The World Doesn't Require You

by Rion Amilcar Scott

  VI.

  From C—e’s Journal, March 2018:

  . . . That creeping sunlight and how it breaks slowly at dawn. So slow it appears to be riding on the back of the clouds. That glacial morning light is why I won’t move from here like my husband wants . . . [T]he light and Rupert, the orange fox who only visits in the morning when the house is still and my husband snores on the couch and the kids are likewise in their rooms snoring—a horrid chorus—but that sound is more peaceful than Reggie’s voice. His voice always wages war on me. Not always in anger. He just speaks a language no one else understands; I certainly don’t. Makes him—and me—very alone. Like I said, his war is not waged in rage, tho [sic] sometimes it is, most of the time he’s just cast me in a certain light and that’s how, to him, I must stay . . . Is it weird that I have better conversations with Rupert? Even though he says nothing (I’m not crazy)—never even makes a sound—and he sometimes trots away while I’m in midsentence? I lean over the balcony and talk, talk, talk, and I swear his face is talking back to me. He listens when I mention the piles of work I have to bring home with me and the grocery store I seem to live in, and the dinners that are never enough . . . and my daughter’s rude lip (MY GOD!) . . . I wonder what Reggie would do if I took off this shirt and climbed on top of him right now, I mean like put these titties all in his face. Probably nothing. He doesn’t understand my language either—body language, verbal language, love language. We created a shared culture and a shared tongue and where our tongues no longer met, there is where things evolved and split into two unintelligible dialects, high C—enian and low Reggieian—or something like that (lol). We are now different countries . . . How did I even get to talking about him, huh? I was writing so I wouldn’t forget about my truest companion, the slow-moving light pouring itself over the horizon in thick, syrupy streams . . .

  VII.

  Somewhere toward the middle of its run, the Ass Incarceration series takes a turn. The fifth film, subtitled Solitary Confluffment, is devoid of Orr G.’s usual troupe. No Jane. No Doe. No Hoe. No Goe. No Loe. No Joe. No Noe. No Moe. Instead, the viewers are introduced to Jill. Solitary Jill in all her solitudes, the only character in the film. She stands inside a cell so dark it’s unclear how the director was able to capture such endless and deep liquid blackness. Still we can see Jill clearly as she stares at the heavy iron of the cell door. The look on her face is confusion then despair as she bangs a fist against the metal. When she gives up, she melts into a corner, and now her face reflects, not a peacefulness, but a sort of resignation. She rests her hand between her thighs and then eventually she removes the only thing she was wearing, her flimsy white undershirt. Jill passes her hands over her breasts, and over (eventually) seemingly the entirety of her body (paying special attention to her pubis) through the course of the next ninety minutes of the movie. Her face cycles through confusion, briefly loneliness, a peacefulness, contentment, joy, even enlightenment. The colors change. Jill doubles and triples. No one should be surprised that Orr G.’s least successful film is also his most avant-garde. It’s also the one, for all its wordlessness, that has the most to say.

  This is where most critics get confused: Orr G.’s theme in Solitary Confluffment is not loneliness, but solitude. Rejuvenator of the broken and resurrector of the prematurely dead. Jill teaches us that our solitude is enough. Never hoard people the way a wealthy man (and even more so, but in a different way entirely, the poor and middle-class man) hoards things. If you are to hoard, hoard solitude. C—e hoards me, she hoards the kids, and sometimes I resist, most times I acquiesce. She takes my acquiescence as a victory, and then attempts to annex more and more of me, and one day, I fear, I will no longer be a sovereign nation.

  The (economic) failure of Solitary Confluffment suggests that the only form of solitude that our society truly values is the violent kind Orr G. satirizes in his movies. When you throw a poor man, a poor woman, into solitary confinement, you go from incarcerating a body to incarcerating, in addition, a mind, and even a spirit if such a thing exists (and my belief in the Christian God, alone up there on his cross, tells me it does). But I hear you now raising your voices in refutation, Ah, you hypocrite, professor of loneliness you, isn’t solitude your great love? Can’t it do some good for an unruly soul such as our hypothetical criminal? And who cares, anyway; even hypothetical criminals are, in the end, just criminals. But this isn’t solitude or even loneliness, per se. It’s malevolence, it’s violence, loneliness weaponized and turned against a human with the force of a personal nuclear weapon creating tiny mushroom clouds within.

