The End of the World Book: A Novel Read online

  The End of

  the World Book

  A Novel

  ALISTAIR MCCARTNEY

  Terrace Books

  A TRADE IMPRINT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

  Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press, takes its name from the Memorial Union Terrace, located at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Since its inception in 1907, the Wisconsin Union has provided a venue for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to debate art, music, politics, and the issues of the day. It is a place where theater, music, drama, literature, dance, outdoor activities, and major speakers are made available to the campus and the community. To learn more about the Union, visit www.union.wisc.edu.

  Terrace Books

  A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

  1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor

  Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059

  www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/

  3 Henrietta Street

  London WC2E 8LU, England

  Copyright © 2008

  The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCartney, Alistair.

  The end of the world book : a novel / Alistair McCartney.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-299-22630-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-299-22633-6 (electronic)

  1. World book encyclopedia—Fiction.

  2. Gay men—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.C3565E53 2008

  813′.6—dc22 2007039995

  For

  TIM MILLER,

  who is essential.

  I want the world and want it as is, want it again, want it eternally.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Although all the names in this encyclopedia are real, as are many of the events, this encyclopedia is a work of fiction, a product of the author's imagination. No reference to any person or event should be mistaken for the actual person or event.

  Actually, this encyclopedia is a dream.

  Contents

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  Acknowledgments

  A

  A

  According to the World Book Encyclopedia, Perth, Western Australia, the city in which I was born in 1971, and in which I spent the first twenty-two years of my life, is the world's most isolated city.

  For me, this isolation, along with the deep tedium of childhood, was eased, if not erased, by the World Book's sense of beauty and order.

  Every time I opened one of the twenty gold-edged volumes I felt as if I were approaching infinity. Though of course, whenever I closed a volume and placed it back on the shelf with the others, I felt distinctly let down upon reentering the world.

  When faced with existence, it seemed the only thing to do was to describe and categorize.

  One afternoon, sitting in my bedroom, leafing through volume A—Abel, Abelard, Aberdeen, aberration—I lay on the floor, using the volume for a pillow.

  Half awake, half asleep, I lay there, I don't know for how long, until my mother came in. It must have been dinnertime.

  Yet somehow, to this day, even though I have been living in Los Angeles, California, for a third of my life, the last third, I cannot shake the feeling that my mother was unable to wake me, and that I am still lying there, my drool streaming onto the gold A on the book's spine.

  ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH

  Surely there is nothing more melancholy than the thought of a dead Abercrombie and Fitch model! Except perhaps the thought of one dead model and one living one, best friends since childhood, the model still living plagued with guilt—he must be responsible for the death of his friend—digging a grave, getting dirt all over the butt of his jeans.

  Whenever I walk past one of the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing stores, in particular one of the outlets that have those shirtless boys standing at the store entrance, this is all I can think about.

  I am not sure if this is the desired effect, but on those cold nights when there is a full moon glinting off the delicate ridges of the boys' six-packs and the deep rosy pink of their erect nipples, it's somehow as if those two boys are the only boys left in the world, or guardians of the underworld, or Sirens, there to lure you in, and, once you have been lured inside, you'll forget your home and your friends and yourself, until you eventually starve to death, just like in mythology.

  ABYSS, THE

  In my old age, I've grown a bit tired of the abyss. I feel like that part of my life is over and there is nothing more frivolous than the abyss. But every now and then, someone turns up, or something occurs, to renew my interest, and my faith, in the abyss.

  ABYSS, DIMENSIONS OF THE

  Before I first went to the abyss I expected it to be all primeval chaos, bottomless, unfathomable, immeasurable. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was extremely architectural and very modern; it had been built according to strict dimensions. Everything trapped in its void was sleek and neat and orderly.

  ABYSS, GETTING OUT OF THE

  Sometimes when I am in the abyss and halfheartedly trying to get out, I tug on the edge, and a sort of underlayer appears, with a lacy trim, just like when I was a kid I'd tug on the hem of one of my mum's polyester skirts, to tell her something, and I'd catch a glimpse of the lacy edge of her 100 percent nylon slip.

  ADELAIDE

  For a long time now, Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, has been known as the city of churches. The ratio of parishes to citizens is slightly alarming; everywhere you look you see a spire or a steeple grazing the sky.

  In the 1970s this moniker was replaced by one of a more sinister nature. A spate of abductions, rapes, and murders of young boys led to Adelaide being dubbed the city of boy killers. Delicate corpses were found in champagne crates. Politicians were involved.

  Yet for me, Adelaide is the city of my mother, the city in which she was born on New Year's Day, 1928.

  Sometimes, my mother dreams that once again she is back in Adelaide, and the world has ended. She wanders through the city, whose ruins are still smoldering, hot to the touch.

