JULES OLiTSKI
well, since I can't sleep. I splashed some cold water on my
face....
235
Splashed .
..
that doesn't sound like something I'd say. Threw
some cold water on my face? Washed my face with cold water? I
don't know.
I noticed with distaste the dark, puffy pouches under my red
eyes....
T hat stinks. "I was disgusted with the way I looked"? That's
better.
My head felt stuffed. The cold water didn't help. I thought, I
better get back
to
sleep, or I might have a stroke. What's this
about stroke? Well, I'm always thinking I'm about to have a
stroke, or have even had one. A slight one, a little one, one I
didn't notice. But a stroke
I
So I went back to bed to try to sleep
and ward off the stroke.
O.K., let me at this point say-am I still talking to myself?
Or
to
you? I don't know. But let me at this point say that this chapter,
this first chapter, is about how to write a book, this book, my
book. Obvious. O.K., to continue, the narrator says:
I tried to pick up the dream at the point I'd been jolted awake.
In the dream I'd been in bed with' a girl, a beautiful girl. She is
lying on her side, her back to me. Suddenly she shifts her back
side in a clearly inviting position. She's inviting
me,
and I'm
very aroused. But I'm fully clothed for some reason. I begin
hastily (I'll have
to
cut out that word, hastily) to try
to
remove
my pants.
In the manuscript the word is "trousers." "Pants" is better.
I'm clumsy about it, I'm taking forever. Finally I make it. I'm
about
to
penetrate her. . ..
Now, in this first chapter that I'm presently revising, I have this
sentence:
