In Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, the men drank grappa. I thought I should give it a try. The liquor store on Broadway and 113th had one bottle, way at the top of a seldom visited shelf. The clerk climbed three steps on the ladder and reached for it. On the way to the register he wiped it down with a damp cloth—it had gathered dust. What might that portend, I wondered. 

          At home, I cracked it, poured, sipped, and nearly spit. It was, to be generous, awful. A strong raw biting taste that pleased nowhere on the palette, stank in the nostrils and, on its way down the gullet, burned every ringlet of the esophagus. I poured a drop more, examined it closely: the translucence of a mildly tinted gel, the viscosity and aroma of nail polish. I stuck it in the pantry alongside cans of Goya black beans. This was not the kind of stash I needed to hide from roommates. It was the kind of stash one hoped roommates would find.   

          They didn’t. That was in 1977. 

          In 1980 I sublet one of my rooms to an Art History graduate student from Goldsmiths, University of London. Gillian her name was, Gillian Back. She was researching, in particular, the early work of Jules Olitski. 

          Of all the abstractionists, she said, I find his work the most appalling. You could hang it upside down and never know. 

          I said, So, then, I don’t understand. Why—?  

          Bryan, she said, with affectionate exasperation. 

          Bryan was her boyfriend. He loved Olitski. And Dubuffet. And Schnabel. He loves the ugly, she said, and showed me his picture. A Geordie (a person from Newcastle, she explained), with a tattooed face, hedge-clipper haircut, and a smile with missing teeth. 

          The most brilliant man I’ve dated, she said.  

          Is he—? 

          He’s the drummer in a band called Placenta Brunch, she said. It’s punk rock. 

          Yes, I said, I suppose it would be. 

          He was weeks away from his doctorate when he announced, that’s it, I quit, and joined the band. 

 

          Two weeks later, Bryan showed up, with a book (A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories, by Robert Walser, master of the Euro micro-mini), and his passport. Nothing else. Gillian wasn’t home—I let him in.  

          The drummer of Placenta Brunch, I presume. 

          Former drummer, Bryan said. 

          He was a long, lanky bloke, a Giacometti with a mustache. And, as it turned out, quite enjoyable. Just his routine alone. Awake by noon, maybe later. A quick splash at the sink, a walk up the hill to Broadway Market, then back down with a sixer of Miller High Life in 16 oz cans, never chilled, which he set on the floor. He’d find a book—anything seemed to do—and camp out on the living room couch reading and drinking for hours. He must have had a bladder the size of a Volkswagen because I think I saw him get up to piss once, maybe twice the whole time he stayed with us. And he remained planted until Gillian returned from her research after five. 

          I took to staying in my room, working there, but sometimes I wanted music. 

          Will this bother you? I’d ask him, pulling a record from the collection shelved up in both the living and dining rooms. 

          To which he’d say, Aw, mate. Please. 

          I’d put on Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations.  

          I rather like that, he’d say. 

          I’d put on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz.  

          Yeah, he’d say. Good choice. 

          I’d put on Tom Waits. 

          He’d say, Ah, precisely, innit? 

          A pleasant bloke, he.  

 

          One night, Gillian hosted a small party. A half-dozen aspiring art historians, Bryan, and me. Early on, she ran out of beer and wine.  

          Bryan asked if there was anything else. 

          I remembered the bottle of grappa, but I warned him of my experience. 

          He said, Let’s have a look. 

          I retrieved it from its spot near the beans. More dust had gathered on it than when I’d bought it three years earlier.  

          It’s been sitting around since the Eisenhower Administration, I said by way of explanation. 

          No bother, Bryan said. Give it here. 

          Have at it, I told him. And don’t worry about replacing. 

          He cracked the top, took a sniff. 

          Interesting, he said.  

          Then he poured several fingers into the glass he’d used for beer, swirled it around, took a mouthful. 

          Ah, he said, delightful. 

          Delightful? 

          Burns the chrome right off, innit? 

          In sixty minutes it was gone. 

 

          And not long after, so was Bryan. Gillian discovered Jules Olitski's involvement in something she identified at first as a sex and psychoanalysis cult, still in existence with headquarters, if that's the right word, just blocks away. She went to interview members, then she joined. 

          With Bryan and Gillian gone, the apartment felt empty. Sometimes I'd pause at the living room and stare at the empty couch. When I wanted music, I'd study the rows of albums and select one after another, rejecting each for reasons that were never clear to me.   

          Months later, I received a package from Bryan–a copy of Placenta Brunch's first ep called Seconds. Its cover was a Jules Olitski. It featured a track called "Grappa."