Since my situation is intolerable, I have decided to take steps to
resolve it. So I have constructed a lifelike dummy made of various brands
of Japanese plastic simulating flesh, hair, nails and so forth. An electronics
engineer of my acquaintance, for a sizable fee, built the interior
mechanism of the dummy: it will be able to talk, eat, work and,walk,. I
hired an important artist of the old realistic school to paint the features; it
took twelve sittings to make a face that perfectly resembles mine. My
broad nose is there, my brown hair, the lines of each side of my mouth.
Even I could not tell the dummy and myself apart, were it not that from my
peculiar vantage point it is quite obvious that he is he and that I am I.
What remains is to install the dummy in the center of my life. He will
go to work instead of me, and receive the approval and censure of my
boss. He will bow and scrape and be diligent. All I require of him is that he
bring me the check every other Wednesday; I will give him carfare and
money for his lunches, but no more. I’ll make out the checks for the rent
and the utilities, and pocket the rest myself. The dummy will also be the
one who is married to my wife. He will watch television with her every
evening, and eat her wholesome dinners. (My wife who also works, pays
the grocery bills out of her salary.) I will also assign the dummy Monday
night bowling with the team from the office, the visit to my mother on
Friday night, reading the newspaper each morning, and perhaps buying
my clothes (two sets – one for him, one for me). Other tasks I will assign
as they come up, as I wish to divest myself of them. I want to keep for
myself only what gives me pleasure.
An ambitious enterprise, you say? But why not? The problems of
the world are only truly solved in two ways; by extinction or by duplication.
Former ages had only the first choice. But I see no reason not to take
advantage of the marvels of modern technology for personal liberation. I
have a choice. And, I have decided to duplicate myself.
On a fine Monday morning I wind the dummy up and set him loose,
after making sure he knows what to do – that is, he knows just how I
would behave in any familiar situation. The alarm goes off. He rolls over
and pokes my wife, who wearily gets out of the double bed and turns off
the alarm. She puts on her slippers and robe, then limps, stiff-ankled, into
the bathroom. When she comes back and heads for the kitchen, he gets
up and takes her place in the bathroom. He, gargles, shaves, comes back
into the bedroom and takes his clothes out of the dresser and closet,
returns to the bathroom, dresses then joins my wife in the kitchen. My
children are already at the table. The younger girl did not finish her
homework last night, and my wife is writing a note of excuse to the
teacher. The older girl sits haughtily munching the cold toast. “Morning,
Daddy,” they say to the dummy. The dummy pecks them on the cheek in
return. Breakfast passes without any incident, I observe with relief. The
children leave. They haven’t noticed a thing. I begin to feel sure that my
plan is going to work and realize, by my excitement, that I had greatly
feared it would not – that there would be some mechanical failure, that the
dummy would not recognize his cues. But no, everything is going right,
even the way he folds The New York Times is correct; he reproduces
exactly the amount of time I spent on the foreign news, and it takes him
just as long to read the sports pages as it took me.
The dummy speaks to my wife, he steps out the door, he enters the
elevator. (Do machines recognize each other, I wonder.) Into the lobby,
out the door, on the street walking at a moderate pace – the dummy has
left on time, he does not have to worry – into the subway he goes. Steady,
calm, clean (I cleaned him myself Sunday night), untroubled, he goes
about his appointed tasks. He will be happy as long as I am satisfied with
him. And so I will be, whatever he does, as long as others are satisfied
with him.
Nobody notices anything different in the office, either. The secretary
says hello, he smiles back as I always do; then he walks to my cubicle,
hangs up his coat, and sits at my desk. The secretary brings him my mail.
After reading it, he calls for some dictation. Next, there is a pile of more
unfinished business from last Friday to attend to. Phone calls are made;
an appointment is set up for lunch with a client from out of town. There is
only one irregularity during the morning; I usually smoke between ten and
fifteen. But I set this down due to the fact that he is new at his work and
has not had the time to accumulate the tensions that I feel after working
six years in this office. It occurs to me that he will probably not have two
martinis – as I always do – during the lunch, but only one, and I am right.
But these are mere details, and will be to the dummy’s credit if anyone
notices them, which I doubt. His behavior with the out-of-town client is
correct – perhaps a shade too deferential, but this, too, I put down to
inexperience. Thank God, no simple matter trips him up. His table
manners are as they should be. He does not pick at his food, but eats with
appetite. And he knows he should sign the check rather than pay with a
credit card; the firm has an account at this restaurant.
