Fleas, etc.

Reginald Hardcourt has fleas. He moved to South Korea to meet his gay guru lover and drink snake oil to get clear. He's lost most his teeth. He sent me a picture--he looks like a deranged baby. "Those won't grow back," I texted him. (He thought they would).

I spent my best years in darkness, collecting and stealing, piecing together a starry identity, fetishizing corduroy. But for the occasional predawn drunkenness and experiments in automatic writing, rarely was I lucid. I felt it was a sin--an act of desperation--to join the outside world. So I waited for a knock upon the door, an invitation in the post. I pretended to be someone else and eventually I became him. Then, after a horrific game of tennis and too many anti-anxiety pills, I decided to kill him off only to discover I was no one else.

As a wolf I would go rambling on full-moon nights hoping to recognize a soul but the best I found were the young women joggers in their tights. I cackled at desire. Jack and Coke in my flask, I diddled butterfaces in the park--it was more fulfilling than a glass of wine with the missus. I went skinny-dipping in a puddle. I continued to collect and steal, becoming a private museum dying to be robbed. The animals poked their noses at my deadbolt, but their wet-nosed efforts annoyed me and I told them to shoo. The intellectuals tried their tired psychotherapies with with their strange faith in sanitary big words, too chicken-shit and linear to be effective in tidying up the messy adolescent room of my mind (there are maggots in the closet from when I first lost my appetite!). I told them to fuck off and tried reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead on a Saturday night--a real yawner, that one.

After a night of revelations that would be forgotten in the morning, she entered me like a ghost--insubstantial, not much to her, but somehow beautiful and strange. With her lonely sad kiss she made it past my guard dogs and I showed her my exotic collection of garbage. I showed her how to laugh at the darkness and I showed her my perfect ass. We had some good times and she pissed in the cat's litter box.

"Baby we're a riot now let's set this world on fire!"

She had that strange mixture of sadness and eroticism I so adore in a chick. She was no filthy animal. Quickly I knew I loved her and quickly I told her so. It seemed so simple but she turned it into a big to-do with her trail of ex-loves who had poisoned her brain. It broke my ashy little aesthete's heart. So one morning I sent her out into the rain and locked the door behind her. I went back to my old ways only to find my automatic writing had gone to shit.

That was that, and after that, a few weeks of intense loneliness, the odd bit of salt-water in my eye, etc., etc. Once that was done, I thought, I will live my life as though the world were a series of parties begging for me to crash them. Laughter, birds, running in the street, etc., etc. And in the ballroom at the Ritz I saw my baby--the only girl I've ever sort of loved--drinking gin and flirting with a rich old drunk. It hit me like a brick: he's nothing but a bum and she's nothing but a whore. And here am I, bold and cool, crashing parties and, though generally hated and perhaps a bit of a loser in this game of love, well, hey, I'm having a pretty good time!

Sunday at the Library

Post binge, I have the intelligence of a toddler, and I can do nothing but take hot baths and forced naps. For a few days, at least, I have sworn to take no poison, and, lately, I've made it a habit to keep these stupid oaths. This one is short-term and easy. In a week or two I will be worse than ever.

I have been researching nature and have come to the conclusion that as animals we are shit. Last night I watched a movie alone in an underground theatre. It ended with the world on fire. When I came home, I pissed in the sink and polished off some gin. The world won't burn tonight, unfortunately, but this is my house, so I have the right to start a little fire. I burned old family photographs out of principle. I didn't expect the sadness.

And then I phoned you up and said: In the morning let's meet in the library and discuss the new renaissance. We can get drunk--no one goes to libraries anymore. I am serious. And isn't there something sexy about the book stacks and the dust and the open space and the girl in the corner with her nose immersed in history? We'll drink warm beer because it tastes like the 12th or 13th century. We will of course resort to violence because I won't be in the mood to read.

What time? When it opens.

I rode my bike not expecting the hangover to hurt me. I went fast; when I arrived I was sweating. The ride, though, was exhilarating, and when I met her at the entrance, my heart was beating on another level. She had to calm me down.

Sweetheart, I said, let's go to the seventh floor. I have something to tell you. Don't be mad, but last night I challenged your husband to a duel. Guns, of course. Why? Because it is the most Zen thing that men can do (it wasn't over you)*. So, of course, we didn't go through with it, because of, you know, the danger and all the practical implications of death and injury. Oh I'll just come out and say it: you really are a magnificent bitch. I would read to you--Byron, probably--but just the other night I realised that books are terribly complicated and I don't understand a word of them.

*because you are a slut who freely mates with both of us.

So let's drink warm beer until we are comfortable being the shitty animals we are. If we were better hunters or had substantial fur, my dear, we wouldn't be in this mess at all. We would stroke each other--possibly well-camouflaged in our cozy little environmental niche--and eat our kill with our bare hands! We wouldn't need books. Wouldn't it be lovely if you were cute, you floozy? But, please, come look, for I am hairy. Woof! Woof! Woof! Oh darling, don't you dare pretend to read. Come, let us forget that we know words. Let us howl on the top floor of this dusty old bibliotheque. Do you know how to get on the roof?

No... Can I tell you a story? When I was young, often I would come home late from school. My mother would ask where I had been and what I had been doing. I always said "nowhere" and "nothing." I never told her about James and his heroin or Geoffrey and his dirty magazines. Isn't that a lovely story? Now let me help you off with that. Or does the girl in the corner make you nervous? It's all right--I'm still tired from the ride, and, anyway, I'm just about ready to croak!

I almost forgot why we came here! If the world does all set fire, what we need are good stories. And of course we'll do away with money. Sweetheart, I know it sounds harsh, but I think we should guillotine the theorists. People now suspect they are full of shit but are too shy to say so, but, in the case of a global disaster, it would be as obvious as your crooked nose. Should we ask the girl in the corner reading Holinshed's Chronicles (yawn!) what she thinks? I feel so rude not offering her a drink. Oh darling, did I mention that on days like this I tend to be a child!?

Typical

Yesterday I developed a touch of nerves when I realised all those I considered friends were leeches who wanted to suck me dry. Since renouncing luxury, I've been hopelessly alone and have, on several occasions, relapsed into pretending. On Saturday night I dressed in bright colours--like a paradisaical bird--and danced with a girl who, through the fog of drink and muffle of noise, resembled the love of my life. I asked her to call me The Elektro King; she did. We danced strangely till the world disappeared. When I woke, after a night of forgetting, I was surprised to stumble upon my soiled clothes arranged in a symbol--an admittedly sloppy Helm of Awe--upon my living room floor.


I had to use all my socks

As I made my own tea, I wondered if the man who created this symbol--that damned Elektro King--was pretending or possessed: this seemed to me the fundamental difference between idiot and artist. I thought about it for a moment and wondered in which camp I should place myself before growing enamored with my chocolate-coated biscuits and staring blankly out the window.