We drink as much as we can as often as we can: shot at a time
now, can’t buy our own bottles. The pace is fast. The fucks
are fast. There is no time for style or pretense. We don’t look
around, ahead, behind.
We have been going four days straight: drink, speed, fuck,
hustle, no sleep: the last night we took acid for R & R : we
walked a hundred miles in the city and rolled in the sewers:
the sun burns: we walk: we pick up what we can: bodies are
giving out, tired: we are on our way home: we get home: she
sprawls out on the mattress, I sit across the room: suddenly
she says, I see something big and black crawling on you: I say,
shit N it’s the acid you just aren’t down yet: she is quiet: she
says, I fucking see them all over: and she is right: they are all
over: huge water bugs the size of small fists: crawling
everywhere: crawling all over us, all over the room, all over
the walls. We run out into the night screaming, trying to rub
them off us, feeling them all over us, inside our clothes,
up our legs, in our hair: we keep shaking ourselves not knowing
where they are on us, can’t get clean, we are exhausted, we
must sleep, no matter how much we tell each other they aren’t
on us we can’t believe it, we keep inspecting each other but
74
can’t stand still long enough to really look, we keep hopping
down the streets kicking and scratching and twisting and
turning, we feel them creeping and crawling, we bang on poor
R ’s door, she lets us in, we vibrate from the acid for days.
*
An exterminator has put a pink powder all around the storefront. The water bugs now crawl around all pink. It is a spectacular effect. Eventually they die but nothing keeps them
out. Especially they drown in coffee cups. The neighbors say
they are coming back. Hey puta we coming. There is no money.
The phone is dead. The walls crawl with pink water bugs. The
heat hangs in the air like fire. In the bright glare of the day we
pick up Jimmy. He is a masseur. He is thick and squat with
muscles, black. He has no teeth. He comes to live with us, to
protect us. N says I have to fuck him because I found him. I
say I will because the neighbors are going to kill us: Jimmy
brings his cat: sometimes she kills water bugs: other times they
die in the coffee: I have to fuck Jimmy several times a day: it is
not fun: N goes in and out: one night Jimmy disappears, N
and I go out, we come back and everything has been smashed
like maniacs have been through with axes: I say they are going
to kill us, we have to get out of here: N says we have no
money: I say we get it from one of our rich school chums, I say
we call her and stick it to her: N is mortified by the implied or
actual rudeness in this but I don’t care: I call her: I make her
come down to where we are: I say we are going to die here
unless she puts us up in a hotel until the end of the summer: I
