The Third Strike

By Jerry Gray

This is the tragic but vivid self-analysis of an alcoholic. It describes, in gripping fashion, the losing struggle one youth had with alcoholism. At the age of 27 the author committed suicide. Even in this brief autobiography there are indications that he came near to finding the power to win the battle, as others have done. A revealing study. Arguably one of the most eloquent and wrenching books ever written about the debilitating despair of a hopeless alcoholic. There is no self-pity or drama, just a factual account of the last few days of this person's life in the Bowery. The style is crisp, incisive and poetic. It is a small book. My understanding is that this book was published posthumously after the author committed suicide. What a loss the literary world suffered, what a waste... except for this little gem he left behind!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805231288

Book preview

CHAPTER I—Rain in the Bowery

IT IS April 4, 1929, at six o’clock in the evening. I am standing on the corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery in New York City, where intermittently rain has been falling in chill, sharp showers all afternoon.

The rain is the only clean thing about me. I love the rain. Even half-drunk I love the rain because it reminds me of tears, and tears cleanse the soul. But more than of tears it reminds me of the river, and I am bound for the river. Out of the first deep, whirling chaos I’ve ever known has come one clear decision: The Hudson River shall claim me this night. I am tired of life. At twenty-seven I feel that I have lived too long. Much too long.

Outwardly I am out of place on the corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery. I am well dressed and shaved. My pants are pressed and my shoes are shined. I have just stood in a barrel while a tired little Russian tailor fussily steam-pressed my suit and talked communism to me from behind a counter stacked harum-scarum with second-hand clothing. Between furtive swigs at my bottle of gin I make Is-that-so? answers at him. What do I care about communism? I won’t be around. Somebody else will have to settle it, and I wish them luck. They’ll need it in this Godforsaken world.

Inwardly I am not out of place on the corner of Delancey Street and the Bowery. I am a mental and spiritual bum—exclamation point—just as much so as this poor, unshaven devil with the hopeless look and de-horn breath who approaches me on his weary way to another speak-easy or to a mission where he hopes he doesn’t fall asleep during services and there’ll be a spare bench to stretch out on for the night.

He looks at me, and I feel a deep kinship with his stoop-shouldered defeatism. I know what he is thinking: Should I burn this guy or not? I save him the abasement. I toss him a quarter, which knocks the props out from under his wheedling aplomb; and before he can mutter meaningless thanks, I say, Beat it. Flop or drink, I don’t care which. It’s yours now. He shuffles on, mute corroboration of my own dark thoughts.

The street of forgotten men on April 4, 1929. That isn’t entirely so. I haven’t been forgotten. Three days ago I wired home for money, and today Dad sent fifty dollars with the simple message Come home.

Three days ago I was a physical wreck, craving the narcotic of drink, at the fag end of a month’s binge. Three days ago I wanted to go home; I wanted to see my folks again, to sleep in my old bed, to eat some of Mora’s chicken and dumplings, to take a walk in the spring-tangy woods of Minnesota, to write a poem, maybe, to a gray squirrel in the old park. I wanted to catch hell from my father and try to wipe out this whole mess and start over again.

But that was three days ago. In seventy-two hours things have changed. The waiting, the inner torture, did it. A seedling of despair has burgeoned into a mighty weeping willow of defeat that shades me in total gloom.

Now I know there’s no use. It would just be the same thing all over again: the promises, the start, and then the backward topple into another drunken escapade, as Mom so charitably puts it. Dear old Mom. Hope springing eternal even from under the deluge. Good old Mom. Don’t think.

No, there’s no hope for you. You should have done it on your last trip to sea. Out about mid-Atlantic where nothingness meets everything, where...

Funny about the sea. You never get down in the dumps out there. Once the hang-over is washed out of you by the cleanest, freshest air in the world...

I look at the dingy, dead smut of the street about me, the lifeless, grimy buildings.

Cut it out, I say aloud. "Forget all pretty mirages. This about you is life—the sum total. This dirty, dead trail of a thousand broken dreams lugged about in a thousand broken minds and bodies—this Bowery—this is life. All else is tinsel, whistling in the dark. The world is only liveable for people who can’t think, who can’t add up their measly pittances of happiness and compare them with the inevitable ten tears for every forced smile. Happiness? Peace? Who dared invent the words? Sucker bait.

"Snap out of it! You’ve made your decision. No wavering now. No cockeyed thoughts about