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“There is a girl,” Lou Andreas tells Freud, “who I cannot seem to understand because she was so exceedingly normal, without fault or flaw, until she became sick with scarlet fever two years ago. Before then, she was a happy child, without care or concern for the world around her, except that she put constant attention to ensuring that her parents were satisfied. Then, she became sick, and since then, she has not slept. She will remain awake for weeks because she knows that once she sleeps for longer than one hour, the nightmares will begin and shortly thereafter, she will scream herself awake.”
Freud responds, or imagines responding, something relating to masturbation.
“She has told me,” the Russian tells, or imagines telling, the doctor, “that there is a strong correlation between beauty and death. This is, perhaps, the most perplexing facet of her case, and it is not what she says but that she must think this. Indeed, she is a beautiful girl, even without sleep, and people often praise her for her beauty.”
Freud responds in long soliloquies, offering her advice, but she does not hear. Lou Andreas tells the great doctor about her patient but she does not wait to hear his response. She does not need to hear his response.
Women & Desire 5
An Introduction
There’s a woman sleeping down the hall. Her hair isn’t golden or flaxen or any of those perfectly descriptive words. Her nose isn’t slight or bold. Her lips aren’t full, but they are also not lacking. Her cheekbones are not defined or flat, but her eyes. Her eyes are full of gray.
She isn’t particularly striking in any way. Which is why she doesn’t threaten me. She doesn’t frighten me. I am not scared.
This woman sleeping down the hall from me, from us, she has slept for days and days and still will not emerge. She has snored and ground her teeth, and this disrupts our nights. They even manage to disrupt our days, and it is for this reason that I need to kill her.
Now.
While she is sleeping.
Because lord only knows how long this woman can sleep.
She must have little more than blistered gums by now. It’s that sound of bone scraping against bone. It’s not just a sound, but it’s really happening. This woman sleeping, she must have a burden that nestles like a bird, and hungry, it scrapes and scrapes and she must have nothing left in her mouth but the bloody remnants of that secret, whatever that secret may be.
I have never killed a woman, but I have often wondered how I would do it. Now, I wonder if her neck, which is not slender or thick, would be easy to grasp or if my large hands would simply slip from smooth skin. But of course I imagine that her skin would not be particularly smooth or rough. It is simply her way.
But I am not sympathetic. She disturbs me, and this is something I do not allow.
The Cold Outside
Once, when I was old, I knocked on a door because it was snowing. Because it was cold, I was wearing nothing but tatters and fragments, and when the door opened, I asked to enter. I was very old back then and could barely walk and yet somehow, I managed to travel quite a far distance simply to knock on this door. When the door opened and a maliciously smiling girl appeared, I found myself suddenly energized. Her eyes were fire, and looking at me, I was warm.
To the small girl I said, “It’s cold out here, outside.”
The child looked just beyond me. She barely bothered to notice that my lips were once again beginning to chatter, and although I wanted nothing more than to push her down and run towards the flickering fire behind her, I smiled the kindest smile I could.
She said nothing.
To the small girl, I repeated, “It’s cold out here, outside.” I said, “Dear child, won’t you let me into your house? It’s quite warm in there I can tell. From your eyes, I can tell that there is warmth tucked directly behind you, if only you’d let me come in.”
The child continued to look beyond me. I was certain that she did not flinch when I began to speak. This, I am quite sure, is no small feat because it has been a great while since I have had the pleasure to engage in oral hygiene. It is nothing personal. There is, in fact, little more that I would like than to be able to wrap some floss around my fingers.
I looked at this small girl with her vacant face, her eyes passionate about something entirely not me. I wanted to kill her. I wanted her to let me into her home so that I could do so without the neighbors noticing.
Once again, I tried, “I am an old lady, dear child. Can you not see that I am shaking, even now as I speak I cannot stop my teeth from banging violently together?” I extended my hand towards her.
I reached and I reached, and I was certain that eventually, either my limbs would extend no further or I would be able to touch her, but my hand kept moving forward and we never did intersect. Nor did she move. It was the strangest thing, how this child avoided my touch, a touch that we both knew would be lethal.
And my arm, by this point of acknowledgement, must have been nearly four feet long. It was a piece of salt-water taffy, only not so sweet or edible.
Finally, when my arm had reached its limit, the girl looked to me and said, “Old lady, you may enter my home, but only if you take out all of your teeth and both of your eyes. Then, you must peel away the nails from your fingers. When all of this is done, knock once again on my door, and I will come outside and strip you of your impure rags and bring you into a warm stew of bath, and there, I will clean you with my own small hands. After you are clean, I will set you by the warmest fire, and there, we will feast.”
I looked at this girl. There was nothing left in her eyes, but she did not avoid my gaze. So I began, one tooth at a time.
The Little Bird That Could
It is true that the little bird had lost nearly half of its left wing after the dog had had her pleasure with it. The man did all that he could to salvage the small bits of cartilage, pressing chunks of loose flesh back into the bone, hoping it would stick like putty if only he applied enough pressure for a long enough period of time.
He drove. He drove knowing that it wasn’t safe for him to be driving while holding a dying bird in his lap, pellets of muscle staining his pants, but he was careful, and he knew that if he waited, the bird would not survive. For this, he was a kind man. It would be impossible to not think he was a kind man when he did, after all, leave his car running when he reached the animal hospital to ensure that the bird received prompt attention. Some would call this stupid, a man abandoning his vehicle like that, but those more foolish would call it kindness, but it matters little how he is judged because he did, after all, leave his car running and in doing so, it was stolen, but by then, the bird had been stabilized, and he cared more for the bird’s health than a money-eating car.
It’s true that the car was stolen, that he in fact had stolen it because it wasn’t but earlier that day that some louse left his car unlocked with the key still in the ignition. This man, this kind man who saved the poor bird, out of dumb luck stumbled across this car, this car that clearly belonged to someone else, but not caring much, perhaps because of intoxication, he got in and drove away.
We’re not going to call it karma or fate or any of these words, but it is impossible to deny that there is some kind of cycle involved because the moment he walked into his house, still intoxicated, although that may be too kind of a description, he saw blood drizzled in chaotic trails. Out of curiosity, he followed these movements, which he alone could see. We have seen the house and the blood and sure as shit there’s no way he could’ve seen any kind of pattern, and yet, somehow he did, and after he followed the trail to its end, he saw the dog and the bird. He’s certain that at some point there was a struggle, perhaps even a war, but by the time he saw it, there were bits of dull bone protruding from this mass of flab and dirty feathers. The dog tossed it up and caught it. She tossed it up again and caught it midair. The man puked in his hand. Then, he called the dog, “Here Killer. Here boy.” The dog’s name wasn’t Killer. The dog wasn’t his. This wasn’t his house. But the dog came anyways. The dog came and dropped the bird on his feet. The dog wasn’t even a boy.