LAST TAPE 5/21/91

So that was five years ago I recorded all that stuff, and this is the first time I’ve really sat and listened to it all. I’d sorta forgotten all the time I spent recording it, but then I found the old Wollensak and the box of tapes stuck away where I’d hidden them in the garage. I was cleaning a lot of my stuff out of there and throwing it, but I brought the box up here to the lake with me. All the tapes are here, too. I guess no one’s listened to them, or I’d probably have heard about it. I can't say it really did me that much good to talk all that out, though. It’s not like things got any better afterward.
When I started all that taping I thought just talking about those things might give them some rest, take some of the pressure off. It did seem to stop the visions. I haven't had another one since Marlene popped up in bed with us that time. But then I haven't been doing much in bed except sleeping. My affliction seems about total now.
It's not that I haven't tried all kinds of other stuff to cure it. I went to a couple of doctors and even to a shrink. The doctors said there's no physical problem. One of them even had me putting paper tapes around my cock at night to see if I got erections. The idea was that the paper would break. I'll tell you it's not that easy to get to sleep like that, but by morning those little strips were confetti. I could have told him that without all the tape shit just to make it look scientific. Hell, some nights I have trouble sleeping, the thing's hard so much. I just can't fuck.
The asshole shrink was even worse. I finally told him I'd recorded all this stuff and would he like to listen to it. He said certainly - for $300.00 an hour. Let's just say we didn't get very far. The price was right with you, Wolly, and you didn’t spout off all that pretentious psychobabble.
One thing has changed. My wife left me. Actually, I don't know why she stayed so long. I guess she's known about my extramarital stuff for a long time. Hell, she knew what I was when she married me. The thing is, she can't accept that I'm totally impotent. She thinks I'm still getting it on the side and that it's just with her I can't get it up. What can I say? I mean, it's not a hell of a defense to tell your wife, "Don't worry, honey, I can't get it up with anyone else, either." It's billed as a trial separation, but I heard her say that the separation is a success; it's the marriage that was a trial, which I thought was rather clever - for her.
I finally ended up here at the lake. I haven’t been here much during the last twenty years; you can understand why. But now It's just about the only place I can afford, considering it's free. I figured my wife deserved the house after all she's put up with, and it gives the kids a place to come home to when they're in town. I know they'd never stay there if I was in the house.
I hadn't been working much, anyway, so I took a little money I'd saved up and traveled around and finally ended up here. Actually, it's really Danny's cabin now. My mother left it to him in her will, along with instructions that I was never to come here. But Dan doesn't give a shit. He never uses it 'cause he moved to Florida a few years ago.
Not many other people are around. The whole place looks pretty run down compared to when Frank was here. They haven't even had conferences for the last few years. The story is that the church plans to sell the whole thing to developers. They'll probably bulldoze it into condos or casinos, which, God knows, the world needs more of.
I've pretty much calmed down about the situation now - about being impotent, I mean. There was a while, though, when I went a little crazy. Basically, it was just an exercise in embarrassment. It was like I couldn't just accept it with some grace. No, I had to demonstrate to every woman within reach what a really limp dick looked like.
In some ways it's a relief all that's over. Most of the ladies I'd been seeing were getting a little long in the tooth, anyway. While I still had it, I tried going with some younger ones, but most of them expect an older guy to flash a lot of money, which I had less and less of. Last year I went with one that reminded me of my daughter, who's 21 now. That definitely put me off.
At least I never ended up with prostitutes. I suppose morally I'm no better than they are, but if all this is ultimately about the death of illusion, going to whores would really be nailing the coffin.
And, of course, I tried porno films, thinking that watching others do it might make my cock jealous. No way. I mean, have you ever seen those movies? They have about as little to do with fucking as a course in auto mechanics.
First there's about an hour of giving head. If a guy really ate that much pussy he'd have a hell of a dislocated jaw. I mean, just try sticking your tongue out that long. When the asshole of a director finally does let them go to it, the guy has to fight the camera lens to get in there. Just what is the point of all those organ shots, anyway? If you're hooked up, you're hooked up; so let them get on with it. Why the great fascination with pubic hair?
If the guy finally does manage to beat out the cameraman, what good does it do him? First he has to lift his leg like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant so that the camera won't miss a stroke; then he has to lean back or do it on his side or dog style or just about any anti-fucking position you can think of.
The amazing thing is that some of these guys actually make it through to orgasm. Of course, no one comes inside - hell no! The audience has paid their five bucks and are entitled to the full shot, so he pulls out in mid stroke, beats off like mad 'cause he's losing it fast, then at least four cameras close in from different angles and in slow motion as he shoots. One ejaculation lasts about ten minutes and looks like Niagara Falls. Naturally, the lady looks thrilled as hell to get come sprayed all over her. Her mouth is saying something like, "not in my face, asshole," but you hear, "Ooooo, shoot it to me, baby!"
Watching all that usually got my cock up about as much as eating saltpeter. I do remember one film, though, that was different. The guy just didn't follow the rules. Not only that, the cameraman hadn't gotten all his practice filming auto parts catalogs. I don't even think there was a "director" screwing everyone up. There was a live mike, and you couldn't hear anyone giving directions. The sounds were like what you really would hear. The bed creaked, and they mumbled some stuff I couldn't make out, but, except for some camera noise, it was mostly just the breathing and groaning you'd expect.
There were some preliminaries, but it seemed like this couple really knew, and maybe liked, each other. They kissed and all, but didn't spend hours giving head before he got in the saddle. The camera drifted around for a closeup, just to let you know they weren't faking it, then moved around to their faces to show they were getting a little glassy-eyed, and then slipped back to a middle distance for the rest of the film. The whole effect was like something you might see it you were peeking out of a closet.
The thing that really held my attention during the film was that the guy was really fucking. Y'see, what everybody misses is that fucking, I mean really fucking, is an irrational state. You can talk all you want about the beauty of communication and mutual orgasms and the importance of caring for the person you're with, but while you can take somebody with you, they can only get into it by themselves, and in the end, really fucking is about as mindless and careless as you can get. It's really about as lonely as anything else.
Now you could tell the guy was really into it. He got lower over the gal and drove his knees into the mattress. She wrapped her arms around his back, then he dropped his head onto the pillow, rode up on his forehead and arched his back a little. I would say that he was well over the first wave, but not letting himself move on. In other words, he was riding a high. I knew just what he was doing - concentrating his whole being, everything about him, into that one small point of his body, that little connection that might let him blow himself through completely into oblivion.
I guess the gal was doing pretty well, too. Sometimes it's not so easy to tell what a woman's feeling, but a clue might be that, in addition to her arms around his back, she had her legs clamped over his butt. He could've gotten up and made a few phone calls without her missing a beat. Also, she was making a sound like, "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh."
Eventually, of course, he had to blow through the high. That's the big catch. In order to stay high, you have to keep getting higher, but the higher you get, the closer you bring the end. Now he was right in that bind. He wanted to keep going forever, but he was already pitching like a bronco. I've never seen pelvic action like that. I wish I was up to it. Finally he shot it, but no one made him jump back and beat off. Hell, only a fool could doubt that he really came. Nothing could stop a guy with a high like that unless he finally blew it.
Needless to say, all that left me with a raving hardon and no place to put it. Of course, I could beat off, but that was hardly the point, and, besides, I was in a theater.
Not that no one ever beats off in a theater. Christ, in some of those places you should wear hip boots with non-slip soles. But that was really the last thing I wanted to be reduced to: sitting in porn flicks pounding it like the sleazy old shits in the back row. I left with my balls aching and never went back. Ninety percent of porn is ridiculous, but when it works, it's even worse.

