the little ones on, down the line, so everyone can pray; and the
courts will let them; because the courts have always let them;
it’s just big daddy in a dress, the appearance o f neutrality. I
been living in Times Square, on the sidewalks, I seen all the
marquees, I studied them, I have two questions all the time,
w hy ain’t she dead is one and w hy would anyone, even a man,
think it’s true— her all strung out, all painted, all glossy,
proclaiming being peed on is what she wants; I do not get how
the lie flies; or ain’t they ever made love; or ever seen no one
real; and maybe she’s dead by now; they must think it’s like
you are born a porn thing; in the hospital they take the baby
and they say take it to the warehouse, it’s a porn thing. They
must think it’s a special species; with purple genitals and skin
made from a pale steel that don’t even feel no pain; or they
think every girl is one, underneath, and they wait, until we
turn purple, from cold, or a thin patina o f blood, dried so it’s
an encasement, like an insect’s carapace. And they get hard
from it, the porn thing, flat and glossy, dead and slick, and
after they find something resembling the specimen from
under the glass and they stick it in; a girl in the rain; five
infants; some girl. It’s like how Plato tried to explain; the thing
pure, ideal, as if you went through some magical fog and came
to a whole world o f perfect ideas and there’s Linda taking it
whole; and they wander through the pure world putting fifty
cents down there to cop a feel and five dollars down there, and
for a hundred you see a little girl buggered, and for fifty you do
something perfect and ideal to a perfect whore or some perfect
blow -up doll with a deep silk throat and a deep silk vagina and
a rough, tight rectum, and you come back through the fog and
there’s the girl, not quite so purple, and you do it to her; yeah,
she cries if you hang her or brand her or maim her or even
probably if you fuck her in the ass, she don’t smile, but you can
hurt her enough to make her smile because she has to smile
because if she don’t she gets hurt more, or she’ll try, and you
can paint her more purple, or do anything really; put things in
her; even glass or broken glass and make her bleed, you can get
the color you want; you strive for the ideal. I fuck it up, I say
the girl’s real, but it don’t stop them; and we got to stop them;
so I take the necessary supplies, some porn magazines where
they laminate the women, and I take the stones for breaking
the glass, I will not have women under glass, and I take signs
that say “ Free the Women, Free O urselves” and “ Porn Hates
W omen” and I take a sign that says “ Free Linda” and I have a
sign that says “ Porn Is Rape” and I take a letter I wrote m yself
that says to m y mama how sorry I am to have failed at dignity
and at freedom both, and I say I am Andrea but I am not
manhood for which, mama, I am glad, because they have gone
to filth, they are maggots on this earth; and I take gasoline, and
I’m nearly old for a girl, I’m hungry and I have sores, and I
smell bad so no one looks at all very much, and I go to outside
Deep Throat where m y friend Linda is in the screen and I put
the gasoline on me, I soak m yself in it in broad daylight and
many go by and no one looks and I am calm, patient, gray on
gray cement like the Buddhist monks, and I light the fire; free
us, I start to scream, and then there’s a giant whoosh, it
explodes more like wind than fire, it’s orange, around me,
near me, I’m whole, then I’m flames. I burn; I die. From this
light, later you will see. Mama, I made some light.
E L E V E N
April 30, 1974
(Age 27)
Sensei is cute but she’s fascist. She makes us bow to the Korean
flag; I bow but I don’t look. We are supposed to be reverent in
our hearts but in m y heart is where I rebel. It is more than a
bow. We bow. We get down on our knees and we bow our
heads. It’s the opening ceremony o f every class. In karate you
get down on your knees in a lightning flash o f perfect
movement so there’s no scramble, no noise; it’s a perfect
silence and everyone moves as one; the movement itself
expresses reverence and your mind is supposed to obey, it
moves with the body, not against it, except for mine, which is
anarchist from a long time ago and I never thought I’d bow
down in front o f any fucking flag but I do, in perfect silence
and sym m etry insofar as my awkward self can manage it; my
mind’s like a muscle that pulls every time; I feel it jerk and I feel
the dislocation and the pain and I keep m oving, until I am on
m y knees in front o f the fucking thing. It’s interesting to think
o f the difference between a flag and a dick, because this is not a
new position; with a dick how you get there doesn’t count
whereas in the dojo all that matters is the elegance, the grace,
o f the movement, the strength o f the muscles that carry you
down; an act o f reverence will eventually, says Sensei, teach
you self-respect, which wasn’t the issue with the dick, as I
remember. There’s an actual altar. It has on it the Korean flag,
a picture o f Sensei, and some dried flowers. When I was a child
I had a huge picture o f Rock Hudson up on the door in m y tiny
bedroom, on the back o f the door so I would see it when I was
alone, as if he was there, physically present with me, because
the picture was so big and real and detailed, o f a real face; I put
it up with Scotch tape and kissed it good-night, a mixture o f
heat and loneliness; not quite as I would kiss m y mother if I
could but with the same intensity I wanted from her, as if she
could hold me enough, or love me enough, or rock me
forever; I never understood w hy you couldn’t just bury
yourself in someone’s arms and kiss until you died; just live
there, embraced, warm and wet and touched all over. Instead
there was this photo I cut out o f a magazine, and a lonely bed in
a lonely house, with mother gone, sick, and father gone, to
pay doctors. I built up all the love there was in the world out o f
those lonely nights and when I left home I wasn’t afraid ever to
touch or be touched and I never abandoned faith that it was
everything and enough, a thousand percent whole, perfect and
sensual and true. I thought we were the same, everyone. I
thought Rock could hold me; hold me; as if he were my
mother, against his breast. O f course, I also liked Tab
Hunter’s “ Red Sails in the Sunset” ; and Tab Hunter. I was