“it’s going to be okay, alonso”

alonso was a nervous man. when he got dressed in the morning, he would routinely think “but this outfit makes me look like a malnourished otter!” these were not happy thoughts. and when he was introduced to strangers he would offer them items out of his pockets to avoid talking about himself. these were not happy encounters.

one day, when he was despairing about his nervous disposition, alonso was walking beside the river on the edge of town when he saw a man named ‘damien heulog’ sitting on the river bank. damien was throwing small flat stones on the surface of the water in the hope that they would skim to the other side of the river. they never did. in fact, each one sank without a trace the moment it splashed into the water. damien’s face was painted with a variety of products – lipstick, eye liner, eye shadow and just a hint of rouge. he wore his hair in a bun and his clothes originated from both the “male” and “female” sections of local shops.

extract from “there will be no inheritence” by evelyn sham (1954)

“i suppose it was about a year ago that i began trying to make myself infertile with any kind of…[pause]…any kind of sincerity. i started to hear a lot about nuclear test sites, you know – trinity, the marshall islands and, of course, the sites that were established in nevada in ’51. before then i had always been sure that continuing my family line was something i could never do but it wasn’t until i heard the stories about the government’s nuclear program that i started to think ‘hey…maybe this is it, maybe this is the way i should do it’.

it seemed so perfect. for me, my attraction to infertility stemmed from my…[pause]…complete conviction that i wanted to remove myself from the equation of humanity. at no time in my life was i drawn to the ideas of universal destruction that were being proposed by the far right after the war, particularly among the remnants of the war time elite. i never wanted to see the light of mankind extinguished, as some of my friends assumed at the time. instead, i wanted to free myself from an anxiety that had been with me from as early as i could remember. i was always afraid of what might happen, what could happen to other people after i’m dead and gone. i hoped that, if i reduced my chances of reproduction to absolute zero, then i would no longer have to deal with this anxiety about the future of the human race. [michael looks at the interviewer and gives a broad, boyish smile] you’re grinning [michael laughs with a light tone] i know….

so, anyway…[pause]…my first location was in the nevada desert. at the time, that was the one i knew the most about and it was the easiest for me to get to….”