Duffy Quotes

Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.

You're a disgusting, shallow, womanizing jackass, and I hope that soda stains your preppy little shirt." Just before I marched away, i looked over my shoulder and added, "And my name isn't Duffy. it's Bianca. we've been in the same homeroom since middle school, you selfabsorbed son of a bitch.

There is a certain strength in being alone.

The beauty of standing up for your rights is others will see you standing and stand up as well.

I'd rather be thought of as smart, capable, strong, and compassionate than beautiful. Those things all persist long after beauty fades.

We come back to the same people to learn something about how we have changed. We want to be assured that we have changed. We so want our pictures to paint differently than they do.

It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege.

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

I'll probably never fully become what I wanted to be when I grew up, but that's probably because I wanted to be a ninja princess.

I like pouring your tea, lifting the heavy pot, and tipping it up, so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup. Or when you’re away, or at work, I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip, as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips. I like the questions – sugar? – milk? – and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet, for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget. Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon, I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day, as the women harvest the slopes for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi, and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea. - Tea

It's been my experience that only children never learn when to keep their fucking traps shut. An older brother would have beat that out of you.

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

I'm not the first or the last to stand on a hillock, watching the man she married prove to the world he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock. - Mrs Icarus

The stars are filming us for no one.

You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

I had the feeling she was going to say something big. One of us had to say it. What happened to us? Where are we going? It was like this silence between us was frozen and we were both feeling our way around it. How is it that two people can need each other so absolutely and then, in moments, not even know how to be next to each other and just be quiet?

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside. The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife which made me worse. I howled in my cell. If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?

Went to the Zoo, I said to Him- Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

Don't worry, Duffy. I like you. We'll kill you last.

You need to choose Leah," Duffy breathes into my ear as he drags his lips lightly across my cheekbone. He rests his forehead against mine. "I won't be your second choice.

We're sorta like 7-Eleven. We're not always doing business, but we're always open.

I’m sorry it’s had to be this hard. But if I hadn’t walked this path, who would I be? At the moment I felt at the center of my life, the dream still braided like sweetgrass in my memory. I remembered Duffy’s challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar. I heard the beatings of wings nearby. I opened my eyes. A young man on a nearby rooftop released his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament.

I’m not saying we’ll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure. Take a chance, Jess. You’re already wondering if the world could change. Try imagining a world worth living in, and then ask yourself if that isn’t worth fighting for. You’ve come too far to give up on hope, Jess.

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love - I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next best bed. - Anne Hathaway

Love’s language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.

Like other women who sought equality, the amount of trouble I cause is inversely proportional to my physical size.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear. La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross to reach you. For I am in love with you and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

You know, my father says those are the four most frightening words a woman can say. He claims that nothing good ever begins with “We need to talk.” You’re worrying me a little here, Duffy.

For this, let gardens grow, where beelines end, sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia; where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise in pear trees, plum trees; bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

I realized I was officially a professional writer when all my plans began with "drink coffee" and ended with "take a nap.

The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound.

Maybe you can explain to me what is so spectacular about her, because you gay girls can’t seem to keep your hands off that daffy redhead.

Greek mythology has always been my Achilles elbow.

And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue

I kept yelling at them that you were a human being, that you mattered, and it was like they weren't even listening to me. I couldn't do anything to help you and I couldn't make them take care of you the way I wanted, you know?" I nodded. I did know. And now I knew that Duffy did too.

I took an axe To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf As he slept.

Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

He was one of those characters who felt that a weak handshake could somehow damage his authority, which meant that every handshake had to bloody hurt.

A black Mercedes Benz 450 SL pulled up. It was your classic hood auto beloved of terrorists, pimps and African dictators.

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others—Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She’d be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they’d be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They’d come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they’d walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man’s-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they’d simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.

from Pearls and Poison… “In two minutes the cops are going to come barreling though that door,” I whispered to Auntie KiKi hoping to get her mind off the body in the back room. “Any suggestions how we tell these workers out here their candidate just croaked?” “Yell The jackass bit the big one, hip-hip hooray Gloria wins, then run like the dickens before someone recognizes us.

Poets sing our human music for us.

The pull of our roots can be such a strong force, no matter how far or wide we may roam.

Johnnie Walker in the tea, Jim Beam in the coffee

A bullet in the head will fix an incipient asthma attack every time.

Whatever awful things you go through, however miserable you feel, those feelings will pass. But don't think for one second you can't show them now anyway. Who does it help keeping them in?

