Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson

remember the night you didn’t cry,
    First night you slept the night entirely through.
    I didn’t sleep all night that night, for joy.
    BILL JENKS : Ah! Those were the days! And then they stopped.
    HT : Brother, Brother. I waited at the Greyhound…
    Do you want to know why those people got killed?
    BILL JENKS : There was this guy I knew, he was a—well, you know,
    I don’t know what you’d call him, maybe a faggot?
    That what you are? A homosexual?
    HT : O, God, O, God, this ain’t my people here!
    I got to get with my people, not these people!
    Gimme a sign !
    â€¦Do you know why that mom and pop got killed?
    Can you ever guess why those two persons died?
    BILL JENKS : ’Cause buckshot blew their brains up.
    HT :                                                                        Can you guess?
    Or should I trace it back for you? Listen:
    I’m all set up, I got a job, I’m in a suit,
    I’m in the Houston Public Library.
    Carpet. Silence. Air-conditioning.
    Holding Street Rod News in my black fingers.
    The time has come to buy a powerful new
    Machine, because I’m free…White guy comes over.
    Now, I’m just looking at my magazine—
    I’m looking at pictures of engines, powerful engines—
    Look up, ’cause now he’s going hem-hem-hem
    With his throat. I say to myself: White man
    Coming up in the public library…
    Light brown hair, blue eyes, the one
    Explain your options on the life insurance,
    Sell you a washer-dryer combination.
    I’m thinking, First my beautiful suit, and now
    This white man in the public library.
    Not young, but not exactly middle-age,
    Just nonchalant, you know, ain’t nothing to him.
    He says, “This is my name,” and all like that,
    White man in the public library.
    â€œDon’t get me wrong, I gotta show you something.
    Come over here to this part of the library
    For compact discs and videos and all,”
    And I don’t know is he a cop , some Mormon …
    What am I gonna do but follow him there?
    He leads me like we’re on safari, man,
    We’re gonna capture something with our stealth,
    White man in the public library.
    Like we’re stalking on a quiet field of birds
    Or moving through a church,
    And there, across the room,
    White man in the public library
    Shows me a beautiful young black woman.
    She’s standing by the racks, what can I say,
    Looking like a lump of Lawd Have Mercy.
    Short sleeveless dress of graphite gray,
    Smooth black arms, incredible black face,
    Had that sticky-outy posture like she tore
    Herself from Vogue or Ebony or Cosmo ;
    The tiniest littlest dab of spit would melt her.
    He showed her to me.
    He looks at me with this face,
    Like a bird dog saying with his face, There,
    Master, I didn’t leave
    No marks of my teeth in her feathers.
    JOHN :…Then what?…
    What then?
    HT : Then we stood still. And then she moved. And then
    She passed into the rest of things.
    And him, he’s gone like he weren’t never there,
    White man in the public library,
    And I felt very confused. I said, I said,
    â€œI can -not stop being confused by this.
    I stand here in my slick new suit, so clean…
    A white man shows me a black, beautiful woman…”
    JOHN : The same suit you have on.
    HT :                                               This very suit.
    JOHN : There’s not much left of it.
    HT :                                               Why, no, not much.
    It’s done been eat to bits in all the confusion,
    The ongoing saga of my continuing
    Confusion, which has not stopped, from then till now,
    You see, because I continue to feel confused.
    They’ll never let me out, I don’t