sat. Oh yes, and I smiled. Tentatively. Quietly. Eyes slanted
down, then up quickly, then away, then down, nothing elaborate. Just a series of sorrowful gestures that scream female.
Gray was in the air, a thick paste. It was a filter over
everything or just under my eyelids. The small table was too
dirty, rings of wet stuck to it, and the floor had wet mud on it
that all the people had dragged in before they sat down to
chatter. I picked this place because I had thought it was clean.
I went there almost every day, escaping the cold of my desolate
apartment. Now the tabletop was sordid and I could smell
decay, a faint acrid cadaver smell.
The rain outside was subtle and strange, not pouring down
in sheets but just hanging, solid, in thin static veils of wet
suspended in the air, soaking through without the distracting
noise of falling hard. The air seemed empty, and then another
sliver of wet that went from the cement on the sidewalk right
up into the sky would hit your whole body, at once, and one
walked or died.
I had nothing to keep the rain off me, just regular cotton
clothes, the gnarled old denim of my time and age, with holes,
frayed not for effect but because they were old and tired, and
what he saw when he saw me registered in those ugly eyes
hanging over those open pores. Her, It, She, in color, 3-D,
fearsome feminista, ballbuster, woman who talks mean, queer
arrogant piece. But also: something from Fellini, precisely a
mountain of thigh, precisely. I could see the mountain of thigh
hanging in the dead center of his eyes, and the slight drip of
saliva. Of course, he was very nice.
* the stupids
91
Coffee came, and cigarettes piled up, ashtray after ashtray,
two waitresses with huge red lips and short skirts running back
and forth emptying them, and the smell of the smoke got into
my fingers and into my hair and on my clothes and the rain
outside even began to carry it off when it was too much for
the room we were in. The empty packs were crumpled, and I
began pulling apart the filters, strand by strand, and rolling
the matchbooks into tight little wads and then opening them
up all softened and tearing them into little pieces, and then I
began to tear the fetid butts into pieces by tearing off the paper
and rolling the burnt tobacco between my palms which were
tight and wretched with strain and perspiration and I was
making little piles of torn papers and torn matchbooks and
torn cigarette packs but not touching the cellophane (he was
talking), and making the little piles as high as I could and
watching them intently, staring, as if their construction were a
matter of symmetry and perfection and indisputable necessity
and it required concentration and this was my job. During this
we talked, of course mostly he talked, because I was there to
be talked to, and have certain things explained, and to be
corrected, especially to be set right, because I had gone all
wrong, gotten all Dostoyevsky-like in the land of such writing
as “ Ten New Ways to Put on Lipstick” and “ The Truth About
How to be Intimate with Strangers. ” Coitus was what?
In the rain we walked to another restaurant, to dinner. Oh,
he had liked me. I had done all right.
*
When I walked into the coffeehouse, he knew me right away.
The mountain of thigh, not any other kind of fame. The place
was wet, smelly, crowded, and I had picked it, it resembled me,
not modest, dank, a certain smell of decay. The other women
huddled themselves in, bent shoulders, suddenly, treacherously lowered heads that threatened to fall off their necks, tight little legs wrapped together like Christmas packages,
slumping down, twisting in, even the big ones didn’t dare
spread out but instead held their breath, pulled in their
tummies, scrunched their mouths, used their shoulders to cover
their chests, crossed their ankles, crossed their feet, crossed
their legs, kept their hands lying quietly under the tabletops,
didn’t show teeth, moved noiselessly, melted in with the gray
9Z
and the mud and the wet, except for some flaming lips: and no
monumental laughs, no sonorous discourse, no loud epis-
temology, no boom boom boom: the truth. I wanted to
whimper and contract, fold up, shrivel to some version of
pleasing nothing, sound the calclass="underline" it’s all finished, she gives up, no
one’s here, out to lunch, empty, smelly, noiseless, folded up.
But I would have had to prepare, study, start earlier in the
day, come from a warmer apartment into a cleaner coffeehouse, be dry, not wear the ancient denim articles of an old faith, witnesses, remembrances, proofs, evidences of times without such silly rules. He stood, nodded, smiled, pointed to the seat, I sat, he gave me a cigarette, I smoked, I drank coffee, he
talked, I listened, he talked, I built castles out of paper on
tabletops, he talked, oh, I was so quiet, so soft, all brazen
thigh to the naked eye, to his dead and ugly eye, but inside I
wanted him to see inside I was all aquiver, all tremble and
dainty, all worried and afraid, nervy and a pale invalid, all
pathetic need contaminated by intellect that was like wild
weeds, wild weeds massively killing the gentle little flower
garden inside, those pruned and fragile little flowers. This I
conveyed by being quiet and tender and oh so quiet, and I
could see my insides all running with blood, all running with
knife cuts and big fuck bruises, and he saw it too. So he took
me to dinner in the rain.
*
The bathroom was in the back, painted a pink that looked
brown and fungoid, and I got to it by heaving myself over the
wet boots strewn like dead bodies in my way, sliding along the
wet puddles, touching strange shoulders delicately like God
just for a hint of balance. The smoke heralded me, shrouded
me, trailed behind me: in front, around, behind, a column of
fire hiding me. The walls in the little room were mud and the
floor was mud and the seat of the toilet had some bright red
dots and green splotches and the mirror had a face looking
out, destitute. I was bleeding. The rain and bleeding. The
muscles in my back caved in toward each other furiously and
then shot out, repelled. A small island under my stomach beat,
a drum, a pulse, spurting blood. Oh, mother. I took thick paper
towels meant for drying big wet hands and covered the toilet
seat and pushed my old denim down to the slobbering floor. I
93