This page copyright © 2004 Olympia Press.
WELL said the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood no sooner was Karel seated in the Round Table than the impossible happened. There before him stood a fairy prince and one of those mythological creatures known as Lesbians. Won't you join our table? they said in sweet chorus.
When he went over with them he saw the most delightful little tea-pot and a lot of smiling happy faces.
A little girl with hair over one ear got up close and said I hope you won't be offended but why don't you dress in girls' clothes?
The Lesbian said yes your face is so exquisite we thought you were a Lesbian in drag when we first saw you and for two long hours they insisted that he would do better for himself as a girl.
He must have fallen asleep for he awoke with a start and saw a nice fat old bullfrog beckoning to him. He went over to see what he wanted and he had a fresh cup of tea to offer Karel. Now you must recite that poem Dreams Die Downward that you recited at my table last time he said and what should Karel find himself doing but repeating an old nursery rhyme he learned as a child.
Then the naiads cooed with joy but at this moment he became aware that his Brooklyn Soso Flower was present with a girl and looking wistfully at him. All at once he heard a shout: Hurrah! Let's go for a boatride and the voices of the little boys and girls rang so enchantingly on the morning air that he was compelled to join them and saying good-bye hurriedly to all he left.
When they had enjoyed a splendid ride they landed at the Doll's House which is a quaint place and as he was wondering when the dreadful babble was going to end (since no one had any tea) who should walk in but Karel's nice old bullfrog himself followed by the naiads and a satyr and they signalled to Karel to come over. Almost the satyr's first words were how much do you want for a copy of that poem and Karel said he guessed two dollars and so he wrote it out. The satyr handed him two dollars which Karel folded carefully and stuck inside his bodice (when no one was looking of course) and eventually some of the party began to leave. Karel made preparations to depart likewise and waited a little while to decide what to do with such a nice afternoon and some men friends coming there he thought he might as well go back to the Round Table and being about to leave the fairy prince who had a watchful guardian (it may have been his elder brother) said to Karel privately we're staying at the Pennsylvania until Tuesday—do come up which almost made Karel blush. He was afraid he had drunk too much tea.
But good-bye he called and hopped off in a lovely little speedboat for the Round Table. When he got there whom should he catch sight of but a couple of old friends and one whom Karel's mother had always told him not to associate with because he was a 'sissy* asked him out to a private tea-party and Karel said yes thank you hardly knowing what he did.
But Soso Flower was beside him and even when Harold came up and began calling Karel names for not coming to see him when he has no telephone Karel kept back the tears because he thought of mother and suddenly the Big Black Bear who owned the cafeteria roared that it was closing and Karel thought that Harold almost had words with someone and Karel completely forgot about his promise to go on the private tea-party. He made his way as best he could through the jostling crowd followed by Harold and Soso Flower.
When the good fresh late afternoon air—the sun was a great red ball—hit them some horrid ogre accosted Karel frightening him out of his wits and without more ado about a questionable place of entertainment Karel gathered his hips and fled with his companions to a haven—a private home—where they ate sandwiches and drank coffee instead of tea.
JULIAN raised his big blue eyes from the telephone directory on the slanting shelf outside the booth on pier 36 and saw a slightly orange face containing eyes with holes in them. He had descended the gangplank of the ship from New Orleans to New York behind a Canadian that limped.
He knew that this was Karel. For one thing he expected eyelashes made up with mascara. Oh he said hello and put his hand in Karel's hand.
Karel was like a tall curved building only much smaller. He was wearing a dark green, the color of the rings around the holes, hat with an upward sweep on the left side. His overcoat seemed to fit him desperately.
Julian had shorter hair and lush expectancy. I must get my bag he said. Good-bye Mr. Canadian I hope your limp will soon disappear, no I don't want to meet your sister. When he came back to Karel they walking made so many twin posts to Eleventh Street. They went past the goal of each lamp and the shapes of men which were half-endured.
You were behind time Karel said.
Yes Julian said even the lights were more retrogressive than I.
You look as real as death Karel said.
They entered a plain hotel and walked up to the desk.
With bath? the clerk asked peering at their signatures.
Without said Julian. He saw Karel with attachment and wonder and Karel looked at him exploringly.
The room was in the best order of another decade. Julian loosened his collar and Karel arranged his long black hair. Karel had written that he used makeup achingly but unobtrusively. His eyebrows though Julian thought might cause an Italian laborer to turn completely around. They lit cigarettes.
You are the Karel who wrote me letters on nice long rotten sheets of paper Julian said. You made words on it that meant o sweet tight boy being in New Orleans they are the first madness of the age besides that which exists between an arctic bird's tongue and its beak. Order some gin he said.
Karel said shall I read you a poem.
Julian said yes order some gin and gingerale.
Karel folded the poem and called a number and asked for Frank. He'll be up.
Do read me your poem Directions.
I said in their faces the other night—Directions not Persuasions. But then stars are the reasons for men-bewildered words.
The chandelier was uglier than either of their faces so neither looked at it.
There he is already.
Hello Frank.
Julian liked his cap.
Here you are.
Thank you.
Now ring for some ice and ask the bell-boy if he thinks art has disappeared as it's been rumored.
The bell-boy said yes sir thank you sir.
This is good gin Julian said pouring the two tumblers again half full, pouring again two half full, pouring half full again two, being used to corn whisky.
You know Jesus came to see me in Cinderella's slippers last night Karel said. Life is a dream the body should be perfumed.
Those Arabian Nights' heroes knew their stuff said Julian.
The world is growing younger over these flowers of concrete, what can one do but love Paris.
The be-poeted courtesan.
And what though I never cared for diamonds I like pink-shaded boudoir lights.
And some thighs I can remember not having known but were known Julian said on a night like a velvet Woolworth pansy sporting a stamen moon, a little lemonish thing.
Karel was wondering how a street with an elevated track over it can frame some people so well or not so well.
Julian said I think I like Djuna Barnes which is a good way to think.
Karel crossed his legs and forearms with the glass in his left hand. Yes and if Miss Barnes were to come past my gate I'd say come into my yard Miss Barnes and sit upon my porch and I will serve you tea and if you will recite one of your poems I will be glad to learn it backwards.
Julian said all things of course are going backwards past her ear.
But that is not my affair is it? Tell me how southerners look now. Until I saw you I believed they were extinct.
Not at all but the sky is different down there. In summer they peel something from it in huge slabs and nail it on you and call it the heat. I floundered in the sleek mirrors.
Would it have been too much to have stolen a rose? Karel said.
I only walked through the maples and plucked one green leaf.
And in winter?
On my left I'd see frozen birds, frozen last night too, on my right the shadows of smoke on the sides of buildings. That's all.
Karel stood up and removed his coat. Do you realize he said that I am what you might call tight?
I'm sure it couldn't be that. Think of Camille Julian said. But he was a little tired too now. Was it his heart's large mouse that was eating away his insides? He thought bed would be a good place to go to. Since he had in his bag only one pair of pajamas he gave Karel the pants and took the coat for himself. They were black pajamas with white figures. While they undressed he thought Karel unimportantly dirty; before, he hadn't thought about hygiene and morals, both being easy to neglect.
Karel thought him just a little rustic.
The coat looked like a coat on Julian.
Karel's shoulders were spare but his chest was full and his arms round so he looked well in just the pants.
They decided that Karel sleep on the right side of the bed.
Julian lay on his back in the dark and inhaled cigarette smoke, accelerating his heart even more.
Karel breathed on his left side. The January moon must have been behind some tower. He said oh. I can't sleep now.
Why not there's nothing else to do Julian said.
Isn't there?
It's so late isn't it?
Well, your heart is beating very fast.
Much gin Julian murmured and turned on his left side also.
Are you really sleepy? Karel said.
Yes I am trying to decide what I shall dream about.
Or whom.
Yes. You can feel my left side thumping even extending the thump to my right side. I should much rather not be excited at all or excited much more. He placed the cigarette's lighted ash in the carpet, took a deep breath and embraced the pillow. Good night he said.
Karel was silent. Then before it is light I must do something cruel he said.
That I should say indicates a heat not submerged by the important Julian said.
Karel hesitated, then bloomed from the bed like a white four-o'clock. He snapped the light on and faced the mirror, looking into it closely and pressing his temples with long unshapely fingers. I am weak he said which is to say that on this planet there are many large people not being very kind and when one is not being killed being a little less than kind which is after all too social. I shall go out and I shall recite and I shall use high heels over their corpses and fail to vibrate with their throats' sweet words of me saying you are the darling of the Doll's House but I shall go further into that other house though still there and wait for what will come like the cracking of eggs on the sides of frying pans. He looked around and saw Julian lying on his stomach observing him with one wide eye.
He turned his back and shed the pajama pants and dressed not too slowly.
Julian lit a cigarette from the pack on the floor beside the bed-post. Karel will you be nice and repeat Frank's number he said.
It's in the directory Karel said.
You know the kind of eyes that have been drunk so often. Julian sat up in bed. I'm sorry you won't stay.
