think o f it but I never think, no category means anything, I
can’t think exactly or the thought gets cut short by the
immense excitement o f his presence or a m emory o f anything
about him, any second o f remembering him and I’m flushed
and fevered; in delirium there’s no thought. At night the bars
are cool after the heat o f the African sun; the men are young
and hungry, lithe, they dance together frenetically, their arms
stretched across each other’s bodies as they make virile chorus
lines or drunken circles. M is the bartender. I sit in a dark
corner, a cool and pampered observer, drinking vermouth on
ice, red vermouth, and watching; watching M , watching the
men dance. Then sometimes he dances and they all leave the
floor to watch because he is the great dancer o f Crete, the
magnificent dancer, a legend o f grace and balance and speed.
Usually the young men sing in Greek along with the records
and dance showing off; before I was in love they sent over
drinks but now no one would dare. A great tension falls over
the room when sometimes one o f them tries. There have been
fist fights but I haven’t understood until after what they were
about. There was a tall blond boy, younger than M. M is short
and dark. I couldn’t keep my eyes o ff him and he took my
breath away. I feel what I feel and I do what I want and
everything shows in the heat coming o ff m y skin. There are no
lies in me; no language to be accountable in and also no lies. I
am always in action being alive even if I am sitting quietly in a
dark corner watching men dance. This room is not where I
live but it is my home at night. We usually leave a few hours
before dawn. The nightclub is a dark, square room. There is a
bar, some tables, records; almost never any women, occasional
tourists only. It is called The Dionysus. It is o ff a
small, square-like park in the center o f the city. The park is
overwhelm ingly green in the parched city and the vegetation
casts shadows even in the night so that if I come here alone it is
very dark and once a boy came up behind me and put his hand
between m y legs so fast that I barely understood what he had
done. Then he ran. M and the owner o f the club, N ikko, and
some other man ran out when they saw me standing there, not
coming in. I was so confused. They ran after him but didn’t
find him. I was relieved for him because they would have hit
him. Women don’t go out here but I do. Ma chere goes out.
I’ve never been afraid o f anything and I do what I want; I’m a
free human being, w hy would I apologize? I argue with m yself
about my rights because who else would listen. The few
foreign women who come here to live are all considered
whores because they go out and because they take men as
lovers, one, some, more. This means nothing to me. I’ve
always lived on m y own, in freedom, not bound by people’s
narrow minds or prejudices. It’s not different now. The Greek
women never go out and the Greek men don’t go home until
they are. very old men and ready to die. I would like to be with
a woman but a foreign woman is a mortal enemy here.
Sometimes in the bar M and I dance together. T hey play
Amerikan music for slow dancing— “ House o f the Rising
Sun , ” “ Heartbreak H otel. ” The songs make me want to cry
and we hold each other the w ay fire holds what it burns; and
everyone looks because you don’t often see people who have
to touch each other or they will die. It’s true with us; a simple
fact. I have no sense o f being a spectacle; only a sense o f being
the absolute center o f the world and what I feel is all the feeling
the world has in it, all o f it concentrated in me. Later we drive
into the country to a restaurant for dinner and to dance more,
heart to heart, earth scorched by wind, the African wind that
touches every rock and hidden place on this island. There are
two main streets in this old city. One goes down a steep old
hill to the sea, a sea that seems painted in light and color,
purple and aqua and a shining silver, mercury all bubbling in
an irridescent sunlight, and there is a bright, bright green in
the sea that cools down as night comes becoming somber,
stony, a hard, gem -like surface, m oving jade. The old Nazi
headquarters are down this old hill close to the sea. They keep
the building empty; it is considered foul, obscene. It is all
chained up, the great wrought iron doors with the great
swastika rusting and rotting and inside it is rubble. Piss on you
it says to the Nazis. The other main street crosses the hill at the
top. It crosses the whole city. The other streets in the city are
dirt paths or alleys made o f stones. N ikko owns the club. He
and M are friends. M is lit up from inside, radiant with light;
he is the sea’s only rival for radiance; is it Raphael who could
paint the sensuality o f his face, or is it Titian? The painter o f
this island is El Greco, born here, but there is no nightmare in
M ’s face, only a miracle o f perfect beauty, too much beauty so
that it can hurt to look at him and hurt more to turn away.
Nikko is taller than anyone else on Crete and they tease him in
the bar by saying he cannot be Cretan because he is so tall. The
jokes are told to me by pointing and extravagant hand gestures
and silly faces and laughing and broken syllables o f English.
Y ou can say a lot without words and make many jokes. N ikko
is dark with black hair and black eyes shaped a little like
almonds, an Oriental cast to his face, and a black mustache that
is big and wide and bushy; and his face is like an old
photograph, a sculpted Russian face staring out o f the
nineteenth century, a young Dostoevsky in Siberia, an exotic
Russian saint, without the suffering but with many secrets. I
often wonder if he is a spy but I don’t know why I think that or
who he would spy for. I am sometimes afraid that M is not safe
with him. M is a radical and these are dangerous times here.
There are riots in Athens and on Crete the government is not
popular. Cretans are famous for resistance and insurrection.
The mountains have sheltered native fighters from Nazis,
from Turks, but also from other Greeks. There was a civil war
here;
Greek communists
and leftists
were purged,
slaughtered; in the mountains o f Crete, fascists have never
won. The mountains mean freedom to the Cretans; as
Kazantzakis said, freedom or death. The government is afraid
o f Crete. These mountains have seen blood and death,
slaughter and fear, but also urgent and stubborn resistance, the
human who will not give in. It is the pride o f people here not to
give in. But N ikko is M ’s friend and he drives us to the
country the nights we go or to my room the nights we go right
there. M y room is a tiny shack with a single bed, low,
decrepit, old, and a table and a chair. I have a typewriter at the
table and I write there. I’m writing a novel against the War and
poems and theater pieces that are very avant-garde, more than
Genet. I also have Greek grammar books and in the afternoons
I sit and copy the letters and try to learn the words. I love
drawing the alphabet. The toilet is outside behind the chicken
coops. The chickens are kept by an old man, Pappous, it
means grandpa. There is m y room, thin w ood walls, unfinished wood, big sticks, and a concrete floor, no w indow ,
then the landlady’s room, an old woman, then the old man’s
room, then the chickens, then the toilet. There is one mean,
scrawny, angry rooster who sits on the toilet all the time. The
old woman is a peasant who came to the city after all the men
and boys in her village were lined up and shot by the Nazis.
T w o sons died. She is big and old and in mourning still,
dressed from head to toe in black. One day she burns her hands
using an iron that you fill with hot coals to use. I have never
seen such an accident or such an iron. The only running water
is outside. There is a pump. M ’s fam ily is rich but he lives a
vagabond life. He was a Com m unist w ho left the party. His
fam ily has a trucking business. He went to university for tw o
years but there are so many books he hasn’t read, so many
books you can’t get here. He was the first one on the island to
wear bell-bottom pants, he showed up in them one day all
puffed up with pride but he has never read Freud. He w orks
behind the bar because he likes it and sometimes he carries
bags for tourists down at the harbor. O r maybe it is political, I
don’t know. Crete is a hotbed o f plots and plans. I never know
i f he will come back but not because I am afraid o f him leaving
me. He will never leave me. M aybe he flirts but he couldn’t
leave me; it’d kill him, I truly think. I’m afraid for him. I know
there is intrigue and danger but I can’t follow it or understand
it or appraise it. I put m y fears aside by saying to m yself that he
is vain, which he is; beautiful, smart, vain; he likes carrying the
bags o f the tourists; his beauty is riveting and he loves to see
the effect, the tremor, the shock. He loves the millions o f
flirtations. In the summer there are wom en from everywhere.
In the winter there are rich men from France w ho come on
yachts. I’ve seen the one he is with. I know he gets presents
from him. His best friend is a handsome Frenchman, a pied
noir, born in Algeria and he thinks it’s his, right-wing;
gunrunning from Crete for the outlawed O . A . S. I don’t
understand how they can be friends. O . A . S. is outright
fascist, imperialist, racist. But M says it is a tie beyond politics
and beyond betrayal. He is handsome and cold and keeps his
eyes away from me. I don’t know w hy I think N ikko looks
Russian because all the Russians in the harbor have been blond
and round-faced, bursting with good cheer. The Russians and
the Israelis seem to send blond sailors, ingenues; they are
blond and young and well-mannered and innocent, not
aggressive, eternal virgins with disarming shyness, an
ingenuity for having it seem always like the first time. I do
what I want, I go where I want, in bed with anyone who
catches my eye, a glimmer o f light or a soupcon o f romance.
I’m not inside time or language or rules or society. It’s minute
to minute with a sense o f being able to last forever like Crete
itself. In my mind I am doing what I want and it is private and I
don’t understand that everyone sees, everyone looks, everyone knows, because I am outside the accountability o f
language and family and convention; what I feel is the only
society I have or know; I don’t see the million eyes and more to
the point I don’t hear the million tongues. I think I am alone
living m y life as I want. I think that when I am with someone I
am with him. I don’t understand that everyone sees and tells M
he loves a whore but I would expect him to be above pettiness
and malice and small minds. I’ve met men from all over, N ew
Zealand, Australia, Israel, Nigeria, France, a Russian; only
one Amerikan, not military, a thin, gentle black man who
loved Nancy Wilson, the greatest jazz singer, he loved her and
loved her and loved her and I felt bad after. I’ve met Greeks in
Athens and in Piraeus and on Crete. It’s not a matter o f being
faithful; I don’t have the words or categories. It’s being too
alive to stop and living in the minute absolutely without' a
second thought because now is true. Everything I feel I feel
absolutely. I have no fear, no ambivalence, no yesterday, no
tom orrow; not even a name really. When I am with M there is
nothing else on earth than us, an embrace past anything
mortal, and when he is not with me I am still as alive, no less
so, a rapture with no reason to wait or deny m yself anything I
feel. There are lots o f Amerikans on Crete, military bases filled
with soldiers, the permanent ones for the bases and then the
ones sent here from Vietnam to rest and then sent back to
Vietnam. Sometimes they come to the cafes in the afternoons
to drink. I don’t go near them except to tell them not to go to
Vietnam. I say it quietly to tables full o f them in the blazing
sun that keeps them always a little blind so they hesitate and I
leave fast. The Cretans hate Amerikans; I guess most Greeks
do because the Am erikan government keeps interfering so
there w o n ’t be a left-wing government. The C . I. A. is a strong
and widely known presence. On Crete there are A ir Force
bases and the Amerikans treat the Cretans bad. The Cretans
know the arrogance o f occupying armies, the bilious arrogance. T hey recognize the condescension without speaking
the literal language o f the occupiers. M ost o f the Am erikans
are from the Deep South, white boys, and they call the Cretans
niggers. They laugh at them and shout at them and call them
cunts, treat them like dirt, even the old mountain men whose
faces surely would terrify anyone not a fool, the ones the Nazis
didn’t kill not because they were collaborators but because
they were resisters. The Amerikans are young, eighteen,
nineteen, twenty, and they have the arrogance o f Napoleon,
each and every one o f them; they are the kings o f the w orld all
flatulent with white wealth and the darkies are meant to serve
them. T hey make me ashamed. They hate anything not
Am erikan and anyone with dark skin. They are pale, anemic
boys with crew cuts; slight and tall and banal; filled with foul
language that they fire at the natives instead o f using guns. The
words were dirty when they said them; mean words. I didn’t
believe any words were dirty until I heard the white boys say
cunt. They live on the Amerikan bases and they keep
everything Amerikan as if they aren’t here but there. They
have Amerikan radio and newspapers and food wrapped in
plastic and frozen food and dishwashers and refrigerators and
ranch-type houses for officers and trailers and supermarkets
with Amerikan brands o f everything. The wives and children
never go o ff the bases; afraid o f the darkies, afraid o f food
without plastic wrap, they don’t see the ancient island, only
Amerikan concrete and fences. The Amerikan military is
always here; the bases are always manned and the culturally
impoverished wives and children are always on them; and it is
just convenient to let the Vietnam boys rest here for now, the
white ones. The wives and the children are in the ranch-type
houses and the trailers. They are in Greece, on the island o f
Crete, a place touched by whatever gods there ever were,
anyone can see that, in fact Zeus rests here, one mountain is his
profile, it is Crete, a place o f sublime beauty and ancient
heritage, unique in the world, older than anything they can
imagine including their own God; but the wives and the
children never see it because it is not Amerikan, not the
suburbs, not pale white. The women never leave the bases.
The men come o ff to drink ouzo and to say dirty words to the
Greeks and to call them dirty names and laugh. Every other
word is nigger or cunt or fucking and they pick fights. I know
about the bases because an Amerikan doctor took me to one
where he lived in a ranch-type house with an Amerikan
kitchen with Formica cabinets and General Electric appliances.
The Greeks barely have kitchens. On Crete the people in the
mountains, mostly peasants, use bunsen burners to cook their
food. A huge family will have one bunsen burner. Everything
goes into one pot and it cooks on the one bunsen burner for ten
hours or twelve hours until late night when everyone eats. -
They have olive oil from the olive trees that grow everywhere
and vegetables and fruit and small animals they kill and milk
from goats. The fam ily will sit at a w ood table in the dark with
one oil lamp or candle giving light but the natural light on
Crete doesn’t go aw ay when it becomes night. There is no
electricity in the mountains but the dark is luminous and you
can see perfectly in it as if God is holding a candle above your
head. In the city people use bunsen burners too. When
Pappous makes a feast he takes some eggs from his chickens
and some olive oil and some potatoes bought from the market
for a few drachma and he makes an omelet over a bunsen
burner. It takes a long time, first for the oil to get really hot,
then to fry the potatoes, and the eggs cook slow ly; he invites
me and it is an afternoon’s feast. If people are rich they have
kitchens but the kitchens have nothing in them except running
cold water in a stone sink. The sink is a basin cut out o f a
counter made o f stone, as i f a piece o f hard rock was hauled in
from the mountains. It’s solid stone from top to bottom.
There are no w ood cabinets or shelves, just solid stone. I f there
is running hot water you are in the house o f a millionaire. I f
you are ju st in a rich house, the people heat the water up in a
kettle or pot. In the same w ay, there m ay be a bathtub
somewhere but the woman has to heat up kettle after kettle to
fill it. She will wash clothes and sheets and towels by hand in
the bathtub with the water she has cooked the same w ay the
peasant woman will wash clothes against rocks. There is no
refrigerator ever anywhere and no General Electric but there
m ay be two bunsen burners instead o f one. Y ou get food every
day at open markets in the streets and that is the only time
women get to go out; only married women. The Am erikans
never go anywhere without refrigerators and frozen food and
packaged food; I don’t know how they can stay in Vietnam.
The Am erikan doctor said he was writing a novel about the
Vietnam War like Norman M ailer’s The Naked and the Dead.
He had a crew cut. He had a Deep South accent. He was blond
and very tanned. He had square shoulders and a square jaw .
Military, not civilian. White socks, slacks, a casual shirt. N ot
young. N ot a boy. O ver thirty. Beefy. He is married and has
three children but his wife and children are away he says. He
sought me out and tried to talk to me about the War and
politics and writing; he began by invoking Mailer. It would
have been different if he had said Hem ingway. He was a
Hem ingway kind o f guy. But Mailer was busy being hip and
against the Vietnam War and taking drugs so it didn’t make
much sense to me; I know Hem ingway had leftist politics in
the Spanish Civil War but, really, Mailer was being very loud
against Vietnam and I couldn’t see someone who was happily
military appreciating it much, no matter how good The Naked
and the Dead was, if it was, which I m yself didn’t see. It was my
least favorite o f his books. I said I missed Amerikan coffee so
he took me to his ranch-type house for some. I meant
percolated coffee but he made Nescafe. The Greeks make
Nescafe too but they just use tap water; he boiled the water.
