fast, so hard, as the ball hits the ground and the boy moves
with it, a weapon with speed up its ass; and they’re a choir o f
fuck, shit, asshole, voices still on the far edge o f an adolescent
high, not the raspy, cigarette-ruined voices o f the lonely, sad
men; the boys run, the boys sing the three words they know, a
percussive lyric, they breathe deep, skin and viscera breathe,
everything inside and outside breathes, there’s a convulsion,
then another one, they exhale as if it’s some sublime soprano
aria at the Met, supreme art, simple, new each time, the air
comes out urgent and organized and with enough volume to
fill a concert hall, it’s exhilarating, a human voice, all the words
they don’t know; and the cops, old, young, it don’t matter,
barely breathe at all, they breathe so high up in the throat that
the air barely gets out, it’s thin and depressed and somber, it’s
old and it’s stale and it’s pale and it’s flat, there’s no words to it
and no music, it’s a thin, empty sound, a flat despair, Hamlet
so old and dead and tired he can’t even get up a stage whisper.
The cops look at the boys, each cop does, and there’s this
second when the cop wants to explode, he’d unleash a grenade
in his own hand if he had one, he’d take him self with it if it
meant offing them, fuck them black boys’ heads off, there’s
this tangible second, and then they turn away, each one,
young, old, tight, sagging, each one, every day, and they pull
themselves up, and they kick the rocks, the broken glass, the
gravel, and they got a hand folded into a fist, and they leave the
parking lot, they walk big, they walk heavy, they walk like
John Wayne, young John, old John, big John, they walk slow
and heavy and wide, deliberate, like they got six-shooters
riding on each hip; while the boys m ove fast, mad, mean,
speeding, cold fury in hot motion. Y ou want them on each
other; not on you. It ain’t honorable but it’s real. Y o u want
them caught up in the urban hate o f generations, in wild west
battles on city streets, you want them so manly against each
other they don’t have time for girlish trash like you, you want
them fighting each other cock to cock so it all gets used up on
each other. Y o u take the view that wom en are for recreation,
fun, when the battle’s over; and this battle has about another
hundred years to go. Y o u figure they can dig you up out o f the
ground when they’re ready. Y o u figure they probably will.
Y o u figure it don’t matter to them one w ay or the other. Y ou
figure it don’t matter to you either; ju st so it ain’t today, now,
tonight, tom orrow ; ju st so you ain’t conscious; just so you
ain’t alive the next time; just so you are good and dead; just so
you don’t know what it is and w h o ’s doing it. If yo u ’re buying
milk or bread or things you have to go past them, walk down
them streets, go in front o f them, the boys, the cops, and you
practice disappearing; you practice pulling the air over you
like a blanket; you practice being nothing and no one; you
practice not making a sound and barely breathing; you
practice making your eyes go blank and never looking at
anyone but seeing where they are, hearing a shadow move;
you practice being a ghost on cement; and you don’t let
nothing rattle or make noise, not the groceries, not your shoes
hitting the ground, not your arms, you don’t let them m ove or
rub, you don’t make no spontaneous gestures, you don’t even
raise your arm to scratch your nose, you keep your arms still
and you put the milk in the bag so it stays still and you go so far
as to make sure the bag ain’t a stupid bag, one o f them plastic
ones that makes sounds every time something touches it; you
have to get a quiet bag; if it’s a brown paper bag you have to
perfect the skill o f carrying it so nothing moves inside it and so
you don’t have to change arms or hands, acts which can catch
the eye o f someone, acts which can call attention to you, you
you just let it hurt because it hurts quiet, and if it’s a plastic bag
it’s got to be laminated good so it don’t make any rustling
noise or scratching sound, and you have to walk faster, silent,
fast, because plastic bags stand out more, sometimes they have
bright colors and the flash o f color going by can catch
someone’s attention, the bag’s real money, it costs a dime, it’s
a luxury item, you got change to spare, you’re a classy shopper
so who knows what else you got; and if it’s not colorful it’s
likely to be a shiny white, a bright white, the kind light flashes
o ff o f like it’s a mirror sending signals and there’s only one
signal widely comprehended on cement: get me. The light can
catch someone’s eye so you have to walk like Zen himself,
walk and not walk, you are a master in the urban Olym pics for
girls, an athlete o f girlish survival, it’s a survival game for the
w orld’s best. You get past them and you celebrate, you
celebrate in your heart, you thank the Lord, in your heart you
say a prayer o f gratitude and forgiveness, you forgive Him,
it’s sincere, and you hope He don’t take it as a challenge,
razor-sharp temper He’s got, no do unto others for Him; and if
you hear someone behind you you beg, in half a second you
are on your knees in your heart begging Him to let you off,
you promise a humility this time that will last, it will begin
right now and last a long, long time, you promise no more
liturgical sacrilege, and your prayer stops and your heart stops
and you wait and the most jo you s sound on G o d ’s earth is that
the man’s feet just stomp by. Either he will hurt you or he will
