the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and all the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines …
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.
My mother screamed when she opened the door. “Son! Is that you, son?”
“I need some sleep.”
“Your bedroom is always waiting.”
I went to the bedroom, undressed and climbed into bed. I was awakened about 6 p.m. by my mother. “Your father is home.”
I got up and began to dress. Dinner was on the table when I walked in.
My father was a big man, taller than I was with brown eyes; mine were green. His nose was too large and you couldn’t help noticing his ears. His ears wanted to leap away from his head.
“Listen,” he said, “if you stay here I am going to charge you room and board plus laundry. When you get a job, what you owe us will be subtracted from your salary until you are paid up.”
We ate in silence.
My bill for room, board, laundry, etc., was so high by this time that it took several paychecks to get even. I stayed until then and moved out right afterwards. I couldn’t afford the rates at home.
I found a roominghouse near my job. Moving wasn’t hard. I only owned enough to half fill a suitcase …
Mama Strader was my landlady, a dyed redhead with a good figure, many gold teeth, and an aged boyfriend. She called me into the kitchen the first morning and said she’d pour me a whiskey if I would go out back and feed the chickens. I did and then I sat in the kitchen drinking with Mama and her boyfriend, Al. I was an hour late for work.
The second night there was a knock on my door. It was a fat woman in her mid-forties. She held a bottle of wine. “I live down the hall, my name’s Martha. I hear you listening to that good music all the time. I thought I’d bring you a drink.”
Martha walked in. She had on a loose green smock, and after a few wines she started showing me her legs.
“I’ve got good legs.”
“I’m a leg man.”
“Look higher.”
Her legs were very white, fat, flabby, with bulging purple veins. Martha told me her story.
She was a whore. She made the bars off and on. Her main source of income was the owner of a department store. “He gives me money. I go into his store and take anything I want. The salespeople don’t bother me. He’s told them to leave me alone. He doesn’t want his wife to know I’m a better fuck than she is.”
Martha got up and turned on the radio. Loud. “I’m a good dancer,” she said. “Watch me dance!”
She whirled in her green tent, kicking her legs. She wasn’t so hot. Soon she had the smock up around her waist and was waving her behind in my face. The pink panties had a large hole over the right cheek. Then off came the smock and she was just in her panties. Next the panties were on the floor by the smock and she was doing a grind. Her triangle of cunt hair was almost hidden by her dangling, bouncing stomach.
Sweat was making her mascara run. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. She leapt on me before I could move. Her open mouth was pressed on mine. It tasted of spit and onions and stale wine and (I imagined) the sperm of four hundred men. She pushed her tongue into my mouth. It was thick with saliva, I gagged and pushed her off. She fell on her knees, tore open my zipper, and in a second my soft pecker was in her mouth. She sucked and bobbed. Martha had a small yellow ribbon in her short grey hair. There were warts and big brown moles on her neck and cheeks.
My penis rose; she groaned, bit me. I screamed, grabbed her by the hair, pulled her off. I stood in the center of the room wounded and terrified. They were playing a Mahler Symphony on the radio. Before I could move she was down on her knees and on me again. She gripped my balls mercilessly with both of her hands. Her mouth opened, she had me; her head bobbed, sucked, jerked. Giving my balls a tremendous yank while almost biting my pecker in half she forced me to the floor. Sucking sounds filled the room as my radio played Mahler. I felt as if I were being eaten by a pitiless animal. My pecker rose, covered with spittle and blood. The sight of it threw her into a frenzy. I felt as if I was being eaten alive.
If I come, I thought desperately, I’ll never forgive myself.
As I reached down to try to yank her off by the hair, she clutched my balls again and squeezed them without pity. Her teeth scissored midpoint on my penis as if to slice me in two. I screamed, let go of her hair, fell back. Her head bobbed remorselessly. I was certain the sucking could be heard all over the roominghouse.
“NO!” I yelled.
She persisted with inhuman fury. I began to come. It was like sucking the insides out of a trapped snake. Her fury was mixed with madness; she sucked at that sperm, gurgling it into her throat.
She continued to bob and suck.
“Martha! Stop! It’s over!”
She wouldn’t. It was as if she had been turned into an enormous all-devouring mouth. She continued to suck and bob. She went on, on. “NO!” I yelled again … This time she got it like a vanilla malt through a straw.
I collapsed. She rose and began dressing herself. She sang.
