Mercy

player, running dope and making money all over Europe, and

I kept thinking, and I saw the thinking go into political

actions, so I felt pretty major, and I just kept washing and

thinking; washing, ironing, and thinking; washing, shopping,

and thinking; washing, cooking, and thinking; washing,

scrubbing, and thinking; washing, folding, and thinking. I

saw the consequences o f m y thinking; it was us out there, not

just him. I was important; he knew; you don’t need

recognition in a revolutionary life. Increasingly he incarnated,

freedom, I dreamed it; especially he was the one who got to be

free outside the four walls, and I got to be what he rolled over

on when he got home, dead tired and mean as madness. He

did— he got on top, he fucked me, he went to sleep. I was

incredulous. In the aftershock I ironed, I washed, I scrubbed, I

cooked. I’d lie there awake after he rolled o ff me, on m y back,

not m oving, for hours— outraged, a pristine innocence,

stunned in disbelief; this was me; me. We’d entertain too, the

revolutionary couple, the subversives— I learned to do it. It’s

like you see in all those films where the bourgie wife slinks

around and makes the perfect martini amidst the glittering

furniture; well, shit, honey, I made the most magnificent joint

a boy could sit down to on a beanbag chair. I mean, I made a

joint so gorgeous, so classic and yet so full o f savagery and

bite, so smooth and so deadly, so big and so right, yo u ’d leave

your wife and fam ily and kill your fucking mother ju st to sit

on the floor near it. I was the perfect wife, illegally speaking; I

mean, I learned how to be a stoned sweet bitch, the new good

housekeeping. Y ou r man comes to visit m y man and he

don’t walk home; I am dressed fine and mostly I am quiet

except for an occasional ironic remark which establishes me, at

least in m y own mind, as smart, and I roll a fine joint, and in

this w ay I’ve done m y man proud; he’s got the best dope and a

fine wom an— and a clean house, I mean, a fucking clean

house; and I ain’t som ebody’s dumb wife except in the eyes o f

the law because I defy society— I defy society— I roll joints, I

have barely seen a martini, there’s nothing I ain’t done in bed,

including with him, except anal intercourse, I w o n ’t have it,

not from him, I don’t know w hy but I just w o n ’t, I don’t want

him in me that way, I think it’s how I said he’s m y husband;

husband. But I don’t think he even knew about it. I’d be as

perfect as I could according to his demands, gradually

expressed, over time. Everything escalates. D idn’t matter

how brilliant m y joints were once he started using a chellum, a

Turkish pipe for hash, rare in Europe, not used because you,

had to be so fucking aggressive to use it, the hashish and

tobacco went in it, it was like a funnel, and you pulled it fast

and hard into your lungs through a kind o f wind tunnel made

by your hands clasped at the bottom o f the funnel and the

bitter smoke hit your lungs with a burning punch, with the

force o f an explosion, and your bloodstream was oxygenated

with hash and nicotine. I didn’t like the chellum but I had to do

it, keeping up with Mr. Jones as it were. C an’t find yourself

being too delicate, too demure, unable to take the violence o f

the hit; not if you are Mrs. Jones; have to run with the boy or

the boy runs without you, he don’t slow down to wait, he

don’t say, Andrea doesn’t like this, she likes that, so let’s do

that. Same with sex. He pushes you down and does it. Y ou

solicit his personal recognition. Y ou ask his indulgence. Y ou

beg: remember me; me. It changes slow. He tied me up to fuck

me more and more; tied me up to this nice little modern brass

bed we got, we had a little money; he had from the beginning,

in rented rooms, on mattresses, on floors, it doesn’t take

much, but it was only sometimes; now he tied me up to fuck

me invariably and I was bored, tired and bored, irritated and

bored; but he wanted it which had to mean he needed it and I

want him to do what he needs, I think every man should have

what he needs, I think if he has it maybe he w on ’t need it in a

bad w ay; and I love him— not in love but I love him; him; I’m

with him because it’s him; him; I want him to want me; me. I

said no or not now or let’s just make love and don’t tie me up,

we don’t need it, or even I don’t want it now, I don’t like it, or

trying to say that I didn’t want to anymore and it had to matter

to him that I didn’t want to because this is me; me. I said in all

kindness and with all tenderness that I didn’t want to but he

did want to and so we did because it was easier to than not to

and it wasn’t like we hadn’t before so it wasn’t like I had any

grounds for saying no or any right and it was so fucking dull,

and stupid and I’d want it to be over and I’d wait for it to be

over, especially to be untied; I learned how to wait, not just

when he was doing things to me but after when he’d leave me

there while he’d putter around or watch television or do

something, I’d never know what exactly. I’d get bad pains in

my side from the fucking or really from every time he tied me

to fuck me and I was so fucking bored it was like being back on

the streets but still easier frankly, just awful in some tedious

w ay: when will he be done, when’s he going, when’s it going

to be over. I know I’m saying I was bored, not morally

repelled, and you don’t have a right to nothing if you ain’t

morally repelled, and I know I don’t deserve nothing, but I

wanted us back being us, the wild us outside and free or

stretched out together body to body and carnal, mutual; not

this fucking tame stupid boring tie me up then fuck me. I don’t

have some moral view. M y view was that I was on his side;

that’s what being married meant to me; I was on his side the

w ay a friend on the street, that rarest creature, is on your side;

anything, any time, you need it, you got it, I don’t ask w hy, I

don’t ask any Goddamn thing, I do it, I take any pain that

comes with it or any consequences and I don’t blab about it or

complain or be halfhearted, I just take it. That was it

fundamentally for me. I’d think, when’s he going, except he

w asn’t going; the husband gets to stay. I started having this

very bad pain in m y left side and I felt frustrated and upset

because I hated this, it w asn’t anything for me; it was banal. I

hated having to go through these routines and I’d see the rope

coming out, or the movement toward the bed, or the belts, I’d

see the shadow o f something that meant he wanted this now

and I’d try to divert him to something else, anything else,

football, sports, anything, or if I saw it was going to happen

I’d try to seduce him to be with me; with me. M ore and more

it was pretend, I had to pretend— the sooner he’d come, the

sooner it’d be over, but he liked it, he really liked it, and it

went on and on; afternoons, fading to dusk. After he’d be

jubilant, so fucking high and full o f energy, jum ping and

dancing around, and I’d have this pain in m y left side, acute

and dreadful, and I wanted to crawl into a corner like some

sick animal and he’d want to go visit this one and that one,

married couples, his friends, his family; w e’d go somewhere

and he’d be ebullient and shining and fine and dancing on air,

he’d be golden and sparkling, and I’d be trying to stand the

pain in m y side, I’d be quiet, finally quiet, a quiet girl, not

thinking at all, finally not thinking, eyes glazed over, nothing

to say, didn’t think nothing, just sit there, pale, a fine pallor,

they like white girls pale, unwashed, he wouldn’t let me wash,

dressed, oh yes, very well-dressed, long skirts, demure, some

velvet, beautifully made, hippie style but finer, better,

simpler, tailored, the one w ho’d been naked and tied, and he’d

look over and he’d see me fucked and tied and I’d feel sticky

and dirty and crazy and I’d feel the bruises between m y legs

because he left them there and I’d feel the sweat, his sweat, and

I’d be polite and refined and quiet while he strutted. The men

would know; they could see. T h ey’d fuck me with their eyes,

smile, smirk, they’d watch me. He liked ropes, belt, sticks,

wooden sticks, a walking stick or a cane; cloth gags sometimes. I didn’t feel annihilated; I felt sick and bored. H e’d always do it to me but sometimes he’d have me do it to him as

a kind o f prologue, a short prologue, and I hated it but I’d try

to keep him occupied, excited, I’d try to get him to come, he’d

want to get hard but I’d want to make him come, I’d do

anything to make him come so the next part w ouldn’t happen

but it always did, you put your heart into staying alive, acting

like you’re in charge; married, a married woman, with what

we been to each other, this is just a hard stretch, he’s having

some trouble, it will change, I’ll love him enough, give him

what he needs, it will change, I can do anything, absolutely

anything. I’d go through the motions, tying him, doing what

he wanted, m ostly light strokes o f a cotton wrap-around belt

and fellating him and then he was ready and he’d tie m y wrists

to the bed and I’d start waiting and soon the pain in m y side

would come and I’d know it was going to last for hours and

he’d use a leather belt, a heavy belt, with a big buckle, a silver

buckle, or sticks, or he’d begin with his open hand, or he’d use

a brush, and he’d do what he wanted and he’d take his time and

then sometime he’d fuck me and I’d hope it was over and

sometimes it was and sometimes he’d do more and after he

would untie me and he wanted to visit folks and party, didn’t

matter w ho or where, even his terrible fam ily, he’d play cards,

the men would play cards, or i f it was real late at night he’d

want an after midnight m ovie, a cow boy m ovie, an edge o f

night crowd where there were always people he knew and

deals he could make and he’d strut by them, circle around

them, regale them, touch and poke them, tell vulgar jokes, sell

hash or score and always, always he’d smoke; or w e’d go to an

after-hours club and he’d deal and strut; and I’d sit there, the

quiet, used thing; the pale, used thing. I’d moan and do

everything you’re supposed to; I’d egg him on to try to get him

to finish; I ju st hate the fucking feel o f rope around m y wrists; I

hate it. We didn’t use mechanical things; you can use anything;

you can do anything any time with anything. The bed was in a

tiny middle room, a passageway really, no window s, and I’d

lay there, m y wrists tied to the headboard, and the walls

would be nearer each time, the room w ould get smaller each

time; and sometimes, more and more, he’d leave me spread-

eagle on the bed, m y ankles tied to the base o f the bed, and he’d

be done, and he’d get up, he’d fuck me with m y legs tied

spread apart and then he’d be dead weight on top o f me, he’d

be done, and sometime he’d get up, when he wanted, and he’d

stand there, his back to me, and he’d putter around, he’d find

his pants, he’d pick out a new shirt to wear, he’d hum, and I’d

want to reach out like this was still us, not just him, and he’d be

only a few feet away, but I couldn’t and I’d say his name and

he’d keep his back to me and I’d ask him to untie me and he’d

keep his back to me and I’d tell him m y side hurt and he’d

putter around and I’d see his back and then I’d close m y eyes

and wait. Then, sometimes, he’d say we were going out, and

I’d say I’m sick and I don’t want to, and then I’d get scared that

he’d leave me there tied up and I’d say I wanted to go, I really

did, and he’d sit down on the bed and he’d untie one rope

around m y wrist and then he’d make it tighter to hurt me and

then he’d untie it because I was shaking from fear that he’d

leave me there and I’d put on clothes, what he liked, and I’d

follow him, quiet. I never thought there was anything I

couldn’t walk away from; not me. If I didn’t like being

married I’d just leave. I didn’t care about the law. I wasn’t

someone like that. This was a few fucking ropes; so what? I

was getting nervous all the time; anxious; and he’d keep

waking me up to do something to me; to fuck me; to tie me; I’d

be sleeping, he’d be gone, he’d come in out o f nowhere, he’d

be on me in the bed where I was sleeping, I just could never get

enough sleep. It was ordinary life; just how every day went;

I’d think I could do it one more day, I could last one more day,

he’ll leave, he’ll change, he will go somewhere with someone,

a girl, he’ll find a girl, he’ll go away to buy or sell drugs and

he’ll get caught, he’ll go to jail, he’ll go back to running with

his pack o f boys; a man will always leave, you can count on it,

wait long enough, he’s gone, how long will long enough be?

I’d be counting seconds, on the bed, waiting. He painted the

bedroom a dark, shocking blue, all the walls and the ceiling; I

screamed, I cried, I begged, I can’t stand it, the walls will close

in on me, it makes the ceiling feel like it’s on top o f me, I’ll

smother, I can’t bear it, I screamed obscenities and I called him

names and I could barely breathe from the tears and he hit me,

hard, in the face, over and over; and I ran away; and I was

outside in the cold a long time; I didn’t have m y coat; I was

crying uncontrollably; I went to the park; men tried to pick me

up; I was freezing; m y face was swelling; I couldn’t stop

crying; I felt ashamed; I got scared; I went back; he wanted to

make love; I was tied in the room. I knew he was capable o f

frenzies o f rage; but not at me— he broke furniture, he

punched his fist into walls, once he tore up a pile o f money,

tore it into a million pieces— it was rage at things; not me; I

don’t care about things. It was an internal agony, he was

tormented, he was so distraught, and I thought I’d love him

and it would help that I did. When the violence possessed him,

it didn’t have anything to do with me; it didn’t; I was terrified

by the magnitude o f it, like the w ay yo u ’re frightened o f a big

storm with thunder that cracks the earth open and lightning

that looks like the sk y’s exploding, you feel small and helpless

and the drama o f it renders you passive, waiting for it to be

over, hoping it w o n ’t hurt you by accident. The first time his

frenzy landed on me— landed on me, a shower o f his fists

pummeling me— I just didn’t believe it. It w asn’t something

he would really do; not to me; me. It was some awful mistake;

a mistake. I didn’t clean the refrigerator. I had never seen

anyone clean one before— I mean, I never had, however stupid

I am I hadn’t— and I didn’t see w hy I should do it and I didn’t

want to do it and he told me to do it and I said no and he went

mad, it was some seizure, something happened to him,

something got inside him and took him over, and he beat me

nearly to death, it’s a saying but I think it’s true, it means that

some part o f you that is truly you does die, and I crawled into a

corner, I crawled on the floor down low so he w ouldn’t kick

me, I crawled, and I was sick in the corner but I didn’t m ove,

and he was sorry, and he helped me, he washed m y face and he

put me in bed and he covered me up and he let me sleep and it

ju st w asn’t something you could imagine happening again. O r

I didn't do the laundry right. I didn’t separate the clothes right.

I washed his favorite T-shirt in with the colored clothes and

some colors ran in it and he held it up and he berated me for

how stupid I was and how I did this to hurt him on purpose

because it was his favorite T-shirt and I was trying to placate

him so I was trying to smile and be very nice and I said it was

ju st a mistake and I was sorry and he said you always have

some fucking smart answer and he hit me until I was wet stuff

on the floor. Everything just keeps happening. Y ou do the

laundry, you think you are free, you get waked up by

someone on you fucking you or he ties you up and you get a

pain in your side and then you go to the movies and time slows

down so that a day is almost never over, it never exactly ends,

nothing exactly ever stops or starts, I’d sit in the movie

wondering what would happen if I just stood up and started

begging for help, I wanted to, I wanted to just stand up and say

help me; help me; he’s hurting me; he, this one here, he hurt

me so bad just before; help me; take me somewhere; help me;

take me somewhere safe; and I knew they’d laugh, he’d make

them laugh, some jokes about women or how crazy I was and

the stoned assholes would just laugh and he’d keep me there

through the movie and then life would just go on; then or

later, that night or tomorrow, he would hurt me so bad; like

Himmler. There’s normal life going on all around you and

you have your own ordinary days and it is true that they are

ordinary because doing the laundry is ordinary and being

fucked by your husband is ordinary and if you are unhappy

that is ordinary too, as everyone will tell you i f you ask for

help. Old ladies in the neighborhood will pat your hand and

say yes, dear, but someday they get sick and die. Y ou can’t

remember if there was a prior time and you get so nervous and

so worried and you just keep trying to do everything better,

the cleaning, bed, whatever he wants, you concentrate on

doing it good, the w ay he likes it, and you just squeeze your

mind into a certain shape so you can concentrate on not

making mistakes and some days you can’t and you talk back or

are slow or say something sarcastic and you will be hurt. Did

you provoke it, did you want it, or are you just a fucking

human being w h o ’s tired o f the little king? If you tell anyone

or ask for help they blame you for it. Everyon e’s got a reason

it’s your fault. I didn’t clean the refrigerator, I did mess up the

laundry, I wasn’t in the right, I’m supposed to do those things,

I’m the wife after all, whoever heard o f one who didn’t know

how to do those things, he has rights too; I’m supposed to

make him happy. And I let him tie me up so it’s on me what

happened and if I say I didn’t like it people just say it’s a lie, you

can’t face it, you can’t face how you liked it; and I can’t explain

that I’m not like them, I’m not someone virginal in the world

like them, I been facing what I liked since I was bom and being

tied up isn’t what they think, the words they use like

“ sadomasochism” or “ bondage, ” three-dollar words for

getting a trick to come, and they get all excited just to say them

because they read about them in books and they are all

philosophers from the books and I hate them, I hate the

middle-class goons who have so much to say but never spent

one fucking day trying to stay alive. And when you are a

fucking piece o f ground meat, hamburger he left on the floor,

and he fucks you or he fucking leaves you there for dead,

whichever is his pleasure that day, it’s what you wanted, what

you are, what’s inside o f you, like you planned it all along, like

yo u ’re General Westmoreland or something instead o f messed

up, bleeding trash, and i f yo u ’re running aw ay they send you

back for more, and they don’t give you money to help you,

and they tell you that you like it; fucking middle-class

hypocrite farts. I have a list. I remember you ones. Y o u try to

pull the w ool over someone else’s eyes about how smart you

are and what humanitarians you all are on the side o f

w hoever’s hurting. Nelson Mandela provoked it. What do

you think about that, assholes? We all o f us got the consolation

that nobody remembers the worst things. T h ey’re gone; brain

just burns them away. And there’s no words for the worst

things so ain’t no one going to tell you the worst things; they

can’t. Y ou can pick up any book and know for sure the worst

things ain’t in it. It’s almost funny reading Holocaust literature. The person’s trying so hard to be calm and rational, controlled, clear, not to exaggerate, never to exaggerate, to

remember ordinary details so that the story will have a

narrative line that will make sense to you; you— whoever the

fuck you are. The person’s trying so hard to create a twenty-

four-hour day. The person picks words carefully, sculpts

them into paragraphs, selects details, the victim ’s selection,

selects details and tries to make them credible— selects from

what can be remembered, because no one remembers the

worst. They don’t dare scream at you. They are so polite, so

quiet, so civil, to make it a story you can read. I am telling you,

you have never read the worst. It has never been uttered by

anyone ever. Not the Russians, not the Jew s; never, not ever.

