They call it a dissociative fugue state. I didn't know it at the time of course. I only knew that I woke with a start, as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on me and I had no idea where I was.

It was dark and I was outside, laying on concrete between what I determined were two dumpsters. Light from the street at the end of the alley filled in some of the shadows. I stood up slowly checking instinctively to determine where, if anywhere, my body ached as though finding a wound or bruising of some kind might help me understand. But there was nothing.

Not even a wallet. Panic struck me for a moment. No wallet, no identification, no money. I searched all my pockets frantically. Not even a scrap of paper.

I wrestled between the fear of having no money and the slow recognition that the more aware I became of myself in this darkened alleyway between two dumpsters, the more I realised I was aware of myself the way someone is aware of the presence of another person in the room without knowing who they were. I did not know who I was.

This was no metaphorical puzzle. I did not know who I was. I knew that I was, that I existed, here, in this alleyway, at night, poorly lit in an undetermined urban area whose sounds were growing with my awareness of them like stuccato bursts of machine gun fire in the distance.

But that was all I knew.

I didn't know how I'd gotten here or worse still, who I was to have gotten here. The world was not entirely unfamiliar but nor was it recognised. I might have thought I was somewhere I had once visited as a tourist or somewhere I had passed through once, ethereally. But I didn't know who that I was. I only knew fragments and those fragments consisted only of that which was around me at that very moment. The past was a void.

Having completed the tour of my body finding no wounds, holes or other troubling physical debilities which might have complicated my immediate existence I stared down the alleyway trying to measure in some way the chances of escaping without being sighted.

But why escape when I still hadn't figured out the basics of my existence like name, purpose and account balances? For example, I knew a wallet might well house the answers to all of these questions but I did not know how I knew a wallet would. I just did. And I had none. I knew to check my back pocket, the pocket inside the wool-blend herringbone coat I wore over me.

Escape because in truth, the air was chilly and whilst I was not wet as one would be having had a bucket of ice water thrown upon them, I was growing gradually more aware of the chill and perhaps the idea that shelter or some kind would be preferable. I looked up at the sky for clues but could find none between the darkness of the hour and the clouds which obscured the luminscence of the moon.

Semantic knowledge is preserved.

******

CANTO UNO

CIRCLE ONE - LIMBO - INNOCENT SOULS

What I need to establish firstly - how does this happen? We might consider the opening trauma linked to repressed memory?

SO at first we've got the trauma, then we've got Marsaw with his repressed memory then we've got Kinderton for:

Recovered memory therapy (RMT) is a term coined by affiliates of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation[26][27] referring to what they described as a range of psychotherapy methods based on recalling memories of abuse that had previously been forgotten by the patient.[28] The term is not listed in DSM-IV or used by mainstream formal psychotherapy modality.[26] Opponents of the therapy advance the hypothesis that therapy can create false memories through suggestion techniques; this hypothesis is controversial and has been neither proven nor disproven. Some research has shown evidence supporting the hypothesis,[29][30] and this evidence is questioned by some researchers.[26][31][32] Even when patients who decide their recovered memories are false retract their claims, they can suffer post-traumatic stress disorder due to the trauma of illusory memories.[33]

Ok, Marsaw has traumatic memory loss.

Often, the fugue state remains undiagnosed until the individual has emerged from it and can recall their real identity. Upon emerging from the fugue state, the individual is usually surprised to find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings.

In one form of psychogenic amnesia, called fugue state, individuals may forget not only their pasts but their very identities. Despite the many Hollywood movies depicting this phenomenon, fugue state is extremely rare in real life. Fugue state normally resolves with time, particularly with the help of therapy.

here is a good, basic link for this...

Unlike most forms of amnesia, which are associated with damage to specific parts of the brain (such as the hippocampus), dissociative fugue has no known physical cause. Typically, the memory loss is triggered by a traumatic life event; subsequently, the individual enters the fugue state, during which the retrieval of memories associated with the event is somehow prevented. Thus, the fugue state is psychogenic: psychological factors impinge upon the neurobiological bases of memory retrieval. The memory loss is, however, reversible; once the individual emerges from the fugue state, he or she is once again capable of retrieving the “lost” memories.

Another good link: NYT article here on dissociative fugue

try to search extraordinary people david fitzpatrick as well.

*****

SO, whilst it is good and well to have Marsaw and his forgotten past, where does he at first find himself?

he first thing about his life that Jeff Ingram remembers is “picking myself up off the ground” in Denver, although he didn’t know where he was at the time. He had no identification but was wearing a ring and a watch, had eight dollar bills in his pocket (he’d left with $700 in cash) and seemed unhurt—suggesting he had not been the victim of a crime. (His car has not been found.) He hadn’t lost his functional memory—retaining the ability to speak, for example. But at some point, he gave up asking for help and walked for six to eight hours until he found Denver Health Medical Center.

“I don’t know who I am,” he told the desk attendant.

“What do you mean?” she asked, handing him an admittance form—an absurdity for someone with no name. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Disbelieving hospital staffers fired questions at him: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?”

*****

SO, Marsaw finds himself in a strange city combination of LA and Paris. In an alley?

I thought I'd been dreaming.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night or just prior to dawn, with a start? An audible, soul-shivering start as though you'd woken just in time to elude the grasp of death? A start that is in fact the start of the search to determine where you are, to recall who you are, how many fingers on your hand, who is sleeping beside you?

Sleeping is a death and waking is the escape. I recalled only that I was in the habit of staying awake as long and as often as possible. I recalled in this slow-to-rise stalgmite of recollection that to manage this I drank and by drinking I mean a slow, incessant habit growing into the crescendo of an all-night bender there is no escaping from.

Or at least so I once thought.

Switching to W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn to find this nugget:

"...and yet, says Browne, all knowledge is enveloped in darkness. What we perceive are no more than the isolated lights in the abyss of ignorance, in the shadow-filled edifice of the world...

I have just opened my eyes to find myself prone in an alleyway between two dumpsters. It is night. It is cold. As my eyes adjust I see people walking past the alley, a few scattered, boisterous people. The kind who frequent the late nights in urban areas. The only kind.

I stood up slowly. Slow motion is the preferred method of movement I said aloud, hearing my voice raspy, cigarette scarred. Upon standing I immediately fell into a coughing spasm that doubled me over and continued until I'd hacked out a wadge of phlegm and was able to stand straight again.

Once that minor trauma had been overcome I was left to wonder what I was doing there in the alley to begin with.

Or, as I shortly discovered in a disjointed yet unpanicked way, who I was.


I shot her.

I can admit that now.

I pleaded guilty at the trial of course, there was no alternative given the evidence. The truth is, until now, until this very moment, I've never admitted it to myself.

The truth is I only shot her because she was going to shoot me first. Or so I thought.

I couldn't explain why there was no weapon found on her. They said she was defenseless, that I shot her in cold blood.

I knew that she was going to shoot me if I didn't shoot her first.

Maybe not at that moment, maybe not even that evening but I knew deep down inside that one day she would shoot me, the second I let down my defences and relaxed she would have shot me.

How do I know that?

I just know. Something this monumental, to have the constant threat of this hanging over your head day in and day out makes you realise that it is inevitable. It WAS inevitable. Until I shot her first.

I checked my pockets for clues. There was no wallet, no money. There were no keys to anything. There was nothing to identify myself with.

I walked slowly out of the alleyway into the street which was eerily empty of people. The revellers that had squawked past so noisily had disappeared. The street was strewn with litter, lamp-lit, many of its buildings boarded up.

I could sense panic rising in me like a bile.

I had no idea where I was.

******

When I woke again it was light.

I was on the ground, underneath a thick pile of newspapers in a cluster of trees in a park. I stood as calmly as I could, brushing the newspapers and nettles from me and peered through the foliage. A few people passed by on a distant foot path, nannies with strollers, joggers. I emerged cautiously, worried that it was obvious I had no idea who I was or where I was.

What am I to do without money?

I decided to try and figure out where I was deducing despite my state that this was currently the easier of the two options. It was obviously a city, somewhere. Away from the park I could hear the sounds of a city, car horns, the hum of traffic. Was it my city?

It was then I heard a rustling in the dead, autumnal leaves. Despite my own uncertainty my curiosity was piqued. I took a step nearer. I followed signs for the city centre and found myself upon a walk of about 30 minutes, a slow walk because I was entirely uncertain of myself and why I was here and was afraid someone might guess this, that perhaps there was some reason for my current state. Surely there was a reason but if it were criminal I didn't want to alert the authorities before I'd had the chance to discover anything further for myself.

THREE ANIMALS OR WHATEVER THESE THREE SYMBOLS. TO BE FOLLOWED BY KIMBERLAND, THE GUIDE

I hadn't been walking very long when

Dante's metaphoric trio is specifically mentioned in the Holy Bible as noted in the 8th edition of The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Jeremiah 5:6 reads, "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: everyone that goeth out thence shall be torn into pieces: because their transgressions are many and their backslidings are increased." By using these three particular animals in his symbolism, Dante is alluding to the negative conception the bible invokes in its symbolic representation of the animals.Psychoanalyst Carl Jung emphasizes the collective unconscious as being inhabited with archetypes that are derived from primal animal behaviors that all humankind possesses. (Huffman 494) Researcher William McDougal proposes in his "Instinct" theory of motivation, that humans are compelled by behaviors that are unlearned, uniform in expression and universal to the species. (Huffman 440) It is these carnal compellations that Christianity attempts to inhibit that are chronicled throughout Christian verse. Dante's metaphoric trio is specifically mentioned in the Holy Bible as noted in the 8th edition of The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Jeremiah 5:6 reads, "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: everyone that goeth out thence shall be torn into pieces: because their transgressions are many and their backslidings are increased." By using these three particular animals in his symbolism, Dante is alluding to the negative conception the bible invokes in its symbolic representation of the animals.

