Ray Read online

  Such was my relationship with Westy at the time that she withdrew in disgust when I came home with the damage to my cheeks and forehead. There is a streak in some women that beats the shit out of a response to pain if the wounds are really sloppy. Even the old joys we knew could not abide against Westy’s sense of the sanitary.

  LIX

  The thrill the suspense the spontaneity are all hanging suspended by one ankle.

  There is one pompous tall bully I know

  Who shall be served.

  He shall perish in the hot foam of his cruel absurdity. He shall be boiled alive.

  His own power glide shall run him over.

  His snide poems shall be twisted screw-wise up his organ’s exit.

  Then we bring on the major stuff.

  Rumors, backbiting, the hissing intimations.

  That was a poem scratched out by yours truly when he had had a long season of no nooky. But now my loneliness is not preying on me as in the old days.

  “What are you doing, Doctor?” says the new nurse.

  “Writing a poem,” says I. “Getting myself my own medicine.”

  “Oh,” she says. “I always loved poetry absolutely to pieces!”

  Here’s some nooky, thinks I.

  She was about twenty-three and the nurse’s dress fit her okay. She was green-eyed, svelte, with ample bosom, etc. There wasn’t the hard face of stupidity such as you see on most nurses. My eyes go to her feet and even there I see a bit of style. Some kind of trim-line whites showing a great deal of the fetching ankle and the blue veins Ray loves.

  “I liked your lectures on nervous anxiety last year,” says she.

  I’m just grooving on those veins in her feet.

  Says she, “Would you read me one of your poems? God, a doctor who writes poems.”

  “Let’s fuck instead’ says I. “What do we have?“

  “Nothing. A couple of grown babies with runny noses. One of them’s a woman who demands to see you personally.”

  “Who is it?”

  “She’s the suicidal Lebanese one that leases the Learjet through her law firm.”

  “Okay,” I say, “we’ll fuck tomorrow.”

  I pass by the mirror and see I’m still semihandsome. But you can never trust your own way of seeing.

  LX

  OVER Hanoi. Hendrix coming in clear. Coming down from high nowhere to blue somewhere to spy the water and the Bonhomme Richard in the luminous China Sea. There was a certain spirit that had the controls and guided me in to make the deck. It was the last of the last if you didn’t. God bless America. At the last moment it is all spirit, because five things could go wrong before the hooks catch you and you are climbing out of the cockpit.

  Oh, Captain, my Captain.

  I saw the hospital in Hawaii. It turned my heart. I saw and heard them interviewing the wounded. The doctor goes in and asks a boy who’s just lost a leg: “Do you feel different about life now?”

  I need to hear Sister’s voice.

  Sister. Sister.

  Ray is lucky. Ray can walk, think, and be a fool in his poems. I am lucky and I feel like fornication. Fellow doctor told me that there is some change and refreshment of hormones when you are with a lady overnight. Never knew that, but I will definitely study it for my long paper on the Nervous Anxiety of the Age.

  Oh, God, my shirt isn’t ironed! Etc.

  Let us meet again, we with our gray and forward hats on a million horses. Pushing the attack toward Washington, D.C. Our loves have evaporated. We run counter to them. Looking at the vista, there are cavalrymen of every race and creed. There is the beauty of the horses, with a steam like cumulus rising from their nostrils. Are we in line?

  “Raise sabers!” says the general.

  Eventually every man’s a sword. I’m riding down the lines and see Commander Gordon looking downcast. On myself I have the wool short jacket with every color of the rainbow on the breast.

  “You haven’t your saber, Commander. Raise it and you will see your men raise theirs.”

  “Sorry. I was thinking about my ex-wife. Brings you down. I know I’m going to die and that brings me down.”

  “If you use the new pistol correctly, I don’t think you’ll die. We are about to launch the Air Force. Shoulders up, Commander! We’ve got every horse ready on its feet. We will race on water and then bring out the pistols. Every bullet is a heat-seeker. There’s no use of my going through the book with you.”

