Alix has many problems. For instance, when Alix was eight and got caught French kissing the neighbor from four houses down the street, Alix's mother was terrified. ALIX, YOU LITTLE SLUT! she screamed over and over YOU LITTLE SLUT! Days later Alix's mother killed herself, found overdosed on amphetamines with her heart exploded. She hadn't even known that Alix's hand had been down the neighbor's pants.
Sometimes Alix felt masculine, sometimes Alix didn't. Most of the time Alix felt like the boy from the country song that was named Sue. Alix would daydream about one day punching Alix's Dad with a terrible fist while furiously singing the words MY NAME IS ALIX! HOW DO YOU DO! NOW YOU'RE GOING TO DIE! But Alix would never see DAD again and Alix knew it well.
In the beginning was the word and the word was Alix and was with Alix always. It was solid, seemingly set to stone. It was the essence, the form that was Alix. And yet at times, it seemed all together wrong, incorrect, a terrible fallacy that had plagued Alix's entire life. Sometimes it contained Alix, some times Alix contained it.
Ask if Alix likes the name Alix and Alix will not answer. As a child Alix hated the name. It was an unfortunate name for a child. At times kids playing basketball or football or whatever chastised Alix. The name simply wasn't tuff, for a boy or a girl. Alix was a child that lived as much on the interior as the exterior, Alix would retreat, flee from the terrible soulless children that would shame another because of a name. Alix was forced to an isolated corner of a dusty fenced in schoolyard and a dusty library book. Alix still hates the name but loves the arbitrary, confused nature of the name. Alix's race is suspect as well. Alix's dad, Alix is told, is one hundred percent Irish and Alix's mother is full-blooded Ute. Alix is foreign and indigenous. There were trees that ached for a more explicit signifier. Trees were trees were trees. Men are men. Women are women. Alix is ALIX.
Alix is a writer, a good writer and a good Christian. At eight Alix won a spelling bee at school and went to state for spelling SoUoSoPoIoCoIoOoUoS. It was fun. Alix and Miss. Masterson rode in her convertible all the way to the state capital with the top down. Later, in Sunday school, Alix won the bible drill tournament by turning to and reading Habakkuk 3:17 -18 before anyone else,
"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior,"
Alix read proudly.
In high school Alix won writing contests by writing a story about a shoot-out between an outlaw and a Ranger. Both dies in the sweltering heat of the Arizona desert, isolated at their own ends of the street, opposite ends of a deserted mining town. In the end Alix earned a scholarship to a University with a writing program.
Like I said earlier, Alix has had a hard life. Ask about Alix's father and Alix replies, "Dead." There will be a pause, ten seconds, before Alix continues, "Soon after Mom killed herself my father took to drinking and even lost his job because of it. Sometimes he'd stay out all night boozing it up and leave me at home all alone." Alix's voice will quiver and will swallow then continue. "I was only eight and home alone. By the time I turned nine he had killed a family man in a car accident. He was all boozed up. They put him away for murder and I was sent to live with my Dad's parents." Alix will sink low into the chair and Alix's face will be concealed by hair.
Presented with a picture and you will notice that Alix is tall for a girl and a little short for a guy. Strong thin legs, a thin waste and firm chest constitute Alix's frame. Alix has shoulder length black hair. Alix's muscles are tight and Alix's eyes are blue and Alix has sexy full lips. Alix is attractive and receives looks from both sexes and welcomes them all. After all, a compliment is a compliment.
It was years and years after Alix's mom's death that Alix's Dad's parents, Alix's grandparents, would tell the truth about Alix's mother. "That wicked woman ruined my boy," Alix's grandma would weep, "That little hussy went off sleepin' with half the town." Alix's Dad found out about an affair Alix's mom was having and threatened to leave her. "But she saved him the trouble when she took all them pills and her heart exploded like that. My boy's heart exploded that day too. He loved her much more than she ever deserved. She ruined him." At this point Alix's grandmother began weeping uncontrollably, blowing her nose into her hanky, blubbing something else and begins to weep again. Alix was irate the first time Alix heard the story. Why hadn't anyone told Alix before? "You were too young for such a story," Alix's grandpa would say. And all along Alix thought IT happened because Alix was caught kissing the neighbor from four houses down the street.
