Part 8 (2/2)

How I ca with Kathy Acker was I invented a Xine in Eugene - that's what you to do in Eugene - called two girls review One day when I was drunk and high withon the floor of our next to the tracks rental house I said to hi Kathy Acker down here to read” And he looked at s seeene

It's not what you think to contact people you think of as a stars I dialed information He called I wrote dohat he should say He said it And shebazz I i Acker

I know not all of you would do the tinkle dance to hang out with Kathy Acker In fact, some of you don't even knoho she was But to ed a break-in on culture and gender, on the prison house of language, and blew it up frohs

And after a

pussy spanking, for the uninitiated, is not just foreplay Christ, most of the woood ones have

When areen colored Best Western pool, we did laps This was after she lifted free weights for about an hour She swam hard She wasn't a superb swimmer, but she was a solid swimmer How she looked in the water was like a hu the crap out of each lap And when she'd turn her head to breath, if I happened to breathe her direction at the right tileamed

It wasn't in the pool that the pussy revelations happened And it wasn't later in my blue Toyota pickup truck after ent to Rite-Aid to buy her sinusseenasked questions about your body by Kathy Acker is definitely enough to make your car seat wet It was later, at dinner, with 14 other people sitting around Between bites of dinner and sips of wine she self narrated about how she didn't as next to soht slide off of the seat and dribble to the floor right there, sucking her ankles and whio under the table with me

I talked with her other tiree with me - she ide open s - she was precise and clear and fully descriptive It was sirl about Like an inside out wo salty coht after aether at the Best Western, after her ja, after the take the writer out to a bar so people can drool on her and crowd her into claustrophobic hell, at approxiot thejuice spanked out of my pussy until the bed flooded It was not like with the photographer I laughed I laughed with pleasure

I had a few other encounters with her We exchanged two letters about sexuality I talked to her on the phone once when I thought I ht be in love with a transsexual person That's it And this She readit Not everyone should You should”

Kathy died in 1997 of breast cancer

Kesey died in 2001 of liver cancer

Soood father Me swi Scene

MY SECOND HUSBAND WAS A CHARISMATIC NARCISSISTIC tender hearted frighteningly attractive artistic drunk With hella black curls of hair traveling halfway down his back And black eyes It seemed And a tiny zipper scar across his left wrist My break up with Devin - poet, divine one - it took 11 years Goddamn it

I took an infor, beautiful women I currently know on the question of e find ourselves driven like s like: ”Because in loving his darkness I found e that if it feels bad, it's good, and if it feels good, you are bad” Then there was the ever popular ”Between slut and saint I choose slut” And this one's a classic of course: ”Bad boys are ood ones If you can survive it And I still feel that way” Also: ”Suffering er bond than love,” and ”I'd rather feel alive and die than feel dead and live” This one nearly made me cry: ”Heto choose” But the one I personally identified with the most was, ”He celebrated a death drive with ht I slept with Devin we consumed 25 bottles of Guinness and two jumbo bottles of wine I barely remember the actual sex but I remember exactly e drank We listened to Jie Days and LA Woman until it felt like it was in our skin When I woke up the nextand looked at the desk across frohed and burped and went back to sleep, Devin's ar about

I first raduate students at the University of Oregon in Eugene It was my second year, his first

I looked around at all the earnest grad student folks at orientation and felt kind of like I had a big red ”A” on my chest due to raduate school in Lubbock Quit undergraduate school in Eugene Went back with a pile of D's and F's and clawed uy who looked equally out of place and very unco black hair and eyelashes I watched hi like he didn't fit in the seat I didn't hear an orientation thing After the orientation I sort of sauntered up next to hiet arrested here,” and I replied without looking at hi underwear,” and ent straight fro for 11 years, so you ht say I was perfectly prieous I' this because wo for their lives to becoh to desire an unending stream of beautiful women but really, if a charismatic narcissist beautiful bad boy o to pieces We suddenly feel like we are finally in that movie rather than a life Just ays wanted To be chosen by the best looking h we are of course sether than to ever want that Or ad shocked every tiot in I always expected hiet into someone else's vehicle Or bed Or house Or life

