Beanie (Bernard Frank)

Okay… so one day in 1969, flush with money and likely stoned (still working at the New York Times), I decided to take a week’s vacation to Florida. I was engaged at the time but that’s a whole other digression and Cheri didn’t come with me so I’ll just say Cheri ended up becoming collateral damage from this trip. I stayed at the Doral Beach Hotel and the first day there, I wound up at the pool, sitting next to this freak from Philadelphia named Beanie who had hair to his waist and a guru-type grin that he perpetually wore on his face. In the course of the week, I spent a lot of time with Beanie, discussing so many things in so many obtuse ways that my head was spinning at ridiculous speeds. Between sharing joints and opinions, Beanie ripped away any remaining objections I had to leaving my life and starting again. We talked about everything from the war to the cost of pot. He also happened to have a fifth booze bottle that was filled with coconut oil that he had brought back from Jamaica (along with a whole bunch of other ‘stuff’). Beanie showed me the virtues of coconut oil as a sun-tanning device and how to roll a huge spliff and by the time the week ended, I knew I wasn’t long for the New York Times. I wanted to ‘Be What I Could’ and not ‘Be What I Was’. And thus began a long journey that was unimaginable at the time but, looking back, was probably inevitable.

Max S

Max himself wasn't all that interesting... pretty much of a small-time selfish big dope who sold bales of Jamaican weed and some Lebanese hashish for a while... was partners with Jerry S and JB. Together, they were decent connections but didn't really get the big picture of things. My sense of the business was that fairness was an essential part of the picture. Just because you had a product that people wanted wasn't a reason to take advantage of them. The business wasn't about a single transaction but was an ongoing relationship that could be profitable for all sides. Jerry got the picture but Max was too full of himself to see anything beyond his own self.

So I remember Max as someone who always tried to milk every bit of product for every possible buck. His ego was huge... and if he had something that he knew you wanted, he played on it until you pretty much paid whatever he wanted and said thank you. After several years, the tables were turned and he was real surprised when I had what he wanted and I told him to go fuck himself.

He did, however, have a sweet-looking live-in who was fun to be with. That relationship lasted until Max became physically abusive. The last time I saw her, her face was bruised purple and my eyes rolled as she tried to tell me how it was her fault. I left and didn't go back. I heard later on that he got busted trying to sell some lousy product to an agent. I suspect he was asking for a price that only a cop would pay.

The Cast of Characters

Bobby Mountain
Kenny L
Gary Yukon
Randy B
Joey R
Scott G
Marvin S (RIP)
Robin (RIP)
Big Al from Red Hook (RIP)
Av
Bill
Travis (RIP)
Tom R; Gabriella
Bradley
JP (RIP)
Stu
James
Rocky
Melvin
Charlie K
Mike R
Dennis B
Vernon H
Peggy
JB
Max S
Jerry S
Norman
Bob S & Murray
Patti (RIP)
Ernie
JP (RIP)
Risa
Keith (RIP)
Steve P (RIP)
Denis W (RIP)
Glen
Gary (RIP)
Ronnie F
Mel M (RIP)
Larry S
David L
Gerry Labush (RIP)
Jack K
Mitch C (RIP)
Charlie G (RIP)
John the Beak
Don L
Donna N
Larry S
Sarah
Kenny K
Tom O'M (RIP)
Lee Lang
Mike Fowler
Michael
Emerson (RIP)
Michael S
Jeff G
Abe
Stu F
Mark F
Russ
Mark M
Jesse T
Kip (57th)
Beanie (Bernie Frank)
David K
Freddy
Schmoo (RIP)
Foot (RIP)
David P & Helen

I Meet Greg & Go To The Beach

One of the best things that happened to me at Bronx Community College was my friendship with Gregg Z. He was the boyfriend of one of the girls who hung around the Pub office. Gregg was a quiet sort of guy, but he always seemed to attract the girls. I remember one time, there was this girl I had been trying to get close to, Lois, and no matter how nice I was to her, she just totally ignored me. I told Gregg about this and he just walked up to her one day and said “Hello bitch.” Lois ran after him for two semesters after that and at the time, I never quite understood was it was that got her. Anyway, in another similar incident, I managed to introduce Gregg to the girl he would eventually marry, Mimi.

We had some good times together while working on the campaign trail and we also became co-editors of Gleanings, the school literary magazine. We seemed to hit it off pretty well, and he asked if I’d like to rent an apartment with him out at the beach in Far Rockaway for the summer. My father, by this time, was starting to look for some new companionship in his life and wasn’t terribly displeased with the idea of me living elsewhere for a few months. He gave the okay and Gregg and I went hunting an apartment at the beach.

