It’s been a long time, baby

There are thousands of people on the streets. No cars. Some hold signs, others just sit on the road, and there are those who sing and shout and a couple of them cry because it’s still the best way to translate and absorb the injustices of life and politics. A. knows O. has already seen her but is pretending not to. She’s thirty-three and tired of the bullshit imposed by the social code of how to act in these situations. So, she walks right up to him and grabs his arm.

A: It’s been a long time.
O: Yeah, I know.
A: What have you been up to?
O: You know, this and that.
A: This and that.
O: Yeah.
A: Can you be more specific?
O: (shrugs his shoulders) You know.
A: No, I don’t. Tell me.
O: I’ve been writing.
A: What about?
O: Stuff
A: Stuff?
O: Yeah.
A: What kind of stuff?
O: I don’t know. Poems.
A: Poems?
O: Yeah.
A: You’ve been writing poems?
O: Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing.
A: Don’t you think poems are very nineteen century?
O: You think?
A: Tell me one.
O: What?
A: Tell me a poem, one of those you’ve been writing.
O: Now?
A: Yes, now.
O: You can’t just say a poem like that, out of the blue. And you recite a poem, you don’t say a poem. Do you get the difference?
A: Ok, so go ahead, recite me a poem.
O: Now?
A: Yes. Now.
O: ‘The bombs fall from the sky, covered by the impunity of the Gods…’
A: ‘The bombs fall from the sky, covered by the impunity of the Gods…’?
O: Yes.
A: That’s your poem?
O: There’s more. ‘Men without homes that make their living by holding empty plastic cups but still don’t eat because they learned that it’s possible to survive with only oxygen and whiskey.’
A: What’s the difference?
O: Difference?
A: Yes, what’s the difference between reciting a poem and just saying it?
O: I don’t know.
A: That’s great.
O: Is it that important?
A: Yes. It’s that important.
O: Why?
A: Because I haven’t seen you for more than six months. And all you have to show for is a poem that you can’t even recite.
O: I like my poem.
A:That has nothing to do with it.
(a second of silence)
O: Am I the worst person in the world?
A: I don’t know. But you’re certainly the worst person I’ve ever met.
(another second of silence)
O: What about you? What have you been doing?
A: Nothing.
O: Nothing.
A: Yes, nothing. That’s all I do, all day, I just lose time. But today was supposed to be different. I woke up and decided that I was going to do something. But just look at me. Here I am, doing nothing again. Do you really thing that it’s possible to survive with only oxygen and whiskey?
O: I don’t know.
A: Wouldn’t it be so cool if it was?

He doesn’t answer, can’t think of anything to say so they just stand there, alone in that street with no cars and thousands of others. There are police officers standing on the Parliament stairs and a group of young people who think they’re entitled to climb those stairs and soon that opposition of wills is going to clash and bruise and hurt and maybe even bleed a little.

A Love Story

She says she wants that but I’m not sure if I can get it. You have to be fast in times like these and I’ve been smoking to much, my lungs are sure to be fucked. Those things, one minute they’re there, the next they’re gone. Too much competition and, let’s face it, hard to carry it, heavy as fuck and wide too, I don’t think my arms can embrace that. I’m just not sure if it is worth the trouble. But she looks at me in that way. As if it is a test. No, it’s more than that. She wants to see how much I love her.

Two days before that, as we were eating breakfast at three o’clock in the afternoon, she said something like

‘Everything needs to be expressed physically. We need things. Otherwise, there’s nothing to believe, right? What do you want from me? Faith?’

I had no idea what she was talking about. So I did what I always do, pick up a cigarette, light it up and look at her, not saying a word, pretend to listen and everything will be fine. Out in the distance and on this precise street, the Town seemed peaceful, but there was a stillness in the air, a feeling that was strange then and obvious now. We can never see what’s right in front of us, it’s as if the focus is all wrong and you need to take a couple of steps back to see the whole picture. Like you’re a bad camera or something, one of those old ones, out of date and nobody wants you anymore, not when there’s so many cool things around.

And now, here we are. And I like the version of this minute. I think I dreamed about it once, the empty aisles interrupted by the brief shadows of other people’s existence, the post apocalypse vibe to it. You can smell the flames outside, police sirens as our soundtrack and no one talks during the looting, it would be rude to do so.

‘Are you going to get it for me or what?’

I’m out of cigarettes so I said yes. There is only one of those things left and this is the time. Put the hood up, man up and express your feelings. I’ll be right back, honey, and then we’ll be happy, I thought, as I look for the knife lost somewhere in the deepness of my riot pants.

