Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (2 page)

'You're lying,' Don Quixote, knowing the ways of the world, replied, 'and your body is smelling. Free the boy!'

As soon as he freed the boy, the boy ran away.

'Come back here instantly!' the old sot yelled after the boy. 'We'll know how to care for you.'

'I won't go back to school. Never. I won't be turned into an old goat like you. I'll be happy.'

'Where're you going to, boy?' meaning 'Where can you go?'

The boy, being very unsure of himself, turned to Don

Quixote. 'Please tell me, ma'am, that I don't have to go with him.'

Don Quixote thought carefully. 'You have to go back, for your teacher, deep inside him, wants to help you and has just been mistaken how to help you. If he didn't care for you, he wouldn't want you back.'

The old man took the boy back to school and there flogged him even more severely. As he was flogging him, the teacher said, 'I have a good mind to flay you alive as you feared.' The boy tried to enjoy the beating because his life couldn't be any other way.

HOW DON QUIXOTE CURED THE INFECTION LEFT-OVER FROM HER ABORTION (SO SHE COULD KEEP HAVING ADVENTURES)

Seeing that she was all battered and bruised and couldn't rise out of her bed due to a severe infection and moreover, knowing that she was sick, Don Quixote couldn't rise out of her bed, which was the sidewalk outside her house.

'Who', St Simeon who had come to help his comrade asked Don Quixote, 'is responsible for this lousy condition?'

'No human's evil. The abortion.'

'Then who caused the abortion?' St Simeon was a highly intelligent young man, besides being holy.

'It's a hard thing,' Don Quixote instructed the saint, 'for a woman to become a knight and have adventures and save this world. It's necessary to pass through trials sometimes so perilous, you become mad and even die. Such trials are necessary.

'My heart's broken,' she continued, 'cause you demanded to be supported, cared for, and you gave nothing back. Either you clung like a child or you threatened to maim me. Now cither you actually don't love me or else you're so insane, you don't realize how much you've hurt me.'

As these words were easing the old knight's and the knight's

old heart, the saint re-questioned, 'But someone must be responsible for evil. Who's responsible for evil? For abortions?'

'I love you,' Don Quixote murmured. Aloud: 'I know who I am. The Twelve Peers of France and the Nine Worthies as well: the exploits of all of them together, or separately, can't compare to mine.'

Inside the house, her friends were talking about her:

- 'Is she going to die?'

- 'She's a very sick girl. She only knows how to do two things: When the sky's black, she lies across the sidewalk's length so the cars don't run her over. She indicates it's day by lying across the sidewalk's width. People, since they're forced to step over her, have to talk to her. I think she's lonely.'

- 'Why'd she have an abortion?'

- 'All she ever used to do was read books.'

'You're right,' the Leftist, who refused to drink in pubs, replied. 'She had no relations to other people. She didn't like them and she was aphasic.'

The Liberal: 'If she's evil, we must be evil too. No man's an island.'

'What about women?' asked the feminist, but no one listened to her. While the Leftist, who never listened to anyone but himself, answered, 'Books or any forms of culture're so dangerous, for they turn people mad, for instance Baudelaire or other pornographers, only our upper classes must be allowed to indulge in them.'

As he was stating this, Don Quixote was crawling into this room. 'I've had a dead abortion,' she said, trying to explain to her friends so they could love her, 'I mean: an abortion by a horse. I need you to take care of me.'

'It's because,' the Leftist, who always had to explain the world to everyone, replied to the knight, 'when you were a child, you read too many books, instead of suffering like normal children. The horse isn't responsible for your abortion. Literature is. You have to become normal and part of this community.'

In order to make her part of a community Don Quixote's friends dragged her toward her bed, which was a mattress on the floor, but just as they were dragging her across the floor,

they saw that she didn't have any wounds. They didn't need to care for or love her.

'My wound is inside me. It is the wound of lack of love. Since you can't see it, you say it isn't here. But I've been hurt in my feelings. My feelings're my brains. My feelings're now nerves which have been torn out. Beyond the hole between my legs, the flesh torn turned and gnashed, inside that red mash or mess, lies a woman. No one ever ventures here.'