To be inevitably misunderstood is a matter for armchair relaxation Karel said but to be unnecessarily misunderstood... he put his hand on the door-knob which felt cold as a forehead. The tunnel-like hall held his horizontal, the elevator going down his vertical moving. He went into the street, more darkened now, and went forward walking slower and slower until he stopped altogether in front of a bench in Washington Square and sat down with his mind prenatally blank.
... if you dream of it or if you don't dream of it there are loads of things to do. Yes said I working my way carefully past my mother's womb. How many are there? Before flowers or anything. How many are there? But flowers were and food and flowers were and. Let's do a bit of plain walking I said to my friend. We were not completely under the awning but we were almost under it. We were. I think that was myself. Very young maybe three. No. Not three. Two. That might have been sufficient. It might have been as it was that diphtheria came and almost. But. How now that I think after it all how can it come here now so really. No question mark because I want to. It I only know: it is a sweet party: it is. I am. My suit is dainty and all of white and stockings are being pulled on. Stockings are being pulled on because or in spite of the first guest who is in sight, walking with a nurse maid and I see them for a moment as I am permitted a glimpse (one stocking is still hanging). And so they arrive. Solely. Twoly. Brilliantly fabulous. I do not particularly care, once the ice cream is over. I am five but I am allowed to forget it. Until I want to count them and so I stand them in a row: fifty-one guests and the doll I got I got I got. I tear grass from the roots on my fifth birthday lawn and they imitate me the other children and I am glad. And they. Are. Between this and that. I am afraid. Even now. Between this and that there might have been: or were: elephantine globularosities protecting their own children like perfect mothers, unaware that a child (I) of five (I) pranced, ran, stumbled, uncared for except in. O elephantine globularosities, who what are you if you are or could be? Between this and that. I love hoops. The round things of wood and sidewalks and running and I am bought a hoop and I play with it running as I expected to run. But is it quite as I expected. I am afraid not. Nor was the Doll. I am not ashamed of my doll. Although it is kept because, I know, only little girls, high up in the big closet in its close glory. I never play with it. I want to show it to them once. But someone is it Grandmother is it Mother snatched SNATCHED it back to some sort of heaven I suppose but my heart. And a velocipede, and an English Mail. Yes, wheels. Hoops. The English Mail (there is an Irish Mail too) is kept in the hall and I want to take it out when it shouldn't be taken out and it is sometimes taken out on the hard asphalt the hard. Knights rush over smooth grey ground. They fall. There are races too. And other children. There is a picture of me when I was or am I how many years old then which pictures me as I am minus about the exact number of years. Life is bitter and head aches. I think there must be a place called Philadelphia for I am going there. There. School. Oh. I am going to school. The teachers put lumps of dark sugar into cups of hot water in the afternoons after school as I wait for my mother to take me home. It tastes salty like meat gravy I discover. Snow I ingest, snow I know, snow it is soft cold out of which one makes snowballs which the children throw at each other. There is a snowball battle but I do not like it. I do not make quite the right number of hits. And while in the cold during recess beside the snow over the ice children play it must be coldly I stick my nose above the window sill my mother having through teacher decreed I am to stay indoors. I AM TO STAY INDOORS. Forever the great dark shall move with breasts offering but withholding stars planets alps one likes to climb or go through a valley skiing. Or when children are out. I am impressed by the Horse Fair by Blankety Blank but I find something lacking in it. Is it the horses? Even bread and tea are good after a sickness. And a little cold lamb. I love my set of elaborate wooden Indians but I leave them in the sand for the rain to spoil for my tin soldiers who are smarter looking. I want the image of Kermit Roosevelt in a doll. I want it. I get it on Christmas morning. Guinevere or Elaine is hanging from her window and stone is going downward beneath her and somehow her heart is fluttering terribly excited. What'} Whot He. Lancelot or someone or who was it comes... conies... He has plumes... There are many noises in the air not of birds no of nothing but Lancelot.
YOU must come and help me find a place to live Julian said leaning half out of bed to talk to Karel over the telephone at noon the next day when where was the sun.
Did you succeed Karel asked in forestalling realization?
That is not immediately thought of in fact whoever sells stamps in this hotel is sure to annoy me, won't you come by?
I'm not so used to benches on cement.
Don't you know any taxi-drivers?
If you insist on being impenetrable perhaps I could come by without risk of hurting your feelings.
Now when will it be I mean how long before—
Oh in an hour if I don't go back to bed I do feel pale blue as a friend of mine says of me which is mostly a mistake on his part.
Julian unwound the bedclothes from him and went to the window. Where was the sun? He thought it must be hiding its face in shame. He tried to see the sky and saw a part of it. The view consisted mostly of three walls of windows the majority with the shades up, all with the same kind of sad curtains either hanging straight or drawn back. A voice with a Western accent came from one of the lower windows I've just gotten in but there are so MANY Fergusons in the phone book I thought maybe you could tell me. She's probably brought the entire state of Texas with her and expects people not to know the difference Julian thought... He went to the washstand and shaved carefully, washed thoroughly, cleaned his teeth indifferently, combed his hair repeatedly, and put on his clothes. He looked at himself in the mirror from various angles and thought he would do.
Karel met him in the lobby. Did you steal fire from heaven last night?
To speak chronologically I'm afraid the vulture consumed my liver.
Tenth Street, Fifth Avenue, Washington Square were walked on.
We'll go to Simon's first Karel suggested.
Mr. Simon was in his office and breathed in puffs. Have you got money? Can you pay your rent? Wait I'll show you a byootiful place. I'll fix it all up for you. Mr. Simon was noted for his minor philanthropies among the artists and the two women in his office, a mother and daughter who had never slept but together, tried to guard his interests and always showed their probably false teeth in a smile at most of the tenants. There was a young lady in one of his numerous houses once who had not paid her rent for eight months so Mr. Simon had her summoned to court. They were both there and the judge told the young lady she would have to move, whereupon she burst into tears. Mr. Simon was touched. He took her from the court room, hailed a taxi, brushed a tear from his own cheek, handed her a ten dollar bill and told her to stay in his house as long as she wanted to and not to mind what that old judge said.
Mr. Simon took Julian and Karel to Third Street under the elevated tracks. He stopped in front of what had been a batik shop but now the door was curtained and the cloudy windows draped halfway up. Inside was a large room with a balcony half across the width and extending the whole length. The balcony was reached by little stairs on the left and held a wide low bed and antique sofa. A partition from the balcony to the floor hid a kitchenette and a combination dressing-room and washroom; a further partition with two doors at right angles enclosed a comparatively brown toilet bowl and seat. In the room on the floor were a red leather couch (one arm missing), studio bed, built out fireplace, lamp, two chests of drawers, stool and two tables. The design on the grass carpet was indistinguishable.
Mr. Simon had been talking. I'll fix a shower-beth here, put up nize curtains, have the rug cleaned make it nize, put curtains across the belcony rail, curtains here, it will be vimderful. It was also going to be wonderful how long Julian was to stay there without paying any rent after the first month or so.
How much?
Fifteen dollars I've been getting but you can have it for twelve.
A week?
Sure a vweek.
That's too much. The place will be occupied by only myself.
Vwell, ten if you pay the ges and lights. I pay the vwater.
Ten a week, do you think that's too much, Karel?
Karel shrugged and pursed his lips. Someone had told him don't purse your lips but he had said where would I be if I had never pursed my lips?
I'll take it, Mr. Simon, when will it be fixed up at least cleaned up?
This efternoon.
I'll be here tonight to sleep.
Very goodt. He gave him the key.
Thank you, Mr. Simon, won't you eat a hot dog with us?
Noo thenks.
They ate hot dogs for breakfast. The wagon was parked on the street in front of the door and they bought bananas from a cart further down.
They went for Julian's trunk and brought it back from the docks on the side of a taxi to 319 West Third Street.
There were no cooking utensils nor eating ones so they went to 'TillieY on Fourteenth Street which at five o'clock is a most vulgar street, invariably alive with the sex-starved.
First they had a pineapple delight served by a girl wearing a hairnet. Cups, saucers, knives, forks, spoons, plates, glasses, boilers, a skillet and a coffee pot were purchased at ten cents an article. Karel needed an eyebrow pencil which he bought at another counter from a salesgirl who looked mixed up.
Karel accompanied Julian to the hotel where the latter put on a dark blue overcoat, packed his bag and paid his bill, much to the relief of the personnel.
Fifth Avenue was dignified; Macdougal Street was marking spaces with taxis for a block that included tea-rooms and a dancing place where you got showerbaths one heard. Third Street divided Macdougal into this upper half and a lower half of gangsters, dark girls and children who played street games.
At 319 the lights were amber and when turned on could be seen from outside, giving the appearance of a speakeasy.
Julian's trunk delivered a typewriter, various books, a dressing gown, suits, and accessories, most of which were to be picked up.
Karel sat down and began typing a poem.
Julian said it's cold and drank two glasses of water. He felt the radiators and they were faintly warm. Come on let's go out and eat he said.
Karel continued to type.
Julian said I'm going.
Karel put his fallen hair in place and said all right wait.
