My Little China Girl

By Gordon MacRae

Thomas is a functional boozer who works hard in international development. His first post is in Vietnam where he is tasked with contriving convincing planning and progress reports to ensure that his federally-funded company continues to bank coin through infrastructure development. All the while, he falls in love with Vietnam, the people and their ways. Unrequited and unfortunately, his hard work begets hard time(s) as he is dismissed from his "creative writing" job, and thereby Vietnam, on charges of quoteunquote immoral behavior.. A victim of love, he rambles throughout Asia, from country to country, and girl to girl, fueled by one bottle after another, trying his worst to emulate the frivolous meanderings of his far more successful author friend, Grant. Along this journey, from Thailand, to South Korea, to Indonesia, to Vietnam with double-backs, he strives to re-realize his long-lost goal of finding the one woman with whom he can finally settle down; a life-partner who will not only allow for his perverse proclivities, but also finally put them to rest. Could a final jaunt, this one to China - a land of over half a billion women - partner him with that one woman who can finally contain his affections?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon MacRae
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393929895

Book preview

Gordon MacRae

First Quarter: THE AUTHOR, THIS FAKER AND THE EASYMAKERS

PRE.

1.

Dedicated to Scrupulous Reader: I, too, have never read a book that didn’t start off like a piece of shit - the best and the worst books always do - and I trust that this one will be no different. Only mediocre books start with a bang and burn out. Hence, I do hope from this pointless pre-ramble henceforth the next say 40 pages or 4000 words, you, Valued Reader, deem these passages to be either the best or the worst. Both are correct and, in this book’s case, shall result, mark my 150,000 words, in the opposite evaluation by book’s end, should you make it that far. So, forward ho, Hereward Wordsmith;  pick-up where I leave off and go ahead and pick apart what’s there and point out what’s not, and love this latest instalment for all that it’s worth, if that be only the paper it’s written on and the paper that paid for it!

This is how my best friend has prefaced every novel he’s written. It’s achieved substantial booklore. The first sentence is always the same. After that, he’ll change words and phrases here and there, depending on how he measures the particular book starts against its follow-through, and on how complex the book is about to be, but the message is always in the same vein. Basically, fuck you, reader! Just read on and like it or leave it, but if you leave it you’re missing out and the parts you do like aren’t any better than you are, or something like that. But, yeah, it’s the long finger bookmark, and that, as his confidant, only I know for certain. However, among his readers, as his unconditional followers, it is always interpreted in positive, or at least humorous ways. I gotta get me one of those formers! Well, either of those – a reader or an unconditional follower! Anyway, the strabismus, the myopic point of all this fuss over him and this opener is that it’s not even his line-age. In fact, he borrowed the meat of it from a couple chatting lit at a sandwich shop. He told me (and only me, but has given me the pass to pass it on only if I ever get to writing that book I ween endlessly about), that the female of the couple was explaining to her male companion how some book she had been reading had started off rough, dull in both senses of the word, and ‘all around shitty’, to the point of her not even wanting to continue finishing it, but that it had ended up, by end, being one of the best books she’d ever read. A book she couldn’t put down and had made her reread list. Not really much of an unusual or uncommon claim, hardly worthy of theft, but stolen nonetheless and with pretty legendary results!

See, my friend, he’s a writer and his research consists almost exclusively in taping people's everyday conversations - whether he is a part of them or not. Because he's a writer and regardless of how successful he is, he is neither busy, nor recognizable, and so flimsy enough to slouch wherever others typically break (you know - coffee houses, beer heavens, cocktail airs, anybenches, food huts) and Dictaphone PWR play-while-record others’ talk. He’s not up with the e-times, and one of those dudes who’s proud of that, yet, at the same time, likes to yap on about future e-ventures. Anyway, back to the point, by transcribing his Dictaphone almost exclusively, his books are virtually entirely ripped-off conversation and often even verbatim dialogue with the resultant ‘lectures and lessons’ being incisively relatable. His characterization is dead-on, so say the critics and the followers, and that's enough to make him a huge seller. He's big all right. So big that he can and does claim earnestly, without apparent (and with sort-of-parental) envy that I'm far more talented than He! He has begun to make these calls to his publishers and also to those neatly dressed folks that attend his readings. Obviously (isn't it-ly?), in taking on my project ME, he is showing himself to be lonely and egotistically worn-out and don't and aren't we all (the big but being that he's got money equals fame equals money to repress himself of these emotions!).

Needful to write, I too, but conversely, admire him and think his talent is all there. Of course, when I talk of his talent everybody is right there to agree with me. It's really not for a man with my supposition to say that he's greater than I. He IS great and I'm no greater, but I AM poorer and maybe handsomer and drunk at least as often but not as drunk when I am and not as getlucky in any state. He has been with many, many women. I have been with quite a few, but not as a result of my status or his fame, more just as a result of a tendency that occurs on the pint. The women will always be there, at least in youth, I imagine. I can’t speak for the older me, but right now, in my early 30s, women come and go as I please, sort of. Really, no matter one’s age, sex and love seems to always be a part of everyone's story with other crazy events swirling around or being interrupted or enhanced or diminished by sexlove. And this is particularly the case for those of us who refuse to grow up, or whose circumstances and luck refuse the kind of maturation that would shift the focus away from the carnal.

On one night, I said to him that I want to write a book about one woman and make her the characters, the plot, the setting - everything. She would be everything and everything else would be the things that will always be there. He said, not asked, What is the difference. That was my point, I think.

