Tales of Ordinary Madness (21 page)

“Too fast! We must go slowly, slowly ...”

We sat up and she took my hand and read my palm.

“Your life line ...” she said. “You haven't been on earth long. See here. Look at your palm. See that line?”

“Yes.”

“That's the life line. Now, see mine? I've been on earth many times before.”

Carol was serious, and I believed her. You had to believe Carol. Carol was all there was to believe. The tiger watched us from twenty yards away. A breeze blew some of Carol's red-brown hair from her back over her shoulder. I couldn't bear it. I grabbed her and we kissed again. We fell backwards, then she broke off.

“Tiger, son of a bitch, I told you: go
slow!”

We talked some more. Then she said, “You see – I don't know how to express it. I have many dreams about it. The world is tired. Some end is coming about. People have deadened into inconsequence – rock people. They are tired of themselves. They are praying for death and their prayers will be answered. I'm – I'm – well – I'm rather preparing a new creature to inhabit what is left of the earth. I feel that somewhere somebody else is preparing the new creature. Perhaps in several other places. These creatures will meet and breed and survive, you see? But they must contain the
best
of all the creatures, including man, in order to survive within the small particle of life which will remain ... My dreams, my dreams ... Do you think I'm mad?”

She looked at me and laughed. “Do you think I'm Crazy Carol?”

“I don't know,” I said. “There's no way of telling.”

Again that night I couldn't sleep and I walked down the hall toward the front room. I looked through the beads. Carol was alone spread upon the couch, a small lamp burning nearby. She was naked and appeared to be asleep. I parted the beads and entered the room, sat in a chair across from her. The light from the lamp fell upon the top half of her body; the rest was in shadow.

I disrobed and moved toward her. I sat upon the edge of the couch and looked at her. She opened her eyes. When Carol saw me she didn't seem surprised. But the brownness of her eyes, though clear and deep, seemed without intonation, without accent, as if I were not something she knew by name or manner, but something else – a force apart from myself. Yet there was acceptance.

In the lamplight her hair was as it was in the sunlight – the red showing through the brown. It was like fire inside; she was like fire inside. I bent and kissed her behind the ear. She inhaled and exhaled visibly. I slid down, my legs dropping off the couch, got at and tongued her breasts, went to the stomach, the bellybutton, back to the breasts, then slid down again, down lower where the hairs began and I began kissing there, bit lightly once, then went lower, jumped over, kissed down inside one leg, then the other. She moved, made a small sound: “ah, ah ...” And then I was down upon the opening, the lips, and I very slowly circled my tongue around the edge of the lips, then reversed the circle. I bit, plunged my tongue in twice, deep in, withdrew, circled again. It became wet there, the slight taste of salt. I circled again. The sound: “ah, ah,...” and the flower opened, I saw the little bud and with the tip of my tongue, as gently and easily as possible, I tickled and licked. Her legs kicked and as she tried to lock them about my head I rose upwards, licking upwards, stopping, rising upwards to the throat, biting, and my penis was then poking poking poking as she reached and placed me at the opening. As I slid in, my mouth found hers – and we were locked in two places – the mouth wet and cool, the flower wet and hot, an oven of heat down there, and I held my penis full and still in her body as she wiggled upon it, asking ...

“You son of a bitch, you son of a bitch ... move! Move it!”

I remained still as she floundered. I pressed my toes against the end of the couch and pressed further in, still without motion. Then I forced my penis to jump three times by itself while not moving my body. She answered with contractions. We did it again, and when I could bear it no longer, I withdrew it almost out, plunged it in – heat and smoothness – did it again, then held still as she wiggled upon the end of me as if I were a hook and she were the fish. I repeated this many times, and then, wildly lost, I thrust it in and out, feeling it growing, we climbed upward together as one – the perfect language – we climbed past everything, past history, past ourselves, past ego, past mercy and examination, past everything but the occult joy of savoring Being.

