October 2005
31 October 2005 | Meshes
Purgatory, it turns out, is a lot like jury duty, except without having to serve on a jury. We watched a film about it on the first day. They never actually said the word purgatory, but between the various choices, this is what I figure it must be. You stay here a while, they don’t tell you how long, and then your name is called and you get to move up, or what I assume is up. Certainly that’s what the film made it seem like. It’s a little nerve-racking though, because I remember watching a Twilight Zone episode when I was kid about this man (a complete asshole) who thinks he’s in heaven but really is in hell. He doesn’t understand this until the end when his guardian angel, or the guy he thinks is his guardian angel, tells him he can’t arrange to have him lose at a certain card game. The man is sick of winning, he wins every hand, so he wants a little variation, but his guardian angel says, No, sir, we can’t do that here. This impressed me tremenously when I was kid. Hell is a place where you always win.
But this place isn’t like that. All it is, is an enormous room with rows and rows of seats. Every now and then, someone’s name gets called over the loud speaker. If it’s you, you’re supposed to go through a door at the front of the room. This was shown to us in the film. People would hear their names called, and then they’d get up and walk through the door. One assumes the door leads to a better place, as they say, but it’s not like there’s a sign that promises this.
The film was pretty damn vague, if you must know. It seemed like it could have been made by Maya Deren. It didn’t have any voice-over or anything. I thought it was beautiful, I really did, haunting and dream-like, but it didn’t exactly clear anything up.
The worst thing (and I hate to complain about this because for all I know this counts against you and keeps you here longer) was something that happened on the first day. I was looking around, trying to decide where to sit (there’s ten times more seats than people), when I thought I spotted my ex-girlfriend in the next section of seats, a few rows closer to the front. I couldn’t tell for sure because it’s been such a long time, but it really did look like her. Long story short, it was her. After the film I walked past her row and pretended to see her for the first time. I figured this was better than waiting for her to see me, assuming she hadn’t done so already, which it occurred to me she had and that she was hoping I’d just disappear or something. When we were alive, for a year after our breakup, we continued to be friends—close friends—but then she decided she didn’t want to see me anymore, didn’t want me in her life in any way, and that was that.
I wasn’t sure what to think as I approached her. I mean, a lot of time had passed, and of course our situations had changed, so maybe she’d be willing to talk again and be friends. Certainly that’s what I was hoping, but I figured I’d play it safe and just say hi and ask how she’s doing, and then sort of follow her lead. It went well, I suppose, in that she was friendly and asked about me, but at the same time I know her really well, as well as I know anyone, and so I know when she’s being nice because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s better than not being nice. On the other hand I thought maybe I should make allowances for the fact that she hadn’t expected me to be there, that I appeared out of nowhere, and that we haven’t talked in what seems like a million years. Of course as I thought this, I knew it was bullshit, I knew I was lying to myself as a way to get through a painful experience, but what can I say?—I needed a way through.
That was the first day. We haven’t talked since. A few times I’ve run into her heading to or from the vending machine, and she’s always smiled at me in friendly, or pseudo-friendly, recognition. I don’t mean to criticize her for this. Far from it. She’s handling the situation as well as anyone could. I mean, would it be better if she spat at me? I don’t so, and I don’t think she does either.
Anyway, maybe I’m being a bit narcissistic to think this, but I can’t help imagining that she’s over there asking herself, again and again, what the fuck is that motherfucker doing here? It’s as though I can’t escape from hurting her, or from imagining I am. And then I end up wondering (obviously I have a lot of time on my hands) if this is the whole point of the deal: that you get stuck in the same room with someone who hurt you, or with someone you hurt, until you’re either purified or, I don’t know what, ready to move on. This doesn’t sound right, it sounds stupid, but I don’t know what else to think. In the film they showed, there was an image almost exactly like the shot in Meshes in the Afternoon in which a woman stands at a window with her hands on a window pane. She’s inside a house looking out, but the trees reflected in the window make it seem like she’s outside looking in. It’s such an evocative image, although at the same time you don’t know what it means or even if it’s supposed to mean anything. The whole film is like this—as are a lot of things, I suppose.
Honestly I don’t what I’m trying to say.
30 October 2005 | Stranger
Many years ago, more years than can possibly be true, Rick Boike discovered my journal in my then girlfriend’s van and wrote a new entry in it: “Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. I love a stranger.”
He wrote this in big, crooked letters—a madman’s scrawl.
In the restaurant, just before we ate, I divided myself into two people, one of whom, the one I thought of as me, took the table behind us. You didn’t realize this, or didn’t seem to. You were upset about the service. Evidently one of the dishes was wrong. You explained this to the waiter who insisted the dish was what you ordered. There was some discussion about chickpeas, which I couldn’t make out from where I sat. Then the waiter left, leaving the wrong dish on the table. Because of this it wasn’t clear to you if he was going to bring the correct dish. I said he was, but you weren’t so sure. While we shared the other dish—Chicken Tikki, I believe—I compared the situation with the waiter to something that sometimes happens between us. I couldn’t quite follow what I was saying because it was loud in the restaurant and because I didn’t like the way I sounded (you know how that is). Still, I believe I was talking about the problem of how to accept someone when you don’t like how that person is, or rather some aspect of that person. I suppose I meant you, because you cried a little, or so it seemed by the way your shoulders shook. Then the waiter brought another dish, presumably the one you originally ordered, the one with chickpeas, and we ate for a time in silence.
28 October 2005 | Label
I want to ask her for a photograph. Not of her today, at 44, but of her then, at 15. Was she as beautiful as I remember? Or really, what did she look like? All I have is the idea she was beautiful. It’s like a label to a picture without the picture. So many of my memories take this form. The referent is missing. All that remains are labels, many of which, I know, are exaggerations, distortions, mistakes, or simply lies, attempts to make the past into something more coherent than it was, or less painful, or more flattering, or—most often—a better story.
