I’ll have to stop going to bars by myself. All I ever do when I go there is get some hot wings, a couple drinks, and depressed. I go there -- or at least I tell myself I go there - to meet people, only I don’t ever meet anybody, I just sit by myself and drink by myself and get depressed. Tonight there were a few people there from my grad classes, and they invited me to come sit with them, only they talked to me for maybe five minutes then ignored me the rest of the night until they left, so I don’t know what good it was for them to invite me to sit with them. I didn’t know the woman who was with them. She was a recent graduate of the program and she was with this one guy who looks like his face is sliding off his skull. I don’t know why she was with him, as ugly as he is and as pretty as she is. I could understand if he were a brilliant writer, but he’s not. Actually, he is a brilliant writer, he’s just a very bad story-teller. Line by line, sentence by sentence, he’s brilliant in his word choice, sentence structure, and details, but his stories don’t make any sense. In one of our workshops, we argued whether or not the main character was a prostitute. If you cannot tell, it is a poorly-written story. All of his stories I’ve read are equally baffling. He needs to be a poet, where story-telling doesn’t matter. So I don’t know why she was with him. I don’t think it’s personality, because he comes off as stupid (though I know he’s not) and he’s dry and uninteresting whenever I’ve talked to him or heard someone else talking to him. Writers should be the most interesting people, since part of their job is interpreting the world. But he’s not. This only made me even more depressed that I can’t get anybody. I wish I could get up the strength to talk to someone, but it seems I’ve reverted to my pre-sexual experience state in female relations. I’ve been told that when I stop looking, I’ll get a woman, and I know that is true. Women only want men who do not want them, but seem to be turned off by a man who is actively looking. I only wish I could turn it off and appear to not be looking. Better yet, appear that I already have someone. If I bought a gold band and put it on my left ring finger, I wouldn’t be able to beat the women off me.
I’m so sick of everything. I’m sick of women and their games. I’m sick of being lonely. I’m sick of being unloved (yes, my parents love me dearly, but that is not what I am talking about). I just want someone to hold and love. And when I find a woman who reacts to these sentiments, it turns out to be someone like L., who is incapable of love. I don’t want much. I want someone to love who will love me back. I want someone smart and educated. I want someone who loves life, who enjoys being alive and wants to have fun in life with me. I used to have far more criteria, but I’ve learned they don’t mean much. These are the only ones left. Still, I cannot find anyone who fits even these criteria. Most women hate themselves too much. You have to love yourself first to love others, just as you must love yourself to enjoy life.
Admittedly, I am not enjoying life too much right now. I’m depressed and lonely and I feel unloved - I am unloved. I’m even more depressed because Wednesday I talked to my friend Andrea's dad and he said he would tell her I had Wednesday and Thursday off so she could come over and visit me, only she never showed up. I like Andrea, but I’m growing very tired of her. I’ve been calling every day and haven’t heard from her once, and when her dad says she’ll come over, I don’t see her. I haven’t seen her all day today (it’s almost 2:30 in the morning as I write this, having come back from The Mahogany, so it’s still the day before to me). I need a friend who will be here for me, who will visit me. Steve has moved back home and he’ll be going to Denver in the Fall. I can’t count on Andrea, she’s already shown me that. At least without Donna here, I’ll have the opportunity to make friends this Summer and Fall. At least Summer classes start soon.
But enough whining. I’m tired of whining, and I’m sure you’re tired of it too. I hate whining. That’s why I hate so much of the music put out anymore. All it is is a bunch of whining. That’s why I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican because of social issues. I’m not a Democrat because all they do is whine. Whining accomplishes nothing. Action is the only thing that gets things done. I need to get active, do something to take care of my problems (you will please note that I have come to this conclusion only as I have sobered). I have a story to tell. I’ve left you in limbo for long enough in regards to my introducing Michel to his characters Bernard and Marcus. It’s time I took you, and him, to the café and introduced Michel to them.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Chapter 33
Pat was unhappy with the advice Michel gave her daughter. She thought her daughter had better things to do than draw or play all day -- like study and do homework. She did not realize -- could not understand -- how drawing and making things up could help her daughter in school. Michel explained that he had kept those qualities, and look how successful he was. Still, Pat began thinking Michel was being a bad influence on her daughter.
Pat looked around the room -- the slowly evolving, moving, transforming pile of papers, toys, plates, glasses, and miscellaneous items seemed to never vanish, though somehow there was always something clean to eat with -- with a grim look than only disappeared when one of her lovers came over. Jessie, though, got to see her mother every day, when no one was over, and so got to see her mother’s melancholy more often than most -- though when Michel changed lovers, he too began to see Pat was rarely happy. Never, he began to think, though he could not be in her mind, so did not know for certain. I suspect he was right. She was like my ex-girlfriend Donna in that respect, taking everything too serious. Except the things that should be taken serious, like love and affection, which seemed absent from her repertoire of feelings -- probably pushed out by her constant anger. At what, I never knew, and don’t claim to know with either Donna or Pat. I think there was a great hatred there for herself, a hatred that prevented her from loving or allowing herself to be loved. I don’t think she thought she deserved it. As I begin to understand the truth behind Donna, I am beginning to see how similar she is to Pat -- something I had not intended. But it is true. The two are almost identical. Considering Donna lost her virginity at thirteen and doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it (or the fact that she slept with much older men at that age), it would not surprise me if she not only allowed but encouraged such behavior in her own daughters. This is not to say there is anything inherently wrong with having sex, but it is unquestionably best if you know what you are doing and what the psychological consequences of your actions are. In that respect, many much older adults are still not ready for sex. But one of the consequences of sex at such a young age in the late twentieth century is that it can lead to feelings of low self-worth, as society judges people who have sex at a young age or are very promiscuous, as Donna has been (I think she gained a pound with each new man she slept with), as being lower than those who have chosen to wait until they were older or have remained monogamous. What society says, most of us believe. If society says people who started having sex at a young age or are promiscuous have less worth to society, then those who fit that mold will think that of themselves and have low self-worth. And if you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else. When faced with love, these people will reject that love, do what they can to destroy it so they can prove again to themselves their own lack of worth. They cannot allow an individual to come along and disrupt what society has told them about themselves. That is why Donna has done what she did and left me. That is why she pushed and pushed, trying to push me over the edge, so I would not want her any more, until she had to go to such an extreme as she has to make me not want her. Which is true. I don’t want her any more. I still love her, but I don’t want her. Her presence is unhealthy. So long as she continues to believe she has no value, her presence will be unhealthy to any man. She will always push until she proves that he cannot love her either. So she will hop from bed to bed, from man to man, never happy, never satisfied, always searching for something she cannot have because she does not understand her problem. She is Pat. Pat is her. And Jessie will be just like them.
But none of that matters any more. I cannot live with someone who does not love herself enough to love me. The only thing I’m waiting for now is for her to get her stuff. I have half her things and all her pictures - pictures of friends, family, most importantly, her mother, and herself - her pictures are her memories. She is too attached, too blindly attached, to the past to ever give up her pictures. That is why I know she'll be back. Still, if she does not come back soon, I will have to take drastic measures and throw away all her things. If that means her pictures too, then so be it. I’ve grown tired of her games. She will undoubtedly be acting the same in thirty years as she does now.
Take Pat, for instance. Pat acts the same way, and she is around the same age as Donna. Still, we see Pat with the added responsibility of Jessie, and she had not changed, has not improved, but only turned her daughter into a smaller, younger version of herself. While Pat is in bed with her neighbor, Florence, Jessie is behind the bushes, shoving Hopes’ hand down her panties. Later, when Pat is in bed with Florence’s husband (neither knows the other is having an affair with Pat), Jessie will be over Michel’s. Donna too is probably doing one of the two herself, fucking some guy or woman while preventing either one from touching any more of her body than she has to. Perhaps she’s fucking someone right now, while you are reading this. Now there’s an image -- as if the ones I’ve given you of Pat and Jessie weren’t enough. At least Pat and Jessie let their lovers touch them. Both of them are more mature than Donna in that way. We all know about that stage children go through where they hate being touched or held. Donna, it appears, has never matured past that point, another milestone of adulthood, where we cherish the touch of those we love.
I’m listening to The Beatles’ White Album, “Blackbird”, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly. / All your life, you’ve been only waiting for this moment to be free. / Black-bird fly!” I’ve been listening to most of my Beatles collection tonight, and much of it has touched me deeper than it has before. “Blackbird,” the lines I quoted above, seem so appropriate for where I am. I need to take my “broken wings and learn to fly.” That is what I was trying to do when I first slept with Donna, when I went to get her so she could move in with me. In trying to get rid of the ridiculousness of my virginity, I made the mistake of falling in love with the woman I only went to fuck. Over a year later, she’s left me. I had been drawn in by her promise that she loved me. I now know she never did. I was used so she could get out of her house -- only she did not realize Texas would, in her opinion, be worse. Between that and the poverty that comes with being a graduate student, she gave up on me. Love stays. Donna left. Some day I hope I can find the one who stays.
