Westlessness
My first published short story, reprinted here.
Foreword
This was the first ever short story I wrote, published in The Moth Magazine, in 2021. There’s not much I’d like to say about it other than that I think it’s quite a contrast to the stuff I’m writing now. Literary references, philosophers, Bibles, etc. I recognise nowadays that in large doses these things can be alienating for the general reader, and so I try to write only about people and action and let any literature or philosophy be implied. I still write often with references to history, but that’s because history impresses on the average person in a way that literature or philosophy doesn’t tend to. Either way, although I’ve changed, I still like this story. I think it’s funny. It’s existentialist with a capital ‘E’ and the obsession with the asteroid, though a pretty obnoxious metaphor, has taken on new meaning for me, with the news announced about six weeks ago of an actual asteroid hurtling toward Earth.
With that news in mind, I’d like to ask, if you read this, to forget about anything metaphorical in this story: the asteroid is real af.
Westlessness
11 December 2019 at 11:28
The asteroid which wiped-out the dinosaurs appeared first in the sky as a new, bright-shining star.
Heidegger told me Hemingway has been cancelled. Apparently his behaviour towards women is unacceptable, and irrefutable; apparently it is documented in such stories as Hills Like White Elephants or Up In Michigan. I said I don’t think you should consider fiction documentary. Heidegger shrugged. He said only a woman should be able to write a story like Up in Michigan.
Hemingway was once the new, bright-shining star of literature.
Hemingway admired bullfighting. He thought the bull cut a tragic figure in the ring. Appearing strong and proud first, the bull is humbled by harpoons, swords, horses, clowns, whatever else. But I’m not sure a bull can be a tragic figure. And I like Hemingway.
Is the decline of America tragic? Heidegger says no, it’s comic. I say yes, for the lost potential. Despite our disagreements, I guess it’s neither. There’s a certain arrogance in the myth of the nation that forbids it ever having the self-awareness of a tragic hero.
China scares me. When I put to Heidegger how I feared Chinese imperialism, he told me it was better than American imperialism. Think of Afghanistan, Vietnam, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I proposed Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong.
China is a new, bright-shining star.
Just some thoughts.
I can’t help wondering why I ever became a writer. You know, I tend to think less that I became a writer than writing became me, like it’s an anchor to which I fix my personality, in which I find some sort of meaning. Once I used to write for fun, then in 2018 a story I submitted to this literary journal found itself published. Soon I was coveted by agents, then publishing houses. After latching myself to an agent I drew up a pitch for this half-formed novel and found myself with a book deal from a publisher I had once only dreamed of being aligned with. They have heralded me a new, bright-shining star.
Things have cooled down since then. For the last few weeks I’ve been holed up in a flat in Islington with Heidegger – my boyfriend – who has started tearing off his fingernails as he listens to me complain about my manuscript. Occasionally he’ll lay off the self-harm to ask whether he might read my work. Then I have to go through this pantomime, pretending that the worst person to comment on your manuscript is the one you’re sleeping with. As is the case with most writers who forbid their partner from reading their work, it is not out of embarrassment that I clutch close the stack of papers pouring from my printer each day, but due to the fact that the novel’s antagonist shares an uncanny resemblance to Heidegger.
One of the biggest sins in the stories which I write are my attempts to imbue them with a theological dimension. My life has been areligious this far. Apart from a routine meeting at Christmas, taken simply to make my grandparents happy, I’m a stranger to my priest. But every time I take on a new project, I reach this impasse where I realise the work is completely secular. People aren’t moved by secularism, it fails to rouse them; a story that doesn’t acknowledge God sets itself apart from every text in the Western Tradition. Therefore, I take a Bible: my go-tos are Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronemy, Joshua, Judges, Matthew ‒ then Kings, Epistle of Jude and Revelations. I scramble among these myths like a Chinese organ harvester, trying to extract anything of significance before transplanting it into my work. When I’ve managed that feat, I leave the thing alone. On my first reread, the piece beats with a new heart. Then a few days later I’ll check again. Due to some incompatibility, the story has died, the original body rejects the transplant. I think it’s because it reads inauthentic. Or it could be that nobody cares about God anymore. Maybe it’s that as a culture we have moved toward the secular. Heidegger describes himself as spiritual, rather than religious. Instead of Psalms, he quotes Confucius at me, then acts all mopey when I don’t embrace his newfound prophets. Perhaps it’s time I should abandon the Western Tradition, if it’s now meaningless. God knows, my Instagram algorithm sends me more quotes from Dostoyevsky than from Jesus.
