Beast, a story

Beast (Opening)

(The complete story is available in the collection Seven True Lies, which you can buy, either in trade paperback or as an Acrobat download, from my bookstore.)

When the rules of love were written, one of them said this:

Once you put a face to the hunger of your heart, your heart cannot let go.

Unaware of this rule, for love had never confided in me, I recently put a face to my heart’s hunger, and this was an unwise thing to do. For with the fresh sting of hope in its nostrils, its hunger grew exponentially and fast, and soon engulfed everything: my thoughts, my dreams, my room, my day, the streets, the earth, the sky, and before I really noticed, and before anything could be done to stop the beast, or even slow him down, my life was nothing but hunger for that one face.

Unaware of this rule, yes, but I am no stranger to the hunger. We are acquainted, Beast and I. I say Beast, for Beast he is, but a beast with the softest voice and the sweetest yearning. He is the whisperer of dreams long abandoned and the promiser of perhaps futures. He is the ruthless and unremitting tyrant dictating moment by moment what you feel and what you do and what you don’t do.

To this I should add that he is also a jealous beast, covetous not only of the here and now of her lovely face, and of its future, but of its past as well: in a brilliant corruption of logic, his greedy eyes can turn pastward and inward in an instant, to hunt for and discover others, and with each such discovery his claws—issuing black, long and sharp from broad paws—will find and slash the tender fabric that is my soul into long, painful wounds.

“But,” I protest, “I didn't even know her then.”

At your voice, Beast slowly turns his shaggy head your way and fixes you with red eyes that quietly but firmly tell you to back off. Then proceeds to seek and find new betrayals by a life you have yet to enter. And with each discovery—real or imagined, in this frame of mind he is not very discriminating—he gouges yet another wound for you to ache with.

As you see this, stunned into silence, for a spell you retain sense enough to marvel at this amazing illogic, at this temporal sleight of hand, but soon enough his claws have gouged too often, your wounds have grown too deep and many, and the ache turns overwhelming, and then you will do anything, anything in this world, to quench it.

At which point Beast is as likely as not to sneak up on you from some unalert behind and whisper in your ear, in your heart, another yearning, so soft, so convincing that all is forgiven.

Beast.

The poets knew him all too well, and as a rule suffered his rage through many a tribute, beautifully. Some, by naming him—Eros of brute lust, the lover of Psyche, the wayward child of Plato’s Aphrodite Pandemos; or Eros of spiritual love, the favored child of his Aphrodite Uranina; or Cupid, son of Venus, his Roman cousin; or Kama; or Freya; or Libido, that modern god so heralded—others by dressing him in one of his many euphemisms: affection, fondness, warmth, adoration, devotion, attraction, closeness, intimacy, passion, infatuation, fancy, desire, longing, wanting, pining, craving, yearning, ardor, heat, fervor, flame, rapture, what have you. And so they tried to wrestle him down onto paper, where they hoped to better view, perhaps even dissect and understand him (as if letters could shackle him and words keep him still). They soon discovered:

He is unnamable and will not brook inspection.

Others—the ambitious, the desperate, and the foolish—deluding themselves, searched their hearts for the one name they thought would fashion for Beast the magical reins with which to control him. Of course, none succeeded. There is no such name, there are no such reins.

Some so failed at this that they called him by the strange name Inspiration.

The rest, the many, knew him as the nameless force which made life worth living. The everything that touches grass with green and the sky with blue. The eyes and the hearts of their beloveds, and the stuff of their dreams. And so, to a pen, they succumbed to him aesthetically.

The poet of our day—if you can call him that: lyricist would be a better word, piner better still—has gone one better (or worse, rather) and has now so garishly embraced his defeat at the paws of Beast that you can—in just about any song, on just about any radio station—see him leer through the words from the first stanza to the last: confident, ruling, unassailable.

Beast.

The mystics knew him better than the poets, and they never made the mistake of thinking him harmless.

Many holy men spent long, hard lives poised to the danger, aware of his presence and alert to his faintest stirring. Some, to silence him, would replace his painful calling with pains of their own choosing—whips, ice, fire—while others, in an effort to starve him and so silence him, would themselves fast for days, weeks. Some succeeded. Not many.

Yet others vowed not to close their eyes until Beast—who among the mystics also acquired a good many names, among them Lust, Desire, Sin even—would evaporate from a lack of sleep. Well, so at least went the theory. This, however, did not work too well either, for in the end it was the vigilant sufferer, and not Beast, who went: hollow-eyed, feverish, delirious, raving, numb, lifeless. And so, as the soon-to-be corpse as a rule ejaculated in the throes of death, Beast would claim yet another messy little victory before slinking away to join the recently departed for a new attempt at living.

When it came to Beast, the mystics pursued one of two goals. The first, and ultimate, was to slay him outright. Few succeeded. Saints. Gods.

