aris is exactly as Henry Miller described it. By the time we get to Paris I’m burning with passion and fire in my soul and turgidity in my loins and Frank is here he’s handling everything he’s handling my appearances he’s handling my publicity he’s even handling the women fate would throw my way as a consequence of my now being a celebrated and translated international author and I don’t give a Tennessee holler or an Arkansas hoot because I’m in Paris and I know some French and I’ve read Rimbaud and Verlaine and Jim Morrison and Rabelais and I’m in Paris and the night is screaming for me because I’m in Paris and I want to fuck the world. It’s a blur of red wines and cancan dancers and poets and newspapermen and hookers from Alsace and well-bred women from London and banker-women from Amsterdam. Long sweaty nights with way too much wine in dangerous bars with gangsters speaking French and jazz wafting out all over the Left Bank and I’m eating fucking snails for breakfast lunch and dinner and loving it. I want to live right now, and then fuck it. The whole wad today. I want to tear the bone from the leg of the world and crack it open and suck the marrow from it, baby, gobble it down, I’m in Paris and I’m having lots of anonymous sex and I’m the featured guest at orgies and I’m convincing my friends to ditch their girlfriends that they just got pregnant telling them they should go somewhere and write and I’m taking the money that they give me give to the girl that they left behind and I’m spending it on absinthe and guzzling it up and down the Champs-Elysées and under the Eiffel Tower and I’m swilling it at Montparnasse and then I’m fucking her too and walking and talking and the sky is torn up with globules of sweet flesh dripping from the moon. Rodin and Moliere and Voltaire are raising their arms up to me and there I am riding my way into the arms of three or four women half my age and twice my age black and yellow and brown and blue. We rut. I’m fucking everything and everyone. I’m fucking the whole fucking city. It’s Paris and I’m still young. I’m virile and I’m hungry and I’m cadging drinks. I’m scum and I’m beautiful. It’s Paris and I’m here right now—you can start—and right now I don’t give a fuck about The Unknown. Here’s the unknown, the real unknown. I smell it, I taste it. It’s dribbling from my tongue. The sweat that this city is giving off, the shit and the piss on the streets and the wine and the pheasants dripping blood in the marketplace and the bread which I tear in hunks and dip in the grease and let run down my chin and the bars I get kicked out of and the smell of her gorgeous blue panties laid out on yellow silk sheets, or hers in my teeth, or hers in the boulangerie. I’m fucking the unknown, boys, fucking it crazy. I’m using a bidet to wash my ass of shit. Smoking hash and eating croissants. Fucking women in foreign tongues. It’s me and the sky and the whole jelly roll and a box of crackers too. I’m fucking the whole idea of France. I’m fucking all of Europe. It’s Paris. It’s beautiful. It’s my world and I’m fucking it crazy, fucking it crazy cock crazy, fucking tropic of cancer type fucking fertile ripe fruit fucking from the vine sweet juice honey oil social fucking fucking outdoors fucking in a garret fucking at a cocktail party fucking at a theatre fucking constantly, constantly fucking. I’m fucking Anais Nin. I love it. We love. We fucking love fucking. It fucking we love. I her fucking me fucking her we fucking constant fucking, fucking, fucking.…

Henry Miller Read 4/8/99 at Brown University 3:53 443K RealAudio Clip