We climaxed together and I remained within her afterwards without my penis softening. As I kissed her, her lips were entirely softened and gave way under mine. Her mouth was loosened, surrendered to everything. We stayed in light and gentle embrace for a half-hour, then Carol rose. She went to the bathroom first. Then I followed. There were no tigers in there that night. Just the old Tyger who had burned bright.

Our relationship went on, sexual and spiritual, but meanwhile, I'll have to admit, Carol carried on with the animals too. The months went by in easy happiness. Then I noticed that Carol was pregnant. That was some drink of water I had stopped by for.

One day we drove to town for supplies. We locked the place as we had always done. There wasn't too much worry about burglary because of the panther and the tiger and the various other so-called dangerous animals walking about. The supplies for the animals were delivered each day but we had to go to town for our own. Carol was well known. Crazy Carol, and there were always people staring at her in the stores, and now at me too, her new pet, her new old pet.

We went to a movie first, which we didn't enjoy. When we came out, it was raining lightly. Carol bought a few maternity dresses and then we went to the market for the rest of our purchases. We drove back slowly, talking, enjoying each other. We were contented people. We only wanted what we had; we didn't need them and had long since stopped caring what they thought. But we would sense their hatred. We were outsiders. We lived with animals and the animals were a threat to their society – they thought. And we were a threat to their manner of living. We dressed in old clothing. I had an untrimmed beard; hair all over my head, and although I was fifty my hair was a bright red. Carol's hair came down to her butt. And we always found things to laugh about. Genuine laughter. They couldn't understand it. In the market Carol had said, “Hey, Poppa! Here comes the salt! Catch the salt, Poppa, you old bastard!”

She was standing way down the aisle with three people between us and she threw the salt over the people's heads. I caught it; both of us laughed. Then I looked at the salt.

“No, no, daughter, you whore! You tryin' to harden my arteries? We need
iodized!
Catch, my sweets, and be careful of the baby! That poor bastard is gonna get enough knocks later!”

Carol caught it and threw back the iodized. It was the look upon their faces ... We were so undignified.

We had enjoyed our day. The movie had been bad but we had enjoyed our day. We made our own movies. Even the rain was good. We rolled down the windows and let it come in. As I drove up the driveway, Carol moaned. It was a moan of utter agony. She slumped and turned quite white.

“Carol! What is it? Are you all right?” I pulled her to me. “What is it? Tell me ...”

“I'm all right. It's what they've done. I can sense it, I know it, o my God o my God – o my God, those rotten bastards, they've done it, they've done it, the horrible rotten swine.”

“Done what?”

“Murder – the house – murder everywhere ...”

“Wait here,” I said.

The first thing I saw in the front room was Bilbo the orangutan. A bullet hole was in his left temple. His head lay in a puddle of blood. He was dead. Murdered. On his face was this grin. The grin read pain, and through the pain he had seemed to laugh as if he had seen Death and Death was something else – surprising, beyond his reason, and it had made him grin through the pain. Well, he knew more about that, now, than I did.

They had gotten Dopey the tiger in his favorite haunt – the bathroom. He had been shot many times as if the murderers had been frightened. There was much blood and some of it had hardened. He had his eyes closed but the mouth had frozen dead into a snarl, and the huge and beautiful fangs protruded. Even in death he was more majestic than a living man. In the bathtub was the parrot. One bullet. The parrot was down near the drain, its neck and head bent under its body, one wing under while the feathers of the other wing were spread wide, somehow, as if that wing had wanted to scream but couldn't.

I searched the rooms. Nothing was left alive. All murdered. The black bear. The coyote. The raccoon. All. The whole house was quiet. Nothing moved. There was nothing we could do. I had a large burial project on my hands. The animals had paid for their individuality – and ours.

I cleared the front room and the bedroom, cleaned up what blood I could and led Carol in. It had probably happened when we were in the movie. I held Carol on the couch. She didn't cry but trembled all over. I rubbed and caressed her, said things ... Now and then a jolt would shake her body, she'd moan, “Ooooh, oooh ... my God ...” After a good two hours she began to cry. I stayed with her, held her. Soon she was asleep. I carried her to the bed, undressed her and covered her. Then I walked outside and looked at the backyard. Thank Christ, it was a large one. We were going from a Liberated Zoo to an animal graveyard overnight.

