Zig

review.

Chapter 1: An Introduction

My name is Zig, and whether you choose to believe that or not is to be tested over the course of these next few days, much like the rest of your fidelity. This is, these initial words and pages, an introduction. But I know what happens when people see the word introduction. They skip over the whole damn thing. Especially those collector reader types. The ones who read pages, not words. You know the types. The ones that read like they’ll win a medal if they can get through something over seven hundred pages, keeping a bookmark between the pages so they can squeeze the bulk they read and masturbate some pseudo-intellect, meanwhile forgetting the chapters and daydreaming over paragraphs that present themselves too formidably.

Damn. It just occurred to me that I’ll have to maintain this standard of naming chapters. I don’t really have any ideas for chapter names… How could I? So what will I name chapter two when it starts? Chapter 2: the stuff I said before I got tired. Chapter 3: the stuff I said before I got hungry and ate a sandwich. Shit. No good.

Huh?

My stenographer informs me I don’t need to worry about titles for chapters. Or, what’s that? That I could go back and add the titles after assessing the chapter content?

Poindexter weasel. You would suggest that, wouldn’t you? This isn’t something to be edited. No editing. Just write. Look at you, with that smirk pasted on.

Fuck man. Write your own shit down!

The stenographer doesn’t seem to understand that he can write down his own words, and mine. Well. Go on. Write that down then. Write it!

It seems unprofessional to intervene in your manuscript, sir.

Said the stenographer.

Excuse me?

Write that down.

I did.

But not like that, like you’d read it in one of those paperbacks. With the comma and the end quotations.

Like this? said the stenographer.

Yes! Perfect. You have to write everything thing you say. Everything! From here on out! Every last damn word. If I’m mid-sentence and you have to piss, you say, Can I piss? And you write it. And I say sure, why the hell not? A stenographer in pissed pants is one distracted stenographer. Write it all!

That might cause problems for our readers, sir.

Said the stenographer. Write it!

It doesn’t seem necessary. I’m the only one being quoted.

Right. Wait, what? Problems? What problems?

Well, per say, if you have a conversation you’re dictating to me. What if I ask a question? My quotations will be contextually, semantically contradictive. It will be like an alternate dimension.

Like aliens?

No, sir. Not like aliens, said the stenographer.

Oh… I think I follow you. You’ll work that out when we get there. But for now you write down every god damn thing.

I feel I am instigating digression. Please continue.

Right, so here now is an introduction. I am Zig, etcetera. It’s obvious at this point that I am dictating. My words are being typed by this son of a bitch with a smirk. Allow me to take this time to describe that son of a bitch.

He is slouch-shouldered. Ugly glasses, some kind of acne scar or something on his cheeks.

They’re freckles.

What have you. A nose like one of those toy birds that sit on desks and tip over and drink water. You know the ones. Weird, long face. An aura about him that makes everyone, even me, want to either puke or be feignedly civil. You know, because you’re scared you’ll hurt the poor creature with a mere word, so you have to maintain some preternatural amiability. Probably only has prosthetic friends. Probably masturbates to deviant pornography. A real squirrely looking son of a bitch. Red hair. No one likes a ginger. Not a ginger without an accent, anyway. He has no accent, his voice seems to flop out of him like a dead fish. I am starting to realize I hired a son of a bitch. Really disconcerting to know I have to look at him while I dictate. It creeps me out how he pecks the typewriter keys, even. Like some machine. An ugly machine thrown away by his maker and forced to whore himself out to the first hobo that comes along.

Stop it!

Said the stenographer.

I don’t want to write about me. I’m not part of your manuscript.

Don’t be so sure. I want to introduce not only myself, but my tools. The things I am using to convey my words. So, there’s you, the stenographer, and his typewriter, two tape-recorders with a stack of ten hour-long tapes, a stack of lined paper yay big and fourteen pens, and a chalk board- but I don’t have any chalk.

