Dying Inside

Well?

Nothing. Nada. Niente. Nowhere. Nulla. Nicht.

Tumbling back to earth. Into the silent funeral. All right, give up, if that’s what you want. All right. Rest, for a little while. Rest and then pray, Selig. Pray.

Monday. The hangover gone. The brain once again receptive. In a glorious burst of creative frenzy I rewrite The “Electra” Theme in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from gunwale to fetlock, completely recasting it, revoicing it, clarifying and strengthening the ideas while simultaneously catching what I think is just the perfect tone of offhand niggerish hipness. As I hammer out the final words the telephone rings. Nicely timed; I feel sociable now. Who calls? Judith? No. It is Lisa Holstein who calls. “You promised to take me home after the party,” she says mournfully, accusingly. “What the hell did you do, sneak away?”

“How did you get my number?”

“From Claude. Professor Guermantes.” That sleek devil. He knows everything. “Look, what are you doing right now?”

“Thinking about having a shower. I’ve been working all morning and I stink like a goat.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I ghostwrite term papers for Columbia men.”

She ponders that a moment. “You sure have a weird head, man. I mean really: what do you do?”

“I just told you.”

A long digestive silence. Then: “Okay. I can dig it. You ghostwrite term papers. Look, Dave, go take your shower. How long is it on the subway from 110th Street and Broadway to your place?”

“Maybe forty minutes, if you get a train right away.”

“Swell. See you in an hour, then.” Click.

I shrug. A crazy broad. Dave, she calls me. Nobody calls me Dave. Stripping, I head for the shower, a long leisurely soaping. Afterward, sprawling out in a rare interlude of relaxation, Dave Selig re-reads this morning’s labors and finds pleasure in what he has wrought. Let’s hope Lumumba does too. Then I pick up the Updike book. I get to page four and the phone rings again. Lisa: she’s on the train platform at 225th, wants to know how to get to my apartment. This is more than a joke, now. Why is she pursuing me so singlemindedly? But okay. I can play her game. I give her the instructions. Ten minutes later, a knock on the door. Lisa in thick black sweater, the same sweaty one as Saturday night, and tight blue jeans. A shy grin, strangely out of character for her. “Hi,” she says. Making herself comfortable. “When I first saw you, I had this intuitive flash on you: This guy’s got something special. Make it with him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, its that you’ve got to trust your intuition. I go with the flow, Dave, I go with the flow.” Her sweater is off by now. Her breasts are heavy and round, with tiny, almost imperceptible nipples. A Jewish star nestles in the deep valley between them. She wanders the room, examining my books, my records, my photographs. “So tell me,” she says. “Now that I’m here. Was I right? Is there anything special about you?”

“There once was.”

“What?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” I say, and gathering my strength, I ram my mind into hers. It’s a brutal frontal assault, a rape, a true mindfuck. Of course she doesn’t feel a thing. I say, “I used to have a really extraordinary gift. It’s mostly worn off by now, but some of the time I still have it, and as a matter of fact I’m using it on you right now.”

“Far out,” she says, and drops her jeans. No underpants. She will be fat before she’s 30. Her thighs are thick, her belly protrudes. Her pubic hair is oddly dense and widespread, less a triangle than a sort of diamond, a black diamond reaching past her loins to her hips, almost. Her buttocks are deeply dimpled. While I inspect her flesh I savagely ransack her mind, sparing her no areas of privacy, enjoying my access while it lasts. I don’t need to be polite. I owe her nothing: she forced herself on me. I check, first, to see if she had been lying when she said she’d never heard of Kitty. The truth: Kitty is no kin to her. A meaningless coincidence of surnames, is all. “I’m sure you’re a poet, Dave,” she says as we entwine and drop onto the unmade bed. “That’s an intuition flash too. Even if you’re doing this term paper thing now, poetry is where you’re really at, right?” I run my hands over her breasts and belly. A sharp odor comes from her skin. She hasn’t washed in three or four days, I bet. No matter. Her nipples mysteriously emerge, tiny rigid pink nubs. She wriggles. I continue to loot her mind like a Goth plundering the Forum. She is fully open to me; I delight in this unexpected return of vigor. Her autobiography assembles itself for me. Born in Cambridge. Twenty years old. Father a professor. Mother a professor. One younger brother. Tomboy childhood. Measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever. Puberty at eleven, lost her virginity at twelve. Abortion at sixteen. Several Lesbian adventures. Passionate interest in French decadent poets. Acid, mescaline, psilocybin, cocaine, even a sniff of smack. Guermantes gave her that. Guermantes also took her to bed five or six times. Vivid memories of that. Her mind shows me more of Guermantes than I want to see. He’s hung very impressively. Lisa comes through with a tough, aggressive self-image, captain of her soul, master of her fate, etc. Underneath that it’s just the opposite, of course; she’s scared as hell. Not a bad kid. I feel a little guilty about the casual way I slammed into her head, no regard for her privacy at all. But I have my needs. I continue to prowl her, and meanwhile she goes down on me. I can hardly remember the last time anyone did that. I can hardly remember my last lay, it’s been so bad lately. She’s an expert fellatrice. I’d like to reciprocate but I can’t bring myself to do it; sometimes I’m fastidious and she’s not the douching type. Oh, well, leave that stuff for the Guermanteses of this world. I lie there picking her brain and accepting the gift of her mouth. I feel virile, bouncy, cocksure, and why not, getting my kicks from two inputs at once, head and crotch? Without withdrawing from her mind I withdraw, at last, from her lips, turn around, part her thighs, slide deep into her tight narrow-mouthed harbor. Selig the stallion. Selig the stud. “Oooh,” she says, flexing her knees. “Oooh.” And we begin to play the beast with two backs. Covertly I feed on feedback, tapping into her pleasure-responses and thereby doubling my own; each thrust brings me a factored and deliciously exponential delight. But then a fu