Mia
We were in my dorm room and it was raining out and we were softly making love in my bed.
After we’d finished I sat up nude in my bed and lit myself a cigarette and Max began to dress
himself in his black suit. And I watched him as he dressed and he looked very handsome.
‘What were you like before?’ I asked him.
‘Before?’ he replied.
‘Yeah’
‘I don’t know. It seems so long ago now. I remember. I remember just— something felt broken
inside of me. I worried that I was going to waste my entire life staring into some screen or
another’ he paused for a moment as he continued dressing then added, ‘Like, when I was a
little kid I remember whenever I saw a plane flying overhead at night, I’d hope that it might be a
UFO come to abduct me and take me to some distant star and that I could just leave this whole
mess of a world behind’
‘Wasn’t it Van Gogh that said, just as one takes a train to a distant station, we take death to a
star?’
‘Mmhm, yeah that’s right. He wrote it in a letter to his brother Theo, as I recall’
Max finished dressing himself then sat down on the end of the bed.
‘…I still remember when I first got bit’ he said, ‘Saying to my mother, of the novel I was working
on at the time, ‘Getting there slowly… Soon I will be writing on a golden typewriter! Just like Ian
Flemming!’ Then going into the backyard to piss and him just jumping down on me from the
roof.
I remember draining my mother’s blood later that evening... Having almost no control upon it.
Necessity can have a strange effect upon a man’
‘Yeah’
Max laid back on the bed as he continued to dangle his legs over the side of it.
He turned towards me, touched my thigh then said, ‘It is the fate of fruit to rot, but not us, my
dear’
‘Mm’
‘Let me paint you again before we go out’
‘But you’ve just gotten all dressed up’
‘I can take it off. I just, you’re so beautiful, my dear. I really should like to paint you again’
I contemplated this for a moment then said, ‘…I remember after you first bit me, I kept on
getting all of these—these weird recollections of some past life I’d had before this one. Did you
get any of that?’
Max sat up on the bed looked at me and shook his head.
‘In the past life, that I often dream of, dream of so vividly as if I were there, I was this young
German girl during the war, the…’
‘The Second World War?’
‘Mmhm yeah, that’s right and I would see all of these awful, horrendous things, and yet I was
still a very patriotic girl. It was, I don’t know, none of us really knew what they were doing then,
but we were all very proud to be German. I— and I was a member of the Hitler Youth, and I
soon, I soon was with so many men. I took, I took a lot of pleasure from being with them. And

towards the end of the war, when it was all really starting to fall down— I made love with
soldiers from both sides. I, I rememer I once even had this coloured, heavy set, African
American infantryman who was, very rough with me’
‘He, didn’t hurt you did he?’
‘No, no he didn’t, he was just very, very rough, with me, that’s all’
‘Oh… Ok’
‘And he, he slapped me in the middle of our love-making, and I remember just looking up at
him with a smile ready to…
And I would have been very young, very young at the time about 14, 15, 16 or so, that sort of
age while all of this was going on. And I lied about my age to the soldiers and they pretended to
believe me. Sometimes I would share their methamphetamine rations with them. We would
disolve it into water, spirits, coca cola…’
‘The devil’s drug. Don’t touch that in this life my dear, please, promise me you won’t’
‘Yeah, I have more sense than that now, for whatever else I lack’
‘Yeah’
‘I just, I got my power from it’
‘What? The speed?’
‘No, making love, having the men at my control almost. Watching them, dance for me’
‘And I don’t think any less of you for it. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, I say’
‘Yeah… For a spell it just seemed that all around me were just sweet dreams, goals and
objective demands. We didn’t know how bad it was; what they were doing, how bad it’d
gotten’
‘Yeah’ Max looked at me again, ‘Would you let me paint you again my dear? You look so
beautiful like that’
‘What like this? I’m just…’
‘Sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette. Your freckles. Everything’
‘Oh, ok’ I took another pull on my cigarette then added, ’Aren’t you worried about the party?
Being late?’
‘Fuck it, fuck ‘em. I mean the plan is kind of, to… Isn’t it?’
‘Mm. Yes dear’
‘So to hell with ‘em. Let them enjoy the night while they still can. For now, let me paint you. Let
me see those beautiful eyes. That beautiful faint little smile. God damnit you’re beautiful’
‘I don’t know’
I watched as Max stripped down to his plaid cotton boxer shorts, folding and laying out his nice
clothes on the foot of the bed. He soon settled down on my floor with a thin sheet of plywood
in his lap and some paints and brushes beside him as he prepared to paint me. He looked at me
for a moment then began to work on the painting.
And I soon lit myself another cigarette, then said to him, ‘I had that dream again last night…’
‘Oh yeah?‘ he replied.
‘I was back in that 99 cent store again, where it happened that evening with the old lady at the
back…’
‘Oh yes’
‘And you remember that orange cat? The orange tabby in the store?’

‘Oh yes’
‘And I was back in that 99 cent store looking at that orange cat again. And I went up to him to
stroke him but he ran away from me towards the end of the aisle. And I continued to follow
him for quite sometime until I eventually found myself standing near the edge of this wooden
platform built onto the side of this sheer craggy snowy mountainside’ I took another pull on my
cigarette and looked at Max as he glanced up from his painting at me.
‘…It was very misty all around me and the platform seemed unsturdy below me’ I went on, ‘I
rubbed my sides for warmth as I paced about it. And little flakes of snow were gently falling
down all around me.
And I, I remember getting this strange, intuitive notion that awful things were happing below
me.
I think that it somehow might’ve been related to my past life…’
‘As the Nazi girl?’
‘Mm, yeah. And then I started seeing these things like a saucepan full of boiling water being
poured over a spider, and then this steam roller was being rolled over a man, who for a few
desperate moments was trying to pull himself away over the road…
And then this pretty teenage girl, and an equally pretty prepubescent girl child were— being
intimate together’
‘Shit’
‘These are just my dreams, I have no control over them, you understand…’
‘Sure. I’m not judging you’
‘And then, and then I remember I was back on the platform and there were crows about me
resting on the ballustrade and its edges. And a man was with me on the platform…
And from behind his eyes I could faintly hear the sound of running feet. His shadows were
narrow and I pictured him rooting around for them in the back of a garage where a man once
hung himself…’
‘…Sorry, what? You mean like they weren’t his, they weren’t his shadows?’
‘Exactly. Exactly. They weren’t his. They didn’t belong to him. I didn’t know how or where he’d
gotten them, but they weren’t his. And in him—this strange, bizarre man, I saw something of
myself: that the more this—type of person showed himself in public, the more he concealed
himself’ I took another pull on my cigarette, ‘You and I both know that our masks are becomimg
larger and larger, more and more fanciful and magnificent by the day. You constantly refer to
yourself as a genius and godlike and—tell me, can you even remember the names of the last
five women you made love to?’
‘Only one of note’
‘Oh don’t get cute with me, I just— Exactly, that’s it, whoever the person behind this Max is,
even to me, will forever remain a mystery; I am half hidden, you are half hidden’
‘Mm’ Max replied as he looked up from his painting at me again.
‘You can see the privilege of our youth now? The early morning and the night, they extol it: that
great privilege of our youth, in spite of all this, it’s just blatant, vulgar almost…’
‘…Yeah… I don’t know how I feel about that word my dear, privilege… I think, to see someone
as privileged is to but squint at some distant picture…’
‘Yes, but, well this is a picture so great one can’t squint at it! I, I remember that man, the one

