It took me a minute or so to realize that this could not be the case, that surely the milkman was dead by now, and surely his assistant had gone gray. I slowly remembered that milk bottles were a thing of the past, irretrievably lost, quaint antiques from the twentieth century. I had all but forgotten that lovely glassy sound of milk bottles gently knocking against one another, so used had I become to drinking milk from cardboard cartons decorated with the smiling faces of missing children, as if the children were somehow happy to be missing.
So where was that sound coming from? Was there a milkman and his boy doing deliveries in the depths of my heart? Was it the sound of my heart breaking? Or perhaps it was merely the sound of my heart adjusting to something?
MILLER, TIM
When I first saw you at that lecture in London in 1994, it was so eerie and momentous. I knew how Goethe must have felt, when, on his twelfth birthday, he was given that puppet theater, for which he wrote his first play, an event that utterly changed the path of his life and altered the course of who he would be.
At that moment, I sort of felt like I was fate's hand puppet. Despite being very aware that there were so many hot puppets, so many heartless puppets, so many puppets that were not for me, I had always sensed that there was one special puppet out there in the world who was dreaming only of me, whose wooden limbs and strings were itching to get all tangled with my wooden limbs and my strings. All my life, I had been waiting with the radical patience of a puppet, and, as soon as I saw you, I knew you were the puppet.
Of course, it wasn't that easy. The first year of our relationship, which had a rather turgid, romantic quality to it, was, how can I put it? Somewhat Wagnerian. But full of lots of good parts, like when we were walking past the Starbucks in the East Village in Manhattan, and you said, It's sort of comforting to know that in one hundred years we'll all be skeletons. I think I really fell in love with you then and there.
And of course there was that letter I wrote to you, in which I said that if you didn't break up with your boyfriend and invite me to Los Angeles, I'd come to you in the night like a specter, or like Satan in Rosemary's Baby, and I'd drug your boyfriend and kill your dog (or vice versa) and fuck you, so you'd give birth to something—what a charmer I was! So, I ended, you might as well invite me anyway, and you did, and the rest is, as they say, history.
I've known you now for how long, almost fourteen years? Inevitably, there are those moments when I really don't feel like I know you at all. Normally I rationalize this by reminding myself that there's nothing wrong with living with a handsome stranger; in fact, it's quite nice and has its advantages. But once in a while, I really do want to solve the riddle of who you are. There are times when I feel like you're the Sphinx (Greek, not Egyptian) and I'm a passerby, attempting to answer that riddle. Though I always stop myself before I get too caught up in this game, remembering that if I do solve it, you'll have to get really mad at me, just as the Sphinx did with Oedipus. We'll have a terrible fight, and then you'll have to destroy yourself (and besides, look what happened to Oedipus afterward!). Or, if I don't, you'll have to devour me; neither of these outcomes is particularly appealing.
Perhaps when I think of you I need to stop thinking in terms of riddles and metaphors altogether. For surely the word boyfriend is itself a metaphor, a figure of speech, describing one thing—you—in terms of another. I kind of like the idea that whoever I think you are, you'll always be thoroughly dissimilar.
What I do know for certain about you is that when you were in fourth grade, every day to school you wore a three-cornered brown felt hat in the style associated with the American revolutionaries. You keep that hat in a cupboard. The hat's dusty and slightly battered, as objects salvaged from childhood tend to be. I like the feel of it in my hands. I hold my breath and wait for some deeper secret to pour out of the hat, to fly out.
MINSK
My favorite place in the world is Minsk, capital of what was formerly known as the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic, but what is today known as the independent nation of Belarus. One day I hope to retire and buy a nice little prefabricated house in Minsk for me and my sweetheart, Tim. In its heyday, Minsk was renowned throughout the Eastern Bloc for the beauty of the young men who worked in its factories, in particular the boys who made Minsk's highly sought-after peat-digging machines. Since the dissolution of the USSR, just as the architecture of the city itself was subjected to severe damage during World War II, the architecture of the city's boys has been in an increasing state of disrepair. One can still see traces and remnants of their devastating beauty; nonetheless, they are no longer so much boys as they are the ruins of boys.
MIRRORS
When we go to dream, one of the first things we notice is that there are no mirrors. No mirrors on the ceiling, like in sleazy seventies bedrooms; no mirrors on medicine cabinets; not even a little mirror hidden in a handheld compact. We are not sure of the reason for this. Perhaps dream exists in a space prior to the invention of mirrors. Maybe someone (God?) has hidden all the mirrors. Or possibly all the mirrors in dreams have been shattered and put to other, more practical uses. Either way, there is no surface capable of reflection; we never see ourselves. This is a great relief. This is precisely the reason why, every night, we go back, again and again, to dream.
MOANS
The eeriest noises in the world are surely the moans that come out of cats' mouths when they're in heat. It sounds like the cats are attempting to speak, but whenever they do, their claws get in the way and they tear the heads off consonants, slit the throats of vowels. Basically, they fuck up the alphabet, massacre it.
I think what's particularly unearthly about their gurgling is that it sounds like something almost human, but not quite. Something that has tried to become human but has failed miserably in its attempt.