I want you, the reader, to know what I am writing with because I want it to be as pure as possible. I’m a purist, really. The way things get jotted down, the hand they’re written in. Beautiful. God, what horrible emulated version are you reading right now? Do you wonder? The editing. Pah! You weasel son of a bitch! No editing, not if it’s right. Not if it’s pure. Imagine! The words flying out of me, hitting the page from those ink-stamped templates from that archaic typewriting machine. Onto a page! The lucidity of certain letters, like notes in music. Some defined more than others, hit by a fervent finger, one caught in a moment. Others dim on the page like a dying street light, typed without enough weight because the hands were in a flutter. Or, wow! On the pages already written, maybe: Crumbs of a brownie because the dictator was hungry. The one crumb, with a bit of icing smearing over one singular pronoun. She. Put that in quotations. She. That pronoun smeared with chocolate. Is it Freudian? Is it chance? Either way she- quotations god damn it- she is a sloppy bitch, smeared over the page. Gluttony, sloth, decadence. Brutality. Oh, how chocolate brownie crumbs can look like blood! That pronoun has life, given by chance. By a fucking brownie crumb!

But where is the smear? Where is the life? Edited out! Flabbergasted I am! Fucking flabber-fucking-gasted. Edited, transcribed by those printing machines. Where are the templates for my pure word? Where is the She with brownie crumb. Good. You remembered the quotations.

And why? Why, oh why isn’t page 29 jotted down in a late night frenzy, a night terror that gripped me like the holy ghost and made me spew glossolalia like some fanatic from a medieval exorcism? Where’s the passion, the curve and jolt of a hand so frantic as if to catch the breath of its mind’s own thoughts? That page, should it ever happen, is just like this. Black on white, static bullshit. And the tapes, the late-night tapes where I ramble on for hours, should that happen. Gone to this format, this emulation.

Good graces! Do you see it? Emulation, man! The fucking transcription. Is it life? Is it the dull fate of life to have everything transcribed for dissemination? Everything emulating the last component to fit that square block into the round hole like some stubborn child with a hammer? You shit! How will the other children learn their geometric shapes if you hammer the hell out of the square block and leave it splintered and plasmatic? You shit! You reaper! You’ve taken its shape from us! Where is the shape!? This child, the one with a hammer. He’s memory, you see. We can only trust the instance! The instance!

You, stenographer. Take up that pen. Take it up! Good. Now, scrawl a giant black line across the page. As you see fit, of course.

What the hell are you waiting for? What’s that? I didn’t hear you!

Sorry. Are you serious?

Yes. Go on. I want you to take it like an assassin’s dagger and stab the shit out of the heart of this here page. Do it.

Ha! See that. Look at it, you son of a bitch! That! That there is for just us! Only us! No one else can see that. Look how the line crosses over. Oh! Imagine that. You managed to scrape across the word reaper. Beautiful work.

My god, man. The way you peck at that typewriter is irritating me. I can’t stand over your shoulder anymore.

Where was I?

Hey. Look at that. Walking by right now in the skirt. I’d fuck the shit out of her.

What? You wrote that?

Should I scribble it out?

No, no, keep it, I guess.

You said to write everything.

I know what I said. Shit. We need a system. Here. If I don’t want you to write something, I’ll pinch you like thi zdf.hlg

Good. Oh. What’s that? zdg.hlg. Why’d you write that?

Because you pinched me, sir.

That’s no reason.

It hurt, sir. I spasmed over the keys.

Well. I like the looks of it. Zdg.hlg. That should be my word. It should mean something. In light of the occasion, I suppose I do have a definition for this new found word. I think it will mean that thing that’s always wrong. The one thing that lingers like some teasing, missing component taunting out on a string to ruin everything and all things. You know the thing?

No, sir.

Well you will. And you’ll know it by name. Zdg.hlg.

