the whole private night was not. I am pleased. It is never
mentioned again. Today is uptown business. The days of
uptown business are few and far between, but all the same
somehow. We are going uptown to talk with men who have
money about our film.
N dresses. She wears a silk scarf as a headband and flared
sailor pants. Her eyes are elongated and blackened and her lips
are pursed: they seem longer, thinner, as if she is sucking them
in. I too go out of my way. Clean T-shirt. Her hair is dirty
blonde and straight; it stands up on end. Mine is curly and
black; it stands up on end. We both comb our hair with our
fingers. We make it stand up more.
Uptown there is a lawyer who is going to turn us into a
corporation. He is silver from top to bottom. The spittle pours
from the edges of his mouth as he listens to the details of our
film. Of course he will incorporate us for no fee: but, leaning
over, and over, and over, almost stretching the trunk of his
body further than it could possibly go, but, he will expect to
come to the Village for a private screening. Village, private
screening. Saliva pours out, a thin, dripping creek.
56
Uptown there is a producer: will he sign N up and make her
a movie star and then we can make our film with that money?
Someone who discovered a famous rock singer sends us to
him. We wait in the chilly waiting room. The sweat and the
dirt that never comes off is pasted on by the cool air of the air
conditioner. The men in suits and the women with lacquered
hair and neat blouses and modest skirts stare. The receptionist
is visibly disturbed. Inside the office is huge. It seems the producer is a quarter mile away. His huge desk is at the end of the huge room. We are told to sit on a sofa near the door. He tells
N she isn’t feminine. I say unisex is in. I say times have
changed. I say people are riveted by the way N looks. The
producer keeps staring at her. He talks and stares. He is hostile.
She mumbles like Marlon Brando. The door opens. His wife, a
famous singer but not a star, comes in. She looks old. She is
dyed blond. Her skirt is short, way above her aging knees. Her
makeup is serious. Each detail is meant to remind one of
youth. Each detail shows how old her face is and how tired
her soul is. The old legs on top of the high heels bounce under
the short skirt as she makes her way across the huge room to
kiss the producer. This is a woman, he says. You see what I
mean, he says, this is a woman. We stare.
Uptown there is an advertising executive: he wants to give
money to bright young men who want to make films. We sit in
his small office. It is chilly. He stares. We discuss the film
scene by scene. He discusses his advertising campaigns scene
by scene. He stares. We ask for money. We leave the script
with him. We are hopeful. N isn’t really. I am. She is right.
The air conditioning always helps.
The offices are strange places.
The people in them seem dead.
It is the straight world of regular USA.
We abhor it.
We go back to our world of slime and sex tired and bored:
to be alive as we understand living. Not like them.
*
The world is divided that way now: the straight adults, old
people; and us. It is that way.
*
On St Mark’s Place the police are always out in large numbers,
57
hassling the hippies. Where we live there are never any police,
no matter who gets hurt or how bad. It takes a riot to bring
them out. Then they shoot.
The flower girls and boys abound in other parts of the
neighborhood, not near us.
We are not them and not not them. N grew up in a swamp
in the South, oldest child, four boys under her, father abandoned family, became a religious fanatic after running whores for a while, came back, moved the family North, sent her to a
girls’ school to get a proper upbringing, then ran off again:
like me, poor and half orphaned. Like me she gets a scholarship
among the pathetic rich. We don’t have money hidden away
somewhere, if only we would behave. Her mother, my father,
have nothing to give. She has other children to feed. He is sick,
says nothing, does nothing, languishes, a sad old man with a
son killed in Vietnam and a dirty daughter on dirty streets. N
and I are poor now: poorer even than when we were children:
nothing but what we get however we get it. But also we are
white and smart and well-educated. Do we have to be here or
not?
We can’t be lacquer-haired secretaries. There is no place else
for us. The flower children are like distant cousins, the affluent
part of the family: you hear about them but it doesn’t mean
you can have what they have. They wear pretty colors and
have good drugs, especially hallucinogens, and they decorate
the streets with paint and scents: incense, glitter: fucking them
is fun sometimes but often too solemn, they bore with their
lovey pieties: but we didn’t leave anything behind and we got
nothing to go back to.
