Dworkin Andrea

Ice And Fire

ICE AND FIRE

By the same author

Nonfiction

W om an H ating

O ur Blood: Prophecies and D iscourses on Sexual Politics

Pornography: M en Possessing W omen

Right-w ing W omen:

T he Politics o f Dom esticated Fem ales

Fiction

the new w om ans broken heart: short stories

ICE AND FIRE

A Novel

by

Andrea Dworkin

Seeker & W arb u rg

L on don

First published in England 1986 by

Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited

54 Poland Street, London WI V 3DF

Copyright ©

by Andrea Dworkin

Reprinted 1986

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dworkin, Andrea

Ice and fire: a novel.

1. Title

823'. 91 4[F]

PR6054. W/

ISBN 0-436-13960-X

Pages 52-56 first appeared, translated into French, in La Vie

en Rose, No 18, July-August 1984.

Filmset in Great Britain in II on 12 pt Sabon

by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by Billings & Son Ltd,

Hylton Road, Worcester

For Elaine M arkson

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

I have two first memories.

The sofa is green with huge flowers imprinted on it, pink

and beige and streaks of yellow or brown, like they were

painted with a wide brush to highlight the edges and borders

of the flowers. The sofa is deep and not too long, three cushions, the same green. The sofa is against a wall in the living room. It is our living room. Nothing in it is very big but we

are small and so the ceilings are high and the walls tower,

unscalable, and the sofa is immense, enough width and depth

to burrow in, to get lost in. My brother is maybe two. I am

two years older. He is golden, a white boy with yellow hair

and blue eyes: and happy. He has a smile that lights up the

night. He is beautiful and delicate and divine. Nothing has set

in his face yet, not fear, not malice, not anger, not sorrow: he

knows no loss or pain: he is delicate and happy and intensely

beautiful, radiance and delight. We each get a corner of the

sofa. We crouch there until the referee, father always, counts

to three: then we meet in the middle and tickle and tickle until

one gives up or the referee says to go back to our corners

because a round is over. Sometimes we are on the fl oor, all

three of us, tickling and wrestling, and laughing past when I

hurt until dad says stop. I remember the great print flowers, I

remember crouching and waiting to hear three, I remember the

great golden smile of the little boy, his yellow curls cascading

as we roll and roll.

The hospital is all light brown outside, stone, lit up by electric

lights, it is already dark out, and my grandfather and I are

outside, waiting for my dad. He comes running. Inside I am

put in a small room. A cot is set up for him. My tonsils will

come out. Somewhere in the hospital is my mother. I think all

night long that she must be in the next room. I tap on the wall,

sending secret signals. She has been away from home for a

long time. The whole family is in the hospital now, my father

with me: I don’t know where my brother is— is he born yet?

7

He is somewhere for sure, and my mother is somewhere,

probably in the next room. I remember flowered wallpaper.

I haven’t seen my mother for a very long time and now

I am coming to where she is, I expect to see her, I am

close to her now, here, in the same hospital, she is near,

somewhere, here. I never see her but I am sure she is lying

in bed happy to be near me on the other side of the wall

in the very next room. She must be happy to know I am

here. Her hair was long then, black, and she was young.

My father sleeps in the hospital room, in the bed next to

mine.

*

The street was home, but, oh, these were kind streets, the

streets of children, real children. The houses were brick row

houses, all the same, two cement flights of stairs outside, the

outside steps, from the sidewalk. The lawns were hills sloping

down the height of one flight of steps, the lower one, to the

sidewalk. There was a landing between flights. Some of us had

patios: the big cement truck came, the huge tumbler turning

round and round, and the cement was poured out and flattened

down, and sticks marked the edges until it dried. Others had

some flowers: next door there were shabby roses, thorns. Each

house was the same, two floors, on the first floor a living

room, dining room, and tiny kitchen; up a tall flight of stairs

three bedrooms, two big, one tiny, a bathroom, a closet. The

stairs were the main thing: up and down on endless piggyback

rides on daddy’s back: up to bed with a piggyback ride, up

and down one more time, the greatest ride had a story to go

with it about riding horses or piggies going to market; up the

stairs on daddy’s back and then into bed for the rest of the

fabulous story; and I would try to get him to do it again and

again, up and down those stairs, and a story. Each house had

one family, all the houses were in a row, but two doors were

right next to each other above the cement steps so those were

the closest neighbors. The adults, mostly the women, would sit

on chairs up by their doors, or sit on the steps up by the doors

talking and visiting and watching the children, and the children

of all the houses would converge in the street to play. If you

looked at it you would see dismal brick row houses all the

same at the top of two flights of cement steps out in the wea

8

ther. But if you were a child, you would see that the adults

were far away, and that the street stretched into a million

secret hidden places. There were parked cars to hide behind

and under and telephone poles, the occasional tree, secret

valleys at the bottoms of lawns, and the mysterious interiors of

other people’s houses across the way. And then the backs of

the houses made the world bigger, more incredible yet. There

were garages back there, a black asphalt back alley and back

doors and places to hang clothes on a line and a million places

to hide, garbage cans, garages half open, telephone poles,

strange dark dirty places, basements. Two blocks behind us in

the back there was a convent, a huge walled-in place all verdant

with great trees that hid everything: and so our neighborhood

turned gothic and spooky and we talked of children captured

and hidden inside: and witches. Outside there were maybe

twenty of us, all different ages but all children, boys and girls,

and we played day after day and night after night, well past

dark: hide-and-seek, Red Rover Red Rover, statue, jump rope,

hopscotch, giant steps, witch. One summer we took turns

holding our breath to thirty and then someone squeezed in our

stomachs and we passed out or got real dizzy. This was the

thing to do and we did it a million times. There were alleys

near one or two of the houses suddenly breaking into the brick

row and linking the back ways with the front street and we

ran through them: we ran all over, hiding, seeking, making up

new games. We divided into teams. We played giant steps. We

played Simon Says. Then the boys would play sports without

us, and everything would change. We would taunt them into

playing with us again, going back to the idyllic, all together,

running, screaming, laughing. The girls had dolls for when the

boys wouldn’t let us play and we washed their hair and set it

outside together on the steps. We played poker and canasta

and fish and old maid and gin rummy and strip poker. When

babies, we played in a sandbox, until it got too small and we

got too big. When bigger, we roller-skated. One girl got so big

she went out on a date: and we all sat on the steps across the

street and watched her come out in a funny white dress with a

red flower pinned on it and a funny-looking boy was with her.

We were listless that night, not knowing whether to play hide-

and-seek or statue. We told nasty stories about the girl in the

9

white dress with the date and wouldn’t play with her sister

who was like us, not a teenager. Something was wrong. Statue

wasn’t fun and hide-and-seek got boring too. I watched my

house right across the street while the others watched the girl

on the date. Intermittently we played statue, bored. Someone

had to swing someone else around and then suddenly let them

go and however they landed was how they had to stay, like a

statue, and everyone had to guess what they were— like a

ballet dancer or the Statue of Liberty. Whoever guessed what

the statue was got to be turned around and be the new statue.

Sometimes just two people played and everybody else would

sit around and watch for any little movement and heckle and

guess what the person was being a statue of. We were mostly

girls by now, playing statue late at night. I watched my house

across the street because the doctor had come, the man in the

dark suit with the black bag and the dour expression and the

unpleasant voice who never spoke except to say something bad

and I had been sent outside, I had not wanted to leave the

house, I had been ordered to, all the lights were out in the

house, it was so dark, and it was late for them to let me out

but they had ordered me to go out and play, and have a good

time they said, and my mother was in the bedroom with the

door closed, and lying down I was sure, not able to move,

something called heart failure, something like not being able to

breathe, something that bordered on death, it had happened

before, I was a veteran, I sat on the steps watching the house

while the girl in the white dress stood being laughed at with

her date and I had thoughts about death that I already knew I

would remember all my life and someday write down: death is

someone I know, someone who is dressed exactly like the

doctor and carries the same black bag and comes at night and

is coming tonight to get mother, and then I saw him come,

pretending to be the doctor, and I thought well this is it she

will die tonight I know but the others don’t because they go on

dates or play statue and I’m more mature and so they don’t

know these things that I know because I live in a house where

death comes all the time, suddenly in the night, suddenly in the

day, suddenly in the middle of sleeping, suddenly in the middle

of a meal, there is death: mother is sick, we’ve called the doctor,

I know death is on the way.

10

The streetlights lit up the street. The brick was red, even- at

night. The girl on the date had a white dress with a red corsage.

We sat across the street, near our favorite telephone pole for

hide-and-seek, and played statue on and off. I always had a

home out there, on the steps, behind the cars, near the telephone pole.

*

Inside the woman was dying. Outside we played witch.

The boys chased the girls over the whole block from front

to back. They tried to catch a girl. When they caught her they

put her in a wooden cage they had built or found and they

raised the cage up high on a telephone pole, miles and miles

above the ground, with rope, and they left her hanging there.

She was the witch. Then they let her down when they wanted

to. After she begged and screamed enough and they wanted to

play again or do something else.

You were supposed to want them to want to catch you.

They would all run after one girl and catch her and put her in

the cage and raise it up with the rope high, high on the telephone pole out in the back where the adults didn’t see. Then they would hold the cage in place, the girl inside it screaming,

four or five of them holding her weight up there in the wooden

cage, or they would tie the rope to something and stand and

watch.

When they picked you it meant you were popular and fast

and hard to catch.

*

When we played witch all the girls screamed and ran as fast as

they could. They ran from all the boys and ran so fast and so

far that eventually you would run into some boy somewhere

but all the boys had decided who they were going to catch so

the boy you would run into accidentally would just pass you

by and not try to catch you and capture you and put you in

the cage.

*

Everyone wanted to be caught and was terrified to be caught.

The cage was wooden and had pieces missing and broken. The

rope was just a piece of heavy rope one of the boys found

somewhere or sometimes even just a piece of clothesline stolen

from a backyard. You could hang there for as long as an hour

and the boys would threaten to leave you there and all the

girls would come and watch. And you would feel ashamed. To

be caught or not to be caught. *

When we played witch it was always the boys against the girls

and the boys always chased the girls and it was a hard chase

and we ran places we had never seen before and hid in places

we were afraid of. There was the street with the row houses

facing into it and then there were the back ways behind the

houses, and the distance between the back ways and the front

street connected by an occasional alley between the row houses

was enormous to a girl running. But we never went out of

these bounds, even when we reached the end of the boundaries

and a boy was right behind us. The street was long and at

each end it was bounded by another street and we never crossed

those streets. We never went past the two back ways on to

streets parallel to our own and we never went into foreign

back ways not behind our own houses. In this neighborhood

everyone had their block and you didn’t leave your block. Our

block was white and Jewish. The block across the street on

one end of our street was Polish Catholic. The block across

the street at the other end of our street was black. Even when

we played witch, no matter how hard you wanted to run and

get away, you never left the block.

*

I would play witch, racing heart.

*

I would play witch, wanting to be chased and caught, terrified

to be chased and caught, terrified not to be chased: racing

heart.

*

I would play witch, running, racing heart: running very fast,

running away, someone chasing: realizing: you have to slow

down to get caught: wanting to be caught: not slowing down.

*

I would play witch, already slow, barely chased, out of breath,

hiding, then wander back to where we had started, then wander

back to where the wooden cage was and see the girl hoisted in

the wooden cage, see the clothesline or rope tied to something

and the boys standing there looking up, hear the shrieking.

12

Downhearted, I would wait until they let her down. All the

girls would stand around, looking up, looking down, waiting,

trying to see who it was, trying to figure out who was missing,

who got caught, who was pretty, who slowed down.

*

Inside mother was dying and outside, oh, it was incredible to

run, to run, racing heart, around the houses and between the

cars and through the alleys and into the half-open garages and

just up to the boundaries of the block, farther, farther than

you had ever been before, right up to the edge: to run with a

boy chasing you and then to saunter on alone, out of breath,

having run and run and run. If only that had been the game.

But the game was to get caught and put in the cage and hoisted

up the telephone pole, tied by rope. Sometimes they would tie

your hands behind you and sometimes they would put tape

over your mouth. The game was to be the witch and have

them chase you and catch you and put you in a wooden cage

and tie your hands and hoist you up a telephone pole and tie

the rope so the cage would stay up high: you weren’t supposed

to want to be the witch but if you were a girl and running

there was nothing else to want because the game was for the

boys to chase you. Everyone else just stood around waiting

until the boys got bored and tired and let the witch down.

*

The horses were running as fast as they could, Roy Rogers

was sort of standing up on the wagon driving them on,

shouting go boy go faster faster, and you could see the horses

streaking by up and down the roughest mountain roads, the

fringes on his cowboy jacket were all swept back by the wind,

and he looked back over his shoulder as he sort of stood up and

shook the reins so the horses would go faster and shouted how

you doing back there do you like this you uppity little thing or

something like that with his grin from ear to ear like a smartass,

and instead of the covered part of a covered wagon there was

a wooden cage like maybe from a medicine show that had a

circus and transported animals and it was heaving over the

rough roads at the full speed of the horses with Roy making

them go faster and faster and up against the slats Dale Evans

was holding on, her face all dirty, imprisoned in the wooden

cage and saying she would never speak to him and he had

13

better let her go. She had been snotty to him and he had gotten

her in the cage and locked her in and taken off, making the

horses go faster and faster and she was screaming and

screaming for him to stop and saying she never would never

not as long as she lived and he was shouting back over his

shoulder as the hills flashed by and the horses’ manes stood up

on end from the wind and the fringe on his cowboy jacket

went the same direction as the horses’ manes and his gun and

holster were tied to his leg, had enough yet I’ll tame you you

little devil. Eventually she was tired and dirty and saw he was

stronger and she got quiet and loved him and he won. They

were in love then. Once she quieted down he slowed down the

horses and took her back to town, leaving her in the cage,

singing her a song. Back in town, all his friends, the Sons of

the Pioneers, got to see her come out of the cage, quiet, dirty,

and she got out of the cage, all the men knowing.

*

I had a cowgirl suit, a cowgirl hat, a gun, a holster. There was

nothing more important than being a cowboy, even though I

had to be a cowgirl because I had to wear a skirt, with fringes,

and a blouse, with fringes, and the cowgirl hat and the gun

and holster didn’t entirely make up for it. It was my favorite

thing to wear, even though we never did play cowboys and

Indians. It had more to do with wanting to be a gunslinger and

learning how to draw fast and shoot straight. I would practice

my draw for hours at a time but no one would go along with

me and have a gunfight. I would draw my gun on my father

and my brother, who would be wrestling and tickling on the

living room floor. There was vague disapproval of the gun in

the air and so I would shoot it outside and it would make a

huge noise and I would gleefully shoot round after round of

caps, a red paper that sort of exploded and burned. I had a

rifle too and boots. But it was the gun I loved, and Annie

Oakley. She wore a skirt and was a crack shot and once we

went to see her at a live show with Gene Autry. I wanted to be

her or Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger, not Dale Evans, not

ever, not as long as I lived.

*

The wooden cage would hang from the telephone pole, hoisted

by a rope or a piece of clothesline. It would dangle there, the

14

girl inside it not easy to see. They would push her around

before they put her in the cage. Sometimes they would tie her

hands. The wooden cage hung over the black asphalt lined by

garages, some open, some not, and garbage cans, all the fathers

at work, all the mothers inside the houses or in the front on

the steps visiting. It would be desolate on the asphalt, boys all

huddled around the cage with the one caught girl, and slowly

girls converging back there from all the directions they had

run in, some coming back from a long way away, having run

and hidden, run to the very edges of the boundaries of our

street or having run up and down the back ways and in and

out of garages, avoiding boys, hiding from them, and then

enough time would pass, and they would dare to drift back,

lonely perhaps, thinking enough time had gone by that

someone else had been caught or the game was over, and there

would always be the one girl surrounded by boys being pushed

into the cage and the cage being hoisted off the ground, or the

cage would already be tied up there. And the boys would stand

under it, watching it, watching her, and the other girls would

stay far away, around the edges, each alone, afraid to get too

close, afraid perhaps that the boys would grab them and do

something to them, also lonely, also left out. It was our saddest

game. It never ended right.

*

lt would begin in a blaze of excitement. Someone would say

let’s play witch. Everyone’s eyes would look wildly around,

scanning the street for where the adults were. We were

accomplices in this game. We all knew not to tell. No one ever

talked about this game or mentioned it any other time than

when we were going to play. The boys would get together and

count to ten fast because it was a ferocious game: the chase

was fierce and fast and it had to be close and there had to be

the excitement of being almost caught or having a hard time

getting away and they had to be able to see you and get you. It

wasn’t a patient game like hide-and-seek. It was a feverish

game, and it would begin at a fever pitch of the boys chasing

and you running as hard and as fast as you could but you

wanted to keep them after you as much as you didn’t want to

be caught so you would have to slow down to stay in sight,

and they would divide up going in twos and threes after one

15

girl or another and they would hunt someone down but if she

wasn’t the one they wanted they would pretend not to see her

finally hiding or they would suddenly turn and run after

someone else or run in another direction pretending to run

after someone else and in the end they would all have circled

the same girl, whoever they had decided on, and they would

herd her from wherever they had caught her, sometimes far

away from the wooden cage, and push her and shove her until

they got her to the telephone pole with the wooden cage. Once

they caught her it was against the rules for her not to go with

them anyway. The game slowed down after the first few

minutes and each girl was running on her own figuring out,

independent of what the boys had planned, whether she wanted

to be caught or not: and what to do to get caught or not to get

caught: and did the boys want her anyway? It became a game

of slow loneliness, of staggering solitude: breathless, dizzy, she

would stop running in a fever and turn to see no one chasing,

no one following. Had she won, outsmarted them, outrun

them, or had she lost, they had never really been after her

anyway. She might hide, or stalk the boys, dazzle them by

showing herself, and then they would chase her and she would

lose them again or hadn’t they really tried at all? Or she would

see one in the distance, maybe half a block away, and he didn’t

see her, or did he, and she would start running and running

and congratulate herself on getting away, or had she? Then a

long time would go by and she would get bored and tired and

want the game to be over and wonder where everybody was

and make her way back to the starting point and no one would

be there so she would make her way to the back alley and the

telephone pole, but from far away, toward it but not to it, not

directly walk up to it, always stay far away from it and the

boys, safe, and see the boys huddling around the cage and try

to see who was in it and hear the screams and watch the cage

go up, two or three boys hoisting it while the rest stood under

it and watched, and you could never see who it was. Later

when they let her down you could see. They would untie her

hands and walk away and she would be left there and the

scattered ring of lonely girls would watch. She was the witch.

No one talked to her at least the rest of the day.

♦

1 6

The convent gave us the right atmosphere. We never saw anything except the thick stone walls, and they were thick, not brick or cement, but huge stones like something medieval,

black and dark gray with moss and other hanging things and

shadows falling like God over the stones: and above the high

walls thick leafy green trees all casting shadows and it seemed

like no sky or light could ever get through them, in or out. It

was completely silent. We never saw anything or heard anything. No door ever opened or closed. No Latin poured out, no bells chimed, no music pierced the early dawn or night.

The wooden cage was hoisted in the back alley closest to the

convent, and you could see it from there, hanging over the

tops of the houses, a place of gothic mystery, Catholic, eerie.

From the telephone pole, hoisted up, inside the wooden cage,

you were raised above the stone walls and the ghastly trees:

and with your hands tied there you were the witch: and the

Catholics could see you.

They had things called nuns, women dressed all in black, all

covered up, and we thought they walked around in twos and

never said a word and had their heads bowed and shaved and

their hands together in prayer. But we didn’t know. We weren’t

supposed to go too near it, the convent, and we were afraid of

disappearing in there for life, because once you went in you

could never come out. There were ghosts there too. We didn’t

know if anyone in there was really alive. When you saw the

top of the convent and the menacing trees above the backs of

the row houses and the wooden cage with a slight figure inside

it hoisted high on the telephone pole and tied there with a rope

and the afternoon began to fade and it got dusky or cloudy

and there were just the silhouettes of things, the starkness of

the cage and the figure in it, the tautness of the rope, the city

ugliness, barren, of the telephone pole, all against a sky that

had begun to lose light, reigned over by old European stones

and impenetrable trees, you knew you were near something

old, chill, something you knew but didn’t know: something

God was supposed to protect you from: something on the edge

of your memory, but not your memory. When it got late in the

day or the sky darkened with clouds or oncoming rain, the

silhouettes were awful drawings of something you had seen

before: maybe in a book: somewhere: and you stood completely

17

still and watched and prayed for the wooden cage to come

down, for the figure in it to disappear, not be there, that slight

figure, for the convent to go away, to be somewhere else: and

especially for the dread boys, the crowd, to notice the coming

dark and be afraid of what they had done. We were overcome

watching: the great shadow of the convent and its thick trees,

its cold walls of stone, and the great imposition of the wooden

cage and the caged figure on the darkening sky. It was eerie

and unhappy: and one was drawn and repelled: drawn to the

convent and the cage, wanting to run inside the house.

We were all supposed to stay away from Catholics. The

convent represented their strangeness and malice: the threat of

their ghostly superstitions. A holy ghost lived there and they

drank blood and ate cookies and kneeled down. They wanted

all the children: and at night you could disappear into those

walls and no one would ever see you again. Standing outside

the great stone thing, even in broad daylight, even with traffic

all around, because one side of the convent was right on a very

big street at a very big intersection, a child was frightened of

the unscalable cold stone and the height of it. We could never

find a way in or out and the walls were too high to climb. I

wanted to see it and go into it but I was afraid even to stand

near it. Once another girl and I stood on that street corner for

hours collecting money for a charity and if you got enough

money you got to go to a special dinner in a restaurant and I

just thought about the traffic, how regular it was, and the sun,

how bright it was, the people walking on the street, how they

looked and dressed, because behind me was the penetrating

silence of those stone walls and I was cold and afraid. I could

feel it behind my back and I could feel the cold stones there

and I could feel the giant height of the wall and I could feel the

reaching coolness of the shadows from the great trees. Then a

car stopped to give us money after we had been there for hours

and this girl I was with went up to the car and then she got

real frightened and wouldn’t say what the man said to her and

said we had to go home right away and was really scared and

since it was right next to the convent I knew it was something

really bad so we went right home and she talked to her mother

who talked to my mother and I kept asking what had happened

and what the man had done to her. Finally my mother said he

18

asked her to get in the car with him. It was very terrible and

ominous to get into the car. The air was heavy with warning

and fear and my own inestimable incomprehension. There was

this edging of my fear away from the convent to the man in

the car and to getting into a car. I thought he must be Catholic.

The girl would never speak of it or answer anything I asked.

My mother said never to say anything about it. I asked if he

had hurt her. My mother said: he didn’t get the chance.

*

There were Jewish blocks and Catholic blocks and black

blocks. We were supposed to stay off the black blocks, though

it was never put that way. We were always just showed how

to walk, down which streets, and told where not to go, which

streets. The streets we weren’t supposed to go on just had that

in common: black faces, black children. The Catholic streets

and the Jewish streets were all inside the same area, alternating,

no mixing. But I liked to go where I wasn’t supposed to, and I

often walked home alone down the Catholic streets, because

no one could tell by just looking at me exactly. I would make

new routes for myself down streets my friends didn’t go on.

Sometimes I went down black streets, because I wanted to.

Then, getting closer to the one central elementary school,

where all kinds of children converged from every direction,

there were blocks that we all had to walk down because we

were all going to the same place and it was just a fact that no

matter who lived there we all had to walk by or through,

however timidly.

Our street was bounded on one end, the one going to school,

by a busy street with lots of cars and across that street was a

Catholic block, Polish. We were supposed to walk up half a

block before crossing that busy street and continue going

toward school on a Jewish block, and usually I did. But coming

home I would want to walk down the Catholic block because

it was different and it seemed more direct. I knew I shouldn’t

but I didn’t exactly know why I shouldn’t except that it did

seep in that they were different from us and we weren’t

supposed to marry them. I wasn’t even ten yet because I was

ten when we moved away.

I had a friend on that block, Joe, and we would say hello

and talk and say shy things to each other. Their houses were

19

different, all brick row houses, but right on the sidewalks, no

flights of steps going up to the door, just one level block. There

were more gardens. Kids didn’t stay outside playing that I could

see. Or maybe there weren’t any, I don’t know. Joe had grease

on his hair and it was combed very straight and sticky sort of,

and he wore checkered shirts, and he talked different but I

don’t know why or how: he didn’t seem to be used to talking.

He was a teenager. I would walk down the street and he would

sort of come out and I wouldn’t know what to say, except one

day I smiled and he said hello, and then after that I would

decide if I was going to walk down the Catholic block or not

and if I was chasing boys and what was wrong with him that I

wasn’t supposed to talk with him and I couldn’t talk with him

too long or someone would notice that I hadn’t come home

with my friends on my block. And I used to come home other

ways too, where I had no one to talk to. I would walk home

by the convent and try to hear things inside it, and sometimes I

would walk home on the black blocks, all alone. This was my

secret life.

