Sunday, September 20, 2009

What I Found When I Was Lost

ACHING, RAVING, RAVISHING, BURNING DESIRE

“Candor ends paranoia.” – Allen Ginsberg

Easy.

I am an extraordinarily difficult person to flirt with. I tend to agree to any inappropriate suggestion immediately. Sometimes this catches people off guard.

As I unlock my door at the Malaysia Hotel, a drunk unshaven Filipino lug peers out next door. Leans against the doorframe and leers cheerfully. “Well, well, well! I had no idea I had such a cute neighbor! I ought to come visit you.”

“That’s a good idea. Give me five minutes, okay?”

Five minutes later there’s a knock at the door. But it’s not the drunk Filipino. It’s an impish young Thai.

“I’m his roommate,” he says. “He too tired.”

And this is also perfectly okay.

This happened years ago. But I still return to the Malaysia Hotel. I take time to struggle with my door. (What I do is I lock and unlock it several times.) So far, no more friendly neighbors.

I am like a dog who saw a squirrel in a tree once and now stops to sniff that same tree each day.

Soliloquy from Dick’s Café, Soi Twilight

“Who am I in Denmark? A retired fire fighter and it is good to be a firefighter but now that is finished and so I am finished in Denmark. When I divorced my wife I thought my life was finished. Who am I in Denmark? I am old and fat and ugly. Oh I can still be charming when I want to be but still the fact remains!

“I can be silent and alone in Denmark and I suppose that is commendable, that is what I am supposed to do. . . and for that what do I earn? Forever silence and forever loneliness! Who am I to anyone? No one! And it will never ever ever be any different. What happens in Denmark? Every few years the bus driver smiles to me. That is all.

“Here I am an ATM – but even that is not nothing. I am also a part of things here. I have my role to play. Six years here I know very many people and everywhere I go people know my name. I have Thai friends who have never once asked me for money. And yes, I suppose I am a kind of insurance. If something goes wrong, if someone is in hospital, then, they will call me. But I do not mind to be their insurance. I want them to be okay. I was a firefighter in Denmark but now that is finished.

“I know they do not always mean what they say, I know this very well. Spend enough time in Copenhagen and you will be grateful to be smiled at for any reason! I believe some of them really are happy to see me. Am I a fool? Are they not human too? I know their names. I tip well but not outrageously. I am a kind person. How do you say in America? I give a damn.

“I know this is very questionable. It is problematic. But I am a part of things. Do you understand? That is all I ever wanted to be – a part of things. . .”

Voyeurism.

In the window directly above and facing the pool at the Malaysia Hotel, there is a head. A white old round head with even whiter hair. Behind glasses with thick black frames eyes stare unblinking at any young man swimming or sunning himself. That head is always in the window, as if it has been mounted there, on a post. It is there in the morning and there in the afternoon. I was here years ago; the head was there then. And it is always staring. If you stare back long enough, the head will finally turn, and a hand will appear and toy nervously with an ear.

Imagine retiring to perv permanently at the Malaysia Hotel! I can easily imagine. That puffy haired white head was once a teenage boy, sneaking looks at shirtless workmen. Desire goes on and on.

How is it possible to ever do anything useful or true with a mind designed for deception? A mind that continually tells small but crucial lies and seeks out poisonous consolations. A human mind.

Obituaries.

Imagine if newspapers told the truth and you opened the obituary page to the words

Addict, 72 Addict, 46 Addict, 19 Addict, 84

Wouldn’t that be excellent? We would be warned and we would not feel so all alone. Also we would have more respect for this Mrs. Joan Tatro, 68, formerly of Columbus, Ohio, who actually succeeded in becoming a secretary. An actual secretary! When everyone else who died on that day died addicted – to heroin or cigarettes or the neighbors’ high opinion, to sex or yoga, to public office or television. .

Herbert Huncke’s obituary carried the headline charismatic street hustler. Remember him? He was basically the Beats’ tour guide for the underworld. Most of the time he wasn’t charismatic at all. Just a junkie. He’s the reason Ginsberg got busted and wound up in a mental hospital, where he met Carl Solomon. Seeds of the poem HOWL. (One of the things that interests me most about human life is that it’s entirely impossible to tell good news from bad.)

It’s extremely unlikely anyone will be able convince the obituary page to boldface the word cocksucker. Maybe I could learn to be a secretary?

The frog in a pot on the stove is slowly, slowly, slowly coming to a boil. Everyone around is smoking, or admiring themselves for not smoking. Even the frog is full of resolutions.

