greater mistake you can make than having
been born in the first place and that's already
happened and it can't be fixed and it wasn't
even your fault.
 |
| He said that when he came upon me from behind he didn't know whether he wanted more to fuck me or to strangle me. Unexpectedly, this turned me on. |
She stopped attributing quotes copied from
the texts she read & no longer took credit
for the lines that came from her own pen. It
seemed irrelevant to make a distinction--or
there was no distinction to make, really, point-
less to make a point of being personal or
impersonal, objective or subjective. Her mind,
unlike her brain, seemed to exist somewhere
outside her skull, it was an interface; there
were only thoughts coming and going, like
radio waves passing through her consciousness,
nothing more; they could be held, possessed,
branded by no one; they were free-range.
All ownership, all currency, all identity
was contrived--
 |
| It is down this hallway, through this doorway that whatever I imagine happening always happens |
2 of the 10 good reasons for lying: (6)
Being beyond gravity, weightless, in a
dream assembled by one's own hands.
(9) I put something of myself in those
stories and hoped to arrive at a defini-
tion one disguised by the surrounding
absurdity--a definition of myself with-
the usual anguish such readings entail.
 |
| At the museum I became obsessed with the obsession of the sculptor who sculpted this bare foot with such care. I imagined him directing such reverential focus to the contours of my own foot, his finger, his chisel, his eye touching me with such patient exactitude… Need I say more? |
My greatest mistake—the greatest?—oh
come on, it's impossible to rank them—
they were all so great, my mistakes, any
one of them looked at in a certain context,
from a certain point of view, might have
qualified as "the greatest"— so let's in-
stead say that my foundational mistake,
the one upon which all the others were
ultimately based, was to try to universalize
my particularity—to claim that my behav-
ior and personality were perfectly "norm-
al"—even superior to the norm—and to
defend this position with a positively lud-
icrous passion—the ferocity appropriate
to a battle for self-survival—which I not-
so-mistakenly took it to be—at least in
the world, among the people with whom
I was living at the time. Why did I want
so badly to be (mis)taken for normal? Of
course, I realize now I should have admit-
ted straight off that there was nothing nor-
mal about me—unhesitatingly, even eager-
ly admitted it to myself and to anyone who
accused me of being abnormal. It would
have spared everyone a great deal of time
& aggravation—me especially. The urge
to fit in is so powerful, though, so all-en-
compassing, it is akin to the urge for self-
preservation—about that I was correct—
if only I could have understood that you
can survive outside of the society of the
normal—at the margins, among the nom-
ads, the fugitives, the terrorists…
…it's strange, isn't it, that someone like me,
with my upbringing & education & presum-
ably well-trained intellect, would have such
a very significant thing in common with this
man. It was his instinct that death is without
meaning unless it is met violently.
"Why not fuck me and then strangle me,"
I asked, half-jokingly. "Or vice-versa. Or
both at the same time? Why does it have
to be a choice?"
"Of course," he said, laughing. "One doesn't
have to choose. We're trained to deny our-
selves, taught that we can't have everything.
It's drummed into us at every turn. It's a
terrible handicap. We grow up crippled be-
cause of it. I blame the Puritans, the Prostest-
ants, the Catholics, the whole lot of them.
Either/or thinking. It's a bad habit. Often,
in fact most times, you really can have it
both ways."
He placed his hands playfully around my throat
and gave my larynx an affectionate squeeze, mom-
entirely cutting off my breath. I felt the impossibly
long erection through his gabardine slacks.
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