When our relationship first began it was like a new, bright-shining star. Like so many stars, it was born under pressure and, like so many relationships, out of an affair. I was the faceless account in his DMs, the reason his partner could no longer be trusted alone with his iPhone. I was the full medical exam on a Friday morning, the two speed awareness courses, the weekend away in Zurich for an interview with a disgraced venture capitalist. All of that was me.
Again, like so many affairs or stars, we were discovered. Then we found ourselves at a juncture where together we were forced to choose whether to burn out or burn bright. Emboldened by each other’s arrogance, we arrived together at the dinners of friends who had once foretold our decline, hanging on each other’s arms, coordinating our outfits, acting like we knew each other more intimately than was possible. Our partnership was exceptional – we told ourselves – because it depended on a constant assault by external forces, which only served to strengthen the bond. We did not forsee that as the world became comfortable with our partnership, when we became largely unthreatened, we would find the internal structure of our relationship flawed. Still I’ve not discovered exactly what this flaw is. I simply take comfort in the fact that our disintegration provides good material for the novel.
Heidegger is not his real name. I call my boyfriend Heidegger because I can’t understand a word he says ‒ he’s too intelligent. Incidentally, he calls me Heidegger too. He calls me Heidegger because he says I’ve been thrown into existence; now I’m falling.
I said to him.
‘Aren’t you too? Aren’t we all? Isn’t that the book? Like, the point of it.’
I was referring to Being and Time, which I haven’t read. My words walked a tightrope which suggested an understanding of the book while preparing my defence against the (correct) accusation, that I know nothing about it. My boyfriend enjoys embarrassing me. It’s not that he likes to be right, or that he likes to watch me squirm especially, but he’s a champion of truth. He’s a journalist, a real investigative reporter for a centre-left newspaper. I suspect he doesn’t respect my work because it can’t be held accountable for its untruths. That I can feature opinions that are not mine, protected by the veil of fiction is, to Heidegger, abhorrent. Veil is an anagram of evil, he has said. Heidegger believes his work fights evil. (On a side note, the philosopher, Heidegger, was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party. My Heidegger wrote a dissertation on the philosopher which was docked the grade it was owed due to its reluctance to engage with this fact. When Heidegger challenged his grade, his lecturer said Nazism is unavoidable, or something. Still, Heidegger did not address it.)
Heidegger drinks V60 coffee, which looks alchemical. We travel east for this anarchist coffee shop, sometimes, taking the District, then the Overground, where the shop has an island around which everybody drinks, standing. You’re not allowed to sit down because excessive sitting is a symptom of the neoliberal system, which the shop rejects. Incidentally, the shop’s staff work eight hours at a time without a wage, paid only in the pride of their effort’s contribution to the cause. I’ve not met the owner, but I hear he wears Hugo Boss.
What is an oxymoron? Anti-capitalist business.
Heidegger ignored me first when I said about Being and Time, because he knew I hadn’t read it. So I repeated.
‘That’s it though, isn’t it? We’re all falling. That’s what Heidegger says.’
First he took a sip of his coffee, then he looked over my shoulder.
‘Yeah. Well, some people know how to fall.’
When I lived in Cornwall, I’d look up at the stars every night. Some shone through the clouds – they were that bright. But I never bothered to learn the names. I knew the ones which looked like a pan on the hob. And Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia I knew because it was the constellation I endeavoured to name. We were on a jetty in a biting night wind. A chain beat a tune on a mast. My hair got all caught in my mouth as I tried to spit out the question, ‘those five stars, what are they?’
The question was asked of an old partner’s father. He was a fisherman, a proper, singing fisherman. On his lip was a grey waxed moustache, and he knew things intuitively. Through his hands he was reeling a line, focussing on the line but not the sky. Then he looked up without a beat to identify Cassiopeia.
