Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

Spent that afternoon trying to figure that one out.

I strip and bleach so the faint pattern-ings of a real voice will show through; and end with something artificial as a henna job. And Calkins, determined not to read, waits for my next book in this jargon called the written word I've been stuck with!

Oh yeah. While he was blowing me, I stopped him in the middle and asked him what he was thinking about — to be a bastard. Very honest and very surprised, he told me Dollar (I flashed on the moment with Risa when our pet murderer went through my mind) which got me a little mad. But that's what I get. I note here (because sex does have something to do with love) Denny's said he loves me six times now, admitted it almost under his breath with this hung expression as though he was daring himself to say it — it always comes off the wall when we're busy doing something else: moving the couch across to the other side of the front room, chucking junk into the yard across the fence, or when I was trying to help Cathedral bend the motorcycle's kickstand back into shape. I don't really know what I feel about him, but I'm glad as hell one of them stays here. (I guess I wish it was Lanya; she's more interesting, in or out of bed… which isn't really the point; really, I just wish she was here.) When I woke up, he had wriggled out of my arms and was curled up in the corner against the walls.

When I got up and went into the living room, most of them were still asleep. Fireball sat on the edge of the couch eating something out of a cup with a spoon. He stood up when I came in (Filament with, oddly, Devastation were tucked together on the couch behind him; the pale Black Widow, with the dark Lady of Spain curled against her, slept on the floor among Tarzan-and-most-of-the-apes) as though he wanted to speak to me. I nodded.

Walking with Lanya today, I told her that She beamed: "Yes, he's said it to me a half-dozen times too. It's charming."

"I don't know," I said. "I don't think so. I mean, I don't understand it. He loves you. He loves me. What the hell does that mean?"

She looked surprised, even hurt Finally she said: "Well — when somebody uses strange words to you that you just do not understand, you have to listen for the feeling and get at the meaning that way!"

"I think," I said after a moment, "it may mean, when he says it he's going to leave me before you do — who say it so much less frequently."

"You think he'll leave us?" Me/us — it struck like that "Give him a reason to stay. I've tried."

"That's a hard one, even in much simpler situations. I wonder if it just has to do with the kinds of people we're familiar with. To you, I'm replaceable. I'm a nice ape, who even happens to be more interesting inside than out I think one of the most interesting things to you Is the way the machinery jerks around by stops and starts. Like you say, though, you've known geniuses before. Ifs nothing new."

"Well!"

"Denny, I think, is the first Denny you've ever known. For you, he's unique — whereas for me, everything from the foster homes he's lived in to the rhythm he bucks his ass at, the protective brutality, and even that well of playful sweetness you can never touch bottom in, the hard-headedness good and bad: sweet and fucked-up as he is, there're many, many, many of him floating around." We turned the corner. "Now for me, you're the irreplaceable one: I've never seen you up so close before, and I do not understand you at all. You say sometimes I act like I don't see you? I don't even know where to look! Living with you around is like like living with a permanent dazzle. The fact that you even like me, or look at me, or brush by me, or hug me, or hold me,

He nodded back. He didn't seem to be able to start, though, so he ate another spoonful.

"Come here," I told him.

Still shoeless, he stepped over a confusion of feet — the Widow's dull black Wellingtons: Cathedral's floppy brown suedes. I put my hand on his shoulder. "You like Dollar, don't you?"

Fireball said: "He's a pretty funny little guy. But he's really okay, huh?" The scrawny, rusty-haired coon had a sleepy half-smile. His eyes looked like circles cut from our sky, tossed into the evenly milky coffee of his face.

"Good," I told him. "You look out for him. You make sure he doesn't get into any trouble around here, you hear?"

The smile wavered—

"Somebody's got to. And I'm tired of it. So you do it now. You hear me?"

— and fell.

He nodded.

"Good." With both hands I took off one of my chains, put it over his head, and hung my fists on his chest. I pulled one down, while the other raised, my knuckles sliding on his skin. Then I ran it the other way. "This'll go with the one you already took for yourself, right?"

is so surprising that after it's over I have to go back through it a dozen times in my head to savor it and try and figure out what it was like because I was too busy being astounded while it was happening."

"Really? That's marvelous!" She was silent the next quarter of a block. Then she said: "He's not going to leave. At least not for a while. Though you may be right about who leaves first, whenever that happens… if ever."

"What do you see?"

"That you are a whole lot of real person. And so, for that matter, am I. Someone who's had as little of that as Denny has just isn't going to run out before he's had a lot more."

"Sounds good," I said. "Hope it works. I like you two. I want you with me. Just don't let me start taking either of one of you for granted!"

"Not, dear heart, if I can help it."

Fireball blinked at me.

"It's yours." I let go.

"That mean I'm a member…?"

Raven, on the floor, propped his head on his elbow. "That's the way we play, sweetheart." He laughed, rolled over (into Cathedral who just grunted), and closed his eyes.

Fireball looked back at me. The sleepy smile returned. "Okay," he said. "Hey, thanks, Kid. Okay…"

"You look out for that crazy, pimple-faced white bastard."

"Okay," he repeated. "I will." Then he ate another spoonful out of his cup.

I went onto the porch.

Risa was sitting outside on a crate under a tree, reading. (Brass Orchids? I craned to see. Yeah.) Rubbing two fingers in the dusty corner of the screenless frame, I watched her, wondering if I should go down and ask her about what I was thinking, finally decided: Fuck it, if you're gonna do it, do it.

I went down the steps — the door clacked behind me — and crossed the yard. "Hey…" I squatted beside her, elbows and hands (wondering how can they get that dirty in just a day) a double bridge, knee to knee. "I wanted to know, I mean, about last night."

She looked up.

"You enjoyed that, huh? I mean, you were into it. Because some of the — one of the women seemed a little upset by it. So I wanted to… know."

She'd slapped her hand over the page like she didn't want me to see it. Which was odd. Her heavy legs shifted. She looked uncomfortable. I waited, thinking: Well, she's probably just not a very verbal person, or maybe she just can't get answers to questions like that together, just like that; or maybe it's a stupid question, or just an embarrassing one. I mean she could have always said: Look, asshole, why do you think I was doing it if I didn't like it? Also, I felt silly pretending, even to myself, I was speaking for Lady of Spain when, of course, I was speaking for me.

"I mean," I said, "I was curious: if you felt any one had… well, forced you?"