Ice And Fire

do the streets. He rubs his hands all over me. He is sweaty

despite the air conditioning and old and pale yellow and fat.

He rubs his hands up and down my arms and all over my

breasts and my neck and up and down my legs, between my

thighs. He rubs his hands all over my bare skin and all over my

clothes. I sit still. He stares at me. He watches me as he rubs

his hands all over. I am going to give you the prescription, he

says, but the next time you come you understand what I want

don’t you? I stare at him. In the office there is a desk with a

chair behind it and an examining table, the one I am sitting

on. Here, I suppose, right where I am now. Do you understand

what I want, he asks me again. I nod. I don’t know exactly

what he wants. I think in precise acts. I am going to write this

prescription now, he says, and give it to you now, he says, but

the next time you come, he says, you be sure you remember

what I want from you. I nod. I am surprised, a little confused.

I thought because he was a junkie he would want money. He

doesn’t ask for any money. I have in my pocket all the dollars

we have. He gives me the script. He kisses my hand. I don’t

want to have to go back.

*

N has on her most flamboyant scarf, like a headband. She is

carefully dressed: flare pants, a silk blouse A has bought for

her, a belt fastidiously buckled. She has gone over the details

of her appearance a hundred times. She is tired. Her face is

drawn and dirty. Her eyes are lined with black, there are deep,

dark circles under them. She is very thin. She is in constant

movement, mostly examining herself, much motion to little

purpose. She twitches with nerves on edge. A is in his usual

dark coat. It is a hot night. I am going to stay with R, not to

be alone and to be near a phone. A has thought of a way to

help us. He and N are going to rob a store: a boutique to be

72

precise. N has some tools in a bag embossed with her last

name. I tell her not to use the bag. I say perhaps they should

not do this. It has been decided. N will call me when it is

done. Our phone is still dead. No one stays there alone. I will

be with poor R who does not know this is happening.

They go, I go. The hours pass. The night is long. A call

comes about 4 am. N is on her way to the Women’s House of

Detention. She will be arraigned in night court.

Night court is interminably dreary and hopeless. The halls

of justice are wide and dreary, the benches are wooden and

hard: after an hour or so, a group of women is brought out:

hookers and N, her scarf too high on her forehead, marking

how many times she has rubbed her hand across her head,

rubbed it back and forth, rubbing off sweat or as a nervous

gesture. She is exhausted by now, but she can’t sit still, even at

the head of this awful room where she waits with the others.

The others are mostly black with bouffant hairdos and vinyl

miniskirts and bare shoulders and nearly bare chests. The

others wear heavy, shiny makeup and high-heeled shoes. A

Legal-Aid lawyer comes over to me, N has pointed me out:

don’t worry, he says, she will only do six months. I am like a

demon possessed. She will not have to go to that prison, not

this night, not ever, I will not have her there. Bail is set at $500

and there are two hours before she will arrive there, go through

the maze of jails and holding cells and end up there, to be

strip-searched and raped by hands, by speculums, by doctors,

by police, by prisoners. I am in a frenzy. Bail bondsmen galore:

I go to them one after another: I call up everyone for money: I

get her out: I take her home. I go to an old friend who helped

me when I was in jail: she calls a lawyer who used to be a

prosecutor: he demands $2, 000 but she won’t do six months,

she won’t do shit. All this happens before I give a thought to

A. He eventually gets two years. He protects her. He was a

friend. Let’s hear it for that sweet pimp. We have a lot of

money to raise: have to get back to business. Can’t afford to

be squeamish.

*

The boutique, it turns out, belonged to a former lover of his,

and she is pissed. She wants him prosecuted, won’t budge. N

could have gotten away, she chatted with the police for a while

73

before they realized anything was wrong: but didn’t: wouldn’t

leave A there alone. He does two years, doesn’t implicate her

at all. We need money.

*

No more squeamishness about the streets. No more timidities.

*

Especially we try to borrow money, because we need it fast:

from old school chums: it brings rich women back near us:

near us: but we are too used, too disreputable now, for them

to want to be that close: they help a little: they eat while we

beg for coffee with hungry eyes: sometimes we get coffee. It is

bitter: school chums: rich school chums: keep N out of jail.

*

A is gone from this time on. We don’t raise bail for him. We

don’t go to court. We owe him. N is free. But we don’t think

about it now. We forget about him altogether.

*

We never sleep at the same time: one of us always has a knife.

We eat speed. We pick up tricks as fast as we can find them.

We drink as much as we can as often as we can: shot at a time

now, can’t buy our own bottles. The pace is fast. The fucks

are fast. There is no time for style or pretense. We don’t look

around, ahead, behind.

We have been going four days straight: drink, speed, fuck,

hustle, no sleep: the last night we took acid for R & R : we

walked a hundred miles in the city and rolled in the sewers:

the sun burns: we walk: we pick up what we can: bodies are

giving out, tired: we are on our way home: we get home: she

sprawls out on the mattress, I sit across the room: suddenly

she says, I see something big and black crawling on you: I say,

shit N it’s the acid you just aren’t down yet: she is quiet: she

says, I fucking see them all over: and she is right: they are all

over: huge water bugs the size of small fists: crawling

everywhere: crawling all over us, all over the room, all over

the walls. We run out into the night screaming, trying to rub

them off us, feeling them all over us, inside our clothes,

up our legs, in our hair: we keep shaking ourselves not knowing

where they are on us, can’t get clean, we are exhausted, we

must sleep, no matter how much we tell each other they aren’t

on us we can’t believe it, we keep inspecting each other but

74

can’t stand still long enough to really look, we keep hopping

down the streets kicking and scratching and twisting and

turning, we feel them creeping and crawling, we bang on poor

R ’s door, she lets us in, we vibrate from the acid for days.

*

An exterminator has put a pink powder all around the storefront. The water bugs now crawl around all pink. It is a spectacular effect. Eventually they die but nothing keeps them

out. Especially they drown in coffee cups. The neighbors say

they are coming back. Hey puta we coming. There is no money.

The phone is dead. The walls crawl with pink water bugs. The

heat hangs in the air like fire. In the bright glare of the day we

pick up Jimmy. He is a masseur. He is thick and squat with

muscles, black. He has no teeth. He comes to live with us, to

protect us. N says I have to fuck him because I found him. I

say I will because the neighbors are going to kill us: Jimmy

brings his cat: sometimes she kills water bugs: other times they

die in the coffee: I have to fuck Jimmy several times a day: it is

not fun: N goes in and out: one night Jimmy disappears, N

and I go out, we come back and everything has been smashed

like maniacs have been through with axes: I say they are going

to kill us, we have to get out of here: N says we have no

money: I say we get it from one of our rich school chums, I say

we call her and stick it to her: N is mortified by the implied or

actual rudeness in this but I don’t care: I call her: I make her

come down to where we are: I say we are going to die here

unless she puts us up in a hotel until the end of the summer: I

make her take us to the hotel and pay for a room. We move

in. I think we sleep for days. *

The room has one window that opens on an air shaft. It is hot

and stuffy. It has one closet. It has a sink. It has a very large

double bed, for three at least. It is brown, with a lot of yellow

in the brown. The bed has a bedspread, brown with a lot of

yellow. There are two shabby chairs, a small desk, a telephone

extension. Down the hall is the bathroom, the showers. The

halls are grand: not plush but wide, marble floors, huge

window at one end. We are off in a far distant end, narrow, as far

away from the huge window as one could be. The woman next

door asks us if we are on the circuit. I ask what circuit. The junkie

75

circuit, you know, she says, Tangier, Morocco, Marseilles,

New York, Hong Kong. I say, no, we are not on that circuit.

Our door stays open, for air.

The hotel is famous. Thomas Wolfe lived there. There are

many kinds of rooms, suites for the rich and famous: rock

groups stay there: and the maid tells us that down this very

hall an old movie actor wrote his autobiography.

There is a rug on the floor too, brown with a lot of yellow

in it.

Everything is dingy in our room: but the hall is grand. So is

the elevator. So is the traffic: money and drugs.

N is bleeding again: it stops and it starts. We use our school

chums more. They come here more. We are cleaner, calmer.

We get dinners and various dates from them: they set things

up: N needs a camera to shoot some footage, we are broke,

the store requires a huge deposit, an old school chum finds a

woman friend of hers for N to have dinner with. They pretend

it is just regular life, like they lead: except they breathe faster.

There are things we have learned: principles we have discerned: now we let the men know we want each other, they can watch. We hold each other on the huge bed, we make love

with each other: the men watch, the men pay: sometimes the

men fuck but we can overwhelm them and they go soft, impotent: we have learned certain principles: we kiss each other, we tease, we hold out the possibility, we get dinner first, we

get cash first, we get breakfast after: they are content to sit in

the same room: sleep in the same bed: to be able to say they were

there, it happened to them. N bleeds. We touch each other. A

man watches. A man pays. It is easier on us. We use the women

for money more and more: it is more artful: there is less sex.

When a man is not there, or another woman, we just sleep.

We make love, the man pays, the man watches, or there is

just the hint that we will and he pays.

The footage gets shot.

We fuck less: N still bleeds: some nights we can’t tell what

the man will do: it is always a game of nerves: we play him: it

is a game of skill: we do what’s necessary: we start out playing

our game not his: he still gets in, still gets the fuck if he wants

it bad enough: N bleeds. Anyone we know we use for money.

We find their weakness. We use them for what we need. We

76

fuck their minds. We play with them any way we can: we take

what we can get: but now we are selling something different,

not the fuck but the idea of two women together, the promise,

the suggestion. It turns out even more men are buyers.

We take acid, take mescaline, drink vodka. The camera

breaks. We sit in a bar, 10 am, and start drinking with the

$200 we have managed to collect. By 4 pm there is almost no

money left. We are writing a letter to the Beatles to ask for

money. We are drinking vodka martinis. We spill them all

over the letter we have just finished and watch the liquid wash

away the ink.

We go to an artists’ colony. I am going to read poems. N is

going to talk about the film. We want them to give us money.

It is in upstate New York, rural, trees, air, the moon. We get

there but instead of reading and talking we drop acid. We

spend the next two days driving all over with two school

chums, one of whom is not tripping, one of whom is having a

bad trip, climbs under the van we have, won’t come out, we

drive to hayfields to sleep, we drive to the ocean, we undress,

we swim, N raises herself out of the roof that opens in the van

bare-breasted on a turnpike, we go a hundred miles an hour:

she and I are happy: our school chums feel bad: we laugh: we

watch every particle of light: we are happy: they don’t forgive

us.

We get the men: we make love: they watch: they pay. Or we

promise, we touch, we flirt, they pay.

The hotel tries twice to throw us out for prostitution. I am

indignant beyond belief. I scream at them about the First

Amendment and the Bill of Rights. They desist, confused. What

do whores know about the Bill of Rights?

We hustle day and night: we are busy: we have hit our stride:

we get money: we hold each other tight and we kiss and we

fuck and the man watches and sometimes he fucks one or the

other of us if there is no way around it and the man pays. We

anticipate them. We know them better than they know themselves. N bleeds.

She goes to the hospital. Her cervix is cauterized.

The time is running out in the hotel. Our school chum won’t

pay for it anymore. There is not enough guilt in the world to

make her pay. N bleeds. She has acute pain in her side. She

needs quiet, a place to rest. We need a place to live. We go to

Staten Island to look for a house. The film is not yet finished.

We find a house. It is raining. There are hundreds of steps up

to it. It is up a steep hill. N is hurting very bad in her side. We

want to move there, we have the money in hand, but how will

we get more for next month and the month after? She is very

sick. We have to leave the hotel. I take her to the Lower East

Side apartment of a woman who has always wanted her. I

deliver her. The building is a piss-hole, a stagnant sewer. The

apartment is five flights up. In the hall there are caverns in the

wall, the plaster broken away, with screen and wire covering

them. Behind the screen and wire, as if they are built into the

wall and caged there on display, are live rats, big ones, almost

hissing, fierce. N is in acute pain. N bleeds. I take the money I

need. I leave her there. I arrange to have pills waiting for me in

Europe. The film isn’t finished. N can’t stand up. I leave her

there on a soiled mattress, curled up in pain. I make her

promise to finish the film. I don’t think about her again. I

don’t feel anything. I take the money and leave on a boat for

Europe. The great thing is to be saturated with something—

that is, in one way or another, with life; or is it?

78

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.

Pasolini

*

I can’t remember much of what anything was like, only how

it started. No light, no weather. From now on everything is

in a room somewhere in Europe, a room. A series of rooms,

a series of cities: cold, ancient cities: Northern European

cities: gray, with old light: somber but the gray dances: old

beauty, muted grandeur, monumental grace. Rembrandt,

Breughel. Mid-European and Northern winters, light. Old

cruelties, not nouveau.

He was impotent and wanted to die.

On the surface he was a clown. He had the face of a great

comic actor. It moved in parts, in sections, the scalp in one

direction, the nose forward, the chin somewhere else, the

features bigger than life. A unique face, completely distinct, in

no way handsome, outside that realm of discourse altogether.

Someday he would be beautiful or ugly, depending on his life.

Now he was alternately filled with light or sadness, with great

jokes and huge gestures or his body seemingly shrivelled down

to a heap of bones by inexplicable grief, the skin around the

bones sagging loose or gone. He was a wild man: long, stringy

blond hair; afghan coat making him into some wild mountain

creature; prominent, pointed, narrow, but graceful nose; a

laugh that went the distance from deep chuckle to shrill hysteria, and back each calibrated niche of possibility, and walls shivered.

It was amidst hashish and rock ’n’ roll.

The youth gathered in huge buildings set aside for dissipation. Inside we were indulged. The huge rooms were painted garish colors. There were garish murals. Political and cultural

79

radicals were kept inside, tamed, self-important, it was the

revolution: big black balls of hashish and rock ’n’ roll.

Inside there was this figure of a man, all brassy on the outside, and inside impotent and ready to die.

I took his life in my hands to save him. I took his face in my

hands, I kissed him. I took his body to save him from despair.

A suffering man: a compassionate woman: the impersonal love

of one human for another, sex the vehicle of redemption: you

hear about it all the time. Isn’t that what we are supposed to

do?

*

It doesn’t matter where it was, but it was there, in a huge mass

of rooms painted in glaring colors: rock music blaring, often

live, old-time porno films— Santa coming down a chimney—

projected on the walls, boys throwing huge balls of hashish

across the room, playing catch. Cigarettes were rolled from

loose tobacco in papers: so was grass: so was a potent mixture

of hashish and tobacco, what I liked. I got good at it. You put

together three cigarette papers with spit and rolled a little filter

from a match cover, just a piece of it, and put down a layer of

loose tobacco, and then you heated the hash over a lit match

until it got all soft and crumbly, and then you crumbled it

between your fingers until there was a nice, thick layer of it

over the tobacco, and you sort of mixed them together gently

with your fingers, and then you rolled it up, so that it was

narrow on the end with the filter and wider at the bottom, and

with a match, usually burnt, you packed the mixture in the

papers at the bottom, and brought the papers together and

closed it up. Then you lit it and smoked. It went round and

round.

The boys had long, long hair. There were only a few junkies,

a little hard dope, not a lot of stealing, very congenial: music:

paint: philosophy. There were philosophers everywhere and

artistes. One was going to destroy the museum system by

putting his paintings out on the sidewalk free for people to see.

