I spent over eighteen hundred bucks turning my little living room into a drawing studio. I bought a secondhand drafting table, a stool, a lamp, pencils, erasers, charcoal, felt-tipped pens, India ink, sable brushes, an ounce of white opaque watercolor, and twelve sheets of 19" × 26" lanalaid printmaking paper at twelve fifty a sheet.
And all the time I wondered, How the hell do I draw like a little kid again?
The answer came to me soon as I started work: with my left hand! To my surprise, I drew with my left hand in a childlike style that resembles Jean Dubuffet’s.
Portrait of Billy Lee Mookerjee, 2054, paper cutout, ink, watercolor, structural paint on paper. Collection Billy Lee Mookerjee
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee to Johnny Baker, November 12, 2054:
Congratulations! Your drawing of me does indeed look like it was done by a gifted child. That’s only the beginning. If you want to be my sheila and gain Gaian Consciousness, you must become like a child again in all things. A little child. A baby. My baby, utterly dependent on me. I will be your father and your mother. Through me you’ll be reborn.
Johnny Baker to Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee, November 12, 2054:
That’s for me!
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee to Johnny Baker, November 12, 2054:
John Firth Baker, I take you as my sheila.
Johnny Baker to Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee, November 12, 2054:
Command me.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee to Johnny Baker, November 12, 2054:
Give up sex, including raising the dead. No more booze or drugs for you. Over the weekend give everything you own, except your Mentor and the clothes on your back, to the Salvation Army.
And then report to me 5 A.M. Monday at the shelter.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, November 16, 2054:
Mookerjee on his home page today:
“I’m pleased to announce I’ve taken John Firth Baker, 17, as my sheila. Johnny has dropped out of high school and abandoned a promising career as a manual artist to devote himself to my service in her pursuit of Gaian Consciousness.”
Numb at the news.
Wakinoya Yoshiharu
Fritz hit the roof when he read about Johnny.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, November 16, 2054:
Three times today, for two minutes on each breast, Srimaanji dry-nursed me in his office at the Gaian Cooperative Wimin’s Shelter. My sucking will stimulate his breasts to produce milk.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, November 20, 2054:
Srimaanji’s milk tastes like sugar water.
Sweet union!
I have drunk my fill,
And fused with
My Guru’s will.28
Oh, Teddy, I’ve never been so happy.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, November 23, 2054:
No wonder there’s talk about moving the government to Omaha (!) or Marquette [Michigan]. Yesterday’s storm surge that flooded the Lincoln Memorial left behind a stink of raw sewage mixed with stagnant seawater. And the roaches and rats! Last night in the shelter, a humongous gray rat scampered out from under my cot and out the hall door. I couldn’t sleep a wink afterwards.
I work eight hours a day, seven days a week, in the Shelter’s kitchen, serving manna soup, manna salad, manna pie, fried manna, boiled manna, steamed manna, roast manna, etc. etc, to the thirty-six femayle noahs and their brats, flooded out of their squats in the last eight years. They live here permanently. I can only take little kids in small doses. Their constant demands drive me up the wall.
Sure am a born keepie. I can’t get used to the rough, cracked, weathered complexions of the older wimin—black or white. The black faces are the color of ashes and look dead.
Most bore me stiff. The only thing they talk about, besides their bowel movements, is hitting the lottery. They discuss their bowel movements because an all-manna diet is so fucking constipating. The whole American underclass must be constipated. My constipation has given me piles.
Shanga Shirvington
Shit, Johnny was a she-he, and a she-he be a freak to me. Ugh! All the same, I must own he had nice tits.
Ol’ Johnny Baker, I really liked him. For a short while, white or no, he was both sister and brother to me. I was fifteen when we met. That was in the K Street Shelter, where I lived alone after my auntie Coralie done passed at seventy-four. She passed on the street in my arms. August heat killed her. She and me, we used to live outta the weather between Fort Totten and West Hyattsville in the ol’ Green Line Metro tunnel. Swarm a tunnel bunnies drove us topside; tunnel bunnies be rats to you.
