When I learned to speak, I said I was a foundling. My parents thought this humorous; I was serious. I have always been serious. No. I have never been serious. It is that I have never found humor, bestowing upon me an air of seriousness . . . but I was, and have always been, too feeble-minded. I am incapable of grasping most ideas . . . and too bored with the ones I can to follow them through. I am most cheerful when doing nothing. Indeed . . . there is nothing to be done. I am too tired, bored, and old. Once, I struggled . . . with an insane intensity to do and to accomplish. But that got me nowhere. I remained the same within, throughout, and regardless. I would prefer to tell you beautiful stories that would make you feel and make you desire to rush out and experience life, but I do not know these, so I cannot speak them. What I know is this room. There is a stench. I am most sure, although I cannot directly identify or distinguish its presence. What are the dimensions of my existence: fourteen feet, five and three-fourths inches by nine feet, two inches. Height: six feet, six and one-half inches. A single bare bulb at the ceiling’s center is dim. This matters not, for my eyes are beyond salvation. There is a small desk and chair. On the floor is an old mattress. A few articles of clothing have gathered in a corner. Attached is a small space that functions as a kitchen and bathroom: a toilet, a sink, and a burner. What remains is trash, rubbish, garbage. This dominates. And then there are the bugs, endless manifestations, and variations. Swarms. Once, I battled them. But regardless of their losses, they persisted . . . and under their great numbers . . . and with little weaponry . . . I was forced to resign. Now, I kill only the stray . . . the one that insists upon harassing me. It no longer matters. Indeed, I have come to identify with them . . . especially the cockroaches. Although why they remain when there is little food to sustain me . . . is beyond me. Why abide within this cell when there is a world of garbage beyond these walls? Familiars? My clothes are a kind of exoskeleton since I rarely remove them. They have become hard and encrusted . . . a defense, a wall. They are as much me as the skin that they hide . . . protect . . . cover. What amazes me is how they persist . . . how they continue . . . how they struggle against all odds until the end . . . driven by some form of madness, no doubt . . . these bugs. Indeed, what would I do without them? They have occupied me almost every night. I tried to familiarize myself with their habits . . . their comings and goings, but I could never distinguish one from another nor identify a daily routine or its lack. Nothing more.
In my younger days, when at times I still ventured out, when the desire to stretch the legs and smell the air, to imbibe in a good stout — if only to alter my environment, if only to cease to stare at the walls of my room that I now do as my sole means of being — when the body demanded to move for reasons the mind could not comprehend, controlled me to conduct myself so, I would discover my being, late at night or early in the morning hours — for I was a habitual insomniac — sitting in some shrouded corner table, alone, with stout in hand, and gazing inconsequentially at the others who were as wretched in their ways as I, shunned and spat upon, attempting the impossible, if for only a short while, to forget and believe. Here, in these establishments that cater to humanity’s stillborn, and with much aid culled from many stouts, some of the more horrendous in their unfathomable cognizance would make the obscene attempt to converse with me. One evening, while in the grip of unconquerable insomnia, I pulled my coat and hat together — any and every means by which to shield myself — and entered the opaque night with a still unknown purpose or destination. This was immaterial. My body insisted that it move, and being so commanded, I obliged the beast. We walked for many hours, my body and I, enjoying, if such is possible, the night that hid us. Let me state, however imperfectly, before continuing this point: I am not me. Now, when first discovering this, when grappling with the first inklings of an infantile comprehension, I thought, in actuality, that it was: I is another. A bold exclamation indeed. As bold and haughty a declaration as this genre permits. This, I understood for myself, to be the dreaming ego of youth when, at times, I deceived myself into believing, all of which will be revealed, expelled, and lanced like a pustule later. I beg of thee, be steadfast and plod on regardless of understanding, for it is impossible; there is no way to know. For whoever I may be, I am most positively not I. It is part of the cruel joke, the divine and cosmic quip that created everything. We, my body