Adjective Narcissism

by J.W. Carey

  His wife, her hair hanging about her face like dust about an aging rat in an abandoned maze, screams. His children, rushing in from a room unseen, join in the cacophonous noise. I wonder if he knows what it is like to lack ability to feed your children. This man whom, in his youth, wore a shirt that commanded us to ‘Hang Mandela’, and yet he sat in the quiet dignity of a childish picture at that figure’s memorial service. But, of course, we cannot hold that against him. He was under the spell of Thatcherism, in much the same way that no one in Germany could have been held accountable for the atrocities of a War impossibly separate and, yet, as real to me as if they fought over some twisted ring of engraved gold and fire.

  Would I see humanity in that oiled face, synonymous with greed and with idiocy? But then, when was the last time I actually saw this imagined face of humanity? Where is the great idea that the Homo Sapient is a creature capable of Love and Understanding, as opposed to the realised world of Greed and Cruelty, simple selfish Desire and utter Contemptibility?

  Now, this is not a personal attack on the man. It isn’t, in actuality, possible to offend the Prime Minister as a person, simply because he is nothing but a replication. You see, in this ‘oh so democratic’ civilisation of ours, we have three main political parties. Each one headed by a black-haired, greasy-faced mannequin, as though some factory in the depths of Westminster churns them out en masse, their opinions and viewpoints screwed into them by uncaring workmen, each enjoying a quick smoke between replications.

  Is it possible to maintain humanity in a position of power, whether that position be a queen, a pope or a CEO, a politician or even the arrogant solitude of a bus driver? Can it survive under the weight of those in your care, or if it does remain, will it remain in its entirety, or instead will it shrivel like a surplus fish in the sun, crumble like ancient marble beneath the hammer or weep like the broken protagonist at the close of this prose? History, theology and, indeed, common observation of the world around us warns us that, despite what the rest of us would desire, the answer is a resounding no.

  And who has more power than the writer?

  Even the lies of God speak of free will, but they have no chains around their wrists, nothing shackling them to the hint of morality.

  * * *

  ‘However, one thing which she never warned us about, despite her self-conceited role as the font of all creativity in our turgid little worlds, was the danger of creating a character whom will attract a... a following. Whether he, or she, be a protagonist, an antagonist, or some unnamed, unknowable character who is visible for less than the heartbeat of a corpse, the Author must be aware of the threat of Hero-Worship.’ I felt their gaze shift from me and, turning, I saw the bartender advance towards me with an unfamiliar expression, ill-fittingly hewn onto his craggy features. It wasn’t anger, and that was a surprise to me. Surely, if he had been cleaning after my toiletry debacle, he would be pretty damn pissed off?

  His feet slapped against the faux floorboards, some ill-reflecting laminate, cuffed and marked with work boots, trainers and, recently, the influx of supposed dress shoes, which bear a closer resemblance to the style of pump I had to wear in Primary School. I pitied him, as he stomped his way towards us, in the manner of a man used to slipping on the ground beneath his feet, his lack of balance replaced with a tread an Abram would be proud of.

  ‘Here,’ he said curtly and yet with a great of degree of kindness, arriving at our position, ‘you, err, you missed a bit.’ He gestured at my sleeve, his hand hidden beneath the relatively clean rag he appeared to pull from the thin of the air, like a twisted, overpaid magician with a preference for jerking off when he should be practicing his childish lies and the trickery of an educated former genius. I, after a moment’s worth of momentous pause to comprehend the broadly Northern words which spilled from his tongue and into my ear; I glanced at my own arm.

  And there, like a contract with God, like a penance enforced upon me by Darwinian evolution, a result of the fickle influence of black-eyed Fate or the shadow of Chance’s unknowable desires, squatted a speck of vomit. I recollect, despite the increasing amount of poison in my bloodstream, that my face flushed like the light spitting from a vivarium.

