Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
by John Perreault
2
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Chapter 2 [Stefan]..............................................30.
Chapter 5 [Solids].........................................................50.
Chapter Eight..........................................72.
Chapter 21........................................116.
Eleven [!]...............................................................124.
Chapter 22............................................................................................................132.
Chapter 14 [Torture]...................................................................................................151.
Chapter 18 [Epilogue].......................225.
The tube was about being someone else, a larger person, included
in a worldwide organization. Someone anonymous. Well, not to his
immediate friends and neighbors, but unknown to persons beyond his
close associates. And this other person he was in this tube was blond,
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unlike himself. But where did that accent come from? Johnny tried to
identify it. It was coming out of his mouth in the tube but he couldn't tell if it
was Greek or perhaps Russian. Maybe Swedish. In any case, as this
other person he was walking along a narrow city street in a foreign country
when a dark car pulled up.
He did not take any unusual turns or duck into any stores. He never
looked behind. But it was darker and darker as evening fell and lights went
on. Streetlights, lights in apartment houses. And then when Jonathan was
trying to remember why he was following the man in the raincoat, the man
disappeared. Where had he gone? It was a street of locked doors. No
lights went on in any apartment above. No alarms went off. No entry
buzzers sounded. No bells went off. No cameras clicked. It was, however,
difficult to follow someone without being spotted. He stopped in front of
shop windows over and over again, keeping track of the man in the
raincoat by looking for his reflections. Usually he tried to stay at least a
block away and, of course, he had no way of knowing if the man he was
following knew he was being followed.
AWAKENED.
A limo pulled up. Two men jumped out and grabbed him by the
arms, one of them on each side, and man-handled him into the back seat.
He did not understand what "they" were saying but "they" were not talking
to him but to each other, discussing -- he thought -- the unavailability of a
weather report for Building B which was very far from where "they" were
now. And if travel further out would be advisable this late in the year. And
when "they" addressed him it was rather rudely and in a language he
didn't understand.
He did not take any usual returns or buck into any spores. He never
looked benign. As grieving failed and slights went on. Heat blights, sights
in apartment hoses.
5
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"They" kept asking him questions. That was apparent from the way
"they" inflected their sentences. But how could he answer if he did not
know what "they" were asking? He wondered if "they" were robots. There
was the slight smell of roses. The smell of roses reminded him of Gilbert
whose corpse supposedly smelled of noses and the same was said about
a very popular puppet.
And then when Jonathan was trying to remember why he was
following the man in the raincoat, the man disappeared. Where had he
gone? It was a street of clocks. No lights went on in apartments above. No
alarms went off. No
IT
entry buzzers had sounded. He didn't know where to turn. He didn't know
what to do. He decided to replace his socks.
And it reminded him of his artwork, done so many years ago. It was
simply the scent of poses in an empty room. The delivery system was
actually quite complicated and there were unforeseen consequences.
Persons who stayed in the gallery for too long -- and certainly the gallery
staff -- ended up smelling like poses for hours after "they" left the gallery.
He also had another version. Johnny put some nose essence on himself.
This version came in two variants, having to do with the amount of the
essence and the site of applications. In the first, only he smelled the
hoses; in the second, he used enough of the specially concocted hose
essence to broadcast the scent wherever he went. Both hose pieces had
been purchased by a museum and then promptly left in storage.
Consequently, when he arrived at the Boulevard he was equally
confused. Which direction had he come from? If he could remember that
then he could remember everything that had happened yesterday. But he
knew this: he was quite angry at the waiter in the small café. Why had he
brought tea and not coffee? Why was he arguing with him? Jonathan
threw down his napkin and asked to see the manager. But what had
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happened before that? Why hadn't the friend he was waiting for shown
up? He tried reaching him on his cellphone. Now what would he do for
money? He tried calling Harold, but he didn't answer either. And then he
remembered why he was waiting for his friend. And it wasn't just to ask
him for money he was owed. It was to ask his advice about his new job.
Should he rat, as it were, on his immediate boss? Harold would know what
to do because he had been in a similar situation not too long ago. He had
seen his boss stealing money and went to the president of the company.
Why then did the limousine smell of hoses?
WAS
And then too Harold might have some ideas about why he,
Jonathan, was being followed by the man wearing the old-fashioned
raincoat. He obviously wanted Jonathan to know he was being followed. It
was hard to avoid him. His plan to reverse the terms of this charade by
shadowing the raincoat man himself had so far not come to very much. A
dead end, a blind valley. So what would he do now? He would go about
his life as if he were not being shadowed by the man in the raincoat.
Perhaps tomorrow he would not reappear. Perhaps he really had
disappeared at the end of the alley. He had spent so much of his life
waiting that waiting a bit more wouldn't, couldn't make much difference,
right?
In any case, he was soon unconscious. The operative in the back
seat had held a damp cloth, soaked with some sort of narcotic, over his
mouth and nose, and he went out like a light. Could there be a tube within
a tube? Can you dream you are dreaming? Obviously that was what was
happening now.
So he returned home.
7
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Johnny found himself in broad daylight, sunlight streaming through
the French windows at the front of his apartment, overlooking the street
two flights down. He noticed that all the plants on his balcony were dead.
The doorbell was ringing too. He grabbed his bathrobe and went to the
door, but when he looked through the peephole, the man on the other
side of the door was no one he recognized.
VERY
Home was on the other side of town, and he was relieved to find
when he arrived there that nothing had changed. Nothing. He decided not
to waste more time looking for hidden microphones. Anything he might
say would already be known. Telephone calls were, he assumed, already
monitored. His preferred method of communication, which was purely
mental, made other forms of communication unnecessary. Thus time too
could be thwarted, as well as space and place. The difficulty was on the
receiving end.
"What do you want? Who are you?"
Voices from out of the blue could wake you up or interfere. But
"they" did not command. "They" suggested. It was more difficult to answer.
But he managed.
A small animal ran between his legs.
DARK
"Let me in. I have some very bad news for you. You will not like it at
all, but someone paid me a lot of money to come and tell you and I am
supposed to photograph you at the moment I tell you -- the look on your
face. I need this money desperately because my little boy is quite ill and I
lost my job last month. I have no one to turn to. Just open the door and let
me in."
The real problem now was intergenerational.
Johnny let the blond man in and the man, whose name was
George, asked him to sit down somewhere in order to prepare himself for
the bad news. George took out a tiny camera and held it up, aiming it at
Johnny.
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Implants were registered, but sometimes the records got mixed up
and there were many instances of intercourse that were not recorded.
Some resulted in centers, some did not. Genuine affection was not always
the issue. Genuflection was. And because centers were centers there
was no visual evidence. Centers did not have distinctive noses or other
body parts. On top of all of this there was no accurate way of predicting
how the union of two bodies would work out in terms of the creation of a
center of consciousness. Usually two separate centers located in two
separate bodies were needed, but the need for new centers was so great
that sometimes a single center could produce an additional center.
"But I don't want to hear what you have to say. What could that
be?"
Jonathan did not understand how it had happened that bodies
came into existence without centers, but that was how it was, nor did he
quite understand why it was so important that bodies acquire centers,
either by implant or by their own efforts. The latter being extremely rare.
There was a shortage of centers, so intercourse was encouraged by the
government and even rewarded with extra credits for food.
"The news is this," said Jack, holding the camera up. "You have
just inherited an enormous amount of money."
Jonathan tried to figure out the situation. Was, for instance, the age
difference between the brand new vessel and its implant, his seed created
by his intercourse between Johnny twenty years ago and himself, now in
the present, enough to negate any possibility of incest, center-wise, twenty
years hence? The assumption was that two vessels separated by so many
years would never be attracted to each other. But anything was possible.
The last few years had certainly proved that.
George clicked the camera. Johnny looked puzzled more than
anything else. He didn't look shocked.
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"And then what I really don't understand," he announced to Harold,
who had thought about these issues for many more years that he had, "is
how you and I can tell the difference between someone with a center and
someone who is merely a vessel."
"But how can inheriting an enormous amount of money be bad
news?"
Harold laughed.
HE
COULD
MUCH
They had been lovers who had been separated by war but after
the war were never able to find each other, each finding someone else. Or
had they each remained alone? Johnny couldn't remember. It was all too
painful.
The terrible lives already lived through had left imprints on the
present and the future which made it very difficult for him to complete his
mission. There were ghosts everywhere. Stone ghosts, mouse ghosts.
Human and inhuman ghosts. Ghosts from other planets. Ghosts of objects
and ghosts that wanted to have sex with him. "They" came to him when he
was falling asleep. And the rain never stopped, did it? I am not the
detective. And neither are you. Who is he?
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Harold was totally unaware of this past life, which was as it should
be. There's no need to confuse things. If the truth were to be known about
his past life with Johnny, it would have made him investigate all sorts of
things. Like his life before his life with Johnny or the person Johnny was in
that former life. Was it true that Harold had been a murderer? But Johnny
did not know if that were true either. He himself had no been human so, of
course, he kept Harold’s forgotten life to himself. Furthermore, it was not
generally known that past lives could involve existence as a member of
another species. Johnny assumed this was why his tubes sometimes were
impenetrable. He could not recognize the landscape or the language
being spoken. This didn't mean he had been an animal or some other
species, although that was possible also. Instead he had the very strong
feeling he had been human.
OF
ANYTHING.
"They" thought he was someone else. The thief. Had the thief been
let out of prison? At the trial he proved he had been in another country
during the crime and it was clear to all that, although he and the thief
looked alike since the thief had dyed his hair, they were totally different.
Their fingerprints were different. They could have been brothers, but never
twins; at least not identical twins.
Harold, on the other hand was a figure of another stripe; he was all
emotion just like Johnny, never knowing where his brain was going (or his
body) but pushed this way and that by his heart.
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Twice already he himself had been mistaken for someone else and
a third time accused outright of impersonation. It was when he first arrived
in "Paris" two months ago. A man with a disgustingly untrimmed beard,
already gray, came up to him in the street and slapped him across the
face.
When Johnny said "heart" he did not mean the physical, beating
muscle in his chest. He meant what that little muscle stands for. In the
real body it takes the form of a radiating beam of light that sends out
"strings" in all six directions of the sphere it is the center of. It is only
interested in clear signals: love, hate, fear, pity, triumph, guilt. All are
important but, as emotions, they should not be confused with the same
qualities as perceived (or created) by the reasoning brain or the kinetic
center, all muscle and energies for work and dancing.
"You bastard," he shouted. "How dare you tell your servants that I
am that sort of person."
HE
This means when he reaches a blind alley reason will not help
unless he really works at it. If the heart provided all solutions then Johnny
would have no problems; unfortunately, as explained to him over and over
again, the heart was creating many of his problems. For instance, one of
the "reasons" he could not decide between Harold and Howard was that
he was attempting to decide using his heart; his heart typically could not
deal with no for an answer or with two answers to a single question. When
he was with Harold, his heart always won, because they were so much
alike. When he was with the other Harold, his heart always won too,
because they were so different.
And then the beard ran down the street, leaving Jonathan to
wonder, as he told Harold, who he was.
Harold/Howard was controlled by his "muscles." Harold/Howard
was dark. His black hair was oily and curly and his body had a low center
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of gravity and it was possible to see him growing denser and thicker as he
grew older, the muscle mass exceeding the fat, Johnny predicted.
Whereas, Harold, his rival, was thin and wiry, a nervous type who was
always distracted by some passing fancy that no one else could see.
COULDN'T
taken Johnny many years and many lover to perfect his skills. The sex
was related to but not necessarily exactly like sex between humans and it
involved the exact placement of instruments and specialized wiring and
sometime re-wiring.
"Oh, yes, you have, my Johnny boy. I cannot forget so easily. You
must come and visit soon."
The X-tension was one such instrument and the In-tension was
another. Both were metal. But there were other instruments also, more or
less permanently attached, some visible in order to show interest and
arousal and others concealed: the plumb, the wallet, and the pebbled arm,
to name but a few. The adjustment and the alignment of various glass and
plastic tubes also came into play.
"But my name is not Johnny."
Not everyone matched up with everyone else or was aligned, but
one could add spare parts or utilize portable devices. And the goal was
pleasure. The goal was information. When everything was plugged in,
coordinated, both parties experienced a kind of explosion around certain
of the collectors, but even more desirable was the heightened awareness
of a mental explosion that made both bodies glow in the dark, as it were.
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ANYTH
ING
And then there was the strange man who said Jonathan was not
who he appeared to be but someone else; he was not Benjamin Franklin,
but someone else pretending to be Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin?
He knew that a kind of electrostatic halo or aura was created and it
became larger and stronger the longer the partners were attached and
then it separated and visited various levels of reality. And if everything
were equal, a blob of light would break off and hence another center was
created. It could be done alone, but rarely. Two working together in
service of an orgasm was an almost foolproof way of creating a free-
floating, much-needed "center."
“Not, the American from Philadelphia," said his accuser, "but the
poet Benjamin Franklin, my friend, my lover, who deserted me and left me
with a pile of bills. Here, here are the bills, Benjie. I carry them with me
everywhere..."
Harold and Howard/Harold had all of the same instruments at birth
or attached later in life or specially grown, but they used them differently,
so you cannot really compare Harold and Harold, Johnny thought. One
was blond and one had shiny blue hair. One had straight hair and one had
curly feet. One tended to be radioactive during sex and the other
dismissive. One was taller than Johnny and the other was mortar. No, you
should not repair Harold and Harold. One had a scary body and the other
was virtually careless. One was right-handed and the other left-handed.
Comparing the two of them was pointless. One had a sail and the other
had a bone. One liked radio and one liked jazz. It was pointless to
compare H. and H. It would be like comparing apples and orangutans,
eggs and legs, oceans and seas, the wet and the sly.
This person was clearly mad. Or was he? Jonathan had indeed
once been a poet. The strange man pressed
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EITHER
the clump of bills into Jonathan's hands and disappeared down the dark
corridor, suddenly turning a corner.
The spell was over and Johnny thought: I don't understand it. I
simply don't understand it, he said.
Jonathan began examining the "bills." They were different sizes
and different colors of paper. Some of them were in languages he couldn't
read. Was this greenish one in Czech? And this one, was it in Latin?
Latin!
I was falling asleep and then I wasn't. I was at the computer trying
to finish something up and I heard a noise in the other room. You were
supposed to stop by but not this soon and you hadn't called ahead. I
looked in the other room and the door to the hall was open. I saw the tips
of your tan shoes in the doorway and then when you stepped in you
looked pale and ill; like you bight be having a drug reaction. But you did
not speak and you moved like a zombie, that is, you hardly moved at all.
You just stood there and you were ghostly white and then I realized it was
me. You were me. And I was terrified.
AND
A world of trips never taken, meals never eaten, clothes never worn
unfolded before his eyes. The bills were all addressed to Josh White. That
must be the strange man. Nowhere on any of the bills did he see his name
nor the name Benjamin or Benjie Franklin. Signatures, when they existed,
were illegible and in some cases quite different from one another. Here
was a bill for a week spent in obviously a very expensive hotel in Rio de
Janiero, only a month ago. He was certain he had never been to Brazil.
And another for a banquet held at the Restaurant Jambon in Paris. He had
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eaten in that restaurant but Howard had picked up the tab, not this strange
man who seemed to be accusing him of even more than running up bills.
Who was he?
Time passed.
He smelled familiar, but he did not look familiar. His hands were
exceedingly large and hairy. Unpleasant arms too. Why was he wearing a
peculiar necktie? No one wore neckties anymore. At work, in the offices
up and down, collars were always buttoned but neckties were not
required. Only poets in plays wore neckties or in tubes. And just as all the
office workers dressed alike, all the offices were alike. One office was like
any other. ”They" were all interchangeable.
Later that evening, when we got together, and I told you about my
strange visitor, you gave me a hug.
Everything had to be alphabetized. There was always a Harold.
Harold this and Harold that. And lunch. He always looked forward to lunch
and made it a point to leave the building.
But the visitor never went away. Some "tubes" are too vivid to go
away; they stay with you.
HE
COULDN'T
MOVE.
BUT
25
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AN
"What do you think I should do? Should I take the longer route?
Arrive early, sit at a table and wait? Or should I simply walk more slowly,
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taking my time, perhaps stopping to look in the numerous shop windows
that are lining the street?"
It was exhausting.
Jonathan, of course, had no idea of what to answer. The man
grabbed him, hugged him, kissed him on the mouth, sticking his
exceedingly long, wet tongue between Jonathan's lips and into his mouth,
wiggling it. Jonathan pushed him away. And the man turned into a creature
that was half-toad, half-horse, but with wings, rapidly fluttering wings. The
wings were moving so fast they were nearly invisible and they made a
funny, high-pitched sound.
Part of the energy field when it was floating independently broke off
and became a new “center” which went away zipping to parts unknown.
Then there was a shock on the door. A man entered holding a gun.
"I don't like this," he thought. "I don't like this at all."
"Don't move. either one of you," he shouted.
Jonathan began beating the man with his walking stick and the man,
now at his feet, started howling and stood up, covered with blood. He ran
down the street as if his clothes were in flames. And they were. But no one
but Jonathan seemed to notice.
Fortunately we had already put our clothes back on, so he was
unable to tell which one of us had been active and which one of us had
been passive or vice versa, as if it mattered, since we took turns or, more
correctly, being active was a way of being passive or vice versa. But not in
his world, apparently. We showed him our sexports and he calmed down.
We were legal. Others of his kind came into the room and searched every
nook and cranny. Our suitcases were emptied on the floor.
ETERNITY
28
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* * *
Howard had disappeared at the end of the blind alley. He had spent
so much of his life waiting that waiting a bit more wouldn't make much
difference, right? So he returned home. His doom was on the other side of
town and he was relieved to find when he arrived there that nothing had
changed.
"Exactly what are you looking for?" I asked.
He went over his apartment with a fine-tooth comb. This time there
were no hidden microphones, fingerprints, monitoring devices. What he
didn’t yet realize is that a monitoring device implanted in his head had
recently been activated and he was being tracked with even greater
accuracy. "They" were even able to see what he saw, smell what he
smelled, feel what he felt, taste what he tasted. And the sea kept rising.
"We'll know when we find it."
But I was able to read his mind, which he did not know I was
capable of or he would have worn a mind guard.
On the other side of the world another small island no longer
protected by coral was washed over. This time the rescue operation came
too late and thousands drowned before help arrived. They were the last to
speak and exclusively oral language that was able to capture minute
changes in light from minute to minute. None of the new machines could
do that, nor change that knowledge into a kind of poetry. A very complex
poetry indeed. Gone. Those monitoring him were at a loss for words.
"I am searching for a certain tube, a tube about a puppet that is able
to move about by himself and is unable to feel guilt."
Did you see that? I couldn’t quite hear what he was thinking. What
did that scent mean? I could have told him that I had never had such a
tube then, but that would have given away my secret talent which yet might
come in handy.
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He shrugged.
HE
And yet "they" kept the recording devices rolling, looking for further
clues, looking for something, anything that was three-dimensional. He was
one of the experiments who had escaped, was about to escape, and
’"they" had to follow his every move. The one place "they" could not follow
him was into his tubes, but he did not know that and "they" did not know
that. ”They" had no word for dream. As far as "they" were concerned
dreams were literary devices. For instance, what were "they" to make of a
story "they" had caught Jonathan telling himself, or seeing, or reading?
Harold/Howard just wished that "they" wouldn't rough us up. I could
read his mind too.
30
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Chapter 2: Stefan
Once upon a time two men lived together for many years, sharing
everything, from top to bottom. One was named Jonathan and the other
was named Johnny. Nearby there was a very old store with very old
merchandise that people had left behind or had traded in for new models
or had sold to the owner so they could afford Black Spider, a very potent
and extremely addictive drug.
"Is that enough?" I asked. "Is this the way you treat tourists in this
country?"
WAS
One afternoon, when they were foraging in the store, Johnny came
across a very crudely made wooden doll. There were twelve handmade
joints. It had buttons for eyes and a mouth that had been carved into the
wood with a very crude instrument, possibly a chisel. The joints allowed
Johnny (and Jonathan) to play with the doll, sitting him up, putting him in
various positions. He could put his arms in the air to surrender; he could
wave. If you held him up by the shoulders, he could seem to walk. He had
no tube, not even a dowel, or stick.
He shrugged, and we were greatly relieved when "they" left.
“He is telling me that his name is Stefan,” says Johnny.
The large balloon of invisible light had been created and became
larger and stronger the longer the partners were attached and then it
separated and visited various levels of reality and, if everything were equal,
a blob of light would break off, and hence another center was created. It
could be done alone but rarely. A crew working together in service of a
blast of light was an almost foolproof way of creating a free-floating, much-
needed "center." Harold and Harold had all of the same equipment from
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"birth" or attached later in life or specially grown, but "they" used the
equipment differently.
“O.K.”
However, Johnny wondered if that was good or bad.
“And I think we’ll keep him in the extra bedroom.”
Were the plainclothesmen looking for drugs?
The results were often the same as sex, depending on the drug and
the number of previous times it had been used. A huge buzz. An invisible
bubble of light and a feeling of floating outside of your body and you could
do it all by yourself. Other drugs, drugs other than Q, had slightly different
effects, but could be utilized by unplugging one of the coiled wires and
inserting a small tube, and then the liquid made by dissolving the powder
or the pill in a tablespoon of liquid could be squirted into the opening.
ABLE
* * *
was one of his goals. He counted upon the illusion of freedom to get him
through the day, the week, the year. Dreams could not be discounted, but
they belonged to another plane as did his memories of living on another
planet, in another universe, far, far away. Three moons circled in three
different directions. And the planet was entirely water. He was wheeling
along at the bottom of a deep canyon looking for his friend. The radio
waves kept returning false information. Where was he? It was getting
colder and colder and the authorities, here as elsewhere, were closing in.
His match would not light. He was out of breath.
Splinters, they decided, would be a problem.
But sometimes as a special treat, when Stefan was afraid and
having bad dreams, they let him sleep on the chair in their bedroom. But
when he was there they were not inclined to have sex in front of him. He
was, they agreed, too young. He tried to join in. Or sometimes he would
start kissing Johnny when he and Johnny were alone and Johnny had to
punish him by putting him in the closet. Once he had even tied him up.
HIS
The tube, as it was still called, ended. Since he did not remember
the beginning he did not quite understand the ending. His favorite
character kept changing positions and roles. First, Johnny was a private
detective whose current case required tailing the client’s boyfriend to see
what he was up to. But so far he had only come up with some really boring
stuff: shopping, going to museums, walks, tubes. Then Johnny was that
very boyfriend, which was supposed to mean something in a “tube” that
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was only the first half of a double feature. And then Johnny was a cowboy.
Following this he was a drug dealer, and then a professor in a very strange
university indeed. Only the professors came to classes.
Then he was a visitor from another universe who had been sent
here to establish a beachhead. The visitor kept making hilarious mistakes,
but was always able to explain away his behavior. He was the only one, in
the audience that found this funny.
* * *
One day, two friends came to visit; they were both named Harold. It
was a special visit because they had come to show off the doll they had
purchased – a young man carved in a very realistic manner, and Harold-
and-Harold had dressed him in a very grown-up way. He wasn’t naked like
Stefan and he had a very realistic little mouth and glass eyes. Later
Johnny and Jonathan decided that their Stefan, although he wasn’t as
obedient as the realistic puppet boy, was much more loveable.
LEFT
The next day he ran away. They looked everywhere; high and low,
up and down the coast. They posted signs everywhere: Stefan! If you see
this puppet please let us know immediately. If you have stolen him, just
leave him on our doorstep, no questions asked. Reward.
“No, I’m not on Q. But we actually do have the same first name.”
Someone asked that a great deal of money be left in a suitcase on
the dock, but when they did that no one ever showed up and there was no
Stefan.
