no fool. He is no fool but is he also sincere?
Can a pimp be sincere?
Ah, he says, not too often, I wanted to dance.
*
He brings N a silk scarf: and me a book.
*
I am wondering if I should sleep with him: but they are a real
pair, boy and girl: she waits for him and he comes often. I take
my cues from her. She is not obligated, as far as I can see: she
wants him around: she really likes him, for himself as we say,
a lot. He remains nice. I begin to think I am wrong about the
apartment. Then I remember his girls. Then I think about N
and smack. I keep my distance. She is loyal to me too. She
won’t go without me. I think.
*
He died, my daddy, kind man, in a poverty of loneliness and
disregard. I was not a good daughter. Nothing came to me
when he died. I took a bus to the funeral. The relatives who
raised me on and off were there. I hadn’t dressed right. I was
dirty and hot. I only had pants. Him being dead wasn’t the
main thing for them: it was me, not dressed right. The cemetery
was flat and ugly. There were weeds. I got back on the bus
right away. I got back late at night. I walk into the storefront
and I think fucking pig, what the hell is wrong with her, there
are things thrown everywhere, papers all around all over the
floor and clothes thrown all around and everything is a fucking
mess. She is not there. I know she is out at a bar. I am pissed
like hell. I keep looking around, unable to take the mess in.
Then it registers. There is nothing left. Everything is gone. The
records are gone, the record player, the sax, the clarinet, the
typewriter, almost all our clothes, except that some are thrown
all over, every fucking thing that can be picked up and carried
is gone: I walk through the apartment: the metal has been
lifted off the back door like King Kong had done it: it
must have taken hours to do and had to have been done in
daylight: the neighbors must have enjoyed it: and in the re65
frigerator there had been a bottle of vodka, that’s all, and now
the empty bottle was there on the sink. The fucks had drunk
the fucking vodka. There is nothing left, and at the same time
an indescribable mess of strewn things, like junk, trash, like
garbage.
I go to the bars to find N. She is far east, at a rough place I
have gone to long before I even knew her— I am two years
older and show it— and the bars are littered with my lost late
adolescence— I find her— I have fucked all the bartenders in
this bar and the one she is talking to now is the best— and I
grab her and take her home. She is pissed with me until she
