Great Expectations

by Kathy Acker

  St. Agnes’ Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was!

  The owl for all his feathers, was a-cold;

  The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,

  And silent was the flock in woolly fold;

  Numb were the beadman’s fingers, while he told

  His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

  Like pious incense from a censer old,

  Seemed taking flight for heaven, with out a death,

  Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

  It was snowing all the time. Frost covered the rooftops the trees the cars. People without hands walked slowly down the middle of the streets. Just as during the blackout, New York City had become a small happy town or a series of small towns strung out in a line. Whenever my mind looked in its mirror, it counted up its blessings: I was walking down a street. There was no one who was attacking me. There were no more stories or passion in my life. I had moments of happiness (non-self-reflectiveness) when I read books.

  I knew there could be no way I would live with a man, because, while I desperately needed total affection, I wasn’t willing to give up my desires which is what men want and I couldn’t trust. The men who were part of my life weren’t really part of my life: Clifford who I hated and the delivery boys who were weaklings.

  Only sensations. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it exists materially or not—for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty … The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth. I am the more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning—and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be Oh, for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

  Of silks satins quilted satins taken from grandmother’s bed thick satins black fur shorn from living lambs cotton steel wool the density of shit chewed-up cinnamon bark clustered angora and linen goose and duck feathers slumber

  Of pyramid cheeses covered by red pepper overripe goat cheeses blue runs through the middle blue alternates with wine down the middle port sherry crumbled crumbling at fingertips’ pressing no taste a physical touch sensation more than a taste the nose winding around itself

  In front of the eye: red blue yellow green brown gray purple violet gray-blue violet-gray in various combinations or forms move by in a faintly maintained rhythm. These are the pleasures of the mind.

  The mistake is allowing oneself to be desperate. The mistake is believing that indulgence in desire a decision to follow desire isn’t possibly painful. Desire drives everything away: the sky, each building, the enjoyment of a cup of cappucino. Desire makes the whole body-mind turn on itself and hate itself.

  Desire is Master and Lord.

  The trick is to figure out how to get along with someone apart from desire if that’s at all possible.

  The body is sick and grows away from the perceiver. As old age comes the body gets sicker. All this is inevitable. When the body’s sick, also the nerves are sick, the mind becomes sick because it no longer knows if it can trust itself. The scream no longer against pain, pain is now accepted as part of living, but against doubt begins.

  I’m going to tell you something. The author of the work you are now reading is a scared little shit. She’s frightened, forget what her life’s like, scared out of her wits, she doesn’t believe what she believes so she follows anyone. A dog. She doesn’t know a goddamn thing she’s too scared to know what love is she has no idea what money is she runs away from anyone so anything she’s writing is just un-knowledge. Plus she doesn’t have the guts to entertain an audience. She should put lots of porn in this book cunts dripping big as Empire State buildings in front of your nose and then cowboy violence: nothing makes any sense anyway. And she says I’m an ass cause I want to please. What’m I going to do? Teach?

  Author: You’re a dumb cocksucker. If some dumb person bought this book, he should have the grace to read it and if he doesn’t like me, so what.

  He (the author) has not hit the humors, he does not know ’em; he has not conversed with the Barthol’mew-birds, as they say; he has ne’er a sword-and-buckler man in his Fair, nor a little Davy to take toll o’ the bawds there, as in my time, nor a Kindheart, if anybody’s teeth should chance to ache in his play. None o’ these fine sights! Nor has he the canvas-cut i’ the night for a hobby-horse man to creep in to his she-neighbor and take his leap there! Nothing! No, an’ some writer (that I personally know) had had but the penning o’ this matter, he would ha’ made you such a jig-a-jog i’ in the booths, you should ha’ thought an earthquake had been i’ New York! But these master-poets, they ha’ their own absurd courses; they will be informed of nothing! Would not a fine pump upon the stage ha’ done well for a property now? And a punk set under her head, with her stern upward, and ha’ been soused by my witty young masters o’ the Cop Station? What think you o’ this for a show, now? He will not hear o’ this! I am an ass, I!

