Yo-Yo Boing!

— You said Mick Jagger’s wife should be president of Nicaragua. Because, quote—she is as smart as a whip—end quote. What makes her less of a whore for power. How can she become president of Nicaragua if she does not even live there, and yet you respect her because she is famous.

— You’re so self-indulgent, smugly ignorant. You think you’re charming the world with your ignorance. You’re impeding knowledge.

— Look, I’m not trying to be perfect.

— I am.

— I want to be human, all too human.

— You want your art to be perfect. Why can’t you see that in other areas you should be just as demanding. Otherwise, when you talk, you really sound like, like a fascist, knowing nothing about anything — and feeling empowered by your ignorance. It invigorates you to fear the unknown — and so you paint your fears with silly superstitions — mascara and lipstick — feeling the blindness of your being. What do I get hearing you babble? How can you say that there’s nothing wrong with cheating?

— I come from a different culture.

— No culture accepts…

— I, I myself accept all kinds of flaws.

— I believe in conscientiousness.

— You also believe in fame.

— To achieve fame one has to be respected by one’s peers. Success cannot be argued.

— I don’t want my cake if I can’t eat it too.

— You’ll have your cake — at night with violins and chandeliers.

— This is the divorce of true minds. I cannot accept that because someone is famous he must be great.

— But you assume that it is noble and pure to be an outcast.

— Like Artaud, like Van Gogh, like Rimbaud.

— Take it from Mama Mona, they yearned for recognition. Do you think Emily Dickinson was happy bound in a nutshell of near oblivion — in the shadowed corners of yellowing pages — waiting to be drawn away and forever by four-eyed inky scholars who haven’t got a clue to this very day because they themselves have never experienced the whammobammo of drums and the jazzy last bip of the bipping rap of the world. Surely Emily Dickinson craved it obsessively. If you should ever have your day in the sun — knock on wood — God forbid a chorus of green faces will accuse you of selling out. See how Cenci told you that you got Yale because you pulled strings.

— What strings do I have? I’ve got more “we regret to inform you”s than John Kennedy Toole and his mother. And now that Jonathan Brent happens to pick my work out of a pile of dusty manuscripts, Cenci, my dear friend and mentor, who has always supported my work, tells me that it’s only because I have contacts.

— All your friends are crooks.

— Who?

— The sadomasochist whore

— She’s no whore. She books appointments.

— Innocence should be suffocated if it fools itself. You wish you were Buñuel, but you’re Viridiana, a fool like Viridiana. You dream of palaces for beggars but you wouldn’t toss them a dime in the streets, yet you offer to help crooks like that dominitrix who works at the Dungeon, feeding off human frailty! What happens in the bedroom affects the whole world. Sexuality and life are one in the same. If you keep believing in your fantasy world, someday you’ll wake up and it will be too late.

— Cuando las autoridades te apoyan — I doubt. A Pessoa ninguna autoridad lo apoyó. Women — I always say — when I read Simone de Beauvoir — I think — she’s a good writer but she would have a been a much better — much better mother. That’s what I think of you, a good writer, but you would have been a much better — much better mother. You could have given birth to a great man. Erraste tu carrera. Debiste haber sido madre.

— Y tú, tú debiste ser mujer.

— I won’t deny it. I would have loved to be a mother.

— Tú eres un envidioso.

— Envy is a splendid sensation, but I would never envy you. Envy involves someone greater than oneself. I would have never published con la chusma.

— That was a reprint. It can be reprinted a thousand times.

— I am an elitist. But I tell you, don’t brag that your book was published by Yale because Foucault recommended it. Nobody believes it anyway.

— No me digas what I should say.

— I don’t care about authorities, institutions.

— I don’t care about institutions.

— Yes, you care. Institutions don’t care about you. But, yes, you care. They throw you a bone, they publish your book, or they publish my journal. But those are stark naked bones that wouldn’t draw a maggot.

— You wish you were a woman like me.

— I would love to be a woman, but not like you. I would have been a mother. Remember, the fact that the institutions recognize you, doubt of yourself, start running. El premio de traducción te dio la publicación.

— It was the merit of the work.

— Merit is never recognized until it is too late.

— A romantic notion for unknowns to cling to. Many writers, the majority, have been recognized. Joyce, Ibsen, I don’t have to name them.

— I guarantee you, a poem published in my journal will give you more recognition than all your books published in Spain.