Love Is a Dog From Hell Read online

  or Stravinsky or Mozart. she boils the

  eggs counting the seconds out loud: 56,

  57, 58…she peels the eggs, brings

  them to me in bed. after breakfast it’s

  the same chair and listen to the classical

  music. she’s on her first glass of

  scotch and her third cigarette. I tell

  her I must go to the racetrack. she’s

  been here about 2 nights and 2 days. “when

  will I see you again?” I ask. she

  suggests that might be up to me. I

  nod and Mozart plays.

  numb your ass and your brain and your heart—

  I was coming off an affair that had gone badly.

  frankly, I was sliding down into a pit

  really feeling shitty and low

  when I lucked into this lady with a large bed

  covered with a jeweled canopy

  plus

  wine, champagne, smokes, pills and

  color tv.

  we stayed in bed and

  drank wine, champagne, smoked, popped pills

  by the dozens

  as I (feeling shitty and low)

  tried to get over this affair that had gone

  bad.

  I watched the tv trying to dull my senses,

  but the thing that really helped

  was this very long

  (specially written for tv) drama about

  spies—

  American spies and Russian spies, and

  they were all so clever and

  cool—

  even their children didn’t know

  their wives didn’t know, and

  in a way

  they hardly knew—

  and I found out about counter-spies, double-spies:

  guys who worked both sides, and

  then this one who was a double-spy turned

  into a triple-spy, it

  got nicely confusing—

  I don’t even think the guy who wrote the script

  knew what was happening—

  it went on for hours!

  seaplanes rammed into icebergs,

  a priest in Madison, Wisc. murdered his brother,

  a block of ice was shipped in a casket to Peru

  in lieu of the world’s largest diamond, and

  blondes walked in and out of rooms eating

  creampuffs and walnuts;

  the triple-spy turned into a

  quadruple-spy and everybody loved

  everybody

  and it went on and on

  and the hours passed and

  it all finally vanished like a paperclip in a

  bag of trash and I

  reached over and flicked off the set and

  slept well for the first time

  in a week and a half.

  one of the hottest

  she wore a platinum blond wig

  and her face was rouged and powdered

  and she put the lipstick on

  making a huge painted mouth

  and her neck was wrinkled

  but she still had the ass of a young girl

  and the legs were good.

  she wore blue panties and I got them off

  raised her dress, and with the TV flickering

  I took her standing up.

  as we struggled around the room

  (I’m fucking the grave, I thought, I’m

  bringing the dead back to life, marvelous

  so marvelous

  like eating cold olives at 3 a.m.

  with half the town on fire)

  I came.

  you boys can keep your virgins

  give me hot old women in high heels

  with asses that forgot to get old.

  of course, you leave afterwards

  or get very drunk

  which is the same

  thing.

  we drank wine for hours and watched tv

  and when we went to bed.

  to sleep it off.

  she left her teeth in all

  night long.

  ashes

  I got his ashes, she said, and I took them

  out to sea and I scattered his ashes and

  they didn’t even look like ashes

  and

  the urn was weighted with

  green and blue pebbles…

  he didn’t leave you any of his

  millions?

  nothing, she said.

  after having to eat all those breakfasts

  and lunches and dinners with him? after

  listening to all his bullshit?

  he was a brilliant man.

  you know what I mean.

  anyhow, I got the ashes. and you fucked

  my sisters.

  I never fucked your sisters.

  yes, you did.

  I fucked one of them.

  which one?

  the lesbian, I said, she bought me dinner and drinks,

  I had very little choice.

  I’m going, she said.

  don’t forget your bottle.

  she went in and got it.

  there’s so little to you, she said, that when you die and

  they burn you they’ll have to add almost all green and

  blue pebbles.

  all right, I said.

  I’ll see you in 6 months! she screamed and slammed the door.

  well, I thought, I guess in order to get rid of her I’ll have

  to fuck her other sister. I walked into the bedroom and started

  looking for phone numbers. all I remembered was that she

  lived in San Mateo and had a very good.

  job.

  fuck

  she pulled her dress off

  over her head

  and I saw the panties

  indented somewhat into the

  crotch.

  it’s only human.

  now we’ve got to do it.

  I’ve got to do it

  after all that bluff.

  it’s like a party—

  two trapped

  idiots.

  under the sheets

  after I have snapped

  off the light

  her panties are still

  on. she expects an

  opening performance.

  I can’t blame her. but

  wonder why she’s here with

  me? where are the other

  guys? how can you be

  lucky? having someone the

  others have abandoned?

  we didn’t have to do it

  yet we had to do it.

  it was something like

  establishing new credibility

  with the income tax

  man. I get the panties

  off. I decide not to

  tongue her. even then

  I’m thinking about

  after it’s over.

  we’ll sleep together

  tonight

  trying to fit ourselves

  inside the wallpaper.

  I try, fail,

  notice the hair on her

  head

  mostly notice the hair

  on her

  head

  and a glimpse of

  nostrils

  piglike

  I try it

  again.

  me

  women don’t know how to love,

  she told me.

  you know how to love

  but women just want to

  leech.

  I know this because I’m a

  woman.

  hahaha, I laughed.

  so don’t worry about your breakup

  with Susan

  because she’ll just leech onto

  somebody else.

  we talked a while longer

  then I said goodbye

  hungup

  went into the crapper and

  took a good beershit

  ma
inly thinking, well,

  I’m still alive

  and have the ability to expell

  wastes from my body.

  and poems.

  and as long as that’s happening

  I have the ability to handle

  betrayal

  loneliness

  hangnail

  clap

  and the economic reports in the

  financial section.

  with that

  I stood up

  wiped

  flushed

  then thought:

  it’s true:

  I know how to

  love.

