Fire Sermon 1

Fire Sermon

She kept talking about scoring coke and Adam’s resolve was slowly weakening. He was thinking about Steven King’s description of the water-wagon in “The Shinning”, how great it looked passing you when you were standing on the ground, and how shitty it was once you hopped on and took a ride.

“Exactly” he said aloud.

“Exactly what” she looked at him quizzically.

“Nothing, god I wanta’ drink!”

“No, you know how you get when you drink, plus you have to drive.”

“Drive where”?

“Let’s get some coke, common…I won’t get that much, a half gram, I can do one and you can do one.”

“If I snort a quater gram of coke it’s on, I’m gonna HAVE TO drink to help with the come down, and I’m trying so fucking hard to stay sober, I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Fine”, she looked away disappointed.

Adam sat at the table and thought how much this scene sucked, how stupid and dingy the bar looked, how bad the music was, how banal the game of pool was, how beastly most of the patrons seemed, the garish lights, all of it was disgusting him because he was sweating a drink. However, he remembered many times getting drunk at this very same bar and loving it. The same place that seemed absolutely vile when sober became a glittering hideaway when drunk. Alcohol was a magic potion, he thought; just add to a glum life and “POOF”, instant excitement.

They sat in silence not looking at each other. She kept checking her phone. Suddenly, “Shit I forgot my smokes, Ima’ run to the car and get them.” She started to get up still looking at her phone.

“OK” vaguely Adam knew that she would score.

“My car’s locked”, he threw her the keys.

When she was gone Adam stared at the beer bottle she left. He looked over at the bar. How beautiful the many colored bottles, lit from underneath. A sparkling door to Shangri-La. He wanted to fall though the door. He wanted to be Alice and tumble down the rabbit hole.
Adam thought, “They say you can’t smell Vodka on the breadth, I wonder if that’s true.”
The pressure was mounting, like a balloon in his guts being blown and blown and blown.
“POP” he yelled. The frat boys looked over from their game of pool as he was getting up. Standing at the bar, rubbing shoulders with some slobbering guy yelling about Lady GaGa to her date, he felt as though his entire body was vibrating. He could taste the shot. The bartender walked over and smiled “Adam, about time you had a drink, did your mom die today”?

“Huh”

“Nothing, what will it be”

“Give me a double shot of vodka and a beer”

“My man” she smiled and turned to grab the glass and pour the drink. The glass was a cut diamond. He sucked it down as fast as he could. Then he sucked down the beer in a few gulps. HE could feel the knot quickly unraveling in his gut. The tightness was dissipating. The warmth of the first drink was delicious. He saw through the window she was coming back. He hollered at the bar tender to bring him another shot of vodka “and make it fast, I have to drink before my date comes back”

The bartender smiled and gave him the second shot. He drank it, payed, and began walking back to the table. He got half way there, turned around, got a beer and returned to the table. When he did she was sitting there.

She seemed more alive “I thought you were not going to drink”

He noticed a small drip of translucent snot dripping from one nostril. “Ahh… fuck it.”
She lit a cigarette and shrugged. She was tapping both feet, which shook the table slightly. She spoke quickly. “know what I want to do”?

He finished his beer. Suddenly the night was full of possibilities. “Oh do tell”
“I want to go to a strip club”

Adam thought of the last time he went to a male strip club. His date enjoyed it immensely, but Adam thought it boring.

“I’m not really feeling that, I don’t have the money anyway”.

She leaned close over the table; “you know those women are amazing, you know you want to, I’ll pay, it’ll be fun.”

Adam didn’t see that coming. He didn’t mind seeing naked dudes because on a visceral level he didn’t feel that they were exploited. On a rational level he knew otherwise, but in the guts he didn’t feel it. It just seemed a little silly and vulgar, but he really didn’t care much one way or another. When he thought about female strip clubs however, it produced a totally different sensation. In that case, every moral and political nerve sent a clear message to his hormone addled brain that screamed EXPLOTATION! His visceral half however was not as noble, but he thought it a bad idea regardless.

He looked sharply at her “Those girls are exploited, you know that”.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t call them girls. Besides, you remember where I teach, or do you just not care? Don’t tell me about the patriarchy, I promise I’m better versed than you. Did you know I used to be a stripper and it mostly paid for my undergrad life? A lot of my very close lady friends and students have been too. You remember Stacy, Scott’s girl-friend? I bet you didn’t know she paid for her masters largely by stripping.” She laughed. “She wrote her thesis on the sex/power matrix, because she knew how to flip a script.

