Dhalgren

“Nightmare used to call me B.J.,” he explained. “Until I told him to cut it the fuck out. So I’m just De

“B.J.? What did that stand for?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Oh,” I said. “Hey, what is your last name, by the way?”

“For a while it was Martin. Once it was Cupp. Depended on the foster family I was staying with.”

Does the onomal malleability here make my own loss more bearable?

“Fuck off, man!” Dollar said, straightening. “It’s their nest too!” His had actually been the only laugh with edge to wake.

“Now look!” Tarzan said. “These bitches come ru

“Now you look,” Filament said. She had about as much use for Tarzan as he had for the other Caucasians in the nest. “You may be Tarzan. But I am not Jane!”

“I’d fuck him,” Lady of Spain said. Black, and an occasional partaker in long, intense conversations with Jack the Ripper, for Tarzan she had acquired something of the apes’ aura. (Because of this was she more tolerant of him?) “I really would. But Tarzan don’t fuck nothin’.” Only one of the twelve could make that come out right. She chose it with such ease, I hope he took a lesson.

“Aw, hey, now: I was just asking you to keep it a little—”

D-t, naked and half asleep, loomed in the back doorway, forearms high on the jambs, bony hips cocked askew, big hands (with their fu

“I was just telling them to be quiet so they wouldn’t wake you up!”

“Time for me to get up anyway, boy. And they did not wake me.”

“You see!” Dollar said. “You see, all your yellin’ and carryin’ on makes more noise than—”

Filament put her hand on Dollar’s chest and lowered her head. “Now you just wait too.” She looked up again. “Tarzan, you like living here, right?”

“What you mean?” Tarzan’s chin jerked belligerently.

“She asked you,” Lady of Spain said, “if you like living here. Or not.”

“Yeah,” Tarzan said. “Yeah. I like living here. What are you go

“I’m not go

“Huh?” Dollar said. “What am I—?”

“And that is: Since you like livin’ here, you better make a real effort to stay.”

D-t broke the silence with laughter. He shook in the doorway like a windy scarecrow.

“Man,” Tarzan said, “now what are you laughin’ at?”

D-t threw one arm around Tarzan’s neck—

“…Hey, man!…”

—and, still laughing, dragged him down the hall, occasionally rubbing his knuckles on Tarzan’s head, hard.

“…Hey, cut it out…hey, stop it; that hurts…damn it, nigger! Cut it out…hey, what are you…stop…!”

In the living room, D-t let Tarzan up.

“…what the fuck you doin’?” Tarzan rubbed both hands in his yellow hair.

“I’m just trying to see if your head is as hard as you keep makin’ out like it is, motherfucker! We got any coffee?”

Tarzan dropped one hand, rubbed harder with the other. “Yeah, I…I think so. Somebody made up a pail about an hour ago.” He was still confused.

In the hall, Filament and Lady of Spain walked on. Behind them Dollar said: “He don’t got no right to talk to you like that.”

“He’s got a right to talk any way he wants,” Filament said. “He’s just got to be set to listen afterward, that’s all.”

“That’s what I mean,” Dollar said; and so rarely do I agree with him about anything, I write this exception down so

idea around with me like a cyst on the tailbone for (how long is that?) and today (the known part of that) walking in the grey (grey, a grey I’m tired of noticing and noting; I’m exhausted with that grey; which is what that grey means to me) street, this memory: I was passing the table where somebody had left one of those transparent plastic glasses, three quarters full of white wine (in the back closet Raven found the saran tube full of them) with the window open behind it; the glare on the interface between plastic and wine suddenly diffracted like an oil-slick and the glass was full of color. If I moved one way or the other more than three inches, it became just greasy plastic full of urine-colored liquid. First I thought the prismatic movement would be lost as soon as I went. But for the next hour, whenever I walked through the kitchen, I could find the spot from which it looked like that again easily.

The idea stayed in my mind the same way, and I could find it just by passing near.

Writing this while taking a crap; small consolations—expected a really unhealthy turd, baloney yellow and spinach black after a node of mucus. Mercifully what came was mostly liquid and left the water too murky to examine.

I thought it would be good to try on Temple Avenue, but I couldn’t find any street with that name on the sign. So I walked down a street as wide and as clean, with gates and doors and window-glass so intact that only the pewter sky told our catastrophe. I saw a lady in a black coat and blue scarf cross at the corner; but she went into a side street; when I looked after her, she was stepping into a doorway. I walked, excited and hollow and knowing my shape—how my body moved, my head a-jog on my neck, the stagger in my one-boot walk—from the inside. Lampposts and doorways and fire hydrants came at me from the smoke—

I guess he was almost a block ahead, but for maybe a minute I wasn’t sure he was there, in the smoke. So I hurried.

He had short, black hair and wore a brown corduroy coat with a woolly collar; it was cooler than usual, but because there was no wind, I was still in my vest. His hands were in his pockets. The coat’s belt hung down on either side.

The belt was all I was staring at.

Just as I started to overtake him, I scraped my leg on some piece of crating or junk lying on the sidewalk—I never did look back at what it was. But it surprised hell out of me. I wonder now if I would have done it if that hadn’t happened: I mean, trying to ignore the surprising sting across my calf, maybe I also ignored that part of my head that would have made me just hurry on past him, reflecting on how close I had come. (Does the City’s topology control us completely?)

When I’d halved the distance, he glanced back. But kept walking. I guess he thought I was just going to walk past.

I grabbed his shoulder and spun him back against the fence bars.

“Hey…!” he said. “What’s your problem!”

I put the orchid blades right up against his throat. He flinched and looked surprised.

“Give me everything in your pockets,” I told him.

He took a breath. “You got it.” He wore glasses.

I dug into his pants pocket while he held his hands up. I brought out three dollar bills. (I think an orchid point accidentally nicked his neck and he flinched again.) “Turn around and let me check your back pockets.” He turned and I felt around under the flap of his coat until I realized his pants didn’t have back pockets. I thought I might hit him or cut him then; but I didn’t.

I backed away and he turned to look at me. His mouth was pressed together. As I stepped away, I realized his side pockets were much deeper than I’d thought: I could see the clustered circles of change outlined low in the black denim.

He glanced past one raised hand to the left.

A guy was crossing the street, watching us. But when I looked, the guy looked away.

The man made a disgusted sound, dropped his hands, and turned to go.

I gestured with the orchid and said, “Hey!”

He looked back.

“You wait here ten minutes before you move,” I said, and took another step backward. “If you call for anybody, or try to come after me, I’ll cut your throat!” I turned and sprinted up the block; glanced back once.