27 October 2005 | Forward
K put the toilet paper on backwards. I discovered this when I went to pee. I like having the roll facing out, as I think of it, the loose flap hanging over the front, because I find it easier to tear off a section this way. The other way makes no sense to me, and leaves me feeling annoyed and frustrated.
A month ago K and I had a talk about replacing the roll. Or I should say, I had a talk with her. When the roll runs out, I always replace it immediately. I’m like this in general—I don’t like to leave things for later—but I’m particularly like this with toilet paper. My concern is that I’ll find the roll empty when I need it most.
K is different from me. She doesn’t like to think about any moment but the present moment, about any need but her present need.* So the only time she replaces the toilet paper is when she happens to need some and there isn’t any. I figure this is what happened today: the toilet paper ran out when she needed it, so she replaced the roll. She may have thought of me then and congratulated herself for doing something to please me. Or maybe not. I only know that she didn’t remember me telling her which way I like the toilet paper to face, despite the fact that I’ve mentioned this several times over the course of our relationship.
But that’s all water under the bridge, as it were, because I believe I’ve solved the problem now. I took a pen and a yellow sticky and I wrote a note to K, saying, “K you are so beautiful please put the toilet paper forward.” This note is taped to the little plastic tube that goes through the toilet paper roll, holding it in place.
26 October 2005 | Crazy
G allows her life to be crazy and then acts as if the craziness of her life is outside her control. Paradoxically, allowing her life to be crazy may be outside her control.
25 October 2005 | Apology
Drunk agin. It makes mey hed funny. But I can’t drink much, I get tired. Unrelated, got into a fight with aaoman at my gym, This was on the phone. She c alled to say they were charging me a late fee. Fuck that. I said she had two coices:, forget this late fee or leose me as a customer. Eventually yelling ensued. Or taher, the raising of voices. I am aorry, Anishsa, you are a nice person who was just doing her job. I hope I did not trausmatize you, however it is that one spells traumataize. But listen, your gym sucks. They didn’t have towels for a while so I had to bering my own. I’m paying 80 dollars a month for no twels. That’s, what is it, something like two dlaars and sevnty cenets a day for no wolwels. Alos the water was changed so there’s less of it. Dn’t thin kI didn’t notice. I noticed. I’m stnaind in the shower and the wter isn’t so nice anymore. I’m sorry I yelld, but just think about it for a second. No twels and less water but more more mone¥ of course nd now this fucking fucked up late fee. Fprgove me.
24 October 2005 | Fractal
I sat in the park with A and talked about his breakup with N, which has left him disconsolate. A group of men nearby were playing cricket. I’d never seen cricket before and wanted to watch the men play, but because this seemed rude to A, I turned to the side.
A said something interesting. He said that the stages of death, as defined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, repeat over and over until one moves to the next stage. It’s a fractal structure, he said. I pictured a corkscrew turning.
As I pondered this image, a cricket ball came flying toward my head. At the moment I first saw it, the ball was just ten or fifteen feet away. Somewhere behind the ball, I could see the man who had struck it. He was frozen in time, as in a photograph, a concerned expression locked on his face. I realize now he feared the ball hitting me, but in that moment I didn’t understand why he was looking at me like that.
I understood something, though, because I snapped my head back, and the ball whizzed by.
A mentioned Kubler-Ross because a breakup is like a death. Perhaps this goes without saying.
23 October 2005 | System
I neglected to mention that the cat is on a diet. It’s on a diet because it’s fat and at high risk of diabetes. This explains why it begs for food all the time: because it’s hungry.
The last time we weighed the cat, it had lost half a pound, a considerable sum for a cat. It has another pound and a half to go.
We weigh the cat at the beginning of each month. I’m the one who does it. First I weigh myself, then I stand on the scale holding the cat. K has taught me how to hold the cat, but I’m not so good at it and the cat squirms a lot. (K would do the holding except she doesn’t want to know how much she weighs.)
So far as I know, the cat has only been overfed twice since I’ve taken on the job of principal feeder. The first time was when my sister visited. My sister is, among other things, an animal communicator. I mention this because my sister fed the cat right after I did, presumably because the cat told her she was hungry.
The other incident of overfeeding was K’s mistake. We’re supposed to signal each other whenever we’ve fed the cat by turning around the cat’s dry food bag. (On the front the bag is says, “Last fed in the morning,” and on the back it says, “Last fed at night.”) One night K forgot to do this and I fed the cat a second time. I got upset about this because, as I explained it to K, I’m trying so hard.
Actually K has forgotten about the bag several times, so I’ve stopped believing what it says on the bag if there’s any chance K fed the cat. Instead I ask. This would seem to defeat the purpose of the bag-turning system (a system I created, by the way), but I still do it because the system works the other way around, letting K know when I’ve fed the cat—assuming that K remembers to look at the bag, which I don’t know that she does.
Funny thing. Though K has been away the last five days, I’ve still been turning the bag around.
22 October 2005 | Walnut
The cat is in the other room, playing with its favorite toy: a long strand of wire with a tiny knob of wood at each end. I’ve never liked the cat. As K says, it has brain the size of a walnut. Whenever K says this I picture a walnut inside the cat’s head where its brain should be.
I’m the one who usually feeds the cat because I wake first and because I’m here more often in the early evening. I don’t mind doing this, except I don’t like the way the cat begs to be fed. It particularly bothers me when the cat wakes me in the morning with its begging. For this reason I keep a spray bottle at the head of the bed, directly behind my pillow. The cat hates to be sprayed and will run away once she sees me brandish the bottle. One morning last week I squeezed the trigger but ended up spraying the wall behind the bed because I was holding the bottle backwards.
As a rule I never feed the cat when it begs to be fed as this would send the wrong message. The wrong message is: begging works. Tonight I was about to get up and feed the cat, but then it suddenly started begging, so I had to wait another ten minutes.
