Dying Inside

“I’d love it if you came,” he tells me. He leans close to me. His androgynous Mediterranean smoothness permits him casually to breach the established American code of male-to-male distancing customs. I smell hair tonic, shaving lotion, deodorant, and other perfumes. A small blessing: not all my senses are dwindling at once. “Your sister,” he murmurs. “Marvelous woman! How I love her! She speaks often of you.”

“Does she?”

“With great love. Also with great guilt. It seems you and she were estranged for many years.’’

“That’s over now. We’re finally becoming friends.”

“How wonderful for you both.” He gestures with a flick of his eyes. “That doctor. No good for her. Too old, too static. After fifty most men lose the capacity to grow. He’ll bore her to death in six months.”

“Maybe boredom is what she needs,” I reply. “She’s had an exciting life. It hasn’t made her happy.”

“No one ever needs boredom,” Guermantes says, and winks.

“Karl and I would love to have you come for dinner next week, Duv. There’s so much we three need to talk about.”

“I’ll see, Jude. I’m not sure about anything about next week yet. I’ll call you.”

Lisa Holstein. John Leibnitz. I think I need another drink.

* * *

Sunday. Greatly overhung. Hash, rum, wine, pot, God knows what else. And somebody popping amyl nitrite under my nose about two in the morning. That filthy fucking party. I should never have gone. My head, my head, my head. Where’s the typewriter? I’ve got to get some work done. Let’s go, then:

We see, thus, the difference in method of approach of these three tragedians to the same story. Aeschylus’ primary concern is theological implications of the crime and the inexorable workings of the gods: Orestes is torn between the command of Apollo to slay his mother and his own fear of matricide, and goes mad as a result. Euripides dwells on the characterization, and takes a less allegorical

No damned good. Save it for later.

Silence between my ears. The echoing black void. I have nothing going for me at all today, nothing. I think it may be completely gone. I can’t even pick up the clamor of the spics next door. November is the cruelest month, breeding onions out of the dead mind. I’m living an Eliot poem. I’m turning into words on a page. Shall I sit here feeling sorry for myself? No. No. No. No. I’ll fight back. Spiritual exercises designed to restore my power. On your knees, Selig. Bow the head. Concentrate. Transform yourself into a fine needle of thought, a slim telepathic laser-beam, stretching from this room to the vicinity of the lovely star Betelgeuse. Got it? Good. That sharp pure mental beam piercing the universe. Hold it. Hold it firm. No spreading at the edges allowed, man. Good. Now ascend. We are climbing Jacob’s ladder. This will be an out-of-the-body experience, Duvid. Up, up and away! Rise through the ceiling, through the roof, through the atmosphere, through the ionosphere, through the stratosphere, through the whatsisphere. Outward. Into the vacant interstellar spaces. O dark dark dark. Cold the sense and lost the motive of action. No, stop that stuff! Only positive thinking is allowed on this trip. Soar! Soar! Toward the little green men of Betelgeuse IX. Reach their minds, Selig. Make contact. Make . . . contact. Soar, you lazy yid-bastard! Why aren’t you soaring? Soar!

Well?

Nothing. Nada. Niente. Nowhere. Nulla. Nicht.

Tumbling back to earth. Into the silent funeral. All right, give up, if that’s what you want. All right. Rest, for a little while. Rest and then pray, Selig. Pray.

* * *

Monday. The hangover gone. The brain once again receptive. In a glorious burst of creative frenzy I rewrite The “Electra” Theme in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides from gunwale to fetlock, completely recasting it, revoicing it, clarifying and strengthening the ideas while simultaneously catching what I think is just the perfect tone of offhand niggerish hipness. As I hammer out the final words the telephone rings. Nicely timed; I feel sociable now. Who calls? Judith? No. It is Lisa Holstein who calls. “You promised to take me home after the party,” she says mournfully, accusingly. “What the hell did you do, sneak away?”

“How did you get my number?”

“From Claude. Professor Guermantes.” That sleek devil. He knows everything. “Look, what are you doing right now?”

“Thinking about having a shower. I’ve been working all morning and I stink like a goat.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I ghostwrite term papers for Columbia men.”

She ponders that a moment. “You sure have a weird head, man. I mean really: what do you do?”

“I just told you.”

A long digestive silence. Then: “Okay. I can dig it. You ghostwrite term papers. Look, Dave, go take your shower. How long is it on the subway from 110th Street and Broadway to your place?”

“Maybe forty minutes, if you get a train right away.”

“Swell. See you in an hour, then.” Click.