Artificial Light

by James Greer

  I lately wonder if my loneliness was why Kurt C—decided it was safe to unburden himself to me, or if he’d done his research and saw that I could keep a secret. If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago for my chief virtue I might have said: I keep secrets. I’m telling secrets now, though—I’m slinging secrets like hot rocks into the sky-blue sea, now that nothing matters. Truth’s its own consequence. The sun provides light but the sun is not itself light. I’ll tell you another one: Kurt is dead. I killed him.

  Notebook Two

  Shot him in the head at close range. Do you want to know why?

  Because he asked. Nicely. In a casual tone, the way you’d ask a friend to watch your cat, if you had a friend, or a cat. I’m not big on favors, but I did this one thing, this one time. It seemed to make sense, and still does, although I’m maybe using make sense in an unusual way. Kurt wanted an appropriate end to the story of Kurt C—. The end he chose matched the tenor of his story. That much I can aver, unreservedly.

  Dredging up memories brings pain, and heat, and a weird taste in the back of my mouth, which may be related less to memory than to lunch, or more accurately the memory of lunch, since I have not eaten properly in some time. Things happen in the world objectively, that seems clear. But I can no longer determine the dividing line between matter and memory (the thing and the image of the thing, to complete the Bergsonian circle) with any self-confidence.

  Kurt made a mess of himself, there’s no getting around that, though the ripples of his exit will take some time to subside. While no anthropomorphic deity likely awaits behind pearly gates—God has been killed so many times by now it’s considered bad manners to resurrect him again—the bulk of us, to judge from the available literature, still cling with childlike hope to some notion of immortality, to some idea of the soul. I know Kurt did, or he would not have handed me a pistol and asked me to shoot. I know I do, or I would not have shot.

  I can’t gargle or shuffle cards. The latter despite my mother’s addiction to solitaire, and to bridge, and her patient efforts to teach me to cut the deck without looking, by touch—to take nonchalantly each half-deck in either hand and bend the cards until the bowed edges kiss, then interleave them with a rapid riffling sound like a gusty wind through ash leaves. I could never manage anything better than a lazy breeze. Considering my upbringing, I should be expert at solitary games. But: no.

  My disability re gargling’s a residual effect of my religious upbringing. I was raised as a Christian Scientist. Christian Science teaches that the world as perceived through our senses is an illusion, the creation of Mortal Error, and that by recognizing the illusory nature of reality and the consequent perfection of God’s true creation—his image and likeness, as manifested by Jesus Christ, his terrestrial son—you will be able through the agency of the Divine Principle to heal the sick and raise the dead, just as Jesus did. Thus we had no need for doctors; if you know one thing about our religion that’s probably the one thing, if you haven’t in the first place confused Christian Science with Scientology, which is a completely different deal. It was founded in the late nineteenth century by a woman named Mary Baker Eddy, and probably because of its feminine origin has retained a matrilineal shape. It’s often handed down from mother to daughter like a spiritual dowry, and the head office, so to speak, is called the Mother Church. My grandmother was a Christian Scientist, thence my mother, whence my mother’s effort to raise me in the faith. Its tenets display a proto-feminist slant best exemplified by Mrs. Eddy’s revisionist Lord’s Prayer, which replaces “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven” with “Our Father-Mother God, All Harmonious.”

  Replace is the wrong word: I think she intended her version as an interlinear gloss rather than a replacement. But for Christian Scientists, and so for me growing up, God was bisexual, or more accurately asexual—both male and female, but neither male nor female, because the Form of God had no body, no need for body, and no need for determinate sex. Which sounds sort of Platonic, and sort of Buddhist, and sort of German Romantic, and sort of American Transcendentalist, and sort of a lot of things but not very Christian, by which I mean that it espouses no inflexible dogma, and professes to draw wholly sufficient inspiration directly from the Bible without need for priestly mediation. You could maybe spot affinities to the Coptic gospels and Gnosticism, as well as with much Eastern thinking generally, too. I’ve always remembered my long-since-discarded religion fondly, as you would an eccentric aunt or an outgrown toy.

