De ups en downs van een schrijver, tolk, therapeut, echtgenoot What we think we become
16-06-2011
Georgina
We had both started work on a PhD.
Different faculty, same building.
We met at the coffee machine. We called him
Eddy.
Giving names to things you both use,
creates a first layer of intimacy.
You always had some trouble putting
together a regular outfit. That day you were wearing a flowery dress with faded blue yeans
underneath. You always looked bored, because everything was just too easy for
you. I liked the way you dragged your feet passed my cubicle. You looked so
convincingly sleepy, it made me smile.
In a very quiet sort of way you radiated
more self-confidence than any girl I had ever met. When we would go for lunch
in the garden of a nearby restaurant, you would blurt out things like: 'By that
time I will already be head of the department'.
Your cocksure attitude gave me a feeling of
peace.
'If you behave I will hire you to serve me
coffee. And maybe if you really behave, you can serve me something else too'.
In your attitude towards me, you displayed
an uncommon degree of verbal cruelty.
I would say:
'We can have a candle light dinner on the
roof of the faculty building'.
And you would say:
'Great, I can throw you off after. Or right
before. More food for me'.
'Be sure to make it look like an accident'.
'Oh, don t worry, everybody knows how
clumsy you are'.
When we did have the candle light dinner I
asked:
'So when do you plan to throw me off?'
'Oh, I have decided it's too soon. I want
to torture you some more first'.
We only met when you felt like meeting.
Which wasn't often. You took your PhD very seriously easy work or not and
you had three girlfriends who were entitled to spend at least one night a week
with you.
Whenever you texted me to ask if we could
meet, everything had to give.
I started rushing as soon as I had put my
mobile back in my pocket. A whole battle plan would develop in front of my
eyes:
-get home, hit the shower
-change clothes
-perfume
-50 push-ups to pump up the muscles a bit
-buy a bottle of vodka and multivitamin
juice to make your favorite cocktail
-buy one freshly baked brownie at the
chocolate bar
I never arrived at your door without a
sweaty brow.
Friends started to wonder why I had let a
girl enslave-kiss me to life, would have been more exact- me virtually
overnight. They looked at me like I was volunteering to shovel coal to keep
hell's furnaces blazing. I couldn't answer their questions. I was puzzled
myself. It had something to do with with the adamant, stern, inflexible look on
your face. Like it was sculpted. It was hard to please you. I could almost
never do anything right.
I would be two minutes late and I would
apologize and say:
'I am sorry, but I had to walk my friend's
dog. He is in the hospital, so he can't do it himself.'
'Well, it's interesting to see where your
priorities lie.'
I'd bring a bottle of wine from a shop on
the outskirts of town where they were supposed to have the best wine North of
the Seine and you'd say:
'White wine? To go with spaghetti?
Interesting.'
When you did say something nice, it washed
my brain with endorphines, because I knew it must have been a very sincere
compliment.
What was I looking for? A strict,
disciplinary mother or just a hard to please girlfriend? Me falling asleep on
your chest and not the other way around, made it all the more worrisome.
I felt like a puppet on your string, but
the puppet felt he belonged there. Any other girl would have cut the string and
chucked the puppet out of the window. Who can stand someone who passionately
pursues the fulfilment of your needs? Who seems to thrive on satisfying you?
You could.
'I never needed anyone to feel complete,
but still you complete me. You complete what was complete already. I think the
most important thing is that with you I can combine the freedom of being single
and have the security of having someone who embraces my uniqueness, without
trying to mold me onto something I'm not and you are there when I want you to
be there.'
One year into our relationship, friends had
to recognize I was a stray bullet who had finally found a direction. You were
the only girlfriend they all respected and didn't look at with pity, but with
enthusiast glee.
I renamed you Zenobia. After the famous
strategist who bested the Roman legions more than just a few times.
The same quiet confidence, dignified
realism and unpretentious beauty emmanate from her portraits.
And it starts out with a Z, because my
story ends with a Z
I don't know why a similar taste in music should pave the way for sexual
intercourse, but it often does.
You liked Half Japanese, but you said it wasn't one of your favorite
bands. The reason you wore the T-shirt was because you actually were half
Japanese. Your father was Japanese, your mother was Belgian. At least she was
at the time, now we would call her Flemish.
We met on the second afternoon of Pukkelpop. I only go to music
festivals when a girlfriend drags me along or to get over one. That time the
latter was the case. We were in luck.
Normally I only like the atmosphere in the camping area. When I'm in
front of the stages I always catch myself watching the band on the tv screens.
Why go to a music festival if you are going to just stand there in a meadow and
watch tv? I can do that much more easily at home, without feeling like a cow
staring at passing trains. But I like the camping grounds and the smell of pot that
gently floats among the tents, like a marihuana sea breeze. I like the bits of
conversation that come to my ear and it makes me feel young and free and
neo-hippie-like to see people wash their hair out in the open. And I like
having sex in a tent with music in the distance and bass beats shaking the
earth under your twirling bodies.
You were there, because you worked there. You helped build the stages
and you were supposed to take them down after. In the mean time you were free
to catch some of the concerts. The only reason you became a roadie. That and
the sense offreedom the irregular
working hours gave you. You had 'the 9 to 5 world ain't no place for me' tatoed
on your wrist. In some kind of very aggressive pink. I guess roadie is one of
the few career options open to someone who has that kind of a tatoe displayed
in full view.
I was in the middle of getting over a break-up. So when when I was
walking back to my tent, after our first conversation, I was telling myself:
this time it's going to be different. This time I am not going to make the same
mistakes again. Not that you had just agreed to a life long relationship or
even a short festival fling, but one can dream, right?
We agreed to meet in front of a stall that sold something that was called
Chinese food, but wasn't. You knew Asian food, so I didn't argue. 'You were in
China?', I asked. 'Yes, is that strange?'
'Isn't that a bit like a German going to Russia?'
'How do you mean that?'
