1

I’m too ugly to go out into the world. I’m a hideous monster.

the case of the murdered twerp

“Toulouse,” says Vincent. “What are you going to do with your life? How’re you ever going to make any money? You’re a deformed crippled beast. Look at your hairy chest, your huge nodding head. Your legs are spindly. You thought just cause your parents’re rich, you had the world on a silver platter. Money does control everything in this world.

“But just cause your parents have money, doesn’t mean you have money.”

“I don’t give a damn,” I mumbled.

“How are you ever going to get famous and get fucked? You’re such a lousy painter. You may be a great painter, Toulouse, but you’re a real lousy one. And that’s what matters: goodness.

“What you need is a man, Toulouse, and you’re never going to get one. You’re going to be lonely for the rest of your life.”

“You’re a raving maniac!” I screech at the top of my lungs. “I believe artists can do everything! Artists can know all the joy and misery and terrifyingness and usefulness cause artists don’t have to suffer! Even though I can barely walk; I’m always in pain; I’m always hungry.

“All I think about is sex. At night, nights, I lie alone in my bed: I see the right leg of every sexy man I’ve seen on the street, the folds of cloth over and around the ooo ooo . . . I ache and I ache and I ache. I feel a big huge hole inside my body. I see a man I like about to stick his cock in my hot pussy.

“I used to think being crippled meant being in constant pain. I can stand pain. Now I know no man wants me. I can hardly bear to live.

“Fuck art, Vincent.”

Just then the owner of the Restaurant Norvins walks up to us. She runs the hottest bar in Montmartre. In the back of the bar’s a whorehouse. Her closest friend is Theo, a young teacher.

“Honey,” Theo’s looking at Vincent longingly, “we’re trying to organize this party. It’s gonna be in the back of here in an hour. And we need help . . . “

Just then this young girl runs over to them. “Norvins,” she screams, “you’ve got to help me. I just saw this, this horrible event. I saw a murder. MURDER! I myself. . . “ “She’s a liar,” Theo says to me in a loud whisper.

“I don’t know what to do. I saw . . .”

“I’ve got work to do,” Norvins says. She walks away from us. “You’re a little liar.” Theo pinches the girl. “I never believe what you tell me in class. What’re you doing in this whorehouse anyway?”

“I tell you I saw murder . . .”

“I’ve got to help Norvins with the whorehouse party . . .”

She turns around, dashes into the bar’s backroom before we can stop her.

“Art,” I say. The room whirls around me: the black bar shudders and turns.

“Art:” I continue, “I’m so unbearably desirous needy I can’t think about art. Who can think about art in this miserable city? I think about sex so much my art must be sex. I think about sex all the time, and I try to stop myself. I tell myself I have to be stronger. I’m alone. I should revel in my loneliness. I’m in pain. I should revel in my pain. I shouldn’t want to be with another person so much. If I think about this miserable situation too much, I’ll realize I’m about to kill myself.”

Suddenly a beautiful man rushes into the bar.

Veronique, Berthe, and Giannina run up to Vincent and me. “Where’s Norvins?” they cackle. “I read in Crime,” Berthe mumbles, “this guy fucks his girlfriend in her left nostril.”

“Shut up Berthe.” Veronique says quickly. “We’ve got to get these apples to Norvins. We’re going to bob for apples at the party.”

I’m looking at the beautiful man; I’m staring at the beautiful man; I’m sending out every vibration I can so he’ll know I want him and only him. His hair’s red. His cheekbones’re high. He’s older than me. His right hand’s lost in my short black head hairs. His left hand’s resting on my cheek. I can feel the hot cum pouring out of my cunt.

The bar swirls and swirls around us.

“Listen you goddamn shitface assbung,” I announce, “you’ve got to fuck me. If you don’t fuck me, I’m going to blow up every rat scum tenement in Montmartre. The cops’ll shit in their pants. They’ll have nothing left to do. If you don’t fuck me Mr. Beautiful I’ll kick your lousy dick inside out I mean it. You can’t treat me like a piece of moldy shit.”