not; either He will hurt you or He will not. Truth’s so simple
and so severe, you don’t be stupid enough to embellish it. I
m yself live inside now. I don’t take m y chances resting only in
the arms o f God. I put m yself inside four walls and then I let
Him rock me, rock me, baby, rock me. I lived outside a lot;
and this last summer I was tired, disoriented. I was too tired,
really, to find a bed, too nervous, maybe too old, maybe I got
old, it happens pretty fast past eighteen like they always
warned; get yourself one boy when yo u ’re eighteen and get
yourself one bed. It got on m y nerves to think about it every
night, I don’t really like to be in a bed per se. I stayed in the lot
behind where the police park their cars, there’s a big, big dirt
lot, there’s a fence behind the police cars and then there’s
empty dirt, trash, some rats, we made fires, there’s broken
glass, there’s liquor to stay warm , I never once saw what it
was, it’s bottles in bags with hands on the bags that tilt in your
direction, new love, anti-genital love, polymorphous perverse, a bottle in a bag. Y o u got to lift your skirt sometimes but it doesn’t matter and I have sores on me, m y legs is so dirty
I just really don’t look. Y ou don’t have to look. There’s many
mirrors to be used but you need not use them. I got too worn
out to find some bed each new night, it got on m y nerves so I
was edgy and anxious in anticipation, a dread that it would be
hard to find or hard to stay or hard to pay, if I just stayed on the
dirt lot I didn’t have to w orry so much, there’s nothing
trapping you in. Life’s a long, quiet rumble, and you ju st shake
as even as you can so you don’t get too worn out. When I lifted
up m y skirt there was blood and dirt in drips, all dried, down
m y legs, and I had sores. I felt quiet inside. I felt okay. I didn’t
w orry too much. I didn’t go see movies or go on dates. I just
curled up to sleep and I’d drink whatever there was that
someone give me because there’s generous men too; I see
saliva; I see it close up; i f I was an artist I would paint it except I
don’t know how you make it glisten, the brown and the gold
in it; I saw many a face close up and I saw many a man close up
and I’d lift my skirt and it was dirty, my legs, and there was
dried blood. I was pretty dirty. I didn’t w orry too much. Then
I got money because my friend thought I should go inside. I
had this friend. I knew her when I was young. She was a
pacifist. She hated war and she held signs against the Vietnam
War and I did too. She let me sleep in her apartment but
enough’s enough; there’s places you don’t go back to. So now
I was too dirty and she gave me money to go inside
definitively; which I had wanted, except it was hard to
express. I thought about walls all the time. I thought about
how easy they should be, really, to have; how you could fit
them almost anywhere, on a street corner, in an alley, on a
patch o f dirt, you must make walls and a person can go inside
with a bed, a small cot, just to lie down and it’s a house, as
much o f a house as any other house. I thought about walls
pretty much all the time. Y ou should be able to just put up
walls, it should be possible. There’s literally no end to the
places walls could go without inconveniencing anyone, except
they would have to walk around. They say a ro of over your
head but it’s walls really that are the issue; you can just think
about them, all their corners touching or all lined up thin like
pancakes, painted a pretty color, a light color because you
don’t want it to look too small, or you can make it more than
one color but you run the risk o f looking busy, somewhat
vulgar, and you don’t want it to look gray or brown like
outside or you could get sad. There’s got to be some place in
heaven where God stores walls, there’s just walls, stacked or
standing up straight like the pages o f a book, miles high and
miles wide running in pale colors above the clouds, a storage
place, and God sees someone lost and He just sends them
down four at a time. Guess He don’t. There’s people take them
for granted and people who dream about them— literally,
dream how nice they would be, pretty and painted, serene. I
w ouldn’t mind living outside all the time if it didn’t get cold or
wet and there wasn’t men. A ro o f over your head is more
conceptual in a sense; it’s sort o f an advanced idea. In life you
can cover your head with a piece o f w ood or with cardboard or
newspapers or a side o f a crate you pull apart, but walls aren’t
really spontaneous in any sense; they need to be built, with
purpose, with intention. Someone has to plan it if you want
them to come together the right w ay, the whole four o f them
with edges so delicate, it has to be balanced and solid and
upright and it’s very delicate because if it’s not right it falls,
you can’t take it for granted; and there’s wind that can knock it
down; and you will feel sad, remorseful, you will feel full o f
grief. Y ou can’t sustain the loss. A ro o f over your head is a sort
o f suburban idea, I think; like that i f you have some long, flat,
big house with furniture in it that’s all matching you surely
also will have a ro o f so they make it a synonym for all the rest
but it’s walls that make the difference between outside and
not. It’s a well-kept secret, arcane knowledge, a m ystery not
often explained. Y o u don’t see it written down but initiates
know. I type and sometimes I steal but I’m stopping as much
as I can. I live inside now. I have an apartment in a building.
