Dhalgren (114 page)

"You're just having experiences one after the other, aren't you?" The first thing I thought of was what Risa had said to me that day out in the yard; what I found myself grinning at was that the possibility of a genital expedient for taking her suggestion left me
just
as dubious as an anal one about whether or not I wanted to go through something like that. Oh, well; maybe some people
can't
have everything.

Lanya grinned up at me—
"Um-hm"
—and kissed my nose.

"What does your Madame Brown think about all this?" I asked.

"That I lead a wild and fascinating life."

"Oh." I nodded.

"She just wonders how I manage to get to school every day on time."

"How
do
you manage to get to school every day on time?"

Lanya shrugged. "Just conscientious, I guess."

"Jesus!"

Denny sat back, his hands in his lap. "You gang-shagged Revelation and Copperhead! Hey—who was better, Pinky or the nigger?"

Am writing this comment on what Lanya said about the girls shagging the two guys at the house right after finishing putting down my account of our chaos and confusion with the Emboriki (with Jack, wouldn't you know, being that much help and making that much trouble!) because a lot of what happened there, what we said to them, what they said to us, pushed my mind back to it. I note that Copperhead and Revelation are pretty much exclusively interested-in-girls guys; remember from last night (significant in terms of today?) Revelation politely trying to tell a pretty drunken Angel. Really, it was nothing personal but, no, he didn't want to fuck around with him, and no, he had never really tried it before, and no he didn't want to, at least not now; and the two of them went on like this, quietly out on the service porch, for half an hour. The truth, of course, is that Revelation was vastly flattered by that much attention from someone that much quicker than he is and wanted to extend it as much as possible. (Did we think by paying them serious attention we were going to flatter them into getting their foot off our necks?) I think, sometimes, the difference is that they are sure that any social structures that arise, grow out of patterns inate to The Sex Act—whatever that is; while we have seen, again and again, that the psychology, structures, and acountrements that define any sex act are always internalized from social structures that already exist, that have been created, that can be changed. All right: Let me ask the terrible question: Could it be that all those perfectly straight, content-with -their-sexual- orientation- in-the-world, exclusive-heterosexuals really are (in some ill-defined, psychological way that will ultimately garner a better world) more healthy than (gulp…!) us? Let me answer: No way!

"Neither of them—" she leaned forward and kissed Denny's nose—"was as sweet as you."

"And by the way," Denny said, "where's my five bucks?"

I cuffed him.

"Hey, you want to hear what happened to me today?"

"It's
my
five bucks, babes!" Lanya said.

"Aw, shit! I went out in the damn street to pimp the fuckin' John—"

"Look, shut up!" I told them. "Listen." Then I described what had happened back in the park. I thought it was funny. But they both thought it was pretty serious, while we talked about it.

We talked about it a long time too.

Three conversations in which Lanya took part her last few days here. (Stayed overnight; which I liked. Maybe I'm ready to go spend some time at her place? The nesting instinct is
not
the same as the homing one. Which pales first?) She was talking with Gladis when I came into the yard:

"Oh—!" and ran up to me, blocked me halfway down the steps.

I focused on her, as on a memory of mountain rain, autumn light, sea fizz.

(She has
green
eyes!)

The most natural thing, she turned me around on the steps and led me back to the porch—when I realized I was being led, she pulled a little harder; urged, "Come on," and took me into the loft room:

"Where's your notebook? Or your new poems, anyway."

"Huh? I thought you wanted to fuck."

"Oh, if you want—" imitating another kind of girl, then she laughed at the imitation's success—"here!" The notebook corner stuck over the loft's edge; she pulled it down. Two loose pages fell.

The active ones (of whichever sex) are dencer and crueler. The passive one (of whichever sex) are lazier and more self-satisfied. In a society where they are on top, they cling like drowners to their active/passive, male/female, master/servant, self/other set-up not for pleasure, which would be reasonable, but because it allows them to commit or condone any lack of compassion among themselves, or with anyone else, and that (at least in this society, as they have set it up) is immoral, sick, and evil; any madness is preferable to that. And madness is not preferable!

She picked them up. "Can I have these to take home?"

"Sure," I said, "—no; not that one," and took back the sheet of blue paper (from the package of stationery Raven brought home).

She folded the page I'd left her and put it in her shirt pocket. I put the other inside the cover and slid the notebook back up on the bed. "Why do you want these?"

"Why do you write them?"

"I don't know… any more."

"Ditto," she said, disturbed; which disturbed.

"Hey," I asked. "You haven't seen Mr Calkins again recently, have you?"

"No?" in a way that asked why I'd asked.

"I mean this isn't his idea… to get my new poems from you? You're not just keeping them for somebody else?"

"Of course not. I just thought I had less chance of losing them than you did."

"Mr Calkins talked to me about stealing them. I
thought
he was joking—you haven't showed them to anybody?"

"Of course not…" Then she said: "Would it be so awful if I had? I did read one—a few to Madame Brown. And a friend of hers who came over that night to visit"

"It wouldn't be awful."

"You look unhappy about it, though."

"I don't know. I'm just confused. Why did you read them? You just liked them?"

"Very much. Everett Forest—Madame Brown's friend—asked me to, actually. We were talking about you, one night when he had dropped over. It came up that I had some of your unpublished work; he was very anxious to see it. So I read three or four of my favorites. I suppose—" she said and sat down on the motorcycle's seat—"this is the part I shouldn't tell you: He wanted to copy them. But I didn't think he should… Kid?"

"What?"

"There's a lot of people in Bellona who are
very
interested in practically any and everything about you."

