Come Back

by Sky Gilbert

  And then there’s my life. Has it not ever been thus — with all religions? Who could ever live by the Book, the good word of any God? Only those dour men who usually, whatever the fundamentalism, have beards and funny hats and walk with dutiful fuckbuddies whose vaginas are covered in drab, floor-length gowns, and whose faces are carefully obscured with funny hoods or hats. No one will ever be as devout as Jesus or Mohammad — this is written into all their texts. And as painful as that may be for the believer, it is a blessing for the rest of the world. Even fundamentalism forgives us our humanity — because we are all sinners.

  Dash mentions Barbara Pym in the final passage I will quote below. He was a maniacal fan of hers. I too have enjoyed her novels. But what is so amazing about a Barabara Pym novel is that the women in them are always going to church — but mainly because the pastors are attractive single men. Never has religious hypocrisy been captured so acutely; it’s almost painful in a delicious way.

  You might understand.

  So we go to mosque in cyberspace; we observe the niceties. We are dutiful Muslims. But your first and most pragmatic argument is that I may be arrested for my actions or perhaps for my thoughts. But I won’t be — I know. All that’s important is that we go through the motions. Because the motions are all that matters.

  Your first argument is about the practical dangers of me possibly being caught at the Tranquility Spa (doing what?). But the irony is that, though I am high-profile, I am not. What I mean is there is a belief among the academic powers that be that jail would kill me — and that, of course, it is important to keep me alive. The reason? I am heroically old and was once famous. Yet no one is actually clear on what practical purpose keeping me alive might serve. So, on a pragmatic level, people don’t care enough about me to worry about what I get up to. But they certainly, in an abstract way, would not wish to learn of my untimely passing. This contradiction works in my favour. But you are also suggesting that the situation, in reality, is that I may be arrested. I would assert you have no real proof of this; there is no reason for your worry.

  Yes, one of the great ironies of the West’s downfall was, as I have said, the underestimation of the burka. But just as crucial was the underestimation of the irresistible attraction of death. Let’s face it, we have our present government because the Turks best understood Freud’s death instinct. Oh, in sunny America, you never die, just “consume, consume, consume. . . .” No one could imagine a people so fundamentally in love with death that they would actually long to die for their beliefs. I know that fundamentalists don’t see their death as a termination. They see it as afterlife — as soul. But in Freudian terms, it’s about ending life on earth, and this is what a suicide bomber is intent on doing.

  You talk about how the Tranquility Spa is illegal, and how I might go to jail. You say I am seriously jeopardizing my life. But, as I’ve said earlier, I don’t value my life all that much now. Each of us will die; I don’t want to live forever — certainly not like this. And, let’s face it, I always was a little in love with death. So perhaps I take these little trips rather than returning to drugs — which I think even you, by now, realize I will not do. Perhaps I am flirting with danger by going to the spa. But that’s as close as I’m going to get to lying stoned in an alley somewhere, fellating an army of homosexuals.

  I don’t know if I ever really told you about that night. I will soon. I think you should hear it.

  So much for your practical worries. Your second argument is a fundamental philosophical challenge to the real. You can’t say that I am in danger in the real world, while at the same time — following your argument to its logical conclusion — you assert that there is no real world at all. If I understand you correctly, this is what you are saying. There are flaws, too, in your argument against reality. They are easy enough to pinpoint, but I am insecure about doing so. I’m also insecure about what might impel you to project this argument at me with such force.

  Your philosophical position is this: on the one hand, post-structuralism and theory are over. But on the other, we are living in a post-theory era that has — because of the course of history — proved that the most extreme of all postmodernists, Baudrillard, was correct. I find it interesting that Baudrillard is so ill-respected today, his reputation so besmirched. Not that he really ever had a reputation. It was a Baudrillard fad, wasn’t it? The Matrix and all. But you are suggesting that Baudrillard was right — for I don’t see how your attitude doesn’t represent the triumph of theory and postmodernism. You also say the reason you can claim to be reaching beyond theory and postmodernism is that their theories are no longer theoretical, because everything has become theoretical.