Snow fell and left itself on their coats. They went to a coffee pot and ordered Western sandwiches and coffee. Karel spoke to two young men that came in. They walked up to the stools and spoke to Karel. He introduced them to Julian: Gabriel and Louis.
They were poets.
Gabriel was an Italian, born in New York. His hair wrapped around itself and had snowdrops in it for he was without a hat. He had black eyebrows that almost met in the center. His eyes were remote but his smile exhibited friendliness.
Louis wore a beret and his mouth was beginning to turn down at the corners. He was somewhat taller than Gabriel and sometimes held one shoulder lower than the other. Have you got a cigarette Karel? he asked. He had a deliberately soft voice.
The two remained standing.
Have one Julian said offering his package. Have something to eat.
They sat down on the stools.
It's too fucking cold to be running around trying to raise fifty dollars Gabriel said.
For what? Karel asked.
For an abortion Gabriel said.
Karel said how strange.
The four finished their sandwiches. Gabriel and Louis ate cheesecake also.
They went outside and stood on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. Louis spoke of the logic of Rimbaud; Gabriel of the rareness of faith, hence the preponderance of betrayals; Julian of a new poem he was contemplating in which time would be an evil to be forgotten; Karel of his uncomfortableness: I can't stand here shading my eyelashes all night.
Where are you living? Gabriel asked Julian.
Three nineteen West Third—the store place. Drop by some night.
The world holds few terrors anymore Louis said.
Are you going our way Karel? Gabriel asked.
No I'm not.
Karel and Julian left them standing on the corner. When they had crossed Fourth Street Karel said do not adopt them. I don't trust them. They are not to be tolerated. Remember, do not. They are magnificent in the abstract but in the concrete dangerous.
You say they have acted.
They are always acting and are not always scientific.
They reached Julian's place and went in.
Karel's tie which he wore in a wide loop knot low on a collar that stopped at his throat's end always became disarranged when he removed his overcoat. That partly accounted for his endurance record in front of the mirror. Sentimentality he said is a willingness to believe in form without substance.
Then Gertrude Stein—
Stein ha I think she ought to float away in space and start her own universe.
What about Gabriel and Louis?
Oh Gabriel revolted at twenty-one from the teachings of a Franciscan monastery and Louis is the son of a Rabbi so they are now complete anarchists.
Whom else do you know?
Mostly people who splash around like children in bathtubs.
No one would expect the ocean to be subdued under such circumstances. Have you seen Theodosia lately?
To be inexact I saw her with Windward and his crowd the other night at Noe's. I swooned in and began my first poem saying crape, heavily, as I looked directly at her, but it is not less than profane that we agree on some things and she had a sweet face.
Is she living with Windward?
No. You knew her in San Francisco?
Yes I knew her. She knows that I have planned to be here and I must call her tomorrow.
Is it really that imminent?
Suppose you ask Windward and the rest around and I'll ask Theodosia and we'll have a party.
You'd better have curtains put up first for policemen and such might burst in with suspicions.
I'll see Simon.
All right, I suppose I'll drag my body homeward angel.
Must you?
I have an unusual appointment for tomorrow afternoon and there may be developments so to speak.
Until tomorrow then.
When Karel had gone Julian, resting his chin in one hand, felt the blood rock his head. He went to his couch and thought of someone else who wasn't himself but a little boy whose grandmother ate dinner with him. He went home with her and on the way they met a negro boy with a billy-goat. The goat was on the sidewalk and it butted his grandma.
I got sent out of the room by Brother Austin for he thought I hit a boy with a piece of chalk but I didn't. Today is my birthday. Mammy baked me a big birthday cake. I wrote a poem called What's the Use'? Sister and I went downtown to Kress's. We were looking at some valentines when a negro girl who was trying to steal a dime bank was caught by a lady detective. I sailed my kite in Jones' field after school. It got tangled up with another boy's and fell just as I had let out all my string. Sister has two little chickens; they are painted orange and pink but the pink one looks sick. Mother and I went down to the river to see how high the water is; it covers the roofs of some of the houses on mud island. Sister's pink chicken died. Martin and I got in a fight after school. Brother Leopold said we must sit on the monkey-box every noon for a month. The nightingales and mocking-birds played ball; the mocking-birds won 18 to 13. I'm a mocking-bird but lost my base-ball. Himogle-boogley. I had to stay in after school for laughing. When the queen tried to christen the viaduct by passing over it in an aeroplane and dropping a bottle of champagne on it she missed by several feet. I went out to Mr. Bass's to have my wart conjured off. I am going away to school. I love my mother so much I am thinking of her all the time.
I am getting long pants and things and kissing people I don't want to for instance Theodosia whom I love for poetry's sake but how did I know I was beautiful enough to make her hold her breasts tightly and afterwards say with her mind do you know where bottomless places are and their reality? did you ever have to go down to the blank wall of death (I have died so often life seems stiff and awkward she said) and when you were there find even reality a little forced? Because of hunger she said which is like feeling blood flow until the last drop is chilled with wind upon the pavement.
Theodosia with her disquieting beauty, sarcasm, violated eyes. Theodosia walking in sunlight, walking in morning, walking in sun paths, walking, walking and walking and saying of age: I am not old enough, I am too young. Theodosia walking in sunlight, walking on dead grass, bearing her body through the sunlight over the dead grass. Theo. Theodosia drinking the morning, drinking the noon, Theo in moonlight, in darkness, walking, walking and saying he is queer. I wonder. Theo bearing wonder. Theodosia finding queer, saying I love you. In strange smoke-thick yellowed air of speakeasies, over wine, over liqueurs, over smoke, over dreamings, Theodosia chanting words like broken musics: I love you. In the yellow afternoon of blinding heat Theodosia in orchid, white limbs and amber hair, white limbs and scarlet shoes, white limbs as nude as morning, Theo in orchid. Theo finding queer: walking slowly in sunlight and saying slowly: I almost believe, except there is a difference and if you are? then there IS a difference. Theodosia walking in sunlight of morning bearing her pale not virgin body over spent dreamings, bearing her pale not virgin body and slim limbs, walking and walking in sunlight and saying queer, I love you. Theodosia walking in sunlight, walking in morning while there is yellow over houses, yellow over half-dreams, yellow over amber hair, and yellow through which Theodosia is walking. Theodosia will say I love you. She will say more surely: I love you through the blue smoke and yellow air of speakeasies. Theo will be walking, walking, walking, bearing her pale slim not virgin body her white slender limbs through my after-dreams somehow always.
WHEN Julian awoke afternoons he could look up through the top of the front windows as he lay on his back and see the people in the elevated cars go by. Later he could see them too: the lighted windows moving successively like a strip of film. He didn't know how many seconds the eyes of the people in the cars could focus on him at night eating with a candle on the table or reading or writing a poem when he was not very happy.
This evening he was expecting Karel at eight. At ten minutes after nine the glass was tapped twice and he went to the door, pulled aside the curtains to look out haughtily, then pulled back the bolt.
Karel said he had been detained at the communist cafeteria in Union Square. A bantamweight prizefighter whom he used to know last year had renewed his acquaintance. He wants me to introduce him to some girls so I told him to come by tomorrow night for the party. He's the type that will bring along a friend too.
Julian poured out glasses of red Italian wine bought down the street before dinner.
Karel walked about the room smoking, as his habit was, without inhaling. Julian saw a bracelet on his left wrist. Let me look at your bracelet.
Karel took it off and handed it to him. My jewel boxes will be bursting if last night should be repeated often.
What happened?
When I went uptown I found Vincent and Tony with a crowd there. Of course I went directly to the bathroom and retouched my face and if I do say so I was—not that life hadn't had a big new howlong? thrill—
Yes my dear but in our anarchistic universe can we have everything we want even for one little minute: I mean for a special dreadful reason, but as far as one's own orgasm goes have you concluded that that is the less important?
Not at all times because bracelets can become symbols. There was an old thing there in evening clothes who whispered something in my ear and since I couldn't pretend to be awfully shocked we went upstairs... To my amazement I was told to go back and send Vincent up and to my utter exhaustion when Vincent came down there was a second request for me...
And just for cold lucre?
Oh it's not so cold after all no not so—but listen to this: after that happened Gabriel and Louis came by not having any place to sleep. They were contemptuous as usual and began insulting everyone but Vincent and Tony and me in an unmistakable manner so the others took their sables and flew.
Something is always threatening trade...
Yes or trade... We decided to have some food before going to bed, I was to sleep there, and Louis was selected to fetch it from the delicatessen. Tony, the impulsive Latin, offered Louis his new camel's-hair coat because of the cold, Louis had only a muffler. Louis admired the coat out loud, put it on and hasn't returned until yet. Tony poor thing is looking for him with a knife. I suppose I should have warned Tony but it all happened so quickly and besides once he has his mind on something...
There was a loud knock on the glass and Julian parted the curtains. It's them.
Who?
Gabriel and Louis.
He opened the door and they came in.
Where is your coat? Karel asked looking at Louis.
Have a cigarette Louis said offering a small box of Benson & Hedges. He had a fresh haircut.