and I — my body incorporates and includes my mind — are not one and the same. This body and this mind, with their endless limitations, hinder me in my goals to no end. Whatever is needed, when I know what is to be done, is endlessly denied me by this horrible and inadequate . . . what to title this thing . . . body? I suppose . . . cell is the most accurate. But here, this is not where I wish to go. There is nothing that can be done. I must move on. I’m tramping the night and have found myself, as I was prone at these times, as I have stated, at a table and with stout. The clientele, firmly in the grasp of incoherent, inebriated abandonment, works steadily towards a communal goal of complete annihilation. This is their only refuge. It is, unfortunately, not long before some lout invades my solitary corner and attempts verbal nuisance upon my being. I shall save you the tedious confabulation, as well as the lout’s tenacious soliloquy, for, in fact, I would be incapable of rendering her parlance into any known civil or uncivil language as it would seem that we were not allies in crapulence to be fully compatible in communication. In all honesty, I found myself incapable of comprehension was this sow’s speech so slurred and pushing the limitation of my decency, of my civil tether, I erupted, if only slightly, with what I hoped would be the defining exclamation to this encounter, “Lady, I don’t know what you want, but the only thing I have to offer is my wretchedness.” And having stunned her by this simple statement, much the way deer is by bright light, I stood, completed my stout with a final swallow, and since I removed neither coat nor hat upon entering or while remaining, there was no need to pull them together before exiting and returning to the solitary night.
There is paralysis. Insentience. There is this room. This body within this room. The self within this body within this room. The eyes are often open. They do not see. There is no longer anything to see. Once . . . a time . . . there was vacillation. I would stand, pace . . . even, late at night . . . peregrinations. The body demanded that it move. I was helpless . . . a slave to its commands. I wanted nothing more than to remain steadfast . . . unmoving . . . within these walls. I would try and reason with it . . . to remind the body that there was no place to go . . . that where it sat is as good as any other, and to move would only distract the mind from its contemplation. But it would not hear. It demanded to move, and so move it did. Nothing was ever accomplished. It walked the same streets it always had. It stopped in the same pubs and drank the same stouts. When it finally grew tired and wished to remain still, the mind would remind the body that it had to return . . . that there was still the walk . . . that it shouldn’t have left to begin with . . . but this is the story; this, the circle.
I feel I have been misleading. Let me state that I have uttered nothing of importance, nothing of relevance, and firmly categorize all statements as the ravings of a mad old man. Assuredly, how could any of this . . . abomination . . . be misconstrued to possess meaning? I am harmless, really, easily forgotten, and only occasionally overcome by delusions derived from insomnia. Ignore it all. What is there that I could possibly know? Once a week, a boy leaves a satchel of meager food at my door. I do not speak with him. I do not see him. Truly, I know not if there is the boy any longer. It might well be a girl, or man, or woman, or another boy. It matters not. How is the food paid for? I remember not. It is long past. This, too, is inconsequential. What if the boy ceased to deliver his parcel if he was no longer given money or if he chose to spend this money on sweets instead of a satchel for me? Well, surely I would die. Not quickly, overnight, or in a week, but months. It would take a long while, since water still pours from the spout that allows me to drink and, therefore, prolong my death, my dying. But I am sure it is nothing less than what I deserve if such an occurrence were set into motion. I’m positive no one would know or care until the stench of my decomposing corpse became unbearable to the surrounding tenants. But they are drunks and prostitutes and addicts, the outcast and trodden upon, and it would take them a long while to come around to doing anything about the smell, seeing as the stench of the street overpowers one’s olfactory to a nauseating extent. And what is my life? I do little more than sit in my chair with its one odd leg and stare at the wall, or pace the length of the room, or write in a notebook on a rare occasion inconsequential deliriums. And this is not to state that I, in these moments, think. Quite the contrary, I have never thought. And this most assuredly is not an admission