Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin (Open Road 1963)

 

The newspapers call the Mets fans “The New Breed.” This is a good name, but there is more to it than this. It goes deeper. As the Mets lost game after game last season, for example, you heard one line repeated in place after place all over town. It probably started in a gin mill someplace with a guy looking down at his drink and listening to somebody talk about this new team and how they lost so much. Then it got repeated, and before long you were even hearing it in places on Madison Avenue.

“I’ve been a Mets fan all my life.”

Nearly everybody was saying it by mid-June. And nearly everybody had a good reason for saying it. You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller? 

Up The Junction by Nell Dunn (MacGibbon & Kee 1963)

 

Out with the girls

We stand, the three of us, me, Sylvie and Rube, pressed up against the saloon door, brown ales clutched in our hands. Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultrily round the packed pub. Sylvie eyes the boy hunched over the mike and shifts her gaze down to her breasts snug in her new pink jumper. 'Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!' he screams. Three blokes beckon us over to their table.

'Fancy 'em?'

Rube doubles up with laughter. 'Come on, then. They can buy us some beer/

'Hey, look out, yer steppin' on me winkle!'

Dignified, the three of us squeeze between tables and sit ourselves, knees tight together, daintily on the chairs.

‘Three browns, please,' says Sylvie before we've been asked.

'I’ve seen you in here before, ain’t I?' A boy leans luxuriously against the leather jacket slung over the back of his chair.

‘Might 'ave done.'

‘You come from Battersea, don't yer?'

‘Yeah, me and Sylvie do. She don't though. She's an heiress from Chelsea.’

‘Really? You really an heiress?' Jimmy Dean moves his chair closer to mine, sliding his arm along the back.

‘Are yer married?'

‘Course she is. What do yer think that is? Scotch mist?' Rube points to my wedding ring.

Sylvie says, ‘Bet they're all married, dirty ginks!'

‘Like to dance?'

Rube moves onto the floor. She hunches up her shoulders round her cars, sticks out her lower lip and swings in time to the shattering music.

‘What's it like havin' a ton of money?'

‘You can't buy love.'

‘No, but you can buy a bit of the other.' Sylvie chokes, spewing out brown ale.

‘I’d get a milk-white electric guitar.'

‘Yeah and a milk-white Cadillac convertible—walk in the shop and peel off the notes. Bang ’em down on the counter and drive out—that's what yer dad does, I bet . . .'

We were crushed in the toilets. All round girls smeared on pan-stick.

‘I can't go with him, he’s too short.'

‘All the grey glitter I put on me hair come off on his cheek and I hadn't the heart to tell him.'

‘I wouldn't mind goin’ with a married man 'cept I couldn't abear him goin' home and gettin' into bed with his wife.'

‘Me hair all right?’

‘Yeah, lend us yer lacquer.'

‘Now don't get pissin' off and leavin’ me.' Rube pulled at her mauve skirt so it clung to her haunches and stopped short of her round knees.

Outside revving bikes were splitting the night.

‘Where we going?'

‘Let's go swimmin’ up the Common.'

‘We ain't got no swim-suits with us.'

‘We’ll swim down one end and you down the other. It’s dark, ain't it?'

‘Who do yer think's going to see yer? The man in the moon?'

‘Yeah and what's to stop yer hands wandering?'

‘We’ll tie 'em behind our backs.'

‘Here, I’ll never git on there I can't get me knees apart.'

‘Hitch yer skirt up under yer coat.'

‘Help, me grandmother’ll catch cold!'

The three of us climb onto the bikes, each behind a boy. We bum up Tooting Broadway and streak round a corner.

‘I did this bend at eighty once,' he shouts over my shoulder.

‘Ninety-two people bin decapitated on them iron girders, taking it too fast.’ We race across the common, then shudder to a halt under some trees. He wears jeans, black boots with double gold buckles and a fine lawn shirt beneath his unzipped jacket.

‘There are two things I'd like to be—a racing driver or a pilot. But you've gotta have money for that.'

The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (Black Spring Press 1963)

To this, I added afternoons reading on my bed, and visits to the library. There is a branch library two blocks from where I live, a noisy place. At one end kids scamper round the shelves of their section, shrieking with laughter till the librarian hushes them, uncomfortably quiet for a while, then soon shrieking again.At the other end the housewives chatter, waiting to rush at the librarian like gabbling hens at a fistful of seed every time she comes to the shelves with another armful of 'romances'.

At the end of one afternoon I went in to look for some thriller. I like these books, the way they scratch on the nerves as I lie in bed. Chandler and Hammett are my favourites. You don't get writing like theirs nowadays. I've read all Mickey Spillane, but he lacks class.

I was looking along the shelves when a fellow came round the end of a bookcase. It was Deaner, the husband. He said, 'Hallo. Seen anything good?'

I said no, and he held a couple of books out. He said, 'I've got these.' Two new novels, fashionable names, the kind that are praised in the highbrow Sunday papers. Every week these papers find another writer who has 'earned his place in the front rank of contemporary writing'. This front rank must be miles long by now. There must be a lot of poor nits like this Vic who are so busy keeping up with this front rank lark that they never have time to read a real book. He said, 'Do you read much?'