There was rats big as cats in the shelter, too. Whenever Johnny see one, he scream, “Mama!”
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, December 1, 2054:
Dreamed last night I visited Johnny in D.C. Pleaded with him to come home with me. But, of all things, a large and repulsive gray rabbit, with coarse, filthy fur, hopped across the floor between us.
Johnny, very scared, whispered, “That’s a bad sign!”
The dream ruined my day.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, December 4, 2054:
I now nurse twice a day on Srimaanji’s sweet, blue-white milk, which cured my constipation. I often doze off at Srimaanji’s breast for a few minutes. When I wake, I’m calm for hours.
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, December 25, 2054:
Merry Christmas!
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, December 25, 2054:
Last night, Srimaanji initiated me into the mysteries of Mamagon Gaia, who is revered in Japan. Mamagon is Japanese for “monster mother.” Mamagon Gaia personifies both the creative and the destructive aspects of our Motherworld. Her song goes:
My womb is full,
My tits are too.
The life I bear
I soon will chew.29
My initiation into Mamagon Gaia’s mysteries was held underground near L’Enfant Plaza, in an abandoned station of the old Metro Orange Line. Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink. Rats, though, and busted cinder blocks, broken pipes, dripping walls, the crunch of roaches underfoot, rusted tracks, and a stench of piss you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe.
The initiation ceremony was secret. All I can reveal is what you won’t like. Teddy, the truth is, I’m an idol worshiper. I worshiped Mamagon Gaia in the form of a badly carved wooden statue. The initiation was disgusting. More I’m not allowed to say.
Merry Christmas.
Shanga Shirvington
When Johnny come back to the shelter Christmas Eve, he sneaked a stiff drink.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee
I can reveal this much: part of the initiation into Mamagon Gaia’s mystery involves certain deliberately repellent acts that help the initiate identify with the elementally destructive—the all-devouring—aspect of our Motherworld.
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, December 28, 2054:
My dear boy, worship Gaia in any form you want, but do it fervently. Fear her and love her with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your might. Think of her day and night. But above all, consider her beginning and her end. And sooner or later, by God’s grace, you’ll seek out her Creator and worship Him with the same fervor.
Happy New Year!
The Reverend Theodore Petrakis
In the fall of my junior year at Oberlin, I got the call to preach the Gospel. I believed—I still believe—as Margaret Boeth says, that religious fervor unlocks the meaning of life.30 I prayed that Johnny would become a fervent idolater so that God could then harvest his fervor for Himself.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, January 1, 2055:
Happy New Year!
Jeanette Baker to Johnny Baker, January 1, 2055:
Happy New Year!
Are you drawing?
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, January 1, 2055:
Srimaanji forbids me to draw. He commands me to look at things for their own sake, not to fix them on paper. “The world,” he says, “is made up of an inf
inite series of creative acts.”
He invented a spiritual exercise especially for me. Once a day, for half an hour, I gaze at something as if for the first time—like a baby. It’s very hard work. Today I focused on a cheap glass salt shaker with a dented blue tin top. As always, the longer I looked the more I saw. Only at the end, I noticed the pattern of the fifteen holes punched in the top. Fourteen were arranged in a circle within a pentagon; the last hole was in the center. I could go on and on about the salt shaker. I catch myself looking at everything through fresh eyes.
Nina May Randolph
Johnny Baker saved my little girl, Violet, from a bad beating—maybe much worse. It’s a long story, but worth telling. What happened was this. My boyfriend, Bud Claypool, beat my seven-year-old black and blue every chance he got. Bud drunk rye whiskey; he takes a drink, then whacks Violet cross her face. He calls the whack “my chaser.”
The poor baby! Things got so that soon as Violet seen Bud reaching for his bottle, she made a dash for the door. Bud was after her like a shot. “Whoopee! Lookit me!” he yells. “I’m chasin’ my chaser!”
Oh, he was a funny one!
I once got between them, and Bud grabbed me by the hair and drug me round the floor, wrenching my neck and scraping the skin off’n my back. What could I do after that? Bud drunk rye and beat Violet something terrible. Thanksgiving day, he busted her nose with the back of his hand. Oh, the blood!
