This Is Memorial Device

by David Keenan

  Everywhere there were old wooden boxes stacked on top of each other (that they used as bookcases). The living room was at the end of a long corridor (that had yellowing pages from old comic strips pasted onto the wall instead of wallpaper) (stuff like Krazy Kat and Little Nemo in Slumberland) and when I first walked in it was really dark and it took some time to make out what was going on (in the room). There was a pair of thick floor-length brown velvet curtains (that were pulled shut) and some candles burning (and some lamps) and on the couch there was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, done up with dark hair and red lips and oversized glasses (her hair like a dark silent river, a river that was moving in complete silence, that’s what it seemed like the first time I saw her) and her ears (don’t even ask me about her ears), I can’t even describe her ears, she had hair pulled back over one of them and it was like seeing the earth from space, the hollow earth (or seeing yourself as a foetus, in the womb of your mother), and she was smoking a cigarette, her arm at a perfect angle (taut, not without effort, but still somehow easy, relaxed), and she was so slim (barely budding) yet (still) she seemed sophisticated and mysterious and old. This relationship is ass-backwards, I said to myself. Her name was Valentine (how could it have been anything else?). This is Valentine, Patty said, my paramour (that’s how he introduced her). I felt unsophisticated (and poor). Valentine stood up and offered me her cheek. I forgot that in France you are supposed to kiss both cheeks so I did it all over again and she laughed but when I looked into her eyes they were like marbles. Let’s get something to eat, Patty said, grabbing his coat, and although I had already eaten I decided to go with the flow.

  We went to a bar and restaurant a few blocks away (which seemed to be their local). The guy behind the bar shouted and waved when they walked in and Patty replied in French (which impressed me). We took a seat in a booth and Patty ordered us a bottle of wine (I would have preferred beer but once again, it was Paris). They both sat across from me. There was something awkward in the atmosphere. We hadn’t mentioned our old lives at all (at one point I went to bring it up but Patty got Valentine in a neck hold and began mock wrestling her so I let it go).

  Money was a problem, they said, they were totally skint (although on a day-to-day basis it really didn’t seem to matter). He was working as a comic book artist (an illustrator was what he called it). They would rise about twelve or one in the afternoon (after having sex, loud sex, every morning) and Patty would appear in nothing but a towel with his newly skinny body sometimes with bites or bruises on it (it was like my old self come back to haunt me) and they would make an elaborate lunch (and drink a bottle of wine between them), always in the dark (which during the day was more like an eerie half-light in the apartment, like neither day nor light, this permanent limbo, it seemed, which was idyllic in a way), and then Patty would settle down to draw at his desk in front of the fire (they had a real coal fire that they stoked night and day) and he would draw all this fantasy stuff to commission (all this sword & sorcery crap) with women with heaving breasts chained to rocks and gladiators and alien assailants. Its good money, he told me, it’s a piece of piss. Plus he would do pin-up art, cheesecake stuff, retro shit and sometimes Valentine would pose for him (so that you would walk into the living room and she would be there on the couch in nylons with a push-up basque and those red lips and those ears and her hair flowing down her back like it was running straight out of Eden). I would walk into the room and I would feel like it was a set-up, like they were both in on it, like Valentine wanted me to see her there and Patty wanted to show her to me (why me, I asked myself).

  I fell into a routine (I had the run of the house). In the mornings (before they were up) I would head over to a boulangerie on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin where I would order the same thing (a baguette with tomatoes and peppers and salmon that they would heat under the grill for me) and then I would sit on a bench in the sun (with the homeless and the beggars and the working stiffs) and watch the world go by. Every few days I would drop in to the bookshop (Shakespeare and Company) and look for my tomboy, my summer love, I called her (although by that point we had done little more than exchange tourist pleasantries). She was never in (or at least never working at the checkout) and I barely knew enough French to ask after her. I wanted my own Valentine (it was that obvious).

