Jardin heard the cries of the witnesses across town. People shouted his name. He dashed to the school and witnessed the horror. The walls of his sanctuary now a blood mural. Blood abstractions. He knelt before his dead mentor and his dead students, holding their dead bodies to his. And his tears were for his fallen students, of course, but also because he knew that there was never to be an escape for him, he’d forever be the axe-wielder.§§
Jardin was never fooled. Never once did he think the Klan had ridden into his classroom. (Of course they didn’t, only a fool would believe they did.) How would they so easily get past the trees and the watchful eyes of the Others? It was bad enough that the Others thought him weak. Worse that they thought him stupid. Jardin shook Riz’s hands. He accepted Thorns’s sympathy. And then he waited. He watched the last of his kids sink into the earth and then Jardin went for his hatchets. He painted the spirit of red death upon his face.
It took him an afternoon of patience, of watching, of waiting, and of guerrilla warfare, crouching low to the earth, dipping behind the trees, but he buried his hatchet into the necks, the heads, the chests, the guts of all the older Others (the younger ones he determined were innocent), leaving Riz for last. You killed those kids, Jardin, Riz said. These were his last words. Not us. You. The Council’s peace is shit. Your peace is shi—. Jardin chopped first at his mouth, and then at his forehead, and he chopped and chopped and chopped until Riz no longer had a face.
After the Others were all dead, the blood-soaked Jardin walked and walked until he came near the river, where he saw Joseph, the General’s son. The boy, about six, wasn’t in class the morning of the massacre. Of course he wasn’t. The boy tossed stones into the Cross River.
Mr. Jardin, he said. My stones won’t skip. Can you show me how again?
No, Jardin said. And he removed both hatchets from his waist.
Mr. Jardin? Why are you covered in so much blood? Are you okay?
Jardin nodded and sat on a rock next to Joseph. He bent forward and placed his hatchets on the soft, shifting earth near the water’s edge.
My daddy says I won’t see my friends anymore, Joseph said. Told me the Klan—
Shhh, Jardin said. Hush. It’s not time to talk about that. One day it will be. Not today. It’s not time to skip stones neither.
No?
Jardin reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a little book. No, son. It’s time to read.
A is for Apple . . . He paused, put an arm around Joseph, and pulled him close. No, that’s not it. A is for the Axe we use to sever limbs clean. B is for the Battles we wage on the vulgar and the mean. Jardin turned the pages as if he actually read those words in front of him. C is for Cuts that separate bodies and heads. D is for Death—
Mr. Jardin, the boy said. The book doesn’t say that.
Hush, boy, Jardin said. Hush. D is for the Death that comes for us bloody, pained, and red, the unholy holy spirit that makes us sleep the forever sleep of the dead . . .
• • •
And when I was done, I fired up my AOL and sent the fable off to Dr. Chambers with a note telling him that it was his time, and I signed it: Your faithful servant and brother, Dr. Simeon Reece. And then I waited.
3.
It didn’t take long for Chambers to reply. I woke one morning a bit after the new year had dawned to my AOL crying, You’ve got mail. A message from my protégé popped onto the screen of my boxy laptop. Chet brought me a golden kiwi, some yellow cake, and hot chocolate, and I shooed him away as I ate and read.
• • •
To: Dr. Simeon Reece
Sent: January 5, 2018, 8:00 a.m.
From: Reggie
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: Re: Newest Fable
Attachment: LONELINESS Essay.docx
Dear Dr. Reece,
I want to thank you for sending me that Milo Sequoia fable you discovered. You gave me something I didn’t even know I needed.
Sometimes I wonder if you’re real, but you just keep proving yourself to be the realest, the hyper-realest. Perhaps if Sequoia were alive today he’d write a fable titled, THE TRIUMPH OF DR. SIMEON, THE REAL.
