New York, NY – October 28, 2008] The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) has announced the selection of five film projects to receive financial and creative support from its inaugural TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Out of 130 applications submitted, the five projects chosen will receive a total of $110,000. The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund supports narrative projects that tell compelling stories about science and technology or portray scientists, engineers and mathematicians as major characters.

The projects were selected by a committee made up of filmmakers Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream) and Steven Shainberg (Fur, Secretary), producer Caroline Baron (Capote), producer and writer Ann Druyan (Contact), Columbia University Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biological Sciences Darcy B. Kelley, and former Director of the National Institutes of Health, co-recipient of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Dr. Harold Varmus.

The selected projects selected and funding are:

· Face Value - $40,000

· The Radioactive Boy Scout - $40,000

· Alva - $10,000

· A Noble Affair - $10,000

· Kitty Hawk - $10,000

“The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund affords us an opportunity to provide funding at a crucial time in the industry,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Chairman of the Board, TFI. “These are projects we would like to see brought to fruition and we are happy to be able to support them with funding and our vote of confidence.”

“We are delighted to partner with the Tribeca Film Institute in supporting these five film projects that showcase the tremendous box office appeal of science and technology themes and characters,” said Doron Weber, program director at the Sloan Foundation. “We expect Face Value and Radioactive Boy Scout to be produced within the next year – there is already significant industry interest and attachments – while developing the other promising scripts for the future.”

“It was exciting to read so many interesting and compelling stories with scientific themes,” said Caroline Baron. “It makes you realize how big a role science plays in all of our lives. The committee feels strongly that we have identified projects where Sloan funding would have the greatest impact.”

Films funded tell stories of a screen siren’s unheralded talents as a pioneering inventor, the true story of a boy scout trying to build a nuclear reactor and win his father’s respect, the controversial life of Thomas Edison, Marie Curie’s passionate personal entanglements on the path to the discovery of Radium, and the intense family drama and intrigues behind the extraordinary achievements of the Wright brothers.

Selected projects for funding:

Face Value - The story of screen siren Hedy Lamarr’s little-known vocation as an inventor and scientist. Working with avant-garde composer George Antheil, with whom she had a passionate affair, Lamarr patented “frequency hopping” to aid the US military in WWII. Little did she know, it would become a key component in most current wireless technology.

Director: Amy Redford; Producers: David Baxter, Gretchen Somerfeld;

Screenwriters: Gretchen Somerfeld, Jose Rivera

The Radioactive Boy Scout - Based on the true story of a 16-year-old Boy Scout in Michigan who, in 1995, attempted to build the core of a nuclear reactor in his backyard shed and was shut down by the Federal government.

Director/Screenwriter: Greg Harrison;

Producer: Danielle Renfrew, William Horberg;

Alva - Was Thomas Edison America’s greatest inventor, or a clever thief with a pioneering acumen for marketing? Alva explores the life of Edison from a precocious young rule breaker, to the full blown ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’.

Screenwriters: Alex Lyras, Michael Dorian

A Noble Affair - Marie Curie was one of the leading feminist figures of the scientific world, facing obstacles in her professional and personal life, both exacerbated by gender discrimination. This is the story of how she proved the existence of the element Radium, thereby paving the way for many discoveries in nuclear science and earning her a second Nobel Prize.

Producer: Anil Baral

Screenwriter: Kathryn Maughan

Kitty Hawk - The story of the Wright Brothers, the original aviation pioneers, that chronicles their journey and struggles towards the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Director/Screenwriter: Tim Kirkman

Producers: Joshua Astrachan, Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Gill Holland

Submissions for the 2009 TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund open November 12, 2008 and will be accepted through January 9, 2009 (postmark deadline). Fund recipients will be announced in the spring of 2009. Visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org for further rules and information on submissions.

About Tribeca Film Institute

The Tribeca Film Institute is dedicated to creative innovation in film and media arts. The Institute creates original programs that draw on the unifying power of film to promote creativity, understanding, tolerance and global awareness. Our commitment is to educate, entertain and inspire filmmakers and audiences alike, while strengthening the artistic and economic fabric of New York City and its Lower Manhattan community.

For more information visit www.tribecafilminstitute.org.

All thirty or so people freeze as one. I begin to melt them as the heat from my empty words sear their nearly naked bodies.

“I see new friends. And you are all my friends, aren’t you? Say yes, nod in agreement, say yes if it is yes, give your nose a wriggle no, if it’s no. Shake your heads no. From where I stand the ayes have it and that is how it should be. Now hear what I have to say. You’ve stood here long this day and you have listened. You have heard. You have heard my words. You have seen. You have seen me demonstrate the quality of these products. Perhaps you have imbibed the mystery of life. I call you together for the express purpose of allowing all of you to return home with a touch of my bottled sunshine. Many years ago, on this very day I may add, I came across a man on his deathbed. He was an old man, a shriveled man, but a gentle man, once a virile man. He was a stern man. He was a scrupulous man. A fearless man. He was addicted to, of all things, as you are, I am sure, of all things to life. He was the true precious jewel to all he touched. Life. Yes. But he was an addict. He could never get enough life so he tried to invent some of his own. He sowed and he reaped and never regretted anything he had ever done. This is not his eulogy. This is not a eulogy for his followers of which there are many. This is just an expression of thanks. He knew no wilderness. He never wore a hair shirt. Some of you may think this is blasphemy. He was not a Christian. He was not a Jew. He did not embrace Buddhism or Hinduism. He was not a Moslem. He was a man who lived and he died a man wanting to continue living, embracing everything that came his way. He died because he neglected his own discovery.”

