Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts
Page 22
Why discarded: 1) Money: Because of unemployment, lacked funds to A) court Elfa, B) repay $700 debt to Elfa. 2) The Brock Dynamic: Chief rival for Elfa’s affections taller, thinner, handsomer, cleaner, gainfully employed, fluent in Icelandic.
Days entertained before abandonment: 959 (each more painful and humiliating than the last).
30
Star Lake Letters
Arda Collins
RE: MS #04-2683; Epiglottic Haematoma: An Unusual Complication of Foreign Body Ingestion
Dear Dr. Fukushima,
Thank you for submitting the above-referenced manuscript to the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology. Two experts have now reviewed your paper, and we have decided that you live somewhere extremely far away, and every time we try to picture you, we come up with nothing, and revert to an inexplicable image of a kitchen cabinet under the sink at home, the inside and the outside of the cabinet, and some of the surrounding kitchen. I keep some cleaning supplies under here, brushes and sponges, but it isn’t a dirty space. I understand why this might not be what you would imagine your name and manuscript title to connote. However, if you were to respond to my admission about you, I would ignore you by sending you the following letter:
RE: MS #04-2683; Epiglottic Haematoma: An Unusual Complication of Foreign Body Ingestion
Dear Dr. Fukushima,
Two weeks and you will have an editorial decision. If you believe that, I can’t help you. I actually couldn’t help you if I tried. I’m picturing you enraged and maybe in tears somewhere in Japan. I don’t know what Japan looks like. I like to think about rural Japan a lot though. I picture small, snowy villages in Hokkaido. In the summer, I imagine calm, sweaty farmers eating noodles with a cucumber. I am looking at the cover of a plastic sheet-saver or whatever, that has a painting of a magical looking pagoda leading down a cliff to a waterfall on the cover. It reminds me of something I might have seen in a restaurant. Is there a restaurant somewhere in you, is that what I’m noticing? Obviously, I don’t want you to answer that, not because I don’t genuinely want to know, but because you know I never want to hear from you.
RE: MS #04-2706; Cochlear Implants and Malformations of the Inner Ear
Dear Dr. Olthoff,
I apologize for the delay in responding to your email. Your manuscript means nothing to me, and although there appears to be a complicated network of people for whom this is not the case, I have such a hard time picturing them that mostly they exist as a notion of voices that I think I remember hearing when I was in a car accident on the highway as a child; or when I am lying in the dark in bed and catch myself turning into an elusive, forgotten interlude of humanity; or when the living room light is still on in the middle of the night. I want to talk about the word “cochlear” though. It reminds me of the beach, because it makes an association with a conch shell. But that would be on a romantic, tropical beach, or one where a man and woman with their young child first learn that they are expecting once again. I am thinking of an autumn beach, someplace cold, like Maine or the Arctic Circle. I don’t have many feelings for you, but I think that something we could do together would be to ride in a dune buggy across the tundra. The beach in the autumn is how we know who we are, the way that everyone’s reaction to velvet curtains, clothing, or furniture is similar, but there are things that have to be explicit.
To: Oto Dept.
From: Annals
RE: Office
I am writing in regards to my office. I seem to be placed at the end of a hall near the fire door, which is fine. I enjoy pretending to be alone at all times, and not existing at all for large portions of that time. However, on that note, I have to bring up the office next to mine. A man in pleated pants who is either German, Danish, or Belgian is working next door, and he is working in conjunction with the story Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates at all times. It would make more sense if he was Dutch, but I doubt he is. He enters and leaves his office with a look of unending devotion to misery. One time in the winter I saw him changing his shoes before he went home at the end of the day; even though he wasn’t changing into ice skates, it was implied. It is impossible that he doesn’t have secret wishes. The reason that this is harmless now but dangerous in the long run, is because it raises the possibility that the presence of the story The Red Shoes could enter the Oto department, if it hasn’t already. I am sure I don’t have to explain why this would be a problem. Immolation in a public building can cause real harm. The sprinkler system in the ceilings in the hallways would go off and all the sheetrock in the hospital would become meaningless. It is a ballet shoe equivalent to Carrie, Firestarter, or Cujo. These are stories from our past that we should learn from in our present society. No one wants the hallway to be immolated.
