A Day at the Polls: Tattooed Leftist Women

Working the polls on Pennsylvania Primary Day, May 19, pretty much confirmed for me how entrenched Philly is when it comes to far-left politics. As Minority Inspector of Elections, I checked Voter IDs when people came to vote, but spent the bulk of my time maintaining watch and answering questions near the voting machines. The excessively hot temperatures contributed to the slow turnout, although that was also due to the fact that many people on the ballot ran unopposed. At the end of the day, only 90 people from my particular division came out and voted. They came as loners, as couples, with baby carriages, carrying dogs and cats. Many brought their children, mostly toddlers; there were also quite a few infants that entered the voting booth with their mothers. Had I been into statistics, I’d feel confident enough to make some generalizations about how Democrats, Republicans, and the city’s Working Families Party — with largely Democratic sympathies when it doesn’t operate as a completely socialist independent entity — present themselves at the polls. Young left-leaning women almost always had bare shoulders with much of their backs exposed. The female leftist uniform includes multiple tattoos on legs, ankles, shoulder blades, and in many instances full-sleeve tattoos on one of both arms. They often had a very haughty air, and if they were accompanied by a husband or boyfriend – the latter usually lagging behind while modestly dressed in jeans and a T-shirt – the full-sleeved tattooed woman always seemed to be the one in charge, at least based on her walking hurriedly in fro

nt of him as if leading a charge. Older, leftist women tended to have short “helmet” hair and long earrings. This style is a leftist classic and comes from radical fashion from hardcore Democrat Socialist West Philadelphia, Powelton Village, and Germantown. Returning from a break at one point, I noticed one left-wing couple inspecting a ballot issues poster near the front door. They were examining the ballot with dedicated ferocity. Just before I walked out of hearing range, I heard the man say to his female partner, “Yeah, he’s pro-Palestine!” They then proceeded to vote. As the day wore on, I noticed that young progressives – whether ordinary Democrats or the eager communists of the Working Families Party – spent an inordinate amount of time in the voting booth. At one point I was truly worried when one couple, both dressed in shorts and flip flops, spent close to 15 minutes in the booth. Did they both have reading problems? The ballot was not that long. The majority of people spent only a few minutes voting. Finally, when the woman exited first, she went off into a corner where she waited for her male companion who, when he finally emerged, slunk sheepishly over to her where they consulted in hushed tones, both of them looking worried as if they had seen something untoward on the ballot. Or if voting constituted something that actually affected them physically.

Some people after they voted became decidedly giddy. The degree to which politics has become a religion could be seen in many of these people. Their faces would explode with delight when they were handed those little “I just voted” stickers. When poll staffers would say good-bye to them, some would raise their hands in the air in celebratory ecstasy. Some raised their hands over their heads in the manner of Rocky, that fictional character whose statue now rests inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I know from experience that many people get a rush of dopamine after they pull the vote lever, but it was interesting to see extreme examples of this. We weren’t allowed to talk politics while working inside the polling station. As you can imagine in 2026, when nearly everything is politics, how do you not do this at least once or twice during a fourteen-hour stint? I had the pleasure of meeting Robyn Bird, Republican candidate for the 177th Legislative District, who is running against incumbent Democrat Joe Hohenstein. Hohenstein, an immigration attorney, was first elected in 2018. Bird handles government affairs for Local 22 of the firefighters and paramedics union. Her campaign has stressed public safety, police and fire support, and criticism of the state’s current immigration and economic policies. Hohenstein, whom I’ve met several times whenever I work the polls, is an engaging individual. He usually shows up with his small entourage; this year he was strangely absent, unless he visited when I took my lunch break. Recently, Hohenstein has become very critical of ICE, like every Philly Democrat, while ignoring the downside of illegal immigration. Like many Democrats, he lumps illegal aliens into the same camp as legal immigrants, and then says he supports “immigration.” Hohenstein is very woke on LGBT issues. He has stated he is the parent of a trans/nonbinary child and emphasized the importance of protecting trans kids. The problem is, what is a trans kid? Would that be a five-year-old? A ten-year-old? Can a ten-year-old know for certain they are trans when they are still debating the existence of Santa Claus? “Trans people are human; however, they are too often attacked for being different and not fitting into our society’s rigid gender structures,” Hohenstein has been quoted as saying. Bird, on the other hand, has the common-sense view expressed by most Americans: If you are an adult and trans, fine; if you are gay, queer, or a nose-ring rainbow gender non-conformist, fine: just leave the children alone. One of my Democrat colleagues working the polls introduced me to Bird. His graciousness surprised me.

