Come Back (23 page)

I'm sorry to say I left him like that. I did not commit any sexual acts with him — unless merely touching his penis is a sexual act. I did only touch it. But what I want you, and need you, to do is to talk to me. And
be yourself
again. Sit beside me when you speak to me, as you once did. Right now it's as if you are going away or perhaps have already gone. . . .

I cannot lose you, cannot live without you. I know this is something one should never say. Come back. Come back from wherever you are about to go or have gone. I can't ever bear to have you away from me. There is never anyone who will precisely be with me the way you were. And the fact that we were not lovers is only an indication of the depth of my feeling for you. Jesus Christ, words do seem inadequate. Don't leave me; never leave me. I cannot be alone. You are the only one — my only one. I need the sweet taste of your passionate admonishment! The tender caress of your disapproving eyes! I need you to tell me what to do. I will obey as best I can. And because I always make mistakes, you will chide me. And for you — well, I know I will always represent the imperfections of the world. Come back. I know you need me — for this reason — as much as I need you. For who does not need to be reminded that the world is imperfect? That's what makes us gods. We love the world anyway, despite its endlessly frustrating, ultimately endearing flaws. Come back. Before I do something rash. But what could I do? Enslaved in my brittle bones and dry opaque skin, bluish with bulging veins that anachronistically pulse with life? Just promise me you will come back.

Please, I'm begging you now. I can't stand it any longer.

...
and Mark said something the next morning about how we he didn't want to take that acting job and so I said, “Honey, please!” And he went on about his career. And I almost said, “Why don't you start talking about a career when you have a career?” But I didn't. And he said it was a bad script — that he didn't have any respect for the writing. And I said, “Do you think I liked the script of
I Could Go On Singing
?” I mean, I couldn't even read the damn thing. But I did. And why did I do it? Because I had to work. Because that was my job and everybody has to do their job. “So get off your fat ass, Mark!” I should have said, but I didn't. “Do the fucking job. And you know what your job is? To make it fucking brilliant, baby; to make it fucking brilliant no matter how bad the fucking material is! If you don't make it brilliant, you have failed as a craftsman — as a
craftsman
— because acting isn't an art, it's fucking work. So don't get so fucking pretentious about it.”

But he did look so yummy in his dressing gown.

Where am I? I'm not sure exactly where I am or where I went. And part of it — most of it — has to do with the fact that I can no longer trust you, or what you tell me. I know you are sitting in front of me now. Explain it to me again? Tell me why you couldn't send me your picture for so long, or visit me? And why now you're sitting in front of me? Is it you? Really you? Can I touch you?

I don't know what you mean that you're a
fog.
Okay, your “body is a fog.” That upsets me. All I wanted was you — all I wanted was you back with me, trying on my dresses again. Remember what happened the first time I made you dinner? Neither of us will ever forget that. Remember when I made you coq au vin because it is the only thing I can cook? Or, at least, the only thing I thought I could cook. Because
I
made it for you. I really did fall in love with you even though you were a woman who liked to be called a man, and you didn't have the important appendage. I really did, and I would have done anything for you — and then you moved away. Why did you move away? You're telling me it was all about your transformation — about becoming what you are now. And what are you? The same thing I am? And what am I? But I stopped cooking coq au vin after that because you said, “Isn't it just chicken stew, after all?” And you ranted on about connoisseurs, and how horrible they are. Then, for dessert, I served you blueberries and cream — but they were grapes. They were grapes! We were both eating grapes and that was a laugh, I'll never forget that. As always, you were so stern. And I loved that sternness. It's a sternness that takes reality so seriously.

So, what, seriously, are you telling me? Are you telling me I'm dead? You keep saying, over and over, that I'm
not
dead. But you also say my body no longer exists “as a carbon-based entity.” What's that supposed to mean? What does that
actually
mean? And now you say, “I really don't know why you were attached to it; it wasn't really yours anymore; it didn't work properly; it wasn't very efficient.” Jesus, I come from a time when the criteria for liking something wasn't just whether or not it was efficient. Do you think I love you because you are efficient? Actually, I suppose I do, a little bit. But you know what I mean. I guess the only affection I had for my body was that it was real, that it was mine, and that it had imperfections. I loved those imperfections as much as I said I hated them.

