ThE UGLY EYE. (a story of one of the thirteen)
The female being can be so ugly. It scares me. EYE want to love women, and then you see their teeth. You see how their skin bunches and sags. EYE want to run away, and hide. The females secrete repulsive fluids and get upset if you tell them that you don’t like it. You don’t want to know about it. That sometimes, they smell BAD. They conceal their ugliness with lotions and potions, perfumes and pads. They have instruments to pluck and redesign their ugly parts. Sometimes they sneak off by themselves or with others. To the toilet, to the bathroom, like chickens, all together, clucking and cooing. Some hide their ugliness, others will forever be ugly, inside and out, it is a case of vegetable peels thrown into compost bin: soon it will rot, and the stink will rise.
EYE just narrowly escaped an encounter with an older woman. Where, after a time of being intoxicated with lust, EYE began to see her. Truly see her. The ugliness of heart, the ugliness of mind and the ugliness of flesh.
How did EYE get involved with so many women, my past is filled with them. They are beautiful at first. In all that, they are same as US. They don't tell you that. They pretend to be different. They pretend to be something else. They pretend to be someone else.
EYE meet another one. So delicate and attentive. So beautiful and charming, wonderfully sexy and exotic.
Her shape sends me into a dizzy spin. EYE am fearful, I know this feeling and it always ends in tragedy.
We talk, we dance, we drink, and we eat. We arrange to meet again.
She is a delightful woman, EYE am a man of no consequence, and she is making me feel like a God.
This woman, this creature of the bathroom and intricate thoughts, stands over me as I drop to my knees to pick up her fallen earring. My instinct has driven me to this. Neural imbalance. In me she has provoked an imbalance, to be her protector, to be her lover, to be a man, to be a gentleman. It is all an illusion. I am at her feet. She wears high-heeled strapped sandals. Her toenails are painted red. Her arches are well defined. Her feet tense slightly and relax. I see the blood pulse across her ankles, smooth as silk fabric. Voice noise fills my head. Eye do not listen to them, warning me of what has happened to me before when love turns to something dreadful. EYE sneak a look up; she is looking down, but there is no weakness in it, no invitation. EYE am just a man. EYE see something strange in her eyes. EYE see ruthlessness and hardness. EYE see in her hundreds of others like her, one’s from my past and many from the future. EYE smile up at her. She smiles back at me.
Me. Joshua Kane.
"Are you one of the thirteen?”
She has noticed me. " Yes. I am one of the thirteen, we are no-one, yet we are everywhere." Well practiced: the counterfeit of humanity. EYE stand. EYE am holding her earrings, but she makes no move to take them from me. She just stands there, arms folded, with a dark stare and hair in her eyes. Red hair. Fake hair. So EYE have to say, "Your earrings." EYE hold them out to her.
"What."
"Your earrings."
"My earrings, what about them?"
This is the sort of woman that she is, and EYE am hooked. EYE am lost. A drowning man. Ancient genetic predisposition. EYE am a total disaster. EYE never learn from my mistakes.
Just then my mobile phone rings. EYE answer. EYE watch her put her earrings back into their rightful place.
EYE listen to the voice on the other end of the call.
“Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack”
Blasphemy. EYE am becoming the thing EYE fear.
But. Pause for a moment, doubt creeps in, and EYE have to cry. Before my tears can evaporate, they turn to blood and my hatred hides deep within.
EYE stand in a dream. Visions filling me with indescribable horrors, the thirteen are within me. But which one am EYE?
I took her to a wonderful restaurant. I could have taken her to the end of the world, or to Egon Romsk’s, but she wanted steak tartar and champagne. It is an expensive restaurant, known throughout London as a difficult place to get into. No problem for me, EYE am one of the thirteen. We can do anything. During powder room moments, EYE could look out the window at the bustling streets. The human being is an ugly thing. The human is a shallow, predictable entity that I despise, but EYE hide it well. A waiter appears from nowhere "Would sir like anything else?" Eye wonder what he would do if EYE asked him to cut out his heart and feed it the starving. But, EYE smile and ask for more champagne. She reappears, dutifully powdered, buffed and fresh. EYE ignore the voices. EYE look at her and think of making love and strawberries.
She looks up at me through falls of red hair and asks lots of questions. I sip the Bollinger. They check you out. They calculate where to file you. But my answers are never truthful and EYE like to play games. So, she will not know what lies behind my bright gaze and tortured mind.
"No, EYE can't see the point of consumerism on a large scale."
She squints up her eyes and peers at me as if to memorise something. Finally: "Oh, that's good." She laughs and crosses her arms in front of her as if to cover up some unknown fragility.
"What about you. No boyfriend?"
"What."
"No boyfriend."
"No."
"Surprising. You're so pretty. Pretty. So pretty."
"Thanks." She takes it in her stride, the way those do who are often praised
"I guess I'm just choosy. No girlfriend?"
I fake a blush. I wish I were back in the arms of Alice. Why do THEY need to know everything about us?
"I suppose EYE have never met the right one." EYE smile at her, wondering if she can through my LIE.
My heart beats faster, the voices rage in my head. Shut up, shut up. EYE manage to slow my heart and block out their tones.
