The Female Void and the Male Light.
Viktor Davis sat contemplating the inch-high stack before him: typewritten pages extensively annotated, yellow-lined note-paper, assorted photocopies of magazine articles and newspaper clippings. The elaborate notes rambled for a few paragraphs or several pages, invariably stopping in mid-thought, mid-sentence.
The Female Void and the Male Light.
He riffled through the unkempt pile of paper, pausing occasionally to read some fragment or other: 'real'-world examples of the Female Void and the Male Light. Religion, politics, the academic world, entertainment.
'More heat than light.'
That was a good one.
'More Female Void than Male Light', 'More Emotion than Reason'. It was a perfect snapshot of the modern Female Void Age. Emotion was pre-eminent, ruling virtually without opposition in the Life Out of Balance world of the last decade of the twentieth century, infecting all aspects of human existence. All You Need is Love. 'Yeah?' snarled Keith Richards. 'Try payin' the fuckin' rent with it.' Victor Davis smiled to himself.
Another fragment. JFK in the final year of his life, being driven to some event or other. With him in the car is Toni Bradlee (wife of Jason Robards of the Washington Post) or perhaps another of the interchangeable Washington Wives.
'Mr. President,' she asks him pointblank, 'have you ever been in love?'
'No,' he answers matter-of-factly, adding with a sudden flash of his characteristic grin, 'came close a couple of times, though.'
Journalism had been an early casualty in the war between the Female Void and the male Light. 'How do you feel?' had virtually replaced 'who, what, where, when and why' as the journalistic cornerstone. 'What are you feeling right now?' Every once in a great while, the Female Void would run afoul of some military figure or a police captain or a fire marshal: some male who had not been devoured whole, who still had something of himself left to call his own. His answer would begin, 'I think . . . ' or 'I believe . . . ' and he would proceed to enunciate a belief, a principle, an ideal which was, to him, fundamental. The Female or Male Feminist (they differ only cosmetically from each other) interviewing him would be dogged in his or her pursuit: 'But how do you feel as an individual, as a person, as a human being?' The interview subject would invariably look confused, discomfited at this. He would paraphrase his belief, his principle, his ideal. 'I think . . .' 'I believe . . .' At this point the he/she interviewer switched, invariably, to another satellite feed: to another journalist or a psychologist or a social worker. Reasoning, Thinking Males with Systems of Belief, made for very bad television.
I watched an interview the other night on CBC Prime Time with a nineteen-year-old girl from an old-fashioned (which is to say 'principled') Vietnamese family. She had gotten pregant during her last year of high school. She knew that she had brought 'shame' to her father, to her family. 'But this is a free country, isn't it?' she asks the camera. 'That means you can do whatever you want, doesn't it?' TYhe camera was indulgently mute on the subject. The girl moved on. She felt scared that she was going to be a mother. She felt unhappy that she had been disowned by her father, but she also, you know, felt happy when her mother called to tell her that she would answer any questions that she had about pregnancy. She felt most enthusiastically about her school guidance counsellor because he had, you know, just listened to her 'spill her guts' and hadn't tried to, you know, make her feel bad. At no time, needless to say, did the word 'think' cross her lips. There is, of course, no need for her to think. The taxpayers of Canada will pay for all of her baby's needs. She didn't need to be made to feel bad. All that she needed was someone to direct her to the appropriate agency. The rest of it was just paperwork. It's a free country, isn't it?
That means you can do whatever you want.
Doesn't it?
Unbidden, the image of the Cerebus Theatre swam to the surface of Viktor Davis' awareness. He turned away from his typewriter and allowed the picture to coalesce in his mind's eye.
The Cerebus readership was there, composed in some (small? large?) measure of females with their male housepets. He squinted, endeavouring to see if any male was chafing at the invisible conduits and metaphorical tubing which drained his life, his essence, his energy as surely and as effectively as any fictional vampire. Cats' eyes gleamed in the darkness, filled with malice. A couple of rows back an obese brunette was stripping away chunks of brain tissue from a thin, pale youth with a spotted face. His head lolled against his shoulder in her direction, his face radiant with ecstasy. He turned to her, his eyes half-lidded. He smiled and mouthed, 'I love you.' She smiled back at him, indulgently. His eyes closed once more. She stuck out her sandpaper tongue, dotted with brains and blood, in Viktor Davis' direction and then cackled loudly. The youth giggled quietly to himself.
To the far left, in the front row, the white husk of a heavy-set man in his early thirties squirmed in the direction of his Lady and Master, his features reflecting pain, confusion and fear. She held his forearm in front of her as if they were bound, one to the other, but in such a way that she was also holding him slightly apart from her. Viktor Davis could see that the fellow had been a quick meal - little more than a snack, by the looks of things. Traces of dried brain-matter, hard and uninviting, encrusted what little there was left of the top of his head. She looked very, very hungry. Every few seconds she turned around in her seat, the hunger in her gaze sweeping across the rows to her immediate rear. Females touched by that insatiable stare hunched a little closer to their own housepets, a menacing growl rumbling low in their throats.
Viktor Davis turned back to his typewriter.
'There is no cure for willful stupidity,' he typed and then sat back, cigarette in hand, to contemplate the words.
He thought of the scene in Cisco Pike where a character played by Harry Dean Stanton worries aloud to the title character (played by Kris Kristofferson) that he doesn't think he will be able to 'get it up' with one of the two women they have picked up for the evening. 'Man,' says Kristofferson, 'it's not your body they're after, it's your goddamn soul.' Stanton blinks several times and a look of relief crosses his features. 'Thanks, man' he says.
There is no cure for willful stupidity.
Yes, said Viktor Davis, I am being brutal here.
In contemplating the full weight of popular culture, television, movies, magazines and newspapers, I see the completely unopposed advocacy of Merged Permanence and I think that a definite brutality is called for. The Male Light is jeopardized on all fronts, in my view. The Devouring Rapacious Female Void is not a thing to be taken lightly, to be explained away, to be rationalised into neutrality. I'm not here to make you feel good. I am here to make you think. And to make you think, I have to make you see.
Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. 'Eating this makes me Happy.' 'When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad.' 'Ooo! puppies!' 'It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!' Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn't stand a chance in an argument with Emotion. There are no rules to Emotional Argument. You simply wander around in rhetorical circles until you feel Happy again, and then the argument is over. This was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were (rightly) denied the vote for so long. In order to move a civilisation forward, an overview is required. You have to be able to step back and examine the structure of a problem. This is what Thinking, Reasoning, is. Every political campaign waged in the G-7 countries has as its centerpiece Job Creation. Polls give the politicians a list of voter concerns. Job Creation is at the top of the list. Ergo, the politicans promise Jobs. Becaus the Female Void dominates the proceedings (simply because the Female Void dominates everything), a candidate is elected based on how he or she makes the electorate Feel. We Feel we can Trust this candidate. No effort is made to step back and ask, 'Isn't the whole point of technology to eliminate work?' Reason would tell you that you can either eliminate (or limit) technology or you can eliminate (or limit) jobs. It is not possible to have it both ways. The Female Void Emotional response is that we have to have it both ways. And so we do. And so the problem gets worse instead of better.
