Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

From Now On Only Bad Things Will Happen to You

There's an episode of Six Feet Under, in which the character Nate has a vision in which his dead wife tells him, "From now on only bad things will happen to you."

I felt I knew exactly what it meant, with an almost mystic recognition.

What is it that is so fascinating and 'true' about such a statement? I think there would not be such fascination about it without the beginning clause, "From now on". This suggests that once upon a time it had been possible for good things to happen. I seem to remember such a world, too. And now I find myself in a world in which it is no longer possible for good things to happen. It is this contrast, of things going wrong, that seems to constitute the nightmare quality of human existence, because it is a nightmare. What could be better calculated to torture consciousness than to suspend it between two realms of infinite void - void in the sense of the unknown, since that is what they are - without memory of where it came from, knowledge of what it is or means of guessing what will become of it?

And yet I once knew life as something other than nightmare. How did the transition occur?

I have noticed that on the occasions - not that frequent, since I tend to downplay the nightmarish quality of existence in conversation and social interaction generally - that I have mentioned to people that it's actually impossible for good things to happen, they have either never admitted that it was true, or they have not understood what I was talking about (perhaps both). I can't really blame them for the latter if their experience is different to mine, since my attempts to explain this impossibility have usually ended with me uselessly opening my mouth like a goldfish, and finding no words. I'm sure it must sound like a very stubborn, emotional insistence. But it's not really like that at all. It's not something stubborn. It's something so fine that it slips through my fingers. It is something that, having permeated everything, is now no longer susceptible to the categories and divisions of language that would be needed to adequately describe it.

I was walking home earlier today and a mother was walking along with her children. Her little girl was saying something like, "Where's my sticker? I've lost my sticker." And it sounded as if she were about to cry if she did not find her sticker. Does human happiness really depend on the presence or absence of a piece of paper with adhesive on its back? You may think I'm only talking about children, but really adults are just the same. What's a job apart from a sticker that says, 'useful member of society'? What's a lover apart from a sticker that says, 'attractive, worthwhile human being'? Does the sticker really make a difference? However many stickers you stick on yourself, does it ever constitute something good happening? No, it's just a sticker, and you're going to lose it, anyway. And then you'll cry, probably. What else can you do? Because you suddenly know that from now on only bad things will happen to you.

(Well, I've just been interrupted by a phonecall from Mr. Wu, still suffering the ravages of a sore throat, I noticed, so I've probably lost my train of thought now. The last thing we were talking about before ending the phone conversation was Daisy Pulls It Off, but that doesn't help me now.)

Ah yes, I was going to say that, I have really got to the point in my life where I wonder how people are even able to have children. I like children, actually. Well, in a general sense. When I'm not forced to be at all responsible or that kind of thing. But it's because I like children that I don't understand really how people can continue to have children.

When I was a child, the world certainly seemed like a place where... I'm not sure how to finish that sentence. It didn't seem, anyway, like a place where only bad things happened. I think it must be something to do with the onset of the sense of time. Time destroys EVERYTHING.

I don't think there's really one point at which the transition occurred. Its conquest was stealthy and inexorable. I remember, for instance, that by the age of about thirty I was definitely aware that I had for some considerable time been living a nightmare. Horror, I reflected, as a literary or cinematic genre, is often seen as something that presents you with 'another world'; you are invited to enter in, to stray from the 'normal world', if you dare. But I realised now that, for instance, the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, was merely daily life. Normality was horror, or horror was normal.

Last night was Hallowe'en. I attended a reading at a branch of Waterstones in London. This was, specifically, a reading from authors anthologised in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #18. After the five authors present read, there was some discussion, chaired by the editor, Stephen Jones. I can't remember now exactly who said what or repeat it verbatim, but there was a question as to why the writers assembled were drawn to horror in particular, and at least two of the authors responded to the effect that no other genre is really adequate to dealing with how people actually feel about their lives any more. "Science fiction has missed predicting the future again," I seem to recall someone saying. And someone else said, I believe, "Well, it predicted the future, but it failed to get past, to leap over the two million corpses we're now heading towards." (I think that figure is a significant underestimate.)

If everyone waited until they were old enough for disillusionment with life finally to set in, for that transition to horror to take hold, before having children, I wonder whether that would do the trick. And yet, there are people who have children later in life. Presumably they have never been disillusioned. Or perhaps they never had illusions to begin with. Perhaps they always considered life as the cruel spiritual torture it is, but never saw this as a reason to refrain from procreation, because they never had anything else with which to contrast it. I don't know. It truly baffles me. You would think that now, in the 21st century, when it is becoming apparent to human beings collectively that we are vile and life is vile and there is no future but suffering, disappointment, death, mayhem etcetera, that the population would start to dwindle significantly. But no, it continues to grow.

I am mystified.

I don't really know why I write this, except that I'm here now, anyway, so I might as well. Sometimes I worry that I might be insane. I don't mean in any interesting way. I just mean in some way that will cause me unbearable anguish as my soul gradually unravels towards extinction or some psychic doom worse than extinction.

I suppose I shouldn't worry on other people's account, though, since if I am insane, then no one's likely to notice, anyway. Perhaps I should be more worried that I might be sane. That would surely be a much more terrible possibility.

There does seem to be a flaw in my thinking somewhere... I am perplexed.