Goddamn flies.
Balfour has seen a lot of dead bodies, too many to count. She’s seen bodies without heads, bodies gone fat and soft as mushrooms, bodies puffing out gases as if they were still breathing, fleshless bodies decomposed enough to reveal the yellow skeleton within – suicide, murder, accident, she’s seen it all, and nothing much fazes her.
Except for the goddamn flies. Something about their glistening blue-black bodies, the incessant hum of their wings, and their filthy children – fucking maggots, the way their roil and spill like rice boiling over out of a gunshot wound, lined up like tiny soldiers on the edge of a laceration, their little mouths in their eyeless faces gumming away flesh gone green with rot – makes Detective Balfour recoil. She doesn’t show it, of course – she’s notorious for her composure. Unlike her fellow officers, Balfour has never once done the following at a crime scene: vomited, blanched at the site of a body torn to pieces and scattered across a room, cried, flinched, quivered, or Taken it Personally.
The job gets to her in other ways, of course, ways that other cops will never guess at. Some nights she sits in front of the TV and stares for hours, bathed and warmed in its toxic blue light, flicking from channel to channel in time to the metronomic blinks of her eyes, so that when she opens them all she sees is the black between stations.
Open. Close. Open. Close. Black. Blue. Black. Blue.
It’s worrisome, to say the least, these evenings spent dumb as a zombie, but she has much bigger things to worry about.
This, for instance.
She was not expecting to find a family, not out here. None of them were.
A couple of kids (not so brave now; noses dripping snot, red-faced from crying, their thin voices hoarse from all the screaming) wandered a bit too far out, right onto the edge of the Borderlands. Before the tree-line went up in earnest, before the abandoned factories and warehouses, some signs of life left out here: a few row-houses staggering against the Darkness, an unpaved road or two, a rusty bicycle, one rib-thin dog (or coyote, Balfour wasn’t sure; there was something undeniably feral about the thing), nosing through a bag of trash on the road. She shot at it, just in case; no goddamn way was a dog was going to sift through her evidence before she did. Before it ran away, it turned its long muzzle, lifted its yellow eyes and gazed at her, for just a split-second longer than she would have liked.
She could have sworn it sneered at her – a particularly human sneer - before it turned its head and loped away into the shadows.
That wasn’t the worst of it, of course.
Inside the row house (three steps up onto a porch that listed drunkenly to the left), and through the door (splintered, ajar, splattered with blood inside and out), down a hall (the floor tacky with blood, the walls shiny with it), and into a kitchen. It wasn’t much of a kitchen, really; these row houses were built well over half a century ago, so there was no microwave, no stainless steel appliances, just a scratched porcelain sink, an old fridge, a gas stove. All of the cupboards were open, their doors hanging askew; there were deep gouges in the wood. Claw marks, Balfour thought.
When she first walked in, she thought that the heap of skin, fur, and oddly twisted limbs on the floor belonged to a large cat, a bobcat maybe, or a lynx – the creatures were rumored to prowl the Borderlands, especially at night. After bending down and examining the stinking pile – goddamn motherfucking flies drowsily circling her head as she did so – Balfour came to the conclusion that she was looking at three separate bodies arranged in a triangle; three bodies, three sides. Two female bodies, one male. The two adults - one male, one female – were laid out with their heads touching, their twisted and mangled bodies pointing down. All four legs and arms were bent at unnatural angles; Balfour glimpsed the absurdly clean whiteness of bones in the folds of flesh and fur.
At the feet of the two adults was a small girl, the base of the triangle. Her eyes were open, glassy green cat eyes staring up at Balfour, staring up through the cloud of flies that circled the girl's head. An upside-down cross was carved into her forehead; the blood had dripped down her face, staining the downy white fur.
Their hearts had been torn out. There was nothing clinical, nothing surgical or deliberate about the wounds. The hearts had been ripped out using only teeth.
All three bodies were covered in grey and white fur, a soft dusting that grew thicker on their arms and legs. Their thin cat ears had been ripped off and tossed into the center of the triangle, along with three long striped tails. One heart rested in the pile of cartilage and vertebrae and fur, partially chewed, the gristle and flesh seething with maggots.
Fur.
It was a trans-family. Balfour had never seen an entire family of trans-creatures before; she had never even imagined that they came from families. In Balfour’s mind, trans-kids sprung fully formed from the filthy back alleys and even dirtier floors of the City clubs. She’s seen plenty of them, both dead and alive, and all different kinds: cats, birds, bears, rabbits, even a lizard or two. They were casualties of the City, these kids, unnatural creatures, who almost invariably came to a bad end. It wasn’t a shock to find a dead trans.
But a dead trans family. That was something different.
The photographer and forensics team were on their way. It was going to be a long night.
***
Balfour shrugs off her clothes and steps into the shower. The crime scene washes down the drain, all of it – the coppery-sweet taste of blood, the cloying stench of rotted flesh, the heady buzz of flies. The eyes of the little girl, her tiny pink nose. Half of it had been eaten away already – whether by her killer or the maggots, Balfour doesn’t know. Doesn’t matter.
She closes her eyes and lets the water wash over her face. It’s hot, almost too hot.
Doesn’t matter.
Balfour washes her arms, her breasts, her feet, her legs, between her legs. She washes her face, scrubs too hard. And last, she reaches behind her to the small dip above her buttocks, in the small of her back, to the soft nub there. She can’t see it – she never, ever looks at it; that’s a rule – but she can imagine it, three inches long, spotted black and white, flicking stiffly back and forth.
She washes it, gently.
Balfour hears a noise and she stiffens. Below the roar of the water, a low growl. Claws clicking, something is padding on soft feet towards her.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Meet Lester
And they even have a side of beef! Mmmmzzzzzz.... my favourite! It must have looked good. I can almost taste it from here. Mmmmzzzzzz.... And Myiagros did all His work! At least He iz good for something! That meanz more for me!!! Heeeeee!
What? Who are you? You can zee me?
How about now?
Heeee! Weeee! Really? How wonderful! I can’t believe it! Where do I start? Where do I begin!? Gee. That’z a toughy. Perhapz at the beginning? That’z what all you mortalz do, right? Hmmm.... I can’t remember. I think zzzzzzzzo.
No. No I don’t think that will do. I should start where I’ve alwayz started. At the end.
Mmmmzzzzzzzzzzz...
I am the proverbial fly on the wall. Not what you expected, right? Like, I’m a REAL fly! Heee. That’z alright. I know all about ztrange exepectationz! Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Did you know that I am the ONLY fly in ALL of the god world? It’z true! Heeee! I used to be like everyone else. Can you blame me? You know what those carcasses are like. Lambs and fish and beef. Mmmmzzzzzzzzz.... Zo me and zome friends would go around looking for the good ones. You know. The fattest and the freshest dead. Yummy.
Except! Except! Except that Myiagros! Every time we found a REALLY good one, He would show up and shew us away!
ZZZ!!!!
Can you believe it? Makes you just want to take a chunk right out of Him! What do the Gods want with carcasses anyways. Why do they need to eat? The worst part was, the best onez were ALWAYZ for the Gods. ALWAYZ!
So one day, I found this beautiful winged horse. Can you imagine how tasty wings must be on a horse? And that’s when I overheard it. Someone named Bellerophon owned this horse, and he was on his way to the god world. Can you believe my luck? Can you even begin to imagine all the wonderful, beautiful carcasses that must be in the god world? Mmmmzzzzzzzzzz.... if you only knew.
So I hitched a ride. Best idea I ever had. We went up and up and up and up and up. Like this: zzzzZZZZZ! Except, as we got closer, I got a little frightened. He was flying so fast! I accidentally stung the horse. Some flies can’t do that, but I’m a gad-fly. So that means I can. Just so you know.
I just wanted the nice horse to slow down. But instead, it bucked off Bellerophon. Can you believe it? I was shocked! He just fell all the way back down, and the nice horse kept going. Of course, when I got up to the god world, I explained EVERYTHING to a guy who had all these thunderbolts (in case he knew where the carcasses were). He was actually really happy! But I don’t know why. He said he’d make me a Proverb, as long as I promised not to tell anyone what really happened. That’s like a mini-god, or something. Now I get to live forever! Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Zeus – that’s the guy that I talked to who had the thunderbolts – He said I could even work for the gods if I wanted to. (That’s Him down there, talking to that other guy. His Son I think. Weee!). I stay away from most of Them; They don’t much like gad-flies I think. Probably all friendz with that Myiagros guy. Jerk. Zzzz.