I think of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, the Continental Congress, Illuminated Thinking, the Finest Hour of the Male Light, dealing with the specific problem of Independence. What did they want to do? What did they not want to do? What innovations had past cultures brought to bear on limiting the ability of government to interfere in the lives of its citizens? Where had other cultures gone wrong and what could be done to prevent and correct those mistakes? They did brilliant work. Brilliant work. I am reasonably certain that such Male Light yet exists in our day and age, and I am equally certain that it avoids the political arena like the plague. In our Female Void Age it is the sole job of elected officials to make the electorate feel good about them frequently enough to get re-elected. Re-election is largely a matter of provoking a positive emotional response within a narrow time frame through televised portrayal, the raising of sufficient funds to make that televised portrayal ubiquitous, and (apart from that) having the good fortune to have no deviations from the Female Void Emotional Perception of Merit (drugs, boozing, women on the side) come to light at an inopportune moment. We do not elect leaders. We elect televised portrayals of Husbands and Fathers. Women (because of the double standard of Female Void Emotional Perception) are elected as televised portrayals of Good Career Women. If she looks like she would be a Good Boss, it is not necessary that she be a Wife and/or Mother. Thinking, the ability to Reason through a problem and put a solution into effect, is very low on the list of priorities, if it is on the list at all. Legislative Assemblies are filled, throughout the civilised world, with televised portrayals capable of provoking an emotional response in their respective constituents. We have been treading water for some time and show no indication of endeavouring to swim any time in the foreseeable future. Politicacl positions are judged on the Emotional Basis of whether they are Popular or Unpopular. Popular is good. Unpopular is bad. Most political positions based on Reason are Unpopular. Most political positions based on Emotion are Popular - provided the Emotion provoked is happiness; if the Emotion provoked is unhappiness or anxiety or uneasiness, then that political position is Unpopular and therefore bad.
Does this make any sense to you? Or does it just make you feel bad?
Male Light does not Merge. Thinking, Reason, is best served by solitude, isolation. Intellect 'works through' problems, changing impediment into insight, oversight into overview, stalemate into solultion. A 'Big Picture' emerges at the 'end of the day', but the day itself is long, composed exclusively of examination and re-examination. History is filled with examples of Great Minds being brought together by the Merged Void's emotional and idiosyncratic belief (or, rather, feeling) that 'two heads are better than one'. On occasion, they are able to 'strike sparks' off one another or they manage to trigger mutual or complementary insights in their respective fields of endeavour through interaction. It is far more likely that they will pass a pleasant hour or two exchanging small talk on a variety of mundane subjects and then go their separate ways, none the worse for intellectual wear and tear, much to the collective disappointment of the Assembled Voids who are without a glimmer of understanding of intellectual processes and who assume that the Male Light is the same as the Merged Void, 'only different'. More than one Society Hostess having brought together (say) a Nobel Prize-Winning Author and a Critically Acclaimed Playwright at her dinner party (after the fashion of breeding one thoroughbred horse to another) has been disillusioned to find, upon her return, no shining literary offspring in evidence, their conversation dominated instead by the Yankees' chance of holding first place in the American League East.
Light does not Breed. Only Jackie Onassis (and like-minded Voids) could perceive her Arrow Shirt Ad Son as having anything in common with his late father, apart from a weakness for blonde actresses.
'Two heads are better than one' has much in common with 'two can live as cheaply as one'. It represents, at its core, the Merged Void raking the Male Light with its Emotion-based fingernails. There is little empirical evidence to support either statement. As the Emotional Female Void devours what is left of the civilisation which has been built by the Rational Male Light, it has extrapolated the former maxim into Larger and More Efficient Voids ('If two heads are better than one, think how good a dozen heads will be!'). Study Groups, Steering Committees, Regional Advisory Boards, Crown Commissions, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam. While it is a basic truth that Light does not Merge, that Light does not Breed, Voids do nothing else. The Merged Void represents Consensus. It is a purely Emotion-based belief (or, rather, feeling) that through Consensus, one arrives at 'Truth' (or, rather, Truth).
In a recent interview, Eddie Campbell, a Considerable Male Light in this Age of the Female Void, discussed his experience as a brief (and much-amused) participant in the creativity-by-committee of Comics' Greatest World (hyperbolic nomenclature being a hallmark of the Merged Void). He observed that the family cat in the Campbell household had been named by committee and that it had taken a full quorum of household members the better part of several hours to arrive at 'Puss'. If one looks closely at the work that is done by the Merged Voids which are devouring our culture, much of it could most charitably be described as 'naming cats'. The period of time it takes to arrive at 'Puss' is directly proportional to the number of 'heads which are better than one' assigned to the task.
As a parenthetical aside, several meetings were held at Dark Horse to determine whether or not there would be an apostrophe in Comics' Greatest World.
What motivates this behaviour? What informs the sensibilities of those who sit tapping pencil against pad, looking thoughtful, portraying themselves as the Good and Dutiful Committee Member? What keeps them from standing up and raising the point of order (Mr. Chairperson) that if brains were dynamite, there wouldn't be enough in this room to blow up a paper bag?
Patriarchy? The imposition of Male Power which restrains and endlessly postpones the Dawning of the Glorious Female Golden Age?
I beg to differ.
Behind this Lesser Void of White Collar Make-Work Programs, the stultifying sameness of ass-covering and ass-kissing, the endless postponement of decision-making in favour of 'further study', 'further discussion', lies the Greater Void, the Omnivorous Engine which drives every committee, every study group, every institutionalised waste of human time and energy, which drives, in point of fact, our entire degraded society.
The Wife and Kids.
If we're going to be able to afford that new dining-room set, I'm going to have to get that raise. If I'm going to be able to get enough money for the down payment on the house, I'm going to have to pull a lot of overtime. If I'm going to pay for the new living-room furniture and the ballet lessons and the tuition at the private school, I'm going to have to get that promotion.
In one of those Poor Us studies for which the Emotional Female Void is notorious, it was pointed out that after a divorce, the average male standard of living rises by (pick your own ungodly number) percent. The average female standard of living drops by (pick your own ungoddessly Poor Us number) percent. This was presented (of course) as living proof of the unfairness of the Global Economic Structure. I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body means that that body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry. (Please don't call us leeches, huffed the leeches, we prefer the term 'asset-challenged'.