“When a New York baby says goodnight
it’s early in the morning
goodnight, sweetheart
it’s early in the morning
goodnight, sweetheart
milkman’s on his way home …”
I staggered to my feet, clutching the front of my pants, and found my wallet. I took out $5, handed it to her. She took the $5, tucked it into the front of her dress between her breasts, grabbed my balls playfully once again, squeezed, let go, and waltzed out of the room.
I had worked long enough to save up bus fare to somewhere else, plus a few dollars to take care of me after I arrived. I quit my job, took out a map of the United States and looked it over. I decided on New York City.
I took five pints of whiskey in my suitcase on the bus with me. Whenever somebody sat next to me and began talking I pulled out a pint and took a long drink. I got there.
The bus station in New York City was near Times Square. I walked out into the street with my old suitcase. It was evening. The people swarmed up out of the subways. Like insects, faceless, mad, they rushed upon me, into and around me, with much intensity. They spun and pushed each other; they made horrible sounds.
I stood back in a doorway and finished the last pint.
Then I walked along, pushed, elbowed, until I saw a vacancy sign on Third Avenue. The manager was an old Jewish woman. “I need a room,” I told her.
“You need a good suit, my boy.”
“I’m broke.”
“It’s a good suit, almost for nothing. My husband runs the tailor shop across the street. Come with me.”
I paid for my room, put my suitcase upstairs. I went with her across the street.
“Herman, show this boy the suit.”
“Ah, it’s a nice suit.” Herman brought it out; a dark blue, a bit worn.
“It looks too small.”
“No, no, it fits good.”
He came out from behind the counter with the suit. “Here. Try the coat on.” Herman helped me into it. “See? It fits … You want to try the pants?” He held the pants in front of me, from waist to toe.
“They look all right.”
/> “Ten dollars.”
“I’m broke.”
“Seven dollars.”
I gave Herman the seven dollars, took my suit upstairs to my room. I went out for a bottle of wine. When I got back I locked the door, undressed, made ready for my first real night’s sleep in some time.
I got into bed, opened the bottle, worked the pillow into a hard knot behind my back, took a deep breath, and sat in the dark looking out of the window. It was the first time I had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I took a drink of wine.
Suddenly the room filled with light. There was a clatter and a roar. The El ran level with the window of my room. A subway train had stopped there. I looked out into a row of New York faces who looked back. The train lingered, then pulled away. It was dark. Then the room filled again with light. Again I looked into the faces. It was like a vision of hell repeated again and again. Each new trainload of faces was more ugly, demented and cruel than the last. I drank the wine.
It continued: darkness, then light; light, then darkness. I finished the wine and went out for more. I came back, undressed, got back in bed. The arrival and departure of the faces continued; I felt I was having a vision. I was being visited by hundreds of devils that the Devil Himself couldn’t tolerate. I drank more wine.
Finally I got up and took my new suit out of the closet. I slipped into the coat. It was a tight fit. The coat seemed smaller than when I was in the tailor shop. Suddenly there was a ripping sound. The coat had split open straight up the back. I took what remained of the coat off. I still had the pants. I worked my legs into them. There were buttons in the front instead of a zipper; as I tried to fasten them, the seam split in the seat. I reached in from behind and felt my shorts.
For four or five days I walked around. Then I got drunk for two days. I moved out of my room and into Greenwich Village. One day I read in Walter Winchell’s column that O. Henry used to do all of his writing at a table in some famous writers’ bar. I found the bar and went in looking for what?
It was noon. I was the only patron despite Winchell’s column. There I stood alone with a large mirror, the bar, and the bartender.
“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t serve you.”
I was stunned, couldn’t answer. I waited for an explanation.
“You’re drunk.”
I was probably hungover but I hadn’t had a drink for twelve hours. I mumbled something about O. Henry and left.
It looked like a deserted store. There was a sign in the window: Help Wanted. I went in. A man with a thin mustache smiled at me. “Sit down.” He gave me a pen and a form. I filled out the form.
“Ah? College?”
“Not exactly.”
“We’re in advertising.”
“Oh?”
“Not interested?”
“Well, you see, I’ve been painting. A painter, you know? I’ve run out of money. Can’t sell the stuff.”
“We get lots of those.”
“I don’t like them either.”
“Cheer up. Maybe you’ll be famous after you’re dead.”
He went on to say the job entailed night work to begin with, but that there was always a chance to work one’s way up.
I told him that I liked night work. He said that I could begin in the subway.
Two old guys were waiting for me. I met them down inside the subway where the cars were parked. I was given an armful of cardboard posters and a small metal instrument that looked like a can opener. We all climbed in one of the parked cars.