Y ou get numb, you forget, you don’t believe it even when it’s

happening to you, your mind caves in, just collapses, for a

minute or a day or a week or a year until the worst is over, the

center caves in, whoever you were leaves, just leaves; if you

try to force your mind to remember it leaves, just fucking

empties out o f you, it might as well be a puddle on the ground.

Anything I can say isn’t the worst; I don’t remember the

worst. It’s the only thing God did right in everything I seen on

earth: made the mind like scorched earth. The mind shows

you mercy. Freud didn’t understand mercy. The mind gets

blank and bare. There’s nothing there. Y ou got what you

remember and what you don’t and the very great thing is that

you can’t remember almost anything compared to what

happened day in and day out. Y ou can count how many days

there were but it is a long stretch o f nothing in your mind;

there is nothing; there are blazing episodes o f horror in a great

stretch o f nothing. Y ou thank God for the nothing. Y ou get

on your fucking knees. We are doing some construction in our

apartment and we had a pile o f wood beams piled up and he

got so mad at me— for what? — something about a locked

door; I didn’t lock the door or he didn’t lock the door and I

asked him w hy not— and he picked up one o f the w ood beams

and he beat me with it across m y legs like he was a trained

torturer and knew how to do it, between the knees and the

ankle, not busting the knees, not smashing the ankles, he ju st

hammered it down on m y legs, and I don’t remember

anything before or after, I don’t know what month it was or

what year; but I know it was worse, the before and the after

were worse; the weeks I can’t remember were worse; I

remember where it happened, every detail, we had the bed in

the hall near the w ood beams and we were sleeping there

temporarily and it was early on because it w asn’t the brass bed

yet, it was ju st a dum py old bed, an old mattress, and

everything was dull and brown, there was a hall closet, and

there was a toilet at one end o f the hall and a foyer leading to

the entrance to the apartment at the other end o f the hall, and

there wasn’t much room, and it was brow n and small and had

a feeling o f being enclosed and I know I was sitting on the bed

when he began to hit me with the beam, when he hit me with it

the first time, it was so fast or I didn’t expect it because I didn’t

believe it was possible, I didn’t understand what happened, or

how it could; but I remember it and the only thing that means

is that it isn’t the worst. I know how to calibrate torture— how

to measure what’s worse, what’s better, w hat’s more, w hat’s

less. Y o u take the great morbid dark blank days and you have

located the worst. Y ou pray it ain’t buried like Freud says; you

pray God burned it out like I say. Some weeks later he wanted

to have dinner with his sister and brother-in-law. I could limp

with a great deal o f pain. I was wearing dark glasses because

m y eyes had cuts all around them and were discolored from

bruises and swollen out o f shape; I don’t know when m y eyes

got that way; the time o f the wood beam or in the weeks I can’t

remember after; but I had to wear the glasses so no one would

see m y eyes. Them kinds o f bruises don’t heal fast like in the

movies. They all played cards and we had cheese fondue

which I never saw before. I walked with a bad limp, I

concealed the pain as best I could, I wore the dark glasses, I had

a smile pasted on my face from ear-to-ear, an indelible smile,

and brother-in-law brought up the limp and I said smiling

with utter charm that I had tripped over the beams and hurt

myself. D on’t w orry, I whispered urgently to m y husband, I

would never tell. I would never tell. What you did (hoping he

doesn’t hear the accusation in saying he did it, but he does o f

course and he bristles). I’m on your side. I wouldn’t tell.

Brother-in-law, a man o f the world, smiles. He knows that a

lot o f stupid women keep falling down mountains. H e’s a

major in the military; we say a fascist. He knew. He seemed to

like it; he flushed, a warm, sexy flush; he liked it that I lied and

smiled. There’s no what happened next. Nightmares don’t

have a linear logic with narrative development, each detail

expanding the expressive dimensions o f the text. Terror ain’t

esthetic. It don’t work itself out in perfect details picked by an

elegant intelligence and organized so a voyeur can follow it. It

smothers and you don’t get no air. It’s oceanic and you drown,

you are trapped underneath and you ain’t going to surface and

you ain’t going to swim and you ain’t dead yet. It destroys and

you cease to exist while your body endures anyway to be hurt

more and your mind, the ineffable, bleeds inside your head

and still your brain don’t blow. It’s an anguish that implodes

leaving pieces o f you on the wall. It’s remorse for living; it’s

pulling-your-heart-apart grief for every second you spent

alive. It is all them cruel things you can’t remember that went

to make up your days, ordinary days. I was in the bedroom. It

was dark blue, the ceiling too. I’d be doing what he wanted, or

trying to. He fucked me a lot. I’d be crying or waiting. I’d be-

staring. I’d stare. I was like some idiot, staring. After he

fucked me I’d just be there, a breathing cadaver. Y ou just wait,

finally, for him to kill you; you hope it w o n ’t take too long,

you w o n ’t have to grow old. Hope, as they say, never dies.

T im e’s disappearing altogether, it doesn’t seem to exist at all,

you wait, he comes, he hurts you this w ay or that, long or

short, an enormous brutality, physical injury or psychological

torture, he doesn’t let you sleep, he keeps you up, he fucking

tortures you, yo u ’re in a prison camp, yo u ’re tied up or not,

it’s like being in a cell, he tortures you, he hurts you, he fucks

you, he doesn’t let you sleep, it doesn’t stop so it can start

again, there’s no such thing as a tw enty-four-hour day. I don’t

know. I can’t say. I didn’t go out anymore. I couldn’t walk,

really, couldn’t m ove, either because physically I couldn’t or

because I couldn’t. There’s one afternoon he dragged me from

the bed and he kept punching me. He pulled me with one hand

and punched me with the other, open hand, closed fist, closed

fist, to m y face, to m y breasts, closed fists, both fists, I am on

the kitchen floor and he is kneeling down so he can hit me,

kneeling near me, over me, and he takes m y head in his hands

and he keeps banging m y head in his hands and he keeps

banging m y head against the floor. He punches m y breasts. He

burns m y breasts with a lit cigarette. He didn’t need to hold me

down no more. He could do what he wanted. He was

punching me and burning me and I was wondering i f he was

going to fuck me, because then it would be over; did I want it?

He was shouting at me, I never knew what. I was crying and

screaming. I think he was crying too. I felt the burning. I saw

the cigarette and I felt the burning and I got quiet, there was

this incredible calm, it was as i f all sound stopped. Everything

continued— he was punching me and burning me; but there

was this perfect quiet, a single second o f absolute calm; and

then I passed out. Y o u see how kind the mind is. I just stopped

existing. Y ou go blank, it’s dark, it’s a deep, wonderful dark,

blank, it’s close to dying, you could be dead or maybe you are

dead for a while and God lets you rest. Y ou don’t know

anything and you don’t have to feel anything; not the burns;

not the punches; you don’t feel none o f it. I am grateful for

every minute I cannot remember. I thank You, God, for every

second o f forgetfulness Y ou have given me. I thank Y ou for

burning m y brain out to ashes and hell, wiping it out so it is

scorched earth that don’t have no life; I am grateful for an

amnesia so deep it resembles peace. I will not mind being dead.

I am waiting for it. I have breasts that burst into flames, only

it’s blood. Suddenly there’s a hole in my breast, in the flesh, a

deep hole that goes down into my breast, I can be anywhere,

or just sitting talking somewhere, and blood starts coming out

o f m y breast, a hole opens up as if the Red Sea were splitting

apart but in a second, half a second, it wasn’t there and then

suddenly it is there, and I know because I feel the blood

running down my breast, there’s a deep hole in my breast, no

infection, it never gets infected, no pus, no blood poisoning

ever, no cyst, completely clean, a hole down into the breast,

you see the layers o f skin and fat inside, and blood pours out,

clean blood, just comes out, it hurts when the hole comes, a

clean hurt, a simple, transparent pain, the skin splitting fast

and clean, opening up, and I’m not in any danger at all though

it takes me some years to realize this, it’s completely normal,

completely normal for me, I am sitting there talking and

suddenly the skin on a breast has opened up and there is a deep,

clean hole in m y breast and blood is pouring down m y chest

and I’m fine, just fine, and the hole will stay some days and the

blood will come and go. T h ey’re m y stigmata. I know it but I

can’t tell anyone. They come from where the burns were, the

skin bursts open and the blood washes me clean, it heals me,

the skin closes up new, bathed in the blood: clean. Because I

suffered enough. Even God knows it so He sent the sign. I’ve

seen all the movies about stigmata and it’s just like in the.

movies when someone explains what real stigmata is so we

can tell it from a trick; it’s real stigmata on me; it’s God saying

He went too far. He loves me. It’s Him saying I’m the best

time He ever had. They asked in the camps, they asked where

is God; but they didn’t answer: omnipotent, omniscient,

omnipresent, H e’s right here, having a good time. When you

get married, it’s you, the man, and God, ju st like is always

said. God was there. The film unrolled. The live sex show

took place. I’m filthy all over. The worst thing was I’d just

crawl into bed and wait for him to fuck me and he’d fuck me. I

couldn’t barely breathe. His long hair’d be all over me in m y

face, in m y eyes, in m y nose, in m y mouth, and it was so hot I

couldn’t breathe so I went to a barber and I got m y hair cut off,

almost shaved like at Dachau so I’d be able to breathe, so m y

hair w ouldn’t m ix with his, so there’d be less hair, I got

dressed, I found some change, I was scared, I didn’t know

what would happen to me, I told the man to take all m y hair

off, keep cutting, keep cutting, shorter, less, keep cutting,

shave it shorter, I just couldn’t stand all the hair in m y face; but

it didn’t get no cooler and I’d lie still, perfectly still, on m y

back, m y eyes open, and he’d fuck me. He didn’t need no

rope. Y ou understand— he didn’t need no rope. Y ou understand the dishonor in that— he didn’t need no rope and God just watched and it was your standard issue porn, just another

stag film with a man fucking a woman too stupid or too near

dead to be somewhere else; a little ripe, a little bruised; eyes

glazed over, open but empty; I would just lie there for him and

he didn’t need no rope. We was married. I don’t think rape

exists. What would it be? D o you count each time separate;

and the blank days, they do count or they don’t?

E IG H T

In March 1973

(Age 26)

I was born in 1946 in Camden, N ew Jersey, down the street

from Walt Whitman’s house, Mickle Street, but m y true point

o f origin, where I came into existence as a sentient being, is

Birkenau, sometimes called Auschwitz II or The W omen’s

Cam p, where we died, m y family and I, I don’t know what

year. I have a sense memory o f the place, I’ve always had it

although o f course when I was young I didn’t know what it

was, where it was, w hy it was in m y mind, the place, the

geography, the real place, the w ay it was, it’s partial in my

mind but solid, the things I see in my mind were there, they’re

pushed back in my mind, hard to get at, behind a wall o f time

and death. Everything that matters about me begins there. I

remember it, not like a dream and it’s not something I made up

out o f books— when I looked at the books I saw what I already

had seen in m y mind, I saw what I already knew was there. It’s

the old neighborhood, familiar, a far-back memory, back

before speech or rationality or self-justification, it’s w ay back

in m y mind but it’s whole, it’s deep down where no one can

touch it or change it, it can’t be altered by information or

events or by wishful thinking on m y part. It’s m y hidden heart

that keeps beating, m y real heart, the invisible one that no

physician can find and death can’t either. N ot everyone was

burned. At first, they didn’t have crematoria. They pushed all

the bodies into huge mass graves and put earth on top o f them

but the bodies exploded from the gases that come when bodies

decompose; the earth actually heaved and pulled apart, it

swelled and rose up and burst open, and the soil turned red. I

read that in a book and I knew right aw ay that it was true, I

recognized it as if I had seen it, I thought, yes, that seems more

familiar to me than the crematoria, it was as i f m y soul had

stayed above and watched and I saw the earth buckle and the

red come up through the soil. I always knew what Birkenau

was like from the parts o f it I have in m y mind. I knew it was

gray and isolated and I knew there were low , gray huts, and I

knew the ground was gray and flat, and it was winter, and I

knew there were pine trees and birch trees, I see them in the

distance, upright, indifferent, a monstrous provocation,

G o d ’s beauty, He spits in your face, and there were huge piles

o f things, so big you thought they were hills o f earth but they

were shoes, you can see from currently published photos that

they were shoes— the piles were higher than the buildings, and

there was a huge, high arch. I have never liked seeing pictures

o f the A rc de Triom phe in Paris, because they always make me

feel sad and scared, because at Birkenau there was a high arch

that looked like a sculpture against that desolate sky. Y o u

think in your mind the yellow star is one thing— you make it

decorous and ornamental, you give it esthetic balance and

refinement, a fineness, a delicacy, maybe in your mind you

model it on silver Stars o f David you have seen— but it was

really a big, ugly thing and you couldn’t make it look nice. I

think I was only waist-high. Y ou don’t know much if yo u ’re a

kid. I remember the women around me, masses o f wom en, I

held someone’s hand but I don’t think it was someone I even

knew, I can’t see any faces really because they are all taller and

they were covered, heavy coats, kerchiefs on their heads,

layers o f clothes fouled by dirt, but if yo u ’re a child yo u ’re like

a little cub, a puppy, and you think yo u ’re safe if yo u ’re

huddled with women. T h ey’re warm . They keep you warm .