I met him my first afternoon in the strange new place. He was

cheerful about destroying the museum system. They were all

cheerful, these energetic talkers of revolution. One spent hours

discussing the history of failed youth movements in Europe: he

had been in them all, never aged, a foot soldier from city to

80

city in the inevitability of history. Another had M ao’s red book

and did exegesis on the text while joints were handed to him

by enthralled cadres. Another knew about the role of the

tobacco industry in upholding Western imperialism: he

denounced the smokers as political hypocrites and bourgeois

fools. Meanwhile, the music was loud, the porno movies played

on the walls as Santa fucked a blond woman in black lace, the

hash was smoked pound after pound.

The women stood out. Mostly there were men but the women

did not fade into the background. There was M, who later

became a famous dominatrix near Atlantic City. She was over six

feet tall and she wore a short leather skirt, about crotch level. Her

thighs were covered with thick scars. She had long, straight,

blonde hair. She wanted to know if I had carried guns for the

Black Panthers. Since I had been too young then, she wouldn’t

have anything to do with me. There was E, an emaciated, catty

little thief: girlfriend of a major ideologist of the counterculture

revolution, a small, wiry, cunning, nervous, bespectacled man:

she wore government surplus, guerilla style: they were arrested

for stealing money from parking meters. You can’t make a

great plan on an empty stomach, he told me. There was a

bright, beautiful woman who looked like the Dutch Boy boy,

only she lit up from inside and her smile was like sunlight. Her

boyfriend was dour, officious, a functionary in the huge,

government-run building that housed the radical youth and the

hashish, he made sure the porno movies were on the right

walls at the right times. There was Frau B, a dowager administrator, suburban, having an affair with the head honcho, an ex-colonel in an occupying army: they kept the lid on for the

government. And then I too became a fixture: the girlfriend,

then the wife. The American. The only brunette. The innocent

by virtue of Americanism. They kept Europe’s feudal sex

secrets hidden. I thought I invented everything. Smoking dope

in their great painted rooms they seemed innocent: I thought

I was the old one.

In these rooms, he looked up, his face all questioning and

tender and sad: and I kissed him.

*

Once you want to be together in Northern Europe it is the

same all over. There is nowhere to go.

81

In the South there are beaches and old ruins. Boys sneak girls

somewhere, some flat place, and other boys hide behind rocks

or pieces of ancient walls and watch. In the North it is cold.

There are the streets, too civilized for sex. There are no rooms,

no apartments, even adult men live with their parents. One is

sneaked into a tiny bedroom in the parents’ house: hands are

held over one’s mouth: no noise can be made: and sneaked out

before dawn, giggling silently and left in the cold, unless one’s

lover is sentimental: then he covers you in his coat and buries

you in his arms and you wait for dawn together. In Northern

European cities, dawn comes late but parents wake up early.

The young men have no privacy: they stay strange little bad

boys who get taller and older. They get married too young.

They sneak forever.

But it doesn’t matter: where or why or how.

There were plenty before him in gray Europe. It was his

sadness: saturating his comic face, his comic stance, his great

comic stories, his extravagant gestures. It made him different:

sad: more like me, but so fragile compared to me, so unused.

When he looked up, so innocent, I must have decided. I became

his friend, thinking that he too must love life fiercely, desperately: my gift to him: it costs me nothing and there is an abundance of it, without limits: the physical facts of life. There

is not a lot I can do. I can do this.

*

Darker, grayer: no buildings filled with hash: another European

city: to get an apartment: we had spent nights together out on

the street, in the rain, in the cold, he was my friend, I had

nowhere to go and he had nowhere to take me so he stayed

with me in the wet nights, bitter cold. So we went somewhere

else, Northern, gray, he came a few days a week, every week,

he taught me how to cook, he was my friend. There was a big

bed, one room, a huge skylight in the middle of the room, one

large table in a corner: I put the bed under the skylight, water

condenses and drips on it, but there I teach him, slowly. I have

understood. He has too much respect for women. I teach him

disrespect, systematically. I teach him how to tie knots, how to

use rope, scarves, how to bite breasts: I teach him not to be

afraid: of causing pain. It goes slowly. I teach him step by step.

I invent sex therapy in this one room somewhere in the middle

82

of Europe. I am an American innocent, in my fashion. I forbid

intercourse. I teach him how to play games. You be this and I

will be that. Rape, virgin, Queen Victoria. The games go on

and on. There are some we do over and over. I teach him to

penetrate with his fingers, not to be afraid of causing pain. I

fellate him. I teach him not to worry about erection. I tie him

up. Dungeon, brothel, little girl, da-da. I ask him what he

wants to do and we do it. I teach him not to be afraid of

causing pain. Not to be afraid of hurting me. I am the one

there: don’t be afraid of hurting me, see, this is how. I teach

him not to be afraid of piss and shit, human dirt. I teach him

everything about his body, I penetrate him, I scratch, I bite, I

tie him up, I hit him with my hand open, with my fist, with

belts: he gets hard. He does each thing back to me. He is

nearly hard. Water condenses on the skylight and falls. We

move the bed. I am disappointed. I liked the extravagance. I

do everything I can think of to help him: impotent and suicidal:

I am saving his life. We are on an island, isolated in this European city. There is us. There is the bed. He is nearly hard. We move back to his city, where he is from, into a room that is

ours. He needs some act, some gesture, some event to give him

the final confidence: to get really hard. Reader, I married him.

*

I love life so fiercely, so desperately: there is an endless

abundance of it, with no limits: it costs me nothing.

Reader, I married him.

*

I thought I could always leave if I didn’t like it. I had the

ultimate belief in my own ability to walk away. I thought it

would show him I believed in him. It did. Reader, he got hard.

*

He became a husband, like anyone else, normal. He got hard,

he fucked, it spilled over, it was frenzy, I ended up cowering,

caged, catatonic. How it will end finally, I don’t know. I

wanted to help: but this was a hurricane of hate and rage let

loose: I wanted to help: I saved him: not impotent, not suicidal,

he beat me until I was a heap of collapsed bone, comatose,

torn, bleeding, bruised so bad, so hard: how it will end, I don’t

know.

*

83

Oh, it was a small small room with no windows: he had it

painted dark blue: he didn’t let me sleep: he never let me sleep:

he beat me and he fucked me: I fought back and I tried to run

away. The rest is unspeakable. He got hard and fucked easy

now. Reader, I had married him. He rolled on top and he

fucked: it costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance

of it: I love life so fiercely, so desperately: how it will end, I

don’t know.

*

Reader, I saved him: my husband. He can fuck now. He can

pulverize human bones.

*

I got away. How it will end, I don’t know.

84

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.

Pasolini

*

Sad boy. Sex is so easy. I can open my legs and save you. It is

so little for me to do. I know so much.

Sad boy. Desperate child. Gentle soul. Too much respect.

Afraid to violate. But sex is violation. I read it in books. I

learned it somewhere. I show you how: and I devour, devour.

There is an endless abundance of it, with no limits. I am a

woman. This is what I was born to give. How it will end, I

don’t know.

*

Then I can’t understand anymore. This isn’t what I meant. I

am so hurt, the cuts, the sores, the bleeding, let me sleep. You

are hard now, my husband: let me sleep: I beg: an hour, a

minute. I love life so fiercely, so desperately: I mean the physical facts of life: I want to make you happy: I don’t want to die: the fists pounding, wild, enraged: sex was always so easy: it

costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance of it, with

no limits: and I didn’t want you to suffer, to die. How it will

end now, I don’t know.

*

The bed: I show you everything: every wild game: soon we

drop the scripts and just tie the knots: how to penetrate: how

to move, when, even why: every nerve: pretending to pretend

so it isn’t real: pretending to pretend but since we do what we

pretend in what sense are we pretending? You pretend to tie

me up, but you tie me up. I am tired of it now. I do what you

need, tired of the repetition, you learn by rote, slowly, like in

the third grade, not tone deaf but no genius of your own: the

notes, one by one, so you can get hard. You get hard. Now

85

you’re not pretending. I don’t know how it will end. I am

waiting for it to end. I know what I want: to get to the end:

you will tell me when the game is finished: is it over? are you

hard?

*

He is normal now, not impotent and suicidal, but in a rage:

my normal, human husband who gets hard: he is in a rage,

like a mad dog. This isn’t what I meant. I love life so fiercely,

so desperately: I thought only good could come of it: sex is so

easy: there is an abundance of it, without limits: I teach him

what I know: he needed a little more confidence, so reader, I

married him. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Believe me, not

them: the normal, human husband with normal, human rage:

little girl saints of sex with your philosophy, little darlings,

when what’s inside comes out, be somewhere hidden, chaste,

out of reach: it spilled over: it was rage: it was hate: it was sex:

he got hard: he beat me until I couldn’t even crawl: it costs me

nothing, and there is an endless abundance of it, with no limits:

I try to get away: how it will end, I don’t know. Until now I

devoured, devoured, I loved life so fiercely: now I think nothing

good can come of it: why didn’t someone say— oh, girl, it isn’t

so easy as it seems, be gone when what’s inside comes out:

impotence and suicide aren’t the worst things. His face isn’t

sad now: he is flowering outside, to others, they have never

seen him fatter, cockier, no grief, no little boy: the human

husband, all hard fuck and fists: and I cower: reader, I married

him: I saved him: how it will end, I don’t know.

*

You can see what he needed, you can see what I did. It’s no

secret now, not me alone. I got inside it when it was still a

secret. It is everywhere now. Watch the men at the films. Sneak

in. Watch them. See how they learn to tie the knots from the

pictures in the magazines. Impotent and suicidal. I taught him

not to be afraid to hurt: me. What’s inside comes out. I love

life so fiercely, so desperately, and I devour, devour, and how

it will end, I don’t know. Sex is so easy, and it costs me nothing,

and there is an endless abundance of it, with no limits: and I

devour, devour. I saved him. How it will end, I don’t know.

There will be a film called Snuff.

86

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.

Pasolini

*

Sad, gentle face, comic. Unconsummated. My virgin. My little

boy. My innocent. Suicidal and impotent. I want you to know

what I know, being ground under: hard thighs: hard sweat:

hard cock: kisses to the marrow of the bone. I love life so

fiercely, so desperately. It costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits, and I devour, devour. I

teach you. You get hard. You pulverize human bones. Finally I

know how it will end. Oh, I run, I run, little boy.

87

Coitus as punishment for the happiness of

being together.

Kafka

*

I lived another year in that Northern city of Old Europe. Terror

wipes you clean if you don’t die. I took everyone I liked: with

good cheer, a simple equanimity. There were houseboats,

saunas, old cobbled streets, huge mattresses on floors with

incense burning: long-haired boys and short-haired girls: I

knew their names: something about them: there was nothing

rough: I felt something in the thighs: I always felt something

coming from me or I did nothing: it was different: I had many

of them, whoever I wanted. I read books and took drugs. I

was happy.

I started to write, sentences, paragraphs, nothing whole. But

I started to write.

Slowly I saw: coitus is the punishment for being a writer

afraid of the cold passion of the task. There is no being together, just the slow learning of solitude. It is the discipline, the art. I began to learn it.

*

I lived in the present, slowly, except for tremors of terror,

physical memories of the beatings, the blood. I took drugs. I

took who I wanted, male or female. I was alert. I read books. I

listened to music. I was near the water. I had no money. I

watched everyone. I kept going. I would be alone and feel

happy. It frightened me. Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being alone. One can’t face being happy. It is too extreme.

*

I had to be with others, compulsion. I was afraid to be alone.

Coitus is the punishment for the fear of being alone. I took

who I liked, whatever moved me, I felt it in my gut. It was

fine. But only solitude matters. Coitus is the punishment for cowardice: afraid of being alone, in a room, in a bed, on this earth: coitus is the punishment for being a woman: afraid to be alone.

*

88

I couldn’t be alone. I took whoever made me feel something, -a

funny longing in the gut or crotch. I liked it. I took hashish,

acid. Not all the time, on special days, or on long afternoons. I

took long saunas. I was happy. I read books. I started to write.

I began to need solitude. It started like a funny longing in the

gut or crotch. Coitus was the punishment for not being able to

stand wanting solitude so much.

*

I gave up other lovers. I wanted solitude. It took a few years to

get faithful. Coitus was the punishment for a breach of faith.

*

I came back to New York City, the Lower East Side. I lived

alone, poor, writing. I was raped once. It punished me for the

happiness of being myself.

*

I am alone, in solitude. I can almost run my fingers through it.

It takes on the rhythmic brilliance of any passion. It is like

holy music, a Te Deum. Coitus is the punishment for not

daring to be happy.

*

I learn the texture of minutes, how hours weave themselves

through the tangled mind: I am silent. Coitus is the punishment

for running from time: hating quiet: fearing life.

*

I betray solitude. I get drunk, pick up a cab driver. Coitus is

the punishment.

*

I write day in and day out, night after night, alone, in the quiet

of this exquisite concentration, this exquisite aloneness, this

extreme new disordering of the senses: solitude, my beloved.

Coitus is the punishment for not daring to be extreme enough,

for compromising, for conforming, for giving in. Coitus is the

punishment for not daring to disorder the senses enough: by

knowing them without mediation. Coitus is the punishment

for not daring to be original, unique, discrete.

*

I am not distracted, I am alone, I love solitude, this is passion

too. I am intensely happy. When I see people, I am no less

alone: and I am not lonely. I concentrate when I write: pure

concentration, like life at the moment of dying. I dream the

89

answers to my own questions when I sleep. I am not tranquil,

it is not my nature, but I am intensely happy. Coitus is the

punishment for adulterating solitude.

*

I forget the lovers of Europe. They don’t matter. The terror

still comes, it envelops me, solitude fights it tooth and nail,

solitude wins. I forget what I have done on these streets here.

It doesn’t matter. I concentrate. I am alone. The solitude is

disruption, extremity, extreme sensation in dense isolation.

This is a private passion, not for exhibit. Coitus is the

punishment for exhibiting oneself: for being afraid to be happy

in private, alone. Coitus is the punishment for needing a human

witness. I write. Solitude is my witness.

*

Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being. Solitude is

the end of punishment.

I write. I publish.

*

Coitus is punishment. I write down everything I know, over

some years. I publish. I have become a feminist, not the fun

kind. Coitus is punishment, I say. It is hard to publish. I am a

feminist, not the fun kind. Life gets hard. Coitus is not the

only punishment. I write. I love solitude: or slowly, I would

die. I do not die.

Coitus is punishment. I am a feminist, not the fun kind.

90

Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les betes

l'ont mange.

(Don’t look for my heart anymore; the beasts*

have eaten it. )

Baudelaire

*

He was a subtle piece of slime, big open pores, hair hanging

over his thick lip onto his teeth, faintly green. He smiled. I

sat. Oh yes, and I smiled. Tentatively. Quietly. Eyes slanted

down, then up quickly, then away, then down, nothing elaborate. Just a series of sorrowful gestures that scream female.

Gray was in the air, a thick paste. It was a filter over

everything or just under my eyelids. The small table was too

dirty, rings of wet stuck to it, and the floor had wet mud on it

that all the people had dragged in before they sat down to

chatter. I picked this place because I had thought it was clean.

