the same as to feel a phobia. And I responded that a person like you might feel a phobia, but one like me is fucked and phobiaized. That means that fear has gotten inside you, never to be released; it means that a person and her fears have become the same thing.
“Touché,” you said, and explained that it was a fencing term, touché, and it meant that I had won.
But in the following class, you struck back; you weren’t going to fall behind in the competition we had started. You came out with this thing about a philosopher who was called Heidegger, and this Heidegger talked about the difference between fear and anxiety. He said that fear was a feeling about something or someone, let’s say a barking dog or a cop who could arrest us, while anxiety was a state of mind about everything and nothing in particular, simply about the fact that we were in this world.
“According to that then,” you asked, “what do you feel here in Manninpox, fear or anxiety?”
“Fear about what we face in here?” I was the first to pipe up, “and anxiety over what we’ve left out there.”
You smiled, and I knew we were beginning to hit it off, to understand each other. Sorry to be so blunt, but the whole thing seemed as if you were just flirting with me, with this is this, and that is that, and this Heidegger, and that my mother’s ass, and if this means that and that means this . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I think if we had met in a club instead of in a prison, we would have begun to get it on, like they say, or to “feel each other out,” which is the same thing; I got that expression from Marbel, a girl who just got here a little while ago. But maybe we better drop this, could be a slippery slope.
I like thinking that everything I have gone through will be kept inside an envelope, and that they will put that envelope in the mail so that it flies where you are so that I remain clean and light, like a blank page, ready for whatever may come. Me on one end and on the other end, far away, in that tightly sealed envelope, my panic and fear and phobias and anxiety. That’s why in my dreams, I imagine how you will recount each chapter, each detail. I’d like to think of everything that has happened to me as a novel, and not life that’s been lived. As such, it is loaded with pain, but as a novel it is a great adventure. I asked for your address to send you this package. I’d have liked to have given it to you in person, but they took us away from you before I had a chance to. And, of course, they didn’t give me your address. Who the hell are we, the inmates, to be given personal information about normal people, what right do we have, why else would I want your address if not to extort money or threaten you? I told them that it was to send you the novel about my life, and they cracked up. A novel—you gotta be kidding—and life? What life did inmates have?
“You, what do you tell everyone one in your . . . novel? You tell them how you get up at six, eat at seven, and take a shit at eight?” Jennings, the most sarcastic, rotten guard asked me.
So they didn’t give me your address, Mr. Rose. I’ll have to come up with another way to get this to you; it will be like sending a message in a bottle.
Another little thing before starting, I’ll tell the story and you believe everything I tell. That’s something Dr. House doesn’t understand. He’s my favorite, that limp bastard, my favorite of all time. We hear inside that he has gone out of fashion in the rest of the world, that audiences grew sick of his insufferable pedantries, and it’s true the guy does think he’s hot shit. But in Manninpox, his fame is eternal, always the king, maybe because time stands still in here and what comes in never leaves. According to House, everyone lies. That’s why he doesn’t believe what his patients tell him or what other doctors recommend. He won’t trust anyone so he goes around suspicious, spying out
“Touché,” you said, and explained that it was a fencing term, touché, and it meant that I had won.
But in the following class, you struck back; you weren’t going to fall behind in the competition we had started. You came out with this thing about a philosopher who was called Heidegger, and this Heidegger talked about the difference between fear and anxiety. He said that fear was a feeling about something or someone, let’s say a barking dog or a cop who could arrest us, while anxiety was a state of mind about everything and nothing in particular, simply about the fact that we were in this world.
“According to that then,” you asked, “what do you feel here in Manninpox, fear or anxiety?”
“Fear about what we face in here?” I was the first to pipe up, “and anxiety over what we’ve left out there.”
You smiled, and I knew we were beginning to hit it off, to understand each other. Sorry to be so blunt, but the whole thing seemed as if you were just flirting with me, with this is this, and that is that, and this Heidegger, and that my mother’s ass, and if this means that and that means this . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I think if we had met in a club instead of in a prison, we would have begun to get it on, like they say, or to “feel each other out,” which is the same thing; I got that expression from Marbel, a girl who just got here a little while ago. But maybe we better drop this, could be a slippery slope.
I like thinking that everything I have gone through will be kept inside an envelope, and that they will put that envelope in the mail so that it flies where you are so that I remain clean and light, like a blank page, ready for whatever may come. Me on one end and on the other end, far away, in that tightly sealed envelope, my panic and fear and phobias and anxiety. That’s why in my dreams, I imagine how you will recount each chapter, each detail. I’d like to think of everything that has happened to me as a novel, and not life that’s been lived. As such, it is loaded with pain, but as a novel it is a great adventure. I asked for your address to send you this package. I’d have liked to have given it to you in person, but they took us away from you before I had a chance to. And, of course, they didn’t give me your address. Who the hell are we, the inmates, to be given personal information about normal people, what right do we have, why else would I want your address if not to extort money or threaten you? I told them that it was to send you the novel about my life, and they cracked up. A novel—you gotta be kidding—and life? What life did inmates have?
“You, what do you tell everyone one in your . . . novel? You tell them how you get up at six, eat at seven, and take a shit at eight?” Jennings, the most sarcastic, rotten guard asked me.
So they didn’t give me your address, Mr. Rose. I’ll have to come up with another way to get this to you; it will be like sending a message in a bottle.
Another little thing before starting, I’ll tell the story and you believe everything I tell. That’s something Dr. House doesn’t understand. He’s my favorite, that limp bastard, my favorite of all time. We hear inside that he has gone out of fashion in the rest of the world, that audiences grew sick of his insufferable pedantries, and it’s true the guy does think he’s hot shit. But in Manninpox, his fame is eternal, always the king, maybe because time stands still in here and what comes in never leaves. According to House, everyone lies. That’s why he doesn’t believe what his patients tell him or what other doctors recommend. He won’t trust anyone so he goes around suspicious, spying out
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