EYE want to run, EYE wish to hide and go back to a place long lost. Now EYE am calm. EYE smile a slight one, one EYE hope will make her think of me as gentle. EYE reach across the table and take her hand. She screws up her eyes at me and grins the funniest little grin. Maybe she's deciding whether EYE am crazy. When EYE pull at her hand, there is the slightest resistance, like the catch of a faulty padlock. EYE laid her hand on top of my baldhead; she lets her hand feel around my small mounds and well-moisturised skin. She feels the pattern of my murkyworld and of my life that has been so solitary and bizarre, until this moment.
"Soft murkiness” She gives me a little rub. EYE close my eyes. EYE feel tears coming on. EYE hear the voices and their fury within me. Stop it. Just stop it. "For good luck." She smiles and blows me a kiss.
She flutters her eyelids. She strokes her fingers through her hair. She gazes it at me. Making me feel that I am the only person that exists for her. EYE talk, she listens, she talks and EYE listen, but the voices are starting to filter through. EYE say something, she is then very angry. Interesting chemistry: embarrassment, pain, anxiety, eventually it always comes down to anger. They always tell me that it is my fault. That they were perfectly normal until they met me. They say to me that they can’t love me anymore. These days EYE ruin it before it can really begin. That way EYE don’t get hurt. She goes to the powder room again and EYE look out of the window and think of Alice. When she returns, she is calmer and laughs, telling me that EYE am a strange one indeed, but she finds it attractive.
Then let's get to know each other, EYE say, and she purses her lips. She's turning her thoughts around in her mind, looking for the jagged edge. Outside, EYE hear a woman scream, EYE turn to see what is going on. EYE see a man slapping a woman hard around her face, no one tries to stop them. EYE watch them and find myself enjoying the moment a bit too much.
EYE try not to get angry. EYE always try to be compassionate, but that is a lot harder to reveal than many people can imagine. In Essex, there's a place where the locals are moved so much by one another's just being there that they sit around all day and weep. Long days, too, EYE don’t think EYE would like to live there. Strikes me as too emotional.
"What are your secrets?" She asks me. EYE think about telling her the truth, but decide against it.
" It is said that once you have glimpsed one of the thirteen, you become one the many. The darkness of the thirteen lingers in the mind's eye." My answer seems to baffle her.
"If that is true, which one are you?”
"That is for you to guess”. EYE smile at her and EYE hope that she will play my game.
"Are you an artist and a writer?"
"Yes, actually." EYE laugh.
"Do you like to look at my feet and toes? "
"Sometimes." EYE reply.
She tilts her head at me. EYE don't mind anything a woman does, especially when they do things like that to me. They cast a spell. Even though EYE know she's challenging me, trying to see if something hidden will come out. But this is a game, EYE will find out about her, she may think she will find out about me. We will become lovers, we will see each other, go to the theatre, go for meals, go to the cinema, galleries, week-ends away, we will discuss many subjects, we will have many opinions and then as the months roll on, things will change, you know what EYE mean, The initial excitement of being with new person, will become dull. EYE will look at her and see faults, what attracted me to her in the first place will have become forgotten. She will hate the way EYE eat, the way EYE snore, my need to be alone, my need to paint and draw. My fetishes, which she originally found exciting, she will consider perverted and disgusting. She will blame me for not changing; she will accuse me of not loving her. She will meet someone else and eventually leave me. EYE gaze at her and think all these things, yet, EYE always wonder if this girl could be different, could she be the one? Will she share my dark desires? Will she be ALL that EYE need and want her to be, would EYE be all of that for her?
After a minute of this silence, with the girl outside the window screaming and the man shouting and the police car arriving and the crowd gathering, EYE win. She says, "OH Kane my life is so boring," and slumps back in her chair.
"No, it's not. You fascinate me. You've got more life in one strand of that pretty red hair than I've got in my whole body. Just the way you move and sway, the sparkle in your eyes, your laugh, the way you think, and the sound of your voice. EYE do not see intelligence in people very often, but I see plenty of it in you. And passion. EYE suspect that you're passionate about things."
"What." She looks at me.
"Passion. Passion."
"What." She looks blankly into my EYES.
Passion. Passion."
" Well I suppose I am about some things." She whispers back at me.
"Like what." EYE ask too eagerly.
"Well Art, I guess. I go to the Egon Romsk’s Art Gallery every Thursday night for the private lessons. I like to use charcoal and inks. I used to be good. But, I haven't touched done it . . ." She trails off, remembering something bad.
"But you should! You're an artist. We are all artists and we all should do what we want, when we want, we must let our creative sides expand.”
"No, I am not like you Kane, I could never be one of the thirteen, I want to be known for myself, I want to be loved for who I am, not what I am.”
"What are you?" EYE whisper.
"I am someone who is alone.” She pounces then. Elbows on the table, face in my face. "I have never met someone who could handle the darkness that hides inside me!”
"Tell me more!” EYE gasp back at her.
"Well, I like to talk dirty when having sex." She blushes. “ I like to have my feet and toes worshipped and sucked, I like to be a slave to my master and I like to be a mistress to my man. I enjoy pornography, violence, cinema, theatre, and alternative things in life. I like to experiment with my existence and I want to be with someone who shares this desire for darkness.”
