He knows?
Of course he knows. Why wouldn’t he know? He’s my closest friend.
And your husband.
But first, he’s my closest friend.
Great. So, I’m ruining a perfect marriage. Now I’m a home-breaker.
You’re not a home-breaker. Who even uses words like home-breaker?
I do, when I meet desperate housewives.
Fuck you. It’s not like you think. We get along well together, you and me. Isn’t that true?
Yes, I think so. Now I was sober. The mushroom’s supposed to last five hours. And here I am, thirty minutes later, my feet turning into lead.
So if we like each other, we can meet.
Sure, for coffee. I’d love that. After all, we are such good friends and we go back such a long way, we could meet and talk about our university days, since we share such a deep platonic bond.
No, I mean, we can meet and we can talk. Or we could go for a movie. Or whatever. Eat pasta. And then if we want, we can fuck. Or kiss. Or we can look at each other naked and play Scrabble. Do whatever we want.
I took her drink and started sipping it. If she was taking my trip, I could at least steal her drink.
Okay, this is how it works. Are you calmer?
I’m listening.
Marco and I are not into the whole bourgeois marriage as a sacred institution scene. We meet other people when we want. You know, this whole love thing, I don’t know how it became so insular and so fucking possessive.
I breathed in. Breathed out. I tried to not be there, but I was.
And you and I, we can be friends. You want another name? Lovers? That’s not happening yet. Why do you need a name for it?
This is crazy. I took out a cigarette. I’m always doing that, when I don’t know what else to do.
It’s called an open relationship.
I know what it’s called.
I thought you wanted a name for it.
LISTENING TO BOMBS
And how long have you had the pain?
Off and on. About three years.
Only when you pass stool?
When I’m shitting, yes. But sometimes it stays for two or three days.
More scribbling. He was paying attention; I like doctors who pay attention, who take their patients seriously.
How much pain when you pass stool?
On a scale of one to ten, if ten is unbearable pain, then I think six or seven at the time of shit . . . passing stool. During the day, about two or three.
A lot of pain. Fingers flying over what looks like Greek on the notepad.
Yes, six or seven on a scale of ten. You can write that.
I understand.
Of course, I don’t know what ten is actually. Because I have never faced unbearable pain.
Okay, okay.
And then two or three during the rest of the day. He wasn’t writing anymore.
And the blood, what colour is it?
On the toilet paper, it’s bright red. In the water, it’s light red: violet? Or pink.
Good, bright red is good. Does anyone in your family have haemorrhoids?
My cousin Vicky. He gets it when he drinks too much, he told me.
Can I examine your belly, could you lie down here please?
I lay down and looked up on his roller bed-sheet.
Pull up your shirt. And then he started pressing everywhere. Does this hurt?
A little.
And this?
A little.
What about here?
A little.
There is some stiffness.
I had seen the symptoms on the online forums. Alicia_47 from Ohio had difficulties for a few months before she went to the doctor and then it was too late. Big_heart_2002 had congested bowels, he spent months worrying it was colon cancer. He didn’t die, but he had to get his intestines tied up in a loop to shit.
Is it bowel obstruction?
I don’t know. We’ll have to do a test.
What kind of test?
Have you ever had a colonoscopy done?
Not yet. I knew the drill: no soft drinks, tea, or coffee from the day before, no nuts, seeds, hulls, skins, no red, blue, purple colouring. After the medication to clear your bowels, stay close to a loo the whole day. Very close. Waseem_bigdk from Hyderabad had to attend office for an urgent client meeting. Didn’t end well.
We need a clear bowel for a good test. Let me explain.
I listened. I already knew. What if in the future, gay parents became ultraconservative. And if one such set had a gay kid but didn’t want him doing anything before he got married. No sex, definitely no poppers. Maybe they’d prescribe antipoppers, to freeze up the butt (like virginity belts or something). Anti-poppers blessed by the Pope.