Corporations, a living example of the Merged Void if ever there was one, always show a preference for the Family Man when it comes to promotions and positions of responsiblity. In the case of Merged Voids, as with most other permutations of existence, It Takes One to Know One. Corporations (or companies of any size, really) wink knowingly at the Little Woman and Her Brood. Once the Male Light has disappeared over the Event Horizon, once the manacle of gold has been pounded into place on the ring finger of his left hand, he is, indeed, a Wage Slave. What goes unsaid (or, rather, what has gone unsaid until now) is that he serves Two Mistresses, Twin Voids. As he labours to make his mortgage payments, pay for groceries, little Axelrod's College Fund, the new sofa, the new drapes, the bigger house, the Company can rest easy. In labouring to fill the insatiable Void Need for material possessions at home, his time and his energy and his spirit disappear into the Vaginal Bottom Line of the workplace. Divorce, once badly thought of, has yielded even greater benefits. The employee with a Wife and Mistress, and later a Wife and an Ex-Wife (and still later a Wife, an Ex-Wife, and a Mistress) is very much rocking to the beat of the Merged Void. Assuming he's going to get a little ahead of himself, the Bank Void steps in with an easy-payment schedule.
Ah, success.
Viktor Davis smiled to himself.
He had been fascinated by power all of his life, and in the Wife and Kids he had found its greatest manifestation in human society. He turned and regarded his readership once more.
A bright-eyed fellow in a dark-blue suit — his shirt lightly starched, his red-and-black-striped tie neatly pressed — locked eyes with Viktor Davis. He smiled and in his smile there was great pity. Over his shoulder there was visible a slim, young woman with green eyes. She lapped delicately at the open wound within the desiccated remains of his temple. 'I understand what you're talking about,' he said. 'We know this couple, see? Man, they are just the absolute picture of what you just described. What you don't realise is that there are good women in the world. You just haven't found the right one, yet. That's all.'
Viktor Davis took a drag from his cigarette and expelled a series of small smoke rings. THe bright-eyed fellow and Viktor Davis stared into each other's eyes for a period of several seconds. One corner of the bright-eyed fellow's smile twitched slightly and the merest trace of anxiety crossed his features. The slim, young woman took a deep bite from the wound. He closed his eyes and the smile broadened. 'You'll see,' he said, leaning towards her. 'You'll see.'
Viktor Davis turned back to his typewriter and his pile of notes, which he began thumbing through absent-mindedly. One of the scrawled observations on a torn piece of yellow-lined notepaper caught his eye. The Male Light and the Female Void: Seminal Energy and Omnivorous Parasite. As ancient as the sacrifice of a Corn King. As ubiquitous as a hundred generations of Roman Catholics eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a Great Prophet.
Paper-clipped to that one:
What was the essence of Jesus' philosophy but the reformation of Judaism as constituted in his time? 'You consume an elephant and excrete a gnat,' he scolded. In regarding the centuries-long work that Merged Voids had committed ypon the Word of God, layers of interpretation on layers of interpretation on layers of interpretation, the Word itself so obscured that little remained but the Profession of Interpretation itself, he had attempted to inject a note of sanity into the proceedings. 'You know, if you just say do unto others as you would have them do unto you, you could probably knock a good four hundred pages out of the rule book right there.' What he failed to recognise was that the Letter of the Law is the province of the Merged Void. It is only the Male Light that is concerned with its Spirit.
Too sensible.
Too much Light.
Bang Bang Bang.
Not surprisingly, it was a European who first broached the subject of the Woman Who Would Come Between Gerhard and Viktor Davis. The occasion was the 1993 Wondercon. Apropos nothing, Jean-Marc Lofficier had launched into an eloquent soliloquy on the subject. No, that wasn't quite accurate. They had been discussing Getting to Issue Three Hundred, and Europeans, having had a longer and more insightful association with the Unfairer Sex, knew that Getting Hit By a Bus (the North American impediment of choice) ranked a distant second, both in terms of likelihood and severity of consequence. At one point, Lofficier had used one of his employers, Moebius, as an example (Viktor Davis had forgotten the entirety of it, but evidently friend Moebius was caught between the Rock of his Present Void, the Hard Place of his Past Void, and His Little Yum-Yum On The Side, or some such thing). Lofficier was surprised to find that Viktor Davis had given the matter a great deal of consideration, that (uncharacteristically for a North American) he recognised it as a primary and central danger. Viktor Davis explained that he had chosen the course of Sequential Temporary Voids: he had no problem with an infrequently offered candidate sitting on his knee for a while, but The Big Chair to Viktor Davis' Left Stayed Empty.
Jean-Marc wished Viktor Davis luck, but expressed his sincere convition that such restraint was not possible in the long term. How very Frnech, thought Viktor Davis. At that moment, Viktor Davis' Then-Current, Now Ex-Temporary Void (probably the best-known secret at that year's Wondercon, apart from Neil Gaiman and his Temporary Supplementary Void) sidled up.
'So, what are you boys talking about?'
Viktor Davis smiled.
'We've just finished.'
I am alone, said Viktor Davis. I am not lonely. There is a big difference.
I have not had a Merged Permanence in my life for five years. It took at least three of those five years for my brain to start functioning properly again. In the aftermath of being part of a Merged Void, all that is left for some time is Void Residue: Emptiness, Fear and Emotional Hunger. It is these three and the endless, fruitless search for a Permanent Cure that the Emotional Female Void calls Love. If you merge with that sensibility, you will share in its sickness. No matter what you pour into it, it remains empty; no matter how you reassure it, it remains afraid; no matter how much of yourself you permit it to devour, it remains hungry. If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point.
The ability to be alone, to have isolation as your primary state of existence, will serve you in good stead in any situation in which you find yourself. The ability to live in Merged Permanence teaches you only how to function within the context of Another's neuroses, inadequacies and failings. It teaches you how to use your own neuroses, inadequacies and failings as both cudgel and petition. When the Merged Permanence ends, whether next week, next year, five years from now, ten years from now, you are left with completely useless life skills, emptiness, fear and emotional hunger.
Fuck dancing. Let's talk about Art.
Years ago Jules Feiffer and I were talking about Norman, and someone asked, 'How come these Jews get married so often?' Jules replied, 'Because they can afford it.' And he was exactly right. Saul Bellow with his greater conservativeness would never have been able to marry four times if he hadn't had the money and I wouldn't have married three times if I, to my surprise, hadn't been able to afford it either.Alfred KazinPeter Manso's Mailer: His Life and TimesAccording to Town & Country magazine, raising a child to age 18 costs $679,000 U.S.
news item
While, for Viktor Davis, it was a source of great amusement to watch Captains of Industry, Pillars of the Community, the Suit-and-Tie Brigade devoured by the Emotional Female Void, their resources, lives and energy disappearing over the Event Horizon of Merged Permanence, the Joke, to put it mildly, lost something of its flavour when it came to Artists. Would that he could conuure a podium, a venue, and assemble all the creative Male Light in one place.
Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhumnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, awho have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfiend.
Women inspire men to do great works
And then distract us from carrying them out.Oscar Wilde
It is up to each individual Male in whom the creative fire burns, in the words of Pater, 'as a hard, gem-like flame' to decide whether to maintain that radiance, whether to settle for a wavery, uncertain light, or whether to extinguish it altogether. The individual Male decides for himself which side in the ancient battle is the better armed, who gets the best reinforcements, the most effective weapons, whose barricades are solid and well-fortified, and whose are makeshift and ramshackle. John Lennon maintained through his House-Husband years of baking bread and minding the baby that he had 'lost his Muse'. Untruer words were never spoken. He drove his Muse from him. The forces within his Groin and his Heart, armed to the teeth, legion upon legion upon legion, surrounded those forces in his Brain and in his Mind, and the battle was lost. John Lennon was a triumph for the malignant forces of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus.
Viktor Davis did not, for the most part, consider actors to be Artists (or even artists). There was more of the Void than the Light about them. How many decent movie scripts had been twisted and transmogrified at the whim of a 'bankable name'? Actors were a great part of the problem in this regard. Movies were no longer stories, they were 'vehicles', voracious Black Holes of degraded currency, tailored to the perceived requirements of the non-creative. He stared at the four quotes, extracted carefully from the murky Emotional Female Void which was the essence, the sum and the substance of Vanity Fair magazine. Fuck it, he thought. It's not as if it's Keanu Reeves or Kevin Costner or some shit; it's Jack Nicholson:
My type of man is not attracted to society at this moment. The fun is gone. There is a quiet desperation in it all. I've been a very social person all my life. So, if I'm backed off, if all my type is backed off, then the fun quotient, in my opinion, is going to drop.
You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police. Everybody else you tell the truth to.
Today, you've got endless women in their 20's and 30's who don't know if they want to be a mother, have lunch, or be secretary of state.
This is so far below where I had hoped the battle would be pitched that I'm not interested.
There is a wonderful story about Pablo Picasso at work in his studio on a mural of some kind. Both his wife and his mistress ended up in the studio and (naturally enough) an argument began. The argument became more and more heated and finally erupted into an all-out hair-pulling, claws-and-teeth fight. Picasso never once turned around. He just kept working.
I love that story.
Alan Moore decided some months ago that, rather than have some sort of tedious mid-life crisis, he would endeavour to become a Magician, a Shaman. Alan Moore, needless to say, is very good at everything he attempts. He is a very strong-willed person, very insightful, very balanced, very stable. As these are not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination, common traits in the Age of the Female Emotional Void Triumphant, I will forgo even the most cursory recitation of the Means by which he set about accomplishing his task. Take it or leave it; in the Viktor Davis scheme of things, the possible repercussions of a member of his readership ignoring a Kids, Don't Try This At Home disclaimer supersedes the author's interest in satisfying your curiosity.
Leaving aside the Means, the End (or one of them anyway) was a visit to the Big White Room. They were all there, Alan informs me. Hawksmoor, Crowley, Vitruvius, Thomas Hobbes, this one and that one. All the Mages of the Ages. 'They are just who they say they are,' Alan observed. 'The Illuminati. Not Jewish Bankers and Worldwide Conspirators. The Illuminated Ones.' I asked if Alan just, you know, saw them or if he had any kind of exchange with them.
'You know, Viktor, I looked around and I noticed there weren't any women in the room. And I said to' (I forget which one he said it was: doesn't matter), 'There are no women. Is this some kind of faggy boys' club or something, then?'
This, according to Alan, generated a good deal of amusement. I laughed as well (which put him off a bit). He offered his opinion that there was probably a Women's Room somewhere else.
I don't think so, Alan.
I don't think so.
Viktor Davis reread the previous segment.
That just about sums it up, he thought. THe Void and Art6ists. He reminded himself that he was endeavouring merely to make his points and he sincerely wanted to avoid belabouring them. He smiled to himself.
Fuck Art.
Let's dance some more.
The difference, of course, is one of perception. Which is more important (as an example): Sex or Emotion? The Sixties were a Male Decade. Sex was everywhere. Emotion took a back seat. In my own case, if I could have a different woman every night of the week, I would do so. If I could have every woman I desired, but I could only have her once, I would do so. If the bargain required that I would never know the Joy of Merged Permanence, there would be no contest. You might as well ask me if I would rather have a nice cream pie or bamboo shoots stuck under my fingernails. What is this, a trick question or something? I'll take cream pies for five hundred, Alex.
In my view, it comes down to which you think is Paper Currency and which you think is Gold. To women, to the Emotional Female Void, their emotions, their feelings, are the Gold at the center of their economic system. Sex is the Paper Currency which represents one aspect of those emotions. To me Sex is the Gold, female emotions the valueless bits of paper interposed between myself and the trasure. As the Emotional Female Void has become pre-eminent in our age, men have been offered two choices: either perceive Emotion as Gold or do with out the Paper Currency. Of course, for men, the proposition becomes: 'Either acknowledge that Paper Currency is more valuable than Gold, or do without the Gold.' The majority of men have capitulated happily. Yes, yes, Paper Curency is more valuable. Can I have some Gold now? The answer, of course, is no. Why do you want Paper Currency (Gold) when I'm offering you all of this Gold (Paper Currency)? Women in the context of Merged Permanence develop a profound jealousy of their own bodies. For most men, the great myth of Merged Permanence is that you will 'get it whenever you want it'. Over a period of time, this becomes adjusted to 'getting it regularly'. Inevitably, this declines into 'getting it on the rare occasions when she'll let me have some'. There have been many historical precedents for women withdrawing sexual favours in order to assert their Power. Today, it is a worldwide, firmly entrenched phenomenon. 'Women Who Refuse to Have Sex With Their Husbands' is not a topic that you are going to see documented in the Void-dominated media; it certianly is not going to be the subject of a week-long series on Oprah or Donahue. I venture to say if you want to find the leading cause of Domestic Violence, the subject is worth a second look. It is an intrinsic part of the Emotional Void's nature to focus on Symptoms when examination of the Problem is what is called for.
