Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Angular, moody dark good-looks and a slender survivor's body made James Huston appear younger than his fifty years. He was wearing a casual tan jacket, a loosened brown tie over an unbuttoned blue shirt.

  This afternoon's was a typical audience. There were the students, at least a few assigned to attend by professors who would themselves not be present, their statement on the lecturer's controversial life and views. Many were here simply because he was famous, some said notorious, the author of several books that described his turbulent life—"raging equally in sexual and intellectual promiscuity,” this morning's newspaper had said. Here, too, were those he called “the grand inquisitors,” faculty members who came only to denounce his lectures in articles in their “intellectual house organs,” full of that-year's positive answers and arcane language. Among both students and teachers, of course, he had as many supporters as detractors. His invitations to speak came as often from those who derided him as those who admired him, who found in the seeming anarchy of his words and works an artful form, a saddened intelligence, and a respect—perhaps anachronistic—for what might be called the “soul.”

  A dark, intense good-looking youngman marched to the front row and remained standing until he was certain the lecturer had noticed him. Then from his pocket he took out a pair of dark-rimmed glasses—daring me to tell him anything he might learn from—and put them on carefully before he sat down. I've seen you before. At the other end of the same row, a tanned brown-haired girl in sleeveless dress uncrossed her brown legs—you will listen only when I speak about sex or bodies—and leaned back as if exposing her limbs to an admiring sun.

  Them, James chose the two. At his lectures, he would select a few in the audience to use in gauging his effect. Varying factors elicited his choices—indications of intent attention, intelligence; cynical defiance; hostility; and, yes, beauty. He would give them names, assigning variegated lives and reactions to them. That made his remarks more intimate. He would name the good-looking youngman— … Mark. The girl would be Adorée.

  Scanning the filled hall, James Huston chose others: a male professor—Dr. Admas—already mentally writing his scathing, remorselessly obscure “post post-structuralist” critique of this lecture; a pretty woman, an untenured professor, with him—Ellen, perhaps an agnostic critic; an older, carefully arranged lady—Mrs. Loomis—who subscribed to every lecture series and knew nothing at all about him; a fiercely intelligent plain young woman with a thick notebook waiting to be filled—oh, yes, Joan; a well-built athlete—Joe, who else?—who at the moment James's eyes glided toward him stretched his young body in blatant competition—youth is not acquired, Joe!; two pretty young girls, determinedly insouciant, hugging and holding hands—Sally and Lorry; a black, very black, youngman with rage ready to scorch—what name?; a Mexican girl—Gloria—her face defiantly brown without “Anglo makeup” and a surprising presence, a rigid, crewcut older man, either a director of continuing education or an undercover officer making sure the lecturer was not subversive—Mr. Hartzell! He might choose others as he spoke…. Hilton—he gave the black youngman an uncommon name.

  “Flawed perfection or perfect flaws, accident or fate, salvation or betrayal,” James Huston began his lecture, softly; always without being introduced.

  Faces looked up startled.

  “We will perhaps discuss perfection and what we accept as such, and the expectations arising from it. Completeness—no possible substitution—might be a component of the perfect. Salvation—I speak in the conventional sense—is therefore perfect; there is no substitute for salvation.” The last three words formed a phrase he used in every lecture he gave, every book he wrote. “From attempts to substitute it, all neuroses stem, and from thwarted expectations, broken promises—neuroses being realistic disappointments carried to an extreme.”

  He deliberately provoked laughter early in his lectures. The expectation of the outrageous conclusions he was known for added interest, and prepared attention for the seriousness of his discourse. Even in his humor were careful clues of his personal intention, the steady dismantling of what he had once believed in: “meaning” and “reasons"—sought in religion, philosophy, psychology, art, finally life; unfound. His lectures were laments for, and rages against—at times subdued, at times overt—deceiving mythologies, betrayals. Each lecture brought him closer to the death of hope.

  “Black is the total absence of color. So is white—the opposite of black. Black and white are perfect. Yet black results from the total absorption of light rays, contains all colors; and white reflects—rejects?—them all. A contradiction? An imperfection? A mystery! The recurrent subject … along with sex.”