“I think you’re extremely beautiful.”

“Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me. Take me to Brazil. Take me to Argentina. Take me to bed. You’re the only person or thing who can make me happy. You can make me ecstatic right now.” I throw my arms in the air, leap on the table. My crippled legs buckle under me.

“I’m too old for you . . .”

“I’m sick of younger men. They always screw me over.”

“I can only screw you three times a day. I know that’s not very much, not for a woman of your extreme . . . “

“I’m in love with you. When I’m in love, what do minor things such as screwing, old age, and lack of money matter? D’you have any money? Darling. Will you support me? Can I be your child? I’ve never had any parents. I love you. I love you. When’re you going to fuck me? Now?”

“You must have had a difficult childhood. I can tell by the difficulty you have expressing your desires. Listen, baby, I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t even know what’s happening to you. I’m going to shove this hard throbbing piston into your cunt your ass your asshole the holes between your toes your nostrils every microinch of your ears your hands your breasts the space between your flopping breasts your mouth your eyes your sweating armpits your navel at 60 miles per hour 200 miles per hour 2,000,000 miles per hour. So fast, my cock’ll never leave you. My cock’ll be 24 inches, 36 inches long. And you’ll be feeling every inch of it. Baby.”

I can see his cock following me everywhere: through the Champs-Elysées, Montmartre, the Seine. A huge golden cock at least 70 inches long. Five feet; no, six feet.

“And when you can stop writhing, my baby, cause I’ve made you come so much and so hard, you’re just coming and coming and coming, all you’re doing is coming, I’m going to slowly, more lightly and slowly than’s possible, lick every part of your body, so slowly, until my tongue comes to your clit. Your clit sticking out, dripping, from your thick red lips. Tongue will be a point; go dot dot dot hammer a tiny metronome on your clit. Your whole body’ll begin to shiver, then . . .”

Wet steaming flesh.

Hot breath shuddering next to me.

His lips kiss me so gently I hardly know I’m being kissed. I don’t feel mad passion. I feel he loves me.

I’m not sure he wants to fuck me.

His tongue moves between my lips. Lightly grazes my tongue. My mouth hardly feels his tongue. I figure he wants to fuck me. I feel a lot of tenderness for him. Tenderness that’s opening me up physically.

Will I fall in love with him?

His red head’s rubbing against my head. I rub my right shoulder against his left shoulder, like friends. I want him to feel love for me. I’ll wait until he feels love for me. He’s kissing me harder and harder. He’s going to love me. He’s going to take me into his secret warm cave. I’m slowly licking the inside of his right ear. He’s shivering and moaning. I’m open. I want him to love me so badly. His hands’re running up and down the tender insides of my legs.

“Baby,” he’s saying, “I’m going to fuck you and keep you. But not yet. You’re going to have to suffer first. You’re going to have to learn the meaning of suffering. One day you’ll find me; and then, it’ll be the end of the world. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I love you so . . .”

He grabs his pants and rushes out of the bar.

I can’t follow him cause I’m a cripple.

“These goddamn cunts.” Norvins’ towering body’s making me ripple and swoon. “Have you seen Giannina around? Now that cunt’s gone. She’s the only one who knows how to put the apples correctly in the bobbing tub.”

“I haven’t seen Giannina.”

“And what happened to that female twerp who said she had seen a murder?”

“She ran into the back room.”

“All she wants is attention. Forget her. There’s Theo.” He runs out and leaves.

I’m a totally hideous monster. I’m too ugly to go out into the world. If I was living with a man, I would have someone who’d tell me if I’m hideous. Now I have no way of knowing if I’m hideous or not. I’m extremely paranoid. I don’t want to see anyone. I’m another Paris art failure. I’m not even anonymous. All I want is to constantly fuck someone I love who loves me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

No one will ever fuck me because I’m a hideous cripple.

