Great Jones Street

I undressed for the first time in two days, getting into bed naked and weak, unfamiliar with my own body. Fenig began then, taking long and desperate strides, and the soft boy below, Micklewhite's carnival meat, cried four tunes in the making of a dream.

14

Hashish smoked in motels always seemed mean. I remember the feeling of something in the middle of my head trying to expand, to work itself outward, causing fearsome pressure. We were in motels between flights or performances, or between a flight and a performance, or the other way around. The motel was never quite the same but motel time was identical everywhere we stayed. There were no edges to the tensions of our waiting; it was one blank plane of unsegmented time. We were usually located somewhere on the outskirts of a vast population center (not necessarily a city) and we sat on the bed or floor, never in chairs, sucking up bad hash, waiting for the ever-rumored limousine to come slipping in out of the plastic glades, a comically elegant hearse into which seven or eight bodies might eventually drop, musicians, road managers, long blond girls with perfect legs, most of us in soiled old clothes, mendicant's denim and mauled boots, all rank with weed, trying to encompass the range of inconsistencies and finding this an unworthwhile endeavor.

But it's the rooms we waited in that I recall. Their plai

For the first time in weeks Fenig was sitting at the top of the landing. I paused at my door, feeling certain there was something he wanted to say.

"Every pornographic work brings us closer to fascism."

I went inside, not bothering to lock the door. In a little while he came in. It was a dark afternoon and I lit a candle. Fenig sat at the edge of a straight-backed chair, leaning well forward, easily able to put his fingers to the tips of his te

"Many thanks," he said.

"What for?"

"For listening."

"I had to stop anyway to get the door opened. So it wasn't that much of an ordeal. Haven't seen you, Eddie. Pounding away at the old machine. Is that what you've been doing?"

"You called me Eddie. That's a gracious gesture and I appreciate it. Coming from you, Bucky, tops in your trade, it's not the kind of thing I'm ever likely to forget. Is there some coffee you can give me?"

"I haven't been able to find the coffee."

"I'd be happy to consume the dregs from an old cup that's just lying around unwashed."

Sorry.

"I'm in the middle of a dark period, practically black. It's one of those times in a writer's life when he or she just wants to fall into bed and pull the covers over his or her head. I'm dropping all my genres and going into a new one completely. The kiddie filth didn't pan out. I can't sell a thing. I can't make anything happen. It's all going sour and I'm just begi

"How deep?"

"How deep is deep, Bucky? The very depths. The place where no sunlight reaches. The pressure hole of the great ocean trench. I'm surrounded by blind fish swimming all around me. It's colder than mountains."

"The pacing hasn't helped. Is that right?'

"There was a point there and I shouldn't admit this even to you, Bucky, but there was a point there when I actually did some ru

"I can't offer advice for your comeback."

"I'll tell you what you can do," he said. "You can find the coffee pot you used last time you made coffee and maybe there's some grounds left over in the ground holder and you can give me a paper napkin and I can saturate the napkin with soggy coffee grounds and just hold it under my nose and sniff it for a little while."

"Aside from everything else I don't think I have any napkins."

"The paper kind is what I need."