The Catholic School

by Edoardo Albinati

  Anyone who has never seen you nude cannot understand

  what a landscape really is, what the profile

  of mountains and rivers, and canyons, the immense plain

  of flesh stretched between the iliac crests

  now brown now white or speckled with snow

  depending on which season is passing overhead.

  Pure phenomenon, pure material, laid out, stripped bare

  by years of eroticism of every sense:

  and yet, yes, that famous poem about the giantess

  (“To wander over her huge forms . . .

  To sleep nonchalantly in the shadow of her superb breasts . . .” etc.)

  now indeed I remember it and even, a little, understand it.

  Perhaps you and I are no longer people, but things.

  THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS PROCESS of reification can lead so far that you can never retrace your steps. Since people can always be reduced to things, while things can never become people (at least not until we have thinking robots, but I mean genuinely thinking ones), the number of things in the world is constantly increasing. To keep this number from becoming overwhelming, many things are eliminated. Like junked cars, tossed into dumps. The same thing happens with people: first we arrange to reduce them to objects, then we eliminate them on account of their status as things, that is, discrediting them as no longer having anything human about them. This is the circuit of degradation that mortifies beings so that we can then hold them in contempt for having been reduced to this state. If a body is available as a thing, then that means it is interchangeable, whereupon we can confidently dispose of it. If we can do what we like with something, then it no longer has any intrinsic worth.

  THERE, that anatomical detail becomes a portentous battery in which it is possible to store up endless amounts of pleasure or pain, real or imaginary. What renders sacred any given portion of a man’s or a woman’s anatomy is precisely its impersonality, its anonymity, like that of the marble torsos you see in museums, often far more admirable than the entire bodies. What do we care if it’s a Hercules, rather than any other god or hero? The intertwining of the muscles, the density of the flesh, the hemisphere of the buttock of a Callipygian Venus—all these things have lost contact with the original name, history, and meaning.

  IN THE SAME WAY that in medieval statuary the hands and the eyes and the face were out of proportion with the rest of the body because through them the sculptor depicted the spirituality of the man, and artists back then cared more about meaning than optical appearances, likewise pornography is very attentive to meanings, it takes little interest in the realism of the entire human figure, and instead deforms the anatomy, with the selection of a certain lens or a startling close-up, emphasizing the parts and the moments in the purest, most stylized state: the cock, female orifices, a mouth gaping open, the spurting semen.

  MOTIVES FOR AN ERECTION can be found by the dozens. Every young male builds up over time—more or less entrusting himself to random chance, or else through a pedantic quest—an iconography made up of bodies and details of bodies, especially the exclusively feminine parts, that is, the breasts. The tits. The big tits. The great big boobs. And he learns to direct his excitement, his arousal, to that anatomical gallery, to devote to it his erections, which at first occurred in a chaotic, disorganized fashion: by so doing, little by little, he acquires the certainty of his actual sexual tastes. The same thing happens with prayer and sacrifice, which are primordial impulses but, at first, aren’t well directed. You feel the need to pray but you don’t know to whom, especially because frequently the gods are the recipients of an offering that exists prior to them: first comes the offering and then you decide who to dedicate it to, just as first comes the erection and then you create a gallery of bodies to which that erection will be devoted. Those bodies aren’t the cause, they are just the destination. You can have a stiff dick out of anger or fear, while riding a sled, drawing a tree, hearing a report of gunfire, being called to the blackboard, while reading Mickey Mouse or Roy Rogers, running after the family cat to stomp on its tail, when the news vendor gives you the wrong change, or while a skin forms on your milk at breakfast when it gets too hot. Fear and desire mingle, and they always will.

  If you choose the tits, it’s because they are the obvious emblems of femininity, and they are assumed to qualify as a male, beyond the shadow of a doubt, anyone who is attracted to them.

  . . . THE NUDES OF THOSE YEARS are hardly ever fully nude, stark naked, in the sense that you never see the body stripped bare from head to foot: instead it is garbed in articles considered seductive, nylon stockings, fishnet stockings, baseball socks and tennis ankle socklets, white socks and leg warmers rolled down on the calves, yes, lots and lots of leg warmers indicating the hard work done in the gym to get a body like that, and work on the bar to make it this firm yet graceful . . . dance slippers or gym shoes . . . or else corsets, bustiers, garter belts, lace . . . lace and embroidery, everywhere . . . thick, dark furs used as a bedcover upon which the candy-pink or snowy-white body stands out, lazily nude . . . and, around the neck, scarves, shawls, bandanas, chokers, necklets, tight collars or pearl necklaces, or heavy collars strung with large stones, or geometric objects dangling between the breasts, practically down to the navel, and even farther down, all the way to the luxuriant pubic area, lots and lots of necklaces in every size and shape . . . and the abdomen gleefully crisscrossed with objects designed to break its continuity, like leather belts, bathrobe sashes and nightgown ties, ribbons, suspenders, men’s neckties, towels and sheets draped over the body as if in some mischievous coquettish burst of modesty . . . the shoulders almost never uncovered, but instead half dressed by skimpy blouses or translucent camisoles, and ballet wraps and boleros thrown open to show off the overexuberant breasts . . . checkered cowgirl blouses fetchingly knotted at the waist, even though right above that knot the tits made the buttons pop open . . . over which in some cases tumble the adorable blond braids of a country girl, the residue of innocence lost or never even known . . . fringed capelets and Indian buckskin bikini tops and hippie halters, always shoved aside by those insolent perky breasts . . . and on their heads were those big floppy-brimmed hats, canvas sun visors or transparent plastic shades, terry-cloth sun hats, ushankas, woolen ski caps . . .

