leave at dawn. We walk home in the hot haze. Junkies make
jokes at us. Men pee. Someone flashes a knife from a stoop.
We are tired. We sleep.
We wake up in early afternoon. The heat is stifling. Today
we are going to take the special acid we have been saving, N
and me and poor R. I am excited. N says first she has to meet
the guy from last night. She promised him. She just wants
forty-five minutes alone with him. He comes in the dead heat
of the afternoon. In the glaring heat of the sun he is still cold,
glistening, mean. He wears a suit. He wears a tie. He has on a
clean shirt, buttoned up to the top. His shoes are polished. His
face is set, he doesn’t try to smile, he has no expression, he
doesn’t sweat. Standing up he is towering, dangerous, cold. N
is happy to see him, reserved, courteous. I am bewildered and
afraid. I just want to fuck him, she says quietly to me. We
have dropped the acid. He is dangerous, I say. What are you
49
going to do when you start tripping? He will be gone by then,
she says. One fuck, then he will go. I wait outside like she tells
me to. They go into our storefront. I expect to hear screams. I
hear nothing. I strain to hear but I hear nothing. Forty-five
minutes later they come out. Nothing has changed with him.
Suit. Tie. Clean shirt, buttoned up. Polished shoes. No expression. Still not sweating. N is glassy-eyed, creamy, content.
I got what I wanted, she said. Whad ya do in there, I ask,
casual but really scared, worse now since I see no sign of human
emotion or exertion in him. Just fucked, she says. He is not a
man who fucks. I can see that. He may kill but he doesn’t
fuck. Either the needle or he tied her up. I am pretty sure. She
is wearing a blouse with long sleeves, not her usual T-shirt. I
don’t see her naked for the next few days. Even as the street
begins to slide and whirl, I know that there are bruises on her
arm from one thing or another. I don’t exactly know the word
sadist but that is what I think he is anyway. I strain for the
word without finding it but I know what I mean. I am scared.
She is satisfied. I never see him again. I think he kills people.
Most of the violent men we see are sloppy, one way or another.
Their violence sort of oozes out. This man is a perfect diamond
cutting through glass.
*
There are the layers, the dumb, slobbering junkies, oozing pus
and grief, dealing a little, stealing, falling down on top of whatever doesn’t move fast enough; there are bastards a little colder, still oozing, and the pimps, who drool. There is a ladder of
street slobber, so that the violence gushes out like tears or
drips like a leaky faucet, but it is a mistake, not cold, ruthless
art: as much accident as intention, not coldly calculated and
perfectly executed. Then there is this other level. No fear. No
ooze. No slobber. No exhibitionism. No boast. Nothing except
serious intention, perfectly conceived and coldly executed, an
interior of ice and a perfect economy of motion.
*
What has he done to her? The acid begins to grip and she will
not say anyway. Poor R had left when she heard N was inside
with a man. N is politely, resolutely silent. She will not budge.
We are worlds apart and the subject is closed. Then we are
awash in acid and beyond all human argument. We begin to
50
roam the magnificent city streets and to play like children in
their decaying monumental splendor. We range over these
grand cement plains like wild animals, we dance up mountains
fleet of foot, we rush down rivers dancing on the silver light of
the rapids: each sight and sign of squalor is dazzling and
unique: there is no language for this and sadist is a word even
when you can’t quite find it: and each and every human form
shimmers in light and motion: the cold, cold man is more than
gone or forgotten: there is no place in the universe for him: he
is behind us now and time is a river, rushing on. The cement is
a luminous rainbow of garish silver and blinding white coming
out of the gravel, rising up like a phoenix from it: gold mixes
into the stone from the heat and the scarlet from the blood is
brilliant and intensely beautiful.
The air is spectacular, daylight, light that dances, a million
shining fragments of light like tiny speckled stones: you could
reach out and touch them except instead you walk between
them, skirting their shiny surfaces, never feeling their glossy
round edges. You reach out your arm to touch a piece of light
and your arm stretches into the distance, it has the curves of a
gracious hill and subtle valley and your fingers slide gracefully
past each other, one then another then another, and they are
gracefully curved, like a valley between two hills, a slight curve,
slack but aesthetic and delicate. And the tips of your fingers
touch the light and dance, dance.
The red from the traffic light spreads out through the air, it
is circle on circle of diffusing red light, it is like a red light in
the sky and with the sun behind it, it becomes fierce and hot.
The streets are endless arcades filled with gentle refuges. There
are stores where they greet you warmly, hippie boys all hairy
and with wet eyes, and give you tea and have you sit and offer
you smoke: and you laugh and laugh: or are deadly solemn:
and there is sitar music and you get lost on each note and drift
until the hot tea is in your hand: and you come back, treated
like a holy traveler, an honored guest, by the warm hairy
strangers. You look at the colored beads and the huge drawings
of tantric intertwinings on the walls: and you are home here
on earth, taken care of, given refuge: until you move on, the
acid pushing you, the pulse somewhere calling you.
51
Outside it is dark now, and you roam through the streets
until dawn when you watch the light come up. There are people
you touch, their faces, their tongues, you slip behind cars or
into doorways or spread out on suddenly available floors,
mattresses that seem to just be there waiting for the simple
traveler with legs that spread all wet. You smoke and smiling
people hand you pills and you swallow them because nothing
can hurt you now: and you stop cars with your acid smile: and
communicate with your acid brain: and you watch something