with the narrow shadows from my dream; the front of his mouth was smiling faintly. And he, he
looked at me with eyes which were both tired and drained of sight, with eyes burning with
hatred at this, at this paper-mache, silly little world of ours, and I felt sullen and hot all over
dear. And then you, you look at me… And you got me out of there with your car and your sweet
curse and your hands and kisses and hot breath; you took me out of my mind, you opened me
up and you slipped your poison into me with content.
For too long I’d carried the weight of my virginity and my, self-satisfaction on a string around
my neck. Lost in that personal limbo from which I was letting out only just the briefest tersest
fragments in my diary which spoke of women making love to men as their faces were slowly
being erased; segni e sogni della terra, l’anima e il volto, dalla scapigilatura al futurismo, take
me there I said to you; some paradise defined by the very colours of hell: red, orange, yellow
and bluish flame, take me away from this bright, cold world, I said’ I took another pull on my
cigarette, ‘At dawn, each dawn the boilers are stoked again for the resurgence of the, wheezing
perpetual thought machine… Every time and I just…’
‘Though sometimes we make love in the mornings’
‘Yes and I like that so. It is such a nice way to wake up’
‘I love you. I hope I haven’t done a bad thing in bringing you into all this’
‘You haven’t and I do love you as well.
…I still rememember that evening with the Luger’
‘Oh yes’ Max replied with a laugh.
‘And all of those men chasing after us and that car door opening and closing quietly’
‘Yes, yes, that was a fine evening’
‘Yeah it was, it really was’ I took another pull on my cigarette, ‘You know sometimes I see you in
my dreams too dear; climbing out of my pocket, climbing up my dress then up thru my hair, to
light a cigarette dangling from my mouth’
‘Ah…’
‘And other times I see burning bookshelves veiled behind smoke and hear husky whispers and
sometimes we’ll make love in fields and you’ll have little green things in your hair’ I looked at
Max some more as he continued to work and after awhile I said to him, ‘Y’know I think there’s a
certain poetry to this city’
‘What Paris? Still?’
‘Yeah… Why not?’ I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on our nightstand and lit myself
another cigarette, ‘I mean, there’s still a window to danger here… The prospect of all night
phone calls and young ladies wrapped up in surprise, lust and chance. And then I see you,
making some careless gesture at them which they grunt their appreciation at. And I hear the
sound of the bed-springs creaking and it becomes stuck in my throat…’
‘I won’t— I won’t make love to any other girls if you don’t want me to’
‘Oh but you need to, don’t you my darling? You need to, to, to feed’
‘Yes…’
‘So there it is. You are a very dangerous person to know.
Y’know, I always often wondered; why me? Y’know? Why my? Why didn’t you just, take me,
drain me, like all the others? What was so special about me, which was not about them?’
Max ran a hand back thru his dark hair. ‘Shit man, I don’t know’ he then said, ‘it’s nothing

personal is it? It’s just, the way it is; I, kill for sustinance, we kill for sustinance, it is what we are,
what we do, there is no other way’
‘But you’re not answering my question; why me? Why did you turn me and not— Why did you
spare me?’
‘Frankly, initially, as I found you desirable’
‘You’re a shit.
You’re a shit’
Max continued with his painting for awhile, then said to me, ‘I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for
any of this. I must eat or I’ll die. I don’t know what else to say. Except, maybe that that’s the
way it is and it’s best not to think about it all too much. You’re just the same as me though. You
do just the same. You can’t point a finger at me’
‘Mm…’
‘…Mia…’ Max soon said to me.
‘Mm…’
‘You were telling me about Paris’
‘Oh, oh yes…
Yeah, I just had this thought, that, that depending upon where one stands, how they move,
where they direct their gaze, this place becomes a series of perspectives: contingent,
fragmented, variable, and completely dependant on the, subjective mechanisms of perception;
thru distortions in the fabric of time and space one can come to see all sorts of things here; a
corpse in a blue denim jumpsuit, under the control of some brutal despotic government,
watching reruns of, The Simpsons in an armchair, in some parallel reality… His skin grey, cut
about the neck with congealed blood about the wound, all this, above the streets we’ve walked
thru so many times holding hands and talking, laughing. And some nights you too can hear far
off explosions, rumbles and cries in the streets, the clatter of rifle fire, see orange and red
flashes over the horizon.
The spatial seperations built into Paris are ultimately to be bridged by vision; these, physical
distances only serve to bring the city closer to the spectator, so close in fact, that it becomes an
internal phenomenon, an endless series of distorted personal perceptions…’ I took another pull
on my cigarette, ‘and then I look at you with your story of how you came from nothing to, to
this, I look at it thru the guise of a woman’s intuition, for whatever little that might be worth.
And I think that against some wall inside of you a little boy is bunching up his fists. And deeper,
deeper inside of you is some adjoining room and I see you adding laughter to some dark
ambulance, all bloodshot and mad, slowly turning that strange car into a grim brace for
impact..’
‘Mia…’
‘Mm’
‘What are you talking about dear?’
‘I, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I might be losing my mind’
‘Yeah… Or maybe you’re the one that’s sane and it’s everyone else that’s mad’
‘Mm. I’d like that’ I took another pull on my cigarette, ‘do you want to love me again now
darling?’

