Moving into chapter 7, we catch Kerouac in a lie right off. Well, a dishonest insinuation actually. Having slammed his new host ‘Roland Major’, actually Allen Temko, in the first paragraph, no doubt because Temko is aligned with Hal Chase and Ed White in the developing Denver versus the frauds feud. In the second paragraph Kerouac goes on to blow hot air to Temko. The context insinuates Kerouac has intimate knowledge of the freights ..

“.. I love the boxcars and I love to read the names on them like Missouri Pacific, Great Northern, Rock Island Line. By gad Major if I could tell you everything that had happened to me hitching here”

.. when we know he’d never gotten any closer to the box cars than seeing them rolling along side the highways on his trip west. By his earlier admission, to Kerouac’s credit, he states he’d passed on any chance at hitching freights. But he might yet experience his infatuation in reality, as it’s certainly possible Cassady has ridden the trains and might introduce Kerouac to the experience.

There is an interesting psychological thread developing here. When denigrating Temko, Kerouac puts down Hemmingway and makes allusions to a sort of ‘Hemmingway-esque’ class snobbery lifestyle associated with Temko’s experiences in Europe. One must wonder if Kerouac’s disdain (to put it mildly) for Hemmingway is based on jealousy and Hemmingway’s authenticity of experience (WWI, Spanish Civil War) versus Navy dropout Kerouac’s propensity to tell, if not in every case a self-aggrandizing lie, often the self-excusing falsehood.

The paradox here is, in his dishonest way, Kerouac is accurately portraying how to live a dishonest life.

Meanwhile, Ginsberg is instructing Cassady in the libertine philosophy of the male homosexual and the wide-open promiscuity known in that community (despised by many lesbians) which Cassady is in turn applying to debauching Denver’s women. One gets Cassady is a natural heterosexual and would have remained straight, were it not for his age 14 years encounter with a ‘mentor of promising but disadvantaged young men.’

Under Ginsberg’s tutelage, Cassady is now cheating on his wife, as well as cheating on his girlfriend that he is cheating on his wife with, all the while concealing his behaviors and lying to every one of them about his intentions, assured by Ginsberg this is real ‘freedom.’

In Ginsberg’s ‘ethics free’ version of essential sexual liberty, taught to and put into practice by Cassady, essentially the women are hustled with lies, and then absolutely screwed, and in every sense of the word.

Kerouac wraps up chapter 7 with bringing an entourage of drunken, partying friends back to his ‘guest’ quarters after 3am and Temko had sensibly denied a wild party of carousing drunks entry to the apartment which in fact did not belong to him but to the family of Ed White; because the place most certainly would have been trashed.

I was at Crow Agency, Montana, for the Indian days celebration. ‘Crow Fair’ has a good pow-wow and I’d traveled down to take it all in with Blackfeet friends from Browning. I’d played a little stick game, but was mostly taking in the dance at the arbor, there were Indians from tribes in every direction, had traveled to participate. The costumes were incredible, brilliant color, the drums and singers were excellent in the northern and southern style.

After the dance had stopped for that evening, around midnight, not yet tired, I’d wandered off into the surrounding brush, deciding to check out ’49.’ This is an informal or ‘off the record’ pow-wow event (never advertised.) I was aware of it, but had never really experienced the native love music. I was standing back from the young male dancers who, after the dance, had brought a drum, and were singing the love songs.

Suddenly there was an absolutely gorgeous young woman in traditional dance costume, walked directly up to me and stood tall, proud, looking me in the eye. I was caught flat-footed, a little panicked, I could not think what to do, I knew there was a proper Indian response but I could not come up with it, the right story. I was thinking like mad for several moments and she’d walked away without ever uttering a word. And then I remembered:

In the Blackfoot oral history, there was a time when women and men did not live together, but on opposite sides of a valley, separated by a river. Then, the Nin-nawa-ki (the Chief of the Women, the highest form of Blackfoot chief, woman or man) gathered the men and lined them up and told the women to chose their husbands. The woman who wished to be married would walk up to the man she desired. If he followed her, they were a couple..

Like popping awake, I looked around to see which direction this beautiful woman had headed but did not see her, already vanished into the dark. An Indian standing beside me had then said: “too late, she’s gone.”

Here is my brainchild for setting precedent holding intelligence agencies and their political enablers responsible for war crimes. This is a true copy of my filing with the International Criminal Court, also online at:

You are free to share this mail with anyone.

Ron West

www.ronaldthomaswest.com