Jane Jervis-Read Drafts

I hook myself up like a carcass on a wall and the girls around me their heads are hanging with great long strings of drool like catgut trailing to the floor.

I am hooking up.

It's mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders.

I am hooking up.

They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.

Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other. They know what I need and for a long time I take what they give me.

They have all our information. They have it on our smart cards. The data is there in black and white and there isn't anyone to argue with.

I clock on, hook up, don't meet anyone. If I don't clock on every two weeks they come to meet me.

You can try to call. You can try but you'll be redirected and redirected, you'll be put on hold

(long frustrated pause)

and even then you'll have to press buttons to categorise your query but my query didn't fit into the options they gave me.

Everything meant the same.

They removed me.

#

Compulsary additives were introduced to the drugs we take, clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resisitance, these additives.

People worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well.

Only the army was a problem. It was easy to recruit, to conscript, conscientious objectors were few and far between. But the army needed to advance aggressively, to slaughter, shed guilt like a reptile. They needed to win. Something was done to their pills. The soldiers were frightening people. The armed forces of the Trade Nations of America could blow up a dog from three thousand meters, could break a neck with a strand of their stinking oiled hair, but they couldn't get a half decent erection between them. Can you imagine what that does to an entire army? So the Cold War hasn't resulted in face-to-face combat yet. We're in a state of emergency until the soldiers can get it up.

#

Eight Exectuive Members. They all jack off online. It's a known fact. There's a lawyer, a general, a financial advisor, a shrink, the ex-president of the United States, an IT man, a robot and Father Nicholson O'Brien of the Evangelical Chruch of America. Someone designs their fantasies for them. Skin and hair little boys and little girls, opium dens and hot breathed animals all made of ones and zeros. You'd never know the difference. It's much safer for them that way.

But I wanted
I wanted
I wanted
to lick the prayer from your face.

#

In the Trade Nations of America, oranges grow with skins thick for ease in packaging. A calf becomes a cow in a matter of days, udder swelling fat with low fat milk. Shift workers are alert all the time, prostitues never run dry. Everyone is working well. We are advancing together in leaps and bounds. Hand over your smart card to pay the pharmacist. In the workpods they are safe. But the blue collars are being custom made. By law a corporation must make every decision in the best fiscal interest of its shareholders... and the technology was there.

#

I do not take their pills. I do not take their pills. The choice is mine. The pills exist to make life more comfortable. The pills exist to normalise any imbalances and an imbalance means not being able to get up in the morning or crying every time you smell camphor or wishing your mother wasn't dead or acne or always having dirt under your fingernails or feeling like your ears are stuffed with cotton or having two sick days in a month or sleeping in or forgetting to wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.

When you take their pills you bleed when they tell you to. Just like clockwork on the Wednesday pill, once a month for five days exactly. So efficient they could bake an egg on you. It makes women feel comfortable, to menstruate, there's no reason for it but it makes them feel comfortable.

You take the sugar pills
and you bleed the sugar blood
out into the drainways.

#

Like everyone I work in a big building for a big company for a boss I've never met. I check in with my card in the morning and I clock off with my card at night. My boss does not exist. I don't believe his name on the plaque at reception. I believe he is a sugar pill to make us all feel comfortable.

#

I have a passion. Not like those on the pills. I have a passion. I watched his face in his yellow bathroom light when he got up to pee. I watched him fold the scarf around his neck on an Autumn morning as he walked through the park.
The leaves.
The leaves.
You should see the colours they designed for Autumn. It'll blow your mind.

#

It doesn't make sense, to shift people off into High Security Bunkers, when they mess up as I did. But a nip, a tuck, edge off the aggression, pep them up all hours of the night and put them to work. Well that makes sense. Prison costs but workforce pays.