The walnut I picture has no shell. It’s just the walnut part.
21 October 2005 | Curve
Last night K informed me—I don’t remember how this subject came up—that my erect penis curves slightly upwards. I hadn’t noticed this, perhaps because I always look at my penis, erect or not, from above—the aerial view, as it were. But it’s true. In my closet mirror the curve is plain.
Seeing this I was reminded of the time I discovered that one of my ears sticks out due to a missing fold. I was twenty-something then, which means that my ear had been sticking out, unnoticed, for twenty-some years.
The obvious next question is, What else am I oblivious to? The mind reels.
20 October 2005 | Head
My ketchup bottle has a quote on the front. It says “Has Restaurant Experience.” On the back of the bottle the manufacturer explains that they’re running a “talking label” contest. You can send in your own phrase. The contest is called Say Something Ketchuppy. It makes me want to cut my head off.
For a while I kept the bottle at the back of the refrigerator, where I wouldn’t have to look at it, but this didn’t help because I knew the bottle was there and still thought about it every time I opened the refrigerator.
I was tempted to throw it out—I don’t even eat ketchup—but K does, and that’s why I bought it: for K, who so far as I know doesn’t mind the quote on the bottle, assuming she’s even noticed it.
For my part I’ve never mentioned it to her, nor mentioned how I feel about it, because to do so would give it even more power than it already has and make me think about it more than I already do, which is a lot.
Finally this morning I had enough: I took the bottle and poured its contents into an empty salad dressing bottle, threw the ketchup bottle in the trash, took the trash bag downstairs and stuck it in one of the trash cans in front of the building. Then I dragged the can to the curb, though today isn’t trash day.
The new ketchup bottle is adorned with a drawing of the head of a famous actor, now retired I believe, who’s wearing a thick ruffled collar like those favored by Renaissance era aristocrats. This drawing is meant as a kind of joke, a charming bit of fun, but sadly it makes the actor’s head look like a fancy Italian delicacy, something you’d buy in a bakery in Little Italy. I don’t mind the drawing nearly as much as the quote on the ketchup bottle, although it does now appear that the actor’s head is floating in a sea of blood—an unfortunate although not entirely irrelevant coincidence.
19 October 2005 | Romance
D told me about a friend who’s in therapy with her boyfriend of eight years because he won’t marry her. She’s broken up with him many times but has always gone back. I asked if this guy has given any indication of ever wanting to marry her, and D said no.
Well she’s an idiot, I said.
Actually she’s smarter than you think, said D. She doesn’t want to marry him either, so she has him play the role of the refuser. That’s why she picked him and why she keeps going back, because he’ll never agree to marry her.
I asked if D’s friend realizes any of this, and D said no, adding the boyfriend doesn’t realize it either.
We agreed that this is strangely romantic.
18 October 2005 | Dream
I stand outside a department store where four mechanical flagellants are thrashing on the ground. Earlier I was talking with one of the salepeople in the store who told me, apropos of nothing, that I reminded of her of two people, neither of whom she knows. The flagellants are huge, at least fifteen feet tall, and are turning from side to side while making moaning sounds. As I watch them writhe in simulated pain, a young punk comes along and grabs some cardboard from the ground and starts tearing it into tiny pieces. Evidently he finds the flagellants as disgusting as I do. This lifts my spirits and makes me realize that there are beautiful things in the world, I need only open my eyes to see them.
17 October 2005 | Fix-it
Today I made a friend cry by saying she’s lying to herself if she thinks she’s going to find the relationship she wants while continuing to sleep with her ex-boyfriend, who to his credit isn’t promising anything more than he can deliver: great sex, false hope, and the occasional fix-it job.
16 October 2005 | Question
Last week, over oatmeal, as K and I were discussing her resistance to doing the dishes, we arrived at the following question: What single thing is most important to your happiness? Our contrasting answers to this question help to explain many things, including why she hates doing the dishes and why I bother to tell you this.
K’s answer: Positive, shared experiences.
My answer: Finding my thoughts interesting.
It was quietly thrilling. I wondered out loud when my thoughts seem interesting to me, what’s happening then, and the answer was plain: When I see something new, when I’m uncovering the truth about something.
I said, “I could be happy dying if I found my thoughts interesting.”
K added, “Oblivio is a record of your interesting thoughts.”
I noted that K’s attachment to her cat is the result of many positive, shared experiences, and that her life is set up to foster and maximize such experiences, which I dubbed, in the singular, a PSE (pronounced “pissy”).
Ever since, whenever K and I talk about our days, I ask her about her PSE’s. “Did you have any PSE’s at the meeting?” “Was your dinner with so-and-so a PSE?”
Obviously there are no potential PSE’s in doing the dishes, unless one does them with another. By contrast, dishwashing is an ideal time for thinking—as is any solitary, meditative activity. This explains why I love showers, and why K loves showering together.
I recall something a beautiful woman once said to me on a date: “Don’t make yourself miserable by thinking so much.” I ended the date as quickly as I could and never called her again.
15 October 2005 | Story
A man comes to a Zen master and says, “I want to quit smoking. Why am I having so much trouble quitting?” The Zen master replies, “You haven’t suffered enough. Go back to smoking.”
This story was told to me by my then girlfriend. It was her way of explaining why she hadn’t broken up with me: she held out hope that I hadn’t suffered enough.
This must be dream, I tell myself, I must be asleep, dreaming. The detective does not exist; he is the product of my unconscious. Unconsciously I desire Henry’s death and so I have killed him in my dream. In truth, Henry is still alive, and like me, he is probably sleep somewhere, dreaming. Perhaps he dreams my death as I dream his. Soon enough I will wake and find myself in bed, the nightmare over. And then in the morning I will have forgotten the whole thing. Perhaps I dream this same dream every night, every night conjuring Henry’s death. Remembering Don Juan, I look down at the palms of my hands and try to seize control of my dream. Be gone, I say, staring at my hands but addressing the dream world detective. Be gone, I don’t want you here. When I finally look up again, the detective hasn’t budged. I’m sorry, he says, I realize this comes as a shock.