I’ve read or heard the story of Jardin the Axe-Wielder many times, of course, but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it told quite like that. Sequoia offers so many shades and layers to a timeworn tale. It’s reminiscent of the way Shakespeare remakes (or rather remade) history as drama. I truly admire how Sequoia plays with history and the foundational myths of Cross River in his work, at least in the work you’ve shown me. Is that his usual métier? You know, Roland Hudson has a poetic re-telling of the Jardin story in The Firewater of Love. In it he adds some nonsense about a fateful and tragic love, which, honestly, detracts from the pathos of Jardin’s journey. Jardin’s love in the Hudson poem is (surprise, surprise) a water-woman and ultimately a stand-in for Gertrude, the object of his own obsession. It’s a tiresome poem. I’m sure you’ve read it, so I’m not telling you anything new. I hate, as a Hudson fanatic, to point out where he is flawed, but his histories often leave me wanting. Anyway, I wonder if Sequoia wrote his version of Jardin’s life before or after Hudson wrote his. What does your research say?
One day you’ll have to let me in on your research methods to help me learn how you are able to unearth such fabulous stuff.
As for me, that Sequoia piece renewed me, man. I read a magazine article about the hatemyprofessor founder, Ulysses Sparks, and I ended up spending an embarrassing number of hours on his site. All those ugly words piled atop one another. Ugly words carelessly arranged can derange us just like beautiful words in beautiful order. Ugly derangement saps us and depletes us, devolves us to our base selves, rips feathers from the wings we’ve gained from all our beautiful derangements. You rescued me from that ugly derangement, Reece. Brought life to my essay and my class planning. Thanks to your aid, I am doing this. I finished a draft I’m proud of. I’m talking the most beautiful derangement, man! I’m thinking now that I should submit it directly to a journal for publication rather than sending it off to Mean Dean Jean Greene. What do you think? The essay—let me warn you, Reece—is a bit offbeat, and I’m fine with that; it’s also the realest thing I ever wrote, to quote one of my inspirations (you’ll see).
I’ve attached a draft, so please, Reece, I ask for your brutality, your toughest love. Please—and of course this goes without saying—keep this under your hat; can’t let it get out before it’s ready!
Now, I must return to the loneliness course and planning for next semester. Syllabus (another offbeat, yet real document) is nearly done. Peace.
Thanks for everything, bruh.
I have the honor to be your very faithful servant,
—Reggie
When she reaches a hand across the table
through the steam of our soup to touch my unblinking left eye,
I don’t flinch even as my heart covers
itself in a thin layer of stone.
That paralytic eye,
evidence of my turn from human to beast,
forever ringed in wetness, new tears.
Thought I hid it well.
Instead of the eye though she thumbs the underside of my eyelashes.
Says: I never realized you had such beautiful lashes.
I laugh, cast my face toward the light above.
My eye blinks.
—Roland Hudson,“Beauty &,” from The Firewater of Love
OF LONELINESS, OF LONGING, OF DESPAIR, OF PORN, AND OF HOPE: A PERSONAL EXPLORATION
By Dr. Reginald S. Chambers
Freedman’s University
This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is qualified unhappiness.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE CRACK-UP
I don’t know what your taste is, but I prefer the rambling, meandering truth.
—YASIIN BEY
I.
If there is a great po
et of pornography it would be the director Orr G., the auteur of the porn film series Ass Incarceration, which to my mind is the most remarkable work of its genre and bests much of the work in other genres of art as well. Its poetry is hardly in the fucking, no, it lies in the non-sexual facial gestures, the small movements. The poetry is in the silences, in the unsaid. It’s in things I can hardly describe within the scope of an essay.
It starts this way: A woman, Jane,¶¶ is lying seemingly asleep, on a cot in a dimly lit cell.
She is wearing white cut-off shorts and a thin white tank top and nothing more. The camera lingers over the dark mahogany of her legs and when it comes to her face you can see her purple mascara is smudged from tears, she turns fitfully as if in a nightmare. A clanging sound rings off-camera and Jane is startled. Into the frame walks Doe wearing a prison guard uniform. It is a dress, though. Or maybe just a longish shirt. Doughy cleavage peeks through the top and the outfit is cut short enough so that when the camera passes, it’s clear that beneath her flimsy covering Doe is bare.
