10

you grope your own pants up and reach out the fifty dollars you had ready in the back pocket. He takes it and moves away with a smile, saying, as he goes, something to the effect of “goo’ night,” though it might well have been followed by “cocksucker” or “whitey” or some such epithet. It had, after all, been he who approached you, spoke to you, offered you sex for money; who tongued and fisted your cock hard; and who finally leant himself, his youthful arse, across the tombstone. The Golden Ass: Apuleius. Why didn’t he simply rob you, you wonder? The money was there all along.

It’s funny how a picture forms itself of many small items, half-apprehended. As you walk back up the slope to your car, through the dark whispering tracks of the cemetery, you think of a dream you once had, a long time ago, a dream where a stone statue turned itself head over heels through the grounds of a park, crushing its way, unstoppable, through ponds and woods and walls. His dark buttocks against the white of the tombstone seemed like an indignant sideways face, about to shout out hoarse commands. The rest of the black and white complex of leaves, shadows, trees might have been made to harmonise with this conception into an Arcimbaldo crowd-scene, faces made of bark and flax.

And what are they doing, the bizarre faces in this crowded canvas? They’re roaring blindly at the leper, the excluded one. Even a boy prostitute can be more in command of his moment, his place, than that bleeding face, shoulder bowed under the weight of a crosstree. So what does that make you? The crucified Christ? The martyr complex is the first thing to explode when the physical organism goes wrong. In this case, when the arsehole-fucking, graveyard-haunting, prostitute-poking, French novel-quoting, extreme experience-craving – Miracle-in-Mary-of-phlegm – blaspheming fucker cannot … cannot what?

GA

ZA

15

God-Botherers

rimettere il diavolo in inferno
– Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Decameron (Day 3, story 10)


“Putting the devil into hell.” Quite an elastic concept also, in its way. Then there’s that trick of taking a lighted match, holding it between two fingers, and letting it burn right down to the stub before you suddenly pinch it black with two pads of skin. It stings, scorches, sears (if you’re lucky).


“Gracious ladies, you who have (perhaps) never heard of the operation of putting the devil into hell, there was once a young man who couldn’t sleep. It began, at first, with too intense a concentration on the things of the day. He would lie awake, for hours, in his little apartment, as his mind went over the immense things he could accomplish in just a few hours, or days, or years – starting next morning. When the morning came, however, he found he was invariably too tired to put any of these plans into practice.

“His friends noticed his persistent fatigue, and began to prescribe antidotes. ‘Take a hot bath before you go to bed,’ said one. ‘Clear your mind of the things of the day by repeating these few words,’ said another. ‘Pour yourself a drink of whisky / hot milk / camomile tea,’ chorused the others. All of these remedies he tried, but none of them worked.

“Finally he went to the doctor with his problem, and was given a sleeping draught. At last he could sleep again. But when he awoke he felt as tired as ever: stale, used-up, thick-headed, as if his sleep had not refreshed him at all. So he stopped taking the draughts, and lay awake as before, his mind going over and over the things of the day …”


You are writing in your notebook, a little story about a man who couldn’t sleep, when the doorbell rings. You think (as one does) of not answering it, but curiosity is too strong. Your story bores you [and me], anyway.

There are two of them, quite young. She (perhaps eighteen?) is wearing jeans, a halter top, bare midriff. No, no, no: in order. Long dark hair, hanging down upon slight shoulders, serve to frame a tanned, unblemished face. Her