Paul Curran, Left Hand, Civil Coping Mechanism, 2014.
excerpt
paul-curran.tumblr.com/
paulcurrran.blogspot.jp/
“Left Hand is every reason why Paul Curran is one of the smartest, most daring, meticulous, violent, delicate, awe-inspiring new fiction chiselers in the known world, if you ask me. His work has been a huge favorite of lucky insiders like me for years, and now the secret is finally and definitely out.” —Dennis Cooper
"With Left Hand, Paul Curran has written something so different that reading it will make your eyes burn.”
—Matthew Stokoe
—Matthew Stokoe
"Stop the psychotic qualitative self-deception of childhood as Henry Miller, Paul Curran’s Left Hand ordered a mandragora sex. It is a cyber ploy plausible to deal with Georges Bataille’s supreme life anyway, this literary alcohol than ecstasy drugs cruel image of Antonin Artaud’s formalin fixed heart that heresy novel is formed on the eroticism cause of supremacy he was attached to the soul of Jean Genet’s sexual literature manual of the internet through perversion strong language.”—Kenji Siratori
“As a manual for how to go mad, Left Hand will find its own audience, but I urge discriminating readers to seek it out and read it with the utmost care and patience: slowly it unveils and embodies what happens when a sensitive mind, scarred by the sins of the fathers and the “acid rain” of today’s neoliberal globalism, revolts by letting his genitals control what’s left of him after the cutting. We’ve all gone there to one degree or another, but only rarely, perhaps not since the death of Brigid Brophy, has so fine a mind allowed us access to all ten circles of hell. Or meta-hell: ‘I go to this novel’s funeral, sit on a hard chair, and observe the casket entering flames.’”—Kevin Killian
"Like most fogged and drug-coated apathetic worlds, Paul Curran’s Left Hand begins by playing into our assumptions of the consequences of narrative violence and unpoliced desire. But as we proceed, unraveling takes hold and all perceptions of ordered identity, even the state of the novel, explode into a slowly undulating chaos. The reader is erupted, returned, through amputation and orgasm into a new site of beginning. I felt afraid in welcome, unprecedented ways.”—Cassandra Troyan
Twenty years ago I went back to university to study writing, won a short-story competition and then a scholarship to do my masters. The manuscript I wrote was short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, got interest from several agents, but was rejected by all mainstream Australian publishers. While living in Japan in the early 2000s, I wrote another novel that my agent rejected and then I rewrote the first one. I was based in London by then, and after my agent rejected the rewrites, I sent it to every agent there and they also rejected it. So, around 2006, inspired and encouraged by new internet writing, and particularly the community gathered around this blog, I decided to start something completely new.
Left Hand consists of four interlinked sections. There's two parallel sets of second-person imperatives based on command hallucinations, advertisements, or song lyrics (Left Hand/A Tower of Limbs). These are like columns that the other sections move around and bleed into. The first instruction section runs linear, and the second runs as a broken reflection of the first. Both sets are divided into 21 parts made up of five blocks (1-5) of five instructions (a-e) that are ten words. In several notebooks, I outlined both sections with 10 instructions (a-j) as a paragraph each and then cut five lines from the final list using a random number generator. While following this procedure, I also wrote notes in the margins or across the pages, anything I was thinking about at the time, memories, comments, observations, processes, distractions, and then wrote these up and mixed them with research papers and violent porn descriptions into a 100,000 word document. I scrambled the document by cutting and pasting at random into a new document. Then I used two different translation programs to translate the fragments into Japanese and then back into English. Finally, I edited and rewrote the whole thing as a 10,000 word first-person meta-monologue (Obscure Distortion Organ). I wrote the last section (Scatter), which is third person, straight onto the computer with minimum notes after completing the other three sections.
I finished the manuscript of Left Hand in 2012 and sent it to Civil Coping Mechanism. They got back to me within 24 hours and offered to publish it. Marc Hulson, who I met through this blog, agreed to paint something for the cover and also asked me to collaborate on a project for Five Years Gallery. Part of that collaboration featured covers of previous editions of Left Hand mentioned in the novel. - Paul Curran (Tokyo, April 2014)
Twenty years ago I went back to university to study writing, won a short-story competition and then a scholarship to do my masters. The manuscript I wrote was short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, got interest from several agents, but was rejected by all mainstream Australian publishers. While living in Japan in the early 2000s, I wrote another novel that my agent rejected and then I rewrote the first one. I was based in London by then, and after my agent rejected the rewrites, I sent it to every agent there and they also rejected it. So, around 2006, inspired and encouraged by new internet writing, and particularly the community gathered around this blog, I decided to start something completely new.
Left Hand consists of four interlinked sections. There's two parallel sets of second-person imperatives based on command hallucinations, advertisements, or song lyrics (Left Hand/A Tower of Limbs). These are like columns that the other sections move around and bleed into. The first instruction section runs linear, and the second runs as a broken reflection of the first. Both sets are divided into 21 parts made up of five blocks (1-5) of five instructions (a-e) that are ten words. In several notebooks, I outlined both sections with 10 instructions (a-j) as a paragraph each and then cut five lines from the final list using a random number generator. While following this procedure, I also wrote notes in the margins or across the pages, anything I was thinking about at the time, memories, comments, observations, processes, distractions, and then wrote these up and mixed them with research papers and violent porn descriptions into a 100,000 word document. I scrambled the document by cutting and pasting at random into a new document. Then I used two different translation programs to translate the fragments into Japanese and then back into English. Finally, I edited and rewrote the whole thing as a 10,000 word first-person meta-monologue (Obscure Distortion Organ). I wrote the last section (Scatter), which is third person, straight onto the computer with minimum notes after completing the other three sections.
I finished the manuscript of Left Hand in 2012 and sent it to Civil Coping Mechanism. They got back to me within 24 hours and offered to publish it. Marc Hulson, who I met through this blog, agreed to paint something for the cover and also asked me to collaborate on a project for Five Years Gallery. Part of that collaboration featured covers of previous editions of Left Hand mentioned in the novel. - Paul Curran (Tokyo, April 2014)
Easily the grossest of this list, Left Hand immediately brings the reader into its damage by giving him no choice but to interact. Opening to the first page, we find what looks like a set of instructions, spelled out as commands:
1.1
(a) Perch with your feet on either side of the bathtub.(b) Stare at your cock getting hard through the rising steam.(c) Hear your lungs sucking in the most air they can.(d) Exhale and then thrust your mouth down at your cock.(e) Slip under the water hitting your head and pass out.
The text goes on like this from there, leading you block by block through scenes of very gruesome abuse and sexual machination, like some kind of roleplaying game penned by Sade.
