putting down ten dollar bills for the bartender and I see the
vodka in front o f me and I drink it, and we talk about
H em ingway, and Ginsberg, and Whitman, and we duck into
another bar, and it’s almost empty, they all are, the weather
makes everything deserted and quiet and we seem like the only
people on earth, really, and the streets get darker, and the wind
gets colder, and the Stoli goes down smoother, easier, faster,
and he unrolls the bills faster, easier, more, and I’m saying shit
I’m tired and I’m telling him m y sad story o f this night and
how I didn’t have anywhere to go and how I don’t have no
money and how things are and he’s concerned, he’s listening,
I’m saying how frightened I was and he’s taking it all in; and
shit I can drink like any man, you know, I mean, I can drink, I
don’t fold, and I say I can outdrink him and he don’t think so
but I fucking do because he stops but he keeps ordering them
for me and I know I’m going to be crashing soon so I’m not
concerned, there’s nothing I have to do but sleep, alone,
warm , inside, and we get to his place and I ask for his keys and
he says he’ll open it because it’s hard and he opens it, it’s a lot o f
locks, it’s locks that slip and slide and look like they have jaw s,
they m ove and slide and spring and jum p, and the door finally
gets open and he says he’ll take me up and inside the door
there’s steps but first he locks the locks from inside, he locks
them with his keys and he says see this is how you do it when
you come in, don’t forget now, and he pockets the keys and I
think I have to remember to get them so when he leaves I’ll be
able to lock the door behind him, it’s unfamiliar to me and I
don’t want to forget, and then there’s the steps, these huge,
wood steps, these towering flights, these creaky, knotted
steps, these splintery steps, there’s maybe a hundred o f them,
it’s so high up you can’t see the top, so you go up the first
twenty or something and there’s a big, em pty room, more like
a baseball field, it’s not like an apartment building where
there’s other people on the first landing, there’s no one there
and it’s em pty, and there’s another twenty or thirty steps and
it’s knottier and there’s holes in the middle o f the steps and
you’re trying to get up them without looking like a fool or
falling and there’s another floor that’s some cavernous room
with canvases and boxes and it’s brown, all brown, stretched
canvases and paintings wrapped in brown paper for shipping
and huge standing spirals o f brown twine like statues and
brown masking tape and these vast rolls o f heavy brown tape,
the kind o f tape you have to wet and you use it to reinforce
heavy boxes, and there’s brown boxes, cartons, unfolded and
folded and there’s brown crates, it’s a kind o f dead brown
room, the air’s brown, not just dark but brown as if it’s
colored brown, as if the air itself is brown, and the walls and
the floor and everything in it is dull brown and it’s not a room
in the normal sense, in the human sense, it’s more like an
airstrip, and you keep climbing and then there’s this next
floor, it’s big like a fucking commercial garage or something
and it’s completely covered in paint, oil paint, you could park
a hundred cars in it but the whole floor is thick with dried red
paint, oil paint or acrylics you know, like the blob’s all dead
and it died in here, the paint’s fucking deep on the floor, it’s
shocking pinks and royal blues and yellows so bright they hurt
your eyes, I don’t mean the floor is painted like someone put
paint on a brush and used the brush to paint the floor or a wall
or something, it’s more like the paint is spilled on gallon after
gallon, heaps and heaps o f it, it’s inches thick or feet thick, it
dries hard and sticky, you walk on it with trepidation thinking
you will sink but it’s firm, it gives a little but it’s firm, it’s dry,
it’s like an artist’s palette like you see in the movies but it’s a
whole real floor o f a room as big as a city block and you walk
on it like yo u ’re outside in the hills walking on real ground
that’s uneven and it’s been wet and you sink in some places or
at least you expect to, the earth’s higher and lower by inches
and you got boots to help you find your footing, your feet sink
in but not really, the ground just gives a little and it ain’t even,
you don’t fall but your footing ain’t sure, but it’s paint, not
earth, paint, it must be a million paint stores all emptied out on.
the floor and then rising from the paint, from the thick, dried,
uneven, shocking paint, there’s canvases and there’s paint on
them, beautiful paint, measured, delicate by contrast, esthetic,
organized into colors and shapes that have to do with each
other, they touch, you see right aw ay that there is meaning in
their touch, there’s something in it, it’s not random, it’s too
fine, almost emotionally austere, your heart sort o f skips a beat
to see how intelligent the paint is, you look up from the chaos
o f the paint on the floor to the delicacy o f the paint on the
canvas and I at least almost want to cry, I just feel such sorrow
for how frail we are. I just had never seen it so clear how art is
about mortality, finding the one thin strain o f significance, a
line o f sorrow, the thread o f a meaning, an idea against death,
an assertion with color or shape as if you could draw a perfect
line to stand against it, you know , so it would break death’s
heart or something. I can see w hy he wanted to walk me
through this because it’s his paintings, precious to his soul.