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers-that-be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year. I see him now, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. - Mrs Tiresias

Beauty is fame.

No jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear. No chandelier see you better lit than here.

No man is an island but every woman is. That's why we build bridges.

Aim for simplicity in Data Science. Real creativity won’t make things more complex. Instead, it will simplify them.

It took ten years In the woods to tell that a mushroom Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out Season after season, same rhyme, same reason.

He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating.

I remembered about the pharma coke, went outside and nailed a line so pure it was like getting yelled at by God. Yorkshire tea, Mrs Campbell’s Black Forest, Bayer cocaine – the lunch of champions.

I like pouring your tea, lifting the heavy pot, and tipping it up, so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup. Or when you're away or at work, I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip, as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

You painted it pink?' Price asked with a grin. 'That’s lavender, you colour-blind eejit,' I said. McCallister saw that Price clearly hadn’t got the message yet. 'Hey lads, you know why Price nearly failed the police entrance exam? He thought a polygon was a dead parrot.' The lads chuckled dutifully and somebody punched Price on the shoulder.

I've got an idea,' I said. 'I'll just turn up tomorrow morning and start having meetings until my brain turns to jelly. Then we'll stop and I'll hide for a bit, then do some more while thinking of other things, then forget it all by the evening, and we'll do pretty much the same thing again the day after that—and rely on subordinates and assistants to deal with actually running the place.' 'Thank goodness for that,' said Duffy with a sigh of relief. 'I was worried you had no experience of running a large public department.

our tragedy begins humid. in a humid classroom. with a humid text book. breaking into us. stealing us from ourselves. one poem. at a time. it begins with shakespeare. the hot wash. the cool acid. of dead white men and women. people. each one a storm. crashing. into our young houses. making us islands. easy isolations. until we are so beleaguered and swollen with a definition of poetry that is white skin and not us. that we tuck our scalding. our soreness. behind ourselves and learn poetry. as trauma. as violence. as erasure. another place we do not exist. another form of exile where we should praise. honor. our own starvation. the little bits of langston. phyllis wheatley. and angelou during black history month. are the crumbs. are the minor boats. that give us slight rest. to be waterdrugged into rejecting the nuances of my own bursting extraordinary self. and to have this be called education. to take my name out of my name. out of where my native poetry lives. in me. and replace it with keats. browning. dickson. wolf. joyce. wilde. wolfe. plath. bronte. hemingway. hughes. byron. frost. cummings. kipling. poe. austen. whitman. blake. longfellow. wordsworth. duffy. twain. emerson. yeats. tennyson. auden. thoreau. chaucer. thomas. raliegh. marlowe. burns. shelley. carroll. elliot… (what is the necessity of a black child being this high off of whiteness.) and so. we are here. brown babies. worshipping. feeding. the glutton that is white literature. even after it dies. (years later. the conclusion: shakespeare is relative. white literature is relative. that we are force fed the meat of an animal that our bodies will not recognize. as inherent nutrition. is not relative. is inert.)

The Latin names of plants blur like belief.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

But this was Northern Ireland in 1981 which was slightly less conservative than, say, Salem in 1692

You're a glass-half-empty kind of guy, sir, aren't you?" "I don't even acknowledge the existence of the glass, son.

Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards, then it would.

Tragedies might be bursts of misery, but regret was forever.

If you look at pictures of the bodies of Muhammad Ali, Ray Robinson, or, for that matter, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee, you'll see physique in perfect proportion and built for function.

I started to crawl off; then I remembered my leftover pizza, and I peeled off the salami, pepperoni, and anchovies and placed them on the CD tray (whicn no one used these days with flash drives around)on Boone's computer. I hit the close button and watched the smelly part of my delicious dinner slide away. Boone would have a great time wondering 'where's that smell coming from?

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife. And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain.

I believe her exact words were “Rip them balls right off that cock-sucker and shove ‘em up his ass”, followed by, “then that shit-for-brains wouldn’t be fucking no more skank hoes on your watch again!” So you can see that I toned it down a bit.

I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either.

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers-that-be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell. Falling in love is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin. Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream. "You

Without warning, Wesley lifted me up onto the pool table. His hands moved to my shoulders, and a second later, I was flat on my back, staring up at him as he smirked. He shifted so that he was on the table too, leaning over me with his face only inches from mine. “On the pool table?” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Seriously?” “I can’t resist,” he said. “You know, you’re pretty sexy when you’re pissed at me, Duffy.” First, I was struck by the irony of that statement. I mean, he used sexy and Duffy-implying I was fat and ugly-in the same sentence. The contrast was almost laughable. Almost.

