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Did You Never Ask Yourself Why, the Lonesome Cowboy is Lonesome? by Nat Boreun
75-\"Jesus was saying: Many are at the door, but the lonesome will enter into the wedding room.\" Coptic Gospel of Didimus Judas Thomas -Nag Hammadi (III century)
-The jewelers call a 'solitaire'* a diamond of fine cut. I want also to say: well cut in facets. "Its water." One says, that is to say his transparency, is his brightness. -- Jean Genet-Pompes funèbres.
I'm on the streetcar that carries me to the University. I should resolve this situation; I could not do it earlier, but now that I'm 18 years old I want to do it as soon as possible, alone. I'm seeking to reorganize the ideas, the two problems of mine, as they are so complex and apparently untied that I don't know how to begin at the beginning, to give back rationally and comprehensibly what I feel. I would want it in a logical manner, but from any part that I begin at, it twists itself and it's so confusing. And then these unexpected cephalalgias, at least thicker, stronger. I'm seriously worried for my future, as my mother is dead into an institute for mental diseases and my father who should have supported all this, moreover, as he was bringing me up. How could I say to him that perhaps I am a homosexual? Certainly, if I'm this way, I have all the rights to life this way, but how should I ask him to understand?
Luckily a cousin of mine, a student of medicine, has fixed me this appointment with a psychologist of his University; he said that he's really capable and surely within a few little sessions all will be clear. I hope it; at least he will be able to pull out from my head all the elements to arrange my situation, to give a reply, anyone it is. I come down by the means and I come into the main entrance of the wing of the building used as ambulatories; there a crisis picks me unexpectedly, just two hours after the last one, and the fog attacks me dense and solid like always. Nobody can see it and how would they be able, in this fine sunny afternoon of September?
Before loosing the contact with reality, I carry out a strategy thats well tried out. I follow an attractive girl who passes near me with a secure step, while I see not even where support the feet, and I recite like a mantra the refrain of an old song: "And all this while / as vampires feed / I bleed."
I make myself sit above a bench in the small inside garden of the facility. How much time has passed? I hope it's not in delay: No, just some minutes are lasted. However I run, practical of the environment to have accompanied often my cousin to the lessons, arriving before the door of my appointment with a reasonable delay. Inside I find a half aged professor, not jovial agree with, but not even haughty. He seems actual the most gotten used type to listen then to speak, I think that he is more pledged in the search that in the teaching. He makes me sit facing him, settle on the two parts of the writing desk; really the couch is in the room, but someone will still use it?
I say to him, "Hi, Doctor, I am..."
"Please not, I don't want to know your name," he says, shaking slightly the head, "So as you will not know mine. A capable student of mine, he said to me that a person was in need of me, it is a free consult, and we avoid the formalities. You can call me Jim, and you will be Ross for me."
The thing was surely unconventional, but seen that I was really saving a fine heap of money, I accepted.
"Ok, Jim. But then, if the thing should prolong itself?"
He waved a hand. "We will think later, don't to give boredom. Rather tell me what has pushed you until here."
Here the point, what was it?...It was a...I was hesitating. He squeezed more times the fist before my face, saying, "Will have time to digress, the core as is? Is it a fear or a desire?"
Ross: Both."
Jim: "Oh! This is essential, of what is discussed?"
I was really embarrassed; if I had not said it, I would have wasted that afternoon, and yet it is so hard to do.
"Well, d'you know... I'd like to be castrated, having my penis cut off."
I've said it to somebody for the first time in my life! One could cook the eggs on my ears, surely I am blushing, redder than a fish in the bowl, but at least I said it! I am waiting for myself to hear some his dissertations about the faults of the penis, the castration complex, the Oedipus phase, questions on my mother or on my childhood erotic habits, I am ready to deal all these things about I am well informed, ready to deal on, but instead he asks me just, "And don't you dislike to lose it forever, Ross?"
I never have thought it in this way. "A lot," I answer, "I couldn't enjoy it anymore, and yet if I imagine that it's going to happen me, I feel such a great fear, a great desire. The erection and the contemporary feel of lacking are the best erotic sensation I can experience, and this is not normal."
Jim smiles for the first time. "You always run too far, even I still know if it's normal: it seems to me that you really don't desire it, better you're feeling it as a must."
It was true, but I felt that the origin of this must, my master, was the same cock and I am too much ashamed to confess this slavery. Ross shifts some documents being on the table and shows me an old tiny guillotine, one of that used to cut the Cuban cigars. "If I would ask you to introduce it into this, now; would you do it?"
