SHAME

The Book of Obed

Obed

Chapter 1.

¹ I am in the trailer—the gypsy trailer, the gypsum flecked and sepia literatured trailer, the hungaried about with frillies and belarustic tchotchki trailer—contemplating what bereft and hopeless ballad Marlene Dietrich might have sung to her reflection in the mirror; ² when my grandmother Naomi enters, attended by her little servant boy.

³ She looks at me and says, You. You are a waste of a greeting. F’tah, with her hand, like that, and she aways her to her closet.

⁴ She has never spoken to me thus. Far from it: she has always been sweet and loving, warm and attentive.

⁵ But grandmother!, my whole world protests on my behalf; and a moment later, Here, it hands back via Grandmother’s little servant boy, here is a letter from your grandmother.

⁶ Her little servant boy is seventy-five if he is a day, and he a day. He is the remains of the day. He is a long day’s journey into Detroit. He is so long in the tooth, the tooth is long in him. I could go on.

⁷ I wonder if he is Grandfather, enchanted. I do not well remember Grandfather, unenchanted.

⁸ The letter is a packet of parchments, crudely bound with ribbon and written in grandmother’s meticulous, short but stylish hand. ⁹ It is a lamentation, a symphonic wail about her entire life, and I am just one of many formerly beloved elements she herewith rejects.

¹⁰ Not just the content but the very tone of the letter is a visceral shock: as if, in the few short days since I last saw her, Grandmother has learned a new literal and emotional vocabulary, is suddenly fluent in the harsh and guttural tongue of the vulgars. ¹¹ That is to say, she uses many bad words. Among other things, I am apparently her wash-pot, but I suspect she means “piss-pot”.

¹² Vexed, I find my mother, and with her and with the letter in hand go out into the night to seek counsel.

¹³ The Moon and her accomplices actively hint at, flirt with Samhain as rendered in mid-20th-century party decorations: ¹⁴ For the sky is a cardboard cutout framed with tissue-paper accordions for clouds; the Moon wears an owl mask when she thinks nobody’s looking.

¹⁵ As expected, my kinsmen are assembled beneath gnarled tree limbs. ¹⁶ I recount the story of my recent interaction with my grandmother, which seems to have gotten more complicated since I left the trailer. ¹⁷ After reading the letter (I tell them) I asked my grandmother to explain what has prompted her belated dismissal of her sweet little old lady façade? Was her internal life always so full of misery and bile, even when, for all those years, she coddled me and made me feel beloved, precious, and full of all the virtues?

¹⁸ She did not answer directly (I tell them) but rather said, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” ¹⁹ “That may be so” (I tell them I told her) “but you have not answered my question. Have you always thought and felt as you do now? And was the kindness with which you treated me, with which you treated family and friends and strangers alike, always deceit?”

²⁰ “Do not pretend to surprise” (I tell them she told me) “for I know you are just the same”; whereupon she left me (so I tell my kinsmen) to my worry.

²¹ My kinsmen are much amazed, for, like me, they have always known Naomi to be a warm and generous being, slow to anger and quick to forgive. ²² The dozen or so assembled follow my mother and me back to our house, where we find Grandmother in the yard, tending to the fences.

²³ “Health and happiness to you, Naomi,” my cousin, foremost and closest to me of my kin, greets my grandmother. ²⁴ She stops working and stands, silent, marble, her face composed in an unknown alphabet. She says to the assembled: ““Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara.” ²⁵ “I will call you Yetzer Mara.” he says. “And again, happiness unto you, for I perceive you are desperate and scarce thereof.”

²⁶ “My grandson has told you a story,” her voice says. She is like a pod-person in reverse.

²⁷ I am terrified. I go into the house and continue to listen, just inside the door.

²⁸ “Your grandson has told us that of a sudden you were unhappy, or that your lot in life, which hereto has suited you like an overcoat, warm and soft and redolent with good memories merely for the huffing, has at this latest hour abandoned you and left you naked and cold.”

²⁹ My grandmother’s voice responds: “You are thereabouts, cousin. What else hath he told you?”

³⁰ “I respond” (says my kinsman) “not because my cousin’s business is my business, nor his many woes and worries my woe and my worry, but because I have every care for you, and all fondness: ³¹ He has said that he asked whether you have always felt so abused by life and by the world; and that you were moved not to respond to his asking.”