A cocked .38 doesn't feel the same as an unprimed revolver. The frame tightens differently, the trigger is on a hair and this tension is communicated to you and the people around you.

If you really have to get shot, Belfast is one of the best places to do it. After twenty years of the Troubles, and after thousands of assassination attempts and punishment shootings, Belfast has trained many of the best gunshot-trauma surgeons in the world.

I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!" And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel - "Here is the march along these iron stones." That was the year of the Munich bother. Which Was more important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Don’t pretend, Bianca,” he said. “You’re smarter than that, and so am I. I finally figured out what you meant when you left. You said you were like Hester. I get it now. The first time you came to my house, when we wrote that paper, you said Hester was trying to escape. But everything caught up with Hester in the end, didn’t it? Well, something finally caught up with you, but you’re just running away again. Only, he”-Wesley pointed to my bedroom door-“is your escape this time.” He took a step toward me, forcing me to crane my neck even more to see his face. “Admit it, Duffy.” “Admit what?” “That you’re running away from me,” he said. “You realized you’re in love with me and you bailed because it scared the shit out of you.

Sherman Reilly Duffy of the pre-World War I CHICAGO DAILY JOURNAL once told a cub reporter, 'Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.' Well, socially I fit in just fine between the whore and the bartender. Both are close friends. And I knew the world was round. Yet, as time went by I found myself confronted with the ugly suspicion that the world was, after all, flat and that there were things dark and terrible waiting just over the edge to reach out and snatch life from the unlucky, unwary wanderer.

Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch. For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair like treasure on the ground; the Midas light turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here we are millionaires, backhanding the night so nothing dark will end our shining hour, no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear, no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor, but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

In the convent, y'all, I tend the gardens, watch things grow, pray for the immortal soul of rock 'n' roll. They call me Sister Presley here, The Reverend Mother digs the way I move my hips just like my brother. Gregorian chant drifts out across the herbs Pascha nostrum immolatus est... I wear a simple habit, darkish hues, a wimple with a novice-sewn lace band, a rosary, a chain of keys, a pair of good and sturdy blue suede shoes. I think of it as Graceland here, a land of grace. It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile back on my face. Lawdy. I'm alive and well. Long time since I walked down Lonely Street towards Heartbreak Hotel. - Elvis's Twin Sister

Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory. I thought "He will not touch me", but he did. He kissed my stone-cool lips. I lay still as though I’d died. He stayed. He thumbed my marbled eyes. He spoke - blunt endearments, what he’d do and how. His words were terrible. My ears were sculpture, stone-deaf shells. I heard the sea. I drowned him out. I heard him shout. He brought me presents, polished pebbles, little bells. I didn’t blink, was dumb. He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings. He called them girly things. He ran his clammy hands along my limbs. I didn’t shrink, played statue, shtum. He let his fingers sink into my flesh, he squeezed, he pressed. I would not bruise. He looked for marks, for purple hearts, for inky stars, for smudgy clues. His nails were claws. I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar. He propped me up on pillows, jawed all night. My heart was ice, was glass. His voice was gravel, hoarse. He talked white black. So I changed tack, grew warm, like candle wax, kissed back, was soft, was pliable, began to moan, got hot, got wild, arched, coiled, writhed, begged for his child, and at the climax screamed my head off - all an act. And haven’t seen him since. Simple as that

And shepherds we shall be, For Thee, my Lord, for Thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee And teeming with souls shall it ever be. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Again, the endless northern rain between us like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are, which row, which seat. I stand at my back door. The light pollution blindfolds every star. I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm, a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town, then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark, your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk, somehow, against your skin, I’d say look up, let it utter on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk. - Bridgewater Hall

Miles Away I want you and you are not here. I pause in this garden, breathing the colour thought is before language into still air. Even your name is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer than the words I have you say you said before. Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me with a look, standing here whilst cool late light dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong, but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away, inventing love, until the calls of nightjars interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain, into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.

Frau Freud Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle, of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick, dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend, the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis – not pretty . . . the squint of its envious solitary eye . . . one’s feeling of pity . . .

