Procreation

“I went to a yoga class once and I had this moment of clarity wherein…we were lying on our backs and because the room was quite small people were really close to each other. There was this girl next to me, pretty fit. I could feel her right there, even though my eyes were closed. Sometimes her hair would brush my face. Wow! Such electricity and tension. And, man, how much I wanted her – thought her beautiful and perfect and alluring – possibly even “the one”. But all without speaking. And all generated in my own fool head. I wondered about her boobs – and when we were upright and open-eyed I caught a glimpse of the top of her cleavage and shuddered. Nothing unusual in all of this, of course – I’ve lived this experience ‘a thousand times, with a million different girls’ (you do the math) but this time I saw so clearly how it’s all bullshit, how it’s actually the tension that’s appealing: the not-knowing of someone so much more preferable, in the desire sense, to the knowing of them – if you know what I mean. I mean, I had a girlfriend at the time – a beautiful lovely woman with the body of an Amazon – great boobs – and every night she slept naked next to me, and every morning she woke up naked and hopped out of bed completely free with all to see – and I had so little interest. There was no appeal in looking at her actual boobs, only the hint of boobs. No spark, even, in holding her naked in my arms – not when compared to the brush of a stranger’s hair in a yoga studio. But what madness is that? Why the tension so desirable? And, of course, if fulfilled, destroyed. Why the bridging of a gap so much more preferable than actually reaching and standing with both feet firmly on the previously longed-for other side?”

Who are you talking to, Rory? There’s no one here…

“There’s so much that’s in me, with regard to women, that they say was in primitive man. Like that: like even when I’ve got a woman at home – got what I thought I wanted – how I always have a wandering eye. Attracted to women I know won’t be good for me. Swayed so easily by a glimpse of some flesh, the curve of a breast. Always wanting another, and another, and another – nothing so satisfying as the new love, a fresh conquest. In fact, that’s when sex feels its best – when it’s someone new. That’s when I put my all into it, pull out all the stops, as Pete Townsend used to say. But after a while…it dies down. Sure, companionship, comfort, getting to know someone – but, sex-wise, it really does appear to be all about spreading the seed as far and wide as possible. And yet I resist, for social pressures, and for the knowledge of the mess it would make. Poor kids growing up daddyless. The way we’ve shaped our world so that we no longer live in communities where everybody helps out and it doesn’t matter so much if one daddy runs away or falls off a cliff or gets eaten by a tiger or killed in battle because there are plenty of other daddies to take his place. And plenty of other mummies, too, to lend a hand. Man, if I had a million dollars I swear I’d have a harem, invite all the women I’ve known and loved over the years, that’ve wanted my babies – and give ‘em to ‘em. That’s what they say in Islam, right? Sure you can have all the wives you want – so long as you can support ‘em. But I’ve always been poor as a rock, and so I’ve never made one. Now I’m not even sure I want to…”

Open your eyes, Rory. See where you are. You’re not where you think you are. There’s no one here…

“Babies are for women, that’s what I say. They ask the wrong question when they ask guys if they want babies – for what man wants a baby? They’re weird-looking useless things. Just images of shitty nappies and keeping you awake. You can’t talk to them. You can’t teach them things. You just have to wait years and years till they’ve grown some sense – and then you can begin. Surely no man wants a baby – cute, though, in small doses they may be – but a child…ah, now that’s a different thing. A child you can discuss things with, share what you’ve learned about life and the world, teach them sports, take pride in them as they grow tall and strong. It’s all bows and arrows and hunting again…”

Open your eyes. Where do you think you are?

“…but what’s to take pride in all that lying around gurgling and shitting and crying. Not that I’m saying I hate them, just…different strokes for different folks. And in this case, babies for women, children for men. Women want babies. Women see them and think they’re cute, enjoy spending time with them. And probably take pride in their gurgles and their smiles and their first steps and first tentative words. I’m sure some New Ager once told me that kids themselves are more into women for the first seven years – into the internal, the nurturing, love and warmth and emotional connection – and then around that time they shift to the guy, to the daddy – to the external, to looking outward, to getting to grips with the world. Something like that. Obviously I’m generalising and don’t really know what I’m saying – leaving myself open to accusations of ignorance and sexism – but…something in it; purely by observing myself I see how little appeal a baby holds for me – how it even feels a disagreeable and unattractive thing – but how much joy I’ve had in my interaction with older children, seeing their passion for life and inquisitiveness, and in sharing things I’ve learned and experienced and in helping bring out of them what they think and feel and want. That’s the good stuff. Not to mention the kicking of balls and the climbing of trees and the running through fields and the – right back to the spearing of deer and the feasting on meat, my son, bringing back the bacon for the tribesfolk, beaming proudly as my own baby boy grows faster and taller and wiser than me, no jealous, petty ego-lion am I, evolution through the generations the natural order of things – and that I shall pass on too…”