Onward! Allow me to describe myself. I am corrugated. Everywhere corrugated. Those lumps of indiscriminant trash that lie on the sidewalks, do you know them? The ones that you would question whether they’re old newspaper, food wrapping, or maybe even just a brown bag; but guess what? You don’t question because there are so many and they’re all so fucked up that you just go right on walking by. They’re not even ugly enough to throw away. They’re gray like all the other matter in the city, and they don’t need to rot or to blow in the wind. They just need to be looked past. Ignored. Subconsciously, in that part of your mind, that superego grandmother that sees all and cares for the scraps and talks to nothing; that voice, she says, I hope someone will pick up that trash one day. Can’t be me. But that trash really does need a good picking up. Oh, well, guess they aren’t hurting anyone. I’m a hobo. A dirty fucking hobo. I’ve lived so long out there on the streets that my skin has turned the color of them. My hair looks like barbed wire and my teeth are clay.

What are you looking at? You weasel. Just write.

Hoho! Should we tell them? Should we? I think we might have to. A hobo with a stenographer? But why? they’re saying. I think we should.

Look up at it. Try to type without your eyes on your mangy mitts. Look at the barrel. Look at the hole, that black hole with that shadow. Oh, that shadow. Keep typing. Don’t look at the typewriter! Look at the shadow in the hole. Like a gopher hole, only you don’t want this gopher to come out. Because once it does, without your even seeing it… Blam! Brains on the wall and some poor sap cleaning it all up off the hotel bedspread.

Wow! You don’t have a single type-o. Makes them wonder, I’m sure. Are you really that good without looking at your hands typing away, or am I really holding a gun at your face? Could you work that well under pressure? Not one fucking type-o! Am I lying about the gun? Am I? Answer!

No.

No? No, what?

I meant, yes.

That really didn’t make any sense. Oh, hoho! This is some good shit. Let’s be crystal clear. I am going to point the barrel straight at your forehead. Stare at it. Now! Do I have a gun? Yes or no. Answer!

No. No gun.

Good boy. I like that answer. (chuckling)

I really wish I did, though. I’d shoot a hole through page 44. Right fucking through.

Well, let’s see. Where to begin? Do you like romance? You shrugged, huh?

Well, it just depends. Some romance is too airy or far fetched.

Damn right. Look at me. Do you think romance ever came into my life? Even once? Don’t shrug. Answer.

Yeah, sure.

Bingo! Good answer. Because, how could it not, right? How could anyone not experience romance? Whether it comes to fruition is another thing completely. I’m just talking about that sting. It’s one of those key components to humanity. We need romance, even if it’s something creepy and incoherent like I’m sure it is with yourself, Mr. Stenographer. Can I call you that? Or no. Too long? How about Steno? No… Graphy. That sounds really bad. Stag. Yeah. We’ll call you Stag. It’s like the word stenographer, in its own fashion. Or, what the hell. Stag Ropehorn. It’s an anagram.

What? What’s that face for?

I think, sir, that it isn’t an anagram. You added an O. Yes, actually. And you dropped an E.

Well I can’t very well stare at the fucking word written right in front of me, now can I? You have that page to help you, you little gerbil. Now, shut up, don’t offer me any advice. Just write. And maybe ask to take a piss. We discussed that that was ok.

So, then. Your name is Stag Ropehorn. When you speak, you will say after the fact: Said Stag Ropehorn.

Good. Now, romance! I like romance. Not all kinds, but my kind. I like my kind of romance. I think I can start there. Yes. Romance is intriguing, it beguiles the very essence of human nature, tickles that need to fornicate. It dolls it up, like putting a nice dress on a whore. Oh, but, geez, that’s thin ice using a whore as a metaphor for fucking. Wrap your head around that, would you? A whore already fucks, but I want her to just represent the human need to fuck. I’m not talking about metonymy! I don’t want to rename her as fucking. I want her to be (put that in italics), be fucking, as in have her exist strictly as thus. Think about it, convert it, convert her. Put it in the right fucking hole! No, no. Don’t think like that. I was touching back on the metaphor with the kid with the hammer. He’s hammering those blocks out of shape to fit the hole, to solve the puzzle willy-nilly, to ignore that pestering need to understand. So, back to the whore. Romance puts the whore in a pretty dress. Ah. I’ve lost it… Did you lose it, too? Shit. You never had it, did you, you fucking slithery weasel. Let me read that paragraph. Quiet, now.