I don’t know how to present my image properly. When I’m with people, I act either like a changing wishywashy gook or like an aggressive leather bulldog. That’s an image. Obviously nobody wants to fall in love with me. I’m miserable, I’m completely miserable. I’ve got this hole inside me my work won’t fill. I have to work harder. I’m too freaky. Why was I born a cripple?

Maybe some man will love me if I pay him for it.

Here all the women know everything. They know if they don’t spread their legs, no man’ll notice them; when they spread their legs, they get fucked not loved. They’re worn. They know they have to turn to the brothel.

They flock en masse to the brothel in the back of Norvins’ bar. All the pretty boys are there, earning their daily bread. Pretty boys; studs; sexy ugly men. Whenever there’s a party in Norvins’ brothel, it’s the talk of the town.

I hate paying for love.

“Well, my dear,” Norvins says to Paul, “it’s about time you’re here. Your costume looks wonderful. You’ll have to set up your mirror behind the crystal ball so you can reflect Giannina who’s disguising herself as various men. Each time you need to show some horny dame a future boyfriend, Giannina’ll appear in the crystal.”

Paul Gauguin’s the local cleaning woman.

“Is that that female twerp,” Norvins whispers to Theo, “who keeps lying? It’s immoral for children to be in a brothel. Get her out of here. Better yet: hide her in the library that’s opposite the dining room.”

“Don’t be ridiculous darling. You’re just jealous cause you’re too old to wear children’s drag.”

“Carry this.” Norvins hands a broomstick to Theo. “I’ve got to present the prizes for bobbing apples.”

All around me’re couples. They laugh and kiss. It’s disgusting. I can’t stand this loneliness. This party. I hobble up to one of the male whores, ask him if he’s busy.

Fifty dollars an hour, honey.

I shudder. How disgusting. How painful. Love’s the only revolution, the only way I can escape this society’s economic controls. I can’t pay someone to really truly love me.

Now this sleazy whore thinks I want him. Now he’s rubbing the insides of my thighs. I love being touched there. I don’t want to give in to this disgusting emotionless touch. I don’t want to give in to anything. I’m burning. “Go away,” I scream. “Get out of here. You’re a creep. I don’t want you. Even if I’ve paid you.” Thank god he doesn’t listen to me. I’m tough: I can take care of myself. He’s putting his arms around me. For at least a moment I’ll be able to relax. I’m deliriously happy. I’m thinking about how much and badly I’m going to get hurt. I’m going to get burned. I’m going to get burned all over. His arms hold me in this real warmth that makes the constant pain I feel go away. I’m no longer thinking. I’m in his arms forever and ever.

All I do is feel: His wet soft lips brush my earlobes, my short thick hairs which make my scalp tingle every time they’re rubbed. My forehead. My eyebrows. My eyelids. My eyelashes. The skin between my eyebrows. My sideburns. I feel so warm and safe I want to give him everything that’s me I want to forget myself: I turn my face trustingly toward his so that my full lips open, longing, feel his lips I can’t tell what I feel I. I feel his mouth’s wetness. I feel my body ache, and rub against his.

As he takes off his clothes, I curl around his big red cock. His cock’s going to make the world change totally. I take his cock in my mouth, as far as it’ll go, I’m testing; then out so I can lick its tip, so I can wet my right hand, corkscrew my right hand up and down the lower smooth slippery shaft. Am I pleasing him? His hands clutch my head. Push my head toward his curling red hair. More and more of his cock hits the back of my throat. My fingers are drumming, not rhythmically, light and hard on his cock. My tongue moves not rhythmically, light and hard, on his long hard cock.

“I’m fucking you for money,” he tells me. “I’m fucking you for money.”

