Pussy, King of the Pirates
ALSO BY KATHY ACKER
Great Expectations
Blood and Guts in High School
Don Quixote
Literal Madness
(Kathy Goes to Haiti;
My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini; Florida)
Empire of the Senseless
Portrait of an Eye
(The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula;
I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac;
The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec)
In Memoriam to Identity
My Mother: Demonology
Pussy,
King of the
Pirates
Kathy Acker
Copyright © 1996 by Kathy Acker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroon use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
The musical companion, Pussy, King of the Pirates by The Mekons and Kathy Acker (Q536), is available from Quarterstick / Touch and Go Records.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Acker, Kathy, 1948–1997.
Pussy, king of the pirates / Kathy Acker.
ISBN 0-8021-3484-X (pbk.)
eISBN 978-0-8021-4661-8
I. Title.
PS3551.C44P871996813’.54—dc209521012
DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH
Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
00 01 02 0310 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Preface: Once upon a Time, Not Long Ago, O . . .
In the Days of Dreaming
O and Ange
The Pirate Girls
In the Days of the Pirates
Pirate Island
Sections from The Chronicles of the Pirates
Days That Are to Come
Preface: Once Upon a Time, Not Long Ago, O . . .
Artaud Speaks:
When O was a young girl, above all she wanted a man to take care of her.
In her dream, the city was the repository of all dreams.
A city that was always decaying. In the center of this city, her father had hung himself.
This can’t be true, O thought, because I’ve never had a father.
In her dream, she searched for her father.
She knew that it was a dumb thing for her to do because he was dead.
Since she wasn’t dumb, O thought, she must be trying to find him so that she could escape from the house in which she was living, which was run by a woman.
O went to a private detective. He called O a dame.
“I’m looking for my father.”
The private eye, who in one reality was a friend of O’s, replied that the case was an easy one.
O liked that she was easy.
And so they began. First, according to his instructions, O told him all that she knew about the mystery. It took her several days to recount all the details.
At that time it was summertime in Dallas. All yellow.
O didn’t remember anything in or about the first period. Of her childhood.
After not remembering, she remembered the jewels. When her mother had died, a jewel case had been opened. The case, consisting of one tray, had insides of red velvet. O knew that this was also her mother’s cunt.
O was given a jewel which was green.
O didn’t know where that jewel was now. What had happened to it. Here was the mystery of which she had spoken.
The private eye pursued the matter. A couple of days later, he came up with her father’s name.
“Oli.”
The name meant nothing to her.
“Your father’s name is Oli. Furthermore, your father killed your mother.”
That’s possible, O thought, as if thinking was dismissing.
The detective continued to give her details about her father: he was from Iowa and of Danish blood.
All of this could be true because what could she in all possibility know?
When O woke up out of her insane dream, she remembered that her mother had died eight days before Christmas. Despite the note lying beside the dead body in which the location of the family’s white poodle was revealed, the cops were convinced that the mother had been murdered. By a man unknown. Since it was now Christmas, these cops had no intention of investigating a murder when they could be returning to their families, Christmas warmth, and holiday.
O realized, for the first time in her life, that her father could have murdered her mother. According to the only member of her father’s family she had ever met, a roly-poly first cousin whose daughter picked up Bowery bums for sexual purposes (according to him), her father had murdered someone who had been trespassing on his yacht.
Then,
