make her take us to the hotel and pay for a room. We move
in. I think we sleep for days. *
The room has one window that opens on an air shaft. It is hot
and stuffy. It has one closet. It has a sink. It has a very large
double bed, for three at least. It is brown, with a lot of yellow
in the brown. The bed has a bedspread, brown with a lot of
yellow. There are two shabby chairs, a small desk, a telephone
extension. Down the hall is the bathroom, the showers. The
halls are grand: not plush but wide, marble floors, huge
window at one end. We are off in a far distant end, narrow, as far
away from the huge window as one could be. The woman next
door asks us if we are on the circuit. I ask what circuit. The junkie
75
circuit, you know, she says, Tangier, Morocco, Marseilles,
New York, Hong Kong. I say, no, we are not on that circuit.
Our door stays open, for air.
The hotel is famous. Thomas Wolfe lived there. There are
many kinds of rooms, suites for the rich and famous: rock
groups stay there: and the maid tells us that down this very
hall an old movie actor wrote his autobiography.
There is a rug on the floor too, brown with a lot of yellow
in it.
Everything is dingy in our room: but the hall is grand. So is
the elevator. So is the traffic: money and drugs.
N is bleeding again: it stops and it starts. We use our school
chums more. They come here more. We are cleaner, calmer.
We get dinners and various dates from them: they set things
up: N needs a camera to shoot some footage, we are broke,
the store requires a huge deposit, an old school chum finds a
woman friend of hers for N to have dinner with. They pretend
it is just regular life, like they lead: except they breathe faster.
There are things we have learned: principles we have discerned: now we let the men know we want each other, they can watch. We hold each other on the huge bed, we make love
with each other: the men watch, the men pay: sometimes the
men fuck but we can overwhelm them and they go soft, impotent: we have learned certain principles: we kiss each other, we tease, we hold out the possibility, we get dinner first, we
get cash first, we get breakfast after: they are content to sit in
the same room: sleep in the same bed: to be able to say they were
there, it happened to them. N bleeds. We touch each other. A
man watches. A man pays. It is easier on us. We use the women
for money more and more: it is more artful: there is less sex.
When a man is not there, or another woman, we just sleep.
We make love, the man pays, the man watches, or there is
just the hint that we will and he pays.
The footage gets shot.
We fuck less: N still bleeds: some nights we can’t tell what
the man will do: it is always a game of nerves: we play him: it
is a game of skill: we do what’s necessary: we start out playing