Doe orders Jane to strip, and when she hesitates, Doe yanks open the cell doors and rips Jane’s flimsy clothes from her body. The two begin rolling and writhing on Doe’s cot, enacting all the stuff of contemporary pornography. In some shots Jane is handcuffed, sometimes not. Glorious cunt pressed to glorious cunt.
I won’t belabor the point too much here, because the sex is not the main event. Sure, it lasts a good long while, but it is grimly and sadly lit. There are moans of passion and pleasure from each woman—it’s clear they are enjoying themselves (at least the characters they are playing are)—but when the camera catches their faces, there is a soft sadness there. I figured at first that I had imagined the sadness, that I had brought my own considerable melancholy with me, but no. After the sex is done and Jane is left alone shackled in her cell, we see Doe walk off to her office. Doe sits nude and alone. She stares ahead. We flash to Jane and she too is sitting, still disrobed and alone, staring ahead. The camera flashes back and forth between the women staring into their naked solitude lamenting how their encounter, pleasing as it was, failed to end their isolation.
II.
I never knew that I was lonely or even what loneliness was until one blinding night when I was twelve or thirteen. Consider this an origin story, as nothing before it matters in the least. A new understanding descended upon me as if by supernatural hand. I hugged and kissed my parents, told them good night, and did the same with my grandmother and my siblings, and then I retired to my bedroom and lay in the darkness. I was an insomniac in those days, so I never expected easy sleep and I didn’t get it that night. Instead I stared up at the black ceiling. I turned to my side and then to my other side. These days I sleep easy. If I sit still long enough I’ll fall into a fitful slumber full of snoring and tortured breathing that ceases momentarily, hopefully, throughout the night. I never thought I’d miss insomnia, but I do. I’m digressing. Allow me my digressions, my ability to speak and to digress is all I have these days; I don’t like to revisit the moment, but I must. I didn’t feel particularly sad that day; true sadness only arrived when I turned out the lights. It rose from my stomach as if on a wave of nausea—and it was that, I guess, emotional nausea—and before I could begin to combat it, I started to cry without control. Sniffling back snot and wiping droplets of tears as large and as shiny as Christmas tree bulbs. They fell faster and in greater numbers than I ever imagined tears could fall. They dampened my pillow and my sheets, my face awash in great angry salt rivers. A lake pooled upon my bed. It was loneliness and nothing else that caused my tears to run, the awareness of this reality blanketing me like the darkness of my room. It had always been there from my birth, I realized, and will always be there, loving parents, siblings, friends, friendly acquaintances, and others be damned. They’ll never care the way I need them to, and, most damning, I’ll never care about them the way they need me to. The blinding blue darkness of these insights! The emptiness they allowed me to see! My one mistake that night was in the conclusion that my salvation could be found in another, a person, a woman who existed somewhere out there, not yet a woman, probably, but a girl, possibly crying out in loneliness as well. Silly lonely long-ago child, even I don’t care about you in the way you wish I would. What in the hell makes you think she ever could?
III.
A less talented or visionary director would have gone back to what made the first Ass Incarceration movie so successful. Orr G.## could have doubled down on the sex and only gestured at making a statement on loneliness and isolation—or ignored that aspect altogether. The next movies could have been a succession of sluts visiting Jane’s cell, but instead they revolve around Jane’s escape from prison and her attempt at building a new life. There’s little consistency; sometimes Jane is a water-woman, sometimes not; various actresses return playing different parts. We see Jane as a fugitive, taking up with a band of sluts; as a home-invader singled-handedly subjugating and dominating a house of women, turning them into her servants, her harem, her sluts; we see her attempting a normal life as a homemaker/handmaiden; as a therapy patient (she is captured by her therapist, played by Noe—get it? Dr. Noe—and then Jane turns the tables on her); as a college student (her dorm is likely the most interesting on campus); as a teacher to a class of disrespectful, underachieving women;*** and finally Doe (who has been searching for Jane all along) catches up with her and we see Jane back in her cell visited by the lusty Doe. It all comes back to loneliness; none of these adventures can quell, or even quiet, Jane’s loneliness. Life is a loop of loneliness and isolation we can never truly outrun, Orr G. seems to say.
