sit and stare. That is why, he says. It is more than a pledge: it
is a blood oath: he has run our blood together. He has gotten
my loyalty: a loyalty above personality, liking, not liking,
wanting, not wanting, outside time and daily desires. He puts
on Madame Butterfly before she commits suicide. My pain is
insane. I do not notice his horrible and cynical wit.
*
I am of course now very gentle with him: in the past I have
been harsh but now I know this, I have seen this, the boy,
raped, I know why he cares about my writing, it is a secret
reason, deep, terrifying: I must treat him with sincerity, respect,
like one of us: the raped. I must not hate him for wanting to
be close to me anymore. I must not hate him.
*
By now it is 1 1 pm. I try to go. He keeps me there. There is
another story to tell about his parents or his sister. He shows
me his bedroom: one night he picked up a baseball team and
brought them all back here and got fucked by all of them. I go
out of the bedroom to leave. There is another book to discuss.
There is another record to hear. He tells me lots of stories
about sex, lovers, adventures. I am clear, precise. I am ready to
go. There is something he must show me. There is something
he must tell me. There is something I must see. There is
someone I must meet. I am ready to go. He plays a record by
Nichols and May, a couple in bed having just fucked discussing
“ relating” through prisms of intellectual pretension. It is right
on the mark, but we are precoital. I have to go. There is a
book he must give me. There is a book he must find. There is
a drawing I must see. It is in his bedroom. We stand there
together, looking. I have my jacket on. I am like a runner,
ready to sprint. There is something he must show me. There is
something he must get me. He finds me a long-out-of-print
early book by Thomas Mann and a dozen other books, too
much for me to carry. I want the books, very much. He finds
me a shopping bag. I think about the empty streets. I need my
hands free, I don’t know if I can find a cab, I leave the books
there, I ask him to bring them to his office where I will pick
them up. It is 4 am. I run out. I am exhausted and confused. I
don’t know what he wants. I know what I want: a publisher,
not a lover; a publisher, not a barter. I think he wants me but I
137
insist to myself I am me, not a woman, the signs are no longer
in my symbology, I do not speak that language, I do not
practice that religion: I have seen him, a child, gang-raped, cut
with knives, it is why he wants to be near me, I am required by my
own dumb heart to love him, he is one of us, the raped, I do not