to being an intellectual or artist or anything with such subversive connotations. The only action of which I might be guilty is that I eat and excrete. Often . . . actually, I would say with frequency, I feel that there is nothing more to me, no further purpose nor relevance than to eat and excrete, and here, one need not be an intellectual. Somewhere, at one time, I became tired of this eating and excreting and attempted to somehow work around it, to live in absenteeism from its relation. Doing this deed every day, many times a day . . . enough. Is there no end, nothing else to be done? At first, I ceased all at once, cold turkey, but then these urges would come upon me that I could not control, and again, I would lose myself to this vice. I have attempted many other means upon which I won’t waste time elaborating, as they, too, came to no avail. At best, I managed to cut back and ate sparingly, only following a great duration of time, as best that I could decipher the passage of time here where this body resides. The excreting caused more difficulty. Though the use of my ass dwindled with the intake, I discovered the degree to which I would urinate was little affected. I soon understood this to be the result of the fact that the quantity of wine ingested had not been incorporated into the equation. Somehow, I must have thought it would have little or no effect on the experiment. Seeing how I did not wish to alleviate myself of the onus of wine, I abandoned the project, quickly forgetting everything, and continued eating and excreting. But I am an old man with little or no influence. Of what harm can I truly be guilty? Who could I possibly corrupt even if this was my desire? I have little control over myself. Indeed, I am a slave to physiology. It dictates. It commands. I simply obey, possessing no alternative. No one would be more pleased to cast it aside, abandon it, like an old hat and coat, than I. Where could I go, and what could I do? All I know is this room, this body in this room, and myself in this body in this room. The end will be upon me soon. Don’t worry. The end comes equally to everyone. No one is exempt. I do little more than sit in this chair, stare, pace, and, on occasion, drink a glass of wine. There is little more to do, little more to be done, little more that can be done. Silent voices from forgotten pasts crackle like autumn leaves on a windy day. Faint music lost in the breeze. Fading photographs losing their faces. Discarded newspapers on deserted street corners. The last flickering light of day.
Let me reiterate and firmly state, so that there will be neither misconstruction nor obfuscation, that when I speak, it is not I. All words are culled from others’ tomes. I am no voice. Nothingness . . . the void . . . emptiness . . . that is all . . . everything. These words . . . others’ words . . . come unwanted . . . repeating . . . numbing . . . endless . . . and again . . . raged and warred . . . but I’m positioned within the dogmatic fascism of this prison. Somehow, something went wrong. I possessed plans. I plotted trajectories. I understood and knew. But . . . the truth is that there is no foundation from which to construct. There is no truth, no lies, only negation and contradiction. No solidity. Blindness. Unknowing. Ignorance. Failure. If I seem to speak solely of despair and defeat, be assured that it is with utmost optimism. It means that I struggle still . . . attempt the impossible . . . somewhere within — far and deep — there is life, begging and pleading . . . desire . . . regardless of, or directly attributed to, my stupidity. This is beside the point. So I live, so I die. No. There is no living. No death. Worms in my heart. I suppose I shall remain a hyena . . . inescapable blood . . . inescapable self. The horror of my stupidity. One dies at less. My mind. No. These eyes. Wait. No. Nothing. Who’s there? Who’s listening? To whom do I speak? What did she say . . . her words? Yes: Try not to suffer too much. It annoys me. She was fond of evoking this statement. She failed to understand. She was severely limited. This happens regularly with the beautiful, never the need to question, never a need. And she was beautiful . . . enchanting and ethereal. But this was not her . . . not her doing . . . a gift from the gods or whathaveyou. She understood this beauty, this power, even less than I . . . which is not to state that she did not use and manipulate it to the best of her ability . . . for most assuredly she did. But how can I blame or scorn? Would not I have done the same if presented with such a gift? Would not I have used it to manipulate others to my desire? And finding this existence so easily manipulated, and feeling secure, having never struggled, detest the ugly, wretched and suffered . . . failures and cowards? Would