Give me, you said, on our very first night, the forest. I rose from the bed and went out, and when I returned, you listened, enthralled, to the shadowy story I told. Give me the river, you asked the next night, then I’ll love you forever. I slipped from your arms and was gone, and when I came back, you listened, at dawn, to the glittering story I told. Give me, you said, the gold from the sun. A third time, I got up and dressed, and when I came home, you sprawled on my breast, for the dazzling story I told. Give me, the hedgerows, give me the fields, I slid from the warmth of our sheets, and when I returned, to kiss you from sleep, you stirred at the story I told. give me the silvery cold, of the moon. I pulled on my boots and my coat, but when i came back, moonlight on your throat outshone the story I told Give me, you howled on our sixth night together, the wind in the trees. You turned to the wall as I left, and when I came home, I saw you were deaf to the blustering story I told. Give me the sky, all the space it can hold. I left you, the last night we loved, and when I returned, you were gone with the gold, and the silver, the river, the forest, the fields, and this is the story I’ve told. "Give

He waved cheerfully, then opened the door, tripped over the threshold, and as his balance was already impaired, nearly went face down on the floor for the second time that day. He caught himself, hung on to the side of the counter, and waited for the pub kitchen to stop revolving. With the careful steps of the drunk, he walked over to the cupboard to get out a pan for frying, a pot for boiling. Shawn was singing in his break-your-heart voice, about the cold nature of Peggy Gordon. And with one eye closed, his body swaying gently, he dripped lemon juice into a bowl. “Oh, fuck me, Shawn. You are half pissed.” “More than three-quarters if the truth be known.” He lost track of the juice and added a bit more to be safe. “And how are you, Aidan, darling?” “Get way from there before you poison someone.” Insulted, Shawn swiveled around and had to brace a hand on the counter to stay upright. “I’m drunk, not a murderer. I can make a g.d. fish cake in me sleep. This is my kitchen, I’ll thank you to remember, and I give the orders here.” He poked himself in the chest with his thumb on the claim and nearly knocked himself on his ass. Gathering dignity, he lifted his chin. “So go on with you while I go about my work.” “ What have you done to yourself?” “The devil cat caught me hand. Forgetting his work, Shawn lifted a hand to scowl at the red gashes. Oh, but I’ve got plans for him, you can be sure of that.” “At the moment, I’d lay odds on the cat. Do you know anything about putting fish cakes together?” Aidan asked Darcy. “Not a bloody thing,” she said cheerfully. “Then go and call Kathy Duffy, would you, and ask if she can spare us an hour or so, as we have an emergency?” “An emergency?” Shawn looked glassily around. “Where?

You know it’s true.” “Even if it is,” I cried, “what does it matter? You could sleep with anybody, Wesley. So what if I walk away? So what if I have feelings for you? I was just a screw to you! You would never actually commit to me. You could never commit to anyone, but especially not to Duffy. You don’t even find me attractive.” “Bullshit,” he growled, his eyes on my face as he moved closer to me again. He was so close. My back was pressed to the wall, and Wesley stood only inches away. It had only been a week, but it felt like ages since we’d been in this kind of proximity. A shiver ran up my spine as I remembered the way his hands felt on me. The way he’d always made me feel wanted, even if he had called me the Duff. Did he? Did he find me attractive despite the nickname? How? Why? “Then why would you call me that?” I whispered. “Do you know how much it hurts? Every time you call me Duffy, do you know how shitty it makes me feel?” Wesley looked surprised. “What?” “Every time you call me that,” I said, “you’re telling me how little you think of me. How ugly I am. God, how can you possibly find me attractive when you put me down all the time.” I hissed the last words through gritted teeth. “I didn’t-” His eyes fell, staring at his shoes for a moment. I could tell he felt guilty. “Bianca, I’m sorry.” He looked into my eyes again. “I didn’t mean-” His hand reached out to touch me. “Don’t,” I snapped, shrugging away from him. I slid to the side and stepped away from the wall. I wasn’t going to be cornered. I wasn’t going to let him have the power here. “Just stop, Wesley.” It didn’t matter if some part of him found me attractive. That didn’t change things. I was just another girl he’d slept with. One among many. “I didn’t mean anything to you,” I told him. “Then why am I here?” he demanded, turning to face me again. “Why the hell am I here, Bianca?