"Perfection," I whisper, "pure perfection."
She thrusts a forkful of steak tartar in my face -- and EYE take it into my mouth, chew, swallow, and wait. We talk about the décor. Another forkful. Another. EYE won't ask her. EYE won't show my happiness. EYE won't lose track of the conversation and say something to spoil it. EYE block out the voices. EYE won’t let them take this one away from me. Her face changes like a sudden wind. So alive now. More and more she settles her eyes on me. Like pouring honey into a straw. When I look away, the restaurant has closed, emptied, we are the only ones left and EYE can see that the manager is waiting for us to pay and leave as well.
"So, when are you going to tell me your secrets?" She delivers a mock slap across my cheek. "That's for lying to me."
"We'd better leave. Can we leave now? Get outside, then EYE will tell you."
She takes hold of my wrist, yanks me out of my chair, and leads me through to the manager. EYE pay the bill and we leave.
She smiles. "Now tell me." She fixes her eyes on me as if they belonged to a bird of prey.” I wonder are you the one? mister Kane." She gives my hand a squeeze.
What an extraordinary girl. EYE tell her everything. EYE tell her ALL my secrets, EYE tell her ALL my desires. EYE tell her my fears, my dreams, my plans.
"She is lying, she is like all the rest, she will bleed you dry and cut open your heart, she only wants what she cannot see, she is a liar, do not listen, hide from her hidefromher, hide!"
The voices are all around me. I fall to the ground and scream a terrifying scream.
Now that should have been the end of it. Who would want to stick around after that? But she took me with her to her home. She looked after me. Sang to me. Soothed me. Held me. Whispered to me. She made love to me. She took me to the Art Class at Egon Romsk’s. We spent many months together, 24/7. Toward the end we decided to paint a large canvas together. That really impressed her. She was rubbing against me by then. Her skin pulsed against my bare arms as we brushed together. Her bracelet rubbed my wrist, as she would lean over me to add another splash of oil. EYE thought of sneaking my fingers through her fingers, but I could never find the right moment for it.
EYE say; "Don't fall in love with me."
"What."
"It's dangerous to fall in love with us." EYE can't stop laughing, even though this matters.
"What are you. . . . What. In love -- I'm not in love with you." Unaccountably, she is upset.
"We are not one of the ordinary people."
"What! Don’t take that tone with me, don’t talk to me about things that do not mean anything!”
"Never mind. It's not important. You're, right." My laughter evaporates. EYE see its remnants shatter against the garden wall, melting into rain. "Forget EYE said anything."
"What. I don't know -- listen, I'm not like you." She glares at me." Do you know what you are?"
"Of course I do." EYE reply.
"An idiot, that's what. Fall in love with you. Don't you know when some things are just for fun?"
Me, EYE try not to get angry. Me, Joshua Kane, one of the thirteen, EYE am not like the others. EYE can contain my anger.
She is electric. Her eyes are on me. On me. On me. She sucks me with her eyes, it feels like. She loves me so much; she really could be the one.
Others they may take it for anger, but it's love. You have to know what to make of it. She loves me. EYE can tell. This is a dangerous situation for her, EYE understand that. As much as EYE love it. EYE have certain responsibilities to the thirteen.
EYE take her hand in mine. But. She pushes it away.
She slaps me.
It's nothing. But EYE pretend to cry.
She looks exhilarated at first. Then her mood changes. "Fuck me now, you fucking cunt, you stupid prick of a man, fuck me now, get out your cock and fuck me!" But for some reason, it does not feel real to me. It feels insincere and robotic.
She thinks that EYE am actually crying. She doesn't know it's all a game. Spinning from my murkyworld. Not tears. This is the moment EYE begin to suspect how ugly she is.
In reality. How UGLY she is, they all are, we are all ugly.
I play along, EYE do, as she wants.
The next month, between HER and EYE, not a word. She smiles at me now and then, a distracted smile. EYE go to my studio, write and paint, twiddle my thumbs a bit, think of past girlfriends and masturbate about them, sex was better with them wasn’t it? Perhaps the fantasy is always more attractive than the real thing. EYE wonder about this. It is my punishment for living a LIE.
It puts me in mind of how EYE lay in bed once, staring at the ceiling. EYE pay no attention to her standing over me. The plaster swirls on the ceiling are enough to link me to another world, my murkyworld. If EYE should want to come back, which perhaps EYE do not. Then EYE will return, but not to her.
She stands over me. She must be really worried this time, because I hear her whimper. In order to be close to me, she's telling me things, things that EYE like to hear, the first time she's ever done a thing like that. She imagines EYE am upset that my expectations have become unclear. It's nothing to do her; it is to do with my murkyworld.
