Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  "I've got a hard-on," Denny said.

  "You've had a hard-on ever since I met you," Lanya told him. "Look, you two: two guys making it together turns me on. That's all. Most of my friends have always been gay. That's what I dig."

  "I know a lot of guys who dig dikes," Denny said.

  Lanya bit his ear.

  "Owww . . . !"

  "Anyway," she said, "that's the turn-on for me. Not getting gang-shagged."

  "Glib." Kid rocked his stool legs now. "But logical."

  "I think you look cute in my vest," Denny said. "You think I look cute without it?"

  "As a bug, babes," Lanya told him.

  "Hey," Denny said. "Are you mad at me?"

  "No," she said. "Just a little confused." She looked at Kid. "I can never figure out if you're the person I keep thinking you are."

  Kid stood up, walked over, and stopped with his hands on Lanya's shoulders, his legs astraddle Denny's knee. "If I talk about you screwing Denny or me, it's for real. If I talk about you screwing anybody else, I'm joking. See? And you can do or talk about whatever you want."

  "And I think you misunderstand me entirely-" she nodded with a look both wary and wry-"sometimes."

  He kissed her (face turning between his palms) and had to bend his legs. She turned her head gently back and forth, rubbing his tongue with hers, and meshed her fingers behind his neck, pulling his down, harder. Finally he had to settle his weight on Denny's thigh. Denny took Kid's shoulder with one hand. The knuckles of the other moved against Kid's breast, fondling hers. Kid's hands slid between Lanya's back and Denny's belly.

  "Both of you," Denny said, "weigh more than I do. Either me or the chair is gonna go, one."

  Lanya laughed into Kid's mouth.

  "Let's go back into your room and ball." Kid said.

  He had actually thought one or the other of them would protest

  Geoff Rivers Kit Darkfeather David Wise Michael Roberts Jerry Shank Frank Yoshikami Harold Redwing Madeleine Terry Priscilla Meyer George Newman Ann Harrison Thomas Sask

  Arthur Pearson Earl Rudolph Phillip Edwards Virginia Colson Hank Kaiser Gary Disch Alvin Fischer Susan Morgan William Dhalgren Peter Weldon Linda Evers Preston Smith

  At her desk, he read the list for the sixth time. The sky beyond the bay window, dense and low, darkened toward evening. Roberts or Rudolph, Rivers or Evers: Fantasize a persona for any. Which, he pondered, would I pick myself? Some permutation . . . Gary Morgan, Terry Rivers, Thomas Weldon? None was his. Was one perhaps nearer than the other? No . . . if they are all. real people, he reflected, then each is just as important. Hey, Kamp, isn't this what that democracy's about that put you up on ... a moon? (But I don't want one. I need one about as much as I need a handful of dollars.) Lips tight, he picked up the papers: Three sheets from the phone pad, two pieces of newsprint, the back, blank pages of a paperback, some sheets of Lanya's paper-all he had written since Brass Orchids. I promised not to write any more; Newboy promised I would. Kid smiled, putting one paper behind the other. He slipped Brass Orchids from beneath the notebook, opened it, closed it, opened it again. Holding it on his palm too long made his stomach ache. Such a strange, marvelous, and marvelously inadequate object! He was still unable to read it through. He still tried. And tried again, and tried till his throat was constricted, his forearms wet, and his heart hammered down where he'd always thought his liver was. Neither dislike nor discomfort with the work explained that. Rather the book itself was lodged in some equation where it did not belong, setting off hyper-radicals and differentials through all the chambers of his consciousness. He looked over at the notebook, read what was on the page behind the list:

  Lingual synthesis: Wittgenstein, Lévi-Straus, Chomsky-I suspect it is what they were getting at: Attempts to reduce vast fields of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics to sets of parameters that not so much define as mirror the way in which philosophical, anthropological, and linguistic information respectively fit into, upon, and around the mind itself. Those particularly parametric works (the Tractatus. La Geste d'Asdiwal, Syntatic Structures-though all three men have written much longer works, work of this type must be very short; none of these is above 30 thousand words) do not discuss fields of study; they drop careful, crystalline catalysts, which, on any logical mind (as opposed to trained minds familiar with galleries of evidence and evaluations) perforce generate complicated and logical discussions of the subject using whatever evidence is at hand, limited only by the desire or ability to retain interest in the dialogue propagating in the inner ear.

