bare-breasted on a turnpike, we go a hundred miles an hour:
she and I are happy: our school chums feel bad: we laugh: we
watch every particle of light: we are happy: they don’t forgive
us.
We get the men: we make love: they watch: they pay. Or we
promise, we touch, we flirt, they pay.
The hotel tries twice to throw us out for prostitution. I am
indignant beyond belief. I scream at them about the First
Amendment and the Bill of Rights. They desist, confused. What
do whores know about the Bill of Rights?
We hustle day and night: we are busy: we have hit our stride:
we get money: we hold each other tight and we kiss and we
fuck and the man watches and sometimes he fucks one or the
other of us if there is no way around it and the man pays. We
anticipate them. We know them better than they know themselves. N bleeds.
She goes to the hospital. Her cervix is cauterized.
The time is running out in the hotel. Our school chum won’t
pay for it anymore. There is not enough guilt in the world to
make her pay. N bleeds. She has acute pain in her side. She
needs quiet, a place to rest. We need a place to live. We go to
Staten Island to look for a house. The film is not yet finished.
We find a house. It is raining. There are hundreds of steps up
to it. It is up a steep hill. N is hurting very bad in her side. We
want to move there, we have the money in hand, but how will
we get more for next month and the month after? She is very
sick. We have to leave the hotel. I take her to the Lower East
Side apartment of a woman who has always wanted her. I
deliver her. The building is a piss-hole, a stagnant sewer. The
apartment is five flights up. In the hall there are caverns in the
wall, the plaster broken away, with screen and wire covering
them. Behind the screen and wire, as if they are built into the
wall and caged there on display, are live rats, big ones, almost
hissing, fierce. N is in acute pain. N bleeds. I take the money I
need. I leave her there. I arrange to have pills waiting for me in
Europe. The film isn’t finished. N can’t stand up. I leave her
there on a soiled mattress, curled up in pain. I make her
promise to finish the film. I don’t think about her again. I
don’t feel anything. I take the money and leave on a boat for
Europe. The great thing is to be saturated with something—
that is, in one way or another, with life; or is it?
78
I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that
nothing good can come of it: I mean the
physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,
youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than
cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an
endless abundance of it, with no limits: and
I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.
Pasolini
*
I can’t remember much of what anything was like, only how
it started. No light, no weather. From now on everything is
in a room somewhere in Europe, a room. A series of rooms,
a series of cities: cold, ancient cities: Northern European
cities: gray, with old light: somber but the gray dances: old
beauty, muted grandeur, monumental grace. Rembrandt,
Breughel. Mid-European and Northern winters, light. Old
cruelties, not nouveau.
He was impotent and wanted to die.
On the surface he was a clown. He had the face of a great
comic actor. It moved in parts, in sections, the scalp in one
direction, the nose forward, the chin somewhere else, the
features bigger than life. A unique face, completely distinct, in
no way handsome, outside that realm of discourse altogether.
Someday he would be beautiful or ugly, depending on his life.
Now he was alternately filled with light or sadness, with great
jokes and huge gestures or his body seemingly shrivelled down
to a heap of bones by inexplicable grief, the skin around the
bones sagging loose or gone. He was a wild man: long, stringy
blond hair; afghan coat making him into some wild mountain
laugh that went the distance from deep chuckle to shrill hysteria, and back each calibrated niche of possibility, and walls shivered.
It was amidst hashish and rock ’n’ roll.
The youth gathered in huge buildings set aside for dissipation. Inside we were indulged. The huge rooms were painted garish colors. There were garish murals. Political and cultural
79
radicals were kept inside, tamed, self-important, it was the
revolution: big black balls of hashish and rock ’n’ roll.
Inside there was this figure of a man, all brassy on the outside, and inside impotent and ready to die.
I took his life in my hands to save him. I took his face in my
hands, I kissed him. I took his body to save him from despair.
A suffering man: a compassionate woman: the impersonal love
of one human for another, sex the vehicle of redemption: you
hear about it all the time. Isn’t that what we are supposed to
do?