  I pulled up my pants and walked

  into the other room.

  another bed

  another bed

  another woman

  more curtains

  another bathroom

  another kitchen

  other eyes

  other hair

  other

  feet and toes.

  everybody’s looking.

  the eternal search.

  you stay in bed

  she gets dressed for work

  and you wonder what happened

  to the last one

  and the one before that…

  it’s all so comfortable—

  this love-making

  this sleeping together

  the gentle kindness…

  after she leaves you get up and use her

  bathroom,

  it’s all so intimate and so strange.

  you go back to bed and

  sleep another hour.

  when you leave it’s with sadness

  but you’ll see her again

  whether it works or not.

  you drive down to the shore and sit

  in your car. it’s almost noon.

  —another bed, other ears, other

  ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other

  dresses

  colors, doors, phone numbers.

  you were once strong enough to live alone.

  for a man nearing sixty you should be more

  sensible.

  you start the car and shift,

  thinking, I’ll phone Jeanie when I get in,

  I haven’t seen her since Friday.

  trapped

  don’t undress my love

  you might find a mannequin;

  don’t undress the mannequin

  you might find

  my love.

  she’s long ago

  forgotten me.

  she’s trying on a new

  hat

  and looks more the

  coquette

  than ever.

  she is a

  child

  and a mannequin

  and

  death.

  I can’t hate

  that.

  she didn’t do

  anything

  unusual.

  I only wanted her

  to.

  tonight

  “your poems about the girls will still be around

  50 years from now when the girls are gone,”

  my editor phones me.

  dear editor:

  the girls appear to be gone

  already.

  I know what you mean

  but give me one truly alive woman

  tonight

  walking across the floor toward me

  and you can have all the poems

  the good ones

  the bad ones

  or any that I might write

  after this one.

  I know what you mean.

  do you know what I mean?

  the escape

  escape from the black widow spider

  is a miracle as great as art.

  what a web she can weave

  slowly drawing you to her

  she’ll embrace you

  then when she’s satisfied

  she’ll kill you

  still in her embrace

  and suck the blood from you.

  I escaped my black widow

  because she had too many males

  in her web

  and while she was embracing one

  and then the other and then

  another

  I worked free

  got out

  to where I was before.

  she’ll miss me—

  not my love

  but the taste of my blood,

  but she’s good, she’ll find other

  blood;

  she’s so good that I almost miss my death,

  but not quite;

  I’ve escaped. I view the other

  webs.

  the drill

  our marriage book, it

  says.

  I look through it.

  they lasted ten years.

  they were young once.

  now I sleep in her bed.

  he phones her:

  “I want my drill back.

  have it ready.

  I’ll pick the children up at

  ten.”

  when he arrives he waits outside

  the door.

  his children leave with

  him.

  she comes back to bed

  and I stretch a leg out

  place it against hers.

  I was young once too.

  human relationships simply aren’t

  durable.

  I think back to the women in

  my life.

  they seem non-existent.

  “did he get his drill?” I ask.

  “yes, he got his drill.”

  I wonder if I’ll ever have to come

  back for my bermuda

  shorts and my record album

  by The Academy of St. Martin in the

  Fields? I suppose I

  will.

  texan

  she’s from Texas and weighs

  103 pounds

  and stands before the

  mirror combing oceans

  of reddish hair

  which falls all the way down

  her back to her ass.

  the hair is magic and shoots

  sparks as I lay on the bed

  and watch her combing her

  hair. she’s like something

  out of the movies but she’s

  actually here. we make love

  at least once a day and

  she can make me laugh

  any time she cares

  to. Texas women are always

  healthy, and besides that she’s

  cleaned my refrigerator, my sink,

  the bathroom, and she cooks and

  feeds me healthy foods

  and washes the dishes

  too.

  “Hank,” she told me,

  holding up a can of grapefruit

  juice, “this is the best of them

  all.”

  it says: Texas unsweetened

  PINK grapefruit juice.

  she looks like Katherine Hepburn

  looked when she was

  in high school, and I watch those

  103 pounds

  combing a yard and some change

  of reddish hair

  before the mirror

  and I feel her inside of my

  wrists and at the backs of my eyes,

  and the toes and legs and belly

  of me feel her and

  the other part too,

  and all of Los Angeles falls down

  and weeps for joy,

  the walls of the love parlors shake—

  the ocean rushes in and she turns

  to me and says, “damn this hair!”

  and I say,

  “yes.”

  the spider

  then there was the time in

  New Orleans

  I was living with a fat woman,

  Marie, in the French Quarter

  and I got very sic
k.

  while she was at work

  I got down on my knees

  in the kitchen

  that afternoon and

  prayed. I was not a

  religious man

  but it was a very dark afternoon

  and I prayed:

  “Dear God: if you will let me live,

  I promise You I’ll never take

  another drink.”

  I kneeled there and it was just like

  a movie—

  as I finished praying

  the clouds parted and the sun came

  through the curtains

  and fell upon me.

  then I got up and took a crap.

  there was a big spider in Marie’s bathroom

  but I crapped anyhow.

  an hour later I began feeling much

  better. I took a walk around the Quarter

  and smiled at people.