Stephen J. Williams

Author: Stephen J. Williams

  • ‘The Mystic Writing-Pad’

    In a book the lights
    of day and love
    gave me, life
    writes itself easily on
    the clear line of commerce:
    someone falls
    as simple as gravity,
    another climbs
    into strange, blue
    emptiness.

    Between its lines,
    the mind’s silence, fires
    light night’s empty dome,
    and all my whisperers come
    to warm their hands
    and snigger.

    We do not know
    whether darkness there
    or here, a sky
    of mind or night,
    protects us …

    Only, the sun rises
    when that sky
    has washed us
    of our daily fear;
    and real, then,
    in a lion’s mouth
    we wake, the air
    is clean and ripe
    for breaking with
    the smell of oranges
    and burning bread.

    The title and the poem refer to S. Freud’s ‘A note upon the mystic writing pad’ (1925). This poem was originally published in Fine Line, 1988.

  • Self-criticism

    (1983, ‘The Breach’)

    Hide and seek is the game
    we play, alternating
    parts, clinging to walls
    just beyond reach.
    Who can live with me?
    he says, mocking.
    Come out. Come out.
    Scar says hands on head,
    to your knees. Scar says
    shout, then says die.
    Scar gives the lie to
    harmless thoughts,
    then settles down
    in the dark house,
    corrupt little animal
    gnawing at the heart
    and baring teeth
    that cut up memory.
    Sleeping and dreaming
    he’s more alive,
    feeds on each hurting
    image, gorged and lying
    safe beyond the breach.

    (13 February 1988)

    Mostly there is just this
    emptiness, being

    ignorant of truths
    that might make us happy.

    Dreams peopled by strangers
    I’ve become familiar with,

    tonight, the stranger is a lover
    rejecting me and accepting me.

    “I’m afraid of you”, he says
    as we begin the slow rock.

    “And I am afraid of you.”

    (3 July 1987)

    The pink cyclamen is doing well today.
    I won’t water it
    so let it come to grief
    in some small way.

    The fern though,
    which always struggles,
    is a bit brown and prickly;
    showing what a lot of life it’s had
    and how much care I gave.

     

    (13 March 1989)

    When he is leaving and opens his arms around me
    I know there is one place I will be small and human,
    Breakable, weak, most unlike my other self.

    Lips should be the most telling part. Kissing the rough,
    imperfect surfaces to speak another language,
    I learn how smart a silence is. And also, how

    love will turn my head off like a light,
    leave me stupid, thick and clouded honey.
    It’s just as well I’m dumb with love —

    If I thought of danger or of pain, calculated futures
    or the interest gained, I would be alone.

    (23 February 1990)

    Ask, as if to extract admission,
    or hoping to discover I am empty,

    What do you believe?

    and I say, “There is nothing
    to be claimed today not wrong tomorrow.”

    I laugh my loud, ungraceful laugh,
    rub two words together, making light

    for a blind and slippery god who, for all
    I know, may also lose his way …

    “My god is the worm
    whose kingdom comes to everyone.”

    (1984, ‘The King of Hate’)

    Years the beast spends
    dining on his own flesh,
    inexhaustible passions
    coming from who knows where
    beyond the breach.
    My arms outstretched
    find a way through
    glowing darkness back
    to where the hate began
    a life of forgetting,
    bandaged head, a mask.
    Come in. Come in.
    He says, this dark house
    is larger than love,
    your heart unwired
    will warm to knowledge
    of superb pain,
    will grow to fill
    its infinite rooms.
    He crowns me king
    of beasts, winds me
    in red fields and war,
    promises all the void
    will sing my name;
    if only I would stay.

    (29 December 1989)

    I’ll go urgently to slay some small enemy,
    grind them to dust in my teeth;

    words wanting to make summer cold
    and, in this eye, a look that sours milk.

    Having my own way, the mood
    would make love stoop and the world red.

    It is madness. I admit it. I am mad.
    —But you, who could be enemy, be grateful

    there are means to make me sweet.
    Do not submit. I love strength.

    Only point my head to the thing which is —
    whatever it is: the cup’s flaw; your or my

    own human ways. —And watch me melt.
    My mad, sweet violence is completely modern.

    (18 March 1990)

    Everything dies in my backyard.
    The effort of planting is wasted
    on stone and sand.

    Dear J., here is the thing
    I have learned about M. Merleau-Ponty’s
    the sayable and the unsayable … 1

    Everything said was meant.
    I tear it up with the roots
    to show you I am dead.

    Though that unsayable part
    grows, next week
    I will bring flowers.

    Don’t ask
    Where are they from?
    I will buy or steal them.

    (A Prayer, 8 April 1990, Palm Sunday)

    I pray to speak as musicians
    pray; those whom I trust, more than writers,
    since they may speak without need to tell.
    With this desire, without end of longing
    for that sound to fill me, I am contrite,
    and offer my imperfect contrition
    to the hope I shall not end in Hell.

    O Lord, whose music made me,
    I beg you, do not leave me soundless
    where I am, believing nothing, and my mouth
    numb with lies. I am in pain.
    Say only — to this silent, shapeless
    form of life I have, you might give remedy.
    With that uncertain knife I could untie my tongue.

    (8 April 1990, excerpt of a letter)

    “… always at each other’s throats — and who has reacted to that in a similar way. I am shocked to find a person, my exact opposite in the choice of object, whose desires and the energy which drives them appear to be organised in exactly the same way as mine. The attraction — ‘curiosity’ would have been a better word — seems to go both ways. There are all sorts of questions which follow from this, like ‘Why am I not on Cogentine?’ I started ‘writing’ when ––––––’s illness started to become apparent (we are approximately the same age, he a little older).
    “There are these short sentences which keep coming out of me now, saying ‘I am mad,’ ‘I am dead’ or ‘I am in pain.’ When I write them down, in the middle of short poems (they have always been somewhere physically in the middle of the poems, neither at the start nor at the end), I start to cry. More curious: I have just noticed that each time I came to write them, I put them in italics, as though they were the names of books on which the poems were commentary.”

