Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (19 page)

'"You'll do exactly as I tell you to do", she repeated as she doffed her Nazi jacket.

'Since I knew what I was saying more than I knew why I was saying it,' the dog explained, 'I knew I was simply acting obsessionally, as I've always acted.

'"You cannot stay the night free, slut, because nothing is free. Slut. Nothing. If you want to stay the night here, you do as I want. This's a contract. If you want, you can go. Right now.

'"I believe only in marriage," I added.

'De Franville knew damn well that she(he) needed anyone's correction because she(he) was nothing. Did she(he) have any money? No. Had anyone heard of the slut? No. Such things are unimportant. What signifies and signified is that she(he) thought she(he) was nothing: she(he) was unable to love; everything had to be given to her(him); she(he) was so bad that, given even one milli-second of self-control, she(he) would shit on whoever was loving her(him); more than anything else she(he) felt, she(he) wanted to be loved.

'If bad is worse than nothing, in her(his) heart of hearts De Franville knew she(he) was worse than bad: she(he) wasn't a girl.

'"Even though I don't care about you because you're bad," I naively informed the tied-up girl(boy), "I'm going to give you what you want and's good for you."

'"No one ever gives me what I want because everyone's always rejected me."

'"Cut out that masochistic scenario because you know the truth is that you're a shit to whoever loves you. Women've given you everything they could for years. I don't know why I should bother about someone like you." Slightly bored, I didn't know whether I should bother to punish her(him). I had to make a definite decision. "I'm going to hurt you badly," I informed her(him), "because I'm good."

'"You're mean." Even her(his) thoughts were bad. She(He) was trying to get back control, and she (he) no longer had it. She(He) was never going to reject me again. I didn't bother telling her(him) off, for speaking was a form of agreeing or allowing her(him) to be bad, so I slapped her(him) down.

'For the first time, she(he) smiled.

'Whatever her(his) confusions, De Franville knew she(he)

had never felt such sweetness: sweetness and gentleness had never existed in the realm of love. Not with the young actresses who had tried to give her (him) everything, for all women, like her(his) mother, loved too much. Not with the older men, tutors and professors, who had separated sex (punishment) from love. No one had wanted her(him) until now.

'Since this was the first time she(he) was wanted, she(he) was in a strange world. She(he) didn't know how to travel in this world. More scared than she(he) had ever been, she(he) spat at me.

'I was too in control to be upset. I reached for a whip, a short single strap with one knot on its end, a little one that was hanging from a nail near the window. Outside it was snowing.

'It was my responsibility, because I could do anything to this strong body, to give it exactly what it needed and no more: I had to know how to give exactly the right stroke. I had to know how to control each inch of flesh that wasn't mine. I had to be able to feel as this other person feels: I could no longer be selfish. I loved her(him) for giving herself (himself) to me.

'I not only was totally in control, I also had to be totally in control, for love controlled me and this world isn't dualistic.

'"Now, you're going to tell me exactly how you've been bad."

'Being bad, she(he) didn't answer me.

'I emotionlessly or responsibly informed her(him) exactly what was going to happen to her(him). "You're going to be whipped ten times. Every time you refuse to tell me why you deserve the next lash, you'll receive an extra lash. Get those pants off."

'Using her(his) bound-together hands as one hand, the clever bitch(dog) pushed her(his) pants off as fast as she(he) could. I drew a black leather line slowly across the small of her(his) back until the back became accustomed to the feel.'

The dog continued, 'Finally I calmed down enough to perceive what I was doing. Then, in a controlled manner, I increased the brutality of my strokes until her(his) body began to writhe. Due to my increasing ferocity, she(he) twists so much that for the first time just as my whip strokes have become hard enough to make her(him) realize that the pain

isn't pretense that pain is only pain and eradicates all pretense and stupid thinking, she(he) reveals a fault that is absolute. She(He) had actually tricked me.

'Then, I hit him without control. I hit him cause I hated him. After a while, my hatred and immolated self-pride, via my right arm's constant action, became a more reflexive understanding. This man had no intention of taking responsibility, for he hated and feared his masculinity as much as I did. By making all this pain clear, both he and I for the first time accepted that sex.'

The dog talked as the man: 'Because I loved her, I knew she needed what had just happened to me, because she had been as permanently frightened as I had. I told her to lie down on the mattress, on her stomach. She complied like a child. She pulled her hideous olive pants down her legs without my having to say anything. Since I was her slave, I told her she would have to tell me exactly how many whip strokes I was going to give her. "Tell me how many times I should hit you."

'For a moment she thought. "Ten."

'"How hard?"

'"Start lightly and increase the force. Don't damage me." Her fear of not being in control was coming out full force. She was going to let me give her so much pain she was going to lose control. I looked at her ass shaking.

'"Each time I whip you, tell me the number of the lash, so your pain is continuously what you want."

'"One."

"Two."

'"Three."

'"Four."

'"Five."

'"Six."

'"Seven."

'"Eight."

'"Nine."

"Ten." Afterwards, she looked up at me in a way that I recognized, for I had looked up to her before in the same way.

'Being for a split second mirrors of each other, we had to be other than we were.'

The dog said in her own voice to Don Quixote, 'I've never done anything like this before.'

'Huh?'

'"I've never gone out of my way for anyone," I told the man or fake man or whoever he was. "Especially for a man.

'"No: I've never gone out of my way for anyone. Before."

