Blood and Guts in High School

by Kathy Acker

  I have to decide what the world is from my own loneliness.

  Scene 2

  Janey’s lying in the dirt outside Genet’s ritzy hotel and dreaming of fucking rock-n-roll stars. First she and James Frogface, whom she met while she was living on the streets of New York City, are standing, holding hands, in a large room. Or they’re in a black rock-n-roll club (CBGB’s). They walk down the block together, two blocks, to his place. She’s surprised she’s going home with James because she hadn’t thought she was hot for him and also thought he was too young for her taste. Surprisingly now she’s kissing James her hands are running up and down his back she’s turned on hot shivery steaming WOW! Her legs spread open as she sinks on to the bed woom her arms close around those thin shoulders. It feels wonderful. Not weird or sort-of-good or not-really-all-there. Just straight wonderful. He fucks hard. He likes to fuck. No need thought fucks everything up. Good. Good. When she meets him at CBGB’s at night, her hand strokes his thigh through his thin black sharkskin pants, she realizes she knew it was OK to touch him.

  She dreams she’s fucking someone more famous than Frogface. More shivers run through her nerves: loss of thought, trust. Trust is loss of thought. Janey and the blond rock-n-roller are madly in love. When she wakes she can’t remember who he was and what the sex was like. She doesn’t know what to do with herself.

  Genet enters and tells Janey she’s totally ugly. Because she’s so loud no one wants to talk to her. She’s the worst kind of Jewish mama pig. She’s vulgar and unrestrained and that is what Europeans especially Frenchmen hate most about Americans. The hierarchy is (Genet has to explain the nature of the social world to her because she’s American):

  Rich men

  Poor men

  Mothers

  Beautiful women

  Whores

  Poor female and neo-female slut-scum

  Janey.

  Then he kicks Janey around and tells her to be worse than she is, to get down, there, down in the shit, to learn. Go to the extreme. To make the decision. Janey girl still has pretensions. She has to be drained of everything. She has to be disembowelled.

  At this moment Genet’s secretary runs over to him and helps him off with his coat.

  ‘Thank you, M’Namah,’ Genet says politely. ‘Reporters have been running after me all day. I shook hands with all of them and smiled a lot. I’m very tired.’

  Little by little Janey begins to understand how beautiful Genet is. She’s so enamoured with him she’s creating him. Truth and falsehood, memory, perception, and fantasy: all are toys in this swirling that is him-her. She’s predicting her future.

  Her future: Genet spits on her and kicks her. The more she tries to be whatever he wants, the more he despises her. Finally she decides her black wool hood and dress aren’t enough. If Genet thinks she’s shit, she should be invisible. When she follows him around, she hides in the walls like a shadow. She secretly washes his dirty underpants. She takes on his moodiness and his hating.

  ‘We have to keep you a great writer,’ M’Namah says to Genet inside the hotel room.

  ‘Yes. The most important thing is that I be the best possible writer. Writing is the great thing, the great teacher.’

  ‘Don’t worry about anything else. I and the crab girl who crawls in those dirty …’

  ‘Janey …’

  ‘… will take care of everything else.’ M’Namah laughs and laughs.

  Scene 3

  The country south of Alexandria is open, dry, and endless. Camel dung and pebbles caught in the sands. Janey is working in a rich man’s fields which border on this sand vastness.

  Boss (the boss is a big man who has gorgeous shoulders, big feet, and talks like a sweet American missionary): Where’s a washcloth? (The Egyptian [slave] workers look dumb.) Goddamn country. Filthy. Filthy. You don’t even have a washcloth. You never take baths, do you?

  Janey: With whom, sir?

  Boss (to Sahih, an Egyptian worker. Sahih is tall, thin, and looks like a voodoo man): Can’t you shut them up? (Sahih is his top slave worker.)

  Sahih: I’m very sorry, Mr Knockwurst. You mustn’t be angry with us. We’re just like children.

  Boss: You’ve had plenty of time to grow up by now. You people are where you are because you take things too easy. You don’t work hard enough.

