Dhalgren

Kid looked from De

“That’s okay,” De

Lanya laughed and sat back against the window edge. A scar of light from beside the shade lay on her hair.

De

“Sure,” Lanya said. “That’s reasonable.” She nodded, laughed again.

“We were just using it to talk,” Kid said.

“Oh,” De

“You do live in a strange city,” Lanya said. “Maybe I do too.” She looked at De

“Right here.” De

“Oh.” After a moment, Lanya said: “You two’ve been at it? Why don’t you two make it then—” she moved her te

Kid said: “I just meant—”

“I know,” Lanya said. “You want De

“Gee,” De

“Oh.” Lanya said, pushing her elbows together.

Kid thought: I still don’t know her name. “Hey,” he said to Lanya. “Come here.”

Lanya pursed her lips, hesitated with stiffened arms; then they un-stiffened. She came forward.

“You too, motherfucker.” De

“If you don’t play, you don’t watch.”

He had been pla

De

“You open your mouth after this morning, cocksucker,” Kid said, “and it won’t be my dick you get in it—”

“Kid…!” Lanya’s protest was real.

But De

Something in the machinery between Kid’s belly and loin tightened. De

De

Lanya moved her other hand down De

“Don’t pull,” De

“I’m not pulling,” she said. “I’m tickling.”

“Oh,” De

(Kid looked at his hand still in the air. It was quieter in the other room.)

Lanya suddenly sat. “Oh wow. Sure.” She wore one of her stranger expressions. “I didn’t even see!”

Kneeling over him, she took Kid’s wrist, got the clasp. Kid was completely astonished when De

Lanya put it on the window ledge by the blind, where it stood, upright, a long, bright crown.

Kid turned his freed hand in the air, looking at the hirsute joints and ruined tips flex, horny palms and knuckles folding, opening, till, tired, it began to waver, fall. Someone tugged at his belt. Someone pulled at his vest shoulder. He laughed, turning, while through some door in another room a lot of people left.

They made love.

It was energetic. It was graceful. It was intense. He was a warmth that moved around and between them. They were warmths that moved around him, between him and each other. Once, eyes closed against the damp blanket, he moved his hand across her rib cage, brushing beneath her breasts with the knuckle of his thumb (she caught her breath…) till he reached her arm (…then let it out) and followed her arm to where her elbow bent on De

After moments, his hand came away, against the embankment of her hip, crossed it. He pressed his fingertips in the hair over her pubic bone, slid them down to cup, to press in. First one, then the other, he touched their genitals. Finally he pushed himself to his knees, put one knee across them, watched them watch him, blinked. Sweat dribbled his cheek. A drop caught in his eyelash and shook. He bent his head.

Is it only an hour, he wondered, that encompassed three people’s four orgasms? Now I know why, though foreplay can be delineated in all its fascinating and psychotropic detail, a poet must use asterisks or blank paper for orgasmic mechanics that satisfying: they open to something so wide you can now understand why, when sex is that good, you may say, “The sex is not the most important part,” and feel these words analog some shadow of truth.

Then he remembered, amidst his auto-pontifications, there were two other people who would have to agree with him before he could even suspect such meanderings correct. Gri

He wondered, if they woke, would they think he had gone to the bathroom.

In the doorway, he pulled on his pants, put on his vest. There was a cold line against his chest…The pen. The chain around him was hot. He ran his fingertips along it, concerned and trying to recall why.

In the strangely quiet hall, he went to the porch door, opened it. And squinted. Gold trapezoids lay high up the lapped-plank wall. His moist skin was slathered with bronze. Each hair on his forearm glowed amber.

He heard his own loud breath; he closed his mouth.

Looking down at his chest, before his vision blurred with tears, he saw that one prism had laid out on his skin a tiny chain of color.

The house was perfectly silent behind him.

He rubbed his eyes, shook his head.