Something 4 The Weekend # 136

The Jim Carroll Band: Catholic Boy: "People Who Died" [mp3]

One night, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I climbed up on the roof of our garage and masturbated under the moonlight. I did it because Jim Carroll wrote about doing the same on the roof of his apartment building in NYC when he was a teenager. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does, really. The raw primacy of the act outdoors - it was quite a powerful experience, and one that stayed with me...There's nothing quite as exciting as outdoor sex, I don't think - fucking like animals...

Anyways, The Basketball Diaries blew my teenaged mind, and is definitely one of the most influential books I've ever read...Sex, drugs, basketball - that was essentially my teenaged life, although I never had to sell my mouth and ass for heroin money...Instead, I worked a dishwashing job for $3.75 an hour for weed and booze money, which I often smoked and drank at the basketball court on 3rd Ave...

The Basketball Diaries was influential because it was one of my earliest forays into adult fiction, and led my reading to what might be considered the more transgressive writers - William S Burroughs, Hunter S Thompson, the Beats, JG Ballard, Kathy Acker...It was an autobiography that seemed to give me permission to experiment, as it were...Now, I never got strung out on smack at 13, let alone 43, but when I was young, I never shied away from trying any drug at least once, including heroin...Most drugs I never did again, including heroin, but two or four were worth repeating...Sex too - just about anything goes, you know, and you never know when a favored safe word might come in handy.

Anyways, Jim Carroll died last Friday, though I didn't hear about it until Tuesday...Go figure...

This song selection is the obvious one, but it truly is a great song and worth hearing again...What is Rock'n'Roll if not a raging against the dying of the light?

RIP, Jim Carroll...

"I just want to be pure."

Hotcha! Hank