Great Expectations

by Kathy Acker

  CLIFFORD: You can’t take anything rough as I can. You’re weaker than me. You’re not the woman I expected. You’re not the woman I want. You’re physically sick all the time.

  SARAH: I AM weak. I never pretended I was different. I act publicly like I’m strong it’s just an image and now I do it well I HAVE to survive. It isn’t real. That’s why I have to be alone so much. I have to be alone so I can be myself. It isn’t that I don’t love you. I just have to be alone.

  CLIFFORD: I understand that you’re weak. I want a strong feminist.

  SARAH: Maybe you should go with someone else. (Hopefully)

  CLIFFORD (resigned): Stop crying and eat your dinner. You need to eat. You’re going to make yourself sick again.

  SARAH: Please don’t keep hurting me.

  CLIFFORD: I’m trying to have a nice dinner. You keep bringing these matters up.

  SARAH: I …? I … (tentatively, obediently, takes a spoonful of food)

  Since my crying is increasing this viciousness, I don’t know how to stop it. I’m in terror.

  He mirrors whatever I feel, but doesn’t realize he’s doing this.

  :Johnny, I know you’re going to murder me.

  :I’m going to murder you, honey.

  :I don’t want you to murder me.

  :But I want money and you’ve got it.

  :You’d murder me even for just the little money you can get. (This isn’t really a question.) I guess if you want to make love, we might as well make love. I’m horny.

  :Can’t you get to sleep? (His finger softly draws a line along her right-side chin bone.)

  :I’m really tense.

  :I’ll kiss you and you’ll go to sleep.

  :I don’t want to go to sleep. Where are you?

  :I’m just playing.

  :Come up here and fuck quickly and then go back to your play. (Johnny crawls up on the bed and very slowly, very gently, kisses her soft lips.)

  :I just want to fuck. I don’t want to kiss.

  :I have to do something to relax you.

  Portrait In Red

  Red everywhere. Red up the river, where it flows among the green pines and old mining camps; red down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of the shipping and the dock pollutions of a going-to-be-great (and going-to-be-dirtier) city. Red on the rain marshes, red on Queen Anne Hill. Red creeping into each of the abandoned cabooses; red creeping over the half-torn-away train tracks and lying on each weed; red climbed over the hacked-up docks into the commercial steel ships. Red in each longshoreman’s eyes when he returns home and slaps his wife around red at the end of the cigarette butt red in the dynamite red of the fire. Red of the eyelid and nose flesh of the bums walking down First Avenue past the more monetarily successful artists. Red the colors of the condos they’re building over the bodies of old people who now have nowhere to live. Red the artist’s hand not from paint but from striking his lover’s face out of repressed fear.

  The raw afternoon is rawest, and the red is most red, and the streets are filthiest on the part of Bell Street next to the river where I lived in fear of my lover for six months.

  He didn’t want to hurt me. There are many desires. But that desire was a fairly surface desire. He was very scared. The fear was very deep. The fear was he used to be on the skids he had to live when he was an adolescent by selling junk he had no one to turn to and he was a bum he was among bums no woman would want him. He wanted education. He got better and better women. He took each one for as much as he could before she had the strength or desperation to flee. He didn’t want to be in this position again. He was desperate. He was a man. He was tough. He was honest. He didn’t use people. He could take care of himself and he never needed anybody. All under this surface was fear. The tension between the two was unendurable especially for him.

  Worse than this was the positive tool or wall he had built to keep surviving. He was as stubborn as a steel wall. As soon as he wanted he could be impenetrable. Impenetrable is stupid. Nobody could touch him. This steel wall was the most dangerous thing about him was total madness.

  Women found him sexually attractive and then fled from him. He had had a series of women and could obviously get any woman he wanted who didn’t know his reputation. Living with him was living with hell. He never relaxed. He was always like an atom bomb. He thought he was delicate feminine because when he got drunk (relaxed) the only aspect he could perceive was overwhelming self-insecurity or fear. And fear is feminine: for women it lies in the heart of heterosexual sex. I don’t know whether I believe that.

