by Kathy Acker
New York City is very peaceful and quiet, and the pale gray mists are slowly rising, to show me the world, I who have been so passive and little here, and all beyond is so unknown and great that now I am crying. My fingers touch the concrete beneath my feet and I say, “Goodbye, oh my dear, dear friend.”
We don’t ever have to be ashamed of feelings of tears, for feelings are the rain upon the earth’s blinding dust: our own hard egotistic hearts. I feel better after I cry: more aware of who I am, more open. I need friends very much.
Thus ends the first segment of my life. I am a person of GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
I Journey To Receive My Fortune
My lawyer Mr. Gordon duly sent me his address; and he wrote after it on the card “just outside Alexandria, and close by the taxi stand.” Nevertheless, a taxi-driver, who seems to have as many jackets over his greasy winter coat as he is years old, packs me up in his taxi, hems me in by shutting the taxi doors and closing the taxi windows and locking the taxi doors, as if he’s going to take me fifty miles. His getting into his driver’s seat which is decorated by an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth, moth-eaten into rags, is a work of time. It’s a wonderful taxi, with six great horns outside the driver’s window, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how many kids to hold on by, and iron spikes below them to prevent the amateur kids from yielding to temptation.
I’m just beginning to enjoy this taxi and think how like a yard of straw it is, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the horses’ nosebags are kept inside, when I see the taxi-driver beginning to open his door as if we’re going to stop presently. And stop we presently do, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open door, whereon is painted “EGYPT.”
We’re walking along the aqueduct which supplies water to the citadel. Stray dogs sleep and walk in the sun. Carrion vultures wheel through the sky. The dogs are tearing at a donkey’s leftovers, especially the head which is still completely covered in skin: the head is the least edible part of the skeleton. Always birds begin with eyes; dogs like the stomach or skin around the asshole. They all move from the tenderest to the toughest.
This old woman’s begging me to fuck her. Puke. I prefer boys in this heat. She’s uncovering her long flat tits, they look like worms, they’re hanging down to her belly-button. She’s stroking them. She has a sweet smile. Her head bends to one side; lips part over her yellow teeth. Another hag catches sight of me in this courtyard, cartwheels in front of me, shows me her ass. She does this when she sees a man because she wants a man so badly. A woman dancing all over her cell is beating up her tin toilet bowl like the picture we have of a crazy person cause she’s not getting affection.
Three nights now I’ve been chasing that creep guy I’m getting sick of not getting him I’m getting sick of getting what I don’t want and not getting what I want. I saw him every night at the Palace before I wanted him. He has a very pretty blonde girlfriend he’s even cuter than her so I didn’t want him. One night he asked me what I do with myself when he doesn’t see me. He finds it hard to talk to me cause he’s very shy. Since that night I’ve gotten this bigger crush on him and every time I’ve returned to the Palace every night this week—only my crush drives me out—every night this week he’s never there.
Quiet way of life here—intimate, secluded. Dazzling sun effects when one suddenly emerges from these alleys, so narrow that the roofs of the shuttered bay windows on each side touch each other.
Sometimes I think about my future … I don’t want to leave this life and go back to the horror that is New York. What shall I do when I get back to New York? What can I do to make New York not horrible? Before it descends on me and eats me up. I’m scared out of my wits.
I’m a scaredy-cat. I run away from everything. Being allowed to laze. This’ what it’s about.
Not only have I shirked facing my problems. I shall die at sixty before having formed any opinion concerning myself. I made a list of human characteristics: every time I had one characteristic I had its opposite.
How did I get to being always alone?
However I worry very little about any of this: I live like a plant filling myself with sun and light with colors and fresh air. I keep eating, so to speak; the digesting will have to be done then the shitting; and the shit had better be good! That’s the important thing.
The day beginning to rise—I have that smartness in my eyes that comes from being up all night. Several upperclass Greek women are walking by. A pleasant fragrance wafts out from under their veils, from the raising of their elbows when they reach up to make sure their veils are still on their heads, and from the edges of the veils themselves as they float up in the draft. In my mind’s eye, I see a pink stocking and a tip of a foot in a pointed yellow slipper.
