When my fingernails eat each other I worry I think of this.

“You know you ain’t shit—I don’t care. Your father died in that stinking ass prison he was in—who the fuck do you think you are?” My friend Carl was pissed off at me. He grew up locked in the walls of a boys home and later in reform schools and I’d just told him he was acting funny because he’d been locked up so long. He just got out of the real jail and I was back with him—told him I had to piss but he said I couldn’t there at Lamar’s. I told him to lighten up—he wasn’t in jail anymore—and started pissing anyway on the sidewalk. I turned away from him and he grabbed me under my armpits and threw me against the building.

I smelled blood on my breath and spit. He grabbed my hair and pulled me into the alley. I was trying to zip my pants, getting ready to fight him, but he said, “No, you sissy. Leave them undone.” He grabbed me by my waist and turned me around. I went to my knees and he pulled my pants down, my back up against his. I pressed open and he knelt behind me. I thought, this must be how rats do it, and I leaned on my hands and closed my eyes. “You still shave your fucking chest,” I said. “Who’s the sissy?” He spit on me and started fucking me then he punched me in the back of my head. “What the fuck are you doing?” I tried to get up but he pushed his hands down on my back and leaned over my ass so I couldn’t move and kept nailing me. My breath was wasted and unclean—he was bigger than me and I knew that when he got angry all my hope was gone. “Here’s one for your mother,” he said. “Is she still a nurse? She can sew this one up for you maybe.” He started getting me with all he had and finished inside me. I hated that. Then he stood up and I knew he wasn’t done.

“I’ll bust your head in that fucking wall,” he said as he buttoned up his pants. “You like that? You want to call my old man a wino again? You’re a fucking queer—you live with a fucking queer. You didn’t argue too much about getting fucked in the ass.” He kicked me in my stomach and I slid up against the wall. “You can’t stop yourself, can you? You see some pretty flash of boy and you start pulling it out. Your old man burning the house down still haunts you, huh? I bet you miss your sister and that’s why you’re queer now. She got burned the fuck up but your pretty little young legs got you out of there, didn’t they?” He laughed and kicked me again.

“Stop it, Carl. You got me. Stop.”

“Do you still have those dreams about Jesus?”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you. I ought to bust your fucking head open and leave you here. When they find you you’ll have maggots and rats eating out your stinking asshole.” I tried to pull my pants up then but he started kicking me all over my body and all I could do was ball up. One kick got me in my eye and I yelled out. “Shut up your crying—did your sister cry when your pops molested her for looking so good? I caught them in the grocery store parking lot one time, remember? That’s where he got busted was riding around in the car with you dressed up like a girl—you were in drag when you were twelve years old you fucking fag. You pitiful goddam sissy. Looks like you would’ve told on him unless you liked it. You liked it, didn’t you? I bet your mother didn’t like it.”

“Let me up.”

“Get up.”

I rose to my knees and Carl picked a broken mop handle off the street and hit me in the back with it. “Oh holiest of holies! Remember when you were into all that stupid shit? Going to clean your brain out with some bible shit? Why you want to talk bad about me, sissy-boy? You’re the fucking queer weirdo.” He started poking me in the ass with the mop handle. “I think you ought to spend eternity under the wheels of a truck,” he said and tried to get the stick into me. I turned to my back and managed to get my pants up. Carl took off his belt and twisted the buckle end of it around his hand. “Your pops ever do this to you?” he started beating me with it. I tried to grab it until one got me hard across my mouth. I turned back over and yelled at him. Headlights shone over us suddenly and Carl knelt against the wall beside me. “Stay the fuck down,” he told me. The lights went away and he stood back up, looking down the alley. “You lay here in the fucking alley, you gutter fag. I’m getting out of here.”

I watched him put his belt back on as he walked away. I got up and walked down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard toward home, brokenhearted, with blood and shit running down my leg.


