weeping wom bs; they’ll be born, the next generation, out o f
what the assholes do to me; I’ve got enough semen dripping in
me for a literary renaissance, an encyclopedia o f novellas, a
generation o f genius; maybe some o f them will paint or write
songs. Mother earth, magic vessel, the altar where they
worship, the sacred place; fifty dollars to burn a candle, or
pills, or a meal and money; bang bang ain’t never without
consequences for the future o f the race. N o reason the race
should be different from the people in it. There’s no tom orrow
I know of. I never seen one that ain’t today. It’s fine to be slut-
mama to a literary movement; the corporeal altar o f sym pathetic motherhood to a generation; his loins; m y ass.
Immortal, anonymous means to his end. It’s what the hippie
girls all glittering, flecked, stardust, want: to be procreatrix
with flowering hips and tea made from plants instead o f
Lipton; they recline, posh and simple, all spread out draped in
flowing cotton and color; they don’t take money; well, they
do, but they don’t say so upfront— from my point o f view
they are mannerless in this regard; mostly they just hang on,
like they have claws, it passes for spiritual, they just sit there
until he comes back from wherever he’s gone after coitus has
made him triste, they say it’s meditating but it’s just waiting
for some guy to show w ho’s left; they ain’t under the light,
they are o f it— luminescent fairy things from on high, just
down for a fast, ethereal screw. I been to bed with them;
usually a man and one o f them, because they don’t do women
alone— too real for the nitrous oxide crowd, not Buddhistic
enough— it’s got an I want right between the legs and it’s got
your genitals leading your heart around or vice versa, who the
hell knows, and it don’t make the boy happy unless he gets to
watch and the hippie girls do not irritate the love-boys by
doing things that might not be directly and specifically for
them. The hippie boys like bringing another woman into bed.
Y ou can shake some coke loose from them if you do it; or
money, which they pretend is like nothing but they hold onto
it pretty tight. Coke and orange juice is my favorite breakfast;
they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them
hard and high and ready but I like to take some o ff with me and
do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed
with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing
the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from
one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are
housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean m y house, bake
m y bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the
sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—
she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings o f
beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling,
it’s sad. Y ou convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what
he never thought would be near him, street grime he w on ’t be
able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overw rought his
prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t
spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out
without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a
woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; m y
appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big
slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because
there w asn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have
money or no one to take care o f me so they just let me out. M y
side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and
there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in m y
shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain
was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in m y
shoulder. It hurt to breathe. Y ou don’t think about your
shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi
is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full
weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure
from inside on where the drill was and there w asn’t enough
Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and
dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking
beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades o f blue all in
flowers, silk, astonishing whirl o f color; and the man’s dark
with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, ju st hair;
and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s
all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats
on m y hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine:
expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can
barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the
guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind o f monster o f fuck, he
lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by,
and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each
other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and
m y side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be m oving
around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the
whole time although my interest comes and goes, at some