Pat looked around the room -- the slowly evolving, moving, transforming pile of papers, toys, plates, glasses, and miscellaneous items seemed to never vanish, though somehow there was always something clean to eat with -- with a grim look than only disappeared when one of her lovers came over. Jessie, though, got to see her mother every day, when no one was over, and so got to see her mother’s melancholy more often than most -- though when Michel changed lovers, he too began to see Pat was rarely happy. Never, he began to think, though he could not be in her mind, so did not know for certain. I suspect he was right. She was like my ex-girlfriend Donna in that respect, taking everything too serious. Except the things that should be taken serious, like love and affection, which seemed absent from her repertoire of feelings -- probably pushed out by her constant anger. At what, I never knew, and don’t claim to know with either Donna or Pat. I think there was a great hatred there for herself, a hatred that prevented her from loving or allowing herself to be loved. I don’t think she thought she deserved it. As I begin to understand the truth behind Donna, I am beginning to see how similar she is to Pat -- something I had not intended. But it is true. The two are almost identical. Considering Donna lost her virginity at thirteen and doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it (or the fact that she slept with much older men at that age), it would not surprise me if she not only allowed but encouraged such behavior in her own daughters. This is not to say there is anything inherently wrong with having sex, but it is unquestionably best if you know what you are doing and what the psychological consequences of your actions are. In that respect, many much older adults are still not ready for sex. But one of the consequences of sex at such a young age in the late twentieth century is that it can lead to feelings of low self-worth, as society judges people who have sex at a young age or are very promiscuous, as Donna has been (I think she gained a pound with each new man she slept with), as being lower than those who have chosen to wait until they were older or have remained monogamous. What society says, most of us believe. If society says people who started having sex at a young age or are promiscuous have less worth to society, then those who fit that mold will think that of themselves and have low self-worth. And if you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else. When faced with love, these people will reject that love, do what they can to destroy it so they can prove again to themselves their own lack of worth. They cannot allow an individual to come along and disrupt what society has told them about themselves. That is why Donna has done what she did and left me. That is why she pushed and pushed, trying to push me over the edge, so I would not want her any more, until she had to go to such an extreme as she has to make me not want her. Which is true. I don’t want her any more. I still love her, but I don’t want her. Her presence is unhealthy. So long as she continues to believe she has no value, her presence will be unhealthy to any man. She will always push until she proves that he cannot love her either. So she will hop from bed to bed, from man to man, never happy, never satisfied, always searching for something she cannot have because she does not understand her problem. She is Pat. Pat is her. And Jessie will be just like them.
But none of that matters any more. I cannot live with someone who does not love herself enough to love me. The only thing I’m waiting for now is for her to get her stuff. I have half her things and all her pictures - pictures of friends, family, most importantly, her mother, and herself - her pictures are her memories. She is too attached, too blindly attached, to the past to ever give up her pictures. That is why I know she'll be back. Still, if she does not come back soon, I will have to take drastic measures and throw away all her things. If that means her pictures too, then so be it. I’ve grown tired of her games. She will undoubtedly be acting the same in thirty years as she does now.
Take Pat, for instance. Pat acts the same way, and she is around the same age as Donna. Still, we see Pat with the added responsibility of Jessie, and she had not changed, has not improved, but only turned her daughter into a smaller, younger version of herself. While Pat is in bed with her neighbor, Florence, Jessie is behind the bushes, shoving Hopes’ hand down her panties. Later, when Pat is in bed with Florence’s husband (neither knows the other is having an affair with Pat), Jessie will be over Michel’s. Donna too is probably doing one of the two herself, fucking some guy or woman while preventing either one from touching any more of her body than she has to. Perhaps she’s fucking someone right now, while you are reading this. Now there’s an image -- as if the ones I’ve given you of Pat and Jessie weren’t enough. At least Pat and Jessie let their lovers touch them. Both of them are more mature than Donna in that way. We all know about that stage children go through where they hate being touched or held. Donna, it appears, has never matured past that point, another milestone of adulthood, where we cherish the touch of those we love.
I’m listening to The Beatles’ White Album, “Blackbird”, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly. / All your life, you’ve been only waiting for this moment to be free. / Black-bird fly!” I’ve been listening to most of my Beatles collection tonight, and much of it has touched me deeper than it has before. “Blackbird,” the lines I quoted above, seem so appropriate for where I am. I need to take my “broken wings and learn to fly.” That is what I was trying to do when I first slept with Donna, when I went to get her so she could move in with me. In trying to get rid of the ridiculousness of my virginity, I made the mistake of falling in love with the woman I only went to fuck. Over a year later, she’s left me. I had been drawn in by her promise that she loved me. I now know she never did. I was used so she could get out of her house -- only she did not realize Texas would, in her opinion, be worse. Between that and the poverty that comes with being a graduate student, she gave up on me. Love stays. Donna left. Some day I hope I can find the one who stays.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Chapter 32
Merry Christmas. I'm alone and my Grandmother is dying. I have no friends and no one to love. What a magical day.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Chapter 31
Another school shooting, this one near Atlanta. The Senate has passed another gun control measure that will do nothing to prevent future school shootings. Republicans are railing against video games and the internet and movies and television shows (I’ve seen The Untouchables from the fifties, and we don’t have anything on television that violent -- and yet, no shootings then). But these are not the problems. Unless you want to count repealing laws, there is nothing the government can do about this problem. Children are shooting their classmates and teachers because they are emotionally stunted. How can they be anything else when their parents are as emotionally stunted as they are? We have children being raised by adults who are emotionally children themselves. This is the self-esteem movement's natural consequence.
Let’s take a look at Pat and Jessie. Pat is a perfect example because most mothers anymore are just like her. Jessie is a perfect example because she is so many daughters out there. She is a child -- a child whose childish habits are identified for her as being adult. Take a look at her at school, during recess:
Jessie has just run out of her school building, holding her friend Hope’s hand. Neither has quite decided what they want to do -- they just know it’s not going to have anything to do with boys. They’re immature. They see another little girl, seven, crouched, looking at something, her painfully thin legs bent like a hairpin. They go to see what she’s looking at. A small caterpillar is crawling across the ground, waves traveling from back to front, pushing its body past rocks and debris. They ask the girl what she’s looking at, and she tells them. Jessie and Hope bend down to look at it too.
“This is my caterpillar,” the little girl says.
Jessie looks at her. She’s not about to let this little girl have anything she can’t. “What makes you think it’s your caterpillar. What if we want it?”
“I saw it first.”
”But there’s two of us,” Jessie says. "We can take it if we want.”
The little girl scoops the caterpillar up in her hands. “No! It’s my caterpillar.” She holds it in both hands, up against her right cheek.
“You should share the caterpillar,” Hope says.
The little girl softens. She remembers “share.” They were still teaching her about sharing. She had to share. It was nice. Nice people shared. She pulled her hands down from her cheek. Jessie reached out with both hands, and clapped the little girl’s hands between hers. The little girl screamed at the sting and feel of something slimy and gross between her hands. Jessie and Hope laughed as they ran off. By the time a teacher got to the little girl, they were hidden behind some bushes planted along the wall of one of the buildings.
“I wish we’d brought something to play with,” Hope said.
“We can play with each other,” Jessie said.
“We’re always doing that. I mean with dolls.”
“We can pretend.”
“My mom gets mad when I pretend. She says I’m too old to pretend.”
“We can still pretend. Your mom ain’t here. Besides, my mom’s boyfriend pretends all the time. He’s a writer. He always make things up. He says pretending is a sign you’re a grown-up, and grown-ups who don’t pretend anymore are dull and serious and too much like babies who haven’t learned how to pretend yet.”
“But my mom...”
Jessie crossed her arms and shoved her nose into the air. “Fine. Don’t pretend then. Be all dull and serious.”
“I’m not dull and serious. I wanna be a grown-up too.”
“Grown-ups do all kinds of things. Do you want me to show you?”
Hope shook her head. Jessie knew how to be a grown-up. She wanted her to show her how.
Of course, Jessie knew nothing about being a grown-up. She had been taught by a bigger child than she was herself. Though she was half-right when she repeated what Michel had told her. Learning how to pretend, to be creative, to make things up or invent things is one of the first signs of maturity -- and one of the first things adults try to destroy, to make their children actually more child-like, more infantile, to turn back their development. To make them more like themselves.