Alix is essentially Christian, essentially. Alix's grandparents were staunch Southern Baptist and when Alix moved in with them after Alix's father went to jail Alix became Southern Baptist too. They believed in ALLMIGHTY GOD, GOD THE CREATOR, THE BIBLE and DINNER ON THE GROUNDS buffet every Sunday after church. Alix's Grandma would bring meat loaf and all the Baptists would sit around, get fat, and spat GOD HAS A PLAN FOR THOSE "WHO LOVE HIM AND ARE CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE."
Alix has this reoccurring dream, a dream something like a Nick Cave ballad. It's a song about a priest and a young virgin. The priest, stern and tall, dark and handsome, rides into town like Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider welding a KJV bible instead of the standard steel six shooters. His face is happy but his eyes are sad and searching. His collar is white. In this town lives the wide-eyed virgin whose lips are colored rose-wine. The priest knows she is the one he seeks. She trembles in his sad charm. The next day he brings her a long stemmed rose and takes her to a lusty river valley where the roses grow, bloody and wild. There on the river bed, standing behind her with tears in his eyes, he picks up a rock and with a quivering hand takes her life, saying, ALL BEAUTY MUST DIE! Then with a careful kiss he wipes the blood from her lips. Alix wakes, most often in a terrible melancholy. Alix, at times, is the virgin and, at other times, the priest.
In the philosophies that education teaches Alix in courses of academia, Alix meets Spinoza, Marx , Nietzsche, and Sarte. GOD IS DEAD! they scream over and over, GOD IS DEAD! They scream at Alix and Alix can't understand how ETERNAL EVERLASTING can be DEAD. But professor Skinner continues to attack Alix's belief system, systematically destroying Alix's systematized theology.
Professor Skinner professes the demons of the world and slowly essentials erase. The idea of God, the central concept of Alix's life since becoming a Christian in the little white washed First Baptist Church has become displaced, has become a language metaphor. "THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD", Yeat's "Second Coming". The right and wrongs of Alix's childhood beliefs created little more than hypocrisy and cowardice. They are ascetic ideals that enslaved Alix. THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD. Alix slowly comes to the notion that Alix had been held captive by Alix's beliefs. Alix realizes that instead, Alix is left with everything through freedom. The name Alix can signify anything Alix wishes. The self that Alix had thought was essential, the self God created Alix to be, is lost and replaced by another self that is created by the reality of Alix's situations and histories.
But with found freedom Alix finds new struggle, a new element of anguish. The radical skepticism that Skinner feeds and that Alix swallows leaves Alix hollow. These deconstructionists leave a deconstructed mess, destroying the modernist ideal and replacing it with a pile of rubble in which Alix wanders seeking something to make sense. Who will Alix be and what will Alix become. Alix is tied down with indecision and cries out for answers into the silent, hard danger of night.
In the end Alix is faced with the certain prospect that Alix's faith will remain intact or it won't. Alix noticed that things like this had the habit of working themselves out. And Alix knows that later, perhaps much later, stark reality will once again press in. It might be something great and terrifying, beyond thought, or it might be the least little incident that causes the cave to cave back in on Alix. Alix's chest will tighten and Alix's lungs will be restricted. The muscles in Alix's stomach will tighten and burn. Alix's head will throb and sweat. It will swim with confused disorientation. Alix will call out in the deep-seated dark that whispers in every dark. Maybe Alix will call out for God, maybe not. Anyhow, Alix will know, not if God exists, or if God is real, but if Alix still believes and has faith. It maybe then that Alix will know who Alix is.