The day after the primary, I read that Barney Frank had died of congestive heart failure. When I lived in Boston, Frank was just beginning to make the political rounds when he joined the state legislature in 1972. He was not yet out-of-the-closet as a gay man but he supported the early efforts of the gay rights movement. Ironically, reading one of his obituaries, I was surprised to learn that when Frank spoke to NBC10 Boston earlier in May from hospice care, he took aim at woke Democrat priorities and called on the party to step back from social issues like trans rights. Truly amazing! “That’s the approach the transgender community should take to male-to-female transgenders playing in women’s sports,” he said. “That’s very controversial. Other issues are, I think more important, but also less toxic, like getting good medical care, guaranteeing that for people, guaranteeing people the right to designate their genders, and they should put off the most controversial.” That’s almost a full conversion to sanity, sans his allowance for gender designation, but in the total scheme of things what he said is still what Democrats need to hear if they want to win elections. (Not that I want them to win elections, of course.) Thom Nickels is Broad + Liberty’s Editor at Large for Arts and Culture and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest work, “Ileana of Romania: Princess, Exile and Mother Superior,” will be published in May 2026.

My father died of throat cancer in 1986. At the time I was working in Human Services with the developmentally disabled in Germantown.

I grew up at a time when it was understood that there should be some emotional distance between fathers and sons. My father never held or kissed me in public like I see many fathers doing today with their toddler sons. That kind of closeness then would have been perceived as excessive and unnatural. Tactile kissing and hugging were the business of mothers. As a result, I grew up fearing my father. He was a disciplinarian and a task master. This is not to say he didn’t love me. He did. He just couldn’t show it. At times I’d take revenge on him by posting little notes around the house calling him Hitler. As you can imagine, that didn’t go off very well. I should note here that I was the eldest of six children. Being the first born, you are likely to be the experimental child in your parents’ eyes. My parents were under twenty when they married, so when it came to raising me trial and error was the norm. Not surprisingly, by the time my youngest sister was 15 or 16, she had it much easier than her older siblings. She and my father considered themselves buddies. Discipline was lax; in another sense, sometimes I felt that my sister got away with murder. I’m writing this to lay the groundwork for what would happen later; when political ideology got the best of me when I was in my twenties, and when that ideology dictated certain actions of mine after my father’s death. This action – a blunt refusal to attend my father’s funeral – was the result of my allegiance to gay ideology. In a nutshell, although my father and I became close long before his death, after his death when the funeral arrangements were laid out by my mother, I was told in no uncertain terms that my partner at the time and I could both attend the funeral as a twosome but we could not take part in a special ceremony after the Mass where my siblings and their spouses went to the front of the church and stood as couples around the casket.

The purpose of the “couples’ line” was to meet and greet the mourners. I had never heard of a ceremony like this; apparently it was one of those post Vatican II ideas that disappeared almost as soon as it was invented. My mother was adamant: “I cannot have you and ‘S’ standing with the other spouses. The family isn’t ready for this. My sisters aren’t ready to see this. You must respect my wishes. ‘S’ can remain in the pews while you come up and join your siblings, but I can’t have ‘S’ standing there with you. Please respect my wishes.” This directive didn’t go down well. Here I was, having spent a few years in Harvard Square and Boston demonstrating with the Gay Liberation Front, writing for underground gay newspapers as a committed dyed-in-the-wool gay activist. Acceding to my mother’s wishes would have meant betrayal of the gay movement. I saw myself as a potential hypocrite, writing and preaching that everyone should come out of the closet while I slinked back into the closet for the duration of a church service just to appease my mother’s sisters, and to prevent them from being shocked, even though they already knew my story. Yet in 1986, standing in front of my father’s casket in church with my partner ‘S’ was perceived as “rubbing it in their faces.” I thought my mother’s request was monstrous, especially since she and my father both accepted ‘S’ at family dinners and holiday gatherings.