Survey.

I used to wonder if other people felt as lonely as I did. Or as frightened. Or as depressed. And the answer turned out to be Yes. I am still trying to figure out, however, if other people are actually this horny. Please -- take a moment to respond below.

Aunt Lucy.

My schizophrenic Aunt Lucy, lifetime resident of the state hospital in Laconia, has a diagnosis which includes the word hypersexuality. Yessir, there’s a word for it! Like halitosis! Like asthma!

So maybe I have a condition and other people are actually reasonable. Not the people I’m meeting of course, but other people.

God speaks to Aunt Lucy. God speaks to me, too. Not often. Perhaps semi-annually. I am also sometimes afflicted with the sense that everything is meaningful and people are basically good. Pathology!

Then there’s the tendency to endlessly compose long story/poem/essays consisting almost wholly of inappropriate information. (There’s a word for this too: hypergraphia.)

Isn’t this writing, which adheres to no genre and contains no structure, akin to the mythological kingdoms unemployed plumbers build secretly for 38 years in their garages using only aluminum foil, bottle caps and chewing gum?

Creativity is for other people. What I do is probably a symptom of something.

Bodhicitta.

When I sit down to meditate, I set my motivation. And at the end I dedicate the merit. I aspire to wake up and to be of benefit to every living thing. I know, it seems ridiculous for someone who can’t pay his student loans or keep his zipper zipped to pray in such a way but, nonetheless, I aspire.

And each time I make a small addendum that, if possible, I would like to be of benefit to the most miserable and sleazy of the addicts, those who have failed again and again and again. To the very most despised, the real lowlifes, the deadbeat dads and vicious mothers, to those who’ve burned up all of their chances and gutted everyone’s patience, to the losers, to the assholes, to the pedophiles.

The innocent

can

get

donations.


Or

fend

for

themselves.


I don’t want them.

Holy Mother, bless me one day to be the Deep Shit Bodhisattva.

Bulge.

Night after night, a man calls me at 3am. I do not think he is not a moneyboy outright. He does not work for a bar or stand on a street corner. Not anymore. I’m guessing that he now occupies the vast gray area between love and whoring, where many very respectable people live. He has foreign friends who take him on vacations. They sometimes give him something for his mother.

He is not young; he has spent far too much time in the sun. His body is still sleek however and, most importantly, the bulge in his turquoise-striped Speedo is impressive. I’ve noted this, repeatedly, and double-checked to make absolutely sure. He caught me at it, got my room number from the pool sign-in sheet, and now calls drunk at 3am, when his glowering German companion has presumably passed out. “I want kiss you!” “I want kiss you!” he says. It must be the German will soon be leaving town.

Cold Shower

What I have in mind is a portable shower, ice cold and dousing. The kind they use in science labs for emergencies, with a broad steel sunflower head and a chain to pull.

This is what I need above my head at all times. (Perhaps they could somehow attach it to my spine?) When overcome with flaming lust I could just pull the chain and at once douse myself. The water would have to be very, very cold.

Also it would be convenient for other people. Sturdy tourists commando in flimsy shorts with thick tanned calves adorned with golden hairs -- and sick to death of me staring -- they could just pull the chain! The whole world could help me to be virtuous, instead of aiding and abetting my unending perversities.

When I am supposed to be concerned with Real Adult Things – the future of the farm, the bills, elections, schedules – and I instead I am lost in a masturbatory haze because some cocky Israeli buck has sauntered past brandishing his delectable armpits – pull the chain! pull the chain! Instantly I am soaked, shivering, and able to return my attention to the details of the lease agreement.

I’d need to wear some light fabric which would quickly dry (and nothing see thru, Porno Boy!) since I would presumably be dousing myself, or being doused, 18 to 36 times a day.

Or course it would hideously embarrassing, to walk around all day beneath a broad metal shower head. Constantly wetting myself! I’d be shivering, cold and wet. I might catch pneumonia. Yes -- but I would be good.

If this is for any reason impracticable, my next idea is a special ice pack I could wear in my shorts. Very very cold. But I fear this would not be sufficient. I think some small electric shock is also very much in order.

(This is the twelth and final essay in the series "What I Found When I Was Lost".)

1 comment:

GaySocrates said...

GD
Great!
Loved the series-You are twisted in the most exquisite and recognizable ways!

Sabbe sattā
averā abyāpajjā anīghā
sukhī attānaṃ pariharantu.

Love
GS