*
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: those years. The men numbered in
the thousands. At first I was alone, then, with her, I wasn’t.
This was one summer. We also had a winter and a spring
before.
*
Every time we needed petty cash: and when we didn’t.
*
We took women for money too, but with more drama, more
plot, more plan. They had to be in love or infatuated. You had
58
to remember their names and details of their childhood. They
gave you what you needed gingerly: the seduction had to
continue past sex: sometimes they would get both of us: other
times only one of us could get near enough: or sometimes we
would both be there, each one picking up the slack when the
other got bored, and take turns before drifting off to sleep. Or
N would do it one night, me another. I liked another woman’s
body there between us, and I liked when N fucked me then her
and then I kept kissing her between the legs, though N would
have fallen asleep by then. I liked those nights. I didn’t like
that we never got enough out of it: enough money: enough
food: enough: and I didn’t like it that the women got clingy or
all pathetic or that not one could bear to remember how she
had come, wanting to be courted, and stayed.
*
And then there was just having the women: because you
wanted them: because it was a piece of heaven right in the
middle of hell: because they knew your name too: because you
went mad with them in your mouth: and you went crazy thigh
to thigh: and it was earth, sublime: and the skin, pearl: and the
breasts: and coming, coming, coming.
*
Especially the hairs that stayed in your mouth, and the bites
they left.
*
The men fucked or did whatever: but the women
came close
to dying, with this quiet surprise.
*
And you did too, because you were the same, only harder, not
new. They were enough like you. As close as could be. Every
slight tremble shot through both bodies. Even when she knew
nothing and you knew everything: even when you did it all:
your fingers on her, her taste all over you, pushed you so far
over the edge you needed drugs to bring you back. The small
of her back, trembling: how small they were, how delicate, the
tiny bones, how they almost disappeared: and then the more
ecstatic exertions of a lover with her beloved.
*
The sex could go on until exhaustion defeated the prosaic
body: these were not the short, abrupt times of men with their
59
push and shove: these were long, hot, humid times, whole
seasons: but once over, life went on: she was on her own,
desolate: unhappy: ready to shell out what you needed so as
not to be alone forever: so as to be able to come back: and you
must never take too much, she must not be humiliated too
much: and you must make sure she knows that you know her
name and her uniqueness: and you must stay aloof but not be
cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is
just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles
and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,
she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her
own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get
near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We
are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and
detached and ready for someone new.
*
The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She
knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,
wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this
coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the
Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists
and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how
to make a living from art.
There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out
for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.
She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the
jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her
cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough
and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened
up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,
high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth
of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly
bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.
Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta
cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,
eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She
disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means
60
money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She
returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.
She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around
the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.
The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in
her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,
some cake, some sandwiches.
Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city
air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are
flowing over. They come to see this life.
Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West
Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,
rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only
the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who
wanna fuck.
N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.
Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone
N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but
not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown
eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with
manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the
street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.
The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not
doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for
coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R
disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a
date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I
don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he
was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but
her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and
is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over
his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the
hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and
how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was
arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the
61
country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t
make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.
He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly
four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke
softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived
around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working
for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but
with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but
loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink
coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the
pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets
are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,
thinking about pimps, nervous.*
A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides
his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-
tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.
He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes
one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.
He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black
hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.
He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark
colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N
and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is
harmonious w
ith how we do things: he imposes nothing: he
has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from
physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,
trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders
food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has
gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday
night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the
volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new
rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a
rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and
some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone
in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning
to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.
*
6z
N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it
isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This
means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off
alone for whole nights.
He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for
drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our
film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He
doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.
He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.
He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of
wine, like a person.
At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at
some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while
he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We
meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us
anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the
jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not
friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at
us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and
smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned
over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.