Free Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream by Kathy Acker

haughtily, and distantly. Such distance is a grace which allows other people to act as they wish or need without fearing my judgement. Though my background and my manners have been considered poor, now I have enough money and I'm so beautiful, many men want me. I don't know if they want more than this image of affluence and sensuality. Men now announce, from a distance which they've chosen, they adore me and haven't ever met any girl like me. But anyway people're treating me as if they look up to, rather than down on, me; so I find it easier to be at a ball, at this ball, and I can start to pay attention to what I'm seeing.
    The Prince finds all this death-in-life in bad taste, especially since he's aware he's going to die soon. Sexual desires no longer interest him: he's hurt and been hurt too many times. These older women have been his mistresses. Once sexual desire has passed, its object always disgusts. These young women're no longer beautiful. . . except for Tancredi's fiancée.
    The Prince: Since I want her and I know my sexual desire's declining and I've little time left to live, my desire is violent. Italians eat too much starch. Because I'm finding my own mental processes increasingly fascinating, I'm tending to have less to do with that or whom bores me. Less and less I know the rules of normal (social) reality; less and less I care about such ignorance. I'm anonymous: I'm at this party just like I'm watching a movie. No event touches me
    On Death:
    The Prince: As if I'm in a ball, I'm looking. For a long time I've been looking from room to room, gorgeously decorated room after sumptuous silk room, dreamed room after sumptuous silk room, looking for I don't know what ... Or why? . . . Rational knowledge: Nothing matters. No one here knows me. I can do anything I want in a social situation. My sexual
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    desire, sometimes overfull and sometimes minimal, is distant from me.
    The Prince's rationality: Only intelligence can grab me. I want an intelligent friend. Since I've no such person, I've no language.
    :In this world of nothing-and-no one-matters, what is there? A palace which I've created or rationality. Every day the palace is larger and stronger. It's the place through which I'm walking. It's the place in which I'm less and less tired.
    The Prince's irrationality: (:I'm ((again)) in the old house which is taller than wide and wood. I'm climbing up narrow gray ((carpeted)) stairs. At the same time I'm descending. The middle rooms, which I've seen before, 're libraries or like libraries. Books cram their shelves. Each room is more magical.
    (:For the first time I've reached the bottom room. The room's larger than the others and different. Its walls aren't dark or wood, but light green. In some of its ends clean white tablecloths cover banquet tables. Although a number of people mill about, the room is more than half empty. Unlike the other rooms, there's lots of light.
    (: ((A party? An art party?)) A white wood door, almost in the center of one of the room's longer walls, swings open. For the first time I can walk through. I look through the partially open doorway. I feel no emotions: there're no emotions. In the next room I see girls in some sort of Catholic ceremony, walking ((in formations?)); each one is carrying a white china plate on top of which's a slice of chocolate layer cake. One ((several?)) of my friends walks through the partially open doorway. There my friend takes one of the small white china cups filled with dark coffee which is being served out of a large silver-colored coffee-maker. When my friend's ((friends')) in the light green room, I ask how the coffee tastes. It's real coffee. I want some. I say aloud that I'm not going to drink any because I don't want to go into the other room. I decide not to die yet.)
    The Prince's rationality: Since nothing matters, every event is every other event. This's called 'manners'. Decadence is aristocracy is rationality is gold is death-in-life. This's why