Oh said Karel prosperity...
Gabriel made himself at home by selecting a book from the row on the table. It was an anthology of modern poetry. These dopes Pound and Eliot... he began.
Listen Louis said reclining on the window-seat talk about something primary such as how we're going to raise some cash before you find yourself a father.
Julian said are you still trying to raise that money? How are you eating in the meantime?
Christ there are too many ways Louis said. The easiest is by asking people on the street.
I suppose their reactions wouldn't be identical Karel said.
Take that fuck McAllen. What do you suppose he thought when I followed him to a gin-mill, walked up to him before he could take his first drink and said McAllen I think your poetry is lousy but I need a buck.
Did you get it?
Hell, yes, he gave me two and I gave him back half of it and said I asked for only one.
You are a panic Julian said. When I get completely broke I'll try that.
But the beautiful thing is the response of some of the cunts Louis continued. The young ones are insulted to think that a man would want to take money from them. The old ones usually come across with at least a quarter.
Don't any of them ever call a cop?
Why should they? I borrowed a dollar from a cop I had never seen before last night. A cop wouldn't do anything about that. Although once I had the unfortunate inspiration to tell a woman what an ugly dog she had after she refused to give me money. She called a dick and I was taken to Bellevue for examination. I ended up by examining the doctors and getting a loan from them.
My dear you are simply insurmountable Karel said.
Louis had the habit, borrowed from Gabriel, of exhaling cigarette smoke with a vicious sound —of impatience no doubt. Say Julian how about my taking a bath here he said.
If you want to. The shower is upstairs.
I know. Simon is asleep at this hour. Have you a towel?
Yes, there's one in the washroom there.
Are you writing anything now Gabriel? Karel said.
Gabriel kept his overcoat on. I'm working on a play Karel he said.
What is it?
Not exactly worked out yet but about a man who is arrested for kissing a little girl on the street. He had an impulse to kiss her for no reason either of tenderness or fetichism.
Louis had stripped to the waist and was about to ask for some soap when there was another knock on the door.
Julian looked out at a face he didn't recognize.
Karel looked out too and said it's Edwin.
Jesus Christ Louis said.
Julian let the curtain fall back and said let him in?
Hell Louis said.
Don't let him in said Gabriel.
What's the matter? Karel asked.
Louis said shit let him in.
Julian opened the door.
Edwin stepped in. Is Louis here? he asked. He was dressed in what could be called only a costume. His overcoat was open showing buff-colored pants, a velvet jacket, open collar and black Windsor tie. He also had a jaw. His flat face was set to express anger but his lips were too pouty for him to appear more than poetic.
Yes I'm here Edwin. Do you want to see me? Louis crossed his arms.
I've come to get that dollar you took from Geraldine or take it out of your hide.
Yeah? Louis smiled with half his mouth.
I mean it damn it. He seemed on the point of tears as he removed his overcoat and looked at Louis. He turned to Karel and Julian who appeared unsympathetic and said I've tried to avoid this but Louis has deceived and stolen from my Love. He promised to pay back the dollar and he hasn't done it. I'm going to teach him a lesson like I said I would or try anyway.
All right Louis said I haven't a dollar. Do you want a fight?
Yes! Edwin took off his jacket, removed his tie and shirt and laid them in a neat pile on the table.
Louis began warming up by punching at the air as soon as he saw Edwin's muscular back and good arms. Edwin was also the taller.
Are you ready? Edwin asked, blushing.
Keep time for them Julian Gabriel said. Fight one-minute rounds, I'll referee.
This is terrible! Karel said shaking his bracelet above his head.
Go! cried Julian, hoping that Louis would win.
They went: Louis feinting and attacking, Edwin standing and punching Louis' head. At the end of the first minute Louis threw himself on the floor, breathing hard. Edwin sat on the bed going over the details as to just why he had to do this and also telling Louis that he was dissipated and hadn't been leading the right kind of life. He said I used to box in the navy you know. Do you want another round or have you had enough?
Louis was furious and got to his feet. You bastard! he said. He was more on the defensive now but every time he struck at Edwin the latter hit him in the face. Louis attacked him wildly with blows from both fists, and found himself lying across the couch after sinking into blackness and blinding light and rising again.
Karel rushed to the washroom for a towel and cold water.
Edwin was apparently more satisfied than he intended to be.
Gabriel fanned Louis and rubbed his hands.
Edwin said I'd give him a dollar myself if I had it but I have to work for my living.
In those clothes? Gabriel asked.
I write poetry too. But I have a sense of decency. I hope I haven't hurt him. But he insulted my Love, you see...
I'm afraid I don't see said Gabriel.
I see said Julian but I'm sure I don't know your face.
Edwin put his clothes back on and took his departure. The others were silent.
Karel bathed Louis' face.
I'm all right Louis said. Give me a cigarette. I didn't know the son-of-a-bitch could fight.
Anything else he might do would be superfluous Karel said.
Louis got up with a few swollen places on one cheek and on his forehead and lips. I guess I'll take the bath now.
A guy like that with dementia praecox ought to be secretly disposed of Gabriel said.
His earnestness was amazing said Julian.
He's a beast Karel said.
Julian gave Louis soap and handed him the towel.
I'll be back soon Louis said, his back looking a little rounder than it had.
Still writing poetry? Gabriel asked Karel when Louis had gone.
What is one to do but face the inevitable?
I'm going to do some sociological and ethnological work.
Do you mind if I ask you a Little Review question?
No—I don't.
Do you write because it pleases you?
Yes, I do. But you should read my essay on art. Gabriel half closed his eyes.
Yes? I suppose you put art in its place?
Well, you might call it that.
That's all right... I don't mind granting anyone his prerogative to think that way—but then I insist on reminding him that there is such a thing as sociology said Karel.
I have decided that poetry is prose with an inferiority complex Gabriel said.
Yes but—Julian put in.
Man prattles poetry and writes prose... Prose I think is the truly aristocratic art.
But the adult is a convention which may be ignored—or valuably misunderstood. Poetry, like prose, is concerned with aesthetic. It's a question of value, purely. Julian felt prouder after saying this.
Gabriel is merely being abnormally oblique Julian Karel said. How would it feel he said to Gabriel for you to consider meaning instead of being meant?
I went through all that last week. You've heard the expression to have the shit scared out of you. Such a thing was demonstrated to me to be based on truth... About dawn I was walking along Fourth Street when a car of four gangsters who had come out of the coffee pot on Fourth and Sixth drove toward me. They saw me and called out hey faggot! as they passed by. I kept walking but when I heard them turn the car around I started to run. They sped up and were even with me when I ran inside a building I knew and locked myself in the toilet in the back of the hall. I was just in time for both the locking of the door and the toilet... I suppose I would have been raped by those bastards.
Karel opened his mouth into an oval and his eyes became wide. My God Gabriel think of me! Oh, the fiends! He lay down on the couch.
Julian said are they that dangerous?
They were probably drunk or I don't see how they mistook me...
Yes you do have a face like a truck-driver.
Louis came in the side door from upstairs naked.
My God did you come through the hall that way? Julian exclaimed.
Yes...little good it did.
Exhibitionist! Julian said.
Karel slid from the couch. How do your bruises feel? he said to Louis touching his cheek with a finger.
All right. They're all right. Are there any more cigarettes?
There's some listerine in the cabinet would that help them Julian said or vaseline?
Do you want some vaseline on them Louis? Karel asked.
No they'll be all right. I'm tired. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. His body was smooth and lightly olive like his face.
Karel Julian thought was over-solicitous.
After a few minutes Louis got up and began to dress.
Gabriel rose, put out his cigarette and sat down on the couch by Julian.
Karel and Louis were in the washroom.
Gabriel looked at Julian and said I'd like to walk with you through terrible things happening.
Julian regarded his mouth and insincere eyes. My bed will never be wide enough he said.
Louis came out of the washroom and said to Gabriel let's get out of here.
Karel came out with his hat on. Julian looked at him.
I'll see you tomorrow night Karel said. Did you call Theodosia?
Yes.
The three left together and Julian lay on his back waiting to look up. He thought about the dawn and wondered if it would come too soon. There he was wondering as he would wonder yes as he would wonder at eighty if he should live that long or must he wonder to live making the if bad form. He believed in the bird swaying on the bough.
But where was paradise? What if he had something in his eye. Oh to be Prometheus sex-guy and whore-walloper what if he had something in his eye there was something in. He went to the mirror and held his eye opened until it watered. Did he ever know anyone to hark back back hark and one lies up some stairs who did surprisingly. He put his coat on and his hat on and locked the door behind him.
The fine snow was fine and there was a man he saw hugging an ash can. He crossed Seventh Avenue and turned into Commerce Street. He found the number and looked up at a dark window. He went in the house and up the stairs without making any noise. His feet made blank sounds on the linoleum in the hall.
Gabriel and Louis had gotten a room in the same building with Karel. Karel's room was next door to theirs. He told them he was sleepy and left them.