13 October 2005 | Friends
K, who works for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit foundation behind Sesame Street (“and so much more,” says K), told me this morning that a new muppet will appear on the show next September. Correction: not a muppet. In 2004 The Jim Henson Company, run by the late Henson’s son and daughter, sold the muppet “property” to Disney. This included Kermit the Frog and Miss Pippy and other less popular muppets, along with the Muppet Show and the various Muppet movies. Disney also acquired the term muppet, so the puppet characters on Sesame Street are no longer referred to as muppets but friends. (To confuse matters, some of these friends are also monsters. The distinction depends on whether the friend is meant to represent a human. Non-human friends are monsters; human friends are just friends. The give-away here is fur: only monsters are covered in fur. Thus Grover and Oscar are monsters, while Bert and Ernie are not. All four, however, are friends. One exception to this fur rule is Big Bird, who is covered in feathers, not fur, but is definitely a monster, albeit an unrelentingly friendly one.)
But I digress.
K wouldn’t tell me anything about the new friend because it’s a big secret and no one outside of Sesame Workshop is supposed to know. I told her I understood, which really I didn’t, and instead made up my own new friend. She’s called Terri, and she’s a self-described slut. (As Terri explains it, calling herself a slut is her way of reclaiming her feminine power.) Terri is into a lot of new age practices and phenomena such as channeling, reincarnation, and crystals, and also various “unsolved mysteries” such as UFOs and Crop circles. I picture her in a purple slip and several scarves. She has sex with all the other friends, sometimes more than one at a time. Since she’ll only do this in the graveyard (you didn’t know there was a graveyard near Sesame Street, did you?), she’s affectionately known as “Cemetery Terri.” Her presence on Sesame Street has a remarkably positive effect on the other friends. For example, Oscar becomes less grouchy, and Cookie Monster develops a broader, though no less voracious, appetite.
12 October 2005 | Junk
I couldn’t get my bottom drawer open because I had put this thick folder in there in the wrong way. In the end I had to remove the drawer entirely. In doing so I saw, through the space where the drawer had been, my lucky piece of plastic, which had mysteriously disappeared sometime last year. It’s just a round piece of plastic, like a poker chip, perhaps a quarter inch thick. I can’t imagine what it was originally used for. My sense rather is that it was cut from something to make a hole. I found it many years ago on the beach in California, at Abbott’s Lagoon, at an isolated sculpture garden where all the sculptures are made from debris from the ocean, all manner of sea junk. Though I call it my lucky piece of plastic, I don’t consider it lucky since I don’t really believe in things being lucky in the sense of bringing good luck. It’s more a kind of memento of the place where I found it, a place where worthless junk has been made into something beautiful.
11 October 2005 | Birthday
It’s K’s birthday today. We just returned from dinner, and a special activity awaits us, one we’ve been anticipating all day, but first I need to write something for Oblivio. I promised her this would only take 10 minutes.
Some highlights from the day:
- Visiting the carousel in Prospect Park, though it was closed.
- K’s first ever bite of roti at my favorite Caribbean restaurant, “Caribbean Restaurant.”
My dead-on imitation, in the Tropical Pavilion at the Brooklyn Botantic Garden, of Werner Herzog “jungle” speech in Burden of Dreams (you have to trust this was funny): “Kinski says the jungle is full of erotic elements. It’s not so much erotic, but full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotic here. I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking, fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there’s a lot of misery, but it’s the same misery that’s all around us. The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing; they just screech in pain. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony. It’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.”
There was more, but I’m running out of time.
Our special activity, by the way, is ear coning. This was K’s idea. Think what you will, but we both find this romantic.
10 October 2005 | Fátima
Day One
When I arrived home tonight, there were six consecutive messages on the machine from Fátima. All the messages had been left in the space of an hour and a half.
- Hi, Jay, this is Fátima calling you Friday 9:30. Can you please give me a call back today or tomorrow? Bye.
- Hi, it’s me again. You are there celebrating your degree and you’re doing well. I’m here at home Friday night celebrating my birthday by myself. In the end, after you’ve celebrated everything with your good friends, Juwow included, the last talk will be between me and you. Call me tomorrow.
- If you want to have the pleasure to see how decent people like me lose it, I’ll give you that chance fully. Because when people love, they give the chance. Bye.
- Laugh, laugh and have fun; you’re on top of the world. Remember Adam, Jay. But I am Eve. Or evil, if you prefer.
- My pain, my shame, will redeem you, whether you like it or not. Remember, my pain will redeem you.
- I’m going for a long walk, and you’re the one who’s going to find me. It’s not my parents, it’s not my friends, it’s not the Harvard Police; it’s you. I’m going for a very long walk.
*
Day Two
Fátima called at least a dozen times this morning. At least I assume it was Fátima. The only time I’m certain about was the first, when I answered and woke Jay. Later, while I was in the bathroom giving myself a haircut, the phone rang every few minutes, and each time Jay picked it up. Unfortunately Jay had some cartoon on the television that drowned out the sound of his voice and made it impossible to determine if he was talking with Fátima. A little later, while I was taking a shower, the doorbell rang and Jay answered it. A little later it rang again, and again he answered it. When I emerged from the shower, I saw that he had gone and had left the television on, tuned to some cartoon. Ten or fifteen minutes later I heard him return and walk back to the television, alone so far as I could tell. Then the doorbell rang again, but Jay didn’t stir. I would have gotten it myself, only I was convinced it was Fátima. The doorbell rang again, this time continuously—without question Fátima was out there, standing on the porch, holding down the buzzer. Finally Jay rose from the couch, and now he’s out there talking with her—I can hear his muffled voice.