Let’s take a look at Pat and Jessie. Pat is a perfect example because most mothers anymore are just like her. Jessie is a perfect example because she is so many daughters out there. She is a child -- a child whose childish habits are identified for her as being adult. Take a look at her at school, during recess:
Jessie has just run out of her school building, holding her friend Hope’s hand. Neither has quite decided what they want to do -- they just know it’s not going to have anything to do with boys. They’re immature. They see another little girl, seven, crouched, looking at something, her painfully thin legs bent like a hairpin. They go to see what she’s looking at. A small caterpillar is crawling across the ground, waves traveling from back to front, pushing its body past rocks and debris. They ask the girl what she’s looking at, and she tells them. Jessie and Hope bend down to look at it too.
“This is my caterpillar,” the little girl says.
Jessie looks at her. She’s not about to let this little girl have anything she can’t. “What makes you think it’s your caterpillar. What if we want it?”
“I saw it first.”
”But there’s two of us,” Jessie says. "We can take it if we want.”
The little girl scoops the caterpillar up in her hands. “No! It’s my caterpillar.” She holds it in both hands, up against her right cheek.
“You should share the caterpillar,” Hope says.
The little girl softens. She remembers “share.” They were still teaching her about sharing. She had to share. It was nice. Nice people shared. She pulled her hands down from her cheek. Jessie reached out with both hands, and clapped the little girl’s hands between hers. The little girl screamed at the sting and feel of something slimy and gross between her hands. Jessie and Hope laughed as they ran off. By the time a teacher got to the little girl, they were hidden behind some bushes planted along the wall of one of the buildings.
“I wish we’d brought something to play with,” Hope said.
“We can play with each other,” Jessie said.
“We’re always doing that. I mean with dolls.”
“We can pretend.”
“My mom gets mad when I pretend. She says I’m too old to pretend.”
“We can still pretend. Your mom ain’t here. Besides, my mom’s boyfriend pretends all the time. He’s a writer. He always make things up. He says pretending is a sign you’re a grown-up, and grown-ups who don’t pretend anymore are dull and serious and too much like babies who haven’t learned how to pretend yet.”
“But my mom...”
Jessie crossed her arms and shoved her nose into the air. “Fine. Don’t pretend then. Be all dull and serious.”
“I’m not dull and serious. I wanna be a grown-up too.”
“Grown-ups do all kinds of things. Do you want me to show you?”
Hope shook her head. Jessie knew how to be a grown-up. She wanted her to show her how.
Of course, Jessie knew nothing about being a grown-up. She had been taught by a bigger child than she was herself. Though she was half-right when she repeated what Michel had told her. Learning how to pretend, to be creative, to make things up or invent things is one of the first signs of maturity -- and one of the first things adults try to destroy, to make their children actually more child-like, more infantile, to turn back their development. To make them more like themselves.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Chapter 30
I’ve been in Texassince Sunday. Tonight, as I walked through campus, I noticed how beautiful it is by lamplight. I was walking because I was lonely. Nevertheless, I knew once I was home, alone, I would no longer be lonely. I cannot meet people, women especially. My old fears have returned. Everyone I know is gone. I am alone. Lonely. I was lonely when Donna was here, only at least I was not alone and lonely. I was not going out, trying to meet people, making myself more lonely. Buddha was right. Life is suffering. Artists celebrate life. Artists find life beautiful. Suffering is beautiful to an artist. All artists suffer and are aware of their suffering more than the average man who does indeed lead a life of quiet desperation.
Sarah is more aware of her own suffering because of Michel. Because of Michel, she will become a great writer. She is more aware of her suffering and is therefore more capable of beauty, as beauty is all that is left after such intense flames. At least the flames weren’t so hot that beauty, too, was destroyed.
Michel, I have learned, knows nothing of true suffering. He knows nothing of loneliness. His creativity cannot come from suffering -- instead it must come from cruelty. His own cruelty. A cruelty that creates suffering in others. Which means I am wrong. His creativity can come from suffering -- only it is from the suffering of others, suffering he creates. This is the theater in which he works.
The Marquis de Sade gained great pleasure from the suffering of others, paying prostitutes to come with him to out-of-the-way places so he could sodomize and beat them until they escaped to report him to the police, who arrested him and placed him in jail where he wrote his great works of libertinism. Michel at least does not do that. Jackie lies face-down on the bed, wrists and ankles ties with silk ties -- Loony Tunes on her right wrist, chaotic patterns on her left and either ankle, as Michel sodomizes her, thrusting grunts from her throat. This is her choice, her idea. Her ass is red from being spanked -- again, her choice, her idea. The more cruel Michel is, the more Jackie is turned on. She revels in pain-heightened pleasure, making the moment more immediate. Nothing is more important than the moment, than this orgasm, than this pain. The bed is pulled away from the wall so it won’t smash holes in it. Michel grabs her hair and pulls her head back. He has no need of de Sade’s prostitutes. He has no need to force his desires on anyone. Jackie is more than willing to oblige.
Later, when Michel is with Jessie, he doesn’t feel the need to tie her down or spank her -- though he does do the rest. The very fact that he is having sex with an eleven-year-old girl is so sufficiently cruel he feels no need to add to it.
Sarah is more aware of her own suffering because of Michel. Because of Michel, she will become a great writer. She is more aware of her suffering and is therefore more capable of beauty, as beauty is all that is left after such intense flames. At least the flames weren’t so hot that beauty, too, was destroyed.
Michel, I have learned, knows nothing of true suffering. He knows nothing of loneliness. His creativity cannot come from suffering -- instead it must come from cruelty. His own cruelty. A cruelty that creates suffering in others. Which means I am wrong. His creativity can come from suffering -- only it is from the suffering of others, suffering he creates. This is the theater in which he works.
The Marquis de Sade gained great pleasure from the suffering of others, paying prostitutes to come with him to out-of-the-way places so he could sodomize and beat them until they escaped to report him to the police, who arrested him and placed him in jail where he wrote his great works of libertinism. Michel at least does not do that. Jackie lies face-down on the bed, wrists and ankles ties with silk ties -- Loony Tunes on her right wrist, chaotic patterns on her left and either ankle, as Michel sodomizes her, thrusting grunts from her throat. This is her choice, her idea. Her ass is red from being spanked -- again, her choice, her idea. The more cruel Michel is, the more Jackie is turned on. She revels in pain-heightened pleasure, making the moment more immediate. Nothing is more important than the moment, than this orgasm, than this pain. The bed is pulled away from the wall so it won’t smash holes in it. Michel grabs her hair and pulls her head back. He has no need of de Sade’s prostitutes. He has no need to force his desires on anyone. Jackie is more than willing to oblige.
Later, when Michel is with Jessie, he doesn’t feel the need to tie her down or spank her -- though he does do the rest. The very fact that he is having sex with an eleven-year-old girl is so sufficiently cruel he feels no need to add to it.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Chapter 29
Today has been a lazy day. Still, it has taken me until 3:15PM to get around to writing. I’ve made dinner, helped clean up, helped grandma with a letter to her friends and family, a letter updating everyone, telling everyone how she is doing, what the doctors told her, etc. She failed to mention the experimental procedure, though. She didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up. I think more, if she put it in a letter, that would make it more concrete -- like she would have to go through with it. She’s afraid of the treatment, because it involves massive amounts of chemotherapy that is to be washed over the cancer, then drained off, then done over until it either stops the cancer or, better, shrinks it. The problem with this therapy, other than it being chemo, which alone scares mom, is that there is a very good chance it will kill her. Still, better some chance than none.
It’s been interesting seeing the changes grandma has had to make. To fight the cancer, she’s essentially become a vegetarian, because meat contains too many things that help feed the cancer or make it worse. So now she eats mostly fruits and vegetables. She’s also drinking an extremely expensive herbal tea called Essiac Tea, which is supposed to boost her immune system. So between her and being around my friend Tony who, I just learned, is now a vegetarian, I’ve all but become a vegetarian myself this week. When we got a pizza with Tony, we had to get a four-cheese pizza with nothing but mushrooms. It was so good, though, I’m glad we did. I’m sure we wouldn’t have chosen that particular kind of pizza otherwise.
I tried being a vegetarian once, when I was interested in someone who happened to be a vegetarian. She looked at me less than approvingly when she saw I was eating meat one time, so I decided not to eat meat around her any more. Eventually, I just stopped. I didn’t miss it too much, though I do love chicken. Fortunately, she was one of those vegetarians who will eat seafood, so I was saved there. I could probably give up red meat permanently again, but I’d have a hard time giving up chicken again, let alone seafood.
I can see Jackie as a vegetarian. Not a vegan or anything radical like that. I’d see her as doing it more for health reasons than for animal rights or anything like that. She is, after all, a biologist, and has no problem with animal testing or research. She’s too much of a humanitarian to think animals are more important than humans. And she’s rational enough to know that anything they find using animal testing can also be used to help animals too. Veterinary medicine has made as many advances because of animal testing as human medicine. Possibly more, for obvious reasons. Something that works on a dog or a cat will definitely work on a dog or a cat, but not necessarily on a human.
