Carroll - Basketball Diaries

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Special thanks to Anne Waldman, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith and Bill Berkson.

IN MEMORY OF PHIL OCHS

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES

FALL 63

Today was my first Biddy League game and my first day in any organized basketball league. I'm enthused about life due to this exciting event. The Biddy League is a league for anyone 12 yrs. old or under. I'm actually 13 but my coach Lefty gave me a fake birth certificate. Lefty is a great guy; he picks us up for games in his station wagon and always buys us tons of food. I'm too young to understand about homosexuals but I think Lefty is one. Although he's a great ballplayer and a strong guy, he likes to do funny things to you like put his hand between your legs and pick you up. When he did this I got keenly suspicious. I guess I better not tell my mother about it. I don't want to describe the first game; I played bad and we lost anyway. I was nervous, I took my girlfriend Joan to the game which was at 153rd St., a Negro church called Minisink. Our team is from Madison Sq. Boys Club on E. 29th St. The starting team consists of two Italians, two spades and me.

When the game was over and we were waiting on the subway platform at 155th, Tony Milliano started a fight with Kevin Dolon. Tony is a huge monster who loves to fight; Kevin is a wise ass little prick. Some guys tried to break it up but Tony wouldn't let them and kept on yelling, "I want blood!" It was scary but interesting; I don't like to fight but I love watching others fight. Kevin asked me to jump Milliano from behind but he was too big for me to get involved. Who wanted to help that little fucker anyway? He's forever getting me in trouble down at St. Agnes grade school, where we go. Just today he snitched to Sister Mary Grace about me spitting on the first graders from the lunch room window.

4 I JIM CARROLL

FALL 63

It was the warmest October day that I ever saw today, so we skipped practice (Tony and Yogi and I) and decided to take a little ride down to the ferry and over to Staten Island. After polishing off a hero at LUCY'S we hopped on the back fender of the Second Ave. bus and rode down to the ferry basin. Once I fell off a bus like that on a sharp turn and almost got my balls crushed under the back wheel, but this ride was smooth enough and we got off and deposited our nickels in the turnstiles and were off. Just as the boat is pulling out of the dock, Tony takes out a bottle of CARBONA cleaning fluid and a few rags and suggests that we do a little sniffing to get high. I was up for this idea because Carbona is one of the finest cheap highs you can get, even stronger than model glue. We slipped up to the top deck of the ship and wet our rags and raised them to our faces. After four deep whiffs we were sailing someplace else, bells ringing through my ears and little lights flashing through my eyes. I pictured myself paddling across a river with black water, only the canoe was going backwards instead of forwards, with clouds that were faces laughing spooky fun-house laughs which wouldn't stop echoing. More sniffs and more freaky visions, the ringing bell sound always getting louder the more I breathe the stuff into my lungs. I kept it up for about ten minutes, but by then I was getting too dizzy to handle it and I had to fling down the rag and make it to the side rail, sick as possible. I began puking wildly. My eyes felt like bowling balls and they were watering like mad. Tony and Yogi had done themselves in too and they ran over to join in the ceremony. Then we recovered enough to

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES I 5

hear shouts from the bottom deck and wiping off our eyes we realized that we had zeroed in over the head of some dude. More unfortunate was the fact that the guy was fantastically huge and looked horribly pissed. We wasted no time in making it to the nearest hiding spot, knowing the guy would be up after us any second. We got to the other side of the boat and did a quick Steve McQueen act, over the rail and down to the lowest deck. Then we ducked into the bathroom and into the last toilet stall, locking the door and sweating our balls off. We hung on in there, reading the little pencilled-in obscenities until the boat docked. After about ten minutes we sent Yogi out to see if the coast was clear. He came back and signalled us out and we ran our asses off the boat, through the terminal onto the nearest bus. We came to a nice park somewhere in the middle of the island and played ball with the local weaklings all day, taking on everyone, even guys as old as sixteen or so. It was almost dark when we caught our ferry back to the city again, keeping a sharp lookout for our friend and vowing we'd never sniff that stuff on any ferry again.

FALL 63

They finally took away old Mrs. McNulty today. She was the incredibly nutty lady who lived right across the alley from our window in the building. She had a very scary habit of going to her sink every night in her bra and panties and offering Mass over it as if it were her altar. She knew the Mass inside out, but she would interject incredible obscenities whenever the Virgin Mary's name

6 I JIM CARROLL

came up, or Christ's name too, for that matter. She had all the standard equipment for the Mass, a gold chalice and all the rest, but at the part that appeared to be what the Catholics considered the consecration, she would shove the thing between her legs and yell, "Suck me, eat my puss, God." Things like that. The stuff she laid down about Mary was always the worst, and I would watch everything quite clearly and really shudder; not that I was ever really religious (not since I was eight actually, when one day I went into a church for the first time and tried to make friends with God by asking him to come home with me so we could watch the World Series together) but because I couldn't understand at all what the fuck could ever possess someone to do something as fruity as that. Man, she really let fly some nights, yelling so that everyone in the building could hear her. When I told some friends about her, a lot of them wanted to come over to see, thinking the scene was really sexy or something. But she was an old lady, sixty-five at least, so the sight of her dressed like that and freaking the way she did was too disgusting, I always had to turn away. I guess someone complained once too often lately and I saw her being tucked into an ambulance, very calm about it, while I was coming back from school today.

FALL 63

All us little crooks down here on the lower east side got one specialty in common: snatching hand bags off ladies. It started first with the bad-off junkies but now it's worked down to us, The Diaper Bandits (as the paper called us

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES I 7

in a story in last night's issue). The dumbest move is to snatch on your own streets. People know all the other people around this yack-yack neighborhood. So we go uptown in the east 60s and posh spots like that in little packs and spread out in the dark and work in teams or, maybe after awhile, alone. One guy walks up to the lady to ask the way to the subway and if you're lucky she points and holds her arm out straight with the bag on her wrist and the other guy swipes it and you're both off. If that don't work you give yourself five seconds tugging time (the most since by then she's calling in the troops) then scratch her up as a loss and tear ass; only the real strung-out junkies go in for rapping them out if they put up a fight, but I'm scared enough without doing a regular mug job. This is my diary for tonight 'cause it was my best day. This lady we pulled the directions-bit on had $123 and change, and that is big time. Then she had a book of traveler's checks that ain't no good for us but that Yogi's big brother bought for five. He says they're good as cash. Most people think this is pulled only on old ladies but this woman tonight was something to jerk off to, as a bonus. Probably a fruit too, 'cause she had all these pictures of nude ladies in the bag; not the dirty mag. ones either. These didn't just show the tits but the cunts too. They were Polaroid snapshots someone took themselves. One was two ladies frenching each other and another was a whole series with girls giving blow-jobs to guys. This one scene had seven people in it doing shit I never heard of. But the topper was one of a fat ugly bitch getting screwed on a table by, I swear, a donkey... that was the biggest hit ever at the Boys' Club. Herb's big brother says he used to see that in some nightclub in Mexico when he was in