  Joan skipped a page for retrospective illumination. You have pretty hair, Joan, … Hilton!—certainly you did not find bigotry in that? Or do you see it—correctly—in every white face, hear it out of every white mouth? The doggedly skeptical Dr. Admas was making a note on a paper: “The structuring absence of his lecture is the modernist discourse that he ignores/* Something that pertinent! And Mark— … It was here, in this city— …

  “What would a contemporary lecture be, without a reference to sex—or dreams?” he clarified for Joan, who nodded. Adorée of the brown satin legs smiled appreciatively. But Mark frowned at the supposed flippancy; so James explained further: “I used sex only to hold lack of attention in abeyance—soon, I will, I promise, use the word ‘fuck.’ “ There was receptive laughter—but Mark secured the barrier of his glasses by placing his hands on his temples.

  “Gray, not so coincidentally, is an imperfect absorption of those rays—the flawed middle, gray age.”

  Mrs. Loomis touched her dyed temples and felt surrounded by so much youth!

  / didn't mean you, you have been so wounded by Mr. Loomis! “In the beginning was the word, St. John tells us, and whatever else Genesis may be, one might see in it a metaphor for literary creativity, the word ordering chaos, bringing—one hopes!—light! Much of the rest of the Book is bad revision,” he continued still lightly to court their intelligent attention. “ ‘In the beginning the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’ Science and Genesis agree. ‘And God said’—and here begins the controversy—'Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.’ But what did that good light reveal to a myopic God? In our time—in my time only—Dachau! Bangladesh! Viet Nam! …” He thrust the scorched images at them.

  The audience reacted in bewilderment to his sudden ferocity. This was his first clashing indication of what they might expect.

  Now he drew back to abstractions: “And plagues, fires, the unholy wars, inquisitions and burnings at the stake and by napalm and gas. Now the darkness becomes benign. It snuffs out the cruelty of that ‘good’ light.”

  Mark seemed about to remove his glasses, paused. Mrs. Loomis looked about the room, to watch the reactions of the susceptible young—and report to Mr. Loomis, who would not listen. Dr. Admas loosened his antagonism—but only because Ellen was clearly interested.

  Outside—where he looked—shadows clasped, commanded by the sun.

  “Questions. Important questions. Before one can find answers, one has to find questions; meaningful questions require meaningful answers.” He reached in his pocket for a slip of paper. He read, “ ‘What are the forces that deconstruct a text?’ “Oh, that gave Dr. Admas an unexpected thrill. Perhaps he will even write, “There are times when he is almost capable of an intelligent— …”

  Joan frowned. Instead of removing them, Mark adjusted his glasses.

  Please, Joan, Mark wait! James Huston continued to read from the paper: “ ‘Is the contemporary novel dominated by metonymy or metaphor?’ “ Please! ” ‘What are the major differences among modernism, post-modernism, and post-postmodernism?’ … Important questions—they were discussed heatedly at a recent conference on criticism…. Babble!” Joan and Mark relaxed. Dr. Admas slashed with his pencil at what he had spiritedly begun to writ
e. “Ask important questions! Did God weep when he flung the lost angels out of heaven? Did the angels weep? When they fell from cloudy grace, did their tears precede them as if to quench the fiery red damnation? Who wept? That is important. Were the rebellious angels the first radicals against the lineage of totalitarian tyrants that begins with God?” Hilton is thinking of white devils shedding black blood. “And were any of the angels black?” he addressed him.

  Hilton nodded.

  “Imagine the rage of betrayed angels! … And imagine what a dreadful childhood Satan must have had.” He moved deliberately from the somber to the seemingly flippant, but even then his tone was bruised by bitterness. Mark did not laugh. You want— … James Huston turned away from his gaze. He looked outside—at the scattering geometry of shadows and light. “ ‘Be wary, be watchful, for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking the ruin of souls,’ so says that often overrated work, the Bible.”