This is one of the reasons she broke up with Michel. He refused to become a vegetarian, or even come close. She had to make something extra for him. This made making meals more difficult, because it is easy to create a vegetarian meal, but not if you have to include meat with it. What do you make with spinach lasagna? If you make meat, you end up only making a few random vegetables, which can get old.
I would probably get along with Jackie much better than Michel. Still, I don’t want to get involved with someone like her. I suppose, since I am writing this, that I could make her an ideal match who won’t cheat on me -- but if I did, I wouldn’t be true to her as a character. Jackie has to exist as the person she is. Otherwise, I’m manipulating her character. She should be absent from my control as much as possible.
So I turned Jackie’s offer down. She looked disappointed, but quickly smiled when Michel returned. I asked Michel if he knew exactly where his novel was going.
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said, “but like with any writing project, I sometimes feel like I’ve run up against a barrier I can’t quite get across.”
“What you maybe need to do is meet your characters. Talk to them, see what they really want.”
“How do you propose I do that?” Michel asked.
“You could either do a mock interview, or you could come with me to the café, and we could meet them there.”
Jackie sat forward on the black vinyl couch, her feet set apart on the worn faded-red-pattered mock-Persian rug. “Are you some kind of nut?”
“No,” I said. “What’s wrong with suggesting Michel go meet his characters?”
“Because they’re his characters. They didn’t exist until he made them up.”
“Of course not,” I said. “But think about what you just said. ‘They didn’t exist until he made them up.’ Well, he has made them up, and now they do exist.”
“But they’re fictional!”
“As are your lives,” I said, then turned to Michel, who seemed confused, like he wanted to believe me, but felt he had to side with reason, represented by Jackie. “Michel, if you want to go, come on. This isn’t an objective world you’re living in. It’s very subjective. It is a rational world, but not one with a hint of objectivity.” I was, of course, talking about the one from which I am writing, which, I will admit, is not a truly objective world (the world is; the people, not so much), per se, but one which can best be understood through science. His can only be understood through art, and critical reason. But these were things I could not tell Michel as we sat by the light of his computer screen glowing pale in his living room. Jackie still looked like she could not believe what I was saying. How could she realize she existed only in Foucault’s “non-place of language?” And the people I proposed Michel come with me to meet were even more so, being creations of a character created by me. Plato would have been appalled.
It’s been interesting seeing the changes grandma has had to make. To fight the cancer, she’s essentially become a vegetarian, because meat contains too many things that help feed the cancer or make it worse. So now she eats mostly fruits and vegetables. She’s also drinking an extremely expensive herbal tea called Essiac Tea, which is supposed to boost her immune system. So between her and being around my friend Tony who, I just learned, is now a vegetarian, I’ve all but become a vegetarian myself this week. When we got a pizza with Tony, we had to get a four-cheese pizza with nothing but mushrooms. It was so good, though, I’m glad we did. I’m sure we wouldn’t have chosen that particular kind of pizza otherwise.
I tried being a vegetarian once, when I was interested in someone who happened to be a vegetarian. She looked at me less than approvingly when she saw I was eating meat one time, so I decided not to eat meat around her any more. Eventually, I just stopped. I didn’t miss it too much, though I do love chicken. Fortunately, she was one of those vegetarians who will eat seafood, so I was saved there. I could probably give up red meat permanently again, but I’d have a hard time giving up chicken again, let alone seafood.
I can see Jackie as a vegetarian. Not a vegan or anything radical like that. I’d see her as doing it more for health reasons than for animal rights or anything like that. She is, after all, a biologist, and has no problem with animal testing or research. She’s too much of a humanitarian to think animals are more important than humans. And she’s rational enough to know that anything they find using animal testing can also be used to help animals too. Veterinary medicine has made as many advances because of animal testing as human medicine. Possibly more, for obvious reasons. Something that works on a dog or a cat will definitely work on a dog or a cat, but not necessarily on a human.
This is one of the reasons she broke up with Michel. He refused to become a vegetarian, or even come close. She had to make something extra for him. This made making meals more difficult, because it is easy to create a vegetarian meal, but not if you have to include meat with it. What do you make with spinach lasagna? If you make meat, you end up only making a few random vegetables, which can get old.
I would probably get along with Jackie much better than Michel. Still, I don’t want to get involved with someone like her. I suppose, since I am writing this, that I could make her an ideal match who won’t cheat on me -- but if I did, I wouldn’t be true to her as a character. Jackie has to exist as the person she is. Otherwise, I’m manipulating her character. She should be absent from my control as much as possible.
So I turned Jackie’s offer down. She looked disappointed, but quickly smiled when Michel returned. I asked Michel if he knew exactly where his novel was going.
“I have a pretty good idea,” he said, “but like with any writing project, I sometimes feel like I’ve run up against a barrier I can’t quite get across.”
“What you maybe need to do is meet your characters. Talk to them, see what they really want.”
“How do you propose I do that?” Michel asked.
“You could either do a mock interview, or you could come with me to the café, and we could meet them there.”
Jackie sat forward on the black vinyl couch, her feet set apart on the worn faded-red-pattered mock-Persian rug. “Are you some kind of nut?”
“No,” I said. “What’s wrong with suggesting Michel go meet his characters?”
“Because they’re his characters. They didn’t exist until he made them up.”
“Of course not,” I said. “But think about what you just said. ‘They didn’t exist until he made them up.’ Well, he has made them up, and now they do exist.”
“But they’re fictional!”
“As are your lives,” I said, then turned to Michel, who seemed confused, like he wanted to believe me, but felt he had to side with reason, represented by Jackie. “Michel, if you want to go, come on. This isn’t an objective world you’re living in. It’s very subjective. It is a rational world, but not one with a hint of objectivity.” I was, of course, talking about the one from which I am writing, which, I will admit, is not a truly objective world (the world is; the people, not so much), per se, but one which can best be understood through science. His can only be understood through art, and critical reason. But these were things I could not tell Michel as we sat by the light of his computer screen glowing pale in his living room. Jackie still looked like she could not believe what I was saying. How could she realize she existed only in Foucault’s “non-place of language?” And the people I proposed Michel come with me to meet were even more so, being creations of a character created by me. Plato would have been appalled.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Chapter 28
Yesterday I went to town with my brother and two friends, John and Tony. After going to Best Buy, we went to Barnes & Noble. I found some books by Wittgenstein and one by Foucault I wanted. I can’t wait to read them. Foucault is interesting, and I decided to read Wittgenstein because one of my professors at the University of Texas at Dallas said he is influenced by him, and I wanted to read some Wittgenstein so I knew where he was coming from philosophically.
Today I went to the doctor with my grandmother. She had to get a CAT scan to see if the cancer is in her liver. I read the introduction to one of my Wittgenstein books, but didn’t get too far. I’m looking forward to getting to it, but I need to finish Broch’s The Sleepwalkers before I get to Wittgenstein and Foucault.
I think Michel would benefit from reading Foucault -- perhaps some other queer theorists -- though I’ve only read Foucault, and not much of him. Just an excerpt from The History of Sexuality. I’d like to read that entire book one day. When I have time. I don’t know if that will be possible in the near future. All the same, I think Michel is on the right track with his novel. He seems exceptionally fair. It makes me wonder about him. Admittedly, I’ve written a lot about homosexuality in my own short stories and novels, but not to the extent Michel has with his novel. It does make sense, however, in view of his future sexual relationship with Jessie. Men who are attracted to young girls are oftentimes closet homosexuals. They find homosexuality personally repulsive, but then turn around and want to sleep with someone who has the same body shape as a male. For some reason, they find sleeping with children more moral than sleeping with other men.
Of course, that is only applicable to modern society, as Foucault would point out. This would not and could not apply to, say, Benjamin Franklin, who had a ten-year-old mistress in France. At the time there was a different concept of the role of children and the nature of sexuality. Then, it was not unusual for people we would consider children to get married. The modern sexual prohibitions were not in effect, or even considered relevant.
But we are in the modern world -- or the post-modern world according to some. Perhaps we are even moving away from that. I’m not one to say. But this world, this contemporary world, is very different from the world of the late 1700's. Everything must be analyzable and, therefore, categorizable. Which is why we can talk about Michel’s hidden homosexual desires and how he misdirects them into being attracted to Jessie and her mother.
I’ve been talking to Michel about his book, and I’ve come to these conclusions because of the way he’s talked about the novel. I’ve also met Jackie. What a beautiful woman. I can understand why he chose to sleep with her while he was with Sarah, even if I don’t agree with his decision. Michel introduced her as his girlfriend, though Jackie looked at me, rolled her eyes, and shook her head to tell me he was lying. When he announced he had to go to the bathroom, then left to do so, Jackie leaned up and said, “Michel won’t be here tomorrow after noon. Why don’t you come over and visit me.”
Deciding to play dumb, I said, “I thought he said you were his girlfriend.”