*

There was an alley next to a church on the way to school and

we would always try to get lost in it. It was only a tiny alley,

very narrow but long, dark and dusty, with stray cats and

discarded bottles and strange trash and urine and so even

children knew its every creak and crevice very soon. But we

would close our eyes and spin each other around and do

everything we could not to know how to get out. We would

spend hours pretending to be lost. We would try to get into

the church but it was always closed. We would play adventures

in which someone was captured and lost in the alley and

someone else had to get her out. But mostly we would flail

around being lost, the worst thing being that we would know

exactly where we were and there were no adventures and we

couldn’t go in the church. Then sometimes suddenly we would

really be lost and we would try to find our way out and not be

able to no matter how hard we tried and it would start getting

dark and we would get scared and somehow when we got

scared enough we would remember how to get out of the alley

and how to get home.

*

20

We had to walk a long way to and from school, four times a

day: to school, home for lunch, back to school, home at the

end of school; or sometimes we had to go to the Hebrew School

after school, twice a week. In school all the children were

together, especially the Polish Catholics and the blacks and the

Jews, and after school we didn’t speak to each other or be

friends. I would try to go to the houses of kids I liked in

school, just walk by to see what it was like if it was near

where I walked to go home, and there would be polite conversations sometimes on their blocks, but their parents would look at me funny and I could never go in. We got to love each other

in school and play together at recess but then no more, we had

to go back to where we came from. We had to like each other

on our block whether we did or not and it was OK when we

were playing massive games ranging over the whole wide world

of our block, but sometimes when I just wanted to talk to

someone or see someone, one person, it wasn’t someone on

our block, but someone else, someone Polish Catholic or black,

and then I couldn’t: because it just couldn’t be done, it just

wasn’t allowed. My parents were good, they were outspoken

against prejudice and they taught me everybody was the same,

but when it came to actually going on another block they just

said not to go there and there and there like everybody else

and when I tried to go there the parents on the other end

would send me away. There was Michael who was Polish Catholic, a gentle boy, and Nat who was black. She would come to my house and once at least I went to hers, at least once or

twice I was allowed to go there, mostly she came home with

me, my parents protected me and didn’t let me know how the

neighbors felt about it, and we always had to stay inside and

play, and her mother was a teacher and so was my father:

and I loved her with all my passionate heart. When we

moved away to the suburbs so mother wouldn’t have to walk

any steps because she couldn’t breathe I was torn apart from

all this, my home, my street, the games, the great throng of

wild children who played hide-and-seek late into the night

while mother lay dying: and I said, I will go if I can see Nat,

if she can come to visit me and I can visit her, and I was so

distressed and full of grief, that they looked funny at each

other and lied and said yes of course you can see Nat.

21

But where we moved was all white and I couldn’t see Nat.

*

So when I was a teenager I went back to the old neighborhood

to show it to a teenage friend, the old elementary school where

I had been happy and the old streets where I had been happy,

we took two buses to get there and walked a long way and I

didn’t tell anyone I was going, but now it was all black and

getting even poorer than it had been and there were hundreds

of teenage girls in great clusters on the streets walking home

from high school and we were white and we were surrounded

and they got nasty and mean and wanted to know why we

were showing our white faces there and I looked up and there

was Nat, quiet as she had always been, the same scholarly

serious face and long braids, now teenage like me, and black,

and with a gang of girls, and she told them to leave me alone

and so they did and she walked away with them looking away

from me, looking grave and sad and even a little confused:

walking away from me, but I was the deserter. I watched her

walking away, and I still see the look on her face even with my

eyes open, a remorseless understanding of something I didn’t

know but she did and whatever it was I had found her but it

didn’t matter because of whatever it was. It was the saddest

moment of my life. Later, mother died. I didn’t laugh or weep

or understand. Why are they gone?

22

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

Mother would be sick and dad worked two jobs, teaching and

in the post office unloading packages. Mother would be upstairs in her bedroom in bed, near death, or in the hospital, near death. My brother would be sent somewhere and I would

be sent somewhere: to separate relatives, suddenly, in the

middle of the night. But sometimes we were allowed to stay

home. A black girl would put us in the bath together and wash

us and put us to bed. My brother and I would play and splash

water and the black girl would wash us and smile, but she was

always tentative, never belonging there. She was always young,

there were so many, even I knew she was young, not as old as

any other big people I had ever seen, and for days on end she

would be the only one to talk to us or touch us or do anything

with us. They were nice to us but never said much and none

stayed too long because we were too poor to pay for help and

eventually we always had to be farmed out separately to one

relative or another. The house of our parents would be dank

with disease and despair, my father’s frenetic dinner served so

fast because he had to get to his second job, the only minutes

we could even see him or hear his voice, and the only one who

talked to us or was nice to us was the black girl who put us in

the bath together where we played and played, after we had

our argument about who had to sit on the end with the faucet,

and she put us to bed: and I always wanted her to stay and be

my friend or at least talk and say things I could understand

like other people did. No one stayed long enough so that I

remember her name because we were funny kinds of orphans:

mother wasn’t dead but dying; father loved us but couldn’t be

there; the relatives split us up so we were always alone in

strange houses surrounded by strange ways of doing things

and adults who weren’t as nice to us as our father was and

they thought that if they were your grandmother or aunt it

made being there less lonely: which it did not. They must have

been teenagers, so much bigger than we were that they seemed

23

like adults. They must have been poorer than even we were.

They were black and we were white: and whoever it is I remember, on your knees by the bathtub, as the blond-haired baby boy and I splashed and squealed, as you dabbed and

rubbed, whoever it is: where are you now? and why were you

there at all? and why couldn’t you stay? and while mother lay

dying, you were kind.

*

Once mother was hiring the girl herself. She must have been a

little better then, standing up in the living room, dressed in

regular clothes not sick clothes, without my father there or any

doctor. I came in and there were lots of women and my mother

talked to them one at a time but all in the same room and one

was white and the rest were black and my mother said who

would you like to have and I said hire the white one.

*

I had never seen a white one so I said hire the white one.

*

Hire the white one, I said, maybe seven years old. Hire the

white one. My dying mother hit me.

*

When we had to move from Camden because my mother

couldn’t walk steps or breathe and was frail and dying, the

neighbors on our block got sullen and banded together and

came and said don’t you sell to blacks. Our next-door neighbor

got sullen and threatening and said don’t you sell to blacks.

These are our friends, said my parents. We will do what’s

right, don’t you worry, said my father ambiguously. We sold

to Polish Catholics, blond, with heavy foreign accents. Not

Jews but not black. The best offer, my father swore. The

neighbors were chilly anyway but soon they all moved. The

blacks were coming closer. So they sold to blacks and moved

out.

*

One of the houses where I had to stay was my uncle’s: marriage, not blood. He was richer than us, a judge, a reform democratic politician even though he had friends in the Klan,

and he was vulgar, and I hated him, and the reform democrats

won and my uncle and his friends looted the city and got rich

and that’s why the blacks in Camden are so poor.

24

I would be delivered to his house and his cronies would

come and they would talk about the niggers and even when

they were the government of the city they were planning to

move out to somewhere else and they planned to steal especially from the school system, or that was the part I heard: they stole equipment from Head Start programs and looted school

equipment and cheated on school-lunch programs and left the

blacks to die and called them niggers and my uncle had a bar

where he sold the niggers liquor and ridiculed them for getting

drunk and bragged that he could sell them horseshit and they

would drink it. He had friends who were friends of Nixon and

friends who were friends of the Klan. Now Camden is a ghost

town with black ghosts on those streets where we played our

real childhood games. I had a divine childhood, even with the

woman dying, and father away day and night working, and

death coming suddenly, and my brother and me separated over

and over, orphans in different places for years at a time: I ran

in those streets and played hide-and-seek and Red Rover Red

Rover and jumped rope and played fish and washed my doll’s

hair with the other girls outside on the steps and sat behind

cars near telephone poles and on strange days played witch: it

was divine until I was torn away from it: and I walked down

Catholic streets and black streets without anyone knowing and

I loved Joe and Nat and Michael: then the vultures moved in

when I had gone away, but I heard their plans and I know

what they did: and the wonderful neighbors on the block where

I lived hated blacks: and I said hire the white one at seven

years old: and the vultures picked the bones of the city and left

it plundered. Oh, Nat, where are you? Did you weep or laugh

or understand?

25

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

We were very tiny, in the third grade— how small are seven-

and eight-year-olds? — the little girls from my block. We were

on a big street not too far from the school, one you had to

walk down. It was a rich street, completely different from ours.

There was no brick. There were big windows in the fronts of

the houses and each one had a different front, some rounded

or curved. There were fences around the few very nice steps up

to the door, ornamentation on the outside, around the

windows or on the facade, wide sidewalks, huge trees lining

the street so it was always shady even in the early afternoon

when we went home from school. We were small and happy,

carrying our books home, chattering away. A bunch of black

girls approached us, surrounded us. They were twice as tall as

we were, real big, from junior high school. They surrounded

us and began teasing and calling us names. They demanded

Diane’s scarf. We were silent, very afraid. She was beginning

to give them the scarf when I said no, don’t. There was one

minute of stunned silence, then raucous laughter: wha you say

girl? Don’t, don’t give it to them. Now why not girl we gonna

take it anyway. Because stealing is wrong, I said sincerely. They

surrounded me and began beating me, punching me, kicking

me. They kept on punching and kicking. I remember falling

and saliva pouring from my mouth and screaming. They kept

punching me in the stomach until I fell all the way to the

ground then they kicked me in the stomach over and over and

then they ran away. I lay on the ground quite a while. No one

offered to help me up. Everyone just stared at me. I got up but

I couldn’t get all the way up because I couldn’t straighten my

stomach, it hurt too much. I held it with both hands and stood

bent-backed. No one touched me or helped me or spoke to

me. I must have said something like my daddy told me it’s not

right to steal. Then someone said that she knew someone who

said my daddy was a sissy. A what? A sissy. He’s a sissy. What

does that mean, I must have asked. You know, she said, that’s

2 6

what all the boys say, that he’s a sissy. Enraged, I walked

doubled up home, determined to find the girls who had beat

me up. But my parents told me not to because they would just

hurt me more. I wanted to go into every junior high school

class and look for them. But it would just make trouble and

they would hurt me more, I was told. I remembered sissy and I

remembered my girlfriends doing nothing. They were somehow

worse than awful and mean. Doing nothing was worse.

*

When you get beat up you don’t see much, you begin falling,

you begin trying not to fall so you feel yourself falling and you

feel yourself trying to stay straight and the fists come from

every direction, down on your head and in your face and in

your gut most, and you keep not falling until you can’t breathe

anymore and then you fall. You hit the cement and you feel it

hit you and you see the feet coming at you and you keep trying

to protect your face especially and your eyes and your teeth

and if you can move once you’re down you try to kick back,

to use your legs to get them off of you, but if you fall so that

your legs are sort of twisted under you then you can’t do that

and you can feel your back twist away from your stomach and

it’s real hard not to piss and once they’ve stopped it’s real hard

not to vomit. You don’t know anything about other people

except the ones hitting you if there are a mess of them and

they are all punching you at once. You don’t think, oh, my

friends are standing around watching. It’s after, when you are

suddenly alone, when the heat of the hitting bodies is suddenly

cold air on your sweat and you suddenly understand that you

are not being punched anymore, it has stopped, and you are

not being kicked anymore, it has stopped, and you think, oh,

I’m not dead, I can breathe, now let’s see if I can move, and

you try to stand up no matter what it costs because standing is

the best thing, it gives you something back, and it is in the

process of trying to get up that you look around and see your

friends watching, and it is in the process of getting up that you

see you have to do it alone, and it is in the process of getting

up that you realize without even thinking that anyone can see

how much you hurt and your friends are just standing there,

watching, staying away from you. It is the process of getting

up that clarifies for you how afraid they were for themselves,

27

not for you, and how chickenshit they are, and even though

you are tiny and they are tiny you know that even tiny little

girls aren’t really that tiny, in fact no one on earth is that tiny,

and then they say sissy and it makes you understand that you

and your daddy are different from them forever and there is

something puny at the heart of them that smells up the sky.

You can be seven or eight and know all that and remember it

forever.

*

Diane was holding her scarf, real pretty with lots of very pretty

colors: and it was Marcy who said, your daddy is a sissy.

*

I got home down long blocks bent over and not crying and

they walked all around me not touching me, staying far away.

My stomach was kicked in but my face wasn’t hurt too bad. I

was bent and there was no way on earth I could straighten out

my back or straighten out my stomach or take my hands away

from my stomach but see I kept walking and they kept walking:

oh, and after that everything was the same, except I never

really liked Marcy again, as long as I live I never will: and I

still would have done anything for Diane: and we played

outside all our games: and I didn’t care whether they lived or

died.

*

Down the far end of our block, not the end going toward

school but the end going somewhere I never saw, there was a

real funny girl, H. She lived almost at the very end of our

block, it was like almost falling off the edge of the world to go

there and you had to pass by so many people you knew to get

there and they expected you not to go that far away from

where you lived, from the center of the block, and they

wondered where you were going and what you were going to

do, and I didn’t know too many people up that end, just some,

not any of my favorites: and also the principal of the Hebrew

School was up that way, and I didn’t like going by his house at

all because in heavy European tones he chastised me for being

alive and skipping about with no apparent purpose. So I

avoided going there at all, and also I was really scared to be so

close to the end of the block, but this girl was really funny and

so sometimes I went there anyway. She had a real nice mother

28

and a sort of bratty younger brother. It was the same basic

house as ours but with lots more things in it, lots nicer: and

her mother was always cheerful and upright and never up dying

in bed, which was as pleasant as anything could be. We

weren’t real close friends but there was some wild streak that

matched: she had it by being real funny, crazy funny, and I

had it some other way, I don’t know how I had it or how she

knew I had it, but she always liked me so she must have.

One regular Saturday afternoon H ’s mother went away and

her father was working and she and her bratty brother were

being baby-sitted and I went there to visit. The baby-sitter was

some gray gray teenager with pimples and a ponytail, and we

just got wilder and wilder until we ended up on top of her

holding her down and punching her and hitting her and

taunting her and tormenting her and calling her names and

telling her how ugly she was: and then the bratty brother came

down and we got scared for a minute that he was going to tell

or she was going to get up because we were getting pretty tired

but he came right over and sat right on top of her and we kept

hitting her and laughing like mad and having so much fun

making jokes about hitting her and calling her names and then

making jokes about that. H was at her head holding her down

by pulling her hair and sitting on her hair and slapping her in

the face and hitting her breasts. The bratty brother was sitting

sort of over her stomach and kept hitting her there and tickling

her there and grinding his knees into her sides. I was at her

feet, sitting on top of them and digging my nails into her legs

and punching her legs and hitting her between her legs. We

kept her there for hours, at least two, and we never stopped

laughing at our jokes and at how stupid and pathetic she was:

and when we let her up she ran out and left us: and when H’s

mother came home we said the baby-sitter had just left us

there to go see her boyfriend: and H’s mother was furious with

the baby-sitter for leaving us alone because we were just

children and she called to complain and call her down and got

some hysterical story of how we had tortured her: and we

said, what does that mean? what is that? what is torture? she

left to see her boyfriend, that’s what she said to us: and the

baby-sitter said we beat her up and tortured her and we said

no no we don’t know what she means: and no one ever believed

29

her. She wasn’t Jewish was the thing. It was incredible fun was

the thing. She was dumber and weaker than we were was the

thing. Especially: it was incredible fun was the thing. I never

laughed so much in my life. She wept but I’m sure she didn’t

understand. You can’t feel remorse later when you laughed so

hard then. I have never— to this day and including right now—

given a damn. Why is it that when you laugh so hard you can’t

weep or understand? Oh, little girls, weep forever or understand too much but be a little scared to laugh too hard.

30

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

There was a stone fence, only about two feet high, uneven,

rough, broken, and behind it the mountains: a hill declining,

rolling down, and beyond the valley where it met the road the

mountains rose up, not hills but high mountain peaks, in winter

covered in snow from top to bottom, in fall and spring the

peaks white and blindingly bright and the rest underneath the

pearly caps browns and greens and sometimes dark, fervent

purples where the soil mixed with varying shades of light

coming down from the sky. The building near the stone wall,

facing out in back over the descending hill to the road and

then the grandeur of the mountains, was white and wood, old,

fragile against this bold scenery, slight against it. When it

snowed the frail building could have been part of a drawing, a

mediocre, sentimental New England house in a New England

snow, a white on white cliche, except exquisite: delicate, exquisite, so finely drawn under its appearance of being a cheap scene of the already observed, the cliched, the worn-down-into-the-ground snow scene. In the fall, the trees were lush with

yellow and crimson and purple saturated the distant soil. Green

got duller, then turned a burnt brown. The sky was huge, not

sheltering, but right down on the ground with you so that you

walked in it: your feet had to reach down to touch earth. Wind

married the sky and tormented it: but the earth stayed below

solid and never swirled around in the fight. There was no dust.

The earth was solid down in the ground, always. There was

no hint of impermanence, sand. This was New England, where

the ground did not bend or break or compromise: it rested

there, solid and placid and insensitive to the forms its own

magnificence took as it rose up in mountains of ominous

heights. These were not mountains that crumbled or fell down

in manic disorder. These were not mountains that slid or split

apart or foamed over. These were mountains where the sky

reached down to touch them in their solid splendor with their

great trees and broken branches and dwarfed stones, and they

31

stayed put because the earth was solid, just purely itself, not

mixed with sky or air or water, not harboring fire or ash: no

ice sliding down to kill anything in its path: no snow tumbling

to destroy: just dirt, solid ground, made so that humans could

comprehend it, not die in awe of it, while snow packed itself

down on top or rain pelted or punched or sun burnt itself out

or wind flashed through the sky, torturing it. These were

mountains meant to last forever in a community of human

sight and sound: not mountains meant to swallow cities and

towns forever: and so one was surrounded by a beauty not

suffused with fear, splendid but not inducing awe of the divine

or terror of the wild, intemperate menace of weather and wind

gone amuck. These were mountains that made humans part of

their beauty: solid, like earth, like soil. One felt immeasurably

human, solid, safe: part of the ground, not some shade on it

through which the wind passes. The mountains could be one’s

personal legacy, what the earth itself gave one to be part of:

one simply had to love them: nothing had to be done to deserve

them or survive them: one could be innocent of nature and not

offend them.

The wooden house, so white and old, underlined the

tameness of these mountains, the incongruity fitting right in, a

harmony, a simple delight. The mountains and the house went

hand in hand: what would the mountain be without the simple

old house? The cold came from the sky and rested on the

ground: touched the edges of the mountains high up and

reached down into the valley and edged along the road and

paced restlessly on the earnest ground. The cold could

overwhelm a human with its intensity, its bitterness, like some

awful taste rubbing on the skin. But in the fragile wooden

house it was warm: so the cold was not the terrifying cold that

could penetrate even stone or brick: this must be a gentle cold,

killed by small fires in charming fireplaces and rattling

radiators in tiny rooms.

Emmy and I never touched, outsiders at this rich girls’

school, on this campus nestled in these welcoming mountains:

she from Kenya, me from Camden; her an orphan separated

from her family to be sent to a girls’ school in New England as

a little girl; me with the woman upstairs dying and the father

gone to work and the brother farmed out and me farmed out,

32

poor little poor girl; her angry and wild, dark black, separated

from everyone she loved and everyone she knew and arriving

here at this college after three or four finishing schools, unfinished, to be educated; me having gotten here so I could read and write; her wanting to go home; me never having a home

anymore again; her not a rich white girl here at this right

school; me poor; her upper-class where she comes from; me

low down; both smart, too smart, for our own good. Also: in

the world of the rich the poor are outcasts. Being black made

her poor, money aside. The others were like some distant

figures who spoke with cotton stuffed in their mouths: nothing

ever came out clean and clear; they had anguish but it was

fogged, having nothing to do with what she or I understood as

real: not that any of the premises were discussed, because the

rich make their own rules, democracy being one of them, the

democracy being in the pretense that no rules have been made:

they suspend them at will: they don’t know: it’s not their fault.

She had a country to think about and plan for: the freedom of

its people and her place there, now that she had been

“ educated, ” westernized, Europeanized: she knew it but not

what to do about it, and however happy we were, in her head

she was always on her way home, to a place where she would

still be an outsider, in exile from a youth that had been stolen

from her. I loved her. I never touched her.

*

The color that comes to New England in the fall does not

leave it when the trees die. Winter is not barren or monotone.

The great evergreens go on in muted light. The bare branches

themselves are tinted with purples and yellows and tawny

shades like deer flashing by at incredible speeds. The ground is

every color of brown and blue and black with yellow and red

running through it like great streaks, and the purple lies in the

ground like some spectral presence waiting to rise up. The air

is silver and blue as it edges toward black. It has the purest

white and the grim gray of a sober storm and in the center of

it will hang the most orange sun, flaming like dreaded fire. In

the fall there are only dizzying spreads of scarlet and yellow or

crimson and ochre: but in the winter, the colors are endlessly

subtle and complex: so many shades of brown that they cannot

be counted or named, so much purple in the air between the

33

trees and under the earth shining through and sliding down

the mountainsides that when the yellow seeps in or crowds in

next to the purple the mind renounces what it sees, saying:

impossible, winter is something brown and dead. The branches

of the trees are elegant, so strong and graceful, even under the

weight of icy snows: the ice rides them like the best lover, an

unsentimental kindness of enveloping, hugging, holding on, no

matter what the pressure is to shake loose. The white branches

stand in solemn quietude, witnesses without speech to the death

called winter, reproaches to the effrontery of other seasons

with their vulgar displays. The white on the mountains reaches

out to the human eye, persuading it that winter is entirely

sublime and will stay forever, also persuading the human heart

that nothing is beyond it— no cold too cold, no snow too big,

no winter too long, no death entirely bereft of some too simple

beauty, no tree too bare, no color too insignificant or too

subtle, no silence too still, no gesture too eloquent, no human

act merely human. In these winter mountains, the human heart

learns to want peace.

The trees near the fragile white house are endlessly high.

They disappear into some low-hanging cloud, all white and

puffy, wispy, watery, dripping ice that melts and burns in the

bright sun before it gets down to the ground. They are great

carcasses rooted in the solid ground, great thick things all

knotted and gnarled, or smooth and silver-streaked. They never

were just leaves: the bright colors deceived the stupid mind.

They were always their trunks, with great canals going through

them and animals living inside. They have other things growing

on them, even in the dead of winter, even partly buried under

the snow or whiplashed by it as the snow swipes on by carried

by the wind in a storm. The great trunks deceive us into seeing

them all white in a snowstorm: but they always stay themselves, the misery-racked survivors of every assault and intrusion, every wind and falling thing, every particle blown by or falling down, every stone or rock hurled against them or

brushing by: the trunk is immoveable while everything else,

except the ground underneath, moves or dies. This is a permanence beyond our own, redeemed by having no memory and no human speech.

Emmy had come from a place entirely unlike this and so

34

had I. She said almost nothing about hers, except that there

was a huge city, cosmopolitan, exciting, and a university, big,

important, and all around the lush, infested green of hot jungle

thick with insects and heat. It had many languages, tribal and

colonial. It was troubling somehow: because there might not

be room for her there. Mine was simpler, city, a suburb later

on briefly: telephone poles, asphalt, seasons, the ubiquitous

cement, the endless chatter of automobiles and human talk:

not the grandeur of mountains. She hadn’t seen snow, except

maybe once before she came here. For me snow had been:

trying to get back and forth from school with the boys surrounding the girls, chasing us, heading us off, pelting us with snowballs, and the snow melting under the dirty car smoke

and turning brown and greasy, and a shovel to dig out the cars

and clear the sidewalks, and playing in the snow dressed in

snowsuits and trying to make a snowman: but especially,

trying to get back and forth from school without getting hurt

by a snowball. My snow had nothing to do with solitude or

beauty and it fell on a flat place, not a hill or mountain, with

the cement under it less solid than this New England earth,

less trustworthy, ready to break and split, ready to loosen and

turn into jagged pieces of stone big enough to throw instead of

snowballs or inside them. We were endlessly strange together,

not rich, foreign to this cool, elegant, simple, beautiful winter.

I didn’t touch her, but I touched him. Her best friend since

childhood, both in Kenya, little kids together and now here,

preparing, preparing for some adult future back home. She

took me with her and delivered me to him and I took him

instead of her, because he was as close as I could get. She was

delighted he liked me, and sullen. It happened in a beautiful

room, an elegant room, at elegant Harvard, friends of theirs

from home, their room, all students studying to be the future

of their country, and I was bleeding anyway and so I spread

my legs for him, not knowing of course that it was because I

loved her. I stayed with him over and over, for months, a night

here, an afternoon there, though I came to hate him, a purely

physical aversion to his clumsy, boring fuck: I didn’t want

him to touch me but I had him fuck me anyway, too polite to

say no for one thing, not knowing how to get out of it, and

wanting her, not knowing it. I got pregnant and had an

35

abortion and she went home. Nothing like pregnancy to make

the man disappear. It decided her. The years of exiled youth

ended. She went home. Like everyone else in the world I was

terrified, it would have been easier right then to be an outcast

hero and have a little black baby whom I could love to death

without having to say why and I would have felt brave, brave:

and no one would have hurt that child: but Emmy looked at

me a certain way all the time now, hate, simple, pure, and I

had the abortion, the hate was hard as a rock, diamond,

shredding the light. She got so quiet I could have died. She left,

but I was the deserter. I didn’t care too much. By the time

mother died everyone was a stranger anyway, and after that I

was a too-cold child with a too-cold heart. I have stayed that

way. Everything gets taken away and everyone eventually

weeps and laughs and understands. Why lie?

