Crash (17 page)
Authors: J.G. Ballard
Our behaviour together became increasingly stylized, as if we were some skilled partnership of surgeons, jugglers or comedians. Far from reacting with horror or revulsion now at the sight of these injured victims, sitting stunned on the grass beside their cars after an early afternoon fog patch, or pinned against their instrument panels, Vaughan and I felt a sense of professional detachment, in which the first workings of some kind of true involvement were revealed. My horror and disgust at the sight of these appalling injuries had given way to a lucid acceptance that the translation of these injuries in terms of our fantasies and sexual behaviour was the only means of re-invigorating these wounded and dying victims. Early that evening, after seeing a woman driver with severe facial injuries, Vaughan lay for ten minutes with
his penis in the mouth of a middle-aged, silver-haired prostitute, almost choking her as she knelt across him. He held her head fiercely in his hands to prevent her from moving, until the spit dribbled from her mouth like a tap. Driving slowly around the darkening streets of the housing estates to the south of the airport, I watched over my shoulder as Vaughan moved this woman around the rear seat, steering her with his strong thighs. All his violence and anger had returned. After his orgasm the woman slumped against the seat. She let the semen drip on to the damp vinyl below Vaughan’s testicles, gasping for breath as she wiped away the flecks of vomit from his penis. Staring at her face as she replaced her spilled bag, I saw the wounded face of the injured woman driver irrigated with Vaughan’s semen. On the seat, and on Vaughan’s thighs, on the hands of this middle-aged prostitute, the semen glimmered in opalescent drops, their colour changing from red to amber and green in the rhythm of the traffic lights, reflecting the thousands of lights in the night air as we sped along the expressway, the harsh phosphorescent tubes of the lamp standards, and the huge corona of light that hung over the airport. As I looked at the evening sky it seemed as if Vaughan’s semen bathed the entire landscape, powering these thousands of engines, electric circuits and private destinies, irrigating the smallest gestures of our lives.
his penis in the mouth of a middle-aged, silver-haired prostitute, almost choking her as she knelt across him. He held her head fiercely in his hands to prevent her from moving, until the spit dribbled from her mouth like a tap. Driving slowly around the darkening streets of the housing estates to the south of the airport, I watched over my shoulder as Vaughan moved this woman around the rear seat, steering her with his strong thighs. All his violence and anger had returned. After his orgasm the woman slumped against the seat. She let the semen drip on to the damp vinyl below Vaughan’s testicles, gasping for breath as she wiped away the flecks of vomit from his penis. Staring at her face as she replaced her spilled bag, I saw the wounded face of the injured woman driver irrigated with Vaughan’s semen. On the seat, and on Vaughan’s thighs, on the hands of this middle-aged prostitute, the semen glimmered in opalescent drops, their colour changing from red to amber and green in the rhythm of the traffic lights, reflecting the thousands of lights in the night air as we sped along the expressway, the harsh phosphorescent tubes of the lamp standards, and the huge corona of light that hung over the airport. As I looked at the evening sky it seemed as if Vaughan’s semen bathed the entire landscape, powering these thousands of engines, electric circuits and private destinies, irrigating the smallest gestures of our lives.
It was during this evening that I noticed the first of Vaughan’s self-inflicted wounds. At a Western Avenue filling station he deliberately trapped his hand in the door of the car, mimicking the injuries to the arm of a young hotel receptionist involved in a side-swipe collision in the car-park of her hotel. Vaughan picked repeatedly at the scabs running across his knuckles. The scars on his knees, healed now for more than a year, were beginning to
re-open. The points of blood seeped through the worn fabric of his jeans. Red flecks appeared on the lower curvature of the dashboard locker, on the lower rim of the radio console, and marked the black vinyl of the doors. Vaughan encouraged me to drive faster than the airport access roads allowed. When I braked sharply at the intersections he deliberately let himself slide against the instrument panel. Blood mingled with the dried semen on the seats, marking my own hands with dark points as I turned the wheel. His face was whiter than I had ever seen it, and he moved in bursts of exhausted nervousness around the cabin of the car, like an uncomfortable animal. This hyper-irritation reminded me of my own long recovery from a bad acid trip some years earlier, when I had felt for months afterwards as if a vent of hell had opened momentarily in my mind, as if the membranes of my brain had been exposed in some appalling crash.
re-open. The points of blood seeped through the worn fabric of his jeans. Red flecks appeared on the lower curvature of the dashboard locker, on the lower rim of the radio console, and marked the black vinyl of the doors. Vaughan encouraged me to drive faster than the airport access roads allowed. When I braked sharply at the intersections he deliberately let himself slide against the instrument panel. Blood mingled with the dried semen on the seats, marking my own hands with dark points as I turned the wheel. His face was whiter than I had ever seen it, and he moved in bursts of exhausted nervousness around the cabin of the car, like an uncomfortable animal. This hyper-irritation reminded me of my own long recovery from a bad acid trip some years earlier, when I had felt for months afterwards as if a vent of hell had opened momentarily in my mind, as if the membranes of my brain had been exposed in some appalling crash.