RE: MS #04-2305; Fixation of Soft Tissue Surrounded by Bone Using Microwave Irradiation: Electron Microscopic Observation of Guinea Pig Inner Ear
Dear Dr. Goding,
We haven’t spoken. At least, not for a while. I recognize your name and your manuscript number, but not the title. However, it makes sense that you are not one of the ones who writes about vocal folds, but about the inner ear.
Doctor, if I may, I feel that if we knew each other, things would be very different for both of us. We would be together in Dusseldorf, in an apartment by the river. For the first time, I would like wall-to-wall carpeting; we would have a glass-topped dining room table, and I would wear expensive blue eyeliner. You would be my valentine and a giant box of chocolates would come from somewhere; one of us would bite all of them—pink, white, caramel, raspberry gel, granular chocolate—all over the living room, while the other one would wear my seashell-inspired bra and underwear set, even if it made me think of mustaches and doorbells to see you in it. Goding, I’m not going to lie to you. You, and I think you know this, break into my silent stream and make the fluorescent lights turn present instead of ongoing. In the end, Goding, as observed by the saints I have seen in paintings in museums, positioned in infinite configurations of hats and outfits, in settings that include baby lambs, calves, and foals; pastures; naked violence; and feasts of fruit and meat held in dark cathedral vaults, I have found that you are still transformed into a medium-size planter in a hotel lobby. The transition into this feeling happens over the course of the afternoon. When I leave the hospital around four or five, when the light is turning in the cold outside the parking garage, I feel empty of plush desires and the thrill of never speaking to you. You open the door to the possibility that speech originates outside of any particular person or plant.
RE: MS #04-2578; Laryngeal Thrush
Dear Dr. Sulica,
I have two words for you: “Laryngeal Thrush.” Hands down, this is my favorite manuscript title. The obvious pornography is subtle. I also love your name, and that it goes with the title. It is as though otolaryngology is its own language, and if I were to translate “Laryngeal Thrush” into English, I would translate “laryngeal” as the word for “river” and “thrush” would be like “rush” so it would be “rushing river,” like the Old West or China, but much more beautiful, because “thrush” also means “vanish” and “thrust,” so it is a river—a “throat”—that does all of those things at once. Modified by your name, Sulica, it does these things slowly, because you cannot say Sulica fast. It is like the word “sluice,” which you also wouldn’t say fast. All together, it is a river, a sluice, that vanishes slowly, with the velocity of rushing and thrusting, which gives it the obvious sexual symbolism that makes a person feel as though they are looking up close at a giant rock face trying to spell their own name.
RE: MS #04-2632; Seasonal Variation of Rhinocerebral Mucor Infection
Magliulo,
Remember the time on the rocks? When we both imagined you drowning me in the inlet? What was needed was succor, not mucor. But that is what it is like with you, one misunderstanding after another; this is what we are supposed to do, make obligatory half moons together in order to maintain the dimension of exis
tence that stores low-grade failures, and I am trying. The dark ocean where there is a cavern of particles from this category of possible enactments is behind one of my organs, and in one of the emotion particle sacs at the base of my skull. If you tested it with your hands it would feel like a raisin made out of a dark ocean.
On the way home, it rained very hard and I wasn’t afraid. Sometimes I mistake Sunday for other things. A hot afternoon that disappears without any desires in it has a place, but I don’t like that aesthetic of reality; maybe it could have a number or a name, and then we could establish for ourselves in life what qualities of reality we wanted to avoid, or if we couldn’t or shouldn’t avoid them we would be prepared because we would recognize them. We would know, for example, that qualities of fear are an established part of a certain kind of sunny day in January, but that it is not fear to be avoided, they are fears that we can possibly become inured to as we get older and find other value in it. Since January is written in muted white cursive letters with a gold tone in the background to indicate waning light behind it, this aesthetic might be called White January Marigold 001 for children, when the fears are new, and for an adult stage it could be White January Marigold 004, to indicate that at least three stages of thought, experience, and subtlety in this category had been traversed. A high level fear would be an inquiry, and this one could be White January Marigold 478: Where Is It? I have the sense that I know, the way sense and know can become snow, but that won’t be how this works.