Sometimes I shock myself with the vaguely disconcerting territory my thoughts meander into. Not because they’re troubling. But because if I don’t hold back, they may venture even further into the realm of the unspeakable. (Realm of the unspeakable! That has a nice and medieval ring to it.) But then if we’re free to say anything online, why can’t we do that in our internal monologues. I think the Internet is our collective monologue. Elon Musk thinks we’re in the Matrix. I think he’s crazy. A voice just told me to say that.
The doc told me about the powder (orange flavor), the gel (rub gently in circles), the procedure (happens all the time), his expertise (if there’s anything in there, I’ll find it). What can you find so deep inside a man? Where does our soul reside? In the heart? Chinese meditation books talk about the base of the spine. Don’t some of those Hindu drawings talk about the top of the head? Every time there’s an extraordinary new scientific discovery, I love how Indians claim it for themselves. Higgs boson? Our Vedas spoke about it 3,000 years ago when they mentioned that which cannot be defined. NASA and Mars Challenger or Discovery? It’s down to the Indians again: you see, Aryabhata discovered the zero. None of this would have been possible without the zero.
When will you be free? What about Tuesday: three days from now?
Doctor, how much will it hurt?
What do you mean?
The operation, on a scale of one to ten.
Probably zero. You will be under anesthesia.
Zero is Indian. But we don’t really know what it means. Sometimes I feel like the square root of -1: totally imaginary, but with some apparent function. I didn’t say these things.
Also, has anyone in your family had cancer?
I didn’t know for sure. But I smiled: holding your cheeks firm helps you concentrate. Resist fear.
When I walked back home I was feeling better. It’s just a test, and if there’s anything, he’ll find it. I could see the tumour inside my intestines: bulbous with little tentacles growing into different organs. Maybe the tumour had a name, Larry. I’m guessing. Larry doesn’t know my name either.
I called Massimo and told him about the operation. He said shit. And then he said he could come over and meet me for a drink. I said no, thanks. Chiara had called once. For the first time, I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I should spend the rest of my life taking photographs of my food and uploading them on Instagram or Facebook? Sometimes it feels like time is cooking us all the time, preparing us. Have you ever seen the Goya painting where the god (I think Saturn) is eating his children? Supposed to be about time and generations and the inevitable. We spend so much time meeting people we allegedly know, and they’re talking about stuff: the latest movie; aborigines and their rights; Bikram Yoga and did you know the positions squeeze your internal organs; have you seen the Double Rainbow and what about the new Mitt Gangnam mash-up; so in Kurosawa’s Rashomon what was the actual story; if the report doesn’t display a significant growth in efficiency the board may have to take some drastic action, and I mean drastic; how was the weekend; does that even matter because so much of art criticism is about perspective that no single analysis could ever be true; what is the director thinking anyway how could we ever tell
, and then Zizek said the first floor of the girl’s apartment was her super-ego; crazy weekend; couldn’t believe he would do something like that, they looked like the perfect couple. You listen and you nod. Then you say something more. Either you say the same thing, or you say something new. And then the new becomes old.
We are all being eaten alive.
I met a young man smoking a cigarette. He had a beard with curly wisps drooping down his face. I asked him where Piazza Venezia was. He wanted to know if I wanted the museum entrance or the entrance to Campidoglio, because I could walk to either side and it would take me the same time. I said I could do both. He probably did archaeology in college and could have told me about the Etruscans who built Rome. But then, why aren’t they just called Romans? Because Rome was a city that had no people, only the hills and the water as clear as the spring skies (his words if he were talking to me, not mine). After Romulus and Remus had suckled on the wolf’s teats, Romulus founded the city. Only the city had no people, so he offered asylum to any criminal or outlaw who wanted to join him (a lot of this riff-raff were the Etruscans). A bit like Australia, without the cricket team. Once upon a time, the archeologist thought he would spend a lifetime digging through the rubble in Ostia and discover, all by himself one late autumn night after fifteen years of investigation, whether the Trojan refugee Aeneas had truly founded Rome (instead of the popular wolf-twins myth which our friend never really believed). Even if only twenty people in the whole world truly appreciated the archeologist’s work, he would be fulfilled because he had answered a 3,000-year-old question.
