BUT THAT DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN (from FEAR OF KATHY ACKER)
What really happened is this.
I wake up. Maybe it's all been one of those bad dreams which jerks back to the beginning of itself over and over. Maybe I was never asleep. Maybe I didn't need to sleep to imagine all of this stuff. Maybe I didn't imagine it, maybe it really happened. Or maybe it happened to someone else and I just changed the names around. You tell me. "All writing is cut‑up." What post‑modernist said that? This question will be on the Midterm. "All reality is a cut‑up." What anti‑post‑modernist said that? This question will be on the Final. Even dreams are a spontaneous collage.
But I remember everything in my life as if it were a dream. And my head is groggy, thick, and throbs inside my bedroom which twirls inside my house. So I get up, waddle into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice and some Tylenol. Fresh‑squeezed orange juice tastes great. I gulp two glasses. I hear some music coming from the living room. I must have left the stereo on. But in the living room everything is off. I DO turn off the stereo, but music keeps playing through the speakers.
"Shit, this is weird!"
And the music itself is pretty weird: like cats meowing through water with bones clinking little boney melodies and flat penises flapping on hot concrete. I don't think this is possible: That I could be hearing this weird music and not be dreaming. I must still be in bed, dreaming that I woke up and drank two glasses of orange juice and turned off the stereo!
So I go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and refuse to hear anything else.
That's when the whispers start. Miniature whispers in my revolving hangover, which puff and hiss before I can actually imagine what they might be saying to me.
"Psssst! We can't hear what you're saying because we're too busy fucking w/ yr mind, ha ha. you are a slimy cock that won't stay hard, ha ha. Listen man you piss shooter bum whore shit. . . . 1/2 of yr life is sorrow and the other 1/2 is dread. . .. ha ha… oh oh! We can't laugh anymore. Now is when we realize that when you finally get the nerve to kill yrself that we'll die too. Yet we can't honestly persuade you not to do it, because what other recourse is there? Yr whole life is one big con game on yr friends who think you are so nice, but the whole time you were scamming on some girl and trying to outmaneuver this guy and all the time trying to get yr name in the gossip pages so that yr wretched life won't have been just a stinky shit that passed down the toilet of oblivion. So don't come crying to us when it's all over and yr hair is gone and you can't see and you've run out of ideas and it's time to quit. We're just a product of yr inability to strain out guilt from all the bullshit you've said. Now the world swirls sickeningly around you and blank inevitability trembles under yr eyelids, right? And you just want somebody to love, but did you actually sacrifice yr self interest for somebody when it counted for them? NO. And now the life flow in yr particular case is about to revert to some other poor uncomprehending id, and yr time is up. SORRY. But you had yr chance to be conscious of the universe while you were here, and all you can think about now is whether you should change the tape on yr answering machine. Forget it. You're not worth the cosmic garbage that went into making you. It's as simple as that.
Good Bye."
All of which means that my ego has slipped out. And this is not the glorious Universe‑in‑Unity ego‑disintegration that Alan Watts talked about. Nor is this a vision of the oversoul, Ergot, who timelessly waits for all humanity to remember itself, piercing the wall of illusion—exploding into Unity. For now I know I'm a human being in this body, but WHO AM I? and who are these people I call my friends? Who is Michelle Clinton? Who were the people that surrounded me at Bob Flanagan's party when I was too stoned on mushrooms? And why were they all pointing at me and laughing? How did I seem to mount the dust mote passing my eyes and ride it into the circling expanding molecules of the living room wall? Or how did I remember such hallucinations when I forget what exactly "I" was/am? Whoever I am I must have a good sense of humor for these people to unhesitatingly poke fun at a poor character who's forgotten who he is. Either that or they're not my friends. What is "my"? What is "me"? I have to get up.
At this point I am trying to force myself awake again, because I see this fat policeman pop up from behind the chair in the corner of my room, and he's got a pistol aimed at my heart and he's squeezing the trigger and out comes that bullet, the gleaming tip streaming silver trails into my chest. Death is like a heavy dark blanket pounding down on my eyes. I can't open them. I can't see. This is all very scary.
Whoa!
-end-
by Jack Skelley
Jack’s Skelley’s books include Monsters (Little Caesar Press), and Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson (Fred & Barney Press). This selection, “But that didn’t really happen,” is excerpted from his novel Fear of Kathy Acker, awaiting final publication. Jack is also guitarist and songwriter for psychedelic surf band Lawndale (SST Records). Twitter @JackSkelley , Instagram @HelterSkelley
Accompanying image courtesy of Lydia Sviatoslavsky