Yes, how DID I mean that? I wasn't making much sense. The sun, the vibes
of the masses, quite a bit of beer (I drink at the end of relationships and at
the start of new ones, and here the two situations blended, so yes, quite a bit
of it) and the old butterfly feeling was making me blurt out crap.
'Nevermind, I was just wondering how Chinese people look at Japanese
people. Knowing what a rowdy time the Japanese had in China right before and
during world war two.
'Right', you said, 'you are one of those guys who read history books.'
You looked at me like you'd just said: 'Right, you are one of those guys
who wake up every morning in their own vomit and like to brag about it.'
'Nevermind', I said again.
'Yes, Nevermind', you said with one eyebrow raised, 'great album, though
In Utero and Bleach are my favorite.'
'You look like the bass player of Shonen Knife', I said.
'Which one?', you asked.
Right, had to admit
a) I didn't know they went through more than one bass player.
b) I didn't know any of their names.
'It doesn't matter', you said, 'they're all good-looking. So thanks.'
I like girls who can take a compliment. Girls who don't fend off
compliments, usually have no trouble stating what they want in bed.
'Do you want to grab a bite?', I said. Being so near to all those food
stalls, it was the most logical thing to ask.
'No, I am not hungry.'
'Are you one of those girls who never eat?'
I can't stand girls who don't eat. They don't have calories to burn in
bed. Or tent.
'No, I eat. I'm sure I'll git a bit peckish when the sun goes down. It's
just too hot to eat anything now.'
'Are you sure? Because you are really slim.'
'Seriously, you should feel my thies.'
You pulled me and my left hand down and put it on your right thie.
'Feel that?'
'It's firm.'
'Maybe. Broad is more the word for it.'
'Seriously, you got a great waist and you got killer legs.'
You were wearing black shorts. So short, the rim barely peeked from
under the rim of your T-shirt.
'Ok, ok, enough with the compliments.'
'Sorry, but it's true.'
Grinning and silence.
'Ok, give me an other one.'
'You got a very feline look.'
'Is that a good thing?'
'That's a very good thing.'
'Ok then. Give me an other one.'
How many compliments does it take till you get to the centre of the...?
I didn't keep count, but we put up a seperate tent that night. All the
way in the back. You moved out of the one you were sharing with your friends, I
moved out of the tent I was sharing with mine. It sort of felt like moving to
the far corner of the island to engage in mysticalinitiating rites, which was a good feeling to
have. At least we could make a little bit more noise there. And we were closer
to the toilets. It wasn't like we needed to be close to the concert area any more.
'You smell like basmati rice, but better.'
'You talk too much.'
Silence.
'But come on, go on. How do I taste? And please don't say something like
hot Sushi.'
You tasted like the most expensive cocktail on the menu, and you don't
want to lose the taste, 'cause you can't afford an other one.
You sat on my face.
'Now you have your cocktail on tap.'
When you rolled away, you asked: 'Doesn't it make your tongue hurt?'
'We are those who ache with amorous love.'
'What?'
'It's the title of an album by Half Japanese, isn't it?'
'Yes, I know. Stop trying to impress me. You already have me naked.'
I was really starting to like you.
The tent at the border of the island, seceded from the rest and formed
it's own little kingdom. We only crossed back to the main island when we ran
out of food. Which we didn't buy at the stalls. We walked all the way to a
supermarket.
'I am what you would call a skinflint. I like that word to describe my
obsession with saving money.'
'I suppose a roadie doesn't get that much pay.'
'Ow, it's ok. Saving money is more like a hobby. Or a challenge I can't
resist. Has something to do with a residue of old Samurai perfectionism.'
Being cheap never sounded so sexy.
I had promised myself not to make the same mistakes again. But it all
felt so right, so I copied that habit of yours. And every time I pick up a new
habit, I overdo it just a tiny bit. The first month of our relationship, I
managed to save over 70 percent of my salary. It's amazing how much you can
save if you really want to.
After Pukkelpop we filled the gaps in your tour schedules with fucking.
The fucking was long, the gaps were short. Every time you left, felt like the
waiter snatched a big dessert I had barely touched right from under my nose.
We texted the skin of our fingers off. Saving money didn't seem to count
for our phone bills. Sometimes we even spoke on the phone. Every other day at
11 am. You were very given to routines for a girl who vowed to hate the nine to
five world.
There a lot of pauses when we were on the phone. Half of the time there
was silence, the other half of the time we were looking for a topic to talk
about. We had agreed not to fill telephone conversation by repeating over and
over how much we missed each other. I hated missing you, your physical presence
and your laughter, so much I drew up a wall between us, to not get too
emotioally attached to you.
That's not very smart. Going into a long-distance relationship while
rejecting the pain of missing, is like declaring war while rejecting the
violence it will cause.
During our last telephone I said: 'Who needs the disappointment of a
telephone call?'
'What?'
'It's in a song by Razorlight.'
'I know that. Tell me the title of the song.'
'Why?'
'Just say the title.'
'Who needs love?'
'Yes, if you can't fucking handle the distance, then fucking have the
guts to tell me so, straight on.'
You hung up.
Very girly thing to do.
I didn't call back.
Very boyish thing to do.
I still can't listen to Half Japanese without craving your body and
wondering in which tent you are sleeping tonight.
I called you the Lady of
the questionmarks. You flooded me with questions. It even started with
one. We were on a train. You sat across from me and you said: 'I am
sorry, but may I ask what you are writing?'
Nothing of any literary worth.
'Ehm, my diary', I said.
'You write a diary?'
Yes, but if you would read two sentences of what's in there, you would run to an other compartment at the speed of lightening.
Of
course, I didn't show you my diary and so we managed to have a drink at
the train station. More questions came. Normally that's my part of the
game, but you didn't even give me a chance to ask you one. It was a
welcome change, I must admit. A girl who showed initiative.
You asked my telephone number. You asked me in which part of the city I lived. You asked me if I wanted to go and see a movie.
And then finally, my first question to you: 'When?'
'How about tonight?'
When you woke up in my bed the next morning you asked:
'Why do you have so many pictures of dead people on your walls?'
