Dhalgren (113 page)

fucker away! You hear me? Throw that fucker away—break it on something, nigger, or I'll break your black head!" He smashed the stock on a stone, "Yeah!" grunting, and twisted up the firing chamber so it was pretty much beyond use. I said: "That's no scorpion weapon! A scorpion's got a fucking sting!" and lifted up my orchid. They liked that.)
just
like John and saying, "Man, you're something else!"

"I should have taken their fucking carton."

"Yeah," Lady of Spain said. "Yeah. That's what we should have done."

Tarzan said: "Yeah. That would have been all right. They wouldn't have minded."

"You're too much," Priest said again, and Cathedral laughed and shook my shoulder.

They kept it up all the way into the nest. Tarzan and Priest came in with me. Cathedral, Lady of Spain, and Angel got stopped outside where they began to tell the story. Well, I guess that was all right. There were enough people around drunk—a bunch of nonmembers who were apparently friends of Devastation or something, I didn't care—to absorb it.

I was going down the hall when Denny swung out of the living room and grabbed my arm. "Hey—!" He was really excited.

I thought he was going to say something about what happened in the park. "Hey what?"

He just blinked.

So I started down the hall again.

He followed and said, "Lanya's in the room, in the loft but—" I looked like I was about to go in—"I think she's busy."

So I stopped.

Denny said: "You probably shouldn't go in."

"What's she doing?"

"Balling."

"Here?"
I said, not that loudly. Beside being surprised, I remember I thought it was not very cool for someone as down as she was on the gang-bang bit (but basically pretty together when it came to keeping her thing in front of assaulting-type male personalities) to be making it with one of the guys from the nest in my loft.

Somebody was coming up the hall from the john.

"Come on," I said to Denny. We went out on the service porch. "Who's she fucking?" I knew the answer was going to be a surprise; and also that there were six-no, five guys I would particularly not like it to be: Spitt, Copperhead, Thruppence, Jack the Ripper, or Fireball; because they were all the sort who, through malice or ignorance, might try to make it into something unpleasant.

"Some guy I picked up downtown."

I was surprised. "—
you
picked up?" I hadn't expected to be relieved, though. "You balled him too?"

"Naw. Naw, it was her idea."

"This sounds very familiar," I said. "What do you mean, her idea?"

"She asked me to go out and find somebody who wanted to fuck her for money… for five dollars."

"Whose
five dollars?" I asked. "His or hers?"

Tarzan and D-t came up the steps and through the porch door, Tarzan to listen, D-t to wait for Tarzan to finish listening.

"It's hers now." Denny grinned, "She said she was listening to us talk about hustling, I guess, a lot, and I guess she was curious. Christ, was it hard to find someone with any money at—"

"We didn't talk about hustling a lot."

"Didn't stop her from listening. She told me she was curious. She said she wanted to try it."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." I cuffed his shoulder. "I just want to know why you're not in there doing
your
thing."

"Shit." Denny scowled. "The guy's a creep. He didn't seem so bad when I met him. But he's a creep, you know?"

"Jesus Christ." Tarzan leaned against the sill of the screenless window frame. "You let your old lady…?" and stopped; probably because of the way I looked at him.

I said: "Let her what?"

"You know, mess around with… well… you know."

"Tarzan," I said, "if my old lady wants to fuck a sheep with a dildo strapped to her nose, that is largely her concern, very secondarily mine, and not yours at all. She can fuck anything she wants—with the possible exception of you. That, I think, would turn my stomach. Yes, that, I think, I would not be able to

I took the orchid from the chain around my neck, I raised my hand and slipped it into the harness, and the sky darkened outside the windows, the sky roared outside the window screens, and I snapped the collar on my wrist, and the light split in two, each arm growing, ragged-rimmed, with magnesium bright edges, arching the sky, and I swung my hand up at Tarzan's chest.

take. I'm going to kill you." On my hand—it swung up at Tarzan's chest—was the orchid. "That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to play tic-tac-toe on your face, and then I'm—"

"Hey…" Tarzan whispered, "you're crazy…!" looking very scared, looking at Denny, then D-t; but they had stepped away, and he looked scareder.

"Yeah?" I nodded. "You didn't know I was crazy?"

I held the clutch of blade-points right in front of his left tit. While everybody held their breath, I thought: It would be easier here than any place else. Then I said: "Aw, shit!
Run,
motherfucker!"

Tarzan looked confused.

I dropped my hand. "I want to see you
run!
And that's the last I want to see of you till after the sun comes up tomorrow. Otherwise, I will beat the shit out of you, carry your broken, bleeding, and unconscious body back to your mother's and father's door sill, apartment nineteen-A, and
leave
you there!"

"They don't live in…" Then his mind clicked back to where he was; he sighed—I guess it was a sigh—and lunged for the door. He collided with a pigeon-chested man in the bluest shirt I've ever seen ("Hey,
watch
it! You okay…?") and fled down the hall.

The man looked confused too.

Not that his hair was long; but for the type of person he was, your first thought would naturally be: He needs a haircut "She said," he said, "I should go out this way…?"

"Okay," Denny said. "There's the door."

Dragon Lady had come up the steps and was standing outside it, watching.

"I gave her the money. Hey, thanks a lot. That was really nice. Maybe I'll be back." He looked at me, then looked just a little more confused.

Dragon Lady opened the door for him and he hurried down into the yard. She looked after him, then let the door close, but stood outside on the top step. I looked at the orchid.

It isn't despair. That vanishes with enough laughter and reason. I have both of those a-plenty. I guess most people, when all is said and done, lead lives as interesting as they can possibly bare. But I don't remember putting it on. I don't.

I don't remember putting it on.

I took it off.

"You like him," I asked, "D-t?"