Oh shit. I just heard the doorbell again, only this time it’s not Fátima; it’s the police—I definitely heard a man’s voice say the word police. I suppose Jay hadn’t actually talking with Fátima but with our upstairs neighbors. Now I feel stupid for remaining in my room all this time, writing. Perhaps I should have gone out and helped Jay in some way. All along I was thinking there was nothing I or anyone could do, so the best thing was to give them space.
Oh shit again. Now Fátima called and I went out to the porch and there was Jay with two police officers.
“Jay, I’m sorry,” I said, “Fátima’s on the phone.”
“Is this her?” asked the cop.
“Yes,” said Jay.
“Do you want me to talk to her?” asked the cop.
“Yes.”
The four of us entered the house and I said, “Hey, Jay, how’s it going?”
“It’s come to this,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
The cop got on the phone and talked to Fátima. It was horrible. After determining that she’s a Harvard student, he said, “Listen, you’re an intelligent woman. I’m telling you that you need to stay away from this property. You don’t want to jeopardize your career… I’m not concerned that you’re not afraid. I’m not trying to make you afraid. I’m just telling you to stay away from this property… He doesn’t want to have anything to do with you either. I’ll tell him to stay away from you, if you like, but you need to stay away from him also… Listen, we’re going to put a tap on this phone. You can’t call him or come here. You can’t approach him in any way. I think you understand that this serious. Jay is filing a report of assault and battery. We’re filling out the forms.” And on and on and on.
After the cop finally hung up, he turned to us and said, “Whew.”
A few minutes later the phone rang again. No one answered it. Fátima didn’t leave a message this time. Then she called again, and again left no message.
While I’ve been typing all this, the cops have been interviewing Jay in the next room. From Jay’s answers I’ve learned that Fátima is black, about 37 or 38, 5’ 1”, about 120lbs. She attacked Jay once before, two weeks ago, in a hall at school. She has hounded him at work. Jay saw her socially in February, then tried to break away from her.
“Do you see much of this?” asked Jay.
“Yes, we do,” said the cop. “It crosses all economic classes, all races.” He didn’t mention genders.
The cop recommended that Jay get a restraining order, either today or Monday.
I went out and spoke with Jay, telling him again that I’m sorry and offering to help in any way I can. The cop asked if I’d seen the assault. “No,” I said, “I’ve never met the woman. I’ve heard her phone messages of course, but I’ve never met her.”
Fátima showed up a short time later—what nerve!—and the cop asked me to take a look at her so I could recognize her if returned. I stood with Steve by the window, looking. Fátima was leaning into the window of the police car, her back to us. We had to wait for a long time before she turned in our direction. My only thought on seeing her face was that she didn’t look insane, that her insanity didn’t show much.
*
After talking about it all with Jay and Steve for about a half hour, I left to go to the library. When I walked out the door I looked around to see if Fátima might be lurking somewhere. If she was, I didn’t see her. Walking home from the library, on Fayette Street, about a hundred feet from the shortcut, I passed Fátima walking from the direction of our apartment. We looked right past each other. I had the horrific thought that she had just come from shooting Jay, and I half-expected to find an ambulance in the front of the house. Instead I found an envelope sticking out of the mail slot. It had Jay’s name on it. I opened the door and handed it to Jay, who for some reason was standing directly behind the door. Steve, who was there also, said, “Here’s your $2,500”—a remark I didn’t understand until Jay played me her three most recent messages.
- I’m leaving the check for $2,500 in your box now. Bye.
- Make good use of it. Use it for the kids in Roxbury; they need it. And take some aside for paying dinners to your next girlfriend.
- Take them out. Have fun. You deserve it.
The envelope contained a check for $2,500 along with a letter that read, “Jay, I did not play alone with my toys. I played with friends that I loved. That’s how I got to became human.” The envelope also held a photo of a laughing girl, perhaps two years old. Fátima.
Jay and Steve went to school and I watched the second half of the Seattle/Utah basketball game, an extraordinarily boring game won by Seattle by 30 points. Right after the game, Fátima started calling again. (Had she been watching the same game? Had the useless ineptitude of the Utah players struck a chord with her?) Here is her most recent round of messages:
- I want to be locked up. I’m giving you all that need for your alibi. You are a healthy citizen and I am a mad woman. I want to be locked up. I want to see it happen and I will do as best as I can to see it happen. You will leave with your conscience.
- I am alone as I want to be. I have absolutely no friends. My friends are mad, angry at me. They don’t want to see me. They don’t want to talk to me. This is where I have got to. Think about it. Put me in jail. Send me to grave.
- You want a woman fresh, clean, young. Explain to me how your mother got divorced from your father if she was not fresh, clean, and young.
- Live happy ever after. Live happy ever after. Is that what the credo says—live happy ever after? With me in your conscience.
- Are you clean—clean, young, and fresh? Striking? Looking for striking women? Go ahead. Go ahead. Live happy ever after!
- And laugh! Laugh loud! Make a mockery out of me! Look at me as if you didn’t know when you see me in the cafe. Laugh! Laugh very loud! Laugh! Laugh about it! It’s very funny!
- Record everything. Broadcast it on the news. Show it to everyone that you know. Juwow H—, your buddies, the black folks at Harvard, your 13BA. Broadcast it very loud, so that everybody can see how mad this woman is and how healthy and fresh and clean you are!
*
Day Three
There were nine more calls yesterday.
- Hi, Jay. You had all this prepared way in advance before your review, right? I realize now that from the beginning there was something very perverse and sick about it. But it will end perverse and sick. Bye.
- Are you aware of the fact that I have a project signed by you in my hands that states the date May twelfth or fourteenth, and that there are people who [inaudible] together at the Wang Center just a couple weeks ago. It’s becoming very ugly. I don’t know if you realize. Very, very ugly. I don’t care what Barry does to me any longer. But it’s not going to do any good to you.
