From White Harlem
I look down the street warily. Every man is suspect. One approaches me even now. Leather jacket. Shades. He stops, still too far away to see well. He takes something from his pocket. A gun! He cleans his glasses against the light of a streetlamp. I relax a little. What if he is polishing his gun! Behind him comes a smaller man. What’s he up to! You had to suspect strangers in the city. They could be murderers ... thieves ... sportscoats.
Invocation
I’m about to spit up all the bile that has been accumulating in me since coming to New York City. I’m bloated with the yellow viscous matter, my organs are swimming in the stuff like a dead virgin pig in the hot afternoon sun. The sun of my contempt. I don’t blame anyone else for my faults—I know them too well!
I thoroughly intended to love New York for its flaws, as all must. The “greatest city in the world” is no place for the half-hearted or weak-willed. I found that out quickly enough. I actually enjoyed this aspect of it. Developing a thick scab of insensitivity suited me, made me diamond hard. Ready to be cracked.
I
Absurdist Fuselage
Mid-June 1981, NYC. Calm. A baby cries. Gargoyles laugh across the street. Faint breeze. Traffic is picking up on Broadway. Not along this street, though. Street lights go out. Vertigo. Young dude pushing out cartloads of garbage, stacking it against the building.
Things will be fine as long as I don’t hold their humanness against them.
II
Waiting Mantra
(For La Maga)
Been on a string four hours
Third beer & counting
If you don’t want to see me
Why don’t you say so?
La Maga likes to make new friends. Her old ones ... well they could be a nuisance. Sometimes they were useful, if she needed help moving, or a quick loan but most of the time she just wanted them to leave her alone.
I felt affection for her. Why should I hide it? I didn’t take it for granted. I didn’t expect more. Didn’t ask for more. Didn’t expect her to wake up one day and be in love with me. Yet it disturbed her. A kiss on the cheek, a hug ... she ducked. A firm handclasp and affectionate glance she could handle. What was she afraid of?
(There are all sorts of nasty things in this hairball chest.)
III
Titmouse
New York is a humorous place. Every minute there seems to be something new to laugh about, whether it be a covey of toy poodles on leashes or an expensively dressed lady in high heels trying to get her Doberman to shit into a business envelope she’s holding under its straining anus.
Or amaze. I saw a rainstorm hit the World Trade Center as I stood in the center of Greenwich Village about a mile away. The wind was gusting and people were running like motherfuckers because it looked like it was going to come off that giant building and eat us. It wasn’t a bad storm. Seeing it vertically was what was shocking.
IV
La Maga and I are of opposite personalities. She expresses everything, even if it is stupid or bigoted, dangerous or insulting. She has her secret knowledge, of course.
I have a willful personality expressed in the passive manner, stubborn mule sides, refuses to budge. I express very little of my emotion except when passionate. Passion is the only thing that will budge me. Pent up rage and frustration all swallowed up. I sit in coffeeshops like Ronald McBoingBoing.
PARANOID. Newsweek says the notebook found in his possession contained several references to his being in Newsweek stories. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR! Says Arnaud de Bourchgrave.
Pecka Pecka, awl, Pecka Pecka!!
V
I’m sizzling on the spit already. My one known path out of here closed off.
Our natural instinct is to kill.
This is one of the factors that make modern life so hard. We repress the naked desire and kill in other ways (backstabbing, sports, business, rock music, professional criticism and the like). War used to fill the gap, allowing young men to let the red blood flow but modern war means annihilation. We clench our bowels and sit growling at one another.
Some kill and the rest of us fear them. We are in awe—to take a life. What that means. Like some sort of priest passing out communion wafers. Dirt, sin, death, sleaze. Like cigarette butts in urine. Like a cock spurting aimlessly at random over some long lost field of ice. What can it be? Death, bloody death of the whole human race.
Do you know what I’m talking about? No?
It figures.
VI
Going out today I found the King of Spades. He looks sad. One face is scratched off. No can tell what it means but I better keep my eyes open.
Hot day, strong breeze, air brilliant with pollutants.
La Maga was sick with a migraine headache and asked me to come help her. For two days I took care of her. I changed the washcloth to cool her forehead, stumbling from lack of sleep. I cooked her food and served it to her and didn’t mind when she wouldn’t let me have any for myself. Not even a lousy potato. I went out on the weird streets of St. Mark’s to buy her ice cream. I walked her to the doctor. I cared for her. A regular fucking prince. I loved it. The second night I massaged her hands and arms while we watched TV. She was getting better and we laughed. I held her in my arms.