The second goal, less gallant but nonetheless valid, was to confine him—asleep and unstirring—to the dungeons of their marble hearts.

And would look like this:

You enter from fine gardens—lawns, fountains, rose beds, the lot—across a wide, somewhat gravelly forecourt and up broad and well worn stone steps to and through an impressive doorway into the first of many high-ceilinged marble halls (Versailles does come to mind) well lit by tall, clear windows, floor polished to a shine, on through galleries with walls and walls of heavy drapery, elegantly embroidered with scenes of Napoleon-less battles and other noble deeds, then further down many a broad step and wide turn into not so well lit, some would even say neglected Gormenghast-like corridors leading farther and farther down ever narrower steps and even less lighted passages onto, finally, the bedrock of the heart's foundation.

And here, riveted to this badly lit marble floor, stands a cage. Bars stronger than steel. Guards, several, impressively armed, stand about. Alert.

This, then, in this cage, is where he slumbers, this little kitten of a beast now, behind bars, on his fluffy red pillow, snoring softly (sounds a little like purring, actually). But beware, kitten Beast is a light sleeper, and down here, this close to him, you tiptoe as gently as you can, if in fact you are fool enough to be down here in the first place.

Were these mystics better off for confining Beast to his hearty cage? Many claim so. It let them pursue calmer thoughts, a finer, more detailed embroidery, they say. Others say the struggle was not worth it. Tensions too taut. Nights too torn. Days too long.

Such a light sleeper.

The few, those who slew him outright—those Saints and Gods—are more certain. Life, they report back to us, grows light and serene with him gone, and possessed now of pure and hungerless hearts they are free to admire beauty, they say, free to dwell upon true affection, upon love even, ever without fear of arousal or attack. The very few. Those Saints and Gods.

As for the rest of us. Us neither mystics nor Saints nor Gods. If you by some uncanny fortune find him asleep in his cage, here’s some very sound advice:

Do not remain. Do not stay down there. Remove yourself. Then stay away. Far away. Walk the gardens. Think calm, happy and grateful thoughts.

If you still, despite this admonition, and for some dull reason of your own, find yourself deep in the earth of your heart, find yourself outside his cage, regarding the sleeping thing—it’s curiosity perhaps, or perhaps you’ve glimpsed a face—you must tread very gently, breathe quiet gentle lungfuls. Do not make a sound. To wake him would be a folly bordering on insanity.

To not only wake him, but then let him out and feed him, is nothing short of suicide.

Call me suicidal.

I have always been partial to long, dark hair. There is something in that scented blackness that for me hides an inner beauty, a knowledge even, that I feel compelled to touch, to explore, or at least long to.

Baudelaire knew all about this: “Let me breathe the fragrance of your hair for long, for ever,” he said, wrote, hoped. “Let me plunge my whole face in it, like a parched man at the water of a spring. Let me wave it with my hand like a perfumed handkerchief, shaking memories into the air.” Words of a man who’s been there, done that, longed for and suffered the beauty of this wonderful, wonderful dark shroud.

But this dark hair must be alive: in waves, in slow spirals, in ripples, curls, motion. Even at rest it should move. The long, ironed variety, although undeniably beautiful, does not move me. Well, it moves me, but not enough and not irrevocably. The slow, black river of oriental hair, for example. Aesthetic, yes, and wonderful too, but austere. Geometric, may be the word I’m looking for. With hair, I don’t yearn for symmetry, I yearn for life.

At the other end of my long, black hair spectrum:

The wild tresses of Jeanne Duval, whose hair was a jet-black jungle thicket and who drove Baudelaire to such heights, and to such despair. Well, that jungle moves me too, but I find it a little too unruly for my taste. Not so for Charles, bless his heart, who drowning in it sang, before going down for the third time: “Let me bite your thick, black tresses forever. When I gnaw your springy and rebellious hair, it seems to me I’m eating memories.”

Poor Charles. Consumed by Beast, he spent a short and glorious lifetime seeking, stalking, describing; insane in the end by the syphilis of it all. You know, once upon a time, and not so very long ago as galaxies go, I was quite convinced that I was he, that I was Charles Baudelaire reincarnated, and now, looking back at a life I have since studied and shared: Well, why the hell not?

But it is not Jeanne Duval’s tresses, but the gentler river of black, that moves me today, that infiltrates, that beckons, cascades to softly land on shoulders, on neck, on back, rippling, swaying, alive.

To reiterate:

What you do, what you do if you see him purring away on his red pillow, is you tiptoe away from him, very gently. For the last thing (if you, as I said, are fool enough to be down here in the first place) you want to do is wake him.

The complete story is available in the collection Seven True Lies, which you can buy, either in trade paperback or as an Acrobat download, from my bookstore.

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