  Our evenings were spent in small talk, in drunken reverie, or with Valentine cooking for the both of us, she was a great vegetarian cook (which wasn’t my style, but still), she would prepare huge bowls of this or that (asparagus and pecorino and pine nuts and salad leaves) and have us help ourselves with wooden spoons and then she would present a perfect dessert (a crème brûlée or a perfectly toasted crumble) all in the dark, all in this perpetual twilight that we lived in (which made it extra-special in a way).

  I started to become close to Valentine. She was half Japanese and half Swedish (which meant she was lithe and radiating and secretive and naive all at the same time). Sometimes when Patty was working towards a deadline we would take walks together through Paris, sit in parks (or at the edge of rivers) or wander around art galleries. I asked her why Patty had invited me to stay. He told me about you, she said. This was during an afternoon that we spent at a park near the Sacré-Coeur (one of our favourite haunts). He said you came from a part of his life that he didn’t want to forget. He talks like I’m a figment of his imagination, I told her. That’s how I feel, sometimes, she said, and she laughed. Still, the topic never came up between Patty and me. He had a way of looking at you that dictated the terms of the relationship and of the conversation, like a wall coming down or like barbed wire (then you were in no man’s land).

  The more time I spent around Patty and Valentine, the lonelier I became. Back home I had cherished my solitary lifestyle but there was something about Paris that made me want to become its confidant, its true lover (like back when I was a kid and fell for Glasgow and everyone in it).

  One afternoon I went back to the bookshop (Shakespeare and Company) and there she was (finally) seated behind the till (my summer love). She was talking to some tourist about Gérard de Nerval, the poet (L’homme Pendu, she called him). I stood to one side and picked up a copy of Satori in Paris by Jack Kerouac and read a few pages (like an idiot backpacker). I felt bad, I read the pages and it meant nothing to me, it seemed trivial (impossible even). Things are definitely changing, I said to myself, this is a tragedy right here. I had to put the book back on the shelf. It felt like a death or a stroke (like a voice in my head had finally succumbed to nothing). I walked up to the counter. Remember me? I asked her. Ah, she said, the literary tourist, Le Dilettante. I’m no dilettante, I said, I’m no phoney (I’ve lived it, I went to say, but lived what?). Right then I had the strangest feeling. The girl in the bookshop looked to me like a bird (like a girl with the head of a bird) and I felt like a feather (a feather with no weight whatsoever). It was like I saw the whole scenario from above. I saw the girl flap her wings (a single effortless movement that turned the bookshop inside out) and I felt that sudden lunging drop inside my body (like the velocity of her wings had caused my organs to spill out beneath me), dragged down by the force of gravity as we were lifted up into the air (it only lasted a few seconds but I’ll never forget it). I felt completely empty (like a tomb). By the time we touched back down I knew I was capable of love, of being filled up, like I had never been before, with no heart or liver or hallucinated spleen to get in the way (that’s the only way I can describe it) (I felt liberated). I held out my hand towards her and she wrote her name and her number in biro along my middle finger. Clementine, it said. I wanted to slide it into her mouth but the moment was gone and I turned and exited the shop without looking back (my heart beating elsewhere, far away and no longer my concern).

  On the way back I got drunk (again) and when I got home I fell asleep in the bath (and had to be put to bed by Valentine). I woke in the night with my head throbbing and I had a terrible thought, that my organs were growing back again, that my
body was filling up, and that soon (once again) there would be no place for love. I sat up straight in the bed. The moon was coming in through the skylight with clouds suspended around it like an old man with a beard. That’s not me, I said. And I hope it’s not my father. I got up to have a drink and I crossed the living room where Patty was still awake (working on some art commission) with a small lamp over his desk (that made him look like a lonely planet). I made it to the bathroom and I filled up the sink and dunked my head in the cold water. I need to wake up, I told myself, I’m filling up with stars and planets (and friends and family). Soon there will be no room to move. I walked back to the living room and Patty was standing next to the window smoking a cigarette, looking out over the city (with the dustbins in the street and solitary figures weaving this way and that).

  It felt like the right time to confront him. I moved to the window. Why did you invite me here? I asked him. We barely know each other, really. He took a long draw on his cigarette and then he bent double in a coughing fit. He wiped his mouth on his arm and it left a thick streak of blood-speckled yellow phlegm. You’re coughing up blood, I said to him. Bullshit, he said. It’s dehydration. I’ve been avoiding water. My entire body is pickled, he said.

