Yes, to writing about childhood and that dread. The thing is that I have more or less written the stories that I can remember, and they are already interwoven in that writing, that is timelines are entangled (that Gordian knot we used to speak about). You might have already seen one of those, in the ‘Ruin in the Sex Club’ installment, which talks about the moment my mother fashioned me into a type of reluctant rebellious exhibitionist, when I was six years old, and a type of aftermath when once finding myself ‘trapped on the Lower-East-Side’, in your environs, that night I had a type of naked seizure in a sex club, whilst being buggered in the doggy position. You might, or might not, have seen it, it is on Flickr, but then there is too much stuff there. The dread I feel is not in the writing, it’s more in the sorting out. The childhood I want to write about is a preamble towards that ‘taking off’, that ‘Wild Goose’ flight. I have also written about how the abused instantly recognize each other, a bit like gays do. I don’t know, what do we exude? Does a shrunken hippocampus generate a smell, change pheromones, cause the pupils to dilate, change the tone of the voice, even create a certain decibel of a shared screaming laugh as two veterans wend their way through the West Village heading for the Quad? I have no idea, but I think we recognize each other. I have seen this before, meaning it has happened to me before, in parties in London or wherever, moments I have walked into a crowded room and heard a laugh and knew. So, I wouldn’t want to stay, linger, on that childhood for long, I wouldn’t want to ‘Shuggie’ or ‘Angela’ it. If it ended up being somewhat of a redemption story, it wouldn’t be that sort, in other words it would not be a personal redemption story. I think you know that I want to go further, and even write a story about a type of universal innocence, and a ‘Nature’ that makes no judgements at all, and outside which we cannot exist or work, and that everything around us, and in us, drives us.
I like the idea of you starting to emerge at boarding school. I have seen you emerge too in other places you have written about, like in that small hotel and that dirty-old-man and his under-the-table shenanigans. There is resonance there.
Your father’s burnt temples must have been bewildering for you, as a child. The thing about WhatsApp, and I love our interaction there, is that these ‘diamonds’ can easily get lost in the push of toing and froing, that rush of enthusiasm. I understand the drink, the drugs, and the sex (obviously), I have been there, at all three, for most of my life. This new ‘words’ obsession seems to have somehow organized a restructuring of all that, but of course the siphoning off of testosterone has also been a huge help there. I do worry, slightly, about not having enough time to sort those words out, and there is also that time we live in where the sorting out might be a moot point anyway, relative to Mr. Putin, Covid, environmental issues, and our own personal bugbear, HIV itself.
I don’t care if my name goes on it, our names go one it, or no names go on it at all. ‘Anonymous’ might be a good way to go, or written by ‘Rack and Ruin’, whatever. I do sort of have a niggling wild fantasy that it might eventually generate a few pennies to support us in our old age, I mean you me, and ‘Him Indoors’, but that is a silly fantasy, a pie in the sky idea. At the same time, I have the idea that if I could finish it in four years, then perhaps it could help see us out. And who said that I wasn’t an optimist? The idea of even getting to live another 4 years seems wildly optimistic to me, but I am going to cherish that optimism and move forward. Imagine Ruin not having to sell his worn-out ass to survive, wouldn’t that be a turn for the ‘Wild Goose’ books? No wonder I have always loved Emile Zola’s ‘Nana’.
I love to hear of you climbing out of ditches too.
In my studio "mourning Lady Di together", I am intrigued. Were my silly elephants there? That’s a shady and somewhat confused time for me. I think I was doing some crystal meth at that juncture. It was also the time I was waiting to find out if I was going to get paid to do that doctorate. There’s a strange caper, a fortuitous chance that presented itself, a lifeline away from self-destruction and New York. Some people would call that ‘making a good choice’, I see it as the survival instinct kicking in, a do or die situation, and the life force taking over, that miraculous driver.
Of course, the posh sweet-robber will be there, but only as a false narrative, a story we told each other to make each other laugh on long walks, that tale as to how you were responsible for bankrupting my parents, driving my father to drink, with the effect of sealing my fate when the mater had to give half of my bed to her half-brother, so she could feed her other gawpers 🐣, causing me to have to flee to NYC, where we met up again in ‘The Moondance’. We will have to set that date exactly, like Bloomsday, a real date with fate, and a great jape.
Those hungry gawpers were always rife for abuse, they would swallow anything, apparently. But then, it’s nature, what can you do?
Strange, I just went for a morning shop with ‘Him Indoors’ and had a rather disturbing panic attack in the middle of it, out of control heart-rate and weakness, dizziness, and metal taste in mouth, and slightly closing over of the throat. I have just taken an Oxazepam to calm down. I have further investigations today, later, in the hospital. It goes on, until, of course, it doesn’t. Nothing has happened like that in quite a few months. I thought they were over.
Small intimations of mortality, and being in ‘the ready position’ or whatever. I suspect one must always be ready, regardless.
I want to talk about the cuckoo gene, that driver trussed up in a Wild Goose.
