fingers and he wrote it down on me and inside me, his fingers
carved it in me with a pain that stayed half buried and there
wasn’t words I had for what he did, he wrote I was cunt, this
sweet little one who was what’s called a child but a female one
which changes it all. M y mama showed that fiction was
delusion, hallucination, it was a long, deranged lie designed to
last past your own lifetime. The man, on the other hand, was a
pragmatist, a maker o f reality, a shaper o f history, an
orchestrator o f events. He used life, not paper, bodies, not ink.
The Nazis, o f course, synthesized the two: bodies and ink.
Y ou can’t even say it would solve the problem to have
numbers on us, inked on. Numbers is as singular as names
unless we are all zero, 0, we could all be 0; Pauline Reage
already suggested it, o f course, but she’s a demagogue and a
utopian, a kind o f Stalinist o f female equality, she wants us all
equal on the bottom o f anything that’s mean enough to be on
top; it has a certain documentary quality. Unlike Reage, my
mother just made it up, and her fiction was a lie, almost
without precedent, not recognized as original or great, a
voyage o f imagination; it was just a fucking lie. I don’t want to
tell lies, not for moral reasons but it’s m y idea o f pride, you
name it, I can take it. I was born in a city where the walls were
falling down; I didn’t see many solid walls. The streets were
right next to you it seemed because you could always hear the
buzz, the hum, the call, as if drums were beckoning you to the
tribal dance; you could see the freedom. Inside was small and
constrained with rules designed to make you some kind o f
trained cockroach and outside was forever, a path straight to
the heart o f the world; there were no limits, it spread out in
front o f you to anywhere, with anyone. Limits were another
lie, a social fiction all the zombies got together to tell. The
destination was always the street because the destination was
always freedom; out from under; no rule on top o f you. Y ou
could almost look through the brick, which was crumbling,
and you had this sense that every building had holes in it, a
transparency, and that no walls were ever finished or ever
lasted; and the cement outside was gray, cracked, streaked
with blood from where they threw you down to have fun with
you on hot nights and cold nights, the boys with their cars and
knives; I knew some o f those boys; I loved Nino who said
“ make love” as if it was something real special and real nice
and so fine, so precious and kind and urgent, his eyes burned
and his voice was low and soft and silk, it wrapped itself
around you, he didn’t reach out, he didn’t m ove towards you,
you had to let him know, you had to; I could still fucking die
for what he promised with his brilliant seduction, a poor,
uneducated boy, but when he did it I got used to being hurt
from behind, he used his knife, he made fine lines o f blood,
delicate, and you didn’t dare m ove except for your ass as he
wanted and you didn’t know if yo u ’d die and you got to love
danger i f you loved the boy and danger never forsakes you; the
boy leaves but danger is faithful. Y ou knew the cement under
you and the brick around you and the sound o f the boys
speeding by in their cars and the sudden silence, which meant
they were stalking you. I was born in Camden down the street
from where Walt Whitman lived, M ickle Street, he was the
great gray poet, the prophetic hero o f oceanic verse; also not-
cunt. Great poet; not-cunt. It’s like a mathematical equation
but no one learns it in school by heart; it ain’t written down
plain on the blackboard. It’s algebra for girls but no one’s
going to teach you. Y ou get brought down or throwed down
and you learn for yourself. There’s no mother on earth can
bear to explain it. I can’t write down what happened and I can’t
tell lies. T here’s no words for what happened and there’s
barely words for the lies. if I was a man I would say something
about fishing and it would be a story, a perfectly fine one too;
the bait, the hook, the lake, the wind, the shore, and then
everything else is the manly stuff. If I was a man at least I’d
know what to say, or I’d say it so grand it wouldn’t matter if it
was true or not; anyone’d recognize it and say it was art. I
could think o f something important, probably; recognizably
so. If I was a man and something happened I could write it
down and probably it would pass as a story even if it was true.
O f course, that’s just speculation. I’d swagger, too, if I was a
man; I’m not proud to say it but I’m sure it’s true. I would take
big steps, loud ones, down the street; I could be the Zen master
o f fuck you. I would spread m yself out and take up all the
space and spread my legs wide open in the subway to take up
three seats with just m y knees like they do. I would be very
bold and very cool. I’d be smarter than I am now, I’m sure,
because what I knew might matter and I’d remember more,
I’m sure. I don’t think I’d go near women though because I
wouldn’t want to hurt them. I know how everything feels. I
think if I was a man m y heart would not hurt so much and I
wouldn’t have this terror I am driven by but cannot name. I
think I could write a poem about it, perhaps. I think it could
probably make a very long poem and I could keep rewriting it
to get every nuance right and chart it as it changed over time;
song o f himself, perhaps, a sequel. Ginsberg says he chased
Whitman through supermarkets; I fucking was him; I
embraced all the generations without distinctions and it failed
because o f this awfulness that there is no name for, this great
meanness at the heart o f what they mean when they stick it in; I
just don’t know a remedy, because it is a sick and hostile thing.
Even if there were no wars I think I could say some
perceptions I had about life, I wouldn’t need the C ivil War or
the Vietnam War to hang m y literary hat on as it were, and I
could be loud, which I would try, I’m sure, I could call
attention to m yself as i f I mattered or what happened did or as
i f I knew something, even about suffering or even about life;
and, frankly, then it might count. I could stop thinking every
minute about where each sound is coming from and where the
shadows are each minute. I can’t even close m y eyes now
frankly but I think it’s because I’m this whatever it is, you can
have sophisticated words for it but the fact is you can be