In Inferno, Dante first encounters the leopard which blocks his path to righteousness. He writes, "Beyond the point the slope begins to rise / sprang up a leopard, trim and very swift! It was covered by a pelt of many spots. / And everywhere I looked, the beast was there" (Inferno I 32-35). Here, Dante is drawing on the sinister conception of the leopard that lays in wait of its prey. This leopard camouflages himself much as the fraudulent may mask their sinister intentions.

In contrast, this sinister characterization is avoided in Nigerian philosophy, Benin, which embraces animals as symbolism of deities. In Benin, the Oba or king is all powerful and is the owner of the land and its people. (Eboreime) The Oba and royal power, represented by images of the leopard, focuses on more positive traits such as speed, agility, cunning, and prowess. (Peck, Coote) For example, Dante regards the preying leopard as a demonic physical threat, whereas Nigerian philosophy would view this same leopard as a patient and skilled hunter. Another African myth comes from the pygmies of Zaire. Tore, the wood god, is represented by the leopard. He is said to be the 'lord of the animal' and patron of the hunt. (Lindemans) This conception also focuses on the leopard as a graceful hunter. The African people glorify the leopard for the same characteristics that are frowned upon in Christian literature.

Following the leopard, Dante encounters the lion, which he uses to symbolize sins of violence and ambition. A group of lions is called a pride, which is also a sin of ambition, punishable in Dante's Hell. A lion is the ruler of the land and asserts himself as such. Dante writes of the lion, "…he was coming straight toward me, it seemed, / with head raised high, and furious with hunger" (Inferno I 46-47). The reader draws the violent, destructive nature from the lion symbol which is also displayed in Christian literature. Perhaps I Peter 5:8 displays this paradigm best as it reads, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." Dante invokes the reader's conception of the lion as he uses him to represent sins that involve violence against others. This symbolism births feelings of fear and recognition of the danger of the lion as one to fear, which spawns a literary barrier to serve as a deterrent from sin.

The lion is also symbolic in Egyptian Mythology. The goddess of war and vengeance, Sekhmet or "Powerful One", contrasts this negative perspective of animal symbolism that Dante portrays. She is pictured with the head of a lioness and symbolizes divine retribution. The Egyptian Sun God, Ra, calls upon his daughter, Sekhmet, to slaughter humans that had concocted a plan to rebel against him, in his aging and vulnerable state. Ra punishes humanity be sending his vengeful daughter. She single handedly defends her father, the almighty Ra by ravaging through the rebellious village, devouring those who plotted against him. Sekhmet, in all her glory, wades through the blood of the punished, claiming her father's exaltation. (Willis 41) Beginning around 1000 B.C.E., Sekhmet began to be portrayed with an alter persona, Bastet. With the changing persona, her appearance changed as well. She began to be depicted as a domesticated cat. Her new duty is to be an "avenger," and slay enemies of Egypt and enemies of the gods. (Cass)

While Egyptian myth conjures the vicious and vengeful spirit of the lion, they do so respectfully and recognize the strength and brutality in a grandiose manner. The story of Sekhmet's wrath recognizes that she attacked only to protect her father. Sekhmet's power was dually respected and feared. Messengers of Sekhmet were thought to be infectious disease. Following this notion, her priests also served as doctors. (Willis 50) While the Egyptians shared many of the same characterizations of the lion as Christians, they applied them differently. Egyptian conception focuses on the strength and power of the lion and makes its mission divine retribution, as opposed to the brutality and violent nature that is the focus of Dante's symbolic representation.

Following the lion on the path is the she-wolf. Dante, using the she-wolf to represent the sins of incontinence writes of the she-wolf, "And now a she-wolf came, that in her leanness / seemed racked with every kind of greediness / (how many people she has brought to grief!)" (Inferno I 49-51). He draws from the reader's negative perception of the wolf, which attributes the wolf as of a predatory nature. The she-wolf is portrayed as a callous hunter who does not differentiate her victims, nor is she merciful. This view is also displayed in Christian literature, especially in the Bible. Genesis 49:27 reads, "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he devours the plunder." The author focuses on the negative characteristics of the wolf as a violent and agitated hunter whereas other culture and mythology revere the wolf for its majestic power. Dante opposes this positive vision with his symbolism, as he uses the wolf to represent the sins that humans find irresistible. He uses the mystery and power of the wolf to emphasize the enticing and alluring manner of these particular sins.

Contrastingly, Native American kinship with the wolf is prevalent as they view the wolf as the brother of man. (Maxwell 348) The Chipewyans honor the wolf as their creator. Their creation myth attributes the body of a wolf to have become the world. The land is made of his flesh, fish are made from his internal organs, and birds were created from his skin. (Maxwell 330) Sub arctic tribes, such as the Ingalik and Koyukon of Alaska, hold the wolf in the highest regard. Members of the tribe are forbidden to kill wolves, as they are considered as brothers to the tribesmen. (Maxwell 348) Native American antiquity accounts for humanity having spawned from animals and does not differentiate the two. They believe their ancestors began life as animals and then transformed themselves into human beings. (Willis 31) The First Nations view wolves as teachers or pathfinders. A wolf is seen as fiercely loyal to their mates and therefore dedicated to their families. (Beaupre)

Roman Mythology offers another positive conception of the wolf, with the ancient story of Romulus. Along with his infant twin Remus, he was abandoned beside a river. They were rescued by a she-wolf and reared alongside her cubs for a few years. (Lindemans) This mythological she-wolf is given a nurturing and affectionate persona that may stem from the animal's loyalty to the pack. While focusing on the characteristics more becoming to the wolf, the Romans have allowed a positive conception into human psyche that differs drastically from the sinister huntress we encounter in Dante's Inferno.

While many pre-Christian and non-Christian faiths may use animals symbolically, they tend to focus on less sinister traits or emphasize these animalistic traits in a positive light. Christianity has long sought to exterminate the primal instinct of humanity. Thus, their use of animals in a symbolic manner tends to focus on the negativity of animal behavior. Animals will submit to their carnal desires instinctively, as will humans, which is an underlying problem in the Christian plight to purify humanity and deter them from sin.

By experiencing Dante's animal symbolism in the Inferno, the reader is connected to his negative view of animal behavior which is the exact form of carnal human nature the Church sought to eradicate from humanity, so as to lessen chance of sin. Human beings are prone to their impulses. Mankind bears an interpersonal conflict between his urges and his will. These "animalistic" urges force one of Christian faith to feel guilt for having submitted to them. Some may say that it is will and faith in God that separates us from the animal kingdom. This is the reasoning behind Dante's choice of individual animals as representative of the three dimensions of sins depicted in Inferno. One can clearly see the type of negative animal symbolism that pervades both the Old and New Testaments, in Dante's Inferno.the leopard, the lion and the wolf. They symbolize the major categories of sin: incontinence, violence and fraud. Or as they are more commonly called – lust, pride and avarice. In her commentary, Dorothy L. Sayers explains that these categories of sin were associated with the three stages of life – lust with youth, pride (self-conceit) with the middle years and avarice with old age. Of course, they can attack a person at any time of his life.

Whatever his conception, Dante likely drew inspiration for the beasts from this biblical passage prophesying the destruction of those who refuse to repent for their iniquities: "Wherefore a lion out of the wood hath slain them, a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them, a leopard watcheth for their cities: every one that shall go out thence shall be taken, because their transgressions are multiplied, their rebellions strengthened" (Jeremiah 5:6).

It is perhaps best, at this early stage, to take note of the salient characteristics of the animals--the leopard's spotted hide, the lion's intimidating presence, the she-wolf's insatiable hunger--and see how they relate to subsequent events in Dante's journey through hell.

I’m thinking about all this in dire detail as I’m walking the streets going somewhere aimlessly. I pick a street and start walking down it and then when the mood strikes me, I take a different street and all the while with no accurate measure of where I am or where I’m going, just random turns. I need something to visualise it. A familiar mark, a subway station. But I’ve got nothing because I don’t even know where I’m going.

Oh wait, yes I do, I just remembered, I’m going to meet with Kimberland, a salesman of some kind. I don’t know what, does it really matter? Do you ever WANT someone to sell you something? This whole moaning culture is a giant vat of selling, shovels full of bullshit they take in their hands and lovingly shove between your lips into your mouth. You can spit it out over and over again but that bullshit taste is still there, long after they leave. It’s their calling card, these punks, these gigantic destroyers of the human soul and champion bullshit feeders.

I met Kimberland on a street corner somewhere. Lost, chum, he asks me as I stand there trying to decide which corner to turn. Fuck off, I said because I don’t like strangers coming up to me unsolicited and talking to me. Not unless they’re fit birds scoffing a light or copping a feel. There now, are you offended? You see, your glass ceiling is fucking low, kid. You’ve gotta raise that glass ceiling really fucking high if you are going to get through all this shit without it getting caked on to you.

Kimberland was used to this kind of street abuse apparently because he was utterly unflustered.

Wanna buy something, he asks.

Like what?

I dunno, what do you want to buy?

I would like to buy a gun and then shoot you with it.

You’d have to buy the bullets too. And probably a hunting license. In fact, if you bought a gun from me and bullets as well and just shot me right here…were you thinking of shooting to kill me or only wound me?….

I haven’t decided yet.

Well, in either scenario, you’d have to buy a lot of influence with the local authorities to get off whatever myriad of charges you’d be facing for shooting someone in broad daylight on a main street corner.

What if I simply said I was religiously intolerant?

Well, firstly, I’m not religious so I’m not sure that’s possible if that’s you’re excuse for shooting me. And secondly, even if shooting in the name of religious intolerance, you won’t be exempted from contempt or conviction. But we’re getting off track. How much money do you have to spend?

None. I don’t use money these days. I used plastic. The plastic symbolises the substance of my need for consumption. How about a goat?

Do you have a goat?

No. But maybe you’ve got one for sale?

******

I meet Kimberlain on another street corner, weeks and weeks later. It’s raining now. I haven’t worn anything in anticipation of getting wet, or prevention of getting wet. So I am soaking when I reach him at the predetermined corner. He’s never tried to sell me anything again since that first meeting, I made him promise. If we were going to hang out again some time.

