Having my way with Ulysses

as if the world was coming to an end

In secret we met - / In silence I grieve / That thy heart could forget, / Thy spirit deceive. / If I should meet thee / After long years, / How should I greet thee? - / With silence and tears.

light a candle for us and pray to whatever youve got because yes the world is coming to an end and it’s about time too woooo this is our house now everybody out thank you and get the fuck out and thank you dear saint lazarus on this your glorious day blah blah blah for demonstrating so clearly just how not to do it for there to be a sundering there must first be a reconciliation and my sister and I are like two become one for this shit though she might murder me at any moment because you cant discount she has that determined vicious look in her eye she’s ready to poison this whole place with Arsenic and finish it off herself o but sister love lets take our time a little we cant create ruination without satisfaction we can at least pretend to like it well have our way with sly uses o yes paralyze it long and hot down to its soul as far as possible and possible too o sly can you feel us making a whore out of you youre swollen out like an elephant come let us relieve you of that baby there you go now lay back darling dont worry sweetie love we’ll pull out

Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s Hotel. Queen’s Ho . . .

As the scribes will persist, the few readers there are in the world are going to have to change their roles and become scribes themselves.2:14 am

He took me to the most beautiful hotel in the city. Historic. Stunning suite. Honeymoon suite: one king sized bed. I had put him off for a long time, knowing he was wife hunting. He was twice my age: I was no wife. I will be no wife. I can’t even call myself anybody’s girlfriend.  I’m focusing on something else, I’d say. You can sleep with me but that’s it kind of thing. I know what I want (I don’t know) and I know who I want (yes, I know). Who I want hasn’t happened and doesn’t look likely. What I want (the want I know I want in addition to the who I want) is experience. I want an interesting life. That’s what I want above all else so yes I said yes I will, yes. I’ll fly there. Fly me there. I’ll fly there and spend the weekend with you I said, but I’m not having sex with you. We’re not having sex. I told him straight up. I want my own room. I know I am easy but I am no whore. Of course, he said. He said of course. What of course? Of course. I let it slide. Get the ticket and I’m not missing any work. We’ll have fun, he said. I’ll take you here, I’ll show you this, we’ll do that. It will be like a normal first date and no sex. Who says a normal first date means no sex? With the one I want we would have sex and no date, so don’t give me normal first date. Don’t give me normal I don’t say. I go. I’m spotted in the airport by a co-worker. I lie. Going to see a friend in that direction. But this airline only goes this direction, he says. Why would I lie. I get there. Flowers and a limousine at the airport. We dine out awkward with flowers, my backpack in the limo. He says his mother will love me. He says he can’t wait to introduce me to his mother. His mother is the best woman imaginable and I am just like her. Is she trapped too? I’m trapped. I understand now I am trapped. What a stupid idea. How in the fuck am I getting out of this. I’ve always wanted a wedding barefoot on a beach he says. I am not shitting you this is what he says. Holy fuck. I don’t know what kind of wedding I want. I don’t want a wedding. I don’t know this guy. The guy I know works for the company. I talk to him on the phone every day. At work I talk to him on the phone. Half a minute have a good one nice day. He is thought generally to be a great guy. He is a great guy. Who the hell knew he’d be this too. I eat. I think. He hangs out with twenty year old guys when he comes to town. He surfs he says. He bikes. He’s training for something. His friends his age have kids he says. I have a negative bank account. He has my return ticket. We eat. We go to the hotel. Beautiful hotel. We go to the hotel. My backpack gets taken up. We get taken up. I’m wearing work clothes: casual business casual, plane stained. The elevator people are smartly dressed, looking at the man and the half his age whore heading for the honeymoon suite with a backpack. There’s a whore in the elevator with us they think. And here we are. One bed. No other room. No mention. Isn’t this suite sweet he says. Suite. He has tickets to this tonight and also that just in case I’d rather that. Do I have something I want to change into? Yeah I say. Give me a minute will you? Alone will you? Just give me a minute alone. He retreats to the balcony, but he’s still all over me. I don’t have any fucking idea what to do. I am alone. Solitary. I’m thinking. There’s a desk in an alcove. Behind the bed in an alcove. I need to think. Paper. Nice pen. Keep the pen. I’m writing. I’m thinking and writing. I can do this all night.