MY LAST meeting with Vaughan – the climax of a long punitive expedition into my own nervous system – took place a week later in the mezzanine lounge of the Oceanic Terminal. In retrospect, it seems ironic that this house of glass, of flight and possibility, should have been the departure point for our own lives and deaths. As he walked towards me through the chromium chairs and tables, his reflection multiplied in the glass wall-panels, Vaughan had never appeared more derelict and uncertain. His pock-marked face and haggard shamble through the passengers waiting for their flight-calls together gave him the look of an unsuccessful fanatic, doggedly holding together his spent obsessions.
He stood beside me at the bar when I rose to greet him, barely bothering to recognize me, as if I were some unfamiliar blur. His hands fretted at the bar, searching for a control surface, the points of fresh blood on his knuckles catching the light. During the previous six days I had waited restlessly in my office and apartment, watching the motorways through the windows, running down the elevator staircase whenever I thought that I had seen his car speeding past. I scrutinized the gossip columns of newspapers and film-trade magazines, trying to guess which screen star or political celebrity Vaughan might be
following, assembling the elements of imaginary accidents in his mind. All the experiences of our weeks together had left me in a state of increasing violence, which I knew only Vaughan could resolve. In my fantasies, as I made love to Catherine, I saw myself in an act of sodomy with Vaughan, as if only this act could solve the codes of a deviant technology.
following, assembling the elements of imaginary accidents in his mind. All the experiences of our weeks together had left me in a state of increasing violence, which I knew only Vaughan could resolve. In my fantasies, as I made love to Catherine, I saw myself in an act of sodomy with Vaughan, as if only this act could solve the codes of a deviant technology.
Vaughan waited as I ordered a drink for him, staring across the runways at an airliner lifting into the air over the western perimeter of the airfield. He had telephoned me that morning, his voice barely recognizable, and suggested that we meet at the airport. Seeing him again, tracing the outlines of his buttocks and thighs in his worn trousers, the scars around his mouth and below his jaw angle, filled me with a hard, erotic excitement.
‘Vaughan …’ I tried to press the cocktail into his hands. He nodded without arguing. ‘Try to sip it. Do you want some breakfast?’
Vaughan made no effort to touch the cocktail. He stared at me with his uncertain eyes, like a marksman calculating the distance of a target. He picked up a water jug, holding the sliding fluid between his hands. When he filled a dirty glass on the counter and drank thirstily, I realized that he was moving into the opening stages of an acid high. He was squeezing and flexing the palms of his hands, wiping his scarred mouth with his fingertips. I waited as he climbed these first gradients of excitation and alarm, eyes roving around the glass-enclosed mezzanine as he picked from the air the first motes of fused light and movement.
We walked to his car, double-parked alongside an airline coach. A few paces ahead of me, Vaughan moved like an over-careful dream-walker. He stared at different pieces of the sky, experiencing – as I myself remembered
only too well – the first of those premonitory light changes that turn a brilliant summer noon into a leaden winter evening within the space of a second. Sitting in the passenger seat of the Lincoln, Vaughan eased his shoulders into the upholstery, as if laying out his wounds. He watched me fumble with the ignition, a faint smile mocking me for all the eagerness I had shown in pursuing him, and yet accepting now his own failure and my authority over him.
only too well – the first of those premonitory light changes that turn a brilliant summer noon into a leaden winter evening within the space of a second. Sitting in the passenger seat of the Lincoln, Vaughan eased his shoulders into the upholstery, as if laying out his wounds. He watched me fumble with the ignition, a faint smile mocking me for all the eagerness I had shown in pursuing him, and yet accepting now his own failure and my authority over him.
As I started the engine Vaughan laid his bandaged palm across my thigh. Surprised by this physical contact between us, I thought at first that Vaughan was trying to reassure me. He lifted his hand to my mouth, and I saw the dented silver cube in his fingers. I unwrapped the foil and placed the sugar cube on my tongue.
