by Lucy Ives
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You think I think you’re going to change my life, but I don’t and you’re not.”
“You’re young, Lizzie-Liz.”
“Right, I’m like seven years younger than you, which is basically five. And pretty soon this won’t be illegal, but who’s counting.”
Loudermilk doesn’t say anything.
Lizzie puts her hands on Loudermilk’s chest. “Loudermilk,” she says, “get up.”
Loudermilk is staring at Lizzie but doesn’t move.
Lizzie makes a fist and pounds on Loudermilk’s chest. “Loudermilk!” she hollers, “I want you up on your feet right now!”
Loudermilk is motionless, staring, a human stick.
“Loudermilk! Loudermilk! Loudermilk!” Lizzie is yelling, “Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up right now, piece of shit! Get up off my lawn! Get up! Get up on your own two feet!” Lizzie slaps Loudermilk in the face. “I hate you! Why won’t you ever do anything?!” Lizzie is crying. Lizzie gets tears on Loudermilk. Lizzie is sobbing, she bends over Loudermilk, she puts her arms around Loudermilk’s head, puts her face on his wet face. “Loudermilk, oh my Loudermilk,” she whispers, “leave me alone.”
Epilogue
Sat, 1 May 2004 23:10:02
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: The Jerkshop
What up H-Bag,
bet you’re thinking I’m pretty slick. I’m writing you from me, as me. Or you as me and me as me and therefore it’s me. Pretty genius, if I do say so myself. the perfect closed system!
Anyways, if you didn’t have a massive coronary you realized by now I skipped town and you’re sitting around pondering me ending my semester a little early. But what you _need_ to know is I got an incredible offer, Harrison me boy, and there’s no place for me but the BIG apple. I feel like I couldn’t even have planned this, like how amazing things worked out but, hey, when you’ve got extreme talent haha ;)
Apologies for the silence. I want you to know that getting an agent has been good but maybe somehow subconsciously I did plan it all? I can’t wait for you to see teh novel when it comes out. Don’t worry broham: I totally changed your name ;) ;) :))
We both got ours!
I’m attaching a scan for you, because your becoming a genuine Seminars person and you need 2 know what’s . This is a just little something something, the secret to the special sause. You being you *might* have missed it. Enjoy your times, man. Get that degree! Hey workshop worked for me so who knows what it would do for you.
Here’s to hoping some day our paths do cross but not too soon.
Your sincerely,
LOUDERMILK
Metadata: 1 file attached, originovdapussy.pdf
The Origin of the World
By Clare Elwil
“You’re telling me I have to choose?” the writing teacher wants to know.
They are in his office and the student has placed a sheet of paper on his desk.
“It’s—it’s,” the student stammers, becoming paler and more shapeless. “I’m just not”—she pauses—“sure.” She touches her prim eyewear.
The writing teacher knows that all personality is, at the end of the day, a performance. The student is waiting. The writing teacher examines the page she has placed before him. On the page are three paragraphs he has not yet read with any sort of concentration. After he has selected one of them, the student has told him, she will know how to begin her story.
The student is saying very respectfully, very softly and crisply, that she needs his help. She needs his help because she does not understand beginnings. She says that she understands everything else, it’s just where things begin that trips her up. This is her expression, “trips [her] up.”
The writing teacher is not sure if he’s heard of this sort of problem before. If a piece of writing does not begin, then does it even exist—or, for that matter, matter? It annoys him because this isn’t a problem pertaining to writing; this is a problem pertaining to a particular kind of person and he’s sick of these kinds of problems as well as these people, not least of all because he’d like to leave his wife.
But the student is not leaving, and her proffered writing is also still here.
The writing teacher scoots the paper closer to his side of the desk.
He reads:
A.While I was still in Paris, I dreamed about my father for the first time in years. And then, through the eeriest of coincidences, I actually saw him, though at no point had I sought him out. It was in the Musée d’Orsay. It was my last day in town. I was standing in Room 20, on the rez-de-chaussée, staring, as my repulsively ill luck would have it, into the pinkish cleft of L’Origine du monde, Courbet’s idealized depiction of a female crotch. Then, as my eyes moved across the surface of the painting to the frame, and as I took a step back, I turned to see, exiting the room, a man I hadn’t noticed previously. It was him, unmistakably him, though we hadn’t spoken in years. He passed through the doorway in a white scarf.
B.While I was still in Paris, I dreamed about my father for the first time in years. And then, through the eeriest of coincidences, I actually saw him, though at no point had I sought him out. It was in the Musée d’Orsay. It was my last day in town. I was standing in Room 20, on the rez-de-chaussée, staring, as my repulsively ill luck would have it, into the pinkish cleft of L’Origine du monde, Courbet’s idealized depiction of a female crotch. Then, as my eyes moved across the surface of the painting to the frame, and as I took a step back, I turned to see, exiting the room, a man I hadn’t noticed previously. It was him, unmistakably him, though we hadn’t spoken in years. He passed through the doorway in a black scarf.