Kimberlain has a big fucking umbrella with him. A fuck you sort of umbrella that, if you were walking down a street carrying it you’d be poking every fucker you passed in the eye or the mouth or the ear. But because he’s stationary, people just walk around him, muttering or turning back after a few steps to hurl a hideous look of disgust at him. Little daggers of bad karma.

It’s like a fucking tent, I said, as I approach him.

There’s only room for one under here, he warns.

Then we’d better find shelter.

******

It used to be easy to find shelter. Just go into a fucking bar. Nice and warm. Drinks to get you fucked up and forgetting everything that makes you sick to your stomach. Drinks and more drinks. But not any more. I take pills that make me vomit if I drink alcohol. I gits them for free. From Big Bossman Government, all-caring,, yummy mummy father superior big business government who want me off the liquor at all times because otherwise I become a deficit to society rather than a show flower of happiness. On these pills, I drink only when I want to vomit which admittedly, doesn’t happen very often.

We could stand under the bus stop shelter, Kimberlain points out with the sharp tip of his umbrella nearly poking out my eye. Or you could, you miserable git. Look at you, soaking. What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why don’t you buy an umbrella.

What, from you?

No, not from me. But there’s other people around who are selling umbrellas. Especially when it’s raining. Rain is an umbrella salesman’s nirvana. You could have gone to one of them. You could be nearly dry instead of soaking and looking for a fucking bus stop to hide under in this downpour.

I like the rain. It makes me feel human. Why would I want an umbrella getting in the way?

Listen, I’m not standing under the fucking bus stop. If you like the rain so much stand in it out here like a man whilst we have our conversation.


Dark wood - symbolises lost in alcoholism. Speaker must find his way out of alcoholism. A bitterness that has cut him off from the rest of the world. (in the instant case, this will be the murder of his spouse)

I cannot explain how I got here. I don't remember the steps taken. I don't remember the thought process. I don't remember the motivations of the decisions taken. Suffice that I am here.

It is Happy Hour in The Fox and Hound. The Fox and Hound is a bar in the city. It is called Happy Hour because the drinks are sold at a reduced price and the patrons consume more cheaply. It is happy for the patrons because they both save money and drink at the same time, giving the illusion of getting something for nothing whilst simultaneously intoxicating the brain to the point of happiness. So goes the theory anyway.

It is happy for the landlord because the cheaper prices draw in bigger crowds and even at discounted prices, bigger crowds mean bigger profits. It is, I believe, what they would call a win-win situation.

Of course there are those for whom the mere or slight intoxication of the brain is insufficient. Everyone is different, has different needs, different motivations for drinking and thus drinks in a different way. For some, the intoxication is an exploration in moderation for others, like myself, it is merely the first stage of a temporary illusion of happiness.

So as I sit alone at the corner of a horse-shoe shaped bar I debate this issue within myself; the temporary illusion of happiness. The artificial induction of the temporary illusion of happiness. I attempt these little exercises of thought to try and induce moderation. The idea is that if I can convince myself that the reality of moderation is not allowing oneself to go beyond that certain point where intoxication becomes inebriation, where happiness prevails over misery, I will have achieved a small victory of sorts. Nightly I bring this challenge to myself and nightly, I fail, despite all thoughts of discouragement.

Gradually I will realise I am diseased. Alcoholism is a disease. The disease of wanting more when more is unnecessary. The disease of greed, the illusion of happiness. I am not unlike a capitalist in that way. A capitalist also has a disease of greed although one might argue that such a disease is at the very least, useful to capitalism itself, necessary. Alcoholism is the inverse; dysfunctional and counter-productive. But for those firsst few drinks anyway, when the temporary illusion of happiness is achieved and instead of stopping at that border to observe and behold and revel, the boundry is destroyed. Yes, destroyed. The nihilistic greed towards self-destruction must also play a role. Without it, moderation is possible. For people like me it is the goal. To reach the point of inebriation that life returns to the very stage of absurdity it exudes when sober.

The drink is the promise provided to the disinherited.

(STAGES OF DRINKING ON THE BRAIN)

Kinderton, Winston and Delia. Kinderton is my psychologist.

if you do not work you become old in a short period of time.

The story of the girl in Budapest who rings a chat show on the radio dealing with love lost, psychologic problems, etc., the usual universal whining, and spills her guts, really lets out her true feelings about her boyfriend, what a sexual animal he is, how he is always screwing around on her and asking how she can find the strength to break it off with him. He happens to be working the night shift in some factory, listening to that same station and he asks himself, broken hearted at first before overcome with rage, is that MY beloved Berluska who is spilling her guts on radio all my friends will hear and humiliating me?

CIRCLE TWO LUST

the act of walking is so well practiced (overlearned) that you can do it without thinking. You program yourself to walk to another room, then your mind wanders, and when you get there you no longer remember why you started the motor program.^^^^^^^^^^^^

As I opened the door, waving my final goodbyes for the evening, I was rather surprised not to be greeted by a gust of wind or the slap of a rain pellet rather to find myself entering another room altogether. I stopped. I looked behind me. Had I, in a slightly enebriated state, exited out the wrong door into another antechamber of the previous pub?

But the door had already closed behind me. Locked behind me. Odd, I thought. A hallucination? Yet I was indeed inside rather than outside. My eyes grew accustomed slowly to the dimness of the tawdry red light of the interior, the red velvet covering on the sofas.

A pale blonde woman, a woman one might consider as having alibaster skin if one could have made out such distinctions in such light, touched my elbow gently.

"May I take your coat?" Her voice was a gelatinous ooze of sensuality. All in a simple query. I looked at her, dressed in sequins, or perhaps merely a sequin robe made of nothing but sequins, her nudity clearly visible even in this light behind the thread-bare cover of a sequin outfit.

She was already in the act of helping me out of my coat before I could think long enough to reply. I slipped out of it readily once I became accostomed to the idea of taking it off. She disappeared into the shadows. I became aware of a gentle, pulsating bass eminating from a distant corner. A thin girl dressed in a black satin negligee appeared.

"May I offer you a drink? A glass of champagne, perhaps?" she suggested without preamble. It's normal that a server would not introduce themselves before taking your order but there was something distinguishable in her manner that led me to the misperception that if we didn't know each other already surely we should and thus I was surprised by my own disappointment that she hadn't introduced herself. The question, on the surface innocent and normal, seemed inexplicably weighted by an odd intimacy.

"Champagne?" I managed to stammer, indecisive.

"By the glass, we have Bollinger, Delamotte and Gosset. If you would like a full bottle however, the possibilities are unlimited..." She smiled like what I could imagine to be an Eden snake, or THE Eden snake, her tongue lingering on the very edge of her lower lip, capped by her upper lip. Both were lightly painted in a plum hue. How could I make such distinctions in the lighting? Well of course, because of the occasional flickers of bright light that now emitted from what I could see was a stage in front of me. A stage decorated by a single pole.

"Just a glass of beer for the moment..." I finally replied. "Until I become better oriented."

Her expression did not change.

"As you wish," she replied perhaps robotically. "Please take a seat and I will retrieve the drink for you."

Jean François de Troy's 1735 painting Le Déjeuner d'Huîtres (The Oyster Luncheon) is the first known depiction of Champagne in painting

After primary fermentation and bottling, a second alcoholic fermentation occurs in the bottle. This second fermentation is induced by adding several grams of yeast (usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, although each brand has its own secret recipe) and several grams of rock sugar.[14] According to the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all the flavour. For years where the harvest is exceptional, a millesimé is declared and some Champagne will be made from and labeled as the products of a single vintage rather than a blend of multiple years' harvests. This means that the Champagne will be very good and has to mature for at least 3 years. During this time the Champagne bottle is sealed with a crown cap similar to that used on beer bottles.[1]

I sat down at the nearest table. The room was scattered with single men at tables surrounding the stage. (BROTHEL IN Bratislava description...)

THE SECRET WAR ON SOLITUDE

BY JAAP STIJL

I thought I'd been dreaming.

I opened my eyes to find myself prone in an alleyway between two dumpsters. It was night. It wasn't cold. As my eyes adjusted I could see people walking past the alley, a few scattered, boisterous people.

I stood up slowly. Slow motion is the preferred method of movement I said aloud, hearing my voice raspy, cigarette scarred. Upon standing I immediately fell into a coughing spasm that doubled me over and continued until I'd hacked out a wadge of phlegm and was able to stand straight again.

Once that minor trauma had been overcome I was left to wonder what I was doing there in the alley to begin with.

Or, as I shortly discovered in a disjointed yet unpanicked way, who I was.

I checked my pockets for clues. There was no wallet, no money. There were no keys to anything. There was nothing to identify myself with.

I walked slowly out of the alleyway into the street which was eerily empty of people. The revellers that had squawked past so noisily had disappeared. The street was strewn with litter, lamp-lit, many of its buildings boarded up.

I could sense panic rising in me like a bile.

I had no idea where I was.

******

When I woke again it was light.

I was on the ground, underneath a thick pile of newspapers in a cluster of trees in a park. I stood as calmly as I could, brushing the newspapers and nettles from me and peered through the foliage. A few people passed by on a distant foot path, nannies with strollers, joggers. I emerged cautiously, worried that it was obvious I had no idea who I was or where I was.

What am I to do without money?

I decided to try and figure out where I was deducing despite my state that this was currently the easier of the two options. It was obviously a city, somewhere. Away from the park I could hear the sounds of a city, car horns, the hum of traffic. Was it my city?

I followed signs for the city centre and found myself upon a walk of about 30 minutes, a slow walk because I was entirely uncertain of myself and why I was here and was afraid someone might guess this, that perhaps there was some reason for my current state. Surely there was a reason but if it were criminal I didn't want to alert the authorities before I'd had the chance to discover anything further for myself.

