The End of the World Book: A Novel
Page 28
ZERO, YEAR
I am interested in the idea of erasing time and returning to the beginning. Throughout history there have been several variations on this concept. In 1795, during the French Revolution, the revolutionary committee, having already abolished the monarchy, saw fit to abolish time, resulting in my favorite revolutionary act: the removal of the hands off town-hall clocks. The clock hands were subsequently melted down to make blades for guillotines and a new calendar was created, beginning with Year One.
Close to two hundred years later, Pol Pot, who was, of course, educated at the Sorbonne, took his Parisian education back to Cambodia and developed this idea further, turning history back to a year zero; this involved sending the intelligentsia off into the fields and murdering two million people, whose skulls were set one on top of the other, like timelines constructed from bones.
And then there is my mother, who at the time of writing is almost eighty years old, and her concept of year zero. She believes it is when we are younger that we are in fact closer to death. Just as we are capable of living backwards through the compulsive activity known as remembering, she likes to think that perhaps, as we get older, and wearier, we are somehow miraculously moving further and further away from death, slowly as a snail. Just like a snail we leave a strange, silver substance that protects us from our main enemy, this being time, and that ultimately erases the years.
ZEUS
I've always liked the story of Zeus and Ganymede, ever since I was a kid. I recall first reading about it in a book of mythology I took out of the library. The story was simple and extreme. Zeus, bored with being a god, eyed Ganymede, who was bored with being a boy. Overcome by Ganymede's beauty, Zeus transformed himself into an eagle, swooped down, and seized the boy, taking him away to Mount Olympus where he became cupbearer for the gods, which basically involved standing around all day and pouring out nectar. Feeling guilty, Zeus offered Ganymede's father two immortal horses to make up for the loss of his son.
It would be years before I understood all the implications of this relationship, but even then it stirred me, deeply. After reading the story, I remember lying on my bed and thinking about the bird's sharp talons and how they must have left bloody scratch marks in Ganymede's alabaster skin.
Unlike Ganymede, I never learned the name of the god who one afternoon in the guise of a magpie flew down and uprooted me from the world, tearing me out of childhood, taking me to Los Angeles to pour Coronas for the gods. It seems this god, whoever he was, did offer my father a little something in return, something immortal, but my father declined the god's kind offer, telling him that he did not require anything for his loss. And, unlike the boy, who became ageless, I did not stay young. I slowly grew older and then I got old.
ZIPLOCK BAGS
In every couple there is always someone who is more practical; in the couple of which I am a component, that is most definitely not me. That summer when we were virtually being inundated with peaches, harassed by peaches, my boyfriend carefully analyzed the situation.
Following his brilliant and groundbreaking analysis of the peaches, Tim jumped on his bicycle and rode to the corner shop, where he purchased a large quantity of ziplock sandwich bags. On his return, he gathered every single peach: both those that were still attached to the tree, and those lying beneath it.
In the kitchen, in a systematic fashion, he cut the peaches into quarters. Then, after some further calculations, he carefully placed the segments of the peaches into the ziplock bags; in each bag there was exactly the amount of peaches required for our morning oatmeal. He proceeded to stack the bags in the freezer, on the same shelf as the paintbrushes, which are in there so we don't forget the color we used to paint the house.
While doing this he took no calls; it was imperative that he not be disturbed. Now we have enough peaches to last us a lifetime. Actually, we have more peaches than we could ever possibly consume in one life. So now it is my job to figure out how we can smuggle the remainder of these peaches with us, perhaps by virtue of some kind of secret compartment, into eternity.
ZIPPERS
Zippers were invented in 1892; this means Arthur Rimbaud, who died in 1891, just missed out on zippers. While out cruising in the sex clubs of Abyssinia—a country that he moved to under the impression that it was the kingdom of abysses, which it ended up being, at least for him—no one ever unzipped the bright silver zipper on his trousers because there were no such things as zippers.
When we were boys and went camping, the sleeping bags we lay awake in, and crawled out of, had zippers running down the length of them. I think they were gold. Sleeping bags were sexy, but there was something sinister about them, like soft coffins.
My mother wore these red and navy blue crew neck sweaters that had zippers at the back. Apart from my mother, I've never seen anyone else wear these sweaters. Perhaps they have become extinct, like musical doorbells, but this is no reason for concern, as surely they will return and come back in style, one hundred years from now, when all of us are gone.
Often I wish there were a little zipper in the back of me, so I could climb into and out of myself whenever I pleased. I have looked around for someone capable of such an alteration, but inserting a zipper is one of the more advanced tasks in sewing, requiring a skilled seamstress. We must wear these selves out, until they are threadbare.
ZOO, THE
I haven't been to a zoo for over twenty years, but I always enjoyed going to the zoo. What child doesn't? It was like a kind of encyclopedia, each category housed in its cage, but this was even better than the actual encyclopedia, because these categories could salivate all over you before they devoured you.