‘But… I just started on this painting. It’s not finished’
‘Mm’
Max looked up at me. I stubbed my cigarette out on the ashtray on the nightstand, then said to
him, ‘I have no desire for anything but you. I have no desire for anyone but you. I have no
desire to improve this world for any man nor woman, to demonstrate or amuse or persuade.
I have my nerves and my vertigo and you, you show me absolute rest; unbroken night; a liquor
unbeknownst to this Earth, which the pharmaceuticals of heaven could not afford me.
And they would call me base and they would call me loathsome, but just, I can still remember
the way you arrived… I feel as if I’ve fallen in love with someone in a dream that I am still yet
waiting to wake up from’
‘Mia…’
Max then set his painting down beside him and climbed up onto the bed and we soon took to
making love.
A shortwhile afterwards we lay in bed together, him behind me, holding me, with the lights off
in my room.
…I was standing on the rickety mountainside platform again. And it was very misty out.
There were explosions on the horizons and I could hear the far off rattle of distant guns and the
violent howl of the wind. I looked down and thru the rickety floorboards of the platform and
the mist below them I could just make out craggy rocks.
I realized that Max was with me on the otherwise abandoned platform.
‘My hands are cold’ he said to me.
I went up to him and held his hands up to my chest. And then I heard the voice of the strange
man again coming from somewhere out of sight, ‘The poetic phrase can imitate a horizontal
line, an ascending or descending vertical line that can rise straight up to heaven without losing
its breath or fall straight down to hell with the velocity of any weight, it can follow a spiral,
describe a parabola, a zigzag, make a series of superimposed angles. It can…’
I tuned the voice out as I let go of Max and approached the ballustrade along the edge of the
platform. I held it tightly and looked down over the edge of the platform, though I couldn’t see
very far for the mist. I could just make out bright green tufts of vegetation sporadically shooting
out of the surrounding dark brown rocks.
I kicked some loose pebbles down off of the edge of the platform then walked back to Max.
I noticed that the man’s voice had stopped. I felt painfully cold and hugged Max in hope of
warming myself up.
‘Where’s that damn cat now?’ he said to me as we hugged, ‘I can’t see him anywhere’
‘Yeah…’ I replied with a slight laugh.
I woke up to find us laying in my bed again. Max was still laying behind me, with an arm
drapped over me. And I touched his thigh.
‘Mia, baby, are you up?’ he said to me.
‘Mm’ I replied.
I still felt half asleep tho we soon started softly making love.
After we’d finished I fell into a light sleep again.
‘We missed the party’ I heard Max say to me sometime later.
‘Yeah’ I replied, ‘there’ll be others’

‘Mm… I’m hungry’
‘Well we could’ve gone last night’
‘I’m hungry… Like, this is the worst babe’
‘I know dear. So am I’
‘So…’
‘Well what the fuck do you expect me to do about it?! We should’ve gone last night if you were
hanging out so bad…’
‘Mm’
‘Look I’m sorry. I just— hold on, I’ll check my phone. See if anything’s going on tonight’
‘Ok’
I leaned over the side of the bed and checked my phone for a shortwhile.
‘…Ok, so there might be something on tonight’ I said to Max.
‘Oh?’
‘But it’s a bit freaky’
‘Ok, so what is it?’
‘A séance. Some of my old friends from college are holding a séance’
‘Old college friends? From Paris U? Are you sure you’re ok with this?’
‘Fuck ‘em. We gotta eat don’t we?’ I lit myself my first cigarette of the day then said, ‘I barely
knew ‘em.
…I suppose’
Later that evening we found ourselves on the metro. And then we were walking thru the wet
streets of town and it was gently raining out. We went into a nightstore and bought half a pint
of whisky. We filled ourselves up with the spirits on the way there but it was not enough. My
mouth smiled at Max as we walked but there was nothing in it. We were both hungry, jittery
and short with each other, even inspite of the warm fuzz of the whisky. And my face became
aware of my mouth and began whispered to it with curious intent.
After awhile as we walked Max made to kiss me but I turned my head away from him. ‘It’s
just—I’m not crazy about your breath’ I said to him, ‘It smells of whisky’
‘Mm... Are we nearly there yet?’
‘Yeah, soon baby, soon’
We soon arrived at the cosy looking terraced apartment block where my friends lived. I could
see some yellow lights on inside one of the windows. And we rang the buzzer and my friend
Jess answered then came down to meet us.
Upstairs, the door to Jess’ room, which I vaguely remembered from my student days was
slightly ajar. And indistinguishable murmurs could be heard from inside.
‘Mia’ my friend Sasha said getting up to embrace me as I walked into the room, ‘it’s been too
long…’
‘Yeah, it has’ I replied, as I embraced her.
‘Guys, this is Max’, I then said to my friends, there were four of them, and they were all young
women; Sasha, Sam, Jess and Jordan.
‘Hey Max’ Sam replied.

‘Hey’ a few of the other girls replied.
‘Hey girls’ Max replied running a hand back thru his hair, we then went and sat with the group,
who were then all sitting around a hand made ouija board.
My nose was slightly runny from the cold out and I felt the need for a cigarette. I held a nostril
shut and sucked some watery mucus back up one of my nostrils then said, ‘you guys haven’t
started yet?’
‘No we were waiting for you to get here’ Jess replied.
‘Ah, that’s sweet…’ I replied.
‘So what’ve you been up to?’ Jess then said to me, ‘it’s been too long… Shit’
‘Ah well, I don’t know’ I replied, ‘the usual’
‘The usual?’ Jess replied, ‘So are you interning somewhere or?’
‘Nah. Fuck work’
‘Fuck work?’
‘Yeah. You heard me’
‘Whoa…’
There was a large window above a computer desk at the far end of the room and I noticed that
it’d started raining rather heavily out since we’d came inside. And I could hear the distant
rumble of thunder out too. A bright flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the room, casting
shadows upon it thru the portioned window frame.
‘Oo spooky’ Jess then said.
‘You guys know what they say about this place being haunted?’ Sam then asked the group.
‘What’s that?’ Max replied.
‘It was in the 1920s, back when…’
‘…Ah god…’ I thought to myself and continued to listen to and look at the rain outside.
‘…sixty of them, Gypsies, Slovaks, men, women and children, just like that’ Sam clicked her
fingers together here as she went on, ‘they all just vanished, disappeared, the earth just opened
up and swallowed them’
‘I’m sorry but just, what the hell does all that to do with this place being haunted?’ Max replied.
‘Oh, don’t you know?’ Sam replied, ‘A family of them came from here, the young daughter used
to live in this very room, they say that you can still hear their voices in the walls, see their spirits
in the mirrors, desperate to suck you in to join them’
The group was silent for a short spell. And the rain and thunder continued away outside.
‘Well whatever can we just get on with this?’ Jordan then said, ‘I’ve been waiting for ages
already’
'You’re in a hurry…’ Sasha replied.
‘Look, I’m sorry, I just… I have to speak to him. I have to speak to him. I’ve been obsessing
about this all week since you first told me and— just, can we get on with it please? No crazy
talk, no anecdotes, no jokes, just… Please can we just do it?’
‘Alright, alright’ I said putting a hand on Jordan’s shoulder, ‘It’s ok’
I glanced over at Max, then lowered my hand.