Home was the brownstone Lincoln building on High Street. It was Jerry’s place and I slept on the floor. I saw the lights on in the living room from outside and had a hard time making it up the stairs.

He was on the couch watching some late night television show when I came in. “Oh God.” He put his drink down and rose. He came and closed the door behind me. “What happened?”

I didn’t answer him. I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My bottom lip was cut and swollen and dirt and grass was all in my hair. What I was worried about was the other injury. Jerry came in the bathroom and asked me what happened again.

“What the fuck’s it look like happened?”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know who the fuck it was.”

“Well where were you?”

I ignored him and opened the mirror for the medicine cabinet. All Jerry’s drag shit, perfume and make-up and fingernails, was everywhere. I slammed it back closed and tried to take my shirt off but it hurt too much. Jerry got behind me and took it from the bottom. He told me to raise my arms up and pulled the shirt over my head. “Oh Jesus,” he whispered.

“What’s it look like?”

“Did they beat you with a bat or something?”

“What’s it look like?”

“It looks like they beat you with a baseball bat. You need to call the police.”

I turned to him so he wouldn’t see anymore. I told him to get out and took my pants off and felt behind me with my hand. There was blood. I wet a rag to clean myself. There wasn’t that much blood. I hoped none of it came from inside me. I got in the shower to clean the shit off me and stood under the water for a long time.

I didn’t have any clothes clean so wrapped myself in a towel and went to my room. It wasn’t a bedroom but a small dining room with sheets hanging over the door. I had an old futon mattress on the floor and laid down on it, covering myself with the towel.

I must have fallen asleep for a bit. When I woke up I was still sore and Jerry was sitting on his knees beside me. He was dipping a towel in a bowel and putting it on my chest. It burned and I told him to stop. He put the stuff on the floor and rubbed his fingers lightly over my chest. I let him. I let him do anything he wanted to me, almost, but I never touched him. He’d masturbate while sat on the couch naked watching TV sometimes, or he’d try to do it while he sucked me off. As long as he didn’t get anything on me I didn’t care. I needed a place to stay and Jerry didn’t make me pay for anything.

“What happened to you, Sam?”

“I already told you?”

“Did you do something?”

I didn’t feel like talking and closed my eyes again. Jerry lay down beside me and kept rubbing me. He moved the towel down and I wanted to turn away from him but I didn’t want him to see the backside of me. I let him uncover me. “Let’s see if I can make it any better,” he said, and ran his fingernails lightly up the inside of my leg to my crotch.

“Has Marie called?” I asked him.

He took my penis in his hand and kissed my stomach. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t answering the phone.” I knew he was lying and his mouth went over me.

Despite all that had happened I still got hard. There was nothing I could do about it. As long as I closed my eyes and didn’t look at the back of his graying head everything was all right. He moved slowly and never opened his mouth, his rhythm not wavering, even when my legs started to move. He finished me with the same slow, excruciating steadiness that he began with. He didn’t stop as my erection faded. I fell asleep despite myself with his mouth still swallowing me, his breath coming in bursts through his nose, the returning hair of his after-hours face scratching my skin.

When I woke up the next morning I was still naked and uncovered and watched the sheets hanging over the windows move. I let my eyes fall to the bottom of the doorway where my sheets touched the floor. The t-shirt Jerry was wearing the night before was there.

I got up and went to the bathroom. My face was red and a little bruised under my right eye. It could be explained away, if Jerry didn’t tell everybody. I went in his bedroom. His clock said after eleven and he was gone. I found a pair of boxer shorts in his dresser and a half pack of cigarettes on the table by his bed. I put the shorts on and sat smoking on the couch in the living room.


