"Adam..."
"Sorry. But you do things to me."
I look at the ground. "I don't mean to."
"Yes you do."
"No. Look—I know what you mean. I usually do mean to do things with people or even, as you put it, to people; but not you. You're different."
"What, because I managed to lose God? Or because I ever had God at all?"
"I am sorry I interrupted. What were you going to say?"
He sighs into the air: a frozen cloud of uncertainty. "I was going to say that I lost God, and then I lost myself. You know how religion usually helps people find themselves, and find God? I managed to lose everything. I thought that was the point. All the books I read about losing desire and losing the ego ... The whole thing was soul-destroying, literally. Nothing prepared me for it. Nothing prepared me for what it would be like to be aware, objectively, of religion without being a part of it. The Bible just became a book, like any other book. I could still read it and make opinions about what this or that bit meant, but I couldn't believe in it."
"Soul-destroying. Like self-destructive."
"Yes. I experienced being truly selfless and it was fucking terrifying."
"Adam..."
"Connecting with other people; losing yourself in them; becoming 'at one.' It's hell. Who said that hell is other people?"
"Sartre."
"He's right. I didn't realize: Ripping out your soul and offering to share it around isn't at all like giving Communion, or taking some old clothes to the charity shop. It's like going into the park at night and taking off all your clothes and waiting to be pissed on."
I think about Wolf, and his useless attempts to get beaten up.
"People can't be all bad," I say.
"That's not what I'm saying. I ... I don't know what I'm saying. This is what I wanted to explain to you the other night, but I'm not doing a much better job now. I told you I've had a breakdown?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I..."
"It's part of the same thing. The self destructs; the self breaks down. It's about exploding the self until there's nothing left anymore. But I couldn't do it. I completely failed. I broke down, sure, but then before I'd even had a chance to look into the abyss and see what it was like I started putting myself back together again. I tried being 'normal': drinking and swearing. It was quite fun. But now I'm not sure who I am. I use this word 'I' and I don't know what it means. I don't know where it begins and ends. I don't even know what it's made of."
"Ah. Well, I can help you there," I say. "Everything in the known universe is made of quarks and electrons. You're made of the same stuff I'm made of, and the same stuff the snow is made of and the same stuff this stone is made of. It's just different combinations."
"That's a beautiful idea," Adam says.
"It's true." I laugh. "I don't usually say that. But it's as true as anything can be."
Once I did a class with my students about working with meaning. It's supposed to be the little introductory session I do to get them thinking about Derrida. We do Saussure and all that basic stuff, and then I show them a photocopy of Duchamp's Fountain—the urinal that was voted the most influential piece of art from the twentieth century—and ask them if it's art or not. In this particular class most of the students started arguing that a urinal couldn't be art: Two or three of them became quite angry about it, and started talking about Picasso, and how their children could draw better pictures; and the recent Turner Prize-winning installation with the light going off and on ... I'd thought that it would be quite an easy class. All I'd wanted to demonstrate was that something that is called a "urinal," which we understand to be something that men piss in, is only different from something that is called a "painting," which we understand to be paint on canvas, because we make it different in language. And whether or not we choose to group either of these things in the category "art" depends on how we define art. But the students were having trouble getting it and I became frustrated with them. I remember thinking, Fuck you. I'd so much rather be at home right now, drinking coffee in my kitchen. I explained to them that everything in the whole world is made up of exactly the same quarks and electrons. Atoms are different. Sure, there are helium atoms and hydrogen atoms and every other sort of atom, but they're only different in the number of quarks and electrons they have and, in the case of the quarks, which way up they are. I explained that, therefore, the urinal could, in a very real way, be said to be the same as, say, the Mona Lisa. I told them that what they thought was reality was all relative to the position from which they were looking at it. Under a powerful enough microscope, the urinal and the Mona Lisa would look identical.
It's not just space and time that are fucked up. Matter is energy, but more than that: Matter is already gray sludge; we just can't see it. Now I think of the Troposphere and I wonder what that is made of and, even if it's only in my imagination, what my imagination is made of.
Adam comes back to my room with me. I immediately get on the bed, but he paces around for a while, peeping out of the curtains, then picking up the Bible and putting it back down. I think he's going to sit on the wooden chair but eventually he comes and sits on the bed next to me, with his head resting against the headboard about two inches from mine.
"So if we're all quarks and electrons...," he begins.
"What?"
"We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together."
"Better that that," I say. "Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time."
I hear his breathing take on a slightly different rhythm as he puts his hand on my leg just where the material of the dressing gown is hanging slightly open.
"And what would you call that? I mean if it's just atoms repelling each other then it can't be worthy of note, really. I mean, why should anyone mind?"
"Adam..."
"What makes it real at all?"
For a moment I think about pain again: about forcing friction; forcing atoms to exchange electrons; forcing something to become real. But this is about something else; something beyond that.
"Language," I say. "Everything from the existence of the word real to the existence of the word fucking to the existence of the word wrong."
I place enough emphasis on the word wrong that he takes his hand away from my leg. I close the gap created by my dressing gown and cross my ankles. I know why I can't do this, but reason isn't the same as desire, and I am aware of my blood pumping purposefully around my body, preparing me for something that can't happen: Adam's lips on mine; his dark, hairy chest pressed against my smooth, pale breasts; penetration; oblivion. It's like starving and feeling you have to eat. I'm starving and someone's just presented me with a bowl of food and told me that I can't eat it; that it might be poisoned.
Adam gets off the bed and walks over to the window. The curtains are still closed but he doesn't open them; he just stands there looking at the beige fabric. He sighs.