What waz I saying? Oh yeah! Work! So sometimes I work for Zeus! He has such a good name. He taught me to control my z’s and s’s. Except sometimez I forget. Like when I get angry!!! It’z just zzzzo hard!
Working is zo much fun though. I get to go and spy on people! And you know what’s really interesting? When people wish they were me, it’s actually not that good. I’ve been in rooms with lots of CEOs and special celebrities, and you know what? It’s boring! They do what normal people do. I’ve seen some queens lose their heads (mmmmzzzzzzz..... the perks of this job!) and I’ve been around when religious icons were condemned to death. But I’ve also been to someone getting a promotion and someone getting fired. Secret meetings seem almost more boring that regular meetings. There isn’t much difference between ‘em, and yet I always hear people say they want to be me.
I wonder why people say things like that. I thought people wanted to know different stuff. Maybe they think they’re all different? Do YOU think you’re different?
Wait.... Are you a mini-god gad-fly?
Zzzzz! Maybe you are the fly on the wall for the fly on the wall. Crazzzzzzzzzzy. Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Okay, since you’re a fellow god-gad-fly, I’ll let you in a secret. Heee! People really change right around the time when they don’t even care about me. You know when people really discuss their feelings or show their true colours? Right after all those big meetings. If you want the juicy stuff, don’t go to the beheading – go to the administrator’s office right beforehand. Same for promotions. Go to the coworker’s bench right after the announcement. It doesn’t get any better than that!
I wonder why people think it does. Maybe they’re pretending. Or maybe they just want to believe it does. Oh that would be fun! Make believe, make believe! Zzzzz! Maybe they like to imagine that it must be something different from what they’re used to. Some unseen, unknown force. Maybe they think the gods are secretly in those secret rooms, behind those closed doors. Heee. Nope! Just me. Wheeee!
You know when is a really good time to watch people? Right before a party, or right after one. It’s weird. I’ve watched people leave a dozen times, and as soon as the door closes, it’s like they transform. They change.
Like, one time, I had to watch these two people get ready to go out. They were going to one of those places that serves that sweet, sweet liquid. They were all excited, and were even drinking it early. They were talking about their hopes and dreams, and how they were going to... ummm.... Do you know what “rock it” means? I dunno. But they said it! They were going to rock it.
I was zzzo excited, I had to follow them! But as soon as they left, they changed. They talked normally. They had some of that liquid stuff (and they spilled some too! Mmmmzzzzzzzz). They talked to some others and laughed. But it seemed like they were completely different people.
And then, when they got back, they transformed again! They started talking and analyzing their time and all the girls they met, and what they had said, and should have said, and how the atmosphere was, and how over priced the appies were, and loop-de-loop! They didn’t act like that earlier. Earlier they acted like they didn’t even care about that stuff. It was so weird. And everyone does that.
Maybe all humans like to play pretend. Silly humans. If they all pretend, then who is real? Maybe just us flies are real.
LOOK! See over there? See? Aphrodite’s here! Mmmmzzzzzzzz.... loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop! She’s never on time. I wish I could work with Her. I asked once. She said I would ruin the mood. I wonder why?
This is fun. My name’s Lester, by the way. What’s yours? Will you wait here in the corner with me? We’re allowed to follow the food out when they’re all done. It’s the best stuff, remember? It’ll be great! Wheee!
What? Who are you? You can zee me?
How about now?
Heeee! Weeee! Really? How wonderful! I can’t believe it! Where do I start? Where do I begin!? Gee. That’z a toughy. Perhapz at the beginning? That’z what all you mortalz do, right? Hmmm.... I can’t remember. I think zzzzzzzzo.
No. No I don’t think that will do. I should start where I’ve alwayz started. At the end.
Mmmmzzzzzzzzzzz...
I am the proverbial fly on the wall. Not what you expected, right? Like, I’m a REAL fly! Heee. That’z alright. I know all about ztrange exepectationz! Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Did you know that I am the ONLY fly in ALL of the god world? It’z true! Heeee! I used to be like everyone else. Can you blame me? You know what those carcasses are like. Lambs and fish and beef. Mmmmzzzzzzzzz.... Zo me and zome friends would go around looking for the good ones. You know. The fattest and the freshest dead. Yummy.
Except! Except! Except that Myiagros! Every time we found a REALLY good one, He would show up and shew us away!
ZZZ!!!!
Can you believe it? Makes you just want to take a chunk right out of Him! What do the Gods want with carcasses anyways. Why do they need to eat? The worst part was, the best onez were ALWAYZ for the Gods. ALWAYZ!
So one day, I found this beautiful winged horse. Can you imagine how tasty wings must be on a horse? And that’s when I overheard it. Someone named Bellerophon owned this horse, and he was on his way to the god world. Can you believe my luck? Can you even begin to imagine all the wonderful, beautiful carcasses that must be in the god world? Mmmmzzzzzzzzzz.... if you only knew.
So I hitched a ride. Best idea I ever had. We went up and up and up and up and up. Like this: zzzzZZZZZ! Except, as we got closer, I got a little frightened. He was flying so fast! I accidentally stung the horse. Some flies can’t do that, but I’m a gad-fly. So that means I can. Just so you know.
I just wanted the nice horse to slow down. But instead, it bucked off Bellerophon. Can you believe it? I was shocked! He just fell all the way back down, and the nice horse kept going. Of course, when I got up to the god world, I explained EVERYTHING to a guy who had all these thunderbolts (in case he knew where the carcasses were). He was actually really happy! But I don’t know why. He said he’d make me a Proverb, as long as I promised not to tell anyone what really happened. That’s like a mini-god, or something. Now I get to live forever! Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Zeus – that’s the guy that I talked to who had the thunderbolts – He said I could even work for the gods if I wanted to. (That’s Him down there, talking to that other guy. His Son I think. Weee!). I stay away from most of Them; They don’t much like gad-flies I think. Probably all friendz with that Myiagros guy. Jerk. Zzzz.
What waz I saying? Oh yeah! Work! So sometimes I work for Zeus! He has such a good name. He taught me to control my z’s and s’s. Except sometimez I forget. Like when I get angry!!! It’z just zzzzo hard!
Working is zo much fun though. I get to go and spy on people! And you know what’s really interesting? When people wish they were me, it’s actually not that good. I’ve been in rooms with lots of CEOs and special celebrities, and you know what? It’s boring! They do what normal people do. I’ve seen some queens lose their heads (mmmmzzzzzzz..... the perks of this job!) and I’ve been around when religious icons were condemned to death. But I’ve also been to someone getting a promotion and someone getting fired. Secret meetings seem almost more boring that regular meetings. There isn’t much difference between ‘em, and yet I always hear people say they want to be me.
I wonder why people say things like that. I thought people wanted to know different stuff. Maybe they think they’re all different? Do YOU think you’re different?
Wait.... Are you a mini-god gad-fly?
Zzzzz! Maybe you are the fly on the wall for the fly on the wall. Crazzzzzzzzzzy. Loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop!
Okay, since you’re a fellow god-gad-fly, I’ll let you in a secret. Heee! People really change right around the time when they don’t even care about me. You know when people really discuss their feelings or show their true colours? Right after all those big meetings. If you want the juicy stuff, don’t go to the beheading – go to the administrator’s office right beforehand. Same for promotions. Go to the coworker’s bench right after the announcement. It doesn’t get any better than that!
I wonder why people think it does. Maybe they’re pretending. Or maybe they just want to believe it does. Oh that would be fun! Make believe, make believe! Zzzzz! Maybe they like to imagine that it must be something different from what they’re used to. Some unseen, unknown force. Maybe they think the gods are secretly in those secret rooms, behind those closed doors. Heee. Nope! Just me. Wheeee!
You know when is a really good time to watch people? Right before a party, or right after one. It’s weird. I’ve watched people leave a dozen times, and as soon as the door closes, it’s like they transform. They change.