‘…I just, I see the way he looks at them’ I thought to myself as the group continued to talk, ‘as if
he wishes to invest in them the tenderness of a kiss, which I know he is more than capable of
doing; spending the night with them before he feeds as he sometimes does.
Is this knowledge of use to me? He’s told me that he’d stop at my word and I know that he
would’ I continued to look at Max as he beheld my friends.
‘…Tho I can’t shake this feeling that the teeth, are slowly drawing to a close around the outside
of the peach’ I thought to myself, ‘the upper sky is being tucked in closer towards its language
and ready to destroy it. It has happened before and it shall happen again; we have become
beasts; dispassionate hunters…’
‘…I don’t know man’ I caught Max say, ‘that’s the question isn’t it? What do I mean?
Or what does any of this fucking mean? One string leads on into the end of another, and then in
time they all just get tangled up, forgotten’
‘That’s great. That’s real great’ Jess replied, ‘Really, you should write that one down’
‘What? I’m sorry, was that not positive enough for you? I’m just trying to be, me here, to say
what is on my mind’
‘No I get that, but…’ Jess began.
I looked at her and my other friends. ‘Shallow, shallow people’ I thought to myself and I felt as if
I could see them slowly merging together like some soft, amorphous paste, characterized by
extreme elasticity.
I waited until there was a pause in the group’s exchange then said, ‘I don’t know about you
guys but I’m feeling about as thirsty as a ghoul. I don’t s’pose I could go to the fridge and grab
myself a coorsack?’
‘You didn’t bring any did you?’ Sasha replied.
‘Oh, she’s being ridiculous’ Jess said, ‘Yes, Mia, please go, you’re our guest, make yourself at
home. Fais comme chez toi’
‘Thank you dear’ I replied, ‘Max?’
‘Oh, ok, sure’ he replied, then to the group he added, ‘You guys—this is great. Don’t wait for us.
Start the sceance. We’ll be back’
‘Sure’ Jess replied.
I heard them talking amongst themselves as soon as we’d left the room.
And as Max and I stood in the hall I took a cigarette out from my purse and lit it.
We then walked down the hall into the kitchen and stood before the girls’ fridge.
‘Ah god damn it man, god damnit’ I then said to him, ‘did you look at them all in there, each
vying for centre stage of their own sad little performances. They all just make me ill’
‘Jess seemed alright’
‘What? Because she offered you a beer? You don’t know her like I do’
‘Well?’
‘I don’t know dude… I don’t know…’
Max put a hand up to his head then said ‘ah fuck’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know’

‘Well, what choice have we got dear?’
‘Yeah. …Gimme one of those cigarettes’
‘Sure’ I replied then did so, and watched as he lit himself one.
He took a few pulls on the cigarette then said, ‘There’s just too many of them in there’
‘…You’re right’
‘Mmm’
‘…We could take one of the girls…’ Max said, ‘Put our hands over her stomach. Slowly remove
her dress…’
‘Mm…’
We continued to smoke.
‘…Do you remember the first one we had together?’ I soon asked Max.
‘Mm’
‘You getting out your handkerchief to wipe that damp red stripe away from the corner of my
mouth’
‘Nn’
‘How we made love that evening. How you had me almost violently and tenderly at once’
‘Yeah’ he walked forward a bit held his hands up to his forehead then said, ‘I didn’t ask for
this…’
‘I know. I know dear’
‘I hope I didn’t do a bad thing in drawing you into all this’
‘Are you kidding me? No. You don’t have to keep saying that’
‘Ok’
Max then walked back to me.
‘God, you’re getting more and more beautiful by the day, you know that?’ he then said to me,
‘Shit, I just look at you and think, ‘does not compute’ I just—fuck’, he took another pull on his
cigarette, ‘Just, how are we gonna, split one of them up from the group, waste ‘em and get the
fuck outta here?’
‘I saw you had your eye on Sasha…’
‘What’s that?’
‘I saw the way you were looking at her’
‘And?’
‘And the way you were looking at all of them for that matter; Jordan, and Sam, and Jess’
‘What? What is this? Jealousy? Your friends are pretty. Men, sometimes think about what it
might be like to be with pretty girls. They don’t mean shit to me though, really. I mean clearly,
otherwise…
Just, you know how I feel about you. So please just, don’t put me on trial like this dear’
‘I’m not putting you on trial, I just…
…Ok’
‘I just, it’s gonna be the four of them in there for awhile for however long they’re hosting that
gay little sceance for and one of them might have a gun, or pepper spray, or a knife, who
knows...

And it’s not how we do things, is it? We don’t take risks like that—or I sure as hell don’t when
I’m out with you’
‘Ok. Ok. So what then?’
Max took another pull on his cigarette, then said, ‘I don’t know, I’m thinking…’
‘Ok’
I looked at him and he looked back at me.
And after a shortwhile he said to me, ‘Ok, so how about, you go in there, take your dress off...
See how they react… Start kissing one of them. They’ll be, they’ll be so fucking worked up by
that—and you work that up, you work that up for a bit, and then, then, that’s when we hit
them…’
I started to laugh a little at this then said, ‘You’re funny. You’re a funny guy. What makes you so
sure my friends are lesbians?’
‘I don’t know, everyone’s part queer aren’t they? I mean that’s, that’s what they’re saying these
days now isn’t it?’
I sighed, then ran a hand back thru my hair, ‘Alright fuck it. Why not? What else have we got?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, ok, fuck it, why not?’
‘Ok’
Max and I then briefly kissed.
We then walked back down the hall and Max soon stopped and held me up against a wall.
‘Look at you, you little fuckin’ school girl’ he then said to me.
‘Yeah, I’m so shy’ I replied.
We then both laughed. We kissed then sat down against the wall.
‘Y’know, before I met you…’ I began.
‘Yeah…?’
‘Just, thruout the whole of my childhood, my youth, I lived with the perception that I was, I was
a part of my dead sister’
‘I know dear… I know…’
I took another cigarette out of my purse, lit it then offered it to Max, before lighting another
one for myself.
‘Yeah…?’ he then asked me.
I smoked for a little while then said, ‘Yeah, I mean, that is, like, in my body and my soul, I
carried the clinging carcass of her around; this dead little sister, who I never got to know, who
my parents were constantly talking about; ‘the other Mia…’
‘Yeah’
‘…And for so long I just waited for them to say to me, ‘We’re sorry dear, our most precious,
sweet and brave Mia’ but they never did, they never did. My father would even say to me,
‘Why can’t you be more like her?!’
‘Yeah…
Yeah. Yeah, I know it was rough for you’
‘Or not always; like, out of fear that I, this, second-born child would also soon sicken and die, I
was coddled and spoiled by my mother.
From an early age I was surrounded by a cocoon of attention, spun out from the rich spinneret