    (18 December 1990)

    I am two men.
    My head is a rock
    in shining sand.

    And the sun,
    which is going down,
    leaves the sky the same color

    as the ocean is. This rock
    —giant, lichen smooth,
    dark, as it always was—

    is fixed, one eye up,

    the other closed in sand.
    I am half free, half blind.

    My seeing eye rolls up
    to see the day is gone.
    Stars light the way.

    And the sea’s black waves
    pour in my sleep,
    and wash the earth and me.

    …

    I’ve forgotten how the story goes. Wait a moment. It will come to me … we wake, the air is clean and ripe for breaking with the smell of oranges and burning bread. He interrupts me to complain that the dream I have been re-telling was cribbed from a poem called ‘Jerome’ — “And a man’s soul thankful for it knows not what, The air is washed, and smells of boiling coffee, And the sun lights it” — a poem called ‘Jerome’ by Randall Jarrell, and also that the writing he has seen — he has only seen it in bits and pieces — betrays a lack of that imagination which would press the facts of the life I wish to describe into a form able to be comprehended, tasted (he talks about writing as though it were a feast, something a person sits down to, to press into the mouth, which satisfies a hunger; and this, even if it is true, is what I object to), tasted and digested. There is no point in arguing. I have not cribbed. I have merely shown how I have dreamt another writer’s dream. One morning Randall Jarrell rose from his bed, after dreaming, after lying half awake, half dreaming, and his flesh was young, and his soul thankful for his body’s sleep, and there was the smell of boiling coffee. “Now you are talking to me of desire and love, and all that sadness which follows on the heels of wanting, and I tell you that a story, such as the story you want, cannot express the truth about these things. Desire is shapeless, painful, empty. —And love, love is the feeling which fills emptiness.” Naevolus, as I shall call him – not even knowing at this stage who he is or where he has come from — because he reminds me of that discarded gigolo with whom Juvenal spoke, wants, now, just at the moment it cannot be given, the story of love, in which everyone lives happily ever after, in which death itself is dead and life is the slave of fiction, forgetting how life ends. The slave who ploughs his master’s field has less trouble than the one who ploughs him! In all those fables of love, morality and hope (“‘Look, father, what we’ve brought home!’ cried the children, and they heaped the witch’s treasure onto the table so that pearls and precious stones spilled in all directions. From that day onwards all their troubles were over and they lived happily together for many years.” “They followed the piper down the road, never once looking back at the town of Hamelin. With him they danced over the hills and far away, to a new land where people were kind and generous and always kept their promises.” “Cinderella, who was as good as she was beautiful, found husbands for her sisters too, who were wealthy and kinder than they had any right to expect.”), in those fables which are the hope life is, their lie grinds screechingly to its end in a child’s sleepy head.

    …

    (27 October 1991, Memoir of My Nervous Illness)

    We hate the thing we fear, the thing we know may be true and may have a certain affinity with ourselves, for each man hates himself. The most interesting, most fertile qualities in every man are those he hates in himself and in others, for hatred includes every other feeling — love, envy, ignorance, mystery, the urge to know and to possess. It is hate that causes suffering. To overcome hatred is to take a step towards self-knowledge, self-mastery, self-justification and consequently towards an end to suffering.

    —Cesare Pavese

    i

    It is always night here. I wait for blessings
    Which, to me, being a black creature—all unconscious,
    Never seen, ungrateful, hungry, parentless
    And discontented — shine like someone else’s sun,
    Pin-pricks in the dome.
    To this darker self,
    The lighter one, with which I live, is alien.
    “In the beginning of everything, he begged
    To enter, talked and talked like a salesman,
    Wanting to know all my secrets. I gave up
    And let the bastard in. … Now, he grubs around
    In all my dirt, builds verses in the cellar,
    And walks the wall between our rooms.
    He will not let me sleep.”

    II

    My head, a crawling nest of insect thoughts, accuses,
    Rehearses, is bursting to release its teeming sound.
    I no longer know whether I am sane or mad. My hatred
    Is an ecstasy, showing me I am alive; that will surely
    Kill me unless I free it from my mouth and speak.

    I know what must be said, the truth which has pressed
    Its thumb into my eye and made me submit; it is simple
    Enough, and I will say it … And I also know what cannot be
    Said, the same truth, ineffable and shadow, of my self
    Which falls behind me, a trail of words as long as a life.

    The world is full of proud men weeping at the sky,
    Who will not learn that longing never dies.
    I am one.

    iii

    “To be loved is better than freedom.
    You are mine. I am yours”, we sing.

    All lovers, loving done, lie together in their being, mouths stretched
    In the O of its silence and fatigue. An extinguishing quiet comes
    To rest on this skin where they went to say they were not vagrants
    And without meaning. —It was a fire in their being that lit the tree.
    They sleep in the ashes of their act.
    The dream they have, of wretched
    Animals, longing to possess, the quantities, the bartering and sums
    Of love—counted out in disappearing fragments—,
    Which whispers as they sleep, and wakes with them, is jealousy.

    iv

    I woke from a dream at three o’clock, my body thick with oxygen.
    My ancestors, white-bearded and huge, wrapped in seal-skin,
    Whispered their language at my suit and hat …
    I glimpse myself,
    And know what comedy the world has run to.
    “Enough”, I said, fearing to know more.
    Today I was the owner of my face.
    I shaved and took it out, let the sun light it, made it speak.
    I will not be an open wound.
    I will become nothing.

    v

    My chronicle is a contest
    Between self-hatred and understanding.
    I believed—

    “It is best not to have a head, best not to have those things
    That come with it. There’s beauty to see, I admit,
    But also, as Tolstoi said, the spectacular absence of meaning.
    And there’s music, that promissory note whose sum
    Is never paid. I don’t want it. Cut off my ears.
    And the dumbest of my senses—this nose. If only
    To tell me how rotten flesh is, who needs it? Not I.
    Spite my face and cut it off, too. A brain might be something
    To keep, don’t you think? —It is the home of memory.
    Tear down the whole house.
    The world has been shaved
    By a drunken barber. It comes, stumbling toward us,
    Bloodied and awful.
    It is best not to have a head,
    Best not to live with pain. Beauty, music, senses, brain,
    Come to nothing. This is what I know today. And at my work
    With whiskey and razor, I cut at the past of things,
    The muscled and unloosenable fact of remembering,
    As if to cut would make me free.”