He made me a martini. I have never had one. It sits on the
Formica. It’s pretty but it looks like oily ethyl alcohol to me. I
never sit down. I ask him about his novel but he doesn’t have
anything to say except that it is against the War. I ask to read it
but it isn’t in the house. He asks me all these questions about
how I feel and what I think. I’m perplexed and I’m trying to
figure it out, standing right there; he’s talking and my brain is
pulling in circles, questions; I’m asking m yself if he wants to
fuck or what and what’s wrong with this picture? Is it being in
a ranch-type house on an island o f peasants? Is it Formica on an
ancient island o f stone and sand? Is it the missing wife and
children and how ill at ease he is in this house where he says he
lives and w hy aren’t there any photographs o f the wife and
children? Why is it so empty, so not lived in, with everything
in place and no mess, no piles, no letters or notes or pens or old-
mail? Is it how old he is— he’s a real adult, straight and narrow,
from the 1950s unchanged until now. Is it that it is hard to
believe he is a doctor? When he started talking to me on the
street he said he was near where I live taking care o f a Cretan
child who was sick— with nothing no less, just a sore throat.
He said it was good public relations for the military to help, for
a doctor to help. Is it that he doesn’t know anything about
writing or about novels or about his own novel or even about
The Naked and the Dead or even about Norm an Mailer? Is it
that he is in the military, must be career military, he certainly
w asn’t drafted, and keeps saying he is against the War but he
doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong with it? Is it that he is an
officer and w hy would such a person want to talk with me? O r
is it that no man, ever, asks a woman what she thinks in detail,
with insistence, systematically, concentrating on her answers,
a checklist o f political questions about the War and writing and
what I am doing here on Crete now. Never. N ot ever. Then I
grasp that he is a cop. I was an Amerikan abroad in troubled
times in a country the C . I. A. wanted to run and I’d been in jail
against the War. I talked to soldiers and told them not to go to
Vietnam. I told them it was wrong. I had written letters to the
government telling them to stop. The F . B . I. had bothered me
when they could find me, followed me, harassed me, interfered with me, and that’s the honest truth; they’d threatened me. N o w a tall man with a square face and a red neck and a
crew cut and square shoulders, a quarterback with a Deep
South accent, wants to know what I think. A girl could live
her whole life and never have a man want to know so much. I
love m y country for giving me this unique experience. I try to
leave it but it follows me. I try to disaffiliate but it affiliates.
But I had learned to be quiet, a discipline o f survival. I never
volunteered anything or had any small talk. It was a w ay o f
life. I was never in danger o f accidentally talking too much.
Living outside o f language is freedom and chattering is stupid
and I never talked to Amerikans except to tell them not to go
to Vietnam; from m y heart, I had nothing else to say to them. I
would have liked to talk with a writer, or listen actually; that
was the hook; I would have asked questions and listened and
tried to understand what he was writing and how he was
doing it and w hy and what it made him feel. I was trying to
write m yself and it would have been different from regular
talk to talk with a writer who was trying to do something and
maybe I could learn. But he wasn’t a writer and I hadn’t
gibbered on about anything; perhaps he was surprised. N o w I
was alone with him in a ranch-type house and I couldn’t get
home without his help and I needed him to let me go; not keep
me; not hurt me; not arrest me; not fuck me; and I felt some
fear about how I would get away because it is always best to
sleep with men before they force you; and I was confused,
because it wasn’t sex, it was answers to questions. And I
thought about it, and I looked around the ranch-type house,
and considered how strong he was and it was best not to make
him angry; but I felt honor bound to tell my government not
just about the War but about how they were fucking up the
country, the U . S . A ., and I couldn’t act like I didn’t know or
didn’t care or retreat. M y name is Andrea I told him. It means
manhood or courage. It is a European name but in Europe
only boys are named it. I was born down the street from Walt
Whitman’s house, on Mickle Street in Camden in 1946. I’m
from his street. I’m from his country, the country he wrote
about in his poems, the country o f freedom, the country o f
ecstasy, the country o f jo y o f the body, the country o f
universal love o f every kind o f folk, no one unworthy or too
low, the country o f working men and w orking women with
dignity; I’m from his country, not the Amerika run by war
criminals, not the country that hates and kills anyone not
white. I’m from his country, not yours. Do you know the
map o f his country? “ I will not have a single person slighted or
left away. ” “ I am the poet o f the B ody and I am the poet o f the
So u l. ” “ I am the poet o f the woman the same as the m an. ” “ I
too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / 1 sound m y
barbaric yaw p over the roofs o f the w o rld . ” “ Do I contradict
m yself? /V ery well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I
contain multitudes. )” He nursed soldiers in a different war and
wrote poems to them. It was the war that freed the slaves.
Who does this war free? He couldn’t live in Am erika now; he
would be crushed by how small it is, its mind, its heart. He
would come to this island because it has his passion and his
courage and the nobility o f simple people and a shocking,
brilliant, extreme beauty that keeps the blood boiling and the
heart alive. Am erika is dead and filled with cruel people and
ugly. Am erika is a dangerous country; it sends its police
everywhere; w hy are you policing me? I loved his America; I
hate m y Am erika, I hate it. I was the first generation after the
bomb. D idn’t we kill enough yellow people then? M y father
told me the bomb saved him, his life, him, him; he put his life
against the multitudes and thought it was worth more than all
theirs; and I don’t. Walt stood for the multitudes. Am erika
was the country o f the multitudes before it became a killing
machine. In m y mind I know I am leaving out the Indians;
Am erika always was a killing machine; but this is m y
statement to the secret police and I like having a Golden A ge
rooted in Whitman. I put his patriotism against theirs. The
War is wrong. I will tell anyone the War is w rong and suffer
any consequence and if I could I would stop it right now by
magic or by treason and pay any price. I don’t think he know s
who Walt Whitman is precisely, although Walt goes on the
list, but he is genuinely immobilized by what I have said—
because I say I hate Am erika. I’ve blasphemed and he doesn’t
recover easily though he is trained not to be stupid. He stands
very still, the tension in his shoulders and fists m aking his
body rigid, he needs his full musculature to support the
tension. He asks me if I believe in God. I say I’m Jew ish— a
dangerous thing to say to a Deep South man who will think I
killed Christ the same w ay he thinks I am killing Amerika—
and it’s hard to believe in a God who keeps murdering you. I
want to say: you’re like God, He watches like you do, and He
lies; He says He is one thing but He is another. His eyes are
cold like yours and He lies. He investigates like you do, with
the same bad faith; and He lies. He uses up your trust and He
lies. He wants blind loyalty like you do; and He lies. He kills,
and He lies. He takes the very best in you, the part that wants
to be good and pure and holy and simple, and He twists it with
threats and pain; and He lies about it, He says H e’s not doing
it, it’s someone else somewhere else, evil or Satan or someone,
not Him. I am quiet though, such a polite girl, because I don’t
want him to be able to say I am crazy so I must not say things
about God and because I want to get away from this terrible
place o f his, this sterile, terrible Amerika that can show up
anywhere because its cops can show up anywhere. He has a
very Amerikan kind o f charm— the casual but systematic
ignorance that notes deviance and never forgets or forgives it;
the pragmatic policing that cops learn from the movies—-just
figure out who the bad guys are and nail them; he’s John
Wayne posing as Norman Mailer while Norman Mailer is
posing as Ernest Hem ingway who wanted to be John Wayne.
It’s ridiculous to be an Amerikan. It’s a grief too. He doesn’t
bother me again but a Greek cop does. He wants to see my
passport. First a uniformed cop comes to where I live and then
I have to go in for questioning and the higher-up cop who is
wearing a silk suit asks me lewd questions and knows who I
have been with and I don’t want to have to leave here so I ask
him, straight out, to leave me alone and he leaves it as a threat
that maybe he will and maybe he w on ’t. I tell him he shouldn’t
do what the Amerikans tell him and he flashes rage— at me but
also at them; is this ju st another Am erikan colony, I ask him ,
and who does he work for, and I thought the people here had
pride. He is flashfires o f rage, outbursts o f fury, but it is not
just national pride. He is a dangerous man. His method o f
questioning starts out calm; then, he threatens, he seduces, he
is enraged, all like quicksilver, no warning, no logic. He
makes clear he decides here and unlike other officials I have
seen he is no desk-bound functionary. He is a man o f arbitrary
lust and real power. He is corrupt and he enjoys being cruel.
He says as much. I am straightforward because it is m y only
chance. I tell him I love it here and I want to stay and he plays
with me, he lets me know that I can be punished— arrested,
deported, or ju st jailed if he wants, when he wants, and the
Am erikan governm ent will be distinctly uninterested. I can’t
say I w asn’t afraid but it didn’t show and it w asn’t bad. He
made me afraid on purpose and he knew how. He is intensely
sexual and I can feel him fucking and breaking fingers at the
same time; he is a brilliant communicator. I’m rescued by the
appearance o f a beautiful woman in a fur coat o f all things. He
wants her now and I can go for now but he’ll get back to me if
he remembers; and, he reminds me, he always know s where I
am, day or night, he can tell me better than I can keep track. I
want him to want her for a long time. I’m almost wanting to
kiss the ground. I’ve never loved somewhere before. I’m
living on land that breathes. Even the city, cement and stone
bathed in ancient light, breathes. Even the mountains, more
stone than any man-made stone, breathe. The sea breathes and
the sky breathes and there is light and color that breathe and
the Am erikan governm ent is smaller than this, smaller and
meaner, grayer and deader, and I don’t want them to lift me
o ff it and hurt m y life forever. I came from gray Am erika,
broken, crumbling concrete, poor and stained with blood and
some o f it was m y blood from when I was on m y knees and the
men came from behind and some o f it was knife blood from
when the gangs fought and the houses seemed dipped in
blood, bricks bathed in blood; w hy was there so much blood
and what was it for— who was bleeding and w hy— was there
some real reason or was it, as it seemed to me, just for fun, let’s
play cowboy. The cement desert I had lived on was the
carapace o f a new country, young, rich, all surging, tap-
dancing toward death, doing handstands toward death, the
tricks o f vital young men all hastening to death. Crete is old,
the stone is thousands o f years old, with blood and tears and
dying, invaders and resisters, birth and death, the mountains
are old, the ruins are stone ruins and they are old; but it’s not
poor and dirty and dying and crumbling and broken into dirty
dust and it hasn’t got the pale stains o f adolescent blood, sex
blood, gang blood, on it, the fun blood o f bad boys. It’s living
green and it’s living light and living rock and you can’t see the
blood, old blood generation after generation for thousands o f
years, as old as the stone, because the light heats it up and
burns it away and there is nothing dirty or ratty or stinking or
despondent and the people are proud and you don’t find them
on their knees. Even I’m not on my knees, stupid girl who falls
over for a shadow, who holds her breath excited to feel the
steely ice o f a knife on her breasts; Amerikan born and bred;
even I’m not on my knees. N ot even when entered from
behind, not even bent over and waiting; not on m y knees; not
waiting for bad boys to spill blood; mine. And the light burns
me clean too, the light and the heat, from the sun and from the
sex. Could you fuck the sun? That’s how I feel, like I’m
fucking the sun. I’m right up on it, smashed on it, a great,
brilliant body that is part o f its landscape, the heat melts us
together but it doesn’t burn me away, I’m flat on it and it
burns, m y arms are flat up against it and it burns, I’m flung flat
on it like it’s the ground but it’s the sun and it burns with me up
against it, arms up and out to hold it but there is nothing to
hold, the flames are never solid, never still, I’m solid, I’m still,
and I’m on it, smashed up against it. I think it’s the sun but it’s
M and he’s on top o f me and I’m burning but not to death, past
death, immortal, an eternal burning up against him and there
are waves o f heat that are suffocating but I breathe and I drown
but I don’t die no matter how far I go under. Y o u ’ve seen a fire
but have you ever been one— the red and blue and black and
orange and yellow in waves, great tidal waves o f heat, and if it
comes toward you you run because the heat is in waves that
can stop you from breathing, yo u ’ll suffocate, and you can see
the waves because they come after you and they eat up the air
behind you and it gets heavy and hard and tight and mean and
you can feel the waves coming and they reach out and grab
you and they take the air out o f the air and it’s tides o f pain
from heat, you melt, and the heat is a Frankenstein monster
made by the fire, the fire’s own heartbeat and dream, it’s the
monster the fire makes and sends out after you spreading
bigger than the fire to overcom e you and then burn you up.
But I don’t get burned up no matter how I burn. I’m
indestructible, a new kind o f flesh. Every night, hours before
dawn, we make love until dawn or sunrise or late in the
morning when there’s a bright yellow glaze over everything,
and I drift o ff into a coma o f sleep, a perfect blackness, no fear,
no m em ory, no dream, and when I open m y eyes again he is in
me and it is brute daylight, the naked sun, and I am on fire and
there is nothing else, just this, burning, smashed up against
him, outside time or anything anyone know s or thinks or
wants and it’s never enough. With Michalis before he left the
island, before M , overlapping at the beginning, it was
standing near the bed bent over it, waiting for when he would
begin, barely breathing, living clay waiting for the first touch
o f this new Rodin, Rodin the lover o f wom en. The hotel was
behind stone walls, almost like a convent, the walls covered
with vines and red and purple flowers. There was a double bed
and a basin and a pitcher o f water and tw o wom en sitting
outside the stone wall watching when I walked in with
Michalis and when I left with him a few hours later. The stone
walls hid a courtyard thick with bushes and wild flowers and
illuminated by scarlet lamps and across the courtyard was the
room with the bed and I undressed and waited, a little afraid
because I couldn’t see him, waited the w ay he liked, and then
his hands were under my skin, inside it, inside the skin on my
back and under the muscles o f my shoulders, his hands were
buried in my body, not the orifices but the fleshy parts, the
muscled parts, thighs and buttocks, until he came into me and
I felt the pain. With Michel, before M , half Greek, half French,
I screamed because he pressed me flat on my stomach and kept
m y legs together and came in hard and fast from the back and I
thought he was killing me, murdering me, and he put his hand
over my mouth and said not to scream and I bit into his hand
and tore the skin and there was blood in m y mouth and he bit
into my back so blood ran down my back and he pulled my
hair and gagged me with his fist until the pain itself stopped me
from screaming. With G, a teenage boy, Greek, maybe
fifteen, it was in the ruins under an ancient, cave-like arch, a
tunnel you couldn’t stand up in; it was outside at night on the
old stone, on rubble, on garbage, fast, exuberant, defiant,
thrilled, rough, skirt pulled up and torn on the rocks, skin
ripped on the rocks, semen dripping down m y legs. Y ou
could hear the sea against the old stone walls and the rats
running in the rubble and then we kissed like teenagers and I
walked away. With the Israeli sailor it was on a small bed in a
tiny room with the full moon shining, a moon almost as huge
as the whole sky, and I was mad about him. He was inept and
sincere and I was mad about him, insane for his ignorance and
fumbling and he sat on top o f me, inside me, absolutely still,
touching m y face in long, gentle strokes, and there was a steely
light from the moon, and I was mad for him. I wanted the
moon to stay pinned in the sky forever, full, and the silly boy
never to move. Once M and I went to the Venetian walls high
above the sea. There was no moon and the only light was from
the water underneath, the foam skipping on the waves. There
was a ledge a few feet wide and then a sheer drop down to the
sea. There was wind, fierce wind, lashing wind, angry wind, a
cold wind, foreign, with freezing, cutting water in it from
some other continent, wrathful, wanting to purge the ledge
and own the sea. A ll night we fucked with the wind trying to
push us down to death and I tore m y fingers against the stone
trying to hold on, the skin got stripped o ff m y hands, and
sometimes he was against the wall and m y head fell backwards
going down toward the sea and on the Roman walls we fucked
for who was braver and who was stronger and w ho w asn’t
afraid to die. He wanted to find fear in me so he could leave
me, so he could think I was less than him. He wanted to leave
me. He was desperate for freedom from love. On the Roman
wall we fucked so far past fear that I knew there was only me,
it didn’t matter where he went or what he did, it didn’t matter
who with or how many or how hard he tried. There was just
me, the one they kept telling him was a whore, all his great
friends, all the men who sat around scratching themselves, and
no matter how long he lived there would be me and if he was
dead and buried there would still be me, ju st me. I couldn’t
breathe without him but they expect that from a woman. I’d
have so much pain without him I w ouldn’t live for a minute.
