The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.
He was in the war, too — he landed on D-day and all — but I really think he hated the Army worse than the war.
The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid of somebody’d say something
smarter than he had. He really amused me.
“Maybe I’ll go to
China. My sex life is lousy,” I said.
“Naturally. Your mind is
immature.”
“It is. It really is. I know it,” I said. “You know
what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy — I mean
really sexy — with a girl I dont like a lot. I mean I have to like
her a lot. If I don’t, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and
all. Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex
life stinks.”
“… If you’re not, dont. I couldn’t care less, frankly.”
About a gallon of water was dripping down my neck, getting all over my collar and tie and all, but I didn’t give a damn. I was too drunken to give a damn.
I wasn’t tired or anything. I just felt blue as hell.
I’ve lived in New York all my life, and I know Central Park like the back of my hand, because I used to roller-skate there all the time and ride my bike when I was a kid, but I had the most terrific trouble finding that lagoon that night… I kept walking and walking, and it kept getting darker and darker and spookier and spookier. I didn’t see one person the whole time I was in the park.
I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funerals and all. My grandfather from Detroit, that keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddam bus with him, and my aunts — I have fifty aunts — and all my lousy cousins… They all came when Allie died, the whole goddam stupid bunch of them. I have this one stupid aunt with halitosis that kept saying how peaceful he looked lying there. …. I wasn’t there. I was still in the hospital.
Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up.
It started rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place.
You didn’t know him. If you’d known him, you’d know what I mean.
But my parents … she has ears like a goddamn bloodhound. …, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she’ll hear you. She’s nervous as hell. Half the time she’s up all night smoking cigarettes.
It didn’t take me long, and I can read that kind of stuff, some kid’s notebook, Phoebe’s or anybody’s, all day and all night long.