Everyothernight, more often than not and seldomly seldomer than always, we will talk about women and he'll tell me even more often that, since his fame, he has never spent a first night with a woman sober and he has never made a drunk woman. See, we're talking about women, not the woman - no, no, let's call her the womEn because she is what every women should, could, would be. And the other thing that he repeats that just sounds so right, albeit immaturely so, is that it really doesn't matter to him how many women he's had because all the sex adds up to less lays than is shared by the average monogamous couple waist-high in sexlove.... Not That He Wants A Relationship!! It could be said that when he’s not borrowing the observations of others, his own are quite pedestrian. Still, he has a way of saying them that comes off as a pedestrian adroitly dodging traffic.

Back to this one night, I tell him how this book of mine would work: Everybody seems to want a woman and the ensuing relationship. But we do not, so let's not have either... let's have the womEn, capital E. You, my friend, I say, are famous in your books for your putting men's words out of the mouths of women (he is frequently verbatim, but his characters are deemed as so bloody great because he'll, for example, swapquote my penis-driven vulgarity with the eureka of a deep-thinking, sexually-liberated female character), yes, you are famous for that interchanged conversational exchange, but nevermind that... let's have the womEn. Like everyauthor, at least of the booming years of Yank Lit, who couldn’t resist the mention of  the word/act fuck or Jesus at least once in  their book (especially JUST once, for penultimate effect), we’ll do the same buuut... let's replace it with the womEn! Big E. The woman that represents all women, that best exemplifies just how spectacular a woman can be, but who (or is it whom?) is an individual all her own and certainly a one and only. Yet she’ll opt to be with me. And so on, I went. You know, like she is singular person, but meant to best represent the plural, yet she’d be singularly mine. Shit babble like that. He's got it on tape and when I hear myself talking like that I'm pretty charged, if not effulgent! I'm, well, happy. Or maybe proud. Yeah proud. And drunk. At least as proud as I can be without the embarrassment of being so and/or the usually subsequent feeling that I should re-evaluate my obvious miring in a pagan, aesthetic way of life. Proud, but not loud, on the lowdown.

2.

I had not seen him since I moved further East than he, until we agreed to meet in notorious Sexlove City just now. This is where it all begins. Everything can and will happen in this never tapped-out megatropapocolyptis. Add to the mix me and my friend and women and all will be the utmost. To make a long story short, and a short sentence long, hereforth, this is about women mostly and about the women we're about to meet before it gets too late, the tape runs out and we stumble out of a bar and score reality with related slurred truths about his fame and my future such and we then return to our separate rooms and hide our moneyed pants under our sides of the beds and wake up on the other sides of the bed with pants' pockets disturbed, but unverifiably so by memories that aren't, and ourselves in love with reality because hangovers make us love what we've always had and still have and just despise this throbbing and sinking pain that marks how good life is on the healed side of this endless, momentary tragedy. Significantly, however, this is about the womEn: (maybe I’ll find her tonight, despite my usual drunk pisspoor attempts!).

HE.

1.

You know I met with my publisher... well, my publishing agent's equal in this part of the world - the guy who seems to think he's my agent in these parts. I hardly know my real agent and he doesn't know me, but he's a good actor about knowing me and I'm a good actor about pretending I'm important enough to need an agent and wealthy enough not to care that I'm giving him loads of money for his fairly uselessness.  Somebody’s gotta plug me though, right? Anyway, I met with his equivalent today, except he was a she and is and would be beautiful as either like a lot of these people in these parts, I’ve been noticing he prepared but turns out she doesn't understand that book about the constellations, fesse points, all points being egocentric and egocentrically centered to seem first, foremost and straight ahead to the ego who's or which's always headed in that perpendicular-to-himself direction, right? She didn't understand it and she quoted me that line I just said as I had made myself say in that book, you know?-

Yeah, 'Everyone's Facing Me', but I really didn't get it either. I mean, it was a great book, you know I loved that book, but I loved it because of all those great lines you stole from Parody, right? She had actually been quoting that pretty smart, weird guy? Whatshisname? And but you had her character saying it all. Anyway, I didn't get it at all or weren't you just being bullshit fancy? I mean I think you even said you were being that, right, or I finished in a fashionably dangling way-

orrrrr...? He mimics, so I continue with my roundabout way of taking his side while staying on mine-

Well, what's this with people understanding your work?? She’s your agent, as if she reads your books, no? Anyway, Paroemia says that ‘understanding is overyourhead’ if we’re going to re-hash lines that are not great!.... though it was pretty great coming from a girl who regularly leaves me to string together two broken English sentences...and pick up the pieces of my mangled heart ummm-

The point is: yes, she didn't understand EFM, nor did you, nor did I. That's the point. That's the central, center point that all people are always moving towards. That we don't understand what we think we understand and that we DO understand that we DON’T understand even ourselves SO this kind of makes us all centered and cantered on ourselves SUCH THAT every-one-thing-else is just revolving around this big, comfortable-in-time canter that is just me... and how they're revolving is that they are perpendicular in that when Iyouwe really introspect we actually view ourselves from outside ourselves like this person facing meyous so the line of vision from outside-me to inner-upright-me is a meeting of two perpendicular lines, geometrically imagined, that is. It's almost like everything outside of me is reached by traveling a radius and everything inside of me is reached by going along the radius to my outside-me and then back along the radius to inside-me. THEREFORE, in that sense, In THAT sense, everyone including me is quoteunqoute facing me... And this time, I’m not just stealing from dialogue. This time it’s all basically thievery from the principles of Hustle and HideandGagHer phylosophistry, if you will?! So, I am an academic if only anemically, after all.... Oh yeah, and we even see objects like that, as perfectly geometrically bee-lined from us and facing us, not with its back to us, if we deemed it had a back. You know? Are you feeling me, friend??-