Like, one time, I had to watch these two people get ready to go out. They were going to one of those places that serves that sweet, sweet liquid. They were all excited, and were even drinking it early. They were talking about their hopes and dreams, and how they were going to... ummm.... Do you know what “rock it” means? I dunno. But they said it! They were going to rock it.
I was zzzo excited, I had to follow them! But as soon as they left, they changed. They talked normally. They had some of that liquid stuff (and they spilled some too! Mmmmzzzzzzzz). They talked to some others and laughed. But it seemed like they were completely different people.
And then, when they got back, they transformed again! They started talking and analyzing their time and all the girls they met, and what they had said, and should have said, and how the atmosphere was, and how over priced the appies were, and loop-de-loop! They didn’t act like that earlier. Earlier they acted like they didn’t even care about that stuff. It was so weird. And everyone does that.
Maybe all humans like to play pretend. Silly humans. If they all pretend, then who is real? Maybe just us flies are real.
LOOK! See over there? See? Aphrodite’s here! Mmmmzzzzzzzz.... loop-de-loop, loop-de-loop! She’s never on time. I wish I could work with Her. I asked once. She said I would ruin the mood. I wonder why?
This is fun. My name’s Lester, by the way. What’s yours? Will you wait here in the corner with me? We’re allowed to follow the food out when they’re all done. It’s the best stuff, remember? It’ll be great! Wheee!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Dinner With The Pantheon
Aphrodite was late, as usual.
It’s not that she was deliberately careless; in fact, had she ever arrived on time, she would have enjoyed the only pleasant part of her family’s weekly dinners – the polite catching-up, the reciting of the week’s pleasures, before the wine caught up with them and the conversation turned to old grudges and new disappointments. But she could never seem to tear herself away from her work, and so tended to enter the Great Hall at the worst possible moment, much to her mother’s chagrin.
‘It’s your work’, she would say. ‘What a waste it is! Why you continue to meddle in the affairs of mortals I will never understand. You and your father…I gave all that up years ago, and am much happier for it. Now please would you sit down, smile, and enjoy the meal I spent all day preparing?’
Aphrodite knew that at least three of those statements were entirely untrue; but unlike her siblings, she never saw the point in arguing with her mother. She had suffered great disappointments over the years, Aphrodite knew, and she saw so reason to add to her mother’s suffering by reminding her of them. She had reason enough to be bitter, her mother, and although Aphrodite rarely did anything to directly please her, she never went out of her way to hurt her.
Though, she wasn’t sure that her mother ever recognized the difference.
Today, Aphrodite was late because of a project she had begun several years ago. She began it without much hope – it was an experiment, really, spurred on by a conversation with her brother Dionysus, a conversation that soon became a challenge. He denied that modern mortals could ever experience – as he said – ‘the rippling, cascading ecstasy of pure desire, as embodied by the divine Maenads, those sisters of wild desire who threw their heads back in wild abandon, and offered up their throats to the darkest and purest of lust.’
Even sober, her brother spoke in that embarrassingly baroque language that Aphrodite had long left behind. She much preferred the language of the 21st-century Americas; simple, plain-spoken, and direct. In fact, she had been an early patron of the poet William Carlos William, although he never knew it. She would sit beside him and whisper in his ear as he wrote, and was quite proud of the results. She was responsible for such varied masterpieces as The Divine Comedy and Don Quixote, but there is nothing, in literature, and in love, so perfect to her as these lines:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Certain that her brother was wrong – that modern humans, and in particular modern women (her proudest accomplishment) could still experience lust at its wildest, without ever sacrificing their dignity, or their flesh, to the degradations of the Maenads, she chose, with great deliberation, an ordinary man and an ordinary woman from her files, and arranged for them to be brought together, again and again. She had intended, simply, to give them the kind of furious sex that only strangers, with needs perfectly matched, can have together. Over the years, she has watched the pair make love and fall in love, without ever learning each other’s real names, or causing the other any pain. It’s been quite the delightful surprise, and she had spent all day cataloging the pair’s various meetings for her files. Aphrodite has been doing her job for thousands of years now, and she has learned to appreciate that the business of love is what matters – without her fastidious bookkeeping, no one would ever remember the shock of first love, the whispered late-night secrets of lost lovers, or the parting words of a ex-wife on her way out the door.
When she finally lifted her head and looked at the clock she was shocked to see that it was well after 6:00 – she was already half an hour late. She put her cigarette out in the heart-shaped ashtray (a gift from a particularly uninspired admirer, though she could not bring herself to throw it out), and left her office.
When she entered the Great Hall she heard voices, already raised to an unhealthy pitch. Her mother’s voice in particular was teetering on the edge of shrill, always a bad sign. Aphrodite threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath, and plastered a Barbie-like smile on her face. She strode in, smiled for her mother (who promptly glanced up, pursed her lips, and reached for her wine glass, all in one fluid motion), and sat at her customary seat next to her brother. Her father was speaking.
‘All I’m trying to say is, the more I read these modern fellows, the more convinced I am that you’re all just a figment of my imagination. This Campbell, for instance, he thinks that you’re all just facets of the whole, which is me. So what this means is…’
He was interrupted by his oldest son, Apollo.
‘Father, do you ever know what a facet is? If you read the texts closely, and if you had at any time paid attention to the numerous papers I’ve written, you will see that – and remember, you have to start with the Sumerian cuneiforms and study the Nordic runes, not to mention the Vedic texts which are notoriously dense…’
Aphrodite stopped listening, and glanced over at her brother, who, from the slightly glassy look of his eyes, was already quite drunk. She smiled and rolled her eyes as their older brother spoke – intoned, really - in that I-know-more-than-you-and-will-continue-speaking-even-if-the-room-clears-out voice; Dionysus smiled back, and found her hand under the table. He squeezed it, and she squeezed back. He filled her glass with purple wine from a bottle close by, and raised one eyebrow. In the unspoken language of siblings, she knew that she had walked into a Big Family Mess, and he was inviting her to drink quickly and copiously.
She sipped the sweet wine and surveyed the table. It was piled high with the usual – plates of fish, a whole pig, a side of beef big enough to feed twelve families and a mountainside full of hungry dryads. Bowls of grapes overflowed, purple and green fruits spilling onto the tablecloth. Carafes of nectar and ambrosia were arranged liberally around the perimeter of the table – say what you would about Hera, but she always ensured that her family was well-fed.
No one had spoken directly to Aphrodite yet. She kicked off her pumps and they clattered onto the marble floor. She sighed, stretched her legs, and took another sip of her brother’s wine. Her mother glanced at her sharply and shook her head.
‘What?’ Aphrodite said. ‘They’re not even wearing anything,’ she said, gesturing towards the Furies. The one-as-three were seated across the table and several seats down from Aphrodite, and were, at the moment, completely naked. It was hard to say if there were three of them, or just one – they changed appearance every minute or so. Right now they were in the form of an elderly woman, her shriveled dugs hanging loose on her chest, short grey hair sprouting from her shoulders and back. She stuck her tongue out at Aphrodite. Aphrodite stuck out her tongue and wrinkled her nose.
‘Really, Aphrodite, is that any way to behave?’ said her mother, sighing.
‘Aphrodite!’ came a call from across the room. ‘You’re here! Oh, thank gods, you’re here!’ A young man with extravagant blonde curls came out of kitchen, smiling wide and holding out his hands. He bent down to kiss Aphrodite on the check, and she smelled cigarette smoke. ‘You were supposed to quit,’ she whispered. ‘Well hon, so were you,’ he whispered back. As the consort of Zeus, Ganymede had full access to all of her father’s oracles and seers, but Aphrodite was always surprised when he made use of them. Her father had never cared much for prophecies – or indeed Truth of any kind - but his young lover certainly recognized the value in keeping watch over the Family.
Ganymede set a pitcher of dark honey mead onto the table, and took his customary seat next to Zeus. On his way, he patted her younger brother’s head, and his hand lingered a bit longer than was strictly necessary in Dionysus’ hair; Aphrodite caught this (as did her mother, who looked at first shocked, then delighted) and shook her head.
