held over one’s mouth: no noise can be made: and sneaked out
before dawn, giggling silently and left in the cold, unless one’s
lover is sentimental: then he covers you in his coat and buries
you in his arms and you wait for dawn together. In Northern
European cities, dawn comes late but parents wake up early.
The young men have no privacy: they stay strange little bad
boys who get taller and older. They get married too young.
They sneak forever.
But it doesn’t matter: where or why or how.
There were plenty before him in gray Europe. It was his
sadness: saturating his comic face, his comic stance, his great
comic stories, his extravagant gestures. It made him different:
sad: more like me, but so fragile compared to me, so unused.
When he looked up, so innocent, I must have decided. I became
his friend, thinking that he too must love life fiercely, desperately: my gift to him: it costs me nothing and there is an abundance of it, without limits: the physical facts of life. There
is not a lot I can do. I can do this.
*
Darker, grayer: no buildings filled with hash: another European
city: to get an apartment: we had spent nights together out on
the street, in the rain, in the cold, he was my friend, I had
nowhere to go and he had nowhere to take me so he stayed
with me in the wet nights, bitter cold. So we went somewhere
else, Northern, gray, he came a few days a week, every week,
he taught me how to cook, he was my friend. There was a big
bed, one room, a huge skylight in the middle of the room, one
large table in a corner: I put the bed under the skylight, water
condenses and drips on it, but there I teach him, slowly. I have
understood. He has too much respect for women. I teach him
disrespect, systematically. I teach him how to tie knots, how to
use rope, scarves, how to bite breasts: I teach him not to be
afraid: of causing pain. It goes slowly. I teach him step by step.
I invent sex therapy in this one room somewhere in the middle
82
of Europe. I am an American innocent, in my fashion. I forbid
intercourse. I teach him how to play games. You be this and I
will be that. Rape, virgin, Queen Victoria. The games go on
and on. There are some we do over and over. I teach him to
penetrate with his fingers, not to be afraid of causing pain. I
fellate him. I teach him not to worry about erection. I tie him
up. Dungeon, brothel, little girl, da-da. I ask him what he
wants to do and we do it. I teach him not to be afraid of
causing pain. Not to be afraid of hurting me. I am the one
there: don’t be afraid of hurting me, see, this is how. I teach
him not to be afraid of piss and shit, human dirt. I teach him
everything about his body, I penetrate him, I scratch, I bite, I
tie him up, I hit him with my hand open, with my fist, with
belts: he gets hard. He does each thing back to me. He is
