Apartment no. 18
We make love in the semi-darkness. Five children are born. A sixth after I return from prison. There is BEFORE & there is AFTER. Before the after is the PRESENT TENSE. The hardest space to occupy. To live. Everything happens so fast… too fast… & not fast enough. All the information is here. I record the data in a notebook. Read it if you must.
Install this anti-novel… this anti-reality… make it burn eyeballs & default settings & brainwashed minds!
Defect.
Or stay behind.
Totalitarianism is a memoir I have yet to write.
American eel in the East River.
The carnies in a carnival are installing the joy machines in a parking lot across the street.
I am going to lose my mind.
Is it possible to live like a human being?
Mr. Zbraň wants to talk to you.
Shall I say you are available?
Are your thoughts imported from elsewhere?
I write a novel under constant surveillance.
She cannot get my pants off fast enough. She wants my flesh inside her. Carnal knowledge.
She asks me questions. Interrogates.
I am in trouble this month.
I have no income.
I await the trickle of the future.
Is she coming?
Am I coming?
What do you tolerate in silence?
Havel says the regime “pretends to pretend nothing.”
Report to the Sub-Ulterior Minister at the Ministry of the Ulterior.
We must investigate the stellar perturbations & tidal effects of the Oort Cloud.
Say yes.
Say yes to life.
Celebrate.
Is there enough rain left in the atmosphere?
Are you cooling off?
Chilling out?
The pocket machine is an anxiety device.
Shut it down.
Throw it into the fishpond.
Am I happening?
Are we happening?
I write sentences.
Separated by whitespace.
That is, it.
Nothing else.
Your journal entry intrigues me.
Adjunct lecturer.
Are you listening?
Everybody loves my story.
Everybody loves my performance.
I walked the dog this morning. I overheard a woman say it was an election year. She was going to go to Wisconsin & Chicago. She also said not much campaigning was happening. Trump was in court for a month. She asked me how old my dog was. I said nine months.
I thought I might like to fuck this woman. Really fuck her. Make her come on the tip & base of my cock. Doggie-style.
I write this under police surveillance.
Trefry says: Write like no one is watching.
We need to make some rules.
Are you familiar with the Soviet bloc countries?
We emerge from a concrete hi-rise apartment block.
Is there at least a small balcony?
Are you aware of the political reality?
What are your political impulses?
I want to live like a human being.
Are you of an “undesirable political background”?
Are you in the Index of Undesirable Persons under the codename FUNKY GOULET?
I fixed the bathroom sink today. There was a long gelatinous schlong in the pipe clogging things up.
What tram have you taken to “the end of the line”?
Is there a roundabout?
Or do the tracks just disappear into infinity?
A vanishing point.
Beware of the Soviet black Volga.
We were slowly gliding lovers… laying & getting laid…
Are you listening to Bee Gees?
Are you familiar with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev?
To write is to dissent… enough is enough… I want more!
ZIG: Check!
KAMILA: Checkmate!
We are fucking.
She has that delicious blond ass.
Are you satisfied with your “lived experience”?
Are you craving?
Oranges?
Lemons?
Bananas?
Are we Writing People?
The secret police searched the apartment again. I was in my underwear. I really really wanted to sleep. They found no illegal manuscripts. I have writer’s block, I said. It happens to all of us.
Are we Dog People?
Are we People of the Dog?
We walk our dogs in the park. Surveillance vans parked near the bodega. Agents eating bacon, egg, & cheese on a roll, SPK.
Salt.
Pepper.
Ketchup.
Rachel asks for doggie-style.
I oblige.
The news today is oblivion.
Radio & TV.
TV apocalypse.
Blonde with a tattoo. Totally my cup of čaj.
I need more information.
mem[o]ry h[o]le
…a n[o]vel
The sun pulses a distorted blood-orange h[o]le in the sky. It is an uncertain thing. A throbbing ball of fiery plasma. And yet we take it for granted. Assume it will do what it always did. I am a little more skeptical than most. And sometimes I wonder.
I record things. I have no other purpose. Reactions. Thoughts. I have the basic language. Emotions. Desires. I ride the surface of the planet like everybody else. Spinning & orbiting & corkscrewing through the galaxy.
There are spaces between the spaces. You cannot see it. They are invisible. Abstract. A numerical equation. An algorithm. We no longer think fast enough. Leave the thinking to the machines.
I pretend to be a human being. It suits my purposes.
Purposeless purpose.
Beware of purple prose!
The machine investigates the anomalies. Are you an anomaly? Or are you like everybody else? Think twice before you answer.
My job is to make things happen. I open the memory holes. They are portals. They are vacuums. They will suck the air out of you. The breath. Keep breathing while you can.
Prison is a funny place. Time stands still in a cell. Are you a potential candidate?
Are you a writer?