Thinking back about what I said on the tapes, a couple of things aren't quite right. For one thing, I said I never saw Marlene again. Technically, I guess that's correct, but I did see her picture once. It was about four or five years ago when Time did a cover story on architecture in the U.S. I think they had I.M. Pei on the cover.
Inside there was an article about him and some project he was developing, but there were also stories of other architects who were making it big. And right there in the middle of one page was Marlene. She was sitting on a drafting stool in front of a drawing board. Two men were standing next to the board, one on each side. At first I didn't recognize her father; his hair had turned all white, but he still looked pretty studly. The article said the other guy was Tom Schraeger, and it called her Marlene Barzani-Schraeger. That made the connection pretty clear.
The story said they had one of the hot firms in Philadelphia. They'd just finished some library that was winning all kinds of awards. It said that Marlene handled all the interior design and was in great demand because of the sensitive way she could bring even large spaces into intimate contact with the individual. I could see she'd changed a lot since Glendale.
What caught my attention, though, was a pendant she was wearing on a gold chain. It was partly covered by her blouse, but I could swear it was the locket I gave her. I really felt like calling her up and at least congratulating her, but I put it off, and then I never did it. I figured I'd made my choices, and, obviously, she'd made hers.
And then there's the thing I said about listening to the tapes hadn't done me much good, like I didn't learn anything from them. Actually, my situation is very clear to me now. I understand it all. What's wrong is that I don't feel anything about what's happened.
I understand why I can't have sex now. The conditions under which I was using sex just don't exist anymore. The deal was I used sex to keep the craziness away. Well, that just isn't there now, so sex isn't necessary. That is, I suppose the chaos, the craziness, is still everywhere, but I can't feel it - or anything much - anymore.
I know that's true because I've been up here over a week now. I haven't made any real effort to have visions or anything, but I know they're not there. I've left all the curtains open and have been all other the cabin, but it's just like any ordinary old place. I don't feel anything, and I know nothing's going to happen, and I know why.
Y'see, your brain follows physical laws like the rest of your body. If you systematically shut off some part - isolate it, refuse to use it - it will wither and die. If it's like an arm or leg, you've got to get it cut off then or it'll poison the rest of the body. But when you do that to a part of your mind, no one can cut out that part, and over the years it just rots away everything around it till no thought, no feeling, no sensation is left.
Now that I see what I've done to myself, to my life, I keep waiting to go all crazy, to rant and rave around and get all stupid. But nothing happens, and I know it never will. The falling eraser has done its job. My mind is clear.

