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and cannot stop the phantasmagoria playing upon my eyelids. Myoki in meditation, Helga and her glacial skin. My old friend Cerberus weasel dying in my impractical car. My youth. Pouring wine down my throat at PetsMart with Reginald Hardcourt. The visions, the hangovers. The insane project of Gibbon Forest and the battle that ensued. My life is ridiculous and my heart is dead.
When I die, write this upon my stone, as it is my legacy and philosophy: Don't listen to the naysaying cocks. Lalalalalala. Tewksbury died an angsty teen.
Leave him here to rot.
Overcooked and wild, I am a daemon spawn born out of place. I am a raving lunatic. Fellows heed my bellows then pour another drink and pray to your new pagan gods. They are less than the old ones, but there's no controlling fashion.
This afternoon I received a surprise visit from Maggie, a former lover. When I was 22 and Maggie was 18, we spent days on end drunk and making love in her cluttered loft apartment. We slept all day and never went outside. Eventually, of course, we grew to hate each other, but we always remembered those early animal days, those days before we became trapped and entangled in the personal. She had heard of my illness and wanted to see me. She said she did not phone because she preferred to arrive unannounced like the wind. I told her not to be so fucking twee and that she could only enter if we were both naked. Like the wind. I warned her I would not be pretty.
I removed my robe and she took off her clothes. We are not what we used to be. But wrinkles become palatable with wine, so I brought out what I could find. Soon we were happy and laughing and feeling fine. I even felt comfortable enough to show her my red patches.
She asked me if was bipolar back then in the loft. Of course not, I said, merely drunk or hungover. But what's the difference, really?
I dug around and found my old copy of "Unknown Pleasures" and put it on the turntable. We danced to "Disorder" and didn't speak a word until the album's end. She broke the silence and ruined the moment by asking me if my bipolarism is killing me. I told her no fuck off oh cry baby cry.
Yesterday I fell ill. Today I visited the doctor. He says my condition is serious. For now I am bedridden. I am grey. I would say I'm not taking visitors, but no one wants to visit a dying recluse.
In my condition, time passes painfully, slowly. There is little to mention besides the disgusting symptoms and the dreams. Last night I dreamt I chased an electric rabbit around Jupiter's orbit. Perhaps that's the sort of shit that happens when you die. Shit that's pointless, strange. Or perhaps it was the fever and the drugs. Either way, pointless, strange.
I do not feel a fondness for the world beyond my bed. It is all lies and madness. We make promises and break them. We pretend to connect but it is all acting and affectation. I hope one day in this world of corruption there is born an honest man. Someone who is better, but still has a bit of swagger.
I cannot forget it, but I cannot remember it, either, how the rabbit runs, an emerald light flashing on its back. Focused and exhausted, I chase it through space. At first it is excruciating--painful--but I grow faster and begin to understand the game we play. I know I will never catch the cosmic bunny, but I'm happy to run the course.
And then I wake in a pool of sweat. Oh hell.
Every morning I think
I hate going downstairs
But for the drunken birds
4:35-6:06 - I wake to celebrate darkness. I pour scotch and work on poetry from the old days. I have forgotten what it means:
I try to halt the dawn
That fuels the moving world
By dreaming of the morning star
Singing a quiet sound...
6:06-10:24 - Drunk and red, I pass out in bed. I dream of trains and America before waking with a headache.
10:24-11:04 - I eat chocolate, drink coffee, and read Halldór Laxness's "Independent People" with the window open and the wind gusting. Hello November.
11:04-11:30 - I melt in the hot tub.
11:30-11:39 - I smoke a cigarette in the nude and think about the rich bitch who broke my heart. Damn it I'd give anything to forget her for a day.
11:39-1:45 - I have bagel and lox and dick around on the Internet. Utter waste of time.
1:45-3:35 - I take a walk and look at the animals. I find a dying, emaciated deer on my property. I drink some brandy and dig it a little grave. I am sorry my friend. I put on my sunglasses and shed a tear.
3:35-4:21 - I fuck about with the computer and listen to The Small Faces.
4:21-4:23 - I receive a rare phone call from an old mate named Elborne. He asks me if I would like to play piano on a track he is recording. He says it will be a slow, atmospheric blues tune with some jazz variations thrown in--right up my alley. I tell him I'm a little rough around the edges. He says that's why he asked me. I agree.