But he w asn’t supposed to need me so bad you could see him
ripped up inside from a mile away. The pain w asn’t supposed
to rip through him; from wanting me; every second; now. He
was supposed to come and go, where he wanted, when he
wanted, get laid when he wanted, do this or that to me, what
he wanted, sex acts, nice and neat, ju icy and dirty but nice and
neat picked from a catalogue o f what men like or what men
pay for, one sex act followed by another sex act and then he
goes aw ay to someone else or to somewhere else, a kiss i f he
condescends, I blow him, a fuck, twice if he has the time and
likes it and feels so inclined; and I’m supposed to wait in
between and when he shows up I’m supposed to suck and I’m
supposed to rub, faster now, harder now, or he can rub, taster
now, harder now, inside me if he wants; and there’s some
chat, or some money, or a cigarette, or maybe sometimes a
fast dinner in a place where no one will see. But he’s burning so
bright it’s no secret he’s on fire; and it’s me. Anyone near him
is blinded, the heat hurts them, their skin melts, more than
they ever feel when they fuck rubbing themselves in and out o f
a woman. H e’s burning but he’s not indestructible. H e’s the
sun; I’m smashed up against him; but the sun burns itself up;
one day it will be cold and dead. He’s burning towards death
and a man’s not supposed to. A dry fuck with a dry heart is
being a man; a dry, heartless fuck with a dry, heartless heart.
He’s the great dancer, the most beautiful; he had all the women
and all the men; and now he is self-immolating; he is torrential
explosions o f fire, pillars o f flame, miles high; he is a force field
o f heat miles wide. The ground burns under him and anything
he touches is seared. The heat spreads, a fever o f discontent.
The men are fevered, an epidemic o f fury; they are hot but
they can’t burn. H e’s dying in front o f them, torched, and I’m
smashed up on him, whole, arms up and outstretched, on
him, flat up against the flames, indestructible. The whore’s
killing him; she’s a whore and she’s killing you. He can’t stay
away but he tries. He enumerates for me m y lovers. He misses
some but I am discreet. He breaks down because I am not
pregnant yet. I show him m y birth control pills, which he has
never seen; I explain that I w on’t be getting pregnant. He
disappears for a day, two days, then suddenly he is in front o f
me, on his knees, his smile stopping m y heart, he stoops with a
dancer’s swift grace, there is a gift in his hands but his hands
don’t touch mine, he drops the gift and I catch it and he is
gone, I catch it before it hits the ground and when I look up he
is gone, I could have dreamed it but I have the flowers or the
bread or the book or the red-painted Easter egg or the
drawing. H e’s gone and time takes his place, a knife slicing me
into pieces; each second is a long, slow cut. Tim e can slow
down so you can’t outlast it. It can have a minute longer than
your life. Tim e can stand still and you can feel yourself dying
in it but you can’t make it go faster and you can’t die any faster
and if it doesn’t m ove you will never die at all and it w o n ’t
move; you are caved in underground with time collapsed in on
top o f you. T im e’s the cruelest lover yo u ’ll ever have,
merciless and thorough, wrapping itself right around your
heart and choking it and never stopping because time is never
over. Tim e turns your bed into a grave and you can’t breathe
because time pushes down on your heart to kill it. Tim e crawls
with its legs spread out all over you. It’s everywhere, a
noxious poison, it’s vapor and gas and air, it seeps, it spreads,
you can’t run aw ay somewhere so it w o n ’t hurt you, it’s there
before you are, waiting. H e’s gone and he’s left time behind to
punish you; but why? W hy isn’t he here yet; or now ; or now;
or now; and not one second has passed yet. He doesn’t want to
burn; but why? Why should he want less, to be less, to feel
less, to know less; w hy shouldn’t he push him self as far as he
can go; w hy shouldn’t he burn until he dies? I have a certain
ruthless objectivity not uncommon among those who live
inside the senses; I love him without restraint, without limit,
without respect to consequences, for me or for him; I am not
sentimental; I want him; this is not dopey, stupid, sentimental
love; nostalgia and lingering romance; this is it; all; everything. I don’t care about his small stupid social life among stupid, mediocre men— I know him, self-im molating,
torched, in me. His phony friends embarrass him, the men all
around on the streets playing cards and drinking and gossiping, the stupid men who lust for how much he feels, can’t imagine anything other than manipulating tourists into bed so
they can brag or sex transactions for money or the duties o f the
marital bed, the roll-over fuck; and he’s burning, consumed,
dying; so what? H e’d show up suddenly and then he’d be gone
and he never touched me; how could he not touch me? He’d
come in a burst and then he’d disappear and he’d never touch
me and sometimes he brought someone with him so he
couldn’t touch me or be with me or stay near me or come near
me to touch me; how could he not touch me? I went into a
white hot rage, a delirium o f rage; if I’d had his children I
would have sliced their necks open. I used razor blades to cut
delicate lines into my hands; physical pain was easy, a
distraction. Keeping the blade on m y hand, away from my
wrist, took all my concentration, a game o f nerves, a lover’s
game. I made fine lines that turned burgundy from blood the
w ay artists etch lines in glass but the glass doesn’t turn red for
them and the red doesn’t smear and drip. There was a man, I
wanted it to be M but it wasn’t M. He tied me up and hurt me
and on m y back there were marks where he used a whip he had
for animals and I wanted M to see but he didn’t come and he
didn’t see. I would have stayed there strung-up against the
wall m y back cut open forever for him to see but he didn’t see.
Then one day he came in the afternoon and knocked on the
door and politely asked me to have dinner with him that night.
Usually we talked in broken words in broken languages,
messy, tripping over each other. This was a quiet, formal,
aloof invitation with barely any words at all. He came in a car
with a driver. We sat in the back. He was elaborately
courteous. He didn’t say anything. I thought he would explain
things and say why. I sat quietly and waited. He was
unfailingly polite. We ate pinner. He said nothing except do
you like your dinner and would you like more wine and I
nodded whatever he said and m y eyes were open looking right
at him asking him to tell me something that would rescue me,
bring me back to being someone human with a human life.
Then he said he would take me home, form ally, politely, and
at m y door he asked i f he could come in and I said he could
only i f we could talk and he nodded his assent and the driver
waited for him and we went in and he touched me to fuck me,
his hands pushing me down on the bed, and I wanted him dead
and I tried to kill him with m y bare hands for touching me, for
not saying one word to me, for pushing me to fuck me, and I
hit his face with m y fist and I hit his neck and I pushed his neck
so hard I twisted it half around and he was stunned to feel the
pain and he was enraged and he pushed me down to fuck me
and he pinned me down with his hands and shoulders and
chest and legs and he kept fucking me and he said now he was
fucking me the w ay he fucked all whores, yes he went to
brothels and fucked whores, what did I think, that he only
fucked me, no man only fucked one wom an, and I would find
out how much he had loved me before because this was how
he fucked whores and this was how he would fuck me from
now on and it went on forever and I stopped fighting because
m y heart died and I lay still and I didn’t m ove and it still kept
going on and I stared at him and I hated him, I kept m y eyes
open and I stared, and it w asn’t over for a long time but I had
died during it so it didn’t matter when it ended or when he
stopped or when he pulled out o f me finally or when he was
gone from inside me and then it was over and there was
numbness close to death throughout me and there was some
man between m y legs. I hadn’t moved and I didn’t move, I
couldn’t m ove, I was on m y back and he had been on top o f me
to fuck me and then he slid down to where his head was
between m y legs and he turned over on his back and he rested
the back o f his head between m y legs where he had fucked me
and he rested there like some sweet, tired baby who had ju st
been born only they put him between m y legs instead o f in m y
arms and he said we would get married now because there was
nothing else left for either o f us; pity the poor lover, it hurt him
too. He was immensely sad and immensely bitter and he said
we would get married now because married people did it like
this and hated each other and felt dead, fucking was like being
dead for them; pity the poor husband, he felt dead. He stayed
between my legs, resting. I didn’t move because there is an
anguish that can stop you from moving and I couldn’t kill him
because there is an anguish that can stop you from killing.
Something awful came, a suffering bigger than my life or your
life or any life or G od ’s life, the crucifixion God; the nails are
hammered in but you don’t get to die. It’s the cross for ladies, a
bed, and you don’t get to die; the lucky boy, the favorite child,
gets to die. Y o u ’ve been mowed down inside, slaughtered
inside, a genocide happened in you, but you don’t get to die.
Y o u ’re not G od ’s son, you’re His daughter, and He leaves you
there nailed because you’re some stupid piece o f shit who
loved someone and you will be there forever, in some bed
somewhere for the rest o f your life and He will make it a long
time, He will make you get old, and He will see to it that you
get fucked, and the skin around where you get fucked will be
calloused and blistered and enraged and there will be someone
climbing on you and getting in you and God your Father will
watch; even when you’re old H e’ll watch. M left at sunrise,
sad boy, poor boy, immensely sad, tired boy, and time was
back on top o f me and I couldn’t move and I waited on the bed
to die but I didn’t die because God hates me; it’s hate. I couldn’t
m ove and I endured all the seconds in the day, every single
second. A second stretches out past hell and when one is over
another comes, longer, worse. It got dark and I dressed
m yself—that night, ten thousand years later, ten million years
later; I dressed m yself and I went to the club and M was
serving drinks and his friend the pied noir was there, the
handsome fascist, the gunrunner for the O. A . S., and this time
he looked at me, now he looked at me, and it was hard to
breathe, and I was transfixed by him; and the noisy room got
quiet with danger and you could feel him and me and you
could see him and me and we couldn’t stop and the fuck we
wanted filled the room even though we didn’t go near each
other and he was absolutely still and completely frightened
because M might kill him or me and I didn’t care but he was
afraid, the great big man was afraid, and I wanted him and I
didn’t care what it cost ju st so I had him, and M said take her, I
give her to you, he shouted, he spit, and I walked out in a rage,
a modern rage that anyone would dare to give me to someone;
me; a free woman. Outside there’s an African wind blow ing
on the island, restless, violent, and there’s perfume in the
wind, a heavy poppy smell, intoxicating, sweet and heavy.
The pied noir is deranged by it and he know s what M did and he
is deranged by that, he wants me with M ’s nasty fuck on me,
fresh like fresh-killed meat. God is the master o f pain and He
made it so you could love someone forever even if someone
cut your heart open. I wait in m y bed, I leave the front door
open. I want the fascist; I want him bad. I am fresh-killed
meat.
S IX
In June 1967
(Age 20)
One night I’m just there, where I live, alone, afraid, the men
have been trying to come in. I’m for using men up as fast as
you can; pulling them, grab, twist, put it here, so they dangle
like twisted dough or you bend them all around like pretzels;
you pull down, the asshole crawls. Y ou need a firm, fast hand,
a steady stare, calm nerve; grab, twist. First, fast; before they
get to throw you down. Y ou surprise them with your stance,
warrior queen, quiet, mean, and once your hands are around
their thing they’re stupid, not tough; still mean but slow and
you can get gone, it takes the edge o ff how mean he’s going to
be. Were you ever so alone as me? It doesn’t matter what they
do to you just so you get them first— it’s your game and you
get money; even if they shit on you it’s your game; as long as
it’s your game you have freedom, you say it’s fun but
whatever you say you’re in charge. Some people think being
poor is the freedom or the game. It’s being the one who says
how and do it to me now; instead o f just waiting until he does
it and he’s gone. Y ou got to be mad at them perpetually and
forever and fierce and you got to know that you got a cunt and
that’s it. Y ou want philosophy and you’re dumb and dead;
you want true love and real romance, the same. Y ou put your
hand between them and your twat and you got a chance; you
use it like it’s a muscle, sinew and grease, a gun, a knife; you
grab and twist and turn and stare him in the eye, smile, he’s
already losing because you got there first, between his legs; his
thing’s in your fist and your fist is closing on him fast and he’s
got a failure o f nerve for one second, a pause, a gulp, one
second, disarmed, unsure, long enough so he doesn’t know ,
can’t remember, how mean he is; and then you have to take
him into you, o f course, yo u ’ve given your word; there on the
cement or in a shadow or some room; a shadow ’s warm and
dark and consoling and no one can close the door on you and
lock you in; you don’t go with him somewhere unless you got
a feeling for him because you never know what they’ll do; you
go for the edge, a feeling, it’s worth the risk; you learn what
they want, early, easy, it’s not hard, you can ride the energy
they give out or see it in how they m ove or read it o ff their
hips; or you can guide them, there’s never enough blow jo b s
they had to make them tired o f it i f worse comes to worse and
you need to, it will make him stupid and weak but sometimes
he’s mean after because he’s sure yo u ’re dirt, anyone w h o ’s
had him in her mouth is dirt, how do they get by, these guys,
so low and mean. It’s you, him, midnight, cement; viscous
dark, slate gray bed, light falling down from tarnished bulbs
above you; neon somewhere rattling, shaking, static shocks to
your eye, flash, zing, zip, winding words, a long poem in
flickering light; what is neon and how did it get into the sky at
night? The great gray poet talked it but he didn’t have to do it.
He was a shithead. I’m the real poet o f everyone; the Am erikan
democrat on cement, with everyone; it wears you down,
Walt; I don’t like poetry anymore; it’s semen, you great gray
clod, not some fraternal wave o f democratic j o y . I was born in
1946 down the street from where Walt Whitman lived; the girl
he never wanted, I can face it now; in Cam den, the great gray
city; on great gray cement, broken, bleeding, the girls
squashed down on it, the fuck weighing down on top,
pushing in behind; blood staining the gravel, mine not his;
bullshitter poet, great gray bullshitter; having all the men in
the world, and all the wom en, hard, real, true, it wears you
down, great gray virgin with fantastic dreams, you great gray
fool. I was born in 1946 down the street from where Walt
Whitman lived, in Camden, Andrea, it means manhood or
courage but it was pink pussy anyway wrapped in a pink fuzzy
blanket with big men’s fingers going coochie coochie coo.
Pappa said don’t believe what’s in books but if it was a poem I
believed it; m y first lyric poem was a street, cement, gray,
lined with monuments, broken brick buildings, archaic,
empty vessels, great, bloodstained walls, a winding road to
nowhere, gray, hard, light falling on it from a tarnished moon
so it was silver and brass in the dark and it went out straight
into the gray sky where the moon was, one road o f cement and
silver and night stained red with real blood, you’re down on
your knees and he’s pushing you from inside, G od’s heartbeat
ramming into you and the skin is scraped loose and you bleed
and stain the stone under you. Here’s the poem you got. It’s
your flesh scraped until it’s rubbed o ff and you got a mark, you
got a burn, you got stains o f blood, you got desolation on you.
