205. The bleeding of one category } into another.

The narrator of Throat Sprockets (Tim Lucas, 1994), sees The Cure at Dulles airport: “I watched with fascination as this troupe of fern-haired, powder-faced specters trudged with their entourage through the crowd toward a private exit.” Shortly thereafter, he considers the Billboard Top 100:

Nearly all the nation’s hit songs, I noticed, had been recorded by mannish women and ambivalent men, with mournful lyrics tenderly addressed to the genderless lovers no longer in their lives. I recognized the symptom. All of us—the people who shaped society—were somehow touched by the same depression, and our blue funk was profiting no one but the business we represented in order to stay alive and in this pathetic state. To the record companies who recorded these balladeers, their sorrow was a platinum payoff, a jackpot of skulls crowned that particular week (the chart said) by Sinead O’Connor’s interpretation of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” This, I told myself, was the first generation of compact disks: silver stacks minted to perform repeatedly, to spin eternally without distortion or diminishment; the voices encoded on them—the first sounds chosen for such preservation—shared a ubiquitous sadness that seemed to yearn for the gone days of vinyl, their voices plaintively aching to be abused once again with yesterday’s needles.

This passage caught my attention in a way it wouldn’t have when I first read the novel in 1994. Then, it served only as a metaphor: compact disk as vampiric, ever-living undead. Lucas’ idea that a historic event—the advent of the compact disk—would be associated with the malaise of a certain group of artists forever, didn’t make an impression.

Fall, 2013, I spent an afternoon with music writer Geeta Dayal—I’d invited her to speak to my students about her Another Green World monograph. I picked her up in Cambridge, drove her to Providence, brought her to both my classes, and took her to lunch. She was a memorable speaker. Between classes, she regarded the CDs in my office (I’m right now listening on an inexpensive Sony boombox to a CD pressed in 1993). She preferred vinyl, she said—she said she always thought “CDs are ugly.” I was surprised. Sure, I was aware of the rhapsodizing vinyl inspires (especially its sleeve), but the beauty of an LP does not ipso-facto suggest that compact disks are ugly. I told her I disagreed, that I love the oil-slick rainbow of an unadorned CD, the different iterations of the jewel case, iterations of the booklet, other varieties of packaging (including mini-reproductions of the vinyl sleeve); I have CDs that are black on both sides, a CD that changes color when played, a CD shaped like Paul McCartney’s head, gold CDs, a short-playing CD set in a transparent ring, double-sided CDs, and CDs that look like little LPs. I doubt I swayed Ms. Dayal. And I will forever be envious of the stack of Kompact LPs she told me she obtained for free.

Coming from the narrator of Throat Sprockets, lost in the midst of his obsession with neck porn and the inevitable unhappiness that accompanies obsession, the observation rings true. Not so out of context.

# # #

I don’t like the phrase “mannish women and ambivalent men.” If “mannish women” is shorthand for lesbian, it’s pretty weak shorthand; if it’s shorthand for women who are tough, or muscular, or for women with short hair (or none), etc., it’s weak. Sinead O’Connor is not mannish, she’s Sinead O’Connor. And what does “ambivalent men” mean in this context? Bisexual? Asexual? Gay? Or just guys who don’t care?

Throat Sprockets is kinda queer, but it’s also very hetero. Once the narrator sees a film that objectifies throats his sexuality is radically changed. He loses all interest in what once aroused him (he was a “breast man”). But he’s only attracted to heterosexual women’s throats, and the women who are also into throats are invariably subservient.

The kinda queerness of Throat Sprockets is its virtue. At the start of the novel, the narrator goes to the Eros during his lunch break to watch pornographic films, even though “X movies, Triple X, whatever you want to call them—have never particularly aroused me.” Instead, he goes

because of my disenchantment with mainstream films; [he] was fed up and growing weak on a steady diet of movies made by money and interested in only attracting more money. American films had become an art form with the agent as auteur; their lack of serious adult concerns was enforced by an outmoded and unrealistic ratings system that refused free expression to works of original or unpopular thought. … Adult films also had a peculiar knack for capturing the listlessness I found at the core of my real life, better than so-called “legitimate” films.

An ambivalent man.

204. Cruel } Saki.

Of “The Open Window”

Penultimate to the story’s final declaration, Vera tells a second story to explain Mr. Nuttel’s abrupt departure from her aunt’s home. Mr. Nuttel, she tells her aunt and her three uncles, spent a “night in a newly dug grave” “somewhere on the banks of the Ganges,” pinned by “a pack of pariah dogs”—thus his fear of dogs (the uncles hunt with a brown spaniel). What this story does, aside from amusing Vera, is give cowardly Mr. Nuttel a backstory full of adventure, a backstory that suggests he isn’t a coward but a man with a well-earned phobia. I asked my students, Was this a kindness?