Viktor Davis thumbed through the now-diminishing stack of papers. He finds himself drawn to several sheetts of white notepaper torn from a small pad. 'Coco Chanel', 'Colleen Doran'. He scans the ensuing sentence fragments quickly and then reviews them more carefully. 'There are exceptions.' The 'are' is underlined several times. 'Sensibility is an altogether different matter from outward manifestation. In seeking to identify and characterise the Female Void, Viktor Davis was attempted to show his reader that there was a much larger game afoot. What appeared to be Male Dominance of the global village amounted to pay no attention to the Wife and Kids behind the curtain. In a genuine Patriarchy there would be no such thing as marriage. In point of fact, in a Patriarchy, Merged Permanence would probably be illegal in a contractual sense. The Wisdom of Fathers (contemplating the inevitability of the Male Heart and Groin compelling their owner to capitulate to a Devouring Emotional Void) would mandate that no monetary resources could be sacrificed on the altar of the Would-Be Venus.' This was followed by several false starts which were crossed out. Beneath these, Viktor Davis had written 'get to the point'.
Indeed.
The point, of course, was that the Male Light was not the exclusive property of Men. It was very close to being the exclusive property of Men, but as Viktor Davis had reminded himself, 'there are exceptions.' In the case of self-publishing (Viktor Davis' idea of self-publishing was best summed up by Don Simpson's promotional slogan: 'One Comic Book. One Universe. Why Pay More?'), there were the indisputable contributions of Colleen Doran and Teri Wood. The problem, of course, in acknowledging exceptions in the Female Void-Dominated Age, was that exception was always extrapolated into being a Universal Truth. This was the shaky foundation upon which Feminism was (and is) built. There were (and are) women who begin their sentences with 'I believe . . .' or 'I think . . .' And they do think. They have reasoned and coherent world views. They realise that inspiration is simply the starting point, that without dedication, hard work, and an avoidance of the Rapacious Voids which dominate our civilisation, the 'hard, gem-like flame' becomes wavery or is extinguished. This sensibility occurs more often — far more often — in men than it does in women. This is not bigotry, this is not sexism, it is a fact which is supported by empirical evidence. The Brontë Sisters are not William Shakespeare, Madame Curie is not Albert Einstein, Florence Nightingale is not Louis Pasteur, Penny Marshall is not Orson Welles, Joan of Arc is not Jesus Christ. The Male Light is not a genderless thing, but it occurs where it occurs and sometimes (not often) it occurs in women. Where the Male Light occurs, it must overcome all manner of adversity, not the least of which is the war between the Heart and the Mind. The mistake Feminism makes is in thinking (or, rather, feeling) that legislation can be passed to eliminate adversity and, in this, it has been quite successful, to the general detriment of our society. The Founders of Feminism, those with Good Brains and the ability to Reason and Contribute, in regarding the babbling cacophone of the 'I feel . . .' Brigade they have unleashed upon the world in the name of numerical parity in all areas of human endeavour, have much to reflect on. I doubt that they do (or will). But I think they should.
The Coco Chanel reference was to the founder and driving force of the French design house (to whom I referred allegorically in Jaka's Story when I introduced Lord Julius' fashionable young wife, Astoria, whose simple and elegant clothing had caused such a stir in Palnu's court, making all of the other Great Ladies' attire seem gaudy and tasteless). For the benefit of the male reader, I'll point out that Jackie's pink number in Dallas was a Chanel. Chanel, after Coco's death, has been taken over by men who are busily adding flourishes and accoutrements of all tasteless and gaudy shapes and sizes to the Chanel designs. The Seminal Light of her innovation is consumed by the Devouring Void of greed, expediency and fad.
There are exceptions.
Viktor Davis reread the passage about Patriarchy and sat staring out the window for some time. The balancing act in which he was engaged was a delicate one. In trying not to belabour his points, there was a real danger of passing over salient arguments too quickly. The Emotional Void relied almost exclusively on contradictory anecdotal evidence. 'Not all women are like that; I have a friend who . . .' Overarching beliefs, large verities, universal truths were dismissed as generalisations. Viktor Davis stared out the window for several more minutes and then began typing.
'Men like Cars. Viktor Davis doesn't like Cars. Viktor Davis is a Man.'
These observations were all true statements. Was it a syllogism? Or was there another name for it? Viktor Davis was uncertain. To the Reasoning Mind and to the Emotional Void, the fundamental structure was sound. They were all true statements, though they appeared contradictory. Using those three statements as a template, Viktor Davis had spent much of his adult life attempting to Reason with the Female Emotional Void. In each case, whatever success he had had (and he had had very little success) had been temporary. He considered his lack of success to be central to the Issue at Hand. Within the context of the Female Emotional Void, no general observation could be considered sound if there existed an anecdotal refutation.
Birth and Death.
There is too much Birth in the world and there is not enough Death.
How can you say that? wails the Female Emotional Void. Just the other day in the newspaper, I read about a family of four who were . . .
I'm not saying, interrupted Viktor Davis, that people don't die. What I am saying is that there is not enough Death. I'm not saying, he added, that babies don't make people ecstatically happy. I'm saying that there is too much Birth. Those are two very different things. If you could create a four-dimensional model consisting of two spheres, one representing Birth and the other representing Death, the former sphere, observed over the last four hundred years, would be growing larger and larger, faster and faster. The latter sphere would be growing smaller and smaller, faster and faster.
Our planet will double its population in the next ten years. Given that it is our society's collective Emotional Void Response that we are not overpopulated, my Reasoning Mind is moved to ask, when does overpopulation occur? If eight billion is not overpopulated, then what is? Fifteen billion? Eighty billion? One hundred billion?
I'm trying very hard to paint you the Big Picture. Patriarchy, to me, is a red herring, a false premise. Which is more successful, Birth or Death? I'm asking you to picture the two as Organisms. The individual, lower-case births and deaths which make up those two Organisms are like molecules. A molecule within an elephant is not an elephant. Birth is Female. Death is Male.
Which is more successful?
If you are unable to see what I'm saying, then I think that proves my point. The Emotional Void is winning. This is not a Patriarchy. It is a Matriarchy. If it ever was a Patriarchy, it was in a time and place where there was a balance between Death and Birth. You'd have to go back a long, long way to find a civilisation and an era where that was true.
'Oh, NO! No way. Uh-uh.' Jeff Smith is shaking his head violently from side to side. He has lunged forward in his seat, his hands waving in the air, as if shooing away a large insect. All of his movements are agitated. At the other end of the couch, his wife sits, her feet tucked beneath her, calmly smoking a Marlboro Light. Her features are inscrutable. Viktor Davis takes another sip of his beer.
'You'd agree that Death is Male?' he asks.
'Yes.'
'You'd agree that Birth is Female?'
'Yes.'
'Which one is winning?'