³² “That is not quite so,” Naomi informs him, and our assembled kin. ³³ Her demeanor has softened now, as if she has recognized a misunderstanding and is eager to correct it, to make things right in the family. ³⁴ “I responded to my grandson’s misgivings by email, and fully; and in so doing, I copied you all, each and every.”

³⁵ My kinsman is startled into silence for a moment. Then he says, “I am not sure I have seen it.”

³⁶ I am likewise startled, because I have not thought to check email. I consult my familiar, rouse it into light and life, call forth email.

³⁷ “I shall resend it, beloved cousin” my grandmother assures our assembled kin; and her voice is rich with all her accustomed sweetness once again.

³⁸ “There is surely no need” (my kinsman assures her) “for doubtless your message is in my inbox, unread.”

³⁹ “I shall resend it, dear one” my grandmother repeats.

⁴⁰ I am filled with mortal dread as I search my familiar for the email in question. The tone of her voice is just as I have known it; the music her voice makes is that I have known my entire life; ⁴¹ But now I understand that the tone itself is an elaborate filigree masking decay.

⁴² I find the email she spoke of. ⁴³ It is a gif image of herself, sitting in a chair and stroking her enormous, barbed, red devil cock with both hands.

⁴⁴ The fever sets in.

⁴⁵ Grandmother was right, I say to myself. We are just the same.

Chapter 2.

¹ The moon no longer cares who’s watching.

² I am at the home of my childhood, the house in which I grew from infancy to boyhood to compulsive wanker at hairy muscled manporn. ³ I have come here to interrogate myself. The moon stands proxy.

⁴ Suppose (I say to myself) that you are just like Grandmother. Suppose that your inner and outer lives are as different as night and day. ⁵ Suppose that your inner life is as an everylasting night, pitch black and full of unseen things that would your earthly meat devour; indeed, that would your skin and bones and very blood devour with (Heinz) relish; ⁶ even unseen in that certain darkness are infinite terrors which you must needs fear and abhor;

⁷ Suppose also (I say to myself) that your outer life, as Grandmother suggests, is as far as far can be from your inner life. ⁸ Suppose you keep your many inner terrors locked in the cellar and, when other humans come by, to drown out the noise of those hidden terrors, you sing IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL at the top of your lungs.

⁹ Suppose, I say again, that this is so.

¹⁰ How came you to this pass? Came you to be so by what force of earth or heaven? (¹¹ For alack and eia! my mind doth of a silly habit vomit forth things like heaven) ¹² For yet even as you smile at your neighbor you do silent hate as universal pestilence all humankind that you see before you.

¹³ Yahweh was right, I say to myself. We are just the same.

¹⁴ “That may be so,” my interrogating self chides, “but you have not answered my question. How came your inner and outer selves to grow so distant one from the other?”

¹⁵ I consider the question. It seems to me, I say to the me to whom I must mean that it seems clear. Me is unclear. Me is confused. Me asks I to start again. I do.

¹⁶ I am not aware (I tell me) of having made a conscious decision that my outward demeanor should so violently discord with my emotional life.

¹⁷ “Who does?” me says with a comical shoulder shrug. “So if it was not a conscious decision…” me trails off suggestively.

¹⁸ I must have encountered circumstances whereby it benefited me— (“and you” me reminds) …whereby it benefited I to dissemble universally to all the humans around me.

¹⁹ “All the humans?” me repeats. “Surely not. Surely I might have told Mother, or Father, or Grandmother?”

²⁰ No, I tell me. That does not follow. For if I had had a shelter, a harbor, an oasis where my outer self— (“and yours” me interjects; “Knock it the fuck off,” I say. “You’re confusing the reader.”) ²¹ Truly, had I a lee harbor among family where my outer self might have reflected my inner self in safety, where I was assured of being beloved, for or despite my inner self; ²² But it cannot have been so. Something in my inner self must have required silence and dissembling.

²³ “Now what would that be?” me says, all coy and shit. The moon winks as if on cue.

²⁴ That I am gay, I realize. That I am gay, I blurt.

²⁵ “I was going for the whole concept of sin in general, but yeah, sure, go with that,” me says.

²⁶ I consider and reconsider fifty years of brain activity, of interface between brain and environment; ²⁷ Of how each moment, even minute event of interface, yea, even of face, was conditioned and informed by every event that preceded it; ²⁸ Wherefore must have all these late events of adulthood been built upon those things learnt in childhood, ²⁹ In the church, whither one was not welcome to go, nay, neither in the home, whence one was doubtless to be sent, beaten and naked and wailing, into the wilderness, were one a faggot: ³⁰ In contemplation whereof I wax wroth.