I have been capable of seeing where she was blind? This is not to state that she was without heart, uncaring, and cruel — which she at times was — but that she was limited, despite this gift, and only human. The thing is . . . her friends, the scene, were drenched in opulence . . . and I never belonged amongst the wealthy . . . who are protected and happy. They knew this, so naturally, it was not to last. When you are raised amongst the feral, the bestial, the dejected, the stench remains regardless of your attempts to hide behind the artifacts of clothing, learning, and speech. Wealth and beauty mask . . . create an illusion . . . in which I am incapable of believing. I am too hideous and wretched a being . . . truly . . . to be permitted amongst the privileged. I remained incapable of the prescribed delusion needed and demanded . . . this was obvious . . . it had to end. When I decided to search beyond . . . to put forth an attempt to understand . . . everything ceased. It all began with that first book, that horrible apocryphal abomination. Overripe with immaturity and naïveté, I chronicled a time in the life of youth steeped in the stuff . . . ah, the ignorance and stupidity. It was an instant success, which granted me access. But it is impossible to escape your blood . . . and the stench of my upbringing — despite how I struggled to eradicate it — could be sniffed out. And here I was forced to question . . . to think . . . and it was this searching that became the subject of the continuation to that first monstrosity — for indeed there was an attempt, a struggle — which caused my expulsion, my exile. If I had continued to spew immaturity, if I had remained an unthinking selfish half-wit with my head firmly in my ass . . . and wrote of that . . . my success would have been boundless. But I’m incapable . . . and now . . . there is nothing . . . there is nothing here for me any longer. These memories persist, but their images gray and fade. Ghosts haunt forgotten lives no longer lived. The dead past torments the select few. Soon it will be over . . . lost . . . unknown. Irrelevant. Turned and began, I seemed almost to have transcended in recording dreams. There is no need for this necrophilia.
Where now I am immobile, stiff, near incapacitated . . . movement was once my all-consuming need. This is not to state that there was joy or pleasure in these peregrinations. It was a need . . . nothing more. One has many needs throughout life . . . and like most, one relents to their ever-insistent demands. Even now, prostrate and dead . . . my mind will forget . . . lost in delirium . . . recalling distant pasts . . . and demand motion. And here . . . the ridiculous . . . I struggle to stand . . . and sway . . . stagger . . . stumble . . . and drag this corpse to the other side of the room . . . and then back. More than it can endure. This teaches me. Flight . . . constant flight was the demand . . . the need. Nothing could keep me still . . . especially with early success. I was everywhere . . . but never for long. One city followed another and with it another woman . . . a night, a day, at most a week . . . but never the same flat, predictable, unoriginal . . . the standard trap of uninformed youth. Money accorded me this. That book, again . . . my one benchmark, my high-water mark. It sealed my fate. No escape. Done. I thought it would be easy. Everything would be fine. Juvenility. Puerile beliefs. Beliefs. A foundation forged on nothing. And how I believed. The world was before me. Amazing. It never ceases to befuddle the brain. Words. Simply words . . . black scribble . . . at best, the vague semblance of a story. How did I find myself there? My fatuity. And afterward . . . everyone after my throat . . . flight. They didn’t like their portraits . . . caricatures, they said . . . they weren’t that way . . . not that selfish, loathsome, egocentric, vindictive, draconic, and so forth. They didn’t like the truth. But what did they expect? That I would concede to their wishes . . . paint each their gluttonous and debauched portraits as if they were the Madonna with the Christ Child? You don’t get anywhere pulling punches, and neither did they. I had to watch my back. I crashed in the cheapest flophouses. The sudden opulence with which I had been entrusted and with which I was accustomed . . . vanished . . . revoked . . . just as quickly. And what did I care . . . it was all a game. I had nothing . . . never had anything . . . and suddenly . . . everything. What do you expect? . . . I wanted it all. I wasn’t going to pull a single punch. I knew. There was no way I could forget . . . my parents . . . home . . . growing up . . . the rejection, abandonment, solitude . . . the slaving in factories . . . the endless slaving in every shit job . . . the wasting of an entire