Adam felt overwhelmed by her tone, her easy dismissal of his approach. He was watching her closely. He felt his blood getting hot. He was trying to consider how to respond without ruining the whole night. He didn’t know quite how to handle this. “You’re welcome for that phrase”.

She finished her beer, snorted and smiled a bit contemptuously and relaxed a bit, “and frankly I don’t think you’re as interested as you try to be, Come on….. you’re not impressing me, so give it a rest for god’s sake. I love strip clubs and so do you, and here’s the rub….. lots of the women love dancing and watching the other dancers. I mean to say for the dancers it’s not just the money, that’s part of it, but they consider themselves artists. You don’t understand the whole routine and the roles and the play-dance of the routine. It’s actually quite subversive. Lots of women and dancers party at the clubs and enjoy watching each other dance on their nights off. They are actually performers and athletes and artists all wrapped into one. Anyway strip clubs are a blow to the patriarchy and to puritan repressive morals. See, it’s all about assuming roles that are actually the reverse of those promoted by patriarchy, although they might not at first appear so. Strip clubs can be the site of erotic and social resistance, of freedom and the deconstruction of bullshit “universal” values and taboos. The dominant values are easily disclosed in strip clubs, transvalued, reversed, and thus for that moment neutralized. The parameters of what you perceive as delaminating the “normal” or “capitalist” patriarchal paradigmatic boundaries are actually transgressed. The dancers are the most powerful players, and the men know that very well. The men submit and they know they are submitting. Not to mention getting naked is inherently pleasurable for most people. Pleasure for the dancer because she is free to get naked, and the men you must remember are not. The dancer always calls the shots. Most of the men actually accept it and enjoy it, because they can relinquish the phony illusion of control they try so hard to hang on to in other social interactions. They enjoy the power being held over them, the men enjoy being subjected to this power. The women assume the confident role and they can grant or withhold pleasure as they see fit, they can move forward with the act or walk away. Get a lap dance and act like a jerk and see what happens. At that point you are totally under their control. Plus in strip clubs women can looked at each other in public and not be ashamed. Where else can we do that? Women can see each other, and see men seeing them, and the men cannot say a damn thing. It’s just as much a place for women to express their sexuality as for men, to assume roles that are opposite the traditional ones. Whatever, we can go to a male strip club but I’m not that into that. Those dudes are mostly Neanderthals. Let’s go watch women. I might know some of the ladies there tonight. Besides, you go to those godamned burlesque shows don’t you, what the hells the difference? Just like most of the other dancers, the girls in the burlesque shows like it, they enjoy it, the fact that they are getting paid, is that suppose to change anything? We’ll have a blast. Besides, your little protests are almost irrelevant anyway, we both know that. ”

Adam felt his face turn hot. He felt like she was attacking him and all he was trying to stand for. “The machine gets inside you. That is one essential facet of alienation, you love your own chains, you build your own scaffold but you can’t see what it is. Then you dance up to the rope and hang yourself. You fall in love with your own lack of humanity. There is only one way to flip the script, and it has nothing to do with assuming roles in a narrative. It has to do with smashing the entire way that goods and services are produced and distributed. That is not done with fancy talk. That is not done in the class room or in some bullshit journal. That is done in the streets, and factories, all the rest will follow. Those strippers are not doing that shit for free. They are doing it because economic necessity makes us do things every day, every day, all day, slowly twisting our bodies and souls so that finally we can’t see the truth. We become appendages of the death machine, appendages of the apparatus of control, we help them reproduce the machine and it grows stronger with every precision lath we turn off the conveyor belt. The more we give them the less we have. The more of our life’s energy and work we churn into that bottomless pit the more empty we become. The machine grows and we wither and are shells, working, eating, reproducing, sleeping, and dying. We become the mouth piece for their television and news and sit coms and game shows and we talk and we think we are speaking but we are not. They are speaking us into social being and they will smash us when we are no longer useful. The truth is they are sucking our life and wealth and spirit from us and using that very energy and wealth to kill and rape and smash and plunder all of humanity until there will be nothing left of this planet but a black burnt piece of rock spinning aimlessly through space.” His body was vibrating again. Now he felt like he wanted to break something, or fight, or lash out.

“Well” she leaned back in her chair, “I want to hang out with you tonight, and I promise if you go we will have a fucking blast. You know we will. It’s fucking fun and I know what you like. You didn’t protest when I brought that porn over, that’s for sure. What the hell’s the difference. You’re the least shy sex addict I ever met, and that’s just fine with me, so spare me your performance of Jonathan Edward Castro, how obviously boring and dated. I can’t stand boring self-righteous men. Don’t be ashamed to like what you like. Just know that those women and men are actually revolting against patriarchy and taboo, weather they know it or not. It’s a good thing, not dirty or shameful or oppressive. There is enough shame in the world.”