  A gasp, controlled—after all, they were sophisticated. Mr. Hartzell glared. Mrs. Loomis pulled in her lips in indignation—no, she was applying lipstick! What was the relentless Dr. Admas writing now?—“He does not address the serious questions he sometimes manages to stumble upon, like the matter of inter-textuality and decentering the subject.” “Again, that has nothing to do with my lecture. I simply quoted one of the favorite sayings of the greatest television performer of our time—Sister Woman, in her nightly series on salvation!” They laughed; she was famous, all knew who she was. When he could bear it, James Huston watched her, at times laughing in outrage, always appalled by her terrifying, hypnotizing power. “Again, I am merely making sure you're listening—you might miss what you've come to hear—sex! blasphemy! …” He stopped. He said softly, “You must understand by now that I inherited the sanity of mad parents.”

  Startled, Mark met his look.

  A connection, Mark? From where, before? “A beloved mother, a despised father—but it was the same, wasn't it?—because it was all passion.” He felt Gloria's accusing brown gaze. Of course, you have a despised mother! He sought Adorée, who cocked her head and blew softly on the sunburned portion of her breasts. Was it the lingering sadness Gloria had evoked that fanned even over Adorée?—Adorée, will you come to hate your beauty?

  “What shall we substitute for salvation?” he asked. “Meditation, Quaaludes, neostructuralism? The arrogant perfections of the sciences? Mathematics! Yes, and then the perfection of love. Love,” he pulled easily at their attention. “We will of course accept, all of us, that love is perfect,” he promised. “There, we start with a clear given.”

  Sally and Lorry kissed each other like two birds. Many other bright faces relaxed. Yes, they accepted that love was beyond assault—and good, always, to hear about. Dr. Admas sighed audibly, thinking, Inverse romantic anachronism!—and he will write in his pad: “But then, his works have always shown a complete lack of consciousness about the implied reader and the narratee— …” Mark! On a white beach! And now you've come to claim something from me. Can I give it?

  “Mathematics is perfect if it solves the meaning of the unknown factor. An important phrase!—and not accidental: the unknown factor. Its solution is assumed by only one other institution—religion, which relies not on hard axioms but on flaccid faith.”

  Joe laughed heartily.

  “We can even draw a picture of ineffable perfection and meaning simply by plotting an algebraic equation on a graph.”

  Joan flipped over a page with a sound that trumpeted ready understanding.

  “Swedenborg tried to find God in arithmetic, too—but then Blake tried to draw the soul! Shall we substitute for salvation the graphed algebraic equation that shows us the exact location of the unknown factor? The unknown quantity—another important phrase! Retain it for later. The unknown quantity of X will be revealed in intersecting lines! Approach with awe!”

  He drew on the blackboard one horizontal line and a vertical one, intersecting. A giant cross. And then he plotted loosely an algebraic equation. “Here is the outline of perfection—not only the solution, but a picture of X, solved! And it has poetry—shadowy reflections, mirror images.” He pointed to the portion of the graph above the horizontal line, then below it, symmetrical forms. “The conscious and the unconscious, reality and dream. And the solution of X?” He turned around. “We have been deceived. There is not one constant. X. X is not the immutable; it changes from graph to graph, now plunging below the horizon into minus, now soaring over it as plus! … And there is the problem of prime numbers, a mystery pondered for three thousand years—the utter perfection of being able to find every number divisible only by one and by itself—such extravagant poetry in mathematics!—the mystery deepening the higher the number mounts. Supposedly finally solved—like the origin of time…. And zero! Invented to make mathematics work. Without it pyramids and buildings fall. Without that nonexistent zero. Even its shape is flawed, a squeezed circle…. More betrayals! The infinity of a geometric progression, which multiples itself but never tallies! The backward infinity of a square root, which divides itself endlessly, never reaching its origin. Both acknowledge in imperfect poetry that demarcation which does not exist—zero. Something so elaborate from nothing? Like the universe, created by a series of accidents in perfect collusion—collision—uniting into inevitability? … But keep that in abeyance, a hint of coming attractions, in the tradition of the great movie serials, to which I owe so much of my episodic and suspenseful mode of presentation!”

  Spreading its powerful rays, the sun spattered shadows of trees outside—white splotches on the grass.

