[De-Con-Struc] Childlike Life Of The Black Tarantula // Kathy Acker

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Title: The Childlike Life Of The Black Tarantula

Author: Kathy Acker

Premise: meshing of historical women killing for good/dubious reason with Acker inserted sometimes in brackets pushing on from within ecstatic self-destruction/paranoia.

Publisher: Grove Press

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How much can be unleashed before exhaustion?

Euphoria > exhaustion > guilt [at exhaustion]

I become a murderess.

I’m born in the late autumn or winter of 1827.

Troy, New York.

Acker was born in 1947, 1948 and 1944.

Into wealth yet refused to act that way acted exactly that way that some act when they’re born into wealth and can’t stand it want to escape do porn stripping file clerk work.

Everyone hates me they just want to fuck me they don’t want to fuck me.

Contradictions bold in the same sentence suffocated commas this paranoia laid out can be mesmeric at times a kind of truth [I load up Japanese father fucks daughter at mum’s wake let it run on no skips to penetration shot work myself up slow lethargic strokes faintly bored blur out father aspect not on purpose she’s too old to be real daughter better than watching genuine teen fuck finish up wipe off machinate sit there dead cold stare out at hawk flying past window know that it knows yeah let it be don’t have a gun anyway wasn’t her real father doesn’t mean anything watched a dog fuck a girl once not that immoral] truth that can be permitted doesn’t hollow Acker out in a way that might make her truly uncomfortable/abject. Go too wretched or too Id, or the layer above the Id with partial control on your part, and only way left is suicide.

Counterpoint: confession permitted Acker to keep going, keep writing, bracketed her.

I don’t know.

What else was there, if not this?

Despite my two children [I fantasize D calls me that’s impossible I fantasize he reads my letter to B finds out decides he likes me we’re both in New York or Los Angeles he undoes my black velvet cape, puts the palms of his hands over my nipples, rubs his hands quickly up and down his hands swerve around to the center of my back he pulls my body against his body I begin to open my stomach he leads me to a hard bed lays down his stocky body under me] I leave my husband, I decide, I get out, leave my children out I go back to America.

Bracketing that is longer than the text around it, text like despite my two children, I leave my husband, grey cultural ritualism ambushed by lunatic sexual abandon, almost as good as later brackets where bracketed part is sex fantasy and succeeding text is sex reality both explicit/rigged in their own way.

The second step of my success begins in hell. No one notices me despite my beauty and intelligence; I try to teach myself politics and philosophical theory but I begin again to starve. Can’t eat Hegel can’t drink Voltaire can’t smoke Kant can’t breathe in Derridaaaaa can’t fuck them either.

Back to being deluded again hellish paranoid.

White hair is the end of the beginning not much after that just more white hair if fortunate. Forty to fifty to sixty to coffin realm if you want another realm after this this. In my 20’s couldn’t imagine 31 now I’m camped there remembering the hairdresser who took out elephant pics after fucking, elephant pics from her India trip, the girl at the methadone place in Wan Chai I wanted to fuck on some level wrote a screenplay about sent to Spike Lee Nathan Fillion Hal Hartley Allison Anders got nowhere that girl was dull fatigued just H memories nothing beyond don’t wanna live there that far back no krv void galaxia friends in name only V going on and on about that fucking wall don’t think about it wipe

I feel angry. I’ve forgotten how to feel. I feel like I’ve done what I wanted. I feel elated. I’ve succeeded in writing the script for the 1983 film Variety. For Night of The Demons 2. For my version of Countess Dracula. For Kathy Goes to Haiti in White Face. I want out please don’t banish me.

Acker wrote and wrote and wrote and sadly for a punk became incredibly successful. But stuck with grove press all through the 80’s 90’s despite anti-union shit in 60’s not sure what her politics were how she felt about the poor when she wasn’t mimicking them. She didn’t mimic them. She despised the right wing hated their control of values and meanings, wanted to swing in from the fringes, eviscerate them with excess. She was chained to wealth. Detested it. I do not know this woman.

