Henry Barreras

“My case is not unique : I am afraid of dying and distressed at being in this world. I haven’t worked, I haven’t studied. I have wept, I have cried out in protest. These tears and cries have taken up a great deal of my time. I am tortured by all the time lost whenever I think about it. I cannot think about things for long, but I can find pleasure in a withered lettuce leaf offering me nothing but regrets to chew over. There is no sustenance in the past. I shall depart as I arrived. Intact, loaded down with the defects that have tormented me. I wish I had been born a statue : I am a slug under my dunghill. Virtues, good qualities, courage, meditation, culture. With arms crossed on my breast I have broken myself against those words.”
― Violette Leduc, La Bâtarde

“The first time I was in bed with a woman it was also in the morning light and so was the first time Christine had her head between my legs. I was running my tongue along the lips of the cunt of the first woman I had ever had my clothes off with and this is what love felt like. One thing, not two. That was it. With a woman I felt whole, not different. For instance if I wanted to put a finger inside her vagina and she said not that, then I knew that maybe the new room wasn't as big as it felt and it went on from there, being diminished though never ultimately losing its glamour but being bound nonetheless by what each woman told me lesbians don't do. So Mary started fucking me. One finger two finger three fingers. And her face all that strong part coming out, dissolving her prettiness and pale freckles and celtic distance into force. I had really liked the thrusting presence of a man's dick inside of me. What I didn't know what to do with was men. Who would rub their beards against my cunt and up and down my clit for hours and I wondered what was wrong with me it was such a dirty thing. I couldn't get off. Only once or twice. The last man being such a pig that I couldn't believe I was letting him eat my pussy. I had a tremendous orgasm. He laughed. The first woman put her head between my legs and the complete sin, the absolute moment of sex came back and I was all in one piece coming apart. I was willing to sacrifice all for that moment. Even I guess my vagina, that jar. I thought I had to give that up but there was nothing like that at all.”
― Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls

“Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes.
You will be released from sexual obsessions.
You will not have drug addictions.
You will not need alcohol.
You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease.
You will be free.”
― Cookie Mueller, Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller

“Jimmy Schuyler was my new job. Slowly I moved his possessions to the Chelsea from an 8th Avenue flophouse where on the final day among the dry cleaned clothes still in plastic bags, charred bits of poetry on papers, art print books-- I masturbated because it was a filthy and interesting place and he found out because I told one person who told someone else. It's alright dear I don't need anything. Go have fun.”
― Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls