“You Can’t Go Home Over My Dead Body Until You Wipe That Look Off Your Face”

1     At Berkeley, my PhD dissertation subject was Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus.

1.1   It’s the old wheeze:

       •  man learns dark secret

       •  flies too near sun

       •  crash

       •  straight to hell

1.2   Moral: Don’t think too much.

1.3   I was engaged in a deconstructive analysis, as I tautologically expressed it.

2     Dr. Faustus was an actual person.

2.1   A native of Germany, he plied his trade in the rowdy public houses common in the first half of the sixteenth century.

2.2   Dr. Faustus lost his post as schoolmaster at Kreuznach through “the most dastardly lewdness with the boys.”

2.3   “This wretch, taken prisoner at Batenburg on the Maas, was treated rather leniently by the chaplain, Dr. Johannes Dorstenius, because he promised the man, who was good but not shrewd, knowledge of various arts. Hence the chaplain kept drawing him wine, by which Faust was very much exhilarated, until the vessel was empty. When Faust learned this, and the chaplain told him that he was going to Grave that he might have his beard shaved, Faust promised him another unusual art by which his beard might be removed without the use of a razor, if he would provide more wine. When this condition was accepted, Faust told him to rub his beard vigorously with arsenic, but without any mention of its preparation. When the salve had been applied, there followed such an inflammation that not only the hair but also the skin and the flesh were burned off. The chaplain himself told me of this piece of villainy more than once with much indignation.”

2.4   In short, the historical Faustus was a vicious quack.

3     The myth of the great magician came later, posthumous to the man Faust.

3.1   In the legend, Faust performed marvels, played tricks on popes and kings, learned the secret ways of stars and immortals.

3.2   Faust summoned Helen of Troy to be his lover, and with her had a son, Justus, born with the gift of prophecy.

3.3   “The devil has honestly kept the promise that he made to me, therefore I will honestly keep the pledge that I made and contracted with him,” said Faust, facing an eternity of torture.

3.4   The yarn was embellished by Marlowe, Mann, Goethe.

Chronology

1991:  I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.

1992:  I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.

1993:  Although I have not visited the campus in a year, I am still working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.

1994:  I am trying to summon the demon Mephistopheles, drawing chalk figures on my floor and chanting Latin backward.

1995:  Even my psychiatrist does not realize that, crouched painfully under the bed, with a flashlight, after my mother has gone to sleep, I am working on a deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus.

1996:  I keep the deconstructive treatment hidden in a pillowcase; before I go to sleep I place an envelope full of letters from “good” people over it, and paperweight the lot with a King James Bible. I have not dared open the pillowcase in six months.

1997:  Now that I have finally destroyed all trace of my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus, I do not understand why I feel unhappy.

1998:  My mother dies of complications following liposuction surgery. Eddie comes home with Ralph and I faint. I wake up on top of the bed, naked and hot in blinding sunlight.

And, seeing the room from this unaccustomed angle, I remember my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus. I haven’t thought about it in a long time.

In my deconstructive treatment of Dr. Faustus, I consider the manner in which incredulity “writes” the discourse about the magus. I draw on sources from The Golden Bough to the Bhagwan Rajneesh. Only it never quite gels.

I think of some ways in which life might have been different, had it gelled.

I lie in bed for some time, just feeling sorry for myself and malingering. I dwell on the negatives. I am flabby, dank, unlovable. Staunch, exalted souls rot in the mines, in the rice paddies, in the exploiters’ factories, while I fatten like a horrible insect.

I go back underneath the bed and days pass.

Sometimes Eddie and Ralph come in to check on me. They say “Hello?” experimentally – but when I don’t respond, they tromp around doing whatever as if they’re alone in the room. Every now and then, Eddie sits on the floor and talks to me. I mostly say “yes” and “no.” Sometimes I think of whole sentences I might say, but they’re all weasely ways of asking why he doesn’t love me. Afterward I suffer agonies of humiliation, just thinking that I almost said these sentences.

I’m trying to hallucinate. The hallucination I choose is of a mass of starving children in the courtyard, calling to eat me. I consider this a potent, apt hallucination. I know it would piss my mother off no end.

I don’t quite tell Eddie or Ralph I am hallucinating, though I drop strong hints.

I keep thinking I’m about to come out from under the bed. Then I think something else. For hours at a time I recall old Happy Days episodes, amazed that we all found Fonzie sexy. I remember unlikely fish from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Did I make up the giant crab? Johnny Carson backward is Nosrac Ynnhoj. What is Nosrac Ynnhoj? would be my prize-winning Jeopardy question.

“You’re going to have to come out someday, Chrysa. You know? Cause I’ll make you. I’ll totally set it on fire or something. Not. Kidding.”

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau Dries Up and Blows Away

1     Ralph kneels down beside the bed and slides a plate of chili in to me, smearing the dust ruffle with poppy-red sauce.

2     I throw up violently into a plastic bucket. It’s yellow; the handle’s hooked behind my neck.

3     They’re sitting on the bed over me having a discussion.

“The bed is the actual problem, cause we don’t talk about this but Chrysa was actually raped in this bed but then Mom was too cheap to throw it out. So no fucking wonder.”

“I don’t think the bed is the problem.”

“And yet, curiously enough, the bed is the problem, or else I don’t know why you bother to just contradict me.”

“I think the problem is self-pity.”

4     Eddie hauls me out from under the bed by my ankle, yelling, “I’ll throw you out, I’ll fucking do it, you don’t wise up fast.”

Parenthesis

(It’s fun to slide on the floor. Then I’m revealed, a horrible result like a turtle pried out of its shell. I’m covered in some kind of juice, unlike other sweat. Eddie goes, “Oh, Jesus.”