How’d anybody ever think the earth wasn’t round, eh? How were radii ever radical? And flat a fad?!But you know, wow, c'mon. Maybe. I didn't know what it meant and, like you said, neither probably did you but it was a fun book and certainly more than about EFM proper-

And THAT too I assert... HA! That book meant shit and she, the agent, should just bloody-well understand it in the way that best supports her suppositions - I mean the good-hearted, heated suppositions she's been working on for years and can't quite make into strong beliefs. USE my book, baby! Let your backbone slide with my bookspine, sister!-

Your advice is mine. Again - I loved the book. And don’t you dare think for a second that I'm not stealing back when I talk about .... Here it comes - the womEn~-

She’s back! The woman. No, No, the wom...E...n. You know what, you lucky bastard?

No, what?

I, good fellow that I am, I mentioned that book idea to my agent and this here part of the world’s newly met agent and...-

Let me bask in the onset of what I think is good news and demand that you just use her name. I mean what was this agent friend's name?-

Shit, I really can't remember it. It was like Martha, but longer... I know it started with an M, or it had a solid M in it-

But wasn't she from around here? Lieland? So her name would start with a curl or hill or valley or bracket.... and to further draw out - did she have all but the brackets to put to you?

Funny. Seriously. I don't really get you and I can't pin my point. Let's just say her name was Martha

Marked, I remarked and he pronounced-

Oh yes. Kamartha. That was it - Kamartha. I think it is one of those made-up names. It's a sexy name though. She's a real knockerout, did I tell you? She dresses just the way you said you like them to dress - like you were describing the other day about that busdriver chickie doodle dandy. Except this woman is doing it in a more white-collar way, you know?

Yeah, I know. But that woman was not the bus driver. I think she was just the bus driver's...-

Anyway, she had really good lips and I couldn't stop thinking about milkin’ a big kiss. One of these days I've just got to plant one on a passerby chickie totally unannounced. You don't know how much that is a goal of mine. How much I think inexhaustibly about that very simple, yet totally impossible, implausible situation. Anyway, back to my point that you’ve been savoring. The agent woman's name tag said publishing agent but  was written in italic style while her name was really big and above that job title and I was thinking that 'publishing agent' is her 'title' yet it seems to be her subtitle in this case-

This lower case, ha-

Drink your beer and listen, please-

Sorry. But I’m not sure this is going where you sent it. Who needs a beer?-

That I do. Anyway, it was a subtitle in this case. Isn't that a little almost unprofessional, especially since this woman is pretty much universally as hot as hell on holiday?-

I can see one of your female characters saying this now

Blime, you can have this! I'll give you the tape later

WHAT!? I should have known. Seriously, He, you’re bugging us and I haven’t said a thing worthwhile! Warn me in the future so I know not to say anything at all!!! And feed me some kind of laconic tonic like insult, not beer which has, we know, the opposide effect! -

Reminds me, Kamartha thinks PWRing means Power.

Everybody thinks that. If you're going to play little word games, like we do – especially on the sauce – then you have to be prepared for the ensuing blasted word games... play-while-record right?-

Nope. It means pink-white-red-

........In-ter-esting....you mean submission, remission, emission... male sexually speaking? I subvert-

What?-

Well, you know He, of all people you know...cuz submission is a little exciting and blushful, isn't it? Play along!

Granted that may be brilliant, and at the least it has cleared-up the pink-white-red line. I could do as well, but not now. Anyway, yes it means play-while-record... Wow, you're really downing that draught. Good on ya. Apologies for my lagerluster performance, I plan to take you up on that later, but let me just finish my point...What is it I wanted to say?=

Incidentally, the waitress here is not noticing us. We need beer. I'm going to tell her you're famous later on, ok, so we can right this uncharacteristically slow service. It’s not like you can with any decency do that, but I’ll do it for ya-

Feel free, but she's probably got a man who she just loves and will be pretend to be uninterested in me and my apparent superduperstardom! Service might get better though-

No. I'll tell her right and charmingly like... Yeah, the drinking has just kept getting more and more with me, you were noticing before. I’m gonna die of the drink. It’s written in stoned. Anyway, but you were talking about Kamartha, is it? And about the women, capital E, and me, if you ever care to get back to that!-

Right. Soon. So her subtitle is publishing agent, but that's really her MAIN title, isn't it? Professionally speaking and we were. Me and her, her and I, in her place of profession during work hours. So, ask the question: What's Kam's title? imperatorially he and compliantly we-

Publishing agent-

Publishing agent-

Right. So listen up! This is not really right. Do they, the publishing people, really want me knowing her name, knowing her skittin’ name as her name before knowing her as defined by her profession? I mean, which is most important? I'd think that meeting her in the office like I did that I'm going to know what she does first and then, secondarily, distinguish her from her colleagues by catching and using her name. I’m not saying nametags are an invitation to sexual harassment, but they are for me, at least in the world of my wicked noggin. So, this is too much for ol’ me. Here's this redhot woman and the first thing she is doing with me is telling me her name like we're already fucking friends and ready to be more than that, like maybe fuckINGfriends. She shouldn't be doing that unless that's what she wants to be doing, implying whatever, and she has to know that I'm a bad mother - She reads me and she damnwell knows I'm a philandering cunt. Excuse me, but. How the hell are we going to be working together like this? I’m being well lead on! So I said 'Hi Kamartha, I believe that you're my publishing agent. Really great to meet you. I'm HE' and she quickly re-greeted me with Yes, the writer. Hello HE"-