Then, interrupting the lists of commands, longer text blocks appear, which seem to open the book into the room behind the room, into the mouth of the programmer. Suddenly we seem to be alongside the one directing all the hell. “To stop this novel occurring from this motel room is impossible,” the first non-command sentence states. The narrator appears to be at war with the thing he’s been designated to create, taking part in real-life scenes as close to those we’ve been commanded to perform. It is almost as if the narrator has been enslaved to his creation, forced to recreate things that should have never had a life. By the end, everything is so fucked it doesn’t even feel fucked anymore, and the private life of the narrator doesn’t seem strange either. It creates a truly terrifying feeling—recognizing that you’ve forgotten not to relate to what the book would have you do, which is maybe the rarest sort of power. - Blake Butler
Paul Curran is a mysterious man. He lives in a foreign country (rumor has it he’s Japanese), keeps somewhat quiet on Facebook, and doesn’t have an author bio on Amazon. His blog is a monstrous thing that got me fired from work and has tall white men in dark blue suits knocking on my door at all hours of the day. I always hide in the bathroom and try to control my breathing. Anyway, for indie lit connoisseurs, Curran is also one of those gems that make reading one of the best things in the world. But you don’t have to listen to me, here’s what Dennis Cooper had to say about Curran’s latest: “Left Hand is every reason why Paul Curran is one of the smartest, most daring, meticulous, violent, delicate, awe-inspiring new fiction chiselers in the known world, if you ask me. His work has been a huge favorite of lucky insiders like me for years, and now the secret is finally and definitely out.” Well, I knew Curran still had some secrets, so I subjected him to some weird questions. Things got really bizarre and yes, I’ve had sex with a photocopier and sometimes impersonate Brad Listi.
\m/ \m/
Gabino Iglesias: I could try to tell people what I think you were trying to accomplish with the unique format you used in Left Hand. However, I think it’d be best if I asked you about it eloquently: dude, what up with that format?
Paul Curran: You’ll have to speak louder. This phone line’s terrible. Something about the elegant format? Oh, yes. They gave me a painting-by-numbers kit as some kind of therapy for my autoimmune skin condition, to stop me picking the scabs and joining the dots with the stuff oozing out. Did you know that in 1951 Palmer Paint introduced the Craft Master brand which sold over 12 million kits? This public response induced other companies to produce their own versions. But it was only the Craft Master boxes that proclaimed, ‘A BEAUTIFUL OIL PAINTING THE FIRST TIME YOU TRY.’ And you know how in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s logical construction of a philosophical system has an obvious purpose—to find the limits of the world, thought and language; in other words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense? Well, the characteristic of being senseless applies not only to the propositions of logic and science but also to mathematics and fiction and pornography or any pictorial form. These are, like tautologies and contradictions, literally senseless, they have no sense. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Are there a lot of numbers or something in Left Hand? Have you read the book? Can you even hear me?
GI: I’m reading the book now and I’m appalled at the lack of teenage vampire romance. Are you against selling books?
PC: You’re reading the book while we’re doing this podcast? That’s brilliant. Have you got a speakerphone or have you undergone some kind of split-brain experiment? I wish they’d given me a speakerphone instead of whatever they did to my brain. I’m finding it hard enough just holding this thing and talking at the same time. I’m also appalled at the lack of teenage vampire romance. I’m sure I included a lot of scenes of teenage vampire romance. They were the best, hottest bits. I can check my notes and get back to you, but as far as I remember, the final draft I turned in was subtitled: A Modern Teenage Vampire Romance. So I’m not sure what happened. Maybe best to ask the publisher or the printer. Or maybe not the printer. And, yes, I’m against selling books. I think they should be free, like in libraries, but you can take them home longer.
GI: Michael J Seidlinger said something about sending the book to the printers and how they would probably stop their work so they could go jerk off. Is the book’s onanistic potential something you wanted to achieve or were you just lucky?
PC: There was apparently some delay at the printers just before the book launch. The story I heard was that some hands were aroused and jerking off and other hands were disgusted and knifing the hands that were jerking off and other hands were entertained and clapping and other hands were bored and just wanted to finish work and so on, and anyway, in the same kind of autoimmune revolt depicted in the book, a refusal to be pinned down and labeled, hands and genitals got jammed in machines and that’s why on the cover there’s those bloody-looking splatters across the title and the border. That is to say, yes and no. The book doesn’t necessarily follow the kind of consistently integrated narrative trajectory conducive to satisfactory onanistic fulfillment, and persecution hallucinations are as prevalent as sexual fantasies, so while there’s plenty of explicit sex and perversion, the perversion is also perverted in a double bind of acceptance and denial that disintegrates hierarchies and unitary forms of human desire until there’s nothing left. This continual shifting makes masturbation potentially dangerous, especially if there are machine around. In Circumfession, Derrida answers the question of what he loves in a different way. No, forget all that. Please cut that answer when you edit this podcast. No one will want to read the book now. Yes, it was intentional, and yes, I’m lucky. It’s a total torture-porn wank fest. What are you wearing? Have you ever had sex with a photocopier? A photocopier (also known as a copier or copy machine) was a machine that made paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. What did you say?
GI: Do you like Brussels sprouts?
PC: Yes, please. The lunches around here are unacceptable. Notice how the ‘s’ is cut when I say ‘Brussel sprouts.’ That’s what I mean about the amputation of onanistic potential. Things coming up and then getting cut down. Time is weird. I’ve been to Brussels, but stayed longer in Bruges. Forerunners to modern Brussels sprouts were likely cultivated in ancient Rome. Don’t you think Roman sprouts sounds better than Brussels sprouts? But they do apparently prevent colon cancer. I’ve had a few colonoscopies and endoscopies. I used to keep the pictures under my pillow until my nurse took them off me. They were like the most amazing kind of internal autoerotic porn. That’s where I found this novel. In its most embryonic state.
GI: Left Hand was accepted for publication 24 hours after you submitted it to CCM. What do you think took them so long?
PC: A manuscript crossing the International Date Line (IDL) eastbound subtracts one day, or 24 hours, so that the calendar date to the west of the line is repeated after the following midnight. Crossing the IDL westbound results in 24 hours being added, advancing the calendar date by one day. The IDL is necessary to have a fixed, albeit arbitrary, boundary on the globe where the calendar date advances in the westbound direction.
GI: I love language that delivers a message without beating around the bush. However, others want sugar-coated fiction. How do you think those readers will react to lines like “Feel the Coke bottle rip the inside of your asshole”?
PC: I guess readers may be put-off by the obscene product placement. I wasn’t even paid for that message. Perhaps I should’ve approached Pepsi. Or at least gone with Diet Coke. Sugar’s bad for your teeth. I’ve got English teeth. So I don’t eat sugar anymore. I’ve lost a lot of weight in here. Did I mention the lunches? I’m actually not allowed to eat anything. It’s all through a drip.
GI: Matthew Stokoe and Dennis Cooper, among others, blurbed LF. Did that make you a little smug for a while?
PC: I’m losing the connection. Are you still there? Something about the blurbs being smudged in that printing fiasco? Well, that made me feel bad, but I was also very happy that writers I admired and was influenced by (ripped off) read and liked the book enough to write something about it and let me put that on the wrapping.
GI: I have a bit of an obsession with Aokigahara. Do you think anything good can come from that? Also, is the weather in London as awful as everyone who’s never been there says it is?
