When I was 19, I was at a MoMA exhibition on the photography of the Beat Generation, looking at a portrait of William Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg. I turned to my right, and there he was—an impossible figure to miss—with a coat and tie, bearded and bald, professorial, sage-like, someone who appeared to know everything, but who still had lifetimes to learn, an older man, a child. Ginsberg was in his 60s, but he seemed like he hadn’t been born yet. He appeared in a Gap ad looking exactly like that. (He donated the proceeds to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.)
We chatted, and he was extremely affable, so much so that he invited me to his apartment on East 10th Street, where, he said, there would be a gathering of poets. But I had plans with my girlfriend, and that stopped the conversation. (Regrets, I’ve had a few.)