  Author: Huh? What rare discourse are you fall’n upon, ha? Ha’ you found any friends here, that you are so free? Away rogue, it’s come to a fine degree in these spectacles when such a youth as you pretend to a judgment.

  What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a spit?

  Sailors, who long ago had lashed themselves to the taffrail for safety; but must have famished.

  “Look here,” said Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing, “look there; that’s a sailor’s coffin. Ha! Ha! Buttons,” turning round to me. “How do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn’t you like to take a sail with them ’ere dead men? Wouldn’t it be nice?” And then he tried to laugh, but only coughed again.

  “Don’t laugh at dem poor fellows,” said Max, looking grave. “Do’ you see dar bodies, dar souls are farder off dan de Cape of Dood Hope.”

  “Dood Hope, Dood Hope,” shrieked Jackson, with a horrid grin, mimicking the Dutchman, “dare is not dood hope for dem, old boy; dey are drowned and d … d, as you and I will be, Red Max, one of dese dark nights.”: THE ONLY CERTAINTY

  To prove that there was nothing to be believed; nothing to be loved, and nothing worth living for; but everything to be hated, in the wide world.

  Sir, my mother has had her nativity-water cast lately by the cunning men in Cow-Lane, and they ha’ told her her fortune, and do ensure her she shall never have happy hour, unless she marry within this sen’night, and when it is, it must be a madman, they say.

  Why didn’t Melville suicide?

  He didn’t want to.

  Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy,

  Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide

  Him in a closet, of such privacy

  That he might see her beauty unespied,

  And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,

  Never on such a night have lovers met,

  The old woman leads him through many halls to the bedroom. He hides and hiding watches the girl he’s in love with. Around the window a carved representational frame stained glass the middle a shield the middle blood. The girl who’s never fucked takes her clothes off. She falls asleep on her bed. The young man covers her naked tits with candied apples fruits creamy jellies cinnamon syrup dishes silver, and lies down beside her.

  She doesn’t wake up. “Now, Sarah, this is purely medicinal.” He handed the full cup to me. “It’ll warm you. You must be warmed. What you should have is a hot bath and climb into a warm bed. I’m afraid Parrot Cottage can’t offer such amenities. Never mind. This is the next best thing.”

  I did what he wanted me to and I hated myself for doing it. I was feeling good because the hot liquid relaxed my body and my tension; this growing ease made me a traitor to myself.

  I had to keep the
joy growing to blot out my consciousness of what was happening to me. Sensuous beauty is its own perfect excuse, for it brings itself into existence. Constant unendable sensuousness—not passion, which destroys—allows neither time nor memory. Later what happened helped me to understand my own nature; and even later, I could remember. I knew that this glory will and always happens and has something to do with dislike.

  There is a dreamlike quality: my body wants as simply as any dream action. The body that wants a man whom I remember I heartily dislike, Clifford Still, can’t be my body and I’m not upset. I know he knows every pore of my body better than I do. He’s tricky. He gets me to be who he wants.

  He says it’s love. I mutter something about the girl I’ve heard he’s going to marry. He laughs, and his laughter excites me.

  “She’s here with me,” he said. “She’s Miss Sarah Ashington. I decided she was the one as soon as I set eyes on her.”

  We married, but I still wanted madly to tell him I was afraid. I did not love the man I had married. He had overwhelmed me and aroused a certain passion in me. For a deadly moment I had found him irresistible. I don’t love him, I cried inside my mind. I hate the inside of my mind. I want loving kindness, tenderness, not this mad wild emotion which he makes me become.

