Sections from The Chronicles of the Pirates

As Narrated by One of MD’s Wolfhounds

THE SINKING OF A SHIP

Since the purpose of these chronicles is to place down for posterity, and whatever shall be after posterity, the histories of the pirate girls, it is not my place to talk about myself. For I am the writer of these chronicles.

Suffice it to say that the family to which I’m genetically tied claims descent from the greatest antiquity.

For my ancestors were there when the world began. For, if this world began by beginning, it must have begun in a division whose double name was, and is, life/death. My forebears were there, then, for Hecate had three names, Uncreate, Life, and Death, and three heads, lion, horse, and dog.

The pirate girls say that man defines God. And so the ancient Greeks, that is, men, sick of the priestesses and fortune-tellers who were controlling the future, transformed Hecate into Death. From then on, Hecate was invoked only 0during clandestine rites of magic, named black by the local politicians. And at the same time, I or my family was reduced to ordinary dog.

But I am nevertheless able to grant to any human her heart’s desire. Suffice it to say that, like the pirate girls, I will still fuck anything.

—I just decided that I’ve talked too much about myself.

—crucified from within by all that’s intolerable in the world and proud of it—that’s my kind of writing

—I shall talk of myself no more

—except to say that I have always been faithful to MD, and ever shall, and she to me and my brother

—and so we came to the new world

—After Silver, Virgin, and The-One-Who-Has-The-Map—that’s what we secretly named her—left the ship, all of us, some not noticing that we had reached land, continued to do what we usually did.

We did notice that there was a bad smell.

Pussycat, licking her lips, said that it was rising up from all the dead fish that were lying under us.

Ostracism took her fingers out of Pussycat in order to investigate. When she returned, she said that there were lots of dead fish everywhere.

Pussycat was ready to eat.

“This stink’s making me sick,” Morgan, or Kiss-of-Rot, added to the conversation. Her face, green, was becoming simultaneously greener and more colorless, so she decided to pass out instead.

Not just Kiss-of-Rot but all of the pirates wanted to return to the Bald Head Pub, the true home of rotten girls where the world was one of comfort. Where dainty red-velvet curtains hang in front of windows whatever the conditions outside. Whatever the time and weather of the world. Where there were neither medical benefits nor class distinctions nor any other amenities to disturb their quiet existence. Where they moved through their orgasms into the imagination of the world.

“Bald Head Pub,” said Pussy, their dreamer, “home where and when there’s no home to those who don’t want one.”

Not bothering to listen to their captain, that was usual, these rotten and rotting girls whispered mutiny to each other. Really foul words, especially words which made no sense.

Only the most criminal, the ones who, when they had hair, pulled clumps of it out of their skulls and placed those bundles in front of other people’s eyes, Antigone and Pussycat, cursed out loud.

Now it was really stinky. So odoriferous that the clams who were lying in the mud-water below, shell-open, and the fish whose mouths were gaping even though they were dead, could see a wall of smell.

With mouths agape between legs.

Most of the pirates still didn’t notice anything.

“I’m going to investigate.” Curiosity-mad Antigone dived into the liquid. Being three feet deep, its bottom hit her head. Sitting up between the open-mouthed fish, she was the first pirate to perceive that the ship was going nowhere.

Now Captain Pussy started to make a speech about shipwrecks, but none of the pirates paid attention because they had begun to fight each other. Water was soaking through everything, water polluted by slime and dead fish heads, fish mouths open as if treasures could be found within. Water mixed with air and earth. Pussycat tried to kick MD, but the sea held her legs back. Half the deck hid under the water. Pussycat and Ostracism, tangled in each other’s bodies, didn’t notice that they were now lying in mud. Antigone rubbed her eyes with both her hands and got more crap into them. Filled with bits of star-fish. When she tried to look through these eyes, the world had changed.

It looked as if the end of the world was the same as its beginning.

The battle broke out in earnest. Drops of water, slime, then blood flew through the lower part of the air. A sore breast, torn flesh at the right shoulder, bruises already turning all the colors of flesh that’s already died. The viscous liquor that the girls were now in managed to buffer the worst of the blows, but not some poisonous scratches.

For the ship was sunk. All that could be seen was fingers of wood spread out and sticking up into, stinking up, the sky.

Thus, the girls visited the dead pirates who lived under the water.

Unnoticed, Ange disappeared in the direction her friend had gone.

King Pussy interrupted the speech she was trying to give to mutter, “First ship I ever lost.”

It was the first time she had ever been on a ship.

Finally, Pussycat munched on a dead fish.

Wearied beyond endurance, the pirate girls fell back into the world of mud.

THE FALL OF A KING AND OF THE KINGSHIP OF PUSSY

King Pussy told all the girls who were lying in the mud and the water what was happening to them. According to her dreams. For Pussy no longer needed to be asleep to see dreams.

“All of us are now being tested for AIDS.

“This is how those tests are being done: needles, having been inserted into the lower spine, put in but principally draw out gooey yellow liquid. And a small amount of blood.

“In other words: a cracked egg yolk.”

Now Pussy predicted the future:

“Half of the ones who’re lying on top of the lofty hospital beds ‘cause they’re in the middle of being tested are men.

“I was only watching what was going on even though I was supposed to be being tested. But it looked like it hurt to be tested so I asked one guy, ‘Does it hurt?’

“ ‘Yes.’”

Pussy is never too clear about things.

“I know that among these people I’m the only one who’s refusing to be tested. And I know that I don’t want to know this.

“All of the tests come out negative.”

Relieved, MD went back to French-kissing my brother, who had just devoured a rat that wasn’t yet dead.

“So I went away with the medical tester,” continued Pussy. “I can’t remember whether a he or a she.” All of the pirates were now listening entranced to their captain. They didn’t mind that they were sitting in mud or that jellyfish particles were dripping off their eyelashes.

“The countryside was anything but beautiful. As soon as we were deep inside that gray and brown straw, she/he tested me, by use of black boxes that looked like Geiger counters, for all major diseases except AIDS.

“I had three of them. I knew this was true ‘cause I was watching those needles in the round glass windows waver in the positive. Just a bit positive . . . that’s positive.

“I was sick.

“How can this be? I was too terrified to answer myself, so in desperation I asked the Medical Authority.

“ ‘It’s probably because you have AIDS. That’s why most people get many of the kind of diseases you have at the same time.’

“Now I panicked. She/he tested me for AIDS and I had it.

“I was feeling the worst things that it’s possible for a human to feel.

“Then reality turned even worse:

“I was sitting in a second-story New York City-like apartment, the usual hole, like the Bald Head Pub, with a bunch of my friends, about half of whom I didn’t know. A man, whom I had never seen before, set this room on fire.

“Because he had just been informed that he was positive.

“Through that disintegrating floor, we fell to the ground. Which was the outside. Human-size automata, female, military, eight of them, in two lines, began to advance. A leg rises straight up, another, military style—1, 2, 1, 2—someone must have first activated them, they kept on closing in on us, for they were planning to annihilate us. That was their one purpose in life. Meanwhile, a missile, flaming right through the sky, hurtled toward us. Similar missiles explode, right there! In the air! Just above our heads! War lies all around us and human limbs are being lopped off!

“I guess I had gotten away from the war, ‘cause I was inside a grocery store. Maria, you were in there with me. In that grocery store.” We called Maria Black Monk ’cause she was as sweet and pure as a holy celibate. “You were crouching down in front of those cash registers so no one could know you were there.”

That’s typical behavior for Maria. She doesn’t want to be part of the human world.

“The cash registers were shelves filled with food. You were crouching down because you were poor and had to steal.”

“I will never recognize Restraint,” Black Mary announced.

“When I asked you, ‘cause even in dream I liked you, what you wanted me to get you, for I see that you were skeletal and homeless, you pointed toward boxes of dried milk. Carnation.

“You spoke up for yourself: ‘I want to eat white rice, not dried milk. But I don’t have money.’

“I knew that there was a causal connection between your two sentences, but I didn’t understand what it was.

“ ‘Will you steal for me?’

“From then on, we hung out together. In the dream, you were beautiful and suicidal, and I didn’t understand how you could be both beautiful and suicidal.

“Nothing anymore made sense.

“Until everyone who had been tested told me that it had been reported to each of them that they were positive. That the U.S. Army had done this and had activated the female automata. They planned to exterminate all of us.”

From then on, Pussy began to talk about herself. It was dream who was talking through her:

“After that war had taken place, the world was changed.

“From that time on, all my dreams were about cats.”

The secret is that these girls aren’t drunks, but dreamers and poets.

“The war had taken place and then there was a cat which belonged to a man and a woman. These humans were experimental poets and married to each other.

“The cat had the bathroom.

“I had the bedroom, which was in front of the house.

“The cat and I were on a train together. Though she had always been distant to me, now she opened up.

“I explained to the woman, whose name was C, that her pussy had become friendly.

“After Henri G., a psychic in London, had introduced me at a symposium, she said, while I was in full view of the audience, ‘Your job will be to improvise on the subject of cats.‘

“ ‘Oh, please. Give me five minutes. I need to figure out what I’m going to say.’

“I started by walking over to the podium which was as tall as me. The larger it grew, the smaller me. As if I was Alice in Wonderland, since this pedestal was only a carton under a carton three times its size, I defeated all of it by carrying it away, and then I could see that the audience was moving backwards.

“I began to talk to them by describing C’s pussy. I thought I was making sense, but they kept on laughing and talking among themselves.

“Some of them were lounging menacingly in the doorway to what lay outside.

“At least half of them were outside.

“When I began speaking again, there was no one left to listen to me.”

King Pussy had just announced to us that she had failed as our captain. She would no longer be a leader.

“I had no more worth because, instead of an audience, there was a group of seventy-five or so schoolgirls, sitting, as they had been taught to do, in folding chairs in three rows.

“All of these girls came from privileged families.

“Because I no longer did anything successfully, I decided the world was void.

“Then I saw that the lecture hall was the interior of a church. A small church.

“Wooden pews were strewn everywhere, this way, that. Down on them, those who were homeless sat discussing their business among themselves. This is what’s going on, I thought, not all that highfalutin culture that I’ve been part of.

“The homeless ended the meeting.

“I was outside the church with C.

“I wanted to go to a punk bar, but there were no more punk bars anymore, and besides, C, the poet, wanted to go to a nice-girl bar.

“We parted our ways.”

As soon as Pussy finished speaking, all the girls cheered, for they thought that she had been speaking about treasure. Clearly, they were going to get more treasure than they had ever seen. They were going to live in silver and gold and do whatever they wanted to do and spit on the world if they could be bothered.

They came out of their sulks and gave another cheer for Pussy their captain that started an echo in a faraway hill, which sent the gulls once more soaring and squalling around the wreck of the ship.

The pirates began to run toward the land, but the muck wouldn’t let them. All the dead fish with their mouths agape. They moved, those sailors, however they could, alternately paddled and crawled, until they reached a narrow stream. The beginning of the earth that contained treasure.