purposes o f the man at the door but the stool’s mine and I will
drink and I will stay as long as I have bills in front o f me and it’s
an unwritten law about girls, that they don’t let you sit
anywhere, so you never quite understand w hy you can be
somewhere sometimes and not the same place the next time
and you figure out you got to hang on to a man and you are his
shadow, like Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow back on. It
sure insures a steady flow o f affection wom an to man if you
can’t even sit down without one. Tonight I have a singular
distaste for a man. I’m not starting out with any interest
whatsoever. H e’d have to catch m y eye like starlight or it’d
have to be like fairy dust where you want some and you need a
taste, it’s something that tickles you deep down but you can’t
reach it to scratch, like the cut o f a record you listen to a
thousand times or you got a taste you can’t get rid o f so yo u ’re
like some fucking hamster on one o f them wheels just running
and running or yo u ’re skim ming coke o ff the top o f something or smack o ff the top o f something, you just get smitten,
lightly but completely, stuck in the moment but also riveted
so you can’t shake it loose, infatuated now , freedom now ,
there’s some special charge com ing from him and yo u ’re
plugged in and it’s sparking, it’s not like you want to get laid
and yo u ’re looking for someone w h o ’s going to be good, it’s
more like some trait you can’t identify strikes you wham , it’s
got an obsession lurking under it, it’s a light feeling but under
it is a burning habit, a habit you ain’t got yet but you just want
to play with it once, like skinpopping heroin or something,
you know, it ain’t serious but you want it. I take an energetic
walk with the city all glowing wet, all sparkling, for me, as if
it’s for me, the light’s for me and the rain’s for me and it’s
stoned out o f its fucking mind for me; and the buildings are
just pure glitter and the light’s coming down from heaven
luscious and wet; for me. The boy at the door can’t keep me
out because I stride in and I am aglow; he’s a mandarin
standing there with his little list and his leather jacket and his
pretensions and his snobbish good looks and I mumble words
I know he can’t hear and I never yet met a man who wasn’t
stupider than me and he’s trying to decide am I someone or not
and I am not fucking anyone but I am striding in my
motorcycle boots and I am wet and I am bound for glory at the
bar and I push m y w ay through the crowd and fuck him and
he’s watching me, he sees that I ain’t headed for a table which
would transgress the laws o f the universe, and it ain’t a girl’s
trick to sit somewhere she ain’t entitled because a man didn’t
pick her out already; he sees I want the bar and I suppose it’s
faintly plausible that a girl might want a drink on her own or it
confuses him enough that he hesitates and he who hesitates is
lost. I take out all the bills I have and he’s watching me do it
