Run With the Hunted (41 page)

 

A day or so later I got a poem in the mail from Lydia. It was a long poem and it began:

Come out, old troll,

Come out of your dark hole, old troll,

Come out into the sunlight with us and

Let us put daisies in your hair …

The poem went on to tell me how good it would feel to dance in the fields with female fawn creatures who would bring me joy and true knowledge. I put the letter in a dresser drawer.

I was awakened the next morning by a knocking on the glass panes of my front door. It was 10:30
AM
.

“Go away,” I said.

“It's Lydia.”

“All right. Wait a minute.”

I put on a shirt and some pants and opened the door. Then I ran to the bathroom and vomited. I tried to brush my teeth but only vomited again—the sweetness of the toothpaste turned my stomach. I came out.

“You're sick,” Lydia said. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Oh no, I'm all right. I always wake up like this.”

Lydia looked good. The light came through the curtains and shone on her. She had an orange in her hand and was tossing it into the air. The orange spun through the sunlit morning.

“I can't stay,” she said, “but I want to ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“I'm a sculptress. I want to sculpt your head.”

“All right.”

“You'll have to come to my place. I don't have a studio. We'll have to do it at my place. That won't make you nervous, will it?”

“No.”

I wrote down her address, and instructions how to get there.

“Try to show up by eleven in the morning. The kids come home from school in mid-afternoon and it's distracting.”

“I'll be there at eleven,” I told her.

I sat across from Lydia in her breakfast nook. Between us was a large mound of clay. She began asking questions.

“Are your parents still alive?”

“No.”

“You like L.A.?”

“It's my favorite city.”

“Why do you write about women the way you do?”

“Like what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don't.”

“Well, I think it's a damned shame that a man who writes as well as you do just doesn't know anything about women.”

I didn't answer.

“Damn it! What did Lisa do with … ?” She began searching the room. “Oh, little girls who run off with their mother's tools!”

Lydia found another one. “I'll make this one do. Hold still now, relax but hold still.”

I was facing her. She worked at the mound of clay with a wooden tool tipped with a loop of wire. She waved the tool at me over the mound of clay. I watched her. Her eyes looked at me. They were large, dark brown. Even her bad eye, the one that didn't quite match the other, looked good. I looked back. Lydia worked. Time passed. I was in a trance. Then she said, “How about a break? Care for a beer?”

“Fine. Yes.”

When she got up to go to the refrigerator I followed her. She got the bottle out and closed the door. As she turned I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me. I put my mouth and body against hers. She held the beer bottle out at arm's length with one hand. I kissed her. I kissed her again. Lydia pushed me away.

“All right,” she said, “enough. We have work to do.”

—
W
OMEN

I read last Saturday in the

redwoods outside of Santa Cruz

and I was about ¾'s finished

when I heard a long high scream

and a quite attractive

young girl came running toward me

long gown & divine eyes of fire

and she leaped up on the stage

and screamed: “I WANT YOU!

I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE

ME!”

I told her, “look, get the hell

away from me.”

but she kept tearing at my

clothing and throwing herself

at me.

“where were you,” I

asked her, “when I was living

on one candy bar a day and

sending short stories to the

Atlantic Monthly?
”

she grabbed my balls and almost

twisted them off. her kisses

tasted like shitsoup.

2 women jumped up on the stage

and

carried her off into the

woods.

I could still hear her screams

as I began the next poem.

maybe, I thought, I should have

taken her on the stage in front

of all those eyes.

but one can never be sure

whether it's good poetry or

bad acid.

 

 

I didn't see Lydia for a couple of days, although I did manage to phone her six or seven times during that period. Then the weekend arrived. Her ex-husband, Gerald, always took the children over the weekend.

I drove up to her court about 11
AM
that Saturday morning and knocked. She was in tight bluejeans, boots, orange blouse. Her eyes seemed a darker brown than ever and in the sunlight, as she opened the door, I noticed a natural red in her dark hair. It was startling. She allowed me to kiss her, then she locked the door behind us and we went to my car. We had decided on the beach—not for bathing—it was midwinter—but for something to do.

We drove along. It felt good having Lydia in the car with me.

“That was
some
party,” she said. “You call that a collating party? That was a copulating party, that's what that was. A copulating party!”

I drove with one hand and rested the other on her inner thigh. I couldn't help myself. Lydia didn't seem to notice. As I drove along the hand slid down between her legs. She went on talking. Suddenly she said, “Take your hand off. That's my pussy!”