Y o u want to be near them and you believe in them without

thinking. I wasn’t there too long. We walked somewhere, we

waited, we walked, it was over. I’ve seen birch trees here in the

United States in the mountains but I have always transposed

them in my mind to a different landscape: that low, flat,

swam py ground past the huts. Birch trees make me feel sad

and lonely and afraid. There’s astrologers who say that if you

were born when Pluto and Saturn were traveling together in

Leo, from 1946 to about the middle o f 1949, you died in one o f

the concentration camps and you came right back because you

had to, you had an urgency stronger than death could ever be,

you had to come back and set it right. Justice pushed you into a

new wom b and outrage, a blind fury, pushed you out o f it

onto this earth, this place, this zoo o f sickies and sadists. Y ou

are an avenging angel; you have a debt to settle; you have a

headstart on suffering. I consider Birkenau my birthplace. I

consider that I am a living remnant. I consider that in 1946 I

emerged, I burst out, I was looking for trouble and ready for

pain, I wanted to kill Nazis, I was born to kill Nazis, I wasn’t

some innocent born to play true love and real romance, the

parlor games that pass for life. I got these fucked-up compassionate parents who believed in law and kindness and blah

blah. I got these fucked-up peaceful Jew s. I got these fucked-

up civilized parents. I was born a girl. I have so many planets in

Libra that I try to be fair to flies and I turn dog shit into an

esthetic experience. Even my mother knew it was wrong. She

named me Andrea for “ manhood” or “ courage. ” It’s a b o y’s

name; the root, andros, means “ man” in Greek. It’s “ man” in

the universal sense, too. Man. She and God joined hands to

tease me almost to death. He put brains, great hearts, great

spirits, into w om en’s bodies, to fuck us up. It’s some kind o f

sick joke. Let’s see them aspire in vain. Let’s see them fucked

into triviality and insignificance. Let’s see them try to lose at

checkers and tic-tac-toe to boys, year in, year out, to boys so

stupid He barely remembered to give them an I. Q. at all, He

forgot their hearts, He forgot their souls, they have no warrior

spirit or sense o f honor, they are bullies and fools; let’s make

each one o f the boys imperial louts, let’s see these girls banged

and bruised and bullied; let’s see them forced to act stupid so

long and so much that they learn to be stupid even when they

sleep and dream. And mother, handmaiden to the Lord, says

wear this, do that, don’t do that, don’t say that, sit, close your

legs, wear white gloves and don’t get them dirty, girls don’t

climb trees, girls don’t run, girls don’t, girls don’t, girls don’t;

w asn’t nothing girls actually did do o f any interest whatsoever. It’s when they get you a doll that pees that you recognize the dimensions o f the conspiracy, its institutional reach, its

metaphysical ambition. Then God caps it all o ff with

Leviticus. I have to say, I was not amused. But the meanest

was m y daddy: be kind, be smart, read, think, care, be

excellent, be serious, be committed, be honest, be someone,

be, be, be; he was the cruelest jo k er alive. There’d be “ Meet

the Press” on television every Sunday and they’d interview the

Secretary o f State or Defense or a labor leader or some foreign

head o f state and w e’d discuss the topic, m y daddy and me:

labor, Suez, integration, law, literacy, racism, poverty; and

I’d try to solve them. We would discuss what the President

should do and what I would do if I were Secretary o f State. He

would listen to me, at eight, at ten, at twelve, attentively, with

respect. The cruelty o f the man knew no bounds. Y ou have a

right to hate liberals; they make promises they cannot keep.

They make you believe certain things are possible: dignity in

the world, and freedom; but especially equality. They make

equality seem as if it’s real. It’s a great sorrow to grow up. The

w orld ain’t liberal. I always wanted excellence. I wanted to

attain it. I didn’t start out with apologies. I thought: I am. I

wanted to m ix with the world, hands on, me and it, and I’d

have courage. I w asn’t born nice necessarily but nurture

triumphed over nature and I wanted to be the good citizen

who could go from my father’s living room out into the

world. I got all fucked up with this peace stuff—how you can

make it better, anything better, if you care, if you try. I didn’t

want to kill Nazis, or anyone. In this sense I knew right from

w rong; it was an immutable sense o f right and wrong; that

killing killed the one doing the killing and that killing killed

something precious and good at the center o f life itself. I knew

it was wrong to take an individual life, mine, and turn it into a

weapon o f destruction; I knew I could and I said no I w on’t; I

could have; I was born with the capacity to kill; but m y father

changed m y heart. I said, it’s Nazism you have to kill, not

Nazis. People die pretty easy but cruelty doesn’t. So you got

to find a w ay to go up against the big thing, the menace; you

have to stop it from being necessary— you have to change the

world so no one needs it. Y ou have to start with the love you

have to give, the love that comes from your own heart; and

you can’t accept any terror o f the body, restrictions or

inhibitions or totalitarian limits set by authoritarian types or

institutions; there’s nothing that can’t be love, there’s nothing

that has to be mean; you take the body, the divine body, that

their hate disfigures and destroys, and you let it triumph over

murder and rage and hate through physical love and it is the

purest democracy, there is no exclusion in it. Anything,

everything, is or can be communion, I-Thou. Anything,

everything, can be transformed, transcended, opened up,

turned from opaque to translucent; everything’s luminous,

lambent, poignant, sweet, filled with nuance and grace,

potentially ecstatic. I thought I had the power and the passion

and the will to transform anything, me, now, with the simple

openness o f m y own heart, a heart pretty free o f fear and

without prejudice against life; a heart loving life. I didn’t have

a fascist heart or a bourgeois heart; I just had this heart that

wanted freedom. I wanted to love. I wanted; to love. I never

grasped the passive part where if you were a girl you were

supposed to be loved; he picks you; you sit, wait, hope, pray,

don’t perspire, pluck your eyebrows, be good meaning you

fucking sit still; then the boy comes along and says give me

that one and you respond to being picked with desire, sort o f

like an apple leaping from the tree into the basket. I was me,

however, not her, whomever; some fragile, impotent,

mentally absent person perpetually on hold, then the boy

presses the button and suddenly the line is alive and you get to

say yes and thank you. In Birkenau it didn’t matter what was

in your gorgeous heart, did it; but I didn’t learn, did I? I

wanted to love past couples and individuals and the phoney

baloney o f neurotic affairs. I didn’t want small personalities

doing fetishized carnal acts. I thought adultery was the

stupidest thing alive. John Updike made me want to puke. I

didn’t think adultery could survive one day o f real freedom. I

didn’t think it was bad— I thought it was moronic. I wanted a

grand sensuality that encompassed everyone, didn’t leave

anyone out. I wanted it dense and real and full-blooded and

part o f the fabric o f every day, every single ordinary day, all

the time; I wanted it in all things great and small. I wanted the

world to tremble with sexual feeling, all stirred up, on the

edge o f a thrill, riding a tremor, and I wanted a tender embrace

to dissolve alienation and end war. I wanted the w orld’s colors

to deepen and shine and shimmer and leap out, I didn’t want

limits or boundaries, not on me, not on anyone else either; I

didn’t want life flat and dull, a line drawing done by some

sophomore student at the Art League. I thought w e’d fuck

power to death, because sexual passion was the enemy o f

power, and I thought that every fuck was an act o f passion and

compassion, beauty and faith, empathy and an impersonal

ecstasy; and the cruel ones, the mean ones, were throwbacks,

the old order intransigent and refusing to die, but still, the

fuck, any fuck, brought someone closer to freedom and power

closer to dying. And yes, the edge is harrowing and poverty is

not kind and power ain’t moved around so easy, especially not

by some adolescent girl in heat, and I fell very low over time,

very low, but I had devotion to freedom and I loved life. I

w asn’t brought low in the inner sanctum o f m y belief; until

after being married, when I was destroyed. I remembered

Birkenau. I wished I could find my w ay back to the line, you

wait, you walk, you wait, you walk some more, it’s over. I

know that’s ignorant; I am ignorant. I wanted peace and I had

love in m y heart and being hurt didn’t mean anything except I

wasn't dead yet, still alive, still having to live today and right

now; being hurt didn’t change anything, you can’t let fear

enter in. According to the w ay I saw life, I incarnated peace.

M aybe not so some understand it but in m y heart I was peace;

and I never thought any kind o f making love was war; make

love, not war; and when it was war on me I didn’t see it as such

per se; war was Vietnam. I never thought peace was bland; or I

should be insipid or just wait. Peace has its own drive and its

own sense o f time; you need backbone; and it wants to win—

not to have the last word but to be the last word; it’s fierce,

peace is; not coy, not pure, not simpering or whimpering, and

maybe it’s not always nice either; and I was a real peace girl

who got a lot o f it wrong maybe because staying alive was

hard and I did some bad things and it made me hard and I got

tough and tired, so tired, and nasty, sometimes, mean:

unworthy. W hy’d Gandhi put those young girls in his bed and

make them sleep there so he could prove he wouldn’t touch

them and he could resist? I never got nasty like that, where I

used somebody else up to brag I was someone good. There’s

no purity on this earth from ego or greed and I never set out to

be a saint. I like everything being all mixed up in me; I don’t

have quarrels with life like that; I accept w e’re tangled. In my

heart, I was peace. Once I saw a cartoon in The New Yorker,

maybe I was eighteen. It showed a bunch o f people carrying

picket signs that said “ Peace. ” And it showed one buxom

woman carrying a sign that said “ Piece. ” I hated that. I hated

it. But you cither had to be cowed, give in to the pig shit

behind that cartoon, or you had to disown it, disown the

dumb shit behind it. I disowned it all. I disowned it without

exception. I kept none o f it. I pushed it o ff me. I purged m y

world o f it. I disavowed anyone who tried to put it on me.

There couldn’t be this garbage between me and life; like some

huge smelly dump you had to trudge through or crawl

through to slide up against someone else who was also real.

And by the time you got to them you smelled like the garbage.

I said no. I said I will not. I said it is not on me. I said I may be

poor but I am not afraid. I said I want. I said I am not afraid to

pay. I said I will not shield myself. I said I will not pretend to

live life; I will live it. I said I will not apologize and I will not

lie. I said, if I die, I die. I was never afraid to die. I got tough in

some ways but I stayed soft inside the core o f m y belief where

there was tenderness for others, sometimes. I kept a caring

eye. I kept a caring heart. O ver the injury I still believed there

was love; not the love o f two but the love o f many. I still

believed in us, all o f us, us, if we could get free from rules and

obedience and being robots. I liked doing sabotage, I’m not

saying I had a pretty heart, I wasn’t a nice girl and I’m not

claiming it. I had some ruthlessness. I wasn’t easy to kill. I

could keep going. I wanted to live. I’m just saying I cared.

Why didn’t I kill him? Why didn’t I? I’m the most ardent

pacifist the world ever saw. And fuck meant all kinds o f

making love— it was a new word. It was fucking if you got

inside each other, or so near you couldn’t be pulled apart. It

was jo y and risk and fun and orgasm; not faking it; I never

have. It didn’t have to do with who put what where. It was all

kinds o f wet and all kinds o f urgent and all kinds o f here and

now, with him or her. It was you tangled up with someone,

raw. It wasn’t this one genital act, in out in out, that someone

could package and sell or that there was an etiquette for. It

wasn’t some imitation o f something you saw somewhere, in

porn or your favorite movie star saying how he did it. It was

something vast, filled with risk and feeling; feeling; personal

love ain’t the only feeling— there’s feelings o f adventure and

newness and excitement and Goddamn pure happiness—

there’s need and sorrow and loneliness and certain kinds o f

grief that turn easy into touching someone, wild, agitated,

everywhere— there’s just liking whoever it is and wanting to

pull them down right on you, they make you giddy, their

mere existence tickles you to death, you giggle and cheer them

on and you touch them— and there’s sensation, just that, no

morality, no higher good, no justification, just how it feels.

There’s uncharted waters, you ain’t acting out a script and

there’s no w ay past the present, you are right there in the

middle o f your own real life riding a wave a mile high with

speed and grace and then you are pulled under to the bottom o f

the world. The whole w orld’s alive, everything moves and

wants and loves, the whole w orld’s alive with promise, with

possibility; and I wanted to live, I said yes I want to live.

There’s not something new about wanting love in spite o f

knowing terror; or feeling love and having it push against

your thighs from inside and then those thighs carry you out

past safety into hell. There’s nothing new about wanting to

love a multitude. I was born on Mickle Street in Camden in

1946, down the street from Walt Whitman’s house. I grew up

an orphan sheltered by the passion o f his great heart. He

wanted everyone. He wanted them, to touch. He was forced,

by his time and place, into metaphor. He put it in poems, this

physicalized love that was universal, he named the kinds and

categories he wanted, men and women, he said they were

worthy, all, without exception, he said he wanted to be on

them and in them and he wanted them in him, he said it was

love, he said lam , he said lam and then he enumerated the ones

he wanted, he made lam synonymous with you are and we are.

Leaves of Grass is his lists o f lovers, us, the people, all o f us; he

used grandiose language but it was also common, vulgar; he

says I ant you and you and you, you exist, I touch you, I know

you, I see you, I recognize you, I want you, I love you, I am. In

the C ivil War he was devoted to wounded soldiers. He faced

the maiming and the mutilation, and he loved those boys:

“ (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d

and rested, /M any a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded

lips. )” It was before surgeons washed their hands, before

Lister, and legs were sawed off, sutures were moistened with

saliva, gangrene was commonplace. He visited the wounded

soldiers day in and day out. He didn’t eroticize suffering, no; it

was the communion o f being near, o f touching, o f a tender

intimacy inside a vale o f tears. He saw them suffer and he saw

them die and he wrote: “ (Come sweet death! be persuaded O

beautiful death! / In mercy come quickly. )” I got to say, I don’t

think a three-minute fuck was his meaning. I don’t. It’s an

oceanic feeling inside and you push it outward and once you

start loving humanity there is no reason to make distinctions

o f beauty or kind, there’s something basic in everyone that

asks love, forgiveness, an honorable tenderness, a manly

tenderness, you know, strong. He was generous. Call him a

slut. I f a war happens, it marks you for life, it’s your war.

Walt’s was the C ivil War, North against South, feuding

brothers, a terrible slaughter, no one remembers how bloody

and murderous it was. Mine was Vietnam; I didn’t love the

soldiers but I loved the boys who didn’t go. M y daddy’s war

was World War II. Everyone had their own piece o f that war.

There’s Iwo Jim a, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima; Vichy and the

French Resistance; sadists, soldier boys, S . S., in Europe. M y

daddy was in the Army. M y daddy was being sent to the Pacific

when Truman dropped the bomb; the bomb. He says it saved

his life. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life. I never saw

him wish anyone harm, except maybe Strom Thurm an and

Jesse Helms and Bull Connor, but he thought it was okay,

hell, necessary, for all those Japanese to die so he could live. He

thought he was worth it, even if it was just a chance he would

die. I felt otherwise. He had an unreasonable anger against me.

