Percival Everett: Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

I had another friend who was so certain that the only way he could identify himself was through language and further by losing himself as object within language that he lost his mind, possibly within language as well, but I never knew what the hell he was talking about. I asked him once why he needed to identify himself. I also asked him, quite sincerely, well, as sincerely as possible, what he meant by identify anyway. Our conversation made for bad music. It sounded like this:

ME: What does it mean for you to identify yourself?

DAVE ( staring earnestly at my eyes. ): It means to establish myself as separate from others.

ME: Really. ( Mild, benign, rectorial, I rise up from my coffin. ) Wiping your own ass doesn’t accomplish that for you?

DAVE ( quickly ): What do you mean?

ME ( gazing on him, impassive. ): You tell me. What do you mean by identify? (I pull myself out completely and take the minutes he is lost in thought to make myself a soft-shelled crab sandwich.)

DAVE: What is manifested in my history is neither the past definite as what was, since it is no more, nor even the perfect as what has been in what I am, but the future anterior as what I will have been, given what I am in the process of becoming. (He cries.)

ME: So, you don’t wipe your own ass? What’s wrong with you? You know, language is very simple. I say something and you either understand it or you don’t. If you don’t, you stare blankly at me and say, What? ( I decide that I have lost my appetite and push my sandwich away. )

DAVE ( almost angrily ): The function of language is not to inform but to evoke.

ME: Well, it’s working. You talk about language like it’s actually something. ( I realize that I don’t know what I mean by something.)

DAVE: Language is not immaterial. (Nods, smiling and laughing.) It is a subtle body, but it is body. Words are bound up in body images that hold the subject. They may impregnate the hysteric, be identified with the penis envier, represent the urinary flow of urethral ambition, or represent the feces retained in greedy jouissance.

ME: Your mother doesn’t like you, does she?

DAVE: You can’t turn a response into a reaction. It’s all about desire, isn’t it? (Still smiling.) If I press a button and the light goes on, there is a response only to my desire. If to turn on the light I must go through a whole system of turns and circuits that I don’t know, then there is a question only in relation to my expectation. And that question will be gone once I know how to make the thing work. (Hands up as if to say, Voilà.)

ME: You’re just a big bag of words. Immaterial words.

DAVE ( smugly ): I’ve upset you, it seems.

ME ( quite sincerely ): Do you know where your wife is?

What I didn’t tell him was that my wife was crashing in an airplane somewhere in western Canada with a pilot whose penis she would later fondle. I chose not to mention it, not only because it was embarrassing, but because it didn’t serve my side of the argument, if I had a side in the argument, if it was an argument. But it was all, if nothing else, immaterial.

Then there was yet another fellow that I knew. He had this theory that there was no such thing as race, refused to acknowledge the subject even. Some low-level academic took him to task about his so-called theory. Like most theories, about most anything, it was all beyond me, leaving me feeling like I was looking at a clock with three hands. The whole idea of coming up with a theory about something that didn’t exist was, however, of great interest to me. But this guy I mentioned, the hack academic, his name was Housetown Pastrychef or Dallas Roaster, something like that, wrote that my friend was essentially full of excrement and that, furthermore, race was not only a valid category but a necessary one. This may or may not have been true. Like I said, I didn’t understand any of the discussion, but my friend dismissed the academic, his name might have been Austin Cooker, by saying that of course he believed such a thing, since he made his living and career out of being the ethnic, you know, cooning it up. They nearly came to blows when they encountered each other in a bar in DC. My friend said, This nigger believes in race as a valid category. The insult made little, if any, sense, but language’s function is not to inform but to provoke.

You had quite a few friends.

I did. More or less. In fact, I knew yet another man, still. Well, he was more of an acquaintance than a friend. I encountered him on my walk to campus. He was a nice-enough-looking fellow but had large blue cubes where his arms should have been. I stopped and stared, as you can well imagine. I looked at him and nodded to his blue cubes. He said, Oh, these. Yes, I said. You see, I found this old pewter lamp. When I rubbed it a genie appeared. He was large, muscular, much taller than us. He told me I could have three wishes. Well, I wished first for a beautiful and comfortable home. You can see it behind me here. He gestured with a cube. And indeed behind him, on a short hill, was a beautiful Victorian house, large and clean, colorfully painted. I told him it was a nice house. He nodded. It is, he said. And then I wished for a beautiful wife. There she is on the porch back there. He gestured again with a blue cube. The woman on the porch was in fact quite striking, gorgeous, long dark hair, dark eyes that I could appreciate at even such a distance. And then, I asked. And then, he said, something went horribly wrong when I wished for blue cubes as arms.

Do you have a point here?

It’s just a story.

But it’s clearly not true.

And?

I was just coming out of the shower when the phone rang. A woman with a shrill voice barked at me, Are you the trainer?

I’m a trainer, I said.

I got this horse.

Yes?

He’s nasty. Nobody can ride him. He hurt my husband.

Yes?

Can I bring him to you?

You plan to ride him at my place?

There was silence on her end.

Your horse is acting up at your house, so I should see him at your house. At least at first, don’t you think?

I guess so.

Where are you?

I’m up in Simi Valley.

It was my turn to say nothing.

Hello?

I’m out near Joshua Tree. That’s a long way. Can’t you call someone closer to you?

Buddy Davies gave me your name.

I don’t know Buddy Davies.

Well, he knows you.

It will be expensive for me to come way over there. It’ll cost you four hundred just to get me over there. I said that so she would say no, but she didn’t. Then there’s my time with the horse.

That’s fine.

What does the horse do exactly?

He bucks. Everything will be going along fine and then he’ll freak out, bucking or bolting. He reached around once, tried to bite my husband’s leg. My husband was just sitting in the saddle and he came around like this.

I’ll be there tomorrow morning at eleven, I said. She gave me the address and I hung up.

What what what could be at the bottom of this questionable exercise? Stories that matter and stories that don’t, like a life, served up on the lid of a garbage can with exquisite garnish, parsley and radishes cut to be roses. Whatever is at the bottom (and by bottom I don’t mean lowest point but undersurface or undercarriage ) of it must have been propagated by an exceptionably significant and fascinating question, mustn’t it have, deeply personal and arresting, engrossing, at the time I wrote it, am writing it, will write it. It is a subtle and delicate last resort against — say — truth? Perhaps veracity is a better word. Reputability. Truth is so, well, worn and perhaps not worn well. There is either a cluster of grave and terrible questions with which this project is burdened or there is none. You could at least come here with the intention of getting me drunk.