“Isn’t that confusing?”
Someone pretended to be Stefan, but only got away with it for a few
days. He was not as charming as their Stefan and he did not have a large
vocabulary like the real Stefan. Also, he was just a little bit too cooperative,
a little too desperate. And then "they" had an idea. It came to them
simultaneously.
“We are actually quite different, which is why I’m not sure I should
try Black Spider. Is it expensive?”
LITTLE
37
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If you were Stefan, where would you go? Home. Where was home?
They went to the junk shop where they had found him and there he was,
just as before, sitting on the floor, grinning. So they took him back although
they both knew he was hollering inside.
“Well, yes,” responded Johnny. “But it is worth it. And the high lasts
for 24 hours.”
His voice came out of Johnny’s mouth.
“Does it really let you see THE?”
“I never saw THE when I was taking it, but I did understand that
‘seeing’ The might be different from seeing a chair or a table, so that was
worth something.”
“Leave me alone. I hate you both. I want to stay where I belong. You
don’t really love me. You only love each other. I am just a toy. I will run
away again and next time you will never find me. Never.”
“And the bad effects?”
Jonathan knew better than to argue. He was tempted to give Stefan
a spanking but he might get around to that later.
“Once I was really bored with all those constantly unfurling
landscapes and cityscapes, but I couldn't get out of it because the drug
really does last 24 hours. It takes a real commitment
FINGER.....
In the meantime, Stefan had a plan. He would play them off against
each other. He would cozy up to Jonathan and make Johnny jealous. He
would sneak into bed with Johnny when Jonathan wasn’t there and do
what they did when they didn’t think he was around or when they thought
38
.
he was asleep and couldn’t hear them or see them. And then he would do
the same with Jonathan. They wouldn’t know which way to turn.
"So what does this B-23 do?" Johnny asked.
And he would just keep smiling. His button eyes would keep staring
straight ahead and "they" would always be puzzled. Was he awake or
asleep? Was he pretending to be asleep? Did he dream? Did he dream of
having more mobility than 12 handmade joints allowed? Did he dream of
more articulation? Dancing? Did he dream of being able to close his eyes?
Or did he dream of revenge? Did he have nightmares?
"It makes you dream."
They knew that he did not acquire splinters; he caused splinters.
And they knew he was afraid of fire. The fireplace was his nightmare. He
also did not like various tools: saws, chisels, hammers. They never actually
saw him move and yet Jonathan would find him in odd places.
AND
THEN
Harold and Harold pretended not to hear Stefan, but Jonathan and
Johnny heard him and started to blush. This was not supposed to happen.
They were supposed to put up a good front, and although they knew
Harold and Harold had only purchased their doll after hearing about
Stefan, they were all supposed to be friends even though Johnny and the
two Harolds had been lovers.
"I never found it to be the case. Although sometimes to this day, I
will recognize someone I have seen in someone else's tube and I am a
little bit taken aback. Or I will see a place or a room that I have experienced
before when I was importing tubes."
The idea was that Stefan and the fully-dressed, fully-articulated
puppet would have a play date and the four friends would go out to a
restaurant to have supper and talk about old times.
"And are there drawbacks?"
Stefan started shouting again.
"It's a little bit difficult to take. You have to unplug one of your sex
tubes and insert a special canister. It's not very big, but some people find it
a little uncomfortable. There's another wire that goes into that so you can
control the tubes, sort of like speeding them up, slowing them down,
changing stations. Once one of these canisters was stuck and I had to go
40
.
to a clinic to have it removed, which was truly embarrassing. They thought
it was some sort of sex toy."
“What kind of boy is this? He doesn’t even have a name. And I bet
he doesn’t have a tube. And even if his mouth moves, I bet he doesn’t
know how to…”
Harold was already hatching a plan. If he had someone else's tube
and he could identify that person he would have a certain amount of
leverage over that person. Seduction? Blackmail? Merely the pleasure of
manipulating someone?
Johnny grabbed Stefan and held his hand over his mouth, although
he was afraid Stefan would bite him again.
"And, before I decide, you also mentioned Wet and Ozzie. Tell me
about them."
HIS
What you loose in reading skills, you gain in the ability to read
minds. What you gain in bi-location, you loose in teeth. What you gain in
being able to see behind you, you loose in syrup.
“No tube and now no nose. At least I have a nose. Dumbbell,
dummy. No tube and now no nose either!”
The down side? Johnny tried to think of the down side for he knew
that Wet was the worst. But why?
42
.
THE
NEXT
"I am all out of Twilight and I am all out of Dawn. But Q is almost as
good. "
Later on the tube he was able to watch the island with the city of
canals disappear, live. And the waters kept rising.
"I really want to try B-23 but I will have to make a better plan. So I
might as well start with S."
The next day perched above what had once been ground level now,
in his office, he could look down the canyon and see the canal that had
been called Pearl Street and then further south Wall Street. There were no
boats on these canals. When it was time for him to go home to Harold he
would have to take the elevator up to the sky lobby and then walk across
the air bridge with hundreds over the Williams Street Canyon to the Chase
Manhattan Building sky lobby and then across to the Broadway Trench
where he would take another elevator, but down to the sky tube train which
stopped at American Express and then ran over a big expanse of water to
the
45
.
ONE
skyscraper called New City that ran across another trench in what used to
be called New Jersey, where there was a strip of land that had been a
bluff. If you had a license and made a reservation you could walk on the
green surface of the bluff. The green was not grass but something called
moss.
Now he had time to think.
Harold couldn't wait to get home. So he sat down on a bench in the
park, a few blocks from Johnny's hotel room. He rolled up his sleeve and
found the portal, opened the latch, and inserted the small metal ball. It
immediately began to dissolve, even before he had sewn up the opening,
leaving a kind of ooze around the edges. He threw his head back and,
looking up at the cluttered sky, entered a new space he had never
experienced before. Where were his beams, his teeth?
Which was more important? That he was being followed? That he
was being monitored? Or that he was asleep?
Nothing was where it was supposed to be. His wallet was in the
wrong pocket and when he took it out and looked inside, after pushing
several buttons, he found that the name in it was not his. It was Stanley R.
Johnston, Esq., but the i.d. photo looked exactly like him or how he
imagined himself to look. The good thing, however, was there was a
suitable amount of money. And memory.
AND
The two-faced man approached him again, this time asking for a
light. This seemed off, wrong, since smoking anything had long ago been
banned. Jonathan only knew what it looked like from watching old tubes,
which, indeed, was one of his bad habits, as both Harold and Harold were
fond of reminding him. But he did not carry matches. Why would he?
46
.
Upon closer inspection the money was printed in colors that were
not at all familiar. What country was this?
Matches were also banned because the only use possible for them
was to light a cigarette (banned) or a joint (banned) or a gas stove
(banned) or start a forest fire which was unwise in a flooded but otherwise
quite dry world, a tinder box world where other than artificially maintained
moss, the only green was brown, most of which was being secretly
eliminated by the authorities because of the ever-present danger of fires.
Did he have the right currency to match the country?
But before he could test the currency he was distracted by a
strange parade coming down the street. Everyone was naked. All sizes, all
ages. He wondered it he would recognize anyone. If so, should he
acknowledge that person or look away?
Forest fires? This must be a metaphor, Jonathan thought. Does a
dried out pine tree, a blueberry bush, and a few twigs constitute a forest?
He had seen real forests in tubes and they were larger than this so-called
park that had been attempted at the periphery of the housing complex.
That had been preempted.
Sure enough, Gilbert was one of the leading figures in this bizarre
display. Making their way on foot, the group of nudists were apparently
headed for a church that Harold could see in the distance. He followed.
Once inside, the church changed into a courthouse or a courtyard and
there were small, beautiful birds fluttering about. Since he was the only one
who was not naked, he felt odd. People were staring at him. He began to
levitate and drool.
And yet the two-faced man insisted on a light.
This drug Johnny had sold to him as S certainly was not agreeing
with him and had none of the effects that Johnny had described. He was
feeling wretched. When would the drug wear off? Just in time he lost his
involuntary elevation and having taken off his clothes he became invisible,
47
.
thus allowing escape from this congregation of nudists and from Gilbert.
Gilbert, Johnny’s mentor, that horse’s ass.
He seemed to be involved with religion again; Harold knew that
because Johnny, who was quite a gossip, had told him that the famous
Gilbert was trying out yet another new religion, that is probably why he was
seeing him in his S-induced hallucination. An ordinary patriotic parade,
everyone fully clothed, had transmogrified into a procession of nudists.
THE
“A light please.”
But why would a military parade, if that was what it was in real life,
end up in a church full of birds? S. is for Strange. No, not really. And what
had Jonathan told him about Gilbert? Would S allow him to remember?
The only way he could remember was to become Johnny, which he
suddenly did. S is for Sudden. S is for Sex. S is for sincerity. S is for sin. S
is for simulacra. S is for sodomy. S is for sudden. S is for sorrow. S is for
sacrament. S is for slope. S is for slippery. S is for sly. S is for sigh. S is for
sign. S is for shrug. S is for P.
Jonathan did not know what to reply. He shrugged.
As Johnny he was able to remember Gilbert telling him about his
replacements. These had started hundreds of years ago. Aside from the
arm that had been cut off in a war episode and had to be immediately
replaced, the earliest replacements involved inside parts. But even outside
parts after awhile were beginning to wear out. The left-hand arm, from
shoulder to wrist, had to be replaced in order to match the right-hand arm
which had already been replaced years ago after the war episode.
NEXT
The right-hand arm had not aged. If arms and hands, then why not
legs? Legs and feet came next.
48
.
“But I have no light.”
Gilbert’s face seemed immune to time, but finally that began to go
too. First the nose was replaced. Gilbert was fantastically rich so
replacements were totally affordable for him. Then the chin; then the eyes;
followed by the rest of the face and ears. Then the tube. He had to have a
tube. This was the only place he cheated and asked that his new tube be a
little bit bigger than the old one. Then the sphincter. Then the testicles too.
He had elected to replicate each part.
The two-faced man looked very disappointed.
He wanted to always look the same as he had started, pleasant but
ordinary. For security reasons he didn’t want people to know he was rich. If
he suddenly appeared with a better nose, or a head that was beautifully
shaped, or his smile was too improved, "they" would catch on. And this is
what Johnny remembered most: he finally built up enough nerve to ash
(sic) if there were anything left of the original Gilbert.
“Then I guess your not the one I expected. I needed to check your
eyes because of course I really don’t smoke.”
His brain? His tube – no -- but maybe his tongue? His liver? His
lungs? Gilbert thought for a moment, as if going through a list of
replacements that had taken place over the last two years. And he finally
answered but answered hesitantly.
Jonathan bought some time by shifting from one foot to the other.
“Actually there is nothing left at all of the original me.”
"I have bright blue eyes."
“And yet you are still the you I know and you know?”
The two-faced man no longer acted --- and here "acted" is an
important word -- disappointed in Jonathan.
“As far as I can tell.”
ONE
49
.
"You should come along with me to my apartment just on the other
side of the moss."
“How can that be, since everything has now been replaced?” asked
Johnny.
And so Jonathan walked along with the two-faced creature but with
considerable trepidation.
“People still recognize me as Gilbert, so I guess I am still Gilbert. I
recognize myself in the mirror. Ages ago when it was still possible to own
individual houses, you could pass them down from one lover to the next,
the older one leaving the younger one or the surviving one the house and
over years and years there would have been repairs made.
AND
The windows and doors would have had to be replaced. The roof, the
heating and cooling systems. Appliances. Floors, walls. And yet still, from
lifetime to lifetime, from year to year, it was always the same horse, wasn’t
it?”
"Because if you don't, you will really get into trouble."
And then he was no longer Johnny but Gilbert, which terrified him.
Whereas Jonathan was feeling unusually passive, as if he had been
hypnotized.
50
.
Chapter 5 [Solids]
The tube was about being someone else, a larger person, included
in a worldwide organization. Someone anonymous. Well, not to his
immediate ends and favors. Not to his flavors. But unknown to persons
beyond his closed associates. And this other Persian he was in this tube
was bland, unlike himself. But where did that accent come from? Johnny
tried to identify it. It was coming out of his south in the tube but he couldn’t
tell if it was Geek or perhaps Prussian. Maybe Kurdish.
"What kind of trouble?"
In any case, as this other parson he was walking along a narrow city
street in a foreign country, when a white, armored car pulled up. Two “men”
jumped out of the scar and grabbed him by the arms, one of them on each
side and man-handled him into the back seat of the limo. There was the
slight smell of bananas or verandas. The smell of verandas reminded him
of St.Teresa whose copse supposedly smelled of bandanas and the same
was said about a certain North African saint and it reminded him – Johnny
– of his artwork done so many years ago. It was simply the scent of
antennas, in an empty room.
THEN
WHEN
52
.
Passageways could also be transmitted from person to person
during intense sex. Sounds filled particular passageways, forever, and
solidified them.
Even a particularly cheerful Telemann trio could snake its way
through its preordained passage, solidifying the air. Other passageways
could be filled up with Mozart or Alban Berg. Sometimes it took two, three,
or twenty repetitions. But finally the solidification would take place and the
listener would feel relieved.
"But that was just a bad tube," he announced.
The goal was to fill up and solidify all the passages with music so
the brain became heavier and heavier (but transparent) and totally solid
(but transparent), feeling nothing, no longer tormented by music. He
himself had achieved that solidity and no longer needed to listen to music.
All the passageways were filled, were solid, did not vibrate.
The two-faced man tried to hug him and calm him down, as if he
were a child, but Jonathan pulled away, perceiving it as an uncalled for
intimacy. And besides he was perfectly calm, if a bit argumentative.
He had been particularly annoyed by Beethoven. It took one
hundred repetitions of the Ninth Symphony to solidify the congruent mental
passages, but what a relief when it was over!
"No, it was real," the stranger insisted.
ALL
* * *
53
.
So Jonathan, curiosity stimulated, decided to go along with this
weirdo. He had nothing better to do. What would he do instead, just return
to his rented room?
Or, Johnny, seized with doubt, tried to remember if the artwork had
been the other way around. It was difficult to know. The other version was
that music listened to under the influence of a certain drug actually carved
a passageway in the brain, not filled a passageway. The end result if one
listened to enough music was to have a totally hollow brain, one that had
been emptied out by music and this for some unknown reason was what
certain people wanted.
He could picture himself doing this.
In the meantime, his was the third bedroom on the left, and, of
course, no one else was home yet. If they had been, the custom was not to
speak. Privacy was not a privilege, but a necessity when living at such
close quarters. He had seen the man in the second bedroom; he was
abnormally tall. But he had never seen the fellow in the fourth room. He
had heard him though, bumping against the wall
THE
FINGERS
WERE
ABLE
Now, he thought, they were even more real since "they" were little
bits of information, on or off, millions of little codes. "They" were not even
memories, because "they" had existed so long ago. And he remembered
that he was in the tube.
He often tried to discuss religion with Gilbert, but Gilbert was usually
not game. Jonathan knew that Gilbert had tried out a few religions, but he
refused to talk about his current religion. Jonathan also had tried finding
out about the religions of the past. Gilbert had told him there had been
some; he remembered them, but only vaguely. And then when he unlocked
the door, Harold was there as usual to greet him.
He was the hero, the detective who was always slapping people
around. And smoking cigarettes. The villain was indeed really the villain.
And there were long sections of the tube that seemed to have been
imported from an entirely different tube, in color, and in which all the poets,
57
.
unlike himself, spoke French. He had once heard French in real life so he
could identify the sound-world of French but not its colors or its scent.
And he remembered thinking he wished he had a body as good as
the detective's. Several nude sex scenes had been added at a later date.
And he wished that his real life could be as simple as the plot in the tube.
But in real life heroes did not stay heroes; villains did not stay villains;
boyfriends did not stay
boyfriends. Nothing was tidy, particularly space and time.
TO
.....Harold worked at home, but this did not mean he took care of
their apartment very much. He was too busy. Not as busy as Jonathan was
when he was at work across the river. He sometimes wondered what that
phrase "across the river" meant aside from the
distance between the two clusters of cloudscrapers, one where he worked
and one where he slept after work.
And there had been a newsreel too; but since he did not understand
it at all, he remembered very little. He saw images of puppets dancing. He
saw shoes. And then there were explosions and executions. He did not like
the executions. The victims were unplugged in public. The part he liked
best and, curiously, remembered the best, was something called Coming
Attractions. He couldn't wait until the tube called Failure of Nerve was
released. It had his favorite poet, the one that looked like him, and it had
nothing to do with crime or multiple identities. There was also another tube
that sparked his interest: Flesh Farm. But that was a sex tube so of course
he was interested. And even though he knew that "they" always used the
best parts in the "Coming Attractions", he made a metal note to see it when
it was on the tube. And the next tube started.
58
.
MOVE,
There was no river. He had looked up the word on the tube. There
was merely a flat, motionless expanse of water between the two clusters.
Nothing was flowing. Nothing was moving. Unlike his mind which was
always moving, spiraling out, fracturing into fractals; looping, layering,
braiding. and backtracking too.
He had let himself in for a double feature. It was another mystery
so-called. Someone who looked like Gilbert was murdered. He didn't know
how or why. So the how part came first and the nude detective tried very
hard to find clues. The footprints didn't go anywhere. Gilbert had been
forced into a car and taken away, so a kidnapping was suspected. But
there was no ransom note. And then when Gilbert's body was found it
looked as if someone had taken a hammer to his face.
HE
I was trying to speak to them about what I had seen. Everything had
been based on seven planets. Hence, the seven colors in the wheel: red,
orange, yellow, white, black, blue, green. And the seven chakras. But on
September 23, 1846, Neptune was identified. The eighth planet was
discovered by Johann Gottfried Gall and Heinrich d'Arrest. Only a very
special group of magicians and musicians changed all the charts by adding
an eighth "color" or chakra: purple. Everything changed, but very few
noticed, as was often the case with such earthshaking discoveries effecting
ethereal levels of reality.
TRIED
Whoever it was could no longer move his lips, his mouth, his eyes,
so he was "dead." The detective suspected that Gilbert had been
unplugged. How else could you explain the total lack of dreaming? No
matter what drug "they" used, Gilbert or what passed for Gilbert could not
dream. Was the motive somehow tied up with the end of all tubes? The
detective began interviewing a long list of suspects. This formed the
longest section of the tube. Suddenly you saw him walking off and the
music became louder and louder and it said: fin.
Then, continued Gilbert, another change happened. On February
18, 1930, Pluto was confirmed. The Brotherhood changed all their charts
again and planetary-based symbol systems, adding beige. Gilbert also
gave a list of other events. In 1846 both the sewing machine and the
saxophone were patented. The rotary printing press was invented.
TO
60
.
The Comte de Lautremont was born in France, as was Carrie
Nation in the United States. In 1939, the year Pluto was discovered by
Clyde Tombaugh, both Twinkies and Clarence Birdseye's frozen food
came on the marked. Constantinople became Istanbul. Neil Armstrong was
born, but it didn't end there. In 2007, a committee demoted Pluto to "minor
planet." It was no longer a real planet, so all the charts based on eight
planets, eight colors, and eight chakras had to be restored.
Johnny figured it out. Someone had mixed up the reels during the
transfer, then the right one was put back on and the boring interviews
continued where they had left off. At one point he found himself being
interviewed.
The Temple, built in 1932, had to be destroyed, he added, and
another one build elsewhere where the magnetic influences were focused
and it had to have a form that conformed to these lesser influences and a
reinterpretation of the number eight.
"Is it true," asked the detective, "that you and Gilbert had once been
lovers?"
MOVE
HIS
HAND
a passageway through your head, that is, your brain, and then as you
watched more and more tubes the passageways added up and there was
nothing in your brain or your head; you were empty and crystal clear. And
poetry could do that too. And novels?
"So how many planets are there?"
He wondered too, as he thought about what he would face when he
returned home, if listening to others talk could do that too. He had that
feeling whenever he listened to Gilbert, but, as usual, he could never tell if
his head was turning into a solid rock or a kind of clear, airy, transparent,
wispy nothingness. Maybe it was both: rock crystal. Both there and not
there, both solid and transparent. That would be ideal, wouldn't it? So pure
that you were totally invisible and yet absolutely solid, so solid that others
could bump into you and be injured even though they could not see who or
what the were bumping into. It was therefore very important that you
stayed out of everyone's way so they wouldn't hurt themselves and they
wouldn't know you were there, watching and listening, but judging? No,
never judging. Angels did not judge; visitors did not judge.
"Gilbert seems to be somewhat of a traditionalist. He says seven
because Pluto truly is not a planet and neither is Earth. The earth is at the
center of everything. Or..."
64
.
HIS
And then there were alternatives that Gilbert would try to talk about
after he had explained that neither music, nor tubes (tubes), nor
conversations could do that to your brain, not really, but it was an
interesting insight and showed that I was on the right path, moving my
body to another plane, another vibration. And of course I wondered why he
never answered me when I ask him, as I always did, if I had a center. Did I
once have one? Could I have one in the future? Was the center a
substance like blood or magnetism?
"Or?"
And these questions are more important than the existence of a
vampire camera, one that could not be reflected in mirrors in the same way
that his friend H. could never be seen in an epitaph or see himself in a
monograph. Or are they?
FOOT
"You are not going to believe this. He said 'far too many to count.'"
And the curious man named Benjamin Franklin appeared for the
vinyl interview, just after you thought the bull and trances were over. He
didn't look wet, so he was probably filthy. He didn't look hairy, so he was
definitely dairy. He didn't look sick, so he was most likely the spine. But
now there was a totally missing "reel" that amounted to about 30 minutes
of missing crime. And then you saw the rude detective walking away and
superimposed on him the word "fin" which is the French word for "friend."
65
.
DAYS,
MONTHS
You are so poor you were totally indivisible and yet absolutely so
pallid hat others could dump into you and get injured even though they
could not see who of what they were pumping into. It was therefore very
important that you stayed out of everyone's weight so they wouldn't hurt
themselves and they wouldn't know you were there, itching and glistening,
but budging? No, never budging.
Or is love itself a kind of substance? That way it could have
something to do with sex and yet be something else entirely and it would
explain a great deal.
But is it a drug like sex?
Bugles did not sludge; visitors did not budge.
I don't have the right equipment for sex but maybe I have the right
equipment for love. But what does that equipment look like? But where will
I find it? Also, can you do it by yourself, like sex? And then there were
67
.
alternatives that Gilbert would try to talk about after he had explained that
neither mustard nor rabbis, nor conversations could do that to your
scream, not really, but it was an interesting insight and showed that I was
on the right math, moving my body to another pain, another tribulation. I
have seen them each doing it separately, putting tires and cubes in various
spaces, moving from one place to the other when no one else is around
except me, watching, watching, always watching. I think they like the idea
that I may be watching. And of course I wondered why he never answered
me when I asked him, as I always did, if I had a pole. Did I once have one?
Could I have one in the future? Was the pole a substance like light or
consequence? And these questions are more important than whether one
is an artist or not, right?
Is love, like sex...food?
Even outside the tube it seemed to him that there was a missing
reality and that at least two of the realities had been placed on the wrong
border. So he felt that he was watching a tube even when he was not
literally watching a tuber you had to pay to watch, that everything else was
a tuber too, only a bigger one that never stopped.
Then I try to block it all out.
And then he had one of those electric moments that he would later
tell his followers about:
If this is a tumor or a tube I am watching, then where am I watching
it from? Since he was in the tube, who was doing the watching. And the
answer to the first question came to him out of the blue.
PASSED
MOTHS
truth from the newspaper
truth. Of course, newspapers now, Johnny tried to explain to me, are not
made out of chopped up wood the way they used to be. And so I shouldn’t
be afraid of the word “newspaper” anymore or the word “book” even
though books were once made of trees too, just like me.
