The End of the World Book: A Novel

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by Alistair McCartney


  I've never been lucky enough to dream of Franz Kafka; naturally he makes a highly disdainful ghost, and he would never stoop so low as to enter someone else's dreams. He waits for you at the burnt-out edges of your dreams. But sometimes I do dream of a day laborer who has the face of Kafka and the build of Kafka; Kafka has returned, not as a writer but as a worker, and he builds houses and digs ditches with the same bleak genius, the same gloomy relentlessness.

  KANT, IMMANUEL

  No journey ever took eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant farther than sixty miles from Konigsberg, the town in which he was born. It is said that nothing distressed him more than the idea of travel and that he had a deep horror of other places. Yet every now and then, he dreamt that he had gone far beyond this carefully marked radius. On waking, he would shudder at the very thought of what he referred to as das Fortgehen, the going away.

  He did like to take long walks though, despite his bad knees, and maintained that all his ideas came to him while out walking: der denkende Spaziergang, the thinking walk.

  Wandering through the town, he would observe the children as they played with their birchwood hula hoops: a remarkable act of concentration. On sunny days he would go out into the fields and watch the snow melt. As soon as he felt his thought taking flight, he would turn around, so he could go back to work, dutifully separating his thinking from his walking.

  KEATS, JOHN

  Just minutes ago, scientists in tight white lab coats announced what they now believe to be the first reported death from AIDS: on February 23, 1821, a young porn star who went by the name of John Keats (real name unknown) died of AIDS-related complications in a little room in Rome. Only twenty-five, John had been in the porn industry (or as he liked to refer to it, the honey factory) for six years. He was associated with a certain school of gay pornography known as English Romanticism. The movies that he made between the autumns of 1818 and 1819 have never been surpassed by any other porn star in a single year. The film that launched him to fame was the remarkable Though I Was Gangbanged I Remain Unravished. Keats became known for the sublime look of melancholy that hovered upon his face whilst he was being topped. He is perhaps best remembered for the film I Place Beauty before Any Other Consideration. Just two days before his untimely death he had completed filming what would be his last starring role, in the controversial barebacking extravaganza Negative Capability.

  KNIVES

  We love all knives: butter knives, miniature steak knives, birthday cake knives. Knives are so useful. We lust after those fishing knives from boyhood fishing expeditions. During the day these knives were used to gut fish, like they were silver Glomesh purses. At night, in the tent, they were pressed against the throat. We have kept these knives; their rusty, serrated edges retain the odor of the fish, like a memory. But we are in love with that knife with the mother-of-pearl handle our mother used to open—that is, to gut—airmail letters.

  KNIVES, BOYS WITH

  There are boys who keep knives concealed on their skinny bodies and then, like magicians, pull these knives, as if out of nowhere. Do not hold this against them.

  KNIVES, DREAM LIFE OF

  After conducting a number of highly intensive sessions with knives, Freud came to the conclusion that the dream life of knives was unrelenting but limited. It seems that knives dream constantly, but mainly of butter—and wrists, wrists, as far as the eye can see.

  KNIVES, VARIETIES OF

  There are so many different kinds of knives in the world, just as there are so many different kinds of boys. Most people are surprised to learn that there are in fact more varieties of knives than there are varieties of boys. Yet the uniqueness of each boy demands a certain kind of knife, in particular a distinct kind of blade.

  KREMLIN, THE

  Lately, during sex, at the extreme moment of pleasure, I've been seeing the Kremlin, specifically the view from Lenin's study. I believe it's the Cathedral of the Annunciation I'm seeing, though it could be the Cathedral of the Assumption. Sex can be as bewildering and complex as all the wildly varied, rather ornate architectural styles of the buildings contained within the Kremlin's walls. Sex is a matter of style. Sex is also very historical. Some of the Kremlin's buildings were built in the late 1400s, while others were built as late as the early 1800s; every man we've ever had sex with is enclosed within us. The Kremlin has been considered by many critics and tourists to be somewhat over the top, sort of like porno sex, reminding us that during sex it's good if there is at least one top. (The Kremlin is obviously a top.) There are extreme contrasts in sex, like the contrast between all the lavishness inside the Kremlin and the somewhat stark, threatening outside wall. Sex should be threatening. Sometimes, just like the Grand Palace of the Kremlin was almost burnt to the ground during Napoleon's invasion of Moscow in 1812, during sex we're almost completely destroyed, but in a good way. And sometimes after sex, we feel incredibly bright, just as after Stalin's death in 1953, all the gold domes of the buildings inside the Kremlin were regilded, to make them even more golden.

