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I really blew it this time,
I feel like I got caught
I don't know what was the crime
man I'm feeling' hot
everybody's after me,
shadows come to life
everybody's telling me,
"Stay out of sight!"
I'm on the run
I'm on the run
I'm on the run run run run run run run
I'm on the run
I used to have friends
I used to have lovers
now all that's at an end
there'll never be another
is that cop there on my trail
why does he look at me
oh my Christ I'm bound for jail
they'll throw a book at me
I'm on the run
I'm on the run
I'm on the run run run run run run run
I'm on the run
oh won't you give me one more try
I'll change my ways I know I can
never cheat and never lie
oh don't you understand
I'm on the run run run run run run run
I'm on the run
Oh what's so bad 'bout what i done
I always thought i kept it clean
oh i miss me having fun
and making all the scenes
I'm on the run
I'm on the run
I'm on the run run run run run run run
I'm on the run
ON THE RUN
Chris Wing & Alin Black
©1979 & 2010
Family Fun Music
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This Chapter is more or less continued from
After Schooling and The Metropolitan
it involves another hike to Boston, where I would stay until 1966
three years - and a lifetime - you'll see - but not on this little page
Heading East Again
September-October 1963
The second time I experienced New York was from the end of September to the end of October, 1963, during which time I did not think of the previous visit -- not even once -- unless you count the avoidance of Chinese food and loud floor shows and dreary movies. The fact that I had no money kinda leaves that point moot. All I really know is that I was in a hurry and got nowhere as a result.
I have no recollection of leaving California for what seems like the umpteenth time when in fact this would be my third crossing by thumb: the 1962 Costa Mesa - Florida - Braintree round trip, and now this, so far, one way hitch.
I do remember some of the rides, though.
Like the guy in Saint Louis who picked me up on the main highway, probably Route 66, but instead of driving toward the other end of town, he was on the backroads. He talked some talk about, "Cock. Here in Saint Louis, when we want to say something is good, we say 'cock'." I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, and didn't figure it out until I was much further down the road.
Outside of Akron, Ohio, I was picked up by a man in a blue Thunderbird, like this one:
I had recently scanned through a book called The Sixth Man by Joel Stern, where I learned this:
and I seem to recall that one of the descriptors that "gave away" a homosexual was that they prefer mentholated cigarettes (Don't go fact-checking, it could be that I imagined the passage, or perhaps someone told me about the dead giveaway). It was the man's demeanor, plus the prominently displayed package of Newport cigarettes that made me wary. Okay, so I was gay. But I wasn't in the community. I didn't know any gay people. After all, up to this point in my life, I'd had sex only with straight boys, and, according to Bill Clinton, that kind of sex wasn't even sex. So the pack of mentholated cigarettes made me suspicious.
Next, I remember walking the entire lakeside of Cleveland. Honest. From the western outskirts to the eastern outskirts. Ouch.
I don't remember anything else. Not even how I found my way to New York City and then, Greenwich Village.
I don't remember how I ended up staying the first night in the incredibly tossed and turned home of an elderly woman who came up to me and asked me if I needed somewhere to sleep.
Next day I continued my journey. After all, I was headed to Boston, for certain, and had to keep moving, moving, moving.
Sleeping in the Snow
It was cold that next day. I was still broke. And by the end of a day of just wandering around, I guess, I got sleepier than sleepy. I found a small park in Greenwich Village, late, and slept half the night on a park bench, under which a recent fall of snow lay still.
I was awakened very very late by a man who looked to be “old” (through probably no older than 25). He took me home, introduced me to his mom and tucked me into his bed. I thnk we had sex. I made up a name to call myself. Joey something or other.
After breakfast—the same breakfast that I image that his mother put out for him seven days a week—eggs, toast, juice, coffee and a kiss on the cheek.
John introduced me to some of the gay fringe and generally put up with me. There may or may not have been sex, at least on my part. The man was more like a good Samaritan helping a moron get a foothold in New York.
He even fixed me up with a job at the company he’d been employed with since graduating from high school. I was now the bicycle messenger for AAA Litho Company (“Accuracy Always Assured”), delivering lithographic plates to printers throughout lower Manhattan. It was fun. One of the places I delivered to was MGM records, or at least to the place where MGM had their record labels and covers printed. The men who worked in the litho plant always enjoyed a good giggle when they spotted me at the mirror, touching up my hair. My once cool crew-cut was now a duck-tail. Very 50s.
Somewhere in here I met a handsome boy who was the helpmate to a blind man who lived in Harlem. I spent the night. It was fun.
Also in this mess, there was a long ride on the subway during which I fell in love at first sight with the prettiest girl in the world. Where did she go?
It was always understood that the arrangement with John—job and bed—would be temporary, but long enough to put some cash in my pocket and buy the clothing I would need when I finally did set out job-hunting on my own.
John an I parted and then there was a series of one night stands, with me meeting boys and spending a night or a week as I floundered.
