(Another poem in the Telescope Builder series)
Rick got a dog, a little black and white one
Its head was big, its tongue stuck out
I could tell it was the runt of the litter because
Before I got my own dog I’d read about how to pick one
I went to Mike’s house one night when his parents
Were out of town; we were going to watch TV
But he went out for a ride with Roberta’s brother and Rick
And some other kids; there wasn’t room for me in the car
Back at junior high on Monday I stopped eating lunch with them
And I guess Rick felt betrayed so when he saw me
Alone one day outside class he said I could punch him
But then he would punch me back
Rick was bigger and stronger than I was
So I wasn’t going to punch him
I didn’t really have anything against Rick
I just didn’t want to hang around with that crowd anymore
One day Vice Principal Drummond said on the loudspeaker
That a little black and white dog with a big head and its tongue hanging out
Had followed some kids to school and if anyone knew whose it was,
Come to the office. I knew it was Rick’s dog
I figured Rick would have heard the announcement
And gone to get his dog.
So I went to my next class; I could’ve stopped by
Drummond’s office, but I didn’t
I saw Rick a few days later and asked him if he got his dog back
He didn’t understand what I was talking about. He had stayed home that day
To look for the dog, who had run away. When I told him
About Drummond’s announcement, he called me a liar.
Drummond must’ve sent Rick’s dog to the pound
I didn’t want Rick’s dog to die. Why didn’t I go
To Drummond’s office and tell him it was Rick’s dog?
The poor dog. I don't even remember his name.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Top of Victory and The Tape Recorder
Two Poems from The Telescope Builder series
Top of Victory
I was climbing up the hill
Taking a shortcut to Dan’s house
When I saw the snake – a rattler?
I didn’t wait to find out. I ran and ran.
That was the last time I took the shortcut to Dan’s house
That was the last time I climbed that hill
So I wasn’t the one to find the body
A few days later at the top of Victory Boulevard.
A little guy named Ricky Cohen found it instead.
He was hiking around up there.
It was the body of a young guy
with a shotgun blast to the chest
and a piece of paper in his hand.
I heard the story from the other kids
I was so upset that I decided
I should write a poem about it
So that I wouldn’t have nightmares.
The poem began,
“They found a boy by my house today
There was a note in his hand with blood.”
I don’t remember the rest.
But I don’t think I had any nightmares.
I read in the newspaper that the suspect was the older brother
Of two of my classmates, Willie and JoAnne.
JoAnne could tell that I knew
from the way I looked at her.
Even when he got older, Ricky Cohen stayed small.
He’d go to bars and pick fights with bigger guys.
Then he’d show them pictures of dead people
And say he was a Mafia hit man.
If not for that snake
I might’ve been the one to find that body
So I have said again and again
Thank you, snake.
Thank you, snake.
The Tape Recorder
I always think about that day
At the school named after the telescope builder.
Mike was by the lockers
And called me over.
He didn’t usually talk to me.
Girls liked him and he had a lot of friends.
He asked me to stand and block the view
So people wouldn’t see him open Terry’s locker
And steal her tape recorder.
He had seen her combination.
I told him I would do it if he gave me the tape.
I didn’t need a tape but I thought I should ask for something.
He said OK. Then Frannie came over to see what we were doing
So Mike didn’t need me anymore.
They took the tape recorder from Terry’s locker.
"Hey, I get the tape," I said.
"You don't get SHIT!" Frannie said.
We climbed the junior high fence and left.
It was a beautiful day.
Two years later in high school
Julie and I were standing outside at recess one day
when I heard the sound of hooves.
It was a horse-drawn carriage, carrying a coffin.
“I heard this would happen,” Julie said.
It was Terry, she said. Terry had killed herself.
And her parents wanted us all to see.
So I always think about that day
I helped Mike and Frannie steal her tape recorder.
At the school named after the telescope builder.
And when I say always, I mean always.
Top of Victory
I was climbing up the hill
Taking a shortcut to Dan’s house
When I saw the snake – a rattler?
I didn’t wait to find out. I ran and ran.
That was the last time I took the shortcut to Dan’s house
That was the last time I climbed that hill
So I wasn’t the one to find the body
A few days later at the top of Victory Boulevard.
A little guy named Ricky Cohen found it instead.
He was hiking around up there.
It was the body of a young guy
with a shotgun blast to the chest
and a piece of paper in his hand.
I heard the story from the other kids
I was so upset that I decided
I should write a poem about it
So that I wouldn’t have nightmares.
The poem began,
“They found a boy by my house today
There was a note in his hand with blood.”
I don’t remember the rest.
But I don’t think I had any nightmares.
I read in the newspaper that the suspect was the older brother
Of two of my classmates, Willie and JoAnne.
JoAnne could tell that I knew
from the way I looked at her.
Even when he got older, Ricky Cohen stayed small.
He’d go to bars and pick fights with bigger guys.
Then he’d show them pictures of dead people
And say he was a Mafia hit man.
If not for that snake
I might’ve been the one to find that body
So I have said again and again
Thank you, snake.
Thank you, snake.
The Tape Recorder
I always think about that day
At the school named after the telescope builder.
Mike was by the lockers
And called me over.
He didn’t usually talk to me.
Girls liked him and he had a lot of friends.
He asked me to stand and block the view
So people wouldn’t see him open Terry’s locker
And steal her tape recorder.
He had seen her combination.
I told him I would do it if he gave me the tape.
I didn’t need a tape but I thought I should ask for something.
He said OK. Then Frannie came over to see what we were doing
So Mike didn’t need me anymore.
They took the tape recorder from Terry’s locker.
"Hey, I get the tape," I said.
"You don't get SHIT!" Frannie said.
We climbed the junior high fence and left.
It was a beautiful day.
Two years later in high school
Julie and I were standing outside at recess one day
when I heard the sound of hooves.
It was a horse-drawn carriage, carrying a coffin.
“I heard this would happen,” Julie said.
It was Terry, she said. Terry had killed herself.
And her parents wanted us all to see.
So I always think about that day
I helped Mike and Frannie steal her tape recorder.
At the school named after the telescope builder.
And when I say always, I mean always.
Monday, October 01, 2007
To See the Sparks Fly
We first met one night behind Fallbrook Mall
You and Rick were walking around the parking lot
I was on my bike and I picked up a huge metal spring
And I threw it toward you as I rode by
It shot out golden sparks as it skidded against the pavement
So the three of us stayed together for a while
Throwing the spring around to see the sparks fly
Two years later I shot myself in the head
I had called you few days before
But you were ill and you couldn't put a band together
To play at my party; you were so disappointed
When you got out of the hospital
Daniel told you I had gone to Debbie’s house
And demanded that she take me back
When she said no, I showed her my father’s handgun
“Get out of here,” she said, and slammed the door on me
I walked across the street, sat down on the curb
And killed myself; we were 15
Two years after that, my picture was on the memorial page
Of our high school yearbook
You called it the death page and you laughed
“Why are you laughing?” the music teacher asked
You didn’t answer
Was it something about the sparks?
You and Rick were walking around the parking lot
I was on my bike and I picked up a huge metal spring
And I threw it toward you as I rode by
It shot out golden sparks as it skidded against the pavement
So the three of us stayed together for a while
Throwing the spring around to see the sparks fly
Two years later I shot myself in the head
I had called you few days before
But you were ill and you couldn't put a band together
To play at my party; you were so disappointed
When you got out of the hospital
Daniel told you I had gone to Debbie’s house
And demanded that she take me back
When she said no, I showed her my father’s handgun
“Get out of here,” she said, and slammed the door on me
I walked across the street, sat down on the curb
And killed myself; we were 15
Two years after that, my picture was on the memorial page
Of our high school yearbook
You called it the death page and you laughed
“Why are you laughing?” the music teacher asked
You didn’t answer
Was it something about the sparks?
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The Pet Wiener
I pulled the van to the curb by the schoolyard gate. Mike and Sean were waiting for me, like they did every day. I opened the sliding door on the passenger side.
“Hey bus driver!” Mike said as they climbed into the van. “The president came to our classroom today!”
“Yeah, I know. I saw it on TV.”
“Did you see me? Did you see me?” Sean demanded as I drove off.
“Did you hear me reading?” Mike wanted to know. “Could you hear what I said when we were reading ‘The Pet Goat’?”
They snickered and giggled.
“Sit down and put your seat belts on.”
“Mike was saying dirty words,” Sean said.
“What words did he say?”
“Whenever we were supposed to say ‘goat,’ I said ‘wiener’ instead!”
Mike and Sean cracked up.
“I said: ‘The wiener ate her dad’s newspaper!’ I think the president heard me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Sean said. “You woulda got in trouble.”
“Yeah! I was probably gonna get in trouble! Miss Williams was looking at me! But then I saw the president looking toward the back of the room, and I turned around and I saw that bald guy was holding up a piece of paper. It said ‘Don’t say anything.’ Then they took the president away.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That must’ve been when they told him about the planes that crashed into the towers.”
“They showed us that on TV later!” Sean said. “For a while. Then when you could see the people falling out of the building Miss Williams told us not to look.”
“Did you see what happened when the plane hit the building?” Mike asked me. “There was that big ol’ honkin’ ball of fire that came out the other side. That was crazy!”
“Sure was,” I said.
“Like THAT!” Mike held up one of his arms as if it were a skyscraper, then used his other hand to show an airplane crashing into it. He did the sound effects, too: “CRSSSSSHHHH!!!! Ka-BOOOOOM!!!!”
“Then when you could see the people falling Miss Williams turned off the TV,” Sean said. “Then she looked at us for a while.
She didn’t say anything. She was just looking at us. It was kinda weird.”
“She’s probably just worried about you guys.”
“The terrorists aren’t going to come here,” Mike said. “We don’t have those big buildings.”
“Well, she’s worried anyway.”
“Why’s she worried?” Sean asked me.
“Maybe she’s afraid the president will start a war that’ll last so long that you’ll have to go fight in one of those raghead countries when you’re eighteen.”
“Wars don’t go on that long,” Mike said.
“Let’s hope not. Miss Williams would be sad.”
“You like Miss Williams, don’t you?” Sean said.
“He wants Miss Williams to suck his wiener!” Mike shouted.
“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“What’ll happen?” Mike asked.
“They’ll put you on meds that’ll turn you into zombies.”
They screamed with laughter.
“Zombies! Zombies!” they chanted. “Zombies!”
“I wanna be a zombie!” Mike said. “I’m gonna eat your brain!”
“No, I’m gonna eat your brain!” Sean answered. They made zombie faces at each other, showing their teeth and raising their arms. I wanted to quiet them down.
“So I guess you guys will always remember the day the president came to your class and read ‘The Pet Goat,’ huh?”
“You mean ‘The Pet Weiner!’” Mike said.
And they laughed and laughed and laughed as I drove the bus down the road into that late summer afternoon.
“Hey bus driver!” Mike said as they climbed into the van. “The president came to our classroom today!”
“Yeah, I know. I saw it on TV.”
“Did you see me? Did you see me?” Sean demanded as I drove off.
“Did you hear me reading?” Mike wanted to know. “Could you hear what I said when we were reading ‘The Pet Goat’?”
They snickered and giggled.
“Sit down and put your seat belts on.”
“Mike was saying dirty words,” Sean said.
“What words did he say?”
“Whenever we were supposed to say ‘goat,’ I said ‘wiener’ instead!”
Mike and Sean cracked up.
“I said: ‘The wiener ate her dad’s newspaper!’ I think the president heard me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Sean said. “You woulda got in trouble.”
“Yeah! I was probably gonna get in trouble! Miss Williams was looking at me! But then I saw the president looking toward the back of the room, and I turned around and I saw that bald guy was holding up a piece of paper. It said ‘Don’t say anything.’ Then they took the president away.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That must’ve been when they told him about the planes that crashed into the towers.”
“They showed us that on TV later!” Sean said. “For a while. Then when you could see the people falling out of the building Miss Williams told us not to look.”
“Did you see what happened when the plane hit the building?” Mike asked me. “There was that big ol’ honkin’ ball of fire that came out the other side. That was crazy!”
“Sure was,” I said.
“Like THAT!” Mike held up one of his arms as if it were a skyscraper, then used his other hand to show an airplane crashing into it. He did the sound effects, too: “CRSSSSSHHHH!!!! Ka-BOOOOOM!!!!”
“Then when you could see the people falling Miss Williams turned off the TV,” Sean said. “Then she looked at us for a while.
She didn’t say anything. She was just looking at us. It was kinda weird.”
“She’s probably just worried about you guys.”
“The terrorists aren’t going to come here,” Mike said. “We don’t have those big buildings.”
“Well, she’s worried anyway.”
“Why’s she worried?” Sean asked me.
“Maybe she’s afraid the president will start a war that’ll last so long that you’ll have to go fight in one of those raghead countries when you’re eighteen.”
“Wars don’t go on that long,” Mike said.
“Let’s hope not. Miss Williams would be sad.”
“You like Miss Williams, don’t you?” Sean said.
“He wants Miss Williams to suck his wiener!” Mike shouted.
“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“What’ll happen?” Mike asked.
“They’ll put you on meds that’ll turn you into zombies.”
They screamed with laughter.
“Zombies! Zombies!” they chanted. “Zombies!”
“I wanna be a zombie!” Mike said. “I’m gonna eat your brain!”
“No, I’m gonna eat your brain!” Sean answered. They made zombie faces at each other, showing their teeth and raising their arms. I wanted to quiet them down.
“So I guess you guys will always remember the day the president came to your class and read ‘The Pet Goat,’ huh?”
“You mean ‘The Pet Weiner!’” Mike said.
And they laughed and laughed and laughed as I drove the bus down the road into that late summer afternoon.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
The Mother Ship
“Yes, I am in contact with them. They brought us here and they will return for us. It’s true. Thank you all for coming tonight to learn about Human Individual Metamorphosis. And thank you, Miss Carter, for the delicious hors d’oeuvres. Some of us were chatting a few moments ago, and you asked about how they contact me. They send me messages. I receive them directly or I see the signs. They have told me to go to Montana and wait for them. The mothership will land there and take us back. We come from the Level Above Human and we are looking for people who want to return there with us. Please wait for Peep to call you to the table. She will ask: Is the journey right for you? Are you right for the journey? Gloria has a personal matter she wants to ask me about, so I will step aside with her for a few moments. When I return, I will answer any questions you have. Peep can answer your questions, too, during the interviews. Gloria, let’s go down the hall here, there is another conference room we can use.”
“Thank you for taking the time for me, Bo.”
"That’s what I came here to do. We are moving back to the next level. All the signs are here. We want to bring other people with us. We need more people. We need you. Now, what did you want to ask about?”
“They came for me.”
“They did? When?”
“Last year.”
“What happened?”
“There was a bright light outside my window. A loud hum. I was in bed, sleeping. I woke up and I looked out the window. There was a space ship! It was spinning! It was beautiful!”
“Did they communicate with you?”
“I’m not sure. I know they took me into their craft. When I woke up, I had been gone for days. They did their tests on me.”
“Zuciferians. They abduct humans for genetic experiments. They rob healthy human specimens of their bodies to use as a suit of clothes. They walk among us to cloud our knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven. They are hiding the truth from us.”
“But Bo – ”
“Don’t worry Julia. We will teach you how to be born into the Level Above Human. We are non-mammalian and we are not Zuciferians. You have nothing to fear.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. We will teach you if you join us.”
“But I came because – ”
“Yes, Gloria?”