IV.
From elementary school through about eleventh grade I liked a succession of girls who did not like me back. In fact, it seems they found me repulsive. They made mockery of my dark skin, my (presumably) West African nose, my unfashionable glasses, generic department-store clothes, and my short stature. All of this earned me a nickname I never accepted, but overheard flitting by me like bullets in a gunfight. Little Ugly, they called me, while assuming I was oblivious to their taunting.††† They spoke of me as if I weren’t there, or as if I stood before them naked and invisible. They bellowed the name on the bus, in the hallway while I walked by, and I pretended I didn’t hear. My muscles twitched each time I heard my new name. The bullets weren’t passing by me, they were striking me, quietly but forcefully, and then they drilled themselves deep into my muscle tissue. And then there was twelfth grade and P—e, who read me Roland Hudson poems before and after we made love in her parents’ basement. And sometimes I fear my vocation as a Hudson scholar is simply an attempt to conjure the softness of her legs. We talk sometimes still—I call her every September thirteenth—she no longer reads the poet she introduced me to and in our silences I imagine her and also I imagine her imagining me. I doubt she remembers when I call that it’s the anniversary of the last time we made love before devolving into argument and petty disdain. It was the day Tupac died. I checked the time of his death later: just as I came, he went. I was supposed to feel sorrow and sadness at the death of one of my heroes—I had looked to his music to lift me out of isolation and despair, and briefly it worked—but I could feel only joy that day. Lord, how I tried, how I tried to feel the appropriate sadness. Oh, I thought. Tupac is dead. And that is as far as my thoughts would go. I felt, instead of sadness, a oneness. A oneness with P—e, with the universe. All short-lived, and ultimately, I realized, my feelings were a falsehood. The sex made us argue, made us eventually hate one another. When I speak to her once a year, I don’t mention that day or the unsatisfying (in retrospect) teenage sex that is likely a grayish blur in the back of her memory, lost among thousands of sexual encounters. I doubt she ever makes the connection. We speak briefly and brightly as if there is not a canyon of time and space between us, as if I don’t have a little girl (9), a little boy (4), and a wife, as if I’m seventeen and fool enough to believe that between our legs lies a powerful medicine. And for
five, ten minutes I’m not alone, but instead I’m kept company by the softness of her legs.
V.
The beauty of Ass Incarceration and most of Orr G.’s work is the way it speaks to both our higher frequencies and our lower selves. Cultivate the mind, yes, but we must never forget the animals: the cock, the ass, the pussy. That is the dispute of the ages between C—e and me. C—e only speaks in higher frequencies. Like a puppet, she has no lower self. Perhaps she is the reason for this exploration.
C—e found me one afternoon, compromised; Ass Incarceration in the DVD player and me in deep with the only lover I regularly knew at the time, myself. It was my several-times-a-day habit in those days to worship at the feet of the god Onan.
What is this? she cried. Her features transformed into a look of condescension and disdain, and somehow—maybe because of her tiny stature—this amplified the cuteness of her face. Is this why you want me and the kids away all the time? (Thankfully the kids were not with her.) Is this why you refused to go out of town with us last month?
No, I assured her. No, my dear. I pointed to the television. You see that quick look that passed across the face of Hoe? Did you see it? It expresses the essential loneliness of the human condition far more beautifully than ten thousand R&B songs, than ten thousand Russian novels, than ten thousand French films.
C—e could place her hand on my forehead and send all my lonely pain temporarily into a blue oblivion. She didn’t, though. She rarely did that anymore.
She watched me pointedly and said, It’s up to you to fix this marriage or we’ll just keep walking by each other like strangers while you’re on your way to jack off like an animal to some goddamn porno!
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