Dhalgren

“Go on,” I said. “You’ve got it too simple. But go on.”

His jaw moved a few times, but he didn’t speak.

“How come you don’t come down to see us?” I asked. “You get hungry, come on down to the nest. Tak’ll bring you there if you ask him. Left over flower-power, in all this pollution, was never my thing either.” I was wondering about him and the department store people but I didn’t say anything.

“Well, you guys…” Jack turned a little from side to side. (Thinking: His palms are now glued to the wood, but he doesn’t want to be noticed trying to tug them loose.) “You guys…I just don’t know. All you got down there is niggers anyway, don’t you? After what I done—what they said I done, what’s a bunch of bad niggers go

I don’t remember ever getting corrected in high school or college for writing who instead of whom. But except to be fu

People talkin’ about me, about what I done, that day when the sky was it across with that fu

“That depends,” I said. “Did you check it out before or after he got shot?”

Something happened on Jack’s unshaven face: the skin between his eyebrows wrinkled, the skin below his jaw slackened. Something happened behind it too. “Oh God,” he said as flatly as, once, I heard a man say “elevator.” “Oh God…” He turned back to the bar. “They all want it to be so bad, they go

“I know,” I told him.

“What can I do? I don’t know what to do.”

“You have to know who you are,” I said. “No matter what they say.”

He didn’t look at me. “You know who you are?”

After a second I said: “About two thirds of it; so I guess at least I’m on my way. Maybe I’m pretty lucky.” I finished my beer. “You come down to the nest. Whenever you want. Just don’t bring your gun.”

“I wish,” Jack said after a few seconds, “I could just get me some kind of job. A job where I could make some good money. Then I could get me a girlfriend; then I could buy my own drinks. I don’t like to sit in a bar and hustle nice guys for drinks.”

“When I first got to town,” I told him, “I had a job, moving furniture. Five bucks an hour. You’d’ve dug it. It was made for you.”

But he was looking at the dollar bill.

Since the frustration was making me mean, I decided it was time to go. I stepped from the bar.

“Hey, Kid?”

“What?”

“Ain’t you go

I thought a second. “Why don’t you keep it?”

“Aw, no, man—Naw, I don’t like to take no hand-outs. I need a job; make some good money; pay my own way.”

“You take this hand-out,” I said. “You need it.”

“Well, thanks, man…?” His finger, holding the paper to the counter, slid it back. “Thanks a lot! I’m good for it, too. You’ll get it back, once I get some money. You’re a pretty nice guy.”

Comments anyway: I want to help. And feel help would be impossible. Almost. Which is simply almost forgetting how much help I’ve had.

I hope he comes to the nest.

Off his head about everything else, he’s right on about the pussy. Despite George, and a city consecrated by twin moons, I know there must be some greater, female deity (for whom George is only consort), a sin yet to name her (as that sun is never named); we have all glimpsed her, sulking in the forest of her knowledge—every tree a tree of that knowledge—and there is nothing but to praise

This afternoon Lady of Spain and Filament staggered through the front door in volcanic laughter, lurched up the hall supporting each other—

“Hey,” I said. “What happened with you?”

Filament faced me, pursed her lips, inflated her cheeks, widened her eyes, and rattled her chains before her breasts, miming something I did not understand. Her cheeks exploded with more laughter. Lady of Spain, dragging Filament’s arm, hauled her away.

Dollar pushed around me, gri

Filament turned and repeated the mime.

Dollar—I’m not sure it meant more to him than it did to me—crashed back against the wall, holding his stomach and howling: “Oh, wow…! You mean…? Really…? Wow…!” and followed them up the hall, his laugh shriller than either of theirs.

Then Tarzan stepped in from the service porch and said: “Look, ladies, people are sleeping in the back room, huh?” There are twelve tones of voice in which you can say that: three of them would have gotten him an apology with muffled giggles. He chose, at random, from the other nine.

Sex between nest members is rare enough—I can think of six, no seven exceptions, including me and De