of her, my mother, an elegant, cold, powerful woman— no, no, more a personality than a
woman, and I supposed too from my grandmother Maria, and my aunts, Ana Ferres and
Catalina.
The other Mia. The other Mia…’
I made a fist then took a deep pull on my cigarette.
‘All of those long elegant hands of women upon me at once.
I felt so unsure, so scared; them wishing to—I don’t know, I don’t know. I was too young to
know…
My mother would constantly chide me to wear a scarf whenever I went outdoors.
And if I ever got sick she would take great pleasure from tending me, coddling me as I laid there
helpless in my bed.
And I remember my aunt, Ana Ferres, for four years, locked herself up in her room, as she
wrote a book about me, Mia Salvatore, visto por su tia, which my mother split into three
elements: reality, the apparent artifice with which Ana portrayed that reality and the tradition
and history of tristeza si misma.
I remember, she would hold me at her bedside at night, and I would fall asleep in her arms to
wake to find myself entirely alone.
And as I grew up, as you know, I greatly enjoyed the company of older women, especially that
of my grandmother and Lucia, my nurse’ I took another pull on my cigarette, ‘I had very,
precious little contact with girls my own age. I often played alone. I would disguise myself as
the queen of Spain in my room and observe myself in the mirror with my cardboard crown and
a bedsheet cape thrown over my shoulders and otherwise I would be entirely naked…
And I would imagine many men and women all violently wanting me; showering me with
affection and attention.
Even then I admired only three things; power, control and divine luxury’ I took a languid pull on
my cigarette, ‘Ah god, listening to me rabbit on like this… You must think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘No’
‘Ok... Y’know sometimes I think you’re pretty much perfect. The perfect boy. I see… When we
make love I feel at peace with this world. I don’t like this world, but when we’re together I… I
don’t notice how terrible it is so much.
Form and space themselves are immeasurable beneath you. I…
In the days there are signs—not simple elements of the future or amorphous forms, but
separable components of an inexorable system, evidently so, autonomous and aesthetic that
they can’t even be comprehended in the modern constitutive vocabulary; I still am that Queen
from my infancy, you see. You have taught me that.
The other men they loved me, but with reserve; they all wished to love me at once, they
idolized me; a true free-thinker who had risen up above petty bougerois notions of right and
wrong. In their eyes, I had become a God; I could see all, but I was none. I had nothing to lose. I
began to test my limits and observe their reactions; to steal from them, cheat on them, lie to
them; I treated them like dirt and they let me...
I felt as if I had entered some queer alien garden which had been fastidiously prepared for me. I
crossed the zodiac of this new universe scared and alone; a pioneer, an adventurer, a
forerunner. I went from house to house, flat to flat, trying to shake myself free of those muddy

littorals, but instead I kept getting myself stuck, sucked deeper and deeper down. Beyond the
territory of those remote tribes I lived only in illuminated visions, strange names. My eyes were
clouded with smoke and the brutal red mist of lust. My legs were often bent and the men were
sad. Their flesh was cold, their eyes were cold. And then of course came the speed. Too much
speed. Not enough sleep nor food. Strange men came to visit me thru the cracks in the
shadows. And I asked them what they had made all of the food plastic for.
I looked over my shoulders as I walked thru the streets. I watched as men in strange, somber
handsome uniforms, pushed themselves thru the crowds— the oily, amorphous masses
towards me and I picked up my pace.
I looked at the men as I walked; the types that moved their faces, their lips, almost involentarily
to extol the virtues of their hollow morality, as dried blood stained the necklines of their shirts. I
looked at them shaking roughly at their mythologies, so fragmented, with so many motes of sad
feeling and expression… Their spirits lost amidst the bright blur of life…
I suppose that even they must’ve had their own unique tedious needs which would arrouse the
violence in them. And they re-entered those infantile fantasies of, of—playing cowboys and
Indians, of shooting up gooks in Korea and ‘Nam, and then in they came to sit as heavy as
pistols in my mouth. And meanwhile the advertisments blared about me and threatened to
drive me blind or mad or to overdose on pills, to drive razors down my wrists. And the men,
they of course, were all relaxed with their eyes clouded. In their chairs they’d jerk and sigh.
They’d speak with their eyes open and the sound of thunder rolling out of them. They’d snore
as I laid beside them and I’d wait to leave them for the beautiful softness and simplicity of
sleep, amidst the royal children in their dark blue gardens. And they would warn me to walk
away from it all and I just—I couldn’t...
…And then I’d wake and walk around the back of the guards and try to catch a glimpse of the
insides of the white rooms of lust and bliss and beautiful women being treated like—and all the
tall strong men, running, running as the guards were many and not what they seemed, said
themselves to be…’
‘Mia…’
I sighed, took another pull on my cigarette then added, ‘They preached of their morality as they
dragged the whales out of the sea and hacked them apart on the decks of their great ships.
They preached of their morality while they dropped fire on the villagers and…
I am…
But then I found you and you are the sun bringing brightness, warmth to the otherwise cold,
dead Earth.
I am…
You come home and expect to find me nude, so I am. And after we have made love, I sit there
with you at the kitchen table, in just one sock, drinking tea and I look at the faint plumes of
steam rising from our cups and I look at you and all the horror of this world leaves me, just like
that. And then in the dreams, my body becomes some great ship. A length of hawser falls from
my gigantion nose and anchors me in my tea cup and I— my spirit climbs down out from my
great body…
…I remember once I found myself in a room where men were beating you with sticks and I ran

up to you and trid to pull them off of you and then they began beating me too and I was nude
and you were nude and the men were beating on us, but we were together…’
‘Mm. Yes, sometimes I dream of you too my dear’
‘…In other dreams though, they’re not as harsh, and we’ll be walking together thru crisp
autumun forests, at great peace with this world and the Lord and all his children…
…You must think I’m mad at times, don’t you?’
‘No. No. Ok? Mia, no. You’ve gotta stop asking me that alright?’
‘Ok’ I rested my head down in Max’s lap.
‘You’re so fucking handsome…’ I said to him, ‘I love you’
He stroked my hair and cheek then replied, ‘yeah, I love you too babe’
And I continued to lay there.
‘…I remember my endless attempts to distance myself from her, her ghost—that of my dead
sister…’ I said to him, ‘That, that was all they could talk about; the other Mia…
I’d look at myself in the mirror and think that I was actually looking at her, and I’d try and talk to
her to ask her what she was like, what she’d been like…’
‘Yeah… How old where you when she died again?’
‘2 or 3 or so, when they found her in the swimming pool’
‘Shit’
‘Yeah’
I continued to lay there looking up at Max’s lightly stubbled chin.
Sometime passed.
‘We never grabbed the Coorsacks…’ Max said after awhile.
‘We didn’t…’
‘Shit’
‘Mmm… Slowly, I suppose you’re coming to see, the, bad audio of American reality’
‘Wouldn’t that be hear then…?’
‘Well, whatever… You see what I mean, tho don’t you?’
‘The misshappen chaos of well-seeming forms and all that?’
‘Yeah’
‘…Do you see yourself as an American…? I don’t particularly. But rather just as a man.
Blood, at the end of the day, knows no, sovereignty, its only home is in veins…
I see but a world full of men, see thru various filters, thru slight curls in the inner most corners
of their eyes, or as spent delving deeper down some, rabbit hole or another…
Or from the filter of some, divide first formed, not even upon the head of a pin, coming to
sunder continents…’
‘…I cannot speak about others, but I mostly just see myself standing up upon my own soul...
An ocean of tears swirling around me, fantasmas del molino viejo. The stench of decaying flesh,
all about me… Sometimes I just, I just wish I could bring all of them to see and to stare and to
cry.
…I cannot, stand the stench of their lies, its worse than that of the corpses’
Max stroked my hair again.

