Dhalgren

your notebook again — forgive me, and I know you will: but your memory for conversation is practically photographic!' 

'No it's not,' I told her. 

'I said 'practically'.' 

'No,' I said again. 'About a third of any conversation I write down is just paraphrase.' 

'Being able to remember two thirds of what people say, even a few minutes after they've said it, is very unusual. Even your account of the night in the park; and you told me you hardly remembered any of that.' 

'I just wrote down what you said happened.' 

'If you don't have the lines right, you've certainly got the feeling! And with my hustling escapade, you've got all the lines. Those I remember.' 

I said: 'You read that too?' 

'And also your accounts of some of the talks we've had together. I don't know how they would stack up next to a transcript, but it's still impressive.' 

'So what's your idea?' 

'Just that, maybe, since you've got such memory for details has something to do with your loosing track or whole periods of time or … well, you know.' 

'That's so interesting,' I said, 'I think I'll forget it right now.' 

'She's just tryin' to help!' Risa said from the stove, clashing pot tops. 

'And she too knows I am joking,' I said. 'But even if you're right, so what?' 

Of course I didn't forget it, witness this. Still, I suspect my highly creative renderings are more convincing than accurate, no matter what she says — I think (hope?).

'You're just having experiences one after the other, aren't you?' The first thing I thought of was what Risa had said to me that day out in the yard; what I found myself grinning at was that the possibility of a genital expedient for taking her suggestion left me just as dubious as an anal one about whether or not I wanted to go through something like that. Oh, well; maybe some people can't have everything.

Lanya grinned up at me—'Um-hm' — and kissed my nose.

'What does your Madame Brown think about all this?' I asked.

'That I lead a wild and fascinating life.'

'Oh.' I nodded.

'She just wonders how I manage to get to school every day on time.'

'How do you manage to get to school every day on time?'

Lanya shrugged. 'Just conscientious, I guess.'

'Jesus!'

Denny sat back, his hands in his lap. 'You gang-shagged Revelation and Copperhead! Hey — who was better, Pinky or the nigger?'

Am writing this comment on what Lanya said about the girls shagging the two guys at the house right after finishing putting down my account of our chaos and confusion with the Emboriki (with Jack, wouldn't you know, being that much help and making that much trouble!) because a lot of what happened there, what we said to them, what they said to us, pushed my mind back to it. I note that Copperhead and Revelation are pretty much exclusively interested-in-girls guys; remember from last night (significant in terms of today?) Revelation politely trying to tell a pretty drunken Angel. Really, it was nothing personal but, no, he didn't want to fuck around with him, and no, he had never really tried it before, and no he didn't want to, at least not now; and the two of them went on like this, quietly out on the service porch, for half an hour. The truth, of course, is that Revelation was vastly flattered by that much attention from someone that much quicker than he is and wanted to extend it as much as possible. (Did we think by paying them serious attention we were going to flatter them into getting their foot off our necks?) I think, sometimes, the difference is that they are sure that any social structures that arise, grow out of patterns inate to The Sex Act — whatever that is; while we have seen, again and again, that the psychology, structures, and acountrements that define any sex act are always internalized from social structures that already exist, that have been created, that can be changed. All right: Let me ask the terrible question: Could it be that all those perfectly straight, content-with — their-sexual- orientation- in-the-world, exclusive-heterosexuals really are (in some ill-defined, psychological way that will ultimately garner a better world) more healthy than (gulp…!) us? Let me answer: No way!

'Neither of them—' she leaned forward and kissed Denny's nose—'was as sweet as you.'

'And by the way,' Denny said, 'where's my five bucks?'

I cuffed him.

'Hey, you want to hear what happened to me today?'

'It's my five bucks, babes!' Lanya said.

'Aw, shit! I went out in the damn street to pimp the fuckin' John—'

'Look, shut up!' I told them. 'Listen.' Then I described what had happened back in the park. I thought it was funny. But they both thought it was pretty serious, while we talked about it.

We talked about it a long time too.

Three conversations in which Lanya took part her last few days here. (Stayed overnight; which I liked. Maybe I'm ready to go spend some time at her place? The nesting instinct is not the same as the homing one. Which pales first?) She was talking with Gladis when I came into the yard:

'Oh&mdash!' and ran up to me, blocked me halfway down the steps.

I focused on her, as on a memory of mountain rain, autumn light, sea fizz.

(She has green eyes!)

The most natural thing, she turned me around on the steps and led me back to the porch — when I realized I was being led, she pulled a little harder; urged, 'Come on,' and took me into the loft room:

'Where's your notebook? Or your new poems, anyway.'

'Huh? I thought you wanted to fuck.'

'Oh, if you want—' imitating another kind of girl, then she laughed at the imitation's success—'here!' The notebook corner stuck over the loft's edge; she pulled it down. Two loose pages fell.

The active ones (of whichever sex) are dencer and crueler. The passive one (of whichever sex) are lazier and more self-satisfied. In a society where they are on top, they cling like drowners to their active/passive, male/female, master/servant, self/other set-up not for pleasure, which would be reasonable, but because it allows them to commit or condone any lack of compassion among themselves, or with anyone else, and that (at least in this society, as they have set it up) is immoral, sick, and evil; any madness is preferable to that. And madness is not preferable!

She picked them up. 'Can I have these to take home?'

'Sure,' I said, ' — no; not that one,' and took back the sheet of blue paper (from the package of stationery Raven brought home).

She folded the page I'd left her and put it in her shirt pocket. I put the other inside the cover and slid the notebook back up on the bed. 'Why do you want these?'

'Why do you write them?'

'I don't know… any more.'

'Ditto,' she said, disturbed; which disturbed.

'Hey,' I asked. 'You haven't seen Mr Calkins again recently, have you?'

'No?' in a way that asked why I'd asked.