  16

  THE MONSTER BY OMISSION remains indifferent to everything but a single detail, a portion of the anatomy. Female virginity intimidates him, challenges him, and only encourages him to use violence in order to get out of the impasse which that virginity itself represents for him. To rape a virgin demands a determination that you can’t have unless you have the ferocity to go with it. In the face of virginity, a perverted man gets excited, gets vexed, and runs the risk of impotence. At that point he will make use of any means or instrument if it allows him to act upon that body, which he can’t leave as it is. What may well be the most chilling circumstance of the reports and the transcripts: when you run into phrases in quotation marks such as “ravaged with a broom handle” or “the insertion of a beer bottle,” as if using objects instead of the sex organ to penetrate the victim were an indication of a particular savagery and determination, which is probably true, but it also constitutes a facilitation of the act, and not just an amplification of the cruelty. You might say that taking someone’s virginity with a tool or an object denatures and more clearly reveals the nonerotic nature of the deflowering: the intention becomes more unmistakable, the fact that it has very little to do with the gratification of an instinct but instead resembles nothing so much as a ceremony, sadistic and necessary. Just as in certain primitive communities a special tool was used, a horn or a bone, to ensure that the initiation of femininity was performed by no single person but in a certain sense by the community as a whole, likewise the impotent rapist girds himself to the task of deflowering as it were a mission that exceeded his physical strength, and uses other means to break the seal, to render profane, that is, to give back to the world
, from which it had heretofore been withheld, that portion of the feminine anatomy that stood for innocence, symbolizing it and with it the fact that the whole person was unsuited to society. Something powerfully anonymous is at work in the rapist’s act, a force that goes well beyond his desires, certainly awakened by his arousal and his own personal lack of scruples, but not explicable solely by those factors. It’s a sort of fatalism, as if deep down he thought of himself as an executor, someone who implements a mandate. Through him cruel and ineluctable laws find their implementation. This has nothing to do with the “quest for pleasure.” Indeed, rapists almost view it as a job. A job that has to be done. In other words, someone’s going to have to do it, and so they roll up their sleeves and get it done. Putting on the leather apron worn by serial murderers, made famous by the movies. In the letter in which he first signed himself “Jack the Ripper,” dated September 28, 1888, the unknown killer, who before then had been dubbed by the popular press Leather Apron, insists on using work-related formulations: the last job, do a bit more work, I love my work . . . job and work, these are the recurring words, work and job, that is, a task he performs scrupulously, out of a sense of duty. Since his identity never has been uncovered, the Ripper remains, so to speak, a collective figure, anyone can don his mask and apron, remaining anonymous while still impersonating his salient features, the ferocity and the gratuitousness of his acts and, at the same time, the inscrutable necessity of his work, his contempt for the law, in other words, all the traits that made him a popular character. Exactly, popular, a popular murderer, popular precisely because he was despicable. Despicability is a garnish to fame, not its antidote. For those reasons, the character of Jack the Ripper will never die. He lurks in the heart of everyday life.

  17

  TO DIE IMMEDIATELY after losing your virginity. To die as you’re losing it. The site of fecundity associated with the time of the funeral rite. A grape crushed and pressed can represent a life being born and a life coming to an end. Nuptials are blood nuptials, nuptials with death, like the nuptials of Persephone, sucked back down into the underworld with Hades, the god who welcomes many souls. The girl passes from one dominion to the other without intermediate phases. Hades rends asunder the earth in order to offer Persephone a kingdom bursting with wealth, and with fear: the offering is so rich and dangerous that it sweeps away the woman for whom it was meant. We are aghast, overwhelmed. All understanding is steeped in panic. If this transition to awareness is inevitable, then it may seem legitimate or even necessary to shorten the timeline, with a burst of violence. A brutal act may even seem more honest than indulging a stream of saccharine endearments, waltzes and daisy chains of deceptive words . . . to wean the girl, kicking her out of the nest, cutting short her fantasies in no uncertain terms, her naïve hopes and dreams.