A fictionalized truth

- Sorry, nothing I can do really, that’s just the way it goes
He said that without looking at me. I guess he didn’t feel the need to. The motherfucker was texting, even if he was almost sixty and had a mustache. Something wasn’t quite right with that picture. But I was warned before, don’t look them in the eye, play nice, they control it, you’re in their turf. It has always been this way.
- What do you mean?
He didn’t even glance, the question meant nothing to him. He just kept at it, big text that one, and he had some skills on him as well, using both thumbs and writing fifteen words a minute. I would think that, if you have that much to say, a phone call would be in order, but maybe he didn’t want to be rude to me. He was working, after all.
- You’re in the middle. You know, not here or there. Somewhere, yes. But not, you know, in the right place.
- Place?
-How old are you? Thirty-seven?
- Why do you ask?
- Because that’s the question.
- How is that the question? What…
He put the cell phone down. Right there, on the table. Then he stretched his fingers and looked at the screen for a couple of seconds. He kind of smiled. When he stared at me, finally, I felt as if my soul had turned to ashes. They are powerful. I was warned before.
- There’s two ways to go about it. Either you’re a veteran, you know, a made name, a ‘master’, as we call them, a national treasure if you will or you’re a young promise, a glimpse of a plausible bright future, someone to look forward to, the one who will replace the other. Do you understand?
I paused.
- No. I really don’t.
He smiled again but still I continued.
- Isn’t there really anything I can do? Because…
- Grow old and don’t die. After all, you can’t get younger, right?
He really enjoyed saying that.
- Isn’t there anyone I can talk to about this?
- You’re talking to me.
- No disrespect, but I meant someone…
-…who is on the top of the pyramid?
- Yes.
- No.
- Why not?
- Because it’s a pyramid. You can’t go to the top of a pyramid just because you want to. There are a million steps to get there.
His cell phone came alive with light and sound. He picked it up immediately, his agile fingers working at it again, pressing those numbers and enjoying it.
- But I’m good. This, the thing I want to do, I think it’s really good. It’s this story about…
Something happened. He stopped texting. He got up. He raised his index finger, long and threatening. His voice was like the voice of God, there was a timbre to it that made you lose your erection for a month.
- Story? Really? And you wonder why you can’t have anything done. You pretentious little prick. Who the fuck are you to think that people are interested in your ‘stories’! And do you really think that we are going to spend money in something as pedestrian as stories? This is the Ministry of Culture. Culture! No, sorry, old habits, excuse me. I meant this is the Secretary of Culture! And you have the nerve to come in here and start talking about stories? Get out of here. You don’t deserve to be here. This is the place where the ‘Masters’ and the ‘Young Princes’ come to be hugged. This is no place for ‘stories’. This is where Culture is made.
And then I left with less than nothing. What the hell was I doing in there? I had been warned. They are powerful. Now I need a drink, a smoke and enough drugs so that I can pretend that I’m still me. I admit that, for a second, I thought about climbing those steps, but it really is a fucking pyramid and I gave up before I even started. I’m going to be a fisherman instead. We don’t need government grants for that, right?

Persona Non Grata

There he was again. Roaming the aisles and not buying anything, what a strange thing for a man to do in a supermarket. He just walked around, passed the Spanish cucumbers and stopped, ‘e.coli free’ it said on a handwritten piece of paper and he believes it. After all, if you don’t take printed sentences for granted, then what’s the point? Society is built on top of that, that stone and what’s carved in it. Moses used it and it worked beautifully. Sculpted cocks in Pompeii endured everything, fire and brimstone and time, and are still alive today. Yes, this strange man was someone who believed in letters and words and symbols and anything documental or permanent, he craved the undying form of everything that’s written. So, naturally, he picked a cucumber and licked it and never, for a second, thought it was a weird gesture. The same can´t be said of the women who stared at him and was five seconds away from calling security.  He noticed the silent judgment and, cucumber in hand (it’s really not his fault if the image was so phallic, what isn’t these days?) he looked at her and said:

‘I’m an artist’.

‘I knew it. You fucking artists. I’m calling the cops’.

For that woman was a firm believer in newspapers and official letters, a law abiding citizen, well informed and responsible and she knew that ‘artists’ were non important people, recently downgraded human beings, their social status revoked, finally, who cares about culture when there’s such important subjects to tackle. He knew that as well, that’s why he was there, in that supermarket aisle, licking vegetables and not buying, because he was now sure that there was nothing he was able to give to society. He sits down and waits for authority, his fate was sealed the moment it was announced that the Ministry of Culture was now a thing of the past, those written things had catch up with him, finally. He would do time, accused of performing oral sex on a vegetable in public (of you want to do that, do it in the privacy of your own home, they said) and then, as he returns to society, reeducated and cleaned of all creative impulses, maybe then he would get a proper job.

Things Children Say

I

They noticed that, every time a plane flew by, up in the sky as they say, the child looked down. Why he did that, nobody knew. But parents never let their young boys get away with anything, so they asked. At first, Gonçalo denied the claim.

‘That’s crazy and I’m not, you know, crazy, I don’t think. Planes are just big pieces of flying metal, what’s wrong about that?’

And then a quick change of subject. He always had a way out, that’s the thing about knowing your parents, it’s easy to make them happy, just talk about things they like and care about. Improving your grades, admiration for their work, that brand new car and how good it smells and how comfortable you sit in it.

