PARTISAN REVIEW
379
notice more people around you, people like me. Or was I the man in
the blue suit who stepped aside so that you could go into a mid–
town restaurant? He shot you a quick, keen, hot smile which you pre–
tended not to see. You were with a woman, a negligible creature,
bony-faced and laughing too shrilly.... Or was I the figure lean as
a boy, in black trousers and a black turtleneck sweater, with my hair
combed down onto my forehead in a fan-like bang, following you
slowly, weightlessly, along the street, following you into that drug–
store on 59th Street, waiting for you to make your purchase (a carton
of cigarettes)? I happen to know that your oldest brother, Carl, died
at the age of forty-one from lung cancer, yet you can't seem to stop
smoking. You are addicted, are you? Perhaps you wish for death?
Smoking
=
Death.
I have never smoked. It's a disgusting, weak habit.
I surround you, I possess you. You have never possessed yourself
the way I possess you. How can you escape? Do you think you can
knock someone like me aside, if you found me kneeling mutely in
your corridor? How? You need me to worship you, my love is more
pure than any you have known , I will lift my voice in hosannas:
Genius! Beloved!
When you die I will kneel beside your grave, or one
like it. When you're dying I will hang around the hospital, over–
hearing the whispered conversations of your friends - if you have
any friends left by then - sniffing- the odor of your suffering. How
I will cherish it -
your suffering.
Can you guess? I will imagine
your death before you do; I will live it for you, shuddering at it,
alive with the delicious sensation of it, Keith Lurie's death - his
death imagined and cherished
before it even takes place.
And then
afterward - ah, yes, many times! - many times afterward, indeed!
Can you guess what ecstasy this is, the healthy wholesome worship
of a great man, by a devoted believer? Can you guess?
I have resisted vulgarity. Consciously. I have resisted what is
called The Obscene. But to give a name to myself, I must be reckless
and risk losing you - or gaining you? (And after all, Keith Lurie,
you aren't very important and you know it: die tomorrow and no–
body will miss you, a "minor American composer with promise" in
small headlines in
The New
York
Times !
You know this!) I will
define myself: I am your disciple, your single believer, your
fan.
We are united. A point of flaming rushing light, a "star" (and