I pause to let my sermon sink in. Some older people mumble. They look puzzled. The younger ones wear smiles of amusement, perhaps cynicism on their untested faces. The women anticipate. The men look bored and only mildly curious. A cool breeze rises leisurely from the ocean. It is getting late in the afternoon. The tide has already changed, forcing the water higher onto the beach. My body is drying and caking with salt. I am chilly, dirty, in need of a shower. I wish I could retire someplace quiet and empty where I can be alone. My act has to go on if I am to make any money. They have come for shampoo but they are getting something unexpected. The ‘tip,’ my unyielding front rows, are now the firm root of my audience. People are in place, one row pushing into another. No one can move on their own. They have to wait it out to see where it, where I am going.

“My friends,” I say.  “My friends. You shall have the benefit of that discovery because I’m in a magnanimous mood. Yes. I want to do something for you that will make you remember me for the rest of your natural days. And even some of your unnatural ones. I want to make you happy. I want you to leave here as happy as you have ever been. I want you to be happy. I want to relieve your sadness. I want you to walk the eternal green valley before you reach heaven. I want you to experience harps and angels and floating clouds before the real thing comes to sadly interrupt your lives. I want you to share my secret. I see a man in the back shaking his head in disbelief. (There is no man.) Believe me, sir, I’m not going to give you the formula. That would make me a fool in this great free enterprise system we have in America. I don’t own the patent on my product. No one yet can reproduce it. Some of its elements have a habit of changing and once changed, the formula is never the same again. All I intend allowing you to do is to go home with a little of my bottled sunshine. It is harmless. It is delicious. It smells sweet. It is safe for children of all ages. It relieves your aches and pains. No leading health agency sanctions it because the Feds are afraid to touch it. It has great restorative powers. The government is afraid it might put their favorite companies out of business. Step in a little closer. Good. That’s it. Better to hear me. After talking to you and many of your friends so much during the day, my voice is starting to slip away just as that decent, kind and gentle old man’s voice did so many years ago in the moments before his death. Can you see it now? Me, so young, he, so old. He beckons me to bring my ear to his mouth. Oh, it was a sad sight, indeed. I bent my head down and he whispered the magic formula in my already jaded ear. I rose as if Lazarus from the dead and knew that I have been the recipient of a great and wondrous gift. That is correct. That is right. Move in closer.”

They are in the palm of my hands. I reach behind me for a bottle of the hair lotion. It is getting close to when the spot is almost complete, when they will pay me with money instead of applause. They are in my pocket, zippered and sealed, buttoned. They wait for me to pluck them, dice them, roast them. I can feel it.

I continue with my pitch. I have to use it before I lose it, before I lose
them—my people, standing patiently in awe in front of me. I am tired. I’m losing my concentration. But I need their money. I have to defeat the withering, yellow, newly calloused thumb of a god unknown—my personal devil driving me to a place foreseen only by “it.” It is a place predetermined before my time, a place of destiny, perhaps that will eventually make me see my time at its end. There is that negative aspect of my being. And damn it, I start smiling. A great big grin washes over my tense face. My uncurled lips seek their mirror in the eyes of the people in front of me. My eyes become less dull. Even my hair begins to shine as if dipped in oil. I receive the strength to go on with my many lies. I’ll take their money and then I’ll go and think. I’ll think and drink and relive something of what I have left behind. I’ll sniff the airs beguiling stench for solace. And I will love it.

I’m in pieces. I have nothing of lasting duration to tie me together. Is my past enough? I’m too young to have nothing so soon. Is my suffering different in intensity and depth than any other individual? Am I different from any other person out of all the millions who are also lost and wandering? Can I seek after myself in limited time and come up with part of an answer? Part of an answer. I am not greedy. Or is it for me to head forward, deny the past and leap boldly into the future by taking a hot iron and cauterizing my festering wounds that refuse healing from the lack of compassion I feel for myself?

Men and women talk on the edge of the crowd. They are loose cannons, mouths in motion. I have to get them back. There is work to do.

“That guy must be nuts,” says an old man wearing a red handkerchief around a balding head covered in liver spots and moles.

“Yeah,” answers his young companion. “I been here all day. Only once I took a break, a break for a frank. I like them franks with the pickles and onion, sweet relish all over. Only once I left.”

“Did you buy anything from him?”

“Not yet. Maybe this time. Just look at him. Sweating like hell. Like a horse. Pouring out of him like piss.”

“Yeah, a real character, that one,” says a skinny, middle-age woman dressed in faded black cotton and wearing black heavy silk stockings.

“Character ain’t the word. An actor, maybe. But a character, no,” says the old man.

“What’s he selling, anyhow?” asks a teenager, a high school-kid with grease in his hair. Pimples dot his unlined face.

“Shhhh,” says his girl friend. “You’ll disturb him, Jerry. You shouldn’t disturb him. He won’t like it.”
“Crap,” says her boy friend.

“Right. If you disturb him, he’ll shut up and start staring like he is blind or something,” whispers another young man with a pencil-thin mustache and long sideburns. Two-toned white and black shoes covered his big feet. The shirt he wears is white on white with, of all things, a tie also white on white. Dazzling.

“He’s in his third one after lunch. I think he did three this morning. I lost count when I got tired standing here,” says a skinny black woman on the side. “I always carry lunch in my pocketbook when I come to the boardwalk looking for a show. After I ate, I lost count. I always sit when I eat my sandwich.”

