Dhalgren

“That’s what you started doing and you ain’t finished me yet.”

De

Kid moved one fist out on the blanket beside his face, hoping it was still warm from her. One fantasy memory of De

De

Kid rubbed his back, dry and papery as before. He wanted to say thanks, but decided it would be silly, so he squeezed De

“Your come tastes different from mine,” De

“Yeah?” Kid closed his eyes.

“It’s more, you know, liquid. And there’s more of it.”

“I’m bigger than you.”

“And it’s more bitter.”

“You know,” Kid said, “you’re a pretty fu

“She got—”

Somebody came into the room, moved something below them, turned.

Kid looked down across the blanket as a nondescript top-of-a-head left through the doorway.

“—got up a little while ago and went out.” De

“Oh. You two do this a lot?”

“Huh?”

“Drag people into bed all the time?”

“Not like this.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know. It’s her idea, most of the time. She’s my best friend here.”

Kid nodded, his chin tapping the top of De

“Naw. She’s not a member. Not like Filament. Or Lady of Spain. She just likes to hang around with them.” He shifted. “I mean us. I bring guys around for her sometimes. As long as she lets me watch. A couple of times I messed around with the guys, just a little. But not like…well, what we did.”

“You like messing around with her too?”

De

Kid laughed.

“Sometimes she’d tell me I should, but I never did. It just embarrassed me, you know? I couldn’t keep it hard, I mean before.”

“Oh.” Kid tried not to smile, even though De

“I can get guys for her two or three times a week, sometimes. She says she don’t wa

“She likes two at a time? I can dig it.”

“Maybe.” De

Kid crossed his arms over De

“I like to watch her make it with guys,” De

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No, I wasn’t. I mean only a little at first.”

“I don’t care what you were thinking about,” De

Now Kid shrugged. “I think I like you. How’s that?” Relaxing from the shrug, he began to laugh. “You want to suck it, sit on it, that’s fine by me. Now you’re going to turn around and run off and look all scared and wide-eyed at me every time we see each other from now on, huh? But I want to make love to you, sometime. Just you.”

“Like I was a girl?”

Kid sighed. “Yeah. If you want to put it that way.”

“I’d like that.”

“I know you would.” He cuffed the back of De

“When you jerk off, do you do that like what I did?”

“Huh?”

“You know. Eat it.”

“Oh. No. I’ve tasted my own a couple of times. Hell, I guess I ate it once or twice, just to see.”

“I do it all the time,” De

“I’ve just known other people who did that too, and…well. I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Is she going to come back?” Kid asked.

De

“Oh,” Kid said again and thought he’d been saying that a lot. So he closed his eyes.

He listened for people moving around the house, thinking it must be growing late in the morning. Something—De

He had to go to the bathroom, for one thing. His head ached slightly, and his mouth tasted like unflavored gelatin, solid around tongue and teeth. He looked for his pants, stopped, put his hand on De

Kid pulled on his pants, dragged his vest and his boot over the edge of the platform. The people in the sleeping bags were still there. Bending to put on his vest, he found his flanks sore; he leaned on the jamb to put on his boot, and for the first time in a while wished he had a second. (A vision of his own hands crumbling dirt between them, the dirt falling on water.) He stepped into the hallway.

The tan shade and the warmth in De

The sky beyond a dirty window pane high on the hall wall was stormy. The bathroom door opened: not Thirteen’s girlfriend, but Thirteen himself. His long hair was bushy from sleep. “Hey I didn’t know you was around here.” Thirteen nodded heavily, his voice roughened by fatigue. “Ain’t seen you in a couple of days.” Kid went into the bathroom and, while he urinated, busied himself not thinking about when the last time he had actually seen Thirteen was. He ground his fist against his sore side and reflected: it probably isn’t possible to really fuck yourself to death. Punching his tongue into bitter corners of his mouth, he squinted out the window. Stormy?

Incredible suspensions in the dry air, and he moved between them, dribbling and/or blowing out all holes. He waited for some bright precipitate. His water splashed and silenced. He massaged his limp genitals, not with desire, but rather to press some feeling back. His knuckles got wet, and he looked down wondering if it were urine or final mucus. Pleasure can be an appalling business, he thought and buttoned his pants.

In the hallway, he stood sucking his salty fingers until he realized what he was tasting, wondered why he was doing it, and remembered De

Then she walked into the hall without seeing him, and opened the front door. He took his fingers from his mouth, recognized her curly hair, tried to envision her full shoulders beneath the blue sweatshirt she now wore.

She went down the steps.

Curious, he walked to the door. If she turns around, he thought, her eyes will be red, hey?

She stopped by the car, prying beneath the bent rim with one finger, looking absently down the block; looked back at him.

The little chill was all anticipation.

She blinked surprised brown eyes at him, from a face that could have been angry.

“Hey,” he said, and smiled at her from the top of the steps, which became more and more difficult to do before her blank blinking, except in confusion. In confusion, smiling, he walked down. “I missed you when you cut out.” There are some storms, he thought beneath the mangled sky, it’s easier to walk into.