Mathilde wakes up. She sighs softly. It’s Tuesday today, isn’t it? It’s always fucking Tuesday. She starts idly touching herself, staring up at the ceiling and thinking. Yep. It’s Tuesday. She sighs again and crawls out of bed. Strolls over to the window of her cramped twelve square meter Parisian studio, starts rolling a cigarette. Lights it, starts smoking while gazing out at her beloved ashtray, the city of Paris.
“Good morning, beautiful”, she says.
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she’s late for work, and she doesn’t really feel like talking, even if she appreciates the greeting.
Mathilde finishes her cigarette, heads over to the bathroom and empties her bowels. It is still, very definitely, Tuesday. She washes her hands. Grabs her comfy jacket. There’s still food in the fridge. There are still plenty of rolling papers and filters and tobacco.
She’s got everything she needs. She sits down and starts to write.
Mathilde is writing a book. It’s called Dick Butler and the Quest for Gazza.
Richard Nicolas “Dick” Bulter, Esq, was a reknowned English adventurer and philosopher living sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is his story. For reasons completely irrelevant to the actual story, Dick Bulter was tasked with a quest. He was to find and embrace Gazza. Who or what is Gazza, you may ask? That is completely irrelevant, as well. It’s not the destination that concerns us, but the journey.
Our story begins with our hero in the city of London, during an epoch of great hope and great tragedy. Stuff happened, everywhere, all the time.
Dick stands majestically on a street corner and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t smoke. Smoking for idiots.
He doesn’t know where Gazza is, but he knows at least one place Gazza isn’t, and that’s here.
Mathilde takes a drag of her hand-rolled cigarette and ashes out the window. She knows how the story is going to end. And she’s already written the beginning. Now she needs some sort of a plot. A way to connect the beginning and the end.
This is going to prove tricky. She finishes her cigarette and rolls another one. She’s going to have to think about this, and this entails going outside. She throws on a jacket and a pair of pants, grabs her wallet. Her wallet has a nice, crisp twenty euro bill inside. This is good. It’s around 14h, which means it’s possible to find someone selling hash in the neighboorhood. Excellent. Nothing helps thinking like good hash.
Good hash isn’t always easy to find in Paris. Hash, however, is. Mathilde, being a lady of wealth and taste, albeit one with a lot more taste than wealth, prefers the good stuff, but at 14h20 on a Tuesday, that’s probably not going to be found. So she settles for the first twenty sac she can get, and takes it home to purify it. She has a hair straightener, 25 micron steel mesh (basically, what you’d make a screen door to keep out mosiquitos out of), and some wax paper. She cuts a bit of the steel mesh, wraps it around the hash, wraps the wax paper around that, then heats up the hair straightener and squeezes the wax wrapper and steel mesh wrapped hash with it. There’s a faint sizzling sound. When she takes the thing out, the cannabis oil has melted through the steel mesh onto the wax paper, leaving the impurities inside. Mathilde smiles. Quality hash. She heats up a knife with a kitchen torch, uses another knife to scrape a bit of the hash oil and drop it onto the hot knife, and inhales the result. Predictably awesome.
Maybe that’s why she likes cannabis so much. It’s garanteed fun. Yes, that fun comes at a price - Mathilde is perhaps a bit less social, and a bit less likely to leave the house.
But boy, does she feel pretty awesome right now.
She’s got that whole ‘plot’ thing to figure out, but you know what? She hasn’t had an orgasm yet today. And it’s Tuesday. She decides to put her hands to use doing something more interesting than writing post-modern literature.
It’s a pity rave parties don’t often happen on Tuesdays. If they did, we could fill this space with a lovely depiction of a rave party, starting with the transition “meanwhile, several kilometers away…”. Alas, it’s Tuesday. There is no party happening.
Mathilde used to believe that there was always a party happening in Paris, if you knew where to look. She’s started to doubt that. Leon will do that to you.
Of course, any mention of the phrase “Leon will do that to you” should be followed by a disclaimer similar to “was it really Leon that did that to you? Or did you do it to yourself? Did you realize you truly loved Leon, and fly into a blind panic, where you did everything you could to sabotage your relationship with Leon, because if you aren’t happy with yourself you can’t be happy with someone else?”
A mild cocaine craving gently flutters in through the window and works it’s way through the smoke filled air of the cramped Parisian studio to Mathilde’s nostrils.
Really. Hash is supposed to take care of this sort of thing.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. Dick Bulter was not tired of London in the slightest, but he felt a strong urge to leave the city and head for the continent.
Dick gets feelings like that sometimes. A character in a story, destined by the plot to be somewhere at some specific time. Somewhere to be, because if he’s not there, the rest of the story can’t happen. And the story has to happen. That’s why the universe exists. For this story.
There are many ways to leave the sceptered isle of kings for countries where the food tastes good and they drive on the right side of the road. They can be roughly classified into three types: plane, train, and boat. Swimming, for the foolish.
