In the Shadow of the American Dream

by David Wojnarowicz

  October 28, 1979

  A.M.

  Went to see Le Prophète Friday night with Alan at the Met. First opera I’ve seen. Throughout the performance kept visually rearranging what was taking place onstage, subvocally replacing lines of song with spoken or sung poetics. Wondered at Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, how amazing it must have been. Le Prophète was pretty boring, realized the singers of the middle-upper-class characters retaining this form through time as something to be indulged in and appreciated in a removed way, small personal pleasures I guess, but more important, how the modernization of such forms could be quite amazing, enthralling, etc. A few moments here or there where the voice was interesting in its sounds, manipulations, otherwise was quite boring. Had to pinch my own leg to refrain from bursting out laughing during solemn scenes. Later showed Alan my artwork. He seemed a bit put on the spot, not wanting to have to tell me he did not like the drawings because of their content. I felt a bit awkward and sad at our obvious differences in perception. It magnified the very things Dirk and I talked about in terms of the conscious choice of imagery we work in, how it becomes unsettling or mildly threatening to those who enjoy an established order or large-scale security. How could I explain that these images reflect energy I’ve picked up in society, in movement through these times? It’s just a translation of what takes place in the world. I found myself almost apologetic because of the choice in what I’d created. Those distances (the horror! the horror!) in between people like me and Alan or myself and Randy or myself and numerous others. At one point after waking I asked him what images would be beauty to him (in response to his question/statement: You have talent, why don’t you use it to draw beautiful things?). His descriptions of images were beautiful, I had to agree, they were images to which I’d also be drawn, imagery I hope to put down on paper in the future. But still in all they don’t answer my own or other people’s questions of why I’m drawn to images that unsettle or confront the viewer in an intense way. I once tried to define it for myself, actually I’ve made numerous attempts at defining it but all I come up with are somewhat lame quasi-psychological reasonings such as: in opposition to the large period of time in which I hid the actions of my youth, street routines, homosexuality, etc., etc., after age twenty I began showing people my more murderous images or writings as if to shock them, or to introduce to them the things or representations of things I’d always felt pressured to keep hidden, placing my enormous head-held energies into others’ hands rather than acting as the silent guard of them.

  Don’t know if I’ll ever come to understand it. But possibly the way forward is for me to try to extend the range of creative acts to cover both images of beauty (silent disturbing beauty) and of intensity—in drawn images and in written images and in photographic images. In doing this—creating a range rather than keeping the beauty hidden as I have done within journals, head, etc.—then I can at least have the physical proof of that range, and thus no longer feel the need to explain it or prove it in conversations or apologize for not having shown the range in its entirety that I feel is contained within me. Delighting as well as shocking that angel within my forehead.

  February–April 1980

  February 4, 1980

  Went out walking around the neighborhood along the river where the dark streets are gently illuminated, pools of light slipping down brick and stone and iron walls and easing over the smooth surfaces of cobblestones … Met this guy I’ve seen before. He stopped his car on a side street and rolled down the windows and waved me over, flashing a smile from the darkness of his car’s interior. We drove down the hill towards the river, pulled into a vast factory parking lot, an enormous pancake of dirt spread beside the Manhattan Bridge and surrounded mostly by river. The slow lights of barges and the bleak iron giantcy of a crane that in the morning barely after the sun rose would be pummeling away at the hard earth amidst the clang of hammers and cries of workmen—He slid down in front of the seat and worked my belt loose from its loop and placed his smooth hands under my sweatshirt rubbing my chest in circular rough motions. After a while, through the condensation gathering on the cold windows from my heated breath, I saw the familiar blue and white colors of a cop car swing round and bounce over the lip of the parking lot border. They swung towards us as I quickly pulled up my pants and awkwardly fastened the belt. After stopping briefly by our car they continued on to another car parked not far away, the inhabitants of which had been making various photographs of the waterfront and skylines. Then they returned and parked so that their headlights shone in and filled our car with blazing lights. I quickly asked the guy to repeat his name in case we were questioned. He did so and rolled down his window. I could see the cops through the haze of lights crawl from their cars and approach. They shone a high-intensity flashlight into our car and played their rays across our laps. I wondered if my zipper was all the way up, if they would notice the outline of my underwear stretched around my legs. I was ordered out of the car after one cop said, Just looking at the river? I was tempted to say, Whatcha think asshole? but spared the poor guy. I felt simultaneously angry and worried. After a couple seconds I completely relaxed, thought about what was unfolding and realized despite cops and laws, I was doing nothing that I felt was wrong. Immediately I calmed down and the prospect of getting arrested didn’t faze me, but I kept my tongue in check for the driver’s sake. I got out of the car as the cop demanded, and found it slightly awkward to walk with my underwear impossibly stretched around my calves. The second cop came around to me and both cops simultaneously asked each of us what was the other guy’s name. I answered, I think his name is Fred but I’m not sure. Not sure, huffs the stupid cop. Whataya mean, yer not sure? Well, I said, I don’t know his name too well. He’s just a guy I see every now and then and sit and talk with. The cop looked at me and told me to start walking. I thought I misunderstood him so I asked him to repeat it. He said, Start walking! Go on, get outta here. I went back to the car to retrieve my coat and the two cops got into a bit of an argument, one saying that I could return to the car, the other telling me to walk out of the lot. Finally, one backed down and I was told to start walking, which I did as Fred rolled his car out of the lot. I walked out behind him and he slowed up to ask if I was all right. I answered, Fine. I’m okay. I’ll see ya another time up on the hill. With that the cop car speakers crowed out, I TOLD YOU NOT TO PICK HIM UP. NOW KEEP MOVING. I waved good-bye and turned a corner and headed up the hill into the night.

