Category: helen
Quotes of Category: helen
Helen of Troy Does Counter DancingThe world is full of womenwho'd tell me I should be ashamed of myselfif they had the chance. Quit dancing.Get some self-respectand a day job.Right. And minimum wage,and varicose veins, just standingin one place for eight hoursbehind a glass counterbundled up to the neck, instead ofnaked as a meat sandwich.Selling gloves, or something.Instead of what I do sell.You have to have talentto peddle a thing so nebulousand without material form., they'd say. Yes, any wayyou cut it, but I've a choiceof how, and I'll take the money.I do give value.Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions:that everything's for sale,and piecemeal. They gaze at me and seea chain-saw murder just before it happens,when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nippleare still connected.Such hatred leaps in them,my beery worshipers! That, or a blearyhopeless love. Seeing the rows of headsand upturned eyes, imploringbut ready to snap at my ankles,I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urgeto step on ants. I keep the beat,and dance for them becausethey can't. The music smells like foxes,crisp as heated metalsearing the nostrilsor humid as August, hazy and languorousas a looted city the day after,when all the rape's been donealready, and the killing,and the survivors wander aroundlooking for garbageto eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.Speaking of which, it's the smilingtires me out the most.This, and the pretensethat I can't hear them.And I can't, because I'm after alla foreigner to them.The speech here is all warty gutturals,obvious as a slam of ham,but I come from the province of the godswhere meaning are lilting and oblique.I don't let on to everyone,but lean close, and I'll whisper:My mothers was raped by a holy swan.You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.That's what we tell all the husbands.There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.Not that anyone herebut you would understand.The rest of them would like to watch meand feel nothing. Reduce me to componentsas in a clock factory or abattoir.Crush out the mystery.Wall me up alivein my own body.They'd like to see through me,but nothing is more opaquethan absolute transparency.Look - my feet don't hit the marble!Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,I hover six inches in the airin my blazing swan-egg of light.You think I'm not a goddess?Try me.This is a torch song.Touch me and you'll burn. book-quotehousemorningof