In his own room after a while he thought he knew. He thought he knew he didn't quite know. But he knew. He would imagine he knew; that was just as good.
Instead of undressing and getting into bed he walked into the hall and knocked on their door.
That was quite possible for him to do he thought; it was possible because they knew it was just possible. So there he was; in it; in the room.
Louis and Gabriel were stretched half-clothed on top of the bed. Some garments, very dirty, were flung about with a recklessness which Karel marked, the recklessness that was truly artistic.
Karel was on his guard with them; he felt a bit self-conscious because he had not been kind to them. Louis' trousers, drawn up by short suspenders, attracted him as his skin had attracted him at Julian's. Louis' face above a black sweater with a white mooncurved wide stripe draped over the chest was alive. Now, as mostly, as always almost, Louis conveyed thoughtfulness to him, thoughtfulness now behind a bruised mouth, and behind eyes. He permitted himself to look at Louis as he had thought of seeing him when on the other side of the wall. Yes he thought.
Louis' activity was in his favor. In repose his face was dark, even morbid. When smiling it attracted because it was evil and young. Moreover, Karel saw that his smile gave his jaw the correct proportion, the without which not beauty, in spite of the swollen spot on his cheek. He sat down by Louis' outstretched form and was gratified to have him move closer to him.
Gabriel and Louis were waiting. They were waiting for their good fortune to occur, to come with the dawn; they were going to force the world to be good with them. They did not want it to be good to them for it could not be good to them who were too good for anyone to be good to them but the world was stupid enough to be punished. It was stupid enough to be fooled; and they had to live.
Karel knew that he was not the world, for he had come into their room then; the world had not done that; the world only put its hands into its pockets when asked, Gabriel and Louis had asked Karel; he had refused. But he was changing, he was changing from the world into something else And they had known that he could change. But would he? Well, they would know very shortly, and on whose account he was changing.
Karel's hand strayed over the rough sweater's surface and landed on Louis' warm neck. His heart gave a leap. Yes! it said. Karel was doing this because he knew it could be done.
Louis looked at Gabriel and caught at Karel's hand, putting it onto his chest under the sweater.
Karel's tight heart grew less tight. It must be what time and he had not slept. Now he could afford to remain awake a little longer. With Gabriel and Louis. But only Louis should profit. As he must profit. As Karel was willing he should profit, anyway at first, for that was the only way it could be done. Just a little Karel thought Gabriel sensed that. But they must both be jubilating, they must both be thinking this.
He kissed Louis. Louis urged him.
Karel was enjoying the progress. It must be so now. It could be his way. So he was not completely responsive. He sat up. I want a cigarette if you have one.
Sure said Louis and produced one from a creased package.
What about something to eat? Gabriel asked.
Let the food go. I'm not hungry Louis said.
Gabriel glanced heavily at him, then disgust spread over his face, a light disgust. I want coffee he said but indifferently.
Karel said I have no money.
Louis lay smoking.
Then I'm going to sleep. I don't care what you guys do Gabriel said. He turned over, away from them.
Past the window there was gray-filled space soon to be practically blue. Karel walked to the window and looked out. He turned around to look at Louis and then walked quietly over and sitting by his head on the bed asked him, in a whisper, if he wished to sleep in his room.
Sure Louis said. He beheld Gabriel's back. His mouth curled. His eyes assumed vacancy as he flung his cigarette mightily away beyond the window.
In Karel's room Karel's heart beat faster. This was this, taking Louis into his room, separating him from Gabriel. Louis would not care about him any longer. No; he could afford to do nothing for Gabriel Karel thought.
The sheets were absolutely cold. Louis was waiting in them.
Their arms were around each other, the light was on, they stared at the ceiling. Later Louis slept, the light was off, a fear was on his heart, Karel's heart, he was awake. Then the door was knocked on and he heard Karel Karel.
What? Who is it?
It's Julian. Let me in.
The door opened and Karel's astonished face said what's the matter? Come in what's the matter? Darling!
Julian went in the tiny room and Karel turned the light on. Louis was apparently still asleep.
I have something in my eye. I couldn't sleep. I must go to a doctor. Will you take me Ito one?
But Julian I don't know of any doctor's office open at this hour Karel said let me see your eye.
Julian went to the lamp and opened his eye can you see anything?
No but it looks blood-shot.
Come on out with me and we'll have breakfast. I'll see a doctor later on.
I'll have to dress. He was in his underwear.
He looked at Louis without any explanation to Julian.
Julian looked at his eye again in the mirror and said God.
Karel said what could be in it?
Something must.
Oh how terrible Karel said.
Julian said a hot punchino would be good. Karel said it would too so they went to Frankie's. They ordered punchinos from the partly crosseyed waiter with a German accent.
There was a group of men and a round blonde girl at the next table. One of the men went over and said to Karel isn't your name Karel and aren't you a writer and won't you both join our table?
Karel and Julian would.
They had applejack. Eventually one pulled out a poem and asked Karel to criticize it. Karel did, doing justice he thought to everything.
Shortly after putting back his poem, another drink having been consumed, the same one pulled out his wallet and showed Karel a card attached therein which read Soandso honorary chief of police.
Karel said were you really in the police department?
The man pulled aside his coat and showed him a badge on his belt. Come over to see me in New Jersey any time he said. Then he thought another drink would be distinctly in order and left to get a bottle from the bar. Whereupon, the blonde round girl having got up to dance with the second man at the table, the third man at the table leaned over to Julian and said I would like to rape that girl there before everybody's eyes.
Julian got over that neatly because when the girl came back she sat on his lap.
The men decided they would go so they all went outside including Karel and Julian and the girl who said let's continue the party at my place.
They all went with her and not having a thing to do decided to play strip poker. They counted their things and every deal the low man removed an article.
The girl, after a while, was almost undressed at the same time that Julian was almost fully clothed. They were playing on a sheet on the floor. She made them promise not to make her remove her shorts but when her brassieres came off they knew there was no wind to make the shorts stay on.
Julian at last began to see that it wouldn't be long for him either. When he was nude the girl said I'm drunk and laid her head in his lap.
Finally everyone left the girl's apartment except Karel and Julian and the three slept in one bed, Julian having forgotten about breakfast and all about his eye.
THE next night Julian was expecting people he knew and people he did not know. He had told those he knew to come by for a raid-party and they were prepared to be taken to the station in the Black Maria. He had borrowed a portable victrola from Theodosia. She had records of Duke Ellington's timed primi-tiveness, King Oliver's trumpets and clarinets and Bennie Moten's natural rhythms.
Julian wore a black shirt and light powder-green tie. His dark hair had been washed to a gold brown and fell over his forehead.
Karel, as he had promised, came by three hours before the others bringing his box of beauty that included eyelash curlers, mascara, various shades of powder, lip and eyebrow pencils, blue and brown eyeshadow and tweezers for the eyebrows.
Julian submitted to his artistry, only drawing the line at his eyebrows being plucked.
I'll make you up to the high gods Karel said to the high... When he was through he regarded the result with a critical and gratified eye. Julian's rather full mouth now had lips which though less spiritual were not quite lewd. His eyes were simple sins to be examined more closely or to be looked at only from a distance.
Karel never did badly by his own face. He put an infinitesimal spot of lip salve in each nostril and almost invisible lines of black running vertically in the center of each eyelid. His eyelashes, as Frederick Spitzberger always predicted, were long enough now to catch in the boughs (should he go for a walk in Washington Square). His mouth, though not long, was made smaller sometimes by his raising the lower lip and pushing in the upper lip with it. Of course his eyebrows often looked the same as the week before. They could be pencilled into almost any expression: Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, etc. He thought he would choose something obvious for tonight. Purity.
Julian said you stay here while I go for the gin.
Don't be gone forever Karel said applying a liquid to his hair which would make a deep wave when properly set.
Why do you hold your lips that way? Julian called from the door.
Because I think it looks adorable Karel answered.
Julian went out into the freezing air. He would buy the gin at the Dragon Tavern. He walked fast, though remaining wholly conscious of the green yellow and black taxis cruising with the promise of anything.
It was Saturday night and the Tavern was crowded. Vivian the blonde girl of the night before was there: starry-eyed: with grappa she said after she had disentangled herself from her dancing partner and gone over to Julian insisting that she pay back the fifty cents she had borrowed earlier that day for Kotex. Julian took it and said he might be back later. Rose, the Jewess who owned the place, handed him a package containing two bottles. He paid her and left. At the studio he found that Frederick Spitzberger had arrived. Frederick was talking in a deep voice that was more often than not jarring; and always shocking when one considered Frederick's body: emaciated, with practically no shoulders and less hips and waist. As for his face, the nose was born he said and the body grew on later. His lips were prominent and curved outward. The shell-rimmed glasses he wore partly concealed his eyebrows: pencilled lines. And would who know that he used mascara around his small brown tender eyes that belied the caustic (though witty as he often said himself) dicta that he let fall upon the heads of others. His accent, which was quite correct, prevailed in whatever situation. He was smoking a black cigarette with a gold tip when Julian came in. In the washroom he was saying to Karel... his sneaky imperatives the slut forgets that the thing on which his assurance and hopes are built, commercial value, has much more substantiation in responsible sources in my case than in his: he refuses to recognize that I have contributed paid articles to four organs of literary expression rated officially as A among literary periodicals, all these beyond his reach; and that for about six hours' expert appraisal of manuscripts for purely commercial publishers I have made as much as a hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents. Any illiterate who tries to denounce me for trying to be different because I can't be effective in any other way will get something like that information on his behind. Where do these self-appointed poetasting arbiters of middle-west poetic destiny think they come off?