  In an age glutted with information, this "storage method" is, necessarily, popular. But these primitive

  Was the end of the page. He did not turn to the next Wittgenstein, Lévi-Straus, Chomsky: He mulled their sounds. A year, a year and a half ago, he had read everything he could find by one.

  He had never heard of the other two.

  "Lingual synthesis . . ." That was nice on the tongue. ". . . particularly parametric works . . ." He picked up Brass Orchids, balanced it on blunt fingers. ". . . careful, crystalline catalysts . . ." He nodded. A particularly parametric work of careful, crystalline catalysts in lingual synthesis. That, at any rate, was the type of object it ought to be. Well, it was short. One of them turned in the bed. One of them turned again. He looked across the room: The tent of a knee. An arm over an arm. The chair back was cool against his. Caning prickled the bottom of one thigh. The plants leaned from their pots.

  He pinched the bright chain across his belly. Dark ones coiled the clothing on the floor. Suppose, he thought, she wants me to stay and him to go. Well, I get rid of the bastard. Suppose she wants me to go? I get rid of all the bastards.

  But she won't. She likes privacy too much. Why else would she go along with this? Along? Something in me would like to have it that she is doing this for me. But all joy in it comes from those moments when it is obviously real as her music, and personally otherwise. I am restless. She turns restlessly.

  His arm, limp, moves with her moving shoulder. Lanya blinked, raised her head. Kid watched her eyes close and her head lay down. He was smiling. He turned Brass Orchids in his hands, turned the loose pages, as though he might heft, through some quality other than weight, the difference.

  The notebook was open again at the list. Puzzling, he read the names once more (it was almost too dark), this time right to left, bottom to top:

  Preston Smith

  Linda Evers Peter Weldon William Dhalgren Susan Morgan . . ,

  Thomas Sask Ann Harrison George Newman Priscilla Meyer Madeleine Terry

  "Why'd she kick us out?"

  "She didn't kick us out. She had things to do. She'll be down to see us. Don't worry."

  "I ain't worrying." Denny balanced along the curb edge. "Shit, I could have stayed up there for the rest of my life and been happy. You on one end and her on the other."

  "How'd you manage to eat?"

  "Present company excepted-" Denny rugged at his vest-"I'd just send out for it. You sure she wasn't mad at us?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay . . . you really think she's gonna come down and visit the nest?"

  "If she doesn't, we'll go up and see her. She'll come."

  "She's a nice person!" Denny emphasized each stress with a beat of his chin. "And I really like that song. Diffraction, huh?"

  Kid nodded.

  "I hope she comes down. I mean I know she likes you, 'cause you wrote a book and everything, and you known her a long time. But I'm just a fuck-up. She ain't got no reason to like me."

  "She does anyway."

  Denny frowned. "Sure acts like it, don't she?"

  The street light above them pulsed . . . at half strength; then died. The sky sheeted over with one more film of darkness. The only other light to come on was two blocks away; it pulsed, pulsed, pulsed again.

  Someone moved into it and shouted, "Hey! Hey, Kid! Denny!" Others trooped into the wavering circle.

  "What the hell are they doing here?" />
  Denny shrugged.

  In the middle of the next block, Dollar, lugging the brass lion on its broken base, pushed between Copperhead and Jack the Ripper. "Hey, we gotta move, you know? We're movin' again!" Dollar was grinning.

  Copperhead was not. "The fuckin' house burnt up on us! How you like that? The fuckin' house burnt up!" A knapsack, one green with his fatigues, swung about his shins. He hefted the strap to the other hand.

  "Jesus," Denny said. "All my shit... ?"

  "What happened?"

  "Nothin'," Copperhead shrugged. "You know ... it just, well...."

  "The whole damn block," Siam said. "About an hour ago. Shit, it was something!"

  Kid felt his heart thump once (like it always did when he found out somebody he knew had died) and in the hollow remains, he thought: That isn't so much a reaction as it is a fear of what the reaction might be. The house burnt down? The . . . house burnt down? But that seems so easy. The house . . .