“You live around here?” says the old man to the skinny woman. He can hardly believe his eyes, the way she looks, but she excites him in spite of himself.

“During the summer, only. In his third one, he stopped and looked at the sky. He got dizzy and someone got him a glass water.”

“It’s still sitting there,” says the teenaged girl. Her timely poodle haircut is frizzled from too much sun and sand. Her red bathing suit is too tight as it stretches across her blooming body.

“Shh . . .” says her boy friend. Whenever he looks at her, he jumps, startled with what he sees.

“I think I’ll buy something this time.”

“Me too. Son-of-a-bitch works like hell.”

“What’s he selling? I forgot.”

“Does it matter?”

“Who cares? He puts on a show.”

“Some show . . . ”

“I’d still like to know what he’s selling.”

“Lady, for a buck, you can’t go wrong.”

“For a dollar, I can eat two days. Here two days. At home, three days.”

“Don’t bother me with your trouble.”

“A dollar? Is that all it costs?”

“A buck. To the track, I almost went today. A better show and for cheaper, I’m getting here.” A smile.

“Shush,” says the skinny, middle-aged woman with lunch for two days in her pocketbook and a room in a bungalow by the ocean for the summer.

“Look. He’s laughing,” says the girl with the poodle cut.

“What’s he laughing at? I want to know.”

“Go ask him, wise guy.”

“I think he’s laughing at us,” say a pompous, pregnant woman in her late thirties. She wears a spanking new maternity swim suit, the best money can buy, the best that an overjoyed husband will buy. She is new to the crowd. The oversized pregnant woman has an expression on her face that says, she never wanted the damned child anyway, so she’ll take her pampered husband for everything he has.

“We’re going to pay him! Why should he laugh at us?” says the old man.

“Well, he at least looks human when he smiles,” offers the pregnant woman, an erotic sneer streaking across her pouting lips.

“Kind of cute,” says the teenaged girl.

“What do you mean, kind of cute?” says her shocked boyfriend.

“Cute. Cute. Don’t worry, he’s too old for me.” She pats his hand, grins prettily like a child, but the blood beats faster than usual between her legs. She likes him for the moment. She likes all men and boys for the moment.

“He better be too old,” says her boyfriend and that ends that.

“Cute she calls him. Are we here for cute?” says the pregnant woman. “He looks so sad, so sad and so out of it. I never saw such a sad face on such a young man. He’s not too old for me.”

“But he works hard, no?” says the old man.

“Yeah. Maybe. That hard, I would never work. Ain’t worth it.”

“But what’s he selling? Someone please tell me what’s he selling.”

“Oh shut up and eat your lunch,” says a new voice to the audience, and that ended that.

My silent laughter done, I go loudly back to work. Reality floods over me, signaling me it’s time to feed the vulture again. I’ll make them squirm first.

Just as with the product, the pattern never varies. When I start calling on people to come see what I have, I watch my crowd slowly build. On most days people are in bathing suits and beach robes. The first few lines of hungry eyes are my “tip.” As the first rows are born I hear myself shouting, coercing, whining, begging, laughing. My feigned, tear-choked, too hoarse voice simulates a whisper as they move toward me. If I am lucky and my timing is on, I can make them move closer to me and listen to everything I say with an inquisitive, hungry intensity. They always think I am about to give something away for nothing. Well, I am, in a sense. Part of me, personal, hating, longing to love and waiting for love in return, goes down the drain with every pitch I make. I auction myself to the highest bidder, waiting for annihilation by the sun-bleached, yellow haired, hard browning, lizard skinned, crawling crust of decaying humanity standing impatiently at my feet.

I go through the motions of calling my flock. I, the Deacon in white, stiff with starch in faded blue cord slacks covering my torn white under shorts. I perspire freely in the intense heat and am soaking wet. My neck itches in a circle. Closed collars and blunt razors make me unhappy because they irritate my tender neck. Though my beard grows fast, the whiskers are soft and almost red, not black or with the feel of Brillo. Weak but gentle shocks come through the frayed microphone cord each time the sweat drips from under my arms to my wrists to the hand holding the mike attached to the portable speaker system at my side. The shocks came as if on cue, matching my heartbeat, in time with the pulsating vein in my forehead.

I see a man slowly lift his elbow and then guide it deftly behind him with finesse and grace. He places it firmly into the breast of a beautifully endowed teen-aged junior Amazon. She stands in a sheath of cloth, tissue paper thin in two-pieces, purple-purple, which passes as a bathing suit. He stands his ground, looking at me, his only expression, innocence. She wriggles in closer to hear what I have to say, her breast working his elbow as his elbow works her breast. I see her breathing change from normal to short sensual gasps.

I often wonder what effect I have on women when I preach the gospel of clean hair, but the chick in front of me is reacting to the guy with the elbow, not me. The newly mated couple come closer to each other. She begins to writhe in obvious sexual pleasure. He grinds his elbow neatly into her taut nipple. His feet stay firmly rooted to the wooden board walk, while he smiles stupidly toward me as if he is listening to everything I say. I feel like saying:  Take your elbow out of her young tit, jerk. Leave her alone in public. For chrise sake, take her under the board walk and lie down with her in private on the cool, damp sand away from my jealous eyes. Just be done with your mechanical, spluttering fluctuations and leave the rest of us less fortunate slobs in peace. Jesus, I am envious.

