Dhalgren

“You look out for that crazy, pimple-faced white bastard.”

“Okay,” he repeated. “I will.” Then he ate another spoonful out of his cup.

I went onto the porch.

Risa was sitting outside on a crate under a tree, reading (Brass Orchids? I craned to see. Yeah.) Rubbing two fingers in the dusty corner of the screenless frame, I watched her, wondering if I should go down and ask her about what I was thinking, and finally decided: Fuck it, if you’re go

I went down the steps—the door clacked behind me—and crossed the yard. “Hey…” I squatted beside her, elbows and hands (wondering how can they get that dirty in just a day) a double bridge, knee to knee. “I wanted to know, I mean, about last night.”

She looked up.

“You enjoyed that, huh? I mean, you were into it. Because some of the—one of the women seemed a little upset by it. So I wanted to…know.”

She’d slapped her hand over the page like she didn’t want me to see it. Which was odd. Her heavy legs shifted. She looked uncomfortable. I waited, thinking: Well, she’s probably just not a very verbal person, or maybe she just can’t get answers to questions like that together, just like that; or maybe it’s a stupid question, or just an embarrassing one. I mean she could have always said: Look, asshole, why do you think I was doing it if I didn’t like it? Also, I felt silly pretending, even to myself, I was speaking for Lady of Spain when, of course, I was speaking for me.

“I mean,” I said, “I was curious: if you felt any one had…well, forced you?”

The top two buttons of her blue shirt were open. Her brown skin was creased between her neck and shoulder. Last night, her eyes, half closed, had seemed so large. Now, wide, they looked small. What she said (a lot more together than I’d expected) was: “That was mine,” and opened and closed her mouth to say something else, but ended up repeating: “That was all mine. You just can’t have any part of that. That’s all. It was…mine!”

“I mean—” I was surprised—but I just shrugged: “I just wanted to know if you…enjoyed it?”

She said: “You go find out yourself, if you want it!” Then, like she was jerking from an anticipated blow, her eyes slipped back to the page. Her fist slipped back to her lap.

I stood up, my mind jutting off on: Do I want to get gang-banged myself? Well, all right, consider. Considering, I walked across the yard. One: I don’t like to take it up the ass because when I’ve tried, it’s almost always hurt like hell. Maybe half a dozen times, it turned out not to be painful, just indifferent (one of these was two days ago with De

As I went up the steps, Copperhead’s head came out of the door; passed by me, went over, squatted by her (like he’d seen me do? Presumably not) and put his freckled hand on the knee of her jeans. They bent close, conferring. She said something that made him laugh. (She didn’t look too happy though.) I stepped through the screen door onto the porch, glanced out the window again.

As Copperhead stood, Lady of Spain (with Filament just behind her), passed now on the other side of the fence, stopped with three fingers hooked over the chipped boards, and asked—I could hear her chains click the wood but not really what she said—Risa something like, How was she feeling?

Risa twisted a little, frowned, and said: “My back is sore.”

Spitt was on the porch, standing by the sink, his arms folded. “She’s something, huh?” He looked resentful as hell.

I glanced out at Risa, looked back at Spitt. He was shaking his head. “How many times she get fucked? Sixty? Seventy-five times?”

“Aw, man,” I told him. “You crazy? Would you believe sixteen, seventeen? Maybe twenty?”

“Huh?”

“There were only seven, eight of us doing anything. And half of us only went once.”

Spitt thought a few seconds. “But, Jesus Christ…Look at her! She’s just sitting there, reading your damn book like that!”

“Spitt,” I said, “balling a couple of dozen people in one night is merely a prerequisite for understanding anything worth knowing.” I mean I have done that. “That’s just the way it is.”

Spitt didn’t seem to think that was fu

This is the last full balnk [blank?] page left.

Re-reading, I note the entries only ghost chronological order. Not only have I filled up all the free pages, but all the half and quarter pages left around the poems or at the ends of other entries. A few places where my handwriting is fairly large, I can write between lines. I’ll have to do a lot more writing in the margins. Maybe I’ll try writing cross-ways over pages filled up already.

Sometimes I ca

Most a

More will go, too.

I work the paper strips, edged with torn perforations, out of the [s]piral with my pencil point. And write more. Looking at the last page, I can’t tell if it’s the same one that was there a month ago or not.

was nearly too bizarre for comment:

Stopped into Teddy’s. It was so early I wondered why it was open. Maybe five people there, among them—Jack. He sat on the last stool, hands (skin grey, cuticles wedged with black, crowns scimitared with it, half moons shadowed under cracked skin) flat on the counter. His hair feathered the rim of his ear (in the twisted cartilage: white flakes. On the trumpet’s floor: dry amber) and went without change into sideburns that join around his chin in scrubby beard. His neck was grey—with one clean smear (where he’d been rubbing himself?). His lids were thickened, coral rimmed, and lashless. The short sleeve of his shirt: torn on the seam over white flesh. Above the backs of his shoes, his socks, both heels torn, curled from ridged, black callous. The fly flap on his slacks was broken. The brass teeth roller-coastered over his lap and under his belt—the buckle tongue had snapped: he’d tied the belt-ends together. “You wa

“Just ask for what you want,” I said.

The bartender glanced over, pushed a rolled sleeve higher; from under his thick fingers the tattooed leopard stalked the jungle of his arm.

“I’d buy it myself,” Jack said. “But, you know, I’ve been pretty down and out. You buy me a beer, man, and I’ll do the same for you, soon as I get myself back on my feet.”