'They inspire me.'
'To do what?'
Your best question so far.
I went to get you some breakfast. When I got back you had already cleaned my place.
'Do you mind if I tidy the place up a bit?'
You
didn't ask if you could move in, but you did. You would only ask if you
could put your this or that here or there. My closet started filling up
with your clothes very rapidly. That was fine, I'm used to using the
floor to store my clothes.
Sometimes you didn't ask
questions. Like when you were cooking. You liked cooking. You also liked
to braid my hair. You liked to wash, shampoo, brush and braid it. I
don't think you were trying to tell me something about personal hygiene.
I'm sure you would have asked me something about it otherwise.
When we went out to restaurants, I would pay. You were still studying. You could pick whatever you liked, but you asked:
'Why do you always order the cheapest on the menu and nothing to drink?'
'I am an artist. I don't believe in artists who eat well.'
'Why not?'
'Writers are like mushrooms. Keep them in the dark and feed them on shit.'
'No really, why do you never treat yourself to anything good? You always buy the best for me.'
'If
you choose to be an artist and never produce anything of any practical
use, you are like a parasite. So when I deny myself some of the luxuries
of life, I feel less like a parasite.'
'You don't like being an artist?'
'I love being an artist.'
'I
think if you had a different profession, you would invent some other
reason to deny yourself the luxuries of life. Maybe you are just not
satisfied with yourself?'
I could stand the questions, but the analysis that came with them was something else.
The
first time we had dinner with your parents I saw where you got your
questioning habit from. Your dad was a cop. He would ask your mother:
'How long was this chicken in the oven? How many degrees? Did you put
enough salt and pepper on it? How much does it weigh?'
Where
were you at the time the potatoes burned? What were you doing in the
bathroom? Was someone there with you at the time who can confirm this?
Any
question he had about me, he directed to you. I didnt have a name. I
was this guy. 'Is this guy treating you well? Is this guy good for
money? At what time does this guy get up? Is this guy handy with a
hammer? What kind of car does this guy drive?'
The answers rolled right out of your mouth. Like you had prepared for an exam.
The only question he ever asked me, was: 'What's your poison?'
Meaning my favorite drink. Apparently you weren't supposed to know anything about liquor.
I
knew it wasn't the right thing to answer to the man's question he had a
reddish, strawberry like nose-, but I said I didn't really like the
taste of alcohol.
When we were walking back to my place afterwards, you were bouncing up and down and telling me what a good impression I made.
I couldn't understand all this enthusiasm and asked:
'Why do you like me so much?'
You said: 'You are like a cute little bird with a broken wing. I just love taking care of you.'
Wrong answer.
I asked:
'What if you like taking care of the bird so much, you don't want the wing to ever heal?'
'What do you mean?'
I
don't know why I didn't keep my mouth shut. I mean, you were
good-looking, very girly, very soft skin, nice hips, fashionable, but
unpretentious clothes, subtle perfume and you had a sensual walk. I
could get used to your cleanliness. You spoiled me with your cooking,
but I liked the time it saved me. And your giving nature was most giving
in the bedroom. I was grateful, but tense. I prefer girls who exploit
me for their personalized hedonistic purposes. I guess it gives me a
sense of usefulness. But still, we had a good horizontal connection.
It didn't make much sense.
All those qualities landed you straight on the list of luxury items I like to deny myself.
'Why do you wanna break up with me?'
'I can't stand being pampered.'
'Why not?'
'Did
you ever read the novel Oblomov? You're going to rock me to sleep with
all this good care of yours. I'm afraid I'm going to be like a sedated
baby eternally suckling at his mother's breast.'
'But I like taking care of you! And it's good for you too. You're finally getting some colour.'
'Look, I don't wanna be your rosy cheeked baby, ok?'
'Is this your way of saying I clean too much? I have it from my mother. I can stop if that's what you want. What do you want?'
I walked out on you then and there,
but thanks for letting me discover, I was never looking for any easy ways out of adult life, but for hard ways in.
It took an altruist to make me see I'm a masochist.
In a relationship there can only be the certainty of choice. The
relationship by itself never comes with any certainty. I gave myself the
certainty of choice when we were together for about a year.
At one moment I said to myself: 'This is as good as it gets. I choose you
and rid myself of all the nagging what ifs'
I remember the moment well, because I was walking back to my place from a
night spent in bed with Hilde.
A very fine night it was, and now I
have the quietness of dawn in a sleepy city on Easter morning to be torn
between feeling elated and being scared out of my wits because you might
discover what I did. So no more of that. It's all very clear now. What this
fear is telling me, is that the one for me is you.
In choosing you, I wasn't settling for less than I thought I could have. I
must be clear about that, in all fairness to you. There was more I could praise
you for than there were things I could criticize you for. I am ready to admit
that.
You had good taste in everything. A bit posh sometimes, but still, good
taste. You looked great. A hardbody. Slim waist. Long legs. D-cup. Very Arian,
but with an original face. Iespecially
liked what you called your 'Ukranian slut look'. Tight glitter top, tiny tennis
shorts and leather orange high-heeled shoes with lots of kinky looking straps.
Purple eye-shade. A one-woman sex invasion.When you walked the streets, you
were like a magnificently glistening sword cutting through the masses.
The only reason I stopped telling you how beautiful you were, was because
you got it into your head to sign up for beauty contests. When you told me
that, I could already see you in glossy magazines, showing off your new slick
looking boyfriend.I was sure you would
trade me for a famous soccer player the second they put that crown on your
head.
You called me while I was jogging along the river. They didn't accept you.
I tried to sound empathic. Hard when you're smiling with relief. I said you
were too beautiful to enter. You wanted to believe that, but didn't. You said
it was the fault of me and my constant compliments that you even tried. I
promised to stop complimenting you. You promised to see beauty contests as what
they were: the mainstream promotion of a very shallow beauty ideal.
We had a very quiet dinner that evening. It takes a lot of talking to reach
a compromise, but as soon as you've reached it, an eery silence can creep in.