OUCH!!!-

Exactly!!! SO you DO get me! It’s subtle yet kniving, so cheers for that! So much for a friendly relationship! So I'm just a writer and secondarily HE. She’s more interested professionally than you know. And then the next thing that she did was say – which I told you about earlier - is that she didn't bloodyhell understand EFM!-

Conversely though, I, myself, I'd thrill to have somebody know and instantly love me as a writer-

True, so would I. But then lose the name. From now and on, I only and just want to be called by -The Writer"... ha ha, yes.-

And I, in turn, only and just want to be called on by the ‘womEn’-

OH yes, oh yes, oh yes. You do deserve the rest of the news. Man, I'm telling you, why don't you write that mad, sad book so we can once and for all lay it to rest? Just for me, do it. You ARE a great writer and it seems to be a really good idea - better than any idea I ever had not that I ever have any of my own ideas, winkety winky- but I think first you're waiting for the real thing, my man, and isn’t that seriously a bit sad or futile or something?-

Actually, I’m still wating on the rest of the news’,

Oh right, this idea of yours got good responses from both agents. Of course, I think they were just appeasing me and really thinking it was just one of mine, and another cockamamie idea I’m stealing, or something. So, you’re on to something, brother!

And this is how our conversations go.

2.

Hold on, there's the waitress. Hey miss, what's your name?-

I’m waitress!-

Ouch again. I'm sorry, maybe saying 'hey miss' was rude, but what's your real name, please?-

It's Anoesista. What can I do for you? Would you guys like another pitcher? she asks using all the right words, but still sounding somehow as if she only speaks a smidgen English, or a pidgin language, so HE speaks his own-

Yeah. Shit yeah. Hi Anoesista. My friend here is trying to meet the perfect womEn with an E - don't ask - and he thinks that maybe he'll find her a little easier if he's drunk when it's probably the other way around. Beautiful name. A beautifully feminine name you have-

Ummm, okay-ay, so the same-m as bef-oh-ore? and now I hear the overdiscrepancy in that she's perissosyllabic like a lot of these girls with their first language inflecting heavily on their second language speaking, so I, as HE before, pair back perissologically-

Yes. Sorry. Nevermind my famous friend. He’s a writer, you know? For a moment there he thought he had met the woman of his dreams, the woman of his most recent narration, miss agentprovocateur - one word, one name, the woman he'd most like to make and be-

Excuse me-uh, sirs, but I don't-not really know what you're-er talking about t-at all-uh-

Whoops. Sorry again. Let me rephrase. My friend here is a writer and he is quite famous, really. He likes to think he can say anything and he will be clever. I have no excuses for myself. You really are quite an electrifying woman. A really good woman. Let me say that that nose of yours, if you don't mind, has just the right aquilinity to convey maturity and intelligence yet upturned a notch to balance with giddy immaturity as inseparable from youth so the nose knows you are cute as well as sexy, you are! No, I know! You are cute and beautiful all at once. Let’s call you cutiful... am I doing it again???-

Ok thanks, I think. That’s kinda funny. Cutiful, yes? I like it! I do not understand the other things you are saying. You sirs do sound like writers-ers, yes-s and then HE turned-

No, no, honey, I'm not all that famous nor am I much of a writer. This man you have just listened to has got the real talent. And then I re-turned-

If so, the talent hasn't got me and I wish it would, and as you can see by my writerfan over here, his talent has definitely got him but hasn't gone to him-

You sirs must be so-oh funny men but weeeeeeird, hee hee-

——?????-

Anywa-ah, sirs, that's just wu-nuh mohj-re pitcher, right? Of Debacle Bee-uh? and that's it! She speaks extra pronunciations when she’s speaking carefully but never nails the most consequent consonant and that's cute, we think, so HE-

Ah, dammit, make it two and get yourself whatever you'd like. Why don’t you pull up a chair with us, missy, but only if you're free, sweetheart. I want to hear about you and, here’s my deal: if you play real nice and spice, maybe I'll even use you as a character in one of my books, 'Anoesis, is it? I’ll write about you in my next book!'-

Really?!!! I mean, really, sir??? Do I understand right? In a book you are now writing? Ok! Be back! and she showed happy bouncy latter and we were (pseudopedo)-pleasured until she softened into the kitchen to pick up an order. Don’t worry, these girls are of age but wear it young, that’s all.

3.

I can’t say whether that was a shameful or acceptable bit of flirting or not, can you?

Ah, don't bug about it. When you become successful, you'll realize that everything you say is just right. Don't ask me to explain it, just believe me. It's fucking ridiculous, really, but it's cool. We're not funny or original or any of that shit. We aren't - none of us. Really, Annie there has probably got more creativity in her little clinger than the both of us put together if she ever cared to try it out, and if anybody didn't care enough to call it creativity-

So she's just really the same as us, you're saying? But the womEn...-

Annnnnd here's my cue to turn off the tape. Until I know you've started that book, our careers are both going to suffer, and so is our drinking, for tonight’s matter! Ok?-

Maybe, but, OH now I remember: weren’t you mentioning something about your agent and my book or was I just getting ...-

That depends

Depends on what, being the requisite reply

Depends on whether you want to keep talking about the womEn or not!

