Steve Toltz - Quicksand

Quick! Tell me something positive about yourself. Without thinking. Go!

I’m good at buying presents.

What else?

I can pretty much befriend any cat.

What else?

I’m out! I got nothing else! You know the bad luck it takes to get a big toe caught in a mousetrap, but I’ve done it, I’ve done it!

You sound stressed.

I am stressed. And I know that stress destroys dendrites and neural pathways in the hippocampus, and that stresses me even more. Christ. I need to stand up.

What was that sound?

I stepped on some walnuts.

Was that your knees?

Mimi, I remember your hair. And your lips. And your eyes.

Aldo, I remember your wife had left you.

I think it was for the best. I mean, for my own safety.

What do you mean?

Well, when you think about it, the phrase ‘until death do us part’ inevitably serves to foster murderous fantasies in one or both parties. That clause is a clear inducement to murder! Am I the only one who can see it?

So you’re still single then.

The materialistic, sex-withholding, cynical women of this superficial town routinely sense my low expectations and then lower themselves to fit under them. And not only that, but I’ve completely run out of sexual fantasies. The actresses are too stupid, the models too thin, the waitresses too mean, the shopgirls too bitter, the nurses too depressed, and the regular civilians look like they haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years. How is one expected to masturbate in this society?

Is this an exaggeration of the real you or a toned-down version of the real you? Or is this the real you?

That’s a good question.

They say if you want to be loved, be lovable.

They also say practise what you preach, that’s why I’m preaching threesomes.

You’re a fucking riot, you are.

I need hosing down, it’s true. Do you have kids?

No.

Are you in a relationship?

I overheard my last boyfriend refer to my vagina as any port in a storm.

Shit. I suppose the vertical decline of your fertility is an issue. Do you want kids?

It’s so late in the game.

I guess at our age the decision to have children is an expression of the fear of not having children.

You know what I think?

Yes I do. You think living in such a fast-moving civilisation means your dreams are obsolete before you have a chance to give up on them.

I think you called to ask me out and you haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Why do you think it’s such a taboo to conclude that life isn’t worth living?

I don’t know. It just is.

Ten thousand women raped, six thousand children molested, twenty-five thousand men beaten to death. Is there one earth day that isn’t like that?

I suppose not.

Then how can you tell me life is worth living? Besides, the question isn’t ‘Is life worth living?’ but ‘Is my life worth living?’ You compare your best day to your worst, and find it balances out quite nicely. You don’t compare your best day with the worst day of a victim of sex slavery!

Don’t fucking yell at me!

If you told people with absolute authority that in ten years every child will be boiled in hot lava, I’m absolutely positive that people would still churn out babies. That’s the human race for you!

You sound like someone who got woken up at the wrong time. Are you sure you meant to ring me specifically?

Tell me what you think of this equation: having already reached my potential five years ago, plus eternity, plus a human mind that cannot fathom the infinite, equals madness, right?

Are you saying you believe you —

Feel every picosecond and will continue to do so ad infinitum.

You think you’re actually —

If I was destined to die, shouldn’t Jeremy’s mother, the fortune teller, have prognosticated some species of void?

What are you saying?

What if from birth I had come down with, that is to say had contracted, an exceedingly rare case of — I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud— immortality ?

That’s crazy.

Yet what is the inability to cause the irreversible cessation of one’s core physiological function if not immortality ? And what is the time value coexisting with that inability if not eternity ? What if the end of consciousness is our common disease, and what if someone was immune, or had built up resistance to the disease? And what if that someone was me?

I’m hanging up now.

In the face of forever, the contours of one’s life slacken and become not just poorly defined, but permanently resistant to definition. I feel sick. I cannot meet the basic prerequisites for death! How embarrassing! I’ve stolen fire from the gods, without meaning to!

You think you’re invincible —

I’m not saying I can’t be hurt. I can. That’s the problem. There’s no freedom in my immortality, it just makes me more vulnerable to pain and suffering. Imagine the setbacks and dangers that I’ll be susceptible to! I might get a thousand-year migraine, or be a few hundred years bedridden, or contract dementia and be combing over precarious memories every morning forever. Or what if I were to be decapitated? Or sentenced to life imprisonment? Death is our wedding with the abyss and I’m the only bachelor in town. This is a sickness. I’m sick. I’m incurable! I’m a candle that can never sputter out! I can break but I can’t erode! I can crumble but not disappear! As time expands, space shrinks. The world is suddenly infinitesimal, every minute a tyrant. I could do anything! Get into any amount of trouble! Or I could do nothing! Make no sound or movement! It makes not the slightest difference!

I can’t understand a single thing you’re saying.

And I can’t understand why masturbation is called self-abuse. It’s the only nice thing I’ve done for myself all week!

Traditionally, who likes hearing this kind of crap?

Traditionally, you should know, I’ve gone for girls with pageboy haircuts and a high-lesbian intelligence. Actually, wait. That used to be true. Now when I see a woman I think: If I had paid a thousand dollars for a high-class escort and she turned up at my door, would I feel like a satisfied customer or would I feel short-changed?

You actually think that?

Let me put it this way. I’m way too old for the raging hormones of adolescence, and yet, and yet, I can’t pass a woman on the street without imagining bending her over a bar fridge, a plinth or a reception desk — it’s an incredible drag.

You’re a monster.

Are you looking at the moon?

I’ve just worked out why you called.

I thought I’d be the first to know.

You want someone to like you for who you were before you became who you are now. You want someone to like you retrospectively.

I think I called at the right time.

Do you now?

Sometimes all you need in life is good timing. I almost never have it. I think I’m actually proud of myself.

Don’t be so sure.

True. I’m always misjudging circumstances. Like the time I went for a job interview and the manager asked what would I say is my greatest asset and I answered: I can sleep anywhere!

Aldo.

Yes, Mimi?

Let’s meet.

VIII

Your Honour, it was three in the morning when we met outside the often violent Coogee Bay Hotel. The night was cold and the moon thin and transparent, just barely in the sky. I spotted her moving as if she hoped to kill something underneath her heel with every step, wearing jeans tight enough to stop circulation, and that, I gruesomely thought, would need to be cut off in an emergency. I felt like a gravedigger resting on his spade.

— Hi, she said.