Y ou w ouldn’t want some stranger rooting around in it; or
even touching it. Y ou have to go through the whole room, the
whole distance o f it, its full length, to get to the stairs that take
you to the top floor where he lives. I keep being afraid I’ll sink
in the paint but I get to the stairs and they’re normal, ju st wood
stairs, even, sanded, finished, with a bannister, and I climb up
after him; it was different N ew Y ear’s Eve, soft and glow ing,
with grand tables and linen and crystal. N o w it’s pretty
empty, big, vast really; there’s a big blow heater hanging from
the ceiling and he turns it on and it blows hot air out at you, it’s
like being in a hot wind, it dries the air out, it’s a m usky,
lukewarm , smelly draft, and he puts it on higher and it’s like
being in a hot wind, warm but unpleasant, an awful August
day with a wind so steady and stale that the air pushes past
you, old air, used already. At one end o f the huge room is a
single wood chair. At the other end is a sort o f kitchen, a sink,
running water, a refrigerator, and in front there’s a kitchen
counter and in front o f that there’s a single bed to sleep on, a
sort o f sofa maybe, flat, no headboard, no cushions, no back,
nondesc
ript, covered with cloth, it’s a couch or an old mattress
on springs or something. Way in the back, to the left o f the
kitchen, hard to see, extending behind the kitchen but you
can’t really see how far, there’s a kind o f cage, it’s chicken
wire, it goes from the floor to the ceiling, and there’s a double
bed behind the chicken wire, and I ask what it is, and he says he
sleeps there with girls, some girls like it, it’s his bedroom, he’s
got cuffs for it that fasten on the chicken wire but it’s got
nothing to do with me, I can sleep on the sofa, and I’m feeling a
chill, m y blood goes cold and I feel a certain fear I can’t define
and do not want to think about, and I’ve tried to shake him all
night but there’s the fact he’s sort o f stuck on, I can’t shake him
loose, and I’m feeling like I’ve been traveling a long time in a
foreign place, the land’s strange, the natives are strange, it’s
been a long w ay up the mountain and you don’t know if the
w ay dow n’s booby-trapped and you know the sidewalks are
roads o f windswept death, they’re not harboring no lost souls
tonight, you ain’t going to make it some hours out there. I am
fucking blind drunk, asshole drunk, dumb bitch drunk, and
I’m figuring he’s Jill’s lover w ho’s got to be back because it’s
her opening night and he’ll go back soon, it’s just a matter o f
time, and I don’t look at the cage, like he said it’s got nothing
to do with me and I try not to think about the cuffs and I stay
w ay on the other side o f the place, near the single wood chair,
m y solace, m y home, the place I pick out where I’m staying as
long as he’s here and I can sit here the whole night, just sit, and
he says hey it’s no problem you sleep on the sofa here see and
he makes some tea and we take the tea downstairs to where the
paintings are and I think this is the right direction, at least he’s
on his w ay out, and he shows me the paintings, one by one, he
shows them to me, it’s sort o f amazing, it’s like being scraped
up o ff the street and suddenly the Museum o f Modern A rt’s,
open to you, a special honored guest, he shows them to me
one by one and I’m pretty awed and pretty quiet except he asks
me questions, what do I think o f this and what do I think o f
this and I try to say something, I say things about poems they
remind me o f because I don’t know how to say things about
paintings and there’s one a little different, it’s an emotional
upheaval, not intellectual like most o f the others, and I like it a
lot, it’s brazen and aggressive and real romantic and I say so
and he says well, it’s named after me then, and I think it’s
probably because he’s drunk and he’ll change it back
tom orrow but tonight it is named for me; Andy he calls it, a
nickname I hate. I say I’ll lock him out and he says he’s going
to call Jill to say he’s on his w ay and we walk upstairs and I sit
on the single wood chair but he doesn’t go near any phone
which I don’t even know where it is, I sit on the wood chair
and I dig m y nails into it and he pours me another drink and
I’m saying I’ve had enough but once it’s in m y hands I’m
nervous so I drink it and it’s pretty much like I’m submerged
in a tank o f alcohol, the fumes are drowning out any air, I’m
close to asphyxiation. I sit real still on the chair, I down the
drink like it’s water, I hold onto the chair for dear life, I see the
chicken wire and it scares me, I think about outside and it
scares me, and he’s just standing there, real benign, there’s not
a hint o f sex, there’s not a spark I can see, it’s Jill’s art opening,
he’s her lover and these facts have only one outcome which is
he’s going to her now or soon and I just have to sit here still
until he does and I ask where Jill sleeps and he says behind the
chicken wire and I feel out o f m y fucking mind, I feel insane,
and he’s totally level; and his eyes change, I never looked at his