“Ex. We still fuck occasionally, but we’re seeing whoever we want. We’re definitely not dating. Come over tomorrow.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“You have any diseases?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Come over.”
She said this with her sexy thick-lipped smile, her wide eyes looking at me with intensity. I wondered for a moment if she were sincerely attracted to me or if she simply wanted another person to fuck, to add to her list, so to speak, then remembered that I knew the answer to this, and decided I really didn’t want to be used -- even though I haven’t had sex in a month and a half. I want it attached to love. I knew Jackie couldn’t give that to me. Of course, I realize now my ex-girlfriend couldn’t give that to me either, but at the time, I thought she was. I know I was. Maybe that’s what matters most.
Today I went to the doctor with my grandmother. She had to get a CAT scan to see if the cancer is in her liver. I read the introduction to one of my Wittgenstein books, but didn’t get too far. I’m looking forward to getting to it, but I need to finish Broch’s The Sleepwalkers before I get to Wittgenstein and Foucault.
I think Michel would benefit from reading Foucault -- perhaps some other queer theorists -- though I’ve only read Foucault, and not much of him. Just an excerpt from The History of Sexuality. I’d like to read that entire book one day. When I have time. I don’t know if that will be possible in the near future. All the same, I think Michel is on the right track with his novel. He seems exceptionally fair. It makes me wonder about him. Admittedly, I’ve written a lot about homosexuality in my own short stories and novels, but not to the extent Michel has with his novel. It does make sense, however, in view of his future sexual relationship with Jessie. Men who are attracted to young girls are oftentimes closet homosexuals. They find homosexuality personally repulsive, but then turn around and want to sleep with someone who has the same body shape as a male. For some reason, they find sleeping with children more moral than sleeping with other men.
Of course, that is only applicable to modern society, as Foucault would point out. This would not and could not apply to, say, Benjamin Franklin, who had a ten-year-old mistress in France. At the time there was a different concept of the role of children and the nature of sexuality. Then, it was not unusual for people we would consider children to get married. The modern sexual prohibitions were not in effect, or even considered relevant.
But we are in the modern world -- or the post-modern world according to some. Perhaps we are even moving away from that. I’m not one to say. But this world, this contemporary world, is very different from the world of the late 1700's. Everything must be analyzable and, therefore, categorizable. Which is why we can talk about Michel’s hidden homosexual desires and how he misdirects them into being attracted to Jessie and her mother.
I’ve been talking to Michel about his book, and I’ve come to these conclusions because of the way he’s talked about the novel. I’ve also met Jackie. What a beautiful woman. I can understand why he chose to sleep with her while he was with Sarah, even if I don’t agree with his decision. Michel introduced her as his girlfriend, though Jackie looked at me, rolled her eyes, and shook her head to tell me he was lying. When he announced he had to go to the bathroom, then left to do so, Jackie leaned up and said, “Michel won’t be here tomorrow after noon. Why don’t you come over and visit me.”
Deciding to play dumb, I said, “I thought he said you were his girlfriend.”
“Ex. We still fuck occasionally, but we’re seeing whoever we want. We’re definitely not dating. Come over tomorrow.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“You have any diseases?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Come over.”
She said this with her sexy thick-lipped smile, her wide eyes looking at me with intensity. I wondered for a moment if she were sincerely attracted to me or if she simply wanted another person to fuck, to add to her list, so to speak, then remembered that I knew the answer to this, and decided I really didn’t want to be used -- even though I haven’t had sex in a month and a half. I want it attached to love. I knew Jackie couldn’t give that to me. Of course, I realize now my ex-girlfriend couldn’t give that to me either, but at the time, I thought she was. I know I was. Maybe that’s what matters most.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Chapter 27
There are a lot of things we need to get back to in this novel. I’ve been too distracted by personal events. The original plan was to have events in the world and in my own personal life help direct the novel, but instead I’ve allowed them to take over. I haven’t talked about what is going on in Syria (more bombings) or about the latest school shooting and the controversy surrounding guns, movies, and video games and how they (according to the politicos on the right and the left) caused these kids to shoot their classmates. Of course, I don’t think guns, movies, or video games had anything to do with what these kids did. Why not blame the kids who did it and their parents, who didn’t raise their children right? The parents? Yes. We have “adults” whose thinking resembles that of the children they are raising, who aren’t providing their children with adult supervision or adult love, teaching them to be adults. We have children masquerading as adults teaching children to behave as children, to lash out as children. The problem is when adults or teens lash out like children, they are often in possession of a weapon. This is what causes school shootings.
A perfect example of this is the way Pat is raising Jessie. Pat is not an adult. She is only interested in instant gratification. Sex without love. The less emotional attachment to sex, the better. This is the way children think. What does love have to do with pleasure? To an adult, who understands the world and the true meaning of self-interest, everything. But children only look for instant gratification. They think being happy now is more important than being happy in the future -- even the near future. They don’t think ahead. It’s Me! Me! Me! Now! Now! Now! and they don’t understand that by thinking this way, and acting on these thoughts, they will only be miserable. They are self-centered, but not truly selfish. Selfishness implies you are doing it for yourself and your own happiness. People like these cannot be happy. They are like my ex-girlfriend, who has the emotional I.Q. of a two-year-old. She has never matured beyond that, and doubtless never will. She has given up happiness because she refuses to allow herself to be happy. Love is not enough for her or people like Pat. They think they need something more -- something they cannot figure out, something that, in truth, doesn’t exist.
Pat was searching for this one thing. She thought she could find it with every dick she had in her. When that didn’t work, she got her daughter to start looking too, using the same method, not realizing if she couldn’t find it in sex, that Jessie would be unable to find it that way either. Still, she hoped, between the two of them, that they would be able to find whatever it was that was lacking in their lives. What they were lacking, what Pat caused her daughter to lack because she lacked it herself, could not be gained externally. What they lacked was internal, emotional. They were two children searching for instant gratification, thinking that sense of emptiness could be filled through their vagina, but still feeling that loss every time the men withdrew. When the waves of pleasure vanished, the emptiness remained.
This is why Michel was, to them, a perfect neighbor. In fact, he was the worst. He also felt empty inside, and tried to fill it with writing or sex. It is something artists try to do: fill the emptiness, whatever that emptiness may be, with their art. And it also explains why so many artists are hyper-sexed. Art is our therapy, our way of creating something in the world that the world, in our opinion, lacks.
Michel continued coming over Pat’s house, to have sex with Jessie as often as Pat. Jessie did not have to dress up to look like a little girl, like her mother did. She was the real thing. She was what Michel was looking for. Emotionally, he could relate to her better than he could with Pat, even though she was no more mature than her daughter. Michel loved lying next to Jessie, running his hands along her shapeless, flat frame, looking around her room, at the dolls in the corner, the posters of Justin Beiber, Harry Potter, Lady Gaga. He looked at her fish tank,, watching the black goldfish with the bubbles under its eyes slowly swim. He wondered how such a deformed fish, with it’s hunched back and double tail, could swim at all. That was probably why they swam so slowly. In nature, it would last about two minutes. Jessie reached over and touched his leg. It distracted him a moment from his thoughts about the fish. He wondered if there were wild goldfish and, if so, what ate them. He looked down at Jessie. “Honey, I don’t think we can go a third time.” “Can I see?” she asked. Michel shook his head. “I think I need to get going. I have to work on my book.”
That was his third novel. The first two had done reasonably well. Not enough for him to retire, but enough to buy a modest house, and put the rest in the bank or in the stock market. We have already talked some about the first novel, and perhaps we should get back to it, talk about where it is going, talk more about the characters, maybe show another chapter or two, or at least give an overview, to let you know where it was going or, since it is published at this point, when he is living next to Pat and sleeping with her and her daughter, where it went. It, too, is a story of two children living with each other.
In later chapters of Michel’s novel The Novelist, we learn that Marcus and Bernard continue treating each other as a pair of children would who were made to live together without adult supervision, eventually not speaking to each other, then coming back together. Marcus accuses Bernard of cheating on him which, as we know, is the truth. Bernard, of course, denies it, and Marcus, not having any proof, decides to believe him, knowing his own behavior on the Internet is beyond the pale. By the end of the novel, he does leave Bernard for someone he has met on the Internet, thinking the unknown promise is better than the known disappointment of his life with Bernard. Marcus thinks the shiny world offered him has to be an improvement and, though we are not told what happens to Marcus once he has left Bernard, since the story is about Bernard, I can promise you that Marcus found himself disappointed. Perhaps not right away. The thrill of the unknown can hold you for months. But eventually, I know he found himself disappointed. On the Internet you can be anybody. If you can, so can others. That is often the case.
But as you may recall, there was another aspect of Michel’s novel, and that was the fact that Bernard was a novelist who was working on his own first novel.