Autumn In New York
Be My Baby
Get a Job
I eventually went to the New York State Office of Employment.
My first job through them was at Klein's on Union Square. It was lifeless, except when I had time to linger in front of a 14th street record store that had outdoor speakers, turned up loud.
From the opening hour til who-knows-how late, the song that came out of those speakers had me and just about every other passer by enthralled.
"Be My Baby" was on its way to the ears of the world.
I couldn't tolerate my task at Klein's: moving racks of furniture from the stores of suppliers to the sales floors of what I thought to be a crappy department store. Miracle on 14th street it wasn't.
I walked away without collecting my pay.
Not long after, again thru the NYSOE, I was hired on the spot to work at a still-well known, if truncated, Madison Avenue artist management company where I reported to Miss P at 8:00 the following Monday morning. Mrs. P was in a tizzy. Certain artists (film actors) were due to arrive and they needed to have spending money waiting for them at the airport. I can't name names. Period. Okay, the actors were William Holden and Audrey Hepburn.
I’d barely gotten in the door when she handed me two checks totaling $800.00 and instructed me to hop a taxi to the company’s bank, cash the checks while the taxi waited and bring the cash back to the office. It was easy to get to the bank and cash the checks. It was far more difficult to bring the cash back to the office. So difficult, in fact, that I lingered in the cab that delivered me back to Madison Avenue.
I think I was ready to open the door and get out when I said, “Take me to the bus station.”
Stealing the $800.00 from a stranger who trusted me was sociopathic. God, those people must have furious as hell. I'm ashamed about it now, because I'm telling the world what I rat I have been. This wasn't my first plunge into depraved behavior, and it would not be the last. There are plenty of ill-gotten moments that I will be forcing myself to reveal. Plenty of debauchery and depravity and desperate measures mixed in with enough sociopathy to make some of the stories depressing to write about. So, I certainly won't write about any of them within close proximity of any of them.
What I did next was stupid and crazy and sociopathic all in one breath.
I went shopping.
I bought a Nehru jacket - just like the ones that the Beatles would soon enough wear. I bought a pinky ring. Pinky rings were all the rage. I never had a class ring, so I guess this would serve as a substitute. I bought a portable record player. I bought a bus ticket to Boston.
The Hotel and the Cabbie
The bus emptied me out in downtown Boston. I was by this time enthralled by Big Cities. Old Cities. Cities Period. Cities not in California.
Dressed in my shiny gray Nehru suit, I hailed a cab. I probably still had maybe three hundred left of the original eight, and I figured that I was living it up.
The cabbie was Italian-American .... no .... I remember now ... Greek. He had a dark five o'clock shadow and seemed quite verile. I was only as hot for him as I had once been hot for Ricky Nelson. Jeez, Louise, as I write this now I realize that I'm still exactly that way. Seeing is believing. Everything else is uinderrated.
Let's call the taxi driver Nikolas.
I introduced myself as Johnny Tillotson, a pop singer of the day whom I'd read was doing a show in Boston during the coming week. Yeah, right, Johnny Tillotson, that was me for the next couple of days. I was a mess, and I knew it.
The hotel looked like this: 
but it probably wasn't this one. It was, however, quite a nice hotel, and I booked myself in for a week.
I had Nikolas wait for me while I checked in. He wanted to show me around Boston. Although I was eager and friendly and totally unconscious, I was still taken equally by his looks and his own eagerness to please and entertain. He dropped me back at the hotel and invited me to have dinner with his wife and toddler at their house the next night.
I bought a stuffed puppy dog for the baby and enjoyed the meal and the company and the distraction from my future. I know to this day that neither he nor his wife had ever heard of Johnny Tillotson, but I never again pretended I was somebody else.
It is definitely depressing to write about this now, so far removed from that time, and yet so aware of the lives I have led.
Another Self Portrait
As an afterthought, writing this stuff out reminds me of the time when I was staying in Jennifer Tree's apartment in Venice, California, while she was out of town gallavanting with Stevie Winwood. Long story. More later. I found a bag of what I thought was cocaine. I'd never done cocaine, so I snorted the whole bunch up my nose and then got the urge to draw my self portrait. Keep in mind that drawing is one of many things I simply have not a drop of talent for. I stood in the mirror with my Koh-ri-Nor pen and started.
An outline. Good. Hair. Good, for now. Eyes. Mouth. Nose. I was making progress. And by the time I was done the whole face was black except for two little eyes peeking out of the ink. I want to say "beady" eyes, but that would be a stretch, even for me, and even feeling on the dark side this morning.
The Basement Apartment
I didn't spend that whole week in the fancy hotel. I had fewer and fewer dollars, and with no prospects for more I took the plunge and rented a by-the-month basement apartment somewhere on Beacon Hill. I was a couple of months shy of being nineteen. It had been about 18 months since I first hitchhiked east. It might as well have been forever, looking back on it now.