It took two days to bury them all. Carol played funeral marches on the record player and I dug and put the bodies in and covered them. It was unbearably sad. Carol marked the graves and we both drank wine and didn't speak. People came and watched, peering through the wire fence; adults, children, reporters and photographers from the newspaper. Near the end of the second day I filled the last grave and then Carol took my shovel and walked slowly toward the crowd at the fence. They backed away, mumbling and frightened. Carol threw the shovel against the fence. The crowd ducked and threw up their arms as if the shovel were coming through.

“All right, murderers,” screamed Carol, “be
happy!”

We walked into the house. There were fifty-five graves out there ...

After several weeks I suggested to Carol that we might try another zoo, this time always leaving somebody to guard it.

“No,” she said. “My dreams ... my dreams have told me that the time has come. Everything is near the end. We've been just in time. We made it.”

I didn't question her. I felt that she had been through enough. As the time for birth neared. Carol asked that I marry her. She said she didn't need marriage but since she had no next of kin she wanted me to inherit her estate. This was in case she died in childbirth and her dreams were wrong – about the end.

“Dreams can be wrong,” she said, “though, so far, mine haven't been.”

So we had a quiet marriage – in the graveyard. I picked up one of my old buddies from skid row to be witness and best man, and again the passersby stared. It was over quickly. I gave my buddy some money and some wine and drove him back to skid row.

On the way in, drinking from the bottle, he asked me, “Knocked her up, eh?”

“Well, I think so.”

“You mean there were others?”

“Uh – yes.”

“That's the way it is with these broads. You never know. Half the guys on the row have been put there by women.”

“I thought it was drink.”

“The women come first, then the drink follows.”

“I see.”

“You never know with them broads.”

“Oh, I knew.”

He gave me this look and then I let him out.

I waited downstairs at the hospital. How very odd the whole thing had been. I had walked from skid row to that house and all the things that had happened. The love and the agony. But for it all, the love had outdueled the agony. But it wasn't over. I tried to read the baseball boxscores, the race results. It hardly mattered. Then there were Carol's dreams; I believed in her but I was not so sure of her dreams. What were dreams? I didn't know. Then I saw Carol's doctor at the reception desk speaking to a nurse. I walked over to him.

“Oh, Mr. Jennings,” he said, “your wife is all right. And the offspring is – is – male, nine pounds, five ounces.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

I took the elevator upstairs to the glass partition. There must have been a hundred babies in there crying. I could hear them through the glass. On and on it went. This birth thing. And this death thing. Each one had his turn. We entered alone and we left alone. And most of us lived lonely and frightened and incomplete lives. An incomparable sadness descended upon me. Seeing all that life that must die. Seeing all that life that would first turn to hate, to dementia, to neurosis, to stupidity, to fear, to murder, to nothing – nothing in life and nothing in death.

I told the nurse my name. She entered the glass room and found our child. As she held the child up, the nurse smiled. It was a tremendously forgiving smile. It had to be. I looked at the child – impossible, medically impossible: it was a tiger, a bear, a snake and a human. It was an elk, a coyote, a lynx and a human. It did not cry. Its eyes looked upon me and knew me, and I knew it. It was unbearable, Man and Superman, Superman and Superbeast. It was totally impossible and it looked upon me, the Father, one of the fathers, one of the many many fathers ... and the edge of the sun gripped the hospital and the whole hospital began to shake, the babies roared, lights went on and off, a flash of purple crossed the glass partition in front of me. The nurses screamed. Three fluorescent light fixtures fell from their chains and down upon the babies. The nurse stood there holding my child and smiling as the first hydrogen bomb fell upon the city of San Francisco.

A POPULAR MAN

twice around I've had the flue, the flue, the flu, and the door keeps banging, and there are always more people, and each person or persons believes that they themselves have something special to offer me, and bang bang bang goes the door, and it is always the same thing, I say

“WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE!”