Silence was new to us. We were never silent before. Always laughing, or talking
and if we weren't talking, we filled the room with the sound of your moaning.
You were the loudest by far. Your orgasms could trick nearby factories, schools
and companies into thinking they were having a fire drill. My dad used to say:
'Something kept me awake last night. It's about 1.75 cm high, blonde and puts a
dumb grin on my son's face.'
Yeah, you were blonde. Out the window went my pathetic adolescent boast: 'I
don't do blondes.'
I also propagated I preferred small breasts.You asked: 'I can't figure it
out. What do you even see in me?'
How much time do you have?
When I first saw you, you were unlike any woman I'd ever seen before. You
looked like an angel with developped sexual organs and at the same time you
looked like you killed your five previous husbands in a way that would make the
most talented Nazi henchman envious. You even said you were a Nazi on our first
date. Not that you had anything against jews, but you couldn't stand the sight
of weaklings. I remember you saying something: 'Without inflicting pain, I go
insane.'
The part of you inflicting it, wasn't quite true. You liked being
administered pain. You could reach orgasm by hitting your 'chatte'. You spoke
French at home. Which makes it even worse that you beat me nine out of ten
times we played Scrabble. We played it in Dutch. As a break in between having
sex. Even you and I couldn't have sex ALL the time. Your father often had 'I
can't stand losing', playing in his car. I don't know if he did that on
purpose, but it was a fine soundtrack to those days.
The moment I chose to be with you for good, I became so scared of losing
you, that, instead of talking you up, with compliments I had always meant, I
started talking you down, with scathing comments I never even believed I meant.
Why do things become so clear only in hindsight?
You broke up with me, because I got too arrogant. Excellent observation, I
must say. Arrogance, a bombastic, yet very fragile shield for insecurity. In
all those sex marathons, you, looking so aggressively sexy and independent,
giving yourself over to me, so passionately, made me overflow with
self-confidence until it turned into blind over-confidence. I was starting to
feel infallible.
I was dealing with the same question. I could never quite figure it out
either, why did you ever fall for me? In the end I was too arrogant to ask you.
I think now, you fell for me because I wasn't a macho, wasmodest, funny andcaring. Walking hand in hand with someone
like you somehow convinced me I should be a bigger, better, much more confident
man todeserve you and so I turned into the exact opposite of what you liked.
How ironic can self-destruction get?
It took me six months and a lot ofinnocent broken hearts before I stopped trying to mend the cracks in my
arrogance. And three years to get over my fear of the certainty of choice.
We're still not on speaking terms, but at least I got rid of enough
arrogance to finally wish you a happy life.
What we had was brief, but the memory stretched. Hooking up with someone
when you least expect it, has the pleasurable quality of becoming a movie
stored in the library of the mind. It usually lasts no longer than one night in
real time, but it takes up more memory space than a boring year will.
You were half American, half German, but you felt German. We spoke
German. In a park, close to the outdoor reception where we met. The first hour
or so we talked about the feeling of guilt young Germans still carry with them.
You said you could travel nowhere without someone bringing up the Holocaust. I
was no exception. I apologized. You patted me on my shoulder a second too long
and said: 'It's ok, I'm used to it.'
You were used to a lot of things. Being compared to your mother for
example. The worst one is your father.He never fails to notice: 'It's a pity you don't have your mother's
nose'. She was a model when she was in her prime.
You are not a model. Not by rigid 21st century standards
anyway.You hate your nose, you say. I
protest and insist you have a very attractive nose. The outdoor reception seems
to get more and more distant, but one of your colleagues keeps bringing us
wine.
We end up in my bed at around six am. My roommate won't be able to concentrate
all day, because he woke up to the sight of your breasts. Very firm breasts you
have. Pointy nipples. You are very active, even after a night spent walking
through town. Is this an attempt at compensation for an inferiority complex? I
don't wanna feed your inferiority complex, but, damn, I like your action.
I walk you back to your hotel around 10 am. When my psychologist makes
me associate something with women I spontaneously say: 'lack of sleep'. All the
way to the hotel your head is on my shoulder, your eyes are closed and you say:
'You know, my boyfriend would never do this, he always falls asleep right
after.' I raise my eyebrows, but am too tired to react.
In the hall of your hotel I ask: 'Can I have your emailadress?' You say
no. 'There's no point, my boyfriend and I share the same emailadress.' I ask
how long the two of you are together. 'Five years', you say. 'Like an old pair
of shoes you are attached to and can't throw away.' I leave it at that. 'You
have an attractive nose', becomes my pick-up line for quite some time.
It works best with girls who already have boyfriends.
A girl in a relationship is a girl who hasn't had a spontaneous
compliment for the dure of the relationship minus the first three months.
Gratefulness is the
key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful,
then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always
want to have something else or something more.~David Steindl-Rast
"The more gratefully we fix our minds on
the Supreme when good things come to us, the more good things we will receive,
and the more rapidly they will come; and the reason simply is that the mental
attitude of gratitude draws the mind into closer touch with the source from
which the blessings come." - Wallace D Wattles
One of my
biggest fears (I have to remind myself every day that fear is just a powerful trigger
to action, thanks to Tony Robbins)
is that
enough will never be enough.
So I make
lists of things (lists help me to get some structure in my emotions) Im grateful
for. Lists Im not going to bore you with, because these are very simple
things, things that wont be so different from the things you are grateful for
if you start summing them up.
So if you
read this, just think about, or write down, maybe ten things that happened in
your life so far that you are really grateful for.
Its
amazing that those things happened to you, so acknowledge how wonderful those
experiences were, re-live them with a feeling of gratitude and youll attract
more similar experiences as a matter of course.
You didn't love me. And that's alright. You didn't really need me. And
that's ok. You didn't want to need me. That's fine. I've been loved before, I
know what it's like. Being loved scares me more than not being loved.
