More gems from the Stanford Archives – Starting this week, transcripts from two sets of tapes recorded by Allen in September and October of 1989 with Gregory Corso – Allen interviewed by Gregory Corso. Gregory is typically transgressive and Allen typically measured and studious. The recent publication of Barry Miles’ Ginsberg biography occasions plenty of serious rumination. Gregory begins, however, with more immediate considerations – sex and drugs. (sex today, drugs tomorrow – read on)
Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso Sept 14 1989
GC: Hi – how are you doing? – I want to ask you something that’s really been getting me, and I think I want to talk about it later, about sex, and about a form of sex called “sodomy”
AG: Right.
GC: I don’t know I always thought “sodomy” was someone being, literally, fucked in the ass…
AG: Right.
GC: …and that someone putting the mouth on the genital organ (whether it be male or female) was called “fellatio”?
AG: Right, F-E-L-L-A-T-I-O.
GC: Ok, now the way the media seems to have it is that sodomy entails both.
AG: Yeah, I keep seeing it mixed up in the newspapers.
GC: That’s important. I mean, if somebody sodomizes an eight-year-old, what is he doing? Is he putting his dick in an eight year old? or sucking a little eight year old’s ass? – his dick -or what?
AG: .. Well that would probably be in the paper, that kind of trying to put his dick in the eight-year-olds’ mouth or…
GC: In his mouth?
AG: ..or…or anal orifice.
GC: I see.
AG: But, literally speaking, according to the dictionary – I just looked it up – which is a little tiny paperback American Heritage – The American Heritage sodomy! The American Hertage sodomy is.. very limited actually. You couldn’t use it as a general thing.
GC: Well You only have male.
AG: “Anal copulation of one male with another”
GC: Right, you only have male. No female. (And) females like being fucked in the ass as much as men!
AG: Do they? What’s your experience ?
GC: My experience – women like it, you know – a little bit of pain, women like a little bit of it, gentle enough with the pain. Anyway, I think it’s a disservice because this means a lot, means a lot, if someone gets screwed in the ass or gets a blow job – because with you and me, (in) that book that came out, the Ginsberg biography [by Barry Miles], they said you seduced me.
AG: Yeah.
GC: I don’t ever remember any sodomy in it . I don’t remember it. I would have remembered something like that, Al…
AG: In the book or in life?
GC: ….but I think I might have..
AG: In the book or in life?
GC: In life.
AG: Yeah.
GC: In life, right – but in the book they have it that you seduced me. But what is seduction? – I love you. I would hold you..
AG: Except I was erotically hung up on you then.
GC: Okay – did you ever put your mouth on my cock?
AG: Yes.
GC: Then that’s it, then I accept that, then I can see that. I could…
AG: I’d blow you a couple of times, I think.
GC: Couple of times? That’s going too far! Now, Allen..
AG: Well, it was so long ago It’s dim in my mind.
GC: Yeah, but I would remember something like that. Not two times. I could see that maybe I.. Did I come? Did I come?
AG: I think so.
GC: You think so? Be careful. Did I or not?
AG: Well it’s kind of vague in my mind at this point.
GC: I don’t think I did Allen.
AG: But I had a very definite (memory) of.. At one point (and I don’t know if it was a dream or it was real, but I think it was real) ..of simultaneously screwing you and blowing you (which is acrobatically almost impossible)…
GC: That’s a dream, yeah, that’s a dream, that’s a fantasy. In no way did you get in my ass. That was what was so important on this one, believe me.
AG…and I don’t understand how that could come about, but it was a very vivid..
GC: Pure fantasy., man. It did not come about. I’m telling you , ok?
AG: OK maybe you’ve got it right.
GC: I’m granting you, I’m granting you that you could put your mouth on my dick where I think it’s an honor.
AG: Yeah.
GC: That’s not the idea – But I was not your lover in life, Allen. You loved me.
AG: I was in love with you..
GC: That’s all, but we weren’t lovers.
AG: ..and I had a very strong crush on you and couldn’t resist you when you were a kid and such a beautiful poet.
GC: Lets get it straight tho’, I was..
AG: But you weren’t going down as my lover, certainly not.
GC: No, but I certainly was your friend, pure poet. And I loved you, loved you. I was always.. I should be honored (because I’m an old fart now) I should be honored that you so held me, man, I held you.
AG: Well I did, and the people I loved were the most excellent..
GC: Yeah but that’s what I.. – that’s a little thing I don’t like about you, you fucker. Yeah, gee, see what you said? – Jesus! In other words.. you’re like a guy who fucks beautiful starlets, beautiful girls, and has a cock ring, you know, and says – “Oh man, look who I screwed, man!”
AG: But aren’t you the one.. You’re the one who said, “Be a star-screwer”
GC: Yeah, I told you be a star-screwer.
AG: But by “star”, I meant a spiritual star.
GC: Spiritual star. Granted. But you loved telling people who you fucked, man, you do..
AG: No, I don’t think so.
GC: And the greater the star the better..
AG: I don’t tell people very much.
GC: That’s deplorable, Allen. A gentleman never tells of the girls he fucked to people. He never tells. “Oh I fucked this one, I fucked that one”. You love going around “Well, I gave him a head job (blow-job), ol’ Neal Cassady – and poor Jack Kerouac, all those macho guys up there in Lowell, they don’t wanna hear that.
AG: They don’t wanna hear that.
GC: No they don’t wanna hear that.
AG: But, you know, you’ve seen Kerouac..
GC: Yeah
AG: ..in situations.. where he was drunk, saying “Nobody loves me, suck my dick”.
GC: Yeah, “drunk”, “Nobody loves me”, “suck my dick” – I saw that – that’s beautiful, that’s beautiful..
AG: ..and, actually what he was doing, partly, it was like a challenge, challenging people…
GC: Right.
AG: …to give him love of some kind or another, and I don’t know if he really meant his dick.
GC: You got, I would say, the cream of the crop, Al, ok? You did. Some beautiful people on this planet that I’ve known as a young man – And they’re all good-looking too – even Burroughs, I’m looking at the picture you’ve got here of Bill Burroughs…
AG: Yeah.
GC: …beautiful looking man, handsome fucker, man – (and) you – look at the young jewboy, you, beautiful, good-looking..
AG: Now the strange thing when I was young I thought he was.. I was sort of an ugly duckling
GC: No, no, no, no.
AG: No, No, I know you’d say “no no no”, but almost everybody that age has a feeling about a bad stink about their soul….
GC: Oh.
AG: …or that their body is unacceptable.
GC: Me, I though it was fine…
AG: Yeah, well.
GC: …because, of course, I was in prison, and I was beloved. I was the young guy. I was the youngest there, right? Curly Italian hair and all that shit.
AG: Well you were very beautiful when I first saw you.
GC: Oh, I thought you liked me for my poetry, Al !
AG: Well no, it was the exquisite form and the exquisite poetry. I still remember the very first poem of yours that I read – in the Pony Stable bar.
GC: Pony Stable bar? – the dyke bar, dyke bar.
AG: Where was that? Waverly Place?
GC: It was on West 4thStreet or West 3rdStreet, neat 6th Avenue.
AG: Near 6thAvenue on the…..Washington Square.
to be continued. (this interview continues – here)