Milkbottle H, page 40
Nothing. The Girl That I Marry close to the lowlying Wildwood boardwalk Diane and Lee lie lingerlooselimbed in the sand.
Lee, fluently dismembered, his parts strewn magnanimously and illogically all over himself, inside and out, smiles down the entire left side of his body, and Diane curves herself over his belly in the sun to open her mouth at his hip for Lee’s smile to flood her throat where it strikes rich rapids so that she laughs the bucking, spraying, spuming turbulence of his smile in her aloud loudly in a great brayspray into his face I think Im enormously fond of you Lee, she laughs, yes, I admit it openly her russetroan waistlength hair peacockeagled across the boys loins.
Dont you know shes after your blackheads Rhona Lyrian sour-nasals. Shit. Diane Valins the type of woman whos after every mans blackheads. Thats the sort of thing I find it impossible to compete with, Rhona complains, whining, highsurprised her voice, as if caught redhanded in the act of stealing from her own voice. Rhona jerks her head, darting a glance behind her, an incessant action. But shit on that. We’ll put on our own plays, dont think I havent got connections, my uncle is a state senator. And as for your Rena Emanuel, Rhona writes to Lee while he undergoes flight training at Randolph Field, why, what she has between her thighs is a sliced peach, I cant compete with that, either especially when the peach lacks a pit. And that peach has been seen with mouths, I think this is something you ought to know, Lee, for your own good that boys for every womans own good
now why dont you consider my body especially if you cover my face with the flag of the United Nations, Rhona urges, I can be considered as a sort of international makeshift for Lee Emanuel. Go on have a piece of cake, have an apple, have a rolled beef sandwich, have another cup of coffee, have you thought of casting your play Ive just the girl youll love her, Lee, shes one of the stars in Pins And Needles, the ILGWU revue, I know her personally, can you imagine she used to be a pieceworker in a dress factory, I tell you we cant fail, Philadelphias ripe for a repertory theater featuring original plays Rhona’s eyes are magnified tenfold behind the thicklensed spectacles, the eyes themselves lodged in their sockets with mascara paste, the spectacles featuring cathedral glass overlaid by frosted glass, have some orange marmalade, have the truth for your own good
THE TRUTH IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
Oh dont misunderstand me, Danny Naroyan irascibly insists, its not that I dont love Rhona, because I do, I do, Lee, its simply that Im afraid of her, too, why, you dont know what the womans going to say next, especially if there are other people around. She has a terrifying candor, she says whatever comes into her head;
She may even say what comes into your head
(because Rhona Lyrian’s skull is constructed out of a hodgepodge of many ugly skulls, and when shes growing in the womb she grows by fits and starts. Her speech, therefore, is spasmodic; she looks behind her constantly:
Am I going to grow now? she inquires of the invisible architect.
Are you going to grow now she inquires of Danny, because I dont see it as of this moment.
I am dissatisfied with my ugliness, she says, because its really unconcentrated. I have beautiful skin, for example, so my ugliness is a soft one; but theres too much of it on my enormous forehead; Ive the illusion Im growing bald. My lips would become a negro, my nose enhance a man, my squinting eye an explorer, but Im none of these. Dont stare at me too long, youll become a philosopher, she nasals disdainfully. Stare at anything too long and youll become a gravedigger.
My eyes are glass coffins, Rhona Lyrian remarks. Let me bury Diane Valin for you, Lee, she urges. Shes a model, right? Well, Id like to model for her myself, for that pinchnosed redhead with her perfect spitshaped tits, but Id have to throw myself across my own grave to do so. I want her to want me. But shed have to be a fly crawling over my glass coffin, wouldnt you my dear she suddenly grins at Diane.
Youre absolutely adorable, Diane chuckles richly and throws her arms around Rhona.
Stop that, Rhona commands, Lee doesnt understand. Youre not looking at two women, Lee, but at models for them. There are no women anyhow, anywhere; only models for them. Men are the only live creatures, she says in a totally startled register, I never realized that before. Which is why Diane and I find it impossible to live; we can only model; we can only tell the truth but we can never be the truth. Which is why men fall in love with us: with models. That is why homosexuals tell you the truth for your own good: theyre imitating models. Now, when women fall in love with each other, that means theyre making a desperate attempt to reach aliveness, to stop being models
Rhona screeches in abrupt laughter
Youre absolutely adorable, Diane chuckles slickly I cant stand it anymore Diane whispers to Lee in Fairmount Park I CANT STAND Lee uncovers a breast and jackintheboxes a nipple Im going to arrange for us to be alone in a friend’s apartment this weekend she promises. All right?
