Run With the Hunted (23 page)

I had lucked out. The movie was over and the first stripper was already on. Darlene. The first was usually the worst, an old-timer come down, now reduced to kicking leg in the chorus line most of the time. We had Darlene for openers. Probably someone had been murdered or was on the rag or was having a screaming fit, and this was Darlene's chance to dance solo again.

But Darlene was fine. Skinny, but with breasts. A body like a willow. At the end of that slim back, that slim body, was an enormous behind. It was like a miracle—enough to drive a man crazy.

Darlene was dressed in a long black velvet gown slit very high—her calves and thighs were dead white against the black. She danced and looked out at us through heavily mascaraed eyes. This was her chance. She wanted to come back—to be a featured dancer once again. I was with her. As she worked at the zippers more and more of her began to show, to slip out of that sophisticated black velvet, leg and white flesh. Soon she was down to her pink bra and G-string—the fake diamonds swinging and flashing as she danced.

Darlene danced over and grabbed the stage curtain. The curtain was torn and thick with dust. She grabbed it, dancing to the beat of the four man band and in the light of the pink spotlight.

She began to fuck that curtain. The band rocked in rhythm. Darlene really gave it to that curtain; the band rocked and she rocked. The pink light abruptly switched to purple. The band stepped it up, played all out. She appeared to climax. Her head fell back, her mouth opened.

Then she straightened and danced back to the center of the stage. From where I was sitting I could hear her singing to herself over the music. She took a hold of her pink bra and ripped it off and a guy three rows down lit a cigarette. There was just the G-string now. She pushed her finger into her bellybutton, and moaned.

Darlene remained dancing at stage center. The band was playing very softly. She began a gentle grind. She was fucking us. The beaded G-string was swaying slowly. Then the four man band began to pick up gradually once again. They were reaching for the culmination of the act; the drummer was cracking rim-shots like firecrackers; they looked tired, desperate.

Darlene fingered her naked breasts, showing them to us, her eyes filled with the dream, her lips moist and parted. Then suddenly she turned and waved her enormous behind at us. The beads leaped and flashed, went crazy, sparkled. The spotlight shook and danced like the sun. The four man band crackled and banged. Darlene spun around. She tore away the beads. I looked, they looked. We could see her cunt hairs through the flesh-colored gauze. The band really spanked her ass.

And I couldn't get it up.

—
F
ACTOTUM

bird-dream and peeling wallpaper

symptoms of grey sleep

and at 4 a.m. Whitey came out of his room

(the solace of the poor is in numbers

like Summer poppies)

and he began to scream
help me! help me! help me!

(an old man with hair as white as any ivory tusk)

and he was vomiting blood

help me help me help me

and I helped him he down in the hall

and I beat on the landlady's door

(she is as French as the best wine but as tough as

an American steak) and

I hollered her name,
Marcella! Marcella!

(the milkman would soon be coming with his

pure white bottles like chilled lilies)

Marcella! Marcella! help me help me help me
,

and she screamed back through the door:

you polack bastard, are you drunk again? Then

Promethean the eye at the door

and she

sized up the red river in her rectangular brain

(oh, I am nothing but a drunken polack

a bad pinch-hitter a writer of letters to the newspapers)

and she spoke into the phone like a lady ordering bread and eggs,

and I held to the wall

dreaming bad poems and my own death

and the men came … one with a cigar, the other needing a shave,

and they made him stand up and walk down the steps

his ivory head on fire (Whitey, my drinking pal—

all the songs, Sing Gypsy, Laugh Gypsy, talk about

the war, the fights, the good whores,

skid-row hotels floating in wine,

floating in crazy talk,

cheap cigars and anger)

and the siren took him away, except the red part

and I began to vomit and the French wolverine screamed

you'll have to clean it up, all of it, you and Whitey!

and the steamers sailed and rich men on yachts

kissed girls young enough to be their daughters,

and the milkman came by and stared

and the neon lights blinked selling something

tires or oil or underwear

and she slammed her door and I was alone

ashamed

it was the war, the war forever, the war was never over,

and I cried against the peeling walls,

the weakness of our bones, our sotted half-brains,

and morning began to creep into the hall—

toilets flushed, there was bacon, there was coffee,

there were hangovers, and I too

went in and closed my door and sat down and waited for the sun.