  Maybe I can articulate it more clearly. You are saying that what was once a theory has become a reality — or, more accurately, a non-reality — and as such it is no longer a theory. And this is because what the post-structuralists were saying was — ontologically, metaphysically and epistemologically speaking — that there was never, in the history of mankind, any there there. But in actual fact this was not always so. Aristotelian man, for instance, did know that A was A. (Whatever we may think of his thoughts.) And the Greeks — who signalled the triumph of consciousness over preconsciousness, objectivity over subjectivity — knew reality, could touch it and see it. But technology has made it impossible to know what reality is — that A is actually A. And this changed our reality. Yes, this has the flavour of Adorno and to some degree Baudrillard about it. But this fluid notion of reality, the idea that reality does not exist, is not, you would posit, a postmodern philosophy, but a reality that has been precipitated by incidents beyond our control.

  In this context you speak of the Singularity and the transhuman. I am surprised, because you have never talked about this at any length, though you have certainly mentioned it. And it is persistently discussed in cyberspace. Of great concern, of course, to our government, is the concept of the soul — whether or not it exists. But those who are pro-transhuman claim — whether we wish it or not — that the possibility that life really will stretch beyond human has become more and more possible.

  First, if this is true, I would like to meet him or her (or it). I would like to meet a purely digital human, someone who is no longer carbon-based. I would like to have a talk with him. You make interesting assertions here — that one cannot really tell the difference between carbon-based life forms and those that are not. You even suggest, and I find this most outlandish, that I might be conversing with a non-carbon-based organism anywhere — even at the Tranquility Spa — without knowing it. Most everyone finds these kinds of suppositions preposterous; it’s not just me.

  The contradiction in your argument against postmodernism also applies to your speculation about the transhuman. If the fake reality is truly the same as the real reality, then why are we so concerned about the difference? Let’s say the Doll Boy was indeed 100 percent a doll, not human after all. Let’s say he was somehow able to accurately imitate a human, that he was able to communicate this sadness about being the Doll Boy to me even though he was not human. For instance, let’s just say, to pull a rabbit out of a hat, that I were to feel sorry for him even though he was not really human. Then what difference would it make if he was non-carbon-based? This is, for me, the major argument against Baudrillard. If the simulation has replaced the real, and it is, in fact, impossible to differentiate, why long for the real world?

  But what seems most important about your argument, even though it’s the thing I am least willing to entertain, is the idea that I must stop being old-fashioned. My attachment to real experience is false, you say, and will ultimately lead to disappointment, because there are no real experiences anymore. Do I understand you correctly? If there are no real experiences, how could I be experiencing them? And why would these real experiences be dangerous? Or are you suggesting that the danger is only my manner of thinking and, consequently, my way of expressing myself?

 
This may be true, because you harp so much on my terminology, asserting that even my use of the term cyberspace — your bête noire — is out of date. Surely I can be forgiven for being out of date. That aside, I think I can also be forgiven for holding technology at bay somewhat. But you say this is impossible, and hypocritical.

  Well, if there is one thing I cannot be accused of, it is hypocrisy.

  I promised myself I would not get angry. I mean, there is really nothing offensive in your communication. It is just too absurd. And it’s hard for me to believe that you even think this way. There is a distance in it that fundamentally frightens me. But you must have composed these arguments, unless you have a ghostwriter. Jesus, I can’t stop myself from getting a little fucking irritated. And let me tell you, there is no fucking drink in my hand. This is me. This is me, getting royally pissed off.

  We’re talking about my life here. You say that my othering of technology is old-fashioned, that it inhibits my growth as a person, and that only very old people talk about cyberspace. Everyone is integrated these days, and people have stopped separating cyberspace from reality. Sure, there really is no difference. But one certainly knows when one walks out the door, doesn’t one? I do! It takes me nearly an hour to do so!