I set up a cross country course like the one I ran that summer - the last summer I was here. I haven't done that stuff for years, but I got right back into it like I'd never stopped. I made it all the way around, including the hills, and only had to walk a couple of times. I did have some pretty heavy pains across my chest after I stopped, but they cleared up.
For some reason I've been thinking a lot about Grandpa lately. I guess this place is his again, now that the evil spirits are resting. Toward the end of his life I think Grandpa thought a lot about evil. That was about the time all the shit Hitler and his guys did in Europe was really sinking it. I remember the first time I heard much about Hitler was in his sermons. I don’t know if he was fascinated by Hitler’s evil or if he just seized on it to make his point. I mean, that was part of his job and all - know the enemy so you can defeat him when he comes at you.
I suppose that's the way he would have seen evil - as the enemy to be vanquished in battle. Onward Christian Soldiers! He was always so strong; he had strength for everyone, even for those who didn't want it. His would've been an active, destructive, violent evil - easy to spot, hard to defeat, but vincible in the end.
I wonder, though, what he knew about the evil of weakness - the daily betrayals, the procrastinations that slowly kill, the little deaths that make the final one anticlimactic. Hitler's evil was Grandpa's kind: palpable, huge, violent, stinking, stalking the earth with cloven hooves and scourging tail. But what about the little Nazis or the good, respectable burghers who voted for the Nazis, or - worse - who didn't vote at all? What about the solid country folk who tended their gardens down the road from Dachau or Bergen-Belsen and rationalized away that sweet stench from the crematory towers?
Not that I'm trying to lay this on the Germans. There's enough evil around for us all. There's the slow death of the spirit of a little kid who's been brutalized. There are the emotions that dry up for want of a mother's hug or a father's hand on the shoulder. There are the people who save their sanity by killing their memories, the only things they can truly leave to their kids. There are those who use other's bodies and laugh at their souls. And there are the ones who do to their own kids as bad as was ever done to them, and the shit of it is they - I - can't tell you how to do it any different.

OK, so much for maudlin rambling. What I need is something physical, so I guess I'll go out and try the cross-country course again. I suppose if something were to happen to me in the woods it'd be a long time before anyone found me, but I'm feeling pretty good. I don't think there's much danger of that. Besides, it doesn't worry me. I can see what's gone and what's left, and, aside from clarity, probably the only virtue left to me at this point is that of a quiet exit.

For Mal Beaty

Night Thoughts


Sometimes in silence,
In night thoughts you visit me.
When, during the day, some word or thing
Has brought you to mind,
I meet you in dreams.
But we haven’t moved on together.
Your sandy hair is still full,
Your body firm in its youth,
And your eyes, half closed as though drowsing,
Watchfully measure
Deceptions and weaknesses.

Best friends in our youth,
We later turned outward,
And friendship faltered
Under careless assumptions, easy abuses -
Faltered but didn’t fail.
We held its strands lightly,
Then, years later, feeling life’s turns,
Gathered them back, gave friendship a new chance -
Though not as before:
A breakout, life-savoring surge -
This time more measured, hardened eyes watching,
And then you were gone.

Violence took you,
But didn’t end with you.
Like fallout from an explosion, it still spreads,
Doing in years what in seconds it did to you.
Failed dreams, lost love, false hopes -
You didn’t suffer these.

Sometimes now my son,
Born years after you left,
Writes a letter in your hand,
Tells a joke in your style,
Or, with drowsy, questioning eyes watches
My struggles, my deceptions, my weaknesses,
And I wonder, my friend,
Is it only in dreams that we meet?

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