“They stole my baby. The space aliens stole my baby. I was pregnant. When I woke up, my baby was gone.”
“Don’t cry, Gloria, don’t cry. We will help you.”
“You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.”
“No one else believes me. Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
“The father? The baby’s father didn’t believe you?”
“There was no father.”
“You don’t know who the father was?”
“No! It wasn’t like that!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say – ”
“I know I was pregnant! I was going to have a baby! No one believes me! I know I was! I was so happy. I’d never been so fulfilled. I was going to be a mother! And then the aliens came and stole my baby! Can you get my baby back for me, Bo? Can you help me?”
“Gloria, I – ”
“Please, Bo. Please tell me you’ll take me to them so I can find my baby!”
“Take my hand, Gloria. Look into my eyes. Listen to me: Everything will be possible in the Kingdom of Heaven, Gloria.”
“Will I find my baby? I will go with them if I have to. Did you say they were Zuciferians? Will you find them for me? Please, Bo, please find them. Please find my baby for me. No one else has ever believed me. Please, Bo, please help me.”
“I can help you, Gloria. Stop crying. Will you come with us to Montana and wait for the mother ship?”
“I’ll do anything, Bo, anything.”
“The journey will be long and hard.”
“I can do it. I will do it.”
“So you will come with us?”
“I knew I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone. After they took the baby, no one believed me. They thought I was crazy! But you believe me, Bo! You believe me! Of course I’ll come with you.”
“This is the final fight for Earth’s spoils. We must triumph over the Zuciferians. All that is here is illusion. But we need the means to go make the journey.”
“Means? What do you mean?”
“We will build a house to simulate the space ship environment. It will be dark. We will sit quietly inside, practicing for the voyage. A rehearsal. We will strive to eliminate all human desire. Can you contribute?”
“I don’t know – ”
“Do you have a house? Do you have a car?”
“I rent an apartment. I have a car.”
“Do you have savings?”
“I have savings.”
“It will be a long trip to Montana and we have to prepare. The trip into space will be longer. We have to be ready, Gloria.”
“I will be ready. I will contribute. I will do anything I have to do to find the way to my baby.”
“Good, good. Don’t cry. Here. Let me hold you. Let me take you in my arms. There … there.”
“Oh my goodness! Oh! Bo! Bo!”
“What is it? What’s wrong, Gloria?”
“I just had a vision!”
“What did you see?”
“A saint!”
“Which saint?”
“Santa Margarita!”
“I don’t know that saint.”
“She was floating over us! She was blessing us! I saw everything! It was so clear! We were in a big house! A mansion! We were all wearing black! With running shoes! But we weren’t running! We were lying on beds. And we all had purple scarves covering our faces! What’s wrong, Bo? Your eyes are so wide!”
“My eyes are always wide, Gloria, wide open to the infinite mysteries of the universe. This vision of yours: It was a sign.”
“A sign?”
“A sign that you must come with us.”
“I must?”
“You must. Will you? Will you say yes?”
“I must. I will. Yes. I will say yes. Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go back to the others now. They are waiting. It will be a long road to the mother ship.”
“The mother ship.”
We have to be ready.
“The mother ship. I will be ready for the mother ship.”
Dedicated to Michael F.
“Thank you for taking the time for me, Bo.”
"That’s what I came here to do. We are moving back to the next level. All the signs are here. We want to bring other people with us. We need more people. We need you. Now, what did you want to ask about?”
“They came for me.”
“They did? When?”
“Last year.”
“What happened?”
“There was a bright light outside my window. A loud hum. I was in bed, sleeping. I woke up and I looked out the window. There was a space ship! It was spinning! It was beautiful!”
“Did they communicate with you?”
“I’m not sure. I know they took me into their craft. When I woke up, I had been gone for days. They did their tests on me.”
“Zuciferians. They abduct humans for genetic experiments. They rob healthy human specimens of their bodies to use as a suit of clothes. They walk among us to cloud our knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven. They are hiding the truth from us.”
“But Bo – ”
“Don’t worry Julia. We will teach you how to be born into the Level Above Human. We are non-mammalian and we are not Zuciferians. You have nothing to fear.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. We will teach you if you join us.”
“But I came because – ”
“Yes, Gloria?”
“They stole my baby. The space aliens stole my baby. I was pregnant. When I woke up, my baby was gone.”
“Don’t cry, Gloria, don’t cry. We will help you.”
“You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.”
“No one else believes me. Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
“The father? The baby’s father didn’t believe you?”
“There was no father.”
“You don’t know who the father was?”
“No! It wasn’t like that!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say – ”
“I know I was pregnant! I was going to have a baby! No one believes me! I know I was! I was so happy. I’d never been so fulfilled. I was going to be a mother! And then the aliens came and stole my baby! Can you get my baby back for me, Bo? Can you help me?”
“Gloria, I – ”
“Please, Bo. Please tell me you’ll take me to them so I can find my baby!”
“Take my hand, Gloria. Look into my eyes. Listen to me: Everything will be possible in the Kingdom of Heaven, Gloria.”
“Will I find my baby? I will go with them if I have to. Did you say they were Zuciferians? Will you find them for me? Please, Bo, please find them. Please find my baby for me. No one else has ever believed me. Please, Bo, please help me.”
“I can help you, Gloria. Stop crying. Will you come with us to Montana and wait for the mother ship?”
“I’ll do anything, Bo, anything.”
“The journey will be long and hard.”
“I can do it. I will do it.”
“So you will come with us?”
“I knew I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone. After they took the baby, no one believed me. They thought I was crazy! But you believe me, Bo! You believe me! Of course I’ll come with you.”
“This is the final fight for Earth’s spoils. We must triumph over the Zuciferians. All that is here is illusion. But we need the means to go make the journey.”
“Means? What do you mean?”
“We will build a house to simulate the space ship environment. It will be dark. We will sit quietly inside, practicing for the voyage. A rehearsal. We will strive to eliminate all human desire. Can you contribute?”
“I don’t know – ”
“Do you have a house? Do you have a car?”
“I rent an apartment. I have a car.”
“Do you have savings?”
“I have savings.”
“It will be a long trip to Montana and we have to prepare. The trip into space will be longer. We have to be ready, Gloria.”
“I will be ready. I will contribute. I will do anything I have to do to find the way to my baby.”
“Good, good. Don’t cry. Here. Let me hold you. Let me take you in my arms. There … there.”
“Oh my goodness! Oh! Bo! Bo!”
“What is it? What’s wrong, Gloria?”
“I just had a vision!”
“What did you see?”
“A saint!”
“Which saint?”
“Santa Margarita!”
“I don’t know that saint.”
“She was floating over us! She was blessing us! I saw everything! It was so clear! We were in a big house! A mansion! We were all wearing black! With running shoes! But we weren’t running! We were lying on beds. And we all had purple scarves covering our faces! What’s wrong, Bo? Your eyes are so wide!”
“My eyes are always wide, Gloria, wide open to the infinite mysteries of the universe. This vision of yours: It was a sign.”
“A sign?”
“A sign that you must come with us.”
“I must?”
“You must. Will you? Will you say yes?”
“I must. I will. Yes. I will say yes. Yes.”
“Good. Let’s go back to the others now. They are waiting. It will be a long road to the mother ship.”
“The mother ship.”
We have to be ready.
“The mother ship. I will be ready for the mother ship.”
Dedicated to Michael F.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Solitude by Guy de Maupassant
There we were, a bunch of men, after a dinner together. We’d had a great time. One of the guys, an old friend, asked me:
“Would you mind taking a walk down the Champs-Elysees with me?”
We left on a slow stroll down the long avenue, under trees with barely any leaves left on them. Silence, except for the vague, steady, background hum of Paris. A cool wind blew over our faces and the rows of stars dotting the sky gave it a golden glow.
My friend said:
“I don’t know why, buy I breathe easier here, out at night, than anywhere else. My thoughts break free of their restraints. I sometimes get some the feeling that makes you think, for a second, that you’re going to unveil the divine secret of all things. Then the window shuts and it’s over.”
From time to time, we’d see two shadows. We’d be passing in front of a bench where two lovers sat side by side, gripping each other so tightly that they looked as if they were blended together into one being.
My friend said:
“Poor fools! It’s not that they disgust me, it’s more that I pity them. Among all the mysteries of life, there’s only one that I’ve sunken into: The torment of our lives comes from being eternally alone, and all our efforts, everything we do, is an attempt to flee that solitude. Those two, there, lovers on a bench out in the street, they’re trying, like us, like everyone, to put an end to their isolation, if only for a minute. But they’re still alone, they’ll always be alone. And us, too.
“That’s the way it seems, more or less. That’s all.
“For some time, I’ve endured this abominable torture of having understood, having discovered the horrible solitude of my life, and I know that nothing can stop it, nothing, do you hear? Whatever we try, whatever we do, whatever our heart’s desire, whether we’re kissing, whether we’re hugging, we’re always alone.
“I brought you with me tonight on this stroll in order to avoid going back to my place, because I can’t take the solitude that I find there anymore. And what good will this do me? I talk, you listen, we’re still both alone, side by side, but still alone. Do you understand?
“Blessed are the simple-minded, according to Scripture. They have the illusion of happiness. They don’t feel our solitary misery, they don’t wander around like me, without contact beyond elbow-to-elbow, without any joy except the endless, self-satisfaction of suffering with the knowledge of our eternal isolation.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?
“Listen. Since I’ve perceived the solitude of being, I feel that I’m sinking deeper into a dark tunnel, and I can’t feel the walls and I don’t know where it ends, and perhaps there is no end! I’m traveling downward without anyone else, without any other living creature taking this same dark passage. This tunnel, it’s life. Sometimes I hear the sound of voices, and shouts … I move forward uncertainly toward these vague rumblings. But I never know just where they are; I never reach anyone, I never feel another hand reaching out in the darkness that surrounds me. Do you understand?
“Some men sometimes discovered this unspeakable suffering. Musset exclaimed:
Who’s coming? Who’s calling me? No one.
I’m alone. It’s the chiming of the clock.
Oh, solitude! Oh, poverty!
“But for him, that was only a passing doubt, and not a definitive certainty, as it is for me. He was a poet; he was populating his life with phantoms and dreams. He was never really alone. Me, I’m really alone!
“Gustave Flaubert was one of the unhappiest beings in this world, because he was extremely lucid. Didn’t he send a girlfriend these words of despair?: ‘We are all in a desert. No one understands anyone.’
“No, no one understands anyone, regardless of what they think, what they say, and whether they try to. Does the Earth know what’s happening in those stars up there, blasting like fireballs across space, so distant that we can only the see the light of a few? While a countless army of others is lost to infinity, but maybe so close together that they form a unified whole, like molecules form a human body?
“Well, man is likewise unaware of what goes on in another man. We are farther removed from each other than those stars, more isolated even, because thought is immeasurable.
“Do you know of anything more horrifying than this constant close contact with people that we can’t know? We love one another as if we were bound together by chains, we’re close, but we stretch our arms out and we can’t touch. We’re in the grip of a tortuous need of union, but our efforts are sterile, our pleasures useless, our secrets bear no fruit, our grasps impotent, our caresses in vain. When we want to get together, we just hurtle toward another person and then collide.
“I never feel as alone as I do when I bare my soul to some friend, because it’s then that I best understand the unbreakable barrier. There he is, a man; I see that his eyes are looking at me; but his soul, behind those eyes, I don’t have the slightest notion of it. He listens. What is he thinking? Do you understand this torment? Maybe he hates me. Or feels contempt for me, or is laughing at me? He’s thinking about what I say, he judges me, he’s scoffing at me, he condemns me, he decides I’m mediocre, or stupid. What’s he thinking? If I like him, does he like me? Just what’s going on in that little round head? The thoughts of someone else are so mysterious, those hidden thoughts. They’re free; they’re thoughts we can never know, never control, never dominate, never conquer!
“And me, as much as I’d love to give of myself entirely, open all the doors of my being, I can’t. In the deepest part of my soul, there’s a section that no one can ever know. No one can ever discover it, no one can get inside, because no one is like me, because no one understands anyone.
“Do you understand me, at least right now? Do you? No, you think I’m crazy! You’re looking at me, you’re wondering about me. You’re asking yourself: ‘What’s gotten into him tonight?’ But one day, if you happen to fall victim to my horrible and subtle suffering, come see me and tell me: ‘I understand you now!’ That will make me happy, for an instant, maybe.
“It’s women who bring my solitude home to me the most.
“Oh, they’ve made me suffer so, because they often gave me – more than other men have – the illusion of not being alone!
“When you fall in love, it seems you expand. A superhuman sensation takes over. Do you know why? Do you know where this immense happiness comes from? It’s because you feel that you’re no longer alone. The isolation and abandonment of other humans seems to cease. What a false impression!
“Even more tormented than we are by the eternal need of love that eats away at our solitary hearts, woman are the biggest lie of the Dream.
“You know those delicious hours spent face to face with that long-haired beauty who drives you mad. What delirium stirs our spirits! What illusion carries us away!
“She and I, we will be as one soon, doesn’t it seem? But that ‘soon’ never comes, and after weeks of waiting, hoping and counterfeit joy, I find myself suddenly, one day, more alone than I’ve ever been.
“After each kiss, after each embrace, the isolation grows. And it is so grating, so painful.
“Didn’t the poet Sully Prudhomme write:
Caresses are but troubled journeys
Fruitless attempts at pathetic love that reaches for
The impossible union of souls through bodies
“And then, farewell. It’s over. You hardly recognize that woman, who for a part of your life had meant everything to you, without you ever having known her intimate thoughts. And those thoughts were no doubt nothing special!
“Just as it seemed that, in a mysterious agreement, in a complete harmony of desire and hope, you dived as deeply as possible into her soul, a word, just one word sometimes, shows the mistake that you made, it shines like a beacon in the night, lighting up the black hole between you.
“But even so, the best thing in the world, it’s to spend an evening near a woman you love, without speaking, almost completely content just to be in her presence. Don’t ask for more, though, because two beings can never fully merge.
“As for me, at present, I have closed off my soul. I don’t tell anyone what I believe, what I think and what I like. Knowing I’m condemned to this horrible solitude, I consider things without ever giving my opinion of them. What good are opinions, arguments, pleasures, beliefs? Not being able to share anything with anyone, I’ve lost interest in everything. My invisible thoughts remain unexplored. I keep a set of answers that I use in response to everyday questions, and a smile that says ‘Yes’ when I don’t want to bother speaking.
“Do you understand me?”
We had walked up the long avenue to the Arc de Triomphe at l’Etoile, then we went back down to the Place de la Concorde. He’d been speaking slowly, and there were other things he said that I don’t remember.
He stopped suddenly, reaching out to point to the tall, granite obelisk standing on the Paris pavement. Its Egyptian profile was set against the starry sky, a monument in exile with the history of its country inscribed on its sides in strange symbols. My friend exclaimed:
“Hey, we’re just like that stone.”
Then he left, without saying another word.
Was he sick? Was he crazy? Was he wise? I still don’t know. Sometimes I think he was right; sometimes I think he’d lost his mind.
Translation by Ten of Swords
“Would you mind taking a walk down the Champs-Elysees with me?”
We left on a slow stroll down the long avenue, under trees with barely any leaves left on them. Silence, except for the vague, steady, background hum of Paris. A cool wind blew over our faces and the rows of stars dotting the sky gave it a golden glow.
My friend said:
“I don’t know why, buy I breathe easier here, out at night, than anywhere else. My thoughts break free of their restraints. I sometimes get some the feeling that makes you think, for a second, that you’re going to unveil the divine secret of all things. Then the window shuts and it’s over.”
