Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (11 page)

A:
Purity has never been quantifiable.

Q:
What is the incidence of purity worldwide?

A:
Purity occurs in .004 per cent of all cases.

Q:
What is purity in the pure state often consonant with?

A:
Purity in the pure state is often consonant with madness.

Q:
This is not to denigrate madness.

A:
This is not to denigrate madness. Madness in the pure state offers an alternative to the reign of right reason.

Q:
What is the content of right reason?

A:
The content of right reason is rhetoric.

Q:
And the content of rhetoric?

A:
The content of rhetoric is purity.

Q:
Is purity quantifiable?

A:
Purity is not quantifiable. It
is
inflatable.

Q:
How is our rhetoric preserved against attacks by other rhetorics?

A:
Our rhetoric is preserved by our elected representatives. In the fat of their heads.

■

Q:
There’s no point in arguing that the machine is wholly successful, but it has its qualities. I don’t like to use anthropomorphic language in talking about these machines, but there is one quality . . .

A:
What is it?

Q:
It’s brave.

A:
There’s not much bravery in art now.

Q:
Since the death of the bicycle.

■

Q:
There are ten rules for operating the machine. The first rule is turn it on.

A:
Turn it on.

Q:
The second rule is convert the terms. The third rule is rotate the inputs. The fourth rule is you have made a serious mistake.

A:
What do I do?

Q:
You send the appropriate error message.

A:
I will never remember these rules.

Q:
I’ll repeat them a hundred times.

A:
I was happier before.

Q:
You imagined it.

A:
The issues are not real.

Q:
The issues are not real in the sense that they are touchable. The issues raised here are equivalents. Reasons and conclusions exist although they exist elsewhere, not here. Reasons and conclusions are in the air and simple to observe even for those who do not have the leisure to consult or learn to read the publications of the specialized disciplines.

A:
The situation bristles with difficulties.

Q:
The situation bristles with difficulties but in the end young people and workers will live on the same plane as old people and government officials, for the mutual good of all categories. The phenomenon of masses, in following the law of high numbers, makes possible exceptional and rare events, which—

A:
I called her then and told her that I had dreamed about her, that she was naked in the dream, that we were making love. She didn’t wish to be dreamed about, she said—not now, not later, not ever, when would I stop. I suggested that it was something over which I had no control. She said that it had all been a long time ago and that she was married to Howard now, as I knew, and that she didn’t want . . . irruptions of this kind. Think of Howard, she said.

■

Q:
He has struck me.

A:
I have struck him.

Q:
We have seen them.

A:
I was looking at the window.

Q:
Their chair is here.

A:
She sang and we listened to her.

Q:
Soldiers marching toward the castle.

A:
I spoke to a tourist.

Q:
I knocked at the door.

A:
We shall not cross the river.

Q:
The river has filled the boats with water.

A:
I think I have seen her with my uncle.

Q:
Getting into their motorcar, I heard them.

A:
He will strike her if he has lost it.

■

A (concluding):
There’s no doubt in my mind that the ballplayers today are the greatest ever. They’re brilliant athletes, extremely well coordinated, tremendous in every department. The ballplayers today are so magnificent that scoring is a relatively simple thing for them.

Q:
Thank you for confiding in me.

■

Q:
. . . show you a picture of my daughter.

A:
Very nice.

Q:
I can give you a few references for further reading.

A:
(Weeps)

■

Q:
What is she doing now?

A:
There is a bruise on her thigh. The right.

12

From
Letters to Wendy’s

Joe Wenderoth

July 3, 1996

Today I bought a small Frosty. This may not seem significant, but the fact is: I’m lactose intolerant. Purchasing a small Frosty, then, is no different than hiring someone to beat me. No different in essence. The only difference, which may or may not be essential, is that, during my torture, I am gazing upon your beautiful employees.

July 5, 1996

Today there was no blood in my stool. The sun was shining as I sat with my burger and Coke and gazed out across the parking lot. Gazed—there is the place where what is feels itself slipping—with difficulty—into the fitful sleep of replica. I did not gaze. I was the sleep what is gazed through. One is confused, though, having truly shit.

July 6, 1996

I was so high on Sudafed and whiskey today that I couldn’t eat. I got a Coke—actually five Cokes, as I could refill for free. It’s times like this—dehydrated, exhausted, unable to imagine home—that your plastic seats, your quiet understandable room, set beside but not quite overlooking the source of real value, offer me a tragedy small enough to want to endure.

July 10, 1996

The great thing about Wendy’s—one of the great things—is that no one ever has sex in this space. It’s like sex is too selfish an activity to go on here. To be in Wendy’s is to understand that there can be no one other; it is to disabuse oneself of that foolish hope, and thereby resume the animal in its more lonely, more mobbed mode of comportment.

July 11, 1996

The glamorous pictures of new items are possessed of such a tiny energy. Massive success accomplishes itself in tiny energy growing tinier. What is it that chooses to remain outside of this increasingly tiny energy—can we even give a name to such a freakish presence? The only time I love the other customers is when they seem, above all, to be eating.

July 12, 1996

I often think about over-eating. It’s strange that I never have. Each bite of my mustard-only double-cheeseburger is so good that I reel in the aftermath. The meaty goodness obliterates my soul as much as it secures it. I am a bell, incapable of vibrating. If I rang with any more force I don’t know that I would remain a bell—I don’t know that the air could stand me.

July 13, 1996

Today I was looking hard at Wendy. I felt like a doctor. I felt like Wendy was very ill, and no one could see it but me. That smile is the smile of a sexy girl who is well taken care of, but care, as we all know, is a relatively new hobby, and Wendy is already moving outside of its novelty. I like to dream that she will come to me for futile treatments.