My heart is beating hard, I'm really tempted, but the fear and rationality get the upper hand, so sighing and putting down my sight I say, "No, I'd not."
He encourages, "Don't worry, I praise it. Tell me, do you remember since this began?"
"Yes, of course I remember. But it's not simple to explain, the dream is begun since my prescholarly age, I call it a dream because I was not able to define it in another manner, but I know that I was well awake when it was happening."
Jim, made curious, "Please, let's proceed, go on, go on!"
"Well, it was happening that my bedroom was becoming wider, without walls and at an indefinable distance was appearing, breaking from a solid and opaque fog, a gilt frame containing a dark surface, frightening. Passing the years this dream has repeated more often. It happens to me now daily, and with opened eyes, announced by a stronger headache, it takes the place of reality; it's every time harder to monitor it."
He nods. "And for this you want to be emasculated?"
"Indirectly, you see, continuing the sight between the years, I had the sensation to close the thing that revealed itself to be a door..." I am telling this to him, but he is vanished, to extract something from the last drawer in lower part of the writing desk. I stop and see him, turning over the pages of a notebook for primary schools.
"Before continuing, I want you tell me if this is what you have seen."
He shows me the page, this notebook is very old, the distance between the lines it's the same of my grandfather's notebooks, it is no more used since thirty years ago. But this is not what strikes me, the picture on the page is childlike, the colors approximate and smeared, but the decorations and the volutes of the door jamb, made with a pencil, are perfect: there's no doubt this is my dream!
"Yes, it is! I say, But the surface of the door is not so moderate, it is composed by hundreds of pieces attached together, everyone of different metal. They are ruined by Time, but on each one you can read a sentence, I believe the same in every language of the world."
Jim asks, "And what is the sentence?"
"I don't know, I could not find our language, I would like to ask it at the guy near the door, but..."
Jim starts on the chair, like hit by an electric discharge. The notebook jumps from his hands and with wide eyes asks me, "Have you seen somebody close the door?"
"Oh yeah. He is there since many years."
"And how is he? What does he look like?" Jim asks.
"He looks more or less like a young Masai warlike one, d'you know, with his orange garment, the thin plaits, the dark skin. In their typical pose when they pasture the herds, leaned to a long pole and to a leg, with the other one folded behind. A half face is always asleep, but the other half one is watchful. He is just a bit fatter than the normal ones."
Jim seems really involved, my case enamors him, I think it is a good mark. "Have you never spoken with him?"
"I'd like it," I say, "You know, after all that time I've seen him all alone. But the only time I tried to get close to him, when he noted me, he opened both his eyes wide apart and leaned on his two legs, then he pointed me with a finger of the free hand. I stopped paralyzed by the fear. He moved slowly his hand towards his garment and lifted it up, showing me a flat groin, smooth, and without sex."
"And how did you feel? Surprised, disgusted, amused?" interrupts Jim.
And I reply, "Oh, no! It was the finest belly I'd never seen, without prominences, nor recesses, on those muscular legs. I was attracted against my will and I sought to reach it, but I did just a step and he smiled at me, showing two parallel rows of thirty-two canines! It was frightening. I fled, and since that day I keep a good distance, and I never have troubled him anymore. But it's since that time that I wish to become a eunuch such as he is."
Jim has the forehead beading up sweat and seems more excited to listen to me, than I to tell it. Weird, for a guy who makes his job at this, I think. With a voice a little hoarse he asks to me, "And has happened something else?"
I say, "Yes. While he was smiling me, it seems that the fog was less uniform; it was taking on like the outlines of enormous half-dressed and stretched bodies, and that those tenuous beings were laughing at me. But perhaps it has been just the impression of the fear, just a moment before fleeing. I never have reviewed them anymore."
He's wordless, he takes the telephone and dials a short number, likely an interior one. Turning me his shoulders he speaks with low voice and with agitation, I can understand just a few words of his ...vision, ...guardian, ...signs and ...now. He turns to me, supports the receiver and smiles, but there's embarrassment in his eyes, "Something is wrong?"
I wonder. He says, "No, but there's a person that would be pleasant to meet you. He is at the floor of above and if you want, I would want to accompany you to see him."
I agree, but I'm not calm, is my case so strange and serious to have to consult someone else? Is it necessary? I insist to have explanations. While we travel halls and almost dusk staircases, outside is by now darken, he reassures me, "No, don't be worried, he's not a colleague, he is just an elderly mister that I would want to meet you. I said to you, this visit is not formal." The word elderly links myself immediately at the notebook that I've seen in his studio; maybe is its owner that I'm going to meet? It should be an extraordinary coincidence.