Back in New York City, the tenth floor of an apartment building on 73rd street and Third Avenue:
HUBBIE: Goodbye, dear. (Shouting) I’m going to Long Island to go hunting.
WIFE (entering their wall-to-wall carpeted living room): But you can’t leave me. It’s Christmas.
HUBBIE: This is my vacation. I worked like a dog all year to keep you in trinkets and furs. I want to do what I want for once in my life and it’s Christmas.
WIFE: You’re gonna desert us on Christmas! You louse! You lousy louse! Mother always said you were a louse and, besides, she has more money than you! I don’t know why I married you I certainly didn’t marry you for your money. (Starts to sob)
HUBBIE: Stop it, dear. (Doesn’t know what to do when he sees a woman crying. It makes him feel so helpless.) The children’ll see and think something’s the matter.
WIFE: We don’t have any children. It’s all your fault.
HUBBIE: It’s always my fault. Everything’s always my fault. When your dog died when you were four years old it was my fault. When Three Mile Island was leaking away Mother threw out her new General Electric microwave cause she said it was a UFO Martian breeding ground: I caused that one. Your commie actor friends’re always telling me I’m not political enough cause I won’t stand on streetcorners and look like a bum just to hand out that rag (SEMIOTEXT(e)) they call a newspaper a bum wouldn’t even use to wipe his ass with, some communism, and then they say I’m responsible for the general state of affairs. All I do is work every day! I never say anything about anything! I do exactly what every other American middle-aged man does. Everything’s my fault.
WIFE (soberly): Everything IS your fault. (The wife starts to cry again.)
You don’t love me enough. You don’t want me to be a little girl. I’m … mmwah (her hands crawl at one of the lapels of his red-and-black hunting jacket). I’m a … googoo. Don’t you love me? Bobby? Do you love me and be nice to me and don’t desert me cause I love you so much?
HUBBIE (completely bewildered): Of course I love you. (His big strong arms pick her up. He carries her into the bedroom. He puts his cock into her pink rayon panties. He comes. He wants to do what he wants to do.)
WIFE: You promised and you can’t break your promise you’d stay here.
HUBBIE: Shit. (He fondles his old Winchester. He walks over to one of the large living room windows and sticks the rifle through the window. He shoots down a streetlight that’s red.) Goddamn.
WIFE: Bobby, what’re you doing? Don’t you know we all—the tenants—decided we’d have noise regulations during the night?
HUBBIE: I can have my shooting practice right here. Bam bam (says as he shoots). Three dead streetlights. Try crossing the street now, President Carter.
WIFE: Don’t insult President Carter that way.
HUBBIE: Bam. (The bullet goes right through a businessman’s hat. The businessman doesn’t notice a thing.) Bam bam bam bam. (The lamps which light the street below Mary and Bobby’s apartment burst open.) Those local hoods can thank me: tonight they’ll jerk their girlfriends off in the doorways and the cops won’t see a thing.
WIFE: You’re acting just like Mother said you would when you don’t get your way. All
you want is attention. You’re gonna be a baby until I give in to you. Well, I’m not going to. I’ve got myself to think about.
HUBBIE: Bam. (Shoots down a four-year-old girl who’s wearing a baby-blue jumper. Her junked-out mother is too shocked to scream. It begins to snow.) Guess it’s gonna snow for Christmas.
WIFE: Ooh, I’m so glad! Now aren’t you glad you stayed home for Christmas?
Scene 2. The Husband’s Monologue.
WIFE: Where’re you going, Frank?
HUBBIE (putting on a torn khaki jacket over his checkered hunting jacket): I’m just going out for a second, hon. There’re a few things I can’t reach from here.
WIFE (flinging her arms across the door like she’s Jesus on the cross): You’re not going out on this cold night. Something horrible’s gonna happen.
HUBBIE (shouldering his gun): Don’t be ridiculous, Mary. There’s nothing out there.