At the other end of the table, Zeus and Apollo argued the merits of Freud and Jung, in increasingly agitated tones; there was likely to be a storm later, complete with thunderbolts and piercing rays of light. The Furies were three cats now, kitten, bobcat, and lion, and the lion eyed Ganymede hungrily. Dionysus slowly sunk in his chair, his head bobbing against the table; he was laughing softly to himself. Hera’s neck muscles were taut as she watched her husband argue with his oldest son, but Aphrodite did not see anger in her narrowed eyes; only sadness.
Aphrodite’s family was her world, and despite all their faults, she loved them. They are a family of story-tellers, always have been, and she had a story to tell them.
She took a deep breath and cleared her throat.
‘Everyone, listen up!’ she said. Eight ancient heads turned toward her. She smiled for them. ‘I have a story to tell.’
Her evening starts with three short, firm raps on the apartment door. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke is on his jacket. She takes a moment to breathe him in. He smiles hungrily. Neither say a word…
It’s not that she was deliberately careless; in fact, had she ever arrived on time, she would have enjoyed the only pleasant part of her family’s weekly dinners – the polite catching-up, the reciting of the week’s pleasures, before the wine caught up with them and the conversation turned to old grudges and new disappointments. But she could never seem to tear herself away from her work, and so tended to enter the Great Hall at the worst possible moment, much to her mother’s chagrin.
‘It’s your work’, she would say. ‘What a waste it is! Why you continue to meddle in the affairs of mortals I will never understand. You and your father…I gave all that up years ago, and am much happier for it. Now please would you sit down, smile, and enjoy the meal I spent all day preparing?’
Aphrodite knew that at least three of those statements were entirely untrue; but unlike her siblings, she never saw the point in arguing with her mother. She had suffered great disappointments over the years, Aphrodite knew, and she saw so reason to add to her mother’s suffering by reminding her of them. She had reason enough to be bitter, her mother, and although Aphrodite rarely did anything to directly please her, she never went out of her way to hurt her.
Though, she wasn’t sure that her mother ever recognized the difference.
Today, Aphrodite was late because of a project she had begun several years ago. She began it without much hope – it was an experiment, really, spurred on by a conversation with her brother Dionysus, a conversation that soon became a challenge. He denied that modern mortals could ever experience – as he said – ‘the rippling, cascading ecstasy of pure desire, as embodied by the divine Maenads, those sisters of wild desire who threw their heads back in wild abandon, and offered up their throats to the darkest and purest of lust.’
Even sober, her brother spoke in that embarrassingly baroque language that Aphrodite had long left behind. She much preferred the language of the 21st-century Americas; simple, plain-spoken, and direct. In fact, she had been an early patron of the poet William Carlos William, although he never knew it. She would sit beside him and whisper in his ear as he wrote, and was quite proud of the results. She was responsible for such varied masterpieces as The Divine Comedy and Don Quixote, but there is nothing, in literature, and in love, so perfect to her as these lines:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Certain that her brother was wrong – that modern humans, and in particular modern women (her proudest accomplishment) could still experience lust at its wildest, without ever sacrificing their dignity, or their flesh, to the degradations of the Maenads, she chose, with great deliberation, an ordinary man and an ordinary woman from her files, and arranged for them to be brought together, again and again. She had intended, simply, to give them the kind of furious sex that only strangers, with needs perfectly matched, can have together. Over the years, she has watched the pair make love and fall in love, without ever learning each other’s real names, or causing the other any pain. It’s been quite the delightful surprise, and she had spent all day cataloging the pair’s various meetings for her files. Aphrodite has been doing her job for thousands of years now, and she has learned to appreciate that the business of love is what matters – without her fastidious bookkeeping, no one would ever remember the shock of first love, the whispered late-night secrets of lost lovers, or the parting words of a ex-wife on her way out the door.
When she finally lifted her head and looked at the clock she was shocked to see that it was well after 6:00 – she was already half an hour late. She put her cigarette out in the heart-shaped ashtray (a gift from a particularly uninspired admirer, though she could not bring herself to throw it out), and left her office.
When she entered the Great Hall she heard voices, already raised to an unhealthy pitch. Her mother’s voice in particular was teetering on the edge of shrill, always a bad sign. Aphrodite threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath, and plastered a Barbie-like smile on her face. She strode in, smiled for her mother (who promptly glanced up, pursed her lips, and reached for her wine glass, all in one fluid motion), and sat at her customary seat next to her brother. Her father was speaking.
‘All I’m trying to say is, the more I read these modern fellows, the more convinced I am that you’re all just a figment of my imagination. This Campbell, for instance, he thinks that you’re all just facets of the whole, which is me. So what this means is…’
He was interrupted by his oldest son, Apollo.
‘Father, do you ever know what a facet is? If you read the texts closely, and if you had at any time paid attention to the numerous papers I’ve written, you will see that – and remember, you have to start with the Sumerian cuneiforms and study the Nordic runes, not to mention the Vedic texts which are notoriously dense…’
Aphrodite stopped listening, and glanced over at her brother, who, from the slightly glassy look of his eyes, was already quite drunk. She smiled and rolled her eyes as their older brother spoke – intoned, really - in that I-know-more-than-you-and-will-continue-speaking-even-if-the-room-clears-out voice; Dionysus smiled back, and found her hand under the table. He squeezed it, and she squeezed back. He filled her glass with purple wine from a bottle close by, and raised one eyebrow. In the unspoken language of siblings, she knew that she had walked into a Big Family Mess, and he was inviting her to drink quickly and copiously.
She sipped the sweet wine and surveyed the table. It was piled high with the usual – plates of fish, a whole pig, a side of beef big enough to feed twelve families and a mountainside full of hungry dryads. Bowls of grapes overflowed, purple and green fruits spilling onto the tablecloth. Carafes of nectar and ambrosia were arranged liberally around the perimeter of the table – say what you would about Hera, but she always ensured that her family was well-fed.
No one had spoken directly to Aphrodite yet. She kicked off her pumps and they clattered onto the marble floor. She sighed, stretched her legs, and took another sip of her brother’s wine. Her mother glanced at her sharply and shook her head.
‘What?’ Aphrodite said. ‘They’re not even wearing anything,’ she said, gesturing towards the Furies. The one-as-three were seated across the table and several seats down from Aphrodite, and were, at the moment, completely naked. It was hard to say if there were three of them, or just one – they changed appearance every minute or so. Right now they were in the form of an elderly woman, her shriveled dugs hanging loose on her chest, short grey hair sprouting from her shoulders and back. She stuck her tongue out at Aphrodite. Aphrodite stuck out her tongue and wrinkled her nose.
‘Really, Aphrodite, is that any way to behave?’ said her mother, sighing.
‘Aphrodite!’ came a call from across the room. ‘You’re here! Oh, thank gods, you’re here!’ A young man with extravagant blonde curls came out of kitchen, smiling wide and holding out his hands. He bent down to kiss Aphrodite on the check, and she smelled cigarette smoke. ‘You were supposed to quit,’ she whispered. ‘Well hon, so were you,’ he whispered back. As the consort of Zeus, Ganymede had full access to all of her father’s oracles and seers, but Aphrodite was always surprised when he made use of them. Her father had never cared much for prophecies – or indeed Truth of any kind - but his young lover certainly recognized the value in keeping watch over the Family.
Ganymede set a pitcher of dark honey mead onto the table, and took his customary seat next to Zeus. On his way, he patted her younger brother’s head, and his hand lingered a bit longer than was strictly necessary in Dionysus’ hair; Aphrodite caught this (as did her mother, who looked at first shocked, then delighted) and shook her head.
At the other end of the table, Zeus and Apollo argued the merits of Freud and Jung, in increasingly agitated tones; there was likely to be a storm later, complete with thunderbolts and piercing rays of light. The Furies were three cats now, kitten, bobcat, and lion, and the lion eyed Ganymede hungrily. Dionysus slowly sunk in his chair, his head bobbing against the table; he was laughing softly to himself. Hera’s neck muscles were taut as she watched her husband argue with his oldest son, but Aphrodite did not see anger in her narrowed eyes; only sadness.
Aphrodite’s family was her world, and despite all their faults, she loved them. They are a family of story-tellers, always have been, and she had a story to tell them.
She took a deep breath and cleared her throat.
‘Everyone, listen up!’ she said. Eight ancient heads turned toward her. She smiled for them. ‘I have a story to tell.’
