Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (14 page)

Perhaps I should say I
lurched
forward. Apparently I’d had a bit more to drink than was strictly necessary. Apparently I’d had
quite
a bit more to drink than was strictly necessary. I’m certain a good many of you know how that feels, don’t you, when you get good and ripped, and that very pleasant little brass band begins its evening concert in your head, and the baton begins to wave, and the timpani begin to roll, and one feels oneself swell into a kind of living crescendo. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s different than the rush one experiences on very good marijuana, say, or opiated hashish. It lacks the vague, speedy flavor of the hallucinogens. No, if it can be compared to anything I’d say it’s closer, in my opinion, to fine cocaine.

Do you young people still do cocaine? It’s lovely, isn’t it? Emily and I liked to snort it off a moon rock she’d bought from the Museum of Natural History in New York. The dear girl was absurdly superstitious about it. We
had
to be in the bathtub, Mahler
had
to be on the stereo, the bill we used
had
to be a fresh twenty, etcetera etcetera. As you can see, she displayed a marked predilection for controlled behavior, did Emily. Alas, my own predilections run in rather the opposite direction.

As I said, I lurched forward. Emily crouched before the white infertile landscape of the dean’s refrigerator, unsuspecting. All I wished to do, you see, was press my lips against the fuzzy layer of down that ran like an untended lawn across the chiseled topography of her shoulder. That was all. There must have been some form of internal miscommunication, however, some sort of synaptic firing among the brain receptors that went awry, because what proceeded to happen was something quite different. What proceeded to happen was that I stumbled over some warped, wayward tile of linoleum, and went hurtling into Emily, and the point of my chin cracked hard against the top of her head, which sent her flying into the refrigerator. I might mention, too, that at some point in the proceedings my pants were no longer fastened at the waist but had slipped to a spot a good deal closer to my ankles, revealing a rather horrific erection I’m at a loss to account for. Where do they come from, these erections? Does anyone know? Why do they come upon one during bus rides, for instance, but not on the train? It’s a subject worthy of exploration. Some of you may well decide to undertake it, in fact, for your first paper.

Emily, for her part, began to scream. One could hardly blame her, of course: I’d caught her off guard; I’d clumsily assaulted her; I’d invaded her space, as she liked to say. I’d done everything wrong, everything. She stood there, crimson-faced, fingering the teeth marks in her skirt, her mouth—

Sorry?

Oh yes, I seem to have bitten her skirt. Did I leave that out? An odd involuntary response, but there you have it. I still have a piece of it somewhere. A light, summery cotton material, as I remember. Sometimes I’ll pick it up and pop it in my mouth again, and the effect, if I may make so grand a claim, is not unlike Proust and his madeleine, conjuring up Emily in great rushing tides of sensory detail.
Remembrance of Flings Past
, if you will. Yes, a wonderful souvenir, that bit of skirt, to say nothing of its usefulness and durability as a masturbatory aid. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Emily was screaming. That was unfortunate, of course, but not unreasonable. The disconcerting part was that even
after
she had turned around, one lip fattening and starting to bleed; even
after
she had seen that it was only me, that it had obviously all been an accident, only an accident, one that had caused me too a great deal of pain; even
after
I had begun to stammer out a lengthy and perhaps in retrospect a not entirely coherent apology; even
after
, class, even
after
—
Emily continued to scream.
In fact she screamed louder. It was a scream without words, without inflection, as insensate and maddening as a siren. It appeared to come from some hot, awful, violent place inside Emily that I had not as yet explored . . . a place that I’ll confess intrigued me. For a moment I had the completely insupportable idea that it bore some relation to her muteness during the love act, a place of inverted pleasures and projected pain, a place where all of Emily’s emotional dysfunctions had sought out a refuge. Ladies and gentlemen, can you blame me for my interest in this young woman? She was fascinating, neurotic, convoluted, thoroughly extraordinary. No, I don’t believe I can be blamed, not in this case, not with Emily Crane. My intentions were innocent ones, therapeutic ones. I wish to establish this point, my essential innocence, right here at the outset, because I will in all likelihood be making reference to it as the semester goes on.

There will be—did I mention?—a midterm and a final.

Of course they all came running at once, the entire faculty, including spouses, secretaries, and administrators, all came at once to the kitchen to see what had happened. For all they knew there had been a murder, a fire. How could they have known it was only a brief, botched kiss?

