Lanya grinned up at me—“Um-hm”—and kissed my nose.
“What does your Madame Brown think about all this?” I asked.
“That I lead a wild and fascinating life.”
“Oh.” I nodded.
“She just wonders how I manage to get to school every day on time.”
“How do you manage to get to school every day on time?”
Lanya shrugged. “Just conscientious, I guess.”
“Jesus!” Denny sat back, his hands in his lap. “You gang-shagged Revelation and Copperhead! Hey—who was better, Pinky or the nigger?”
“Neither of them —” she leaned forward and kissed Denny’s nose—“was as sweet as you.”
“And by the way,” Denny said, “where’s my five bucks?”
I cuffed him. “Hey you want to hear what happened to me today?”
“It’s my five bucks, babes!” Lanya said.
Am writing this comment on what Lanya said about the girls shagging the two guys at the house right after finishing putting down my account of our chaos and confusion with the Emboriky (with Jack, wouldn’t you know, being that much help and making that much trouble!) because a lot of what happened there, what we said to them, what they said to us, pushed my mind back to it. I note that Copperhead and Revelation are pretty much exclusively-interested-in-girls guys; remember from last night (significant in terms of today?) Revelation politely trying to tell a pretty drunken Angeclass="underline" Really, it was nothing personal but, no, he didn’t want to fuck around with him, and no, he had never really tried it before, and no he didn’t want to, at least not now; and the two of them went on like this, quietly out on the service porch, for half an hour. The truth, of course, is that Revelation was vastly flattered by that much attention from someone that much quicker than he is and wanted to extend it as much as possible. (Did we think by paying them serious attention we were going to flatter them into getting their foot off our necks?) I think, sometimes, the difference is that they are sure that any social structures that arise grow out of patterns innate to The Sex Act—whatever that is; while we have seen, again and again, that the psychology, structures, and acoutrements that define any sex act are always internalized from social structures that already exist, that have been created, that can be changed. All right: Let me ask the terrible question: Could it be that all those perfectly straight, content-with-their-sexual-orientation-in-the-world, exclusive-heterosexuals really are (in some ill-defined, psychological way that will ultimately garner a better world) more healthy than (gulp…!) us? Let me answer: No way! The active ones (of whichever sex) are denser and crueler. The passive ones (of whichever sex) are lazier and more self-satisfied. In a society where they are on top, they cling like drowners to their active/passive, male/female, master/servant, self/other set-up not for pleasure, which would be reasonable, but because it allows them to commit or condone any lack of compassion among themselves, or with anyone else, and that (at least in this society, as they have set it up) is immoral, sick, and evil; any madness is preferable to that. And madness is not preferable!
“Aw, shit! I went out in the damn street to pimp the fuckin’ John—”
“Look, shut up!” I told them. “Listen.” Then I described what had happened back in the park. I thought it was funny. But they both thought it was pretty serious, while we talked about it.
We talked about it a long time too.
Three conversations in which Lanya took part her last few days here. (Stayed overnight; which I liked. Maybe I’m ready to go spend some time at her place? The nesting instinct is not the same as the homing one. Which pales first?) She was talking with Gladis when I came into the yard:
“Oh—!” and ran up to me, blocked me halfway down the steps.
I focused on her, as on a memory of mountain rain, autumn light, sea fizz.
(She has green eyes!)
The most natural thing, she turned me around on the steps and led me back to the porch—when I realized I was being led, she pulled a little harder; urged, “Come on,” and took me into the loft room:
“Where’s your notebook? Or your new poems, anyway.”
“Huh? I thought you wanted to fuck.”
“Oh, if you want—” imitating another kind of girl, then she laughed at the imitation’s success—“here!” The notebook corner stuck over the loft’s edge; she pulled it down. Two loose pages fell.
She picked them up. “Can I have these to take home?”
“Sure,” I said, “—no; not that one,” and took back the sheet of blue paper (from the package of stationery Raven brought home).
She folded the page I’d left her and put it in her shirt pocket. I put the other inside the cover and slid the notebook back up on the bed. “Why do you want these?”
“Why do you write them?”
“I don’t know…anymore.”
“Ditto,” she said, disturbed; which disturbed.
“Hey,” I asked. “You haven’t seen Mr. Calkins again recently, have you?”
“No…?” in a way that asked why I’d asked.
“I mean this isn’t his idea…to get my new poems from me? You’re not just keeping them for somebody else?”
“Of course not. I just thought I had less chance of losing them than you did.”
“Mr. Calkins talked to me about stealing them. I thought he was joking—you haven’t showed them to anybody?”
“Of course not…” Then she said: “Would it be so awful if I had? I did read one—a few to Madame Brown. And a friend of hers who came over that night to visit.”
“It wouldn’t be awful.”
“You look unhappy about it, though.”
“I don’t know. I’m just confused. Why did you read them? You just liked them?”
“Very much. Everett Forest—Madame Brown’s friend—asked me to, actually. We were talking about you, one night when he had dropped over. It came up that I had some of your unpublished work; he was very anxious to see it. So I read three or four of my favorites. I suppose—” she said and sat down on the motorcycle’s seat “—this is the part I shouldn’t tell you: He wanted to copy them. But I didn’t think he should…Kid?”
“What?”
“There’s a lot of people in Bellona who are very interested in practically any and everything about you.”
“There aren’t a lot of people in Bellona,” I said. “Everybody keeps telling me this; what are they interested in me for?”
“They think you’re important, interesting…maybe some combination of the two. Make copies of your poems? I know people who, if I gave them your laundry list, would type careful reproductions as if they were some university library or something.”
“I don’t have a fucking laundry list. I don’t even have any laundry,” I said. “Who?”
“Well, Everett for one. When I told him you sometimes left your notebook over at my place he practically had a fit. He begged me to let him know next time you left it so he could look through it and maybe make a—”
“I’d break your head.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” She moved on the seat. “I wouldn’t.”
“There’s just not enough else for people to be interested in in this city.”