Carlos

My Christian name is Carlos, though somewhere in my middle years I earned myself, the
unofficial title, ‘The Perverted Preacher’, a distasteful moniker, entirely undeserved, yet
nonetheless, one that stuck, though I do not feel to get into all of that too heavily now,
and I will rather say that I am but a simple, God-fearing man.
One evening a few nights back, a member of my congregation came up to me in my church,
seeking clarity and guidance, and I told him, that there are three things that are necessary to
make every man great; a conviction in the power of goodness, an absence of jealousy and
suspicion and a desire to help all of those who are trying to be good and to do good.
…Perhaps it is our loneliness here then that is doing strange things to our souls, as night after
night, I seem to be having this same reoccuring dream in which my hands are bloody and I’m
scrubbing and scrubbing at them, and yet I still can’t seem to wipe all the damn blood off of my
hands— it belongs to them you see—they are the begettors of this modern plague and
pestilence, they are the ones who have made God angry... It has all ended. It all belongs to
them you see... The women and girls like wanton animals. Making their, wantonness their
ignorance, in the words of the poet. The disease which— every action I make is fear-driven. It’s
every man for themselves. I am a victim of this life, as I run around like some fool chasing an
endless plethora of meaningless baubles.
In every conversation I have with a woman, I feel as if I am competing with her.
Women are essentially possessions—yet I am still terribly intimidated by them.
I will often hang around high schools. Sometimes in the afternoons I get their scent in my nose
and I feel as I could kill myself to make it stop. I don’t trust anyone. All women are whores. And
I imagine them taking off their white blouses, unbuttoning and unzipping their short pleated
navy skirts, beings of ineffable savagery and disgust... The child! El hombre que ha hecho esto.
Él está más enfermo hoy. In a recent sermon, I told my congregation a short tale of a fellow,
who after his death, was taken by an angel to see both heaven and hell. In hell there were a lot
of people sitting around a table on which was laid out a sumptuous feast. But all of these
people were starving, crying out, weeping in their anguish for their arms were much too long to
convey the food to their mouths. Then the chap was taken up to heaven, where he soon
witnessed a near identical scene taking place, only there was no starvation there, and all were
satisfied—why? As all of the long-armed men were all busy feeding one another.
You see this old world of ours is far closer to the hell than the heaven from that tale; it can no
longer stand, as all the men are obsessed by the women who crawl around together, their soft
bodies foreshadowing their adoption of new forms, their faces protrayed like masks with
heavy-lidded eyes, reflecting lilies, pontificating catamites, dour, whizzing brats— you see, one
cannot give what he does not posses—to give love one must first possess it, one cannot teach
what one does not understand, the dead, are still very much living, and they are compelling us
to kill, the women are merely men in finer clothes, the city is burning, scathing and I stare at the
ladies with their wide brows, upswept hair, students of willful distortion and sexual
experimentation, post-consciousness exploration, dying slaves, desperate to blot out the sun. I
can see them all and from the pulpit I can hear their derisive cacophony of whispers, as I gaze
upon the plump round full bossomed ladies, intoning our sick souls and begining to reel under

the slender pillars that buttress the one from the other, going down amongst the fossilized
swans, criss-crossing in lateral shafted, coiled, hanging, foul leaning constructions— and I stand
there, my heart stinging in my chest, as I watch the young women, taking off their masks, hiding
behind the silhouettes of drunken fauns, speculating on youth and virility held in dire contrast
to age, impotency. And they would call me a degenerate… Oh, I am falling apart. These lines,
these scribblings in my pad are my only friends. But it doesn’t matter. They are often with us, in
their red, yellow and green dresses, dancing in the afternoons in the old houses and on the
empty rocks, snickering at the suicides, those too weak to continue in the merry carnival they
view life. It’s all going to the dogs. And they quietly talk as they stand hand in hand on the
shore, looking out towards the open sea. It doesn’t matter; life, death, promises. There are no
friends. The light of the cross no longer shines in them— though before we consider taking our
own lives, we must first be really, truly sure, and we must also consider the likely responses of
those we will leave behind; how our actions may affect our work, business, clients. Love, said to
be built up upon the individual, is falling away into wanness and death, as the lights swirl
around me. One cannot appreciate what he does not recognize and to recognize love one must
first be receptive to it, one cannot have doubts about what he wishes to trust and to trust love
one must first be convinced of it, or one cannot admit what he does not yield to and to yield to
love, one must first be vulnerable to it as one cannot live what he does not dedicate himself to
and to dedicate oneself to love, one must first have made the decision to forever be growing in
love, or that is to say that the mind is everything, what we think we become and then if we are
weak and defeated the reason is usually that we have allowed failure to dominate our
thoughts; to create a deep unconscious belief that we do not have the ability to succeed.
As I write this it will soon be dark outside.
Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly until the sun goes down. Anyone can carry his
burden, however hard, until nightfall. Soon the shadows will taper into slender menacing
things. And as I look out from my window I will be able to see the silhouettes, the figures of
dangerous beasts, on the cobbles below, the women like synchronized corpses performing in
some foul gallows dance. Everywhere we will be surrounded by insects in white. And we must
come to lay down our comforts, our pleasures, even our very lives to make a bridge of human
chains over which millions will cross this ocean of life—this I beseech of my congregation at
every mass, but it is just words I know now… And soon the light will go, and the planet will
begin to harden, and the marshes, flats and gorges, will spew forth unfeeling vessels, and the
matrix upon which we live will begin to twist and turn and we will come to see the false as true
and the true as false.
And I cannot—I cannot see them any longer when I look. And soon I will have to abandon them
all; the dead eyes opening, glinting shrapnel in their black orbits. How will I be when I am
blind?! When their words will gnarl and twist into me in the wilderness? Even now they are
slowly breaking themselves up into geometric shards, and it is difficult to distinguish their
motives, their words, fine tuned for personal gain and maximum harm, their cheeks coloured
by sickly flowers brought up from the underworld. Oh, how I am ever surrounded by nagging
doubts, suspicions, hostilities, dread—the men, how they are rising up like a plague in me. They
say the aim of culture is its effect on character. And I have spent day after day in this
wilderness, obsessed by the imaginary trivality of all this, mentally dissecting all objects at
hand. They will hold me down with their thumbs. It’s all completely faded, even the ghosts too,