In time she began to calm down. Emily Crane, she calmed down. The vein at her temple softened and receded, her hands unclenched, her color assumed a normal shade. For the benefit of the onlookers she attempted a shrug of casualness, but her shoulders remained tight, unnaturally so, where I’d tried to kiss them, so that she appeared to have frozen midway through some strange, inelegant dance step. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Frida, cooing, stroked Emily’s forehead. The room hushed. Emily looked at me softly, inquiringly, as she used to look at me during our Special Topics seminar only a year ago, her brow creased, her head cocked at a steep angle, her eyes wide and damp, and when she opened her mouth again I heard a whole robed choir of ardent angels rising to their feet.

“You’re disgusting,” she said. This in a loud and brittle voice. The sort of voice, class, one should never use on one’s lover—and yet in the end one always does, it seems.

My tenured colleagues slipped away at once, grateful for the chance to escape and preoccupied, no doubt, with scandals of their own. But the untenured faculty looked on greedily, their faces lit by the kind of ghoulish pleasure with which small children attend the dismemberment of insects. They’d be dining out on this for weeks. Already I could hear the first rough whispers, the first conspiratorial murmurs. Emily, if she heard them, paid no mind; she stood proud, like a high priestess conducting a ritual sacrifice, slitting the throat of our love on the party’s altar. “You’re disgusting,” she said again, perhaps for the benefit of Herr Stramm, who had missed it the first time. And then she wheeled, grabbed Evan Searle by the elbow, and commenced what I judged to be a rather theatrical exit.

Excuse me, but there are, I believe, a few minutes left.

Emily, Emily Crane, left this university soon afterward. I cannot tell you where she went because no one will tell me. It was the end of the term and I was left without a teaching assistant, left to grade 117 undergraduate papers, which I read, quite alone, on the floor of the unfurnished apartment that Lisa insisted I sublet the week after the dean’s party. No doubt in a few weeks I will be grading your papers on that same floor. Sometimes it is all I can do to rise from that floor. Sometimes it is all I can do.

“There are persons,” wrote the great William James, “whose existence is little more than a series of zig-zags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes.”

Who are these persons, you ask? You see one of them before you. If you take a moment and look to your left and your right, you will see two more. And by the time you are older, and not so very much older at that, you will begin to see him or her in the places you have not as yet been looking: in the reflection of a glass, say, or an intimate’s stare, or a barren refrigerator. Ultimately, you see, the private will win out. The axis of reality, James tells us, runs solely through the private, egotistic places—they are strung upon it like so many beads. We are all in this together, ladies and gentlemen, in a way that would be horrible were it not so comic, but in a way that manages to be quite horrible anyway. We are all students of desire. We arrive at class eager as puppies, earnest, clumsy, groping for love. That is what brought you here this morning. You have caught the scent of possibility. You have begun to gnaw at your leashes, and they have begun to fray, and soon, soon, you will go scampering off in search of new ones.

Very well then. We are out of time. Next week, according to the syllabus, we will turn our attention to Janice, Janice Rodolfo, who left me for the captain of the golf squad in my junior year of high school. Among other issues, we will explore the theoretical implications of submissive behavior—mine—and analyze the phenomenon known as “dry humping” for its content of latent aggression. Until then, I ask only that you keep up with your reading and, of course, your journal, which I intend to review periodically. I ask that you keep your writing neat.

Are there any questions?

No?

I thought I saw a hand up . . . there, in the back row, the young lady with the red blouse, with the—

I thought I saw your hand.

Perhaps I have already answered your question. Or perhaps you’re somewhat shy. There’s something inhibiting, isn’t there, about a forum such as this, all these narrow desks in their rigid lines. If I had my way in things, if it were up to me, this class would not be a lecture at all, but a succession of individual consultations in some small, comfortable room. A room like my office, for instance, on the third floor of this building, to the left of the stairs. Room 323. If it were up to me, young lady, you would ask your questions there. You would put down your pen and take off your shoes. There would be music, something chastened and reflective, to facilitate our inquiries. In the end we might choose not to speak at all, but merely to gaze into a flickering candle, attending to the gyrations of the light, to the dance of its shadow up the wall and to the small elusive effects of our own breath . . .

Yes?

Right, right, by all means, mustn’t run over. It’s only . . .

I thought, I thought there was . . .

I thought I saw her hand.

