I assume there’s no answer to the question “What’s more important: one’s creative and energetic youth, or one’s old-age of relaxed contemplation?” When I was young, it seemed like my youth was most important — I remember telling myself, “Old age is Hell: it’s full of aches and pains; therefore do not work hard to set aside funds for your self-to-come; do not plan for retirement; instead, simply live for the present moment, because that’s all you have of worth.” But now I look back thru the eyes of this older, stupider man that I have become, and my opinion has changed: I wish that I could go back into the past and find my younger self, and stand over him as he sleeps; then raise my glittering sword and chop off his head. Then I would sell his blood to the dogs on the street.
But I’m not decrepitly elderly yet — I’m just middle-aged. I have no major aches and pains; my life has not, as of May 17 of 2021, become pure Hell constantly. In fact, my main gripe is that not enough people care about experimental literature.
So I should transform myself into a wholesome woman in a bathing suit, and publish an essay. That way, I could become a harlot, and stand on the street and show my essay to passersby and say:
“Hello, I am the prostitute who authored this masterwork. I beg you to read it. Ah, but you look like you’d rather not read it. OK, then what must I do to interest you in my article? How about if I give you some free sample-services from this business that I have chosen to perform as a day-job? Have we a deal now?”
And then I would allow potential readers to mate with me in any fashion they desire. I would give them free services for many months — however long it takes for them to tire of this bribe. Then, when they no longer feel any natural attraction toward me (tho I myself will never stop feeling attracted to them), they will skip the last of our usual three daily trysts. (By skip I mean they will indulge in the act of a no-show.) I will then page their pager. And they will call me on the line that I have specified:
“Hello!” I will say when I answer: “I was worried that since you did not show up as per usual, you might not respond to my skypage (my wireless telecommunication). Thanks for calling back. I’m here in the poetry section of the library, waiting, slightly panting; my lust is inflamed. I was just wondering if there’s been a mistake — maybe your wrist-watch stopped, so you’re not even aware of your tardiness… or, God forbid, perhaps you are finished with me forever! Please, give it to me straight: I’d rather know the awful truth than be strung along with sweet lies that never pan out. Have I become to you like bubblegum that is chewed flavorless?”
“Yes,” my non-paying client and potential reader admits, “your body and mind contain no further mysteries: I have solved the riddle of your existence. Every aspect of your being is too plain to make me salivate. No longer do you bring out the animal in me.”
“Thank you for responding so frankly,” I say. “Now, the whole reason that I allowed you to take advantage of so many great deals from my job as a day-harlot is that I was hoping I could entice you to read my essay. So that’s my next question: Will you still read my essay?”
There is a long silence. I begin to fear that my potential reader has terminated our call.
“Hello?” I say. “Are you still there?”
“I’m still here,” the ex-client sez. “I’m just thinking.”
“Whew!” I say. “OK, take your time.”
More moments pass in crackly landline-phone silence. During the wait, I slide down onto the floor (I had been leaning against a bookshelf) and recline in my sleek white bathing suit with my derrière facing the only other guest who is at this library (she is sitting at a table nearby, pretending to read an Earth Science textbook), in case there’s some chance that I might use my physical assets to lure another potential reader toward my essay. Then finally my ex-client’s voice snaps me out of my dream of longing:
“I guess I’ll do it. Can you fax me a copy of the thing, or just post the text on a blog and send me a link so that I can click thru and skim it?”
“Oh! Absolutely!” I say. “I’ll do both!”
So I use my mobile device to send the digital file of my essay to the library’s ink-jet printer. Then I staple these sheets of paper together and fold them and stuff them into an envelope, which I mail off to the company that faxes manuscripts to people. I make sure to include the number of the ex-client whom I desire to receive this communication; and I add a pink-tinted post-it note with a smiley face. — Also I copy and paste the text of my essay on my blog; then I send an instant message to Madame Blanc [that’s not her real name: I always protect my potential readers’ identities] containing the address where she can see my piece online.
After pressing the “Send” icon, I sigh loudly. It is a sound of pleasure as well as pride for a harlotry job well done.
Now the woman who was fake-reading the Earth Science book stands up from her table and slowly approaches me. She stands towering over me (I’m now back on the floor in my bathing suit)...
“Excuse me,” she blushes, “but I couldn’t help overhearing you sigh just now.”
“Yes,” I say, “I’m sorry about that. I know that this is a library, and thus I should try to silence all sounds of satisfaction; but the truth is that I am relieved that I finally found a reader for this essay that I wrote; and my pleasure was so great that I could not contain it.”
“Ah, I understand,” sez the woman. “So… you’re a writer?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling and sitting up straight against the bookshelf in my white one-piece while fine-tuning my hair. “At least, I try to be a writer. My day-job is lovemaking.”
The woman is tapping her lips with a pencil. “Lovemaking, eh?” She unbuttons another button on her blouse (the top three buttons were unbuttoned already). “Is this essay of yours available to peruse online?”
“It is!” I exclaim a little too loudly. “I just got done posting it to my blog, because my last client — ex-client, rather — requested that I do so; in case it’s easier for her to access.”
“Really!” the woman is now absentmindedly tracing graceful lines with the pencil’s eraser upon the region around her collarbone. “What type of hoops must one jump thru, in order to get a peek at this essay of yours?” (Between the words “this” and “essay”, the woman lowers her eyes to my swimsuit and nods suggestively.)”
