A few months ago, when Alien Buddha Press announced their “rejection” issue, allowing writers to bring forth their favorite rejected pieces and rejection letters, my first thought, was, damn....I wish I could find “The Second Wound”----moreover, I wish I still had the rejection letter from that one goth mag....
Well, lo and behold, here I am on the tail end of a move, going through some rando boxes of cripcrap, and guess what turns up?
--the SECOND wound--
You are the second wound. Does that distress you or please you? If it helps any, you're the second behind her and somehow the worst. It came as a jolt, because I never thought, in all my wildest, blackest dreams, that you would draw more blood than she. There you are, my dear, secondhand but ultimately lethal, but I still have to thank you, because your sting eclipses hers and I thought I'd never get through hers alive.
She was the golden, whirring blade of the west, a jewel, a sapphire turning into diamond in the setting sun of my youth's distressed autumn. Hope. A word I laughed, barking stonily at. Joy. Light. Love, for light and all such dazzling things. Excited, hands clapping with glee as though she were at the circus. She was the first wound, the bitter plateau that made my heart foolish, caring, expectant, insane.
Reckless was the name of my fall, all the while begging favors. Divination, ghosts lurking in cabinets, the voices I ran to, the voices I screamed for, an easy answer, a ray of hope, off on my hobby horse, examining frivolous trace elements of matters unscientific. All the while I was buoyant yet sinking in quicksand, groping for a branch, a root, an imaginary hand to hold on to, invisible warmth, a cold lie, a mountain untamed, and what it was, was sacred ground too high and foreboding for a lowly immigrant palmer, a fortress, the shrine untouched and unseen.
All bridges and paper towers must fall beneath the unsure feet of a mad, sad fool and with time these steps were torn asunder as I tried to balance myself on them. The Prettiest Girl in the World is groomed into royalty and so knows well her station in life. Her criteria are demanding and fruitful in achievement. Who shall she choose for her consort but the Prettiest boy in the world? And so in flash, a clear, sparking wonder, a world ends, a tiny world, insignificant, one that will never be missed, imbedded in the grainy pavement to be scrubbed away by a wretched civic lackey after the wailing morning editions.
And so she was the golden blade which struck me and drew that unlucky first blood—she was like the wide golden pathway paved with gems and adornmemnts. My body and my soul trembled, my hands shook and my knuckles whitened, on my knee alone and bowed, cowed against those castle walls, the unscalable fortress. No, over and over in a shaking, feverish litany, no, no, no, don't let it hurt, no, don't do this, no, not again, don't let it happen to me, a telltale sign, a sealed, oaken door, a dead end that cackled and proclaimed, fool! It happened to you before you even realized it! A world untouchable, untouched, a relentless cliff never climbed, never to be, never to be, foremost in an endless string of tragedies and aches and unheeded prayers.
An ending, but not an ending, because you are the second wound, the silver knife sheathed lovingly in an ornate, touching icon, camouflaged in a fairy tale skin. Your cool waters drove me helplessly your way and again I was pilgrim, beaten against the torrent, wanting and needing for a cure, an antidote for the leprosy, the damage of my soul.
But the soft, quiet glory sought was glory superficial, for you held that concealed blade and when salvation grinned at my addled eyes like a snake hypnotic or a tiger voracious the illusion laughed and pulled away. The Sacred Virgin is a statue, forged of granite, eyes of cold stone and this false, eleventh-hour hope, that small faith I held to my heart and so fleetingly entertained turned savage and gaping and tore me in half. This timid pilgrim approaching with bent reverence and the cautious eye of an injured child only seeking the warmth, the calm, the shelter of grace, an exit from these dark, lugubrious corridors, was surprised to be mauled by such treacherous beauty. I liken you to pitcher plant, fragrant, irresistable, inescapable and carnivorous. This is how we bleed and die, we impetuous insects, bleed and die, bleed and die. The rose in its blooming, pink allure entrances us, blinds us to the barb and leaves us torn.