  As a result of Christian Science, though, I never took medicine of any kind—not aspirin, not vitamins, not mouthwash—growing up, and so never learned how to swallow pills or gargle. I can now swallow pills, because once I discovered anti-anxiety drugs I realized that I needed them like some people need the light on at night, but I still can’t gargle. I should also note that during the unmedicated portion of my life I never once fell majorly ill, and such diseases as I did manage to attract absented themselves in short order and with a minimum of fuss. Examples: I had chicken pox, but only for two days. Mumps, one day. Measles, my most recent disease, lasted longest, four days, and the first two were the only time in my childhood (lasting until I went off to college, in Yellow Springs, about twenty miles northeast of Dayton proper) when I was seriously ill, in the sense that I wasn’t able to get out of bed. I ate a lot of grapes, which helped, and my mom read both the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the main Christian Science text, which didn’t.

  Now I get sick all the time. If hungover counts as sick, I’m almost never not sick. To counteract the progress time and disease have made on my undoctored body, I’ve a) taken up hypochondria, more as a hobby than a career; and b) begun ingesting, regularly: vitamin supplements, bee pollen, spirulina extract, and pain relievers of every over-the-counter stripe. This in addition to whatever anxiety-related prescription medication I can obtain without prescription, or without resorting to doctors. Though my job carries health insurance (I’m almost certain), I’ve retained an aversion to the medical profession that, despite my deep conviction upon exiting the shower and seeing, in the infallible lens of my bathroom mirror, a dime-sized eggplant-purple shoulder bruise, that I had contracted the plague, prevents me from taking advantage of our nation’s health care system. I do eat a lot of apples, however.

  On the plus side, I’m very slender. My metabolism sprints where others crawl, and I have to make sure I eat enough to keep up a reasonable human façade, especially since in our social circle we look closely at each other for signs—like weight loss—which could indicate drug abuse, a subject to which we have become sensitized after three or four overdose deaths, presumed accidental. The two most popular drugs to abuse are methamphetamines and heroin. Either will kill you, but crystal meth will take longer, because you can’t really overdose—I suppose it’s theoretically possible that your heart could explode from the adrenalin rush, but the most likely result of taking too much is you’ll shoot someone else or yourself or wake up two weeks later with an unnaturally clean apartment.

  Not a drug-taker, me. One of the few in our town, or at least among my friends. Speed in any form’s anathema to my constitution, and heroin’s so perfectly designed for me that I’ve always been scared to try. Too many people I’ve known have tried, and died, or permanently scarred not just their own lives but the lives of the people in their calling circle. I watched it happen close hand, once. A summer roommate, Jeddah Tern, started as everyone starts, snorting an occasional line at parties, then snorting an occasional line in his room, then progressing to the needle and regular trips to West Dayton for his daily dose, which quickly increased from one to three to five to seven bags. At first, I cared. Rookie mistake. I took him to the methadone clinic on Brookdale Avenue, and tried to keep watch as best my schedule allowed, but after a week or so of vigilant care, I came home from work to find him nodding out on the couch. I slapped him, hard, on the cheek, so hard my hand stung for minutes. He just grinned at me—not sheepish, but not without a c
ertain embarrassment, for the loss of his humanity. That was the only time I’ve ever hit another person as an adult.

  Not until a month later—foolish Fiat—did I kick him out. Took me the better part of the next month to make a thorough accounting of everything Jeddah had stolen from me during that time, most of which I didn’t mind and didn’t miss (or it wouldn’t have taken me a month): a good third of my CD collection; my CD player; a pair of expensive shoes, never worn, or worn only once, still in the box; a small camera, never used, also still in box; a fancy pen and pencil set, gold-plated, never used, s.i.b.; a framed print of a painting by the famous post-impressionist Darren Soon, stuffed in the back of a closet; several boxes of miscellaneous office supplies, which had been purloined from the library; a watch. The only thing of real value was a frail silver necklace that my mom had given me, and which had been (as these things inevitably have been) given to her by her mother, and so on, down to the tangled roots of my family tree, which lay buried somewhere in the dirt of Dayton. The necklace may have been worth a great deal of actual money, but its worth as a literal memento mori I could not then and cannot now bring myself to calculate.

