a fast, gorgeous trip out o f hell, a hundred-mile-an-hour ride
on a different road in the opposite direction, it’s when you see
an attitude that sets you free, the way she moves breaks you
out, or you touch her shoulder and exhilaration shoots
through you like a needle would do hanging from your vein if
it’s got something good in it; it’s a gold rush; your life’s telling
you that if you’re between her legs you’re free— free’s not
peaceful and not always kind, it’s fast, a shooting star you ride,
i f you’re stupid it shakes you loose and hurls you somewhere
in the sky, no gravity, no fall, just eternal drift to nowhere out
past up and down. You can live forever on the curve o f her
hip, attached there in sweat and desire taking the full measure
o f your own human sorrow; you can have this tearing sorrow
with your face pushing on the inside o f her thigh; you can have
her lips on you, her hands pushing on you as if you’re marble
she’s turning into clay, an electricity running all over you
carried in saliva and spit, you’re cosseted in electric shock,
peeing, your hair standing up on end, muscles stretched, lit
up; there’s her around you and in you everywhere, the
rhythm o f your dance and at the same time she’s like the
placenta, you breathe in her, surrounded; it’s something men
don’t know or they’d do it, they could do it, but instead they
want this push, shove, whatever it is they’re doing for
whatever reason, it’s an ignorant meanness, but with a woman
you ’re whole and you’re free, it ain’t pieces o f you flying
around like shit, it ain’t being used up, you got scars bigger
than the freedom you get in everyday life; do it the w ay you ’re
supposed to, you got twenty-four hours a day down on your
knees sucking dick; that’s how girls do hard time. There’s not
many women around who have any freedom in them let alone
some to spare, extravagant, on you, and it’s when they’re on
you you see it best and know it’s real, now and all, there w o n ’t
be anything wilder or finer, it’s pure and true, you see it, you
chase them, they’re on you, you get enraptured in it, once you
got it on you, once you feel it m oving through you, it’s a
contagion o f wanting more than you get being pussy for the
boys, you catch it like a fever, it puts you on a slow bum with
your skin aching and you want it more than you can find it
because most women are beggars and slaves in spirit and in life
and you don’t ever give up wanting it. Otherwise you get
worn down to what they say you are, you get worn down to
pussy, bedraggled; not bewitched, bothered, bewildered; ju st
some wet, ratty, bedraggled thing, semen caked on you, his
piss running down your legs, worn out, old from what yo u ’re
sucking, I’m pretty fucking old and I have been loved by
freedom and I have loved freedom back. Did you ever have a
nightmare? Men coming in’s m y nightmare; entering; I’m in,
knock, knock. There’s writers being assholes about outlaws;
outlaw this, outlaw that, I’m bad, I’m sitting here writing m y
book and I’m bad, I’m typing and I’m bad, m y secretary’s
typing and I’m bad, I got laid, the boys say, like their novels
are letters home to mama, well, hell’s bells, the boys got laid:
more than once. It’s something to write home about, all right;
costs fifty bucks, too; they found dirty wom en they did it to,
dirty women too fucking poor to have a typewriter to stu ff up
bad boy w riter’s ass. Shit. Y ou follow his cock around the big,
bad city: N ew Y ork, Paris, Rom e— same city, same cock.
B ig, bad cock. Wiping themselves on dirty women, then
writing home to mama by w ay o f G rove Press, saying what
trash the dirty women are; how brave the bad boys are,
writing about it, doing it, putting their cocks in the big, bad,
dirty hole where all the other big, brave boys were; oh they say
dirty words about dirty women good. I read the books. I had a
typewriter but it was stolen when the men broke in. The men
my clothes, my typewriter. I wrote stories. Some were about
life on other planets; I wrote once about a wild woman on a
rock on Mars. I described the rock, the red planet, barren, and
a woman with tangled hair, big, with muscles, sort o f Ursula
Andress on a rock. I couldn’t think o f what happened though.
She was just there alone. I loved it. Never wanted it to end. I
wrote about the country a lot, pastoral stuff, peaceful, I made
up stories about the wind blowing through the trees and leaves
falling and turning red. I wrote stories about teenagers feeling
angst, not the ones I knew but regular ones with stereos. I
couldn’t think o f details though. I wrote about men and
women making love. I made it up; or took it from Nino, a boy
I knew, except I made it real nice; as he said it would be; I left
out the knife. The men writers make it as nasty as they can, it’s
like they’re using a machine gun on her; they type with their
fucking cocks— as Mailer admitted, right? Except he said
balls, always a romancer. I can’t think o f getting a new
typewriter, I need money for just staying alive, orange juice
and coffee and cigarettes and milk, vodka and pills, they’ll just
smash it or take it anyway, I have to just learn to write with a
pen and paper in handwriting so no one can steal it and so it
don’t take money. When I read the big men writers I’m them;
careening around like they do; never paying a fucking price;
days are long, their books are short compared to an hour on
the street; but if you think about a book just saying I’m a prick
and I fuck dirty girls, the books are pretty long; m y cock, m y
cock, three volumes. They should just say: I Can Fuck.