EYE figured it out from the voices, from the wreckage of my skin. My body is turning. Equal and opposite reaction: EYE force myself against THEM, against the direction of normality, and thought it artistic. EYE should have been left alone. EYE should not be so selfish as to think that anyone can love me. Women / Girls are the same. They promise so much, then let you down, but throw the blame at another reason. Never their fault. Always mine. Outside the window: blackness. EYE thought they would always love me for who EYE am, not what they want me to be, but nothing EYE do has the intended effect. One thing led to another. New forces, new corrections, all wrong, all wrong. This should work; this is right, then silence, then alone. Always alone. What goes on inside you doesn't always express itself perfectly in the world outside. That is the way EYE am.
Her voice whispers as she stands over me, her tone is so kind -- that's the link. That's why she is reminding me of ALICE, of this day. So kind, her voice just now.
She says, "You cannot live like this, we cannot live like this. This isn't death we've got here Kane, this is life. You can't just lie there day on day and piss yourself and weep with regret. For one thing, the smell. Come back an artist again. I don't hate you, not really. Say something to me. Talk in your tongues. Say as best you can. We piece it together, don't we. We make out your meaning through the gulps and clicks and a word here and there, through all the murkiness of it, you sad hard thing. People don’t understand you, they don’t understand us, but I can’t live like this anymore. I need to live again, for myself.”
That was a long time ago. I don't know when she left me, she is just another in a long line of regrets. EYE look for her sometimes, in the galleries. But, EYE never see her. EYE think of them all, my pretty pretty ones. She loves me too much.
Here EYE am inside my studio. Dark in here, but not like the darkness of the thirteen. Pitch black darkness. Be careful, madness lives within the thirteen, EYE know this for EYE am one of them. My paintings are of an intricate design. Even with the lights off, there is a lifeless red darkness, a tinge to things as if seen whilst drowning in still waters. Lifeless shines at me it is a pure colour.
The colour of the thirteen.
"My name is Joshua Kane, EYE am one of the thirteen. EYE am alone. EYE have loved, EYE have been loved, EYE have felt love. BUT EYE have never been IN love. EYE am no-one, yet EYE am everywhere, for EYE am the voice of the fire."
EYE am forever distracted. EYE throw the doors open to the balcony. The noise makes me remember ALICE. In the emptiness of space there is no sound, of course. To those who know what EYE know, any sound is a memory. Let it clatter, echo and weep. My memories are too many, too much, a void of my own making. Dim dirty light from one of four bulbs in a cluster hangs from my studio ceiling, the others burnt out. The ceiling is lined with dead insects and their dirt. I glued them there for motivation. To enhance my art. To have something to talk to.
When she left me, EYE remember that EYE was standing just inside the door. Watching her. She wanders from cupboard to cupboard, opening and closing them, each with a distinct sound. EYE am thinking, this is the truth of what women are. Swirling figures, taking what is not theirs, but think it is because they have shared some time with you.
"Here it is." She cries.
A little black box with sharp corners. She wipes the dust off with her palm, dirtying her hand; she doesn't seem to mind. This box has gold padlocks on it and a nameplate, still bright. She sits down on the dull round rug. "Look."
EYE sit with her. She lays down the box in the middle of the round rug and opens it. There's a pendant in three pieces in velvet padding. She smiles at me, and I see the glitter of the pendant, times two, in her eyes. She takes out the chain, and then takes out one section to fit onto the chain. Then she takes out the third piece and attaches it to the second piece, it is of unusual design "I made this for you, look at it slide right in." And it does, too. Into it’s shape and design and again, slides again, for the hidden message, the last, where the third piece fits in. "The thirteen," she calls it. Why does this give me an erection?
"EYE love you” EYE tell her.
"I do not love you” she replies.
"Go now." EYE say to her.
"But we can still be friends." She says.
"Go. Please." EYE say.
"One last kiss before I leave?” she asks.
Her breath has a sour smell. Maybe it's my mind, her breath collected in a forgotten part of my memory, her tongue looks putrid and feels almost decayed. A person can be never be free when so many memories fill our minds with misinterpretation and loss. EYE turn and blink, turn and blink, as she expands and contracts.
"No hard feelings, Joshua. I just don't think it would work out." She says to me as she leaves.
"Yes, EYE have heard that before."
"You're an extraordinary man, though. Don't think I'm indifferent to that. You move me, really. But I don't want to hurt you. Our lives are too short."
"Yes, EYE have heard that before as well."
"You'll find someone, no doubt about it, a girl who thinks like you. Who will share your murkyworld, who is more like you and be your soul mate. You'll meet someone else."
"Keep your mouth shut, please." How did EYE get the scissors? Why is hair scattered across the round rug? Her red hair, red as blood. "Please stop talking to me and leave." EYE shout at her.
This close, EYE can see fear in her eyes, EYE can see where EYE cut some of her hair from her head. The shape of her fear is invigorating, seldom seen. "I understand that you’re angry, but you must see Joshua that we are so different to each other.”
"That’s not what you said when we first started seeing each other." EYE tell her.
She stands at the doorway and looks through me. “I thought you would change.” She says.
She slams the door and runs from me, running to HIM, the other man, the one that fulfils her requirements and needs. EYE watch her from my window, EYE watch her get into the car, EYE watch her kiss HIM and drive away.
EYE am the EYE and EYE am always watching.
EYE am Joshua Kane, one of the thirteen and EYE am number one.
ThE ENd.
