by Neil Gaiman
Nobody wants to get murdered. There’s not much to like. If it happens, it’s bound to be horrible.
Unless the deed goes down in public, odds are good that the last voice you’ll hear—aside from your own worthless pleas, helpless screams, and undignified death rattles—will be coming from the person who kills you.
Now imagine that person is David J. Schow, whose sardonic, whip-smart, nightmare stand-up comedy patter should be the envy of psychotics everywhere. Imagine yourself as that captive audience, with his late-night-FM-radio-DJ-from-hell voice both tickling and tormenting you all the way out of this world and into the next.
That’s the setup for “Now Hold Still,” an original Schow that delivers all the razor-sharp ferocity and wit we have come to expect from this hardest of hard-ass literary assassins.
Now do what he says.
What other choice do you have?
Sorry I woke you up again.
You always ask the same dumb questions. Why me (meaning you)? Or who are you (meaning me)? Which paves the way for what do you want (meaning what do I want from you and how can you talk your way out of it)? That’s okay because I expect you to say that—you always do. Last time this happened it occurred to me that you want a story, a justification that might reduce your fear or make sense of your apparently random victimization.
I used to have this girlfriend who once said I had to learn to look at a situation from the other person’s point of view, and I first thought what the hell for? This is fairly cut and dried. So I thought about it some more.
Here’s the story I came up with. We’ve got time.
You know what a soul-mate is? I don’t mean the mainstay of cheap romance—that flowery, idealistic bullshit people use to excuse the ruination of their lives. Seriously, now. Don’t most people assess what they have by smacking it against the wall of True Luv? And it never sticks. Hence many otherwise normal folks squander their well-being on an altar of whom-meets whom and happy endings all designed to rub your nose in what a crap life you have anyway.
The pisser about such clichés is that sometimes they’re real—a random synergy, that ole thunderbolt that must exist if for no other reason than to cause us to writhe and pillory ourselves because it never exists for you and me. That’s just infuriating, like not getting picked in the natural selection choose-up. It forces you to watch people effortlessly achieve a precise chemistry while you sit, a failure in a puddle of missed ingredients.
Buck and Nikki had a chemistry like that, the kind that could leave you pissed, envious, covetous, sourpussed.
But you probably wouldn’t want to pay the price such a rarity costs, because you’ve always wanted things easy and convenient. A couple like Buck and Nikki, they could be your shining beacon of hope or your best reason to kill yourself. Especially if you’re the kind of person who thinks finding a soul-mate is oh-so-special, and not merely a lie unforgiving mothers use to reassure loser children.
Buck and Nikki met by accident. Catalyst, reaction. Saw the essence of their beings in each other. Got married. Got divorced, because even ideal relationships need maintenance. Eventually they hooked back up. Buck needed larger goals. Nikki needed the illusion of freedom. They hit upon a course that was brutally honest, yet directly required them to be creative.
They sat down and made lists of every person with whom they’d gotten sexually involved since their breakup. No omissions, no cheats, no tricks and no also-rans. Basically, anybody who could be considered an assault on their unity. Then they added the people with whom they’d each had relationships prior to hooking up. (Buck had another marriage back in the weeds, somewhere.)
When they were finished they had to give full disclosure on each name. Buck’s list had 72 and Nikki’s 153, because getting laid for her was always a matter of simple consent (except for the rapes), whereas for Buck it was more a male pursuit thing.
They laughed over their sub-lists of “almosts.”
Then they added their lists together—and this is the creative part—and Buck said we should just kill every single one of them, and Nikki’s eyes lit up.
Think about that for a moment. Think about the commitment, the conviction it would take as an expression of an ultimate kind of love, a sealant bond of genuine weight and consequence, a process and an involute puzzle demanding bottom-lessly creative solutions. A self-renewing, auto-refreshing task.