  Janey (with pride): I’m going to work harder. I’m going to work so hard I’m going to get out of here.

  Boss: Why do you people want to get out of here? Can you think? Can you feel? Tell me, what is life? You eat and you sleep.

  Sahih: I’ll tell you why she acts the way she does. (He pulls a cigarette out of his pants.) Will you allow me to smoke? It’s only when the boss is around, I smoke a cigarette. Otherwise I work all the time. Even though I’m an animal. I’m one of the best workers you have.

  Janey (resolutely): I hate …

  Sahih (breaking in): I didn’t tell you you could open your mouth.

  Janey: You did. All of you did. You said I’m nothing and …

  Sahih: All she does is weep, Mr Knockwurst. You should get rid of her. We might be animals, but at least we know to keep our feelings locked in us. Women are worse than animals, Mr Knockwurst. They don’t understand what’s happening as we do.

  Janey: For 2,000 years you’ve had the nerve to tell women who we are. We use your words; we eat your food. Every way we get money has to be a crime. We are plagiarists, liars, and criminals.

  Sahih: I know what’s discontenting her, Mr Knockwurst. It’s always the same thing with women. She’s living with that rebellious homosexual and she’s horny.

  Janey: My face makes him sick.

  Sahih: Even though I’m a real man, I know how he feels.

  Janey: I don’t have anywhere to sleep. I have to work as hard as possible so I can get enough fame then money to get away from here so I can become alive.

  Boss: Tell them to shut up. Women are not allowed to talk.

  Sahih (to Janey): You have to understand that you’re stupid. And you’ll never be able to make enough money to get away by working.

  Boss: Unless she spreads her legs.

  Sahih: Even then she’ll have to do specialties.

  Boss: So she’s horny? She wants a lover? She likes our baskets? (Laughing.) She’s a woman. She doesn’t know what it is to be a human. (He walks up to Janey and seizes her thighs. Rips them apart.) Like that. That’s what a human is. (He’s in a bad mood. To Sahih): Get back to work.

  Sahih: Are you leaving us, Mr Knockwurst?

  The thunder is beginning everywhere. Chaos and horribleness is beginning.

  Sahih (to Janey): How are you going to get the money to get out of here?

  Janey: Any way I can.

  Sahih: Things are happening. There’s no reasons or meanings. Things are one way or the other. Which way are you going to choose? There’s no way the poor can get money. (Pause.) What are you going to choose?

  Janey: Everything’s going so fast!

  Scene 4

  Janey’s in goal in Alexandria for stealing two copies of Funeral Rites and hash from Genet. She’s alone in a cell surrounded by bars like a caged animal. Every hour an Egyptian judge who’s dressed like an overdressed English barrister walks by and tells her who she is.

  Judge 1: You’re a woman.

  Judge 2: You whine and snivel. You don’t stand up for yourself. You act like you do totally to please other people. You’re a piece of shit. You’re not real.

  Judge 3: You’re a whore a thief a liar a smelly fish a money dribbler an egotistic snob.

  Judge 4: You have every vice in the world.

  etc.

  Janey (to these gaolers): I hate you.

  President Carter: So what?

  Janey: I have a right to be happy.

  President Carter: You have no rights. The universe is evil. Why do you think anything? You women are always complaining. Why aren’t you like us fascist men: why don’t you learn to shut up, stow away your grievances
, learn the small details and particulars of evil? (Pause.) You’re too lonely. You can’t stand it anymore. Your pain has no relation to anyone else’s pain. So what? Learn the varieties of pain, watch your pain, and grow up.

  You think there is truth. Everything is lies. We don’t need to lie ’cause everything is lies. Learn to be proud of lies and materialism and hidings and discrepancies.

  Janey: Accept! Shit. Go take your shit to the grave. That’s what I say. I’ll tell you something,

  tonight

  when night comes, I’m going to crawl

  into your houses, and in your dreams where you have

  no power, I’ll make you steal and whore. I’ll turn you

  around …

  Gaoler (breaking in): What good does it do? All there is is pain in this hatred. You strut around like a peacock. There’s no pain. All the pain in the world’s in your thoughts.

