Dhalgren

by Samuel R. Delany

  But Glass was already down on his hands and knees, pushing Revelation aside, pants open, buckle dangling, cock flapping at his belly like a shy foot of over-sized garden hose.

  Copperhead, holding his pants up with one hand, with the other helped Revelation stand.

  "You see," Revelation said. "Even the second time, I go pretty . . ."

  "A load is a load," Copperhead said. "How you wanna time it is your problem."

  Revelation took an unsteady step that pulled him away from Copperhead's grip, said, "God damn . . . !" then started to the wall. Halfway, he glanced at me again, suddenly got a big, pink grin. "You better get some of that while there's still some left." At the wall, he turned to lean, hands once more rucked behind him, genitals still engorged, slick with common juice.

  I stood, watching, wondering- when I could maneuver to see pussy:

  With one hand, Risa held Glass's shoulder. Her knees splayed, sagged, recovered. His hips were going side to side as much as up and down. She was doing something with her other hand-trying to get his pants further down his legs, I realized. Finally he paused long enough to let her push them to his knees, and before she twisted back up beneath him he began to hump and flatten. She lifted one foot, dropped it, and for a moment her face turned from him to us, eyes and mouth wide, tongue crawling around her teeth, till it snapped back, then lapped at Glass's neck. Copperhead squatted by them-to watch? But he leaned forward, said something. Glass slowed.

  Risa said something I couldn't hear, put her hand on Copperhead's naked knee, raised her head a moment, said something else.

  "God damn," California said. "Them two been going at her four, five times. Each."

  Copperhead stood up and walked toward us. "Oh, man!" He put his hand on the wall to balance while he tried three times to get his other foot back inside his pants. Perspiration shone among the freckles and red hairs inside his thigh. Then green canvas slid over them. He jerked his chin toward the Glass and Risa. "That nigger can fuck!" His foot coming down, knocked D-t's shoulder (Copperhead: "Hey-sorry!") who looked up and said, "You ain't doin' so bad yourself," and dropped his face back into his arm.

  Copperhead grinned, pushed his works, glistening like wet leather, into his fly and buttoned the top button.

  "You want something to drink?" California asked; he'd taken the jug from Dollar.

  "No." Copperhead rubbed the place between his beard and his thick, lower lip with the side of his forefinger. "But she does."

  "I think," I said, "I am gonna get a piece."

  "Hey," Copperhead said, "you better get some-before we kill her!" He shook his head. His beard was wet "Go on." Then he went out of the room.

  I stepped across D-t and nearly tripped on a blanket tangled between two mattresses. California came over too; he stuck his forefinger in the lion's brass mouth, wiggled it there, then suddenly grinned at me as though he'd made a joke. I just leaned against the wall to watch.

  Once Glass threw up his head, face bright with sweat, teeth and eyes minstrel white. Risa's head and shoulders shook like somebody was hammering the soles of her feet. She kept saying, "Ughhhh . . . Ughhhh . . . Ughhhh . . ." and sometimes closing her mouth. Glass's face slapped down and hid her unfocused blinks.

  Re-reading this, it occurs to me that the written words don't let you know whether Copperhead meant Risa or Glass. His tone of voice did, though.

  I squatted by the wall.

  Glass's hips, smacking hers, made her thighs shake.

  I got my hand under my belt to pull my dick over; it rubbed hard on a seam or something, which hurt.

  Glass threw back bis head again, pushed himself up on bis hands, his ass going. Risa's hands bounced on his shoulders. She grabbed air, she slapped the mattress; then she hung on his neck. The heel of one foot dug the ticking, her toes wide, then curling down on their dark knuckles.

  She was making a sound for all the world like a flannel torn near the ear. Glass finished.

  I guess she didn't or couldn't or wouldn't.

  Still up on his hands, bis head dropped. She kept pulling at his shoulders. He took a loud breath and sat back on bis knees. "Oh, shit . . ."

  Risa dropped her hands between her legs.