Ahh, the womEn... nothing but the womEn....

Yes, I talked about you

And the womEn?! How could you NOT talk about the womEn?

Perhaps you should direct that query TO the womEn!

Really, though?

I told her that you have some good ideas and you’re a fine writer

The womEn approves

Cheers and goodnight to both of you

Beerdowns follow!

ME.

1.

Do you know that there are people who have never been told that they are sexy, beautiful, intelligent and best? They have not been told all of these and may not have been told even one of these. I've heard all of these about myself many times and I choose to believe every one of them every time. I'm single and, at the moment, somewhat unloved in the sense that I do not have a partner who tells me that she loves me. I do not have a girlfriend that calls herself so and mine. Even, it's unimaginable that there is a woman who touches herself while envisioning me, that there is a woman who has racy dreams of me even accidentally like I used to dream of my sister's friends before I discovered something generally latent in myself. Yet, I've been told that I'm sexy, beautiful, intelligent, and best many times (granted that sometimes I need to ask why I’m not getting these compliments before they burst forth!). On the other hand, there are many people with mates - some boy- or girl-friended and others married - who have never heard these things from their mates nor from anyone. Is this the way people should be? I don’t exactly know my point here other than like this -

Along with sexy, beautiful, intelligent and best, so is love deemed a bad word too often. It is an irresponsible or overexcited compliment; a rash declaration with pretenses or expectations; or, even worse, hack praise, with evil, selfish or ambivalently motivated pretext.

I have nothing more to say about this, but it bothers more than it should, possibly.

2.

She says that she is not the same as all other women and that I should stop understanding her that way. She reads a very popular book by a flunky psychologist/flunky author which and who tells her that she is unique and that her unique needs will be met by a unique man who has been duly rehearsed and exercised on the recognition, treatment of her incurring, occurring, and recurring needs. Of course, it is up to me to be the unique man who can do her needs. This just IS the familiar situation in which I find myself with a woman. And I’m usually successful just by treating a woman like all women, actually. Hardly unique behavior at all. Which feels at least slightly disingenuous. I suppose I just have to keep this secret.

I, too, will continue to be a failed author and psychologist, and so she likes me. It allows me to be dead wrong or completely in-tune with her feelings (but I have feelings and needs too! - which I don't really seem to realize clearly until they reveal themselves in my moments of angry weakness). Really, she doesn't really listen to me at all. That's why I've loved her. I don't stand by a single thing I've said in my entire life - except that it's been a really long time since I've been wrong. Seriously, I clowned through my puberty years and said stupid but not cool or mean, I depressed my academic years with unquantified (partner-wise) and unsatisfied late-blooming sexuality, and now I work, and dammit, I see more, know more, learn more than almost everybody who also works. So I have to believe my conception of the womEn IS right, and she will be, and that checking my correctness is a waste of time and above the qualifications of everyone else. I will no longer stand by my facts as if they are contentions. The womEn will not question me and I will not question her. Questioning will not be a need. Imagine that? No needs!

Everything will be worked out and work out. She'll - the womEn - just stare at my skits sparing the argumentative reactions to things presumed or assumed. We will finally get along.

3.

The truth is that she/they – a woman, women – make(s) a lot more sense than I do.

It has always been that our lifestyles don't collaborate.

I have no interest in meeting a woman who kills herself with poison and hate. Yet, when she smokes or drinks I am in love with my naughty but otherwise angelic angel. And if she only bitterizes and bitches occasionally, and gets happy and makes happy the rest of the time then I am in love with my sharp-witted, fun jejune. (Suffice to admit, I’m drawn to the bipolar variety!)

Conversely, she has zero interest in my killing myself with poison and hate. She'll never like it. It causes bad scenes and it's not endurable or, rather, we are not so. The latter has been proven to be true and the former is so by definition.

4.

See, women always hold on to me with memories of my charm but have expectations for more and then can't see my mistakes as gerrymanders through the blurs, stars and reds of the charm I once offered. She can't realize the obvious: that if I can say unbelievably sweet and moving things (her call, not mine), then I am capable of and will also halvenet her with absolutely original and absolutely malevolent jibes. In deed, I can't believe my anger and insults at times. They are even more shocking to her, she who had pegged me for a wonderful ligure of a boyfriend. I'm always apologetic and I'm also very good at restating my insults into more acceptable language, but the damage, as she says, has already been done. I've been told by women that I scare them when I'm angry and that it's not their fear of a physical attack, but it is the face that I wear that cringily focuses with fear, anger and hate (for example, it is often the face that her father wore when he became human for the first time in front of her).

It is ironic, or something of the like, that my greatest most memorable lines to her have come when I have been drinking good (though she may be unaware of my imbibe) and that the most hateful, hurtful lines of mine have come when I've been too clearheaded and too abstinent. That's a situation that women will never realize. She refuses to see a good side of, a beauty to, a good excuse for or the necessity of my drinking.

And, unlike me, I suppose she really is quite perfect. She has so many perfections. Her loveliness torments me. She doesn't have to try even a reflex to capture and retain me. I'm so intimidated by her grip on me. I'm so disappointed by the ease with which she can keep me around. I'm resentful of my rarely being truly upset with her. I can't handle her insistence that she doesn't want to be wanted by every man. I won't accept that I won her but I also won't accept that there's a better man than me for her. I keep telling her to improve this 'one thing' that has something to do with dishonesty i.e. the not-wanting-another-man claim. This dishonesty thing makes us fight until I begin to be the instigator by ultimating, out of nowhere, that she must improve this 'one thing' or else we're through. It's all redundant or backwards (or something).  I’ve always seen the stain that was going to spill us well in advance and then can't get over it (Understand that the real problem here is ME, so examples are not necessary). From the beginning, I was drawn to her looks and the way she presented her zesty appearance - especially to me - and not much more was noticed. I really should be drawn to more than that, but shit (isn't beauty just body-boggling way beyond any other attraction?). As easily satisfied as I am to start, I am also so easily dismayed then on.