From time to time, we’d see two shadows. We’d be passing in front of a bench where two lovers sat side by side, gripping each other so tightly that they looked as if they were blended together into one being.
My friend said:
“Poor fools! It’s not that they disgust me, it’s more that I pity them. Among all the mysteries of life, there’s only one that I’ve sunken into: The torment of our lives comes from being eternally alone, and all our efforts, everything we do, is an attempt to flee that solitude. Those two, there, lovers on a bench out in the street, they’re trying, like us, like everyone, to put an end to their isolation, if only for a minute. But they’re still alone, they’ll always be alone. And us, too.
“That’s the way it seems, more or less. That’s all.
“For some time, I’ve endured this abominable torture of having understood, having discovered the horrible solitude of my life, and I know that nothing can stop it, nothing, do you hear? Whatever we try, whatever we do, whatever our heart’s desire, whether we’re kissing, whether we’re hugging, we’re always alone.
“I brought you with me tonight on this stroll in order to avoid going back to my place, because I can’t take the solitude that I find there anymore. And what good will this do me? I talk, you listen, we’re still both alone, side by side, but still alone. Do you understand?
“Blessed are the simple-minded, according to Scripture. They have the illusion of happiness. They don’t feel our solitary misery, they don’t wander around like me, without contact beyond elbow-to-elbow, without any joy except the endless, self-satisfaction of suffering with the knowledge of our eternal isolation.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?
“Listen. Since I’ve perceived the solitude of being, I feel that I’m sinking deeper into a dark tunnel, and I can’t feel the walls and I don’t know where it ends, and perhaps there is no end! I’m traveling downward without anyone else, without any other living creature taking this same dark passage. This tunnel, it’s life. Sometimes I hear the sound of voices, and shouts … I move forward uncertainly toward these vague rumblings. But I never know just where they are; I never reach anyone, I never feel another hand reaching out in the darkness that surrounds me. Do you understand?
“Some men sometimes discovered this unspeakable suffering. Musset exclaimed:
Who’s coming? Who’s calling me? No one.
I’m alone. It’s the chiming of the clock.
Oh, solitude! Oh, poverty!
“But for him, that was only a passing doubt, and not a definitive certainty, as it is for me. He was a poet; he was populating his life with phantoms and dreams. He was never really alone. Me, I’m really alone!
“Gustave Flaubert was one of the unhappiest beings in this world, because he was extremely lucid. Didn’t he send a girlfriend these words of despair?: ‘We are all in a desert. No one understands anyone.’
“No, no one understands anyone, regardless of what they think, what they say, and whether they try to. Does the Earth know what’s happening in those stars up there, blasting like fireballs across space, so distant that we can only the see the light of a few? While a countless army of others is lost to infinity, but maybe so close together that they form a unified whole, like molecules form a human body?
“Well, man is likewise unaware of what goes on in another man. We are farther removed from each other than those stars, more isolated even, because thought is immeasurable.
“Do you know of anything more horrifying than this constant close contact with people that we can’t know? We love one another as if we were bound together by chains, we’re close, but we stretch our arms out and we can’t touch. We’re in the grip of a tortuous need of union, but our efforts are sterile, our pleasures useless, our secrets bear no fruit, our grasps impotent, our caresses in vain. When we want to get together, we just hurtle toward another person and then collide.
“I never feel as alone as I do when I bare my soul to some friend, because it’s then that I best understand the unbreakable barrier. There he is, a man; I see that his eyes are looking at me; but his soul, behind those eyes, I don’t have the slightest notion of it. He listens. What is he thinking? Do you understand this torment? Maybe he hates me. Or feels contempt for me, or is laughing at me? He’s thinking about what I say, he judges me, he’s scoffing at me, he condemns me, he decides I’m mediocre, or stupid. What’s he thinking? If I like him, does he like me? Just what’s going on in that little round head? The thoughts of someone else are so mysterious, those hidden thoughts. They’re free; they’re thoughts we can never know, never control, never dominate, never conquer!
“And me, as much as I’d love to give of myself entirely, open all the doors of my being, I can’t. In the deepest part of my soul, there’s a section that no one can ever know. No one can ever discover it, no one can get inside, because no one is like me, because no one understands anyone.
“Do you understand me, at least right now? Do you? No, you think I’m crazy! You’re looking at me, you’re wondering about me. You’re asking yourself: ‘What’s gotten into him tonight?’ But one day, if you happen to fall victim to my horrible and subtle suffering, come see me and tell me: ‘I understand you now!’ That will make me happy, for an instant, maybe.
“It’s women who bring my solitude home to me the most.
“Oh, they’ve made me suffer so, because they often gave me – more than other men have – the illusion of not being alone!
“When you fall in love, it seems you expand. A superhuman sensation takes over. Do you know why? Do you know where this immense happiness comes from? It’s because you feel that you’re no longer alone. The isolation and abandonment of other humans seems to cease. What a false impression!
“Even more tormented than we are by the eternal need of love that eats away at our solitary hearts, woman are the biggest lie of the Dream.
“You know those delicious hours spent face to face with that long-haired beauty who drives you mad. What delirium stirs our spirits! What illusion carries us away!
“She and I, we will be as one soon, doesn’t it seem? But that ‘soon’ never comes, and after weeks of waiting, hoping and counterfeit joy, I find myself suddenly, one day, more alone than I’ve ever been.
“After each kiss, after each embrace, the isolation grows. And it is so grating, so painful.
“Didn’t the poet Sully Prudhomme write:
Caresses are but troubled journeys
Fruitless attempts at pathetic love that reaches for
The impossible union of souls through bodies
“And then, farewell. It’s over. You hardly recognize that woman, who for a part of your life had meant everything to you, without you ever having known her intimate thoughts. And those thoughts were no doubt nothing special!
“Just as it seemed that, in a mysterious agreement, in a complete harmony of desire and hope, you dived as deeply as possible into her soul, a word, just one word sometimes, shows the mistake that you made, it shines like a beacon in the night, lighting up the black hole between you.
“But even so, the best thing in the world, it’s to spend an evening near a woman you love, without speaking, almost completely content just to be in her presence. Don’t ask for more, though, because two beings can never fully merge.
“As for me, at present, I have closed off my soul. I don’t tell anyone what I believe, what I think and what I like. Knowing I’m condemned to this horrible solitude, I consider things without ever giving my opinion of them. What good are opinions, arguments, pleasures, beliefs? Not being able to share anything with anyone, I’ve lost interest in everything. My invisible thoughts remain unexplored. I keep a set of answers that I use in response to everyday questions, and a smile that says ‘Yes’ when I don’t want to bother speaking.
“Do you understand me?”
We had walked up the long avenue to the Arc de Triomphe at l’Etoile, then we went back down to the Place de la Concorde. He’d been speaking slowly, and there were other things he said that I don’t remember.
He stopped suddenly, reaching out to point to the tall, granite obelisk standing on the Paris pavement. Its Egyptian profile was set against the starry sky, a monument in exile with the history of its country inscribed on its sides in strange symbols. My friend exclaimed:
“Hey, we’re just like that stone.”
Then he left, without saying another word.
Was he sick? Was he crazy? Was he wise? I still don’t know. Sometimes I think he was right; sometimes I think he’d lost his mind.
Translation by Ten of Swords
Monday, June 04, 2007
Becon-les-Bruyeres to La Defense and Back
I took the suburban suburban commuter line from Gare St. Lazare to Becon-les-Bruyeres every Monday. I was teaching English at the French sales division of an American car parts company in Asnieres. Becon-les-Bruyeres isn’t a town, it isn’t a city, it isn’t a community; it’s just the name of a train station in Asnieres. There’s a station called Asnieres, too, but it’s on the east side of the city, which is pretty grim; it’s filled with rain-stained modern concrete bunker-style apartment complexes. The west side, the Becon-les-Bruyeres side, is charming. Quiet suburban streets, older picturesque brick apartment buildings and houses. The car parts company office was in a converted mansion.
The best part of the gig was the train ride out. There must’ve been some program for deaf kids, and a bunch of them would take the train with me. Each week, these two really cute deaf girls would check me out, sign to each other, giggle silently, check me out again and sign to each other some more. I was 23, and they were high school kids, 16 or 17, so nothing was going to happen. Besides, I didn’t know sign language.
I say that was the best part, but really it was the only good part. The company was teaching its employees English because the secretaries and salesmen would sometimes have to take calls from the head office in the states. No one really wanted to learn English, unlike most of the other places I worked, where people had to request the classes and hence showed up motivated most of the time. These people were being forced, they were tired and bored and uninterested, so they were tiring and boring and uninteresting.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was this: I taught two classes there, one after lunch (12:30 to 2 p.m.) and one after work (5 to 6:30 p.m.), leaving me with a three-hour break. Now if I’d had that schedule the year before, when I was still a student, it would’ve been OK, I could’ve been reading L’Education Sentimentale or L’Espoir or Lettres Persanes or working on a paper for the Histoire des Idees class. But college was over, so the three-hour break was a problem. Newspapers on Monday are particularly thin ¬– nothing much happens on Sunday in France.
Plus, there was only one café in the neighborhood and its girl-watching offerings were pretty limited. So I got in the habit of hopping back on the train to the next station, the giant office skyscraper complex called La Defense.
There were a couple of bars and cafes there that could be pretty lively, and I felt more comfortable sitting there for two hours than I did in Asnieres. One of the places even had a Pac Man machine! What happened to the extra hour? That was taken up with walking back to the station and waiting for the train which ran about every ten minutes, a little more often at rush hour.
One day as I was leaving the café after a vigorous round or two or three of Pac Man, I was walking back to La Defense station through the hallways under La Defense. I was behind two young women in summer dresses and sandals. One was black, the other was mixed or Arabic. They slowed down and I sped up and passed them. Just as I did, a tall black guy turned a corner and walked alongside me for a few steps, then stumbled a bit – I could tell from his unsteady walk plus the look on his face, that he was either moderately drunk or wildly stoned.
He turned and saw the two girls. He said something to them and they didn’t respond. He said something else, and they still didn’t respond.
The four of us turned a corner and climbed a flight of stairs to the train platform. The girls sat down on a bench and the guy was pacing back and forth behind them. I’m sure they could sense him. And that he had an issue. I sure as hell could. But they pretended not to. They just kept talking with each other as if nothing was happening.
“Who do you think you are?” the guy said to them, from behind. “Don’t ignore me.”
The black girl dropped the pretense at that point.
“Leave us alone,” she said, not turning, and with an irritated tone, as if he were some annoying bug.
He answered: “What do you think? You think you’re white?” Then he slapped her on the side of the head. “You’re not white.”
I have to stop the story here for a minute. Chicks take a lot of shit walking around Paris, and riding the buses and trains. Sometimes guys offer compliments that are charming, but sometimes the compliments are less charming. And then there’s the stuff that’s over the line. One night I had a seat facing a black guy on the subway and when a white chick sat down next to him he said: “Hey, you wanna come back to my place with me?” When she said no, he called her a racist. Well, I thought to myself: “If she wasn’t before, she is now. That’ll teach her to sit down next to a black guy. Way to go dude.” I’d seen a lot of shit that chicks had to take. And I’d heard about worse. But I’d never seen a guy slap a girl’s head from behind before. So maybe that’s why I shouted at him:
“YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE, NOW!”
Once again, I have to stop the story for another minute in order to convey the full extent of the absurdity of this situation. I’m 5’7” when I stand up straight and I’m pretty sure I weighed in at about 130 at the time. I was wearing motorcycle boots that day – they were in fashion. While they may have made me look a little taller – maybe 5’9” – any advantage the appearance of more height gave me may have been diminished by the emphasis it placed on the slightness of my physique. This guy that I had just yelled at was 6’5” or maybe even 6’6.” He wasn’t bearish, but he had a strong build. I’d say he might’ve been about 80 pounds heavier than me. Maybe more.
And just as I had shouted at him, the train approached.
So here’s the equation I did in my head:
If he takes six steps toward you, and if you don’t kick him as hard as you can in the shin or the balls – and are you up for that? – he could grab you by the bicep and toss you onto the rails in front of that oncoming train. Above all, man: Show no fear.
So I looked at him and he looked at me. I have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe it was this: That guy’s gotta have a knife or he wouldn’t be so confident. Or maybe he knows karate. And I’m shit-faced; it would be easy for me to lose balance. But if I took six steps toward him, I could pick him up by his bicep and throw him under the train. Unless he gets in a good kick first.
So he didn’t do anything. He just gave me the stink-eye. The train rolled to a stop and he got on the car that in front of us. The girls got up, but the whistle blew before they could make it to the next car.
“Shit!” one of them said. They both stopped. They were going to miss the train rather than get in the same car as him.
“Don’t worry, get on,” I told them. “He won’t do anything now.”
So the three of us boarded the train and sat down. We sat as far away from the guy as possible. But still, there we were, the four of us, on the train together. No one else was in the car.
The girls continued talking, keeping up the appearance that, as far as they were concerned, everything was cool. I wondered what I would do if he came over to strangle me. I realized that I didn’t quite know. So it was a good thing that he didn’t.
The girls and I got off at the next stop.
“Thank you, sir,” one of them told me. “Merci monsieur.” They ran down the quay and got on the next car to continue on to Paris. The guy stayed in his seat.
I didn’t take the train to La Defense on my break anymore. I decided it was just too much effort to spend killing those three hours. So I went back to reading Liberation or Le Monde, walking around the block, and sitting for a few minutes at the corner café. I had learned to appreciate the boredom it offered.
Years later, back home in L.A., I was a reporter on an overnight ride-along with a sheriff’s deputy patrolling Malibu when he saw a crazy homeless man trying to climb a fence onto the grounds of a castle overlooking Pacific Coast Highway. So I watched the deputy arrest him. The homeless guy’s name was Dynamus and he believed he owned the place and was carrying a note he wanted to deliver to the occupants, threatening them if they didn’t leave. (The castle was just being rented out for movie and TV production, so there was no one living there.) The deputy later asked if I’d noticed the “escalation of force” he used throughout the arrest process: First asking the guy to place his hands on the hood of the patrol car, then using his “command voice” to trigger the guy’s instinct to obey authority, then pushing him onto the car and cuffing him. I guess I must’ve used my “command voice” on the train platform that day, without knowing it. Lucky for me, huh?
I still fantasize about those deaf girls. What if they had been a little older? Think I could’ve got a threesome going? There are hotels all over Paris and the suburbs, practically one on every street. Now that would’ve been a fun way to spend that three-hour break at Becon-les-Bruyeres – a place that doesn’t really exist. What if I’d got them in bed? How would we have communicated? What’s that you say? The international language of love? Yeah, in theory. But I’m talking practical, real life stuff. I’m not just talking theory.
The best part of the gig was the train ride out. There must’ve been some program for deaf kids, and a bunch of them would take the train with me. Each week, these two really cute deaf girls would check me out, sign to each other, giggle silently, check me out again and sign to each other some more. I was 23, and they were high school kids, 16 or 17, so nothing was going to happen. Besides, I didn’t know sign language.