  I got up and stood just behind Glass. When Risa's knees went down, her foot slid by my boot. She rubbed her ankle back and forth on mine through the soft leather. Glass stood, unsteadily, so I gave him a hand. He held my arm with one hand, tried to pull his pants up with the other, and said: "Go on, man. Fuck that pussy. Yeah! Shit . . ." He looked very dazed and not quite at me.

  I opened my fly.

  Risa looked pretty dazed too.

  Her breasts rolled on her ribs as she rocked. I had to bend my knees to get my crank out. She reached to scratch her hip; then her hand forgot what it was doing, touching her stomach all over; she was looking all around the room, moving just her narrowed eyes. I put my barefoot on her cunt. She rocked her hips till I pressed hard; then she held my dirty ankle and rubbed her hair on the calloused ball. The arched bone there slid around under its wet skin. What had leaked into the hair under my instep felt thick as clay slip. She opened and closed and opened her mouth, but breathing, loudly, through her nose. And her eyes were still moving around without fixing anything. A drop of water rolled sideways down her jaw.

  I took my foot away.

  She began to pull at herself, digging two fingers in, to open and close a raw canyon; she blew out her mouth, all her lips sticking and pulling apart.

  (Did I think: Who am I standing here with a hard-on for? Me, her, or them? No, I didn't.) I opened my belt and kneeled down. She got an expression almost a smile and swung it all around her, head rolling; and still pulling. Christ.

  I went forward. Holding myself up on one hand, I caught one of hers and got it down on my dick. (Lanya once told me lots of guys get up tight if a girl tries to touch their dick when they're putting it in; it turns me on.)

  I remember I opened my eyes once and saw her brown neck stretching as her head turned away, then wrinkling as her ear hit mine, hard. She was pushing at my pants to get the belt buckle out of the way, I realized. Then she grabbed hold. I fantasized about eating her, some. And her blowing Dollar, for some reason; I remember thinking this was freaky enough that I shouldn't have to fantasize at all. At which point, without loosening her legs on my hips or her arms over my shoulders, she screamed. Loud. It scared me to death. I thought: There goes my hard. It didn't-but that was the first time I thought about the rest of the people in the room. Somebody was standing near us; because I could see his sneaker right in front of my face. When she began to drag air back into her chest, with some wet sound in her mouth (which, hunting for mine, finally caught it-I tried to lick her tonsils), I thought I was going to come. Only it took another minute and a half. When I come, sometimes, balling somebody I'm not too interested in (or having particularly uninteresting sex with somebody I am), I get some picture (or words) that stays a few seconds until it hazes to something hard to recall as a dream: This time, it was an image of myself, holding hands with someone (Lanya? Risa? Denny?) and running among leafless trees laced with moonlight while the person behind me kept repeating: ". . . Grendal, Grendal, Grendal . . ." which, while I rocked my face in her hot neck and the stinging in my thighs, chest, arid belly went on, seemed very funny. (Specific and primitive?) I raised my face out of the moon-bright branches into a room lathered with the smell of smoke and scorpions. And grinning, man, like a tiger!

  I sat back, dragging chains over her. She bit one, held it in her teeth so it tugged on my neck. I pulled, till it came out of her mouth, kneeled back, and bumped into someone-Dollar-who said: "Hey, man. Pretty good, huh?"

  "Watch it," California said, trying to crowd in. "Come on, huh?"

  Copperhead, holding a gallon jug, stooped down beside Risa. Glass stood just behind his shoulder. Copper-head got one hand under her neck. She held onto the knee of his fatigues.

  I stood up while California clambered over her
ankles. "Hey, Copperhead? Man, she's drunk enough already! She's gonna toe sick if you-"

  "Get out of here," Copperhead said: "This is water. She asked me for a fucking drink of water before, that's all."

  "Oh." California slid his hands up Risa's legs. A tendon in her thigh shook. California bent.

  "Aw, come on!" Glass said, and punched at California's head. "Can't you wait until she has a fuckin' drink of water?" But Risa grabbed California's hair, grunting, and pulled him down. Glass sucked in his breath and watched her drink till Copperhead lowered the jug. Water ran down Risa's cheek. She got out, ". . . thank you . . ."

  "You're welcome," California said, muffled in her crotch.