  Six months ago Jeddah Tern died of an overdose. I’ve spent some time since his death combing the pawnshops and thrift stores of Dayton for my necklace, unsuccessfully.

  I’m not what you’d call good-looking—hardly any breasts, hips like a boy, dull gray eyes too small, too far apart on my face, which is one reason I wear glasses (the other’s because I can’t see without them). I don’t wear makeup, and I hate messing with my hair, so I keep it short, but it sticks out in wild directions unbidden.

  But no matter: I’m a serious girl, with serious aspirations that do not allow room for romance. As Hercules did by Cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the heels, away with him! Not that I don’t find boys attractive, or girls for that matter, but whenever I find myself tempted, whether theoretically or in drunken fact, I tend to shy away, envisioning as an aid to my impaired resolve the ugly consequences of a followedthrough advance. Because those consequences, at least for me, have always been ugly, and painful, and worthless. I’m not the type who believes in learning from experience. Not my experience, anyway.

  My main orientation has always been to books. I’m a bibliomane, which helps explain why I ended up a librarian. Part of my attraction is purely aesthetic—I love books as artifacts, and though I’m not a collector myself, I appreciate the attention to detail and respect for the texture of time exhibited by that breed. I have an aversion to badly designed books. I need to think that someone put a lot of thought and effort into every aspect of the book I hold in my hands. The other part’s more straightforward: I’m in awe of the process—when rightly accomplished—by which thoughts can be ordered and expressed—whether profound or simply beautiful without apparent meaning. (For instance, I have spent hours mouthing Latin verse that I barely understand for enjoyment—for the music of the syllables pirouetting on my palate and out into the fetid air of my hot apartment.) Which doesn’t mean I read poetry only, or novels, because my tastes are catholic even if my religion’s not, and I’ve been imbued since birth with a thirst for the acquisition of facts that borders on pathological. So philosophy, of course, but also biology, chemistry, physics, linguistics, political science (in the general sense—as long as I’m left alone I don’t much care about politics), the smatterings of about ten languages, with near fluency in reading three. Etcetera. You get the picture. I’m not bragging—of course I’m bragging, but I’m bragging to purpose, as a help to whomever stumbles on these notebooks and tries (and I’m hoping you’ll try) to decipher, or better yet, edit my squirrelly scrawl. If a little learning’s a dangerous thing, then the scattered ashes of great learning hold still more peril. What you hold in your hands, stands to reason, you hold at some risk. To what, I’m not exactly sure.

  My favorite writer? Of all time? Really? If you speak, read, or write English as your native tongue and you don’t say Shakespeare you’re worse than a fool, because any fool knows what you pretend you don’t. Okay, so him. But after Will, my absolute favorite is a fairly obscure Irish writer from the 1920s called Sean O’Hanlon, who must have used a tuning fork instead of a typewriter or pen, because his words have perfect pitch. His most famous book is called Miserogeny, which, though often described as a novel, is as much an epic poem, sketchbook, series of unconnected essays, apercus, epigrams, dicta, lists, formless only because it transcends form.

  I once kissed a guy because he reminded me of the way I imagined Thomas Farrell, the hero or authorial alter ego in Miserogeny. I was drunk on whiskey and I went with the guy into the old gazebo in the park across from The Pearl. The cement on the floor of the gazebo was wet from summer rain, and so was the rotting bench where we sat making out. I could feel the seat of my jeans soaking through. Mist haloed the streetlamp on the corner which was the only light. When we started kissing he looked different, not so much like Thomas Farrell and more like someone I didn’t want touching me, so I [passage deleted in text, scored heavily several times in pencil].