'"Men believe only in what they imagine," he replied. "They don't have any idea nor do they care what a certain relationship's really like:

'"Before I actually met you, I was already in love with you. Since I was watching you all the time, we had met long before you knew it, so that I knew, when we met, we already loved each other. Love doesn't need human understanding. I told you the exact truth when I told you I needed to be punished, for I had been bad, you had no conception, how much, I had been deceitful."

'"For that you're going to have to agree to let me punish you forever and ever. God - or someone - forbid, you should ever end up being good."

'De Franville agreed. "Furthermore," De Franville added as a coda, "since you're now giving your life to punishing me, if you ever deviate, falter, or alter in the slightest way, I will turn on you and treat you in a manner so horrendous you will wish you had never, in the beginning, turned to women for happiness."'

Don Quixote was disgusted that human heterosexuality had come to such an extreme end, even though the dog wasn't human, only female. She covered her disgust. 'What happened to you that you ended up this way?'

The dog explained her innocence:

'My childhood is a river:

1. The River

'I have to get out of this house. All the time. I guess I have to wander. Around the ugly river, which should be full of garbage, but isn't. I love this river. Today I ran along the dark riverbank for an hour. The cold wind blew around my sides so that, while running, I felt it. The dirt and leaves beneath my feet

were so damp and puddly, it must have just rained, and deeply. I thought it was going to rain. Obviously it was too cold to run.

'I gather my legs up in a "V" as, on my belly, on the stone wall surrounding the river, I look at the river.

'I'm glad I'm in this tired, tedious, hedged-in country. Even though it's colder than hell and the wind is ripping through my untouchable - or so I feel - flesh, I don't want to go inside. I hate going into that empty, cold apartment. It is alien. Someone, there, is going to yell at me. My nurse is always telling me there's something wrong with me. I'm always cold in the apartment cause no one hugs me. They don't hug me cause I'm unlike other people: I'm neither male nor female. My nurse likes my sisters and brother unlike me, because they, unlike me, 're normal. I'm weird. I love the river because it isn't human and I'm not human.

'My sisters and brother're lying around their mother on her bed. She never gets up from her bed. She hugs them and even kisses them. I have to sit at the foot of the bed. Their mother, not my mother, says to me that she's sorry she can't touch me and I'm untouchable, "but until the nurse or any other person who is another person says to me you're normal and you're trying to do the only possible thing you can do to adjust to life - be happy like everybody else in this world - , I cannot allow you to be around happy people, that is, people. Because you are diseased." I love the river because it should be full of garbage, but isn't.

'"What, then, should I do, mommy?" I asked as politely as I knew how.

'"Don't say 'she', Villey." Villey is short for Villain.

'"I didn't say 'she', mommy."

'"I'm not your mother. Don't speak that way to your mother."

' "How can I speak to you?"

'"Children have no right to ask questions. So until you learn to be quiet, keep your fat trap shut."

'I did what she told me, for I did what everyone told me. I passed out of the human world to my worlds of trees and books. Every night I gave my hand in marriage to my favorite book. A child, still being human, has to love. In my bedroom,

which wasn't my bedroom because I didn't exist enough to own, there was a bookcase. Each book in that bookcase, when I read it, was a world which didn't contain parents.

'I sit on the windowseat at the bottom of one of the huge livingroom windows where I'm not supposed to sit. Since I draw the thick olive velvet then beige lace curtains past me and I'm hidden between this wall of curtains and the window pane, I'm in my own world. Here, when I read, my own world and the book's world meet. Since there's no room for anything else, I'm safe.

'Since, when humans appear in this world, they're less important than the non-humans: the world outside the window pane also contains no monsters. I would tend to gaze at this world rather than at the small black figures on a page: this world whose meaning is, like a book's, always distant from me. Here, at the edges of meaning, I'm safe. Outside it's raining, as it always does in this city.

'My book says: "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question." My book is about bleakness which I love. Bleakness is Nature storming cold olives and browns something like a sky. Winds blow long drab gray skirts upwards, toward the heavens. Humans're just small figures in the midst of everything or nature, which, immense, proud and arrogant storms fill with cold and frightfulness. Here, a human only revolts and fails because revolution must be failure.

'My step/half brother can't find me. He runs out of the room to tell my fake mother, with whom he's in league, I'm trying to suicide.

'Nevertheless, he's broken through my barricade. Because of him, not only have I lost all my joy in life. They also can now find me. They can put their huge hands on me: I'm in torment.

'This brother, half brother step-brother fake brother, has an angel's face. His torso's a rugby player's. Psychically he's

violent. His combination of mental and physical, or he, is powerful and frightening. When he's acting violently expect-ably, he tears down doors, throws chairs, and beats up people. Since his mother adores him because he acts like this, like a big man, she gives him everything he wants; the more mannish he acts, the more she gives.

'These past few weeks she's been feeding him downers. The family doctor advised this because the family doctor thinks my brother should be caged up. He knows my mother isn't going to do it. The family doctor's responsible. The more violently my fake brother behaves, the more downers she feeds him. One result is he's now spending so much time eating and sleeping - which my fake mother encourages cause when he eats and sleeps he's not violent - that his former physical angelic resemblance is now corpulence and sallowness. Acne covers his puss.

'My fake brother is the human world. Being four years older than me, my fake brother explains to me the reasons why he hates me so that I'll learn them: I don't know how to love sincerely; I care too much what other people think about me.

'If this isn't true, if I don't care what other people think about me, I wouldn't care if he loved me and I'd think he's crazy just as his own mother thinks he is. But, since I do care cause I hate him, what he says about me must be true: I don't know how to love; therefore, he does.