Her evening starts with three short, firm raps on the apartment door. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke is on his jacket. She takes a moment to breathe him in. He smiles hungrily. Neither say a word…
Friday, January 8, 2010
Hidden Pleasures
Her evening starts with three short, firm raps on the apartment door. She opens it to reveal him standing there. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke is on his jacket. She takes a moment to breathe him in. He smiles hungrily. Neither say a word.
His lips press into hers roughly, and his hands immediately find her waist. She moans into his mouth and they hit the wall as one. Her hands roam distractedly as her right knee begins to climb against his thigh. Their bodies heat with the known passion of two demanding and impatient lovers, separated for far too long. He must have her. Here. Now. She must be taken. Nothing else matters. The rest of her life is thrown from her mind by the selfish animal pressed against her. Vaguely, they both hear the sound of the door close behind them.
Their desires feed off each other: her fingers paw at the back of his jacket, longing for flesh. His own hand denies them, pinning her wrists against the wall above her head. She resists, but her strength is no match. His spare hand rises against the contours of her form assuredly. Her body betrays her, shuddering with pleasure under his physical dominance. And when his hand grabs at her breast she is overcome by the demand between her thighs. “Fuck me,” she begs, biting his ear. Their clothes line the way to the bedroom.
~ ~ ~
Her friends would describe her as quite sexless. Not a prude, just not sexually ambitious. But then again, her friends didn’t know that he existed. No one did. She didn’t need to keep him a secret, but she liked to. It’s how it had started, and it’s how it would stay. For the two of them, everything that they were was found in the unsaid. Everything was between the lines.
Her days otherwise were plain: what you would expect of any North American. She went to work, did her 9-5, and then went to coffee or dinner or movies with the girls. She gossiped about celebrities and work and politics. She had aspirations to be a painter, and vowed one day to visit New Zealand. She was pro-choice on the abortion issue, voted liberal and believed in God. She wanted a house of her own one day with a loving husband and a couple of kids. But not within the next 5 years. Her career was going well, and she was up for a promotion. She occasionally house-sat for her friend and never failed to make a joke about calling it “house sitting” when, really, her friend had an apartment – not a house.
He was her secret adventure. They got together to get away. To be intimate without detail and without attachment. They only had those two rules. Everything else was part of the fun. Sometimes they spent a whole day just drinking or smoking pot. Other times they went on weekend trips and made love on mountaintops. And once they simply fucked for a week straight, in a hotel room, without saying a single thing to each other. She had many names for him – Jack, Jacob, Terrence, Paul, Will, the list went on. These were not his fabrications but hers. She liked giving him different names for their different encounters.
The second time they ever met was in a crowded coffee shop a few years ago. It was her day off and she picked up a paper to read until he arrived. It became exceptionally crowded as the morning rush piled in and she found herself completely surprised when he was suddenly there, standing over the table. He always made great eye contact and smiled in a way that spoke. On this occasion, it was saying “I am glad you got a table.” She later learned with delight that it could say a lot more.
She noticed that he had a book with him, and asked about it. His reply was quotation. “The first rule about Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.” Today he was a Tyler, she decided with a smirk. From that meeting, they lay down the first rule of their own: no identifying details. They could talk about their wishes and their political views, their projects and their pleasures. But no names and no phone numbers. They were never to share the addresses of their homes or offices. The serendipity of their first meeting had ensured that they were not even certain that they lived in the same city. And in a meeting of minds and souls, they both knew they wanted to keep it that way.
~ ~ ~
The smoke rises from their cigarette, alongside the morning sun. They share it back and forth, laying naked and sweaty under white sheets. The window is open, and the smoke wanders towards it. “It’s your turn, you know,” she says as she blows smoke into his face with a grin. Delicately he takes the cigarette from her fingers as she looks to him for a reply. He smiles and says nothing, taking a long drag. Her hands wander playfully beneath the sheets, tracing down his stomach and then up his thigh. He lets out the smoke slowly. Laughing, she grips his growing arousal. “Do I have to pull it out of you?”
He breaths her scent in deeply. “You might have to.”
They play the morning away in vanilla pleasures. He tastes each part of her while she writhes. She mounts him until he is spent. They tease each other while they talk and laugh. Finally he gets up, a quarter past eleven.
“Where are you going?” she asks, admiring his naked form in the sunlight.
“Making us breakfast,” he replies, looking for his jeans.
“I think your pants are in the hallway. But you’re only allowed to wear an apron. It’s hung up on the fridge.”
~ ~ ~
“He doesn’t smoke,” they’d say. All his friends did, and so when they were all out on the town together, he was often asked by passer-bys if he could sell them a cigarette. As far as they were concerned, he’d never smoked anything in his life. When they gave him the mandatory ribbing about it, he just shrugged it off, explaining that it would set a bad example for his son. None of them were fathers, so that shut them up pretty good.
Don’t smoke, don’t drink, and don’t break the law, he taught. As well, good little boys never talk to strangers. His son meant the world to him and raising him properly, no matter what his relationship was like with his ex-wife (“who is a bitch” his friends also said), was the most important thing in his life. He got to visit on every other weekend, and on they traded Christmas and Spring Break.
It was on his way to visit his young man of 6, he first ran into her. While driving into the city, he stopped for a quick coffee and directions. He was running late, hated the drive, and was certain that his ex-wife had her wrath waiting for him when he arrived. He needed to change their arranged Thanksgiving plans because of his work, and had been cold over the phone. She was in the line up directly ahead of him, and he first noticed her when he overheard that she was short on a few cents of change. “I’ll have to pay with a $20.”
He called her Jane, as in Jane Doe. If he had had more time, he may have learned her name. Instead, he suggested what would later become the second and last rule of their relationship. After a brief chat waiting for their drinks, he invited her to meet her again at the coffee shop, Sunday morning. He quickly explained, with the most charming smile he could muster, that he had to go but would love to meet her again. If she wasn’t here, then no hard feelings and they’d probably never see each other again.
He didn’t know what he expected out of their next meeting. There was merely a hint of seduction, of life, of reality there. He had heard it in her voice, and he wanted to be around it again.
Later, they found security in the sentiment. Every time they met, one person would suggest when and where they would meet next time. If, at any time, either person no longer wanted to continue these meetings, they could simply not show up. Since they would also not exchange any personal information, they would have no way to contact the other. They would exist only as memories.
He never had any interest in bringing Jane into the rest of his life, which as it turned out, worked perfectly for both of them. They both had their lives exactly how they wanted. And so, when he went to visit her, his friends simply thought he was going out of town on business. His son heard how, in his spare time, his father climbed mountains to be on his own. Sometimes he went months without seeing Jane and sometimes it was only a couple of weeks. Once it had been well over a year.
As he left the shop that day, he couldn’t get how wonderful she smelled out of his head.
~ ~ ~
The smell of breakfast wafts into the bedroom. She stretches, waking from her doze. She finds her panties and scoops them off the floor on the way to the bathroom. Her hair is a mess.
He hears the shower start up down the hall, over the sizzle of bacon. He sets up one plate and one glass, with one knife and one fork. He finds some orange juice in the fridge and pours the glass full. He’s not a chef, but has manages to time eggs and bacon together while finding all of his clothes.
She shouts out the open bathroom door with a mock tone: “the bacon better be crispy!”
He smiles. Putting on his pants he checks the time. Everything is perfect, but he can’t stay. It’s probably better this way.
She enjoys the shower and lets the hot water refresh her skin. She wonders how much longer he will stay. She wants to spend as much time as she can with him, but she only has until this afternoon. She’s not looking forward to reminding him of that.
The breakfast is ready, and he hears the shower stop. He turns off all the burners and plates it up. Removing an envelope from his jacket pocket, he places it next to the orange juice, where she is sure to see it. With a last glance to the discarded bra that lay across a chair, he shows himself out.
They assured me that your identifiable information would be kept confidential, even from me.
Port-to-Port Traveller’s Agency
On Weston and 53rd St.
Passport, personal and insurance information needed to complete the process of your airline ticket for a 2 week trip to New Zealand leaving June 14th, 2010 from Johnson International Airport. Please arrive with this information no later than January 31st so that everything can be processed ahead of schedule. Reference #2157, Agent: Fresia
It’s all paid for. Dates are negotiable +/- a week in case your life doesn’t quite agree. They will update me. See you at the airport!