I first heard this noise when I was a kid, lying in bed one night. It was coming from the roses right beneath my window. I had no idea what the noise was, and I called my mum in. She told me it was cats; they were very unhappy, she said, and they were taking their unhappiness out on the roses.
But what about the moans that come out of our own mouths? They're equally eerie, similar to the moans that issue from ghosts—except whereas ours express deep bodily delight, theirs express a ragged sense of loss over no longer being in a body and a terrible longing to once again reside in a body, in all its complexity. (On further reflection, our moans are identical to those of a ghost.)
Some say our moans are the sound of words falling apart, of words having little black nervous breakdowns. Others say moans are the enemies of words, out to get words, and that words should always be on the lookout for moans. Either way, we can agree that these moans will be our undoing.
MODELING
When I was ten years old, I decided to become a model. If you wanted to be a model, it seemed the first thing you had to do was to walk around with a book on your head. It gave you good posture. Balancing volume M of the World Book Encyclopedia on my skull, I walked slowly up and down the brief length of our hallway, proceeding as carefully as possible, so the book wouldn't fall.
Once I had mastered one volume, I took to walking with two volumes stacked on my head: A and M. After that, I tried three. Gradually, I accumulated volume upon volume, until finally I was able to balance all twenty volumes of the World Book on my head, until my neck had sunk into my spine, which itself had melted down like snow, or ice cream, until I crawled on all fours with the poise and grace of our prehistoric ancestors.
MODERNITY
Modernity ended in 1953, when hearing aids became so small as to be almost invisible.
MODERNITY, POST-
Postmodernity began in 1978 when my father threw me off his shoulders into the Indian Ocean, screaming.
MONARCHS
Last year there was talk that monarch butterflies, known for their strong flight and long migrations, were about to become extinct; we would have to be content with observing these butterflies in
glass cases. But this summer there were so many of them in our garden, nice big orange-brown ones, and even bigger yellow and black ones, that it almost seemed a bit excessive. Although I'm glad that they are still around, or back, somehow this overload of monarchs is as worrying as their absence. There is such a thing as too many wings, too much beauty, too much abundance. One can easily be overwhelmed by paradise.
MONOTONY
At least when we were at school, the deep boredom of the day was constantly interrupted by the brothers, who, depending on their moods, would get out their canes or their belts, and who, again depending on their moods, would then swat us on the backs of our thighs, on our knuckles, or, of course, on our behinds, for committing some minor infringement. Even better was when other boys had committed the crime. Brother Santa María, my fifth through seventh grade teacher, would line these boys up at the front of the classroom, and allow us to watch—in fact, make us watch—as he took his glossy brown belt, or, as he referred to it, my friend, to the boys. Now we are no longer at school, yet the days are still profoundly boring—if anything, the boredom of the days has increased exponentially. We have to be more inventive; we must come up with other ways to overcome this monotony.
MONTAIGNE, MICHEL DE
In 1571, exactly four hundred years before I was born, French writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne, having grown weary of the horrors of the world, withdrew to the cool quiet of his castle to write his rambling, chatty essays. Apparently, whenever he grew tired of writing, he'd go outside and raise the drawbridge over the moat of his castle up and down, up and down, listening to the squeaky noise the mechanism made. Montaigne, who, with his shaved head, walrus mustache, and light goatee looked a bit like a sixteenth-century cholo, usually wrote wearing his white ruff collar, but sometimes, when it tickled the base of his earlobes to the point of distraction, he would take the collar off. Eventually, he always put the collar back on, knowing that one is confined to the style of one's century. Skeptical of rationality, and unconvinced of reason's ability to illuminate anything, Montaigne was subject to a recurring dream where he was wearing a collar sewn out of molten hot lava, and his essays were erupting out of him, one after the other, at times violently, at times mildly.
MOON, THE
There is a theory that millions of years ago a meteorite collided with the earth. A big chunk of the earth broke off and floated away, and that chunk gradually formed into what we now call the moon. Thus today, when we gaze at the moon and are moved by its pale strangeness, we are simply longing for reconciliation with what was once part of us. The implications of this theory are dazzling: nothing is further away than the self; nothing is colder or lovelier than the self.
MOTHERS
Just as they say a mother-to-be has a certain glow about her, it can be said that boys who have been recently diagnosed with HIV have a certain look about them that could also be construed as a glow. After all, both the boy and the expectant woman are in a state of apprehension. And both must be full to overflowing with a feeling that is strange and uncertain, though the boy is surely less certain and even more fearful of what is inside him. Both are giving birth to something. In another epoch, one even stranger and more twisted than our own—if such a thing is conceivable—people might even shower gifts upon these boys.
MOUTH, THE
Some days I feel like I'm nothing but a mouth, a giant, gaudily painted mouth, one hundred dogs' drooling mouths, and from each of my mouths issues forth a length of shining.
Perhaps in the future we need to consider eradicating the mouth.
