So I was trying to be interesting and cosmopolitan, blabbing on about bullfighting and they’re both ooh-ing and aahhh-ing like I’m the most fascinating person they’ve ever met. I told them about my short story and the editor guy said he wanted to read it. Then at one point, Tim the bookstore guy left to go to the bathroom and this editor guy, who reminded me of my Uncle Norman, started stroking my knee under the table. I shifted away and he smiled this creepy grin. When Tim came back, he proceeded to drink three more gin and tonics, then staggered out of the place by himself. I think he was in a blackout drunk.
So I was stuck with this editor guy and after a while we had run out of things to talk about. He said he had a car and would happily give me a lift to the Upper East Side. Which was okay with me because it’s a long journey from the Village late at night. Turned out he had a Mercedes sports car and it was pretty fun zipping through the city. We were laughing and joking, he was running red lights and acting like he owned the world.
He stopped in front of my apartment building. As I undid my seat-belt, he reached over and tugged me toward him.
I said, “I don’t go that way.”
He stroked my leg again and purred, “Doesn’t this feel good?”
I said “No!” and flipped his hand back into his lap.
He said, “Come on, don’t be like that. You’re very very attractive.” Gave me this big toothy smile and then he brought his arm up and around my shoulders. He was a big guy. He was trying to hug me.
I said, really clearly, “If you don’t take your hands off me, I’m going to break your jaw so bad, you’re gonna be sucking cock through a straw.” His eyes went all hard and he let go of me. I got out of the car. I was really wound up.
So now I guess I’ve totally fucked up my big “connection” to the publishing world. I told Zim what happened and he said I should have let the guy do what he wanted. Said I have to be willing to sacrifice everything for my work. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
June 11, 2006
Isn’t anger the basis for all great art? Why bother trying to make an argument (which is all that a book, or any work of art is: a point of view) if one doesn’t have the motivation? And what purer motivation is there than anger? Anger is the emotion that is born when a wrong has transpired. Wrongs must be righted! Knut Hamsun versus Henrik Ibsen! Joseph Conrad versus Henry James. Allen Ginsberg versus T. S. Eliot, Ni Tsan versus the Sung Dynasty masters! Bob Dylan against the folkies. Bukowski against the world! There has to be some motivation. Contentment doesn’t possess enough fuel to feed and stoke the furnace of art.
These assholes cutting into me, each taking their little piece of flesh. Bleeding me. Wearing me down. Trying to smother me. Next time I see Leon I will tell him he can’t have my next book. That’s all. No one can. I will write it for myself. I don’t need this crap in my life.
All the same, the books are my progeny. And my children must be read in order to live. Someone out there needs them, wants them. If I don’t fight for them, who will? I need to promote them even if I have to act like a whore. Otherwise my children will die. And if they die, I die.
Others can have their biological children, nagging spouses and spiteful parents. I don’t need any of that. I need to define my relationship to the world and I can only do that through words. Even if no one understands me today, they will someday. I am certain of this.
This is the invisible war, the war each author has to fight on his own behalf. They all did it—Hemingway, Capote, Faulkner, Carver, Roth—all. Otherwise the writing is forgotten. A writer’s job is to promote himself. And to do that we must take the abuse. Fellini said “I drop my pants and everyone either laughs or applauds.” Perhaps my battle is futile, because I am no Hemingway, Capote, Faulkner, Carver or Roth. I’m nothing. Maybe my books deserve to die and I will die with them. For the time being, I’m postponing lunch with Leon.
June 13, 2006
The New York Review of Books (five months too late), with no advance warning or fanfare, has vindicated A Gentle Death. In a masterful and definitive analysis, the critique explores the themes in relation to my previously published body of work. The reviewer actually lists my last five books at the head of the article. Has read each and every one. Carefully. Understands my points. Recalls characters who reappear under different nomenclatures. Understands the subtle nature of the love affair as it resonates with the CIA story line. Happily explores the whole tapestry I have woven in which truth plays against fiction, etc.