*
It doesn’t matter where it was, but it was there, in a huge mass
of rooms painted in glaring colors: rock music blaring, often
live, old-time porno films— Santa coming down a chimney—
projected on the walls, boys throwing huge balls of hashish
across the room, playing catch. Cigarettes were rolled from
loose tobacco in papers: so was grass: so was a potent mixture
of hashish and tobacco, what I liked. I got good at it. You put
together three cigarette papers with spit and rolled a little filter
from a match cover, just a piece of it, and put down a layer of
loose tobacco, and then you heated the hash over a lit match
until it got all soft and crumbly, and then you crumbled it
between your fingers until there was a nice, thick layer of it
over the tobacco, and you sort of mixed them together gently
with your fingers, and then you rolled it up, so that it was
narrow on the end with the filter and wider at the bottom, and
with a match, usually burnt, you packed the mixture in the
papers at the bottom, and brought the papers together and
closed it up. Then you lit it and smoked. It went round and
round.
The boys had long, long hair. There were only a few junkies,
a little hard dope, not a lot of stealing, very congenial: music:
paint: philosophy. There were philosophers everywhere and
artistes. One was going to destroy the museum system by
putting his paintings out on the sidewalk free for people to see.
I met him my first afternoon in the strange new place. He was
cheerful about destroying the museum system. They were all
cheerful, these energetic talkers of revolution. One spent hours
discussing the history of failed youth movements in Europe: he
had been in them all, never aged, a foot soldier from city to
80
city in the inevitability of history. Another had M ao’s red book
and did exegesis on the text while joints were handed to him
by enthralled cadres. Another knew about the role of the
tobacco industry in upholding Western imperialism: he
denounced the smokers as political hypocrites and bourgeois
fools. Meanwhile, the music was loud, the porno movies played
on the walls as Santa fucked a blond woman in black lace, the
hash was smoked pound after pound.
The women stood out. Mostly there were men but the women
did not fade into the background. There was M, who later
became a famous dominatrix near Atlantic City. She was over six
feet tall and she wore a short leather skirt, about crotch level. Her
thighs were covered with thick scars. She had long, straight,
blonde hair. She wanted to know if I had carried guns for the
Black Panthers. Since I had been too young then, she wouldn’t
have anything to do with me. There was E, an emaciated, catty
little thief: girlfriend of a major ideologist of the counterculture
revolution, a small, wiry, cunning, nervous, bespectacled man:
she wore government surplus, guerilla style: they were arrested
for stealing money from parking meters. You can’t make a
great plan on an empty stomach, he told me. There was a
bright, beautiful woman who looked like the Dutch Boy boy,
only she lit up from inside and her smile was like sunlight. Her
boyfriend was dour, officious, a functionary in the huge,
government-run building that housed the radical youth and the
hashish, he made sure the porno movies were on the right
walls at the right times. There was Frau B, a dowager administrator, suburban, having an affair with the head honcho, an ex-colonel in an occupying army: they kept the lid on for the
government. And then I too became a fixture: the girlfriend,
then the wife. The American. The only brunette. The innocent
by virtue of Americanism. They kept Europe’s feudal sex
secrets hidden. I thought I invented everything. Smoking dope
in their great painted rooms they seemed innocent: I thought
I was the old one.
In these rooms, he looked up, his face all questioning and
tender and sad: and I kissed him.
*
Once you want to be together in Northern Europe it is the
same all over. There is nowhere to go.
81
In the South there are beaches and old ruins. Boys sneak girls
somewhere, some flat place, and other boys hide behind rocks
or pieces of ancient walls and watch. In the North it is cold.
There are the streets, too civilized for sex. There are no rooms,
no apartments, even adult men live with their parents. One is
sneaked into a tiny bedroom in the parents’ house: hands are
held over one’s mouth: no noise can be made: and sneaked out
before dawn, giggling silently and left in the cold, unless one’s
lover is sentimental: then he covers you in his coat and buries
you in his arms and you wait for dawn together. In Northern
European cities, dawn comes late but parents wake up early.
The young men have no privacy: they stay strange little bad
boys who get taller and older. They get married too young.
They sneak forever.
But it doesn’t matter: where or why or how.
There were plenty before him in gray Europe. It was his
sadness: saturating his comic face, his comic stance, his great
comic stories, his extravagant gestures. It made him different:
sad: more like me, but so fragile compared to me, so unused.
When he looked up, so innocent, I must have decided. I became
his friend, thinking that he too must love life fiercely, desperately: my gift to him: it costs me nothing and there is an abundance of it, without limits: the physical facts of life. There
is not a lot I can do. I can do this.