Then he taunts me, “Don’t you feel awful you can’t stop me? Some mother who can’t protect her own little girl!”
Time after time, he beat my baby up and taunted me. “You some fucking lousy mother to lemme do this to your own flesh and blood!”
One morning pretty soon after the New Year, Bud got dead drunk, passed out under the table, and lays there like a dog turd in the gutter. I run for it with Violet to Billy Lee’s Shelter for Wimin, on Euclid Street and Sherman Avenue, which I seen on the web that fall. I figured a man with tits might take kindly to kids, and I weren’t wrong.
Can’t say the same for Johnny. Tits and all, he was a big baby hisself, ’specially around Billy Lee, who was both Ma and Pa to him—more Ma than Pa, if you get my drift. Leastways, so the wiminfolks in the Shelter told me. Man nurses boy! I never heard the like before.
That first day I could see Johnny was peeved by Billy Lee’s attention to Violet. Fact is, Johnny sulked and pouted like he was the seven-year-old. But first thing in the morning, when Billy Lee tells Johnny, “Take Violet to the Howard University Children’s Clinic for a checkup,” Johnny says, “Right away!”
Naturally, I go along.
Well, sir, the minute the three of us step out the front door into the pouring rain, Bud rears up in front of us and makes a grab for Violet. Who knows how he knowed where we was!
I recollect what happened next in, like, slow motion. Violet screamed, I froze, but Johnny, with his head down, throwed hisself in Bud’s way. The top of Johnny’s head clobbered Bud smack in the mouth; Bud’s teeth split open his lower lip and Johnny’s scalp. Talk about blood! Did you know that spilt blood turns pink in the rain?
The rest is a blur, except for Bud; I seen him cut and run towards Fairmont Street, one hand over his mouth, bleeding all the way.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, January 8, 2055:
My scalp’s healing. (Can’t believe I was so brave!) Violet hasn’t spoken a word since the attack. Doctors say she needs psychorobotic therapy.
With Claypool still on the loose, Nina May (Violet’s mother) won’t set foot outside the shelter for fear that he’ll waylay them again. Srimaanji, who knows everybody, took the matter up with the Capitol Hags, a local Gynarchist underground action squad, some of whom are also Gaians.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee
No comment.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, January 16, 2055:
Srimaanji tells me Claypool’s been “fixed”—but won’t let on what that means.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, January 19, 2055:
Get this: The Capitol Hags “fixed” Claypool with two manipulated sets of regulatory genes that control production of vasopressin and oxytocin, a couple of hormones released in the blood during sex and childbirth. The genes will make the s.o.b. constantly produce very high levels of both hormones, and freak him out, like Srimaanji says, with “an insatiable craving” to nurture little kids.
How ’bout them apples?
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, January 20, 2055:
But of the fruit of the tree which is the midst of the garden, God hath said, of them apples, ye shall not eat.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, January 20, 2055:
Ha! Ha!
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, January 20, 2055:
Ha! Ha! yourself. This is no laughing matter. Involuntary genetic manipulation is a grave sin.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, January 24, 2055:
ME: (tonight, 11:50 P.M.): Johnny, you awake? I miss you. If you’re awake, let’s have a look at you.
JOHNNY: Here I am, Mother.
ME: You’re looking good, Johnny.
Johnny: Tits and all?
ME: Tits and all. Johnny, I want you to know, I’m paying your monthly apprenticeship dues for the Guild—just in case you come home.
JOHNNY: Good night, Mother.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, February 6, 2055:
All this morning, Claypool knelt on the street outside the shelter, weeping and pulling his hair and going something like, “Forgive me, Violet Randolph, and if you can find it in your heart, give me the chance to make up to you what I done. Lemme take care of you or I’ll die.”
Nina May yelled out the window, “Ah, blow it out your ass!”
This whole business makes me proud to be a Gynarchist.
