Samuel Delany - Dhalgren

I looked back.

Jack was looking at Bunny's empty cage. The black velvet curtain at the back swung as though someone had just brushed by on the other side. "Like that big nigger that they got his picture up, all over the place with his God damn dick hangin' out all over. I just don't see that. I mean I don't got nothin' against it. But, man, if they gonna do shit like that, why don't they put some pictures of some pussy up too! You know? If they gonna do one, don't you think it's right they should do the other?"

"Sure," I said.

"I mean, maybe somebody like me, or you— you got a girl friend — is interested in something else, huh? When I first got here, I knew things weren't gonna be like every where else. I was real nice to people; and people was nice to me too. Tak? The guy I met with you, here? Now he's a pretty all right person. And when I was staying with him, I tried to be nice. He wants to suck on my dick, I'd say: 'Go ahead, man, suck on my fuckin dick.' And, man, I ain't never done nothin' like that before… I mean not serious, like he was, you know? Now, I done it. I ain't sorry I done it. I don't got nothin' against it. But it is just not what I like all that much, you understand? I want a girl, with tits and a pussy. Is that so strange? You understand that?"

"Sure," I said. "I understand."

Jack pushed the corner of his mouth out with his tongue, trying to break the scab. "I guess he understood too. Tak, I mean. He's still nice to me. He talks to me when he sees me, you know? He asks me how I'm doin', stuff like that… Man, I just wish I'd see some pictures of some nice pussy up there, beside all that dick. I mean that's what I'm interested in; it would just make me feel better."

I drank some beer. "Make me feel better too."

"You been to that commune place — you know, in the park?" Jack looked at the wrinkled bill. "Tak took me down there. And I guess it was pretty nice, you know. I was talking to this one girl, who's one of the ones who runs it—"

"Milly?"

"Yeah. Mildred. And she's goin' on and on about my deserting from the army, and all about how good they all feel about deserters, and I guess she's tryin' to be nice too — but after a while, I mean after a couple of fuckin' hours of that, I had to say: Lady, how you. sittin' there tellin' me how bad the fuckin' army is when you ain't never been in the fuckin' army and I just been there for a God damn year and a half! She don't know nothin' about why I run out of the fuckin' army. And she don't even care." His eyes wandered to his hands, the bottle, the puddled counter, the bill, his hands… "I mean, she didn't know a thing…" He drew breath and looked up at me.

"I met Frank at the commune… the guy who's supposed to be a poet? He'd been in the army; and he deserted. He knew what I was trying to tell her. For a while there, him and me, we were pretty close. I can't talk as good as he can, and he knows all about a lot of stuff I don't. But we went around a lot together. He took me to that House where all the girls live. You been there?"

"No."

"Well, it's really something, man. Some of them girls are pretty nice — some are pretty strange, too. And the guys that come around there… well, some of those girls go for some pretty freaky guys. I guess some of them, the girls, even liked me. But only the freaky ones that I just wasn't interested in. I wanted to get me one, sort of little — they got some big women over there! — and pretty. And soft And smart. Now to me being smart in a girl is very important. If I could get me a girl who could talk about things and understand things half as good as Frank could, I'd be happy. And they got some smart girls over there too. In fact, I don't think none of 'em is stupid. Just a lot of them is pretty freaky, though. There was some there just like I wanted. And I could of used a girl friend! I mean I talked to them. And they talked to me. But I couldn't get anywhere. Frank could. He could get laid from Wednesday to next Thursday and start all over tomorrow. I wanted to get laid, but I wanted more than that, too. Now I know people around here is different from me; but that means I'm different from them, too. Only I guess if you're too different, nobody wants anything to do with you. I mean they don't care shit." His hands jerked in the puddle, to the bottle's base. He frowned for a while, and I thought he was finished. But he said: "You hear about the nigger — this black guy who used to come in here: the one who got shot off top of the Second City Bank building?"

I nodded.

"Do you know what they think—" Jack turned on his stool, one hand going to spread across the chest of his shirt—"John, Mildred, all them people over in the commune in the park — that I was the one who done it! And they tellin' all sorts of other people, too! They tellin' that to all them girls who live in that House together! 'Cause I'm white, and I'm from the south, and I don't know how to argue good and explain that they are fuckin' crazy — they are fuckin' crazy if they think I done something like that!" He looked as surprised in the telling as I was in the hearing. "I… I had a gun, you know?" His hand closed to a loose fist that slid, stopping and starting, down his shirt, leaving a wet stain.

I nodded.

"I always had a gun at home. They should have guns out there in the park with all the nuts wandering around in this city. And all they got to do is walk into a store and take one — like I did. They got people comin' around to the park all the God damn time, to take food away from 'em? And some of the people who come got guns. Get up on a damn building and shoot a damn nigger?" His hand, loose in his lap, twitched. "Jesus Christ, I wouldn't do nothin' like that! But I go around the park, man, and I hear them talking. I mean I heard people talkin'; then they'd turn around, and they seen me and shut up! Frank won't have nothin' to do with me no more. I mean he'd say hello or somethin' when I'd speak first and then walk away to do something else. But five times — five times I'd start over to find out just what'n hell was goin' on and he walks away soon as he see me comin'. I mean it's like they're afraid of me; only they got me so scared, I'm afraid to go back. Shit, I don't even believe Frank thinks I done it. Frank's a nice guy. He just don't want the others to think he's havin' anything to do with me. And I don't know what to do with that. I just don't know. I thought for a while, right after I first met him, Frank was like Tak. I know he goes after girls. But he writes that poetry and stuff and, sort of, well… if he liked me, I guessed maybe that was part of it. 'Cause I damn well couldn't see no other reason: he's smarter'n me, older'n me, and he's got about everything he wants. When all this stuff started, I thought maybe because I'd never done anything with him, like with Tak, that was… well, was why he was bein' so damn mean. That pretty stupid, huh? But this place puts ideas like that into your head. I told him, right out; I said, 'Anything you wanna do — Anything at all…!' I wished he'd been gay, man. I wished he'd liked me like that. Because then, after bein' with Tak and all, even though I ain't, I'd kind of known what to do. You know?" He looked at me, shook his head, looked at the bottle. "You know what I mean?" He took his hand out his lap and put it back in the puddle.

"Go on," I said. "You've got it too simple. But go on."

His jaw moved a few times, but he didn't speak.

"How come you don't come down to see us?" I asked.

"You get hungry, come on down to the nest. Tak'll bring you there if you ask him. Left over flower-power, in all this pollution, was never my thing either." I was wondering about him and the department store people but I didn't say anything.