if you get married they think you’re
finished
and if you are without a woman they think you’re
incomplete.

a large portion of my readers want me to
keep writing about bedding down with madwomen and
streetwalkers —
also, about being in jails and hospitals, or
starving or
puking my guts
out.

I agree that complacency hardly engenders an
immortal literature
but neither does
repetition.

for those readers now
sick at heart
believing that I’m a contented
man--please have some
cheer: agony sometimes changes
form
but
it never ceases for
anybody.