  Janey: I want you to plunge further into irrevocable grief. I want you to be totally without hope. Just what is. I want you to be evil.

  Gaoler: Those are just words.

  Janey: Keep looking for reality. You’ll drive yourself crazier and crazier until you’ll realize what I’m doing.

  Gaoler: I realize you when I tell you who you are. I realize you by judging you. I love you, Janey, when I beat you up.

  Scene 5

  Janey’s still in gaol. She doesn’t know whether it’s day or night because she can’t see anything. She’s blind.

  She used to fantasize that when she went blind, a wonderful man would come along, take pity on her, and rescue her. Now she knows that nothing like that is going to happen.

  Janey (thinking quietly to herself, not spoken aloud): Everything that is this world stinks. Even if something good would come along now like love, or money which causes love, I would laugh in its face. No I wouldn’t. I just absolutely know right now and for ever love’s not going to come along, so I might as well die. I don’t want to commit suicide anymore, like I used to; I want to go through death. How can I go through death?’:

  (Aloud) Hey, death!

  (Death doesn’t answer.)

  Janey: Goddamn you answer me even if I am a woman!

  Death: What do you want, you lousy brat?

  Janey: I want to know why a man doesn’t love me and why my life’s such a miserable shit-pit and why suffering exists?

  Death: I’m not your gaoler. Only living humans are gaolers.

  Janey: You’re the biggest and best rebel who is. Why don’t you teach me how to rebel better?

  Death: Your pride in yourself as a criminal, whore, and piece of scum is causing your suffering.

  Janey: So what.

  Death: Do you want me to tell you what death’s like?

  Janey: No. When I’m dead, I’ll find out.

  (Death departs.)

  Janey: The night is left. I’m alone. Now the murderers are descending.

  (Sounds of thunder.)

  Scene 6

  As soon as the cops throw Janey into the clinker, Genet starts stealing from the poor and the crippled so he can join Janey in goal. He doesn’t love Janey, but he intuits it’ll be wild to join her.

  For months he publicly rips off everyone. At first the cops stay away from him because of his reputation as a white intellectual. Finally they bust into his room and stick handcuffs around his wrists.

  Being in prison is being in a cunt. Having any sex in the world is having to have sex with capitalism. What can Janey and Genet do?

  Scene 7

  The capitalists get together and discuss the Janey question.

  Mr Knockwurst: The slave Janey stinks. My God. Workers are pigs, women are worse, but she’s something else. I arranged to have her steal from that homosexual she lives with so I could have her locked up for the rest of her life, but now she’s convincing criminals and prostitutes they’re people. If they think they’re people, they’ll revolt against us. What are we going to do about her?

  Mr Fuckface (an intellectual Viennese count): Each time you dare to show one of them attention, even if it’s to imprison him, the thief begins to think he’s someone.

  Mr Knockwurst: Well, what can I do? I can’t kill all my workers. Then I might have to work.

  Mr Blowjob (he owns a large fava bean plantation about ten miles south of Cairo): I always cut out my peasants’ tongues and whatever other extremities they don’t need.

  Mr Knockwurst: As it is my workers are ready to kill themselves.

  Mr Fuckface: What the hell is she? Fourteen years old? What the hell can any of them do? We’re fully armed. We own all the weapons in the world and all the scientists who design the weapons. (Taps his cigar against an ashtray.) The truth is we can let them do what they want as long as we convince them to stay alive.

  (An Egyptian sneaks in and sets fire to a tree.)

  Mr Knockwurst: The terror is upon us.

  Our workers hated us. We denied their expectations. We limited their space and time boundaries so we could get more work out of them. They began to hate everyone. The world. They want to destroy the world. Themselves. They’re about to commit mass suicide. Look at Janey …

  That’s the problem.

