View source for Lipton’s Journal/February 1, 1955/412

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And now I understand Monroe St. and the hammer I got on my head.{{refn|For six months in 1951 {{NM}} and Adele lived on Monroe Street on Manhattan’s Lower East side. A gang of thugs crashed one of their parties and Mailer was hit in the head a couple of times with a hammer.}} When the hoodlums wanted to crash the party, I was wrong and the others were right. If I had taken a firm line (firm is pious in Yiddish I believe) and told them to get the fuck out of here—it was precisely the fuck which they wanted to introduce into my party—then they would either have fought immediately or gone away. But I took a tolerant compromising line and that was intolerable to them. They had to find out, destroy or be destroyed.

Just as in reverse, the time I followed Adele{{LJ:Adele}} down the stairs at First Avenue and she was being whistled at/insulted by two teen-age hoodlums as I came out was a moment where angry at her, a little drunk, and feeling aggressive, I shouted at the hoodlums, “KNOCK OFF,” and to my amazement they did, one staying his distance, the other apologizing.

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[[Category:February 1, 1955]]