I Love Dick (3 page)

“That night with you, we caught the Western bug. Your bug. I mean, Chris and I are sensible people. We don't do anything without
a reason
. So you must be responsible. I have the feeling you've been watching all these days with a John Wayne grin, manipulating us from a distance. I really resent that part of you, Dick. Intruding on our lives. I mean before that night Chris and I had a good thing going. Perhaps not passionate but comfortable. We could have gone on like that forever and then you came, the rambling man, with all these expatriate philosophies that we've outgrown ourselves over the past 20 years. This is really not our problem, Dick. You're leading a ghost town life, infecting everyone who comes near you with a ghost disease. Take it back, Dick. We don't need it. Here's another fax I thought of:

Dear Dick, Why did you do this to us?

Can't you leave us alone?

You're invading our lives
—
why?

I demand an explanation.

Love,
Sylvère

Were these letters sendable? Chris said yes, Sylvère said no. If not, why write them? Sylvère suggested writing until Dick returned their calls. Okay, she thought, believing in telepathy. But Sylvère, not in love but enjoying the collaboration, understood they might be writing him forever.

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

Come to think of it, why'd you even call us Sunday night? The night after our ‘date' with you in Antelope Valley. You were supposed to be this cool guy smoking a cigarette behind his bedroom door on Sunday morning, just waiting for us to clear out. It would've been totally in character not to call. So why did you call? Because you really wanted it to continue, right? You came up with this lame excuse about going to get breakfast—at 7:30 in the morning in this tiny town where the grocery store is 3 minutes away? It took you three hours, Dick, to get that fucking breakfast. So where'd you go? Did you sneak out to meet the bimbo girl who left her abject message on your answering machine? Can't you spend a single night alone? Or were you already fighting the invasion of your mental universe by this couple of cynical rapacious libertines? Were you trying to defend yourself; or was it a trap you set, tightening it the following night with your apparently innocent call? Actually, that night I picked up the receiver for a moment and heard your voice. Such a small voice, too, for such enormous stakes. You've been holding our destiny in your hands for the last few days. No wonder Chris didn't know what to say. So what's your game, Dick? You've gone too far into it to keep hiding in the distance, biting your nails and listening to
Some Girls
or some
other
girls. You have to deal with what you've created. Dick, you have to respond to the following fax:

Dear Dick I think you won. I'm totally obsessed with you. Chris will be driving across America. We have to talk this over
—

Sylvère

What do you think of that, Dick? I promise not to do you any harm. I mean, I'm on my way to France to see my family, they have security at the airport, I can't afford to be caught carrying a gun. But it's time to put an end to this craziness. You can't go on messing people's lives up like this.

Love,
Sylvère

Chris and Sylvère laugh hysterically, sitting on the floor. Because Chris is a 90 wpm typist she and Sylvère maintain eye contact while he talks. Sylvère's never been so prolific. After plodding along at a rate of about 5 pages a week on
Modernism & The Holocaust
he's exhilarated by how fast the words accrue. They take turns giving
DICK
-tation. Everything is hilarious, power radiates from their mouths and fingertips and the world stands still.

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

Two days ago Sylvère and I were discussing methods of disposing of dead bodies. I thought the best place might be in a rural storage facility. We visited one this week in Crestline and it occurred to me that a body could be left for quite some time so long as the rent was paid. Sylvère, however, objected that the corpse would rot and smell. We discussed refrigeration, but as far as I recall the bins have no electric outlets.

Highway medians are a notorious place for corpse disposal, and a real commentary on the public architecture of the '80s, wouldn't you say? Like Self Serve Filling Stations (and doesn't that description say it all?) they're a densely yet anonymously travelled public space where no one seems to be in charge. You don't see people picnicking around the highway, do you? It's not a place where children play. Medians are seen only from fast moving vehicles: a perfect condition for disposing of remains.

For a long time now I've been interested in dismemberment. Did you ever read about the Monika Beerle murder in the East Village, circa 1989? The case was apocryphal of conditions in New York at that time. Monika'd come from Switzerland to study Martha Graham dance. She made money part-time topless dancing at Billy's Lounge. She met a guy named Daniel Rakowitz hanging around the outside of her building and she liked him. One thing led to another and she invited Daniel to move in. Maybe with someone sharing rent she could cut down on dancing? But putting up with Daniel Rakowitz was worse than Billy's Lounge. He disappeared for days, then brought groups of crazy people from the Park back home. She said he'd have to leave. But Daniel wanted Monika's rent-stabilized apartment lease. And maybe he set out to kill her, 'cause the New York City Council, in the wake of AIDS, had passed a bill entitling non-related roomates to inherit leases of the deceased. Or maybe he just hit her in the throat with the broom handle accidentally too hard. But Daniel Rakowitz found himself alone on 10th Street with her corpse.