I get into some pants and let them in through the door. but I am very tired, never get the sleep I should, haven't shit in 3 days, precisely, you guessed it, I am going mad, and all those people have their special energy, they all have points of goodness, I am a loner but I am not that much of a crank, but it is always always – something. I think of my mother's old saying in German, which is not precise, but which went something like this: “emmer etvas!” which means: always something. which a man never quite understands until he begins getting older. not that age is an advantage, only that it brings the same scene again and again like a movie madhouse.

it is a tough guy in soiled pants, just off the road, great self-belief in his work, and not a bad writer at all, but I am wary of his self-belief as he is wary of the fact that we do not kiss and lock arms and assholes in midroom. he is entertaining. he is an actor. he ought to be. he has lived more lives as one man than ten men have lived. but his energy, in a sense, beautiful, is finally wearing on me. I don't give a fuck about the poetic scene or that he phoned Norman Mailer or knows Jimmy Baldwin, or the rest, or all the restly rest. and I see that he does not quite understand me because I do not quite excite to his preponderances. o.k. I still like him. he beats 999 out of a thousand. but my German soul will not rest until I find the thousandth. I am very quiet and listen but there is a huge boil of madness underneath me that must be kept care of finally or I will do it myself, someday, in an 8 dollar a week room just off Vermont Ave. so there. shit.

so he talks. and it's good. I laugh.

“15 grand. I got this 15 grand. my uncle dies. then she wants to get married. I am fatter than a pig. she's been feeding me good. 300 a week she's making, counselor's general's office, some god damn thing, now she wants to get married, quit her job. we go to Spain. all right, I'm working on a play, I've got this great idea for a play in my mind, so all right, I'm drinking, I'm fucking all the whores. then this guy in London he wants to see my play, he wants to put on my play, o.k., so I come back from London and what the fuck, here I find out my wife's been fucking the mayor of the town and my best friend, and I face her, I say, ‘YOU LOUSY WHORE, YOU BEEN FUCKING MY BEST FRIEND AND THE MAYOR. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU NOW BECAUSE I WILL ONLY GET FIVE YEARS BECAUSE YOU ADULTURATED ME!' ”

he paced up and down the room.

“then what happened,” I asked.

“she said, ‘go ahead and stab me, cocksucker!' ”

“that's guts,” I said.

“it was,” he said, “I had this big butcherknife in my hand and I threw it on the floor. she had too much class on me. too much upper-middle class.”

all right. so, all god's children – he left.

I went back to bed. I was merely dying. nobody was interested. I wasn't even interested. the chills came over me again. I couldn't put enough covers over me. I was still cold. and my mind too – all the human adventures of the mind seemed like con, like shit, it seemed as if the moment I were born I had been plopped in among the batch of con-men and if you didn't understand the con or play the side of the con you were dead, out. the con had it sewed, had it sewed for centuries, you couldn't bust the seams. he didn't want to bust the seams, he didn't want to conquer; he knew that Shakespeare was bad writing, that Creeley was fear; it didn't matter. all that he wanted was a small room, alone. alone.

he'd once told a friend he had once thought had some understanding of him, he'd once told his friend, “I have never been lonely.”

and his friend had responded, “you're a god damned liar.”

so, he went back to bed, sick, was there an hour, the doorbell rang again. he decided to ignore it. but the ringing and the pounding began with such violence that he felt it might be something of importance.

it was a young Jewish lad. quite a good poet. but what the hell?

“Hank?”

“Yeah?”

he pushed through the door, young, energized, believing in the poetic-hoax – all that shit: if a man is a good human being and a good good poet he will be rewarded somewhere this side of this side of hell. the kid just didn't know. the Gugg's were already set for those already comfortable and fat for sucking and lurking and teaching English I or II in the dull universities of the land. everything was fixed for failure. soul would never overcome con. only a century after death, and then they'd use that soul out of con to con you out of con. everything failed.

he came in. young, rabbinical student.

“ah, shit, it's awful,” he said.

“what?” I asked.

“on the ride to the airport.”

“yeh?”

