The Self Injury Anthology Project: 'The Dinner Party'
By Gordon Houghton
PUBLISHER: ANCHOR
PUBLICATION DATE: APRIL 1998
CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT
The obligatory copyright bit:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Besides which, it's not nice.
[extract: chapter one, complete]
Let's be honest.
The only aspect of this whole business which in any way disturbs me is the thing in the sink. Everything else (the Rites, the Symbols, the Objects, the Collection - even the murder) has been the logical conclusion of my life so far: it defines me. But that thing, staring at me as if I were solely responsible, as if the whole universe hadn't conspired with me to produce these events, in this place, at this moment in time... that thing bothers me.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. As my father used to say: if you want to tell a story properly, start at the start and end at the end. Complete crap, of course - you can tell a story in any way you like - but I don't have much time, and I can't think of any better way to begin.
So:
I remember my own birth very clearly.
This might strike you as odd, unique even, and I understand that, I really do; but to me it's unexceptional. I've told my friends about it, and their reactions have warned me against broadcasting the information too widely. But - what the hell? - some stories just have to be told. Try to keep a thing down and it struggles and wriggles and wrestles until it slips from your grasp. My father, when I knew him, strangled many a motto, but there was one in particular which he squeezed so hard that he just about murdered the meaning, and it wasn't until long after he'd gone that it began to have any value for me. Even now, when I repeat it to myself, I can still hear his deep, slow voice: Kill it or set it free, he said, but don't sit on it.´
I can't remember the exact circumstances in which he passed on this home-grown aphorism - there were too many to recount - but it's stuck to me like no other. I've got half-recollections of mundane, practical, less succinct proverbs dealing specifically with everything from never pouring hot fat down the sink to putting the washing powder back in the same place you found it, but this one has never faded. It's as much a part of my childhood as my pet rabbit, my favourite toys, and the open fire in our living room. It's reassuring, and timeless, like an old piece of furniture; but it must have started somewhere. My own special theory is that the root of all life is sexual contact, so I guess, in the end, like everything else, it was simply a result of personal erotic experience.
Don't sit on it, he said.
So I won't. I was there at my birth, and I remember. This is what happened.
It was very warm. About as warm as I am now, in fact (it was hot here when I first stepped in, but, unlike my mother's womb, this surrogate gets colder by the minute). It was also dark, and wet, and slightly sticky - though, of course, these evaluations only came later, when I realised that the world could be light, and dry, and smooth, and a thousand other distinct physical conditions. (Not to mention the huge scope of psychological states: since I popped out from between her thighs I've learned that you can be more than just annoyed or contented, that you can cry, and laugh, and use a sharp intake of breath to indicate that you're running out of patience, and... whatever.)
But let's go even further back. Most people remember little or nothing from before they were born. Even before they get to three, it's just simple sound-bites, a favourite toy, a nightmarish experience in hospital, a friendly face, sitting in the back of a car, their parents' legs. Memory can select any one moment from a million such random events and sensations - who knows why one is given preference over another? (Given time, I could probably even forget what happened today, and all I'd be left with is a vague sense of guilt, a hazy unease. But I don't have time.)
Anyway, in my case there's hardly anything I can't remember about my own life, no grey period in which the past was a mixture of the apocryphal, the half-remembered, the known. I know there was a time when I existed in two quite distinct worlds; and I knew that these worlds would be joined together, and that they would make a new world much stronger than either of its parents. (Of course, when I talk about twin worlds you're probably thinking 'sperm and ovum'. But I don't think it's that simple. I've seen sperm under a microscope: nasty, single-minded, futile, repulsive, clueless, comical, rudderless, wriggling eels with outsize heads. And I know what a human egg looks like: mostly dull. But from what I can remember about myselves at that time, I was the perfect combination of awesome size and breathtaking beauty... Incidentally, I trace all my mood swings back to this original duality. Ever since I was born I've suffered violent fluctuations from misery to elation and back again - you try to maintain an even keel, but in the end it's easier to abandon ship.)
I had no sense of time before the embryonic phase of my life, so I don't know when the twin worlds collided. However, their Joining was Significant. If I was writing this, I'd use capitals to distinguish between those events which have a bearing on the story you're about to hear, and those which have significance generally but don't mean much in this context. (For example, this morning I tied my shoelaces in reverse order, left before right. This is insignificant, but is nonetheless one of many things that happened today). But the Joining was Significant because it was the first in a sequence of many rites of passage.
For all but the fortunate few such rites no longer exist. There is no threshold, no ritual to announce that beforehand you were one thing and now you have become another. For me, though, there have been many such sacraments. They all begin with fear and self-loathing, peak in ephemeral satisfaction, and decline to remorse.
This sequence has been the story of today, and is the story of my life.
In the womb I was conscious of just three facts.