Norm an M ailer’s new novel. I Can Be Fucked. Jean Genet’s
new novel. I ' m Waiting To Be Fucked Or To Fuck, I Don't
Know. Samuel Beckett’s new novel. She Shit. Jam es Jo y c e ’s
masterpiece. Fuck Me, Fuck Her, Fuck It. The Living Theatre’s
new play. Paradise Fucked. The sequel. Mama, I Fucked a Jewish
Girl. The new Philip Roth. Mama, I Fucked a Shiksa. The new,
new Philip Roth. It was a bad day they w ouldn’t let little boys
say that word. I got to tell you, they get laid. T h e y’re up and
down these streets, taking what they want; tw o hundred
million little Henry Millers with hard pricks and a mean prose
style; Pulitzer prizewinning assholes using cash. Looking for
experience, which is what they call pussy afterward when
they’re back in their posh apartments trying to ju stify
themselves. Experience is us, the ones they stick it in.
Experience is when they put down the money, then they turn
you around like yo u ’re a chicken they’re roasting; they stick it
in any hole they can find just to try it or because they’re blind
drunk and it ain’t painted red so they can’t find
it; you get to be
lab mice for them; they stick the famous Steel Rod into any
Fleshy Hole they can find and they Ram the Rod In when they
can manage it which thank God often enough they can’t. The
prose gets real purple then. Y ou can’t put it down to
impotence though because they get laid and they had wom en
and they fucked a lot; they just never seem to get over the
miracle that it’s them in a big man’s body doing all the
damage; Look, ma, it’s me. Volum e Tw elve. They don’t act
like human beings and they’re pretty proud o f it so there’s no
point in pretending they are; though you want to— pretend.
Y o u ’d like to think they could feel something— sad; or
remorse; or something ju st simple, a minute o f recognition.
It’s interesting that yo u ’re so dangerous to them but you
fucking can’t hurt them; how can you be dangerous if you
can’t do harm; I’d like to be able to level them, but you can’t
touch them except to be fucked by them; they get to do it and
then they get to say what it is they’re doing— yo u ’re what
they’re afraid o f but the fear just keeps them coming, it doesn’t
shake them loose or get them o ff you; it’s more like the glue
that keeps them on you; sticky stuff, how afraid the pricks are.
I mean, m aybe they’re not afraid. It sounds so stupid to say
they are, so banal, like making them human anyw ay, like
giving them the insides you wish they had. So what do you
say; they’re just so fucking filled with hate they can’t do
anything else or feel anything else or write anything else? I
mean, do they ever look at the fucking moon? I think all the
sperm they’re spilling is going to have an effect; something’s
going to grow. It’s like they’re planting a whole next
generation o f themselves by sympathetic magic; not that
they’re fucking to have babies; it’s more like they’re rubbing
and heaving and pushing and banging and shoving and
ejaculating like some kind o f voodoo rite so all the sperm will
grow into more them, more boys with more books about how
they got themselves into dirt and got out alive. It’s a thrilling
story, says the dirt they got themselves into. It’s bitterness,
being their filth; they don’t even remember right, you’re not
distinct enough, an amoeba’s more distinct, more individuated; they go home and make it up after they did it for real and
suddenly they ain’t parasites, they’re heroes— big dicks in the
big night taming some rich but underneath it all street dirty
whore, some glamorous thing but underneath filth; I think
even i f you were with them all the time they wouldn’t
remember you day-to-day, it’s like being null and void and
fucked at the same time, I am fucked, therefore I am not.
M aybe I’ll write books about history— prior times, the War o f
1812; not here and now, which is a heartbreaking time, place,
situation, for someone. Y o u ’re nothing to them. I don’t think
they’re afraid. Maybe I’m afraid. The men want to come in; I
hear them outside, banging; they’re banging against the door
with metal things, probably knives; the men around here have
knives; they use knives; I’m familiar with knives; I grew up
around knives; Nino used a knife; I’m not afraid o f knives.