Six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to.

While we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.1:36 am

Look. Don’t you know that if you fuck a whore, you together become one body? It’s old, this idea, thousands of years written by people who were no better than they should be. They say in their most sacred “The two shall be one flesh.” The beast with two backs and the molecules entwining.  And more than that, it’s turtles all the way down baby; you’ve just thrown yourself into the den of lions. So far be it for me to put two and two together, but we are each other, you and I. You think we are cultured fellows, promising so brilliantly and indeed we are and them too, though they don’t know it. And we’ve all fucked around: we’ve had sex with everybody. You sleep with him, he sleeps with him and her, and she sleeps with she and she with he and all of us all together form one body of no uncommon calibre.  Whatever shall we wear?

Sounds are impostures, like names.

This never changes.1:11 am

Well hello darling, what’s your name? What do they call you, honey? I’ve been called plenty, I can tell you. Here’s a list:

  1. Veronica. My first name. After some delay possibly whispered to me with kissing and disappointed relief. Perhaps sung to me by Mamáma or The Maids.
  2. Virginia. My older by two and a half years sister’s name. Mine too when my mother yelled it.
  3. Ronnie. My American grandfather’s name for me. His name for loving me. Don’t call me that. Only Grampa can say my sweetest name. His mouth saying his my name says I was something a bit different for him than anybody else was. So only him, yeah? Nobody gets to call me that call me Veronica. Don’t you come any closer. I never should have said. So now get out please. Go.
  4. Vicki. Great. My bully. My mortal enemy. The only other girl in my grade when we moved to Colorado and we both have V names which people found interchangable, even in an isolated mining town.
  5. Scrawny Ronnie. I was tiny. Don’t call me Ronnie.
  6. Vero — My mother would scream this at games in which if I had not been coerced into joining the team there would not have been enough of us to play. Go Vero!
  7. Bero — The way Vero sounds to American ears whose mouths called me that too.
  8. Bennie — Timed typing. Maybe six of us. Mr. Stroh behind his novel saying on the count of three one click two click click clack. Who’s cheating? It was Veronica. No it wasn’t it was James. Shut up Benedict! Benedict Arnold was a traitor not a cheater and to betray you I’d have to be aligned with you which I’m not. Veronica, load a new piece of paper. Hey let’s call her Bennie. It wasn’t me; it was James.
  9. Victoria — Nobody called me this in my home town. The town had one Vicki and one Veronica one Virginia and one Valerie. No Victoria and never any confusion.  In college the unsure of my name called me Victoria.
  10. Vern — College Friend: Hey Vern, know what I mean? I didn’t like it and then I did like it. This became my name.  Hi, my name is Vern.  Everybody calls me Vern.
  11. Vernie. Close friends, mostly in college, mostly females but for Tod where the hell is he? Who disappears in the information age? But Tod is only one of his what’s in a names and I can’t find him under any of them.
  12. Um. Coined by students finding Veronica too impersonal and Doctor or Professor Robertson or Browning or Tonkin too formal.
  13. Verne — Sounds the same as Vern. But the sound I hear from my inlaws’ mouths is spelled differently in South Africa. Verne is what they say when they say Vern.
  14. Maria — My middle name. Not my middle name.
  15. Robertson Gonzales Reyes — The names I was born with, a portion of which feels foreign and awkward next to my other names, depending on the speaker’s hemisphere of origin.
  16. Robertson — My first last name I used. Much more simple in America to think and not be required to speak the Gonzales Reyes part.
  17. Gonzales Reyes — My silent names.
  18. Browning — The name I never wanted. I stayed Robertson for over a year. Then I found the last thing my husband had been lying about. He was so relieved. I had stepped closer to the meanings behind the sounds of his names. The great burden of being known only partially had lifted from his shoulders and landed on mine like a toad on my shoulder. Whispering names in my ear. So I changed my name. It would help.
  19. Robertson — It did not help. I was Browning for maybe eight months. I was Browning when I finished my degree. Dissertation submission paperwork, should I write Robertson? I sent in Browning. And by the time I got Robertson back I didn’t want it anymore. The Robertsons had shown me their meanings behind their sounds too.
  20. Tonkin —  I love my Tonkins. I am an imposter Tonkin, so I am free to invent Tonkin history. Tonkins are good at hard things, I tell my children. And so they are.
  21. Bitch Cunt Whore Baby Babe Honey Sugar Sweetie Darlin Little Filly. Please feel free to add to this list. I know who I am to me. I want to know who I am to you. We all do.