I went there almost every day, escaping the cold of my desolate

apartment. Now the tabletop was sordid and I could smell

decay, a faint acrid cadaver smell.

The rain outside was subtle and strange, not pouring down

in sheets but just hanging, solid, in thin static veils of wet

suspended in the air, soaking through without the distracting

noise of falling hard. The air seemed empty, and then another

sliver of wet that went from the cement on the sidewalk right

up into the sky would hit your whole body, at once, and one

walked or died.

I had nothing to keep the rain off me, just regular cotton

clothes, the gnarled old denim of my time and age, with holes,

frayed not for effect but because they were old and tired, and

what he saw when he saw me registered in those ugly eyes

hanging over those open pores. Her, It, She, in color, 3-D,

fearsome feminista, ballbuster, woman who talks mean, queer

arrogant piece. But also: something from Fellini, precisely a

mountain of thigh, precisely. I could see the mountain of thigh

hanging in the dead center of his eyes, and the slight drip of

saliva. Of course, he was very nice.

* the stupids

91

Coffee came, and cigarettes piled up, ashtray after ashtray,

two waitresses with huge red lips and short skirts running back

and forth emptying them, and the smell of the smoke got into

my fingers and into my hair and on my clothes and the rain

outside even began to carry it off when it was too much for

the room we were in. The empty packs were crumpled, and I

began pulling apart the filters, strand by strand, and rolling

the matchbooks into tight little wads and then opening them

up all softened and tearing them into little pieces, and then I

began to tear the fetid butts into pieces by tearing off the paper

and rolling the burnt tobacco between my palms which were

tight and wretched with strain and perspiration and I was

making little piles of torn papers and torn matchbooks and

torn cigarette packs but not touching the cellophane (he was

talking), and making the little piles as high as I could and

watching them intently, staring, as if their construction were a

matter of symmetry and perfection and indisputable necessity

and it required concentration and this was my job. During this

we talked, of course mostly he talked, because I was there to

be talked to, and have certain things explained, and to be

corrected, especially to be set right, because I had gone all

wrong, gotten all Dostoyevsky-like in the land of such writing

as “ Ten New Ways to Put on Lipstick” and “ The Truth About

How to be Intimate with Strangers. ” Coitus was what?

In the rain we walked to another restaurant, to dinner. Oh,

he had liked me. I had done all right.

*

When I walked into the coffeehouse, he knew me right away.

The mountain of thigh, not any other kind of fame. The place

was wet, smelly, crowded, and I had picked it, it resembled me,

not modest, dank, a certain smell of decay. The other women

huddled themselves in, bent shoulders, suddenly, treacherously lowered heads that threatened to fall off their necks, tight little legs wrapped together like Christmas packages,

slumping down, twisting in, even the big ones didn’t dare

spread out but instead held their breath, pulled in their

tummies, scrunched their mouths, used their shoulders to cover

their chests, crossed their ankles, crossed their feet, crossed

their legs, kept their hands lying quietly under the tabletops,

didn’t show teeth, moved noiselessly, melted in with the gray

9Z

and the mud and the wet, except for some flaming lips: and no

monumental laughs, no sonorous discourse, no loud epis-

temology, no boom boom boom: the truth. I wanted to

whimper and contract, fold up, shrivel to some version of

pleasing nothing, sound the call: it’s all finished, she gives up, no

one’s here, out to lunch, empty, smelly, noiseless, folded up.

But I would have had to prepare, study, start earlier in the

day, come from a warmer apartment into a cleaner coffeehouse, be dry, not wear the ancient denim articles of an old faith, witnesses, remembrances, proofs, evidences of times without such silly rules. He stood, nodded, smiled, pointed to the seat, I sat, he gave me a cigarette, I smoked, I drank coffee, he

talked, I listened, he talked, I built castles out of paper on

tabletops, he talked, oh, I was so quiet, so soft, all brazen

thigh to the naked eye, to his dead and ugly eye, but inside I

wanted him to see inside I was all aquiver, all tremble and

dainty, all worried and afraid, nervy and a pale invalid, all

pathetic need contaminated by intellect that was like wild

weeds, wild weeds massively killing the gentle little flower

garden inside, those pruned and fragile little flowers. This I

conveyed by being quiet and tender and oh so quiet, and I

could see my insides all running with blood, all running with

knife cuts and big fuck bruises, and he saw it too. So he took

me to dinner in the rain.

*

The bathroom was in the back, painted a pink that looked

brown and fungoid, and I got to it by heaving myself over the

wet boots strewn like dead bodies in my way, sliding along the

wet puddles, touching strange shoulders delicately like God

just for a hint of balance. The smoke heralded me, shrouded

me, trailed behind me: in front, around, behind, a column of

fire hiding me. The walls in the little room were mud and the

floor was mud and the seat of the toilet had some bright red

dots and green splotches and the mirror had a face looking

out, destitute. I was bleeding. The rain and bleeding. The

muscles in my back caved in toward each other furiously and

then shot out, repelled. A small island under my stomach beat,

a drum, a pulse, spurting blood. Oh, mother. I took thick paper

towels meant for drying big wet hands and covered the toilet

seat and pushed my old denim down to the slobbering floor. I

93

waited for life to pass, for the man to go away, for the blood

to stop, to grow old and die. Four beige-stained walls, enough

naked flesh hitting the cold edge of the cold air to keep me

awake and alive, and time passing. Then I went out because I

had to, because I wasn’t going to die there, past the kitchen, a

hole in the wall, burning oil hurled in the air by a cook who

bounced from pot to pot, singing, sauteing, stirring, draining,

humming. I walked through all the same tables, this time my

hands straight down by my side like other people, and I sat

down again. The piles of matchbook paper covered the table-

top, and he was slumped and disbelieving.

*

On the right when you enter the coffeehouse there are unappealing tables near the trash, and behind them a counter with cakes under cheap plastic covers but the cakes are good,

not cheap. All the light is on the other side, a solid wall of

glass and light, and all the tables near the glass and light were

always filled with people with notebooks writing notes to themselves on serious subjects as serious people who are also young do. I always looked over their shoulders, glanced sideways,

eavesdropped with my eyes, read whole sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes there were equations and triangles and words printed out with dull blue ballpoint pens, like in the

fifth grade, block lettering. More often there were sentences,

journals, stories, essays, lists of important things to remember

and important books to find. Sometimes there were real books,

and the person never looked up, not wanting to be thought

frivolous. Of course he had gotten a table filled with light,

something I rarely managed to do, next to the glass, and the

glass was colder than I had ever seen it, moist and weeping,

and the light had become saturated with dull water. Outside

there was the funniest phone box, so small it wasn’t even the

size of a fire hydrant, and there was a plant shop with the

ugliest plants, all the same color green with no letup, no

flower, no variation. The street running alongside the wall of

glass was stones, the old kind of street, suffering under the

cars, humans push ourselves on it and it moves under us, trying

to get away.

His ears meanwhile flared out. His tongue splattered water.

His nose was caked. His shoulders dropped, trying to find

94

China. His shirt was open to the middle of his chest, showing

off his black hairs, all amassed, curled, knotted. It is not normal

for a man not to button his shirt. God was generous with

signs.

His fingers intruded, reaching past everything, over the ashes

and butts, over the hills and reservoirs and deserts of torn

matchbook covers that I had erected as an impenetrable geography, and they were so finely tuned to distress that they went past all those piles, and they reached mine, small, stubby,

hard to find. Oh, his teeth were terrible.

All round there were students, archangels of hope and time

to come, with dreams I could hear in their chatter and see

circling their heads. Faces unlined, tired only from not sleeping,

those horrible reminders of hope and time. Hamburgers were

abundant. Serious persons, alone, ate salad. We drank coffee,

this man and me.

*

I was appropriately frail and monosyllabic. “ No. ” Soft. No.

His was a discourse punctuated with intense silences, great

and meaningful pauses, sincere and whispered italics. “ Look—

I need you— to do something on jeans commercials — Brooke

Shields —something on the First Amendment — I want— you—

to talk about little— girls— and seeing— their tooshies. I

mean— listen — what

you— have— is— terrific— /

mean— /

know— I know — how good it— is— and I d o n 't— want— you—

to change— it. But the country needs— to know— what you—

think— about Calvin Klein— which is— to— me— frankly— and

I— tell— you— this— straight—out — worse than cocaine— and

I want— you— to say— that. I want —your voice— right—

up— there— right— up— front. "

No. My Crime and Punishment. My Inferno. My heart. Soft,

frail, no arrogance. “ No. ”

“ Listen— I— need—something

hot— something— like—

Brooke— Shields— and— something hot for the lawyers— an—

essay on the— First— Amendment. I mean — I know — your

book— isn't— about— the— First— Amendment— but I need—

you to tear— those bastard— lawyers— apart— and something

on— advertising. I mean— The New York— Times— is— as

bad— as Hustler — any day— and we all know— that— and I

need— you— to say— so. And why—aren’t you— advocating—

95

censorship— I mean— the bastards— deserve— it— and— we—

could get— some press— on that.

“ I need— something from you— I mean— I— can't— just—

say— to the fucking salespeople — I don't have anything— on—

jeans

commercials— and— I— don’t— have— anything— on—

Brooke— Shields— and

everyone

thinks

you— want—

censorship— so why don’t you— just give— us— that— and

then— we can sell— the fucking thing. I mean— listen— I think

you are— right — all the way—I do. I— want— you— to know—

I hate— pornography— too— more— than— you— even. I have

my reasons. I mean. I don’t think you are— completely— right

in everything— you say — but listen— just— add — a few—

things. You can have — the rest — I mean— listen. I am — with

you— one

hundred— percent— because—I— see— what

all

this— does— to— women— but— the thing is— teenagers— and

all those— tooshies— on tellie— in the — living room— and I—

mean— that is what people— understand. ”

“ No. Thank you for seeing me. ” Soft smile. “ Listen, I appreciate your time, but no. ” Homer would die. Dante would shit.

Dostoyevsky would puke; and right too. Quiet, frail, polite, not

daring to show the delusions of grandeur in the simple

“ Thanks, no. ”

I stand up and reach out to shake his hand. I am ready

to go. This is in the first five minutes. Then he begins with

literature, my heart.

*

He does the canon, my heart. Dostoyevsky, Rimbaud, Homer,

Euripides, Kafka my love, Conrad, Eliot, Mann, Proust. His

courtesy is sublime. Dickinson, the Brontes, Woolf, Cather,

Wharton, O’Connor, McCullers, Welty. Oh, I love them but I

have ambition like a man. I am curt, quiet, tender, bleeding,

especially quiet, but lit up from inside. He seduces. Dante.

Bach, the greatest writer. Months later I will finally read

Faulkner and he will be the only one I can tell, trembling in

my pants.

The next three hours are him, seducing, talking this passion,

I am building my little castles in the sand. Tess. Flaubert.

Hedda. Marquez. Balzac. Chekhov.

He wants to publish my book. As Is. It is bold and has

no manners. I am in life now confused, overwhelmed. On the

96

page never: but here I am dizzy, why does he, why will he, can

he, is it true? Hush hush little baby, hush hush my dear. As Is.

I am profoundly loved. We go to dinner in the rain.

*

Byron, the Song of Songs, Dickens, Mozart, Jean Rhys, Tolstoy

and the Troyat biography and the new biography of Hannah

Arendt, Singer, Freud, Darwin, Milton. I am profoundly loved.

I am trembling. Donne. Utterly female. Bought and saved.

*

I am afraid to eat, wet, in the restaurant, out of the rain,

trembling and wet: too carnal, too vulgar, too much the

mountain of thigh, I want the ether.

*

lt is, of course, not entirely this way. Somehow, Conrad reminds him of a high school teacher who had a boat in his sophomore year of high school; and Dostoyevsky reminds him

of someone he fucked three weeks ago in Denver— it was cold

there; and Milton reminds him of how misunderstood he was

when he was eighteen; and Zola’s J ’Accuse reminds him of

how he stood up to his parents and finally told them whatever;

and Mann reminds him of a lover who told him how hard it

was being German and of course he remembers the room they

were in and the sex acts that went before and after the desperately painful discussion of how hard it is; and Virginia Woolf reminds him of how depressed he is when he has to attend

sales conferences; and Singer reminds him of how his Jewish

mother reacted when he told her whatever; and Mozart reminds him of all the piano lessons he took and how brilliant he was before he decided to be brilliant now as an editor of

literature and also how he was unappreciated especially when

he taught English to a bunch of assholes in the sixties who had

no critical standards; and Freud reminds him of what it was

like to be such a sensitive child in school when all the boys

were masturbating and telling whatever jokes; and Jean Rhys

reminds him that he has been stalled on his own novel for

quite a while because of the demands of his job, which can be

quite pedestrian; and Djuna Barnes reminds him of a party he

went to in the Village dressed not in a dress like the other

whatevers but in a suit and didn’t that show whomever; and

Dickens reminds him of how much he abhors sentimentality

97

and the many occasions on which he has encountered it and

since he is in his late thirties there have been many occasions

and he remembers them all. And the Brontes remind him of his

last trip to England, which Maggie is really fucking up, which,

he tells me sternly, is going to hurt feminism.

And I wonder how I am going to survive being loved so

profoundly, like this. My palms do not sweat; they weep.

*

We went from the coffeehouse to the restaurant in the rain,

wet. I tried to slide along the broken New York sidewalks,

drift gracefully over the cracks, dance over the lopsided cement,

not hit the bilious pieces of steel that jut up from nowhere for

no reason here and there, not fall over the terrible people

walking with angry umbrellas into me. I tried to glide and

talk, an endless stream of pleasant yesses with an occasional

impassioned but do you really think. We stopped, we breathed

in the rain, breathless, in a crack I saw a broken needle, syringe,

I want it a lot these days, the relief from time and pain, I keep

going, always, away from it, he followed and we walked far,

across town, all the way from east to west, in the rain, wet,

cold, and I tried not to be breathless, wet, and the hair on his

lip glistened with lubrication and he strutted, his shoulders

sometimes hanging down, sometimes jutted back. They hung

down for the Japanese. They jutted back for Celine.

The cement disappeared behind us, a trail of rice at a

wedding, and stretched out in front of us, the future, our life,

our bed, our home, our earth, wet.

We went into the restaurant, wet.

*

A small cramped table, an omelette, a dozen cups of coffee, a

million cigarettes, one brutal piss after waiting all night, no

dessert, his credit card: dinner: I was tired enough to die. Hours

more of the canon, my heart. Except that we had reached the

end hours before, but still he went on.

We walked out, I wanted to go, off on my own, back to

myself, alone, apart, noiseless, no drone of text and interpretation, no more writers to love together as only (by now it was established) we could: just the dread silence of me alone,

with my own heart. On cement, in rain, wet.

I left him on a corner. Asked him which way he was going.

98

Would have gone the opposite. Extended my hand, kind but

formal, serious and sober, ladylike and gentlemanly, quiet but

taut, firm and final. He took it and he pulled me into his lips

so hard that I would have had to make both of us fall to get

away: and I didn’t scream: and he said he loved me and would

publish my book. Oh, I said, wet.

*

We left the restaurant and walked down a wide street full of

shops, cards, clothes, coffeehouses, restaurants, some trees

even, brick buildings, light from the moon on the rain. We

talked nervous clips, half sentences, fatigue and coffee, wet.