The first - my divided history up to that point - I've just told you about, so I won't repeat it.
The second was my own existence, a state intimately connected to sound. I remember, in particular, two heartbeats. The background rumble of my own heart acted as a metronome, a clock regulating the cycles of activity outside my small, private sphere. (But it wasn't always regular, and I attached great significance to minuscule fibrillations, out of all proportion to their importance. I've since copied this pattern of behaviour to excess, revering detail and rarely seeing the whole picture.) And then there was my mother's heart. More distant, a sluggish pulse reverberating down the umbilical cord and throbbing at my belly. An accompaniment to my own music. I think of her, my mother, as a student imitating my lead, following almost perfectly, sometimes syncopated, but quick to pick the beat again.
There were other sounds, too, but these I classify as Discord: a dog barking, a car starting up, a plate smashing on the floor, the violent rushing of my mother retching into the toilet bowl. The biggest Discord of all was conversation, a hazy, meaningless mumbling which (at first) I believed was part of my own thoughts, my mind's attempts to sort the crap from the quality that would serve me in later life. It was a shock when I realised that these sounds were beyond my control. Anyway, there were two voices I distinctly remember which might have belonged to my parents, but - get this - I can't be sure. Don't dismiss this so easily: what concrete proof do any of us have that the people who claim to be our begetters actually did the begetting? I don't mean birth certificates, or old photos, or word of mouth, or the fact that you have his big nose and her thick lips - I mean real proof.
Take my case. My parents never spoke to me as a child in the same pedestrian and vapid tones they used when I was sprouting inside that swelling belly. This has often troubled me. It's a silly theory, and you won't entertain it for a moment I'm sure, but it has to be said (Don't sit on it): I believe that the two voices I heard in the womb did not belong to my parents. This leaves two conclusions. Either I was swapped at birth and everyone has kept very quiet about it since, or my parents hired surrogate speakers to talk to me in utero.
Consider my father's last words to me before he left: 'You're no son of mine. I never wanted you, and I won't have anything more to do with you.'
Before I reveal the third aspect of my life in the womb, I've got five scraps of information for you. Pay attention: all of these have some bearing on the events I'll soon describe.
1. These names are important: John, Alison, Nigel, Susan, Alan, Kate.
2. I have an excellent memory, so everything I've told you, and will tell you, is true.
3. Another name. My father's surname is Fly, so since I was a boy I've given him the nickname Dragon. Ha bloody ha. His family - I can't call them mine - emigrated to the West from eastern Europe, so it all fits in a spooky subliminal kind of way.
4. My name is Felix. Labels should be Significant, and the three events leading up to, and including, my birth made my label inevitable: I was born at seven o'clock on July the seventh; on the same day my father won a small bet he'd had with an uncle about the time of my arrival (he'd 'felt it in his bones'); and I took only ten minutes to slip out, from the bursting of the dam to the cutting of the cord. The fact that Felix is more suited to a cat, a Roman dictator and a host of early Christian saints bothered no one.
5. I've never been a great communicator. It's not entirely my fault, and I can't say I regret it, but it's there. It can't be ignored. As a result, I've had a fear of conversation since childhood... But I do have friends, and I value them. The dinner party this evening is a case in point: I wasn't the most talkative member of the group, but I was happy with the way things went and satisfied that the appropriate rites had been properly carried out. More about that - and my friends - later.
Okay. The third fact about my life in the womb:
I could see the future.
Think about that: I knew what was going to happen.
Everything was revealed to me by thought-pictures. Visions, if you prefer. These weren't destinations that could be altered, or prophecies about events affecting someone else if certain conditions were fulfilled, but things that would occur, without question, whatever I did. Sometimes they were simple images, such as knives, or spinning wheels, or blood; but most of the time they were hazy feelings. I was never given the complete picture - I would have thrown myself off a cliff at the first opportunity if I had - but there was always enough there for me to know that I would suffer accidents, and failure, and misery, and rejection. (This raised the question, which has been asked by millions before me, and will be asked by millions after I'm gone: what, then, is the point of going on? Like them, I don't have the answer.)
This foreknowledge wasn't too disconcerting at first: deep inside my mother's soft, protective shell I didn't know life could be anything other than the way I foresaw. I had no... context. I didn't know much about beaches (except for that rhythmic hiss), or kites, or pets, or mirrors, or toys, or fire, or friends. The pictures I saw were cut-scenes, snatches of emotion - and the most prevalent emotion was fear.
The biggest and most frightening picture of all was also the clearest. It was like a story: you have an idea what's going to happen from the clues you pick up, but you never know exactly where it's going to end, or how all the details will slot into place.
The big picture was this. I knew that I was destined to harm, but until today I didn't know who would be harmed, or how it would be done.
© Gordon Houghton, reproduced with the authors permission.