“There’s no way that I can do that,” I told her. “S’ is every bit a part of my life as the spouses of my brothers and sisters are. You’re telling me to deny that; you’re telling me to relegate ‘S’ to second tier status. Can’t you stand up to your sisters? Why should they dictate how you arrange Dad’s funeral?” My mother was unmoved. When I talked to a gay friend about it, he told me not to bend to her wishes. “He’s your partner, you can’t betray him. You’re not a teenager living under her roof. You’re an adult. She doesn’t respect your relationship.” I resolved not to go to the funeral. On the day of the Mass, the burial at the cemetery and the luncheon afterwards, I was not present. The cold embrace of stubborn ideology offered few emotional comforts. In my mind I was with the family at the funeral Mass, even as I pushed doubts about my decision out of my mind. I kept telling myself: Yes, I had done the correct thing. After all, I had a message to convey: the equality of gay people. My not going was really an affirmation of that fact. With a small group of friends, we headed to Westminster Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd where my father had just been buried. One of my friends brought incense and some ceremonial Native American paraphernalia. We conducted our own ceremony around the grave. Waving a feather and incense sticks over the earth, we held hands in a circle and said some prayers. At the cemetery, the site of my father’s grave filled me with immense sorrow. The mountainous pile of flowers spoke to the many people who loved him. Doubts about boycotting the funeral flooded my being; they rushed in like shadows and filled me with dread. What had I missed? Had I chosen ideology over properly mourning my father?

It would be a number of years before I realized my mistake. ‘S’ and I never stayed together. We would split four years from the date of the funeral. You only have one father and that father only dies once. I could have given into Mother; I could have swallowed my gay pride and thought of her needs after a marriage of almost 30 years. I could have compromised. The experience caused me to be less critical of ideologically driven young people as they prance about today insisting on pronouns or the correctness of their opinions. I recognize that arrogance because I was once one of them.

That’s a country I inhabited a long time ago. But the past is the past. Thom Nickels is Broad + Liberty’s Editor at Large for Arts and Culture and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest work, “Ileana of Romania: Princess, Exile and Mother Superior,” will be published in May 2026.

The Pope from Chicago (Thom Nickels-Frontpage Magazine)

Leo, the affable smiling pope, is now a bona fide hero of the secular left and legacy media. Not only has he captured the minds and hearts of progressive cafeteria Catholics, pro-choice women, and weak men who voted for Kamala Harris, but various open border groups, like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The USCCB loves him because he speaks less about Catholicism than he does about the new world order while using “peace” as a buzzword to get more and more people to love him. This first “American” pope who identifies as Latin American, also appeals to atheists and secularists but not to traditional Catholics, many of whom don’t view him as a “holy” pope at all, at least when compared to Saint Pius X, Pius XII, or Leo XIII. Leo is very much a political pope who should be working for the UN and not the Catholic Church. Like his predecessor Francis, Leo loves giving interviews at 30,000 feet on the papal jet.

He also clearly loves being a celebrity, though this was the case since his days as a seminarian. His pre-ordination years included dressing up as John Belushi with slicked-back black hair, black hooligan hat, sculpted sideburns that conjure up sleazy nightclubs, and sunglasses. In another photograph from the same period – which has never been officially published but somehow wound up in the hands of a distant family member of mine – he’s dressed as Groucho Marx, taken when he was a student at Villanova University. Villanova, it should be noted, is a Main Line Philadelphia suburban party school where sports is king. Fast forward several decades after Leo’s time in Latin America as a missionary-liberation theology advocate and communist sympathizer, to the day he was elected on the fourth ballot by progressive cardinals in Rome to put a dent in the Trump presidency. Many were fooled when he greeted the world dressed in traditional vestments, unlike Francis who would go on to make a show of his ostentatious “humility.” Leo smiled, waved, then prayed in Latin, but the intuitively-sensitive picked up a vibe. A vibe that was not good. A little confession here. Immediately after his election I checked out a tarot card reader on You Tube who asked the cards (or “spirit”) what kind of pope Leo would be. I expected to have a good laugh but was taken aback when the reader said the new pope would almost be a pacifist obsessed with peace at any cost and that he would initiate some of the most revolutionary changes in the Catholic Church since its founding. The changes would start off slowly, the reader emphasized, but then accelerate in a manner that would shock many Catholics. I think of that card reader a lot these days as Leo not only turns the Catholic Church on its head but has come forward – as that popular meme so accurately states – like a typical Democrat from Chicago. Leo is more of a secular leader than a spiritual father: blessing a block of ice, honoring Pachamama and Pope Francis’s agenda more than the teachings of Christ, essentially telling Our Lady of Fatima that she was wrong when she told the three shepherds in 1917 that more people go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than any other sin. “That’s not true,” Leo seems to be firing back at the Mother of God. “You concentrate too much on sex, being uncharitable to migrants is the greatest sin, so take your negativity and stop telling children lies.” This is the arrogance of Francis’s Synodal Church.

