by Gordon Lish
I mean, honestly.
I’ve made every effort, endued this man with every benefit of the doubt, but fuck it, it’s useless.
You see what I’m saying?
In more words of one syllable, James is what?
A man.
Typically speaking, to be sure, but, for my money, for Gordon’s, that’s it and that’s it—one is dealing with, or is confronted with, a delimiting, right?
Whereas with yon female (distaff) aspect of the species, there’s, more generally speaking, contact in the offing. In other words, figuratively one-syllabled ones, woman. This, my friend, is where the action is. Call it what you will, it’s where mutuality, as it were, transcendence, as might be said, beckons.
Listen, wasn’t it, or, more formally, weren’t it, what I, Gordon, whom, at the outset of this, or onset, so openly claimed?
Remember?
Because you do or do not remember?
Because I was quite clear about it, I do believe I might allege, asserting, as I did, that I, Gordon, had, in the course of things, from the perspective of the aged, determined, germane to the question of what’s the world for me, or, say, set forth the proposition it’s a woman, the woman, our women of the species.
They will, they can, play ball with you.
It’s as basic and fundamental as that.
Your woman of the species will play ball with you.
And has!
They have!
With solely three—go ahead and count them if you wish—with a total of not one woman more than solely a mere three—I said count them, ness paw?—exceptions.
Yet you are not going to catch me sitting here setting forth statements left and right appertaining to, or anent (hah!), the tits and ass aspect of my declaring what I stood there declaring to this irretrievably best ex-friend of mine, Jims by name.
James.
Don’t kid yourself. As far as him, I cut that cocksucker right out of my life—my life, my life!
Right the fuck out of it.
Jims—James, if we must—he’s long gone in my personal traffic with mankind, in proof of which statement, or in support of it, I, Gordon, couldn’t even sit here anymore and tell you what the fellow’s last name is, or was. No, no, no, no, no, no, no—my best friend, all my best friends, if you will permit the generalization, they’re W-O-M-E-N.
Well, I’ve grown up.
I, Gordon, have come to behold the fact that commerce with people is either contactual or crap. Well, fact for me, for Gordon. I am not sitting here saying fact as a, you know, as a universal, or, let us say, as a ubiquitous, nor as a universalized, proposition. Just wait. Wait till you get old. Unless it’s until—“until”—you become, or turn, old. Which fact of life—life, life!—puts me in the position, or, say, positions me, to speak with an affection—nay, passion, a passion—for a quality of candor unheard-of in the annals of your everyday youth, or youngster, or youthling.
It’s either contact or it’s shit.
And, excuse me, but what I, Gordon, have just given myself permission to enter onto the record is nothing compared with the uncouthness I might, at bottom (au plafond), have recorded for history if I felt myself entirely free to speak my mind to the full extent of its contents, unless it’s, you’ll further excuse me, content.
Contactual, my friend, or may I, at this stage, say friends—this is the word at its most plafond.
With, let us not forget, the three exceptions, I, Gordon, have been sitting here keeping my powder dry whilst waiting for me to tell you.
To tell you of.
Fine, fine, a penny, a dime—okay, it’s not that the man (who? I ask you, whom?) did not have a contingency of a point. Yet let us not get ourselves, at this stage of the game, sidetracked, or, more vivaciously stated, shouldered, or hustled, off the track.
Lest it be “off-the-track.”
Our business, at least in this given realm, or domain, is them.
Or, more properly, they.
Namely, the three (keep counting, thank you—for I refuse—refuse!—to be intimidated) exceptions.
I, Gordon (Gordon!) refuse to.
Each—each of the (how many?) three (from my perspective and, I dare to say, yet time, of course, will tell, yours) a fucking top-of-the-line mystification!
Honest.
Honestly.
Yes, yes, it’s crazy, I know—but if you will extend to me the courtesy of listening to me (hearkening, or harkening) for all of two minutes more, you’ll probably catch on to an aspect, or to a fact at least, of what I, Gordon (Gordon!), am sitting here straining to get at.