His lips press into hers roughly, and his hands immediately find her waist. She moans into his mouth and they hit the wall as one. Her hands roam distractedly as her right knee begins to climb against his thigh. Their bodies heat with the known passion of two demanding and impatient lovers, separated for far too long. He must have her. Here. Now. She must be taken. Nothing else matters. The rest of her life is thrown from her mind by the selfish animal pressed against her. Vaguely, they both hear the sound of the door close behind them.
Their desires feed off each other: her fingers paw at the back of his jacket, longing for flesh. His own hand denies them, pinning her wrists against the wall above her head. She resists, but her strength is no match. His spare hand rises against the contours of her form assuredly. Her body betrays her, shuddering with pleasure under his physical dominance. And when his hand grabs at her breast she is overcome by the demand between her thighs. “Fuck me,” she begs, biting his ear. Their clothes line the way to the bedroom.
~ ~ ~
Her friends would describe her as quite sexless. Not a prude, just not sexually ambitious. But then again, her friends didn’t know that he existed. No one did. She didn’t need to keep him a secret, but she liked to. It’s how it had started, and it’s how it would stay. For the two of them, everything that they were was found in the unsaid. Everything was between the lines.
Her days otherwise were plain: what you would expect of any North American. She went to work, did her 9-5, and then went to coffee or dinner or movies with the girls. She gossiped about celebrities and work and politics. She had aspirations to be a painter, and vowed one day to visit New Zealand. She was pro-choice on the abortion issue, voted liberal and believed in God. She wanted a house of her own one day with a loving husband and a couple of kids. But not within the next 5 years. Her career was going well, and she was up for a promotion. She occasionally house-sat for her friend and never failed to make a joke about calling it “house sitting” when, really, her friend had an apartment – not a house.
He was her secret adventure. They got together to get away. To be intimate without detail and without attachment. They only had those two rules. Everything else was part of the fun. Sometimes they spent a whole day just drinking or smoking pot. Other times they went on weekend trips and made love on mountaintops. And once they simply fucked for a week straight, in a hotel room, without saying a single thing to each other. She had many names for him – Jack, Jacob, Terrence, Paul, Will, the list went on. These were not his fabrications but hers. She liked giving him different names for their different encounters.
The second time they ever met was in a crowded coffee shop a few years ago. It was her day off and she picked up a paper to read until he arrived. It became exceptionally crowded as the morning rush piled in and she found herself completely surprised when he was suddenly there, standing over the table. He always made great eye contact and smiled in a way that spoke. On this occasion, it was saying “I am glad you got a table.” She later learned with delight that it could say a lot more.
She noticed that he had a book with him, and asked about it. His reply was quotation. “The first rule about Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.” Today he was a Tyler, she decided with a smirk. From that meeting, they lay down the first rule of their own: no identifying details. They could talk about their wishes and their political views, their projects and their pleasures. But no names and no phone numbers. They were never to share the addresses of their homes or offices. The serendipity of their first meeting had ensured that they were not even certain that they lived in the same city. And in a meeting of minds and souls, they both knew they wanted to keep it that way.
~ ~ ~
The smoke rises from their cigarette, alongside the morning sun. They share it back and forth, laying naked and sweaty under white sheets. The window is open, and the smoke wanders towards it. “It’s your turn, you know,” she says as she blows smoke into his face with a grin. Delicately he takes the cigarette from her fingers as she looks to him for a reply. He smiles and says nothing, taking a long drag. Her hands wander playfully beneath the sheets, tracing down his stomach and then up his thigh. He lets out the smoke slowly. Laughing, she grips his growing arousal. “Do I have to pull it out of you?”
He breaths her scent in deeply. “You might have to.”
They play the morning away in vanilla pleasures. He tastes each part of her while she writhes. She mounts him until he is spent. They tease each other while they talk and laugh. Finally he gets up, a quarter past eleven.
“Where are you going?” she asks, admiring his naked form in the sunlight.
“Making us breakfast,” he replies, looking for his jeans.
“I think your pants are in the hallway. But you’re only allowed to wear an apron. It’s hung up on the fridge.”
~ ~ ~
“He doesn’t smoke,” they’d say. All his friends did, and so when they were all out on the town together, he was often asked by passer-bys if he could sell them a cigarette. As far as they were concerned, he’d never smoked anything in his life. When they gave him the mandatory ribbing about it, he just shrugged it off, explaining that it would set a bad example for his son. None of them were fathers, so that shut them up pretty good.
Don’t smoke, don’t drink, and don’t break the law, he taught. As well, good little boys never talk to strangers. His son meant the world to him and raising him properly, no matter what his relationship was like with his ex-wife (“who is a bitch” his friends also said), was the most important thing in his life. He got to visit on every other weekend, and on they traded Christmas and Spring Break.
It was on his way to visit his young man of 6, he first ran into her. While driving into the city, he stopped for a quick coffee and directions. He was running late, hated the drive, and was certain that his ex-wife had her wrath waiting for him when he arrived. He needed to change their arranged Thanksgiving plans because of his work, and had been cold over the phone. She was in the line up directly ahead of him, and he first noticed her when he overheard that she was short on a few cents of change. “I’ll have to pay with a $20.”
He called her Jane, as in Jane Doe. If he had had more time, he may have learned her name. Instead, he suggested what would later become the second and last rule of their relationship. After a brief chat waiting for their drinks, he invited her to meet her again at the coffee shop, Sunday morning. He quickly explained, with the most charming smile he could muster, that he had to go but would love to meet her again. If she wasn’t here, then no hard feelings and they’d probably never see each other again.
He didn’t know what he expected out of their next meeting. There was merely a hint of seduction, of life, of reality there. He had heard it in her voice, and he wanted to be around it again.
Later, they found security in the sentiment. Every time they met, one person would suggest when and where they would meet next time. If, at any time, either person no longer wanted to continue these meetings, they could simply not show up. Since they would also not exchange any personal information, they would have no way to contact the other. They would exist only as memories.
He never had any interest in bringing Jane into the rest of his life, which as it turned out, worked perfectly for both of them. They both had their lives exactly how they wanted. And so, when he went to visit her, his friends simply thought he was going out of town on business. His son heard how, in his spare time, his father climbed mountains to be on his own. Sometimes he went months without seeing Jane and sometimes it was only a couple of weeks. Once it had been well over a year.
As he left the shop that day, he couldn’t get how wonderful she smelled out of his head.
~ ~ ~
The smell of breakfast wafts into the bedroom. She stretches, waking from her doze. She finds her panties and scoops them off the floor on the way to the bathroom. Her hair is a mess.
He hears the shower start up down the hall, over the sizzle of bacon. He sets up one plate and one glass, with one knife and one fork. He finds some orange juice in the fridge and pours the glass full. He’s not a chef, but has manages to time eggs and bacon together while finding all of his clothes.
She shouts out the open bathroom door with a mock tone: “the bacon better be crispy!”
He smiles. Putting on his pants he checks the time. Everything is perfect, but he can’t stay. It’s probably better this way.
She enjoys the shower and lets the hot water refresh her skin. She wonders how much longer he will stay. She wants to spend as much time as she can with him, but she only has until this afternoon. She’s not looking forward to reminding him of that.
The breakfast is ready, and he hears the shower stop. He turns off all the burners and plates it up. Removing an envelope from his jacket pocket, he places it next to the orange juice, where she is sure to see it. With a last glance to the discarded bra that lay across a chair, he shows himself out.
They assured me that your identifiable information would be kept confidential, even from me.
Port-to-Port Traveller’s Agency
On Weston and 53rd St.
Passport, personal and insurance information needed to complete the process of your airline ticket for a 2 week trip to New Zealand leaving June 14th, 2010 from Johnson International Airport. Please arrive with this information no later than January 31st so that everything can be processed ahead of schedule. Reference #2157, Agent: Fresia
It’s all paid for. Dates are negotiable +/- a week in case your life doesn’t quite agree. They will update me. See you at the airport!