PC: Can you ask one question at a time, please? Yes, I think good can come from anything, especially your obsession with Aokigahara. You should write about it. Just follow the numbers in Left Hand. Or paint a picture. I wonder if there’s a painting-by-numbers Aokigahara version. I’ll ask my nurse after this call. I’ve never been there, but I once climbed Mt Fuji and got altitude sickness and felt like I wanted to die. I’ve got a story in an upcoming Cityscapes with a line, ‘Others speak about the big mistake, millions of drunken needle explosions, automobile industrial accidents, the irresistible stench from a masturbating corpse, and the cute jingle of a sports bag, pecked at by eagles, dragged back from Aokigahara Forest, burned beneath tables in alleyway bars, stuffed into a coin-locker at Shinjuku Station.’ Oh, no, the weather in London is much worse than awful, but everyone goes to the pub all day, so no one notices, and then one day it’s sunny and everyone goes outside and it’s really beautiful for a couple of days and everyone takes their clothes off and lies in the park and gets burnt and forgets the bad weather and then it rains again so they go back to the pub. 9. Blood or whiskey? Is that two questions? I’m not meant to drink in here. It makes my skin worse, and fucks up my meds and my liver. But okay. Why not. What’s the time? Whiskey in the morning, blood at night. Or red wine anytime. I like to compromise. From the New World. Australia or Chile. 10. Who’s your favorite left-handed author? Joan of Arch. Was she a writer? Was she even left handed? Are you still listening to me? Who are you, anyway? I thought Brad Listi was meant to call me. Is this Bret Easton Ellis? Who is this? - Interview by Gabino Iglesias
For the first few moments there is the celebration of the left hand. Condemned for centuries for being the evil hand left-handed individuals no longer cower in fear. Yet their lives are full of small insults of a world made for right-handed individuals. The left-handed continually look for their salvation and find nothing. At the end of their lives the right-handed ones try to give them a handshake and fail. Life’s little tragedies fit in the palm of a hand.
Doctors try to give out the proper advice. Proper is not a pseudonym for right. What is right is not typically proper. The world is funny that way. Stitched together by fast-moving threads the world is string theory. Everyone tries to hide themselves behind something, clothes, a trampoline, any element of fun really. A body is not fun. A body is something to live inside of for years upon years, waiting as the body thing shrivels up. Inside the body is a mind that is fully aware of this fact and it is unable to stop the aging process.
A body needs foreign objects inside. Typically this happens many times throughout a day. Food is destroyed inside of a body. Various tools to remove those foods are placed into the mouth to try and brush teeth, to keep the world clean in a jungle of a mouth. Nobody says a word about these things, why they need to happen, what the point is really. Doctors are aware of these facts, fully aware. In extreme cases doctors can replace the human with the machine. Hence there are implants, fake knees, arms, and hands, almost everything. With enough hardship the human becomes less human more imagined. Long ago such a thing would not be possible. Aging terrifies people, enough people with enough power to stall the inevitable decline.
Power pushes back. Smaller powers take longer. Life is a pendulum swinging without concern. Eventually everything swings back and forth, having the good moments with the bad moments. From extreme to extreme the balance is fleeting. A select few recognize the balance that lives between the extremes of good and bad. Such moments ought to be cherished. Moments of clarity offer a glimpse into the future. Depending on the strength of the eyes those fleeting glimpses can determine an entire life. Sometimes a future can flash before a person’s eyes. Unfortunately most people tend to blink.- Beach Sloth
Paul Curran is a mysterious man. He lives in a foreign country (rumor has it he’s Japanese), keeps somewhat quiet on Facebook, and doesn’t have an author bio on Amazon. His blog is a monstrous thing that got me fired from work and has tall white men in dark blue suits knocking on my door at all hours of the day. I always hide in the bathroom and try to control my breathing. Anyway, for indie lit connoisseurs, Curran is also one of those gems that make reading one of the best things in the world. But you don’t have to listen to me, here’s what Dennis Cooper had to say about Curran’s latest: “Left Hand is every reason why Paul Curran is one of the smartest, most daring, meticulous, violent, delicate, awe-inspiring new fiction chiselers in the known world, if you ask me. His work has been a huge favorite of lucky insiders like me for years, and now the secret is finally and definitely out.” Well, I knew Curran still had some secrets, so I subjected him to some weird questions. Things got really bizarre and yes, I’ve had sex with a photocopier and sometimes impersonate Brad Listi.
\m/ \m/
Gabino Iglesias: I could try to tell people what I think you were trying to accomplish with the unique format you used in Left Hand. However, I think it’d be best if I asked you about it eloquently: dude, what up with that format?
Paul Curran: You’ll have to speak louder. This phone line’s terrible. Something about the elegant format? Oh, yes. They gave me a painting-by-numbers kit as some kind of therapy for my autoimmune skin condition, to stop me picking the scabs and joining the dots with the stuff oozing out. Did you know that in 1951 Palmer Paint introduced the Craft Master brand which sold over 12 million kits? This public response induced other companies to produce their own versions. But it was only the Craft Master boxes that proclaimed, ‘A BEAUTIFUL OIL PAINTING THE FIRST TIME YOU TRY.’ And you know how in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s logical construction of a philosophical system has an obvious purpose—to find the limits of the world, thought and language; in other words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense? Well, the characteristic of being senseless applies not only to the propositions of logic and science but also to mathematics and fiction and pornography or any pictorial form. These are, like tautologies and contradictions, literally senseless, they have no sense. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Are there a lot of numbers or something in Left Hand? Have you read the book? Can you even hear me?
GI: I’m reading the book now and I’m appalled at the lack of teenage vampire romance. Are you against selling books?
PC: You’re reading the book while we’re doing this podcast? That’s brilliant. Have you got a speakerphone or have you undergone some kind of split-brain experiment? I wish they’d given me a speakerphone instead of whatever they did to my brain. I’m finding it hard enough just holding this thing and talking at the same time. I’m also appalled at the lack of teenage vampire romance. I’m sure I included a lot of scenes of teenage vampire romance. They were the best, hottest bits. I can check my notes and get back to you, but as far as I remember, the final draft I turned in was subtitled: A Modern Teenage Vampire Romance. So I’m not sure what happened. Maybe best to ask the publisher or the printer. Or maybe not the printer. And, yes, I’m against selling books. I think they should be free, like in libraries, but you can take them home longer.
GI: Michael J Seidlinger said something about sending the book to the printers and how they would probably stop their work so they could go jerk off. Is the book’s onanistic potential something you wanted to achieve or were you just lucky?
PC: There was apparently some delay at the printers just before the book launch. The story I heard was that some hands were aroused and jerking off and other hands were disgusted and knifing the hands that were jerking off and other hands were entertained and clapping and other hands were bored and just wanted to finish work and so on, and anyway, in the same kind of autoimmune revolt depicted in the book, a refusal to be pinned down and labeled, hands and genitals got jammed in machines and that’s why on the cover there’s those bloody-looking splatters across the title and the border. That is to say, yes and no. The book doesn’t necessarily follow the kind of consistently integrated narrative trajectory conducive to satisfactory onanistic fulfillment, and persecution hallucinations are as prevalent as sexual fantasies, so while there’s plenty of explicit sex and perversion, the perversion is also perverted in a double bind of acceptance and denial that disintegrates hierarchies and unitary forms of human desire until there’s nothing left. This continual shifting makes masturbation potentially dangerous, especially if there are machine around. In Circumfession, Derrida answers the question of what he loves in a different way. No, forget all that. Please cut that answer when you edit this podcast. No one will want to read the book now. Yes, it was intentional, and yes, I’m lucky. It’s a total torture-porn wank fest. What are you wearing? Have you ever had sex with a photocopier? A photocopier (also known as a copier or copy machine) was a machine that made paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. What did you say?
GI: Do you like Brussels sprouts?