Or, to put yet an even finer point on it, out.
So all right, then—we come to the three “experiential” exceptions—the three of them taken not necessarily in the order (sequence) of their occurrence.
Unless it’s its.
Very well, then—number one (#1) is the woman who (whom?) for as long as I, Gordon, have dwelt in this neighborhood I have seen coming at me always behatted with this pretty immense “hat body” in what I assume to be the fabric (textile) of felt.
You do know what I mean—an unformed, more or less, “hat” that’s yet to be delineated into a shaped, or designed, manifestation in, or of, headwear.
Forget the color.
I, Gordon, could not for the life—life, life!—of me give you to know what hue—for I, Gordon, when she is coming at me, when I notice that it is she who is coming at me, am far too attentive to other features of the occasion than to, say, for instance, hue.
It’s big.
Its brim, which is the essence—the essence—of floppy, of the absence of sizing in the millinerial sense of the word—is so sizable as to hide (conceal, or keep unrevealed) the details of her face (countenance), save to give me to say that this latter runs anywhere from expressionless to dour. No, skip it—let’s settle instead for somewhere in the range (range?) of expressionless to indifferentless. To say “dour” is to say rather more than this person would—or will—at her least, at her least vivacious—impart.
Anyway, she’s always—or, rather to say, when I spot her coming at me, she is always walking (on the sidewalk, I needn’t, I expect, indicate) northward.
I, therefore, am going southward, ness paw?
Fast.
Man oh man, the lady, invariably, moves (walks) fast.
Never without her carrying something in her, or with her, left hand.
Say a shopping bag, say a portfolio-type thing, say a thing with content, unless it’s “contents.”
Lickety-split, okay?
So that’s it.
For years and years.
Proportions reflective of my own and, further, always the “hat,” forever the inchoate hat, night or day, or night and day, never not at top speed—and (here’s the thing) never once—not once!—acknowledging, by the merest, by the fleetingest, by the ephemeralest sign, me, my presence, I.
I, Gordon (Gordon!), you understand.
So there—that’s one.
Two is terrible. Two is, to my mind (my mind, my mind!), indescribably horrible. Yet, I, Gordon, will seek to, you know, to assemble, as it were, a description apt enough to convey the horribleness of it—to wit, having come from visiting with one of my daughters and having noted (seen, observed) how filthy dirty her kitchen telephone was, I, promptly, on my return to my place (here, where I sit now, or am now sitting) take stock of my (own) kitchen phone (or telephone), and having (dismayingly, distressingly) found it not scrupulously (totally) the object of impeccability I had conceived of its being whilst getting a shocked, a disgusted, look at my daughter’s (yuh, yu, yumach, ooomach!) kitchen phone, I went, straightaway, in pursuit of a new one of the kind and—agreed, agreed, this is not readily reported and is taking me more time to do so than is (agreed yet again, agreed) salutary or salubrious insofar as the business of “story-telling” goes (nay, favorable, say I said)—whilst on the way there to the phone store, hastening onward on my way to the phone sto
re in pursuit of a replacement, I see coming at me a woman, a lady, a femininity of the species, walking, making her way, in a style that suggested, if not suggests, or is or was suggestive of her having been seized with an unwellness of a certain exorbitant kind.
Or out-of-the-ordinary degree.
She’s, the lady is, wobbling—sort of.
Staggering?
Very well, then—is staggering, is looking (to me, to Gordon!) sick, sickened, at the point of (all right, then!) collapse.
Plus which she’s (here we go) really pretty terrifically odd-looking.
Her face.
Very, very nicely turned-out, garbed, dressed—her costume (in keeping, I am certain I have said, made clear, given indication of) with the character of the neighborhood, of the district, then, of the precinct, of the what-have-you.
I mean to say the lady was positively a lady of parts.
Albeit (albeit?), face-wise, hideous.