I say that was the best part, but really it was the only good part. The company was teaching its employees English because the secretaries and salesmen would sometimes have to take calls from the head office in the states. No one really wanted to learn English, unlike most of the other places I worked, where people had to request the classes and hence showed up motivated most of the time. These people were being forced, they were tired and bored and uninterested, so they were tiring and boring and uninteresting.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was this: I taught two classes there, one after lunch (12:30 to 2 p.m.) and one after work (5 to 6:30 p.m.), leaving me with a three-hour break. Now if I’d had that schedule the year before, when I was still a student, it would’ve been OK, I could’ve been reading L’Education Sentimentale or L’Espoir or Lettres Persanes or working on a paper for the Histoire des Idees class. But college was over, so the three-hour break was a problem. Newspapers on Monday are particularly thin ¬– nothing much happens on Sunday in France.
Plus, there was only one café in the neighborhood and its girl-watching offerings were pretty limited. So I got in the habit of hopping back on the train to the next station, the giant office skyscraper complex called La Defense.
There were a couple of bars and cafes there that could be pretty lively, and I felt more comfortable sitting there for two hours than I did in Asnieres. One of the places even had a Pac Man machine! What happened to the extra hour? That was taken up with walking back to the station and waiting for the train which ran about every ten minutes, a little more often at rush hour.
One day as I was leaving the café after a vigorous round or two or three of Pac Man, I was walking back to La Defense station through the hallways under La Defense. I was behind two young women in summer dresses and sandals. One was black, the other was mixed or Arabic. They slowed down and I sped up and passed them. Just as I did, a tall black guy turned a corner and walked alongside me for a few steps, then stumbled a bit – I could tell from his unsteady walk plus the look on his face, that he was either moderately drunk or wildly stoned.
He turned and saw the two girls. He said something to them and they didn’t respond. He said something else, and they still didn’t respond.
The four of us turned a corner and climbed a flight of stairs to the train platform. The girls sat down on a bench and the guy was pacing back and forth behind them. I’m sure they could sense him. And that he had an issue. I sure as hell could. But they pretended not to. They just kept talking with each other as if nothing was happening.
“Who do you think you are?” the guy said to them, from behind. “Don’t ignore me.”
The black girl dropped the pretense at that point.
“Leave us alone,” she said, not turning, and with an irritated tone, as if he were some annoying bug.
He answered: “What do you think? You think you’re white?” Then he slapped her on the side of the head. “You’re not white.”
I have to stop the story here for a minute. Chicks take a lot of shit walking around Paris, and riding the buses and trains. Sometimes guys offer compliments that are charming, but sometimes the compliments are less charming. And then there’s the stuff that’s over the line. One night I had a seat facing a black guy on the subway and when a white chick sat down next to him he said: “Hey, you wanna come back to my place with me?” When she said no, he called her a racist. Well, I thought to myself: “If she wasn’t before, she is now. That’ll teach her to sit down next to a black guy. Way to go dude.” I’d seen a lot of shit that chicks had to take. And I’d heard about worse. But I’d never seen a guy slap a girl’s head from behind before. So maybe that’s why I shouted at him:
“YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE, NOW!”
Once again, I have to stop the story for another minute in order to convey the full extent of the absurdity of this situation. I’m 5’7” when I stand up straight and I’m pretty sure I weighed in at about 130 at the time. I was wearing motorcycle boots that day – they were in fashion. While they may have made me look a little taller – maybe 5’9” – any advantage the appearance of more height gave me may have been diminished by the emphasis it placed on the slightness of my physique. This guy that I had just yelled at was 6’5” or maybe even 6’6.” He wasn’t bearish, but he had a strong build. I’d say he might’ve been about 80 pounds heavier than me. Maybe more.
And just as I had shouted at him, the train approached.
So here’s the equation I did in my head:
If he takes six steps toward you, and if you don’t kick him as hard as you can in the shin or the balls – and are you up for that? – he could grab you by the bicep and toss you onto the rails in front of that oncoming train. Above all, man: Show no fear.
So I looked at him and he looked at me. I have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe it was this: That guy’s gotta have a knife or he wouldn’t be so confident. Or maybe he knows karate. And I’m shit-faced; it would be easy for me to lose balance. But if I took six steps toward him, I could pick him up by his bicep and throw him under the train. Unless he gets in a good kick first.
So he didn’t do anything. He just gave me the stink-eye. The train rolled to a stop and he got on the car that in front of us. The girls got up, but the whistle blew before they could make it to the next car.
“Shit!” one of them said. They both stopped. They were going to miss the train rather than get in the same car as him.
“Don’t worry, get on,” I told them. “He won’t do anything now.”
So the three of us boarded the train and sat down. We sat as far away from the guy as possible. But still, there we were, the four of us, on the train together. No one else was in the car.
The girls continued talking, keeping up the appearance that, as far as they were concerned, everything was cool. I wondered what I would do if he came over to strangle me. I realized that I didn’t quite know. So it was a good thing that he didn’t.
The girls and I got off at the next stop.
“Thank you, sir,” one of them told me. “Merci monsieur.” They ran down the quay and got on the next car to continue on to Paris. The guy stayed in his seat.
I didn’t take the train to La Defense on my break anymore. I decided it was just too much effort to spend killing those three hours. So I went back to reading Liberation or Le Monde, walking around the block, and sitting for a few minutes at the corner café. I had learned to appreciate the boredom it offered.
Years later, back home in L.A., I was a reporter on an overnight ride-along with a sheriff’s deputy patrolling Malibu when he saw a crazy homeless man trying to climb a fence onto the grounds of a castle overlooking Pacific Coast Highway. So I watched the deputy arrest him. The homeless guy’s name was Dynamus and he believed he owned the place and was carrying a note he wanted to deliver to the occupants, threatening them if they didn’t leave. (The castle was just being rented out for movie and TV production, so there was no one living there.) The deputy later asked if I’d noticed the “escalation of force” he used throughout the arrest process: First asking the guy to place his hands on the hood of the patrol car, then using his “command voice” to trigger the guy’s instinct to obey authority, then pushing him onto the car and cuffing him. I guess I must’ve used my “command voice” on the train platform that day, without knowing it. Lucky for me, huh?
I still fantasize about those deaf girls. What if they had been a little older? Think I could’ve got a threesome going? There are hotels all over Paris and the suburbs, practically one on every street. Now that would’ve been a fun way to spend that three-hour break at Becon-les-Bruyeres – a place that doesn’t really exist. What if I’d got them in bed? How would we have communicated? What’s that you say? The international language of love? Yeah, in theory. But I’m talking practical, real life stuff. I’m not just talking theory.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Katia (V-The End)
(cont. from posts below)
That was pretty much the end.
“Did you talk to Pascal?” Katia asked.
“Yeah.”
“How is he?”
“Not good.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t ask me about the rent money. She probably knew. The next two weeks were awkward between us. She knew I needed the rent money and she didn’t have it. I called Philippe and he told me he’d talk to Marie about it.
I came home from school one day and she told me she’d be moving out. I felt really bad about it. But that’s because I thought she was leaving because Pascal wasn’t going to pay the rent. It was something else. Some complex story that I barely understood. She was going back to Hungary. But only for a while. She told me the reason, but I didn’t understand it. Some family problem? Some visa question that she could only take care in Budapest? In any case, she couldn’t ask me to keep the room for her. It was getting to be late November. Great, I said to myself; not only did I not get November’s rent money, I won’t get any for December, either; it’ll take me at least a few weeks to find a new flatmate.
Katia and I kissed goodbye one afternoon and that was the last I saw of her. Philippe got the November rent from Maria and I swung by his office in Saint-Michel to pick it up one afternoon. A couple of weeks later, he had a get-together at his apartment in Versailles and invited me out. I brought him a Tom Verlaine record and he served snacks and wine and there was a lot of talk among a crowd of English teachers there about American politics. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. Sometime during the party, Philippe asked me:
“Hey, did you hear about Pascal?”
“No.”
“He died.”
“He died?” It took a second to register. “When?”
“Oh, a few weeks ago.”
“You mean, right after I talked to him?”
“I don’t know. When did you talk to him?”
“About the rent. Early November. Before I called you.”
“A little after that.”
“Did he ever get out of the hospital?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they sent him home. Maybe not.”
So that meant: Maybe I had called him while he was on his deathbed to hound him about a hundred bucks in rent for Katia.
“What about Katia?” I asked. “Does she know?”
“Oh, she knows. She’s living at his parents’ house.”
“She’s back from Hungary?”
“Did she got to Hungary?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know. Marie told me, but I didn’t quite understand. In any case, her visa was temporary. So now that he’s dead, she’s no longer allowed to stay. She’ll have to go back.”
Katia did go back to Hungary. But the next year, at another party, Philippe told me that she found another Frenchman in Budapest and married him and they moved back to Paris. So Katia finally got what she wanted.
Pascal and Katia were in my life for just a few weeks that fall in Paris. We had a few conversations; really, Pascal and I just exchanged just a few sentence and Katia and I a few dozen. But I’ll always remember them both. Why is that? There are people I’ve known who’ve played bigger roles in my life, but they fade into the fog of my memory, emerging only upon some prompt, when I find some trace of them somewhere, somehow. Not Katia. She’s always there. I wonder if she still has that picture of me. Maybe it’s true, what the Native American mystics believe about images captured by a camera. Maybe it's true that they steal your soul.
That was pretty much the end.
“Did you talk to Pascal?” Katia asked.
“Yeah.”
“How is he?”
“Not good.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t ask me about the rent money. She probably knew. The next two weeks were awkward between us. She knew I needed the rent money and she didn’t have it. I called Philippe and he told me he’d talk to Marie about it.
I came home from school one day and she told me she’d be moving out. I felt really bad about it. But that’s because I thought she was leaving because Pascal wasn’t going to pay the rent. It was something else. Some complex story that I barely understood. She was going back to Hungary. But only for a while. She told me the reason, but I didn’t understand it. Some family problem? Some visa question that she could only take care in Budapest? In any case, she couldn’t ask me to keep the room for her. It was getting to be late November. Great, I said to myself; not only did I not get November’s rent money, I won’t get any for December, either; it’ll take me at least a few weeks to find a new flatmate.
Katia and I kissed goodbye one afternoon and that was the last I saw of her. Philippe got the November rent from Maria and I swung by his office in Saint-Michel to pick it up one afternoon. A couple of weeks later, he had a get-together at his apartment in Versailles and invited me out. I brought him a Tom Verlaine record and he served snacks and wine and there was a lot of talk among a crowd of English teachers there about American politics. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. Sometime during the party, Philippe asked me:
“Hey, did you hear about Pascal?”
“No.”
“He died.”
“He died?” It took a second to register. “When?”
“Oh, a few weeks ago.”
“You mean, right after I talked to him?”
“I don’t know. When did you talk to him?”
“About the rent. Early November. Before I called you.”
“A little after that.”
“Did he ever get out of the hospital?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they sent him home. Maybe not.”
So that meant: Maybe I had called him while he was on his deathbed to hound him about a hundred bucks in rent for Katia.
“What about Katia?” I asked. “Does she know?”
“Oh, she knows. She’s living at his parents’ house.”
“She’s back from Hungary?”
“Did she got to Hungary?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know. Marie told me, but I didn’t quite understand. In any case, her visa was temporary. So now that he’s dead, she’s no longer allowed to stay. She’ll have to go back.”
Katia did go back to Hungary. But the next year, at another party, Philippe told me that she found another Frenchman in Budapest and married him and they moved back to Paris. So Katia finally got what she wanted.
Pascal and Katia were in my life for just a few weeks that fall in Paris. We had a few conversations; really, Pascal and I just exchanged just a few sentence and Katia and I a few dozen. But I’ll always remember them both. Why is that? There are people I’ve known who’ve played bigger roles in my life, but they fade into the fog of my memory, emerging only upon some prompt, when I find some trace of them somewhere, somehow. Not Katia. She’s always there. I wonder if she still has that picture of me. Maybe it’s true, what the Native American mystics believe about images captured by a camera. Maybe it's true that they steal your soul.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Katia's Rent (IV)
(continued from posts below)
Before Katia moved in, I’d been dating Brigitte. She came over to see my apartment one night. My bedroom walls were covered with black fabric. The other bedroom had wallpaper with garish purple flowers, floor-to-ceiling. I told Brigitte I’d have to paint it white. She said, no, it would have to be blue. I said I didn’t know about that, being that the ceiling was purple. She said if I painted it blue, she would help. Promise? I asked. Promise, she said.
Once Katia had moved in, Brigitte came over for coffee one afternoon and met Katia and Jules. I had already explained to Katia that I had promised Brigitte she could help paint the walls blue. Katia said she wanted them to be white. I said fine, she could paint them white after Brigitte and I painted them blue. Katia said that was absurd. I explained to Katia that I had made a promise to Brigitte and I always kept my word. Katia wasn’t happy.
The next night she came into my room.
“You know, I was talking to Jules about painting the room,” Katia said. “And we think –”
“Yeah, I know, you want it to be white. I think white’s better, too. But –”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh? What were you going to say, then?”
“We think – well, we think Brigitte’s too young for you.”
“Oh, really?”
“And is Brigitte going to move in here?”
“No plans right now.”
“So why should she decide what color the room is? It’s my room.”
“Look. I told you before. I promised.”
I bought the blue paint. I peeled the wallpaper off the wall, which was a huge mistake. The plaster had never been spackled, so that was another huge job I hadn’t foreseen. I did a minimal amount of spackling, just enough to cover the worst slices and holes in the plaster, and got ready to paint.
Brigitte didn’t show up. I took out my anger by painting all night. I had bought her a rose and I left it on my mantelpiece to remind me of how she stood me up and that I shouldn’t ever make a date with her again. Over the next few weeks, Katia acknowledged that the blue paint turned out OK, although we agreed that white would’ve been better. The rose shriveled up and turned black, and I stopped seeing Brigitte.
Pascal didn’t pay Katia’s rent.
“He’s very sick. He’s in the hospital,” Katia told me.
“I still have to pay the rent, Katia. I need your share. You promised he’d pay.”
“Yes, but he’s in the hospital.”
“I can’t tell that to the real estate agent. They won’t care. They need the rent. When will you have it?”
“I don’t know. When he gets out of the hospital.”
“When is he getting out of the hospital?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you ask him?”
“I don’t want to talk to him. You can call him. Here’s the number.”
So I walked down the street to the pay phone and called Pascal at the hospital that Saturday morning. The switchboard operator connected me to his room and he answered the phone.
“This is Steve, Pascal. You know, Katia’s living at my apartment.”
“Oh yes.”
“How are you?”
“Not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are they taking good care of you?”
“Well, you know.”
“Are you going to be OK?”
“Doesn’t look good.”
“Wow, that’s terrible. When do you think they’ll let you go home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, I hate to bother you with this, you being sick and all, but I’m calling about the rent.”
“You’ll get the rent. Don’t worry.”
“Great. Thanks. It’s just that it’s due now, and I was wondering when I’d have it.”
He got angry and yelled at me:
“Look, I told you you’ll get your rent and you’re going to get the rent! You’ll just have to wait!”
“Oh, OK, sorry man, I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to find out when I’d get.”
He was still angry.
“I told you YOU’LL GET YOUR RENT.”
“OK, OK, I said it was OK. I know your ill. I feel bad for you. I was just trying to explain why I was calling. It’s OK. Hope you get better, soon.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly.
We said goodbye and hung up.
Before Katia moved in, I’d been dating Brigitte. She came over to see my apartment one night. My bedroom walls were covered with black fabric. The other bedroom had wallpaper with garish purple flowers, floor-to-ceiling. I told Brigitte I’d have to paint it white. She said, no, it would have to be blue. I said I didn’t know about that, being that the ceiling was purple. She said if I painted it blue, she would help. Promise? I asked. Promise, she said.