The visit is not formal, but not even normal: we arrive at the room of the appointment where we don't find even a light. I do toil to distinguish the furniture, while the professor is moving with safety. He lifts up a receiver and says, "Here we are." Then, to me, "He will be here in a few minutes."
In fact I've just the time to get used to this darkness and to see that I am in an old medical ambulatory, and that the other door of the room is opened an three persons come in. One is who he said, definitely elderly, but I have the impression to be in front of the eldest living beings that I've ever seen: a man with far-eastern face, whose skin has an indefinable color, he walks gracefully but very slowly, helped by two attendants whom I'm not able to determine the sex and nor the age. What strikes me are their eyes, with no irises, with no pupils; they're completely white. This weird trio approaches me and I don't know what to do, the psychologist is held in apart, in order to not disturb, and also the servants are removed when the old man is opposite me. I put a little one to understand that since he is in the room, it is illuminated as daylight, I look around, but I can't see any lamp.
While I'm so distracted he shakes my hand, and I look at him and smile, his touch is like the dead snakes skin; I can look at him by the high one to the lower part, but his face does not have some expression and don't shine through no emotions, while I'm so embarrassed. His expression of serenity does not change even when he leaves me and, I don't know how, I find in my right hand a tin-soldier toy of a Yankee soldier and in the left one a Redskin.
"Have you never played with these?" he wonders. His voice is a whisper, alternated at deep sighs, as if he did an erroneous toil.
I say, emphatically, "Oh, yeah. It was my favorite!" It comes to me spontaneously to speak louder than usual, unconsciously I retain him deaf and just a little doting.
Always imperturbable, he extracts from a pocket of his jacket the reproduction of a cowboy on horseback, shows me and says, "Did you never ask yourself why, the Lonesome Cowboy is lonesome?"
Really, I never have done that, but I say to him, "Because he doesn't know his own name."
He nods. "Well, then you speak my language." But what does he say, I know just mine and the French, and this is not French!
I confirm, "No, you're speaking mine!"
"Oh, it's impossible. I speak none."
This conversation is absurd, this situation is absurd! I look at the psychologist, I hope he helps me to go away without to be rude, but I can hear my mouth utters these words, "But you know your own name."
"And you? Would you like to know yours?"
I can't stop. "It should be mattering."
He takes a deep breath, then, more slowly than before, "I could send you on the top of a hill to plant a tree also if you were not wanting." "I would feel my one's duty to make it. But if you would do it just 'cause you have to, you could just step by step halve the distance and never reach the top."
"Right, but if I would know my own name I could say at the tree to go to plant itself, and he would do it."
Something inside of him is broken, has a dizziness, instantly the two blind persons are behind him with a chair and they help him to sit down, while the professor extracts from his breast pocket of the jacket a small pill that the old man put with trembling hand under his tongue. The professor says to me, "Excuse him, its for his bad heart."
The attendants help him to open the shirt-collar. Pass another minute while I find myself so stupid, standing up with two tin-soldiers in my hands, watching a sick old man. Then it seem he take again himself, but I don't know if it's an enhancement: he keeps his head between his hands and start to cry dry, with efforts that shakes his whole thin body. The professor that is still there, neighbor, he stoops down towards him. With a thread of voice, but I can hear it distinguished, the old man says, "I'd never thought to see one in my lifetime."
Then he closes his eyes, exhausted by so many emotions. Immediately the room becomes dark, until to go out we should use a pocket lamp that the psychologist takes from his pocket.
Outside is yet night and while we are coming down the staircases I wonder him explanations, I've understood nothing of this meeting, I've said things against my will, I think to have wasted my afternoon. He says not on the staircase, but the building is empty at this hour and I'm too curious in order to wait for to arrive at the office. At first restive, but then, bothered, he answers, "The more simple one is your headache. It's self-defense of your brain that can feel the signs of your vision before you be conscious of it. It knows it is wrong for you and it tries to avoid it." He shuts up, but I want to know even if for the other obsession he has an explanation, above all I want to know if I am homosexual. He stops suddenly and turn, then as if it was a clear thing that just I was the only one to not understand, he says, "But what homosexual, you're a bogey-mole!"