    Now, you—those of you
    Who still have heads—look at what the headless world has come to.

    …

    (28 February 1992, Advice to Myself)

    Teachers, in their classroom mode,
    Will point the way down any road.
    Before you go, remember this:
    That getting lost is half the bliss.
    —But take a compass and a map,
    The way ahead is full of traps;
    And pack some warm and woolly socks,
    The future is an oblong box.

    Poems in this series were published in Cargo, Number 7, 1989, and Perseverance Poets’ Collection 1991-92, 1992
    1.  Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s book is called The Visible and the Invisible. ↩

  • Flowers for the dead

    Ask me why I write so many poems about the dead
    And I tell you it is because there are so many of them.
    Ask me why these poems must be written and I tell you
    It is because other poems are wrong and must be corrected.

    What is wrong about these other poems? you want to know.
    I heard one say, “My friend, who is dead now, sat with me
    All afternoon and there was nothing to say, and when I was leaving
    He stopped to take a flower from his tree and gave it to me.”

    I heard another say, “Don’t be sad—This is only as This is,
    Things growing and things dying in their cycle, all
    In their own time and in their own way dying. The dead
    Are dead and gone. Life goes on. So, go.”

    The purpose of a poem is to say what is—with the force
    Of a hammer. When it comes down, this hammer, the poem
    That comes with it, about that dead lover or that dead father,
    Should strike you in the throat and make you speechless.

    So, when someone has died, do not take flowers with you.
    When it is your turn to write about the dead do not write
    About flowers, or afternoons in the sun, or cycles, or God.
    Tell it as it was. Get out your hammer and drive the nail in.

    For example, the poem of a father says, “He preferred
    Pain to morphine, hiding pills the doctor gave because pain
    Told him he was still alive. He died in a hospital bed.
    His cleaning woman was standing beside him.

    Yes. That’s right. The cleaning woman. Fearing love more
    Than death, Dad would not let the family know
    He was human and in need of love. We read about it
    In the classified columns of the daily newspaper.”

    For example, the poem of a lover says, “I thought—
    Who the fuck is this man with bones sticking up under
    The skin of his back, who looks jagged and cold as a lizard?
    When you said you were hungry and I made dinner,

    I knew you were going to throw up, and you did
    —In my lap. Thanks. Let’s make a deal. I forgive you
    For looking at me with those weightless, jealous eyes, if
    You forgive me for hoping you would die more quickly.”

    When someone has died, do not take flowers with you.
    Make poems in the teeth of your grinding jaw and bursting head.
    The dead don’t need flowers or poems about flowers.
    The dead leave pain behind them so we know we are still alive.

    Originally published in Overland, Number 120, 1990 and then in Family Ties: Australian poems of the family, edited by Jennifer Strauss. Melbourne: Oxford, 1998
  • The black king

    The black king

    The house has been quiet for more than a year. Parties, not wild but happy, used to distract the whole block, and several of the neighbors did not shy from joining in a celebration they knew nothing about or did not quite understand. The man in this house was an open neighbor. He did not have a history, nor did he seem to create any that could be seen from the street. Amiable and talkative when he stopped at a fence to say hello, and often seen carrying a face that was all smile, he was to some people eminently approachable, and to others plainly weird.

    But women liked him. They liked him perhaps because he was conscious of not letting his eyes drop to their breasts and hips, or perhaps because, when he spoke, ordinary words would reveal an emotion.

    The house was different. Unchanging. Weather and years had no effect on it. So, when he disappeared inside it, he was no longer a neighbor but a secret.

    I don’t want to imply that the house was severe or gloomy. It was nothing like that. When he arrived, I think it was eight years ago, he stripped the ugly paint off it, planted evergreens front and back, and put startling pink azaleas in pots under the sills of the front window. On tables beside windows which faced the other street-the house is at a corner-he grew obconicas mainly, friendly flowers that I don’t like because when they are perfect they look artificial. From either street it was possible to see the rooms. They were sparsely furnished but painted in warm colors, and each of them differently. The picture of the house had been completed eight years ago and it never changed. A house should be a process, accumulating life. Parts of the garden should die, others flourish. Paintings, photos, tables and chairs, should move. Neglect should inspire unfitness of its looks, at least occasionally. And then, probably, there should be more than visitors. A family should scar it, graze the skin. A little mending and changing is good for a house. In this house, though, there was none of that. The house seemed inconsistent with the man. It had the rigidity of a silence intended to end argument and change. A picture of stability which could be happiness.

    Through most of this time I never spoke to him. That was not willful. The opportunity never arose; though it could also be said I never made one. When we first met I was one of the team whose work would be to care for him during the last few months of his life.

    “I’ve seen you”, he said and eyebrows lifted to form an irony.

    “Yes, I live close by.”

    “It must be strange. Is it allowed?”

    “We talked it over. I don’t think there will be any problems.”

    “If I’d known I could have invited you up for a meal”, he said, in that manner that was to become familiar, talking as though there were no more chances to do or to plan. For a moment I stumbled on the thought of objecting vigorously.

    “You still can.”

    He laughed, surprised to find he talked about himself in the past tense. “Yes, of course, though you may have to cook if I feel like shit.”

    “I’m not that bad a cook, really. You may be disappointed.”

    In the first half of the last year the house was noticeably closed. Window shutters locked a month at a stretch, the canary yellow car disappeared, and the grass, what small area of it there is, grew too long. He was in hospital while the burglars moved in.

    I am told that when he was in hospital he was a different man completely. The place reminded him of his dependence on other people and the truth of his illness. Why would a perfectly able and competent person be in hospital? He hardened against the forms of help and incessant prodding and testing which are natural (or at least unavoidable) in hospitals, so that it seemed to the staff he was normally unfriendly, plaintive, and terse. They were glad to get rid of him when it was decided he could stay at home, or, rather, that there was nothing more that they could do for him.