I’m thinking about all this in dire detail as I’m walking the streets going somewhere aimlessly. I pick a street and start walking down it and then when the mood strikes me, I take a different street and all the while with no accurate measure of where I am or where I’m going, just random turns. I need something to visualise it. A familiar mark, a subway station. But I’ve got nothing because I don’t even know where I’m going. Oh wait, yes I do, I just remembered, I’m going to meet with Kimberland, a salesman of some kind. I don’t know what, does it really matter? Do you ever WANT someone to sell you something? This whole moaning culture is a giant vat of selling, shovels full of bullshit they take in their hands and lovingly shove between your lips into your mouth. You can spit it out over and over again but that bullshit taste is still there, long after they leave. It’s their calling card, these punks, these gigantic destroyers of the human soul and champion bullshit feeders.

I met Kimberland on a street corner somewhere. Lost, chum, he asks me as I stand there trying to decide which corner to turn. Fuck off, I said because I don’t like strangers coming up to me unsolicited and talking to me. Not unless they’re fit birds scoffing a light or copping a feel. There now, are you offended? You see, your glass ceiling is fucking low, kid. You’ve gotta raise that glass ceiling really fucking high if you are going to get through all this shit without it getting caked on to you.

Kimberland was used to this kind of street abuse apparently because he was utterly unflustered.

Wanna buy something, he asks.

Like what?

I dunno, what do you want to buy?

I would like to buy a gun and then shoot you with it.

You’d have to buy the bullets too. And probably a hunting license. In fact, if you bought a gun from me and bullets as well and just shot me right here…were you thinking of shooting to kill me or only wound me?….

I haven’t decided yet.

Well, in either scenario, you’d have to buy a lot of influence with the local authorities to get off whatever myriad of charges you’d be facing for shooting someone in broad daylight on a main street corner.

What if I simply said I was religiously intolerant?

Well, firstly, I’m not religious so I’m not sure that’s possible if that’s you’re excuse for shooting me. And secondly, even if shooting in the name of religious intolerance, you won’t be exempted from contempt or conviction. But we’re getting off track. How much money do you have to spend?

None. I don’t use money these days. I used plastic. The plastic symbolises the substance of my need for consumption. How about a goat?

Do you have a goat?

No. But maybe you’ve got one for sale?

******

I meet Kimberlain on another street corner, weeks and weeks later. It’s raining now. I haven’t worn anything in anticipation of getting wet, or prevention of getting wet. So I am soaking when I reach him at the predetermined corner. He’s never tried to sell me anything again since that first meeting, I made him promise. If we were going to hang out again some time.

Kimberlain has a big fucking umbrella with him. A fuck you sort of umbrella that, if you were walking down a street carrying it you’d be poking every fucker you passed in the eye or the mouth or the ear. But because he’s stationary, people just walk around him, muttering or turning back after a few steps to hurl a hideous look of disgust at him. Little daggers of bad karma.

It’s like a fucking tent, I said, as I approach him.

There’s only room for one under here, he warns.

Then we’d better find shelter.

******

It used to be easy to find shelter. Just go into a fucking bar. Nice and warm. Drinks to get you fucked up and forgetting everything that makes you sick to your stomach. Drinks and more drinks. But not any more. I take pills that make me vomit if I drink alcohol. I gits them for free. From Big Bossman Government, all-caring,, yummy mummy father superior big business government who want me off the liquor at all times because otherwise I become a deficit to society rather than a show flower of happiness. On these pills, I drink only when I want to vomit which admittedly, doesn’t happen very often.

We could stand under the bus stop shelter, Kimberlain points out with the sharp tip of his umbrella nearly poking out my eye. Or you could, you miserable git. Look at you, soaking. What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why don’t you buy an umbrella.

What, from you?

No, not from me. But there’s other people around who are selling umbrellas. Especially when it’s raining. Rain is an umbrella salesman’s nirvana. You could have gone to one of them. You could be nearly dry instead of soaking and looking for a fucking bus stop to hide under in this downpour.

I like the rain. It makes me feel human. Why would I want an umbrella getting in the way?

Listen, I’m not standing under the fucking bus stop. If you like the rain so much stand in it out here like a man whilst we have our conversation.

*****

So how is it going? He asks, flicking his butane lighter and torching a roll up in his mouth.

A lot of pains, I said. Mostly in my arse. These people, these televisions, these incessant commercials. Those kinds of searing pain that make me want to dig my eyeballs out of my skull just to distract me.

I thought you didn’t watch television. In fact, didn’t you even say you destroyed your television with the business end of a ball peen hammer?

Nah, that’s just hyperbole. I watch television in the showrooms of electronics stores. I go from one store to another spending like 30 or 40 minutes watching. Sometimes I ask a question to one of the salesmen, like do you have any of these in mauve, or why does the picture look so fuzzy? Just so they won’t hassle me about standing there. There’s a lot of showrooms selling televisions you better believe it. You’d think they were giving away pussy in there but nope. Just a bunch of fucking televisions.

But where would you be without television, Marsaw?

Marsaw?! I hissed under my breath. What did I tell you about using my real name in public?!

Marsaw, Marsaw MARSAW! He shouted which prompted me to stomp on his right foot as hard as I could.

Then he hopped on one foot howling, the umbrella falling to the ground as he tried to grab at his foot and squeeze out the pain and because it was gusting a bit, when it hit the ground, the umbrella went flying off right into the face of a pretty executive bird who was in the middle of some work-related conversation about unrequited love and the latest sitcom being featured on the cultish television magazines.

She too fell to the ground as if she’d been hit by a sniper on the 11th floor.

I rushed over and held out my hand. Jesus, that umbrella could have decapitated you, I said as I pulled her to her feet. She looked at me blankly as though she didn’t understand English or couldn’t hear or read lips. You could have been decapitated I said slowly and loudly to her again.

I heard you the first time, she muttered, wiping the front of her business suit with a nail-bitten hand, Female executive paws, I call them, all of them chewing their nails down to the nub with anxiety about playing man in a man’s world with a female edge but never fully accepted as anything but stupid or butch, depending on how well she was performing.

Well, what about it? Aren’t you glad you weren’t decapitated at least?

And what, you want me to thank YOU for that?

No, it was just an observation…

Well here’s an observation for you to chew on: you’re a pest. And now here’s a command for you: get lost.

Whose the new lady friend, Kimberlain asked cheerily as he approached me, walking her walk past him into the crowd.

Her name is Agneta Millstone, she’s unattached and looking for some female companionship. I spat on the ground, nearly hitting someone’s shoe. Can’t a man even spit without having people getting in the way?

*****

It finally stopped raining.

Kimberlain was sitting on the ground in an alleyway right in the middle of a big puddle.

I stood a few feet away in front of him looking up at the sky trying to discern how much time I’d have to dry.

Where were we anyway, he asks suddenly, poking around in his pockets for a cigarette.

Queen Bastrino Boulevard and Avenue of Eternal Sadness. Right near the fish fry and Laundromat a go-go. It was raining hard and we started walking. You lost consciousness just above this puddle, fell and then woke up again a few seconds ago sitting upright in that same puddle. You really should see someone about that.

Kimberlain had some kind of condition, I don’t know what the fuck it’s called and frankly, what difference does it make? He passes out in the middle of nothing. Like the opposite of somnambulism only falling instead of walking. He’s says he’s been doing it for years. He loses consciousness and wakes up wherever he fell. Certain words he thinks of appears to trigger it. He says he thinks he was hypnotised against his will somewhere once and they even made him forget he’d been hypnotised and this is all some giant joke only a select few who were there to witness it are privy to. A hypnotic baptism. A series of them. That’s what he calls them, hypnotic baptisms.

Listen, I’m tired. I’m going off somewhere alone, he said, making a big effort to stand up again. I can’t believe you made me lose that fucking umbrella…

Ok, I suppose I’ll see you sometime next week?

Weather-willing.

*****

My home is not my castle. I got back to it after that big meeting with Kimberlain and I couldn’t help but think about that stupid phrase. Castle. What kind of fucking castle was this? A single bulb room in a shitty part of town? Cockroaches? A yes, cockroaches. I hated them for the longest time living in this fucking castle of mine. But then I started catching them and killing them in boiling water and believe it or not, with the right kind of sauce, say a marsala or a cream sauce, they taste alright. I started thinking fuck, I could open up a cockroach restaurant and pretend they were a new delicacy. Hard sell that, though. People are usually pretty staunch in their opinions. Especially one like cockroaches are disgusting. But they say cockroaches would survive nuclear war so if I eat enough of them, who knows, maybe I would too.

My castle has a day bed. It had a cheap dresser with the few bits of clothing I own and wear religiously because I have nothing else to wear. I wear them to near rags and then I go out to the cheapest fucking market in the ugliest part of town and buy more clothes to replace the rags.

I stopped shaving about 4 years ago. I look it.

My castle has a lot of books I don’t read or haven’t read more than a page or a sentence or sometimes just a word out of. There are books like this all over the castle. In the bed sheets, under the bed, around the toilet like a mystical ring, overflowing out of milk crates, on the floor, tucked in the closet. On the kitchen counter, above the frig, but not too near the hot plate. God forbid. This place would go up like a fucking firecracker.

And that’s about it. A lot of overflowing ashtrays. Welcome to my castle. The whole place reeks of stale smoke. A few months ago I managed to get a date with this bird I met in the super market and she had a few glasses of wine while I watched her in this run down little café a few streets from my castle and it was going all pretty smoothly and progressing nicely and she asks me why don’t you invite me back to your castle, all shy like…

Sure, I says. I pay the bill, waving off her efforts to split the bill. The least I could do. I sometimes forget I even have a dick. What do I use it for? Just to piss out of. It doesn’t get much action. Not even from me. Even I ignore my dick. How can I expect some bird to love it?

We walk up the dusty, filthy stairway up to my floor, I open the door grandly and wave her in.

She walks in, laughing one minute, gagging the next. Jesus christ, she moans, holding her hand to her mouth. What the fuck do you DO in here?

