PHILIP ROTH
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couldn't drown . Fucks thirty women every day and nothing will ever
cut him down . But I'm afraid of getting hit by a truck in my bath. I
could not do a thing to save myself.
If
there isn't a great book on this
subject there should be . By Dostoyevsky . My next door neighbor's
son out there under the streetlamp washing his car. A most remark–
able boy. Just seventeen . Handsome, brilliant . Funny . Being sorely
tested on my own again. Berserk behavior beckons. He is a little
crazy . Is bad . Is wild . My taste for the treacherous. A danger for me .
Laughing, claims I tried to seduce him when he was only twelve. The
mother knows exactly what is going on, looking out the upstairs win–
dow. I lie around naked adding up all my zeroes and being sorely
tested . Crawling the walls on all fours. Hot and young , what a com–
bination . Who could relinquish that? Him. His friends. The bunch
of them . A Dostoyevsky dream come true . He's already got parking
tickets worth five hundred dollars and has had his license all of a
month. Parks in front of fire hydrants , so his father tells me . A warn–
ing that, to keep my shades pulled down . I don't trust this responsible
Dad . When he takes a good look at me he doesn't let on that he's
looking. Everyone's the same . I go to my eye doctor. Park Avenue,
extraordinary reputation, but he chases me around his optical ma–
chines, and, looking through the light at my vessels, feels my tits in
the dark. They'll shave my head for this greed. Racked and ruined
by choice and greed . They'll brand me , SHE SEES EVERYTHING
ACCORDING TO HER NEEDS, and slam me into the stocks.
The D.A. will gladly provide penal equipment. But if I cannot be
rescued by anything decent , what's to stand in the way of a little
disaster with next door's son? In hot pursuit of the protruding male
organ . In the good old days before I started taking myself so seri–
ously, there would have been no debate. Where did all the fun go?
Very difficult, if not impossible, separating the healthy hedonist from
the self-destructive nut. I'm like a person stashed away in a prison.
Inside the washing machine with the cycle turned to spin. Where
did
all the fun go? I'm insane tonight. Maddeningly impelled to fuck up.
Somebody has pumped a little sickening gas into everything and
soon, if I'm smart, I shall pass completely away . I think there's a rat
in this room .
I dreaded today . I loved him and am charmed by him and he's
funny , but his morality is impossible and his narcissism downright
dangerous . A moralistic and repressive person. As far as I can see
life's not meant to be an exercise in denial. These responsible people!
