Status Updates From Frankissstein: A Love Story

“What is your story, sir? I said.
That is the dilemma, he replied. I do not know if I am the teller or the tale.”

“Is his story the result of his madness or its cause?”

“We seek to care and to console. We do not seek to cure. Madness cannot be cured; it is a disease of the soul.”

“There is a view that love, because it begins so spontaneously, is also simple. Yet if love engages our whole being and affects our whole world, how can it be simple? The day of simple are done - if they ever existed. Love is not a pristine planet before contaminants and pollutants, before the arrival of Man. Love is a disturbance among the disturbed.”

“I don’t say anything because he is the centre of his world. I have affected him and he never wonders how he has affected me. He is in control of what he creates. He hasn’t created me and so he feels uncertain.”

“I love you, he says.
I want to hold this moment. I want to believe it. I want his love to have enough salt in it to float me. I don’t want to be swimming for my life. I want to trust him. I don’t trust him.”

“A man who wants to be without his body. And I am holding his body in my left head.”

“Is this what I am to you? I said.
A hand? No.
A sex object.
Don’t you like what we do? (He took his penis out of his trousers.)
You know I do. (I spat in my palm.)
Then why deny pleasure?
To avoid pain. (He takes four minutes this way.)”

“I watched him talk. I love to watch him talk. He likes to be watched. He’s a showman.”

“I wish TO KNOW why all that ails mankind must be the fault of womankind?”

“We destroy out of hatred. We destroy out of love.”

“and therefore the monster has no name, for he has no need of one.
What father does not name his child? asked Shelley.
One who is terrified of what he has created, I said.”

“Why are you so easy in your body? he said.
Because it really is my body. I had it made for me.”

“Or we could just go on as we are, I said.
He shook his head. Of the scenarios I have sketched, your alternative is the only one that is impossible.”

“I get the sense, deep down, that Victor Stein is a high-functioning madman.”

“It is easy to be controlled by someone who is controlling and charming.”

“Nationalism is on the rise, I say.
He nods. That is a throwback. A fear. A refusal of the future. But the future cannot be refused.”

“I am part of a small group of transgender medical professionals. Some of us are transhuman enthusiasts too. That isn’t surprising; we feel or have felt that we’re in the wrong body. We can understand the feeling that any-body is the wrong body.”

“That isn’t sex, Victor.
I can’t decide with you, Ry, whether you are a Puritan or a Romantic.
I am a human being.”

“I love watching him. He has that sex-mix of soul-saving and erudition.”

“The alchemists sought three things, said Shelley: the secret of turning lead into gold, the secret of the Elixir of Eternal Life, the homunculus.”

“And so we passed our days, underfed, over-drunk, longing for the soul and not knowing where to find it.”

“I saw that the wretched creatures enslaved to the machines were as repetitive in their movements as machines. They were distinguished only by their unhappiness. The great wealth of the manufactories is not for the workers but for the owners. Humans must live in misery to be the mind of the machines.”

“What is real life these days?”

“sex is a democracy.”

“You got a lotta Not Yets in your life, Dr Shelley.

She’s right. I am liminal, cusping, in between, emerging, undecided, transitional, experimental, a start-up (or is it an upstart?) in my own life.”