Each desk's surface was already overcrowded with the names of boys who had gotten there before us, though by the time I read those names, many of those boys were no longer boys at all, but men, old men who smelled of vegetables and wore heavy coats, or dead men who were residing either in heaven or hell—depending on the kind of life they had led—just as by now, surely the frames of those desks have been melted down, the lids chopped up for firewood.
DESTRUCTION
If you are looking for me and need to find me immediately, you can always find me in that space halfway between the world and its destruction, halfway between category and daydream.
DEVIL WORSHIPPERS
Devil worshippers become devil worshippers in an effort to evade the dreariness of life. They turn toward Satan to make life a little more glamorous and to give it a little more pizzazz. S stands not only for Satan, sodomy, and sacrifice but also for satin and sequins! Yet being alive cannot always be interesting. No matter how many black masses they hold, and no matter how many dark and ominous surprises occur during these ceremonies, like us, devil worshippers are still forced to return to the humdrum of the everyday. Even for devil worshippers there must be long stretches of life that are simply, and sublimely, mundane.
DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM
When it rains heavily, as it has been doing of late, the homeless people in our neighborhood sleep beneath the eaves of our local library.
DIANA, PRINCESS
I met Princess Diana once. It was back in 1983, shortly after her marriage to Prince Charles. She and England's heir to the throne came to Fremantle, the town where I went to school, and we all lined up, and she walked along the line and said hello, hello. I remember she wore a navy blue dress with white polka dots. Although this was still early days, long before all the problems, there was something gloomy about her even then, a sense of doom that passed as regal. It was as if, lurking beneath her fluffy bouffant blonde hairdo, there was an abyss, and that is why she wore her hair like that, to conceal the abyss. (Perhaps that is why everyone wore their hair like that in the early '80s.)
Of course when Diana died in the car crash in Paris in 1997, I was crushed, and quite hysterical, to be honest, along with the rest of the Western world—it's not often in the so-called West that we get to experience something on the level of myth. I recalled meeting her, and I wished I had reached out and touched the hem of her dress.
Shortly after her death, I had a dream that she sent me a little calling card, inviting me to come and visit her, and in lovely lettering it said, Hey you, don't come too soon to the dark, but if you do, I'll welcome you.
DIANA'S WEDDING DRESS
It is said that there is an exact replica of the dress Princess Diana wore on her wedding day back in 1981. The only difference between the replica and the original is that whereas on the original there is a length of Queen Mary's lace sewn on the bodice, on the replica of the dress there is a copy of this lace.
Similarly, I recently heard that under the supervision of Queen Elizabeth II, a company is presently at work on a replica of Diana's death. The only difference will be that this time, the hair on her head will be a synthetic wig—virtually identical to her actual hair. Apart from that, this death will be exactly the same as her original death.
DIANA'S WEDDING DRESS, THEORIES OF
A group of scientists in Paris are currently examining a possible connection between Princess Diana's wedding dress, designed by the Emmanuels, and the AIDS virus. The link, which at this point in time still remains tentative, is that both the dress and the virus appeared in 1981, and the dress was itself a bit like a virus, a virus of ivory silk. The scientists are conducting tests in an attempt to prove that the Emmanuels and the wedding and the dress—in particular the puffy sleeves—somehow caused AIDS, which up until then had been latent, to bubble to the surface.
DICTATORSHIPS, FASCIST
In my fascist dictatorship, organized around dreams, everyone would be required to sleep long hours and to dream relentlessly. In the morning, the first thing citizens would be required to do would be to write their dreams down in state-issued dream journals—even if they'd forgotten their dreams they would have to check a little box that says FORGOTTEN. Once filled, these journals would be handed in, and, at the end of the year, if someone had forgotten their dreams 100 times or more, they would be asked to report to the State Department of Dream, and they'd be sent off to hard labor camps that were very far away, where they would be forced to dream every hour of the day. Every now and then, someone with a particularly poor dream record or someone known to hold unfavorable opinions on the practice of dreaming would be executed, as an example, and a reminder, that people must do everything they can to dream. In the central squares of all the cities there would be monolithic, heroic statues of ideal citizens immersed in dream.
DISASTERS
When we watch the national news, we are always secretly disappointed when nothing particularly devastating has happened. However, as soon as the reporters with their oddly reconstructed faces speak of carnage, or disaster, on a grand, previously unimaginable scale, our excitement rises steadily, like a death toll.
DISEASES
Although all diseases are interesting—that is to say, despite our intense fear of them, they arouse and hold our attention—and although we are fascinated by all of them, from the plague of Athens in 400 BC, when the Athenian warriors who died wore very short, pleated tunics, to the bubonic plague of the 1300s, when the men who died wore tunics with similarly short, pleated skirts, we find that our thoughts constantly return to the disease known as AIDS, which is not technically a disease but a syndrome. However, for argument's sake, let us call it a disease, for who really fears a syndrome?
