Adios, Scheherazade

This part of 7th Avenue was neither bright nor dim, the lights seeming to illuminate the street while leaving the sidewalks in semi-shadow. And there, along the sidewalks, standing in store entrances or under the dark marquees of theaters, were the whores. Some of them strolled slowly along, but others just stood where they were, almost blending into the buildings behind them, their clothing dark, their eyes containing a cold glitter.

Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men stopping to talk with one of the whores, but it took him a while to build up his courage. He walked past several girls who gave him meaningful glances before he took out his paint can and brush and painted a big round target on his ass. With his funny red nose and his great big yellow bow tie and the huge flappy shoes and the puffs of smoke coming out of the hole in the top of his barber stripe top hat, he was just the cutest little devil in the center ring.

This is not to happen. Start the paragraph again, get swinging again, retype this page when were back in the saddle. And:

Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men with clear plastic balls, inside which the blue and red gears could be seen failing to mesh.

Paul walked for three blocks among them, seeing here and there other men stopping to talk with one of the whores, opening their shirts and skins and cutting out various organs and handing them over, dripping and steaming and oozing maroon goo, to the hookers who dropped them in black shopping bags to be delivered to the beauty parlor early next morning.

I will not. I will not. Paul walked for three blocks, he would have been better off going home and jerking off in his back yard. Or some neighbors back yard. Here, Paul baby, jerk off to this book here, by this fella Dirk Smuff. He isn’t the best of the grubby pornographers, he isn’t the worst, he’s one of the fuzzy brown ones in the endless middle. Show him a filthy book with no name on it, he wouldn’t be absolutely sure whether it was or was not written by him. Maybe one of the early ones, he’d say, musing, thinking it over, trying to remember. Did I write that sentence?

Paul Paul Paul Paul walked those three fucking blocks.

I don’t want to go through it again. I don’t want to describe it again, not even in third person, not even through Paul.

And it would be worse to make Paul win, I’d never respect myself again if I wrote it that way. Or changed the hooker to a different type, it wouldn’t work, she’d keep ripping off the mask and showing she was the same ebony stiletto.

I miss Betsy. God, how I miss Betsy.

What if she was here now? If it hadn’t happened, if she hadn’t gone away, hadn’t read the book, nothing. What would I be doing?

The same thing. Probably the same thing, though maybe I’d be more securely into doing the dirty book by now. But I’d still be in here, she’d be out there in some other room. It’s a little after nine in the evening, the dishes would be done, she might be watching television. Doing something, how do I know what? The point is, we wouldn’t be physically together in the same room. We might not have said more than half a dozen things to each other all day, we might not have been actually together in the same room more than an hour all day long. So why should I miss her so much?

What difference does it make? I do, that’s all.

It was strange, eating dinner alone. I heated up a frozen pot pie and some other stuff, sat there alone in the kitchen eating it. The light seemed dimmer somehow, I don’t know why.

I didn’t read the Sunday Times yesterday, so I read it tonight, during dinner. Trying to distract myself, but of course I should have known better.

Like the first thing I did was the Sunday puzzle, which was full of things like “Woe is me” and “just desserts” and “not up to it” and “fat chance” and “Start it now.” My favorite was “But is it art?” and the whole damn puzzle was called “After the Feast Is Over.”

So much for the puzzle. This week there was a special Jazz Recordings section, full of that recent assumption that jazz is art and should be taken seriously, which makes me very nervous. Reading about people who have learned a craft and consider that makes them artists always makes me nervous, because it makes me wonder if I’m supposed to make noises of similar stripe. After all, may there not be noteworthy bits of business in my various sex books?

There may not.

Reading the news is even stranger, I mean the stuff they call “hard news.” All about the Cyprus crisis, and the devaluation of the pound, and Vietnam, and racial strife, all this stuff that has about as much relevance to me as a dog throwing up in Nairobi. I mean, on page 37 of yesterday’s Times there is the following headline, and I am not kidding:

USE OF FIREARMS IN RIOTS DEPLORED