Getting rid of bodies in Manhattan must be very hard. It's bad enough trying to get out to the Hamptons without a car or credit card. A carpenter friend loaned him a chainsaw. Parting out the arms-legs-head. He jammed the different body parts in garbage bags and hit the street like Santa Claus. A leg turned up at Port Authority Bus Terminal in the trash. Monika's thumb came floating to the surface of some Welfare Soup in Tompkins Square Park.

And then there was the airline pilot in Connecticut who killed his wife, strapped a rented woodchipper onto the bed of his pickup truck and drove around the streets of Groton in a snowstorm, chipper whirling skin and bones. Sylvère says this story reminds him of the
Romance of Perceval
. The blood must've been a sight.

Speaking of Sylvère, he now thinks the best way of disposing of a body would be to cement a basketball hoop above it. This presumes a suburban setting (perhaps like yours). The land I own is in the Town of Thurman, upstate New York, 3000 miles away—although I will be driving there next week.

Dick, did you realize you have the same name as the murdered Dickie in Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books? A name connoting innocence and amorality, and I think Dick's friend and killer confronted problems much like these.

Love,
Chris

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

On December 15 I'll be leaving Crestline to drive our pickup truck and personal belongings and our miniature wire-haired dachshund Mimi back to New York. Six or seven days, three thousand miles. I will drive across America thinking of you. The Idaho Potato Museum, every landmark that I pass, will draw me closer to the next and they'll all be meaningful and alive 'cause they'll trigger different thoughts of you. We will do this trip together. I will never be alone.

Love,
Chris

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

I bet if you could've done this with Jane you never would've broken up with her, right? Do you envy our perversity? You're so priggish and judgmental but deep down I bet you'd like to
be like us
. Don't you wish you had someone else to
do it
with?

Your friend,
Sylvère

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

Sylvère and I have just decided to drive out to Antelope Valley and post these letters all around your house and on the cactuses. I'm not sure yet whether we'll hang around next door with a video camera (machete) to document your arrival, but we'll let you know what we decide.

Love,
Chris

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

We've decided to publish this correspondence and were wondering if you'd like to write an introduction? It could read something like this:

“I found this manuscript in the drawer of an old kitchen cabinet that I picked up at the Antelope Valley Swapmeet. It makes strange reading. Obviously, these people are very sick. I don't think there's much film potential in it because none of the characters are likeable.

“Still, I believe these letters will interest the reader as a cultural document. Obviously they manifest the alienation of the postmodern intellectual in its most diseased form. I really feel sorry for such parasitic growth, that feeds upon itself…”

What do you think?

Love,
Sylvère

PS: Could you Express Mail us a copy of your latest book,
The Ministry of Fear
? We feel that if we're going to write for you we should get more familiar with your style.

Love,
Chris

Crestline, California

December 10, 1994

Dear Dick,

Chris and I have spent the whole morning lying around with our computer thinking about you. Do you think this whole affair was just a means for Chris and me to finally have sex? We tried this morning but I think we've gone too far into our morbid imaginations. Chris continues to take you seriously. She thinks I'm sick, now she'll never touch me again. I don't know what to do. Please help—

Love,
Sylvère

PS: Thinking about it further, these letters seem to open up a new genre, something in between cultural criticism and fiction. You told us how you hope to revamp the writing program at your institution along these lines. Would you like me to read from it in my Critical Studies Seminar when I visit next March? It seems to be a step towards the kind of confrontational performing art that you're encouraging.

Regards,
Sylvère

By now it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Sylvère was triumphant, Chris was desperate. All she'd really wanted, for the past seven days was a chance to kiss and fuck Dick
_——
, and now all hope was receding, their meeting grew more distant every day, leaving everfewer pretexts for her to call. Clearly the letters were unsendable. And Sylvère was so excited by their writing, and aroused by it, and he knew that if there wasn't another event soon, another point of contact to fuel Chris' expectations, all this would end. For all these reasons, the pair decided they would write a fax.