4:24-5:20 - Full of nervous excitement, I don collegiate garb and warm up the Elan. I listen to Dizzy Gallespie's "The Champ" and Bob Dylan's "Positively Fourth Street" loudly and repeatedly before trading them for the sweet purr of my engine. I have almost forgotten the bitch and the deer.
Reginald,
Thank-you for waking me before sunrise. I had just fallen asleep when you forced your note beneath my door. Sarah was beside me and we had just entered the sleeping phase--you know I have trouble sleeping when there is a bird in my bed. I tried to suggest she go home, but she preferred to nuzzle. In other words, I am sleepless and it is largely your fault.
Blah blah blah, I went to Ireland with a half-naked girl. Well done. Quit your bragging--do you know I felt-up her cowgirl friend? And for the last time, that hip-hop bullshit is not poetry despite its wild, African syncopation. It is ignorant verbal spewing. I am on a steady diet of Schubert and The Rolling Stones. I suggest you follow my lead.
I confess you made a hell of a Greenleaf. I admit my Poirot was half-assed, but that is because I could not decide between the Ustinov and Finney incarnations. Anyhow, to hell with costumes. I have decided next year I shall just go out with my patchwork cap and deep blueberry sweater and look like a Fine Piece of Ass.
Was Rodney drunk while flying this time? I swear I will never take your private jet again. Your pilot is a drunkard and your gold accents are tacky.
I am sending this message by falcon with a command to peck out your eyes. Please don't take it personally. Mordecai knows not what he does.
Yours,
Nigel Tewksbury
I received the following message beneath my door this morning. The slide woke me up. I am constructing my reply, which hopefully shall be less winded than the original.
Nigel,
I am recuperating as I dictate this epistle, which Edwina's sure hand will transcribe. To begin, I must say I thought you rather a stick-in-the-mud last week when you turned down my invitation to jet to Ireland for All Hallows'. (In fact, I still think you looked and acted like a fuddy-duddy in your Hercule Poirot costume.) For what better place is there to celebrate Celtic New Year in true pagan fashion? I suppose we had just had that row about the abacus and were both rather tight. The last thing I recall is marching down the street in Westminster. I had a lingerie-angel on my back who was chanting her siren's hymn:
"Patron' on ice
And we can pop bottles all night
Baby you could have whatever you like
I said you could have whatever you like
Late night sex so wet you're so tight
I'll gas up the jet for you tonight
Baby you could go where ever you like"
Next thing I knew I was aboard my jet to Ireland with Rodney at the helm. I had lost one Poirot, but gained one shiner and one lingerie-angel. She grew infuriated after I ejaculated over the Irish Sea and started teasing her about her costume: "Pardon me, are you dressed as a trollop?", "Ugh, excuse me madam, are you dressed as a harlot?", "Ma'am, I daresay, are you costumed as a whore?". I did some laudanum on the plane. I cannot recall the slut's name or her departure, but she was not there when I sprinted through downtown Cork in search of the party.
I came across a Samhain Night celebration. Never before has the division between the world of the living and the Otherworld been so blurred. I danced with a goblin and drank with the green faerie. To stave off corruption I endeavored to speak only in Spenserian stanza. This proved difficult, so I tried to speaking with my wild eyes only. Dressed as Dickie Greenleaf, I appeared quite daft. I started singing "My Funny Valentine" and jabbing at those that tried to lure me into the pagan dance ritual. I felt they were trying steal my corrupted soul.
One chap was dressed as a banana. He prodded me as his ghoul friends danced around in a circle laughing. I felt the key was to peel him thereby revealing his true spirit to stave off the Netherworld. He became enraged as I tried to bite the bottom of his peel. Then I knew evil had triumphed and it was time to escape. I found a rotten Ronnie's and gathered all the salt I could before their service people drove me out. I sprinkled the salt in my hair to ward off the otherworldly creatures and ran into the forest.
It was darker than the circles under a Bangkok streetwalker's eyes that night. The witching hour had struck. I took off my dazzling blue top-hat and attached it to a tree as an indicator. There was snow and I became frightened of the tracks I was leaving. After running serpentine figure eights I decided the best course was to hang from a tree limb and make my footprints smaller before they dissipated to nothing. That would throw the spirits off course. I swung from tree to tree in this dense thicket using branchiation techniques I had learned in an earlier incarnation. I curled up in the groin of a sturdy oak.