PC: Yes, please. The lunches around here are unacceptable. Notice how the ‘s’ is cut when I say ‘Brussel sprouts.’ That’s what I mean about the amputation of onanistic potential. Things coming up and then getting cut down. Time is weird. I’ve been to Brussels, but stayed longer in Bruges. Forerunners to modern Brussels sprouts were likely cultivated in ancient Rome. Don’t you think Roman sprouts sounds better than Brussels sprouts? But they do apparently prevent colon cancer. I’ve had a few colonoscopies and endoscopies. I used to keep the pictures under my pillow until my nurse took them off me. They were like the most amazing kind of internal autoerotic porn. That’s where I found this novel. In its most embryonic state.
GI: Left Hand was accepted for publication 24 hours after you submitted it to CCM. What do you think took them so long?
PC: A manuscript crossing the International Date Line (IDL) eastbound subtracts one day, or 24 hours, so that the calendar date to the west of the line is repeated after the following midnight. Crossing the IDL westbound results in 24 hours being added, advancing the calendar date by one day. The IDL is necessary to have a fixed, albeit arbitrary, boundary on the globe where the calendar date advances in the westbound direction.
GI: I love language that delivers a message without beating around the bush. However, others want sugar-coated fiction. How do you think those readers will react to lines like “Feel the Coke bottle rip the inside of your asshole”?
PC: I guess readers may be put-off by the obscene product placement. I wasn’t even paid for that message. Perhaps I should’ve approached Pepsi. Or at least gone with Diet Coke. Sugar’s bad for your teeth. I’ve got English teeth. So I don’t eat sugar anymore. I’ve lost a lot of weight in here. Did I mention the lunches? I’m actually not allowed to eat anything. It’s all through a drip.
GI: Matthew Stokoe and Dennis Cooper, among others, blurbed LF. Did that make you a little smug for a while?
PC: I’m losing the connection. Are you still there? Something about the blurbs being smudged in that printing fiasco? Well, that made me feel bad, but I was also very happy that writers I admired and was influenced by (ripped off) read and liked the book enough to write something about it and let me put that on the wrapping.
GI: I have a bit of an obsession with Aokigahara. Do you think anything good can come from that? Also, is the weather in London as awful as everyone who’s never been there says it is?
PC: Can you ask one question at a time, please? Yes, I think good can come from anything, especially your obsession with Aokigahara. You should write about it. Just follow the numbers in Left Hand. Or paint a picture. I wonder if there’s a painting-by-numbers Aokigahara version. I’ll ask my nurse after this call. I’ve never been there, but I once climbed Mt Fuji and got altitude sickness and felt like I wanted to die. I’ve got a story in an upcoming Cityscapes with a line, ‘Others speak about the big mistake, millions of drunken needle explosions, automobile industrial accidents, the irresistible stench from a masturbating corpse, and the cute jingle of a sports bag, pecked at by eagles, dragged back from Aokigahara Forest, burned beneath tables in alleyway bars, stuffed into a coin-locker at Shinjuku Station.’ Oh, no, the weather in London is much worse than awful, but everyone goes to the pub all day, so no one notices, and then one day it’s sunny and everyone goes outside and it’s really beautiful for a couple of days and everyone takes their clothes off and lies in the park and gets burnt and forgets the bad weather and then it rains again so they go back to the pub. 9. Blood or whiskey? Is that two questions? I’m not meant to drink in here. It makes my skin worse, and fucks up my meds and my liver. But okay. Why not. What’s the time? Whiskey in the morning, blood at night. Or red wine anytime. I like to compromise. From the New World. Australia or Chile. 10. Who’s your favorite left-handed author? Joan of Arch. Was she a writer? Was she even left handed? Are you still listening to me? Who are you, anyway? I thought Brad Listi was meant to call me. Is this Bret Easton Ellis? Who is this? - Interview by Gabino Iglesias
excerpts
from LEFT HAND
1.1.
a) Perch with your feet on either side of the bathtub.
b) Stare at your cock getting hard through the rising steam.
c) Hear your lungs sucking in the most air they can.
d) Exhale and then thrust your mouth down at your cock.
e) Slip under the water hitting your head and pass out.
1.2.
a) Catch your reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.
b) Taste the bathroom steam mix with the hallway's thick dampness.
c) Look at Alex slumped on your bed shooting up heroin.
d) Hear yourself asking Alex about the money he owes you.
e) Listen to Alex describe the English language course he joined.
1.3.
a) Smell Alex's hair as his mouth slurps on your cock.
b) Let go of the curtain hanging broken from your window.
c) Taste some blood that you noticed on your left hand.
d) Watch your hand pushing Alex's head away from your cock.
e) Shut the door behind Alex and collapse onto your bed.
1.4.
a) This line has been left blank for no particular reason.
b) Wake up to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere.
c) See the words left hand printed deep inside your brain.
d) Lean back in your chair when you smell your manager.
e) Watch your manager saying there is blood on your collar.
1.5.
a) Spy on a woman in the window behind your office.
b) Feel the head of your cock glide between your teeth.
c) Smell the carpet below your desk after you fall down.
d) Remember Alex calling heroin the only cure for jet lag.
e) Unravel a note that you found in Alex's coat pocket.
2.1
a) Click on a Japanese schoolgirl masturbating in a navy uniform.
b) Taste honey in your throat when her limbs are amputated.
c) Look up when you notice a student approaching the counter.
d) Watch the student's eyes and say the manager is out.
e) Ask your colleague if she can answer the student’s questions.
2.2.
a) Stand in front of your mirror sniffing a schoolgirl uniform.
b) Lay the mirror on your bed and become a schoolgirl.
c) Watch the schoolgirl in the mirror fucking a Coke bottle.
d) Feel the Coke bottle rip the inside of your asshole.
e) Taste soap on your lips and collapse onto the mirror.
2.3.
a) Tap your keyboard until two words appear on the screen.
b) Say the words left hand to yourself in your head.
c) Change the font from Times New Roman to Courier New.
d) Increase the font size until each word takes one line.
e) Put the words in bold and italics before deleting them.
2.4.
a) Feel a layer of sweat and deodorant covering your body.
b) Take your left hand off your mouse and bite it.
c) Realize that your computer screen has swirled into tunnel vision.
d) Try to touch the words coming from your colleague's mouth.
e) Listen to your chair swiveling around as you stand up.
2.5.
a) Hear the sound of your shoulder barging the toilet door.
b) Breathe in the mix of bleached come and air freshener.
c) Smell your invisible left hand in front of your face.
d) Turn on the hot water tap and taste the water.
e) Look at the water running through your invisible left hand.
3.1.
a) Order a Double Whopper meal at Burger King in Westfield.
b) Go into the Disney store and touch the stuffed toys.
c) Listen to women trying on lingerie in different changing rooms.
d) See a customer pointing you out to a security guard.
e) Look at the security guard asking you to follow him.
3.2.
a) Walk into Central Bar and order a glass of vodka.
b) Take a mobile phone off the counter and call Alex.
c) Look at the phone and say you quit your job.
d) Listen to the traffic going through the Holland Park roundabout.
e) See a schoolgirl in uniform getting off a 94 bus.
3.3.
a) Suck on the last piece of ice in your glass.
b) Breathe in deeply and rub your cock through your pocket.
c) Hear a horn blasting the schoolgirl across Shepherd's Bush Green.
d) Catch the scent of her white panties as she walks.
e) Hide behind a tree when she looks over her shoulder.
