The Mere Future
THE MERE FUTURE
Sarah Schulman
THE MERE FUTURE
THE MERE FUTURE
Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Schulman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Suite 200, 341 Water Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6B 1B8
arsenalpulp.com
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.
Book design by Shyla Seller
Cover and interior image copyright © Alex Lukas
Photograph of Sarah Schulman by Nayland Blake
Printed and bound in Canada on FSC-certified paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:
Schulman, Sarah, 1958-
The mere future / Sarah Schulman.
ISBN 978-1-55152-257-9 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-55152-266-1 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3569.C5393 M47 2009 813’.54 C2009-900857-2
ISBN, digital edition: 978-1-55152-347-7
For Kathy Danger
Special thanks to David Bergman
Sacred knowledge, in the hands of fools, destroys.
—The Upanishads
CONTENTS
12. A WORKING GIRL FROM THE WORKING CLASS
31. THE CITY THAT NEVER LISTENS
33. IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALISM
35. ONE FOR ONE AND NONE FOR ALL
(I
N THE FUTURE
, when things are slightly better because there has been a big change.)
Back in the present, my lover Nadine and I have moved to a new part of town to reaffirm our vows. The old streets were too familiar, telegraphing past failures and complaints. Each landmark, a bitter nostalgia.
We’d come to that time in our romance where we knew too much, and so the real loving could begin. Deception ends then, the deception that one is more important than the other.
Now for the new regime:
1. communication
2. negotiation
3. reconciliation
4. healing
This is the sequence of a strife worth living.
To forgive pain is to create a friend for life. To be silly in such a moment, viciously wrong, is to create an enemy. If you are cruel and stupid when you should listen and be kind, don’t blame her.
Look at me, Reader.
I don’t believe in closure, I believe in the reopening of love.
People can get court orders to keep communication from happening, why can’t we get court orders to sit down and talk it through? That would be my idea of a better world.
Amazingly, and wonderfully, I do live in a better world. You see, the society that surrounds my feelings has finally taken a huge step forward, one that can inspire me to do the same. For now, some days hence, Our Town’s most recent election has yielded the most surprising victory. At last, voting has created progress and just as I have become emotionally up to the task of betterment, my government leads the way with:
THE SELECTION OF OUR NEW MAYOR AND HER
MARVELOUS WORLD VIEW
Yes, the citizens have chosen visionary change at last! Who knew that New Yorkers would some day wise up? But now that they have, I can too. Finally, all hopeful gestures can reach their desired goals.
It’s The New Era, and just because we all decided to try something true.
I’m excited about this. And proud of you.
Evidence reveals that facing and dealing with problems requires more than one person with a spine. If only one person has a spine, it will be broken by the other’s lack. But two spines, two capacities for recognition, and two evolving individuals with their own specific knowledge—this is the formula for shifting to the freshest spot.
New Yorkers have collectively agreed to change for the better, and so have “we.” Nadine and me.
My society inspires us, and I am happy.
Tomorrow morning we exist, coexist, form habits, and exercise comforts in Terrainville, a new Manhattan neighborhood next to Flower Market.
The elevator in this building is made exclusively of ice. So, to rise to each occasion, the tenants must drink great quantities of gin until we think that we’re better off than we are. That’s how we get in and out of the apartment.
Delusion, sedation, unwarranted jubilation, warranted.
Gourmet soup and little chocolates decorate our refrigerator door, photographs of home-made meals. We, so busy, only have time to make coffee, trying to chit-chat in the mornings between long periods of sludge. That moment, to say what I did and hear what she will, that brief loving presence after a night of shared sleep, that is the true time. All the rest of the day I fear and regret, so I can share a coffee with the girl I adore. I never even make toast. The joy of being with her lets hunger play a vague second fiddle.
But, just as the greatest pleasure complements fear, I also refuse to own a toaster. I fear that the bread crumbs will attract mice, thereby rendering our home sordid and a disgrace. An excuse for rupture. I’d rather forgo shame than have toast. The specter of crumbs on the floor, or burning bits of bread. Those flames would leap, and make all my dreams disappear. There are, after all, live gas jets buried historically behind the light fixtures of these old, landmarked hovels. That’s what makes this apartment so desirable, that it has a dangerous past. Substandard living conditions are hard to find these days. They’re edgy and give the tenant special status, as I must daily avoid combustion to keep my love drinking coffee before me. Take no chance. One little fire and that would be the end of me and all my labors. All my little bits of beauty. For this reason, I occasionally buy toast on the street, even though I always overpay. And then fear all day.
Ours is a busy neighborhood. There are many outlets for toast. Some are dank and some are dreary. Some are exclusive. Some whistle for me.