  Which Copperhead must have thought was the funniest thing he ever heard. He just broke up. And spilled water all over the floor.

  "You can take her in the mouth," Dollar was saying to Fireball. "If you want, you can take her mouth and I'll take her pussy. Or you can take her pussy and I'll. . ."

  I walked to the door. Halfway there I realized I was going to shit within thirty seconds.

  Siam walked in. "She still workin' out?"

  "Party's still going," I said and pushed by him.

  In the hall, Spitt was rubbing the scar on his chest "Them guys still messing around in there? Jesus Christ." He looked unhappy.

  I asked: "You get your turn?"

  "Yeah. Before. But they just on on and fucking on! They're gonna kill her or something."

  "You're just scared it'll all be used up by the time you're fit for seconds." I grinned. "Why don't you go in there and see if you can finish her off?" Then I went in the bathroom, got my pants down fast, and sat.

  My buttocks got wet from the splash, and there was six seconds of gut-cramp that started in my ankles. Then it eased. My crank hung down against the porcelain, so cold I had to slide my hand over it to hold it away. (Cold knuckles; better than a cold cock.) Through the bathroom door I watched Spitt, still standing in the hall. After a while, he went in the room. "Grendal grendalgrendalgrendalgrendalgren . . ." still ran through my head. Suddenly, I realized I hadn't been listening carefully enough; I'd stuck the brake in the wrong place. The actual word I'd heard at orgasm and that, for the last few minutes had been repeating in my head was: ". . . Dhalgren . . ." I wiped myself with part of the second page of the Bellona Times, January 22, 1776.

  Going back to the loft bed, I thought it would be nice if Lanya had stopped by and was waiting with Denny (knowing she wouldn't because I'd thought about it); she hadn't

  Up in the loft, I lay on my back for a minute; then I rolled over and hit Denny on the shoulder. He woke up. "What?" "Smell my dick," I said.

  "Huh . . . ?" Then he made a disgusted sound, sat up, bent down, and sniffed. My fly was open.

  Denny looked up, frowning. "You got dandruff in your crotch." He wrinkled his nose. "Who is it?" I laughed.

  "The girl they got in the back, Risa." I grinned at him. "You get some?"

  "Oh . . . I went in there before while you were asleep. It was mostly girls in there then. I didn't do nothing." He settled again on the bed, his back to me.

  Looking up at the ceiling, I began to fall asleep: the kind of falling where you watch yourself do it, and everything gets all tingly and you sink among the tingles.

  And woke up with Denny on top of me, my arms across his back. He was breathing in short gasps, face against my neck, rubbing off on my belly. Wondered why I'd bothered to wake him up be-

  Power is all. Another falsification: I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

  My speech changes when I talk to different people; I go from "ain't" to "aren't," "yes" to "yeah," from a fixed to a formless diction. With Lanya, a lot of the time, it gets playful, arch. With others, it flattens. When I'm upset, it punctures with dozens of noise nodes: "you know's" "I mean's" and "sort of s". I left behind me a whole vocabulary and syntax at the colleges I passed through, which began to come back with Newboy, Kamp, that interview, and with Calkins at the retreat. It's lability, not affectation; a true and common trait. But if I tried to write down what I say as I move from speech context to speech context, it would read like lack of character, not a characteristic. I note all the eccentric words around me: Glass used the word ". . . radically . . ." fore with that routine which was pretty much calculated to turn him on. I didn't stop him, but I was annoyed; so when I began bad-mouthing him (growling into his hair: ". . . come on, you two-bit cocksucker; come on, you scrawny, shit-ass bastard . . .") it was real: he shot pretty quick. But by then I had a hard-on again. I was actually sort of digging him just lying there on top of it. But he got down to suck me off. I guess I'd wanted him to do

  that when I first woke him up; now I didn't. "Don't waste your time," I told him, dropping my chin to watch the top of his head. "Can't you just go to sleep?" But he kept working (and playing with my asshole which I'd mentioned Nightmare mentioning to me) and I shot. He crawled back up beside me, and I held him around his belly with his back to me (like a warm dog) while he occasionally squirmed like he'd be more comfortable on the other side of the bed (yeah, like trying to sleep with a dog) while I wondered: If I'm starting to have to fantasize girls in order to come with guys, maybe I'm not as bisexual as I keep telling myself?