The female being can be so ugly. It scares me. EYE want to love women, and then you see their teeth. You see how their skin bunches and sags. EYE want to run away, and hide. The females secrete repulsive fluids and get upset if you tell them that you don’t like it. You don’t want to know about it. That sometimes, they smell BAD. They conceal their ugliness with lotions and potions, perfumes and pads. They have instruments to pluck and redesign their ugly parts. Sometimes they sneak off by themselves or with others. To the toilet, to the bathroom, like chickens, all together, clucking and cooing. Some hide their ugliness, others will forever be ugly, inside and out, it is a case of vegetable peels thrown into compost bin: soon it will rot, and the stink will rise.
EYE just narrowly escaped an encounter with an older woman. Where, after a time of being intoxicated with lust, EYE began to see her. Truly see her. The ugliness of heart, the ugliness of mind and the ugliness of flesh.
How did EYE get involved with so many women, my past is filled with them. They are beautiful at first. In all that, they are same as US. They don't tell you that. They pretend to be different. They pretend to be something else. They pretend to be someone else.
EYE meet another one. So delicate and attentive. So beautiful and charming, wonderfully sexy and exotic.
Her shape sends me into a dizzy spin. EYE am fearful, I know this feeling and it always ends in tragedy.
We talk, we dance, we drink, and we eat. We arrange to meet again.
She is a delightful woman, EYE am a man of no consequence, and she is making me feel like a God.
This woman, this creature of the bathroom and intricate thoughts, stands over me as I drop to my knees to pick up her fallen earring. My instinct has driven me to this. Neural imbalance. In me she has provoked an imbalance, to be her protector, to be her lover, to be a man, to be a gentleman. It is all an illusion. I am at her feet. She wears high-heeled strapped sandals. Her toenails are painted red. Her arches are well defined. Her feet tense slightly and relax. I see the blood pulse across her ankles, smooth as silk fabric. Voice noise fills my head. Eye do not listen to them, warning me of what has happened to me before when love turns to something dreadful. EYE sneak a look up; she is looking down, but there is no weakness in it, no invitation. EYE am just a man. EYE see something strange in her eyes. EYE see ruthlessness and hardness. EYE see in her hundreds of others like her, one’s from my past and many from the future. EYE smile up at her. She smiles back at me.
Me. Joshua Kane.
"Are you one of the thirteen?”
She has noticed me. " Yes. I am one of the thirteen, we are no-one, yet we are everywhere." Well practiced: the counterfeit of humanity. EYE stand. EYE am holding her earrings, but she makes no move to take them from me. She just stands there, arms folded, with a dark stare and hair in her eyes. Red hair. Fake hair. So EYE have to say, "Your earrings." EYE hold them out to her.
"What."
"Your earrings."
"My earrings, what about them?"
This is the sort of woman that she is, and EYE am hooked. EYE am lost. A drowning man. Ancient genetic predisposition. EYE am a total disaster. EYE never learn from my mistakes.
Just then my mobile phone rings. EYE answer. EYE watch her put her earrings back into their rightful place.
EYE listen to the voice on the other end of the call.
“Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack
Clicketyclackclicketyclackclicketyclack”
Blasphemy. EYE am becoming the thing EYE fear.
But. Pause for a moment, doubt creeps in, and EYE have to cry. Before my tears can evaporate, they turn to blood and my hatred hides deep within.
EYE stand in a dream. Visions filling me with indescribable horrors, the thirteen are within me. But which one am EYE?
I took her to a wonderful restaurant. I could have taken her to the end of the world, or to Egon Romsk’s, but she wanted steak tartar and champagne. It is an expensive restaurant, known throughout London as a difficult place to get into. No problem for me, EYE am one of the thirteen. We can do anything. During powder room moments, EYE could look out the window at the bustling streets. The human being is an ugly thing. The human is a shallow, predictable entity that I despise, but EYE hide it well. A waiter appears from nowhere "Would sir like anything else?" Eye wonder what he would do if EYE asked him to cut out his heart and feed it the starving. But, EYE smile and ask for more champagne. She reappears, dutifully powdered, buffed and fresh. EYE ignore the voices. EYE look at her and think of making love and strawberries.
She looks up at me through falls of red hair and asks lots of questions. I sip the Bollinger. They check you out. They calculate where to file you. But my answers are never truthful and EYE like to play games. So, she will not know what lies behind my bright gaze and tortured mind.
"No, EYE can't see the point of consumerism on a large scale."
She squints up her eyes and peers at me as if to memorise something. Finally: "Oh, that's good." She laughs and crosses her arms in front of her as if to cover up some unknown fragility.
"What about you. No boyfriend?"
"What."
"No boyfriend."
"No."
"Surprising. You're so pretty. Pretty. So pretty."
"Thanks." She takes it in her stride, the way those do who are often praised
"I guess I'm just choosy. No girlfriend?"
I fake a blush. I wish I were back in the arms of Alice. Why do THEY need to know everything about us?
"I suppose EYE have never met the right one." EYE smile at her, wondering if she can through my LIE.
My heart beats faster, the voices rage in my head. Shut up, shut up. EYE manage to slow my heart and block out their tones.
