“What the hell does that mean?” Lenore said.
The Antichrist exhaled. “Let’s pretend just for fun that it’s the late seventies, and Lenore is in her blue period, and is still keeping exclusively to her study, and snapping at anyone who comes near, including poor old Grampa, who was getting ready to die, and being generally pathetic…”
“Get on with it. My bottom hurts.”
“And anyway, in this game-context, that Lenore is still Skeptical as hell, or at least strenuously adopting the pose, and ostensibly convinced that all she is is the act of her thinking, à la the French-man, although Lenore would say all she is is the act of speaking and telling, but that’s so bullshitty it makes my tongue hurt, and anyway luckily unnecessary, and so we say that all she is is the act of her thinking; that’s the only thing she can be sure of, is just her being her thinking.”
“Is this real, or are you saying all this because you’re flapped?” asked Lenore.
“Please hush,” LaVache said. “I’m hard at play. So all Lenore is is her act of thought, nothing else can be ‘assumed.’ ” He lay back and looked at the reddening sky, the joint resting in a carved initial in the leg. “So she’s her thinking. And, as we know, all thinking requires an object, something to think of or about. And the only things that can be thought about are the things that are not that act of thought, that are Other, right? You can’t think of your own act of thinking-of, any more than a blade can cut itself, right? Unless you’re the guy who’s significantly lowering Nervous Roy Keller’s quality of life, but I refuse to think about that until the leg demands that I do so. So, we can’t think ourselves, if all we are is the act of thinking. So we’re like the barber. The barber, if I recall, shaves all and only those who don’t shave themselves. Here Lenore thinks we think all and only those things which do not think themselves, which aren’t the act of our thought, which are Other.”
“Hell of a game,” Lenore muttered.
“But then we remember that all we are is our act of thought, in the game, for Lenore,” LaVache said, fast, now, and slightly slurry. “So if we think about ourselves with respect to the game, we’re thinking about our thinking. And we decided the one thing we couldn’t think about was our thinking, because the object has to be Other. We can think only the things that can’t think themselves. So if we think ourselves, see for instance conceiving ourselves as thought, we can’t ourselves be the object of our thinking. Q.E.D.”
Lenore cleared her throat.
“But if we can’t think ourselves,” the Antichrist continued to the sky, trying to lick his lips, “that means we, ourselves, are things that can’t think themselves, and so are the proper objects for our thought; we fulfill the game’s condition, we are ourselves Other. So if we can think ourselves, we can’t; and if we can‘t, we can. KA-BLAM,” LaVache gestured broadly. “There go the old crania.”
“Dumb game,” said Lenore. “I can think of myself any time I want. Here, watch.” Lenore thought of herself sitting in the Spaniard home in Cleveland Heights, eating a frozen pea.
“Dumb objection, especially from you,” the Antichrist said to the sky. “ ‘Cause do you really think of yourself? What do you think of yourself as? Shall I recall some of our more interesting and to me more than a little disturbing conversations of the last two years? If you don’t think of yourself as real, then you’re cheating, you’re not playing fair, you’re chute-hopping, you’re not thinking of yourself.”
“Who says I don’t think of myself as real?” Lenore said, looking past the Antichrist at the bush he’d gone to the bathroom in.
“I’d be inclined to say you say so, from your general attitude, unless that little guy with the big mustache and the movable chairs has conked you on the head or something,” said the Antichrist. “It’s my clinical opinion that you, in a perfectly natural defensive reaction to your circumstances, have decided you’re not real — of course with Gramma’s help.” LaVache looked at her. “Why is this all so, you ask?”
“I haven’t asked anything, you might have noticed.”
“It’s because you’re the one on whom the real brunt of the evil — shall I say ‘evil’?—the brunt of the evil of this family has fallen. Evil in the form of these little indoctrination sessions with Lenore, which I’ve got to tell you I’ve always regarded as pathetic in the extremus. Evil in the form of Dad, who, having totally fucked with our mother’s life, for all time, is trying to fuck with your life in all kinds of ways I bet you don’t even know about, or want to know about. Think now of the circumstances leading up to my own particular birth. The same way Dad’s tried to fuck with my life, everybody’s. Just as he was fucked with in his turn, by fools in old-style hats and coats.” The Antichrist laughed. “That’s a poem. Anyway, you’ve borne the brunt. John was off to Chicago with his slide rule and a whole lot of masochistic baggage by the time he would have been any use to Dad or Lenore; I’ve had a limb and a thing to fall back on; Clarice was clearly inappropriate in terms of disposition — we needn’t discuss all that. But so you’re it. You are the family, Lenore. And in Dad’s case, go ahead and substitute ‘Company’ in the obvious place in the above sentence.”
Lenore reached under and removed a bit of stick she’d been sitting on.
“But Lenore has fucked up your life even further, sweetness,” the Antichrist said, sitting back up with the joint and looking at Lenore. “Lenore has you believing — stop me if I’m wrong — Lenore has you believing, with your complicity, circumstantially speaking, that you’re not really real, or that you’re only real insofar as you’re told about, so that to the extent that you’re real you’re controlled, and thus not in control, so that you’re more like a sort of character than a person, really — and of course Lenore would say the two are the same, now, wouldn’t she?”
“I wish it would rain,” Lenore said.
“You just had a shower a little while ago,” LaVache laughed. “You’re a nervous wreck, sis. Don’t be so nervous. Here. Kiss the bird for a second.” The Antichrist was holding up the joint, which Lenore saw was burning down one side much faster than the other.
“I don’t want any,” Lenore said. She glanced at the sun, which was now sticking Kilroyishly over the top of the gymnasium. “How about if we just spontaneously abort this line of conversation, Stoney, OK? Since, if I were maybe to ask you to help me out with respect to this supposed evil-and-reality-as-opposed-to-telling problem, what you’d do is obviously just tell me something, so that the whole thing would—”
“Don’t call me Stoney,” said LaVache. “Call me LaVache, or the Antichrist, but no more Stoney.”
“You don’t mind Antichrist, which I have to say is just about the most disturbing nickname I’ve ever heard? But you mind Stoney?”
“Stoney is everybody’s name,” the Antichrist said. He spat white again. “Everybody in the family with male genitals is Stoney. Stoney reminds me I’m probably just a part in a machine I wish I wasn’t part of. Stoney reminds me of deeply annoying expectations. Stoney reminds me of Dad. As Stoney I’m more or less just educed…”
“What?”
“… but as the Antichrist I just am, ” said the Antichrist, waving the joint grandly at the red and black horizon. “As the Antichrist I have a thing, and it’s gloriously clear where I leave off and others start, and no one expects me to be anything other than what I am, which is a waste-product, slaving endlessly to support his leg. I’ve also just sort of helped you, here, I think, if you bothered to notice.” With his finger the Antichrist wet the side of the joint that was burning too fast, to make it bum slower.