36

The great thing is to be saturated with

something— that is, in one way or another,

with life; and I chose the form of my

saturation.

Henry James

*

Have you ever seen the Lower East Side of New York in the

summer? The sidewalks are boiling cement, almost molten,

steaming, a spread of heat scorching human feet, the heat like

the pure blue of the pure flame, pure heat saddled with city

dirt and city smell and especially the old urine of the hundreds

of near-dead junkies hanging nearly skeletal in the shadows of

doorways and crouched under the stinking stairwells of

tenements in which the hot, dead air never moves.

The sun burns. It burns like in Africa. It is in the center of

the sky, huge and burning. No clouds can cover it. It comes

through them, a haze of heat. It gets bigger every day. It is a

foul yellow fire, sulfur at the edges. It hangs and burns. It

spreads out. It reaches down like the giant hand of some monster. The buildings burn.

The air is saturated with the hot sun, thick with it. The air

is a fog of fire and steam. The lungs burn and sweat. The skin

drowns in its own boiling water, erupting. The air lies still,

layers of itself, all in place like the bodies filed in a morgue,

corpses grotesquely shelved. Somewhere corpses and rot hang

in the air, an old smell in the old air, the air that has never

moved off these city streets, the air that has been waiting

through the killer winter to burn, to torment, to smother: to

burn: the air that has been there year after year, never moving,

but burning more and more summer after summer, aged air,

old smell: immortal, while humans die.

There is never any wind. There is never a cool breeze. The sun

absorbs the wind. The cement absorbs the wind. The wind

evaporates between earth and sky. There is never any air to

breathe. There is only heat. Rain disappears in the heat, making

the air hotter. Rain hangs in the air, in the thick, hot air: bullets

of wet heat stopped in motion. Rain gets hot: water boiled that

37

never cools. Rain becomes steam, hanging in midair: it burns

inside the nose, singes the hairs in the nose, scorches the throat:

leaves scars on the skin. The air gets wetter and hotter and when

the rain stops the air is heavier, thicker, harder to breathe. Rain

refreshes only the smell, giving it wings.

The smell is blood on piss. The blood coagulates on the

cement, then rots. Knives cut and figures track through the

blood making burgundy and scarlet footprints. Cats lap up its

edges. It never gets scrubbed out. The rain does not wash it

away. Dust mixes in with it. Garbage floats on top of it. Candy

bar wrappers get stuck in it. Empty, broken hypodermic

needles float. It is a sickening smell, fouling up the street,

twisting the stomach into knots of despair and revulsion: still,

the blood stays there: old blood followed by new: knives especially: sometimes the sharp shots of gunfire: sometimes the exploding shots of gunfire: the acrid smoke hanging above the

blood: sometimes the body is there, smeared, alone, red seeping

out or bubbling or spurting: sometimes the body is there, the

blood comes out hissing with steam, you can see the steam just

above the blood running with it, the blood is hot, it hits the

pavement, it hisses, hot on hot: sometimes the person moves,

walks, runs, staggers, crawls, the blood trailing behind: it stains

the cement: flies dance on it in a horrible, pulsating mass: it

coagulates: it rots: it stinks: the smell gets old and never dies.

Sometimes the next day or the day after people walk through

it and track it around step after step until it is just a faint

splash of faded, eerie pink: and the smell is on their shoes and

they go home: it gets inside, thrown near a pile of clothes or

under the bed: it clings to the floor, crawls along it, vile and

faint.

There is other blood. Cats and dogs die bleeding, smashed

under cars. Rats and mice die bleeding, poison opening up

their insides and the blood splattering out. The carcasses decompose. They are thrown in trash cans or kicked in dark corners or swept under parked cars. Chickens are sacrificed in

secret religious rites, sometimes cats. Their necks are slashed

and they are found, bloodless. The blood has been drained

out. There is no trace of it. Children fall and bleed. Their

parents beat them. Women bleed inside or sweating on street-

corners. Blood spurts out when junkies shoot up.

38

The piss sits like a blessing on the neighborhood. It is the

holy seal, the sacramental splendid presence, like God omnipresent. The men piss night and day, against the cars, against the buildings, against the steps, against the doors, against the

garbage cans, against the cement, against the window ledges

and drainpipes and bicycles: against anything standing still:

outside or inside: against the walls of foyers and the walls of

halls and on the staircases inside buildings and behind the

stairwells. Mixed with the smell of the piss is the scent of

human shit, deposited in broken-down parks or in foyers or

behind stairwells and the casual smell of dog shit, spread

everywhere outside, in heaps. The rat shit is hard and dry,

huge droppings in infested buildings, the turds almost as big as

dog turds, but harder, finer, rounder.

The heat beats down on the piss and shit and the coagulated

blood: the heat absorbs the smell and carries it: the heat turns

wet on human skin and the smell sinks in: an urban perfume: a

cosmopolitan stench: the poor on the Lower East Side of New

York.

*

On this block, there is nothing special. It is hot. It stinks. The

men congregate in packs on the hot stoops. It is no cooler at

night. Inside the crowded tenements it is burning, harder to

find air to breathe, so the men live outside, drinking, shooting

up, fights break out like brush fires, radios blare in Spanish,

knives flash, money changes hands, empty bottles are hurled

against walls or steps or cars or into the gutters of the street,

broken glass is underfoot, dazzling, destructive: the men go

inside to fuck or eat at whim: outside they are young, dramatic,

striking, frenetic until the long periods of lethargy set in and

one sees the yellow sallowness of the skin, the swollen eyes

bloodshot and hazed over, the veins icy blue and used up. “ I

got me everything, ” says Juan, my pretty, wired-up lover,

junkie snorting cocaine come to fuck while N and R are in the

kitchen. He shows up wired. I hesitate. Perhaps she wants him.

We are polite this way. “ He wants you, ” N says with her

exquisite courtesy, a formal, passionless, gentle courtesy, graceful and courtly, our code, we have seriously beautiful manners.

There are no doors but we don’t know what they are for

anyway. We have one single mattress on the floor where we

39

sleep. He fucks good, Juan, I like him, he keeps his junk to

himself, he can’t live long, the coke makes him intense, pulsating, deep thrusts, incredible tension in his hips, hard, muscled hips, not usual for a junkie, I can’t feel the smack in his body,

no languor anywhere, intense crazed coke fucking, intensely

devoted fucking for a junkie. N and R walk by, going out. N

gives an appreciative look. She smiles her broad grin. I am

groaning under him. She laughs her comradely, amused laugh,

grinning from ear to ear.

The apartment is a storefront. You walk down a few steps to

get to the door. Anyone can hide down where you have to

walk. The whole front of the apartment is a store window.

There is no way to open it. It is level with the street. It has

nothing to keep anyone out, no bars, no grating. It is just a

solid sheet of glass. The front room is right there, on the street.

We keep it empty except for some clothes in our one closet.

The middle room is right behind the front room, no door, just

a half wall dividing the two rooms. No window. We have one

single mattress, old, a sheet or two, a pillow or two, N ’s record

player and her great jazz and blues and classical records, her

clarinet, her saxophone, my typewriter, an Olivetti portable, a

telephone. Behind the middle room is a large kitchen, no door

between the rooms. There is a big wooden table with chairs.

There are old, dirty appliances: old refrigerator, old stove.

We don’t cook much or eat much. We make buckets of iced

tea. We have vodka in the refrigerator, sometimes whiskey

too. Sometimes we buy orange juice. There are cigarettes on

the table, butts piled up in muddy ashtrays or dirty, wet cups.

There are some books and some paper and some pencils. There

is a door and a window leading out back. The door has

heavy metal grating over it, iron, weaved, so that no one can

break in. The window is covered in the same heavy metal. The

door is bolted with a heavy metal bolt and locked with a heavy

metal police lock.

The floors are wooden and painted. The apartment is

painted garish red and garish blue. It is insufferably dark,

except for the front room on the street. We have to cover the

window. It is insufferably hot with virtually no ventilation. It

is a palace for us, a wealth of space. Off the kitchen is a thin

40

wooden door, no lock, just a wooden latch. Through it is- a

toilet, shared with the next door apartment, also a storefront

but vacant.

Before Juan comes, we are in the kitchen talking about our

movie. We are going to make a movie, a tough, unsentimental

avant-garde little number about women in a New York City

prison. I have written it. It strangely resembles my own story:

jailed over Vietnam the woman is endlessly strip-searched and

then mangled inside by jail doctors. N will make it— direct it,

shoot it, edit it. It is her film. R is the star. She is N ’s lover for

years, plans on forever, it is on the skids but she hangs on,

pretending not to know. She is movingly loyal and underneath

pathetically desperate. N and I are not allowed to be lovers so

we never are, alone. We evade the spirit of the law. N refuses

to make a political film. Politics, she argues, is boring and

temporary. Vietnam will be over and forgotten. A work of art

must outlast politics. She uses words sparingly. Her language

is almost austere, never ornate. We are artists, she says. I am

liberal with her. She always brings out my generosity. I take

no hard line on politics. I too want art. We need money. Most

of ours goes for cigarettes, after which there isn’t any left. We

fuck for drugs. Speed is cheaper than food. We fuck for pills.

We fuck for prescriptions. We fuck for meals when we have

to. We fuck for drinks in bars. We fuck for tabs of acid. We

fuck for capsules of mescaline. We fuck for loose change. We

fuck for fun. We fuck for adventure. We fuck when we are hot

from the weather. We fuck for big bucks to produce our movie.

In between, we discuss art and politics. We listen to music and

read books. She plays sax and clarinet and I write short stories.

We are poor but educated.

*

The day we moved in the men, our neighbors, paid us a visit.

We will get you, they said. We will come when we are ready.

We will fuck you when we are ready. We will come one

night when we decide. Maybe we will sell you. N is worth a

lot of money in Puerto Rico, they say. I am worth not so

much but still a little something. They are relaxed, sober.

Some have knives. They take their time. How will you keep

us out, one man asks logically. What can you do to keep us

out. One night we will come. There are six or seven of them

4i

there. Two speak, alternating promises. One night we will

come.

Our friend M shows up then, cool cool pacifist hippie type,

white, long hair in a ponytail. Hey man, he says, hey man,

hey man, let’s talk peace not war, let’s be friends man, let’s have

some smoke. He invites them into our storefront. The men sit

in a circle in the front room, the front door wide open. Hey,

man, come on, these chicks are cool. Hey, man, come on, these

chicks are cool. Hey, man, come on, I got some good smoke, let’s

just cool this out man smoke some smoke man together man

these are cool chicks man. He passes a pipe, passes joints: it is

a solemn ceremony. We gonna come in and get these chicks

when we want them man. Hey man, come on, man, these

chicks are real cool, man, you don’t wanna mess with these

chicks man they are cool man. The pipe goes round and round.

The neighbors become quiet. The threats cease. M gloats with

his hip, his cool, his ponytail accomplishment as peacemaker.

Hey man any time you want some smoke you just come to me

man just leave these chicks alone man smoke and peace man,

you know, man.

They file out, quiet and stoned. M is elated. He has forged a

treaty, man. M is piss-proud, man. We get stoned. Smoke,

man. The front door stays wide open as we sit in the front

room and smoke. Night comes, the dark. M points to the open

door. Just stay cool with those guys, man. Those guys come

back you just invite them in for a little smoke. It’s cool, man.

*

I have a habit, not nice. I am two years into it this time. I have

had it before. Black beauties. I take a lot of pills. The pills cost

a lot of money. N takes them too. I don’t know if it is addiction

or pleasure for her or how long she has been taking them or if

she can do without them. I never ask. These are privacies I

respect. I have my own dignity too. I pretend it is cheaper than

food.

One night N brings home a fuck, a Leo named Leo. He

steals our speed and all our cash. The speed is gone. I go into

emergency gear. I pretend it is a joke. How the fuck, I ask her

repeatedly, can anyone be stupid enough to fuck someone who

says he is a Leo named Leo? I ask this question, tell this joke,

many times. I am scared. We find a trick. She fucks him because

42-

she lost the pills. It is our code and her own personal sense of

courtesy. We get the pills. A Leo named Leo, I say. How can

anyone be so stupid? We pop the pills. A Leo named Leo. We

sit in our middle room, she is drinking scotch and I am drinking

vodka, we are momentarily flush: and the pills hit. A Leo

named Leo. We laugh until we start to cry. We hold our guts

and shake. A Leo named Leo. She grins from ear to ear. She

has done something incredibly witty: fucked a Leo named Leo.

We are incredibly delighted with her.

*

Walking down St Mark’s Place I run into an old lover, Nikko. He

is Greek. I love Greece. We say hello, how are you in Greek. It is

hot. I take him back with me. N is not there. We have a fight. I am

insulted because he wants to wear a condom. But women are

dirty, he says as a point of fact. I am offended. I won’t allow the

condom. We fight. He hits me hard in the face several times. He

hits me until I fall. He fucks me. He leaves. It is two weeks before

I remember that this is what happened last time. Last winter.

Women carry diseases, he said. No condoms, I said. He hit me

several times, hard in the face, holding me up so he could keep

hitting. He fucked me and left. I had another lover coming, a

woman I had been waiting for weeks to see, married, hard to see.

I picked myself up and forgot about him. She was shameless: she

liked the bruises, the fresh semen. He didn’t use the condom.

Either time.

*

We proceed with our film project. We are intensely committed

to it, for the sake of art. The politics of it is mine, a hidden

smile behind my eyes. We call a famous avant-garde film critic.

He says he will come to see us at midnight. At midnight he

comes. We sit in the front room, huddled on the floor. He is

delicate, soft-spoken, a saintly smile: he likes formal, empty

filmic statements not burdened by content: our film is some

baroque monster in his presence, overgrown with values and

story and plot and drama. It will never have this appearance

again. Despite his differences with us— aesthetic, formal,

ethereal— he will publish an interview with us to help us raise

money. We feel lifted up, overwhelmed with recognition: what

he must see in us to do this for us, a pure fire. We wait for the

other shoe to drop.

43

But he sits there, beatific. We can interview each other and

send it to him along with photographs of us. He drinks our

pathetic iced tea. He smiles. No shoe drops. He leaves.

The next days we spend in a frenzy of aesthetic busywork.

We take pencils in hand and plot out long, interesting conversations about art. We try to document an interesting, convoluted discussion of film. We discuss Godard at some length and write

down for posterity our important criticisms of him. We are

brassy, hip, radical, cool. We haunt the photo machines at

Woolworth’s, taking artistic pictures of ourselves, four poses

for four quarters. We use up all our change. We hustle more.

Excuse me, sir, but someone just stole my money and I don’t

have a subway token to get home with. Excuse me, sir, I am

very hungry and can’t you spare a quarter so I can get some

food. Excuse me, sir, I just lost my wallet and I don’t have bus

fare home.

Then we go back to the machine and pose and look intense

and avant-garde. We mess up our hair and sulk, or we try

grinning, we stare into the hidden camera, looking intense,

looking deep, looking sulky and sultry and on drugs.

We write down some more thoughts on art. We pick the

photos we want. We hustle for money for stamps. Excuse me,

sir, my child is sick and I don’t have any money to buy her

medicine.

The critic prints our interview. He doesn’t print our

photographs. We are famous. Our thoughts on film and

art are in the newspaper. We wait for people to send us

money.

*

We run back and forth from our storefront to Woolworth’s as

we get the money to take more photos. We run back and forth

as we add pages and pages to our interview with each other. I

sit at the typewriter ponderously. This is an important project.

We run back and forth each time we think of something new

to add: a new pose to try, a new sentence to write down, a

new topic to explore, a new intensely artistic sulk or pout. We

make feverish notes in Woolworth’s and run home to type them

up. On one trip a policeman follows us. He walks half a block

behind us, keeping us in sight. We go faster, go slower, he stays

half a block behind us. Girls, he calls finally, girls. We wait.

44

He catches up. There is a silence. Did you know, girls, that

about half an hour ago you crossed the street against a red

light? We are properly stunned, truly stunned, silent and

attentive. I have to write you girls a ticket but listen I don’t

want to be too hard on you, I don’t want to give you a

record or anything so why don’t I write it just for one of

you. The three of us decide he will give the ticket to N since

the apartment is not in her name. He slowly, soberly, prints

her name out in big block letters. Now listen girls you be

careful next time I don’t want to have to do this again you

hear. We stand there, dazed and acquiescent. We walk on

slowly, once we are sure he is really gone. We look over our

shoulders. Is he still there or was he really there? N has a

ticket for jaywalking in her hand. Between us right then we

have a dozen tabs of acid and a bag of marijuana and some

loose joints. We have no money for food so we have been

living on speed and alcohol. We have the speed on us, in a

prescription bottle but you would have to be a fool to believe

it. We are hungry and as soon as we mail off our interview

we know we are going to have to find a fuck. We are stoned

beyond all imagining, and yet of course intensely serious

about art. Still, in the scheme of things, jaywalking is not

a good thing to do. We can see that now, once we think

about it. We think about it now quite a lot, rolling along the

city streets in the burning heat, our sides splitting with

laughter. We are dazzled with the universe and its sense of

humor. We are dazzled too by its generosity: we are left to

pursue art: we are not carted off, dangerous criminals,

drowning in drugs. We are artists, not riffraff. We are scared,

the cop’s breath still hot on our silly necks. Hungry, we find

a fuck, a safe one, N ’s girlfriend, to whom we recount our

uproarious adventure, stressing our triumphant escape. She

feeds us, just barely pretending to be amused. I leave them

alone. N pays for the meal.

*

Poor R ’s apartment is tiny and dark, on the first floor of a

brown brick building in a Mafia neighborhood. Italian rings

out around us: is it apocryphal or are stolen bicycles really

returned? R says it is true. She says she is safe here. Every

window is covered in layers of metal. It is dark, but it is the

45

real Village, not the Lower East Side. It is West. It is not piss-

covered. It is not blood-drenched.

Poor R is refined, ladylike, devoted. She cuts N ’s hair and

sews clothes for her. She makes her meals and feeds her friends.

She is repelled by the company N keeps but she is devoted

anyway, the soul of quiet devotion no matter what the provocation. She wants to be a refuge, a retreat, a nest. She makes sachets of delicate smells. She lights delicate candles to go with

dinner. She cooks delicate souffles and serves many kinds of

cheeses. She goes to auditions and gets jobs off-Broadway in

little theaters. She is small and delicate and refined. She is

quiet and kind. She is genuinely devoted. We come from the

dense torment of our storefront, immersed in the drugs,

smelling of the sex, numb from the violence, nevertheless exhilarated: and she feeds us and lets us sleep: because she is in love and devoted. She is talented, carefully dressed, not pretty,

not handsome, but each feature is distinct so that the face adds

up to an expressive one. She reads books and listens to music,

all in moderation. She loves devotedly, without moderation.

She hangs in for the long haul. She is promising to be there

forever. She wants to be there when N, weary, wants peace.

Given half a chance, she would be the one. But she has no

chance. N is bored. We eat, I leave, N pays for the meal.

*

N is easy to love, devotedly. She is very beautiful, not like a

girl. She is lean and tough. She fucks like a gang of boys. She is

smart and quiet. She doesn’t waste words. She grins from ear

to ear. She is never afraid.

*

Women pursue her. She is aloof, amused. She fucks everyone

eventually, with perfect simplicity and grace. She is a rough

fuck. She grinds her hips in. She pushes her fingers in. She

tears around inside. She is all muscle and jagged bones. She

thrusts her hips so hard you can’t remember who she is or

how many of her there are. The first time she tore me apart. I

bled and bled.

*

Women want her. So do men. She fucks everyone. It is always

easier for her to than not to. She has perfect courtesy and rare

grace. She is marvelously polite, never asking, never taking,

46

until licensed by an urgent request. Then she is a hooligan, all

fuck and balls.

*

She is slightly more reserved with men. When a man fucks me,

she says, I am with him, fucking me. The men ride her like

maniacs. Her eyes roll back but stay open and she grins. She is

always them fucking her, no matter how intensely they ride.

Me I get fucked but she is different, always just slightly outside

and on top: being him, fucking her. The men are ignorant and

entranced.

*

She dresses like a glittering boy, a tough, gorgeous boy.

She is Garbo in Queen Christina but run-down and dirty and

druggy, leaner and tougher: more used: slightly smelling of

decay and death, touched by the smell of the heat and the

smell of the piss and the smell of the men: but untouched

underneath by any human lust not her own.

*

She is ardent and intense, entirely charming, a grimy prince of

the streets, tough and fast: destitute and aloof, drawn to the

needle: edging toward the needle: but she fucks instead most of

the time: she likes the needle though: you can see it in her eyes,

all glazed over: she stops grinning and her lips get thick with

sensuality and dirty with greed: she loses her courtesy: she is

finally taken over: the needle is not her fucking her: it is something outside her fucking her: and she dissolves, finally. I could lose her to this. I never think about losing her or having her,

except around the needle. It is the only thing I am afraid of. I

would do anything for her. I want to shoot up with her: her do

it to me, tie the rubber thing, heat the spoon, fill the needle,

find the vein, shoot it up. She demurs politely. She keeps away

from it: except sometimes: she does not draw me in. She does

it away from me: with other lovers: now and then: glassy-eyed

and elated: not aloof but ecstatic: sated: when no one could

even see, from day to day, that she had been hungry.

Or I couldn’t see.

Or she wasn’t: the needle just gutted her with pleasure: so

afterward, in retrospect, one inferred that there had been a

lack, a need, before the needle: but in fact she had been complete before and now was simply drenched in something extra: 47

something exquisite, heavy and thick like some distilled perfume, sweet to the point of sickness, a nauseating sweetness: something transporting and divine: something that translated

into eyelids weighed down and swollen, lips puffed up, the

cracks in them spreading down, the body suddenly soft and

pliant, ready to curl, to billow, to fold: a fragile body, delicate

bones suddenly soft, eyes hiding behind lush eyelids: the hard

tension of her hips dissolved, finally. The way other women

look when they’ve been fucked hard and long, coming and

coming, is how she looked: the way other women look fucked

out, creamy and swollen, is how she looked. The needle gave

her that, finally: dissolved.

*

The jazz club is on a rough street, darker even than ours. It is

low down in a cellar. It is long and narrow. The walls are

brick. The tables are small, brown covered with a thick shellac,

heavy and hard, ugly. They are lined up against the brick walls

one right next to the other. You have to buy two drinks. There

is a stage at the end of the long, narrow room. Jazz blares,

live, raw: not the cold jazz, but belted-out jazz, all instruments,

all lips and spit. There is no chatter. There is no show. There

is just the music. The musicians are screaming through metal.

Or there is waiting—glasses, ice, cigarette smoke, subdued

mumbling. The music is loud. No one talks when the musicians

are on stage, even when they stop for a minute. Everyone waits

for the next sound. The smoke is dense but the sounds of the

horns punch through it and push it into the brick. We are

listening to the legendary black musician who according to

some stories turned Billie into a junkie. I am wondering if this

is as awful as it seems on the surface and why it is whispered

in a hushed awe. He is a sloppy musician by now, decades

later. He is bent over, blowing. He is sweating like a pig. His

instrument screams. There is not a hint of delicacy or remorse.

The music rouses you, the volume raises hackles on your skin,

the living, breathing sound makes your blood jump, but the

mind is left bored and dazed. Other musicians on the stage try

to engage that lost faculty: they solo with ideas or moods,

some sadness, some comic riffs. But the legend blares on,

interrupts, superimposes his unending screech. We can only

afford two drinks but the legend makes us desperate for more:

48

to take the edge off the blowing, blowing, blowing, the shrill

scream of the instrument, the tin loudness of his empty spasms.

The set ends. We want to stay for more. It is live music, jazz,

real jazz, we want as much as we can get of it. We cannot

come here often. The two required drinks cost a lot. We are at

a small wooden shellacked table against a brick wall. On one

side is a bohemian couple, dating nonetheless. On the other

side, the direction of the stage, is a man. He is huge. His

shoulders are broad. He is dressed very straight, a suit, a tie, a

clean shirt, polished shoes. He is alone. I hate his face on sight.

It has no lines. It is completely cold and cruel. There is nothing

wrong with it on the surface. His features are even handsome.

His skin is a glistening black, rich, luminous. He is lean but

nevertheless big, broad-shouldered, long, long legs. His legs

can barely fit under the small table. He is solitary and self-

contained. He has been watching N. He offers us drinks. She

accepts. They talk quietly between sets. I can’t hear them, don’t

want to. I can see something awful in him but she is fascinated.

I can’t name it. His expression never changes. It shows nothing.

I am instinctively afraid of him and repelled. N listens to him

intently. She looks almost female. Her body softens. Her eyes

are cast down. The music starts. He leaves. The legend sweats

and blares and spits and screams. He is even sloppier now,

more arrogant too, but we are drunker so it evens out. We

leave at dawn. We walk home in the hot haze. Junkies make

jokes at us. Men pee. Someone flashes a knife from a stoop.

We are tired. We sleep.

