Eddie invited me in for hot wine. His small sparsely furnished room smelled like a combination of burned orange peel & old woman’s cheek you’re forced to kiss at a family reunion. Carpet covered in big oily stains, the room spoke eloquently of spills of the clumsy fuckers who’d once lived there.
We had sandwiches & hot wine. Eddie was one of those people adept at summing up their lives in less than a minute. Born in Thailand. Studied medicine- never practiced. Traveled widely. Now trying Paris.
Nothing to say to that.
Conversation flowed like water down flushed toilet. He stared at me so intensely I felt my eyes were pocket-sized mirrors & he was checking his hair.
Night came quickly- it unnerved me he didn’t put on lights. Glanced at switch on the wall but was afraid to move if this fool preferred the airless joy of shadows then so would I. Finally he reached behind him & put on a lamp. Small light burned & grew huge in my eyes.
– So, you had a disappointment today, he said.
– Yes, I thought she’d be here.
This made him laugh in violent spasms, a laugh like a congenital defect.
– I meant the death of your friend.
– Oh, yes, that too.
– You love this girl?
– She’s an old friend from home.
– Australia, he said blandly making the name of my country sound like an old thing he’d once owned but had since thrown away. I said Uh-huh & he continued w/questions. What was I doing in Paris? How long would I stay? Where did I live? Did I work? Why not? & so on. He offered to help me in any way I needed. Money or a job or a place to stay. I thanked him & said it was getting late.
– Would it bother you very much if I took your photo?
It would.
– Oh, come on. It’s just this little hobby of mine, he said smiling. I looked around the room for proof of this claim- a photograph maybe- but the walls were bare & when he went into the next room to get his “apparatus” as he called his camera that made me shudder because whenever someone says the word apparatus I see enormous gleaming pincers w/single plump drop of blood at its tip.
– I think I should be going, I said.
– Just one little photo. I’ll be quick, he said w/ fixed smile like a window painted shut.
As he set up I felt convinced he was going to ask me to take off my clothes. He was talking all the while saying You really must tell me if there’s anything I can do for you, convincing me not only was he going to ask me to take off my clothes, he was going to pull them off himself. He switched on another light- a single bulb blared a trillion watts & he took my photo sitting in the chair & standing up & putting on my coat & walking out the door.
– Come by for dinner tomorrow night, he said.
– OK, I lied & hurried out & on the way home swung by the cemetery for a final farewell to Lionel where I tried to be solemn & feel REMORSE SADNESS LOSS SOMETHING I took a deep breath didn’t do any good I couldn’t feel ANYTHING other than pure disgust at myself- I procrastinated so long I missed what might have been a turning point in my life when is the next one going to be? I’d pictured our reunion a zillion times Caroline had been the focal point of my being in Europe or to put it plainly of being alive and through fear & indecision I’d missed her.
I kicked the headstone in a fit of impotent rage but then remembered Lionel. Tried to be sad again but had no room in my heart for mourning him. Too busy mourning love.
Unfeeling tribute to my old friend broken by soft footsteps on grass- Eddie at the bottom of cemetery hands in pockets staring. I pretended I didn’t see him & rushed off into night thinking of pincers.
Me Again
Can’t pretend other people’s minor misfortunes aren’t of great amusement to me because they are- not death or sickness but when someone’s money is swallowed by a public telephone which then refuses to make a call it’s fucking funny. I can watch people hitting telephones all day.
I’ve found an ingenious place to think- inside cool, dark cathedrals of Paris. Of course believers as dumb as patriots make conversations but conversations quiet as they’re w/ God. Stupid how we think God only hears our thoughts when we address them to him
Café Gitane
Months since last written. Crazy with solitude crazy with indecision crazy with imaginary eyes. Days filled w/ walking thinking reading eating drinking smoking & generally trying to pick the padlock of life but it’s difficult when you’re the blunt weapon left out of every war. Hope I won’t suffer same problems in the future, can’t think of anything worse. (Not that I’ve anything against problems, I don’t- expect to have them all my life- just don’t want them to be the same problems. Hope for different horrific affliction to mark each new year.) I think your early twenties must be the age you stumble onto patterns that will ruin your life.
A Thursday
Talk about volatile combinations now LUST & LONELINESS have fused in a haunting unbearable way my body screams my soul screams to touch to be touched around me are countless chiseled & flawless couples look like they’re off to start new unendurable race of ex-soap stars there MUST be someone for me somewhere.
2:30- Midweek?
Every day- same café, different book to read. I don’t speak to ANYONE & keep my eyes in strange places when I order my coffee but they know my face here. The patrons smoke anything flammable & the bartender asks you what you want to drink as if you might be his old nemesis from high school but he isn’t sure & I sit at a small table near the radiator thinking here I am again wanting to be invisible then furious when ignored.
Out the large window I look at life. What a fucking lot of bipeds! Australia – bipeds throwing a ball. Paris – bipeds in turtleneck sweaters. Pessoa called humanity “variable but unimprovable”- hard to find a better description than that. The waiter comes by with the bill. I argue w/ him & lose quickly. No wonder key existentialists were French. It’s natural to be horrified at existence when you have to pay 4 dollars for coffee.
Undated Time
I imagine Judgment Day to be God calling you into a tiny white room w/ an uncomfortable wooden chair that you sit in & splinter yourself as you shift anxiously. He comes in smiling like a train conductor who found you without a ticket & he says I don’t care what good you did or what evil & I don’t care if you believed in me or in my son or in any other member of my extended family & I don’t care if you gave generously to the poor or if you gave to them stingily with closed fists but here is a minute-by-minute account of your time on earth. Then he produces a piece of paper 10,000 kilometers long & says, Read this & explain yourself. Mine would read as follows:
June 14th
9:00 am
woke up
9:01 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:02 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:03 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:04 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:05 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:06 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling
9:07 am
lay in bed, staring at ceiling