A.M. Homes - The End of Alice

For William

A stopped clock is right twice a day.

Lewis Carroll

Who is she that she should have this afflicted addiction, this oddly acquired taste for the freshest of flesh, to tell a story that will start some of you smirking and smiling, but that will leave others set afire determined this nightmare, this horror, must stop. Who is she? What will frighten you most is knowing she is either you or I, one of us. Surprise. Surprise.

And perhaps you wonder who am I to be running interference, to be acting as her translator and yours. Mine is the speech, the rhythm and rhyme of an old and peculiar man who has been locked away for too long, punished for pursuing a taste of his own.

Fair to say that I see in her the seeds of my youth and the memory of another girl I couldnt help but know.

Alice, I hand you her name gently, suggesting that if you hold it, carefully as I do, pressed close to the heart, you might at the end of this understand how confusing the beating of two such similar hearts can be and how one finally had to stop.

And by now, if you are anything at all, you know who I amand find my disguise the silly childish senility of the long confined, of the good mind gone sour. But know, too, that as I tell you this, I feel like a contestant on Whats My Line; before me is my tribunal, the three members of the panel, blindfoldedthat detail should cause some excitement in a few of you. They ask me questions about my profession. The audience looks directly at me and recognizing my visage from its halftone reproductions is entirely atitter. I am the first pervert, the first lover of youth, theyve had on the show. I am honored. I am touched. When I think no one is looking, I touch myself.

And let it be said that I have the utmost admiration and respect for the young woman to be discussedfor young women in general, the younger the better. Serving my sentence, I have become the chief correspondent, the conversant majora, in these matters. From near and far, by youth and beauty, and those not so fortunate, I am sought for my view, my sampling of these situations.

In the beginning, the words sent were often kept from me, the letters delivered opened and marked with long black passages, the jealous ink of my jailers heavy hand. It bothered them that I had fansand I still dobut at some point it was acknowledged, supported by research, that we are not a kind to operate in groups, tribes, or packs. We are not an organization, a political machine, we have no common goal and are therefore considered too diffuse, pathetic, and self-centered to cause a revolution. And so my mail began to arrive unencumbered, to simply be delivered, unopened, uninteresting. Then, too, over the course of time, my keepers have changed two, three, and four times, subject to varieties of administrations, the warming and cooling of the social climate, etc. And while I have largely been forgotten or dismissed by my keepersno doubt due to my advancing agethe mail still arrives with astonishing regularity.

Unfortunately, I am not the correspondent I once was. I do read everything, but too often perhaps for some of you, I do not write back. I no longer feel that every question deserves an answer and can no longer afford to spend my pocket money on postage.

However, there are exceptions. What drew me to this particular offering, this large flat envelopeI find significance in the page not folded, the document of such value that it cannot be tampered with, altered to fit through the thin slot of a mailbox, that its contents are of such import that they need be taken by hand to the postmaster and left in his care for quickest deliverywhat interested me about this well-typed tome was the willingness of its author to transcend, to flirt, outside her chosen category or group.

Among our kind what annoys me most is the unwillingness to explore, or even acknowledge, an attraction other than ones own. Welike the unafflictedact as though our pleasure palace is superior, as though no other exists. This lack of appreciation for the larger world of activity causes a sadness in me that damn near ruins the whole thing. Why not celebrate the full range? That she, too, raised this question is perhaps near the root of my attraction to herthat and the fact of her attraction to him, attraction to telling me, the way she reminded me of my beloved Alice. And to be honest, I dont get much mail from girls. I immediately write back a short introductory note: Most interesting. Please do send a photograph of yourself as it would help me to understand better.

She responds with a note of her own. Fuck photos. What are you, a pervert?

Caught again. Returned to my humbleness, my place. Yes, dear, I jot back on a plain white card.

I had hoped that in a photograph of her I might find some part I could enjoy, some piece still a childthere often is a little something left until one is well into the second or even third decade. Sometimes its just the chin, a bit of the neck, or the lobe of the ear. Sometimes there is one perfect sliver that has thus far gone unmarked. From that, I am able to go on, focusing on that place, that segment of youth, filling in the rest, whatever is needed, from my memory of how it once was. But now I am getting ahead of myself.

Call me old-fashioned in that my concentration here is on an arrangement that according to many of my peers has long since passed. My fellow esthetes in this great colony of philes insist that I am a classicist. I am interested in the coupling that throughout history has propagated the human race. I realize that for many the real interest, the contemporary current, is in what some consider the greatest refinement, the linkage of related parties either by marriage, familial bonds, or the nearness and dearness of the same sexthe mind-bending adjustments, fascinating alterations, and gesticulations associated with the pairing of two like objects. But I ask that you bear with me, that you allow for this reconsideration of the more traditional of our species. All will not be lost.

She writes: The way you talk is so peculiardid you go to school in England? Or is it a speech impediment? One of my friends had to have a talking tutor all the way through high school.

I answer: University of Virginia, B.A., 1961. The speech impediment is an affectation.

Oh.

Before continuing I must also ask that you excuse the idiosyncrasies of my sound, of my thought, for I so rarely speak these days that all I do say seems to hurl itself forward, collecting references, attachments to both past and present as it goes. My access to society is limited, making what does filter through so much more dear, filled with import and meaning. I am often moved to tears, or worse, or more. Here, too, I could go on, I do go on, but it is best if we stick to the story at hand, that being hers not mine. Mine, all too familiar; mine, now a life of late nights in my room, cot against the wall, color television seta gift from an anonymous admireron a distant chair, the spectral color wheel of light radiating across the white walls, throwing shadows into the stillness of night. Alone, I watch with the plug of a headphone pressed into my ear, and then sometimes I have companyI share my set with Clayton, a Princeton boy cum murderer, well adjusted, having taken the prison fantasy to heart. We have cable here, stolen in from a wire in the wall, working well when the winds are right. The volume is kept low, lest the keepers hear our groans, our howls, our tears, and take the toy away. We sit perched on the edge of the cot and watch: Voyeur Vision, Nude Talk Show, Robyn Byrd, ads for outcalls, Dial 970-Peee (the extra e stands for extra pee), Chicks With Dicks. And lest I sound like a hypocrite, I am horrified, breathless. For the first time I feel my age, as weak bones and heartbreak. But I am drawn to these things, that is the nature of my disease, to be drawn to far too many things. And I am horrified and I am sad.