William Jay Barker
from Junior Birdman
Barker lived in the 1950s on 2020 Grace Avenue in the Hollywood guest house of Burton Holmes, then famous for his travelogues. The Holmes estate, “Topside,” near the famous Hollywood sign, had been the home of Tyrone Power and before that the silent screen idols Francis X. Bushman and Blanche Sweet. The guest house had more recently been the home of Tab Hunter and was up the street from the home of Donald O’Conner, with whom Barker became friends.
Barker appeared in various roles on television and in films, including Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957) with Harry Dean Stanton and Imitation General (1958) with Glenn Ford. This period of his life provided the background/inspiration for much of his novel Junior Birdman.
Anaïs Nin summarized Barker at this time as “Society, Paris, Rome, Cocteau, Prince Ruspoli, De Sica and the movies, Jean Genêt, ambisexuality.” He was not happy in California, she reported, which he considered a “tranquilizer.” He wanted to return to Europe and “wilder forms of life.”
In the spring of 1959, Bill moved into the Gerald Brenan household in southern Spain, and it was here that he wrote Junior Birdman, which Brenan admired, comparing it to Petronius’ Satyricon. Although the novel was completed while he was living with Brenan, Barker waited until the 1970s before publishing it. He took the manuscript to Australia where he stayed with friends in Surfer Paradise. He forwarded the manuscript to a publisher in Rieti, Italy, who issued it pseudonymously as the work of “Billy Bones.” It did not have a coptright He picked up the copies upon his return, distributed some among friends, and took the rest to India, where he solicited a bookseller in New Dehli to act as distributor.
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At night the spider streets stretch forever through L.A. as you drive bemused down the straight maze: going nowhere because coming from nowhere. Is there a greater emptiness between the stars? You are but the brain of this machine which glides by the years of telegraph poles. You think of the buzz from Amelia Earhart. “Where is Everybody?” Somewhere ahead the Towers of Watts spin spin away from the mickey mouse town, patchwork cones of the immigrant’s aspiration caught short at the inevitable end of America: the Pacific Ocean.
* * *
The screen door wheezes in the waterboy, and you waken remembering the rootless oasis of your life. Already over the CahuengaPass the sea-hum loudens as the dragonfly cars skim the freeway. Picking your way back along the cotton field of your night, you collect the tufts of receding dreams. Sacrificing the innocence of the April morning you do up the roach that lies like a spaceship in the moon crater of the blue glass ashtray looming before your left-turned head. Below eye level the column filched from the Coloradoghost town graveyard spirals upward in support. You look straight down now beyond the twin peaks of sheeted feet at the elegant surface of the sterile little desk: the bronze girl beneath the palm, the trompe l’oeil goody box, the porcelain lamp: and you decide to do your letters now before the day drifts. You must get to the laundromat and to the Hughes Market, and not forget lunch at the Hollywood Orvieto with your agent and two little chicks waiting to hatch for real. On the gritty terrace all the tables pretending to be in Europe will hold money talk, me talk; the wine will come halfway through the tepid counterfeit cuisine; and you will exchange polite French formulas with the abacus-eyed manager. You will miss the great oak that has made way for the air-conditioned wing: you will consider instead the white glare of the Esso Station across the way; and you will watch the shoals of flicker people patrolling hazy Sunset Boulevard. Up and at’em.
* * *
New York New York, the Jersey flats, the Pilsudski Highway, a huge ear of Dionysos holding music lovers harkens to arriving and departing planes between blasts of Beethoven’s Fifth. Any fifth here is bound to he bourbon. Miracle, a silent taxidriver whooshes you soundlessly to the birthday party. There are balloons, champagne, white flowers everywhere. Rocky creates when you walk in. He really does look like the gingerbread boy, Mother Dash is all Spanish and high-combed, an island queen welcoming the mutineers. It s good in this light decor to let the too too solid melt. As for the resolution and the dew, you’ll think about that tomorrow. You are faithful to Cynara, to cinerama. After a while you no longer notice the two shifting lines between the middle and the sides.
The city rises, falls, pumps its way through to breaking day, the clatter of garbage pails cymbals heralding the morning after. In an hour or so money will wake up hungry, and human fodder will pour out of the many mouths of Hades. The streets will fill where you are forbidden to walk barefoot, buildings be invested, desks tenanted. Money will feed, and sing, and lull the mind once more. Rooty toot toot how that man could shot. New York, stone tyrannosaurus rex, New York, capital of the world. The Monster World.
* *
The answer is: Whomsoever feels desire, desires what he is not sure of possessing what is not present, what he does not possess, what he hasn’t got, what he lacks. That is what desiring is, what loving is. . . how can love be God, being neither beautiful nor good? Can’t you see for yourself you think love is not a god? What is it then? a demon?” This sounding off a sounding out of the vanity of all human love, carnal passions, normal and otherwise, resting uneasily on an illusion of the senses, an error of the imagination. Reality is a creation of desire and memory; it exists in hope, remembrance and absence rather than in the immediate experience; it is only in solitude or in illness and especially at the approach of death that we may possess it.
To grasp this real life we must return to the depths where what really exists lies unknown, the ocean floor, gems, the desert, flowers. The way is a narrow one, strait is the gate, for to be saved we must first lose ourselves, the ego, let it all go, everything that made our lives, our reason for living, renounce ourselves. Steep hills of introspection, crash landings from the jet-set, that phantom newsprint world.
There is no more urgent appointment than the one you have with yourself. The Holy Grail has but one drop left in it: the spirit of childhood.