  (Another Egyptian sets fire to a tree.)

  Mr Fuckface: Let her kill herself. Let them all kill themselves. We’ll take their babies.

  The capitalists lie down on the ground and make love to each other. That is the only sex we know nowadays.

  Mr Blowjob: Our love is here to stay.

  He and the others in ecstasy take off their false cocks and lipsticks and diamonds and kneecaps and fake fingernails and pacemakers and artificial kidneys and breast sponges and contact lenses and American Express cards and lying voices. Lies lies lies.

  Mr Fuckface: You see, we own the language. Language must be used clearly and precisely to reveal our universe.

  Mr Blowjob: Those rebels are never clear. What they say doesn’t make sense.

  Mr Fuckface: It even goes against all the religions to tamper with the sacred languages.

  Mr Blowjob: Without language the only people the rebels can kill are themselves.

  (Meanwhile, the theatre in which the play is being shown is set on fire.)

  Mr Knockwurst: Every night Sahih tells me my workers play these records of screams and to amuse themselves instead of sleeping they knife each other. Is that what we call language?

  (No answer.)

  Mr Knockwurst: They’re all Janeys. They’re all perverts, transsexuals, criminals, and women. We’ll have to think of a plan to exterminate them and get a new breed of workers.

  (Another part of the stage goes up in flames.)

  Scene 8

  Janey and Genet are locked in neighbouring cages in gaol. Their bodies stink to high hell. They’re whispering to each other.

  Janey: I think a war’s coming.

  Genet: That’s no news. Wars are capitalists’ toys.

  Janey: I’m not talking about a war. Terror is everywhere and it’s increasing.

  Genet: You stink more than this gaol does. You lousy stinking pervert.

  Janey (still whispering): The night is opening up,

           to our thighs,

  like this cunt which I’m holding in my hand

  cuntcuntcuntcunt.

  and we descend,

        like we’re in a tunnel or a

        cave inside the mind,

  night is opening all

  all murderers all you makers of

  violence come out of your holes.

  the final Maker of Violence is my

  thighs, and my bloody fingernails, and

  the teeth inside my cunt.

  Please night take over my mind I don’t like this poetry I can’t stand to live anymore because Genet won’t beat me up anymore.

  (A man who murdered his parents begins to act out the murder for the millionth time. Genet and Janey watch.)

  Genet: Look …

 
Dim light has gathered through a tiny hole high up in the wall. Suddenly it goes black. In this blackness, caused by a power blow-out, the upper-middle class women and the cops smash store windows, beat up bums with chains, and wander about. A young black man sticks his hand under a ten-year-old girl’s tight yellow sweater.

  Janey: Let us pray to madness and suffering and horror.

  Genet: We’re going to die soon. Why don’t you think about freedom instead?

  Janey: The night is opening up,

  like my thighs open up

  when there’s a big fat cock in

  front of me.

  End of abstract haze. Now the specific details can begin in the terrible plagiarism of The Screens. The writing is terrible plagiarism because all culture stinks and there’s no reason to make new culture-stink.

  Scene 9

  All the different people in Alexandria, that city of gold.

  Two-storey pale blue, brown, and pale grey brick and wood houses, side by side, down the streets. Red-brown colour, air and surface, and, above that, gold light, the sun, and above that pale blue. The air is grey and semithick.

  Birds call in the air. They’re being scared by the increasing numbers of sudden loud noises. There are some modern apartments and the beach surrounds everything.

  Artist: I want to write a play that will amaze everyone. We’ll need at least 200,000 dollars to do it right. We’ll have to have an orchestra, at least five to ten actors, an assistant director, a top choreographer, one of the top choreographers in the business, and a proscenium.

  Punk Rocker: I don’t understand what’s happening. This world is doomed. There’s nothing to believe in.

  Rich Do-Nothing: The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The right wing is beginning to show its power in this country. Taxes are abolished and schools are being shut down. Proposition 13 is going to take place all over the country. Everything economic and therefore everything is going to get worse.