I would have died, he said, I would have died. He was peace-

loving but nothing could shake his faith that Hiroshima was

right, not the mass death, not the radiation, not the pollution,

not the suffering later, not the people burned, their skin

burned right o ff them; not the children, then or later. The

mushroom cloud didn’t make him afraid. To him it always

meant he wasn’t dead. I was ashamed o f him for not caring, or

for caring so much about himself, but I found what I thought

was common ground. I said it was proved Truman didn’t have

to do it. In other words, I could think it was wrong to drop the

bomb and still love m y father but he thought I had insufficient

respect and he had good intuition because I couldn’t see w hy

his life was worth more than all those millions. I couldn’t

reconcile it, how this very patient, very kind, quite meek guy

could think he was more important than all the people. It

wasn’t that he thought the bomb would stop Jew s from being

massacred in Europe; it was that he, from N ew Jersey, would

live. He didn’t understand that I was born in the shadow o f the

crime, a shadow that covered the whole earth every day from

then on. We just were born into knowing w e’d be totally

erased; someday; inevitably. M y daddy used to be beat up by

other boys at school when he was grow ing up. He was a

bookworm , a Je w , and the other boys beat the shit out o f him;

he didn’t want to fight; he got called a sissie and a kike and a

faggot, sheenie, all the names; they beat the shit out o f him,

and yes, one did become the chief o f police in the Amerikan

way; and then, somehow, an adult man, he knows he’s worth

all the Japanese who died; and I wondered how he learned it,

because I have never learned anything like it yet. He was

humble and patient and I learned a kind o f personal pacifism

from him; he went into the A rm y, he was a soldier, but all his.

life he hated fighting and conflict and he would not fight with

arms or support any violence in w ord or deed, he tried

persuasion and listening and he’d avoid conflict even i f it made

him look weak and he was gentle, even with fools; and I

learned from him that you are supposed to take it, as a person,

and not give back what you got; give back something kinder,

better, subtler, more elevated, something deeper and kinder

and more human. So when he didn’t mind the bomb, when he

liked it because it saved his life, his, I was dumb with surprise

and a kind o f fascinated revulsion. Was it just wanting to stay

alive at any cost or was it something inside that said me, la m ; it

got sort o f big and said me. It got angry, beyond his apparent

personality, a humble, patient person, tender and sensitive; it

went me, I am, and it said that whatever stood between him

and existence had to be annihilated. I would have died. I might

have died. As a child I was horrified but later I tried to

understand w hy I didn’t have it— I was blank there, it was as if

the tape was erased or something was just missing. If someone

stood between me and existence, how come I didn’t think I

mattered more; w h y didn’t I kill them; I never would put me

above someone else; I never did; I never thought that because

they were doing something to annihilate me I could annihilate

them; I figured I would just be wounded or killed or whatever,

because life and death were random events; like I tried to tell

m y father, maybe he would have lived. When someone pushes

you down on the ground and puts him self in you, he pushes

him self between you and existence— you do die or you will die

or you can die, it’s the luck o f the draw really, not unlike

maybe yo u ’ll get killed or maybe you w o n ’t in a war; except

you don’t get to be proud o f it i f you don’t die. I never thought

anyone should be killed ju st because he endangered m y

existence or corrupted it altogether or just because I was left a

shadow haunting m y own life; I mean really killed. I never

thought anyone should really die just because one day he was

actually going to kill me, fucking render me dead: inevitably,

absolutely; no doubt. I didn’t think any one o f them should

really die. It was outside what I could think of. Is there

anything in me, any I am, anything that says I will stop you or

anything that says I am too valuable and this bad thing you are

doing to me will cost you too much or anything that says you

cannot destroy me; cannot; me. If someone tortures you and

you will die from it eventually, someday, for sure, one w ay or

another, and you can’t make the day come soon enough

because the suffering is immense, then maybe he should die

because he pushed him self between you and existence; maybe

you should kill him to push him out o f the way. Do you think

Truman would have bought it? M y daddy wouldn’t have

either. At best he’d say w hy did this tragic thing happen to

you— it would never be possible to pin down which tragic

thing he meant— and he’d be bitter and mad, not at the bad one

but at me; I’d be the bad one for him. At worst I’d be plain filth

in his eyes. I don’t know w hy I can’t think all the Japanese

should die so I can stay alive or w hy I can’t think some man

should die. I’ll never be a Christian, that’s for sure. I can’t

stand thinking Christ died for me; it makes me sick. I got some

idea o f how much it hurt. I can’t stand the thought. I am; but so

what? I’ve actually been willing to die so none o f them would

get hurt, even if they’re inside me against what I want. N o w I

started thinking they’re the Nazis, the real Nazis o f our time

and place, the brownshirts, they don’t put you on a train, they

come to where you are, they get you one by one but they do

get you, most o f you, nearly all, and they destroy your heart

and the sovereignty o f your body and they kill your freedom

and they make you ashen and humiliate you and they tear you

apart and it ain’t metaphor and they injure you beyond repair

or redemption, they injure your body past any known

suffering, and you die, not them, you; they kill you some-

times, slow or fast, with mutilation or not; and you are more

likely to murder yourself than them; and that’s wrong, child o f

God, that’s wrong. I can never think someone should die

instead o f me; but they should if they came to do the harm in

the first place; objectively speaking, they should. I think

perhaps they should. M y reason says so; but I can’t face it. I

run instead; run or give in; run or open m y legs; run or get hit;

run, hide, do it, do it for them, do whatever they want, do it

before they can hurt me more, anticipate what they want, do

it, keep them cooled out, keep them okay, keep them quiet or

more quiet than they would be if I made them mad; give in or

run; capitulate or run; hide or run; hide; run; escape; do what

they say; I used to say I wanted to do it, what they wanted,

whatever it was, I used to say it was me, I was deciding, I

wanted, I was ready, it was m y idea, I did the taking, I

decided, I initiated, hey I was as tough as them; but it was fuck

before they get mad— it was low er the risk o f making them

mad; you use your will to make less pain for yourself; you say /

am as if there is an I and then you do what pleases them, girl,

what they like, what you already learned they like, and there

ain’t no I, because i f there was it w ouldn’t have accepted the

destruction or annihilation, it w ouldn’t have accepted all the

little Hitler fiends, all the little Goering fiends, all the little

Him mler fiends, being right on you and turning you inside

out and leaving injury on you and liking it, they liked seeing

you hurt, and then you say it’s me, I chose it, I want it, it’s

fine— you say it for pride so you can stay alive through the

hours after and so it w o n ’t hit you in the face that yo u ’re just

some piece o f trash who ain’t worth nothing on this earth. N o

one can’t kill someone; h o w ’d I become no one; and w h y ’s he

someone; and how come there’s no I inside me; how come I

can’t think he should die i f that’s what it takes to blow him

loose? I’m a pilgrim searching for understanding; because

there’s nothing left, I’m empty and there’s nothing and it takes

a lot o f pride to lie. I wanted; what did I want? I wanted:

freedom. So they are ripping me apart and I smile I say I have

freedom. Freedom is semen all over you and some kinky

bruises, a lot o f men in you and the certainty o f more, there’s

always more; freedom and abundance— m y cup ran over.

There’s a special freedom for girls; it doesn’t get written down

in constitutions; there’s this freedom where they use you how

they want and you say I am, I choose, I decide, I want— after or

before, when you ’re young or when you’re a hundred— it’s

the liturgy o f the free woman— I choose, I decide, I want, I

am— and you have to be a devout follower o f the faith, a

fanatic o f freedom, to be able to say the words and remember

the acts at the same time; devout. Y ou really have to love

freedom, darling; be a little Buddha girl, no I, free from the

chain o f being because you are empty inside, no ego, Freud

couldn’t even find you under a microscope. It’s a cold night,

one o f them unusual ones in N ew Y ork, under zero with a

piercing wind about fifteen miles an hour. There’s no coat

warm enough. I lived in someone’s room, slept on the floor. It

was Christmas and she said to meet her at M acy’s. I followed

the directions she gave me and went to the right floor. I never

saw anything so big or so much. There’s hundreds o f kinds o f

sausages all wrapped up and millions o f different boxes o f

cookies all wrapped up and bottles o f vinegar and kinds o f oil

and millions o f things; I couldn’t get used to it and I got dizzy

and upset and I ran out. I lived with the woman who helped

me when I was just a kid out o f jail— she still had the same

apartment and she fed me but I couldn’t sleep in m y old room,

her husband slept in it now, a new husband, so I slept on a sofa

in the room right outside the kitchen and there were no doors.

There was the old sofa, foam rubber covered with plaid cloth,

and books, and the door to the apartment was a few feet away.

When you came in you could turn right or left. I f you turned

left you went to the bathroom or the living room. The living

room had a big double bed in it where she slept, m y friend. If

you turned right you came to the small room that was the

husband’s and past that you came to the open space where I

slept and you came to the kitchen. The husband didn’t like me

being there but he didn’t come home enough for it to matter.

He was hard and nasty and arrogant but politically he was a

pacifist. He looked like a bum but he was rich. He ordered

everyone around and wrote poems. He was an anarchist. M y

old room had to stay empty for him, even though he had his

own apartment, or studio as he called it, and never told her

when he was showing up. A friend o f hers gave me a room for

a few months in a brownstone on West 14th Street— pretty

place, civilized, Italian neighborhood, old, with Greenwich

Village charm. The room belonged to some man in a mental

institution in Massachusetts. It was a nutty room all right.

T w o rooms really. The first w asn’t wider than both your arms

outstretched. There was a cot, a hot plate, a tiny toilet, a teeny

tiny table that tipped over i f you put too much on it. The

second was bigger and had windows but he filled it up so there

wasn’t any room left at all: a baby grand piano and

humongous plants taller than me, as tall as some trees, with

great wide thick leaves stretched out in the air. It was pure

menace, especially how the plants seemed to stretch out over

everything at night. They got bigger and they seemed to

move. Y ou could believe they were coming toward you and

sometimes you had to check. The difference between people

who have something and me is in how long a night is. I have

listened to every beat o f m y heart waiting for a night to end; I

have heard every second tick on by; I’ve heard the long pauses

between the seconds, enough time to die in, and I’ve waited,

barely able to breathe, for them to end. D aylight’s safer. The

big brown bugs disappear; they only come out at night and at

night yo u ’re always afraid they’ll be there so you can’t help but

see them, you don’t really always know whether they’re real

or not, you see them in your mind or out o f the corner o f your

eye, yo u ’re always afraid they’ll be there so if you see one slip

past the corner o f your eye in the dark you will start waiting in

fear for morning, for the light, because it chases them away

and you can’t; nothing you can do will. Same for burglars;

same for the ones who come in to get you; daylight; you wait

for daylight; you sit in the night, you light up the room with

phony light, it’s fake and dim and there’s never enough, the

glare only underlines the menace, you can see you’re beseiged

but there’s not enough light to vaporize the danger, make it

dissolve, the way sunlight does when finally it comes. Y ou can

sleep for a minute or two, or maybe twenty. Y ou don’t want

to be out any longer than that. You don’t get undressed. Y ou

stay dressed always, all the time, your boots on and a knife

right near you or in your hand. Y ou get boots with metal

reinforced tips, no matter what. Y ou don’t get under the

covers. Y ou don’t do all those silly things— milk and cookies,

Johnny Carson, now I lay me down to sleep. Y ou sit

absolutely still or lie down rigid and ready for attack and you

listen to the night m oving over the earth and you understand

that you are buried alive in it and by the grace o f random luck

you will be alive in the morning— or w on’t be— you will die or

you w on ’t and you wait to find out, you wait for the light and

when it comes you know you made it. Y ou hear things break

outside— windows, you can hear sheets o f glass collapsing, or

windows being broke on a smaller scale, or bottles dashed on

cement, thrown hard, or trash cans emptied out and hurled

against a cement wall, or you hear yelling, a man’s voice,

threat, a wom an’s voice, pain, or you hear screams, and you

hear sirens, there are explosions, maybe they are gun shots,

maybe not— and you hope it’s not coming after you or too

near you but you don’t know and so you wait, you just wait,

through every second o f the night, you wait for the night to

end. I spend the change I can find on cigarettes and orange

juice. I think as long as I am drinking orange juice I am

healthy. I think orange juice is the key to life. I drink a quart at

a time. It has all these millions o f vitamins. I like vodka in my

orange juice but I can’t get it; only a drink at a time from a man

here and there, but then I leave out the orange juice because I

can do that myself, I just get the vodka straight up, nothing

else in the glass taking up room but it’s greed because I like

rocks. I never had enough money at one time to buy a bottle. I

love looking at vodka bottles, especially the foreign ones— I

feel excited and distinguished and sophisticated and part o f a

real big world when I have the bottle near me. I think the

bottles are really beautiful, and the liquid is so clear, so

transparent, to me it’s like liquid diamonds, I think it’s

beautiful. I feel it connects me with Russia and all the Russians

and there is a dark melancholy as well as absolute jo y when I

drink it. It brings me near Chekhov and D ostoevsky. I like

how it burns the first drink and after that it’s just this splendid

warmth, as i f hot coals were silk sliding down inside me and I

get warm, m y throat, m y chest, m y lungs, the skin inside my

skin, whatever the inside o f m y skin is; it clings inside me. M y

grandparents came from Russia, m y daddy’s parents, and I try

to think they drank it but I’m pretty sure they w ouldn’t have,

they were just ghetto Jew s, it was probably the drink o f the

ones who persecuted them and drove them into running

away, but I don’t mind that anyw ay, because now I’m in

Am erika and I can drink the drink o f Cossacks and peasants if I

want; it soothes me, I feel triumphant and warm , happy too. I

have this idea about vodka, that it is perfect. I think it is

perfect. I think it is beautiful and pure and filled with absolute

power— the power o f something absolutely pure. It’s com pletely rare, this perfection. It’s more than that the pain dies or

it makes you magic; yeah, you soar on it and you get wise and

strong by drinking it and it’s a magnificent lover, taking you

whole. But I love ju st being near it in any w ay, shape, or form.

I would like to be pure like it is and I’d like to have only pure

things around me; I wish everything I’m near or I, touch could

be as perfect. I feel it’s very beautiful and if I ever die I wouldn’t

mind having a bottle o f it buried with me, if someone would

spring for it: one bottle o f Stoli hundred proof in honor o f me

and m y times, forever. I’d drink it slow, over time. It’d make

the maggots easier to take, that’s for sure. It does that now.

They ain’t all maggots, o f course. I been with people who

matter. I been with people who achieved something in life. I

want excellence myself. I want to attain it. There’s this woman

married to a movie star, they are damned nice and damned

rich, they take me places, to parties and dinners, and I eat

dinner with them at their house sometimes and she calls me

and gets me in a cab and I go with her. I met her because I was

w orking against the Vietnam War some more. I got back to

N ew Y ork in Novem ber 1972. It was a cold winter. I had

nothing; was nothing; I had some stories I was writing; I slept

on the floor near someone’s bed in a rented room. Nixon

bombed a hospital in North Vietnam. All these civilians died. I

couldn’t really stand it. I went to my old peace friends and I

started helping out: demonstrations, phone calls, leaflets,

newspaper ads, the tricks o f the trade don’t change. I had this

idea that important Amerikans— artists, writers, movie stars,

all the glitz against the War— should go to North Vietnam sort

o f as voluntary hostages so either N ixon would have to stop

the bombing or risk killing all them. It would show how venal

the bombings were; and that they killed Vietnamese because

Vietnamese were nothing to them, just nothing; and it was

morally right to put yourself with the people being hurt.

Inside yourself you felt you had to stop the War. Inside

yourself you felt the War turned you into a murderer. Inside

yourself you couldn’t stand the Vietnamese dying because this

government was so fucking arrogant and out o f control.

There was a lot o f us who never stopped thinking about the

War, despite our personal troubles; sometimes it was hard not

to have it drive you completely out o f your mind— if you let it

sink in, how horrible it was, you really could go mad and do

terrible things. So I got hooked up with some famous people

who wanted to stop the War; some had been in the peace

movement before, some just came because o f the bombings.

We wanted to stop the bombing; we wanted to pay for the

hospital; we wanted to be innocent o f the murders. The U . S.

government was an outlaw to us. The famous people gave

press conferences, signed ads, signed petitions, and some even

did civil disobedience; I typed, made phone calls, the usual;

shit work; but I also tried to push m y ideas in. The idea was to

use their fame to get out anti-War messages and to get more

mainstream opposition to the War. Hey, I was home; only in

Amerika. One day this woman came in to where we were

w orking— to help, she said; was there anything she could do

to help, she asked— and she was as disreputable looking as me

or more so— she looked sort o f like a gypsy boy or some street

w a if—and they treated her like dirt, so condescending, which

was how they treated me, exactly, and it turned out she was

the wife o f this mega-star, so they got all humble and started

sucking. I had just talked to her like a person from the

beginning so she invited me to their house that night for

dinner— it turned out it was her birthday party but she didn’t

tell me that. I got there on time and no one else came for an

hour so her and me and her husband talked a lot and they were

nice even though it was clear I didn’t understand I w asn’t

supposed to show up yet. She took me places, all over, and we

caroused and talked and drank and once when he w asn’t home

she let me take this elaborate bath and she brought me a

beautiful glass o f champagne in the tub, then he came in, and I

don’t know if he was mad or not, but he was always real nice

to me, and nothing was going on, and there wasn’t no bath or

shower where I lived, though I was ashamed to say so, I had to

make an appointment with someone in the building to use

theirs. They kept me alive for a while, though they couldn’t

have known it. I ate when I was with them; otherwise I didn’t.

M y world got so big: parties, clubs, people; it was like a tour

o f a hidden world. Once she even took me to the opera. I never

was there before. She bought me a glass o f champagne and we

stood among ladies in gowns on red velvet carpets. But then

they left. And I knew some painters, real rich and famous.

One o f them was the lover o f a girl I knew. He befriended me,

like a chum, like a sort o f brother in some ways. He just acted

nice and invited me places where he was where there were a lot

o f people. He didn’t mind that I was shy. He talked to me a lot.

He seemed to see that I was overwhelmed and he didn’t take it

wrong. He tried to make me feel at ease. He tried to draw me

out. I sort o f wanted to stay away from places but he just tried

to get me to come forward a little. In some ways he seemed

like a camp counselor organizing events: now we hike, now

we make purses. I’d go drinking with all these painters in their

downtown bars and they had plenty o f money and it wasn’t a

matter o f tit for tat, they just kept the drinks coming, never

seemed to occur to them to stop drinking. I knew his girlfriend

who was a painter. At first when I met him I had just got back.