We crossed a small street. We stood in front of a blooming

garden, all colored and leafy, where a prison used to be, I had

been in it, a tall brick building, twelve floors of women, locked

up, a building where they took you and spread your legs and

tried to hurt you by tearing you apart inside. A building where

they put you in cells and locked that door and then locked a

thicker door and then locked a thicker door, and you could

look out the window and see us standing on that corner below,

looking like a man and a woman kissing under the moon in

the rain, wet. You could see the lights and the hookers on the

street corners and the literati fucking around too. You could

see a Howard Johnson’s when it was still there and gaggles of

pimps right across a huge intersection and you could hear a

buzz, a hum, that sounded like music from up there, up on one

of those floors inside that brick. You could see the people

underneath, down below, and you could wonder who they

were, especially the boys and the girls kissing, you could see

everything and everyone but you couldn’t get at them, even if

you screamed, and inside they spread you on a table and they

tore you up and they left you bleeding. And they tore me up.

And now it was a garden, very pretty really, and my honey the

publisher who I had just met was right there, in the moonlight,

wet: and the blood was flowing: he grabbed me and pulled me

and kissed me hard and held me so I couldn’t move and it was

all fast and hard and he said he loved me.

*

I am bleeding again on this corner; where there was a prison;

where a man has kissed me against my will; and will publish

my book, oh my love; and it is wet; and the cement glistens;

99

and the moon lights up the rain; and I am wet. I turn away

and go home.

*

The windows were open, as always. The cold no longer

streamed in as it had the first few months when the windows

first had to stay open day and night: winter, fall, summer,

spring: wind, rain, ice, fire. Now the cold was a tired old resident, always there, bored and heavy, lazy and indifferently spinning webs tinged with ice, stagnant, ever so content to stay

put. Even when the wind was blowing through the apartment,

blowing like in some classic Hollywood storm, the cold just

sat there, not making a sound. It had permeated the plaster. It

had sunk into the splintered red floors. It was wedged into the

finest cracks in pipes, stone, and brick. It sat stupidly on the

linoleum. It rested impressively on my desk. It embraced my

books. It slept in my bed. It was like a great haze of light, a

spectacular aura, around the coffeepot. It lay like a corpse in

a bathtub. The cats hunched up in it, their coats wild and

thick and standing on end, their eyes a little prehistoric and

haunted. They tumbled together in it, touching it sometimes

gingerly with humbly uplifted paws to see if it was real.

Prowling or crouched and filled with disbelief, they sought to

stumble on a pocket of air slightly heated by breath or accidental friction. There was no refuge of more than a few seconds’ duration.

The fumes that polluted the apartment came through the

walls like death might, transparent, spreading out, persistent,

inescapable. A half mile down, five long flights, immigrants

cooked greasy hamburgers for junkies, native-born. Each

hamburger spit out particles of grease, smoke, oil, dirt, and

each particle sprang wings and flew up toward heaven, where

we tenement angels were. The carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion was a gaseous visitation that blurred vision, caused acute, incomprehensible pain inside the head,

and made the stomach cringe in waiting vomit. The gas could

pass through anything, and did: a clenched fist; layers of human

fat; the porous walls of this particular slum dwelling; the

human heart and brain and especially the abdomen, where it

turned spikelike and tore into the lower intestine with sharp

bitter thrusts. Molecules whirled in the wall: were the wall

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itself whirling: wondrous: each molecule providing elaborate

occasion for generous invasion: dizzying space for wandering

stink and stench and poison. The wall simply ceased to be

solid and instead moved like atoms under a microscope. I

expected to be able to put my hand, gently, softly, kindly,

through it. It would fade and part like wisps of cotton candy,

not clinging even that much, or it would be like a film ghost: I

would be able to move through it, it not me being unreal. The

wall had become an illusion, a mere hallucination of the solid,

a phantom, a chimera, an oasis born of delirium for the poor

fool who thirsted for a home, shelter, a place inside not outside,

a place distinctly different from the cold streets of displacement

and dispossession, a place barricaded from weather and wind

and wet.

Each day— each and every day— I walked, six hours, eight

hours, so as not to be poisoned and die. Each day there was no

way to stay inside and also to breathe because the wind did

not move the fumes any more than it moved the cold: both

were permanent and penetrating, staining the lungs, bruising

the eyes. Each day, no matter how cold or wet or ugly or dusty

or hot or wretched, the windows were open and I walked:

anywhere: no money so there was little rest: few stops: no

bourgeois indulgences: just cement. And each night, I crawled

back home, like a slug, dragging the day’s fatigue behind me,

dreading the cold open exposed night ahead. In my room,

where I worked writing, the windows were never closed because the stench and poison were too thick, too choking. After midnight, I could close two windows in the living room just

so no one went in it and just so they were open again by 6

am when the cooks heated up the grease to begin again.

Sometimes, in my room, writing, my fingers were jammed

stiff from the cold. Sometimes the typewriter rebelled, too

cold to be pushed along. I found a small electric heater, and

if I placed it just right, out of the wind but not so close to

me that my clothes would burn, my fingers would regain

feeling and they would begin to bend subtly and hit the right

keys, clumsy, slow, but moving with deliberation. Less

numbed, they moved, a slow dance of heroic movement:

words on a page.

Each night, until dawn was finally accomplished, fully alive

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and splendid, I wrote, and then I would crawl, broken-hearted

and afraid of dying, to one small distant room, the size of a

large closet, where the fumes were less, and I would sleep on

the floor on an old Salvation Army mattress with springs that

some reformed alcoholic had never quite finished under an

open window. I would dream: oh, Freud, tell me, what could it

mean: of cold, of stench, of walking, of perhaps dying. Morbid

violences and morbid defeats: cement, rain, wind, ice. Time

would pass: I would tremble: I would wake up screaming:

driven back to sleep to be warmer, I would dream of cold, of

stench, of walking, of perhaps dying. Then, it would be time

to wake up. I would be tired and trembling, so tired. I would

walk, six hours, eight hours. After the first two winters I never

got warm. Even in the hell of tenement heat, I never got warm.

I dreaded cold like other people are afraid of being tortured:

could they stand it, would they tell, would they beg, would

they die first right away, struck down by dread, would they

dirty their pants, would they beg and crawl. I wanted to surrender but no one would accept my confession and finish me off.

He kissed me against my will and then I walked home,

slowly, in the rain, wet.

My love, the boy I lived with, lay sleeping, curled up in a ball,

fetal, six feet, blond, muscled, and yet his knees were drawn

up to his chest and his sweet yellow curls fell like a two-year-

old’s over his pale, drawn face, and his skin was nearly translucent, the color of ice spread out over great expanses of earth.

He was dressed in layers of knitted wool, thermal pants and

shirts, sweatshirts: we always wore all we had inside. The quilt

with a wool blanket on top of it had shifted its place and his

knees and face were brought together, his hands lost somewhere between them. I sat watching him, lost, in this room of his. He was on brown sheets. The radiator clanged and

chugged: the noise it made was almost deafening, only in this

room. There were big windows, and a fire escape splayed out

under them going down to the treacherous street. There was a

big desk buried under piles of papers. There were books,

thrown, strewn, left for months open at one place so that the

binding broke and the page itself seemed pressed to death.

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There were books in all stages of being opened and closed

with passages marked and pages bent and papers wedged into

the seams of the binding with hand-scribbled notes, yellowing.

The books were everywhere in great piles and clusters, under

typewriter paper that simply spread like some wild growth in

moist soil, under heaps of dirty clothes, under old newspapers

that were now documents of an older time, under shoes and

socks, under discarded belts, under old undershirts, under long-

forgotten soda bottles not quite empty, under glasses ringed

with wet, under magazines thrown aside in the second before

sleep. Oh, my love could sleep. In the ice, in wind, in rain, in

fire, my love could sleep. I watched him, content, a goldenhaired child, some golden infant, peaceful, at ease in the world of coma and unremembered dreams. It was Christian sleep, we

both agreed, mostly Protestant, impervious to guilt or worry

or pain, Christ had died for him. To my outsider’s eye it was

grace. It soothed, it was succor, it was an adoring visitor, a

faithful friend, it loved and rested him, and he knew no suffering that withstood its gentle solace. I had seen the same capacity for sleep in persons less kind, one was born to it, the

great and deep and easy sleep reserved for those not meant to

remember.

I sat on the other side of the room where he slept, in a

typing chair bought in the cheapest five and dime, slightly built,

perilous, covered in cat hair. His desk was huge, an old, used

table, big enough to hold the confusion, which, regardless,

simply billowed over its edges and onto the floor. The ground

between the typing chair and his heavy, staid double bed was a

false garden of tangle and weeds, or a minefield in the dark,

but he slept with the light on, even he never quite safe because

it was more like sleeping outside than sleeping inside. He would

never be vagabonded: never desolate and out in the cold. But I

would be, someday, putting on all the old trashy clothes, army

surplus, of these cold years, walking forever, simply settling

outside because inside was ridiculous, too silly, an insupportable idea: the absurd idea that this was a place to live.

Sleep kept him believing he had a home— somewhere, after all,

to sleep. But I spent the nights awake, I had to sit at a desk,

turn on electric lights, refer to many different and highly

important books, pace, sharpen pencils, change typewriter

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ribbons, make drafts, take notes, make phone calls, in meaningful and purposeful ways, with dignity and skill, physically inside, certainly inside. That old woman I would soon be,

always outside, sat right near me, I could smell her savage

skin, the mixture of sweat and ice, fear and filth. I already had

her sores on my feet and her bitterness in my heart. I knew

her: I was her already, carefully concealing it: waiting for the

events between this moment and later when I would be her.

My gray hair would hang from the dirty saliva in my mouth

and I would push along some silly belongings: books no doubt,

and some writings, and maybe a frazzled cat on a leash, because

otherwise I would be desperately lonely. Between us, this old

woman and me, there was just this sweet sleeping boy, a giant

of pale beauty and barely conceivable kindness. He was at

least slightly between her and me, and all my rush to despair

was moderated by this small quiet miracle of our time together

on earth. There was nothing perfect in it: but it was gentle: for

me, the kindest love in a life of being loved too much. I sat in

the typing chair, warmed by watching him sleep that foreign

sleep of peace, I watched him and I believed in his peace and

his rest: what was impossible he made real: and then his eyes

fluttered open, and with so many different sounds in his voice,

the whole range of calling and wanting, he called me: said my

name, reached out, and I walked over and touched his hand:

and he said, you’re home, and he asked what was wrong.

And I raged. I bellowed. I howled. I was delirious with pain.

I was shrill with humiliation. I was desperate with accusation

and paranoid but defensible prophecy and acrid recrimination

against what would happen to me. To me. The insufferable

editor, the arrogance, the terms of the agreement: my fury, my

rage, my memory of my life as a woman. Nearly keening in

anguish, I told him about the cafe, the literature, the obsessed

man, the kiss.

“ You’ve done it before, ” he said quietly. And went back to

sleep.

*

You know what I meant. This is the world you live in. You’ve

done it before, he said. Oh, yes.

Shit you know what I meant.

You know what I meant.

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I am trying to pace, windows open, under the weight-of

blankets. He is sitting up on his bed, under blankets.

You know what I meant.

Oh, I do.

Some things are true. What he meant is true. I know what, I

know how, I know where, I know when, I even know why.

Oh, I do.

*

But I don’t want to.

He says my name. Please, he says, wanting me to stop.

But really, I don’t want to.

He says my name, pleading. Please, he says, please, I know,

I know, but what can you do?

But I don’t want to. I want, I say, I want, I say, to be this

human being, and I want, I say, I want, to have somebody

publish my book, I say, this simple thing, I say, I want, I want,

I say, to be treated just like a human being, I say, and I don’t

want, I say, I don’t want, I say, to have to do this. I have

nowhere else to go, no one else who will do this simple thing,

publish my book, but I don’t want to have to do this.

He says my name, softly. Please, he says, please, stop, you

must, he says, stop, because, he says, this is making me crazy,

he says, softly he calls my name, please, he says, there is

nothing to do, he says, calling my name softly and weeping,

what is there to do, what can you do?

I want, I say, I want to be treated a certain way, I say. I

want, I say, to be treated like a human being, I say, and he,

weeping, calls my name, and says please, begging me in the

silence not to say another word because his heart is tearing

open, please, he says, calling my name. I want, I say, to be

treated, I say, I want, I say, to be treated with respect, I say, as

if, I say, I have, I say, a right, I say, to do what I want to do, I

say, because, I say, I am smart, and I have written, and I am

good, and I do good work, and I am a good writer, and I have

published, and I want, I say, to be treated, I say, like someone,

I say, like a human being, I say, who has done something, I

say, like that, I say, not like a whore, not like a whore, I say,

not any more, I say, and he says, calling my name, his tongue

whispering my name, he says, calling my name and weeping,

please, I know, I know. And I say to him, seriously, someday I

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will die from this, just from this, just from being treated like a

whore, nothing else, I will die from it. And he says dryly, with

a certain self-evident truth on his side: you will probably die

from pneumonia actually. Ice hangs, ready to cut each chest. I

hesitate, then crack up. We collapse, laughing. The blankets

bury us alive.

*

He sleeps curled up blond, like a pale infant, in a room five

floors above a desperate street corner. The windows are open,

of course, and he sleeps, pale and dreamless, curled up and

calm. The stairs outside his windows, rusty and fragile, go

from our tenement heaven down to the grimmest cement. The

sirens passing that corner blast the brick building, so that we

might be in a war zone, each siren blast meaning we must get

up and run to a shelter to hide. But there is no shelter. There is

the occasional bomb by terrorist groups. Arson. Prostitutes.

Pimps. Junkies. Old men, vagabonded, drunk with running

sores, abscesses running obscene with green pus, curled up like

my love, but blocking our doorway, on the front step, on the

sidewalk under the step, behind the garbage cans, curled up

just in the middle of the cement anywhere, just wherever they

stopped. The blasts of the sirens go all day and all night and in

between them huge buses make the building shake and wild

taxis careen with screeching brakes. Cars rocket by, men with

guns and clubs sounding their sirens, flashing lights that spread

a fierce red glare into our little home: red flashing lights that

climb five flights in the space of a second and illuminate us

whatever we are doing, wherever we stand, in one second a

whorish red, turn us and everything we see and touch into a

grotesque special effect. Sirens that blare and blast and make

the brick shake, announcing fire or murder or rape or a simple

beating. Screams sometimes that come from over there, or

behind that building, or in the courtyard, or some other apartment, or the nice man with the nice dog ranting at his mother over eighty and her screaming for help. Across the street there

is a disco: parties for hire and music that makes the light

fixtures quake between the siren blasts. Sometimes a flight

above us, right near the roof, the filthy vagabonds sneak

in and hide, piss and shit, urine runs down the hall stairs

from the roof and a stench befouls even the awful air, and so

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cautiously the police are called, because the drunken, ruthless

men might be armed, might hit, might rape: might kill.