We wake up in early afternoon. The heat is stifling. Today

we are going to take the special acid we have been saving, N

and me and poor R. I am excited. N says first she has to meet

the guy from last night. She promised him. She just wants

forty-five minutes alone with him. He comes in the dead heat

of the afternoon. In the glaring heat of the sun he is still cold,

glistening, mean. He wears a suit. He wears a tie. He has on a

clean shirt, buttoned up to the top. His shoes are polished. His

face is set, he doesn’t try to smile, he has no expression, he

doesn’t sweat. Standing up he is towering, dangerous, cold. N

is happy to see him, reserved, courteous. I am bewildered and

afraid. I just want to fuck him, she says quietly to me. We

have dropped the acid. He is dangerous, I say. What are you

49

going to do when you start tripping? He will be gone by then,

she says. One fuck, then he will go. I wait outside like she tells

me to. They go into our storefront. I expect to hear screams. I

hear nothing. I strain to hear but I hear nothing. Forty-five

minutes later they come out. Nothing has changed with him.

Suit. Tie. Clean shirt, buttoned up. Polished shoes. No expression. Still not sweating. N is glassy-eyed, creamy, content.

I got what I wanted, she said. Whad ya do in there, I ask,

casual but really scared, worse now since I see no sign of human

emotion or exertion in him. Just fucked, she says. He is not a

man who fucks. I can see that. He may kill but he doesn’t

fuck. Either the needle or he tied her up. I am pretty sure. She

is wearing a blouse with long sleeves, not her usual T-shirt. I

don’t see her naked for the next few days. Even as the street

begins to slide and whirl, I know that there are bruises on her

arm from one thing or another. I don’t exactly know the word

sadist but that is what I think he is anyway. I strain for the

word without finding it but I know what I mean. I am scared.

She is satisfied. I never see him again. I think he kills people.

Most of the violent men we see are sloppy, one way or another.

Their violence sort of oozes out. This man is a perfect diamond

cutting through glass.

*

There are the layers, the dumb, slobbering junkies, oozing pus

and grief, dealing a little, stealing, falling down on top of whatever doesn’t move fast enough; there are bastards a little colder, still oozing, and the pimps, who drool. There is a ladder of

street slobber, so that the violence gushes out like tears or

drips like a leaky faucet, but it is a mistake, not cold, ruthless

art: as much accident as intention, not coldly calculated and

perfectly executed. Then there is this other level. No fear. No

ooze. No slobber. No exhibitionism. No boast. Nothing except

serious intention, perfectly conceived and coldly executed, an

interior of ice and a perfect economy of motion.

*

What has he done to her? The acid begins to grip and she will

not say anyway. Poor R had left when she heard N was inside

with a man. N is politely, resolutely silent. She will not budge.

We are worlds apart and the subject is closed. Then we are

awash in acid and beyond all human argument. We begin to

50

roam the magnificent city streets and to play like children in

their decaying monumental splendor. We range over these

grand cement plains like wild animals, we dance up mountains

fleet of foot, we rush down rivers dancing on the silver light of

the rapids: each sight and sign of squalor is dazzling and

unique: there is no language for this and sadist is a word even

when you can’t quite find it: and each and every human form

shimmers in light and motion: the cold, cold man is more than

gone or forgotten: there is no place in the universe for him: he

is behind us now and time is a river, rushing on. The cement is

a luminous rainbow of garish silver and blinding white coming

out of the gravel, rising up like a phoenix from it: gold mixes

into the stone from the heat and the scarlet from the blood is

brilliant and intensely beautiful.

The air is spectacular, daylight, light that dances, a million

shining fragments of light like tiny speckled stones: you could

reach out and touch them except instead you walk between

them, skirting their shiny surfaces, never feeling their glossy

round edges. You reach out your arm to touch a piece of light

and your arm stretches into the distance, it has the curves of a

gracious hill and subtle valley and your fingers slide gracefully

past each other, one then another then another, and they are

gracefully curved, like a valley between two hills, a slight curve,

slack but aesthetic and delicate. And the tips of your fingers

touch the light and dance, dance.

The red from the traffic light spreads out through the air, it

is circle on circle of diffusing red light, it is like a red light in

the sky and with the sun behind it, it becomes fierce and hot.

The streets are endless arcades filled with gentle refuges. There

are stores where they greet you warmly, hippie boys all hairy

and with wet eyes, and give you tea and have you sit and offer

you smoke: and you laugh and laugh: or are deadly solemn:

and there is sitar music and you get lost on each note and drift

until the hot tea is in your hand: and you come back, treated

like a holy traveler, an honored guest, by the warm hairy

strangers. You look at the colored beads and the huge drawings

of tantric intertwinings on the walls: and you are home here

on earth, taken care of, given refuge: until you move on, the

acid pushing you, the pulse somewhere calling you.

51

Outside it is dark now, and you roam through the streets

until dawn when you watch the light come up. There are people

you touch, their faces, their tongues, you slip behind cars or

into doorways or spread out on suddenly available floors,

mattresses that seem to just be there waiting for the simple

traveler with legs that spread all wet. You smoke and smiling

people hand you pills and you swallow them because nothing

can hurt you now: and you stop cars with your acid smile: and

communicate with your acid brain: and you watch something

you could never look at before, a huge roach, a dead rat, and

you are awed by its monstrous beauty.

Your sweat simply melts you and you take off your clothes

somewhere with someone and you come and come and come:

and laugh: and fuck: and smoke: and drink: and run, run, run:

and smile: and the music is everywhere, in the traffic, in the

rumbling of the heavy trucks, in the sirens, in the screeching

wheels of police cars, in nasty motorcycles and in the sucking

sounds of the dirty men who whisper cunt when you walk by.

And you talk, intensely. The universe. Reality. Light. Truth.

Time. Dawn comes and you are hungry. You are coming down.

You smoke. You sit on a stoop, tired and content. A man

walks by. You ask him for breakfast. He takes you to one of

the all-night restaurants run for the likes of you on the Lower

East Side. The rabble are eating, all tired, all fucked out, all

drugged out. It is beautiful, serene. You get orange juice and

blintzes and sour cream and eggs and toast and coffee. The

man waits. Hey mister, you say laughing, wanna buy us

breakfast? He nods. Now you sit and eat and he watches. Now

you are full. Now he pays the bill. Now you say, hey, mister,

wanna fuck? You are still zinging on the acid a little but mostly

it is over: back to business: of course mister wants to fuck.

*

N and I sit on the stoop in front of poor R ’s apartment. The

light is just beginning. The dark is lit up from inside. The acid

is beginning to soften, to lose its grip. We are still wavy, still

floating, still charged, still porous, bodies floating in light and

air: but personality is beginning to creep back in: we know

who we are and where we are: we know that dawn is on its

way: we know that we are hungry and have to eat: we know

the acid is going: we know the night is over and the trip is over

52

and pedestrian day is nearly here: we sit watching the dark

becoming lighter and lighter: we sit watching a dead rat at the

curb: it is indisputably a rat, not God: poor R is sleeping inside,

she won’t let us in, she won’t make us breakfast, we are excommunicated, we are happy, we are turned loose to look for breakfast elsewhere: we sit there, buddies, and chat in the dark:

we walk around: we touch fingers and briefly hold hands.

*

N and I sit on a stoop in St M ark’s Place. Hey mister. We are

hungry. The acid is wearing off. The smoke has given us

ravenous appetites. We are tired. Hey mister. Some misters

pass. This one mister takes us to breakfast. He is silent,

watchful, not easy to disarm. Mister turns out to be not such

an easy fuck. N fucks him and falls asleep. Mister doesn’t

sleep. Mister probably hasn’t slept in months. Mister is nuts. I

get Mister for hours. N sleeps like a log.

*

Mister is white, lean, wiry, crew-cut, muscled, tense, wired to

go off. A coil ready to spring. Full of inexplicable rushes of

violence. He fucks like he hates it. It never gets him anywhere.

He concentrates, he fucks. You can’t feel much except his concentration. He is doing some martial art of the thighs, over and over, trying to make it perfect, get it right: it doesn’t touch

him: then the violence pours through him, impersonal, and he

is in a frenzy of fuck: then, more tense but calmer, he concentrates, he fucks. Eventually I sleep. I don’t know how or why.

When I wake up it is nearly night again. He is taking us to

the beach. The heat here in the storefront is scalding; treacherous, wet steam. Our skin is raw and burning. Our clothes are wet. Our eyes are almost swollen shut. It is hard to breathe.

Heat hurts our lungs. Mister has a car. He is giving us dinner.

We are going with him to the beach.

He drives like a maniac, but we only feel the breeze. The car

barely touches the road. It swerves. We leave the city behind.

The air gets less hot. We see the city lights trailing behind us

as we swerve and curve in the airborne car. We cool down

enough to be afraid.

The car stops, and there is a beach and an ocean. It is endlessly deserted. There are no cars. There are no people. There is a full moon and it is nearly light on the beach. The water

53

shines. It advances up against the beach. The waves are small

and delicate. The ocean is tame but it goes on forever. It goes

out as far as we can see, way past the moon. We are on the

beach. Mister wants some sex. N whispers to me that she can’t

fuck, she is bleeding again. All summer she has had this mysterious bleeding. I tease her that she wants to get out of fucking this creep. But still: she is bleeding, not menstruation, hemorrhaging: she can’t be fucked. She and I make love for him on the beach. It is not enough. He is wired, tense, has spasms of

violence, shows us his knife. N holds me down from behind,

both arms. He turns away one minute, a modest gesture unzipping his fly. She grins ear to ear. I try to get loose watching her grin. She is strong and I can’t. She holds me down. He

pulls down his pants. He fucks me. I get dressed. N and I sit

and watch the ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. He

goes off by himself. A cop comes along. What are you doing

here? Watching the ocean officer. It’s dangerous here at night

girls. Thanks officer. We walk up to the car. The cop moves

on. Mister jumps up from behind the car, plays with his knife.

Mister takes us for lobster, he is silent and watchful, he doesn’t

eat, then Mister drives us home.

*

We get out of the car. The beach is there. The ocean is there.

The moon is full. We see the ocean with the moon hanging

over it. Mister is wired. Mister tells us he has a gun in the car

under the front seat. Mister tells us he hates his wife. Mister

tells us he is going to kill the bitch. Mister tells us his wife has

tried to get away from him. Mister tells us his wife was walking

down a street and he beat the bitch to pieces and pulled a

knife on her. How could his wife do that, we say, not knowing

what she did. We go on to the beach.

*

The beach is a little scummy, empty cans and empty bottles,

paper, trash. The sand is a little dirty. N and I undress each

other. We kiss. We make love standing up. He wants us in the

sand. We make love in the sand. She dresses. He shows a knife.

She holds me down. I am flat on my back naked on the beach.

She is behind me. I look up into her face. She grins. It is her

comradely grin. But I try to get loose and can’t. She is strong.

She is holding me down. It is our charade, but I can’t get

54

loose. He fucks me. He disappears. I brush the sand off but I

am all gritty. I get dressed fast. N and I sit and watch the

ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. The cop comes. He

tells us girls could get hurt alone on the beach at night. We are

panicked that Mister left without us. The car is still there. We

walk to it. We get in covered with sand. I can taste sand in my

mouth. Mister buys us lobster. He sits and watches, all tight

and coiled. He drops us at the storefront. Inside we drink iced

tea and sleep entirely embracing each other. We sleep and kiss

like it’s one thing, wound round each other like the gnarled

branches of an ancient tree. She has stopped bleeding. The

sand rubs and rubs, hurting a little, we are drenched in sweat,

we sleep and fuck at the same time, not letting go.

*

Have you ever seen the moon, full, rising behind the head of a

man fucking you on a dirty beach? Have you ever heard the

ocean, lying flat on your back, your arms behind you, held

down, have you heard the sound of the ocean behind him, have

you looked up to see her broad grinning face? Have you ever

felt the sand, dirty and a little wet, all over, and kissed her

thighs and the sand? Have you ever kissed a bleeding woman

everywhere and tasted dirty sand and then watched moonlight

fall on a knife and been naked in the sand while he fucked

you, the full moon behind him, the sound of the ocean behind

him, and your wrists weighed down by lead, her knees on top

of your arms as she caressed your breasts while he fucked like

doing push-ups, but the full moon is very beautiful and the

sound of the ocean is very fine?

*

And then, alone, have you needed each other so bad that you

slept and fucked at the same time, the whole time you were

sleeping, what others call night, so close, so entangled, melted

together, wrapped around each other, sand biting your skin

rubbing in the sweat: and been at peace, happy, with time

stopped right there?

*

The narrow mattress on the painted floor is drenched through

with sweat, and the sand pricks like sharp, tiny bites, hurting,

and the room is dark and airless, and we are wound together,

sleeping as we fuck: a somnambulant intercourse: wet and hot,

55

barely on the verge of consciousness and not yet dream: the

heat turning it into delirium: for all the hours of a human

night.

*

We wash. N goes to use poor R ’s shower. She has broken the

letter of the law but will not tell. The promise was made when

N loved her. Now she doesn’t. The shower is redundant in the

wet heat but it will get rid of the sand. I stand in our kitchen,

it is dark even though sunlight blankets the earth outside the

iron bars covering the kitchen windows: I look first through

the grating over the doors and windows into the backyard to

see if the neighborhood boys are there: they stare in, bang on

the windows, bang on the doors: we try not to undress in front of

them. I fill a big pot full of water. It comes out of the tap

sweaty. I dip an old washcloth in and out of the pot and rub it

disconsolately all over. Then I do the same again, using soap,

but not too much, because you can never quite get it off. Then

I do it again with clean water. Then I am ready.

N comes back clean. She has not told, I can tell. We both

broke our promise to poor R. The beach was within the law;

the whole private night was not. I am pleased. It is never

mentioned again. Today is uptown business. The days of

uptown business are few and far between, but all the same

somehow. We are going uptown to talk with men who have

money about our film.

N dresses. She wears a silk scarf as a headband and flared

sailor pants. Her eyes are elongated and blackened and her lips

are pursed: they seem longer, thinner, as if she is sucking them

in. I too go out of my way. Clean T-shirt. Her hair is dirty

blonde and straight; it stands up on end. Mine is curly and

black; it stands up on end. We both comb our hair with our

fingers. We make it stand up more.

Uptown there is a lawyer who is going to turn us into a

corporation. He is silver from top to bottom. The spittle pours

from the edges of his mouth as he listens to the details of our

film. Of course he will incorporate us for no fee: but, leaning

over, and over, and over, almost stretching the trunk of his

body further than it could possibly go, but, he will expect to

come to the Village for a private screening. Village, private

screening. Saliva pours out, a thin, dripping creek.

56

Uptown there is a producer: will he sign N up and make her

a movie star and then we can make our film with that money?

Someone who discovered a famous rock singer sends us to

him. We wait in the chilly waiting room. The sweat and the

dirt that never comes off is pasted on by the cool air of the air

conditioner. The men in suits and the women with lacquered

hair and neat blouses and modest skirts stare. The receptionist

is visibly disturbed. Inside the office is huge. It seems the producer is a quarter mile away. His huge desk is at the end of the huge room. We are told to sit on a sofa near the door. He tells

N she isn’t feminine. I say unisex is in. I say times have

changed. I say people are riveted by the way N looks. The

producer keeps staring at her. He talks and stares. He is hostile.

She mumbles like Marlon Brando. The door opens. His wife, a

famous singer but not a star, comes in. She looks old. She is

dyed blond. Her skirt is short, way above her aging knees. Her

makeup is serious. Each detail is meant to remind one of

youth. Each detail shows how old her face is and how tired

her soul is. The old legs on top of the high heels bounce under

the short skirt as she makes her way across the huge room to

kiss the producer. This is a woman, he says. You see what I

mean, he says, this is a woman. We stare.

Uptown there is an advertising executive: he wants to give

money to bright young men who want to make films. We sit in

his small office. It is chilly. He stares. We discuss the film

scene by scene. He discusses his advertising campaigns scene

by scene. He stares. We ask for money. We leave the script

with him. We are hopeful. N isn’t really. I am. She is right.

The air conditioning always helps.

The offices are strange places.

The people in them seem dead.

It is the straight world of regular USA.

We abhor it.

We go back to our world of slime and sex tired and bored:

to be alive as we understand living. Not like them.

*

The world is divided that way now: the straight adults, old

people; and us. It is that way.

*

On St Mark’s Place the police are always out in large numbers,

57

hassling the hippies. Where we live there are never any police,

no matter who gets hurt or how bad. It takes a riot to bring

them out. Then they shoot.

The flower girls and boys abound in other parts of the

neighborhood, not near us.

We are not them and not not them. N grew up in a swamp

in the South, oldest child, four boys under her, father abandoned family, became a religious fanatic after running whores for a while, came back, moved the family North, sent her to a

girls’ school to get a proper upbringing, then ran off again:

like me, poor and half orphaned. Like me she gets a scholarship

to a rich girls’ college. We meet there, the outcast poor, exiled

among the pathetic rich. We don’t have money hidden away

somewhere, if only we would behave. Her mother, my father,

have nothing to give. She has other children to feed. He is sick,

says nothing, does nothing, languishes, a sad old man with a

son killed in Vietnam and a dirty daughter on dirty streets. N

and I are poor now: poorer even than when we were children:

nothing but what we get however we get it. But also we are

white and smart and well-educated. Do we have to be here or

not?

We can’t be lacquer-haired secretaries. There is no place else

for us. The flower children are like distant cousins, the affluent

part of the family: you hear about them but it doesn’t mean

you can have what they have. They wear pretty colors and

have good drugs, especially hallucinogens, and they decorate

the streets with paint and scents: incense, glitter: fucking them

is fun sometimes but often too solemn, they bore with their

lovey pieties: but we didn’t leave anything behind and we got

nothing to go back to.

*

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: those years. The men numbered in

the thousands. At first I was alone, then, with her, I wasn’t.

This was one summer. We also had a winter and a spring

before.

*

Every time we needed petty cash: and when we didn’t.

*

We took women for money too, but with more drama, more

plot, more plan. They had to be in love or infatuated. You had

58

to remember their names and details of their childhood. They

gave you what you needed gingerly: the seduction had to

continue past sex: sometimes they would get both of us: other

times only one of us could get near enough: or sometimes we

would both be there, each one picking up the slack when the

other got bored, and take turns before drifting off to sleep. Or

N would do it one night, me another. I liked another woman’s

body there between us, and I liked when N fucked me then her

and then I kept kissing her between the legs, though N would

have fallen asleep by then. I liked those nights. I didn’t like

that we never got enough out of it: enough money: enough

food: enough: and I didn’t like it that the women got clingy or

all pathetic or that not one could bear to remember how she

had come, wanting to be courted, and stayed.

*

And then there was just having the women: because you

wanted them: because it was a piece of heaven right in the

middle of hell: because they knew your name too: because you

went mad with them in your mouth: and you went crazy thigh

to thigh: and it was earth, sublime: and the skin, pearl: and the

breasts: and coming, coming, coming.

*

Especially the hairs that stayed in your mouth, and the bites

they left.

*

The men fucked or did whatever: but the women came close

to dying, with this quiet surprise.

*

And you did too, because you were the same, only harder, not

new. They were enough like you. As close as could be. Every

slight tremble shot through both bodies. Even when she knew

nothing and you knew everything: even when you did it all:

your fingers on her, her taste all over you, pushed you so far

over the edge you needed drugs to bring you back. The small

of her back, trembling: how small they were, how delicate, the

tiny bones, how they almost disappeared: and then the more

ecstatic exertions of a lover with her beloved.

*

The sex could go on until exhaustion defeated the prosaic

body: these were not the short, abrupt times of men with their

59

push and shove: these were long, hot, humid times, whole

seasons: but once over, life went on: she was on her own,

desolate: unhappy: ready to shell out what you needed so as

not to be alone forever: so as to be able to come back: and you

must never take too much, she must not be humiliated too

much: and you must make sure she knows that you know her

name and her uniqueness: and you must stay aloof but not be

cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is

just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles

and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,

she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her

own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get

near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We

are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and

detached and ready for someone new.

*

The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She

knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,

wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this

coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the

Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists

and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how

to make a living from art.

There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out

for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.

She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the

jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her

cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough

and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened

up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,

high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth

of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly

bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.

Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta

cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,

eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She

disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means

60

money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She

returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.

She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around

the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.

The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in

her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,

some cake, some sandwiches.

Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city

air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are

flowing over. They come to see this life.

Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West

Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,

rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only

the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who

wanna fuck.

N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.

Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone

N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but

not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown

eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with

manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the

street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.

The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not

doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for

coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R

disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a

date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I

don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he

was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but

her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and

is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over

his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the

hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and

how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was

arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the

61

country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t

make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.

He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly

four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke

softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived

around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working

for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but

with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but

loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink

coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the

pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets

are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,

thinking about pimps, nervous.*

A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides

his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-

tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.

He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes

one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.

He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black

hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.

He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark

colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N

and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is

harmonious with how we do things: he imposes nothing: he

has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from

physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,

trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders

food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has

gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday

night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the

volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new

rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a

rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and

some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone

in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning

to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.

*

6z

N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it

isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This

means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off

alone for whole nights.

He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for

drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our

film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He

doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.

He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.

He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of

wine, like a person.

At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at

some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while

he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We

meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us

anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the

jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not

friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at

us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and

smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned

over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.

A sits there polite as ever, our friend. N seems to trust him. He

sits and watches too. The blues vibrate from the machine. The

room is tiny. There are two or three tables against a wall

where we sit. A sits on the outside of the tables, we are blocked

in against the wall, the men stand around. There are a lot of

them, all crowded in, and then spilling over to the sidewalk.

Billie keeps us company while the men stare and do business.

We are quiet.

*

A’s best friend doesn’t say much. He never talks directly to

either of us. N sleeps with both of them by now. She says they

have quite a routine. She says the puncture marks on A’s body

are holes that go right through his skin. Sometimes she does

their laundry or stays with them a few days.

*

63

N meets some of his women. She is not happy. They are real

Times Square whores.

*

He seems to be keeping N separate, apart. He and his best

friend share her.

*

One night he comes to the storefront all soft-spoken, a

friend. He has been thinking about our situation. We are all

standing in the dark dank middle room, near the single mattress. He wants to help us. He has an apartment in Times Square we can move into, both of us. We don’t have to do

anything for him, absolutely nothing. We can just come live

there. N defers to me to say yes or no. I say no. I have been

thinking a lot about pimps. He is unruffled. He is our friend.

If we don’t want to move in with him, it’s OK. He will think of

some other way to help us. He and N go off. I wonder if she is

going to live with him. She does now and then, for a day or

two. He is a friend. I know he adores her: I can see it. I can’t

see him pimping but for a fact he pimps so so much for what I

can see. I like him and she is loyal to him: her loyalty once

given is not breachable: her code is close to absolute, unspoken,

I have never seen it breached: it is his lost hand, the punctures

in his body, his best friend and the routine, his courtesy and

intelligence, and something in him irredeemably outside: she

even does their laundry. I say to her, you know, N, about

pimps. Don’t worry, she says, yeah I know.

I would believe her except for the smack. She doesn’t do it

regular but who knows what it takes, not much. He is besotted

with her but the smack is easy: and he isn’t any fool. I ask N

what his girls on the street are like. She frowns, looks down.

*

He shows me his drawings, pen sketches, elaborate and skillful,

images of horror and death. I show him my poems: the same.

N plays her clarinet. These are family times.

*

He sits in the coffeehouse, in the bar, wherever, as we come

and go: bringing money back: he doesn’t touch it and buys his

own coffee.

*

64

What else can I do? he says solemnly. I can’t dance anymore.

*

I wait for him to mention the apartment again: to seduce, to

convince. Then I will know. He doesn’t. He is either sincere or

no fool. He is no fool but is he also sincere?

Can a pimp be sincere?

Ah, he says, not too often, I wanted to dance.

*

He brings N a silk scarf: and me a book.

*

I am wondering if I should sleep with him: but they are a real

pair, boy and girl: she waits for him and he comes often. I take

my cues from her. She is not obligated, as far as I can see: she

wants him around: she really likes him, for himself as we say,

a lot. He remains nice. I begin to think I am wrong about the

apartment. Then I remember his girls. Then I think about N

and smack. I keep my distance. She is loyal to me too. She

won’t go without me. I think.

*

He died, my daddy, kind man, in a poverty of loneliness and

disregard. I was not a good daughter. Nothing came to me

when he died. I took a bus to the funeral. The relatives who

raised me on and off were there. I hadn’t dressed right. I was

dirty and hot. I only had pants. Him being dead wasn’t the

main thing for them: it was me, not dressed right. The cemetery

was flat and ugly. There were weeds. I got back on the bus

right away. I got back late at night. I walk into the storefront

and I think fucking pig, what the hell is wrong with her, there

are things thrown everywhere, papers all around all over the

floor and clothes thrown all around and everything is a fucking

mess. She is not there. I know she is out at a bar. I am pissed

like hell. I keep looking around, unable to take the mess in.