I was sleeping on floors. I slept on her floor some nights when

he wasn’t there. She was all tortured about him, she was just

all twisted up inside, but I never understood why, she was

pretty incoherent. We drank, we talked about him, or she did;

she didn’t have any other subject. There wasn’t no sexual

feeling between him and me and he acted cordial and

agreeable. We went on a bus with some other people they

knew to N ew Hampshire for Thanksgiving. I think he paid

but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have any money to go but they

wanted me to go; they had friends there. We went on the

Greyhound bus and it let us o ff somewhere in Verm ont and

someone, another painter from up there, was supposed to pick

us up, but he didn’t come all night, so we were in the parking

lot o f the bus station, locked out o f the depot, deserted and

freezing through the whole night; and in the morning we got a

bus the rest o f the w ay. It was like being on a camping trip in

the Arctic without any provisions— w e’d pass around the ugly

coffee from the machine outside. We got cold and hungry and

angry and people’s tempers flared, but he sort o f held it all

together. His name was Paul, she was Jill. They fought a lot

that night but hell it was cold and awful. He was gregarious

but sort o f opaque, at least to me; I couldn’t figure out

anything about him really. He w asn’t interesting, he w asn’t

real intelligent, and then suddenly, mentally, he’d be right on

top o f you, staring past your eyes into you, then he’d see

whatever he saw and he’d m ove on. He had a cold streak right

down the middle o f him. He w asn’t someone you wanted to

get close with and at the same time he held you on his margin,

he kept you in sight, he had this sort o f peripheral vision so he

always knew where you were and what you needed. He kept

you as near as he wanted you. He had a strong w ill and a lot o f

insistence that you were going to be in his scout troop sitting

around the fire toasting m arshmallows. He had opinions on

everything, including who took too many drugs and who was

really gay. We got to N ew Hampshire and there was this big

house a wom an built with a tree right up the center o f it going

out the ro o f and all the walls were w indow s and it was in the

middle o f the woods and I never saw anything so imposing, so

grand. It w asn’t rich so much as handsome from hard w ork

and talent. The two wom en w ho lived there had built it

themselves. One was a painter, one a filmmaker; and it was

real beautiful. There was a lot o f people around. Then the food

came, a real Thanksgiving, with everything, including things

I never saw before and I didn’t know what they were, it was

ju st beyond anything I had ever seen, and it was warm and fine

and it was just people saying this and that. I’d been aw ay a long

time. I didn’t know what mostly they were talking about.

Someone tried to explain who Archie Bunker was to me but I

couldn’t understand what was funny about it or how such a

thing could be on television and I don’t like jokes against

faggots. I sat quiet and drank Stoli all I wanted, day and night.

We all bunked down in different parts o f the huge room. I

made love with a real young guy who reminded me o f a girl I

used to know; and some woman too who I liked. Then

somehow this guy Paul got us all back to N ew York. He had

been in the loft bed with Jill. It was the only real bed and it was

private because it was up so high and behind a structural beam.

They just kept fighting all night so he was aggravated and he

was angry anybody else made love, he said the noise kept him

up. So he wanted to leave and it was follow the leader. It was a

nice Thanksgiving, a real one in a way, as if I lived here, on

this earth, in ways that were congenial to me. The people had

furniture and books and music and food and a big fire and they

talked about all sorts o f things, books, music, everyday

things, and the filmmaker showed her film. I got back to N ew

Y ork, slept where I could, mostly on floors, it could get

harrowing, I would get pretty tired, I wasn’t really understanding how to put an end to it, I felt just perpetually exhausted and stupid, I didn’t see how you get to be one o f

these people who seemed plugged in— food, money, apartment, that stuff. I’d get warm in the bars with the painters. I’d

go downtown and they’d be there and w e’d drink. Sometimes

one o f the guys would hit on me but mostly I said no. I don’t

like painters. They seem very cold to me, the men; and the

women were all tormented like Jill, talked about men all the

time, suffered, drank. I don’t know. I made love with some o f

the women but they were just sort o f servants to the men;

drunk, servile. I fucked some o f the men but they were so

self-involved, so completely cold, in love with themselves, so

used to being mean to whoever was with them. They put this

shit on a canvas and they make it thick or thin and it’s blobs or

something and then they’re known for doing that and they just

do it over and over and then they’re very crass in bed, they’re

just fucking-machines, I never knew men w ho just wanted to

fuck and that’s it, I mean, you couldn’t even say it was a power

trip because it was too cold and narrow for that, greedy and

cold; they really should have just masturbated but they wanted

to do it in a girl. Paul kept making social events and he and Jill

invited me. Then N ew Y ear’s came and Paul had me to this

big dinner; Jill too but it was at his loft, his building I guess, I

couldn’t really grasp that part o f it. I was afraid to go but he

said it would be fine and I didn’t have to do anything or say

anything; I didn’t believe it because usually you had to cook or

clean or something but it was true because this was some

elegant sit-down dinner and there was people serving dinner

and he hadn’t cooked it but someone, some real cook, had. It

was N ew Y ear’s Eve. It made me feel special to be there, even

though I was scared. I felt like someone, not someone famous

or someone rich, ju st someone who could be somewhere

inside with people and nice things, I felt warm and in the midst

o f grace and abundance. It made me feel that there were people

in the world who were vibrant, who talked, who laughed. It

was not ju st some place to be— it was fine, a fine place. I was

almost shaking to see it, the table, the candles, the china, the

silverware, vigorous, jubilant people, warm and ruddy and

with this physical vitality that almost bounced o ff the walls. I

was so lonely that winter. I came back in N ovem ber 1972, all

broke down. It was a bitter cold winter. I went to Paul’s loft on

N ew Y e ar’s Eve for dinner; a formal dinner; except no one

was dressed formal or acted formal. It was shimmering. It was

dazzling. There was plates and beautiful glasses and there was

food after food, all cooked, all served, first one thing, then

another, then another, it went on and on, it was like a hundred

meals all at once, and no one seemed to find it surprising like I

did; I was like a little child, I guess; I couldn’t believe it was

real. There were candles and music but not just candles, the

candleholders were so beautiful, silver, crafted, antique, old,

so old, I thought they must have come right from Jerusalem.

There were about twenty people altogether. The men were

mostly painters, mostly famous, pretty old. They talked and

told jokes. The girls were painters too but they didn’t say

much except for one or two who talked sometimes and they

were real young, mostly. There was a man and a girl and a

man and a girl all around the table. There was all these wines

and all these famous men asking you if you wanted more. Y ou

had the feeling you could ask for anything and these great

men, one o f them or all o f them, would turn heaven and earth

to get it for you. I was shy, I didn’t know what to say; I

certainly wasn’t no great artist yet and I wanted to keep my

dreams private in my heart. I said I was writing stories. I said I

was against the War. The men said, one by one, that you

couldn’t be political and an artist at the same time but they

didn’t argue or get mad at me; it was more like how you would

correct a child who had made an embarrassing mistake. One

o f them took me aside and asked me if I remembered him. He

looked so familiar, as if I should reach out and touch his face. I

said hadn’t we seen a movie together once. He said we had

made love and I was on mescaline and hadn’t I liked it and

didn’t I remember him. He was real nice about it and I said oh

yes, o f course, and it was nice, and there were a lot o f colors.

He didn’t seem to get mad. I smiled all night, because I was

nearly awed. The men had this vitality, they were sort o f

glowing. I never knew such a thing could happen. Y ou

listened to them, because they might say something about art.

One talked to me about death. He was a real famous painter.

He said that both him and me were artists. He said artists were

the only people who faced death without lying. He said that

was the reason to make love— because you had looked death in

the face and then you defied it. He said the others didn’t

understand that but he did and I did and so would I come with

him. And I laughed. I didn’t go with him but I laughed, he

made me happy, I laughed, I felt it was such beautiful bullshit

and I laughed. I thought it was a real nice thing for him to say.

It was a new year. I was drinking champagne. I w asn’t alone. I

wasn’t outside. I was safe. It was so much— beauty and life and

gracious ease; it was so surprising, so completely wonderful

and new; it was glittering and sparkling, it was small and

warm, it was new and scary and exciting and real fine. I started

having this dream over and over. It was N ew Y ork, streets I

knew, usually down in the Village, around Washington

Square, sometimes on Fifth Avenue above the Square. It was

very dark. The dark was almost a person, a character in the

dream. The dark had a kind o f depth, almost a smell, and it

was scary and dense and it was over everything, you almost

couldn’t see anything through it. The dream was somewhere

in the Village, sometimes near those big impersonal buildings

on Fifth Avenue, but even i f it’s deeper in the Village the

buildings are stone, big, impersonal, not the town houses or

brownstones o f the Village, but the impersonal Fifth Avenue

buildings, a cold rich city made o f cold stone. Som ehow I go

into one and it opens into this huge feast, this giant party in this

giant ballroom, physically it’s almost underground as if you

are going down inside the ground but there is this grand

ballroom and the women have gow ns and jew els and the men

are shiny and pretty in black suits and ruffled silk shirts but no

one makes me leave, at first I’m afraid but no one makes me

leave, there’s lots o f noise and there’s music and there’s food,

all sorts o f weird kinds o f food, cocktail food and real food and

drinks and it’s warm and friendly and in the dream I say yes,

I’ve been here before, it’s waiting, it’s always here, it’s just part

o f N ew Y ork , you don’t have to ever be afraid, hidden aw ay

there’s always something like this, you ju st have to find it, and

it fades, the dream fades, and I wake up feeling flushed and

tired and happy and I think it’s out there if only I can

remember where it is and it’s not until I’m out on the streets

that I understand I just dreamed it, I wasn’t really there, not

just last night but ever, but still I think N ew Y ork is full o f

such places, only I don’t know where they are. But after N ew

Year it just was colder and harder; there’s not a lot o f magic in

the world, no beautiful fairy godmother to wave her wand so

you can stop sifting through ashes and go to the ball. I slept

outside the kitchen in m y old friend’s apartment; I wrote

stories, slow, real slow, over and over, a sentence again and

again, I did peace stuff against the War, I got food from bars

mostly. Y ou go during happy hour and you only need one

drink. Y ou can get a man to get it for you or if you have the

change you can do it and then there’s warm food and you can

eat; they make it real fatty usually but it’s good, heavy and

warm and they bring out more and more until happy hour’s

over. I met the actor and his wife and she took me everywhere,

all around. Sometime I moved into the loony’s room with the

carnivorous plants and I wrote stories, slow, real slow, word

by word, then starting over. I had nothing and I was nothing

and I couldn’t tell no one how I was hurt from being married.

And I kept drinking with the painters. I liked the noisy bars

and the people all excited with drinking and art and all the love

affairs going on all around, with all the torment, because it

wasn’t m y torment, it didn’t come near m y torment. It was

distracting, a kind o f static that interrupted the pain I was

carrying. I got the peace group to give me seventy-five dollars

a week and I worked every morning for them, making phone

calls, writing leaflets, mimeographing, typing, doing shit. I

said I was a writer i f someone asked. I worked on m y stories,

slow; I stayed alive as best I could; I waited through long

nights, I waited. N o w it’s bitter cold; a bitter cold night;

unusual in N ew Y ork; with the temperature under zero; with

the wind blowing about fifteen miles an hour, trying to kill

you, cutting you in half and then in half again, you can’t

withstand it, there’s nothing can keep it from running through

you like a knife. I’m in m y little room, the loon y’s room; I’m

staying calm; I don’t like being alone, it’s hard, but I’ m

thinking I’m okay, I’m inside, I’m okay; I’m thinking I will

take out m y notebook and w ork, sit with the words, make

sentences, cross words out, you hear a kind o f music in your

head and you transpose it into words but the words sit there,

block letters, just words, they don’t sing back, so you have to

keep making them better until they do, until they sing back to

you, you look at it and it moves like a song. Y ou hear it

m oving, there’s a buzz on it and the buzz is music, not noise; it

can be percussive but it’s still lyrical, it sings. It’s a delicate

thing, knowing when it’s right. At the same time it’s like

being in first grade where you had to write the words down

careful in block letters and you had to make them perfect;

because you keep trying like some six-year-old to make the

words perfect so they look back at you and they are right, as if

there’s this one right w ay and it sits there, pure and clear, when

yo u ’re smart enough, finally, to put it on the page in front o f

you. I always want to run away from it: putting the words

down, because they’re always w rong at first and for a long

time they stay wrong, but now the cold night keeps me in, the

wind, the killer wind, I sit on the cot, I m ove m y papers to the

tiny table, I get out a pencil and I find some em pty paper, and I

start again, I begin again, I have started again over and over

and tonight I start again, and I hear the words in m y heart. I

came back with two laundry bags, like canvas shopping bags.

I carried them on the plane. T hey were m y laundry bags from

when I was a housewife. One has manuscripts and a couple o f

books. The other has a sweater and some underwear and a pair

o f pants. I don’t have anything else, except a fairly ragged skirt

that I’m wearing, I made it m yself with some cheap cloth, it

has clumps and bulges and I’ve got a couple o f T-shirts. I think

the manuscripts are precious. I think you can do anything if

you must. I think I can write some stories and I think it doesn’t

matter how hard it is. I’m usually pretty tired by night but the

nights are long and if you can write the time isn’t the same kind

o f burden; the words, like oxen, pull the dark faster through

time. I think it is good to write; I think perhaps someday I

might write something beautiful like Death in Venice, something just that lovely and perfect, and I think it would be worth a person’s whole life to write one such thing. I have an

invitation to go to Jill’s art opening, her first show ever. It is a

big event for her. Girls don’t get to have shows very easy, and

some people say it is because o f Paul; she’s resentful o f him; I

tell her it doesn’t matter one w ay or the other, the point is to do

it, just do it. I feel I should go but I don’t have clothes warm

enough for this particular night. I walk everywhere because I

don’t have money for subways, I walk long distances, I took

m y husband’s warm coat when I left— it’s the least you can

give me, I said, he was surprised enough when I grabbed it that

he didn’t take it away— it’s a sheepskin coat from Afghanistan

but it doesn’t have any buttons so you can’t stay warm in bad

wind— it’s heavy and stiff and it doesn’t close right and if

there’s bad wind it rips through the opening; I was running

away and I wanted the warm coat, I knew it would last longer

than money, I was thinking about the streets, I was remembering. And he gave me some money too, took some change

out o f his pocket, some bills he was carrying, handed it to me,

said yeah, take this too. It was maybe what you’d spend on a

cheap dinner. I wanted his coat. I was leaving and there was

m y coat and I thought about having to get through one

fucking night in m y coat, a ladies’ coat, m y wife coat, tailored,

pretty, gray, with style and a little phony fur collar, a waist, it

had a waist, it showed o ff that you had breasts, and I thought,

shit, I w on ’t live through one night in that piece o f shit, I

thought, I’d better have a real coat, I thought, the bastard has a

real coat and yes I will risk m y life to get it so I grabbed it and at

first he didn’t want me to have it but I said shit boy it’s a real

cheap w ay to end a marriage and he could’ve smashed me but

he didn’t because he wanted me out and he looked at me and

said yeah take it and you don’t wait a second, you grab it and

you get out. I never was sorry I took it. I slept on it, I slept

under it, I wrapped it around me like it was m y real skin, m y

shelter, m y house, m y home, I didn’t need to buy other stuff

for staying warm , I wore a cheap T-shirt under it, nothing

else, I didn’t have to w o rry about clothes or nothing like that;

but tonight’s too cold for it, there’s nights like that, wind too

bad, too strong, no respite; tonight’s too cold. I think I’m

going to sit still, sit quiet and calm, inside, in a room, in this

quiet room, w ork on m y story, cross out, put new words

down, try to make it sing for me, for me now, here and now,

in m y head now. T hey say Mann was a bourgeois writer. I

never saw it myself. I think he was outside them and I

wondered how he knew when it was beautiful enough and

when it was right. It seemed you had to have this calm. Y ou

had to be still. I think it’s this funny thing inside that I’m just

getting close to, this w ay o f listening, you can sort o f vaguely

hear something, you have to concentrate and get real still but

then you hear this thin thread o f something inside, and the

words ride on it right or they don’t but if you get the words

perfect they are ju st right on that thread, balanced just right. I

can’t really do it though because I’m always tired and I’m

always afraid. I shake. I can’t quiet down enough. The fear’s

new. I w asn’t some frightened girl. I’m afraid to sit still. I’m

afraid to be alone. I’m afraid when it’s quiet. A n y time I

remember I’m afraid. A ny time I dream I’m afraid. A ny time I

have to sit still alone I’m afraid. I just got this shake in me, this

terror; it’s like the room ain’t empty except it’s hollow , worse

than em pty, like some kind o f tunnel in hell, all dark with

nothing, a perfect void, I’m part o f the void and the air I’m

breathing is part o f it and the walls o f the room are the tunnel

and I’m trapped in a nothing so damned real it’s fixed forever. I

shake bad when I’m alone. I work on the stories barely able to

hold the pencil in m y hand. I don’t have no dope to calm me

down. The shake gets less if I smoke some dope, even a small

joint. Mentally I concentrate on calming m yself down so the

shake’s inside but I ain’t trembling so bad in m y body, I’m

more normal. So I sit for as long as I can, writing words down

and saying the sentences out loud to m yself and then I start

speeding up inside with fear and there’s no reason and so I have

to start calming m yself all over again, I concentrate on it until

I’m sitting still, not shaking. Then he just came right inside.

