When she first moved to the city she had to keep pinching herself to see if it was really, truly true.  And she pinched herself every time she doubted it.  It was true.  Lucky her.  She did live in a big modern city with tall building.  So tall, that when she looked up at them she felt giddily overpowered, overwhelmed, struck silent and thoughtless at the sheer strength and power that these anthropomorphic structures expelled.  The suits, the bustle, the energy, WOW.

 

She continued to pinch and pinch and pinch herself until she was numb.  Once numb she noticed the people, her people, her people all living as one.  She wanted to run and hug and kiss everyone, inside that is.  She was amazed by everyone's apparent cooperation.  No one got in anyone's way, no one pushed or bumped into anyone else.   They all had places to go and people to meet and it was all quiet orderly, tidy, straight and aligned. 

 

After a time she felt comfortable exchanging quick looks and occasional smiles at people she thought might be like her.  Sometimes she felt like she was a part of it all, a part of some great and mysterious order.  An order some how dictated from above from one of those office suites on top.

 

Taking pause one day in this marvelous city, she heard a voice, a screechy voice, a voice that had the shmarm authority of a ring master and a voice consumed with masking pain.

 

"Listen," the voice rasped,  "This is my building, it has my breath stuck all over the walls, my eye stare glued to the paint.  This is my building and you can't take it away from me."

 

She wanted to stay and listen but she was afraid that she would be caught.  She was afraid that she would be singled out.   She was afraid she would be noticed and she was afraid that she would not...

 

"I've caught you, you can try to steal it, but I know who you are."  She was pulled into the voices rant, she acknowledged that she wanted to be an audience.

 

"I worked in this building for twelve years.  This building was very good to me, it kept the rain off my head and kept me warm from the cold and this building treated me like everyone else, human, I ate food here and it disposed of my piss just like everyone else.  This building doesn't care who you are, you are the same as the boss big shot who touched your shoulder one Christmas when he was drunk and said "good job".  And who fires you three years later because there's not enough work.  Now what am I suppose to do." 

 

Reality and the imagined collided in this voice which included as its audience both her and the building, the object/subject of her afflicted affection.  Whether real or imagined the voice spoke with direction.

 

"My darling, my friend, protect me.  Here I stay until you fall on top of me, and then I can come back inside."

 

"Geez," she thought, a  pity of mixture and sadness.  "The poor woman must be mad."

 

Sometimes she felt like she was a part of it all, a part of the great city.

 

There was a green park.  She would go there at first when she arrived, she would go there when she felt good, or not.  She would go there to say this is the good life.  She would sit on a park bench, read a book, relax and feel contentment with the right twinge of this is alone and I am lonely. 

 

Sometimes when she was in the park she would see from a distance someone approaching her and she would think, "Please don't come and talk to me."  She hated having to explain that the sadness on her face was just the way she was born, not the way she felt.

 

"Hi. Beautiful day, isn't it."  Not a question.

 

"Uh, ha."  She squeezed.

 

"Mind if I join you."  This also was not a question.  But she felt obliged to treat it as one.

 

"Um.  Yes.  I do."  She said.

 

"Oh, stuck up are you."

 

"No.  I'm not stuck up." 

 

She felt herself falling into a trap filled with questions that weren't really questions.  This was a trap filled with nice girls.  Polite girls whose ankles were snared by iron leg clamps that kept them from moving, while they slowly bled to death.  Confectioners sugar smiles covering pain.

 

"Oh stuck up are you."  He gets in the last word and she's gone wondering if there is a God..

 

It struck her as improbable but she isn't sure.  The office buildings, yes they were real, God? Without the reason or forum of a philosopher, instead she asks friends, gulps beer and expects that they will answer just like her, with cool chilly ambivalence.  Except one, yes, God, he said, did exist.  This man, his intelligence, his defiance, his indifference, they all frightened her.  But it's a party and the music is loud and her head hurts and she's got to sleep.  Sleep, sleep, sleep. 

 

Sleepy, she laid her head down and found that she could not close her eyes.  She tried and tried but they wouldn't close.  Eyes scratchy and sore but still she could not sleep.  Months past and she felt hopeless but not tired.  She tried reading, smoking and watching TV, no sleep.  One night she picked up a book written by a woman who had been subjected to the cruel and obsessively torturous demands of a wicked manipulative man.  Her mind was twisting pleasure and pain into a rope which bound her past present and future.  Excited, she masturbated and finally fell into a deep dreamless sleep which lasted for three years.

 

She was awoken by a sweet kiss from a warm and generous man who asked kindly,

 

"Now please, tell me your dreams."