Her friends, aghast at femininity, determined to burn it out.

Meanwhile, Don Quixote, having found the only true remedy for human pain, fell asleep.

A Dream Of Saving The World

I'm walking down a mountain. At a peak which was white, I traded something.

I and St Simeon're walking down a mountain. The foliage around us is luscious and light green. Trees have lots of little leaves. The path-down-which-we're-walking's dirt is tan and is winding slowly while it descends. The aerial freeway in a city. We're skiing. There're tiny blue yellow and orange flowers. We're running down a path. We're descending down a steep path. The path is reddish-brown. It's dangerous. We're at a curve of fantastic natural beauty: Thick thick bushes and leaves hang over waist-high dirt walls, are brushing our faces' skin. Beyond, the sky is blue. The foliage's so thick, there's only part of a sky. It's the beginning of night. St Simeon and I are at our little house at the foot of the cliff. The house's inside is beautiful. There're three bedrooms. A huge embroidered-blue-silk-covered bed's sitting in one of the bedrooms. Outside, the sky is lightless. A policeman is telling for a moment St Simeon who has a beer in his right hand to stop drinking. The cop grabs the beer out of Simeon's hand. Simeon runs after the creep. Since I'm knowing St Simeon has a bad temper, I'm running after the saint to try to stop him from doing anything stupid, the policeman's shooting me dead.

When Don Quixote awoke, screaming and raving on the floor, her friends told her she had to go to the hospital so that they could do something with her.

'Do you know why I'm screaming?' the mad knight told them. 'Because there's no possibility for human love in this world. I loved. You know how much I loved. He didn't love me. He just wanted me to love him; he didn't want to love in return.' Pauses. T had the abortion because I refused normalcy

which is the capitulation to social control. To letting our political leaders locate our identities in the social. In normal good love:

'It's sick to love someone beyond rationality, beyond a return (I love you you love me). Real love is sick. I could love death.'

Her friends, being kind, brought her food, for they knew the food where she was going stinks.

'I don't want this food. I want love. The love I can only dream about or read in books. I'll make the world into this love.' This was the way Don Quixote transformed sickness into a knightly tool.

PROVING THAT TRUE FRIENDSHIP CAN'T DIE

One day St Simeon went away. Don Quixote couldn't bear living without him. For St Simeon had taught her how to slay giants, that is to consider someone of more importance than herself. Even when she had been irritated then angry with him because he was younger than her - forty-two compared to her sixty-six years - she had learned to stay calm.

She didn't know why he had left her. She could only figure out that that evil magician, her enemy, had somehow enticed Simeon away from her. All she knew was that she had to have him back.

She sighted New York City. She was elated, for she was anxious to see her friend. She decided to wait until night which is when the city opens. Night orgasmed: it wasn't lightless: its neon and street lights gave out an artificial polluted light. Nothing was to be heard anywhere, but the barkings of junkies. Their whinings and mutterings deafened her ears and troubled her heart. Where was the heart? All the noises grew along with the silence. The knight took such a night to be an omen, but of what?, nevertheless, discounting the peril, she kept on.

About two blocks straight on, she came to a dark object. She saw that it was a tower. This old dilapidated boarded-up

church inside of which rats cockroaches and occasionally junkies did their dealings was the principal church of the city. She thought Simeon, being a good Catholic, might be here. She was walking through the church's graveyard which was a blind alley filled with garbage. At its end, junkies were puncturing razors, for lack of needles, into their arms. 'It's probably the custom,' Don Quixote thought, 'in a land of revolution, to build major churches in broken-down scumbag sections, though it seems anti-religious. Every nation has its own customs: Even though I'm English, I must show some respect.'

