there’s holes in them and I get scared as if it’s not really inside.
There’s not much food and I know it ain’t mine in any
meaningful sense. Y o u ’re supposed to make things up, not
just write down true things, or sincere things, or some things
that happened. M y mother who you can’t make up either
because there’s nothing so real as one named me Andrea as if I
was someone: distinct, in particular. She made a fiction. I’m
her book, a made-up story written down on a birth certificate.
Y ou could also say she’s a liar on such a deep level she should
be shot by all that’s fair; deep justice. if I was famous and my
name was published all over the world, in Italy and in Israel
and in Africa and in India, on continents and subcontinents, in
deserts, in ancient cities, it would still be cunt to every fucking
asshole drunk on every street in the world; and to them that’s
not drunk too, the sober ones who say it to you like they’re
calling a dog: fetch, cunt. if I won the Nobel Prize and walked
to the corner for milk it would still be cunt. And when you got
someone inside you who is loving you it’s still cunt and the
ones w ho’d die i f they wasn’t in you, you, you in particular, at
least that night, at least then, that time, that place, to them it’s
still cunt and they whisper it up close and chill the blood that’s
burning in you; and if you love them it’s still cunt and you can
love them so strong you’d die for them and it’s still cunt; and
your heartbeat and his heartbeat can be the same heartbeat and
it’s still cunt. It’s behind your back and it’s to your face; the
ones you know, the ones you don’t. It’s like as i f nigger was a
term o f intimate endearment, not just used in lynching and
insult but whispered in lovemaking, the truth under the truth,
the name under the name, love’s name for you and it’s the
same as what hate calls you; he’s in you whispering nigger. It’s
thugs, it’s citizens, it’s cops, it’s strangers, it’s the ones you
want and the ones you deplore, you ain’t allowed indifference,
you have to decide on a relationship then and there on the spot
because each one that passes pisses on you to let you know he’s
there. There’s some few you made love with and yo u ’re still
breathing tight with them, you can still feel their muscles
swelling through their skin and bearing down on you and you
can still feel their weight on you, an urgent concentration o f
blood and bone, hot muscle, spread over you, the burden o f it
sinking into you, a stone cliff into a wet shore, and yo u ’re still
tangled up in them, good judgm ent aside, and it’s physical, it’s
a physical m em ory, in the body, not just in the brain, barely in
the brain at all, you got their sweat on you as part o f your
sweat and their smell’s part o f your smell and you have an ache
for them that’s deep and gnawing and hurtful in more than
your heart and you still feel as if it’s real and current, now: how
his body moves against you in convulsions that are awesome
like mountains m oving, slow, burdensome, big, and how you