  Jill returns later in the series, not in her own movie, but in other installments of Ass Incarceration. She never interacts with the others and she never utters a word. She is simply in the background, naked and pleasuring herself, enacting her own solitude.

  VIII.

  Sometimes when I’m alone, my mind turns to myth, and once in a while I even go out and observe the lovers holding hands; I try to guess which fool is in the thrall of a water-woman.‡‡‡ I never believed in water-women until my third semester teaching at Freedman’s University. It was a balmy fall and an adjunct wandered onto campus, making the world’s drear suddenly bright. She taught two courses in a classroom next to mine. Her name matters not: for all time, within this essay and in life, she is the Adjunct. Often I’d give my students a quiz or a writing assignment, something where they’d have to be quiet, so I could eavesdrop on the Adjunct. I wouldn’t say her voice was heavy, but it was authoritative. She was the god of her classrooms, no challenging her power. I heard a light, sultry curl, like bluish smoke, in her voice. When she came to my office and we spoke, the curl took over her voice, and the force, the power of it, became a hint of her true nature. And you should have seen her face, one of those faces that perpetually holds a smirk, as if she knew a joke no one else knew.

  When she walked by, man and woman stopped and watched her in quiet appreciation.

  Say, bruh, K—, the poetry professor whose office sits adjacent to mine, said one day as J—, an administrator in our department, came by to discuss with us some administrative matter. What y’all think of [the Adjunct]?

  J— was nominally our superior, but he relinquished that designation when it came to little boy stuff. We said nothing, smiled a bit. K— delivered his punch line: Lotta adjunct in the trunk, right?

  Let me get outta here, J— said, chuckling. Y’all n-words gon’ get me fired.

  Stone-faced, I turned and made it my business to ignore all such comments, especially when she began to come by my office, first a question about a Roland Hudson poem.

  I want to teach his work, the Adjunct said. I’m missing something.

  Have you read The Firewater? I asked, reaching for a volume from my bookshelf. This is the only poetry book there is. No other works of poetry even exist.

  Soon we would head to lunch together, she and I, discussing Hudson’s work. Entire conversations made up of little more than Hudson’s verse. C—e thinks little of Roland Hudson. I’d appreciate contempt; her indifference breeds in me resentment.

  I forgot C—e when I was in the Adjunct’s presence. It was as if she didn’t exist. But as soon as the Adjunct and I parted, images of C—e would come flooding into my head like an invasion. Even now sometimes the Adjunct’s scent breezes into my nostrils like the breath of life and I forget C—e. I look about but the Adjunct is nowhere near. That’s a clue you’re in deep with a water-woman, a derangement of the senses, first pleasant, then distressing.

  The Adjunct would read aloud from Roland Hudson in my office, that powerful voice making me drift, and I’d find that I was actually alone by the Cross River. Or was that a dream? I know I dreamt about her frequently, and now I confuse those dream images with the real thing. I daydreamed about her in class, students shaking me, snapping their fingers, calling my name forcefully: Dr. Chambers, you all right?

  One such moment, I talked of Hudson to my students and I heard her voice whisper
ing to me. This was the first day of the spring semester. I walked out into the hall, leaving behind a class of confused students. I called her name. Followed the trail of her voice, her scent. I swear to you it was taking me to the river. The only thing that stopped me was K— putting himself into my path.

  Fuck is wrong with you? K— asked.

  Huh? I snapped foggily back into the moment.

  I’m trying to teach class and you’re fucking banshee-wailing [the Adjunct’s] name.

  But where is she? She was just here talking to me.

  How the fuck should I know, man? She’s an adjunct. She wasn’t just here talking to you. She’s gone. We got new ones. Get a grip.

  And she was indeed gone, dear reader. I searched the campus. I looked for her out in the community. Asked and asked and asked. Something told me to search by the river, and then—such a buzzing in my head—I knew. Even now, I’m careful not to say her name or think it when I’m near the Cross River, for fear that those mischievous woes will rise up and claim me for their collection of bodies at the bottom of the water. Even as I type this I must strengthen my resolve to not wander to the river.