When Julian slammed the door Frederick came out with an eyebrow raised and said this must be little boy blue.
Julian said how do you do?
Karel came from the washroom looking resplendent. I told K-Y to bring some goods to tack over the rest of the front windows. I'm desperately afraid of a raid.
Let's have a drink now Julian said unwrapping the High & Dry.
Yes indeed said Frederick starting A Good Man is Hard to Find on the phonograph.
While Julian was pouring the drinks Armand Windward came in with K-Y who was holding a bundle of red curtains under her arm. K-Y was from Kentucky. She lived with Windward in a sky-lit apartment and they took sunbaths in the nude regardless of visitors or the weather. Usually the only visitor was Frederick. K-Y was mistress of much flesh: breasts and hips in perfect lavish proportion. Her face was striking without makeup though occasionally she made more decided with a black pencil the point of hair growing at the top of her forehead. She was expansive and somewhat worthy of love. Artists drew her body. She did portraits of children. As for Windward, he always reserved the right to be whimsical; in fact, demanded the privilege when he had just the right amount of marijuana, the 'portorican papers' he bought on 99th Street.
Here are the curtains K-Y said I didn't bring any more on account of I didn't have any more.
Julian put the smaller table up on the window-seat and Karel climbed up on it and K-Y handed him thumb-tacks one at the time. People passing by outside slowed down, especially if they belonged to the unemployed, and looked up at him stretching the red curtains across the windows. He saw Santiago, a Mexican dancer whom he had asked to come, crossing the street with Osbert Allen, an English painter of American skyscrapers. Sometimes at the Dragon Tavern Santiago danced the native dances he had learned in Mexico, to see them the following season introduced in a Broadway show 'for the first time in America'. Karel thought about him last summer at the artists' colony in Woodstock: a crowd had a bonfire by the pool one night making steak sandwiches and drinking applejack. Mrs. Dodge, wife of the philosopher, was there and Santiago with a rather extraordinary girl morbidly in love with him; also Karel and Osbert among others. For some trivial slight on Santiago's part the girl stalked away from the fire and down off into the darkness and to the icy pool where she pulled off her clothes and plunged in. It seems she had enacted such a performance before and the last time she was dragged out in a fainting frozen condition. So Osbert this time went after her. Santiago was very careless and only after much jockeying was persuaded to go down and help him get her out. When she wouldn't obey Santiago's command to come out he stripped and went in and began to yelp because of the cold—while she was blandly floating around, one supposed until she would be too exhausted to remain on top. As Santiago went toward her (Osbert had a flashlight playing on the pool) she fainted in his arms and he yelled for help because they were both sinking and freezing. They were near a rock in the middle of the stream and Osbert leaped out to it and dragged her on it and started massaging her. Then after exhortations from the shore she was passed with much difficulty from rock to rock and taken in a blanket back to the fire—weeping and protesting that she wanted to swim and swim. A scene followed between her and Santiago. She bit his leg and he slapped her on the face. Almost everybody chimed in on the argument. Mrs. Dodge called Santiago, 'stinking shit'. Strange as it may seem, Karel came out with admiration for Santiago, regret over the girl, and disgust for nearly everybody else. And he did a poem on it.
Osbert and Santiago entered during the cries of Karel who had turned to lay Frederick out for smoking a cigarette of marijuana. Frederick said that he was his own mother and please, Karel, after all.
The curtains were up and when Gabriel and Louis came in, though they had not been invited, Julian went to fix some more drinks. He came out to hear Frederick ask of Louis where are you bleeding? You must be bleeding somewhere for the groans you are emitting.
Osbert was already well filled with wine which he drank habitually in large quantities. Santiago, after dancing at the Tavern, had been known to find Osbert on the floor of a wine cellar in need of Physical Aid (though not Financial since Osbert was to take Santiago on a European tour the next summer). Osbert interrupted the cockney story he was telling K-Y to giggle profusely at Frederick's rebuke to Louis.
Julian asked who wanted gin and who didn't want gingerale.
Another knock came and the door was opened to admit Karel's sandy-haired bantam-weight. The friend he introduced was also a boxer but was studying at New York University. He was in the light-weight class. The small one's name was Gene and he immediately offered K-Y a drink of rye which he carried in his hip-pocket. She said she wasn't drinking.
At last Theodosia came. Julian kissed her saying darling. Her once long hair had been shortened to a bob shaped to her head. She looked younger he thought or at least as young as she had looked two years before, although the circles under her eyes seemed to be permanent.
Yes she wanted a drink. She had been trying she said to make a decision all day and she would get drunk and make it.
Santiago in his consciously childish way said that he wanted something to eat and that he was bored. I'm bored he said and Theodosia was charmed with him.
Karel had forgotten about the dreaded raid and was talking to Louis on the apparent incongruity of having a very elaborate structure fall into oblivion at the (logically possible?) pulling of a trigger or cessation of heart-beat.
Julian put on a screaming record to drown out Frederick who had just said to Gabriel after a philosophical speculation on the latter's part: get off that pot, Annie, it's full of shit already.
Armand was well on his third marijuana and felt warmly decayed. Frederick asked him to dance.
Gene attached K-Y and was serious dancing with her large body in his arms.
Theodosia was with Gene's friend.
Julian led Karel in a slow dance step and Karel leaned—oh way back, and when the music stopped Gene's friend asked Karel if he could have the next one.
Julian and Theodosia went behind the partition for another drink. Theodosia liked to get drunk all at once so she took a double one. When they came out they found Gene trying to carry K-Y up the balcony steps but she was too heavy and the steps too narrow and since she wouldn't walk up and said Christ you're hurting me he had to be content with talking to her on the couch.
Somebody knocked. Karel went to the window and said it's Harold.
Harold Forte who illustrated books and bathrooms made his vivacious entrance and kissed almost everybody except Gabriel and Louis. He had on spats and a new suit since he had just returned from Philadelphia, having made he said oh hundreds and hundreds of dollars and having lived in the lap of luxury in a home which he 'did' for two weeks. Aren't the Villagers amusing? he remarked to Karel looking over his shoulder at Louis and Gabriel. Theo, dear, you look marvelous how do you do it? Oh I must have some eggsie-weggsies I'm plastered. Julian dear how are you the last time I saw you you had one circle under each eye and now you have two.
That's a lie said Julian.
Frederick was appalled by what he termed Harold's vulgarity and said what can one do about people who are always trying to legitimatize their faces.
Frederick dear, dear Frederick... and nobody has introduced me to those ones Harold said indicating Gene and his friend.
Karel introduced them.
So charmed Harold said and then in a loud whisper to. Santiago: Really who are these people— have they no homes? At that Santiago had one of his painful laughing spells.
I say said Osbert to Harold you look positively gay in the new clothes.
Oh said Harold you're lovely too, dear, and gave him a big kiss on the forehead, much to Osbert's dismay. Then everybody became alarmed over Santiago who couldn't stop laughing between gasps for breath.
Julian thought that after all Gabriel and Louis were guests since they were there and asked Louis who was looking with his chin down at him if he wouldn't have a drink. Louis said he would and they retired. Things never happen to me Julian Louis said. I must always make things happen to other people. I'd like someone to take me by the hair... But Julian didn't and when they came out Julian saw Theodosia looking more surprised than hurt as Frederick said to her listen, disastrous, starting with a poem the conclusion is response, but starting with a poem is starting with a poem and the response is not the same as the response to an elephant.
Harold was getting Santiago off again with so I said to the Duchess—Dutch you old battleaxe you hold the baby for a while, my hands are wet. Karel saw Julian and Louis together and thought he's the last stand surely my last stand if one won't be the whole exclusive flesh won't be the marble like that...
Gabriel took Louis aside and said let's go but Louis said not now.
The gin was all gone and Harold volunteered to buy two more bottles (even if he had sent all his money to his mother) provided someone else would go for it so Frederick said he would go for it with Gene's friend and Gene's friend not being articulate enough to say he'd rather not, went out the door with Frederick.
Armand's eyes were beginning to be red and dilated and glazed and K-Y called him honey over and over.
Julian and Theodosia danced and Theodosia spoke of things which might please her.
Harold was talking to Santiago and Osbert.
Karel was listening to Gabriel and Louis who were arguing about one thing while they meant another.
Frederick and Gene's friend came back sooner than everyone had expected and gin was drunk by everyone except K-Y and Gabriel.
Karel drank more than he had ever drunk in one evening.
The others were talking at the tops of their voices when there was a knock on the door leading into the hall and upstairs.
Oh God who could that be Karel said you go to the door Julian.