  I know: I'm a closet monosexual.

  Oh yeah. While he was blowing me, I stopped him in the middle and asked him what he was thinking about-to be a bastard. Very honest and very surprised, he told me Dollar (I flashed on the moment with Risa when our pet this morning and several times I've heard Lady of Spain refer to an ". . . entity . . ." while among the others I've heard ". . . sententious . . ." ". . . caravan . . ." and ". . . conspicuous . . ." go by. But when I transcribe the conversation around me, I find myself purposely playing down the verbal range of it, so that it does not read like post-literate affectation-which it isn't George's speech can't even be written down for the common reader; Throckmorton (at the party) speaks only in inane combinations of serial phrases that become satires on themselves as soon as they are recorded but that, during utterance, make miracles of communication. I suppose I'm just getting frustrated by what written words can't do. This afternoon, Gladis, wholly pregnant and half smiling, said through the kitchen screening: "You got no . . ." paused and interjected three syllables of laughter ". . . know what I can see it in here. can I?" What marks of ellision, inflection, and melody could make that sound, or the sense of it, intelligible on paper?

  Spent that afternoon trying to figure that one out.

  I strip and bleach so the faint patternings of a real voice will show through; and end with something artificial as a henna job. And Calkins, determined not to read, waits for my next book in this jargon called the written word I've been stuck with! murderer went through my mind) which got me a little mad. But that's what I get. I note here (because sex does have something to do with love) Denny's said he loves me six times now, admitted it almost under his breath with this hung expression as though he was daring himself to say it-it always comes off the wall when we're busy doing something else: moving the couch across to the other side of the front room, chucking junk into the yard across the fence, or when I was trying to help Cathedral bend the motorcycle's kick-stand back into shape. I don't really know what I feel about him, but I'm glad as hell one of them stays here. (I guess I wish it was Lanya; she's more interesting, in or out of bed . . . which isn't really the point; really, I just wish she was here.) When I woke up, he had wriggled out of my arms and was curled up in the corner against the walls. When I got up and went into

  Walking with Lanya today, I told her that She beamed: "Yes, he's said it to me a half-dozen times too. It's charming."

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't think so. I mean, I don't understand it. He loves you. He loves me. What the hell does that mean?"

  She looked surprised, even hurt Finally she said: "Well-when somebody uses strange words to you that you just do not
understand, you have to listen for the feeling and get at the meaning that way!"

  "I think," I said after a moment, "it may mean, when he says it he's going to leave me before you do-who say it so much less frequently."

  "You think he'll leave us?" Me/us-it struck like that "Give him a reason to stay. I've tried."

  "That's a hard one, even in much simpler situations. I wonder if it just has to do with the kinds of people we're familiar with. To you, I'm replaceable. I'm a nice ape, who even happens to be more interesting inside than out I think one of the most interesting things to you Is the way the machinery jerks around by stops and starts. Like you say, though, you've known geniuses before. Ifs nothing new."

  "Well!"

  "Denny, I think, is the first Denny you've ever known. For you, he's unique-whereas for me, everything from the foster homes he's lived in to the rhythm he bucks his ass at, the protective brutality, and even that well of playful sweetness you can never touch bottom in, the hard-headedness good and bad: sweet and fucked-up as he is, there're many, many, many of him floating around." We turned the corner. "Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never seen you up so close before, and I do not understand you at all. You say sometimes I act like I don't see you? I don't even know where to look! Living with you around is like like living with a permanent dazzle. The fact that you even like me, or look at me, or brush by me, or hug me, or hold me, the living room, most of them were still asleep. Fireball sat on the edge of the couch eating something out of a cup with a spoon. He stood up when I came in (Filament with, oddly, Devastation were tucked together on the couch behind him; the pale Black Widow,

  with the dark Lady of Spain curled against her, slept on the floor among Tarzan-and-most-of-the-apes) as though he wanted to speak to me. I nodded.