    In his house he could be difficult, too, but here at least there was time for him to explain what he wanted and didn’t want, and the team considered it part of its work to make these adjustments—within reason.

    With some people the problem is an excessive willingness to be helped; these people want servants who will turn dying into a style of luxury. —That’s what I’m told.

    In the first weeks he would allow us little more than to drive him to appointments with his doctors, for tests at the hospital, or to visit relatives. He was uncomfortable driving when he discovered his vision could suddenly blur. For a long while he relied on friends, those who were not afraid to visit or, rather, to wait through the long silences or bouts of crying that could erupt at almost any moment. If it was not plain fear that kept some away, the uncertainty of dealing with certain death restrained the rest from visiting. It was to provide relief for those people who had helped most that we were here.

    Elizabeth was the first of us to notice his passion for chess. Among the books in his library was a section devoted to the game, and in the living room an old cabinet contained at least a dozen sets of men and boards.

    “Everyone says that. Without fail, it is always the first thing you hear.”

    “No, really, I think I know the rules, but I’m sure I’m no good at it”, Liz replied. “I like board games, though.”

    “I like them less now.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “For some reason people always advise a new opponent they are really no good at the game”, he said, setting up the black pieces on his side of the board. “They think of it as an intellectual game. The mind goes on the line.”

    “No reason for you to worry, if you’re good at it.”

    “I suppose not”, he said with some anger.

    “Well, we can just play. You don’t have to talk about it”, Liz said.

    In the middle-game he started to talk again, looking at the board. “If I castle, plant a knight in front of this position, and play safely, the defence works itself out. I wouldn’t need to force a win. Draws can be very satisfying. It’s not at all like life; there’s too much art in it.”

    “Competitive, too”, Liz offered, struggling with his cryptic messages.

    “With you, unfair competition.”

    “I’m easy!”

    “All of you together, it’s unfair.”

    We learned not to be so rigid in our scheduling and we let him arrange us around him, realising that eagerness to help could destroy the will. It was unfair.

    But this, like everything in the last few months, also changed. At first, he wouldn’t allow us to do the laundry. He persisted with this ban longer than anything else, for reasons that must have been quite irrational because he didn’t mind at all that we did the ironing. In the meantime, we restored the house when he wasn’t looking, repaired the garden, and potted plants. The picture of the house got better as he deteriorated.

    He never forgot about the washing completely. His body would not allow him to forget. During long periods of diarrhoea he lost weight into his bedclothes and trousers; and when the problem wasn’t diarrhoea he would be throwing up every meal. We became adept with buckets and towels. That was easy enough. It was much harder to cope with his embarrassment and sense of degradation. When he felt this most acutely it wasn’t strange he wouldn’t talk to us, answering with shrugs, grimaces, and nods, instead of words. Moods fluctuated with his body, though, and when he felt better, he talked more.

    Twice he asked to speak to meetings of volunteers and it was during these meetings we heard what he thought about us.

    “I hate every one of the people, every one of those volunteers who come into my house”, he said. “I hate seeing my clothes neatly pressed. I hate having the bed made for me. I hate hearing questions like ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ ‘Do you think you will be able to have some dinner tonight?’ ‘Would you like to see your mother tomorrow?’ So I swear and curse. I think that if I hate everything that is happening to me enough, if I am angry enough, it will all go away. Stupid. What’s amazing is that these people decide they are not going to give up on me. Anger makes me feel better. It keeps me going.”

    At the start of summer his mother arranged a birthday party, gathering all the reluctant, complaining family at the house. She wanted us to be there, too.

    It seemed to me the more light came into the house the worse he looked, the easier it was to see those purple blotches which had appeared on his face.  —No, not really the light. It was seeing more of his family made me realise how divisive and frightening illness could be. Mother watched everyone keenly, afraid that at any moment someone would let a taboo word loose like a bullet in the air. Sister hugged him too quickly, and careful not to let her lips touch his face. Elder brother’s wife and child had conveniently found other duties with a mother-in-law. All this healthy prejudice and fear made him look ill.

    I winced with embarrassment whenever someone took up their duty to make conversation.

    His cousin, Tom, arrived like a change of weather, strode into the living room with a large, brown-papered parcel, and larger smile, planted himself on the sofa, and kissed the thin, sick man on the lips-leaving some of his smile there.

    “Sorry about the paper.”

    “Oh, god, not another one.”

    “Who did you say was the chess player?”

    “John. Over there”, he said, looking at me.

    “Good. I’ll beat him first then.”

    “Not if I have anything to do with it”, I said, accepting the challenge.

    The brown paper tore open, revealing a new chess board and heavy, wood box.

    “That’s the last thing he needs”, the elder brother moaned.

    “Yeah, I know, aren’t they wonderful?” Tom replied, opening the box and taking out two of the pieces. “Come on, we’ll set them up on the table in there.”

    Tom and I played chess, on the table with the obconicas. Brothers and sister talked, I thought too eagerly, with Liz and Mary, the two women on the team. Perhaps they thought if the conversation with the women lapsed they would have to speak with the men. With the women they could simply be grateful, but the men were another matter. They would have to ask, “Why are you doing this?” or “What are you really doing this for?” Tom, though, felt no need to avoid any of us.

    “He told me you live near here.”

    “Yep. Just down the street a bit.”

    “You didn’t know him before?”

    “No. We’d never met.”

    “Well, he likes you. I mean he likes you more than the others. Not that he isn’t grateful to all of you, but he likes you the most.”

    “I don’t understand that at all.”

    “He says you say what you think and you wouldn’t let him win at this”, Tom said, nodding at the board.

    “I don’t beat him anyway.”

    “You will, though… You know he uses the game to keep watch on himself.”

    “No?”

    “He doesn’t care about the Kaposi’s and the rest of it. Well, that’s not right: he does care. He just doesn’t want to go off his head as well. He couldn’t stand that. He’s afraid he won’t be able to think.”

    “Oh, I see.”

    “He’s got a nickname for you.”