3.4.
a) Listen to the schoolgirl calling to you on Goldhawk Road.
b) Inhale her vanilla perfume as she turns down an alley.
c) Grab her hair and kiss her mouth until she resists.
d) Push her to her knees and pull out your cock.
e) Squeeze her throat and fuck her hard in the mouth.
3.5.
a) Lick your lips then hear footsteps coming down the alley.
b) Glance around realizing your cock has left the schoolgirl's mouth.
c) Smell garbage as the schoolgirl's head hits a brick wall.
d) Catch a taste of her panties as she slumps down.
e) Watch the come spurt from your cock onto her legs.
from LEFT HAND
1.1.
a) Perch with your feet on either side of the bathtub.
b) Stare at your cock getting hard through the rising steam.
c) Hear your lungs sucking in the most air they can.
d) Exhale and then thrust your mouth down at your cock.
e) Slip under the water hitting your head and pass out.
1.2.
a) Catch your reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.
b) Taste the bathroom steam mix with the hallway's thick dampness.
c) Look at Alex slumped on your bed shooting up heroin.
d) Hear yourself asking Alex about the money he owes you.
e) Listen to Alex describe the English language course he joined.
1.3.
a) Smell Alex's hair as his mouth slurps on your cock.
b) Let go of the curtain hanging broken from your window.
c) Taste some blood that you noticed on your left hand.
d) Watch your hand pushing Alex's head away from your cock.
e) Shut the door behind Alex and collapse onto your bed.
1.4.
a) This line has been left blank for no particular reason.
b) Wake up to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere.
c) See the words left hand printed deep inside your brain.
d) Lean back in your chair when you smell your manager.
e) Watch your manager saying there is blood on your collar.
1.5.
a) Spy on a woman in the window behind your office.
b) Feel the head of your cock glide between your teeth.
c) Smell the carpet below your desk after you fall down.
d) Remember Alex calling heroin the only cure for jet lag.
e) Unravel a note that you found in Alex's coat pocket.
2.1
a) Click on a Japanese schoolgirl masturbating in a navy uniform.
b) Taste honey in your throat when her limbs are amputated.
c) Look up when you notice a student approaching the counter.
d) Watch the student's eyes and say the manager is out.
e) Ask your colleague if she can answer the student’s questions.
2.2.
a) Stand in front of your mirror sniffing a schoolgirl uniform.
b) Lay the mirror on your bed and become a schoolgirl.
c) Watch the schoolgirl in the mirror fucking a Coke bottle.
d) Feel the Coke bottle rip the inside of your asshole.
e) Taste soap on your lips and collapse onto the mirror.
2.3.
a) Tap your keyboard until two words appear on the screen.
b) Say the words left hand to yourself in your head.
c) Change the font from Times New Roman to Courier New.
d) Increase the font size until each word takes one line.
e) Put the words in bold and italics before deleting them.
2.4.
a) Feel a layer of sweat and deodorant covering your body.
b) Take your left hand off your mouse and bite it.
c) Realize that your computer screen has swirled into tunnel vision.
d) Try to touch the words coming from your colleague's mouth.
e) Listen to your chair swiveling around as you stand up.
2.5.
a) Hear the sound of your shoulder barging the toilet door.
b) Breathe in the mix of bleached come and air freshener.
c) Smell your invisible left hand in front of your face.
d) Turn on the hot water tap and taste the water.
e) Look at the water running through your invisible left hand.
3.1.
a) Order a Double Whopper meal at Burger King in Westfield.
b) Go into the Disney store and touch the stuffed toys.
c) Listen to women trying on lingerie in different changing rooms.
d) See a customer pointing you out to a security guard.
e) Look at the security guard asking you to follow him.
3.2.
a) Walk into Central Bar and order a glass of vodka.
b) Take a mobile phone off the counter and call Alex.
c) Look at the phone and say you quit your job.
d) Listen to the traffic going through the Holland Park roundabout.
e) See a schoolgirl in uniform getting off a 94 bus.
3.3.
a) Suck on the last piece of ice in your glass.
b) Breathe in deeply and rub your cock through your pocket.
c) Hear a horn blasting the schoolgirl across Shepherd's Bush Green.
d) Catch the scent of her white panties as she walks.
e) Hide behind a tree when she looks over her shoulder.
3.4.
a) Listen to the schoolgirl calling to you on Goldhawk Road.
b) Inhale her vanilla perfume as she turns down an alley.
c) Grab her hair and kiss her mouth until she resists.
d) Push her to her knees and pull out your cock.
e) Squeeze her throat and fuck her hard in the mouth.
3.5.
a) Lick your lips then hear footsteps coming down the alley.
b) Glance around realizing your cock has left the schoolgirl's mouth.
c) Smell garbage as the schoolgirl's head hits a brick wall.
d) Catch a taste of her panties as she slumps down.
e) Watch the come spurt from your cock onto her legs.
OBSCURE DISTORTION ORGAN
To stop this novel occurring from this motel room is impossible. I go with a girl. We meet a boy. There is sexual intercourse with glass on the floor in a broken pharmacy. A police officer discovers my dead body in the back of a stolen van. The police officer shoots at my dead body. The girl is driving the van. I want to murder the boy. But I think it would be easier to murder the girl. So I try to murder the girl, even though I am already dead, and the boy throws me onto the road. That is the end of this novel.
***
I leave my father’s remains in a glass case at a strip club and catch a flight to London, shouting drunken methods in an Indonesian bar during a layover on the way, or when I get to Europe in a hostel somewhere east of Prague, where the owner says medicine rather than method has been inserted into your writing. It is no remedy, I reply, and orgasmic childhood psychosis is not self-deception, but if stopped and ordered to ask, alcohol is a plausible ruse for coping with life, and anyway this novel is stronger than medicine because of the heart images formed through fictional masturbation. When the owner asks me to pay, I tell him my money to get high will come from the directors of several multinational companies who intentionally republish this novel in its current unrecognisable form.
***
London summer is a bone-hot tombstone deceased under where I walk. I arrive as a prostitute accompanied by internet instructions about illegal student immigration. Anyone speaking natural English will confuse the authorities. Language draws up substances lacking actuality, and desire is more easily pursued with confidence when you can blend into the crowd. I work in an ex-curtain factory on Uxbridge Road. I stand in a corner of Shepherd’s Bush Green. A mysterious telephone call on an abrupt slow night possesses enough doubt to deceive what guides me. Her shoes. Her husband. The absence of a pulse. At a sewerage plant, near where they used to make cars, I walk across rusted pipes churning out shit and mulched up paper and enter an abandoned factory converted into apartments now derelict and possibly being used as some kind of theatrical space. I join what appears to be the audience participating in an unrealistic performance of a courtroom situation until my attention implodes and I slink under the floorboards. Other things happen after that. I become another person completely.