First he lies on top of me and fucks me. Then we both lie on our sides and fuck. Then he lies on top of me and alternately fucks me in my cunt and in my ass. I come and I come and I come and I come. He moves very slowly as he’s coming. He never looks at me. He falls asleep while he’s holding me.

“Any man’ll fuck me,” Giannina tells Veronique in total privacy, “once or twice. But it’s like fucking the men in the porno movies I’m in. And I get paid to fuck when I make movies.”

Veronique sighs.

“The fucking’s always terrific. I come once twice lots I come and I come and I come. The guy never gives a shit about me. The only difference between the artists I fuck and the studs in the movies is that I can talk to the studs in the movies.”

“I hardly ever come.” Giannina gasps amazement. “I need to fuck guys who fuck really slowly, for a long time, so it just comes over me. I tremble and tremble and tremble.”

“Veronique,” Giannina says, “I think I’m falling in love with Jim.”

“What’s the matter with that?”

“He doesn’t want to see me again. He doesn’t like me. I don’t understand why. We love fucking together.”

“It’s just your paranoia. I’ve had the worst week I’ve had in a long time I’m so paranoid. We’re both paranoid cause we’re Aries.”

“I was lying on the couch with Jim. Watching TV. I felt I was with this warm person in a home. That hasn’t happened to me in months: being with a guy and not just fuck fuck fucking.”

“Jim’s settling down with Linda. He gets more prudish the more married he gets. He’s been dropping all his girlfriends.”

“Gee William’s cute. He’s got the continual hots.”

“He kept looking like he was about to jump me. He was real drunk, that’s why he was letting some emotion show. This life’s keeping us lonely, Giannina. What these artists really want are pillows. Nice soft sweet female pillows. We can’t be that way. We’ve got our own work. We’re waitresses.”

“Each time I get hurt, I close myself up.”

“You act like you don’t need anyone.”

“The more I find I can live alone, the more I don’t want to deal with the younger weakly formless men. The older men never have any emotions. Not toward me.”

“The trouble is we keep having images of what we want. We don’t let our emotions take over.”

“At the end of the party,” I’m telling Poirot, “she was dead.”

“Where’d she die, Toulouse?”

“It was the end of the party. Veronique said, ‘Where’s that little twerp Norvins hates? The one who keeps saying she saw a murder. She didn’t get lost or something?’ We all looked for her. Suddenly Paul screeched. A body was hanging out of the bobbing apple tub.”

“Do you always bob for apples? Whose idea was that?”

“I don’t know. But she must have been killed during the party.” We’re sitting in Poirot’s small flat on the Rue de Ganglia in Paris. Only one man servant, George, attends the flat. Poirot thinks for a moment.

“Tell me, this Norvins, who runs the bar, what’s she like?”

“A good person. Efficient. Hard on her girls and her whores, but she has to be. Looks like a society dame. Veronique, Berthe, and Giannina’re her waitresses.”

“Did Norvins know the victim?”

“Slightly. She thought of her as ‘the nuisance.’ So did Theo and Paul. You can’t let a young girl run in and out of a brothel as she pleases.”

“Who exactly was at the party and what was the layout of the place?”

“The people I’ve told you. Plus Theo, a young teacher; Paul who was dressed as a witch she was telling everyone’s fortune; Vincent my friend; and all the male whores Norvins uses they’re all the same. It was basically their party. And two other teachers, Rousseau and Seurat. We call them teachers cause they’re so good, they show the whores what to do.”

“Were any of these people holding any sort of grudge against the young dead girl?”

“How could they? She was so, so full of shit. She did keep saying she had seen a murder, but no one believed her.”

“Maybe she had seen a murder.” Poirot’s stroking his moustaches like a big fat cat. “Did she say when she had seen this murder?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the layout of the brothel?”

“Here:

Will I kill myself if I don’t get a man?

What do I care who killed that twerp? What’s her name? Marie.

Poirot’ll figure everything out. He’s my father.