I cry, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” I am sort of trying to curl up in a crash position, but also to sit up normally, so the effect is as if two kids are fighting for the controls.

“Okay, you need a fucking shower, I’m not kidding. Right? You look like shit. I’m your brother, okay? You look like shit. Do you ever think of eating?”

“Leave me alone!”

He mimics, in a high-pitched voice, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” And then – “No. You gotta come do something for me.”

“You’re just fucking cruel!”

He crosses his arms. I catch my breath and everything is devastatingly clear. All the things I have to say to Eddie are simple and friendly. Then the next sob comes and I remember that he doesn’t love me.

“Well, get up,” he says. “I haven’t got all day, personally.”

“I can’t,” I snivel. For a moment it’s true. I can’t even get up, and there he is, tormenting me.

“I need you to come to Mom’s office,” he says, with labored sarcasm. “It’s like, ten inches, do you think you can manage ten inches?”

But I say stubbornly, inspired: “I’ll have to crawl.”

“I don’t care if you roll! Do umbrella steps!” Eddie wails. “I want you to type a mailing list,

FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

I crawl to my mother’s office. Eddie shuffles behind me, muttering, groaning with impatience. I can feel the swipe when he mimes kicking me in the ass. Sometimes I’m on all fours, making a good clip despite a fake limp in my left arm. Sometimes, depleted, I fall on my belly and can only make pitiful, beached-jellyfish motions. In my mind, at any moment he might crack and fall to his knees beside me, clasping me in his arms. If this miracle can be achieved, everything will instantly be healed and bright. Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you love me? my mind is booming.

At the same time I’m so furious I want to turn and bite his shins. So I’m a hypocrite, really, and I can feel I’m going to get nowhere.

Can’t give up, though, I tell myself. A quitter never wins.

Eddie’s understandably exasperated; but satisfied, too. I feel in my ritual donkey imitation I am actually carrying both of our loads. It’s strange how, to an outsider, he would seem to be the powerful one.

Finally we arrive at Mom’s office. By now we have arrived, too, at the point where people just rave, as if in fever, and the things they say are all deformed by heat. So as I grovel up to the PowerMac Mom got new just before she disintegrated and was no more, Eddie’s barking, “Me and Ralph can’t type, cause we’re men. So you gotta at least type or else you go live in the garden with the other snails!”

“Oh, you can too type! You can type!”

“We can’t type! We’re men!”

“You can type!”

“NO! You’re gonna type and fuck you!”

“I’ll type but you have to admit that you can type first!”

“We can’t type!”

Silence. I’m crouched on the gray carpet in my mother’s office. The furniture is glass and stainless steel and black canvas. It’s like sitting inside an expensive suitcase.

Eddie says, “I got the mailing lists over there. They need to go on labels.”

I blurt: “But I’ll need the computer on the floor.”

Eddie winds up and slams his fist down on the glass computer desk. Both of us flinch, expecting it to shatter. But nothing happens. Then he says, “Look what you made me do.”

I’m shouting, “Don’t dare blame me!” as he stamps out of the room.

I sob for some time, and think about homelessness. Then I move the monitor and the keyboard down under the desk. I crawl to fetch the mailing lists. There are 48 pages of addresses, single-spaced. I feel safe, realizing it will take me a long time. As long as I have labels, Eddie won’t throw me out.

From then on, every day I furtively crawl down the corridor to my mother’s office, where I sit under the desk typing labels and printing them out. When my eyes begin to hurt from the screen, I stick labels on envelopes. Once, when I look up at the door, Ralph’s there. I duck my head, ashamed because I look like shit. He says, “How’s things?” and when I look up again, he’s gone. Later, in the doorway, I find a cheese sandwich, neat on a plate with a folded paper napkin.)

End Parenthesis

5     Eddie lies on my floor drinking peppermint schnapps.

It’s late at night, I don’t know how late. Through the dust ruffle he tells me how cool it’s going to be once the center’s really going. But he can’t let me stay if I’m some loony crawling around the halls.

I’m his sister and he loves me and all. He likes me, anyway. He loves me. No, he likes me, no, he loves me. No, it’s something else that doesn’t start with an L.

So, instead of rotting in my own shit, why don’t I just wake up and do his marketing stuff; I got that Master’s after all, and what good’s a Master’s if all I want out of life’s to rot under a bed? I gotta admit.

While he speaks, I’m trying to hallucinate. I’ve got the starving children massed out in the courtyard. I make them wail: Hey, Chrysa, someday everyone’s gone forever! Let usss eeeat you! Someday everyone’s gone forever!

And I tell him through the dust ruffle that I would be glad to do his marketing stuff; but what about the children? They’re expecting me to feed them.

Eddie doesn’t answer. Eddie doesn’t answer. Soon I understand, and burn with embarrassment. I’m only pretending to hallucinate, to earn pity. Eddie saw through me. Now he’s going to tell Ralph.

6     A coyote howled in the courtyard, everyone was out of the house and only a real coyote. Eddie was gone too. I prayed to God for Eddie to be downstairs although I knew he wasn’t. Finally I just lay in the cool night dust slack-jawed and thought that the coyote must have brown fur and his pawpads would be rough and warm. They would feel to him like my bare feet do, on the poolside tiles.

He howled. I lay and hummed along quietly. Finally I guess he was all howled out.

7     I don’t know exactly how long I malingered. It’s easy to mistake a month for two weeks, and vice versa. It can’t have been important to our ancestors to tell.

It seemed like one incredibly long bad day.

8     Then I crawled out from under the bed and stood up. I reeled there, wondering, how did that happen? I almost got back under

but didn’t, and there I was.

Healed!

In the windows, the day was blue. The grass below shone. I felt pretty atrocious, but that seemed less important now. It occurred to me that if I never told anyone I was depressed, I could have a brilliant career, and no one any the wiser.