The door opened and he was in. I heard the locks unlocking—

N ew Y ork locks, real locks, I heard the cylinders turning, but

I didn’t grasp it, it was just a noise I couldn’t associate with

anything, and the door opened before I could register the

sound and he’s there, the g u y’s there, short, dark, w iry, sort o f

bent but from rage, a kind o f twisted anger in his muscles, he’s

tied in knots and it twists him all up and he’s raging all over the

apartment touching things and screaming and it’s him, they

told me he was locked up, it’s the guy, paranoid schizophrenic

they said, a very smart guy they said, but out o f control,

locked up, smart they said, a very smart guy but really fucked

up in the head, hears things, sees things, paranoid, has

delusions, and the landlady’s not here and no one’s here to

calm him down who knows him or to say who I am and he’s

screaming and I am saying who I am and saying the names o f

the landlady and his neighbors and saying, oh, they didn’t

know he’d be back, and I was just here for this second, a few

hours, a day, and I was just leaving, just now, and he’s

screaming and he’s hitting the table and he’s suddenly silent

and staring and he’s between me and m y stuff and I say I’ll be

back for it and he shouldn’t w orry and it’s all okay and o f

course it’s his place and I haven’t touched a thing, and I’m

trying to get m y coat but he’s in the w ay and he’s between me

and m y laundry bags, and me and m y papers, and I grab the

coat in a fast ju m p and swoop and I say the landlady will come

back for m y stuff or he can put it outside and he’s standing

there rigid and I run, I have the coat, I keep talking, I get out,

out o f the apartment, out o f the building, down the steps in the

hall, down the stoop, out, and I’ve got the keys to m y old

friend’s apartment, m y old peace friend, for the sofa outside

the kitchen and she got me the loony’s room and she said to

come back anytime so I turn to her, I’m pretty scared and I’m

shaking and I’m running and I don’t know if he’s calling the

police because there’s no one in the building to say who I am or

that they said I could stay there and I’m running to m y old

friend’s place and it’s a bitter cold night with the wind at about

fifteen miles an hour, under zero, the streets are deserted, they

are bare, and I think well okay, I’m safe, I got out, anybody’d

be shaking, I took everyone’s word that he wouldn’t be back

without enough warning, I relaxed, I took things out o f my

laundry bags, I was there a couple o f months nearly, I mean, I

never completely relax and I never completely unpack; and I

w asn’t asleep, thank God, but now I have to figure out where

to go, and I run to m y old friend’s apartment and I have the

keys in m y hand but I knock first because maybe she is there

and she is inside and she asks who it is and I say I am me and I

say what happened, that the guy came back, showed up,

opened the door, was in, and I ran and I need a place to sleep

tonight and it’s, ah, freezing out there, and she says there’s

someone with her and she doesn’t want me to come in because

he’s with her and I say okay, fine, yeah, it’s fine, yeah, it’s

okay, yeah, okay, because you don’t press yourself on

someone even if they told you always to come to them and

they gave you keys, they have freedom and if they say no then

you ain’t wanted there, and I think about saying to her you

have to do this because I have nowhere to go and nothing and I

will die out there, this ain’t no joke, tonight’s a dying night,

but you can’t push yourself on someone and I figure she

knows that anyway and you can’t count on no one, they will

let you die and that’s just the truth, and she don’t even open the

door to see my face or pass me money, she keeps it locked and I

hear her fasten the chain, and I’m in the hall o f her building and

I think I can go to Jill’s art opening, it’s all I can think of, a bar’s

more uncertain, more dangerous, and I can spend at least a few

hours there inside and there’s people there I know and I can

find a place to sleep maybe on someone’s floor, I don’t want to

fuck anyone, I just know I don’t, but maybe I can find

somewhere, I only got a couple o f dollars and it don’t last long

and you can’t stay warm through a whole night on it and I

don’t know anything past I have to find a place to sleep tonight

and get out o f the cold and I will w orry about the rest

tom orrow, where to go and what to do, I will think about it

tom orrow, and I say to m yself that I ain’t scared and so what

and this is nothing, absolutely nothing, piece o f cake, no

problem, I’ll just go and have a drink or something at the

opening and I’ll ask around and the art opening will last maybe

until two a. m., and then there’s only four hours or maybe five

until dawn, five really, and I can do that; I can do it; if I think

four hours I can do it and then after it’s only a little more time

and there’ll be light; I can do it; it ain’t new and I can do it; and

probably I can find somewhere to sleep and if I have to fuck I

will but I don’t want to but so what if I do but I w on ’t; I can last

through tonight. I’m walking in the wind, it’s like swim m ing

in the ocean against a deep and deadly tide, I’m walking down

to Soho, the streets are bare and the wind is cruel, just fucking

brutal cruel, I get about half a block at a time and I try to find a

doorw ay, warm up, walk as much more as I can stand, the

wind just freezes you, your chest, your blood, your bones; it

fucking hurts; it ain’t some moderate pain, it’s desperate like

some anguish possessing you. Soho’s industrial lofts and.

galleries and a couple o f bars, there’s long streets with

nowhere to go, it’s as if the doorw ays disappeared because the

buildings are industrial buildings and there’s elevators you

have to use to get inside, not normal doors, the painters living

there are illegal and there’s no shops or stores to step into and

Jill’s gallery is w ay downtown, near Canal Street, a long walk,

and the cold’s hurting me and I’m afraid. M y mind is rocking

back and forth from I can find someone and if I have to I’ll fuck

them even no matter what and I can make it from two to six if I

have to, I can. There’s no bums out, there’s no whores,

everyone’s folded inside some crease somewhere and anyone

who ain’t might not live until morning; there’s nights like that;

and I get there and I take the warehouse elevator up and it’s

white, it’s a huge warehouse room painted a glossy white and

there’s all these people dressed in real clothes, you know,

outfits, for style, and the w om en’s all acting nice and flirty

with the men and it’s warm and the men’s all acting smart and

polite and civilized and there’s wine, white wine, and there's

Stoli and bourbon and ice, and there’s cheese and some little

pieces o f food, some little sandwiches, tender little things you

can eat in one bite, yo u ’d be hard pressed to take two, you

know those funny little sandwiches that are always wet and

sort o f wilted, and the room ’s so shiny and white and big the

people almost disappear in it, the ceiling’s so high you feel like

a little ant, and it seems the people are sparse though there’s a

lot o f them, they don’t look like the wind got to them but

rather they’re all polished up, all shined, and there’s paintings

on the walls, Jill’s paintings, and in the middle o f the room

there’s Jill but she’s not looking all polished up, she’s sort o f

gray and miserable, and I say hi and I congratulate her and

she’s mad and sad and I say well it’s a big deal, really, and your

nerves are bound to get frayed, aren’t they, and she gets darker

and stranger, and Paul comes over, and she glowers, and he

says some pleasant things, and she and he seem to agree that

the paintings are on the wall and the people are in the room,

and there’s a certain amount o f tension over this, and Paul’s

saying normal things like hey have something to drink and

there’s food, take some, or have some, and I’m saying the sort

o f foolish things people say about paintings, aren’t they

strong, aren’t they interesting, haven’t they grown, don’t they

dominate the room, and it works kind o f like Valium because

Jill evens out and there’s a small smile out o f one side o f her

mouth at least and I think I should just walk around and see

about finding someone I can ask for a place to sleep, and I walk

around, and I have one drink to warm up because I can’t drink

because I don’t know what the rest o f the night will be and

relaxing isn’t in the picture until there’s shelter and I have a wet

sandwich and I chat with this woman and this man and they’re

mostly painters and they really all want to say something

about the relationship, Paul and Jill, not the paintings, so

there’s this catty, gossipy quality to everything and also it’s all

secretive because no one wants to be accidentally overheard by

Jill or Paul and while Jill is staying one place, dead center in the

room, just standing there by a particularly big painting, Paul is

all over, behind people, in conversations, introducing people,

the real host, the scout leader; and he chats with me awhile too.

But I’m scared, because I know this will end and real life will

come back. I know the trick’s not to look desperate. I know

the trick’s to seem as if there’s nothing wrong; w hy the hell do

you need to sleep on someone’s floor if nothing’s wrong? I

can’t think o f any plausible reason but I figure it’s not rational

as such, you know, reasons, it’s attitude, you have to have a

kind o f calm as if it’s just normal so no one thinks they’ll have to

give you anything; or care for you. So I make m yself steady

and I think this is normal and I ain’t so scared as actually I am

and I think well Jill knows everyone here and she’s m y friend

so I’ll ask her and I take her aside, meaning just a little o ff her

mark, and I say I need a place to sleep and is there anyone here

who might put me up ju st for one night, and she says she’ll

think about it, and I smile and act as if it’s okay one w ay or

another and I drift o ff and more time passes, and I’m drinking

soda and thinking, every second thinking, m y heart beating

too fast in fear, but outside I’m calm and simple, and Jill comes

up and says, listen, I’m going home with Paul so w hy don’t

you stay at m y loft, and I say that’s great, because it is, and I am

fucking happy, I think even it will be nice, it’s a big place, it’s

sort o f dark but it’s fine, you know, with a bed on a kind o f

platform, a mattress really, and it’s really nice, you know, so

I’m at ease, I mean I am really happy, and I pour m yself a stiff

drink, a real fine drink, and I’m chatting aw ay like a real

person, you know, I can’t emphasize enough how m y heart

slows down and how m y blood stops racing and how inside

m y head calms down and I’m just a person, not so shiny as the

others but not scared no more, more like a happy girl o f the

regular kind, and then, once the adrenaline has subsided

altogether, I feel how tired I am, I feel how it’s worn me out, I

feel how cold I got and how I’m just dragged out and

enervated, weary, and it’s midnight by now , I been at the

opening a long time, and I think it’s decent to leave, so I go to

Jill, and she and Paul are holding hands and they are looking

happy and I am glad there’s a truce and I ask if I could go to her

loft now , and she’s upset or confused or something, and m y

heart sinks, but he says, look, I’m going to stay at Jill’s loft

with her, it’s ju st easier, so w hy don’t you go to m y place, it’s

empty, there’s no problem, I’ll give you the keys, okay? I say

things like I don’t want to put you out and arc you sure it’s

okay and he says what is obvious, I ain’t putting him out

because it’s a big night for Jill and he’s staying with her at her

place because it’s ju st better for her that w ay; and I say fine; and

everyone says fine; and he’s going to give me the keys and

directions because I’m not sure where it is from here and I’m

waiting for him to come tell me these things, he said he’d write

them down, and fatigue is dragging me down, and I get my

coat and he comes and says hell I’ll just walk you there, it’s no

big deal, Jill’s going to be here for a couple o f hours yet, I’ll

walk you and come back, it’s just a few blocks away; and I was

glad because I didn’t want to get lost and I don’t know it

around here so good and it’s late and the streets are a little scary

down here, it’s not a regular neighborhood, and the wind has

made the streets bare and menacing as if it’s blowing dark

shadows in your face to smother you, and we go out, and it’s

colder than before, you are turned half to ice and the streets are

empty, just this naked cement with tides o f wind sweeping

over it like a sandstorm in the desert, and he says shit let’s get a

drink, and we step into a bar, we fucking dive into it, grateful

it’s there, and w e’re at the bar and I’m drinking my Stoli

straight up and I don’t have no money and I say so because I’m

planning to pay half because that’s fair and also I don’t want

wrong ideas communicated or to take advantage because he’s

a famous painter and he’s saying shit it doesn’t matter, it’s so

fucking cold we w on’t make it if we don’t take care o f

ourselves, and we talk about Hem ingway or something, and

we take o ff again, and we get a little further and there’s another

bar and we dive in, grateful, and we sit at the bar and there’s

another Stoli in front o f me and w e’re talking about some actor

he knows w h o ’s shooting cocaine and he’s saying it’s a tragedy

and I’m thinking yeah it is; and I’m saying Jill will w orry and

he’s saying there’s plenty o f time and I’m saying we should

just brave it and walk to his place and he’s saying it’s Jill’s

opening and she’s the center o f attention and that’s how it

should be and it’s good for her, she needs to stand more on her

own, and he’s proud o f her, and it’ll be fine, and there’s

another Stoli and another and another bar and another and he’s

putting down ten dollar bills for the bartender and I see the

vodka in front o f me and I drink it, and we talk about

H em ingway, and Ginsberg, and Whitman, and we duck into

another bar, and it’s almost empty, they all are, the weather

makes everything deserted and quiet and we seem like the only

people on earth, really, and the streets get darker, and the wind

gets colder, and the Stoli goes down smoother, easier, faster,

and he unrolls the bills faster, easier, more, and I’m saying shit

I’m tired and I’m telling him m y sad story o f this night and

how I didn’t have anywhere to go and how I don’t have no

money and how things are and he’s concerned, he’s listening,

I’m saying how frightened I was and he’s taking it all in; and

shit I can drink like any man, you know, I mean, I can drink, I

don’t fold, and I say I can outdrink him and he don’t think so

but I fucking do because he stops but he keeps ordering them

for me and I know I’m going to be crashing soon so I’m not

concerned, there’s nothing I have to do but sleep, alone,

warm , inside, and we get to his place and I ask for his keys and

he says he’ll open it because it’s hard and he opens it, it’s a lot o f

locks, it’s locks that slip and slide and look like they have jaw s,

they m ove and slide and spring and jum p, and the door finally

gets open and he says he’ll take me up and inside the door

there’s steps but first he locks the locks from inside, he locks

them with his keys and he says see this is how you do it when

you come in, don’t forget now, and he pockets the keys and I

think I have to remember to get them so when he leaves I’ll be

able to lock the door behind him, it’s unfamiliar to me and I

don’t want to forget, and then there’s the steps, these huge,

wood steps, these towering flights, these creaky, knotted

steps, these splintery steps, there’s maybe a hundred o f them,

it’s so high up you can’t see the top, so you go up the first

twenty or something and there’s a big, em pty room, more like

a baseball field, it’s not like an apartment building where

there’s other people on the first landing, there’s no one there

and it’s em pty, and there’s another twenty or thirty steps and

it’s knottier and there’s holes in the middle o f the steps and

you’re trying to get up them without looking like a fool or

falling and there’s another floor that’s some cavernous room

with canvases and boxes and it’s brown, all brown, stretched

canvases and paintings wrapped in brown paper for shipping

and huge standing spirals o f brown twine like statues and

brown masking tape and these vast rolls o f heavy brown tape,

the kind o f tape you have to wet and you use it to reinforce

heavy boxes, and there’s brown boxes, cartons, unfolded and

folded and there’s brown crates, it’s a kind o f dead brown

room, the air’s brown, not just dark but brown as if it’s

colored brown, as if the air itself is brown, and the walls and

the floor and everything in it is dull brown and it’s not a room

in the normal sense, in the human sense, it’s more like an

airstrip, and you keep climbing and then there’s this next

floor, it’s big like a fucking commercial garage or something

and it’s completely covered in paint, oil paint, you could park

a hundred cars in it but the whole floor is thick with dried red

paint, oil paint or acrylics you know, like the blob’s all dead

and it died in here, the paint’s fucking deep on the floor, it’s

shocking pinks and royal blues and yellows so bright they hurt

your eyes, I don’t mean the floor is painted like someone put

paint on a brush and used the brush to paint the floor or a wall

or something, it’s more like the paint is spilled on gallon after

gallon, heaps and heaps o f it, it’s inches thick or feet thick, it

dries hard and sticky, you walk on it with trepidation thinking

you will sink but it’s firm, it gives a little but it’s firm, it’s dry,

it’s like an artist’s palette like you see in the movies but it’s a

whole real floor o f a room as big as a city block and you walk

on it like yo u ’re outside in the hills walking on real ground

that’s uneven and it’s been wet and you sink in some places or

at least you expect to, the earth’s higher and lower by inches

and you got boots to help you find your footing, your feet sink

in but not really, the ground just gives a little and it ain’t even,

you don’t fall but your footing ain’t sure, but it’s paint, not

earth, paint, it must be a million paint stores all emptied out on.

the floor and then rising from the paint, from the thick, dried,

uneven, shocking paint, there’s canvases and there’s paint on

them, beautiful paint, measured, delicate by contrast, esthetic,

organized into colors and shapes that have to do with each

other, they touch, you see right aw ay that there is meaning in

their touch, there’s something in it, it’s not random, it’s too

fine, almost emotionally austere, your heart sort o f skips a beat

to see how intelligent the paint is, you look up from the chaos

o f the paint on the floor to the delicacy o f the paint on the

canvas and I at least almost want to cry, I just feel such sorrow

for how frail we are. I just had never seen it so clear how art is

about mortality, finding the one thin strain o f significance, a

line o f sorrow, the thread o f a meaning, an idea against death,

an assertion with color or shape as if you could draw a perfect

line to stand against it, you know , so it would break death’s

heart or something. I can see w hy he wanted to walk me

through this because it’s his paintings, precious to his soul.