Bernard decided to call the novel The Chicago Dinner Party. That had all kinds of connotations. Especially when he decided to call his protagonist Judy. This also fit into his idea that she was at a party when the novel starts. In fact, she could go to parties throughout the novel, and the parties could give her ideas for her own stories.
So that’s where Judy is when the novel starts: at a party. She is standing, drinking a glass of red wine, talking to a very handsome man. He is not her husband. Her husband is at home. He does not care for the parties she goes to - or her friends. He thinks little of her writing. She succeeds despite him.
But here, at the party, Judy is in her element. She is talking to an educated, intelligent, handsome man who is interested in her and what she does, who finds value in her writing even though, he admits, he has yet to read anything of hers. But, to his credit, he has just met her, and her two books are not well known. He has only learned of them through her, and promises, quite sincerely, that he will try to find them and read them. He is sincere for two reasons: 1) he loves literature and revels in discovering new authors - especially by meeting them, and 2) he is extremely attracted to her and would like to get in her pants. Though she is a married woman, she is not adverse to this idea, yet unspoken between them.
Bernard stopped writing for a second and looked a the pages he had typed. Hmm. How many times had he thought these very things when talking to someone at a party or a bar, especially when he traveled? He did not have the guts to cheat on Marcus in town, but he had definitely gone where it appeared Judy was going. Maybe she would have a string of affairs. That was the kind of thing interested him. Women having affairs with gorgeous men. He admitted to himself that this was him fantasizing, every bit of it. He wished he were the glamorous Judy. Ah, for real breasts and a vagina! But he also knew he would never get the surgery. He liked being a man, being who he was. He wanted a vagina, but he knew he would miss the penis more. And why go halfway? So instead, he created good female characters and led their lives in his fiction. It was difficult.
That was already admitted in the second chapter of The Novelist. But it was a perfect outlet for his longings. I could see that as I read the chapters Michel gave me to read. When I pointed it out to him, he became excited.
“You’re right! You’re exactly right. Part of him desires to be a woman, but the fact is, he is a homosexual man, which does not necessarily have anything to do with wanting to be a woman. Not every gay man secretly wants to be a woman. Gender and sexual orientation are separate things,” Michel said.
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. He seemed exceedingly excited over this. It made me wonder a moment about his own sexual orientation.
Before I get ahead of myself, I should explain how Michel and I met and how we became close enough for him to start showing me chapters of his novel (for most beginning novelists, you only have to be an acquaintance, and they will happily show you what they have written -- something I will admit to being guilty of as well). I decided I should meet Michel so the story could be put back on track. I will admit that once he and Sarah broke up, I wasn’t sure what to do -- and I have seven months of writing to go. But maybe, if I insert myself into the fictional story occasionally, I’ll be able to put the thing on track. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway. We’ll see if it works.
But anyway, I decided I needed to meet Michel in person. I can control him better that way, because when I’m with him, I’ll be able to talk to him and direct his thoughts and, therefore, his actions more directly. I can’t let him get away from me too much, or he might not end up where I suggested he is going. So in order to meet him, I decided to do what I did with Sarah to meet her: I put him in a bar, and started talking to him. All I had to do was mention I was a writer, and he started off, talking about his own writing, who his influences were, about his project. I told him his novel sounded interesting, that I’d love to read parts of it, if he didn’t mind - make a few suggestions. We arranged to meet at the bar during the day, for lunch, and he would bring me some chapters. I read them, then called to tell him I was ready to talk about them, if he wanted to. That led to the conversation started above.
I asked him where he thought it was going, and he told me in detail. He had it well planned -- something I rarely do with stories -- but that is a difference in creative styles.
I was just interrupted by a phone call -- well, I guess I wouldn’t call it “interrupted” once I found out what the call was about. It was for my grandmother, but when I heard her doctor introduce himself, I listened in. My grandpa had found the name of a doctor from San Francisco who has been known to cure my mom’s type of cancer, with massive doses of chemotherapy, and they had given that doctor’s name to my grandmother’s doctor, who looked him up on the Internet, found him, and contacted him. The doctor told him as long as the cancer was not in her liver, he would do the treatment, and there was a good chance it would work. Grandma’s doctor said it was her only hope. My grandfather would beg to differ, I’m sure, since he has been praying, asking God to cure her -- but he also has enough sense to realize, at least as he puts it, that God could decide to cure her with this therapy. For him, at least, seeking scientific cures is not denying the power of God, but allowing that God can decide to cure her through modern medicine. God helps those who help themselves. Don’t ask God for food while sitting at a lake with a fishing pole. Put a worm on the hook, throw it in the water, and ask God to let the fish bite. That’s more of my grandpa’s philosophy, and I will admit it is well supported by the Bible.
But now I’ve gone back to what I said was turning into a problem in this novel - my dwelling on what’s going on in my immediate surroundings - but I’m sure the reader would love to hear this good news. Assuming it is good news. Let’s hope it is.
A perfect example of this is the way Pat is raising Jessie. Pat is not an adult. She is only interested in instant gratification. Sex without love. The less emotional attachment to sex, the better. This is the way children think. What does love have to do with pleasure? To an adult, who understands the world and the true meaning of self-interest, everything. But children only look for instant gratification. They think being happy now is more important than being happy in the future -- even the near future. They don’t think ahead. It’s Me! Me! Me! Now! Now! Now! and they don’t understand that by thinking this way, and acting on these thoughts, they will only be miserable. They are self-centered, but not truly selfish. Selfishness implies you are doing it for yourself and your own happiness. People like these cannot be happy. They are like my ex-girlfriend, who has the emotional I.Q. of a two-year-old. She has never matured beyond that, and doubtless never will. She has given up happiness because she refuses to allow herself to be happy. Love is not enough for her or people like Pat. They think they need something more -- something they cannot figure out, something that, in truth, doesn’t exist.
Pat was searching for this one thing. She thought she could find it with every dick she had in her. When that didn’t work, she got her daughter to start looking too, using the same method, not realizing if she couldn’t find it in sex, that Jessie would be unable to find it that way either. Still, she hoped, between the two of them, that they would be able to find whatever it was that was lacking in their lives. What they were lacking, what Pat caused her daughter to lack because she lacked it herself, could not be gained externally. What they lacked was internal, emotional. They were two children searching for instant gratification, thinking that sense of emptiness could be filled through their vagina, but still feeling that loss every time the men withdrew. When the waves of pleasure vanished, the emptiness remained.
This is why Michel was, to them, a perfect neighbor. In fact, he was the worst. He also felt empty inside, and tried to fill it with writing or sex. It is something artists try to do: fill the emptiness, whatever that emptiness may be, with their art. And it also explains why so many artists are hyper-sexed. Art is our therapy, our way of creating something in the world that the world, in our opinion, lacks.
Michel continued coming over Pat’s house, to have sex with Jessie as often as Pat. Jessie did not have to dress up to look like a little girl, like her mother did. She was the real thing. She was what Michel was looking for. Emotionally, he could relate to her better than he could with Pat, even though she was no more mature than her daughter. Michel loved lying next to Jessie, running his hands along her shapeless, flat frame, looking around her room, at the dolls in the corner, the posters of Justin Beiber, Harry Potter, Lady Gaga. He looked at her fish tank,, watching the black goldfish with the bubbles under its eyes slowly swim. He wondered how such a deformed fish, with it’s hunched back and double tail, could swim at all. That was probably why they swam so slowly. In nature, it would last about two minutes. Jessie reached over and touched his leg. It distracted him a moment from his thoughts about the fish. He wondered if there were wild goldfish and, if so, what ate them. He looked down at Jessie. “Honey, I don’t think we can go a third time.” “Can I see?” she asked. Michel shook his head. “I think I need to get going. I have to work on my book.”
That was his third novel. The first two had done reasonably well. Not enough for him to retire, but enough to buy a modest house, and put the rest in the bank or in the stock market. We have already talked some about the first novel, and perhaps we should get back to it, talk about where it is going, talk more about the characters, maybe show another chapter or two, or at least give an overview, to let you know where it was going or, since it is published at this point, when he is living next to Pat and sleeping with her and her daughter, where it went. It, too, is a story of two children living with each other.
In later chapters of Michel’s novel The Novelist, we learn that Marcus and Bernard continue treating each other as a pair of children would who were made to live together without adult supervision, eventually not speaking to each other, then coming back together. Marcus accuses Bernard of cheating on him which, as we know, is the truth. Bernard, of course, denies it, and Marcus, not having any proof, decides to believe him, knowing his own behavior on the Internet is beyond the pale. By the end of the novel, he does leave Bernard for someone he has met on the Internet, thinking the unknown promise is better than the known disappointment of his life with Bernard. Marcus thinks the shiny world offered him has to be an improvement and, though we are not told what happens to Marcus once he has left Bernard, since the story is about Bernard, I can promise you that Marcus found himself disappointed. Perhaps not right away. The thrill of the unknown can hold you for months. But eventually, I know he found himself disappointed. On the Internet you can be anybody. If you can, so can others. That is often the case.