³¹ And I consider my hatred of humanity, and I think: Yep. They earned it.

³² And I consider that not all of humanity contributed to my maladjustment, and I think: Who fucking cares.

³³ And it came to pass, a large number of celebrants wandered from the direction of Aunt Ella’s house, across the driveway and the cement walk, past the grandfather tree and into the backyard. ³⁴ They were formally dressed for a party, and many were clearly inebriated.

³⁵ I did not know many of these persons well; so that, when my brother walked by in their number, I clutched his sleeve and pulled him to me, away from the congregation. Aside, I asked him: ³⁶ Brother, do you, like me, nurture a passionate hatred of all those humans around you because homophobia?

³⁷ But from my brother answer came there none; rather, he said, “How good to see the moon! The moon is cold and chaste. I am sure she is a virgin…” ³⁸ And his companions pulled him back into their giddy midst, remonstrating his sobriety.

³⁹ And it came to pass that I perceived one party guest more homophobic than the rest, and I did take him as emblematic of all my woes, even unto my least woe; ⁴⁰ And I did therefore smite him bitterly, and smite him again; ⁴¹ Yea, I did bring him to the ground and with mighty force did I smite a rock against his head, like, a whole bunch of times.

⁴² And there next arrived a waiter with a cocktail glass, iced cold and sweating in the summer night, seeking for that party guest [whom] I had smitten with so much smiting; and I besought to take up the glass in his stead; ⁴³ Whereupon the waiter protested, saying, Nay, but that this were made especial for Mister Thus-and-so; ⁴⁴ And I answered him plainly, saying, Verily I have just broke the neck and caved in the head of Mister Thus-and-so; ⁴⁵ Thus and so that cup shall be mine.

⁴⁶ And when I took the cup and had drunk of it deeply, then did I bless humankind, and forgive them, and love them. Selah.

Chapter 3.

¹ My grandmother has built a considerable fortune owning and managing a house of divers entertainments. ² Tonight it is my job to oversee delivery unto that house of a number of resources upon which those entertainments are made.

³ We are on an autobus. We ride toward my grandmother’s establishment, picking up employee girls along the way. I have never met the driver, no, neither have I met most of the girls.

⁴ Among my duties I am a scribe; just now I am listening to and transcribing the rules as to where various articles of clothing are kept, clean, in storage, and whither they must go once soiled. ⁵ The rules are numerous and complicated. It is my job to codify them into a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be followed henceforth by all my grandmother’s entertainers.

⁶ It becomes increasingly clear throughout our travel that the girls are all terrified of my grandmother and all the management and administrative class who work in my grandmother’s organization. ⁷ Many times through the course of our “running through the garments” one or another of the girls advise me that it is best to be immediately cooperative and not to question anything put to us.

⁸ It becomes increasingly unclear throughout our travel both what sort of vehicle we are traveling in and who I am: ⁹ Indeed, by the time we arrive at the door of my grandmother’s house of divers entertainments, we are in a boat on a busy transit canal in a city, like Venice, whose streets are of water; ¹⁰ Moreover, I am clearly not my grandmother’s grandson but one of the girls in her employ.

¹¹ I am first on the gangway. We are snuggled to the pier and my way into the house is unobstructed; ¹² But I am fraught with worry from my warning conversations about the superiors’ treatment of the girls; and as no one on the boat or in the house has issued an order to disembark, I stay still; ¹³ Until the girl directly behind me whispers, “You’d better move!”

¹⁴ And I scurry into the house. Various matronly types mill about in overwrought 1900s and 1910s gowns of faux silk and taffeta. ¹⁵ Occasionally one of these barks directions for the new girls: “Head over there to the wash station!”

¹⁶ We are already fully entrenched and encumbered, whaleboned and starched upright in our elaborate undergarment exoskeletons, so it is clear this exercise is to be, in figurative as well as literal terms, a “whore’s bath”.

¹⁷ Still afore the queue, I arrive first at the washing station as directed. It seems a carnival attraction, a contrivance in wrought iron, painted gaily, spigots and levers every which way (though strictly left-right symmetrical); ¹⁸ And with a huge semi-circular basin looking like nothing so much as a ten-man urinal.

¹⁹ And in the very center of the back wall of the basin, an unobtrusive manufacturer’s stamp reads “Moab”.