EYE want to run, EYE wish to hide and go back to a place long lost. Now EYE am calm. EYE smile a slight one, one EYE hope will make her think of me as gentle. EYE reach across the table and take her hand. She screws up her eyes at me and grins the funniest little grin. Maybe she's deciding whether EYE am crazy. When EYE pull at her hand, there is the slightest resistance, like the catch of a faulty padlock. EYE laid her hand on top of my baldhead; she lets her hand feel around my small mounds and well-moisturised skin. She feels the pattern of my murkyworld and of my life that has been so solitary and bizarre, until this moment.
"Soft murkiness” She gives me a little rub. EYE close my eyes. EYE feel tears coming on. EYE hear the voices and their fury within me. Stop it. Just stop it. "For good luck." She smiles and blows me a kiss.
She flutters her eyelids. She strokes her fingers through her hair. She gazes it at me. Making me feel that I am the only person that exists for her. EYE talk, she listens, she talks and EYE listen, but the voices are starting to filter through. EYE say something, she is then very angry. Interesting chemistry: embarrassment, pain, anxiety, eventually it always comes down to anger. They always tell me that it is my fault. That they were perfectly normal until they met me. They say to me that they can’t love me anymore. These days EYE ruin it before it can really begin. That way EYE don’t get hurt. She goes to the powder room again and EYE look out of the window and think of Alice. When she returns, she is calmer and laughs, telling me that EYE am a strange one indeed, but she finds it attractive.
Then let's get to know each other, EYE say, and she purses her lips. She's turning her thoughts around in her mind, looking for the jagged edge. Outside, EYE hear a woman scream, EYE turn to see what is going on. EYE see a man slapping a woman hard around her face, no one tries to stop them. EYE watch them and find myself enjoying the moment a bit too much.
EYE try not to get angry. EYE always try to be compassionate, but that is a lot harder to reveal than many people can imagine. In Essex, there's a place where the locals are moved so much by one another's just being there that they sit around all day and weep. Long days, too, EYE don’t think EYE would like to live there. Strikes me as too emotional.
"What are your secrets?" She asks me. EYE think about telling her the truth, but decide against it.
" It is said that once you have glimpsed one of the thirteen, you become one the many. The darkness of the thirteen lingers in the mind's eye." My answer seems to baffle her.
"If that is true, which one are you?”
"That is for you to guess”. EYE smile at her and EYE hope that she will play my game.
"Are you an artist and a writer?"
"Yes, actually." EYE laugh.
"Do you like to look at my feet and toes? "
"Sometimes." EYE reply.
She tilts her head at me. EYE don't mind anything a woman does, especially when they do things like that to me. They cast a spell. Even though EYE know she's challenging me, trying to see if something hidden will come out. But this is a game, EYE will find out about her, she may think she will find out about me. We will become lovers, we will see each other, go to the theatre, go for meals, go to the cinema, galleries, week-ends away, we will discuss many subjects, we will have many opinions and then as the months roll on, things will change, you know what EYE mean, The initial excitement of being with new person, will become dull. EYE will look at her and see faults, what attracted me to her in the first place will have become forgotten. She will hate the way EYE eat, the way EYE snore, my need to be alone, my need to paint and draw. My fetishes, which she originally found exciting, she will consider perverted and disgusting. She will blame me for not changing; she will accuse me of not loving her. She will meet someone else and eventually leave me. EYE gaze at her and think all these things, yet, EYE always wonder if this girl could be different, could she be the one? Will she share my dark desires? Will she be ALL that EYE need and want her to be, would EYE be all of that for her?
After a minute of this silence, with the girl outside the window screaming and the man shouting and the police car arriving and the crowd gathering, EYE win. She says, "OH Kane my life is so boring," and slumps back in her chair.
"No, it's not. You fascinate me. You've got more life in one strand of that pretty red hair than I've got in my whole body. Just the way you move and sway, the sparkle in your eyes, your laugh, the way you think, and the sound of your voice. EYE do not see intelligence in people very often, but I see plenty of it in you. And passion. EYE suspect that you're passionate about things."
"What." She looks at me.
"Passion. Passion."
"What." She looks blankly into my EYES.
Passion. Passion."
" Well I suppose I am about some things." She whispers back at me.
"Like what." EYE ask too eagerly.
"Well Art, I guess. I go to the Egon Romsk’s Art Gallery every Thursday night for the private lessons. I like to use charcoal and inks. I used to be good. But, I haven't touched done it . . ." She trails off, remembering something bad.
"But you should! You're an artist. We are all artists and we all should do what we want, when we want, we must let our creative sides expand.”
"No, I am not like you Kane, I could never be one of the thirteen, I want to be known for myself, I want to be loved for who I am, not what I am.”
"What are you?" EYE whisper.
"I am someone who is alone.” She pounces then. Elbows on the table, face in my face. "I have never met someone who could handle the darkness that hides inside me!”
"Tell me more!” EYE gasp back at her.
"Well, I like to talk dirty when having sex." She blushes. “ I like to have my feet and toes worshipped and sucked, I like to be a slave to my master and I like to be a mistress to my man. I enjoy pornography, violence, cinema, theatre, and alternative things in life. I like to experiment with my existence and I want to be with someone who shares this desire for darkness.”