Yes. You’re right. But open your eyes. There’s no one here. I want you to see where you are…

“Huh?” I laughed. “Oh yeah, sorry, I’ve just been going on and on and – wow, I guess I went into some sort of zone. Well, your fault – you shouldn’t have given me that weird-ass shot. Like talking tea. Except I don’t even remember the…what happened? I remember the…Sophie…Grace…and then…”

Open your eyes.

I realised then it wasn’t Harry’s voice I was hearing – it wasn’t even a voice at all. Not an outside one. Not one I was hearing with my ears. A whisper, in my brain. A…

I tried to open my eyes.

“I can’t open my eyes!” I screamed. “I’m blind!”

You’re not blind. Open your eyes. Relax.

I breathed. Except, I wasn’t breathing, I was only thinking of breathing. Still, it worked. It helped me to relax.

“I can’t feel my eyes,” I said. “I thought they were there but…they’re not. I can’t feel anything. Where’s my body? Why can’t I see?”

What do you see?

“I see…wait…wait a minute…I see…space! Yes! I see stars and space and – wow…this is unreal. Where is my body? It’s gone. Where am I? Fuck my eyes! I don’t need ‘em: this is wicked!”

I opened…something. I could see, eyes or no eyes. The space grew darker, the stars brighter and more colourful and shining. Brighter and brighter still, the gaps between them lessening. Was I moving towards them? Were they moving towards me? Or was everything closing in?

The centre. I’m at the centre of the universe. I am the centre of the universe.

But then, everyone is. The universe is infinite. The centre is, therefore, everywhere. No wonder it feels as though the whole world revolves around me.

The world. The world is gone. The world is but a distant dream. A fading idea of something that once was. Imagine! All the life and birds and trees and volcanoes and even humanity and me – just a dream. Did I make it up? Was it some story I told myself and got so into I forgot it was make-believe?

But certainly this was real.

Welcome to the real world.

I laughed. I laughed with all my being and the stars pulsated and laughed with me too. Closer and closer they came, faster by the second. Except time not what it once was – time, too, just a figment of my imagination. Difficult to describe but…

Everything wonderful. Everything peaceful and glowing and gorgeous. All my chickens coming home to roost.

Where am I?

Where do you think you are?

In space? The end of time?

The end of time.

This is what I wanted to see.

This is what you wanted to see.

Will it hurt?

It won’t hurt.

The stars, rushing now, racing madly towards me. Me at the middle. The first one hits. Oh, wow! It feels like I just got bigger, like I suddenly know – and am – so much more.

Everything increases. The rate of impact. The speed. The light is immense.

What am I? I want to know.

The answer: a dot.

With a final mad flurry everything – every thing: the stars, the darkness, the space in between the different threads of darkness – has entered into me. And now there is just me. And what I am is a dot.

Am I tiny? Am I huge?

How can I tell, with nothing left to compare myself to?

I feel amazing – but even as I say it, I lose the awareness of what ‘amazing’ is. ‘Amazing’ just a relative term. Good, bad, horrible, sweet – it’s all gone. What is there in this dot? Just…is. Just me.

I get a panic. The memory of all that great and magnificent and strange and wonderful is fading – and I don’t want it to fade. It was all so much fun – and, sure, there was all that bad stuff too, the small and the stupid and the petty and the fucked-up – but now I know, that was what made all the good stuff possible. The dot is amazing – was amazing: amazing has been sucked up too – but…it’s just not the same.

Or maybe that’s the problem: that it is all the same.

I thought I wanted peace – but even peace is only possible next to the existence of that which isn’t peace. I thought I wanted…

But now I know what I want: I want it back. I want to do the whole darn thing all over again.

The panic. The wanting. The fear of not having it and the desire of knowing that it’s exactly what I need. It grows. It bubbles up inside me. I feel it…expanding, struggling, wanting to burst free. This desire – incredible, immense – is overwhelming my being, till it’s all that I am.

I explode. A million, billion pieces of me shooting out into the void. A trillion. A quadrillion.

It’s infinite, really.