You were Serbian. I like that about you. You wore a long black fake leather
coat and boots with heels like daggers. When our eyes met for the first time, I
thought I read: 'Wanna see my gun collection?' But you didn't collect guns. You
collected orthodox icons. Your room was full of them. Fucking surrounded by
icons is way more disturbing than fucking in the midst of stacks of
kalashnikovs and old ammo, I must admit.
Bojana. I thought it meant something like 'battle babe', but boja meant
colour in Serbian, your name wasn't derived from boj meaning battle. It didn't
change much, I kept seeing you like the twin of Xena, warrior princess. We
would meet after work and you'd say: 'my boss wanted me to re-do all last
week's invoices' and I would say: 'So you cut his throat with the rim of a
plastic cup.'
You didn't like that.
You were distant, yes, and you took everything very serious and looked like
you could ram your head through a brick wall if you wanted to, but you only
looked that way. You were very sweet actually. Walked your 11-year old dog
every day. He couldn't walk very fast, so you skipped lunch at work to take him
out. You brought your old grandfather his newspaper every morning. You would
knock on his wooden backdoor and yell: 'Are you still alive?' I thought it was
funny, but of course you were serious. You were always serious. 'I put my soul
into everything I do', you said. And you did. You had a ritual for everything.
You would only put your running shoes on when you were standing exactly in
the middle of your doormat. You would make a cross every time you ate
something. You ate beans at every supper. No matter what the main dish was, you
would warm up a can of beans to go with it. You said it protected you from
colon cancer. You sounded so convincing, I started to do it too.
I liked observing you do things. Everything you did was like a prayer in
motion. You didn't like me watching you all the time. 'What? What? Why are you
smiling?', you would ask while you were folding towels or something.
When you broke up with me, you said: 'You never take anything serious and I
don't think you ever will.'
I said I took our relationship serious.
You said: 'That's the only thing I don't want you to take serious. You make
me feel like I am your study object. It's exhausting.'
I was confused for months after. With new girls I started behaving like a
clown more than ever. They didn't stay either. I texted you and asked if you
really thought I was never serious about anything. You answered: 'God, you are
like a Martian studying to be human.'
I became passive with women. Just sat there with them, didn't dare say a
word, afraid that every word I'd utter would be fake anyway. Passivity turned
out to work rather well. It gave timid girls the courage to open up and made
them playful. It made extravert women use me like a living dildo. Before I knew
it I was being passive on purpose.
And so, as I sit here eating my beans and I keep staring at your picture
with the defiant pose (truly sorry, but you really look like you're about to
climb aboard an Abrams battle tank and shoot some village all the way back to
the middle ages) I have to admit:
you were right once again my serious
Serbian girl, I am in fact studying to be human.
You smoke fifty sigarettes a day. It tastes like shit every time we
kiss. I soak my tongue in apple juice, but it won't wash off.You should be
writing your thesis, but you ride me six times a day. Seven on Sundays. You
take the purple ribbon out of your blonde hair and you strap it around my cock.
It's the only way to keep it completely hard. Every vein feels about to pop,
but the pain drowns in your moans.
To call you impulsive, is to call a nuclear bomb a bit destructive. We
go to restaurants at 3 am. I don't know how you find these places. When the
bill comes, it kindly says: 'Pay what you think it's worth' Homeless poets
crowd our table and pay you with verses to get some of your attention. Little
rhymes on pieces of magazines, napkins, cardboard and even wall paper. You
plaster the tiles of your bathroom with them.
'I wash myself in street poetry', you say. It keeps me young.' Well,
your bathroom sure looks like a temple of punk. For some reason your hands are
on the mirror, dipped in your menstruation blood. You have no idea why you did
it. 'But it looks pretty cool, don't you think?' You love it when I go down on you when you have your period. 'Good doggy', you say afterwards
and then you grab my balls and just squeeze them real hard, until, against all
expectations, the pressure makes me come. You only like sex when you are in
full control. You like giving blowjobs, but only if you leave your teethmarks. I
dont mind going down on you, at any time of the month, I plead not guilty on
any charges of perversion. When I go down on you I feel like Im kneeling
before the altar of all thats feminine. When I tell you its a deeply
religious feeling, you say: Shut up and do it again.
You always get your way. You once walked up to a girl and offered her
money for the boots she was wearing. You got them for 40 euros and a kiss on
the lips.I call you Miss Pallenberg when I text you. As in Anita Pallenberg,
Brian Jones' girlfriend until she 'eloped' with Keith Richards. You kinda like
it. 'I guess we do have the same decadent style', you say. You pride yourself
on your decadence. 'Some people they try so hard to get their yaya's out, they go on till it's five to twelve. I go on till it's five past twelve.' To
this day I don't know if you knew you were paraphrasing Hitler.
It's too late to ask you. You also 'eloped'. You called me 'too much of
a thinker, not enough of a do-er'. That stung. That stung bad. For months after
you left, I tried rather obstinately to prove you wrong. But first of all, I had
trouble locating these underground go-go's, as you liked to call them, and then
when I did locate them the people there looked at me like I was the taxman,
about to bust their moonlighting asses, clumsily posing like one of them. I
kept falling asleep whenever I sat down during the daytime. I had to admit you
were right.
That was hard, swallowing my pride. Getting used to 'normal' sex after
you left, was even harder. Like going back from cocaine to cafeine. Sometimes I
still run into one of those bum poets. I smilingly throw them a dime. As a
small offering to fucking in the fast lane. I often wonder what kind of guy
could keep up with you. They say you are sharing a floor of an old factory with
a manic-depressive playwright somewhere in East-Berlin. I have a good feeling
about that.
When I really miss you, I look at the napkin you left me, pinned on my
own bathroom wall.
Stand up and face the music
Embrace madness, everybody is already so frigging
normal
embrace madness, but do it genuinely, open your eyes
everybody is already so stupendously
delusionally
blind
embrace madness
it's the only thing that's pure
I go for a jog then, even if it's 4 am and pouring harder than over the Mekong delta. And when cops pull over and ask if I'm in
the habit of running so early in the morning and I say, without bothering to
look at them, 'sometimes I just feel like it' and they drive off with a wry
smile, I feel like you and I really connected at some very deep level. And the
eight months we were together suddenly feel like so many life-times. And when
my new girlfriends put up some token protest when I want to lick the crimson
nectar right off their thies, I just say 'embrace madness' and dig right in.
