A writer in love
Must never portray a writer in love
Just as a foul beast
Should never moonlight as a beauty
Click – the image vignetted and blurred. It has been six days since I’d had a sober hour. Squished behind card tables and the glares of hoarders, the women of the puces smiled a knowing smile. They were the same ones from the brothel, but their clothes had changed and so had their smiles.
I dropped to the eye level of small children inspecting the bulging pockets of bulging American tourists and decided on one thing; after this final cigarette, and this next liver varnish, and the one that would follow, I would rouse myself from this drunken stupor and begin living again. I had kissed the devil, soaked in his bubbling blood and floated in his charcoal faeces for too long. Seven, ten or one virgin waited for me in Vienna, or another of the other great literary cities. There I’d have the freedom to soak in my own alcoholic, distorted and retorted way. Where I could write a novel no one would read and be content with no one ever reading it. Perhaps seeking no one ever to read it. All the while on the brink of conversation and discussion of things passed without ever mumbling a word.
Sure, it would be an utterly lonely and tiresome existence.
I dropped to the eye level of small children inspecting the bulging pockets of bulging American tourists and decided on one thing; after this final cigarette, and this next liver varnish, and the one that would follow, I would rouse myself from this drunken stupor and begin living again. I had kissed the devil, soaked in his bubbling blood and floated in his charcoal faeces for too long. Seven, ten or one virgin waited for me in Vienna, or another of the other great literary cities. There I’d have the freedom to soak in my own alcoholic, distorted and retorted way. Where I could write a novel no one would read and be content with no one ever reading it. Perhaps seeking no one ever to read it. All the while on the brink of conversation and discussion of things passed without ever mumbling a word.
Sure, it would be an utterly lonely and tiresome existence.
