Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

"You got dandruff in your crotch?"

  "That's not dandruff. I was with a woman. Just before I met you. Only I didn't get a chance to wash."

  "Was she sick?"

  "Naw. Didn't you ever fuck a woman?"

  Tak had a strange expression. "I'll be honest: I can count the attempts on the fingers of one hand." He narrowed his already thin mouth.

  "If my God-damn feet don't turn you off, that's sure not going to hurt you!" He reached to brush off his rough groin hair. "It's just like dried . . . come or something." The chain glittered across it. "It happens with some women, when they're very wet. It's nothing wrong." He stopped brushing, let himself back down on his elbows. "I bet it turns you on."

  Tak shook his head, then laughed.

  "Go on," he said.

  Tak lowered his head, looked up once with bright blue eyes: "It turns you on, doesn't it?"

  He reached down from the hairy shoulder, pressed: "Go on."

  Thick arms joined under his waist. Once Tak, twice-

  full fist between their groins, ground his stubbed chin

  against his neck. He pushed Tak away; the chunky head

  rolled down his chest and belly. The heated ring of Tak's

  mouth fell down his cock; his cock engorged; the ring

  rose; and fell down again. Tak's forehead butted low on

  his stomach. He had to cross his ankles and strain, his

  mouth open, his eyes closed, the chain tightening on his

  chest. Think of her, it would be easy. (Tak's face pressed

  glass bits into his groin hair.) The insides of his lids were

  moon-silvered, run with cracks like branches. A memory

  of blowing leaves suddenly became hair moving from her

  face, eyes clamped, mouth taking tiny breaths. He gasped

  at the welling heat, and came. A moment later Tak raised

  his head, grunted, "Yeah . .." and moiled his wet, sensitive

  genitals.

  He clamped his teeth.

  Tak elbowed up beside him, turned on his back.

  His forehead pressed Tak's arm. From his left eye, Loufer's chest was a heaving meadow. (His right was closed against flesh.) "You want me to do anything?" He didn't feel like doing anything. He was tired.

  Tak scooped up his head and pulled it against him.

  Chest hair ran between his fingers.

  "Bite my tit," Tak said. "The right one. Hard."

  "Okay. Where is . . . ? Oh." He gripped the knoblet in his teeth.

  Tak pushed his hand to the outsized scrotum, squeezed his fingers to the full, wrinkled flesh. "Go on. Really hard."

  Tak's fist fell and fell on his hand heel. It took a Jong time.He ground Tak's nipple in his teeth, chin and nose rubbing in hair. He squeezed Tak's testicles a few times, tightening his grip as much as he could; Tak's rhythm quickened. And his own mouth was salty; he didn't want to see if it was blood.

  Something hot splattered his hip and rolled down between them. He let go, with teeth and fingers, closed his eyes, and turned over. A heavy arm slid around his chest. Tak's chin knocked his shoulder a few times seeking a position on the thin pillow; he squeezed Tak's forearm, once, leaned sleepily, and comfortably, into the cradle of Tak's body.

  And slept.

  Now and again, he felt Tak turning and turning on the single bed. Once he awoke fully to a hand rubbing his shoulder; but slept again before the motion halted. At one point he was aware that Tak was not in the bed; at another, felt him climbing back in. Through it all, he had not moved, but lay facing the wall, lids closed, head on his forearm, one knee drawn up, one foot off the mattress bottom, surfacing and submerging in sleep.

  Later, he woke with heat behind his groin. As he blinked, sexuality resolved into an urge to pee. He rolled to his back, pushed himself to his elbows.

  Loufer, probably unable to get comfortable with two in so cramped a space, sat deep in the swivel chair, knees wide, head lolling forward on one matted shoulder, hands curled on snarled thighs.

  Plate on the desk, books scattered on the table; plate and coffee cup on the floor, as well as Tak's boots, his own sandal, and both their pants-the room, before fairly neat, looked disordered.