Callous, iron multitudes passed my chalk outline and in despair I dragged myself away. Off the sidewalk and out of the rain-beaten gutter which was at this point sanguine with my dark discharge. I was half-paralyzed, wondering how to ever, ever walk, function, live or look straight ahead into the world again like I wasn't wounded and dead. I was seeing everything around me with shocking, new, crystalline eyes that weren't condescended to or lied to by futile hope or eager desperation. Mine were the stark eyes that saw through the shadows, the lyrical summers, the lovely screens and this world's lush, seductive contradictions. In my rage and disappointment I bellowed like a lost, trapped animal (which is what I was) and prayed to be struck blind forever.
I never asked for these feelings you and she have visited upon me and were I given the opportunity, the offer of false hope once again, if I had a choice in the matter, I would choose to be petrified, a thing of stone, and feel nothing. I am the excrement, the beggars in gray legions who crawl these cold streets. We try to rise above the flurrying traffic, holding up a frightened hand to reach out, seize a handhold and then our grasping fingers are trodden upon, broken.
Bedraggled and frozen, I crawled to the cathedral, held my battered body against its walls and cut my forehead on the stained glass. Bloodied forever, the pain, the ache drove me to my knees, drove me into a ball, a giant fetus on God's doorstep. Noooo, I cried, while the heavenly host sang in their intangible jubilation, noooo, not again, not again, don't let it huuuuurrrrt anymoooorrrrrre, crying out, shattered and choked like a broken mother bereaved of a soldier son. Not again not again nooooo, but yes, again. Again. Again, like a revolving door, like an assembly line, ongoing, repetetive, unending.
******
The ice, the roar of the vacuum, the disease unholy and toothsome in my innards I stumbled about the parchment harbor and I came to the blades, the mill, the concentration camp, the noisesome grinder where the fish are taken every day to be disposed of. The mass grave, surrounded by gratings, rusty, bloodstained tin walls and bridges which ride, brazen, discolored and unmoving, like the baleen of a long-dead whale and in between all of it, the dirty, used-up water is confined, semi-stagnant, where it lashes out against the structure with feeble, dying waves. The nets are dragged up mechanically from the water, pulling the fish up again and again for sorting, butchering and separation. Different bins are filled with different parts---the stripped flesh, the various internal organs—the bins are individualized for easy and even shipping and distribution. In the meantime, the bones and the heads, those visages, pictures of their shredded souls now wiped away, are dropped like so much mechanized stool into a Dispose-All Unit the size of Yankee Stadium and the blades whirr like those of a giant blender, pureeing it all into muck and the stench fills the air for miles.
I sit and watch it all and my face becomes dry, stretched, like leather. After a million bodies are destroyed, blessed oblivion creeps in to conquer me and it is all rendered abstract, meaningless.
Copyright 1990 C.F. Roberts, 2020 Molotov Editions
“The Second Wound” was the granddaddy of all the Guy-Who-Can't-Get-Laid stories, along with the way-the-hell-too-long “The Night is for Lovers”, which I wrote concurrently in 1990, after I'd finally polished off my first novel. I found this manuscript for the first time in many years and ran it by my wife, who was sort of taken aback by the whole thing. “There are a few words and phrases that jump out,” she said, “but I've been reading your writing for years, now, and this doesn't read like you.”
Do with that what you will. You're on my blog---there's plenty to read.
The “story”, such as it is, is simple: When you strip away all the imagery, metaphor and flowery language, it's like, “I liked this girl, but she liked this other guy and I was bummed. Then I fell for this other girl and she rejected me, too. Now I'm really bummed.” Kind of a textbook example of raw emotion and very little substance wrapped up in a lot of fluffy, overwrought prose.
It was the early 90s, I was starting to actually pick up some publications and an ad came up in one of these zines I contributed to soliciting for poetry and fiction for consideration in this forthcoming Gothic magazine.