Someone actually gets it. The review won’t put me on any bestseller lists but at least one person sees what I was doing. I am reborn.
I need a break. I need to remove myself from these grinding gears of commerce. How can anything constructive be accomplished with so much money at stake? How can I write? Of course it’s my own fault because twenty years ago I let them produce a movie based on a story of mine. That started all this, didn’t it? I danced with the devil and that’s how I ended up in the crosshairs. But how is it possible to be known as a great American writer without the movies? The playwrights all had movies. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was filmed seven times! No wonder he got to fuck Marilyn. And the novelists too. Capote, Harper Lee, Steinbeck, Updike, Roth, Dick, Mann. Everything Hemingway wrote. It comes down to this, a movie is the fast path to a reputation. No movie, soon forgotten.
August 1, 1977
The gay editor called me. He was very sober-sounding on the phone. He didn’t mention putting his hand on my knee. Talked as if it never happened. Maybe he wants to give it another try. Or maybe…he actually likes my work. Said he read “My Lucky Day” and thinks it’s terrific. Wants to see more. He also said he’s called someone over at The New Yorker and sent them “My Lucky Day.” I guess I should start reading The New Yorker. Now I feel guilty I threatened him. On the other hand, maybe he read the story because I refused to blow him.
August 3, 1977
Essentially, John is a pot dealer and people are always there to buy pot. But some, like me, stay a little longer. Or a lot longer. Also John and ’Gitte let people passing through town crash at their place. ’Gitte will cook a huge bean soup (she’s vegetarian) and bake bread and feed everyone for days. Sometimes there are people sleeping on the floor (on foam mats) while we hang out and smoke weed and talk. The visitors are usually hippies: ex–Ivy Leaguers (always very WASP-y) with matted hair who have migrated down from some Vermont commune or Amsterdam. They have big-chested, crazy girlfriends, the kind who roll their eyes when they laugh and wear patchouli oil.
A young couple from Copenhagen was crashing at John’s last night. Very blond, almost white-haired, very earnest people until the guy got way too stoned and couldn’t stop laughing. The girl was outrageously beautiful, but in a way that usually doesn’t turn me on, like a female David Bowie. I could see her nipples under the sheer material of her peasant blouse.
Eventually the Danish pastry dragged her imbecilic boyfriend off to bed (and this skinny, pimply guy who came by to buy hash oil also split) so that John and I were left alone. I like it best when we’re alone. Then I can really listen to him. With a twinkle in his eye, he pulled out a Baggie filled with these crumpled-up brown things inside. Peyote buttons. We ate a bunch.
John became unusually quiet. Instead of talking, he dug up some old Dylan bootleg stuff he has on cassette tapes. We listened to that for a while. I’m not really into Dylan, and on these tapes he sounded like a cat in a burlap bag. Then John put on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” On the fifth or sixth playing I was hallucinating trails. The last time John and I did psychedelics, I was speeding, so the stuff didn’t hit me so hard. Now I was tripping for real. The room shifted into another zone of reality. I kept swallowing back the bitter vomit that lay in the back of my throat, but after a while I forgot about that.
I was staring at the floor when the music stopped. John seemed to be staring at the same spot I was staring at. John stuttered: “Ever see dogs fucking?”
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br /> I said, “Yeah” and my voice sounded like a tiny person was living in the back of my throat speaking on my behalf.
John said, “Female dogs are ‘bitches’ but male dogs are just ‘males.’ There is no equivalent term for ‘bitch.’”
I said, “Why is that?” thinking that was the appropriate response.
John said, “Who knows? But another little known fact is that koala bears have a double-ended penis.” Pause. We stared at the floor for another minute. Then John said: “Now you take millions of humans and add gut-wrenching hunger. Throw in a few machine guns, a police state and you know what you got? A perfect formula for any possibility. No matter how far out beyond the imagination. Auschwitz. But even worse. Can you imagine worse?”
I peeped “No.” The walls were flowing like lava.
