Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "I don't have a fucking laundry list. I don't even have any laundry," I said. "Who?"

  "Well, Everett for one. When I told him you sometimes left your notebook over at my place he practically had a fit. He begged me to let him know next time you left it so he could look through it and maybe make a-"

  "I'd break your head."

  "I wouldn't do that." She moved on the seat. "I wouldn't."

  "There's just not enough else for people to be interested in in this city."

  "I think," she said, "you've got it. But even though I wouldn't let him go snooping in your journal, I still think your writing this down bores me; no, it makes me angry. It didn't make me angry when she and I were talking about it, it was flattering. Its rehearsal, however, is maddening. I enjoy having fantasies about these things, thinking about them-but as a game. (Haven't I?) There's no reason not to enjoy them that way any more. But since the publication of Brass Orchids I sometimes find myself saying to myself: "All right. I want to stop playing this game and go try another one for a while. Lord, let me think about something else!" And I can't. That's a much meaner version of the terrifying morning beneath the tree. But the truth is, most of the poems in the book were written before I came to the scorpions. (Which ones were actually written afterward?) The other irony is that the one time I really was their leader was when I made them help me get June's and Tarzan's brother out of the shaft. Everything since has been the concreting of some

  My sensibilities have grown inflamed as our giant sun. I am writing poems now because there is nothing else to read except the newspaper, discussing for pages the rumors and ephemera that fume through the city. How can this go on when such moons rise and such suns set? I am living this way because the horror here seems preferable to life in Tarzan's family.

  Bullshit! Only I felt like that when I wrote it-no: I felt something, and thought those words the proper ashes of the feeling as I searched the smoulderings. But they were only smoke. Now I cannot tell whether the feeling itself was misperceived or merely its record inaccurate! fantasy begun then-and in their minds, not mine. Have I lost by the realization? For (arbitrarily?) precious sanity's sake I have to think at least I've learned.

  When you get water from either the kitchen or the bathroom or the service-porch tap, bubbles form around the sides of the glass, but not evenly about the whole surface. They make a band with a definite bottom edge, but peter out up the side. Have noticed, over the last several days, the line starts higher and higher. Must ask Tak if this means something.

  To the next conversation, then; maybe better luck:

  I stopped outside the kitchen door because I heard them talking inside. Through the screening I saw Lanya sitting on the table, her back against the wall, Gladis and pretty much all the apes (no Tarzan); also D-t leaning against the icebox and Glass standing in the living-room doorway, and Spirt just behind him, to the other side. A loud discussion; and Lanya's voice cut over (she leaned forward, looking around): "I have never-no, wait a minute! Wait. I have never seen a bunch less interested in sex than you guys! No, listen! I mean for guys who don't have anything else to do. Really, I'm not kidding. When I was in college, or practically any place, any job I've ever had; or guys I've just known-seen a bunch who were less interested in getting laid-"

  "I don't see why you're complaining!" from Jack the Ripper.

  "I'm not," Lanya said. "But I mean, I spend* maybe half my time here. Maybe more than half. And I think I know you guys pretty well-"

  And D-t: "No, now you wait a minute! Hey, now you wait-"

  Lanya finished in the silence: "I was just curious why, that's all."

  "Now wait," D-t repeated. "We got a very strange and funny group of people here. And I guess we don't talk about it that much because you have to be very careful, you know? Very polite."

  "I don't just mean making jokes about sex," Lanya said. "But even that, when you come down to it. You'll get really foul for ten, twenty minutes. Then nothing for a day, two days-"

  "You mean thinking and figuring how to get laid?" Raven said. "Yeah, I know what she means." Spitt said: "I don't have to talk about it. I get mine," and looked at Glass to corroborate him.

  Glass, hands behind him on the wall, just leaned back a little more watching (Spitt and Lanya were the only whites in the room), curious, as though the discussion was going on all for him.