Our love, was liquid Turned out we both loved drinkingelse turned out to be fucking Drinking in bathrooms and kitchens and alleys and hallways and bars and cars Drinking all the way to the coast and all night at a bar and in the s and oyster shooters in soene Drinking before, during, and after classes Drinking in beds and in baths and at the rivers and in the rose garden and in the graveyard next to U of O and on top of Prince Lucien Campbell Hall

We drank Guinness

We drank cheap turn your teeth purple wine

We drank Chivas, because he had a thing about Jim Morrison

We drank vodka, because of well,his favorite poet drank - Bukowski - and like Bukowski's women, I matched him drink for drink

We drank each other blind

Drinking ourhe said I want to be a painter I said I want to be a writer So we drank to that And painted And wrote And celebrated every hour with booze Dancing with lesbians Tripping with hippies Mushroo the tires of Republicans We drank with bums under overpasses and on the tracks We drank with friends and enemies and ex-cons and tat artists and once a priest and bikers and once with a famous actress and with his drunk father and my drunk mother and all the people we'd never met We dreaan itching athe painted paintings of wild faces - abstract faces so you could never say who they were or why

While ere drinking the chaos of art ca we could do to control anything about us

Alereart We s and I made stories Hehad a power bigger than our du

Art The expression of huination Or emotions that have been locked inside a body spilled out all over the Goddahed since I was 10 It wasn't safe to laugh as a child, and later in life when I lost hter hurt too h All the time Sometimes I think that's the best of it

I would have done anything for him A love unto death And

Godda it all sound literary

It wassluht our tickets home from Reno, Nevada How by then I was deadened with drunk How I looked at hi minute How I tucked his ticket in his pocket and left all our bags around hiot on a plane without him

