September 1970. Eisenhower High School. I can’t get into the teen spirit of the Hopkins High pep rally. Purple Power! Youth Fever! Sieg Heil! Makes me sick.
“I put out a comic book with some other freaks that is sold in the hallways for a dime. The Daily Planet. My mom gets a call from a concerned parent who’d said she’d already had enough trouble with her son without this pornography inciting him to take drugs. Lady on the phone said I had to be on drugs to do the awful things to her son that I did. (IN A COMIC BOOK!?!?) Mom’s scared and shaking. Poor dear. She weakens and tells me I’m missing out on the best years of my life. But meanwhile, my art teacher Vern says I’ve got it, just do it harder, that I’m on the verge of greatness. He says I MUST devote myself to art, carry a sketchbook everywhere. Concerts: Savoy Brown, Poco, Johnny Winter And (with Rick Derringer), Youngbloods, Grateful Dead, Elton John, Eddie Harris, Flying Burrito Brothers, Faces (w. Rod Stewart), John Sebastian, Leo Kottke, Neil Young, Al Kooper, Taj Mahal, Elvin Jones. I check in in homeroom each morning before walking across the golf course back home again. The joys of ‘Modular Scheduling,’ which basically means I don’t have to spend much time in school. I usually have the house to myself as dad is downtown being a corporate lawyer and mom is off being an interior decorator. Anyhow, at 9 a.m, I sit behind Laurie Gold who is a heavy-lidded slim Jewish girl with velvet pants and no bra. A spoiled and sultry rock chick whose dad owns a chain of jewelry stores. She drives a GTO and always has good hash. She’s continually looking down to see if her tits are arranged right, then moistening her lips. We have sex together once in a while, but I don’t see her as girlfriend material. She’s got a phony way about her. She’s a real snob and looks down on all these high school jocks and squares. Except me. I’m the chosen one . . . she says she cares about me but I’m impossible to communicate with. She says I have highly developed intuitive skills, including ESP! …”
The Paris Review
The Paris Review: Duncan Hannah’s Seventies New York By M. H. Miller
On the Real-Time Thrill of Reading a Writer’s Diary – Duncan Hannah
NY Times: From CBGB to the Galleries of the Met
amazon: Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies
1960s: Days of Rage
1960s: Days of Rage 