  I felt like I was going crazy. (What was happening inside our bodies?) Is that why you asked me here, I said to him, so that my insides could die off one by one? He looked at me like he was concerned. What’s going on with your body? he asked me. I told him a bird took away my feelings, removed every one of my organs like it was an operation. Where are they now? he asked me. In the tops of the trees, I told him, at the bottom of the ocean. Then I had a feeling like the dawn coming up (silent, without permission) and I woke up in bed with a view of chimneys and television aerials and churches and clothes hung out to dry (stretching off into infinity).

  I got up the next morning and no one said anything (they were both up early). Valentine had an interview as a cashier at some fashion boutique so for once they had set the alarm and were both sitting around the kitchen table and eating bagels and drinking coffee when I walked in (wearing nothing but a pair of pyjama bottoms). Nice tattoo, Valentine said (back then I had a tattoo of a nautical compass just above my heart to the left, a compass with sea monsters and tides and ships sailing all around it, I’ve since had it removed).

  Patty acted like nothing had happened. I told them I had a date (a girl who worked in a bookshop). Valentine said I should ask her round for dinner. Patty looked right at me, I thought he was going to wink at me (I could almost see his face moving in that direction, if you know what I mean), but then he just stared some more and looked away. In the end Valentine never got the job and so they were more skint than ever but as I say you would never have known it because they kept on eating these pyramids of goat’s cheese and drinking all this wine (and buying new plants and art supplies).

  I called Clementine and invited her to the house. At first she kept talking in French on the phone and it was confusing (I wasn’t even sure if it was her) but eventually she settled down and we made our plans. I had arrived in Paris with little more than the clothes on my back so on the night I asked Patty if I could borrow some of his outfits and Valentine helped dress me (we were about the same size so it was no problem). I chose a pair of boots from the pile at the top of the stairs (a pair of motorcycle boots with a metal eagle on the heel) and I put gel on my hair and I combed it and parted it on the side (the first parting it had seen in a lifetime).

  It turned out that Clementine lived quite far away (somewhere in Clichy) so Patty offered to go pick her up (on his moped). I thought about her arms around his chest, the smell of her perfume on his neck, but I said okay regardless. Back home Valentine and I cracked open a first bottle of wine.

  Clementine looked different on the night (still boyish but older and sadder and making an effort). She was wearing a loose paisley-pattern dress (it came halfway down her thighs) and she had a black woollen shawl over her shoulders and a small purse in her hand. This is formal European romance, I said to myself. This is a movie script. I took her hand and I kissed it and she bit her lip (which was a sign of something).

  How was the ride? I asked Clementine. Hair-raising, she said. We sat around the table in the kitchen, where Valentine was preparing the meal (I can’t remember now but which might have been stuffed something, stuffed peppers, something like that), but the point is it took ages for her to make it and so we all ended up getting prematurely drunk. Have you heard about Johnny’s tattoo? Valentine asked Clementine. No, she said, should I have? If you want to get your bearings you might, Valentine said, and she burst out laughing. Tell me, Patty said, how do we go about avoiding all those sea monsters? Do you have the coordinates? And when should we set sail, exactly? It’s a map, I said, it’s fixed, it’s not a guide, it’s a fantasy. Then why have it? Patty asked me. I don’t know, I said. There’s blood and water inside me that needs an example, maybe. I like tattoos, Valentine said. I’m always asking Patty to have one. What would you have, Clementine asked, if you were going to get a tattoo? Patty thought for a second. I could never have a picture, he said, never a graphic or a sign. It would have to be a word. What would the word be? she asked him. Three letters, he said. How about ‘but’, Clementine said? That’s my favourite English word, that sums it all up, to me. No, ‘yet’ is better, Valentine said. Better yet, Clementine said, what about ‘bun’? Bun, Patty said, that’s nonsense, that’s rubbish. No, she said, a bun in the oven. Tell us, Valentine asked him, tell us what your word is! But Patty just sat there smiling (even in Paris, it was the same old story).

