cannot talk without making them mad or crazy, that cannot
do anything but ju st must sit quiet, that does not have any
reason to be in the room at all, not this room where they are,
only some other room somewhere else to be fucked, sort o f
kept like a pet animal and the man goes there when he’s done
with the real stuff, the real talk, the real politics, the real w ork,
the real getting high, even the real fucking— they go somewhere together and get women together to do the real
fucking, they hunt down women together or buy wom en
together or pick up women together to do the real fucking;
and then in some one room somewhere hidden aw ay is the
w ife or girlfriend and she’s in this sort o f vacuum, sealed
aw ay, vacuum packed, and when she comes out to be
somewhere or to say something there is an embarrassment and
they avert their eyes— the man failed because she’s outside—
she got out— like his pee’s showing on his pants. We’d go to
these meetings late at night. These guys would be there; they
were famous revolutionaries, famous to their time and place,
criminals according to the law; brilliant, shrewd, tough guys,
detached, with formal politeness to me. One was a junkie, a
flamboyant junkie with long, silken, rolling brown curls,
great pools o f sadness in his moist eyes, small and elegant, a
beauty, soft-spoken, always nodding out or so sick and
wretched that he’d be throwing up a few times a night and
they’d expect me to clean it up and I w ouldn’t, I’d just sit there
waiting for the next thing we were all going to discuss, and
someone would eventually look me in the eye, a rare event,
and say meaningfully, “ he just threw u p , ” and time would
pass and I’d wait and eventually someone would start talking
about something; I didn’t get how the junkie was more real
than me or how his vomit was mine, you know. When the
junkie’d come to where we lived he would vom it and sort o f
challenge me to leave it there, as he had fouled m y very own
nest, and he’d ask for a cup o f tea and I’d clean it up but I
w ouldn’t get him the tea and I tried to convey to my husband
that m y hospitality was being abused, our hospitality, o f
course, that I wasn’t being treated fair, not that some rule was
being broke but that the boy was being rude to me; I told my
husband to clean it up finally but he never did it too good. I
told m y husband who I still thought was m y brother that I
didn’t want the junkie to come anymore because he didn’t
treat me in an honorable w ay and I said I wasn’t born for this.
So there were these fissures coming between us because the
fraternal affection was with him and the junkie from the old
days together, not him and me from now, and I was shocked
by this, I couldn’t grasp it. I went into the rooms with him but
it came down on him how bad it was from the men and it came
down on me that I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near
where they were. I kept going to the rooms because we kept
hitting targets all over the city and w e’d need to get o ff the
streets fast and he’d know some place he wanted to be, one
friend or another, and they’d all be there; it would contradict
the plan but he’d say it was necessary. Some were on the run
for recent crimes but most were burned out, living in times
past, not fighting no more, most stopped long ago and far
away and they were just burned out to hell. Yeah, they were
tired, I respected that; I mean, I fucking loved these heroes; I
knew they were tired, tired from living on their nerves, from
hiding, from jail, from smoke, from fucking, which came first
for some but last for others. Some had children they had
deserted; some lived in the past, remembering stray girls in
cities they were passing through. They were older than me but
not by a lot. I wanted their respect. I hadn’t given up and I did
anything anybody else did and I wasn’t afraid o f nothing so
how come it was like I wasn’t there? I mean, I was too
honorable to be anything other than strong and silent, I tell
you; but I thought silence made its own sound, you count on
revolutionaries to hear the silence, otherwise how can the
oppressed count on them? Every lunatic was someone we
knew that we dropped in on or stayed with while we were
running— or m oving just for the sake o f speed, the fun o f
flight. We went to other cities, hitchhiking; we lived in small
rented rooms, slept on floors. We went to other countries—
we begged, we borrowed, yeah, we stole, me more than him,
stealing’s easy, I been stealing all m y life, not a routine or some
fixed act, just here and there as needed, from stores when I was
a kid, when I was hungry or when there was something I
wanted real bad that I couldn’t have because it cost money I
didn’t have— I never minded putting money out if I had it in
m y pocket— I mean, I remember taking a chocolate Easter egg
when I was a kid or m y proudest, most treasured acquisition, a
blues record by Dave Van Ronk, the first man I ever saw with
a full beard like a beatnik or a prophet; I took money when I
needed it and could get it easy enough; pills; clothes. M o n ey’s
w hat’s useful. He began dealing some shit, it w asn’t too hard
or dangerous compared to running borders with other
contraband but it got so he did it without me more and more;
he spent more and more time with these low life gangster
types, not political revolutionaries at all but these vulgar guys
who packed guns and just did business; he said it’s just for
money, what’s it got to do with you or with us, I’ll just do it
fast, get the money, it’s nothing; and it was nothing, I didn’t
have no interest in money per se, but it got so he did the
running, he was free, freedom and flight were his, he’d pick up
and go, I didn’t know where he was or who with or when I’d
meet them they’d be lowlife I had no interest in, just toadies as
much as some corporate businessmen were and I’d feel very
bored with them and they’d treat me like I was a skirt and I’d
feel superior and because I didn’t want no part o f them I didn’t
challenge it, I’d just put up with it and be relieved when he did
his shit for money elsewhere; he hunted money down, he
hunted dope down, he drove the secret highways o f Europe at
a hundred miles an hour, without me, increasingly without
me, and I stayed home and dusted walls, waiting, I waited,
while I waited I cleaned, I dusted, I washed things, I made
things nice, I put something here or there, little touches, but