Since his installation (they used to call it a coronation), Leo has appointed radically-liberal clergy to head dioceses throughout the country: easy on abortion-James Martin acolytes who also hate ICE, and the president’s immigration policies. He refuses to meet with leaders of the SSPX – the voice of the true Catholic Church as opposed to the diabolical Synodal Church invented by Francis – while meeting with the Obama administration’s David Axelrod and feuding with President Trump, and before that with White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, Tom Homan, who has said of Pope Leo and the Vatican, “I wish they’d stay out of immigration.” Homan was correct when he said the pope and the Vatican do not understand the immigration problem the United States is dealing with. “They’re looking at this from an ivory tower perspective while American families are being destroyed by fentanyl, human trafficking, and criminal cartels,” he said. Progressive American Catholics and atheistic leftists don’t care about immigration nuance. The latter camp is happy Leo dislikes Trump and fights the administration when it comes to immigration. Both groups think Homan’s concern is made up or exaggerated, an excuse to “hate” the pope. They also brush off allegations brought by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and other advocacy organizations that have expressed deep concern over Pope Leo XIV’s past handling of abuse cases. What happens in Peru, stays in Peru. The Daily Mail reported on a man named Lopez de Casas, a victim of clergy abuse who happens to be the national vice president of SNAP, who accused Leo of failing to address abuse allegations when he was a bishop in Peru. “Staying silent is a sin. It’s not what God wants us to do. Jesus wants us to stop these things, not to make a heathy garden for secular abuse to grow,” he told the publication. This week I read that the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia will award Pope Leo its 38th Annual Liberty Medal at a public ceremony to be held July 3, 2026 on Independence Mall. The Center’s website states: “The award recognizes The Holy Father’s lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world, ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” The NCC’s logic defies common sense. Every pope in recent times has supported “religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression.” What the NCC is really awarding Leo for is his standing up to Trump when it comes to immigration and ICE. For years the NCC has walked a haphazard line between conservative and leftwing politics. Former Liberty Medal winners include Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Muhammad Ali, and Ken Burns, so you know where this institution is coming from.

The NCC is also located in one of the most leftwing cities in the nation, where public schools are encouraged and even rewarded for the promotion of Islam and issues related to Palestine. Much like in Chicago public schools, students in middle and high schools are not penalized when they attend anti-ICE protests. In the Philly public school system, no references are made to Easter while every effort is made to promote Ramadan and other Muslim holidays. The NCC’s announcement came on the heels of Pope Leo’s appointment of a former illegal alien to the bishopric of West Virginia, Evelio Menjivar- Ayala, born in El Salvador in 1970. In an interview with (the liberal) U.S. Catholic, Menjivar-Ayala recalls that his impoverished childhood included dreams of one day leaving El Salvador. “I always dreamed of crossing the border to see what lay beyond,” he said. Menjivar-Ayala’s dream was almost realized when he came to the U.S. in 1990 as an illegal alien when he was smuggled unsuccessfully into the country in the trunk of a car. Menjivar-Ayala tried three more times to enter the country. As Monica Showalter writes in American Thinker, “He tried to enter the U.S. three times, getting thrown out each time until he paid a cartel human smuggler to illegally get him in. “After that, he filed a what looks like a typical asylum claim, as many do, an economic migrant claiming to be escaping persecution and being deathly afraid of returning to his home country. “ Menjivar-Ayala was not escaping persecution. That was a lie. In the U.S. he worked a number of menial jobs before becoming acquainted with Chicago’s leftwing clerical cabal. In due time, he was appointed a Deacon by the defrocked sexual predator, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., accused of molesting handsome seminarians. Showalter questions in her article if Menjivar-Ayala was ever “courted” by McCarrick and then showered with favors (the Deaconate) from the sugar daddy. The appointment of Menjivar-Ayala to West Virginia, a Protestant majority state with only 60,000 Catholics, 90% white and that voted for Trump by 42 points, is also very queer. Obviously, there is a Vatican agenda here to do everything possible to help transform the state politically. Leo’s move is much like the EU’s forced immigration policies that have gone a long way to destroy much of Europe, especially France, the UK, and Ireland. Menjivar-Ayala also told U.S. Catholic: “The church was very instrumental in helping people organize themselves after the watershed 1968 meeting of Latin American Bishops in Medellín, Colombia. That awakened a sense of social awareness and a closeness, a conscious awakening. “People began to join different organizations and to read the Bible from that perspective. Seeing faith from that perspective brings liberation, not only salvation in heaven but liberation from what oppresses you here on Earth.” The last paragraph can be used to justify both the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Most of the devastation from this pontificate is yet to come. True Catholics are in for a real heartbreak.