  I don’t want to believe that.

  CLIFFORD: Since the world is a hostile place to me, I have to be able to do whatever I want. I’m going to have a good time today. I don’t care what you feel. You’re probably dying because you’re always dying as a ploy to get at me. To destroy me. I’m going to have a good time today. When I have a good time, I eat crepes and drink lots of cappucino, then I go to the department stores to look at either Ralph Laurens or Gucci suits. After six I drink champagne, beer with my buddies and shoot pool, I get good and drunk. I know I shouldn’t get drunk like this everything is my fault it isn’t my fault. A language that I speak and can’t dominate, a language that strives fails and falls silent can’t be manipulated, language is always beyond me, me me me. Language is silence. Once there was no truth; now I can’t speak.

  I’m going to Paris because in Paris no one speaks English. That’s where I’ll be able to make art.

  I won’t have any chance of making money there. I’ve never had steady money because I’m nothing. I hate this government because they’re responsible.

  I don’t like women because I hate their cunts. I don’t know who they are. I know I know who they are: they just want. They think they’re perfect. I don’t want to become better. I don’t care. I don’t have problems as other people do.

  I decided I wasn’t going to have anything else to do with a woman. I wasn’t going to try to live with one again. I was into my work and I didn’t have the time.

  I set up this living situation so no woman could enter it. I built that loft bed and no other conveniences anywhere, just my working tools. For a shower I go to the sauna down the street for ten dollars an hour. I eat my meals in the Belltown.

  I know I drink too much. I like sex a lot. Once or twice a week this crazy girl when she can’t pick any other man up that night comes around one or two in the morning. She doesn’t want anything but sex from me and that’s all I want from her.

  I’m a teamster and I make a lot of money so I’m in a position to help out my fellow artists who aren’t as financially well-established as I am. I buy their work whenever I can. I like to pay for their drinks. I’m generous.

  SHE: What is his relation to money?

  SHE: It stinks.

  I kept thinking he was conning me. Then I would think, this is crazy and paranoid. I just want to know.

  SHE: I want to ask you about Clifford. If you don’t want to answer any of these questions cause they’re too close, I fully understand. They’re just so many times I haven’t known the truth in a situation and this time I want to know the truth.

  CLIFFORD: Let me explain something. Let me explain something. I absolutely want to explain something. I am not a violent person. I have never in my life physically hurt anyone. I would not hurt a woman. Nobody understands how sensitive I am. I do not believe all that shit about men and women I think sexism is disgusting. Men who want women to do the housework and bow to them are pigs. I cry and I’m as sensitive as a woman. No one realizes this about me I don’t have anything to do with the world. NO.

  As a result of his own barrenness, he develops a capacity to absorb the fertility of others. Of the real self. The only way you can get the real self is to rip someone off. The only way you can get love. Humans need love. You’re a con man.

  When my girlfriend got sick, she was good and sick she was almost dying, I didn’t give a damn because when she’s sick she can’t
give me anything. She had become sick so she could deny me. This means the sicker she becomes, the more I have to rip her off. That’s the only way things are fair between us. I’m a feminist. I don’t want a woman mothering me or telling me what to do. I want a balance of power that’s why I have to take from her.

  I didn’t bother to lie and she knew I was taking from her. But she played stupid, asked me if I was ripping her off why was I ripping her off. She not only played stupid she played the martyr. She kept whining while I was sleeping and I need my sleep I work like a dog-shit every day trucking I don’t have time for whining which is pretense. She cried she was helpless since she didn’t know anyone in this strange town, she was dependent on me, she was too sick to shop and desperate for food I was refusing to give her. I didn’t want any part of this. I didn’t starve her to death and I didn’t throw her out. She was just asking me to let her be the boss so I wouldn’t get anything from her and I wouldn’t allow that. I appear stupid because I don’t bother talking to people. Their talking—like her sickness—is pretense. And I have to work my butt off. If I’m one thing, I’m absolutely honest.

