There's nothing in the dark, really. Nothing at all.
James River City.
There’s something old here, old and bloody.
And it’s so stinking hot most of the time that you
Fail to notice the white chill of the air
The kind of white that’s best seen
Stained with blood.
There are houses in England that are older than America
But there’s nothing in England that’s older than what’s here.
This is a place accustomed to hate, and those of us that
Live here know how to manage it. We hate each other
Discreetly. Joyously killing our own kind but walking circumspectly when we consider
Killing those that aren’t our own color.
It’s taken me awhile but recently I’ve become able to
Smell the old blood that’s still fresh on the streets here. And I knew from the first moment I smelled its shit-stained air that the City on the James River has every
Sin for sale, every sin imaginable and some that aren’t,
If only you know where to look and who to sell to and have the coin that’s wanted.
This is the oldest city in America, maybe the world. It’s sick with sin but makes sin look like virtue. Old virtue. The kind that has money and power; the kind of power that can
Break a life.
It’s a human city, James River City, the humanest city since
Sodom, and like Sodom it’s full of its own certainties, its privileges of faux-Aristocratic lineage and pride, its secret internecine feuds and hatreds.
It’s a City of Powers, and Thrones, and Dominions, is James River City, all of them too
Genteel to murder in the open.
And the women here…
They look like silk feels when you cut it. And the prettiest of them all have
Eyes that say hurt me. Hurt me real bad. Please.
But haughty? They might be hawks to stoop upon the Sun and burn out their hearts in
Hatred of it before ever its fire ate them whole.
I’ve learned to love them, crack whores stalking Jeff Davis Highway and more than
Happy to talk to the white man in the car, no matter how black they are. And the white girls in the offices, glad-handing the calculation of the monetary worth of each dick they
Let fuck them.
I can’t tell you how old, and wise, and sick, and evil, this place is.
It’s taken me awhile to see it, the white-columned elegance in its unutterable foulness, the hothouse
Orchid heat of its malignancy and vileness. But it’s here. And it’s addictive.
And, loved for itself, beautiful.
The Princes and Princesses of this City don’t advertise themselves;
They’re too proud to boast. Their preferred spell is one of complete
Silence. Because nothing changes here.
No King ever dies here, no Queen is ever barren, and nothing will ever be other than it has always been. This is the city of Perfect Certainty, the Principality of Flesh in its Power.
There is no more erotic city, no more perfect expression of the
Geography of Desire, than the City on the James. Even the light in hidden alleyways and secret places smells of sex. Even the light smells of it.
This City on the James has its own Angel. An Angel of Old Night, and Murder, and Rape. An Angel of death with an iPhone on his hip and a site on My Space, and endless ages sat in his eyes.
That’s the thing. You can’t see the Angel until you can see the City on the James, and once seen then you have to love it. You have to. It seduces you, carries you to a place full of spices, where every spice is an exhalation of the dead.
Every day here is Halloween. Every day. The City on the James is not a good place to be if you’re afraid of the dark.
Because it’s pitch black here at noonday, no matter how bright the sun.