The Art of Selfishness: A New York Poet

The life and times of poet John Giorno (1939-2019) can be found in the memoir, Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), published one year after Giorno’s death. Giorno, a poet, knew everybody in the fascinating New York City arts and cultural world of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Giorno’s range of friends and acquaintances was shockingly wide and diverse. I “knew” Giorno years ago as the Beat gay poet who published a book of poems entitled, Cancer in my Left Ball. Giorno was also interviewed by Gay Sunshine magazine in San Francisco and by Fag Rag in Boston. Fag Rag was a revolutionary gay liberation publication edited by Walt Whitman scholar, Charley Shively (1937-2017). I wrote for the publication briefly in the late 1970s. Giorno’s memoir tells heretofore unpublished stories about Allen Ginsebrg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and artists Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and many others. Giorno worked on Great Demon Kings for twenty five years and finished the book just one week before his death. He never saw it in print. What struck me most about this memoir was its honesty.

As a student at Columbia University in 1956, Giorno told a friend: “The reason I dislike Columbia, is that everyone is here to become lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and professors. Their aspiration is to get some horrible job making money to support a wife and children, a bourgeois life imprisoned in suburbia…” When a friend of Giorno’s urged him to read Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, his whole life changed. “I held HOWL in my hand and I wanted to scream, to explode…Clear light and absolute bliss rang in my heart…” Giorno went on to read Jack Kerouac’s books and came to trust Kerouac’s understanding of the world. Life dealt Giorno a serendipitous blow when he met Kerouac at a party on May 31, 1958. “It was like being struck by lightning,” he recalls. “I was young and beautiful and that got me what I wanted and all I wanted was sex.” Giorno was also lucky to have wealthy parents who indulged his penchant for the bohemian life. “Jack was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, and I could see his muscles, and he had an amazingly handsome face.” The two men conversed and then a bit of magic happened. “I was drunk and so was he, and we staggered, our cheeks brushed against each other. We could have kissed.” Kerouac looked at Giorno and whispered, “Why are we here?” But this dance of intimacy was broken by a jealous Allen Ginsberg. Giorno recalls: “Allen swam in like a great white shark. He destroyed love through jealousy and possessiveness.” Giorno would have run-ins with Ginsberg throughout the years, at one point calling him a “pushy Jew,” for which he later apologized. Ginsberg, for his part, made it known that he never much cared for Giorno’s performance poetry. Giorno met Andy Warhol at the artist’s first one-man show at New York’s Stable Gallery. The year was 1962 around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “I took hold of Andy’s soft hand, which dangled from his wrist.” In 1963, while attending a Jasper Johns opening, Giorno spotted Warhol which led to a mutual friend inviting them both to dinner and then a dance performance at the Judson. At the end of the evening, Giorno told Warhol that he’d like to see him again. Entranced by Giorno’s good looks, Warhol said, “What about tomorrow night?” This was the birth of their love affair. The memoir indiscreetly details all of Warhol’s sexual fetishes, especially the time when the artist crawled across the floor to tongue-polish Giorno’s shoes. Through Warhol, Giorno’s circle of friends grew. He was meeting people like John Cage and Philip Glass although he already counted among his inner circle Village Voice columnist and dance critic, Jill Johnston (author of Lesbian Nation). Giorno and Warhol spoke every night. At this time the poet had a job on Wall Street and was known as an anomaly among his fellow writers and artists. New York City at this time was very provincial when it came to gay artists and writers being honest about their sexuality. Giorno writes, “The old guard Abstract Expressionists had been notoriously homophobic. Only straight guys, like themselves, were great painters. Gay artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns didn’t talk about their sexuality, and shunned homoerotic imagery in their work.”