Y ou w ouldn’t want some stranger rooting around in it; or

even touching it. Y ou have to go through the whole room, the

whole distance o f it, its full length, to get to the stairs that take

you to the top floor where he lives. I keep being afraid I’ll sink

in the paint but I get to the stairs and they’re normal, ju st wood

stairs, even, sanded, finished, with a bannister, and I climb up

after him; it was different N ew Y ear’s Eve, soft and glow ing,

with grand tables and linen and crystal. N o w it’s pretty

empty, big, vast really; there’s a big blow heater hanging from

the ceiling and he turns it on and it blows hot air out at you, it’s

like being in a hot wind, it dries the air out, it’s a m usky,

lukewarm , smelly draft, and he puts it on higher and it’s like

being in a hot wind, warm but unpleasant, an awful August

day with a wind so steady and stale that the air pushes past

you, old air, used already. At one end o f the huge room is a

single wood chair. At the other end is a sort o f kitchen, a sink,

running water, a refrigerator, and in front there’s a kitchen

counter and in front o f that there’s a single bed to sleep on, a

sort o f sofa maybe, flat, no headboard, no cushions, no back,

nondescript, covered with cloth, it’s a couch or an old mattress

on springs or something. Way in the back, to the left o f the

kitchen, hard to see, extending behind the kitchen but you

can’t really see how far, there’s a kind o f cage, it’s chicken

wire, it goes from the floor to the ceiling, and there’s a double

bed behind the chicken wire, and I ask what it is, and he says he

sleeps there with girls, some girls like it, it’s his bedroom, he’s

got cuffs for it that fasten on the chicken wire but it’s got

nothing to do with me, I can sleep on the sofa, and I’m feeling a

chill, m y blood goes cold and I feel a certain fear I can’t define

and do not want to think about, and I’ve tried to shake him all

night but there’s the fact he’s sort o f stuck on, I can’t shake him

loose, and I’m feeling like I’ve been traveling a long time in a

foreign place, the land’s strange, the natives are strange, it’s

been a long w ay up the mountain and you don’t know if the

w ay dow n’s booby-trapped and you know the sidewalks are

roads o f windswept death, they’re not harboring no lost souls

tonight, you ain’t going to make it some hours out there. I am

fucking blind drunk, asshole drunk, dumb bitch drunk, and

I’m figuring he’s Jill’s lover w ho’s got to be back because it’s

her opening night and he’ll go back soon, it’s just a matter o f

time, and I don’t look at the cage, like he said it’s got nothing

to do with me and I try not to think about the cuffs and I stay

w ay on the other side o f the place, near the single wood chair,

m y solace, m y home, the place I pick out where I’m staying as

long as he’s here and I can sit here the whole night, just sit, and

he says hey it’s no problem you sleep on the sofa here see and

he makes some tea and we take the tea downstairs to where the

paintings are and I think this is the right direction, at least he’s

on his w ay out, and he shows me the paintings, one by one, he

shows them to me, it’s sort o f amazing, it’s like being scraped

up o ff the street and suddenly the Museum o f Modern A rt’s,

open to you, a special honored guest, he shows them to me

one by one and I’m pretty awed and pretty quiet except he asks

me questions, what do I think o f this and what do I think o f

this and I try to say something, I say things about poems they

remind me o f because I don’t know how to say things about

paintings and there’s one a little different, it’s an emotional

upheaval, not intellectual like most o f the others, and I like it a

lot, it’s brazen and aggressive and real romantic and I say so

and he says well, it’s named after me then, and I think it’s

probably because he’s drunk and he’ll change it back

tom orrow but tonight it is named for me; Andy he calls it, a

nickname I hate. I say I’ll lock him out and he says he’s going

to call Jill to say he’s on his w ay and we walk upstairs and I sit

on the single wood chair but he doesn’t go near any phone

which I don’t even know where it is, I sit on the wood chair

and I dig m y nails into it and he pours me another drink and

I’m saying I’ve had enough but once it’s in m y hands I’m

nervous so I drink it and it’s pretty much like I’m submerged

in a tank o f alcohol, the fumes are drowning out any air, I’m

close to asphyxiation. I sit real still on the chair, I down the

drink like it’s water, I hold onto the chair for dear life, I see the

chicken wire and it scares me, I think about outside and it

scares me, and he’s just standing there, real benign, there’s not

a hint o f sex, there’s not a spark I can see, it’s Jill’s art opening,

he’s her lover and these facts have only one outcome which is

he’s going to her now or soon and I just have to sit here still

until he does and I ask where Jill sleeps and he says behind the

chicken wire and I feel out o f m y fucking mind, I feel insane,

and he’s totally level; and his eyes change, I never looked at his

eyes before but now they’re cold, they are real cold, they have

a steel quality, you might say they are mean and you might say

they are cruel and you might say they have m y blood smeared

on them and he’s saying he’ll just tuck me in, I should just lie

down and he’ll cover me with a blanket and then he’ll leave

and I’m saying he should leave now and I’m Jill’s friend and he

says he just wants me to sit next to him on the single bed just

for a minute, just sit there next to him, and I am some falling

down drunk stupid bitch but I am not going near him, I am

sitting on the chair, I have got m y fingernails dug in, and he’s

spying, totally level, totally calm, you can leave if you want,

quiet voice he has, you can just leave, quiet voice, soft voice,

cold eyes, not brown, yellow eyes, ochre eyes, dirty yellow

eyes, quiet voice, you can leave or you can just come here and

sit with me, sit next to me, just for a minute, or you can leave,

or you can leave, or you can sit here, next to me or you can

leave; and I thought, can I? — the door’s locked from inside,

you can’t stay on the streets, the bars are closed, there’s no

strangers outside you can find, even if you was going to risk it,

and you can barely put one foot in front o f another, everything

in front o f your eyes is streaked and moving, everything’s got

a tail like a comet racing through the sky, everything’s a shiny

streak whirling past you and you are standing still unless you

are falling, you fall and stop, fall and stop; and he’s saying you

can leave and you’re wondering if he’d let you anyway,

because finally it occurs to you he is more than a liar, or w hy

would he be so calm? He’s so quiet; quiet voice; you can leave;

or come right here, sit near me, just near me; and then there’s

w hatever’s past the fucking sunset, you know, the ocean

pounds the shore or something, there’s a hurricane, many die,

it breaks apart the beach, shacks, houses, stone walls, they’re

wrecked, Atlanta burns, you know, metaphor, I’d rather talk

in metaphor than say the things he did, God made metaphor

for girls like me, you know, life is nasty, short, brutish, short,

you can be snuffed out, it’s so fast, so mean, so easy,

someone’s eyes go cold, they go mean, they say sit near me

and you say no and they say sit near me and you say no and

they say sit near me and you say no and it’s like a boy and a girl

and some courtly dance except he is saying you can leave, -a

death threat, you can leave, with his cold eyes gleaming a

devil’s yellow from the meanness o f it, a dirty yellow , as i f his

eyeballs changed from brown to some supernatural ochre and

he puts his hands on m y shoulders and his hands are strong and

he lifts me up from the single wood chair and there’s this kind

o f long waltz the length o f the great ballroom where his arms

are around me and I am going one, two, three, four, against

him, in the opposite direction from him trying to get past him

and he is using m y own motion to push me back to where he

wants and he sits me down on the single bed and w e just sit there

like chaste kids, teenagers, side by side, we each look straight

ahead except he’s got his hand on m y neck, w e’re Norm an

Rockw ell except his fingers are spread the width o f m y neck,

his fingers are around m y neck, circling m y neck and I turn my

head to face him, m y b ody’s staring outwards but I turn m y

face toward him and I say to him I don’t want to do this, I get

him to face me and I look him in the eye and I say I don’t want

to do this and his hand tightens on m y neck and I feel his

fingers down under m y skin and into the muscle o f m y neck

and he says quiet, totally level, totally calm: it doesn’t matter,

darling, it doesn’t matter at all. I’m thinking he means it

doesn’t matter to him to fuck and I smile in a kind o f gratitude

but it’s not what he means and he takes his other hand and he

puts it up at the neck o f m y T-shirt and he pulls, one hand’s

holding m y neck from behind and the other’s pulling o ff my

T-shirt, pulling it half off, ripping it, it burns against m y skin

like whiplash, and he pushes me down on the bed and I see m y

breast, it’s beautiful and perfect and kind o f cascading, there’s

no drawing can show how it’s a living part o f me, human, and

when he puts his mouth on it I cry, not so he can tell, inside I’m

turned to tears, I see his face now up against m y breast, he’s

suckling and I hate him, I feel the inside o f his mouth, clam my

and toothy and gum m y, the cavity o f his mouth and the sharp

porcelain o f his teeth, there’s the edge o f his teeth on my

nipple, and he’s got my underpants torn o ff me and m y legs

pushed up and spread and he’s in me and I think I will count to

a hundred and it will be over but it isn’t, he’s different, I try to

push him o ff and he raises him self above me and he smiles at

me and he pushes me back, he holds me down, and I give up, I

do, I stay still, m y body dies as much as it can, hate distilled, a

perfect hate expressed in a perfect physical passivity, a perfect

attentiveness to dying, he’s going to say I’m a bad lay because I

w on ’t move but I hate him and I w on’t move. I just wait now

for him to come but he’s different, he w on’t come, he pushes

m y neck to hurt it and he kisses me, I feel his mouth on me,

he’s in me, sudden, brutal, unpleasant; vomitous; then he’s out

o f me, he’s kissing me, he kisses me everywhere, he rams into

me then he’s out, he’s kissing, he’s kissing my stomach, he’s

kissing m y legs, then he’s in me and m y thighs are pushed back

past m y shoulders, then he’s kissing me, he’s kissing m y anus

and licking it and he’s kissing my legs and he’s talking to me,

your skin reminds me o f Bridget’s, he says, Bridget has

beautiful skin, some whispering bullshit like I’m his lover or

his friend or something, conspiring with him, and then he’s

ramming him self in me and then he’s kissing me and I am

confused and afraid and I am paralyzed, I don’t move, I don’t

want to move, I w on’t move but also I can’t move, hate pins

me there flat, still, a perfect passivity, I think I am physically

real but my body’s incoherent to my own mind because I can’t

follow what he’s doing to me or what he wants, he’s doing it

to me but I don’t know what it is, there’s no organizing

principle, there’s no momentum or logic, I’m desperate for an

end but there’s no end, he’s brutal and cold and chaotic and I

say this will end but it doesn’t end, he rams, he kisses, I say this

is real, I am real, surely I am real, the physical reality is

overw helm ingly brutal and nasty, he tempers it, he thinks,

with these kisses, each one must be washed off, gotten off,

later, the skin must be gotten o ff later, gotten rid of, the cells

must be scraped off, I will need new skin, clean skin, because

he is expectorating all over me, I will need to rub and scrape, I

can use a knife or a stone, I’ll scrape it off, he’s in me, then he

withdraws, then he kisses, he kisses m y stomach, he kisses m y

feet— m y feet; he kisses m y legs, I feel a searing pain in m y leg,

I feel a terrible bad pain, I feel sharp shots o f pain, then he

rams, he kisses, he pushes, he pushes m y legs apart, he pushes

them back, he rams, he kisses, he must o f read a book, girls

like this, girls like that, you kiss girls, you kiss them; you kiss

them; he’s kissing me and saying things as if we are friends or I

know him or something and then he rams in, brutal bastard,

and then he’s a lover, kissing; and this is m y body but it ain’t, I

say it ain’t, I say it ain’t, I say I ain’t here and it ain’t me; but

time’s real — time is real— time’s real; there’s a long time until

dawn, there’s a couple o f hours until six and then there’s

m aybe an hour after that until there’s real light, you know,

sun, sun coming down from the sky, sun filtering down

through the cold, sun traveling down; heating up, even a little,

the streets, stone cold, steel-like daggers, the slab they lay you

out on; m y slab, a stone cold street; and a girl who wants to

live, such a girl, a girl who fucking wants to live doesn’t go out

until dawn, can’t go out until dawn; girls don’t go out at night;

girls who want to live don’t go out at night; you need light to

go out; you need sun; you need daylight; you need it to be a

little warmer, you need the edge o ff the cold, you need the

wind warmed up a little, you need it pale out, not dark, you

need it yellow or yellowish or even a flat silver or gray, a dull

gray, you need it gray or grayish or a dirty white at least, you

need it ash or a pale, pale blue as if it’s got a wash over it, a

watercolor wash, a greenish hue, or you need it to be pink, a

pinkish color, you need it pink, a little pink and a little warm ,

pinkish and warmish, you need light, you need light that’s

fresh and new, wholesome, washed in a subtle pastel color, a

pale hue, you need real light, honest light, well-established

light, not half dark, not stained by dark, not transitory or

illusory, you need it yellow from sun or even silver or gray,

you need it heated up, cozy, as if someone lit a match and

burned it to heat up the air, you need the sun m ixing with the

wind, a touch o f heat, you need it to be daytime if you’re a girl

so you can be safe and warm and at night you have to stay

inside so you w on’t get hurt; you don’t go out after dark; you

stay inside at night, you don’t be stupid and fuck up or some

stranger could hurt you, some bad man, a Nazi or some ghoul.