Perhaps her one very obvious imperfection is that she seeks out clichéd imperfections in me (no doubt citing that psych. book!).

5.

A womAn is not a bad person, really. She is just the agreement of everybody that she is the womAn that best suits men. That they are the women that best suit men. And don't think that I think that I'm not part of this population. I don’t hold myself higher than other men. I don't wish to defy everybody (something like: people defying history... idiotic showmen...deserved to be ignored into repetition until the very repetition drives the showmen mad with his own observed spectacle... as He wrote..."such that the showmen must see his own show such that the showmen he watches is NOT facing him, such that rather he is perpetually facing the showmen and his identity - which he now perpetually questions as he questioned history and, so, everything and everyone -  which cannot be changed because it has stolen him!). No, I'm not knocking everybody. Sure, I think I want better, not deserve better. Hell, if I can recognize that I want better, then maybe I deserve better.

I want a womEn, not a soulmate. I want something more self-reliant, not as connected to me, yet utterly impressive to observe with or without my companionship. A woman who amalgamates all that I love women for yet ....... I don’t know!

Exactly what the womEn will be like and what we will do together - I don't have a clue.

That much I know.

THAT EVENING WITH ME AND HE AND WOMeN WE HOPE TO MEET.

1.

This place has got me up. Not just the bar - the whole area. There's so much going on and only in the last couple of days have I realized that being frustrated is being interested. Why didn't you tell me about this place, you little shit? his talk was mine-

I've been telling you about it for years and I know that you had the schedule to visit... you could have had the schedule. Why do you do all the readings and signings and parades and crap? since he had always spoken against such activity-

I'm not a money writer, you know that. I bloody-well do everything my agent and publisher tell me to do because they're all money-wise and I'm not but, shit, I DO like the money. If I'm told signing books is going to sell books, then I'll do it. It's a sad situation, believe you me-

What do you mean? Sorry, I don't really experience real sadness much anymore, except in others. With myself, I see right and when I stop seeing that I get the hell out of the place-

Seriously, please put those little quips into writing to rid them or materialize them and then go meet your fans. Then experience a sadness that is a realization that they aren't you - not a one, not close. They don't have a fucking clue what you're writing about-

But you don't care about...(about whether your reader understands you)-

Still hold. They don't have ONE clue. Seriously, not one of them has one iota of an idea of your id, I. Ha. but what is really, really sad... no saddening...and sad, actually, is that they aren't like you even a little and they aren't unlike you in any way that is interesting in the least. I had this one guy who tried to tell me that my book had helped him 'reflect his anger'. I told him that it was significant that my book had allowed him to 'reflect ON his anger'. He corrected me and said that it had helped him 'reflect his anger, not ON his anger'. He said that he was now a very calm man because of reading this book. The book being 'Juvenescience'. What the fuck? Reflect his Anger? That Book?-

I don't know what he meant. Let me think... I mean, wouldn't that make him appear to be not-calm. He must have meant 'deflect'-

No. He absolutely meant 'reflect' because a womanfan who overheard our conversation joined in telling of her applied Juvenescience and her path towards 'reflecting anger'. What the fuck was going on? This woman was one of these real sexual enigmas, too, who can't be getting any and you have to wonder if she doesn't get any because she can't and so now has decided it's not for her or she doesn't get any because the thought of getting some doesn't even cross her mindfuck! The thing you do know, not that you really know if she is getting some or not - fuck, I've been surprised at who's getting it sometimes - you know that what started her not getting any was that she didn't turn men and that that’s because she is not pretty, or too booky, or too busy 'reflecting' unseens. Anyway, apparently most of my fans are really quoteunquote reading my books. Unlike my agent, which is a strange twist, maybe! Yes, these fans are reading right into my books while misreading me completely. That's my point. What’s my point?? That my fans are clowns? Partly, but related, that the people who love reading me don't even love me for the reasons I'd like them to.... Then again, the truth is that we really don't want our readers to understand us, and only when they misunderstand us in a flattering way is it a good thing. Break down all your readers and what you’d like from ‘em and the truth is that the best manfan is downright impressively smart and fairly presentable, and that the best womanfan is pretty, young, young and pretty and admires and wants to sleep with us just because we're authors so who, actually, wouldn't have had more than a passing fancy to get down and really deepread one of our books. We’re all just a bunch of pince nay N.A.Y dilettantes, the whole nerdy clowny lot of us. Ahhh, fuck us all!-

Wow! You’re pretty wound up! Really, I thought J was a silly book. A really good and silly book. I don't remember anything about anger. And let me say this, too, Mr. SpoiledShot: being admired for garbage reasons has always been my goal. I don't want to have anything to do with maintaining my fame, if I ever achieve it. Love me because I'm cute, Love me because I'm rich, Love me because I'm this writer or whomever who's really loved. Not that I'm going to take up rip-rapping or impressionism or poetry or any of that real shit-easy writing if you can call it that. And don’t get me started on photography! Call me cute after I pay for you, if you want, pretty girl. Fool me and compliment me and, better, really love me just because I'm so-called important because assuredly my importance has everything to do with who I am and has been, after all, born out of me, though luck and such were factors, too

