A refugee from the western suburbs, I used to skip school and take the bus into the city. I hung out on St Mark’s Place and the Bowery, copping the look and the attitude of punk, discovering Bukowski and the Beats in bookshops. Returning to the subdivisions of Jersey was an embarrassment. The soil was too thin for art. No poetry could ever grow in the grapefruit rinds of the compost heap. Ashamed of my origins, neither high nor low, I dreamed of smoky bars and cafés, steaming slums. I believed that the down and dirty would lead me to the height of consciousness, that to conceive beauty it was necessary to sleep with ugliness. I’ve been in that bed for several years now. So far nobody’s knocked up.
Jay McInerney
On October 02 2011
46 Views
![[i]A refugee from the western suburbs, I used to skip school and take the bus into the city. I hung out on St Mark’s Place and the Bowery, copping the look and the attitude of punk, discovering Bukowski and the Beats in bookshops. Returning to the subdivisions of Jersey was an embarrassment. The soil was too thin for art. No poetry could ever grow in the grapefruit rinds of the compost heap. Ashamed of my origins, neither high nor low, I dreamed of smoky bars and cafés, steaming slums. I believed that the down and dirty would lead me to the height of consciousness, that to conceive beauty it was necessary to sleep with ugliness. I’ve been in that bed for several years now. So far nobody’s knocked up.[/i]
Jay McInerney - Fotolog](http://sp7.fotolog.com/photo/39/13/78/con__tacto/1317600101935_f.jpg)