I was a bum in San Francisco but once managed

to go to a symphony concert along with the well-

dressed people

and the music was good but something about the

audience was not

and something about the orchestra

and the conductor was

not,

although the building was fine and the

acoustics perfect

I preferred to listen to the music alone

on my radio

and afterwards I did go back to my room and I

turned on the radio but

then there was a pounding on the wall:

“SHUT THAT GOD-DAMNED THING OFF!”

there was a soldier in the next room

living with his wife

and he would soon be going over there to

protect me from Hitler so

I snapped the radio off and then heard his

wife say, “you shouldn't have done that.”

and the soldier said, “FUCK THAT GUY!”

which I thought was a very nice thing for him

to tell his wife to do.

of course,

she never did.

anyhow, I never went to another live concert

and that night I listened to the radio very

quietly, my ear pressed to the

speaker.

war has its price and peace never lasts and

millions of young men everywhere would die

and as I listened to the classical music I

heard them making love, desperately and

mournfully, through Shostakovich, Brahms,

Mozart, through crescendo and climax,

and through the shared

wall of our darkness.

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,

the potted plants yellow as corn;

my woman was gone

and the empty bottles like bled corpses

surrounded me with their uselessness;

the sun was still good, though,

and my landlady's note cracked in fine and

undemanding yellowness; what was needed now

was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester

with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd

because it exists, nothing more;

I shaved carefully with an old razor

the man who had once been young and

said to have genius; but

that's the tragedy of the leaves,

the dead ferns, the dead plants;

and I walked into a dark hall

where the landlady stood

execrating and final,

sending me to hell,

waving her fat, sweaty arms

and screaming

screaming for rent

because the world had failed us

both.

Jack came through the door and found the pack of cigarettes on the mantel. Ann was on the couch reading a copy of
Cosmopolitan
. Jack lit up, sat down in a chair. It was 10 minutes to midnight.

“Charley told you not to smoke,” said Ann, looking up from the magazine.

“I deserve it. It was a rough one tonight.”

“Did you win?”

“Split decision but I got it. Benson was a tough boy, lots of guts. Charley says Parvinelli is next. We get over Parvinelli, we get the champ.”

Jack got up, went to the kitchen, came back with a bottle of beer.

“Charley told me to keep you off the beer,” Ann put the magazine down.

“‘Charley told me, Charley told me' … I'm tired of that. I won my fight. I won 16 straight, I got a right to a beer and a cigarette.”

“You're supposed to stay in shape.”

“It doesn't matter. I can whip any of them.”

“You're so great, I keep hearing it when you get drunk, you're so great. I get sick of it.”

“I am great. 16 straight, 15 k.o.'s. Who's better?”

Ann didn't answer. Jack took his bottle of beer and his cigarette into the bathroom.

“You didn't even kiss me hello. The first thing you did was go to your bottle of beer. You're so great, all right. You're a great beer-drinker.”

Jack didn't answer. Five minutes later he stood in the bathroom door, his pants and shorts down around his shoes.

“Jesus Christ, Ann, can't you even keep a roll of toilet paper in here?”

“Sorry.”

She went to the closet and got him the roll. Jack finished his business and walked out. Then he finished his beer and got another one. “Here you are living with the best light-heavy in the world and all you do is complain. Lots of girls would love to have me but all you do is sit around and bitch.”

“I know you're good, Jack, maybe the best, but you don't know how
boring
it is to sit around and listen to you say over and over again how great you are.”

“Oh, you're bored with it, are you?”

“Yes, goddamn it, you and your beer and how great you are.”

“Name a better light-heavy. You don't even come to my fights.”

“There are
other
things besides fighting, Jack.”

“What? Like laying around on your ass and reading
Cosmopolitan?
”

“I like to improve my mind.”

“You ought to. There's a lot of work to be done there.”

“I tell you there are other things besides fighting.”

“What? Name them.”

“Well, art, music, painting, things like that.”

“Are you any good at them?”

“No, but I appreciate them.”

“Shit, I'd rather be best at what I'm doing.”

“Good, better, best … God, can't you appreciate people for what they are?”

“For what they
are?
What
are
most of them? Snails, bloodsuckers, dandies, finks, pimps, servants …”

“You're always looking down on everybody. None of your friends are good enough. You're so damned great!”

“That's right, baby.”

Jack walked into the kitchen and came out with another beer.

“You and your goddamned beer!”

“It's my right. They sell it. I buy it.”

“Charley said …”

“Fuck Charley!”

“You're so goddamned great!”

“That's right. At least Pattie knew it. She admitted it. She was proud of it. She knew it took something. All you do is bitch.”

“Well, why don't you go back to Pattie? What are you doing with me?”

“That's just what I'm dunking.”

“Well, we're not married, I can leave any time.”

“That's one break we've got. Shit, I come in here dead-ass tired after a tough ten rounder and you're not even glad I took it. All you do is complain about me.”