  But her disappearance has left me unbearably sad and alone. I can speak to no one about this. Not C—e, not anyone. Who would believe it? I see the look on the faces of some of her former students and others—janitors, professors, administrative assistants—who ask after her. They too had been marked.

  Another hallmark of water-woman derangement: I wrote the below, but I don’t recall writing it. I have no idea if it is a recollection, a dream I had, my imagination, or something else, but I wrote it in her thrall:

  A READING

  His lips followed his hands; his nose, too, buried in the odors of her body, seeking oblivion, seeking the drug that emanated from her body.

  —ANAÏS NIN, “ELENA”

  Her scent left the Professor so delirious, so fevered, that even though weeks had passed since he had last seen her, all it took was a glimpse, or perhaps the sultry sound of her voice—it sent him into a reverie, a blissful synesthesia. Now she read aloud as they lay intertwined on her couch. Whatever she read didn’t matter, and he couldn’t even remember it now thinking back, all that mattered was hearing the music of her voice in all its polyphonic rhythmic hypnotisms. The pair complained, absently, about how hot it had become so all of a sudden, and neither noticed—he entranced by the perfume and music of her and she by the act of reading—when they began removing their clothes to free themselves from the encroaching heat.

  IX.

  Orr G.’s finest work cannot perhaps even be classified as pornography. True, The Assolationists utilizes his usual stable of actresses—Jane is here, as is Doe—and it is not devoid of on-camera sex, but the focus here is decidedly not on lovemaking. It concerns itself with a husband (played by the former slapsmith Nude Nick, credited here as Nude Nicolas) who allows his wife (Jane) to talk him into making a porno with another woman (Soe). At first the husband is excited for all the possibilities. But as time passes, his face becomes more weathered, more concerned and pained. The nuance in the facial acting is powerful and surprising, especially given what kind of work this is. What if, the husband wonders, his wife only suggested it to make him happy? Or worse, as a test? What if she can’t handle watching him make love to another? What if fucking another is a thing he himself can’t handle—all those emotions tangled up? After all, he’s realizing, he only agreed to the porno to make his wife happy. The color of the room is a warm teal; beams of white natural light burst through the blinds. As he lies on the bed waiting for his porn partner, wearing just a robe and black socks and nothing more, it occurs to the husband that he’s made a grave mistake. The porn actress (for some reason it’s not Soe, but instead Doe) walks in wearing just a thin blue robe—she might as well be wearing nothing—and the husband shoots up, startled, as if this woman’s skin is as translucent as her garb. His face will be out on the open market, he suddenly realizes. His neighbors could, in theory, pause the video and count the hairs of his ass. His penis’s head will soon be as recognizable—perhaps even more so—than the head on his neck. The husband begs the actress’s patience while he speaks to his wife. He goes into the next room to see her, but when he enters he finds his wife is gone. The room is nothing but a sterile whiteness. Earlier it was filled with furniture—some chairs, a desk, a bed; some paintings of boats-on-water on the lime-green walls. How could this all change so quickly? Where could his wife be? She promised to wait here watching the proceedings through a sliver of cracked doorway. He waits for a while, and when she never materializes, the husband returns to the next room to tell the porn actress of his wife’s disappearance in all its strangeness, but as soon as he enters the room he finds it too is empty and white and he is all alone.

  • • •

  I sat back after reading the Chambers essay unable to break the smile that turned my face into a clown mask. My love and affinity for Chambers had now become overwhelming. Between his masterpiece and the (unauthorized) class he was planning, I could gaze up from my hole and see the brightness of the spring semester—futurelight from a star not yet born but already blinding in its life and blazing death.

  * Jardin the Axe-Wielder is somewhat of a folk hero in this town. Every Cross Riverian schoolboy at some point imagines himself as “the firstborn son of Cross River.” Of course, this is why I chose him as the subject for my fable, to activate the immature fantasy that Chambers must have once held, that I am sure is still somewhere living within him.