"Who?" D-t said. "Tarzan? Man, he's okay. He just don't know when to keep his mouth shut. That's all."

"You made him piss all in his pants," Denny said. Then he laughed. "You see that? He was getting wet, all down the side of his leg." He gestured at his own thigh.

"Huh?" I said.

"He wet all over himself." Denny laughed again, sharp, and barking, like a puppy.

"I wish I'd seen it," I said. "It would have made me feel better."

"I… don't mind Tarzan," Denny said.

"Look, man," D-t said. "Tarzan's just a kid. He don't know anything."

"Shit!" I slipped the orchid back on my neck again. "He's older than Denny!"

"He comes," D-t said, "from a very strange family. He's told some of us all about them. You got to make allowances."

"They're not
that
strange," I said.

"I mean," D-t said, "they didn't teach him too much. I mean about the way things are."

"Yeah?" I took a very large breath. "Maybe what gets me is how much his family reminds me of my own."

Then I went down the hall and into my own room.

Lanya, visible down to her nose, looked over the edge of the bed like a cartoon Kilroy.

"Hello," I said. "How are you?"

"When I heard you come in," she said, "I thought Denny would keep you in the front room. That's why I sent the guy out the back."

I climbed up into the loft.

She sat up and made room; she was wearing her jeans, but they weren't buttoned yet. "You know what turned him on most? That I was a chick who balled scorpions," she said immediately. "That was all that really interested him. He was
nice
enough. But I could have been a piece of liver one of you guys had jerked off in; he would have been just as happy." She touched my knee, tentatively. "I mean, I don't mind being a… what do they call it, 'a homosexual bridge' if I
enjoy
both ends. Really—he was too funny."

"I was going to ask you," I said, "whether you had completely lost your mind. But coming from me, I suppose, the question is presumptuous to the point of quaintness."

"I don't
think
I'm out of my mind." She frowned. "To finish up the fantasy, I should turn this—" she pulled a five dollar bill from under her knee—"over to you. Or Denny…" She sucked in her lower lip, then let it go. "Actually I'd like to keep it."

"Fine by me," I said. "Just don't get into this money thing too seriously. You'll end up like Jack."

"It isn't the money," she insisted. "It's a symbol."

"That's
just
what I mean."

"I think you should take your own advice."

"I try," I said, "Hey—this wasn't intended as some kookie way to get back at me for mugging that guy in the street?"

"Kid!" She sat back. "You just shocked me for the first time since I've known you!"

"Tread delicately," I said. "Where do you come off with this shit about
me
shocking
you?"

"I didn't even think of it. I mean, how are they even comparable? I mean what would… Wow! Is that what you thought?"

"No," I said. "I didn't
know.
So I
asked."
We sat for a few seconds, rather glumly. Then I said: "Was he any good?"

She shrugged. "It's five bucks."

Then, because there was nothing else to do, I began to laugh. She did too. I put my arms around her and she sort of fell into them still laughing.

"Hey!" Denny came up over the edge. "He was a real creep, huh? I'm sorry. Some guys you get, they aren't so bad. Some are even pretty nice. I figured, you know, if I'm gonna get some john set up for your first time, you know, I should find somebody nice. I thought he was nice when I brought him back here but—what's so funny?"

Which got us going all the harder.

Denny crawled behind us. "I wish you'd tell me what's so funny about trickin' with a creep like that?"

"While we're skirting the subject," I got myself together enough to ask, "have you balled any of the other guys in the nest?"

Lanya wriggled a little in my arms. "In the nest? Well, not here—"

"Where did you ball 'em?" Denny asked, rather sharply.

"Who," I asked, "did you ball?" I guess I was surprised again.

"Revelation," Lanya said.

I nodded.

"…and, well, Copperhead."

"Jesus," Denny said. "When?"

Lanya raised a forefinger to bite on the green polish. "You remember the night of Kid's party, when he went off to Cumberland Park, during the fire, and found those kids, with George? You'd wandered off somewhere, Denny, and I was just sitting around here talking with everybody. Gladis and I were telling them about the House—that place where all the girls stay? They were very interested. So finally Gladis and I took Copperhead, Spitt, and Glass over—that's where I pick up my birth-control stuff, anyway. The evening is a little hazy, but as I recall, Revelation wandered in just a little later—" She sat up, scowling at her lap. "Spitt retired early with a young lady he met right away—they just went upstairs. And Glass wasn't feeling well so he left to come back here. But Copperhead and Revelation stayed around downstairs with the rest of us—Dragon Lady had come there, and everybody was yakking about old times—and got incredibly stoned. And—" She paused, her expression between consideration and confession—"eventually, I balled them. And—" she nodded at Denny—"your little girl friend there balled them. And Gladis balled them. And Filament. And Dragon Lady. And, all in all, about—" she raised her fist and began opening it, finger at a time; raised her other fist—"nine other women balled them too. Not in that order: I was fifth or sixth."

Denny said slowly and wondrously, "Wow…!"

"It was very funny." Lanya dropped her

shoulders. "I really thought the two of them had flipped out or something, at first. I was sort of scared for them. I don't think they could have stood up and walked. It was almost like they were in some sort of half-trance. Revelation was lying on his back crying through most of it. That part didn't turn me on too much. But it got some of the ladies off, and how! And he didn't lose his hard-on."

I was surprised and I was curious: "Did they come?"

"Maybe a couple of times at first. I think. But after that, they were just permanently up. Nobody gave 'em a chance to go down. You just did anything you wanted with them. And anyone who was interested did."

"All girls?" Denny asked.

Lanya nodded.

"Shit."

Lanya leaned against me. "I've never seen men in a state like that before. The whole thing was really very dyke-y." She crossed her arms under her breasts. "I dug it. It was a little scarey. But it was… an experience."