We left the airport through the exit tunnel, crossed Western Avenue and ascended the upward ramp of the interchange. For twenty minutes I drove along the Northolt expressway, holding the car in the centre lane and letting the faster traffic overtake us on either side. Vaughan lay back, right cheek resting against the cool seat, his arms limply at his sides. Now and then his hands contracted, arms and legs flexing involuntarily. Already I could feel the first effects of the acid. My palms felt cool and tender; wings were about to grow from them and lift me into the speeding air. An icy nimbus was gathering around the roof of my skull, like the clouds that form in the hangars of spacecraft. I had taken an acid trip two years earlier, a paranoid nightmare during which I had let a Trojan horse into my mind. As Catherine tried helplessly to calm me she had appeared in my eyes as a hostile and predatory bird. I had felt my brains sliding on to the pillow through the hole she had pecked in my skull. I remembered crying like a child and
hanging from her arm, begging her not to leave me as my body shrank to a naked membrane.
hanging from her arm, begging her not to leave me as my body shrank to a naked membrane.
With Vaughan, by contrast, I felt at ease, confident of his affection for me, as if he were deliberately guiding me along this expressway which he had created for me alone. The other cars passing us were present through an enormous act of courtesy on his part. At the same time, I was sure that everything around me, the growing extension of the LSD through my body, was part of some ironic intention of Vaughan’s, as if the excitement suffusing my mind hovered between hostility and affection, emotions which had become interchangeable.
We joined the fast westward sweep of the outer circular motorway. I moved the car into the slow lane as we turned around the central drum of the interchange, accelerating when we gained the open deck of the motorway, traffic speeding past us. Everywhere the perspectives had changed. The concrete walls of the slip road reared over us like luminous cliffs. The marker lines diving and turning formed a maze of white snakes, writhing as they carried the wheels of the cars crossing their backs, as delighted as dolphins. The overhead route signs loomed above us like generous dive-bombers. I pressed my palms against the rim of the steering wheel, pushing the car unaided through the golden air. Two airport coaches and a truck overtook us, their revolving wheels almost motionless, as if these vehicles were pieces of stage scenery suspended from the sky. Looking around, I had the impression that all the cars on the highway were stationary, the spinning earth racing beneath them to create an illusion of movement. The bones of my forearms formed a solid coupling with the shift of the steering column, and I felt the smallest tremors of the roadwheels magnified a hundred times, so that we traversed
each grain of gravel or cement like the surface of a small asteroid. The murmur of the transmission system reverberated through my legs and spine, echoing off the plates of my skull as if I myself were lying in the transmission tunnel of the car, my hands taking the torque of the crankshaft, my legs spinning to propel the vehicle forwards.
each grain of gravel or cement like the surface of a small asteroid. The murmur of the transmission system reverberated through my legs and spine, echoing off the plates of my skull as if I myself were lying in the transmission tunnel of the car, my hands taking the torque of the crankshaft, my legs spinning to propel the vehicle forwards.
The daylight above the motorway grew brighter, an intense desert air. The white concrete became a curving bone. Waves of anxiety enveloped the car like pools of heat off summer macadam. Looking down at Vaughan, I tried to master this nervous spasm. The cars overtaking us were now being superheated by the sunlight, and I was sure that their metal bodies were only a fraction of a degree below their melting points, held together by the force of my own vision, and that the slightest shift of my attention to the steering wheel would burst the metal films that held them together and break these blocks of boiling steel across our path. By contrast, the oncoming cars were carrying huge cargoes of cool light, floats loaded with electric flowers being transported to a festival. As their speeds increased I found myself drawn into the fast lane, so that the oncoming vehicles were moving almost straight towards us, enormous carousels of accelerating light. Their radiator grilles formed mysterious emblems, racing alphabets that unravelled at high speed across the road surface.
Exhausted by the effort of concentrating on the traffic and holding the cars around us in their lanes, I took my hands off the wheel and let the car press on. In a long and elegant swerve the Lincoln crossed the fast lane. The tyres roared against the concrete verge, lashing the windshield with a storm of dust. I lay back helplessly, my body exhausted. In front of me I saw Vaughan’s hand on
the wheel. He sat across me, one knee up on the instrument panel, steering the car within inches of the central reservation. An oncoming truck sped towards us in the adjacent fast lane. Vaughan removed his hand from the wheel and gestured towards it, suggesting that I drive the Lincoln across the central reservation and straight into the truck.
the wheel. He sat across me, one knee up on the instrument panel, steering the car within inches of the central reservation. An oncoming truck sped towards us in the adjacent fast lane. Vaughan removed his hand from the wheel and gestured towards it, suggesting that I drive the Lincoln across the central reservation and straight into the truck.