July 14, 1996

It’s amazing how I recognize the parking lot but do not recognize the parking lot’s power to make customers appear. How is it that this place remains unfulfilled by its sudden natives? And why these natives, and not those? And what homeland allows them to arrive so completely oblivious to the constant violence of various similar orders following one another into merely wanting words?

July 16, 1996

Today I bought a salad just to look at it, smell it, rub it on my face. Again I’m feeling like a doctor, but now the feeling is clearer—I feel like an ancient doctor, with ancient ideas about what need be done. I asked the register-girl if it would be possible to have small holes drilled into my skull so that good strong coffee could be poured down on to my brain.

July 17, 1996

It feels good to be punched in the face, but only for an instant. This is what I was thinking as I sat in this afternoon’s empty dining room. Then my mind wandered and I imagined Wendy was in my car with me. She said, “I’d like you to take your fat tongue and run it from my asshole to my clit over and over again.” I said, “I’d like you to punch me in the face.” Thus it ran, the empty dining room filling.

July 18, 1996

Today I felt like a cup of soda that had been sitting—full—for too long. Watery, sides melting, barely able to be handled—but there, so very very there, and simply demanding proper disposal. It is my suspicion that, however persuasive that demand, there can be no such thing.

July 24, 1996

I was thinking today of the beatings my mother used to give me. I came to enjoy them very early on, and to take them silently, adoringly. Since then I have come to equate silence with extreme pleasure. But that silence was never silence, really. It was a kind of awful familiar music piped in from nowhere at the least possible volume. Like here, today.

July 25, 1996

Often, on a very hot day, Wendy’s is quite cool. Almost cold. I have become aware of the fact that we take leisurely walks in a raging fire. There is some pleasure in blatant self-destruction but shelter is a newer and deeper pleasure—one not yet frilly. At Wendy’s, we begin to fathom the fact: the fire makes us cold, finally, and fills us with the inadequacy of pleasure, the pleasure of inadequacy.

July 27, 1996

So many drive-through people. Of course, there is really no such thing as driving through—one drives by. And who would drive by a Wendy’s? Who would be so ridiculous as to assume that he could simply extract what he needs from a visit without actually making the visit, without standing awhile inside the blessed delusion of a manned source? How fast the dead learn to bury the dead.

July 29, 1996

I sort of recognize your employees, but not so much as you’d think. I believe they recognize me. When I think about it, the faces that really stay etched in my mind are the faces of porn stars. Only in porn, it seems, does a face acquire the peculiar glow of its ownmost rhythmic ambiguity. It’s sad to every day come to Wendy’s and see faces that will never be given to me in their full porn depth.

July 31, 1996

Your employees are beautiful—they do not have authority. Even the manager has no authority—if pushed, he will just call someone, who also has no ultimate authority. It’s extremely pleasing to recognize this fact—one feels so fairly situated in the teeming absence of authors. At Wendy’s, one writes not from an author, but to an author, a sleeping owner who will never wake.

September 2, 1996

I love the cleanliness of a Wendy’s. Such a clean is not in any sense a banishing of genitalia; it is the creation of a quiet bright mind-space that allows for the deliciousness of genitalia to become obvious. I look out over the colorful clean tables and the pretty food posters and I like people again; each has a dick and balls, or a cunt and titties, which, clean, are simply enjoyable.

September 14, 1996

Last night I dreamt that I pissed on Wendy’s head. I entered the restroom, approached the urinal, and started pissing, when suddenly I realized it was not a urinal at all . . . but Wendy. As I began to protest (to the dream itself) I understood that I
must have
known it was her. I felt ashamed, yet wronged. I also felt like the only thing I ever wanted to happen was finally happening.

September 20, 1996

Today I had a Biggie. Usually I just have a small, and refill. Why pay more? But today I needed a Biggie inside me. Some days, I guess, are like that. Only a Biggie will do. You wake up and you know: today I will get a Biggie and I will put it inside me and I will feel better. One time I saw a guy with three Biggies at once. One wonders not about him but about what it is that holds us back.

September 21, 1996

If I had to say what Wendy really was—if she had to be one thing instead of a field of various energies—I think I’d have to say that she was a penis. Something about her face and the shape of her hair, the muffled red coherence of head and torso, and perhaps too her lack of arms and legs. A penis is found in just such a lack of limbs; it’s really amazing when it arrives anywhere.

November 15, 1996

A beautiful woman with a Biggie. Nothing else—just a Biggie. She sat alone; she seemed like she was waiting for someone. What lucky soul could make a beautiful woman with a Biggie wait? Who has that kind of power? What person would a beautiful woman with a Biggie find attractive? Only one answer made sense to me: another beautiful woman with a Biggie.

January 4, 1997

It’s wonderful to think of meat sculpted to resemble a penis, but it’s a different thing to actually have it on your plate. So long as it’s an idea, you can lick it, kiss it, without feeling strange. Its actually being meat is something the idea seems incapable of entertaining. That is, while the idea allows for a wonderful semblance, it forever infuses the necessary biting and chewing with unnecessary sadness.

March 26, 1997

Shall I put my penis on the counter? But what would it really accomplish? Would it change the world? Would it change me, or the attendant employees? No, no, and no. But should we judge an activity by whether or not it changes something? That would imply evolution as pre-determined and full of specific purpose. My penis on the counter is resistance; it demonstrates evolution’s indeterminate willfulness.