Her face became disdainful. He remembered how they met, just a month before in a seminar he was taking at college different from his, him new to the graduate school and her almost finished, running into her in the library, and asking what was she was reading. He could see it was Derrida. He had never met anyone who actually tried to negotiate that type of writing. Adam sat and asked a few questions cordially and tried to suggest Marxist answers. She became more animated with every response, he closely watched her gesticulating hands as she first incinerated the corpse of materialism, then those who had already dispensed with so much unsophisticated positivism , hacking to bits the first generation of relativist wizard-gods (who emerged from Saint-Denis blood thirsty with text) with the machetes they sharpened for her. A grand mutiny, deconstructing the deconstructions. She hacked them to pieces with a more advanced relativism. Adam was impressed by her ability to counter everything, tear it all up to pieces, and enjoy launching into the void where everything was potentially false, so anything was possible. To Adam her tirade ended with a vision of her standing in the twilight of all idols, smashed statues and temples and books all around, blood splattered, holding a hammer for the forms, a machete for the formulators. He thought she had to be wrong, but at that moment it didn’t matter, so he asked her out. He was amazed she said yes. But now all that passion had become a weapon. After a month of furious argument and love-making, the flame was beginning to burn through its fuel. Adam could see that was almost completely snuffed. He wanted to calm down but now it was too late.

“I think you are wrong” Adam hoped he could leave it at that because he wanted to enjoy the night with her.

She started to get up. “Well, I’m going to the bathroom; Why don’t you give it a shot. Jeeeezzzz, you guys need to read more Millet or Judith Miller ….Oh what the fuck do you know about female sexuality anyway. Actually, stop reading altogether and just hang out with strippers if you want to know what’s what, and if you want to impress me, post something on Lit Erotica, but spare me all those goddamned sermons. I’ll tell you what patriarchs I find most “alien”, it’s all these goddamned Christians posing as Marxists, or what’s more vulgar and bland, fooling themselves into believing that there was any difference in the first place. Your Marx looks just like the ol’ dictator father Jehovah full of truth and universal justice. I wonder what profit He will reveal the truth to next, what sacred text you will enshrine in a generation or two. Just another metaphysic for you to get wrapped up in for your ego’s sake, like little children scared of the dark. She smiled and paused “you trip me out”…and began laughing, leaning far back in her chair, looking at the celling, mockingly laughing.

Adam suddenly felt sick, like a terrible mistake had been made. He stood and looked straight at her, straight into her green eyes. Adam wanted to explode, but he spoke very low and moved close so she could hear clearly. He knew their short tryst was over.

“You are a tool too but you’re too smart to see it. But no matter, because you’re the last of the burnouts. Your line I mean. After you, the deluge. Don’t expect another wave of highly evolved nihilism. After you, no more reverse hermeneutics. It won’t be long before the truth begins to reveal its self, to undress, for all the image and shadow that cloths the world to unravel piece by piece, slowly at first, then with quickening pace, and all that smart talk won’t mean shit. Let me be very clear, I want you to listen to this, I want you to remember this when we are strangers. Time is coming when you will have to make a choice. A very clear choice. Dig? Time is coming when you will have to do things that are unsavory and harsh or you will likely die. Do you hear that? Time is coming when they will drag you out of your fancy office for speaking out, if you have the clarity and guts to do so, and your hen pecked lackey colleagues will pretend they didn’t see anything. They will remain silent like rabbits and cower in their holes, desperately trying to hang onto a semblance of security and selling their souls in the process, or they will fight to be free. It might be next year, ten years, or forty but I think you will see it, or at least the beginning of it. Yea, I can play the profit anytime I like. Fuck it, fuck what you think. People sneer at me and mine every day, they laugh and dismiss and try to ignore us. But time is when they will remember us, and they will no longer be able to ignore us, as the fires begin to burn closer and they start to feel the heat.”

She yelled at him as he walked out. “I hope you get what you really want, which your head presented to the governor on a silver plate. You are a preaching patchwork boy made up mostly of self-hate. I’ll let you do the repentance for both of us.”

He walked out shaking visibly and wanted badly to get drunk or smash or fight or perhaps just disappear completely into the cool moonless night so that all contradictions were finally resolved.