Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (4 page)

'"You who own this world are dead corpses: Our friends the pigs're eating your ears. The foxes're nibbling at your cocks 'n you're coming. Poor men needing mothers. Poor idiots. You're worshipping suffering, in every possible fetish, and we like our freedom. All being is timelessly wild and pathless, its own knight, free."

'As I have explained,' Don Quixote told the dog, 'there's no human suffering that humans haven't created.'

Finally Don Quixote understood her problem: she was both a woman therefore she couldn't feel love and a knight in search of Love. She had had to become a knight, for she could solve this problem only by becoming partly male.

It was necessary for her to delve deeper into this matter. Did she really have to be a male to love? What was a woman? Was a woman different from a man? What was this 'Love' which, only having dreamt about, she was now turning around her total life to find?

'Therefore, who am I?' she asked St Simeon.

'Who cares.'

'Of course I'm not interested in personal identity. I mean: what is it to be female?'

'To be a bitch,' the dog answered.

'If history, the enemy of time, is the mother of truth, the history of women must define female identity. The main tome on this subject or history was written by Cid Hamete Benengeli, a man. Unfortunately, the author of this work so major it is the only one is an Arab, and that nation is known for its lying propensities; but even though they be our enemies, it may readily be understood that they would more likely have added to rather than have detracted from the history.

'"Be assured," this book starts out, "that the history of women is that of degradation and suffering." (True,' she said to herself, rubbing her wounded cunt.) '"Nevertheless, history shows us that no woman nor any other person has to endure anything: a woman has the power to choose to be a king and a tyrant.

' "Let us examine this history of women in its details:

'"The first woman recorded by human history was Amadia of Gaul. Gaul, you know dog, was an ancient city. Amadia fell into the clutches of her mortal natural enemy, Arcalaus. Arcalaus made her prisoner. Then he stuck two knives into her thigh flesh. Then he bound her to a pillar in his court-yard, for

he was a rich man so he could do whatever he wanted. It's a well-known fact that he lashed her body two hundred times with his horse's reins solely for her own pleasure. A certain female chronicler, anonymous or dead as women in those days had to be, recorded how this woman, hair as white and red as the Bloody Body of Christ, left in a room alone, a trapdoor opens beneath her feet, she drops into a deep underground pit of shit. The shit smells. She finds herself again bound hands and feet. Arcalaus liked this form of torture. Servants made her drink down a bowl of sand and ice-cold water.

""Please love me.'

' '"Why should I love you?'

""Hit me.'

' "He hit her hard across her face. She looked up at him with her eyes open wider than usual. 'Hit me again.' He hit her even harder.

'"'Oh.'

'"He slapped her face's right side twice. She wondered if there was a danger of her ear being damaged. 'I'm hitting you because I love you.'

'"Already she was in a trance in which every one of her moments was coming. She couldn't live without this pleasure: the possibility that he might love her because he was giving to her without taking. Since he wasn't vulnerable, she had no way of knowing whether he loved her.

' "She was dangling from a long hook. She had never wanted before. 'Slap.' 'Slap.' She would do anything to make him love her.'"

'Then how have women come up in the world?'

'By magic.'

'That makes a lot of sense. Magic's really done a lot for this world.'

'Don't be a bitch,' Don Quixote told the dog. 'You only say that because the only thing you can perceive is history. History's a fiction, and, as such, propaganda. Just as death destroys pain and time memory, so magic does away with history.'

The dog scratched its head. 'As far as I know, the real pain is death.'

'Without personal history or memory,' Don Quixote

explained, 'you wouldn't know. Then everything would be possible. In the immortal words of Hassan i Sabbah, who was Cid Hamete Benengeli's friend, "Nothing is true, everything is permissible."

'It's not history, which is actuality, but history's opposite, death, which shows us that women are nothing and everything.' Having found the answer to her problem, Don Quixote shut up for a moment.

A SCENE OF THE MADNESS AND/OR THE DREAM OF DON QUIXOTE

Having decided that heterosexual love's possible, Don Quixote looked up a brothel's address in the telephone book, then walked toward it. One of the madame's favorite prostitutes, seeing a woman or potential money staring at the house, ran toward her. Being female, she could see that Don Quixote was sick with love.

So she put Don Quixote in an attic and took off all of her armor. Laid her upon four smooth planks. Don Quixote had been hurt for so long, so deeply, she took pleasure in all of this. The prostitute tied a white blindfold around the knight's eyes so the night'ld feel easy and learn to trust her. She covered Don Quixote's bruised body with sheets made out of saddle leather.

The madame, entering this wretched attic, was short skinny hunch-backed and one-eyed. She and her girlfriend pulled down one of the leather sheets, rubbed oil into the knight's flesh to heal the deep bruises, and covered her from her head to toe with plaster. At times, they kicked the bitch.

As the madame looked at the deep black blue and purple bruises on the knight's body, which she couldn't see cause plaster was covering them, her girlfriend explained, 'She's sick from heterosexual love.'

Don Quixote, being plastered, couldn't speak. Her dog spoke for her. 'These aren't the marks of heterosexual love, but of Catholics. Catholics, since they're celibate, throw stones.'

The girlfriend: 'I prefer whips to rocks, myself.' She again kicked the dog. 'I often dream I'm falling down from lofty rocks, my stomach goes, but I never touch the ground, and my fear changes to freedom. When I wake up, I see I'm covered with bruises.' She again kicked the dog.

The dog: 'Such are the bruises of love.'

The madame: 'Who's this bruised-up victim?' She kicked the dog.

The dog: 'A knight.'

The madame: 'But it's white, not black.'