Distracted by Vaughan’s physical presence as he leaned against me, I held the wheel again, steering the car down the fast lane. Vaughan’s body was a collection of loosely coupled planes. The elements of his musculature and personality were suspended a few millimetres apart, floating beside me in this pressure-free zone like the contents of an astronaut’s capsule. I watched the cars approaching us, unable to grasp more than a fraction of the thousands of messages which their wheels and headlamps, windshields and radiator grilles were flashing at me.
I remembered my first journey home from Ashford Hospital after my accident. The brightness of the traffic, the nervous perspectives of the motorway embankments and the vehicle lanes along Western Avenue, had anticipated this acid vision, as if my wounds had flowered into these paradisial creatures, celebrating the unity of my crash and this metallized Elysium. As Vaughan urged me again to crash the car into the vehicles approaching us, I was tempted to obey him, making no effort to answer the teasing pressure of his hand. An airline coach sped towards us, its silver hull irradiating all six lanes of the motorway, bearing down on us like an alighting archangel.
I held Vaughan’s wrist in my hand. The dark hairs of his pallid forearm, the scar tissue on the knuckles of his ring and index fingers, were now irrigated with a harsh
beauty. Taking my eyes off the road, I clasped Vaughan’s hand in my own, trying to close my eyes to the fountain of light that poured through the windshield of the car from the vehicles approaching us.
beauty. Taking my eyes off the road, I clasped Vaughan’s hand in my own, trying to close my eyes to the fountain of light that poured through the windshield of the car from the vehicles approaching us.
An armada of angelic creatures, each surrounded by an immense corona of light, was landing on the motorway on either side of us, sweeping down in opposite directions. They soared past, a few feet above the ground, landing everywhere on these endless runways that covered the landscape. I realized that all these roads and expressways had been built by us unknowingly for their reception.
Leaning across me, Vaughan steered the car through the flight paths. As we changed direction, horns and tyres screamed around us. Vaughan controlled the wheel, like a parent guiding an exhausted child. I held the rim passively in my hands, following the pathway of the car down a slip road.
We stopped below an overpass, the front fender of the Lincoln rolling on to the concrete palisade that divided the motorway embankment from the edge of an abandoned wrecker’s yard. I listened to the last music of the engine before I switched off the ignition, and lay back in my seat. In the screen of the rear-view mirror I watched the cars climbing the access ramp on to the motorway behind us, eager arrivals at this aerial carnival. They sailed along the road surface above our heads to join the aircraft Vaughan had watched for so many months. As I gazed at the distant causeways of the northern circular motorway I could see that everywhere these metallized creatures were soaring through the sunlight, ascending from the traffic jams that had locked them together.
Around me the interior of the car glowed like a magician’s bower, the light within the compartment becoming
darker and brighter as I moved my eyes. The instrument dials irradiated my skin with their luminous needles and numerals. The carapace of the instrument binnacle, the inclined planes of the dashboard panel, the metal sills of the radio and ashtrays gleamed around me like altarpieces, their geometries reaching towards my body like the stylized embraces of some hyper-cerebral machine.
darker and brighter as I moved my eyes. The instrument dials irradiated my skin with their luminous needles and numerals. The carapace of the instrument binnacle, the inclined planes of the dashboard panel, the metal sills of the radio and ashtrays gleamed around me like altarpieces, their geometries reaching towards my body like the stylized embraces of some hyper-cerebral machine.
In the breaker’s yard a testudo of abandoned cars lay together in the ever-changing light, their outlines shifting as if some time-wind were blowing across them. Strips of rusting chrome leaked into the overheated air, patches of intact cellulose bled away into the crown of light that covered the yard. The spurs of deformed metal, the triangles of fractured glass, were signals that had lain unread for years in this shabby grass, ciphers translated by Vaughan and myself as we sat with our arms around each other in the centre of the electric storm moving across our retinas.