***
I find a young boy in the afternoon, question him about this novel, and discover raw materials and other things without explanation verified control processes or selective systems. I hit the boy with destructive intensity when he is through the door into this motel room. It is impossible for him to recognise me because I am wearing a ski mask. My voice is calmness maintained in a bubble of everything. He tells me he works at a slaughterhouse and plays drums in a heavy metal cover band. He thinks he is a traveller of existence. His arms are virtual reality assembled. I sit his senses next to mine and make my arms part of him watching murder masturbation fear movies. I know I need this boy but I do not know why I need him. He is concerned about things without being. I recognise that meaninglessness. I feel that meaninglessness. I laugh at his secrets. This cruel agony is worse than murder. I clamp his wrists and overwhelm him. I tighten a USB cable around his neck and slit his throat. He cries at the sight of his own blood. I think he understands a number of sounds, perhaps four or five, but no more words. I push acid into his beautiful face. His terrestrial body enters into other conditions. I fill him with morphine and do not give him water. He wakes up. He dies. Perhaps he does not do anything. It is late. I stick needles into the boy and then inject myself with his blood and consciousness. The air deviates near the surface as I shake the semen from my penis into his mouth. I enjoy his body. I play with his body until he wakes up. I dig a hole somewhere through him using my tongue as a shovel. Queer words gush through us in feverish waves like atomic ash, small things brimming with sickness and remote psychological pride. I remember his shoulders in the moonlight, and the smell of his hair. I am looking at the Gulf War on a screen at Bangkok airport. I return to Phnom Penh and then Hiroshima. I paddle in a swimming pool and receive some unnamed but highly contagious genital infection. A metal dropper syringes infected blood out of my vagina. I am in absolute confusion. I can feel my stump, and my stump can feel me.
***
The two columns my stump scratches in the dirt represent extreme internal division and double-letter fascination processing that helps overcome official helplessness. I suspect I am waiting in some tropical mushroom district with my belt chewed up and my pants falling down, but this might just be the only recognition my senses make possible. Misunderstanding actuality is a conceptual formation disturbance I frequently use for self-protection from other hallucinations. This modification of feelings results in compressed sensitiveness and loss of other things. I am my own specimen under a pin. I want to kidnap 21 identical backpackers and turn them into zombies, or convince them they have been turned into zombies, or self-administer and convince myself I have been turned into a zombie. Perhaps I have brain damage, a severe head injury, defective evolution intelligence, or something settling outside chronic differential diagnosis. Maybe everything here is being written while I force cavity sexual intercourse without a condom on a body entirely asleep, on this bed, in this motel room, and a body entirely asleep forces cavity sexual intercourse without a condom on my body entirely asleep, on this bed, in this motel room, simultaneously, in a chokehold, for at least three or four years, and this is an escape attempt, from us, from me, from this bed, from this motel room, moving literally from nonexistent template to private document to novel.
***
I have not read this novel. I do not read novels. That is neither a defence nor an explanation. The walls of this motel room roll repeatedly. They merge front and back until there is nothing like mysterious disclosure but crude navigation and perplexity. Disjointedness seems to be an extensive internal behaviour that is impossible to describe through paragraphs and sentences. Being remotely integrated is an illusion supported by the same economy and social politics that makes the left hand a traitor. Perhaps I am dying from gangrene in this motel room after getting my limbs amputated in a cheap clinic in a foreign country. I think I would like to complete this novel before I die. I am trying to rearrange the most important details. The deformed results are guaranteed to bring bankruptcy. I wave my stump at the screens around my bed and confuse the thoughts passing through my brain with the conceptual regurgitation appearing in front of my eyes. I believe I am in a motel room dying from gangrene. I ejaculate excessively.
***
My doctor gives me insufficient medicine and no sexual relief. He tells me to take out the stitches quickly in order to ensure the scars remain. He recommends sleeping on a trampoline in the garden outside this motel room to avoid visibility. I consider his advice for some time but instead decide to install infected foreign objects into my body. I finger the edge of the scars and open the gauze, several years earlier, infected, returning to this motel room. I tell my doctor power pushed back overtakes time, and your days are numbered. He says this novel clearly demonstrates immature emotionality assimilation and orgiastic self-centeredness. I say each sentence here travels in a straight line and each word in each straight line is a person shunted from a truck into a gas chamber before gathering on the other side of some metaphorical slaughterhouse. He asks to meet my parents. He speaks to them in private before we sit down together. He says there should really be an empty chair in this motel room for my mother’s silent pain.
***
In order to feel thought as an abnormal mutation written in the mind of an underage girl, I cut off my voice and drift into agreement repetition. I turn in circles, blonde hair, and a tight body, trying to control my enthusiasm, hide it, searching through foundation appearance hallucinations. I lower my panties and show my vagina under the stairway outside this motel room. Someone licks my scars. Someone licks my vagina. My clitoris is the size of an egg. My dildo is a large mushroom. I experience transcendence during my first orgasm. The shock to my vagina is fast and strong. There is an explosion. Fire. I know what to do. I set up fake websites to pursue backpackers. The websites generate rape hallucination fantasies and hardcore back-story devices. I use chloroform and make love to the backpackers I find. They have a natural craving for chloroform. They move around with free will, separated from their limbs. I collect profiles of their friends. I obtain IP addresses and passport images. I know they are not truly the people they are trying to be. Most have been infected by forgery, fraud, and sarcasm. My imagination accumulates facts. I make bombs. They explode. I imagine being part of the lunar surface landing and the World Trade Center collision at the same time. My eyes discover a host of plural transcendental beings living excessively in the darkness surrounding the motel room inside this motel room. They appear in order to rearrange the words pouring from these screens before I can read them. Their fingers come away incandescent from the light cast through the slats in these paragraphs, prickling as thick as carpet, images traced to somewhere else, slipping in and out of consciousness.
***
Every morning, I come round slowly and want something exciting to do, some morbid thing, some morbid experience. I call a female dancer. She dances for me sexily. We do some functionality games. I lick a little smooth skin and hair. She removes her panties and that magical box gets wet. Something else happens, or develops, or it translates into a first indication without there being words, a meta-image that expresses this moment. Her beauty torments me before having sexual intercourse with her. She tastes gorgeous. We take a shower together. She does not speak English greatly. Because she cannot be a fisherman, her father sells her to a pimp. She goes to school in a third-world ex-colonial museum that breaks her appearance and convinces her to move into a furniture store with her abusive uncle. She sets fire to the furniture store and sends one side of herself to London. She tells me she cannot sleep. She curls up on my pillow. I try to get her to watch at least two screens at the same time. I find it difficult to breathe. I am worried about the blood clotting in my penis. I must be restricted to the night. Her uncle visits the motel room inside this motel room in a schoolgirl uniform. She has not fallen asleep completely. I make her half-eyed awake and tell her about her uncle’s visit. She pushes me away and I punch her in the face. Her body trembles with fear, but it cannot move. She cannot protect herself. I chop her soft leather skin. She is in a white bikini on a beach with her parents. I look at the waves entering and leaving, rolling over her body. She is playing with her sister. I think about tightening a rope around my own neck. I know more trouble will come, guilt and shame, and the insect power of existence, but the ecstasy shock of two virgin bodies rubbing against each other on the same beach as a thousand corpses is the only thing that I can call love.