existence for such mediocrity. I looked around . . . saw how it treated others . . . what it did to them. Not me. I was going to battle with my final breath. I would not end like them. I would not be one of them. Such hideousness. The eyes were hollow and dead. There wasn’t anything more to them. Stupid. Abject. Insufferable. So when a little luck came my way . . . there was no question; I had nothing to lose. I wouldn’t end like all the rest. What did I care? . . . I had spent my life rejected . . . a forced solitude. Here were the wealthy. I pulled one over on them . . . all those books I used to read . . . the energy of a drowning man trying to save himself. I was unstoppable. I would do anything. I simply had to endure playing the clown . . . the fool . . . for their amusement. I was a joke to them. They didn’t care . . . secure in the womb of their stature. I even told them . . . I was writing it all down. It would be a great success. They laughed . . . always laughing at everything I said . . . my ambition . . . my belief. They got theirs. I stripped away all masks. I laid it down and showed the world the true face of the privileged. When you have nothing . . . when you are expendable from day one . . . when you are seen to lack all significance . . . when you have been in and out of jail . . . have been beaten and have beaten others in kind . . . place no value upon this feeble bilious existence . . . care not if death takes you in the next second or thirty years . . . no amount of wealth can grant you such security. It can also make you careless and stupid, which it did for me . . . and often. Enough with this. How many times must I tread this wheel? I’m through. Let it go. Maybe this will be the final time? Maybe now I can forget? Maybe freedom . . . finally? Out. Complete rejection. Abandonment. Dissolution. Nothing more.
There is only one story we tell, the only story there is, and we tell this story time and again, and again in another guise, to pass the time, the story of time, of our existence. But like the existence that the story illustrates, the story itself is a corroding non-place that lacks a center while it winds down, slows while steeped in entropy, falters, breaks, fragments, and desperately searches for a way to write itself out; the thing and itself — the story and its teller — being irrevocably entwined . . . one and the same . . . one abortive effort mirroring the other.
Sometimes there’s a knock. I never answer. I don’t mean the small boy or child, or whoever it might be that delivers my parcel of food for the week, though for him too, I never answer. That knock, which accompanies and indicates the arrival of my parcel, is always the same: a light and inoffensive knock, primarily two small raps but sometimes three and nothing more. The time of arrival, as best that I can decipher, is always the same. I then wait until I am sure the child is gone before opening the door a crack and taking the items. But this is not what I am speaking, or rather, I’ve lost myself. Sometimes there is a knock. I never answer. Indeed, my body contracts and stiffens while my heart races. I don’t know who it is. Indeed, no one else ever comes; no one has a reason. Except, maybe, my fear that they have come to evict me, throw me to the curb, and eject me from this hole. And what would become of me then? A further degeneracy? A further decaying? I hold my breath. I remain still. I listen. These knocks, when they come — which are infrequent — are different in rhythm and number but always loud, hard, and violent. I expect the door to be broken down and for men to rush in and take me, beat me, force me from here. I have done nothing; I will yell. But they will not listen. They do not care. They have a job to do. I am an impersonal object, subhuman even, a roach to be crushed beneath a boot. Nothing more. But I cannot hold my breath forever, and eventually, I again breathe, and again my body relaxes slowly, though my ears remain alert for the slightest indication that a person is still present. Eventually, I will approach the door cautiously and, placing my ear to it, listen. I hear only what I assume to be the regular noise of the street. I return to my chair and sit. I am shaken and uneasy. My mind remains on the knock, on who it is that knocked, on what the knock might mean. Who has come for me and why? I know no one. It has been too many years since I first arrived here. I have never been close to anyone. I no longer have a family. Could it be who it is that allows me to stay, pays for me to stay? If so, I never want to meet him. I have no desire to see another person for the remainder of my wretched existence. I am here to wait. I am preparing for the end. I want nothing that will hinder me from this task . . . that will prevent me from the maxim. Never Again.