Needless to say, it put a little damper on the mood. But as she vomited over the toilet, I held her hair back for her and told her little stories I’d seen on the news to take her mind off all the vomiting. Are you sure you don’t just have food poisoning, I asked finally.

We didn’t eat anything you idiot. We only drank wine, remember? No. It’s definitely this fucking flat of yours. You should have it deloused. Really.

And then she puked some more while I held her hair back.

When she was finally done puking, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Fancy a little French kissing, she giggled.

That almost made me puke too but the truth is, if we were both puking, there wouldn’t be much time for sex. And let’s face it, that’s the only reason either of us were here at the moment.

Look, I’m sorry, she says. This place puts me off sex.

We could go to yours…

Nah, let’s just call it a night, shall we?

Great. It’s a night. Now what?

I wake up and go home. Thanks, this was fun. Really.

******

I’m laying on the floor reading and eating a sandwich made of onions and marmite. If I look closely, I sometimes see the words of the book I’m reading. Then I turn the book to read the title. “How To Tell Time”, it says. “Without a Clock.”

I feel lonely. Books are my only friends.

******

A few days later I wake up and wonder where I am. Gradually it all comes into focus. All the grime, all the sadness, all the wasting of time.

I am tempted to break open a bottle of gin and turn on the television but I remember that both make me incredibly ill so I try to find something to distract myself with. I recite a poem to a few of the cockroaches which were captured in my home made cockroach capturing mechanism; like a rat trap only for roaches and a lot smaller. I can’t remember any of the classic poems, or even the anonymous poems, so I make one off the top of my head which has nothing to do with the cockroaches, but I’m sure they’ll listen anyway because they’re trapped, caught and there’s nowhere else for them to go.

SOMETIMES I GROW COLD.

Then I decide maybe it’d be better sung than recited. Maybe to a little Cockroach Castle finger-snappy jazzy sort of tune.

Sometimes I grow cold
My eyes permafrost
My tan a warning to igloos
Everywhere the Eskimos
Are frightened.

I shake my head because that’s what I do when I’ve stumped myself with my own stupidity.

What the fuck am I going to do today I ask the caged cockroaches.

*****

Sometime later, or maybe it was before, it’s really fucking hot and humid outside and inside the flat it’s like a broiler. I can feel my flesh cooking. I drink water out of the rusty tap and think jesus, if I were a dog, I’d be drinking water right out of the toilet. I’m much better off being human. But it’s so fucking hot I can hardly move. I stick my whole head in the sink and then I go back to the mattress and lie down again. I know I called it a day bed before but really, it’s just an old, yellowing mattress on the floor, almost indistinguishable amid the newspapers and dirty clothes and empty glasses and ashtrays and books.

I hate the heat. I prefer the cold. That’s what they say.

And of course there’s the other fuckers, the ones who always have to be different, who say they hate the cold and prefer the heat. How can you staaaaaand the cold these people ask me incredulously when I tell them the cold is my friend. What can I say to that? Ok, I was only kidding, I hate the cold too. Actually, I prefer it somewhere in between. What the fuck can I say, I got it wrong!

I want to play records but no one plays records any more and I don’t have any records or even a record player. I used to have all of that shit. Now it’s all what, I dunno, Cds, DVDs? Have they come up with something else already? Fuck, this perpetual march that humanity is on to progress, it’s just all so fucking tiring. I can’t keep up any more. Why don’t they have like a, B-side to the human experience where nobody does anything or has any fucking ambition. Just sit around, kill something once in a while to eat, or just eat grass or something, fuck, what’s the difference?

Finally, I try and turn the television on. Oh yes, I’ve got a television alright. I don’t tell many people about it because it would seem, you know, hypocritical and all, but man, sometimes I just fucking crave it, you know? Like I couldn’t get through the night without a few hours of inanity.

It’s a political argument show. All these arrogant fuckers shouting each other down with their fucking OPINIONS like anyone is going to give a fuck or even remember in twenty years, all that blustering and self-importance.

I look on the cockroaches. I’m getting hungry. Cockroach and garlic mayonnaise sandwiches. That would just hit the spot. Like those prawn cocktail sandwiches only fresher. Fresh cockroaches. Never thought I’d be thinking about it but once that tv came on, it hit me, I’m fucking hungry and I want some cockroaches.

I used to sit in the dark for hours in the beginning, just so I could jump up, hit the lights and start scooping those little fuckers up in my special cockroach net. It reminds me, or perhaps I’m simply imagining it in my head, of those Planet of the Apes movies where they’re all on horseback catching humans in nets. I’m the Apes and the cockroaches are the humans. It’s a fun little game. I’m trying to think of how to make it into a proper board game, with like electric tweezers and plastic cockroach pieces hidden in little nooks and crannies. Comes with a roach whistle and all. I just blow it and they come scurrying along. Right into daddy’s little sauce pot, I coo to them.

There’s a knock on the door and I freeze. What time is it?

What is it? I demand in a fake deep, angry voice.

Can you please turn that fucking music down? Some people are trying to sleep!

Music? What fucking music? There’s no music in here.

I heard you singing that song to the cockroaches. Don’t try and deny it. And now all the cockroaches in my flat are running all over the place keeping me awake. What the fuck is wrong with you for god’s sake? Where is your compassion?

I open the door and see a fat, balding man in a tee shirt and stained jockey shorts scratching his crotch looking at me.

He must see me as I see myself in the mirror, not how I see myself in my head.

He looks puzzled for a moment. Moves his scratching from his balls to his bald head and looks all around the hallway.

Where the fuck are we anyway?

2006, I said.

You should read this book, I add. How to tell time without a clock. Then you’d know.

Well, I’m trying to sleep anyway so can you keep it down?

I turn back to the room, my castle. Hey you fucking maniacs, can you keep it down for this poor chap?! I shout loud enough to make even my own ears hurt.

Would you like a cup of watery tea? I ask as he heads back down the hall. He ignores me. I close the door and lie back down on the mattress.

******

I read this article, or perhaps I heard it on one of those altruistic radio programmes, about this guy who masturbates on junk mail. Supposedly it’s the latest in sexual faddism. And I think, god, if only I had a sex drive, I could go crazy in here. There’s junk mail from the last six months accumulated all over this flat. More junk mail than books, just how I like it. I never imagined it to be a sexually arousing though. I want to call in to that radio show, yes, definitely a radio show and not a newspaper article because I couldn’t phone into a newspaper article. I wanted to phone in and ask, hey, do women suffer from this too?

But I don’t have a phone, so I just sit there and think about the chances instead.

Later that night I leave my castle to go to this horrible country and western bar at the end of my street, a hideous place with horrible, stupid music, basically the call to idiots everywhere, the Idiot’s Siren and not only that but all the people are fat and ugly and stupid and then they get drunk which only compounds their stupidity and these fat oily fuckers start having sex. Not right there in the bar but they peel off in pairs like jets in a fighter squadron. Fuck Bombs.

I’m sitting there alone while all these idiots are milling around me drinking and saying really stupid stuff that I can’t even repeat because you might go blind reading it it’s so fucking stupid. Some pig-faced woman in a lace top with an inch of visible makeup blotting her bloated jelly roll pig face, sweat pouring out of her, guzzling her cocktail with an umbrella in it, staring at me out of the corner of her eye, pretending to laugh at her friends’ jokes even though she’s not listening, she’s sending me subliminal sex missives, really graphic and disturbing missives so I thought fuck it, why not just come right out and ask her.

I lean in to her, feeling her twitch with anticipation.

Is it true that women masturbate on junk mail too or is it only men?

Holy shit, it all goes bad quickly from there. She screams as though I’ve slashed her with a knife and everyone looks at us. She points at me. This man just asked me if I liked to masturbate on junk mail!

I don’t need to tell you, I got out of there pretty quick. A few people tried to poke or kick at me as I scurried out thinking about a nice cockroach frittata, but generally, I made it out back into the street unscathed. A guy was standing there smoking a cigarette.

Can I interest you in a little junk mail, he says, opening his coat to display the samples.

*******

Nobody visits me any more. Not that they ever did actually. I’ve been alone in this flat for as far back as I can remember. Of course, that’s only a few years ago. All the years before that fell away in a drunken haze I remember absolutely nothing of. Someone wrote me a letter awhile ago, after it was all over. No memories left for you, lad, it said. Written in crayon. I often tried to figure out what it meant but I couldn’t remember.

So this is where I am.

My castle. My cockroaches. My slow pace. My endless time.

I have arrived and stayed. Where or why, no one I ask has any idea. I have an inkling this Kimberlain character holds the key somewhere. I have to find him again.


******((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((***************************


The promise of death is the only promise that gives my life any meaning, any depth. Can you imagine what it would be like not to have this hanging over us? To think we would be sentenced rather than blessed with a life in perpetuity, Shapeless, boring, incessant? The sentence worth than life would be a never-ending life.

Kimberlain counsels me. I am supine on a rug on a concrete floor in a flat with no windows.

You pretended to be people you weren’t.

Foreigners, even. You disguised your voice with a phony accent and most of these people didn’t know the difference, wanted to be enchanted instead of looking down reality’s throat and hearing ahhhh.

I have a thought and a passes.

It’s like this at night most often. It’s all real, waking out of the dream, being in the dream, thinking about the dream. It’s a rash in the head. I can’t get it out and all I want to do is scratch it more and more, thinking and thinking about the same idiotic moment.

Kimberlain doesn’t shush me. He let’s me prattle on a little bit, like a parent humouring a child’s gibberish.

The gibberish exhausts me so I fall silent.

Kimberlain doesn’t swing a pocket watch in front of me. He gives me drugs. It’s ok, he says. These drugs are to help you, not to prolong you.

And I lie there, supine on that

Ok, this guy tried to tell me one afternoon, sitting on a chair on the sidewalk everyone in their beer malt liquor rubbing day chests and getting all, you know. Fuck.

You can’t say you’re any one nationality. You think. They are everywhere. They whisper in my ear over and over: “It’s the lifestyle”.