I stroked Vaughan’s shoulder, remembering the terror in which I had clung to my wife. Yet Vaughan, for all his harshness, was a wholly benevolent partner, the eye of this illumination of the landscape around us. Taking his hand, I pressed his palm against the medallion of the horn boss, an aluminized emblem which had always irritated me. I felt the indentation in his white skin, remembering the triton-shaped bruise in the palm of the dead Remington as he lay across my bonnet, remembering the pink grooves in my wife’s skin left by her underwear, the imprints of imaginary wounds, as she changed in her department store cubicle, remembering the exciting crevices and sulci of Gabrielle’s crippled body. One by one, I moved Vaughan’s hand across the glowing dials of the instrument panel, pressing his fingers against the
sharp toggles, the projecting lances of the direction indicator and gear shift.
sharp toggles, the projecting lances of the direction indicator and gear shift.
At last I let his hand rest on my penis, reassured by its firm pressure on my testicles. I turned towards Vaughan, floating with him on the warm amnion of illuminated air, encouraged by the stylized morphology of the automobile’s interior, by the hundreds of radiant gondolas soaring along the motorway above our heads. As I embraced him, Vaughan’s body seemed to slide up and down in my arms, the muscles of his back and buttocks becoming hard and opaque as I felt the changing planes. I held his face in my hands, feeling the porcelain smoothness of his cheeks, and touched with my fingers the scars on his lips and cheeks. Vaughan’s skin seemed to be covered with scales of metallic gold as the points of sweat on his arms and neck fired my eyes. I hesitated at finding myself wrestling with this ugly golden creature, made beautiful by its scars and wounds. I moved my mouth across the scars on his lips, feeling with my tongue for those familiar elements of long-vanished dashboards and windshields. Vaughan loosened his leather jacket, exposing the re-opened wounds that marked his chest and abdomen, a deranged drag queen revealing the leaking scars of an unsuccessful trans-sexual surgery. I lowered my head to his chest, pressing my cheek against the bloody profiles of a collapsing steering wheel, the collision points of an instrument panel. I ran my lips along his left collar-bone, and sucked at his scarred nipple, feeling the re-sectioned areola between my lips. I moved my mouth down his abdomen to his damp groin, marked with blood and semen, a faint odour of a woman’s excrement clinging to the shaft of his penis. A zodiac of unforgotten collisions illuminated Vaughan’s groin, and one by one I explored these scars with my lips, tasting the blood
and urine. With my fingers I touched the scar on his penis, then felt the glans within my mouth. I loosened Vaughan’s blood-stained trousers. His naked buttocks were like a pubertal youth’s, as unscarred as a child’s. The nerves in my legs and arms began to jump with irritation, my limbs flexing themselves in a series of nervous spasms. I crouched behind Vaughan, forcing his thighs against my own. The jutting carapace of the instrument binnacle presided over the dark cleft between his buttocks. With my right hand I parted his buttocks, feeling for the hot vent of his anus. For several minutes, as the cabin walls glowed and shifted, as if trying to take up the deformed geometry of the crashed cars outside, I laid my penis at the mouth of his rectum. His anus opened around the head of my penis, settling itself around the shaft, his hard detrusor muscles gripping my glans. As I moved in and out of his rectum the lightborne vehicles soaring along the motorway drew the semen from my testicles. After my orgasm I lifted myself slowly from Vaughan, holding his buttocks apart with my hands so as not to injure his rectum. Still parting his buttocks, I watched my semen leak from his anus across the fluted ribbing of the vinyl upholstery.
and urine. With my fingers I touched the scar on his penis, then felt the glans within my mouth. I loosened Vaughan’s blood-stained trousers. His naked buttocks were like a pubertal youth’s, as unscarred as a child’s. The nerves in my legs and arms began to jump with irritation, my limbs flexing themselves in a series of nervous spasms. I crouched behind Vaughan, forcing his thighs against my own. The jutting carapace of the instrument binnacle presided over the dark cleft between his buttocks. With my right hand I parted his buttocks, feeling for the hot vent of his anus. For several minutes, as the cabin walls glowed and shifted, as if trying to take up the deformed geometry of the crashed cars outside, I laid my penis at the mouth of his rectum. His anus opened around the head of my penis, settling itself around the shaft, his hard detrusor muscles gripping my glans. As I moved in and out of his rectum the lightborne vehicles soaring along the motorway drew the semen from my testicles. After my orgasm I lifted myself slowly from Vaughan, holding his buttocks apart with my hands so as not to injure his rectum. Still parting his buttocks, I watched my semen leak from his anus across the fluted ribbing of the vinyl upholstery.
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