A recollection by Muldoon Elder

I'm thinking of a large, long and rather wide table. The table is made of thick, dark wood with a slight sheen to it. It has ornate place mats on it, three or four bottles of red wine and an elaborate spread of little goodies to nibble on. A rather pompous architect had just announced, to the group of us standing around the table, the trite profundity that "There is very little difference between love and hate!" to which I responded, "Sir, you are mistaken... there is no difference between love and hate!" and quickly began an inspired expatiation that almost had me believing that there was no difference. The architect, after carefully following the torturous, Jesuitical steps proving my theory and having accepted my conclusion with the somewhat dazzled eyes of enlightened recognition, left in a huff after I told him that I was only kidding.

Standing next to me by the table was Paul Krassner. Moments later, Krassner and I are under the table, giggling and scrambling away from a giantess named Mrs. Brunn as she does her mighty best to kick the crap out of us after having knocked the two of us underneath the table. I had never met her before but I had heard of her. The year was 1963, now nearly forty years ago, but the recollection is still fresh in my mind. It was Krassner who started the giggling. My first thought, while under the table, was that he would be pissed off, but the irony of his own innocence in the matter and the frustrated rage behind the kicking must have caught his funnybone.

First of all, who is Paul Krassner? If I'm not mistaken, he started out as a child prodigy concert violinist at the age of six. He later started and published a gadfly news magazine called The Realist. He's a small fellow, fits neatly under a table, with curly hair, a pock marked face and a twinkle in the eye. It's a sort of detached twinkle like he's already thinking of something else. I read in the paper that on Tuesday he will be giving a reading from Murder at The Conspiracy Convention, a book that I presume he wrote. The reading will take place at seven o'clock at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

At the time of the table incident my little Vorpal art gallery was located in the alley next to City Lights Books where Charlie Chaplin had given Ferlinghetti the rights to use the title of Chaplin's movie of the same name for the bookstore since he and Lawrence were of the same basic political persuasion. The alley was originally called Adler Place but was renamed Jack Kerouac Alley a couple of years ago. The gallery was right behind Vesuvio's bar, a wonderful, funky place, with a great history, that still exists today. I had heard that before I turned my space into a gallery it had been a Chinese laundry and that it had also been a corny sort of art gallery run by someone named Margaret Brunn. Yes, she was the giantess at the beginning of this story.

So there we were, Paul Krassner and I thirty-nine years ago at a North Beach party full of artists and writers, standing by that table, having a friendly chat about love and hate when the giantess comes up and introduces herself. I was young at the time and I suppose a bit of an asshole. Anyway, I probably shouldn't have used the word "crap." When she mentioned that ha, ha, that she had been there first and had had a gallery there before I did, I responded, "yes, but I heard that you exhibited a lot of crap." Boom! Out of nowhere she threw a right cross at me. I ducked and the punch knocked Paul right under the table, the force of her mammoth body knocking me alongside him. We scrambled on hands and knees to avoid the ongoing kicks and curses and all the while Paul was making wonderful existential comments and giggling like a madman. He loved it.

Perhaps there really is no difference between love and hate.

© _Muldoon Elder