D. Harlan Wilson

 

Avalanche of My Self


The Generator is a machine disguised as a drunk man. He's standing in the limelight. Cross-eyed and pigeon-toed, his smooth pink body is teetering from side to side.

Suddenly the Generator opens his mouth and burps. The burp manifests itself as a blast of booze that shatters the crystal movie screen and leaps out into the cold black vacuum of space. The booze spills everywhere, forming a sea in the nothingness that rears back its whitehead and tidalwaves everything in its path. It is the avalanche of my Self.

When the Generator sobers up, he arbitrarily decides to disguise himself as me. He puts the disguise on over the one he is already wearing.

Like my burp before me, I leap out into space . . . fall . . . scream and curse . . . pass out . . . wake up . . . scream and curse . . . and land on a rickety wooden raft adrift in the winedark sea. In the distance I see a sixteenth century French sailboat on which a band of pirates dressed in drag perform strange rituals. In my hand I discover an over-the-counter antidepressant pill that, when I pop it into my mouth and swallow it, not only evens out my bipolar disposition, it cures my head of baldness, too. I make a mental note to myself. The note reads: "Obtain patent."

A female movie star is on the raft with me. She's standing on the edge of the raft, shielding her eyes from the green light of the sun as she peers at the island we are approaching. Did she crawl out of the sea or has she been here all along? More importantly--is she in character or out of character? I ask her. She rolls her eyes and gives me the pestered look female movie stars give to men that hit on them. Then she snaps, "My name is Sandra Bullock."

I nod at her. "That's not what I asked you."

"But that's what I'm telling you."

"Fine. You're name's Sandra Bullock. What's your real name?"

The movie star frowns. Her lips pinch together tightly, as if a clothes pin has been applied to them. "My real name? Audrey Hepburn. I'm dead, you see."

"So you're in character?"

"I never said that. All I said is that I'm dead."

"Technically that's the same thing as saying you're in character."

"Whatever. Anyway I'm trying to film a movie here. Please stop talking to me. Go bother somebody else."

"Okay," I say . . . and punch the movie star in the stomach. She doubles over in open-mouthed pain. I squint at the island, which uses building-sized mechanical insect legs to lift itself out of the water and move closer to us, as if it can't wait for the raft to get there. The sky is a rainbow of unknown colors.

"Nice special effects," I say . . . and shove the movie star into the sea. She struggles to get back on the raft. I don't let her; every time she grabs onto the raft I kick her in the forehead. She curses me, threatens me, spits at me. She tells me she's sleeping with the director of this film and when he finds out what's going on here I'm in deep shit. Then a purple wavelet washes over her head and the sea consumes her.

The island sets itself down in front of me with a groaning noise, like an old man with a bad back sitting down on a toilet. The island is man-made. On it is a graphite mountain and a crescent beach composed of grey grains of salt. On the beach is an unkempt, whitetrashy house that is just a step above a trailer home. The house has been painted the same purple color as the sea by a man wearing a black bowler hat and an expensive skintight black suit with broad, pointy shoulders. He's standing on the porch of the house. A lazy, unlit cigarette is hanging out of his mouth and circular mirrorshades are covering his eyes. When I get close enough to the porch, he tosses me a spring line and I tie the raft off.

"There's a storm coming," I say.

The stranger removes the mirrorshades from his eyes and the cigarette from his mouth. He blinks at me. His eyes are the color of radio waves. "No there isn't. You're mistaken. Why should I believe a murderer anyway?"

"I'm not a murderer."

"I just saw you drown that girl back there. You're a murderer."

"No I'm not. For your information, that girl was a movie star. When people kill movie stars it's not called murder. It's called mercy. Unfortunately movie stars are nearly impossible to kill." I point over my shoulder. The movie star is climbing out of the water onto the raft. "See what I mean?"

A sad expression washes over the stranger's face. "Oh . . . Well, I'm just happy to be part of the film. Even if I don't have any more lines after this next one. Come on inside." He takes off his hat and wedges it under an armpit, then leads us through an upside-down door.

Inside the house is a racquetball court, or rather, the inside of the house is a racquetball court. In one corner of the court is a kitchenette complete with refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, stove and even a chef with a hearty double-chin and a tall white hat.

"My wife used to be a whore before she evolved into a person with values," is the chef's greeting. "I want the whore back."

In the opposite corner of the racquetball court is a young lady. She has flaxen hair tied up into two bushy pigtails and fake freckles have been painted onto her cheeks. She's sitting cross-legged. Her eyes are closed and she's whispering to herself in Pentecostal tongues.

"What's her problem?" I ask the stranger, forgetting he has run out of lines. I ask the cook.

"She's a little bitch. That's her problem."

The movie star takes offense at this accusation. She threatens to sic the director on the cook's ass, too.

"Don't worry about her," I say. "Her sense of her Self is problematic to say the least. She thinks she's the worlds primary referent. She thinks everybody wants something from her."

"I don't think I'm the world's primary referent."

"But you do think everybody wants something from you. Same damn thing."

"Not it's not. To think you're the world's primary referent is to think that everything in the world happens because of you. I don't think that at all. I just think everybody wants to fuck me."

I raise an eyebrow and glance at the cook. He raises an eyebrow and pulls three small onions out of his pocket. He begins to juggle them.

I look at the movie star and say, "I don't want to fuck you."

"Bull," she responds. "You tried to kill me. Thousands of people have tried to kill be before. The reason? They wanted to get in my pants and I wouldn't let them."

"I never wanted to get in your pants. Did I ever make a move on you? No."

The movie star makes a disgusted face. "You are so full of shit. What was all that conversation about whether I was in or out of character, huh? Just idle chit-chat? I don't think so. I think you're the one with the problematic sense of Self here. I think you think you're the world's primary referent."

"I don't think I'm the world's primary referent. I know it."

The movie star shakes her head at me. The cook, in contrast, ignores me and begins to dice up vegetables on a cutting board, mumbling about how his life has been socially constructed by a "bitch ethic." I get the feeling that he has suddenly become deathly afraid of me. I want to ask him if that's true, but I decide to leave him alone. I point at the movie star and say, "And since I am what I know, everybody wants something from me. What do they want? They want me to go on existing. If I don't go on existing, nobody else does. Do you understand? It doesn't matter if you do or not. I just think it's funny that you think you're hanging out on the same ontological plane as me. Anyway you're a moron and if you don't mind I'm going to pretend you're not here now. After all, you don't have any more lines."

With great difficulty the movie star tries to fling a slew of obscenities at me. Nothing comes out of her mouth, of course, so she storms out of the house and dives into the sea and swims about a hundred feet before she is gored and tossed around and butchered and finally eaten up by a great white shark. The eyes of the shark are miniature television screens on which the film Jaws 3-D is running.

"Nice special effects," I say, admiring the view. I had followed the movie star outside. Dark storm clouds are visible now and they're moving in fasttime across the iridescent sky. The camera focuses on the clouds for three beats, then cuts to a long, down-angle shot on me. I'm standing alone on the porch of the house on the crescent beach. By degrees the camera moves in to an extreme close-up on my face, which is exhibiting the vexed expression of a soap opera star just before the scene cuts to a commercial. But I'm not vexed. I'm trying to remember my next line . . .