 

She was embarrassed that she hadn't dreamed.  She felt the need to impress him so she began to recount dreams which she felt she should have had...  She dreamed she had a baby.

 

"Good, go on."

 

And that the baby was born with two heads, and was ugly, hideously ugly, so ugly that she felt ashamed that she could bear something so offensive to the eye.  She hid the baby under her skirt but the baby suffocated so she buried it under the house.

 

He told her he thought the dream was merely Okay.  He told her he had wished for a better one and she wondered if a wish and a dream were the same thing.  She decided that they were and told him she wished she were a missionary a missionary on a..., on a..., on a mission, a mission for truth.  She wandered the world but could never find it.   She glanced at him to see if he was still engaged, couldn't tell.  She was smart enough to know that enthusiasm can make up for naiveté.  She admitted that in her dream she found the antithesis and left that for him to imagine.  This antithesis was a sign to her to continue looking but a wise one said,  "Give up your search, you will never succeed."  "At this moment," she said, "You woke me up."

 

"Together," they thought.  She had much to learn.  So they decided she should learn a language.  French.  So that she would know a romantic language and Freud, so that she could understand herself.  She began to fall in love with the man of her dreams.

 

Sing song.

 

She wanted to love him forever.  She wanted their love to be like a building, something people could look at and admire and tried very hard to do so and she would have succeeded except that they both got bored. They built walls around themselves and then each other. They knew what to expect.  The intensity which kick started their passion couldn't be sustained.  They had explored everything but cruelty.  Flat, there were too many options.  Movies, desire pits, yearn churns, you see and you want, you are the image of your desire, which grows in the seam between two spent lovers. 

 

The last film they went to see together was THE REIGN OF TERROR.  Halfway through the film he turned to her and said, "You are not as beautiful as you think you are."  This was the first time that he had not asked her a question.

 

How could she know that?  How could she think of herself in those terms.  She could only stare at him, her face, his face flickering from the projected light and she thought, "I'm not as beautiful as he thought I was and now he's mad cause he thinks I tricked him into falling in love with me and thinking I was beautiful.  I think that we are in trouble now."

 

Now being as she and he tried to cope with their disappointment.  He with her beauty and she with his inability to fill the void.  There came the recriminating blame because it felt so good and now it just hurt.  "It's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, they said this and then they didn't say anything and then they eventually looked at each other and she wondered who that person was and all the things that she had liked about him just faded away.

 

She was thrilled once again to be on her own.  It was an adventure and it brought exciting new thoughts.  She cut her hair, read new books and took long invigorating walks.  Striding past the hordes of insipid lovers, she had the confidence of one who knows exactly what they want and how they are going to get it.

 

It is unimportant for us to know what it is she wanted, the object of desire is often less interesting than the desire itself.  Is that true?  Is that a question or an answer?

 

Now she would sit on a park bench and not one person would approach her.  Not her with her knowledge, her acceptance, and her pain which could no longer be read in her eyes.  Her eyes now flashed anger, her bosom cleaved pain and she wore black turtle necks, tight jeans and leather jackets.  No one could entice her into wanting something she hadn't wanted before.  Now it was obvious that this was a woman who had made up her mind.  She defined a world.  She joined the status quo and everything was fine until she began to feel weak.  It started slowly at first.  That voice came back, but it was changed.

 

"You just want to fuck a corpse.  You're a slim bag Jimmy.  You gave me those drugs cause you wanted you and your friends to fuck a dead cunt.  Only I didn't die.  No I just pretended I was dead so you would feel bad but you didn't feel bad.  You're just a mean prick Jimmy."

 

She began to feel weak.  It started slowly.  She went to the doctor and she said, "Doctor I'm dying."

 

Doctor said, "Yes everything is bad and then it gets worse."

 

That made her feel a little better but she still had pains.  She couldn't breath.  She felt like she was suffocating.  "Can't you help her?"

 

The Doctor said, "It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.  You have nothing to fear of death.  Death is simply the separation of the body from the soul."

 

She looked at the Doctor, stared at him with disbelief.  She hadn't viewed life in those spiritual terms for a long, long time.  Not since she had been a young girl, at a party, drunk and scared.  She thought for a moment about what the soul could be but she could only think of herself.  She could thank Freud for that.  She thought of the Cartesian paradigm then said aloud, "To hell with structure." and started to cry.

 

She felt separate and complete, strong and very modern.  She felt she had a soul but that the soul was her and she was responsible for it.  She felt satisfied that she was not going to be seduced by the doctor's rhetoric.

 

The Doctor did not notice that her face maintained a calm mask of someone who would listen but could never be convinced or agree.  The Doctor prescribed this antidote.