RE: MS #04-2563; Clinical Significance of Middle Frequency Sudden Deafness
Dear Dr. Filho,
There is a pile of empty cans and being in a junkyard stringing some of them to the tail of a dog, and in another part there is a movie about a wooded area.
You are never there when I think of you, and your absence is large and delicate. I have wondered if the shadows in my discriminating faculties are the reason I detect you, especially since the record of your manuscript in the database shows that you are unavailable at this time.
This has left a problem about trains that people have lost interest in. We felt close to them through myths of the West and the Civil War, but train tracks in the daytime in the summer are dreary and meaningless and they have to be addressed. I would rather be bitten by a dog than look at them, but as I am saying this it seems like they are the same thing.
RE: MS #04-2571; Acute Laryngeal Abscess: A Rare Entity But Life-Threatening Disease Revisited
Dear Dr. Eliashar,
Your manuscript, “Acute Laryngeal Abscess: A Rare Entity But Life-Threatening Disease Revisited” exists. Your name in my handwriting on a file folder though is its true incarnation. To say “revisited” actually refers to many people’s bad habits. I don’t know why you would bring up something so unpleasant, when clearly you are hoping to have your paper published. As for things here, they’re going well. I have been getting your emails, I am sure you have been wondering, but as you know, I don’t care, not because I don’t actually care, but because the physical actions that are part of this have to take place through the conduit of my office, and then I feel gray about us. I feel so sad when I think of us, the sense of hopelessness is overwhelming. Is that what you mean by “revisited?” I hope that things with you and your wife are better, and the sleeping pills. Sometimes I think of you chewing through the pillow in your bedroom in the middle of the night while your wife is lost in her nightgown. Most of this must be soothed by the early breakfasts you share in what is generally the best part of the day. Even though you have shitty sleep, the minutes after you pull into the garage on a night when it first seems like the end of winter and listen to the car cool to the memory of a former shrub, is a gentle, dark pantomime. Even if you are forced to remember the past, you don’t have to finish your thought.
RE: MS #04-2649; Purulent Chondritis of the Laryngeal Framework Cartilages
Dear Dr. Ewend,
Where do we start? Your sister’s white Romanian sneakers have been in and out of the hallway door for a month. She has had her hair highlighted, and the tired problem and the laundry seem better. In America, people would be worried about Epstein Barr but for her, it is probably Chernobyl. I also saw yesterday before it rained, the outer borough patio of the comptroller’s wife. She tried to commit suicide two years ago, and even though I have passed her house again and again I have never seen her. It is wrong to feel sad about someone else’s private, abominable pain that I did not have to experience. The geraniums and plastic white outdoor chairs that I have seen only in that way were showing between the slats of the wooden enclosure they have on the side of their house facing the sidewalk. I don’t know what things are for in their specifics, but I have an overall sense that no work is wasted.
RE: MS #04-2674; The Anterior Laryngeal Webs
Lijie,
Lijie. I don’t know what to think about that. Are you like a tongue? A pre-historic animal making infrequent sounds lost in the advent of Phanerozoic miasma in a plant landscape? You open the door to the possibility that speech originates outside of any particular person or plant. You extrude that from life.
