spend a whole afternoon shooting horned toads in their loose bellies with a pellet pistol, watching their fluids leak out on the sand, perusing them for symptoms of sensation. In his flat green eyes the same neutral curiosity as when he’d wire up a new room or tinker with a motor.
Ned was a mortal, a bondsman of death, and even his cruelty was shallow, like his eyes.
D—— wanted me to go with Ned one time … the time that Laurel was away with O——, I think. I know. I didn’t refuse, exactly, but somehow it didn’t happen.
D——, Ned, and I were standing in … some space somewhere. On three vertices of a triangle with the dry air crackling between us. Trust me, I thought, you wouldn’t enjoy it. I didn’t have the bayonet, but I ran my thumb along the air where the edge of it would have been.
It wasn’t that I had no taste for pain. I just didn’t have any taste for Ned. If you needed something fixed he was fine, but after that forget it.
Ned went slack and dropped the subject. Wandered off. Then again, taking Laurel to the cave was probably an even better way of hurting me.
D——’s reasons were—D—— didn’t need reasons. Of course he didn’t do it merely out of spite. It was all about breaking down the ego, doubtless, and to ensure the People would be One. Then too, when D—— forced upon you something lesser, it increased the value of his own satiric love.
In Laurel’s case, One wouldn’t have called it punishment. D—— wasn’t jealous of O——, not in that way. He was jealous of the piece of O—— he wanted for himself. D—— wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known that either Laurel or I had deflected O—— from the ranch … and probably he did have his ways of knowing that.
So. Laurel had been back from Malibu for only a few hours when D—— looked at her piercingly: I want you to go with Ned. My blood jumped in me, but I didn’t move. Laurel lowered her head and obeyed.
I was late to San Francisco because I got off the bus in Denver and started talking to a guy with jet-black hair and creamy skin and a cold spot in his eyes somewhere, that seemed to recede all the way through the back of his head. It drew me, that quality of the eyes, like I’d seen it somewhere long before, out there in the wine-dark emptiness of the universe where it came from. He’d whip his girls (there were four or five of us) high up on the backs of the legs where the marks wouldn’t show, with a coat hanger or an extension cord. The marks showed anyway, a little, in the miniskirts and hot pants he made us wear. Besides the street he had a little call business, which seemed to specialize in rough trade.
So I learned something: there were ways I didn’t want to be hurt. That wasn’t my bag, as they put it back then. Did I know what was? In the end it wasn’t hard to get away—he was lord and master of four square blocks but outside that territory he wouldn’t have known where to go or what to do, so I didn’t worry much about stealing his money. After all, he had stolen mine. The other girls were too limp to go with me, and I didn’t trust them enough anyway. Maybe they’d been there too long, or maybe they liked what they were getting, or maybe it was the thin air up there in Denver, which did sometimes make it hard to think straight.
When I finally did arrive at the Haight, I learned something else: you can’t make a living out of free love. It might be your bag, or it might not be your bag, but pretty soon my bag was empty. Not one bone to rub against another.
A woman has two purses.
Doing it with Louie was exciting at first because at the time, for a white chick who came from where I did, it was breaking a big important rule. But apart from that there was no real difference, or at least not a very interesting difference. Louie was full right up to his neck with ordinary mortal meanness, which worked well enough on the rest of his string, but didn’t really do
Ned was a mortal, a bondsman of death, and even his cruelty was shallow, like his eyes.
D—— wanted me to go with Ned one time … the time that Laurel was away with O——, I think. I know. I didn’t refuse, exactly, but somehow it didn’t happen.
D——, Ned, and I were standing in … some space somewhere. On three vertices of a triangle with the dry air crackling between us. Trust me, I thought, you wouldn’t enjoy it. I didn’t have the bayonet, but I ran my thumb along the air where the edge of it would have been.
It wasn’t that I had no taste for pain. I just didn’t have any taste for Ned. If you needed something fixed he was fine, but after that forget it.
Ned went slack and dropped the subject. Wandered off. Then again, taking Laurel to the cave was probably an even better way of hurting me.
D——’s reasons were—D—— didn’t need reasons. Of course he didn’t do it merely out of spite. It was all about breaking down the ego, doubtless, and to ensure the People would be One. Then too, when D—— forced upon you something lesser, it increased the value of his own satiric love.
In Laurel’s case, One wouldn’t have called it punishment. D—— wasn’t jealous of O——, not in that way. He was jealous of the piece of O—— he wanted for himself. D—— wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known that either Laurel or I had deflected O—— from the ranch … and probably he did have his ways of knowing that.
So. Laurel had been back from Malibu for only a few hours when D—— looked at her piercingly: I want you to go with Ned. My blood jumped in me, but I didn’t move. Laurel lowered her head and obeyed.
I was late to San Francisco because I got off the bus in Denver and started talking to a guy with jet-black hair and creamy skin and a cold spot in his eyes somewhere, that seemed to recede all the way through the back of his head. It drew me, that quality of the eyes, like I’d seen it somewhere long before, out there in the wine-dark emptiness of the universe where it came from. He’d whip his girls (there were four or five of us) high up on the backs of the legs where the marks wouldn’t show, with a coat hanger or an extension cord. The marks showed anyway, a little, in the miniskirts and hot pants he made us wear. Besides the street he had a little call business, which seemed to specialize in rough trade.
So I learned something: there were ways I didn’t want to be hurt. That wasn’t my bag, as they put it back then. Did I know what was? In the end it wasn’t hard to get away—he was lord and master of four square blocks but outside that territory he wouldn’t have known where to go or what to do, so I didn’t worry much about stealing his money. After all, he had stolen mine. The other girls were too limp to go with me, and I didn’t trust them enough anyway. Maybe they’d been there too long, or maybe they liked what they were getting, or maybe it was the thin air up there in Denver, which did sometimes make it hard to think straight.
When I finally did arrive at the Haight, I learned something else: you can’t make a living out of free love. It might be your bag, or it might not be your bag, but pretty soon my bag was empty. Not one bone to rub against another.
A woman has two purses.
Doing it with Louie was exciting at first because at the time, for a white chick who came from where I did, it was breaking a big important rule. But apart from that there was no real difference, or at least not a very interesting difference. Louie was full right up to his neck with ordinary mortal meanness, which worked well enough on the rest of his string, but didn’t really do
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