    “Does he?”

    “Yeh.”

    “Are you going to tell me?”

    “Guess.”

    “I’ve no idea.”

    “The black king. That’s what he calls you. Silly, isn’t it?”

    “I hope so.”

    “Well, you’re not doing too well today. I’m going to win, I think.”

    “It does look bad for me.”

    “So why are you doing this?”

    “Helping, here?” I asked, to make sure I would answer the right question.

    “Of course.”

    “Lots of reasons. Just to help, for a start. Then, so he will know he’s not alone, I suppose.”

    “What about you, though? What do you get out of it? And if you say ‘satisfaction’ I’ll hit you.”

    “No … To tell the truth I don’t know yet.”

    From its first days everyone thought that summer would be particularly hot and mulled over hot synonyms like an incantation. Scorch, blaze, and the rest.

    A week after the birthday party another heat began. Mary telephoned one morning and waited at the gate for me as I ran down the street. We may have committed some indiscretion, or maybe one of the family had trusted a neighbor. It was just as likely that gossip and guessing had, for once, converged on the truth and spread like fire to the surrounding houses. On the footpath a great slash of red paint spilt from a can underlined the four letters of my neighbor’s new name, written with a thick, bold brush. I was astonished and Mary was crying. “That’s not all”, she said.

    “What else!? What else could the bastards do?”

    She took one hand from her face to point at the letterbox which was filthy with excreta.

    “Does he know?”

    “He can see from the window, John.”

    “Please, you go inside, Mary. I’ll get rid of this.”

    For a moment I thought of cleaning it, but really I wanted to kill, and might have except there was no one to lay my hands on. I settled for a sledgehammer, taking a swing at the box to knock it off the fence in one blow. There was nothing to do about the paint. Hosing down turned the red slash into a red blur, but the word was already dry and could not be moved. It stood screaming on the footpath for days and was never removed entirely.

    There were more important things to worry about. Our friend joked about the shit. “You know, you are too quick to condemn my neighbors. It could have been a very agile dog, or that big cat a couple of doors down.” Or he joked about my sledgehammer. “I’m lucky I still have a house the way you people behave!” I think it was resignation that released this humor on us, turning everything terrible into laughter. Weeks of humid, breathless heat, which I enjoyed, suffocated him. “It’s all right”, he said, “this heat now and no hell later will suit me fine.” He flatly refused to return to hospital. No one there would understand his new jokes.

    He died the night of the promised change, just to show that life really can imitate the weather. Tom tells me that Liz made all the calls when it was clear he would not last. Tom knocked on my door and said I’d better come. He didn’t need to say why. I knew it would be like that.

    Large, cool drops of rain crashed on my glasses and shirt as we ran down the street. The house, which had been sealed tight against the heat all day, was uncomfortably still and warm. As soon as he entered, Tom cried out, “Oh, for god’s sake, open the bloody windows!” It was dark, too, and I stood, sweating, in the shadows of the hall that led to the bedroom. Now, I thought, if only the doctor and nurse will not come. I wished for them not to come so there would be no more injections and orders, no more parody of medicine. I stood outside his door and wished he would die. Liz went from window to window, almost in a panic, as though opening them would save him. I hoped and wished and knew that nothing would.

    “Richard, it’s me—Tom. Do you want anything? Johnno’s here. Do you want to see him?”

    Tom put out his arm to call me into the room. It was Tom calling, though, not the man in the bed. Except that his ribs moved under the single, light sheet, he was dead already, and I doubt he could hear Tom spluttering about a game and that the black king was here.

    I sat behind Tom on Richard’s bed. I put my arms around Tom’s arms and chest to stop his fidgeting and prodding. While he sobbed, I closed my eyes and wished again.

    Then, while the house cooled, before the others came, there were no more questions, only answers.

    Originally published in Outrage, September 1988, and then in Imaging AIDS, Artists Against AIDS Exhibition, 1989, and Fruit: An Anthology of Australian Gay Writing, edited by Gary Dunne, 1994

  • A tall unmarried house-buyer

    Between the ages of 17 and 21 he was devout, and considered taking holy orders.  Before that were several years of recreational drugs, “Grass mainly”, and afterwards, the steep decline of devotion into the present.  He says there is a theory in psychology that the image of ourselves is moulded slowly by the way in which other people treat us and react to us; and also that he always thinks of himself as ordinary.  But he looks down on everyone, talks slowly, because no one can look him straight in the eye.  Taking no notice of his family, except to telephone every now and then to keep in touch, he is a little surprised and frightened that his lover finds them so disagreeable.  The step-father sells sun-glasses.  The mother is a social worker.  The step-father can spend hours giving instruction in the new technology of his product and the vagaries of the sales market; there is no division between the life of his work and his private life.  During business hours mother discusses the horrible details of a child’s abuse, knowing that the world is painful and dirty and, for some people, without hope, and after hours switches on a Pentecostal fervour in which she imagines her son surrounded by religious ornament.  She writes a letter saying what she would like for her birthday: “a cassette recording of you reading the book of Isaiah.”  The son refuses, with a knowing laugh his mother cannot hear.  “They’re all weird.”  “You’re the only normal one, are you?”  “Yep.”  There are very few people he does not like, finding something likeable in all of his fellow workers except one.  His politics and hobbies are social.  Hard-working member of the local branch of a democratic and socialist party, he brews beer at home.  Examples of it turn up at parties, restaurants, the homes of friends, anywhere it is acceptable to be seen with a bottle, and sometimes places where it is not.  Hobby, politics, and the local cricket team, define him as a social being.  Three thousand miles from his parents’ home, even further from most of what he remembers, he has fitted comfortably into an unknown city, as if no place would be alien so long as there were people in it.  Distance and change should have made him wary.  He remains unmarried, but lives with a small and quirky woman.  In their bedroom is a framed reproduction of a painting by Bonard.  It shows a girl inelegantly lumped, face down, in a messy bed, sleeping.  The painter must have known her very well, and must have loved her, less in the way some artists love each last painting than how, for others, there could be no limit of attention, or paint, lavished on unguarded poses.  The girl isn’t always tired, but she does enjoy her sleep.  They will buy a house, a study of desuetude, the only kind they can afford; and take the bed with them, and re-paint it.