Friday, January 1, 2010
William and the Visitors
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake, 1794
William first saw God when he was four. It has been widely described since then, by his patrons, his mother, his dear Catherine, and by those men who so desperately wish to discredit him, but only William knows the Truth. The God who bent his great shaggy head and peered in through the bedroom window that summer day on Broad Street was no Christian God, and certainly not the God of the Church in which William and his family spent Sunday mornings. This was a nameless God, with black eyes so deep and wide William saw all of history reflected in them, all the bloody Deeds of men flashing back to him in shades of black and gold and red. This God did not blink, and in his lidless and Endless eyes was a challenge – one that William was not, at the tender age of four, strong or brave enough to accept. The Pagan Godhead moved closer until only one great black pupil filled the window, and William screamed.
William saw the Angels when he was ten. Six years after his terrifying experience at the window, William walked the broad lanes of Peckham Rye Park. He often partook of long solitary walks through this city he so loved – he loved the smell of the fishmonger’s stalls and the fresh droppings of horses, the clattering of hooves along the cobblestoned streets, the calls of the newspaper boys and the screeching of gulls overhead. Despite this, he often visited Peckham Rye, simply for the quiet of it – there was nothing sweeter than an afternoon spent ambling through the park. He nodded to the ladies as he passed, and dodged the chattering doxies in the shadows. He would bring his sketchbook and draw, or work on his engravings – not the trees and flowers and dogs of the park, but those visions of ancient Jerusalem crumbling, the Great Fall, and Lucifer himself that so plagued William. There was a gnawing in his belly, always, a desire at once Divine and Profane, to bring forth the Grotesque and give it form. His drawings, so vivid and terrifying, drew gasps and surprise from others, but never William. The Godhead that had so scared him had given William a great gift, and he was bound to honor it.
He was not surprised, then, when he glanced up from a sketch of Jonah wasting away in the Belly of the Great Fish, to see a tree filled with Angels. Twenty or thirty of them, all a’glitter, their wings outstretched like brilliant nets of gold to catch the sunlight. Leaves wriggled in them like fish. The angels were so bright, so shining, that William could not see their faces – though he had the sense that they smiled at him, and though he couldn’t see them, he knew they had long Greedy teeth and incisors that could cut him to ribbons. The Angels spoke then, in a language that only William could understand – Latin and Hebrew and something that was never meant to be spoken. It was a warning. William listened, and nodded.
That night, he told his mother what he had seen, though he left out the teeth. He did not wish to upset her.
Many years later, William saw the Flea. He was thirty-three years old at the time, and living in Lambeth in a small cottage with his beloved Catherine. During the day he taught Catherine how to read and write, and together they worked on his engravings. During the night they loved each other as man and wife, in increasingly ingenious ways. In Catherine, William had found a helpmeet and a lover, and at her side and across her bosom (and other places besides) he spent his pleasure.
Often he was visited by the Angels of his youth, and such dead friends as chose to linger; it was not unusual to raise his head from an hour of painstaking engraving to find Moses or Michelangelo sitting in the chair Catherine had only then vacated.
On this evening, though, Catherine was out calling on a poor family down the road; though they had little themselves, the Blakes (as instructed by the Angels, in fiery tones that ought not be ignored) gave readily to those less fortunate. Catherine had left him to work on ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, a pamphlet that, directed by the Angels and a brief visit from John Milton (William had not expected to see the great poet’s bowed head and milky eyes glaring at him from Catherine’s chair when he happened to look over one evening) was turning into a much more complex work, a work that William was loathe to finish. He had gotten up from his chair and walked to the door leading to the small vegetable garden of which Catherine was so proud. He looked out over the verdant patch of grass and dirt, and was about to glance up at the moon, so fat and content in her own patch of sky, when a shadow passed across his vision. He started, and scanned the garden for the Creature, for he knew it was no ordinary owl or moth that had darted past him – he felt a presence at once malevolent and giddy, something that even Nature, grand as she is, could not have borne forth. He stepped onto the lawn, and there it was. He described it later to friends as ‘scaly, speckled, very awful’, but mere words could never do the Creature justice. He later came to know it as the Flea, but that night it was the Creature – taller than any man, skin as green and horn’d as a toad, long curling fingers, and a tongue that flicked in and out of it blood-speckled mouth, obscenely, and, William thought, mockingly. Its muscles rippled as it walked toward William; it walked oddly, lightly, trippingly, like a dancer, as light as any winsome midnight fairy. 'William', it hissed, and licked its red eyeball. 'William, let me in.'
William shut the door.
However, the Flea soon became a constant companion, often sitting next to him as he wrote or drew, offering snide comments and criticisms; though, William admitted privately to himself, the creature’s conversation was so witty and shrewd that he soon grew to enjoy and even anticipate his visits. William loved the Angels and the Secrets they told him; he tolerated the paranoid circumlocutions of the dead Milton; he was warmed by the tales and homilies of Moses; but he was amused – and, strangely, comforted - by the Flea and his bawdy jokes.
William is 68 now, and in the last year of his life. He knows this because the Angels told him, many years ago, exactly when and where he would die. He has confided this only in Catherine, and so they are both prepared for the End. William is very tired. Although his death is still eight months away, he longs for it. The Angels have promised that his return to the Heavenly Realm will be met with great pomp and circumstance. His death, they assure him, will be but a new Birth, and he will be born again, bloody and mewling like an infant, from the loins of the Heavenly Father.
Now though, it is the last evening of the year. Only an hour remains in this year of Our Lord, 1826, and William is glad of it. His stomach pains him, almost without pause now, and the fits of uncontrollable shivering continue unabated. His body aches, always, now.
Catherine has gone to bed already. He imagines her warm body, gone soft and loose with age, nestled in the blankets of their marriage bed, her grey head resting on the pillow. She will be snoring loudly. William has not been sleeping well – the nausea that gnaws at his stomach so terribly during the day is nearly unbearable at night – so he often spends his nights in this chair, by the fire, so as to allow Catherine the rest she so deserves.
He is rarely alone, and tonight is no exception. A succession of shimmering, ghostly visitors have come and gone already; the Angels made an appearance earlier, as did the great magician Merlin (in the guise, oddly, of a small tabby cat that William stroked absentmindedly as it spoke, in increasingly agitated tones, of dragons and Camelot and the sorceress Niviane). The Flea is sitting in Catherine’s chair now, reciting his own ribald version of ‘The Wyf of Bath’ and chuckling quietly to himself. William is only half-listening; he has heard this tale many times, and he closes his heavy eyes and allows his mind to drift. The room grows cold, despite the fire, and when William opens his eyes, the fireplace has disappeared; the Flea’s chatter is but a distant murmur. He is no longer in his parlor, but standing on a street that he has never seen before. On either side of him, tall buildings rise to the sky; taller even than Big Ben himself, buildings of glass that shimmer like his Angels, strange buildings stretching into the clouds above. The sounds of this City are unlike anything he has heard before. The screeching of gulls, yes, but also the purr of machines moving of their own accord; there are no horses to be seen. Machines glide past him on four wheels, machines the fantastic colors of his engravings - blue and red and yellow and green. Suspended above the street, poles blink red, yellow, green; the machines move in accordance with the flashing of the colors. William realizes there are people inside the machines, people controlling the great purring beasts as they glide past him, faster than any horse or man.
What marvels! What fantastic world is this? William feels no panic; he is Gulliver and this is Brobdingnag. There is nothing to fear, William has learned over the years, from the Fantastic and the Grotesque. God’s eye marked William over sixty years ago, and he is not afraid.
William’s reverie is interrupted by a shove from behind. A girl hurries past him, intent on some rendezvous or appointment; William can only imagine how the denizens of this strange City live, or how they while away the fantastic hours.
‘Wait!’, he calls to the girl. ‘What is this place? Where am I?’
She turns. Her hair is black as night and her face is decorated in colorful paint, but all William sees are her ears; soft white lamb’s ears. The Lamb. This is the Lamb.
Of course.
‘You’re in the goddamn way, old man, that’s where you are,’ the Lamb says. She sneers, turns, and hurries away. William smiles, and nods to himself. Yes, he thinks, that’s right. That's exactly it.