Then it registers. There is nothing left. Everything is gone. The

records are gone, the record player, the sax, the clarinet, the

typewriter, almost all our clothes, except that some are thrown

all over, every fucking thing that can be picked up and carried

is gone: I walk through the apartment: the metal has been

lifted off the back door like King Kong had done it: it

must have taken hours to do and had to have been done in

daylight: the neighbors must have enjoyed it: and in the re65

frigerator there had been a bottle of vodka, that’s all, and now

the empty bottle was there on the sink. The fucks had drunk

the fucking vodka. There is nothing left, and at the same time

an indescribable mess of strewn things, like junk, trash, like

garbage.

I go to the bars to find N. She is far east, at a rough place I

have gone to long before I even knew her— I am two years

older and show it— and the bars are littered with my lost late

adolescence— I find her— I have fucked all the bartenders in

this bar and the one she is talking to now is the best— and I

grab her and take her home. She is pissed with me until she

sees. It is impossible to calculate our loss. Everything we own.

They ravaged it. Went through. Decimated it. There hadn’t

been much until it was gone. I barely saw the damage the

first time. Barely saw what was gone. Barely remembered what

had been there. We have nothing left, except some T-shirts.

They have even taken underwear and blue jeans. They have

taken belts. They have taken everything.

The next morning our neighbors all greet us with smiles.

The next morning the boys across the street ask us how things

are going.

The next morning the head of the pack smiles and says hi

girls, next time we gonna come for you.

*

We are sleeping on the narrow mattress in the day. Next door

there is a thunderous sound. The thunderous sound moves

from one end of the apartment to the other and back again.

There are screams and laughs and things crash and break. The

feet are loud and fast, running back and forth. There is only a

thin wooden door between us and the next apartment. The

sound is very loud. It is not precisely human, not identifiably

human: it could be anything: like what? a herd of buffalo: we

are drifting off back to sleep: we dismiss it: it can’t be anything:

it is broad daylight: the sound is thunderous, back and forth,

back and forth: we sleep. Later, we go in. They have been

there, while we slept, in broad daylight. Everything is gone

except for what they left broken so we could see it good. They

didn’t take the TV that was in there. Instead they smashed it.

Hey girls we coming for you.

A knock on our door: head of the pack: hey we gonna pay

66

you girls a visit soon. You ready for us. We gonna have a goodtime. He leans against the door. He smiles. I start to close the door. He stops me, still leaning. Hey girl that ain’t gonna help.

Ain’t nothin gonna help. We coming right in. When we ready.

*

lt is having been asleep, hearing them, hearing the smashing,

hearing the plundering, hearing the raucous laughs: hearing:

while out cold: in a coma of sleep: having seen their knives:

knowing them: sleeping through it but hearing it all the same.

They will come: when they ready.

*

I beg N not to go out but she has a date with R. I don’t really

beg, it isn’t in our code, but I ask, unlikely enough. I ask once.

To my way of thinking, it is begging, don’t leave me here

alone. She wants to go, to get out, to get away, with safe little

R in her safe little apartment. She is afraid. Don’t go.

*

I bolt the door behind them, thinking where I can go. The

banging starts. Knocking first. Then banging. The front door.

Hey you got no manners you don’t open the door. Hey it go

worse for you if you don’t open the door. Hey you want we

break it down. Hey you want we come in from next door.

Hey you want we use the back door girl. Banging. Banging.

Silence. Hey girl. Just wanna talk girl you ain’t gonna do no

better than that. You got thirty seconds girl then we come

through the front window girl: it break like a bone girl: you

ever see a bone break girl I gonna show you how you arm

break girl: and I got my boys in the back too you know that

girl. I go to the phone: police, even though they won’t come:

the line is cut: the phone is dead. The back is a jungle.

I open the door. The head of the pack is there. Behind him

there are seven or eight men, slouching, spitting, smoking. They

are several feet behind him. He is smaller than most of them,

dark, curly hair, not shaved, heavy moustache, earring in one

ear, gold, big dark eyes. Now girl this is the way it is, I keep

my word, you open the door we talk. Now you make a choice

girl. See these boys do what I say and now you let me in and

you take care of me real nice girl right now and we have a

good time or you close the door girl and we come in all together

and we get you good girl: you see girl you decide. He pulls out

67

a knife: gold, ornate, the size of a dagger. He fingers it. What

do you want, I say. He says, hey girl I just wanna come in,

have a little smoke, make a little love girl what you think, but

these boys here they ain’t so nice as me they a little rough girl

sometimes they ain’t so nice but you take my word girl you let

me in and I tell them to go home and they go home. I don’t

know what he will do but I know what they will do. I take my

chances with him. I say, you have to leave the knife outside.

He says, no girl hey that knife she my friend she go with me

where 1 go girl. I say, I won’t let you in with the knife. OK,

girl, I put the knife right here, right on this here window girl,

and if anything happen to me girl my boys put this knife right

in your back you understand girl. I nod. He turns to them, says

something in Spanish. They linger. He talks again. They leave.

Ah you see girl you so sweet it hard for them to go but you a

friend of Joe now.

He saunters in, looks around. Oh yeah girl they was nice

records you had, nice. He saunters into the middle room, sits

on the mattress, takes off his shirt. A gold cross glimmers in

his hairy chest. Hey girl now you make me something to eat, I

got to have something to eat girl so I can screw you good. We

got time girl. We got all night. We don’t have much food, I

say. Oh yeah girl that right, well, what you got. I say, there are

hot dogs. You make me hot dogs girl. I want you to make me

hot dogs girl. I am counting the minutes, thinking that maybe

if I can keep him eating or talking or distracted N will come

back or it will get light or he will fall asleep or I will think of

something: I use pacifist strategies, try to make him see I am

human, ask him questions about himself. The boys still outside

girl, I holler and they come, so you cook girl. I cook.

He chatters. He grabs a sharp knife in the kitchen: hey girl

this for me not you. You thinking about using this on your

boyfriend Joe, that ain’t right girl. He eats. Why you not eating

girl? I say I am not hungry. I sit across the huge wooden table

from him, the kitchen dull in the artificial light of a bare bulb.

He eats. Oh this is good girl, you this good girl? We gonna

find out girl.

He drinks iced water. He drinks iced tea. He drinks vodka

out of the bottle. He gets up. OK girl you come.

He saunters back to the mattress. He takes off his pants. 1

68

stand there. There is a banging on the door. I am frozen. Don’t

you say nothing girl or you gonna be dead. The sharp knife is

in his hand. I stand there, quiet, so still. The knocking continues. You know who that is girl? I nod yes, thinking that if I can get to the door maybe I can get help: but afraid it is his

boys. The knocking goes on and on. I don’t dare move. We

wait for it to stop. I say maybe I should see who it is. He says

don’t you move girl, don’t you fucking move. The knocking

stops. He says, now you get over here girl. The knocking starts

again. A deep male voice calls me by name. Oh, I say, it is

someone I know, if I don’t answer he will be worried and do

something, but I can go to the door and tell him to go away.

You do that, says Joe real quiet. You better get him away girl.

You better do that. Or I gonna get you good girl. You ain’t

keeping my boys and me out girl. I promise, I say, I will make

him go away. I promise I won’t say anything. The knocking

continues. I see the knife, I see the cross, I see the hairs on his

naked chest. OK girl you got two minutes then you be here. I

walk toward the door. It is a long, slow walk and I am afraid.

I open the door. It is W, someone N and I know only slightly, a

dealer, a tall, thin, dignified black man: very tall. I step just

slightly outside the door and whisper please help me: I point to

the dagger on the window ledge: I say there’s a man in there I

can’t get out he forced his way in please help me I beg you. I will

take care of it, he says with enormous quiet conviction. He walks

in. Joe is there undressed, on the mattress, the knife in his hand

on his belly. W says, what’s this I hear you fucking junkie you

trying to take my woman from me, I’m gonna fucking kill you.

He says this very quietly but with a deep resonance in his voice.

Joe begins to shake. Hey man I didn’t know she was your girl

man hey I didn’t mean you no shit man. He fumbles with his pants.

He fumbles with his shirt. He starts sweating bad. Hey man if I

know she was your girl man hey I wouldn’t touch man it was just

a joke man. W says, don’t I know you from somewhere man? Joe

says, yeah man, I buy some smack from you but times is hard

man. W says well you come to see me man if you need anything

but I don’t want my woman here bothered. You understand, W

says with quiet seriousness and authority, this is my woman. You

treat her with respect man you understand she belongs to me.

Hey man I didn’t mean nothing by it man.

69

Joe fumbles and sweats. They talk smack. Joe is sloppy and

scared, W is austere and serious. W shows Joe to the door.

Then he comes back.

I thank him. It isn’t enough. He tears into me. He bites my

clitoris and bites it and bites it until I wish I was dead. He

fucks. He bites my clitoris more, over and over, for hours, I

want to die. The pain is shooting through my brain. I am

chewed and bitten and maimed. I am bleeding. He leaves. I

hurt so bad I can’t even crawl. He leaves the front door wide

open.

*

From now on N and I never sleep at the same time: one of us

is always awake with a knife in her hand. We lie down on the

narrow mattress together, never alone, and one sleeps and one

stays awake, knife in hand, knife clutched, ready to use. She

sleeps a few hours, I listen to every sound: knife in my hand.

The sweat is cold now always: no matter how the summer

heat boils and steams and hangs like fire in the air. I sleep a

few hours, wake up in a cold sweat, always to find her wide

awake, eyes wide open, alert, watching the room: anything

moves, it dies. I count on her. I count on the knife. I think I

can use it on myself, if there are too many of them.

*

We know they will come back. I knew Joe would turn me over

to the others when he was done that night or some other. We

know we can’t keep them out. They know. We wait. We don’t

sleep very much at all.

*

I am staggeringly hurt: body and mind.

*

N and I are inside, sitting on the mattress. She is writing in her

notebook. I am staring at the wall. I can walk now. There is a

knock on the door. It is W. He is invited in. I don’t talk. I sit.

N sits. He stands, very tall, then sits. He brings out some grass.

He is soft-spoken and courteous. He rolls a joint. We smoke.

He and N exchange pleasantries. We smoke. I don’t talk. He

speaks directly to me. I stare. I haven’t been talking much but now

I don’t talk at all. He saved me. I can’t think of anything to

say. I think I say thank you. We smoke. My body is slowly

getting numb, hard to move, nearly immobile. Each arm, each

70

leg, is very heavy, like a ton of wet sand. I can’t move. I don’t

talk. We smoke. They talk. They talk about witchcraft, the

occult, drugs. I don’t follow it. He talks to her. I hear it. He

excludes me but refers to me. He talks only to her. You young

women need my protection. I could come here once or twice a

week, get you young women a real bed, you shouldn’t be

sleeping on this mattress on the floor, so you really both sleep

here do you? and you and I could have some real fun with

her, we can do things of real depth, different things, unusual

things that call on deep energies, there are many things you

and I could do with her. I don’t look at him but I know I am

her. I can’t talk. I can’t move. My brain is some dead slug.

Everything is heavy, like a ton of wet sand. My muscles don’t

move. My legs don’t work. I remember crawling after he

chewed me up, and the pain. We could do many things with

her, he says, and there are mysteries we could discover together,

she is the perfect instrument for us to discover these mysteries,

she is so pliant, there are so many subtleties. He talks about a

big bed, and I think he wants to watch N hurt me: he is saying

they will do it to me, he is saying he will give us regular money

every week, he is talking about a big bed and tying me up, I

can’t feel anything but the pain between my legs hanging somewhere in the center of my dead brain: telling me to run, run: but I can barely move: I concentrate every living ounce of will

and energy on moving, one leg at a time, the other leg, slowly,

to get up. It takes nearly forever. I stand up. My mouth moves.

A sound comes out, loud. No. It sounds like a whisper. I walk,

a ton of wet sand inching along a desert, into the kitchen,

collapsing on the table. N says: you heard her. He says he will

leave the grass and come back some other time. The offer still

holds. N can call him anytime. But he will come back anyway.

She should think about it.

All night we talk about a ring of occultists N has heard

about and all the women they have tortured to death and their

witchcraft rites and the way they use sex and drugs ending in

death. She is sure this is true. We are afraid: we think it is a

paranoid fantasy but we believe it anyway: we know somewhere there are these dead women. We do not move all night.

The smoke has nearly paralyzed us. We fall asleep sitting up.

In the morning N examines the grass to see why we couldn’t

7 1

move. She sniffs it and rubs it between her fingers, scrutinizes

it. There are tiny fragments of glass in the weed: pieces of

glass vials. The grass has been soaked in morphine.

I am scared. So is she, I think. I want to disappear. There is

no money. I am too afraid for the streets. We are running out

of speed. I cower on the mattress. She writes in her notebook.

*

I go to a junkie doctor in the Village for a prescription. I can’t

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

want to have to go back.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

movement, mostly examining herself, much motion to little

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

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

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

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

72

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detention. She will be arraigned in night court.

Night court is interminably dreary and hopeless. The halls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The others are mostly black with bouffant hairdos and vinyl

miniskirts and bare shoulders and nearly bare chests. The

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

be squeamish.

*

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

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

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

73

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

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

at all. We need money.

*

No more squeamishness about the streets. No more timidities.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

about it now. We forget about him altogether.

*

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

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

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

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

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

around, ahead, behind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

74

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

down the streets kicking and scratching and twisting and

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in. I think we sleep for days. *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

75

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

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

Our door stays open, for air.

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

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

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

hall an old movie actor wrote his autobiography.

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

in it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just the hint that we will and he pays.

The footage gets shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

76

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

away the ink.

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

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

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

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

spend the next two days driving all over with two school

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

us.

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

promise, we touch, we flirt, they pay.

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

indignant beyond belief. I scream at them about the First

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

do whores know about the Bill of Rights?

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

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

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

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

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

She goes to the hospital. Her cervix is cauterized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

78

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

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

Pasolini

*

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

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

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

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

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

beauty, muted grandeur, monumental grace. Rembrandt,

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

cruelties, not nouveau.

He was impotent and wanted to die.

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

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

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

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

no way handsome, outside that realm of discourse altogether.

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

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

jokes and huge gestures or his body seemingly shrivelled down

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

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

blond hair; afghan coat making him into some wild mountain

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

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

It was amidst hashish and rock ’n’ roll.

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

79

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

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

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

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

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

A suffering man: a compassionate woman: the impersonal love

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

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

do?

*

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

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

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

projected on the walls, boys throwing huge balls of hashish

across the room, playing catch. Cigarettes were rolled from

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

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

together three cigarette papers with spit and rolled a little filter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

papers at the bottom, and brought the papers together and

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

round.

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

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

paint: philosophy. There were philosophers everywhere and

artistes. One was going to destroy the museum system by

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

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

cheerful about destroying the museum system. They were all

cheerful, these energetic talkers of revolution. One spent hours

discussing the history of failed youth movements in Europe: he

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

80

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

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

by enthralled cadres. Another knew about the role of the

tobacco industry in upholding Western imperialism: he

denounced the smokers as political hypocrites and bourgeois

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

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

hash was smoked pound after pound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

little thief: girlfriend of a major ideologist of the counterculture

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

she wore government surplus, guerilla style: they were arrested

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

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

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

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

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

government-run building that housed the radical youth and the

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

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

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

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

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

secrets hidden. I thought I invented everything. Smoking dope

in their great painted rooms they seemed innocent: I thought

I was the old one.

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

tender and sad: and I kissed him.

*

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

same all over. There is nowhere to go.

81

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They sneak forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

82

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

Reader, I married him.

*

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

know.

*

83

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

don’t know.

*

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

pulverize human bones.

*

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

84

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

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

Pasolini

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

don’t know.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

end now, I don’t know.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

85

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

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

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

hard?

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There will be a film called Snuff.

86

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

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

Pasolini

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

87

Coitus as punishment for the happiness of

being together.

Kafka

*

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

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

good cheer, a simple equanimity. There were houseboats,

saunas, old cobbled streets, huge mattresses on floors with

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

knew their names: something about them: there was nothing

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

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

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

was happy.

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

I started to write.

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

88

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

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

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

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

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

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

stand wanting solitude so much.

*

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

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

*

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

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

happiness of being myself.

*

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

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

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

daring to be happy.

*

I learn the texture of minutes, how hours weave themselves

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

for running from time: hating quiet: fearing life.

*

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

the punishment.

*

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

of this exquisite concentration, this exquisite aloneness, this

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

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

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

punishment for not daring to disorder the senses enough: by

knowing them without mediation. Coitus is the punishment

for not daring to be original, unique, discrete.

*

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

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

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

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

89

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

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

punishment for adulterating solitude.

*

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

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

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

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

disruption, extremity, extreme sensation in dense isolation.

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

punishment for exhibiting oneself: for being afraid to be happy

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

witness. I write. Solitude is my witness.

*

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

the end of punishment.

I write. I publish.

*

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

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

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

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

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

die. I do not die.

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

90

Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les betes

l'ont mange.

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

have eaten it. )

Baudelaire

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

apartment. Now the tabletop was sordid and I could smell

decay, a faint acrid cadaver smell.

The rain outside was subtle and strange, not pouring down

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

suspended in the air, soaking through without the distracting

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

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

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

walked or died.

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

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

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

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

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

fearsome feminista, ballbuster, woman who talks mean, queer

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

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

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

saliva. Of course, he was very nice.

* the stupids

91

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

two waitresses with huge red lips and short skirts running back

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

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

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

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

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

the matchbooks into tight little wads and then opening them

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

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

and rolling the burnt tobacco between my palms which were

tight and wretched with strain and perspiration and I was

making little piles of torn papers and torn matchbooks and

torn cigarette packs but not touching the cellophane (he was

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

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

matter of symmetry and perfection and indisputable necessity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

he had liked me. I had done all right.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

spread out but instead held their breath, pulled in their

tummies, scrunched their mouths, used their shoulders to cover

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

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

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

9Z

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

monumental laughs, no sonorous discourse, no loud epis-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

pathetic need contaminated by intellect that was like wild

weeds, wild weeds massively killing the gentle little flower

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

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

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

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

me to dinner in the rain.

*

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

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

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

wet puddles, touching strange shoulders delicately like God

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

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

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

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

dots and green splotches and the mirror had a face looking

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

muscles in my back caved in toward each other furiously and

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

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

towels meant for drying big wet hands and covered the toilet

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

93

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

top, and he was slumped and disbelieving.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the light had become saturated with dull water. Outside

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

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

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

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

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

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

to get away.

His ears meanwhile flared out. His tongue splattered water.

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

94

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

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

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

signs.

His fingers intruded, reaching past everything, over the ashes

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

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

hard to find. Oh, his teeth were terrible.

All round there were students, archangels of hope and time

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

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

those horrible reminders of hope and time. Hamburgers were

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

this man and me.

*

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

His was a discourse punctuated with intense silences, great

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

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

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

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

mean— listen — what

you— have— is— terrific— /

mean— /

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

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

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

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

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

up— there— right— up— front. "

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

frail, no arrogance. “ No. ”

“ Listen— I— need—something

hot— something— like—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

95

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

could get— some press— on that.

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

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

jeans

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

Brooke— Shields— and

everyone

thinks

you— want—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you— one

hundred— percent— because—I— see— what

all

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

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

mean— that is what people— understand. ”

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

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

daring to show the delusions of grandeur in the simple

“ Thanks, no. ”

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

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

literature, my heart.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

my pants.

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

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

Hedda. Marquez. Balzac. Chekhov.

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

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

96

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

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

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

*

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

and the Troyat biography and the new biography of Hannah

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

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

*

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

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

mountain of thigh, I want the ether.

*

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

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

there; and Milton reminds him of how misunderstood he was

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

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

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

was being German and of course he remembers the room they

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

sales conferences; and Singer reminds him of how his Jewish

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

literature and also how he was unappreciated especially when

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

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

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

were masturbating and telling whatever jokes; and Jean Rhys

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

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

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

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

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

Dickens reminds him of how much he abhors sentimentality

97

and the many occasions on which he has encountered it and

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

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

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

he tells me sternly, is going to hurt feminism.

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

talk, an endless stream of pleasant yesses with an occasional

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

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

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

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

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

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

lip glistened with lubrication and he strutted, his shoulders

sometimes hanging down, sometimes jutted back. They hung

down for the Japanese. They jutted back for Celine.

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

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

our bed, our home, our earth, wet.

We went into the restaurant, wet.

*

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

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

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

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

end hours before, but still he went on.

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

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

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

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

98

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

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

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

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

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

publish my book. Oh, I said, wet.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

street corners and the literati fucking around too. You could

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

pimps right across a huge intersection and you could hear a

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

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

underneath, down below, and you could wonder who they

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all fast and hard and he said he loved me.

*

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

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

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

99

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

and go home.

*

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

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

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

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

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

blowing like in some classic Hollywood storm, the cold just

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

haunted. They tumbled together in it, touching it sometimes

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

Prowling or crouched and filled with disbelief, they sought to

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

The fumes that polluted the apartment came through the

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

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

cooked greasy hamburgers for junkies, native-born. Each

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

each particle sprang wings and flew up toward heaven, where

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

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

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

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

human heart and brain and especially the abdomen, where it

turned spikelike and tore into the lower intestine with sharp

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

100

itself whirling: wondrous: each molecule providing elaborate

occasion for generous invasion: dizzying space for wandering

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

solid and instead moved like atoms under a microscope. I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a place distinctly different from the cold streets of displacement

and dispossession, a place barricaded from weather and wind

and wet.

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

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

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

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

were permanent and penetrating, staining the lungs, bruising

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stiff from the cold. Sometimes the typewriter rebelled, too

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

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

me that my clothes would burn, my fingers would regain

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

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

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

words on a page.

Each night, until dawn was finally accomplished, fully alive

101

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

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

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

the floor on an old Salvation Army mattress with springs that

some reformed alcoholic had never quite finished under an

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

slowly, in the rain, wet.

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

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

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

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

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

shirts, sweatshirts: we always wore all we had inside. The quilt

with a wool blanket on top of it had shifted its place and his

knees and face were brought together, his hands lost somewhere between them. I sat watching him, lost, in this room of his. He was on brown sheets. The radiator clanged and

chugged: the noise it made was almost deafening, only in this

room. There were big windows, and a fire escape splayed out

under them going down to the treacherous street. There was a

big desk buried under piles of papers. There were books,

thrown, strewn, left for months open at one place so that the

binding broke and the page itself seemed pressed to death.

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There were books in all stages of being opened and closed

with passages marked and pages bent and papers wedged into

the seams of the binding with hand-scribbled notes, yellowing.

The books were everywhere in great piles and clusters, under

typewriter paper that simply spread like some wild growth in

moist soil, under heaps of dirty clothes, under old newspapers

that were now documents of an older time, under shoes and

socks, under discarded belts, under old undershirts, under long-

forgotten soda bottles not quite empty, under glasses ringed

with wet, under magazines thrown aside in the second before

sleep. Oh, my love could sleep. In the ice, in wind, in rain, in

fire, my love could sleep. I watched him, content, a goldenhaired child, some golden infant, peaceful, at ease in the world of coma and unremembered dreams. It was Christian sleep, we

both agreed, mostly Protestant, impervious to guilt or worry

or pain, Christ had died for him. To my outsider’s eye it was

grace. It soothed, it was succor, it was an adoring visitor, a

faithful friend, it loved and rested him, and he knew no suffering that withstood its gentle solace. I had seen the same capacity for sleep in persons less kind, one was born to it, the

great and deep and easy sleep reserved for those not meant to

remember.

I sat on the other side of the room where he slept, in a

typing chair bought in the cheapest five and dime, slightly built,

perilous, covered in cat hair. His desk was huge, an old, used

table, big enough to hold the confusion, which, regardless,

simply billowed over its edges and onto the floor. The ground

between the typing chair and his heavy, staid double bed was a

false garden of tangle and weeds, or a minefield in the dark,

but he slept with the light on, even he never quite safe because

it was more like sleeping outside than sleeping inside. He would

never be vagabonded: never desolate and out in the cold. But I

would be, someday, putting on all the old trashy clothes, army

surplus, of these cold years, walking forever, simply settling

outside because inside was ridiculous, too silly, an insupportable idea: the absurd idea that this was a place to live.

Sleep kept him believing he had a home— somewhere, after all,

to sleep. But I spent the nights awake, I had to sit at a desk,

turn on electric lights, refer to many different and highly

important books, pace, sharpen pencils, change typewriter

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ribbons, make drafts, take notes, make phone calls, in meaningful and purposeful ways, with dignity and skill, physically inside, certainly inside. That old woman I would soon be,

always outside, sat right near me, I could smell her savage

skin, the mixture of sweat and ice, fear and filth. I already had

her sores on my feet and her bitterness in my heart. I knew

her: I was her already, carefully concealing it: waiting for the

events between this moment and later when I would be her.

My gray hair would hang from the dirty saliva in my mouth

and I would push along some silly belongings: books no doubt,

and some writings, and maybe a frazzled cat on a leash, because

otherwise I would be desperately lonely. Between us, this old

woman and me, there was just this sweet sleeping boy, a giant

of pale beauty and barely conceivable kindness. He was at

least slightly between her and me, and all my rush to despair

was moderated by this small quiet miracle of our time together

on earth. There was nothing perfect in it: but it was gentle: for

me, the kindest love in a life of being loved too much. I sat in

the typing chair, warmed by watching him sleep that foreign

sleep of peace, I watched him and I believed in his peace and

his rest: what was impossible he made real: and then his eyes

fluttered open, and with so many different sounds in his voice,

the whole range of calling and wanting, he called me: said my

name, reached out, and I walked over and touched his hand:

and he said, you’re home, and he asked what was wrong.