In the afternoon there is a sales conference. The vice president
explains a new promotional campaign for the Midwest. The dummy makes
suggestions. The boss nods. The dummy taps his pencil on the long
mahogany table and looks thoughtful. I notice he is chain-smoking. Could
he be feeling the pressure so soon? What a hard life I led! After less than
a day of it, even a dummy shows some wear and tear. The rest of the
afternoon passes without any incident. The dummy makes his way home
to my wife and children, eats my dinner appreciatively, plays Monopoly
with the children for an hour, watches a Western on TV with my wife,
bathes, makes himself a ham sandwich, and then retires. I do not know
what he dreams he has, but I hope they are restful and pleasant. If my
approval can give him an untroubled sleep, he has it. I am entirely pleased
with my creation.
The dummy has been on the job for several months. What can I
report a greater degree of proficiency? But that is impossible. He was fine
the first day. He could not be any more like me than he was at the very
beginning. He does not have to get better at his job but only stick at it
contentedly, unrebelliously, without mechanical failure. My wife is happy
with him – at least, no more unhappy than she was with me. My children
call him Daddy and ask him for their allowance. My fellow workers and my
boss continue to entrust him with my job.
Lately, though – just past week, really – I have noticed something
that worries me. It is the attention that the dummy pays to the next
secretary, Miss Love. (I hope it isn’t her name that aroused him
somewhere in the depths of that complex machinery; I imagine that
machines can be literal-minded.) A slight lingering at her desk when he
comes in the morning, a second’s pause, no more when she says hello;
whereas I – and he until recently –used to walk to that desk without
breaking stride. And he does seem to be dictating more letters. Could it be
from increased zeal on behalf of the firm? I remember how, the very first
day, he spoke up at the sales conference. Or could it be the desire to
detain Miss Love? Are those letters necessary? I could say he thinks so.
But then you never know what goes on behind that imperturbable
dummy’s face of his. I am afraid to ask him. Is it because I do not want to
know the worst? Or because I am afraid he will be angry at my violation of
his privacy? In any case, I have decided to wait until he tells me.
Then one day it comes – the news I had dreaded. At eight in the
morning the dummy corners me in the shower, where I have been spying
on him while he shaves, marvelling how he remembers to cut himself
every once in a while, as I do. He unburdens himself to me. I am
astonished at how much he is moved – astonished and a little envious. I
never dreamed a dummy could have so much feeling, that I would see a
dummy weep. I try to quiet him. I admonish him, and then I reprimand him.
It’s no use. His tears become sobs. He, or rather his passion, whose
mechanism I cannot fathom, begins to revolt me. I am also terrified my
wife and children will hear him, rush to the bathroom, and there find this
berserk creature who would be incapable of normal responses. (Might
they find both of us here in the bathroom? That, too, is possible.) I run the
shower, open both the sink faucets, and flush the toilet to drown out the
painful noises he is making! All this for love! All this for the love of Miss
Love! He has barely spoken to her, except in the way of business. And yet
he is madly, desperately in love. He wants to leave my wife. I explain to
him how impossible that is. First of all, he has duties and responsibilities.
He is the husband and father to my wife and children. They depend on
him; their lives would be smashed by his selfish act. And second, what
does he know about Miss Love? She is at least ten years younger than he
is, has given no particular sign of noticing him at all, and probably has a
nice boyfriend her own age whom she’s planning to marry.
The dummy refuses to listen. He is inconsolable. He will have Miss
Love or – here he makes a threatening gesture – he will destroy himself.
He will bang his head against the wall, or jump out of a window,
disassembling irrevocably his delicate machinery. I become really
alarmed. I see my marvelous scheme, which has left me so beautifully at
my leisure and in peace the last months, ruined….
Why, if only you knew how I have spent these last months, while
the dummy was administering my life. Without a care in the world, except
for occasional curiosity as to the fate of my dummy. I have slid to the
bottom of the world. I sleep anywhere now: in flophouses, on the subway
(which I only board very late at night), in alleys and doorways. I do not
bother to collect my paycheck from the dummy anymore, because there is
nothing I want to buy. Only rarely do I shave. My clothes are torn and
stained.
Does this sound very dreary to you? It is not, it is not. Of course,
when the dummy first relieved me of my own life, I had grandiose plan for
living the lives of others. I wanted to be an Arctic explorer, a concert
pianist, a great courtesan, a world statesman. I tried being Alexander the
Great, then Mozart, then Bismarck, then Greta Garbo, then Elvis Presley –
in my imagination, of course. I imagined that, being none of these people
for long, I could have only their pleasure, none of their pain; for I could
escape, transform myself, whenever I wanted. But the experiment failed,
for lack of interest, from exhaustion, call it what you will. I discovered that I
am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but
any person at all. I like watching people, but I do not like talking to them,
dealing with them, or offending them. I do not even like talking to the
dummy. I am tired. I would like to be a mountain, a tree, a stone. If I am to
continue as a person, the life of the solitary derelict is the only one
tolerable. So you will see that it is quite out of the question that is should
allow the dummy to destroy himself, and have to take his place and live
my old life again.