Now think about your own personal list. The people you’ve fucked. Who’ve fucked you over. The ones you loved who didn’t love you. The liars and con artists, the opportunists and abusers, the rotten choices, the impulse buys and the gauntlet of faces you’ve had to survive in order to develop what you call a persona and some sort of half-assed working philosophy.
I use the comparison of good memories versus bad. Good ones tend to shrink on the shelf while bad ones swell up to absorb more space, and that’s a problem. The good boils down to fleeting impressions, fast moments, partial incidents—that long and unexpected kiss in a taxi; those fiery wrestling matches where you got what you wanted for once; a sudden spark of passion out of nowhere; the rare instance of transcendence or actual comfort. Now stack that one good feeling against the two weeks of misgivings it probably cost and you’ll see the disparity—the year wasted versus the perfect moment; the downside of feeling good; the bitter, endless hours that taught you to be better or different with your next partner.
Obviously we’re not just talking about sex here, although that’s all that matters to the drones out there in yahoo-land. Who’s fucking whom really does make the world go ‘round. It’s often the only piece of intel that matters.
Buck and Nikki, see, had found a way to cut right to the steak, stay happy, and build their love.
Let’s go back to those lists: First thing you do is check off anybody who might have died without your help. Okay, that left 210 people.
Next thing you’d normally do is omit special circumstances or those candidates who were inapplicable or immune. Buck and Nikki looked at each other. Soul-mates, right? No fucking exceptions; still 210.
Then Nikki remembered this one guy who wound up (deservedly) as a paraplegic in an iron lung. She wanted him to spend every waking moment of his life suffering, and Buck agreed—209.
Three people in prison. Tougher to reach, so—206.
Four impossible to trace, gone to ground (perhaps literally), out of the world without a shove. It happens. Fair enough—202.
Or: a hundred and one times two. The symmetry was irresistible.
Hell, bullets come fifty rounds to a box; shotgun shells are five-per, and if you looked at it that way, the whole massacre barely added up to a full grocery bag.
The strategy was this: Any hesitancy, inability, or misgivings by one would be compensated by the other. If Buck couldn’t bring himself to lay a sledgehammer upside the skull of his #8 from high school, then Nikki would batter-up. If Nikki felt a ping of remorse about stabbing her #43 (her longest liaison before Buck), Buck would move in smartly with the appropriate gutting tool. (Besides, ole #43 turned out to be a gosh-danged drug dealer.)
It was like collecting, in a way. Or catching the bug for library skills—research, data, deduction, checklists. The first items in your collection come fast and hard, in a flurry. The final ones are the most difficult to collect because the grails are the most subterranean, difficult, or costly.
As to bank, well, their parents had died in such a timely fashion that providence, not coincidence, was credited. Instead of a portfolio, golf, condos or early retirement they chose their special mission, which also fulfilled the old itch for a bit of world travel. Buck and Nikki were, after all, responsible adults who had to make their own way. All they really had was each other (and they had each other a lot).
Still, you’re asking why, meaning you want all kinds of explanations you hope will prolong your clock. An “arc,” as they say in the movie business, a through-line.
When stories explain everything to you, that’s calle
d “exposition.”
Ever notice how most stories try that old “calm before the storm” routine? They try to set up something “normal” and then mess with it; make it abnormal to provide a fulcrum to restore the status quo. Except in them stories they usually get “normal” all wrong. It rings false. Or it ain’t normal for half the people who read it. I mean, what is “normal,” anyway? The Fifties nuclear family? The Nineties drag of soccer moms, SUVs and cellphones? Gold watches, gardening and grandkids? That stuff was never normal for me, and hearing about it all the time sounded like fairytales of zombie life from another planet, like Mars.
“Normal” is relative.
Think about the bad things. The secret things you’ve done in your life. The stuff so bad you’ve never shared it. Never even made teasing hints.
The maybes are endless. So are the excuses. Some of that crap might break your heart. But you love patterns and order, so you break your own heart over and over.
Ever mourn the dead? You think dead people give a sour rat fart about your self-humiliations and your displays designed to be noticed and overheard?