II

Sometimes you want to kill yourself but you can’t do it—oh sweet Jesus gloried God there’s something there—flowers by your feet don’t mean a thing but the radio does—you want to kill yourself but you can’t do it—my mother cries when I yell at her and I was fucked with a stick I can’t tell my mom—see dreams when I sleep and can’t talk to my pops never could—I never knew my sisters the girls and I wish I was a moth

Outside the old possum looks for food—I used to throw him endpeices of bread but I don’t have anymore—he snoots around on his little quick legs that won’t move him fast looking for something to eat—he’s a big rat a big stinking rat and he’s hungry—I wanted to feed him but I couldn’t I didn’t have any food

The week before I fucked my girl and didn’t like what I saw I didn’t think of the ground that night but I didn’t like what I saw—I don’t know who I am—I am some body that I don’t know—I’m stuck inside some pale pimply skin and can’t even stand these dirty fingernails—this chest hurts because I smoke—I’m worried about these teeth they’re fucked up anyway but these don’t seem right—this body stinks and I don’t like it—I can’t keep it clean—I drag it unwillingly into baths and showers as often as I can and it always starts stinking again—I hate it—the armpits stink and I have to smear waxy shit that doesn’t smell like any part of nature I’ve ever smelled but I have to smear it all up under these slimy armpits so I can deal with the smell—I want to burn this body and get out of it but I can’t do it

No one wants me they want these stupid eyes and this voice—that’s all—they want my hair I don’t want it—I shaved it all off one time and no one liked me they thought I hated people—I don’t hate anyone—I hate bodies and out—I want nothing I want to not sneeze or fart or throw up or have to eat or drink or smoke—my mother whoever she is besides that failing body of hers and her apathy she wants out too—my mother wants to keep me in prison—my father does too though he won’t say so—people want my body but they don’t want my breath

I want to kill myself but I can’t do it—I would blow the back of this head all over this living room wall—this room deserves no better—there’s roaches and hungry possums out the window—let the newcomers worry about me haunting them only their fucked up worries haunt them like everyone else—let the policemen clean my brains off the wall and let the landlord paint over me—let them dump me in a hole and the fools stand there and cry—get me out of here

I eventually went to the doctor. This doctor walked in with the newspaper under his arm and told me I could read one of his magazines on the wall while I wait—he left and I sat there naked in the patient’s paper gown and my socks still on, that’s all—a nurse came in and told me to open my mouth
I’m not sick—
We still have to check your temperature
I don’t have a fever
It doesn’t matter, we have to take it anyway
You gonna stick it up my ass like everybody else does?
Excuse me?
She was pretty and young, not too much older than me and had a nice ass. I think I offended her she left and a man came in
We have to take your temperature. Open your mouth
I opened it.
Now close it.
I closed it and he slid the thing out of my mouth after a while. He wrote it down, my temperature. You need to watch your mouth, he told me and closed the door behind him.
The doctor came and told me I needed stitches and they took me to a room and gave me stitches. They didn’t put me to sleep, just numbed my ass and sewed it up. They were apologetic in their eyeballs but didn’t say so—ashamed to admit it I suppose like people are ashamed to tell fucked up warped up retards in electric wheel chairs that they pity them—don’t pity them but inspire them—but I know we’re all worthless—

The doctor’s breath smelled like wet tar when he breathed on me—my breath smells like cat food, old cat food—

And there I was at home wishing I could feed a goddam possum to keep from blowing my brains out—I couldn’t help him

When I got better I was going to find Carl so he could do it again—I hoped he’d do it again—it didn’tt hurt me it hurts this stupid person I was trapped inside of and I didn’t give a damn about him—he’s a fetid cat cunt with worms falling out of it—he’s a dog that smiles though it’ll die in an hour from the maggots falling out of its hole in the stomach—it’s a tape recorded conversation and a Mexican television show at four a.m. in Nashville Tennessee when some brokenhearted sissy can’t sleep—it’s no beer for the wino and the junk fiend locked with no bail in the drunk tank—it’s a flat tire on a girl’s car all alone and her father molests her (she’s only sixteen) and I don’t want anything to do with it

There were pain pills in the cabinet—I’d take them all and do it easy but I didn’t want to waste them—they made me feel good sometimes.