Gothic. Okay. “Gothic Literature”, as I understood it, was very purple, angst-ridden, fatalistic romance of the sort that was churned out by the likes of Goethe, the Bronte Sisters and so on. Gothic MUSIC was the label, as I understood, being fixed onto bands I enjoyed listening to like the Sisters of Mercy, the Cure and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds....again, gloomy, overwrought, depressing and fatalistic.....I'M THERE. You want Gothic Fiction, lil' magazine coming out of Maine? Have I got the ticket for YOU!!!!!
I sent out “The Second Wound”, which was a mainstay in my story arsenal at the time, as well as a newer one, “Fat Chance”, an equally depresso piece of work which you can find elsewhere on this blog (happy hunting!)
The lil' magazine out of Maine wasn't havin' it. I became well-acquainted with the editor at this point, who was not shy regarding constructive criticism nor about sharing her philosophies on writing, themes, philosophical approach and a variety of other things.....
She gave all kudos to my talent and my wordplay, but told me that, surely I must know how dangerous it was to objectify an individual as a “wound” or a “blade” or any such thing.....
Do WHAT, now?????
I learned a few things about political correctness at this time. So you couldn't use metaphors or allusions or other such writerly tools to describe an emotional state of being, because that's “objectifying an individual”.
SUUUURE.
Wanna tell me the story sucks? Sure, I'll buy that. Overwrought, solipsistic garbage? Okay. This “objectifying an individual” horseshit? No. Just fuck off a cliff with that nonsense.
She further told me that the character in the story deserved the heartache he suffered because he was weak and left himself open to it....she tried to sell me on Ayn Rand's ANTHEM, which I gave a pass to.....so, politically correct AND an Ayn Rand freak? Points for versatility, I guess.....she would later declare that she categorically refused to read all 20th century authors with the exceptions of Rand and Anne Rice----well, yeah, this lady was one of a kind....
She came back and told me, later that she'd decided that she'd be willing to run “TSW” as part of a compilation of “feminist horror stories”, as kind of a cautionary tale....I responded, not just with a no, but a HELL no, because that was never my intention with the story. Seriously....this lady was calling herself “Gothic”?
But I'm never one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and I became a reader and supporter of the mag, which lasted a year or two....
VAMPIRES, huh? Wow. Didn't realize up 'til then this shit was supposed to be about VAMPIRES. Okay....
I did get several stories and poems run in the mag over the span of its existence, anyway---although I always found it kind of odd that my whiney guy-who-can't-get-laid stories were considered beyond the pale and “objectifying”, but my stories about predatorial psycho killers (who looked at their victims, more or less, as food, and usually came out of the stories with no comeuppance for their actions) were a shoe-in.
You never know.
There was perpetually a dig between us, though....she began pushing her idea of a literary revolution she called “outsiderism”, which near as I could figure was supposed to combine many of our underground/DIY ethic with her Ayn Rand aesthetics.....she described me in some editorial as ”a writer who uses his elastic command of language to promote ideas far afield from Outsiderism”....uuuhhh....not sure what “ideas” those might have been.
I think that she always perceived some imagined “rivalry” between us which was honestly never interesting to me. She projected this kind of highfaluttin' pseudointellectualism where in one instance she would be challenging “Miltonians” (people who like John Milton, I guess) over one thing or another and it was difficult to discern what her issue with Milton was---at another point she extended an invitation to me to attend some soiree up at her place in Maine, where he announced (in the mag) as drinks and discussion over the place of romance in contemporary art and literature....
NUH-UH!!!! Sorry, lady, it don't work that way! I'm not driving all the way up to Maine to be your foil in front of all your hoity-toity drinking buddies!!!!!
I'm not the champion of some supposed genre, nor do I have an agenda in pushing some abstract philosophy. I'm a fucking guy who writes stories, and THAT'S IT.
“The Second Wound” would get a second lease on life in 1995, in the pages of BIZARA, an interesting little fly-by-night mag that used some interesting, if now-outdated computerized fonts and graphics that would become more commonplace in the next decade. So, at the end of the day, life was good.