Theres something youve got to understand of course its entirely theoretical
BIRDS ARE MADE OF ELECTRICITY
I NEED A MAN
I BELIEVE IN ABSOLUTE FIDELITY
MILKBOTTLE H TILTS OF COURSE ITS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE THAT IT WILL SPILL IF IT REACHES A CERTAIN ANGLE ALTHOUGH ITS AMUSING THEORETICALLY TO DISCUSS WHETHER ITS CONTENT BE MILK OR WATER
CHIRP CHIRP BIRDS ARE MADE OF ELECTRICITY although On the last few miles of White Horse Pike before Atlantic City the New Jersey landscape comes milk and water in the dusk of the Buick sedan whose rear seat is as highstuffed with valises as is practicable without Levi, driving, prevented from hindsight in the rearview mirror bulging summersuits and dresses on hangers clogging the hook between the door and the rear side window, Lee hunching with birds made of electricity stuffed underneath his shortsleeved rayon shirt, blue, both the rayon and the electricity, Nina Tarassoff using him as a model for her Picasso boy whose purple electric bird perches on his shoulder, now I want you to take those birds out of your shirt, she says, and have them fly electrically over the New Jersey landscape in the dusk, shes quite peremptory, quite businesslike, Ive got a right, she continues, because Rachel and Levi are my mother and father as well, and theyve got a whole stable of organgrinders and their monkeys organized into a corporation whom they send out each morning and they’ve already become millionaires from the organgrindermonkey industry, because snow falls in copper pennies, copper crystals blurrily fan out over the whole New Jersey landscape, SANTA REDCHEEYA, SANTA RETCHEEYA. Little boys and their electric birds are my models, Nina fiercely avers. No, Jeffery Adams does not make me pregnant, hes my psychoanalyst, and it wouldnt be ethical, to clear up my neurosis by implanting me with seed. Lumberjacket colors, nonetheless, not milk and water, she throws a palette into Lees eyes youre blinding me youre blin no Im not Rhona Tarassoff denies, Im simply making you see, the clue a muted rainbow, the clue the visions in muted rainbows,
the clue Jeanne d’Moth and her Electric Bird, watch out, Levi is choking the bird. Thats not so, Lee says, for he says it is true my son that birds are made of electricity. Sit still, Nina cries. You boys, you boys—sit still for my analyst’s sake, he cant see them in their muted rainbows otherwise. Its cold, Lee knows, cold this summerdusk, July First, and I wish I were munching on a hotdog on the snowsmeared comer. He shivers in the back of the Buick, knowing Nina Goldstein summer and winter though Im going on vacation, and the electric birds bounce up and down on the rear seat stop it stop it youre shaking the car Rachel complains up front Dont be ridiculous Levi countermands her plump shoulders Levi Im sure I left something You didnt leave anything
SMELL THE SALT AIR her plump shoulders fatten with her looming sniff Im sure I left something you were in such a hurry to go Levi I cant understand why youre always in such a hurry a few minutes more what would it matter
We want to get there before dark am I right Rachel
So a few minutes after dark who cares
I want to get a few minutes in the water
You and your water milk
I want to cool
plenty time to cool off in the morning whats such a hurry you made me forget half what I should bring along
every year its the same thing
no its not and would you believe it its true I always find something when i start looking in the trunk I forgot something
so Ill bring it with me next week youll write youll t who can remember i wont remember looking in the trunk so forget it
youre in such a hurry levi did you turn out all the lights for godsake
the gas the gas i think maybe i left on a burner i checked all the
and the water upstairs that too
the back door youll see youll see is unlocked
im telling you rachel i tried it five times its locked besides dont you think if a thief wants to come in a locked door wont make any difference
never mind there are all kinds of thieves
no only one kind
whats one k
the kind that steals
its not for jokes levi
shut up already the traffics heavy and whos driving
the electric birds are driving
we shouldnt go this summer anyhow
what all of a sudden