Once Katia had moved in, Brigitte came over for coffee one afternoon and met Katia and Jules. I had already explained to Katia that I had promised Brigitte she could help paint the walls blue. Katia said she wanted them to be white. I said fine, she could paint them white after Brigitte and I painted them blue. Katia said that was absurd. I explained to Katia that I had made a promise to Brigitte and I always kept my word. Katia wasn’t happy.
The next night she came into my room.
“You know, I was talking to Jules about painting the room,” Katia said. “And we think –”
“Yeah, I know, you want it to be white. I think white’s better, too. But –”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh? What were you going to say, then?”
“We think – well, we think Brigitte’s too young for you.”
“Oh, really?”
“And is Brigitte going to move in here?”
“No plans right now.”
“So why should she decide what color the room is? It’s my room.”
“Look. I told you before. I promised.”
I bought the blue paint. I peeled the wallpaper off the wall, which was a huge mistake. The plaster had never been spackled, so that was another huge job I hadn’t foreseen. I did a minimal amount of spackling, just enough to cover the worst slices and holes in the plaster, and got ready to paint.
Brigitte didn’t show up. I took out my anger by painting all night. I had bought her a rose and I left it on my mantelpiece to remind me of how she stood me up and that I shouldn’t ever make a date with her again. Over the next few weeks, Katia acknowledged that the blue paint turned out OK, although we agreed that white would’ve been better. The rose shriveled up and turned black, and I stopped seeing Brigitte.
Pascal didn’t pay Katia’s rent.
“He’s very sick. He’s in the hospital,” Katia told me.
“I still have to pay the rent, Katia. I need your share. You promised he’d pay.”
“Yes, but he’s in the hospital.”
“I can’t tell that to the real estate agent. They won’t care. They need the rent. When will you have it?”
“I don’t know. When he gets out of the hospital.”
“When is he getting out of the hospital?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you ask him?”
“I don’t want to talk to him. You can call him. Here’s the number.”
So I walked down the street to the pay phone and called Pascal at the hospital that Saturday morning. The switchboard operator connected me to his room and he answered the phone.
“This is Steve, Pascal. You know, Katia’s living at my apartment.”
“Oh yes.”
“How are you?”
“Not good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are they taking good care of you?”
“Well, you know.”
“Are you going to be OK?”
“Doesn’t look good.”
“Wow, that’s terrible. When do you think they’ll let you go home?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, I hate to bother you with this, you being sick and all, but I’m calling about the rent.”
“You’ll get the rent. Don’t worry.”
“Great. Thanks. It’s just that it’s due now, and I was wondering when I’d have it.”
He got angry and yelled at me:
“Look, I told you you’ll get your rent and you’re going to get the rent! You’ll just have to wait!”
“Oh, OK, sorry man, I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to find out when I’d get.”
He was still angry.
“I told you YOU’LL GET YOUR RENT.”
“OK, OK, I said it was OK. I know your ill. I feel bad for you. I was just trying to explain why I was calling. It’s OK. Hope you get better, soon.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly.
We said goodbye and hung up.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Katia's Friends (III)
(Continued from posts below)
They left and Katia asked if she could put on some music. I said yes and she popped a cassette into the tape player in her room. It was “Phantasmagoria” by a group called Curved Air. I had loved the album when I was 15 – seven years before. It started with two bold strokes on the violin, then a descending pattern of eighth notes with an echo effect. It was dated, but it brought me back to my younger days and my life in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Katia took a picture of me. A few days later, I was passing her room and I noticed she had developed the film and put my picture in a plastic cube on her desk. I thought this was odd, being that I lived there. The other sides of the cube were decorated with pictures of other people – friends, I assumed.
One of my students had loaned me an antique Underwood typewriter so I could write the short stories I’d wanted to write when I came to Europe. The brackets that held the ribbon in place weren’t high enough to keep the ribbon from flying out of its place whenever I hit a capital letter, though, so I taped sticks of cardboard onto them. One afternoon when I got back from class, I was typing away at a story I’d been trying to write for a long time. The story was about the day before I moved from Los Angeles to the suburbs when I was 12. That morning, my friends Richard and Gary met me behind a restaurant and we went climbing on rooftops along a busy street. It was a farewell to my life in the city.
A friend of Katia’s came over. He was another student and he was also taking French classes. He was older and called himself Jules even though was German. Katia took him in her room and I could hear them getting it on as I typed. I stopped typing and put on some Billie Holiday music so I wouldn’t have to listen. I can’t say I liked the idea of her having sex in the next room on a weekday afternoon, but I couldn’t complain about it, either. After all, she had offered herself to me first. And her marriage, at that point, only existed officially, for visa purposes.
Saturday morning I went grocery shopping. When I came back, Katia called me from the shower.
“I’m stuck in here. I forgot a towel. Could you get one from my room and hand it to me?”
So I did. She reached her arm out from behind the shower curtain and said thank you. She stepped out of the shower with her towel wrapped around her and walked past me to her room.
So there I was with a beautiful, naked young woman, fresh out of the shower, in my apartment. I was a healthy young man with a normal sex drive. But I followed my rule: no relationships with the roommate. She was married and I needed the rent money. I put the groceries away and made us some lunch.
That afternoon, her friend Jules came over with Gyorgy, who was a friend of Katia’s from Budapest. He had wild frizzy hair and he was a filmmaker. He saw one of my books – “Blood Letters and Bad Men: An Encyclopedia of American Crime” and went nuts.
“Can I read this?” he asked, wide-eyed with excitement. Sure, I told him. I explained that I used it to teach English, photocopying the entries on Jesse James and John Dillinger so that my students could read and discuss them. I stayed away from the gory stuff in class, though. But I urged him to read the entry on the cannibal killer Albert Fish, which he did – and loved. We bonded.
“What are you doing in France?” I asked him. “Are you making movies?”
“No, I’m a political refugee.”
“Oh really? For a film you made?”
“Well, one I was making. It’s that there were some people I was working with. They were in trouble. The government wasn’t happy with them.”
Katia walked into my room and joined us. She spoke a sentence or two of Hungarian with him. The mood changed.
“I was telling him that he didn’t understand what it was like there,” she said to Gyorgy. Then she turned to me and said: “We had a good friend who disappeared.”
“Disappeared? How?” I was hoping for some elaboration.
“Gone. One day he was just gone,” Katia said.
“The police got him? The government? Did anyone see him get arrested?”
“No,” she said. “No one ever does.”
Maybe it was their rudimentary French, or maybe I didn’t know how to ask the right questions, but I still wasn’t getting the full picture.
“Did he do anything wrong?” I asked. “Was he a criminal? A drug dealer? Leading a revolutionary cell?”
They both shrugged.
“We were students,” Katia said.
Maybe it was our rudimentary French. Maybe it was tough to communicate. They were trying to tell me that it could’ve happened to anyone. I think that’s what they were trying to tell me.
Katia went into the kitchen to make us coffee. Jules, Gyorgy and I went into the living room. Gyorgy grabbed a small platform that the previous tenants had left behind. It was a wooden box made from pieces of particle board with carpeting wrapped around it. I was using it sometimes as a coffee table, sometimes as low seat. He stood it on its side and sat on it.
“Hey, if you want to sit on that, fine, but not on its side,” I said. “It’ll break. Look at the way it’s put together.”
Gyorgy laid it flat. But Jules decided to give me some shit.
“It’s funny how people are in Europe,” he said. “When I was in the United States, I stayed with some friends and they let me drive their car. I was amazed at how open and generous they were.”
He was implying that I was being stingy and controlling with my carpeted box.
“If you came to visit me in the states, I’d let you drive my car, too,” I told him. “The car’s insured. That’s my only piece of furniture, man. I don’t have insurance for it. So if it breaks, I have to throw it out. Then I won’t even have this pathetic little thing I can use as a coffee table. I’ll have nothing in my living room. I’d be upset.”
Katia brought us a coffee pot and cups and served the coffee.
“And I’m looking around at the four of us and I don’t see us going to get me a coffee table if this thing breaks.”
“You’ve got a point,” Jules acknowledged. “But you will acknowledge, that the mentality is different in America.”
“I will acknowledge that,” I said. It was an easy enough point to concede. Mentalities are different country to country. I’d met enough people in my travels to have learned that. United States, Germany, Hungary, England, France – things are really different, everywhere and when things are different, people think differently.
We drank the coffee quickly. It was winter and the days were short. The light in the sky was already fading and the apartment was getting darker every minute. I went back into my room and tried to work on my story. Katia and her friends left.
They left and Katia asked if she could put on some music. I said yes and she popped a cassette into the tape player in her room. It was “Phantasmagoria” by a group called Curved Air. I had loved the album when I was 15 – seven years before. It started with two bold strokes on the violin, then a descending pattern of eighth notes with an echo effect. It was dated, but it brought me back to my younger days and my life in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Katia took a picture of me. A few days later, I was passing her room and I noticed she had developed the film and put my picture in a plastic cube on her desk. I thought this was odd, being that I lived there. The other sides of the cube were decorated with pictures of other people – friends, I assumed.
One of my students had loaned me an antique Underwood typewriter so I could write the short stories I’d wanted to write when I came to Europe. The brackets that held the ribbon in place weren’t high enough to keep the ribbon from flying out of its place whenever I hit a capital letter, though, so I taped sticks of cardboard onto them. One afternoon when I got back from class, I was typing away at a story I’d been trying to write for a long time. The story was about the day before I moved from Los Angeles to the suburbs when I was 12. That morning, my friends Richard and Gary met me behind a restaurant and we went climbing on rooftops along a busy street. It was a farewell to my life in the city.
A friend of Katia’s came over. He was another student and he was also taking French classes. He was older and called himself Jules even though was German. Katia took him in her room and I could hear them getting it on as I typed. I stopped typing and put on some Billie Holiday music so I wouldn’t have to listen. I can’t say I liked the idea of her having sex in the next room on a weekday afternoon, but I couldn’t complain about it, either. After all, she had offered herself to me first. And her marriage, at that point, only existed officially, for visa purposes.
Saturday morning I went grocery shopping. When I came back, Katia called me from the shower.
“I’m stuck in here. I forgot a towel. Could you get one from my room and hand it to me?”
So I did. She reached her arm out from behind the shower curtain and said thank you. She stepped out of the shower with her towel wrapped around her and walked past me to her room.
So there I was with a beautiful, naked young woman, fresh out of the shower, in my apartment. I was a healthy young man with a normal sex drive. But I followed my rule: no relationships with the roommate. She was married and I needed the rent money. I put the groceries away and made us some lunch.
That afternoon, her friend Jules came over with Gyorgy, who was a friend of Katia’s from Budapest. He had wild frizzy hair and he was a filmmaker. He saw one of my books – “Blood Letters and Bad Men: An Encyclopedia of American Crime” and went nuts.
“Can I read this?” he asked, wide-eyed with excitement. Sure, I told him. I explained that I used it to teach English, photocopying the entries on Jesse James and John Dillinger so that my students could read and discuss them. I stayed away from the gory stuff in class, though. But I urged him to read the entry on the cannibal killer Albert Fish, which he did – and loved. We bonded.
“What are you doing in France?” I asked him. “Are you making movies?”
“No, I’m a political refugee.”
“Oh really? For a film you made?”
“Well, one I was making. It’s that there were some people I was working with. They were in trouble. The government wasn’t happy with them.”
Katia walked into my room and joined us. She spoke a sentence or two of Hungarian with him. The mood changed.
“I was telling him that he didn’t understand what it was like there,” she said to Gyorgy. Then she turned to me and said: “We had a good friend who disappeared.”
“Disappeared? How?” I was hoping for some elaboration.
“Gone. One day he was just gone,” Katia said.
“The police got him? The government? Did anyone see him get arrested?”
“No,” she said. “No one ever does.”
Maybe it was their rudimentary French, or maybe I didn’t know how to ask the right questions, but I still wasn’t getting the full picture.
“Did he do anything wrong?” I asked. “Was he a criminal? A drug dealer? Leading a revolutionary cell?”
They both shrugged.
“We were students,” Katia said.
Maybe it was our rudimentary French. Maybe it was tough to communicate. They were trying to tell me that it could’ve happened to anyone. I think that’s what they were trying to tell me.
Katia went into the kitchen to make us coffee. Jules, Gyorgy and I went into the living room. Gyorgy grabbed a small platform that the previous tenants had left behind. It was a wooden box made from pieces of particle board with carpeting wrapped around it. I was using it sometimes as a coffee table, sometimes as low seat. He stood it on its side and sat on it.
“Hey, if you want to sit on that, fine, but not on its side,” I said. “It’ll break. Look at the way it’s put together.”
Gyorgy laid it flat. But Jules decided to give me some shit.
“It’s funny how people are in Europe,” he said. “When I was in the United States, I stayed with some friends and they let me drive their car. I was amazed at how open and generous they were.”
He was implying that I was being stingy and controlling with my carpeted box.
“If you came to visit me in the states, I’d let you drive my car, too,” I told him. “The car’s insured. That’s my only piece of furniture, man. I don’t have insurance for it. So if it breaks, I have to throw it out. Then I won’t even have this pathetic little thing I can use as a coffee table. I’ll have nothing in my living room. I’d be upset.”
Katia brought us a coffee pot and cups and served the coffee.
“And I’m looking around at the four of us and I don’t see us going to get me a coffee table if this thing breaks.”
“You’ve got a point,” Jules acknowledged. “But you will acknowledge, that the mentality is different in America.”
“I will acknowledge that,” I said. It was an easy enough point to concede. Mentalities are different country to country. I’d met enough people in my travels to have learned that. United States, Germany, Hungary, England, France – things are really different, everywhere and when things are different, people think differently.
We drank the coffee quickly. It was winter and the days were short. The light in the sky was already fading and the apartment was getting darker every minute. I went back into my room and tried to work on my story. Katia and her friends left.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Pascal and Olga (II)
(Continued from Katia's Story, below)
Pascal had been traveling. He passed through Iraq and Turkey then stopped in Hungary. I never knew what he was doing. Maybe Katia told me and I forgot, but maybe she didn’t. It was a long trip. He had been on the road for months. He got sick in Turkey, or Iraq. Ate something or drank something he shouldn’t have. Got some bad disease that was eating at his liver and kidneys. Got sick, anyway. Recovered enough to head home, stopping in Budapest along the way. That’s where he met Katia.
They got married, which meant Katia could come with him back to France. As soon as she got her exit visa. But that would take months. So Pascal went back to Paris to get treated for his illness. And Katia waited for her visa in Budapest.
But she had a friend named Olga who had a student visa for France. Olga asked Katia if she could stay with Pascal when she got to Paris. Katia said yes. That was September, the year before I met Katia. Katia’s visa finally came through in July, and she got on the first train out of there. But when she showed up in Paris – surprise! – Pascal and Olga explained to her that they were together and she would have to find her own place. That’s where I came in, with my barely furnished apartment in Saint Cloud.
I sympathized with Katia, I really did. I’d been rejected before. An American girl I fell in love with when I first got to Paris left me for a French guy. I knew how it must’ve felt.
“That’s really sad,” I told her. “Should you go back to Hungary?”
“You don’t know what it’s like there.”
“I guess I don’t.”
I could tell from her body language – she turned sideways, gazing at me over her shoulder – she wanted me to take her in my arms and comfort her. But I wasn’t going to. She sighed when I didn’t respond, and stood up.
“Katia?”
“Yes.”
