In the bathroom I stripped slowly before the mirror. Face first: there was a grey swelling over my left eye, and my rug was quite badly singed on the same side. A fight? I didn’t think so. If there’d been a fight, then I must have won it. My body was all there, trembling, whimpering in the graphic light, but all there. I turned — and gasped. Dah. .. Oh, Christ. My back, my great white back was scored with thirty or forty sharp red welts, regularly patterned, as if I’d slept on a bed of nails. Taking a two-fisted grip on my spare tyre, I was able to wrench round some flesh and get a good look at one of these bloodless wounds. An indentation, a red hole: I could insert my quivering pinkie to half-nail depth. I stepped back. No other damage. No new damage. My bumf-crammed wallet was intact:
credit cards, eighty-odd dollars, thirty-odd pounds. My hangover was fine. My hangover had come through okay.
So. I had spent the night, or part of it, on a patch of earth in alphabet-land — Avenue B, deep down on the East Side. After an evening of pleasure and profit with my friends in Bank Street, I had clearly gone out for a drink or two. Bad idea! Oh very bad! Someone, at some stage, had worked me over with a tool, a spike or a blunt shiv. My shirt was punctured in places, but not my jacket — my good, my best jacket. It was now eight-thirty. I bathed my face with water and felt hot fingers beginning to tickle my back. For ten minutes I vomited elaborately, with steamhammer convulsions that I had no strength to resist or contain. Then for twice that long I sat twitching on the shower’s deck, the silver snout tuned to full heat and heft but doing nothing much to wash off my rot. I must be very unhappy. That’s the only way I can explain my behaviour. Oh man, I must be so depressed. I must be fucking suicidal. And I wish I knew why.
Look at my life. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: But it’s terrific! It’s great! You’re thinking: Some guys have all the luck! Well, I suppose it must look quite cool, what with the airplane tickets and the restaurants, the cabs, the filmstars, Selina, the Fiasco, the money. But my life is also my private culture — that’s what I’m showing you, after all, that’s what I’m letting you into, my private culture. And I mean look at my private culture. Look at the state of it. It really isn’t very nice in here. And that is why I long to burst out of the world of money and into — into what? Into the world of thought and fascination. How do I get there? Tell me, please. I’ll never make it by myself. I just don’t know the way.
——————
Nothing much happened for a couple of days, which was fine by me. Nothing happened. Well, I say that, but of course me and my sore back got up to all kinds of stuff.
Me and my sore back composed a letter to Martina. Yes, a letter. I even went out and bought a dictionary on Sixth Avenue to assist me in the project. You know those hangovers where you can’t spell I’m or you’re, let alone sorry or again? It took me about a day each to write, seal, stamp and post this letter of mine, but I managed to get the thing off in the end. I apologized for my behaviour (you know how it is: a few drinks, a few laughs, you step out of line), and asked if I could buy her lunch some time. After all, I pointed out, lunch was the one date we hadn’t yet tried. Drinks, breakfast, dinner— but not lunch. I said I would ‘quite understand’ if she wanted to cut her losses and call it a day. I wouldn’t let me buy me lunch, I said, and I meant it. Jesus, would you?
Me and my sore back had cocktails with Butch 6eausoleil. There was no mention of the debacle at the Berkeley Club, thank Christ. Butch looked beautiful—a cauldron of youth and health—and she seems docile enough at this stage. That makes sense. She’s getting $750,000. Her only proviso is that she won’t do any housework. In the film. She won’t sweep a floor. She won’t even rinse out a coffee cup. Chicks’ liberation. Who do you want to play opposite you? I asked her. Christopher Meadowbrook, Spunk Davis or Nub Forkner? Butch said that she would favour a dark-complected co-star. The big thing aboutButch is that she isn’t just a dumb blonde, as she herself stressed. I agreed. She might look like one. She might even behave and talk like one on occasion. But she isn’t just a dumb blonde. That’s the big thing about Butch.