"Perfection," I whisper, "pure perfection."
She thrusts a forkful of steak tartar in my face -- and EYE take it into my mouth, chew, swallow, and wait. We talk about the décor. Another forkful. Another. EYE won't ask her. EYE won't show my happiness. EYE won't lose track of the conversation and say something to spoil it. EYE block out the voices. EYE won’t let them take this one away from me. Her face changes like a sudden wind. So alive now. More and more she settles her eyes on me. Like pouring honey into a straw. When I look away, the restaurant has closed, emptied, we are the only ones left and EYE can see that the manager is waiting for us to pay and leave as well.
"So, when are you going to tell me your secrets?" She delivers a mock slap across my cheek. "That's for lying to me."
"We'd better leave. Can we leave now? Get outside, then EYE will tell you."
She takes hold of my wrist, yanks me out of my chair, and leads me through to the manager. EYE pay the bill and we leave.
She smiles. "Now tell me." She fixes her eyes on me as if they belonged to a bird of prey.” I wonder are you the one? mister Kane." She gives my hand a squeeze.
What an extraordinary girl. EYE tell her everything. EYE tell her ALL my secrets, EYE tell her ALL my desires. EYE tell her my fears, my dreams, my plans.
"She is lying, she is like all the rest, she will bleed you dry and cut open your heart, she only wants what she cannot see, she is a liar, do not listen, hide from her hidefromher, hide!"
The voices are all around me. I fall to the ground and scream a terrifying scream.
Now that should have been the end of it. Who would want to stick around after that? But she took me with her to her home. She looked after me. Sang to me. Soothed me. Held me. Whispered to me. She made love to me. She took me to the Art Class at Egon Romsk’s. We spent many months together, 24/7. Toward the end we decided to paint a large canvas together. That really impressed her. She was rubbing against me by then. Her skin pulsed against my bare arms as we brushed together. Her bracelet rubbed my wrist, as she would lean over me to add another splash of oil. EYE thought of sneaking my fingers through her fingers, but I could never find the right moment for it.
EYE say; "Don't fall in love with me."
"What."
"It's dangerous to fall in love with us." EYE can't stop laughing, even though this matters.
"What are you. . . . What. In love -- I'm not in love with you." Unaccountably, she is upset.
"We are not one of the ordinary people."
"What! Don’t take that tone with me, don’t talk to me about things that do not mean anything!”
"Never mind. It's not important. You're, right." My laughter evaporates. EYE see its remnants shatter against the garden wall, melting into rain. "Forget EYE said anything."
"What. I don't know -- listen, I'm not like you." She glares at me." Do you know what you are?"
"Of course I do." EYE reply.
"An idiot, that's what. Fall in love with you. Don't you know when some things are just for fun?"
Me, EYE try not to get angry. Me, Joshua Kane, one of the thirteen, EYE am not like the others. EYE can contain my anger.
She is electric. Her eyes are on me. On me. On me. She sucks me with her eyes, it feels like. She loves me so much; she really could be the one.
Others they may take it for anger, but it's love. You have to know what to make of it. She loves me. EYE can tell. This is a dangerous situation for her, EYE understand that. As much as EYE love it. EYE have certain responsibilities to the thirteen.
EYE take her hand in mine. But. She pushes it away.
She slaps me.
It's nothing. But EYE pretend to cry.
She looks exhilarated at first. Then her mood changes. "Fuck me now, you fucking cunt, you stupid prick of a man, fuck me now, get out your cock and fuck me!" But for some reason, it does not feel real to me. It feels insincere and robotic.
She thinks that EYE am actually crying. She doesn't know it's all a game. Spinning from my murkyworld. Not tears. This is the moment EYE begin to suspect how ugly she is.
In reality. How UGLY she is, they all are, we are all ugly.
I play along, EYE do, as she wants.
The next month, between HER and EYE, not a word. She smiles at me now and then, a distracted smile. EYE go to my studio, write and paint, twiddle my thumbs a bit, think of past girlfriends and masturbate about them, sex was better with them wasn’t it? Perhaps the fantasy is always more attractive than the real thing. EYE wonder about this. It is my punishment for living a LIE.
It puts me in mind of how EYE lay in bed once, staring at the ceiling. EYE pay no attention to her standing over me. The plaster swirls on the ceiling are enough to link me to another world, my murkyworld. If EYE should want to come back, which perhaps EYE do not. Then EYE will return, but not to her.
She stands over me. She must be really worried this time, because I hear her whimper. In order to be close to me, she's telling me things, things that EYE like to hear, the first time she's ever done a thing like that. She imagines EYE am upset that my expectations have become unclear. It's nothing to do her; it is to do with my murkyworld.
