“I think I can deliver this place to you at the fee you want, but there are two provisos.”

“Continue.”

“Before I continue, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” I told him my name and explained that I was an obscure visionary poet from the East Village.

“Another obscure visionary poet,” he muttered bored.

“Not another,” I corrected, “one that has control of a theater you need, and frankly I’m hoping to be less obscure.”

“That would leave just the visionary.”

“Right, and I envision that we can help each other.”

“You’re jesting.” He quickly understood the direction in which I was heading.

“I’ve been writing poetry all my life and, other than in school, I’ve never been published. All I’m asking is that you look at a poem of mine. If you don’t like it, nothing lost. But if you do like it, you gain a poet and a theater.”

“Why in God’s name do you think that I can get you published?”

“Everyone knows that you are to the Harrington what Delmore Schwartz was to the Partisan Review, what Mencken was to American Mercury and what Perkins was to Harper & Row.”

“Perkins was with Scribner, and that wasn’t a magazine.”

“I thought Bartelby was with Scribner’s.”

“Oh, God!” He sighed and rose to go.

“Look! All we’re talking about is a couple of well-crafted lines, one stanza that describes the mechanism of the East Village.”

“The mechanism of the East Village?” He smiled. “What’s your poem about, a car?”

“Call it what you will.”

“Is this machine rhymed or free verse?”

“I rhyme, but…”

“Narrative, confessional, free association…?”

“Essentially narrative.”

“Where is this sacred poem?” he asked. Apparently I had passed the multiple-choice part of the quiz.

“I’ll have it for you in a week.”

“A week! Tomorrow is our final editorial conference. Then we go to print. Next week is my first vacation in two years.” He rose again and said, “That ends that.”

“Wait a second.” I stood up. “I can have it for you before the film ends.”

“All right, fine,” he replied, prepared to go.

“Then you’ll do it?”

“I’ll consider it if you get the poem here before the film ends, but I’ll tell you right now, don’t expect much.” He opened the door to leave.

“One last thing,” I requested before he departed. “Miguel’s a bit of a barbarian. In order to get you your price I would like you to tell him that you’re paying the whole two hundred. I’ll cover the deficit.”

“You mean if I accept your poem,” he added. Then we shook hands, and he went back into the auditorium.

I swiftly went through the office collecting necessities to write poetry with, a beer from the fridge, a clock, two sharpened pencils, paper. Calling the projectionist, I asked her how long the film would last.

“Another reel, about twenty minutes,” she replied, curiously free of any antagonism.

I snuck into the bathroom stall, and for the benefit of any curious eyes that might check the exposed underpart of the partition, I dropped my pants around my knees and sat.

I hadn’t written a poem in years, and was not sure of why I was doing this. Occasionally opportunity was prompting enough. I thought hard about nonsense and started scribbling. First, I started just jotting out recollections of New York, but then I dashed down little slogans and aphorisms that I had heard over the past few months, then I rhymed them into a quick poem, while offering my own criticism in alternating verse:

Stop Aids not Gays.

It wasn’t well rhymed

No entry for gentry

A graffitied wall chimed.

Only niggers pull triggers

There’s a strong verse,

Drink, Drive and Die—Alliteratively terse

Mug and Goetz what’s coming

A pale little pun.

I’ll stick to free verse

Couplets are done!

But then I remembered that I specifically said it would be an East Village poem, so I started thinking about each street, from First to Fourteenth. I drew up a small map and noted every established hangout and local institution; the poem had to be short, cute, and simple. I sensed that this was all the silver-spooned editor could digest.

There were no revelations in that refuge for defecators and lovers. Sitting upon that unwashable and ancient toilet, I toiled, tinkered, and versified. When seated in that position too long, something is bound to fall out and soon the bowels moved; a cheap little stanza complete with all the squalid neighborhood emblems. For no clear reason, I entitled it “Cowboy Streets, Indian Avenues”:

Third Street bikers

At Seventh Street bars

Met Twelth Street whores

Screwed quick in cars

Are busted by cops from Fifth Street way

Who drive them all off toward Avenue A

It was forced and trashy and I hoped that one day I would be a writer talented enough to repudiate it. Outside the stall, I could hear someone pacing, and then more feet. The film must have ended. After quickly writing a final draft, I flushed the toilet for effect and abdicated the chair.

Entering the theater in the middle of deafening applause and brightening lights, I saw no sign of Owensfield. But then I heard a bunch of giggly punk boys and girls and spotted the patron in their midst. Silently I watched them giggle and react to his every movement. Wealth, like fame, provided incredible leverage to one’s character; an adequate mind seemed brilliant if it belonged to a star. Not-repulsive looks made a blue blood stunningly handsome; mild sensitivity catapulted one into heights of sexiness; basic decency made them rivals of Mister Christ. Owensfield and his lucky entourage were about to skip out the fire exit when I intercepted him.

“Here.” I shoved the poem in his face. With nothing more than a rise of his eyebrows, his group was signaled to linger outside. As he mumbled the poem aloud, Miguel appeared from the other side of the theater and started approaching.

“Well,” he uttered as he crinkled the page into his pocket, “to buy this much space as an advertisement would cost you about a hundred and fifty dollars and frankly we’ve published a lot worse.”

“Is that an acceptance?”

“No, it’s a deal.”

“What’s a deal?” Miguel entered in the middle of the conversation.

“Your friend drives a hard bargain.” Owensfield seemed to yield. “He got what he was after.”

“Wow!” Miguel marvelled as he looked at me.

“I’ve got people waiting,” the well-to-doer replied. “We’ll discuss all the bindings later. Au revoir.” And he was gone.

“How the Tao did you do that?”

“I knew what appealed to him. It turned out I had read his latest piece, a study on Bobby Musil. We talked about that awhile, until the next thing I know we’re both reliving Hapsburg, Vienna, Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, and Saint Stephen’s. My God, first we were in tears and then in stitches.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Kindred spirits!” I exclaimed. “Elective affinities. For the moment we were the same person. Hell, when I finally popped the request it was like I was asking myself for something.”

“And you’re telling me he just gave in.”

“It was more like I gave it to me.”

“Amazing. And I always thought the richer they were the poorer they were. I was ready to take his offer.” Miguel looked perplexed. Only the speech pattern and mannerisms remained of the Miguel who was once the sincere earth child. The money and the vulgarity had made its breach; Miguel knew he couldn’t walk nude along the streets or hand out dandelions, and he knew that rhetoric was just rhetoric, but in his heart of hearts I think he really wanted to believe that the right words could precipitate the correct actions. He nodded, still perplexed, and went into his office.