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bodies.
But I need to speak to her to find out what to do.
What is in question at the moment is not her desire, but
yours. But of course she turned to the room the true slave
is unable to perceive her desires, save as they relate to fulfilling
the desires of another.
I made a sound it came out like a bark of protest and
surprise. What had my entire life been about, if not the creation
and appeasement of desire? Why had I answered the ad, if not
to appease the strange stirrings in my body?
But as laughter, accompanied by what seemed a thumping
of tails, went around the room, I realized that what she said was
indeed true. My desire was not a true desire an activity one
244 / JANE DELYNN
could, in a pinch, pay someone to perform but it was a desire
to have someone else treat me a certain way, a way that would
involve pain and humiliation, surely, but in a manner I myself did
not choose, for to choose it was not my desire.
Shame spread through me, for who I was and that others
should know but also a kind of relief, in that I was at last
understood.
See how the abject creature bows her head in embarrass-
ment. You see before you not the proud submission of the
canine, but the craven cowardice of the human mongrel. I
barked in protest. She still resists her fate, as if all of us in this
room do not know who she is as if, indeed, many of us are not
just like her. The bitch seems surprised at this, the auctioneer
continued, as if the existence of our group and countless others
like us serves to mitigate her shame, as if, were she alone in her
perversion, it would in any way invalidate her desires.
And indeed, I had slunk back on my haunches, my head
buried in my paws, in a manner that the auctioneer pointed out
was typical of canines.
This will not do, she continued. You must make your
choice, in as clear and loud a voice as possible, so that all may
hear and acknowledge your choice. Join our Society, or leave
us forever. Which is it to be?
As the bugle sounded a final three times, I thought of the
Current and the boredom of our relations, then I thought of the
one before the Current, and the one before that and the ones
before that those whom I had loved who had loved me in
return, those for whom love had died in me faster than it had in
them and those in whom love had died faster than in me, those
whom I had loved who had never loved me no matter how much
245 / LEASH
I had wanted them to, and those I had never been able to bring
myself to love, no matter how they had wanted me to and no
matter how, in a perfect world, I would have been able to do so.
I thought of those I had lived with for years, and those I had
dated for months, and those I had embraced once for ten min-
utes within the locked bathroom of a bar, and all I saw was pain.
Pain for love that had died and was no more, pain for love that
had never been and never would be, and, most of all, pain for
the pain I had suffered and would suffer again, because, after all,
it is the nature of desire to go forever unfulfilled....
You shake your head. I take it, then, you do not wish to join
our Society?
Unable to speak, I again shook my head.
As you still reside in the Realm of Language and are not yet
dependent on others to interpret your needs and desires, you
must take responsibility at least one final time for who you
are and proclaim it unequivocally, in full view and hearing of the
microphones and camera, so that your choice may be recorded
for all posterity. If you refuse or find yourself incapable of speech,
if you do not specifically announce your intentions to become
one of us, we must assume your desire to leave, and deal with
you accordingly. She waited several second, then clapped her
hands; two women who had been standing at the side of the
stage marched over to me. They yanked me to my feet, flung
the mask over my eyes, and placed me in darkness once again.
But it was a different darkness than I had become accus-
tomed to one not in which anything might happen, but one
from which all possibilities had been removed. A hand on each
arm, stumbling (for I was not used to supporting myself with only
two limbs) I felt myself being led off the stage not to the sound
246 / JANE DELYNN
of jeering and boos, as I would have expected, but utter silence.
Automatically, out of that resistance from which I had func-
tioned my entire life, I pushed against those hands, fell down on
all fours, dug in my paws, and refused to move.
The dogs in the audience started howling, and I began to
howl too.
Speak now, or forever hold your peace! the auctioneer
shouted.
No! I heard myself howl, then yes, yes, yes, as I took my
irrevocable oaths, from different angles and closeups, with depth
of field and telephoto, in profile and full face, immediately after
which, in fulfillment of her warning, the muscles of my tongue and
vocal chords were partially severed, so that I lost the capability
of coherent speech. And I howled in pain and rage and regret,
as she had foreseen, and as she had also foreseen as time
passed I learned not just to accept my fate, but to embrace
it with body, brain, and soul so much so that, in memory of
who I once had been and in trust of whom I had become, I was
allowed, before my fingers were fully converted to paws, to record
my story: partly for the benefit of those who had known me per-
sonally, so that they may cease torturing themselves over the
nature of my so-called disappearance, but mostly to alert those
like us who are unaware of our existence about a world in which,
if they are lucky, they may someday find themselves at home.
But all that came later, after I had abandoned the world of
words for another one deeper and richer, surely, with its own
joys and sorrows but of this, alas, I cannot speak.
THE END
247 / LEASH
Publications by Semiotext(e)
SEMIOTEXT(E) / NATIVE AGENT SERIES
CHRIS KRAUS, EDITOR
WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK COOKIE MUELLER
IF YOU RE A GIRL ANNE ROWER
THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES BARBARA BARG
HOW I BECAME ONE OF THE INVISIBLE DAVID RATTRAY
NOT ME EILEEN MYLES
HANNIBAL LECTER, MY FATHER KATHY ACKER
THE MADAME REALISM COMPLEX LYNNE TILLMAN
THE NEW FUCK YOU: ADVENTURES IN LESBIAN READING EILEEN MYLES & LIZ KOTZ, EDS
READING BROOKE SHIELDS: THE GARDEN OF FAILURE ELDON GARNET
I LOVE DICK CHRIS KRAUS
AIRLESS SPACES SHULAMITH FIRESTONE
THE PASSIONATE MISTAKES AND INTRICATE CORRUPTION OF ONE GIRL IN AMERICA MICHELLE TEA
ALIENS & ANOREXIA CHRIS KRAUS
THE PAIN JOURNAL BOB FLANAGAN
INDIVISIBLE FANNY HOWE
LEASH JANE DELYNN
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