Sentiments v. Syllables (Japanese Bonus Track)

Vegas still hasn’t quite faded from my memory. As I serve two-dollar ginger ale to the Asian men in first class, the two virginal boys prancing in the aisles of Delta Flight 1751 only excite images of masculine knights and their tight fitting unitards. Provoking me with their mushroom tips, these men look happy with their lives, with their ginger ale, while I am left stung by the sour looks of their detestation.

It was a Thursday night when Luc told me I looked pretty, but maybe that was because we were in the hotel bar. He talked to me about France, prehistoric elephants of the Midwestern plains, doing magic, and, to a lesser extent, about his wife, Marie. He also talked about eating my pussy, which was something new, something risqué, convenient, and in a rather depressing admission, essential. In his room he taught me French words, wore tight jeans, and exhibited a steady hand. On Friday morning, I awoke to a note from those steady hands. He wrote in all caps and thanked me.

That morning I ordered blueberry pancakes, charged them to his room, and felt almost nothing. Nothing except that little hint of nostalgia for the very recent past. I’ve found the trick is to try and not think about anything. Try for nothing, look for nothing, because the church of the subgenious is an order of scoffers and blasphemers, dedicated to total slack, delving into mockery science, sadofuturistics, megaphysics, scatalography, schizophreniatrics, morealism, sarcastrophy, cynisacreligion, apocolyptionomy, ESPectorationalism, hypno-pediatrics, subliminalism, satyriology, disto-utopianity, sardonicology, facetiouism, ridiculophagy, and miscellaneous theology.

By the afternoon I had sold the memoirs of my love life to a publisher. They are going to make a board game out of it and most likely nobody will ever pass go, nor will anyone ever collect two hundred dollars. The abrogation of my trip found myself in the airport, snacking on two chocolate chip cookies to pass the time. Remember, dénouement. Other French words: inconvenient, nonessential, etc. In the end I don’t want flowers, or spaceships, I don’t really want anything. I feel cold, like the ghost of someone who used to exist, but someone much happier than I, maybe someone like Marie. Vegas still hasn’t quite faded from my memory.

-mildredratched-