Oh. No good. I lost it. I guess I hammered the block in the wrong hole.

Well. All right. Romance. Let’s start there. Oh, wait. Clever me! I think this is a good place for a new chapter.

Chapter 2: Romance, I Guess

Don’t confuse the title. The I guess is strictly because I was guessing I should name the chapter that. But, oh brother, I’m certain that this is romance.

Well, it all came about because I had this job, you see. I worked a sort of museum. Or not a museum that people tend to go to, so not so much a museum. It was a potential museum, an impending museum. I will call it the Impusendeum. Let me see how you spelled that, Stag. Oh, rightly done. Impusendeum. The impending museum. It was thus because, well, the history hadn’t happened yet. The history was impending, it was waiting in a nice little shell for the right people to bring it to the surface. It was an organization, you see. People, idealists, crazy people with ideas. Too many ideas. They were the ones who thought this whole thing up. Well, the main one of them, anyway. Why not create a museum for history before the history happens?

Ugh. I can see by Stag’s expression that I am not describing this too well. Of course, I won’t hold you, the reader, to his standards. You get it, don’t you? These people, or one of them, wrote down all these little manifestos and social reforms, invented a culture even, stacked all this shit in a building and waited for the plans to take action. Some of the employees liked to call it a time machine. It was no fucking time machine, let me tell you, but it had a certain je ne sais quoi. A certain genuineness to it that made me believe the bullshit. Made me think it was all really going to happen. The main thing that instilled my confidence in its verisimilitude was actually just the paycheck. Somehow these bastards managed to pay me every month, and generously, too.

And for what, huh? To stand in the empty halls and act like we had visitors. That’s right, I would stand in the Impusendeum all day, teetering from the backs of my heels to the toes, whistling and keeping a prosaically vigilant eye for anyone who stepped too close to any of the exhibits. Of course, no one did. Why? Because no one came to the Impusendeum. No one knew about it.

So why pay some sap to stand guard in the exhibits? Because the head of the whole idea was someone who believed a little too much in superstition. And why not? He was a wizard. That’s right. No, no. Not like he had a purple hat and pointy clothes with glitter all over him. He was a man completely obsessed with the occult. Whatever mythos or anti-religious spiritualism he fanaticized over was beyond me. In fact, he may have invented his own regimes or theories. That would make sense, being that he was trying to invent history. Why not go hog wild and invent a higher set of morals and physics, or spiritualism?

This brings me to a good question. What, may I ask, is the difference between spiritualism and physics? No, no. Better phrasing. What is the difference between science and faith? Can you tell me, Stag Ropehorn? Can you? Well, I know the answer. I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, let me introduce a character. Oh, goodness me. I meant to say a friend. But I’m all so rolled up in this narrative business that I said character. At any rate, he was a character. And a friend.

Thomas Biddler. Mr. Biddler. He was a fellow employee at the Impusendeum. We would roam the halls together, exchange ironic or mischievous glances to one another. That was about all. We weren’t allowed to talk because it disturbed the visitors. There were no visitors. But it disturbed the visitors. So we would just look at each other. I tell you, Mr. Thomas Biddler had the face that could tell more than any prose writer could articulate in words. He made me want to laugh every time with those looks of his. Not the usual eyebrow raise or the usual pursed lip pressed like a burst of laugh was coming. No. In a single look he could say, Hey, man, I’m going to piss on the Stretson exhibit in five minutes. Jocose of course. Or maybe, Hey, dude, at around noon I was hungry so I ate a bagel. All in one look. Can you believe that, Stag? In one look he could tell me what he had for lunch. Tried and tested, too. That very day I saw bagel crumbs in his locker as he was changing to leave the premises. That face. You heard that aphorism, or what. A picture is worth a thousand words. Then why can’t a face be worth just a many? Incredulous, Stag? You puny shit. There are fifty muscles in the human face. Well, there’s about. Fifty muscles! And you’re telling me you can’t express legions, torrents, hoards of words in all those wrinkles, flexes, and shifts? Fifty muscles! Do you know about permutations, Stag? Well, do you?