It’s his mark on you and you’ve got his smell on you and his
bruise inside you; the houses are monuments, brick, broken
brick, red, blood red. There’s a skyline, five floors high, three
floors high, broken brick, chopped o ff brick, empty inside,
with gravel lots and a winding cement road, Dorothy
tap-dances to Oz, up the yellow brick road, the great gray road,
he’s on you, twisted on top o f you, his arms twisted in your
arms, his legs twisted in your legs, he’s twisted in you, there’s
a great animal in the dark, him twisting draped over you, the
sweat silver and slick; the houses are brick, monuments
around you, you’re laid out dead and they’re the headstones,
nothing written on them, they tower over your body put to
rest. The only signs o f existence are on you, you carry them on
you, the marks, the bruises, the scars, your body gets marked
where you exist, it’s a history book with the signs o f civilized
life, communication, the city, the society, belles lettres, a
primitive alphabet o f blood and pain, the flesh poem, poem o f
the girl, when a girl says yes, what a girl says yes to, what
happens to a girl who is poesy on cement, your body the paper
and the poem, the press and the ink, the singer and the song;
it’s real, it’s literal, this song o f myself, yo u ’re what there is,
the medium, the message, the sign, the signifier; an autistic
poem. Tattooed boys are your friends, they write the words
on their skin; but your skin gets used up, scraped aw ay every
time they push you down, you carry what you got and what
you know, all your belongings, him on you through time, in
the scars— your meanings, your lists, your items, your serial
numbers and identification numbers, social security, registration, which one you are, your name in blood spread thin on
your skin, spread out on porous skin, thin and stretched, a
delicate shade o f fear toughened by callouses o f hate; and you
learn to read your name on your body written in your blood,
the book o f signs, manhood or courage but it’s different when
pussy does it. Y ou don’t set up housekeeping, a room with
things; instead you carry it all on you, not on your back tied
down, or on your head piled up; it’s in you, carved in, the cold
on you, you on cement, sexy abrasions, sexy blood, sexy
black and blue, the heat’s on you, your sw eat’s a wet
membrane between you and the weather, all there is, and you
have burns, scars, there’s gray cement, a silver gray under a
tarnished, brassy moon, there’s a cement graveyard, brick
gravestones, the em pty brick buildings; and yo u ’re laid out,
for the fucking. Walt was a fool, a virgin fool; you would have
been ground down, it’s not love, it’s slaughter, you fucking
fool. I’m the field, they fall on me and bruise the ground, you
don’t hear the earth you fall on crying out but a poet should
know. Prophets are fucking fools. What I figured out is that
writers sit in rooms and make it up. M arx made it up. Walt
made it up. Fucking fools like me believe it; do it; foot soldiers
in hell. Sleep is the worst time, God puts you in a fuck-m e
position, you can’t run, you can’t fight, you can’t stay alive
without luck, you’re in the dark and dead, they can get you,
have you, use you; you manage to disappear, become invisible
in the dark, or it’s like being hung out to dry, you’re under
glass, in a museum, all laid out, on display, waiting fpr
whatever gang passes by to piss on you; it’s inside, they’re not
supposed to come inside but there is no inside where they can’t
come, it’s only doors and windows to keep them out, open
sesame and the doors and windows open or they bash them
open and no one stops them and you’re inside laid out for
them, come, hurt me now, I’m lying flat, helpless, some
fucking innocent naked baby, a sweet, helpless thing all curled
up like a fetus as if I were safe, inside her; but there’s nothing
between you and them; she’s not between you and them. Why
did God make you have to sleep? I was born in Camden; I’m
twenty; I can’t remember the last time I heard my name. M y
name is and will the real one please stand up, do you remember
that game show on television, from when it was easy. Women
will whisper it to you, even dirty street women; even leather
women; even mean women. Y ou have to be careful i f you
want it from the street women; they might be harder than you,
know where you’re soft, see through you, you’re all different
with them because maybe they can see through you. M aybe
you’re not the hardest bitch. Maybe she’s going to take from
you. I don’t give; I take. It’s when she’s on me I hear m y name;
doesn’t matter who she is, I love her to death, women are
generous this way, the meanest o f us, I say her name, she says
mine, kisses brushing inside the ear, she’s wet all over me, it’s
all continuous, you’re not in little pieces, I hear m y name like
the sound o f the ocean in a shell; whether she’s saying it or not.
We’re twisted around each other inside slime and sweat and
tear drops, w e’re the wave and the surf, the undercurrent, the
pounding o f the tidal wave halfway around the world banging
the beach on a bright, sunny day, the tide, high tide, low tide,
under the moon or under a black sky, w e’re the sand wet and
hard deserted by the water, the sand under the water, gravel
and shell and m oving claws crawling. I remember this one
woman because I wanted her so bad but something was
wrong, she was lying to me, telling me m y lie but no woman
lies to me. There’s this woman at night I remember, in a
restaurant I go when I’m taking a break, kosher restaurant
with old men waiters, all night it’s open, big room, plain
tables, high ceilings, ballroom high and wide, big, em pty
feeling, old, old building, in N ew Y o rk , wide dow ntow n
street, gray street, fluorescent lights, a greenish light on green
walls, oil paint, green, the old men have thick Jew ish accents,
they’re slow m oving, you can feel their bones aching, I sit
alone over coffee and soup and she’s there at the next table, the
room ’s em pty but she sits at the table next to me, black leather
pants, she’s got black hair, painted black, like I always wanted,
and I want her but I’m her prey because she wants a bow l o f
fucking soup, she’s picked me, she’s coming for me, how did
that happen, how did it get all fucked up, she sees me as the
mark because I’ve got the food which means I’ve got the
money and I can’t go with her now because she has an
underlying bad motive, she wants to eat, and what I feel for
her is complete sex, so I’m the dope; and I don’t do the dopey
part; it’s m y game and she’s playing it on me; she’s got muscles
and I want to see the insides o f her thighs, I want to feel them, I
want her undressed, I want her legs around m y shoulders, she
smiles, asks me how I am; be a fool, tell her how you are. I
look right through her. I stare right through her while I’m
deciding what to do. I ain’t giving; I take. I want to be with
her, I want to be between her legs and all over her and her
thighs a vise around m y neck; I want m y teeth in her; I want
her muscles squeezing me to death and I want to push dow n on
her shoulders and I want m y thighs crushing down on her, all
m y weight on her hips, m y skin, bluish, on the inside o f m y
thighs feeling her bones; but I'm the mark, that’s how she sees
it, and maybe she’s meaner than me, or crazy, or harder, or
feels less, or needs less, so she’s on top and she takes; how
many times have I done what she’s doing now and did they
want me the w ay I want her; well, they’re stupid and I’m not;
it hurts not to take her with me, I could put m y hand on her
and she’d come, I stare right through her, I look right through
her but I’m devouring her at the same time which means she
knows I’m a fool; she’s acting harmless but maybe it’s a lie, my
instincts say it’s a lie, there’s no harmless women left alive this
time o f night, not on these streets. Y ou risk too much if you go
with a woman who needs less than you do; if you don’t have
to, if you have a choice, you don’t take risks— you could lose
your heart or your money or your speed; fucking fool who has
a choice and doesn’t use it; it’s stupid middle-class girls you
have to find or street women past wanting, past ambition,
they live on bits o f this and pieces o f that, they’re not looking
for any heavy score, they live almost on air, it’s pat, habit, they
don’t need you, but sometimes they like a taste; survival’s an
art, there are nuances, she’s a dangerous piece o f shit, stunning
black eyes, and I’m smitten, and I walk out, look behind me,
she came out, watched me, didn’t follow, made me nervous, I
don’t often pass up what I want, I don’t like doing it, it leaves
an ache, don’t like to ache too long without distracting m yself
by activity, anything to pass the time, and it makes me restless
and careless, to want someone like that; I wanted her, she
wanted food, money, most o f what happens happens for food,
all kinds o f food, deep hungers that rock you in their
everloving arms, rocked to eternal sleep by what you need, the
song o f myself, I need; need her; remember her; need women;
need to hear m y name; wanted her; she wanted food. What’s
inside you gets narrow and mean— it’s an edge, it cuts, it’s a
slice o f sharp, a line at the blade’s end, no surface, no waste, no
tease, a thin line where your meanest edge meets the air; an
edge, no blade you can see. If you could stomp on me, this is
what yo u ’d see— a line, touch it, yo u ’re slivers. I’d be cut
glass, yo u ’d be feet. Y o u ’d dance blood. The edge o f the blade,
no surface, just what cuts, a thin line, touch it, draw blood.
Inside, nothing else is alive. Where’s the love I dream of. I hole
up, like a bug in a rug. There’s women who bore me; wasted
time; the taste o f death; junkie time; a junkie woman comes to
me, long, languid afternoons making love but I didn’t like it,
she got beat up by her boyfriend, she’s sincerely in love, black
and blue, loving you, and he’s her source; pure love; true
romance. D on ’t like m ixing women with obligation— in this
case, the obligation to redeem her from pain. I want to want; I
like wanting, ju st so it gets fulfilled and I don’t have to wait too
long; I like the ache just long enough to make what touches it
appreciated a little more, a little drama, a little pain. I don’t like
no beat-up piece o f shit; junkie stooge. Y ou don’t want the
edge o f the blade to get dull; then you got dullness inside and
this you can’t afford. The w om an’s got to be free; a beast o f
freedom; not a predator needing a bow l o f fucking soup, not a
fool needing a fucking fix; she’s got to give freedom off, exude
it, she’s got to be grand with freedom, all swelled up with it, a
Madame Curie o f freedom, or she’s Garbo, or more likely,
she’s Che, she’s got to be a monster o f freedom, a hero o f
loveless love; Napoleon but they didn’t lock her up or she got
loose, now, for me; no beat up junkie fool; no beautiful piece
looking for a hamburger. There’s magnificent women out
here. These lights light you up. Y ou are on Broadw ay and
there are stars o f a high magnitude. There’s the queen o f them
all who taught me— sweet name, Rebecca; ruthless crusher o f
a dyke; honest to God, she’s wearing a gold lame dress when I
meet her in jail when I’m a kid, eighteen, a political prisoner as
it were, as I saw myself, and she loves poetry and she sends me
a pile o f New Yorker magazines because, she says, I’m a poet;
and I don’t want her on me, not in jail, I’m too scared, too
hurt, but she protects me anyway, and I get out fast enough
that I don’t have to do her, and I see her later out here and I
remember her kindness, which it was, real kindness, taking
care o f me in that place, which was w hy I was treated right by
the other inmates as it were; I see her on the street, gold lame
against a window, I see her shimmering, and I go with her for
thanks and because she is grand, and I find out you can be free
in a gold lame dress, in jail, whoring, in black skin, in hunger,
in pain, in strife, the strife o f the streets, perpetual war, gritty,
gray, she’s the wild one with freedom in her soul, it translates
into how you touch, what’s in your fingers, the silk in your
hands, the freedom you take with who you got under you;
you got your freedom and you take theirs for when you are
with them, you are a caretaker o f the fragile freedom in them,
because most women don’t got much, and you don’t be afraid
to take, you turn their skin to flames, you eat them raw, your
name’s all over them, you wrap them up in you, crush them in
you, and what you give is ambition, the ambition to do it
big, do it great, big gestures, free— girls do it big, girls soar,
girls burn, girls take big not puny; stop giving, child, better
to be stole from than to give— stop giving away the little that
you got. I stay with her until she’s finished with me, she’s
doing her art on me, she’s practicing freedom on me; I’m
shaking from it, her great daring, the audacity o f her body on
mine; she’s free on me and I learn from it on me how to do it
and how to be it; flamboyant lovemaking, no apology, dead
serious, we could die right after this and this is the last thing
we know and it’s enough, the last minute, the last time, the
last touch, God comes down through her on me, the good
God, the divine God; master lovemaker, lightning in a girl,
I’ve got a new theology, She’s a rough Girl; and what’s
between m y legs is a running river, She made it then She
rested; a running river; so deep, so long, clear, bright, smart,
racing, white foam over a cliff and then a dead drop and then it
keeps on going, running, racing, then the smooth, silk calm, the
deep calm, the long, silk body, smooth. I heard some man say I
put it in her smooth, smooth was a noun, and I knew right
away he liked children, he’s after children, there are such men;
but it’s not what I mean; I mean that together w e’re smooth, it’s
smooth, w e’re smooth on each other, it’s a smooth ride; and if I
died right after I wouldn’t feel cheated or sorry and every time
I’m happy I had her one more second and I feel proud she wants
me; and she’ll disappear, she’ll take someone else, but I’ll sit here
like a dumb little shit until she does, a student, sitting, waiting at
her feet, let her touch me once, then once more, I’m happy near
her, her freedom ’s holding me tight, her freedom ’s on me,
around me, climbing inside me, her freedom ’s embracing me;
wild woman; a wild w om an’s pussy that will not die for some
junkie prick; nor songwriter; nor businessman; nor
philosopher. The men are outside, they want to come in, I
hear them rattling around, death threats, destruction isn’t
quiet or subtle, imagine those for whom it is, safe, blessedly
safe; so in m y last minutes on this earth, perhaps, I am
remembering Rebecca who taught me freedom; I would sit
down quiet next to her, wait for her, watch her; did you ever
love a girl? I’ve loved several; loved. N ot just wanted but
loved in thought or action. Wasn’t raped by any o f them. I
mean, rape’s just a word, it doesn’t mean anything, someone
fucks you, so what? I can’t see complaining about it. But I
wasn’t hurt by any o f them. I don’t mean I w asn’t hurt by love;
shit, that’s what love does, it drags your heart over a bed o f
nails, I was hurt by love, lazy, desperate drinks through long
nights o f pain without her, hurting bad. Wasn’t pushed
around. Saw others who were. It’s not that wom en don’t. It’s
just that it had m y name on it, men said pussy or dyke or
whatever stupid distortion but I saw freedom, I heard Andrea,
I found freedom under her, wrapped around her, her lips on
me and her hands on me, in me, her thighs holding on to me;
there’s always men around waiting to break in, throw
themselves on top, pull you down; but wom en’s different, it’s
a fast, gorgeous trip out o f hell, a hundred-mile-an-hour ride
on a different road in the opposite direction, it’s when you see
an attitude that sets you free, the way she moves breaks you
out, or you touch her shoulder and exhilaration shoots
through you like a needle would do hanging from your vein if
it’s got something good in it; it’s a gold rush; your life’s telling
you that if you’re between her legs you’re free— free’s not
peaceful and not always kind, it’s fast, a shooting star you ride,
i f you’re stupid it shakes you loose and hurls you somewhere
in the sky, no gravity, no fall, just eternal drift to nowhere out
past up and down. You can live forever on the curve o f her
hip, attached there in sweat and desire taking the full measure
o f your own human sorrow; you can have this tearing sorrow
with your face pushing on the inside o f her thigh; you can have
her lips on you, her hands pushing on you as if you’re marble
she’s turning into clay, an electricity running all over you
carried in saliva and spit, you’re cosseted in electric shock,
peeing, your hair standing up on end, muscles stretched, lit
up; there’s her around you and in you everywhere, the
rhythm o f your dance and at the same time she’s like the
placenta, you breathe in her, surrounded; it’s something men
don’t know or they’d do it, they could do it, but instead they
want this push, shove, whatever it is they’re doing for
whatever reason, it’s an ignorant meanness, but with a woman
you ’re whole and you’re free, it ain’t pieces o f you flying
around like shit, it ain’t being used up, you got scars bigger
than the freedom you get in everyday life; do it the w ay you ’re
supposed to, you got twenty-four hours a day down on your
knees sucking dick; that’s how girls do hard time. There’s not
many women around who have any freedom in them let alone
some to spare, extravagant, on you, and it’s when they’re on
you you see it best and know it’s real, now and all, there w o n ’t
be anything wilder or finer, it’s pure and true, you see it, you
chase them, they’re on you, you get enraptured in it, once you
got it on you, once you feel it m oving through you, it’s a
contagion o f wanting more than you get being pussy for the
boys, you catch it like a fever, it puts you on a slow bum with
your skin aching and you want it more than you can find it
because most women are beggars and slaves in spirit and in life
and you don’t ever give up wanting it. Otherwise you get
worn down to what they say you are, you get worn down to
pussy, bedraggled; not bewitched, bothered, bewildered; ju st
some wet, ratty, bedraggled thing, semen caked on you, his
piss running down your legs, worn out, old from what yo u ’re
sucking, I’m pretty fucking old and I have been loved by
freedom and I have loved freedom back. Did you ever have a
nightmare? Men coming in’s m y nightmare; entering; I’m in,
knock, knock. There’s writers being assholes about outlaws;
outlaw this, outlaw that, I’m bad, I’m sitting here writing m y
book and I’m bad, I’m typing and I’m bad, m y secretary’s
typing and I’m bad, I got laid, the boys say, like their novels
are letters home to mama, well, hell’s bells, the boys got laid:
more than once. It’s something to write home about, all right;
costs fifty bucks, too; they found dirty wom en they did it to,
dirty women too fucking poor to have a typewriter to stu ff up
bad boy w riter’s ass. Shit. Y ou follow his cock around the big,
bad city: N ew Y ork, Paris, Rom e— same city, same cock.