Cassiopeia shines dim in London, it’s a faint star system so, to see it properly, you need a clear sky without light pollution. A few weeks ago Heidegger took me to the country, to visit his sister. We were walking from a restaurant to our car in a clear cold night and I craned my head up to look for that lonely constellation, when I noticed a bright star glowing outside it. It hung alone to the right of Cassiopeia, burning faintly orange, unfamiliar. I asked Heidegger whether he’d ever noticed that star.
‘Sure. Maybe. I dunno,’ he responded.
I was holding tight to his arm.
Previously I have taken comfort in my ignorance about the solar system. I always thought that if a meteor appeared in the sky, like it must have for the dinosaurs, I’d never know. Not until it killed me. That is, of course, unless it appeared around Cassiopeia. Again I looked at the new, bright- shining star. Heidegger told me to stop shaking.
‘It’s cold,’ I replied. ‘I’m cold.’
Jesus said that the wise man built his house upon the rocks and the idiot built his house upon quicksand. I’m working, here, on drawing a parallel between The Bible and my novel. My novel traces the dissolution of a relationship between a protagonist who resembles myself and a boyfriend who resembles Heidegger. My previous short story, the one which attracted attention, traced the disintegration of a relationship between a protagonist who resembled myself and a boyfriend who resembled the son of a Cornish fisherman. By the time I wrote that one, our relationship was long dead, so I could regard it like a mosquito caught in amber. It had a solid foundation. The novel has me tripping over myself because every time I go to write a chapter about this character who resembles Heidegger, I find myself reminded of Heidegger’s sweetness, and the piece is incoherent, full of contradictory views. Other times, I try to write a more tender segment about the couple which may entice the reader into caring about the certainly doomed relationship; it tends to be on these days that Heidegger makes me hate him. Thus far, I’ve written one-hundred-and-four first pages.
One remedy could be to dump Heidegger. My novel requires a grand, destructive finale. Maybe I should have an affair. If our relationship were to end in real life, then I would have my ending. I could have my novel, wrapped in a neat purple bow.
Just the other day I bought a telescope. It’s a little shitty one which looks like a Pringles tube painted black, but it’s all I could afford. However it’s still capable ‒ on a good day ‒ of penetrating the West London light pollution so that I may observe the stars. I set it up below the skylight in Heidegger’s study last Wednesday, then fixed its gaze on Cassiopeia, before edging it to the right, to find that new, bright-shining star which I had spotted in the country.
It was 2 a.m., then. Heidegger entered with a cup of tea drawing dustclouds in the air with steam. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be writing?’ he asked.
My heart was beating in my ears. Through the telescope I observed a little black object with light pouring off it, the shape unfixed so that it seemed to be travelling through the cosmos.
‘What do you make of this?’ I responded.
Lifting my head from the eyepiece, I turned to see Heidegger fingering a stack of papers piled on my desktop.
‘When’s your deadline? It’s near, isn’t it? You should be working.’
He placed his mug down on the paper, so that it painted a damp ring like an eclipse.
‘Heidegger, baby,’ I replied, ‘I’m scared. I think I’ve discovered a meteorite. Like the one that killed the dinosaurs. I think it’s hurtling towards us.’
A hand lifted to Heidegger’s mouth, stifling a laugh.
‘You don’t know shit about stars.’
‘Just take a look,’ I responded.
Craning down to the telescope, he looked for a minute. Without lifting his eye from the lens, he said, ‘you know, you’re too young to be messing your publishers around like this. They won’t appreciate it. You can’t just claim to be an artist, not in that industry.’
‘What do you make of it?’ I asked.
He sighed.
‘Looks like a star to me.’
Last year China was forced to cull a million pigs due to an outbreak of swine flu in its slaughterhouse population. When he discovered the fact, Heidegger wept. Heidegger is a vegan. At the start of our relationship, he said my being vegan was something non-negotiable. During our relationship he has equated cow farming to mass rape. He said he could not date a rapist. And so I became vegan.