But as you may recall, there was another aspect of Michel’s novel, and that was the fact that Bernard was a novelist who was working on his own first novel.
Bernard decided to call the novel The Chicago Dinner Party. That had all kinds of connotations. Especially when he decided to call his protagonist Judy. This also fit into his idea that she was at a party when the novel starts. In fact, she could go to parties throughout the novel, and the parties could give her ideas for her own stories.
So that’s where Judy is when the novel starts: at a party. She is standing, drinking a glass of red wine, talking to a very handsome man. He is not her husband. Her husband is at home. He does not care for the parties she goes to - or her friends. He thinks little of her writing. She succeeds despite him.
But here, at the party, Judy is in her element. She is talking to an educated, intelligent, handsome man who is interested in her and what she does, who finds value in her writing even though, he admits, he has yet to read anything of hers. But, to his credit, he has just met her, and her two books are not well known. He has only learned of them through her, and promises, quite sincerely, that he will try to find them and read them. He is sincere for two reasons: 1) he loves literature and revels in discovering new authors - especially by meeting them, and 2) he is extremely attracted to her and would like to get in her pants. Though she is a married woman, she is not adverse to this idea, yet unspoken between them.
Bernard stopped writing for a second and looked a the pages he had typed. Hmm. How many times had he thought these very things when talking to someone at a party or a bar, especially when he traveled? He did not have the guts to cheat on Marcus in town, but he had definitely gone where it appeared Judy was going. Maybe she would have a string of affairs. That was the kind of thing interested him. Women having affairs with gorgeous men. He admitted to himself that this was him fantasizing, every bit of it. He wished he were the glamorous Judy. Ah, for real breasts and a vagina! But he also knew he would never get the surgery. He liked being a man, being who he was. He wanted a vagina, but he knew he would miss the penis more. And why go halfway? So instead, he created good female characters and led their lives in his fiction. It was difficult.
That was already admitted in the second chapter of The Novelist. But it was a perfect outlet for his longings. I could see that as I read the chapters Michel gave me to read. When I pointed it out to him, he became excited.
“You’re right! You’re exactly right. Part of him desires to be a woman, but the fact is, he is a homosexual man, which does not necessarily have anything to do with wanting to be a woman. Not every gay man secretly wants to be a woman. Gender and sexual orientation are separate things,” Michel said.
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. He seemed exceedingly excited over this. It made me wonder a moment about his own sexual orientation.
Before I get ahead of myself, I should explain how Michel and I met and how we became close enough for him to start showing me chapters of his novel (for most beginning novelists, you only have to be an acquaintance, and they will happily show you what they have written -- something I will admit to being guilty of as well). I decided I should meet Michel so the story could be put back on track. I will admit that once he and Sarah broke up, I wasn’t sure what to do -- and I have seven months of writing to go. But maybe, if I insert myself into the fictional story occasionally, I’ll be able to put the thing on track. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway. We’ll see if it works.
But anyway, I decided I needed to meet Michel in person. I can control him better that way, because when I’m with him, I’ll be able to talk to him and direct his thoughts and, therefore, his actions more directly. I can’t let him get away from me too much, or he might not end up where I suggested he is going. So in order to meet him, I decided to do what I did with Sarah to meet her: I put him in a bar, and started talking to him. All I had to do was mention I was a writer, and he started off, talking about his own writing, who his influences were, about his project. I told him his novel sounded interesting, that I’d love to read parts of it, if he didn’t mind - make a few suggestions. We arranged to meet at the bar during the day, for lunch, and he would bring me some chapters. I read them, then called to tell him I was ready to talk about them, if he wanted to. That led to the conversation started above.
I asked him where he thought it was going, and he told me in detail. He had it well planned -- something I rarely do with stories -- but that is a difference in creative styles.
I was just interrupted by a phone call -- well, I guess I wouldn’t call it “interrupted” once I found out what the call was about. It was for my grandmother, but when I heard her doctor introduce himself, I listened in. My grandpa had found the name of a doctor from San Francisco who has been known to cure my mom’s type of cancer, with massive doses of chemotherapy, and they had given that doctor’s name to my grandmother’s doctor, who looked him up on the Internet, found him, and contacted him. The doctor told him as long as the cancer was not in her liver, he would do the treatment, and there was a good chance it would work. Grandma’s doctor said it was her only hope. My grandfather would beg to differ, I’m sure, since he has been praying, asking God to cure her -- but he also has enough sense to realize, at least as he puts it, that God could decide to cure her with this therapy. For him, at least, seeking scientific cures is not denying the power of God, but allowing that God can decide to cure her through modern medicine. God helps those who help themselves. Don’t ask God for food while sitting at a lake with a fishing pole. Put a worm on the hook, throw it in the water, and ask God to let the fish bite. That’s more of my grandpa’s philosophy, and I will admit it is well supported by the Bible.
But now I’ve gone back to what I said was turning into a problem in this novel - my dwelling on what’s going on in my immediate surroundings - but I’m sure the reader would love to hear this good news. Assuming it is good news. Let’s hope it is.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Chapter 26
I am writing this from my grandparents' house. When my brother called to say our grandmother had spent the weekend in the hospital, I decided I could wait no longer. I had to come. I got Delia (an Egyptian woman with a Ph.D. in English) to work my last two shifts of the week for me, and I left Monday morning.
Right now I’m sitting talking with my brother and our friend Tony. We just went out to move some things in the garage and look at the stars. It was the first time I’d seen Taurus and Pegasus. Tony had taken astronomy and pointed them out to me.
Well, it looks like we’re going to go out to eat, though it is 11:19 PM. I guess I’ll get back to this later. Maybe even get back to the actual story rather than my own problems. Now there’s a novel concept for a novel - sticking to the story...
Right now I’m sitting talking with my brother and our friend Tony. We just went out to move some things in the garage and look at the stars. It was the first time I’d seen Taurus and Pegasus. Tony had taken astronomy and pointed them out to me.
Well, it looks like we’re going to go out to eat, though it is 11:19 PM. I guess I’ll get back to this later. Maybe even get back to the actual story rather than my own problems. Now there’s a novel concept for a novel - sticking to the story...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Chapter 25
I should have fucked Sarah.
What a nightmare the last few weeks have been. The semester is ending, so I have had a lot of work to do -- final papers, etc. And I’ve been looking forward to seeing my grandmother, who could die any time in the next few months. So what does Donna do? The week before, she said she wanted to go see her grandmother because she was in the hospital with breast cancer. Considering my grandma’s condition, I let her go, with the understanding that she would be back that Friday for work.
Friday, she did not show up for work. I had to work both my and her shifts. So Saturday, I brought her phone book to work and called her grandmother, who told me 1) she had never been in the hospital and 2) she had not seen her granddaughter in a year. Now I knew she lied. So I called two of her friends I thought she would have gone to see, and neither had seen her. However, her one friend said when she had talked to her last, she had talked about going to Iowa.
I knew she had several friends from Iowa she had met on Facebook, and the $600 phone bill I received in the mail the Thursday before showed over half her calls were to Iowa (I had no calls on the phone bill, by the way). All to one number. She had to be there. Still, I wanted to be sure, so I checked our e-mail, her saved letters, and found a very interesting one from one of her Facebook friends. Her friend was going on about how crazy she was about this guy, giving as an example the way Donna and this guy named Paul were with each other. Clue number one. So I decided to use the Find option on my computer, going to the Start button at the bottom left corner of the screen, then up to Find, then over to Files or Folders, then searching for “Paul” And I found Paul. I found a letter he had written to her using her Excite e-mail account that had been cached in our computer. It went on and on about how much he loved her and wanted to be with her for the rest of his life (poor, naive fool). Clue number two. The next thing I found was a cached web page, a tarot reading web page, where the question you asked was at the top of the web page, followed by the answer in tarot cards. The question was: “Will me and Paul be intamate” (her sentence structure and spelling). Clue number three.
I took my phone bill to work Sunday and called the number. A kid, maybe ten or eleven, answered. I asked if Paul was there. He wasn’t. I asked if L. was there. “No, she’s not here either,” was the reply. I asked if she had been there. “Oh yeah, she’s been here.” “Could you please give her a message for me?” Sure. “Please tell her to call Vance at work. Thanks.”
Ten minutes later, she called: “I’ve been in jail!”
“What are you doing in Iowa?” I asked.
“When I got out, I ran up here.” I asked her who Paul was. “Who’s Paul?” she asked. I told her about everything I had found. She denied it all, saying she didn’t know what I was talking about. After some more discussion, she said, “I guess it’s over then?” Of course! Did she really think I would allow myself to be treated this way? I told her to go to Hell.