Ever hurt somebody on purpose? Perhaps relieve them of the burden of their lives? Is that too extreme for you?
How about all the people you’ve killed without murdering them? The lies you’ve spun, the dreams you’ve crushed, the trodden victims of your own screwed-up personality?
There are no karmic checks and balances, and the universe doesn’t give a good goddamn about you.
Yet you think you have some jumped-up moral superiority to Buck and Nikki, don’t you? You think you’re “normal.”
I could say, well, it was because of the baby. Nikki pushed really hard and Buck watched the spawn of their union dribble out in pieces. An arm with an elbow joint, a foot, half a head. And then you’d say, oh, now I get it, because you got your exposition. You think you know the mission, the plot.
But I wouldn’t want you to analyze this to death and miss its value.
I would say Buck and Nikki found other ways to sanctify the covenant of their love, and then I would ask: Have you ever really been in love like that?
Now define “normal.” I dare you.
At this stage I probably don’t need to tell you that Buck and Nikki aren’t their real names. You know that, right? If you didn’t know that, you would still be sleeping. No duct tape, no gag. Enjoying a dream of love, perhaps, absent the real thing.
What you and I have right now is intimate, but it sure ain’t love.
As might be normally expected, Buck and Nikki’s verve began to flag about the time they hit the century mark, one hundred down. Leaving a hundred to go, plus stragglers. It might have been boredom or weariness or satiation. Whatever. So they started farming out a few jobs. Which is why I woke you up this way tonight, when you thought you were sleeping safely alone. Like I woke you up two nights ago, in another town. When you were wearing a different face, asking all the same dumb questions.
You’re all the same to me.
And as intriguing as you may have found my tale of Buck and Nikki, I have no interest in what your own story might be. What your real name is. Who you might or might not have slept with in the past.
Story or no story, you’ll ask the same dumb questions every time. Giving you all the exposition changes nothing.
You’ll come awake in the dark, thinking yourself innocent and normal, and there I’ll be, standing over you. You’ll open your eyes and get it. No story; just is.
Feminine Endings
BY NEIL GAIMAN
Psychosis thrives in the open, unseen. That’s one of its most terrifying aspects. We walk past it daily. Maybe nod. Maybe smile. Never recognizing what it is that is smiling back, with a searching gaze more intimate than we would ever want to know.
But love doesn’t play by ordinary rules. And obsession is confession, be it welcome or not. As witness this nightmarishly heartfelt declaration.
Neil Gaiman is one of our finest, alivest, most enthusiastically engaged and therefore beloved modern storytellers. And this seldom-seen gem shows him at his most perceptively attentive. Letting us know just how well he knows us.
A little too well, if you ask me.
My darling, Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me, placed coins in the palm of my hand). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you.
I write this in English, your language, a language I also speak. My English is good. I was for many years ago in England and in Scotland. I spent a whole summer standing in Covent Garden, except for the month of Edinburgh Festival, when I am in Edinburgh. People who put money in my box in Edinburgh included Mr Kevin Spacey the actor, and Mr Jerry Springer the American television star who was in Edinburgh for an Opera about his life.
I have put off writing this for so long, although I have wanted to, although I have composed it many times in my head. Shall I write about you? About me?
First you.
I love your hair, long and red. The first time I saw you I believed you to be a dancer, and I still believe that you have a dancer’s body. The legs, and the posture, head up and back. It was your smile that told me you were a foreigner, before ever I heard you speak. In my country we smile in bursts, like the sun coming out and illuminating the fields and then retreating again behind a cloud too soon. Smiles are valuable here. But you smiled all the time, as if everything you saw delighted you. You smiled the first time you saw me, even wider than before. You smiled and I was lost, like a small child in a great forest, never to find its way home again.
