dancing; the pain’s a force o f nature beyond my ability to bear
and I can’t take the edge o ff it very easy and I can’t stand
needles and I can’t sit still with it and I can’t rip it out, although
if it was located right precisely in m y heart I would try, I
would take m y fucking hands and I would take m y fucking
fingers and I would rip m y chest open and I would try. It’s
raining and the rain makes me all steamy and damp inside and
out and it ain’t a man I want, it’s a drink, a dozen fucking
drinks to blot out the hard pain and the hard time, each and
every dick I ever sucked, and the bottle ain’t enough because I
can’t stand the quiet, a quiet bottle in a quiet room; I can’t
stand the quiet, lonely bottle in the quiet, lonely room. Lonely
ain’t a state o f mind, it’s a place o f being; a room with no one
else in it, a street with no one else on it; a city abandoned in the
rain; em pty, wet streets; cement that stretches uptown,
downtown, empty, warm, wet, until the sky starts, a
perspiring sky; empty cars parked on empty streets, damp,
deserted streets lined with dark, quiet buildings, civilized,
quiet stone, decorous, a sterile urban formalism; the windows
are closed, they’re sleeping or dead inside, you w on’t know
until morning really, a gas could have seeped in and killed
them in the night; or invaders from outer space; or some lethal
virus. I need noise; real noise; honest, bad noise; not random
sounds or a few loud voices or the electronic drone o f
someone’s television seeping out o f a cracked w indow; not
some dignified singer or some meaningful lyric; not something small or fine or good or right; I need music so loud you
can’t hear it, as when all the trees in the forest fall; and I need
noise so real it eats up the air because it can’t live on nothing; I
need noise that’s like steak, just so thick and just so tough and
ju st so immoral, thick and tough and dead but bloody, on a
plate, for the users, for the fucking killers, to still their hearts,
to numb anything still left churning; a percussive ambience for
the users. It’s got to be brute so it blocks out anything subtle or
nuanced or kind, even, and it’s got to be unceasing so you can’t
hear a human breath and it’s got to stomp on you so your heart
almost stops beating and it’s got to be lunatic, unorganized,
perpetual, and it has to be in a crowded room where there’s
gristle and muscle and cold, mean men and you can’t hear the
timbre o f their voices and you don’t need to see them or touch
them because the noise has you, it’s air, it’s water, you
breathe, you swim; I need noise, and it’s too late to buy a bottle
anyway, even if I had enough money, because it is very dear, it
would be like buying a diamond tiara for a princess or some
fine clothes, a fine jew el, it is out o f m y reach, I have not had
one o f m y own ever and I don’t count the bottles you can’t see
in the paper bags because that is a different thing altogether,
more like gasoline or like someone took matches and lit up
your throat or yo u ’re pouring kerosene down it or some
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