And this is why you ARE a writer, too!-

I wish. I'm talking-

Talking, Writing, Listening. All the same game. At least you've got the something figured out. You're ready for the shit, more than I was... What's in this drink? It's good. It's making me feel-

That, He, is one of the many cocktails here. The avocado is a really deep taste. Who would have thought avocado could succeed as a drink? The rum is a really cheap, deep feel-

Shit, I'm loving this area. I’ve got a reading here tomorrow and I'll drink these things all the while. Maybe my fans here are pretty? he touched upon and I retouched-

Trust me, they are and they are plentiful. They'll love you because you're well-known and for no other reason, like I was saying. It's a wonderful place. Hot as hell, though, but you get used to it-

The heat was making my eyes sting this afternoon-

Yeah, and I don't think it's the sun. It's the sun plus the heat. Doesn’t hit till well above 30 degrees. Haven’t you taken a take-took, yet? Fast travel but rough and bumpy and the hot air in your face makes you want to vomit I queazed and He-

No shit? I haven't been on one. The hotel sweets told me not to-

Forget about your money here, too. Just forget about it. Let them rob you, you'll still have lots left. Things are cheap. You watching your money, like you need to, is going to make me watch my money which is not what I want to do. This is our vacation. Even if we splurge, our wallets and bank accounts won’t suffer.-

Don't worry, chief. My life is a vacation. Don't worry about me frugalizing. You know that’s never been my angle. How is this a vacation for you?-

How? I don't know - sometimes this place makes me crazy and I miss everybody so much. I've never been so alone, actually. That's true. I love my life, my job's a joke and that's good, I've got money, the women cry when I get sentimental, most people like me, but most people here seem to think I'm either irresponsible or crazy and expect me to prove that I'm not at their convenience - and how the hell am I supposed to recognize other's conveniences?-

So, you’re lonely~ You really do seem ripe for a book writing, I'd say-

Yeah, I've got my hours at work down to four days a week, so I'm writing every night these days and I'm going to give you the book I've been talking about some day- I'm writing this one for you and, who knows, maybe I'll start doing radio shows and parades and book signings and sexstands and moneyblows and gaming and barney-blakes and blarneyspakes and easymakes...-

Should I stop you, mate?!!! HA. Do it. It’s not all fame and guns being a celeb, my boy. There's no blooded better way to show contempt for your fans than to meet em. Actually, I'm doing more and more of these shows just so I can knock my fans and they don't even recognize it. Sure, they piss me off, but I’m boss. Well, they're morons and I am too, but at least I'm learning to be less like them in that I've really stopped admiring this here author me. Hell, I only admire myself when I'm depressed because, then, somebody's got to. Man, what the fuck is in this drink, again?! More, no? he excited.

Since small visual matters somehow become more significant at the onset of drunkenness, I played with a fibril of celery from a tomato drink that was hitting me pretty good, also. I fitted it into a tablecloth's ornamental thread and seam and thought about his life and remembered that sometimes when I get drunk I ludicrously pretend to be a famous writer and nobody treats me differently at all. I followed:

You're still the same man you were before you wrote any books, you know? But you just seem all around happier-

I am and I am. This book will make your life. Expect some money and respect and women, but don't expect any of these rewards to feel any different than they have in the past. Here's an easy trick - ask yourself how your life is going to change once you're well-known. Got it? Can't really imagine anything at all different, eh? Sure, you'll have more, that's all, and fewer worries. But it's still going to be you and your thoughts and that's really all you are, isn't it? For me, it's that I can be afforded and afford vacations like this that makes my life different and better than it used to be. It's that this drink is making me happy and that I was happy BEFORE I drank this drink that makes things great. I'm a happy man. Splittin happy to see you again, too.-

So am I-

And so we are.

2.

This place is known to me a Sexlove City or more commonly and properly and to others as CaneStalk. It is a supercity without a plan. It's people-scaled and, therefore, people-jammed. Everywhere you look there's a sexy woman and a hideous deformity who'll never get to touch the former. That's sad. It's a hot place with a stink for every corner and a skyscraper for every business. I've loved this city for the 14 months I've worked and played here.

We had met at this bar the previous night. This was becoming our meetingplace before we would go our separate ways. He seemed extraordinarily busy and I understood that he was taking in just about all the historic, tourist sites and drinking heavily at so-called contemporary tourist sites. Several times He had expressed amazement to me over the 'hands-off from the men and authorities and hands-on from the women' treatment he had received at some of these nouveau tourist attractions. He has never felt freer and more famous and I can relate. Tonight we had agreed that nothing special would be planned other than our hanging together and being our-neanic-selves and probably some brothelbar- and partybar- hopping.

All of the waitresses here are local and they're all cute and young. There's an enormous palm tree in the middle of this bar and a young barman is shimmying across an elevated wooden beam that sneaks through the cirrus patulousness of leaves previously unattended. It seems that this beamwalker is about to attempt to trim the foliage but why now when we are all here for comfort and not to witness or vicariously experience precariousness? About as much uneasiness as we are accustomed to in these sorts of barrooms is a spilt tray or spilt drink or an eye towards a potentially falling uncoastered drink on one of these slippery, shellacked hardwood tables. The dullerwooded beam runs perpendicular to the inside of the outside face of the bar. It seems to have no purpose, definitely not as a structural support anyway, and the wood is rotten no doubt from CaneStalk's insistent humidity. The palm is vibrant - the leaves are limp-rounded as a whole, and deliciously green individually and together. The kind of stunning green that's as green up-close as it is as a whole. The palm is one of these native Alex pubescent-formed ganglies. Straight and tall.