  KRUEGER, FREDDY

  After Kafka, I would say that my other type is Freddy Krueger.

  Though most of you are already familiar with the former's scrawny, sorrowful sensuality, let me tell you a bit about the latter. Freddy Krueger is the leading man of the horror movie Nightmare on Elm Street, the first version of which, released in 1984, sixty years after Kafka's death, is arguably the greatest film ever made in the history of cinema. Ruggedly handsome, Freddy has a sort of burnt face, and wears a fetching, dirty sweater with red and green horizontal stripes. His trademark is, of course, his elegant gloves, equipped with their long metal claws for fingers.

  Surely it is more than just coincidence that these two men, the daimonic writer and the demonic hero, share the same magical initials, F. K.

  And on further reflection, the two have far more in common than just their initials. Both are thoroughly despondent, abject figures; both are at home nowhere but in dreams. Both men are utterly undeviating, their very names streaked with the brightest kind of violence.

  Though whereas the violence of Freddy Krueger's soul is always projected outward, resulting in those long metal fingers tearing nubile teenage boys to shreds, Franz Kafka's violence turns gently and consistently inward.

  L

  LAKE, VERONICA

  When I was a teenager I had long hair, and it seems most of my adolescence was spent at parties sitting on the floor with other boys, all of whom had long hair. You could almost reach into the past and drag us by the ends of our hair into the present. For years now I have been getting my hair buzzed short and cropped close to the skull, like a nun's or a collaborator's. I thought that my long hair was a thing of the past; as the years receded, baldness would be waiting patiently for me. But I must have been mistaken, or become confused, for once again I have found that my hair is heavy and long. I have a fringe hanging down over one eye, just as I wore it in high school. Once again I am in the kitchen with my mother, who, in her exasperation, is telling me that I look like Veronica Lake; she's warning me that the actress went blind in one eye, and that if I'm not careful, I will suffer the same fate.

  LANDSCAPES

  If I were able to return to childhood, the landscape that I would encounter would be primarily flat, like the top of my mother's ironing board, and wonderfully monotonous, the monotony interrupted here and there by slag heaps of corduroy, low hills of pencil shavings, and quarries filled with rotting baby teeth.

  LASSOOS

  Desiring to forget myself, I went for a walk down by the Pacific Ocean. I walked for a great distance and thought for an even greater distance, but still I could not shake the feeling that I was nothing but a stain.

  Pausing for a moment at the edge of the ocean, I caught sight of what appeared to be a lasso. I found a stick and pulled the lasso out of the brown, foamy water. The lasso had been fashioned out of bright red rope and was covered with green bits of algae. When I arrived home, I lef
t the lasso in the sun to dry.

  That night, at a club, I met a man with a considerable number of tattoos.

  The man gave me a brief yet satisfactory lap dance. As the man danced, I had the thought that I myself was a tattoo, which cheered me up. I noticed that he had a small, green tattoo of a lasso on the back of his left hand. How lovely it is, even if only for a few seconds, when the conditions of life meet the conditions of dream.

  LAUGHTER

  I like laughing, and I do it a lot. I like how it does strange things to the mouth, makes you want to pull out your sewing kit, get a needle and thread, and sew the damn thing up. Still, I am not wholly satisfied with my laugh. I listen to the crow's laugh and find it far superior; it's the most raw, the most violent form of laughter (though maybe if I really applied myself and put my mind to it, I could offer the world a laugh that is even more ragged, more coarse).