Inspired by yesterday's gut-slashing monologue I have started work on a monologue of my own:
'my advice to all you 20-something Cassanovas'
In this monologue I will play a 46-year old Latino who reflects on his life and that of his friends and co-cassanovas, as a warning to young guys who are as restless as he was and still is.
Benjamin (academic and editor of Balzac) and yours truly went to see a play yesterday in Vienna.
Entrance fee: 27 fucking euros
whoopsy daisy, they are rich across the border
Luckily we were sponsored by the Flemish representation in Austria, so it didn't cost us one cent.
No, I'm lying, the obligatory wardrobe ran off with 80 cents.
Anyway, I was very impressed (and I'm smug enough not to be impressed easily, yes, ok, come on, shoot me) and want to stage something like it. Starting with the monologue 'on the destructiveness of porn'
Who will direct this, remains to be seen, because my directors are either busy becoming a doctor or busy seeing doctors because they are falling apart from too much booze.
Nevermind, I'll direct it myself.
Hell, if I learn to articulate a little bit more, I'll even act it myself.
Description copied from http://mqw-2011.k-lab.net/en/program/detail/?page=8&order_by=date_asc&filter_keyword_ids=16&event_id=6444
(monologue was in german language with an intentional fat Flemish accent)
"A godsend", the
Flemish weekly Knack called it. Indeed, this must be the most
overwhelming collective guest lecture ever held by 30 Belgian
missionaries to the Congo in one theatre: the magnificent solo Mission
by Belgian actor Bruno Vanden Broecke, which he will perform in German
for his German-speaking audience. It is almost impossible to believe
that the man on stage is no real-life missionary but an actor - and that
his report, reflections and comments are not those of a Belgian priest
with 50 years' experience of serving in post-colonial Congo but culled
from interviews conducted by young playwright David Van Reybrouck with
dozens of Congo missionaries. In his informal lecture, the missionary
speaks of his life in Africa over time, of belief and community, of
different Congolese ethnicities. He speaks about the Eucharist, about
God and about getting stuck in the mud, about wars, festering wounds and
the barrel of a gun pressed against his forehead. He describes an
utterly ruined country and its enchantingly beautiful nature. Both in
content and performance, this production is one of the most impressive
theatrical experiences of recent years.
Cast Text: David Van Reybrouck / Director: Raven Ruëll Production: Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, Brüssel
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two thingsreveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading
characters, make awful things happen to themin order that the reader
may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as
possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete
understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish
the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Singing
along with the Beatles reminds me of being 8 years old and sitting in the
passengers seat of my fathers car and not having a care in the world (apart
form being totally awed by this giant father of mine, who was God, rock idol,
King, favourite writer, favourite painter, toughest dude, slickest strategist
all rolled into one to me and he really was all those things- it will be hot in
Heaven tonight)
Only
doubting whether I should become a second lieutenant or a surgeon. John Lennon
had it right however when he said: Life is what happens to you, while youre
planning for something else
So I didnt
become an officer, not an army officer anyway, and I didnt become a surgeon,
not the kind that dissects bodies anyway. So I went to study Russian, because
that sounded real fancy and sounded like very difficult. But I knew it was a
safe bet, its just an other fucking language, I can do any language. So it was
a safe gamble. Im naturally inclined to safe gambles, thats why I win most
board games and get to have jobs I dont have the right degree for.
And then,
in my second year of studying fancy Russian, I met Pavel Ocepek, my teacher of
Slovene. And then its like the universe chooses a path for you and puts you
back on it as soon as you stray a bit too much. Hes the one who made me a
writer. A fledgling one, but a very eager and stubborn one. And so studying Russian,
became a course in advanced writing and I'm almost about to graduate.
Studying Russian became styding Slovene became studying writing became studying girls.
Thoroughly.
Which brings us back to the Beatles. Because the first
beautiful woman I caressed came into my life with A ticket to ride as an
intro. And an excellent intro that was.
knitting nows into an ocean of elastic eternal bliss
Don't know whether I have Nietzsche to thank for this, but I experience a blending of time, like I can travel through different 'nows'
I'm still picking beans with my father
he is still puzzling every passerby by saying hi to them right after voting
he is still playing records and rolling over the floor, dancing with a chair
he is still saying to a 30-something woman: you should sleep with my son, you could still learn a couple of things
he's still saying after an event where I made the opening speech: now, ok, that was like The Rolling Stones were the opening act for a crappy band like the Pebbles
I am still going down on Y as a birthday gift to myself
we are still coming right at the same moment, flowing into each other, I in her impeccable, devoid of all evil, strong-willed and bright blue eyes, she in my psychedelic green-yellow-brown all embracing hedonistic eyes
X is still riding me right after I ran 12 kms and felt superbly young and alive and she is still saying I have the body of an ancient Greek God (something she didn't mean in a completely positive way, but still)
I am still getting applause from my class of Slovene right after my teacher got my letters to him in slovene published in some magazine
I am still giving scandalous speeches at university which people still talk about today
and I am still being held tightly in Z's arms, like I don't remember if a girl ever held me that tightly
I hope everyone can feel god-like immersed in the sea of their favorite nows
Chiricahua apaches beffen beter dan Mescalero apaches
Live fast,
grow motherfucking old en steel boeken in The Next Apache
Mijn
rechtsstreekse chef is een soort Jan Cremer, zonder motorfiets, maar met boot.
Uiterlijk
lijkt hij op Clint Eastwood. Hij kan hijsen als een Rus en heeft gevoel voor
humor als een Brit.
Hij zuipt
mij op wekelijkse basis onder tafel. Hij amuseert zich dan zo kostelijk dan ik
het niet eens genant vind.