  • Man in loft

    (Bach, Emerson, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Mirabeau, Foucault)

    “I have been taught to identify the mad, and to say ‘This person is mad and should be avoided,’  or ‘That person is not like us.  He must be mad’; though the lesson I have learned, in fact, is that people we wish to avoid are, consequently, mad, or that people who do not choose to be, or cannot be, like us, are mad.”  “You have to be schizophrenic to understand what it is like”, he says.  “If I were to describe what goes on in my head you’d think it was crazy.  When I am thinking it, it is very real.”  In our first conversation he tells me “I love music.  Classical Music.  And pornography.  That’s all.  Just classical music and pornography.”  Inside his flat there are clothes on the floor, along with a lot of dirt.  It is not possible to wash yourself clean in the bathroom, though the bath itself is clean.  “I clean the bath.  The bath is clean,” he says.  He plays the guitar, and then the mandolin, and then the banjo, and I notice there is a violin in a case on the floor of the living room.  —But he does not get to the violin: suddenly there is no more music and it is time for pornography.  “You’ll like this”, he says, as if by affirmation it would be true.  A woman whose breasts are clearly too large for her costume gazes through a window.  He goes to the record collection and asks, “What would you prefer—Shakespeare or, I know, yes, this will be great, Emerson.”  He shakes with excitement.  He takes out the spoken word recording of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poems.  The woman who was gazing through the window is lying on a sofa, masturbating.  “Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze.”  Yes, Ralph—of course.  There is an invisible world.  He introduces me to a friend, also schizophrenic, but one who, unlike him, refuses to take his medication.  John was a mathematician, and is still brilliant.  Now he is Jesus.  We sit in a café with Jesus, and I ask “What makes God laugh?”—immediately having to mask my wonder at hearing a precise and reasonable answer.  There is a more perfect world than the one in which we live.  Inevitably, he will refer the woman he wants to love, by way of introduction to the disciplined and misogynist world of Arthur Schopenhauer, to a bifurcation of that world into the mundane and the transcendent.  In the commonplace part he is only one of many.  By a choice which appears to be not entirely conscious he keeps the windows of his flat covered day and night, day after day, and always.  Lonely, only early in the afternoons, when he is tired of practising a difficult piece by Bach, he says to himself, “Now, what shall I do with my penis?” and, in the absence of the woman whom he loves, it is time for pornography.  The exceptional part meets the ordinary and, here, anything is possible.  He takes the opportunity to improve Shakespeare.  Once, in the asylum, he had read that “Such civil war is in my love and hate That I an accessary needs must be To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.”  Years later, in the afternoon, in a nausea induced by less than two milligrams of Cogentine, he remembers “As a necessity my needs must be To that sweet thief which hourly robs me.”  Which is taking what from whom?  Desire steals a part of everyone.  There are moments I feel he is about to say, “The world is my idea”,  and he would, as he did the moment the windows were closed and covered, look up at the sky, thinking to fly there, panic, look around him for something to hold on to; or he will, looking down at his feet, believe the world to be just a ball which will stop turning if he stops walking.  “You should read Jean Paul’s Selina to see how a mind of the first order tries to deal with what he comes to think nonsensical in a false concept which he does not want to relinquish because he has set his heart upon it, although he is continually troubled by absurdities he cannot stomach.”  He decides “I cannot love anyone” but has set his heart upon it.  One woman tells him, “You sound like a text book.  You think too much.”  These words come out of the mouths of people who love their own oppression, who have become insensible after having administered to their bodies a sufficient amount of pleasure (tennis once a week, nightly television, cheap but effective wine, a modicum of Faith).  You cannot utter such words to a man who has lived in another world, where infamous excesses are committed upon the very person of the prisoner; … vices which the propriety of modern times does not permit us to name.  In a word, you cannot say something so stupid to a man who has been mad with Desire.  The next time his psychiatrist asks “How are you feeling today?” he gives my reply: “I shall instruct my madness to be proud, For psychiatrists are proud and make their clients stoop.”  A small, typed sign is stuck to the door of his flat; it says, “Psychoanalysis: device allowing pigeon to enter but not leave loft.”

     

    Originally published in Overland, no. 120, 1990.

  • First and last words

    Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain,
    For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

    —William Shakespeare, Richard II, 2.1.7-8

    The first time I heard someone speak about AIDS Dennis Altman was warning the audience of a conference that AIDS would become a business, providing employment for professional educators, carers, commentators, researchers, opinionists and authors. At the same conference several people noted the absence of speakers directly affected by the virus.

    Later, I spent a short time writing Question and Answer advertisements for the Victorian AIDS Council (Q: Is kissing safe? A: Yes. It’s as simple as that …). I signed, like everyone else, documents (loosely) binding me to an agreement of confidentiality. One night I spoke to a man, antibody-positive, who expressed the opinion the Council’s obsession with confidentiality was at least partly responsible for the crushing vacuum formed by not being able to hear the voices of people with AIDS He acknowledged the good intention of the Council policy to protect him but added the angry footnote, “I don’t want to be protected.” No doubt the policy also exists to keep safe from those who need no protection the ones who do.

    The verbal litter of the media’s coverage of AIDS issues has been to some degree corrected by the sensible and compassionate commentary of Altman and a very few others. I waited for a while to hear how creative writers and artists would speak about AIDS, and heard nothing, or so near to nothing as makes no difference. I waited, also, to see in print the record of those personal experiences which only people with AIDS can tell and, again, found almost nothing. It is obvious confidentiality is not the only agent of the silence we are in. I cannot resist the temptation to tell a simple and ineluctable truth … There are too many creative writers. Quite a few of them are gay. Hardly any of these (I’m being very generous, I think) have bothered to write anything about AIDS. Therefore, gay Australian writers are, on the whole, a bunch of fucking wimps. I feel better having said it.

