Another Little Piece of My Heart Read Online Free

me. I was afraid to go to Tom’s house because I knew she would noodge me about my piece, but I couldn’t stay away for long. Fortunately, she was out when I arrived. In a corner of the kitchen I saw the stud with the magic guitar. Actually, I saw his ass bobbing up and down. I stood there, queasy. After it was over, he wiped his dick with a crusty cloth and grinned at me dreamily. “Wanna jam?” he asked.
    At first I thought he meant sex, but then I realized that he wanted to play for me. Relieved, and a bit regretful, I followed him into his room. He picked up his guitar.
    “I can’t think of what to write,” I whined.
    “Well,” he said. “What do you like? Write about that.”
    “I like … you,” I blurted (probably blushing).
    His smile said, Of course you do, but besides that …
    “Well … I like poetry—the Beats. And folk music. I play.”
    “Guitar or banjo?”
    “Kazoo.”
    I could tell that he didn’t regard that as a real instrument.
    “What else do you like?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. I guess rock ’n’ roll.”
    He looked baffled. “Frankie Avalon?”
    “No, no. That’s crap. I like doo-wop.”
    “But what about new stuff? Like, the Beatles.”
    “Sure. Absolutely. They’re amazing.”
    “Okay!” he said. “Write about them.”
    Well, I’d already done that, and there was nothing to stop me from recycling the piece on the Beatles that I’d published in my college paper. So, with Tom along for support, I brought it down to The Rodent . ButI made the mistake of telling the editor where it had previously run, and he wasn’t up for sloppy seconds. Only when Tom insisted did he look at my manuscript. “Just stop wearing that dumb beret,” he groused as he read the lead.
    Then he delivered his verdict: “It’s not for us.”
    I wasn’t just wounded; I was baffled. I couldn’t understand why my piece wasn’t right for a paper willing to publish anything. Now I realize that it had to do with its readership, which didn’t include rock ’n’ roll fans. The Rodent may have been an open book, but its editor had an unerring sense of what would offend its readers. Prose poems about sacrilege and oral sex were welcome, as was coverage of the Women’s Strike for Peace, but not an article about pop music. Pop was too vulgar for this crowd. It was part of the same tide that had brought the blacklist, the hula hoop, and the TV dinner to the center of American life. Like the Cold War, it had to be resisted.
    I learned a lesson that would stay with me for the rest of my career. Writers and publishers are fire and ice. We’re in it for the words and the attention; they’re out to make a buck. I know there are exceptions, but nonprofit partisans are no more likely than media barons to embrace what threatens their values, and in 1962 their values were the only options. The blogosphere has made everyone a writer, but back then, there was no alternative to the limitations of print. Publications had stables of writers, and for a wild-eyed kid like me it was very hard to break in. The most adventurous journals, such as Evergreen Review , limited themselves to work by credentialed radical intellectuals. I was invisible to a magazine that published Albert Camus. Music mags were only interested in jazz or folk, and in fan books, writing was beside the point. As for the fledgling underground press, it, too, was a business—so I concluded. If I wanted to join the word trade, I’d have to accept that. Or not.

    Sometime in the next few years (I’m not sure when), Tom died. She overdosed—on heroin, I presume, but it could have been amphetamines, or both. These were the so-called hard drugs that only the most reckless of us went near. In the course of the sixties, that changed. I would know many junkies, friends who stank of sedatives, speed freaks whose teeth chattered as they spoke. Most of these people were dear to me, especiallythe women. It may be that I’m drawn to women who radiate