Free Darling Clementine by Andrew Klavan

won,” he says, as if he can’t believe it. “He killed that woman and we’re gonna get him.”
    I slide my jeans down. “Goes to show you: good always triumphs over evil in the end.”
    Arthur stands naked before the bed: his pale skin, the slender thrill of his muscles. “It never does,” he says in the same tone of voice. “Never. But we’re gonna get him.”
    â€œBeat me, Arthur,” I say. “Bugger me. Make me your sex slave.”
    â€œOh, come on, Sam, I’m not into that stuff,” he says. He looks down. His cock has suddenly shot up like a rocket. He runs to the bathroom for the vaseline.
    I am rueful, lying across his knee, coming at every other blow. I am rueful, cynical and worldly wise. I will go no more a’roaming (crack) in search of Death (whack) I will fight no wars (crack) no bulls, I will drink no liquor (slap) and take no drugs (crack) because Death is not just a radical (whap) he is also, maybe mostly, a bourgeois.
    So I continue as Arthur hurls me onto the bed, asshole open and to the sky, the eye of heaven on earth. I go on as, greased, his prick wobbles into me and strokes deeper and deeper to the canonic rhythms of Bach, giving me a sense of security and a searing pain that does not give me pleasure, but is a pleasure in itself.
    Stroke and anti-stroke, I continue: Death is a TV set. Death is a dollar bill. Death is a Communist revolution. Jesus Christ is Death. Death is the family, fidelity, promiscuity. I am coming and coming and coming. Death is a job. Death is modesty. Death is the vacuum cleaner of the loins sucking up all our pleasures into themselves. Death is birth and love and muzziness and faith and non-belief.
    But most of all—oh, oh, most of all, my darlings—Death is fucking me right up the ass, and I love it, love it, love it!

Four
    I am a bourgeoise. I will never attain Buddhahood. Such is life. Maybe I will be given Buddhahood for free, here on Fifth Avenue, maybe it will flash through the window and find me here amidst my comforts and I will be suddenly enlightened but still have air conditioning. Then I can appear on the cover of a book, a big closeup of my face, smiling. “Zen And The Art of Investment!” “Satori Through Money Management.” “Things and Tranquility.”
    What am I to do with this ordinary life? Last Saturday, Arthur watched the Mets game on TV. I brought him a beer and a bowl of crackers. I lay with my head on his lap and he stroked my hair. What, oh what, will happen, I was wondering, when Arthur discovers that I like this, that I am contented as a cat, that despite the fact that my poetry is growing more and more radical, is being published like crazy, is being hailed in some circles suddenly as a new voice, that despite this, I am becoming more and more happy with the little pleasures, the carving on the scrolled leg of the sofa, the shows we can afford to go to see, the dinners out. What, oh, what, will Arthur do when he realizes that I am not his secret song, and never was. I am not even a Clementine of Philadelphia, merely a Bradford of Greenwich: I would be content with less than this, God help us.
    Now and again, I hear my father snickering, and I rage, rage against the dying of the light. But then I think maybe the light is not dying, maybe there is more to come; maybe it was the wrong light—or maybe these are just the usual rationalizations of the 25-year-old encasing herself in amber like a fly. All I know is that if someone quotes Flaubert to me, that rot about bourgeois life leading to radical art, they will not take his throat from me until they pry my cold, dead fingers from around it.
    Instead, I think of Rome a lot. I think of Keats. I used to think Keats was the Jesus Christ of poetry, crucified by the critics, his fiery particles snuffed out by their articles, rising up again to give us modern verse. But I do not hate the critics anymore. How can