  "There are just very different kinds of people here," D-t said. "For me, maybe, what she said is true. I just never been that interested in sex, I guess, compared to some people. I told a friend of mine once I jerked off about maybe two, three times a year. And got laid about the same. He said that was very strange-"

  "Yeah, that's strange!" Jack the Ripper hollered, and people laughed.

  "Spider over there, see-he's what . . . ? Ten years younger than I am? And he's down at the park, practically every God-damn night it looks to me, getting his pipes swabbed out by the guys sneaking around the bushes-"

  "God damn-" Spider said, uncomfortably.

  "We just got very different people," D-t went on, "who like very different things. In very different ways. People like me and Gladis, say. We're pretty much exclusively interested in the opposite sex, and then, one at a time and rarely."

  "Three times a year, baby," Gladis said, her inflection swinging down low as it could get, "now I don't know whether I'm all that much like you?" and up again.

  Which tickled the Ripper.

  "Shit," D-t said. "You know I used to think I was normal. But then we got guys like Jack the Ripper who are interested in anything."

  Spider said, sullenly: "I'm interested in anything."

  "Aw, nigger," D-t said, "you'd be interested in a clam if it smiled at you and promised not to bite!"

  Spitt added over the laughter, ". . . and even then, I don't know!" which I don't think anybody really heard.

  "Then we got the groupies-" D-t went on.

  "Groupies!" from Glass, laughing for the first time. "Is that what you call us?"

  "I mean you guys just aren't interested in anything less than a full scale encounter group-grope-"

  "Aw, man," from Glass, "you just wish you could-" and I didn't hear the rest because:

  Tarzan asked: "What's going on in there?" I glanced back. "Nothing."

  But some of the guys inside had seen us through the screen. A couple more turned to look. So I opened the door and went in, Tarzan following. Lanya was still laughing. Edging Thruppence over on the table, I sat next to her.

  "With so many different types, see," D-t said, getting Lanya's attention back, "you have to be very polite: When we live this close. And that means you don't talk too much. You just do it when it's around to be done and the rest of the time you talk about something else."

  Tarzan stayed in the doorway, his back to the screen, as outside now as Glass had been before.

  Laughter spilled them into different subjects (food, wouldn't you know): Thruppence said we had stuff in the cellar that we hadn't known about till now because nobody had thought to look, till he'd gone down that morning. He took some of us out to show us. There was no real cellar door; just a trap-window, planked over, and a busted Yale lock hanging from the hasp. It let you into a damp, four-and-a-half foot dugout that went under half the house where, besides all the crates of tin cans-some with mildewed labels-was the fuse-box and the hot-water heater, which I re-lit.

  Later a couple of people took baths.

  I wish they'd continued the sex discussion. It hadn't felt finished. I wondered if it was the advent of me (the Boss) or Tarzan (the Oddball) that had shifted it; or simply the balance in the cream-to-coffee ratio. Out of conceit, I decided it must have been Tarzan.

  Revelation, with his ash-pale hair, his gold chains, his pink, pink skin, polarizes a black bunch when he is the only white among them the same way Lady of Spain, blacker than Spider, high-assed, with little, low tits (from jokes the others make, she's of West Indian descent), polarizes a white group when she is the sole bla
ck: visually.

  Tarzan, however, so often the only blue-eyed blond among the apes (now the official name for the sub-group of five out of the fifteen/sixteen blacks in the nest [Raven, Jack the Ripper, Thruppence, Angel, Spider]) polarizes them in a very different way. His fawning fascination, his near-belligerence, and general lack of use for anyone white makes it impossible to see him/them without a whole aura of sexual/political resonances, which they carry like their lights. (Two thoughts-First:) Even so, everyone seems more or less able to absorb the situation with tolerance and hardly a comment. (Second:) With all these wacked-out spades, there doesn't seem to be one among them, man or woman, in a similar position with a white group (Glass, triumvirate with Spitt and Copperhead, seems a very different thing. Why?) Perhaps the nest (or the House) would be a good place for June after all-after all, I can put up with Eddy. (Or can I?)

  Pretty soon it broke up around the cellar window and got back together in the yard . . . But we never did get back to talking about sex. Oh, well: that politeness. I guess Lanya's right.