Deformed—congenitally, I would, without expert background in genetics and so forth, essay to say. But just the face, mind you, or so far as I can see—wearing, as to her person, a yellowy summery seersucker suit—unquestionably on the point of swerving, teetering, veering (captured by, caught up in, a calamity of virage) off-course—her eyes in contact, let’s say, pleadingly—nay, near-hysterically—with mine.
But oh so very succinctly.
For I am moving, store-ward—at a great clip, and although I am not in the least unaware of the obligation (obligesse) gripping me for one to intervene in some fashion—uh, better to say, offer rescue or the like—my heart (in combat with my “heart”) recoils.
You understand?
She’s, the lady is, so … ugly.
So—fine, fine—yet not that she’s not—visibly, how other than visibly?—on the ghastly, perhaps even the lastly, verge.
Whereas the phone’s up ahead, now no more than a quick half-block ahead—fresh, antiseptic, blemishless.
I will skip the skippable, the interim—getting the telephone, buying the kitchen phone (a wall-phone, as I am certain I must have already, for your personal information, been prompt to state) and reversing my course.
My friend (friends?), would that I had had the good sense to have adopted a different way homeward and, thus, not seen (not, not!) what I “saw” (descried oblique sight of) when, homeward-bound, a half-block back along the path I had come, seeing men and seeing women and seeing children (children!) gathered into a clump of—well, yes, concern—all of them, of it, of this clump of humanity, attention-wise, leaning down into—what, what?
Here we go.
I told you, I told you!—didn’t I tell you?
A bloodiness.
This is the only, I cannot other than this, words, words—what, what?—a glimpse only, no more than a glimpse—as I hurried, almost (I’m embarrassed to admit) sprinting, with my brand-new supernally white kitchen telephone all so happily insulated in its manufacturer’s package (oh so prettily loaded into its appliance-store containage), home again, home again, home again, home. But hurried past not so fast that I did not glimpse blood, glimpse yellow, marveling at the clump of them, people gathered in a clump, people ingathered—solicitously, solicitously!—in the practice humane at the curb.
So that’s two.
Three?
The third?
That’s my dead wife Barbara.
Barbs, I called her, Barbs.
Me (I’ll be brief about it) she called Gore, facing my face heedlessly, beseechingly, as she made her striding way to an early—not to mention, belated—grave.
So to hell with the Jims and their so-forths!
Nay, to hell with men—with how about very mankind?
Stinking perfidious shits!
HIS SON, FALLING
OKAY, LET’S GET right to it before this old machine LF MINE ===gives right out in the middle of the best part OF THUS THUGG ui WANT TI TEKLL PEOPLE, because the machine, this one’s got ONE IF THE HIUNGES ln it busted and they’re all telling me, by way of them warningm me to learn to use the new machine they went and got ne before this old one goes all dead okn me like evertytgubg dies, which I don’t have to tell you Im pldnty used to working with uit back thee wutg all thr stories =======sat here abd wrote fir yiu in uit with the best of intenbtioins in iut and that just when U get ti the crux of ther thhiubng and its all just gkoing ti lay litself ciwn on its deathhbed a bd like everyttghubg ekse has, just gie ti shuit on yoiu. So