scurrying about my room to tap me on the shoulder, before suddenly hiding. I cannot even walk
thru the streets, as I know that they will follow me where ever I go. Perhaps it might be a good
idea to light a candle for now. It is beginning to grow rather dark in here.
I think I can hear their whispers tho. They will begin trying to whisper to me soon. One will say
‘are you sure this is the right one?’ And another will reply, ‘Yes, yes, I should think so’
And they will have me kill myself. They will tell me all deaths are made real by the visit of our
own, the gates opening to the numberless souls, and there— here, some empty shell inside this
small drafty room…
I have since opened myself a bottle of rum as I continue to write. And I’ve been drinking it neat
straight from the bottle for the cold.
‘Besides they’d just lift it out, wouldn’t they?’ I just caught one of them say, ‘And relet the
place’
‘They know that there won’t be anyone coming back too’ another one of them responded, ‘Not
after he’s cut his wrists open and sprayed blood all about the place’
Do I deserve this? Their cruel mocking laughter? I suppose it is true that I have not been an
angel of late, to say the least. And I remember saying to one of them, ‘better to keep the shoes
on while you do it, it is better to keep the shoes and the long black stockings on’
And to think I was a pure Catholic once! Before these creatures got to me! You see, they are
now in my blood. I have grown so—how to say in this language? Thirsty…
Though I think it is no good anymore. They say no sacrifice is too great for the defence of
freedom. That the nation itself is worthless that will not, with pleasure, venture all for its honor.
People are as always unreasonable, illogical and self-centred. The people really do need help,
but they may attack you if you attempt to help them and so it is no good.
Man is of course, the only animal who will breaks his own neck to save face. He has learned to
obey, but will never know how to command.
And I think more, I think more of Maria… They tell me that if she had married me and the child
was mine, I would share him with her, but he wasn’t, of course. All of this was a kind of
elaboration of her inner evasion. The social tricks, she knew how to perform. She was not
interested—merely polite. She probably doesn’t even really exist anymore in a way. It’s
astonishing, really, even her small face now when I try to conjure it in my mind’s eye, seems
perpetually stained by imaginary expressions, held before imaginary glasses— only it was her
awful eyes that betrayed her at last. I looked into them one evening and I knew, and she knew
that I knew. And we were both terribly self-aware and unable to process the discomfort of it all.
She was after all a consistent winner. And she follows me now like many crucifixtions on the
path in to Rome. She hisses at me at the most inopportune times and thru the shadows
threatens approach, sometimes she refracts herself thru my glass of wine, and at other times
she will sit on the edge of my bed at night, and whisper of how she’d be glad to take me with
her, sewing horns as furrows, as they hold their glasses, and fair colour drains the world’s.
It is now quite late out. The whole scene from my window is imbued with mourning and
ineluctable evocations of death.
They are organizing divisions between us. Spitting blood out into their hanckerchiefs. They head
to their parties, the bars to drink with friends, they go to the lavatory and they talk, they are the
gods, the men, the ghosts…
Men too are training, in the days, to be able to defend the town. I do not see what all of the

fuss is about. Let it all burn, let it all go to the dogs I say. For when I look into the eyes of a
woman, I feel as if I am already looking down the greased barrel of a gun, at oblivion, eternity,
which ever of the two it might be. And yet, at other times, or at one at least, I have seen one as
some girl child again, rocking sweetly back and forth on a wooden horse. Ah, how has it all gone
so far amiss? I haven’t eaten a proper meal in days. I am cold. I am exhausted. I feel to cry but I
know I cannot. My hair is continuing to thin.
I fear if I continue writing in this journal I will soon begin to grow mawkish tho, if I have not
already, so for now I will put down my pen and go out for a walk, though before I leave this
small room, as is my custom, I will tuck my revolver into the back of my slacks, behind my belt,
and brown velvet cloak.