victor
you cant do nothing for him sha sha
you think because hes a boy he dont know
all right already you have to shout all over Atlantic City
were not yet in Atla
i could swear i can hear water dripping youll see when you get back therell be a flo his breath in electric birds starts and stutters over the flatlands, the saltlands, the oceanbitten marshlands, the sea sneezing high up in his nose to spray forth through the open car window and through the summersnowing winter-ovened twilight. A chill coughs from his skin and skitters the leastlight and is lost in the worlddark summing up over the hotel tips fraily marking the distant coastal town, flickering brittles that snap off in the Leethroat, his cheeks leatherretted from the tacktacking wind smartsoftening off in delicate blisters at eyepouch and tattletonguetip, the Martian canals on the Jersey backshore, rectangles of waters quickslackslow, bluesmudged green marshweed I got a racing catcloud whose hair, slicked back, makes the last of a ninth purplelife across aquamarine turrets tattling golden smokeeagles after. A pool of waterblack is smashed in the eye by a bulging silver shower that, gulping, cuts itself off at a sudden swarm of tepid clarity. Rose ice gives off a banked mist, touching the nightfrosted cables on either side of White Hose Pike with the exhalations of blue moths. And all around the spasms of the electric birds in the boy courses a hidden green waterway, a speckle of wings thinly arched, a small white beast of bridge over toyboat and skinny bungalow ankles in the meanderstream to the approaching bay CLAMS CLAMS CLAMS LIVE BAIT LIVE, a bearded face smoking a red pipe that fishes for blue smoke in the pickled wavelets, a grizzled ancient sun lowering his heavily bemedaled chest behind the whinewinded car, my old father and my old mother the boy kills them with the immortal secrecy of his sight, sight belonging only to him in all the brightleft world of the whiffs of sandy rain waving their stalks from the surreptitious sea, of the salt blinking pale glass prickles at forehead and exposed boygums, and topaz seriatims in echoic echelons north and south from the rising black horizons. The air, spoken in husky trebles, moves now in dim transparencies. A gull haggles coarsely. Two gulls, three, and a maiden fourth sling widening mauve hoops round a mosquitoripped bog. The flaw of a far wave slashes a sting of tobacco bitters at the roaring windshield, a boynose distending, rending, the nose scooping at the throat and lung, throwing up the ammoniacal stench of the navel reservoirs to precipitate brackish brown currents from the thickening surge of the salted silts LIVE BAIT LIFE CLAMS CLAMS CLAMS, the species of the ticklebirds ticktock scratching at the dark, the sea cumulus in the boy, the tides twisting up his breastbone, he struggles, seethe over seethe, to take himself to crackleflight far out over and above the Emanuels, over Levi and Rachel and Lee, boasting of his biting insects on the leash, boasting of his comber fought into his controlled sinuosity, seizing the affrighted ghosts of the oceans backlashlands, pearlhandled weapons now his Under the halfstorm moon, he swings in pinions of sweat and flares his electric birds of nostrils over the fishermen fumbling up their tackle, the fisherman pulling oar over the sunslumping baywaters, the glitters slidesinking into long ray troughs, as the boy ascends through the fishsplashing window over the long white causeway to the sea,
so that, fucking her, somebodys father dying downstairs, sneezing, pricked by allergy testshots from the root of the prick to its tip, the member swelling to three times its size and inordinately sensitive, sneezing a urinal spray each time the left testicle death-rattles its last brew,
thats mine, mine Levi declares
Lee and Levi grappling over the ownership of the left testicle Ill stuff both man and boy with cotton Dr Newman prescribes its the left ball over the rightfield fence Clancy Mann shouts so its mine
three males battling over a single ball
but I wont be able to hear a thing if you stuff my left testicle with cotton Levi objects
ILL BE DEAF IN ONE BALL
never mind youve got to eat
Dr Newman Ive been losing weight and coughing.