Verder kan
ik bacchanalen met het management van harte aanbevelen. Je offert je lever dan
wel op aan de werksfeer, maar die lever helpt bij het werk natuurlijk geen
moer.
Een van de
grootste voordelen van een ambassade, is dat ze vlakbij de beste cafés ligt en
dat er in de kelder een douche is.
Een van die
cafes verkoopt ook boeken. Een hele plezierige combinatie is dat, maar voor de
eigenaar niet lucratief. Ik heb er al vier boeken gestolen. Ik ga naar toilet
en stop ze weg in mijn broekspijpen.
Als ik een
geweten had, zou ik het sussen met de gedachte dat ik die boeken echt lees.
Ik lees ze
echt. Echt waar, ik lees die dingen.
Eentje ging
over de val van de Romeinse republiek.
ONGEMEEN
BOEIEND, zeg.
Veel
geleerd, vooral van die Caesar. Zoveel interessanter dan Alexander de grootste
miet of die Corsicaanse dwerg die een hopeloos slecht manipulator was en veel
ambachtelijker als het op genocide aankwam dan die Weense schilder. Wie van de
twee de beste speeches maakte, blijf een raadsel. Die Hitler zien oreren,
blijft toch geweldig fascinerend, ook al gaat het natuurlijk over niks, maar de
opgekropte seksualiteit spat er zo in bakken af, samen met dat zweet, het is
toch weer mooi.
Maar die
Caesar dus. Heerlijke kerel. Van zodra hij die piraten die hem ontvoeren zegt: Als
ik weer op vrije voeten ben, kom ik achter jullie en maak jullie allemaal kapot
tot Pharsalus. Heerlijke vent.
Dat hij
zich liet vermoorden, heb ik nooit goed gesnapt.
Lijkt mij
echt niks voor iemand van het sterrenbeeld Kreeft.
Ook
ongemeen IN-TER-E-SSANT is het boek
Best
American Short Stories 2004
Steengoeie
verhaaltjes. En die van Macca en Lennie kunnen er zo bij, zonder dat wij ons te
hoeven schamen.
The Next
Apache, dat is trouwens nog eens een kroeg.
Ik ben er
nog geen enkele keer binnengeweest, zonder dat iemand vroeg:
Ben jij
nou die volgende Apache?
En dan zeg
ik doodserieus: Nee, ik ben de vorige. Ik heb werk gevonden bij de ambassade.
En dan wijs
ik op de barman, die ook iets indiaans heeft, en zeg: Hij is de nieuwe. Maar hij
is wel Mescalero. Ik ben zelf Chiricahua.
En dan vragen ze wat het verschil is. En zeg ik: Geen,
alleen zijn Chiricahua betere beffers.
Als Apache is Bratislava trouwens niet echt de ideale stad. Er
is hier geen enkel paard dat ik kan dood rijden en als ik evenveel zou lopen
als ik wil lopen, moeten ze mij hospitaliseren door alle uitlaatgassen die ik
binnen krijg. Verder vind ik hier niemand interessant genoeg om te scalperen en
je hangt toch niet zomaar de scalp van eender wie aan je broeksriem. Die dingen
gaan na een tijdje toch wat rotten en stinken. Dus scalpeer je alleen iemand
voor je toch een beetje respect had.
Verder ook ONWIJS GAAF is het boek The Magus van John
Fowles.
Dat moet ik echter nog stelen, in de keten Panta Rhei in Polus
shopping center.
Het kost een schandelijke 12, 5 euro en dat is in Slowakije
toch echt geen doen.
Ze hebben een toilet en mijn broek met de brede pijpen is
net gewassen.
Als ze mij pakken zeg ik wel dat alles stroomt en dat het
boek in mijn broekspijp niet langer hetzelfde boek is als het boek in hun
rekken.
En anders claim ik wel diplomatieke onschendbaarheid.
This man has been here for so long, he no
longer walks the streets of Slovakia, he wades through its soul.
He's the man who told me it's ok to be
anything in this country.
Are you a homosexual?
Fine, just don't talk about it and eat,
man, eat, as long as you eat well, everything's fine.
Life flows through you and the purpose of
being alive is living, plain, good living.
Life can be simple and quite pure in an
honest country.
In an honest country life is framed on
three pillars.
1.Eating
2.Drinking
3.Fucking
And you work to sustain those three.
In an honest country fucking is about
fucking.
Fucking is truly 'the old in and out' over
here.
Imagination has no place in the bedroom.
Back to naked basics.
Anything that can be done without tools,
without any sort of unnatural attributes can and will be done.
Once you get a Slovak girl to take you
along, everything flows naturally.
Her hand will be a teleguided missile and
your cock the target.
You don't require fancy vibrators, kinky
originality, no need to wear a pig's mask, crawl around on all fours and make piggy grunts, nothing of the
sort, but you will need
stamina.
Expect to perform between two, to well,
seven and beyond.
Western men are not trained in this way,
Slowak men are.
Will she be dissapointed if you perform
only twice?
Maybe a little.
But Slovak girls are different from Western
girls as well.
They haven't been taught to put blame on
the men if they don't climax.
These girls know how to take pleasure, they
don't wait for it to be given to them.
She looks after herself and takes what's
she after from you.
This is because there was no sexual
revolution around here.
There was never a decade here in which you
were almost politically forced to screw around with just about everyone you
met.
The summer of love was western. At the
time, the east was either queuing in line to get some fucking milk or taking a
defiant stance against Russian tanks.
There was a never a moment in Slovakian history where men were made to recognize, hey, wait a minute, we're animals,
we're only after sex, we need to protect women from us, hormone-crazed men-pigs.
No, sex is a part of life around here, as much as eating and drinking are parts of it.
So the good thing is, there's an ulimited
supply of good, plain, natural humping.
You can do it in whichever way Adam and Eve
could do it.
If you're into sm, you'll have a hard time
finding a match around here.
Slowak society hasn't reached this state of
sexual and emotional indigestion.
The proverbial tree of wisdom hasn't been
touched yet.