But I don’t believe farming cows equates to raping them. Call me controversial, if you like. Heidegger does. For the same reason, I don’t think Hemingway was right in enjoying bullfighting. A bull cannot be a tragic figure, not like a human can be a tragic figure, because they lack the understanding of their downfall, therefore depriving us of that anagnorisis, as well as the catharsis when the curtain falls. I don’t think a cow equates the molestation of their genitals with some sort of trespass on their dignity. They might not like it, but it’s not so profound, surely. When I lived in Cornwall, I watched on two occasions a bull service a heifer. Cows engage in a form of oral sex, I discovered, as well as watersports. Drinking the heifer’s piss allows the bull to test his mate’s pheremone levels. He can feed her urine into a little cavity in his mouth, a sexual litmus test. Then he mounts her, which is the real spectacle. If anything is degrading, it is that.
I hardly get work done any more. Whenever I sit down to write I don’t have time to fret about plot or dialogue or characterisation, because within five minutes of reaching my desk, I’m fiddling with the telescope, trying to find the star. When I can’t, I open my laptop and search on Google, new stars, or, new meteorites. Of course, there are new stars and new asteroids, but none just outside Cassiopeia. I worry the experts are missing something.
‘You know,’ Heidegger said, ‘you’ve really got to pull your finger out. Enough of this star shit, just get the book done, give the publishers what they want and go on your way. Do you not want a career?’
We were at the anarchist coffee shop. I had a cramp in my lower back, plus in my thighs, because it was a busy weekend in the Christmas season and there was no space on either of the tubes which brought us East.
‘What’s the point?’ I said. ‘With the meteor. Like, seriously. Is there any point?’
Heidegger thought a second. I watched his eyes flick over my shoulder. When I turned my head I saw the attractive manager in his Hugo Boss suit.
Finally, Heidegger suggested, ‘contemplative satisfaction?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’ve got time, my head’s not in the guillotine yet. I’m sure it’s not. You know what The Times said when they interviewed me? They predicted a meteoric rise, that’s what they said.’
He chuckled. A new couple of anarchists entered the shop, so the top of the door knocked a little silver bell hanging from a length of copper. Heidegger wouldn’t look at me.
‘Yeah? Well, meteors burn up.’
We were in Chiswick Gardens drinking mulled wine while the light died overhead. Planes passed over like satellites, humming, disrupting our conversation, which probed the idea of breaking up. I wanted the final word to be explosive. In my pocket my iPhone was on, it’s voice recorder app running so I could know exactly how my character would respond in the final instant. My novel was a will-they-won’t-they type. For the sake of my art, it had to be they won’t.
Three parakeets sailed overhead, bringing me temporarily outside myself. Heidegger was lecturing me about what he perceived to be a sort of idleness that affected my character. He was recounting all the projects I had begun and abandoned during the period he had known me.
‘You know, it’s like being with a sandcastle, the way you’re always disintegrating. Like, if you could just show some composure ... Even if there is a comet. Can you not just get on with your life?’
From above, an orange leaf descending like a dull, dead star. It floated down to my feet. Bending over, I picked up the thing and let it break apart in my hands. Then I repositioned myself so that my phone might still accurately detect our dialogue.
‘What do you want to do then?’ I said.
Heidegger stayed quiet. He took a sip of his wine. Suddenly I noticed a change overcome him. Distracted from our conversation, his chin jutted up to the sky while simultaneously his brow squinted. Darkness had descended completely. Still mothers walked past with their children on leads, breath escaping their mouths as steam. Then a flash lit up the sky, briefly, like a knife tore an opening through the overwhelming darkness, allowing the heavens to escape before being quickly stitched together. For a second there was nothing. Then, fire.
It landed on the grass before us, burning, though the flames quickly fizzed and died. Then it glowed orange, brilliantly, before succumbing to the cold and turning blue. I stood up from the bench, the wine spilling from my flask over my shoe. First I considered the floor, then I craned my head to the sky in search of Cassiopeia. Overhead was clear. Searching a moment, I discovered the star system and the new, bright-shining star beside it, gone.
I turned to Heidegger, an arm outstretched at the sky.
‘It burnt up,’ I said. ‘It existed!’
He remained tight-lipped.
‘Admit it.’
Bending down, I tried to pick up the ball, but it scolded my fingers.
Heidegger stood up. Rising from the comet was the smell of the cosmos.
I should have known this was how it would end. This was how it would always end. With neither a bang nor a whimper. And I’d not be destroyed, but relieved. Now, here’s a question: when is a new, bright-shining star not a new, bright-shining star?
When it’s a speck.