by Eric Heckel and another watercolor by Lee J. Wexler, 1952, a telephone, newspapers, correspondence, dirty stockings freckle the floor. The scene opens (and closes) in this room, between 2 writers, the first writer the owner (as long as the rent is paid) of the room and the second writer a visitor. . . .
Second writer (let’s call him Karl Thornton): I sold this movie script to a producer. He thinks it’s great. Can you imagine a surrealist Western? Can you imagine an abstract Western?
First writer (let’s call him Henry Knapp): I can’t imagine any kind of Western.
Karl: Now I’ve got this next one. It is about a bank holdup. I’ve got 4 boys from Oxford, suave, who pull the job. I need some wild dialogue, way out. They told me you were the boy to do it. I’ve seen your poetry. It’s the maddest thing since—since Rabelais shit on them and made them like it.
Henry: I know it sounds corny, but I cannot compromise.
Karl: That’s just the beauty of it. You don’t have to compromise! They don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I have a negro running through the fields with his pants down, screaming, “Kiss my black ass!” You see what I mean?
Henry: No.
Karl: By the way, how did you come out on, well, how did it work out?
Henry: You mean the love affair with the 20-year-old negress?
Karl: Yeah.
Henry: I guess I told you about her when I was under the influence of a few beers.
Karl: You were drunk, man, plenty drunk.
Henry: (Pouring wine all around, draining his glass) Well, she was only 20, and she was black, and she was the one who was frightened, not the whites but the blacks who would condone her for her act. Actually, and without being conceited, I think she cared, but not enough. None of them care enough—black or white.
Karl: You’ve had more damned affairs than a man of your age deserves.
Henry: Hold it, daddy, I’m 40, but I’m dying. You want some laughs?
Karl: I’d rather have a Hollywood script.
Henry: Well, this isn’t Hollywood, it’s life: for a short period, I was married to a semi-millionaire’s daughter and I dabbled in her so-called magazine literary. And here came these sexy poems: YOU HAVE RUINED MY VAGINA; TAKE ME, LOVER; YOU, SEDUCER. As poetry it was less than fair.
Karl: But as an opportunity, it held all sorts of overtones.
Henry: And undertones.
Karl: You arranged a meeting, a literary meeting.
Henry: And found a 32-year-old virgin, well-read in the classics, ready to die, admirer of my mind and body, beautiful legs and hungry as a goldfish unfed 3 days.
Karl: What a spot.
Henry: I asked her to marry me.
Karl: You?
Henry: Hell yes—I’ve been married before. And I was married then.
Karl: And?
Henry: She had some type of incurable disease, and although she carried a Blue Cross card or something, it ended up to nearly $100 a month to the medics. Was my love that strong? Shit yes: for horses.
Karl: Tell me some more, baby. I’ll work it into the script.
Henry: So women can go to hell, I’m going to get me a lamb like the old English sailors, or, yes, it was a sheep, or a nice young boy. Let me read you a letter I’m going to mail to this bitch today. Here goes, quote: “I don’t want to hurt your feelings. My meetings with you down here were both physical and spiritual revelation that came at a time when I was very close to a foreboding finality. I’ve had another affair since then—she was only 20, much too young—”
Karl: That was the colored girl.
Henry: Shut up. “—that was less rewarding. I suppose it’s thinking on this last affair, and Jane, and my X-wife, and some others, that shows me I’m simply a ladies’ man. I don’t know what’s wrong and I much less give a damn. I’ve still got music and the horse, a drive down the coast and rotten alcohol for my shredded-wheat stomach. I’ve still got words to do and I’ve still got my pride, I still have my pride, and as Shakey said, ‘I still have my death to do.’”
Karl: You’re killing me, kid, but go on, round it off.
Henry: “And I can do without petticoats whether they be 20 or 40 or 60, rich or poor, sexy or cold, whether they live in Denver or Bermuda, East Kansas City or London, whether in the fog or the rain or the 9am sunlight—”
Karl: You’re rolling daddy, hit it!
Henry: “Whether with cats on their laps or black boyfriends, whether letter-writers or screamers of arias, whether tall or short or pregnant, whether nun or nude or whether with breasts or without, whether resplendent with jewels and the image of love or whether wrinkled and grey and forgotten, whether riding places on oceanic steamers or shucking in a cow through the gate, whether ugly or beautiful, whether living or dead, rich or poor, the hags, the whores, the mirrors of my heart, may they all be damned and without
yours,
Henry Knapp.”
Karl: Don’t you think that’s rather cruel? To a dying person? For $100 a month.
Henry: It certainly is, and that’s just what happens when the words carry you and you forget the human side. Writers are all bastards, trying to knock off each other or some editor, or they, like I, throw dirt on the dying. I hate my guts.
Karl: Some others do too. They tell me that J. Karlton Thrumbro thinks your stuff stinks. What have you got to say to this, Mr. Knapp?
Henry: I don’t know. Why this eltchl, this conservative from the halls of the ikons and holy rollers, the pluckers of rondeaus and smellers of the lily, why this spalpeen should set himself up as a special critic of literary know-how is more than I can dispense with a quodlibet.
Karl: Let me fill in the rest?
Henry: The stage is yours. I’ve quite hogged it with my sloughed-off loves.
Karl: The field boils with literary journals, a great slough and pot wash of them for those who wish to continue on the descensive, whether they be gnostics, pansies, or grandmothers who keep canaries and goldfish. Why these reactionaries cannot be content with their lot, why they must lacerate us with their yellow-knuckled souls, the looming kraken of their god-head, is beyond me. I certainly do not give a magniloquent damn what they print in their journals. I beg no alms for modern verse. Yet they come bickering to us. Why? Because they smell life and cannot stand it, they want to plunge us into the same spume and sputum that has held them daft with the deism of stale 1890 verse.
Henry: Amen.
Karl: But what I’m getting at, are you going to help me with this script?
Henry: Buy me another bottle of wine and I’ll think it over.
Karl:
