The Fifth Wall: A Novel

by Rachel Nagelberg

  “We stood around a casket and participated in a ritual we didn’t even understand. A stranger read scripture and paraphrased my father’s obituary in the fucking present tense.”

  “An ancient woman led us to a small vista behind her horse barn that looked out onto a neighbor’s yard. The yard was frozen and covered with snow, and the ashes just plopped down into the snow and sat there—no wind or anything to carry them away into the ‘great yonder.’ Just a pile of wet ashes and an eighty-year-old woman standing behind us coughing up a storm of phlegm.”

  “Jesus.” Adam signals for another round. “Where’s the romance?”

  I slurp the remains of my drink. “You know I originally wanted to just blow it up—demolish the whole fucking property and just settle it at that. But then some layer of reality resolved and forced me to work within society’s structured flows. The deconstruction at first was a kind of settling, but now it’s become much more compelling—the intention that goes into every dismantled piece. It’s not just a one-time decision, but days, hours, minutes of calculated steps. To watch the ripping out of a floorboard scuffed from our shoes, the walls with our pencil marks—the crevices where Caleb and I had written our names. I’m realizing that to truly insult a structure is to break it down. Piece by piece, nail by nail.”

  “Well, it’s art.” Adam lights another cigarette.

  I shake my head in protest. The performance wasn’t even mine to begin with. I walked in the door, and there she was. It’s like the timing was set, the staging planned. The greatest performance of all: a witnessed coincidence. My mother, the artist supreme.

  “I see it as more of a life experiment,” I say. “Transcending the act—merely using film as a way of archiving; I don’t intend to show this anywhere.”

  “Oh you’re so full of your own shit, and you know it.” His smoke circles the booth, entering my lungs, collecting in my pores.

  “I mean, how I think about it is this—think of how we store information in computers. When you destroy a computer, all your information is lost—rather, your computer loses its memory. This is how I think about the house.”

  “Well, obviously, Sheila, but your analogy’s a little outdated, considering, for instance, cloud backup storage, and the unseen framework that technology instills … the house, yes, will disappear, but the contents inside of it will live on invisibly, in you.”

  “And in the video,” I add.

  “Right, of course. Documentation as memory. The camera is the ultimate romantic invention.”

  I think of all the technology being installed for The Last Art—screens projecting 3D interfaces of computed data of city structures mirroring coral reef patterns, the inner workings of the Internet resembling Dark Matter and the biological structure of the brain. All of it raw data translated to moving colored lines, shifting like ghosts in a digitalized non-place. The display of “Smart Art” weaponry—the world’s first laser-guided bomb, plus current laser and satellite-guided bombs. A GPS-ed bomb. A 3D-printed AR-15. Artificial hearts and lean slabs of beef growing in Petri dishes. A film about the world’s first artificial organism. A whole room filled with thousands of mounted smart phones displaying viral YouTube videos, Instagram and Facebook posts, text and picture messages … everything is “happening” now in a way that feels self-generating, and yet it’s all actually outside of us, information circling around us at a rate faster than time, producing total disorientation, amnesia, panic. We talk about the world as if we have a clear concept of what it is—its satellite image as familiar to us as a photograph of our friends, but we actually have no fucking clue. Technology’s been able to make the Earth feel completely known. One great big illusion we’ve all grown accustomed to.

  “Your family has no idea, do they?” Adam stares inquisitively at me.

  I down his shot of whiskey in response.

  “You’re a fucking terrorist, is what you are.”

  We both burst out laughing again. I cough from all the smoke, hiccuping some half-digested Goldfish—Adam scoots up his chair and pats me on the back, but it’s no use—I have a case of the giggles.

  “I’m a terrorist!” I throw my arms into the air and nearly fall over laughing. I can feel the energy of Adam’s body, both its familiarity and foreignness penetrating my senses. There is a potency to the air—a heightened energy I feel within my bones. The world feels open to endless possibilities, the present unfixed and pulsating throughout the room.

  This bar, our table, the lighting and garish white tablecloths—as if the backdrop to our lives from the beginning of time.

  How easily our brains allow us to become comfortable.

  And it hits me with incredible force. The realization that up until my mother’s suicide, I’d felt a great disenchantment with the world. It was something I’d always felt since childhood—this life with a filter. The only time I’d experienced it lifting was on September 11th in 2001, when both fantasy and terror entered the world as we watched, on repeat, the towers explode and crumble to the ground. Isn’t that when I started making art?

  The honest truth is that, as the house dismantles, I feel more alive. Veins of power burst within the falling walls.

  Fuck, I am a terrorist.

  Adam’s eyes sparkle. He grabs me by the jaw and kisses me violently. Chapped lips firm and aggressive, the massaging of a bitter, smoky tongue.

  I topple onto him.

  “You’re so fucking sexy.” He grabs me at the waist and pulls me closer, sucks harder at my mouth.

  I obey his actions through harsh, heavy breaths, my nerves galactic and spiraling with adrenaline.

  Before I know it we’re stumbling outside and heading towards his apartment, the moon a bright white orifice blazing from the face of a treacherous sky.

  It happens while we’re having sex. The Lack—no longer restricted to the instance with the axe. I come out of it as he’s exploding into me, the both of us shrieking bloody murder.

  It takes me a few moments to realize what’s happened, to register the ruffled sheets, the smoky air, the heaving mass above me.

  Adam collapses beside me, moaning with delight. He pulls me close to him. He says he was watching my face the entire time—that as I was reaching my peak, my expression broke out into the most horrifying contortion he’d ever seen. I ask him what happened then? He looks at me slightly disappointed. You mean you don’t remember? He asks. I say I was just really caught up in it—that it’s all kind of a blur. He laughs, saying that that’s when I started screaming. I was shrieking, like seriously, at the very top of my lungs. And it freaked him out so much in such a profound way that he began having an orgasm himself! He says I was screaming out of what—no joke—looked like a crucifixion-fetishist must look like during the nailing—this type of excruciating, masochistic arousal—and that he began shouting, too, because he was fantastically shooting into me while also at the same time trying to pull out from me because he’d forgotten to put on a condom.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “Are you not on the pill, baby?” He strokes my arm.

  I am on the pill. But had I been remembering to take it? My mother, even as a nurse, had been totally against it. She thought it a terrifying experiment to try to change the course of evolution. That pumping your body full of hormones was like absorbing radiation—it worked scientifically on some levels, but left your body fending for itself without its own source of protection. But condoms feel awful, and I never trust myself always to use them.

  “Don’t worry—it’s all good.” I stroke his mess of dandruffy curls.

  The strewn pile of my clothes buzzes on the hardwood, its vibrations permeating the structure of the room, the bed frame, our trembling bodies. Déjà vu hits me like a whirlwind, my heartbeat pacing to the floor’s quiet rumble.

  A real artist is someone who acts, Adam had said to me at some point during the night. Who interrogates, who coerces, who takes radical risks. I close my eyes and focus inward, trying to center mys
elf amidst the relentless chaos.

  Is this what it feels like, then—to be fully consumed? Possessed by internal forces? Engulfed by fantasy?

  My phone continues to buzz on the floor. I stare at the ceiling, feeling the vibrations of its ringing in the sweat-soaked bed, my exhausted body.

  I let it ring.

  In my dream, it’s dark outside—so dark it feels thick as acrylic with blackness. Adam and I roam long, narrow hallways in a building that appears to be a combination of the architecture of SFMoMA, Adam’s apartment, my mother’s house, and Mal’s pizzeria. I hear a loud growling noise and turn towards a cavernous hall of pitch-black, seeming to call out to me from the depths of its interior. I spin back around to find Adam, but he’s gone. A hollow fills my stomach. I bolt down the dark hallway, flailing my arms and legs, and come upon a clearing—grassy, a hill—a very steep hill, with fog circling all around it. In front of me appears Maddie, Jesse’s dog, the senior citizen, pattering around, looking lost. I walk over to pet her, bending down and nuzzling my face into hers. I feel a lot of comfort. Warmth. Suddenly the hill drops and gets very, very steep and high—almost vertical, like the peak of a mountain—as if being pulled down by a force, nearly causing us to fall. Maddie becomes very large, like a horse, and flailing—her eyes, burning red, become glazed over with white. She begins growling, producing devilish noises, spurting in a language I can’t seem to understand. I gasp, and watch as Maddie’s face disappears, her body altering to the technological nature of the Drog, as it looms over me, faceless and writhing with various interworking mechanisms and parts. I know that there is evil here. This world I’ve entered into is wholly unsafe. I feel tremendous pain, guilt, and loss, as we are pulled down into the mountainous abyss.