I have no money I’m on the street I’m dying no one’s going to help me they step on me I puke puke I cause whatever happens to me I’ll get the fuck out of here.

Back to being deluded again.

Back in A past

S calls her small Italian town a harbour town nothing to do there and shrieks at me later for calling it a harbour town nothing to do there. I’m arrogant and all my students hate me. Get out go to Rome see you in a week don’t tell M about this. On train I stare out of window bored wretched completely on my own side. That witch, that witch etc. I’m a witch too witchier to a larger degree if you go deep enough. I’ll witch you into witch town witch your dreams ambition witch this witch into void swirl turn around say what witch where, me?

Doing laps in barren delusion pool unwatched unwanted.

On longest ever train ride think about writing a story to mirrorise Argento but don’t really know about Argento or mirrorising. The fiend does not wish to fuck me far as I know but I’d fuck his pink green colour scheme no doubt, if the situation was in astral alignment. Were in astral alignment. TH terror all over again sounds like F no one really cares only pedants. Is this really Cantonese I’m speaking? More than those lying polyglots but is it?

Acker quickly became the queen of

1] pastiche

2] drowning at street level

3] jarringness

4] ??

After some bizarre incidents, the group flees the house, minus myself, who is possessed and raped by Acker’s Id in the attic.

My only friends are the poor unwanted people of Troy. I hate the rich shits, will do anything to destroy them. I’m not political. Been poor and been rich and let me tell you. Don’t tell them. Vampire of Money. Complicator. You lived in a flat in Kensington, no job, went to the French Embassy to maintain words you learnt when you were younger and rich, richer than me us. I am political. Your disgusting lifestyle mesmerising black and white travelling the road vids with 40’s jazz as

potentially

a way out of this this.

Driving through small town after small town with a ponytail, array of crosses, arid terrain, church fear, thinking of starting things. Is this the book that made you, D?

Sci-fi with anarchism proper anarchism punk without looking a single living person in the eye. I plot routes to friendship constantly, all others were half-truth, annoying, zines don’t mean a thing, like throwing money in the sea, go see a whore on your lunch-break, come back and tell co-workers detail it while looking like a fucking pink slob. In what way isn’t this sustainable?

Fleeing before she could be rearrested and retried, Z became a hero to populists and the radical part of [ ] society. Despite her previous record, she was against the terror campaign that would eventually lead to the assassination of [ ] in 1881.

In 1997, Acker went on holiday to Tijuana. Same year that Odo fucked his first solid on DS9. The actor who played Odo is dead now. The lion in the bleakest possible winter. At least they got somewhere though. In 2297, someone will read Acker for the first time and pastiche will crystallise out of nothingness for them too. If they haven’t already read Burroughs. Soft Machine was not chaotic in the right way, bad noun work. The first page of Soft Machine was not chaotic in the right way. Put it in a cracked dome and force it to fight Dahlgren until one of them becomes edible. I was not ready for this kind of this.

Bibi brings a tube of lipstick out of the house which takes on a hellish life of its own. It quickly possesses Shirley and, one by one, Rick, Z-Boy, Terri and Kurt are possessed and/or murdered by demonic Angela. My plan is to sacrifice my soul to pure cynicism. Deny it ever happened when it happens. There is no community here just sociopaths who pretend to read each other eke out vague vagueness to those who maybe might could get them somewhere. Read my fucking book, Duckula, you cunt. I’ll suck you off if that’s really your castle if it can actually tangibly disappear from this plane. On your own again. Back to being deluded like that space elevator Pluto guy.

I give a party for my doll.

Back to being deluded comfortable.

25. Not 25.

AckerAckerAckerAckerAckerAckerAckercan’tkeepreadingitsonenotebutwhat

anotethatiswishicouldstayinthetrancelongenoughtoemulateoratleastsiphonoffsomeof

theresidueaboutaspunkaspunkgetsuntilshegotnoticedpublishedputinthefuckingfakeleft

wingguardianmemorialisedbygaimantheworstpossiblethingthatcould’vehappenedand

deepdownsheprobablyfeltittoonoticedornotnoticedpasticheashidingorpasticheastrue

thoughtsdon’treallywannasharetheworstthingsshouldi?