    Ending my own intransigence by seeking to promote the publication of whatever people with AIDS had written I found more disturbing reasons for the stifling climate. Writing requires an effort of concentration and endurance which people with AIDS often find themselves unable to afford. During periods of illness, if there is no one who can be trusted to transcribe a tape recording or to assist with the physical trouble of placing words on a piece of paper, no strength of desire can overcome the fact of physical weakness. —And when the writing is done there is no guarantee it will be published. One journal, written by a man who died of AIDS in 1987, has so far failed to be published because—the editors said—it is not very well written, and too short to stand alone. This failure makes me rigid with anger: considerations of ‘Literature’ and ‘Art’ should prevent the publication of almost everything we read these days.

    Do I really need to give reasons for you to read the excerpts from James’s journal which are reproduced here? Perhaps not, but bear with me a while so I can list the most important.

    First, James wished to be heard. On 29 July 1987, when it appeared his journal may have been lost, James spoke into a tape recorder recounting the anguish of a person who had been violently gagged.

    “I just cannot believe what’s happened! Yesterday Wendy looked for my journal but couldn’t find it. She left and Bob rang. He said it was in the drawer. It wasn’t there. In fact it was nowhere and still hasn’t been found today. Yesterday I panicked and felt around, the nurses searched everywhere, people were phoned. It just disappeared from my room.

    “I just can’t believe this. I was so upset, I’d lost a part of myself, yet how? How could it just go? Who would take it? If someone came in, why would they take that? Wouldn’t they take my walkman? What if it got caught up in the linen? Where the hell is it? I felt bad enough before this; I was agitated, angry. I’d just been here so long, felt I couldn’t stand it, was upset. It was all getting to me: the hospital, drips, needles, tests, people in and out, noise-just too much! Then yesterday stretched it so far I’d thought I’d snap, even if they just wanted to take my temp. I didn’t think I could stand even that.”

    Second, recording the ordinary facts of his own illness and death, James shows how unnecessary and wasteful ‘good writing’ is: lying requires an effort of will which the very ill are not likely to squander.

    Third, I am showing only those parts of the journal which refer to James’s eyes so we can think, as we read, about how lucky we are; and to remind us that, by reading, we can silently agree James’s work was valuable and is not wasted on us.

    May 24

    My left eye is causing me some concern. Maybe I am worrying too much, as usual. It’s just that I’m scared it’s getting worse. I close my right eye, using only my left and it seems I can only see half of what I should see. I can see directly ahead but not below the centre or to the left side unless I move my eye right around and then I can still only see what I am looking at. So, if I look left I can’t see straight ahead. The same if I look right.

    It is scary because it really does seem worse. And if it gets any worse than this it will really affect my day-to-day life. If unable to drive, I’d lose a lot of my independence. No—I just couldn’t stand it …

    June 4

    Bob told me some strange news yesterday. He said that a Scottish vet had found a vaccine that kills the AIDS virus in monkeys—that there was a vaccine against it, but they hadn’t tried it on humans. It hit me very hard. Imagine the impact that news like that would have on me. And to make matters worse, we didn’t know any more than that. Could it ever be used on humans? Did it just prevent you from getting AIDS or could it be used on people who already have AIDS? There were no details, other than it worked on monkeys. And monkeys being so similar to man, it created a real possibility of hope.

    My head spun with a hundred questions and no answers. Emotionally, I was stuck in limbo. I felt like crying, laughing, yelling, but I couldn’t. Because I didn’t know enough to know how to feel. We didn’t know for sure. But there was hope, a new hope!

    Bob heard it on the news, so we thought that more information would be gained on the news that night. I looked at all the evening news shows and there was nothing! Not one mention! I couldn’t understand it. We both couldn’t. By then I was OK and wasn’t really thinking too much about it. I was thrown into such a state that my brain switched off to stop the torment of all these questions without answers.

    And my left eye is getting worse. When I use only the left one, the lower right corner is distorted. So if I look at the TV with the left eye, the bottom corner bends upwards. And I’ve had double vision, too. Before I could just hope it would get better. Now it’s painfully obvious that it won’t. But still I don’t think about it if I can help it, which is almost impossible because I use my eyes all the time. I can’t think of ifs and buts and what-ifs, because I don’t really know what’s going on. I only know I see less: this flat, all of a sudden, seems so much darker, and I can’t drive at night and even walking outside at night is very difficult. I could have cried a few times this week, but it just didn’t come out …

    June 12

    But the hardest part of it is that I am finding it more difficult to do things and if it gets worse then things become even harder. I lose so much independence, constantly in need of help. What about reading and writing? And driving and going where I want to go when I want to go?…

    I try too much not to walk into things, so what happens? I walk into things. So I got out of there as quickly as possible and came home …

    June 16

    Things haven’t improved in the last few days. In fact things have become much worse. Even writing this is most difficult. My eyes have deteriorated in the past week and even more in the past two days. I’ve also not been feeling very well for most of the past ten days or so, although today I feel good again physically …

    Since Sunday my right eye has become fuzzy, making it very hard to read, write and drive …

    Today I was wiping the bench and I double checked that it was clear of anything. I moved my arm across and knocked a glass across the room. I even made sure to check. The glass was right under my nose and I couldn’t see it. I can’t see anything down there. Anyone would have seen it. It’s been a pretty lousy few days …

    June 25

    When they went bad all of a sudden, over just a couple of days, it really scared me. I just hoped and hoped that it wouldn’t keep going the way it was. I guess I could say it’s been the worst few weeks I can remember …

    I was convinced I had to feel bad about my eyesight, I mean angry and I should cry and throw things a lot. But now I see where I was going wrong. I wasn’t following how I felt. I was reacting in a way I thought I should, how I’d be expected to react in other people’s eyes.

    So I guess Bob was right. The decision not to drive was the acceptance by me of the condition of my eyes …

    July 3

    I saw my doctor who suggested a new drug I could try if I wanted to. The only thing is it may do nothing. It may improve my eyes and it might have side effects. I said, “Yes, of course, I’ll try it.” I felt I had to try …

    And the theatre was so dark! I just had to go very slowly and hang on to Bob. I’ve not had to hold on to someone before and that was hard to cope with too …

    I was admitted into hospital for the new drug Phoscarnate.1 It is a new drug from Sweden, with no guarantees, but it could improve my eyes. There is a very small chance of some side effects. Hallucinations, anaemia, headache, epileptic fits, and a few I can’t remember, but really they were such rare occurrences, like 2 or 3 per cent.