The next day she was well enough to start bitching at me. I was eating too much of her food. (I’d dared to make myself a half a sandwich.) We argued about ridiculous things. I guess we’d been together too long. She talked about seeing Howard, looking at me with steady defiant gaze. I didn’t remember making any claims. Buy your curio and get out, I thought. She thanked me as I left but there was none of the warmth of our domestic scene of the previous evening. My motives were pure. I’d be lying to deny that I felt let down by the brusqueness of my dismissal. It was obvious that she had goals that simply didn’t include me.
Would she do the same for me? I have to doubt it. She uses me as her psychic shield.
VII
When you’re in a place where you know you no longer can be. When every day is pain. When you have become stagnant creatively. When love is no longer possible. When you have failed for the hundredth time. How can people continue to believe in you? How can you believe in yourself? Without self-pity I can say that my life is hell and continues to be. I don’t want pity. I don’t want a cure, I don’t want an answer. I want love and the peace to work. I don’t want to deal with irate sonovabitches on the street. I used to have charity, although not very much, I used to enjoy people. Now all I want is to see them frozen in space and time until I’ve passed through. They can continue to exist without me. Every contact with a human being is painful. My paranoia pushes me close to violence. I survive by continuing blindly, a Pontiac in an acid rain. I hate this place yet I know the real problem is inside me.
VIII
Blasphemy
K: Are there nuns anymore?
W: Of course. They’re getting raped and murdered in El Salvador.
K: Those weren’t nuns, they were communists ... and lesbians.
W: No. They were Jesus’s wives. The wives of Xhrist. You don’t fuck with Xhrist’s harem.
A moment of silence.
W: Of course Jesus doesn’t fuck them ... Why should He when He has His Mother?
God enjoys blasphemy. He blasphemes against the human race every day. Cancer to eat us up; love without hope, nasty twists of fate. I’m not saying that we deserve any better, just that God blasphemes, too, against us His little children.
A ray of sunlight strikes my face as I write this last line.
IX
This story begins with a man following his wine bottle up the street. Now, this isn’t as mysterious as it might seem. Indeed, the wine bottle, green, cheap, was in his hand. I say he was following it because he held it in front of him, like Yorick’s skull, as he staggered, all fetid and rotten, behind it.
“Yoke him,” I think as I sit in this here coffeeshop drinking espresso with the last 5 dollars in my pocket (& this borrowed),serenely writing in my notebook about the wino and his bottle and drawing the obvious parallel between his madness and mine.
My wine is this ridiculous muse, intoxicating and corrupting, bearer of false dreams.
X
An Interview
A: Well, for one thing I can’t read book reviews anymore because I’m afraid of seeing my ideas already there ... and because I know Jesus is trying to destroy me. Or maybe it’s Yahweh trying to drive me to Jesus. Each day is too cannily designed to destroy my equilibrium to be anything but the work of a malignant enemy.
Q: That’s quite egocentric, don’t you think? To presume that you’re the center of God’s attention?
A: Well, that’s why God is great, He torments everyone at once. It’s not only me.
Q: People are starving, being blown to bits, tortured by their loved ones ...
A: I’m tortured on the inside. Hey, you think God’s such a friendly fellow?
Q: That’s an old question that every philosopher has tried to deal with, the presence of evil. Better men than you, I might add.
A: No doubt, but they still got their asses kicked. I’m just tired of being worked over all the time.
XI
The Editor
He pointed to the passage like an adult trying to show an incredibly dull child for the fourteenth time the simple truth of the matter.
“What’s the point of this?”
“What?”
“'He slips and falls.’ Why does he slip and fall? It doesn’t advance the plot. Nothing becomes of it...”
“There’s water on the floor,” Marvin leans forward to point out the words: `... there was water on the floor.’ “What can I tell ya?” Marvin shrugged. “He slipped and fell in some water. He wasn’t hurt. What ‘a ya want me to do, hurt him? You want me to break my main man’s arm just to please you? How’s he gonna wrestle a Samurai like that?”
The name of his book?—I’m an Asshole and so are You
XII
The Story of the Last Hundred Years
His lower back ached.
His ear hurt where the frame of his glasses rested.
Dried sweat on his right lens disturbed his vision.
His right hand seemed to lose some feeling.
A spot in the upper third of his ass crack itched.
His crossed leg began falling asleep.
His left thumb tingled.
He prepared to write.
His left eyebrow itched.
A hair fell into his eye.
He looked at the article to be read in panic.
Thought of a humiliating experience in journalism class, fifteen years before.
Hated himself.
Last night.
Regained control.