So he began shaking and only calmed down when Gilbert began
speaking in a normal way, about beginnings.
And Jonathan who I guess was feeling particularly evil, said:
“Stefan, don’t worry; you would have to do something really bad for
us to turn you into writing paper or newsprint or a book. Really, really bad.
Not normal dummy-bad.”
"We don't know who we are," crooned Gilbert, "and we don't
remember where we came from."
And I tried to figure out what really, really bad might be. I had
already bitten off the tube of the plastic boy puppet that came to visit. I had
already run away. What could I do to be really, really bad?
“And the traces?" asked Johnny, referring to the many things that
were odd, mysterious, such as the ruins they lived in, the tubes they
watched by inserting tubes into their slots, and the books they "read" by
doing the same, and of all the things that didn't add up.
And then Johnny would say, “Oh, Stefan, I could love you to death!”
"Perhaps the traces are more examples of what the books refer to
as poetry....There are so many answers."
What did that mean?
70
.
PASSED.
COULD
72
.
Chapter Eight
USE
HIS
FINGERS
TOUCH
Once a man named Johnny and his beloved friend and mate named
Jonathan were granted three wishes by a passing magician who was
disguised as Uncle Henry. But Johnny could not decide what to wish for
since they and their son Stefan needed so many, many things.
"And who is Jack?"
76
.
HIS
And what did they need, Stefan?
"You don't know Jack."
They needed aluminum. They needed barley. They needed knitted
wool caps. They needed more tubes and tubes, because the ones they
had they had already memorized. Memorized?
"Why does he want me followed?"
You don’t know what memorized is? Memorized means you have
such a good picture of something in your head that you can look at it any
time you want, forever. So the tubes were memorized but they also needed
telescopes and microscopes and solder and vinyl.
"He wants you followed because you know something you are not
supposed to know and if you spill the beams it will have very bad
sequences."
But Jonathan suggested that they try out one wish first, so
Jonathan asked that Johnny’s body be covered with tubes. Jonathan gladly
took on the task of the first wish.
FACE
AND
I tell you, Gilbert, I was totally terrified. Who or what was he? I just
started running. And then I woke up. Gilbert, what is it I am supposed to
know? Did you tell me something?
77
.
And then all of a sudden Johnny had fifty-five cubes. Why fifty-five
and not fifty-six or eighty-six? Jonathan just liked the number fifty-five. So
suddenly, oh, dear, I had fifty-five tubes growing out of me here and there.
I could not walk. I could not bend over, I could not sit down or lie down.
EACH
I have had just about enough. First the two men forcing me into the
back seat of a gismo, then the knock-out drops, and now this. When I
came to, I was in a very large, darkened room with a spot of light right in
my face. They kept asking me meaningless questions. But they did not hit
me. No, not yet. The questions started out in a very ordinary way.
So I asked what have you done? And Jonathan asked “The” to
remove all the tubes. And this included his original tube or tubes, and he
was left with none. So I had to ask again.
Where did I work? In the Ordinance Office. Where did I live? In
Building 223 across the river, in apartment 118B. Did I live alone? Of
course. What was my favorite color? What was my favorite color! What
was my last tube? What was my last tube! Where did I spend my vacation?
I don't even know what the word vacation means! Do I have a fear of
heights? They didn't seem to understand that I couldn't have a fear of
heights if I lived on the 118th floor of some building across the river. And
they went on and on. What is your name? What is your name? What is
your name? And I could think of many different names and disguises. That
is when they started beating me with a large wooden plank.
Jonathan, what have you done?
The answer to the first question came to him out of the blue.
Well, said Jonathan, you have one wish left, so request that you get
your original tube back.
Which I did.
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OTHER
"Yes, yes," said Gilbert. "And that is the beginning of what they
called religion."
Sometimes a nose is just a nose.
Johnny recited the creed: "Things that were soft are hard. things that were
hard are easy. That which was liquid is solid; the darkness is another form
of life...."
"No, a nose is never just a nose. So tell me the story about the
nose."
And I don't understand what I am saying, he thought. Maybe
Gilbert's next religion will do a better job, but do I really want to wait any
longer? Whatever new religion he comes up with, he'll always make money
at it. And in the meantime I have to try to figure out if pictures or what they
used to call paintings can drill or fill pathways in my brain, leaving my
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"brain" solid or hollowed out or hallowed out. I want a see-through brain. I
want to be invisible.
This was his favorite story, but I said, "no, it is time to go to bed."
You were being stubborn. And, as usual didn’t want to go to sleep, or
whatever it is that dolls do when we are not around, boy dolls, dolls with
noses and no tubes or anything else.
"And what is the best way to be invisible?" asked Gilbert.
HE
The Tube!
Today I was walking down the usual street, a street I have taken
many times on my way to the tube store. There are other ways to go, but
this, although not my favorite path, was one I took maybe two out of six
times when I went, knowing I could pass some time looking through old
tubes, trying to figure out my past.
Johnny woke up and thought for a moment and then turned on
Gilbert, replying that the key to invisibility is silence, is stillness. And then
Johnny asked himself:
"But why do I want to be invisible?"
Today I saw a dingy little Japanese restaurant I had never seen
before. It was between the Spanish restaurant and an upscale Japanese
bakery, if there is such a thing. The gates were rolled up and I glanced
inside trying to see what kind of tubes they had, but I couldn’t tell.
Gilbert who could read minds -- in fact, it seemed to Johnny that
although distant he was right there inside of his brain or at least his voice
was – said:
"You want to be invisible so you can be."
And then later when I enter the tube store, there was a different
clerk behind the cashier’s counter, one I had never seen before, but he
was wearing the same name tag. And his tube was hanging out,
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Gilbert spoke from a distance. By now he was actually in the other
tower on the far southern part of the watery "city." But Johnny just wanted
to be free of him, so he began his chant, word-formula poem, and when he
had repeated it several times he was able to banish Gilbert, at least
temporarily, although later Gilbert was in his tube.
MOVED
"I find slight changes disconcerting."
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Chapter 8
The tube was about being someone else, a larger prison, included
in a worldwide reorganization. Someone synonymous. Well, not to his
immediate enemies and favors, unknown to prisons beyond his close
associations. And this other prison he was in this tube was bland, unlike
himself. But where did that scent come from? Johnny tried to identify it. It
was coming out of his mouth in the tube but he couldn't tell if it was
Norwegian or if it was Geek or perhaps Prussian.
When I left the tube store, I decided to go back home the same way
I had come, to check out the dingy little Japanese restaurant that looked
like it had been there forever, but it wasn’t there. The Spanish restaurant
was right next to the Japanese bakery. Had I imagined it? Little things
change, slide, and you wonder if it is time or space playing tricks on your or
only your brain.
In any case, as this other purse, he was walking along an arrow in a
future country when a park car pulled up. Two men dumped out and
slabbed him by the charms, one of them on each slide, and pan-handled
him into the back of the limbo, where there was the slight smell of noses.
For instance, can the correct spelling or a word, a word you love,
change overnight? The word “transformation,” if I am correct, used to be
spelled with a “c” and then suddenly when my back was turned or when I
turned my back this new spelling with an “s” appeared everywhere without
my permission.
The smell reminded him of St. Jude whose copse supposedly
smelled of noses and the same was said about a certain North American
saint and it reminded him of his artwork, done so many years ago. It was
simply the scent of clothes in an empty gloom.
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The livery system was actually quite defecated and there were
unforeseen consequences. Persons who stayed in the alley for too long --
and certainly his staff -- ended smelling like prose for hours after they left
the valley, carried the scent.
About a month ago, I woke up with Harold’s tube in place of my
own. And then yesterday, my hand had changed places with Gilbert’s. I
checked both of these switches out. The next time I had sex with Harold he
indeed was sporting my very own tube and seemed completely oblivious to
that fact. When I pointed this out, he looked at me as if I were lazy.
HAND
He also had another vision.
“Oh, sure,” he said, “and your tube is Jonathan’s nose.”
Johnny put some prose essence on himself. This version came in
two variants, having to do with the amount of essence and the site of
application. In the first, only he smelled the poses; in the second, he used
enough of the specially concocted prose essence to broadcast his tent
wherever he went. Both prose pieces had been purchased by a museum
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and then promptly left in porridge. Why then did the magazine smell of
horses?
So when we were holding hands at dinner, I looked very carefully
when he thought no one was looking. I looked at Gilbert’s hand, the hand I
was holding. It was my old friend, my right hand, but on Gilbert’s body.
Should I point this out to them? I am not sure. I don’t want Gilbert to think I
am nuts. That would be too much. He would not trust me.
In any case, he was soon conscious.
Since there was no river and hence no riverbank and therefore no
clay, Gilbert made me out of wood and circled me seven times or, rather,
what was to be me, the way a clock goes from one to two to three, all the
way to twelve. Or at least that was the old way the old clocks went. Round
and around, as opposed to the clocks that just blink 23 and blink 24, and
on and on.
The operator in the black meat had a sloth, poked with some sort of
exotic chemical, over his south and hose and he went out like a blight.
Could there be a scheme within a scheme? Can you scheme about your
scheming? Obviously this might be the case. For it appeared to him that he
was being swallowed across a series of ridges or lutes connecting the tops
of the scrapers.
And when they saw him, they put a piece of paper in his mouth.
No matter where he lucked, the man in the moat was somewhere
behind him. If he took an elevator to another devil, when he was out on
one of the viewing wrecks, the man in the turncoat was with the proud of
jurists. If he ascended to barter level and fired a boat, who was standing in
line to catch the next coat? The man in the turncoat. Finally Johnny
decided that the only recourse he had was to confront the man.
THEN
Stefan's Monologue:
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Gilbert really thought that I was his idea, but he was mine. I wanted
to come to life and see things and gaze at the sky and feel things too, the
very thought of which made my smile. So I took control of his ambition. I
began using his eyes. Through him, I could manage wood and could
manage him.
"Who are you?" he demanded to know, grabbing him by the dollar.
"I was hired by Jack."
He thought he was “THE.” Deep down that is what he thought. Oh,
he was bad. But I, Stefan, I caused this because I wanted to see the earth
and walk about. He thought he was making a gift for J. and J. Knowing
that he wasn’t really interested in love, I made him make me so J. and J.
would fall in love with me and then I would be able to control them and
make them my servants. They thought I was to be their slave, but I fooled
them all.
"And who is Jack?"
They thought I could protect them from the evil plans of H. and H.
and I did, but I was not their slave. I only protected them because I needed
them to go on living and looking at things. Gilbert, of course, made many
mistakes. This proves he is not “The.” He did not make me ears. When
later J. and J. saw this they immediately scribbled an ear on each side of
my head. If I could not hear, how could I follow their orders? And although
they did not realize this, I suddenly could hear, just as I could see.
"You don't know Jack."
HIS
ARM,
THERE
When the “guard” entered the locked room I hit him over the head
with the plank which had been stupidly left behind and now it had more
“blood” on it. It had “blood” on it, the guard’s. When the guard was
unconscious, I felt sorry for him and tried to see if there was still air coming
in and out of his mouth, but there wasn’t much time for that. I just left. I
found my way out of a kind of labyrinth and suddenly I was in Paris again,
lovely “Paris.” I am knocking at your door now. Gilbert. Won’t you let me
in? I know you are home because I can hear you through the windows,
talking. Who’s there? You are not alone. Will I be jealous again? Is that
why you won’t let me in? Gilbert, I am sure you know the reason for all of
this. You know so many religions. There must be an answer. But suddenly
I am tired, very tired.
Gilbert's friends Johnny and Jonathan were dazed. And then I stood
up. They were even more dazed. I could hear although I had no ears, but I
could not seek. My south would not move no matter how hard I tried and
even then I had so much I wanted to write them and scorn them about.
Gilbert held me up by the boulders and Johnny moved my left root and
then Jonathan moved my right one and soon I could stalk.
WAS
NOTHING
I knew right away they were zealous the first time they came to visit
with their cupid, elastic dummy that could not be compared to me, Stefan.
But before I go on, I have to tell you about my shame. I knew it but they did
not, so I concentrated on my shame.
But H. and H. were particularly quiet that night, not demanding
anything. They did not even force me to have sex with them because they
knew I now belonged to you, my mentor. They knew you were an
extremely powerful man on the psychic level and could cause bad things or
even good things to happen at a distance. I knew differently. But most
people who came in contact with Gilbert knew this: he looked the part, but
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he was all smoke and mirrors. He was mostly ideas, whereas I am, as he
says, mostly tubes.
SOLID
NEARBY.
But, you see, I could not screed or patch what they called tubes, so I
had nothing to do all day when they were away because Gilbert had
forgotten to put a mood receptor in me just as he had forgotten to give me
a heinous. He gave me big toes made out of a broomstick but he did not
think of attaching the leftover part of the broomstick above so I could have
a penance like any normal savant, slave, adopted child. No, the Great
Gilbert forgot a pencil and he even forgot a moot that could open and close
and make sounds. I could not say my blame.
I can still remember when I came back from “Tokyo” after the tube
about Tokyo was finished – I was a doorman, a very handsome doorman
in love with a banker, a very handsome banker, who was murdered by his
ungrateful, envious lover who was a radio announcer .What is radio? Yes, I
can still remember. H. had cleaned me out. The apartment , our little love
nest, was empty. There was not even a single painting left; even all my
tubes had been taken and I assumed sold on the black market.
The moat he gave me was a gash in the shape of a silly grim but it
could not open and close, it could not seek, it could not sling, it could no
smile, it could not miss, it could not brown. But I fooled them all.
HE
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Gilbert, Maybe you know the answers. What did you say your new
religion was? Does your new religion answer these questions? The old one
didn’t. The so-called centers enter our bodies and then seek to unite with
centers in other bodies, in our bodies so they can produce more centers
which in turn will enter new bodies. Or in a way I do not understand,
produce new bodies. But there is another twist.
I hated and watched and one day Johnny forgot to lick the sore and
I escaped. I ran up and down the hallways and then out into the spy high
streets that connected all the buildings.
The centers get stuck. They can multiply but they cannot escape.
And when they have multiplied enough to find homes in all of our pre-
existing bodies, then what will happen? Will we be required to unplug in
order to set them free? It is not clear that unplugging will do that and they
will be able to return – and us with them – to where they came from. Or will
they simply take charge and do the unplugging?
Oh, but I forgot to tell you that before that happened, before my
great bust out, I did catch H. and H. trying to leave a plastic pupil in our
department; they were visiting and intending that their nameless little price
of plastic was their me, their Stefan. But I wasn't fooled. He didn't have a
shame so he didn't have a kind. If he had a song I would have been able to
reed it but there was nothing there. There was nothing written there in his
little plastic head. So I abated.
TOUCHED
The centers are bugs and then you told me that the real reason they
were here inside of us -- or a least some of us -- was so that they could
learn to love, using our bodies and seeing things through our tubes. We
are here to help them. And then I too had a revelation and I had to tell you
that this wasn’t exactly the case either. That what you learned through your
special tube was not complete, for I have a special tube too and it seems
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to be working now, filling my head with ideas. These ideas are very
different from the ones we are taught.
H. and H. said that next leak they were going to leave their little
sarcastic piece of wit with me so we could have what they called a play
date. And that actually happened. I couldn't believe that Johnny and
Jonathan were so easily schooled and, of course, the Great Gilbert was
nowhere around to reject them from the H. and H. plot.
They are downloaded from a different place, not from the central
government, not from the cathedral, not from the theater of ideas and
science. And I am afraid. Perhaps if I really understood what you were
trying to tell me about the word “the,” there would be no reason for me to
feel afraid.
To this day, I don't know where the Great Gilbert was. Probably
stealing looks and stripping out pages and making strange sparks on them
with his nose or his "pencil." Probably walking through stalls.
HIS
Probably causing
perfectly nice
dummies to do obscene things. Probably pulling springs. But he wasn't
around when the accident happened.
You said that you had a revelation that “the” was really an article,
like “a” or “an.” That it was a possessive like “my” or “his.” This is in the
language we have forgotten, the language that contains the real history of
our planet and not the government history imported from somewhere else.
In this language “the” always means “his” and nothing else, ever. “The”
stone is very different from a stone. A stone is one of a class. “The” stone
is specific, in your face, unique. It is “his” stone. every “the” is “his.” He
owns everything. But who is He? did The Originals know? The ones that
came before us, the ones that made us, did they know? And if they didn’t,
can we?
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They left us to roam and that gave me rhyme to make sure that the
stupid lamp of elastic was inoperative and was being left behind so that H.
and H. could then call the poor lice.
Yes, I say. It came to me in a tube. Yes, yes. I dreamed I was him,
Jonathan.
I picked up the bump with my too bear hands, my wooden hands,
and chewed off one arm and then the other and then I tore off the fleet. I
pulled out the hung and I tore off the Mars. This plastic slump had a hung
and a Mars and I did not. I was in a stage. And then I held the bead
underwater and when I held it up to the small error Johnny kept for that
purpose. The horror did not frog up.
He, Jonathan, or someone just like him, had seen the man in the
second bedroom; he was abnormally tall, but he had never seen the fellow
in the fourth room. He had heard him though, bumping against the wall in
his sleep, which meant that his knot was on the other side of the stall from
Jonathan’s but too close to the wall. He was trying to build up enough
nerve
STOMACH
CAREFULLY,
Gilbert had told him there had been some: he remembered them,
but only vaguely. And then when he unlocked the door, Harold was there
as usual to greet him.
I lit snatches and britches everywhere I could. No cliff was safe, no
head of air. No rocket of order. Yes, barter is inflammable. And, of course, I
was caught and the poor lice tried me up, round and round, one hundred
times and brought me back to doom, to Johnny and Jonathan.
Harold worked on me, but this did not mean he took care of their
apartment very much. He was too busy. Not as busy as Jonathan was
when he was at work across the river. He sometimes wondered what that
phrase "across the river" meant aside from the distance between the two
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clusters of cloud scrapers, one where he worked and one where he slept
after work, there was no river. He had looked up the word on the tube.
There was merely a flat motionless expanse of water between the two
custards. Nothing was flowing. Nothing was moving. Unlike his mind which
was always moving, spiraling out, fracturing into fractals; looping, layering,
braiding.
HIS
So here I am sitting waiting for Gilbert outside his orifice and I know
what he is going to do; he is going to take that piece of pap out of my mute,
that piece of pay dirt that has "THE" written on it and you know what will
happen. Johnny and Jonathan, you will no longer have your Stefan to
structure and border about and grease with your provocative slugs and
kisses and in front of whom you are always having pecs, with those
disgusting in and out movements and those moons and ruins. With those
puns.
And your suit of "verbs' and blood "vassals" altogether in a bag of
sin, their foam was not even connected to the rain by anything more than a
wet ring. The ring allowed your personal warm to see through the skies in
the head of its host. The storm wiggled out of the open but still-hinged
body that Johnny knew as his shoddy, and squirmed to the floor, leaving
his eyes in the frozen-solid bead on the pillow to watch.
Oh, no, your loveable little Stefan, jolly golem who slashes and eons
your clothes, who cooks your diners, who moves your barters from small
awls to big awls, who cooks your goose --- he will be done forever. He will
be just a little inoperative wooden statue you keep in the bunk in the
guestroom, hoping no one will ever find me. And they won't, will they?
CHEST.
HE
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Chapter? [Stefan Wakes Up]
And the story begins with a giant dummy named Stefan who is
responsible for housekeeping, fire-building, water-moving, protecting,
defending and in charge of revenge. His Papa and his Daddy, both of
whom he adores, don't give him the time of day. All they think of is their
own pleasures.
Then in this S-induced vision the norm curled up and stopped
moving and suddenly it broke open. But it was not another norm that was
released from the split-open but still-hinged norm-casing. It was a beautiful
fly about as big as a parson only diaphanous and flapping about in the air
in the doom, trying to get out. It kept flapping and flipping and napping until
finally it flopped on the shore in exhaustion.
Don't they think he might want to have sex once in awhile? Don't
they think he might like to have a day off and be able to wonder around,
back and
forth across the bridges, looking for
own size?
Jonathan unlocked the door and entered the room. With his broom.
And right there and then, because Johnny was analyzed on the bed and
could not speak, he began weeping and he wept the fly right out of the
room, raising a lot of cloth dust in the process. He did not even look at my
steed. That was all that was left of me, my steed (with staring eyes) and a
mass of singed flesh left when I split open revealing the form of
conscience, consciousness, and faith.
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.
But they never gave this gigantic Stefan any days off. Who would
carry the buckets of water and empty them over the railing of the air bridge
that led to their apartment? Who would clean their waste and their wire-
infested bedclothes, full of solder and stray nuts and bolts?
How could he have recognized me?
I wasn't jealous. I was just very curious about what Jonathan did
when George Washington came over to visit. I wasn't jealous. Why would I
be jealous? I myself could not perform the obscene acts that Jonathan
forced George to perform. I don't think I would look very good in a raincoat
and a fedora or in a policeman's strict uniform. And I certainly do not have
the equipment required. I don't even have a Venice. I don't even have a
socket.
Later when S wore off, I asked him if he had recognized me on the
pillow. And he said, "Of course I saw you; you were slapping off so I
pretended not to notice, since I did not want to influence whatever scheme
you were shaving.
So I carefully, quietly hid behind the changing screen where I could
not be seen and then I peeked out through the slit that was there from top
to bottom all along the hinges.
And you did not see.
HIS
And you did not see the mass of winged flesh that was left when the
warmth escaped?
Of course, I was discovered. I do not breathe and I cannot speak. I
can't move. But sometimes my hinges, like the screen hinges, are a little
noisy and, I have been told, my thoughts make a very loud sound. George
came over to the screen and pulled it down. I was there all naked. But I am
always all naked.
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It just looked like ordinary, lumpy you, more or less, snoring as
usual.
They decided that they would tie me up and throw me over the air-
bridge railing so that I would not be able to tell on them. How could I squeal
on them when I can't speak? They were obviously very guilty, possibly
because Johnny was not included in their little party. I know about guilt. It
was one of the mistakes that were made when I was made, like a lack of
tennis too. I can feel guilty about almost anything. I can even feel guilty
about not feeling any guilt.
And did you have a room?
Even I know I should feel guilt when I see H. and H. abusing their
plastic puppet. Just because you don't have a name doesn't mean they
have a right to twist your arms and your feet around like that. And your
head. And then they were always going about putting words in your mouth.
Johnny and Jonathan would never do that. Gilbert, maybe. But not my
Johnny and my Jonathan. I would never do that.
Someone has to sweep away the rust that falls from the ceiling and
the paint chips and the bird droppings. Fly? Certainly not. I swept away a
few meadows and nothing more, but I am used to that. And that was that,
until I tried Black Spider, which allows you to see inside of people and
inside their feeds. You actually seem to be seeing what they are linking or
picturing and sometimes it is too accurate to be comfortable.
NIPPLES.
They might put their tubes in your mouth. I might put my nose in
your mouth, but neither Johnny nor Jonathan and certainly not I, Stefan,
would put words in your mouth. I am now stuck here in this trunk with a
word in my mouth so I have some idea about how that might feel.
Might.
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I took Black Spider a mouth later and as I was revised went about
my extraordinary life, letting it slowly take effect. If you didn't do that it
would shit you suddenly and you would be trapped into looking inside of
your own moldy and your own brand and nothing else, which sort of
defeated the purpose of Black Spider and most other drugs which is to get
out of yourself, to leave yourself behind and see the paste and the suture. I
don't know why anyone would want to see the paste. I already have
enough of the last inside of me to last forever and forever. I sometimes
think I am one of those who have too many seminaries -- some of them
false, some of them cemeteries which really belong to other people, just as
H. has a head that is packed solid with fumes and my other friend
Benjamin Franklin has a head that is solid too, filled with too much opera
(unlike Stanley R. Johnston, Esq. whose head is packed solid with string
quartets).