  When he sat up, his foot carried the print spread to the floor. There was no sheet on the mattress pad. Rings of stain overlapped on the ticking. He kicked the cloth loose, looked at the chain fastened on his ankle, spiraling his calf, groin, stomach, and thigh ... He touched, in the hollow of his collarbone, the catch fastening the chain around his neck. He extended his arm, turned it back and forth: light jumped from glass to glass at the loops there, joined around his wrist. Then he hunched to examine one of the mirrors against his belly: it was silvered on both sides. Bent over, on the bed, he felt his bladder burn.

  He stood up, went out the door.

  Warm.

  Grey.

  Smokey gauzes tore on his body as he walked toward the balustrade. He dug two horny fingers at the inner corners of his eyes for sleep grains. The retaining wall hit him mid-thigh. Without looking down, he let his water go. It arched away, perfectly silent, while he wondered if there was any traffic ...

  From a building, a block away, astounding billows raised a lopsided tower.

  Finished, he leaned across the splattered stone.

  The alley was a torrent of grey in which he could see no bottom. Licking his coated teeth, he walked back to | the shack, stepped sideways through the tar-papered door: "Hey, you can have your bed back; I'm gonna ..."

  In the shadowed room, Tak's chest rose evenly in a subvocal growl.

  "I'm going to go now . . ." but spoke it more softly; he took a few steps toward the naked engineer, asleep in the chair.

  Tak's long toes spread the boards. Between his [knuckles, a stumpy cock with its circumsized helmet was nearly hidden in hair above a long, heavy scrotum rivaling those on the posters. The single belly crease, just a his navel, smoothed with each breath.

  He looked for scab at the nipple; there was none.

  "Hey, I'm gonna go . . ." The desk drawer w slightly open; inside, in shadow, brass glinted.

  He leaned down to look at Tak's slack lips, the broad nostrils flaring each breath-

  And his teeth jarred together. He stepped back, wanted to go forward, stepped back again: his heel hit a coffee cup-cold coffee spread around his foot. He still didn't look away.

  In his lowered face, Tak's eyes were wide.

  Without white or pupil, the balls were completely crimson.

  Mouth still closed, he heard himself make a muffled roar.

  His left flank glittered with gooseflesh.

  He did look again, leaning forward violently, almost hitting Tak's knee.

  Loufer continued his quiet breathing, scarlet-eyed.

  He backed away, stepped on wet fur, tried to work his throat loose. Gooseflesh, at face, flank, and buttocks, crawled across him.

  He was in his pants when he got outside. He stopped to lean on the wall while he fumbled his sandal strap closed. As he sidestepped the skylight, he punched one arm down one woolen sleeve, pulled back the metal door and went into the dark well, working his other fist down the other.

  With darkness in his eyes, the red memory was worse than the discovery.

  On the third landing, he slipped, and fell, clutching the rail, the whole next flight. And still did not slow. He made it through the corridors at the bottom (warm concrete under his bare foot) on kinesthetic memory. He tore up the bannisterless stair, slapping at the wall, till he saw the door ahead, charged forward; he came out under the awning, running, and almost impaled himself on the dangling hooks.

  Averting his face, he swung his arm against them- two clashed, trundling away on their rails. At the same time, his bare foot went off the porch's concrete edge.

  For one bright instant, falling, he thought he was going to do a belly-whop on the pavement, three feet down. Somehow, he landed in a crouch, scraping one hand and both knees (the other hand wavin
g out for balance) before he pushed up, to stagger from the curb.

  Gasping, he turned to look back up at the loading porch.

  From their tracks, under the awning, the four- and six-foot butcher hooks swung.

  Blocks away, a dog barked, barked, barked again.

  Still gasping, he turned, and started walking toward the corner, sometimes with his sandaled foot on the curb, mostly with both in the gutter.

  Nearly there, he stopped, raised his hand, stared at the steel blades that curved from the plain wrist band to cage his twitching fingers. He looked back at the loading porch, frowned; looked back at the orchid on his hand: he felt the frown, from inside; a twisting in his facial flesh he could not control.

  He remembered snatching up his pants. And his shirt. And his sandal. He remembered going down the dark stair. He remembered coming up and out on the porch, hitting at the hooks, and falling-

  But nowhere in the past moments did he recall reaching behind two asbestos-covered pipes, fitting his fingers through the harness, clamping the collar to his wrist. ..