“That’s really sad. That’s really a sad story. And I feel really badly about what happened to you.”
“Yes?”
“But, I’ve gotta ask. I know this sounds bad, that I’m only thinking about myself, but –“
“Yes?”
“Are you sure he’s going to pay the rent for you?”
“Oh, but he has to. You understand. I came here. And he kicked me out of his house! And we were married!”
“Uh, but really, when you think about it – he doesn’t have to do anything.”
Here’s what I was thinking: This guy was brazen enough to trade out his Hungarian women, even though he was married to one of them. And now I’m supposed to count on him to come through with Katia’s rent money? Sure. He’s not gonna pay me. Fuck.
“Oh, he’ll pay,” Katia assured me.
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will. You don’t have to worry.”
“OK. I’ll count on you to get him to pay.”
“He’ll pay. That will happen.”
“OK. I won’t worry about it, then.”
The next day I called Philippe from a pay phone at Censier-Daubenton, the Sorbonne's bunker-like complex in the 13th arrondisement, during a break from my classes.
“So Katia told me the story of Pascal and how he dumped her for some other Hungarian babe,” I said.
“You didn’t know? I thought I told you.”
“No, I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”
“Marie didn’t tell you that night we came over?”
“No, I would’ve known. I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Oh.”
“Is he going to pay the rent for her?”
“Oh definitely.”
“You sure?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Well, what if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll get Marie to intervene.”
That’s what I was hoping to hear. At least I’d have someone to turn to.
Pascal and Olga came over that weekend. Katia and I were sitting in the living room. They brought Katia some packages she had mailed to herself from Hungary. Olga had taken the same French classes I was taking the year before, so we compared notes on the teachers. Pascal and Olga didn’t sit down with us. Pascal handed me an envelope with Katia’s first month rent. It was a pretty uncomfortable scene. Funny thing: Olga was a stocky, short-haired blonde, and not very pretty. Why did he pick Olga over Katia? Maybe because he was ill and wasn’t in any kind of shape to manage his life. Maybe Olga just took over.
(to be continued)
Pascal had been traveling. He passed through Iraq and Turkey then stopped in Hungary. I never knew what he was doing. Maybe Katia told me and I forgot, but maybe she didn’t. It was a long trip. He had been on the road for months. He got sick in Turkey, or Iraq. Ate something or drank something he shouldn’t have. Got some bad disease that was eating at his liver and kidneys. Got sick, anyway. Recovered enough to head home, stopping in Budapest along the way. That’s where he met Katia.
They got married, which meant Katia could come with him back to France. As soon as she got her exit visa. But that would take months. So Pascal went back to Paris to get treated for his illness. And Katia waited for her visa in Budapest.
But she had a friend named Olga who had a student visa for France. Olga asked Katia if she could stay with Pascal when she got to Paris. Katia said yes. That was September, the year before I met Katia. Katia’s visa finally came through in July, and she got on the first train out of there. But when she showed up in Paris – surprise! – Pascal and Olga explained to her that they were together and she would have to find her own place. That’s where I came in, with my barely furnished apartment in Saint Cloud.
I sympathized with Katia, I really did. I’d been rejected before. An American girl I fell in love with when I first got to Paris left me for a French guy. I knew how it must’ve felt.
“That’s really sad,” I told her. “Should you go back to Hungary?”
“You don’t know what it’s like there.”
“I guess I don’t.”
I could tell from her body language – she turned sideways, gazing at me over her shoulder – she wanted me to take her in my arms and comfort her. But I wasn’t going to. She sighed when I didn’t respond, and stood up.
“Katia?”
“Yes.”
“That’s really sad. That’s really a sad story. And I feel really badly about what happened to you.”
“Yes?”
“But, I’ve gotta ask. I know this sounds bad, that I’m only thinking about myself, but –“
“Yes?”
“Are you sure he’s going to pay the rent for you?”
“Oh, but he has to. You understand. I came here. And he kicked me out of his house! And we were married!”
“Uh, but really, when you think about it – he doesn’t have to do anything.”
Here’s what I was thinking: This guy was brazen enough to trade out his Hungarian women, even though he was married to one of them. And now I’m supposed to count on him to come through with Katia’s rent money? Sure. He’s not gonna pay me. Fuck.
“Oh, he’ll pay,” Katia assured me.
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will. You don’t have to worry.”
“OK. I’ll count on you to get him to pay.”
“He’ll pay. That will happen.”
“OK. I won’t worry about it, then.”
The next day I called Philippe from a pay phone at Censier-Daubenton, the Sorbonne's bunker-like complex in the 13th arrondisement, during a break from my classes.
“So Katia told me the story of Pascal and how he dumped her for some other Hungarian babe,” I said.
“You didn’t know? I thought I told you.”
“No, I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”
“Marie didn’t tell you that night we came over?”
“No, I would’ve known. I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Oh.”
“Is he going to pay the rent for her?”
“Oh definitely.”
“You sure?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Well, what if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll get Marie to intervene.”
That’s what I was hoping to hear. At least I’d have someone to turn to.
Pascal and Olga came over that weekend. Katia and I were sitting in the living room. They brought Katia some packages she had mailed to herself from Hungary. Olga had taken the same French classes I was taking the year before, so we compared notes on the teachers. Pascal and Olga didn’t sit down with us. Pascal handed me an envelope with Katia’s first month rent. It was a pretty uncomfortable scene. Funny thing: Olga was a stocky, short-haired blonde, and not very pretty. Why did he pick Olga over Katia? Maybe because he was ill and wasn’t in any kind of shape to manage his life. Maybe Olga just took over.
(to be continued)
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Katia's Story (La Hongroise)
It was 1980 and if you could get out of Hungary, you did. Katia could and did. Ah, but not so fast. How to tell the story of Katia? I’ve wondered for years. Twenty-seven years now. Is it Katia’s story? I can’t really tell her story. All I can tell is what I know about her.
I was 22. I had left Los Angeles two years before. I’d gone by bike from Paris to Barcelona, by train back to Paris, then Brussels, then boat and train to London, where I spent a year working at a cheap hotel. I went to Lake Geneva for a hotel job I didn’t get and then to Warsaw to visit the girls I’d met and made friend with in London when they were working as chambermaids to earn hard currency. Went to visit other friends in Gloucester and Sheffield. I spent a summer relaxing in Honfleur on the Normandy coast, then hitchhiked south through France to Montpelier for a visit with more friends I’d made in London, some French kids who’d also worked at the hotel with me. From Montpelier I thumbed to Nice, then took a train to Rome and stayed a week, visiting briefly with another friend from London. Another train to Brindisi, then a boat to Greece, where I worked at a fleabag hotel in Athens, then traveled around the Pellopenese, stopping at the abandoned Byzantine city of Mystra and a monumental classical temple on top of a mountain in the middle of the island. Headed back to Athens via Delphi, stood alone in the ruins of the Temple of the Oracle at dawn. Headed back across Europe by bus through Yugoslavia, then by thumb through Austria and Germany to Denmark, where I stayed with a family I’d translated for when their car broke down in Honfleur. Was heading back to L.A. via Paris and London, but happened upon a job teaching English in Paris and stayed. Rented a room from a playgirl named Roselyne who lived in a luxury flat near the Arc de Triomphe, but the young British sculptor she was having an affair with dumped her and she went back to an oil company executive named Henri she’d been seeing before the sculptor came to town. Henri and Roselyne decided I wasn’t a good ingredient in the mix so I needed to find a new place to live.
I would’ve gone back to Los Angeles at that point and my life would’ve turned out vastly different. Who knows what I would’ve become? But I’d signed up for a year at La Sorbonne and was looking forward to it, so I wanted to stay in Paris.
Philippe, a guy who ran a language school where I’d been working as a sub, told me his friends were leaving a great place in Saint Cloud, a ritzy suburb outside Paris, and I should take over the lease. So I did.
It was an empty apartment, with one bare light-bulb hanging from the ceiling in the hallway. It was an insane project and if I’d been smart I never would’ve tried to furnish an apartment in France at that point in my life. I made several attempts to equip the kitchen with flea market purchases – a salad bowl, some cutlery, some cups – but the whole enterprise was way beyond me. Roselyne's lover Henri drove me out to Argenteuil, a distant suburb north of Paris, where his parents had just died, and sold me their stove. I was almost functioning, but not quite. I saw an ad for a used fridge, bought it and carted it back to my new home, but the motor exploded when I plugged it in. The woman who sold it to me gave me my money back, though, so I went to a used furniture depot and bought another one.
After I’d paid my first month’s rent in cash, the real estate agent said: OK for this time, but you’ll need a to write a check from now on. Signing a lease was traumatic enough. Now I’d have to open a checking account. That meant keeping track of my money, something I’d never done, nor even conceived of, until then. So there I was in France at 22, with a checking account I didn’t know how to manage and a minimally furnished apartment.
It had two bedrooms and a living room, and the rent was $200 per month. Philippe said he could find me a roommate, too. His girlfriend Marie had a brother named Pascal. They said Pascal’s wife needed a place to stay for a while. I assumed he was traveling because I’d known he’d been around the world a few times. I didn’t know why else his wife would need to rent a room from me. I guess I should’ve asked.
Phillipe brought Marie over to look at the apartment one night. She was working on her doctorate in physiological psychology. I told her the most amazing thing I’d learned about the brain in my college studies was that you sometimes treated epilepsy by cutting the connections between the right and left brain – the corpus callosum. This didn’t disable a person as much as you’d think. But there were strange results, because different sides of the brain controlled different senses. So if one eye perceives a sign, it can send that information to the brain, but the part of the brain that received that information might not be able to transmit it to the part that controls speech, so the person would not be able to say what was seen.
Marie paused for a moment, then said:
“Not many people know that.”
Marie deemed the apartment suitable for her sister-in-law and Pascal brought Katia over on Sunday afternoon with a couple of suitcases. Roseline and I were still friends and she had given me a bed for the second bedroom. We chatted briefly and Pascal explained that he’d pay the rent for Katia as soon as he could. I helped Katia set up her room as best we could. I grilled us a steak for dinner and opened a can of green beans. We sat on the floor in the living room and ate. I made us some tea – actually, a Swiss concoction called “tizaine” – and then went into my room and shut the door.
About 10 minutes later, I heard Katia laughing. She had gotten undressed and walked into my room in her nightgown. She was a pretty blonde. I was in bed. She was holding a letter.
“I just got this letter yesterday and because I was packing and moving, I didn’t have time to open it and read it,” she told me. “It’s from a Hungarian girlfriend. I had written to tell her I’d be moving in with an American boy.”
Katia read from the letter her friend had sent her:
“That’s so great! I met an American guy in Paris when I was there, too! He took me to a hotel and we made love for three days straight! You’re going to have a great time!” Katia laughed and laughed.
I smiled and said “Yeah, that is funny.” Katia laughed some more and walked out of my room and into hers.
Was I supposed to follow her? Maybe. But then I’d be some other guy. Not me, not with my new flatmate, not with a married one whose husband was supposed to be paying her rent. Even if she weren’t married, I’m not sure I would’ve. Business first. If we had a love affair that went bad, I’d have to see her every day. And that would’ve been a situation pretty high on my list of things I didn’t want.
When I got back from classes the next afternoon, Katia was in the apartment, waiting for me, it seemed.
“You made me tea last night,” she said. “That was very nice. Could I make some for you now?”
“Yes, of course.”
She poured boiling water into two cereal bowls, mixed in spoonfuls of tizaine and carried them into my room. I was siting crosslegged on my bed. She sat down next to me and we drank together. She looked straight at me.
“You haven’t asked about me being here with you even though I’m married to Pascal. Is it because you don’t want to know?”
“No. It’s because I didn’t want to pry.”
What I actually said was something closer to “I didn’t want to invade your personal life,” because I don’t think there’s a word for “pry” in French. Or if there is, I didn’t know it. So you formulate your concepts and choose your words based on what you can translate. That’s how you start “thinking” in a foreign language. I didn’t speak Hungarian and Katia didn’t speak English, so we were communicating in French. Or trying to.
“No, you wouldn’t be invading my privacy. We live together, you know.”
I could tell she wanted to tell me.
“If you want to tell me, you can.”
So Katia told me the story:
(to be continued)
I was 22. I had left Los Angeles two years before. I’d gone by bike from Paris to Barcelona, by train back to Paris, then Brussels, then boat and train to London, where I spent a year working at a cheap hotel. I went to Lake Geneva for a hotel job I didn’t get and then to Warsaw to visit the girls I’d met and made friend with in London when they were working as chambermaids to earn hard currency. Went to visit other friends in Gloucester and Sheffield. I spent a summer relaxing in Honfleur on the Normandy coast, then hitchhiked south through France to Montpelier for a visit with more friends I’d made in London, some French kids who’d also worked at the hotel with me. From Montpelier I thumbed to Nice, then took a train to Rome and stayed a week, visiting briefly with another friend from London. Another train to Brindisi, then a boat to Greece, where I worked at a fleabag hotel in Athens, then traveled around the Pellopenese, stopping at the abandoned Byzantine city of Mystra and a monumental classical temple on top of a mountain in the middle of the island. Headed back to Athens via Delphi, stood alone in the ruins of the Temple of the Oracle at dawn. Headed back across Europe by bus through Yugoslavia, then by thumb through Austria and Germany to Denmark, where I stayed with a family I’d translated for when their car broke down in Honfleur. Was heading back to L.A. via Paris and London, but happened upon a job teaching English in Paris and stayed. Rented a room from a playgirl named Roselyne who lived in a luxury flat near the Arc de Triomphe, but the young British sculptor she was having an affair with dumped her and she went back to an oil company executive named Henri she’d been seeing before the sculptor came to town. Henri and Roselyne decided I wasn’t a good ingredient in the mix so I needed to find a new place to live.
I would’ve gone back to Los Angeles at that point and my life would’ve turned out vastly different. Who knows what I would’ve become? But I’d signed up for a year at La Sorbonne and was looking forward to it, so I wanted to stay in Paris.
Philippe, a guy who ran a language school where I’d been working as a sub, told me his friends were leaving a great place in Saint Cloud, a ritzy suburb outside Paris, and I should take over the lease. So I did.
It was an empty apartment, with one bare light-bulb hanging from the ceiling in the hallway. It was an insane project and if I’d been smart I never would’ve tried to furnish an apartment in France at that point in my life. I made several attempts to equip the kitchen with flea market purchases – a salad bowl, some cutlery, some cups – but the whole enterprise was way beyond me. Roselyne's lover Henri drove me out to Argenteuil, a distant suburb north of Paris, where his parents had just died, and sold me their stove. I was almost functioning, but not quite. I saw an ad for a used fridge, bought it and carted it back to my new home, but the motor exploded when I plugged it in. The woman who sold it to me gave me my money back, though, so I went to a used furniture depot and bought another one.
After I’d paid my first month’s rent in cash, the real estate agent said: OK for this time, but you’ll need a to write a check from now on. Signing a lease was traumatic enough. Now I’d have to open a checking account. That meant keeping track of my money, something I’d never done, nor even conceived of, until then. So there I was in France at 22, with a checking account I didn’t know how to manage and a minimally furnished apartment.
It had two bedrooms and a living room, and the rent was $200 per month. Philippe said he could find me a roommate, too. His girlfriend Marie had a brother named Pascal. They said Pascal’s wife needed a place to stay for a while. I assumed he was traveling because I’d known he’d been around the world a few times. I didn’t know why else his wife would need to rent a room from me. I guess I should’ve asked.
