Mom was here like three weeks ago. I let her in this time. She saw my bong. I watched her for ages while she glanced at it, again and again. I knew she knew what it was. She was alive in the sixties, for fuck’s sake. I hadn’t left it out on purpose, but this apartment is so goddamn small that shit just piles up everywhere and you lose your ergonomic perspective. The bong was torturing her. I saw beads of sweat lining themselves up along the skin between her nose and her upper lip. What’s that part of the body called? I can never remember. I started to really enjoy myself as her initial discomfort turned to pain and the pain wrote its signature across her stupid face. And I wondered what part of her was in me. Then I remembered. Every part. As she left she said please, Lloyd, please … and I said what, Mom? Please what? And I raised my eyebrows and half-smiled in a mock pleasantness that I know for a fact creeps her right out. Creeps me right out.
Just take care. I … I …
And she turned and scurried away, like a little white mouse, down the communal stairs and back to her terrified, dipsomaniac life.
MY DAD fucked off when I was a kid. I think he just couldn’t stand to look at her any more. I remember the last time I ever saw him. He looked different, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and a jacket with the collar turned up. I remember thinking he looked really cool. He kissed me on the top of my head and said love you, kiddo. I didn’t say anything back, just stood looking at him from the hallway, wondering why my mother was taking giant breaths and covering her face with one hand while pulling at my dad’s arm with the other. Mom told me some bullshit story about how he had to go and do important work for the government to fix the hole in the ozone layer. I made myself believe that for years, until I overheard her on the phone to one of her mental-case friends, talking about him. He’d had another kid with another woman. A boy. I started to grind my teeth that night, and didn’t stop for years, till finally I ground through to a nerve and the pain made me pass out.
I know now that all that shit was a series of tests I’d set myself. I think I failed some of them, that’s why I’m still groping around in the dark.
I DREAMT I killed the kid. That kind of fucked things up, I can tell you. And not in the way you might think. I didn’t mean it; I only wanted to see how far I’d go before I made myself sick and stopped. Then I woke up and the kid was standing up looking at me over the edge of the travel cot with his big scared eyes and I shouted thank fuck and frightened the crap out of him, literally. But being a solipsist, I know the danger of crossing boundaries in the dream dimension. It’s a dream precedent; I know now it’s an actual possibility. It’s something my inner warrior wants to do and is not able to, being bound by the strictures of this false human reality. I still won’t allow myself to be fully immersed in the truth: I am alone in the universe; the universe is created by me and for me and nothing exists outside of my consciousness. I have to explore the edges of myself. I have to learn more before I can break through the barrier. I have to not care about the feelings I ascribe to my creations. Why did I do this to myself, cripple myself with conscience? It must have some meaning, the fact that I worry about doing certain things, when I know that nothing has any consequence outside of me. It’s another test I’ve set myself, obviously. But I don’t know how to pass it — am I overcoming an obstacle by giving in to my urges to destroy, or by resisting them? What do I want from myself? Why am I so unknowable?
Having killed the kid in my dream bugs me, no matter what way I think about it. Now I don’t know what to do. Opacity has trumped clarity again. These tests, these tests. Trevor has some meaning — he must be like a behaviour modifier or something. Obviously he’s an integral part of me. He’s an impulse, an instinct, a fight or flight mechanism. Him giving me this kid is me showing myself something. Maybe I should just ask straight out. I’ve always tried to stay icy cool around Trevor, though. I don’t think he knows he doesn’t really exist as an entity independent of me. Actually I’m sure of it. I need him to feel inferior to and fearful of me. I think that’s how I’m supposed to make all my creations feel. It’s easier with Mom. But then I’ve been working on her for longer. Solipsism isn’t as easy as it might seem. It’s difficult living in a universe with a population of one. But you already know this, being me.
I remember when I told Trevor I’d decided to be a solipsist. He laughed like a fat, retarded duck. He honked at me. Wow, he said, that’s like a really good excuse to give yourself for not having a job. I disgusted myself by suddenly dropping my cloak of aloof superiority and becoming defensive. I can’t help the economy, I said, in a pathetic, loser voice. Pardon, the bastard said, with glee in his eyes, you can’t help the economy? But didn’t you create the fucking economy, being a solipsist? And then he started to do his honking laugh again and I slapped him in his fat face. The tears that sprang immediately to his eyes fascinated me. I hurt him; I hurt myself. I felt my cheek sting later. This battle I’m having with Trevor is obviously some inner conflict, some breaking-down-building-up process of growing and strengthening, like a muscle being worked out. It has to be damaged to develop.
So, now I have this kid, who is wrecking my gaff. I’ve put myself in this position, that’s obvious; I just have to figure out why. The kid is kind of cute. Dylan is his name. He keeps saying Mama and Gaga and crying and pointing, and the only thing that shuts him up is showing him things. Like, I have to pick him up and point at stuff and say look, Dylan, look at the stereo, look, Dylan, look at the cooker, look, Dylan, look at the fucking sofa. The kid loves looking at shit. I’m getting a bit pissed over this whole situation. Like, I could go down for this. I’d be in the news and everything. Sometimes I forget the solipsism thing and start believing myself to be vulnerable to outside forces. They’re really inside forces; the things I’m afraid of are the weak parts of myself that I have to deal with. When I feel no fear, I’ll have completed my journey. Then I’ll become the being I was meant to be. I’m not sure what my true form is. I won’t discover that until I’ve slain every demon.
Rory
THIS SUMMER WAS shaping up great and all. We had the World Cup to look forward to — it’s nearly easier to watch when we’re not in it — the weather was looking half-decent there around May and late June, and Bobby was making shapes towards going out on his own doing insulation and all that environmental shite that everyone says is going to be the saving of us all. He rang me to come up and all one evening and I gave a hand stacking blocks of an ash tree he’d cut the evening before and he told me all about it while we worked. I like that way of talking, so you haven’t to be nodding and agreeing and trying to hold a person’s eye. It gives you room to stop and think; the work fills the silence between words. I went home delighted off my head. I even told the mother and father about it. The mother got all dramatic like she always does and started saying how she’d say a novena for the plans and thank God for Bobby Mahon and the father agreed away and he said begod tis the likes of Bobby will put paid to this auld downturn and isn’t he a solid sight to God altogether and if anyone could get something like that off the ground and running it was Bobby and stick with Bobby and by the end of the night I nearly hated Bobby and wondered why in the name of all that’s holy I’d opened my big fat mouth about it at all. Still though, at least they were happy for a while.