EYE figured it out from the voices, from the wreckage of my skin. My body is turning. Equal and opposite reaction: EYE force myself against THEM, against the direction of normality, and thought it artistic. EYE should have been left alone. EYE should not be so selfish as to think that anyone can love me. Women / Girls are the same. They promise so much, then let you down, but throw the blame at another reason. Never their fault. Always mine. Outside the window: blackness. EYE thought they would always love me for who EYE am, not what they want me to be, but nothing EYE do has the intended effect. One thing led to another. New forces, new corrections, all wrong, all wrong. This should work; this is right, then silence, then alone. Always alone. What goes on inside you doesn't always express itself perfectly in the world outside. That is the way EYE am.
Her voice whispers as she stands over me, her tone is so kind -- that's the link. That's why she is reminding me of ALICE, of this day. So kind, her voice just now.
She says, "You cannot live like this, we cannot live like this. This isn't death we've got here Kane, this is life. You can't just lie there day on day and piss yourself and weep with regret. For one thing, the smell. Come back an artist again. I don't hate you, not really. Say something to me. Talk in your tongues. Say as best you can. We piece it together, don't we. We make out your meaning through the gulps and clicks and a word here and there, through all the murkiness of it, you sad hard thing. People don’t understand you, they don’t understand us, but I can’t live like this anymore. I need to live again, for myself.”
That was a long time ago. I don't know when she left me, she is just another in a long line of regrets. EYE look for her sometimes, in the galleries. But, EYE never see her. EYE think of them all, my pretty pretty ones. She loves me too much.
Here EYE am inside my studio. Dark in here, but not like the darkness of the thirteen. Pitch black darkness. Be careful, madness lives within the thirteen, EYE know this for EYE am one of them. My paintings are of an intricate design. Even with the lights off, there is a lifeless red darkness, a tinge to things as if seen whilst drowning in still waters. Lifeless shines at me it is a pure colour.
The colour of the thirteen.
"My name is Joshua Kane, EYE am one of the thirteen. EYE am alone. EYE have loved, EYE have been loved, EYE have felt love. BUT EYE have never been IN love. EYE am no-one, yet EYE am everywhere, for EYE am the voice of the fire."
EYE am forever distracted. EYE throw the doors open to the balcony. The noise makes me remember ALICE. In the emptiness of space there is no sound, of course. To those who know what EYE know, any sound is a memory. Let it clatter, echo and weep. My memories are too many, too much, a void of my own making. Dim dirty light from one of four bulbs in a cluster hangs from my studio ceiling, the others burnt out. The ceiling is lined with dead insects and their dirt. I glued them there for motivation. To enhance my art. To have something to talk to.
When she left me, EYE remember that EYE was standing just inside the door. Watching her. She wanders from cupboard to cupboard, opening and closing them, each with a distinct sound. EYE am thinking, this is the truth of what women are. Swirling figures, taking what is not theirs, but think it is because they have shared some time with you.
"Here it is." She cries.
A little black box with sharp corners. She wipes the dust off with her palm, dirtying her hand; she doesn't seem to mind. This box has gold padlocks on it and a nameplate, still bright. She sits down on the dull round rug. "Look."
EYE sit with her. She lays down the box in the middle of the round rug and opens it. There's a pendant in three pieces in velvet padding. She smiles at me, and I see the glitter of the pendant, times two, in her eyes. She takes out the chain, and then takes out one section to fit onto the chain. Then she takes out the third piece and attaches it to the second piece, it is of unusual design "I made this for you, look at it slide right in." And it does, too. Into it’s shape and design and again, slides again, for the hidden message, the last, where the third piece fits in. "The thirteen," she calls it. Why does this give me an erection?
"EYE love you” EYE tell her.
"I do not love you” she replies.
"Go now." EYE say to her.
"But we can still be friends." She says.
"Go. Please." EYE say.
"One last kiss before I leave?” she asks.
Her breath has a sour smell. Maybe it's my mind, her breath collected in a forgotten part of my memory, her tongue looks putrid and feels almost decayed. A person can be never be free when so many memories fill our minds with misinterpretation and loss. EYE turn and blink, turn and blink, as she expands and contracts.
"No hard feelings, Joshua. I just don't think it would work out." She says to me as she leaves.
"Yes, EYE have heard that before."
"You're an extraordinary man, though. Don't think I'm indifferent to that. You move me, really. But I don't want to hurt you. Our lives are too short."
"Yes, EYE have heard that before as well."
"You'll find someone, no doubt about it, a girl who thinks like you. Who will share your murkyworld, who is more like you and be your soul mate. You'll meet someone else."
"Keep your mouth shut, please." How did EYE get the scissors? Why is hair scattered across the round rug? Her red hair, red as blood. "Please stop talking to me and leave." EYE shout at her.
This close, EYE can see fear in her eyes, EYE can see where EYE cut some of her hair from her head. The shape of her fear is invigorating, seldom seen. "I understand that you’re angry, but you must see Joshua that we are so different to each other.”
"That’s not what you said when we first started seeing each other." EYE tell her.
She stands at the doorway and looks through me. “I thought you would change.” She says.
She slams the door and runs from me, running to HIM, the other man, the one that fulfils her requirements and needs. EYE watch her from my window, EYE watch her get into the car, EYE watch her kiss HIM and drive away.
EYE am the EYE and EYE am always watching.
EYE am Joshua Kane, one of the thirteen and EYE am number one.
ThE ENd.
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