-taken from I, etcetera, by Susan Sontag, Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 1988, Toronto, Canada.
resolve it. So I have constructed a lifelike dummy made of various brands
of Japanese plastic simulating flesh, hair, nails and so forth. An electronics
engineer of my acquaintance, for a sizable fee, built the interior
mechanism of the dummy: it will be able to talk, eat, work and,walk,. I
hired an important artist of the old realistic school to paint the features; it
took twelve sittings to make a face that perfectly resembles mine. My
broad nose is there, my brown hair, the lines of each side of my mouth.
Even I could not tell the dummy and myself apart, were it not that from my
peculiar vantage point it is quite obvious that he is he and that I am I.
What remains is to install the dummy in the center of my life. He will
go to work instead of me, and receive the approval and censure of my
boss. He will bow and scrape and be diligent. All I require of him is that he
bring me the check every other Wednesday; I will give him carfare and
money for his lunches, but no more. I’ll make out the checks for the rent
and the utilities, and pocket the rest myself. The dummy will also be the
one who is married to my wife. He will watch television with her every
evening, and eat her wholesome dinners. (My wife who also works, pays
the grocery bills out of her salary.) I will also assign the dummy Monday
night bowling with the team from the office, the visit to my mother on
Friday night, reading the newspaper each morning, and perhaps buying
my clothes (two sets – one for him, one for me). Other tasks I will assign
as they come up, as I wish to divest myself of them. I want to keep for
myself only what gives me pleasure.
An ambitious enterprise, you say? But why not? The problems of
the world are only truly solved in two ways; by extinction or by duplication.
Former ages had only the first choice. But I see no reason not to take
advantage of the marvels of modern technology for personal liberation. I
have a choice. And, I have decided to duplicate myself.
On a fine Monday morning I wind the dummy up and set him loose,
after making sure he knows what to do – that is, he knows just how I
would behave in any familiar situation. The alarm goes off. He rolls over
and pokes my wife, who wearily gets out of the double bed and turns off
the alarm. She puts on her slippers and robe, then limps, stiff-ankled, into
the bathroom. When she comes back and heads for the kitchen, he gets
up and takes her place in the bathroom. He, gargles, shaves, comes back
into the bedroom and takes his clothes out of the dresser and closet,
returns to the bathroom, dresses then joins my wife in the kitchen. My
children are already at the table. The younger girl did not finish her
homework last night, and my wife is writing a note of excuse to the
teacher. The older girl sits haughtily munching the cold toast. “Morning,
Daddy,” they say to the dummy. The dummy pecks them on the cheek in
return. Breakfast passes without any incident, I observe with relief. The
children leave. They haven’t noticed a thing. I begin to feel sure that my
plan is going to work and realize, by my excitement, that I had greatly
feared it would not – that there would be some mechanical failure, that the
dummy would not recognize his cues. But no, everything is going right,
even the way he folds The New York Times is correct; he reproduces
exactly the amount of time I spent on the foreign news, and it takes him
just as long to read the sports pages as it took me.
The dummy speaks to my wife, he steps out the door, he enters the
elevator. (Do machines recognize each other, I wonder.) Into the lobby,
out the door, on the street walking at a moderate pace – the dummy has
left on time, he does not have to worry – into the subway he goes. Steady,
calm, clean (I cleaned him myself Sunday night), untroubled, he goes
about his appointed tasks. He will be happy as long as I am satisfied with
him. And so I will be, whatever he does, as long as others are satisfied
with him.
Nobody notices anything different in the office, either. The secretary
says hello, he smiles back as I always do; then he walks to my cubicle,
hangs up his coat, and sits at my desk. The secretary brings him my mail.
After reading it, he calls for some dictation. Next, there is a pile of more
unfinished business from last Friday to attend to. Phone calls are made;
an appointment is set up for lunch with a client from out of town. There is
only one irregularity during the morning; I usually smoke between ten and
fifteen. But I set this down due to the fact that he is new at his work and
has not had the time to accumulate the tensions that I feel after working
six years in this office. It occurs to me that he will probably not have two
martinis – as I always do – during the lunch, but only one, and I am right.
But these are mere details, and will be to the dummy’s credit if anyone
notices them, which I doubt. His behavior with the out-of-town client is
correct – perhaps a shade too deferential, but this, too, I put down to
inexperience. Thank God, no simple matter trips him up. His table
manners are as they should be. He does not pick at his food, but eats with
appetite. And he knows he should sign the check rather than pay with a
credit card; the firm has an account at this restaurant.