I live alone. I’ve got enough money if my rich mother keeps forking it over. She’s sorry for me cause I’m a cripple.

It’s better to be a cripple in this world than just a plain ugly creep who writes books.

Every night I lie on my bed and am miserable. I look at the empty spot next to me. When I want to put my head on someone’s shoulder, I . . . When I want to find out if I possibly don’t look like an ugly cripple, I ask . . . When I want to feel someone’s weight pounding into me, bruising me, naked flesh streaming against naked flesh naked flesh pouring wet against naked flesh, I . . . When I ache and ache and ache; I always ache; every day I ache; I . . . I need a man because I love men. I love their thick rough skins. I love the ways they totally know about everything so I don’t need to know anything. They don’t really know everything, but we’ll forget about that. They take hold of me; they shove me around; and suddenly the weight of my own aggression’s off me. I can go farther out. I can explore more. They’re masculine which means they know about a certain society, this polite-death society which is their society, with which they know how to deal. So I don’t have to deal with it. I don’t want to. They provide a base for me in a society to which I feel alien. Otherwise I’ve got no reason to be in this world.

I can’t get a man unless money’s involved. I found this out in the brothel.

Maybe this is only cause I’m so ugly.

“Should I bother seeing people at all?” I ask Poirot. Poirot’s stumped.

“Whenever I see people, I can’t stand them. They make my nerves snap. I can’t stand seeing them cause I know they hate me.”

“Did you murder the young girl?” Poirot asks.

“I don’t like my friends anymore. I don’t want to see anyone. I want to sit by myself, and play chess.

“I’ve got to paint. I’ve got to paint more and more, make something beautiful, make up for make away with this misery, this dragging . . .”

“You lack the analytical mind. You’re too emotional to have planned this murder.”

“The cops finally got Norvins’ brother,” Bethe exclaims. “They gave him the death sentence, and all he was doing was stealing.”

“All I ever do is play with myself. I don’t care about politics.”

“When the cop arrested Clement, Clement hit him over the head with the end of a bottle. What d’you think of that? At his trial Clement said: ‘The policeman arrested me in the name of the law; I hit him in the name of liberty.’ “

“Berthe, do you think it’s better to fuck a man for money, or just to fuck for free?”

“Then Clement said. ‘When society refuses you the right to existence, you must take it.’ “

“I’ll fuck any way I can get it. I love to fuck so much.”

“The other day the cops arrested Charles Gallo.”

“Huh,” says Giannina.

“The anarchist who threw a bottle of vitriol into the middle of the Stock Exchange; fired three revolver shots into the crowd, and didn’t kill anyone. When the cops got to him, he said, ‘Long live revolution! Long live anarchism! Death to the bourgeois judiciary! Long live dynamite! Bunch of idiots!’ “

“That stuff doesn’t concern us. We’re women. We know about ourselves, our cunts, not the crap you read in the newspapers. Who’d you think murdered the girl?”

“Maybe a person who lives in the same hell we live in. Sure we’re waitresses. We’re part of the meat market. We’re the meat. That’s how we get loved. We get cooked. We get our asses burned cause sex, like everything else, is always involved with money.”

“I don’t like to think and I don’t trust people who think.” Giannina kisses Bethe on her right ear.

“If we lived in a society without bosses,” Bethe says seriously, “we’d be fucking all the time. We wouldn’t have to be images. Cunt special. We could fuck every artist in the world.”

“I’d like to fuck all the time.”

“My heroine is Sophie Perovskaya.” Giannina’s slowly licking the inside of Berthe’s ear. “Five years ago March first The People’s Will, a group she was part of, murdered Tsar Alexander II. As she died, she rejoiced, for she realized her death would deal a fatal blow to autocracy.” Giannina blows into her ear. “I’d like to have the guts to follow that woman.”

“I want to be a whore.”