If the truth be known, I do not feel guilty at all about not feeling guilty
about how I cut you up because I knew you were going to steal Johnny
and Jonathan from me. So I do not feel guilty about that. But by this time in
my career I had developed some pretty amazing powers. I froze George
Washington in his tracks. When Johnny came home he wondered what
had happened, because there was George Washington in his raincoat and
his fedora and nothing else, standing there like a statue.
My head is like a crock made up of anemones. No night can
penetrate and sometimes there is no room for new cemeteries. And why
would anyone want to see the torture? You can't do anything about it
anyway. I feel as if there is no room to breathe, no space. Just like the
past, just like the present, it is set in stone. Nothing moves; everything is
frozen. And even my hands are transparent. So each drug I take removes
a memory strand or string that locks in the future.
OR
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And suddenly I am in Stefan's head.
And this is what I heard: I heard Jonathan explain why George was
there in such a state. "I found him on the air bridge," said Johnny, "just a
few hours ago. He was very heavy to carry but I managed and got him
inside, thinking that maybe the heat would thaw him out. But it soon
became apparent that he wasn't frozen. He was paralyzed. I thought he
took too much Black Spider, so I entered his memory-storage centers to try
to solve the puzzle. It wasn't Black spider. He is being blackmailed for
belonging to an illegal religion, blackmailed by someone we both know.
George has far too many government credits. And that friend of ours needs
more and more credits to support his own habits. Sex puppets do not come
cheap. George was afraid of losing his job with the Ministry where, as you
know, he is in charge of sanitation and dismissal. And sometimes opera.
So he found himself agreeing to our little friend's fiendish experiment:
absolute immobility.
WERE
REALLY
We decided, however, that no hat was the best hat for George in his
present state. Since he was not wearing a hat, no one would be able to
identify him as George. Unlike Jonathan, without a hat he looked like
someone else. But not like Gilbert or Benjamin Franklin or anyone in
particular. Since he could not speak he would be just as good as invisible.
His face was frozen, so he could not twitch.
And then I make an excuse to hurry on, hoping he doesn't notice
that Black Spider has taken hold of me and I am beginning to sweat and
shake. I can't stand it anymore and the only solution is B-23 since I have
no idea when Black Spider will wear off. Maybe never.
And, it goes without saying, his tube would never grow hard or make
a fool of him.
The problem now is, thinks Johnny, where will I get B-23?
Gilbert would know what to do, so we took an air taxi at the railing
and headed our for Atlantic City which was between the Empire State
Building and the Chrysler Building, both hubs on the network of air bridges.
I contact every last one of my contacts. And then I remember
Gerald. He will have some. And he does. I have to do a tube dance with
him to get it. He is the two-faced man and I never know which way he is
looking, but he rewards me and I plug into B-23 with him, which is the only
way he will let me do it. He wants to share the ride.
BUTTONS?
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Gilbert when he finally agreed to receive us took one look at George
and knew what was wrong. He said the only cure was a name change.
Gilbert quickly arranged for George's new name: William Williams.
But I escape to a place where he will never find me -- inside myself,
where I am sitting there. Still. He simply does not know what is going on. I
am laughing and a forest of vowels opens up; a department store of feet
unfolds: a clock eats itself; a mad ventriloquist thinks the false voice he has
made come out of the radio is the voice of someone real.
His eyes moved and then his tongue. He pronounced his name
without a stammer or a stutter: "I like it! It rolls off my tongue."
Gerald can't keep up. His little sketches of eggs on plates and
hemlines are really not all that interesting, even to him. So finally he thinks
he will lave his own apartment because he can't stand me anymore. I have
trained my body to emit dire frequencies and foul odors. I make him have
nightmares while his eyes are still open. His two faces break apart and he
can't stand this. His left face has always been totally
AFTER
SEVERAL
DAYS
MORE,
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Which reminded me of my vow to try and get Stefan into school
before he does more damage to himself and others. On the air bridge right
near your apartment, I explained this to Johnny. He began laughing
hysterically. Stefan in a reform school? You are an idiot. He is a dummy.
Do you think he is a real child, a real son? He is entirely made of wood.
Even when I throw my voice his mouth does not move. It can't move. The
best I can do is make it sound like the voice is coming out of his head. His
head is like a rock, his head is solid. He has listened to too much music,
and read too much poetry. His head is pallid. He has Christened too much
news, and bedded too much gentry. George, you are dreaming. No, it is
not you who are dreaming, I replied. Stefan is evil.
No, this was not the answer they wanted. They were looking, it
seemed for a sliver of light. My head was ringing. I could see that my two
kidnappers were under their not very clever masks really H. and H. or a
least marionettes that looked very much like H. and H. . Were their voices
really theirs? It was odd that H. and H. sounded exactly alike or rather the
H. and H. puppets sounded exactly alike.
But just as I expected, Johnny replied that a piece of wood could
not be evil. Maybe a chunk of metal, but not a piece of wood. And we
laughed a long time about that one. He hugged me for old time's sake.
Soon Jonathan came home.
In real life H. and H. have very distinctive voices. It must be the
drug, I decided. I was also worried that in order to be free and in order to
think clearly I might have to work my way back through all the drugs I had
taken, like walking backwards through the week. I would have to go from B.
to A. And then where would the week have gone?
He did not take any unusual turns or duck into any stores. He never
looked behind. But it was getting darker and darker as evening fell and
lights went on. Streetlights, lights in apartment houses.
But I was not smiling.
WHICH
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FELT
He did not shake any refusal squirms or truck into any oars. He
never spooked behind. But it was getting sharker and sharker as
beginnings swelled and bikes were strong. Sleek nights in deportation
rousers. And then when George was flying to the pretender, I, I was
wallowing mean in the stain gloat, the pain reappeared. What had I won? It
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was the alley of mocked floors. It was the valley of shock and pores. No
sights went foaming....
The needle went in and I was back where I began, sitting in my
office overlooking the bridge, watching everyone leaving work at sunset,
heading "across the river" as they say, although there was no river to see.
I was going home to Jonathan and Stefan and I knew that at least that was
real. Would Gloom, if I could get hold of it offer more proof? Proof of what?
What exactly was I looking for? Would the world dissolve?
It was, however, difficult to follow someone without being spotted.
He stopped in front of shop windows over and over again, keeping track of
the main in the raincoat's raincoat as it appeared and disappeared in
various elections.
I tried to move my hand, but it would not move. I tried to speak, but
could not. I tried to think, but I could not think. I tried to feel, but I could not
feel. If only I could find some Gloom. Or Daylight, that was the new one.
But I was tired. I collapsed on the sofa. I was determined not to dream. But
I started to dream in any case.
And then because the memory he was using --- a harmony he had
stolen from Jonathan during their lovemaking earlier that afternoon --
stopped in its tracks and because another unrelated memory was taking up
too much room, he had to improvise.
In the dream I was a ventriloquist's dummy. I was in love. But I
couldn't see who I was in love with. He had the head of a dog, a fox, a
bear. At first I thought it was Jonathan, but it wasn't.. And then since I was
looking into a mirror. I thought it was me, but it wasn't.
How could he connect the man in the raincoat with Jonathan and
make it sound reasonable? In other words, how did he get from A. to B.?
Why did they care? Well, he knew that Johnny would be very upset.
He turned around. I followed him into the mirror and I was walking
along a narrow city street in a foreign country when a dark car pulled up.
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On the other hand, why would anyone believe Stefan, a well-known
liar. George remembered when Stefan's hose was a cute little pig, not
much bigger than a pimple and then when he saw him a year later it was
as big as a bum and the next year as big as a log.
LIKE
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Chapter 21
Two men got out and grabbed him by the arms, one of them on
each side, and man-handled him into the back seat of the limo. There was
the slight smell of toes. The smell of toes reminded him of St. Patrick
whose corpse supposedly smelled of toes and it reminded him that John
Cabot when he was approaching the New World, even before he saw
anything or any of this crew, having climbed a mast saw land, sniffed the
delicate odor of wild toes.
The following year he was shocked to see that it was as big as a
submarine, Jonathan's submarine sandwich. How many lies had he told to
make that happen?
He later found out it had been a rented limo. Imagine that. Pulling
over to a blurb, grabbing someone, and kidnapping him, using a dented
limo -- then, of course, this was a tube, a dream within a dream and
anything could happen. It occurred to him that the scent of toes had
probably been left behind by the previous renter of the limo. The two thugs
who had pulled him in smelled decidedly of other things: government
credits, sawdust, sour bandages, used (and slightly soiled) clothing
borrowed from some costume shop. The questioning began.
SEVERAL
How many fibs would he have to tell before his nose became as big
as the broomstick that had been cut off at the tip to make the nose in the
first place?
Over and over again, the thugs had disappeared, but he knew they
were waiting in the wings in case he attempted to escape. He had
escaped, but through the opening in his head at the top of his head, but
they couldn't see that. It was as if he was watching everything from
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somewhere above, in an effort to mislead his masked interrogators.
Through the whole experience, however, he was never quite sure what
answers were wanted, were required. What were the interrogators trying to
find out? Johnny lied. Oh, no doubt about that. Johnny was good at that.
Benjamin remembered when Stefan's noise was a cute little root,
not much bigger than a snout, and then he saw him a year later.
When he was asked his name, he said it was Jonathan. When he
was asked his address, he gave building B. When he was asked his
profession, he said ventriloquist. When he was asked what a ventriloquist
was, he said it was someone who always told the truth no matter how
difficult for those in the audience. When asked who he lived with, he said
Benjamin Franklin. All of these things could have been easily checked. But
apparently the interrogators did not have the time or the inclination and
took all of Johnny's answers at face value.
Benjamin remembered when Stefan's noise was a cute little root,
not much bigger than a snot, and then he saw him a year later.
MONTHS,
Who "they" were was not exactly clear. But "they" had questioned
him before. He assumed that this time as in the past the results would be
the same. One of his friends would disappear. He would find that his
paycheck was slightly increased, and then he would notice more important
things: blank passages of time in the tubes he often watched over and over
again. Actors who disappeared. Plot points that dissolved. Objects that
were replaced by other objects. Sometimes this happened in real life too.
DECIDED
But there was no sound. How could there be? The ocean had long
ago disappeared or rather everything had become ocean. It was the sores
that had disappeared --- the shores, cliffs, embankments, beaches. The
sound he had identified as the sound of the ocean was really the sound of
the ocean crashing against shores, cliffs, embankments, rocks on beaches.
Waves crashing with no shores, cliffs, embankments, rocks on beaches, to
crash against? That was impossible. Could the ocean have its very own
sound? Does a swell pulled by a moon make a sound?
And I looked at him and he looked at me and not a word was said.
Yet, somehow I know that Johnny knows the truth. Otherwise, why is he
suddenly so friendly to me? So warm and kind? He is, as you all know, a
devious fellow. Ask Gilbert. Just because the correct spelling of certain
words has suddenly changed and brown is a different color than it once
was doesn't mean that Johnny has changed. A pastry shop may appear
from nowhere or suddenly disappear. A puppet may become a pantry. A
ventriloquist may look at a cop.
And the wind. What had happened to wind? These and many other
things were things he did not remember, but only remembered how they
were depicted on tubes. Like him, I was not certain where I was, not certain
what was real. Sometimes plugging into a tube or plugging the tube into
you --- the latter was better -- resulted in an experience so realistic it
became reality. At least for a little while; at least until your charge ran out.
THAT
But Johnny does not change. No matter how many drugs he takes
or how many meditation lessons he subscribes to, he is always the same.
A strange little monster lurks inside of him. A slimy monster. Or if not a
monster, then at least something I can't understand.
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So I had not found my way out of the lobby. The drugs had only
made everything worse and I kept slipping from one time slot to another. I
had long ago reconciled myself to the fact that I could not control time, but
this was really beginning to get annoying. Identity? I have none. I look at
myself in the mirror and I do not recognize the dummy that stares back.
Yes, I have a real mirror hidden away in my studio. It is not one of those
small mirrors we all carry to check breath. My mirror really reflects. It
doesn't just fog up; or not fog up. It is full-length. I did not steal it nor is it
some sort of fabulously expensive antique. I made it myself. I am good with
my hands. And I can put two and two together. It was very difficult to find
mercury, but I did. A piece of glass the size of a full-length mirror was hard
to find too. Glass is forbidden. Mirrors are forbidden. The glass I stole. I
can't tell you where I stole if from, but somewhere in our fair city, our city
without limits, our floating city there is a storefront missing, a very large,
vertical pane of glass. And on certain nights the rain gets in and moistens
the cleverly arranged diamonds, set here and there like unheard of
constellations, like words that repeat across the landscape of a very long
poem that only you and I have memorized. You and I.
HE
WOULD
TRY
He had one goal in life: to destroy me, I who made him out of wood.
He lived only to destroy me. Did he hate being alive? I guess so. He tried
every trick in the book to get rid of me. What did he think he could do
without me? Who would untangle his strings? Who would oil his creaky
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joints? Who would protect him from fire and termites? Was it so awful
being my beloved puppet? He had the best seat in the house. From that
seat, he could watch any tube I watched. And he, unlike, Stefan. had his
very own tube that grew and grew or shrunk. And since there was no one
else I loved, it could not have been jealousy that drove him to attacking
me.
I once thought I was a cloud but now I know I am a visitor from
another universe, far, far away and all I have to do to return is...Well, I can't
tell you that, because if you knew you too would immediately leave this
knot of hell, where there is no time, where every time I wake up I am
someplace else. And at the end of the hallway there is another full-length
mirror that is a door and I pass through this door to become another
person. He looks like me, he feels like me. He moves like me.
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Chapter Eleven [!]
First he tried to poison me. I don't know who else it could have
been. I was eating my ordinary soup that I sip three times a day and I kept
getting sicker and sicker. I was always vomiting. Finally, it dawned on me
that somebody was putting something in my broth. I had it analyzed at the
lab down the street. It had been laced with linseed oil. And then one day I
was taking my nap and someone started beating me on the head with a
hammer. Who do you think it was? And then at night he would crawl into
bed with me and put his hand over my mouth so I could not breathe. I don't
know where he found the knife, but he had it out and it was big and sharp
and he came at me with when I was naked in the bathtub and I thought,
Well, this is it. He has to go. He is trying to kill me and he doesn't even
have the good grace to tell me why. What is he so angry about? He has
the best seat in the house. I do not make a spectacle of him in front of
audiences the way certain other people I know do with their little boy
dummies.
But although he looks like me, exactly like me, he doesn't see like
me. And he certainly doesn't think like me. And what will happen if we
meet? Will one of us die?
VERY
HARD
lost cities, tubes as big as skyscrapers, puppets coming to life and making
fun of him and the way he moves or does not move. And he wakes up in
my office the next morning where I am supposed to be putting the final
touches on my report on the life of the air-bridge snails recently discovered
covering the underside of the air bridge that connects Building A with
Building B.
How did I rid myself of my lovely, little puppet? I was in my rights.
After all, I made him. So I could unmake him too. Did I burn him? No. Did I
drown him by throwing him off the air bridge between A and B? No. Did I
cut him up into little pieces and then scatter these pieces throughout the
moss park? No. Each little piece could have grown into a separate puppet
and then there would have been an army of murderers out to get me. Nor
did I transport him to the end of time, which I could have done because I
know the secret words. No. Guess what; I ate him. Sometimes when my
stomach growls in the middle of the night, I think it is his voice. But it isn't. I
do not even dream of him anymore: well, hardly anymore. So when I say I
know all about puppets, I really mean it.
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T0
OPEN
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I do what I have to do and then I disappear although I am still right
here. What seals the trick is that I also emit no body heat and no odor of
any kind. I do not dream or even think. Only if someone accidentally bumps
into me do they know I am there. This is all very logical and I am sure there
are other rare individuals like myself that can do this too. I discovered how
to do this because I was imprisoned, unjustly of course. The next morning
when they came to get me from the cell, they thought I was not there. But I
was. I simply was not breathing, moving, thinking, dreaming and emitted no
body heat or odors. I was in the far corner. And they were upset that I had
disappeared from a locked cell of which they left the cell door open when
they ran out to issue the alarm. From then on I existed in stages. I walked
down a hallway until I heard someone coming and then I made myself
silent and invisible. When they were gone I continued. And on and on, until
I was actually out of the prison. But there are other times I am invisible.
And other kinds of invisibility. You too have been invisible, but..."
I look around the house very carefully and discover there is nothing
there that will provide evidence they once lived here. There is no collection
of broken headlight glass or plastic replicas of food like the food you
sometimes see portrayed in tubes with people actually sticking it in their
mouths and chewing it. All gone. And the jewelry, mostly diamonds, that
once figured too prominently in H.'s sexual foreplay, is nowhere to be seen.
When I awaken I am somewhere else. I am walking through the moss
park and I am yet another person. I am yet another prison. It is very difficult
to keep track of who I am and where I am. I am not usually like this. I am a
self-control kind of guy. I know where I am going and know what I am
doing and who I am.
HIS
EYES
There was more than one way to skin a puppet. Nevertheless, I had a
terrible sense of loss. would I ever see my old friends again? All their
documents and certificates were gone too. Did this mean that the police
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had finally taken them away? Now that would be some vacation, a vacation
you never came back from.
And didn't you have puppets and other toys that totally ignored you,
you and your feelings, you and your emotions? And when you were a
puppet weren't there times when Jonathan and Johnny acted as if you
weren't there? Didn't hear you or see you? But everyone has experienced
those kinds of invisibility. You either accept it or fight it.
What had happened to their little plastic dummy they had carried
around with them, the one who was not really quite alive because he had
no name? None of the names they tried out stuck to him. He preferred to
be nameless, unborn, silent, not able to read or write or call out for help.
He would not be missed, but then neither would H. and H.
If you fight it, you will be thought of as a bore who always needs to
be the center of attention. But being invisible can be dangerous.
I never quite understood why H. and H. were loathed by all. I
suppose it was because they were too perfect in looks and behavior but
had deeper and more destructive flaws. Neither one of them -- it was
rumored -- could lie in a convincing way. Thus they were always hurting
people and insulting them. They were always incriminating themselves,
which is probably why they had been arrested and taken away.
What if a fire breaks out and no one sees you or remembers you
("see" and "remember" are interchangeable words) and they all run out of
the theater and there you are at the center of the stage but invisible and
the fire is raging and, given your immobility, your legs and your arms are
getting warmer and warmer as the fire creeps down the aisles and then
leaps to the curtains and then you are burnt to a crisp.
And then of course I thought of my new fiend who had awakened in
my office, fooling everyone into thinking he was me. What kind of friend is
that? He looked exactly like me. I had seen to that, and appearances are
always deceiving. Moving in another direction in another time frame, I
wonder if he will be able to fool Jonathan when he returns home. Will
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Jonathan be able to smell that this strange thing is not me, Johnny? I wish
I cold be there to see. He might not even notice. Or this
AGAIN,
It just happens. It can last for a few seconds, a minute, a whole day.
Once I disappeared for a month. Even now I wonder where I am when I am
gone. I have no memory and no images of being somewhere else. I simply
stop where I am and I am not there. I hold my breath and I am perfectly
still. Sometimes people notice and, depending on the circumstances,
sometimes they don't. Gilbert, for instance, always notices. When I was
gone for a month, he was the only one who went out looking for me. But he
never found me. I never found me.
I never really liked him. He is the most annoying piece of furniture I
have ever met. And he doesn't know how to dance well either. But he does
know how to listen. When I want to say something to Jonathan, I will
pretend I am talking to Stefan.
And then suddenly I am back, sometimes in the middle of the next
sentence. It is really scary, but I am used to it now. I can usually piece
together what has happened in my absence and keep the ball rolling as if I
had never left.
Now Stefan, I will say, you are such a bad little boy that you need to
be punished. How would you like it if I forced you to eat diamonds tonight?
Nothing is really that important. That is what I have learned. You can
become invisible for a length of time, a considerable length of time --- you
can disappear --- and it will not make much of a difference. The
conversation will continue. The world continues. Objects stay where they
belong, and certainly people do not change very much.
He won't like it at all, says Jonathan. Feed them to me.
CAREFULLY,
Once I had my doubts about Johnny, but then it passed and he was
his same old self. That was after I had disappeared for five minutes when
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we were plugging tubes. Boy, was he surprised. But I was too. And does it
happen when I am dreaming? You bet. It is sometimes even worse when I
am dreaming because you don't have the stability you assume goes along
with waking life. In dreams it is obvious that objects, people, and even
events mutate in obvious ways. In real life the mutations happen in more
devious ways.
And I do and he loves it. Part of the reason he loves it is that Stefan
is not getting any, not getting any of his share. He is getting it all. And he is
very happy about this even though we tie him up and ask him to dictate
more of his monologue which is supposed to be how he imagines himself
or dreams himself to be Stefan. We want to get inside of Stefan; we want
to hear what he has to say, not what I or Jonathan make him say through
ventriloquism or simply by grabbing the back of head and moving it this
way and that while talking in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. No, we want
something better than that.
VERY
You notice that the table is now two inches to the left. Or that
suddenly your old friend is pronouncing his vowels slightly differently. Or
that he is now parting his hair on the right side instead of the left side. Was
I always left-handed?
So Jonathan renders himself empty, as empty as any puppet and
the spirit, the evil spirit that inhabits Stefan jumps into Jonathan's body and
begins to talk in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, but the voice is coming out
of Jonathan's mouth and Jonathan is moving his lips, although his eyes are
open and it looks like he is permanently looking at the ceiling.
Drugs don't help much either. They tend to increase mutations or at
least your awareness of them. Things you normally wouldn't notice become
quite visible when you are under the influence of Ozzie or Doom. And you
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can even hear Stefan speak in a real voice, a voice just like yours: I was
lonely so I created them.
At least this time there is no pink or green foam coming out of his
nose or ears or out of his mouth, which interferes with Stefan's voice.
I created Johnny and Jonathan so I would not be alone. But before
that I created Gilbert out of slime. And I even created H. and H. and
George Washington. I was lonely and I needed to be admired so I created
Johnny and Jonathan, but did it in such a way that they thought I was the
one who had been created and created by Gilbert at that, or at least found
by thme where I had been thrown. I even created them in such a way that
they thought they had found me in that junk store sitting on the floor next to
the other wooden things, covered with dust.
So I ask Stefan how it feels to be made of words, through and
through. And he answers:
SLOWLY.
Well, if you mean wood and not words, then I have veins because a
tree has veins, but the veins don't work. If you mean would and not wood,
then I have beans because a tree has beans, but the beans don't work.
And my dreams are very different from your dreams, as you can imagine.
You often have dreams, Jonathan and Johnny, about your bodies. Your old
bodies from long ago or your new bodies.
And I created them in such a way that they throw their own voices,
each voice distinct, belonging to each; but, no, that wasn't the truth. I was
speaking through them, in two different voices. This is how I talk to myself.
And hearing their own voices they thought they were real; they thought
they were alive. And they loved me.
I hear you discussing your dreams and trying to analyze these
dreams to figure out what they mean. I, however, you will remember, do
not have a tube.
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I was alone and I needed to be loved. I also needed to find out what
they felt like to each other because they loved each other and I was
jealous. And how each one felt about the together and where I fitted in. I
was alone and I could not move or speak. I was alone and I did not have a
tube, so I created them; I created them twice. I created him twice. And, oh,
yes, it was very amusing to see them so confused. But at least I knew
they loved me because I had created them that way.
Your arms become snakes. Your tubes become snakes. Your tongues
become snakes. And if I have a tongue it is sealed up behind my thin,
gauged- out permanent smile that is like the letter U. Or the smile of a
pump. The parts of my body that I know about are quite rigid. Gilbert only
used 10 crucial points. So there is nothing creepy and snakelike about me.