  Third conversation started in the loft. I was on my back; Lanya was leaning on my chest, looking in my mouth while I talked about something. In the middle of a sentence, she got my mind off what I was saying, saying: "I could come from just the smell of your breath. It puffs out in a small hot cloud with each word."

  "Pretty bad, huh?"

  "It's not bad-please, don't stop talking."

  But I couldn't think of how to go on.

  She said: "Your mouth is like a flower. Each tooth is like a daisy petal, complete with calyx: You're getting a sort of green skin over the base of your teeth, up near the gum."

  "Beautiful," I said. "Pretty soon I'm be ready for Bunny to come take me away."

  "Hey." Denny rolled over. "Let me see?" leaning on my shoulder.

  I said, "Oof!" and didn't smile.

  "Smile," Denny said.

  "I wonder if it comes off." Lanya reached up and held her hand like a claw, over my face. "Just a second," one finger coming down.

  "Cut it out-!" I turned my head.

  "I was just going to scrape at it with my fingernail."

  Denny looked at his hand on my shoulder. "Man, my nails are filthy."

  "They're rimmed with the exact color of black pearl." Lanya put her cheek next to his. "And he'll probably use it in one of his poems."

  "Too fancy," I said, my hand on his. She covered mine. Then Denny closed his eyes tight and tried to wiggle between us like a basset puppy (which started us laughing) and sometimes she is a lorikeet. And sometimes he is a parrot; and she is an airborne borzoi. I said: "Get up. I want to show you something," at which Denny laughed and Lanya grunted.

  Denny told her: "That's all right. Well just get our clothes off right away, next time."

  I said: "Aw, come on!"

  We put on some clothes (Denny: socks, vest, chains. Lanya: shirt; her harmonica fell out; was returned to breast pocket; tennis sneakers. Me: pants) climbed down from the loft, put on more clothes (Denny: pants, boots. Lanya: took off sneakers to put on jeans, put on sneakers again. Me: vest, chains, boot), and went into the hall.

  Baby, Adam, Priest, Devastation, Filament, t h e Executioner (who everybody usually calls: X-X) and Cathedral were pell-melling in and X-X told me they were really beat, had been running since sometime yesterday. I said three or four of them could go up and fall out in the loft bed because we weren't using it. Filament, the knuckles of one hand on her hip, the other hand waving (she chooses to wear only thin chains, some outside her breasts [nipples like puddles of Peptobismol on the upper slopes of soapstone breasts] some inside) told about what they done in the park: scared some children, unintentionally, and had some sort of loose, blurry confrontation with two men who might have been Tom and Mak. Three went to find mattresses in the back room.

  The trapdoor on the porch ceiling was open. Denny climbed up the ladder nailed against the wall; Lanya and me (wondering who'd opened the door and why) followed. Poked my head after her heels into the lead-colored sky.

  Stepped up on the

  pebbly roofing paper and couldn't figure out how transition had occurred between the slab of runny metal three feet beyond the trap,

  (To try for accuracy is to risk awkwardness.) To find out who I am I've had to give up my name and who knows what part of my life. It wasn't a choice. But treating it like one seems the only way to keep my mind . . . "seems"? I am frightened because, in this City, I don't know where I am, I don't know where I can go. (To try for form is to risk pomposity.)

  Asked Lanya if she'd reconsidered being a scorpion instead of just a scorpion's old lady. "Not," she said sweetly, "on your fucking life!" And then: "No, seriously. I've thought about it again, and it's just something I don't want to do. I like staying here for extended visits. But I like living with Madame Brown." Well, she's been here three days straight. And yesterday Denny, for a joke, put one of his chains around her neck and she kept it on till she and the football-Stadium - wide, muzzy balloon around us-and-the-nearest-buildings. Thought of climbing down and up again to watch this time.

  Across the roof, Fireball-buck naked except his optic girdle-turned around and smiled, a little confused.

  "Did you open the roof trap?" Lanya asked.