*
Darker, grayer: no buildings filled with hash: another European
city: to get an apartment: we had spent nights together out on
the street, in the rain, in the cold, he was my friend, I had
nowhere to go and he had nowhere to take me so he stayed
with me in the wet nights, bitter cold. So we went somewhere
else, Northern, gray, he came a few days a week, every week,
he taught me how to cook, he was my friend. There was a big
bed, one room, a huge skylight in the middle of the room, one
large table in a corner: I put the bed under the skylight, water
condenses and drips on it, but there I teach him, slowly. I have
understood. He has too much respect for women. I teach him
disrespect, systematically. I teach him how to tie knots, how to
use rope, scarves, how to bite breasts: I teach him not to be
afraid: of causing pain. It goes slowly. I teach him step by step.
I invent sex therapy in this one room somewhere in the middle
82
of Europe. I am an American innocent, in my fashion. I forbid
intercourse. I teach him how to play games. You be this and I
will be that. Rape, virgin, Queen Victoria. The games go on
and on. There are some we do over and over. I teach him to
penetrate with his fingers, not to be afraid of causing pain. I
fellate him. I teach him not to worry about erection. I tie him
up. Dungeon, brothel, little girl, da-da. I ask him what he
wants to do and we do it. I teach him not to be afraid of
causing pain. Not to be afraid of hurting me. I am the one
there: don’t be afraid of hurting me, see, this is how. I teach
him not to be afraid of piss and shit, human dirt. I teach him
everything about his body, I penetrate him, I scratch, I bite, I
tie him up, I hit him with my hand open, with my fist, with
belts: he gets hard. He does each thing back to me. He is
nearly hard. Water condenses on the skylight and falls. We
move the bed. I am disappointed. I liked the extravagance. I
do everything I can think of to help him: impotent and suicidal:
I am saving his life. We are on an island, isolated in this European city. There is us. There is the bed. He is nearly hard. We move back to his city, where he is from, into a room that is
ours. He needs some act, some gesture, some event to give him
the final confidence: to get really hard. Reader, I married him.
*
I love life so fiercely, so desperately: there is an endless
abundance of it, with no limits: it costs me nothing.
Reader, I married him.
*
I thought I could always leave if I didn’t like it. I had the
ultimate belief in my own ability to walk away. I thought it
would show him I believed in him. It did. Reader, he got hard.
*
He became a husband, like anyone else, normal. He got hard,
he fucked, it spilled over, it was frenzy, I ended up cowering,
caged, catatonic. How it will end finally, I don’t know. I
wanted to help: but this was a hurricane of hate and rage let
loose: I wanted to help: I saved him: not impotent, not suicidal,
he beat me until I was a heap of collapsed bone, comatose,
torn, bleeding, bruised so bad, so hard: how it will end, I don’t
know.
*
83
Oh, it was a small small room with no windows: he had it
painted dark blue: he didn’t let me sleep: he never let me sleep:
he beat me and he fucked me: I fought back and I tried to run
&nbs
p; away. The rest is unspeakable. He got hard and fucked easy
now. Reader, I had married him. He rolled on top and he
fucked: it costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance
of it: I love life so fiercely, so desperately: how it will end, I
don’t know.
*
Reader, I saved him: my husband. He can fuck now. He can
pulverize human bones.
*
I got away. How it will end, I don’t know.
84
I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that
nothing good can come of it: I mean the
physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,
youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than
cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an
endless abundance of it, with no limits: and
I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.
Pasolini
*
Sad boy. Sex is so easy. I can open my legs and save you. It is
so little for me to do. I know so much.
Sad boy. Desperate child. Gentle soul. Too much respect.
Afraid to violate. But sex is violation. I read it in books. I
learned it somewhere. I show you how: and I devour, devour.
There is an endless abundance of it, with no limits. I am a
woman. This is what I was born to give. How it will end, I
don’t know.
*
Then I can’t understand anymore. This isn’t what I meant. I
am so hurt, the cuts, the sores, the bleeding, let me sleep. You
are hard now, my husband: let me sleep: I beg: an hour, a
minute. I love life so fiercely, so desperately: I mean the physical facts of life: I want to make you happy: I don’t want to die: the fists pounding, wild, enraged: sex was always so easy: it
costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance of it, with
no limits: and I didn’t want you to suffer, to die. How it will
end now, I don’t know.
*
The bed: I show you everything: every wild game: soon we
drop the scripts and just tie the knots: how to penetrate: how
to move, when, even why: every nerve: pretending to pretend
so it isn’t real: pretending to pretend but since we do what we
pretend in what sense are we pretending? You pretend to tie
me up, but you tie me up. I am tired of it now. I do what you