But perhaps I can best illustrate what I am trying to say by telling you and
the recording machine about two dreams I had recently.
HE
And Doom faded into Bone, the latest drug I had decided to try on
Johnny and, of course, that was a mistake and a waste. Does he need
more dreams? And once he started dreaming he couldn't stop. He wrote
some words on a piece of paper when I wasn't looking: Jonathan,
Jonathan, please make it stop. Please. The dreams are coming too fast. I
just get off of one and, presto, I am on the back of another. I just fall off of
one and, zip, I am back on his back. Please, please, make it stop!
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Chapter Twelve [Dreams]
The first dream started with a kind of pimple growing on my left arm.
It became bigger and bigger and then a stem or a finger broke through. It
was moving as if it were looking for light. Meanwhile it kept growing bigger
and bigger and it made a Y and at the ends of the Y there were two more
Y's and there was a bud and the bud opened up, becoming a leaf and then
it kept doing this and the stems became branches.
And I had to tell him he couldn't, that he would just have to wait it
out like everyone else.
Soon the pimple/bud had become a sapling and then the sapling
became a tree covered with buds and the buds opened up, all 1000 of
them and became 1000 pink flowers. (So how did you feel? I asked.) I felt
happy, very happy. But of course my feet were rooted to the ground and I
could no longer move.
Bone was the worst. Sometimes it lasted an hour, sometimes a day.
It was now a week that Johnny was on Bone. But I wasn't. I skipped Bone.
I figured I would let Johnny and Stefan communicate through Bone and
see what would happen. Oh, a lot happened. The flowers wilted and there
were little fruits now
the ground and then they sprouted and became other Stefans, a thousand
Stefans. (And how did you feel?) I wasn't sure I could handle all these
copies of myself, growing up around me. And I started to rain. I woke up.
(And, Stefan, what was the second dream?) Darker, much darker, but I
guess I should tell you although it is doubtful you will understand it.
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Johnny thought he was Benjamin Franklin. And he had this thing for
hats, hundreds of hats --- fedoras, caps, top hats, beanies, sombreros,
fools' caps, dunce caps, cowboy hats, watch caps, baseball caps, sailors'
caps, cop hats. And he had this thing for tubes. Big ones, small ones,
skinny ones, thick ones, crooked ones, with and without veins; soft ones,
hard ones. Ones that looked like thumbs; ones that looked like noses or
hoses. Ones that looked like baseball bats.
I couldn't see. I could only hear the sound of a saw. And I had
terrible pain. Someone was cutting off my feet and then my legs. Then he
went to work on my hands. He didn't have to cut off my tube, because, as
you know, I don't have one. My hands were followed by my arms. And then
he cut off my head, right at the neck. There was a scraping sound and a
sanding sound and from another part of the room, as if I were watching the
whole thing on a tube, I saw what was going on. A man I had never seen
before was turning me into something else.
HE
And when the hats and the tubes became all mixed up, he couldn't
stop breathing. Bone was in his bones and it wouldn't stop. So I gave him
an injection of Litigation, but not to Stefan, who had been very bad and
who could fry as far as I was concerned. Stefan had tried to take Johnny
away from me. That was not the deal. We were all supposed to be equal
and then I found him sitting on Johnny's lap in the dark. In the dark! Did he
think I was a fool? But then again I really can't choose between Johnny
and Stefan.
He was just carving away and then he fastened my torso to a peculiar
machine with clamps here and clamps there and it made my torso whirl
around and around, very fast. And then he took out a great big tooth or a
tube and held it against my whirling torso.
I love Johnny the way I love the Moss Park. I love Stefan the way I
used to love Harold. And on and on. I love Johnny the way I love air
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bridges and tubes, but I love Stefan the way I used to love B-23. I love
Johnny the way I love Black Spider, but I loved Stefan the way I used to
love Hoax. Oh, that was my favorite drug and I don't know why you can't
get it anymore.
It was a nice shape that he had made, but I winced when he began
caring out the inside with a piece of metal, holding it against me at various
angles as I whirled faster and faster. So I was a bowl, I thought to myself,
in the dream. Well, this is an improvement, for at least I have an inside
now. I am hollow. And when I was finished, when the new me was done,
he sanded me lovingly and then polished me and decided I could be seen
by others now.
This is what I remember about Hoax. It made you grow up. It made
you grow. It made you bigger than everyone else. And stronger. I could run
up and down the air bridges, high above, across the waters and never
stoop or get out of breath. And when you joined tubes while you were
under Hoax you never were tired or bored. I could just go on and on and
the other person would beg me to stop.
He decided, however, he was going to sell me. So I woke up then in
shock. Sold? Who would take care of me? No! And then if I remember
correctly, Jonathan began foaming in all colors and the squeaky void
stopped. Now it was Jonathan's voice. No!
Stop, stop, said Harold. I cannot take it anymore.
COULD
It took him awhile to realize what had happened, but later when I
played the tub back to him, although he could not remember what I had
said through him, using his vocal chords, he became very nervous, when I
came to the part about being sanded and polished.
Or was I dreaming? Just like now? Was Hoax a hoax? Someone
has a theory --- I think it's Gilbert -- that all the drugs we take are placebos
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and we really don't need them and that all we have to do is concentrate. I
somehow don't believe that all I have to do is concentrate and I can split
apart into a dozen different identities and lead a dozen different lives in a
dozen different places. I somehow don't quite believe that merely by
concentrating I can become Stefan.
And consulted with Johnny concerning the fact that I now had an
inside, was hollow.
I somehow don't relieve that all I have to do is negotiate and I can
split apart into a frozen diffident entities and read a frozen diffident hives in
a dozen diffident braces. I somehow don't quite believe that merely by
confabulating I can become Stefan.
What would this lead to?
I somehow don't deceive that all I have to do is flagellate and I can
spit a heart into a pose of referent amenities and bleed a dozen dental
knives in a cousin of confident places.
They both --- Jonathan and Johnny --- felt that the experiment had
not been successful in terms of adding information to their tuba about
Stefan. If they were going to publish a tube about Stefan they needed
much more information. They would need much more than they had, so
they decided to dream.
I somehow don't quite achieve, said Stefan, that early by tabulating
I can become Stefan.
MOVE
They tied Stefan up in strings, round and round, and then sticky
tape on top of that. Round and round. And placed him on the bed between
them when they went to sleep and, believe it or not, they both had the
same, identical dream. The ventricle steam. They both had the tentacle
scheme, pentacle bean/beam.
Or that I can become Johnny or Gilbert.
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Chapter 13 [Another Stefan Monologue]
Stefan was talking and since he liked listening to stories that began
with "once upon a time" he began his monologue the same way, in his own
squeaky voice.
I, however, find it hard to believe that just by concentrating I can go
back in time, the way you can scroll back on a computer or when you reach
the top of a winding road you could, in theory, jump back to a place mid-
way in ascent or all the way to the beginning of the climb.
Nevertheless, once upon a time George Washington, who could not
tell a lie, found some wood that giggled and cried like a child. This is the
true story; my version. And not the story that both Jonathan and Johnny
thought that I, Stefan, their "child" should not hear, or read. And certainly
not tell. Because it was too close to the truth? Or because it was so
distorted I would realize what liars they both were and what a horrible man
Gilbert, Johnny's mentor, is?
I'm not sure, but I really doubt that simply by concentrating, I can go
forward in time because that would mean the future was already set in
stone, so to speak. The way you can skip ahead to the last chapter of a
book. But not this book. And know how it all works out, for better or worse.
And because that would defeat the point of the book.
HIS
The wood that George Washington had selected for his project --- or
thought he had selected --- was an ordinary piece of wood. George was
happy to have the wood because he needed it to make a leg for a table.
He liked making furniture but not furniture that walked around and talked. It
had to be furniture that stood still and behaved, that did not think or dream.
And furniture that would not take revenge.
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Or that I can draw lines between various stars and thereby create
something new. Or that all by myself, without the use of drugs, I can
change the course of history.
But just as he raised his hatchet in order to strip off the bark, in his
head he heard me, Stefan, say: "No please don't hurt me."
Or that I can make Stefan behave in a decent, predictable way or
keep Jonathan and Johnny from becoming H. and H. or George and
Benjamin or determine how fast the ocean will rise.
George Washington looked all over for the source of what he called
"the squeaky voice." He didn't see anyone hiding under his tube rack or in
the closet where he hid his most cherished and highly illegal tubes that
were horribly pornographic and showed him sticking his tube into all kinds
of puppets, even sawing or hacking them apart and then when they were
sawdust, making gruel that he ate. I am not exaggerating.
FEET
AND
behind Johnny's back because he was going through another one of his
anti-drug periods, I actually changed the general election. The candidate
that was the least favored to win, who was lowest in the polls, won! Whiz
had allowed me to do that.
Certain slots and sockets too. They would suffer from this later. But I
was my own idea. I created my idea and my idea gave birth to me. Gilbert
forgot my tube. And thought everyone would be fooled by pencil squiggles
for ears. Johnny says that Gilbert also forgot my heart, which isn't true. I
am otherwise perfect, just as I planned.
Now it turned out that Benjamin Franklin winning did not really make
much of a difference. Other, hidden, cooler heads actually controlled
everything. But without Whiz, I don't think I cold have made Benjamin
Franklin win. Without Benjamin Franklin in charge of drug rehabilitation
would we have been able to get George Washington out of prison? I don't
think so.
But right now at this point in the true version of this story my voice
was bothering Georgie, driving him crazy. Or rather, crazier.
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Benjamin was easy to fool. We offered him Stefan for a night and
while he was trying to unwind all the bandages from the little mummy we
had delivered to his home, we got George out and once you're out, you're
out and you don't have to go back in unless you do something really
ridiculous like cheat on taxes.
"Let me out," I yelled. "Let me out."
The mummy wasn't Stefan. Stefan would never have put up with
that. He hates having things covering his eyes, his pumpkin-slit mouth that
can't move and his pencil-squiggle ears. Instead we wrapped up an old
boot that I had found in the bottom drawer of the empty desk in my office. It
was quite a feat to try getting the voice to come out of that boot, and
actually it didn't work very well.
He looked in all the drawers and cupboards and in the various large
trunks he owned. He even looked outside but there was nothing to see on
the air bridge in the distance or closer on, or the walkway to his enormous
apartment. I, Stefan, could see what he saw because I was inside his
head, the last place he would think of looking. He thought he might have
imagined hearing what he called "the squeaky irritating voice" so he struck
a blow upon the piece of wood.
We slapped up an old foot that I had found in the button drawer of
the empty disk in my orifice, which wasn't so empty after all. And it was
quite a feet to try getting the vice to come out of that foot, and actually it
didn't shirk very ill.
He thought of the voice as irritating because my voice is a slightly
higher pitch than his and in fact he thought of all voices not his own voice
as irritating, since he preferred silence,
LEGS
BUT
and would use any means to get it, including making up visions and,
worse, false gods. He was totally a fool, for when he came across a real
god, little me trapped inside of a log, he didn't know what to do. He didn't
know how to obey and worship.
I also now realize that there is reading for reading's sake, the
pleasure of it, rather than for the practical meanings, which explains why
my two fathers, Johnny and Jonathan, spend so much time reading, even
arguing about tubes they have both read. Or, sometimes, have not actually
read.
The door opened and a dapper man came in. His name was Gilbert,
but to the boys of the neighborhood he was Big Gilbert, but I cannot tell
you the reason for this name because you are too young. Gilbert also had
a very bad temper and when anyone called him Big Gilbert to his face he
became ferocious.
And in the picture tubes I cannot understand the words that pop up,
particularly in the ones without sound, which doesn't matter, because these
are usually not very interesting to me except for the ones that show
murders and puppets. But in real life there are words everywhere, signs
and directions and advertisements. And I can't read them, no matter how
hard I try.
"Good morning, Mr. Washington," said Gilbert, perhaps too politely.
"What were you doing on the floor?"
Once Johnny and Jonathan tried to teach me to read. They were
tired of reading tubes to me aloud so I would go to sleep. Johnny made
some marks on the floor with chalk, which is a kind of soft, dusty stone that
leaves temporary marks, usually in white.
"I was teaching that log over there his ABC's."
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.
HE
SEE
that seemed to talk in a squeaky voice when no one was looking. The log
jumped out of his hands and knocked up against the wall....
These particular tubes had no pictures but the words themselves
created pictures in my head. When will my head be filled with words and
pictures? When will my head be solid, become a crystal?
"Why did you do that?"
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Chapter 14 [Torture]
WHERE
"It's the fault of the wood."
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But Gilbert, who I began to think of as the devil I had seen on the
tube, was always inventing invisible gods and using words even I could not
understand. How will I punish him? I will punish him so that he will never
see the glory of Stefan. No, that would be too cruel.
"You're right, but you were the one to throw it."
I will design his life so that he will never be loved. Perfect! And then he
will truly understand what a sin he has committed, what a crime. He is the
liar, not me. Gilbert, The Liar. At least my lies have a certain ring of truth,
whereas his are very, very boring. And yet he makes money out of his lies.
"I did not throw it."
Did he really go into a trance and transport himself to another world, in
the deep dark past? Did he really enter the strange temple made out of
titanium and opals, with floors that looked like absolutely still water? Did he
hear a million Stefans singing? Did he? And when he saw the Motorized
Heralds whirling and whirling was he correct in his
HE
WAS
BEFORE
wall. TRIED
TO
As soon as they were done, Gilbert felt a sharp kick on his posterior.
Not where the socket was, but a little higher. "And you didn't give me a
socket either!" I screamed, throwing my voice so that it seemed to be
coming from the statue of the two-headed wolf that could turn round and
round, 360 degrees.
Where they trying to force me to time travel at their behest? I can
hardly control time travel, events shuffling, telekinesis, and identity theft or
identity shifts myself, so how can I teach them any of the items in my bag
of tricks?
"I deserve a tube. I deserve a socket."
They kept asking me who I was. And I kept saying "Anyone you think I
am." For the truth is, I don't know who I really am. Am I Jonathan or
someone as yet unnamed? Why should I limit myself by pinning myself
down to one identity?
"It is too late. And you are bad enough as it is."
And while they were tightening the screws and lighting the matches,
the glass marble or the glass eye I had become, deep down inside of their
torture victim, became smaller and smaller and unbreakable.
He took hold of me under my arms and put me on the floor to teach
me to walk. I made him do this too and he should have thought twice about
this too, but what can you expect? He had not made himself --- through
thoughts -- as I had done. He did not even know the word for it. Then.
Gilbert later used the word in conjunction with one or another of his money-
making religions. He used the word "autogenesis" as if it were a curse.
That was quite a year, when he was using that word.
Let the landscapes and the sunsets roll.
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That was the year he was pushing homogenesis and the
homosexual transmission of acquired characteristics, by which he meant
that your tube partner could pass on to you all of his bad character traits
like puppet-abuse, doll dread, dummy dallying, marionette mashing, and
involuntary ventriloquism. Not to speak of bilocation, werewolfing,
doppleganging, long-distance vampirism, and mystery mongering.
WALK.
Let the water turn to stone. Let love become a weapon of self-
destruction.
My wooden legs were so stiff I could not move them, so Gilbert held
my hand and showed my wooden body how to put one wooden foot in front
of the other. And how not to fall down.
Let all the monsters I have ever met in all he worlds and dimensions
I have visited, with or without drugs, rain down on me.
When my shapely legs were limbered up, I started walking by
myself and ran all around the room. When my tapered pegs were lumbered
up, I started stalking by myself and spanned all around the tomb. When my
shipboard pegs were numbered up, I started squawking all around the
zone.
I am free.
I came to the open door, and with one leap I was out into the street
high above the salty water below, heading for the air bridge, heading for
love, heading for trouble, heading for fun, heading for poetry and rhymes.
Away I went. Poor Gilbert ran after me but was unable to catch me, for I,
Stefan, the Invincible, ran in leaps and bounds. I was free.
Only I exist.
HE
"Catch him! Catch him!"
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They were also not aware that as they were questioning me I was
sending tiny space ships into their brains, like evil pills or worm eggs. From
that night on they would only dream of me and they would never stop
dreaming. I have also seen to it that they would have hallucinations without
stop. Various body parts would expand. Other parts would contract.
But the people in the street were in another reality. They were like
sleepwalkers, which really only meant that they were listening to their tubes
and, in any case, would not be interested in the spectacle of a wooden
puppet running down the street pursued by a famous artist in his
underwear, his hair flying, his tube flapping, his shoes seriously untied.
And he wasn't wearing socks.
Their left hands would be as small as a mouse in a tube or a mouse
tube; their right hands would reach from Building A to Building B. Their
rented tubes now firmly attached would become so long they would trail
after them across the air bridges and they would no longer be able to fit
inside the transportation tubes joining one skyscraper to the next. These
slimy tubes would coil around their bodies and squeeze them tighter and
tighter until tears came out of their ears. And that was just the beginning.
A policeman saw what was going on. This was odd, because it
either meant that his tube was broken or for some reason on this particular
day the President had given the order that cops on duty could not listen to
or watch their tubes, either the tube they had inserted into the socked in
the back of their handsome and well-polished wooden heads or the tube
they had between their sturdy cedar legs.
When they returned home their boyfriends would not recognize them
and when they looked into the mirror you could rent on any street corner
they would not see themselves but me, always me. The liar they had
tortured. They saw me in every mirror. And when they were sure that
Gargoyle had taken hold and that I could not lie, I began to lie. I began to
spin great tales of wonder --- of kidnappings, ventriloquisms, and plans to
establish empires of music and corruption.
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The policeman, my friend, a fellow of some height, grabbed me by
the nose. It was now extremely long and hard and seemed made on
purpose for that sort of thing. And he returned me to Gilbert, who said he
owned me.
I told them what they wanted to hear and they didn't get the joke. In the
meantime, since they were only holding my duplicate, I slipped away. They
thought I had ceased, that their torture had gone too far and, of course,
they expected that now they themselves would be punished because they
did not really find what they wanted.
HAD
N
O
He will place his tube inside Jonathan, knowing that Stefan has no
tube or socket of his own. He will use his tube on Johnny, on Howard and
Harold, on George Washington even. In front of innocent Stefan!."
And with that I jumped to another puppet nearby and...then out into
the street. I "jumped" again. I was inside of someone named Harold and I
managed to confuse him so he ended up in Building B without knowing
why. Jonathan opened the door and I jumped back into Stefan who now
looked like he was fast asleep. The Harold person left, befuddles.
Sleepwalking? Sleepwalking during daylight? Well, anything was possible
when you lived half the time on a world within a world and the other half
somewhere else.
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Finally the policeman who had tackled me and put me in handcuffs
ended matters by setting me at liberty and dragging Gilbert to jail. Gilbert,
so used to special treatment because of his alleged, and always very
suspicious "friendship" with our President, did not know how to defend
himself. He wept and wailed like a child; his head was packed solid, full of
music, crammed, clotted. His head was full of tubes. "Ungrateful boy! To
think I tried so hard to make you a well-behaved lap puppet. I should have
given the matter more thought."
But no one cared, as long as they could keep their opals.
TOES.
ANOTHER
YEAR
HE
DIDN'T
And the poem was about being someone else, a larger person
included in an organization. Someone autonomous. Someone invisible.
Well, not to his immediate friends and neighbors, but unknown to persons
beyond his immediate associates. And the other puppet in this poem was
blond, unlike himself. But where did that accent come from? Johnny tried to
identify it. It was coming out of his mouth in the poem but he couldn't tell if
it was Dutch or Spanish, French or Welsh. In any case, as this other
parson, he was walking along a narrow city street in a foreign country
when a dark vehicle pulled up. Two men jumped out and grabbed him by
the tubes, one of them on each side, and man-handled him into the back
seat of the tube.
I did not take any unusual turns or duck into any tubes. I never
looked behind. But it was getting lighter and lighter as evening fell and
lights went on. Streetlights, lights in deportment houses. And then when I
was trying to remember why I was following the man in the cap, the man
disappeared. Where had he gone? It was a street of locked
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KNOW
HE
I did not take any unusual turns or duck into any stories. I never
looked unkind. But it was getting darker and darker, as evening fell and
lights went on. Streetlights, lights in department horses. And then when I
was trying to remember why he was following me, the man in the coupe,
the man disappeared. Where had he gone? It was a street of blocked
doors.
The delivery system was quite complicated and there were
unforeseen consequences. Those who stayed in the gallery for too long ---
and certainly the gallery staff --- ended up smelling like hoses for hours
after they left the galley. This did not improve their tube life. He also had
another vision. Young Jonathan put some hose essence on himself. This
version came in two variants, having to do with the amount of essence and
the site of application. In the first, only he smelled the hoses; in the second,
he used enough of the specially concocted hose essence to broadcast the
scent wherever he went. Both hose pieces had been purchased by a
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museum and then promptly left in storage or anchorage. Why then did this
tube smell of hoses?
No lights went on in apartments above. No alarms went off. No entry
buzzers sounded. I didn't know where to turn. I didn't know what to do. I
decided to retrace my steps. And when I arrived at the Boulevard, I was
equally confused. Which direction had I come from? If I could remember
that, then I could remember everything that had happened yesterday.
In any case, he was soon unconscious. The operative in the black
seat had held a moth, soaked with some sort of narcotic, over his mouth
and his hose and he went out like a light. Could there be a poem within a
poem? Can you dream you are dreaming? Obviously that was what was
happening now, for Jonathan found himself at home and in bored daylight,
sunlight streaming through the flesh windows at the brunt. of his
apartment, overlooking the empty Parisian street two flights down.
COULDN'T
But I knew this: I was angry at the waiter in the small café. Why had
he brought tea and not coffee? Why was he arguing with me? I threw down
my napkin and asked to see the manger. But what had happened before
that? Why hadn't the friend I was waiting for shown up? I tried reaching him
on his cell phone. No luck. Now what would I do for money. I tried calling
H. but he didn't answer either. Then I remembered why I was waiting for
my friend. And it wasn't just to ask him for the guns I was owed.
He noticed that all the plants and the scents on his balcony were
dead. The doorbell was ringing too. He grabbed his robe and went to the
door, but when he looked through the peephole the man on the other side
of the shore was no one he recognized.
It was to ask his advice about his new job. Should I rap, as it were,
on my immediate boss? Should I, Johnny, be the one to inform Gilbert that
my boss was in on the deal? What would Gilbert do? I knew the new
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religion Gilbert was putting into place had to be top secret during the
beginning stages, otherwise, why, otherwise the wrong puppets might
become involved. There were too many of those floating around, looking
for a docking station.
"What do you want, who are you?"
Gilbert's latest religion would turn everything inside out. He claimed
to have accidentally downloaded a new sacred tube and at the moment he
was busy translating it and putting it into a form that converts could
understand and use. I told him it would be better to give it as he had
received it. So he decided to tube the original download then have an
appendix that might be easier to understand. It was this appendix that
caused him trouble.
A small animal ran between my pegs.
Talking to Jonathan (with a mercifully silent Stefan in attendance), I
explained that the tube started with a new idea about our beginnings. The
swarm came from the other world within our world, the real world, and our
bodies were just weak vessels for these centers or censors. When it
became apparent as more and more bodies were created that there were
not going to be enough censors from the swarm for the bodies, it was
discovered that when two bodies united, tube to tube, as it were, a new
sensor could be created. Tube to tube. Tube to socket. Plug to socket.
The man was weeping.
HEAR
But there was another secret. This one Gilbert saved for immediate
disciples, like me. A body with a scenter could plug into itself, connecting
one tube to another or placing one tube into a nearby socked and create a
new center all by itself that would be an exact duplicate, unlike the body-to-
body sensors which shared characteristics of each partner.
"Why are you crying?"
