Ice And Fire

86

I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that

nothing good can come of it: I mean the

physical facts of life, the sun, the grass,

youth. It’s a much more terrible vice than

cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits: and

I devour, devour. How it will end, I don’t know.

Pasolini

*

Sad, gentle face, comic. Unconsummated. My virgin. My little

boy. My innocent. Suicidal and impotent. I want you to know

what I know, being ground under: hard thighs: hard sweat:

hard cock: kisses to the marrow of the bone. I love life so

fiercely, so desperately. It costs me nothing, and there is an

endless abundance of it, with no limits, and I devour, devour. I

teach you. You get hard. You pulverize human bones. Finally I

know how it will end. Oh, I run, I run, little boy.

87

Coitus as punishment for the happiness of

being together.

Kafka

*

I lived another year in that Northern city of Old Europe. Terror

wipes you clean if you don’t die. I took everyone I liked: with

good cheer, a simple equanimity. There were houseboats,

saunas, old cobbled streets, huge mattresses on floors with

incense burning: long-haired boys and short-haired girls: I

knew their names: something about them: there was nothing

rough: I felt something in the thighs: I always felt something

coming from me or I did nothing: it was different: I had many

of them, whoever I wanted. I read books and took drugs. I

was happy.

I started to write, sentences, paragraphs, nothing whole. But

I started to write.

Slowly I saw: coitus is the punishment for being a writer

afraid of the cold passion of the task. There is no being together, just the slow learning of solitude. It is the discipline, the art. I began to learn it.

*

I lived in the present, slowly, except for tremors of terror,

physical memories of the beatings, the blood. I took drugs. I

took who I wanted, male or female. I was alert. I read books. I

listened to music. I was near the water. I had no money. I

watched everyone. I kept going. I would be alone and feel

happy. It frightened me. Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being alone. One can’t face being happy. It is too extreme.

*

I had to be with others, compulsion. I was afraid to be alone.

Coitus is the punishment for the fear of being alone. I took

who I liked, whatever moved me, I felt it in my gut. It was

fine. But only solitude matters. Coitus is the punishment for cowardice: afraid of being alone, in a room, in a bed, on this earth: coitus is the punishment for being a woman: afraid to be alone.

*

88

I couldn’t be alone. I took whoever made me feel something, -a

funny longing in the gut or crotch. I liked it. I took hashish,

acid. Not all the time, on special days, or on long afternoons. I

took long saunas. I was happy. I read books. I started to write.

I began to need solitude. It started like a funny longing in the

gut or crotch. Coitus was the punishment for not being able to

stand wanting solitude so much.

*

I gave up other lovers. I wanted solitude. It took a few years to

get faithful. Coitus was the punishment for a breach of faith.

*

I came back to New York City, the Lower East Side. I lived

alone, poor, writing. I was raped once. It punished me for the

happiness of being myself.

*

I am alone, in solitude. I can almost run my fingers through it.

It takes on the rhythmic brilliance of any passion. It is like

holy music, a Te Deum. Coitus is the punishment for not

daring to be happy.

*

I learn the texture of minutes, how hours weave themselves

through the tangled mind: I am silent. Coitus is the punishment

for running from time: hating quiet: fearing life.

*

I betray solitude. I get drunk, pick up a cab driver. Coitus is

the punishment.

*

I write day in and day out, night after night, alone, in the quiet

of this exquisite concentration, this exquisite aloneness, this

extreme new disordering of the senses: solitude, my beloved.

Coitus is the punishment for not daring to be extreme enough,

for compromising, for conforming, for giving in. Coitus is the

punishment for not daring to disorder the senses enough: by

knowing them without mediation. Coitus is the punishment

for not daring to be original, unique, discrete.

*

I am not distracted, I am alone, I love solitude, this is passion

too. I am intensely happy. When I see people, I am no less

alone: and I am not lonely. I concentrate when I write: pure

concentration, like life at the moment of dying. I dream the

89

answers to my own questions when I sleep. I am not tranquil,

it is not my nature, but I am intensely happy. Coitus is the

punishment for adulterating solitude.

*

I forget the lovers of Europe. They don’t matter. The terror

still comes, it envelops me, solitude fights it tooth and nail,

solitude wins. I forget what I have done on these streets here.

It doesn’t matter. I concentrate. I am alone. The solitude is

disruption, extremity, extreme sensation in dense isolation.

This is a private passion, not for exhibit. Coitus is the

punishment for exhibiting oneself: for being afraid to be happy

in private, alone. Coitus is the punishment for needing a human

witness. I write. Solitude is my witness.

*

Coitus is the punishment for the happiness of being. Solitude is

the end of punishment.

I write. I publish.

*

Coitus is punishment. I write down everything I know, over

some years. I publish. I have become a feminist, not the fun

kind. Coitus is punishment, I say. It is hard to publish. I am a

feminist, not the fun kind. Life gets hard. Coitus is not the

only punishment. I write. I love solitude: or slowly, I would

die. I do not die.

Coitus is punishment. I am a feminist, not the fun kind.

90

Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les betes

l'ont mange.

(Don’t look for my heart anymore; the beasts*

have eaten it. )

Baudelaire

*

He was a subtle piece of slime, big open pores, hair hanging

over his thick lip onto his teeth, faintly green. He smiled. I