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PARTISAN REVIEW
eringly - ashamed that 1 loved her - or whatever it was that held us
together: sexual terror eased by the other, the lesser strain on con–
sciousness in being domestic, the simpler responsibility of mutual
protection.
"So long as men pause for me and don't piss on me the way they
do you, my dear-"
My sexual existence insulted him: it made him ache .
I
was slouching as a form of politeness but now
I
straightened
up : what the hell: why not be The Young Man 1 was.
But then 1 slouched again,
I
felt or mis-saw and imagined the
ache coming off him so strongly .
"You are so witty -" 1 said toadying in so dry a way it seemed
an insult - a posture of sexual superiority .
Or of the possession of a living tie to someone. Ora.
Johnno, now, began moment by moment, to have a greater
and greater air of truly extraordinary drunkenness, a quality of a
psychological and emotional density of hurt and bitterness -
I
myself
hated being said no to in the way of being turned down sexually:
hated? My mind would collapse and my spirit would burn-literally
be consumed as if by an acid or by fire -longing was considerably
easier than being turned down, to having one's value shunted onto
some track of the peripheral and the unnecessary - often 1 believed it
was better not to try things rather than undergo that being burned -
and then the rage of talking or forcing someone somehow to agree or
to swindle them into it or plead - those elements of the self, those
further rooms of a moment, 1 loved and was uneasy about and con–
sidered to be a kind of hell- a self! didn't dare live with. The mo–
ment is cluttered with the fires of refusal. And of retribution . J ohnno
has taken on a cluttered speed of rage-a derangement. And 1 am
guilty, and ashamed, and conceited , and frozen and rigid . H e is a
rare metal too heavy to be moved by wind or by arm or hand: only
by self-will. He is not sanely physical. He was in motion according
to his own drunken will only. He said, "Wit is not for liars about
love -" dismissing me as a writer for the moment.
"I
thought that's just what it was ."
"You
would-you haven't a witty bone in your body ."
"Shakespeare thought wit was for the deprived ."
"He was a fag," Johnno said. "He was like me."
"Not entirely ."
"Listen to the pouf calling the kiddIe black - "
"Fartmouth, lay off- why do you get so drunk?"