  And while we're at it, I wouldn't mind replacing my heart with the heart of a crow, which weighs barely an ounce; I could live so lightly. Surely this weight would be preferable to the present weight.

  LAVOISIER, ANTOINE-LAURENT

  Although French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier did not discover oxygen, he did name it, in 1775. He also named his Pekingese dog after the life-giving gas, in 1783. Six years later, in 1789, he wrote Elements of Chemistry, laying the foundations of this science as we know it today. Then, in 1794, at the height of the French Revolution, the first modern chemist found himself sentenced to death by the revolutionary tribunal for not being modern enough.

  What did Lavoisier think about as he walked up the five wooden steps to the guillotine? Did he think about oxidation, and how terrible it is to be human, with its promise of rusting and of certain decay? Far better to be an element. Did he try to calm himself by repeating his own law of conservation? Matter can neither be created nor destroyed; when something disappears, it is still there. Or did he think of nothing, perhaps just his little dog, as he took in big gulps of oxygen?

  There is a sublime painting of Lavoisier and his wife, done by Jacques-Louis David. In it, Lavoisier sits at a table, writing with a quill. He is surrounded by the things he loves most: his wife and the glass instruments in which he conducted all his experiments.

  Looking at this painting, one almost forgets the abrupt nature of Lavoisier's end. Instead, one's eyes linger on his legs, specifically his right leg, poking out from under the table. It is remarkably long and slender in its glossy black stocking. If he had been born in another place and time, he could have been a Rockette! And indeed, contemporary accounts state that as Lavoisier approached the guillotine, many people remarked on how shapely his legs looked in their pale gray breeches.

  LEDERHOSEN

  Back in the late eighties, I wore my lederhosen tight. I had just come out, and I had just begun working out, and I wanted to show off my muscles and my butt. Wearing something constricting somehow felt deeply liberating. There was even a brief period where I went around with one strap of my lederhosen buttoned and one unbuttoned, somewhat coquettishly. When I see photographs of this, I blush: my face turns as red as the apples that were appliquéd along the lederhosen's straps. Although I wouldn't dream of wearing tight lederhosen anymore, this continued well into the mid-nineties. Then, I got into hip-hop and began buying lederhosen three sizes too big for me, as was the fashion, wearing them nice and baggy, keeping it alpine gangsta. Now that we are in the twenty-first century, and what with me getting older, I'm not really sure how to wear my lederhosen.

  LEGS, MY FATHER'S

  There are black-and-white photos of my father when he was in the Merchant Navy, before he gave up the sea. He looks devilishly handsome, especially in his summer uniform; the white shorts display the dark hairs on his muscular legs to good advantage. As a boy I pored over these photos; I spent far too much time scrutinizing my father's legs.

  LENZ, JAKOB MICHAEL REINHOLD

  My favorite writer is the eighteenth-century German poet and madman Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, memorialized in the novella Lenz, written by the equally troubled Georg Büchner. Lenz penned odes to Immanuel Kant, hung out with Goethe, and wrote a comedy, The Tutor, a play that ends with the hero castrating himself. Lenz also had a habit of tearing his hair out in clumps; he would claim the ragged haircut was not his doing but had been done by God's scissors. In an effort to avoid the feelings that were constantly overwhelming him, Lenz would take little walks out in nature, what Goethe called God Nature, but even that was too much for his frail senses. In English, the sensation that nature instilled in him translates roughly into being fisted by God. Although Lenz didn't die until 1792, at the age of 41, an obituary for him came out in 1780. For the last twelve years of his life he lived on posthumously.

  LIBERACE

  It is said that Liberace, in an attempt to come to terms with the Kaposi's sores that covered his body, thought of them as sequins. In the days leading up to his death from AIDS-related symptoms on February 4, 1987, he made numerous references to his sequins, often remarking that his sequins were hurting him. Yes, he said in his final interview, I am disfigured by sequins. I am studded with the strangest, darkest sequins.