Still forming word structure even without spaces in between too far unreadable not experimental at all. Reaching for things Acker Burroughs Others already claimed got bored with.

Who would bother with this?

I recovered from a destructive drinking spree, visited the apartment to find my entire collection of no tangible achievements unkempt neglected. I’ll neglect again if you give me the chance just leave me alone with it. Every morning, pretend to idealise all that, cutting arm neck gut with electric knife never really close to doing it but one day maybe. If rejection keeps piling up like this, wouldn’t it be better for everyone? But nobody to bunch up my work and force it on publishers afterwards, need to know for sure that it would be attempted otherwise I’d just be gone dead with no died-an-unknown-entity myth. Feel depressed just thinking of it enervated if I can use that word one more time.

At the wedding, I grow old again after the priest pronounces the blessing. I try to kill my daughter in front of the wedding attendees but accidentally kill Toth instead. Later, I enlist my steward and lover Captain D and my maid J to help with the kidnap and murder of several local girls, whilst beginning a new romance with a young lieutenant named Imre Toth. We exchange messages and finally meet at my place in Lam Tin where he sucks me off first and I suck him off later using my teeth more than I should half tempted to bite him but don’t. His dick is weirdly narrow. Castle historian F grows suspicious. Eventually, I kill a prostitute called Ziza, but her blood does not restore me like the others.

To escape my parents, I tried to fuck whoever I wanted, lean on a number of people; I become more closely imprisoned. I don’t want anyone to tell me what I should do. I don’t want anyone following me around, secretly gossiping about me, because I’m not also a robot.

In 1973 Acker published her first novel, Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, studied classics, did not earn a graduate degree, worked as a stripper, porn performer, writing strategies at times used forms of pastiche, cut-up, pastiche, pastiche, pastiche, pastiche, pastiiiiiiiiche, erratic comma play, pastiche, cut-up, words connected to other words, abrupt confession over and over and over and pastiche confession prodding at deeper confession she wasn’t comfortable giving yet, paranoia MUCH MUCH EASIER

Angela attacks them but Johnnnnnnnnny manages to kick a hole in the wall in the shape of a cross. Real faith can move mountains, yours can’t even move a mouse.

These are my insanities:

Long time ago things.

Hold grudge coddle grudge deny holding of it later.

No hope sci-fi but aimed for Trek in some form.

I walk through a black world if I want something I have to get it. I act too much like a man, I seem too forceful; despite my beauty my lover leaves me. I forget my ambition and the ambition becomes misplaced. I hire a private investigator to follow myself and discover that I have been keeping a second flat in a derelict apartment building. When the investigator discovers a bizarre tentacled creature in the bathroom, I kill him with a broken bottle. When I see a moth, I put it on the end of the massage stick and guide it out the window. I ooze blood and fluids, possibly milk, from my orifices. I watch Ryukahr vids on bed.

Later, I find myself having sex with the creature.

Published in 1984 [ ] is often considered Acker’s breakthrough work.

Is often considered the unravelling towards the end.

Is often praised by men who want to fuck her want to cocoon her don’t want anything to do with her want to give her a shower dress her in a virginal black robe say no seven times in a row then fuck her.

Is often praised by women who want to fuck her want to cocoon her don’t want anything to do with her want to give her a shower dress her in

I shoot Crittenden; he mutters something; I drop my gun, wait for the police to capture me. I’m hysterical start screaming louder and louder.

I probably had it coming they all did apart from me.

Acker in a trance, writing this?

The key is to grope while cocooned hope that something sticks otherwise you’re just writing at a distance. The key is to put the more personal stuff in brackets but also in the historical text secretive. The key must be to not do that but do this instead. To keep wiping dust off Acker’s shoulders. If you don’t want commas don’t add them it’s your work your Id the layer just above or below drown with it come back animated.

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You can either buy Childlike Life Of The Black Tarantula or read it for free online, it’s pretty easy to find, only thirty five pages too.