One morning, before work, when none was said nor done, we slid in with the sun and then slurped down the stairs for togetherness and toast. The rain on the plate glass window, umbrellas, and one unrecognized smiling devil in a see-saw of gray passed by. We looked at that figure, crossed our legs, and flapped our shoes. Ah, togetherness.
Turning slyly, I gazed at Nadine’s humanity over the rock-hard table. In Los Angeles, people earn money and cover their kitchen counters with pink granite. But in New York City, no one has kitchen counters, we slice on ingenious contraptions that fit our little space. So, the only rocks in our apartments used to be in our hands. Reminders of the protests of our youth. Their outcomes can be most easily spotted in contemporary commerce. Hence, with some satisfaction, I glanced outside at the Unisex Sari Shoppe Imported From Chicago, and then turned back quickly, just in time to notice two new truths about my light, Nadine.
1. Over these years, she has changed so much for the better.
Blessedly, I have loved her long enough to notice. It would have been stupid to hang up the phone and never see each other again.
2. She now has grey hair.
Neither of these “facts” had ever been that way before. And so I had consequently to ask myself the following question:
Do I have grey hair too?
In the past, I would have feared this kind of associative inquiry because it would have been a reflection of the narcissism at the base of my homosexuality. The other should not associate to the self. Or so they say. All my life I’ve worried about being selfish, about listening, about considering the other, and so I’ve been repeatedly crushed. Then I realized one sunny day that true narcissists never ask themselves these questions. They destroy arbitrarily and never pay the price. Now that I am free of the fear that I might be narcissistic, I am plagued by the fear that you (Reader) truly are.
Natural disasters and historical traumas provide the opportunity to bring people together. But there is nothing as divisive as human cruelty.
Definition: The consequences of your actions on others do not matter = Cruelty
That’s how I know I have truly lived. I fear the unaccountable ones. I already know the damages that they do. The only mystery remaining is, are their ranks about to be swelled by (Reader) you?
Only the fear of being a selfish homosexual has been quelled. This relief, to now be able to associate with others without feeling pathological about it opens up all portals. For I was then able, at that Brekfsto-Resto, to ask the real question, the one at the heart of the manor.
Are all women going grey?
Or is it just me? I mean her?
You can spot the ones who dye it. Every strand is the same hue, or so deliberately varied that the viewer is distracted from the necessity of aging. The bad dye job looks stinky. What’s the point? We all know what’s under there. I prefer Nadine’s natural variety, the streaky kind. I like a body that reflects someone’s life. But that’s the thing with us gray-haired ladies (if I am one), some of us have very girlish bodies. Robust and hungry. We are animals. Our hair is irrelevant except for aesthetics (huge). Hair color means nothing about our potency, everything about our history. We’ve risen and splattered, risen and splat. We know what it takes to land flat on our backs. We should be honored. Walk among us, serve us tea, and look deeply into our eyes. I like our guise, the truth, the sad vulnerability of knowing. Of not hoping any longer for what can never be. Of loving the things we do privately.
This toast with Nadine was a casually loving date between two old cronies, two members of the same secret society who had formed one of our own. We’d signed the card in the ancient days when you could phone up any other gay girl in the United States of America and she’d call you right back. Sadly, now that we’re freer, no one returns phone calls unless there is something in it for them. But my gal and I reminisce fondly about the former tribal bond and are much the better for it, even though you can’t stop the future. And why would anyone want to try? That’s the thing about my group. Lesbians have a great shelf life. We don’t need plastic surgery. The rest of the world runs around trying to grab hold of some younger person’s tale, while we get more beautiful every year. Our knowledge becomes rarer and more alluring.
This morning I would be disorganized, late, wrong clothes, un-brushed. Nadine glided from the ice room with a fashionable scarf around that prominent neck and a soft impeccably clean sweater. It showed off more of her body than there actually was.
Oh my
, I thought, feeling like a devil. Brand new shoes on her, dainty black boots. The leather not yet creased, its life before it. Buckles hinting tastefully at bondage.
I took a new look at my old love. If her eyes had been bluer, they wouldn’t have faded away. Maybe I could have seen through them into her heart. Her mouth? Can’t remember. Instead I was riveted by the attention she paid to her knife. I was jealous of the butter. Then, connecting again, a few dirty thoughts were allowed to pass across the toasty table. Knowing that hesitancy is mature, I thereby felt insecure. Aroused, aware, and recommitting. We have to preserve what is lost in order to know that we have lived. But if it is lost, it cannot be preserved. So “loss” is the wrong word. The thing remembered is being seized by absence, and so I must, must, must grab it back … Oh yeah, I looked down right then and saw a long, black silk blouse, oodles of tactiles. Real tweeds. Heels.