  "Yeah. I just wanted to get out and walk around." He told us he liked to go around naked. To his unnecessary explanation, Denny explained (unnecessarily) that you could go around in the street stark naked if you wanted in Bellona ". . . and it wouldn't bother nobody." Lanya, by now, was taking off her clothes. So I took off mine. Denny said, "What the fuck," and took off his. (He left the dog's choke collar looped and re-looped on his ankle.) Lanya took her harmonica out of her shirt and began to play those discordant clutches. We all walked around and stared out at the edges of what we could see or each other when each other wasn't staring back; leaned on the roof rim; sat on the mansard things along the side. A long time.

  Then Fireball got on his pants and chains-

  "So long," Lanya said.

  Fireball grinned. "So long."

  -and went down.

  We came closer together at the far corner and talked about him a while, me and Lanya mostly, mostly Denny listening. Then I told them for the first time about mugging that guy last week.

  Sort of awed, Denny said: "Wow!"

  Lanya said: "You are kidding, aren't you . . . ? Jesus, you're not!" She was sitting cross-legged with her back on the low wall. When she lifted her harmonica, there were two parallel dashes on her thigh.

  "No, I'm not kidding. It was interesting."

  went to bed. But she didn't put it on again this morning when she went to school.

  Filament has a blue scorpion tattooed on her shoulder she said she got before she came to Bellona. She has probably volunteered more information about her previous life than anyone around the nest (most of her life sounds very dull); but, high on tact, she also manages to remain one of the most invisible. If one were writing about the place, she'd probably be among the half dozen people most likely left out, or whose one or two outstanding traits you'd fix for decoration on another character. A girl, and white, she still has the most typical scorpion personality, almost unbelievably so. In fact, I wonder if I believe that; so this note. "The awful thing is, I'm sure you did it to find out what it felt like, or for some other half-assedly commendable reason."

  "The main thing," I explained, "isn't that I was so scared, but if you get off this very thin line, you get angrier than a mother-fucker-"

  "Look," she said, "you wouldn't kill somebody just to find out what it felt like."

  "It would be easier here than any place else."

  "Christ!" She looked up at the sky.

  "Okay," I said. "So you don't approve. Why are you angry?"

  "Because," and her eyes came down to mine, "in some funny way I think it's my fault. And don't ask me to explain that; or you'll get angry."

  While I tried to figure out some way to get her to explain, practical
Denny asked: "What'd you get?"

  "Three bucks. For the work, it pays better than the Richards's." I reached over for my pants, took the bills out of my pocket, and gave them to him. "Here." I glanced at Lanya with a little smile. "I'd split it between you, but she wouldn't take one."

  She got a tightish expression that let me know she certainly would.

  Denny looked at the bills and repeated: "Wow!" Thinking: He would use the same inflection if he discovered something had been stolen from him. "Here." Denny handed one bill to Lanya and-"Here, you keep one. That way we can split it up right."-one back to me. "I gotta take a piss." He stood and walked away, palms facing back, the bill wrapped on the middle finger of his left hand.

  Lanya watched me. "I suppose I'd find you dull if you didn't keep dropping stuff like that into my head. No, don't say anything. I'm still thinking." She pushed herself to her knees. "I've got to take a piss too." Her buttocks and one thigh were printed from the roofing paper.

  At the corner drain, Denny looked back over his shoulder. "You going downstairs to the bathroom?"

  "No," she said in a considered tone that, when the rest of their exchange was finished, should have made me realize she knew what it was going to be.

  "Oh, yeah. I guess you can squat here." Denny finished and shook himself.

  "What makes you think I have to squat to piss?"

  "You're a girl. You can't do it st . . . I mean I thought girls had to sit down or something."

  "Jesus God!" Lanya said.

  "Well, how do you guide it then?" Denny asked.

  "Same way you do."

  "But you don't have a-?"

  She held up two fingers in a peace sign, turned them down against her cunt and sort of pulled. "Like that, if you must know. Now would you please stop staring and let me pee?"