‘Ah fuck I’m hungry’ I then said.
‘Yeah, me too’
‘This is the worst’
‘Mm’
‘My head is fucking throbbing’
‘Mm. Mine too’
Max stubbed his cigarette out on the skirting board behind us then said, ‘Alright up we get’
He then pushed me back up so that I was then sitting up against the wall again then stood up
himself. And I held my hands out to him and he then pulled me back up. And we then walked
back to Jess’s room. The door was closed then. And I could hear faint conversation coming from
inside.
‘And hence I am not brain dead, ok?’ I caught one of the girls say.
‘Oh, just shut up ok?’ I caught another voice, that I recognized to be Sasha’s reply to this, ‘are
we gonna do this again or not?’
‘Did you not just see the glass just tell us to stop?’
‘Yeah, and you totally fucking pushed it to say that’
‘No I didn’t. Would I?’
‘Seriously, you expect us to answer that?’
‘I swear, I didn’t. I don’t care if you don’t believe me’
I turned the door knob and Max and I walked into the room.
‘Hiya. What’d we miss?’ I said.
‘Ugh, nothing’ Sasha replied with a sigh.
Max and I then sat down with the others.
‘This isn’t a bad time is it?’ I asked the group.
‘Nah. You’re good’ Jess replied, ‘you know how to do this right?’
‘Yeah’ I replied, ‘we all put our fingers on the shot glass and see what happens?’
‘No, no, first we have to all hold hands and say the prayer again’ Jess replied.
I looked at Max and he looked back at me.
‘Wait, is it just me or is really hot in here?’ I then asked the group.
‘It’s all the candles, yo’ Sam replied.
‘Yeah’ I replied, ‘wait…’
I then unzipped my dress, sat up on my knees and slowly pulled it off. I had not been wearing a
bra beneath it.
‘Whoa…’ Jordan said and I shrugged at this, with a slight smile.

Later that evening I found myself laying naked in my bed beside Max, who was then only in his
black socks.
‘Dear’ I said as I looked over at Max.
‘Mm’ he replied.
‘Tell me we’ll have a bright future together…

Hang gliding and painting and sculptures and luxury and prizes…’
‘I don’t know…’
‘…Several beautiful surrealist portraits of ours hanging in my beloved Dalmau Gallery in
Barcelona. You with your dark hair grown down long past your shoulders, dressed in black
shorts, a black shirt, a long black cape and a large black felt hat… And we could start a new life
for ourselves in Barcelona. I could go back to school there, we both could. In the mornings we
could attend courses at the academy and in the afternoons and evenings we could work in your
atelier…’
‘Yeah’
‘I often feel like, this world is too modern for us… But we can change that, can’t we my dear?’
‘Sure, I shouldn’t see why not.
Say, if you’re up, could I have another cigarette?’
‘Ok, sure’ I replied and sat up and turned the light on the nightstand back on and retrieved my
packet and lighter from the stand and handed them to him and I then watched as he lit himself
a cigarette and I soon followed his lead.
‘…Y’know, it’s funny’ he soon said to me, ‘I’d expected barriers…
But instead there was next to no resistance’
‘Yeah. We should hit them while they’re sleeping more often’
‘Mm.
…I haven’t written in so long. I feel to write to get this all out of me’
‘Yeah…’
‘And I am conscious of your need for, metamorphis’
‘Mm’
‘There’s an, intimate private component to it, isn’t there?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You wanting to change, you wanting us to change. But we can’t…’
‘Mm…’ I remembered the scene in Jess’ room.
‘It can be a troublesome world’ Max went on, ‘A violent one, as you well know’
‘Mm’ I took another pull on my cigarette, ‘Yeah. I don’t know. We did what we had to. I’m not
proud of it. But fuck it. Fuck it’
‘Yeah’
A shortwhile later I said to Max, ‘I remember I spent the summer of ‘98 on vacation with my
father in Cadaqués, his birthplace on the Costa Brava...
Our family had a little holiday house up there.
Cadaqués was a place which he’d loved with fanatical loyalty for all his life...
If I could’ve seen all this, then, in my pure girlhood, holidaying on the coast, would I have done
something to change, to avoid this track? I do not know.
I still remember the strong winds, the big atlas in his study, the death of dear Felipa and my
father promptly marrying her younger sister, who by then had already been living in the
household with us for at least the last four odd years.
I would hide behind the sofa and watch him making love to her as she leaned over the window
overlooking in the bay. I worshipped her. To me she was truly unique.

I would weep and clench my teeth as I watched them and swear with all the power in me that
one day her glorious name would circle the heavens and I would rescue her from fate and
death and, all of this... Each contour of her face and body was capable of being developed as a
distinct and completly independent element. I would crouch there watching the pair for what
seemed like hours, deconstructing, analysing every element of her beauty.
I would watch the top half of her coming to life as he made love to her; to me, I remember it all
seemed to represent man’s great triumph, his, will.
Her figure was as if one carved from marble, flawless. And her grace would slowly spill down
from her top half to her lower as he continued to love her. The channels from her top to her
bottom would become congested with the, violence of it all, and ironically they would slow
down and lighten up, her form would became increasingly schematic until, the lower half of her
seemed to become made up entirely of austere block-like shapes. And the love I once felt for
her would morph into jealousy; something, horrid and bitter. ‘Oh you little cunt’ I would think
to myself as I hid there, ‘you little bitch... You like that don’t you, you little slut?’
The various block-like elements of her would come to represent different identities to me.
‘It’s like a jigsaw’ I would think to myself as I watched her, ‘a jigsaw… You have so many
different elements, different sides to you, I can’t make head or tail of you anymore you…’
The colour was slightly different in all of her various—forms.
Her head would be composed of a very detailed pileup of various forms—a rather skillful
manipulation on her part; the metaphysical litany of the classic figure, the elegant woman.
The very paragon of femine elegance and beauty, of what I should, aspire to be.
Shit, I would’ve only been about 14, 15 or so at the time.
And she intended to, to be a new mother for me, to plan my entire life out for me in meticulous
detail; where I would study, what type of young woman I would become, what I would do with
my very own body.
‘You, my dear, are on the road to great success’ she would say to me in that large old house.
I remember how she made me complete nude study, upon nude study of her in preparation for
my entrance examination to the art school in Barcelona. For six weeks on end, from when I
woke to when I went to sleep she’d make me sketch and paint her. As a revolt to all this, in
private, I soon began painting her being violently violated by Bacchaus en la costa de Jacopo
Sansovino. I too depicted her being violated by several influential figures in the art scene at the
time; Luis Buñuel, Federico Farcia Lorca, Pedro Garfias, Eugenio Montes, and Pepin Bello,
amongst others.
And I would dream of her being violated by demons and ghouls as she slept on craggy beds of
rocks— this was my dream, my nightmare, for however many weeks on end…
Once I eventually passed the entrance exam and got into the college in Barcelona, I kept to
myself mostly and cultivated my role as a loner. Occassionally I made love to men who did not
mean much of anything to me. One morning I helped myself to 4000 pesos from the wallet of
one as I left his dorm room in the morning. And all the while I dreamed of her, of, of killing her
almost…’
‘Mmm’
‘And the men, I took them apart like the poems they made us deconstruct in school.
To me they were not men of ideas, of visions, but of words; nay, the very same words, the very
same ordinary words with the very same base, crass ends…