The sirens blast the air, wind runs wild like plague through

the rooms: and outside on the street men are curled up in fetal

position, all hair and scabs and running sores, feet bandaged

in newspaper and dirty torn cloth, eyes running pus, a bottle,

sometimes broken to be used as a weapon, held close to the

chest. The women on the great spiked heels, almost as cold as

we are, can barely stand. They wobble from the fix, their

shoulders hang down, their eyes hang down, their skin gets

yellow or ochre, their faces are broken out in blotches, their

hair is dry and dead and dirty, their knees buckle: they are too

undressed for the cold: they can barely walk from the fix: they

have broken teeth: they have bruises and scars and great

running tracks: and all this they try to balance on four-inch,

six-inch, heels; toe-dancers in the dance of death. On this

corner mostly they are thin, too thin, hungered-away thin,

smacked-away thin: thin and yellow.

In the park down at the end of the block, not far away, the

drugs change hands. The police patrol the park: giving tickets

to those who take their dogs off the leash. In the daylight, four

boys steal money from an old man and run away, not too fast,

why bother. The dealers sit and watch. The police stroll by as

the deals are being made. Any dog off a leash is in for serious

trouble.

Ambulances drag by. Cars hopped up sounding like a great

wall falling flash by, sometimes crashing past a streetlight

and bending it forever. Buses trudge with their normal

human traffic. The cops coast by, sometimes with sirens,

sometimes flashing red, just to get past the stoplight. Fire

engines pass often, fast, serious, all siren and flashing light:

this is serious. Arson. Bad electrical wiring. Old tenements,

like flint. Building code violations. Whole buildings flame up.

We see the fires, the smoke, the red lights. First we hear the

sirens, see the flashing light with its crimson brilliance, then

we ask, is it here, is it us? We make jokes: that would warm

us up. Where are the cats? Can we get them out in time? We

have a plan, a cage we can pull down from a storage place

(we have no closets, only planks scattered above our heads,

hanging on to the edges of walls), and then we can rush

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them all in and rush out and get away: to where? He sleeps.

How?

On TV news we see that in New York City where we live

people die from the cold each winter. We have called and

written every department of the city. We have withheld rent.

We have sued. No one cares. We know that we could die from

the cold. But fire— they must care about fire, they have a fire

department, we see the fire engines and the flashing red lights

and we hear the sirens. No cold department, no whore department, no vagabond department, no running-pus-and-sores department, no get-rid-of-the-drug-dealers department: but fire

and dogs-on-the-leash departments seem to abound. I am

always pleasantly surprised that they care about fire.

The disco music is so loud that we cannot hear our own

radio: we call the police. There is an environmental-something

department. They will drive by and measure the decibel level

of the sound. This is a great relief. Can someone come and

take the temperature in our apartment? The policeman hangs

up. A crank call, he must think, and what with so many real

problems, so much real violence, so many real people dying.

My pale blond friend sleeps, his skin bluish. I call the police

about the noise.

The landlord has installed a lock on our building. The lock

must be nearly unique. You turn it with a key and when you

hear a certain click you must at that second push open the

door. If you miss the click you must start all over again. If

your key goes past the click, the door stays locked and you

must complete the cycle, complete the turn, before you can

start again, so it takes even longer, and if you miss it again you

must still keep going: you must pay attention and put your ear

right up against the lock to hear the click. The fetal vagabonds

run pus at your feet and the drooping prostitutes come at you,

perhaps wanting one second of steadiness on their feet or

perhaps wanting to tear out your heart, and this is a place

where men follow women with serious expectations not to be

trifled with, pursue in cars, beep from cars, follow block after

block in cars, carry weapons, sneak up behind, rob, need

money, need dope, and you must stand there at exquisite attention and listen for the little click.

The cement on the corner has been stained by its human

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trash: it is the color of a hundred dead junkies somehow ground

into the stone, paved smooth, running like mud in the rare

moonlight. Sometimes there is blood, and sometimes a savage

dog, belonging to one of the drunken men, chases you and

threatens to tear you apart and in terror you edge your way

inside: listening carefully for the little click. In a great urban

joke, God has given us all the trappings of a civilized society.

We have a huge intersection with a traffic light. We have a bus

stop. Across the street there is a bank and a school as well as a

disco. Next door there is a large church with stained glass and

ornate and graceful stonework. The intersection has the bank,

a hospital diagonal from us, and a fast-food chicken place.

And then, resting right next to us, right under us, tucked near,

is the home of the hamburger itself, the great gift of this

country, right on our corner, with its ascending ordure. I laugh

frequently. I am God’s best fan.*

The windows are open, of course, and he sleeps, pale and

dreamless, curled up and calm, nearly warm except that his

skin has become a pale blue, barely attached to the fine bones

underneath. Outside the sirens blast the brick building, they

almost never stop. Fire and murder. Cars rocketing by, men

with guns and clubs and flashing lights that climb five flights

in the space of a second and turn us whorish red, like great

wax museum freaks in a light show.

I listen to the music from the disco, which is so loud that the

Mozart on my poor little $32 radio is drowned out. Tonight,

perhaps, is the Italian wedding, and so we have an imitator of

Jerry Vale to a disco beat that carries across the wide street,

through air freighted with other weight, screams and blasts,

and into the epicenter of my brain. If I close the windows,

however, I will probably die. But it is the vibration, in this

case the endless clucky thumping of the badly abused instruments, that worms its way under my skin to make me itch with discontent, irritation, a rage directed, in this case, at

Italian weddings, but on other nights at French crooners, at

Jaggerish deadbeats, at Elvisian charlatans, at Haggardish

kvetchers, and even, on occasion, at Patti Pageish or even Peggy

Leeish dollies embellished by brass.

I watch the limos pulling up, parking in front of the fire

109

hydrants and no-parking signs. I see a man in a tux tear down

with his bare hands a no-parking sign. I see an endless supply

of kids attending these adult parties. The house used to be a

synagogue. One day it was empty. Then a man with many

boys moved in. The boys had tattoos and did heavy work and

had lean thighs. They all lived on the top floor. The parties

were on the lower two floors. The boys flew a flag from the

top floor. I called it never-never-land. The parties drove me

mad.

The women who went into the house were never contemporary cosmopolitan women. They always wore fluffy dresses or full skirts and frilly blouses, very fifties, suburban, dating,

heavy makeup. Even the youngest women wore wide formal

skirts, maybe even with crinolines, in pastel colors, and their

hair was set and lacquered. They were deferential and flirty

and girlish and spoke when spoken to. Sometimes they had a

corsage. Sometimes they wore female hats. Sometimes they

even wore female gloves or female wraps. Always they wore

female shoes and female stockings and stood in a female way

and looked very fifties, virgin ingenues. They never met the

rough boys from the top floor, or not so that I could see. They

came with dates. There were floral arrangements inside, and

white tablecloths, and men in white jackets. Then, during the

day, the boys from the upper floor would ride their bikes or

get wrecked on drugs. Once my favorite, a beautiful wrecked

child who at fifteen was getting old, too covered with tattoos,

with hair hanging down to his shoulders and some beautiful

light in his eyes and thighs, had a young girl there. She too was

beautiful, dark, perfect, naked, exquisite breasts and thighs,

they hung out the window together and watched the sun rise.

They seemed exquisitely happy: young: not too hurt yet, or

young enough to be resilient: he must have been hurt, all

tattooed and drugged out and in this house of boys, and she

had been or would be, and I prayed for her as hard as I have

ever hoped for myself. That she was and would be happy; that

she was older than she looked; that she would be all right. It

was only at dawn that the human blood seemed to have washed

out of the cement and that injury seemed to disappear: and

men began emerging from the park where they had been

fucking and sucking cock all night: they were weary and at

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peace: and there seemed to be a truce just then, for the duration

of the dawn, between night and day, between people and despair. The boy and girl, radiant and tender with pleasure, hung out of the window. Underneath them men dragged themselves

toward home, tender with fatigue. I sat by the open window

and smiled. It was the only time to be awake and alive on that

Lower East Side street corner. The light would be not quite

daylight: night was still mixed in with it: and there was peace.

Then the sun would be up, glaring and rude. The night would

be defeated and angry, preparing to return with a vengeance.

The vagabonds would shit and move. The fumes would begin

anew for the day, inevitably thicker and more repellent than

before, more repulsive than it was possible to be or to imagine

or to engineer or to invent. The whores would go home short

and lose more teeth. The boys across the way would shoot up,

sleep, eventually ride their bikes or go stand on street corners.

I would go to the small distant room and try to sleep on the

Salvation Army mattress under the open window. I would hear

the sirens. I would wake up burning, with ice not fire.

*

I would sit by the open windows in the living room and watch

the dark, then the light: dawn was my pleasure, a process

pungent with melodrama, one thickness edging out another,

invading it, permeating it: dark being edged out, a light

weighing the night down until it was buried in the cement.

You could slice the night and you could slice the day, and it

was just the hour or two, some parts of the year it seemed like

only minutes, in which both mixed together resembling peace.

The light would begin subtly and I could just see some tree-

tops up the street in the park. At first they looked like a line, a

single line, an edge of jagged mountaintops etched against a

dark eternity with a sharp, slight pencil, and gradually the line

filled in, got deeper and deeper until the shape of each tree got

filled in, and then color came, the brown branch, bare, the

leaf-covered branch, green, the blossom-covered branch,

chartreuse. I could see some dogs being walked early, the first

ones of the day coming, forms under artificial light turning

into creatures of flesh and blood when the real light came. I

could see, in the next room, the tousled head of my love, the

boy I live with, sleeping. Soon he would wake up and I would

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go to sleep and he would go to work and I would have stopped

working: now while he still slept and I was a vigilant consciousness I opened the windows that had been closed in the living room and sat down next to them to watch the dawn, the

kindest time.

In the hour before my turn came, my turn to sleep, night

would brand me: it would go through my brain, and make

pictures there of itself: every figure of horror would escape the

night and enter my brain: and each mundane piece of a living

day, the coming light, would grow huge and induce fear: a

drip under the sink was a torrent, irresolvable, menacing: so

there was no time to sleep: and the plaster falling from the

ceiling would become the promised disaster: and there was no

time to sleep: and the crack in the toilet threatened sewage and

flood: and so, it was impossible to sleep: and there was the

landlord to be called, and the windows were open, and congestion in the chest, and shopping to do, and noises on the roof, and some strange sounds from below: and so it was

impossible to sleep. The drip under the sink would mean calling

the super: and this meant no sleep: because he was a small,

mean, angry man, aloof but radiating hot cruelty, one little

man knotted into one fist of a man. His wife, having no English, would answer the phone and in terror stammer out

“ asleep” or “ not here” or “ no, no. ” Once she begged me in

splatters of languages I did not speak: do not make me get

him, miss, he will hurt me. The sink would be stopped up

beyond help, or there would be no heat or no hot water, for us

in this cold place a disaster of unparalleled dimensions, and

she would whisper in chokes: do not make me get him, miss,

he will hurt me. I knew the sound of the swollen larynx waiting

to burst.

The day would be solidly established, that graceless light,

and the people of the day would begin moving on the street,

the buses would come one after another, the traffic would rev

up for the day ahead, the smoke from all the motor engines

would begin escalating up, the noise would become fearsome,

the chatter from the street would become loud and busy, the

click click click of shoes and boots would swallow up the

cement, the voices would become various and in many languages: and I would make my way down the hall to the small 112

room with the broken springs in the mattress under the open

window and try to sleep.

I dreamed, for instance, of being in a tropical place. It was all

green, that same steady bright unchanging green under too

much light that one finds in the steamy tropics, that too-lush

green that hurts the eyes with its awful brightness, only it was

duller because it seemed to know it was in a dream. And in the

steaming heat of this too-green jungle with its long thin sharp

leaves and branches resembling each other, more like hungry

animals than plants, stretched out sideways not up, growing

out wide not up, but still taller than me, there was a clearing,

a sort of burnt-out, brown-yellow clearing, short grass, flat, a

circle surrounded by the wild green bush. There were chairs,

like the kinds used in auditoriums, folding chairs set up, about

eight of them in a circle like for a consciousness-raising group

or a small seminar. The sun burned down. I was standing.

Others were sitting in the chairs, easy, relaxed, men and

women, I knew them but I don’t know who they were by

name, now or then, and I have a big knife, a huge sharp knife,

and very slowly I walked up to the first one and I slowly slit

her throat. No one moves or notices and I walk to the next

one and I slit her throat, and I walk to the next one and I slit

his throat, and slowly I walked around the circle of sitting

people and I slit each throat slowly and purposefully. I wake

up shaking and screaming, burning hot, in terror. In the dream

I was truly happy.

Or I dream the dream I hate most, that I am awake, I see

the room, someone is in it, I hear him, he has a knife, I wake

up, I try to scream, I can’t scream, I am awake, I believe I am

awake, but I cannot scream and I cannot move, my eyes are

open, I can see and hear everything but I cannot do anything, I

keep trying to scream but I make no sound, I cannot move, so

I think I must not be awake, and I force myself to wake up

and it turns out that I wasn’t awake before but I am now, and

I hear the man in the room, and I can see him moving around,

and I am awake, and I try to scream but no sound comes out

and I try to move but I cannot move, but I am awake, and I

see everything and I hear everything, every detail of the room I

know I am in, every sound that I know is there, every detail of

reality, the time, the sounds of the neighbors, I know where I

i i 3

am and who I am and that I am awake and still I can’t say

anything, I try to scream but I can’t, the vocal cords do not

work, the voice does not work, my mouth works but no sound

comes out, and I try to force myself to get up but my body

does not move, and then I realize that even though I think I

am awake I must not be awake and so I force myself to wake

up, I fight and I fight to wake up, and then I wake up, and I

hear the man in the room, I see him, I see his face, I see him

and see every detail of who he is and how he is dressed and

how he moves and where he goes and I see myself and I know

I am in bed and he is in the room and I hear every sound and I

try to scream but I cannot and I try to move but I cannot and

so I try to force myself again to wake because I know I must

be asleep and I am so terrified I cannot move from fear and I

cannot scream from fear: and by the time I wake up I am half

dead. Drenched in sweat, I try to sleep some more.

I hear my love, my friend, moving around, awake, alive. I

am relieved. The night is over. I can begin to try to sleep. I

hear him turn on the water, he is there if it floods. I have left

him a note, probably two pages long, filled with worries and

admonitions: what must be done to get through this day

coming up, the vivid imperatives that came to press in on my

brain as night ended and I knew I would have to sleep, the

dread demands of uncompromising daylight: more calls to the

city, more calls to the landlord, more calls to the lawyers,

more calls to the super: and buy cat litter: and remember the

laundry, to take it in or to pick it up and I have left money,

five dollars: and I love you, have a good day, I hope it goes

well. I can’t sleep in his bed because in the day his room has

fumes, even with the windows open. So I am down in this

little closet under an open window to sleep. Somehow my

friend comes home at night, it is a surprise always, and I am

always, inevitably, without fail, a cold coiled spring ready to

snap and kill, a minefield of small, deadly explosions. Dinner

is eaten in front of partially opened windows. I cannot live

through this one more day, I say, each and every night, sometimes trying to smile and be pleasant, sometimes my face twisted in grief or rage. I am going to: kill the landlord. Today I almost

threw a rock through the windows of the hamburger place.

