Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (20 page)

'Since I'm bad and don't even understand my badness, I can't trust myself, so I do everything my fake brother, even though I hate him, tells me to do. I'm always scared.

2. Dreams Of/In The Human World

'This morning,' the dog continued to tell the night about her childhood in order to understand and explain her sexuality, 'this morning I woke up while dreaming I had an abortion in a hospital. I was in the waiting room whose floor was tiled and whose walls paled with yellow. The waiting room was also my hospital room. After the operation, upon feeling tenderness in the area below my bellybutton, I told the nurse, "I think

there's something still in there. I think there's something wrong." Whereupon all the nurses took their time doing anything while talking to each other a great deal. The nurse whom I had told, who was very nice, said I should see the doctor, then ran out of the room to fetch one.

'The room I was in was my hospital room. Blood, as if I was pissing, pissing like a man only straight upward without arcing, shot up from my cunt in thin streams. I saw two thin streams. My blood hit the top of the pale hospital walls, even the ceiling. I thought what a mess, just like in a movie. Then, there were more than two streams. The hospital walls had become red, just like in CARRIE. The doctor was taking his time somewhere. The nurse who had gone to fetch him, or some nurse, walking into the room and seeing the bloodiness, rang the emergency bell, just like she had been taught to do. Finally, the nurses put their arms around me and told me they were going to take care of me.

'They put out my consciousness for the necessary operation.

'I calmed myself down enough to fall asleep by fantasizing I had the courage to walk into an S&M club I've wanted to go to and about which I'd been informed. An older but handsome man, who's with his wife, picks me. While I'm hanging suspended from the black leather bands I saw at ------'s house,

he's whipping me lightly enough so I can feel he likes me. When he asks me to leave the club with him, I agree. While I'm still chained up, he wraps the rest of my clothes around me to carry me away. I'm wondering if I could be killed or hurt. Of course, as we leave the club, I could scream I'm being kidnapped.

'I'm in no way and don't want to be a victim. I'm pulling back:' the dog explained her fear to the fearless knight, 'fantasy doesn't have the same immediacy as a dream.

'I'll go through (with) (my) fantasy:

'In the cold night, as soon as I see the man outside the club, I say with surprise, "You're not the one I was with inside."

'"You're wrong," he corrects me. "You were so involved in your feelings, you didn't notice when I and the other man changed places."

'This man is exactly what I like: short, muscular, hair chopped almost to the flesh.

'This's the fantasy I want. I'm going to say out loud everything I want. I saw him really as a tyrant, a murderer.

'Even though I'm so frightened I can't speak, I control myself and speak: "I'm scared."

'"You'll have to not be scared: (you'll have to trust me). Therefore, I'm going to put this hood over your head."

'Being enclosed in his car and helpless because I'm blind, I have to trust him. He says out loud it's important that people know they need other people.

'When this car stops, he has to lead me, helpless, out of the car, up some steps, across a threshold, to a bed. He straps me so I'm spread-eagled into the four leather bands permanently fixed in the bed's corners. He whips my back until I'm/my consciousness's in another state.

'"Now," the man says to me, "I'll be able to take care of you."

'I resist all the way. A new thing for me. I will not see my fake brother because he, because he doesn't love me, makes me into a victim. Simultaneously all of me wants to be with him because all of me wants his love. My family protests the way I am. The fact is that I
am
this way. I'm conscious that my refusal, my refusal upon refusal, my double mutiny that mutiny, this momentary attempt of mine to be a whole human, renders me liable to their disgusting penalties. Like any other rebel slave, perverse rebel, I resolve, now and forever, with total desperation, always to go to all lengths.'

'If pornography,' mused the night, 'is that which incites its listeners to degeneracy, violence, and rioting questioning, what you're telling me is pornographic. You don't even know how to speak properly.'

'All stories or narratives,' the dog barked, 'being stories of revolt, are revolt.

'These stories or revolts are especially revolts against parents. Why? Because parents have control, not only over children, but also - to the extent that adults're products of their childhood -over everyone. In order to live or be human, the self must seize control:

3. Proof That All Story-Telling Is Revolution

'A child's only desire,' the dog told Don Quixote, 'was to kill his parents. Since the parents didn't want to die and since they were unable to kill their child, they did their best to kill their child without actually killing it by treating it as badly as possible. Then they left the kid somewhere so the kid would be an orphan.'

'This explains my childhood,' Don Quixote announced. 'I always knew literature had some purpose.'

'Precisely: these parents have their nurse stick a safety pin into the kid's thigh, then they abandon the kid on some field, as if they can still find a field in the nuclear waste.

'Some people, as if there're still people left in nuclear society, find the kid and bring it up. To the kid, all parents're fake; childhood is fake; fakeness or falsity is good cause fake parents, unlike real parents, love you. This's the definition of childhood.

'As the kid becomes older, he wants to know who he is. Because if the only parents and childhood he can remember or bear to remember're fake, he might not exist. Does he have any control over his own life? How can he become existent and control his own life?

'What is this world of fakeness?' the dog asked meaninglessly. She answered herself, 'Meaningless murders, men, and lack of loving control me.

'In order to find out his identity and to be real, (for knowledge is the same as power), the child must murder his real father. Then the child murders his real father. The child is now terrible and violent. Being evil, the young rebel breaks down chaos or meaninglessness.

'The young boy kills his mother by raping her. Human power comes, at least partly, from sexuality.

'Oedipus: I am the biggest shit in the world. I murdered my father and raped and effectually killed my mother. All righteous people should murder me. Someone, please touch me. Physically touch this mentally diseased flesh. I'd do anything for a hug. There's no end to, because there's no escape from, my being-pain.

'People: Here comes our political leader. He'll be able to help

you out. We're, as people, helpless.