- Hi, Jay. I left a few things at your door for you. And from this point on, you’re in charge of whatever happens to me. Do you understand? From now on, it’s up to you whatever happens to me.
- Jay, you are responsible for whatever happens to me. And I curse you. You’ll never be able to love. You’ll never be able to be happy. You’ll never be able to do anything with your degree in architecture. You are cursed for life. Do you understand me? You are invisible. From today on you are invisible, unless you take responsibility for what you’ve done to me.
- Answer to me. Answer to me. Answer the phone. Answer to me! Answer to the phone! Answer to me! I’m not crazy. I am just a human being who you have been making miserable. Answer to me if you have any sense of shame! Answer to me! Answer to me! Answer to me; you are there. If you have any sense of shame, answer to me! Answer to me! … I know you’re there, Jay. Answer the phone. Answer the phone. I have taken a number of pills, I don’t know how many. Answer the phone.
- I have been walking between your place and my place at two in the morning, three in the morning, and I have met someone, Sasha, that works at the cafe. Absolutely everyone that I know and that you know is going to know about this. You are going to be exposed. I’ve spoken to the chair of my department. I’ve spoken to my colleagues. I’m speaking to your advisor. I’m speaking to people in GSD. Because you are a monster. You are not a human being; you are a monster. And you’re not going out of Harvard with a degree and do whatever you want. Do you understand me? Call the police, and we’ll deal with the police. I will deal with the police. My department will deal with the police. Harvard will deal with the police. You’re outcast. You are an outcast. You are gonna have to get—
- You have preferred to associate yourself with Juwow R— and the like. Who are they? Who is Juwow? Juwow is an orphan; he’s a bastard. He has a family of 200 children. His father keeps having children with every single woman on that island. He has no social class. He’s a nobody. That’s why he hates me. Who are your friends and the friends of the people you’re hanging out with? They’re nothing. Who are these women? You attract these striking women. Women that aren’t worth the shit. They’ve nothing. You don’t even understand what your place is. You’re trying to put me in my place. My place is upper middle class with access to power and decision. Haven’t I proved it to you several times. Does the evidence hurt?
- Have you been asking advice from your father? Who’s your father? What does he know? The only thing that he knew probably was to abuse your mother and get rid of her. That’s exactly the example that you’re following. You’re a bastard, and your father is. Show all this. Date it, record it, show it to the police. Get me in jail if you can. You are going to be exposed. You’re the scum of the world. You are not human, and you will be invisible. You are invisible and you’ll keep being invisible.
- If worse comes to worse, I’ll kill myself. I have the means to do that. But it’s not going to be without a lot, a lot, of suffering on your part. Believe me, you’re going to be going through a lot of suffering. Invisible nigger.
After transcribing these nine messages, I replaced the microcassette in the answering machine, thinking that a written transcription doesn’t do her justice, that one must listen to her speak to fully grasp the desperate intensity of these messages. After I removed the old microcassette and before I inserted the new one, the phone rang. The answering machine began to whirl, searching for the beginning of the tape. But with no tape, the answering machine just continued to whirl as the phone rang. After 30 or 40 rings, I went into my room and shut off the ringer on my phone. The phone in Guiomar’s room continued to ring, but it wasn’t nearly as loud. After 100 or more rings, the ringing suddenly stopped. I quickly inserted the new microcassette, but then had trouble recording a greeting. Actually, I may have succeeded in recording a new greeting, but I couldn’t get the machine to play it back. By this point, my laptop was beginning to run out of juice. (I had brought the computer into the living room so I could sit next to answering machine while transcribing Fátima’s messages.) I considered this a sign that I should go out and buy something to eat. It was now almost one o’clock and I had failed to take the time to eat anything. My plan was to buy some fruit, come home and have lunch, document what was in the two small brown bags that Fátima left outside the door this morning, and then watch the first game of the Chicago/Orlando conference final at 3:30.
On the porch I discovered a large plastic bag. The bag contained clothes, mostly, and there was note on top for Jay. I’m never going to be able to keep up with her, I thought.
On the way to and from the grocery I thought about that bag. I could picture Fátima in her apartment carefully stuffing various articles of clothing into it and then lugging it down the stairs and out the door. What went through her mind as she struggled to carry that bulky bag the five or six blocks from her apartment to our porch? What in the world is she thinking? I can only assume that her thoughts resemble her messages, that her messages are her thoughts. (The phone is ringing again.) Last night I told the whole story to Judith, who more than anything was struck by the woman’s lack of shame. This, I realize, is what makes her so compelling: the sense that she has moved beyond the bounds of propriety, that she has no fear of the police, of insanity, or self-degradation, that she has surrendered herself to her passion, without thought to the consequences. It is madness.
When I returned from the grocery, there were no additional packages on the porch and only one new message on the answering machine. I was tempted to start in on documenting the contents of the two little bags but then realized I had to eat something, so I cut a few pieces of cheese and stuck them between two slices of whole wheat bread.
As to those two little bags, they are both medium-sized shopping bags with handles—one from the Gap, the other from Structure. The Gap bag contains reading materials mostly: some books (The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon; Black Skin, White Masks, also by Franz Fanon; encountering the other(s) by Gisela Brinker-Gabler; Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; A Salute to Cape Verdean Musicians and their Music by Ronald Barboza); two photo books (The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes, and Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective); two recent editions of The New Yorker (the April 29 Black in America issue, and the April 8 issue featuring an article on Albert Murray by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.); and three CDs (Cesaria and Miss Perfumado by Cesaria Evora, and The Cape Verdean Blues by The Horace Silver Quintet plus J. J. Johnson). The bag from the Gap has assorted nicknacks and pottery, most of which were probably made in Cape Verde: three dolls, including a medium-size stuffed tiger; two vases (one a large simple brown and blue vase, the other a much more elegant and colorful hourglass-shaped vase); a clay plate etched with the scene of what looks like a shamanistic rite; a small ceramic plate; a shell painted with the scene of someone wind surfing; a small head of a woman made from seems to be polished bone; a carved wooden letter opener; two handmade beaded bracelets; a carved wooden bowl; and a pair of hand-painted wooden maracas.