  Apologetically, I stared up into his all-knowing, sickeningly aware eyes and, under that ungrudging watchfulness, under that lack of judgement, I felt ashamed. So, with a combination of self-loathing and rage at the man stood over me, I reached out and plucked the cloth from his grasp, muttering a graceful ‘thank you’, the words possessing an unsurprising lack of grace. He walked away then, leaving his gift in my hands, as I dabbed at the vomit on my sleeve. The three were silent, again. Unmoving as though possessed by the villain of some Doctor Who episodic adventure, trapped in plain sight.

  ‘Hero-worship, you see,’ I returned to my topic, desperate to forge some space between the all-knowing narrator I desired to be, and the scared little boy beneath the eyesight of a god, ‘is the most dangerous result of personality that we can imagine, whether that personification be kind and callous, or generous and cruel. Whether the protagonist is a pope bearing the opinions of a sane person, though those two ideas may be oppositional, a politician designed by his PR team to be viewed as a ‘Man of the People’, or simply a World War warlord, whom limps through the oceanic residue of the deaths he has caused, the lives he has snuffed out like candles within the pathway of a breeze, or simply the remnants of those ‘uncivilised tribes’ he sent to the gas chamber, whilst condemning the same action mere years before.’

  ‘Because, in time, we all come to hate the hero. It may only be for a moment, but at some point we will see him, or her, as all that we wish to be. And we will think, ‘if only they had not existed, or taken some other pathway! Then I could be there, with all that fame and money and integrity, and I could be happy.’ I chuckled to hide my embarrassment, still dabbing at the vomit, throwing a caustic glance after the suddenly broader back. ‘I could be happy, if I were him.’

  Alan Wilson Watts

  I had so many plans. To finally earn the title of ‘Author’ or even that lower-class recognition as a ‘Writer’ was that my main aim? Perhaps, if criticism suddenly relents, even to offer me the role of ‘Experimental Writer’? To receive a publicised invitation into the same category as Johnson and Danielewski! Imagine such a world! Where the title I carry around with me, though it is one I have earned, is something to be proud of! To become an arsehole of such magnitude that when someone asks me what I do, with the faked sincerity even the most uninterested can offer, I could say ‘Experimental Author’!

  ‘Experimental’. To a character, still a boy in a man’s body, though both are beginning to show signs of wear, the very word smacks of arrogance and the contemptibility which comes as easily as a priest towering over a choir boy. ‘Experimental’ literature is simply failure, much like ‘Alternative Medicine’, or any youthful sub-culture fading beneath self-delusion and the simple passage of time. Whilst some things may well be eternal, nothing lasts as it is meant. Everything is torn from its context; it is adapted by wit, abused by idiocy, worshipped by the ignorant and hated by those who believe it to be fact.

  But then, perhaps, it would be honest to suggest that ‘Experimental’ is little more than an excuse for mediocrity, for that heinous word to be a replacement for talent, for imagination. I could present this to you in a box, offer you an interchangeable narrative lacking in meaning, as simply an exercise of possibility, an exploration into the carefully stylised treatment of literary prowess.

  I have tried, within reason and as made possible by the constraints of this narrative, to maintain my honesty. More for my own sake than for yours, that I may be able to fool myself into believing, for one single moment, that I haven’t already wasted this life of mine. That this personal disgust, ignorant of self-abasement, is a mere delusion. Whether I am the character, the Author, the Narrator, that does not matter, whoever this is, I hate him.

  I hate him for the waking nightmares,
for the rats in the cage about my face, for the unspoken screams of condemnation, for the rope tying me, naked, to my chair. I hate him because, in my head, I ride his coattails like a publicist to an author, like a groupie to a musician, only to find my face scraping away on the jagged cobbles he walked. I hate him like the alcoholic hates the wine.

  No. I am lying to you again. I don’t hate him, how could I? I know I should, but for this alternative persona, I cannot even begin the pretence of emotion. It is needlessly cruel, creating such a text as this. It walks with head held down, with limbs slowly and methodically crippling themselves, with a self-destructive instinct carefully lacking in heroic honesty or intent.