  He drops to his knees and kisses my brow my eyelids my throat. He is kissing my naked heart. His tiny hands are shuddering my naked heart and now he is beside me (he is whispering to me he is whispering into me) This whisper is an outside cool breath This whisper is controlling me this whisper is my breath

  In Paris policemen wearing blue triangular hats walk past buildings smaller than themselves and murderers look like each other and wear black. The ornamentation of Venice is precise a fairytale. The Roman streets lie sunlit, though there’s no sun, where rooms, above, wander into room after room so that inside is outside though it isn’t. Sometimes I murdered a man or a group of men murdered me. I never saw the details of their faces.

  “Sarah, my love,” he murmured, “didn’t you know? It was meant to be.

  “I raped you,” he said.

  I stared at him incredulously.

  “I want you to realize what a resourceful husband you have. You know how thick these winter fogs become? It occurred to me it’d be easy to lose our way … to wander around and around. You would feel tired. You wouldn’t know what you were doing. I would make you drunk. I would be your savior. Under the guise of being God, I’d do what I want. You see how romanticism works.”

  “Is love always disgusting?” I was still regarding his perspective as useful.

  He laughed. “What do you say, my pet? What does your body say when I touch it? I’m a man, Sarah; I’m not the mealy-mouth you think you want. You’ll never know who I am.”

  “I still think it’s disgusting you raped me and you planned to rape me.”

  “Your heart is telling you the truth,” he said.

  I didn’t know if I loved my husband, or not.

  I hated him I hated him but I knew if he should leave me I would die.

  “My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!

  “Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?

  “Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest

  “After so many hours of toil and quest,

  “A famish’d pilgrim, -sav’d by miracle.

  “Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest

  “Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think’st well

  “To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel.

  Is my lover trying to murder me?

  Is my lover trying to get my inheritance?

  Is my lover a stupid worthless being?

  “You have to trust me,” he tells me. He won’t tell me why. As soon as he tells me I have to trust him he takes some of my jewels, not my favorites, to sell because we can use the money, and when I ask him where the money is he won’t answer me.

  It’s always my fault.

  The nightmares have begun again.

  As I said, it was winter. Three days after the winds started they could never stop for the concrete buildings housed them the streetlights held them the very beds and streets were winds. My skin and the stuff under my skin tremble, feel the temperature extremes, I don’t know what is physical doubt and what is mental doubt.

  I want vision. If I do everything I can to change myself (my SELF is my desires and dreams), so I don’t have to leave this man—if I leave him, I won’t bother again with a man—am I turning away from all that is dearest and deepest: vision? Or is vision that which has nothing to do with the will, but is necessity working itself out?

  When I was in eighth grade, I thought the twins in my class, who were the only girls considered to be as intelligent as me, absolutely evil. I thought about them or absolute evil all the time. My husband wants me to put my inheritance in a joint bank account and draw up a will in his name.

  How do we know how to act? How do we know when our actions will cause pain? How is it possible to chose? I knew I must not choose and I must escape.

  Ye winds, ye cold air-snakes who wind through flesh, all who are nature:

  Seattle Art Society

  Timelessness versus time.

  There is very little money available to poor people. Since the American culture allows only the material to be real (actually, only money), those who want to do art unless they transfer their art into non-art i.e. the making of commodities, can’t earn money and stay alive. Almost every living artist who keeps on doing art has family money or at least one helpful sex partner. There’re a few artists whose work this society desires, for the country needs some international propaganda (and there’s nothing as harmless to a materialist as formalist experimentation). So an American artist has about one chance in 100,000 to earn a living making art. Nevertheless all the artists expect to have this one in 100,000 success. After five to thirty years of either slow starvation or, if there’s family or sexual money, lack of feedback recognition and distribution (for only the few artists who are famous get their work amply recognized and distributed), at least three-quarters of the artists who haven’t died off yet are willing to do anything to succeed and turn to more commercial or technical work or become bums. Nevertheless, more and more people in urban America want to become artists because only artists are happy and know reality and there are no other jobs. The art market is becoming more glutted and artists help each other out less and stab each other in the back and do everything else necessary to survive.