B ig, bad cock. Wiping themselves on dirty women, then
writing home to mama by w ay o f G rove Press, saying what
trash the dirty women are; how brave the bad boys are,
writing about it, doing it, putting their cocks in the big, bad,
dirty hole where all the other big, brave boys were; oh they say
dirty words about dirty women good. I read the books. I had a
typewriter but it was stolen when the men broke in. The men
broke in before when I w asn’t here and they took everything,
my clothes, my typewriter. I wrote stories. Some were about
life on other planets; I wrote once about a wild woman on a
rock on Mars. I described the rock, the red planet, barren, and
a woman with tangled hair, big, with muscles, sort o f Ursula
Andress on a rock. I couldn’t think o f what happened though.
She was just there alone. I loved it. Never wanted it to end. I
wrote about the country a lot, pastoral stuff, peaceful, I made
up stories about the wind blowing through the trees and leaves
falling and turning red. I wrote stories about teenagers feeling
angst, not the ones I knew but regular ones with stereos. I
couldn’t think o f details though. I wrote about men and
women making love. I made it up; or took it from Nino, a boy
I knew, except I made it real nice; as he said it would be; I left
out the knife. The men writers make it as nasty as they can, it’s
like they’re using a machine gun on her; they type with their
fucking cocks— as Mailer admitted, right? Except he said
balls, always a romancer. I can’t think o f getting a new
typewriter, I need money for just staying alive, orange juice
and coffee and cigarettes and milk, vodka and pills, they’ll just
smash it or take it anyway, I have to just learn to write with a
pen and paper in handwriting so no one can steal it and so it
don’t take money. When I read the big men writers I’m them;
careening around like they do; never paying a fucking price;
days are long, their books are short compared to an hour on
the street; but if you think about a book just saying I’m a prick
and I fuck dirty girls, the books are pretty long; m y cock, m y
cock, three volumes. They should just say: I Can Fuck.
Norm an M ailer’s new novel. I Can Be Fucked. Jean Genet’s
new novel. I ' m Waiting To Be Fucked Or To Fuck, I Don't
Know. Samuel Beckett’s new novel. She Shit. Jam es Jo y c e ’s
masterpiece. Fuck Me, Fuck Her, Fuck It. The Living Theatre’s
new play. Paradise Fucked. The sequel. Mama, I Fucked a Jewish
Girl. The new Philip Roth. Mama, I Fucked a Shiksa. The new,
new Philip Roth. It was a bad day they w ouldn’t let little boys
say that word. I got to tell you, they get laid. T h e y’re up and
down these streets, taking what they want; tw o hundred
million little Henry Millers with hard pricks and a mean prose
style; Pulitzer prizewinning assholes using cash. Looking for
experience, which is what they call pussy afterward when
they’re back in their posh apartments trying to ju stify
themselves. Experience is us, the ones they stick it in.
Experience is when they put down the money, then they turn
you around like yo u ’re a chicken they’re roasting; they stick it
in any hole they can find just to try it or because they’re blind
drunk and it ain’t painted red so they can’t find it; you get to be
lab mice for them; they stick the famous Steel Rod into any
Fleshy Hole they can find and they Ram the Rod In when they
can manage it which thank God often enough they can’t. The
prose gets real purple then. Y ou can’t put it down to
impotence though because they get laid and they had wom en
and they fucked a lot; they just never seem to get over the
miracle that it’s them in a big man’s body doing all the
damage; Look, ma, it’s me. Volum e Tw elve. They don’t act
like human beings and they’re pretty proud o f it so there’s no
point in pretending they are; though you want to— pretend.
Y o u ’d like to think they could feel something— sad; or
remorse; or something ju st simple, a minute o f recognition.
It’s interesting that yo u ’re so dangerous to them but you
fucking can’t hurt them; how can you be dangerous if you
can’t do harm; I’d like to be able to level them, but you can’t
touch them except to be fucked by them; they get to do it and
then they get to say what it is they’re doing— yo u ’re what
they’re afraid o f but the fear just keeps them coming, it doesn’t
shake them loose or get them o ff you; it’s more like the glue
that keeps them on you; sticky stuff, how afraid the pricks are.
I mean, m aybe they’re not afraid. It sounds so stupid to say
they are, so banal, like making them human anyw ay, like
giving them the insides you wish they had. So what do you
say; they’re just so fucking filled with hate they can’t do
anything else or feel anything else or write anything else? I
mean, do they ever look at the fucking moon? I think all the
sperm they’re spilling is going to have an effect; something’s
going to grow. It’s like they’re planting a whole next
generation o f themselves by sympathetic magic; not that
they’re fucking to have babies; it’s more like they’re rubbing
and heaving and pushing and banging and shoving and
ejaculating like some kind o f voodoo rite so all the sperm will
grow into more them, more boys with more books about how
they got themselves into dirt and got out alive. It’s a thrilling
story, says the dirt they got themselves into. It’s bitterness,
being their filth; they don’t even remember right, you’re not
distinct enough, an amoeba’s more distinct, more individuated; they go home and make it up after they did it for real and
suddenly they ain’t parasites, they’re heroes— big dicks in the
big night taming some rich but underneath it all street dirty
whore, some glamorous thing but underneath filth; I think
even i f you were with them all the time they wouldn’t
remember you day-to-day, it’s like being null and void and
fucked at the same time, I am fucked, therefore I am not.
M aybe I’ll write books about history— prior times, the War o f
1812; not here and now, which is a heartbreaking time, place,
situation, for someone. Y o u ’re nothing to them. I don’t think
they’re afraid. Maybe I’m afraid. The men want to come in; I
hear them outside, banging; they’re banging against the door
with metal things, probably knives; the men around here have
knives; they use knives; I’m familiar with knives; I grew up
around knives; Nino used a knife; I’m not afraid o f knives.
Fear’s a funny thing; you get fucked enough you lose it; or
most o f it; I don’t know w hy that should be per se. It’s all
callouses, not fear, a hard heart, and inside a lot o f death as if
they put it there, delivered it in. And then out o f nowhere you
ju st drown in it, it’s a million tons o f water on you. if I was
afraid o f individual things, normal things— today, tom orrow ,
w hat’s next, w h o ’s on top, what already has transpired that
you can’t quite reach down into to remember— I’d have to
surrender; but it drowns you fast, then it’s gone. I’d like to
surrender; but to whom , where, or do you just put up a white
flag and they take you to throw your body on a pile
somewhere? I don’t believe in it. I think you have to make
them come get you, you don’t volunteer, it’s a matter o f pride.
Who do you turn yourself into and on what terms— hey,
fellow, I’m done but that don’t mean you get to hurt me
more, you have to keep the"deal, I made a deal, I get not to feel
more pain, I’m finished, I’m not fighting you fucks anymore,
I’ll be dead if it’s the w ay to accomplish this transformation
from what I am into being nothing with no pain. But if you get
dead and there’s an afterlife and it’s more o f the same but
worse— I would just die from that. Y ou got all these same
mean motherfuckers around after yo u ’re dead and you got the
God who made it all still messing with you but now up
close— H e’s around. Y o u ’re listening to angels and yo u ’re
not allowed to tell God H e’s one m aggoty bastard; or yo u ’re
running around in circles in hell, imprisoned by your fatal
flaw, instead o f being here on a leash with all your flaws, none
fatal enough, making you a m aggoty piece o f meat. I want
dead to mean dead; all done; finished; quiet; insensate;
nothing; I want it to be peaceful, no me being pushed around
or pushing, I don’t want to feel the worm s crawling on me or
eating me or the cold o f the wet ground or suffocating from
being buried or smothering from being under the ground; or
being stone cold from being dead; I don’t want to feel cold; I
don’t want to be in eternal dark forever stone cold. N othing
by which I mean a pure void, true nonexistence, is different; it
isn’t filled with horror or dread or fear or punishment or pain;
it’s ju st an absence o f being, especially so you don’t have to
think or know anything or figure out how yo u ’re going to eat
or w ho’s going to be on you next. It’s not suffering. I don’t
have suffering in mind; not jo y , not pain— no highs, no lows.
Just not being; not being a citizen wandering around the
universe in a body or loose, ethereal and invisible; or just not
being a citizen here, now, under street lights, all illuminated,
the light shining down. I hate the light shining down— display
yourself, dear, show them; smile, spread your legs, make
suggestive gestures, legs wide open— there’s lots o f ways to sit
or stand with your legs wide open. Which day did God make
light? You think He had the street lights in some big
storeroom in the sky to send down to earth when women
started crawling over sidewalks like cockroaches to stay alive?
I think He did. I think it was part o f the big plan— light those
girls up, give them sallow light, covers pox marks, covers
tracks, covers bruises, good light for covering them up and
showing them at the same time, makes them look grotesque,
just inhuman enough, same species but not really, you can
stick it in but these aren’t creatures that get to come home, not
into a home, not home, not quite the same species, sallow
light, makes them green and grotesque, creatures you put it in,
not female ones o f you, even a fucking rib o f you; you got ones
in good light for that. They stick it in boys too; anything under
these lights is here to be used. Y o u ’d think they’d know boys
was real, same species, with fists that work or will someday,
but someday isn’t their problem and they like the feel that the
boy might turn mean on them— some o f them like it, the ones
that use the older ones. I read about this boy that was taken o ff
the street and the man gave him hormones to make him grow
breasts and lose his body hair or not get it, I’m not sure; it
made me really sick because the boy was nothing to him, just
some piece o f something he could mess with, remake to what
he wanted to play with, even something monstrous; I wanted
to kill the guy; and I tried to figure out how to help the kid, but
I just read it in Time or Newsweek so I wondered i f I could find
him or not. I guess it depends on how many boys there are
being fed hormones by pedophiles. Once it’s in Newsweek, I
guess there are thousands. The kid’s around here somewhere;
it said Low er East Side; I hate it, what the man did to him.
These Goddamn men would all be each other’s meat if they
weren’t the butchers. They use fucking to slice you open. It’s
like they’re hollow, there’s nothing there, except they make
big noise, this unbearable static, some screeching, high-
pitched pain, and you can’t see they’re hollow because the
noise diverts you to near madness; big lovemaker with fifty
dollars to spend, seed to spill making mimetic magic, grind,
bang, it’s a boy, a big, bad boy who writes books, big, bad
books. I see the future and it’s a bunch o f pricks making a
literature o f fucking, high art about sticking it in; I did it, ma;
she was filth and I did it. O nly yo u ’ll get a Mailer-Genet beast:
I did it, ma, I did it to her, he did it to me. The cement will
grow them; sympathetic magic w orks; the spilled seed, the
grinding, bang bang, pushes the fuck out past the bounds o f
physical reality; it lurks in the biosphere; it will creep into
weeping wom bs; they’ll be born, the next generation, out o f
what the assholes do to me; I’ve got enough semen dripping in
me for a literary renaissance, an encyclopedia o f novellas, a
generation o f genius; maybe some o f them will paint or write
songs. Mother earth, magic vessel, the altar where they
worship, the sacred place; fifty dollars to burn a candle, or
pills, or a meal and money; bang bang ain’t never without
consequences for the future o f the race. N o reason the race
should be different from the people in it. There’s no tom orrow
I know of. I never seen one that ain’t today. It’s fine to be slut-
mama to a literary movement; the corporeal altar o f sym pathetic motherhood to a generation; his loins; m y ass.
Immortal, anonymous means to his end. It’s what the hippie
girls all glittering, flecked, stardust, want: to be procreatrix
with flowering hips and tea made from plants instead o f
Lipton; they recline, posh and simple, all spread out draped in
flowing cotton and color; they don’t take money; well, they
do, but they don’t say so upfront— from my point o f view
they are mannerless in this regard; mostly they just hang on,
like they have claws, it passes for spiritual, they just sit there
until he comes back from wherever he’s gone after coitus has
made him triste, they say it’s meditating but it’s just waiting
for some guy to show w ho’s left; they ain’t under the light,
they are o f it— luminescent fairy things from on high, just
down for a fast, ethereal screw. I been to bed with them;
usually a man and one o f them, because they don’t do women
alone— too real for the nitrous oxide crowd, not Buddhistic
enough— it’s got an I want right between the legs and it’s got
your genitals leading your heart around or vice versa, who the
hell knows, and it don’t make the boy happy unless he gets to
watch and the hippie girls do not irritate the love-boys by
doing things that might not be directly and specifically for
them. The hippie boys like bringing another woman into bed.