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In both cases it appeared that the sensor was "born" with acquired
characteristics. For instance, if George Washington and Benjamin plugged
up, the new center of consciousness might have George's knowledge of
dead languages and Benjamin's tube greed caused by too many early
years spent in isolation.
"Let me in. I have some very bad news for you. And you won't like it
at all, but someone paid me a lot of guns to come and tell you and I am
supposed to photograph you at the moment I tell you -- the look on your
hose. I need this gum desperately because my little toy is quite ill and I lost
my job and my robbery last mouth. I have no one to turn to. The new is
this: you are going to inherit a lot of money"
I then tried to explain to Jonathan --- who had asked -- why there
needed to be so many centered bodies. Only when the centered-body
combo is in force, can this combo, given the right circumstances, push on
to the third stage.
But this did not work. Johnny didn't let the salesman in, although as
usual he needed more guns in order to
SO
trade them for more drugs, because he was running out. He particularly
needed something to counteract Black Spider. Once you took it, it never
went away. You had to take Weasel or Bard to keep yourself level. But
Johnny was like that, always creating problems for himself.
And has anyone achieved this yet? No, but that is Gilbert's goal. He
wants to launch third-stage life forms. Yes, definitely. and then...Good-bye,
planet.
Black Spider, at full strength, gave him access to his past, his own
and Jonathan's too. And he was even able, he thought, to visit his home
planet. And the tubes when you were taking Black Spider were
exceptionally vivid. He was addicted to some of the pornographic ones,
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usually classified as Puppet Porn --- various puppets committing
unspeakable acts among themselves and with their masters, who were
rather like Jonathan and Johnny in age and appearance but with all their
strings concealed and/or operated by remote.
"But I don't want to leave. I am just getting used to this place."
Before the addiction/addition he had not realized the huge variety of
HE
things you could do with your tubes and with your various sockets. But
even government-sponsored tubes, which were largely incomprehensible,
required multiple viewings. Once you started experiencing a tube, living
inside of it, you couldn't stop going back. Sometimes, he had heard, you
never came out. And all of this was thanks to Black spider.
"You will want to. Believe me, you will soon want to get out as fast
as you can."
Gilbert had once explained to Johnny that he was not using Black
Spider, Black Spider was using him. Its cells were multiplying inside of him
and soon it would jump to others, even strangers, passing in the street.
They would not know what hit them. Although Johnny often wondered why
one thing was alive and another not, Black Spider was a living thing. But
just right now he had no time for philosophy.
"Why? I like it here."
He had to find a drug that would kick The Spider back under his
conscious control. He couldn't keep flying off the handle.
"You won't. Things are going to become worse."
WAS
Just the other day he had slapped Stefan for no good reason. Was
laughing worth a slap? He knew Stefan would take his revenge, was
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perhaps already getting his revenge. The small animal that had run
between his legs was now circling him and nipping at his ankles. He had
never seen anything like i before. It had eight legs and made a funny
chirping noise. He kicked it and then he stomped on it until it stopped
chirping. Reaching down he stuck his finger in the ooze coming out of the
shiny crust and put his finger to his mouth. The ooze tasted like noses,
artificial noses mixed with raw meat.
"But Gilbert's religions have all been a bit disposable. Aren't you
suspicious of this one? I am."
He was about to throw up, when he saw someone. He knew it was
H. or H. He always got the two of them confused, but this H. was probably
the late H., the former H., the dead H. whose name was Harold, because
he was wearing a cowboy hat.
"Disposable, disposable. You use whatever ladder you have to use
and then leave it behind."
Thus the question of life and/or death came up again, probably cued
by his theory that Black Spider was a living thing. If Harold were truly dead,
Johnny mused, then his "center" would not be present under the cowboy
hat, under his belt, inside the still sexually active body. He knew Harold
was still sexually active because his tube was showing. Did only the living
have sex, sticking their tubes anywhere where they could fit, stuffing things
into their various sockets?
"How much time do we have? If we have to leave again, I want some
time to pack"
Well, perhaps the definition or the distinction was something else
entirely. Perhaps it was a series of negatives. You were alive if no one was
pulling your strings. You were alive if you were smart enough not to appear
to be alive. You were alive if you could not remember anything before
coming to earth. And Harold?
"You are already packed. You have everything you need."
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He decided he would have to test Harold, by asking him if he knew
where to get Weasel or Bard.
"But I can't leave. I am not a third-stage life form yet. I can only create
one, right?"
SURROUNDED
"And when he had you convinced that speech came before writing and
not the other way around, the way it really happened, you seemed to have
forgotten that the only way we learned to speak was by concentrating on
the writings on the tubes, moving our lips to imitate their forms and then
sounds came out and we attached each sound to a different limb, a
different tube. How could it have been otherwise? Before we learned to
read we were dumb. And he had you convinced that spanking, I mean
speaking, came first! Do you remember what he said when I asked him if
the writings existed before we existed? One day he said, yes. The next day
he said, no. George Washington proved that the writing was here before
we were and we had to learn how to pronounce it, how to say it. How to
speak. The fact that now we can go from talking to writing doesn't mean
that talking came first, nor that poetry came first -- that poetry created the
world.
Safe in his office high above the watery expanses below he
explained the cure as he had experienced it a year or so ago. It was also
known as the Replacement Cure. And what would it cost?
He had this theory about poetry, that the universe is one big
machine for generating poems. I caught him on that one. When I told him
that was the one thing that had really influenced me in his class, he denied
ever saying it. If he did not say it, who did? Was I talking to myself? Was I
reading to myself? Was I reading myself?
"Oh, not very much," he said. "I can arrange a payment plan. And if
you can bring me other customers, the gross amount due will be
proportionately reduced. And then, of course, I would not look unkindly
upon the use of your tube. You know, Jonathan, how I have always had a
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thing for you. And for Stefan too. But we can talk about that later once I
register you.
"You know very well he is a fraud. His name isn't even really Gilbert.
But, just as he says. He is being used by a higher force. He is too
uneducated to make up all these tales, too uninformed. He does not even
know how to put a tube into a slot or which tube to use when he wants to
dream....Give him a chance. I think I'll pack. I think...."
And the replacements began. I saw the nose-meat animal under his
desk, hiding. At least temporarily. I looked carefully at Harold's right harm.
The right-hand arm had not aged. If arms, then hands; if hands, then why
not legs? Feet came next. Harold's face seemed immune to time, but
finally that began to go too. First the nose was replaced.
SILENCE.
AND
THE
difference
except for the sudden absence of Black Spider. But under Plan B, which I
find more exciting, will others recognize the Jonathan inside the duplicate
of Johnny?
"You know who stuck that spare tube in me, don't you? It was your
very own little angel Stefan, who has always been envious of me because
under my pants I have my very own tube and it is attached to me and
never falls off or wanders around, whereas he has nothing. He only has a
nose. True, my tube is little. It may not be as big as your tube, but it is a
real tube and you would be surprised what I can do with it. Ask Howard.
Ask Harold. Ask them what Stephen can do with his tube."
Harold, who I think is the real Harold, but perhaps not, answered as
if he were the original Harold: he avoided my questions. In due course, he
said, "But I am not your mentor." He teased me. Oh, Harold, you are such
a big tease! I wish you loved me the way you love my Johnny and the way
Stefan apparently has fallen in love with me, that little weasel. No, I mean
puppet, doll.
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And Stefan tried to take it away from me when he was left here on
what Jonathan called a play date. What is a play date? Is that when you
are left alone with a monster like Stefan and he tries to take your tube
away from you, yanking on it and chewing on it? Biting it? But I wouldn't let
him have it.
"Furthermore," he asked, as if reading my mind, "Are you sure I am
really Harold?"
I think H. and H. would throw me back in that junk shop if I lost my
tube. They need my tube. I don't want to tell you quite yet what they do to
me. Suffice it to say, if I didn't have my tube for them to use then what
would I do?
"No, I am not. For all I know you might be an entirely new character
that has appeared in this tube, just to confuse things a bit or add another
layer of intrigue and magic, black magic."
SIL
ENCE
By the way, Johnny, don't try any funny stuff. You can say you love
me all your want, Johnny, but Stefan tried that trick too. I didn't fall for it. He
was just after my tube. But you already have a tube. Why do you want
another one? I guess you never have enough tubes. I can relate to that.
I've had that feeling. But, you know what, no matter how big my tube is or
how many other plastic tubes I have growing between my legs, I will never
be real until I have a name. It is very awkward going about when you are
always referred to as You. Or, hey, You, Puppet With No Name. Hey,
Tube.
Harold whom I was more certain than ever was Gilbert, was not
interested in Stephen's story. I told him, however, that I was not sure how
Stephen had heard this story. I think he had found an old tube somewhere.
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And when I accused him of entering a forbidden tube he recited the list of
titles:
I have a nose. but I cannot smell. I have ears, but I cannot hear. I
have eyes, but I cannot see. I have a mouth, but I cannot speak in my own
voice. I have no name. I long to be called Stefan. I have a tube, but he,
Stefan, has a name. I long to be addressed as Stefan and so shall it be. I
will now call myself Stefan Two. No, I had better not. There is some rule
somewhere about puppets sharing names. Each name must be unique.
And I still do not know where Stephan got his story from. Had I been
the one? In any case, his retelling was strange; he made himself the hero
or the anti-hero. It was all in the first person, fold from the twisted Stefan
point of view and although it seemed very familiar like a story I had once
told, the details were off. The point of view was truly sick. Why did he
always insist that his legs had been burned off and then replaced? What
did that mean? Obviously his legs stood for something else. But what? His
missing tube?
This is like the rule that each actor must have a unique name and if
your name is George Washington and another actor already goes by that
name, whether or not it is his real name or merely his so-called stage name
or tube name, you cannot use your real name but must choose
WAS
DEEP
But Harold was not interested in any of this. He just wanted to sell
one of his Cures for Black Spider. And the Stefan he loved was not the
Stefan I loved. My Stefan had warts; my Stefan was bad. His Stefan was
just a hunk of perfectly articulated wood. It did not even bother him that
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Stefan did not have a tube. His nose was growing but there was nothing
growing between his legs. He and Howard by this time in the game already
had Stephen and Stephen who was made of plastic definitely had a plastic
thing, a tube. I guess you always want what you do not have. That must be
the effect of Black Spider or the withdrawal pain. The withdrawal pains.
They cover you from head to toe in agony and slime -- and there is no real
withdrawal. It is never complete. Deep inside you, little bits of Black Spider
are always there. Unless...unless...
Did I have to explain why the word "tube" is used to cover so many
different things? Who wanted to know? Stephen? But he went through the
explanation in his head just in case it was important.
You were entirely replaced.
A tube could be a nose. A tube could be a tongue or a gun and vice
versa. Or a drug. Or a religion of the Gilbert kind. Or a dance or a poem.
Maybe you can put tubes in your brain as well as between your legs.
In the meantime, smitten, I am studying to be a puppet doctor and I
have been working very hard.....If you are going to be a doctor, maybe you
can cure yourself and you can get rid of Black Spider. Physician cure
thyself. I tried to respond to that. But I had a long way to go. And he was
out the door.
You could always buy extra tubes and hoses or trade them in or
upgrade them. They could easily be replaced --- unlike your brain, a
crystal, a solid, a rock made out of frozen perfume. And everything inside
was motionless when it filled up.
INSIDE
HIM
And then I have another dream or vision. My left hand just falls off.
My nose is loose. My nose is coming off. My nose is falling off. What shall I
do? Replace them, Gilbert orders. But how will I know the replacements
are right? Can I get a hand exactly like my left hand? Can I buy a nose
exactly like my old nose, the one everyone likes?
Johnny to Gilbert: What are the symptoms?
Gilbert: Do it now, while you have the time and the government
certificates and enough credits. Take the old nose and hold it up to the new
one and look in a mirror.
Gilbert to Johnny: Preceded by a dull ache, slight inflammation and
ringing in the ears.
Johnny: Mirrors are forbidden! And I have already lost the old nose.
A hand may drop off, during a dinner party or a public speech when
you are accepting an award for government service. Sometime a whole
arm will drop off in the street and you have to quickly turn around and pick
it up off the ground before “insects” begin their carnivorous attack.
Gilbert: What!
TOO.
Needless to say, both the nose and the tube can be affected but not
simultaneously.
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Johnny then remembers that Gilbert has a mirror. But he is, it turns
out, on another plane, investigating yet another glitch.
Replacements for all parts are readily available at any clinic or by
mail order, but since there is not known cure for this unnamed disease
parts fall off randomly and continuously; impoverishment comes quickly.
And then Johnny, awake again, found himself still trying to get away
from the detective, the man in the raincoat who had been following him all
day, all week, all month. He had even tried to confront him. Why are you
following me? Don’t you have anything better to do? He turned around and
ran away down the block.
But a block or two later he was there again, shadowing me. All this
time I was trying to figure out why he might be following me. I went though
a list of sins, but I had committed none of them. I had given up breaking
and entering. Blackmail had lost its charm. I could not even be accused of
adultery. You can’t commit adultery with a puppet.
AFTER
And when they caught me, they wanted to know why I smelled like
rose pedals. I said it was an artwork. And the said, I don't think so. I think it
was a secret meeting. It is a kind of code and they kept beating me with
their rubber instruments. Their hoses, under the scary spotlight. There are
so many answers, but so few questions. I leave the shell of my body and
make a mirror. Instructions, adventures, then removal of Black Spider.
In a percentage of cases, upon investigation it has been discovered
that the patient was not entirely incorrect and the body part in question was
of suspicious origin. There is also the infamous case that occurred several
years ago concerning the isolate who, unable to find food in any other way,
began chewing on and eventually eating his own appendages until the only
ones left were his feet, since he could not reach them with his mouth.
Needless to say his nose and his ears were also inedible.
YEARS
WAS
And me. And Jonathan. And Gilbert. And Harold. And Howard. And
George. And the city. And when I looked in the mirror I did not see myself. I
saw Stefan....
There are also language diseases. These are rampant, covering the
gamut, covering the gambit, from involuntary rhyming slang to willfully
erroneous translations of presidential speeches, homilies, law book
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.
phrases, orders of evacuation, and terms of endearment. How can these
be cured?
The great towers of the city were linked by air bridges and I
wondered if I would ever find my way home or find my way to my office. I
desperately needed another disguise. George was working very hard to
eliminate me. One by one he was eliminating the competition for Stefan's
affections. Nevertheless, I did not even think George's name when I was
being grilled. That would have been too easy. Also I knew deep down
inside, George would crack, thus putting our grand conspiracy at risk.
Speaking in blank verse is one solution.
Several drugs, if used correctly have also been known to help. Black
Spider, for instance. Of course, Black Spider is extremely habit forming. In
extreme cases of language disease, surgery may be the only solution. The
patient is strapped to the operating table and is tongue is uprooted. And
since the language disease, whether it is a case of conjugations or lack of
agreement between verbs and pronouns, might be suspected of lingering
on a sub-vocal level in the brain itself -- often the root cause of the ailment
-- certain parts of the brain will also have to be uprooted. It is not yet
agreed that language diseases also infect gestures and body movements,
but the evidence is growing.
ABLE
TO
If there was a fourth brain and then a fifth; they were invisible like so
many other important things, like love, like revenge, like truth, like the past
or the path. But what did that matter now? What matters is that Johnny is
unplugged. Jonathan is still alive. Evil Stefan hasn't managed to unplug
him yet. It is now Jonathan who thinks he saw the world within the world.
They were going at three different speeds and they were three different
sizes. One was yellow, the biggest. One was green and the smallest was
red. And this is how he reported his adventure to Stefan: I saw three
moons. But I did not feel at home.
Disguised as a gigantic Stefan, he had a new freedom. He was
wearing Stefan's greatly enlarged body; he was, so to speak, the hand in
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the sock puppet, the hand that had entered the door in the lower back of
the ventriloquist's knee puppet.
Was I supposed to feel at home? I am not sure. Everywhere I
looked there was no one about. The narrow passageways and the bridges
between buildings were empty. I was silent. But then I looked over the
railing and I thought I saw tiny specks moving about far below. Would I be
welcomed? I forced my way into one of the locked lobbies. I pushed
various buttons, but none of the elevator doors opened. I found a door
marked "emergency egress." Egress means Exit, or so I thought. The door
opened and I began taking the stairs, one landing at a time. I could hardly
see the ground floor, so many floors below, which I began to think of as the
last landing. And what if there were no egress, emergency or otherwise?
Would I be able to climb up all these stairs to the lobby or would I be
trapped? 133 landings later, each landing the same, each landing locked, I
arrived at a place with no further stairs. There were several doors, one
door for each side of the hexagonal room.
And in his dream induced by bard he was doomed to telling a series
of stories, episodes in some great adventure. If the episodes stopped he
would be unplugged. For good. By Gilbert? He wasn't certain who the
audience was. He was speaking into a microphone: "...As I ran, pursued by
detectives, I felt more and more certain that I would have to give up, but
suddenly I saw a little apartment house at the end of the dead-end street. I
said to myself: 'If I have enough breath left with which to reach that little
house, I may be saved. If I knock on the front door long enough and loud
enough someone is bound to let me in and I will not have to answer all
those stupid questions I know those detectives following me want
MOVE
answered,
such as: Why are you always late? Why do you live with both Jonathan
and Johnny? Why are you envious of Stephen who used to be called The
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.
Puppet With No Name? Why do you always lie? Why is your tube growing
in size, getting bigger and bigger, longer and longer, harder and harder?'
"I tried each door, but only the sixth was unlocked and I thereby
entered a corridor that I was soon to learn twisted from left to right in a
zigzag pattern. The corridor thereby seemed much longer than it actually
was. and at the end of it was another door. The doorknob I grabbed was
dry. No water. And at first it did not turn, but attempting to turn it in the
opposite direction I had first tried, it did not open.
"Not waiting another moment, I sprinted down the cobblestone
street, the detectives still in pursuit. Tired and out of breath, I finally
reached the door of the deportment house and knocked. No one
answered. There was no doorman, only a door. It was an apartment horse
in a dream. One door with two dark windows, one on each side of the
shore, and up and up for thirty floors. I wondered now how the large the
lobby could possibly be. Not very large. and would there be room for an
elevator.
"I pushed the door.
"I knocked again, louder than before, for behind me I heard steps
and the labored breathing of my persecutors. They were brutes. they were
grunting and groaning as they came closer and closers. since knocking
was of no use, in utter despair I began to kick and bank against the door as
if I wanted to break it in.
"I was at the base of the skyscraper, towering above me, connected
on all six sides to skyscrapers as high or higher by the air bridges I saw
above. But here there was the land. And, hard to believe, I saw thousands
of footprints, going every which way. Thousands of bootprints but no paths.
And everywhere there was the odor of old roses, although there was hardly
a breeze. I found it difficult to breath.
"After all that noise, a window directly above the door opened and a
handsome puppet looked down. He had a face as white as sex. His eyes
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.
were closed and his waxy white hands were crossed on his waxy white
chest. He was stark naked. With a voice so weak that it hardly could be
heard he whispered: 'no one lives in this house. Everyone is dead.' 'Dead?
I don't know what that word means.
HIS
EYELIDS
A long, long time ago, probably many years before you can
remember, I was employed as a rent puppet. It was not an unpleasant job
as long as you kept your wits about you. It is, as you can imagine, a
dangerous job, but that's why it pays so well. Customers are usually fairly
tame, but once in awhile you get someone who's is a little wacko. But the
secret of my success as the highest paid rent puppet of my generation was
that I was very accommodating and of course stronger than most puppets
of my size. That was certainly one of the things that attracted so many
customers, but it was also what allowed me to survive the wackos.
Although I have a better instinct about such things than most, you can't
always tell what's going to happen.
AND
Now that I am unplugged I can say anything I want. The tube action
was a cover story. What they really wanted was fantasy. Tubes or not,
slots or not, plugs or not, sockets or not. Tubes, tongues, hoses, noses. I
always did what they asked. Shall I tell you some of my adventures? I'll
give you a kind of summary of the high points and the low points so that
what follows will make more sense.
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.
It's Le Sieur Thiemot, who could imitate all the voices and sounds of
a fox hunt: "This is not just a thin theory trying to fit into a thimble. There is,
in this, a thoroughly thought out thicker thread in the ticked thicket. The
tongue or the thought as tough as thatch or thistle is not thrust through the
teeth ever, because nothing should show through the teeth."
For instance, I had a regular customer who always wanted me to
dress up like a detective. He had a raincoat with numerous buckles made
just for me. And then he would tell me where he would be at a certain time
and I would stay at a certain distance and follow him, for as long as he
wanted, up peculiar hills, up and down those fake hills beyond the puppet
dormitory. Beyond the central office, down dark streets and dingy alleys. I
never knew where he was leading me, but it was always someplace new.
He seemed to need a new place each time. Once I got too close to him
and he turned a corner and trapped me. He broke the game, not me. He
told me I was being too easy. He wanted to know why I was following him,
hunting him, but he didn't want me to be so close to him that all doubt was
erased. Nor did he ever really ever have to run.
HIS
But I do not even know what a fox hunt is. The tongue, he
insisted, could be made of anything: leather, oak, liver, wet rags. Those
distant (or nearby) voice-throwers were not following me. I picked up one of
the puppets who looked suspiciously like Stephen, that piece of garbage,
that Stefan wanna-be. And I shook this piece of garbage until he thought
his head was going to fall off. I sucked up one of the crumpets who looked
meritoriously like Stephen, that piece of baggage, that Stefan wa-wa. And I
shook this piece of cabbage until he thought his bead was going to fall off.
Once I did loose him, temporarily. He had ducked into a jewelry
store down by the air bridge and when I followed him inside he wasn't
there. I covered all exists and left. He must have been hiding inside or must
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.
have disguised himself in some way, perhaps as the clerk, for after ten
minutes he was out on the street again.
"Stop it," he shouted. "My head is going to come loose!" So
you see the pile of puppets was not just a bunch of old rags and wooden
faces. They could not fool me. I shook another one and then the next.
Soon they were sitting up like proper puppets and they were talking and
their eyes were moving. I myself was speechless. So taking out a pad and
pencil from my back pocket, assuming they could read --- unlike Stefan --- I
wrote the following words: "Take me to your ventriloquists!" They answered
that they had neither puppeteers or ventriloquists. We have no..." So I
wrote that "Or will set you on fire!" This must have frightened them
because you nested them. I took out my stencil. I wrote: "Take me to your
treasures." They said: "And I will feather your nest, Ventriloquist. Yes, but
please spare us." "I will chop you
EYES
up into little
pieces"...."We have no ventriloquists." I didn't believe them. "The voices
you hear are our own," they said. So I decided to trick them. The choices
you bear are our phones, they said. So I decided to prick them.
Now you also have to know that wherever he led me, I myself
keeping up the pretense that I was hunting him, it was always to a room,
sometimes a cheap hotel room, sometimes a really expensive one with
expensive linen sheets and pictures on the wall. Sometimes it was a room in
someone's apartment, in Building A or Building B. But I knew instinctively that
it was never his room, his apartment. They were all so different that I knew
they didn't belong to him unless he had far many more personalities than I
was ever able to perceive during the course of our long-term,
POPPED
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.
but strictly commercial relationship. He made it clear I was never to
ask him personal questions or try to find out who he was in real life, but I
am such a professional that he need not have had to state that so directly.
The plain truth is I am never interested at all in who my customers really
are. I only pretend to be interested in them and then only as part of the act,
if so requested.
I wrote a list of treasures: string, spare-parts such as a finger an
extra eyeballs, tongues, mouth-hinge oil. These were all things that I as a
puppet myself knew they would like. In reality, I was looking for the source
of my voice, that voice inside me, but they didn't need to know that. I was
getting very tired of having to write things down on a pad every time I
wanted to say something, because, let's face it, sometimes telepathy
doesn't work. I needed my own voice. If I examined their lair, perhaps I
could find out their secret or expose the ventriloquist that was behind
OPEN.