MOVIES
Humans spend so much time at the movies. By the end of this century, humans will spend all their time at the movies. They will refuse to leave the cinema. They will be born and they will learn to talk and they will fall in love and they will eventually die, all within the air-conditioned confines of the cinema. At the movies, what's on the screen is of little to no significance. What's important is how dark it is. We can't really see one another and we are not permitted to talk with one another. What matters are the ushers in their red uniforms, with their flashlights, enforcing silence. The little red and black ticket stubs that litter the floor of the cinema are also essential. What is crucial is the accidental or intended rubbing of knees or pressing of thighs against the legs of handsome strangers. As we sit in the near dark, which gets us used to the grave—which will not be pitch-black, but will actually have a certain source of light, what is known as corpselight—we forget one another and we begin to forget ourselves. This is why we go to the cinema. The odor of teenage boys mingles with the odor of popcorn, creating a dense, stale, buttery stink.
MUSES
Lord Byron claimed his muses were boys with buzz cuts wearing baggy jeans. They'd come down on their skateboards and hit him over the head with their skateboards. He'd emerge from his daze in a fit of inspiration. A couple of centuries earlier, in 1598, after Irish rebels set fire to Edmund Spenser's lace collar, Spenser, depressed in mind and spirit, wrote a long poem called “The Cum of the Muses.”
My muses don't live on Mount Helicon, but in Pomona, California. Before I write, I call them up on their cell phones. Sometimes they don't answer. You can always tell if my muses were just here; they leave long trails of their saliva. My muses are nice and violent. It's only when I fail to create that I learn what they are truly capable of. If ignored, the muses are quick to exact revenge. They behead everyone I love with machetes. One must always be alert; one must always be listening out for the muses.
MUSTACHE, HISTORY OF THE
If one examines and then ranks the history of the mustache, it is unarguable that Friedrich Nietzsche's, with its shaggy exuberance, takes first place. He purposely grew it to absurd proportions, so his lips, that red, fleshy part of his body that uttered the truth, would be permanently concealed. This philosopher's mustache has been hugely influential; take, for example, the bushy mustaches of the so-called gay clones of the 1970s (direct descendants of Nietzsche) that come in second. It was their mustaches that sealed their fate. Nietzsche's influence can also be seen in the walrus-like mustache that tickles the upper lip of the cholo—or anyone lucky enough to kiss a cholo—and occupies third place.
It is the drastically different pencil-thin mustache that hovers subtly above the lips of young Mexican men that comes in fourth. This mustache was directly influenced by Franz Kafka, whose mustache falls into fifth place. In true style, Kafka lags behind those he inspired, those young men who wear this mustache so slight it almost fails to exist.
MUSTACHE, HITLER'S
Though one cannot condone such a mustache, and though one might wish such a mustache had never been seen on the face of this earth, one cannot undertake any serious study of the mustache without thoroughly examining this terrible, blunt, oblong example. Hitler's mustache haunts the history of the mustache.
MYSTERIES
Inside me there is a dead boy lying beneath the shrubbery, the rhododendrons, and there is a lot of tweed; tweed is a fetish. There are boy maids wearing frilly little aprons and caps, and at night the boys change into tuxedos or evening gowns. Everyone is very dotty and very arch and very witty, and everyone is suspicious; adultery is the norm. Everyone is consuming excessive amounts of tea, and can everyone gather in the drawing room at eight. Before morning another boy corpse will turn up in me, then another in the evening, and no one will feel anything, just like in an Agatha Christie mystery.
MYSTERIES, BIG-PRINT
When my mother and I walked to the local shops and the local library, we'd hold hands, and on the way we'd talk about different things. Sometimes I'd look at the sunspots on the back of her hand, which were like polka dots, but less precise. Some of them were brown, like my slippers. Others were silver and matched the watering can.
The other mothers would stand outside next to their mailboxes, in their polyester floral dresses. As we passed by, they'd snicker and whisper.
Upon arriving at the library, mum an
d I would go to our separate sections. I would head for the National Geographics, while she went to the shelves where they kept the big-print mysteries. We took our time in choosing our selections, because there were limits imposed upon our library memberships.
Upon leaving, each of us would hold one side of the string bag that was filled with books.
One afternoon, leafing through a National Geographic—I think it was an article on a European city, maybe Madrid—I saw a picture of a teenage junkie. He had dark curly hair, blue-black circles under his eyes, and blue track marks covering the inside of his pale arms, like birds seen from a great distance.
That night the boy crept into my dreams, as boys have a tendency to do. But I dreamt that my mother was the junkie, injecting mystery directly into her veins. She wore long-sleeved flannel nightgowns to cover up the track marks. In the dream, I was standing over her, holding a magnifying glass in my hand, just looking.
Today, my eyesight is beginning to fail me. Is this the way we begin to leave the world? Very slowly, gradually seeing less and less of it, until our eyes have had enough and finally it's time to leave altogether.
Soon, just like my mother, I suppose I too will have to read the big-print mysteries.
It's possible the experts are wrong about eternity. When I arrive there, I will find an exact reconstruction of my local library. And I will also find my mother, browsing the shelves of the big-print mysteries, resting beneath the shade provided by the shelves.
The End of the World Book: A Novel Page 16