Scratched his neck realizing that he hadn’t shaved.
A deeper part of his ass itched.
His shoulder itched.
His forehead itched.
His inner elbow itched.
His mouth tasted foul reminding him that he still needed to shave and brush his teeth.
Each day revolved quickly yet he did nothing.
Attacked by the memory of a past lover.
XIII
I call La Maga to congratulate her upon her birthday. She doesn’t recognize my voice, asks me who I am. There’s been a misunderstanding of late. She’s been avoiding me. A relationship that I’d hoped to strengthen has withered away.
We feel each other out carefully, maintaining a jovial tone while something deeper eats away, at least in me. She must know what has happened. A drifting away. A re-birth of her identity, of her hopes, of her spontaneity. Something she and I lost a longtime ago in a look exchanged on the Epiphany, when I waved bye-bye to her at the door as she left the party with the nice man who’d offered her a ride home—the long way around.
We spoke of her, mostly, as always. I interjected a few personal notes of despair and one upsmanship but she insisted on talking about herself.
I don’t begrudge her; the change brings her closer to the old La Maga. The one I love.
I feel betrayed. By God. By fate. My myself. By her.
So, her life is wonderful right now. She’s signed up for a filmmaking course at NYU. When I enthusiastically offer to help she swats me carelessly. I curse my lapse of face.
I much want not to be uncivil.
She wants to hang up early in the conversation but we get diverted onto Isherwood.
She becomes enthused as a spark glows faintly between us. Less restrained she forgets the distance I can’t forget.
But I am civil. I don’t forget my basic sympathetic feelings for her.
Then I reach my limit. Fortunately there is a junction for a quick exit and I take it. Unfortunately La Maga wants to go for all the bananas and starts to explain why she’s been so quirky of late.
I know why. To discuss it would only cause an argument.
We should have argued. I’m exhausted and can’t absolve her. I whimsically compare her to a slug. Whimsy being something she taught me. This statement shocks her but I am out of my head and not responsible.
The truth is she has abandoned me.
XIV
Thoughts Overheard of a Woman Looking Back at Me
Man
Staring with lifeless eyes
I’m gonna kill you
Piss on your grave
I’m gonna ...
Smoke this cigarette
XV
Park Slope/Park East
I feel like a pendulum swinging between three boroughs. I live in Brooklyn, work in Manhattan, and visit Toinette in the Bronx. Mama Pro’s Delicatessen is the bottom of the swing.
Boro Hall.
Stuck on those long subway lines, stuck in a room full of fuckers I don’t even want to share the planet with much less be crammed flesh to flesh with in a steamy, jolting subway car. A car full of assholes. I try to imagine this literally. Palpitating, farting, making sucking noises.
Better not laugh. Some sucker will notice and make fun of the crazy white boy.
—Call me crazy? Well, fuck you!
Yeah, then he’s got to get serious with you, too.
“No motherfucker tells me to fuck off! You got that, boy? I’ll kill you, you fuck with me! You got that? I’ll kill you!”
Yeah, yeah, is it my fault?
You wanna say, “Fuck you, sumnabitch, I ain’t taking shit off you, neither!”
But you don’t. What if he’s a psycho killer? What if he’s already been pushed so far in a corner that all he has left is the power of life and death? “Nobody fucks with me, man!”
Death. Doom. Destruction.
XVI
“Anarchy? No,” he cocked his head. “I don’t want power to be in the hands of the violent as it would in anarchy, you’d have chieftains ... but it’s the violent that rule now. Look at it. Look at the ’60s. You hear a lot about the violent society—and it is—on every level. Look at it. How many Black Panthers were killed by the police? About one third. Would they do it again? You don’t have to ask. How many liberals were assassinated? Think about it. How many intellectuals discredited? Hmmm? You think it was an accident? No way, baby, no way. ‘The American assassin is a loner, a sexual twist, someone uncertain about reality, identifying with famous people, killing to be one with the symbol.’ Could be, ace, if you want to buy that story, but think about it because the story could be different.
“You know the one about the spy who didn’t know he was a spy? The assassin who didn’t know he was an assassin? One day an idea pops into his head from nowhere. He doesn’t know where it came from. Years before he was in the army or maybe working for Motorola. He had the usual teenage fixation on the Beatles. He was sick for a couple of weeks. Bad. ‘Don’t remember a thing about it, said I ran a temperature of 105. Should be dead.’ Gets the shakes and beats his wife. John Lennon’s in the papers again. Think maybe I should go and kill him. Why not kill Reagan, too, after being put on the scent by a twelve year old nymphet?’ Click, boing! There’s the signal. The Winston Lights ad in the hands of his press agent.’ Boom! Screech! President be shot but not for long because there is always someone around to take his place. ”No, I don’t believe in hurting individuals but I believe in fucking over institutions in any way I can.”