C.While I was still in Paris, I dreamed about my father for the first time in years. And then, through the eeriest of coincidences, I actually saw him, though at no point had I sought him out. It was in the Musée d’Orsay. It was my last day in town. I was standing in Room 20, on the rez-de-chaussée, staring, as my repulsively ill luck would have it, into the pinkish cleft of L’Origine du monde, Courbet’s idealized depiction of a female crotch. Then, as my eyes moved across the surface of the painting to the frame, and as I took a step back, I turned to see, exiting the room, a man I hadn’t noticed previously. It was him, unmistakably him, though we hadn’t spoken in years. He passed through the doorway in a red scarf.
The writing teacher looks up. “Are these different?” he wants to know.
The student’s demeanor hasn’t changed. Maybe she looks surprised, but mostly she looks exactly the same as she looked before.
“What exactly are you trying to get me to tell you?” the writing teacher demands, more frankly than he means to. He’s spoken without much foresight or control.
“I need help. Like I said. I don’t know how the story is supposed to begin.”
“I’m supposed to choose”—he pauses—“on your behalf?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Then I choose red, the last one. How’s that?” The writing teacher realizes he is trembling.
“Oh.”
“Oh?” he parrots.
“No, no,” she reassures him. “I think it’s a great choice! I always think it’s best to choose what you really want.” And here she adds, “Consequences be damned.”
The student reaches across the desk and, producing a pen the writing teacher has not seen before, circles the passage he has chosen. The pen makes a squeaking sound.
Then the student rises from her chair. Taking the paper with her, she exits the writing teacher’s office.
That night, in his large and comfortable bed, the writing teacher dreams a dream. In the dream, the writing teacher is in a bare room, watching as a strange game unfolds. The game is played using round black and white tokens. These tokens—large cardboard dots—are affixed to the backs of three faceless prisoners. A prison warden (also faceless) has been tasked with freeing a single prisoner and, for reasons not elabor
ated in the dream, wishes to employ a rational system to make his selection. In the game there are a total of five cardboard dots, two black and three white. The prisoners are aware of the number of dots and their respective colors. Each prisoner is to have a single dot taped to his back. The first prisoner to identify the color of his dot for logical reasons, without recourse to his reflection or direct communication with the other two prisoners, will be freed. And presumably go on to lead a full and liberated life.
In the dream game, the faceless warden decides to affix white dots to all three of the prisoners’ backs. This removes the scenario, the dreaming writing teacher observes, in which one prisoner sees two black dots (he will immediately conclude that his dot is white) and introduces uncertainty. Each of the prisoners sees two white dots. Therefore, they must conclude that the warden has either assigned three white dots—which is the case—or that the warden has assigned two white dots and one black dot. It is, at first glance, equally unclear to each of the prisoners whether they have been assigned a white or a black dot.
This first glance is a moment in which nothing regarding the dream game has so far been resolved, except that the distribution of dots is not immediately knowable.
Each of the prisoners recognizes that the other two prisoners, like him, hesitate to act. They also recognize the meaning of this hesitation. They slowly come to understand that the hesitation means that everyone is seeing the same thing. Each of the three prisoners sees two white dots, and no one sees either: A. two black dots, or B. a white dot and a black dot. The prisoner seeing scenario A would immediately come to a conclusion about the color of his dot (= white) and rush off. Prisoners seeing scenario B would immediately recognize that they are not black dots because the prisoner they see wearing a white dot continues to hesitate, rather than rushing off to share his conclusion, and those seeing scenario B would in turn rush off, having used induction to conclude. Everyone is hesitating. This inertia is meaningful. Since it is a kind of inertia that is recognizable, the writing teacher thinks, it is useful.
The prisoners each reach a conclusion, or so it seems to the writing teacher in his dream, by interpreting the inertia they have perceived. They successfully rule out both scenario A and scenario B. Each jogs joyfully forward to attempt to be the first to tell the warden the tale of how they came to their shared conclusion. As only one prisoner can be released, each must hope to be the sole individual to benefit from this collaboratively established realization. They are all running now . . .
The writing teacher wakes up the next day puzzled by what he has seen. How can anyone win if all three of the prisoners share the same conclusion? Yet, all the same, he feels pretty good.
He stares at his wife, who is already on her feet and moving around their room.
Five days pass. Then another day. Maybe a week flows by. During this time, the writing teacher does not see the student who did not know how to begin her story. Then it is time for class again. The class meets and the student is there. They are going to discuss a story written by a different student, a fact that brings the writing teacher a modicum of relief, a certain sense of safety. They discuss this new story, which is a well-crafted tale about disappointment in college. The writing teacher is pleased.
Forgetting his recent history with the student who did not know how to begin her story, the writing teacher throws caution to the wind and recounts his recent interesting dream regarding the black-and-white-circle game played among prisoners. He describes the dream, just as it occurred to him.