Today I almost went up to the man who runs it and spit at

1 1 4

him, hit him, cursed him, called him foul names, threw myself

on him and tore his throat open. All day long, every minute of

every day, but especially today, whichever day it is, I want to

kill, burn down, tear down, destroy, put an end to this,

somehow, anyhow. He does the dishes. I stalk him. I want to

talk with you, I want an answer, what are we going to do,

where are we going to go, I want to move to a hotel, I want to

move, I want to leave this city, I am going to kill somebody, I

want the landlord to die, I want to slice out his heart, I want

to pound him into the ground myself, these hands, I am going

to call him now and tell him what a foul fuck he is, what a

pig, I am going to threaten him, his wife, his children, I am

going to make them as afraid as I am cold, I know we don’t

have any money but I have to go to a hotel I can’t stay here I

am going to burn down the restaurant I know how to make

bombs I am going to bomb it I am going to pour sand down

their chimney I am going to throw rocks I am going to burst

the windows I am going to explode it and break all the glass I

am going to set a fire I am going to smash my fists through the

windows. I almost did that tonight, he says, shaking, I almost

couldn’t stop myself, I almost broke all the windows. I am

quiet. He is gentle, I am the time bomb. I look at him. He is all

turned inward with pain, on the edge of a great violence which

we are united in finding unspeakable when it comes from him:

we are believers in his tenderness: it is our common faith. He

has a surface, calm and clear as a windless, warless night:

underneath perhaps he too is cold, or perhaps I am simply

driving him mad. He wants to throw rocks, not egged on by

me but when alone, coming home. He cannot bear violence, in

himself, near him. I have absorbed it endlessly, I can withstand

anything. I am determined to keep calm, I see I am hurting

him with my bitter invective, I am determined to get through

another night, another day. He reads. Perhaps he is cold too?

We talk. We touch hands quietly. We fall asleep together in his

bed marooned. I wake up soon. He is asleep, curled up like a

lamb of peace. Perhaps you have never known a gentle man.

He is always a stranger, unarmed, at night wrapped in simple

sleep he curls up like a child in someone’s arms. It is after 1 1

pm, the restaurant has now been closed long enough for the

wind streaming through the apartment to have cleared out my

115

room so that I will not choke or get head pain or throw up or

have sharp pains in my gut. My lungs will ache from the cold.

My fingers will be stiff. My throat will hurt from the cold. I sit

down to work. I must write my book. I work until the dawn,

my salvation, day after day, when I see the beauty of earth

unfolding. I watch dawn come on the cement which is this

earth of mine. Then I sleep my kind of sleep, of cold and

burning, of murder and death, of paralysis and silent screams,

of a man with a knife who moves with impunity through a

consciousness tortured with itself, of the throats I have slit, of

the heat of that tropical place. In the dream there was no

blood but I wake up knowing that it must have been terrible,

smelly and heavy and sticking and rotting fast in the sun.

*

I watch him sleep because the tenderness I have for him is

what I have left of everything I started with.

My brother was like him, frail blond curls framing a guileless

face, he slept the same way, back where I started. A tenderness

remembered tangentially, revived when I see this pale, yellowhaired man asleep, at rest, defenseless, incomprehensibly trusting death not to come. We are innocence together, before

life set in.

Sometimes I feel the tenderness for this man now, the real

one asleep, not the memory of the baby brother— sometimes I

feel the tenderness so acutely— it balances on just a sliver of

memory— I feel it so acutely, it is so much closer to pain than

to pleasure or any other thing, for instance, in one second

when each knows what the other will say or without a thought

our fingers just barely touch, I remember then in a sharp sliver

of penetration my baby brother, pale, yellow-haired, curls

framing a sleeping face while I lay awake during the long

nights, one after the other, while mother lay dying. It is con-

sumingly physical, not to sleep, to be awake, watching a blond

boy sleeping and waiting for your mother to die. Or I remember my brother, so little, just in one second, all joy, a tickle-fight, we are squared off, each in a corner of the sofa

(am I wearing my cowgirl outfit with gun and holster?), father

is the referee, and we are torrents of laughter, rapturous

wrestling, and his curly yellow hair cascades. He was radiant

with delight, lit up from inside, laughing in torrents and me

11 6

too. My childhood was this golden thing, eradicable, intense

sensations of entirely physical love remembered like short,

sweet, delirious hallucinations, lucid in fog. Now I love no

one, except that tender man now in the next room dreaming

without memory, a blessed thing, or not dreaming at all: that

curled-up blond muscled thing recalling every miracle of love

from long ago. I was happy then: don’t dare deny it.

I don’t love now, at all, except when I remember to love the

blond boy, the stranger not even related to me, not part of

anything from before, who sleeps in the next room: a tall blond

man: when I remember to love him certain minutes of certain

days. Don’t look for my heart. The beasts have eaten it. What

is his name?

117

Our women writers write like women writers,

that is to say, intelligently and pleasantly,

but they are in a terrible hurry to tell what

is in their hearts. Can you explain why a

woman writer is never a serious artist?

Dostoyevsky

*

I came back from Europe. I lived alone in a pink apartment on

the Lower East Side across from the police precinct. I wanted

to be a writer. I want to write. Every day I write. I am alone

and astonishingly happy.

The police cars ram into the crushed sidewalk across the

street. The precinct is there. Men in blue with guns and

nightsticks swarm. Garbled sounds emanate from radios on

their hips. They swarm outside the impressive stone building,

the precinct headquarters. Red lights flash. A dozen cars swerve

in or swerve out, crash in or crash out, are coming or going,

burning rubber on the burning streets, the smell of the burnt

rubber outlasting the sound of the siren as its shrillness fades.

The police cars never slow down. They stop immediately.

They start up at once, no cautionary note, the engine warming.

They pull straight out at top speeds or swerve in and almost

bang against the building but somehow the brake gets the

weight of the cop and the sidewalk is crushed on its outer

edge.

The sirens blare day and night. The cars bump and grind

and flash by, day and night. The blue soldiers mass like ants,

then deploy, day and night. The red of the flashing lights illuminates my room, like a scarlet searchlight, day and night.

The police are at war with the Hell’s Angels, two blocks

away. The motorcycles would collect. The swastikas would be

emblazoned, the leather would defy the summer heat, the

chains would bang like drums through the always-percussive

air hitting the cement. You could hear the anguish of the

motorcycles, hear the anguish of the streets, as the burning

rubber scarred them: the police cars would pull out fast and

there would be a din of dull anguish sounding like distant war,

118

there would be the pain of acute exploding sounds that made the

buildings move and shake and your body was shocked by it even

before your mind could understand that you had not been killed.

There were fires too, loud red fire trucks: real fire, the

building across the street next to the precinct building burning,

the top two floors burning, the building right next to mine

burning. The red lights would flash like great red searchlights

and the sirens would scream right into the blood: and there

would be fire.

Across from the precinct in a gravel lot the police parked

their regular civilian cars and boys played basketball.

The street seemed to be overrun with uniforms, fires, guns,

cars careening in and out. The red searchlights and sirens made it

seem that the Martians had landed, or the army, or war had come,

or giant insects, or man-eating plants. Each day was a surreal

drama, an astonishment of military noise and civic emergency.

It was not the usual exile of the Lower East Side: condemned

into a circle of hell from which there was no exit, no one ever

left alive, no sign anywhere of what others call “ the social

order” ; instead, the social order swarmed and crushed sidewalks, was martial and armed; the social order put out fires that continued to burn anyway from one building to the next,

flaring up here, flaring up there, like one continuous fire,

teasing, teasing the men with the great hoses and the heroic

helmets. It was not the usual Lower East Side exile: one was

not marooned forever until death with only seawater to put to

one’s parched and broken lips: one could scream and maybe

someone with boots and a gun and a uniform and a right to

kill would take time out from the military maneuvers of the

swarming militia and keep one from becoming a corpse. One

hoped, but not really, that a single woman’s scream might be

heard over the military din. Right next to the precinct, in the

building next door, a burglar crawled into the apartment of a

woman in broad daylight, the middle of the hot afternoon,

simply by bending the cheap gate over her fire escape window

and climbing in the open window. The army did not stop him.

When he set the fire that killed her as she napped that afternoon, the red searchlights did not find him; the sirens, the hoses, the trucks, the helmets, did not deter him.

*

119

The apartment was five flights up. The numbering of the floors

was European. The ground floor was not the first floor, it had

no number. The first floor was up a steep flight of stairs. The

fifth floor was at the top of a huge climb, a mountain of stone

steps, a hiker’s climb up. It was not too far from God. Each

day an old, old, heavy Ukrainian woman, bent, covered in

heavy layers of black skirts and black shawls, black scarf tied

tight around her head hiding her hair except for white wisps,

washed the stairs, bottom to top, then cleaned, the banisters,

top to bottom. She had her bucket and a great mop of stringy

ropelike mess, and a pile of rags: stoop-shouldered she washed

and rinsed, washed and rinsed, dusted and polished. There

was no smell of urine. In each hall there were three toilets, one

for each apartment on the floor. The toilet was set in concrete.

The cubicle was tiny. It didn’t lock from the outside, but

there was a hook on the inside. Each tenant cleaned their

own.

The apartment was newly painted, a bright Mediterranean

pink, fresh, garish, powdery. You walked in right to the kitchen, there was no subtle introduction, it was splintered, painted wood floors, no distinct color, a radiator, a grotesque,

mammoth old refrigerator with almost no actual space inside, a

tiny stove, and a bathtub. There was a window that opened

onto a sliver of an airshaft. There was a room on either side of

the kitchen. To the left, on the street, above the teeming blue

soldiers and desperate fire trucks, there was a living room,

small but not tiny. It had a cockroach-ridden desk, one straight-

backed wooden chair, and I bought a $12 piece of foam

rubber to sleep on, cut to be a single mattress. I bought a

bright red rug with a huge flower on it from Woolworth’s, and

laid it down like it was gold. Under it was old linoleum,

creased, chunky, bloating. There were two windows, one

opening onto the fire escape, I couldn’t afford a gate and so it

had to stay closed, and the other I risked opening. I found a

small, beautiful bookcase, wood with some gracious curves as

ornament, and in it I put like a pledge the few books I had

carried across the ocean as talismans. The room to the right of

the kitchen, covered in the same cracked linoleum, was like a

small closet. The window opened on the airshaft, no air, just a

triangular space near a closed triangle of concrete wall. The

120

room was stagnant, the linoleum ghastly with old dirt ground

into the cracks. The room was smothering and wretched. The

walls sweated. I didn’t go into it.

The toilet in the hall was outside the locks on the apartment

door, outside the huge steel police lock, a steel pole that shored

up the door in case of a ramming attack, outside the cylinder

locks, outside the chain lock. I carried a knife back and forth

and I slept with a knife under my pillow.

The glare of the lightbulbs was naked. The pink paint flaked

and rubbed off to the naked touch. The heat enveloped one,

the skin burned from the hot water in the air. I immersed myself

in the bathtub: in the heat one never got dry: and lived between

the desk and the mattress on the floor: writing and sleeping:

concentrating: smiling at the red rug with the big flower. I

learned to be alone.

*

The apartment was painted Mediterranean pink, the paint was

powdery, I found some remnants of cheap cotton in a textile

store and tacked them up over the windows: light came in

unimpeded, the heat of the burning sun, the red searchlights of

the military, the red alarm of fire, danger, must run, must

escape, will burn. The walls between the apartments were thin.

There was a thin wall between me and the man in the next

apartment, a tiny man of timid gentleness. I heard long conversations and deep breaths, discussions about the seasoning in soups and the politics of anal warts, both subjects of his expertise. At night I would dream that there was a hole in the wall, and everything was like a play, the extended conversations, a two-person domestic drama: I knew I was sleeping but I believed the hole was real: and I knew I was sleeping but

the conversations must have been real, in their real voices with

their real inflections, as they sat there in my view. We had no

secrets and at night when I would scream out in terror at a

bad dream, I would alarm my neighbor, and the next day he

would ask me if anyone had hurt me: late, timid. Above me

the man would get fucked hard in the ass, as his expletives and

explications and supplications and imperious pleadings would

make clear. The two male bodies would thump on the floor

like great stones being dropped over and over again, like dead

weight dropping. Sleep could not intervene here and mask the

121

sound for me in flashy narratives of story-within-the-story,

play-within-the-play: the screams were too familiar, too close,

not yet lost in life rushing forward.

I slept when I was tired. I wrote. Sweat poured out. I took

long walks. My dreams were like delirium. I did not have hours

or days. I simply went on. There was a great, soft stream of

solitude and concentration and long, wet baths, and timid trips

to the toilet. Oh, yes, I had a terrible time getting money and I

don’t want to say how I did it. I lived from day to day, stopping

just short of the fuck. I had odd jobs. I did what was necessary.

I was always happy when I was alone: except when restlessness

would come like a robber: then I would walk, walk.

*

The pink walls and the red carpet with the huge flower were

my indulgences. The rest was austere, the heat prohibiting

excess, poverty offended by it. The single mattress was like a

prayer.

I came alive again: in solitude: concentrating: writing.

*

Yes, there were men and women, women and men, but they

were faded: they were background, not foreground, intrusions,

failures of faith, laziness of spirit: forays into the increasingly

foreign world of the social human being: they were brief

piercing moments of sensation, the sensation pale no matter

how acute, sentimental no matter how tough: namby-pamby

silliness of thighs that had to open: narrow pleasure with no

mystery, no subtlety, no subtext: pierce, come; suck, come;

foretold pleasures contained between the legs, while solitude

promised immersion, drenching, the body overcome by the

radical intensity of enduring. *

I met my beautiful boy, my lost brother, around, somewhere,

and invited him in. I saw him around, here and there, and

invited him in. Talking with him was different from anything

else: the way the wind whispers through the tops of trees just

brushed by sunset. It made me happy. I invited him in. My

privacy included him. My solitude was not betrayed. We were

like women together on that narrow piece of foam rubber, and

he, astonished by the sensuality of it, ongoing, the thick

sweetness of it, came so many times, like a woman: and me

122

too: over and over: like one massive, perpetually knotted and

moving creature, the same intense orgasms, no drifting separateness of the mind or fragmented fetishizing of the body: instead a magnificent cresting, the way a wave rises to a height pushing

forward and pulls back underneath itself toward drowning at

the same time: one wave lasting forever, rising, pulling,

drowning, dying, all in the same movement; or a wave in an

ocean of waves covering nearly all the earth, immense. My lost

brother and I became lovers forever, buried there, in that sea

so awesome in its density and splendor. I need never touch

him again. He became my lover forever. So he entered my

privacy, never offending it.

*

I had learned solitude, and now I learned this.

*

On his birthday I gave him a cat that had his face.

I had looked everywhere for it. I had looked in stores, I had

traced ads, read bulletin boards, made phone calls. I had gone

out, into the homes of strangers, looking for the cat I would

know the minute I saw it. Red. With his face: a certain look,

like a child before greed sets in, delicate, alert, listening. The

day came and I didn’t have it. I knew the cat was somewhere

waiting, but I was afraid I would not find it. The day of his

birthday I went out, looking, a last search, asking, following

every lead, hour after hour. The heat was rancid. Then a man

told me where to look: a woman had found a pregnant cat in a

garbage dump and had taken it home: the kittens were red. He

called her. I went there. The skies had darkened, gotten black.

The air was dusty. The thunder cracked the cement. Hail fell.

I ran to her house, awed by this surfeit of signs, afraid of the

stones of ice and the black sky. In the house the cat with his

face was waiting. I took the cat home.

