Dhalgren

“Thank you, thank you. A million times, thank you. I’ve got to run along to greet my audience with—” Bu

California and Revelation had stopped to stare. Lady of Spain came out of the front room behind them, leaned on their shoulders, and gri

Bu

Pondering, Kid went back to the loft.

Seated Raven had a loop of wire and two screws in his mouth. “Who was that?” he asked, voice mangled by metal.

Kid just laughed and climbed up the post. “God damn,” he said. “Couldn’t you wait for five minutes to get started?”

De

“We haven’t started very seriously,” Lanya said around De

“Yeah?” Kid climbed up and pushed his hand between their hips (De

They made love, breathing softly with wide mouths. For a while, with his belt and pants open, Kid refused to take his pants off—

(“I’m sorry, Lady, you can’t go up there. Kid’s busy.”

(“He ballin’?”

(“Yeah. Come back later.”)

—but after a while they tickled him and, while he lay laughing, pulled them down. Huddled with their heads together, De

“Marvelous,” Lanya said and buried her laughter on Kid’s shoulder.

“Sure,” Kid said. “If you want. Sure.”

But, with knees uncomfortably wide, elbows bent, and the boy’s dry back brushing his belly, Kid’s penis, pulling along the flexing crevice, lay limp. He started to say something, thought better, and kissed De

Lanya opened her eyes and, through her catching and catching breath, frowned. She worked one hand free, and licked and licked her fingers. Then she reached around De

“I like that…” De

“It’s pretty good…” Kid got out, shifted his weight, and decided that Lanya had the right idea: Talking was silly. He didn’t come in De

They lay on their sides, Lanya sandwiched between.

“I can feel him,” De

“So,” she whispered, “can I,” and Shhhhhed him. Both Kid’s hands were around her chest. Someone held his thumb. He thought it was her because she always used to, but it was De

He woke, suddenly and fully. They were both still. His cock was erect; but as he raised his head to look down at himself, he felt it soften. He had rolled slightly to the side. His penis lowered toward Lanya’s thigh.

It is not touching her, he thought.

Then, the slightest warmth. And pressure.

It is touching her.

Eyes wide, he rolled back, trying to understand by blunt reason that terrifying and marvelous transition.

I am limited, finite, and fixed. I am in terror of the infinity before me, having come through the one behind bringing no knowledge I can take on. I commend myself up to what is greater than I, and try to be good. That is wrestling with what I have been given. Do I rage at what I have not? (Is infinity some illusion generated by the way in which time is perceived?) I try to end this pride and rage and commend myself to what is there, instead of illusion. But the veil is the juncture of the perceived and perception. And what in life can rip that? Is the only prayer, then, to live steadily and dully, doing and doubting what the mind demands? I am limited, finite, and fixed. I rage for reasons, cry for pity. Do with me what way you will.

5

He woke…

As Kid sat, De

Kid’s side cooled.

He thought of her side cooling.

He watched De

He pushed his feet out the cuffs, got his boot, his vest, his chains, and swung around to the post and climbed down. Raven was gone.

He noticed the silence just as it ended with voices in the other rooms. He could not decide whether it had been a few coincident seconds, or a protracted hush, begun before his waking, ending. Restless, he walked into the hall.

And recognized her blue sweatshirt as she turned into the service porch. When he reached the door, she was going down the steps into the yard. He followed.

Halfway into evening, the sky above the littered and trampled dirt was without feature.

Angel, Filament, and Thruppence, under Copperhead’s supervision, were trying to start a fire.

Raven, Spider, D-t, and Jack the Ripper, with Tarzan the one white among them, sat on crates or stood at the back of the yard, passing two gallon jugs, both half empty, and arguing.

She looked up, saw him at the head of the steps, and (he thought) started. “Hi,” she said with a very puzzled look and brushed a feathering of hair back from her face.

“Hey.” He came down the steps.

She looked at his foot.

It had been a long time since he had even been around anyone who noticed his half-shod eccentricity. He thought about the coming party, found his mind rummaging again through Bu

She looked more uncomfortable. “I just wanted to come over and say hello to some of the guys,” she explained. “I’m living over there, now,” indicated only with a turned head that turned right back. “You know that commune you guys used to hit up in the park? Well, some of the ones from there come over to our place a lot—our house is just girls—but anybody can come and visit.”

Kid nodded.

She folded her arms across the full, faded sweatshirt. “This place is—” she looked around the rubble—“is sort of nice.”

“You come over here to see De

She looked down at her baggy elbow. “What do you want with him? I mean what are you—” she tightened her arms—“going to do with him? I want him back.”

Jack the Ripper glanced across the fireplace, glanced away. Kid thought: She has learned, when she lived like this, to hold such converse in a space full of people.

“I want him. What do you need him for?”

He thought she was going to cry, but she just coughed.

“He just isn’t that smart. Those poems you wrote? I read them, all of them. When I was in school, we read poetry and stuff and I liked it. I was the smartest person in my class—one of them, anyway. De