I must with the same breath curse and bless the modern condition that drives me to such rigorous asceticism. Without so prevalent an epidemic of mindlessness and devotion to technology I would not chafe so violently, and seek the peace of solitude, if only to keep from being ill-tempered around friends. Because among these few my grievance goes from moral and aesthetic concern to inarticulate, or unarticulated agitation. Alone, a sort of tranquility settles over me, and I can once again feel the smooth surface of the pearl that has taken shape in my mind from the perpetual going-over I give the issue.
I take as the foundation of my theme my own loneliness. One should build foundations of the strongest material at hand. And by loneliness I do not mean depression of hopelessness – despair. It is in fact what gives me strength and keeps me in motion. The term as it’s generally used implies a generic yearning. Mine is specific, a craving more than a hunger. Probably it is too specific – probably, and fortunately. I have constructed a desire too specific to meet its fulfillment. Thus have I ensured the longevity of my foundation. I would have to create my life anew were I ever to find what I’m looking for.
Specific how? When my desire descends from words and ideas, when it escapes its language-womb, its objects are found in earthly forms and behavior. I will see a young couple, clothed earnestly in rebellion of conformity, pressing against each other with youthful violence, the skin of their faces touching with heedless familiarity – yes, this familiarity of skin which is gained by bold and constant aggression in lust, which creates a privacy among the multitudes far more sacred and profane than all your dubious attempts with technology (phones, music devices) which, when witnessed, drops into the core of my loneliness, my strength, like a hallucinogenic drug, and all my associations sever. I am struck dumb. Or, standing in line at the supermarket, I will imagine that the beautiful girl ahead of me is purchasing groceries for the home we share alone, the small studio with its bed, stove and desk, in which no words are exchanged – because I cannot imagine them, such a commonplace conversation would put me completely out of sorts, would be the utmost unfamiliar bliss! Stronger than the dimensions of the room we inhabit is the silence that inhabits us. Each act of lovemaking – many, many! – is a ritual of gratitude for the abundant silence that protects us from the world and from each other, that preserves us each individually.
It happens many times daily that I awaken from my reverie of alienation, from my litanies of solitude and formless desire. I walk the city streets with my eyes open, and my gaze achieves an abstract viscosity, it glides over everything, taking nothing in directly or point-blank, but accruing a long train of data that enters into me by other means. Though I am hardened outside, the rest of me is quite porous. When I walk, the locomotion of my creature’s body – torso, limbs, chin, pelvis – dissolves a certain encrustation (apathy). I become more vulnerable to myself and to what occurs around me. My perception flattens. I do not tend to differentiate between a mother pushing her baby in a stroller and a raked-up mound of orange and brown leaves being slowly redistributed by the wind. Impressions abandon their origins and arrive with a sort of pristine indifference. Let me clarify. I am never more at peace – curious, loving, unperturbed, magnanimous, understanding – than when I walk through the city alone. The world becomes a gentle rain observed from behind a pane of glass.
My tranquility is prodigious, filled with activity. I do not wish to imply that it is barren and still. I call it by that word precisely because its fecundity does not disturb me. An absence of thought and commotion leaves me highly agitated, gives me the sort of energy that collects among the uppermost tiers at the opera house before the orchestra strikes its first note, and the performers lurk backstage. I consider it a triumph over one’s native tongue to achieve a working inversion of one’s vocabulary. Every word carries its opposite, more powerful meaning in its reflection. When I discovered this it was as though I’d been using the dull edge of the knife my whole life. I embarked upon a new and rebellious lexicography that gave me great delight. I had a new set of eyes in my head with which I rediscovered the inner and the outer worlds. I achieved greater mastery over myself by overthrowing the tyranny of complacency. And it shut me up – turned words to granite chunks in my mouth. I began to trust them only as they were exchanged with myself or set down on paper. My unique fluency – my linguistic fingerprint – put me in dangerous relation to others. It became clear to me that if I had trouble making myself understood before, I would now find the endeavor nearly impossible, detrimental to both parties. So I nurtured it – and still do – secretly. I parade out my words in private, on the page, like a child with his toys which have meaning – names, stories – only in his imagination, in his incommunicable private universe.