And now you say I have given all that up. You say it's about acceptance now. Listen, this is all happening too fast; it's all happening too fast and I don't understand it. Where am I? What am I? Am I a copy of me now? Am I all my data uploaded into a computer? But there is no
computer
. When I look down I don't see a computer. I see my body — not young, certainly old, but younger. When it still looked like a body and wasn't twisted. What's that about?

And why do you say I'm not supposed to use words like
computer
anymore?

Back in my day we used to be suspicious of people who said things like that. In fact, it sounds suspiciously like — if I may be postmodern — the idea that words do shape our perceptions of things. You said it yourself, there is no
there
there. But if I hold on to words, if I ask questions like, “Am I a computer?” then it means I am still utilizing the concept of
computer
. And as long as I do that, computers exist. But you say they only exist in my mind. But do I have a mind, if that's all I am?

Because I swear I'm looking down and I'm seeing a body.

Please don't tell me my body is a fog. And no, I don't know if I like my body or not. Because, well . . . what a strange question to ask. Not that strange, I guess; I spent my life worrying about my body, hating it, wishing there was less of it. And then irony of ironies — now it's gone. No, I refuse to accept that it's gone. What have you done with it? What have you done with
my
body? This is anti-the-body, do you understand? Don't accuse me of being anti-technology; I don't have to be anti-technology just because I'm pro-body.

I see it all now; it all becomes clear. Most of the twentieth century was about making the body disappear. It was about erasing it, and that has come to material fruition today. The body no longer exists. Except that can't be true. That's murder! You murdered my body.

When was the funeral? I want to see the corpse.

That's when it all started, really. In the nineteenth century — in the Victorian age. People began to resist the body. Actually, I think it started before that, in the Renaissance. It began with toilets. When people began to flush away their refuse, they were well on the road to forgetting that their bodies existed. Ugh, get rid of that mess — flush, it's gone! And then along comes Queen Victoria — the disaste for the body, bodily functions, children tortured for masturbating. Graham crackers and Kellogg's cereals — dull foods will stop children from masturbating. Did you know that the whole cereal industry was built on an anti-masturbation campaign? Usher in the twentieth century. The destruction of the body happens faster. Faster. Everything is faster. And exponential. You like that word:
exponential
. You say it's key.

I'm talking now.

How are you able to interrupt my thoughts? Yes, I look at you and you are talking, but your thoughts seem to be going directly into my head.

Do I still have a head? You say you're looking at it. But should I take your word for it?

To continue with my thoughts: In the twenty-first century, we say goodbye to death and funerals. It's as if death no longer happens. Nobody wants to go to a funeral. Nobody wants to celebrate the dead. When I died for the first time . . . is this the second time? Do all the other times I wrestled with my body, and life, and death not matter, in the modern sense?

Back in the sixties, it was all about youth culture and being young. No one wanted to look at the old. And gradually the old — though their numbers swelled for a time — began to cease to exist. Older people began to replace their body parts with younger parts. And there was porn. And body fascism. And what I went through with Louis B. Mayer. All this is very much a part of that. Because all the talk about the perfect body and health was very big at the end of the last century. And so was going to the gym. But why is an obsession with health and fitness anti-body? A contradiction! Well, it is, even though it might not seem that way, because bodies are not perfect. When you are obsessed with youth and physical perfection, you grow to hate the body. Real bodies get old; they die, and then . . . Wait.

What about death? What is going to happen to me? Am I going to die? Because if my body is not here and I am talking to you . . . does that mean I'm dead?

Oh, I see; yes, obviously. You say I mustn't talk about life and death because those terms are now meaningless.

Sorry, I'm not buying any of it. This is a postmodern manipulation. This is the ultimate postmodern nightmare. Look what you have done. The pope was right to warn us about you. Yes, the pope denounced postmodernism. I think it was the one called Ratkiller or Ratcatcher, the German Nazi, whatever his name was — no, wait, he was the Austrian. That's it, he was the Austrian — like Schwarzenegger.
He
denounced postmodernism. Or he should have. As if you're going to go around killing death! You can't kill death. And you certainly can't kill it by telling people not to use the word
death
.

At least admit this: if my body is gone, then . . . Jesus, how much I loved that cramped-up dry husk!

