392
At basement doors
boys
move in neon light-
it seems like it is the usual American death .
(Johnno Fynner)
PARTISAN REVIEW
Johnno was truly smart and often wrong and often out of con–
trol, even in his adroit and gorgeously accoutered mind, his intellect ,
so that I was really, in a sense, scared, in the ways he said I was, of
his
reality;
but I didn't blame myself for being scared of it . I wasn't
interested-and-scared by the lies in his public role or by him being a
death-lover and him being a delicate violence-hound. I was scared
that I was a fool. And I didn't want his suffering since I had my own.
Well, at the time, actually, I was happy; but happiness is a kind of
terror.
He was doing eye-stuff with
The Person
(Johnno's term) .
I said, "I think I'll get going. I'll leave you to romance-"
He sort of tossed his head. He decreed his reply as witty and so
it was, when his face and eyes were added in: "Are you off to do the
toilets? Don't say you don't do them; it's clear you do: your face drips
with the experience - What a hypocrite you are . . . Go and dream
of me: you will-why deny it?"
You lie, Wiley,
if
you claim that the world exists in a manner even slightly
with courtesy toward men like
us~
Mad fragments of loneliness on fire.
Ambitious people, I guess.
I was tired of him for now. I suppose that hurt him. I don't
know.
A thickset man, fortyish, is smiling in a broad way atJohnno–
it is odd how the room comes real when I stop attending toJohnno.
The forty-year-old thickset man is leaning back and smiling with
broadened, not thinned lips, it's an oddly claiming and atmospheric
sort of smile; he is smiling in that way and with deadened, staring
eyes at Johnno.
And The Person In the Dark T-Shirt is now lying on the floor,
an arm under his head and is staring at a number of people in turn .
He is being a stud generally. He is not centered onJohnno. He , The
Person, is young- is fragilely conceited ...
"- a rah di odd - dee - dah -" The verbal gull-flocks, wings
beating, cries circling, climbed, whistled, and boomed in my ears off
and on.
J ohnno is aware of the knots and ramifications here but his