RE: MS #04-2812; Unusual Case of Accessory Nose Associated With Unilateral Complete Congenital Choanal Atresia
Dear Dr. Ou,
You are my mind. Not you, and not your mind, but you as the unidentified physical components that are assigned to your spatiality that includes limb thoughts and organ thoughts. Maybe that is the total wrong direction. Endlessness is happening right now, and lions and grass are part of it. The problem is not that there is no one in our soul, or that it’s invisible. It in this life is so visible it’s up close to us every minute. If you had a beautiful animal so close to your face that you were gazing into its eyes every minute so that you were in motion with it in time through its relation to the black cosmos, your perception would be affected and other things about the world and the particulars of creation might be obscured. A commercial that my soul gives me is a sprinkler in a garden or grass area. I understand why it likes this, but I only like it because it likes it. When I see that image, either on the inside or the outside of my mind, I know my soul is activated, and is conveying its participation in the present tense in a mainstream way.
RE: MS #04-2653; Pulsatile Tinnitus Associated with Internal Carotid Artery Morphologic Abnormalities
Dear Dr. Eshragy,
Fistula. What pleasures, or pleasutes lie here? A pleasute is an episode of logical, optimistic pleasure, a vignette of pleasure that is a completed bright interlude.
I have some punctuation, an eyebrow pierce, a lip pierce, and an earring loop in my top cartilage. There is a myriad of jewelry in life. Is jewelry a flute? A river that flows so that everything that festers in one area of geologic gestation germinates to form a temporal spore is separated by rocks that break a melismatic waterfall chamber for space to echo sensible inside any? any what? this, again? Your ears overrun, and my ears, in faunal space. We’re alone together, and not alive at the same time, but we bring ourselves to ring together. What if we changed the concept of beginning? What are your aquatic interests?
31
LIFE STORY
David Shields
FIRST THINGS FIRST.
You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever. I may grow old, but I’ll never grow up. Too fast to love, too young to die. Life’s a beach.
Not all men are fools; some are single. 100% Single. I’m not playing hard to get; I am hard to get. I love being exactly who I am.
Heaven doesn’t want me and Hell’s afraid I’ll take over. I’m the person your mother warned you about. Ex-girlfriend in trunk. Don’t laugh; your girlfriend might be in here.
Girls wanted, all positions, will train. Playgirl on board. Party girl on board. Sexy blonde on board. Not all dumbs are blonde. Never underestimate the power of redheads. Yes, I am a movie star. 2QT4U. A4NQT. No ugly chicks. No fat chicks. I may be fat, but you’re ugly and I can diet. Nobody is ugly after 2 a.m.
Party
on board. Mass confusion on board. I brake for bong water. Jerk off and smoke up. Elvis died for your sins. Screw guilt. I’m Elvis; kiss me.
Ten and a half inches on board. Built to last. You can’t take it with you, but I’ll let you hold it for a while.
Be kind to animals—kiss a rugby player. Ballroom dancers do it with rhythm. Railroaders love to couple up. Roofers are always on top. Pilots slip it in.
Love sucks and then you die. Gravity’s a lie; life sucks. Life’s a bitch; you marry one, then you die. Life’s a bitch and so am I. Beyond bitch.
Down on your knees, bitch. Sex is only dirty when you do it right. Liquor up front—poker in the rear. Smile; it’s the second-best thing you can do with your lips. I haven’t had sex for so long I forget who gets tied up. I’m looking for love but will settle for sex. Bad boys have bad toys. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me. Live fast; love hard; die with your mask on.
So many men, so little time. Expensive but worth it. If you’re rich, I’m single. Richer is better. Shopaholic on board. Born to shop. I’d rather be shopping at Nordstrom. Born to be pampered. A woman’s place is the mall. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. Consume and die. He who dies with the most toys wins. She who dies with the most jewels wins. Die, yuppie scum.
This vehicle not purchased with drug money. Hugs are better than drugs.
You are loved.
Expectant mother on board. Baby on board. Family on board. I love my kids. Precious cargo on board. Are we having fun yet? Baby on fire. No child in car. Grandchild in back.
I fight poverty; I work. I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go. It sure makes the day long when you get to work on time. Money talks; mine only knows how to say goodbye. What do you mean I can’t pay off my Visa with my MasterCard?