We despise writers. They take themselves so seriously.
Laugh a little.
Fuck a woman. Fuck a man.
Get out of your room!
Cigarettes & beer. Your belly on the small of the back of a woman you used to love.
Howl.
Speak.
We lurch towards Gomorrah. We lurch towards Sodom.
Amerika is on fire!
Europe is on fire!
I can’t be left to my own devices.
Otherwise.
Nothing gets done.
Yes… yes… open another mem[o]ry h[o]le. See what happens.
We might end up elsewhere.
Or nowhere.
Spacetime lingers in the echo chamber.
The machines are talking & I can’t quite follow.
Yeah… I’m feelin’ feelin’ feelin’… kind of hollow.
Zig & Kamila
…another friggin novel by r.g. vasicek
Asymmetrical blond bangs & cult-like green eyes. She likes the thickness of my dick. Fills her up, so to speak, she tells her girlpals. Almost like a gasoline filling station. Yes, Amerika is like that. We are all dissidents. Because dissent is the American way. Ask George Washington. Ask Ben Franklin. Ask Henry David Thoreau.
The metropolis lures us in like a honeytrap. The tall buildings. The alleyways. The century-old pubs & taverns. The People of the Suburbs are suckers for such & sundry. At least I learn to do my laundry in a laundromat.
Kamila has the best ass in Texas. She brings it up to New York in a VW Beetle. Parks it on Park Avenue before she finds a place in the East Village. She meets Zig in a laundromat. He begs her for quarters & laundry detergent. She is a woman’s woman, for sure. All tits & ass.
I am a little dumb, for a boy. I pretend I am smarter. I figure out that if you stare into space long enough, people figure you for a prophet. I use every weapon I can get. I want to be a writer. A novelist.
I keep switching between third-person & first-person. I am very confused.
Amerika has its grip on me. I ain’t going anywhere.
Kamila & Zig keep each other occupied in the metropolis. They get jobs as ushers at a theater. People really do not need help finding their seats. Sometimes they tip. Sometimes not. Zig & Kamila see some of the best actors & actresses in Amerika go through that theater.
Zig wants to write a play. Kamila wants to be a star.
How did I get into this mess? This mess of being a writer. It really is chaos in here, here being in the space of my mind. Not enough elbow room, is there?
We do our thing. We do our time. The metropolis swirls & swirls & swirls.
Kamila & Zig know a couple named Fritz & Marnie. They do everything together. Party together. Sometimes even sleep together. One never really knows whose dick is in who. The kayak trip on the Mississippi is the best. They figure they should swap partners for a while.
Alas! Life is not forever.
Amerika… of all places… of course… of course…
The self-forgetting necessary for a successful fuck.
Underground seminar.
Are you ready? Are we ever?
I leave Kamila & Zig behind. Let them fornicate.
Welcome to the space of becoming.
A risky path awaits you, writer…
Uncertainty.
Ambiguity.
Mystery.
The unknowable thing-in-itself.
Are you a speaker of Attic Greek in the metropolis of Athens?
We drink radioactive water.
We work in the uranium mines at Camp Nikolai.
The landscape is in ruins.
Wasteland.
Upsurge.
We are thinkers at the bottom.
Diagnosis 307.
Kurvafix!
Yamaha RZ-350… žlutý like a yellow-jacket.
Klinovsky!
Tarkovsky!
We reëmerge from the Zone.
The machine parts in our wheelbarrows are beyond compare.
A German shepherd lies next to me in a puddle.
Amerika intoxicates.
The 7-Eleven in Ronkonkoma is where we get our coffee.
I can smell the L.I.E.
I can hear it.
Mojmír is a good name for an anti-hero.
Are you listening?
Are you fearless?
I wander the streets of New York City. Where is the tram to Holešovice? No name is good enough for me. I am Zig. I zig & zag. The N train & its funky route.
The State does not require all of you.
Only a part of you.
Enough to show your acquiescence.
The hand-crank pencil sharpener screwed into a plank of wood. The recessed LED ceiling lights in the kitchen. The mason jar of quarters & nickels & pennies. The Japanese acoustic guitar leaning against a wall of red brick & glass cubes. Morning light from the nearest star oozes in the apartment.
On weekends you wander the gravel trail around Lake Minnewaska in the Shawnagunks.
Are your thoughts intact?
Aired out by mountain breeze?
You pilot the Toyota across the George Washington Bridge onto Harlem River Drive.
The Triboro Bridge.
Astoria Boulevard.
Wherever you go, be there thoroughly.
A laptop pops open on your lap. A machine is made.
Petite machines for the immigrant proletariat.
And the petit bourgeoise.
Are you a French speaker? Are you a Czech speaker? Are you an American speaker?
Is language your language?
Are you Writing People?
Are we industrializing the language?