  Afterwards, dizzy from drinking and flush from the humidity and the aborted arousal and the incompatible mix of substances in my stomach, I crawled to the edge of the gazebo and puked copiously into the weeds. The guy was sweet, he bent over and wiped my mouth with the tail of his shirt, but I told him I was okay and asked him to go back in and order me another drink. When he left I sat for a few minutes with my head resting against the wet wood of the gazebo’s lattice. A perfume of azaleas made me think of the house in Lewisburg, which had a hedge of azalea bushes in front, facing the street. I carefully pulled a long stem of wild grass out of its socket and sat chewing.

  Then I went inside, and thought everyone was looking at me and knew what I’d done, and for some reason that produced a feeling of guilt that would not subside for two or three drinks, even though no one had noticed, and even though had they noticed they wouldn’t have cared, because you only notice things you care about, and you only care about things you notice. This was an epiphany I very clearly remember experiencing fully that night. Protected by my selfconstructed paradox, I was free, and my freedom was a terrible thing to behold, if only anyone had cared to see. Outwardly, my behavior changed in no way: I chatted familiarly with familiar people, cracked a couple of wry jokes, destroyed an innocent stranger’s self-confidence, possibly forever, with a withering put-down when he tried to strike up a friendly conversation. The usual, in other words. But on the inside, where all the important stuff happens, we’re told, I had changed in fundamental ways, because I had come to a full realization of the power of my invisibility. The boy from the gazebo left an hour or so after I returned, without even looking to see if I was still there, as if nothing had happened between him and some drunk girl, not even bothering to point me out to his friends as a recent conquest. I know because I watched him go. I watched them all go. I know because I noticed.

  Later that night we stood milling around in a soused clump in front of The Pearl at closing time, discussing whose turn it was to host the after-hours party. We were watching while Mary Valentine and Amanda Early made rash decisions about sleeping or not sleeping with whomever had bought them the most drinks that night (I know this sounds catty, but it’s meant in the fondest way; also, it’s the strict truth, more often than not—as either would admit, freely, unabashed, without rue). We’d grown used to Kurt’s off-putting presence, and he’d grown used to ours, and he often stayed until the last few of us were left, although he had not yet acquired the habit of following us to after-hours. At first we assumed he was hoping for a ride, but too proud to ask, but whenever any of the few of us a) who could afford a car and b) were stupid enough to run the Dayton Police gauntlet at closing time, would offer, he always said no thanks and set off on foot, with a look of real happiness no matter the weather, which at the approach of winter was often bitter cold, and sometimes brought needles of frozen rain. Kurt would turn up the collar o
f his ginger-colored pea coat and walk into the dark, disappearing from the streetlit street by degrees.

  Tonight, though—a night of firsts—something extraordinary happened: Kurt laughed. I didn’t catch who or what had set him off, cackling like—well, like I don’t know quite what, exactly. Which is partly what made the moment so formidable: the way Kurt threw his head back and unleashed (if you were there you’d know what I mean) his laughter, uncoiling the sound from his larynx in a way so unusual, and yet so natural, that his body transformed from a twisted, frail skeleton unsuited for any imaginable physical activity into a machine designed for laughter. The most compelling aspect of Kurt’s laughter was that it became him, and that he seemed like a man who at one time had laughed often and easily, but not for a while. To me a discovery like this—a radical alteration of your initial impression about someone you’ve known for any length of time—was as exciting as the discovery of an unknown comet to an unknown astronomer.

  In the context of Kurt’s story, then, this was the second or third most important in his allotted basket of nights.

  The only way to describe Kurt laughing would be to say he looked merry. Which I know is not a word used to describe anyone anymore, but it’s the one that fits in this case. He laughed, merrily, and left with a wave of his arm, still laughing.

  But you see the mischief: Many of us, knowing that merry company’s the best medicine against melancholy, will neglect our business, and spend all our time among like-minders in a bar, and soon unlearn otherwise how to exist but in drinking: malt-worms, whiskey-fish, wine-snakes, qui bibunt solum ranarum more, nihil comedentes, “like so many frogs in a puddle.”