“Don’t you understand the world in which we’re living?” Berthe screams. “On Sunday May 21 the first detachment of Versailles troops entered the capital. This entrance caught the Commune unawares. Thiers’ army made up of prisoners of war and provincial recruits shot everyone in sight. They killed 25,000 people. The Communards, retreating from Paris, burned as much as they could. Marshal MacMahon of the Versailles army declared order was restored. The death of the Paris Commune was the death of the workers’ revolutionary power. Now we have to give up our lives to cause any destruction of this society.”

Giannina kisses Berthe again and again. Her tongue slowly enters Berthe’s full red mouth.

“We want men!” both women think. “Be a man to me! Fuck me. Fuck me. Lie on top of me. Drive it into me. We want women!”

Their warmth and need for warmth drive them into each other.

They feel confused. They’re not sure they want each other, even though sweat’s pouring out of their flesh and their cunt muscles’re relaxing, opening with the agony of desire.

Naked flesh against naked flesh. Naked lips against naked lips. Naked cunt burning against naked cunt. Naked thighs against naked thighs. Bare shoulders twisting around bare shoulders. Naked tits against naked tits.

“Giannina,” murmurs Berthe, “sometimes I hate you. You’re so beautiful every man’s always creaming in his pants after you. I could never be so beautiful. When I’m with you, sometimes, I feel ugly.” Her tongue flickers the aching nipples.

Her whole mouth goes to the nipple, and sucks.

The hair curling above the cunt, between the thighs, around the outer lips, in the red crack of the ass touches the thick pink outer lips touches the tiny red inner lips inside the outer lips touches the red berry at one end of the inner lips whose inside grows if it’s grazed lightly enough touches the muscles and nerves spiraling as a canal away from the red inner lips. Berthe’s thumb draws a slow pink spiral against the soft yielding breast flesh. Her right hand’s fingertips grasp the heavy falling breast. The nipple rubs against the inside of her palm.

“Giannina, I don’t want to. I think I’m falling in love with you. Help me not to, or don’t let me get burned, I’m scared I’m going to be very very in love with you.”

The wide open pink cunt lips. Giannina’s fingers touch.

The thin slivers of red membrane.

As Giannina touches the membrane, lightly, very lightly, she sees the membrane move, the whole cunt quiver. Sigh. Lightly she draws her middle finger along the main fold . . .

She hears Berthe scream and scream. Berthe screams and screams. Berthe’s in a world composed only of sensations. She doesn’t know anything except what she feels. She rolls around on this wonderful mass of flesh and bones, yielding and non-yielding, her nerves rub into warm, wet, rough hairs. She writhes reels quivers shakes turns spins falls rises bounces squirms wiggles pants. Her sense of balance’s rolling against Giannina.

Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. Feeling all the possible feelings which are needs in the world.

Giannina’s the cat. She throws herself up, against Berthe because she wants Berthe. She wants to throw her body into Berthe’s body because she wants to bask in Berthe’s heat. Berthe’s safety. Berthe’s going to do it to her. Berthe looks so huge. Berthe’s flaming hair. Berthe’s blue eyes. Berthe’s huge hands. Berthe’ll protect her: she can open herself totally to Berthe . . .

Her cunt opens to Berthe’s cunt. To all of Berthe’s body which’s going to get inside her. Her mouth’s open. Her eyes’re open. Her arms are open, groping wet heavy flesh. Her legs’re open. Wide. Her stomach’s rending. Her whole abdomen’s opening. Her womb . . .

“I’m frightened. I want you. This’s the sun. I want you,” Berthe squeals.

“If you were a man, I could love you,” says Giannina.