I think I can smell this body as it decomposes. It is the stench of rotting flesh. The skin is gray. It hangs on the bones. It may be true that this body is a corpse. It is sometimes stiff and impossible to move, as though rigor mortis has begun. My clothing is rigid and encrusted. I do not recall the last time I bathed or changed clothes. I no longer remove my clothes. I can no longer ascertain a reason for their removal. Indeed, they serve no purpose. I would not place them upon it if they were not already on this body. I may very well have lost or broken my spectacles. It is often difficult to see. Each day, the light of the world dims, and the objects within grow faint and out of focus. I do not care. To see is no longer relevant. To move is no longer a concern. As I have said, I believe this body may already be dead. I certainly hope that I will not have to endure another. I do not think that I could again be capable. At times, when I shift or alter the body’s position, a great billow of wind is released. This no longer bothers me, and I am often unaware, for its emission is with considerable regularity. The body often collapses to the floor. This is a minor annoyance. Here, it will remain until I muster what is needed to struggle again and again to arise. When it is that the body does fall, I often allow it to remain where it lies. There is no need, no hurry, to usher and force it beyond the condition in which it has found itself. As it is, I have little control over this body. Also, I have little knowledge of its simple operations. I will often think of something for the body to do when it will not do what I have thought, or it will do something different and in no relation to this thought. I often seem to bring it great pain by making it accomplish simple tasks. However, if I do not force the body so, it will remain prostrate and unmoving, and if there is something I have learned, there are basic tasks and chores that seem to be required for its continued functioning. But here, I do not know. I often think I should leave it alone and cease my attempts to have it move and do. I do not know what would be better or best. Instead, I continue with patterns and routines of which I am well aware and of which I have been treading for as long as my limited memory can recall . . . a continuous proliferating of continuous repetition.
It is perhaps my delusions that have afforded me the stamina to endure. For, if it were not that my intellect be so enfeebled whereby the ability to cogitate and disinter remained a totality of elusiveness, I may have once been capable.
Sitting in my chair, I came to myself to discover that I was staring and had been staring for an extended duration. At first, I did not know what my eyes were seeing and thought that it was my shoe or the dust on my shoe or possibly a hole in my shoe or, in general, some aspect or aspects of my shoe with which my eyes were preoccupied. But upon scrutinizing my shoe and its vicinity, I discovered that it was not my old shoe in which my eyes had found interest, but a small beetle of sorts, no larger than a quarter of one’s thumbnail, on its back and unable to correct itself. The beetle’s legs moved all at once and rapidly, or I imagine what constitutes rapidity for a beetle on its back, and I imagine wishing to correct its predicament. I had been watching it struggle for a great while, but of this, I have no distinct memory. With full consciousness, or at least with a semblance of awareness, I watched the beetle and its attempts. Very little transpired. Its many legs moved in various permutations and speeds. At times, the beetle seemed to have worked itself up to such a fury that it would rock on its hull or, at times, complete a circular rotation before tiring itself out and leaving its situation inevitably unaltered. It seems that despite my attentiveness and lack of all other distractions, I lost myself for a while, for I eventually discovered myself, again coming to and again wondering what preoccupied my eyes. Here, I followed the same scenario toward discovering the beetle and its unaltered predicament. I am unaware of how long I sat watching the beetle, nor am I aware of the number of times I lost myself before finding myself and again discovering the unaltered beetle. It is quite possible that this pattern continued for an extended duration, though not extensively; for the beetle continued to move and continued to struggle until unable to endure this horror any further, I lifted the toe of my shoe and swiveling the shoe on its heel, moved the toe an inch to the left, and placed it down upon the beetle. I then applied further weight.