Twelve bells clang. William is home; the Flea has returned to its hovel, and Catherine’s chair is empty. It is midnight, 1827.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake, 1794
William first saw God when he was four. It has been widely described since then, by his patrons, his mother, his dear Catherine, and by those men who so desperately wish to discredit him, but only William knows the Truth. The God who bent his great shaggy head and peered in through the bedroom window that summer day on Broad Street was no Christian God, and certainly not the God of the Church in which William and his family spent Sunday mornings. This was a nameless God, with black eyes so deep and wide William saw all of history reflected in them, all the bloody Deeds of men flashing back to him in shades of black and gold and red. This God did not blink, and in his lidless and Endless eyes was a challenge – one that William was not, at the tender age of four, strong or brave enough to accept. The Pagan Godhead moved closer until only one great black pupil filled the window, and William screamed.
William saw the Angels when he was ten. Six years after his terrifying experience at the window, William walked the broad lanes of Peckham Rye Park. He often partook of long solitary walks through this city he so loved – he loved the smell of the fishmonger’s stalls and the fresh droppings of horses, the clattering of hooves along the cobblestoned streets, the calls of the newspaper boys and the screeching of gulls overhead. Despite this, he often visited Peckham Rye, simply for the quiet of it – there was nothing sweeter than an afternoon spent ambling through the park. He nodded to the ladies as he passed, and dodged the chattering doxies in the shadows. He would bring his sketchbook and draw, or work on his engravings – not the trees and flowers and dogs of the park, but those visions of ancient Jerusalem crumbling, the Great Fall, and Lucifer himself that so plagued William. There was a gnawing in his belly, always, a desire at once Divine and Profane, to bring forth the Grotesque and give it form. His drawings, so vivid and terrifying, drew gasps and surprise from others, but never William. The Godhead that had so scared him had given William a great gift, and he was bound to honor it.
He was not surprised, then, when he glanced up from a sketch of Jonah wasting away in the Belly of the Great Fish, to see a tree filled with Angels. Twenty or thirty of them, all a’glitter, their wings outstretched like brilliant nets of gold to catch the sunlight. Leaves wriggled in them like fish. The angels were so bright, so shining, that William could not see their faces – though he had the sense that they smiled at him, and though he couldn’t see them, he knew they had long Greedy teeth and incisors that could cut him to ribbons. The Angels spoke then, in a language that only William could understand – Latin and Hebrew and something that was never meant to be spoken. It was a warning. William listened, and nodded.
That night, he told his mother what he had seen, though he left out the teeth. He did not wish to upset her.
Many years later, William saw the Flea. He was thirty-three years old at the time, and living in Lambeth in a small cottage with his beloved Catherine. During the day he taught Catherine how to read and write, and together they worked on his engravings. During the night they loved each other as man and wife, in increasingly ingenious ways. In Catherine, William had found a helpmeet and a lover, and at her side and across her bosom (and other places besides) he spent his pleasure.
Often he was visited by the Angels of his youth, and such dead friends as chose to linger; it was not unusual to raise his head from an hour of painstaking engraving to find Moses or Michelangelo sitting in the chair Catherine had only then vacated.
On this evening, though, Catherine was out calling on a poor family down the road; though they had little themselves, the Blakes (as instructed by the Angels, in fiery tones that ought not be ignored) gave readily to those less fortunate. Catherine had left him to work on ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, a pamphlet that, directed by the Angels and a brief visit from John Milton (William had not expected to see the great poet’s bowed head and milky eyes glaring at him from Catherine’s chair when he happened to look over one evening) was turning into a much more complex work, a work that William was loathe to finish. He had gotten up from his chair and walked to the door leading to the small vegetable garden of which Catherine was so proud. He looked out over the verdant patch of grass and dirt, and was about to glance up at the moon, so fat and content in her own patch of sky, when a shadow passed across his vision. He started, and scanned the garden for the Creature, for he knew it was no ordinary owl or moth that had darted past him – he felt a presence at once malevolent and giddy, something that even Nature, grand as she is, could not have borne forth. He stepped onto the lawn, and there it was. He described it later to friends as ‘scaly, speckled, very awful’, but mere words could never do the Creature justice. He later came to know it as the Flea, but that night it was the Creature – taller than any man, skin as green and horn’d as a toad, long curling fingers, and a tongue that flicked in and out of it blood-speckled mouth, obscenely, and, William thought, mockingly. Its muscles rippled as it walked toward William; it walked oddly, lightly, trippingly, like a dancer, as light as any winsome midnight fairy. 'William', it hissed, and licked its red eyeball. 'William, let me in.'
William shut the door.
However, the Flea soon became a constant companion, often sitting next to him as he wrote or drew, offering snide comments and criticisms; though, William admitted privately to himself, the creature’s conversation was so witty and shrewd that he soon grew to enjoy and even anticipate his visits. William loved the Angels and the Secrets they told him; he tolerated the paranoid circumlocutions of the dead Milton; he was warmed by the tales and homilies of Moses; but he was amused – and, strangely, comforted - by the Flea and his bawdy jokes.
William is 68 now, and in the last year of his life. He knows this because the Angels told him, many years ago, exactly when and where he would die. He has confided this only in Catherine, and so they are both prepared for the End. William is very tired. Although his death is still eight months away, he longs for it. The Angels have promised that his return to the Heavenly Realm will be met with great pomp and circumstance. His death, they assure him, will be but a new Birth, and he will be born again, bloody and mewling like an infant, from the loins of the Heavenly Father.
Now though, it is the last evening of the year. Only an hour remains in this year of Our Lord, 1826, and William is glad of it. His stomach pains him, almost without pause now, and the fits of uncontrollable shivering continue unabated. His body aches, always, now.
Catherine has gone to bed already. He imagines her warm body, gone soft and loose with age, nestled in the blankets of their marriage bed, her grey head resting on the pillow. She will be snoring loudly. William has not been sleeping well – the nausea that gnaws at his stomach so terribly during the day is nearly unbearable at night – so he often spends his nights in this chair, by the fire, so as to allow Catherine the rest she so deserves.
He is rarely alone, and tonight is no exception. A succession of shimmering, ghostly visitors have come and gone already; the Angels made an appearance earlier, as did the great magician Merlin (in the guise, oddly, of a small tabby cat that William stroked absentmindedly as it spoke, in increasingly agitated tones, of dragons and Camelot and the sorceress Niviane). The Flea is sitting in Catherine’s chair now, reciting his own ribald version of ‘The Wyf of Bath’ and chuckling quietly to himself. William is only half-listening; he has heard this tale many times, and he closes his heavy eyes and allows his mind to drift. The room grows cold, despite the fire, and when William opens his eyes, the fireplace has disappeared; the Flea’s chatter is but a distant murmur. He is no longer in his parlor, but standing on a street that he has never seen before. On either side of him, tall buildings rise to the sky; taller even than Big Ben himself, buildings of glass that shimmer like his Angels, strange buildings stretching into the clouds above. The sounds of this City are unlike anything he has heard before. The screeching of gulls, yes, but also the purr of machines moving of their own accord; there are no horses to be seen. Machines glide past him on four wheels, machines the fantastic colors of his engravings - blue and red and yellow and green. Suspended above the street, poles blink red, yellow, green; the machines move in accordance with the flashing of the colors. William realizes there are people inside the machines, people controlling the great purring beasts as they glide past him, faster than any horse or man.
What marvels! What fantastic world is this? William feels no panic; he is Gulliver and this is Brobdingnag. There is nothing to fear, William has learned over the years, from the Fantastic and the Grotesque. God’s eye marked William over sixty years ago, and he is not afraid.
William’s reverie is interrupted by a shove from behind. A girl hurries past him, intent on some rendezvous or appointment; William can only imagine how the denizens of this strange City live, or how they while away the fantastic hours.
‘Wait!’, he calls to the girl. ‘What is this place? Where am I?’
She turns. Her hair is black as night and her face is decorated in colorful paint, but all William sees are her ears; soft white lamb’s ears. The Lamb. This is the Lamb.
Of course.
‘You’re in the goddamn way, old man, that’s where you are,’ the Lamb says. She sneers, turns, and hurries away. William smiles, and nods to himself. Yes, he thinks, that’s right. That's exactly it.
Twelve bells clang. William is home; the Flea has returned to its hovel, and Catherine’s chair is empty. It is midnight, 1827.
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