Far Rockaway was a wonderful place before the powers that be tore it down in an urban renewal binge during the 1970s. The boardwalk ran on for several miles above a beautiful white sanded beach. Each two blocks of beachfront were enclosed by these long stone jetties that extended at least a hundred fifty feet into the ocean. It was an exhilarating experience to stand at the end of one of these jetties above the deep ocean water, with the wind blowing powerfully in your face, waves slapping the rocks, the spray dancing all around, with gulls and other birds spearing fish within a few feet from your perch. It was a favorite place for local fishermen who would hang out on the jetties whenever the waters weren’t being used by swimmers. I was quite inspired by the changing moods of the ocean. On a calm clear day, it would appear so peaceful and non-threatening, while during stormy weather the waves would scream their roar with a ferocity that was genuinely frightening. For seven months out of the year, the streets and beaches were serene and practically deserted. The other five months, however, were another matter entirely.

It wasn’t long before we found an apartment on Beach 44^th Street in one of those big old houses that were common in the area. The rent was $150 a month for a single furnished room with a small kitchen. By furnished, I mean it had two single beds, a straight-backed wooden chair and an old metal lamp without a shade. The house was a victorian-style structure with a high-peaked roof that resembled the House of the Seven Gables. The roof was covered with dark gray shingles. It was a small, dimly lit version of Norman Bates’ house which overlooked his famous motel. It had been painted an ominous shade of drab green at some time in the distant past and was badly in need of attention. There was a steep staircase leading up to our room and every time I climbed those steps, I expected to find a skeleton at the top.

Vietnam, Eggs and Marijuana

During the time I spent at Bronx Community College, from 1965 through 1967, the action in Vietnam started to become much more intense. The ‘police action’ was beginning to feel much more like a war. Our country was drafting more and more young men, sending them off to Southeast Asia, and there was no real end in sight. I found myself, at first, torn between my natural patriotic feelings and the suspicion that this war had nothing to do with patriotism. In fact, as time went on, I felt that it might be more patriotic to try to end our involvement, than to enlist and fight for Uncle Sam. Although I refrained from joining any of the on-campus anti-war organizations, because they were much further left-leaning than I believed myself to be, in mid-1966, I did show up at a protest outside a marine recruiting station on the Grand Concourse and began picketing the place. A crowd gathered and before long, the fifteen demonstrators, me among them, were bombarded with an assortment of items varying from tomatoes to eggs. I could see that the passions on both sides of this issue were going to be expressed with extreme intensity.

That term, I was taking a night course at the college annex which was located in the Bronx High School of Science. One of the protestors from the recruiting station, David Fleischer, turned up in my class and we used to talk politics while walking to the subway after class. He was espousing what sounded to me like a ‘party line,’ which seemed to welcome an American defeat in Vietnam rather than the cessation of fighting that I favored. On a cool night, while arguing some point or other, he produced a corn cob pipe and asked me if I’d like to smoke some ‘pot.’ I had been offered the opportunity to indulge with increasingly regularity lately and in fact had tried it twice with no apparent effects. I figured this would be just like those other times so I joined him in smoking his pipe. I just took two or three puffs, but by the time we reached the train station, I was having difficulty focussing on conversation. In fact, it seemed that there were five minute pauses between responses. The train was delayed, and we sat there for an hour, waiting on a bench. Finally, it arrived and I began the long trip home. Usually, the ride took 45 minutes if you made good connections but was unlikely to take more than an hour if you didn’t. The train seemed to take forever stopping and starting at the stations along the way, and I was really afraid of what my dad would say when I staggered in the door, more than two hours later than expected. Finally, I arrived at my home station and walked to two blocks home. Amazingly, he couldn’t see anything wrong with me and I actually arrived home only five minutes late. The entire delay had been an illusion, an effect of the cannabis. The next day, I expected to have a craving for drugs, the beginning of a dreaded habit, but I could discern no after effects whatsoever.