“So now, dial it back a bit. Some starving farm girl from the Ukraine is propositioned by a gentleman in a nice suit who happens to be passing through. He has money. He seems to wield a certain authority. And all he wants her to do is fuck a German shepherd. For more money than she can make in a year growing turnips. She sucks off Augie Doggie while Doggie Daddy plays hide-the-kielbasa. And why not? I mean who’s the victim here? The chick or the freak who gets off on this shit?
“So don’t sweat it, because that’s life in all it’s ironic and varied splendor. Right? The agony and the ecstasy. Life happens. Just ’cause you don’t want it to happen doesn’t mean it doesn’t. All over the world, right now, while we sit here as wasted as roadkill, people are having sex with dogs, sheep, chickens. Maybe even voles. Murdering each other. Raping each other. Even eating each other.”
I said, “I think kielbasa is Polish not Ukrainian. What’s a vole?”
John said, “A vole is like a gerbil. Smaller. Easier to insert.”
I said, “Insert where?”
John said, “Into the lower colon. Use a tube. Put the gerbil in a rubber glove. Insert into anus. Allow small mammal to go exploring. Stimulates the prostate.”
I said, “Whose prostate?”
John said, “Some candy-assed movie star. Candy-assed movie stars will do anything. Because they’re rich and stupid. Especially if it has to do with sex. Hey, we could start a rumor! Some movie star has been seen in the emergency room having a gerbil removed from his ass!”
“No one would believe it.”
It was around this time that I realized that some new folks had dropped by and they were sitting on the floor a few feet away passing a joint. Every time I glanced over in their direction, there seemed to be more of them. I whispered to John, “What’s going on?”
John gave me this Cheshire Cat smile and said, “You can’t lie to me.”
I said, “I’m not lying. About what?”
And then he said, “I know who you are even if you won’t admit it to yourself.” As if I had been hiding something from him. More people arrived and ’Gitte emerged from the back and I finally understood that they were throwing a party. People kept piling in the front door. The place started to get crowded and so I wasn’t really hanging out with John anymore because John had wandered off to socialize with the new arrivals. Plus I was tripping my ass off. A wave of anxiety tickled my gut, like “Can I handle this?” And as soon as that happened, ’Gitte materialized and said, “John told me to give you this.” And she passed me a small pipe. I took a hit. It wasn’t weed. It was a bitter white smoke. Opium? Whatever it was, I suddenly went all calm and my fingers tingled.
’Gitte disappeared and I found it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of where I was standing. I completely lost sight of Big John. People were forced to follow the current of the crowd, me included. We were all moving in this flowing stream of partygoers, from one part of the loft to the other. I didn’t like it, I wanted to get out from the thick of the crowd so I aimed myself toward the walls. The enormous loft windows had been yanked wide open and people clustered along the sills. The summer air blew in in gusts. I could actually see the breeze. Then some sort of music layered and wove into the babble, and became an indistinguishable part of it. Or was it the pipe that got passed around? Someone said, “dusted,” and my ass felt like it had been welded to the floor. I was sitting, but I didn’t remember sitting down. A girl with long hair and a headband plopped down alongside me, looked deeply into my eyes and said “Hi,” and then stood up and walked away. A long thick python with glittering scales slithered past my hand. I couldn’t remember if John had a snake. Unsteady, I rose to my feet.
As soon as I stood up a primal fear of wetting my pants shot through me. I struggled through the throng toward what I thought was the direction of the bathroom. But I had forgotten where the bathroom was. Also there was something very important I had to tell John, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Another pipe was passed to me and I toked on this too. It tasted like the color blue and then tasted of chocolate. A black guy in beaded dreadlocks was laughing at me. “Hold it in, dude, you gotta hold it in!” ’Gitte hopped by, pretending she was the White Rabbit. And I saw myself off to one side watching myself watching her. Then wham, everyone in the room disappeared but her and me.