But after that... if you mess up again, then they'll rip out your brains and feed your body to the police dogs, they'll rip out your brain and hang it out to dry with their dirty underpants. They'll hang it out to dry but they'll never let it die. They'll never let you sleep. You'll feel those damned dogs sinking their canines into your grey matter, licking your frontal lobe til it's shiny and clean as a hubcap. Oh they'll never let you sleep, it's a known fact.

#

So I am castrated. Made to clock into family planning. Once every two weeks to hook up and be normalised. I'm walking around and I can't feel sensation on my skin. They dull me out, slow my heart to the pace of a dead person's and I can feel the mute buzz of it, like a television in the corner, when I lie down to sleep.

For a long time I don't bleed at all. I sleep and do not dream. I have no fantasy. A half fried egg, gone cold. I can function but I cannot fire. My motor skills are fine and polished but my thought processes don't go beyond the practical. I work. I work. Like everyone I work in a big building for big company... I am employee of the month. I work quickly and well and I never bleed and never cry. I remember wanting him the way I remember a childhood song. I can't quite get a hold of it. I can't quite get the taste of anything. I'm so dry that my thighs are chafing, my piss burns like petrol. I'm so dry that my body is a cactus. I lose all my weight. No one notices. No one notices. I am employee of the month.

#

I stop clocking on. I stop hooking up. I lock the doors of my apartment.

#

And the first drop of my blood falls. I feel the ache of my reproductive organs grinding, the work that they do. I feel the contraction and the opening of my sex parts when the first drop of my blood falls and I catch it. I catch it in my hand and they come for me.

You take the sugar pills
and you bleed the sugar blood
out into the drainways.

Everything meant the same.

They removed me.

I want to write about the colonisation of the body and the mind through drugs - perhaps a compulsary additive is introduced in medication already being taken by a large percentage of the population of the Trade Nations.
Clothed in different names; Maldendiocin in contraceptive pills, Pelcin 4 or Disrodexin in antidepressants. They break down resistance, these additives.

People worked long hours and bought a lot of stuff. The world functioned well. No one was forcing our mouths open, believe that. The social machine enforced it- the media's hand up the arse of it, the Eight's hand up the arse of it, sort of a Chinese Dragon with a little red pill on the tip of its tongue.

Natural human functioning became sort of disgusting, the oozing fertility, the downward spirals, the pheromones, the aggressive uprising of joy. Once men would have shaved their faces and women their underarms. Now it was just slightly deviant not to be taking some sort of a normalising pill. You wouldn't tell your boss, for instance, that you weren't on a pill. You just wouldn't. You wouldn't get the job in the first place. They'd assume you'd be the type to sleep in or not wipe your shit off the side of the bowl.

I hook myself up like a carcass on a wall and the girls around me their heads are hanging and great long strings of drool like catgut are trailing to the floor.

I am hooking up.

It is mandatory for me. Mandatory for me but not for everyone. Prostitutes and sex offenders. I am hooking up. They know what we need. I take what they give me. I slide the cool metal into the poor puckered vein of my arm and I wait to see if anyone's going to miss me.

Afterwards my eyes will be rolling back in my head and my feet won't walk one in front of the other. They know what we need and for a long time I take what they give me.

They have all our information. They have it on our cards. The data is there in black and white and there isn't anyone to argue with. I clock on, hook up, don't meet anyone. If I don't clock on every two weeks they come to meet me.

You can try to call. You can try but you'll be redirected and redirected, you'll be put on hold

(long frustrated pause)

and even then you'll have to press buttons to categorise your query, but my query didn't fit into the options they gave me.

I wanted I wanted I wanted
to lick the prayer
from your face.

Everything meant the same.

I messed up.

I really like the short # points. I think this poetic dreaming style of writing really fits the context of Senseless/the Censored.

What I have done is printed everyone's work out and am going to have a reading tomorrow. I have used all your work in order, so most recent post first...Let me know if that should be otherwise, but it reads well to me so far. Of coarse I'll let you know how the reading goes though...

Also, keep me posted on any further developments. But I think it's progressing well.

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