Mercy (55 page)

can do that myself, I just get the vodka straight up, nothing

else in the glass taking up room but it’s greed because I like

rocks. I never had enough money at one time to buy a bottle. I

love looking at vodka bottles, especially the foreign ones— I

feel excited and distinguished and sophisticated and part o f a

real big world when I have the bottle near me. I think the

bottles are really beautiful, and the liquid is so clear, so

transparent, to me it’s like liquid diamonds, I think it’s

beautiful. I feel it connects me with Russia and all the Russians

and there is a dark melancholy as well as absolute jo y when I

drink it. It brings me near Chekhov and D ostoevsky. I like

how it burns the first drink and after that it’s just this splendid

warmth, as i f hot coals were silk sliding down inside me and I

get warm, m y throat, m y chest, m y lungs, the skin inside my

skin, whatever the inside o f m y skin is; it clings inside me. M y

grandparents came from Russia, m y daddy’s parents, and I try

to think they drank it but I’m pretty sure they w ouldn’t have,

they were just ghetto Jew s, it was probably the drink o f the

ones who persecuted them and drove them into running

away, but I don’t mind that anyw ay, because now I’m in

Am erika and I can drink the drink o f Cossacks and peasants if I

want; it soothes me, I feel triumphant and warm , happy too. I

have this idea about vodka, that it is perfect. I think it is

perfect. I think it is beautiful and pure and filled with absolute

power— the power o f something absolutely pure. It’s com pletely rare, this perfection. It’s more than that the pain dies or

it makes you magic; yeah, you soar on it and you get wise and

strong by drinking it and it’s a magnificent lover, taking you

whole. But I love ju st being near it in any w ay, shape, or form.

I would like to be pure like it is and I’d like to have only pure

things around me; I wish everything I’m near or I, touch could

be as perfect. I feel it’s very beautiful and if I ever die I wouldn’t

mind having a bottle o f it buried with me, if someone would

spring for it: one bottle o f Stoli hundred proof in honor o f me

and m y times, forever. I’d drink it slow, over time. It’d make

the maggots easier to take, that’s for sure. It does that now.

They ain’t all maggots, o f course. I been with people who

matter. I been with people who achieved something in life. I

want excellence myself. I want to attain it. There’s this woman

married to a movie star, they are damned nice and damned

rich, they take me places, to parties and dinners, and I eat

dinner with them at their house sometimes and she calls me

and gets me in a cab and I go with her. I met her because I was

w orking against the Vietnam War some more. I got back to

N ew Y ork in Novem ber 1972. It was a cold winter. I had

nothing; was nothing; I had some stories I was writing; I slept

on the floor near someone’s bed in a rented room. Nixon

bombed a hospital in North Vietnam. All these civilians died. I

couldn’t really stand it. I went to my old peace friends and I

started helping out: demonstrations, phone calls, leaflets,

newspaper ads, the tricks o f the trade don’t change. I had this

idea that important Amerikans— artists, writers, movie stars,

all the glitz against the War— should go to North Vietnam sort

o f as voluntary hostages so either N ixon would have to stop

the bombing or risk killing all them. It would show how venal

the bombings were; and that they killed Vietnamese because

Vietnamese were nothing to them, just nothing; and it was

morally right to put yourself with the people being hurt.

Inside yourself you felt you had to stop the War. Inside

yourself you felt the War turned you into a murderer. Inside

yourself you couldn’t stand the Vietnamese dying because this

government was so fucking arrogant and out o f control.

There was a lot o f us who never stopped thinking about the

War, despite our personal troubles; sometimes it was hard not

to have it drive you completely out o f your mind— if you let it

sink in, how horrible it was, you really could go mad and do

terrible things. So I got hooked up with some famous people

who wanted to stop the War; some had been in the peace

movement before, some just came because o f the bombings.

We wanted to stop the bombing; we wanted to pay for the

hospital; we wanted to be innocent o f the murders. The U . S.

government was an outlaw to us. The famous people gave

press conferences, signed ads, signed petitions, and some even

did civil disobedience; I typed, made phone calls, the usual;

shit work; but I also tried to push m y ideas in. The idea was to

use their fame to get out anti-War messages and to get more

mainstream opposition to the War. Hey, I was home; only in

Amerika. One day this woman came in to where we were

w orking— to help, she said; was there anything she could do

to help, she asked— and she was as disreputable looking as me

or more so— she looked sort o f like a gypsy boy or some street

w a if—and they treated her like dirt, so condescending, which

was how they treated me, exactly, and it turned out she was

the wife o f this mega-star, so they got all humble and started

sucking. I had just talked to her like a person from the

beginning so she invited me to their house that night for

dinner— it turned out it was her birthday party but she didn’t

tell me that. I got there on time and no one else came for an

hour so her and me and her husband talked a lot and they were

nice even though it was clear I didn’t understand I w asn’t

supposed to show up yet. She took me places, all over, and we

caroused and talked and drank and once when he w asn’t home

she let me take this elaborate bath and she brought me a

beautiful glass o f champagne in the tub, then he came in, and I

don’t know if he was mad or not, but he was always real nice

to me, and nothing was going on, and there wasn’t no bath or

shower where I lived, though I was ashamed to say so, I had to

make an appointment with someone in the building to use

theirs. They kept me alive for a while, though they couldn’t

have known it. I ate when I was with them; otherwise I didn’t.

M y world got so big: parties, clubs, people; it was like a tour

o f a hidden world. Once she even took me to the opera. I never

was there before. She bought me a glass o f champagne and we

stood among ladies in gowns on red velvet carpets. But then

they left. And I knew some painters, real rich and famous.

One o f them was the lover o f a girl I knew. He befriended me,

like a chum, like a sort o f brother in some ways. He just acted

nice and invited me places where he was where there were a lot

o f people. He didn’t mind that I was shy. He talked to me a lot.

He seemed to see that I was overwhelmed and he didn’t take it

wrong. He tried to make me feel at ease. He tried to draw me

out. I sort o f wanted to stay away from places but he just tried

to get me to come forward a little. In some ways he seemed

like a camp counselor organizing events: now we hike, now

we make purses. I’d go drinking with all these painters in their

downtown bars and they had plenty o f money and it wasn’t a

matter o f tit for tat, they just kept the drinks coming, never

seemed to occur to them to stop drinking. I knew his girlfriend

who was a painter. At first when I met him I had just got back.

I was sleeping on floors. I slept on her floor some nights when

he wasn’t there. She was all tortured about him, she was just