Monthly Archives: June 2009

There’s something not right about our… bond, X tells me. Something went awry somewhere, he says, and he wishes I’d help him locate it, he wishes I’d say something for once. Don’t tell me you expect me to prove something, he says, we should be working together. Or is it something else, he says, something beyond my control, beyond your control even. Maybe nothing’s gone wrong, or maybe everything has, long ago, long before us, or does that amount to the same, he says, I wish you’d say something for once. Do you even know what I’m talking about? he asks.

X tells me he’s found out how to approach his life. All he needs to do is imagine he’s in a job interview, he says, imagine that his life is one long job interview. That’ll perk him up and gird his loins and straighten his back and snap his suspenders, he says. He’ll be more professional. He’ll get up earlier and go to bed earlier. He’ll live his life as if it were under the public eye, because isn’t that what professionalism means? he says. He’ll be accountable, transparent and productive, he says, he’ll stop masturbating and sitting around in his pyjamas drinking beer and watching sitcoms, he’ll finally become responsible.

It’s all about being emotionally healthy, X tells me. He wishes he were more emotionally healthy, he says. And balanced, he says, above all balanced. And also mature. And professional. Then maybe people would stop looking at him funny in the supermarket, he says. Maybe he’d even get laid, he says, because women love a professional, emotionally healthy man, unless they’re emotionally unhealthy, and he wouldn’t want an emotionally unhealthy woman, he wants a normal woman, because it’s all about being normal, normal and emotionally healthy, he says. And productive, he says, being productive and staying busy, without forgetting to have fun and relax. Maybe he should take some responsibility, he says, become a leader of men, get some self-respect, do some good in the world. Or maybe it would be enough to get a chinchilla, he says, to keep him company. It might also help if he wore a suit, he says, then people probably wouldn’t stare at him in supermarkets. Or maybe he should get a hobby, he says, develop some interests, take up a sport, take a cooking course or get a gym membership.

X is scared of women, he tells me, he’s terrified of them! They’re like the queens of the Amazons, he says, formidable matriarchs, indifferent ice queens, sexy vixens, jailbait. No, he says, they’re more like horses, like horses’ hooves clattering up the stairs in his hallway with their heels, clicking and clattering into his bedroom, like in those German expressionist pictures, all angular and threatening. No, clearly they’re not like that at all, he says, that’s just a fantasy, isn’t it, they’re soft, maternal, they have compassion, they’re designed for compassion. He likes to listen to women talk, to learn from them, he loves the way they jump from topic to topic as if everything were equally important, he loves their animated faces. And he can learn from them, can’t he, he says, learn from their energy and their compassion, which is the most beautiful quality on earth, the quality that resides first and foremost in femininity. There’s nothing more beautiful than a mother breastfeeding her baby, for instance, he says, or the look on a girl’s face when she thinks about her ill grandfather or a friend who’s on a dodgy date. And that’s what women have, compassion, it’s built-in, isn’t, he says, that’s what makes the world go round, what would it be like if there were only men on the planet? he asks. Death and destruction, he says. No, feminine compassion is what men seek and lack, they seek it because they lack it, he says, because we all came from women, didn’t we, he says, we all came from the delta, the Nile of life, the alpha and the omega, even women themselves, and we all want to go back, don’t we, he says. We all need the union of the male and female principles, he says, like all those mythological pictures and sculptures.  Women are soft and round and caring, he says, and we need that, we men who are swept by the cold hard winds of discord, he says, we fearful and hostile members of the patriarchy, he says. But I know women, X says, I’m observant. I know how they get given half a chance, when they feel dissatisfied for whatever reason, when they play their mind games and take you on their guilt trips, he says. No, forget women, he says, he should just forget them, especially the hot ones, they just use their hotness to lure you in, spend half the day thinking about their appearance and the rest of the time playing mind games with you, he says. But I’m probably just scared of them, aren’t I, he says, scared of the deltas of the Amazons, the ones who flaunt them, who are proud owners of their bodies, who let it all hang out, like Germaine Greer or Madonna, the ones who are the best they can be in the face of a hostile and fearful patriarchy, the strong Amazons and the sexy vixens. But good on them for all that, X says, good on the suffragettes and feminists, they should flaunt their deltas and their tits, be loud and proud, X says.

There’s a laughter that wells up from Creation, X tells me, an echoing laughter, the laughter of Creation laughing at itself, at its own preposterousness, can I hear it? If you’re not careful it’ll take you over, he says, it’ll make you a permanent laughing stock. Perhaps there’s even a yoga of laughter, he says, a yoga of laughing at your own preposterousness, unto self-annihilation, the yoga of the laughing stock, the holy fool, but of course there are no holy fools anymore, we’ve established that already, he says.

He fucked it up, X tells me, good and proper, and now there’s no way out, no solution. He’s tried it all, he says, work, love, drink, drugs, he even got laid once, but there’s no exit. I fucked it all up at some point and now look at me, he says. Now he walks through his life like a ghost, a kitschy ghost, here it is again, he says. He’s the kind of man who startles people when he talks to them, as if he’d materialised out of nowhere, el hombre invisible. He’s like the guy down the street, he says, the pale guy with the stained jacket. People start and put their hands on their hearts and smile sheepishly when he walks past them, he says.

Presumptuous, that’s what he is, X tells me, but you know that already. That’s the word, isn’t it, the word that gets to the heart of it, he says. He has too much to say, he says, too many terribly important things to say, which of course turn out to be insignificant, presumptuous in fact. For instance, he was about to write a poem, he says, as if he had a claim to poetry. Men like me have no claim to poetry, he says. Men like me always talk too much to have a claim to poetry. Maybe he just needs to get laid, he says.