Y ou can shake some coke loose from them if you do it; or
money, which they pretend is like nothing but they hold onto
it pretty tight. Coke and orange juice is my favorite breakfast;
they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them
hard and high and ready but I like to take some o ff with me and
do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed
with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing
the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from
one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are
housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean m y house, bake
m y bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the
sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—
she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings o f
beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling,
it’s sad. Y ou convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what
he never thought would be near him, street grime he w on ’t be
able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overw rought his
prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t
spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out
without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a
woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; m y
appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big
slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because
there w asn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have
money or no one to take care o f me so they just let me out. M y
side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and
there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in m y
shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain
was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in m y
shoulder. It hurt to breathe. Y ou don’t think about your
shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi
is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full
weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure
from inside on where the drill was and there w asn’t enough
Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and
dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking
beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades o f blue all in
flowers, silk, astonishing whirl o f color; and the man’s dark
with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, ju st hair;
and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s
all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats
on m y hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine:
expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can
barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the
guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind o f monster o f fuck, he
lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by,
and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each
other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and
m y side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be m oving
around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the
whole time although my interest comes and goes, at some
point the boy takes o ff the shirt and I’m wondering who he is
and w hy he’s here, and I don’t have to w orry about her
sentimentality because the boy isn’t seeking variety and he
don’t want to watch, this is a boy who wants to fuck and he
moves good but he’s boring as hell, the same, the same, and
when the pain hits me I am pretty sure I am really going to die,
that the clot is loose in my blood somewhere and it’s going to
go to m y brain, and I’m trying to think this is real glorious,
dying with some Olympian fuck, but the pain is some vicious,
choked up tangle o f blades in my gut, and I try to
choreograph the pain to his fuck, and I try to rest when he’s
not in me, and I am praying he will stop, and I am at the same
time trying to savor every second o f m y last minutes on earth,
or last hours as it turns out, but intellectual honesty forced me
to acknowledge I was bored, I was spending m y last time
bored to death, I could have been a housewife after all; and the
light comes up and I think, well, dawn will surely stop him;
but he fucks well into daylight, it’s bright morning now with a
disagreeably bright sun, profoundly intrusive, and suddenly
there’s a spasm, thank the Lord, and the boy is spent, it’s the
seventh day and this man who fucks must rest. And I thank
God. I do. I say, thank you, Lord. I say, I owe Y ou one. I say, I
appear still to be alive, I know I was doing something
proscribed and maybe I shouldn’t address Y ou before he even
moves o ff me but I am grateful to Y ou for stopping him, for
making him tired, for wearing him out, for creating him in
Y our image so that, eventually, he had to rest. I can’t move
because m y insides are messed up. M y incision is burning as if
there are lighted coals there and I’m afraid to see i f it is open or
i f it will bleed now and m y shoulder has stones crushed into it
as i f some demolition team was crushing granite, reflexive
pain from some dead spot, I don’t know where, and I truly
think I might not ever move again and I truly think I might
have opened up and I truly think I might still die; and I want to
be alone; die alone or bleed alone or endure the pain alone; and
I’m lying there thinking they will go now when the girl starts
pawing me and says stupid, nice things and starts being all
lovey dovey like w e ’re both Gidget and she wants now to have
the experience, if you will, o f making love with a wom an; this
is in the too-little-too-late category at best; and I am fairly
outraged and astonished because I hurt so much and m y little
sister in sensitivity thinks we should start dating. So I tell them
to go; and she says but he doesn’t like me better, m aybe he
needs you to be there— needs you, can you imagine— and I’m
trying to figure out what it has to do with him, w hy it’s what
he wants when I want them to go; it’s what I want; I never
understand w h y it’s always with these girls what he wants— i f
he’s there and even if he ain’t in sight or in the vicinity; he had
his hours doing what he wants; and she tells me she’s
disappointed with me for not being loving and we could all
share and this is some dream come true, the most amazing
thing that’s ever happened, to her or ever on earth, it’s the
pro o f that everything is possible, and the pain I’m in is keeping
me from m oving because I can’t even sit up but I’m saying
very quiet, get out now. And she’s saying it’s her first time
with a woman and she didn’t really get to do anything—
tourist didn’t get to see the Eiffel T ow er— and I say yes, that’s
right, you didn’t get nothing. So she’s sad like some lover who
was real left her and she’s handling me like she read in some
book, being a tender person, saying everything bland and
stupid, all her ideals about life, everything she’s hoped for, and
she’s preachy with the m orality o f sharing and unity and
harm ony and I expect her to shake her finger at me and hit m y
knuckles with a ruler and make me stand in a corner for not
being some loving bitch. T here’s a code o f love you have to
learn by heart, which I never took to, and I’m thinking that if
she don’t take her treacle to another planet I’m going to stand
up, no matter what the pain, and physically carry her out, a
new little bride, over the threshold to outside. She’s some
sobbing ingenue with a delicate smile perpetually on her face
shining through tears which are probably always with her and
she’s talking about universal love when all the boy did was
fuck us to death as best he could, which in m y case was close
but no cigar and I couldn’t bring m yself to think it was all that
friendly; and I had a short fuse because I needed another pill, I
was a few behind and I was looking forward to making them
up now in the immediate present, I could talk real nice to
Demerol and I didn’t want them there for when I got high
again; so I said, you go, because he really likes you and you
should stay with him and be with him and be good to him, so
the dumb bitch leaves with the prince o f peace over there, the
b o y’s already smoking dope so he’s already on another plane
taking care o f him self which is what he’s really good at; and
she’s uncomprehending and she’s mournful that I couldn’t get
the love part right but they went, I saw the b o y’s turquoise and
purple silk shirt float by me and the drippy, sentimental girl in
cotton floated out still soliciting love. I never understood w hy
she thought you could ask for it. N o one can ask it from me. I
never can remember his face; peculiar, since his head was right
above me for so long, his tongue in my mouth, he kissed the
whole time he fucked, a nice touch, he was in her kissing me or
in me kissing her so no one’d get away from him or decide to
do something else; I just can’t remember his face, as if I never
saw it. He was a Taurus. I stayed away from them after that if I
knew a man was one because they stay too long, slow, steady,
forever. I never saw such longevity. She was Ellen, some
flower child girl; doomed for housework. I’m not. I ain’t
cleaning up after them. I keep things as clean as I can; but you
can’t really stay clean; there’s too much heat and dirt. It’s a
sweltering night. The little nymphs, imps, and pimps o f
summer flitter about like it’s tea time at the Ritz. There’s been
uprisings on the streets, riots, lootings, burning; the air is
crackling with violence, a blue white fire eating up the
oxygen, it’s tiny, sharp explosions that go o ff in the air around
your head, firecrackers you can’t see that go o ff in front o f you
when you walk, in front o f your face, and you don’t know
when the air itself will become some white hot tornado, ju st
enough to crack your head open and boil your brains. T hat’s
outside, the world. Summertime and the living is easy. Y ou
just walk through the fires between the flames or crawl on
your belly under them; rough on your knees and elbows. Y o u
can be in the street and have a steaming mass, hot heat, kinetic,
come at you, a crowd, men at the top o f their energy, men
spinning propelled by butane, and they bear down on you on
the sidewalk, they come at you, martial chaos; they will march
over you, yo u ’ll be crushed, bone m arrow ground into a paste
with your own blood, a smear left on a sidewalk. The crow d ’s
a monster animal, a giant w olf, huge and frantic, tall as the
sky, blood pulsing and rushing through it, one predator,
bearing down, a hairy, freaky, hungry thing, bared teeth,
ugly, hungry thing, it springs through the air, light and lethal,
and you will fucking cringe, hide, run, disappear, to be safe—
you will fucking hide in a hole, like some roachy thing you
will crawl into a crack. Y ou can hear the sound o f them
coming, there’s a buzz coming up from the cement, it vibrates
and kicks up dust, and somewhere a fire starts, somewhere
close, and somewhere police in helmets with nightsticks are
bearing down on the carnivorous beast, somewhere close and
you can hear the skulls cracking open, and the blood comes,
somewhere close there’s blood, and you can hear guns, there’s
guns somewhere close because you smell the burning smell,
it’s heat rising o ff someone’s open chest, the singed skin still
sm oking where the bullet went through; the w o lfs being beat
down— shot over and over, wounded, torn open— it’s big
manly cops doing it, steel faces, lead boots— they ain’t
harassing whores tonight. It looks like foreplay, the w ay the
cops bear down on the undulating mass; I stroke your face
with m y nightstick; the lover tames the beloved; death does
quiet you down. But a pig can’t kill a wolf. The w o lfs the
monster prick, then the pigs come and turn the w o lf into a girl,
then it’s payback time and the w o lf rises again. In the day
when the w o lf sleeps there are still fires; anything can suddenly
go up in flames and you can’t tell the difference at first between
a fire and a summer day, the sun on the garbage, the hot air
making the ghetto buildings swell, the brick bulging,
deformed and in places melting, all the solid brick w avy in the
heat. At night the crowd rises, the w o lf rises, the great
predator starts a long, slow walk toward the bullets waiting
for it. The violence is in the air; not symbol; not metaphor; it’s
thick and tasty; the air’s charged with it; it crackles around
your head; then you stay in or go out, depending on— can you
stand being trapped inside or do you like the open street? I
sleep days. It’s safer. I sleep in daylight. I stay awake nights. I
keep an eye out. I don’t like to be unconscious. I don’t like the
w ay you get limp. I don’ t like how you can’t hear what goes
on around you. I don’t like that you can’t see. I don’t like to be
waiting. I don’t like that you get no warning. I don’t like not to
know where I am. I don’t like not to know m y name. I sleep in
the day because it’s safer; at night, I face the streets, the crowd,
the predator, any predator, head on. I’d rather be there. I want
to see it coming at me, the crowd or anything else or anyone. I
want it to look at me and I want a chance. There’s gangs
everywhere. There’s arson or fires or w o lf packs or packs o f
men; men and gangs. The men outside m y door are banging;
they want to come in; big group fuck; they tear me apart; b oys’
night out. It’s about eight or nine at night and I’m going out
soon, it’s a little too early yet, I hear them banging on the door
with knives and fists, I can’t get out past them, there’s only one
w ay out; I can’t get past them. Once night comes it’s easy to
seal you in. Night comes and you have the rules o f the grave,
different rules from daylight, they can do things at night,
everyone can, they can’t do in the day; they will break the door
down, no one here calls the police, I don’t have a gun, I have
one knife, a pathetic thing, I sleep with it under m y pillow. I
figure if someone’s right on top o f me I can split him apart
with it. I figure if he’s already on top o f me because I didn’t
hear him and didn’t see him because I was unconscious and I
wake up and he’s there I can stick it in him or I can cut his
throat. I figure it gives me time to come to, then I try for his
throat, but if I’m too late, if I can’t get it, i f he’s som ehow so I
can’t get his throat, then I can get his back. O r I can finish
m yself o ff i f there’s no other w ay; I think about it each time I
lie down to sleep, if I can do it, draw the knife across m y
throat, fast, I try to prepare m yself to do it, in m y mind I make
a vo w and I practice the stroke before I sleep. I think it’s better
to kill him but I just can’t bear them no longer, really, and it’s
unknown i f I could do it to me; so fast; but I keep practicing in
m y mind so if the time comes I w o n ’t even think. It would be
the right thing. I don’t really believe in hurting him or anyone.
I have the knife; I can’t stand to think about using it, what it
would be like, or going to jail for hurting him, I never wanted
to kill anybody and I’d do almost anything not to. I know the
men outside, they’re neighborhood, this block, they broke in
before, in daylight, smashed everything, took everything,
they ran riot in here, they tell me they’re coming to fuck me,
they say so out on the street, hanging on the stoop; they say so.
T h ey’ve broken in here before, that’s when I started sleeping
with the knife. Inside there’s too many hours to dawn; too
many hours o f dark to hold them off; they’ll get in; I know this
small world as well as they do, I know what they can do and
what they can’t do and once it’s night they can break the door
down and no one will stop them; and the police don’t come
here; you never see a cop here; there’s no w ay to keep them out
and m y blood’s running cold from the banging, from the noise
o f them, fists, knives, I don’t know what, sticks, I guess,
maybe baseball bats, the arsenal o f the streets. The telephone’s
worthless, they cut the wire when they broke in; but no one
would come. This is the loneliest I ever knew existed; now;
them banging. There’s things you learn, tricks; no one can
hurt me. I’m not some stupid piece o f shit. Y ou got a gang
outside, banging, making threats. They want to come in;
fuck. T h ey’ll kill me; fuck me dead or kill me after. It’s like
anything, you have to face what’s true, you don’t get to say if
you want to handle it or not, you handle it to stay alive. So
what’s it to me; if I can just get through it; minimum damage,
minimum pain, the goal o f all women all the time and it’s not
different now. If you’re ever attacked by a gang you have to
get the leader. If you get him, disable him, pull him away from
the others, kill him, render him harmless, the others are
nothing. If you miss him, attack him but miss, wound him,
irritate him, aggravate him, rile him, humiliate him without
taking him out, you are human waste, excreta. So it’s clear;
there’s one way. There’s him. I have to get him. if I can pull
him away from them, to me, I have a chance; a chance. I open
the door. I think if I grab him between the legs I’m in charge; if
I pull his thing. I learn the limits o f m y philosophy. Every
philosophy’s got them. I ain’t in charge. It’s fast. It’s simple. I
open the door. It’s a negotiation. The agreement is he comes
in, they stay out; he doesn’t bring the big knife he has in with
him; it stays outside; if I mess with him, he will hurt me with it
and turn me over to them; if anything bad happens to him or if
I don’t make him happy, he will turn me over to them. This is
consent, right? I opened the door myself. I picked him. I just
got to survive him; and tom orrow find a w ay out; away from
here. He comes in; he’s Pedro or Jo e or Juan; he swaggers,
touches everything, there’s not much left he notes with
humor; he wants me to cook him dinner; he finds m y knife; he
keeps it; he keeps saying what he’ll do to me with it; I cook; he
drinks; he eats; he keeps talking; he brags; he talks about the
gang, keeps threatening me, what he’ll do to me, what they’ll
do to me, aspects o f lovemaking the gang would also enjoy
and maybe he’ll just let them in now or there’s time after,
they’re waiting, right outside, maybe he’ll call them in but
they can come back tom orrow night too, there’s time, no need
to w orry, nice boys in the gang, a little rough but I’ll enjoy
them, w o n ’t I? Then he’s ready; he’s excited himself; he’s even
fingered him self and rubbed himself. Like the peace boys he
talks with his legs spread wide open, his fingers lightly
caressing his cock, the denim pulled tight, exerting its own
pressure. He goes to the bed and starts to undress and he runs
one hand through the hair on his chest and he holds the knife in
the other hand, he fingers the knife, he rubs his thumb over it
and he caresses it and he keeps talking, seductive talk about
how good he is and how good the knife is and I’m going to like
them both and he’s got a cross on a chain around his neck and it
glistens in his hair, it’s silver and his skin is tawny and his hair
on his chest is black and curly and thick and it shines and I’m
staring at it thinking it shouldn’t be there, the shiny cross, I am
having these highly moral thoughts against the blasphemy o f
the cross on his chest, I think it is w rong and concentrate on
the im m orality o f wearing it now, doing this, w hy does he
wear it, what does it mean, his shirt is o ff and his pants are
coming o ff and he is rapturous with the knife in his hand and I
look at the cross and I look at the knife and I think they are both
for me, he will hold the knife, maybe I can touch the cross, I
will try to touch it all through and maybe it will be something
or mean something or I w o n ’t feel so frightened, so alone in
this life now, and I think I will just touch it, and there’s him,
there’s the cross, there’s the knife, and I’m under them and I
don’t know, I will never remember, the hours are gone, blank,
a tunnel o f nothing, and I’m naked, the bell rings, it’s light
outside so it’s been five hours, six, there’s a knock on the door,
insistent knocking, he says don’t answer it, he says don’t
move, he holds the knife against me, just under m y skin, the
tip just under it, and I try to fight for m y life, I say it’s a friend
who expects me to be here and will not go away and I will have
to answer the door and I w on’t say anything and I w on’t tell or
say anything bad, I will just go to the door to tell m y friend to
go away, to convince him everything’s fine, and someone’s
knocking and he has a deep voice and I don’t know what I will
do when I reach the door or who it is on the outside or what
will happen; but I’m hurt; dizzy; reeling; can’t feel anything
but some obscure pain somewhere next to me or across the
room and I don’t know what he’s done, I don’t look at any part
o f me, I cover m yself a little with a sheet, I pull it over me and I
don’t look down, I have trouble keeping m y head steady on
m y shoulders, I don’t know if I can walk from the bed to the
door, and I think I can open the door maybe and just keep
walking but I am barely covered at all and maybe the gang’s
outside and you can’t walk naked in a sheet, they’ll just hurt
you more; anyone will. I can’t remember and I can barely
carry m y head up and I have this one chance; because I can’t
have him do more; you see? I got up, I put something around
me, over me, a sheet or something, just held it together where
I could, and I took some steps and I kept whispering to the
man with the knife in m y bed that I would just get rid o f the
man at the door because he wouldn’t go away if I didn’t come
to the door and really I would just make him go aw ay and I
kept walking to the door to open it, not knowing if I would fall
or if the man in the bed would stick the knife in me before I got
there, or who was on the other side o f the door and what he
would do; would he run or laugh or walk away; or was it a
member o f the gang, wanting some. It was cool and clear and
light outside and it was a man I didn’t know except a little, a
big man, so tall, so big, such a big man, and I whispered to him
to help me, please help me, and I talked out loud that I couldn’t
come out now for breakfast like we had planned and I
whispered to say that I was hurt and that the man inside was a
leader o f a gang and I indicated the big knife on the w indow
ledge, out o f m y reach, a huge dagger, almost a sword, that I
had got the man to leave outside and I whispered that he was in
m y bed now with a knife and out loud I tried to say normal
things very loud but I was dizzy and I wasn’t sure I could keep
standing and the big man caught on quick and said normal
things loud, questions so I could answer them and didn’t have
to think o f new things because I’m shaking and I say the m an’s
in m y bed with a knife and please help me he was with a gang
and I don’t know where they are and maybe they’re around
and they’ll show up and it’s dangerous but please help me and
the big man strides in, he doesn’t take the big knife, I almost
die from fear but he just does it, I used m y chance and there’s
none left, he has long legs and they cover the distance to the
bed in a second and the man in m y bed is fumbling with the
knife and the big man, so big, with long legs, says I’m his; his
girl; his; this is an insult to him; an outrage to him; and the man
in the bed with the knife says nothing, he grovels, he sweats,
he asks forgiveness, he didn’t mean no harm, you know how it
is man; and hey they agree it’s just a misunderstanding and
they talk and the man in m y bed with the knife is sweating and
the man who saved me is known to be dangerous, he is
known, a known very serious man, a quiet man, a major man,
and he says he’s m y man and I’m his woman and he don’t want
me having no trouble with sniveling assholes and any insult he
throws makes the man in m y bed with the knife sweat more
and grovel more and the big man, the man with the long legs,
he speaks very soft, and he says that now the man in the bed
with the knife w ill leave and the man in the bed with the knife
fumbles to put his pants on and fumbles to put his shirt on and
fumbles to get his shoes on and the big man, the man with the
long legs, says quietly, politely, that nobody had ever better
mess with me anymore and the man who was in m y bed with
the knife says yeah and sure and please and thank you and I am
some kind o f prom queen, bedecked, bejeweled, crowned
princess, because the man with the long legs says I am his, and
Pedro or Juan or Jo e is obsequious and he says he is sorry and
he says he didn’t understand and he says he made a mistake and
they chat and I’m shaking bad, I’m there covered a little, I’m
shaking and I’m not really covered and I’m covered in sweat
and I’m trying not to fall down faint and I’m shaking so much
I’m nearly naked, I’m hurt, my head falls down and I see my
skin, all bruised anywhere you can see as if I turned blue or
someone painted me blue, and there’s blood on me but I can’t
look or keep m y eyes open, I’m just this side o f dead but I’m
holding on, I’m shaking but I got something covering me
somewhere and I’m just not quite dead, I’m keeping something covering me somewhere, and Pedro or Juan or Jo e
leaves, he leaves mumbling an apology to the big man and I’m
saying thank you to the big man with serious formality, quiet
and serious and concentrating, and I’m something that ain’t
fresh and new, I’m something that ain’t clean, and I don’t
know anything except he’s got to go now because I have to
curl up by m yself to die now, it’s time, I’m just going to put
m yself down on the bed, very careful, very slow, on m y side
with m y knees raised a little, curled up a little, and I’m going to
God, I am going to ask God to take me in now, I am going to
forgive Him and I am going to put aside all m y grudges against
Him for all what He did wrong and for all the pain I ever had or
saw and I am going to ask Him to take me away now from
here and to somewhere else where I don’t have to move ever
again, where I can be curled up a little and nothing hurts and
whatever hurts don’t have to m ove and that I don’t have to
wake up no more but the big man ain’t through and I say later
or tom orrow or come back and he says I have to pay m y debts
and he talks and he threatens and he has a deep voice and he is.