Of course most contract AIDS as a result of an accident or a mistake, yet the fact that one can actively seek it out, the fact that one can contract it willingly, the fact that, if one wanted, one could go out and buy and partake of a quantity of HIV, and most importantly, the fact that it can be passed on through an act, not merely of passion, but of love, and that in the process of acquiring it, one can thoroughly enjoy one's self, somehow makes AIDS very interesting.
It's safe to say that if there were a contest, AIDS would probably win the prize for the most interesting disease.
DISEASES, CHILDHOOD
Surely the best thing about childhood was its diseases (those dreaded vaccinations and inoculations against diseases, such as tuberculosis and rubella, for which we lined up as if we were heading to the guillotine, were also highlights!).
First there was chicken pox, which was like being covered in polka dots, but polka dots that itched so badly they were painful, polka dots that, when you finally gave in and scratched them, bled all over the linoleum in the kitchen. I still have one little scar from this chicken pox experience, a pale little one beneath my right nipple, like a white silk button, a souvenir, as it were, from the disease; in this sense, all diseases were like taking vacations from childhood, which is why we so looked forward to them.
Then there was mumps, which began with an alarming lack of symmetry: first the right side of my face blew up, like those blowfish I often saw flopping helplessly on the jetty at Point Walter, those fish who we were taught to avoid because they were poisonous, but which Japanese business men considered a delicacy precisely for their poison. It took three days for the left side of my face to swell up; finally I was grotesque according to classical proportions. Mumps was far more painful than chicken pox: it was like having polka dots blister their way along the inside of your jaw.
And then there was German measles; compared to the former two, this was a relatively simple disease. This disease was ideal, utterly painless. Again, as with chicken pox, I was covered in polka dots, but these did not scab or feel like anything; they were simply there for a while. I was placed in quarantine, and I felt like I had become one of my mother's polka dot dresses, and this is exactly what I had always wanted to be.
DISFIGURE
MENT
Up until 1981, or thereabouts, homosexuals in the West had been designated as the arbiters of beauty.
Then in 1981 our job description changed, and we became the arbiters of disfigurement.
DOG
I was the last of seven children. Sometimes my dad would get confused and call me by the name of one of my siblings. Sometimes he'd get even more confused and refer to me by one of our dogs' names, either Bandit, the first dog, or Cossack, the second dog, both beagles, a noble breed, both of whom would die from cancer. There were times my father became so confused he forgot I was his son and thought I was his dog. This is understandable: after all, someone needed to continue the family dogs' good name; the dogs required an heir. Dad would bring me home bones with tasty bits of gristle on them. He'd take me out for brisk walks on a leash that was unimaginably long.
DOG BITES
Recently, after an exhausting yet ultimately rewarding day at my job as professor at an obscure, progressive university, I was walking home from the bus stop when I was bitten on the inside of my forearm by a big, pearl-gray dog. Luckily I was wearing one of my jackets made from synthetic material in a factory in China. Otherwise the hound's fangs would have broken the skin. Instead, they merely left puncture points.
Nevertheless, I found myself quite shaken by the incident. There was something primal about it, and I never use that word, because nothing primal ever happens to me. I hadn't been bitten by a dog since I was a kid, and I found my mind wandering back to all those other times, like the time I was bitten by Bandit over a dispute involving a bone brought home by my father, and then, after we put Bandit to sleep, the time I was bitten by Cossack over yet another dispute involving yet another bone, and some jealousy on my part, what Freud called the Canine Complex, which is when you want to fuck your father and kill your dogs.
And then of course there was that time when a circus pitched its tent in the park at the end of our street, and I went down to take a look. There was a little clown dog wearing a ruffle round its neck and a gold pointy hat on its head, tied to one of the stakes holding up the so-called big top. When I knelt down to pat the dog, it promptly sunk its teeth into my left thigh, tearing through my cherry-red corduroy pants. This was perhaps my favorite dog bite. One of the circus hands came over and took the pointy hat off the dog's tiny head, then placed it carefully on my own.
As I walked back home, slightly dazed, to tell my boyfriend, Tim, that I had been bitten by a dog, I realized that I couldn't really complain. I'd had some very good dog bites in my life, which suddenly seemed like a series of dog bites, separated by long periods of blank silence. I could almost feel time, like a dog, sinking its teeth into me. At thirty-six years of age I had thought that part of my life was over, but it seems that I still have it in me, it seems that there are some stray dogs out there wandering around that still want to bite me, that salivate when they see me.
DOG FOOD
Back in the 1970s there were often stories in the newspaper about old men who lived by themselves and were so poor they could only afford to eat dog food. I'd see these men at our local supermarket, loitering in the pet food aisles, their shopping baskets filled with cans of wet food. I knew they'd go home and eat a third of a can at each meal, sitting alone at their small kitchen tables. I worried that this was going to be my fate. It seemed a natural transition, to go from being a lonely boy to being a lonely old man, living on dog food, with nothing but a can opener to keep me company.
DOODLING
Once when I was a kid my mother noticed a pad I had been doodling on; the page was covered in little coffins with crosses on them. That's funny, she told me, but your dad doodles exactly the same thing, little coffins of exactly the same dimensions as yours, mainly when he's on the phone, talking to his family in Scotland. She laughed and said she considered this habit of his a bit morbid.