  With his hand—wet with sweat—James Huston wiped away a portion of the graph he had drawn earlier, creating a blurred void where the spurious “solution” had been found. He felt an enveloping sorrow as he slashed a cruel X within the smudged void. “Had mathematics not betrayed us, there— …” He pointed to the intersection of the X. ”… —there would be God. But not impaled in masochistic splendor.”

  Assertively, Joan drew an X on a single page. And Mark removed his glasses for a moment, pretending to clean them, then replaced them. Gloria pressed her lips together, as if assuming an attitude of prayer. Clumsily, Joe touched his round shoulder, attracting, attracted. What will become of you, Joe? —when answers are no longer given to you and you must ask questions? Dr. Admas underlined what he had just written with dramatic flourish: “Aha! The imaginary signifier!” He whispered something to Ellen, who brushed his hand away.

  “As long as death exists, free will does not. Except perhaps in suicide. Have we arrived at a possible act of perfection—the one action in which fate embraces choice?” The question had slid into his lecture, the soft words asked to himself. But having spoken them aloud, he forced Mark to look at him. A clue! Mark did not nod in assent. James Huston drew back his private question, from them. Then: “God is love is perfect is omnipotent.

  Then why do we ask so little of him? Tiny petitions for tiny improvements of our not so tiny lot. Why not ask that grain grow in a rage across the barren soil of starved countries? Why not ask for justice for the poor,” Gloria, “and for the violated,” Hilton, “the walking dead,” Mrs. Loomis? “Why not ask that we grow wings and soar like angels,” Joan?—"although, as we have seen, our angelic ancestors did not fare too well with theirs.” This time he rushed on, obliterating laughter, “Why not ask for the moon and the stars,” Ellen? “Why not ask that we … never grow old,” Joe? “or die,” Adorée? Or for sustaining hope? he asked himself but looked at Mark. “It is true that we are created in the image of a small, mean God—whose contemporary high priests—psychiatrists!”—he spat out the word—”… —are deep betrayers, providing answers even where there are no questions. Puncturing dreams…. Like the lords who bought indulgences for their evil by giving money to the holy church, the rich pay their analysts to absolve them of deserved guilt. Atonement by psychoanalysis! Oh, yes, there are times when guilt is justified, should be exposed—and then
allowed to roil and burn in expiation!” Mark, your eyes—are they brown?—like mine? “Perverted psychiatry provides the perfect climate for capitalism—and terrific alliteration.”

  Mr. Hartzell's pen had gone crashing to his pad! Adorée was glancing out the window. James yanked at her attention: “The legs part, and the cunt receives the cock— …” She looked up with full interest. “The legs part, the moist cunt receives the panting cock; the legs part and the ass receives the cock. An orifice is penetrated, orgasm occurs, time stops, a stasis in infinity and boredom. Perfection perceived only in the memory of a fleeting moment. Gone. It is always, That was a good fuck; never, This is a good fuck. I keep my promises, you see; I have used that word! So much for the betrayal of sex!”

  Now he pushed anxious words into their laughter. “The body withers, the appetite has gone, the face is gaunt, bodily functions rebel. Lassitude, nausea, constant apprehension, the pulse races, there are moments of fever accompanied by chills. The desire to sleep is overcome only by the inability to do so. In the extreme one dies—but more often kills another, or both. What malady have I described? … Love.”

  There was laughter mixed with nervousness, a contingently welcome release. Dr. Admas wrote: “And! More important! —Love is a historical construct!”

  “Obviously I wasn't serious. Love is perfect.” He looked at Sandy and Lorry, so pretty, sitting so close. Don't listen now! “We know, all of us, that without love life is meaningless. We accept love as perfection. The only completion of the incomplete. The sine qua non of life. Sine. Qua. Non. Not Synanon.” He bent over a nervous youngman on the front row—the youngman frowned, flustered. “Although, come to think of it,” James Huston said with kindness, “the Synanon of life isn't bad, it's better—leave it! The Synanon of Life!” The youngman beamed. “Without love, disorder reigns, life is meaningless.”