*

Year after year, he is with me. Solitude is with me and he is

with me. Now I’ve spent ten years writing. Imagine a huge

stone and you have only your own fingernail. You scratch the

message you must write into the stone bit by bit. You don’t

know why you must but you must. You scratch, one can barely

see the marks, you scratch until the nail is torn and disintegrates, itself pulverized into invisible dust. You use the I23

blood from your ripped finger, hoarding it to go on as long as

you can but hurrying because you will run out. Imagine ten

years of it. But the solitude changes. At first it is fresh and

new, like any lover, an adventure, a ravishing excitement, a

sensual derangement: then it gets deeper, tougher, lonelier, not

because one wants the closeness of friends but because one

doesn’t, can’t: can barely remember wanting anything but

solitude. One remembers wanting, needing, like one remembers a childhood dream: but even the memory seems frivolous, trivial, a distraction: solitude kills the need for anything but itself, like any grand passion. It changes one, irrevocably. Promiscuous warmth dies, all goodhearted fellowship with others dies, seems false and cheap. Only burning ice is left inside. Whoever gets too near gets their skin burned

off and dies from the cold.

He lives inside my privacy. He coexists with my solitude,

hating it sometimes but rebelling in silence by himself because

he does not want to leave: I would make him leave, even now.

I put solitude first, before him. His complaints are occasional,

muted. I keep him far away even when he is gentle, asleep,

curled up next to me like an innocent child, my solace, my

human heart. The years of solitude— the seconds, the minutes,

the hours, night into morning, evening into night, day stretching into night and weeks stretching into months— are a moat he cannot cross. The years of being together with him— the

seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days into weeks into

months into years— do not change this. This is the way I love

now.

You are nomads together, in cheap room after cheap room:

poorer and poorer: the written word does not sell: some is

published but it is not embraced, it offends, it does not make

money, no one wants more of it, it has an odor, those with

good taste demur: the pink apartment with the toilet in the

hall is left behind: food stamps, bare foam rubber mattress

that starts shredding and has great potholes like city streets,

cold floors, cheap motels, the backs of rented trucks moving

your few belongings from one shabby empty place to another:

writing: hungry. He is closest and dear, loved more now, but

he is necessarily outside the concentration and the pain of the

task itself, the discipline and despair, the transcendent pleasure,

124

the incommunicable joy. The writing makes one poorer and

poorer: no one likes it. It gets worse and worse, over years,

that is the hard part, over years, day by day, for years. One

absorbs that too, endures it, getting dead and mutilated inside:

one endures the continuing, worsening poverty and the public

disgrace: strangers despise you, for what you think or what you

write, or no one knows you. And you put writing, solitude, this

failure, first, before him: and his way of loving you is not to take

offense: not to point out the arrogant stupidity of the choice:

but to stay, to let you leave him out, far away, in the chill region

because you have a cold and awful heart. He is for human times.

But writing is cold and alone. It makes you monstrous, hard, icy,

colder and more barren, more ruthless, than the Arctic Sea.

*

Each book makes you poorer: not just blood: money, food,

shelter: the more time you use writing but not making money,

the poorer you are. Each book makes you poorer. You are

awash in pain, the physical poverty, the inner desolation. You

get deader and deader inside. The blood still stains the stone, a

delicate pink, tiny drops rubbed into signs and gestures. The

glacier moves slowly over the fertile plain, killing. Everything

around you begins to die.

*

Solitude is your refuge and your tomb, where you are buried

alive. Writing is your slowr, inexorable suicide. Poverty is the

day grinding into night, night hurling you back without mercy

to day: day is teeth grinding to the exposed, raw nerves, slow,

a torture of enduring. There are no human witnesses, only the

lost boy asleep. He is tangled in knots of helpless rage. He

thought life was fairer. He sleeps like a lost child. You are in a

fever of creation, waiting to die, hurrying to finish first. There

is more to do.

*

Solitude is a shroud, the creature inside it still alive; writing

resistance to being bound up and thrown in a hole in the

ground; poverty the wild weeds growing over the hard, lonely

earth. The lost boy sleeps, breathes, suffers: fingernails

scratching against the looking glass trying to get through, he

can’t bring Alice back.

*

115

Solitude is revenge. Writing is revenge. Poverty is your wild

pride, open sores, matted hair, gorgon, rags, hairshirt, filth

and smell: arrogant saint nailed to a tired old cross. He tells

you he hates your pride. He does hate it.

*

It is too easy to be martyred. Your pride is more terrible than

that. You keep fighting. Solitude is revenge. Writing is revenge.

Medea, not Christ, is your model. Where are the children to

kill? I could, I could. “ I too can stab, ” she told Jason. I too

can stab.

*

So now we have come to rest in this awful place, the windows

open in the cold storm of winter, the fumes turning even the

coldest, fiercest wind stagnant, rancid. The vagabonds shit in

the foyer of the building’s lobby and behind the stairwell and

hide out on the landing above us. We are five flights up. There

is no money to move one more time: and my friend, my sweet

boy, sleeps in wool and thermal underwear and sweatshirts

pale and blue as if frozen by death: and I sit by the open

window in the dead of winter, wintry winter, the wind

streaming in, a small electric heater just keeping my fingers

from freezing up stiff, and I write, I am cold and tired beyond

anything I can say, any words there are: a dying bird, broken

wing, on a plain of ice; some creature, lost and broken, on a

plain of ice, isolated, silent, fatigued, famished for warmth and

rest and rescue, having no hope, wanting not to turn cannibal before dying: crawling, crawling, trying to find the end of the icy plain, the rich brown earth, a plant, a flower:

rescue, escape: some oasis not ruined by heavy, wet, implacable

cold.

I am cold all the time. I walk six hours a day, eight hours a

day, then come to this apartment where the windows are never

closed. I am desperate beyond any imagining. You will never

know. It is amazing that I do not kill.

*

I am afraid of dying, especially of pneumonia. I am sick all the

time, fever, sore throat, chill to the bones, joints stiff, abdominal pains from the fumes, headaches from the fumes, dizziness from the fumes. I am afraid of sleeping, afraid of dying: each day is a nightmare of miles to walk not to die: is there

1 2. 6

money for a cup of coffee today? I am a refugee: profoundly

despondent and tired enough to die: I want somewhere to live:

really live: I imagine it: warm and pretty: clean: no human shit

in piles: little bourgeois dreamer: dumb cunt: eyes hurt like

Spinoza’s: I am in the apartment, there is a driving rain, violent

wind, I stand in the rain inside, drenched.

*

The fumes start in winter. Winter, spring, summer, fall, winter

again, summer again: the edge of fall. The chill is in the marrow

of the bones. The fatigue makes the eyes gray and yellow,

great rings circle them: the skin is dirty ivory like soap left in a

bathtub for years: the fatigue is like the awful air that rises

from a garbage can left to melt in the sun: the fatigue especially

sits on the tongue, slowing it down, words are said in broken

syllables, sentences rarely finished: speech becomes desperate

and too hard: the fatigue drowns the brain in sludge, there is

no electricity, only the brain sinking under the weight of the

pollution: the fatigue is smeared all over, inside the head it is

in small lakes, and behind the eyes it drips, drips. It is fall. The

windows are open. The book has been finished now. Many

publishers have refused to publish it. There is virtually no one

left to despise it, insult it, malign it, refuse it: and yet I have

been refining it, each and every night, writing until dawn. Now

I am tired and the book is perfect and I am done, a giant slug,

a glob of goo. A woman lets me go to her apartment, on the

ocean. Perhaps she saves my life.

*

In the living room there are large windows, and right outside

them there is the beach, the ocean, the sky, the moon: the sound of

the waves, the sound of the ocean moving over the earth becomes

the sound of one’s own breathing. It is foggy, hot, moist, damp,

and when fog rises on the water, huge roaches climb the walls

and rest on the tops of the windows. They are slow, covered in

the sea mist, prehistoric, like the ocean itself. They seem part

of my delirium, a fever of fatigue: I am alternately shivering,

shaking delirious and comatose, almost dead: a corpse, staring,

no pennies for her eyes. I have no speech left. I sit and stare, or

shake and cry: but still, the ocean is there. I hear the ocean, I

see the ocean: I watch the huge bugs: at dawn, I swim: I see

the red sun rise and I swim: I hear the ocean, I watch the

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ocean, I see how it endures, going on and on, I listen to the

sound of its endurance, I sit and stare or I shake, fevered. The

bright sunlight breaks up the fog, dries up the mist, the huge

brown bugs disappear: outside normal people chatter: the

afternoons are long, dull, too much sun, too many chattering

vulgar souls not destroyed, normal people with normal concerns: cheery seaside banter: old women on benches on the boardwalk right under my window: and at night teenagers

drinking beer, listening to the blaring radios, courting,

smoking. I avoid the bright sun of the afternoon and the normal

people. I sit in the living room, the sound of the ocean cradles

and rocks me, and I read Thomas Mann, listen to Mozart.

When the vulgar afternoon is over, I watch the ocean and I

listen to it endure. At night, I go out and in, out and in, walk

the beach, walk the boardwalk, sit in the sand, the wet sand,

watch the ocean, I watch it sitting, standing, walking, I walk

along its edge with concentration like not stepping on the

cracks in sidewalks, or I just tramp through the silky water as

it laps up against the sand. I sit on the empty benches on the

boardwalk and I watch the ocean. I go to the edge and touch

the vastness, the touch of my fingers is then carried back under

the water across the earth, and I am immortal: the ocean will

carry that touch with it forever. I breathe to the sound of it

enduring. I breathe like it does, my blood takes on its rhythms,

my heart listens to the sound of the ocean enduring and mimics

it.

After five days, my lost boy comes to visit. We swim. In the

shower we make love. We sleep on the beach, in the fog, in the

mist. Inside the huge slick bugs line the tops of the windows,

poised there to drop off or fly, but never moving, primal, they

could be gargoyles, guardians in stone but as old as the sea. I

watch them. I stare. I am terrified by them but too tired to

scream or run or move: I am restless: they sit: I am afraid: they

sit: they are long, slick brown things, repulsive, slow: I must

be here, near the ocean, or perhaps I will die: maybe they wait

for that: grotesque guardians of my lonely, tired death. I am

restless. I go inside, I go outside. I listen to music: Bach,

Chopin, Mahler, Mozart. They and the ocean are renewal, the

will to live. So is the boy, my love, sleeping on the beach. I

have left him, fragile, exposed, as I always do, to sleep alone.

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He sleeps, I am restless, I go in and out. He leaves the next

day. I have two more days here. The ocean has turned me

nearly human: closer to life than death. Someday I want the

ocean forever, a whole life, day in and day out, a proper marriage: I want to be its human witness: near its magnificence, near the beat of its splendid, terrifying heart. Oh, yes, I am

tired: but I have seen the ocean come from the end of the

world to touch the sand at my feet.

*

He calls me, the publisher with the dripping upper lip, the hair

on it encrusted slightly yellow, slightly green. His voice is

melodious, undulating like the ocean, a soft washing up of

words on this desolate human shore: a whisper, a wind rushing

through the trees bringing a sharp, wet chill. He wants me,

wants my book: he is soft, melodious, undulating, tones like

music washing up in waves on the shore.

He calls, whispering. You are so wonderful to want me, I say.

*

He calls, whispering, a musical voice, soft, soft, like the ocean

undulating or the wind rushing through the trees at dusk, the

chill of night in the wind.

I am a writer, I have an agent, she stands between me and

every disaster, one human heart with knowledge and skill,

some common sense, and I say to her, I cannot stand to talk to

him. I don’t know what to say to him, I don’t know how to

say anything to him because anything I say has to mean: take

me: have me: I love you: I want you, wonderful you. I knew

how, certainly, once. He must be loved, admired, adored, to

publish me, whom he now adores. She tells me what to say. I

write it down, word for word, on a four-by-six plain index

card. I cross out the adjectives. I say what she tells me. I read

it, pausing where I have crossed words out. I sound breathy

and unsure. Brilliant, brave, heroic, you are so wonderful to

want me, I say.

So wonderful, so wise, so brave, so pure, so true, so smart, so

brilliant, so intelligent, so discerning, so unique, so heroic, so

honest, so sensitive, so good, so so you are you are.

So kind, so gentle, so tender, so intuitive, so sweet, so fine,

so vulnerable, so so you are you are.

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The adjectives are all implicit, crossed out on the index cards

but whispered under the silence of the dead pauses, massing in

clusters under the throat.

*

Tell him, she says, my guardian, my friend, standing between

me and disaster, tell him that he alone of all the men in the

world has the brilliant and incredibly courageous capacity and

talent to. . .

I say that he alone— pause— breathe— breathe—is well

I don’t say this easily— breathe— breathe— he alone—

breathe— pause— breathe— has

the— breathy— breathy—

talent— pause—

I know, he says, voice undulating.

Oh, I say, breathy, breathy, talent, pause, breathy, breathy,

courage, it’s so hard for me to, pause, pause, say this, breathe,

breathe, but he alone.

I know, he whispers, voice undulating, rushing through the

trees, wind at dusk, carrying chill. I know. I will take care of

you now, he says, and hangs up.

*

Tell him, she says, this woman who stands between the abyss

and me, who believes in me, who year after year stands with

me so that I will write, tell him that you trust his judgment

implicitly because he is so special and that his incredible mind

and phenomenal intellect and brilliant ability to. . .

I say that I trust, I breathe hard, I trust, I pause, I trust him,

breathy breathy pause, and his mind is— breathe— breathe—

well it’s not often that I can honestly say— I breathe— pause,

pause— breathy, breathy— his intellect and ability—

I know, he says, breathy, undulating wind rushing.

*

He has to believe that every idea of mine is his. This is the art

of being female, but I have lost it. She tells me what to say, I

write it down, I cross out the adjectives, I say it, I read it,

breathy, full of raw nerves: but in his world the breathy pauses

mean fuck me, the misery in my voice means fuck me, the

desperate self-effacement means fuck me.

He whispers, undulating: comforts me: he will take care of

me now.

*

130

The contracts are signed. I have been breath-fucked, undulated,

through several intimate talks on the phone. The phone is

slobbered over, whispered over, bits of spit are the silent dissent. In my throat there is a lump the size of a man’s fist.

*

My throat has a rock in it, busting the seams of my neck: each

breathe-pause-breathe is a word lying down there to die,

to decompose, to be a pile of dead bone fragmented in the

throat. Each breathy hello, each breathy sentence about he is a

hero, he is a rescuer, he is a genius, he is a savior, pulls its way

past the rock, bone, graveyard of words not said, remarks not

made, a woman’s slow death, the familiar silence, the choking,

the breathy death. Oh, so quiet, so timid, so wordless, so deferential. It is the only way to absorb, to honor, to recognize, to survive, his immeasurable greatness, his sublime intelligence,

his magnificent sensibility, his superbly-intuitive understanding. Breathtaking qualities: breathtaking love: of an editor for a writer: of a man for a woman: you are so wonderful, I say.

Undulating, he knows.

*

In my throat there is a lump the size of a man’s fist. In my

throat there is a rock the size of my tears. In my throat unsaid

words lie down to die: they are buried there: the writer is

dying: the woman is being reborn. Oh, says the breathy little

thing, you are so wonderful.

