Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“Why?”

“Humor.” Caesura . “Look, I don't know why Onion Man does half the shit that he does. I don't know why he's pissed away so much time trying to recreate one of Reich's orgone boxes. I don't know why he cans his own beer as opposed to bottling it. I don't know why he believes Gravity's Rainbow to be a continuation of V . Regardless,” as he drags from his cigarette, “Mongo's the reason why Winchester refuses to believe that Mordecai is Coprolalia.”

“What about him and Daphne?”

“Who?”

“Winchester.”

“Yeah — he wishes. They, Poot Moint, ended up playing a few sets at the party Winchester attended. They exchanged numbers. That's about it.”

“What about the Russians?”

“What?”

“The Russians. Sean said that—”

“Oh, that's because it was down in Brighton.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I was there. Back then I spent a lot of time with the A-R-E.” He laughs. “We ended up sacrificing a pig on Brighton Beach — another one of Onion Man's brilliant ideas. Winchester ended up hightailing it back to the City after that.” He becomes quiet for a moment. “But you understand what I'm saying, right? About Keens and the A-R-E?”

“It's like a religion.”

“Only in the sense that it seeks to provide a spiritual experience without recourse to God. Have you ever thought about the conditional relationship between man’s soul and God? Does either one suffice for the other?”

“Well, it seems like God needs to exist for man to have a soul. Where else would it come from?”

“Has science proven that God didn’t create the Earth?”

“Well…no, actually.”

“I mean in seven days. Is Genesis accurate?”

“No.”

“So it’s possible that the material world can exist without God. Why not the spirtitual, too?”

Caesura .

“Look, the A-R-E was established to attempt to answer some of the questions that have plagued the human mind since it first became conscious of itself. The spiritual experience that Keens aimed to create was to be generated by the free association of eidolons among other eidolons. You know, because Keens always believed conversation to be the highest form of art. He was not fond of the now famous quote of a Nobel laureate, who claimed that hell is other people. Then again, the same laureate once said that an adventure is an event that is out of the ordinary without being necessarily extraordinary. So I guess he didn't have it all wrong.”

“Who? Sartre?”

“Yes. Look, the point is that hell is not other people; hell is dealing with the pretenses of other people. Heaven is all space, all time, filled with eidolons only.”

“So that was the goal.”

“No, the goal, the JOKE, was something different. As I've told you, no one really knows what it was or what it is supposed to be.”

“Did he ever write anything concerning the JOKE? Did he have a manifesto?”

“No.”

“Did he leave a note upon his death?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say?”

“'The only proof of the present is in syntax.'”

She's standing on the east side of Fifth Avenue, in the middle of what would be Seventy-First Street if there were no park, only a further extension of concrete. There continues to be a relentless drizzle, turning the City into a symphony of hues a la Ligeti. She is a haze of red and bronze with a chestnut halo that flutters gently as a slight breeze picks up, rustling the various shades of gray and brown and green that surrounds her. She is animated once again — self-animated rather — and no longer any number of visions torn from the picture book of memory. While the Connie of the past had the tendency to elicit every visceral emotion that seeks to protect or embrace or surrender, the Connie of the present evokes things no less carnal, but they all feel negative. I can't help but feel as though I hate this woman.

She is waving now, summoning a flood of images from the past, images that had not necessarily been repressed, but nonetheless relegated to some place that never gets visited, kind of like a senile grandparent's home. The entire train ride up here I felt inundated by her, by the fact that I would once again be in her presence. It was not the warming anticipation of having the opportunity to resume a relationship that had, perhaps, only been suspended; it was more like a walk to the principal's office. I knew I wanted to see her. The problem is that the veracity of this proposition is time-sensitive. I did want to see her, just under the condition that the act occur six months ago.

As the train barreled uptown, I couldn't help but ask myself why she suddenly wanted to have me back in her life. After she avoided so many phone calls. After she explained that she needed time to herself. After she so callously redacted the history that we had shared so as to make years of mutual cathexis seem like a few weeks of innocent fun. These tactics of denial had been employed directly after the break, of course — those first few weeks when we were both attempting to reacquaint ourselves with the type of solitary life that is lonely, lethargic, and often accompanied by damp pillowcases and empty bottles of liquor, beer, wine — whatever is available. Over the past three months, however, she has become less resilient to the idea of the two of us having been in love at some point in the past, to the two of us being just friends now, to the two of us not being able to stop loving one another even if this means we are no longer in love , just lovers in the sense of being like family or friends or lost in some terra vague that seems to transcend both of these groups. It's acknowledged that something had once been there, and that it no longer is. We talk on the phone, we write each other emails, but we eschew the past unless it involves the sort of banality that one can share with a friend or a sibling: about the time we got pulled over in Roscommon, or the time we met John Scofield, or the time we both got sick after eating at one of those half-price Sushi places in the Village. So now it's an abridged history, a history in which I am ignorant of the birthmark that greets anyone who travels far enough up her right thigh, in which I have never seen or smelled or tasted that O'Keeffe flower in which she takes so much pride. Maybe we fucked — to her, that is. And not the author-with-inadequacy-issues or the author-stuck-with-an-inadequate-man type of fuck, which is ruthlessly passionate for all of the five or six consecutive hours it takes for the character with the cock, which needs to measured in meters, to finally launch his gallons onto Onan's tomb. No. This was just a fuck. Nothing epic or tender about it. Just a fuck. And that was it. Cock in cunt. Repeat as needed. Huff. Puff. Ejaculate. Sleep.

“You never remember to bring your umbrella,” she says when I approach her. She embraces me, tightly and quickly, and then backs away with haste. She never was one for physical platitudes, even when we shared a bed. “You look ( caesura ) good.” I squint. “No, really, you look…I don't know…happy.” She smiles, slowly, maybe coyly. “What's the secret?”

“A complete lack of exercise and sleep,” I respond. “And a lot of booze.”

“So you haven't changed at all, huh?”

We begin to walk south. “So how are you?” I ask.

“Well, I'm kind of tired because the air conditioner in the condo is broken. But, besides that, I had an interview earlier. I don't think it went well. The guy who I met with was such an asshole. He asked me what relevant experience I had. Relevant experience? Excuse me? I thought you were the one who contacted me because you thought I was qualified enough to fill the position. Yeah, position. It's never a job. It's always a position.” She exhausts. “These people are so fucking stupid.”