And I raged. I bellowed. I howled. I was delirious with pain.

I was shrill with humiliation. I was desperate with accusation

and paranoid but defensible prophecy and acrid recrimination

against what would happen to me. To me. The insufferable

editor, the arrogance, the terms of the agreement: my fury, my

rage, my memory of my life as a woman. Nearly keening in

anguish, I told him about the cafe, the literature, the obsessed

man, the kiss.

“ You’ve done it before, ” he said quietly. And went back to

sleep.

*

You know what I meant. This is the world you live in. You’ve

done it before, he said. Oh, yes.

Shit you know what I meant.

You know what I meant.

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I am trying to pace, windows open, under the weight-of

blankets. He is sitting up on his bed, under blankets.

You know what I meant.

Oh, I do.

Some things are true. What he meant is true. I know what, I

know how, I know where, I know when, I even know why.

Oh, I do.

*

But I don’t want to.

He says my name. Please, he says, wanting me to stop.

But really, I don’t want to.

He says my name, pleading. Please, he says, please, I know,

I know, but what can you do?

But I don’t want to. I want, I say, I want, I say, to be this

human being, and I want, I say, I want, to have somebody

publish my book, I say, this simple thing, I say, I want, I want,

I say, to be treated just like a human being, I say, and I don’t

want, I say, I don’t want, I say, to have to do this. I have

nowhere else to go, no one else who will do this simple thing,

publish my book, but I don’t want to have to do this.

He says my name, softly. Please, he says, please, stop, you

must, he says, stop, because, he says, this is making me crazy,

he says, softly he calls my name, please, he says, there is

nothing to do, he says, calling my name softly and weeping,

what is there to do, what can you do?

I want, I say, I want to be treated a certain way, I say. I

want, I say, to be treated like a human being, I say, and he,

weeping, calls my name, and says please, begging me in the

silence not to say another word because his heart is tearing

open, please, he says, calling my name. I want, I say, to be

treated, I say, I want, I say, to be treated with respect, I say, as

if, I say, I have, I say, a right, I say, to do what I want to do, I

say, because, I say, I am smart, and I have written, and I am

good, and I do good work, and I am a good writer, and I have

published, and I want, I say, to be treated, I say, like someone,

I say, like a human being, I say, who has done something, I

say, like that, I say, not like a whore, not like a whore, I say,

not any more, I say, and he says, calling my name, his tongue

whispering my name, he says, calling my name and weeping,

please, I know, I know. And I say to him, seriously, someday I

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will die from this, just from this, just from being treated like a

whore, nothing else, I will die from it. And he says dryly, with

a certain self-evident truth on his side: you will probably die

from pneumonia actually. Ice hangs, ready to cut each chest. I

hesitate, then crack up. We collapse, laughing. The blankets

bury us alive.

*

He sleeps curled up blond, like a pale infant, in a room five

floors above a desperate street corner. The windows are open,

of course, and he sleeps, pale and dreamless, curled up and

calm. The stairs outside his windows, rusty and fragile, go

from our tenement heaven down to the grimmest cement. The

sirens passing that corner blast the brick building, so that we

might be in a war zone, each siren blast meaning we must get

up and run to a shelter to hide. But there is no shelter. There is

the occasional bomb by terrorist groups. Arson. Prostitutes.

Pimps. Junkies. Old men, vagabonded, drunk with running

sores, abscesses running obscene with green pus, curled up like

my love, but blocking our doorway, on the front step, on the

sidewalk under the step, behind the garbage cans, curled up

just in the middle of the cement anywhere, just wherever they

stopped. The blasts of the sirens go all day and all night and in

between them huge buses make the building shake and wild

taxis careen with screeching brakes. Cars rocket by, men with

guns and clubs sounding their sirens, flashing lights that spread

a fierce red glare into our little home: red flashing lights that

climb five flights in the space of a second and illuminate us

whatever we are doing, wherever we stand, in one second a

whorish red, turn us and everything we see and touch into a

grotesque special effect. Sirens that blare and blast and make

the brick shake, announcing fire or murder or rape or a simple

beating. Screams sometimes that come from over there, or

behind that building, or in the courtyard, or some other apartment, or the nice man with the nice dog ranting at his mother over eighty and her screaming for help. Across the street there

is a disco: parties for hire and music that makes the light

fixtures quake between the siren blasts. Sometimes a flight

above us, right near the roof, the filthy vagabonds sneak

in and hide, piss and shit, urine runs down the hall stairs

from the roof and a stench befouls even the awful air, and so

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cautiously the police are called, because the drunken, ruthless

men might be armed, might hit, might rape: might kill.

The sirens blast the air, wind runs wild like plague through

the rooms: and outside on the street men are curled up in fetal

position, all hair and scabs and running sores, feet bandaged

in newspaper and dirty torn cloth, eyes running pus, a bottle,

sometimes broken to be used as a weapon, held close to the

chest. The women on the great spiked heels, almost as cold as

we are, can barely stand. They wobble from the fix, their

shoulders hang down, their eyes hang down, their skin gets

yellow or ochre, their faces are broken out in blotches, their

hair is dry and dead and dirty, their knees buckle: they are too

undressed for the cold: they can barely walk from the fix: they

have broken teeth: they have bruises and scars and great

running tracks: and all this they try to balance on four-inch,

six-inch, heels; toe-dancers in the dance of death. On this

corner mostly they are thin, too thin, hungered-away thin,

smacked-away thin: thin and yellow.

In the park down at the end of the block, not far away, the

drugs change hands. The police patrol the park: giving tickets

to those who take their dogs off the leash. In the daylight, four

boys steal money from an old man and run away, not too fast,

why bother. The dealers sit and watch. The police stroll by as

the deals are being made. Any dog off a leash is in for serious

trouble.

Ambulances drag by. Cars hopped up sounding like a great

wall falling flash by, sometimes crashing past a streetlight

and bending it forever. Buses trudge with their normal

human traffic. The cops coast by, sometimes with sirens,

sometimes flashing red, just to get past the stoplight. Fire

engines pass often, fast, serious, all siren and flashing light:

this is serious. Arson. Bad electrical wiring. Old tenements,

like flint. Building code violations. Whole buildings flame up.

We see the fires, the smoke, the red lights. First we hear the

sirens, see the flashing light with its crimson brilliance, then

we ask, is it here, is it us? We make jokes: that would warm

us up. Where are the cats? Can we get them out in time? We

have a plan, a cage we can pull down from a storage place

(we have no closets, only planks scattered above our heads,

hanging on to the edges of walls), and then we can rush

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them all in and rush out and get away: to where? He sleeps.

How?

On TV news we see that in New York City where we live

people die from the cold each winter. We have called and

written every department of the city. We have withheld rent.

We have sued. No one cares. We know that we could die from

the cold. But fire— they must care about fire, they have a fire

department, we see the fire engines and the flashing red lights

and we hear the sirens. No cold department, no whore department, no vagabond department, no running-pus-and-sores department, no get-rid-of-the-drug-dealers department: but fire

and dogs-on-the-leash departments seem to abound. I am

always pleasantly surprised that they care about fire.

The disco music is so loud that we cannot hear our own

radio: we call the police. There is an environmental-something

department. They will drive by and measure the decibel level

of the sound. This is a great relief. Can someone come and

take the temperature in our apartment? The policeman hangs

up. A crank call, he must think, and what with so many real

problems, so much real violence, so many real people dying.

My pale blond friend sleeps, his skin bluish. I call the police

about the noise.

The landlord has installed a lock on our building. The lock

must be nearly unique. You turn it with a key and when you

hear a certain click you must at that second push open the

door. If you miss the click you must start all over again. If

your key goes past the click, the door stays locked and you

must complete the cycle, complete the turn, before you can

start again, so it takes even longer, and if you miss it again you

must still keep going: you must pay attention and put your ear

right up against the lock to hear the click. The fetal vagabonds

run pus at your feet and the drooping prostitutes come at you,

perhaps wanting one second of steadiness on their feet or

perhaps wanting to tear out your heart, and this is a place

where men follow women with serious expectations not to be

trifled with, pursue in cars, beep from cars, follow block after

block in cars, carry weapons, sneak up behind, rob, need

money, need dope, and you must stand there at exquisite attention and listen for the little click.

The cement on the corner has been stained by its human

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trash: it is the color of a hundred dead junkies somehow ground

into the stone, paved smooth, running like mud in the rare

moonlight. Sometimes there is blood, and sometimes a savage

dog, belonging to one of the drunken men, chases you and

threatens to tear you apart and in terror you edge your way

inside: listening carefully for the little click. In a great urban

joke, God has given us all the trappings of a civilized society.

We have a huge intersection with a traffic light. We have a bus

stop. Across the street there is a bank and a school as well as a

disco. Next door there is a large church with stained glass and

ornate and graceful stonework. The intersection has the bank,

a hospital diagonal from us, and a fast-food chicken place.

And then, resting right next to us, right under us, tucked near,

is the home of the hamburger itself, the great gift of this

country, right on our corner, with its ascending ordure. I laugh

frequently. I am God’s best fan.*

The windows are open, of course, and he sleeps, pale and

dreamless, curled up and calm, nearly warm except that his

skin has become a pale blue, barely attached to the fine bones

underneath. Outside the sirens blast the brick building, they

almost never stop. Fire and murder. Cars rocketing by, men

with guns and clubs and flashing lights that climb five flights

in the space of a second and turn us whorish red, like great

wax museum freaks in a light show.

I listen to the music from the disco, which is so loud that the

Mozart on my poor little $32 radio is drowned out. Tonight,

perhaps, is the Italian wedding, and so we have an imitator of

Jerry Vale to a disco beat that carries across the wide street,

through air freighted with other weight, screams and blasts,

and into the epicenter of my brain. If I close the windows,

however, I will probably die. But it is the vibration, in this

case the endless clucky thumping of the badly abused instruments, that worms its way under my skin to make me itch with discontent, irritation, a rage directed, in this case, at

Italian weddings, but on other nights at French crooners, at

Jaggerish deadbeats, at Elvisian charlatans, at Haggardish

kvetchers, and even, on occasion, at Patti Pageish or even Peggy

Leeish dollies embellished by brass.

I watch the limos pulling up, parking in front of the fire

109

hydrants and no-parking signs. I see a man in a tux tear down

with his bare hands a no-parking sign. I see an endless supply

of kids attending these adult parties. The house used to be a

synagogue. One day it was empty. Then a man with many

boys moved in. The boys had tattoos and did heavy work and

had lean thighs. They all lived on the top floor. The parties

were on the lower two floors. The boys flew a flag from the

top floor. I called it never-never-land. The parties drove me

mad.

The women who went into the house were never contemporary cosmopolitan women. They always wore fluffy dresses or full skirts and frilly blouses, very fifties, suburban, dating,

heavy makeup. Even the youngest women wore wide formal

skirts, maybe even with crinolines, in pastel colors, and their

hair was set and lacquered. They were deferential and flirty

and girlish and spoke when spoken to. Sometimes they had a

corsage. Sometimes they wore female hats. Sometimes they

even wore female gloves or female wraps. Always they wore

female shoes and female stockings and stood in a female way

and looked very fifties, virgin ingenues. They never met the

rough boys from the top floor, or not so that I could see. They

came with dates. There were floral arrangements inside, and

white tablecloths, and men in white jackets. Then, during the

day, the boys from the upper floor would ride their bikes or

get wrecked on drugs. Once my favorite, a beautiful wrecked

child who at fifteen was getting old, too covered with tattoos,

with hair hanging down to his shoulders and some beautiful

light in his eyes and thighs, had a young girl there. She too was

beautiful, dark, perfect, naked, exquisite breasts and thighs,

they hung out the window together and watched the sun rise.

They seemed exquisitely happy: young: not too hurt yet, or

young enough to be resilient: he must have been hurt, all

tattooed and drugged out and in this house of boys, and she

had been or would be, and I prayed for her as hard as I have

ever hoped for myself. That she was and would be happy; that

she was older than she looked; that she would be all right. It

was only at dawn that the human blood seemed to have washed

out of the cement and that injury seemed to disappear: and

men began emerging from the park where they had been

fucking and sucking cock all night: they were weary and at

110

peace: and there seemed to be a truce just then, for the duration

of the dawn, between night and day, between people and despair. The boy and girl, radiant and tender with pleasure, hung out of the window. Underneath them men dragged themselves

toward home, tender with fatigue. I sat by the open window

and smiled. It was the only time to be awake and alive on that

Lower East Side street corner. The light would be not quite

daylight: night was still mixed in with it: and there was peace.

Then the sun would be up, glaring and rude. The night would

be defeated and angry, preparing to return with a vengeance.

The vagabonds would shit and move. The fumes would begin

anew for the day, inevitably thicker and more repellent than

before, more repulsive than it was possible to be or to imagine

or to engineer or to invent. The whores would go home short

and lose more teeth. The boys across the way would shoot up,

sleep, eventually ride their bikes or go stand on street corners.

I would go to the small distant room and try to sleep on the

Salvation Army mattress under the open window. I would hear

the sirens. I would wake up burning, with ice not fire.

*

I would sit by the open windows in the living room and watch

the dark, then the light: dawn was my pleasure, a process

pungent with melodrama, one thickness edging out another,

invading it, permeating it: dark being edged out, a light

weighing the night down until it was buried in the cement.

You could slice the night and you could slice the day, and it

was just the hour or two, some parts of the year it seemed like

only minutes, in which both mixed together resembling peace.

The light would begin subtly and I could just see some tree-

tops up the street in the park. At first they looked like a line, a

single line, an edge of jagged mountaintops etched against a

dark eternity with a sharp, slight pencil, and gradually the line

filled in, got deeper and deeper until the shape of each tree got

filled in, and then color came, the brown branch, bare, the

leaf-covered branch, green, the blossom-covered branch,

chartreuse. I could see some dogs being walked early, the first

ones of the day coming, forms under artificial light turning

into creatures of flesh and blood when the real light came. I

could see, in the next room, the tousled head of my love, the

boy I live with, sleeping. Soon he would wake up and I would

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go to sleep and he would go to work and I would have stopped

working: now while he still slept and I was a vigilant consciousness I opened the windows that had been closed in the living room and sat down next to them to watch the dawn, the

kindest time.

In the hour before my turn came, my turn to sleep, night

would brand me: it would go through my brain, and make

pictures there of itself: every figure of horror would escape the

night and enter my brain: and each mundane piece of a living

day, the coming light, would grow huge and induce fear: a

drip under the sink was a torrent, irresolvable, menacing: so

there was no time to sleep: and the plaster falling from the

ceiling would become the promised disaster: and there was no

time to sleep: and the crack in the toilet threatened sewage and

flood: and so, it was impossible to sleep: and there was the

landlord to be called, and the windows were open, and congestion in the chest, and shopping to do, and noises on the roof, and some strange sounds from below: and so it was

impossible to sleep. The drip under the sink would mean calling

the super: and this meant no sleep: because he was a small,

mean, angry man, aloof but radiating hot cruelty, one little

man knotted into one fist of a man. His wife, having no English, would answer the phone and in terror stammer out

“ asleep” or “ not here” or “ no, no. ” Once she begged me in

splatters of languages I did not speak: do not make me get

him, miss, he will hurt me. The sink would be stopped up

beyond help, or there would be no heat or no hot water, for us

in this cold place a disaster of unparalleled dimensions, and

she would whisper in chokes: do not make me get him, miss,

he will hurt me. I knew the sound of the swollen larynx waiting

to burst.

The day would be solidly established, that graceless light,

and the people of the day would begin moving on the street,

the buses would come one after another, the traffic would rev

up for the day ahead, the smoke from all the motor engines

would begin escalating up, the noise would become fearsome,

the chatter from the street would become loud and busy, the

click click click of shoes and boots would swallow up the

cement, the voices would become various and in many languages: and I would make my way down the hall to the small 112

room with the broken springs in the mattress under the open

window and try to sleep.

I dreamed, for instance, of being in a tropical place. It was all

green, that same steady bright unchanging green under too

much light that one finds in the steamy tropics, that too-lush

green that hurts the eyes with its awful brightness, only it was

duller because it seemed to know it was in a dream. And in the

steaming heat of this too-green jungle with its long thin sharp

leaves and branches resembling each other, more like hungry

animals than plants, stretched out sideways not up, growing

out wide not up, but still taller than me, there was a clearing,

a sort of burnt-out, brown-yellow clearing, short grass, flat, a

circle surrounded by the wild green bush. There were chairs,

like the kinds used in auditoriums, folding chairs set up, about

eight of them in a circle like for a consciousness-raising group

or a small seminar. The sun burned down. I was standing.

Others were sitting in the chairs, easy, relaxed, men and

women, I knew them but I don’t know who they were by

name, now or then, and I have a big knife, a huge sharp knife,

and very slowly I walked up to the first one and I slowly slit

her throat. No one moves or notices and I walk to the next

one and I slit her throat, and I walk to the next one and I slit

his throat, and slowly I walked around the circle of sitting

people and I slit each throat slowly and purposefully. I wake

up shaking and screaming, burning hot, in terror. In the dream

I was truly happy.

Or I dream the dream I hate most, that I am awake, I see

the room, someone is in it, I hear him, he has a knife, I wake

up, I try to scream, I can’t scream, I am awake, I believe I am

awake, but I cannot scream and I cannot move, my eyes are

open, I can see and hear everything but I cannot do anything, I

keep trying to scream but I make no sound, I cannot move, so

I think I must not be awake, and I force myself to wake up

and it turns out that I wasn’t awake before but I am now, and

I hear the man in the room, and I can see him moving around,

and I am awake, and I try to scream but no sound comes out

and I try to move but I cannot move, but I am awake, and I

see everything and I hear everything, every detail of the room I

know I am in, every sound that I know is there, every detail of

reality, the time, the sounds of the neighbors, I know where I

i i 3

am and who I am and that I am awake and still I can’t say

anything, I try to scream but I can’t, the vocal cords do not

work, the voice does not work, my mouth works but no sound

comes out, and I try to force myself to get up but my body

does not move, and then I realize that even though I think I

am awake I must not be awake and so I force myself to wake

up, I fight and I fight to wake up, and then I wake up, and I

hear the man in the room, I see him, I see his face, I see him

and see every detail of who he is and how he is dressed and

how he moves and where he goes and I see myself and I know

I am in bed and he is in the room and I hear every sound and I

try to scream but I cannot and I try to move but I cannot and

so I try to force myself again to wake because I know I must

be asleep and I am so terrified I cannot move from fear and I

cannot scream from fear: and by the time I wake up I am half

dead. Drenched in sweat, I try to sleep some more.

I hear my love, my friend, moving around, awake, alive. I

am relieved. The night is over. I can begin to try to sleep. I

hear him turn on the water, he is there if it floods. I have left

him a note, probably two pages long, filled with worries and

admonitions: what must be done to get through this day

coming up, the vivid imperatives that came to press in on my

brain as night ended and I knew I would have to sleep, the

dread demands of uncompromising daylight: more calls to the

city, more calls to the landlord, more calls to the lawyers,

more calls to the super: and buy cat litter: and remember the

laundry, to take it in or to pick it up and I have left money,

five dollars: and I love you, have a good day, I hope it goes

well. I can’t sleep in his bed because in the day his room has

fumes, even with the windows open. So I am down in this

little closet under an open window to sleep. Somehow my

friend comes home at night, it is a surprise always, and I am

always, inevitably, without fail, a cold coiled spring ready to

snap and kill, a minefield of small, deadly explosions. Dinner

is eaten in front of partially opened windows. I cannot live

through this one more day, I say, each and every night, sometimes trying to smile and be pleasant, sometimes my face twisted in grief or rage. I am going to: kill the landlord. Today I almost

threw a rock through the windows of the hamburger place.

Today I almost went up to the man who runs it and spit at

1 1 4

him, hit him, cursed him, called him foul names, threw myself

on him and tore his throat open. All day long, every minute of

every day, but especially today, whichever day it is, I want to

kill, burn down, tear down, destroy, put an end to this,

somehow, anyhow. He does the dishes. I stalk him. I want to

talk with you, I want an answer, what are we going to do,

where are we going to go, I want to move to a hotel, I want to

move, I want to leave this city, I am going to kill somebody, I

want the landlord to die, I want to slice out his heart, I want

to pound him into the ground myself, these hands, I am going

to call him now and tell him what a foul fuck he is, what a

pig, I am going to threaten him, his wife, his children, I am

going to make them as afraid as I am cold, I know we don’t

have any money but I have to go to a hotel I can’t stay here I

am going to burn down the restaurant I know how to make

bombs I am going to bomb it I am going to pour sand down

their chimney I am going to throw rocks I am going to burst

the windows I am going to explode it and break all the glass I

am going to set a fire I am going to smash my fists through the

windows. I almost did that tonight, he says, shaking, I almost

couldn’t stop myself, I almost broke all the windows. I am

quiet. He is gentle, I am the time bomb. I look at him. He is all

turned inward with pain, on the edge of a great violence which

we are united in finding unspeakable when it comes from him:

we are believers in his tenderness: it is our common faith. He

has a surface, calm and clear as a windless, warless night:

underneath perhaps he too is cold, or perhaps I am simply

driving him mad. He wants to throw rocks, not egged on by

me but when alone, coming home. He cannot bear violence, in

himself, near him. I have absorbed it endlessly, I can withstand

anything. I am determined to keep calm, I see I am hurting

him with my bitter invective, I am determined to get through

another night, another day. He reads. Perhaps he is cold too?

We talk. We touch hands quietly. We fall asleep together in his

bed marooned. I wake up soon. He is asleep, curled up like a

lamb of peace. Perhaps you have never known a gentle man.

He is always a stranger, unarmed, at night wrapped in simple

sleep he curls up like a child in someone’s arms. It is after 1 1

pm, the restaurant has now been closed long enough for the

wind streaming through the apartment to have cleared out my

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room so that I will not choke or get head pain or throw up or

have sharp pains in my gut. My lungs will ache from the cold.

My fingers will be stiff. My throat will hurt from the cold. I sit

down to work. I must write my book. I work until the dawn,

my salvation, day after day, when I see the beauty of earth

unfolding. I watch dawn come on the cement which is this

earth of mine. Then I sleep my kind of sleep, of cold and

burning, of murder and death, of paralysis and silent screams,

of a man with a knife who moves with impunity through a

consciousness tortured with itself, of the throats I have slit, of

the heat of that tropical place. In the dream there was no

blood but I wake up knowing that it must have been terrible,

smelly and heavy and sticking and rotting fast in the sun.

*

I watch him sleep because the tenderness I have for him is

what I have left of everything I started with.

My brother was like him, frail blond curls framing a guileless

face, he slept the same way, back where I started. A tenderness

remembered tangentially, revived when I see this pale, yellowhaired man asleep, at rest, defenseless, incomprehensibly trusting death not to come. We are innocence together, before

life set in.

Sometimes I feel the tenderness for this man now, the real

one asleep, not the memory of the baby brother— sometimes I

feel the tenderness so acutely— it balances on just a sliver of

memory— I feel it so acutely, it is so much closer to pain than

to pleasure or any other thing, for instance, in one second

when each knows what the other will say or without a thought

our fingers just barely touch, I remember then in a sharp sliver

of penetration my baby brother, pale, yellow-haired, curls

framing a sleeping face while I lay awake during the long

nights, one after the other, while mother lay dying. It is con-

sumingly physical, not to sleep, to be awake, watching a blond

boy sleeping and waiting for your mother to die. Or I remember my brother, so little, just in one second, all joy, a tickle-fight, we are squared off, each in a corner of the sofa

(am I wearing my cowgirl outfit with gun and holster?), father

is the referee, and we are torrents of laughter, rapturous

wrestling, and his curly yellow hair cascades. He was radiant

with delight, lit up from inside, laughing in torrents and me

11 6

too. My childhood was this golden thing, eradicable, intense

sensations of entirely physical love remembered like short,

sweet, delirious hallucinations, lucid in fog. Now I love no

one, except that tender man now in the next room dreaming

without memory, a blessed thing, or not dreaming at all: that

curled-up blond muscled thing recalling every miracle of love

from long ago. I was happy then: don’t dare deny it.

I don’t love now, at all, except when I remember to love the

blond boy, the stranger not even related to me, not part of

anything from before, who sleeps in the next room: a tall blond

man: when I remember to love him certain minutes of certain

days. Don’t look for my heart. The beasts have eaten it. What

is his name?

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Our women writers write like women writers,

that is to say, intelligently and pleasantly,

but they are in a terrible hurry to tell what

is in their hearts. Can you explain why a

woman writer is never a serious artist?

Dostoyevsky

*

I came back from Europe. I lived alone in a pink apartment on

the Lower East Side across from the police precinct. I wanted

to be a writer. I want to write. Every day I write. I am alone

and astonishingly happy.

The police cars ram into the crushed sidewalk across the

street. The precinct is there. Men in blue with guns and

nightsticks swarm. Garbled sounds emanate from radios on

their hips. They swarm outside the impressive stone building,

the precinct headquarters. Red lights flash. A dozen cars swerve

in or swerve out, crash in or crash out, are coming or going,

burning rubber on the burning streets, the smell of the burnt

rubber outlasting the sound of the siren as its shrillness fades.