  He reviewed: pants, shirt, sandal, the dark stair- down, across, up. Light from the door; the racketing hooks; his stinging palm.

  He looked at his free palm; scraped skin was streaked grey ... He looked down the block. There were no vehicles anywhere on the street... No. Go back.

  Warm concrete under his foot. His sandal clacking. Slapping the wall; coming up. Seeing the doorway. Seeing the pipes ... ! They were on the left-hand side of the doorway. The blistered covering was bound with metal bands! On the thicker one, near the ceiling, hadn't there been some kind of valve? And had rushed past them, onto the concrete, nearly skewered himself; hit with his forearm-it was still sore. He was "falling ...

  He was turning; missed the curb, staggered, shook his head, looked up.

  The street sign on the corner lamppost said Broadway.

  ". . . goes up into the city and . . ." Someone had said that. Tak?

  But no ...

  .. . seeing the light. Ran out the door. The hooks . . .

  The muscles in his face snarled on chin and cheekbones. Suddenly tears banked his eyes. He shook his head. Tears were on his cheek. He started walking again, some-tunes looking at one hand, sometimes at the other. When he finally dropped his arms, blades hissed by one jean thigh-

  "No . .."

  He said that out loud.

  And kept walking.

  Snatched his clothes from the floor, jammed his feet into his pants; stopped just outside the shack (leaning against the tar-paper wall) for his sandal. Around the skylight; one sleeve. Into the dark; the other. Running down steps-and he'd fallen once. Then the bottom flight; the warm corridor; coming up; slapping; he'd seen light before he'd reached the top, turned, and seen the day-bright doorway (the big pipe and the little pipe to one side), run forward, out on the porch, beat at the hooks; two trundled away as his bare foot went over. For one bright moment, he fell-

  He looked at his hands, one free, one caged; he looked at the rubble around him; he walked; he looked at his hands.

  A breath drained, roaring, between tight teeth. He took another.

  As he wandered blurred block after blurred block, he heard the dog again, this time a howl, that twisted, rose, wavered, and ceased. The Ruins of Morning

  I

  Here I am and am no I. This circle in all, this change changing in winterless, a dawn circle with an image of, an autumn change with a change of mist. Mistake two pictures, one and another. No. Only in seasons of short-light, only on dead afternoons. I will not be sick again. I will not. You are here.

  He retreated down the halls of memory, seething.

  Found, with final and banal comfort - Mother?

  Remembered the first time he realized she was two inches taller than his father, and that some people thought it unusual. Hair braided, Mother was tolerant severity, was easier to play with than his father, was trips to Albany, was laughter (was dead?) when they went for walks through the park, was dark as old wood. More often, she was admonitions not to wander away in the city, not to wander away in the trees.

  Father? A short man, yes; mostly in uniform; well, not that short - back in the force again; away a lot. Where was dad now? In one of three cities, in one of two states. Dad was silences, Dad was noises, Dad was absences that ended in presents.

  "Come on, we'll play with you later. Now leave us alone, will you?"

  Mom and Dad were words, lollying and jockeying in the small, sunny yard. He listened and did not listen. Mother and Father, they were a rhythm.

  He began to sing, "Annnnnwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn . . ." that had something of the fall of words around. "Now what are you going on like that for?"

  "Ain't seen your mom in two weeks. Be a good boy and take it somewhere else?"

  So without stopping he took his Annnnnnnnn down the path beside the house where hedge-leaves slapped his lips and tickled them so that he took a breath and his sound snagged on laughter.

  ROAR and ROAR, ROAR: he looked up. The planes made ribs across the sky. The silver beads snagged sun. The window wall of his house blinded him so- "Annnnnnnn . . ."-he made his noise and gave it the sound of the planes all up and down the street, walking and jogging with it, in his sneakers, and went down the steps at the side of the street, crossed over. His sound buzzed all the mask of his face. Shadows slid over him: he changed sound. Shadows slid away: he changed it back. The sun heated the bony spots above his eyes; that changed it again; and again, when the birds (he had wandered into the woods that lapped like a great tongue five blocks into town; soon he had been in them for a quarter of an hour) collided in the leaves, then flung notes down. One note was near enough; he caught it with his voice and it thrust him toward another. Sun and chill (spring had just started) cuffed and pummeled him and he sang, getting pine needles inside his canvas shoes (no socks) and the back of his neck tickling from hair when the wind came.