  LIBRARIANS

  At my library the librarians are very strict and always extremely busy. They look inside every book and check the handwritten names of the boys who have taken that book out. Then they make a list, and they execute certain boys who have borrowed a particular book one time too many. My librarians wear thick, horn-rimmed spectacles and walk around, cutting out the tongues of any patron found talking. Once they're done with this, they get on all fours and start cataloguing lightning.

  LIE DETECTOR TESTS

  I had been experiencing a moderate yet persistent bout of depression when the invitation—or should I say order—to take the lie detector test, issued by the Los Angeles Department of the Imagination, arrived in the mail.

  As I read the document I was so excited that when I closed the metal mailbox, I cut my hand on its corner and bled a little bit over the very official-looking, powder blue envelope. This was just the thing I needed to lift me out of my depression, I thought, even if it was just momentarily, like being lifted on a wave, only to fall again. After all, even the glamour of being forced to take a lie detector test would inevitably wear off. Still, as I walked back up the footpath, clutching the envelope, which, unless I was mistaken, was scented with gardenia—or was it frangipani?—wondering what outfit I should wear to my first lie detector test, wondering what it would feel like to tell the truth, wondering if I had ever in fact told the truth, I could not help but notice a definite spring in my step.

  LIPSTICK

  Our parish priest would refuse women Communion if they were wearing too much lipstick. He'd give long homilies, referring to the passage in Revelations that mentions the time when there will be only one stick of lipstick left in the world.

  Sometimes, after Mass, he'd confiscate the lipstick. He kept the offending items in a metal box above the stove in his house, which was just behind the church. There were rumors that he'd redistributed the lipstick to the altar boys who came over on Tuesdays and Thursdays, who put aprons on over their robes, cleaned and cooked him kippers, and did the dishes. There was talk of altar boys trying out the different shades, coloring in the holy wafers with the shades that didn't suit their complexions, but these are just rumors.

  LISTS

  I found myself at a club the other night, standing at the edge of the dance floor, feeling supremely unfulfilled, sort of solitary and glittering like a disco ball, when a shirtless young man who happened to be wearing his jeans low, allowing me a glimpse of the sublime aspect of his abyss, came up to me and handed me a list.

  At first I thought it was a Billboard chart list, but it turned out to be a list of my dreams. Not of the dreams I have already dreamt, but of all the dreams I am yet to dream, with the title of each dream, the subject of the dream, and the amount of time the dream will take.

  LONELINESS


  Whose bright idea was it to turn his loneliness into an art? To fine-tune one's loneliness until it is bleak loveliness? Whoever it was, we are indebted to you. This is the most important discovery in the history of loneliness.

  LOSS, TOWER OF

  The glass tower of loss has one hundred floors, all made out of glass. On each floor, to distract themselves from their loss, boys look up the skirts of the boys on the floor above, except for the boys working on the 100th floor, who have only the sky to look at and who must confront their loss.

  LOVE

  All tasks are strange and carry with them a certain kind of monotony, but surely this task is the strangest, the most monotonous.

  M

  MACRAMÉ

  The most significant art form of the decade known as the 1970s was undoubtedly macramé, that coarse lacework produced by weaving cords into a pattern. However, some contest this and argue that, on the contrary, mime was the greatest cultural achievement of the decade: mime, that subtle art form in which people with white pancake makeup on their faces, with black markings on their lips and around their eyes, dressed in overalls and horizontally striped T-shirts, brilliantly expressed something, anything, by virtue of movement and facial expression alone, that is to say, mutely, as if their tongues had been cut out of their heads. Although I admire mime—if only I could have mimed this entire book, instead of having written it—I still believe macramé is the higher and purer art form.

  In the late 1970s, at the height of macramé's popularity (though some argue that by this point, interest in macramé was already beginning to decline, rapidly, and it had become, in fact, a dead, decadent art), while other children made charming macramé potholders for their mothers, and macramé owls that would serve as tasteful wall hangings, for my mother, using off-white wool, I made a realistic macramé psyche.

 

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