@@@@@ Who does? Get potted, get screwed, and
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Who does?
Get potted, get screwed, and get up in the morning, somehow

And the women:
Hearn, she says, in her deep husky voice, you're a shell, you're nothing but a goddam shellAfter you've had fifty thousand of us up here, you'll probably cut it off and hang it up to dryYou learned an acceptable wiggle somewhere along the line and you think that's all you need to get byYou've got a faeces complex, haven't you, you can't stand being touchedYou get me so goddam mad, a million miles away, aren't you, nothing ever hits youNothing's worth touching
Oh, the girl says quietly in her childish breathless voice, you're really good, there's such goodness in you, but you're wrong, you see, because true compassion is evil, when I was in the hospital there were a few minutes when I loved a doctor, and then I didn't care about him any more, and when I was in the shock treatment I kept thinking contact was evil, and it's only freedom that's worth while, it's why you don't want me because you're free and good
Her voice is reedy, well modulatedOh, well, darling, what could I do, it was perfectly preposterous, all those silly apprentices just loathing my guts, all of them perfectly convinced of course they could do the thing better than I could, and my God you should have seen some of the interpretations they had, they were just bound to make trouble, and they creamed everything, everything, between Eddie and me, I could have had the ingénue in Sing at Breakfast, I don't know why I hang around with you, I'm just wasting my time

Still there are momentsDifferent women, different nights, when he lies in embrace, steeped in a woman's flesh until the brew is intolerably joyousThere are love harvestings, sometimes months in a row when there is one woman, one affair, and a proud secret knowledge of each other's loins, admirable matings, sensitive and various, lewd or fierce or dallying gently, sometimes sweet and innocent like young lovers
Only it never lasts
I can't tell you why, he says one night to a friendIt's just every time I start an affair, I know how it's going to endThe end of everything is in the beginnings for meIt's going through the motionsIf you saw my analystIf I'm afraid of having my dick cut off or something like that I don't care to know itThat's not a cure, it's a humiliation, it's a deus ex machinaI find out what's wrong and bango I'm happy and go back to Chicago and spawn children and terrorize ten thousand people in whatever factory my father decides to give meListen, if you're cured, everything you've gone through, everything you've learned is pointless
And if you don't go you're just going to get sicker
Only I don't feel sick