In the Shadow of the American Dream (19 page)

Later, after dark, down at the river, a man emerged from the darkness and sounds of the waterfront, waves turning slightly, raising sounds beneath the wheels of the highway traffic. The guy was large, a strapping laborer's or weight lifter's frame, his hair cropped close to his skull, growing in recently from having been shaved.

I turned on my heel with no hesitation; he turned down by the brick wall that bordered the walkway leading to the crushed sides of the covered pier. Hesitating he muttered something that sounded like a cross between a low whistle and a statement. I followed him as he turned the brick corner and disappeared in the direction of the warehouse. Stepping over rigging irons and broken pipes I followed his retreating back, covered by a black leather jacket that shone softly in the darkness, like shining shoes beneath a surface of water. Stooping beneath the half-raised doorway (loading doors) I saw him walk further into the darkness and then turn suddenly and squat down, motioning me towards him with a single wave of his large hands. Rubbing my palms around the base of his neck over and over, feeling the bristle of his shaved skull against the sensitive undersides of my wrists, movements like birds in a stationary flexing of wings, my hands riding his forehead, smoothing along his jacket, over his hard shoulders and muscles … feeling something soft and foreign, I realized he had a couple large feathers hanging from one shoulder by a piece of string, some decoration that perplexed yet gladdened me for it threw meaning into his image, as if it were a tribal gift, a sense of mysterious beauty placed within the projections I had put upon his sturdy shoulders of who he was and what distances he had traveled. His face buried itself beneath my shirt and rose upwards like an enormous fisted hand, tongue easing out between slightly parted lips so I could feel the coolness of a breeze follow his motions. I freed the buckle on my belt and then the button of my overalls, and he followed up with a series of movements of his hands, sliding the zipper down and his face leaning first back and then forward into my belly. I wrapped my hands around his body, my arms pressing against his sides, the wind moving closer and the lights of turning cars spreading beneath the slight cracks in the wall where it joined the concrete floor.

Somewhere behind us in the darkness, men stood around. I could hear the shuffle of their feet, the sense of their hearts palpitating in the coolness, the drift of a slightly luminous hand curving an arc against the night with a cigarette, adrift like falling stars or comets in old comic-book adventure illustrations, a sense of unalterable chance and change, something outside the flow of regularity: streets, job routines, sleepless nights on solitary damp mattresses, a river flowing like a gray film of life past our eyes endlessly, unaltered but by physical actions.

When I came he stood up and whipped out a white rag from his pocket and smoothed it over his forehead and mouth and laughed: Jesus, and I said, Yeah, whew. And he said, The fire really took this place apart, but man if those floorboards could talk …

Yeah if those floorboards could talk, if those streets could talk, if the whole huge path this body has traveled—roads, motel rooms, hillsides, cliffs, subways, rivers, planes, tracks—if any of them could speak, what would they remember most about me? What motions would they unravel within their words, or would they turn away faceless like the turn of this whole river and waterfront street, all of its people, its wanderers, its silences beneath the wheels of traffic and industry and sleep, would it turn away speechless like faces in dreams, in warehouses, pale wordless faces containing whole histories and geographies and adventures?

Effects of crashing: It's like you've been bone-tired for the last twenty years and just now suddenly becoming aware of that weariness, the heaviness of it contained within a gesture of a hand, of a gait, or of the turning of vision towards darker things, hoping for eventual and smooth sleep, turning one's back to the shape of the world, looking for rest and respite.

Out along the waterfront asphalt strip, more cars are turning and circling. Headlights like lighthouse beacons drift over the surface of the river, swinging around and illuminating men, strangers, men I might or might not have known because their faces were invisible, just disks of black silhouette outlined briefly as each car passes, one after the other, pale interior faces turned against the windows, then fading into distance.

[No date]

Standing here seeing the outline of my form thrown three times against the glass and metal walls of the doorway, I'm inside, having retreated from the rain. Rain streaking through the spheres of lampposts, making the sidewalks and streets and especially the curbsides boil and foam while taxis sail through it all. One
A.M.
on the corner of Sheridan Square—across from the unlit triangle of park benches streaming in the night, neons as far as you can see, then the shell of darkness beyond, and back there over that indiscernible line drawn by lack of lights is the whole pocket of memory and a sense of the past few hours, past days, seeds of weariness brought on by the crashings of black beauties.