The dog speaking for itself: 'It's the person I love.' The girlfriend kicked it again.

At this point Don Quixote due to her constant habit of imagining any possibility to be true conceived of as wrong a reality as can be imagined. She imagined that the madame was beautiful and had fallen madly in love with her. For the madame had promised that night, and every night, she would sneak to the knight and lie in bed with her, so that their hearts would cease to ache throughout the long night. Thus Don Quixote spake thus (via her dog): 'Beautiful lady, thank you for your treatment of me, which has been pretty lousy, which I will remember for the rest of my days. Will you marry me since I love you? I don't need to tell you who I am, so you can put the name down on the marriage certificate, because you don't give a shit. Our love, or rather my mind's idea of love, is written down in everyone's memory for all eternity; my heart through all the varying vicissitudes of life, however much we'll be parted, will adore you. I would to Bloody Christ that this love between us didn't hold me an insane captive. What are such love's laws? It scares me to love you more than to love my life. How can I live and how can I live responsibly fully when I love this way? Your eyes are the mistress of my freedom.'

Don Quixote's mentality was so mad, she, maddened, took such mental perceptions to be facts. She had visions:

Her first vision was of human love. A person whom she loved loved her.

Her second vision was of a handsome man. This man told her that he loved more strongly or possessively or madly than

she loved. If this is true, then men're more capable of love and vision and life than women. If this is true, women can survive. For, as I've said, as soon as a woman loves, she's in danger. Why? Because the man for whom she'd do anything because he beats her up makes her almost die: Because she's the one who loves, not him, from not knowing whether or not he loves her, she becomes sick, yet she can't give him up. She loves him so much, she becomes pregnant, but she can't have a child alone. Her dilemma of love or she is her abortion. If a woman insists she can and does love and her living isn't loveless or dead, she dies. So either a woman is dead or she dies. This's what the handsome man told Don Quixote.

Is it the same for a man? Men're inscrutable things.

Can Don Quixote solve this new problem? Can Don Quixote figure out how to love and live? Can Don Quixote fight this handsome man?

This is the way Don Quixote fought: 'Man. I don't accept your argument. If you're realistic, I'm mad. My madness is love. It isn't possible for your Culture to judge or explain my love.

'For how can anyone judge if another person's sane or mad?'

A judge, who showed up, said that being rational he couldn't decide.

All reality and madness are trying to destroy each other. Bam! Bam! Wop! Swop. Madness, because it's a thin old debilitated aborted knight, is too weak. It had no chance of doing anything. It can't think. It fails. As it falls to the ground, the invincible reality of malehood puts his sword to its pulsating throat.

'Either become normal, that is anonymous, or die,' the handsome man told Don Quixote.

'I can't be normal because I can't stop loving.'
How can I stop loving you? I must stop loving you. You are my life. Please help me. I don't need help.
'I won't go against the truth of my life which is my sexuality.'

In the face of her insanity, the man, being as kind as Jesus Christ, gave the woman another choice. 'Become a normal person and stop having visions for at least a year. That way you'll be allowed to live.'

I've stopped loving you.

All of this happened to Don Quixote in her madness which was a dream.

Now that Don Quixote couldn't love for a year, which is as good as forever, she no longer knew what to live for. It's not that she had to have a man: it's that without faith and belief, a human's shit and worse than dead. Worse than being shit and dead, Don Quixote knew she was no longer a knight but shit and dead, that is, normal. Better to be a businessman.

She decided she'd rather be dead than worse than dead.

The dog told her it could solve this problem. Since it wasn't human and didn't believe, it could believe without dying.

'What're you going to believe?' Don Quixote queried.

'I believe I'm going to die instead of you so you can love without dying.'

'How're you going to die?'

'By whipping myself.'

'I've no objection against that. I just don't understand how a dog can believe.'

'That's why you're going to have to pay me a lot of money for me to die. How much's your life worth?'

Don Quixote, being a knight, was an idealist. 'Filthy lucre has nothing to do with faith! I won't pay you a bloody cent to die. Human love occurs only when a human suffers for no reason at all. You can't give me my life if I give you anything because then you're taking, not giving.'

'Thank God I'm not human and rational. Give me money or give me life.'

Wanting to live, that is feel, Don Quixote agreed to pay up.

'How much?'

'A hundred.'

'Five hundred.'

'Two-fifty.'

'Four-fifty. My life isn't dog shit, but dog.'

'Four hundred. You're not a real dog. As soon as you beat yourself up so much you suffer, vision'll take over this world.'

They found a powerful and flexible whip made out of a donkey's halter. That very night the dog, beginning to beat itself to death like a good Catholic, whispered, 'Please beat me,' to itself.

After two of these fierce whiplashes, the dog asked Don Quixote for eight hundred dollars. Suffering greatly, Don Quixote agreed. The dog began to hurt itself as much as possible, and more again, and since each lash or scratch or wound had no reason, for money doesn't exist for an idealist, each blow tore out her heart.

At the sound of its agonized wails and the thud of the cruel lash, she came running up to the dog and snatched the twisted halter that served as a whip out of its paw. T love you too much for you to hurt yourself. If I have to, I'll be normal and dead.' It was in this way that Don Quixote's quest failed.

Inasmuch as nothing human is eternal but death, and death is the one thing about which human beings can't know anything, humans know nothing. They have to fail. To do and be the one thing they don't know. Don Quixote realized that her faith was gone.

'Thank God, I'm so happy.'

'Don't you believe that humans suffer?' the dog asked.

'I don't know anything about what they're always telling me. The media. I know what's around me. All this love crap and do-good crap's an illusion. I feel great and this world's wonderful and no humans suffer.'