And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore’s shoulders.

My matchless lamb that may atone for all, said she, glorified my destiny, chose me for his equal, although unequal our coupling once seemed. When I went from your wet world he called me to his graciousness. Come hither to me, my lover sweet, for neither mote nor spot is in you. He gave me power and also beauty. In his blood he washed my pledge and place and crowned me clean in virginity and adorned me in flawless pearls.12:32 am

Scene: [Some time after midnight in the offices of Holy Mother Public Relations Martha and Mary are having a stitch and bitch.]

Martha: So you weren’t always a virgin. What was your life like before?

Mary: Before? God. Things were different, I mean I started working at fourteen, you know? I started young. Here’s a picture. [A photograph of a teenaged Mary appears in Martha’s hand; she almost drops her wine.]

Martha: You were cute, look at your hair!

Mary: I had two right feet.

Martha: So tell me about the first one.

Mary: [laughing] Jesum chrysanthamums, that was so long ago! And I was so stupid; I mean I knew absolutely nothing about men. Nothing. My first one was a Libyan eunuch and I was such a neophyte, I had no idea!

Martha: [choking on her wine a little] Mary! Jeez

Mary: Oye! Careful!

Martha: Jeez and crackers would be great with this wine.

Mary: Nice save. And yeah, I could eat something. [Mary widens her eyes just perceptibly and a deliquescing bleu cheese appears with sesame crackers] You like bleu?

Martha: Sweet. Yes. Thank you. So didn’t you realize that he had nothing going on downstairs?

Mary: I’m fourteen. What do I know at fourteen? He looked like a Ken doll, nothing alarming there. But I’ll tell you who was alarming, this guy I knew, what was his name? Pen something, Pendenis. Panther! Holy mama.

Martha: Ha!

Mary: Lord I knew I was going to be in trouble, and he had it all out there too. I mean, he was packed into these tight pants on a stage just about dick level with the crowd. I got whacked in the head with that thing! It must have taken some serious divine intervention to get him into those pants. Anyway, he’s the one who burst my tympanum. Hey, where’s your sister?

Martha: Speaking of getting dickslapped. I don’t know. I don’t care. She’s probably off with J being a cocktease.

Mary: Seriously?

Martha: She won’t do him until he puts a ring on it, so they’ve been doing everything but. I tried to tell her

Mary: I thought they were married? Or at least engaged, didn’t they just have the wedding?

Martha: They called it off. It’s on, it’s off. He’s been cheating on her with a ton of potential Mrs. Je

Mary: Watch it!

Martha: eepers. Sorry.

Mary: You want him popping in here?  Jeezum Crow!  So she’s still technically a virgin?

Martha: Yeah, but come on.

Mary: I know, right.

Martha: So.

Mary: Yeah. The thing about virginity. Who cares? You know? I mean really, look at who cares, it’s never the virgin. And whatever she’s telling herself, I highly doubt she can get off on a technicality.

Martha: Or much else.

Bueñas noches, Señorita Blanca.

Whoso therefore knows how to conjoin the principles, or direct the work, to impregnate, to mortify, to putrify, to generate, to quicken the species, to make white, cleanse the vulture from his blackness and darkness so he is purged by the fire and tinged, and purified from all his spots, shall be possessor of a treasure so great, that even kings themselves shall venerate him.11:36 pm

Careful that whore riding the dragon. Password. This way to the lower world, three turns to the right then you’ll find your divine spirit in the depths of matter. Don’t believe me? Doesn’t matter. Not important. You’re in, you figure it out. A hint, friend. The more you putrefy the more likely you’ll purify. Understand? Have you no soul? You have hope, you say. Hope. you think that’s enough? Please. Pandora, you know her? Cheap whore that one but a nice kid. She let all the evils out of her jar for the world’s grief and left hope inside. Smart girl.  Oye tell me, yeah, if you’re so smart, if you know everything about sin then what’s hope? What was hope doing in the jar with all the other baddies? Lucky it stayed in there. Right. So. See there my vulture’s shadow? Follow it. Now go. Estúpido. Quién no tiene fuerza para matar la realidad no es lo suficientemente fuerte como para crearlo. Hablar conmigo de esperanza. Estoy grandeza tres veces. Estoy palabras en acción. Te ves en todos los estratos del ser y es mi cara que ves. Soy el mago que creó magia! Estoy sentido inagotable. Hice el culo sólo pensar en ello. Hablar conmigo de esperanza.  You still here?  I said go.