Yes, said Stag Ropehorn.

Well, good. Because you can think of those fifty muscles as a permutation, each one capable of at least two positions or functions. What does that mean? That function or position A of muscle 1 can be in combination with position A of muscle 2, 3,4, and all the rest. 50 times 49, times 48, times 47. My god, man! I should make you write the whole damn thing so it gets through that weasel skull of yours. That may very well equal more than the 250,000 words in the English language. In fact it does. By so many fold! So why are you over there snickering about his face being capable of speaking better than poets? His face was ten thousand poems, shifting from one page to the next in its voluminous bulk as muscle 32 switched to position or function B, or muscle 14 to position or function A, and so forth ad holy-shittum. Did you get that? Ad Holy-shittum.

Yeah, we didn’t talk much at all. Even in the locker. We didn’t have to, all had already been said in those unperturbed hallways and galleries of the Impusendeum. Now, I’m not claiming that I, myself, can articulate my face like the veritable Mr. Biddler. No. Some friendships are only in need of one speaker, you understand. The one friend tells, the other listens. This was our chemistry to the umpteenth degree. I listened to those faces like I’d never been audience to anything. And it fulfilled all that was necessary in the friendship. So the one day I said but six words to him in the locker, I felt like an ass. All I said was, Do you want to have lunch? No sooner had those words been spoken then I felt like some alter boy defecating on a crucifix. That wasn’t it, man. That wasn’t the friendship. It ended in those hallways, in those galleries. We couldn’t take that kind of pretense out to lunch. And for what? To ring it out and try to catch something new between us. No. Because that was us. Not the us that the one of us knew as the one side of us, you see. But the us conglomerate. We were only meant for each other to exchange those faces. Definitely not to go to lunch and talk about nonsense. Any other subject besides the Impusendeum would have been nonsense. And that was work. Who goes to lunch to talk about work? Businessmen, maybe. That’s why their gender is included in their title. The words are even put together, as if their penis had been fused to their briefcase. They are one entity with their job. Not Mr. Biddler and I, though. We were one entity that could exist only in the context of that job.

That’s why I was torn up when he turned in his resignation. I saw it while we were passing by the Richards-Daugherty exhibit. He said it solemnly, with a twinge of regret for not going to lunch, paradoxically with that knowledge that it was a futile idea anyway. That was the last time I saw Mr. Biddler’s face in the Impusendeum. But strangely, it wasn’t the last time I saw his face.

On a Monday morning, right when you settle down to bite the first piece of toast, your nostrils all full of egg and potato, the paper in your one uninvolved hand, what do you do when you see something like that in the obituary? What happens to your appetite when you see the name of a friend- someone close, tangible- delivered up like a cold meat at a deli in some formally written three-sentence obituary? I tell you, that kind of shock will make you skip breakfast all together. Then you find yourself walking on the lawn without any pants, gripping your stomach from some pain that will soon transform into liqui-shit. Where did that shit come from? I didn’t eat anything, god damn it. But I’m not angry at the liqui-shit. I’m angry because Mr. Biddler is dead. Found dead of natural causes in his apartment. How dry. I thought long about those few words used to describe the most articulate man I’d ever known. I didn’t want to have that describe his existence’s leave of my world. I wanted his face, smiling up at me with some detailed description, wry and warm like some final page in that novel of faces. So hell, I thought, I’ll crash the funeral!

I had to find out where it was, though. Luckily, Mr. Biddler had given me his aunt’s phone number one time in the Impusendeum. He’d said I should call her and buy her Honda because my car was a piece of shit. He always saw me beating the starter with a wrench every