Skip to content

Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1974)

Story (1974)

Excerpt

Notes of a Dirty Old Man

To find the proper place to write, that's most important; the rent should be reasonable, the walls thick, the landlord indifferent, and the tenants depraved, penurious, alcoholic, and lower-middle-class. With the advent of the highrise apartments, small courts, with their own private entranceways, have more and more vanished, and the wonderful characters that once infested these places have vanished along with them. I lived for eight years on a front court on DeLongpre Avenue, and the poetry and the stories flourished. I'd sit at the front window typing, peering through excessive brush onto the street; I'd be surrounded by beer bottles and listening to classical music on the radio, sitting in my shorts, barefooted, my fat beer belly dangling...

Appears in Books

Appears in Magazines