One talked to me about death. He was a real famous painter.
He said that both him and me were artists. He said artists were
the only people who faced death without lying. He said that
was the reason to make love— because you had looked death in
the face and then you defied it. He said the others didn’t
understand that but he did and I did and so would I come with
him. And I laughed. I didn’t go with him but I laughed, he
made me happy, I laughed, I felt it was such beautiful bullshit
and I laughed. I thought it was a real nice thing for him to say.
It was a new year. I was drinking champagne. I w asn’t alone. I
wasn’t outside. I was safe. It was so much— beauty and life and
gracious ease; it was so surprising, so completely wonderful
and new; it was glittering and sparkling, it was small and
warm, it was new and scary and exciting and real fine. I started
having this dream over and over. It was N ew Y ork, streets I
knew, usually down in the Village, around Washington
Square, sometimes on Fifth Avenue above the Square. It was
very dark. The dark was almost a person, a character in the
dream. The dark had a kind o f depth, almost a smell, and it
was scary and dense and it was over everything, you almost
couldn’t see anything through it. The dream was somewhere
in the Village, sometimes near those big impersonal buildings
on Fifth Avenue, but even i f it’s deeper in the Village the
buildings are stone, big, impersonal, not the town houses or
brownstones o f the Village, but the impersonal Fifth Avenue
buildings, a cold rich city made o f cold stone. Som ehow I go
into one and it opens into this huge feast, this giant party in this
giant ballroom, physically it’s almost underground as if you
are going down inside the ground but there is this grand
ballroom and the women have gow ns and jew els and the men
are shiny and pretty in black suits and ruffled silk shirts but no
one makes me leave, at first I’m afraid but no one makes me
leave, there’s lots o f noise and there’s music and there’s food,
all sorts o f weird kinds o f food, cocktail food and real food and
drinks and it’s warm and friendly and in the dream I say yes,
I’ve been here before, it’s waiting, it’s always here, it’s just part
o f N ew Y ork , you don’t have to ever be afraid, hidden aw ay
there’s always something like this, you ju st have to find it, and
it fades, the dream fades, and I wake up feeling flushed and
tired and happy and I think it’s out there if only I can
remember where it is and it’s not until I’m out on the streets
that I understand I just dreamed it, I wasn’t really there, not
just last night but ever, but still I think N ew Y ork is full o f
such places, only I don’t know where they are. But after N ew
Year it just was colder and harder; there’s not a lot o f magic in