'No. No, no way. It's just not true.' He stares straight ahead for a moment or two and then looks at Viktor Davis. 'I just don't think that way, man. I just can't see that at all.'
Vijaya grinds out her cigarette in a small glass ashtray.
At Jeff's insistence, the discussion ends. They agree to disagree. Viktor Davis isn't certain what the disagreement is, but clearly an impasse has been reached.
They begin to discuss animation instead.
Viktor Davis had been through his pile of paper many, many times in the last two weeks or so. One of the newspaper clippings (from the London Observer in late 1993), sent to him by a Cerebus fan, had gone missing. It concerned the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It seemed that the average cost to rehabilitate the local wildlife had come to something on the order of $40,000 per seal. Two of the more expensive reclaimed subjects had been released back into the sea at a special ceremony. Inside of five minutes they were both eaten by a killer whale.
All stories are true. Was the story apocryphal? Possibly. Was the story a hoax? It could very well be. Whether the story happened or not, whether the cost of reclamation is exaggerated, at the core there is, to me, a great truth. Where Emotion supersedes Reason, where Compassion overrules Thought, you will end up spending thousands of dollars to clean up a killer whale's dinner for him. You will do many things that are equally absurdist in their nature. It is, to me, a centerpiece of the Female Emotional Void viewpoint that a seal covered in oil is seen only as a potential mummy seal or daddy seal or (come on, you can take it) someone else's little boy seal or little girl seal. It is beyond the capacities of the Female Emotional Void to see the furry little creature as Whale Food.
A seal is dying.
Somewhere, right now, a furry little thing with big black puppy-dog eyes is being ground to pulp in the jaws of a killer whale. Blood is geysering from severed arteries, bones are splintering into needle-thin fragments. Somewhere else, a litter of seal pups suckles at its mother's teats.
The one is not a good thing and the other a bad thing. They are both necessary. Between the two a balance is maintained. There are enough seals to eat the things that seals eat, and there are enough seals to feed the things that eat seals. You would do seals no favour by having the United Nations Security Council pass a resolution granting them a Seal Homeland protected, by a multinational peacekeeping force, from killer whales. You would do the seals no favour by developing Seal Fertility Drugs and Surrogate Mother Seals for those seals unable to conceive on their own. Even if you managed, over a period of years, to airlift in a large enough supply of fish so that No Little Seal Would Go To Bed Hungry, the best that you could accomplish is an Exponentially Rising Seal Population. Soon you would need an expanded peacekeeping force to keep the seals from killing each other, as well as keeping the killer whales at bay. The resources required to build adequate housing for the seals and to maintain an adequate supply of fish would double and redouble faster and faster.
One of the acknowledged masters of the cartooning field, Winsor McCay, did a cartoon some decades ago depicting Death and Time. Death stands hunched over a long scroll, crossing off a name. Time is bearing away a coffin marked Old Age. The former says He Was Too Old To Think (emphasis mine). The latter replies Yes, And He Encumbered The Earth. The cartoon is entitled Death Is Kind and Necessary. The sub-heading is It Wipes Off the Human Slate, Makes Way for New Ideas (again, emphasis mine).
Life out of balance.
We are already past the point of no return. I think it is no coincidence that the last organized attempt in this century to institutionalize genocide (the Nazi Death Camps) constituted little more than a flesh wound inflicted by the Death Sphere upon the Birth Sphere. World War II ended with the dropping of two Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't for one minute, deny the human suffering involved, the families and cultures which were decimated by the conflict. What I am saying is that We Have a Problem. We seem to be unable to confront the fact that Death has become impotent. Even if we applied all of the resources of technology to building Space Age Death Camps, even if we could arrive at a consensus of Who Has to Go (everyone with blue eyes, anyone over the age of twenty-five, anyone under six feet tall — I'll use three examples which would include myself in the hopes that you can understand my point, here), it would take several generations before we could even make a dent in the overwhelming advantage that Birth holds over Death.
Instead, we apply the enormous resources of the state of Michigan to stopping Jack Kevorkian from assisting terminally ill patients to commit suicide.
Life out of balance.
WAY out of balance.
WAY WAY WAY out of balance.
The Universal Mother, Birth, has an agenda. It is a very short agenda, consisting of two items: One, childbirth is an inherent right. Two, absolute safety for everyone is the goal of human society. On both counts, She is doing very, very well. In considering a worldwide population of eight billion people, the relative number of people who are dying in wars (or 'wars', rather) is very, very small. The relative number of people who are dying from diseases is very, very small. The relative number of people who are dying from famine is very, very small.
The only answers to these points are Void Emotional, Void Anecdotal. 'How would you feel if your family died in a war? How would you feel if a friend or relative of yours were dying of AIDS or leukemia? How would you feel if everyone in your neighbourhood were in the grip of a famine?' To me, these are not answers. The very underpinnings of the questions imply the Problem. It is Feeling, rather than Reason, which has brought us to this situation.
I'm pointing out to you that we are in the back seat of a car (ALL of us). There is no one in the driver's seat. As a matter of fact, the steering wheel fell off a few decades back. The accelerator is glued to the floor. The doors are welded shut. We are going faster and faster and faster. Take offence, if you will, at my impertinence in point this out. Call me heartless, a cold fish (believe me, I'm used to it). Ostracize me and form a worldwide We're Just Out For a Sunday Drive in the Country organization. Print up Faster is Fun posters. Hug and Kiss each other and Feel Good about yourselves. The Problem is Still There.
Here we go, eh?
THe Universal Mother has most of the world's resources at her disposal. Childbirth is an inherent right, worldwide, with the exception of China. And even there, there is only a limit on childbirth, not an outright ban. China has managed to get its National Automobile to the point where it is only going way, way, way too fast, instead of way, way, way, WAY too fast. The news media are divided between two kinds of stories: Feel-Good stories and Feel-Bad stories. The implications of Feel-Bad stories are self-evident. It is a Dangerous World. It is unsafe to go to the corner store, unsafe to be out at night, unsafe to get into your car, unsafe to leave your baby unattended, unsafe to get in an airplane, unsafe to go to school, unsafe to jog, unsafe to sit in your living room, unsafe to leave your door unlocked, unsafe to go into the parking garage, unsafe to get in an elevator. Your neighbor is unsafe, your husband or boyfriend is unsafe, sex is unsafe, Tylenol is unsafe, Pepsi is unsafe, the streets are unsafe, downtown is unsafe, the suburbs are unsafe, being alone is unsafe, having a gun is unsafe, not having a gun is unsafe, swimming pools are unsafe, parks are unsafe, the subway is unsafe.