***
A corpse must possess some internal relationship power with the being who hides inside that dead shell. I believe the sounds coming from my mouth are from a lobotomised girl. Listening to her moan is like feeling crushed sugar and honey in my hands. I look at myself as this young girl in the shower. She has a beautiful gymnast’s body. She comes to the motel room inside this motel room and we have sexual intercourse. I supply her with unlimited medicine. Between literature classes at university, she goes back and forth anywhere. She finds a dog-eared first edition of this novel and gives it to me as a gift. I experiment with writing on her panties and instruct her to film herself reading this novel in front of her boyfriend. I inhale the show from an open window. I suffocate her with a USB cable. I have sexual intercourse with her before she dies. I have sexual intercourse with her after she is dead. I handcuff her, transfer my penis to her throat, and push hard. Her organs offer further truths about dialectic appearances, objective real-time hallucinations, and the bonds that mediate our relationships. They tell me depression and suicide are a vision of things to come, and only murder can alleviate the loneliness of a troubled childhood.
***
The map of modification and stability in this novel is assembled in the place it is written. Concentric circles pull the map into parallel lines disappearing from the visual adrenal cortex. I kidnap a boy, have sexual intercourse with him, and torment myself with the memory of that act, restricted to this motel room, writing this novel concerning these things. Another obscure boy enters my imagination. I turn around. The boy inserts his penis into my anus, a hand on my hip, and we come simultaneously. I find this boy at Hammersmith bus station. I use chloroform of course. He stumbles to one side. He wobbles and continues to wobble. His hips are in the mud. He looks like a very thin girl who works at Shepherd’s Bush market. I think they are related. My impulses for and against incest are normal. But whenever the victim is a child, the riff to violate this libidinal rejoicing becomes desperately hard to withstand. Several plural transcendental beings follow us to this motel room. Some of them invent paedophilic insults. I disperse the boy’s clothing and torment his formless genitals with medical equipment. I push his knees under his jaw. I feel dissatisfaction. I chop him up. I attack him with a screwdriver that represents my atrophied penis. When I eventually get hard enough to rape him, perhaps as a boy myself, who is broken in part by the disappearance of existence, my thoughts concerning who I am depart from language and enter future abstract spatial concerns. Instead of smashing my leg in a motorcycle collision, I become a dancer. My brother finds me on television. We have been divided since childhood when our parents got divorced. I never meet my father until after he dies of cancer. I burn my father’s body. He possesses beautiful yakuza tattoos.
from A TOWER OF LIMBS
1.1.
a) Hear the beat moving and vibrating down through your intestines.
b) Squint at a glitter ball reflecting racks of colored light.
c) Taste sulphur and sweat that has dried and come back.
d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.
e) Feel the music circling through your ass and your cunt.
1.2.
a) Notice a man and a woman dancing on a stage.
b) Look at the woman sucking on the man's soft cock.
c) See yourself in a mirror tied up to a pole.
d) Watch the man trying to fuck the woman from behind.
e) Bite at and chew on the material covering your mouth.
1.3.
a) Watch the man spraying his cock to get it hard.
b) Try to squeeze your hands out of some wrist straps.
c) Look at the woman grabbing and pulling the man’s hair.
d) Clutch onto the pole and try to yank it out.
e) See the man throwing the woman down on her back.
1.4.
a) Twist the wrist straps around until your hands are numb.
b) Look at the man pissing on the woman's shaved head.
c) See the woman scratching and then punching the man’s face.
d) Watch the man strangle the woman until she goes limp.
e) Look at the man wanking and coming on the woman.
1.5.
a) Choke yourself jerking forward on the strap around your neck.
b) Gag on the vomit back-washed through your mouth and nose.
c) Feel and hear the screams coming out of your throat.
d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.
e) Close your eyes and fade into the music guiding you.
2.1.
a) Hear the music stop and see the lights go down.
b) Track a spotlight and listen to a voice saying welcome.
c) Feel yourself being lowered into a chair with leg stirrups.
d) Listen to the voice explaining there are only two contestants.
e) Hear the voice saying the first to come inside wins.
2.2.
a) Reach past the spotlight to a crack in the wall.
b) Feel the crack move as the voice introduces the champion.
c) Listen to the champion strutting around the stage and clapping.
d) Look at people trying to order drinks at a bar.
e) See an assistant grabbing and dragging me onto the stage.
2.3.
a) Hear the assistant pinning me down and removing my clothes.
b) See the champion inspecting me through the mirror on stage.
c) Watch the champion wanking his cock and punching my face.
d) Look at the champion picking me up in the air.
e) Feel the champion slapping his cock up against your cunt.
2.4.
a) Listen to me crying as I wank over your reflection.
b) Tell me you want only my cock inside your cunt.
c) Feel the champion’s spit hitting your face and your breasts.
d) Look at your body wasted from drugs in the mirror.
e) Wince each time the champion punches me in the head.
2.5.
a) See the champion laughing and throwing me through the mirror.
b) Listen to me wanking my soft cock on the floor.
c) Feel the champion kicking your stomach and then choking you.
d) Watch me trying to get up but then falling down.
e) Notice your heart throbbing when you see me standing up.
3.1.
a) Hear the champion jump on me and fuck my ass.
b) Feel a gust and realize your left arm has gone.
c) Listen to me wanking my cock covered in your blood.
d) Watch the champion rubbing your cunt secretions on my face.
e) Feel another gust and realize your right arm has gone.
3.2.
a) Taste some morphine and see an assistant slapping your cheeks.
b) Look at the blood spurting out from your left hip.
c) Hear the champion sticking his cock into my droopy mouth.
d) Watch me bite the champion’s cock and swipe his feet.
e) Notice some people below the stage glancing up at us.
3.3.
a) Look at me picking up a piece of broken mirror.
b) Watch me stabbing the champion in the face and neck.
c) Feel the champion’s full weight collapse on top of you.
d) Listen to an assistant dragging the champion behind the stage.
e) See a different assistant inspecting your cunt with his tongue.
3.4.
a) Hear music blasting from speakers and then see lights spinning.
b) Watch me escape from the assistant who was holding me.
c) Feel my cock throbbing hard as I pump your cunt.
d) Taste the come spurting from my cock into your uterus.
e) Sense the come travelling up inside and around your body.
3.5.
a) Gaze at your headless and amputated torso on the stage.
b) Drift to the rooftop and breathe in the midnight air.
c) Feel the neon warmth of Bangkok Hong Kong Shanghai Tokyo.
d) Hear an airplane taking off and rumbling through the sky.
e) Catch your silhouette looking out from one of the windows.
from SCATTER
Paul thought he had suffered a fatal brain injury but felt like he had entered a new reality and was experiencing everything for the first time. He predicted what he was going to see before he opened his eyes. There would be palm trees and seagulls and the ocean swelling along the same beach he had seen a million times before. But everything would be totally different. He felt calmer and more in control than he had ever felt in his life. The oscillating binaries of pain and desire had gone. His head had been wiped clear. The tide seemed to be connected to his breathing in an unselfconscious way. He doubted he could move even if he wanted to. He expected to be paralyzed at least.
- - - - - When Paul looked at the road, time became unstuck and hurtled back into the present. He watched the van swerving away from him before it straightened up and settled into a comfortable pace. He could just make out Robert and Lucy huddled together through the dusty curtain across the back window and he held onto that image for a long as he could. He told himself it didn't bother him that they were together. It seemed to represent the correct order of things.
A road train coming from the mines in the desert ploughed head-on into the van. The impact ripped a hole through this new reality. The van crumpled and flipped into the air before landing on its side. A door came spinning off the van and skidded into a ditch covered with long dry grass. Everything went silent for a second after the crash then returned louder than before. Dragging sound out of every object present, the road train kept going. Paul stepped back as it lumbered past. The driver was focused straight ahead on something far beyond this plane of existence. The van was motionless. No one climbed out from the hole where the door used to be. The heat shimmered everything into a mirage.
