David Wallace - Broom of the System

LENORE: How do you know his age?

JAY: It’s extractable from the context, you ninny. Cut the guano. Relax and let’s try to make a stride or two.

LENORE: Maybe just a quick dash to the ladies’ room, and then I could dash right on back—

JAY: Hush. If you feel a desire to go to the Desert, why don’t you just go? What are you afraid of?

LENORE: You’re blowing this way out of proportion, assuming there’s anything to blow. Which come to think of it there isn‘t, because I’m not afraid of anything. I’m just not dying to go out there, is all. And it would be pointless. There’s just no way twenty-six people, most of them incredibly old, and with walkers, and at least one needing things to be ninety-eight point six degrees all the time, are wandering around in the Desert in September. But what gets me is that it seems like everybody for some reason wants to get me out there. What I resent is just having no say in where I go or what I ostensibly want or—

JAY: I have one word for you.

LENORE: Goodbye?

JAY: Membrane. I say to you “membrane,” Lenore.

LENORE: I think I’d prefer goodbye.

JAY: Think of our work together, Lenore. Our strides. Our progress. Don’t you see that perceiving your own natural desires and inclinations and attractions as somehow being directed at and forced on you from outside, from Outside, is a truly classic instance of a malfunction in a hygiene-identity network? That it’s exhaustively reducible to and explainable in terms of membrane-theory? That a flabby membrane is unhealthily permeable, lets the Self out to soil the Other-set and the Other-set in to soil the Self?

LENORE: I’m afraid I’m really uncomfortably in need of a shower. JAY: And why, pray? I’ll simply tell you straight out that in my perception it’s because you are perceiving the above revelations, the above, yes, let’s take a great stride forward and say the above exhaustive and deadly-accurate characterization and explanation of your whole trouble-set, as coming from outside you, as somehow forced upon you. When it’s really coming from inside you, Lenore. It all is. Don’t you feel it? Direct your attention to your Inside. Feel how clean it is. Forget I’m here altogether. Pretend I’m you.

LENORE: It’s just impossible to take you seriously in that gas mask. JAY: Were I to remove this now, my naïve young client and friend, the stench of breakthrough would blast me into unconsciousness. You would be truly and utterly alone.

LENORE: And what do you mean, pretend you’re me? I thought the whole problem was supposed to be that that flabby old membrane wasn’t keeping you on your side and me on my side. If I pretend you’re me, what does that do to the membrane?

JAY: But don’t you see, the pretending will come from inside you. A true pretending can only come off in the context of an intimate awareness of the real. For you to pretend I’m you, you must know I’m not; the membrane must be a strong, clean membrane. The strong, clean membrane chooses what to suck inside itself and lets all the rest bounce dirtily off. Only the secure can truly pretend, Lenore. The secure have membranes like strong, clean ova. Like ovums. These membranes withstand the onslaught of the countless Other-set, ceaselessly battering, the Others, their heads coated with filth, their underarms clotted with fungus, they batter, and the secure membrane/ovum waits patiently, strong, aloof, secure, and, yes, occasionally will let an Other in, will suck it in, on the membrane’s terms, will suck it in like a sperm, will take it inside itself to renew, to create itself anew. Only a strong membrane can suck in a sperm, Lenore. Here, I know, pretend I’m a sperm.

LENORE: I don’t care for the way this session is going one bit.

JAY: No, really. Be secure. Pretend I’m a sperm cell. Here. I take the string out of the… hood of my sweatshirt, affix it to my behind for a tail, like so…

LENORE: What in God’s name are you doing?

JAY: Pretend, Lenore. Be an ovum. Be strong. Let me hypothetically batter at you. Batter batter. Surrender to the unreal of the real interior.

LENORE: Are you supposed to be a sperm, wriggling your sweatshirt-string like that?

JAY: I can feel the strength of your membrane, Lenore.

LENORE: A sperm in a gas mask?

JAY: Batter batter.

LENORE: I demand that you set my chair in motion.

JAY: Admit that your inclinations and attractions come from inside you.

LENORE: Look, quit wriggling that string all over the place.

JAY: Admit you’re attracted to this young man. This translator. This blond Adonis who can offer you realms of Self-Other interaction you’ve never even dreamed of.

LENORE: How do you know he’s blond?

JAY: The context is the fluid of the uterus. I’m swimming, to batter at you. Batter batter. Let someone inside your membrane.

LENORE: Is this a pass? Are you making a pass?

JAY: Don’t misdirect so pathetically transparently. I speak… speak of this man who spreads your pupils from the inside, like the soft petals of some helpless flower. Who can show you perhaps how the strong membrane is permeated. Who can batter! Batter batter.

LENORE: What are you saying?

JAY: We’re making gargantuan strides. The room is swirling with breakthrough-gases, in which, paradoxically, everything becomes strangely clear. Can’t you feel it?

LENORE: I think you’ve flipped. I never signed up for sperm-therapy, buster, I’m telling you right—

JAY: Admit that your attraction to this Other comes from inside your Self. Strengthen the membrane. Let it be permeated as you desire it so!

LENORE: And how might I ask is Rick supposed to fit into all this? What about Rick?

JAY: Rick knows he must forever remain an Other to you. Rick knows the meaning of membrane. Rick is like a sperm without a tail. An immobilized sperm in the uterus of life. Why do you think Rick is so desperately unhappy? What do you think he means by the Screen Door of Union?

Lenore Beadsman pauses.

JAY: He means membrane! Rick is trapped behind his own membrane. He hasn’t the equipment to get out.

LENORE: Hey, you’re not supposed to talk about your other patients. JAY: Why do you think he’s so possessive? He wants you in him. He wants to trap you behind the membrane with him. He knows he can never validly permeate the membrane of an Other, so he desires to bring that Other into him, for all time. He’s a sick man.

LENORE: Look, stop trying to swim around. You’ve made your point. JAY: No, you’ve made your point. All distinctions are shattered. I am not here. I am the sperm inside you. Remember that you are half sperm, Lenore.

LENORE: Pardon?

JAY: Your father’s sperm. It’s part of you. Inseparable.

LENORE: What does my father have to do with all this?

JAY: Admit.

LENORE: Admit what?

JAY: That you want someone truly inside you. That your membrane is crying out.

LENORE: Jesus.

JAY: Listen…. Hear that? The faint cry of a membrane, isn’t it? “Let me be an ovum, let—”

LENORE: He loves me.

JAY: He does? The Adonis? The valid Other?

LENORE: Rick, you dingwad. Rick loves me. He’s said so.

JAY: Rick cannot give us what we need. Admit it.

LENORE: He loves me.

JAY: It’s a sucking love, Lenore. An inherently unclean love. It’s the love of a flabby, unclean membrane, sucking at an Other, to dirty. Dirt is on this membrane’s mind. It wants to do you dirt.

Lenore Beadsman pauses.

JAY: Do you love him back? Does he batter validly at the membrane? LENORE: Please, a shower.

JAY: Admit the source of your dispositions.

LENORE: Leave me alone. Start my chair.