Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

Your grandfather,

Gordon

HOW COME IS IT I am always telling people stories and people are always construing my stories to be stories as in stories? Why would I want to tell people made-up stories? I can't stand made-up stories. It makes me sick to hear a made-up story. Look, if your story is a made-up story, then do me a favor and keep it to yourself. Me, I would never tell a made-up story about anything, let alone about myself. I respect myself much too much for me ever to stoop to just making something up about myself. I don't get it why anybody would want to tell a made-up story about himself. But the even bigger mystery to me is why, when you tell them the truth, people go ahead and look at you and say, "Oh, come on, quit it — nooooooooooooo." Take this one, for instance. I mean, suppose we just take ourselves a squint at how this one works with someone like you instead of with anyone like anyone else. So okay, so it was when I was lecturing someplace far away from here once. I was there for the week, had to be there for the week, was signed up to teach fiction-writing there for the week — and was, for the week, being put up at the home of some very fancy folks, dignitaries in the English department or in the literature department or in one of those departments like that, both husband and wife. Anyhow, they were very grand and very nice and very kind, and I accordingly start to begin to feel so tremendously and irredeemably in the debt of these persons even before I had even slept for even one night under their roof. Well, I wasn't actually under their roof, as it were, but was in a sort of added-on affair attached to the house by a sort of connective passageway, you might say, since passageways, I suppose, connect. I only mean to say that my place, my borrowed place, the place lent to me, that is, had its own window and its own door and when you went out of it, the door, you stepped into a little connective consideration that put you right up against the kitchen door of where the grown-ups were — which is to say, the house of one's hosts. Anyhow, to get right to it if you don't mind all the hurry — you just have to appreciate the fact that I am the most fastidious little thing in all the wide and untidy world. In other words, let's say I happened to have been your houseguest for a period of ten years. At my usual base rate of one squillion tidinesses per year, it works out to your finding not just your house but your next-door neighbors' houses about one gazillion times tidier than they were when I first put in an appearance in your neighborhood. So I guess it goes without saying this little tiny sort of garage apartment I was in was the last word in presentability the morning I was — the week's work now a job left unjumbled behind me — making ready to leave. Okay, I had to catch a plane, you see. So here's the thing — had positioned a box of candy on the table by the door, had leaned up against the box of candy a square of writing paper on which had been entered the written expression of my gratitude, had situated the key on the table so as for the key to act as a discouragement against the thank-you note's drifting to the floor, had taken one last look about to make certain nothing would offer the slightest invitation to reproach. Ahhhh. Good Gordon. I tell you, I felt as if, praise God, here I was — Gordon, Gordon — getting away with crimes against humanity all over again. And at this our fellow shoulders his carry-all and goes for the knob with his other hand. But lets go of it, the doorknob, in the instant, it having just been disclosed to him that he is going to have to race to the latrine, and this — this! — with all possible speed. Now then, we are hastening ahead ourselves in order that we might consider the forthcoming event from the dainty standpoint of hindsight, eh? Are you following me? Try to follow me. I have wiped. I have, as is my custom, wiped — wiping with soap, wiping with water — wiping such that the concept of wiping is delivered from its critique — flushing, don't you know it, like Neptune all the while. Good again, hurray again, for I have not tarried for too long. I can make it to the airport in more than enough time. I get to my feet, draw up my trousers, fasten them, yank a handful of toilet tissue free from the roll for to give a last finishing touch to the porcelain, to the seat, to the whole glistening commode. When I see — in the bowl — in the bowl! — this solitary, big-shouldered, brute-sized stool. So I activate the flushing mechanism. The water goes into its routine commotion, the excretum gets itself sucked out of sight, but in due course — just as I had guessed — hell, guessed — knew, knew! — from the instant I was born, I knew, I knew! — it, this thing, this twist of Lish-ness lifts itself back into blatant view — grinning, I do believe — even, it seemed to me, winking, I do believe. Fine, fine — I hit the plunger again, already knowing what there is to be known, what there is always to be known — namely, that I and that all my descendants might stand here at our hectic labors flushing toilets until the cows come home, that when they did come, this malicious, hainted, evil turd would still be here for them to see it, and see it — it idly, gaily, gigantically turning in the otherwise perfect waters below — they, the bovine police, would. What to do, what to do, what to do? I mean, I could see, foresee, could feel myself defeated by forecast galore. This blightedness, this fouledness, it would never be gone. If I snatched it up and hid it away in my carry-all, the contents thereof would smash into it and mash it into a paste that would then smear itself remorselessly onto my really prize stuff, the best of which I had toted with me to this outpost to show myself off in in front of whosoever might show up in my class. If instead I went to the window with it (you know what) and dumped it (you know what) overboard, would my hosts not come and discover it (it!) beneath the very porthole the very minute my plan had seen me gone? What of taking it in hand, of going to the door with it, then of going with it (oh, God, it again!) thither, thereafter to dispose of same in a suitable municipal receptacle as soon as I were well clear of the neighborhood? Ah, Jesus, this seemed the very thing! Until foresight (stories, stories, stories) made me to read in my mind — in my mind! — the sentence predicating the presence of my protectors there in the passageway on the other side of the door, they foregathered in beaming bonhomie for the very purpose of embracing me the one last time, thereupon to send me all the more welcomed off. So are you seeing what I in my mind — in my mind! — saw? I would fling open the door and he would be there to reach for my hand to clasp it powerfully to his own. Whereas were I to have taken the precaution of having shifted the turd into my other hand, then would this not be the hand she, for her part, would then shoot out her hand to to seize, no es verdad ? I mean, I do not know what this means, no es verdad —but can you think of what else there is for anyone to say? Except, to be sure, to report to you — yes, yes, yes! — that, yes, I ate it, you bastards, I ate it! Well, of course, I ate it. After all, had it not been written that I would? Come on, quit it — what outcome by the teller — by me, by you, by Willie, by your aunt Tillie — has not already been well and roundly foretold?

So which is it, do you say?

Is it story or story?

It's truth?

Not truth?

Nor aught but words as words working their way along as words — a bit of ink on this otherwise blank or — worse, worse! — unnumbered page.

I AM WRITING THIS the night of 30 January 1994.