The Mere Future (6 page)
Harrison was sick of
like
because even he knew that a metaphor must be natural to have true meaning. To compare one image to another is only valuable if you wish the second image to illuminate the first. To simply repeat the same knowledge twice doesn’t do anyone any good.
As Harrison read this translation of Balzac, he imposed some strange uses of the word
like
to see how it felt. This is how a writer reads from time to time. One text exists on top of the other. Unless they are just trying to fall asleep.
Inside Bond’s apartment,
a tree fell like falling leaves
. That could be interesting.
Inside Balzac’s story, however, it was a cold December morning in France. A young man paced on the sidewalk
like
a husband about to visit his first mistress.
Sidewalk
is a modern word to convey the meaning of the side of a Paris street many years ago, don’t take it literally, with contemporary eyes. The dusty rubble that pedestrians clung to while they dodged the flying shit of horses was all that was available to them. Our man climbed the stairs to his master’s house,
like
a young mistress worried about the King’s welcome.
If one compares fragile emotions, nothing so resembles love as the youthful passion of an artist beginning the luscious torment of his destiny of glory and sadness, audacity and shame, vague beliefs and discouraging certainties.
Would Balzac’s young unknown’s real talent lose itself in the practice of his art making,
like
a pretty woman loses herself in the wiles of coquetry?
As the story’s poor neophyte hero stood on the landing greeting his teacher, he perceived something diabolical about the old man with a lace collar. The
maître
’s forehead was bald, bombed, pre-dominant, fallen, filthy, and on top of a smashed nose. This
maître
’s thoughts had crushed both his soul and his body.
The
maître
beckoned the young’un through the threshold and let him into his first
MASTER ARTIST’S STUDIO
, his first smell of the Master’s paint and his first sight of materials chosen with that acquired instinct of specific understanding and knowledge.
Before the boy stood a huge canvas holding three strokes of white. The day could not illuminate all the piece’s angles,
like
fragments of torsos or a silver leather bag lovingly polished by a century of orgasms. Many years of those orgasms were self-provided, but then that became futile because the Master could no longer recall real-life sex acts in which he had actually participated with another person. They were too long in the past and too overshadowed by socialized emotions, that is to say, feelings about others. Because the maître could not remember, he could not believe that it would come to him again, and that lack of faith made fantasy impossible. Sexual fantasy implied hope. He had no hope. He had painting. That was all he had. The young fellow thought he saw the projected memory of an aureole that, decades back, had been offered to the Master’s mouth with real love, but by now it had desiccated.
“Do you
like
it?” the Master asked.
The year was 1612.
H
ARRISON
B
OND
PUT
down this book. It was a lesson he would never forget. He had started out trying to read technically, but then he had gotten so lost in the telling of the story that he forgot to look out for mechanics. That was the sign of a great work. Sadly, Harrison faced facts. No one would ever feel that way about
My Sperm.
Bond knew that a person who could make him forget his self-consciousness must know something about life, and so he resolved to take Balzac’s discovery to heart.
What Bond had learned was: He wanted never to become the lonely old Master. He did not want to be the wishful neophyte with all that suffering before him. So far, he had avoided both those fates. He was a
young
Master. If he slid even one step back, they would do a revisionism and decide that he no longer mattered. He would never climb back on. So that slide could
NOT
take place. The facts were in. Bond had to stay on top.
Loneliness was Harrison’s enemy, like imminent cancer waving hello from every cigarette. He had to be very, very vigilant. Once you get Loneliness, it never goes away permanently. It always lurks and threatens to re-approach.
Right now he had a classically marketable personal conundrum that both deflected loneliness and provided good material. He was in love with two women and would soon have to choose. Bond checked his watch. He’d have to choose in three months.
Who were these two women? What were their attributes?
Well, each of them owned a television set.