I learned when young that the eyes give too much away. Some in my profession adopt dark spectacles, or even (and these I scorn with bitter laughter as amateurs) masks that cover the whole face. What good is a mask? My solution is that of full-sclera theatrical contact lenses, purchased from an American website for a little under $500 Euros, which cover the whole eye. They are dark grey, or course, and look like stone. They have made me more than $500 Euros, paid for themselves over and over.
You may think, given my profession, that I must be poor, but you would be wrong. Indeed, I fancy that you will be surprised by how much I have collected. My needs have been small and my earnings always very good.
Except when it rains.
Sometimes even when it rains. The others as perhaps you have observed, my love, retreat when it rains, raise umbrellas, run away. I remain where I am. Always. I simply wait, unmoving. It all adds to the conviction of the performance.
And it is a performance, as much as when I was a theatrical actor, a magician’s assistant, even a dancer. (That is how I am so familiar with the bodies of dancers.) Always, I was aware of the audience as individuals. I have found this with all actors and all dancers, except the short-sighted ones for whom the audience is a blur. My eyesight is good, even through the contact lenses.
“Did you see the man with the moustache in the third row?” we would say. “He is staring at Minou with lustful glances.”
And Minou would reply, “Ah yes. But the woman on the aisle, who looks like the German Chancellor, she is now fighting to stay awake.” If one person falls asleep, you can lose the whole audience, so we play the rest of the evening to a middle-aged woman who wishes only to succumb to drowsiness.
The second time you stood near me you were so close I could smell your shampoo. It smelled like flowers and fruit. I imagine America as being a whole continent full of women who smell of flowers and fruit. You were talking to a young man from the university. You were complaining about the difficulties of our language for an American. “I understand what gives a man or a woman gender,” you were saying. “But what makes a chair masculine or a pigeon feminine? W
hy should a statue have a feminine ending?”
The young man laughed and pointed straight at me, then. But truly, if you are walking through the square, you can tell nothing about me. The robes look like old marble, water-stained and time-worm and lichened. The skin could be granite. Until I move I am stone and old bronze, and I do not move if I do not want to. I simply stand.
Some people wait in the square for much too long, even in the rain, to see what I will do. They are uncomfortable not knowing, only happy once they have assured themselves that I am natural, not artificial. It is the uncertainty that traps people, like a mouse in a glue-trap.
I am writing about myself too much. I know that this is a letter of introduction as much as it is a love letter. But I should write about you. Your smile. Your eyes so green. (You do not know the true colour of my eyes. I will tell you. They are brown.) You like classical music, but you have also Abba and Kid Loco on your iPod Nano. You wear no perfume. Your underwear is, for the most part, faded and comfortable, although you have a single set of red-lace bra and panties which you wear for special occasions.
People watch me in the square, but the eye is only attracted by motion. I have perfected the tiny movement, so tiny that the passer can scarcely tell if it is something he saw or not. Yes? Too often people will not see what does not move. The eyes see it but do not see it, they discount it. I am human-shaped, but I am not human. So in order to make them see me, to make them look at me, to stop their eyes from sliding off me and paying me no attention, I am forced to make the tiniest motions, to draw their eyes to me. Then, and only then, do they see me. But they do not always know what they have seen.
I see you as a code to be broken, or as a puzzle to be cracked. Or a jig-saw puzzle, to be put together. I walk through your life, and I stand motionless at the edge of my own life. My own gestures, statuesque, precise, are too often misinterpreted. I love you. I do not doubt this.
You have a younger sister. She has a myspace account, and a facebook account. We talk sometimes. All too often people assume that a medieval statue exists only in the fifteenth century. This is not so true: I have a room, I have a laptop. My computer is passworded. I practice safe computing. Your password is your first name. That is not safe. Anyone could read your email, look at your photographs, reconstruct your interests from your web history. Someone who was interested and who cared could spend endless hours building up a complex schematic of your life, matching the people in the photographs to the names in the emails, for example. It would not be hard reconstructing a life from a computer, or from cellphone messages, like a crossword puzzle.