  From being sick, she goes on to act like she’s scared of me. I guess she is or she really thinks she is. I’m too worn-out to know the difference. I don’t give a damn about taking care of her anymore because she’s made me give up. Because she’s done me in.

  I’ll tell her something. She doesn’t know how to love somebody. Psychiatrist said about. Say I’m violent.

  I think I understand but nobody agrees with me.

  I’m not going to let her get away from here because otherwise so I’ve locked this door. I know I shouldn’t lock this door but she’s not really locked in.

  Two beautiful girls live in Paris. The oldest is tall and thin. Since her eyelids are always three-quarter’s over her eyes, she appear to be constantly looking at the ground. This lack of curiosity or humility makes her seem nunlike. Pale skin with absolutely no color over the cheekbones emphasizes the sobriety.

  The younger sister, unbelievably beautiful, radiant as a moon that has no night to contrast it, pink-orange roses in the cheeks and eyes, shining because they haven’t yet been touched: not being caught in the maw of fame, not fearing the traps sexual satiety causes, not desiring beyond desire to be an image: real. Her hair would fly around her head like the feathers on some of those hats in the Blvd. St-Germaine Des Pres shop windows. Her emotions are even more uncontrolled, for no one has ever shown her she has to control herself or else she is hurt. These uncontrolled movements add charm. But she’s so scared of her mother, she keeps this wildness to herself.

  PORTRAIT IN RED, kept handing over this money

  PORTRAIT IN RED if I ever asked about it he said

  PORTRAIT IN RED $60,000 in debt and that’s why

  PORTRAIT IN RED how

  PORTRAIT IN RED did your first husband rip you off for a quarter of a million dollars excuse me

  PORTRAIT IN RED the last year Clifford and I were together, we both went to see a psychiatrist.

  : I didn’t know that.

  : He said he couldn’t do anything more for us as things stood: Clifford should definitely go into therapy.

  : Is he still doing a lot of drugs?

  SHE: He’s getting stranger and stranger these days. He just sits by the TV and doesn’t move and never talks to anyone. We haven’t talked in months.

  SHE: Is he still doing a lot of drugs?

  SHE: Drugs? You know I’ve lived with him for six months, but I don’t really know anything about him. He comes home from work on the weekdays so dead tired. He can’t talk. He immediately goes to sleep, wakes up, goes back to work. On the weekends he wakes up immediately, goes out of the house. He’s gone for hours. If I ask him where he’s been, I don’t want to pry or anything I’m just trying to find some conversation, he gets so angry I don’t ask.

  PORTRAIT IN RED me was to take a razor blade and cut through this wrist in front of him.

  : How could you stand living with him for six years?

  : It was only three years.

  : Three years? He said six.

  : From 1975 to 1978. My first husband and I were married for almost six years.

  PORTRAIT IN RED draw blood and freaked out.

  PORTRAIT IN RED used to.

  PORTRAIT IN RED he kept telling me I was psychotic because I thought he was ripping me off and when there’s only one other person there’s no way to know.

  3. The End

  * * *

  I’m thinking about you right now and I’ve been thinking about you for days when I jerk off I see your face and I’m not going to stop writing this cause then I’ll be away from this directness this happiness this isness which is. At the same time I’m never going to have anything to do with you again. Because you, even if it is just cause of circumstances, won’t love me. This isn’t the situation. I’m being a baby as usual. There are complications. Are shades, hues, never either-or, the shades are meanings, come out, you rotten cocksucker

  44 B.C. Brutus and Cassius murder Julius Caesar.

  42 B.C. The outlaws Brutus and Cassius in the Battle of Philippi lose to Mark Antony.

  Mark Antony allies himself with Cleopatra and neglects his wife Octavia (Caesar’s great-nephew’s sister).

  Messala, the main literary patron, goes with young Caesar who turns away from Antony.

