These stories, that have been available on
Blogspot for 10 years for free, will now only be available on Amazon at the
address above. They are contained in “Vagabon Freak”, the 1st volume
of a trilogy titled “The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cats”. I have been the
archetypal starving artist in his garret, painting, drawing and writing,
writing, writing as if I were some waif crying out in the wilderness. Now I
need you, dear reader, to hear my cries and go to Amazon and buy a copy of my
book and keep me alive. There you will find my complete tale, from beginning to
end, in one place, for you to hold in your hot little hands. When you read it
straight through, I assure you, it will blow your mind.
Below are introductory paragraphs and some
pictures that I still retain to illustrate this story, hopefully to give you a
come-on to get my book. Thanks for giving me a go, TZ.
Sample:
It didn’t worry Arthur that Sid and gang had abandoned
him for their motherland, America held no appeal for him, and as a gay gentile
he wouldn’t fit into their scene anyway. He was a lone homo on the run, not
fitting in anywhere, hated by most for no good reason, not an assassin nor an
arms dealer, merely a seeker after sexual enlightenment, which he didn't get, a
failed mystic being his biggest crime.
He aimed for London and would arrive for the Punk
revolution in early '76, a much more fitting milieu for his type, if he could
keep his shit together, and get over his hippie airy-fairiness. He hoped his
seven hundred dollars would get him there, if he traveled overland and was frugal.
India had palled on him, he’d seen and done enough, and if he stayed any longer
he would mulch so far down into the dirt he would be irretrievable. He had a
journey of Marco Polo proportions ahead of him and he prayed he had the stamina
to escape India and achieve his destination, enjoy modern civilization’s
amenities and surf the wave of popular culture like a hero.
He’d given up trying to be an ascetic with the pretense
of being enlightened, the only way in which he’d realized his Self was
resignation towards his homosexual nature, acceptance of his dysfunctional
humanity and a determination to achieve his potential, as a thinker, an artist
and possibly a political rebel. He still practiced Yoga exercises and was
extremely fit and healthy, he attempted meditation at all hours of the day, no
matter the activity, trying to calm an overactive mind and sharpen his wits.
He’d made pilgrimage to most of the Indian holy sites,
had gut-dropping adventures but always remained merely a tourist. At Budh Gaya
he’d longed to sit under the Bodhi Tree and find Buddha, except that an uptight
monk had chased him away as a no-good vagabond. He’d sat on Vivekananda’s rock
at the very bottom of the sub-continent where the three oceans crashed together
and instead of cosmic consciousness he received cold water splashed in his face
and was nearly swept away into the maelstrom.
At Benares he tried to meditate on death and transience
beside the funeral pyres at the river ghats and all he got was his mind clouded
with the stench of burning flesh and the filth of body-parts floating in the
water and he felt repugnance. He went to live with Tibetan Buddhist monks in
their monastery at Dharmsala and was shocked by the medieval toilets, weevils
churning in great vats of shit that he had to sit upon; he got sick and vomited
his guts dry and ran away in a head-spinning fever.
He’d searched high and low for his soul’s salvation, from
the Siva Temple at Kedarnath high in the Himalayas to Ramakrishna’s Ashram down
in the south of Tamil Nadu; at times he’d experienced intense euphoria, even
gained a few talents like goal-oriented concentration, mental telepathy and
purveyor of auguries. These were all transitory flashes, for the most he’d
found only the husk of his body driven by the software of his programmed mind,
full of moods, desires, fears, joys, hopes, dreams, thoughts that kept
repeating or changed with the weather, whatever the circumstances dictated, and
no soul anywhere to be found.
Trying to still the Mind was like trying to dam the
Ganges River by thrusting his hand into it. And trying to quell his sexual
libido was akin to sitting on top of a volcano hoping to block an eruption with
his skinny butt. All he really wanted was to find love and overcome his status
as a sexual outlaw; forever hunted in the shadows, he longed to live in the
light.
Yet throughout all his travails he tried to be a cool
dude, never cheating, trying to help if he could. One day on a bus he met a
woman who’d just been to visit a foreigner in an Indian jail, incarcerated for
drug possession, and though she hardly knew the guy she put in much time trying
to help him. When Arthur asked her why she bothered to do it, it was so much
trouble, she looked at him as if he were an idiot and said, “But he is me. It’s
the same as me being in there. I would want someone to help me if I was there.
I don’t see the difference between us except I’ve got my freedom.”
This gave Arthur a luminous satori, one of the clearest
epiphanies from all his travels and sitting at many big Babas’ feet. “Yeah, for
the truly compassionate there is no separation of identities, all creatures share
the same consciousness of being, one doesn’t have to be separate and living for
me me me all the time.”
Yet he was ever himself, imperfect and vulnerable, and by
1976 he’d learned enough in the mystic continent of India to last him the next
twenty-one years and thus he had to be on his way or he would return to the
dust. He left Goa for Bombay and, while getting ready to doss down at the
cricket Maidan at night, he was approached by a very beautiful young Indian man
of a similar age to himself, whom he keenly desired as he hadn’t had sex for
what seemed like ages.
At twenty-six years old, Arthur was at the height of a
young man’s sexual prowess and for the last few years had experienced little
pleasurable satisfaction. He felt he never did quite get his hands on the
quintessential Indian male, an elusive phantom, intrinsic to the phenomena of Samsara,
whom he had chased down endless pathways in his masturbatory dreams. This
luscious guy lurking in the shadows of the cricket maidan, who fit his ideal of
the perfect male, was available, but only at a price, for he was a hustler. The
money Arthur had was for something he wanted much more, escape from the land of
his dreams and, anyway, he was too proud to pay for it.
“But I’m a great artist, I’m going to be famous one day,
can’t you feel my presence, the force of my personality? How can you knock back
a hot dude like me?” pleaded Arthur.
The young man gazed contemptuously at the horizon and
replied, “What can you give me now? Fame in the future means nothing to me.
With no money there is no honey. I want the sweet life the same as you and the mouthful
you desire so bad, so baad you could die for it, is not free. I’m worth much, I
have value and you must pay for it. This is a fact of life.”
Arthur gnashed his teeth in frustration, it was a hard
truth and he hated it, and he thought, “All you macho, superior, beautiful men
can get fucked! I can live without you, if I have to. And maybe one day I’ll
have the money, charisma as well, but I’ll be knocking you back because I won’t
need it, I’ll be enlightened by then, and it’ll be you begging to be with me.”
He was catapulted out of Bombay and up the length of
India to Delhi and in her fabulous seven cities he nearly got lost again. He’d
discovered a Budhist monastery on the outskirts of the city that charged only
one rupee a night to stay there. It was a converted Mughal fort in Mehrauli and
most of the foreigners slept on the roof of the giant gatehouse. They led the
usual communal life, sharing most things and, as Arthur still had a few balls
of charas given him in goodwill by Jean-Jacques, he was a very popular Hippie Baba.
They would sit in chillum circles and relate their hair-matting tales of India
to each other, each story more incredible than the next, and Arthur told them
of his own death defying escapades and of all the crazy, big Babas he had
crossed paths with.
(If your curiosity is piqued please go to the WEB
address above and buy the book to read further.)