My gray hair would hang from the dirty saliva in my mouth
and I would push along some silly belongings: books no doubt,
and some writings, and maybe a frazzled cat on a leash, because
otherwise I would be desperately lonely. Between us, this old
woman and me, there was just this sweet sleeping boy, a giant
of pale beauty and barely conceivable kindness. He was at
least slightly between her and me, and all my rush to despair
was moderated by this small quiet miracle of our time together
on earth. There was nothing perfect in it: but it was gentle: for
me, the kindest love in a life of being loved too much. I sat in
the typing chair, warmed by watching him sleep that foreign
sleep of peace, I watched him and I believed in his peace and
his rest: what was impossible he made reaclass="underline" and then his eyes
fluttered open, and with so many different sounds in his voice,
the whole range of calling and wanting, he called me: said my
name, reached out, and I walked over and touched his hand:
and he said, you’re home, and he asked what was wrong.
And I raged. I bellowed. I howled. I was delirious with pain.
I was shrill with humiliation. I was desperate with accusation
and paranoid but defensible prophecy and acrid recrimination
against what would happen to me. To me. The insufferable
editor, the arrogance, the terms of the agreement: my fury, my
rage, my memory of my life as a woman. Nearly keening in
anguish, I told him about the cafe, the literature, the obsessed
man, the kiss.
“ You’ve done it before, ” he said quietly. And went back to
sleep.
*
You know what I meant. This is the world you live in. You’ve
done it before, he said. Oh, yes.
Shit you know what I meant.
You know what I meant.
104
I am trying to pace, windows open, under the weight-of
blankets. He is sitting up on his bed, under blankets.
You know what I meant.
Oh, I do.
Some things are true. What he meant is true. I know what, I
know how, I know where, I know when, I even know why.
Oh, I do.
*
But I don’t want to.
He says my name. Please, he says, wanting me to stop.
But really, I don’t want to.
He says my name, pleading. Please, he says, please, I know,
I know, but what can you do?
But I don’t want to. I want, I say, I want, I say, to be this
human being, and I want, I say, I want, to have somebody
publish my book, I say, this simple thing, I say, I want, I want,
I say, to be treated just like a human being, I say, and I don’t
want, I say, I don’t want, I say, to have to do this. I have
nowhere else to go, no one else who will do this simple thing,
publish my book, but I don’t want to have to do this.
He says my name, softly. Please, he says, please, stop, you
must, he says, stop, because, he says, this is making me crazy,
he says, softly he calls my name, please, he says, there is
nothing to do, he says, calling my name softly and weeping,
what is there to do, what can you do?
I want, I say, I want to be treated a certain way, I say. I
want, I say, to be treated like a human being, I say, and he,
weeping, calls my name, and says please, begging me in the
silence not to say another word because his heart is tearing
open, please, he says, calling my name. I want, I say, to be
treated, I say, I want, I say, to be treated with respect, I say, as
if, I say, I have, I say, a right, I say, to do what I want to do, I
say, because, I say, I am smart, and I have written, and I am
good, and I do good work, and I am a good writer, and I have
published, and I want, I say, to be treated, I say, like someone,
I say, like a human being, I say, who has done something, I
say, like that, I say, not like a whore, not like a whore, I say,
not any more, I say, and he says, calling my name, his tongue
whispering my name, he says, calling my name and weeping,
please, I know, I know. And I say to him, seriously, someday I
105
will die from this, just from this, just from being treated like a
whore, nothing else, I will die from it. And he says dryly, with
a certain self-evident truth on his side: you will probably die
from pneumonia actually. Ice hangs, ready to cut each chest. I
hesitate, then crack up. We collapse, laughing. The blankets
bury us alive.
*
He sleeps curled up blond, like a pale infant, in a room five
floors above a desperate street corner. The windows are open,
of course, and he sleeps, pale and dreamless, curled up and
calm. The stairs outside his windows, rusty and fragile, go
from our tenement heaven down to the grimmest cement. The
sirens passing that corner blast the brick building, so that we
might be in a war zone, each siren blast meaning we must get
up and run to a shelter to hide. But there is no shelter. There is
the occasional bomb by terrorist groups. Arson. Prostitutes.
Pimps. Junkies. Old men, vagabonded, drunk with running
sores, abscesses running obscene with green pus, curled up like
my love, but blocking our doorway, on the front step, on the
sidewalk under the step, behind the garbage cans, curled up
just in the middle of the cement anywhere, just wherever they
stopped. The blasts of the sirens go all day and all night and in
between them huge buses make the building shake and wild
taxis careen with screeching brakes. Cars rocket by, men with
guns and clubs sounding their sirens, flashing lights that spread
a fierce red glare into our little home: red flashing lights that
climb five flights in the space of a second and illuminate us
whatever we are doing, wherever we stand, in one second a
whorish red, turn us and everything we see and touch into a
grotesque special effect. Sirens that blare and blast and make
the brick shake, announcing fire or murder or rape or a simple
beating. Screams sometimes that come from over there, or
behind that building, or in the courtyard, or some other apartment, or the nice man with the nice dog ranting at his mother over eighty and her screaming for help. Across the street there
is a disco: parties for hire and music that makes the light
fixtures quake between the siren blasts. Sometimes a flight
above us, right near the roof, the filthy vagabonds sneak
in and hide, piss and shit, urine runs down the hall stairs
from the roof and a stench befouls even the awful air, and so