Ginette had a color set with remote mind control, satellite, cable, and airborne. It had fifty-thousand channels. It had
VCR, DVD,
digital, laser, and molecular attachments. She could watch live or archivally, and she could also watch shows that hadn’t been broadcast yet. Whenever Harrison was at Ginette’s house, they lay in bed together eating Madagascarian take-out food, giggling in the soft shag and vinyl cushions, and watching future programming from Utah, Maui, and Taipei. It was fun.
The other love, Claire, had a small black-and-white box. It was vintage, displaying her eccentricities. There were five snowy channels showing programs from the 1960s. These programs were:
The
Defenders, Flip Wilson, The Smothers Brothers, Playhouse Ninety
, and
I Love Lucy
. Apparently these were all that anyone actually needs. The two lovers would stretch out on the hand-made quilt and eat cheese and crackers and drink Fresca and giggle.
Whichever woman he chose, that was the set that he would be watching. He could live without the comfort and hip knowledge of the color/mind remote/nuclear set, and he could live without the bohemian currency of having something fetishistically in the know, but he could not live without the giggling.
Claire, the black-and-white girl, had soft luxuriant breasts with musty nipples,
like
perfectly warmed stewed apples. If he chose her, the day would inevitably come when he would no longer be fixated on her breasts and would then turn to the TV. That would mean night after night of marveling at the superiority of the past. A weird proposition for a creator of contemporary culture.
Ginette’s breasts were not as intoxicating, but her living room was sexier. Ultimately, it provided many provocations to fuck. And when sex wore off, he could spend a lot time just changing the channels.
How to make this decision?
These were his true feelings. Did that make him a bad person? After all, he admitted it. Wasn’t that enough?
In many ways, the question before Harrison came down to this:
If he could easily find yet another girlfriend as soon as the sweetness wore off, he would chose Claire and her black and white. But if the threat of age was soon to be upon him, and his desire/ability to attract would suddenly tatter like yesterday’s newspaper, he’d better choose Ginette—the lass with comfy designer cushions. The wrong decision could be fatal. How to maximize and judge?
Harrison had fallen in love many times before. He knew what love was. Ultimately, each of the many women he had fallen in love with, he had loved with the same sincerity, fear, ardor, and detachment. Frankly, he had not loved a single one of them more than any other. He was familiar with love. In a way, it was not special. It was essential, regular, sublime like the morning, and equally available. It was not, and it was snot. Could he be deceiving himself, or perhaps he was just lucky? Would his luck continue? If he was just lucky, why had this goodness befallen him? Was he going to get away with life?
He knew that escaping punishment made him despicable in the minds of many, not the least of all—Feminists. The gross dullards of the planet. But it was still true. Why was the truth so shameful to those sows?
Harrison looked out his window at the vast blue tops, people, points, and clock towers, feelings, iron, and brick. He saw brink. He saw clink. He imagined the future with both Claire and Ginette.
Ginette was very social. He could take her anywhere, and she in turn would take him. She liked to schmooze and so did he. She was thin, pretty, dark. A wisp with substance. She would not be a burden, embarrassment, or obstacle to the approval of other people. She was of mixed parentage. Her father was Columbian and her mother was from the District of Columbia. Her father had gone to Columbia and her mother was born on Columbus Day. This made her interesting. She would be an asset. She’d been schooled in Romania, Moravia, Batavia, Bavaria, and L.A. Petite, attractive, slender, sharp, small, and tiny. Like many Third World aristocrats, she’d call him out in public with small intimate rebukes that would humanize him in the minds of others and telegraph
hot tamale
. It would reveal him as sexy and a good sport. She had friends, she could take care of herself. She was sexy like a tree, all sinew and bone. She had a fencing coach and did Thai massage three times a week. She’d never get sick. She’d never cry over something that couldn’t get fixed. She wouldn’t lose her passion because she wouldn’t settle for its diminishment without discarding all interest. When he was busy, she’d find other things to do.
These were all good points.