Phillipe brought Marie over to look at the apartment one night. She was working on her doctorate in physiological psychology. I told her the most amazing thing I’d learned about the brain in my college studies was that you sometimes treated epilepsy by cutting the connections between the right and left brain – the corpus callosum. This didn’t disable a person as much as you’d think. But there were strange results, because different sides of the brain controlled different senses. So if one eye perceives a sign, it can send that information to the brain, but the part of the brain that received that information might not be able to transmit it to the part that controls speech, so the person would not be able to say what was seen.
Marie paused for a moment, then said:
“Not many people know that.”
Marie deemed the apartment suitable for her sister-in-law and Pascal brought Katia over on Sunday afternoon with a couple of suitcases. Roseline and I were still friends and she had given me a bed for the second bedroom. We chatted briefly and Pascal explained that he’d pay the rent for Katia as soon as he could. I helped Katia set up her room as best we could. I grilled us a steak for dinner and opened a can of green beans. We sat on the floor in the living room and ate. I made us some tea – actually, a Swiss concoction called “tizaine” – and then went into my room and shut the door.
About 10 minutes later, I heard Katia laughing. She had gotten undressed and walked into my room in her nightgown. She was a pretty blonde. I was in bed. She was holding a letter.
“I just got this letter yesterday and because I was packing and moving, I didn’t have time to open it and read it,” she told me. “It’s from a Hungarian girlfriend. I had written to tell her I’d be moving in with an American boy.”
Katia read from the letter her friend had sent her:
“That’s so great! I met an American guy in Paris when I was there, too! He took me to a hotel and we made love for three days straight! You’re going to have a great time!” Katia laughed and laughed.
I smiled and said “Yeah, that is funny.” Katia laughed some more and walked out of my room and into hers.
Was I supposed to follow her? Maybe. But then I’d be some other guy. Not me, not with my new flatmate, not with a married one whose husband was supposed to be paying her rent. Even if she weren’t married, I’m not sure I would’ve. Business first. If we had a love affair that went bad, I’d have to see her every day. And that would’ve been a situation pretty high on my list of things I didn’t want.
When I got back from classes the next afternoon, Katia was in the apartment, waiting for me, it seemed.
“You made me tea last night,” she said. “That was very nice. Could I make some for you now?”
“Yes, of course.”
She poured boiling water into two cereal bowls, mixed in spoonfuls of tizaine and carried them into my room. I was siting crosslegged on my bed. She sat down next to me and we drank together. She looked straight at me.
“You haven’t asked about me being here with you even though I’m married to Pascal. Is it because you don’t want to know?”
“No. It’s because I didn’t want to pry.”
What I actually said was something closer to “I didn’t want to invade your personal life,” because I don’t think there’s a word for “pry” in French. Or if there is, I didn’t know it. So you formulate your concepts and choose your words based on what you can translate. That’s how you start “thinking” in a foreign language. I didn’t speak Hungarian and Katia didn’t speak English, so we were communicating in French. Or trying to.
“No, you wouldn’t be invading my privacy. We live together, you know.”
I could tell she wanted to tell me.
“If you want to tell me, you can.”
So Katia told me the story:
(to be continued)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Thanks of an Ungrateful Sponsor (See Below)
This is cute, but not appropriate for Tufenkian. Please re-write as a
normal "plug", or delete from your blog.
normal "plug", or delete from your blog.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
And Now a Word From Our Sponsor
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Is price a worry? They won’t fail
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This post commissioned by Serr.biz.
75 percent off! March 10-18
Tufenkian Carpets has a rug for you!
You may not think so, but it’s true!
Their floor coverings come from Tibet
And are all as fine as you can get!
So head on down to their Melrose store
They have carpets that you’ll adore
Is price a worry? They won’t fail
To fit your budget during their March sale
The beauty of these rugs you will barely believe
The eye-catching colors! The intricate weaves!
You will want to purchase more than just one
A carpet in each room is much more fun!
These gorgeous rugs were made by hand
They’ve come here from a distant land
When you see them, you’ll understand
Tufenkian rugs are grandest of the grand
Take a ride to these magic carpets
The store is near the La Brea Tar Pits
So after rug-shopping you can take a side trip
To where saber-toothed tigers into muck did slip
These are not just rugs, they are works of art:
With your carpet you’ll never want to part
You’ll delight in the beauty, you’ll enjoy the style
Tufenkian Carpets will make you smile!
So for the best Tibetan rugs in L.A.
To Melrose you should make your way
In the middle of March, big savings will you get
When you buy your Tufenkian carpet!
Visit the Web site - Click here:
Tufenkian Carpets
Sale: Saturday, March 10th - Sunday, March 18th
Sale Hours:
Monday - Friday 9-6
Saturday - 10-5
Sunday 12-5
8466 Melrose Ave
West Hollywood, CA 90069
For Directions Call
Call (800) 432-9917 ext. 2
This post commissioned by Serr.biz.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Now I'm Done (I of II)
I’m ill, but I don’t know with what, and I wait. The chairs are blue, bright blue. The nurse calls my name and I stand up. “Right this way,” she says, and I go with her to a small room down the hall. I sit where the nurse can check me out and she does. She writes it all down. “The doc will be right with you,” she says, then she leaves. Some time goes by, then the doc comes in.
“Hi, pal,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Hi, doc,” I say. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel good.”
He looks at me.
“Hmmm,” he says. “And you don’t look so good.”
“I know, doc, I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, you’re pale,” he says. “Take off your shirt. Let’s see if I can find out what you’ve got.”
So I take off my shirt. He hears me breathe. He feels the glands in my neck and then he holds my tongue down with a stick so he can look deep in my throat. He holds a small light in his hand, and he shines it in my eyes, first the right, then the left. He steps back and makes a few notes on my chart.
“Work got you down?” he asks.
“Could be, but I don’t think it’s just that.”
“Well, how are things at home? You got a gal?”
“We split up,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s that.”
“Hmm,” he says. “We’ll have to do some blood tests.”
He sends me to the lab on the third floor. I sign my name on a sheet and wait like I did at the doc’s. A girl comes to the door and calls me. I go with her in a small room and sit down on a chair. She bends my arm to find a vein. Her thick black hair smells nice, and her shirt is cut low so I can see the soft, smooth top halves of her big round breasts. She sticks my arm and I watch my dark red blood ooze in the tube. She marks my name on a piece of white tape, puts it on the tube and then she leaves. I watch her bounce as she walks off. If I felt good, I would flirt with her, I would tell her how good she looks, and then, if she smiled or said thank you, I would ask her out. But I don’t feel good.
I go home and warm up last night’s soup on a low flame. I eat out of the steel pan and then I lie down on the couch and take a nap. I dream I am with a girl, not the girl at the lab, this one’s thin and she has long blond hair, and I stroke her arm, then her wet lips kiss me. I take off her shirt and touch her breasts. They are not the big round breasts of the girl at the lab, but they are nice. She breathes hard. I run my hand up her leg and lift her dress. I touch the hair on her mound, I feel her wet sex, she sighs, then I wake up.
I go for a walk down the street, past the shops and then back home. I’m beat. I go to bed and sleep, then wake up, then sleep some more, then wake up. It’s been like this for some time. My wife said she could not take my nerves. No sleep gave me bad nerves, I think.
It’s the next day, and I am at work, at my desk, as a sports scribe for the town rag: news this day, fish wrap the next. I do not have much to do, and that’s good, ’cause I could not do much, I’m too thrashed. I call a high school hoops coach. I write down what he says. I hang up. I spin a yarn on the hoops team, the kids, the coach. I put it in the "hold" file so it will be in the rag soon, but not the next day. I go home and sleep, then wake up, then eat, then sleep some more. Like I said, I know I’m ill, but I don’t know what I have. Yet.
Two days go by and on the third day the nurse calls as soon as the sun comes up. She says the doc wants to see me. That does not sound good, does it? It does not sound good at all. Oh well. I have to know, I guess.
I go see the doc and he tells me: “I have bad news.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say.
He says that there are white blood cells and red blood cells. That, I knew. But I have more white blood cells than I should. Way more. That, I did not know. He says I should have come last May or June. But now, in March, it’s too late. Way too late.
He says he could try drugs on me, but he doubts they’d help. He says he could try to nuke me, zap me, what have you, but he says it may be too late for that, too. I should have come last year, he says. Then he just looks at me and shrugs.
“How long do I have, doc?” I ask him.
“Two months,” he says. “Six months. I don’t know. Not much more than that, though.”
This is a shock, of course.
They say you get mad, then you try to say it’s not true. Then you try to make a deal with God – you say “If you let me live, I will be good,” or “if you can cure me, I’ll be a new man,” things like that. Then you’re sad and you grieve, then you know it’s true and you work with it. But I can tell you now that I did it all at the same time, from the start, and I did not move from one stage to the next, I just do it all, all of it, all the time, I’m mad, I’m sad, I try to make a deal, I grieve, I give up, I take it the best I can, all of it, all the time.
I go home. I should have gone to the doc, like he said, last year. Oh well. What was that rhyme? “... Nor all your tears wash out one word of it.” I hate to let go, but I have no choice. I’m done here, soon.
But now what? I mean, ’til then? Should I get one last blow job? I could get one of those rags from the rack in front of the store down the street and call one of those girls in the ads. I could go to her place and have her kneel at my feet while I sit on her couch. She would run her red lips up and down my stiff cock, while I can still get it up. Soon, I’ll be too sick. Will a blow job make me feel good? One last time? I don’t know. But it might be worth a try.
Or I could go to Tom’s Bar on South Street and try my luck with the girls there. I could pick up a girl at a bar for the last time. I could buy her a drink, look deep in her eyes and tell her how good she looks and bring her back to my place. I could slide my hand on the curve of her breast, I could run my mouth up her thighs, I could touch her pink clit with the tip of my tongue, she would breathe hard, she would moan, I would make her come, she would scream, Oh! Oh! Oh! She would love it, I think, don’t you? I would climb on top of her and then I would put my cock in her and fuck her and come in her. I would love it, too,
I think, for that one last time. Then, when I’m done with that, there would be no more.
And then should I go out for one last good meal? What could I have? Should I go to that French place, Le Bec Fin? I went there last year and had the foie gras, then the raie au beurre noire with a glass of fine white wine. Le Bec Fin would be a good choice, I think.
But wait: I’ve heard there’s this tea you can drink. Would that cure me? The doc made it seem like it’s too late. But just to make sure, I pick up the phone and call and ask him if I should try this tea. He says: Sure, go for it, guy, try the tea. What have you got to lose? But I can tell from the way he says it the tea will not do what I’d want it to, which is make this stop.
“There’s no hope, is there?” I ask him.
“Not much,” he says. “There’s not much hope.”
I tell him thanks and I hang up.
If I pick up a girl, should I tell her I’ll die soon? No, that would scare her. I won’t tell her. She’d think I have AIDS and then she’d be mad. And you know, this would not be to talk, this would be for sex, one last fuck.
To talk, I’d want to be with my friends. I’d like to smoke a joint with my friends, one last time. We’d get stoned and I’d tell them that I’ll die soon. Two of them, I think, or three of them, will be mad. They’ll say: Why don’t you try to find a cure? You could beat this if you try, they’d say. They won’t get it. But the rest of them will get it. They’ll know it’s too late and it’s good not to take the drugs and get nuked if you don’t want to, it’s good to just let go, if that’s what you want. They’ll want to know what made me ill. They’ll ask me what I have that will kill me. I’ll tell them. I can’t write it here, though. It’s a big word and I want to write these last thoughts with just small words, no big words.
When a man knows he’ll die soon, what does he want, and what does he do? Does he want one last blow job? Does he go pay for it? Or does he say no, that would not be right for me. Does he want to pick up a girl at a bar and take her home to make love one last time? Does he do it, or does he say no, that would not be right for her, or for me. Does he want one last walk up the hill, for the view of the clouds as they turn pink, then red, then blue when the sun goes down on the trees? Does he go up the hill, or does he just stay home and sit and think of how it would be? Does a sax guy want to wail on one last jam? If he could, what would that jam sound like? Would that be the best horn riff of all time? Or would he not play out of fear he could not play what he wants to play? What would that feel like? You have one last chance, and you can’t do it. That would not feel good. Does an ink-stained wretch like me want to write one last tale? Does he do it, or would he not, out of fear he would not say what he needs to say? You know, there are times when there are no words for what you feel. There are times when words can’t do what you want them to.
This is not a new tale, it’s an old one, it’s been told in books and on film. So the point is to tell it my own way, to make it mine, just for me. So I chose to write it like this, with just small words, no big words. I think the small words are best here, while the big words would just get in the way. Each word I picked for this last tale has just one pulse, just one beat, like each beat of my heart – whoomp, whoomp, whoomp – this heart that will soon beat its last. Each beat sends my blood all through me, to my hands, to my eyes, to my brain. Soon, there will be one last beat and no more, and I’ll be done, I’ll be dead. And when I put the last dot after the last word in this tale, my last tale, that will mean it’s done, and now it is, and I am, too. Now I’m done, now, here, with this last dot, right here.
“Hi, pal,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Hi, doc,” I say. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel good.”
He looks at me.
“Hmmm,” he says. “And you don’t look so good.”
“I know, doc, I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, you’re pale,” he says. “Take off your shirt. Let’s see if I can find out what you’ve got.”
So I take off my shirt. He hears me breathe. He feels the glands in my neck and then he holds my tongue down with a stick so he can look deep in my throat. He holds a small light in his hand, and he shines it in my eyes, first the right, then the left. He steps back and makes a few notes on my chart.
“Work got you down?” he asks.
“Could be, but I don’t think it’s just that.”
“Well, how are things at home? You got a gal?”
“We split up,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s that.”
“Hmm,” he says. “We’ll have to do some blood tests.”
He sends me to the lab on the third floor. I sign my name on a sheet and wait like I did at the doc’s. A girl comes to the door and calls me. I go with her in a small room and sit down on a chair. She bends my arm to find a vein. Her thick black hair smells nice, and her shirt is cut low so I can see the soft, smooth top halves of her big round breasts. She sticks my arm and I watch my dark red blood ooze in the tube. She marks my name on a piece of white tape, puts it on the tube and then she leaves. I watch her bounce as she walks off. If I felt good, I would flirt with her, I would tell her how good she looks, and then, if she smiled or said thank you, I would ask her out. But I don’t feel good.
I go home and warm up last night’s soup on a low flame. I eat out of the steel pan and then I lie down on the couch and take a nap. I dream I am with a girl, not the girl at the lab, this one’s thin and she has long blond hair, and I stroke her arm, then her wet lips kiss me. I take off her shirt and touch her breasts. They are not the big round breasts of the girl at the lab, but they are nice. She breathes hard. I run my hand up her leg and lift her dress. I touch the hair on her mound, I feel her wet sex, she sighs, then I wake up.
I go for a walk down the street, past the shops and then back home. I’m beat. I go to bed and sleep, then wake up, then sleep some more, then wake up. It’s been like this for some time. My wife said she could not take my nerves. No sleep gave me bad nerves, I think.
It’s the next day, and I am at work, at my desk, as a sports scribe for the town rag: news this day, fish wrap the next. I do not have much to do, and that’s good, ’cause I could not do much, I’m too thrashed. I call a high school hoops coach. I write down what he says. I hang up. I spin a yarn on the hoops team, the kids, the coach. I put it in the "hold" file so it will be in the rag soon, but not the next day. I go home and sleep, then wake up, then eat, then sleep some more. Like I said, I know I’m ill, but I don’t know what I have. Yet.
