Such children exist.
I have seen them on the streets.
I was once such a boy myself. I had the power to turn heads in my direction. It was my mother made me what I used to be before my hair turned dark and I was left with not one single living relative of the opposite sex.
Being the sons of virgins we have problems all our own. We cannot father children. Our mothers fear us, not only like other mothers do, for our size and strength, but for our mystery. But just as—having fed the child—the mother forgets to eat; just as—having taken the child for music lessons over a period of years—the mother feels that she, too, can play the instrument, so the mothers come alive when the sons step to the stage and our mothers even more so. In many ways they are no different from other mothers as they creep into their son’s rooms listening for the sounds of breathing, or leaning close enough to feel the warmth and leaving reassured, except that our mothers can only tell the difference between the sun and son by one single letter and they remain confused about this difference all their lives.
Our mothers (they say, “My son, my sun.”) living one half of a life in which we are the rest (which causes rages and obsessions, strange exacerbations of the psyche, twitches, tics…); while we, precocious, hold up in each hand poisonous snakes we strangled before we could walk. She snaps a picture. After that, cries out. Makes me wonder, What is the nature of female satisfaction? Now that she is gone I wonder even more. To me it is a question as convoluted as the meaning of meaning.
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ONE INDIVIDUAL
Appropriately younger. Appropriately smaller. Many skills, some not yet catalogued. Owns nothing. Seen from a distance, awkward and lumpy. Breasts jiggle. Nose, wide and a little strange. Eyes, gray-green, a not unusual color.
I was taking time out to discover more about her. I only wanted useful information. Long before I was really ready I met her. Brachycephalic, we leaned our heads together. I was strong and silent. I was saving the best of myself for last. At a convenient time and place I kissed her, felt her breasts and learned valuable information I hadn’t found out at the movies. I liked what I felt.
I doubled my precautions when I was around her, letting knowledge of myself seep through to her slowly. I grew a wide blond beard. Frequently I made gestures suggesting passion. I kept looking up at the sky or into her eyes and smiling. I stood with my back to the sun.
But though, and especially at that time, I felt the female had great things in store for me, I waited, wanting to become familiar with her underwear before confronting the situation directly.
In the department of comparative anatomy I compared the anatomies of fifty typical women. I was attentive to details that might have been overlooked by others of my kind. I now know what I like.
In a department of lingerie I attacked the other problem, gaining insights into many strange, pandurate contraptions. I studied all the graceless, lacy trappings and accouterments that give the aura of grace, attentive to details. I know what I like.
Love? I don’t want to get into any bungling sentimentality. I will use the word at the proper time.
She says; “Just as you’ve suspected, I have deep within me many fierce and terrible desires common to all women and that lie waiting awakening by men.” She quotes: “Woman were formed from a crooked rib.” She quotes: “There is no wrath above the wrath of a woman.” She quotes: “There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb.” She quotes: “Let us consider also her gait, posture, and habit, in which is vanity of vanities.” She quotes: “If we inquire, we find that nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women.”
She quotes:
“Woman is the Chimaera,… its face was that of a radiant lion, it had the filthy belly of a goat, and it was armed with the virulent tail of a viper… meaning that a woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep.’”
She says: “Once all women were witches. Several people wrote about it, all of them men.”
She quotes:
“And what, then is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report?’”*
It was by accident I came upon the knowledge of it. Her. Suddenly I felt dizzy. I was looking at her but I could make no sense of anything. Words were only separate words… goats and horns… living members… been seen and is oft report… I hadn’t planned to act so fast, but what else could I do? I didn’t want to seem disinterested, but I knew that I had missed many fascinating and perhaps crucial remarks. Action was called for. There was no recourse but to learn by doing and find out what would happen after that. And, since I wanted to take advantage of her anyway (without seeming to), it may have been the best possible move.
I went from “What are you?” to “Whatever you are,” and “Show me one more thing,” and she did. If I had three wishes they would be for the same thing three more times.
She tells me that the Navajos say that the sun is only a shield for another being EVEN MORE BRIGHT! and I believe it. I believe it.
“I have a surprise for you: a penis wider than it’s long. Only the heads of the largest states have them like that. Ambassadors, sometimes.”
(I keep it up with a bit of fishing line.)
She says my penis is not out of the ordinary but the string, just then, pulls taut and I forget the universe (and its intentions). (Blessings on them after all, breasts removed or not.)
So begins a shift of emphasis, and though, by now, I have a wealth of information into the primordial mysteries of the feminine. (She has told me it was women that were the ones who learned the process of fermentation; they, the guardians of potions and poisons, though how does she know? Women, she says, the snake at the saucer of milk by the door; grandmother spider… Fornicaria, goddess of the oven… I have a wealth of information already, but I’m afraid that in a little while, I will have lost the notion of end results and reasons.
