Who could sleep? I could not sleep. I turned on the television to see if I could catch the CNN item, and there it was, coming around again on the 2 A. M. cycle: murder, murder, sound the alarm, People of Exudation, your miracle is no miracle! I telephoned my doctor. I telephoned all my doctors — to leave word with their services for an emergency callback first thing in the morning. Then I went back to watching CNN in convinced anticipation of a still later headline counseling all Skin-Cap users to forget it, the dawning of any perspective with the dawn, and instead for them to quick bite down on their cyanide pills and be saved from the gray flora of quaintnesses to come. I had the window wide open. The heat was ghastly. This was August in the city. A man is steaming in his juices, his chickenheart blast-frozen in the runoff onto a bedsheet soaked in oil of Lish. What next? Why this seeming afterthought I am seemingly striving to get seamed into this last word here at the last? Pay attention — there is a bug buzzing, wings beating, a great dry thrashing just west of the corner of an eye — and I whack at it in reflex — whack eins! — whack zwei! — both times on this super orbital thing we all of us human beings have, it not occurring to me, not even after the initial bit of bone-crushment inflicted — dolt, dolt! — your hand, it's got the remote gadget in it, you idiot! — and the second time you do it, the second time you whack, you had better be looking to be lying here bleeding with blood all over your face. Which is what I did — bleed — and which was what I was still doing importantly well into the dawn's, this one's, early light. Now this—yes, this twistiness, curtains from a cunning foreign spritzer toppled by a silly boo-boo on the head — you are indeed, I cannot flinch from conceding, most vexingly correct — for, yes, is it not this that story consorts with a yen for story to be? With a fraud made by accomplices, with a swindle enacted between friends.
FACTS OF STEEL
NOTHING WOULD PLEASE ME more than for me as an artist to be free to sit here and tell you the truth. But they won't let me do it. May I tell you something? They will not let me do it. The whole kit and caboodle of them are all in cahoots. I'm telling you, it sickens me, it just sickens me, the way things are. You cry out against it from the pit of despair, but ask yourself, does it do you any good? This is why I have no choice but to resort to ruse after ruse. God knows I get no pleasure from it. The last thing I as an artist desire is for me to have to sit here and keep developing this worldwide rep I have as a rusefier extraordinaire. But am I the one who has the say? I am not the one who has the say. You heard of the road of life? Because this is exactly what this is, it is the fucking road of life. Oh, how could I have been such a fool, thinking to myself Gordon darling you are an artist darling you are in the driver's seat darling there will cometh your day in the sun. But who are they giving any day in the sun? They are not giving anybody any day in the sun. So you see how come the facts of steel? Ergo, the facts of steel. Can I tell you something? Let me tell you something. Whatever your occupational pursuit, take pains you throw the devils off. Because it's either that or you're under their thumb. You have heard of the proverbial thumb? Because it's either they get you under it or they bind you hand and foot. But save your tears. Nobody cares. Believe me, they can't wait to stand there and spit in your face. The whole mob of them, once they get their hooks into you, your goose is cooked. I'm sorry, but they're worse than Greeks. Will they let you live? They will not let you live. Will they let you speak? They will not let you speak. And guess who the loser is. Do I have to tell you who the loser is? Because the answer is Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. Hey, you're just lucky they don't make you make it zinc. So what chance do I as an artist have but to dance to their tune? You know what it is? I'm telling you what it is. It is a national disgrace. But I Gordon did not start it. It was either Andrew Carnegie who did or the other cocksucker, Henry James.
GROUND
YOU EVER PLAY THE GAME which when you were little of you take your fingers and you walk the feet of them all around? Not all around anywhere, not walk the feet of them all around just anywhere, but walking them just on the rug your hand was on or on the bed your hand was on or on something you could be on if you put your hand down like fingers are feet like that on it — like even like on a table?
So you ever play it, this game?
He was a little man.
If you were me, then he was a little man.
But even if you were a little girl, then maybe he was still a little man.
And strong.
Strong and could do anything.
Mine could fly if I got a piece of tissue paper or if I tore off a piece of something else like that like some type of paper like that and got it caught or got it stuck up in between the tops of them — my fingers, my fingers! — kept it caught in there and stuck in there up there where the head was — like these ones here, like the tops of these ones two ones here — can't you see where these ones two ones here, how they come together as fingers where there's this crease in them, you could call it, or call it, you know, like this crouch or crotch or whatever they say?
It was the head.
The crease was the head — and the rest was the arms and the legs — and the tips of the fingers, like call them the fingertips, they were the feet — and wait a minute, wait a minute — the piece of the tissue paper or the piece of any other kind of paper, it was the cape the little man had coming out of the back of his head, it was the cape which the little man had on him for him to have on him like a flying cape for the little man to stand there on his feet and have it flung out back behind him from out in the back of his head for when the little man wanted to go ahead and jump up and fly anywhere up over something so long as there was room in the air up over whatever it was, which was where the air was.