“Sorry,” I said.

Neither of us said anything until we reached the parking lot at Venice beach. “You want a sandwich and a Coke or something?” I asked.

“All right,” she said.

We went into the small Jewish delicatessen to get the things and we took them to a knoll of grass that overlooked the sea. We had sandwiches, pickles, chips and soft drinks. The beach was almost deserted and the food tasted fine. Lydia was not talking. I was amazed at how quickly she ate. She ripped into her sandwich with a savagery, took large swallows of Coke, ate half a pickle in one bite and reached for a handful of potato chips. I am, on the contrary, a very slow eater.

Passion, I thought, she has passion.

“How's that sandwich?” I asked.

“Pretty good. I was hungry.”

“They make good sandwiches. Do you want anything else?”

“Yes, I'd like a candy bar.”

“What land?”

“Oh, any kind. Something good.”

I took a bite of my sandwich, a swallow of Coke, put them down and walked over to the store. I bought two candy bars so that she might have a choice. As I walked back a tall black man was moving toward the knoll. It was a chilly day but he had his shirt off and he had a very muscular body. He appeared to be in his early twenties. He walked very slowly and erect. He had a long slim neck and a gold earring hung from the left ear. He passed in front of Lydia, along the sand on the ocean side of the knoll. I came up and sat down beside Lydia.

“Did you see that guy?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ, here I am with you, you're 20 years older than I am. I could have something like that. What the hell's wrong with me?”

“Look. Here are a couple of candy bars. Take one.”

She took one, ripped the paper off, took a bite and watched the young black man as he walked away along the shore.

“I'm tired of the beach,” she said, “let's go back to my place.”

We remained apart a week. Then one afternoon I was over at Lydia's place and we were on her bed, kissing. Lydia pulled away.

“You don't know anything about women, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can tell by reading your poems and stories that you just don't know anything about women.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, I mean for a man to interest me he's got to eat my pussy. Have you ever eaten pussy?”

“No.”

“You're over 50 years old and you've never eaten pussy?”

“No.”

“It's too late.”

“Why?”

“You can't teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, it's too late for you.”

“I've always been a slow starter.”

Lydia got up and walked into the other room. She came back with a pencil and a piece of paper. “Now, look, I want to show you something.” She began to draw on the paper. “Now, this is a cunt, and here is something you probably don't know about—the clit. That's where the feeling is. The clit hides, you see, it comes out now and then, it's pink and very
sensitive
. Sometimes it will hide from you and you have to find it, you just
touch
it with the tip of your tongue....”

“O.K.,” I said, “I've got it.”

“I don't think you can do it. I tell you, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Let's take our clothes off and lay down.”

We undressed and stretched out. I began kissing Lydia. I dropped from the lips to the neck, then down to the breasts. Then I was down at the bellybutton. I moved lower.

“No you
can't,
” she said. “Blood and pee come out of there, think of it, blood and pee....”

I got down there and began licking. She had drawn an accurate picture for me. Everything was where it was supposed to be. I heard her breathing heavily, then moaning. It excited me. I got a hard-on. The clit came out but it wasn't exactly pink, it was purplish-pink. I teased the clit. Juices appeared and mixed with the cunt hairs. Lydia moaned and moaned. Then I heard the front door open and close. I heard footsteps. I looked up. A small black boy about five years old stood beside the bed.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked him.

“You got any empty bottles?” he asked me.

“No, I don't have any empty bottles,” I told him.

He walked out of the bedroom, into the front room, out the front door and was gone.

“God,” said Lydia, “I thought the front door was locked. That was Bonnie's little boy.”

Lydia got up and locked the front door. She came back and stretched out. It was about 4
PM
on a Saturday afternoon.

I ducked back down.

—
W
OMEN

we like to shower afterwards

(I like the water hotter than she)

and her face is always soft and peaceful

and she'll wash me first

spread the soap over my balls

lift the balls

squeeze them,

then wash the cock:

“hey, this thing is still hard!”

then get all the hair down there,—

the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,

I grin grin grin,

and then I wash her …

first the cunt, I

stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass

I gently soap up the cunt hairs,

wash there with a soothing motion,

I linger perhaps longer than necessary,

then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,

the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,

soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,

the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,

and then the cunt, once more, for luck …

another kiss, and she gets out first,

toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in

turn the water on hotter

feeling the good times of love's miracle

I then get out …

it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,

and getting dressed we talk about what else

there might be to do,

but being together solves most of it,

in fact, solves all of it