  He asked: "Was Nightmare there?"

  "Fuck," Copperhead said. "Fuck. He and the Lady was off somewhere. Thirteen was gone somewhere too. Fuck."

  Glass chuckled. "I could smell Thirteen's stash burning right up. Sure wished I knew where he kept it, and I would have got it out for him. But when it was burning-" he swung a pillowcase down from his shoulder into his arms-"you sure could smell it. You know I been in seven God-damn fires. Seven times I had my house burn out from under me. Lost my mother in a God-damn fire."

  "In Bellona?" Siam asked.

  Glass looked at Siam, realization in his face that he had been misunderstood. "No . . ." He hugged up the pillowcase. "I ain't been in no fire in Bellona, except this one."

  "Where are we going to move?"

  Denny said, "You want to go back to Lanya's and see if she'll put us-"

  "Not on your fucking life," Kid said.

  "I mean," Denny questioned, "you said she wasn't mad at us none."

  "You got some place for us to move?" Copperhead asked. "Nope," Kid said. "Come on. We'll find one."

  "Now we don't want no place that's gonna burn up again before we get in it," Copperhead said. "Do we?"

  Scorpions mumbled outside the circle of the lamp. Some carried mattresses, some cartons, some shovels and tools.

  "Come on down this street," and the cavalcade practically filled the alley. Trees had been planted and ringed with ornamental fences. But each trunk was charred to a black fork with twisted tines. "That wooden house must have gone up like a matchbook."

  "Naw," Copperhead told him. "Nobody got hurt. Nobody didn't really lose nothing they didn't want to lose. We all got out in tune."

  "I got the lion!"

  Kid turned on Dollar's pocked and stubbled grin.

  "Man, I wouldn't've left my lion behind for nothing. It's the only fuckin' thing I own. You got that for me, Kid, remember? You got that for me and I wouldn't leave behind nothing like that for anything in the world, you know?"

  "Denny . . . ?"

  Behind Dollar, she pushed her way forward. Her arms were full, her hair was tangled, and one heavy cheek was smudged.

  "Denny, I got your stuff out!"

  Her eyes, sweeping among them, caught Kid's and swept away.

  "Denny? I think I got it all. . ."

  "Oh, wow!" Denny said. "Oh, hey, you did? Wow, that's great!"

  "Here: I got your shirts." She caught up with them. "And-" she glanced up blankly at Kid; the heavy breasts in her blue sweatshirt pressed out against bags and packages. Her small, full fingers had left the brown paper sweaty so that it bellied between them-"and the posters down from your wall. And the picture books. I didn't bring the blankets ... I didn't bring the blankets because I thought it wouldn't be too hard to get some more blankets-"

  "You got my radio?"

  "Of course I got your radio. I think I got everything-there wasn't very much-except the blankets."

  "I don't care about the God-damn blankets," Denny said. "You okay? I mean the house was burning down, and you were back up in there getting my stuff?" He took a paper bag from her- "Oh, watch out... !"

  -pulled Brass Orchids from his back pocket and dropped it inside.

  "What's that?"

  "Nothin'. What you so curious about? Oh, hey! You got my game in there."

  "Un-huh. Denny?"

  "Why don't you let me carry the rest of those?"

  "That's all right. Denny?"

  "What?"

  "I don't think me and my friend-"

  She glanced back.

  Kid did too.

  The blond girl in the pea jacket was just behind them.

  "-are going to stay with you guys any more. I just wanted to bring you your stuff."

  "Hey," Denny said. "Why not?"

  "I don't know." She adjusted the other bags. "We just want to go somewhere else. We don't want to be members. And we know some nice people who have a house where we thought we could stay. It's just girls there."

  "Just girls?" Denny said. "You ain't gonna have no fun there."

  "Boys can visit and stuff like that. Boys just don't live there. I just don't think I want to live with you guys any more. I mean after the fire-" once more she glanced at Kid-"and everything. You know."

  "Jesus," Denny said. "Jesus Christ. Well, I mean, I guess so, if you don't want to any more."

  "You can come visit me, too. If you want."

  "Shit," Denny said. "God damn."

  "I just think it would be better. I mean if I live someplace else. It's a very nice place. They're very nice girls."