I wanted to go see my grandma. I had to plan everything, rearrange my original plans, try to get all my hours in on the weekend so I could have the week to see my mother. I told her she had to be here by Friday if she wanted to get her stuff, because I wasn't going to be here. Last time I talked to her she said a bearing was going out on the back wheel of her car and she had to fix it first. I don’t know if I should believe her or not. Everything has turned out to be a lie (I’m beginning to truly understand how Sarah feels, how she felt when she found out about Michel and Jackie).
And right now, my only real concern is her being gone with all her things. In truth, I am glad to be rid of her. She was spending me into the poorhouse, into bankruptcy. Now I will be able to save my money and pay my bills on time. My phone bill will be all but nonexistent, my electricity bill will probably be half to a third of what it is now (I rarely have the A/C or the TV on, and I actually turn the computer off when I’m not using it). And the food bill will be cut by about a tenth too, because I don’t mind making, say, spaghetti or chili and eating on it for a week. That’s maybe two dollars a day for food. And she eats enough food for a classroom of people. And when she left, I cleaned up the apartment for the first time this year. Papers were everywhere, the floors had been unvacuumed, and since I was working forty hours and going to school full time and she would complain every time I tried to do anything (even laundry!), I could not get it done myself. But when she was gone, I cleaned up the place. It has been over a week since I finished it (it took 3 days to clean), and the apartment is still as clean as the day I finished (though I suppose it could be vacuumed again). So between all this and the fact that she had not had sex with me in the three weeks before she left (something which I understand now, though she had been keeping it down to only once every other week -- not very much for a self-professed nympho) make me glad she is gone and will be gone shortly. Now I can move on with my life. Find someone who will love me like I now know she never did.
Having gone through it all now, I understand what Sarah is going through. I understand why she sits in her apartment, watching television, numb, stunned. How could Michel do this to her? She thought he had loved her. She had loved him. Sure, he was chauvinistic, maybe even misogynistic, but she had not thought he would cheat on her. Especially with Jackie. She thought they hated each other. Their living together was only for convenience and money’s sake. She knew she would not make that mistake again. The next man she went out with was going to be living alone. No roommates. Not even male roommates, in case they were gay lovers. No chances. Never. Not ever. Not again.
What Sarah really needed to do was write. She needed to write about her relationship with Michel, fictionalize it, make it objective, so she could work it out, make her deal with it faster. It would have made her feel better (as this chapter is doing for me already). But she did not have the presence of mind to do that yet. It took me this long to sit down and write it, knowing all the time I had this novel to work on, and that the way I was constructing it would be a perfect outlet, so I should not expect Sarah to do it any faster. I am sure she will deal with it in her fiction, as many writers do, in her own time.
In the meantime, I suppose she will sit in front of her television, feeling sad and a little sorry for herself. It will do her no good to feel sorry for herself, just as it will do her no good to get mad at Michel for being who he was or at herself for not being able to see it in time, but it will take her time to figure that out. For now, there is the television. The single person’s friend. The source of estranged human contact that is just enough to make living alone tolerable. No thoughts. No worries. Just staring at the screen, taking it in with minimum effort, staving off the loneliness that lingers on the outside edges of the screen, keeping our focus on it lest that loneliness engulfs us and sends us into despair.
What a nightmare the last few weeks have been. The semester is ending, so I have had a lot of work to do -- final papers, etc. And I’ve been looking forward to seeing my grandmother, who could die any time in the next few months. So what does Donna do? The week before, she said she wanted to go see her grandmother because she was in the hospital with breast cancer. Considering my grandma’s condition, I let her go, with the understanding that she would be back that Friday for work.
Friday, she did not show up for work. I had to work both my and her shifts. So Saturday, I brought her phone book to work and called her grandmother, who told me 1) she had never been in the hospital and 2) she had not seen her granddaughter in a year. Now I knew she lied. So I called two of her friends I thought she would have gone to see, and neither had seen her. However, her one friend said when she had talked to her last, she had talked about going to Iowa.
I knew she had several friends from Iowa she had met on Facebook, and the $600 phone bill I received in the mail the Thursday before showed over half her calls were to Iowa (I had no calls on the phone bill, by the way). All to one number. She had to be there. Still, I wanted to be sure, so I checked our e-mail, her saved letters, and found a very interesting one from one of her Facebook friends. Her friend was going on about how crazy she was about this guy, giving as an example the way Donna and this guy named Paul were with each other. Clue number one. So I decided to use the Find option on my computer, going to the Start button at the bottom left corner of the screen, then up to Find, then over to Files or Folders, then searching for “Paul” And I found Paul. I found a letter he had written to her using her Excite e-mail account that had been cached in our computer. It went on and on about how much he loved her and wanted to be with her for the rest of his life (poor, naive fool). Clue number two. The next thing I found was a cached web page, a tarot reading web page, where the question you asked was at the top of the web page, followed by the answer in tarot cards. The question was: “Will me and Paul be intamate” (her sentence structure and spelling). Clue number three.
I took my phone bill to work Sunday and called the number. A kid, maybe ten or eleven, answered. I asked if Paul was there. He wasn’t. I asked if L. was there. “No, she’s not here either,” was the reply. I asked if she had been there. “Oh yeah, she’s been here.” “Could you please give her a message for me?” Sure. “Please tell her to call Vance at work. Thanks.”
Ten minutes later, she called: “I’ve been in jail!”
“What are you doing in Iowa?” I asked.
“When I got out, I ran up here.” I asked her who Paul was. “Who’s Paul?” she asked. I told her about everything I had found. She denied it all, saying she didn’t know what I was talking about. After some more discussion, she said, “I guess it’s over then?” Of course! Did she really think I would allow myself to be treated this way? I told her to go to Hell.
I wanted to go see my grandma. I had to plan everything, rearrange my original plans, try to get all my hours in on the weekend so I could have the week to see my mother. I told her she had to be here by Friday if she wanted to get her stuff, because I wasn't going to be here. Last time I talked to her she said a bearing was going out on the back wheel of her car and she had to fix it first. I don’t know if I should believe her or not. Everything has turned out to be a lie (I’m beginning to truly understand how Sarah feels, how she felt when she found out about Michel and Jackie).
And right now, my only real concern is her being gone with all her things. In truth, I am glad to be rid of her. She was spending me into the poorhouse, into bankruptcy. Now I will be able to save my money and pay my bills on time. My phone bill will be all but nonexistent, my electricity bill will probably be half to a third of what it is now (I rarely have the A/C or the TV on, and I actually turn the computer off when I’m not using it). And the food bill will be cut by about a tenth too, because I don’t mind making, say, spaghetti or chili and eating on it for a week. That’s maybe two dollars a day for food. And she eats enough food for a classroom of people. And when she left, I cleaned up the apartment for the first time this year. Papers were everywhere, the floors had been unvacuumed, and since I was working forty hours and going to school full time and she would complain every time I tried to do anything (even laundry!), I could not get it done myself. But when she was gone, I cleaned up the place. It has been over a week since I finished it (it took 3 days to clean), and the apartment is still as clean as the day I finished (though I suppose it could be vacuumed again). So between all this and the fact that she had not had sex with me in the three weeks before she left (something which I understand now, though she had been keeping it down to only once every other week -- not very much for a self-professed nympho) make me glad she is gone and will be gone shortly. Now I can move on with my life. Find someone who will love me like I now know she never did.
Having gone through it all now, I understand what Sarah is going through. I understand why she sits in her apartment, watching television, numb, stunned. How could Michel do this to her? She thought he had loved her. She had loved him. Sure, he was chauvinistic, maybe even misogynistic, but she had not thought he would cheat on her. Especially with Jackie. She thought they hated each other. Their living together was only for convenience and money’s sake. She knew she would not make that mistake again. The next man she went out with was going to be living alone. No roommates. Not even male roommates, in case they were gay lovers. No chances. Never. Not ever. Not again.
What Sarah really needed to do was write. She needed to write about her relationship with Michel, fictionalize it, make it objective, so she could work it out, make her deal with it faster. It would have made her feel better (as this chapter is doing for me already). But she did not have the presence of mind to do that yet. It took me this long to sit down and write it, knowing all the time I had this novel to work on, and that the way I was constructing it would be a perfect outlet, so I should not expect Sarah to do it any faster. I am sure she will deal with it in her fiction, as many writers do, in her own time.
In the meantime, I suppose she will sit in front of her television, feeling sad and a little sorry for herself. It will do her no good to feel sorry for herself, just as it will do her no good to get mad at Michel for being who he was or at herself for not being able to see it in time, but it will take her time to figure that out. For now, there is the television. The single person’s friend. The source of estranged human contact that is just enough to make living alone tolerable. No thoughts. No worries. Just staring at the screen, taking it in with minimum effort, staving off the loneliness that lingers on the outside edges of the screen, keeping our focus on it lest that loneliness engulfs us and sends us into despair.
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