Let me start over

Distilled YEAR ONE WE DRINK GUINNESS MOSTLY ALL THE TIME and we ride Mountain bikes around Eugene at night and we go to the Vet's Club we go to the Vet's club we go to the Vet's club we go to the High Street Cafe hey I'll give you uy who joined us for a drink he does we laugh we drink we fuck We rent a house together near the traintracks we drink Guinness we paint each other's bodies we paint the walls we paint an entire rooo crazy drinking we do perfor's head e we perfor blond hair attractive draht me on one side of the bathroom door with a Swiss Army Knife him on the other side of the bathroom door with a kitchen knife we carve each other's names into our arms we do I fall and break open the body of the toilet water spewing everywhere he breaks down the bathroom door we bleed we fuck septic water Year Te drink Busharden we steal all the heads of roses we strip and ride the current down the McKenzie river we road trip froon to Florida we drink uy die on the road some terrible wreck blood everywhere stretchers with corpse side of the road gorgeous ocean cliff view blood and road flares and a just like you loveddeathward so Jim Morrison I wanted to be in your fire we eat ecstasy and ride our bikes on the freee drive and drive all the southern states redneck fuckwads laughing snakeskin boots and cowboy hats all the way to Alabama his home to Florida my parents then turn around as fast as possible back to the west to Oregon where we can be e are the e get married in Tahoe at the top of Harvey's Casino with my best friends lovers Mike and Dean and my sister and my parents Oedipal fakers and his parents southern Baptist fascists and we drink with the gay boys and a casino preacher with giant hair groomed black as a record album marries us says a Native A Lake Tahoe we laugh all the way down the elevators all the way through the year all the way to rings on our fingers and bells on our toes Year three love is a series of islands in Greece the Cyclades rising fro stones for du ferries we drink Tsipouro we drink Mavrodafni we drink Retsina we drink Metaxa Metaxa Metaxa white stone buildings endless rock beaches mountains and olive hills and brown skinned people with dark hair dark eyes open ariant tits and laughing until I'm drunk du while he goes out to sleep with Greece Year four is London and Keats' house and laying on the tiny bed we're not supposed to and getting kicked out drunk tourists and Hyde Park naps and the Tate Gallery and Westiant wooden doorchildren but we didn't come for London the food is shi+t the people are unattractive the Shakespearian tradition is all over everything until we fuck in a giant tidepool near the Cliffs of Dover good really good pub with no Aiant fistfight he's drunk he thinks he's Bukowski run I say run these are English pig dog thugs we escape to where anted to be to Ireland Becket and Synge and Joyce and at Yeats house we fuck in the castle against the e fuck on the stones at Innish Moore we drink and pass out in Joyce's country his shoes washi+ng away down a river my hair soaked with rain we read books e were part of history e were part of drinking e were part of anything not ourselves alk and walk but why do the pictures we took of each other have no smiles Did we become a Beckett play? Year five a restored farmhouse in France my beloved Michael with us his lover with us we live there for a ne we eat rabbit we eat crepes we eat escargot we laugh they taste like dirt we eat and eat and drink restaurant with et lost and too high in all the art and high ceilings and hide in a bathroo until a French woman asks ”sont bien vous? sont bien vous?” Back out into the Louvre and even the Mona Lisa looks silly back to the far speed on the speed train back to the farmhouse which is near Normandy on the coast - stop - war and remembrance - back at the far and drinking and fire Next night night pulled over anday ht with the French cop and a ht in the French farht love Year six yelling begins a rhythins and yelling gets louder and drinking gets louder and hi woether how do they what is a couple over ti and allery but nothing stops the yelling that is taking over the house and drinking and kissing that becoraduate school too e and the liquor of intellectual fights the liquor of love no travel h passion but barreling differently splitting apart into the fla Year seven I start a dissertation he quits grad school drinking and yelling: cleaved Year eight I get a PhD I get a real job someone here needs to soone haywire beautiful fucked up children so full of pro so full with alcohol we keep on beingand he pisses drunk in the corner and he falls down the stairs and he passes out on the lawn and he passes out driving and how do you do this how do you where is ? Year nine here is a job at rown up here is a trip with a drao to Vietna the riverfront in Portland I buy him alcohol I try and try to buy our love back I try and try but no money stops him in Vietnam he falls in love Tu-Ha he lies and lies he coht after night he stays in Vietnam Tu-Ha I stay in bed for days and days I don't eat I drink the drinking of alone I piss in the bed I don't move me urine and vodka and sad sad dead childless woman with her job and her house and her first book and her cat and her dog and her o back to Tahoe to try to remember pretend Year 10 we drink on top of Harvey's Casino we drink in the elevator we drink instead of fucking until we can't see or hear or feel we drink even on the way to the airport in the cab we get to the airport I go to the ticket counter to go back to Oregon but I know I'on I turn around with the tickets he's asleep against the wall snoring like drunks do all our luggage around him like children we never had I leave the ticket in his drunk sleeping hand he's pissed himself I can't take care of this man Year 10 he sleeps with one of our ood person she eood person she eood person they fuck and fuck I come home from work she is on the black leather couch passed out he is passed out on the floor Year 10 you said you would love ether in love you said when I was 75 we'd laugh our saggy skinned laughs and drink to our old ass love you said it toit where are you where is the man ould love a woman like me there are no men if not you there never were anylose 25 pounds everyone says everyone says you look so beautiful Like a movie actress Isn't she beautiful?

Am I beautiful?

Love is a lifedeath

My Lover, Writing I KIND OF DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU THIS

Iyou I left words out On purpose But I knohy I was hiding words froendered body, and I can tell you tales Endless stories of a woman as me and is also all of us Our bodies the flesh metaphor for all human experience This This happened to me This is where I failed Where I went blind Where I opened s Where I chewed off my hand Where I tried to off ned to ask for love, or ventured into pleasure or pain Or just got drunk and fucked up Again Here are the scars I am a swimmer My shoulders are broad My eyes, are blue