This AGREEMENT is between ____
Potential
Future Husband
____ (hereinafter referred to as “You”), and ______
Me
______ (hereinafter referred to as “Me”).

WHEREAS, you let me use your colored markers,

WHEREAS, you let me ride your bike,

WHEREAS, you are shy and have knobby knees and take me into the brush beyond the school fence that we call Outer Mongolia and ask if I will “go” with you on a piece of notebook paper with three boxes that say “yes,” “no,” and “maybe,”

. . . you agree to love me.

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1980.

BE IT KNOWN, that for good consideration the following additions or changes will comprise a part of said contract as if contained therein. All future addenda shall likewise be considered as contiguous to said contract, and all other terms and provisions of said contract shall remain in full force and effect.

1. Insert “WHEREAS, you are dark haired and dark eyed, over six feet tall, with dimples,”

2. Insert “WHEREAS, you are a bad boy on the outside, but a sweet, sensitive, and loyal boy on the inside who is not afraid to cuddle and cry,”

     . . . you agree to love me.

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1989.

ADDENDA:

1. Strike “over six feet tall.”

2. Insert “WHEREAS, you do not make out with me after your show and then drive me home in your van with your buddies in the back snickering, ‘Someone’s gonna face the hairy axe wound tonight.’”

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1990.

ADDENDA:

1. Insert “WHEREAS, we do not meet on my European backpacking trip right out of high school. You do not have an enticing South African accent and invite me back to spend the summer working at a youth hostel with you in Athens, Greece after exchanging letters and phone calls for months. You do not drink retsina wine with me on a rooftop looking out at the white buildings dotting the city like cranes and I don’t lose my virginity to you. You don’t tell me a month later that if I was a good girlfriend I wouldn’t chat with the Australian boys in the bar as I wait for you to finish bartending. You don’t call me a slut under your breath another month later when I casually wave to a guy I know. You don’t throw away letters from my friends and tell my family I am not there when they call and then say, when I wonder why nobody is answering me, that you are obviously the only one who cares. No. You don’t lock me out at 2 a.m. so that I end up sleeping on benches in the Athens subway. You don’t get me drunk one night with round after round of Ouzo for the boss’s birthday, hold me down, and have your way until I get sick, or tell me it’s all water under the bridge the next day and to stop crying. You don’t berate me with lectures about sucking it up and discipline and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. And I do not one night push open the door to find you on your back on a mattress with a woman straddling you on all fours and her vagina pointed straight at me. I do not feel my stomach drop each floor to the lobby and out to the street, where I do follow to find my breath, do discover my voice, do go through the movements to pack my backpack and walk out of there the next morning straight past your raised hand, you fucking asshole, I dare you, just dare you to do it and show everyone watching what I already know about you.”

2. Strike “WHEREAS, you are a bad boy on the outside.”

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1991.

ADDENDA:

1. Insert “WHEREAS, you buy me a bumblebee finger puppet and a spaceship that shoots foam disks so I can protect myself from your onslaught on the circus backlot, shrieking and laughing like a kid. After everyone has gone home, late at night, we lie on the dark round stage in the big top and talk about building a cabin in the woods. One day. The first time you kiss me it’s really soft and sweet and you say, ‘How was that?’ And we hold our breath when Tommy comes through with a flashlight to check the tent.”

2. Insert “WHEREAS, you do not have to go back to Montreal.”

3. Strike “You are dark haired.”

4. Insert “You might be bald.”

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1995.

CODICIL:

Mitigating substantiation of fuck-ups. Evidence attached, exhibits 1 and 2

1. My friends told me that attraction fades anyway, so I soldiered on. But I made you get off me to brush your teeth because it was always there, the chemical evidence of our incompatibility. When you asked me to come home with you at Christmas, I said no, and you said, “When I get back, this is going to be over, isn’t it?” and I said yes. And after Christmas you came up to me in a university hallway after I avoided you for days, and you gave me a Simon and Garfunkel CD box set. “I got this for you before we broke up,” you said, “and I don’t have anyone else to give it to.”

2. One night a boy I liked more than you invited me out to dinner and I forgot my date with you. When I returned, hours late, you were sitting on the front steps, still waiting. I hung on the arm of the other boy and your face fell. “So sorry,” I said. “We ate already. I’ll call you tomorrow.” I climbed the stairs around your seated body. And I didn’t call.

   I, the undersigned, do hereby submit a motion of
mea culpa
. I understand that these fuck
-
ups may render all potential future husbands null and void, according to Article 1, paragraph 6 of the Municipal Code of Karma.

