A Description of My Room
at 3670 Rue St-Denis

BESSIE SMITH (1894–1937), Chattanooga, Tennessee. Poor Bessie. I’m so down-hearted, heart-broken too. I’m stretched out on the river bottom (“Mississippi Floods”), with the songs of the cotton pickers for a lullaby. The Mississippi invented the blues. Every note holds a drop of water. A drop of Bessie’s blood. “When it rained five days and the sky turned black as night / When it thundered and lightninged and the wind began to blow. . .”

Poor Bessie. Poor Mississippi. Poor muddy-water girl. Poor Bessie with her lynched heart. Black bodies running with sweat, bent over the snowy grace of the cotton. Black bodies shining sensual, beaten by the cruel wind of the Deep South. Two hundred years of desire thrown together, boxed in, piled up and sent down the Mississippi in the hold of a riverboat. Black desire obsessed with pubescent white flesh. Desire reined in like a mad dog. Desire flaming up. Desire for the white woman.

“What’s happening to you, man?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re afraid?”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of the goddamn blank page?”

“That’s it.”

“Squeeze it, man, grab it and make it cry for mercy, humanize your goddamn blank page.”

A DESCRIPTION of my room at 3670 rue St-Denis (done in cooperation with my old Remington 22).

I write: bed.

I see: dank mattress, dirty sheet, pounded-out pillow, corrugated couch.

I think: sleep (Bouba sleeps twelve hours straight), make love (Miz Sophisticated Lady), daydream in bed (with Miz Literature), write in bed (Black Cruiser’s Paradise), read in bed (Miller, Cendrars, Bukowski).

MILLER, Cendrars, Bukowski.

I must be dreaming.

I’m sitting by myself on a bench in the Carré St. Louis. There’s a guy sitting across from me; I look without really seeing him. Something about him catches my eye. I know that guy. I’m sure I’ve seen his face somewhere. Where the hell could it have been? That long, full, refined face—I know it. I don’t know why I can’t place him. Slightly hooded eyes, completely bald, face like a bonze monk—holy shit, it’s Miller. Henry Miller. Henry Miller in the Carré St. Louis! I can’t believe my eyes. Miller sitting sipping on a Molson. Just like that. Henry Miller. Miller, the old sod. Incredible. I must be dreaming. A hallucination. The effects of hunger. I pinch myself. He’s still there. Miller himself. That hungry mouth ready for the finest morsels. He’s talking to a guy next to him. A bum. Maybe not. Shit . . . it’s Cendrars. Blaise Cendrars. The one-armed man. I must be completely nuts. Miller and Cendrars in the Carré St. Louis. Right next to me. I move closer. They’ll disappear in a puff of smoke. The genie back in its bottle. They’re still there, talking away, minding their own business. I can actually touch them.

“Slide over, Miller,” I tell him.

Cendrars looks over at me.

“How’re you doing, Blaise?”

Police sirens. The cops pick up a guy who’s all bloody. It’s Bukowski.

Bukowski in deep shit again!

“WAKE UP, man. You’ve been sleeping on the machine for an hour. You won’t be able to straighten out your neck.”

“An hour!”

“My watch never lies, man.”

“You mean it was just a dream?”

“What dream?”

“It was totally crazy. I dreamed I was talking with—you’ll never guess who.”

“Miller, Cendrars and Bukowski.”

“Shit! How’d you know?”

“What do you mean how’d I know? It’s all written right here in black and white. Who else would have written that?”

“Written what?”

“Written this passage. There’s two of us here, right? You and me. So who wrote it? Your Remington?”

“Could be. It could have been my Remington, Bouba. Don’t forget the machine belonged to Chester Himes.”

“You need a little rest, man.”

NEW DESCRIPTION of my room at 3670 rue St-Denis (done in cooperation with my Reming-ton 22).

I write: toilet.

I see: two dirty towels, three bars of soap, one after-shave, two bandages, two toothbrushes, one deodorant stick (English Leather), two tubes of Colgate toothpaste, one jar of Alka-Seltzer, one electric razor (gift from Miz Literature), two bottles of Astring-o-Sol, one box of Q-tips, a dozen Shields condoms (extra sensitive, contoured for better fit, lubricated), one box of Kotex (left behind by a Toronto girl, Miz Security), a bottle of cologne and a jar of aspirin.

I think: read Salinger in a steambath with Miz Literature and make love in the shower with Miz Sophisticated Lady.

I write: refrigerator.

I see: one bottle of water, one half-empty can of tomato paste, one three-quarters-empty jar of relish, a big hunk of oka cheese, two bottles of beer and a bag of carrots.

I write: window.

I see that lousy cross framed in my window.

I write: alcohol lamp.

I see Miz Suicide and Bouba talking in hushed voices, drinking Shanghai tea.

I write: couch.

I see the old couch where Bouba reads Freud as he listens to jazz all day.

I write: jazz.

I listen to Coltrane, Parker, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Smith, Holiday, Art Tatum, Miles Davis, B.B. King, Bix Beiderbecke, Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong, T.S. Monk, Fats Waller, Lester Young, John Lee Hooker, Coleman Hawkins and Cozy Cole.

I write: box of books.

I read: Hemingway, Miller, Cendrars, Bukowski, Freud, Proust, Cervantes, Borges, Cortazar, Dos Passos, Mishima, Apollinaire, Ducharme, Cohen, Villon, Lévy Beaulieu, Fennario, Himes, Baldwin, Wright, Pavese, Aquin, Quevedo, Ousmane, J.-S. Alexis, Roumain, G. Roy, De Quincey, Marquez, Jong, Alejo Carpentier, Atwood, Asturias, Amado, Fuentes, Kerouac, Corso, Handke, Limonov, Yourcenar.

I write: typewriter.

I see my old Remington 22 typing this.