I am not unaware of the irony in this development. That in order to more beautifully and accurately hymn my loneliness I have developed an approach to the world which guarantees my alienation from it. But again – I disavow hopelessness and despair. As long as the modern condition offers me nothing of my peculiar satisfaction, I do best to wander off as far as possible in the direction that most pleases me, that is, toward myself. My one avenue into society remains this writing, which I shall exercise no shame in proliferating. Rejection, misunderstanding will only strengthen me. And yet I know that there is a part of me which gives rise to this communication and which is immune to my induced metamorphoses. I speak with cloven tongue to this part in others. I will be understood. How do I know? Because, little by little, I begin to make sense to myself.
I find more sympathy in Aaron’s refusal to look into my eyes than in anyone else’s more concerted (therefore theatrical and false) efforts. He is very handsome and vain. He works his big-knuckled fingers gently over the down along his jaw line, and you can tell he is thinking about the beard he cannot grow. He is young, beautiful, radiant. I find his presence nourishing. His earnestness rises to the surface of his skin and, just looking at him, you justify your trust and comfort. My own is based not on the possibility of betrayal or abandonment – without which there can be no youth – but in knowing that I will never be confused as to his acceptance or rejection of me. My silence compliments him nicely; his silence is a visual monologue. I listen carefully with my eyes.
It is late autumn and we are sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park. I am steeped in his aura of self-absorption and a little giddy with his proximity. By association I am exalted – I transcend. I am the rag he carries with him to wipe his feet before entering Heaven. He will endure the humiliation of my servility because it is invisible to him, I mean taken for granted, expected. I defer to his vivacity.
“There goes Pickles.”
I detach my gaze from his face and follow his line of sight. An obese man in a soiled white apron is the object of his passive scrutiny. The man waddles laboriously in our direction.
“Pickles?”
“He’s an ex-hitman for the mafia.”
“He looks like a butcher.”
“He is a butcher. Look at his right hand.”
Pickles passes within a few feet of us. I give him an up-from-under glance. His right hand is… truncated. Each finger, including the thumb, ends before the last knuckle. There are great yellow stains beneath his armpits.
“Born that way?”
Aaron laughs.
“He gave up bumping people off and opened a butcher’s shop on Avenue C. He ran numbers out of the back. He was caught pinching a little off the top. They made it so he couldn’t pinch any more. He left the country for a year – returned to Naples, I guess – and came back all fat and quiet. This was in the seventies.”
Aaron is very satisfied with his story, and I am very satisfied with him. I revel in the tough-man tone he’s adopted. I sit there smiling as he chews on the skin of his thumb. His jaw flexes, twitches, the play of shadow and light on the contour of his face finds its reflection deep inside my gut. I imagine Pickles’ fat, foreshortened grip on the butcher knife… or how he must have watched, astonished, as its familiar violent function was worked by a different hand on his own flesh…
“They made him do it.”
“What, leave the country?”
“No, mutilate his own hand.”
“Really?”
This is too wonderful. I want to laugh, to put my arm around my dear friend’s shoulder.
“They held a gun to his head and placed their order. He used a cleaver once from pinky to index finger, chopping with his bad hand. He had to do it again for the thumb. There was just enough time for him to wrap the order in wax paper before passing out.”
Aaron’s obsession with violence is perfectly natural. What I mean is, the perversion is harmonious with his character. His own flesh is so pure, ruddy and radiant that self-worship must inevitably take the form of violence. He makes it seem desirable. He speaks about it with such flawless nonchalance you wonder whether he has ever experienced pain.
I move a few inches away from him, not out of fear, but to place myself in a more advantageous position.
I say: “Punch me.”
Without looking at me he replies, shaking his head, “You’re crazy.”
I don’t dare ask again.
We smoke a cigarette in silence, then stand up and crush the butts beneath our shoes. We are only a short distance from the exit onto Avenue A, and on the way toward it, he suddenly turns to me and shoves me, incredibly hard and with both palms flat against my chest, into the bushes. Tangled, scratched, and breathless, I close my eyes and smile up at the sky. Aaron runs away.
He has never read a word of what I write. He understands me perfectly.