  There’s a very good artist (i.e. he wants to do art and nothing else) who wants the world to be as it is in the center of his art. All the artists recognize this goodness. He’s very animal especially his wiggling ass he’s such a great fuck, all the women artists want to fuck him. He lives in Seattle. He’s fucked every woman artist in Seattle. All these women artists are still in love with him. A new woman artist who’s more famous than these other women artists cause she’s from New York City comes to Seattle. All the artists love her cause she’s still living outside that community, isn’t yet competing. She marries M. de Cleves so she can stay away from New York City.

  As soon as these two artists meet, they fall madly in love with each other. The good artist isn’t making art anymore because he can’t work for money and do art, he refuses to starve to death, he refuses to do his art as anyone else wants him to do it, he refuses to butter up the ego of the one dealer in Seattle who shows new young work. The Princess is making lots of art because she’s a quarter of a half successfully developed an image in New York. But she won’t stop doing her art to support the purer artist even though this refusal makes her feel guilty. She doesn’t love her new husband M. de Cleves.

  Young people are now getting married cause they see how their parents followed every desire and got totally disrupted and how the total nihilism of 1979 caused nothing but O.D.’s and cancer. The Duc de Lorraine’s going to marry Mme. Claude de France, the King’s second daughter. Elizabeth of France wants to marry the Du
c de Nemours.

  The few male artists who’re successful want to fuck girls twenty or more years younger than themselves. Why do men want to fuck and marry girls who’re so dumb there’s no interesting conversation or power play? Mme. de Cleves’ mother says: studying human history answers you. If you want to understand an event, always increase its (your perceptive) complexity.

  Historical example: Our former King met Mlle. de Pisselieu when she was extremely young and fell wildly in love with her. He fell in love with the Duchesse de Poitiers and kept hold of Mlle. de Pisselieu. His first son was poisoned. Because he bitched about his second son to the Duchesse de Poitiers, she said she’d make this son fall in love with her and did. The King’s support of his third son, the Duc d’Orleans, made the second and third son hate each other. Mlle. de Pisselieu became the Duchesse d’Etampes. The King and the Duchesse d’Etampes hated the Duchesse de Poitiers. The Duc d’Orleans died from fever. The King died. Since the second son, our King, worshipped the Duchesse de Poitiers, he wanted to exile her lovers; but he adored her so much, he couldn’t. Even as she got older, he would remain in love with her. He made her main lover Governor of Piedmont, but used the Vidame de Chartres to prevent this lover from getting anything. The Duchesse de Poitiers hated the Vidame de Chartres and the rest of his family. The Vidame de Chartres’ niece just married the Prince de Cleves.

  There is purity. The whole world, not in itself but as the beliefs that there are no qualitative differences between events so money takes the place of value, hates purity. Purity is always. There’s no duality so purity is phenomena. But (relations): a story. A story plus a story plus a … makes … a tapestry. Human perception (relation) makes more perception. How can purity be a story?

  Because all the male artists she knows fuck any cunt they can get into and the non-artist males bore her, the female artist doesn’t believe love or purity’s possible in this world and so sticks with her husband.

  She learns from history that purity comes from lies or impurity: historical example: after Mme. de Tournon lived with a poet who made her support him by working dirty movies and in a sex show, she swore she hated men. She would always be a lesbian, even though she wasn’t sure she physically liked fucking women as much as men, so she could devote herself to her art. Her former husband, Peter, was still in love with her even though she was a lesbian. Paul told Peter he was fucking ten different women because he was so horny. Peter was the only person in whom he dared confide. If his girlfriend found out, well: when his ex-wife had found out he had fucked just one other woman, she had an epileptic fit tried to commit suicide and broke up their marriage. The next morning, Mme. de Tournon repeated this gossip to all her girlfriends one of whom was Paul’s girlfriend. Jean-Jacques told everyone Mme. de Tournon planned to marry him. Jeffrey knew Mme. de Tournon planned to marry him. Mme. de Tournon is known as the most honest female artist in Paris.