Afternoon brings me down to the river, a lazy afternoon with the highway traffic rushing along past me, bringing with it all concerns of the working world, schedules blown away in that traffic, in the breeze from the river as I pass beneath the West Side Highway in between slow-moving columns of cars …

Inside in one of the back ground-floor rooms of the warehouse, there's a couple of small offices built into a garagelike space. Papers from old shipping lines scattered like bomb blasts among wrecked pieces of furniture, three-legged desks, a Naugahyde couch of mint green upside down, small rectangles of light and river and wind over on the far wall. Met this French guy, born in Paris, working in Los Angeles, has this navy blue sweater with buttons that line the left shoulder, allowing me to slowly fumble in shy awkwardness to set them free, lift my pale hands beneath the sweater, finding the lip edge of his tight white T-shirt, feeling the graceful yet hard curve of his abdomen, his chest rolling slightly in pleasure.

We're moving back and forth within the tiny cubicle, an old soggy couch useless on its side, the carpet beneath our shifting feet revealing our steps with slight pools of water. We're moving around, shifting into positions that allow us to bend and sway and lean forward into each other, arms moving so our tongues can meet with nothing more than a shy hesitation, sunlight burning through the river window empty of glass but covered with a screen that reduces shapes and colors into tiny dots like a film directed by Seurat. His mouth parts, showing brilliant white teeth within the tan of his face, hands unhooking the buttons at the front of my trousers, the arc of his back sending indiscernible shivers through my arms and legs—haunted by the lines of shadows that dip down around his warm neckline, I lean down and find the collar of his sweater and draw it back and away from the nape of his neck and gently probe it with the tip of my tongue.

Later he took me back to his place belonging to a friend of his who is on retreat, and in the shadows of the living room he pulled a gleaming new guitar from its case and proudly rubbed his hands along its neck. We rolled some weed and he made toast and tea and upstairs in the bedroom we got it on again and he fell back into a relaxed state, his arms outstretched and eyelids closed down, his body brown from some faraway sun, and I let one hand slowly explore him, touching, sliding gently over every inch of surface, dipping around the legs, between them, up the hips, following the lines of muscles, the curve of his limbs, the collarbone, fingers smoothing out his forehead, brushing his temples, dreaming whole relationships against his reposing body.

He told me he lived in the States for five years, at first with a boy his own age who was heavily into drugs. The police were after him so they moved in silence to Jersey near where I was born along the sea, and he worked and supported both of them, the other being unable to work for fear of discovery. After two years he left him because of differences that threatened to drive him crazy. The other guy was into S/M: I would beat him up not because I had any desire to, or that I felt anything sexual, but because he wanted it and I wanted to give him pleasure. He finally committed himself to a mental hospital and all the doctors said the same thing: Stop seeing this guy.

And now, two years later, I still miss him …

Now it's the next day, having taken some amphetamines yesterday, staying up all night working with clay and paint to produce a yellow-spotted black salamander.

Came into the city and called this Frenchman. He said, Come on over, and I walked through the streets with a sense of weariness, drinking from a clear glass bottle of seltzer water, feeling heat from thoughts and the drift of images from the day before. Realizing his handsomeness and wonderfully outgoing nature was composed of honesty with himself and trusting his senses. He put it forth so clearly while in the presence of a stranger.

We dropped some quaaludes and went upstairs into the bedroom.

Time's become strange, with the distance growing between me and Brian. There's moments when I wish I had some money and a fast car so I could step out the door and burn rubber through gravel and create a separation in my head from the past. Sometime I want to say it to him, to tell him I understand what he's doing. And yet there's this mixture of an emotional
slap
I feel, it's like he's dragging it out on me. Why doesn't he just split and be honest about it, rather than let it die so slow? That's when I wish I had the car. The car and the money to leave this state behind, to leave him behind, so that these senses could slowly fade and eventually become relegated to the past fold of memory, where things assume that drift of function, that drift which allows a cool distance, a view, that emits no color to flush the cheeks.

Los Angeles for a couple days was like some kind of refuge—from the thoughts about Paris and the constant limbo I feel I'm in by allowing fears of the unknown—aging—to keep me standing on all this solid ground. Solid ground, composed of no movements that suggest chance or change from what's momentarily comfortable or safe. I gotta break away from this. I gotta try to take apart and rearrange and step away from this past, step into what could possibly be a new shift in my living.

