Mercy (77 page)

sharp-edged thing scrapes it raw. I need enough bills to keep,

drinking so no one’s going to chase me aw ay or say I can’t pay

rent on the stool or so I don’t have to smile at no one or so no

bartender don’t have me throwed out; I am fearful about that;

they always treat you so illegitimate but if you can show

enough money they will tolerate you sitting there. There’s not

enough money for me to eat even if they’d let me so I put that

out o f m y mind, I would like lobster o f course with the biggest

amount o f drawn butter, just drenched in it, ju st so much it

drips down and you can feel it spreading out inside your

mouth all rich and glorious, it’s like some divine silky stu ff but

there’s never enough o f it and I have to ask for more and they

act parsimonious and shocked. If you sit at a table you have to

buy dinner, they don’t have some idea that you could just sit

there and be cool and watch or have a little o f this and a little o f

that; they only have the idea that everyone’s lying, you know,

everyone’s pretending, everyone’s trying to rip them off,

everyone’s pretending to be rich so they have to see the money

or everyone’s pretending they’re going to eat so they have to

see the m oney or everyone’s pretending they can pay for the

drinks so they have to see the money and if yo u ’re a woman

you don’t get a table even i f you got money; m y idea is if I have

enough m oney and I put it out in front o f me on the bar and I

keep drinking and drinking I can stay there and then I don’t

have to look to m y right or to m y left at a man for a fucking

thing; I can i f I want but I am not obliged. I’m usually too shy

to push m y w ay in and I’ve never tried it, I ju st know yo u ’re

not supposed to be there alone, but tonight I want to drink, it’s

what I want like some people want to win the Indy 500 or

there’s some that want to walk on the moon; I want to drink;

pure. I want to sit there and have m y ow n stool and I don’t

want to have to be worried about being asked to leave or made

to leave because I’m ju st some impoverished girl or gash that’s

loose. I will stare at the clear liquid, crystal, in the glass, and I

will contemplate it as a beautiful thing and I will feel the pain

that is monumentally a part o f me and I will keep drinking and

I will feel it lessen and I will feel the warmth spread out all over

me inside and I will feel the surging, hard, nasty river go

warmer and smoother and silkier as the Stoli runs with it, as it

falls from top to bottom inside me, first it’s on the surface o f

the river, then it’s deeper down in it, then it’s a silk, burning

stream, a great, warm stream, and it will gentle the terrible

river o f pain. I will think deeply; about art; about life; I will

keep thoughts pouring through me as inside I get warmer and

calmer and it hurts less, the hurt dims and fades or hides under

a fucking rock, I don’t care; and m y brow will curl, you know,

sullen, troubled, melancholy, as if I’m some artist in m y own

right myself; and the noise will be beautiful to me, part o f a

new esthetic I am cultivating, and I will hear in it the tumult o f

bare existence and the fierce resonance o f personal pain as if it’s

a riff from Charlie Parker to God and I will hear in it the

anarchic triumph o f m y own individual soul over the deep evil

that has maimed me. I take the bills and crush them into m y

pocket and I walk, I run, I light down the stairs and out the

building, I leave my quiet room, and I hit the streets and I

walk, fast, dedicated, determined, stubborn, filled with fury,

spraying piss and vinegar, to M ax’s, about twelve blocks from

where I live, an artists’ restaurant and bar, because I know it

will be filled with ramrod hard noise and heat, a crush o f hard,

noisy men, artists and poseurs and I don’t know the difference,

poseurs and the famous and I don’t know the difference, it’s a

modern crime but I can’t concentrate on it enough to

remember the ones you’re supposed to know, except Warhol

because he’s so strange and he’d stand out anywhere and I

don’t want to go near him; but the difference mostly is that I

think I am the artist, not them, but you can’t say that and it’s

hard even to keep thinking it though I don’t know w hy it’s so

hard, maybe because girls aren’t ever it; but all the poseurs and

all the famous will be at the tables where I can’t go, even if I

had money to eat they w ouldn’t let me eat there, not alone,

and I w o n ’t be one o f the pleading girls who is begging to be

allowed to go to the tables, I will just get a stool at the bar if the

guy at the door lets me in, he might not and usually I am too

shy to defy him and I hang tight with a man but tonight I want

in myself, I want the noise and the hard edge and the crush and

I want to drink, I want to find a place at the bar for m yself and

it’s got m y name on it even though I don’t got no name for the

purposes o f the man at the door but the stool’s mine and I will

drink and I will stay as long as I have bills in front o f me and it’s

an unwritten law about girls, that they don’t let you sit

anywhere, so you never quite understand w hy you can be

somewhere sometimes and not the same place the next time

and you figure out you got to hang on to a man and you are his

shadow, like Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow back on. It

sure insures a steady flow o f affection wom an to man if you

can’t even sit down without one. Tonight I have a singular

distaste for a man. I’m not starting out with any interest

whatsoever. H e’d have to catch m y eye like starlight or it’d

have to be like fairy dust where you want some and you need a

taste, it’s something that tickles you deep down but you can’t

reach it to scratch, like the cut o f a record you listen to a

thousand times or you got a taste you can’t get rid o f so yo u ’re

like some fucking hamster on one o f them wheels just running

and running or yo u ’re skim ming coke o ff the top o f something or smack o ff the top o f something, you just get smitten,

lightly but completely, stuck in the moment but also riveted

so you can’t shake it loose, infatuated now , freedom now ,

there’s some special charge com ing from him and yo u ’re

plugged in and it’s sparking, it’s not like you want to get laid

and yo u ’re looking for someone w h o ’s going to be good, it’s

more like some trait you can’t identify strikes you wham , it’s

got an obsession lurking under it, it’s a light feeling but under

it is a burning habit, a habit you ain’t got yet but you just want

to play with it once, like skinpopping heroin or something,

you know, it ain’t serious but you want it. I take an energetic