Okay, thre kids and te grandskidsm they alk got together and got up the greebacjs abd got mr a new inem but IU ca n;t ty=opre rjght with thus old ine niw, my eyesw my arthritis and my i mpogiencde … shuttinbg kwn on ne itm is the got damn thubg, Yes, I am an old god and it’s juzt luik they say how you can’t tea ch one new tricks but I dkn’t give squat abiuyt thenm is all I juyst wabtit tell yiu this thuinbg whuchg haoppened years back and theeres been ni reilutiuon if it yet a nd it concerns me and my son Lardner jjust that I caan/t. So let’s hurry, Here’s the set up, I’ve got thi s son (Lardner, didn’t I tell yiou?) who used ti come over ti see ne at the old hoyse now and then abd so okay,l ardner he cimes and tere were are sitting at the tabvle and smoking and drinking cubingockkfee abd I get to zoft o carcg sight of my biy abd see ther kid, who;s turbugn gkind if gree it lokks like and thrbn all pastylooking and white and even yeklkow even and so IU says to him, Lardner, you feekiunbg sick oir anytbjunbg like that abs he ups and snfd he sas ti me, nope, pops, Im just that I had thussi ne cazy tomatoc toast out there frmh the hughway vendor on the eway ivere toi yiu and naybe geah, he;s feelkunbg a trCE DIZZY ABD ALL BUTM WIT WORRYM, but HE’S OKAY, but I can see he;s bo okay I ever seen anbdn AND so JUS LEFT HIM SUT A UN UTRE, A ND CAN SEE, WHoA Nellie, BIY, THIS KID IF NUNBE HE’S SICK, YIY JKNIW,M BUT WWE JUSGT GO ON SiPPING SNF PUFFING AND GTHENBM SURE AS HEKLKM IUT;S PLAIN HE,S HONE WHITE AS A GHOST, ALL RIGHTM AND i SAYS TI HIMN, lARDNER, TME YIU TOOKM YIURTRSEKF TI THR SKINK IR THE TO THR TOILET OR SOMETHUNBG, AND HE SHYA SSURRM SUREM AND JUST MAKES IT TI THR Sin K whuch ius rught near by ub thge kitchen and WE BHE SADRS TI SI D LIKE NBE/S JULOCHCKING A ND i GETS NSEKF UO BEHUNBD HINM FIR NE TKO E THEE ABD SEADY HIM BUTM, SHUTM HE STARTS TO SA GIN BACK AND u CAB SEEM HEKKFUREM UNB ATE BEXRF SECIBD HE;S GIUNBG TI GI AKK THE WAY ABD SI HE DIESM SO HE DoIES, AND i DON’T KNW SHOYKD i SABD THEE ABD TRY TI CTAHGC HIN AND GOI FA,KLING IN MGT OLD BRIKE ASS QWUTG HIM KIR ,EAL KFF TKITESJDKE KIUT KIFTBE WAYH ABDS WHAT ui CDECIDXE TI DI i DECIE IN TBESECINDS k;VS GIT JUN REAL ,KIFE BUT UN FALING LIFE IT’S LIKE HIMFAK=== R GIE-ARN TO USE THE Egey KIYRS FIR NE TIK NAKE UO MNG MIBD ABD WEKLL, YOU CAZN SEE THUS OKD NACHIUBNE WOIB;T TAKE IT NI NIRE,M SI THAT’S JUT, NI WAY IF NE TEKKLUNG YIY WGAT i DUD, KIT/S IED-UO ON YOIYU AND THE \ALL MJJUSGT BHJSTIRY NKOW JUST THE WAHii AZM ASND TBHUDS MACHUNBE JS A DTBE[-BKIWYKH/’RE GKJ G TI RE IIZEE UO ON YOY ABD SIMNEOBDY EBDS UO BUSTED IR BEAT SI BAD HE;S VGIT TI KEEO TI HIS BED FIR THE FREST of his natural life IF UT ON OIYUT IR WAIT ON THE SITUATUINB TIO TEKK YIOY BIW TI DO, MNEANM YIOYU KNIW/BECSUAE YIY BETTER HAD BECAUZSE YIUR TIMNRE’S COMUNG to yiy wuith loike yiur kid anx TIOM, ME IR HIM IR THE NACHUBE KEEOIUNG THE WHIOLE FCKJEDJ UO DEALK TI ITESKF.WBE IUBG TOO FAST ABD CRAZY ABD MB T A,LL SGAFTS lw Im ok zn czn alk but Lafdcy can’t thoi he’s nit dead byt just parakyzed akk ti shut lkuike a dead mkid =and uts sad cause wboo knkows coukld I have caught hin a d git sqasbed nhysekf sk tbee ;s dad abd biuyt dead abd nit just boy but ZZi didnbn’t and he fekll bad wbeb he cfekk back abd was akk snasned tk sbjut abd yiu jbiw wghat? Kit;s fuckuing sa us whgatm ut;s just fycing sad/G. Here;s yiur overiiod, the end]]].