"There're aren't a lot of people in Bellona," I said. "Everybody keeps telling me this; what are they interested in me
for?"

"They think you're important, interesting… maybe some combination of the two. Make copies of your poems? I know people who, if I gave them your laundry list, would type careful reproductions as if they were for some university library or something."

"I don't have a fucking laundry list. I don't even have any laundry," I said. "Who?"

"Well, Everett for one. When I told him you sometimes left your notebook over at my place he practically had a fit. He begged me to let him know next time you left it so he could look through it and maybe make a—"

"I'd break your head."

"I wouldn't do that." She moved on the seat. "I wouldn't."

"There's just not enough else for people to be interested in in this city."

"I think," she said, "you've got it. But even though I wouldn't let him go snooping in your journal, I still think your writing this down bores me; no, it makes me angry. It didn't make me angry when she and I were talking about it, it was flattering. Its rehearsal, however, is maddening. I
enjoy
having fantasies about these things, thinking about them—but as a game. (Haven't I?) There's no reason not to enjoy them that way any more. But since the publication of
Brass Orchids
I sometimes find myself saying to myself: "All right. I want to stop playing this game and go try another one for a while. Lord, let me think about something else!" And I can't. That's a much meaner version of the terrifying morning beneath the tree. But the truth is, most of the poems in the book were written before I came to the scorpions. (Which ones were actually written afterward?) The other irony is that the one time I really
was
their leader was when I made them help me get June's and Tarzan's brother out of the shaft. Everything since has been the concretizing of some

fantasy begun then—and in their minds, not mine. Have I lost by the realization? For (arbitrarily?) precious sanity's sake I have to think at least I've learned.

When you get water from either the kitchen or the bathroom or the service-porch tap, bubbles form around the sides of the glass, but not evenly about the whole surface. They make a band with a definite bottom edge, but peter out up the side. Have noticed, over the last several days, the line starts higher and higher. Must ask Tak if this means something.

To the next conversation, then; maybe better luck:

I stopped outside the kitchen door because I heard them talking inside. Through the screening I saw Lanya sitting on the table, her back against the wall, Gladis and pretty much all the apes (no Tarzan); also D-t leaning against the icebox and Glass standing in the living-room doorway, and Spirt just behind him, to the other side. A loud discussion; and Lanya's voice cut over (she leaned forward, looking around): "I have never—no, wait a minute! Wait. I have
never
seen a bunch less interested in sex than you guys! No, listen! I mean for guys who don't have anything else to do. Really, I'm not kidding. When I was in college, or practically any place, any job I've ever had; or guys I've just known—
seen
a bunch who were less interested in getting laid—"

"I don't see why
you're
complaining!" from Jack the Ripper.

"I'm not," Lanya said. "But I mean, I spend maybe half my time here. Maybe more than half. And I think I know you guys pretty well—"

And D-t: "No, now you wait a minute! Hey, now
you
wait—"

Lanya finished in the silence: "I was just curious why, that's all."

"Now
wait,"
D-t repeated. "We got a very strange and funny group of people here. And I guess we don't talk about it that much because you have to be very careful, you know? Very polite."

"I don't just mean making jokes about sex," Lanya said. "But even that, when you come down to it. You'll get really foul for ten, twenty minutes. Then nothing for a day, two days—"

"You mean thinking and figuring how to get laid?" Raven said. "Yeah, I know what she means."

Spitt said: "I don't have to
talk
about it. I
get mine,"
and looked at Glass to corroborate him.

Glass, hands behind him on the wall, just leaned back a little more watching (Spitt and Lanya were the only whites in the room), curious, as though the discussion was going on all for him.

"There are just very different kinds of people here," D-t said. "For me, maybe, what she said is true. I just never been that interested in sex, I guess, compared to some people. I told a friend of mine once I jerked off about maybe two, three times a year. And got laid about the same. He said that was very strange—"

"Yeah,
that's strange!" Jack the Ripper hollered, and people laughed.

"Spider over there, see—he's what…? Ten years younger than I am? And he's down at the park, practically every God-damn night it looks to me, getting his pipes swabbed out by the guys sneaking around the bushes—"

"God damn—" Spider said, uncomfortably.

"We just got very different people," D-t went on, "who like very different things. In very different ways. People like me and Gladis, say. We're pretty much exclusively interested in the opposite sex, and then, one at a time and rarely."

"Three times a year, baby," Gladis said, her inflection swinging down low as it could get, "now I don't know whether I'm all
that
much like you?" and up again.

Which tickled the Ripper.

"Shit," D-t said. "You know I used to think I was normal. But then we got guys like Jack the Ripper who are interested in anything."

Spider said, sullenly: "I'm interested in anything."

"Aw, nigger," D-t said, "you'd be interested in a clam if it smiled at you and promised not to bite!"

Spitt added over the laughter, "…and even then, I don't know!" which I don't think anybody really heard.

"Then we got the groupies—" D-t went on.

"Groupies!" from Glass, laughing for the first time. "Is
that
what you call us?"

"I mean you guys just aren't interested in anything less than a full scale encounter group-grope—"

"Aw, man," from Glass, "you just wish you could—" and I didn't hear the rest because:

Tarzan asked: "What's going on in there?"

I glanced back. "Nothing."

But some of the guys inside had seen us through the screen. A couple more turned to look. So I opened the door and went in, Tarzan following. Lanya was still laughing. Edging Thruppence over on the table, I sat next to her.

"With so many different types, see," D-t said, getting Lanya's attention back, "you have to be very polite: When we live this close. And that means you don't talk too much. You just do it when it's around to be done and the rest of the time you talk about something else."