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

And now, O Alcibiades, the divine thing having been performed, tell me, are the girls and the youths and the philosophers as fond of thee as ever?10:42 pm

Scene: [Around the ideal form of a table sit Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pistritus, and a mirror reflecting an even more ideal form of a table around which sit Glycera, Chloe, Phyllis and a mirror reflecting ooh look at that table, way more ideal, around which sit Anemone, Posie, Echo in a mirror, and a mirror reflecting ok now I like this one best, wait, can I see that first table again? reflecting Mars, Venus, and Juno and a mirror reflecting turtles all the way down.  On each ideal form of a table sits a container of plums. Some of the containers are coffins, some are eggs.]

Glaucon: [Brotherly, breathing on the mirror while the others stare hard at the plums] On behalf of Alcibiades, for the fulfillment of his one great goal, I call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

Juno: [Chewing a plum] You hear that?  Venus, get off of Mars, we have to troop to the call.

Anemone: Poor ghosts. I really anticipate disaster here.

Echo: Disaster here.

Posie: [Carving into the table with a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife reminiscent of Roman history]  e ar space ach e ar e period.

Alcibiades: Anything yet?

Anemone: He is so expectant!

Echo: expectant!

Posie: [Carving]   tea ay en tea exclamation point.

Glycera: [Wearing a frock of muslin and yellow shoes]  He wants me again.  Already.

Phyllis: Well don’t go.  That man would make his own mother an orphan.

Chloe: Isn’t his father the son of his own mother?

Anemone: He heard her say that.  Look his face is growing dark.

Echo: Growing dark.

Posie: eye en gee space dee ay ar kay period.

Pisistratus:  All is lost.  I’m leaving.

Glaucon: Stay, we have all the mirrors aligned in perfect harmonic proportions.  This will work.

Pisistratus: It will work if we bribe somebody.

Alcibiades: Glycera’s soul is far away.  What if she won’t assume her etheric double?

Juno: Ok, place your bets. Will she assume her etheric double?  I say yes.  A whore like that? Come on.

Mars: I say yes too. Last time she had her leg up over our left shoulder.  I could watch that again 16 times in a row.

Venus: Alcibiades’ left shoulder. She won’t.  He’ll beg until he’s black in the face but I’ll have to incarnate for her.  Where’s my ruby dress?

Phyllis: Huzzah! I think Venus will go for you. I wonder if she has a ride?  She can take Aristotle, he’s parked out back.

Juno: Venus your bet’s a throwaway.  Just listen to her heart beating! Can hear it two mirrors over.

Glycera: I guess I can go, but I won’t use a condom. I hate condoms. Well at least I had my period last week so there’s that.  He bites, though.  It’s off putting.

Chloe: You’re fertile!  Oh you’ll have a nice ripe egg for him.

Glycera: Oh fabulous, I’ll get pregnant.  Great.

Anemone: Will she?

Echo: She?

Posie:  capital ess ach e question mark.

Glycera: What do you think, ladies?

Phyllis: It’s a holocaust; you’ll get burned.

Chloe:  Yes she’ll burn. The young green shoots of new plumtrees require putrefaction first. End it now and go to him, it will be the beginning of something.  And the Gods are involved, so there will be mirror effects all over the place.  Lose yourself in it.  I mean, look at these plums.  They’re dying. They won’t be fully empowered until putrefied. The tomb of death is the womb of new life.

Glycera: Ok, here I go.

Juno: You hear that? Let’s get started.

Juno, Venus, and Mars: [Breathing on the mirror] We call them to life across the waters of Lethe.

A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh!