The Paris of 1886 is the Paris of the Conservatives, in spite of the surprising, and painfully short presidency of the Radical René Goblet; of General Boulanger; of the Opportunists who’re making Paris and France into an empire whose only rival is Great Britain; of depression due to increasing imports of American and Australian wheat, widespread phylloxera destruction of grapevines, lack of natural sources such as coal needed in this beginning industrial period. An act passed July 1886 forbids the Orleans and Bourbon heirs access to French soil. General Boulanger, the new Minister of War, expels the Due dAumale and the Duc de Chartres from the Army. The general on the black horse’s charming! Bismarck, a bit too hastily, incarcerates a prominent unnamable French person. Boulanger gets him released! But people’re still starving everywhere: strikes’re increasing especially in the mining, iron, and steel industries.

What can we know of such a period?

A particularly brutal strike and murder occurs in the mining town of Decazeville.

The most important incident of the year, at least for us, takes place not in France, but in Chicago, U.S.A. The most industrialized city in the world. A city that’s a giant factory. In France the workers still support their bosses. The workers want to be petit bourgeoisie. The new Marxist party, tiny to begin with and composed of intellectuals, splits into the “Possibilists” and the French Workers’ Party. In Chicago the workers unite.

May Day, 1886.

The workers celebrate and demonstrate.

A strike’s going on at the McCormick harvester works.

Two days later. Chicago cops shoot at strikers during a clash between strikers and blacklegs at the works.

Local anarchists hold a meeting at Haymarket, a large empty spot in Chicago, to protest the cop shootout.

The meeting goes peacefully enough. A heavy storm drives away most of the people. The police order the meeting to close. Samuel Fielden, one of the demonstration leaders, who’s still speaking, objects. He tells the cop the meeting’s orderly. The police lieutenant insists. Suddenly, a bomb explodes the crowd.

Who threw the bomb?

The day is wet, cold, and windy. One policeman, several other people wounded. The police start to shoot. Demonstrators policemen wounded killed.

The city panics! Bombers terrorists’re going to take over! The police arrest nine prominent anarchists. One of the nine, Schnaubelt, disappears.

Another of the nine, Albert Parsons, who’s been missing, turns himself in to the cops so he can share his friends’ fate.

The defendant anarchists try to use their trial to put the conservative American government on the defensive:

SCHWAB (ONE OF THE ANARCHISTS): I demand the floor in the name of all the defendants.

JUDGE: You can’t have the floor!

THE ANARCHISTS: Speak, Schwab, speak!

SEVERAL JURYMEN: Your Honor, tell the defendants to shut up.

THE D.A.: The defendants are to remain seated!

(All the anarchists stand up and scream.)

JUDGE: The court will not permit itself to be intimidated by this uproar. I declare that, if the slightest disturbance is injected into the trial, I shall bring in a verdict of guilt against the defendants.

SEVERAL ANARCHISTS: Cut it short! Judge us now, without letting us be heard! That won’t take so long!

THE ANARCHISTS (EN MASSE): Condemn all of us!

All! All!

The court sentences four of the anarchists to death.

The court sentences four of the anarchists to long prison terms.

During the appeal sessions, Albert Parsons speaks for eight hours. Samuel Fielden speaks for three. Schwab calls for “a state of society in which all human beings do right for the simple reason that it’s right and hate wrong because it’s wrong.”

Lingg (a true terrorist who has manufactured bombs) expresses contempt for “your ORDER, your laws, your force-propped authority.”

The court changes none of the death or prison sentences.

My friends Vincent, Paul, Theo’re starving. I’m dying for lack of love. Suddenly I’m also starving because my mother stops giving me money. I move into the brothel.

In the last bedroom of Norvins’ brothel, a small dingy room into which a beam of light occasionally filters, Rhys Chatham, a prostitute, lives. Rhys is a tall red-hair, lanky, huge basketball player’s chest, broad shoulders, green eyes thin large nose stiff spine. He’s an ex-cop. In fact, he used to be Superintendent of the Paris police. He was a good, honest cop, as cops go; he got his desire to work hard and be honest from his religious parents. But he also wanted to find God, and God isn’t in the police force. This’s the wildness and meanness of Rhys’ character.

“Masturbate in front of me,” Rhys says to me.