Helen Keller Really Lived: A Novel

"On average, the limits of a ghost’s rationality are very narrow ..."

Helen Keller Really Lived 31 On average, the limits of a ghost’s rationality are very narrow —no good, therefore, to explain to these astral bolváns that their bodies are non-returnable. Like toddlers and cretins, they just won’t accept basic physical principles, like entropy, heat death and “no more.” On average, but there are exceptions, and believe it or not, I’m one of them. So not only do I know I can’t get that sack of shit back, I don’t want it. I don’t want my body because I don’t want nobody. No body, no desire—it’s that simple, króshka. “Hmmmph,” you’ll say as you read this on the Mac you “inherited” from me, “hmmmmph,” like there’s a pubic hair in 32 Elisabeth Sheffield your throat. And maybe there will be one there, but who the fuck cares? Then lacing your long tanned fingers beneath your chin, you’ll ask the computer screen “then why is he haunting me?” Fair enough. If I don’t want nobody, least of all you, why bother? Maybe you think I’ve got nothing better to do now that I’m a spook but float around inside your Mac, playing with your pixels. Let me tell you, I’ve got plenty to do, plenty. All that reading I never had time for when I was looking up pizda all day—I was nothing but a cunt mechanic. No more ortho gel, no more latex gloves, no more twats, no more hands. Finally I can live like I always wanted to, like a member of the intelligentsiya, wallowing in words all day. I’m even doing a little scholarly work. Yeah détka, I can do whatever I want now that I don’t need to eat, to sleep, to fuck, to exercise, to lose weight, put on deodorant, pluck my eyebrows (yes, I did—they were always so bushy), pick my teeth, hold in my farts (which I realize were getting worse and worse), comb a head of still thick but grizzled hair. I don’t need to worry about losing my looks (believe it or not, back in the Brighton Beach days they called me the James Dean from Odessa), because I no longer have any looks to lose. Really, it’s nothing but the life of the mind for me now baby—an endless biblio-debauch in the original Plato’s Retreat. ...