On that particular day, as with many of my days, my crowd, the tip, starts edging from me. It has to be obvious to them that my mind is drifting, not paying them the attention they think they deserve. But the man and the girl remain rooted, held in place by a devil set loose to torment them and me. I realize I stopped talking. Slowly I started again, fervently demanding, knowing insanely that I depend on them, they who ae freely roasting in the sun, standing at my feet, comfortably and vulgarly attired for pleasure. My words and how I throw them out, sound like an Indian chant. “Now here this, now here this. Hya. Hya. Step right hup. Hup. One and ahl, step right hup. Everybody a winnah, no one a losah. All go home with something. Something useful, something you’ll use every day. Everyone a winnah. Nobody leaves empty handed . . .” Apparently it is enough to hold them even under the broiling sun. No one moves.

The silence ends when an impatient mother drops her child. The fat baby lands with a squashy sound, then rolls with a thud, its head bouncing off someone’s flabby-knee and never crashing on the wooden slats by his mother’s feet. It wails with that all too trite truth that exclaims, oh where oh where is my mother’s love? The small boy is perhaps three and he cries well, normal for his age. His mother is beside herself for dropping him and is useless in quieting him down. My crowd moves in closer and tries consoling the mother, a fat woman, wide at every turn, wearing a funny, single piece bathing suit with little pink and blue bows that mark the fullness of her rich, too ripe breast and thighs.

I wonder how some bare feet can stand the heat and splinters of the crumbling wood board walk. Briefly, without warning, a single cloud drifts in front of the sun temporarily blinding its ferocity. I blink several times to bring the crowd back into focus. They are my people now and so like putty. The Atlantic Ocean is calm. I can see very few white caps on the soft, almost noiseless, rolling waves. A tern chatters overhead and drifts high into the blue, near soft-gray thatched sky. Lazily, but with an apparent and avowed mission, it starts a long descent to the water below. Faster and faster it comes and then it hits the ocean, breaks the surface and disappears. An imperceptible second later it emerges wet and empty-billed. The tern does an awkward loop, rights itself and gracefully and nonchalantly flaps itself higher and higher,  out of sight.

A man’s whinny voice breaks my reverie.

“Hey, mister. Yeah, you. When do we get the freebie? When? Huh?”

Reality is a pain in the ass. The man is a pain in the ass. If I could zap him to nothingness, I would do it, but I need him.

Once the cloud floats away, the sun returns with renewed intensity. I look down at the people in front of me, most of whom are waiting patiently for me to give them what they think they have come for. They have freckles and blisters on their faces, arms, legs and bodies.  Unruly stalks of hair stand on their heads and patches of hidden hair are beneath their clothing. They have good and bad teeth, a variety of eye colors, and I know they have many untapped dreams. There are maybe thirty people standing in front of me waiting for me to start my act, probably waiting for me to fail. They want a show. I am their trained seal, their sheared and coifed pink poodle. I hate every minute of it. At first I mumble, a trick I use to get the crowd to lean in closer, the way they should when I want them to listen and lean on all my words.

I can’t help noticing the man with the elbow. He stands there as if he has nothing to do except distract me from what I should be doing, turning the suckers’ smiles into gold. He is in his late twenties, possibly in his early thirties. His body is strong but already his middle is starting to flesh to premature heaviness. His eyes are tiny and they squint against the glare of the sun. He has a long, sharp nose, thin parched lips and his lips press flatly against his wire-haired, dirty-blond head. His bathing suit erupts with a sizeable erection. It holds in place, jutting out. He does not care.

The girl he leans against is in her teens. Pretty, yet plain, she is strangely homely and possesses the ideal girly magazine figure for that year. She has huge breasts and large nipples. Thick ankles reach upward to thicker, though well-defined calves. These flow toward fully muscled thighs. She has a richly ripe, meaty body. Neatly packed buttocks perch below a small, rounded stomach surrounded by an unbelievably narrow waist. She can grow to fat before she reaches thirty. For now, she will probably provide a hell of a lot of entertaining moments for anyone nearby or for a wandering elbow that happens to find its way onto her body. Her freckled face is proving to be more that just a brief distraction for me. She is so young, and she looks inexperienced. But she is enjoying every moment of his sharp, screwing elbow. I wish I could be down with him. I’d indoctrinate her in a way I deserve.

It is getting late in the day. I have done nothing to earn my keep. The sun floats listlessly in the sky, growling with silent, gaseous, infernal fire. People are leaving the beach, looking for something to eat or drink, seeking a place to release their swollen kidneys with a rush of pleasure. The conglomerate odor of hot grease, sweet custard cream and dense spice fills the air. The edge of my crowd, the floating part of the tip, is under assault by darting, energetic, screaming, and shouting  kids hurtling themselves uncontrollably across the boardwalk, their parents nowhere in sight. Their high-pitched screams annoy me and do not allow me to think. I have to get into my pitch mode and cannot.

The man and the teen-age girl are still at it, grinding themselves slowly to ecstasy. Now and then they are jostled sideways so they suddenly are face to face. Expressions of fright cross their normally bland features. They see each other for the first time, the second time, the third time. The shackles of the past reach out and grab them. Lust fills the man’s face. Confused passion drains the heavily suntanned girl almost white. Her freckles pop like black polka dots on a white silk tie. The two people move as if they are in the throes of intercourse, their orgasms almost complete. His hands now rest lightly on her hips. Her hands hold fast to her fleshy thighs. Does she know she is not alone? I think she is aware of his hands, yet she doesn’t care what he does—her pleasure comes first before anything in her life. I see her trying to move away—once, but no more, probably wondering how many notice their open, nearly consummated passion. I watch a race between two untrained, semi-tamed, uncultivated, partly domesticated dogs.