The Emotional Void is in full control and playing Emotional Tricks on itself. On television, it scares itself shitless and then sells itself material possessions. 'It seemed okay. After all, she had known him for years. He was a friend, a schoolmate. She got into the car at 9.42 P.M.. And that was when the nightmare began.' Pregnant pause. 'When we come back, a mother remembers.' 'Do you ever get a headache that just won't go away?'
At 9.42 that night, all around the world, girls were getting into cars with men that they knew. Millions of them. Billions of them. They went out for a soda. They stopped by and visited some friends. They did some research at the library. They went to band practice. They returned home and tried a new hairstyle. They talked on the phone to their girlfriend for about an hour and a half. They did their homework. They went to bed. The end.
The odds of being at the center of a Celebrated Crime of Violence are about the same as winning a National Lottery. Losers and Winners. If, instead of focussing on each excruciating detail, a moment-by-moment re-enactment of a Celebrated Crime of Violence, we followed a Lottery winner, moment by moment, re-enacting His or Her Last Day as a Poor Person, the last half-hour before the winning number was announced, eyewitness accounts from everyone who was In the Room, we would be telling ourselves exactly what we are telling ourselves with A Current Affair, Hard Copy and all the rest of them. Nothing. Zip. Nada. This thing happened to this person. Implicit in this is not just 'it could happen to you'. It is fundamentally important for the Female Emotional Void, central to her advocacy of Merged Permanence, that the message be 'it is likely to happen to you, it is practically inevitable that it will happen to you'. Find a nice guy, settle down, have kids. Don't take any chances. Don't look for trouble and trouble won't look for you. 'I'm bored' has become the universal refrain. Put on A Current Affair. See that girl? Just an ordinary, fun-loving seventeen-year-old, just like you. She was probably 'bored' too, don't you think? And now look — look at her mother crying, look at the shocked expressions of disbelief on the faces of her classmates. Look at her favourite teacher choking back his tears. You're 'bored'? Count yourself lucky, Missy. That gil probably wishes she were 'bored' right now. But it's too late for her. She just had to go out and have 'fun', didn't she?
Fear. Our Merged Female Emotional Void Heritage is nearly universal. We are being made afraid of everything. Bad things do happen. Bad things happen to everyone. When was the last time a Bad Thing happened to you Not a bad thing, a Bad Thing? The best part about Fear as Lifestyle is that you will eventually be proven right. It may take a few weeks, it may take a year, five years, ten years, but if you face each day Numb with the Certainty that Something Bad is Going to Happen it eventually will. I knew it. I just knew something Bad was going to happen today.
A Coward dies a Thousand Deaths, the Hero dies but Once.
I agree with that sentiment, except for the 'Hero' part. I'd replace that with 'the Thinking Person'.
People have been known to spontaneously combust. It does happen. The difference between people who wear only flame-retardant clothing and carry a fire extinguisher with them wherever they go and the manner in which the majority of our population conducts its day-to-day affairs is one of degree only.
During the great polio epidemics of this century, whole neighbourhoods were scrubbed clean. Pesticides were sprayed on every tree, every inch of lawn. Whole communities mobilised in a concerted effort to eliminate any likely or even remotely possible source for the pestilence. When the polio vaccine was discovered, it was found that the source of the diesase was a bacteria found in raw sewage, to which humans had previously been immune because they used to be exposed to it in trace amounts over extended periods.
No! Bad! That's dirty!
DIR-TEE!
Checkmate, said Viktor Davis.
He smiled and lit another cigarette.
No, not you.
Me.
I'm looking at the biggest chessboard it is possible for me to imagine. My side is Reason. Your side is Emotion. I can't move my king. Here are the news media and popular culture, scampering wildly in the direction of the latest example of Anecdotal Human Misery, cameras bobbing, microphones thrust before the latest Suspect. Did you do it? How do you Feel? The Victim's family. Do you think he did it? How do you Feel?
Check.
Here is the Absolute Right to Give Birth. Babies having babies. The human population doubling and redoubling. It reminds me of the story of the commoner who did a great favour for a King and was granted a boon. He asked only that the King put one piece of grain on the first square of his chessboard, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, eight grains on the fourth square and so on. By the time the thirtieth square had been filled, the King's granaries had been emptied. By the time the fortieth square had been filled, the King owed the commoner all the wheat his kingdom could produce for the next ten years.
Check.
Here are all of the mechanisms for changing direction, occupied by televised portrayals of Husbands and Fathers. No legislation can be passed which jeopardizes the Absolute Right to give Birth. Every child must be fed. Three sqaure meals a day. Clothing. Shelter. Mothers' Allowances. Ninety-eight per cent of Child Support is paid by men to women.
Check.
Reason can't defeat Emotion in an argument because in an Emotional Argument you just go around and around in rhetorical circles until you become Happy again and then the argument's over.
Check.
Mate.
Merged Permanence, the Emotional Female Void, surveyed the board uneasily. The Universal Maternal Visage brightened.
What about . . .?
The Brightness vanished.
Oh. Right.
Viktor Davis took another drag from his cigarette. There was a great serenity in his level gaze.
Maybe you could move your . . .
The two were silent for a time. Viktor Davis calmly smoked his cigarette. The Emotional Female Void looked up at him and flashed a friendly smile which Viktor Davis did not return. The Emotional Female VOid returned to studying the situation on the board. THe corners of Her mouth twisted downwards, frustration and misery etching long, hard lines in Her features. Tears started from Her eyes.
Without looking up, she asked:
What should I do?
Viktor Davis continued to smoke, drawing out the moment, increasing the tension in the air. At last he said:
You won,' and then he added, 'you tell me.'
Viktor Davis pushed back from the chessboard. He stood up and took a last drag from his cigarette. He expelled the smoke in a small series of concentric rings. He reached across the board and lightly flicked his cigarette. Swirling ashes feel like the first winter snow on his opponent's queen, catching here and there in her crown and in the moulded curves of her majestic form, settling onto the black square she occupied and the white and black squares adjacent to her.
He turned and walked towards the door.
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
It was the plaintive cry of a wounded animal, a frightened child lost in the woods.
WHAT SHOULD I
Viktor Davis closed the door behind him, cutting off the piercing crescendo of the Void which was breaking, overtaken and consumed by Emotion, which the Voice was incapable of restraining, before which the Voice was as helpless as a sapling in a tornado.
Viktor Davis sat forward on his chair. His hands were folded together, resting against the lower half of his face, his elbows on his knees.
Exception entered the room.
You're very young, Viktor Davis thought to himself, but said nothing. There was a kind of concern on Exception's face, but it consisted more of observation and assessment than it did of empathy or emotion. Beneath that cosmetic surface, strange imagery swam, fragments of ideas and intuitions, creative seedlings which might take root, might one day come to something. Or might not.
You okay? asked Exception.