  She finds herself back at the house in which she grew up, but the house is gone; nothing remains except the long porch that wrapped around the house, and on which she spent many an evening, but which now wraps itself around nothing, as if nothing were a kind of gift.

  AEROGRAMMES

  When my father turned sixteen he joined the merchant navy. It was the perfect job to get him out of the little town of Motherwell, Scotland, and a good way to see the world, or at least portions of it. He liked the waves and the hems of girls' dresses. He liked the ocean's ability to drown out everything.

  In 1956, during a stint in the Pacific, my father, James McCartney, met a woman named Beth Wildy, who would eventually become his wife. She was gentle and had red hair.

  He wrote love letters to her, while he was away at sea. He wrote in black ink, on pale blue aerogrammes. Measuring eight by four inches, these letters were scattered in odd places all over our house.

  Today, the handwriting in these amorous documents is virtually indecipherab
le. The aerogrammes themselves are soft and deeply creased.

  AIDS, PRE-

  The so-called golden era of gay life is usually said to have occurred during the 1970s, that decade of unbridled sex, set to a soundtrack of disco music; the decade leading up to AIDS, or perhaps leading down to AIDS, like a long set of steps. It is an era we have designated in retrospect, and we must ask ourselves: were the men who were part of this era aware of all their gold?

  The era is said to have ended with the first case of AIDS in 1981.

  However, when I gaze into my disco-mirror ball, I see that we have been looking the wrong way. The golden era actually begins in 1981, and then, not confined to the space of a decade, stretches backward like a long gold streak, far away from us, far away from disco, all the way back to antiquity.

  ALPHABET, THE

  In first grade, when I was taught the alphabet, led carefully from letter to letter, each letter linked to a word and a picture, starting off with the classic example of A is for Apple, I was very excited to be entering language, officially, finally. Although a part of me felt unsure as to whether I truly wanted to cross over this threshold, inside, I wanted to turn around and flee.

  Perhaps, without knowing it, I sensed what waited for me on the other side of the alphabet—death, which, if anything, is not in alphabetical order. This explains that simultaneous thrill and sinking feeling as I learned to form each letter on the page in cursive writing, in those exercise books whose lines decreased in width as I became more proficient.

  To this day, every time I encounter the alphabet, within each letter I detect the promise of annihilation. I continue to be filled with an overwhelming urge to turn on my heels and run in the opposite direction, as far away as possible from language.

  ANCESTORS

  I know very little about my ancestors, those persons from whom I have descended, those organisms from which I have evolved. For all I know, I could come from a long line of executioners, or labyrinth makers. Records might indicate a startling number of mental defects and physical abnormalities. I have to invent my ancestors, just as everyone will have to when we all become clones.

  Still, it's nice to know they are there, preceding me, sodomizing me, as it were. Whenever I start feeling too heavy, I remind myself that, like my ancestors, I am just a fact, a fact amongst facts. I suppose I must bear a passing resemblance to a number of my forebears, and in this sense, I'm not even myself, but a ghost—or a combination of ghosts—stretched tightly over bones.

  ANESTHESIA

  I preferred it when they called it twilight sleep. When the angels have to be operated on, the surgeons, who wear long white flowing robes, like angels, put toy space helmets on the angels' heads, to reduce their anxiety. The surgeons part the wings, and then inject in the soft spot at the base of the wings.

  ANGELS

  To be perfectly honest, I'm not that into angels. I think they're deeply overrated entities. Slabs of meat capable of flight. Though I like the fact that the term angel doesn't denote a nature, that is an identity, but rather denotes a function, just like the term homosexual. And, like you, I wouldn't mind fucking an angel, yanking on its wings, sucking on it swings, cumming on its wings. There is something obscene about wings. You see this in certain paintings, like Caravaggio's Seven Acts of Mercy, where two angels grapple with one another sideways in midair. One angel's wings are much bigger than the other angel's. His wings are like exposed genitalia. I've heard that wings are surprisingly gristly and that most angels, like most humans, hate themselves, can't stand the sight of their own wings. On Sundays, in their bedrooms, they take razors to their wings.

  ANNA KARENINA

  Anna Karenina, which is my favorite novel, is not a book of infidelity, nor is it a book detailing the lives of the Russian upper classes: it is a book of blushing. On average, a blush occurs on every third page.

  I find myself skimming over the story the way one skims over descriptions of landscapes, just to get to the blushes. Everyone in Tolstoy's book is subject to blushing. No one can avoid it. Each character finds himself in a moment when whatever is glowing inside of him is revealed, against his will.

  Interestingly enough, it is not Anna who blushes the most (456 blushes) but Levin (512 blushes). Anna is too busy radiating and burning. She is subject to an odd glow that goes way beyond blushing. But Levin blushes to the point of compulsion. Agricultural theory causes him to blush. The sight of newly polished boots makes him blush. The arrival of spring sends him into a heavy blush. Vronsky is the character who blushes the least (one insignificant blush).