At the Perth Zoo, I had my favorite animals. I liked the polar bears, who in 1980 devoured a teenage boy with a death wish and long stringy brown hair who had leapt into their sunken enclosure. I remember visiting the zoo shortly after this incident. In fact, I think the front-page article that appeared in the local newspaper, complete with photographs of the boy and the polar bear in question—though photographed separately—led to me asking or even begging my mother to please take me to the zoo.
That day, we went to look at the polar bears, who were separated from us by a kind of moatlike structure, and I remember mum telling me that the moat was there to make it perfectly clear who was the visitor and who was the animal, who was rational and who was wild; however, given the boy's leap into the welcoming arms of the bears, it seemed there was still some confusion regarding this matter.
I also appreciated the Tasmanian devil that lived in the nocturnal house in a kind of glowing glass case. When he wasn't hiding, he would race around and around in frenzied circles, as if he were going insane or already insane, just trying to take the edge off his insanity. Even then, I felt an odd affinity with this creature, perhaps because of its painfully shy and violent nature, or perhaps because of its frantic, restless sensibility.
Though if I am to speak truthfully, I recall very little of the animals. I mean, I know there must have been lions there, but I have no recollection of them. When I think back, I just see the word lion, written in orange crayon, or an image of a lion from the TV.
I do recall the cages quite vividly. Sometimes, when I was standing at a certain distance from a cage and the light was at a certain angle, the shadows of the bars would fall across my skin, as if I were my own cage or in the process of becoming a cage.
And, if we are to speak truthfully, the animals were just an excuse for us to visit the zoo—we were really there for the cages.
Although I haven't been to the zoo in a long time, I don't really need to go, because occasionally I dream I'm once again at the zoo.
At this zoo, there are zookeepers who look very handsome in their drab and tight, dark blue uniforms. The zookeepers are emotionally distant. They pay no attention to me. They're preoccupied with cleaning out the boys' cages, which they do on a daily basis, on their hands and knees, scrubbing the wooden floors of the cages with hot water
and disinfectant.
The boys attract many visitors. They claw their trainers, leaving terrible sex marks.
And there are lions at this zoo. I can say this for certain. Their fur is red, the same shade my mother dyes her hair. The pads of their paws are as soft as blackboard erasers, in contrast to their sharp claws.
But the lions are not in their cages. Their cages are nowhere to be seen. Instead, these lions leap over a wall in an orderly fashion, while I balance upon the wall, wearing nothing but a pair of new school shoes. Every time a lion leaps, a mechanism descends. It's like a giant version of a mechanical claw you find in one of those arcade games, where you're pushing a button, trying to pick up a stuffed toy with the claw, but invariably you never win, and you've wasted all your money.
Whenever the mechanism descends, I grab hold; it lifts me up, just out of the lion's reach. The mechanism seems to be in relatively good working order. The zoo hopes to purchase a newer model in the near future.
As soon as the lion lands on the other side of the wall, the mechanism places me back down, very gently. The mechanism folds up and ascends. Then another lion leaps, and once again the claw comes down, lifting me up, ever so slightly, to a place of relative safety.
Acknowledgments
Excerpts from this work were published in Bloom, The James White Review, Suspect Thoughts, Queer and Catholic, Two Crows, Paws and Reflect, and Mirage #4 Periodical.
Many thanks to the following people for their aesthetic guidance and for reading the manuscript throughout its various stages: Jim Krusoe, Dennis Cooper, James McCourt, Richard Canning, Susana Chávez-Silverman, Teresa Carmody, Anne Hawthorne, Sakada, and Amanda Walzer-Prieto.
I'm indebted to all my writing teachers, particularly Kate Haake, Rod Val Moore, Jill Ciment, and Brenda Walker. I'm equally and blissfully indebted to anyone who's published my work, especially Patrick Merla, Don Weise, Charles Flowers, Richard LaBonte, Lawrence Schimel, and Karen Finley. I receive constant inspiration and support of all kinds from all my friends and fellow-writers, all my creative writing students, Antioch University L.A. and Santa Barbara, Frida, and my family, especially my parents.
The World Book Encyclopedia was an invaluable store of knowledge and wonder, specifically the 1957 and 1960 editions.
I'm deeply grateful to everyone at the University of Wisconsin Press who worked so hard on the book, particularly Raphael Kadushin, Sheila Moermond, Andrea Christofferson, Carla Aspelmeier, Chris Caldwell, Adam Mehring, Amy Johnson, Nadine Zimmerli, and Amy Caes. Thanks to Vivian van Blerk for the beautiful image on the cover.
And of course, eternal thanks to Tim Miller, who's my guiding light in writing and in life.