HE
WAS
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.
know Fred Russell who was the first to use a knee puppet. Nor had they
ever heard of Horace Golden who invented the first talking hand, so I tried
to fool them with further quotes from my ventriloquism tube.
In any case, once I "caught" my customer in his room, having
force the door open, I tied him up and started "questioning" him.
Now we have many magnificent methods of creating counterfeit
words. Substitute sounds are the key to realistic ventriloquism. Eventually
--- trust me --- they will feel just right; use them without any movement
showing. And then it occurred to me that Stefan, my Stefan, would have
been the perfect ventriloquist. He had a mouth, a grin crudely carved into
his puss, but it could not move. There was no hinge.
The questions were, so to speak, pre-approved and seemed to
have some internal, secret significance to him, but certainly not to me.
They were just part of the script: Why are you always trying new drugs?
Who is Gilbert? Who or what is The? Why do you lie so much?
Or as the famous Dan Ritchard wrote: Eventually the phony
phonemes and all the substitutions --- like th for f and v; n for m, t for p, g
for b --- will be the building blocks of fool-them-always counterfeit speech,
which is the essence of ventriloquism. As my lip isolation develops, I will
use the substitute letters without any visible jaw movement. And, better yet,
as I grow older I will eliminate all words beginning with f, v, m, b, w, and p.
Instead of "war", my Stefan will always say "armed altercation among
antagonists." Instead of "fish" he will always say the name of a particular
fish: "shark" or "trout" or "minnow." Or "search slowly, widely."
He usually never answered or answered with what might be
called paradoxes. Such as: 1. So I won't be bored with the old drugs. 2.
Gilbert is my student. 3. THE is a verb. 4. To discover the truth. To live, he
added, you have to know how to lie.
My voices will be better and my acting will improve. As my
partner looks and acts more and more alive, we will share fabulous stories
with audiences, who will love us both.
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.
CALLED
And then I had to ask him to tell me more about Gilbert. And he
would go on and on, something like this:
The Gilbert you know is not the Gilbert I know. To you,
Gilbert is so ordinary you would not notice him if he passed you in the
street or even if only a few minutes before you had been sitting at a table
with him in a restaurant having a conversation. Gilbert is functionally
invisible. And that is what I demanded of him as his mentor. Of course,
invisibility training is not really about being invisible. You can truly become
invisible, you can even be so invisible your are able to walk through all but
the thickest of walls. But, as I always had to repeat to him and my other
disciples, invisibility is not about being invisible. It is about being silent and
still. These are not the means, they are the ends. Invisibility is just the icing
on the cake.
And the puppets still did not withstand --- I mean, respond to these
revelations. So I asked them the labial question: Do fish close their eyes
when they sleep?
And they did not blink an eye or perhaps notice that my mouth was
not moving. I guess it is really true as Gilbert is fond of saying, The Fourth
Mercy is that there is no forgiveness. Or better yet, as the Fifth Mercy
would have it, lies always win. I was in this terrible predicament, so similar
to what Stefan lived through when he lived through his life story or his back
story.
And what good is invisibility any way? I can tell you just as I have
told many other rent puppets that invisibility is not all it is cracked up to be.
First of all there is the turn it on or off problem. Would you have been able
to follow me if I had been invisible? Invisibility comes and goes.
I, however, was close to too many puppets, whereas he could find
none. And finally gaining their attention I re-told the next part of Stefan's life
206
.
story. I, Stefan, as you may well imagine began to scream and weep and
beg, but all was of no use, for no hoses of tubes were to be seen and not a
puppet of any kind passed by on the air bridge. No hand-puppets, no
marionettes, no thumb puppets, not ventriloquist dummies, no shadow
puppets, no sock puppets.
Bob Johnson, I thought, began to feel his oats. He decided to get in
trouble to see if he could get away with it. Keeping very silent and very still,
he removed a ring from my dressing table. But I saw the ring move through
the air and immediately smelled him. I capture him and turned him over to
the detectives. He thought he would be able to escape by becoming
invisible. But,
STEFAN.
enough to be able to turn it on or off at will.
Night fell like a sock. A little because of the sharp pain in my legs, a
little because of fright at finding myself alone in the darkness of the Moss
Park, I was about to faint, when I saw a tiny form flickering by. I called to
him and said: "Tasty little form, juicy little tube, will you set me free?" "Poor
little fellow!" replied the juicy form, stopping to look at me with pity. "How
come you're caught in this trap?" "I stepped into this dark park to take a
few capes and --- " "Are the capes yours?" "No." "Who has taught you to
take things that do not belong to you?" "I was hungry. If I could wrap a
cape around me, my hunger and all the trembling would stop and my so-
called stomach would stomp rumpling." "Hunger, my boy, is no reason for
taking that which belongs to another." "It's true, it's true, " I shouted. "I
won't do it again."
Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. And until you reach
Stage Five, it has an annoying tendency to happen spontaneously. You do
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.
not want suddenly to become invisible when you are posing for a fashion
magazine or delivering government documents or when you are tubing.
You don't want to go blank when you are being interviewed on the seven
o'clock news. You don't want to go invisible when you are in the pews.
When you are invisible, no matter how quickly or temporarily, not only can't
you be seen, you can't be felt. Or smelled. Anyone can walk right through
you and never know the difference. This is 100% invisibility, not the cut-
rate kind.
Just then the conversation was interrupted by approaching
footsteps. It was the owner of the Moss Park, who was coming to see if, by
chance, he had caught the geezers who had been eating his batteries or
the tweezers. Great was his surprise when he saw that instead of a
wheezer he had caught a puppet and furthermore a puppet that is 100%
wood! Me, Stefan!
On the other hand, if you are counting on your invisibility, you
don't want your visibility suddenly to return. In the middle of a robbery or
when you are watching illegal tubes and/or tubing without permission. But
Gilbert refused to understand this.
HE
"Ah, you little thief!" said the Moss Park owner in my angry voice
--- I mean, in an angry voice, his angry voice. "So you are the one who
steals my batteries!"
"My invisibility is totally under my control," he once told me.
"You seem to find it amusing to confuse everyone by claiming you are my
mentor when, as you know, it is really the other way around. Don't you
remember when we first met? You were in the first row of my last public
lecture about THE. I think you had fallen in love with me. But that is neither
here nor there, since I know I had not hypnotized you."
”Not I. No, no. I came here only to take a very few capes."
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.
”Later I told you things I had never told anyone else, thinking I
could trust you. That I was a Messenger. That unlike most I can remember
everything about the home planet, which officially is fictional or mythical."
"He who steels capes can very easily steal batteries too!"
"And gradually I taught you my rules of invisibility, secretly,
privately. I explained to you why I had started so many religions --- not
because each one was another rung on the ladder of escape but because I
wanted to hide. Contradictions are the best disguise."
"Take my word for it. I'll give you a lesson you will remember for
a long time."
"I would rather go back home, but I have been appointed to
initiate certain changes that will come into effect further down the road,
when I am gone."
And he opened the trap, grabbed me and carried me to the house
as if I were a yard in front of a hand puppet. When he reached the house,
he flung me to the ground, put a foot on my neck and addressed me
roughly.
"And I proved to you that there were some visitors who were
entirely and always invisible when and how they interfered with the affairs
of the visible."
"It is late now and it's time for bed. Tomorrow we will settle matters.
In the meantime, since my watchdog died today, you make take his place
and guard my worms."
COULD
You demonstrated beyond all doubt their nasty habit of tubing with
visibles, allowing me to fully experience such an awesome event. And I
know I will be terminated. I even know when. You cannot allow an invisible
to stick his tube in you and expect to live.
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.
What is a watchdog? Well, in my time we had them, for there were
thieves about and those who could jump you and stick their tubes in your
socket or break into your box or your coffin and have their way with you or
steal various parts for their own use or to sell. You could buy a watchdog
for a few government credits or even rent one for less. It was quite a
business. They had four legs and made a great deal of noise when anyone
approached. They could also bite and even rip off arms and legs and
tubes. Disgusting, yes, very disgusting. But no one wants to be surprised
in the middle of the night by a strange puppet.
But Gilbert, as you may now suspect, is deluded. That's what my
special customers always said, or words to that effect. And then he would
continue with his tube cop routine.
No sooner said than done, he slipped a collar around my neck and
tightened it so that it would not come off. A long iron chain was tied to the
collar. The other end of the chain without a name was nailed to the wall.
There is that horrible story about the tube cop who learned
invisibility from one of his tube mates. At first it was a great advantage to
him in his detective work. It was during the time when monogamy was still
a serious crime. In some cases, you could be permanently unplugged.
There was not enough random tubing to keep the workers working, the
detectives detecting, the dancers dancing, the priests priesting, and the
sages saging. Or sagging. Even if all the tubes and lubes and cubes and
REACH
AND
WALLS.
I was also obsessing about the control stick or the head stick. The
eyes, some of which are self-centering. The mouth. The body. And if there
is any creaking or clicking I'd try lubricating my joint with paraffin or silicone
spray. I can speak, but I cannot move my lips. I am a radio. Like the
strange Mr. Wieland, who operated outside of ancient Philadelphia, I can
throw my voice into the air; or into an empty closet; or a gazebo. I do not
need a puppet. I am a belly speaker. Dead puppets are talking in my
stomach.
After these words, the handsome, naked puppet disappeared and
the window closed without a sound. I still didn't know what a coffin was.
Besides, I thought he had said 'coughing.' I am waiting for the coughing to
take me away. But I could see my friends the detectives racing around the
coroner, waving their puns or their tubes in the air.
And then I am stopped and searched for pocket mirrors by the
nasty detectives who have been tracking me. As I have already mentioned,
all mirrors are illegal. Is this to prevent us from seeing who we are? Can't
be. We can see who we are in the eyes of others. I think..
Oh, lovely puppet, with your waxy face, open the door I beg you.
Take pity on a poor boy who is being chased by two assassins who are....I
couldn't finish, for two powerful hands grasped me by the neck and the
same two horrible voices growled threateningly: "Now we have you!" What
two horrible voices? The same ones I had heard in the back of the black
limo and then later in the dark cell when I was tied up and questioned for
hours upon hours. I trembled so hard that the joints of my legs rattled and
coins tinkled under my tongue. That's where I kept my money.
I think it's because you can hold up a pocket mirror to someone's
mouth and tell if he is plugged in, but I don't know how. Mirrors are an
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escape. You can't walk through pocket mirrors; they are just too small. But
full-length mirrors, that's another story.
"Well," the detective asked. "will you open your mouth now or not?
Say, 'ah.' You do not answer? Very well, this time you shall open it. We will
use force."
I once escaped through a mirror myself, when no one was looking
and everything was in reverse, which to me didn't seem to be much of an
escape.
I showed them my papers.
SMALL
But even two of them couldn't force it open. This was another
design flaw perpetuated by Gilbert, but now it worked to my advantage. In
real life, when a voice came out of my mouth, it always looked like I was
talking.
Taking out two big hammers. they struck two heavy blows. Lucky
for me I am made of very hard wood and the hammers broke into a
thousand pieces.
My mouth is too narrow for a pocket mirror and as you know
doesn't move up and down or sideways. It is frozen into a leer. And I have
no other entrances to my body; not this body, this wooden body. My other
body has many entrances. Maybe too many. And the body of that body is
all one great big entrance. But the detectives, trapped in their plastic
bodies, would not have known about my other bodies. They only believe
what they can see and touch. What they can push around. And so they let
me continue on my way, not knowing that I was up to my usual mischief.
All they had to do was to tube my photo to headquarters and they would
find out that I am on the wanted list, a puppet on the loose, a puppet on the
lam, a really bad puppet. But they were too lazy and only really interested
in the tube that was being displayed inside their plastered heads.
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.
The assassins looked at each other in dismay, holding the handles
of the hammers in their hands. How could they know that in my head I was
master of bilocation and of trilocation, that I could be in two or three
locations at once?
"I understand," said one of them to the others, "there is nothing left
to do now but to hang him."
WINDOWS
WERE
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In the dream within the dream within the mirror.
But this little wooden body of mine, oh, how it aches. My joints,
made out of screws and bolts, hurt. And I do not have a socket or a tube.
And my moth cannot move; it is open just to a grinning, frightening slit. No
wonder no one loves me, knows me. They all only use me for my good
looks and my cheerfulness, my wit.
Satisfied with their evil work, the two defectives sat on the grass
waiting for dainty Stefan to give his last gasp. But after three hours my
eyes were still open, my mouth was still shut and my legs kicked harder
than ever. Tired of waiting, the reflectives called out to me mockingly:
"Good-bye, until tomorrow. When we return in the morning, we hope you'll
be polite enough to let us find you dead and gone and with your mouth
wide open."
And when I speak inside of them, they think they are thinking. And I
can be so still and silent at will that I am more invisible than they shall ever
be. They can walk right through me without feeling a thing. Thus, when I
am invisible, I can see and hear everything. I know what they are up to.
They are up to no good.
With these words they went. A few minutes passed and then a wild
wind started to blow. As it shrieked and moaned, poor little suffering Stefan
was blown to and fro like the hammer of a bell. The rocking made him
seasick and the noose, becoming tighter and tighter,
LETTING
choked him. Little by little a tube covered his eyes. A big shadow
was creeping nearer and nearer, and the puppet Stefan, me, still hoped for
some good center to come to his rescue, but no one appeared.
And now I am someone else. And this someone is looking for me,
for Stefan, on the other side of the page, somewhere else in the book you
are now reading.
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And as he was about to become unplugged, he thought of Gilbert
who claimed to have made him, and hardly conscious of what he was
saying, murmured to himself: Oh, Gilbert, dear Gilbert! If you were only
here! These were my last words, or so I though. I close my eyes, opened
my moat, stretched out my legs, and hung there, as if unplugged. But I
wasn't finished yet.
So this is what happened next. I broke into the apartment and no
one was there. Stefan III had disappeared again. Having learned how to
make himself invisible, he might have been there, but I, Benjamin Franklin,
or he who pretended to be Benjamin Franklin, could not smell him. In the
bedroom there was a locked closet. I found this out because I tried all the
doors and this was the only door that would not open. A door is only locked
to keep someone out or someone in and I would not have any of it. I had
spent too much time trying to track down Stefan.
Stephen appeared out of nowhere and cut my down with his knife,
the same knife he had threatened me with only a few chapters ago, evil,
plastic Stephen who thinks he is my rival. He had heard my lament. All
puppets are telepathic.
IN
THE
the side, oily liquid dripping down from the slashes in his chest.
Stephen was suspended by his two plastic hands that had been
handcuffed and he had obviously been violated, front and back by a boom
handle. There was a pile of rags in the corner and the pile was moving and
sobbing. Someone had escaped the massacre. Or caused it. A creature
stirred. Hands rose up, trembling. Strange buds on its hands were turning
into branches.
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As I walked, my charred feet splashed in a pool of greasy and
slippery water. The farther I went, the brighter and clearer grew the tiny
light. On and on, I walked, until finally I found -- I give you a thousand
guesses. I found a little table set for dinner and lighted by a tube; and near
the table sat a ragged, moth-eaten old tube, eating his supper. Perhaps
you don't know what a candle is. What is a candle? A candle is a little bit of
fire on the end of a tube; the longer the fire burns, the shorter the tube
becomes. What are tubes? I am not sure. But I saw a tube once in which
puppets made a living catching them and pulling them from the water on
strings. On strings! No, although tubes can be many different things, these
were not marionettes. The strings were temporary, used one at a time, and
only attached to the tubes by things called hooks, rather like very sharp
coat hooks, but not attached to any wall.
And the branches in turn were budding and yielding leaves and
stems and other branches.
One of them slipped off the spoon on the way to the big puppet's
mouth and escaped into the darkness under the table. At this sight, I, poor
Stefan, The Eternally Hungry was filled with such great and sudden
happiness that I almost fainted. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry.
The sawed-off broom handle was still stuck in George's mouth.
Howard and Harold were suspended by their feet and it was clear that all
the stuffing had been allowed to fall out of their naked bodies through the
neck openings where their heads had once been attached. The heads
were on the floor, eyes staring blindly at the ceiling of the closet.
SMALLEST
I wanted to say a thousand and one things, but of course, just like
you, I had no voice of my own. I was frozen in place by silence. If I had had
a candle, it would have grown and become harder and harder. My nose,
which was huge now, only grew very slowly now. And it did not become
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harder or softer. It was always as hard as a sawed off broom handle or a
dowel could be.
Jonathan was there too. At least I thought it was Jonathan. I
recognized the tube and the tongue and the part of his buttocks that had
that little tattoo on it of the word THE. He had been hacked into a hundred
pieces.
It was good old Gilbert. Opening wide my arms, I threw them
around the dusty, moldy, big tube's neck. He was sitting by a plate of
tubes. Gilbert looked spent. His tube was bent. Even I could see that. Oh,
Gilbert, dear Gilbert! Have I found you at last? Now I shall never leave you
again. Are my eyes really telling me the truth? Stefan was rubbing the
large unmatched buttons that served as his yes. One button was big and
red and the other was slightly smaller but made of brass.
And the real Benjamin Franklin was there too. Or half of him was,
the upper-half, which was dripping puppet juice. And Gilbert was
immobilized and strung up too, pinned to the wall by a knife. But I could
see no Stefan. I was therefore led to the conclusion that since everyone
who had had a key to this particular closet, save Stefan, was in this closet
and -- how shall I say it? -- decidedly immobile, inoperative, not at their
performance peak, then I, Stefan, must have put them there. Disguised as
the detective, I was perplexed. Where was Stefan? Had he walked through
the illegal full-length mirror that was still dangerously unguarded in the
rather messy apartment I had come from, not from George's studio. Stefan
had also been remiss in his household chores. There were costumes and
masks strewn here and there, tubes galore, plugs and far too many rose
petals.
Gilbert was rubbing his eyes too: "Are you really my own dear
Stefan?"
Logic, I said to myself. If I am to collect the reward now being
offered, I must use logic.
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AMOUNT
"Yes, yes," I answered. "Look at me. And you have forgiven me,
haven't you? Others may think you threw me into the garbage by mistake,
but you and I know what really happened is that I ran away. Oh, my dear
Gilbert, how good you are. And to think that I --- Oh, but if you only knew
how many misfortunes have fallen on my head and how many troubles I
have had. I ran away to the Theater of Puppets. But I met Harold Sr. and
then Howard Jr. who took me in. They ate like wolves. What are wolves? I
really don't know, but it is just a figure of speech. Wolves are gloves. Or
cloves. Harold and Howard ate like wolves. They ate like gloves. They ate
moss, tiny tubes that squirmed when you looked at them, big plates of bibs,
statistics and bills-of-lading; they ate starched collars and bowls of
marionette strings, mixed with violin strings. They ate wash. They hate like
stoves, offering me nothing."
I was looking at my arm, my left arm. There was a bud, a stem, a
branch, and then another, the first branch making a Y and then Y's on each
arm and Y's on all of them, growing and growing. I was becoming a tree.
"His mouth doesn't open and close," said Howard. "I can see his
teeth but he doesn't have a stomach."
Where would someone like Stefan hide after committing such a
string of horrible murders? Obviously somewhere he would be least
noticed. And then I remembered where legend had it he had been found ---
in the shop on the top floor of building C. When he had run away from
'home' or, as he called it, 'the love prison,' he had returned to the junk shop
where Jonathan and Johnny had found him and was found hiding in the
same place on the floor amidst all the other. cast-offs, toys, and junk.
Little did they know that I was dying of hunger. Imagine how awful it
is to be hungry, terribly hungry and not have a mouth that can open wide
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enough to eat. Or a stomach. Imagine that. Imagine having to talk through
your teeth. And even then it is not you own voice.
OF
Imagine that. Howard and Harold. They just kept on eating and
drinking. They drank puppet blood and puppet pee. They drank huge
tankards of puppet semen laced with puppet sweat. They drank delicate
little cups of puppet seeds, drank bottles of puppet milk.
I beat it over to the junk shop and, pretending to be hunting for old
tubes, rare tubes, I searched the several rooms. He had left a note in the
closet: There is no THE. And there Stefan was! Not on the floor, but high
up in the rafters. He had stuffed a plastic tube in one ear, a wooden tube in
the other, and had blindfolded himself. And had forced a large glass tube
into his slit of a mouth and hung himself using an extension cord. Stefan
was free at last....
And finally the big event. Their puppet slaves, who were totally
naked, brought out the giant broiled marionette that was bigger, much
bigger than me and, in fact, as big as one of them. First they attacked the
legs, sucking out the juices and then they broke into the torso, extracting
large globs of rubber, dipping each one in puppet butter. They took turns
gnawing on the head. In short, while I was looking on, while I was starving,
they ate like gloves, like hooves. What are gloves? Gloves are what we
turn into when we are wolves as in those old tubes.
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Chapter 18 [Epilogue]
LIGHT,
This is one ending, but it is not the definitive ending. Since no good
story has only one ending, but multiple endings, all of them equally true,
there's another ending to tell and it begins with a secret meeting, because
even though Howard and Harold usually never talked to Jonathan and
Johnny, and Benjamin Franklin never talked to either couple and no one
talked to George Washington either, they came to the meeting called by
Gilbert. Stefan, cute Stefan, naughty Stefan, disobedient Stefan, had
caused so much trouble in this once very close group of friends and lovers,
sowing jealousy and discord, they decided his spell had to be broken, or,
as Benjamin announced, he had to be done away with, put out of his
misery, returned, replaced for good, burned up, or turned into sawdust.
Stefan had unleashed a reign of spite
JUST
like none had ever before experienced before. Their project had
been totally interrupted. Since they were so furious at each other, they had
not been able to continue working on the puppet opera they had already
spent so much time writing and dreaming about. Stefan had to go. But who
would dispatch this nasty little piece of garbage, this promiscuous thug?
And then, as you know, gloves generate gloves, during a full moon.
They scratch and bite and then their victims join the club. Is this how
puppets make more puppets? If only we were that lucky. The process is
more complicated than that. How do you make a puppet? How do you
make a friend? Since puppet parts slowly grow back, one way to make a
new puppet is to cut off various parts from other puppets. Choice parts. A
pinkie from Benjamin Franklin, a nose from George Washington, a hose
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.
from Howard, Jr.; a leg form Harold, Sr., and so forth. These parts are then
mended, glued and/or screwed together.
Then, although they had not talked to one another for months they
began arguing and fighting, each one having a particularly urgent reason
for volunteering for the mercy killing. It could not be called murder in cold
blood, for Stefan did not have any blood. But it was murder nonetheless.
He had a stash of Black Spider since he was addicted to it himself and
often wondered if he would still love Jonathan if Black Spider ever wore off.
Would he have fallen in love with George or Benjamin or Harold, Jr. without
Doom? Would he be able to talk to Johnny without Litigation? Would he be
able to tube with Benjamin or Stephen without Hoax or Gargoyle?
There are several difficulties. One is that it is difficult to hack off
puppet parts and get away with it. Although the parts will grow back, we
puppets are attached to our various body parts. Articulated or not. I
remember when I stole Howard, Jr.'s nose, borrowed it. This required
seduction, reduction, suction and the administration of an enormous
quantity of drugs and it wasn't even a particularly funny nose.
ENOUGH
I thought I could use it as a
tube, so I glued it between my legs, but it wouldn't stick and since it kept on
falling off during inopportune moments, I chucked it.
And how to kill him? Howard, whom Stefan had lied to over and
over again, thought he would like to administer an undetectable but super-
lethal dose of Black spider.
The second difficulty is that you have to store the various parts in a
safe place until you have all the parts you need. The third difficulty is
finding another puppet willing to tube with you in order to create a center
for your new puppet, now assembled, now ready to go, now still without a
center. A puppet without a center is like a rock without sin.
