60
PARTISAN REVIEW
spinsters, six foot tall if an inch, with identical grey hair and
pince-nez and sharp hysterical noses and files arranged before
them, cards itemizing your stakes in heaven and hell.
F ranting the twins, a line. At the end of this I take my
stand. Up ahead, in female baritone first, in female soprano
next, the words, the command incurious, the dogma unshakable,
Take a number, take a seat. Men drop away to left and right,
the line moves, I move, no matter how often it has happened
to me, this coming to a place and an experience than which no
whorehouse ever built can disgust me more, it is always new.
Always the same, you see, yet not the same, always being eaten
deeper, like rust slowly burning in the same iron in the same
place. And I listen to the words up ahead Take a number, take
a seat, trying to kid myself This don't apply to me, I got an
appointment for ten o'clock, I waited three hours yesterday
getting it. And pass the . time wth What great material! think–
ing this, that and the other details now, the way the smoke
curls up at the barny ceiling, the way that woman there, she sits
like Mona Lisa only she never heard of Leonardo, so on, what
great story-stuff this is now, criticizing in this manner, the trouble
with Farrel's shortstories, those I've read, that is, there ain't
none of his lumpens ever come in contact with social service,
Conroy has nothing to say about this either, gloating, you see,
in the beshat and wouldbe impersonal ways of some authors,
over my humiliations and hurts, over my hungers and my peo–
ple's, all in the name of this field's virginity and the worth of
all this to me in the realm of stories yet to be written. Which
is okey, I guess, only underneath all this, as the line moves,
as I move, I pass the time in other ways, I
must,
I think Now
the way to handle her is like this-planning, to say the least, to
lick her butt with no less gusto than I would, say, be taking a
good long walk through green grass along river's edge,
The
way to talk to her is-the imagination bitched-up but wistful
and soaring nevertheless, visions of groceries, sweet groceries,
to follow, and-aw! aw! let the priest spit on his tail three
times and die of it, here I am, at last, the steel lips open. I try
to beat her to it. I ha-ve an appointment with-. No go.
Take a number, take a seat.
·
__:=
You
don't understand. (Ha, ha, who don't?) I have an
app-
It is incredible. It is unbelievable.
If
I did not see it,
would not believe it. The sparse eyes narrow, the steel mouth
