Generation Loss Read Online Free PDF

that?"
    "Tell
me again why you're doing this?"
    Phil
ran a hand across his stubbled scalp. "Aw, man. You know, Cass, you are so
fucking hardassed, you know that? I really did think it would be a great gig
for you. The legendary Aphrodite Kamestos, the semilegendary Cassandra Neary—I
mean, you could get close to her, you know that? I saw her place, that island.
What you always used to talk about, all that bleak shit you like? Well, this is
it. All these rocks, and the ocean, the sky."
    He
sighed. "And, I dunno, there was something about her. When I met you—you
reminded me of her. You know?"
    "The
forgotten Cassandra Neary," I said. "The never-fucking-happened
Cassandra Neary."
    "Forget
it." He glared at me, then said, "You know, I should know better by
now. To try and do you a fucking favor." He picked up his phone.
"I'll find someone else."
    I
shook my head. "I'll do it, I'll do it. I need the money. I need to get
out of town." I glanced outside again. "So are you going to call me,
or what?"
    He
opened the cell phone. "I'll call this editor. Then I'll call this other
guy in Maine. I'll get him to set stuff up, bring you out in a boat or
something. Then I'll call you."
    "Well,
that's suitably vague." I stood. "So I guess I'll wait for you to
call me, or for some guy to do some stuff, or something."
    Phil
nodded. "Great. Hey, aren't you going to thank me?"
    "I'll
thank you when I get paid, how's that? I'll take you to dinner."
    I
leaned over to kiss his unkempt scalp.
    "Thanks,
Phil," I said, and walked home.
    5
    You'll
think I was leaving the city because I needed to escape from grief, or guilt,
or fear: all the reasons people fled in those years, and a lot of them escaped
to the same place I was heading.
    But
the truth is that when Christine had called me that morning, it had been almost
two years since we'd last spoken. She couldn't bear the sound of my voice,
she'd told me: it was like talking to a dead person. Or no, she went on, it was
like that nickname Phil Cohen had given me. It was like talking to an android,
something that mimicked human speech and affect but wasn't actually alive.
    "The
terrible thing is, I really loved you, Cass," she'd said on that last
message. "I love you now."
    I
knew she wanted me to meet her, to say I loved her too. I knew she was giving
me a chance to save her—to save myself, she would have said— but I couldn't
lie. I can't lie about that kind of stuff. This isn't a virtue. It's a flaw,
just as my seeing the true world is not a gift but a terrible thing. I've lived
my entire life expecting the worst, knowing it will happen, seeing it happen.
Making it happen, people used to think, then photographing it and making other
people see it too.
    People
think they want the truth. But the truth is that people want to be reassured
that it's only there that the horror lies, there on the other
side of the television, the computer screen, the world. No one wants to look on
the charred remains of a human corpse lying at their feet. No one wants to look
on unalloyed grief and horror and loss. I don't always want to myself, but I
won't deny that I do, and I won't deny that my photos show you what's really
there. I can't look away.
    6
    I
had vacation time saved up at the Strand, so I gave notice that I'd be gone for
a few weeks. They were surprised, but they also seemed relieved that I was
doing something normal—it was the first time I'd taken off in about five years.
I spent most of my last days there ferreting through the stacks, looking for
anything on Kamestos.
    I
didn't find anything, except for that one iconic photograph of her in an
Aperture volume on 20th century photographers, a black-and-white portrait taken
by her husband, the poet Stephen Haselton, shortly after their marriage. I knew
there were other images: a pencil drawing by Jean Cocteau that was on the
dustjacket of the original edition of Mors, a sketch by Brion Gysin that
looked like Jean-Paul Marat's death mask.
    I
assumed that