It’s a genuine building, a tenement, which is a famous kind o f
building in which many have lived in history. M aybe not
T rotsky but Em m a Goldm an for certain. I don’t go near men
really. Sometimes I do. I get a certain forgetfulness that comes
on me, a dark shadow over m y brain, I get took up in a certain
feeling, a wandering feeling to run from existence, all restless,
perpetual motion. It drives me with an ache and I go find one. I
get a smile on m y face and m y hips m ove a little back and forth
and I turn into a greedy little fool; I want the glass all em pty. I
grab some change and I hit the cement and I get one. I am
writing a certain very serious book about life itself. I go to bars
for food during happy hours when m y nerves aren’t too bad,
too loaded down with pain, but I keep to m yself so I can’t get
enough to eat because bartenders and managers keep watch
and you are supposed to be there for the men which is w hy
they let you in, there ain’t no such thing as a solitary woman
brooding poetically to be left alone, it don’t happen or she
don’t eat, and mostly I don’t want men so I’m hungry most o f
the time, I’m almost always hungry, I eat potatoes, you can
buy a bag o f potatoes that is almost too heavy to carry and you
can just boil them one at a time and you can eat them and they
fill you up for a while. M y book is a very big book about
existence but I can’t find any plot for it. It’s going to be a very
big book once I get past the initial slow beginning. I want to
get it published but you get afraid you will die before it’s
finished, not after when it can be found and it’s testimony and
then they say you were a great one; you don’t want to die
before you wrote it so you have to learn to sustain your
writing, you take it serious, you do it every day and you don’t
fail to write words down and to think sentences. It's hard to
find words. It’s about some woman but I can’t think o f what
happens. I can say where she is. It’s pretty barren. I always see
a woman on a rock, calling out. But that’s not a story per se.
Y ou could have someone dying o f tuberculosis like Mann or
someone who is suffering— for instance, someone who is
lovesick like Mann. O r there’s best-sellers, all these stories
where women do all these things and say all these things but I
don’t think I can write about that because I only seen it in the
movies. There’s marriage stories but it’s so boring, a couple in
&nbs
p; the suburbs and the man on the train becoming unfaithful and
how bored she is because she’s too intelligent or something
about how angry she is but I can’t remember why. A love
story’s so stupid in these modern times. I can’t have it be about
m y life because number one I don’t remember very much and
number two it’s against the rules, you’re supposed to make
things up. The best thing that ever happened to me is these
walls and I don’t think you could turn that into a story per se or
even a novel o f ideas that people would grasp as philosophical:
for instance, that you can just sit and they provide a
fram ework o f dignity because no one’s watching and I have
had too many see too much, they see you when they do things
to you that you don’t want, they look, and the problem is
there’s no walls keeping you sacred; nor that if you stand up
they are solid which makes you seem real too, a real figure in a
room with real walls, a touchstone o f authenticity, a standard
for real existence, you are real or you feel real, you don’t have
to touch them to feel real, you just have to be able to touch
them. M y pacifist friend gave me money to live here. She saw
me on the street one day, I guess, after I didn’t go back to her
apartment no more. She said come with me and she got a
newspaper and she found an apartment and she called the
landlord and she put the money in m y hand and she sent me to
the landlord which scared me because I never met one before, a
real one, but also she wasn’t going to let the cash go elsewhere
which there was a fair chance it would, because I would have
liked some coke or something or some dinner or some drinks
and a m ovie and a book or something more real than being
inside which seemed impossible— it seemed not really available and it seemed impossible to sustain so it made more sense
to me to use the cash for something real that I knew I could get,
something I knew how to use. I started sending her money
back as soon as I got some, I’d put some in an envelope and
mail it back even if it was just five dollars but she said I was
stupid because she only said it was a loan but it w asn’t and I