I lean in, my big moment about to begin. The crowd leans toward me. I reach a frenzy, at least in my mind. In that particular, special madness, I draw myself together almost becoming one with myself, a melding of mind and body. I have to sell. I have to make some money. I have to work. Suddenly the wicked sound of a harsh slap, skin against skin, brings me back to real time.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” the voice of the girl says.

She acts like a wilted, teenage passion flower, her true self. I  see her try to get away from the man but he will not back away from her. His arms try encircling her waist but she wants nothing to do with him. She moves from him, to get away from him. The man will not retreat from the girl. As a tactic, he backs off a half-step until his hands and arms again go to her waist and he pulls her to him. She lashes out at him again, this time with her small fists, striking him on the head and body. Now the crowd backs off to give them air, give them room to move in whatever direction, emotional or physical, they want to go in the stillness of the humid afternoon.

The man drops his arms from her hips. Tears come to his eyes. A small bubble of blood appears on his broken lower lip. We are all silent, waiting for something else to happen, wondering who will take the next step.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go now,” he says.

He hesitates. Each word has a huge gap before he says his next. The pauses between them are enough for a train to pass through, easily, without the wheels on either side touching any letters in any of the words. His thick voice carries no weight. He is spent. His back appears to bend to the ground, his head hides deeply in his neck. The curl of his body protects him from any feelings he has toward himself as a despicable person. He turns from her, makes his way through the crowd and moves swiftly down the board walk, the hotel shadows casting an eerie darkness over his departing body.

Her eyes flicker at the people surrounding her. Maybe they believe they protected her from any further evil. A wild timbre visibly flows through her body, and sends a shuddering spasm from her feet to her head. Her head then droops to her chest. Blood flows to her face. She is dizzy. Was she embarrassed, ashamed, guilty? None of it matters. None of it applies.

“Stop!” She shouts at his retreating back. He does and she takes after him, running to catch up. Another love affair made in heaven.

I bend down to my supplicants and whisper, “Now my fine friends, it’s your turn.”

All ears perk as one. Some in the back row can’t hear what I say. I lean back on my heels and repeat myself, my voice continuing in a coarse whisper. Still a few don’t hear me. I stand higher, square my round, slumped shoulders and shout at the top of my lungs. It will be the last time for my opening line, “Now my fine friends, it’s your turn.” With the help of my antiquated and shock-filled sound system, everyone finally hears everything I have to say.

“Now my fine friends, it is your turn. So lend an ear. Pay absolute attention to what I have to say. Here we go.”

My thoughts on being a pitchman. I work in front of people.  I know nothing about them. But I now know exactly what they are and what they are not. Generally they smell badly, as if they can’t afford deodorant. Could it be the weather? They are like leeches. They mooch every chance they get. The people are poor in this neighborhood. People run to me when they hear me call: Come over, come on over here. I have something for everyone. I want them steered here, to me, to my counter. They come as if I’m a magnet. The show attracts them to me and they believe they’ll get something free. When they get something free, they pay nothing for anything extra. The people are thick, with minds that don’t move fast. Usually they make me sick. I throw the poor bastards a bone and then they fall asleep in front of me. I know that’ll never do. I don’t know how to wake them without doing something foolish to make me appear stupid. Then again, maybe I just toss a lousy spiel.

All is aberrant.
So is this damn job.

I now work the McCrory’s store in Newark. Suddenly I can’t escape New Jersey. I spend my first 21 years in Brooklyn and manage to be in Jersey three, four times. I graduate college with high distinction in history and get my first job in Joisey. Is there a message here? Maybe my luck will change. I’m averaging 70 bucks a week, hardly a living. That’s too low. Six pitches a day are all I can manage. I can’t get the crowds to stay once I charm them. I have to do at least ten pitches a day to make a c-note a week. The outfit I’m working for is making a fortune off me and all the other suckers they have working for them

At night when I return to my parent’s home in Brooklyn, I’m getting into the habit of having a drink in the neighborhood joint on the corner a half block from my house. It is a place where “nice” Jewish boys don’t go, especially when they live down the street. I consider myself lucky for having this goy bar to visit. Tonight I saw a man crying, truly crying in his beer. I thought that only happened in the movies or in bad books. See how wrong I can be. I wonder what it is that causes a man to cry, and at times, if not to weep, at least arrive at the point where he wants to weep. I’ll take it a step further. If he doesn’t want to cry but he suddenly finds that he is going to cry, that he must cry to wash his soul of some damage, what does he do to fight himself and not cry? He knows from his upbringing that he must never cry, at least when he’s in front of others. Without doubt he struggles to make sense of an emotion he can’t control. I think that’s a man problem, a problem for men in our backward society. “Boys don’t cry!” I heard that all my life. Still, hear it. “Boys don’t cry!” Hurt or not, inside or out, boys don’t cry. Men cannot cry, should not cry, especially in public, because society doesn’t allow them to cry. It is the one public defense a man cannot use, unless, of course, he is drunk like that man down at the other end of the bar.

July 15, 1955, 10:45 p.m. Soon I hope to be making it, anything, again.