  Denny was looking into the bag.

  She said: "I'm pretty sure I got everything. What are you looking for? If it's not in there, it's probably in here."

  "I'm not looking for anything."

  "Oh."

  The mask of Kid's face tingled. Suddenly he turned to Copperhead. "You ever been in any of these houses?"

  "No."

  "Let's try that one."

  "Sure."

  Kid turned to the others. "Hey! Hold up there, will you?" He walked up the unpainted steps. Halfway, he glanced back:

  She shifted paper bags in her arms, biting at her lip while trying to get them comfortable. Denny looked at her, then at Kid, then back at her. The others shuffled and talked.

  In his hand, the knob's squared and toothy shaft slid out another inch-

  Kid pushed the door in.

  The loose ceiling fixture-

  He ran his eyes over the hall, waiting for sounds of occupancy.

  The crayoning on the dirty wall-

  He had the oddest feeling. "Anybody home?"

  "Well, if they are," Copperhead said, "they can damn well get ready to move the fuck out. 'Cause we come to pay a long visit, right?" Others laughed. Copperhead called up: "Does it look okay?"

  "Yeah. It looks pretty ..."

  "Should we come on up?"

  "Yeah, come on."

  At the end of the hall the bathroom door was open. Footsteps behind him passed around him; and somebody carrying the chained mannequin pushed by.

  The house came alive with scorpions.

  With a feeling of suspended confusion, he wandered through the front room into the kitchen.

  Copperhead was looking in the cabinets above the sink. "Whole lot of canned stuff. That's pretty good. Too bad they left all their garbage though." A bag had broken under the table. The table was piled with garbage. The sink and the counter were heaped with dishes.

  Kid decided he didn't like it here.

  Outside the screen door, the sky heaved and twisted like a chained thing.

  He turned abruptly into the living room.

  The blond girl in the pea jacket sat on the couch, fists between her knees, watching two scorpions lay out a mattress on the floor. She looked at Kid, hunched her shoulders, and looked back at the scorpions. She seemed very tired.

  "Hey,man," Dollar said behind his shoulder, "this is a really fine place." Clutching his lion, he shouldered open a door across the hall. Sever
al guys were inside, straightening out mattresses and sleeping bags. Dollar pushed his way among them to set the lion in the window. He turned, silhouetted before the torn window shade. The brass beast peered by his hip from the sill. "Hey, man. You shouldn't have brought that old burned-up mattress with us. It's gonna smell up the whole fuckin' place." On the ticking was a charred halo around a crater two feet across of ashes and burned cotton.

  "It's the only one I had," the scorpion (another white guy named California) said, and yanked it across the floor. He dropped the corner to overlap another.

  Newspaper and magazine pictures had been at one time pasted over the wall; then some of them ripped off.

  A black scorpion Kid didn't know stood up and

  grinned. "This sure beats the place were we staying, hey,

  Kid?" Squinting, he looked around. "Yeah, this is pretty

  nice."

  I prefer, Kid thought, the red eyes, God damn it!

  Across the hall, the door to the service porch was open. He started in, and stopped, one hand on the jamb. There was neither glass nor screening in the windows. Siam sat on a crate. "Hey . . ." He pulled the newspaper into his lap, and looked at Kid with growing confusion. "I was . . . was reading the paper." Siam offered a smile, thought better, and took it back. "Just reading the paper." He stood; the paper fell on the floor. The boards had once been painted maroon. "Is there something you want me to do . . . ? I was gonna help out with the moving, but my hand . . ." He gestured with his bandaged arm. At the place where the bandage wrapped his hand, the flesh was scaling. "I guess I can help set up some stuff," Siam said, looking at his grimy fingers. "If you want. .. ?"

  "Naw," Kid said. "Naw, that's all right."

  The verdigrised spigot on the wall splashed on the muddy drain.

  Something clanked and ground behind him.

  Kid turned.

  The Ripper and Devastation wheeled the Harley up the hall:

  "I don't see why you wanted to bring this piece of junk along. You can't get no gas for it, and you say the motor's all shot any way."

  "Well, it's a good bike, if I could get it fixed."

  "You want to put it in the bathroom like last time?"