“Ginsberg gets his ribs broken in the crash. nothing happens to Ferlinghetti, the biggest schmuck of them all. he's going off to Europe, to give these 5 to 7 dollar readings a night, and he doesn't even give himself a scratch. I was on stage with Ferlinghetti one night and he tries to upstage a man so bad, with tricks, that it's pitiful. they hissed him, finally, they caught on. Hirschman pulls a lot of that shit too.”

“don't forget, Hirschman is hooked on Artaud. he figures if a man don't act crazy he ain't a genius. give him time. maybe.”

“shit,” says the kid, “you gave me 35 dollars to type up your next book of poems but there are too many. JESUS CHRIST, I didn't think there would be so MANY!”

“I thought I had given up writing poetry.”

and when a Jew says Jesus Christ you know that he is in trouble. so he gave me 3 dollars and I gave him ten, and then we both felt better. also he ate half a loaf of my french bread, a blessed pickle and left.

I got back in the sack and got ready to die, and for good or bad, good boys or bad boys, writing their rondos, flexing their two-bit poetic muscles, it does get tiresome, so many of them, so many of them trying to make it, so many of them hating each other and some on the top, of course, not deserving to be there, but many on the top deserving to be there, and so the whole thing a tear-down, a rip-down, up and down, “I met Jimmy at a party ...”

well, let me swallow shit. so he got back into bed. and watched the spiders swallow the walls. this is where he belonged, always. he couldn't bear the crowd, the poets, the non-poets, the heroes, the non-heroes – he couldn't abide by any of them. he was doomed. his only problem in doom was to accept his doom as kindly as possible. he, I, wee, thee ...

he made it back to bed, trembling, cold. death like the side of a fish, white-colored water of lisping. think of it. everybody dies. that's perfect except for me and one other person. fine. there are various formulas. various philosophers. I'm tired.

all right, the flue the flue, natural death of rustic frustration and not-caring, and so here we are, finally, spread in bed alone, sweating, staring at the cross, going mad in my
own
personal way, at least it was my own, those days, nobody bothering me, now it's always somebody at the door, I don't make $500 a year writing and they keep knocking at my door, they want to LOOK at me.

he, I, went to sleep again, sick, sweating, dying, really dying, just let them leave me alone, I don't give a damn if I am genius or idiot, let me sleep, let me have one more day my way, just 8 hours, the rest can be yours, and then the bell rang again.

you'd think he was Ezra Pound with Ginsberg trying to suck his dick –

and he said,

“wait a minute, let me put my pants on.”

and all the lights were on, outside. like neon. or prostitute tickling hairs.

the guy was an English teacher from somewhere.

“Buk?”

“yaah. I'm sick man. flu. real contagious.

“are you having a tree this year?”

“I dunno. I'm dying right now. little girl in town. but I'm very sick now, contagious.”

he stands back and hands me a six pack of beer, arm's length and then opens his latest book of poetry, autographs it to me, he leaves, I know that the poor devil can't write, never will, but that he is hooked on some lines that I once wrote somewhere that he never will.

but it isn't competition; great art is not competition at all, great art can be govt. or children or painters or cocksuckers or anything at all.

I said goodbye to the man and his 6 pack and then opened his book:

“... spent the 1966-67 academic year on a Guggenheim Fellowship in studying and doing research at ...”

he threw the book into the corner of the room, knowing that it would be no good. all the awards went to the already-fat who had the time and knowledge of where to get an application form for a motherfucking Gugg. he'd never seen one. you didn't see them while driving taxis or working as a hotel boy in Albuquerque. fuck.

he went back to sleep.

the phone rang.

they kept beating at his door.

that was it. he didn't care anymore. among all the sounds and sights, he didn't care, he hadn't slept for 3 days or 3 nights, hadn't shit for dinner, and now it was quiet. as close to death as you could without being an idiot. and being one close. it was great. soon they went away.

and across the christ of his rented ceiling came little cracks and he smiled as the 200 year old plaster came down onto his mouth, he breathed it in, and then choked to death.