  * * *

  ‘Despite the inherent lack of meaning in all of this,’ I spoke into the rapidly-filling emptiness behind my eyes, ‘I cannot pretend I haven’t enjoyed this role. This pretence at the knowledgeable stranger, the dishevelled wanderer haunted by his own failures, driven by his genius into the arms of substances designed to make such an existence bearable.’ The glass was cold; it was my only real sensation, the one thing I held onto as solid in that shifting darkness. My previous glass had long since been replaced by now, those harsh grooves shifting into a circular frame, despite the chip my clenched hand found itself digging into.

  ‘I’m not the person I have proven myself to be this evening. Never before have I simply strode into a bar, albeit with the hint of a stagger, and began a conversation with anyone besides myself and the glass before me, about anything. Whether Liverpool played well last night, whether the winter is growing colder or finally beginning to relent, how to fix the hole in the frame of my window, or the nuances and unrepeatable aspects of narrative presentation and execution.’ I lifted the glass, my arm making it halfway to my lips before I froze it. ‘I have had intense arguments, ones which have gone on to cause my complete re-evaluation of all I previously held to be true, without hearing another person’s voice. I have fought both sides of the same coin, argued and pleaded with myself to understand the nonsense twisting in the maelstrom of my monologue.’

  ‘Even whilst living out this narrative, this ‘experiment’ for the pleasurable abasement of those I will never see nor meet, I am not the same person who awoke to find himself vomiting into the heating system of an almost empty bus mere hours before. How could I be? When you pour your every effort into a work, even if that work is simply the education of a tripled shadow in some religious metaphor, it is quite simply exhausting to near the end without a single shred of purpose, without anything profitable, to any definition of the word, emerging from the ashy texture of an alcoholic’s subconscious.’

  The glass made it another few inches towards my lips.

  ‘I had hoped, despite my protestation of innocence from that ever-present crime of purpose, to find something here, something close to the end that made this experiment worth experiencing. To find some meaning somewhere other than the bottom of a glass, the bottom of a page or the bottom of a painting.’

  The glass had warmed now, trapped as it was beneath my sweating skin although, perhaps, it may well be more honest to say my fingertips were trapped around it. With every breath I wish I could describe as tortured, I could feel it curling back from the rim, the sickly stench that was me returning to itself, much like a dog sniffing at its own refuse.

  ‘In this role, as Narrator, Author, Character, alcoholic youth and dishevelled, broken stranger, I will make you one final promise, an addition to the increasingly lengthy list of those I have already broken. We are close to the end now, nearing the end of the end of the journey, the one you had all but completed the very moment you first allowed your eyes to crawl across these empty words originating from my hands. I swear to you, with as much honesty as a coronation oath or a marriage vow, that there will be blood before this existence is done.’

  I laid the glass against my lower lips, holding my breath against the poisonous stench emanating from the clear liquid.

  ‘As Creator, I tell you, there will be petals falling in a spotlight, there will be red running in the streets and there will be broken limbs arranged like a serial killer’s masterpiece.’

  I opened my eyes to the empty seats, smiling tightly as I threw the liquid back in one sickening motion. The water filled my mouth and ran down my throat before I even had the chance to gag, burning at the ravaged muscle within my throat, ignorant of whom it had entered.

  * * *

  How does my honesty grab at you? Like a lecher in an alleyway? Like a drunk or, more accurately, a drink at a bar? Like an aquatic hunter and the slim piece of bait the supposed prey is offered? And, if you truly believe it to be such a thing, is it preferable to the technically genuine narrative I could have offered? Is this, in anyway, a triumph? Even a triumph despite its ever-present, all too noticeable failure? Destined to go down in history amongst such great disasters as Thermopylae, or the Light Brigade’s imbecilic charge? Or to be forgotten by all but the few, to be remembered with half-affection and easy contempt in some darkened corner of the internet? Down amongst the Bronies, amongst the closet paedophiles, with their ethical outrage, and the failed Memes?