point the boy takes o ff the shirt and I’m wondering who he is
and w hy he’s here, and I don’t have to w orry about her
sentimentality because the boy isn’t seeking variety and he
don’t want to watch, this is a boy who wants to fuck and he
moves good but he’s boring as hell, the same, the same, and
when the pain hits me I am pretty sure I am really going to die,
that the clot is loose in my blood somewhere and it’s going to
go to m y brain, and I’m trying to think this is real glorious,
dying with some Olympian fuck, but the pain is some vicious,
choked up tangle o f blades in my gut, and I try to
choreograph the pain to his fuck, and I try to rest when he’s
not in me, and I am praying he will stop, and I am at the same
time trying to savor every second o f m y last minutes on earth,
or last hours as it turns out, but intellectual honesty forced me
to acknowledge I was bored, I was spending m y last time
bored to death, I could have been a housewife after all; and the
light comes up and I think, well, dawn will surely stop him;
but he fucks well into daylight, it’s bright morning now with a
disagreeably bright sun, profoundly intrusive, and suddenly
there’s a spasm, thank the Lord, and the boy is spent, it’s the
seventh day and this man who fucks must rest. And I thank
God. I do. I say, thank you, Lord. I say, I owe Y ou one. I say, I
appear still to be alive, I know I was doing something
proscribed and maybe I shouldn’t address Y ou before he even
moves o ff me but I am grateful to Y ou for stopping him, for
making him tired, for wearing him out, for creating him in
Y our image so that, e
ventually, he had to rest. I can’t move
because m y insides are messed up. M y incision is burning as if
there are lighted coals there and I’m afraid to see i f it is open or
i f it will bleed now and m y shoulder has stones crushed into it
as i f some demolition team was crushing granite, reflexive
pain from some dead spot, I don’t know where, and I truly
think I might not ever move again and I truly think I might
have opened up and I truly think I might still die; and I want to
be alone; die alone or bleed alone or endure the pain alone; and
I’m lying there thinking they will go now when the girl starts
pawing me and says stupid, nice things and starts being all
lovey dovey like w e ’re both Gidget and she wants now to have
the experience, if you will, o f making love with a wom an; this
is in the too-little-too-late category at best; and I am fairly
outraged and astonished because I hurt so much and m y little
sister in sensitivity thinks we should start dating. So I tell them
to go; and she says but he doesn’t like me better, m aybe he
needs you to be there— needs you, can you imagine— and I’m
trying to figure out what it has to do with him, w hy it’s what
he wants when I want them to go; it’s what I want; I never
understand w h y it’s always with these girls what he wants— i f
he’s there and even if he ain’t in sight or in the vicinity; he had
his hours doing what he wants; and she tells me she’s
disappointed with me for not being loving and we could all
share and this is some dream come true, the most amazing
thing that’s ever happened, to her or ever on earth, it’s the
pro o f that everything is possible, and the pain I’m in is keeping
me from m oving because I can’t even sit up but I’m saying
very quiet, get out now. And she’s saying it’s her first time
with a woman and she didn’t really get to do anything—
tourist didn’t get to see the Eiffel T ow er— and I say yes, that’s
right, you didn’t get nothing. So she’s sad like some lover who
was real left her and she’s handling me like she read in some
book, being a tender person, saying everything bland and
stupid, all her ideals about life, everything she’s hoped for, and
she’s preachy with the m orality o f sharing and unity and
harm ony and I expect her to shake her finger at me and hit m y
knuckles with a ruler and make me stand in a corner for not
being some loving bitch. T here’s a code o f love you have to
learn by heart, which I never took to, and I’m thinking that if
she don’t take her treacle to another planet I’m going to stand
up, no matter what the pain, and physically carry her out, a
new little bride, over the threshold to outside. She’s some
sobbing ingenue with a delicate smile perpetually on her face
shining through tears which are probably always with her and
she’s talking about universal love when all the boy did was
fuck us to death as best he could, which in m y case was close
but no cigar and I couldn’t bring m yself to think it was all that
friendly; and I had a short fuse because I needed another pill, I
was a few behind and I was looking forward to making them
up now in the immediate present, I could talk real nice to
Demerol and I didn’t want them there for when I got high
again; so I said, you go, because he really likes you and you
should stay with him and be with him and be good to him, so
the dumb bitch leaves with the prince o f peace over there, the
b o y’s already smoking dope so he’s already on another plane
taking care o f him self which is what he’s really good at; and
she’s uncomprehending and she’s mournful that I couldn’t get
the love part right but they went, I saw the b o y’s turquoise and