The police cars never slow down. They stop immediately.

They start up at once, no cautionary note, the engine warming.

They pull straight out at top speeds or swerve in and almost

bang against the building but somehow the brake gets the

weight of the cop and the sidewalk is crushed on its outer

edge.

The sirens blare day and night. The cars bump and grind

and flash by, day and night. The blue soldiers mass like ants,

then deploy, day and night. The red of the flashing lights illuminates my room, like a scarlet searchlight, day and night.

The police are at war with the Hell’s Angels, two blocks

away. The motorcycles would collect. The swastikas would be

emblazoned, the leather would defy the summer heat, the

chains would bang like drums through the always-percussive

air hitting the cement. You could hear the anguish of the

motorcycles, hear the anguish of the streets, as the burning

rubber scarred them: the police cars would pull out fast and

there would be a din of dull anguish sounding like distant war,

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there would be the pain of acute exploding sounds that made the

buildings move and shake and your body was shocked by it even

before your mind could understand that you had not been killed.

There were fires too, loud red fire trucks: real fire, the

building across the street next to the precinct building burning,

the top two floors burning, the building right next to mine

burning. The red lights would flash like great red searchlights

and the sirens would scream right into the blood: and there

would be fire.

Across from the precinct in a gravel lot the police parked

their regular civilian cars and boys played basketball.

The street seemed to be overrun with uniforms, fires, guns,

cars careening in and out. The red searchlights and sirens made it

seem that the Martians had landed, or the army, or war had come,

or giant insects, or man-eating plants. Each day was a surreal

drama, an astonishment of military noise and civic emergency.

It was not the usual exile of the Lower East Side: condemned

into a circle of hell from which there was no exit, no one ever

left alive, no sign anywhere of what others call “ the social

order” ; instead, the social order swarmed and crushed sidewalks, was martial and armed; the social order put out fires that continued to burn anyway from one building to the next,

flaring up here, flaring up there, like one continuous fire,

teasing, teasing the men with the great hoses and the heroic

helmets. It was not the usual Lower East Side exile: one was

not marooned forever until death with only seawater to put to

one’s parched and broken lips: one could scream and maybe

someone with boots and a gun and a uniform and a right to

kill would take time out from the military maneuvers of the

swarming militia and keep one from becoming a corpse. One

hoped, but not really, that a single woman’s scream might be

heard over the military din. Right next to the precinct, in the

building next door, a burglar crawled into the apartment of a

woman in broad daylight, the middle of the hot afternoon,

simply by bending the cheap gate over her fire escape window

and climbing in the open window. The army did not stop him.

When he set the fire that killed her as she napped that afternoon, the red searchlights did not find him; the sirens, the hoses, the trucks, the helmets, did not deter him.

*

119

The apartment was five flights up. The numbering of the floors

was European. The ground floor was not the first floor, it had

no number. The first floor was up a steep flight of stairs. The

fifth floor was at the top of a huge climb, a mountain of stone

steps, a hiker’s climb up. It was not too far from God. Each

day an old, old, heavy Ukrainian woman, bent, covered in

heavy layers of black skirts and black shawls, black scarf tied

tight around her head hiding her hair except for white wisps,

washed the stairs, bottom to top, then cleaned, the banisters,

top to bottom. She had her bucket and a great mop of stringy

ropelike mess, and a pile of rags: stoop-shouldered she washed

and rinsed, washed and rinsed, dusted and polished. There

was no smell of urine. In each hall there were three toilets, one

for each apartment on the floor. The toilet was set in concrete.

The cubicle was tiny. It didn’t lock from the outside, but

there was a hook on the inside. Each tenant cleaned their

own.

The apartment was newly painted, a bright Mediterranean

pink, fresh, garish, powdery. You walked in right to the kitchen, there was no subtle introduction, it was splintered, painted wood floors, no distinct color, a radiator, a grotesque,

mammoth old refrigerator with almost no actual space inside, a

tiny stove, and a bathtub. There was a window that opened

onto a sliver of an airshaft. There was a room on either side of

the kitchen. To the left, on the street, above the teeming blue

soldiers and desperate fire trucks, there was a living room,

small but not tiny. It had a cockroach-ridden desk, one straight-

backed wooden chair, and I bought a $12 piece of foam

rubber to sleep on, cut to be a single mattress. I bought a

bright red rug with a huge flower on it from Woolworth’s, and

laid it down like it was gold. Under it was old linoleum,

creased, chunky, bloating. There were two windows, one

opening onto the fire escape, I couldn’t afford a gate and so it

had to stay closed, and the other I risked opening. I found a

small, beautiful bookcase, wood with some gracious curves as

ornament, and in it I put like a pledge the few books I had

carried across the ocean as talismans. The room to the right of

the kitchen, covered in the same cracked linoleum, was like a

small closet. The window opened on the airshaft, no air, just a

triangular space near a closed triangle of concrete wall. The

120

room was stagnant, the linoleum ghastly with old dirt ground

into the cracks. The room was smothering and wretched. The

walls sweated. I didn’t go into it.

The toilet in the hall was outside the locks on the apartment

door, outside the huge steel police lock, a steel pole that shored

up the door in case of a ramming attack, outside the cylinder

locks, outside the chain lock. I carried a knife back and forth

and I slept with a knife under my pillow.

The glare of the lightbulbs was naked. The pink paint flaked

and rubbed off to the naked touch. The heat enveloped one,

the skin burned from the hot water in the air. I immersed myself

in the bathtub: in the heat one never got dry: and lived between

the desk and the mattress on the floor: writing and sleeping:

concentrating: smiling at the red rug with the big flower. I

learned to be alone.

*

The apartment was painted Mediterranean pink, the paint was

powdery, I found some remnants of cheap cotton in a textile

store and tacked them up over the windows: light came in

unimpeded, the heat of the burning sun, the red searchlights of

the military, the red alarm of fire, danger, must run, must

escape, will burn. The walls between the apartments were thin.

There was a thin wall between me and the man in the next

apartment, a tiny man of timid gentleness. I heard long conversations and deep breaths, discussions about the seasoning in soups and the politics of anal warts, both subjects of his expertise. At night I would dream that there was a hole in the wall, and everything was like a play, the extended conversations, a two-person domestic drama: I knew I was sleeping but I believed the hole was real: and I knew I was sleeping but

the conversations must have been real, in their real voices with

their real inflections, as they sat there in my view. We had no

secrets and at night when I would scream out in terror at a

bad dream, I would alarm my neighbor, and the next day he

would ask me if anyone had hurt me: late, timid. Above me

the man would get fucked hard in the ass, as his expletives and

explications and supplications and imperious pleadings would

make clear. The two male bodies would thump on the floor

like great stones being dropped over and over again, like dead

weight dropping. Sleep could not intervene here and mask the

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sound for me in flashy narratives of story-within-the-story,

play-within-the-play: the screams were too familiar, too close,

not yet lost in life rushing forward.

I slept when I was tired. I wrote. Sweat poured out. I took

long walks. My dreams were like delirium. I did not have hours

or days. I simply went on. There was a great, soft stream of

solitude and concentration and long, wet baths, and timid trips

to the toilet. Oh, yes, I had a terrible time getting money and I

don’t want to say how I did it. I lived from day to day, stopping

just short of the fuck. I had odd jobs. I did what was necessary.

I was always happy when I was alone: except when restlessness

would come like a robber: then I would walk, walk.

*

The pink walls and the red carpet with the huge flower were

my indulgences. The rest was austere, the heat prohibiting

excess, poverty offended by it. The single mattress was like a

prayer.

I came alive again: in solitude: concentrating: writing.

*

Yes, there were men and women, women and men, but they

were faded: they were background, not foreground, intrusions,

failures of faith, laziness of spirit: forays into the increasingly

foreign world of the social human being: they were brief

piercing moments of sensation, the sensation pale no matter

how acute, sentimental no matter how tough: namby-pamby

silliness of thighs that had to open: narrow pleasure with no

mystery, no subtlety, no subtext: pierce, come; suck, come;

foretold pleasures contained between the legs, while solitude

promised immersion, drenching, the body overcome by the

radical intensity of enduring. *

I met my beautiful boy, my lost brother, around, somewhere,

and invited him in. I saw him around, here and there, and

invited him in. Talking with him was different from anything

else: the way the wind whispers through the tops of trees just

brushed by sunset. It made me happy. I invited him in. My

privacy included him. My solitude was not betrayed. We were

like women together on that narrow piece of foam rubber, and

he, astonished by the sensuality of it, ongoing, the thick

sweetness of it, came so many times, like a woman: and me

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too: over and over: like one massive, perpetually knotted and

moving creature, the same intense orgasms, no drifting separateness of the mind or fragmented fetishizing of the body: instead a magnificent cresting, the way a wave rises to a height pushing

forward and pulls back underneath itself toward drowning at

the same time: one wave lasting forever, rising, pulling,

drowning, dying, all in the same movement; or a wave in an

ocean of waves covering nearly all the earth, immense. My lost

brother and I became lovers forever, buried there, in that sea

so awesome in its density and splendor. I need never touch

him again. He became my lover forever. So he entered my

privacy, never offending it.

*

I had learned solitude, and now I learned this.

*

On his birthday I gave him a cat that had his face.

I had looked everywhere for it. I had looked in stores, I had

traced ads, read bulletin boards, made phone calls. I had gone

out, into the homes of strangers, looking for the cat I would

know the minute I saw it. Red. With his face: a certain look,

like a child before greed sets in, delicate, alert, listening. The

day came and I didn’t have it. I knew the cat was somewhere

waiting, but I was afraid I would not find it. The day of his

birthday I went out, looking, a last search, asking, following

every lead, hour after hour. The heat was rancid. Then a man

told me where to look: a woman had found a pregnant cat in a

garbage dump and had taken it home: the kittens were red. He

called her. I went there. The skies had darkened, gotten black.

The air was dusty. The thunder cracked the cement. Hail fell.

I ran to her house, awed by this surfeit of signs, afraid of the

stones of ice and the black sky. In the house the cat with his

face was waiting. I took the cat home.

*

Year after year, he is with me. Solitude is with me and he is

with me. Now I’ve spent ten years writing. Imagine a huge

stone and you have only your own fingernail. You scratch the

message you must write into the stone bit by bit. You don’t

know why you must but you must. You scratch, one can barely

see the marks, you scratch until the nail is torn and disintegrates, itself pulverized into invisible dust. You use the I23

blood from your ripped finger, hoarding it to go on as long as

you can but hurrying because you will run out. Imagine ten

years of it. But the solitude changes. At first it is fresh and

new, like any lover, an adventure, a ravishing excitement, a

sensual derangement: then it gets deeper, tougher, lonelier, not

because one wants the closeness of friends but because one

doesn’t, can’t: can barely remember wanting anything but

solitude. One remembers wanting, needing, like one remembers a childhood dream: but even the memory seems frivolous, trivial, a distraction: solitude kills the need for anything but itself, like any grand passion. It changes one, irrevocably. Promiscuous warmth dies, all goodhearted fellowship with others dies, seems false and cheap. Only burning ice is left inside. Whoever gets too near gets their skin burned

off and dies from the cold.

He lives inside my privacy. He coexists with my solitude,

hating it sometimes but rebelling in silence by himself because

he does not want to leave: I would make him leave, even now.

I put solitude first, before him. His complaints are occasional,

muted. I keep him far away even when he is gentle, asleep,

curled up next to me like an innocent child, my solace, my

human heart. The years of solitude— the seconds, the minutes,

the hours, night into morning, evening into night, day stretching into night and weeks stretching into months— are a moat he cannot cross. The years of being together with him— the

seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days into weeks into

months into years— do not change this. This is the way I love

now.

You are nomads together, in cheap room after cheap room:

poorer and poorer: the written word does not sell: some is

published but it is not embraced, it offends, it does not make

money, no one wants more of it, it has an odor, those with

good taste demur: the pink apartment with the toilet in the

hall is left behind: food stamps, bare foam rubber mattress

that starts shredding and has great potholes like city streets,

cold floors, cheap motels, the backs of rented trucks moving

your few belongings from one shabby empty place to another:

writing: hungry. He is closest and dear, loved more now, but

he is necessarily outside the concentration and the pain of the

task itself, the discipline and despair, the transcendent pleasure,

124

the incommunicable joy. The writing makes one poorer and

poorer: no one likes it. It gets worse and worse, over years,

that is the hard part, over years, day by day, for years. One

absorbs that too, endures it, getting dead and mutilated inside:

one endures the continuing, worsening poverty and the public

disgrace: strangers despise you, for what you think or what you

write, or no one knows you. And you put writing, solitude, this

failure, first, before him: and his way of loving you is not to take

offense: not to point out the arrogant stupidity of the choice:

but to stay, to let you leave him out, far away, in the chill region

because you have a cold and awful heart. He is for human times.

But writing is cold and alone. It makes you monstrous, hard, icy,

colder and more barren, more ruthless, than the Arctic Sea.

*

Each book makes you poorer: not just blood: money, food,

shelter: the more time you use writing but not making money,

the poorer you are. Each book makes you poorer. You are

awash in pain, the physical poverty, the inner desolation. You

get deader and deader inside. The blood still stains the stone, a

delicate pink, tiny drops rubbed into signs and gestures. The

glacier moves slowly over the fertile plain, killing. Everything

around you begins to die.

*

Solitude is your refuge and your tomb, where you are buried

alive. Writing is your slowr, inexorable suicide. Poverty is the

day grinding into night, night hurling you back without mercy

to day: day is teeth grinding to the exposed, raw nerves, slow,

a torture of enduring. There are no human witnesses, only the

lost boy asleep. He is tangled in knots of helpless rage. He

thought life was fairer. He sleeps like a lost child. You are in a

fever of creation, waiting to die, hurrying to finish first. There

is more to do.

*

Solitude is a shroud, the creature inside it still alive; writing

resistance to being bound up and thrown in a hole in the

ground; poverty the wild weeds growing over the hard, lonely

earth. The lost boy sleeps, breathes, suffers: fingernails

scratching against the looking glass trying to get through, he

can’t bring Alice back.

*

115

Solitude is revenge. Writing is revenge. Poverty is your wild

pride, open sores, matted hair, gorgon, rags, hairshirt, filth

and smell: arrogant saint nailed to a tired old cross. He tells

you he hates your pride. He does hate it.

*

It is too easy to be martyred. Your pride is more terrible than

that. You keep fighting. Solitude is revenge. Writing is revenge.

Medea, not Christ, is your model. Where are the children to

kill? I could, I could. “ I too can stab, ” she told Jason. I too

can stab.

*

So now we have come to rest in this awful place, the windows

open in the cold storm of winter, the fumes turning even the

coldest, fiercest wind stagnant, rancid. The vagabonds shit in

the foyer of the building’s lobby and behind the stairwell and

hide out on the landing above us. We are five flights up. There

is no money to move one more time: and my friend, my sweet

boy, sleeps in wool and thermal underwear and sweatshirts

pale and blue as if frozen by death: and I sit by the open

window in the dead of winter, wintry winter, the wind

streaming in, a small electric heater just keeping my fingers

from freezing up stiff, and I write, I am cold and tired beyond

anything I can say, any words there are: a dying bird, broken

wing, on a plain of ice; some creature, lost and broken, on a

plain of ice, isolated, silent, fatigued, famished for warmth and

rest and rescue, having no hope, wanting not to turn cannibal before dying: crawling, crawling, trying to find the end of the icy plain, the rich brown earth, a plant, a flower:

rescue, escape: some oasis not ruined by heavy, wet, implacable

cold.

I am cold all the time. I walk six hours a day, eight hours a

day, then come to this apartment where the windows are never

closed. I am desperate beyond any imagining. You will never

know. It is amazing that I do not kill.

*

I am afraid of dying, especially of pneumonia. I am sick all the

time, fever, sore throat, chill to the bones, joints stiff, abdominal pains from the fumes, headaches from the fumes, dizziness from the fumes. I am afraid of sleeping, afraid of dying: each day is a nightmare of miles to walk not to die: is there

1 2. 6

money for a cup of coffee today? I am a refugee: profoundly

despondent and tired enough to die: I want somewhere to live:

really live: I imagine it: warm and pretty: clean: no human shit

in piles: little bourgeois dreamer: dumb cunt: eyes hurt like

Spinoza’s: I am in the apartment, there is a driving rain, violent

wind, I stand in the rain inside, drenched.

*

The fumes start in winter. Winter, spring, summer, fall, winter

again, summer again: the edge of fall. The chill is in the marrow

of the bones. The fatigue makes the eyes gray and yellow,

great rings circle them: the skin is dirty ivory like soap left in a

bathtub for years: the fatigue is like the awful air that rises

from a garbage can left to melt in the sun: the fatigue especially

sits on the tongue, slowing it down, words are said in broken

syllables, sentences rarely finished: speech becomes desperate

and too hard: the fatigue drowns the brain in sludge, there is

no electricity, only the brain sinking under the weight of the

pollution: the fatigue is smeared all over, inside the head it is

in small lakes, and behind the eyes it drips, drips. It is fall. The

windows are open. The book has been finished now. Many

publishers have refused to publish it. There is virtually no one

left to despise it, insult it, malign it, refuse it: and yet I have

been refining it, each and every night, writing until dawn. Now

I am tired and the book is perfect and I am done, a giant slug,

a glob of goo. A woman lets me go to her apartment, on the

ocean. Perhaps she saves my life.

*

In the living room there are large windows, and right outside

them there is the beach, the ocean, the sky, the moon: the sound of

the waves, the sound of the ocean moving over the earth becomes

the sound of one’s own breathing. It is foggy, hot, moist, damp,

and when fog rises on the water, huge roaches climb the walls

and rest on the tops of the windows. They are slow, covered in

the sea mist, prehistoric, like the ocean itself. They seem part

of my delirium, a fever of fatigue: I am alternately shivering,

shaking delirious and comatose, almost dead: a corpse, staring,

no pennies for her eyes. I have no speech left. I sit and stare, or

shake and cry: but still, the ocean is there. I hear the ocean, I

see the ocean: I watch the huge bugs: at dawn, I swim: I see

the red sun rise and I swim: I hear the ocean, I watch the

127

ocean, I see how it endures, going on and on, I listen to the

sound of its endurance, I sit and stare or I shake, fevered. The

bright sunlight breaks up the fog, dries up the mist, the huge

brown bugs disappear: outside normal people chatter: the

afternoons are long, dull, too much sun, too many chattering

vulgar souls not destroyed, normal people with normal concerns: cheery seaside banter: old women on benches on the boardwalk right under my window: and at night teenagers

drinking beer, listening to the blaring radios, courting,

smoking. I avoid the bright sun of the afternoon and the normal

people. I sit in the living room, the sound of the ocean cradles

and rocks me, and I read Thomas Mann, listen to Mozart.

When the vulgar afternoon is over, I watch the ocean and I

listen to it endure. At night, I go out and in, out and in, walk

the beach, walk the boardwalk, sit in the sand, the wet sand,

watch the ocean, I watch it sitting, standing, walking, I walk

along its edge with concentration like not stepping on the

cracks in sidewalks, or I just tramp through the silky water as

it laps up against the sand. I sit on the empty benches on the

boardwalk and I watch the ocean. I go to the edge and touch

the vastness, the touch of my fingers is then carried back under

the water across the earth, and I am immortal: the ocean will

carry that touch with it forever. I breathe to the sound of it

enduring. I breathe like it does, my blood takes on its rhythms,

my heart listens to the sound of the ocean enduring and mimics

it.

After five days, my lost boy comes to visit. We swim. In the

shower we make love. We sleep on the beach, in the fog, in the

mist. Inside the huge slick bugs line the tops of the windows,

poised there to drop off or fly, but never moving, primal, they

could be gargoyles, guardians in stone but as old as the sea. I

watch them. I stare. I am terrified by them but too tired to

scream or run or move: I am restless: they sit: I am afraid: they

sit: they are long, slick brown things, repulsive, slow: I must

be here, near the ocean, or perhaps I will die: maybe they wait

for that: grotesque guardians of my lonely, tired death. I am

restless. I go inside, I go outside. I listen to music: Bach,

Chopin, Mahler, Mozart. They and the ocean are renewal, the

will to live. So is the boy, my love, sleeping on the beach. I

have left him, fragile, exposed, as I always do, to sleep alone.

128

He sleeps, I am restless, I go in and out. He leaves the next

day. I have two more days here. The ocean has turned me

nearly human: closer to life than death. Someday I want the

ocean forever, a whole life, day in and day out, a proper marriage: I want to be its human witness: near its magnificence, near the beat of its splendid, terrifying heart. Oh, yes, I am

tired: but I have seen the ocean come from the end of the

world to touch the sand at my feet.

*

He calls me, the publisher with the dripping upper lip, the hair

on it encrusted slightly yellow, slightly green. His voice is

melodious, undulating like the ocean, a soft washing up of

words on this desolate human shore: a whisper, a wind rushing

through the trees bringing a sharp, wet chill. He wants me,

wants my book: he is soft, melodious, undulating, tones like

music washing up in waves on the shore.

He calls, whispering. You are so wonderful to want me, I say.

*

He calls, whispering, a musical voice, soft, soft, like the ocean

undulating or the wind rushing through the trees at dusk, the

chill of night in the wind.

I am a writer, I have an agent, she stands between me and

every disaster, one human heart with knowledge and skill,

some common sense, and I say to her, I cannot stand to talk to

him. I don’t know what to say to him, I don’t know how to

say anything to him because anything I say has to mean: take

me: have me: I love you: I want you, wonderful you. I knew

how, certainly, once. He must be loved, admired, adored, to

publish me, whom he now adores. She tells me what to say. I

write it down, word for word, on a four-by-six plain index

card. I cross out the adjectives. I say what she tells me. I read

it, pausing where I have crossed words out. I sound breathy

and unsure. Brilliant, brave, heroic, you are so wonderful to

want me, I say.

So wonderful, so wise, so brave, so pure, so true, so smart, so

brilliant, so intelligent, so discerning, so unique, so heroic, so

honest, so sensitive, so good, so so you are you are.

So kind, so gentle, so tender, so intuitive, so sweet, so fine,

so vulnerable, so so you are you are.

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The adjectives are all implicit, crossed out on the index cards

but whispered under the silence of the dead pauses, massing in

clusters under the throat.

*

Tell him, she says, my guardian, my friend, standing between

me and disaster, tell him that he alone of all the men in the

world has the brilliant and incredibly courageous capacity and

talent to. . .

I say that he alone— pause— breathe— breathe—is well

I don’t say this easily— breathe— breathe— he alone—

breathe— pause— breathe— has

the— breathy— breathy—

talent— pause—

I know, he says, voice undulating.

Oh, I say, breathy, breathy, talent, pause, breathy, breathy,

courage, it’s so hard for me to, pause, pause, say this, breathe,

breathe, but he alone.

I know, he whispers, voice undulating, rushing through the

trees, wind at dusk, carrying chill. I know. I will take care of

you now, he says, and hangs up.

*

Tell him, she says, this woman who stands between the abyss

and me, who believes in me, who year after year stands with

me so that I will write, tell him that you trust his judgment

implicitly because he is so special and that his incredible mind

and phenomenal intellect and brilliant ability to. . .

I say that I trust, I breathe hard, I trust, I pause, I trust him,

breathy breathy pause, and his mind is— breathe— breathe—

well it’s not often that I can honestly say— I breathe— pause,

pause— breathy, breathy— his intellect and ability—

I know, he says, breathy, undulating wind rushing.

*

He has to believe that every idea of mine is his. This is the art

of being female, but I have lost it. She tells me what to say, I

write it down, I cross out the adjectives, I say it, I read it,

breathy, full of raw nerves: but in his world the breathy pauses

mean fuck me, the misery in my voice means fuck me, the

desperate self-effacement means fuck me.

He whispers, undulating: comforts me: he will take care of

me now.

*

130

The contracts are signed. I have been breath-fucked, undulated,

through several intimate talks on the phone. The phone is

slobbered over, whispered over, bits of spit are the silent dissent. In my throat there is a lump the size of a man’s fist.

*

My throat has a rock in it, busting the seams of my neck: each

breathe-pause-breathe is a word lying down there to die,

to decompose, to be a pile of dead bone fragmented in the

throat. Each breathy hello, each breathy sentence about he is a

hero, he is a rescuer, he is a genius, he is a savior, pulls its way

past the rock, bone, graveyard of words not said, remarks not

made, a woman’s slow death, the familiar silence, the choking,

the breathy death. Oh, so quiet, so timid, so wordless, so deferential. It is the only way to absorb, to honor, to recognize, to survive, his immeasurable greatness, his sublime intelligence,

his magnificent sensibility, his superbly-intuitive understanding. Breathtaking qualities: breathtaking love: of an editor for a writer: of a man for a woman: you are so wonderful, I say.

Undulating, he knows.

*

In my throat there is a lump the size of a man’s fist. In my

throat there is a rock the size of my tears. In my throat unsaid

words lie down to die: they are buried there: the writer is

dying: the woman is being reborn. Oh, says the breathy little

thing, you are so wonderful.