  Do you know what it is that makes a Creator a success, in this modern world? It isn’t really the ability to weave a clever narrative, to express realistic emotion or present witty dialogue. Instead, it is the ability to make and, subsequently, break contracts. Eisner asked ‘Is not all Religion a Contract between Man and God?’ and I, in my arrogance, would twist such a line of questioning with the query, ‘What are Creators, but the Gods of their creations?’

  But to break a contract is to make a tragedy. It is that assumed promise which has made the miniscule proportion of modern entertainment possessing the rare value of emotionality. It is that ability to sacrifice conscience and, at times, even your own desires, which makes genius. In this context, Creators may, instead of being Gods, be regarded as Slaves to the whims of their Creation, as malnourished workers chained to their profession by steel, as physical and destructive as any other addiction.

  * * *

  The corpse below me was nothing but a replica of what could have been and a parody of what has been. The actuality of what was offered me no respite from the intangible horror of possibility. Naught but a lump of meat and bone and tendon, chained to the ground by death, soulless and empty of promise. It stared towards the road, no doubt following the direction of a murderer, one whom did not even stop to check if they left their victim still alive.

  Its eyes still held life within them, as though the spark of existence, that series of chemicals which was the essential cornerstone of personality not having burnt out its last yet. It could have been anyway. Perhaps it was nothing but the reflection of innovation flying past, leaving burning after images in the depths of an abandoned retina. Despite this, it was already dead. Nothing could be done to save it. No last, desperate twitching shook its body. No tortured breaths emerged from its slim, still throat.

  Its feathers, all mottled grey and white and black and brown, had huddled together under the rain, as though attempting to cower beneath each other in a silent, desperate war for warmth. The pigeon’s stomach was cracked open, nothing but a thick line of blood emerging from that once pulsating breast.

  I watched it for a few moments more, God damn me, but I did. With hands bundled deep into my coat pockets, my hair sagging around my macabre fascination, with the increasingly potent ghost of sobriety heavy on my breath, I stood in the rain and watched a dead thing bleed into the space between pavements, into the microcosm of a gutter and the emptiness behind humanity’s dull design.

  * * *

  There cannot be compromise. You realise that now? I cannot meet you halfway, because that is not how the story goes. I have warned you, time and again, that this is not only a failure in terms of narrative and ‘experimentation’, but is a failure for narcissistic self-abuse, for idiomatic semantic choice, for literature and life and existence. And, seeing as these words are still haun
ting your eyesight like a spiritualist’s lies, I can only assume you have ignored my advice to walk away.

  Very well, it is clear that the only success here is the self-abuse emerging from you, whilst my metaphorical wrists remain firmly intact. I didn’t mean this to happen. You were supposed to abandon this horror on my first insistence, or at the very least my second! Now I have an obligation to offer you an ending to a narrative without either an end, or the very possessions which would actually make this a narrative.

  Somebody once said, quoted by every faux-writer and delusional critic since the words emerged from their mouth, that the Happiness of an ending depends simply on when you end it. And they were right. But you have gone beyond the short story, beyond the novella, beyond the experiment and beyond this obsession with the self. Am I supposed to thank you for that, for tearing through these conventions of mediocrity despite my protestations, despite my will?

  Fine. You keep reading these pointless words; you keep your eyes fluttering across these pages like moths towards a flame. I would wonder, of course, does the Moth realise that death is the only possible ending to that story? Or is it simply so concerned with reaching its objective, that the fear and the threat of death simply fall away by the roadside? Perhaps we, perhaps I, should revise the original opinion of our roles here. Whilst I am still not an Author, nor am I merely the drunk any longer.

  At this marked point within this failure, with sobriety and self-awareness finally passing from lips to brain to fingertips, I would state with as much empathy as can be mustered, that I am simply the Moth, and the ‘Experiment’ you see before you, is nothing but a candle to you something to light your way for a few hours only but, for me, it means acknowledgement. For me, it means existence.