    When I arrived on the ward, no one knew exactly why I was there. Oh, but I did of course! Someone said was my DHPG2 ready? And I had to tell them, “No, I don’t have that any more.” They said I should go to my room and settle in and all will be sorted out. I asked the nurse who took me, “Why am I here?” She said the doctor probably wanted to keep an eye on the cough I’d been telling them about for six weeks. I said, two weeks is a long time for a check up, that I was here for a new drug to try on my eyes. Oh, says she, I’ll go and check. Nurse returns: Yes, you are here for that. Patient, who knows nothing, says: Yes, I had already told you all that! I knew why I was there, no one else did and when I tell them they check, come back and tell me why I’m here. But I’m the patient and they are probably embarrassed because they didn’t know. Oh yeh, they’d also lost my file. Probably why no one knew what the hell was going on. It was all a bit of a joke, really.

    The drug didn’t arrive on Monday. They said Tuesday, but Tuesday comes and the drug didn’t. They now say Wednesday! I am handling being in hospital, it is a nice rest, I eat well when I can (I’ve seen the dietician about eating only what I want) and it’s warm. But I was getting agitated about being there for no apparent reason. But as always there was a reason for me, I thought, and the reason for this also caused me more worry and agitation.

    Thursday—no drug.

    It’s Friday, here I am and so is the drug. I am apprehensive, hopeful, determined, a bit unsure of its effects, all sorts of feelings. They want me now, to plug it in!

    July 16

    Today they told me the heart problem was probably due to the same CMV in my eyes. I seem to get worse: like 39° temps, not being able to eat, vomiting.

    I was on the Phoscarnate for one week, and they took me off because it was affecting my renal functions and they’ve put me back on the DHPG with a much higher dose. What’s going to happen in the next few weeks? Well, nobody knows. The only good thing that came out of it was that I might be home in a week.

    July 20

    Lunch was lovely but the whole experience wasn’t easy. Last time I was in that restaurant, I could see the beautiful room. This time I couldn’t see any of it, and Bob had to cut my food. I’ll have to adjust.

    I did something so stupid, walking from the cinema to the restaurant. I put in more of a limp than I already had, because I was holding on to Bob and I didn’t want people to think we were ‘together.’ Afraid of comments!! I felt a right idiot afterwards, when I thought about it. People that I couldn’t see and never would again, who cares about them? I shouldn’t, but today, well, I just got silly for a while …

    July 21

    The eye specialist came and said the number of white spots in my eyes had decreased. Good news for once. But he was concerned about my central vision: that the white area could spread to the centre, even though the number of spots is decreasing. That danger has always been there anyway. They just will NOT grow there, they just CANNOT and I’m bloody determined they won’t. The main thing was that they decreased—so why should they grow any more? They will not! They will GO! He left his report, the doctors are keeping me on medication. It seems obvious to me, seeing as it’s helping …

    August 18

    I guess I couldn’t be bothered, I wasn’t interested and I just can’t write any more. That’s why it’s on tape and Wendy is copying it into the journal, which I guess is basically the same thing. I’m not writing it, but they’re still my thoughts and words …

    August 10

    (By this time James was using a tape-machine to record his thoughts. The tapes were later transcribed to the journal by Bob and Wendy. In these tape recordings James often recalls the events of previous weeks, explaining the confusion of chronology in these entries.)

    But yeh, I guess I’ve got something to complain about: who wouldn’t get angry, depressed, complain if their eyesight were just slowly going and if their life-span wasn’t expected to be long?

    August 12

    I was talking to my doctor, the day before, and I was telling her that I was thinking of getting a white stick, so if I was ever walking through the streets with someone and I bumped into someone, they would know that it’s because I can’t see very well. Maybe I wouldn’t get abused and if I had the stick people would move away and let me through. I’d have someone with me, of course, I couldn’t do it by myself.

    She said that was a good idea and later that day the physiotherapist comes in and gives me a walking stick! I was quite annoyed really, that they just told this girl, “Give him that”, and hadn’t bothered to talk to me about it. I was just a patient. So then I thought, what the hell … If nothing else it might be a nice prop. But that’s just it. I was talking to my doctor about a white cane and somehow or other it ended up being a walking stick.

    August 14

    I believe my eyes are getting worse, I don’t think it’s working so why have the drug. It seems harder sometimes, to have my eyes deteriorating than it would be if I just couldn’t see. I would just have to get used to it, then and there and get on with it! But then I can see things close to me, like an ashtray, cigarettes or a cup: if I look around on the coffee table, I can find them. I should be grateful that I can still do those things and see. But I’m so fed up and angry, I’ve been so depressed. It’s no wonder I want to forget the drug, forget the hospital …

    August 22

    I think it’s going to be OK. I think everything is just going to be OK. I feel good and I feel less weight on my shoulders. I feel better within myself. It’s going to be OK!

    …

    At this point the tape-machine James was using jammed.

    It is, I think, wrong to assume James’s last, hopeful remarks are an hallucination. Having, in the end, more conviction than most in the truth of his unusual spiritual beliefs, he refers to the future of his soul, not his body.

    Wendy said of James’s last month that “Slowly, he retreated into his inner world and conversation with others became more limited. However, he would still assure us that he knew what was happening, even when he seemed to be asleep.”

    A few days before his death, having already survived several weeks longer than some people expected he would, James appeared one night in Wendy’s dreaming. He was healthy, beautiful, and clear—the picture of his former and future self. In the dream they worked together in a field planting onions.

    James died in his sleep on the evening of 18 September 1987.

    1989

    [Information about the David Williams Fund, where contributions can be made to assist people living with HIV.]
    1. Foscarnet. ↩
    2. A cytotoxic drug administered by drip. ↩