I sat back, dragging chains over her. She bit one, held it in her teeth so it tugged on my neck. I pulled, till it came out of her mouth, kneeled back, and bumped into someone—Dollar—who said: “Hey, man. Pretty good, huh?”
“Watch it,” California said, trying to crowd in. “Come on, huh?”
Copperhead, holding a gallon jug, stooped down beside Risa. Glass stood just behind his shoulder. Copperhead got one hand under her neck. She held onto the knee of his fatigues.
I stood up while California clambered over her ankles. “Hey, Copperhead? Man, she’s drunk enough already! She’s gonna be sick if you—”
“Get out of here,” Copperhead said. “This is water. She asked me for a fucking drink of water before, that’s all.”
“Oh.” California slid his hands up Risa’s legs. A tendon in her thigh shook. California bent.
“Aw, come on!” Glass said, and punched at California’s head. “Can’t you wait until she has a fuckin’ drink of water?” But Risa grabbed California’s hair, grunting, and pulled him down. Glass sucked in his breath and watched her drink till Copperhead lowered the jug. Water ran down Risa’s cheek. She got out, “…thank you…”
“You’re welcome,” California said, muffled in her crotch.
Which Copperhead must have thought was the funniest thing he ever heard. He just broke up. And spilled water all over the floor.
“You can take her in the mouth,” Dollar was saying to Fireball. “If you want, you can take her mouth and I’ll take her pussy. Or you can take her pussy and I’ll…”
I walked to the door. Halfway there I realized I was going to shit within thirty seconds.
Siam walked in. “She still workin’ out?”
“Party’s still going,” I said and pushed by him.
In the hall, Spitt was rubbing the scar on his chest. “Them guys still messing around in there? Jesus Christ.” He looked unhappy.
I asked: “You get your turn?”
“Yeah. Before. But they just go on and fucking on! They’re gonna kill her or something.”
“You’re just scared it’ll all be used up by the time you’re fit for seconds.” I grinned. “Why don’t you go in there and see if you can finish her off?” Then I went in the bathroom, got my pants down fast, and sat.
My buttocks got wet from the splash, and there was six seconds of gut-cramp that started in my ankles. Then it eased. My crank hung down against the porcelain, so cold I had to slide my hand over it to hold it away (Cold knuckles; better than a cold cock.) Through the bathroom door I watched Spitt, still standing in the hall. After a while, he went in the room.
Power is all. Another falsification: I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.
“Grendal grendalgrendalgrendalgrendalgren…” still ran through my head. Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t been listening carefully enough; I’d stuck the break in the wrong place. The actual word I’d heard at orgasm and that, for the last few minutes had been repeating in my head was: “…Dhalgren…” I wiped myself with part of the second page of the Bellona Times, January 22, 1776.
Going back to the loft bed, I thought it would be nice if Lanya had stopped by and was waiting with Denny (knowing she wouldn’t because I’d thought about it); she hadn’t.
Up in the loft, I lay on my back for a minute; then I rolled over and hit Denny on the shoulder.
He woke up. “What?”
“Smell my dick,” I said.
“Huh…?” Then he made a disgusted sound, sat up, bent down, and sniffed. My fly was open.
Denny looked up, frowning. “You got dandruff in your crotch.” He wrinkled his nose. “Who is it?”
I laughed.
“The girl they got in the back. Risa.” I grinned at him. “You get some?”
“Oh…I went in there before while you were asleep. It was mostly girls in there then. I didn’t do nothing.” He settled again on the bed, his back to me.
Looking up at the ceiling, I began to fall asleep: the kind of falling where you watch yourself do it, and everything gets all tingly and you sink among the tingles.
And woke up with Denny on top of me, my arms across his back. He was breathing in short gasps, face against my neck, rubbing off on my belly. Wondered why I’d bothered to wake him up before with that routine which was pretty much calculated to turn him on. I didn’t stop him, but I was annoyed; so when I began bad-mouthing him (growling into his hair: “…come on, you two-bit cocksucker; come on, you scrawny, shit-ass bastard…”) it was reaclass="underline" he shot pretty quick. But by then I had a hard-on again. I was actually sort of digging him just lying here on top of it. But he got down to suck me off. I guess I’d wanted him to do that when I first woke him up; now I didn’t. “Don’t waste your time,” I told him, dropping my chin to watch the top of his head. “Can’t you just go to sleep?” But he kept working (and playing with my asshole which I’d mentioned Nightmare mentioning to me) and I shot. He crawled back up beside me, and I held him around his belly with his back to me (like a warm dog) while he occasionally squirmed like he’d be more comfortable on the other side of the bed (yeah, like trying to sleep with a dog) while I wondered: If I’m starting to have to fantasize girls in order to come with guys, maybe I’m not as bisexual as I keep telling myself?
My speech changes when I talk to different people; I go from “ain’t” to “aren’t,” “yes” to “yeah,” from a fixed to a formless diction. With Lanya, a lot of the time, it gets playful, arch. With others, it flattens. When I’m upset, it punctures with dozens of noise nodes: “you know’s,” “I mean’s,” and “sort of’s.” I left behind me a whole vocabulary and syntax at the colleges I passed through, which began to come back with Newboy, Kamp, that interview, and with Calkins at the retreat. It’s lability, not affectation; a true and common trait. But if I tried to write down what I say as I move from speech context to speech context, it would read like lack of character, not a characteristic. I note all the eccentric words around me: Glass used the word “…radically…” this morning and several times I’ve heard Lady of Spain refer to an “…entity…” while among the others I’ve heard “…sententious…” “…caravan…” and “…conspicuous…” go by. But when I transcribe the conversation around me, I find myself purposely playing down the verbal range of it, so that it does not read like post-literate affectation—which it isn’t. George’s speech can’t even be written down for the common reader; Throckmorton (at the party) speaks only in inane combinations of serial phrases that become satires on themselves as soon as they are recorded but that, during utterance, make miracles of communication. I suppose I’m just getting frustrated by what written words can’t do. This afternoon, Gladis, wholely pregnant and half smiling, said through the kitchen screening: “You got no…” paused and interjected three syllables of laughter “…know what I can see it in here, can I?” What marks of ellision, inflection, and melody could make that sound, or the sense of it, intelligible on paper?