  31 B.C. The Battle of Actium young Caesar decisively defeats Antony.

  29 B.C. Empire begins. Centralization of power which is thought. Any non-political action such as poetry goes against centralization. Ovid is exiled. Propertius and Horace are told they have to write praises of the empire.

  To The Door

  “Why aren’t you grabbing my cunt every chance you get? I love fucking in public streets and why are you telling me you want to be friends and work with me more than you care about sex with me, but you don’t want FOR ANY REASONS to cut out the sex? So you want to own me without owning me?” says Cynthia the whore. She goes out on to the street to search for Propertius her boyfriend. It’s night. She finds him.

  “Why don’t you take me? I don’t have more than five minutes. Why does it have to last beyond these grabbing actions? Oh I believe in love that thing that is impossible to happen”

  A bones-sticking-out cow is dragging a cart by glittering religious objects past a dead murderer

  “And besides you’re fat and ugly and I’m more beautiful than you and I’ve got more money (I can earn more in five minutes in this world): you should be taking me out to dinner.

  Here’s the hole the window we can climb through to the place we can fuck in. Holes.”

  He, rubbing his crotch: I just want to stick my dick into something. What the hell do I care, by all that stinks, what I stick it into? When I was a kid I used to use a bottle with something in it. Now I can use a cunt but unfortunately a cunt has a woman attached to it. By all that’s holy, girl, I’m a man! The best wet dream I had was in high school I was fucking this girl I wanted to fuck, her hole disappeared, but I still kept shoving, rubbing into her. I woke up and I was pounding into the bed.

  Actually I don’t want you to have anything to do with me. I just want split-open red-and-black pussy.

  CYNTHIA: Why don’t you let me go: I want to go back to not-existing which is freedom.

  HE: I like you a lot.

  CYNTHIA: I’m lifting up my leg and peeing all over you. That doesn’t work. Maybe if I let you make all the decisions, you’ll be my father.

  HE: I don’t want to make any decisions. People tell me what to do real easily and I won’t stand being told what to do so I avoid people.

  CYNTHIA (to herself): But I want him to love me. He’s never going to give me what I want, but I’ll still fuck him.

  They’re standing in front of a huge partly open window through which is an empty space.

  CYNTHIA: C’mon. Jump. What’s the matter with you, dummy, are you too fat to jump? I’ve got five minutes. You’re
gonna be a creep and not do anything, I’m scared too, I want it. Flesh is it. Your arms are it.

  HE: Isn’t that guy waiting for you?

  CYNTHIA: That’s why we’ve got only five minutes.

  At A Door’s Edge

  During the night, the streets very dirty uneven rocks no way to be sure of your footing much less direction as for safety all sorts of criminals or rather people who had to survive hiding under one level of stone or behind an arcade you can’t even see just standing there: there’s no way to tell the difference between alive and dead. Criminalities, which are understandable, mix with religious practices, for people have to do anything to satisfy that which can no longer be satisfied

  We shall define sexuality as that which can’t be satisfied and therefore as that which transforms the person.

  (Stylistically: simultaneous contrasts, extravagancies, incoherences, half-formed misshapen thoughts, lousy spelling, what signifies what? What is the secret of this chaos?

  (Since there’s no possibility, there’s play. Elegance and completely filthy sex fit together. Expectations that aren’t satiated.)

  Questioning is our mode.

  CYNTHIA: Just why are you fucking me? You’ve got a girlfriend named Trick and you love her. According to you she’s satisfied with you and you with her.

  Propertius is staring blankly at the door.

  CYNTHIA: I’m sick of being nice to you. So what if you want a girl who’ll consider you her top priority and yet’ll never ask you for anything? I can’t be her.

  Propertius is staring blankly at the door and scratching his head.

  CYNTHIA: DON’T FUCK ME CAUSE YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF MY CUNT. LEAVE ME ALONE. This is the only way I can directly speak to you cause you’re autistic.

  PROPERTIUS: This is my poem to your cunt door.