Barker lived in the 1950s on 2020 Grace Avenue in the Hollywood guest house of Burton Holmes, then famous for his travelogues. The Holmes estate, “Topside,” near the famous Hollywood sign, had been the home of Tyrone Power and before that the silent screen idols Francis X. Bushman and Blanche Sweet. The guest house had more recently been the home of Tab Hunter and was up the street from the home of Donald O’Conner, with whom Barker became friends.
Barker appeared in various roles on television and in films, including Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957) with Harry Dean Stanton and Imitation General (1958) with Glenn Ford. This period of his life provided the background/inspiration for much of his novel Junior Birdman.
Anaïs Nin summarized Barker at this time as “Society, Paris, Rome, Cocteau, Prince Ruspoli, De Sica and the movies, Jean Genêt, ambisexuality.” He was not happy in California, she reported, which he considered a “tranquilizer.” He wanted to return to Europe and “wilder forms of life.”
In the spring of 1959, Bill moved into the Gerald Brenan household in southern Spain, and it was here that he wrote Junior Birdman, which Brenan admired, comparing it to Petronius’ Satyricon. Although the novel was completed while he was living with Brenan, Barker waited until the 1970s before publishing it. He took the manuscript to Australia where he stayed with friends in Surfer Paradise. He forwarded the manuscript to a publisher in Rieti, Italy, who issued it pseudonymously as the work of “Billy Bones.” It did not have a coptright He picked up the copies upon his return, distributed some among friends, and took the rest to India, where he solicited a bookseller in New Dehli to act as distributor.
----------
At night the spider streets stretch forever through L.A. as you drive bemused down the straight maze: going nowhere because coming from nowhere. Is there a greater emptiness between the stars? You are but the brain of this machine which glides by the years of telegraph poles. You think of the buzz from Amelia Earhart. “Where is Everybody?” Somewhere ahead the Towers of Watts spin spin away from the mickey mouse town, patchwork cones of the immigrant’s aspiration caught short at the inevitable end of America: the Pacific Ocean.
* * *
The screen door wheezes in the waterboy, and you waken remembering the rootless oasis of your life. Already over the CahuengaPass the sea-hum loudens as the dragonfly cars skim the freeway. Picking your way back along the cotton field of your night, you collect the tufts of receding dreams. Sacrificing the innocence of the April morning you do up the roach that lies like a spaceship in the moon crater of the blue glass ashtray looming before your left-turned head. Below eye level the column filched from the Coloradoghost town graveyard spirals upward in support. You look straight down now beyond the twin peaks of sheeted feet at the elegant surface of the sterile little desk: the bronze girl beneath the palm, the trompe l’oeil goody box, the porcelain lamp: and you decide to do your letters now before the day drifts. You must get to the laundromat and to the Hughes Market, and not forget lunch at the Hollywood Orvieto with your agent and two little chicks waiting to hatch for real. On the gritty terrace all the tables pretending to be in Europe will hold money talk, me talk; the wine will come halfway through the tepid counterfeit cuisine; and you will exchange polite French formulas with the abacus-eyed manager. You will miss the great oak that has made way for the air-conditioned wing: you will consider instead the white glare of the Esso Station across the way; and you will watch the shoals of flicker people patrolling hazy Sunset Boulevard. Up and at’em.
* * *
New York New York, the Jersey flats, the Pilsudski Highway, a huge ear of Dionysos holding music lovers harkens to arriving and departing planes between blasts of Beethoven’s Fifth. Any fifth here is bound to he bourbon. Miracle, a silent taxidriver whooshes you soundlessly to the birthday party. There are balloons, champagne, white flowers everywhere. Rocky creates when you walk in. He really does look like the gingerbread boy, Mother Dash is all Spanish and high-combed, an island queen welcoming the mutineers. It s good in this light decor to let the too too solid melt. As for the resolution and the dew, you’ll think about that tomorrow. You are faithful to Cynara, to cinerama. After a while you no longer notice the two shifting lines between the middle and the sides.
The city rises, falls, pumps its way through to breaking day, the clatter of garbage pails cymbals heralding the morning after. In an hour or so money will wake up hungry, and human fodder will pour out of the many mouths of Hades. The streets will fill where you are forbidden to walk barefoot, buildings be invested, desks tenanted. Money will feed, and sing, and lull the mind once more. Rooty toot toot how that man could shot. New York, stone tyrannosaurus rex, New York, capital of the world. The Monster World.
* *
The answer is: Whomsoever feels desire, desires what he is not sure of possessing what is not present, what he does not possess, what he hasn’t got, what he lacks. That is what desiring is, what loving is. . . how can love be God, being neither beautiful nor good? Can’t you see for yourself you think love is not a god? What is it then? a demon?” This sounding off a sounding out of the vanity of all human love, carnal passions, normal and otherwise, resting uneasily on an illusion of the senses, an error of the imagination. Reality is a creation of desire and memory; it exists in hope, remembrance and absence rather than in the immediate experience; it is only in solitude or in illness and especially at the approach of death that we may possess it.
To grasp this real life we must return to the depths where what really exists lies unknown, the ocean floor, gems, the desert, flowers. The way is a narrow one, strait is the gate, for to be saved we must first lose ourselves, the ego, let it all go, everything that made our lives, our reason for living, renounce ourselves. Steep hills of introspection, crash landings from the jet-set, that phantom newsprint world.
There is no more urgent appointment than the one you have with yourself. The Holy Grail has but one drop left in it: the spirit of childhood.