eyes before but now they’re cold, they are real cold, they have
a steel quality, you might say they are mean and you might say
they are cruel and you might say they have m y blood smeared
on them and he’s saying he’ll just tuck me in, I should just lie
down and he’ll cover me with a blanket and then he’ll leave
and I’m saying he should leave now and I’m Jill’s friend and he
says he just wants me to sit next to him on the single bed just
for a minute, just sit there next to him, and I am some falling
down drunk stupid bitch but I am not going near him, I am
sitting on the chair, I have got m y fingernails dug in, and he’s
spying, totally level, totally calm, you can leave if you want,
quiet voice he has, you can just leave, quiet voice, soft voice,
cold eyes, not brown, yellow eyes, ochre eyes, dirty yellow
eyes, quiet voice, you can leave or you can just come here and
sit with me, sit next to me, just for a minute, or you can leave,
or you can leave, or you can sit here, next to me or you can
leave; and I thought, can I? — the door’s locked from inside,
you can’t stay on the streets, the bars are closed, there’s no
strangers outside you can find, even if you was going to risk it,
and you can barely put one foot in front o f another, everything
in front o f your eyes is streaked and moving, everything’s got
a tail like a comet racing through the sky, everything’s a shiny
streak whirling past you and you are standing still unless you
are falling, you fall and stop, fall and stop; and he’s saying you
can leave and you’re wondering if he’d let you anyway,
because finally it occurs to you he is more than a liar, or w hy
would he be so calm? He’s so quiet; quiet voice; you can leave;
or come right here, sit near me, just near me; and then there’s
w hatever’s past the fucking sunset, you know, the ocean
pounds the shore or something, there’s a hurricane, many die,
it breaks apart the beach, shacks, houses, stone walls, they’re
wrecked, Atlanta burns, you know, metaphor, I’d rather talk
in metaphor than say the things he did, God made metaphor
for girls like me, you know, life is nasty, short, brutish, short,
you can be snuffed out, it’s so fast, so mean, so easy,
someone’s eyes go cold, they go mean, they say sit near me
and you say no and they say sit near me and you say no and
they say sit near me and you say no and it’s like a boy and a girl
and some courtly dance except he is saying you can leave, -a
death threat, you can leave, with his cold eyes gleaming a
devil’s yellow from the meanness o f it, a dirty yellow , as i f his
eyeballs changed from brown to some supernatural ochre and
he puts his hands on m y shoulders and his hands are strong and
he lifts me up from the single wood chair and there’s this kind
o f long waltz the length o f the great ballroom where his arms
are around me and I am going one, two, three, four, against
him, in the oppos
ite direction from him trying to get past him
and he is using m y own motion to push me back to where he
wants and he sits me down on the single bed and w e just sit there
like chaste kids, teenagers, side by side, we each look straight
ahead except he’s got his hand on m y neck, w e’re Norm an
Rockw ell except his fingers are spread the width o f m y neck,
his fingers are around m y neck, circling m y neck and I turn my
head to face him, m y b ody’s staring outwards but I turn m y
face toward him and I say to him I don’t want to do this, I get
him to face me and I look him in the eye and I say I don’t want
to do this and his hand tightens on m y neck and I feel his
fingers down under m y skin and into the muscle o f m y neck
and he says quiet, totally level, totally calm: it doesn’t matter,
darling, it doesn’t matter at all. I’m thinking he means it
doesn’t matter to him to fuck and I smile in a kind o f gratitude
but it’s not what he means and he takes his other hand and he
puts it up at the neck o f m y T-shirt and he pulls, one hand’s
holding m y neck from behind and the other’s pulling o ff my
T-shirt, pulling it half off, ripping it, it burns against m y skin
like whiplash, and he pushes me down on the bed and I see m y
breast, it’s beautiful and perfect and kind o f cascading, there’s
no drawing can show how it’s a living part o f me, human, and
when he puts his mouth on it I cry, not so he can tell, inside I’m
turned to tears, I see his face now up against m y breast, he’s
suckling and I hate him, I feel the inside o f his mouth, clam my
and toothy and gum m y, the cavity o f his mouth and the sharp
porcelain o f his teeth, there’s the edge o f his teeth on my
nipple, and he’s got my underpants torn o ff me and m y legs
pushed up and spread and he’s in me and I think I will count to
a hundred and it will be over but it isn’t, he’s different, I try to
push him o ff and he raises him self above me and he smiles at
me and he pushes me back, he holds me down, and I give up, I
do, I stay still, m y body dies as much as it can, hate distilled, a
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