  “Sabers up!” Commander Gordon says.

  Behind him five thousand silver sabers rise.

  “What do they have? What do their hired soldiers have?”

  “We caught them short. All they have is the old lead. The machine guns. The air will bring down the potency of our jackets.”

  Christ, here we go. Not a chance, but what a territory to gain!

  Their cannon just missed me as my horse started running on the water. We are high on our horses and laughing and I can hear the shrill Rebel yell behind me. They are throwing out phosphorus bombs, and I see some of the men go down. My men just laugh and the horses climb the banks. What an open field. We are laughing and screaming the yell.

  It is an open field.

  LXI

  IT was noon. I could not eat.

  I went over to the Hooches because I knew the old man was off for a break from the tugboats.

  Mr. Hooch was there and I caught him in the very act of writing. It was about Sister, his dead daughter and my dead lover.

  In the ground my daughter is but should not be

  My mind and face is coming strong toward victory

  In the ground but better her singing for the worms

  Than the town and all of its terms

  Below what happened, she lies, in no disguise

  My daughter always loved the earth anyway

  And when I put my ear to live grass I can hear her

  I can hear her, I can hear her, I can hear her.

  And when I stand up I am dirty in my veins

  I am soiled throughout. That’s Sister

  Mister.

  He took a Kool off me. I was humiliated by his poetry and I had to go to the bathroom to cry loud. It was a storm of tears.

  Sister was with me. “Keep on, Doctor,” she said.

  His wife came out and gave me a nod.

  When I think I’m doing good, I have to come over and see that I’m not even in the contest. In fact I have put the old fart in contact with an English prof at the school, who’s also a poet. It seems that the Collected Poems of J. Hooch are going to be a published fucking reality.

  I was laboring on another one when that new nurse came in again. She was quite a choice and I was out of nooky going on four months. For some weird reason I began lying to her lavishly. They were not harmful lies. I invented a whole new biography and person. I get tired of being him, Ray, all the time.

  “And so when I jumped out of the U-2 and saw all the Chinese around me, I knew there had been a misreckoning on someone’s part. Instead of killing me, however, they were friendly, knew that I was a doctor in training, and introduced me to all the ins and outs of acupuncture. I guess I began to write poems about then.”

  “Wow. Do you ever write about sex?”

  “Often,” I replied.

  “Does anyone ever get enough sex?” she asked.

  “The spring in me is very tight. Nothing else will do except gigantic fucking and sucking.

  “Are you speaking poetry to me now?”

  LXII

  SOUNDED like something. It was in cold weather. From my heart I follow the ghost voice. It is leading me and leading me and leading me.

  Oh, my I Oh fortunate fooll It is the voice of Westy and she wants to screw. I adore a woman who shouts for screwing. I adore! What with her legs in the air! What with her coming! What with her cheer and despair together!

  Close your eyes, darling, and have the old original pleasure! Tongue in, tongue out. Big hard sexuals.

  Ah, my God,
you’ve made me come!

  Everyone thinks it’s a crisis at sunrise, but I do not. I think of rising in the Phantom at dawn and the dawn intense—orange, yellow, violet, blue-black—the day very present because it could be the day of your death.

  Westy lifted her legs around me. She wanted to see the old miracle of my big thing going in.

  What a paradise of delight marriage can be.

  Nothing comes close to Westy in the pussy department.

  And you can see how my poetry is improving.

  I’m climbing the high oak of learning.

  I’m feeling the old force of yearning.

  Hoo! Ray! Fucking Ray! Ray in the fourth decade!

  Ray, yes, Ray! Doctor Ray is okay!

  Charlie DeSoto and Eileen are together again. The nurses are getting married. Westy is coming with the hot oils and the balm. The Alabama team is still whipping everybody in sight. My patients are calling. Bill is getting ready to fish. Elizabeth is looking in the Holy Bible. Mr. Hooch has his hands on a pencil.

  Sister!

  Christians!

  Sabers, gentlemen, sabers!