Im glad you came, one more month and you mightve contracted tuberculosis never mind the constipation I want you to start eating, bananas, cream, steaks, everything her groinhair a slate cloud floating lazily around the prick as electric birds dart in and out Red your thighs are like bananas the doctor told me to eat everything, cinnamon and ebonystreaked her thighs, lemontinted and faintly sour to the squeeze, blackpipers the dartbirds snapping at the sandy cloud, gulls gritting their wings;
one million three hundred and four the hoop revolves about the hips of the oneeyed prick, swivelling
TWO
NINETEEN
FOUR THOUSAND cockwise and countercockwise with ticktock delicacy he palmprods the bath’s surface scum toward the foot of the tub and with the other hand, his pores in steaming hoops, he gouges the bathbrush bristles into his grimy ankle fretted with Rachels veins fritterbitten by blue knots now you make three and half turns of a figure 8 he chattersweats over his body, and then reverse the bristles procedure, etching the white soap into the ankleflesh so that he is paradisaically pristine, the very blush of itching purity over each square inch of his flesh, but he must work quickly else the newflushness be polluted once again by the very liquid cleansing it)
He lowers her last leg into the black bathwater so that Rena may take a breath, mochamarbled breasts shushed by red mouthprints she looms over the boy pinioning his arms to the bottom of the tub
LET ME UP LET ME UP he cries a tragedy might occur the drainstopper might be dislodged, the water flow out and in so doing deposit a dense layer of supercontaminated filth atop his roseate skin condensing to the strains of the liebestod from tristan, the most wonderful music to accompany one making love Rosa argues, doesnt it perfectly match what were doing, mom, mom he stutters into the phone from Bermuda on his honeymoon with Hannah
what is it mein kint
its Rosa he yips in a steaming stammer, the furriers daughter catching little animals and stripping them of their skins shes coming after me with a knife and its not time for her change of life the gold snow hurtles through the window at 236 East Roosevelt Boulevard and stinging his ass just as he reaches the bathroom down the hallway
SHUT UP WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME LEVI SNORES the MONSTER GESTICULATING from the parapet of the ancient castle that he WILL NOT PERMIT HIS DAUGHTER TO SING IN NITECLUBS youve
got to promise me, lee, youve g
but my draft board says Im 1A Ill have to go into the Army I might be killed what I can promise you is the moment Im discharged well be mar
say it Diane say it
its very difficult Ive never said it to the room in the yellow box Diane’s face is exposed in red splotches under the yellow light red and yellow splo
Rhona, excitedly, heeheehees its because youre yellow Lee not Diane youre y
Lee shakes. A liver springs at St Red from across the room, a heart, a brain, a ligament slashes across her throat youll take it very easily wont you but what about Dr Newman and his hymenectomy and Mrs Sherman’s whole body turning gray, now black, now gray my husbands on the phone her charred voice curling
round the instrument while Mark Fahn gravely seats himself at the piano, the gilt mirror slinging slaloming excoriating quicksilver flakes around the bedroom, the magenta stripes hooping about the girl and the boy on the bed
thirteen thousand and one
sixtyfour
nine
one billion
TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMNED HAT SILAS KLEIN AND LETS SEE WHATS I will play my composition in sounds interspersed by silences Mark explains because I am a pederast I need a boy I NEED A
BOY patting the water Lee dams back his breath patpaddles back the dirty waters and when bubbling seams of anthracite scum convolute at the foot of the tub he turns his arms into pillars of stone and quarterinch by quarterinch he pushes his neck, shoulders, chest up the slanting chilled porcelain, continuing to pat-push the water away from his body periodically by stiffening a leg and balancing on his hip so that he can bend one arm to do so while maintaining his yardage up the rear of the tub I tell you
she pursues me with a knife,
the leash a knife,
the monstrous german police dog tied to the leash of the knife when he SPRINGS make them shut up in the bedroom Levi bellows I dont want them fucking while Im dying;
besides, what shall I do about the business do you want it does Dave want it I want an honest answer
no I screaming BUT ITS TOO BIG ITLL HURT ME LEE IM FRIGHTENED
LISSEN ONCE ITS INSIDE ITLL BE ALL RIGHT
EVERYTHINGS ALL RIGHT ONCE ITS INSIDE VINCE HARRISON SNARLS AT THE MULTITUDE OF WOMEN ON STRIKE: VAGINAS OF THE WORLD UNITE YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR STAINS MISS JUBILEE JORDAN MISS PATRIOT HERSELF PLUNGES HER NAILS INTO THE VELVET CURTAINS AND STARTS TO HEAVE THE SHOTPUT FROM SIDE TO SIDE, Joan of Ark dashing against
the windowscreen Look tonight youve just got to stay over and not go to The Heel Rosa contorts her ultimatum or I dont want you here again.