My blue satin vest looked exquisite as a makeshift sheet, but did little to shield me from the howling wind. I did my last dose of laudanum before passing off into a deep slumber. Queen Mab haunted my dreams. I dreamt I was the King of Majorca in 1341. Jude Law was my jester.
When I awoke my throat was dry. My teeth chattered intensely. I was lying sideways in a snowdrift and my tailored Greenleaf costume pants were torn in many places. (How had the fall from the tree not woken me? Had Queen Mab enchanted me there?) The underworld had been defeated and I was alive in the mid-morning Irish sun!
When I surveyed my surroundings I noticed I was only a few hundred metres from McDonald's. My hat was spiked through a sapling and totally ruined. Further, "Regin" had been peed into the snow and there were faeces nearby. Footprints were everywhere. My back ached like the devil. I did not feel ashamed as I hitched a lorry back to the airport (my money clip was not about my person). I felt I had truly safeguarded mankind from some terrible fate.
Faithful Rodney was on the tarmac waiting and whisked me off to the Isle of Mann. I have been nursed back to health for the most part, but my mind still turns like the triskelion. I have been medicating with absinthe to quell my overwrought nerves. You certainly missed a hell of a struggle old chap. I shan't soon forget your abandonment but fear you may have made a pact with the Otherworld to save yourself. It is probably all for the best.
Yours,
Reginald Hardcourt
This week I have been suffering from a cold, and, despite the ailment's common status, it has really been fucking with my body and mind. Further, the meds I popped often left me covered in a thin membrane of sweat. Earlier this week I attempted an autumn bicycle ride, but after labouring through the first sector, I unzipped myself from my sleek neoprene uniform and discovered I was coated in the disgusting, mucusy interstitial fluid that made me feel like some sort of science-fiction pod-person. It was heartbreaking and then made worse upon vomiting blood in my neighbour's garden. I had hoped to put in a solid 40K time-trial and then a few heats at the velodrome. But I barely made it past the front gates.
But O Happy Day! This morning I awoke feeling vigourous as a devil. After performing a few powerful air-punches, my first thought was to celebrate by hitting the liquor cabinet, but I quickly decided to restrain myself. At least, that is, until nightfall. And then I shall howl.
Anyone up for a night on the town?
During the utter idiocy of my adolescence, I was fascinated by that most rugged of American creatures, the train-hoppin' hobo. I loved their wild and pithy rants against rules and responsibility; I loved their drunken form of Communism and simple secret codes; and, possibly above all, I loved the worn looks of their hats and satchels.
Often upon coming home from school, I would run to my bedroom, tussle up my uniform and hair, and smoke cigarettes whilst dreaming of riding the rails across the unimaginably gigantic country that is the United States of America. I decided I would call myself "Opium Jack" and I would have the reputation of being the most suave and nonchalant hobo in this here land. "Ain't nobody more suave than Opium Jack, ya hear?" would be the malformed interrogative spoken by all the ramblers and tramps who made my acquaintance. I imagined fucking dirty, toothless girls who had run away from home because damn it we are all so misunderstood. And it would never be awkward because we would get drunk at the first sign of guilt and the cycle would eternally repeat and we would never, ever be sad or bored.
But, as I say, back then I was an idiot. Of course the life of the hobo would not be the Romantic ideal I have in my mind. Once the money and Jack Daniel's ran out, I would often be sad and bored and possibly shitting my pants and vomiting simultaneously. My teeth would rot and I would be ugly. Flipping the bird at responsibility certainly has its drawbacks.
And yet, there is something to it. Perhaps I should not reject my teen angst outright. It is difficult to throw our lives away and ride the rails, and yes, it would be a hard and lonely life. But so is the life of an Aesthete. Indeed, upon inspection, Aesthetes and hobos aren't so terribly different. We have in common the altered states, the neglect of responsibility, the love of the unorthodox. Despite the flashy cars and lovely clothes, this dandy still has a hobo soul. So what would Fishgill Jones or Syphilitic Pete think of Nigel Tewksbury? Would they welcome him as a brother or deride him as a sissy? What form of code would they chalk upon his antique door?