  For 200 pages before her death, Anna stops blushing. She attempts to blush yet fails miserably. Then right before she is decapitated by the rushing train, she regrets her decision and wishes to reverse it, but cannot. It is a physiological impossibility to reverse a blush. Longing terribly for more life, she enters into one long eternal blush.

  APPLES

  One day back in fifth grade, during recess at Christian Brothers College, the Catholic boys school I attended, I was playing handball with my friends when all of a sudden, a boy in twelfth grade—who, with his raggedy, dirty-blond hair bore a passing resemblance to the pop singer Leif Garrett—came up behind me, grabbed me by the neck, and proceeded to stuff a half-eaten apple down my throat. I felt like one of those geese that French peasant women wearing polka-dot headkerchiefs force-feed, so the geese can get all nice and fat and their enlarged livers can be used for pâté, which is a delicacy.

  The boy continued shoving the apple into my mouth, until one of the priests came down and put a stop to things. By this time, the Leif Garrett look-alike or impostor had pushed me down onto the concrete. I remember that as the priest hovered over me, I got a look up his black gown. I saw that he was wearing long black socks that went up to just below his knees, and that his legs were very white, but covered in thick black hair. His shoes smelled of the pink cakes of disinfectant that lay at the bottom of the bathroom urinals. I was seized by a desire to suck on the heavy black hem of the priest's robe but held myself back.

  Up on my feet, I remember that the skin of the half-eaten apple looked very red against the sky, which was gray and pigeony. The priest held the apple as evidence, while the older boy claimed that I had thrown the apple at him. I denied having done this, but I can no longer recall whether or not I was being truthful. Either way, I was left with a life-long attachment to red apples.

  Just the other day, I was at our local Venice farmer's market, surrounded by the usual hordes of white mothers with their gaggles of white babies. Pausing at a stall selling only red apples, I picked one of them up, and was taken back, transported on a rickety horse-drawn cart of red apples, to that incident. I felt an intense longing to once again be held in that boy's grip. The apple in my hand almost seemed to glow, and somehow felt terribly heavy. When the stall owner asked me if I was interested in purchasing some apples, his comment dragged me out of my reverie, and I was transported back on a cart—this time the cart was wholly devoid of red apples—to the present.

  ARISTOTLE

  Often referred to as the father of thought, the Greek philosopher Aristotle was thinking approximately 2,300 years before the Holocaust; he said that all things, like the Holocaust, could be understood as unities of form and matter. On the morning after the Holocaust, in an attempt to understand and explain the Holocaust, he developed the four causes (material, efficient, formal, and final), and the three unities (plot, thought, and character), though, he added, in the end, the head is nothing but a death camp for thought: we need another language to explain this, a language of ash and bits of bone. Aristotle taught at a place called the Lyceum, where they all wore robes with vertical stripes. He lectured to his boy students whilst strolling around the corridors of the Lyceum, always walking behind his students; all of the corridors led directly to the Holocaust, and as soon as Aristotle and his students had reached the end of the corridors, the hems of their robes brushing against the end of thought, the
y would turn around and walk back.

  ASBESTOS

  If there's one thing I love, it's asbestos. For me, no other substance is full of such pathos. The word comes from a Greek adjective meaning inextinguishable—if only I had that quality—and the Greeks maybe liked asbestos even more than me, weaving it into a cloth in which they wrapped the bodies of the dead for the purpose of cremation.

  The other morning I woke up dreaming of asbestos, that fireproof material. Specifically, I found myself dreaming of the little asbestos so-called state or public houses that were scattered throughout Willagee, the neighborhood I grew up in. Painted pink and blue, there was something almost dainty about these houses, like petits fours. In fact, these houses were so dainty, the inhabitants were often putting their fists through the thin walls in outbursts or fits or drunken rages. Sometimes the holes were big enough for me to peer through and catch glimpses of what was going on inside.

  Half awake, yet still dreaming—the state I find myself in most of the time—my mind also wandered to memories of the gray corrugated asbestos fences that separated all the houses from one another. This particular kind of asbestos was very soft. There was talk that the poorest people in our neighborhood used it to make sundresses for the little girls and underpants for the little boys. In my reverie, I saw our asbestos fence—how much daydreaming did I do leaning up against that fence? The image of the fence was so real I could almost taste the asbestos.

  However, as soon as I was fully awake, I slowly remembered that asbestos was a thing of the past. Years ago, ever since the advent of the terminal condition known as asbestosis, all the asbestos fences in my neighborhood had been razed and all the asbestos houses destroyed, replaced with structures built out of brick.