No. Any redemption Vera brought Mr. Nuttel was accidental. She tells stories because she tells stories. Vera is intelligent and bored, and cruelty is fine by her if it entertains. Like Saki himself.

Mr. Nuttel (“nut” or, as the English might say, “nutter”) suffers from a nervous condition. What that is, or what caused it, is not a concern of “The Open Window”; rather, its concern is with Mr. Nuttel’s masculinity. He is not like the uncles, as emphasized by Aunt Sappleton who complains, “They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men-folks, isn’t it?” Not like Mr. Nuttel, who naturally would “not speak to a living soul,” as his sister scolds; Mr. Nuttel does not enjoy the boisterous company of men, or, we can assume, hunting, or playing with dogs, or teasing (as Ronnie, Aunt Sappleton’s youngest brother, does). Mr. Nuttle might be thinking about sex when he wonders “whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state,” but he’s so unattractively nebbish, he certainly hasn’t a chance with her if he is—she yawns when he speaks, perks up only when the uncles (real men) return: “‘Here they are at last!’ she cried.” Finally, Mr. Nuttel is frightened by “a self-possessed young lady of fifteen”—is it more than her story that makes Mr. Nutter nervous around Vera? He’s hen-pecked by his sister, boring to adult women, and unmanned by a girl.

“The Open Window” is cruel because it has no sympathy for the likes of Mr. Nuttel and assumes its audience won’t, either. How could they? He’s ill. His mental illness = a weakness of character that deserves to be mocked.

I write assuming you know the story, or think you do.It operates like a joke, so we remember the punchline (the uncles aren’t ghosts! Vera tells tall tales!) but not the details. It’s full of details to recommend it: the eeriness of Vera’s first story, Aunt Sappleton’s unintentional collaboration with her niece (“don’t they look muddy up to the eyes!” she says of the supposedly drowned uncles), the detail of the white mackintosh carried by Mr. Sappleton, and the story’s final line, “Romance at short notice was her specialty.”

As I recall the story, I overlook Vera’s cruelty and her age; I remember her as a little girl with a gift for morbid storytelling. I wrote that version of Vera in Color Plates (“Little Girl in a Blue Armchair”).

Stronger in my memory than Saki’s original is the audio version from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Ghost Stories for Young People (1962)—it changes quite a few details: Mr. Nuttel is an independently wealthy recluse who raises mushrooms and is a great reader of books and—perhaps this is why I forget Vera is fifteen?—he’s “ushered in [to the Sappleton home] by a very dignified ten year-old girl.” It’s kinder and spookier, too.

203. The premature burial } of Antigone & Chico.

Why did Richard P. Piquard bury alive a Shih Tzu dog? The Worcester Telegram reported [Sept. 10, 2018] “Chico [the dog] wasn’t getting along with the man’s new cat”; on the following day the Telegram reported, “It wasn’t getting along with the man’s new kitten.” Allegedly, he’d warned his ex-girlfriend that, “If you don’t get Chico out of my house, I will take him in my backyard and shoot him.”

Kaylee Belanger, who “found friend’s dog buried alive,” who wore a Star Wars t-shirt for her court appearance (a fierce Chewbacca, bowcaster drawn—was the shirt meant as a threat to the dog-hating Piquard?), said, “It wasn’t mentioned in the courtroom, but there was a… rock holding [the dog] in that hole. He pinned him under a rock to ensure that he couldn’t get out of the hole. So… whatever he tries to say is… unbelievable.” Chief of Police Walter J. Warchol said Piquard, “claimed he thought the dog was deceased.”

Chico was 18; maybe Piquard really did think he died, perhaps after he attempted to kill him? According to the veterinarians who attended the dog after he was rescued from his grave, “There was also evidence the dog had been neglected before being buried alive.” The police and Belanger (who said, “[Piquard’s] been a friend of ours for six years now”) seems determined to believe that Piquard knowingly buried the dog alive.

After Antigone defied King Kreon’s decree that her brother, Polynices is not to be buried, Kreon decides to bury her alive. He chooses this as her punishment not for its symmetry but in order to avoid a curse:

I will hide her alive in a rocky cavern,

setting out enough food to avoid a curse,

so that Thebes may escape all blame.

And there, praying to Hades, the only god

she reveres, perhaps she won’t happen to die,

or at least she will learn that

it is a waste of labor to revere Hades.