Viktor Davis briefly considered answering Define okay, simply for the literary effect. Fortunately the time for literary effects was past.
I'm fine, he said. How are you doing?
Good, replied Exception. I have an idea for a . . .
A passing ambulance or police car or fire engine drowned out the rest of the words. Story? Song? Play? Painting? Asnimated cartoon?
That's good, said Viktor Davis, smiling.
You never explained why men have beards, said Exception.
Viktor Davis laughed. He was quiet for a time and then he reached for his cigarettes.
We bit off her dick, he said. That's why we have more of It than she does. More violence, more creativity, more Light. A man's beard can be summed up as 'Pay no attention to the Seminal Act of Extreme Violence Behind The Curtain'. How many menstrual cramps does it take to paint the Mona Lisa?
Exception considered this. That's pretty far-fetched, Exception said.
Viktor Davis smiled. If you'll recall, I said I think I know why men have beards and women don't. I didn't say I knew for sure.
All stories are true, said Exception.
Viktor Davis nodded. Even a story that says 'all stories are false' is true.
What was all that stuff about Scheherezade and the Sword of Damocles about?
Viktor Davis smiled.
Most of what I've been saying here, I think you'll agree, is pretty controversial stuff. If you consider it controversial now, you can imagine what it was like carrying it around with you through John Lennon's murder, eight years of Ronald Reagan, four years of George Bush, the Gulf War, the murder of fourteen female engineering students by Marc Lepine in Montreal, Lorena Bobbitt, Janet Reno authorizing the assault on David Koresh's little Waco shindig.
I really do see it as a series of chessboards. Most things that happen in our world don't really change much on the chessboards. The news stories that go away in a hurry, like Tonya Harding, might represent the movement of a pawn on the next chessboard up. Something like JFK's assassination represents a simultaneous movemnt of several pieces which go a long way up and out to the Big, Bigger, Biggest chessboards. When I put Margaret Thatcher in the book and she was forced to resign by her male cabinet a few months later, well, when you're someone like me who believes in synchronicity, who is not intellectually equipped to explain soething away as a coincidence, that can be a pretty unsettling experience. The worst part was that I knew I was still four or five years away from Getting to the Point. Was I playing on the same chessboard as Margaret Thatcher? Did I just knock off her queen? And how was that going to go over with the queen on the next chessboard up? It's tough to play a game when you don't know what board you're on or what the rules are. Thatcher's resignation was followed by an amazing series of Behind Closed Doors scandals, much bigger fish than myself crushed by the Sexual Harassment Juggernaut. They changed the laws in Canada so that a woman couldn't give her consent when she was drunk and a man couldn't plead innocent because of drunkenness. I seriously considered turning myself in. 'Look, I don't remember what her name was, but she was a nurse at Freeport Hospital. She was drunk and I was drunk. As a law-abiding, public-spirited citizen, I want to turn myself in.' I probably owuld have, but, really, all I could do was keep going. The only real card I had to play was knowing that the Point, the Point that would get me in the most trouble with the Female Emotional Void, was in issues 181 to 186, not 287 to 300. That's why I'm writing this in June instead of August, as I ordinarily would be for a September release. It was the Run for the Roses. Maybe I could catch Her sleeping or something.
Viktor Davis laughed.
And then I'm getting ready to go out one Friday night and I just happen to turn on the television and there's O.J. Simpsons and his buddy on a nice little 40-mile-an-hour jaunt down 405 with a dozen police cars following them. I could definitely relate.
Exception laughed. So you made it?
Viktor Davis grinned. To quote a great philosopher of modern times, It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over. Cerebus is a very weird little commodity in the context of the Female Emotional Void Age. It's too small to pay attention to and too big to ignore. 184 hasn't even come out yet. The collected Reads won't be out for almost a year and that's where most people read the book: in the collected form. It wouldn't be that big a stretch to categorize Reads as Hate Literature against women. All it would take is for one woman to be disturbed enough by Reads to file a lawsuit, or a women's group to file a class-action suit, in this Fascistic Feminist country and that would be the ball game, wouldn't it?
Does that worry you?
Not especially. They could ban the book, seize the house and all of the inventory, all of the artwork, and burn it. Copies of it would still be out there. As long as I can have a pad of paper and a ball-point pen in my prison cell, I'll be happier than a pig in shit. Clean and sober, three square meals a day, an exercise room to work out in. No monthly deadline. Sounds like a lot less pressure to me.
Viktor Davis grew serious.
Don't ever be afraid, he said. FDR was right. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I might get to the end of Cerebus and I might not. I could get hit by a bus, I could get cancer, I could lose my right hand, my eyesight, I could fall in love and get married.
Exception was unable to conceal profound astonishment.
Viktor Davis laughed. I'm not immune, you know. All of those things have happened to better men than me. If you look at the casualty figures in any creative field, the odds are pretty good that I'll die in poverty, the work itself completely forgotten. The other option, if you're talking about house odds, is that I end up married to some tyrannical Queen of the Circus. Love is blind. It's also deaf, dumb and stupid. If What's-Her-Boobs can do that to Hugh Hefner, what we are talking about is a very large and very determined Force of Nature. You can walk as carefully as you want through a mine field; it is still a mine field. But it's also true that if you step up to the plate worrying that you're going to strike out, the odds are that you're going to strike out. Not doing a large ambitious work because you're convinced Danger Lurks Around Every Corner, the old 'I might be dead this time next year', is a waste of the Inner Radiance that found you. It's like life insurance. It's betting against yourself. It's blowing out your own flame before someone beats you to it.
Night had fallen and Viktor Davis seemed to become less substantial, seemed to merge with the surrounding darkness. Only the edges of his features were clear, illuminated as he was from behind.
Remember that you're just a custodian for It. You can be a good custodian, a so-so custodian or a bad custodian. You can make It a pile of smouldering twigs or you can make It a bonfire. The Male Light or the Female Void. I'm telling you that you have to choose. I'm telling you that if you think you can have both, you are mistaken, that you have already made your choice in that case.
Was Exception growing or was Viktor Davis shrinking?
You're getting larger, said Viktor Davis. We're going our separate ways. A six-inch-by-nine-inch image area is a very cramped environment. You're not in here anymore. You're out there. And I'm just the voice in your head. Back to the way it used to be.
He smiled.
Well, not quite the way it used to be.
Viktor Davis did not elaborate.
Consensus and Exception merged once more. Rather, Consensus and some Exceptions merged. Other Exceptions, feeling the first icy brush of the Merged Void against them, edged slightly apart from it. As they felt the weak gravitational tug, they moved even further from it, compressing their own awareness within themselves. Several hard, gem-like flames flared into new existence.
'Shine on,
You Crazy Diamond.'
Wish You Were Here