Man, it’s hot. Heat is funny. It makes me want to do nothing, but it makes me erotic as hell. It’s crazy and paralyzing. The hot weather gives me an erection when I sit and write. Wrote Leslie again. Still no answer.
I have to do more reading. All this work is getting in the way of my head. So much is on my mind. Money, future, women, money, future, women. I’m still waiting for a reply from NYU. I hope there’s no trouble. Hope everything works out, but if it doesn’t, well then I can’t allow it to bother me. I’ll be 21 in a few days. Too damn few days. Radio on. The music is great. Balcony Rock. Take Five. Brubeck. Shearing. Too much ale. Birdland Show, Lullaby of—one, two, three, testing.  Soon more money. Buy sandals for tired, hot feet.

Brooklyn, July 16, 1955. So agreeable, so new, so fresh, so clean, so blue: Am I? Sigh.

Two years for graduate school and my masters degree. But I have no money. Sailors, whores, college men (bright ones). I don’t care. Who cares?

July 20, 1955. I wrote Carole a day after my twenty-first birthday.

I have to get more bristles and more lanolin. I’m always running behind what I earn and what I pay for supplies. At this rate I’ll owe them more than I earn. I must aim for the boardwalk in Atlantic City. It’s the least they can do for me after all my failures.
Graduate school seems almost certain now. I have to work up a program that will carry me through over the next two years. I’ll go for my masters at night and work during the day. It should work out okay. Father to his son, “Here comes my son the student.” Finally, someone will be happy.

The goods arrived at the store. I now have combs and brushes and lanolin and shampoo. I’ve so much of the god damned stuff, I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not selling enough to make any money so I can’t consider myself a successful pitchman. Can I arrange to have someone in the store steal this crap? Who will be dumb enough to buy it even on the street?

There is so much to do, to see, to hear. There are so many ways to live life, to have action. Does action by itself necessarily denote ant-intellectualism? Man, I hope not. I wish it were easy for me to say, definitely not. Action for a Hindu is much different from action for a Jew, than in the pure sense for a Hebrew. Take that for granted. Action means movement, but movement toward what? Toward learning? Toward sex? Toward arriving at self-satisfaction? Toward knocking at the door of anything physical? Toward existentialism? Toward an intellectual activism of the mind. The mind leaps forward and bounds toward answers that can’t be found by searching within. Sitting. Standing. Prostrate. All happen simultaneously with a flick of the mind’s wrist. Don’t ruin it by lowering it to the depths of ocean slime and muck. Is it a game of semantics? Is it a game of philology? No doubt, a game. No matter what anyone says. No matter what.

Do I love her? Hey, I wonder. That’s the problem confronting me. I’ll either figure it out by hard thought (different from soft thought), or it’ll come to me in a religious flash. Should I trust it if it comes? Her letter will tell me much. Leslie still hasn’t answered but what she writes seems to matter less each moment. I must discover where her mind is these days. I assume she has some curiosity about me, life, us. Does she have a passion to learn? Is there anything she wishes to discuss, to read? Does she want to get in a car and drive someplace for adventure? I don’t think I’m asking too much when I express my urge to know. I know I must wait for her answer. If the signals are right, there should be one coming soon. Signals, right? My imagination is at work. A few more days. A few more drinks. Now to sit back, sweat it and wait.

July 28, 1955. It has become a big day. Carole answered and now I’ve written her another letter. I have no choice but to wait for her answer. If it hits me the way I think it will I’ll ask her to come to New York. This is not as silly as it sounds. It’s not senseless to make plans. Plans put me in a good frame of mind. Though I do plan for events in my life, I rarely make plans that succeed. I may end breaking earlier plans I made or I may act on the spur of the moment, but what the hell. Dave may be right, but I think it’s she I’ve always loved. I’ve been away from Carole for too long and I really would like to hear from her. I would like to see her soon. Carole’s answer to my latest letter remains my most important priority. Her letter must answer my letter and not screw around with what I wrote. Otherwise, we will continue the mess we are in. And she must realize many things about me she refused to see in the past. Our possible impending situation needs a resolution.

I spoke to my boss tonight. He says, with a sigh of resignation, I can have part of Atlantic City for a few weeks. Perfect. Perhaps I can right myself and get out of debt. I’d also like to prove I can do this job, though I realize it has no future. I’ll delay telling NYU my decision until I finish the boardwalk stint. With partial expenses, sun, sand and surf, available chicks and kosher franks, maybe even I can make some bucks and come out ahead. Goodbye Bamberger’s in Newark and hello Mrs. Court’s Rooming House By The Sea.

I haven’t been reading much lately. Carole is too much on my mind. She consumes all my thoughts. And there is the matter of making a living, another consuming passion. This would be a good time to get started again, especially with graduate school staring me in the face. Take at least ten books with me to Atlantic City. Include works on religion. Read about Buddhism, Taoism and Judaism. If anyone asked me why, I would have to say I really don’t know, but with those three religions, I believe there is common ground.

“Why is there any being at all and not rather nothing?” Martin Heidegger.

“Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”  Ulysses, James Joyce.

“No one need make a spiritual detour to ascertain that he exists.”
The Tale of The Wig, Pio Baroja.

“Brutishness,” I suggested.

“Yes . . . All my brutishness, but he can scarcely read or write.”

“And he has never philosophized on life,” I added.

“No,” Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness.
“And he is all the happier for leaving life alone. He is too busy living it to think about it. My mistake was in ever opening the books.” The Sea Wolf, Jack London.

