25th Hour

Monty Brogan 

[standing in the men's bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with a "FUCK YOU" written on it] Well, fuck you, too. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos. Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin' Otisville, J! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 72 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky, whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, cheering the Bronx bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place. [pause] No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

La Dame de Fer (Lady of Fire)

Allez-Roxy bébé,

Like a fucking tourist I was mesmerised by the view of the Eiffel Tower from the apartment. I believe it’s because I don’t have to walk the filthy-rotten streets or catch the stinking Metro hot with human-humidity to go see the beautiful lady. When I do venture out on the Metro I douse myself in parfum, GUCCI Flora to be exact, to protect me from catching some air-born Parisien virus.

From the seventh-floor balcony I can see La Dame de Fer—the Eiffel Tower—and La Meringue on the other side (Sacre Cœur). I feel like the two monuments are a tale of a woman’s l’histoire d’amour. It begins at the church, le Sacre Cœur; the wedding day is here and she is dressed all in white, towering high in her big hooped meringue. Then of course night descends and she is set ablaze by passion on her wedding night. She finds her man unfaithful and sets herself and her dress alight. She is burning, quite a spectacle to behold. Like her bridal waltz all alone, she is dancing—spinning around, drunk and dizzy. She lights up the night sky with her golden flames; for all of Paris to see the rage of her tortured memory each night.

The few times I’ve been to the Trocadéro, once with my lover Driss on his moto, we stood underneath at the foot of the big-skirted girl and I felt like a pervert standing there between her legs looking up at her cunt between her thick thighs. However, the first time I saw her I was with Renaud, an old lover, now a friend. I still recall what we argued about that night all those years ago. He made the point firmly that I was mistaken and that the old lady was in fact a man, who was lying back with his crowning glory, a big-phat-cut-cock with a long-hard-erect-triumphant-metallic shaft and adorned with a crowning glorious head. The nightly display a shower of golden sparkling champagne, like ejaculate all over itself, revelling in its own ecstasy.

I thought maybe now in these austere dark days autumn in Paris, the lady is a junkie. The form is no longer a dress but a heroin needle injecting, giving her a nightly show of exhibitionism, like the Moulin Rouge. Vegas-lights-rock-light. Each and every night there is spectral, a display of exultation from her cocaine high.

I am tired of these beautiful-old-decaying-rotten-dirty-wretched streets and then I think of St Germain. It feels like another world, another life. Set apart, yet now contained within the ever-encompassing open slums of austerity that has crept in from the outskirts of town, la banlieue. The heroin addict has scaled the beige city’s walls. Not only les portes de Paris proper, but all of Europe. So the lady is a stripper, she does her nightly dance and at the end of her act, she burns her dress. She is left naked and in her short, mind-obliterating junkie high she trembles with the champagne-shower-ejaculate all over her body. Coming down hard from her drug addled heights, she has the banlieue bleues.

Walking up rue Marcadet to my apartment from the Metro Guy Môquet (my first mistake!), I asked the barkeep at the brasserie Christophe Colomb “if I could use the bathroom”. He asked directly “if I would be buying a drink?” I answered “non.” Then he replied directly, “NON!” How could a man deny a woman the use of a toilet? The French are fucking special, that is why Napoleon never had his victory march through the Arc de Triomphe and all that remains is just a cauchemar of a roundabout.

L’amour toujours dur… FUCKING L’AMOUR! What the fuck do I know about this emotion? Less than zero! Natta! Nix! Rien! Diddley-Squat! Zip! Zilch! I slept alone last night, yet again. There is always a reason, always an excuse: a motorcycle accident, sick siblings, a razor, a clean shirt, midnight meetings, or just plain old hustling. Me, I will sleep alone tonight like the two nights before. The wind blows, the rain falls, then darkness descends and I am left alone. Perhaps I too have the banlieue bleues?

It is morning here and dinner time in Sydney… Je vais chercher un croissant… Last night’s candles snuffed out, empty wine glasses, his umbrella leaning against the bureau. I think to the Roman goddess Aurora; goddess of the dawn, she heralds a new day, carrying the flame to light the sun. She had a mortal lover as we all do, hers the Prince of Troy.

I would shake the colour off my skin for him and then for some reason I hope that he loves me always, down to my heart-beating soul. Oh, how I hope for la grasse matinée every morning together. He is here now in front of me and we will make love loudly, his heart-beating-pounding-body-and-soul on top of me, giving me what I waited for all night long in the lonesome sounded-out hours of the night before.

What to make of these moments of ecstasy, my happiness always fleeting, never permanent. Then it is my turn to leave and I no longer wait for him; I spend the days and nights without him.

Oh, how time marches on…

Keep well my, dear young friend Roxanne,

Bisous ton amie,

Fayroze!