  I ran into the old Lithuanian woman who owns the building as I returned home. She was standing far off in the dark field with her two mangy old dogs, two great animals that look like strange Australian desert pigs with hides like the stuff old worn carpets are made of. I walked into the field towards her and said hello. She was rosy-cheeked even in the darkness. She went into a sad monologue about her family in Russia: My brother—I have thirteen brothers and sisters—my one brother just twenty years old refused to go to Siberia so they threw him on a train, very dark and crowded, no windows and no fresh air, nothing much to eat, many other people in the cars, for a long long distance they take him, my father, too. See they come around and say to all these farmers—my father was a very good farmer—these men come around and tell all the farmers to sign a paper that says we have one big farm, but no, we have a whole lot of little farms. Many people say, No, I won’t sign the paper. And boom, they are taken away to Siberia, many young children, whole families, fathers, the parents but not the children, or half the family … I see my father dragged off to Siberia, where it’s very cold and no heat and he dies very quickly there. And my brother, twenty years old, they fire a gun at him. I see his stomach, a big hole opens in his stomach …

  There’s nothing so horrifying as war stories from the mouths of the people who experienced it. Like in Europe, all those people who saw their relatives die …

  February 8, 1980

  Time on the river had become irrelevant—walking down into the darkness of the side st
reets and avenues, crossing the highway, cars burning in lines going uptown and downtown, waiting beneath the overpass, papers skidding along the loading docks, some character standing beside a solitary car in darkness, over by the river a series of cars easing from parking spots on the asphalt runway, others turning off along the waterfront, circular motions of vehicles, burning headlights acting like beacons that sweep over the surface of the river, the river looks like clouds, the rafts of ice driven together by currents, spread from the shore to the center of the river protected from being swept away by the piers. When the headlights swing away from the surface of the river, everything is settled into a calm easy darkness, ice merges into a slow illuminated color of night, the bare ridges of the ice floes exposed, like arctic childhood memories, waiting for the polar strides and windy howls of desolation.

  A large sheet of corrugated iron has been nailed over the walkway that once led to the covered pier. No more scenes there; all of it relegated to the past, summers’ movements held in my mind like a series of film clips, the rooms that evolved into rooms, the dusty heat that survived the winds and spread through the structure, sounds of gasping and the slow scrape of shoes across the floors, cinematic motions unfolding before my eyes, scenes of renegade men I had never known, scenes straight from the novel mind, wildboys breathing life, clothes slowly being removed by strangers’ hands, the slight breeze drying the sweat of arms and legs and ruffling through the dense hair of sweet crotches. The light aligning itself with motion, curves of legs and arms and upturned necks, the murmur of sensation, dreams uttered from faces with closed eyes. Now just windy noise clashing with silence of night, big tin sheets banging in the wind and dense burnt breezes flowing from shattered windows and twisted roofs, the stars above, the winter still riding over the mouth of the structure, ships still passing ominously in the darkness, lights of the Jersey cliffs burning and winking, a huge cigarlike cloud of steam tilting from the lip of a factory smokestack, the neon red cup of coffee dripping continuously there against the snow-covered rocks of the coast.

  A car came circling in from the highway, a pale face turning towards me behind the window, the eyes of the driver shielded in shadow, lips frozen for a moment in motion as the car makes a swift curve somewhere further down and swings back to envelop me in light. I turned and stared at the driver as he swept past, his face turning towards me once again, the invitation in the sudden parking of the vehicle a dozen yards away. I walked around in the cold, moving my hands around within my pockets to warm them, went to the other side of the car and stood there motionless, watching the lower torso of the driver with hands on the wheels. Finally he bent forward, his head came into view, and he peered questioningly at me: a sharp click of the door locks. I went over and opened the door and slid in sideways. He let the light remain on so as to answer some unasked questions and then click, the car was turned towards the night, darkness taking the place of hands and legs and shadows covering our faces. He said he didn’t talk English, a slightly familiar accent on his tongue. Qu’est que tu parle? I asked. Ah bon, español, français, etc. We talked in loose French as he swung the car away from the river and drove further down, away from the motion of strangers and the clusters of other cars. He was a slim guy with thick black hair, sweet face belonging to rogues along Pigalle, dense like old photos of Mayakovsky, thick features, nose and lips and cheekbones formed from some sensual stone. Broad shoulders and a pair of hands that showed muscle and veins in their broadness. He unbuckled my belt in the shadows of the vehicle, thrust his mouth down along the pale area of my exposed stomach, traced lines with his tongue over its curves. Roughly pulling my pants further down around my legs he dipped and licked smooth areas of saliva around the curve of my knees, beneath my knees which drove me wild, in a swift motion releasing his own cock from his trousers and placing my hand upon it. He blew me in a series of rough motions, his tongue darting back up to my abdomen and up across my sides, over my chest, leaving very slight luminous trails across its surface, my hand moistened with my tongue slid back down to his cock and I leaned my head back as he pulled me towards him, murmuring something in French I couldn’t understand, feeling him attempting to enter me I came into his curved palm, gasping against the noise of the winds that crashed along the coast.