“The warbler, swinging
his body upside down
does his first singing.”
A haiku attributed to Kikaku (1661-1707)

Atlantic City, New Jersey. August 7, 1955. These are my impressions of Atlantic City while trying to work a pitch, working a pitch, surviving a pitch.

Dirt from the old wood boardwalk always covers my ankles. Sand fills the crevices between my toes. My sandals quickly become scuffed-raw and grease-stained. But they are comfortable. The rest of me is surprisingly clean, my clothing neat and pressed, smells good. All of me is a mixture of salt and taffy and coarse Jewish mustard, the tastiest in the world.

Before starting my pitch I always sniff the clean ocean air. I love the smell of salt borne on the wind. I cough the fine dust and sand that blanket everything only a few feet off the ocean. When I cough, I hawk and spit brown-stained cigarette saliva from the unfiltered Camel’s I smoke. Then I get down to work.

It doesn’t matter what I sell. My job is to reel in the crowd. Wayne’s syrupy product is always the same richly perfumed, lanolin based, whitish orange colored liquid with less than ten-percent alcohol. I’m positive he bottles it in his spare room. It cost the customer one dollar a bottle and if he buys the shampoo, he also receives a free comb and brush, what we call the teeth and bristle. The free comb and brush are the come-ons. It is that give-a-way that turns the audience on or keeps them away.

I’m going to try out for a job as a pitchman. I’ll be selling who knows what in chain stores in New York and New Jersey. First I journey to Flushing to watch a pro in action, then to talk terms. I’ve got to watch two demonstrations to see if I can make it. Then I’ll see the boss man later in the week. My commission will be on gross sales. Strange feeling of freedom and river boat gambling, if I can handle the job. The souls of my parents and friends will curdle when they learn what their favorite college graduate is about to do.

June 15, 1955. New York. I saw the pitch and it was fascinating how my future boss handled the crowd. Beautiful and magical. Hell, it beats being an executive trainee, so I threw in with him and his crowd. With other future pitchmen I went back with him to his apartment on the Upper West Side where he briefed us on our new job. He gets the locations and works out the arrangements with the stores. He works in Woolworth and other chains. Tomorrow I go to Union City, New Jersey. I have to get a small fan because these stores are very hot. The air-conditioning doesn’t always work. We have to inventory the goods on and under the counter. The last guy who worked this pitch, did this job, cut out, quit, and Wayne doesn’t know if he stole anything. I must count all my combs and brushes. I have to estimate, as Wayne says, my bristles. I also have to get into the store’s public address systems. Wayne doesn’t supply a sound system. If I don’t have a sound system, I’ll kill my voice. He started lecturing us about speaking from our chests, not from our throats, less from our mouths. Enunciate clearly. Rid myself of my Brooklyn accent, though it isn’t as bad as some guys I know. If I get the p.a., I’ll have to turn it to the bass, then to two or three on the volume. We mustn’t blow out the store with our pitch, frighten customers away or anger the store manager. I have to call Wayne tomorrow night when I get back from the store and run a tally with him. I must work on my “balley,” the pitch. I have to use a full length mirror and watch myself talk. Some fun. The “balley” is the part of the spiel that brings the crowd to me. While doing my talk, I have to get in as many words and I can, and samples out as I can simultaneously. A one-armed paperhanger, my mother would say.

Pitch the shampoo and lanolin firmly. Hold the bottles aloft and gently. Fill the spiel with surprise. Sure. I shouldn’t move too fast or push too hard. I have to make the five minutes seem fast but filled with fun and facts. Wayne says I have to get a cloth other than black for the counter top. Black is too depressing. Black is a lousy color. Black isn’t even a color. Suddenly I’m also a clerk. I have to do everything for that man and he collects the money, no matter what. Remember to ask Wayne if the stock inventory has to be recorded and find out when he wants the sheet with all the numbers signed.

Get in touch with Dave in Easton to tell him what I’m doing with my honor’s degree in history, almost none of which is modern. Tudor-Stuart England is good preparation for a pitch man. Fun. He’ll chuckle through his glass of ale with the bizarre turn my post college life is taking.

June 18, 1955. I still feel strange putting something down on paper. It’s strange because it probably isn’t a natural act. It hurts when I have to read it back, especially when it isn’t very good. Really bad, like. But it keeps going from the pen to the page, especially when I’m riding the subway, eating in a diner, drinking at a bar. It’s worse when I read aloud. Then my writing has even less meaning. I look for the reason I write. I seek the answer to what propels me to write. Something is alive inside me that makes me want to create. When something makes no sense, it hurts then and it hurts later when I force myself to think of what I’ve done to the page, how I may have desecrated the white space between the lines.

All the small problems hang on as I do my best to hang in. They never borrow time. They present themselves time and again. Sure the big difficulties keep coming back, too, but they never really go away. They never disappear. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whoopee. The little obstacles often grow into bigger ones and fuse with each other, solder on porous metal. Together they make a whole, a unit of dense hopelessness. A damnable and absurd circle. A squared circle. All my emotions become stopped up, a drain plugged with debris. The water collects above the mesh screen and goes no further than its continuous, downward circle.

Why is there nothing, no one thing, I can be positive about? Perhaps when something starts to work itself out for me I can probably face myself and come to an agreement where I’m going, if I know where I’ve been.

