Dhalgren

“With so many different types, see,” D-t said, getting Lanya’s attention back, “you have to be very polite: when we live this close. And that means you don’t talk too much. You just do it when it’s around to be done and the rest of the time you talk about something else.”

Tarzan stayed in the doorway, his back to the screen, as outside now as Glass had been before.

Laughter spilled them into different subjects (food, wouldn’t you know): Thruppence said we had stuff in the cellar that we hadn’t known about till now because nobody had thought to look, till he’d gone down that morning. He took some of us out to show us. There was no real cellar door; just a trap-window, planked over, and a busted Yale lock hanging from the hasp. It let you into a damp, four-and-a-half foot dugout that went under half the house where, besides all the crates of tin cans—some with mildewed labels—was the fuse-box and the hot-water heater, which I re-lit.

Later a couple of people took baths.

I wish they’d continued the sex discussion. It hadn’t felt finished. I wondered if it was the advent of me (the Boss) or Tarzan (the Oddball) that had shifted it; or simply the balance in the cream-to-coffee ratio. Out of conceit, I decided it must have been Tarzan.

Revelation, with his ash-pale hair, his gold chains, his pink, pink skin, polarizes a black bunch when he is the only white among them the same way Lady of Spain, blacker than Spider, high-assed, with little, low tits (from jokes the others make, she’s of West Indian descent), polarizes a white group when she is the sole black: visually.

Tarzan, however, so often the only blue-eyed blond among the apes (now the official name for the sub-group of five out of the fifteen/sixteen blacks in the nest [Raven, Jack the Ripper, Thruppence, Angel, Spider]) polarizes them in a very different way. His fawning fascination, his near-belligerence, and general lack of use for anyone white makes it impossible to see him/them without a whole aura of sexual/political resonances, which they carry like their lights. (Two thoughts—First:) Even so, everyone seems more or less able to absorb the situation with tolerance and hardly a comment. (Second:) With all these whacked-out spades, there doesn’t seem to be one among them, man or woman, in a similar position with a white group (Glass, triumvirate with Spitt and Copperhead, seems a very different thing. Why?) Perhaps the nest (or the House) would be a good place for June after all—after all, I can put up with Eddy. (Or can I?)

Pretty soon it broke up around the cellar window and got back together in the yard…But we never did get back to talking about sex. Oh, well: that politeness. I guess Lanya’s right.

Third conversation started in the loft. I was on my back; Lanya was leaning on my chest, looking in my mouth while I talked about something. In the middle of a sentence, she got my mind off what I was saying, saying: “I could come from just the smell of your breath. It puffs out in a small hot cloud with each word.”

“Pretty bad, huh?”

“It’s not bad—please, don’t stop talking.”

But I couldn’t think of how to go on.

She said: “Your mouth is like a flower. Each tooth is like a daisy petal, complete with calyx: You’re getting a sort of green skin over the base of your teeth, up near the gum.”

“Beautiful,” I said. “Pretty soon I’ll be ready for Bu

“Hey.” De

I said, “Oof!” and didn’t smile.

“Smile,” De

“I wonder if it comes off.” Lanya reached up and held her hand like a claw, over my face. “Just a second,” one finger coming down.

“Cut it out—!” I turned my head.

“I was just going to scrape at it with my fingernail.”

De

“They’re rimmed with the exact color of black pearl.” Lanya put her cheek next to his. “And he’ll probably use it in one of his poems.”

“Too fancy,” I said, my hand on his. She covered mine. Then De

I said: “Get up. I want to show you something,” at which De

De

I said: “Aw, come on!”

We put on some clothes (De

Baby Adam, Priest, Devastation, Filament, the Executioner (who everybody usually calls: X-X) and Cathedral were pell-melling in and X-X told me they were really beat, had been ru

(To try for accuracy is to risk awkwardness.) To find out who I am I’ve had to give up my name and who knows what part of my life. It wasn’t a choice. But treating it like one seems the only way to keep my mind…“seems”? I am frightened because, in this City, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I can go. (To try for form is to risk pomposity.)

The trapdoor on the porch ceiling was open. De

Asked Lanya if she’d reconsidered being a scorpion instead of just a scorpion’s old lady. “Not,” she said sweetly, “on your fucking life!” And then: “No, seriously. I’ve thought about it again, and it’s just something I don’t want to do. I like staying here for extended visits. But I like living with Madame Brown.” Well, she’s been here three days straight. And yesterday De

Across the roof, Fireball—buck naked except his optic girdle—turned around and smiled, a little confused.

“Did you open the roof trap?” Lanya asked.

Filament has a blue scorpion tattooed on her shoulder she said she got before she came to Bellona. She has probably volunteered more information about her previous life than anyone around the nest (most of her life sounds very dull); but, high on tact, she also manages to remain one of the most invisible. If one were writing about the place, she’d probably be among the half dozen people most likely left out, or whose one or two outstanding traits you’d fix for decoration on another character. A girl, and white, she still has the most typical scorpion personality, almost unbelievably so. In fact, I wonder if I believe that; so this note.