But then, at a gas station, another plane and the same reaction. The mother was taking notice, as if he was a lab rat in a Pavlovian experiment. She got out of the car, quickly, opened the door, grabbed him by the arm and pushed him out.

‘Look at the plane’
‘I’d rather not, thank you’
‘Look at the plane, you little freak’.
‘That’s no way to speak to your child’.
‘Why won’t you look at the plane?’
‘Listen, if I do that, it will explode’.
‘What?’

Mother wasn’t happy about that. And she made him look, even if the plane was now flying pass the sun and his eyes started watering up and tears ran through his cheeks and his face hurt.

‘Did it explode?’
‘No’.
‘What does that tell you?’
‘That you shouldn’t look at the sun’.
‘No. What does that tell you?’
‘That things don’t happen like that’.
‘Exactly’.
‘That disasters always take time’
‘What’?

II

‘Say what?’

The parents were now at a party, an election day party, if you can believe that, as if there’s anything to be cheerful about, or maybe there is, a last rave (‘matrix-style’) before the apocalypse, but let’s not get into that now, there’s a story to finish and we’re almost there. The TV was on, naturally, no sound, just lips moving and numbers popping up on the screen, signifying nothing.

‘That’s what he said, can you believe it? And then, as we drove away from the gas station, he said another thing…’
‘Wait a moment’.

This man, the one who just interrupted, he thinks he’s smart. And he is, but not in a good way. And he continued, as smart people tend to do.

‘That thing about a plane? It’s from a book. There are a brief couple of lines in ‘Underworld’, you know, the Don Delillo book? Did you read the book?’
‘We have it, yes.’
‘But did you read it?’
‘Well, we have it, that counts for something, doesn’t it?’
‘Anyway, maybe your kid happen to read it and…’
‘I don’t think so’.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s nine. And nine year old boys don’t read Don Delillo, do they?’
‘So, anyway, what did he say next?’
This woman, the one eager to know the rest, she thinks she’s beautiful. But she isn’t. She’s just trying too damn hard.
‘He said, if you can believe it, that Pedro Passos Coelho is our new Prime Minister. I mean, come on, really? I…’

Something happen on TV. The usual talking heads, dressed in suits and drinking liquid from transparent cups, disappeared. A news anchor looked at us, the public, as if he was five seconds away of telling us that our pet just died. The smart man raised the volume.

‘An airplane just exploded in the middle of its flight, no apparent reason, pieces of metal and humans are falling from the sky and smashing into brand new cars in Portela de Sacavém.’

The mother has only one thing to say.

‘Oh, my God…’.

But it was the father who completed the sentence, that’s why they were married for twenty something years, not one original thought between the two, a perfect couple.

‘…Pedro Passos Coelho is our new Prime Minister.’

‘Disasters take time’, that’s what Gonçalo would have said if he was there, but the young boy was asleep by now.

Exercise in lying

It was over. Again. They sat in the car, no music, no light, as she explained the reasons why it couldn’t go on. He felt desperate. Impotent. John would have cried if he wasn’t so tall, but a man his size could never shed tears. “I don’t have any water in me”, he thought, as he left the car without looking back. Shoulders imploding, hands on his pockets, eyes on the sidewalk, an overwhelming sense of misery. It was over. Again.

As he walked home, gigantic faces were looking at him from the billboards, smiling politicians in perfect haircuts, mocking him with the prospect of a better world. Nothing but lies, there’s a mute hypocrisy in showing your teeth when all the world is gone to hell, fucked beyond recognition and deep in this black hole where there’s nothing to do but tell each other stories, like children trying to overcome our fears. Except, this time, there really is a monster in the closet. No light, no music, no nothing.

That same night, legs stretched on the bed with one ankle over the other, the left shoe still on, he thought of her. How much he would miss having her. Sleep came and, for the first time, it was one, uninterrupted, continuous, like a drunkard lying in a park bench. The blackouts can be friendly, wrapped arms that swallow you whole and suspend the world for hours.

When he woke up, there were no messages on the cell phone. It was early and sunny. John left the house and ran for miles until he reached the river. The wind dried up the sweat; there was no water in him, still. He smoked a moist cigarette he kept in his hand, sun burning his face and each arm as he said out loud; “can you save yourself and kill yourself at the same time?”. Someone was giving away stickers, ‘vote for this guy right here, he will save you’.

‘I’m in pain’, John said.

‘Aren’t we all?’, replied the girl, probably not old enough to vote but committed to her own future. Spend enough hours preaching about the Lord and you will be saved. Work among the Party and you’ll find a job.

He showered with his socks still on. Hot water punching his ear and neck, eyes closed and a new feeling, this time of self-deprecation. A terrible sadness. He then cried for the first time, because he figured it out. There was nothing but indifference in him. He didn’t give a fuck. That’s the day when John found out that all love is imaginary, as shallow as a politician’s sentence. A simulated heartbreak every four years and never a glimpse of hope, walking in a room knowing that everything is not going to be okay, nothing ever works, just going through the motions, waiting for the sun to blast into a big ball of fire and then darkness and, when all things are gone, honesty, at last.