I thought, once. To have her just once. Why isn’t that possible? I hated the fact that there was something impossible in my life. I felt my dick get hard. Blood hard or piss hard? I entered an open door and the couple from Denmark were on the floor screwing. The girl was completely naked and on her back. She turned her head and her eyes locked on to mine. She kept her eyes on me while the cheerful Dane slid in and out. He had incredible stringy muscles all over his body, even in places where muscles don’t usually exist. I thought, this guy must do kung fu. The girl stared at me as she was jostled with every thump, as if she wanted me to join in. With great effort I backed out of the room and closed the door.
I found another doorway along the wall and figured it had to lead back to the big room, a shortcut. I wedged myself through the door, making sure none of the partygoers followed. I didn’t want anyone to see me piss my pants. This new hallway was lit by wall sconces every ten feet separated by small framed photographs hanging between them. I tried to get a good look at the photographs, but whenever I focused on one, it would become unfocused. Like I could see it, until I stared right at it, then I saw nothing but shadow. I pushed on in the direction of the bathroom.
After passing several locked doors, I found one that swung open. As I entered the room, someone shouted out, “Shut the door, man!” and I could make out in the candlelight one of the foreign guys from two months before. He was barefoot and naked from the waist up, probing his arm with a little plastic hypodermic needle, like the kind diabetics use. His black tattoos were luminescent in the dim light, crosses and black panthers and a heart crowned with thorns.
Blood seeped from the wounds on his arms. Blood dripped from the syringe. Drops of blood stained the old flooring all around him. His bare feet were smudged with blood.
I said, “Oh, you don’t want to be doing that.” Bookcases lined the walls. I could smell the mold growing on the old paper. Centipedes crawled over the bindings, slithered down onto the floor and ran over the floorboards. I figured they were attracted by the blood. I could see them lapping up the blood with their tiny centipede tongues.
The foreign guy said, “Man, you just don’t get it do you?” He stood up. His body was covered with thick scars that lay along the crook of both arms, on the veins of his lower abdomen, on his jugular, his inner thigh. The scars looked like bits of earthworm. He left the needle dangling in his arm, picked his shirt off the floor and daintily slipped the sleeve up over it. “Gotta be coordinated to do that,” he said proudly. The worms on his skin began to wriggle.
Then I was walking in an unfamiliar wing of the loft marveling at the immense size of the place. John had told me that the loft had been a mousetrap factory before the Civil War. After that it had become a kind of leather-cutting warehouse, and then a storage house for exotic brass-ware from Asia. Also, John had t
old me the place was haunted.
I mumbled to no one, “I’m ripped. How did I get so ripped?” and continued along the hallway, making three right turns figuring that this would have to get me back to the party. I could hear it, I just couldn’t see it. Obviously John and ’Gitte only occupied a portion of the massive loft and now I was lost again in a maze of large airless rooms stacked with ancient office furniture, wood pallets and fearsome grease-slathered machines that crouched in the dark like monsters. I could no longer hear the party, but logic told me that I would have to come to the building’s outer wall or be redirected back to the main room.
I made my way toward muffled voices. An open doorway spilled yellow light onto the stained oaken floors. With relief I entered, eager to find people. This group was seated on either side of long tables, apparently having a meal, probably ’Gitte’s soup. But no one looked up. When I got closer, I could see that they weren’t eating at all, but fiddling with small bits of wood and wire.
Everyone was intently constructing mousetraps. Someone glanced up at me. He wore a leather vest over his boldly striped shirt. His sleeves were rolled up under elastic bands and he sported a long scraggly mustache and a hat. He seemed to gaze right through my chest and then returned to cocking the spring on his contraption. I’m not afraid of ghosts, but I didn’t think it was healthy to hang around them, so I left.
I smelled ’Gitte’s perfume a moment before finding her in the hallway. She said nothing, simply took my hand and led me back to the party. This was the first time we had ever touched one another. A universe of love streamed through her warm hand into mine. I was about to speak, but she let go of my hand and the crowd closed in around me. I was back where I started, in the thick of it. Music, laughter, perfume and weed smoke crowded my senses.
Then the gathering roared in unison, and the horde split open like the Red Sea. In the clearing stood Big John, wielding an axe, tall and broad and fearsome. All I could think was, “He’s taller than I thought.”
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