Julian opened the door as Karel and Frederick fled to the washroom.
Standing outside was a kimona with a head of hair sticking out the top. 'Please' came from a mouth that Julian did not locate at once. He gradually made out the eyes. If you're going to keep up this noise till morning I'm going to call the police. Ive got to go to work in Brooklyn at four o'clock and I've got to get some sleep whatdoyouthinkthisistheFOURTHOFJULY?
It does make me think of history Julian said have a drink.
No I won't have a drink and if you don't stop this noise I'm going to call the police call the police that's all me gottogotoworkat four o'clock way out to Brooklyn and you trying to tear the house down... She receded toward the stairs still talking and so up the stairs, still talking...
The nerve Harold said instead of apologizing for her face she asks us can you the nerve of...
Julian thought it best to at least stop the victrola since no one seemed inclined to leave just at that moment.
Everybody had another drink and when Karel passed out Julian allowed Frederick to put him to bed there. Frederick worshipped Karel and considered him his 'first influence”.
Gabriel urged Louis to leave with him. Louis said say wait a minute can't you? and Gabriel
departed.
Theodosia said to Julian she had planned to spend the night with him but since Karel...
Yes Julian said since Karel...
Gene offered to take her home and Theodosia said all right call a taxi.
Can we sleep in the bed on the balcony? Osbert asked meaning Santiago and himself. I'm so drunk he won't be able to take me home.
Shut up Santiago said. I'll get you home you bore me.
Harold said he would die if he didn't have some oysters at once. So kissing (almost everybody) good-bye declaring, though, that his love was not wholly physical he left with Osbert and Santiago.
K-Y was still calling Armand honey and after a while got him to get up and go.
Frederick said his mother would be frantic if he wasn't in soon but that he would see them tomorrow night. He lived in the Bronx.
Karel looked as if he would be unconscious until daylight.
Louis, the only other one left, had made no move to go so Julian said let's finish the gin. He drank his highball slowly and noticed for the first time what a beautiful nose Louis had. But he thought Louis' hair too thick as he grasped a handful. Julian looked at Louis looking up at him and said the only thing I have against life is that it spoils young men's mouths. Where are you sleeping tonight?
I have a place to sleep.
Sleep here. You and Karel and I will sleep in one bed.
Have you got cigarettes and oranges for breakfast?
I've got cigarettes and I can get oranges.
They undressed and went to bed that way with Karel who had one hand on the floor. They lay in bed smoking, their heads turning with the gin.
Julian thought: for a sexual conquest that turns out to be mutual it is not required that flattery be used by the agressor; all that is necessary is that the object feel inferior, not in intellectual qualities but in sexual attractiveness.
He changed the position of his head.
THE sun didn't shine white but the sun shone. Karel slept, loving neither flowers, animals nor music. There was no clock in the place. Louis found cigarettes and gave Julian one. Louis sat at the table and wrote with pencil on a piece of yellow paper. Julian looked at the floor strewn with cigarette butts, a broken victrola record and some glasses. An empty gin bottle stood at Louis' elbow and another lay at his ankle.
Don't you know that poems shouldn't be written after sexual excesses Julian said.
Louis said that is when I always write. He had put on Julian's dressing-gown without bothering to draw the sash together.
I suppose I'll take a bath Julian suggested if you don't mind giving me the robe. Julian looked at his face in the mirror. Before going to bed he had not removed the mascara that Karel had applied to his eyelashes and under his eyebrows was black and under his eyes was black. He applied cold cream to his face, wiped it off, and went upstairs to the tin-lined bathtub with the shower above it. The water was alternately hot and cold. Somebody had left a pair of socks in one corner. There was a bar of soap on the tub which Julian took back downstairs. He found Karel awake but still in bed and talking to Louis who was dressing. Karel became quiet when Julian entered and nothing was said until Louis, after borrowing a book and turning his mouth down at Karel, smiling, left, saying I'll see you guys later.
Karel remained silent and Julian said how do you feel?
I always feel too much but I am aware of it Karel said.
I didn't say what do you feel.
Well, as long as I live I shall be able to extract myself from places, sooner rather than later.
Then you cannot bear challenges? asked Julian.
Of course I meant, also dragging the spoils with me.
I hope you will never have to commit suicide to do that.
Karel didn't reply, considering the unexpectedness of his position, which had come about inadvertently. A week ago he had looked on Louis with intolerance and little curiosity. Louis' way of seizing people made Karel think of a carnivorous bird or animal. Karel saw him hurt physically and realized the strength and weakness of Louis whom he went to bed with. Louis' asking was his way of taking. Karel was filled with a sense of power because of the willingness, even eagerness, of Louis to make their relation not a one-way affair sexually. Louis' sense of power was dilated by the fact that Karel was to keep him. Karel saw his own strength and weakness juxtaposed on that of Louis and what he saw made a whole. During the night he had just spent in bed with Julian and Louis he had heard Julian laugh and then Louis laugh and saw a segment of the whole, at the existence of which he was annoyed. He did not resent the tangent of Gabriel for he saw how he could be eliminated, in spite of Louis' having been dominated from the first by him. There were people who remembered the meeker Louis. Gabriel inspired action. Karel was sure Louis wanted to slough off Gabriel's influence not only because he feared it but also because he wanted now to show his own independence. Therefore Karel did not fear Gabriel's success if he chose to interfere, but Julian, he found, made the thing lopsided. I am moving uptown tonight he said to Julian. With Louis.
Why uptown?
I think it's safer. If I live down here Louis will get in bad with the gangsters. He's been too friendly with a few of them and they wouldn't accept his living with me. Too many undesirable people know my address anyway.
I don't guess then I'll see you very often.
You can visit us can't you?
Julian felt an absence of something he had held dear a few minutes before. He looked around the room to see what was missing. He could find a wrong space nowhere and was sad. Then he thought he saw what he had lost. Since he saw it it must have been returned so he hadn't lost it for good.
His temporary illusion had disclosed a softness in him. A softness is a weakness and that submitted to always leaves some sort of something if only a small fear. This was a something that could be concealed by something else. He would think by what, by what it could be concealed.
Good-bye now. He looked at Karel with hard eyes and hoped the tears wouldn't come through until Karel left and when Karel left the tears didn't come through. He was learning to assume hardness. He put water and ground coffee in the pot and lit the gas. He dressed himself while thinking about love. He doubted the sincerity of the people he saw living together supposedly in love. He had never known physical and mental love towards a single person. It had always been completely one or the other. With Karel it was the other. With Louis really neither. He was unbelieving when he saw lovers who were lovers in the complete sense and who slept night after night in the same bed. He was quite sure their love was a fabrication or a convenience or a recompense and he did not believe in their love as love. There was a poem about that and he opened a book to read it and came to
'We shall say, love is no more
Than walking, smiling,
Forcing out “good morning",
And were it more it were
Fictitiousness and nothing.'
'We close our eyes, we clutch at bodies,
We wake at dream's length from each other
And love shamefully and coldly
Strangers we seem to know by memory'
'Like dunces we still shall kiss
When graduated from music-making'
Why had his estrangement with Karel happened and what could Karel gain from Louis? The coffee began to percolate and smell good. Julian pulled the table up to the bed and sat on the bed.
Somebody knocked coarsely from the hall. It was Mr. Simon's Swedish boy come to sweep and put the room in order. Sometimes he left a pile of dirt in the middle of the floor.
Julian finished the coffee, put on his jacket, overcoat and black hat, and went out to the street. He was alone now for Karel was gone and he walked along looking at the sidewalk. Little boys with baskets of wood passed. The smell of beer came from a basement. He would go to the French place a few doors down and get a 'white bunny' for fifty cents, a pink drink tasting of liquorice. He reached a door painted green and rang the bell. The lock clicked and he went in and up the steps.
The proprietor opened the door for him and he nodded once and went in. There were no other customers at that hour in the room filled with white-covered tables. The windows at the front were on a level with the elevated tracks. He sat facing them and asked for a white bunny and lit a cigarette. He sipped the drink but it was soon gone so he ordered another and waited a while before tasting it.
I hate this place which is at this moment a. lonely; b. unlovely; c. has the possibility of the same thing that anything with possibility has. And what is that but the is and the do.
He ordered another drink and that made three and four made two dollars which was all the dollars he had. He went out and down the steps. Thank God for a kind of great show and he meant by that look at them. He wasn't at home. And here o murderpiss beautiful boys grow out of dung.
And wear padded shoulders. They push flesh into eternity and sidestep automobiles. I bemoan them most under sheets at night when their eyes rimmed with masculinity see nothing and their lymphlips are smothered by the irondomed sky. Poor things, their genitals only peaceful when without visiting cards. They install themselves narrowly and until 11:15 their trousers must be adjusted over the exclamation point, the puritanical period that old maids prefer not to grasp although they say how do you do adonisprick or do they grasp it with their five-fingered wrinkled cunts. Oh they will never undress in the subway fearing imprisonment and shame. Ramon Novarro wouldn't, no, nor Richard Barthelmess and John Barrymore wouldn't though he is old enough. Harry Number wouldn't nor would Louis, no, nor Karel nor I nor the one who would like the length of it to be seen.
