Brad Gooch met Howard Brookner at a gay club in 1978. Howard was working on his film project about William S. Burroughs and Brad was a post-grad student at Columbia and writer. The heady swirl of the hedonistic 70’s was everywhere and they were firmly part of it. Burroughs, Mapplethorpe, Haring. It was all sex and drugs and art with a capital A and the possibilities were seemingly endless. Then the spectre of death in the form of AIDs transformed the landscape forever. In between, […]
One silent gift
It’s 1914 in Paterson, New Jersey. Constance Kopp and her sisters Norma and Fleurette have taken their horse and buggy into town to do some shopping. Suddenly one of those newfangled motorcars plows right into them, damaging the buggy beyond repair. It’s a miracle the women themselves have survived with relatively minor injuries. People in the street help extricate them, right the horse and retrieve the remnants of their ruined buggy. The driver of the motorcar is Henry Kaufman, who runs the family silk dyeing factory […]
Mob mentality
There is a terrible storm kicking up in a little seaside town. The majority of it’s inhabitants are safely tucked in their homes, but three men are still at the local hotel, having their customary game of cards and a nightcap. Then one of the gentlemen decides to make his way home. The wind is blowing fiercely, adding difficulty to his already inebriated step and he loses ten matches trying to get his cigar lit. Ducking into the doorway of an abandoned house, he tries […]
RIP Lilly Bottoms
Stray Bullets 2: Somewhere Out West details pretty much what happened next after Orson, Beth and Nina took off with all that cash and coke. The majority of the book is set in Seaside, a raggedy-ass town out in the desert with a three mile long boardwalk, ready for when an earthquake drops California off into the ocean. I’m not making that up. The other main attraction is Lilly Bottoms, the five-legged cow, and every year there is a fair where she is the guest […]