Y ou got to stay inside and if there’s a boy who likes you he’ll

sit next to you and he’ll kiss you and you can just stay with

him. Paul’s asleep. H e’s pinning me down, half on top o f me, a

lover but slightly displaced, half on me, half on the bed, it’s a

single bed, it’s been light a long time, two hours, three hours, I

watched the light come, it’s slow at first, then it’s sudden, it’s

pale today, a delicate yellow, a pale cold tone, I’m a student o f

light and time; my eyes are swollen open as if I saw something

that fixed them in place but I didn’t see nothing special, I

always wait with m y eyes open, I had them open, I didn’t close

them, it doesn’t help to close them, I waited for light but he

didn’t stop just because there was light, sometimes something’s important to you but it doesn’t matter to someone else

but you don’t know that, you don’t understand it, he lasted

well past the light and then he fell asleep without m oving

much, I wouldn’t have minded turning into a pumpkin but the

lovely lady had to stay at the ball, the beautiful princess loved

by the boy, he liked her so much; then he fell asleep without

m oving much, his body the full length o f mine, half on me,

half off, his arms holding onto me, one spread over me, dead

weight, one leg was spread over me, dead weight; and I was

completely still, I stayed completely still, except m y eyes

wander, and I decide I’m never going to lie down again, I’m

never going to lie down on m y back, I’m going to sit or I’m

going to stand up always from now on, in alleys or in

apartments or anywhere, and I try to move but I hurt, I am

filled with aches under m y skin, in m y bones, in m y joints, in

m y muscles, I’m stiff and I’m sore and then m y head’s

separate, it’s very big and there’s a thud in it, a bang, a buzz,

and there’s polka dots in the air, painted on, in the whole vast

room, dancing dots, black and navy blue, and he’s watching

me, I m ove slow ly and finally I am sitting, sitting on the edge

o f the bed, the single bed, sitting, chaste, just sitting, and m y

right leg is split open, the skin on it is split open in two places,

above m y knee and under m y knee, the skin’s torn, there’s big

jagged pieces o f skin, there’s gashes, it’s deep tears, deep cuts,

blood, dried blood and wet blood, m y leg’s torn open in tw o

places, his kisses, his lover’s kisses opened the skin, inside it’s

all angry looking as if it’s turning to a yellow or greenish pus,

it’s running with dirty, angry blood, I think it needs stitches

but I can’t get stitches and I’m scared o f gangrene, old ladies

get it on the street, winos get it when there’s sores, and I go to

wash it at the sink but it hurts too much and I think his water’s

dirty, I’m sure he has dirty water, it looks dirty, and the skin’s

splitting apart more, as if it’s a river running over land, and I

concentrate on getting out, finding m y clothes, putting on m y

clothes, they’re torn and fucked up, and I ask for the keys to

get out and he says something chatty and he smiles, it’s

English but I can’t exactly understand it so I nod or smile in a

neutral w ay and I think I’d better get out and he says see you or

see you again or see you soon, it’s English but it’s hard to

understand, I can’t make out the separate words, and I say

yeah, yeah, o f course, sure, and it doesn’t seem to be enough

so I say I’ll call, it seems better, it’s affirmative, he relaxes, he

smiles, he’s relaxed back into the bed, and I move, slow ly, not

to alarm him, not to stir him, not to call attention to myself, I

try to m ove the w ay they tell you with a book on your head,

smooth and calm and quiet, firm and fast and sure, ladylike,

self-abnegating, to disappear, and I take the keys and I go

down the steps, very slow, it’s hard, the blood from the gashes

is dripping down and the leg’s opening more and it hurts, it

hurts very much— if you spread your arms out full, that much,

or even more maybe. If it was a knife you could put the skin

back together and there wouldn’t be so many diseases, knives

are cleaner, this w on’t go back together, it’s ripped, it’s too

torn, it’s dirty, some special dirt, it’s named after him, this

dirt, it’s called Paulie, I named it after him; and I leave the keys

like he told me inside the door in the hall on the floor, it’s

unlocked now, the door’s open, I walk out and it’s deserted,

cold, bare, bare city streets, calm, no wind, a perfect, pure,

clean cold, cold enough to kill the germs on m y leg, it’ll freeze

them and they’ll die, I think it must be the case, if you can kill

them through heat, sterilization, you must be able to kill them

through cold, I think the damaged tissue’s already freezing and

the germs are dying or they will and it’s good there’s no wind

because if anything moves my leg screams, the skin screams,

it’s like a flashfire ignited up my leg, a napalm exploding on

me; and he’s sleeping upstairs, he’s in bed, he didn’t get out o f

bed, he’s asleep, he was back asleep almost before I left, he

seemed to be waiting for me to kiss him goodbye or good

morning or hello, I said I’ll call and he relaxed back into bed, I

stared, I made m yself move, I moved fast, quiet, which is w hy

they teach you to walk with a book on your head, you walk

quiet, with poise, you have a straight back, you take firm,

quiet steps, and I wish someone would go up now while he’s

asleep and kill him or rob him, I wish I could put a sign on the

door— it’s open, kill him, rob him, I think there’s some

chance, it’s a bad neighborhood, maybe som ebody’ll find

him. I’m dirty; all m y clothes are torn and fucked up as if they

were urinated on or wrapped in a ball and used to wipe

someone’s ass. I call Jill from a pay phone. He raped me, I say.

H e’s not the milk o f human kindness she says and hangs up; is

raped me worse than cheated on you? I got some change, some

quarters, some dimes, m y favorite, half dollars, they’re pretty

like silver, I like them. She knew it was bad; raped me. The

earth’s round but the streets are flat. There’s rain forests but

the streets are cold. I can’t really say I understand. It’s ten a. m.

I’m tw enty-six years old. I got a wound on m y leg, a nasty

sore, dirty fucking sore from a rabid dog, slobbering m angy

cur, an old bag lady’s sore, ugly fucking sore; maybe the

A . S . P . C . A . ’d come and get him. I could use a drink. I got to

sleep before there’s night, it comes fast in winter, you lose

track. It’s ten a. m .; and soon it will be ten-o-five; soon. Y ou

have to count fast, keep counting, to keep track. U g ly,

fucking, stupid bitch, got to sleep, can’t lie down. There’s

fleas.

N I N E

In October 1973

(Age 27)

There’s a basketball court next to where I live, not a court

exactly, a hoop high up, and broken cement, rocks, broken

glass; there’s boys that play, the game ain’t ballet like on

television, it’s malice, they smash the ball like they’re smashing heads and you don’t want to distract them, you want their

eyes on the ball, always on the ball, you want them playing

ball; so you get small and quiet walking by, you don’t let

nothing rattle or shake, you just blend, into the sidewalk, into

the air, get gray like the fence, it’s wire, shaky, partly walling

the place in, you walk quiet and soft and hope your heart don’t

beat too loud; and there’s a parking lot for cops right next to

the basketball, not the official vehicles but the cars they come

to work in, the banged up C hevys and Fords they drive in

from the suburbs because most o f them don’t live here no

more but still, even though they got more money than they

make you don’t see nothing smart and sleek, there’s just this

old metal, bulky, heavy, discolored. The young cops are tight

and you don’t want to see them spring loose, their muscles are

all screwed together real tight and their lips are tight, sewed

tight, and they stand straight and tight and they look ahead,

not around, their pupils are tight in the dead center o f their

eyes staring straight ahead; and the older ones wear cheap

sports jackets too big for them, gray, brown, sort o f plaid,

nearly tweed, wrinkled, and their shoulders sag, and they are

morose men, and their cars can barely hold them, their legs fall

out loose and disorganized and then they move their bodies

around to be in the same direction as the legs that fell down,

they m ove the trunks o f their bodies from behind the steering

wheels against gravity and disregarding common sense and

the air moves out o f the way, sluggish and slow, displaced by

their hanging bellies, and they are tired men, and they see

everything, they have eyes that circle the globe, insect eyes

and third eyes, they see in front and behind and on each side,

their eyes spin without m oving, and they see you no matter

how blank and quiet you are, they see you sneaking by, and

they wonder w hy you are sneaking and what you have to hide,

they note that you are trash, they have the view that anything

female on this street is a piece o f gash, an open wound inviting

you in for a few pennies, and that you especially who are

walking by them now have committed innumerable evils for

which you must pay and you want to argue except for the fact

that they are not far from wrong, it is not an argument you can

win, and that makes you angrier against them and fearful, and

you try to disappear but they see you, they always see you; and

you learn not to think they are fools; they will get around to

you; today, tom orrow, someday soon; and they see the boys

playing basketball and they want to smash them, smash their

fucking heads in, but they’re too old to smash them and they

can’t use their guns, not yet, not now; even the young cops

couldn’t smash them fair, they’re too rigid, too slow up

against the driving rage o f the boys with the ball; so you see

them noting it, noting that they got a grudge, and the cars are

parked on gravel and broken glass and rocks and they should

have better and they know it but they don’t and they w o n ’t

and later they get to use the guns, somewhere, the city’s full o f

fast black boys who get separated from the pack; and you hear

the fuck, shit, asshole, o f the basketball players as a counterpoint to the solitary fuck, shit, asshole, o f the lone cops as they emerge from their cars, they put down their heavy legs and

their heavy feet in their bad old shoes, all worn, chewed

leather, and they pull themselves out o f their old cars, and

they’re tired men, overweight, there ain’t many young ones at

all, and there’s a peculiar sadness to them, the fascists are

melancholy in Gotham, they say fuck, shit, asshole, like it’s

soliloquies, like it’s prayers, like it’s amen, like it’s exegesis on

existence, like it’s unanswered questions, urgent, eloquent,

articulated to God; lonely, tired old Nazis, more like Hamlet,

though, than like Lear, introspective from exhaustion, not

grand or arrogant or merciless in delusion; and the boys hurl

the ball like it’s bombs, like it’s rocks and stones, like it’s

bullets and they’re the machines o f delivery, the weapons o f

death, machine guns o f flesh, bang bang bang, each round so

fast, so hard, as the ball hits the ground and the boy moves

with it, a weapon with speed up its ass; and they’re a choir o f

fuck, shit, asshole, voices still on the far edge o f an adolescent

high, not the raspy, cigarette-ruined voices o f the lonely, sad

men; the boys run, the boys sing the three words they know, a

percussive lyric, they breathe deep, skin and viscera breathe,

everything inside and outside breathes, there’s a convulsion,

then another one, they exhale as if it’s some sublime soprano

aria at the Met, supreme art, simple, new each time, the air

comes out urgent and organized and with enough volume to

fill a concert hall, it’s exhilarating, a human voice, all the words

they don’t know; and the cops, old, young, it don’t matter,

barely breathe at all, they breathe so high up in the throat that

the air barely gets out, it’s thin and depressed and somber, it’s

old and it’s stale and it’s pale and it’s flat, there’s no words to it

and no music, it’s a thin, empty sound, a flat despair, Hamlet

so old and dead and tired he can’t even get up a stage whisper.

The cops look at the boys, each cop does, and there’s this

second when the cop wants to explode, he’d unleash a grenade

in his own hand if he had one, he’d take him self with it if it

meant offing them, fuck them black boys’ heads off, there’s

this tangible second, and then they turn away, each one,

young, old, tight, sagging, each one, every day, and they pull

themselves up, and they kick the rocks, the broken glass, the

gravel, and they got a hand folded into a fist, and they leave the

parking lot, they walk big, they walk heavy, they walk like

John Wayne, young John, old John, big John, they walk slow

and heavy and wide, deliberate, like they got six-shooters

riding on each hip; while the boys m ove fast, mad, mean,

speeding, cold fury in hot motion. Y ou want them on each

other; not on you. It ain’t honorable but it’s real. Y o u want

them caught up in the urban hate o f generations, in wild west

battles on city streets, you want them so manly against each

other they don’t have time for girlish trash like you, you want

them fighting each other cock to cock so it all gets used up on

each other. Y o u take the view that wom en are for recreation,

fun, when the battle’s over; and this battle has about another

hundred years to go. Y o u figure they can dig you up out o f the

ground when they’re ready. Y o u figure they probably will.

Y o u figure it don’t matter to them one w ay or the other. Y ou

figure it don’t matter to you either; ju st so it ain’t today, now,

tonight, tom orrow ; ju st so you ain’t conscious; just so you

ain’t alive the next time; just so you are good and dead; just so

you don’t know what it is and w h o ’s doing it. If yo u ’re buying

milk or bread or things you have to go past them, walk down

them streets, go in front o f them, the boys, the cops, and you

practice disappearing; you practice pulling the air over you

like a blanket; you practice being nothing and no one; you

practice not making a sound and barely breathing; you

practice making your eyes go blank and never looking at

anyone but seeing where they are, hearing a shadow move;

you practice being a ghost on cement; and you don’t let

nothing rattle or make noise, not the groceries, not your shoes

hitting the ground, not your arms, you don’t let them m ove or

rub, you don’t make no spontaneous gestures, you don’t even

raise your arm to scratch your nose, you keep your arms still

and you put the milk in the bag so it stays still and you go so far

as to make sure the bag ain’t a stupid bag, one o f them plastic

ones that makes sounds every time something touches it; you

have to get a quiet bag; if it’s a brown paper bag you have to

perfect the skill o f carrying it so nothing moves inside it and so

you don’t have to change arms or hands, acts which can catch

the eye o f someone, acts which can call attention to you, you

don’t shift the bag because your hand gets tired or your arm,

you just let it hurt because it hurts quiet, and if it’s a plastic bag

it’s got to be laminated good so it don’t make any rustling

noise or scratching sound, and you have to walk faster, silent,

fast, because plastic bags stand out more, sometimes they have

bright colors and the flash o f color going by can catch

someone’s attention, the bag’s real money, it costs a dime, it’s

a luxury item, you got change to spare, you’re a classy shopper

so who knows what else you got; and if it’s not colorful it’s

likely to be a shiny white, a bright white, the kind light flashes

o ff o f like it’s a mirror sending signals and there’s only one

signal widely comprehended on cement: get me. The light can

catch someone’s eye so you have to walk like Zen himself,

walk and not walk, you are a master in the urban Olym pics for

girls, an athlete o f girlish survival, it’s a survival game for the

w orld’s best. You get past them and you celebrate, you

celebrate in your heart, you thank the Lord, in your heart you

say a prayer o f gratitude and forgiveness, you forgive Him,

it’s sincere, and you hope He don’t take it as a challenge,

razor-sharp temper He’s got, no do unto others for Him; and if

you hear someone behind you you beg, in half a second you

are on your knees in your heart begging Him to let you off,

you promise a humility this time that will last, it will begin

right now and last a long, long time, you promise no more

liturgical sacrilege, and your prayer stops and your heart stops

and you wait and the most jo you s sound on G o d ’s earth is that

the man’s feet just stomp by. Either he will hurt you or he will

not; either He will hurt you or He will not. Truth’s so simple

and so severe, you don’t be stupid enough to embellish it. I

m yself live inside now. I don’t take m y chances resting only in

the arms o f God. I put m yself inside four walls and then I let

Him rock me, rock me, baby, rock me. I lived outside a lot;

and this last summer I was tired, disoriented. I was too tired,

really, to find a bed, too nervous, maybe too old, maybe I got

old, it happens pretty fast past eighteen like they always

warned; get yourself one boy when yo u ’re eighteen and get

yourself one bed. It got on m y nerves to think about it every

night, I don’t really like to be in a bed per se. I stayed in the lot

behind where the police park their cars, there’s a big, big dirt

lot, there’s a fence behind the police cars and then there’s

empty dirt, trash, some rats, we made fires, there’s broken

glass, there’s liquor to stay warm , I never once saw what it

was, it’s bottles in bags with hands on the bags that tilt in your

direction, new love, anti-genital love, polymorphous perverse, a bottle in a bag. Y o u got to lift your skirt sometimes but it doesn’t matter and I have sores on me, m y legs is so dirty

I just really don’t look. Y ou don’t have to look. There’s many

mirrors to be used but you need not use them. I got too worn

out to find some bed each new night, it got on m y nerves so I

was edgy and anxious in anticipation, a dread that it would be

hard to find or hard to stay or hard to pay, if I just stayed on the

dirt lot I didn’t have to w orry so much, there’s nothing

trapping you in. Life’s a long, quiet rumble, and you ju st shake

as even as you can so you don’t get too worn out. When I lifted

up m y skirt there was blood and dirt in drips, all dried, down

m y legs, and I had sores. I felt quiet inside. I felt okay. I didn’t

w orry too much. I didn’t go see movies or go on dates. I just

curled up to sleep and I’d drink whatever there was that

someone give me because there’s generous men too; I see

saliva; I see it close up; i f I was an artist I would paint it except I

don’t know how you make it glisten, the brown and the gold

in it; I saw many a face close up and I saw many a man close up

and I’d lift my skirt and it was dirty, my legs, and there was

dried blood. I was pretty dirty. I didn’t w orry too much. Then

I got money because my friend thought I should go inside. I

had this friend. I knew her when I was young. She was a

pacifist. She hated war and she held signs against the Vietnam

War and I did too. She let me sleep in her apartment but

enough’s enough; there’s places you don’t go back to. So now

I was too dirty and she gave me money to go inside

definitively; which I had wanted, except it was hard to

express. I thought about walls all the time. I thought about

how easy they should be, really, to have; how you could fit

them almost anywhere, on a street corner, in an alley, on a

patch o f dirt, you must make walls and a person can go inside

with a bed, a small cot, just to lie down and it’s a house, as