In 1964, Warhol asked Giorno to star in his film, “Sleep,” a 5hour, 20 minute film that shows Giorno sleeping. Giorno writes that he gave Warhol the idea to do a painting of Jacqueline Kennedy in the black funeral veil she wore at her husband’s funeral. Giorno was with Warhol the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “We both started crying, weeping big fat tears. We pressed our faces together and kissed. It was the first time that we had properly kissed. It had the sweet taste of kissing death. It was exhilarating.” Through it all Warhol kept saying, “I don’t know what it means.” Giorno’s relationship with Warhol dissolved over time but by this time the poet was traveling to Tangier to visit Jane and Paul Bowles. He found Jane Bowles to be seriously crazy and returned to New York. Giorno’s friendship with artist Robert Rauschenberg became a love affair after the two men drank multiple cups of tea and smoked joints. “He had a beautiful body, soft skin and firm muscles. It was like making love to Alexander the Great or Emperor Hadrian. His body radiated the worldly power of great accomplishment.” Ruaschenberg, formerly married with children, “had an unspoken rule that no one was allowed to write about his being gay, under the threat of excommunication and wrath of hell, and nobody did.” In the 1950s, gay was the kiss of death; as a result, Giorno found Ruaschenberg’s use of heterosexual images to be self serving. Ruaschenberg and Giorno did collaborate on a number of projects and performance pieces. Then Ruaschenberg took an extended trip to Los Angeles where he met and bonded with Warren Beatty. Giorno recalls, “With that new friendship came Shirley MacLaine and rich beautiful Hollywood movie stars, drugs and alcohol, a world that was over-the-top.”

While Ruaschenberg was hobnobbing in Hollwood, Giorno was getting feelings that the relationship would soon end. He describes how he sat down on a park bench and began to cry. “It was at that moment that Bob Ruaschenberg and I broke. For no reason, nothing had happened; nothing had changed in our relationship. I believed it was precognitive recognition.” The break did occur shortly after Ruaschenberg returned from Los Angeles. From Ruaschenberg, Giorno would become lovers with Jasper Johns but first he established an intimate connection with William Burroughs. “Thin, gentlemanly, and courtly, he dressed in imitation Brooks Brothers suits. He had the power, a strong magnetizing quality, to attract people to him. Every night we got completely drunk on bourbon and water, smoked endless joints and cigarettes, and took whatever drugs appeared as gifts.” Burroughs told Giorno: “Why would anyone want to go to bed with me, I look like someone from Bergen-Belsen.” Giorno told him that he wanted to thank William for being a great hero of gay sexual freedom. “I wanted to reward him for his noble efforts. He had the most appalling taste, attracted to puny street boys from London and Tangier. I wanted to offer him bliss.” Jasper Johns, Ruaschenberg’s former lover. now became Giorno’s lover. Giorno declares: “Ruaschenberg was too crazy, Warhol was too over-the-top, the Abstract painters were dying gods, and minimal and conceptual artists were still forming. Jasper had caught the golden ring,” Johns, with his southern charm and (mostly) stable WASP lifestyle, was with Giorno when the poet’s creation, the Dial-a- Poem program (famous poets reading their works on a toll-free line) reached new publicity heights, with articles about it in The New Yorker, the New York Post, the BBC and the Christian Science Monitor. When The New York Times did an article on Dial-a-Poem, Giorno’s name was catapulted into the stratosphere. Giorno then did what many poets did in the late 1960s and early 70s: he handed out mimeographed poems in the street as a form of activism. The Vietnam War had gotten Giorno interested in politics but unfortunately Giorno’s obsession with politics contributed to a breakup with Johns. Years after first meeting Jack Kerouac, Giorno ran into him on the corner of Third Avenue and Seventh. “Jack was wearing a flannel shirt and a brown corduroy zipper jacket with the collar up against the chill. He was just a nice, overweight guy, with a hangover, who was smiling and gentle, with warm eyes.” Kerouac had just made a fool of himself on William F. Buckley’s show, Firing Line, doing the live interview while very drunk. On Buckley’s show, Kerouac called Allen Ginsberg “That Jew!” and generally came off as moronic. Giorno writes that the former Adonis’ face was “beat up and bloated.” “Kerouac and I looked in each other’s eyes for a long moment. Love arose in each of our hearts. There was a sexual energy and unexpected possibility. We rested for a moment in the glimmer of our hearts.” And then Giorno was off. “I said good-bye. I had a day of appointments, and was already half an hour late.” Thom Nickels