Claire, on the other hand, was very slow. She’d never send the little note, never make the spontaneous gesture within the right framework of time. She wouldn’t introduce him to anything exterior that he couldn’t find for himself. Her world was small. She had interior beauty, true. But so do many others. Hers wasn’t unique in the fact of its existence, only in its precision. Choosing her would mean a romantic retreat from the world of competition.
La petite vie.
And that would prove what a man he truly was. That he didn’t need the glare of the flashbulbs in his own living room. It would be true love. Just choosing Claire. No world included.
He thought about that. Just Claire. No World. Just Claire. No World. Just Claire. No World.
Could be ultimately dull.
If he and Ginette fought there would still be something interesting to do. With Claire, they would have no choice but to read.
That settled it. The choice was clear. Ginette.
And yet the choice of Claire seemed dangerously and repulsively inevitable. He might not have to pull the wool over her eyes. Maybe she would accept him as he truly was. A scoundrel. Was it better to be known or unknown? Ginette was superficial; she would never see what was wrong. Claire would notice right away.
Harrison Bond believed that there was one woman, somewhere on this earth, who could understand him and accept him for the bastard that he truly was. A woman from whom he would never have to hide, his equal. He could trust her and she wouldn’t go away, even if he did something wrong. That was the woman he would love forever, the one who would love him forever. Not
accept
with recrimination, tears, and tragic resignation. But simply accept, with pleasure.
Perhaps neither of these gals fit that bill.
I
FINISHED MY
article with Nadine’s loving coach/touch/couch. Her fascination with Glick was bordering on insane fandom. She was doodling the words
ambition
and
flesh and bone
on our dishtowels. She was playing old Ornette Coleman music and anything else that took her back to the avant-gardish days. She even started wearing clothes that had never returned into style, like moccasins and midi-skirts, jumpsuits and sparkle socks. Anything to stand apart.
I combed my hair, clutched my article under my arm, and set out for Mr Bond’s.
While I was wandering through the colorful and strangely happy streets, I did not know that Bond was still thinking about the two dames in his life, and still trying to choose. The main problem was that they were both nice. He would have preferred if both of them could be happy. In fact, he knew he could keep both of them happy if they would just grow up enough to let him have everything his way. He could win the approval of both sets of their friends.
But in the meantime, Harrison needed a title for his second novel.
My Sperm
was really hard to beat. There were very few words in the English language that carried that same weight as the word “sperm.” Only “Mom.”
The problem with “Mom” was that she wasn’t provocative. All her meanings were already known. She suffered, and—depending on your school of thought—it was her fault or someone else’s. “Sperm” was unique in its power. It still elicited a slight frisson in casual conversation. All you had to do was say it and someone would laugh. It was naturally surprising.
Harrison had realized quite early in the title search that going for another key word was not the best approach. It would clearly be a pale imitation. The new title had to have a lot of different sounds and some overlapping images. It had to appear to be a title so foreign from his first that the content and direction of the second novel would be completely unpredictable. Like
Mongol Siblings in
Shreveport
. Something a little gothic. Second novels shouldn’t be as easy as the first ones—not on the writer and not on the public. They should telegraph
stretch,
thereby showing the artist’s inevitable trajectory to the big, big leagues.
He shuffled papers at his desk, looking for a great idea. Plot clot. A murder, did it have to be a murder? Couldn’t child abuse, a nice violent rape, couldn’t that suffice? A homosexual killer who rapes his victims through their eye sockets? A woman who viciously murders prostitutes? Something unpredictable. A black jazz musician who takes drugs and the white people who learn from his mistakes? A good story.
A doorbell awoke him from unsettling dreams.
“Hi.”
It was me.
He shuddered.
“Hi, Harrison,” I smiled insecurely. “Did you forget our appointment?”
“Oh no,” he sneered, feigning politeness while clearly letting me know that I am nothing. In case I forgot. By using a tonal sneer while saying the right words, he would never be quoted disadvantageously, and yet the message was crystal clear. They teach you this in private school. They teach you how to be the kind of guy who could never be charged with “but you said …” because he never said it.