But now he works in marketing, and only uses his entire education for trivia when he sits for Easter lunch with his girlfriend’s family. Her dad is a banker and nods every two minutes to the young geek’s lectures. His opinion of his daughter’s boyfriend approaches something like contempt. So he asks the boy to pass the olives.
I said thank you (I always say grazie, there is so much to be thankful about. Actually, not really.) and walked towards home. I crossed Via Galvani where Chiara lived. On one end of Via Galvani was the Protestant cemetery: just outside the city walls since non-Catholics weren’t allowed to be buried inside the Holy City. Gramsci is decomposing there. Sois John Keats. On his tombstone it says: Here lies one, whose name was writ in water. But who could have written that? Jesus?
And on the other end of Via Galvani is the modern art museum. It used to be a slaughterhouse, still has the giant hooks where they hung the cattle. Sometimes, they string up paintings or photos on the hooks. Between marinating cows and nameless poets, Chiara and her vagina stew on the ground.
Where is Kurt Cobain buried? Did Eddie Vedder smoke his ashes (rock stars don’t do that kind of thing anymore)? What should we do when Lady Gaga dies? Cover a turkey with strips of her skin? And then Justin Bieber could have the turkey for Thanksgiving. That could be the first sign of the end of the world. We think too much about climate change. We need to focus on the real issues: is a world possible after Lady Gaga and Oprah, another world where Shah Rukh Khan isn’t smirking and Amitabh isn’t playing pimped-up forty-year-olds on screen and Sachin Tendulkar isn’t adjusting his crotch while he takes guard? There is no other world but this one.
In the evening, Federico called me again and asked if I wanted to catch the next game. On my way to the bar, I ran into Leonardo, he was geared up in his uniform. One hand extended in support to the old lady who stays opposite his flat. She was ninety years old (claimed she was 107 and remembers the First World War). He called her grandmother, Nonna. Every evening when Leonardo was allegedly in town, he took her out. Nonna once had a son named Marco. Marco died, so she’s left with just Leonardo who doubles up as a son-neighbor figure. His turtles probably double up as her grandchildren.
Hey, Krantik. Where are you going?
Going to watch a game at Il Cazzo. Nonna nodded. Or her head was nodding; I don’t think she controls her movements anymore.
Che cosa e Cazzo? she asked.
Cazzo is where you go to learn the meaning of life, Leonardo said to her. You don’t worry about this, Nonna. Young people need their alcohol; they need to make sense of the world.
Nonna cackled and I could see her yellowed, toothless gums. Leonardo’s always saying crazy shit to her. She’s losing her mind with dementia/Alzheimer’s. Thinks Leonardo’s her son most of the time.
You remember Krantik, don’t you? He asked her.
Si si. Ma tu non sei Italiano?
No, I said, sono Indiano.
Cazzo.
When I got to the bar, I saw Fede and Laura with another man.
Krantik, my man. Fede broke off to hug me. His lips were swollen and a whole patchwork of bruises ran across half his face.
What happened?
A small accident.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be. It went off perfectly, he said.
There was a guy between them; he had a wizened face, like a dry mango, and a long coat that trailed on the ground.
That’s Batukhan.
Hi, he drew out a hand; the other was still drumming the glass. He had a drooping moustache. He looked like an Eskimo or Central Asian, not swarthy South Asian or Middle Eastern. (What does a Middle Eastern person look like? I want to say sinister, but I suspect that’s because I watch so much 24, so I won’t say it. But now I’ve already said it.) Looked like he had a long-barreled gun in his coat. Or a piece of dried yak meat.
