Dhalgren

'I mean this isn't his idea… to get my new poems from you? You're not just keeping them for somebody else?'

'Of course not. I just thought I had less chance of losing them than you did.'

'Mr Calkins talked to me about stealing them. I thought he was joking — you haven't showed them to anybody?'

'Of course not…' Then she said: 'Would it be so awful if I had? I did read one — a few to Madame Brown. And a friend of hers who came over that night to visit'

'It wouldn't be awful.'

'You look unhappy about it, though.'

'I don't know. I'm just confused. Why did you read them? You just liked them?'

'Very much. Everett Forest — Madame Brown's friend — asked me to, actually. We were talking about you, one night when he had dropped over. It came up that I had some of your unpublished work; he was very anxious to see it. So I read three or four of my favorites. I suppose—' she said and sat down on the motorcycle's seat—'this is the part I shouldn't tell you: He wanted to copy them. But I didn't think he should… Kid?'

'What?'

'There's a lot of people in Bellona who are very interested in practically any and everything about you.'

'There're aren't a lot of people in Bellona,' I said. 'Everybody keeps telling me this; what are they interested in me for?'

'They think you're important, interesting… maybe some combination of the two. Make copies of your poems? I know people who, if I gave them your laundry list, would type careful reproductions as if they were for some university library or something.'

'I don't have a fucking laundry list. I don't even have any laundry,' I said. 'Who?'

'Well, Everett for one. When I told him you sometimes left your notebook over at my place he practically had a fit. He begged me to let him know next time you left it so he could look through it and maybe make a—'

'I'd break your head.'

'I wouldn't do that.' She moved on the seat. 'I wouldn't.'

'There's just not enough else for people to be interested in in this city.'

'I think,' she said, 'you've got it. But even though I wouldn't let him go snooping in your journal, I still think your writing this down bores me; no, it makes me angry. It didn't make me angry when she and I were talking about it, it was flattering. Its rehearsal, however, is maddening. I enjoy having fantasies about these things, thinking about them — but as a game. (Haven't I?) There's no reason not to enjoy them that way any more. But since the publication of Brass Orchids I sometimes find myself saying to myself: 'All right. I want to stop playing this game and go try another one for a while. Lord, let me think about something else!' And I can't. That's a much meaner version of the terrifying morning beneath the tree. But the truth is, most of the poems in the book were written before I came to the scorpions. (Which ones were actually written afterward?) The other irony is that the one time I really was their leader was when I made them help me get June's and Tarzan's brother out of the shaft. Everything since has been the concretizing of some

My sensibilities have grown inflamed as our giant sun. I am writing poems now because there is nothing else to read except the newspaper, discussing for pages the rumors and ephemera that fume through the city. How can this go on when such moons rise and such suns set? I am living this way because the horror here seems preferable to life in Tarzan's family. 

Bullshit! Only I felt like that when I wrote it-no: I felt something, and thought those words the proper ashes of the feeling as I searched the smolderings. But they were only smoke. Now I cannot tell whether the feeling itself was misperceived or merely its record inaccurate!

fantasy begun then — and in their minds, not mine. Have I lost by the realization? For (arbitrarily?) precious sanity's sake I have to think at least I've learned.

When you get water from either the kitchen or the bathroom or the service-porch tap, bubbles form around the sides of the glass, but not evenly about the whole surface. They make a band with a definite bottom edge, but peter out up the side. Have noticed, over the last several days, the line starts higher and higher. Must ask Tak if this means something.

To the next conversation, then; maybe better luck:

I stopped outside the kitchen door because I heard them talking inside. Through the screening I saw Lanya sitting on the table, her back against the wall, Gladis and pretty much all the apes (no Tarzan); also D-t leaning against the icebox and Glass standing in the living-room doorway, and Spirt just behind him, to the other side. A loud discussion; and Lanya's voice cut over (she leaned forward, looking around): 'I have never — no, wait a minute! Wait. I have never seen a bunch less interested in sex than you guys! No, listen! I mean for guys who don't have anything else to do. Really, I'm not kidding. When I was in college, or practically any place, any job I've ever had; or guys I've just known—seen a bunch who were less interested in getting laid—'

'I don't see why you're complaining!' from Jack the Ripper.

'I'm not,' Lanya said. 'But I mean, I spend maybe half my time here. Maybe more than half. And I think I know you guys pretty well—'

And D-t: 'No, now you wait a minute! Hey, now you wait—'

Lanya finished in the silence: 'I was just curious why, that's all.'

'Now wait,' D-t repeated. 'We got a very strange and funny group of people here. And I guess we don't talk about it that much because you have to be very careful, you know? Very polite.'

'I don't just mean making jokes about sex,' Lanya said. 'But even that, when you come down to it. You'll get really foul for ten, twenty minutes. Then nothing for a day, two days—'

'You mean thinking and figuring how to get laid?' Raven said. 'Yeah, I know what she means.'

Spitt said: 'I don't have to talk about it. I get mine,' and looked at Glass to corroborate him.

Glass, hands behind him on the wall, just leaned back a little more watching (Spitt and Lanya were the only whites in the room), curious, as though the discussion was going on all for him.

'There are just very different kinds of people here,' D-t said. 'For me, maybe, what she said is true. I just never been that interested in sex, I guess, compared to some people. I told a friend of mine once I jerked off about maybe two, three times a year. And got laid about the same. He said that was very strange—'

'Yeah, that's strange!' Jack the Ripper hollered, and people laughed.

'Spider over there, see — he's what…? Ten years younger than I am? And he's down at the park, practically every God-damn night it looks to me, getting his pipes swabbed out by the guys sneaking around the bushes—'

'God damn—' Spider said, uncomfortably.

'We just got very different people,' D-t went on, 'who like very different things. In very different ways. People like me and Gladis, say. We're pretty much exclusively interested in the opposite sex, and then, one at a time and rarely.'

'Three times a year, baby,' Gladis said, her inflection swinging down low as it could get, 'now I don't know whether I'm all that much like you?' and up again.

Which tickled the Ripper.

'Shit,' D-t said. 'You know I used to think I was normal. But then we got guys like Jack the Ripper who are interested in anything.'

Spider said, sullenly: 'I'm interested in anything.'

'Aw, nigger,' D-t said, 'you'd be interested in a clam if it smiled at you and promised not to bite!'

Spitt added over the laughter, '…and even then, I don't know!' which I don't think anybody really heard.

'Then we got the groupies—' D-t went on.

'Groupies!' from Glass, laughing for the first time. 'Is that what you call us?'

'I mean you guys just aren't interested in anything less than a full scale encounter group-grope—'

'Aw, man,' from Glass, 'you just wish you could—' and I didn't hear the rest because: