The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip On New York’s Mean Streets

Jim describes his experience skipping school to explore Times Square. He meets a 30-year-old woman who invites herself to see a movie with him. He agrees, but when they make out, he realizes she is transgender. A horrified Jim refers to her as a “freak” (94) in his diary, as the idea of someone being transgender had yet to be normalized. He later provides a glimpse into his home life when his mother receives a note from school stating that “Jim has become a constant enigma around here” (96). She asks what the word means, and Jim lies and tells her it means an example of perfection. He ends the entry there, explaining that the scene that unfolds post-his mother finding a dictionary goes poorly.

The next entry focuses on Jim’s acquaintance Bobby Blake (a different Bobby than the one mentioned in Part 4). Bobby breaks into an ice cream shop one night and a clothing store on another while on speed. Jim puts himself in risky situations involving drugs as well, such as shooting heroin with strangers. Jim has an unrelated encounter with a 10-year-old girl who asks him about his opinions on war and religion. She takes his long hair as a sign that he is against the Vietnam War, and he tells her she is correct. He tests her belief in the war by asking if Christ would kill or participate: She answers “no” after some healthy debate. Jim marvels at the girl’s wisdom for her age.

Jim describes the “fag hustling scene” (104): He engages in sex work with gay men. He frames the scene as filled with unusual kinks and stories. One particularly horrific experience sees Jim taken home by a man who asks him to whip a cat to death before engaging with him sexually. A disturbed Jim is vehemently against it, frees the cat, and whips the man with his own weapon before leaving him. Despite the occasional unusual experience, he expresses curiosity about being gay. Jim has no issue using his clients for money and seems to be more comfortable around them than other people. He also describes his nine-year-old self’s experience playing “doctor” (111) with two 13-year-old girls who turned out to be drag queens.

Jim has a second encounter with death when he and his friends stumble upon a woman who jumped in an attempt to end her life. Jim holds her hand while his friend calls the police; the former is shaken by the event but nonchalantly writes, “These things happen” (108).

Jim makes a connection between sex and war, explaining a dark fantasy in which a nuclear bomb explodes over New York—which would “melt [him] into its raw wet walls of white heat in pure orgasm” (114). He conflates the intense emotions of war with those felt during sex, and explains that if the bomb missed him, he would feel left out. In a racially charged encounter, Jim is asked to step in for someone on an all-Black basketball team and ends up being the high scorer. The team asks him not to be in the post-game photo, and he speculates it is because “they didn’t want to let the readers get to see that the high scorer was a [...] white boy” (117). Jim goes on to describe an experience being high on codeine cough syrup in his old neighborhood, getting chlamydia—“the clap” (120)—from a girl, and his increasing addiction and tolerance to heroin. He realizes that the addiction is becoming a problem and tries to quit, describing the withdrawals as voices and pains that he cannot shake.

Jim describes World War II’s effects on his psyche. He had “dreams of goblins in tiny planes” (126) as a young child and reacted to ambulances and fire trucks with fear, worrying their sounds were air raids. Whenever he gets stoned, he is often taken back to those frightening images. Jim describes his being called a “commie” because he is against the war. He refutes the idea that his beliefs are political at all, stating that he thinks “more about a fire truck passing late at night than [he does] about Karl Marx” (127). He views all governments as “scheming governments of death and blinding white hair” (127) with no compassion or understanding. He also expresses disdain for corrupt cops due to several bad experiences with them (i.e., witnessing some dealing drugs). Jim continues to find solace in Brian and John Browning’s Headquarters. He poetically describes an LSD trip with Willie (the friend who was taken away via ambulance in Part 1) in which he becomes engulfed by nature and forgets he exists: “I forgot all about any body I had and left it behind finally, thinking I was just a spirit flashing incredibly fast all through, wiping up the dew invisibly” (129). During another trip, he watches a lunar eclipse and is moved by its beauty.

One day, the power goes out along the Eastern Seaboard while Jim and his friends are taking the subway. After an hour, someone finally realizes that the first door of the first car made it to the station before the power went out. Jim describes the absurdity of the ordeal and his panic at the possibility of war. He hitches a ride on a truck and then steals a delivery bike to get home. When he gets home, he and his brother decide to break into a gym and steal booze and drugs out of a locker. Jim notes that it was “an interesting day, light and dark” (138). Jim also gets a girlfriend named Hedi. She is well-off, being the daughter of a “big wheel” (138). He visits her regularly to hang out, have sex, and take what he can from her father’s medicine cabinet. Jim’s home life worsens as his parents grow more distant, irritated, and combative—which is partially fueled by their political debates. Jim’s parents are pro-war while Jim himself attends peace marches and is against the United States’ occupation in Vietnam.