  But please don’t admonish me for being unfair to technology. By now you must be familiar with what film technology did to me. Christ, isn’t that what my whole life has been about? How easy do you think it was to wrench myself away from all that? Getting off drugs was a cakewalk compared to halting, finally, the ultimate performance: being her — the monster who was the star. How can I not other technology? Remember, I know that the sad-old-men-who-no-longer-call-themselves-faggots-but-we-all-know-they-are still buy the ancient vinyl, still try to play the scratchy proceedings.

  No one really understands. Only that fucking genius Dr. Ahmed in Dubai understood what it meant for me to give all that up. Dr. Ahmed, bless his soul, had the genius to save me! If only he could have saved Michael Jackson. If only there hadn’t been so much fucking money involved. If only Jackson’s death hadn’t been worth more than his life . . . Dr. Ahmed would have saved him too! Thank God my life wasn’t worth anything. Dr. A was the one who taught me to love myself, to separate myself from all the Hollywood bullshit. But look what’s happened. Look what has become of the entertainment industry! Surely this proves it’s always been rotten to the core. We should have nothing but contempt for it, and for all the fat-assed capitalists who will always make money off the backs of the real people who are being exploited as trained seals.

  Don’t you think I knew what I was doing when I was drunk on Johnny Carson? Of course I knew Johnny was a very smart, funny guy. Oh God, that bitch Joanna — I could have killed her. He was so pussy-whipped by that witch of a second wife. (What second wife isn’t a witch, after all?) He was a very nice man. And I was going through a period where all I really wanted was to have real conversations with people, not autograph sessions. I was tired of working, I’d been working since I was an infant. I just wanted a conversation. And if I was going to have it in front of a million people and it was going to be seen as my breakdown, then fuck it.

  It was the beginning of the postmodern obsession with people as objects of disintegration. This obsession, of course, originated with the faggots. But I don’t hold them responsible. I mean, look at me with Dash King. I could be accused of the same thing. But maybe he just fascinates me. Sure, I, like everyone else, enjoy watching people disintegrate. But I don’t think that’s it. Everybody talks about the magic of the movies. They still talk about it. But there was a time when that magic was related to a very real thing. I actually had a voice. I had vocal chords. Now it doesn’t matter whether anyone has real talent. It’s gone beyond that — everyone is an artist, and a singer, and a writer. Call me old-fashioned, I don’t give a fuck. Do you think I really care? You seem to think my affection for what used to be reality is going to hurt my scholarship. This is your last-ditch attempt to get me interested in changing my ways. I’ve changed enough — I can’t change more.

  You know, the truth is . . . I’ll say it: I do identify with Dash King. But it’s not because he was a suicidal drug addict. No, and it’s not because he was fond of identity politics and that fondness killed him. And it’s not because I’m a crazed suicidal fag hag. Not any of that. It’s because he thought truth came from those who were despised. From the abject. And his theory cannot be proved. This was only an intuition based on his own paranoid delusions about his life. He was the ultimate rebel with a cause; to reveal that the so-called normal life, the heterosexual hegemony, was hiding enormous hypocrisy. As I said earlier, isn’t everything hypocritical? But Dash believed that it is from those who are demonized, flawed, that a deep understanding of fundamental human hypocrisy ultimately comes.

  This explains his last rant, which was scrawled, in what was perhaps a moment of rebellion against technology, on a piece of paper that had been crumpled and shoved into the bottom of the pile of his last work. . . .