Now, whenever I call up Australia and get my father on the phone, while we talk about the weather, beneath the grain of his voice I can hear the familiar scratching sound of pen on paper, like chickens pecking furiously for feed in the dirt.
DRAG
After the end of the world there will be no more drag, as there will be no women left to imitate. Actually, there will be no such thing as imitation, which requires an object. Still, we will come up with ways to make things camp. Anyone who has read the Book of Revelations, which describes the apocalypse as if it were a Busby Berkeley routine, knows that the end of the world is far more camp than the beginning of the world. For starters, we will put some sequins on the primordial slime and wrap the ooze in a feather boa.
DRAPER'S, THE
I was lying in bed this morning, putting off getting out of bed, wondering whether I should just stay in bed, when I remembered the draper's. It was two doors down from the butcher's, next to the chemist's. Is there even still such a thing as a draper? To be honest, I don't remember much about it, except that they sold bolts of cloth and ribbons and women's dresses, highly synthetic dresses in violently floral patterns. I had been led to believe that these dresses had been skinned right off the backs of violent, highly synthetic animals (in this sense, the draper's was just a variation on the butcher's). And it was always somewhat dark in there, like twilight. I literally haven't thought of the draper's for twenty or so years. I must have been repressing it.
DREAM DROOL
Dream drool is what streams out of boys' mouths while they are dreaming. It is mostly clear. In Communist countries, where boys dream very little, dream drool is considered a delicacy. It is very expensive, like truffles or caviar. The most prized dream drool comes from Romanian and Albanian boys. In these countries, they have special farms where women in polka-dotted headscarves grab boys by their necks and force-feed them dreams.
But in the West, where boys dream regularly and freely, and where there is an excess of dream, dream drool is cheap and plentiful. Little children love it. Old ladies stand all night over boys and scoop up the drool with silver teaspoons, making sure they catch it before it falls onto the pillow. They sell the stuff at church fetes, in empty jam jars, along with those gold slabs of toffee in pleated cupcake holders.
DREAMS
If I am perfectly honest with myself, the only thing I really like is dreaming (and sex, which is, after all, just a variation on dream). More importantly, the only thing I'm really good at is dreaming (and sex).
Each morning the first thing I do is write my dreams down in spiral-bound notebooks. I like to do this while I can still hear the dreams gurgling out of me, reminding me that I'm nothing but a silver drain for dreams.
As I scribble away, I feel as if I am taking dictation from my unconscious. I feel like I am one of those brassy secretaries in an old movie from the forties or the fifties, wearing a black pencil skirt, working in some office, and my unconscious is my boss, who is intent on seducing me.
And indeed, when I look at all my dream journals from over the years, stacked neatly on top of each other on the shelves in my office, I get the feeling that there is something distinctly bureaucratic about this whole process. All my life I've had a horror of bureaucracy, and have done everything to avoid the bureaucratic, but maybe all the spaces I flee to—desire, imagination, dream—are themselves bureaucracies, full of manila folders and filing cabinets.
In this sense, my dream journals are nothing but yellowing, bureaucratic documents. Without knowing it, I have become just what my mother wished me to be, a low-level civil servant, one who must report, not to the state, but to dream, one who is working in the strange yet reliable, and somewhat monotonous, bureaucracy of the unconscious.
DREAMS, THE ANTECEDENT OF MY
It's clear to me that I inherited this predisposition to dream from my mother.
My mother was a ravenous dreamer. Let me put it another way: she had an appetite for dream.
She dreamt every night, all night, and in the morning remembered everything. Her dreams were as long and detailed as a nineteenth-century Russian no
vel; in fact, she dreamt often of Russia—always pre-revolutionary Russia—her nights populated with dancing bears and onion-domes, Fabergé eggs and Nijinsky's thighs, Anna Pavlova's tutu and doomed czars and czarinas. Her dream journals read like Anna Karenina or War and Peace: it was as if Tolstoy had taken a razor, excised all the exterior detail, and written his books according to the characters' interior worlds.
My father, on the other hand, claimed that he never dreamt, that he was too busy to dream, that he worked too hard to dream.
Not a particularly conscientious housekeeper, my mother was fastidious in her dream life; she kept detailed transcripts of her dreams in those ledgers accountants use, which at our local supermarket were cheaper than notebooks. She kept these hidden from my father, burying her dream ledgers in the garden, little dreamy graves, but she began to forget where she buried them, and one day when we are all gone some children will unearth them (who, on the other hand, will unearth this?).
My mother was mainly successful at concealing her dreams, but sometimes she was careless: she'd fail to wash all the dreams off her skin, and my father would smell them on her, like in those old movies where wives smell strange perfume on their husbands.
Some mornings she had dreamt so much that her dreams would be swirling around her ankles. She'd forget to mop up the dreams off the linoleum. My father would come into the kitchen and slip in one of her little dream pools. The dog would race in and gobble the dream up. The dog grew fat on my mother's dreams.
The End of the World Book: A Novel Page 6