  25. My Dream Bride Which Is Of Course My Mother But Not With a Vagina Please: Dominic Hunter aka Dom aka Wee Be-Ro from Relate confesses to Ross Raymond that he loved Remy from the moment he saw him.

  From:

  To:

  Subject: Re:

  Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 22:39:12 +0100

  My dearest Ross, how I worry about you! How is your chest and that nasty cold? I’m doing fine thank you, keeping well, as well as can be. Thank you for the lovely mail and for the flowers and the chocolates and the little extras, I absolutely adored the Abner Jay record you sent me, that’s right up my street, you know how to spoil me and now I shall spoil you, aha, as in ruin your book by contributing my own two cents worth of material! I always prided myself with my photographic memory, I never forget a face, or a slight, or a bit of rough trade in the toilets at Heaven or down the back of Covent Garden for that matter. Unlucky for them. But lucky for you, my dearest Ross, or at least I do hope so, in this instance.

  I will tackle your queries one by one in my own way but forgive me if they all tend to blur into one tremendous sigh. When I think about the past it’s all I can do not to wilt like a tulip.

  – Yes, I fell in love with Remy the moment I saw him, it’s all out in the open now, the whole cat’s cradle, the whole kitten caboodle, it’s true, I admit it!

  – It was at a New Year’s party where the host, this awful tranny who went on to terrorise Airdrie, to literally terrorise the place, had us all write down our resolutions on a piece of paper and pass them around the table to read, a game of four wishes if you like, and when darling Remy’s came around he had written four goals for the new year, normal ones that anyone would write like stay in shape and get more done, but then he had this one about how he wished to ‘cultivate more aberrant thrills’. What a style! What a manner! Tout Suite! Ooh La La! Etc. I pencilled in a quick number five that said marry me xxx and passed it to the next person without a word, sweet as a nut. Mum’s the word! Of course when it came back around darling Remy saw it. But he had no idea who had written it. Who wants to marry me? he asked. Of course everyone denied it. Including me. Which made it all the more delicious!

  – Back then he looked like a young Tim Buckley. A young Tim Buckley cherub floating on a musky cloud of pure calm. He was really so calm and collected. And th
en on stage he would release the beast. That’s what I would always say to him. I would give him a pep talk before we would go on. It’s time to release the beast! I would say. That would drive him crazy. I told him he should have been in stand-up, in drag, preferably. But he was uncompromising that way, alas and alack!

  – I was more of a performance artist in those days. I would dress up like a clown or a mime and I would play this big fuck-off amplified single metal string instrument. I had built it with dustbin lids for resonance and a wooden brush for a neck and a piece of fence for a string. But I would play it like I was in a silent movie with really exaggerated gestures. Totally oblivious to the din I was making. I based my style on the scream queens of the silent era. No one cared except one person, darling Ronnie.

  – Ronnie was my partner at the time I met Remy. Ronnie saw me do this performance at Zanzibar in Coatbridge. I was a regular at Zanzibar in Coatbridge. It was an oasis. Quite literally. A refuge, a haven. I think it even had a neon oasis on the sign outside. Plus there was a back room nobody knew about, just the queens, the queens of the scene. During the performance I got so carried away with my own devilish approach to experimental cabaret that I almost severed an artery in my wrist while playing the damn thing! Ronnie was the only person there quick-witted enough to get me off stage. He wrapped the wound on the spot and drove me to hospital. He was a non-drinker even then bless him. He told me that was when he fell in love with me. Oh my! Sitting in casualty, dressed like a clown! A tea towel stemming a wrist wound! You can see his type right there! They say you fall in love with your mother. They say all sorts of things. So I fell in love with my mother. So maybe I did. Ronnie was a heartbreaker. A real tough-looking salt but inside such an inquisitive nature. Such a faithful heart. I have so much love for the sincere seekers of this world. And he brought that kind of intensity to every aspect of his life. That’s why he was a non-drinker. He had to be present at every moment. He insisted on it. So that he could silently marvel at it. What a champ! He was my dream bride which is of course my mother but not with a vagina please.