  Every great artist was a bad person. I know that and I have always known it. I don’t want to be a bad person. But it doesn’t matter. Everything I do is bad. You’re not supposed to be promiscuous, and you’re not supposed to have a beautiful boyfriend who doesn’t let you fuck him. And you’re not supposed to write plays about drag queens. But most of all you’re not supposed to be me and be an artist. But let’s face it, artists are only good people in hindsight. Shakespeare was probably a pederast and a killer. The proof is de Vere. . . . He killed someone in a duel over one of his servants. Then he imported that castrato from Italy so he could diddle him. And are we just supposed to go: Please, no! The man who killed somebody in a duel and diddled a castrato? He could not be a Shakespeare! He could not be our Shakespeare. Not the man who lived in a quaint cottage with Anne Hathaway, the older woman who snared him. They had three lovely children. Sure, he went off to London and probably was a bit of a ne’er-do-well — but only in the way that straight men are studs. But God help us if, imagine, Shakespeare was a faggot murderer. Well, I propose, and this is not academic, and I’m not going to use hegemony or discourse or synchronic or diaspora, this is the truth. Aporia? You can’t find the word in a dictionary! Only a murderer pederast could have written those plays. Maybe he was a well-read murderer pederast, a brilliant murderer pederast. But what makes him great is he not only had more knowledge in his head than most writers, about Italian art, falconry, the law, mythology, Latin, Greek, cosmology, history, the military, seamanship — the list goes on and on — but he also knew about life in fundamental ways, ways that matter. Would I say that all great writers have to be killers? I don’t think so. I didn’t have to be a killer. But did you ever see the play that my friend Jill wrote for me — where she had me playing Jack the Ripper as a homosexual? Jill said, “I’ve written this play for you and it will prove my feminist theory that Jack the Ripper was a homosexual.” And I liked Jill, and I wanted to help her out. And sure I liked being the centre of attention. But even Jill said, “Come on, everybody hates you, and thinks you’re such an awful low-life drag-queen faggot . . . why don’t we take advantage of it and have you play the biggest villain of all time? It would be fun.” So I did it. That was the beginning of my end. I’m to blame. I played up my dark reputation because — God knows why — maybe I wanted to be infamous. Or maybe I knew from the start it was fucking dumb to imagine that artists are gods. I mean, look at Philip Larkin: racist, sexist Philip Larkin. Did you hear about Lisa Jardine not teaching him? Give me a break, the greatest poet of the latter half of the twentieth century? And they won’t teach him because of some dumb letters to his best friend Kingsley Amis? Those were private! Not meant to see the light of day! Letters between Amis — who is practically a stand-up comic — and Larkin! Private letters in which they talk about cunts and bitches and say that all women are good for is fucking. Parenthesis! In quotes! They were kidding, you assholes! They weren’t meant to
be read out loud in a fucking class. And Roman Polanski and Woody Allen — would we want to be married to these pederasts? No, but that doesn’t mean they are not great artists. I mean, even Pym! Even the great Barbara Pym. There’s a picture of her at a desk on the back of one of her books. She’s smoking. Barbara Pym is smoking! Let’s bury her under a pile of her own books for that — for the self-destructive sin of smoking. She lived in the sixties and would have heard the Surgeon General’s rants. So she fucking ignored them, so what. I’d like to make a movie of Philip Larkin raping Barbara Pym. They were good friends, you know. Raping her while she smokes . . . because she likes it, she likes getting raped by him. Because deep down she’s a fucking whore, and that’s what makes her a good writer—

  The passage ends there, and it’s probably a good thing. The corner of the paper is ripped. One cannot be certain if there was more, as there wasn’t much room on the page to write anything else. The paper is not dated. But the paper that is with it — the last dated paper — is marked at the top by Antonio as having been written a month before Dash’s death. It seems to me, though, it must have been written a week or so prior.

  King was so obsessed with his own celebrity, or lack of it, that he embarked on a suicide mission, filling himself with booze and poppers and, presumably, cum. In these letters he predicts the manner of his own death, for in fact he did die, as he told his friend he wished, of a heart attack in a bathhouse hot tub. He was found the next day. He had been dead for twenty-four hours. The sanitation crew in those gay bathhouses was sometimes lax. One wonders what might have happened to a body in a whirlpool for twenty-four hours. Pickled? Burned to death? Impeccably preserved?