Yet the word, the word, pulses insanely in their minds. The word oppresses them and they loot the world in the name of democracy and squander it on crap.
Look around, Lenny Bruce said, look around you! Point your finger, show them you know them for what they are. Who are these ungodly men, he said, and what are you gonna do about it?
I remember Lenny Bruce started at a bar in Jackson Heights, NY, called the Blue Haven around the corner from where I grew up. The Blue Haven was a little mafia bar. Tough guys with wide brimmed, pearl gray hats...and six or seven bodyguards. Young punks trying to make it in the rackets.
It was a place to swing, to pop for a drink, to search for a perfumed maiden. It was a place of frustration and tears, and puritan doubts. The sex was lousy; the women often beautiful. It was the road, and it ended in sleazy roadhouses with pills or heroin or booze, and the dreams of narcissus.
I don't know what you think...don't care. I remember impotence disguised as toughness, and instincts suppressed. I remember tear-stained faces and bloody noses. I remember terrified silences, loneliness, and despair.
"It isn't natural," the pretty brunette said to me, shaking her head. "What do you want with a tramp like me," the typist said. "I like men wid manners," the poor girl said. "I must be a fuck'n bum," Charlie said, "hanging out in these joints all the time."
This was swinging; and swinging can be just a sad voice crying in the night...desperately waiting for the sun to come up. Swinging is hope when everything is black.
They say Lenny Bruce died, but death doesn't diminish a man. He gave us something. You can call it fresh insight, but it sounds more like: "don't be afraid." Don't be afraid of the bogey man, the big man, the tough man...don't be afraid of yourself. Don't let them bullshit you to death. Don't be afraid. Swing, baby, swing. Tell them you've got feelings, scare them half to death. Tell them you've got feelings, scare them half to death...