Sitting in Gary's place: seeing all these little things from Brian to him. They're like Xerox copies of tenderness, the small things that comprised Brian's actions that I took as some kind of symbols of what he felt for me in a
personal
way. Seeing replicas of those actions makes them no longer personal. I feel foolish, like placing dreams in someone else's hands. So this is what it feels like, staring awkwardly across a table, cigarettes in hand, creating a slow haze across little notes in semi-French, a truck of yellow-brown plastic that dispenses Pez candies. Notes that no longer show up on the table at home. Why am I so silly about all this? Being sentimental is okay but when it occurs for lack of real emotions it sucks and seems pointless. Brian asks if I want to do the big “H” tonight. I don't know. Maybe. If the Frenchman doesn't show up in time to change my mind. The thing that makes me feel silent and brooding with the Frenchman is the realization that all this is my background, a whole group of desperate people, while all I really want to do is be feeling excited by living and possibility and desire. Not to nullify it with pills and needles.

There's never been a more foreign kind of rest than heroin, sweet white heat that enters the body slowly (unless it's booted with that slight drawback of blood, then the plunger of the needle pressing fast). A white heat that brings on a sensation of heaviness, of strange weight to the arms, legs, and torso, up around the base of the neck, warmth, and the continual sensation of these weighted limbs immersed in warm fluids, pools of water, lying down with the head slightly raised. A pleasure.

Gary and Val went for the stuff somewhere on 8th Avenue around Times Square, left in a taxi while I stayed behind to wait for Viola who'd broken a bone in her hand just the previous day after catching it in a door. Later in a slight midnight rain as Val and I walked down 8th Avenue to the West Village he told me, God, here I was standing outside this fuckin' restaurant, see, it's a fuckin' front for this dealer, and I wasn't allowed up, so I'm standin' there in my leather jacket and this guy comes up out of nowhere, all these fuckin' hookers paradin' around, right? And this guy comes up and says, Hey, ya wanna go with me for a drink? And I says, No thanks, sweetheart. Then this other guy comes up and starts askin' me if I know where the Barnum Room is, some transvestite disco club, so I thought, Oh gawd, what if my parents ever saw me right here leaning against this bogus facade of a restaurant, fuckin' nighttime in Times Square waiting for a friend who's scoring some heroin …

They all showed up sometime later. It was a sublet joint Gary was stayin' in on the fringes of Chelsea, not too far from the apartment of a guy whose head I almost bashed in when I lived on the streets 'cause of his American Indian stonework collection, this twenty-pound stone fish, black rock, that I wanted as soon as I touched it. Viola walks in and says, Oh gawd, I'm in pain, where's the fuckin heroin? She reaches into her shoulder bag and pulls out a fistful of hypos. Now I gotta find one that works …

She's popping the plastic tops off and dipping them one by one into a glass of water, testing them, and finally selects one and pulls the depressor out of the hypo and dips it in a jar of Vaseline, rolls it slightly and sticks it back in. Asks Gary for a spoon: These designer spoons, the guy who sublet this place will kill me if he finds 'em bent. The spoon's bent and the smack is taken out of the tiny snap-lock bag and unfolded from its wrapping. Who's first? asks Viola. Can I be first? She's gonna shoot half of a fifty-dollar cut. Gary and Val say, No, you better do David first 'cause once the needle's out of your arm you'll prolly be in no shape to do anything but nod. So I sit down as she cuts off a quarter of the hit and pushes it onto a matchbook cover and drops it into the bent spoon, a red candle nearby flickers and she's singeing arm hairs, cooks it and drops a wad of cotton from a Q-tip into the spoon and draws the liquid into the needle through the cotton. My arm is tensed up with a robe belt around the biceps and they're both marveling over them big fuckin' veins. Always said I'd make a good junkie. Put your arm down and hold still, she says, a fuckin' pro. The needle slides in easy but she don't boot it since it's my first time. I remember when I was shootin' the coke at her place, her sister the nurse said, Don't worry, if ya drop dead we'll just toss ya outta the window. The plunger pushed and it slides out. Now hold your arm up and rub it so you don't get an air bubble. A minute later I look and can't even find a needle mark. No red dots, nothin'. That's how good she is, Sister Roxanne, nurse of the Netherworlds. Walked over to the couch and lay down and returned to reading the sleazy b-mags the people that own this place left behind:
National Enquirer
and
Star,
etc. “I was Elvis's secret lover for fifteen years.” “Tree leaps off hillside and attacks the car of drunken driver.” Etc. Waitin' for the effects to come on, feelin' impatient, finally it does, real slow while Viola's takin' the needle from her arm going, Aahhh shit, what a fuckin' rush, having booted it.