“Evil I did dwell, lewd did I live.”
A repetition of the repetition of before as Joseph, repeating earlier and repeating the latter, realizes he’s gnawed the paper of the corner and sets the book back in the pile, which is snatched up by the author — Joseph assuming to inspect the damage and demand payment — who tosses it open and in the lectern of his palm begins to write in it. He waits, his hand fidgeting with his face, as if to suggest a neurosis, an explanation for his earlier meal, finally settling on his earlobe, which he tugs and rolls between his fingers like a lock of hair, cups the back of his head and massages his neck before effortly putting it to his side, now aware of it, hanging limply, he twittles his fingers, slaps his own thigh, aware he’s justified his teeth marks, scratches nose, and leaves it clasping his own waist effeminately.
Lovely Reader:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders requires the presence of nine symptoms for a diagnosis. The number of symptoms is as exaggerated as infinity. We’re all mad, if you can believe that, as this present author is no surer of his own sanity than a resident of a madhouse, since it really comes down to perspective. “Sir William said he never spoke of ‘madness’; he called it not having a sense of proportion.”
Proportion is acquired most scientifically by observation, normal activities, propagation, an occupation, behavior matching that of one’s peers, a lunatic in an asylum is still not sane, though, even as he follows all of these maxims. Are you ecstatic? Are you sad, depressed? Are you mad? The relief is in none of these, in no polarization of the emotions. One must be at all times harmonious, as harmonious as a mythical bodhisattva, an example, a teacher, a god, with no strong feelings. Outrage, fear, sadness, glee, exultation, sexual fervor, narcissism, desire, it is all disproportional to social reciprocity, social interaction, social functioning, and social development.
I would like to dispel any rumors you might have heard about me. I am not a human fly, I do not favor spiders for lunch, dinner, or any other midday snack, I do not educate delinquents for juvenile delinquency, I do not stretch my telekinetic fingers out over the expanses of time and space to grope unexpecting women’s crotches, it was not I who phantom phucked that virgin, it is not in my demeanor to eat the stars. I am not here to sell magazine subscriptions or insurance policies. On the contrary, I am the professor of a new algebra, a mathematical prediction formula for proportion’s sake called the ARTMEYYBO system. Read and understand (the grape vine, so-called for its Bacchus excesses, is wrong, I tell you this as a friend and a former/future lover, to be sure).
Creativity (a), Desire (b), Opportunity (c), Intellect (d), Emotion (e), Reason (f), Anger (g), Beauty (h), Body (i), Mind (j), Madness (k), Logic (l), Learning (m), Lie (n), Language (o), Kindness (p), Justice (q), Death (r), Jealousy (s), Hope (t), Love (u), Fate (v), Grace (w), Perfection (x), Destruction (y), Ability (z).
A + C = Z, just as Z + C = A, or A + Z = C
U — T = K, just as K — T = U, or U — K = T
I + J + H = X, just as F + L — E = C, or K + B — M = Y
If you are hoping for X, without I + J + H, E + F / Y = T, you are mad.
* * *
The darkness of the room was oppressive that evening as she entered, only the faint shadows of faces and forms, the synthetic colors of their masks receding out of the darkness, a surreal parade of jesters and comedians. When she came out of the air in the hallway, the room was stifling, the breath of all those men clinging to her skin, the soft hum of their voices intermingling with her thoughts. They did not look like men; they looked like tormented spirits in a godless dungeon. She was transfixed by it.
Elisa was the only woman present. She was always in the company of men, the same man multiplied a thousand times. He said the same things with a hundred different voices. He looked at her the same way with all those different eyes. She was a compliment to the proceedings, her face hidden by a mask: a smiling black cat with white whiskers and a protruding pink tongue. She always wore leather pants; she had to peel them off of her body. She knew what the pants did, how they shined in the faint illumination, the contours of her body highlighted by a ribbon of white light, punctuating her sensuality. The black boots with six-inch heels, the tight black tank top, her little gloves, she was a costume, a character. The men’s little pussy.
She joined the Wolf like she was his lap cat. Her eyes, which never seemed to focus on any one person, stopped on the sheen of organic blue. Like one star in the night sky, it twinkled in the darkness. She stared at it because it was out of place and because it was beautiful. All alone, set apart, surrounded by the faces. It took her several moments of constant focus to realize it was an eye, an eye set within a face, the face of an unmasked man, a man who stared back at her. His gaze didn’t tumble over her body. She did not feel like he was looking at her, it felt to Elisa like he was boring into her, like he was entering into her body and remaining, like he planned to dwell in there as an occupant, not a visitor. Her mouth had gone slack, she leaned awkwardly against the man beside her, like she had fallen and didn’t have the strength to recover. She had not resisted, she had not accented, either. It was as though he had tricked her into exposing herself, she felt anger and pleasure, she had not wanted it and yet, she wanted him to continue. That invasion roamed within her and Elisa let it, she felt it move inside her and she felt it drain her. She couldn’t force herself to repel him, to fight for what was left of her, to make a last stand, she wanted him to lay claim to it all.
And he expanded within her, he didn’t go room to room, he no longer moved within her, he filled her. Elisa quivered noticeably, her upper lip curled around her teeth, her nostrils flared, and she exhaled him. She felt wasted, deliciously exhausted, she felt as she had never before, a purposefully sublime feeling that slowly dissipated, emanating out of her body and she only wanted one thing, to feel it again.
His eye closed and she was released. She was able to move again, she regained her composure, she touched her own face, she hadn’t been able tell her own expression and then, she regained control. His ownership had been complete and he had chosen to relinquish it back to her. She was frightened by it and she wanted nothing more than for him to take it back, for his presence to be once more within her, but she didn’t look at him again. She told herself that she couldn’t, that she could not give up again. She only needed to make it through the proceedings without ever looking at him again.
* * *
Him the omnipotent state tossed headfirst, like a comet, from their spires down to endless perdition, there to dwell in defiance. His doom reserved for him a wrath, a foresight of conviction, for now the thought of happiness did not torment him. Joseph moved lengthily down a hollowed street towards his destination. He had deciphered the message, he had argued with the causes and the effects, the thesis and the antithesis, he was lighting his lantern and venturing out, towards a supreme enterprise, to be initiated, joining the baleful and the afflicted, the rebel angels. At the door, where peace and rest can never dwell, hope comes in utter darkness, a password delivered and a final step into the pale hallway. Joseph, in the dungeon, listens only to the silence of the hall, the movement of lips against earlobes, the shifting of cloaks against arms, the plastic rubbing against the collar, the faces all disguised as Halloween deities, the crowd amassing around him as he’s led to his place, the stage unlit, the furnace flaming without light, the congregation quietly waiting.