Blood and Guts in High School (12 page)

'I go crazy when I want to fuck a guy,' Hester thinks to herself. 'How will any man ever love me? How can I be happy if a man doesn't fuck and love me? But look at Pearl. She's happy and she doesn't fuck.'

Pearl's four years old. She's as wild as they come.
Wild
in the Puritan New England society Hawthorne writes about means
evil anti-society criminal.
Wild. Wild. Wild. Going wherever you want to go and doing whatever you want to do and not even thinking about it. 'Why did you get stoned?' the Persian slave trader asked me this morning. In 'primitive' 'wild' societies like Haiti the word 'why' doesn't exist. Pearl, according to Mr Hawthorne, wears hippy clothes and runs around in the forest and makes no distinction between what's outside her and her dreams. On the whole she doesn't make many distinctions. She doesn't know human beings exist. Sometimes she senses human beings exist. She senses a black vertical mist that's a wall pressing into her as if on top of her. She wants to scream. She feels helpless.

She doesn't like people much.

She notices Hester her mother. Once she notices someone she'll stick by that person she'll open herself up she is soft and totally hurtable that's what being wild is. (Secretly.) (Privately.) 'Cause once you're open like that you're a real person 'cause you're no longer separated from other people. It's dangerous. Whatever happens to you happens to the

ones you're connected with. Whatever happens to them happens to you. It's scary and dangerous to open yourself to someone. Not that you ever have any choice.

The townspeople think Pearl's evil because she lives off the roads. 'No man will ever love a woman like you when you grow up,' say the townspeople. 'The roads are our civilization. They're the order men have impressed on chaos so that men's lives can be safer and more secure and, thus, so that we can all progress. Human life gets better and better.'

The roads are getting so super-paved and big and light and loaded with BIG MACS and HOWARD JOHNSONS that the only time people are forced into danger or reality is when they die. Death is the only reality we've got left in our nicey-nicey-clean-ice-cream-TV society so we'd better worship it. S & M sex. Punk rock. Don't you know, you can step into the snow, the raging ocean and the freezing snow, you can step into danger . . . anytime you please . . . step into me . . .

The government, the big multinational businessmen, the scholars and teachers, and the cops are the people who maintain the roads. The scientists, philosophers, and artists are the people who build the roads. Everyone's a slave.

'Who can I talk to?' Hester screams.

These most important men in the world decide it's their duty to tear the mother away from her child. They want to keep the child so they can train the child to suck their cocks. That's what's known as education. 'Who can I talk to?' Hester screams.

The Reverend Dimwit (the young handsome Reverend) raises his hand. Reverend Dimwit is the best student in the school. 'Let Hester keep her child.' The cops ask him why. He thinks up a phoney excuse: 'The child is the visible sign of the woman's sin and so will keep reminding the woman of her sin. That way we can be assured of the woman's continuing and deepening punishment.' The top cops, who don't have any feelings, accept this lousy logic. (Anything's acceptable as long as it's logical.) But evil Chillingworth, the builder of the logic road, wonders why the Reverend is helping Hester. Nothing in the world, Chillingworth thinks, will be unknown to me. I am totally self-sufficient. I never ask anyone's advice. My plots and manipulations are all-potent. Chillingworth sneaks his way into the Reverend's heart, but he doesn't give his own heart away. This is friendship and love in the fucked-up society.

A couple is one who loves plus one who lets love. Couples make up the townspeople world. If you're not part of a couple, you don't exist and no one will speak to you you outcast. Go to hell outcast. Outside the road. Don't you know there's nowhere to walk anymore unless

you're walking to somewhere? Now if you shut up and stay nonexistent and don't act like the freak you are, maybe in two years we'll notice you and tell you our neurotic problems 'cause we have lots of neurotic problems, but don't ever expect to be invited to one of our parties.

I, Hester, am a red house lost in the thickening mist. One of my sides is clearly visible. The red one. The other side is hazy. I'm not sure if it's real. There's a little light I don't know anymore where it's coming from. Everything that isn't touching my eyes is gone. Not blacked out, just gone into the dark mist that's blotting out everything. The mist goes back and back . . .

Everyone I know lives on the roads. They're creepy crawling snivelling things. I don't want anything to do with them. Ugh. I hate people. I can be alone. I can close myself up. I won't let anyone get near me. I think I'm off the road, but I'm dominated by fear and hatred. I'm as closed-up and fucked-up as everybody else. I am hell. The world is hell. No it isn't!' I scream, but I know it is. Hell. Hell. Hell. Hell. Help. Help me. Help me. Love me.

'The fullness and breadth, the clear entirety of this hell and therefore its limitations,' Reverend Dimwit then says to Hester, 'will appear and be fully apparent the moment we become conscious of the secrets in our hearts.'

I can't work. I can't move.