At first I read the veins on her breasts and make conjectures, but the structure is INSANE ! Basic ironies abound. Ambivalences. Whoever cooked this up makes me laugh. (Lightning, for instance, strikes the best people. Jesus, born in a manger like any other corn god.) I laugh even when we are using sex for exercise or to cure a cold.
I found out that “Many female mysteries were taken over by the men, and that in some the men still wore the more primordial woman’s dress.” (How do they know, especially since there were no trousers?)
I found out that “The men rebelled under the leadership of the sun, slaying all the grown women and only permitting ignorant and uninitiated little girls to survive.”
I found out that, “Smitten in the core of her being, the woman rages over the silent mountain heights, everywhere seeks the one who also loves best to walk in the heights….”
In a world full of symbols I draw the sun at my crotch, the moon at my belly button, wanting to make all this into one giant work of art with introduction and explanation for it. Sex will be the best joke in it, starting with the Venus of Willendorf….
*Quotations from The Great Mother, an analysis of the archetype by Erich Neumann; and Malleus Maleficarum (circa 1490), translated by Rev. Montague Summers.
Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989
Not Burning
NO, I DON’T burn books, I just let them drop away. Fall out of sight. I lose them right on the shelves. Here among the file cards, I still have some power. The power to list or not to list, and to be left out of the lists is to be left out of the library. A book will be forgotten whether I inadvertently forget it or whether I choose to forget it, and that’s that.
But, good or even bad, most books used to please me. They pleased m
e by their heft and by their covers and by the fact that words are used to form them. I liked books as books, pure and simple. I took books before bed instead of aspirin. I took books when I felt a cold coming on. But (and through no fault of my own) my joy in them has become empty. Today I dropped four file cards into the trash. God knows what I have rejected just now… lost forever… unlisted. They could have been my favorites for all I know. All the better, then, if my old favorites.
There are no clear-cut reasons for the absence of these particular books from the files. (I am not a moralist.) I lose books at random. (Well, not exactly at random since they, all four, came in a row from the same file box. Vogel to Vogelstein. Two Vogels, one Vogelgesang, and one Vogelstein.)
Yes, but you’re thinking, shouldn’t I, rather, find solace among all these books? Turn to them in times of need? Many of the books in the library are filled with do-it-yourself advice and practical philosophies for every occasion. This day and age there is a book for every problem, and the promise of future happiness at whatever age (though there must be limits). Except it was a book that told me it was time for self-examination. It was a book that said to step back with a cold clear eye, and I did. I looked in the mirror and woke up and saw that I had already grown old. Just like that-old-and sooner than I had expected. (Am I the last to know it?) So now, and because of a book, I am in an unpleasant state of mind, though one would hope, only slightly deranged.
And to think that I have not ever dared all these years… not even once in all my whole life so far, to wear a black cape and a broad-brimmed black hat with a red tassel. Fearing the loss of self, I suppose. (Who is it, then, who wants to wear that costume? Become conspicuous? Who would I have been if I had dared to do it? And if I do dare to do it, who will I become?)
You will be thinking, I’ve simply not got hold of the right books. Perhaps that’s true. And suddenly it occurs to me that if such books exist, they are probably (of course!) among the very ones I have just thrown into the trash.
I retrieve the four file cards. Find: Symbols of Decay in Western Civilization, Behind the Face Lift, The Reality of Fantasy, and Capturing Desire. I will check out all these books and examine them at home. Meanwhile, I will throw four other cards, sight unseen, into the trash instead of these. This time all the authors (and deliberately so) by the name of Young. It doesn’t occur to me until I’m on the way home that it’s one of these other four books that most likely contains the help I need. I rush back up the steps and, breathless, feel my heart skip beats, but the trash has already been taken out. Think: there goes my future, such as is left of it. Still, I do have Symbols of Decay…. Possibly I can take the decay of western civilization as a metaphor for myself and learn something from it. And Face Lift. I hadn’t thought of that. Old crone with lifted face (lifted eyelids, lifted neck, lifted elbows?) and still all those backaches, weak knees, hairs on my chin? Perhaps better to (and finally) put on a wide-brimmed black hat and a big black cape. (I’ll be found out soon enough, I suppose. Probably a role I can’t handle. Probably my eyes will look out from under with an incongruous expression.)
I open, first, Capturing Desire. The cover is red, pink, and white and has a sort of wing-like design.
If I were writing about fishes or birds instead of about desire, then the title of this book would be the The Capture of Birds and/or Fishes and then we could go straight to the topic at hand with no preliminaries because we all know exactly what a bird or a fish is, but on the other hand, do we know desire? Even know our own desires? Are we not, in the very midst of our yearnings, obsessed also with their opposites? Can we not say that we actually do not want what we think we want, and that we do not want it in exactly the same proportion as we want it, so that we continuously balance between two or three or four loves and their corresponding hates. In other words, we do not try to capture anything at all, neither a bird nor a fish. It is we ourselves who are captured, so that when we reach out to grasp the fleeting moment, it has not yet appeared.