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out into playing fields, the factory, allotments kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, till you came at last to the edge of the woods. It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink, my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up. Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone. Little Red-Cap

During all that time I didn't see Willie. I didn't see him again until he announced in the Democratic primary in 1930. But it wasn't a primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the back room of Casey's saloon rolled into one, and when the dust cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood. In the background of the picture, under a purplish tumbled sky flecked with sinister white like driven foam, flanking Willie, one on each side, were two figures, Sadie Burke and a tallish, stooped, slow-spoken man with a sad, tanned face and what they call the eyes of a dreamer. The man was Hugh Miller, Harvard Law School, Lafayette Escadrille, Croix de Guerre, clean hands, pure heart, and no political past. He was a fellow who had sat still for years, and then somebody (Willie Stark) handed him a baseball bat and he felt his fingers close on the tape. He was a man and was Attorney General. And Sadie Burke was just Sadie Burke. Over the brow of the hill, there were, of course, some other people. There were, for instance, certain gentlemen who had been devoted to Joe Harrison, but who, when they discovered there wasn't going to be any more Joe Harrison politically speaking, had had to hunt up a new friend. The new friend happened to be Willie. He was the only place for them to go. They figured they would sign on with Willie and grow up with the country. Willie signed them on all right, and as a result got quite a few votes not of the wool-hat and cocklebur variety. After a while Willie even signed on Tiny Duffy, who became Highway Commissioner and, later, Lieutenant Governor in Willie's last term. I used to wonder why Willie kept him around. Sometimes I used to ask the Boss, "What do you keep that lunk-head for?" Sometimes he would just laugh and say nothing. Sometimes he would say, "Hell, somebody's got to be Lieutenant Governor, and they all look alike." But once he said: "I keep him because he reminds me of something." "What?" "Something I don't ever want to forget," he said. "What's that?" "That when they come to you sweet talking you better not listen to anything they say. I don't aim to forget that." So that was it. Tiny was the fellow who had come in a big automobile and had talked sweet to Willie back when Willie was a little country lawyer.

Before he could say my name, I closed the space between us. Quickly, my lips moved against his. The mental and emotional emptiness took over instantly, but physically, I was more alert than ever. Wesley’s surprise didn’t last as long as it had before, and his hands were on me in seconds. My fingers tangled in his soft hair, and Wesley’s tongue darted into my mouth and became a new weapon in our war. Once again, my body took complete control of everything. Nothing existed at the corners of my mind; no irritating thoughts harassed me. Even the sounds of Wesley’s stereo, which had been playing some piano rock I didn’t recognize, faded away as my sense of touch heightened. I was fully conscious of Wesley’s hand as it slid up my torso and moved to cup my breast. With an effort, I pushed him away from me. His eyes were wide as he leaned back. “Please don’t slap me again,” he said. “Shut up.” I could have stopped there. I could have stood up and left the room. I could have let that kiss be the end of it. But I didn’t. The mind-numbing sensation I got from kissing him was so euphoric-such a high-that I couldn’t stand to give it up that fast. I might have hated Wesley Rush, but he held the key to my escape, and at that moment I wanted him… I needed him. Without speaking, without hesitating, I pulled my T-shirt over my head and threw it onto Wesley’s bedroom floor. He didn’t have a chance to say anything before I put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him onto his back. A second later, I was straddling him and we were kissing again. His fingers undid the clasp on my bra, and it joined my shirt on the floor. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel self-conscious or shy. I mean, he already knew I was the Duff, and it wasn’t like I had to impress him. I unbuttoned his shirt as he pulled the alligator clip from my hair and let the auburn waves fall around us. Casey had been right. Wesley had a great body. The skin pulled tight over his sculpted chest, and my hands drifted down his muscular arms with amazement. His lips moved to my neck, giving me a moment to breathe. I could only smell his cologne this close to him. As his mouth traveled down my shoulder, a thought pushed through the exhilaration. I wondered why he hadn’t shoved me-Duffy-away in disgust. Then again, I realized, Wesley wasn’t known for rejecting girls. And I was the one who should have been disgusted. But his mouth pressed into mine again, and that tiny, fleeting thought died. Acting on instinct, I pulled on Wesley’s lower lip with my teeth, and he moaned quietly. His hands moved over my ribs, sending chills up my spine. Bliss. Pure, unadulterated bliss. Only once, as Wesley flipped me onto my back, did I seriously consider stopping. He looked down at me, and his skilled hand grasped the zipper on my jeans. My dormant brain stirred, and I asked myself if things had gone too far. I thought about pushing him away, ending it right where we were. But why would I stop now? What did I stand to lose? Yet what could I possibly gain? How would I feel about this in an hour… or sooner? Before I could come up with any answers, Wesley had my jeans and underwear off. He pulled a condom from his pocket (okay, now that I’m thinking about it, who keeps condoms in their pockets? Wallet, yes, but pocket? Pretty presumptuous, don’t you think?), and then his pants were on the floor, too. All of a sudden, we were having sex, and my thoughts were muted again.

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.