"Lawrence Lipton arranged a reading to which I brought all my friends, not the ones he asked for.
He wanted to sleep on the floor of my one-room place, but that I evaded, knowing I can neither drink all night nor talk all night. The reading took place in a small wood frame house exactly like a million others in Hollywood.
Ginsberg and Corso sat on opposite sides of a table with a gigantic bottle of red wine and read their poetry. One of Ginsberg's poems was called "Howl". It was a great, long, desperate wail, a struggle to make poetry out of all the objects, surroundings and people he had known. At times, it reached a kind of American surrealism, a bitter irony; it had a savage power. At moments, it did seem like the howling of animals. It reminded me of Artaud's mad conference at the Sorbonne. Then a man in the audience challenged Ginsberg in a stupid way.
"Why must you write about the slums? Isn't it enough that we have them?"
Ginsberg was in a frenzy of anger. He proceeded to take off all his clothes, throwing each piece to the audience. My friend Ingrid received the soiled jockey shorts. He provoked and challenged the man to come and expose his feelings and his real self as nakedly as he had.
"Come and stand here, stand naked before the people. I dare you! The poet always stands naked before the world."
The man in the packed audience tried to leave. Ginsberg said:
"Now let someone dare to insult a man who offers what he feels nakedly before everyone. . . ."
The way he did it was so violent and direct, it had so much meaning in terms of all our fears of unveiling ourselves. The man in the audience was booed and hissed until he left. People began to throw his clothes back at Ginsberg. But he sat at ease on the couch and showed no signs of dressing again. . .
The two poets went on reading for hours. I left, thinking it was like a new surrealism born of the Brooklyn gutter and supermarkets."

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