AFTERWORD
OH NO YOU don’t, just hold your horses, sweetness, because, no, N-O, you’re definitely not getting rid of me as readily as that, because oh no no, don’t you worry, there’s plenty which has been going on here which hasn’t even come close yet to covering the ground between us, because I, Gordon, have been sitting here anticipating you and your every thought, so don’t you think that for one minute I have not been anticipating you and your every thought, so don’t you worry, prec
ious, I, Gordon, am all too cruelly aware of what’s what as far as your head goes, sitting here, as an author, paying nought but total attention to you via my personal one-of-a-kind method, so yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I, Gordon, know the score as far as you, I, Gordon, am one hundred and fifty percent in-the-know as far as what’s what as regards the “thoughts” you have been thinking to yourself because you are one hundred and fifty percent lacking in the guts to say them to me to my face because what you don’t know is Gordon (Gordon!), armed, is the fellow not only nutso but also, you know, armed again, strapped, packing heat, so, you know, so let’s, as the man’s confidant, his sole, you know, one true reader, if you will, play it cool and not go ahead and make any type of tzimis—or, rather, rather, cogitate out loud, or risk funding the least sign of disagreeableness or, worse, controvertability—nay, fuck the controvertible, I’m talking about bearing toward me any negative mental material as far as me, but, friend, precious friend, let me take steps to remind you, darling, there is no protection, okay, because Gordon heard, because Gordon got it, because Gordon, by dint of his unusual method, has been able to divine the drift of what’s happening mentally with you in advance of its occurrence in you, which is a power I, qua author, possess, that’s right, not only informing me of your mentality but making me privy to it (unless it’s “privvy” etc.), do you hear, so do you hear, because I, Gordon, did hear, do hear, because I, Gordon, have been missing not one jot of what’s what as far as you, which means every nasty thought, which means every vicious—nay, malicious—every multilateral meditational ipsit that’s been occupying—nay, even pre-self-occupying the shmush of your brain-thing—oh yes, indeedy, oh yes, right from the start I, Gordon, have been sitting here listening to you and weighing the value of—nay, the weight of—of every single solitary, for want of a better word, “word,” believe me, I have been sitting here taking your measure every instant, so, yes, yes, enough said, but so just don’t you dare to sit there and flatter yourself you’re any more of a closed book to me than I am a closed book to you, so am I making myself utterly pellucid to you or not, so are you willing to grant me the fact that there’s been anywhere along the way any deficit in the degree of pellucidity which I have been prepared to sit here and proffer to you in an acceptable exchange of a certain reciprocity from you on your part, which is because I am committed, which is because I am, at bottom, as stated, a committed person, so fair enough or fair enough, which, I promise you, you don’t have to go look it up on any shelf or at any venue, because the answer is is, is, ceaselessly—nay, incessantly—me paying, my paying my undivided attention to you as would God Himself by reason of an un-to-be-disclosed method of mine, not to mention, not to gild the lily (lilly?), by the force of a force-majeure style of a unique, shall we say, methodology devised virtually exclusively by and for an array of the investigative myself, yes, yes, sat here and with all of my heart, with the assistance, dare I say it, of my very sensitive yet alert kishkelehs, of my, of Gordon’s, very, dare I say it again, peculiarly refined kishkes sitting in fucking situ, to be sure, yet what is my remuneration in return but malice, malice, malice, not to mention maliciousness, as if butter would not melt in your mouth, oh yes, oh yes, as if butter itself would turn gelid there laden with hellishness on your vicious tongue, all unperturbed by the perfervid breath of your incalculable store of unjustifiable vileness, of spite, of, if you will, ill fucking will, whereas I, Gordon, the Creator of this, whereas I, Gordon, the Chap-in-Charge-of-This, have had to sit here and study