*

The air tries to push past the fist of tears. It comes out in a

rush, having had to push through. Oh, says the air having

rushed past the swollen lump in the throat, oh— breathe—

breathe— pause— a tear silently dies, a word dies— oh, you are

so wonderful.

*

His voice undulates, confident, melodious, whispery, I try not

to have to talk to him, the phone rings: I have begun already

to be afraid: he never says who he is: the undulating voice says

hi, deep, whispery, melodious, hi, hi, it sort of slithers out long

and slow like a four-syllable word, the inflection going up and

down singsong: and he begins talking: it is invariably chivalrous— I thought you would like, I thought you would like, to know, I remembered that you like, I protected you from, I

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saved you from, I remembered that you wanted, I was thinking

about you and wanted to know if you wanted— but the voice

undulates: like there is some secret: the voice of someone whispering a secret: each time I think it is an obscene phone call but something warns me and I don’t hang up, I am courteous and

quiet, I listen, and it goes on and on, this undulating voice,

and then he says something recognizable, businesslike, but in

a deep whisper, and I know it is him, my savior, the one I have

to undulate with or die. The phone rings: I have come to dread

it: he never says who he is: the voice is melodious, undulating

or the wind rushing through the trees at dusk carrying the

edge of night, chill, fear. I am breathy, uncertain, timid, tenuous:

in his world it means fuck me.

*

Have you ever seen a snake on parched ground, undulating?

His voice was like a snake. I am the parched ground.

*

“ I can’t, ” I say.

“ What will you do then? Where are you going to go? ” asks

my agent, smart, humane, serious, a serious woman with a

serious question. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go.

“ I don’t know what to say, ” I say.

“ Just say..

I write it down. I cross out the adjectives. I pause. I am

breathy. I can barely choke it out. It sounds desperate and

sexy. I never have to finish a sentence. “ I know, ” he says,

melodious, undulating.

*

The lump in my throat is tears, a fist. It is repulsion, coiled up,

ready to spring. Then the wild wires will cut through the silky

skin lining the throat and blood will flood the lungs and spill

out over the shoulders, and the child will be like a stone statue,

ancient marble, desecrated with red paint: head and shoulders

cold and polished, throat torn open: Brian DePalma and

werewolves: the stone statue on a stand, shoulders and head,

eyes empty, no pupils, stone hair matted down in cold ivory:

blood tearing out of the torn throat: called Loved. I am the

child, silent now: a girl sleeping on a bed, it is dark, she is

wearing a turquoise dress with old-fashioned buttons all up

the front from below the waist to the high neck, and her daddy

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comes in to say goodnight, and slowly, slowly, he undoes each

button— she has not been able to sleep, he says go to your room

and just lie down and rest and I will come in, no don’t worry

about changing your clothes, so she lies down just as she is, in

her old-fashioned dress with all the buttons— and slowly,

slowly, he undoes each button: it is a dream but she is awake,

a fog, in the dark, she waits, he undoes each button, he is

nervous, throaty, he rubs her, he is throaty, he runs out: the

lump in my throat is tears. I am the child, silent now. It takes

me back that far: that close to annihilation.

*

The phone rings late Friday evening. The whisper goes on and

on. He wants me to come to dinner at his apartment the next

night. I say, well no, I don’t think, maybe sometime next week

we could meet, in a restaurant because I know how busy he is.

The whisper deepens, chills. No that really wouldn’t be good

because he really wants me to meet this friend of his, a woman

whom he knows I would like very very much and whom I just

absolutely must meet and the problem is that she has been in

Nicaragua with the Sandinistas for the last three months and

she is just back in New York now for a few days and she is

leaving early Monday morning and she and I have so much in

common and the women’s struggle in Nicaragua is really so interesting and so essential: he just can’t stand to think of her and me not meeting and he is really just going to be there to cook

dinner: do I like steak? and this is the only chance there is for

me to meet her and find out from someone firsthand, a woman,

you know, more about the situation of women down there. Oh,

yes, well, certainly, I say. I chastise myself for attributing seduction to him. Paranoid, paranoid, I accuse myself. I am nervous and unhappy: does he or doesn’t he: will he or won’t he: it doesn’t

matter, another woman will be there. Tonight I am safe.

*

Late fall, November already, is blustery, cold. I walk there, to

his apartment, a long walk, an hour, over urban cement,

against a strong wind. Some of the streets are entirely desolate,

deserted. A man offers me $50. I walk fast, against the wind. I

smoke cigarettes one after another. I am on edge, nervous. I

hope to tire myself out, walking miles against the cold wind.

*

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The street is dark, deserted. The man lunges out at me and

offers me $50. Oh, shit, mister, you have $50 for me. I am put

in my place by this stranger, lunging out, I am nervous, on

edge: the wind almost knocks me down. The streets are wide.

There is no traffic. The streets are dark, deserted. The wind is

fierce. I am cold. I am sweating.

*

I find the building where the editor lives. It is on a wide, dark,

deserted street, dangerous, deserted. I knock and knock on the

heavy wooden door to the lobby. The doorman is elsewhere

and there is no other way to get in. I knock and knock, the

street is deserted except for the wind, the cold, I almost leave.

The doorman opens the door. I go up in the elevator. I am

cold. His windows will be closed, his apartment will be warm:

it is another world.

*

He is barefoot. The living room is warm. The living room is

filled from corner to corner with furniture, three sofas, the

three sides of a square, a huge wood table filling the square.

The bedroom is just a double bed, the rest of the room empty.

There is a tiny dining room with a big round table, set for

two. The kitchen is a cubicle, dingy, things hanging everywhere. It is all carpeted. The living room is claustrophobic, there is barely any room for moving, walking, pacing, the three

sofas and the wooden table that fills in the space of the square

are like one thing, one huge, heavy thing, bedlike. You can

get laid anywhere in this room but on the floor. There is a

sound system of incredible sophistication: four speakers, two

on the floor, two hanging from the ceiling, he can virtually

mix his own records by adjusting dials. He has an extra pack

of cigarettes there for me, my brand not his. There is a bowl

of grass. We sit. He gets me a drink, vodka with ice. He has my

brand. He drinks Scotch. I am very nervous. I don’t take off my

coat. I sit and drink. The whisper of the telephone will not do

here. He has to speak up. I am sitting on the far edge of a sofa,

as far away as I can get. He is squarely in the middle of the

middle sofa. He has his bare feet up on the large square low

table that the sofas surround. The sofas and table are inexplicable. I have my coat on. I smoke feverishly. Little philosophers of repression: it is not desire. I am wearing my heaviest motorcycle

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boots, my plainest black T-shirt, my basic denim, hanging,

ragged. He wears denim, a leather belt, a white undershirt. His

eyes sort of stare in at his moustache. We smoke. We drink. I

am waiting for the woman from Nicaragua. I am hot. I take

off my coat. I put it beside me, between him and me, a pile, an

obstacle, not subtle. I drink. We chitchat. There is sofa everywhere. One cannot stand or walk around. It is for lying down on. I ask when the woman is coming. Oh, he says, not missing a

beat, she just called a while back, I tried to get you but you had

left already, she couldn’t make it tonight but the next time she is

back in the country we will get together, I want you to meet my

sister too. A grown-up woman cannot pretend to be a virgin.

*

He knows what I love and what I need and what I do not

have. He knows I love music. He knows I live in the cold, in

the wind. He knows I haven’t been able to buy steak. He puts

on music. His record collection is sublime: it is an ecstasy for

me: the sound embraces and pierces: his taste is exquisite: he

makes me a concert: we don’t have to talk: I am happy in the

music: he leaves me alone and makes dinner, runs out now

and then to change the music, each piece more beautiful, more

haunting, more brilliant than the one before it: he knows music:

he educates me tastefully and then leaves me to listen. He

interrupts to tell me stories about himself, how when he was

sick certain pieces of music healed him, the story is long and

boring, I listen quietly feigning interest, he will now play those

pieces for me: they could make the dead walk: they are the

deepest layers of sex, the deepest sensual circles transmuted to

formal beauty, ordered, repeated in unspeakably beautiful

patterns, sound on sound, sound inside sound, sounds weaved,

sounds pulling the body into an involuntary happiness unrelated to human time, real life, or narrative detail: sounds deeper than sex: sounds entirely perfect and piercing. He

doesn’t put on one record and leave it. He changes, weaves,

composes, interlaces: just enough, just not quite enough, it

leaves you wanting, wanting, needing more.

Dinner is ready, two steaks. We sit next to each other at the

big round table. Now he is close enough to whisper. I will tell

you, he says, why I am publishing your book, he is whispering,

I have to strain closer to hear; I will tell you, he says, whisper

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ing, why, the real reason. He is whispering, my ear is almost

up against his lips to catch the passing breath, the words just

barely discernible on the edge of breathing out. I will tell you,

he says, why. Meat juice and fat glisten in his moustache and

zing past my ear.

*

He was a schoolboy, probably around fourteen. A teacher and

some older boys gang-raped him for hours and cut him up all

over with knives.

*

He tells it slowly, detail by detail: the way raped people talk:

once one starts the whole story must be told, nothing can be

omitted. I see it.

*

I am shaking in pain and rage. I cannot talk. My skin is

crawling in terror. I see it.

*

I see it. I see the boy. I see him, the boy, the child. I see him on

the table where they did it. I see the torn membranes inside

him, the bleeding, the tearing destruction. I see the knife cuts. I

feel the pain. I see that he was a child. I see that he was raped.

I don’t look at the adult male beside me. I shake in pain and

rage. I am numb with anger: for him, for us: the raped.

*

He says he sees the man sometimes, the teacher. He says he

did the one thing the man would find unbearable: talked to

him. He says to me: that’s something you will never understand. I say: never. I swear: never. I take an oath: never.

*

I am publishing your book because I know it’s true.

*

I am numb. I want to cry but I do not cry. I don’t cry over

rape any more. I burn but I don’t cry. I shake but I don’t cry. I

get sick to my stomach but I don’t cry. I scream inside so that

my silent shrieking drowns the awful pounding of my heart

but I don’t cry. I am too weak to move but I don’t cry. I

haven’t a tear for him. I sit there, immobile, watching the boy

on the table. I see him.

*

He clears the table. We go back to the sofas. I sit far away

from him. I am quiet: stunned, like from a blow to the head. I

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sit and stare. That is why, he says. It is more than a pledge: it

is a blood oath: he has run our blood together. He has gotten

my loyalty: a loyalty above personality, liking, not liking,

wanting, not wanting, outside time and daily desires. He puts

on Madame Butterfly before she commits suicide. My pain is

insane. I do not notice his horrible and cynical wit.

*

I am of course now very gentle with him: in the past I have

been harsh but now I know this, I have seen this, the boy,

raped, I know why he cares about my writing, it is a secret

reason, deep, terrifying: I must treat him with sincerity, respect,

like one of us: the raped. I must not hate him for wanting to

be close to me anymore. I must not hate him.

*

By now it is 1 1 pm. I try to go. He keeps me there. There is

another story to tell about his parents or his sister. He shows

me his bedroom: one night he picked up a baseball team and

brought them all back here and got fucked by all of them. I go

out of the bedroom to leave. There is another book to discuss.

There is another record to hear. He tells me lots of stories

about sex, lovers, adventures. I am clear, precise. I am ready to

go. There is something he must show me. There is something

he must tell me. There is something I must see. There is

someone I must meet. I am ready to go. He plays a record by

Nichols and May, a couple in bed having just fucked discussing

“ relating” through prisms of intellectual pretension. It is right

on the mark, but we are precoital. I have to go. There is a

book he must give me. There is a book he must find. There is

a drawing I must see. It is in his bedroom. We stand there

together, looking. I have my jacket on. I am like a runner,

ready to sprint. There is something he must show me. There is

something he must get me. He finds me a long-out-of-print

early book by Thomas Mann and a dozen other books, too

much for me to carry. I want the books, very much. He finds

me a shopping bag. I think about the empty streets. I need my

hands free, I don’t know if I can find a cab, I leave the books

there, I ask him to bring them to his office where I will pick

them up. It is 4 am. I run out. I am exhausted and confused. I

don’t know what he wants. I know what I want: a publisher,

not a lover; a publisher, not a barter. I think he wants me but I

137

insist to myself I am me, not a woman, the signs are no longer

in my symbology, I do not speak that language, I do not

practice that religion: I have seen him, a child, gang-raped, cut

with knives, it is why he wants to be near me, I am required by my

own dumb heart to love him, he is one of us, the raped, I do not

have to sleep with him, surely that is not what he meant.

*

I know what he wanted, he wanted me to ask to see the scars, to

run my fingers over them, to love him because of them, to stay

there, touching the scars, while he bit and clawed and screwed. I

have seen such scars. Of course, I knew what he wanted: old

habits: familiarity, the smell, the language of the body: you run

your hands over scars like that and you stay the night.

*

I get home. The windows are open. The wind blows through. I

am so cold.

*

I don’t want him. I need him, oh desperately, but I don’t want

him. I have his secret, sorrow added to sorrow, pain added to

pain, rape added to rape. I am faithful to the raped, it is my

only fidelity. I have his secret. It was a blood oath but not on

my blood, my real blood, so it is not enough, I know that, he

is a man, he needs my real blood, my blood is the blood beyond

symbol, uterine blood, vaginal blood, seasonal blood, stench

blood, strong blood; it is not over because it has not been my

blood, him cutting, me bleeding, the way a man and woman

do it. Others say: oh, he is gay, don’t worry, he doesn’t want

that. Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. Oh, he

can’t want that. I want to buy it. He can’t want that. The

raped don’t do that to the raped, I want to believe.

*

Others say: oh, don’t be silly, he can’t want that. I am dense,

troubled but dense. Before I knew what he wanted and how he

wanted it, but now I am blinded, because the raped don’t do

that to the raped. I decide: he can’t want that. I don’t believe it

really, but others say he can’t want that, so I don’t really know

what he wants, not that, I say. I pick a posture: he has told me

a secret: we are colleagues with a special understanding: his

secret: I will be patient and loyal because of his secret: because

I hurt in his behalf. I am always astonished by the cruelty of

138

rape. I am awed by the enduring of it. I am awed by those who

carry the secret: those bodies carrying it, burned in; those minds

collapsing under the weight of vivid recollection that doesn’t

pale with time. I am awed by the intensity of the never-

assuaged anguish. I am confused. I don’t know what he wants

from me. He can’t want that. In private, I am troubled. In public

I am dense; we are colleagues with a special understanding.

*

I feel dread, confusion, panic: he can’t want that. That is so

simple and this whole routine is so complex. I need him but I

don’t want him. I am cold, the wind blows through the apartment, I am destitute and I have nowhere left to go: I don’t know what to do except to walk away: and I can’t do that

because I am too desperate and he is one of the raped.

*

I have nowhere else to go. I have no money, no hope of being

published elsewhere, by anyone else, my work offends everyone

else. Life is dead ends, ghostly alleys. I need him. I am so

confused, so cold, unhappy. I don’t know what he wants.

Others say: not that. I think: well, it can’t be that.

*

Underneath, inchoate— it is that. I want him to stay away. I

know he is coming closer.

*

I even say to myself: just do it. Just do it. But I don’t want to. I

say to myself: just do it, in the long run it will be so much

simpler, get it over with, just do it, he will get tired of you

soon, what difference can it make to you, one more or less—

but it makes a difference, I don’t know why, I don’t even want

it to: it just does. I am cold and I am tired and I don’t want to.

*

I am confused, but he is not. It boils over: he loves me.

I am scorched by it everywhere I turn, in private, in public, in

the little world of business where I go to meet with him, the

little world of huge skyscrapers and sterile offices. Like sunlight, it blazes. I don’t know what it is or why or what it consists of— but there is no missing it— I am his special

someone or something: he emanates it: it is no secret: every

secretary and office boy treats me like his bride. I like being

loved. He is no fool. I like being loved: so much so that I want

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to be loved more: and more: and more. I like it when men love

me. I especially like it when it starts to make them hurt. I like it

when they hurt. I am hooked enough. I am a player in the game.

*

Nevertheless I do not want it. I am proper, distant. I am formal.

I am soft-spoken: in his world it means fuck me.

*

The phone rings. His voice slithers. There is some detail of

production. I am called into his office. I am treated like the

Queen of Sheba. Everyone is both warm and deferential, respectful, amused by my jokes, I am never left waiting, I am escorted, welcomed, not just by secretaries and office boys. The president

of the company introduces himself to me, shakes my hand,

welcomes me: more than once. I am singled out: the beloved.

I go in prepared not to take up time. I am there four hours

later, six hours later. Everyone has gone home. We sit alone

high up in the sky surrounded by dusk. It gets dark. We walk

out. We walk along the sidewalks. We come to where he turns

to go to his apartment. I hold out my hand for a formal handshake. He draws me close and kisses me. I walk on, alone.

*

If I have to call him, I try to leave a message, take care of it

indirectly: I talk to my agent and ask her to call him. He always

has me come in. I go in with a list: the things that must be

taken care of. I pull out the list and say: this is a list. I cross

things off the list as we discuss them. It is never less than four

hours, six hours. I try to get it done. He must tell me this and

that. He loads me down with gifts: books. They are cheap gifts

from a publisher, but nevertheless: they are special, precious,

what I love, not thrown at me but given carefully, in abundance, he introduces me to new writers, he gives me beautiful books, he thinks about what I like and what I don’t like. He

keeps me there. My list sits. We walk out together. We get to

the corner. I go to shake his hand. He kisses me fervently. I

walk on, alone.

*

He takes me to dinner, it is the same. Romantic. He talks. I try

to end it. He talks on and on. I shake his hand. He kisses me. I

walk on, alone.

*

140

The meetings go on for months. I go to his office. He keeps me

there. Everyone leaves. He tells me sexy stories, his lovers, his

adventures. I have my list out. He talks about writers. He

gives me books. He talks about himself, endless. It is dusk. It

is dark. There is a sofa in his office. He brings me over there. I

don’t sit down. I keep standing. I am formal. We walk out

together. We walk several blocks together. He does not acknowledge any of my moves to go. Finally, I go to shake his hand.

He pulls me. He kisses me. I walk on, alone.

*

It is dark. It is night. We walk several blocks together. It is

time for him to turn off to his apartment. I don’t shake his

hand. I start to move away fast, almost running, and say

good-bye once I am moving away. He grabs me and pulls me

and kisses me. I walk on, alone.

*

I dread the meetings, always four hours, six hours. Every smile

is a lie. He publishes my book with some money behind it, a

token of his esteem like a fine piece of jewelry would be. The

book is savaged. I am humiliated, ashamed. It keeps him away.

It is the one good thing. He could probably have me now. I am

too ashamed to pull away. He could wipe his dick on me now.

Why not?

*

He bought the next book before this savaged one was published. It was a token of his esteem, like a fine piece of jewelry would be.

I work feverishly to meet my deadline. I have one year. He

leaves me alone. I am desperate for money. The landlord sets

up a new exhaust system for the restaurant downstairs. The

windows are closed. I am still cold all the time but the windows

are closed. I am afraid I will suffocate, that the air is still

poison, but I am too cold to open the windows. Sometimes the

new exhaust system doesn’t work and I get sick so I am nervous

and afraid each day but the windows are closed. Sometimes

they are opened for a week at a time because the new exhaust system doesn’t work but most of the time the windows are closed. Each day I beat down the humiliation of the last

book to work on this new one: it is like keeping vomit from

coming up. I work hard. A year passes. I finish it. He

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has called to assure me of his love but he leaves me alone.

*

Then the rats come. Just as I am finishing, the rats come.

There are huge thuds in the walls, heavy things dropping in

the walls, great chases in the ceiling, they are right behind the

plaster, chasing, running, scrapping. The walls get closer and

closer, Edgar Poe knew a thing or two, the room gets smaller

and smaller. I am up each night and they are running, falling,

dropping, chasing, heavy, loud, scampering, fast. They are

found dead in the halls. The landlord says they are squirrels.

*

Night after night: they drop like dead weight in the walls, they

run in the ceiling, the walls close in, the ceiling drops down,

plaster falls, they are running above the bed, they are running

above the bath, they are running above the sink, the toilet, the

sofa, the desk, they are in the walls, falling like dead weight,

we put huge caches of poison in great holes we make in the

walls, we plaster the holes, sometimes one dies and the stink

of the rotting carcass is inescapable, vomitous, and still they

run and chase and fall and pounce: they are overhead and on

every side. I am scared to death and ready to go mad, if only

God would be good to me.

*

I live like this for months. The publisher has promised to publish a secret piece of fiction only he has read. He read it months before, in the privacy of his love for me. Now I have submitted

it officially. He has promised me, money, everything. I am

entirely desperate for money. I am so afraid. He knows about

the rats. He knows how poor I am. He knows I am ready to

leave the sleeping boy, who sleeps through the jumping and

chasing and great dull thuds. I am, frankly, too desperate and

too tired to love. I am too afraid. The boy sleeps. I do not.

This constitutes— finally— an irreconcilable difference.

The editor tells my agent he must talk to me about structure:

ideas he has for the piece of fiction: this means he will publish

it, but he has these ideas I must listen to.

I call to make an appointment at his office.

He insists on dinner.

There is dinner, coffee afterward: a restaurant, a coffeehouse. He talks and talks and talks. I drink and drink and 142

drink. I am waiting for the ideas about structure. He orders

for me. He smothers me with talk. I drink more. I ask in the

restaurant about his ideas about structure. He ignores me and

keeps talking. I drink. He talks about sex. He talks about his

life. He talks about his lovers. I say: well we must get absolutely

sober now so I can hear your ideas about structure. We go to a

coffeehouse. He talks. He talks about how he has to love an

author. He talks about the authors he has loved. He talks about

someone he is involved with who is writing a novel: he talks

about visiting this author and that author and what they drink

and how they love him and how they want him. I say I want

to hear his ideas about structure. He tells me he is going to

buy a beach house, a house by the ocean, where I can come to

live and write. He says he has found it. He says it is right on

the ocean. He says he can picture me there, working, undistracted, not having to worry about fumes and rats and poverty. He tells me that as long as he has a home I have a

home and that this home, on the ocean, is very special and for

me. He knows it is what I have always wanted, more than

anything: it is my idea of peace and solace. I say thank you but

I had a rather strange childhood always being moved from

home to home because my mother was sick sort of like an

orphan and I am not too good about staying in other people’s

houses. I ask him about his ideas about the structure of the

novel. He says that his involvement with the work of an author

and his involvement with the author are indistinguishable, he

has to love them as one. He tells me about the house he is

buying right on the ocean where I will go and work and finish

the novel. He tells me he sees me in it working. I ask him

about his ideas about structure. He tells me that he wants me

to understand that now I have a home, with him, by the ocean,

he has bought a home there where I will live and write, his

home and my home. We leave the coffeehouse. We get to the

corner where we go in different directions. I ask him if he

wants to tell me about his ideas about structure so I can think

about them. He tells me that the publishing company is my

home too, as long as he is there, and he wants me to see the

house on the ocean which is my home: and the publishing

house is my home, because wherever he is is my home. He tells

me to call him, day or night. He tells me to call him at home. I

M3

look blank, because I am blank; I am blank. He kisses me. I

walk away, alone. He calls after me: remember you have a

home now. I met him at six for dinner, it is now three in the

morning, I don’t know his ideas on structure. I walk home,

alone. The rats are in the walls. The walls are closing in.

Someone, a stranger, blond, six feet, muscled, curled in fetal

position, is sleeping. I do not call the publisher, no, I don’t, I

wait for his offer of money on my novel. Months go by. I

don’t call him, my agent keeps calling him, he says he is

working on it, trust him, six or seven months go by, the

stranger in the next room and I barely speak to each other, the

rats are monstrous, I am hungry. I say to my agent: you must

find out, I must have money. She calls. He says he doesn’t do

fiction. He doesn’t do fiction. My book that I finished when the

rats came is published a few months later. He lets it die, no gift

like jewelry for me anymore. He preordains its death and it dies. I

see my house, the ocean so near it. I see the beach, smooth wet

sand, and the curve of the waves on the earth, the edge of the

ocean, so delicate, so beautifully fine, lapping up on the beach

like slivers of liquid silver. I see the sun, silver light on the winter

water, and I see dusk coming. I am alone there, in winter, ice on

the sand, silver waves outside the window. I see a small, simple

house, white and square against the vast shore. I see the simple

beauty of the house absorbing the dusk, each simple room

turning somber, and then the dusk reaching past the house onto

the wet beach and finally spreading out over the ocean. I see the

moon over the ocean. I see the night on the water. I see myself in

the simple house, at a window, looking out, just feeling the first

chill of night. I sit in the apartment, rats are running in the

walls, the walls are closing in, writing my poor little heart out:

in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. You have to be

in a terrible hurry or the heart gets eaten up. There is a carcass,

sans heart, writing its little heart out so to speak: in a terrible

hurry: and somewhere an ocean near a house, waiting. He

can’t want that, they said, oh no, not that. I am a writer, not a

woman, I thought somewhere down deep, he can’t want that.

Now I am in a terrible hurry to tell what is in my heart. Who

could hurry fast enough? Brava\ whoever managed it!

Did I remember to say that I always wanted to be a writer,

since I was a little girl?

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Content

Dworkin Andrea Ice And Fire