- - - - - After standing up and walking a few more steps, Paul looked back at the discarded lump of flesh lying there but couldn't comprehend that it had ever been connected to his body. It resembled a dead sea-creature washed up on the tide rather than the rare delicacy he once believed it to be, but of course those two analogies amounted to the same thing in the end. Paul felt voices somewhere in his head and realized the voices were telling him to keep going. The blood now pumping from where his cock used to be turned into flames between his fingers. He stared into the flames until he couldn't see or feel anything. His body became pieces of cinema film, burnt up and melted as he collapsed into the sand.
from A TOWER OF LIMBS
1.1.
a) Hear the beat moving and vibrating down through your intestines.
b) Squint at a glitter ball reflecting racks of colored light.
c) Taste sulphur and sweat that has dried and come back.
d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.
e) Feel the music circling through your ass and your cunt.
1.2.
a) Notice a man and a woman dancing on a stage.
b) Look at the woman sucking on the man's soft cock.
c) See yourself in a mirror tied up to a pole.
d) Watch the man trying to fuck the woman from behind.
e) Bite at and chew on the material covering your mouth.
1.3.
a) Watch the man spraying his cock to get it hard.
b) Try to squeeze your hands out of some wrist straps.
c) Look at the woman grabbing and pulling the man’s hair.
d) Clutch onto the pole and try to yank it out.
e) See the man throwing the woman down on her back.
1.4.
a) Twist the wrist straps around until your hands are numb.
b) Look at the man pissing on the woman's shaved head.
c) See the woman scratching and then punching the man’s face.
d) Watch the man strangle the woman until she goes limp.
e) Look at the man wanking and coming on the woman.
1.5.
a) Choke yourself jerking forward on the strap around your neck.
b) Gag on the vomit back-washed through your mouth and nose.
c) Feel and hear the screams coming out of your throat.
d) Watch people talking and laughing crowded around tables and booths.
e) Close your eyes and fade into the music guiding you.
2.1.
a) Hear the music stop and see the lights go down.
b) Track a spotlight and listen to a voice saying welcome.
c) Feel yourself being lowered into a chair with leg stirrups.
d) Listen to the voice explaining there are only two contestants.
e) Hear the voice saying the first to come inside wins.
2.2.
a) Reach past the spotlight to a crack in the wall.
b) Feel the crack move as the voice introduces the champion.
c) Listen to the champion strutting around the stage and clapping.
d) Look at people trying to order drinks at a bar.
e) See an assistant grabbing and dragging me onto the stage.
2.3.
a) Hear the assistant pinning me down and removing my clothes.
b) See the champion inspecting me through the mirror on stage.
c) Watch the champion wanking his cock and punching my face.
d) Look at the champion picking me up in the air.
e) Feel the champion slapping his cock up against your cunt.
2.4.
a) Listen to me crying as I wank over your reflection.
b) Tell me you want only my cock inside your cunt.
c) Feel the champion’s spit hitting your face and your breasts.
d) Look at your body wasted from drugs in the mirror.
e) Wince each time the champion punches me in the head.
2.5.
a) See the champion laughing and throwing me through the mirror.
b) Listen to me wanking my soft cock on the floor.
c) Feel the champion kicking your stomach and then choking you.
d) Watch me trying to get up but then falling down.
e) Notice your heart throbbing when you see me standing up.
3.1.
a) Hear the champion jump on me and fuck my ass.
b) Feel a gust and realize your left arm has gone.
c) Listen to me wanking my cock covered in your blood.
d) Watch the champion rubbing your cunt secretions on my face.
e) Feel another gust and realize your right arm has gone.
3.2.
a) Taste some morphine and see an assistant slapping your cheeks.
b) Look at the blood spurting out from your left hip.
c) Hear the champion sticking his cock into my droopy mouth.
d) Watch me bite the champion’s cock and swipe his feet.
e) Notice some people below the stage glancing up at us.
3.3.
a) Look at me picking up a piece of broken mirror.
b) Watch me stabbing the champion in the face and neck.
c) Feel the champion’s full weight collapse on top of you.
d) Listen to an assistant dragging the champion behind the stage.
e) See a different assistant inspecting your cunt with his tongue.
3.4.
a) Hear music blasting from speakers and then see lights spinning.
b) Watch me escape from the assistant who was holding me.
c) Feel my cock throbbing hard as I pump your cunt.
d) Taste the come spurting from my cock into your uterus.
e) Sense the come travelling up inside and around your body.
3.5.
a) Gaze at your headless and amputated torso on the stage.
b) Drift to the rooftop and breathe in the midnight air.
c) Feel the neon warmth of Bangkok Hong Kong Shanghai Tokyo.
d) Hear an airplane taking off and rumbling through the sky.
e) Catch your silhouette looking out from one of the windows.
from SCATTER
Paul thought he had suffered a fatal brain injury but felt like he had entered a new reality and was experiencing everything for the first time. He predicted what he was going to see before he opened his eyes. There would be palm trees and seagulls and the ocean swelling along the same beach he had seen a million times before. But everything would be totally different. He felt calmer and more in control than he had ever felt in his life. The oscillating binaries of pain and desire had gone. His head had been wiped clear. The tide seemed to be connected to his breathing in an unselfconscious way. He doubted he could move even if he wanted to. He expected to be paralyzed at least.
- - - - - When Paul looked at the road, time became unstuck and hurtled back into the present. He watched the van swerving away from him before it straightened up and settled into a comfortable pace. He could just make out Robert and Lucy huddled together through the dusty curtain across the back window and he held onto that image for a long as he could. He told himself it didn't bother him that they were together. It seemed to represent the correct order of things.
A road train coming from the mines in the desert ploughed head-on into the van. The impact ripped a hole through this new reality. The van crumpled and flipped into the air before landing on its side. A door came spinning off the van and skidded into a ditch covered with long dry grass. Everything went silent for a second after the crash then returned louder than before. Dragging sound out of every object present, the road train kept going. Paul stepped back as it lumbered past. The driver was focused straight ahead on something far beyond this plane of existence. The van was motionless. No one climbed out from the hole where the door used to be. The heat shimmered everything into a mirage.
***
Paul smashed a bottle on a sewerage pipe. He gripped the neck of the broken bottle in one hand and his cock in the other. He staggered along the beach, stabbing the bottle at his chest and wanking his cock until it got hard. When he was about to come he shuddered to his knees and hacked into his cock with the broken bottle. The glass got halfway through and the come spurted out along with the blood. Ecstatic under the influence of the chemicals shooting through his body, and determined to enact their conclusion, Paul hacked the glass through the rest of the flesh until the whole thing came away.- - - - - After standing up and walking a few more steps, Paul looked back at the discarded lump of flesh lying there but couldn't comprehend that it had ever been connected to his body. It resembled a dead sea-creature washed up on the tide rather than the rare delicacy he once believed it to be, but of course those two analogies amounted to the same thing in the end. Paul felt voices somewhere in his head and realized the voices were telling him to keep going. The blood now pumping from where his cock used to be turned into flames between his fingers. He stared into the flames until he couldn't see or feel anything. His body became pieces of cinema film, burnt up and melted as he collapsed into the sand.
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