XVII
El Diablo
I was very jumpy. There had been the usual Christmas rash of murders in NYC so I decided it was safer to stay in the neighborhood. There were no pick-ups at the West End so I drank a few brew and watched a young stud in black muscle t-shirt playing pinball. Every time he lost the ball he’d whirl completely around while giving the machine a vicious kick. I expected someone to ask him to calm down but no one did. When he’d finished he put on a Cheap Trick jacket to tend the bar.
I took a walk through campus and back, dreaming of my future.
Returning to the bar I saw Fromage. He was sitting with Julie, the girlfriend of one of our co-workers. She was a very sharp woman who pored herself into tight red pants to burn down the city. She was also very drunk. A friend of hers had been murdered a block away just last night. He was walking a young woman home after work when they’d been surprised by a bandit. He courageously pushed her into building before turning to the robber. It was the last time she’d see him alive.
I bought Julie a beer. Fromage was beside himself. Her gloom was depressing him. He was pissed because she owed him money from a wild night they’d shared recently and now she wouldn’t pay. Billy Joel’s Only a Woman played on the jukebox.
“This is my song.” She held my hand while singing the lyrics, gesturing with her long red nails.
When she was finished she hugged me, kissing me while saying, “I love you, baby.”
I returned the compliment wondering where this was leading.
She demanded I play the song again so I took my boner to the jukebox and tried to calm down while punching a couple of songs of my own (If You See Her Say Hello; I’m One). Luckily, before her song could play again she wanted to leave. She demanded we go to Fromage’s apartment. Fromage felt very put upon. He didn’t want any more of nonsense and tried to talk her out of it. I remained noncommittal. Fromage asked me to come along to help babysit her. He thanked me but I would have thanked him.
Julie was a fiery Italian Catholic from Cape Cod. She kept her reserve except when drunk. Then the whole mountainside fell down.
At his apartment she demanded to hear a particular song. Once more. Then again. Finally ignoring her Fromage put on a Supremes record. She wanted to dance. Fromage refused so I was enlisted. We gyrated lasciviously, crotch to crotch, ass to ass, down and dirty, hot lava in a molten stream. Fromage didn’t hesitate, when he got the chance, to point out that her boyfriend had a key to the apartment if he felt like looking for her. He was known for violent temper.
I hadn’t kissed a woman in over six months and it showed. She rubbed me with every part of her body. Fromage watched the ceiling with a look of disgust on his face although he was probably just bored. “Give the poor boy a rest,” he said. Then left the room.
Ain’t life a funny thing? A man had to be killed before I could have what love and devotion could never win. She never gave me the time of day before that or after yet our brief moment together was enough to affirm life for each of us. A delicate thing. Surprise. Action.
XVIII
The Turtle Dance
That day I left on the train for Washington DC to visit my old friend Rodan and his wife Georgia Tech. I had taken the poison, now to administer the bullet.
As the train slid through New Jersey I thought of Marvin Totallion. They called him “Blue Boots” at work because he’d spray-painted his shoes aquamarine. He’d shaved his head, leaving only an aesthetic fringe, like a gaunt St. Jocobo, the kissing saint. He spoke in short, twisted bursts of perverse humor, laughing by pointing his face at the ceiling so you could watch his throat muscles work. He was lean, mean, and sarcastic.
One night we went back to his place at 108th and Amsterdam, past a Catholic church where there was a small statue of the Virgin Mary. The ledge outside his window was stained with brown spots. He pointed that out. We drank Dos Equis, smoked hooter, and expounded on things as young men will.
He showed me a piece of his artwork, a hunk of insulation torn from a burned supermarket. It looked like a stone slab but was in fact very light. He had spraypainted red and black crisscrossing lines across its dun surface.
Marvin related a vision he’d had late one night. Being unable to pay the electric bill he’d been reading by candlelight. The book was Raymond Roussell’s Impressions of Africa. He became aware of movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked up the brown spots that his landlord had dripped onto the stone ledge while painting the window frame had come alive.
They had become turtles, crowding around him, swaying rhythmically on their hind legs in a turtle dance. The next morning he found himself lying in the middle of the room on his back. He was wearing his coat, the candles were burned out, the brown spots had returned to their places in the dappled sunlight.
The train continues through the afternoon haze into Baltimore where La Maga was born.
Literature for the Aged