patience and curry the ongoing obligation (nay, the imperative, the imperative!) to keep my thoughts to myself and wait you the fuck out until this ideal (propitious) moment, you hear me, do you hear, for me to say to you, as in yon heart seeking yon heart, as in this citizen approaching that citizen, do be nice, do, just for once in your life, do the, you know, do the nice thing and start acting, if you will, as if—nay, like, like—you are a self-actuated human being who is harboring in his (or her) heart of hearts, excuse me, nothing but niceness, not one smidgen of anything but of a totally unvarnished personality of niceness, or for the thesaurus’ sake, call it, take into account that the time for the conducting an act of unimpeachable generosity to a co-mortal has come, of your even—even!—of your even of your exhibiting a tittle of human decency, and notice, is Gordon (I) not couching his speech in language understandable to all—speaking intelligibly, intelligibly!—because listen, listen to me, I personally have had it rough, I, Gordon, have been going through some “heavy weather,” that’s right, that’s right, heavy, okay, which few co-mortals of mine—which fucking goddamn few of them!—have themselves had to “weather” anywhere near the lousy luck which I, Gordon, have had to myself “weather,” yet, unimaginably, albeit not at all improbably, have I, Gordon, not succeeded in maintaining (exterior-wise) an even keel with you, except, yes, except when all is said and done, when the kine of the manse are discovered and thence stewarded homeward and thusly restored at last to their place in society, who has exacted (read this as extracted) the profit, if there is to be had any, from these terrible exertions—you, to wit, or me, you know, I, Gordon?—so long as, of course, it goes without saying, so long as the question is examined, is made open to unexcelled examination, by all parties concerned with this matter on a pars pro toto basis—that’s right, that’s right!—from all angles, all, it is I, addressing you as benefactor, and you harkening, it is hoped, as appreciative (what else but?) beneficiary, importuning you for, please, nonetheless, for your forgiveness, please, for, you know, for your repeatedly making every allowance for me, for, please, granting me, in my role as macher, as shtarker, as personage responsible, one who has set his cap for the course of accomplishing no more, nor less, than the enlightening of you, qua reader, than the elevating of you—nay, than the educating or even the edifying of who (of whom?) other than but of you? God as my judge, God as my witness, I’ve tried, I have tried, have even striven, have gone and knocked myself out as regards the mission of improving you qua yourself, and, if High Heaven wishes it to be so, also the members of your family into the bargain, or, as is of this scription the standard as usage, your family members. So thanks. In a word, you bet—thanks. From me (from Gordon) to you, whoever (to whomever?) you might happen to be at this juncture in your life’s “journey,” I, Gordon, say thank you to you. Let us, at the least, be friends—however distant we may be in terms of wealth, of position, of intellectual concepts, plus with respect to any spite of national origin. Frankly, I believe it to be entirely in order that we take this opportunity to, figuratively, you do realize, pat ourselves on the back (unless it’s supposed to be plural). We are, after all, however in communion, however merged, however suspended, one with the other, in a state of mutuality, in a condition of twain. This—this!—has been, let’s face it and not shy away from it for one single solitary scintilla of an instant, that it’s been a fucking quest, am I right? Let it mean, then—for I, Gordon, expressing myself strictly as myself, have, from the very outset, intended for this to mean, and to achieve a plane of hyper-superlativeness, as both my mother and father, as they, or as them, if you will, would have, for their child, I, Gordon, so very sincerely wanted to come about for him (me). No matter how baseless and unreconstitutive, we would do well for us to condense our far-flung phraseology to the word that best conveys (compresses), and which, naturally, is intended to be extended to your “family members,” the achieved sense of theoretical relief from our most excruciating of excruciations—i.e., please.