Am stuck on the road to Gaian Consciousness. I still don’t feel any personal connection between myself and our living Motherworld. Srimaanji says submit to him in all things and Gaian Consciousness will come to me.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, March 22, 2055:
A few hours ago the late afternoon sky caught my eye—the red sun half-covered by a dark purple cloud with a bright red border. A lemon-yellow streak below it slowly turned green, then blue, but with the green mixed in it—a cerulean blue.
The colors got me thinking of the paint box you gave me and your hopes for me to paint masterpieces. I’m sorry to disappoint you. My goal is to awaken spiritually to our planetary destiny.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, March 31, 2055:
Bud Claypool showed up this morning at the door of the shelter with a cuddly Winnie the Poohbot as a gift for Violet. It stretches out its stubby arms and cries in the cutest voice, “Roses are red, I know Violet is blue. Let me make it up to you. Love, Bud.”
Nina May said, “Fuck off!”
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, May 10, 2055:
See this?
GOOD SAMARITAN SLAIN TRYING
TO PREVENT CHILD ABUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C. May 10. An unemployed former exoduster from Oklahoma City, Robert “Bud” Claypool, 28, was stabbed to death this morning by Lee McKibben, 32, an electrician, when the former tried to prevent McKibben from beating his daughter Hannah, 8, with a wire hanger.
“Bud tried to interfere, so Lee stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife,” said a witness, who refused to identify herself. McKibben is under arrest. Hannah, whose mother Anita, 27, was found drunk at the scene, was placed in the care of the Washington, D.C., Municipal Children’s Shelter.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, May 10, 2055:
Am still proud to be a Gynarchist.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee
Johnny showed an interest in geophysiology, the workings of our Motherworld. To further his education, I accepted an invitation for us to attend an actual conference on planetary reproduction hosted by the Japanese Earth Scientists Association, which was meeting in Tokyo in early June. Johnny was raring to go to Japan; he hoped to meet
her biological father, who was head of the Ozaki Institute of Humin Metamorphic Genetics in Kyoto.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, June 6, 2055:
Dear Mother,
Tokyo University Shiro (keep). The Japanese call their never-ending rain “night-sweats” from a line in Miyoko Nakaya’s famous poem “Global Warming”:
Earth is feverish,
drenched in night-sweats:
torrential rain.31
Speaking of poets, a young friend of Clorene Welles, the exogenetic botanist Irene Winters, gave a talk here today on terraforming Mars. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. She looks like an African work of art. Gossip is she goes both ways. How’s Emma?
Yesterday morning, I spoke with Plowman’s secretary, Wakinoya Yoshiharu, in Kyoto, who sends you his regards. I’ll bet that once upon a time he was a pretty boy.
Made a date to see Plowman in his office a week from this coming Wednesday, the 16th, at noon. Gulp! My father! At long last! I can hardly believe it! I’m counting the days. What to wear? What to wear? My hair’s in good shape and my beard is very much in style here. Van Dykes, three-day-old beards, shaggy beards—everything except wispy Chinese Mandarin beards—are popular. The in look is an unshaven, out-of-work, down-at-the-heels, 17th-century Samurai, which I find very attractive.
Japanese men are hot. Physical fitness is all the rage. The favorite outdoor teenage sport is off-road rain biking. Believe it or not, it looks like fun!!! Never thought I’d say that about a sport, did you? But Srimaanji is encouraging me to get more physical exercise.
I miss you. Love to Polly.
Your loving son, Johnny
P.S. After the Conference ends next Saturday, Srimaanji and I will vacation for the rest of the summer in Kyoto as the guests of his friend the Gaian guru Sodo Yokoyama.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, June 9, 2055:
Dear Mother,
The Gender War here claims an average of 90 lives a year—men and wimin. The phallocratic terrorists call themselves Thunder Gods in honor of the kamikaze suicide pilots (“Thunder Gods”) from the second half of the Global Tribal War. They are fanatically tribal and anti-Chinese. Naturally, the Gynarchist Isle of Wimin Movement is staunchly anti-tribal but—being Japanese—is also fiercely anti-Chinese.
The Song of the Earth Page 14