By their fondness of sights, one would be apt to imagine, that instead of desiring to see things as they should be, they are rather solicitous of seeing them as they ought not to be.10:30 pm

Brang, the bell stopped the talking,
In Nurse Callan comes walking.
Her belly looks swelled
Shut your mouth sir! they yelled.
This woman you should not be mocking.
 
But I mock from familial duty,
Besides, just look at her booty!
Most nurses are whores
Like Kitty, Lynch adores.
So relax, boys, the point now is mooty.  

A whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture.

Excuse me, Monsieur le Count, said I; - as for the nakedness of your land, if I saw it, I should cast my eyes over it with tears in them; - and for that of your women (blushing at the idea he had excited in me) I am so evangelical in this, and have such a fellow-feeling for whatever is weak about them, that I would cover it with a garment if I knew how to throw it on: - But I could wish, continued I, to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them to fashion my own by: - and therefore am I come.

10:29 pm

She was so wet and I had no condom.  I swear to God I could have killed myself a thousand times. Ok. That’s not true. I did have a condom. Shit. How did you pick up on that? I’m such a dumbass. There she was dripping wet. Young, just fat enough to be easy.  I had one hand each going down from top and up to bottom and then God damn it, never open a condom with your teeth. Shit. Never open a fucking condom with your God damn teeth. Well, what are you going to do?  I’d like to say you can’t miss what you don’t have.  Will be picking up condoms while I’m in town.  Get one like, made of armor or something.  Some God damn thing that means business.  Won’t break apart in a hurry.  You know if things go well I could train Milly to be more like Kitty, you know her?  She won’t use condoms.  She’s a great girl though it kind of sucks she’s a whore.

By no means would he though he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law.

Then Mrs Light-mind added as followeth: Come put this kind of talk away. I was yesterday at Madam Wanton's, where we were as merry as the maids. For who do you think should be there, but I and Mrs Love-the-flesh, and some others. So there we had musick and dancing, and what else was meet to fill up the pleasure. And I dare say my Lady herself is an admirably well-bread Gentle-woman, and Mr Lechery is as pretty a fellow. 10:17 pm

Miss Forcible is a very virtuous young lady and the daughter of a virtuous woman and as it was getting on to that time in her life as it does for so many a maid she found within her heart a longing called Shit-or-Get-Off-the-Pot directing her nature toward desiring of a union with her favorite young man Mr. Equivocal.  Miss Forcible and Mr. Equivocal reside with greater and lessor degrees of comfort in the kingdom of Living Together also known in the land as Let’s See Where This is Going which suited Mr. Equivocal nicely and Miss Forcible thought so too, but always with her mind of relocating to The Next Step as one can put up with anything for the short term and within the breast of Mr. Equivocal resided a spike called Possible as he was heir to the family Grass is Greener and often wondered if perhaps the pretty whore called Bird-in-the-Hand might choose to take him to Two in the Bush which he had sometimes visited though not as recently as all that.  Mr. Equivocal’s perennial habit was to tell Miss Forcible he would like to ask of her a particular question if she would be so kind as to hear it, perhaps New Years Eve next, at which time he would tell Miss Forcible that she might prepare herself for a fine Saint Valentines to come.  But did he propose said question to Miss Forcible? Indeed he did not.  On the most recent feast of Saint Valentine, a day upon which Miss Forcible colored her body in hues of Expectancy but alas Mr Equivocal was color blinded that day for he had girted himself with Doubt tho tied with strings called Hope as he had gifted Miss Forcible with a red lace peek-a-boo bustier and crotchless thong as an offering called How About It?  And how about it? Miss Forcible understood it as a present called More For Him than For Me.  And where was the small box containing Sparkling?  Alas, Sparkling was nowhere to be seen. Clearly to obtain Sparkling Miss Forcible felt, she must journey through the land of Deceit over the mountains of Deception for her Mr. Equivocal was likely in the thrall of the Demon All Time whereas her guardian angel Time is Running Out knew far better.  Her first stop in her journey was along the stream Physic where she found a previously unknown allergy to the medicine Kill Child requiring Mr. Equivocal to get over his aversion to the device Preservative if he was to ever see her clothed in More For Him than For Me.  Then Miss Forcible gathered fruit from the tree Pincushion and with help of the angel Clandestine modified Preservative just enough to rechristen it Sieve.  She’ll have Sparkling by Christmas.