I smile brightly, “Oh, I can send you the link right now — do you have a mobile phone?”
The woman pouts, sorta comically to show that she’s not really devastated: “No, I hate those things. I only have a computer at home. But I can give you my email address. Also I have a fax machine — do you know how to fax?”
“Oh, I wish I had known that you’d be interested,” I say; “I just got done sending a fax of my essay to that same potential reader, only a few moments ago!”
“Is that so?” the woman reclines back against the bookcase and rests her elbows on either side of the shelf that’s behind her, thus causing her blouse to press taut against her bosom. “You sound like a very popular author.”
Now I myself blush deeply, “Well, no; it’s actually the same ex-client who requested both a fax and the link to my blog. I only have one reader, so far. Potential reader, I should say — for she hasn’t actually, officially read my piece yet. To the best of my knowledge. But she’ll probably get a chance to look at it tonight. Or by Wednesday, at the latest.”
“Alright, listen,” the woman now leans forward and sez in a low voice, conspiratorially, “since you already apparently maxed out your faxing quota for this evening, why don’t you just make a regular printout of this essay of yours, and deliver it to my home address in person… We can read it together aloud. Or, who knows?—maybe we’ll even end up NOT reading it (if you know what I mean),” and she winks ostentatiously.
“Oh, no,” I say, “I would rather that you read my essay than NOT read it.”
She exhales. “OK, then we’ll read it,” she sez. “How long is it, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s roughly fourteen hundred words — just a couple pages. An average length for a modern classic.”
The woman exhales in relief, “Ah, that’s fine. I was worried that you were going to say it’s book-length, or multiple volumes, by the way that you were acting.”
“How I was acting?” I rise from the spot where I’ve been sitting on the library floor, “How was I acting?”
The woman tilts her head, thinks for a sec, and then answers: “A little too desperate.”
§
So I meet Madame Rouge [again, not her real name] at her house. It is filled with candles, and there is gorgeous organ music on the soundtrack.
The volume of the music now lowers so that you can hear our dialogue:
“Did you bring the text?” sez Madame Rouge, now tracing the flesh of her collarbone with her fingertips (she is no longer holding the pencil that she had in the library scene).
“Yes,” I unzip my purse.
“Whoa!” Madame Rouge exclaims, as her eyes widen. “That’s a golden scroll, tied up with a ribbon — I was expecting something rather less deluxe.”
“Like what?” I say, while seductively sliding the ribbon off the parchment instead of untying it.
“I just thought you’d have a few papers stapled together, which you’d retrieve from a manila folder that’s stored in a briefcase.”
“Well,” I smile, “you underestimated me.”
Madame Rouge smiles and laughs.
§
So I read my essay aloud and Madame Rouge loves it:
“I would like a copy of that,” she sez, “to give to my friend who is a literary critic. I think she will flip out and tell me that I have discovered, at long last, the Author of Our Eon — she’s spent her entire life searching high and low among the outpourings of modern literature for a writer who possesses your type of genius, and I think she’ll judge you to be THE ONE. And she’ll be so happy that I have brought to her attention the literary star who shall propel her into super-fame as a critic, that I’m certain she shall finally sleep with me. You see, I’ve been trying to bed her since the moment that I met her (I fell in love with her at first sight, as is my wont) but she’s never responded to my advances. THIS, however,” (she rattles the unrolled scroll in her upheld hand,) “shall seal the deal. So, do you think I can get a copy?”
“Oh, gosh, certainly,” I say, “in fact, that one is yours, that you’re caressing — I made that copy specially for you: I already have the digital file on my flash-drive; so I can print more out, anytime.”
“But this is on gold parchment, with a red ribbon to seal it up when it’s rolled.”
“Yes,” I smile brightly again; “I added those touches as a hint, or an ‘advance’, as you call it — it’s my own attempt to win your affection. For I want you yourself to desire ME as much as you desire your friend the critic. And, of course, I’d love it if she were to fall in love with me as well.”
Madame Rouge’s eyes refocus on the golden scroll before her, “You did this all for me? — Oh! I’m speechless.”
§
So it turns out that the literary critic, whose name is Madame Noir, adores my essay, and she ends up sharing a bed with Madame Rouge on account of her find. Then she, the critic Madame Noir, writes a review of my essay, and it appears in a trade periodical that the college where she’s employed publishes quarterly. The review is positive: she gives my essay a score of 92 out of 100 total points (no one’s ever gotten a higher number, so this is basically the top score) — and she declares me to be the Present Age’s Deva.
So I get to have my body photographed in a whole bunch of centerfolds, and I gain many fans, and they all tell me that they love my prize-winning essay. “This is how Schopenhauer must have felt, at the peak of his career,” I whisper to myself while posing for the final flash-bulb before the next scene begins.
§
But there is no next scene. And the reason that I chose to end this essay so awkwardly is that I was attempting to emulate the modus operandi that I presume the master James Joyce employed when composing his collection of stories called Dubliners, where, for instance, if he had written a tale about a team of soccer players (which incidentally he did NOT), instead of concluding by saying “All these females joined each other in holy matrimony and slept together happily ever after,” he would fix upon an epiphany — a defining spot in the life of his protagonist — and just chop the thing there. So my hero above (the one in the sexy swimsuit: my alter ego) experiences her most sacred moment, while basking in a favorable review, spread-eagled for the camera.
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