I refuse to itemize the contents of the bag on the porch. Well, I just took a peak. As I said before, it contains a lot of clothes—jeans, t-shirts, socks—but also numerous towels of various sizes. There’s a large envelope on top with Jay’s name on it, and a brown plastic bag inside that contains some harder objects, possibly books.
The new message on the machine goes: “Hi, Jay, I left a bag outside with some things and a letter for you. It’s important that you read it.”
The phone just rang again. I didn’t answer it, thinking it was Fátima. Instead it was a Detective White from the Cambridge Police with a question about the report Jay filed yesterday. As to that report, which Jay left sitting on our kitchen table, section 26, the section entitled Narrative, reads:
On the above date & time 8 states that 20 came to his home wanting to speak to him. 8 went outside on his front porch to talk to 20. 8 went to walk back into his house (20 wanted to argue). When 20 tried to follow in behind him 8 blocked her path. At this point 20 attached 8 scratching his left arm, nose, and bit him. During this time 8 states that he was trying to hold her back. 8 states although there was never a romantic relationship they had gone out socially in the past. 8 states that 20 has been harassing him by phone since February 96. 8 was advised of his 209A rights but declined at this time.
Section 5, Offense(s), reads, “A & B Annoying and Harassing Phone Calls.” Section 4, Weather Conditions, reads, “Cloudy.”
09 October 2005 | System
In 1988 Laura and I created a three-stage model of what we called “living process.” We called the three stages Good Thing, Rut, and Transition. As we saw it, Good Thing becomes Rut, Rut becomes Transition, and Transition becomes Good Thing. It’s a continuous circuit.
A Good Thing never leads directly to a Transition, in large part because it has no reason to. A Good Thing wants to remain a Good Thing, and this is precisely why it becomes a Rut. Ruts, on the other hand, want desperately to change into something else.
Transitions can be indistinguishable from Ruts. The only important difference is that new events can occur during Transitions, whereas Ruts, by definition, consist of the same thing happening over and over.
When a scientist makes what is recognized as an important discovery or breakthrough, this is perceived as a Good Thing. But then the discovery or breakthrough inevitably becomes a kind of dogma or Rut. This is followed by a period of Transition until someone makes a new discovery, creating a new Good Thing.
The duration of the stages is not consistent from case to case: a system could be in Good Thing for a long time and then pass through a brief Rut—although the opposite is more likely. Good Things by their nature are fragile.
The model as a whole helps to define what might be called a “healthy” system, a system capable of evolution and renewal. Notably, Ruts are integral to even the “healthiest” system; however systems that tend toward shorter Ruts can be thought of “healthier,” of having better odds of survival.
*
Encountering these ideas again (I found them in an old journal) made me remember Laura, which in turn made me question the model we created. Is our friendship in an extended Rut? A Transition? I know it’s not a Good Thing. Is there a fourth stage we missed? This is what I suspect, only I don’t know what to call it, nor where it fits with the other stages, nor even if it can thought of as a stage. Instead it seems like something that swallows the stages, or that swallows the thing that moves through stages. What is it?
*
Addendum 10/10/05: I just turned the page in my old journal and found this entry from the following day:
I’m not sure what Transition is, nor if it’s even necessary. Maybe the model should just go: Good Thing, Rut, Good Thing, Rut. This dualistic model scares me because I think the truth of the matter is closer to Good Thing, Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut, Good Thing, Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut Rut….
But this then reminds me of something else: “The nine shallow, one deep rhythm delights your partner. The vacuum has tremendous effect: she feels empty then full, empty then full. This pause pleases because you constantly refresh her senses with change. When we eat our fill, we want no more. But one delicious taste increases desire. We satisfy then stimulate desire. We create desire then renew satisfaction.” —Mantak Chia, Taoist Secrets of Love
08 October 2005 | Chance
I’ve often said I’d give anything to talk to him again, but what would I actually say, if given the chance? I don’t think he would understand any of it, nor do I think I could really tell him anything. It would be like it is with other people. You want to reach out, but what do you have to reach with? Also, he’d be old now. 94. His sister-in-law, my great-aunt, is the last one left in his generation. She weighs seventy pounds and sleeps all the time. Would I sit by his bed as I sit by hers and hold his hand as I hold hers and smile when he opens his eyes and say nothing, as I do with her, her eyes like mine but so much older?
07 October 2005 | Basement
I’m in the basement doing laundry with Dave Waldstein. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I’m surprised at how nice his clothes are. I don’t remember him having such nice clothes. I say, “I realize this is going to sound trippy, but I think I’m dead, Dave.”
He glances up from the shirt he’s folding to give me a look.
I say, “I don’t know how long I’ve been dead, it might have just happened. I’m not used to it. All my life I was a part of the world and now I’m not anymore.”
I know what Dave is thinking: If you’re dead, how are we having this conversation? While wondering how to explain this to him, it occurs to me that maybe he’s dead too. Should I tell him? I decide not to.
“Last I heard,” I say, “you were definitely alive. You live in Westchester. You’re still a sportswriter, but I don’t think you like it very much.”
At this Dave gives me a crooked smile, one I take to mean: at least you got that right, buddy.
It’s a half-funny moment, but then suddenly it strikes me that Dave isn’t really Dave, and that I’m just talking to myself in the basement. Holding up a pair of socks, I say, “These socks are an illusion. Something like a dream. All of these clothes are. Even the basement is. There’s really no sense in us folding anything.”