Fear’s a funny thing; you get fucked enough you lose it; or
most o f it; I don’t know w hy that should be per se. It’s all
callouses, not fear, a hard heart, and inside a lot o f death as if
they put it there, delivered it in. And then out o f nowhere you
ju st drown in it, it’s a million tons o f water on you. if I was
afraid o f individual things, normal things— today, tom orrow ,
w hat’s next, w h o ’s on top, what already has transpired that
you can’t quite reach down into to remember— I’d have to
surrender; but it drowns you fast, then it’s gone. I’d like to
surrender; but to whom , where, or do you just put up a white
flag and they take you to throw your body on a pile
somewhere? I don’t believe in it. I think you have to make
them come get you, you don’t volunteer, it’s a matter o f pride.
Who do you turn yourself into and on what terms— hey,
fellow, I’m done but that don’t mean you get to hurt me
more, you have to keep the"deal, I made a deal, I get not to feel
more pain, I’m finished, I’m not fighting you fucks anymore,
I’ll be dead if it’s the w ay to accomplish this transformation
from what I am into being nothing with no pain. But if you get
dead and there’s an afterlife and it’s more o f the same but
worse— I would just die from that. Y ou got all these same
mean motherfuckers around after yo u ’re dead and you got the
God who made it all still messing with you but now up
close— H e’s around. Y o u ’re listening to angels and yo u ’re
not allowed to tell God H e’s one m aggoty bastard; or yo u ’re
running around in circles in hell, imprisoned by your fatal
flaw, instead o f being here on a leash with all your flaws, none
fatal enough, making you a m aggoty piece o f meat. I want
dead to mean dead; all done; finished; quiet; insensate;
nothing; I want it to be peaceful, no me being pushed around
or pushing, I don’t want to feel the worm s crawling on me or
eating me or the cold o f the wet ground or suffocating from
being buried or smothering from being under the ground; or
being stone cold from being dead; I don’t want to feel cold; I
don’t want to be in eternal dark forever stone cold. N othing
by which I mean a pure void, true nonexistence, is different; it
isn’t filled with horror or dread or fear or punishment or pain;
it’s ju st an absence o f being, especially so you don’t have to
think or know anything or figure out how yo u ’re going to eat
or w ho’s going to be on you next. It’s not suffering. I don’t
have suffering in mind; not jo y , not pain— no highs, no lows.
Just not being; not being a citizen wandering around the
universe in a body or loose, ethereal and invisible; or just not
being a citizen here, now, under street lights, all illuminated,
the light shining down. I hate the light shining down— display
yourself, dear, show them; smile, spread your legs, make
suggestive gestures, legs wide open— there’s lots o f ways to sit
or stand with your legs wide open. Which day did God make
light? You think He had the street lights in some big
storeroom in the sky to send down to earth when women
started crawling over sidewalks like cockroaches to stay alive?
I think He did. I think it was part o f the big plan— light those
girls up, give them sallow light, covers pox marks, covers
tracks, covers bruises, good light for covering them up and
showing them at the same time, makes them look grotesque,
just inhuman enough, same species but not really, you can
stick it in but these aren’t creatures that get to come home, not
into a home, not home, not quite the same species, sallow
light, makes them green and grotesque, creatures you put it in,
not female ones o f you, even a fucking rib o f you; you got ones
in good light for that. They stick it in boys too; anything under
these lights is here to be used. Y o u ’d think they’d know boys
was real, same species, with fists that work or will someday,
but someday isn’t their problem and they like the feel that the
boy might turn mean on them— some o f them like it, the ones
that use the older ones. I read about this boy that was taken o ff
the street and the man gave him hormones to make him grow
breasts and lose his body hair or not get it, I’m not sure; it
made me really sick because the boy was nothing to him, just
some piece o f something he could mess with, remake to what
he wanted to play with, even something monstrous; I wanted
to kill the guy; and I tried to figure out how to help the kid, but
I just read it in Time or Newsweek so I wondered i f I could find
him or not. I guess it depends on how many boys there are
being fed hormones by pedophiles. Once it’s in Newsweek, I
guess there are thousands. The kid’s around here somewhere;
it said Low er East Side; I hate it, what the man did to him.
These Goddamn men would all be each other’s meat if they
weren’t the butchers. They use fucking to slice you open. It’s
like they’re hollow, there’s nothing there, except they make
big noise, this unbearable static, some screeching, high-
pitched pain, and you can’t see they’re hollow because the
noise diverts you to near madness; big lovemaker with fifty
dollars to spend, seed to spill making mimetic magic, grind,
bang, it’s a boy, a big, bad boy who writes books, big, bad
books. I see the future and it’s a bunch o f pricks making a
literature o f fucking, high art about sticking it in; I did it, ma;
she was filth and I did it. O nly yo u ’ll get a Mailer-Genet beast:
I did it, ma, I did it to her, he did it to me. The cement will
grow them; sympathetic magic w orks; the spilled seed, the
grinding, bang bang, pushes the fuck out past the bounds o f
physical reality; it lurks in the biosphere; it will creep into