  Adam Black (b. 1979)

  The Terrorist, 2013

  Fresh semen splattered inside Sheila B. Ackerman

  The next morning, the Walgreens pharmacist hands me a thin cardboard package containing two small white pills you release by popping them through a sleek foil barrier. She observes my tired face—messy hair, smudged mascara—frowning.

  “Do you have any questions?” she asks.

  I shake my head and pay the outrageous forty dollars for the Plan B. I’d taken it a few times in college after a few nebulous evenings involving my friend Victor’s famous punch laced with pure MDMA.

  A muted TV flashes the news; a scrolling news line reads CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKES EXCEED RECORD ANNUAL NUMBER. A sense of uncertainly fills me. Have they been happening with my no longer feeling them?

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. Texts I haven’t even looked at from last night. I scroll through them while heading to the exit of the store. Jesse wondering where I am. A fantasy scenario of what he wants to do to me. I browse over it without really reading it, my brain right now lacking the room for that kind of play. A message from Caleb—long, fucking so long—a text that takes what feels like a full minute to scroll back to its beginning:

  CALEB

  Last night during ceremony I felt the full weight of the earth. I broke through the body mold. The air became my body, the plants my skin, the dirt my blood. It had been raining in the jungle for days up until last night. At first I felt the nourishment of the plants—the water seeping through my being, down to my roots and soil—so beautiful and natural and pure. But then I started to drown. I felt like I was being suffocated, the water now too much water. I felt the earth cry out, I felt its reactive body. The unnatural weather patterns, the diseases, the way the earth is responding to industrialization, globalization, fighting to survive! The world is a dying organism, Sheila. A dying organism with a toxic mass inside. The feeling was so strong that my body started to physically shake, and waves of terrible sadness rippled through me. I understood what Mom must have been feeling… this terrible weight, this body knowing of its end, the pain it was already enduring, and what it was preparing to endure. The Shaman came and sat in front of me. He sang deep, throaty noises at me while I tried desperately not to scream. The weight was so heavy, Sheils. She felt so trapped. She couldn’t bear to let it take her like that. And then at some point a memory flooded into me which I hadn’t remembered in years but which was of mom carrying me up the stairs as a little boy and her spooning me until I fell asleep. I had totally forgotten about it. I saw how u and I, when we were really young, brought so much life into Mom and Dad, how they loved to show us new

  A finger taps me on the shoulder, and I stop reading the message. A tired man pushes past me into the Walgreens. I can’t fucking take this right now, Caleb. I shove my phone back in my pocket, pop the first pill in my dry mouth and swallow, and head down the windy street towards home.

  The Mission reeks of urine and sizzling maize pupusas. The overcast sky casts a stale, charcoal glow. I pass by a weather-worn tent sheltering a sleeping body exuding an overwhelming stench of filth and decay. A woman in stilettos clicks by me rapidly, yelling into an earpiece; a man holds out his cell phone in front of his face, conducting some sort of interview. A crying woman muttering to herself stops and asks me for fifty cents; she thrusts a dirty cup into my face and I push her away—not now, not today, for Christ’s sake. A tremendous nausea comes over me. Clutching my stomach, I move along the streets trying to maintain an inner balance so I don’t hurl this pill up and have to spend another forty bucks. This whole lost city’s filled with people talking to themselves; even the young entrepreneurs look totally schizophrenic. A body enters through an open glass door a few businesses down from me, and I head for the building—anything to just get off the street.

  Inside is a small, heated waiting room. A young receptionist sits at a desk lit by dim track lighting, across from her two chairs framing a table with an insulated spouted thermos, tiny paper cups, and a pile of health and wellness magazines. A sign on the wall reads WELCOME TO A COMMUNITY ACUPUNCTURE CLINIC. PLEASE SPEAK WITH A WHISPER, AND HELP YOURSELF TO SOME TEA. The young receptionist looks up at me and smiles wide. She tiptoes out from behind the desk.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she whispers to me. “I’ve had to pee like crazy for the past hour.” She rushes to lock the door behind me and asks me to keep an eye on a woman, whom she points to, behind a shadowed room divider. I peer behind the divider and spot a woman, alone, sitting up on one of the four sheet-lined recliner chairs, eyes closed, breathing heavily, with a massive protruding stomach. Tiny acupuncture needles poke out from her wrists, shoulders, head, and ankles; her hands grasp beneath her enormous swollen belly. “She was feeling a little light-headed and dizzy earlier,” the receptionist says. “I just didn’t want to leave her alone!” She shuffles towards the back to the bathroom. Beads of sweat drip from the pregnant woman’s brow, her lips swollen, parted loosely, her body at the edge of her seat, mind turned inwards as if she’s listening to something communicating from inside. I stand gaping in front of her, feeling like both a stranger and a ghost in this bizarre situation of great intimacy, wrongly witnessing some sort of private moment mistakenly handed to me—too symbolic to possibly exist. Soft sounds emanate from an adjacent room; shadows through the screened door reveal an acupuncturist helping another patient. The woman inhales and exhales with great, palpable force, her body brimming to its edges with vitality. I feel an energy pulsing through her so familiar and yet so foreign—this body carrying this great, living weight. The biology in my body twisting and turning, feeling her splitting cells.