 

 "There are miracles which are performed every day.  For example,"  The doctor said,  "I know a man whose face was hideously disfigured in an accident.

 

"He had been a beautiful youth and had a promising career as an actor.  His career was progressing right on schedule, he was getting good roles and critical recognition. 

 

"The Actor went to a party one night, a party with a rough crowd.  He enjoyed doing this under the pretense that he was researching future roles, but really The Actor loved the thrill of abandoning his well mannered middle class upbringing, which encouraged him to define long term goals and achievements.   The Actor needed the experiential, to get right down to the dirty moments at hand. 

 

"There was one man there at this party who was espousing his newly formed Manifesto on the Pimp Kingdom.  Saying how he kept his girls loyal because he kept them scared by the fist. 

 

"Well The Actor thought this Manifesto guy was vile, nasty and mean. It didn't seem right so The Actor argued his point to the Manifesto who took out a baseball bat and bashed The Actor's head to pulp,  flush with the wall. 

 

"Now The Actor who was very beautiful was now the ugliest person alive.  Now he would walk the streets night after night, looking defiantly at all the people who turned away in disgust.  The Actor's ugliness became a symbol of defiance, the ugliness became a reminder of order, justice and all that was good in the city.

 

"One night, out of the shadows, came a woman who approached The Actor and said, "Would you like to go out on a date?"

 

The Doctor said, The Actor said, "Yea, I want to go on a date, very much."

 

"So she took him to a park, close by.  She took from him $50. then laid him on the grass and started sucking his cock."

 

The Doctor smiled, pleased with his story and satisfied by his skill.  He did not notice that her face maintained a calm mask of someone who would listen but could never be convinced or agree. 

 

She thought The Doctor was deluded.  She did not think that his story was a miracle.  She decided to perform her own miracle.  She willed her body to split a cell in her womb, which it did, and for that to multiply, which it did.  And then she said,  "Doctor, I'm pregnant."

 

She gripped his couch, feeling weak.  She laid her head down but voices from the waiting room crept in and started ringing in her head.

 

"No computer is going to take my job away as a building inspector.  Let me tell you that right now. 

 

"I was thinking ahead when I trained for this job.  But that one up there, let me tell you, she has really got it in for me.  So I told her I was just doing my job, like I always do.  She's had it in for me right from the beginning.  So I told her, "Look, get off my case.  If you can't get it together to do your job, it's not my fault."   I told her, "It was there when I checked yesterday and it's not my fault if she can't account for it today."

 

Then she said,  "Doctor  I'm pregnant."

 

Now that she was pregnant she had ambivalent thoughts and feelings about having a child.  She dreamt of babies now.  Not buried babies underneath the house, or two monstrous two-headed creatures.  She felt private and then her belly began to grow.  And suddenly it was not a private matter.  She was no longer the image of herself.  She became a symbol, a representation, someone who had had sex, she became a bearer, of meaning.  And this saddened her, as she was bloated, full of baby, and the picture of health.

 

She had her baby, and it was not like her dream.  Mothers' tend to love their babies very much and with this love, she gave her baby away.  She delivered her miraculous conception to the world, which consumed The Baby's cuteness with delight.   It was for the better and better was always best.  "Is that true?"

 

She wondered if she could be happy. Someone, flirting at a party, asked her if she was happy and she became confused and belittled his veiled inquiry. It seemed to be, that at any given moment, plausible, in an external kind of way. 

 

She wondered if she could be happy.  She thought people are happy when they are building something.  When the old is being swept away and the new is being constructed.  She imagined the heady feeling one must have felt in participating in the construction of the suburban ideal. 

 

Those communities that were breaking new ground, pushing the limits of the urban frontiers.  Those must have been the days.  She heard their voices.

 

"I just walk around with tears in my eyes.  It's as if a tornado has swept through our house and we're just left staring at the rubble.  I don't know how to cope....  Do you know what he did the other day? 

 

He swings into the kitchen and he says, "Hey, look mom,"  Get a load of this.  There across his jeans, about a foot and a half wide and underneath he's wearing flowered girls underwear.  Well, I was just shocked.  I had no idea of how to respond.  You know he's just doing it to shock us.  But I'm not giving in.  The other day he said he was going out to get his hair cut.  His father asked him how he was going to cut his hair and he said, "OH! I was thinking of getting a mohawk and dying it purple.  His dad said,  "Don't forget, you are trying to get a job."

 

Thank god he only died his hair black, but let me tell you we are both at our wits end.

 

Those were the days.  Pushing the limits of the urban frontier.  She began to reconstruct her past.  Then she yelled....

 

"STOP!"