big and he has long arms and he isn’t leaving, he says, and he is
strong and he pulls me down and gets on top o f me and says I
owe him and he fucks me and I say God Y ou must stop him
now but God don’t stop him, God don’t have no problem
with this, God rides on the back o f the man and I see Him there
doing it and the man uses his teeth on me where men fuck and
G od ’s for him and I’m wondering w hy He likes people being
hurt and I’m past hating Him and past Him and I can’t beg
Him no more for respite or help or death and the big man has
his teeth between m y legs, inside me and on the flesh all
around, he’s biting, not a little, deep bites, he’s using his teeth
and biting into the lips o f m y labia and I’m thinking this is not
happening and it is not possible and it is not true and I am
thinking it will stop soon because it must stop soon but it does
not stop soon because the man has fucked but it means nothing
to him except he had to do it so he did it but this is w hy he is
here, the real reason, this biting in this place, he is wanting to
do this other awful thing that is not like anything anyone ever
did before and I say this is not happening and even Y ou are not
so cruel to let this man do this and keep doing it and not
making him stop but the man has long arms and he’s driven, a
passionate man, and he holds me down and he has long legs
and he uses his arms and legs to keep me pinned down and he is
so big, so tall, he can have his face down there and still he
covers me to hold me down, m y shoulders, m y breasts; but
m y head twists back and forth, side to side, like some loose
head o f a doll screwed on wrong. He is cutting me open with
his teeth, he looks up at me, he bites more, he says lovers’
things, he is the great lover and he is going slow, with his
mouth, with his teeth, and then watching m y head try to
screw itself o ff m y neck; and he gets in a frenzy and there’s no
words for this because pain is littler and sweeter and someday
it ends but this doesn’t end, will not end, it will never end, it’s
dull, dirty, rusty knives cutting my labial lips or the edge o f a
rusty tin can and it’s inside me, his teeth reaching inside me
turning me inside out, the skin, he is pulling me open and he is
biting inside me and I’m thinking that pain is a river going
through me but there’s no words and pain isn’t a river, there’s
just one great scream past sound and my mind moves over, it
moves out o f m y head, I feel it escape, it runs away, it says no,
not this, no and it says you cannot but the man does and my
mind just fucking falls out o f my brains and I am past being
anything God can help anyway and He’s making the man
stronger, H e’s making the man happy, the man likes this, he is
liking this, and he is proud to be doing it so good like a good
lover, slow, one who lasts, one who takes time; and this is real;
this happened and this will last forever, because I am just
someone like anyone and there’s things too bad for me and I
didn’t know you could be lying flat, blue skin with blood from
the man with the knife, to find love again, someone cutting his
w ay into you; and I’m just someone and it’s just flesh down
there, tender flesh, somewhere you barely touch and you
w ouldn’t cut it or wound it; no one would; and I have pain all
over me but pain ain’t the word because there’s no word, I
have pain on me like it’s my skin but pain ain’t the word and it
isn’t m y skin, blue with red. I’m just some bleeding thing cut
up on the floor, a pile o f something someone left like garbage,
some slaughtered animal that got sliced and sucked and a man
put his dick in it and then it didn’t matter if the thing was still
warm or not because the essential killing had been done and it
was just a matter o f time; the thing would die; the longer it
took the worse it would be; which is true. He had a good time.
He did. He got up. He was friendly. He got dressed. I wasn’t
barely alive. I barely moaned or whispered or cried. I didn’t
move. He left. The gang was somewhere outside. He left the
door open, wide open, and it was going to be a hundred years
before I could crawl enough to close it. There was daylight
streaming in. It was tom orrow. T om orrow had finally come,,
a long tom orrow, an eternal tom orrow , I’m always here, the
girl lying here, can’t run, can’t crawl, where’s freedom now,
can’t move, can’t crawl, dear God, help me, someone, help
me, this is real, help me; please, help me. I hate God; for
making the pain; and making the man; and putting me here;
under them all; anyone that wants.
S E V E N
In 1969, 1970, 1971
(Age 22, 23, 24, 2$)
Yeah, I go somewhere else, a new country, not the fucking
U . S . A ., somewhere I never been, and I’m such a sweet genius
o f a girl that I marry a boy. N ot some trash bourgie; a sweet
boy w ho’d done time; I rescued him from jail once, I took all
my money and I gave it to some uniformed pig for him; a
hostage, they had kidnapped him, taken him out o f his bed and
out o f where he lived in handcuffs in the middle o f the night
and they kept him; I mean, he just fucking disappeared and it
was that he was locked up. They let me in the prison, the great
gray walls that are built so high and so cold you can’t help but
feel anyone in them is a tragic victim buried alive. You
w ouldn’t be right but that’s what you’d feel. Cold stone, a
washed-out gray. I was a child standing there, just a girl,
money in my hand, love in my heart, telling the guard I
wanted m y friend loose and had come to pay for him to go
now, with me; I felt like a child because the prison was so big
and so cold, it was the gray o f the Camden streets, only it was
standing up instead o f all spread out flat to the horizon, it was
the streets I grew up on rising high into the sky, with sharp
right angles, an angry rectangle o f pale gray stone, a washed-
out gray, opaque, hard, solid, cold, except it wasn’t broken or
crumbling— each wall was gray concrete, thick, the thickness
o f your forearm— well, if you see someone’s forearm up
someone’s ass you know how long, how thick it is, and I seen
these things, I traveled a hard road until now; not how a
gentleman’s forearm seems draped in a shirt but what it is i f it’s
in you— a human sense o f size, chilling enough to remember
precisely, a measurement o f space and pain; once the body
testifies, you know. It was cold gray stone, an austere
monument; not a castle or a palace or an old monastery or a
stone w inery in cool hills or archaic remains o f Druids or
Romans or anything like that; it was cold; stone cold; ju st a
stone cold prison outside o f time, high and nasty; and a girl
stands outside it holding all her money that she will ever have
in her cute little clenched fist, she’s giving it to the pigs for a
man; not her man; a man; a hero; a rebel; a resister; a
revolutionary; a boy against authority, against all shit. H e’s all
sweet inside, delicate, a tender one, and on the outside he is a
fighting boy with speed and wit, a street fighting boy, a
subversive; resourceful, ruthless, a paragon, not o f virtue but
o f freedom. Bom bs here and there, which I admire, property
not people; blow ing up sym bols o f oppression, monuments to
greed and exploitation, statues o f imperialists and w armongers; a boy brave enough to strike terror in the heart o f business as usual. I’m Andrea, I say to the guard as if it matters;
I have the money, see, here, I’ve come to get him out, he’s m y
friend, a kind, gentle, and decent boy, I say showing a moral
nature; I am trying to be a human being to the guard, I’m
always a pacifist at war with myself, I want to ignore the
uniform, the gun, inside there’s someone human, I want to act
human, be human, but how? I think about these things and I
find m yself trying; trying at strange times, in strange places,
for reconciliation, for recognition; I decide reciprocity must be
possible now, for instance, now standing at a guard booth at
the outermost concrete wall o f the concrete prison. Later,
when I am waiting for his release, I will be inside the concrete
building and all the guards and police and guns will disappear
as if it’s magic or a hallucination and I will wander the halls,
ju st wander, down in the cell blocks, all painted an oily brazen
white, the bars to the cells painted the same bright white— I
will wander; wander in the halls like a tourist looking around
at the bars, the cells, the men in the cages, the neat bunk beds;
the men will call things out in a language I don’t understand,
grinning and gesticulating, and I will grin back— I’m lost and I
walk around and I walk quite a long w ay in the halls and I
wonder if the police will shoot me if they find me and I hope I
can find my w ay back to the room where they left me and I
think about what strange lapses there are in reality, ellipses
really, or little bumps and grinds, so that there are no police in
the halls anywhere and I can just walk around: loaded down
with anxiety, because in Amerika they would shoot me if I
was wandering through; it’s like a dream but it’s no dream, the
clean white prison without police. N o w , outside, with the
guard, at the first barricade, I act nice with both fear and utopia
in m y heart. Who is the guard? Human, like me. I came for my
friend, I say, and I say his name, many times, in the strange
language as best I can, I spell it, I write it out carefully. I don’t
say: m y friend you Nazis grabbed because he’s political— my
friend who makes bombs, not to hurt anyone but to show
what’s important, people not property— my friend w ho’s
afraid o f nothing and no one and he has a boisterous laugh and
a shy smile— m y friend who disappeared from his home three
nights ago, disappeared, and no one knew where he was,
disappeared, gone, and you had come in the middle o f the
night and handcuffed him and brought him here, you had
hauled him out o f bed and taken him away, you had
kidnapped him from regular life, you had pushed him around,
and you didn’t have a reason, not a lawful one, not one you
knew about, not a real crime with a real indictment, it was
harassment, it was intimidation, but he’s not some timid boy,
he’s not some tepid, tame fool; he’s the real thing. He’s beyond
your law. H e’s past your reach. He’s beyond your understanding. H e’s risk and freedom outside all restraint. I never
quite knew what they arrested him for, a w ay he had o f
disappearing inside a narrative, you never could exactly pin
down a fact but you knew he was innocent. He was the pure
present, a whirling dervish o f innocence, a minute-to-minute
boy incarnating innocence, no burden o f m em ory or law,
untouched by convention. And I came looking for him,
because he was kind. He said Andrea, whispered it; he said
Andrea shy and quiet and just a little giddy and there was a
rush o f whisper across m y ear, a little whirlwind o f whisper,
and a chill up and down m y spine. It was raining; we were
outside, wet, touching just barely, maybe not even that. He
lived with his family, a boarder in a house o f strangers, cold,
acquisitive conformers who wanted money and furniture,
people with rules that passed for manners, robots wanting
things, more things, stupid things. He had to pay them m oney
to live there. I never heard o f such a thing: a son. I couldn’t go
there with him, o f course. I had no place to stay. I was outside
all night. It rained the whole night. I didn’t have anywhere to
go or anywhere to live. I had gone with a few different men,
had places to stay for a few weeks, but now I was alone, didn’t
want no one, didn’t have a bed or a room. He came to find me
and he stayed with me; outside; the long night; in rain; not in a
bed; not for the fuck; not. Rain is so hard. It stops but you stay
wet for so long after and you get cold always no matter what
the weather because you are swathed in wet cloth and time
goes by and you feel like a baby someone left in ice water and
even if it’s warm outside and the air around you heats up you
get colder anyw ay because the w et’s up against you, wrapped
around you and it don’t breathe, it stays heavy, intractable, on
you; and so rain is very hard and when it rains you get sad in a
frightened w ay and you feel a loneliness and a desolation that is
very big. This is always so once you been out there long
enough. I f yo u ’re inside it don’t matter— you still get cold and
lonely; afraid; sad. So when the boy came to stay with me in
the rain I took him to m y heart. I made him m y friend in my
heart. I pledged friendship, a whisper o f intention. I made a
promise. I didn’t say nothing; it was a minute o f honor and
affection. About four in the morning we found a cafe. It’s a
long w ay to dawn when you’re cold and tired. We scraped up
money for coffee, pulled change out o f our pockets, a rush o f
silver and slugs, and we pooled it on the table which is like
running blood together because nothing was held back and so
we were like blood brothers and when m y blood brother
disappeared I went looking for him, I went to the address
where he lived, a cold, awful place, I asked his terrible mother
where he was, I asked, I waited for an answer, I demanded an
answer, I went to the local precinct, I made them tell me,
where he was, how to find him, how much money it took to
spring him, I went to get him, he was far away, hidden away
like Rapunzel or something, a long bus ride followed by
another long bus ride, he was in a real prison, not some funky
little jail, not some county piss hole, a great gray concrete
prison in the middle o f nowhere so they can find you if you
run, nail you, and I took all m y money, m y blood, m y life for
today and tom orrow a n d : he next day and for as long as there
was, as far ahead as I can count, and I gave it like a donor for his
life so he could be free, so the piglets couldn’t put him in a
cage, couldn’t keep him there; so he could be what he was, this
very great thing, a free man, a poor boy who had become a
revolutionary man; he was pure— courage and action, a wild
boy, so wild no one had ever got near him before, I wish I was
so brave as him; he was manic, dizzying, m oving every
second, a frenzy, frenetic and intense with a mask o f joviality,
loud stories, vulgar jokes; and then, with me, quiet, shy, so
shy. I met him when he had just come back from driving an
illegal car two times in the last month into Eastern Europe,
crossing the borders illegally into Stalinist Eastern bloc
countries— I never understood exactly which side he was
on— he said both— he said he took illegal things in and illegal
people out— borders didn’t stop him, armies didn’t stop him, I
crossed borders with him later, he could cross any border; he
wore a red star he said the Soviets had given him, a star o f
honor from the government that only some party insiders ever
got, and then he fucked them over by delivering anarchy in his
forays in and out o f their fortressed imperial possessions. He
had a Russian nickname, his nom de guerre, and since his life was
subversion, an assault on society, war against all shit and all
authority, his nom de guerre was his name, the only name
anyone knew he had; no one could trace him to his fam ily, his
origins, where he slept: a son paying rent. Except me. In fact
the cops arrested him for not paying traffic tickets, thousands
o f dollars, under the conventional birth name; he ended in the
real prison resisting arrest. Even in jail he was still safely
underground, the nom de guerre unconnected to him, the body
in custody. When I married him I got his real name planted on
me by law and I knew his secrets, this one and then others,
slow ly all o f them, the revolutionary ones and the ones that
went with being a boy o f his time, his class, his parents, a boy
raised to conform, a boy given a dull, stupid name so he would
be dull and stupid, a boy named to become a man who would
live to collect a pension. I was M rs. him, the female one o f him
by law, a legal incarnation o f what he fucking hated, an actual
legal entity, because there is no Mrs. nom de guerre and no girl’s
name ever mattered on the streets or underground, not her
own real name anyway, only if she was some fox to him, a
legendary fox. I was one: yeah, a great one. I had m y time. But
it was nasty to become Mrs. his Christian names and his
daddy’s last name, the w ay they say M rs. Edw ard Jam es Fred
Smith, as if she’s not Sally or Jane; the wedding was m y
baptism, m y naming, Mrs. what he hates, the one who needs
furniture and money, the one you come home to which means
you got to be somewhere, a rule, a law, Mrs. the law, the one
who says get the mud o ff your shoes because it’s dirtying the
floor, the one who just cleaned the fucking floor after all. I
never thought about mud in my whole fucking life but when
you clean the floor you want to be showed respect. I lived with
him before we got married; we were great street fighters; we
were great. N o one could follow the chaos we made, the
disruptions, the lightning-fast transgressions o f law; passports, borders, taking people or things here or there; street actions, explosions, provocations, property destruction, sand
in gas tanks, hiding deserters from Vietnam, the occasional
deal. We had a politics o f making well-defined chaos,
strategically brilliant chaos; then we made love. We did the
love because we had run our blood together; it was fraternal
love but between us, a carnal expression o f brotherhood in the
revolutionary sense, a long, fraternal embrace for hours or
days, in hiding, in the hours after when we wanted to
disappear, be gone from the world o f public accountability;
and he whispered Andrea, he whispered it urgently, he was
urgent and frantic, an intense embrace. He taught me to cook;
in rented rooms all over Europe he taught me to cook; a bed, a
hot plate, he taught me to make soup and macaroni and
sausages and cabbage; and I thought it meant he was specially
taking care o f me, he was m y friend, he loved me, w e’d make
love and he’d cook. H e’d learned in the N avy, mass meals
enhanced by his private sense o f humor and freedom, the jokes
he would tell in the private anarchy o f the relatively private
kitchen, more personal freedom than anywhere else, doing
anything else. He got thrown out; they tried to order him
around, especially one vicious officer, he didn’t take shit from
officers, he poured a bowl o f hot soup over the officer’s head,
he was in the brig, you get treated bad and you toughen up
or break and his rebellion took on aspects o f deadly force, he
lost his boyish charm although he always liked to play but
inside it was a life-or-death hate o f authority, he made it look
like fun but it was very dark; a psychiatrist rescued him, got
him discharged. His parents were ashamed. He joined real
young to get aw ay from them; he didn’t have much education
except what he learned there— some about cooking and
explosives; some about how to do hard time. He learned some
about assault and authority; you could assault anyone; rules
said you couldn’t; in real life you could. M om m y and daddy
were ashamed o f him when he came home; they got colder,
more remote. Oh, she was cold. Ignorant and cold. D addy
too, but he hid him self behind a patriarchal lethargy; head o f
the clan’s all tuckered out now from a life o f real work, daily
service, for money, for food, tired for life, too tired to say
anything, too tired to do anything, has to just sit there now on
his special chair only he can sit on, a vinyl chair, and read the
newspaper now, only he gets to read the newspaper, which
seems to take all day and all night because he ponders, he
addresses issues o f state in his head, he’s the daddy. D ay and
night he sits in the chair, all tuckered out. H e’s cold, a cold
man whose wife took the rap for being mean because she did
things— raised the kids, cleaned the floor, said eat now, said
sleep now, said it’s cold so where’s the coal, said we need
money for clothes, terrible bitch o f a woman, a tyrant making
such demands, keeping track o f the details o f shelter; and she
got what she needed i f she had to make it or barter for it or steal
it; she was one o f them evil geniuses o f a mother that kept her
eye open to get what was needed, including when the Nazis
were there, occupying, when some didn’t get fed and
everyone was hungry. Daddy got to sit in the special chair, all
for him. O f course, when he was younger he worked. On
boats. Including for the Nazis. He had no choice, he is quick to
say. Well, not that quick. He says it after a long, rude silence
questioning w hy is it self-evident that there was no choice or
questioning his seeming indifference to anything going on
around him at the time. Well, you see, o f course, I had no
choice. N o, well, they didn’t have to threaten, you see, I
simply did what they asked; yes, they were fine to me; yes, I
had no trouble with them; o f course, I only worked on a boat,
a ship, you know. Oh, no, o f course, I didn’t hurt anyone; no,
we never saw any Jew s; no, o f course not, no. M om m y did, o f
course; saw a Jew ; yes, hid a Je w in a closet for several days,
yes. Out o f the kindness o f her heart. Out o f her goodness.