I always shake my head. Sometimes I even hit myself in the ear, like there’s a malfunction.

Hollywood be thy name, Kimberlain said suddenly, as if he’d woken from a trance himself. Did you just slap yourself in the ear, he asked me.









We were no longer kids.
Dried out, served on a platter with chips on the side sitting underneath some greasy counter heat lamp growing more insipid with each passing day.
It wasn’t the happiest time.
Oh sure, we could see people around us happy but we always had a sneaking suspicion the only reason they were happy was because they were ignorant or simple. Un-evolved, still choking down the bones of their ancestors, revolting and full of mindless banter.
So we weren’t happy and the people around us who were seemed like, well, idiots. Happy like dogs when they see their master. Not happy like cats because the world can fuck off. Happy like dogs. Panting, drooling, slobberingly stupid dogs.
How could we be happy floating in the sea of stupidity around us, the air so damp with stupidity you would enter the indoors with little micro stupidities clinging to you, soaking your clothes. Worse than cigarette smoke, they say. But cigarette smoke was the only real way of drying off the dampness of the stupidity soaking the air around you.

Micky Whitemeat says you shower in stupidity every day. I listen to Micky Whitemeat on the Am radio. It’s distinctly unsatisfying, which is why I do it.

But these people, these who I can’t even fathom I belong with, belong to, wander amid, occasionally copulate with, I can’t shake them. I find little pockets of resistance from city to city but almost never in rural areas. Rural areas make you stupid and slow. And well they should be far from the cities because they look at cities as cynically as cities look at rural areas. Ok, maybe cities look at rural areas with just a little weekend lust in their eyes but you can be certain cities are not going to sit out there gathering dust waiting for the first speck of news to reach you.

Am I alright?

Am I bleeding?

*****

It's too late by then. Everything is over. I've struck her and her face is bleeding so when she asks me for that last delicate moment that she will ever trust me again, I just shake my head. No.

*****

The minute.

This minute that's just passed, this minute now, expiring as I speak, that minute over there being tracked for the future, BANG. It's all just mushroom clouded without any good sound track to remember it by.

*****

PART ONE

We were no longer kids.

Instead we were the ghost of kids.

Dried out, served on a platter with chips on the side sitting underneath some greasy counter heat lamp growing more insipid with each passing day.

It wasn’t the happiest time.

Oh sure, we could see people around us happy but we always had a sneaking suspicion the only reason they were happy was because they were ignorant or simple. Un-evolved, still choking down the bones of their ancestors, revolting and full of mindless banter.

So we weren’t happy and the people around us who were seemed like, well, idiots. Happy like dogs when they see their master. Not happy like cats because the world can fuck off. Happy like dogs. Panting, drooling, slobberingly stupid dogs.

How could we be happy floating in the sea of stupidity around us, the air so damp with stupidity you would enter the indoors with little micro stupidities clinging to you, soaking your clothes. Worse than cigarette smoke, they say. But cigarette smoke was the only real way of drying off the dampness of the stupidity soaking the air around you.

We, of course, is only me. I've inverted the M for convenience. We can evolve any moment "we" feel necessary. That is to say we, the convenient device to trot out when the moment struck me. There is no we at all. Well, nobody else on the outside knows that. As far as they're concerned we means me and someone else or many someone elses. Of course you know now too. So I guess you're not on the outside any more.

Micky Whitemeat says you shower in stupidity every day. I listen to Micky Whitemeat on the Am radio. It’s distinctly unsatisfying, which is why I do it.

But these people, these who I can’t even fathom I belong with, belong to, wander amid, occasionally copulate with, I can’t shake them. I find little pockets of resistance from city to city but almost never in rural areas. Rural areas make you stupid and slow. And well they should be far from the cities because they look at cities as cynically as cities look at rural areas. Ok, maybe cities look at rural areas with just a little weekend lust in their eyes but you can be certain cities are not going to sit out there gathering dust waiting for the first speck of news to reach you.

I’m thinking about all this in dire detail as I’m walking the streets going somewhere aimlessly. I pick a street and start walking down it and then when the mood strikes me, I take a different street and all the while with no accurate measure of where I am or where I’m going, just random turns. I need something to visualise it. A familiar mark, a subway station. But I’ve got nothing because I don’t even know where I’m going. Oh wait, yes I do, I just remembered, I’m going to meet with Kimberland, a salesman of some kind. I don’t know what, does it really matter? Do you ever WANT someone to sell you something? This whole moaning culture is a giant vat of selling, shovels full of bullshit they take in their hands and lovingly shove between your lips into your mouth. You can spit it out over and over again but that bullshit taste is still there, long after they leave. It’s their calling card, these punks, these gigantic destroyers of the human soul and champion bullshit feeders.

I met Kimberland on a street corner somewhere. Lost, chum, he asks me as I stand there trying to decide which corner to turn. Fuck off, I said because I don’t like strangers coming up to me unsolicited and talking to me. Not unless they’re fit birds scoffing a light or copping a feel. There now, are you offended? You see, your glass ceiling is fucking low, kid. You’ve gotta raise that glass ceiling really fucking high if you are going to get through all this shit without it getting caked on to you.

Kimberland was used to this kind of street abuse apparently because he was utterly unflustered.

Wanna buy something, he asks.

Like what?

I dunno, what do you want to buy?

I would like to buy a gun and then shoot you with it.

You’d have to buy the bullets too. And probably a hunting license. In fact, if you bought a gun from me and bullets as well and just shot me right here…were you thinking of shooting to kill me or only wound me?….

I haven’t decided yet.

Well, in either scenario, you’d have to buy a lot of influence with the local authorities to get off whatever myriad of charges you’d be facing for shooting someone in broad daylight on a main street corner.

What if I simply said I was religiously intolerant?

Well, firstly, I’m not religious so I’m not sure that’s possible if that’s you’re excuse for shooting me. And secondly, even if shooting in the name of religious intolerance, you won’t be exempted from contempt or conviction. But we’re getting off track. How much money do you have to spend?

None. I don’t use money these days. I used plastic. The plastic symbolises the substance of my need for consumption. How about a goat?

Do you have a goat?

No. But maybe you’ve got one for sale?

******

I meet Kimberlain on another street corner, weeks and weeks later. It’s raining now. I haven’t worn anything in anticipation of getting wet, or prevention of getting wet. So I am soaking when I reach him at the predetermined corner. He’s never tried to sell me anything again since that first meeting, I made him promise. If we were going to hang out again some time.

Kimberlain has a big fucking umbrella with him. A fuck you sort of umbrella that, if you were walking down a street carrying it you’d be poking every fucker you passed in the eye or the mouth or the ear. But because he’s stationary, people just walk around him, muttering or turning back after a few steps to hurl a hideous look of disgust at him. Little daggers of bad karma.

It’s like a fucking tent, I said, as I approach him.

There’s only room for one under here, he warns.

Then we’d better find shelter.

******

It used to be easy to find shelter. Just go into a fucking bar. Nice and warm. Drinks to get you fucked up and forgetting everything that makes you sick to your stomach. Drinks and more drinks. But not any more. I take pills that make me vomit if I drink alcohol. I gits them for free. From Big Bossman Government, all-caring,, yummy mummy father superior big business government who want me off the liquor at all times because otherwise I become a deficit to society rather than a show flower of happiness. On these pills, I drink only when I want to vomit which admittedly, doesn’t happen very often.

We could stand under the bus stop shelter, Kimberlain points out with the sharp tip of his umbrella nearly poking out my eye. Or you could, you miserable git. Look at you, soaking. What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why don’t you buy an umbrella.

What, from you?

No, not from me. But there’s other people around who are selling umbrellas. Especially when it’s raining. Rain is an umbrella salesman’s nirvana. You could have gone to one of them. You could be nearly dry instead of soaking and looking for a fucking bus stop to hide under in this downpour.

I like the rain. It makes me feel human. Why would I want an umbrella getting in the way?

Listen, I’m not standing under the fucking bus stop. If you like the rain so much stand in it out here like a man whilst we have our conversation.

*****

So how is it going? He asks, flicking his butane lighter and torching a roll up in his mouth.

A lot of pains, I said. Mostly in my arse. These people, these televisions, these incessant commercials. Those kinds of searing pain that make me want to dig my eyeballs out of my skull just to distract me.

I thought you didn’t watch television. In fact, didn’t you even say you destroyed your television with the business end of a ball peen hammer?

Nah, that’s just hyperbole. I watch television in the showrooms of electronics stores. I go from one store to another spending like 30 or 40 minutes watching. Sometimes I ask a question to one of the salesmen, like do you have any of these in mauve, or why does the picture look so fuzzy? Just so they won’t hassle me about standing there. There’s a lot of showrooms selling televisions you better believe it. You’d think they were giving away pussy in there but nope. Just a bunch of fucking televisions.

But where would you be without television, Marsaw?

Marsaw?! I hissed under my breath. What did I tell you about using my real name in public?!

Marsaw, Marsaw MARSAW! He shouted which prompted me to stomp on his right foot as hard as I could.

Then he hopped on one foot howling, the umbrella falling to the ground as he tried to grab at his foot and squeeze out the pain and because it was gusting a bit, when it hit the ground, the umbrella went flying off right into the face of a pretty executive bird who was in the middle of some work-related conversation about unrequited love and the latest sitcom being featured on the cultish television magazines.

She too fell to the ground as if she’d been hit by a sniper on the 11th floor.

I rushed over and held out my hand. Jesus, that umbrella could have decapitated you, I said as I pulled her to her feet. She looked at me blankly as though she didn’t understand English or couldn’t hear or read lips. You could have been decapitated I said slowly and loudly to her again.

I heard you the first time, she muttered, wiping the front of her business suit with a nail-bitten hand, Female executive paws, I call them, all of them chewing their nails down to the nub with anxiety about playing man in a man’s world with a female edge but never fully accepted as anything but stupid or butch, depending on how well she was performing.

