man; I’m not proud to say it but I’m sure it’s true. I would take
big steps, loud ones, down the street; I could be the Zen master
o f fuck you. I would spread m yself out and take up all the
space and spread my legs wide open in the subway to take up
three seats with just m y knees like they do. I would be very
bold and very cool. I’d be smarter than I am now, I’m sure,
because what I knew might matter and I’d remember more,
I’m sure. I don’t think I’d go near women though because I
wouldn’t want to hurt them. I know how everything feels. I
think if I was a man m y heart would not hurt so much and I
wouldn’t have this terror I am driven by but cannot name. I
think I could write a poem about it, perhaps. I think it could
probably make a very long poem and I could keep rewriting it
to get every nuance right and chart it as it changed over time;
song o f himself, perhaps, a sequel. Ginsberg says he chased
Whitman through supermarkets; I fucking was him; I
embraced all the generations without distinctions and it failed
because o f this awfulness that there is no name for, this great
meanness at the heart o f what they mean when they stick it in; I
just don’t know a remedy, because it is a sick and hostile thing.
Even if there were no wars I think I could say some
perceptions I had about life, I wouldn’t need the C ivil War or
the Vietnam War to hang m y literary hat on as it were, and I
could be loud, which I would try, I’m sure, I could call
attention to m yself as i f I mattered or what happened did or as
i f I knew something, even about suffering or even about life;
and, frankly, then it might count. I could stop thinking every
minute about where each sound is coming from and where the
shadows are each minute. I can’t even close m y eyes now
frankly but I think it’s because I’m this whatever it is, you can
have sophisticated words for it but the fact is you can be
sleeping inside with everything locked and they get in and do
it to you no matter how bad it hurts. In magazines they say
w om en’s got allure, or so they call it, but it’s more like being
some dumb w riggling thing that God holds out before them
on a stick with a string, a fisher o f men. The allure’s there even
i f you got open sores on you; I know. The formal writing
problem, frankly, is that the bait can’t write the story. The bait
ain’t even barely alive. There’s a weird German tradition that
the fish turned the tables and rewrote the story to punish the
fisherman but you know it’s a lie and it’s some writer o f fiction
being what became known as a modernist but before that was
called outright a smartass; and the fish still ain’t bait unless it’s
eviscerated and bleeding. I just can’t risk it now but if I was a
man I could close m y eyes, I’m sure; at night, I’d close them,
I’m sure. I don’t think m y hands would shake. I don’t think so;
or not so much; or not all the time; or not without reason;
there’s no reason now anyone can see. M y breasts w ouldn’t