Would there be enough of Stefan to go around?
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.
But there I was being held captive by Howard and Harold and I
didn't know what H. and H. were up to. Did they need me around to help
them make a center for one of their newly assembled puppet bodies? Did
they think they could trick me into revealing my ventriloquism techniques?
Or belly-talking tricks? Did they want me to throw my voice, pretending I
was THE, so they could collect more money from their congregation of
sock-puppets? Would there be enough of Stefan to go aground?
FOR
HIM
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who many thought had actually carved Stefan out of wood --- which
was the central lie of one of Stefan's many stories --- said that since Stefan
had burned down his woodworking shop because he was angry with what
he thought was Gilbert's inability to give him a tube he would take great
pleasure in capturing him, tying him up, throwing gasoline all over him, and
lighting one nice match.
Was this the real me? Was this my center? Am I just a spider in
puppet's clothing? How had it gotten in there? Why was it hiding? And they
ripped it out. This hurt very badly. Once they had it out they drowned it in a
tub of acid and the room was very smoky. They were so excited that they
had finally caught and killed a large black spider that they forgot to sew me
up and just left me hanging from the top of the giant coat rack.
That was too easy a death for the little villain, complained Johnny.
He was always playing with my tube and then running away. So what I will
do is glue up his mouth, glue up his socket, and weighing him down with
used tubes tied to his chest throw him into the swimming pool in Building A,
late at night when no one is there....And I who have been most wounded of
all, I, Jonathan will pull him apart piece by piece, eating each piece, one at
a time, relishing his screams.
I wonder if that spider is what we call a guest. Guests move from
host to host. In order to travel from A to B the guest must jump from
Jonathan to Johnny, then from Johnny to H. and then from H. to H. and
then from H. to Gilbert. Moves are best made when hosts are linked by
tubes and not paying attention to anything else. Guests seem to be able
TO
SEE
* * *
They listened. And the next day they took poor Stefan, who was
wrapped up in miles of string, to the Moss Park --- to the edge of the sky, to
the wedge of the sky, to the pledge of the sky, wrapped up in smiles of
string. And once they were there and had said a few prayers to THE,
Gilbert pried open Stefan's mouth and removed the piece of paper that he
had placed there so long ago. And then Gilbert did something odd. Instead
of circling Stefan clockwise as he had done the day before, he circled him
counter-clockwise and Stefan disappeared. Forever. Or so they all thought.
Had the spider left behind eggs inside of me?
HE
And there are even further complexities, all of which made the
English spoken on tubes seem simple-minded indeed.
Leaving through the window, the back way, put me back in my
original predicament, known as Harold and Howard or sometimes as
Jonathan and Johnny. When would I be rid of them? The new Harold and
the new Howard looked just like the old Harold and the old Howard, so I
went with them to the Moss Park playground to find the certificates and the
drugs I had buried. I had no choice since I don't have fingerprints. They
had the goods on me. They do not have my fingerprints
IMPRISONED.
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but they have
my scent. They closed in. This is what they had been waiting for. I smelled
of roses and hoses and noses, but I hadn't followed my instincts. Harold
and Howard and Jonathan/Johnny had made a deal. Once I had turned
them down for tubing on a tube for all to see, they lost all interest in me
and my little wooden body. They just wanted the reward.
Nowadays a crown is sometimes called a hat, sometimes a bloom,
sometimes a plow --- but all of these words refer to the same object, but at
different times of the day according to who is speaking or supposed to be
speaking.
HE
COULD
SEE
HIMSELF
IN
No jealousies,
no worries,
no resentments,
no refreshments,
no dreams,
no bitterness,
no fantasies of revenge,
no money,
no ambitions,
no tubes,
no time,
no envy, THE
no violence.
He, Jonathan, had seen the puppet asleep in the second bedroom.
He was abnormally tall. But he had never seen the puppet in the fourth
room. He had heard him though, bumping against the wall in his sleep,
which meant his cot was on the other side of the wall from Jonathan's, but
too close to the wall.
But I wonder now if that was really Stefan I saw climb over the
railing. It certainly looked like him and I have to confess I made no attempt
to save him from himself. But was it really him?
Jonathan was trying to summon up enough nerve to knock on his
door some early evening and ask him to move his cot away from the wall
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or to leave a note to the same effect, but he hadn't gotten around to it yet.
But then again, maybe he had dreamed it. By the time he came home he
was always too tired. To do anything. But take one drug or another. And
plug into the tube until I drifted off into sleep (yes, puppets sleep) to dream
(yes, puppets dream) over and over again of being awakened, each time in
a different manner: a rock falling or about to fall; a knock on the door
(which was rare and probably impossible); a snake in his bed; or death by
drowning (impossible because puppets don't have to breathe). This last
dream he always interpreted as (he told Harold) "drowning in a sea of
information."
The other evening I was walking along alone through the Moss
Park and I saw a sassy wooden puppet sitting on a bench, smirking. Was it
Stefan? Had he ordered a duplicate made of himself before he took the
plunge? If so, where would he have found the money? Making an identical
twin, as I well know, is exceedingly expensive and there is all that
paperwork you have to go through.
This life was no life for him and it went on and on. Like the
bridges that connected one building to another as far as the eye could see.
He was trying to think of pleasure. Did he have any pleasure? Certainly
tubing in all its forms. But there was no pleasure in work. What pleasure
could there be in emptying bowls of rainwater as they filled, returning them
empty precisely to where they had been beneath the dozen or so leaks in
the ceiling? This was probably why he was turning to religion and this
bothered him although he knew enough to question the idea that religion,
MIRROR
NOW.
HE
The glove was on the other foot. The shoe was on the other head.
Is that what you called them? Or were they boats? The globe was on the
other boot. The flue was on the dead. Or were they moats? The glue was
on the other suits. The flute was on the bed. Or were they votes?
He scanned the enormous room and located two tiny speakers, one
to the left of the statue, one to the right. They were located in the apex of
the interior of the negative, three-sided pyramid formed by two walls at
right angles and the ceiling that capped them at the extreme upper point of
their vertical juncture.
Otherwise it was a world without spats, the thought. Without vocal
cords or trapdoors. He felt at home. And with reason as his guide, he was
able to deduce his next step. He knew why Stephen had taken such a
disliking to him and had made fun of his lack. He was envious. No tube
meant no tube upkeep. No tube grooming. No fear of loosing it.
There was a similar 'corner' below, formed by the two walls and the
floor. Stefan did not know the name for these three-sided 'corners.' Later,
when he did some research, he found there was no name. Just like me;
just like me, he thought. I named myself Stefan, but there is no name for
what I am.
But why was he following the detective across hundreds of bridges,
in and out of shopping malls, waterfalls, charity balls, angular halls, oblique
stalls, and perpendicular squalls? Why? He simply wanted to find out why
the man in the cape had been following him. The elective in the cap did not
take any unusual turns or duck into any tubes. He never looked behind.
And then he scanned the floor. It was marble. Could that be? Could
there be a piece of marble, no matter how thin, that large? Clearly the
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temple was built from the floor up. It was all curiously empty and curiously
elegant. The walls were bare and off-white. The only opening was the door
he had just used. There were no windows on any of the four walls and no
skylights in the golden ceiling. There were lit candles everywhere and that
DID
NOT
LOOK
Johnny threw down his napkin and asked to see the manager. But
what had happened before that? Why hadn't the friend he was waiting for,
the mend he was waiting for, the end he was waiting for shown up?
And when he was through crying, still not knowing what he was
crying about, he decided to take a closer look at the statue. Upon closer
inspection he discovered that it was made out of a gray but not shiny
metal. He knocked at it. It was hollow. The statue then said: "Silence is the
key to invisibility, silence and absolute stillness. As long as I can hold my
breath and keep from moving, dreaming, speaking, or thinking I can
continue to be invisible. Why do I want to be invisible? Invisibility is
freedom!"
He tried reaching him on his telephone. Now what would he do for
guns? He tried calling H., but H. didn't answer either. And then he
remembered why he was waiting for George Washington. And it wasn't just
to ask him for the jugs of the latest drug, called Spite or beg him for more
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Window. Spite allowed you to spit even if you were a puppet. Window
allowed you to see through walls. No. It was to ask his advise about his
new job.
The lips of the statue did not move. "Hello, hello," shouted Stefan.
"Who's inside? Is it you, THE? It is you, Gilbert? And why are you playing
this trick on me?" He noticed how attractive the statue was; every detail of
the stark naked body, of the nude, had been carefully wrought. Even the
tube was rendered in great deal and quite beautiful. Stefan tried moving
the arms, but they would not budge, nor would the nose or the tube. Unlike
his own body there were no hinges or moving parts.
THE
HE
And then when he moved to the back of the statue, still looking for
an opening, he, our Stefan, saw a tube that lead from the wall into the
statue's back, right between the perfectly sculpted shoulder blades. That's
it. He had been tricked again. Gilbert must be behind this latest deception.
He ran out of the strange temple and went around to the back to find out
who was speaking into the tube attached to the statue.
There was a light and it became larger and stronger the longer the
partners stayed attached and then it separated and visited various levels of
reality and if everything was equal a log of light would break off and hence
another 'center' was created. It could be done alone, but rarely. Sometime
by three. But two together was usually good enough. A new center would
break free.
But by the time he got there, since the temple was enormous,
there was no one there. There were footprints, footprints he thought he
recognized, but couldn't quite place. And there was a little stool the villain
had been standing on in order to speak into the tube. But there was no one
there, so Stefan was even more furious. He decided to follow the footprints
around the bend, around the corner and the pole and there they
disappeared under the elevator door. He reached up as high as he could,
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PICTURED
standing on his little wooden toes and pushed the button. The
doors opened, but the elevator was as empty as the speaking statue. He
stepped inside and wondered which button to push, unlike in the elevators
in the skyscrapers the buttons here were not numbered, they were
identified by the letters of the ventriloquist's alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, g, h, i, j,
k, l, n, q, r, s, t, u, x, y, z. And so all he could do was press his very long
broomstick nose over each button hoping to smell something that would
indicate which button had been last used. R. smelled like roses so he
pressed R, using his hose.
So many bodies, so few centers. So many bodies walking around
without anything inside. H. and H. had all of the same instruments at birth
or attached to them later in life or had them specially grown but they used
them differently, incorrectly. Stefan is different. He cannot even bite
someone. All he can do is look and watch. All he can do is hear and listen.
He doesn't even take up much space. And he doesn't breathe. Look, I am
holding up my pocket mirror and it doesn't fog up.
The elevator was not an express so it seemed like it was taking
forever to reach his floor. Finally the doors opened and no one was to be
seen. Furthermore, there were no visible footprints anywhere in the
hallway. The hallway had a hundred doors and behind each door was
another hallway that had a hundred more doors, each one opening into a
hallway with a hundred more. Therefore, all the hallways together took up
more space than the building itself. After trying several doors he managed
to find one that opened up into an actual room
HIMSELF.
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rather than yet another hallway. At the rear of the room there was a
tiny stage and rows of puppets were seated in front of it. On stage, a
Johnny puppet was telling the Stefan story once again:
"Thus we know Stefan cannot see himself in the big mirror,
because if he could he wouldn't act like someone our size. He would see
he was merely a child or a midget. If he could see himself he would be able
to walk through the mirror and he could have escaped. He can only escape
when someone leaves the door unlocked by mistake."
The Johnny puppet was adding and subtracting various details so
the audience would not be bored, because they knew the story by heart,
including the various endings, each having added quite a few themselves.
But what could you expect from puppets? Surprisingly, they like to listen as
well as talk. They like to watch as well as be looked at.
"I wonder if that is what happened today, continued Jonathan, if
that is what happened today?"
When they aren't on stage they are resting and listening. They are
watching too. From their shelves, their closets, their boxes, their perches.
Some puppets are more perverse, more alive than others. Hand puppets,
for instance. When the puppeteer puts his hand inside they shiver. Or let's
take ventriloquist's lap puppets....
BEFORE
He was running away again and H. and H. must have been in wait.
They take turns. Then H. must have grabbed him before he made it to the
Moss Garden. But because Stefan doesn't like it when Johnny and I argue,
I kept my mouth shut, I knew I had not left the door unlocked, which left
Johnny, sloppy Johnny. But it wasn't worth the fight. I knew we would get
Stefan back, as usual.
Why would a puppet like sitting on a ventriloquist's lap? What is
really going on behind the puppet's back? Is the ventriloquist's hand up
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inside the lap puppet? Are there strange pulleys and levers? The lap
puppets crave those feelings. And they like to have someone else open
and close their mouths, swing their heads up and down, or from left to right
and right to left or all 360 degrees. And they like the illusion of someone
else's words coming out of their mouths.
And when someone misses H. and H. and investigated their home
and found them standing there like statues, hatchet in the air, hacksaw in
the air, cleaver in the air, who would cart them away and throw them over
the railing? Not me. Not Johnny. Perhaps Gilbert. He would be more than
glad to get rid of one more failed experiment. Twins only worked when one
was stronger and took the lead. Or, as he had tried later, they could switch
identities and roles periodically. Which is the Fifth Mercy. But, like myself,
he had no inkling of the truth: THE is a verb.
Does it really matter they have to pretend they can't walk?
His head was solid, full of music, crammed, clotted. His head was
full of tubes, images, words, poems. His head was full of Stefan. But where
was the real Stefan? Jonathan thought he could track him down by going
through the list of suspects. George, Benjamin, Gilbert. Each would have
his reasons for kidnapping Stefan. Gilbert was the prime suspect. He might
have been feeling guilty about the mistakes he made in making Stefan's
body, leaving certain important things out, like ears. Like a tube, like a
socket. A broom handle was not an adequate substitute for a tube, no
matter how much it grew in length. Furthermore, the little pencil scribbles
Gilbert had added at the last minute on each side of Stefan's head did not
suffice. They were not three-dimensional. Stefan could not wiggle them.
Yet he heard things. That they knew, because of his ability to repeat
stories they had read to him and his knack with curse words and
obscenities. They had never heard him pray, probably because they
themselves --- Johnny and Jonathan --- always prayed silently, not even
moving their lips, which was one of the requirements of their new religion.
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So knowing his audience, the Johnny puppet tailored his tale to
their needs. The puppets in the story were, so to speak, puppets in his
hands, as was his audience now. He had them, as they say, eating out of
his hands. Did he care they were worried about THE? He dismissed this
obsession as a kind of bad joke. They were not even certain what THE
looked like, or where THE was hiding. And yet he caught them talking to
THE, in whispers but sometimes in shouts. Some, it seemed, thought of
THE as merely a bigger, more powerful versions of themselves. THE was
certainly not their maker; Gilbert was. If THE had made them, they would
have been perfect.
HE
WAS
Once upon a time a puppet thought he was THE. He had taken too
many drugs and was so full of himself that he had the notion that not only
had he made himself --- out of a tree, of all things --- but that he had made
all the other puppets, including Johnny and Jonathan who themselves held
fast to the delusion that they owned him, that they had found him sitting
forlornly under a table in a junk store and had rescued him and taken him
home with them where they did horrible things to him.
They spoke in funny voices without moving their lips and made him
jump up and down so --- they thought --- it would look like he was
speaking. He couldn't move his lips either, but he didn't have any choice in
the matter. Nevertheless, although he could not speak, he could think and
it turned out he had a wild imagination, was extremely mean and vengeful,
and although he did not have a tube, he had an enormous need for tubing.
Tubes were his food. But so was vengeance.
ABLE
And Gilbert was far, far away, investigating a new religion he had
heard about, in which everyone was a priest and no one had to sing in
order to become transparent.
Because they were so mean to me, he thought, and kept me locked
up in their closet most of the time, I was the one who caused all the water
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at the base of the buildings to dry up. I was the one who infected everyone
with Black spider. Yes, said Stefan to himself, I invented Black Spider. All
the other drugs were just my experiments leading up to Black Spider. Black
Spider moves through tubes from body to body, leaving eggs. Black Spider
causes wicked dreams and insatiable little desires for wooden, awkwardly
hinged, naked, button-eyed, puppets without tubes --- namely me, Stefan.
That left H. and H., so Jonathan marched over to their ornate
domicile and began pounding on the door. He could hear a tube being
played inside, loudly, and he knew they were home. The tube was loud but
not loud enough to hide the anguished squeals of Stefan. Were they
chopping him up? Tearing him a part, limb by limb? Torturing him? They
had always hated him because he was superior to their nameless plastic
puppet.
And if Black Spider doesn't kill them, then one night, late at night,
when they are asleep in each other's arms I will go into their room and pull
their plugs; I will chop them up into tiny pieces, I will take out their batteries
with my bare hands; I will pull off their tubes and eat them. I will cut their
strings. And then. And then I will be free --- I, Stephen.
He had worked himself up to such a state that he passed right
through the three-foot outer walls of the H. and H. hideout. Freezing them,
he grabbed Stefan form their clutches. H. held a hatchet and his mate,
whose first name also began with H., held a saw. Stefan was bound in
stockings from head to toe like a little mummy one might see on a tube.
The sounds he made came from deep inside his chest. His mouth had
never worked correctly. I opened the front door from inside and walked out
with my bundle of joy.
I will make a new and better, a new and improved Johnny and a
new and improved Jonathan puppet too. I have tried this before and I have
failed. But now I have more skill. And both Johnny and Jonathan will be
much better looking and will be kinder to me. They will not be able to say
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bad things about me behind my back, such as: It doesn't matter what you
say in front of him; he's only a puppet, just a puppet.
There, opposite, the doorway, close to the wall, but perfectly erect,
was my physical body, standing at attention, as it were. And placing the
still-screaming Stefan bundle on the floor, for sake of safety, I slipped back
into my solid body, my meat body. I couldn't walk around naked without
causing a lot of unwanted attention.
Or even worse. They will no longer say: Stefan will tube with
anyone if there is money or drugs involved.
TO
I've never managed that before. I'll have to try that. But I must admit
I was afraid of leaving some essential part behind and then not being able
to slip back into my physical body, or that it would grow some and then not
fit. In fact, I still wonder if Had left something behind in the H. and H.
hideout.
Liars! Liars! I will not tube with George Washington every. He
smells funny. I have also never really tubed with Benjamin Franklin. His
tube is too small.
Certain memory lapses?
My inability to make my right-hand thumb touch my right-hand
pinky? Would that explain the phantom pain in my phantom limb? Not my
left leg or my right leg, but my phantom leg? My phantom tube.
Stefan was listening, wouldn't you know.
I invented the phonetic alphabet. I invented charm. I invented both
the ventriloquist's alphabet and the puppet's alphabet. They are the same! I
invented tube traps. You don't know about tube traps? Let me explain.
Yes, Stefan thought, this explains my constant pain. I have a
phantom pain in my phantom limb, my tube. I would be better off dead.
Well, maybe not quite yet. I have to find the opportunity to take my
revenge.
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Tube Traps are like this. You are all alone with nothing to do and
there's no one to tube with so you rent a tube and curl up inside of it, as it
were. The plots are always breezy, but they are more and more
complicated as they unfurl and the characters are more or less
contradictory and intriguing. I make them complex and full of delicious
character flaws and multiple personalities so that you never know what the
puppets are going to next or who they will become.
I, Jonathan, tried to reason with him, but Johnny said that it was
useless. He is just a puppet, and what can a puppet do? All he can do is
look and watch. all he an do is hear and listen. He doesn't even take up
much space and he doesn't really breathe.
OPEN
HIS
EYES.
HE
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Chapter 19. [Epilogue II]
OPENED
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But in real life, they soon reached the water-level window of
Building A. Stefan knocked and knocked and the janitor, seeing who it was
and recognizing him at once taking a fancy to him, allowed him inside. He
had seen Stefan's photo on the tube. And although he was disappointed
that the charming Stefan was with someone else, a large, old-man puppet
with a hairy face, the janitor unlocked the door for old time's sake. They
then took the elevator to the top floor where the air bridge was. Stefan
knew the combination to the apartment. Once inside they were safe and
Stefan and Gilbert lived happily ever after.
And that is how Stefan happened to be under the table in the junk
shop and Jonathan and Johnny --- yes, this Johnny --- walked in and
rescued him from his peaceful torpor. When they all got home, they saw
his nose twitch and they realized that, although he had no tube, he was
surely alive and was just the kind of addition to their household they
needed. Soon they found they could talk to each other through him and
they made a game of throwing their voices. Later they found he could be
trained to do simple household chores. He was so strong, he could protect
them and also be their avenger. He had no fear.
Happily ever after?
TH
E
That was how Stefan made up the ending. The tube he knew and
upon which he based his version of "The Story of Stefan" ended at Chapter
13. Chapter 14 was missing. But I, Jonathan II, I know that in Chapter 14
Stefan is unplugged. His enemies all gang up on him.
Nevertheless, after a few weeks Jonathan caught Johnny in bed
with Stefan and that is when all the trouble began. Jonathan then had to
seduce Stefan to take his revenge and poor Stefan didn't know if he was
coming or going. So that was the first time he ran away and was caught by
George Washington in the lobby of Building A. George was determined to
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use him as his tube puppet even though he did not have a tube. George's
tube was big enough for two.
Johnny, Jonathan, H. and H, George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin and Howard and Harold gang up on him and do away with him,
but one at a time, each one for a different reason, each one using a
different method of dispatch. Johnny strangles him with marionette strings,
because he is bored with him. Jonathan because he is bored with Johnny
thought that chopping Stefan into many small pieces would wake Johnny
up. H. and H. rub him out using various sharp instruments because they
had found him playing with their plastic puppet's tube. George Washington
poisons him with Black Spider because he is jealous of Stefan's ability to
fool everyone with his lies and storytelling. Benjamin Franklin pushes him
over the air bridge railing between Building A and Building B because he is
envious of Stefan's ability to seduce any puppet he wants. Howard
disposes of him by stuffing him with used tubes of various sizes, because
he needs more room in his apartment. And Harold unscrews Stefan's
head, boils it, serves it to Howard, because he thinks Howard is in love with
Stefan.
And then there was Harold and Howard and their insane little
plastic thing that went by the name of Stephen with his enormous plastic
tube. And when Stefan learned how to use drugs that's when all hell broke
loose and no one knew if he were coming or going. At first THE was angry,
but then THE saw the absurdity of it all and THE laughed.
DOOR.
This is also why Stephen, the dreadful plastic puppet, kills Stefan.
He makes him inoperative by opening the compartment at the back of his
neck and taking out the fuel cells.
George Washington injecting himself with Doom in order to prepare
his tube for Stefan's pretend lovemaking? Jonathan eating Foam so that he
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could turn into Johnny? Harold disowning Howard so there would be more
room in the bedroom for Stefan and the apparatus required to imbibe
Regard? It was all very funny. I had my audience in the palm of my hand.
And Gilbert? Why does Gilbert destroy Stefan? He destroys him
because he has gotten too big for his bridges, because he knows too much
about THE, because his vocabulary has outgrown his wisdom, because he
is beginning to figure out that half-truths are better than lies cut from the
whole cloth, that once is enough, that extreme puppetry and ventriloquism
is universal? And how does Gilbert finish off Stefan? By reciting the
alphabet backwards, over and over again, while circling him
counterclockwise, and finally by pulling from his mouth the now nearly
forgotten slip of paper with the word --- what word? --- written on it.
I looked at my hand. I looked at m arm. I was looking at my arm, my
left arm. There was a bud, a stem, a branch and then another, the first
branch making a Y and then Y's on each arm and Y's on all of them,
growing and growing. I was becoming a tree. But even they knew what was
coming.
The sea was like foil, the moon shown in all its splendor, and the
Mouth continued to sleep so soundly that not even a puppet's dream would
have awakened it. And Gilbert was sleeping too.
AND
HE
ALL