Well, what about it? Aren’t you glad you weren’t decapitated at least?

And what, you want me to thank YOU for that?

No, it was just an observation…

Well here’s an observation for you to chew on: you’re a pest. And now here’s a command for you: get lost.

Whose the new lady friend, Kimberlain asked cheerily as he approached me, walking her walk past him into the crowd.

Her name is Agneta Millstone, she’s unattached and looking for some female companionship. I spat on the ground, nearly hitting someone’s shoe. Can’t a man even spit without having people getting in the way?

*****

It finally stopped raining.

Kimberlain was sitting on the ground in an alleyway right in the middle of a big puddle.

I stood a few feet away in front of him looking up at the sky trying to discern how much time I’d have to dry.

Where were we anyway, he asks suddenly, poking around in his pockets for a cigarette.

Queen Bastrino Boulevard and Avenue of Eternal Sadness. Right near the fish fry and Laundromat a go-go. It was raining hard and we started walking. You lost consciousness just above this puddle, fell and then woke up again a few seconds ago sitting upright in that same puddle. You really should see someone about that.

Kimberlain had some kind of condition, I don’t know what the fuck it’s called and frankly, what difference does it make? He passes out in the middle of nothing. Like the opposite of somnambulism only falling instead of walking. He’s says he’s been doing it for years. He loses consciousness and wakes up wherever he fell. Certain words he thinks of appears to trigger it. He says he thinks he was hypnotised against his will somewhere once and they even made him forget he’d been hypnotised and this is all some giant joke only a select few who were there to witness it are privy to. A hypnotic baptism. A series of them. That’s what he calls them, hypnotic baptisms.

Listen, I’m tired. I’m going off somewhere alone, he said, making a big effort to stand up again. I can’t believe you made me lose that fucking umbrella…

Ok, I suppose I’ll see you sometime next week?

Weather-willing.

*****

My home is not my castle. I got back to it after that big meeting with Kimberlain and I couldn’t help but think about that stupid phrase. Castle. What kind of fucking castle was this? A single bulb room in a shitty part of town? Cockroaches? A yes, cockroaches. I hated them for the longest time living in this fucking castle of mine. But then I started catching them and killing them in boiling water and believe it or not, with the right kind of sauce, say a marsala or a cream sauce, they taste alright. I started thinking fuck, I could open up a cockroach restaurant and pretend they were a new delicacy. Hard sell that, though. People are usually pretty staunch in their opinions. Especially one like cockroaches are disgusting. But they say cockroaches would survive nuclear war so if I eat enough of them, who knows, maybe I would too.

My castle has a day bed. It had a cheap dresser with the few bits of clothing I own and wear religiously because I have nothing else to wear. I wear them to near rags and then I go out to the cheapest fucking market in the ugliest part of town and buy more clothes to replace the rags.

I stopped shaving about 4 years ago. I look it.

My castle has a lot of books I don’t read or haven’t read more than a page or a sentence or sometimes just a word out of. There are books like this all over the castle. In the bed sheets, under the bed, around the toilet like a mystical ring, overflowing out of milk crates, on the floor, tucked in the closet. On the kitchen counter, above the frig, but not too near the hot plate. God forbid. This place would go up like a fucking firecracker.

And that’s about it. A lot of overflowing ashtrays. Welcome to my castle. The whole place reeks of stale smoke. A few months ago I managed to get a date with this bird I met in the super market and she had a few glasses of wine while I watched her in this run down little café a few streets from my castle and it was going all pretty smoothly and progressing nicely and she asks me why don’t you invite me back to your castle, all shy like…

Sure, I says. I pay the bill, waving off her efforts to split the bill. The least I could do. I sometimes forget I even have a dick. What do I use it for? Just to piss out of. It doesn’t get much action. Not even from me. Even I ignore my dick. How can I expect some bird to love it?

We walk up the dusty, filthy stairway up to my floor, I open the door grandly and wave her in.

She walks in, laughing one minute, gagging the next. Jesus christ, she moans, holding her hand to her mouth. What the fuck do you DO in here?

Needless to say, it put a little damper on the mood. But as she vomited over the toilet, I held her hair back for her and told her little stories I’d seen on the news to take her mind off all the vomiting. Are you sure you don’t just have food poisoning, I asked finally.

We didn’t eat anything you idiot. We only drank wine, remember? No. It’s definitely this fucking flat of yours. You should have it deloused. Really.

And then she puked some more while I held her hair back.

When she was finally done puking, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Fancy a little French kissing, she giggled.

That almost made me puke too but the truth is, if we were both puking, there wouldn’t be much time for sex. And let’s face it, that’s the only reason either of us were here at the moment.

Look, I’m sorry, she says. This place puts me off sex.

We could go to yours…

Nah, let’s just call it a night, shall we?

Great. It’s a night. Now what?

I wake up and go home. Thanks, this was fun. Really.

******

I’m laying on the floor reading and eating a sandwich made of onions and marmite. If I look closely, I sometimes see the words of the book I’m reading. Then I turn the book to read the title. “How To Tell Time”, it says. “Without a Clock.”

I feel lonely. Books are my only friends.

******

A few days later I wake up and wonder where I am. Gradually it all comes into focus. All the grime, all the sadness, all the wasting of time.

I am tempted to break open a bottle of gin and turn on the television but I remember that both make me incredibly ill so I try to find something to distract myself with. I recite a poem to a few of the cockroaches which were captured in my home made cockroach capturing mechanism; like a rat trap only for roaches and a lot smaller. I can’t remember any of the classic poems, or even the anonymous poems, so I make one off the top of my head which has nothing to do with the cockroaches, but I’m sure they’ll listen anyway because they’re trapped, caught and there’s nowhere else for them to go.

SOMETIMES I GROW COLD.

Then I decide maybe it’d be better sung than recited. Maybe to a little Cockroach Castle finger-snappy jazzy sort of tune.

Sometimes I grow cold
My eyes permafrost
My tan a warning to igloos
Everywhere the Eskimos
Are frightened.

I shake my head because that’s what I do when I’ve stumped myself with my own stupidity.

What the fuck am I going to do today I ask the caged cockroaches.

*****

Sometime later, or maybe it was before, it’s really fucking hot and humid outside and inside the flat it’s like a broiler. I can feel my flesh cooking. I drink water out of the rusty tap and think jesus, if I were a dog, I’d be drinking water right out of the toilet. I’m much better off being human. But it’s so fucking hot I can hardly move. I stick my whole head in the sink and then I go back to the mattress and lie down again. I know I called it a day bed before but really, it’s just an old, yellowing mattress on the floor, almost indistinguishable amid the newspapers and dirty clothes and empty glasses and ashtrays and books.

I hate the heat. I prefer the cold. That’s what they say.

And of course there’s the other fuckers, the ones who always have to be different, who say they hate the cold and prefer the heat. How can you staaaaaand the cold these people ask me incredulously when I tell them the cold is my friend. What can I say to that? Ok, I was only kidding, I hate the cold too. Actually, I prefer it somewhere in between. What the fuck can I say, I got it wrong!

I want to play records but no one plays records any more and I don’t have any records or even a record player. I used to have all of that shit. Now it’s all what, I dunno, Cds, DVDs? Have they come up with something else already? Fuck, this perpetual march that humanity is on to progress, it’s just all so fucking tiring. I can’t keep up any more. Why don’t they have like a, B-side to the human experience where nobody does anything or has any fucking ambition. Just sit around, kill something once in a while to eat, or just eat grass or something, fuck, what’s the difference?

Finally, I try and turn the television on. Oh yes, I’ve got a television alright. I don’t tell many people about it because it would seem, you know, hypocritical and all, but man, sometimes I just fucking crave it, you know? Like I couldn’t get through the night without a few hours of inanity.

It’s a political argument show. All these arrogant fuckers shouting each other down with their fucking OPINIONS like anyone is going to give a fuck or even remember in twenty years, all that blustering and self-importance.

I look on the cockroaches. I’m getting hungry. Cockroach and garlic mayonnaise sandwiches. That would just hit the spot. Like those prawn cocktail sandwiches only fresher. Fresh cockroaches. Never thought I’d be thinking about it but once that tv came on, it hit me, I’m fucking hungry and I want some cockroaches.

I used to sit in the dark for hours in the beginning, just so I could jump up, hit the lights and start scooping those little fuckers up in my special cockroach net. It reminds me, or perhaps I’m simply imagining it in my head, of those Planet of the Apes movies where they’re all on horseback catching humans in nets. I’m the Apes and the cockroaches are the humans. It’s a fun little game. I’m trying to think of how to make it into a proper board game, with like electric tweezers and plastic cockroach pieces hidden in little nooks and crannies. Comes with a roach whistle and all. I just blow it and they come scurrying along. Right into daddy’s little sauce pot, I coo to them.

There’s a knock on the door and I freeze. What time is it?

What is it? I demand in a fake deep, angry voice.

Can you please turn that fucking music down? Some people are trying to sleep!

Music? What fucking music? There’s no music in here.

I heard you singing that song to the cockroaches. Don’t try and deny it. And now all the cockroaches in my flat are running all over the place keeping me awake. What the fuck is wrong with you for god’s sake? Where is your compassion?

I open the door and see a fat, balding man in a tee shirt and stained jockey shorts scratching his crotch looking at me.

He must see me as I see myself in the mirror, not how I see myself in my head.

He looks puzzled for a moment. Moves his scratching from his balls to his bald head and looks all around the hallway.

Where the fuck are we anyway?

2006, I said.

You should read this book, I add. How to tell time without a clock. Then you’d know.

Well, I’m trying to sleep anyway so can you keep it down?

I turn back to the room, my castle. Hey you fucking maniacs, can you keep it down for this poor chap?! I shout loud enough to make even my own ears hurt.

Would you like a cup of watery tea? I ask as he heads back down the hall. He ignores me. I close the door and lie back down on the mattress.