WIFE: You’re going to get drunk and hang around with loose women and God knows what and Josie and Ermine’re coming at seven!
HUBBIE: Aw, honey. I don’t want to see those alcoholics.
WIFE: Josie and Ermine aren’t alcoholics. Ermine earns $75,000 a year.
HUBBIE: They drink up all my Scotch. I’ll tell you what. If they come in here, I’ll go bang-bang and Winchester will get rid of the beggars. I told you I was getting you a nice Christmas.
WIFE: You’ll do your shooting on the street. I just washed the kitchen floor.
On The Street
HUBBIE: Here we go round the mulberry bush the mulberry bush the mulberry bush … I’m a child again. I’m happy. I haven’t been happy since I went out drinking with that black whore who threatened to burn my balls off with her BIC just cause I was teasing her a little about her kid sister. Women are too sensitive. Take my wife. Premonitions! (Huge black shadows start gathering around the husband.) Boy did she get hot under the collar huh … about nothing … about a dead four-year-old who in two years would be hooked on junk. All women are hooked on junk. Now I can do whatever I want.
Is there anything else? Is there anything else? What is it to know?
I, Peter, don’t know because I obsessively adore my father. My father was a poor German-Jewish refugee. He came to America and started a successful millinery business in those old days when men weren’t allowed to have their own businesses. Then he married a rich woman, well that’s what men did in those days, that’s the only way they could succeed. That and being pimps. Women don’t realize that marriage is a business for men—clothes makeup all the stuff women belittle; they want the men to wear that stuff and then they say “Men’s stuff is unimportant;” marriage and sex are the only business men got. My father thought money was everything; he had a right to think money was everything; he didn’t have a choice of thinking anything else considering where he lived when and he had made himself a success.
Unfortunately I’m shit to him because I don’t want to earn money. I don’t know what to do because I honor him and what he’s done.
My mother is a dummy and a piece of jellyfish. The most disgusting thing in this world is her. My worst nightmare is that I’ll have some of that jellyfish in me.
My mother, the jellyfish, wants me to be just like I am.
So I fall down in a fit. I decide to be totally catatonic. I am unable to know anything. I have no human contacts. I’m not able to understand language.
They call me CRAZY. But I’m not inhuman. I still have burning sexual desires. I still have a cock. I just don’t believe there’s any possibility of me communicating to someone in this world.
I hate humans who want me to act like I can communicate to them. I hate feeling more pain because I’ve felt so much pain.
My idea of happiness is numbness.
From what I’ve seen and read I think the people who live in Egypt don’t absolutely hate their lives.
I feel I feel I feel I have no language, any emotion for me is a prison
I think talking to humans, acting in this world, and hurting other humans are magical acts. I fall in love with the humans who I see do these things
I think these categories: this logic way of talking (perceiving) is wrong.
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS POWER AND POWERLESSNESS. For instance, I, Peter, am totally passive or powerless. I live in a world in which one major power, the USA, is trying to artificially create a war with another great power to increase its military budget. All rich businessmen get richer while wars are always fought on top of the bodies of poor people. We are really really powerless.
Anything mental is real.
Dear Peter,
I think your new girlfriend stinks. She is a liar all the way around because her skin is yellow from jaundice, not from being Chinese like she pretends. She’s only pretty because she’s wearing a mask. You’re hooked on her tight little cunt: it’s only a sexual attraction I know you’re very attracted to sex cause when you were young you were fat and no girl wanted to fuck you. What you don’t know is that this cunt contains lots of poisons—not just jaundice—a thousand times more powerful than the coke she is feeding you to keep you with her—especially one lethal poison developed by the notorious Fu Manchu that takes cocks, turns their upper halves purple, their lower parts bright red, the eyes go blind so they can no longer see what’s happening, the person dies. Your new girlfriend is insane and she’s poisoning you.
Love,
Rosa
P.S. I’m only telling you this for your own good.