The rain outside is a flash. Everyone who has walked into this bar in the last few have been spectacles of brightly mono-colored rainrobes and dripping skin and hair. The wetted seem to find this rain new and exciting even though it rains here every other day. The rain may be stopping. Torrential rain comes and goes in a palpitation. My friend's got this smirk that styles him as well off. He's a genius, a patzer, a wit and getting pretty overweight. He has encouraged me to keep eating leafy and starchy so that I will not find the extra pounds that he has. The young barman has reached a plump section of green and is shearing. He is nearly laughing and I don't know why. I try not to think that his laugh is out of embarrassment because such frailty - the nervous laugh - reminds me that I am stronger than everybody who does this and it is virtually everybody who does do this.

There are very many waitresses in this restaurant so I know they're paid nothing. Although, everybody who's working here appears to be happy. They’re wearing their famous Lieland smiles.

That rich local is a lecher. Fucker’s totally lost touch. He's demanding waitresses to look at him so that he can look away and give orders to people of whom he probably can't stand the sight, or for whom he has and gives zero respect (whatever the fuck respect is). He's a bully, a cruel indignant man, a folly and he's waving his club of a hand at the young barman botanist in a gesture that signals stop. His fatface is impasted with drunkred, but he's a heel-tapper for show. Our waitress is scurrying somewhere, no doubt to complete a ridiculous order that this man has made. Now that the enjoyable bar music has been lowered (aha, that was the order!), our waitress is free and unacknowledged. She is a naif. I've seen the rich man's type harry and presumable fuck a whore without even a pleasantry exchanged. It’s all money and sex and that’s it, not a scrap of humanity. His type would have no problem wrecking a sweet girl like our waitress and then she'd cry when I spoke lengthily with her; she'd cry NOT because I'm so wonderful and honest but because I'm certainly so by comparison. The rich man wants to be my friend because he senses status. He'd blackfish my friend as a party member and give him compliments that sounded aloud. My friend would honor and rout him playacting a parody of dignity and respect. I can't stand this man, but I also don't understand him and have never met him, which accommodates my dislike. All of these men can be humanized and I do that upon unavoidable confrontation and that's why I'll never meet the man I'm only seeing before me. I don't want to like the bastard!

There's a mixed couple and I'm jealous of this fairly nerdy man who is delighting this local, attractive young woman. My jealousy is adrenalized as I now notice that this presumably foreigner-loving woman with her long black hair and huge eyes is even more attractive than I thought. She has precious curls of hair lopping across the outside of her huge so so clean eyes and a long outward curl of hair ending near her unearringed ears. Her body is hidden under the table. However, her feet are there for me. Her toes are plump, sexy and soft-skinned and I don't think I can keep looking at her like this. It hurts me too much. I've taken photographs of women's feet and the pictures don't cut it if the forelegs don't make the shot. I've also mouthrounded big toes and something's unfinished there, too, and how I hate to imagine that it may be that I desire the sort of finishing, spurted secretion that warms the mouths of forthcoming, outgoing women performing similar sucking acts upon men. I will not look at these toes anymore because I was really enjoying the rare, unsexy distractions of yestermoment. I push a napkin on my pantent and try to defocus.

3.

So I look at He. That should work! He's thinking about something and looking up at the barman who is retreating to a small balcony which is probably serving its first purpose in a long time. Now appears another barman on the same balcony who reaches out to grab the shears from the barman who was grooming the tree.

The shitty rich man is being alone at the moment but his air of kingshit persists in what I would prefer be a moment of dejection. My friend's got two empty tallglasses on his side of the table and I'm betting that he's, as usual, requested that all empties remain because he thinks it looks funny and tragic and because he'd rather not assume the role of being ostensibly sober to anyone who would wish to talk to him on this evening. An illustrious man like him can get away with being obstreperously drunk, especially since he is almost as celebrated for his booziness as for his books.

Now both barmen are descending the bamboo ladder - one after the other. It seems as though the shears have been left up top. As both men have landed side by side, they then walk in file to the middle of the floor which floors open space variously known as the vestibule, foyer, or please-wait-to-be-seated section.

My friend has ordered some bottles of beer for us (there’s only so many mixed drinks you can have before the sweetness becomes overkill). I have missed an opportunity to banter with our waitress who's, from what I overheard and understood of her unmastered use of my language in a quick conversation with another biz body, got a brother who works here and protects her from bad men. I'm disappointed that she sees some nobility in her brother making decisions about her need for safety. I do not know her brother, but I suspect he prides himself in his devotion to the protection of his sister more often than he ensures her safety.

The two tree-trimming, ladder shimmying, barmen have just grazed by our waitress and her chest has been fondled by a big palm frond. It had been retrieved from the floor where the barmen met for the third time. This fourth meeting between barman, barman and waitress to leaf is a fine piece of flirting and everyone's got a laugh. My friend, once finished pouring his beer into yet another glass, notices-

Did you see that? Have you been watching what's been going on here? These people are offending my stupidity-

You mean with the palm leaf?-

"Yes. These two men have been instructed by the haughty gentleman over there with all the orders to cut off a piece of palm. They have now, as instructed, passed the palm over the chest of our waitress and