“Watch me,” one of the old guys said.
He jumped up on the dusty seats, began walking along ripping out old posters with his can opener. So that’s how those things get up there, I thought. People put them there.
Each poster was held by two metal strips which had to be removed to get the new poster in. The strips were spring-tight and curved to fit the contour of the wall.
They let me try it. The metal strips resisted my efforts. They wouldn’t budge. The sharp edges cut my hands as I worked. I began to bleed. For each poster you took out there was a new poster to replace it. Each one took forever. It was endless.
“There are green bugs all over New York,” said one of the old guys after a while.
“There are?”
“Yeh. You new in New York?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you know all New York people got these green bugs?”
“No.”
“Yeh. Woman wanted to fuck me last night. I said, ‘No, baby, nothing doing.’”
“Yeh?”
“Yeh. I told her I’d do it if she gave me five bucks. It takes five bucks worth of steak to replace that jizz.”
“She give you the five bucks?”
“Nah. She offered me a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup.”
We worked our way down to the end of the car. The two old men climbed off the back, began to walk toward the next subway car parked about fifty feet up the track. We were forty feet above the ground with nothing but railroad ties to walk on. I saw it wouldn’t be any trouble at all for a body to slip through and fall to the ground below.
I climbed out of the subway car and slowly started stepping from tie to tie, can opener in one hand, cardboard posters in the other. A subway car filled with passengers pulled up; the lights from the train showed the way.
The train moved off; I was in total darkness. I could neither see the ties nor the spaces between them. I waited.
The two old guys hollered from the next car: “Come on! Hurry! We got a lot of work to do!”
“Wait! I can’t see!”
“We ain’t got all night!”
My eyes began to adjust. Step by step I went forward, slowly. When I reached the next car I put the posters on the floor and sat down. My legs were weak.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“A man can get killed up here.”
“Nobody’s ever fallen through yet.”
“I feel like I could.”
“It’s all in the mind.”
“I know. How do I get out of here?”
“There’s a stairway right over there. But you gotta cross a lotta tracks, you gotta watch for trains.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t step on the third rail.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the power. It’s the gold rail. It looks like gold. You’ll see it.”
I got down on the tracks and began stepping over them. The two old men watched me. The gold rail was there. I stepped very high over that.
Then I half-ran half-fell down the stairway. There was a bar across the street.
—FACTOTUM
Poem for Personnel Managers:
An old man asked me for a cigarette
and I carefully dealt out two.
“Been lookin’ for job. Gonna stand
in the sun and smoke.”
He was close to rags and rage
and he leaned against death.
It was a cold day, indeed, and trucks
loaded and heavy as old whores
banged and tangled on the streets …
We drop like planks from a rotting floor
as the world strives to unlock the bone
that weights its brain.
(God is a lonely place without steak.)
We are dying birds
we are sinking ships—
the world rocks down against us
and we
throw out our arms
and we
throw out our legs
like the death kiss of the centipede:
but they kindly snap our backs
and call our poison “politics.”
Well, we smoked, he and I—litt
le men
nibbling fish-head thoughts …
All the horses do not come in,
and as you watch the lights of the jails
and hospitals wink on and out,
and men handle flags as carefully as babies,
remember this:
you are a great-gutted instrument of
heart and belly, carefully planned—
so if you take a plane for Savannah,
take the best plane;
or if you eat chicken on a rock,
make it a very special animal.
(You call it a bird; I call birds
flowers.)
And if you decide to kill somebody,
make it anybody and not somebody:
some men are made of more special, precious
parts: do not kill
if you will
a president or a King
or a man
behind a desk—
these have heavenly longitudes
enlightened attitudes.
If you decide,
take us
who stand and smoke and glower;
we are rusty with sadness and
feverish
with climbing broken ladders.
Take us
we were never children
like your children.
We do not understand love songs
like your inamorata.
Our faces are cracked linoleum,
cracked through with the heavy, sure
feet of our masters.
We are shot through with carrot tops
and poppyseed and tilted grammar;
we waste days like mad blackbirds
and pray for alcoholic nights.
Our silk-sick human smiles wrap around
us like somebody else’s confetti:
we do not even belong to the Party.
We are a scene chalked-out with the
sick white brush of Age.
We smoke, asleep as a dish of figs.
We smoke, as dead as fog.
Take us.
A bathtub murder
or something quick and bright; our names
in the papers.
Known, at last, for a moment
to millions of careless and grape-dull eyes
that hold themselves private