******

I read this article, or perhaps I heard it on one of those altruistic radio programmes, about this guy who masturbates on junk mail. Supposedly it’s the latest in sexual faddism. And I think, god, if only I had a sex drive, I could go crazy in here. There’s junk mail from the last six months accumulated all over this flat. More junk mail than books, just how I like it. I never imagined it to be a sexually arousing though. I want to call in to that radio show, yes, definitely a radio show and not a newspaper article because I couldn’t phone into a newspaper article. I wanted to phone in and ask, hey, do women suffer from this too?

But I don’t have a phone, so I just sit there and think about the chances instead.

Later that night I leave my castle to go to this horrible country and western bar at the end of my street, a hideous place with horrible, stupid music, basically the call to idiots everywhere, the Idiot’s Siren and not only that but all the people are fat and ugly and stupid and then they get drunk which only compounds their stupidity and these fat oily fuckers start having sex. Not right there in the bar but they peel off in pairs like jets in a fighter squadron. Fuck Bombs.

I’m sitting there alone while all these idiots are milling around me drinking and saying really stupid stuff that I can’t even repeat because you might go blind reading it it’s so fucking stupid. Some pig-faced woman in a lace top with an inch of visible makeup blotting her bloated jelly roll pig face, sweat pouring out of her, guzzling her cocktail with an umbrella in it, staring at me out of the corner of her eye, pretending to laugh at her friends’ jokes even though she’s not listening, she’s sending me subliminal sex missives, really graphic and disturbing missives so I thought fuck it, why not just come right out and ask her.

I lean in to her, feeling her twitch with anticipation.

Is it true that women masturbate on junk mail too or is it only men?

Holy shit, it all goes bad quickly from there. She screams as though I’ve slashed her with a knife and everyone looks at us. She points at me. This man just asked me if I liked to masturbate on junk mail!

I don’t need to tell you, I got out of there pretty quick. A few people tried to poke or kick at me as I scurried out thinking about a nice cockroach frittata, but generally, I made it out back into the street unscathed. A guy was standing there smoking a cigarette.

Can I interest you in a little junk mail, he says, opening his coat to display the samples.

*******

Nobody visits me any more. Not that they ever did actually. I’ve been alone in this flat for as far back as I can remember. Of course, that’s only a few years ago. All the years before that fell away in a drunken haze I remember absolutely nothing of. Someone wrote me a letter awhile ago, after it was all over. No memories left for you, lad, it said. Written in crayon. I often tried to figure out what it meant but I couldn’t remember.

So this is where I am.

My castle. My cockroaches. My slow pace. My endless time.

I have arrived and stayed. Where or why, no one I ask has any idea. I have an inkling this Kimberlain character holds the key somewhere. I have to find him again.


******((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((***************************

It's amazing, Kinderton is preaching to me as I move about the flat with the intention of emptying the rubbish bin. It's amazing, isn't it, he asks more forcefully. That you can continue to survive on such crumbs of hope. One message from one person, no matter how strange, unexpected and incomprehensible, is enough to sustain you for days. Not weeks of course. You need a series of these small revelations to sustain you for weeks but you are like a trapeze artist moving from one tiny crumb to the next thinking you are closer to some more bearable truth.

And yet, you realise, even in this exercise that there is no such bearable truth. It is only the hope of finding one that sustains you. What would you do with a bearable truth? Would you embrace it or run away again, like always?

His question hangs in the air like a swarm of gnats. I take inventory of the rubbish bin: coffee grounds, the tiny fag ends of hundreds of cheap roll ups, orange rinds. I wonder vaguely to myself where the orange rinds came from and then remember that only a few days before Kinderton had come bearing a gift of a crate of tangerines. They fell off the back of a delivery truck, he explained. Besides, there's no vitamin C in cockroaches, you should understand that. You need another form of nourishment. You're beginning to look too grey.

*****

Listen, he says, pulling away at the rind of a tangerine, one of the few left, as I light another cigarette in a room already so choked with smoke we can barely make each other out. You are in limbo. It is just like the period before you were born, after you die, that limbo of nothing only somehow, you're still here. You ask yourself that every day, don't you? What are you doing here when you're already dead or not yet born? Isn't that someone who has no memory of the past? Not yet born? And yet you were. There's a whole horrific past that you can't remember, won't remember. Blocked out, blacked out. Limbo. Wake up. Misfortune is not the destiny of others. It is your path. Your only path.

*****

The problem is always too many choices.

Kinderton says we should all be so lucky to live in gulags, not having to take responsibility for our choices any more because there aren't any.

It's hardship, he says knowingly, playing the pipe-toting intelligentsia in one simple motion, hardship but freedom from choice.

People who have too many choices end up spinning their wheels, you mark my words. These future generations are going immune to attention spans. But I'm not telling you anything you can't see for yourself. What is important is that you do not follow their lead.

Why can't I have a female mentor?

You see! Just there. Choice. What makes you think there even ARE female mentors? If this were a gulag you wouldn't be clamouring for a female mentor. You'd be clamouring, with chattering teeth, for a warm fire, a blanket and an eternal sleep.

But you can't negate choice. It's right there. You don't have a choice but to have choice.

It's called mental weakness, Kinderton said, tapping his forehead. Choice is what got you into this mess in the first place. Do you want another relapse? Another period of complete blackness? Isn't that why you're here to begin with? To find out how it happened and avoid in the future?

Well to be honest, I just want to find out how it happened. Once I know that I'll decided whether or not I want to avoid it in the future. Maybe it was a good thing.

Maybe it was a good thing, Kinderton mutters to himself. Maybe it was. So good maybe you should return to that blackness, that nothingness.

Kinderton says big men have alot of urine in them.

He says if a man can't piss for at least 60 seconds straight, he's not a real man, but a half man.

I urinated in an alley, away from spectators.

*****

I played this little game wherein I kidded myself I didn't think about her. Oh, I thought about her, but only in the detached way one reads about a dozen anonymous people dying somewhere in a flash flood. You were aware you should feel bad but somehow the bad feeling couldn't spring forth. It was just caught there in the back of your throat and had remained there so long you barely even noticed it was there any more.

*****

At this hour he begins to write again, polishing the same stone over and over, still a stone.

Kinderton likes the solitude of music on headphones. It drowns out the Thursday night church bells, a persistent drone, a beautiful woman who opens her mouth one too many times and each time, to his disgust, Kinderton sees a little deeper into her.

So he sits near the window of his room overlooking the harbour, lights from the street dancing on the dark night water. He smokes because it relieves an inner restlessness that pacing does not satisfy. He has no where to go but plenty to do. (so he believes anyway but if you observe his sloth-like behaviour you realise that smoking and reading and music are the primary passions, distractions...

When I arrive he clears a stack of books and papers from a chair, dumps it without ceremony on the floor behind the chair and motions with a swinging arm wordless like an ape, for me to take it.

He regrets now that he must remove the headphones and so it is that we both sit around a table beside the window, listening to those church bells which sound lovely to my ears but to him, night after night of it sometimes it seems, it is maddening.

He puts music on, loudly so that we will be a near shout in conversation but he doesn't care. At least it drowns out the church bells. I feel like I'm battling a psychological disease with those bells, he mutters to himself, serving us both a cup of tea and taking his seat again, props arranged.

So, you say that you want to remember, he begins abruptly, even his cigarette betraying an insatiable inner anger, clenched tightly, blown out after barely inhaling, contemptuously, still thinking of the church bells.

May I ask why?

I think a moment before responding. I am not sure if he is attempting to evaluate my sincerity or is simply curious.

I imagine for the same reason any man would want to remember, or to be able to remember at least...the vast emptiness leading up to now is lonely. I'm aware that at birth it was no different but there was also no or little consciousness of history itself, there was nothing needed to build upon. I am like a building erected without blueprints or material. Just simply there one day. No explanation of how or why.

What if what you remember is not particularly pleasant? Once the floodgates are opened, it will difficult to control it. Memories, good, bad, horrible, disfiguring, will come out as if opening a Pandora's box.

I'm aware that most of it is probably unpleasant but at least I'll be aware of it.

Well, they'll be coming for you, soon enough. Don't be so eager. I suggest we take a walk to a cafe I know of a few blocks from here. We can discuss this away from church bells.

He nods his head slowly.

******


The promise of death is the only promise that gives my life any meaning, any depth. Can you imagine what it would be like not to have this hanging over us? To think we would be sentenced rather than blessed with a life in perpetuity, Shapeless, boring, incessant? The sentence worse than life would be a never-ending life.

Kimberlain counsels me. I am supine on a rug on a concrete floor in a flat with no windows. Incense is burning and kyoto music is bleeding through the speakers unintrusively.

You pretended to be people you weren’t.

Foreigners, even. You disguised your voice with a phony accent and most of these people didn’t know the difference, wanted to be enchanted instead of looking down reality’s throat and hearing ahhhh.

I have a thought and a passes.

It’s like this at night most often. It’s all real, waking out of the dream, being in the dream, thinking about the dream. It’s a rash in the head. I can’t get it out and all I want to do is scratch it more and more, thinking and thinking about the same idiotic moment.

Kimberlain doesn’t shush me. He let’s me prattle on a little bit, like a parent humouring a child’s gibberish.

The gibberish exhausts me so I fall silent.

Kimberlain doesn’t swing a pocket watch in front of me. He gives me drugs. It’s ok, he says. These drugs are to help you, not to prolong you.

And I lie there, supine on that sofa trying to think of absolutely nothing.

Ok, this guy tried to tell me one afternoon, sitting on a chair on the sidewalk everyone in their beer malt liquor rubbing day chests and getting all, you know. Fuck.

You can’t say you’re any one nationality. You think. They are everywhere. They whisper in my ear over and over: “It’s the lifestyle”.

I always shake my head. Sometimes I even hit myself in the ear, like there’s a malfunction.

Hollywood be thy name, Kimberlain said suddenly, as if he’d woken from a trance himself. Did you just slap yourself in the ear, he asked me.

No. It’s the meq