lush and liquid, I never could pass up the sparkle, it’s a wet,
shimmering night, a wet, dazzling night; but warm, as if it’s
breathing all over you, as if it’s wrapped around you, a
cocoon, that w ispy stuff. If there’s acid in your brain
everything’s fluid and monstrous bright; this is as if the acid’s
out there, spread over the city, the sidewalks are drenched in it
and the buildings are bathed in it and the air is saturated with it,
nothing’s standing still and it is monstrous bright and I love
the fucking city when it’s stoned. Inside it’s dull and dry and
I’m not in a constructive mood and there is a pain that runs
down me like a river, a nasty, surging river, a hard river, a
river that starts up high and races down to below falling more
than flowing, falling and breaking, shattering; it’s a river that
goes through me top to bottom; the pain’s intractable and I can
barely stand it; it’s not all jo ie de vivre when a girl goes
dancing; the pain’s a force o f nature beyond my ability to bear
and I can’t take the edge o ff it very easy and I can’t stand
needles and I can’t sit still with it and I can’t rip it out, although
if it was located right precisely in m y heart I would try, I
would take m y fucking hands and I would take m y fucking
fingers and I would rip m y chest open and I would try. It’s
raining and the rain makes me all steamy and damp inside and
out and it ain’t a man I want, it’s a drink, a dozen fucking
drinks to blot out the hard pain and the hard time, each and
every dick I ever sucked, and the bottle ain’t enough because I
can’t stand the quiet, a quiet bottle in a quiet room; I can’t
stand the quiet, lonely bottle in the quiet, lonely room. Lonely
ain’t a state o f mind, it’s a place o f being; a room with no one
else in it, a street with no one else on it; a city abandoned in the
rain; em pty, wet streets; cement that stretches uptown,
downtown, empty, warm, wet, until the sky starts, a
perspiring sky; empty cars parked on empty streets, damp,
deserted streets lined with dark, quiet buildings, civilized,
quiet stone, decorous, a sterile urban formalism; the windows
are closed, they’re sleeping or dead inside, you w on’t know
until morning really, a gas could have seeped in and killed
them in the night; or invaders from outer space; or some lethal
virus. I need noise; real noise; honest, bad noise; not random
sounds or a few loud voices or the electronic drone o f
someone’s television seeping out o f a cracked w indow; not
some dignified singer or some meaningful lyric; not something small or fine or good or right; I need music so loud you
can’t hear it, as when all the trees in the forest fall; and I need
noise so real it eats up the air because it can’t live on nothing; I
need noise that’s like steak, just so thick and just so tough and
ju st so immoral, thick and tough and dead but bloody, on a
plate, for the users, for the fucking killers, to still their hearts,
to numb anything still left churning; a percussive ambience for
