I wish that you would do me a very kind-hearted and very special favor and kindly have the men of the Park Department greatly reduce all the top-heavy and overgrown trees in height to a height of about 25 feet high and to have all the long boughs and branches shortened considerably in the length and all parts of the trees greatly thinned out from the base to the very top parts and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty, and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the general thoroughfares and to the surroundings along by the streets, avenues, places, roadways, roads, highways, boulevards, terraces, parkways (streets called courts, lanes, etc.) and by the Parks inside and outside.
I would greatly, kindly and very urgently request that the boughs and branches be pruned, trimmed and pared off at a distance of from twelve to fifteen feet from the front, side and rear walls of all houses and other buildings of every description and not allow them to come in contact with them as a great many of them are very much marred by them coming in contact with them, and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty and very much more safety.
I wish that you would kindly have the men of the Park Department prune, trim and pare off the boughs and branches at a distance of from twelve to sixteen feet above the sidewalks, flaggings, grounds, curbs, etc. and not allow them to keep drooping away down low as a great many of them are now doing and thereby give plenty of height to walk beneath the same…
It went on and on in this vein, always detailed and explicit, the style never varying. One more paragraph—. I wish that you would kindly have the boughs and branches pruned, trimmed and pared off and down considerably below the roofs of the houses and other buildings and not allow them to protrude over, lap over, lay over, cross over or come in contact with the houses and other buildings and to have the boughs and branches greatly separated between each and every tree and not allow the boughs and branches to lap over, lay over, cross over, entwine, hug, cluster or come in contact with the adjoining trees and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the thoroughfares and to the general surroundings around by all parts of Queens County, New York…
As I say, upon finishing the letter I felt thoroughly relaxed, at ease with the world, and extremely indulgent toward my own precious self. It was as if some of that light—that more natural light—had invaded my being. I was no longer enveloped in a fog of despair. There was more air, more light, more beauty to all the surroundings: my inner surroundings.
Come Saturday noon therefore, I made straight for Manhattan Isle; at Times Square I rose to the surface, snatched a quick bite at the Automat, then swung my prow round in the direction of the nearest all out dance hall. It didn’t occur to me that I was repeating a pattern which had brought me to my present low state. Only when I pushed my way through the immense portals of the Itchigumi Dance Palace on the ground floor of a demented looking building this side of the Cafe Mozambique did it come over me that it was in a mood similar to the one which now claimed me that I had staggered up the steep rickety stairs of another Broadway dance hall and there found the beloved. Since those days my mind was utterly free of these pay as you go joints and the angels of mercy who soberly fleece their sex-starved patrons. All I thought of now was a few hours of escape from boredom, a few hours of forgetfulness—and to get it as cheaply as possible. There was no fear in me of falling in love again or even of getting a lay, though that I needed bad. I merely craved to become like any ordinary mortal, a jelly-fish, if you like, in the ocean of drift. I asked for nothing more than to be swished and sloshed about in an eddying pool of fragrant flesh under a subaqueous rainbow of subdued and intoxicating lights.
Entering the place I felt like a farmer come to town. Immediately I was dazzled, dazzled by the sea of faces, by the fetid warmth radiating from hundreds of over-excited bodies, by the blare of the orchestra, by the kaleidoscopic whirl of lights. Every one was keyed to fever pitch, it seemed. Every one looked intent and alert, intensely intent, intensely alert. The air crackled with this electric desire, this all-consuming concentration. A thousand different perfumes clashed with one another, with the heat of the hall, with the sweat and perspiration, the fever, the lust of the inmates, for they were very definitely, it seemed to me, inmates of one kind or another. Inmates perhaps of the vaginal vestibule of love. Icky inmates, advancing upon one another with lips parted, with dry, hot lips, hungry lips, lips that trembled, that begged, that whimpered, that beseeched, that chewed and macerated other lips. Sober too, all of them. Stone sober. Too sober, indeed. Sober as criminals about to pull off a job. All converging upon one another in a huge, swirling cake mould, the colored lights playing over their faces, their busts, their haunches, cutting them to ribbons in which they became entangled and enmeshed, yet always skilfully extricating themselves as they whirled about, body to body, cheek to cheek, lip to lip.
I had forgotten what it was like, this dance mania. Too much alone, too close to my grief, too ravaged by thought. Here was abandon with its nameless face and prune-whipped dreams. Here was the land of twinkling toes, of satiny buttocks, of let your hair down, Miss Victoria Nyanza, for Egypt is no more, nor Babylon, nor Gehenna. Here the baboons in full rut swim the belly of the Nile seeking the end of all things; here are the ancient maenads, re-born to the wail of sax and muted horn; here the mummies of the skyscrapers take out their inflamed ovaries and air them, while the incessant play of music poisons the pores, drugs the mind, opens the sluice gates. With the sweat and perspiration, with the sickening, overpowering reek of perfumes and deodorants all discreetly sucked up by the ventilators, the electric odor of lust hung like a halo suspended in space.
Walking up and down beside the Hershey Almond bars stacked one upon another like precious ingots, I rub against the pack. A thousand smiles are raining from every direction; I lift my face as if to catch the shimmering dew drops dispersed by a gentle breeze. Smiles, smiles. As if it weren’t life and death, a race to the womb and back again. Flutter and frou-frou, camphor and fish balls, Omega oil … wings spread full preen, limbs bare to the touch, palms moist, foreheads glistening, lips parched, tongues hanging out, teeth gleaming like the advertisements, eyes bright, roving, stripping one bare … piercing, penetrating eyes, some searching for gold, some for fuck, some to kill, but all bright, shamelessly, innocently bright like the lion’s red maw, and pretending, yes, pretending, that it’s a Saturday afternoon, a floor like any other floor, a cunt’s a cunt, no tickee no fuckee, buy me, take me, squeeze me, all’s well in Itchigumi, don’t step on me, isn’t it warm, yes, I love it, I do love it, bite me again, harder, harder…
Weaving in and out, sizing them up—height, weight, texture—rubbing flanks together, measuring bosoms, bottoms, waists, studying hair-dos, noses, stances, devouring mouths half open, closing others … weaving, sidling, pushing, rubbing, and everywhere a sea of faces, a sea of flesh carved by scimitar strokes of light, the whole pack glued together in one vast terspichorean stew. And over this hot conglomerate flesh whirling in the cake bowl the smear of brasses, the wail of trombones, the coagulating saxophones, the piercing trumpets, all like liquid fire going straight to the glands. On the sidelines, standing like thirsty sentinels, huge upturned jugs of orangeade, lemonade, sarsparilla, coca-cola, root beer, the milk of she-asses and the pulp of wilted anemones. Above it all the almost inaudible hum of the ventilators sucking up the sour, rancid odor of flesh and perfume, passing it out over the heads of the passing throngs in the street.
Find some one! That was all I could think. But whom? I milled around and milled around, but nothing suited me. Some were wonderful, ravishing—as ass, so to say. I wanted something more. It was a bazaar, a bazaar of flesh—why not pick and choose? Most of them had the empty look of the empty souls they were. And why not, handling nothing but goods, money, labels, buttons, dishes, bills of lading, day in and day out? Should