Plain, hard fucking is still crazy enough
around here.
People who like honesty will find this
country to be paradise on earth.
There's this very practical honesty around
here.
A girl behind the counter in a story who's
cranky, will show that she's cranky. If she's in a good mood, she'll radiate
her good mood. What you see, is what you get. There's no phony, standardized
friendliness in stores around here.
You know, the way we get served in Belgium:
'here's your change, alstuuuuuuuuubliiiiiiiiiiiiieft, toooot ziiiiiiiiiens'
In Belgium store folk think they're
friendly when they stretch the vowels to unbearable length.
And you know they fucking hate their job,
even if they sound like magical friendly fairy from Friendliland.
But anyway, sex tourists, please don't
cancel your flights to Thailand.
Before you get to the natural, plain, hard
fucking, you have to go through all the rituals that open the gates to little
Miss Natural's Moist Dungeon.
Thrill-seeking one-nightstanders should
never, never come over here.
Unless they wanna feel like superman
without his powers.
I'm in a region that seems to qualify as a country.
It has a capital and a currency that's even valid in other countries.
The people are medieval, but the buildings are fairly new.
In the supermarket you can find yourself surround by the latest capitalist goods and peasants that look like Baldrick in Blackadder.
They bump into you constantly over here and if they apologize, you know they are foreigners.
Cars are quite like knights in a tournament. Even police cars want to ride you down like grass.
The women expect you to go slay some dragon before they accept you between their legs. They only know missionary position, because that's the only position that has a catholic ring to it.
No, that's not true, when you ask them they say they like to be on top. Yes, they are very dominant around here.
If you try to dance with them, you'll find that they insist on leading.
Lead you whereto?
To the brink of destruction and alchohol oblivion.
So, my dear Sjosje, stay the fuck away from these hellish creatures, they are man-eaters, vampires who distill the manly energy from all of your fluids.
So what has Slowakia got to offer?
Well, this society is so fucking insane and immobile and inflexible, you start to feel like a visitor from outer space. You never feel part of the fucked-up-ness around here, which can be a very liberating feeling.
Since you can't sympathize with machos, it's also easy to walk past these pent-up balls of agression and alcohol sponges they call men around here.
You could blame all the backwardness on the mountains, as some Slowak intellectuals do, but Switzerland has mountains too and they are cultured people who speak more than one language and gave birth to the Geneva convention.
So it's not the mountains.
It's trying to be something they're not.
A fully developed capitalist country with all the luxury that goes with it and mixed blessings that go with it.
Maybe when they get to have a Gay Pride Parade that doesn't get attacked by skinheads, maybe then the simmering anger in these people's eyes will fade out.
4 guys, no girls (they're smarter than you think) and too much too drink
We meet at a restaurant.
We don't care what it looks/smells like as long as the price list hasn't changed since 1989 and the heating is turned on.
The topic is: Slowakia and girls.
Or better: Slowakian girls.
Not exactly enough too have an evening-filling conversation about, but we manage.
The young guys infuse the older guys with some new tricks to catch the fresh fish.
One of them remarks:
'You know, it's funny, we're twenty years older than these guys and yet the four of us are hunting the same age group.'
Well, I'm not an active hunter any more, but I do like to keep up with new developments in the hunter, ehm, science.
I need to be prepared to teach my sons how to hunt, 'cause I don't want them to go hungry for more than two decades as their father did.
So we swap theories and tactics about how to set a trap and make it work.
And we also think about some guys who don't need any such tricks at all, they just walk into a room and all pussies scream: 'Lock on target! Aim the tiny harpoon, better known as clitoris.'
Those guys exist, but for psychogical benefits we like to pretend they live in an completely different dimension.
Anyway, a whole lotta talking' going on at our table
and a whole lotta shakin' going on in an other part of the restaurant.
A bunch of Russians (come to whitewash money???) is sucking the vodka out of this world and swinging to some oldies. The kind of music the DJ in my personal hell would play endlessly.
So there we are, talking about how to hunt down chicks, happily ignoring the fact that three Russian, with the characteristic Y-shaped legs, womenfolk are eyeing us.
When we don't budge, one of us makes excuses
'yes, but it's good that we don't approach them, because there's four of us and there's three of them. So one of us is going to end up without one.'
Someone else says, with a bit more moral elasticity:
'Or one of them ends up with two of us'
Nothing happens and I'm certainly not going to get three Russian men-prowlers on our sweaty trail, so we leave.
The four armchair-womanisers go to a different bar.
Maybe even cheaper, I didn't check.
One of us starts ordering beer AND hruskovica (strong pear brandy that tastes like your grandma's undies that were soaked in something remotely resembling mashed pears)
So from then on three of us were relatively sober and one of us is somewhere nearer to God and a lot of naked angels.
(we won't mention names, but it was Benjamin)
We finally switch to a different topic.
Some gut feeling on our part telling us that with one of us in this state of sociable merriness it's better not too mention girls.
So for the remainder of the evening we pretty much talk Slowakia to waaay below sea-level.
Smashing up a country with words, yes, we relish that.
That done, we return home.
One of us (yes, ok, Benjamin again) starts inviting girls to share a cab. Doesn't really matter where to, but they kindly decline the offer.
A bit strange, because the offer wasn't all that bad. They could have gotten drunk for free, just sitting in a cab filled with alcohol breath, but no, they had other, more urgent business to attend to.
Slipping into a slightly less provocative outfit to go to early Sunday mass, for example.
So off we go.
Benjamin has a lively conversation with the taxi driver.
Something about the hunt for low prices in a capitalist society.
Yes, the capitalist agony of choice, it's still all very new here.
So off to bed I go,
for some reason dreaming that I go for a run with Daniel Kimono, one of the fastest runners in history. (and no even in my dreams I wasn't able to keep up)
And Benjamin, well, he sits up late and attends to business.
And when he finally gets to bed, he wakes me up by gibbering Slowak in his sleep.
Maybe something about naked angels swirling round his head.
Or Slowak girls in a world where there never was any Catholicism.
