Dhalgren

poems and journal notes — are all gone, as well as pages here and there through the rest.

More will go, too.

I work the paper strips, edged with torn perforations, out of the [s]piral with my pencil point. And write more. Looking at the last page, I can't tell if it's the same one that was there a month ago or not.

was nearly too bizarre for comment:

Stopped into Teddy's. It was so early I wondered why it was open. Maybe five people there, among them — Jack. He sat on the last stool, hands (skin grey, cuticles wedged with black, crowns scimitared with it, half moons shadowed under cracked skin) flat on the counter. His hair feathered the rim of his ear (in the twisted cartilage: white flakes. On the trumpet's floor: dry amber) and went without change into sideburns that join around his chin in scrubby beard. His neck was grey — with one clean smear (where he'd been rubbing himself?). His lids were thickened, coral rimmed, and lashless. The short sleave of his shirt: torn on the seam over white flesh. Above the backs of his shoes, his socks, both heels torn, curled from ridged, black callous. The fly flap on his slacks was broken. The brass teeth roller-coastered over his lap and under his belt — the buckle tongue had snapped: he'd tied the belt-ends together. 'You wanna buy me a beer?' he asked. 'First night I got to town, I brought you and your girl friend a beer.'

'Just ask for what you want,' I said.

The bartender glanced over, pushed a rolled sleeve higher; from under his thick fingers the tattoed leopard stalked the jungle of his arm.

'I'd buy it myself,' Jack said. 'But, you know, I've been pretty down and out. You buy me a beer, man, and I'll do the same for you, soon as I get myself back on my feet.'

I said to the bartender: 'How come you won't serve him?'

The bartender put his knuckles on the counter and swayed. 'All he gotta do is ask for what he wants.' He looked around at the other customers.

'Give us a couple of beers,' I said.

'Right up.' The open bottles clacked the boards in front of us.

'There you go.' I took a swallow from mine.

Jack's bottle sat between his thumbs. He looked at it, then moved his fingers a little to the left.

What he'd done was adjust the spaces so that the bottle was centered between his hands.

The bartender glanced again, pursed his lips — about as close as he would let himself get to shaking his head — and moved away, fist over fist.

'You don't have to pay here,' I said.

'If I could pay,' Jack said, 'I really would; I mean, if I had it, I'd buy it myself. I'm not a skinflint, man. I'm really generous when I got it.'

I considered a moment. Then I said: 'Just a second.' I reached in my pants pocket.

The dollar bill, in a moist knot, came up between my third and fourth finger. It was so crumpled, at first I thought I'd just found some dirty paper I'd stuck there (a discarded poem?). I spread it on the counter. One corner, from sweat and rubbing, was worn away down to the frame of the '1'.

While Jack looked at it, I wondered what Lanya would do with hers; or Denny with his.

Jack raised his head, slowly. The corner of his mouth was cracked and sore. 'You can have a pretty rough time in this city, you know?' His hands were still flat. Foam bubbled up his bottle neck and over, puddling at the base. 'I just don't understand it, man. I don't. I mean, I've done everything I could think of, you know? But it just don't look like I can make it here no how. Since I been here—?' He turned to me. Bubbles banked and broke against his fingers. 'I been nice to people! They got all different kinds of people here, too. I mean I ain't never seen all kinds of different people like this here before. I've been nice and tried to listen, and learn how to do, you know? Learn my way around. 'Cause it is different here… But I just don't know.' His eyes went above and behind me.

I looked back.

Jack was looking at Bunny's empty cage. The black velvet curtain at the back swung as though someone had just brushed by on the other side. 'Like that big nigger that they got his picture up, all over the place with his God damn dick hangin' out all over. I just don't see that. I mean I don't got nothin' against it. But, man, if they gonna do shit like that, why don't they put some pictures of some pussy up too! You know? If they gonna do one, don't you think it's right they should do the other?'

'Sure,' I said.

'I mean, maybe somebody like me, or you—you got a girl friend — is interested in something else, huh? When I first got here, I knew things weren't gonna be like every where else. I was real nice to people; and people was nice to me too. Tak? The guy I met with you, here? Now he's a pretty all right person. And when I was staying with him, I tried to be nice. He wants to suck on my dick, I'd say: 'Go ahead, man, suck on my fuckin dick.' And, man, I ain't never done nothin' like that before… I mean not serious, like he was, you know? Now, I done it. I ain't sorry I done it. I don't got nothin' against it. But it is just not what I like all that much, you understand? I want a girl, with tits and a pussy. Is that so strange? You understand that?'

'Sure,' I said. 'I understand.'

Jack pushed the corner of his mouth out with his tongue, trying to break the scab. 'I guess he understood too. Tak, I mean. He's still nice to me. He talks to me when he sees me, you know? He asks me how I'm doin', stuff like that… Man, I just wish I'd see some pictures of some nice pussy up there, beside all that dick. I mean that's what I'm interested in; it would just make me feel better.'

I drank some beer. 'Make me feel better too.'

'You been to that commune place — you know, in the park?' Jack looked at the wrinkled bill. 'Tak took me down there. And I guess it was pretty nice, you know. I was talking to this one girl, who's one of the ones who runs it—'

'Milly?'

'Yeah. Mildred. And she's goin' on and on about my deserting from the army, and all about how good they all feel about deserters, and I guess she's tryin' to be nice too — but after a while, I mean after a couple of fuckin' hours of that, I had to say: Lady, how you. sittin' there tellin' me how bad the fuckin' army is when you ain't never been in the fuckin' army and I just been there for a God damn year and a half! She don't know nothin' about why I run out of the fuckin' army. And she don't even care.' His eyes wandered to his hands, the bottle, the puddled counter, the bill, his hands… 'I mean, she didn't know a thing…' He drew breath and looked up at me.

'I met Frank at the commune… the guy who's supposed to be a poet? He'd been in the army; and he deserted. He knew what I was trying to tell her. For a while there, him and me, we were pretty close. I can't talk as good as he can, and he knows all about a lot of stuff I don't. But we went around a lot together. He took me to that House where all the girls live. You been there?'

'No.'

'Well, it's really something, man. Some of them girls are pretty nice — some are pretty strange, too. And the guys that come around there… well, some of those girls go for some pretty freaky guys. I guess some of them, the girls, even liked me. But only the freaky ones that I just wasn't interested in. I wanted to get me one, sort of little — they got some big women over there! — and pretty. And soft And smart. Now to me being smart in a girl is very important. If I could get me a girl who could talk about things and understand things half as good as Frank could, I'd be happy. And they got some smart girls over there too. In fact, I don't think none of 'em is stupid. Just a lot of them is pretty freaky, though. There was some there just like I wanted. And I could of used a girl friend! I mean I talked to them. And they talked to me. But I couldn't get anywhere. Frank could. He could get laid from Wednesday to next Thursday and start all over tomorrow. I wanted to get laid, but I wanted more than that, too. Now I know people around here is different from me; but that means I'm different from them, too. Only I guess if you're too different, nobody wants anything to do with you. I mean they don't care shit.' His hands jerked in the puddle, to the bottle's base. He frowned for a while, and I thought he was finished. But he said: 'You hear about the nigger — this black guy who used to come in here: the one who got shot off top of the Second City Bank building?'