This revelation invests me like a tornado, I could believe it is all a joke devised from my cousin, if I don't pits that I know that all this is true. Return back at least of 12 years: my mother caught me playing with my little dick, she asked me what was happening, why I did it. I told her my dream and she said me never reveal it to anybody. I had believed, until today, that she said also, "We will have to cut it off, in order to not become a mole!" referring at the old belief that the masturbation makes you blind, but now I remember exactly, she said, "We will have to cut it off, SO you will become a mole!" Therefore, all this was not new for me; I'm having no more patience and take the professor by the collar, dragging him into the ambulatory. I want to know everything.
Sat with calm in his office, he explains me that the sight I was having, was common for a lot of children, 'til they're innocent, but that the education and the Religions of Salvation spread in the world cause its dismissing. What I see when I lose control is the Times Door, it has been created by the Ancient Gods that still reside in the Ancient Evenings into our heads. He says to me, Don't laugh, 'cause this is not legend or mythology, they exist and I've seen them laughing of me when I was not succeeding to approach at the door. Their Guardian was able to frighten me and their dominion was safe. They claim to have created the door to force the Time to elapses just in one direction, protecting us by the Kaos. Really we are hindered by the absolute knowledge that would free ourselves from their domination.
He continues, more confidentially: Before I've expressed badly, you are potentially a bogey-mole. You have the potency to become, but you're not yet it. All the marks say you should be the one that could open the Door, little elected had the possibility of vision of the Guardian; the last we know was in 16th century!"
Taming him, "And should I be castrated?"
"No. When you will learn your own name, you will want to be castrated! Already almost to be there now, that the way is still so long. You should know that the first Moles that were sent to fight the Guardian, were males, 'cause we thought that they were stronger, but the guardian was using the only arm he has, and that you've seen: with his shark teeth bites the genital of ours fighter, castrating him with the bite, as the young rabbits do into their fighting for reproduction. Quite can understand how they were fighting contracted by the fear to lose their manhood. Then is begun the usage to use eunuchs as Moles, some docile ones without fear to lose it. So some Guardians were killed, that's true, but the Moles had not knowledge enough to open the Door and since that is the only key to open it, we are still at the starting point."
I reply, charmed, "And if also I was not in a position to open it?"
"You're not obliged to do it. You can renounce in every moment. As I said to you, the way is so long: you will learn at first the 'pancrazio', an ancient Roman fighting technique to kill with armless hands; should become educated in all he human knowledge, and already this will occupy many years. Then you will go to live in a cave, in an out-of-the-way zone, where you will have nothing but yourself; there survive will be your own only worry, all your knowledge will be useless and you'll forget it, discovering your own name. Just now, you'll be emasculated. But if you will not want it, you'll have still the possibility to renounce."
"And I will not be a bogey-mole."
"You will not be anyway. In fact you will be ashamed of your novelty been and at least a year you will go to beg at the southern countries of the world. Mocked also by the humblest, will become strong enough for the struggle."
Always more charmed by this catharsis, I say: "How many possibilities will I have to win?"
"It will be up to you, certainty the Guardian is very strong; since always he's chosen between the strongest warlikes of the most aggressive tribes of eastern Africa and made like you've seen him, a shark-man, by the witch of Tunisis. His eunuch state does not make him more docile, it is not of his own, he's even more fierce because of sexual frustration."
I reply, after a reflection, "But, if after I've opened the door, really the Kaos will reign on, and my mutilation would been useless?"
At this point his excitation is at the top, he lifted up and almost screaming, "It is not possible! We're not some primitives; we have made many steps beyond since centuries! What now is Kaos for our senses, but not for our minds that can conceive it and the quantum mathematics, the strings theory has supported, a reality with twenty-four dimensions; with the opened door, will be normal! You cannot be an obstacle for the progress, actually you've seen and you know that what you've seen is a truth, you cannot deny to the whole humanity the gift that has been given to you. For you it will not be even a sacrifice..."
He goes on in this way, as he wanted to convince me by force; it was not necessary, on the contrary he obtained an inverse effect. Now is evident the warning of my mother, "Never reveal it to anyone..."
It was not to preserve me by the struggle, it was to preserve me by the human overbearances, that could be frightening more then the Guardian.
I run away, without a word, and yet I'm running through the dark and desert roads of my town. Lost, also the fixed stars are slowly turning over my head: I feel myself hunted, now I know, they can't let me free, they will find me, but is not this the why I'm running as far as possible. It's because I'm in fear of that charming; if I will see them I will slow down for let they keeping me. Bewildered, I was looking for an answer and I had it, but the answer is a question - "Will I know my own name or will I be forever a Lonesome Cowboy?"
And what would you do walking in my shoes? Because to be able to walk in someone else's shoes is the only true knowledge.
*solitaire=lonesome
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