'Leader: It's not that you're guilty, son, it's just that you're so

foul, you make other people foul, in fact dead, by being

around them. Get out of here. Human pain is the most

disgusting thing in the world.

'Oedipus: Please, just love me a little. I'm so lonely, travelling

from foreign land to foreign land. I don't know what a family

is. All other human beings have families. Since I killed mine

off, I don't have a family.

'I accept my total loneliness. No, I don't. I talk only for your sake; I'm nothing; only for you, I ask . . . 'Leader: Stop bothering me. I had a tough morning this morning.

'Oedipus: Because I'm so painful don't ever call me or have any human have anything to do with me ever again. 'Leader: At least believe in yourself.

'Oedipus: Who am I? Therefore: what is there to believe in? How hard it is to live with consciousness. (There must be consciousness.) Please touch me, my leader, just once. Just give me one hug and I'll never ask you again. 'Leader: No. I am not going to touch you. I don't want you. Neither are you allowed to rest in the myth of how disgusting or bad you are, for you know the particulars of why you're disgusting. You know consciousness.

'Oedipus: I'd rather be physically hurt than know consciousness or myself. My self is total pain.

'Leader: The point is that you have no choice. You will obey. Chance governs. You have only what you're given or are: yourself. There's no escape: not even exile's escape.

'This is rebellion.

4. The Female Side Of The Oedipal Myth

'Me,' the dog said, 'I'm not male. I want to be touched.

'Since my brother was male, he was mean and cruel. That's how males're. Being mean and cruel, he refused to touch me. That's how males're: they always deny physical affection so that we females'll be tied to them via this double bind: we

want them and we hate their guts. Males're insecure,' added the bitch.

'What're my reverse Oedipal relations to women? Nothing.

'Let me explain: I had two kinds of female ties, sister and mother:

'My sisters and I had nothing to do with each other because I wasn't like them. They were English and they spent all their time attracting men, whom they didn't want, by means of no nail polish bad make-up clothing carefully picked out not to emphasize their sexual characteristics and brilliant conversation; whereas I, who couldn't attract a dog, wanted to fuck. Since finding my sexuality repulsive they refused to talk to me, and since I, as I'm always, can't talk, there was no way we could talk, even though we were fake sisters.

'As to my mother - My mother doesn't have sex. My mother doesn't have sex because she doesn't have to because she's found a man and because she's a monster. Because she doesn't need sex and is a monster, she reasonably hates me.

'As for everyone else, that is, the servants. The servants imitate the monsters or their betters by hating me. My only sexuality is fear of everything I know as human. My sexuality is wanting not to exist.

'Please, maybe I can wash your dishes. I want to wash your dishes very badly. I will wash every little dish. I will wash every little dish over and over so many times, until it breaks so it will never be dirty again. Really, I have always wanted to be a maid. Your maid. I don't know how, it just comes naturally, nobody ever taught me. Nobody ever taught me anything. I'm a natural.

'Unlike Jesus Christ, I can't find any joy in wanting to not exist or in suffering.

'The next question about my sexuality is: Why am I lower than Jesus Christ? Why do I suffer more than anyone else suffers? Why is there human unhappiness?

'When I was a child, I thought about this problem a lot. I decided: Since there can't be smoke without fire, such unhappiness is real. There must be something wrong with me. I'm not only not like other females, I'm not like other humans. (I was too young to know everyone's not like other humans. - Does

this mean everyone's unchangeably unhappy?) Since I was unlike everyone else, there was no reason my fake family should either love me or care enough about me to hate me.

'Since my only desire is that my fake family love me, my desire or me is reasonless and stupid.

'Are all phenomena meaningless or products of chance? I turned to examining non-human or natural phenomena: the drawing-down away of day; the continuous rain in the beginning month; gray wind, continuous damp which is colder than cold.

'Everything is nothing or chance. I don't know what to do. I'm desperate. I yell aloud the most meaningless thing I can: "Mommy. Please help me. Give me a home. I want to go home, mommy. Mommy, daddy. I'm only a child. Grant me the only pleasure that is love," while I know there's no one to help me.

'I feel someone's helping me. I'm safe: oh, someone's taking care of me. I can cuddle. I grasp this thought like flesh to, into me. Actually, there's only nothingness. I'm pretending there isn't only nothingness. I have to admit to what's real. I cry, only this time crying's no relief.

'Someone runs into the room. The nurse. Someone's, finally, going to take care of me.

'My fake mother comes into the room and tells her to let me alone cause, since I deserve nothing, I'm just acting selfish. I must learn I can't always get my own way.

'When the nurse is about to leave the room, I beg her to relent because I can't bear my thoughts when I'm alone. Loneliness is the worst punishment they inflict on me cause loneliness forces me to perceive all those thoughts I otherwise can escape.

'"Stop pretending, Villain. You're acting viciously and violently. The only person you ever think about is yourself."

'Not bothering to notice my reply, she turns to the nurse, "Don't pay any attention to her because she lies."

'With that, they leave me. I sink into a stupor in which I'm not thinking.

5. I Dream

'I am here alone and it's very quiet. This is my new bed. Go away from me. You over there. Dog. Go back into your

corner. With your mouth so bright it could be a sun. Here, is my terrain. Here, ye cavillers, all ye who till your fields and bang your mistresses into babies: I will have none of that. Populate the lands, fecundate the schools that are the burning houses of murderers, but do not do so in front of Your Virgin Queen:

'My flesh, being the whitest of white, even a soap fleck will turn spotty and pimply. My eyes can bear neither the glare of moon nor of days. Thus I need sheets, endless reams of realms of thick sheets unto the infinity of the never-disappearing waves, to pull over and over and over me.