  † It’s widely debated if a version of the events in this story actually occurred. In myths that are told and retold among Riverbabies, Jardin is a towering warrior-hero. Most known evidence suggests he was born, lived an unremarkable life, and died in anonymity as most of us will.

  ‡ Now, these were some bad motherfuckers.

  § He probably wasn’t really the firstborn child of Cross River.

  ¶ Now, she, she was a bad motherfucker.

  # As I wrote this I felt bees of tears stinging my eyes. I felt my Uncle Joe’s arm heavy on my nine-year-old neck just after my father’s funeral. I could hear the jangle of his gold chain and see the shine from his Virgin Mary pendant. I could smell the grit of his cologne, the fading German beer on his breath. What you crying for, little nigga? Stop acting like you ain’t got no father.

  ** The identities of most of the Others are lost to time, so I invented these names. I’m particularly proud of the name Thorns. Don’t you love it?

  †† This sentence was a late addition and I wrestled with it for a long while. Did it give away too much? Was I showing Chambers my hand? No, I decided, at this point I was all in.

  ‡‡ This is an authentic transcription of the nearly lost Cross Riverian language of the rolling tongue. My knowledge of the language is one of the many areas I pride myself in being well studied.

  §§ Here I hoped Chambers would imagine his students slaughtered on a Freedman’s classroom floor. He’d see himself rising from their bloody corpses an avenging angel.

  ¶¶ Orr G. employs a team of sluts (his word, not mine), actresses who are akin to a band, or rather they are instruments, beautiful, frequently nude, interestingly shaped instruments he deploys the way a conductor uses the pieces of an orchestra. And with this team of women, Orr G. creates pornographic symphonies. At times they appear to be portraying the water-women of Cross Riverian myth. The lead slut, Jane, is peer to a succession of actresses with names like Doe, Hoe, Loe, Noe, and on and on. The names of his collaborators provide an accidental commentary on the director’s work. He seems to have bought in wholeheartedly to the one-woman-with-many-faces aesthetic that is central to both modern misogyny and modern pornography. Each name is chosen to be generic, flying in the face of traditional flashier porn star nomenclature, and speaking to the disposable qualities of the women in Orr G.’s films. Only Jane (with one notable exception) is free from a nearly random rhyming name, but still she is shackled (Jane is frequent
ly shackled) with the most generic female name possible. There have been a series of Janes, adding on to Orr G.’s cruel and dismissive joke, but there could hardly be a movie series without these women.

  ## Orr G. began his career as a rapper, performing under the name Original Gangsta; his eponymous first album proved that his raps would be as uninspired as his moniker. Original Gangsta’s music nearly immediately became a punch line, synonymous with craven banality and aggressive mediocrity. The Personality Kliq, in particular, held Gangsta and his music up for scorn. Octavio the Clown of the Kliq first referred to Gangsta as Orr G. on the track “Lowered Xxxpectations.” It wasn’t a full-on dis, more an aside, but mocking Original Gangsta in song soon became a trend. In the Kliq’s video, an actor made up to resemble Gangsta dances about in a G-string. What precipitated the attack is lost to time. Gangsta never formally responded; instead he abandoned his thug persona and gained a slight bit more success making sexually charged songs as Orr G. His next album, Gangsta Orgy, received bemused and grudging acceptance as a novelty artifact, but it was undeniable that there lingered a sense of sadness or resignation in Orr G.’s sex jams. (His most memorable line: “I slip your girl the jalepeño / You be slipping her that hollow peen, yo.”), as if his life had gone far afield from what he had planned and there was nothing to do but to keep moving in this new direction that the market dictates. The market’s rewards were not enough, and within a year Orr G. abandoned music and released his first film, Xxxiles (or alternatively: SeXxxiles from the Orr G.). It begins with Jane being called into a dark swampy abyss, where she meets the rest of the gang, this time playing water-women, those sweet mythical sirens of the deep who exist only to mesmerize lovers and pull them to watery deaths. Jane says repeatedly, I don’t want to be here. Each time, a naked and groping Doe or Noe or one of the others replies, You’re free to go, but the naked and submitting Jane never leaves.