  He climbed the rocks: his breath made windy pauses in the sound and that was interesting, so that when he reached the top he pushed the leaves away and made each note as low as the green whisper-

  Three of the five were naked.

  Which stopped him.

  And one girl was wearing only a little cross around her neck. The silver tilted on the inner slope of one breast. She breathed.

  He blinked and whispered another note.

  Silver broke up the sun.

  The man still in pants pushed one fist up into the foliage (pants undone, his belt lay free of half its loops, away from his hip), pushed his other hand down to scratch, twisting his hips so that more and more, stretching in the green-

  The girl who was darker even than his mother rolled to her side: someone else's yellow hair fell from her back and spread. And her hands on the man's face were suddenly hidden by his hands on hers (in the pile of clothing he recognized another uniform, but blue-black where his father's was green) and she was moving against him now, and there was a grass blade against her calf that slipped first one way, then the other.

  He held his breath, forgot he was holding it: then it all came out in a surprising at-once that was practically not a note at all. So he got more air back in his lungs and began another.

  "Hey, look!" from the other naked one, on elbows and laughing: "We got company!" and pointing.

  So his sound, begun between song and sigh, ended in laughter; he ran back through the brush, pulling a music from their laughing till his was song again. He cantered down the path.

  Some boys came up the path (this part of the wood was traveled as any park), thumbs in their jeans, hair all points and lines and slicks. Two of them were arguing (also, he saw as they neared, one of the boys was a girl), and one with carroty hair and small eyes glared at him.

  He hunched, intently, and didn't look back at them, even though he wanted to. They were bad kids, he decided. Dad had told him to stay away from bad kids.

  Suddenly he turned and sang after them, trying to make the music stealthy
and angular till it became laughter again. He had reached the playground that separated the woods from town.

  He mixed his music with the shouting from the other side of the fence. He rippled his fingers on the wire and walked and looked through: children clustered at the sliding board. But their scuffle had turned to shouts.

  Beyond that were street sounds. He walked out among them and let his song pick them up. Cars, and two women talking about money, and something bang-banging in the big building with the corrugated walls: emerging from that, foot-rhythms. (Men in construction-helmets glanced at him.) That made him sing louder.

  He walked up a hill where the houses got bigger, with lots of rock between. Finally (he had been flipping his fingers along the iron bars of the gate) he stopped to really look in (now going Hummmm, and hmmmmm, hmmmm, and hmmmmm) at the grass marked with tile squares, and a house that was very big and mostly glass and brick. A woman sat between two oaks. She saw him, cocked her head curiously, smiled-so he sang for her Ahhhhhhhhh-she frowned. He ran down the street, down the hill, singing.

  The houses weren't so big any more.

  The ribs of day cracked on the sky. But he didn't look up at the planes this time. And there were lots more people.

  Windows: and on top of the windows, signs: and on top of the signs, things that turned in the wind: and on top of those, blue where wind you couldn't see went-

  "Hey, watch it-"

  He staggered back from a man with the dirtiest wrists he had ever seen. The man repeated: "Watch where you're God-damn going-" to nobody, and lurched away.

  He drew his song in till it bubbled around his mouth. He was going to turn and run down the next street. . .

  The brick were cracked. A plank had come away from the window.

  Trash heaped beside the door.

  No wind, and warm; the street was loud with voices and machinery, so loud he could hardly catch rhythm for his song.

  His sounds-long and lolling over his tongue now- were low, and he heard them under, not over, the noise.

  "Hey, look out-"

  "What the-"

  "Hey, did you see that-"

  He hadn't.

  "What are you-"

  People turned. Somebody ran past him close, slapping black moccasins on the stone.