I went to the bathroom. It smelled like someone had taken a hangover shit in there. It was foul. I took a piss, washed my face, put some water in my disheveled hair and brushed it back with a hairbrush I found on the counter.
She was standing by the front door when I came out of the bathroom, still wearing only the towel over her. As I was about to leave, she put her arms around me and kissed me on the lips.
“We’ll fuck some other time,” she whispered into my ear before I left.
I doubted it.
9
The air felt cold when I stepped out of the building. The city was quiet. It was Sunday.
I lit a cigarette. As I had a few hours to kill before meeting Vicky, I decided to go and sit down in a pub. I began walking towards Dublin. I guess I had no imagination.
It took me about fifteen minutes of walking to arrive at the pub. When I got there, I ordered a beer at the counter and sat down in the same spot as the day before. I looked out the window. The yellow leaves were starting to fall.
As I sipped on my beer, I overheard two people nearby talking about Stalin and Russian society. Somehow, their conversation went from that to relationships and cheating. It seemed to me that the girl was flirting with the guy. The guy told her that he still talked to his ex, even though she had cheated on him. The girl said he shouldn’t. The guy eventually invited the girl over to London where he lived. The girl said it was too expensive. An empty pleasantry followed by a lie.
I went to the bathroom.
As I was pissing into the urinal, I saw the word “hubris” written on the wall in front of me. A strange thing to write on a bathroom wall, I thought. But then, wasn’t that the whole problem? The hubris of humanity. Everybody was so sure of what they were and what surrounded them. There was so little doubt in them. Everybody was so self-important. The belief that their lives were meaningful and useful rarely went into question. They thought that they were powerful individuals capable of accomplishing everything they set their minds to. When in truth, they accomplished nothing. They died as stupid as they lived. With nothing to show for it in the end. It was only their overconfidence that made their lives bearable.
For example, consider the average priest. Wasn’t everything he did ultimately absurd? And yet, if you took it all away from him, what did he have left? Nothing. If you took his God away from him, he’d realize he was in hell.
And so it was with most people. What gave meaning to their lives were illusions. Illusions that they not only believed in, but had to believe in, as otherwise their world would fall apart. And so they believed. Regardless of how absurd the illusions were. And this was their hubris. Without it, would there ever have been a society?
As I was washing my hands, I recalled something that Bukowski had once said: “Realize how ridiculous we are with our intestines wound round, shit slowly running through as we look each other in the eyes and say, ‘I love you.’ We’re monstrosities.”
As usual when it came to his observations around humanity, he was spot on. We were monstrosities. And we were full of shit. Both figuratively and literally.
I went back to my table and sat down. I took out Will O’ the Wisp and began reading:
“But you don’t look as much in pain as you were a few days ago. Do you still have any pains?”
“I do not have pains. I am in permanent pain.”
I read a couple of chapters before my mind started drifting. I began thinking about the lady I had left in the apartment. Not that she could have helped me. It seemed all she was looking for was a quick fuck and even that didn’t work out. On the other hand, what I needed was somebody to take care of me. To look after me. For I couldn’t always rely on doing that myself. I was self-destructive and prone to depression. And I needed somebody to balance that out. But the person that was supposed to do that had left me.
Well, that’s not quite right. She wasn’t supposed to do anything. It had just seemed to me at first that she didn’t mind the darkness inside of me. That she could handle it. But in the end, she couldn’t.
Even though I had loved Vicky deeply, she had stopped loving me over time. And I couldn’t really blame her for it. For I wasn’t always easy to live with. My behavior was often unpredictable… especially when drunk. I was negative to the extreme. Extremely critical. And constantly depressed.
And now that she was no longer there, the darkness inside of me was kept at bay by no one.
I felt that it was going to consume me.
10
It was almost time to meet Vicky. I left the pub, bought some cigarettes from a nearby kiosk, and walked the streets of Old Town towards the steakhouse where we were supposed to meet.
We had planned to go there previously but then we broke up and never did. It was strange how people did so many things together and then from a certain point onwards they didn’t anymore. It all seemed rehearsed and fake somehow. Perhaps it was because we had invented relationships. We had made them up. They weren’t real things like the sun and moon were real. They were ideas with fictional rules. And that’s why they didn’t work. The real world always got in the way.
When I arrived at the steakhouse, I leaned against the terrace, lit a cigarette, and waited. The name of the steakhouse was M&W. In my mind, it stood for misery and worry.
It was chilly outside, but I liked it. I had always liked autumn. Standing there, smoking my cigarette and observing the people walking by, I suddenly recalled an idea I’d once had for a novel which was to take place during autumn. It was about a suicidal young painter and her attempts to find a reason to survive in a world that didn’t give a shit.
To be sure, it was a rather lousy idea. Just like most of the ideas I’d ever had for novels, none of which ever materialized. I never did much with this one either except for writing a few bad chapters and deciding that the main character’s name should be Lola, a decision which took me hours to arrive at. However, I still liked the title I had come up for it. It was going to be called The Occluded Front, which was a meteorological term for saying, “When a cold front overtakes a warm front.” Incidentally, that was precisely how I felt about my current mental state.
Eventually Vicky showed up, fifteen minutes late. I noticed that she had dyed her hair blonde.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello.”
“Sorry for being late.”
“That’s all right.” It was strange for me to see her. I wondered whether it was also strange for her to see me. “Shall we go inside?” I asked.
She nodded.
We sat near a window. I felt that the place had a rather gaudy atmosphere with its faux fireplace, faux marble, and red carpets.
A waitress came over. We ordered some beer and New York strip steaks. She shortly came back with the beers.
“So… how’s it going?” Vicky asked me. I sensed as though she thought she had to and didn’t really care.
“Not so good,” I said with an anguished smile. “Not so good at all.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about you?”
“I’m actually doing great.” She gave a wry smile. “Sorry, I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
“Nah, that’s good.” Good for her. Not so good for me.
We sat in silence for a while until the waitress brought our steaks.
“How’s it going with your job?” I asked, chewing on a piece of meat.
“It’s going good. How’s yours?”
“It sucks, as usual. You were lucky to be able to find a job that interests you. Not an easy thing to do in this world.”