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On the hottest day of 1965, I carried a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder onto a New York City bus to get to the apartment where Allen Ginsberg lived on East 7th Street between Avenues B and C, a neighborhood now called Alphabet City. I struggled up five flights of stairs with the Wollensak. It weighed a lot to begin with, but became progressively heavier with each step. If there were transistor electronics in those days, they were not available to us poor graduate students. By the time I got to the landing on the fifth floor, I was steeping in my own sweat. My knock was answered by Peter Orlovsky, Allen's partner, who stared at me expressionlessly. I explained that I had come to interview Allen. He said, “Allen is sleeping.” I asked whether I might wait. He stepped aside and beckoned me in. There was no foyer or anteroom: I had entered the kitchen.
An old-fashioned rectangular deal table stood in the middle of the small room. Peter took a seat on the side opposite the door I had come in by, and motioned me to one facing him. Thus we sat, in silence, for a good long while. Glancing around the room, I was annoyed to see a recent model Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder in a lovely burnished walnut case, mounted on the wall to my right.
Muffled sound from a room behind him stirred Peter to stand and cautiously open its door. He slipped in and shut it again, leaving me alone for several minutes. Presently, he reemerged to announce that Allen had awakened and was ready to meet with me. I hefted the Wollensak and walked to the door. Allen sat cross-legged on a bare mattress with black striped ticking. He wore a T-shirt that was too short to be tucked into his boxer shorts, leaving a hairy ridge of bare midriff that he scratched lazily with the fingernails of both hands.
The impetus for this meeting was an idea I had for a doctoral dissertation to study the phenomenon of charismatic leadership. I had developed a set of criteria derived chiefly from the work of sociologist Ma