The hard way. Toward the end I guess I fell into the pool and about five people pulled me out and I suppose I was just angry—not to mention drunk again-Just do something really outrageous—there was one woman there named Marny who was really nice—I started talking about how Fd fuck anybody there for five franqs; just five franqs, and I’ll show any one of you here heaven—”
“Mmmmm,” the Spike said.
“Only who should be there too but that Danny character; with a big grin, he says; ‘Hey, Vm into that, from time to time. Five franqs? I’ll take you up!’ I just looked at him, you know, and I said, ‘Not you, cock-sucker. What about one of your women?’ I mean I just wanted to break through, some how. You know what he say’s to me, with this very concerned look, like you’ve asked him to play one of his old thirty-three recordings, but he knows it’s got a scratch? ‘Well, I don’t really think any of our women are into that, right now—except possibly Joan. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll run and ask,’ and goes dashing up one of those incredible stairways with the incredible view of the ice outside. Of course Philip is already back by this time, and I’m trying to tell these women, I mean I am a good lay. A really good lay. Professional quality—I was a professional. You don’t even have any professionals out here! I mean, I could make it work for me. And Philip, who must be almost as drunk as I am, is saying, ‘Yeah, I was into hustling—Marny and I both were when we were kids and hitchhiking around. First time she was on the Earth and I was on Luna we did it for a few months. The illegal kind, I think. Only I can never remember on Earth which kinds are illegal. It’s great for the body. But it’s a little hard on the mind.’ He said it was like it was playing tennis all the time and never getting a chance to talk to anybody except over the net! I mean, can you imagine that? From Philip? If I hadn’t been so drunk, I probably would’ve been surprised. As it was, I guess I realized it was just one more annoyance I was going to have to live in the same world with, maybe chuckle at from time to time. No matter how much puking I did.” The walkway led them around a gentle curve. “After that, I had to leave. No logic or metalogic could have made me stay. It was all perfect, beautiful, without a crack or a seam. Any blow you struck was absorbed and became one with the structure. Walking back from the Ring—Philip had asked didn’t I want to wait for Joan and, when I said no, he made me take another pill; they work—I kept on wanting to cry.”
“Why?”
“It was beautiful, whole, harmonious, radiant—it was a family I’d have given my left testicle—hell, both of them—to be a daughter or a son to. What a place to have grown up in, secure that you are loved whatever you do, whatever you are, and with all the knowledge and self-assurance it would give you while you decided what that was. But the great lie those people hold out, whether they’re in a commune or a co-op—and this, I suppose, when all is said and done, is why I hate them—even the ones I like, like Audri (who’s my other boss), is: Anyone can have it, be a part of it, bask in its radiance, and be one with the radiating element itself—oh, perhaps not everyone can have it at an address within shoulder-rubbing distance of London Point, but somewhere, someplace, it’s waiting for you ... if not in a family commune, then in a work commune like your theater company, if not in a commune, then at a ... well, a heterophilic co-op; if not at a heterophilic co-op, then at a homophilic one. Somewhere, in your sector or in mine, in this unit or in that one, there it is: pleasure, community, respect—all you have to do is know the kind, and how much of it, and to what extent you want it. That’s all.” He had almost cried coming back to his licensed sector co-op that morning. He almost cried now. “But what happens to those of us who don’t know? What happens to those of us who have problems and don’t know why we have the problems we do? What happens to the ones of us in whom even the part that wants has lost, through atrophy, all connection with articulate reason. Decide what you like and go get it? Well, what about the ones of us who only know what we don’t like? I know I didn’t like your Miriamne friend! I know I didn’t want to work with her. I got her kicked out of her job this morning. I don’t know how any of those things came about. And I don’t want to know. But I don’t regret it, one bit! I maybe have—for a minute—but I don’t now. And I don’t want to.”
“Ah ha!” the Spike said. “I think we have just gotten down to a gritty—or at least a nitty.”
He looked at her white mask sharply. “Why?”
“Your whole tone of voice changed. Your body carriage shifted. Even with your mask, you could see your head jutting forward so, and your shoulders pulled back into position—in the theater, you have to learn a lot about what the body has to say concerning the movements of the emotions—”
“Only I’m not into theater. I’m into metalogics. What about those of us who don’t know what the body has to say about the emotions? Or the paths of the comets? Put it in terms that / know!”
“Well, I’m not into metalogics. But you seem to be using some sort of logical system where, when you get near any explanation, you say: ‘By definition my problem is insoluble. Now that explanation over there would solve it. But since I’ve defined my problem as insoluble, then by definition that solution doesn’t apply.’ I mean, really, if you ... No. Wait. You want me to say what happens in your terms? Well, you hurt, for one thing. Yes, people like me can sit down and map out how you are managing to inflict a good deal of that hurt on yourself. I suspect, at your better moments, you can too—”
“In your terms they’re my better moments. In my terms they’re my worst—because that’s when the hurt seems to be the most hopeless. The rest of the time I can at least come up with a hope, however false, that things will just get better.”
“In your terms, then, you just hurt. And—” She sighed—“from time to time—I mean I know how much Miriamne wanted that job; she’s probably a good number of credit slots below you and me—you hurt other people.”
They were silent for a dozen, rustling steps.
“You were asking me before if being a prostitute had done me any harm. I was just thinking. Your friend Miriamne thought the reason I’d gotten her fired was because she hadn’t been interested when I’d made a pass at her. Well, maybe that’s one bad thing hustling did do to me. You see, the one, degrading thing that happens to you again and again and again in that kind of job is people—the men who employ you as much as the women you’re there to service—is people constantly give everything you do, just because you’re selling it, some sort of sexual motivation. When you’re in the business, you learn to live with it. But it’s the difference between them and you—you get it in jokes, you get it in tips, you get it in jobs you’re shuttled away from. And it never has anything to do with any real reason you might do anything real at all. Ask your friend Windy, he’ll tell you what I mean: when I came out here, I’d heard all about the satellites’ sexual freedom—it’s the golden myth of two worlds. When I left Mars, I promised myself that was something I’d never do to any other person, as long as I lived; it had just been done to me too many times. Well, maybe being a prostitute made me over-sensitive, but when Miriamne seriously said that, to me, this morning—that I’d gotten her canned because she wouldn’t put out—well, it just threw me! It isn’t something you find out here all that frequently, and, yes, that represents an improvement in my life. But when it is done, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant. It’s not something I could possibly do to anyone else. It’s not something I like having done to me ... As much as I dislike her, all the way over here I’ve been feeling sorry for her. But if she is the type who would do that to another person ... hell, do it to me, I wonder if I have the right to feel sorry for her ... You know?”