What strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or talking about had any real interest for me. Only the object haunted me, the separate, detached, insignificant thing. It might be a part of the human body or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button I had found in the gutter. Whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to surrender, to attach my signature. To the life about me, to the people who made up the world I knew, I could not attach my signature. I was as definitely outside their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of civilized society. I was filled with a perverse love of the thing-in-itself—not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded, worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration.
Living in the midst of a world where there was a plethora of the new I attached myself to the old. In every object there was a minute particle which particularly claimed my attention. I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object. Whatever set the object apart, or made it unserviceable, or gave it a date, attracted and endeared it to me. If this was perverse it was also healthy, considering that I was not destined to belong to this world which was springing up about me. Soon I too would become like these objects which I venerated, a thing apart, a non-useful member of society. I was definitely dated, that was certain. And yet I was able to amuse, to instruct, to nourish. But never to be accepted, in a genuine way. When I wished to, when I had the itch, I could single out any man, in any stratum of society, and make him listen to me. I could hold him spellbound, if I chose, but, like a magican, or a sorcerer, only as long as the spirit was in me. At bottom I sensed in others a distrust, an uneasiness, an antagonism which, because it was instinctive, was irremediable. I should have been a clown; it would have afforded me the widest range of expression. But I underestimated the profession. Had I become a clown, or even a vaudeville entertainer, I would have been famous. People would have appreciated me precisely because they would not have understood; but they would have understood that I was not to be understood. That would have been a relief, to say the least.
It was always a source of amazement to me how easily people could become riled just listening to me talk. Perhaps my speech was somewhat extravagant, though often it happened when I was holding myself in with main force. The turn of a phrase, the choice of an unfortunate adjective, the facility with which the words came to my lips, the allusions to subjects which were taboo—everything conspired to set me off as an outlaw, as an enemy of society. No matter how well things began sooner or later they smelled me out. If I were modest and humble, for example, then I was too modest, too humble. If I were gay and spontaneous, bold and reckless, then I was too free, too gay. I could never get myself quite au point with the individual I happened to be talking to. If it were not a question of life and death—everything was life and death to me then—if it was merely a question of passing a pleasant evening at the home of some acquaintance, it was the same thing. There were vibrations emanating from me, overtones and undertones, which charged the atmosphere unpleasantly. Perhaps the whole evening they had been amused by my stories, perhaps I had them in stitches, as it often happened, and everything seemed to augur well. But sure as fate something was bound to happen before the evening came to a close, some vibration set loose which made the chandelier ring or which reminded some sensitive soul of the pisspot under the bed. Even while the laughter was still dying off the venom was beginning to make itself felt. “Hope to see you again some time,” they would say, but the wet, limp hand which was extended would belie the words.
Persona non grata! Jesus, how clear it seems to me now! No pick and choice possible: I had to take what was to hand and learn to like it. I had to learn to live with the scum, to swim like a sewer rat or be drowned. If you elect to join the herd you are immune. To be accepted and appreciated you must nullify yourself, make yourself indistinguishable from the herd. You may dream, if you dream alike. But if you dream something different you are not in America, of America American, but a Hottentot in Africa, or a Kalmuck, or a chimpanzee. The moment you have a “different” thought you cease to be an American. And the moment you become something different you find yourself in Alaska or Easter Island or Iceland.
Am I saying this with rancor, with envy, with malice? Perhaps. Perhaps I regret not having been able to become an American. Perhaps. In my zeal now, which is again American, I am about to give birth to a monstrous edifice, a skyscraper, which will last undoubtedly long after the other skyscrapers have vanished, but which will vanish too when that which produced it disappears. Everything American will disappear one day, more completely than that which was Greek, or Roman, or Egyptian. This is one of the ideas which pushed me outside the warm, comfortable bloodstream where, buffaloes all, we once grazed in peace. An idea that has caused me infinite sorrow, for not to belong to something enduring is the last agony. But I am not a buffalo and I have no desire to be one, I am not even a spiritual buffalo. I have slipped away to rejoin an older stream of consciousness, a race antecedent to the buffaloes, a race that will survive the buffalo.
All things, all objects animate or inanimate that are different, are veined with ineradicable traits. What is me is ineradicable, because it is different. This is a skyscraper, as I said, but it is different from the usual skyscraper à I’américaine. In this skyscraper there are no elevators, no seventy-third-story windows to jump from. If you get tired of climbing you are shit out of luck. There is no slot directory in the main lobby. If you are searching for somebody you will have to search. If you want a drink you will have to go out and get it; there are no soda fountains in this building, and no cigar stores, and no telephone booths. All the other skyscrapers have what you want! this one contains nothing but what I want, what I like. And somewhere in this skyscraper Valeska has her being, and we’re going to get to her when the spirit move me. For the time being she’s all right, Valeska, seeing as how she’s six feet under and by now perhaps picked clean by the worms. When she was in the flesh she was picked clean too, by the human worms who have no respect for anything which has a different tint, a different odor.
The sad thing about Valeska was the fact that she had nigger blood in her veins. It was depressing for everybody around her. She made you aware of it whether you wished to be or no. The nigger blood, as I say, and the fact that her mother was a trollop. The mother was white, of course. Who the father was nobody knew, not even Valeska herself.
Everything was going along smoothly until the day an officious little Jew from the vice-president’s office happened to espy her. He was horrified, so he informed me confidentially, to think that I had employed a colored person as my secretary. He spoke as though she might contaminate the messengers. The next day I was put on the carpet. It was exactly as though I had committed sacrilege. Of course I pretended that I hadn’t observed anything unusual about her, except that she was extremely intelligent and extremely capable. Finally the president himself stepped in. There was a short interview between him and Valeska during which he very diplomatically proposed to give her a better position in Havana. No talk of the blood taint. Simply that her services had been altogether remarkable and that they would like to promote her—to Havana. Valeska came back to the office in a rage. When she was angry she was magnificent. She said she wouldn’t budge. Steve Romero and Hymie were there at the time and we all went out to dinner together. During the course of the evening we got a bit tight. Valeska’s tongue was wagging. On the way home she told me that she was going to put up a fight; she wanted to know if it would endanger my job. I told her quietly that if she were fired I would quit too. She pretended not to believe it at first. I said I meant it, that I didn’t care what happened. She seemed to be unduly impressed; she took me by the two hands and she held them very gently, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
That was the beginning of things. I think it was the very next day that I slipped her a note saying that I was crazy about her. She read the note sitting opposite me and when she was through she looked me square in the eye and