I said, 'Not much.'

I knew that tone in his voice. The sentry's challenge of the book-lonely. He stood there waiting for me to give the right password. Among the uneducated (which frankly is what you would call the general population where I live) the serious reader is a lonely person. He goes about among the crowds with his thoughts stuffed inside him. He probably dare not even mention them to his nearest pals for fear of being thought a schmo. There's a hunger in his eyes for someone to talk to. He watches, and from time to time when he sees someone likely, he makes his signals. His situation is very much like that of the nancyboy. I spoke to discourage him. I didn't want him falling on my neck. This Soul Mates idea doesn't appeal to me.

He said, 'I read a lot. When I have time. I sometimes wonder if I've bitten off more than I can chew with this exam. I work at nights till I can't see the figures any more, and I'm still behind the syllabus.'

We looked along the shelves in silence. He said, 'Do you like Upton Sinclair?'

I should have given him the brush-off again, but too quickly I answered him. 'Not all that Lanny Budd stuff. But the early ones are terrific.'

The lights came on in his face and he was gabbling to me like a boy.

So there it was. I never have the sense to keep aloof. The semaphore blinks and I answer it. We moved on along the shelves in silence again, but Vic had a kind of relaxed look, satisfied, like a girl you've assured with a squeeze of the arm. In front of the H. G. Wells shelf we began to talk quite naturally. Wells is an old favourite of mine. This Vic for all his Sunday-paper tastes spoke like an intelligent boy.

I picked up a couple of Simenons, and we walked home together . . .

The Graduate by Charles Webb (The New American Library 1963)

"Come on in the living room a minute," Mr. Braddock said. "You'll get to bed right after a little food."

Benjamin slid back down the stairs, stood and followed his father slowly into the living room. He dropped down onto the sofa.

"Well now," Mr. Braddock said. "Let's have the report."

Benjamin's head fell back and he closed his eyes again.

"What about the money. Did you cash my check?"

"No."

"Well what happened. Did you get some work?"

"Yes."

"What kind of work was it."

"Dad?"

"Come on, Ben," he said. "I'm interested in this."

Benjamin took a deep breath. "I fought a fire," he said.

"That big fire up there?" his father said. "You fought it?"

"That's right."

"Well that's right up there by Shasta. You must have been right up there in the Shasta country. That's beautiful country."

Benjamin nodded.

"How much did they pay you on a deal like that," his father said.

"Five an hour."

"Five dollars an hour?"

"That's right."

"They give you the equipment and you go in and try to put out the flames."

Benjamin nodded.

"Well what about the Indians. I was reading they transported some Indians up there from a tribe in Arizona. Professional fire fighters. Did you see some of them?"

"I saw some Indians. Yes."

Mr. Braddock shook his head. "That is real exciting," he said. "What else happened."

Benjamin didn't answer.

"You didn't have any trouble getting rides."

"No."

"Well tell me where you stayed."

"Hotels."

Mr. Braddock nodded. "Maybe this trip wasn't such a bad idea after all," he said. "Did you have any other jobs besides the fire?"

"Yes."

"Well what were they."

"Dad, I washed dishes. I cleaned along the road. Now I am so tired I am going to be sick."

"Talk to a lot of interesting people, did you?"

"No."

"You didn't?"

"Dad, I talked to a lot of people. None of them were particularly interesting."

"Oh," his father said. "Did you talk to some of the Indians?"

"Yes Dad."

"They speak English, do they?"

"They try."

"Well what else did you-"

"Dad, the trip was a waste of time and I'd rather not talk about it."

"Oh?" his father said. "Why do you say that."

"It was a bore."

"Well it doesn't sound too boring if you were up there throwing water on that fire."

"It was a boring fire."

It was quiet for a few moments. "Can't you tell me a little more about it?"

"Dad-"

"Let's hear about some of the people you bumped into."

"You want to?"

"Sure," his father said. "What kind of people stopped to give you rides."

"Queers."

"What?"

"Queers usually stopped," he said. "I averaged about five queers a day. One queer I had to slug in the face and jump out of his car."

"Homosexuals?"

"Have you ever seen a queer Indian, Dad?"

"What?"

"Have you ever had a queer Indian approach you while you're trying to keep your clothes from burning up?"

Mr. Braddock sat frowning at him from the chair. "Did that happen?" he said.

"Dad, for what it was worth I did the whole tour. I talked to farmers, I talked to-"

"What would you talk to them about."

"The farmers?"

"Yes."

"Their crops. What else do they know how to talk about."

The Rise of Gerry Logan by Brian Glanville (Delacorte Press 1963)

It was the openness of the face that struck me most, more even than its intelligence. Openness, in the sense of wanting to know, was what really set it apart from all the other faces in that dressing-room. They were heavier, of course, they hadn't the same friendliness, the unexpected welcome, but above all, they were closed, they didn't aspire. They knew what they knew, and that was enough; they knew it at twenty-five, which was his age, they'd know it at thirty-five, and they'd know it still - no more, no less - at forty-five. But his greeting had more than friendliness, it had eagerness, too, as though he might find through me some part of what he wanted to know.