- i don't really wanna know what's good for me -

diary: "journey with a silver bullet," they caution.

2021-03-02T12:53:57Z

1.

Tonight, we're leaving England, as he still calls it (Great Britain, the United Kingdom).

The trail of blood I've left across London is too thick, Thames-like in breadth, and we have only had time to collect the essentials from the factory in Bexley as a result, hunters at our heels. Clean clothes, his old writs and the necklace he found me in Paris. The diamond weighs like a head on my chest.

I remember the feeling of his body against mine in the tub, the force of his hands on my hips, his volume beneath me. Inside me. You don't fuck yourself on diamonds, oh, trust me, I have tried. It's all show, no pleasure. For him I'm all pleasure, nothing left for which to show. I have never been so stripped before, and I've removed my clothes for a million eyes, haven't I?

Since I have no reflection anymore, I can't see what I look like, every layer peeled off. But I feel it. I feel free.

Weightless, even with diamonds hanging around my neck.

2.

We're crossing siren country.

After the sun set, Spike took me up on deck where there's view of the waters, they're dark and troubled, frothing like their very own type of beast and the salt was in the wind, and the wind was beating us in the faces. We'll be sailing for another ten hours, our cabin crammed and dark, the electrical lights digging into every corner, yellowish and flickering. We shared a couple of cigarettes after smashing the smoke alarm.

He calls it lying low. I hope lying low entails fucking on too-narrow bunks to the sound of waves hitting the hull. I hope it entails disturbing the other passengers with even louder noises, crashes and creaking and unapologetic moaning near the end.

I hope he'll call me Maddie again. I hope he'll reduce me to exactly so few syllables.

And maybe the sirens will hear us, outside, maybe they'll recognise me as one of their own and keep their tentacles off what's mine. We didn't pick Denmark to look for a fight, but I suppose if they start calling, I'll feel invited anyway. They say, if you can't beat them, join them.

I got him either way.

3.

Math can be very easy - Denmark is fifty percent island, fifty percent Germany's dick and one hundred percent country, oh, doesn't that add up? We crossed two bridges to get to Copenhagen, I hear there's another connecting us to Sweden a stone's throw from here. The larger bridge saw us in a semi-exciting car chase, the local police not too impressed with Spike's runaway approach to the toll charges, but he's a demon behind the wheel, isn't he, my good boy and we lost them. Or they lost us, let's be completely honest.

We're here now. Abandoned house on the outskirts of the city, if you can really call it that. Compare it to New York or London or Paris, I mean, compare it to Chartres and this must count as a countryside vacation. Christiania is its own little kingdom, people in these parts are stoned a lot and I try not to eat the locals, unless I actually want to get high. Pity, because no one will miss them, so they're temptingly easy to snatch.

Right now, though, I'm not in the mood for easy, am I? No, I'm in the mood for hard.

Mm...

4.

He fucked me behind the Royal Danish Theatre tonight, no doubt it beats the British Museum. Didn't the vikings eventually conquer England anyway? Denmark wins this round, I believe, the only parameter on which it counts for anything. I'm still a bit sore, oh, he fucked me so thoroughly. Our little game got him going, didn't it, a bit of adrenaline, some sense of hunt... I do want to set him in motion, I mean to take him places, after all.

Will I be as good as him when I've passed a hundred, though? Or will I be even better? Watch out, my dear - I'm coming for you.

It's like hide and seek in reverse.

5.

Things go by strange names in this place, the Glyptotek (from the Greek word for a collection of statues, I'm told), Rundetarn (the Round Tower, how concrete, because that's what it is, a very round tower, not square, not a corner in sight) and Arnold Busck Boghandel (a bookshop, heavenly) down the street from it. The weather has been cloudy with a side of rain as we're quickly discovering is the default for Denmark around this time of year, so Copenhagen has been explored as if I weren't dead and ready to burn at the first touch of direct sunlight.

To be alive is such a nice pretense.

Danes eat a lot of fish and drink heavily which makes their blood taste very potent. Many bad things can be said for this little pickle of a country between greater and no doubt more interesting nations, but it's a dish. For lunch, I had a lovely man called Caspar and he was so kind as to pay my books for me first at the heavenly bookshop I mentioned before when I came up short. It didn't cost me anything, not even a real smile, whereas it cost him his life.

Equality is a dream, you'll have to sleep your way to it. Charles Bukowski would no doubt agree with me, I don't know about Leonard Cohen. I don't know about Spike.

I must remember to ask him when he gets back. It looks like rain, doesn't it?

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poetry: letter.

2021-03-02T12:21:28Z

Letter
Leonard Cohen

How you murdered your family
means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body

And I know your dreams
of crumbling cities and galloping horses
of the sun coming too close
and the night never ending

but these mean nothing to me
beside your body

I know that outside a war is raging
that you issue orders
that babies are smothered and generals beheaded

but blood means nothing to me
it does not disturb your flesh

tasting blood on your tongue
does not shock me
as my arms grow into your hair

Do not think I do not understand
what happens
after the troops have been massacred
and the harlots put to the sword

And I write this only to rob you

that when one morning my head
hangs dripping with the other generals
from your house gate

that all this was anticipated
and so you will know that it means nothing to me

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poetry: bewitched in new york.

2021-03-01T11:22:12Z

bewitched in New York
Charles Bukowski

the lady was the most unfaithful and terrible I had
ever encountered and I knew it and she knew it and she was
both ugly and beautiful at the same time and the
two of her just sat there on the window
ledge of that open hotel window
in New York City on
one of the hottest days of all time, no
air conditioning, no fan, we sweated and
suffered and waited for something
to happen.

I was drunk, she was on drugs, we had just
concluded a slippery bit of
copulation and afterward she said, "you son-of-a-
bitch, we're stuck here in hell!"

"good," I said.

then I saw her fall out of the window, we
were four floors up, I heard the scream,
her body was gone.

then it was back, she was sitting on the
window ledge again. "did you see that?" she
asked. "I fell out of the window!"

"good," I said.

"but somehow I pulled myself back in!" she
said.

"good," I said.

"is that all you can say?" she asked.
"good?"

"I can say that I think you're a witch or a devil
and that your window act just now proves
it."

I felt that by falling out she had lifted my
spirits and then she had deliberately dashed
them by climbing back
in.

"so I'm a witch or a devil, huh? well, no more
ass for you!"

"good," I said.

sometimes you live and stay with a woman and have no
real idea why.

with her I knew: it was the simple, fascinating,
unrelenting mystery and terror of
her self.

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