Sign here X ______________________

and here X ______________________

ADDENDUM:

1. Insert “WHEREAS, we have chemistry and you smell good to me.”

SIGNED this ____ day of ______________________ , 1999.

ADDENDUM:

1. Insert “You are not my professor in the Netherlands. We do not stand in the hallway talking about books for an hour before moving to the pub next door. It does not take you two weeks to mention you are married, with an eight-year-old daughter. We do not continue meeting for coffee ‘as friends’ and marvel at the way the time leaps. I do not get the inevitable phone call that you love me one night as I cross the bridge in the damp Dutch autumn, do not force you to stop talking to me and get yourself into therapy to make sure, do not finally give myself over when you say you know there is no other way for you. You don’t beg me to trust you. You don’t tell me you want us to get married and how we will build a family. You don’t quote Yeats poems. You don’t move to an apartment overlooking the canal in Utrecht, where we spend our days. We do not go to faculty dinner parties together and Luxembourg on weekend trips. You don’t accept your ex-wife’s terms that you can only visit your daughter at her house and I can’t be in the same room with her. We do not fight about it when things are still the same a year later. When we decide to resolve the issue by buying a home in the neighborhood so your daughter can come over after school, you do not find problems with every house. You do not backpedal about our future babies. I do not go home to see my family, and you do not promise to get serious about finding a house when I get back. Two weeks after I am back in California, I do not get your call to say that you are moving back in with your ex-wife for the sake of your child. You do not actually tell me to wait ten years for you because when your daughter is eighteen you plan to come back to me. You do not talk about how this is your great sacrifice. You do not move back in that weekend and your wife does not immediately change your phone number so I cannot contact you anymore. Your secretary, who was my friend when we were together, does not refuse to put me through when I try to reach you. There is not the hideous impenetrable wall of silence when I pace my studio apartment all night in a frothy delirium, until you begin to send me e-mails. You do not call me your Beatrice, your muse, as though I existed solely as a prop in your life, as if I had not lost the ground from under my feet.”

ADDENDA:

Strike it all.

Strike the e-mails that say:

“I want a tape of your laugh.”

terminate the contract. terminate

WHEREAS, you vis-à-vis me, heretofore exist solely and exclusively in past tense and time travel is
a posteriori
null and void.

WHEREAS,
terra nullius
therefore null and void by conditions of terms and mutually agreed upon in perpetuity
ad infinitum
default by undersigned henceforth shall cosigner per outlined therein without recourse.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Sign here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

this ____ day of ______________________ , 2005.

Renegotiate.

WHEREAS, . . .

You are not a ranger I meet hiking in a Berkshires nature reserve. I do not let you hold my hand and let someone call me baby again. I do not start to think about it all again, about my waning fertility and the ghost babies that fill my bedroom at night, about how nice it can be to have someone make coffee and fresh fruit and place it before my sleepy face in the morning, all just as I find out that I will be moving to Iowa. I do not hear, in our telephone conversation a few weeks after I move there, that moment when I hear you slide out of reach. I do not hear the mundane questions about my family and my apartment and my work. And I want to say no, please-wait-stop, let’s talk about when we hiked to the waterfall and watched the teenagers leap from the top to hurtle inches from the rock wall into the pool below, remember when we discussed the temerity of youth while we held hands on the walk down? Let’s talk about picking stinging nettles as we shrieked each time one got us, exacting our revenge over the steaming nettle soup in your little house, those easy kisses punctuating our kitchen dance as we prepared the table. Let’s coo over baby saw-whet owls and look for the skunk cabbage bloom . . . But I hear the futility, and as I say goodbye through the phone I know only definitively that you are gone after the click. I stand there with the phone in my hand, looking at the crap lump of plastic in my hand as the only miserable conduit I have left.

WHEREAS, I remember one night as we walked in a parking lot, you took me by the hand and led me to a tree. This is the Black Locust Tree, you said. It is completely poisonous, except for the blossoms. You can eat the blossoms, they are delicious and filled with nectar. You picked the blossoms and brought one to my mouth. Trust me, you said. It’s delicious, you said. But the leaves and the rest of the tree will kill you.

Strike “You agree to love me.”

Insert “I, the undersigned, agree to love you.”

Sign here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

and here X __________________________

Signed this ____ day of ______________________ , 2011.