Their necks grow unknowingly, their eyes are eaten eventually; something explodes near their testicles and in the vicinity of their hearts (and sometimes they are nauseated). They doubtless clean spots off or out; they are soldiers without medals since they have legs with hairs on them and their heels sound. They wash themselves assuredly.
I have often imagined the curve of them next to me in bed colored like coffee or like cream or like peaches and cream powder but without peaches and cream powder in their perspiring dear pores. They have I understand eyelashes with noses to match.
I have often caught them going into toilets and coming out too.
I know the strange as it may seem pull towards the goodlooking ones, the ones with the proud rumps and the careless underlips. They have all positions but stardusters' but I wouldn't mind a starduster, at least if I could depend on him at 8:30, but a prizefighter might be better though I don't know: some movie actors have made me look for my hat extraordinarily. They should carry knives to kill those others and hang their cunts around their necks and give them to the hungry dogs. And for every one given to or stolen by them or at any rate CUT, I personally would give them each a you can guess kiss.
Wives douse them but not always; you can see them dripping yet their cuffs are clean.
Broadway is one of the streets they walk on and 72nd Street another (and there are still others o pleased to be varied God). A pair of dice would be useless: buy a pair and swallow them but sit and wait or walk and wait. Their profiles may have nothing to do with carfare, then again gin may be bought and lemons even stolen though grenadine is a luxury. All won't make love though because that's the queerest part: boys you with the bluebrown shadows among your clothes and in warm rooms the closetomeredder smell.
He turned back down Fifth Avenue because the wind was blowing and it was cold. When he reached his studio he dropped on the bed and heard for the thousandth and more time the irregular beat of his heart through his right ear on the pillow.
This did not interfere this time with how beautiful she was. She had never been so beautiful even when he was ten years old. There were violet shadows around her eyes and the nipples of her breasts were not large. She raised her arms and there was no hair under them. No hair anywhere else except the long hair from her head. She was walking by the sea and someone was coming towards her: a sailor in a blue suit with a white sailor hat on the back of his head. When she saw him she stopped and looked at him and her violet eyes with the violet shadows were gazing at him. He walked to her his body and arms swinging like they would swing a little. When he got to her he leaned on the beach with his left thigh and elbow. He was twenty years old; his name was Jack; he had green eyes and the color of his hair was the bright gold color of the short silk threads of his eyes and brow. His teeth were white like the cap he wore and his face gold to a shade as the hand he raised to her (a shade less gold than the sun's sorrow). She let her knees fall into the sand by him. She wasn't afraid of him at all, she was by the sea. They were warm to each other, he was pure. She was beautiful, it was sad to see the sailor-boy have to piss afterwards and walk away.
GABRIEL accepted it as he might have accepted a suddenly proffered second-hand thing, unneeded and unuseful. He smiled at the Italian and put the pint of liquor in his overcoat pocket.
It was not the manner in which his lips were drawn over his teeth, or any unspoken phrase in his eyes, that, to one who was conscious of Gabriel as an entity, gave his smile the impress of derision; for if he were looked at through the eyes of a stranger his smile was acceptable enough. And often there was no lack of warmth in it—he simply did not have even a small portion of what is called charm. If it was his will to treat the lives of people objectively, hence without involving his own feelings, hence selfishly, it was his fate to be treated so by others.
He thanked the short young man with the dark suit and gray hat, buttoned his overcoat and left the speakeasy where he had spent the night and morning sitting in a chair, for he had had no room since Louis had left with Karel. He had not been drinking and had eaten no breakfast.
Walking along Fourteenth Street toward Union Square, Gabriel was in one of those not so frequent days before spring when the air is cold but not penetrating, and the sun splendid and will prove to be very warming about noon if the rays of it are allowed to shine on your face and hair. He was on his way to Theodosia's where he had been going at one in the afternoon to have toast and coffee and to type Theodosia's manuscripts for which she paid him ten cents a page. Possibly two weeks he had been thus occupied. When he arrived at her apartment she was always in the bathroom, the door of which opened into the bedroom but which could be seen from the studio where Gabriel did the typing. She would crack the bathroom door an inch or two and peep at Gabriel with the announcement that she would be out in just a minute.
Gabriel had never looked into her eyes with desire. If he had considered her as an object of pleasure, it was only as a minor pleasure that could be postponed indefinitely.
When he reached the square he walked in a diagonal line to the subway entrance but did not descend the steps. Instead he walked further to the center of that tract of earth which, rumor had it, was in the process of becoming a park. Now the ground was brown and the frozen mud was softening under the heat. He stopped and looked around him: the Amalgamated Bank, Co-operative Cafeteria, S. Klein...
People picked up their legs like racehorses and walked close to the show-windows around the square. He seemed in the center of a huge merry-go-round. He looked at the sun and it blinded him for an instant. Feeling the bottle of liquor, which his hand had warmed, he took it out of his pocket and extracted the cork. Raising the bottle to his lips he tilted his head back, closing his eyes to the sun. The whisky flowed down his throat, leaving the bottle in excited regular agitations. His insides felt as if they were just being given life, as if they had had no blood before and were ready now to function. The bottle was empty and made a bright crystal twirl toward a policeman standing a mile away at the corner of Fifteenth Street and Union Square.
Gabriel must get off the merry-go-round. It was turning so fast now that it made him dizzy. It was going around and around and around and then it stopped and he almost fell over but it started again, going with more speed than ever, and his balance was regained.
He continued the diagonal line he had started and left all the men in overalls and other clothes turning in Union Square. Eighteenth Street was Theodosia. He was going to Eighteenth Street and Theodosia. He went along some street distinguished because it could exist nowhere but m a large city in the United States. He hated the people in the street as a whole and he hated them individually for he was not Napoleon that he could crush them all at once, it would have to be singly and a part of himself each time made either looser or stronger by the wound he would receive from them. He was walking along very fast and hardly swerved from a straight line so that they had to step out of his way. Something was pulling him up by the scalp and he held out his arms in readiness to grasp anything if he felt himself leaving the sidewalk. His overcoat flapped behind him. His full black kinky hair stood up like a headdress.
Eggshell is Theodosia he thought. He kept his lips shut and held in a laugh that wanted to get out. Lunatics laugh he thought and did Napoleon ever? If he laughed at Napoleon he would be a lunatic. He could feel himself laughing all over so he clamped his tongue between his teeth.
Theodosia will have just gotten out of bed. She will be in her bathroom with the charcoals of grotesque nudes on the dark green walls. She will peep out at him through the slit in the door and he mustn't curse her.
He reached Eighteenth Street and found the entrance to Theodosia's dwelling. The front door was open and he walked into the hall and back to her door which was unlocked. In the studio he shed his overcoat and fumbled with his left hand at the knot in his tie. He took long breaths and walked heavily towards the bathroom door.
It was opened two inches and one eye of Theodosia looked at him. She didn't say, as usual, just a minute. Gabriel stopped with his lips apart and looked at the slit showing her one eye. He was silent and seemed to be impelled towards the thin horizontal shaft that had an eye at the top. He was running after it (through a tunnel) and the thing was on the end of a train leaving him running as hard as he could; in the darkness he stumbled, he was pitching forward and his face would be smashed; he was falling forward, he made no resistance and was shocked into consciousness like if an alarm clock had gone off. His eyes focused and it was Theodosia's breathing close face that he saw. He felt her arms around his neck and his arms around her waist. He smiled sweetly as he could and picked up her body which was taller than his own and walked with her to the bed. She wore a white nightgown. On the journey to the bed she said Gabriel Gabriel and put a cheek against his shoulder. He deposited her on the bed. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing rapidly. Gabriel kept his eyes on her while he jerked off his coat for if he took his eyes away he had a difficult time locating her again.
Theodosia had waited two weeks for this moment. She had dreamed of it, then thought of it, then prayed for it. Yet she had done nothing, said nothing, ever, to show Gabriel that she might submit to him. She had felt when with him that her spirituality was challenged. His thoughts seemed forever separated from the flesh. But in her heart Theodosia desired to make him hers just once. After that they could ascend the mountains again—or, at least, he could. She kept her eyes closed as she felt Gabriel beside her. Her nightgown was being raised and she breathed faster and faster. She felt Gabriel's hands on her ankles and her legs slowly bending at the knees. Oh, oh she gasped, her eyes still closed. Then she opened her eyes some and saw Gabriel on the bed kneeling in front of her with his hands holding her legs apart, his mouth descending.
Gabriel felt her faint. He was standing in the middle of a merry-go-round and saw a nude woman walk up behind him. She kicked his head off. He saw his head whirl brilliantly from his shoulders. His head was a bottle whirling in the sun. He could see the blood gushing from his headless trunk. It gushed like vomit.
He had vomited.
Theodosia jumped up and fled to the bathroom, closing the door with a sob. Gabriel fell in the place on the bed where she had lain. After a thick voice said Napoleon, almost tenderly, he heard nothing more.