A Real Pisser

One other thing that came out of my relationship with Peter L was Sandy M. I met her at one of the campaign rallies for Roy Goodman. She lived on West 86^th Street and her father was the Horowitz of Horowitz and Margaretten Matzohs. This impressed Peter to no end and to both our surprise she accepted my invitation to see a movie. My parents were thrilled that I should be dating a girl with such obvious links to the upper social classes, and one whose name was revered throughout the Jewish community. Well, matzohs or no matzohs, Amanda was one weird girl. I mean she was pleasant company and all that, but there were some aspects of this girl’s behavior that really shocked me. First of all, I wasn’t all that sophisticated in these kinds of relationships. Therefore, on the first date, when she excused herself three times to go to the ladies room during the movie, I didn’t think much about it but rather was focused in on her willingness to smooch and rub her body against mine. In fact, it wasn’t until a month or so later, on our fourth or fifth date, that I realized she had some physical or psychological problem with her urinary tract. I had been ignoring the obvious problem when one evening, in the dead of winter, with the temperature below zero, she insisted that I stop my car on the Bronx River Parkway so she could run into the woods. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back because I had this vision, while she was off in the woods, of what it would be like to live with a person who had to piss every half hour. I dropped her off at her plush apartment house and headed east to Astoria where, while the girls weren’t even close to being in the ruling class, they had firm control over their bladders.

College Journalism?

My stories were apparently first-rate since I was given the opportunity to write my own column in my second semester on the paper. I now had a forum from which to opine on any subject that struck my fancy, or at least those that didn’t upset the faculty advisor, Mr. Wolfson. There was quite a battle going on that year for the presidency of the student council. The outcome of these elections was generally decided by a small percentage of the votes cast and therefore the opinions expressed in the school paper weighed heavily in the balance. One candidate, Peter Lesser, was really leaning on the editorial board and the columnists to gain their approval. He told me he had political ambitions and connections which he would use to help me in the real world if I endorsed him in my column.

Peter was a tall fellow with fairly short black hair which he combed straight to one side. If he had a mustache his haircut might have been reminiscent of Hitler. His face was highlighted by his bushy black eyebrows, and a thin, hawk-like nose which pointed straight ahead like a one-way traffic sign. When he spoke, Peter always seemed to me to be talking out of the side of his mouth. It was funny because he was doing this literally and figuratively at the same time. He was always running after money and power. His brother had married some girl from Chicago whose parents owned half the city. He used to say they had so much money they couldn’t count it. Anyway, he figured he could use his brother’s good fortune to further his political goals. One of these was to become governor of New York by the year 2000. However, Mario Cuomo has nothing to fear, since Peter has long since vanished from the New York area.

One thing which came out of my relationship with Peter was my getting involved in several political campaigns in 1966. Peter and I worked together to help get Roy Goodman elected to the State Senate in the Silk Stocking District. He indicated that by working in the political arena, we might get advance notice when any Army Reserve lists were opened up in the New York area. This would presumably enable us to avoid duty in Vietnam and at the same time get credit for having served our country. (I guess Dan Quayle was thinking along the same lines.) In any case, Roy Goodman was a good man, and I never regretted working for him. The other campaign was a little more dicey. We went out to try to elect a Black republican, Eugene MacIntosh, to the state assembly. The district included most of north Harlem and Washington Heights. He was running against a Jewish democrat who was strictly a ‘Tammany Hall’ type of politician. I remember gathering up a bunch of friends from school, convincing them that Harlemites would be better off with a Black republican than a Jewish political hack and organizing them into a group we called ‘Students for MacIntosh.’ We spent many a night walking the streets of Harlem, talking to voters and imploring them to vote for Mr. MacIntosh. One of our brighter ideas was to make a stencil that read “MacIntosh for Assembly” and paint the letters into crosswalks with Dayglo paint. We figured that people always look down as they step off a curb and therefore they couldn’t miss seeing his name. After all, name recognition was touted as the battle that wins these kinds of wars. Apparently we were right in half our assumptions. Everybody who crossed the street read the signs but the reaction was decidedly anti-MacIntosh. These were the days before graffiti was in vogue and MacIntosh received about two hundred angry phone calls complaining that we had defaced the streets. This may have been the first organized graffiti spraying in New York City history but obviously that milestone went unappreciated at the time. Shortly, we were sent out with cans of black paint to eliminate the stencilled messages. Frankly, the bright colors that we had used went a long way towards sprucing up an otherwise dirty and dreary locale, but I guess the residents had other ideas. Ultimately, it didn’t matter anyway since MacIntosh was a Lindsay republican and Harlemites were traditionally democratic voters. I think Eugene got about 20 percent of the vote.

I did finally endorse Peter, but it was because his opponent was both a real jerk and a TMF member, not because he tried to bribe me. In fact, he won the school election by a slim margin when his girlfriend, a student at the nursing division, managed to stuff the ballot box on his behalf and at his behest. Peter is now a District Attorney in Dallas and recently ran for mayor. I understand he went to Texas after failing the New York Bar exam three times. New York’s loss is Texas’ gain. Hooray for politics.