Two days go by and on the third day the nurse calls as soon as the sun comes up. She says the doc wants to see me. That does not sound good, does it? It does not sound good at all. Oh well. I have to know, I guess.
I go see the doc and he tells me: “I have bad news.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say.
He says that there are white blood cells and red blood cells. That, I knew. But I have more white blood cells than I should. Way more. That, I did not know. He says I should have come last May or June. But now, in March, it’s too late. Way too late.
He says he could try drugs on me, but he doubts they’d help. He says he could try to nuke me, zap me, what have you, but he says it may be too late for that, too. I should have come last year, he says. Then he just looks at me and shrugs.
“How long do I have, doc?” I ask him.
“Two months,” he says. “Six months. I don’t know. Not much more than that, though.”
This is a shock, of course.
They say you get mad, then you try to say it’s not true. Then you try to make a deal with God – you say “If you let me live, I will be good,” or “if you can cure me, I’ll be a new man,” things like that. Then you’re sad and you grieve, then you know it’s true and you work with it. But I can tell you now that I did it all at the same time, from the start, and I did not move from one stage to the next, I just do it all, all of it, all the time, I’m mad, I’m sad, I try to make a deal, I grieve, I give up, I take it the best I can, all of it, all the time.
I go home. I should have gone to the doc, like he said, last year. Oh well. What was that rhyme? “... Nor all your tears wash out one word of it.” I hate to let go, but I have no choice. I’m done here, soon.
But now what? I mean, ’til then? Should I get one last blow job? I could get one of those rags from the rack in front of the store down the street and call one of those girls in the ads. I could go to her place and have her kneel at my feet while I sit on her couch. She would run her red lips up and down my stiff cock, while I can still get it up. Soon, I’ll be too sick. Will a blow job make me feel good? One last time? I don’t know. But it might be worth a try.
Or I could go to Tom’s Bar on South Street and try my luck with the girls there. I could pick up a girl at a bar for the last time. I could buy her a drink, look deep in her eyes and tell her how good she looks and bring her back to my place. I could slide my hand on the curve of her breast, I could run my mouth up her thighs, I could touch her pink clit with the tip of my tongue, she would breathe hard, she would moan, I would make her come, she would scream, Oh! Oh! Oh! She would love it, I think, don’t you? I would climb on top of her and then I would put my cock in her and fuck her and come in her. I would love it, too,
I think, for that one last time. Then, when I’m done with that, there would be no more.
And then should I go out for one last good meal? What could I have? Should I go to that French place, Le Bec Fin? I went there last year and had the foie gras, then the raie au beurre noire with a glass of fine white wine. Le Bec Fin would be a good choice, I think.
But wait: I’ve heard there’s this tea you can drink. Would that cure me? The doc made it seem like it’s too late. But just to make sure, I pick up the phone and call and ask him if I should try this tea. He says: Sure, go for it, guy, try the tea. What have you got to lose? But I can tell from the way he says it the tea will not do what I’d want it to, which is make this stop.
“There’s no hope, is there?” I ask him.
“Not much,” he says. “There’s not much hope.”
I tell him thanks and I hang up.
If I pick up a girl, should I tell her I’ll die soon? No, that would scare her. I won’t tell her. She’d think I have AIDS and then she’d be mad. And you know, this would not be to talk, this would be for sex, one last fuck.
To talk, I’d want to be with my friends. I’d like to smoke a joint with my friends, one last time. We’d get stoned and I’d tell them that I’ll die soon. Two of them, I think, or three of them, will be mad. They’ll say: Why don’t you try to find a cure? You could beat this if you try, they’d say. They won’t get it. But the rest of them will get it. They’ll know it’s too late and it’s good not to take the drugs and get nuked if you don’t want to, it’s good to just let go, if that’s what you want. They’ll want to know what made me ill. They’ll ask me what I have that will kill me. I’ll tell them. I can’t write it here, though. It’s a big word and I want to write these last thoughts with just small words, no big words.
When a man knows he’ll die soon, what does he want, and what does he do? Does he want one last blow job? Does he go pay for it? Or does he say no, that would not be right for me. Does he want to pick up a girl at a bar and take her home to make love one last time? Does he do it, or does he say no, that would not be right for her, or for me. Does he want one last walk up the hill, for the view of the clouds as they turn pink, then red, then blue when the sun goes down on the trees? Does he go up the hill, or does he just stay home and sit and think of how it would be? Does a sax guy want to wail on one last jam? If he could, what would that jam sound like? Would that be the best horn riff of all time? Or would he not play out of fear he could not play what he wants to play? What would that feel like? You have one last chance, and you can’t do it. That would not feel good. Does an ink-stained wretch like me want to write one last tale? Does he do it, or would he not, out of fear he would not say what he needs to say? You know, there are times when there are no words for what you feel. There are times when words can’t do what you want them to.
This is not a new tale, it’s an old one, it’s been told in books and on film. So the point is to tell it my own way, to make it mine, just for me. So I chose to write it like this, with just small words, no big words. I think the small words are best here, while the big words would just get in the way. Each word I picked for this last tale has just one pulse, just one beat, like each beat of my heart – whoomp, whoomp, whoomp – this heart that will soon beat its last. Each beat sends my blood all through me, to my hands, to my eyes, to my brain. Soon, there will be one last beat and no more, and I’ll be done, I’ll be dead. And when I put the last dot after the last word in this tale, my last tale, that will mean it’s done, and now it is, and I am, too. Now I’m done, now, here, with this last dot, right here.
Now I'm Gone (II of II)
And now that life I led, it’s done. My heart beat its last beat. My lungs breathed their last breath. My mouth spoke its last word. Now I’ve just got these shards of thoughts that I send to you with these last words as my brain shuts down. Can you hear me? Are you there? Or am I too far now, too far from you, too far for these words to reach you?
I rise, I float, I rise, I float.
What will become of that skin that held this soul?
Ice? To be thawed years from now when they can cure what killed me? I did not choose that. There are folks who do it, though. Some just freeze their heads, so their brains can be brought back to life. Wow. I would not want that. This is the way to do it; to just let go.
Flames? I thought that’s what I’d have done with my skin and bones. But I’m a Jew, and Jews don’t do that. I did not know that ’til last month when I knew I was ill and I checked. So what is left of me will go in the ground. In a box. That is what is done in my faith.
I rise, I float, I rise, I float. What now?
Will there be that light that I have heard of? Not yet, I don’t see it.
I think back.
Are these my last thoughts, as I leave this world?
I was a boy. There were more boys with me, in a room. We played with toys. Cars, boats. Paints – with our hands. And there were girls, too. We sang songs. Then there was school. We will learn to read, they said one day. I was scared that I would not learn. But I learned. It was not that hard. Whew.
I lived in New York. Then we moved, me and mom and dad. To L.A. I had to change the way I did things. Kids made fun of me for the way I talked. And dressed. They wore jeans. I wore dress slacks. I tried to fit in, I changed what I wore, I tried to talk like them. After a time, I fit in. Kind of.
There were boys with me, then, too. We played sports. And then girls. I fell in love for the first time. Jill. Was that her name? I think that was her name. She had short brown hair and wore nice clothes to school. A white blouse. A blue skirt. She did not know I loved her. At least I don’t think so. Where is she? Will I see her? No, that is all gone.
With each thought, each of these last thoughts, I feel each thing fade. Each face, each thing, fades, fades, fades. Then it’s gone.
I grew up. I learned to drive. I fell in love once more, and she did not know, like the first girl, that first time. And then I fell in love one more time. That time, she knew. We went to be and kissed and touched and licked and sucked and fucked. I loved her. I thought she loved me. Did she? For a time, sure. Some time later I knew she did not love me. Then I was sad, so sad I cried. Then I moved on, as they say you do. It’s true, you move on.
I smoked pot with friends. I got a first job, then a new job, then a third job, then a fourth. I worked and I made a few bucks. I smoked more pot. I was still in high school. I played in a band. The band broke up. Then more school, where I took a class, then two, then three and four, and learned how to write news. I smoked more pot.
I float, I rise, I float, I rise.
The things I think of, these last thoughts, they fade and go, then they’re gone.
I left L.A. and lived in the U.K. for a year. I went to France, and Spain and Rome and Greece, too, then back to France. I learned French there and got a job where I wrote news. I stayed a few years and came back to L.A. where I got a job and lived that life I led, the one that’s gone now.
There were good days. There were films, there were books. Good meals, fine wine. I went to the beach. I fell in love and then fell in love again. As I think back on each face, she fades, she fades, then she’s gone. Gone for the last time.
There were bad days, too. We’ve all had those. Then there were real bad days: when I got sick and I knew it was the end.
I rise, I float, I rise, I float.
What now? What next? It is what we all want to know, right? When you breathe your last breath, what then?
Will there be the flames of hell? I don’t think so. A warm glow in the clouds? I don’t know.
Ah, the clouds, the clouds. Big white clouds stretched out on the sky. They hold rain. The rain falls in the cold and it’s snow, it’s ice.
The snow falls, white flakes blow in the wind. The snow lands and stays on the ground in piles and it turns all the streets white. Pure. It makes things look pure.
Flames, too. They kill germs. They make things pure, too. Odd, huh, that flames and ice both make things pure.
Are these my last thoughts, of flames and ice and how they make things pure?
I float, I rise, I float, I rise.
The world fades, not just faces and things, but now the whole world, all things, each thing. Am I gone now? Is this the end? Where is the end? Wait … is that the light I see? Can I feel it? I don’t know. You’d think I would know, right? That light that they say is there, at the end. If you saw it, you would know. At least I think you would.
These last words I think, these last short words – this time, too, I made them short words, words with one sound, one beat, my last fight with words – I leave them now, too. They fade. Now there will be no more words, long or short, one beat or two. No more thoughts, no more words. No more. It’s the end.
I float, I rise, I float, I rise. But now there is no I, no me. And that’s when the light shines.
The last sparks of my brain light up and then fade and I’m gone.
Is it cold here? Is it hot? Flames? Ice? I can’t tell. All that I could feel, heat, warmth, cool, all that is gone.
Will my soul now join all the souls in the light? Will I come back?
We can’t know. We will not know. But we will go. We all go. There’s no way not to go. I wish there were.
I lived and loved. I loved life. I loved the beach. I loved the sky and the clouds. I loved films and books and the sounds of horns and strings and drums. I did not want life to end. I did not want to go. But I went. I had to go. It was my time.
I float, I rise, I float I rise.
Is that the light?
The light is there. Or is it? Is it just a dream, just a thing you see when your brain shuts down?
No, I think it is there. I think I see it.
And so now it’s the end.
And now I’m gone.
I rise, I float, I rise, I float.
What will become of that skin that held this soul?
Ice? To be thawed years from now when they can cure what killed me? I did not choose that. There are folks who do it, though. Some just freeze their heads, so their brains can be brought back to life. Wow. I would not want that. This is the way to do it; to just let go.
Flames? I thought that’s what I’d have done with my skin and bones. But I’m a Jew, and Jews don’t do that. I did not know that ’til last month when I knew I was ill and I checked. So what is left of me will go in the ground. In a box. That is what is done in my faith.
I rise, I float, I rise, I float. What now?
Will there be that light that I have heard of? Not yet, I don’t see it.
I think back.
Are these my last thoughts, as I leave this world?
I was a boy. There were more boys with me, in a room. We played with toys. Cars, boats. Paints – with our hands. And there were girls, too. We sang songs. Then there was school. We will learn to read, they said one day. I was scared that I would not learn. But I learned. It was not that hard. Whew.
I lived in New York. Then we moved, me and mom and dad. To L.A. I had to change the way I did things. Kids made fun of me for the way I talked. And dressed. They wore jeans. I wore dress slacks. I tried to fit in, I changed what I wore, I tried to talk like them. After a time, I fit in. Kind of.
There were boys with me, then, too. We played sports. And then girls. I fell in love for the first time. Jill. Was that her name? I think that was her name. She had short brown hair and wore nice clothes to school. A white blouse. A blue skirt. She did not know I loved her. At least I don’t think so. Where is she? Will I see her? No, that is all gone.
With each thought, each of these last thoughts, I feel each thing fade. Each face, each thing, fades, fades, fades. Then it’s gone.
I grew up. I learned to drive. I fell in love once more, and she did not know, like the first girl, that first time. And then I fell in love one more time. That time, she knew. We went to be and kissed and touched and licked and sucked and fucked. I loved her. I thought she loved me. Did she? For a time, sure. Some time later I knew she did not love me. Then I was sad, so sad I cried. Then I moved on, as they say you do. It’s true, you move on.
I smoked pot with friends. I got a first job, then a new job, then a third job, then a fourth. I worked and I made a few bucks. I smoked more pot. I was still in high school. I played in a band. The band broke up. Then more school, where I took a class, then two, then three and four, and learned how to write news. I smoked more pot.
I float, I rise, I float, I rise.
The things I think of, these last thoughts, they fade and go, then they’re gone.
I left L.A. and lived in the U.K. for a year. I went to France, and Spain and Rome and Greece, too, then back to France. I learned French there and got a job where I wrote news. I stayed a few years and came back to L.A. where I got a job and lived that life I led, the one that’s gone now.
There were good days. There were films, there were books. Good meals, fine wine. I went to the beach. I fell in love and then fell in love again. As I think back on each face, she fades, she fades, then she’s gone. Gone for the last time.
There were bad days, too. We’ve all had those. Then there were real bad days: when I got sick and I knew it was the end.
I rise, I float, I rise, I float.
What now? What next? It is what we all want to know, right? When you breathe your last breath, what then?
Will there be the flames of hell? I don’t think so. A warm glow in the clouds? I don’t know.
Ah, the clouds, the clouds. Big white clouds stretched out on the sky. They hold rain. The rain falls in the cold and it’s snow, it’s ice.
The snow falls, white flakes blow in the wind. The snow lands and stays on the ground in piles and it turns all the streets white. Pure. It makes things look pure.
Flames, too. They kill germs. They make things pure, too. Odd, huh, that flames and ice both make things pure.
Are these my last thoughts, of flames and ice and how they make things pure?
I float, I rise, I float, I rise.
The world fades, not just faces and things, but now the whole world, all things, each thing. Am I gone now? Is this the end? Where is the end? Wait … is that the light I see? Can I feel it? I don’t know. You’d think I would know, right? That light that they say is there, at the end. If you saw it, you would know. At least I think you would.
These last words I think, these last short words – this time, too, I made them short words, words with one sound, one beat, my last fight with words – I leave them now, too. They fade. Now there will be no more words, long or short, one beat or two. No more thoughts, no more words. No more. It’s the end.
I float, I rise, I float, I rise. But now there is no I, no me. And that’s when the light shines.
The last sparks of my brain light up and then fade and I’m gone.
Is it cold here? Is it hot? Flames? Ice? I can’t tell. All that I could feel, heat, warmth, cool, all that is gone.
Will my soul now join all the souls in the light? Will I come back?
We can’t know. We will not know. But we will go. We all go. There’s no way not to go. I wish there were.
I lived and loved. I loved life. I loved the beach. I loved the sky and the clouds. I loved films and books and the sounds of horns and strings and drums. I did not want life to end. I did not want to go. But I went. I had to go. It was my time.
I float, I rise, I float I rise.
Is that the light?
The light is there. Or is it? Is it just a dream, just a thing you see when your brain shuts down?
No, I think it is there. I think I see it.
And so now it’s the end.
And now I’m gone.
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