Then she saw a number of well-dressed, obviously, society women. 'Don't be vulgar,' said a lady-like lady who was wearing a nice non-designer suit. A tall Givenchy-suited hideoso who had just found out the white-booted cowgirl was the reason her husband was divorcing her, even though the only thing she liked about hubby was his money, rapped cowgirl over the head. Cowgirl, turning around, kicked Givenchy upperclass slut. 'You can't hit me because I'm wearing glasses.' So cowgirl, taking glasses off, whacked skinny legs. Skinny legs whose legs weren't beautiful, down on ground cause also her legs weren't working, saw cowgirl's firm guinea-pig-like leg and sunk her teeth into its knees. 'I'll get you some iodine,' said the fat millionaire who was planning to turn or buy her young gigolo into a TV star. 'Get me a cure for hydrophobia.' Then skinny ugly legs sank down crying. How can such women live without men?

Desperate to find St Simeon, - this is the beginning of her desperation to find love in a world in which love isn't possible, - especially because she's so desperate, - Don Quixote's madness was beginning to reach a point beyond the imagination or human understanding. However the truth always wins. The truth was that Don Quixote had to be with St Simeon.

Not only was Don Quixote not with St Simeon. She was in a church.

Don Quixote had only one choice, for there's a remedy for everything except death. 'I
am
mad,' Don Quixote admitted to herself. 'Since I'm mad, I can believe anything. Anyone can be St Simeon, for anyone can be a saint. That's religion. If who I believes St Simeon doesn't believe he's St Simeon, I'll swear to

it. If he swears he is, I'll whip him. But if he keeps on swearing he's not St Simeon, I'll tell him he's been enchanted.

'Where I spit,' Don Quixote said to herself, 'no grass will ever grow.'

In the United States, packs of roaming wild dogs now indicate a decaying urban area or an increasing separation between the universal military government and the national civilian populace. Don Quixote saw a pack of wild dogs coming toward her. One of the dogs lit a cigarette. A beautiful dog was walking by her. 'Mary darling, we've been waiting for you.' 'C'mon, Mary.' 'Leave me alone, Betsy.' 'What're you up to?' 'Shh.' 'How've you been feeling, Mary?' 'Shh. It's Gloria Grahame.' 'Anything for the gossip columns, darlings?' 'Shh.' 'Now, Mary. What's this about a doctor?' 'We all know about you and the doctor, Sylvia . . .' 'What do you know? . . . There's nothing between the doctor and I. He enjoys my company.' 'Oh.' 'Wait till I start talking about you, Mary. You're trying to break up my marriage, you pigeony X-wife, but you won't. S. . . is a gentleman. By the way, there's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used outside a kennel.'

'A malign enchanter,' Don Quixote thought that the leader of this pack was St Simeon, 'must again be pursuing me, this time outside my dreams, for he's transformed your hunky body into a dog's. I hope I don't look too bad.' Don Quixote looked for a mirror, but couldn't find one in the church. 'Nevertheless, dog, please love me because as for me I'm not so attached to appearances that I've stopped loving you. With us, friendship'll last forever.'

The dog tried to bite off the knight's hand.

While Don Quixote was trying to take her sick friend up in her arms, the dog saved her the trouble by kicking her. Since dogs aren't supposed to kick, Don Quixote knew this was really her friend. The dog, like all friends, started to run away.

'I'm always miserable,' Don Quixote whined. 'It's the way I am. If my best friend's a dog, what am I? How will anyone ever love me? I'm doomed to be in a world to which I don't belong.'

The dog, having smelled future dead meat in and of Don Quixote, had slunk back into the church.

'St Simeon. What lies concealed beneath your bark? Are you really good or evil? To tell the truth, I never noticed your ugliness, only your beauty, before this. Do you have any pimples now? Now, no one could really possibly love you except for me, because no one sees truly except for me, because I love.'

Because he was hungry, the dog followed Don Quixote, out of the church.

I think Prince should be President of the United States because all our Presidents since World War II have been stupid anyway and are becoming stupider up to the point of lobotomy and anyway are the puppets of those nameless beings, - maybe they're human - demigods, who inhabit their own nations known heretofore as 'multi-nationals'. On the other hand: Prince, unlike all our other images or fakes or Presidents, stands for values. I mean: he believes. He wears a cross. President Reagan doesn't believe this crap he's handing out or down about happy families and happy black lynchings and happy ignorance. Worse: he might. Whereas The Prince believes in feelings, fucking, and fame. Fame is making it and common sense.