I liked it when they turned their heads to look at me as I passed them in the quad.
I wore low-cut dresses and short shorts. I liked the power I had over them, to reduce them to
grunting beasts. I think I wanted to inflict as much of my own pain on as many of them as I
could. I made a game of it. It was rather fun. They stood for nothing and so they fell easily. In
their perfect symmetry they could be deconstructed at will.
Soon things however went off the rails a bit.
By my second semester I can’t remember a day when I wasn’t drunk or otherwise inebriated.
Instead of attending tutorials and classes I went to parties, resturants, bars. I was romantically
involved with two young men at once for a spell until one of them found out and informed the
other and it ended with them both.
At the beginning of my third semester, I was bared from the academy for 12 months. Though
this didn’t much trouble me… I firmly believed that my professors were incapable of teaching
me anything at all’
‘Mm’
‘Shall I go on? I’m not boring you am I?’
‘No. Not at all. I’m listening’
‘…I remember, I once had this rather startling dream. I woke up in the middle of the night, in
my little dorm room for it.
I’d been looking at this woman, or I suppose I should say her body, lying grey skinned, in the
middle of this vast wasteland. Her head had been removed, as had her hands and feet, and
beside her was this oblonged hole, with very clean sheer vertical sides. And I could not see how
deep it was as it’d been partially filled up with blood. And the rotting carcus of some old nag
was a shortway away from the woman and its stomach had been cut open and its rotting
entrails were lying on the sandy ground before it. And the sun was just starting to go down
above the scene. And I tried to walk away but I found myself slowly walking down into the
surface of the ground as if it were made out of some, mud or water, or were some muddy
shallow lake. And I kept on walking away and— but I’d just keep sinking deeper and deeper into
the queer, somehow at once both solid and liquid, ground. And soon my head was the only
thing that was above it.
And around then I woke up— or at least I thought I had, and I went to my desk and tried to
write about my dream on my typewriter but the keys of it felt strange somehow, and I looked
down at the thing to notice that it was made entirely out of flesh…
And so I picked a pair of scissors up off of my desk, and opened them and gave the thing an
exploratory little poke. And it bled slightly from where I’d struck it but otherwise did not react.
…I, I took a long entry of it all on waking and it stuck with me for awhile…’
‘Mn’
‘And yeah… What else?
…I was telling you about my student days in Barcelona…’
‘Yeah…?’
‘Oh, oh yes, and soon came my relationship with the painter Julio Moisés.
I remember when he first came into my life, I genuinely believed that he was the,
personification of death. The first time we made love it was a beautiful experience, until he left
and I was certain that he had left to take the life of my dear old father. I felt devestated. I wept

and wept in that small little room. And as I smoked a cigarette I looked down at my hands and
they were shaking and the colour had just faded right out of them.
Julio soon returned back to my room with his sister, Ana Maria however and the three of us
passed the rest of the evening drinking absinthe in town together. It was a lovely evening.
And when we at last got back to Julio’s downtown flat, the sun was just starting to come up, yet
still we did not sleep. He painted his sister and I posing nude by the open window of his 4 th story
apartment. And we could hear the sounds of the city waking up outside. And as he worked Julio
would shoot me these, these looks of such, vivaciousness and intelligence that I would tremble
all over.
…My high regard for him however did not last long’
‘Oh? What happened?’
‘I don’t know. His art was lousy. Just one of my paintings was a thousand times better than his
entire catalogue put together’
‘Really?’
‘By far. Yet they would take him much more seriously than me at the time as he knew how
to—how to play the art game as it were and was more than prepared to do so’
‘Mm’
‘…Long after our split he’d write me these long, tender and delicate letters.
For a spell he even secretly took photos of me while I slept’
‘Shit’
‘Yeah. And he’d write to me of how he ‘awaited me everyday’ and would remember our love-
making while he, pleasured himself.
And I hadn’t seen him once in person since that last summer.
We were both going off in different directions, or at least I was trying to but he wasn’t.
Shortly after the end of the year however, he was murdered, by street hooligans’
‘Shit… What happened?’
‘I don’t know, I wasn’t there, I just read about it afterwards’
‘Were you upset?’
‘I don’t know. I probably should’ve been, but whether or not I actually was, I can’t even recall’
‘Shit’
‘I can tell you though that for a long time afterwards he stayed with me as, some sort of
invisible man…’
I lit myself another cigarette, took a few pulls from it, then went on, ‘The humblest and noblest
virtues often live side by side with the most hardened vices; I got back into college, smoked a
lot of weed and made love to many men. I listened to them sigh and languish in my bed.
I saw them lead me thru great sorrowful cathedrals of flesh; sprawling interior masses… Dark
and sacreligious things... And endless words would sprout out of them. I’d go for walks in the
park in the morning and the dew would be glowing on the lawns and distant clouds of gnats
would be silhouetted by the rising sun and these people, these near strangers would be walking
beside me, talking about their lives and their various accomplishments…
I soon got back into the speed. I started seeing men in the shadows again. Black figures made of
nothing…
Ah God. Who cares, what am I even talking about?’