In the afternoon there is a sales conference. The vice president
explains a new promotional campaign for the Midwest. The dummy makes
suggestions. The boss nods. The dummy taps his pencil on the long
mahogany table and looks thoughtful. I notice he is chain-smoking. Could
he be feeling the pressure so soon? What a hard life I led! After less than
a day of it, even a dummy shows some wear and tear. The rest of the
afternoon passes without any incident. The dummy makes his way home
to my wife and children, eats my dinner appreciatively, plays Monopoly
with the children for an hour, watches a Western on TV with my wife,
bathes, makes himself a ham sandwich, and then retires. I do not know
what he dreams he has, but I hope they are restful and pleasant. If my
approval can give him an untroubled sleep, he has it. I am entirely pleased
with my creation.
The dummy has been on the job for several months. What can I
report a greater degree of proficiency? But that is impossible. He was fine
the first day. He could not be any more like me than he was at the very
beginning. He does not have to get better at his job but only stick at it
contentedly, unrebelliously, without mechanical failure. My wife is happy
with him – at least, no more unhappy than she was with me. My children
call him Daddy and ask him for their allowance. My fellow workers and my
boss continue to entrust him with my job.
Lately, though – just past week, really – I have noticed something
that worries me. It is the attention that the dummy pays to the next
secretary, Miss Love. (I hope it isn’t her name that aroused him
somewhere in the depths of that complex machinery; I imagine that
machines can be literal-minded.) A slight lingering at her desk when he
comes in the morning, a second’s pause, no more when she says hello;
whereas I – and he until recently –used to walk to that desk without
breaking stride. And he does seem to be dictating more letters. Could it be
from increased zeal on behalf of the firm? I remember how, the very first
day, he spoke up at the sales conference. Or could it be the desire to
detain Miss Love? Are those letters necessary? I could say he thinks so.
But then you never know what goes on behind that imperturbable
dummy’s face of his. I am afraid to ask him. Is it because I do not want to
know the worst? Or because I am afraid he will be angry at my violation of
his privacy? In any case, I have decided to wait until he tells me.
Then one day it comes – the news I had dreaded. At eight in the
morning the dummy corners me in the shower, where I have been spying
on him while he shaves, marvelling how he remembers to cut himself
every once in a while, as I do. He unburdens himself to me. I am
astonished at how much he is moved – astonished and a little envious. I
never dreamed a dummy could have so much feeling, that I would see a
dummy weep. I try to quiet him. I admonish him, and then I reprimand him.
It’s no use. His tears become sobs. He, or rather his passion, whose
mechanism I cannot fathom, begins to revolt me. I am also terrified my
wife and children will hear him, rush to the bathroom, and there find this
berserk creature who would be incapable of normal responses. (Might
they find both of us here in the bathroom? That, too, is possible.) I run the
shower, open both the sink faucets, and flush the toilet to drown out the
painful noises he is making! All this for love! All this for the love of Miss
Love! He has barely spoken to her, except in the way of business. And yet
he is madly, desperately in love. He wants to leave my wife. I explain to
him how impossible that is. First of all, he has duties and responsibilities.
He is the husband and father to my wife and children. They depend on
him; their lives would be smashed by his selfish act. And second, what
does he know about Miss Love? She is at least ten years younger than he
is, has given no particular sign of noticing him at all, and probably has a
nice boyfriend her own age whom she’s planning to marry.
The dummy refuses to listen. He is inconsolable. He will have Miss
Love or – here he makes a threatening gesture – he will destroy himself.
He will bang his head against the wall, or jump out of a window,
disassembling irrevocably his delicate machinery. I become really
alarmed. I see my marvelous scheme, which has left me so beautifully at
my leisure and in peace the last months, ruined….
Why, if only you knew how I have spent these last months, while
the dummy was administering my life. Without a care in the world, except
for occasional curiosity as to the fate of my dummy. I have slid to the
bottom of the world. I sleep anywhere now: in flophouses, on the subway
(which I only board very late at night), in alleys and doorways. I do not
bother to collect my paycheck from the dummy anymore, because there is
nothing I want to buy. Only rarely do I shave. My clothes are torn and
stained.
Does this sound very dreary to you? It is not, it is not. Of course,
when the dummy first relieved me of my own life, I had grandiose plan for
living the lives of others. I wanted to be an Arctic explorer, a concert
pianist, a great courtesan, a world statesman. I tried being Alexander the
Great, then Mozart, then Bismarck, then Greta Garbo, then Elvis Presley –
in my imagination, of course. I imagined that, being none of these people
for long, I could have only their pleasure, none of their pain; for I could
escape, transform myself, whenever I wanted. But the experiment failed,
for lack of interest, from exhaustion, call it what you will. I discovered that I
am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but
any person at all. I like watching people, but I do not like talking to them,
dealing with them, or offending them. I do not even like talking to the
dummy. I am tired. I would like to be a mountain, a tree, a stone. If I am to
continue as a person, the life of the solitary derelict is the only one
tolerable. So you will see that it is quite out of the question that is should
allow the dummy to destroy himself, and have to take his place and live
my old life again.
-taken from I, etcetera, by Susan Sontag, Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 1988, Toronto, Canada.
