“Well, that’s a difficult question. One that is now being asked by teams of doctors, semioticians, linguists and anthropologists worldwide. A whole host of disciplines are working together on this one. It seems that people are waking up with it, so dreams seemed the obvious site of entry. It has been suggested that it is more likely that people are catching it as they move into a dream state. The structure of consciousness, identical to that of the unconscious, moves from the more or less illusory conditions of the personality into an automatic concrete version of the self found in dreams. The redistribution of elements may leave a person momentarily vulnerable to the virus, which may have already been there, dormant. Some specialists are suggesting that we use as little connotative language as possible, and to definitely avoid metalanguage. Like, well, like we’re using right now, Grant.”
“What does the virus look like, Dr. Rauf?”
“The immature virus looks a bit like a sunfish, brightly coloured, with spiky fins. And it has two long, pointy fangs, which it uses to practise scratching at the paradigms it will eventually invade. It’s important to remember, of course, that it is also becoming a tangent, and eventually the mature virus resembles the figure of abjection. The copy is a different matter. The copy is a strange, full and undetectable presence.”
Grant prepares his next question, pushing his finger into pursed lips, but he doesn’t ask it. Instead, he slides the finger into his mouth while making a slashing gesture across his throat with his free hand.
Grant has strong convictions when it conies to counselling the young, and he believes that adolescence is almost entirely a political passage. Young women should be made aware of the plight of their older sisters in shelters before being introduced to the thrill of the blouse. The connection, Grant acknowledges, is a male one, the short length of a long, punitive and controlling chain. He advises girls to seek out women who have enthusiasm, energy, exuberance. He instructs young men to proceed cautiously, to become aware of the complexity of the world, to seek out men who have a wide range of feeling. He cheers on the teenage homosexual, while sadly noting the complicated degrees of acceptance that await him. Grant listens with principled uncertainty, never hearing a wrong note in the broken voices of young men, or an awkwardness in a teenage girl, that isn’t important to the whole world. He gathers young people up and down, along the sides of his soft, kind voice, and asks some of them, with a hand dipping down through a circle of sunlight, if they would like to come and work in a big, beautiful television studio.
“Hello, Parkdale Crisis Hotline. My name is Peter, how can I help you?”
“Hi… uh… Peter. I got a strange question.”
Grant sits up on the couch and scrapes the label wrapped around a cigar. He flicks too forcefully with the back of his thumbnail and tears through the outer layer of tobacco.
“Oh… I’ve heard it all. You can’t shock me. Hey, first of all, what’s your name?”
“Uh, Warren.”
“OK, Warren, how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven, eleven… I spoke to an eleven-year-old girl yesterday morning who wanted a sister so bad that she was pricking holes in her father’s condoms. So, Warren, I know all about you eleven-year-olds.”
The boy laughs and clicks his tongue. Grant can tell that, right now, this troubled little man can’t understand anything that isn’t directly his problem.
“Warren, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me, exactly, what you called to say.”
“Mmm. OK… I think I got the dog pregnant.”
Grant presses a finger on the edge of an ashtray, tilting it up off the table.
“Warren… that’s not possible.”
“I took the dog down into the crawl space and I poked it between the legs.”
Grant lifts his finger and the ashtray clicks on the glass.
“What do you mean you poked it?’”
“I went inside it. You know.”
“OK. Warren. No matter what you did. No matter what happened, you can’t get a dog pregnant. It’s physically impossible.”
The boy breaks in, crying and talking furiously.
“I’m so scared. I keep looking at her. She comes to me at the dinner table. What if she’s pregnant? What if? I don’t want a little dog brother! My parents are going to kill me! Shit! What if she’s pregnant?”
“Whoa boy! Slow down there, Warren. First of all, I wish you’d listen to me. Are you willing to listen for a second?”
“Alright.”
“Are you listening, Warren?”
“Yes.”
“OK. This is big news. This is important. Here it is: you cannot get any animal pregnant. None. Not a dog, not a squirrel, not an ape. Not ever. Ever. Never. Are you listening, Warren?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Now that’s fine. That’s definitely
“What? What’s my problem?”
“Well, Warren. What you’ve done has made you feel bad, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good thing. It’s right that this makes you worry.”
“It is?”