And farther on I read:
And what of the desire to wear certain strange costumes? That is the desire to be noticed by the beloved in a certain particular and very special way. And what of the desire to stand out in a crowd of beloveds, that they should not turn into hostile strangers. And what of the desire to give someone else their heart’s desire? That is simply the desire to be noticed by that person, that that person should become the beloved.
The book jacket shows the author, Marshal Vogelgesang, to be a rather fat, bearded man with squinting eyes. (One wonders is he laughing quietly to himself and at what?) Can’t tell if he’s tall or short. The dust jacket says he lives right here in the city. The book is old. Add twenty years to the picture and he might be almost my age. I do add twenty years and wonder what he thinks about desires at our time of life?
But now I’m wondering, what if today were the last day of my life—which I don’t think it is—but would I, even so, dare to wear that black hat and cape? Wouldn’t I rather die, then, with my ingratiating smile? Die as a “Nice Person”? Nice to the very end and perhaps, finally, gain acceptance of whomever happens to be present at the time? Probably some nurse or other. “She was nice,” the nurse will say. “She never bothered anybody. She was nice to the very end, though in great pain.”
In actuality, I know that I am not at all as nice as I try to seem. Nor am I as helpless as one might think. I can do harm. I want to stress that. Can do great harm and may already have done it and might do it again. And tomorrow, I suspect, more books lost, right behind the head librarian’s back.
Saturday I will go—yes, I will-actually go out to look for the cape and the hat and appropriate boots, whatever the cost. But how try these things on in front of the clerks, transforming myself from moment to moment? One minute my drab and mousy self, and the next, an elegant and brooding stranger (at last—at least I hope so). They will be saying: “What is that old lady doing in that hat? Does she think she’s twenty, tall and thin and dark?” After I have all the proper things on, then it may be different. And what if I, dressed like that, found my old self dressed like this advancing down the same street but on the other side and in the opposite direction? I would flaunt my self to myself. I would cross the street just to swing my cape around in my old self’s face and turn my back on her, the “librarian”! While she is busy with her little file cards, I, older and wiser—though with a wisdom not learned in books—will roam the streets and spend her money.
I read:
There is an element of surprise in all desire, and an element of mystery. Also an important element of danger… of the different… (which is why we so often fall prey to infidelities). New fires are lit. A fan of possibilities opens out before one. One hesitates, One says to one’s self: “At my time of life?” or, “With my looks and disabilities? My stuttering? my limp?”….
This is just what I was hoping to hear. Yes, I can awaken desire in others if I dare the costume, dare to throw the cape back over my shoulder. I will be, if not a treasure, then, certainly, a surprise.
One doesn’t lie loose all day Sunday waiting for desire. One has a plan of action. First, it might be well to cultivate an old desire. Start with what’s at hand and then progress to higher and more complicated forms until one reaches the most profound desires of all, the most expansive, the most grandiose….
Yes, I will “start with what’s at hand,” which is this book, though really don’t feel that going after the man that wrote it will be starting small. In fact, right now, it’s the highest I can think of doing. But, starting this high, probably I will progress all the faster to the upper levels of desire, and who can tell where I’ll get to and what other heights I’ll reach.
I decide to send for the new outfit by mail so as not to put myself through any unpleasantness with clerks and also not to be influenced by their opinions. I know the clerks will say that for my coloring, light blue is better. I do know that’s true, and I’m deliberately going against it. I don
’t want to be distracted from my purpose and needlessly buy a whole light-blue wardrobe that I’ll never wear, but I don’t trust myself to be able to stick to my black outfit, especially not when faced with clerks eyeing each other behind my back and smiling smiles I don’t know quite what to make of.
When the outfit comes, it’s even better than I expected; the cloak, soft and thick; the hat, glossy and very Spanish. The high-heeled boots almost fit. I know they will rub my feet, but I can stand that. The hat comes a little too far down over my eyes, but all the better to hide any incongruous expressions I may have.
I read:
Of course one cannot long talk of desires without talking of sexual desires. Just as one cannot long court disaster without bringing about disasters, one courts desire and up comes sex, because, are not desire and sex made of the same cloth, both originating in the mother… in the longing for the breast itself?
So I call up Marshal Vogelgesang. He’s actually at home and answers the phone himself. His voice sounds old and tired and, possibly, a little drunk. I tell him I’m from a magazine and want to see him about doing an article on him. He not only believes me, he’s pleased and flattered and makes an appointment to see me.
When the day comes, I dress in the outfit and put on more makeup than I generally wear, especially eye makeup. I resist the urge to pencil in a little “hairline” mustache. I like this new self. It’s not exactly as good as I had thought it would be, but much better than before. I sidle out into the street trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible. I spurt from doorway to doorway, dash down into the subway and try to lose my self against the wall behind a trash can, but there’s no hiding. People stare at me even when I’m in the corner hardly moving. Even on the train, they don’t read the ads, they look at me.
The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1 Page 53