they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them
hard and high and ready but I like to take some o ff with me and
do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed
with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing
the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from
one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are
housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean m y house, bake
m y bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the
sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—
she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings o f
beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling,
it’s sad. Y ou convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what
he never thought would be near him, street grime he w on ’t be
able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overw rought his
prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t
spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out
without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a
woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; m y
appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big
slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because
there w asn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have
money or no one to take care o f me so they just let me out. M y
side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and
there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in m y
shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain
was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in m y
shoulder. It hurt to breathe. Y ou don’t think about your
shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi
is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full
weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure
from inside on where the drill was and there w asn’t enough
Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and
dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking
beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades o f blue all in
flowers, silk, astonishing whirl o f color; and the man’s dark
with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, ju st hair;
and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s
all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats
on m y hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine:
expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can
barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the
guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind o f monster o f fuck, he
lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by,
and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each
other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and
m y side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be m oving
around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the