You are right, aren't you? I was complicit. I was willing to watch my body gradually disappear and be replaced by various mechanical — or am I not supposed to use that word too? — devices.

So it's all my fault? Everything is my fault?

Where is my body? It doesn't hurt anymore. I am conscious of that. But when the pain goes away it's as if it never hurt. It's so easy to forget, isn't it? They used to say that when you had a limb cut off, you would have phantom pain near where the organ existed. Will I experience phantom pain from the loss of my whole body? Or have you erased things from my memory? You say you didn't. And I seem to remember everything. But how can you remember something like a body when it's been gone for so long? When it's been a long time, I may forget forever.

I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for everything I said about the homosexuals. I know why I was obsessed with Dash King. He was a saint. He should be canonized! He was the last of those who had any affection for
the body
. I mean, he was all fucked-up about it, with a perfect boyfriend he couldn't touch.

And the drugs. Drugs are cyborgian, are they not? Part of the plot? Is it a plot? I was wrong to think drugs are reality.
They are the opposite
. Cyberspace is a drug.

This is very important
. We are no longer in control of our own minds or bodies. Am I in control of what I'm saying?

“Why wouldn't you be?” you say.

What kind of an answer is that? You're not supposed to be some sort of non-directional narrative therapist, you're supposed to be my friend. Maybe you're
not
my friend. Maybe you're my enemy. And maybe the homosexuals were my only true friends.

Of course, they were irritating and stupid, and ultimately their celebration of my life — way past my death — was a celebration of their own mediocrity and lack of imagination. But at least they liked to fuck. Oh, how they loved
the body
. They got
AIDS
. Some of them even continued to fuck after they had
AIDS
. Those homosexuals were addicted to the body, God bless 'em! Someday someone will realize how heroic they were. Of course, they had to die off. Even porn kills sex eventually, because eventually you become addicted to not having real sex — because who wants real sex when sex is better in cyberspace.

But there is no cyberspace.

So, right, okay. You say it's just the difference between carbon-based and non-carbon-based technology. And I am no longer carbon-based. That's very simple. You can certainly say it very calmly. So why do you look like that? Why do you look exactly the way you looked when I last saw you? I haven't seen you in twenty years. Why do you look like that? It's very comforting; but it's
not
comforting to see you that way if that's not the way you look. So, you don't have a body? A real, sorry, carbon-based body? You can have any body you want, and you picked one today that you thought I'd like? Do you realize how condescending and fucking
crazy
that sounds? You say you picked that body just to please me? First of all, it's not a fucking body.

I want my
real
body back. I want my old, decrepit, dry, smelly body. I know it wouldn't have lasted forever — but I thought that when it died my soul would too. I see it all clearly now, you tried to give me hints. . . . Well, why didn't you just tell me? You thought it would be traumatic? Well, it certainly
fucking
is.

So what about the Tranquility Spa? What about Allworth? The Doll Boy? Didn't they exist? I saw them. I went there.

I miss Allworth.

You still don't think it's a good idea for me to hang out there? Why? Is it because it's too real? Those people struggling with plastic surgery and their own bodies are simply too real? Is that it? Oh, you don't want me to use the word anymore?
Can you see how fucking hypocritical that is?
Jesus, you can't stop me from saying
real
if I want to. That bar was
real
and those monsters were
real
. And if I want to go out the door, they are still. And you can't stop me from going out if I want to.

I'm going there.

Wait, how can I go out the door if I don't have a body? How does that even work?

What about the human spirit? Isn't that what we're talking about? You may have put everything that was in my brain into a computer. All right, fuck you — bad word. You may have taken all my data and put it somewhere in cyberspace and given me this replica, this fog of a body, but what did you do with my spirit? I had a spirit, you know! I was
her
; no, I am
not
her. I
was
her; you're not going to convince me that I
am
her. What is a human being without the spirit? You can't capture the spirit and bottle it. That's the whole point. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's the whole point about spirit — you just have to believe in it. You have to have faith.

So what if that makes me sound religious. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of words. You don't have to give power to them if you don't want to. I still haven't bought into this new universe you are trying to sell me.
Maybe I have
become religious
— if religious means believing in the spirit.