*

The air tries to push past the fist of tears. It comes out in a

rush, having had to push through. Oh, says the air having

rushed past the swollen lump in the throat, oh— breathe—

breathe— pause— a tear silently dies, a word dies— oh, you are

so wonderful.

*

His voice undulates, confident, melodious, whispery, I try not

to have to talk to him, the phone rings: I have begun already

to be afraid: he never says who he is: the undulating voice says

hi, deep, whispery, melodious, hi, hi, it sort of slithers out long

and slow like a four-syllable word, the inflection going up and

down singsong: and he begins talking: it is invariably chivalrous— I thought you would like, I thought you would like, to know, I remembered that you like, I protected you from, I

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saved you from, I remembered that you wanted, I was thinking

about you and wanted to know if you wanted— but the voice

undulates: like there is some secret: the voice of someone whispering a secret: each time I think it is an obscene phone call but something warns me and I don’t hang up, I am courteous and

quiet, I listen, and it goes on and on, this undulating voice,

and then he says something recognizable, businesslike, but in

a deep whisper, and I know it is him, my savior, the one I have

to undulate with or die. The phone rings: I have come to dread

it: he never says who he is: the voice is melodious, undulating

or the wind rushing through the trees at dusk carrying the

edge of night, chill, fear. I am breathy, uncertain, timid, tenuous:

in his world it means fuck me.

*

Have you ever seen a snake on parched ground, undulating?

His voice was like a snake. I am the parched ground.

*

“ I can’t, ” I say.

“ What will you do then? Where are you going to go? ” asks

my agent, smart, humane, serious, a serious woman with a

serious question. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go.

“ I don’t know what to say, ” I say.

“ Just say..

I write it down. I cross out the adjectives. I pause. I am

breathy. I can barely choke it out. It sounds desperate and

sexy. I never have to finish a sentence. “ I know, ” he says,

melodious, undulating.

*

The lump in my throat is tears, a fist. It is repulsion, coiled up,

ready to spring. Then the wild wires will cut through the silky

skin lining the throat and blood will flood the lungs and spill

out over the shoulders, and the child will be like a stone statue,

ancient marble, desecrated with red paint: head and shoulders

cold and polished, throat torn open: Brian DePalma and

werewolves: the stone statue on a stand, shoulders and head,

eyes empty, no pupils, stone hair matted down in cold ivory:

blood tearing out of the torn throat: called Loved. I am the

child, silent now: a girl sleeping on a bed, it is dark, she is

wearing a turquoise dress with old-fashioned buttons all up

the front from below the waist to the high neck, and her daddy

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comes in to say goodnight, and slowly, slowly, he undoes each

button— she has not been able to sleep, he says go to your room

and just lie down and rest and I will come in, no don’t worry

about changing your clothes, so she lies down just as she is, in

her old-fashioned dress with all the buttons— and slowly,

slowly, he undoes each button: it is a dream but she is awake,

a fog, in the dark, she waits, he undoes each button, he is

nervous, throaty, he rubs her, he is throaty, he runs out: the

lump in my throat is tears. I am the child, silent now. It takes

me back that far: that close to annihilation.

*

The phone rings late Friday evening. The whisper goes on and

on. He wants me to come to dinner at his apartment the next

night. I say, well no, I don’t think, maybe sometime next week

we could meet, in a restaurant because I know how busy he is.

The whisper deepens, chills. No that really wouldn’t be good

because he really wants me to meet this friend of his, a woman

whom he knows I would like very very much and whom I just

absolutely must meet and the problem is that she has been in

Nicaragua with the Sandinistas for the last three months and

she is just back in New York now for a few days and she is

leaving early Monday morning and she and I have so much in

common and the women’s struggle in Nicaragua is really so interesting and so essential: he just can’t stand to think of her and me not meeting and he is really just going to be there to cook

dinner: do I like steak? and this is the only chance there is for

me to meet her and find out from someone firsthand, a woman,

you know, more about the situation of women down there. Oh,

yes, well, certainly, I say. I chastise myself for attributing seduction to him. Paranoid, paranoid, I accuse myself. I am nervous and unhappy: does he or doesn’t he: will he or won’t he: it doesn’t

matter, another woman will be there. Tonight I am safe.

*

Late fall, November already, is blustery, cold. I walk there, to

his apartment, a long walk, an hour, over urban cement,

against a strong wind. Some of the streets are entirely desolate,

deserted. A man offers me $50. I walk fast, against the wind. I

smoke cigarettes one after another. I am on edge, nervous. I

hope to tire myself out, walking miles against the cold wind.

*

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The street is dark, deserted. The man lunges out at me and

offers me $50. Oh, shit, mister, you have $50 for me. I am put

in my place by this stranger, lunging out, I am nervous, on

edge: the wind almost knocks me down. The streets are wide.

There is no traffic. The streets are dark, deserted. The wind is

fierce. I am cold. I am sweating.

*

I find the building where the editor lives. It is on a wide, dark,

deserted street, dangerous, deserted. I knock and knock on the

heavy wooden door to the lobby. The doorman is elsewhere

and there is no other way to get in. I knock and knock, the

street is deserted except for the wind, the cold, I almost leave.

The doorman opens the door. I go up in the elevator. I am

cold. His windows will be closed, his apartment will be warm:

it is another world.

*

He is barefoot. The living room is warm. The living room is

filled from corner to corner with furniture, three sofas, the

three sides of a square, a huge wood table filling the square.

The bedroom is just a double bed, the rest of the room empty.

There is a tiny dining room with a big round table, set for

two. The kitchen is a cubicle, dingy, things hanging everywhere. It is all carpeted. The living room is claustrophobic, there is barely any room for moving, walking, pacing, the three

sofas and the wooden table that fills in the space of the square

are like one thing, one huge, heavy thing, bedlike. You can

get laid anywhere in this room but on the floor. There is a

sound system of incredible sophistication: four speakers, two

on the floor, two hanging from the ceiling, he can virtually

mix his own records by adjusting dials. He has an extra pack

of cigarettes there for me, my brand not his. There is a bowl

of grass. We sit. He gets me a drink, vodka with ice. He has my

brand. He drinks Scotch. I am very nervous. I don’t take off my

coat. I sit and drink. The whisper of the telephone will not do

here. He has to speak up. I am sitting on the far edge of a sofa,

as far away as I can get. He is squarely in the middle of the

middle sofa. He has his bare feet up on the large square low

table that the sofas surround. The sofas and table are inexplicable. I have my coat on. I smoke feverishly. Little philosophers of repression: it is not desire. I am wearing my heaviest motorcycle

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boots, my plainest black T-shirt, my basic denim, hanging,

ragged. He wears denim, a leather belt, a white undershirt. His

eyes sort of stare in at his moustache. We smoke. We drink. I

am waiting for the woman from Nicaragua. I am hot. I take

off my coat. I put it beside me, between him and me, a pile, an

obstacle, not subtle. I drink. We chitchat. There is sofa everywhere. One cannot stand or walk around. It is for lying down on. I ask when the woman is coming. Oh, he says, not missing a

beat, she just called a while back, I tried to get you but you had

left already, she couldn’t make it tonight but the next time she is

back in the country we will get together, I want you to meet my

sister too. A grown-up woman cannot pretend to be a virgin.

*

He knows what I love and what I need and what I do not

have. He knows I love music. He knows I live in the cold, in

the wind. He knows I haven’t been able to buy steak. He puts

on music. His record collection is sublime: it is an ecstasy for

me: the sound embraces and pierces: his taste is exquisite: he

makes me a concert: we don’t have to talk: I am happy in the

music: he leaves me alone and makes dinner, runs out now

and then to change the music, each piece more beautiful, more

haunting, more brilliant than the one before it: he knows music:

he educates me tastefully and then leaves me to listen. He

interrupts to tell me stories about himself, how when he was

sick certain pieces of music healed him, the story is long and

boring, I listen quietly feigning interest, he will now play those

pieces for me: they could make the dead walk: they are the

deepest layers of sex, the deepest sensual circles transmuted to

formal beauty, ordered, repeated in unspeakably beautiful

patterns, sound on sound, sound inside sound, sounds weaved,

sounds pulling the body into an involuntary happiness unrelated to human time, real life, or narrative detail: sounds deeper than sex: sounds entirely perfect and piercing. He

doesn’t put on one record and leave it. He changes, weaves,

composes, interlaces: just enough, just not quite enough, it

leaves you wanting, wanting, needing more.

Dinner is ready, two steaks. We sit next to each other at the

big round table. Now he is close enough to whisper. I will tell

you, he says, why I am publishing your book, he is whispering,

I have to strain closer to hear; I will tell you, he says, whisper­

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ing, why, the real reason. He is whispering, my ear is almost

up against his lips to catch the passing breath, the words just

barely discernible on the edge of breathing out. I will tell you,

he says, why. Meat juice and fat glisten in his moustache and

zing past my ear.

*

He was a schoolboy, probably around fourteen. A teacher and

some older boys gang-raped him for hours and cut him up all

over with knives.

*

He tells it slowly, detail by detail: the way raped people talk:

once one starts the whole story must be told, nothing can be

omitted. I see it.

*

I am shaking in pain and rage. I cannot talk. My skin is

crawling in terror. I see it.

*

I see it. I see the boy. I see him, the boy, the child. I see him on

the table where they did it. I see the torn membranes inside

him, the bleeding, the tearing destruction. I see the knife cuts. I

feel the pain. I see that he was a child. I see that he was raped.

I don’t look at the adult male beside me. I shake in pain and

rage. I am numb with anger: for him, for us: the raped.

*

He says he sees the man sometimes, the teacher. He says he

did the one thing the man would find unbearable: talked to

him. He says to me: that’s something you will never understand. I say: never. I swear: never. I take an oath: never.

*

I am publishing your book because I know it’s true.

*

I am numb. I want to cry but I do not cry. I don’t cry over

rape any more. I burn but I don’t cry. I shake but I don’t cry. I

get sick to my stomach but I don’t cry. I scream inside so that

my silent shrieking drowns the awful pounding of my heart

but I don’t cry. I am too weak to move but I don’t cry. I

haven’t a tear for him. I sit there, immobile, watching the boy

on the table. I see him.

*

He clears the table. We go back to the sofas. I sit far away

from him. I am quiet: stunned, like from a blow to the head. I

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sit and stare. That is why, he says. It is more than a pledge: it

is a blood oath: he has run our blood together. He has gotten

my loyalty: a loyalty above personality, liking, not liking,

wanting, not wanting, outside time and daily desires. He puts

on Madame Butterfly before she commits suicide. My pain is

insane. I do not notice his horrible and cynical wit.

*

I am of course now very gentle with him: in the past I have

been harsh but now I know this, I have seen this, the boy,

raped, I know why he cares about my writing, it is a secret

reason, deep, terrifying: I must treat him with sincerity, respect,

like one of us: the raped. I must not hate him for wanting to

be close to me anymore. I must not hate him.

*

By now it is 1 1 pm. I try to go. He keeps me there. There is

another story to tell about his parents or his sister. He shows

me his bedroom: one night he picked up a baseball team and

brought them all back here and got fucked by all of them. I go

out of the bedroom to leave. There is another book to discuss.

There is another record to hear. He tells me lots of stories

about sex, lovers, adventures. I am clear, precise. I am ready to

go. There is something he must show me. There is something

he must tell me. There is something I must see. There is

someone I must meet. I am ready to go. He plays a record by

Nichols and May, a couple in bed having just fucked discussing

“ relating” through prisms of intellectual pretension. It is right

on the mark, but we are precoital. I have to go. There is a

book he must give me. There is a book he must find. There is

a drawing I must see. It is in his bedroom. We stand there

together, looking. I have my jacket on. I am like a runner,

ready to sprint. There is something he must show me. There is

something he must get me. He finds me a long-out-of-print

early book by Thomas Mann and a dozen other books, too

much for me to carry. I want the books, very much. He finds

me a shopping bag. I think about the empty streets. I need my

hands free, I don’t know if I can find a cab, I leave the books

there, I ask him to bring them to his office where I will pick

them up. It is 4 am. I run out. I am exhausted and confused. I

don’t know what he wants. I know what I want: a publisher,

not a lover; a publisher, not a barter. I think he wants me but I

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insist to myself I am me, not a woman, the signs are no longer

in my symbology, I do not speak that language, I do not

practice that religion: I have seen him, a child, gang-raped, cut

with knives, it is why he wants to be near me, I am required by my

own dumb heart to love him, he is one of us, the raped, I do not

have to sleep with him, surely that is not what he meant.

*

I know what he wanted, he wanted me to ask to see the scars, to

run my fingers over them, to love him because of them, to stay

there, touching the scars, while he bit and clawed and screwed. I

have seen such scars. Of course, I knew what he wanted: old

habits: familiarity, the smell, the language of the body: you run

your hands over scars like that and you stay the night.

*

I get home. The windows are open. The wind blows through. I

am so cold.

*

I don’t want him. I need him, oh desperately, but I don’t want

him. I have his secret, sorrow added to sorrow, pain added to

pain, rape added to rape. I am faithful to the raped, it is my

only fidelity. I have his secret. It was a blood oath but not on

my blood, my real blood, so it is not enough, I know that, he

is a man, he needs my real blood, my blood is the blood beyond

symbol, uterine blood, vaginal blood, seasonal blood, stench

blood, strong blood; it is not over because it has not been my

blood, him cutting, me bleeding, the way a man and woman

do it. Others say: oh, he is gay, don’t worry, he doesn’t want

that. Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. Oh, he

can’t want that. I want to buy it. He can’t want that. The

raped don’t do that to the raped, I want to believe.

*

Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. I am dense,

troubled but dense. Before I knew what he wanted and how he

wanted it, but now I am blinded, because the raped don’t do

that to the raped. I decide: he can’t want that. I don’t believe it

really, but others say he can’t want that, so I don’t really know

what he wants, not that, I say. I pick a posture: he has told me

a secret: we are colleagues with a special understanding: his

secret: I will be patient and loyal because of his secret: because

I hurt in his behalf. I am always astonished by the cruelty of

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rape. I am awed by the enduring of it. I am awed by those who

carry the secret: those bodies carrying it, burned in; those minds

collapsing under the weight of vivid recollection that doesn’t

pale with time. I am awed by the intensity of the never-

assuaged anguish. I am confused. I don’t know what he wants

from me. He can’t want that. In private, I am troubled. In public

I am dense; we are colleagues with a special understanding.

*

I feel dread, confusion, panic: he can’t want that. That is so

simple and this whole routine is so complex. I need him but I

don’t want him. I am cold, the wind blows through the apartment, I am destitute and I have nowhere left to go: I don’t know what to do except to walk away: and I can’t do that

because I am too desperate and he is one of the raped.

*

I have nowhere else to go. I have no money, no hope of being

published elsewhere, by anyone else, my work offends everyone

else. Life is dead ends, ghostly alleys. I need him. I am so

confused, so cold, unhappy. I don’t know what he wants.

Others say: not that. I think: well, it can’t be that.

*

Underneath, inchoate— it is that. I want him to stay away. I

know he is coming closer.

*

I even say to myself: just do it. Just do it. But I don’t want to. I

say to myself: just do it, in the long run it will be so much

simpler, get it over with, just do it, he will get tired of you

soon, what difference can it make to you, one more or less—