Mercy (36 page)

him or not. I guess it depends on how many boys there are

being fed hormones by pedophiles. Once it’s in
Newsweek
, I

guess there are thousands. The kid’s around here somewhere;

it said Low er East Side; I hate it, what the man did to him.

These Goddamn men would all be each other’s meat if they

weren’t the butchers. They use fucking to slice you open. It’s

like they’re hollow, there’s nothing there, except they make

big noise, this unbearable static, some screeching, high-

pitched pain, and you can’t see they’re hollow because the

noise diverts you to near madness; big lovemaker with fifty

dollars to spend, seed to spill making mimetic magic, grind,

bang, it’s a boy, a big, bad boy who writes books, big, bad

books. I see the future and it’s a bunch o f pricks making a

literature o f fucking, high art about sticking it in; I did it, ma;

she was filth and I did it. O nly yo u ’ll get a Mailer-Genet beast:

I did it, ma, I did it to her, he did it to me. The cement will

grow them; sympathetic magic w orks; the spilled seed, the

grinding, bang bang, pushes the fuck out past the bounds o f

physical reality; it lurks in the biosphere; it will creep into

weeping wom bs; they’ll be born, the next generation, out o f

what the assholes do to me; I’ve got enough semen dripping in

me for a literary renaissance, an encyclopedia o f novellas, a

generation o f genius; maybe some o f them will paint or write

songs. Mother earth, magic vessel, the altar where they

worship, the sacred place; fifty dollars to burn a candle, or

pills, or a meal and money; bang bang ain’t never without

consequences for the future o f the race. N o reason the race

should be different from the people in it. There’s no tom orrow

I know of. I never seen one that ain’t today. It’s fine to be slut-

mama to a literary movement; the corporeal altar o f sym pathetic motherhood to a generation; his loins; m y ass.

Immortal, anonymous means to his end. It’s what the hippie

girls all glittering, flecked, stardust, want: to be procreatrix

with flowering hips and tea made from plants instead o f

Lipton; they recline, posh and simple, all spread out draped in

flowing cotton and color; they don’t take money; well, they

do, but they don’t say so upfront— from my point o f view

they are mannerless in this regard; mostly they just hang on,

like they have claws, it passes for spiritual, they just sit there

until he comes back from wherever he’s gone after coitus has

made him triste, they say it’s meditating but it’s just waiting

for some guy to show w ho’s left; they ain’t under the light,

they are o f it— luminescent fairy things from on high, just

down for a fast, ethereal screw. I been to bed with them;

usually a man and one o f them, because they don’t do women

alone— too real for the nitrous oxide crowd, not Buddhistic

enough— it’s got an I want right between the legs and it’s got

your genitals leading your heart around or vice versa, who the

hell knows, and it don’t make the boy happy unless he gets to

watch and the hippie girls do not irritate the love-boys by

doing things that might not be directly and specifically for

them. The hippie boys like bringing another woman into bed.

Y ou can shake some coke loose from them if you do it; or

money, which they pretend is like nothing but they hold onto

it pretty tight. Coke and orange juice is my favorite breakfast;

they want you to do the coke with them because it makes them

hard and high and ready but I like to take some o ff with me and

do it alone or with someone I pick, not with someone in bed

with some silly girl who ought to be a housewife but is seeing

the big city and he’s so hip he has to be able to roll over from

one to another, dreaming it’s another housewife, all girls are

housewives to him; peace, flowers, love, clean m y house, bake

m y bread. They try to tell you they see the real you, the

sensitive you, inside, and the real you doesn’t want money—

she wants the good fucking he’s got and to make strings o f

beads for him and sell them in flea markets for him; darling,

it’s sad. Y ou convey to the guy that you’re the real thing, what

he never thought would be near him, street grime he w on ’t be

able to wash off, and he’s so trembling and overw rought his

prick starts shaking. There’s some who do things real, don’t

spend their time posturing or preening; they just pull it out

without philosophy. There’s this one I had once, with a

woman. I was on Demerol because I had an operation; m y

appendix came out but it had got all infected and it was a big

slice in me and then they let me loose with a blood clot because

there w asn’t somewhere for me to stay and I didn’t have

money or no one to take care o f me so they just let me out. M y

side didn’t seem like it would stay sewed, it felt open, and

there was a pain from the clot that was some evil drilling in m y

shoulder that they called reflexive pain which meant the pain

was really somewhere else but I could only feel it in m y

shoulder. It hurt to breathe. Y ou don’t think about your

shoulder or how it moves when you breathe unless some Nazi

is putting a drill in it; I saw God the Nazi pushing His full

weight on the drill and if I breathed it made more pressure

from inside on where the drill was and there w asn’t enough

Demerol in the world. So I’m walking around, desperate and

dreamy, in pain but liking the pills, and I see this shirt, fucking

beautiful shirt, purple and turquoise and shades o f blue all in

flowers, silk, astonishing whirl o f color; and the man’s dark

with long hair and a beard, some prototype, no face, ju st hair;

and I take him back but there’s this girl with him too, and she’s

all hippie, endlessly expressing herself and putting little pats

on m y hand, teeny weeny little pats, her hand to mine:

expressing affection for another woman; heavy shit. I can

barely believe this one’s rubbing her hands on me. And the

guy starts fucking, and he’s some kind o f monster o f fuck, he

lasts forever and a day, it’s night, it’s dark, and hours go by,

and I see the light coming up, and she and me are next to each

other, and he’s in me, then he’s in her, then me, then her, and

m y side is splitting open and I’m not supposed to be m oving

around with the clot but you can’t keep your hips still the

whole time although my interest comes and goes, at some

point the boy takes o ff the shirt and I’m wondering who he is

and w hy he’s here, and I don’t have to w orry about her

sentimentality because the boy isn’t seeking variety and he

don’t want to watch, this is a boy who wants to fuck and he