He reasons that if he buries her alive, he hasn’t killed her—she’ll die of natural causes (he guesses starvation). Obviously, this is perverse logic—as it’s pointed out by the famously ignorable Tiresias.

Acrisius, Danae’s father, makes a similar decision when he discovers Danae is pregnant in spite of his best efforts to keep her otherwise: “…not daring to kill his own daughter, [he] locked her and the infant Perseus in a wooden ark, which he cast into the sea.” Premature burial at sea.

According to Robert Graves, “The myth of Danae, Perseus, and the ark seems to be related to that of Isis, Osiris, Set, and the Child Horus.” Set, jealous of his brother Osiris, tricks Osiris into trying on for size a coffin; once Osiris is inside, pleased because he fits the coffin perfectly, Set and his cronies seal the coffin and throw it into the Nile.

Like Chico the dog, Osiris, Danae, and Perseus are all freed from their graves. Antigone—like Chico the dog!—dies as a result of her entombment (in despair, she hangs herself—“no wedding song sung/ for me at my marriage./ Instead, I will wed death”).

Piquard did not kill Chico. When Belanger found Chico’s grave, she “lifted that rock off that dog he screamed louder than I’ve ever heard any dog scream… and there’s no way that scream didn’t come out of him when he was being squished under there.”

So she believes. What she knows is that “we [she and the veterinarians] opted to humanely euthanize [Chico] so he could be with his original owner again.”

“Original owner” is not a euphemism for God; the family of Piquard’s ex-girlfriend owned Chico. She couldn’t care for Chico because she moved to an apartment that wouldn’t allow pets; why her family wouldn’t take the dog during the 18 months Piquard, according to the Providence Journal, “reportedly asked her repeatedly to take Chico.”

As regards Chico’s death, all involved clearly bear responsibility. Belanger said, “You don’t think about these things until it actually happens and then you go back and you wonder about all those little incidents and if they were something leading up to this if you could have suspected it and prevented it.”

However, only Piquard buried Chico alive.




[ quotes from Sophocles' Antigone translated by Diane J. Raynor; Robert Graves quoted from his Greek Myths; image is "Man Holding a Shrine Containing an Image of Osiris" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ]

202. Wild dogs & } furriers.

Jay Decay’s introduction to the Pluto in Furs reading was off-the-cuff-ish, a blend of his “An Abysmal Masochism” essay and other ideas and scolds. Highly entertaining. People arrived as he spoke. The mini-split unit whined. A shot of whiskey was passed my way. A skinhead with an anti-hate t-shirt sat down and looked at his phone throughout the event. A little girl alternately wore cat-ear headphones and listened. Jay summoned Clint Smith to read first—I laughed, poor Clint, sacrificial first reader, but he handled it with aplomb. He read from “Behemoth,” the long short story that closes the anthology— “The dogs were matted with a burgundy mucus, their glistening pelts catching the morning sunlight… the sound of their nails clacking on the asphalt as they scrambled away.” (A passage coincidentally reminiscent of a scene from “Wild Dogs” [in Supernatural Tales no. 30].) Jay offered comments, brought up Jeffrey Thomas whose story “The Tangible Universe” begins the anthology and reminds me of Brian Evenson’s preoccupation with amputation. Orrin Grey read. I was called up fourth. I moved a table, asked the audience what they knew about Thomas of Britain’s Tristan, from which I drew inspiration. Gemma Files read a tale of decomposition. She dreamed the title of her story. So heavy the dark burden of “Headsman’s Trust,” Richard Gavin had to sit while he read. (Many of the readers wore black. If I were to guess, I’d say Mr. Gavin wears black every day of his life. Gemma Files has a tattoo of two Egyptian hieroglyphs on her arm. I wore a purple shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of forest green sneakers.) At the reading’s end, I remained seated with Clint and the whiskey and people came down to say hi. Lisette from Canada told me she came just to hear me because she likes Worse Than Myself; I signed an autograph for a person who had, previous to that moment, wondered if I was real. I signed as “the other Adam.” (The back cover of Pluto in Furs is a subtle tribute to the opening shots of the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The cover is pretty. It’s by Matthew Revert.) We drank all the whiskey. We thought we’d check out the marshmallows at the Tor reading, but they were on their way out, vying for spots on the elevator. From the rooftop terrace, where the reading had been, we listened to a concert in the park below, watched lights—purple & white.

Out on the street in front of City Hall, where I waited for Clint to return from an errand, a coyote loped past me with a snake in its mouth.

[ image: Pluto in Furs Gradebook, my tribute to Matthew Revert's Pluto in Furs cover. ]