Talk. I’m lonely for some talk with a woman of intelligence. Then again, maybe she should be everything except intelligent. But she should talk, anyway. Crap. That wouldn’t work. A thinking mind works best on a screw-happy body. Dream on. Unsatisfied curiosity, me, struggles to discover beauty, her. Somewhere. Anywhere. A kiss and something more. Or nothing else. A fleeting wisp bathed in bloody gore. What does that mean? A woman. A bull. Ping bang. Couples do come together. They produce. They create. They also can destroy anything in their path. They again, they etc. It’s always the same. The search never ends. In some ways it’s all life. It is fuming, big, fat abstraction. Here today, gone tomorrow. The ultimate cliché. Damn the cliché and balls ahead.

Speaking of that, I met a chick last night named Leslie from Chicago. She’s five feet two inches tall, weighs 112 pounds, is 34-23-35 and that isn’t bad. She has short black hair, bright blue eyes. We had a fine night. We met and we wasted no time getting to know each other. She was willing and helpful. Her body was warm and soft. Her nipples were firm, large and taut. Leslie’s scent was real, delicate, yet musty. She called herself a pseudo sentimentalist but she took me the first time quickly and anxiously. She yipped. I shouted. Then we drank from each other with all the thirst of dying people. Thank you, she said. She told me it is an inadequate way to express what she really feels. It is wonderful, I said. That’s what I felt. Wonder. It has been wonderful, she said, as she cupped my erection between her hands and guided it slickly between her legs, allowing it to ride deeply inside her as if it was jet propelled. When I left her, she told me she would be back. God it was good.

It happened in New York, New York, July 4, 1955. I’ll be dipped. Independence Day.

July 5, 1955. Leslie could be the one, but Chicago is a long way away, too far away. Thus, the only two chicks now on my mind live far away. The latest one is something more. I won’t explain. I cannot explain. But maybe I should try explaining. It’s amazing how everything about her lingers. Just fantasizing about her makes me hot, makes me want to come with little real effort, as if I ever needed much effort at all. Write her and try to keep it clean. Keep it honest, though, no matter what.

I’m at work in Union City. This lousy store is driving me crazy. I’ve sold hardly anything. People aren’t buying. At least they aren’t buying what I have to sell. Nothing is moving. Temperature outside is 93 degrees. It’s not much cooler inside. The air conditioning works sporadically. Shoppers are nowhere to be found. I’m dying here. I can’t make a buck. I can’t even make my nut. If the hot weather doesn’t subside, I’ll subside. I’m having a hard time taking the heat especially when I’m inside and dressed in a shirt and tie.

Letter to Leslie. Dear Leslie. ( Not a bad start.) Hi, nice people. I like nice people when they are better than almost anyone else I know. It may sound strange, but I miss you, though we spent so little time together. As I write this I’m on a bus trying to get back to New York from New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. Thousands of cars crowd the roads. Too many passengers jam my bus. We can’t move in this horrendous traffic. It’s about 100 degrees outside and approaching that inside this metal coffin, my bus. It can’t get any worse. Gas fumes clog my mind. From where I sit I can’t see the sky. A thin film of blue plastic coats the windows to keep the glare of the sun from our eyes. But I know the sky is gray. Soot covers everything evenly. Everyone has a hand on his car horn—bleats and beeps and mechanical groans fill the air. We start moving again so I’ll complete this later when I’m home or sitting quietly in a gin-mill someplace in the real world I call, Brooklyn.

I’m restarting the letter to Leslie. It’s late at night. I don’t really know what to say. Last night I sat and wrote to you. One hour later much of this came but I won’t put it all down on paper because, well, I may say too much. You did things to me during those two days we were together. You were the brightest ray of light to shine on me in a long time. Then you had to leave. Suddenly you weren’t there. Though I knew you were leaving, you left me in a state of shock. Inside I became dark again. One more day with you and I would have been lost forever, permanently. I should be bold with you to get what I want. We were bold with each other. Hot buttered rum in July. Add just a pinch of salt. Dive in without hesitating. You are now too far from me. Our joined surfaces were all too briefly penetrated. We took a ride that was so marvelously sweaty that sometimes it was impossible to hold each other for very long. Each move we made was steamy and punctuated by our cries of joy. It’s more than I can express. A picture. A word. A scene. An event. So much so soon and it came so fast. All the words spill out. They crumble, pounding and trampling each other, compressing, bursting forth, emptying themselves on the page without apparent reason, without sense, without any purpose, but emptying themselves anyway.

I often act without thinking, think without acting. I’ve been writing some of this at work. It’s very slow today. I’m glad. I have a feeling I’ll lose money on this job. Not good. My mind is too full to think about pitching people some lousy, untested product for their hair. I wouldn’t use it on my hair. You had to come into my life and further complicate it. I’d be a fool to forget you, unless, of course, you told me to and then, even then, I might be at a point where I could not. I don’t think anyone else you know could spew so much over this plain white paper. I can’t hide my feelings toward you. Once I commit myself, it is impossible for me to go back on my word. Or hardly ever. My love to you and your love to me, if that’s possible. But you are there and I am here in desolate Union City, not even in New York.

I keep saying, forget it, forget it. Forget the night. Forget her. Deny Leslie’s existence. It doesn’t work, though. My problem is that I want you Leslie. I want to get to know you better, more, always. I want to know more about you, the whys, the wherefore’s, what makes you tick.

Leslie said “thank you for the evening” and she “wished me the best of everything.” Then she said “I will be back.” Somehow I doubt it.

July 6, 1955. I called Dave. He wants money, as usual. He needs money, as usual. Hell, so do I. I haven’t even earned bus fare.

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• Estimated Base Weight (without any straps or accessories attached:
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Price: $249.00 (US)