The students listen. The writing teacher has the distinct impression that they find him to be a gifted raconteur. It’s a fairly cerebral set of events all in all, and yet they do not look bored.
“I woke up,” the writing teacher concludes, “feeling mystified. It’s amazing the little things the unconscious brain can produce!”
The students are nodding. This is to say, the students are all nodding except for the student who did not know how to begin her story. There she is in a striped sweater.
The student who did not know how to begin her story raises her hand.
“Yes?” says the writing teacher.
“I have a question,” the student says. “Maybe it’s an observation, I’m not sure.”
“Shoot!” says the writing teacher, with what he hopes will pass for breezy enthusiasm.
“So, I’m thinking about your dream. Though distributed across this weird imaginary time, it’s not really a story. It sounds deceptively like a story, but it’s not actually a dynamic arrangement of events. Rather, it’s a discrete series of what I’d call entailments? It’s like an elaborate, folding scaffold.”
“Hmm,” says the writing teacher.
The student’s eyes narrow but she continues. “When expanded and considered at length, it will point to a specific kind of datum related to human social experience. I would call this scaffold a ‘sophism,’ which is to say, a deliberately erroneous argument. This scaffold consists of events of looking and thinking and, eventually, walking. It is produced via the medium of a room. It is also produced through the medium of others. The scaffold, once unfolded, is a piece of persuasion. It suggests that information in human social life is mostly generated not through deception or confession but rather (and ironically) through the act of recognizing that other people do not know what you also do not know.”
Now everyone in the room is staring at the student. The writing teacher realizes that it is possible that she has never spoken in class before.
“But I can poke holes in this sophism. It’s not very hard to do. Most fucked-up and ersatz of all is the warden, who is in fact unable to assign any combination of dots other than the three white dots, if he values the notion of a fair game. In distributing three dots of the same color, the warden renders the puzzle equally challenging, which is to say, equally time consuming but artificially so, for all three contestants. Had he distributed the dots differently, for example at random handing out two black dots and one white dot, the wearer of the white dot would have been the instant winner. This is similarly true for a situation in which one black dot is present, for its wearer would be at an immediate temporal disadvantage in the reasoning process. Any scenario the three wearers of dots could contemplate other than the one that they in fact encounter is an impossibility, given the need for a game. This has nothing to do with real life. Simply put, a warden who behaves differently cannot exist within the game. Therefore, there was also, ironically, never a game, never a contest here, and never a warden with the will to choose. I knew the solution even before the dots were distributed, which is, by the way, the real test of logic.”
No one says anything.
The writing teacher looks down at his watch. He looks up again and lets everyone know that the class has ended.
All semester long the writing teacher waits to see the story to which he has, or so he believes, supplied the beginning. He reads other stories, but the student who said she did not know how to begin her story never hands anything in.
The semester ends.
The day before winter break, the writing teacher sees the student in the hallway of the building in which his class is held and decides that he will approach her.
“You really know how to make a guy wait,” he jovially informs her. It seems like a good way to break the ice, and the double entendre nicely masks any actual eagerness on his part to read her work, he thinks. She’ll have to puzzle through what it seems like he really means before she can get to the fact that he’s just asking her to hand in some work. There’s no way she can know that he only considers her another writer—and a worthy competitor, at that. She’ll never know that he’s completely uninterested in her physically.
The student stares at him. “Oh, I already stopped writing! Isn’t that what you wanted?”
It’s very strange, because it seems so matter-of-fact. The writing teacher wonders for a moment if he is still dreaming.
“You stopped writing?” he repeats
.
“Yes. Yes, I did.” The student smiles. She turns back to her acquaintances.
The writing teacher walks slowly back to his office. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t totally elated by this turn of events. He hears laughter in the hallway behind him and stops for a moment to listen. He can’t hear what they are saying, but he reflects that it must be nice to still be so young.
Afterword
The Libertine
The state of society and the Constitution in America are democratic, but there has been no democratic revolution. They were pretty well as they are now when they first arrived in the land. That is a very important point.
—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE,
Democracy in America
When I began writing this novel, I was, mostly without knowing it, reproducing a trope from the libertine canon. I was rehearsing an archaic situation-comedy format I had first learned about by watching the 1987 film Roxanne, in which Steve Martin attempts to seduce Daryl Hannah, the titular Roxanne, by way of a hunky proxy played by Rick Rossovich, an actor I don’t think I saw anywhere else ever again but who apparently had an important role in Top Gun. Martin’s character, C. D. Bales, is a philosophically inclined fireman with a very (unbelievably) large nose. I don’t need to explain why this proboscis presents a problem in mid-1980s America, though of course today we’d probably just think of it as an additional genital. Through a series of mishaps and happy coincidences, Martin/Bales woos Hannah/Roxanne, and true love conquers all, forestalling forever the false promise of a nose job looming, in true eighties-fantasy fashion, on an earlier horizon.