‘Your life back in Barcelona’
‘Yeah. Move over’
‘Ok’ He did so. And I got up and pulled back on a discarded t-shirt and pair of panties from the
floor, then laid back down over the blankets and rested my head in his lap and took another
pull on my cigarette and watched as the smoke unfurled above me.
‘I love you Max’ I said to him.
‘Yeah. You too’ he replied.
‘Tell me all of this unpleasantness will go away’
‘I don’t know’
‘Ok’
‘…A shame about your friends. Jess in particular seemed nice’
‘You didn’t know her. You didn’t know her like I did. She wasn’t all that’
‘Ok’
‘Do you want to love me again?’
‘Now?’
‘Mm’
‘I don’t know. After all that, I… Why don’t we just, go back to sleep?’
‘Ok’
I sat up and took another pull on my cigarette, then said to him, ‘Look, if you’re torn up about
my friends, please don’t be, those girls were nothing.
We thought we were being cute, having a slumber party, having a séance. It was initially only to
be the four of us, but then Mia and her weird boyfriend Max came over.
Just… I don’t know…’
‘Could we just sleep tonight though dear?’
‘Ok sure. Whatever’
I finished my cigarette and we soon turned off the light on the night stand and I went back
under the covers again with Max.
And I laid in bed before him holding his hand which was drooped over me for a long while
before I started to feel sleepy.
…I had come to find myself walking thru this seemingly endless barren wasteland. I tried to take
my mother’s little pocketwatch out of my pocket but I found it to be crawling with these large
black ants and I threw the thing away from me at once in shock.
And I felt very cold and my breath was fogging up before me and I folded my arms across my
chest and rubbed them.
…I was still in the wasteland and I was sitting beneath an arid dead tree and I was cradling this
baby in my arms, yet it was not my own.
And suddenly all around me were these people and they were looking on at me aghast.
‘She’s got that baby!’ a lady screamed at me, ‘She’s stolen that baby!’ And I noticed then that
the baby too was crawling with ants. And I set it down on the ground and began to run as fast
as I could from the crowd.
I didn’t know how long I’d been running for, but the people were no longer around me then nor
could I see them anywhere on the wasteland, so I stopped running and returned to a leisurely
walk. And the wasteland seemed to stretch out endless in all directions before me.

And after walking on for awhile I came up upon this large long metal rectangle which was
somehow floating a few feet off of the ground. I climbed up onto the thing and and walked over
it for a spell. And its metal surface felt cold to my feet. And I could just make out distant
coastlines before me as I walked and the sun was just starting to set.
Eventually I came to the end of the platform and hopped down off of the edge of it. I walked on
thru the wasteland until I came upon this large, framed portrait of my father which was
hovering in the air before me and I spat upon it.
‘Why?!’ I shouted out at the great painting, ‘Why?! I’m losing my damn mind here!
Where are you?! Where were you?! Huh? I’m losing my damn mind here. It’s not enough that
you should just bring someone into this world, you should have to care for them there after
too’
I then walked on, away from the portrait.
And after awhile I noticed that standing in a line beside me were these somber dispassionate
archbishops, judges, architects of law…
‘They’re going to watch you die out here’ I thought to myself as I walked on, rubbing my sides
for the painful cold. I looked down at my feet and I noticed that they were bare and blistered
and I continued on thru the wasteland. And as I walked on I saw my virgin body hanging from
the branches of a spindly bare tree a short distance from me, and it was slowly melting as if it
were made out of wax.
Awhile later as I continued on I saw some parallel incarnation of myself making love with two
men at once.
I could barely remember who the two men had been then. And I stopped to watch the scene.
‘Oh you little slut…’ I thought to myself as I stood there, ‘fuck you’
I wandered on thru the wasteland for what seemed like years. I watched distant cities and
forests burn. And eventually I somehow found myself in some place like a war-ravaged
Vietnam. And I watched as young men treaded on landmines and fell into punji traps and were
picked off by hidden snipers. Dying men were screaming all around me. And I could still vaguely
remember Max. And after however long wandering around the forests, and blasted out cities of
that war torn country, I eventually saw Max again. And I ran up to him and we embraced. And
he told me of how he’d been injured in the war, and could never be with me in that way again
and I told him that I didn’t mind and that I was just glad to see him again.
Somemore time passed, and I found myself sitting beside Max, in my old room, watching my
youngself standing dressed as a Queen before my old mirror again. PADRE ESTÁ MIRANDO was
written in dripping black paint on one of the walls of my room.
And then Max and I were in these budding furrows at dusk looking at these two peasants, a
man and a woman, standing with a small casket between them.
And the man was holding a small black cap before his waist and had a sorrowful expression on
his face which slowly faded away to that of a bare skull.
And I watched as a wooden wheelbarrow with some sacks of flower on it, slowly extended out
from the chap’s head…
And then the strange, narrow-shadowed man, I’d seen in so many dreams before, began talking

from somewhere out of sight. And although I could not see him I felt certain that it was him,
due to both my intuition and the familiar dispassionate husky tone of his voice.
‘…the scene is one of great severity’ I listened as the fellow said, ‘Apart from the habit of
exaggeration which they gather from her, and from the implication, that she has asked too
many people to stay, and has had to lodge with some others in town, she cannot bear incivility
to her guests; to young men in particular who are poor as church mice and exceptionably
able…’
The voice went on but another one, also seemingly belonging to the same man, began talking
over the top of it simultaneously. And I could only pick out occassional bits from the dual
monologues here and there, ‘…spoke so severely about Charles Tansley and his daughters;
Prue, Rose and Nancy…’
‘…that they could sport infidel ideas which they’d brewed up themselves from a life different to
hers…’
‘…for when she looked at the glass and saw her grey cheeks, sunken at fifty she thought that…’
‘…disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner table directly after the meal was over the
eight sons and daughters of…’
‘…no other privacy to debate anything, even Tansley’s lies, the passing of the Reform Bill,
seabirds and butterflies…
‘…the sun poured into the attic, planks aroused and seperated them, one from the other, so
that every footstep could be plainly heard…’
‘And the Swiss girl was sobbing endless tears as she looked at her father who was succumbing
to a long battle with cancer in the valley of grisons lit up by bats, flannel straw hats, ink-pots
and flower pots, and paint pots and beetles and bugs and the skulls of small birds…’
‘…while she drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned to her wall and the smell of salt
and weeds which were in the towels too gritty with sand from bathing…’
‘…And all that that comes out of the landscape in which you are everything, the trees and the
bees and the birds and the flowers, and the waves and the spray of the salt and..’
I suddenly woke up in my bed and ran my hands thru my hair. And my room was still dark.
‘Ah my god’ I said, ‘what time is it?’
‘…I don’t know’ I heard Max murmur sleepily.
I laid back down besides him, facing him. I kissed him on his forhead, touched his shoulder
softly then said to him, ‘Dear?’
‘Mm…’ he replied drowsily without getting up.
‘I just had the strangest dream… I felt like I was asleep for years. For years. I…’
‘Mm…’
‘Ah god, that was a strange dream…’
‘Mm…’
‘It lasted so long—or seemed to, I... Years… It seemed like I was in it for years… For years! And I
remember you were injured… It was awful’
‘Mm…
…How was I injured?’
‘Like in Fiesta. From some war’
‘Awo…’

‘Yeah. And we were in a war together. Vietnam maybe? Or it was like Nam but it wasn’t actually
Nam’
‘Ok’
Max then kissed me. And we kissed some more, and I soon turned around so that my back was
facing him.
And after awhile as we continued I said to him, ‘Max?’
‘Yeah?’ he replied.
‘Why don’t we go to Africa together? Just—fuck everyone, fuck all of them, fuck all of it to hell
and just go?’
‘Yeah, I’d like that’