Are you Hindu? He was fluent in English; even a hint of an English accent.
My parents are. Maybe I am.
Which is your favourite god?
Shiva.
Why Shiva? Isn’t he a bad guy?
No, he hangs out with the badasses, demons etcetera (yes, I did that again). And smokes a lot of weed.
That’s a good reason to like him.
The best I could think of.
Jesus is cannibalized every day, Laura said. Perfect for BDSM types.
You don’t believe in Allah?
I don’t know what he looks like.
Do you know what gravity looks like?
What?
Gravity, things falling down.
No. Maybe like an apple? Or a falling plane?
Or a fat man on a trampoline?
Maybe. What about you? Are you Buddhist?
Was Buddha Buddhist? Batukhan asked me.
He didn’t even know he was Buddha.
What did the Buddha say about the world? he asked me.
He said that our actions lead to consequences.
No, he didn’t say that. All that was only made up later. What he really said was all this is a smokescreen. We’re thrashing around in a giant pool of shit, hoping to convert some of this eternal shit into wine.
I never heard that part.
Everything comes from nothing, and returns to nothing.
Okay, that sounds familiar. But I’m no expert.
So what the Buddha said was: there is no consequence of anything. So there is no point having a choice either. All choices mean nothing. Or every choice means the same thing.
Maybe. I don’t know, I said. There’s no point thinking about what someone said 2,000 years ago.
No, there isn’t.
Are you working in Rome? I asked him.
Batukhan doesn’t need to work, Fede said.
I have some money, undeserved and unearned but mine nonetheless, Batukhan added.
That’s the best kind of money. So what do you do?
I travel, he said.
Where have you been?
I was in Lebanon in 2006.
What were you doing there?
I was listening to the war.
Listening to the war?
First the Hezbollah struck, they called it Operation Truthful Promise. And then Israel promised there would be painful consequences. I flew there at once (I was in Sierra Leone before this), the day before they blew out the Hariri Airport. I raced from Beirut to Tyre, where the Israelis were dropping bombs
every five minutes. Rented a basement hotel room, lay down on the bed, and listened.
That sounds a little . . . crazy.
It was tough. There was no room service.
What were you listening for?
The rhythms of the bombs going off. It was the most beautifully synchronized sound I had ever heard. Do you know what each sound meant?
That people were dying?
That with each blast, people were finally given the answer to the question we all ask: what the hell am I doing here?
And you were just lying in bed the whole time?
No, that would have driven me crazy. I had brought my whisky, and I went for a walk every afternoon: bought kibbeh and baba ghanoush from the family next door. I often asked the lady how she managed to concentrate with all the bombs going off. She said she listed to Beyoncé to drown out the sound.
And what’re you doing in Rome?
I’m watching a football game.
What’s your plan here?
Watch the Roma-Lazio game, get a beer.
I mean your long-term plan.
In the long-term, I’m planning on dying. What about you?
This whole place is filled with crazies. I looked up at the screen. Batukhan twisted his glass around on the table. He wasn’t really watching. I saw him eye the English people in the bar a couple of times. Tottenham were playing Roma in the Champions League next week and the city was already reeking of white trash. (What? They’re racist all the time, have you seen the treatment a black player gets on a football pitch in Europe. In India, we love a foreign team; you’d never see that kind of behavior in South Asia. We only brutalize and oppress our own people, never a gora white guy. But an Indian is always pretty fucking racist when it comes to anyone with a darker skin tone. I think I’ll stop my stereotyping antiracist rant here.) There were about twenty of them. The types who would tear their shirts off at matches and throw down flaming chairs. And there were fifty-odd Italians. I like the Italians: you have some hoodlum-fascist types, but they don’t usually hulk around town causing trouble, indisputably proving primate evolution.
What have you bet? I asked Fede.
If Roma wins, I’m marrying her.
If Roma wins, I’m getting another lover, Laura said.
No Direction Rome Page 8