06 October 2005 | Shaking
I found myself in bed, shaking. I got up to pee—and to get away from the bed. In the bathroom I was surprised by how much I needed to pee. I hadn’t known. Also, I couldn’t stop shaking. It was a problem. I stood there shaking and peeing and trying not to get pee everywhere because of the shaking.
On the drive from Salzburg to Graf, S and I visited Ohlsdorf—the home, for the last 24 years of his life, of my favorite writer, Thomas Bernhard. Coincidentally it was Thomas Bernhard week; a banner hung over the road announcing this. I winced. Bernhard despised Ohlsdorf, just as he despised all of Austria, which made this an ironic and possibly insulting honor.
Later, in Vienna, I was told that Bernhard’s hatred of Austria is a large part of why so many Austrians revere him. Evidently hatred of one’s homeland is a quintessentially Austrian attitude. But it is by no means universal, for another group of Austrians consider Bernhard a Nestbeschmutzer (someone who soils his own nest). Bernhard himself claimed to love Austria more than his critics; his love was the ground of his hatred. His hatred, however, ran deep. In a famous insult from the grave, his will disallowed all publication and staging of his work within Austria’s borders.
But I digress.
Bernhard’s home, a farmhouse, was far from Ohlsdorf proper. I had no idea what I would do when we arrived—probably nothing more than gawk as we drove past—but the banner made me uneasy. Finally, less than a mile from our destination, I told S, who was driving, that I wanted to turn back.
“But we’re almost there,” she said.
“I don’t care. Bernhard doesn’t want us here.”
“But Bernhard is dead.”
“I know he’s dead. Now please stop the car.”
S pulled the car onto the shoulder, and we sat for moment in silence. Then she asked me to get out.
I remember throwing stones at a tree while I waited for her to return.
We never discussed what she saw at the farmhouse. I never asked her about it, and she never brought it up.
04 October 2005 | Phone
It’s interesting that I fall back on writing. Because one thought I have is that writing is bullshit. That’s how it feels: that what I’m writing is bullshit and that writing itself is bullshit—by which I mean, beside the point. Still, what else do I have? This thought occurred to me last night: Even if it’s bullshit, it’s all I have.
*
I’ve been trying to write a story and haven’t had much luck. I don’t know if this can be called writer’s block. What exactly is writer’s block? Is it when you write something and it isn’t any good? I think of that as bad writing. Is it when you try to think of something to write and can’t? To me that’s not being able to think of something.
*
I held a broken phone to my head and imagined a character in a play who does this. None of the other characters would acknowledge it; it would be this dumb thing he does to get attention.
Ah, but what would happen if a call came in for him on another (real) line. What would he say?
At first I thought he says, “It’s okay, I’ve got it,” but then I realized this is wrong.
He says, “Take a message, I’m on the other line.”
03 October 2005 | Arrow
The breasts of the woman tonight… so yummy. And yet he hardly talked to her, despite her apparent interest, and left the party abruptly. It was because of her outfit, which seemed designed for no other purpose than to guide his eyes to her breasts. “You have a fondness for breasts, sir? Please follow me, I have a pair which may interest you.” It struck him as overkill, a lack of subtlety. Whatever she wore, he would have noticed her breasts, so why the flashing traffic arrow? He felt insulted by it, for it made him think she thought this was all he cared about. And here he was, proving her right. Which he resented because while he notices breasts, he notices other things as well, including things one cannot knead or suckle, such as wit and intelligence.
In TV sci-fi shows these days, there is always at least one character (not necessarily human) with large, shapely breasts. On some excuse or another, this character is obliged to wear a skin-tight outfit. Doubtless the actresses who play these roles realize they were chosen because of their breasts and that the characters they portray were created for the same reason, that both actress and character are, essentially, breast-delivery vehicles—the shows’ writers having begun with the obligatory need for a large-breasted character and worked backwards. What must it be like to think, I am here for my tits?
This was what disturbed him—that she seemed to think she was there for her tits, or that he was, and that this represented, for her, an opportunity. Such is the new feminism: objectification is good when you are the object of it, and know it, and use for your own ends. However, what ends can it possibly help you achieve? None of any worth, he thought, although he knew this was unfair to her. His sense, instead, was that she wanted love, the same as anyone, and was going about finding it as best she could, which to her mind (and who is to argue with her?) began with her breasts.
Later, walking to the subway, it struck him that men have probably gone for her breasts first, again and again, and that over time she has formed herself around this maneuver—the stray hand in her sweater—in order to not feel repulsed by it. That is, even if she enjoys it, which one would hope she does, she must grow weary of men wanting her for her breasts and not for her, whoever she may be beyond them.
02 October 2005 | Place
My god I’m almost afraid to describe this. Or it’s more like I can’t quite get to the place from which it’s describable. That place… it means being inside it. There’s really no difference between the place and the place from which to describe it.
Her hair was blond, or perhaps light brown. She wasn’t tall. I know this because I’m not tall myself and wouldn’t have liked a girl taller than me. Similarly she couldn’t have been particularly thin or fat, because I would remember that.
So much of what I believe derives from what I don’t remember.
She sat at the front of my row. I was two seats back, or perhaps three.
I can see the classroom a little. It had a door at the front, on the right. I’m not able to walk through it. I know because I’ve tried. I’m stuck at my desk in the middle of the room. There must be windows to my left but I can’t turn my head that way to see them.
The other students are vague. They occupy space but have no appearance. It would be wrong to draw them with blank faces because that would seem strange. They aren’t strange. It’s as though the room is a painting, most of which is sketched in pencil. Although this too is wrong. The figures are people not sketches. Perhaps it’s more like a photograph in which the background is out of focus, although deliberately so, so that the foreground, the object of the composition, stands out. However this photograph has no foreground. It’s all background.