  “NOW YOU’RE A WOMAN.” “When you lay down on the meadow you were a little girl / but when you got up you were a woman.” That’s what people said of a girl after she had her virginity taken. Or else she said it of herself, “I am a woman now,” in songs. That was the exact expression in Italy back then: to take someone’s virginity, or have it taken, almost like having a wisdom tooth removed to keep it from crowding the rest of your teeth.

  There is a special ferocity taken out on a virgin girl, as if they wished to punish her for her pride or for her naïveté in choosing to remain one, for having cultivated her virtue. Virtue is seriously a reason for misfortune, when it encounters its enemies, who are bound and determined to make it pay dearly, as we have said, with a paradoxical pedagogical intent. Virtue shown off ends up becoming a “splendid sin.” For that matter, there seems to be no way out for women: they are raped either because they tempt men or because they reject men. Both attitudes are considered provocative. Except, in the first case, they are punished by going along with what seemed to be their wish, only taking it beyond all reason; in the second case, they are punished by having taken from them what they had so strenuously defended. The goal is the same, whether it is shamelessly offered or jealously denied: to a man eager to punish a woman, the objective actually doesn’t interest him all that much, only as a pretext for inflicting a punishment.

  18

  AFUNDAMENTAL PSYCHIC RUPTURE COMING on the heels of a negligible physical laceration. This happened to me once, with a German girl, experiencing both phases of this passage, but over a considerable span of time. The interval between made the experience extraordinary. Usually, you meet a virgin girl and then you either leave her as she is or else you make love with her and together with her you experience the passage from the life that precedes to the life that follows. The girl will get up no longer a virgin (that is, deprived of something, and yet completed by that privation).

  But I experienced the following, rather improbable adventure. I beg you to believe me when I swear that it really happened to me, exactly as I am going to tell you. And the reason I’m telling it is that I believe it has something to do with the other stories gathered in this book, which all have to do with the spilling of blood, like Freud’s famous anecdote from his study on the lapsus, what came to be known as the Freudian slip.

  . . . EXORIARE ALIQUIS NOSTRIS EX OSSIBUS ULTOR . . . (Let an avenger arise from my bones . . .)

  HER NAME WAS BETTINA. I’ve had four German girlfriends in my life and three of them were called Bettina. She was eighteen when I met her, I might have been twenty-three. We were in Salamanca, Spain, where I had won a scholarship for summer studies, and she had come to study Spanish. She was very pretty, her hair blond and silky, and there was a small space between her two upper front teeth, which gave her a sweet and slightly childish smile, as if her family had decided not to get them straightened with orthodontics, intentionally leaving her with that mouth of a child. In her case, the family mattered, it mattered a great deal. Bettina in fact was the youngest daughter of a hero of the Second World War. A fighter pilot who had been awarded the Iron Cross at the age of twenty-two for his extraordinary courage. Bettina would tell me about him as she lay stretched out naked in the bed of my dorm room, arms wrapped around me, after I had tried in vain to take her virginity, I had tried, I had given it my utmost determination. I really liked Bettina a lot, and she aroused me, I had tried gently but decisively, but as I began to penetrate her, she would moan with the pain. “It hurts! It hurts so much!” she would moan, because even though she was there to improve her Spanish, which for that matter she already spoke fluently, with that enchanting German accent which was not the least of the reasons—along with her beautiful eyes, her breasts firm and erect, and the impalpable blond peach fuzz that covered her all over like a pelt and in the hollow of her sex only grew a shade denser—that I liked Bettina so very much, whenever we were with other people we spoke Spanish, but between us, in English. It was easier, more direct. “It hurts!!” she would complain, as soon as I so much as began to push into her. And this happened once, twice, three times, ten times, sobbing and wriggling out of my arms, until I had even thought of trying to hold her still by the arms, pinning her down with all my weight and thrusting it in by force, but then I hadn’t had the nerve. And so after a week of doughty attempts we’d given up: we’d lock ourselves in the bedroom, we’d take off our clothes, we’d embrace and kiss, but went no further than that. I remember my sex organ, swollen to immense size with my arousal, after an hour of these hugs and kisses. To have a beautiful caring young woman in your arms, naked, but not make love with her (it seems to me we didn’t have recourse to any other solution as an alternative to penetration, I don’t remember ever coming on her or in her hands, and I’d fleetingly kissed her between the legs just to try to soften the obstacle that barred the way to that dingus of ordinary size but which, in effect, did appear outsized with respect to the minuscule fissure just lightly dusted with blond peach fuzz, indeed, perhaps that was the only real reason, to feel the tickle of that fuzz on my lips, that I had knelt over her, and never for more than a few seconds at a time), to hold that German delight
in my arms without making love with her remains one of the most heartbreaking sensations that I’ve ever experienced in my life, and in fact it created an indelible memory in me, a memory that resurfaces every time that chance establishes a random connection between words and images such as girl—Germany—blondness—pain.