Free Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer Page B

I had a mad uncle.
    MULBERRY: Mad uncle Ede—must be from all that inbreeding. Did
he really think
?
    EDE: I don’t know. He really thought he was a parrot. Or a squirrel, depending on the day.
    Another round of Zombies.
    Spin the bottle.
    The usual questions: Ever done it out-of-doors? Anally? With a member of the same sex? The opposite sex? Favourite sexual fantasies?: the secretary (Chakrabarti) … the nurse (Titmuss) … the dominant woman (Alexander Kirwin) … the virgin flower, atremble in your arms (Benedict Kirwin), the threesome (Benedict Kirwin again), the
foursome
(Benedict Kirwin yet again), a
Roman orgy
of women (Benedict Kirwin has a lot of fantasies) …
    MULBERRY: No prizes for guessing
your
fantasy, Peters.
    EDE: Yeah. Germanic genius all dressed up in
leder
.
    The Kirwins are quizzed about their brief encounters at the
derangement of the senses
party. Mulberry is quizzed about the ethics of
riding bareback
. About the sex/death relationship. We explore the topics of fisting, of auto-erotic asphyxiation. We discuss the effects of various drugs on sexual performance. On methods of relaxing the anal sphincter (Mulberry). Of engorging the reluctant cock (Doyle).
    We rank the company in terms of sexual promiscuity (Mulberry wins). In terms of sexual
prowess
(Titmuss claims to be an expert in the Indian erotic arts. No one believes him). In terms of sexual
attractiveness
, Ede comes top (centuries of breeding). In terms of
sexual repression
.
    MULBERRY: You win that one, Peters. Hands down.
    Saturday night. Ede texts.
You up? I split with Fee
.
    Ede, in the communal kitchen, emptying a tub of mushrooms onto the counter.
    EDE: The best I could get. Guaranteed head-fuck.
    Fee! Fee! Why must it all be so complicated?, Ede says. We’re cursed. We’re
doomed
.
    Beauty seems like a great clue, Ede says. Plato was right. It points somewhere. But to what? There is
this
world, that is all. Beauty makes a sign—but of what? A sign of nothing. Of the absence of signs. Beauty mocks us, Ede says. Beauty says:
The way is barred. There is no path
. Beauty is the door that’s shut.
    Fee! Fee! It’s unbearable, Ede says. He can’t stand it! Fee is beautiful, but Fee is witless. Fee and her friends: beautiful but witless, chattering away in their flat. So inane. So depthless.
    EDE: Have you noticed how the rahs are all saying
literally
now?
I was like literally exhausted. I was like literally wasted
. But nothing they say actually
means
anything! Literally
or
figuratively! Most of the time, they don’t even finish their sentences.
I was literally so …
They just trail off. They barely
speak
, most of the time.
Mmms
and
ahhs
. Little moans, nothing else.
Oh reeealllly. Lurrrrrvely. Coooool
.
    And they use the word
uni
, which is unforgiveable, Ede says.
My uni
 … As if Cambridge were some cuddly toy. As if
they
were all cuddly toys.
    He’s known these people all his life, Ede says. He’s supposed to marry one of them! To perpetuate the breed. To join one great house with another, consolidating landed wealth, and so on. Fee would do perfectly, he says. He was led to her, itis quite clear, by some
innate aristocratic homing device
. Something
Darwinian
. Something quite disgusting …
    EDE: We’re puppets, Peters!
    Better to ruin himself, Ede says. Better to ruin the whole Ede legacy. To squander its fortune. To wreck its great estates. Better to end the family line. Better to become a cautionary tale to scare young aristocrats, he says.
    Ede steeps the mushrooms in warm water, adding a squeeze of lemon juice. We drink the tea.
    We speak of our desire for despair—real despair, Ede and I. For choking despair, visible to all. For chaotic despair, despair of
collapse
, of
ruination
. For the despair of Lucifer, as he fell from heaven …
    Our desire for
annulling
despair. For a despair that dissolves the ego; despair indistinguishable from a kind of
death
. For
wild
despair, for heads thrown back, teeth