purple silk shirt float by me and the drippy, sentimental girl in
cotton floated out still soliciting love. I never understood w hy
she thought you could ask for it. N o one can ask it from me. I
never can remember his face; peculiar, since his head was right
above me for so long, his tongue in my mouth, he kissed the
whole time he fucked, a nice touch, he was in her kissing me or
in me kissing her so no one’d get away from him or decide to
do something else; I just can’t remember his face, as if I never
saw it. He was a Taurus. I stayed away from them after that if I
knew a man was one because they stay too long, slow, steady,
forever. I never saw such longevity. She was Ellen, some
flower child girl; doomed for housework. I’m not. I ain’t
cleaning up after them. I keep things as clean as I can; but you
can’t really stay clean; there’s too much heat and dirt. It’s a
sweltering night. The little nymphs, imps, and pimps o f
summer flitter about like it’s tea time at the Ritz. There’s been
uprisings on the streets, riots, lootings, burning; the air is
crackling with violence, a blue white fire eating up the
oxygen, it’s tiny, sharp explosions that go o ff in the air around
your head, firecrackers you can’t see that go o ff in front o f you
when you walk, in front o f your face, and you don’t know
when the air itself will become some white hot tornado, ju st
enough to crack your head open and boil your brains. T hat’s
outside, the world. Summertime and the living is easy. Y ou
just walk through the fires between the flames or crawl on
your belly under them; rough on your knees and elbows. Y o u
can be in the street and have a steaming mass, hot heat, kinetic,
come at you, a crowd, men at the top o f their energy, men
spinning propelled by butane, and they bear down on you on
the sidewalk, they come at you, martial chaos; they will march
over you, yo u ’ll be crushed, bone m arrow ground into a paste
with your own blood, a smear left on a sidewalk. The crow d ’s
a monster animal, a giant w olf, huge and frantic, tall as the
sky, blood pulsing and rushing through it, one predator,
bearing down, a hairy, freaky, hungry thing, bared teeth,
ugly, hungry thing, it springs through the air, light and lethal,
and you will fucking cringe, hide, run, disappear, to be safe—
you will fucking hide in a hole, like some roachy thing you
will crawl into a crack. Y ou can hear the sound o f them
coming, there’s a buzz coming up from the cement, it vibrates
and kicks up dust, and somewhere a fire starts, somewhere
close, and somewhere police in helmets with nightsticks are
bearing down on the carnivorous beast, somewhere close and
you can hear the skulls cracking open, and the blood comes,
somewhere close there’s blood, and you can hear guns, there’s
guns somewhere close because you smell the burning smell,
it’s heat rising o ff someone’s open chest, the singed skin still
sm oking where the bullet went through; the w o lfs being beat
down— shot over and over, wounded, torn open— it’s big
manly cops doing it, steel faces, lead boots— they ain’t
harassing whores tonight. It looks like foreplay, t
he w ay the
cops bear down on the undulating mass; I stroke your face
with m y nightstick; the lover tames the beloved; death does
quiet you down. But a pig can’t kill a wolf. The w o lfs the
monster prick, then the pigs come and turn the w o lf into a girl,
then it’s payback time and the w o lf rises again. In the day
when the w o lf sleeps there are still fires; anything can suddenly
go up in flames and you can’t tell the difference at first between
a fire and a summer day, the sun on the garbage, the hot air
making the ghetto buildings swell, the brick bulging,
deformed and in places melting, all the solid brick w avy in the
heat. At night the crowd rises, the w o lf rises, the great
predator starts a long, slow walk toward the bullets waiting
for it. The violence is in the air; not symbol; not metaphor; it’s
thick and tasty; the air’s charged with it; it crackles around
your head; then you stay in or go out, depending on— can you
stand being trapped inside or do you like the open street? I
sleep days. It’s safer. I sleep in daylight. I stay awake nights. I
keep an eye out. I don’t like to be unconscious. I don’t like the
w ay you get limp. I don’ t like how you can’t hear what goes
on around you. I don’t like that you can’t see. I don’t like to be
waiting. I don’t like that you get no warning. I don’t like not to
know where I am. I don’t like not to know m y name. I sleep in
the day because it’s safer; at night, I face the streets, the crowd,
the predator, any predator, head on. I’d rather be there. I want
to see it coming at me, the crowd or anything else or anyone. I
want it to look at me and I want a chance. There’s gangs
everywhere. There’s arson or fires or w o lf packs or packs o f
men; men and gangs. The men outside m y door are banging;
they want to come in; big group fuck; they tear me apart; b oys’
night out. It’s about eight or nine at night and I’m going out
soon, it’s a little too early yet, I hear them banging on the door
with knives and fists, I can’t get out past them, there’s only one
w ay out; I can’t get past them. Once night comes it’s easy to
Mercy Page 16