  February 21, 1980

  The river was dirty and coming towards me in the wind, a smooth chest trembling with sweat. The movement of him in the bare doorway, green fields opening beneath the moon and the neoned coast. This desire, so small a thing, becomes a river tracing the drift of your bare arms, dark mouth, and memories of strangers. All things falling from the earth and sky: small movements of your body on the docks, moaning down there among the boards and the night, car lights slanting across the distance, airplanes in deep surrender to your rogue embraces. A smile sparking grin, a darkening house, from behind car windows, the moving confidence of transvestites along the highway. The wind plays along the coast sustained by distance and leveled landscapes, drifts around bare legs and through doorways of barrooms. Something silent and recalled, the sense of age in a familiar place, the emptied heart and light of the eyes, the white bones of streetlamps and autos, the press of memory turning over and over and I’m coming. Later sitting over coffee and remembering these cinematic motions as if witnessed from a discreet distance, laying the senses down one by one, writing in the winds of red dawn, turning over slowly into sleep.

  February 23, 1980

  Standing in the waterfront bar, having stopped in for a beer in midafternoon, smoky sunlight fading in through the large plate-glass windows and a thumping roll of music beating invisibly in the air … Over by one window and side wall a group of guys hanging out playing pool, one of them this Chicano boy, muscular and smooth with a thin cotton shirt of olive green, black cowboy hat pushed down over his head, taut neck rising out of the cut of his shirt, strong collarbones pressing out, a graceful curve of muscles in his back and a solid chest, his stomach pressed like a slightly curved washboard against the front of his shirt, muscles in his arms rising and falling effortlessly as he gesticulates with one hand, talking with some guy who’s leaning into the sunlight of the window, in his other hand the pool stick balanced against his palm, a cigarette between his fingers. He leaned back and took a drag and blew lazy smoke rings slow one after the other that pierced the rafts of light and dissolved within the shadows. The guy he was talking to looked like some midwestern country boy straight from the fields of gathered wheat and dusty back roads traveled by pickups with beer cans in the backseat and a buzz in the head from summer. He had dark eyes and a rosy complexion, a roughly formed face made of sharp lines and his hair cut short around the sides and back of his neck. Standing there drinking from my bottle I could see myself taking the nape of his neck in my cold white teeth, a shudder of eroticism as he turned and stared out the window for a moment at the traffic. Light curved around his cheeks and the back of his head, the shaved hair having left bristles that I could feel against the palm of my sweating hand, all the way across the room. He looked around after turning away from the window and set his eyes on me for a long moment, studying me for indiscernible reasons, and I felt the bass of the music tapping in on some center where my emotions or passion lies, I tilted my head back and took another swig from the beer, humming gathering from my stomach and rising up around my ears. He turned away and the Chicano guy leaned over the pool table for a shot, his back curved and taut like a bow, arm drawing back to clack the balls softly on the table, a couple dropping into side pockets and for a moment the two of them were lost in a drift of men entering the bar. I moved over a few feet to bring them back in view and some sort of joke had developed between them, the country boy reached into the bottom slot of the table and withdrew a black shiny eight ball and advanced towards the Chicano, who drew back until his buttocks hit the low sill of the window. He giggled and leaned his head back letting a hardness come from his eyes. The country boy’s face turned a slighter shade of red, and he reache
d out with his hands, one hand pulling the top of the Chicano’s shirt out, and the other deftly dropping the eight ball into the neckline. The ball rolled down and lodged near his torso and the two of them laughed as he reached in, hand sliding down his chest and stomach I would have readily laid my forehead to, and retrieved the ball. I took a last swig from my beer, overcome with the heat that had been gathering within my belly and now threatened to overcome me with dizziness, barely managed to place the bottle upright on the nearby cigarette machine and push open the doors into the warm avenue winds, push open the doors and release myself from the embrace of the barroom and the silent pockets of darkness and the illuminating lines of light thinking it was Jacques Prevert who said, Why work when you have a pack of cigarettes and sunlight to play with, and listened to the horns of ships along the river, far away over the fields of buildings and traffic, turned a corner and headed crosstown. Pleasure derived as much from the witnessing of lovely images as from any sexual embrace. Remembering how when I was younger and was rejected by the sturdy rogue men ten years older than me whom I met within the dark avenues of the river, how I came close to telling them it didn’t matter, I had their images, their faces and bodies and all the associations in my head to go home at leisure and lay down upon the warm sheets of a summer room and lay my hand to myself and have them anyway.