She, the immortal S, came over tonight, self invited, an hour early as was her want last time, Saturday night.
Drink's scent pushed its way through the door before her, hit me before I felt her presence physically. I can tell when she's drunk the way she can tell when I'm stoned. But we can't pick the opposite in each other. Perhaps this means I am born to be a junkie, her to be a lush.
An hour ago, creeping towards midnight, as I struggled with a cantankerous old PC that I was setting up for a remote connection in to Adelaide, I texted her
"Alone we suffer, together we suffer and survive".
I know that her interpretation of this line could be anywhere from sadness to madness. Just a couple of letters difference, and perhaps no difference really because Ihow she interprets the SMS does not change why I sent it. Torn apart we tear ourselves apart. Held together we hold each other together. It's really that simple. Today I was strong, getting up to a few days clean, and she came over, in her own words, in a foul mood. She is battling her desire to stay away from me with her desire to get gabo the only way she knows how, through me. Not that I supply the gabo, I supply the means to the gabo at the lowest cost.
No risk of the employer catching her hand-in-till, no waking with self loathing from the seedy man's seed still spent on her legs, but all things have a cost, and I like, at times when I am feeling generous of spirit, to think that there is a good part in her that battles constantly, saying to her "You cannot use a man like this, you are a good woman, and a good woman will not sell her heart except to the true buyer".
Other times I feel not so generous, but that is the nature of me and all men, to chop and change, as S said of me the other day. She wanted to spend time with me on Sat setting up her iPod, I couldn't I said, I meet my nephew, come and do it yourself at the flat. I need you to help - OK, I will, as long as it's not a gabo thing.
'I want it to be a gabo thing' she said, and hated herself for being honest, for selling herself like this. The last time we met, Sat night, when I scored for her, I told her she was being unfair, knowing I loved her and would always score when she asked. I know this will be her next ammo against me, and yet I handed it to her willingly, because it was true. But how can it be true when come this Saturday she will tell me "You said you would always score for me because you love me"
(What must it take to say such a thing to a person you shared 8 years with?)
And what response will I be able to give but "And I won't score for you because I love you".
The zen of gabo.
"born into this" says Bukowksi, I must read some of his works, Rachael C read them decades ago and I numbly nodded at my complete knowledge of him, that is, recognition of his name and an association with beat literature.
But we are born into this, S just as much as I, DQ just as much as Algie. We are born, we struggle to stay true to some child formed ideal, then at some point we either die or lose the childhood ideal. Is there a difference?