  The receptionist returns, thanking me, and rushes to unlock the door. I bolt out of it, nearly tripping on the sidewalk, running at full speed.

  My mother would carry us up the stairs, one by one, and tuck us into our beds. She’d lay with each one of us until we fell asleep. Was it growing inside her then? This great toxic particle blooming in her brain as she recited Goodnight Moon from memory, tucked wisps of hair behind my ears? Oh Caleb, why do you have to be so fucking understanding? She couldn’t bear to let it take her like that—but she could bear to leave us this way? If only you knew! Had t
he darkness taken over her motor skills, worked its icy tentacles into her frontal cortex, disturbing her whatever-it-is that processes common fucking decency, my God! If we only knew—there is so much we could have done! The Earth is dying from our selfishness—but what about me? New research shows cancer possibly lurking in our DNA—right now a tumor could be growing inside me at a microscopic rate. What’s to stop it? Perhaps we all have this darkness living inside of us—this growing lack starting from the day we are born, invisible and waiting for the right moment, living alongside of us as we move and fuck and speak.

  The film furrows and chafes; black and white lines zigzagging along the color image. My dad asks her a question and she begins to answer it. He zooms in until her face fills the screen. Focusing in, the curves of her face become craters, valleys and mountains. Her face becomes a map. The TV screen’s a mirror. All cameras have a coercive nature—a natural quality of the camera is to be obscene. Penetrating angles from all angles from every direction, every space unseen. Long shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up; dolly, tracking, pan, tilt, zoom. The closest resemblance to pure consciousness. But I can’t for the life of me make out what she fucking says.

  A house has eyes all over its body—its whole body is a face. A house watches us, is witness to our lives. Its façade is a wall of protection, an armor that will last much longer than us. You can bolt the locks, seal the windows, set up a complex security system to prevent intrusion—and yet, like in a horror film, the killer always gets inside.

  A house will shelter you from everything but yourself.

  On one of the Handycam tapes I salvaged, labeled 1988, there is a segment that I don’t remember—an instance I couldn’t possibly have seen. This is a segment that exists in the middle of two taped events: 1, my brother’s baseball game and 2, my third birthday party. The segment enters after twenty seconds of black. The camera flips on and it’s a bright summer morning; light reflects off the vertical kitchen windows, creates an encompassing aerial calm blue. A framed print of Warhol’s quadrupled John Lennon. A potted aloe plant. A blood-orange mug of steaming coffee. My mother sits at the kitchen table cutting strips of paper. Beside her is a shiny compact metal box. The camera moves slowly towards her, the frame wobbling with each step. It creeps up behind her. Her hair is tied up with a lavender scrunchie. Lower-scalp fuzz. Visible neck birthmark. And just what are we doing here? My dad speaks, and my mother jumps with fright, turns and sees the camera, clutches her heart, laughs. Christ, Danny, she says, smiling into the camera, you just can’t get enough of that thing, can you? A toaster pop. A candle. The ticking Kit-Cat clock. Explain to the camera what you’re doing. My dad’s hand appears and strokes her hair. My mother leans into his touch. His hand falls outside of the screen. I’m making a time capsule, she says. The camera moves beside her to try and get a glimpse. My mother purses her lips, pushes my dad back playfully. Come on, Daniel. The camera turns to face her profile, zooms in so that her face fills the screen. She turns towards us and giggles, her eyes glassy and bright. Her cheeks hibiscus red. Enough of that, come on. She turns away to cover the other materials. Seriously, Daniel, she tries to sound stern. For real, she says, fucking come on.