I am blood & bones
I am blood & bones (something i wrought last night..)
"I am blood & bones".
She smiled, the irises of her eyes exultant like tulips.
"&, I suppose you do not believe in human nature" she inquisitioned, her tongue lashing at his side like a whip. He grimaced, his mind a tepid hodgepodge of half-assed ideas, but mainly, moreover, resentment.
"I don't want to know what it is that I believe."
"You believe whatever it is that you find convenient." He grimaced again. "It's funny how all this wishy-washy postmodernism seems to all boil down to convenience."
"I am a Postismist. Postmodernism is dead." He quipped, laconically, not sure if he cared what she perceived of him. The pub was awash in gaudy light fixtures spewing yellow and orange hues, reverberating around the pastiche crimsons, the chewing-gum-spattered patterned carpets, the anachronistic Guinness posters.
"That is so Postmodern. To say Postmodernism is dead. You need to learn what is from what isn't". The 'isn't' was a mountain amongst molehills. The sounds of the pub swarmed around him like a dense forest. He wasn't entirely sure why he was there, why he was lackadaisically engaged in this ruinous conversation with this vapid girl with her ostentatious pearl necklace, her blathering of lipstick, her obnoxious flower-print Topshop dress, her bluish cocktail glass.
"The problem is that you literary theorists have lost touch with reality, as much as you have with human nature. You've got so caught up in pursuing deviant political agendas based upon factually inaccurate ideals that your comprehension of reality has become... warped." The words fluttered past him like butterflies. With the flap of the butterflies wings universes collapsed and were reborn.
"I've never had much of a conception of reality" he mused. "It seems to be a rather bizarre place". She looked as if she had been morally broached.
"How can you say that? Reality is everything you have ever perceived, that you've ever known, everything you'll ever be...'
"Shall one day be washed away by the sea." He smiled. He really couldn't be bothered to engage her. He wanted to run out of the door, to patter over the slick-wet pavement in the darkness, to climb the steps to his house, go inside, lock the door and ignore the idiosyncrasies of the world.
"I suppose so. But there's an awful lot of living to do before then. Why do you have to take such a pessimistic view of everything? Why can't you understand that some morals are universal, that there are instincts which are stitched into the fabric of humanity". He wanted to vomit. He appreciated her perspective, but why was he standing, staring at her sumptuous breasts, and her picturesque neckline.
Maybe this is my human nature. To stand here and stare at this piece of meat. Two pieces of meat, two bundles of genetics, clasped together in this salubrious ocean, this tapestry of chaos.
"That's the problem with feminists, though" she continued. "They don't understand that the bridge between the genders is a result of a very real difference. Social norms are only the outcome of the reality of our genetics." She paused. "As students of literature, we should embrace this. This is why a new approach to understanding literature & authorship is so crucial. It's called Literary Darwinism; it's about looking at human beings & their relationship to literature in the context of their inextricable humanity; the inescapability of their nature." She paused again for breath, then engined off again into the distance. "After all, it was Shakespeare who posited the universality of human experience & who celebrated it through literature. Even a callous bastard like yourself can relate to Hamlet." His blood was racing through his veins & he wanted to fight this assault off. It was plain to him that she was wallowing in the same old banal & reactionary dogmas that had dogged his childhood & tainted his adolescence. He frowned.
"I can't believe you're coming out with this rubbish." She smiled, petulantly. "Stop trying to enshrine your own beliefs, your own cultural predilections under this dubious church that you call human nature. I have no idea what those two words mean. They mean to their author what their author wants them to mean. The most amazing trait of our species, in my opinion, is the variability of experience, the plurality of opinion. What's the point of wrapping all of that up in some banal generalisation that merely serves to marginalise & alienate anyone who disagrees with that small group who call themselves the moral majority. Human nature can only be defined as the lack of an inherent, unified nature." She looked mildly disgruntled.
"Why do you have to define everything paradoxically?" He shrugged
"I find it humorous."
"How can you find it funny? Things can't be two contradictory things at the same time."
"Contradictions happen in language, language is not reality. Anything can happen in language." He realised he was just standing around talking to this woman because he wanted to have sex with her.
"Not meaningfully. Anyway, I'm not trying to marginalise anyone. What I'm talking about is very inclusive; it includes everyone, including you." She smiled salaciously, her cheeks clenched.
"You're trying to marginalise anyone who doesn't agree with you." He wasn't sure if she understood the subtle subjectiveness of semeiotics, or the fragility of language. She had probably been a bit muddled by Derrida. But at the same time, he wasn't sure if he understood the biologicalness of it all.
"No, I'm just saying that I am right, and that you are wrong." Her eyes twinkled.
"I am blood & bones. But I, & I can only speak for myself, realise that as a human-being there are more things that make our clocks tick and our worlds spin on their axes than the want to gush my juices down another's vaginal canal. This world is full of wonder, full of mystique & joy. Much of that is not derived from genetics-inspired socialisation. We may be apes, but we can be very autistic apes." Her eyes drooped like dandelion stamen.
"I don't... I don't quite understand that. I see everything as..."
"So you think that I am standing here talking to you because I want to have sex with you?"
"Well, I suppose..."
"And why are you standing here talking to me?" she fluttered her eyelashes & then furrowed her brow, to look like she was engrossed in thought. "Because you want to have sex with me?"
"No.... no..." she giggled "um... it's... hehe.... much more that I could be scouting you out to see if you're any use as a provider, as a..."
"You've backed yourself into a wall here. Either you admit that you're talking about literature because you find it intellectually satisfying, or you come home with me right now and f**k me like the animal you claim to be." She lifted her eyebrows. She seemed genuinely offended.
"Fortunately", she reminded him, "this is the point at which I realise that you lack tactfulness, subtlety or any sort of conformity to normal ways of socialising & I slap you & walk off to find another partner. I'll spare you the slap."
"Then you recognise that you're discussing this with me out of intellectual curiosity?"
'No", she said, backing away "I was merely trying to secure myself a quality mate. But you've proved to me that you're nothing of the sort.' He laughed to himself as she backed off to the bar, eyeing up a tall, dark, handsome rugby-playing Adonis.
All I have to do to win the argument, he thought, is to walk out of here into the rain & wind, spurn this whole opportunity. Of course, perhaps winning the argument was all only a ploy to get her to mate with me. The irony of the situation converged upon him, smothering him. He felt vindicated, gazing towards her. She turned around from the bar & returned his glance. He smiled, vindictively as he bundled his coat up around his shoulders & walked out of the pub into the teeming rain, holding her gaze all the way to the door.
thank you very much. didn't take that long. hehe about 1/2 an hour. i was bored & fantasising about a girl i fancy who lives in manchester. i live in london. bah.