Yes, they would have killed her but she said what did the Jew s
ever do to me and she hid one, yes. Little Je w girl became his
daughter-in-law— times have changed, he would note and
then he would nod ponderously— but it was the hero,
m om m y-in-law, w ho’d say things like “je w it dow n” because
she did the work o f maintaining the family values: fed the
family materially and spiritually. But m y husband wasn’t one
o f them; the worse they were, the purer, the more miraculous,
he was. He wasn’t o f them; he was o f me; o f what I was and
knew; o f what I thought and hoped; o f the courage I wanted to
have; o f the will I did have; o f the life I was leading, all risk and
no tom orrow; and he was born after the war like me; a child o f
after. So there was this legal thing; the law decrees; it made me
their daughter-in-law more than it made me his wife. There
was it and them on the one hand and then there was us: him in
exile from them— I thought he was as orphaned as I was; and
braver; I thought he was braver. I embraced him, and he
embraced me, and neither o f us knew nothing about
tom orrow and I never had. I didn’t wait for him like some
middle-class girl wanting a date or something in ruffles or
someone wanting a husband; I wasn’t one o f them and I didn’t
want a husband; I wanted a friend through day and night. I
didn’t ask him what he liked so I could bow and scrape and my
idea wasn’t to make him into someone safe, denatured. He
was an anarchist o f spirit and act and I didn’t want no burden
o f law on him. I just wanted to run with him, be his pal in his
game, and hold him; hold him. I indulged an affection for him,
a fraternal affection that was real and warm and robust and sort
o f interesting on its own, always sort o f reaching out towards
him, and I felt tender towards him, tender near him, next to
him, lying next to him; and we were intense, a little on edge,
when we holed up together, carnal; our home was the bed we
were in, a bed, an empty room, the floor, an em pty room,
maybe not a regular home like you see on television but we
wasn’t like them on television, there w asn’t tw o people like us
anywhere, so fragile and so reckless and so strong, we were
with each other and for each other, we didn’t hide where we
had been before, what we had done, we had secrets but not
from each other and there w asn’t anything that made us dirty
to each other and we embraced each other and we were going
to hole up together, kind o f a home, us against them, I guess,
and we didn’t have no money or ideas, you know , pictures in
your head from magazines about how things should be—
plates, detergents, how them crazy wom en smile in advertisements. It’s all around you but you don’t pick it up unless you got some time and money and neither o f us had ever
been a citizen in that sense. We were revolutionaries, not
consumers— not little boy-girl dolls all polished and smiling
with little tea sets playing house. We were us, unto ourselves.
We found a small place without any floor at all, you had to
walk on the beams, and he built the floor so the landlord let us
stay there. We planned the political acts there, the chaos we
delivered to the status quo, the acts o f disruption, rebellion.
We hid out there, kept low , kept out o f sight; you turn where
you are into a friendly darkness that hides you. We embraced
there, a carnal embrace— after an action or during the long
weeks o f planning or in the interstices where we drenched
ourselves in hashish and opium until a paralysis overtook us
and the smoke stopped all the time. I liked that; how
everything slowed down; and I liked fucking after a strike, a
proper climax to the real act— I liked how everything got fast
and urgent; fast, hard, life or death; I liked bed then, after,
when we was drenched in perspiration from what came
before; I liked revolution as foreplay; I liked how it made you
supersensitive so the hairs on your skin were standing up and
hurt before you touched them, could feel a breeze a mile away,
it hurt, there was this reddish pain, a soreness parallel to your
skin before anything touched you; I liked how you was tired
before you began, a fatigue that came because the danger was
over, a strained, taut fatigue, an ache from discipline and
attentiveness and from the imposition o f a superhuman
quietness on the body; I liked it. I liked it when the embrace
was quiet like the strike itself, a subterranean quiet, disciplined, with exposed nerve endings that hurt but you don’t say
nothing. Then you sleep. Then you fuck more; hardy; rowdy;
long; slow; now side by side or with me on top and then side
by side; I liked to be on top and I moved real slow, real
deliberate, using every muscle in me, so I could feel him
hurting— you know that melancholy ache inside that deepens
into a frisson o f pain? — and I could tease every bone in his
body until it was ready to break open, split and the m arrow ’d
spread like semen. I could split him open inside and he never
had enough. I had an appetite for him; anything, I’d do
anything, hours or days. In my mind, I wasn’t there for him so
much as I was the same as him. I could feel every muscle in his
body as if it were mine and I’d taunt each muscle, I’d make it
bend and ache and stretch and tear, I’d pull it slow, I’d make it
m ove toward me so much it w ould’ve come through his skin
except I’d make him come before his skin’d burst open. I didn’t
have no shyness around him and I didn’t have to act ignorant
or stupid because he wasn’t that kind o f man who wanted you
to overlay everything with the words o f a fool like you don’t
know nothing. Some was perverse according to how these
things are seen but that’s a concept, not a fact, it’s a concept
over people’s eyes so much you wish they would go blind to
get rid o f the concept once and for all. It’s how the law makes
you see things but we were different. We were inside each
other; a fact; wasn’t perverse; couldn’t be. We turned each
other inside out and it binds you and there w asn’t nothing he
did to me that I didn’t do to him and w e’d talk and cook and
roam around and drink and smoke and w e’d visit his friends,
which wasn’t always so good because to them I was this
something, I didn’t understand it but I hated it, I was this
something that came into a room and changed everything.
There were these guys, mostly fighters, anarchists, some
intellectuals, and when I came into the room everything was
different. I was his blood and that’s how we acted, not giggly
or amorous, but I think I was just this monstrous thing, this
girlfriend or wife, that is completely different from them and
cannot talk without making them mad or crazy, that cannot
do anything but ju st must sit quiet, that does not have any
reason to be in the room at all, not this room where they are,
only some other room somewhere else to be fucked, sort o f
kept like a pet animal and the man goes there when he’s done
with the real stuff, the real talk, the real politics, the real w ork,
the real getting high, even the real fucking— they go somewhere together and get women together to do the real
fucking, they hunt down women together or buy wom en
together or pick up women together to do the real fucking;
and then in some one room somewhere hidden aw ay is the
w ife or girlfriend and she’s in this sort o f vacuum, sealed
aw ay, vacuum packed, and when she comes out to be
somewhere or to say something there is an embarrassment and
they avert their eyes— the man failed because she’s outside—
she got out— like his pee’s showing on his pants. We’d go to
these meetings late at night. These guys would be there; they
were famous revolutionaries, famous to their time and place,
criminals according to the law; brilliant, shrewd, tough guys,
detached, with formal politeness to me. One was a junkie, a
flamboyant junkie with long, silken, rolling brown curls,
great pools o f sadness in his moist eyes, small and elegant, a
beauty, soft-spoken, always nodding out or so sick and
wretched that he’d be throwing up a few times a night and
they’d expect me to clean it up and I w ouldn’t, I’d just sit there
waiting for the next thing we were all going to discuss, and
someone would eventually look me in the eye, a rare event,
and say meaningfully, “ he just threw u p , ” and time would
pass and I’d wait and eventually someone would start talking
about something; I didn’t get how the junkie was more real
than me or how his vomit was mine, you know. When the
junkie’d come to where we lived he would vom it and sort o f
challenge me to leave it there, as he had fouled m y very own
nest, and he’d ask for a cup o f tea and I’d clean it up but I
w ouldn’t get him the tea and I tried to convey to my husband
that m y hospitality was being abused, our hospitality, o f
course, that I wasn’t being treated fair, not that some rule was
being broke but that the boy was being rude to me; I told my
husband to clean it up finally but he never did it too good. I
told m y husband who I still thought was m y brother that I
didn’t want the junkie to come anymore because he didn’t
treat me in an honorable w ay and I said I wasn’t born for this.
So there were these fissures coming between us because the
fraternal affection was with him and the junkie from the old
days together, not him and me from now, and I was shocked
by this, I couldn’t grasp it. I went into the rooms with him but
it came down on him how bad it was from the men and it came
down on me that I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near
where they were. I kept going to the rooms because we kept
hitting targets all over the city and w e’d need to get o ff the
streets fast and he’d know some place he wanted to be, one
friend or another, and they’d all be there; it would contradict
the plan but he’d say it was necessary. Some were on the run
for recent crimes but most were burned out, living in times
past, not fighting no more, most stopped long ago and far
away and they were just burned out to hell. Yeah, they were
tired, I respected that; I mean, I fucking loved these heroes; I
knew they were tired, tired from living on their nerves, from
hiding, from jail, from smoke, from fucking, which came first
for some but last for others. Some had children they had
deserted; some lived in the past, remembering stray girls in
cities they were passing through. They were older than me but
not by a lot. I wanted their respect. I hadn’t given up and I did
anything anybody else did and I wasn’t afraid o f nothing so
how come it was like I wasn’t there? I mean, I was too
honorable to be anything other than strong and silent, I tell
you; but I thought silence made its own sound, you count on
revolutionaries to hear the silence, otherwise how can the
oppressed count on them? Every lunatic was someone we
knew that we dropped in on or stayed with while we were
running— or m oving just for the sake o f speed, the fun o f
flight. We went to other cities, hitchhiking; we lived in small
rented rooms, slept on floors. We went to other countries—
we begged, we borrowed, yeah, we stole, me more than him,
stealing’s easy, I been stealing all m y life, not a routine or some
fixed act, just here and there as needed, from stores when I was
a kid, when I was hungry or when there was something I
wanted real bad that I couldn’t have because it cost money I
didn’t have— I never minded putting money out if I had it in
m y pocket— I mean, I remember taking a chocolate Easter egg
when I was a kid or m y proudest, most treasured acquisition, a
blues record by Dave Van Ronk, the first man I ever saw with
a full beard like a beatnik or a prophet; I took money when I
needed it and could get it easy enough; pills; clothes. M o n ey’s
w hat’s useful. He began dealing some shit, it w asn’t too hard
or dangerous compared to running borders with other
contraband but it got so he did it without me more and more;
he spent more and more time with these low life gangster
types, not political revolutionaries at all but these vulgar guys
who packed guns and just did business; he said it’s just for
money, what’s it got to do with you or with us, I’ll just do it
fast, get the money, it’s nothing; and it was nothing, I didn’t
have no interest in money per se, but it got so he did the
running, he was free, freedom and flight were his, he’d pick up
and go, I didn’t know where he was or who with or when I’d
meet them they’d be lowlife I had no interest in, just toadies as
much as some corporate businessmen were and I’d feel very
bored with them and they’d treat me like I was a skirt and I’d
feel superior and because I didn’t want no part o f them I didn’t
challenge it, I’d just put up with it and be relieved when he did
his shit for money elsewhere; he hunted money down, he
hunted dope down, he drove the secret highways o f Europe at
a hundred miles an hour, without me, increasingly without
me, and I stayed home and dusted walls, waiting, I waited,
while I waited I cleaned, I dusted, I washed things, I made
things nice, I put something here or there, little touches, but
especially I washed things— I washed floors, dishes, clothes,
anything could be washed I fucking washed it; and I would o f
course keep thinking; I’d be doing laundry but I’d think I was
thinking— housework wasn’t what I was doing, not me, no, I
was thinking. I shared the fruits o f all this labor with him,
clean clothes, clean dishes, clean floors, my thinking, which
has always been first-rate in some senses, and I saw him put the
thinking I had done into action so I felt like some pretty major