Dear Peter,
I want you wet. I want you dripping all over me. I want you just for sex. Once I know I can have you I might ignore you I know that would be very stupid. Then you’d run away as fast as you could. Then I’d want you so much I’d figure more subtle lasting ways to commit suicide than all the ways—like lobotomy, everyone in my family goes, I robot flesh made of steel—I have these past two years since you left me. Ours is the hottest love affair that has ever existed and I’m telling everyone that it is so. Physical sex doesn’t have to have anything to do with love affairs. Love affairs are when each person can do anything they want and the other person realizes that the most unbelievable behavior possible is usual.
Love,
Rosa
The Gritty State Of Things To Come
Dear Sylvére,
This serves you right. I told you this was going to happen. Now that I’ve spent last night fucking you, I’m in love with you. I’m writing these few lines to give you the news and the news isn’t good. A few minutes ago the cops arrested me for stealing a copy of SEMIOTEXT(e). You keep talking about how you’re making Italian terrorism fashionable: isn’t my ass here in New York worth at least a penny to you for every dollar of Italian terrorist ass over there? I think you should be nice to me because I’m just a helpless little girl. Also please try to get permission to come to see me and bring me some underwear. Put in your cat because I need affection and you don’t need anything. How are you? Darling, I’m awfully sorry about what’s happening to me. Let’s face it: some kids are born with silver spoons in their mouths. I’m an old woman whose teeth are falling out. I’m counting on you to help me out. I wish I could run into your chest and climb on your arms three hours a week and no more. Remember what we do together when I’m unparanoid enough to see you. Remember what we do together when I’m unparanoid enough to see you. Try to recognize the only reality of the real world: no one gives a shit about anything. Get on your knees, sweetheart, and kiss the earth,
Love,
Rosa
We Have Proven That Communication Is Impossible
Dear Susan Sontag,
Would you please read my books and make me famous? Actually I don’t want to be famous because then all these people who are very boring will stop me on the street and bother me already I hate the people who call me on the phone because I’m always having delusions. I now see my delusions are more interesting than anything that can happen to me in New York. Despite everyone saying New York is just the mo
st fascinating city in the world. Except when Sylvére fucks me. I wish I knew how to speak English. Dear Susan Sontag, will you teach me how to speak English? For free, because, you understand, I’m an artist and artists by definition are people who never pay for anything even though they sell their shows out at $10,000 a painting before the show opens. All my artist friends were starving to death before they landed in their middle-class mothers’ wombs; they especially tell people how they’re starving to death when they order $2.50 each beers at the Mudd Club. Poverty is one of the most repulsive aspects of human reality: more disgusting than all the artists who’re claiming they’re total scum are the half-artists the hypocrites the ACADEMICS who think it’s in to be poor, WHO WANT TO BE POOR, who despise the white silk napkins I got off my dead grandmother—she finally did something for me for once in her life (death)—because those CRITICS don’t know what it’s like to have to tell men they’re wonderful for money, cause you’ve got to have money, for ten years. I hope this society goes to hell. I understand you’re very literate, Susan Sontag,
Yours,
Rosa
Dear David,
Are you a Tibetan monk yet? I used to hate you because you didn’t love me so much you would give up your whole life for me. I expect this of every man. In retrospect, I realize that I was also selfish: I should have stopped making demands that you not be the closet female-hating sadist you are. I understand it’s very hard to be rich because rich people are trained, they can’t just be poor, they are trained to act as if they need to work and be big worldly successes. Your explanation that you gave up writing your visions in order to do commercial Hollywood script writing because you needed Francis Ford Coppola’s $150,000 when you receive huge monthly estate checks rivals a university professor’s essay on the similarities between Moby Dick and Nazism. At least a university professor really has to make a living. Language means nothing anymore anyway. Walking down Second Avenue with you while you’re telling me you’re as poor as me when I know I have to fuck thirteen-inchers in porn films the next day so I can pay Peter, my husband, his goddam rent wasn’t as bad as how my other boyfriends treated me: at least you bought me lunch at Amy’s after we fucked. The only thing I resent is when you were doing everything you could to force me to fuck your Tibetan guru and I had bad gonorrhea. That your environmental richness does not excuse.