You won’t believe this. It’s the damnedest thing. Suddenly, it seems, half the girls in New York want to get in my pants – yes, my pants, the winded Y-fronts with the slack elastic. Is this success? Is this money? Is this promotion, the light shed by Martina Twain? Loafing around at the Blithedale, I am accosted by little crackers in the commissary and the games room. They come right up to me, packed tight in heatwave wear, and suggest pressing get-togethers at their place or mine. I sit in a bar drinking lite beer and marshalling my confusions – and a big bim will climb up next to me, steadying herself with a hand on my thigh. ‘Buy me a drink,’ she’ll tell me. ‘I’m hot.’ The other evening, I swear, as I walked up Forty-Third Street in the dusk, a New York woman stood spread-legged in my path and dropped a handkerchief – like so – as I loomed by. There are salacious notes waiting for me in the lobby of the Ashbery. There are salacious women waiting for me in the lobby of the Ashbery. What do you want? I say. ‘Can’t we discuss this in your room? I’d really like to discuss this in your room.’ I fend them off, full of fear and failure. Drink, deep drink, has never looked so sweet. But I get by on wine and Serafim. I look for clues in all this sex bloat and beriberi. And I sometimes think: I’m it. I’m the clue.