Dick isn’t foolish. He has a keen appreciation for the miracles of modern industrial captialism, and he’s going to take a train.
He’ll take the Eurostar. Why not the plane? Heathrow is a shithole and Saint Pancras is beautiful. As for boats… Newhaven is also a shithole.
Dick isn’t superstitious, but he is a little stitious. He wants a nice trip, so he’s going to start in a nice place.
Mathilde loves it when works gets done. She’s not very good at actually doing work. But sometimes, she kinda makes a vague effort to be where she feels like she should be, and stuff happens. Things are ‘accomplished’, somehow. The To-do list, if it actually exists, shrinks a bit.
Feeling somehow responsible for the words that just appeared on the page, Mathilde pats herself on the back, then goes out to buy cigarettes.
Cigarettes taste like shit. Fortunately, if you smoke a couple, you can’t taste them anymore. And nicotine is honestly pretty nice. Well, it’s nice at first, and then it can get a bit unpleasant as the human body struggles to get rid of a highly toxic alkaloid secreted by the nightshade family of plants in order to not get eaten.
Humans are pretty intersting aren’t they? Plants make toxins to not get eaten, and humans smoke those plants and inhale the toxins because they happen to stimulate certain receptors in their brains.
Mathilde is human. Enfin, to say that is to define Mathilde, which is somewhat tricky. One could define ‘Mathilde’ as a consciousness, a thing that is experiencing reality. But that consciousness is experiencing reality in the mind of something that looks a lot like a hairless chimpanzee walking on two legs and calls itself a human being.
In addition to marvelling at the miracle of existence, Mathilde gets to do stuff like get angry, cry, and smoke more.
She gets to feel sad, because Leon isn’t there anymore.
Whatever.
Can’t unsay what has been said.
Can’t unbreak what’s been broken.
There’s a book that needs to be written.
It’s one thing to fuck up. That happens, people are human, they fuck up, it’s what humans do. It’s how they learn.
But you fuck up, and know you fucked up, and YOU DO IT AGAIN.
Why?
Dick alights in Paris, Gare du Nord. Gare du Nord is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the nicest part of Paris. It’s rather smelly. The people there aren’t very reputable, and with good reason. Pockets get picked. Tourists get scammed.
He goes outside and takes a deep breath, inhaling a metric shit-ton of stale cigarette smoke and filthy urban grime. Delicious. He’s not too sure where to go next.
Dick travels lightly. He has a backback, with spare underwear, spare muscle shirts (Dick always wears muscle shirts) and a spare pair of trousers.
Note the use of the terminology ‘trousers’ rather than ‘pants’. Dick is English. He grew up choking under the oppressive grip of the monarchy. He calls the long garment that covers the legs ‘trousers’.
Dick wear muscle shirts because they take up less space in his bag, and because they show off his sexy arm muscles.
Dick is fortunate enough to be travelling with a bank card with ‘enough’ money on it. His bank card is like a gun in a Hollywood movie. Never empty.
As such, he decides that the first step might be to find a hotel. He doesn’t fancy the look of this neighborhood, so he decides to first explore the city a bit until he finds a hotel in a nice part of town.
Mathilde pauses, sips her cup of tea, looks at what she’s written. Okay.
The story has officially started. Stuff is going to happen, and soon, that much is obvious. The main character is going to be wandering around the city.
Something unexpected will pop up. But what?
It’s getting dark. Wired up on caffeine (if Mathilde were more of a pedant, she’d go around reminding everyone and their mum that tea contains caffeine), Mathilde is heading towards the Cafe Menil. It’s one of the many, many bar/bistro/cafes near Menilmontant. The orange glow of streetlamps is already lighting the streets, and the last rays of the sun disappear as Mathilde arrives at her destination. Her friends are there. There’s Candice, and Isis, and Ernest. Beatrice texted to say she was on her way, and Heloise was originally going to come but cancelled.
Beatrice is running late because she was at grappling practice. She’s actually really good at grappling, which can be a useful skill in some situations. Situations in which grappling is useful don’t often happen in the world Mathilde lives in, however. Paris is too respectable for that now.
Paris has more or less cleaned up her act. Okay, maybe ‘cleaned up’ her act isn’t the mot juste here. There’s still dirt and dogshit and cigarette butts and day old urine everywhere. But Paris has sold out. Filth doesn’t seem to interfere that much with the all important business of selling Louis Vuitton bags to rich tourists. Violence does. Revolution does.
Paris used to be quite the revolutionary, back in her day. She was really something - the queen of the counterculture.
And then she grew up, got a little to accustomed to the comforts of capitalism, and now look at her. No more barricades, just Apple stores and Starbucks. She’s sold out.
I wonder if she ever looks at herself in the mirror and thinks “my god, I’ve become the very thing I raged against”.
Mathilde greets everyone, grabs a chair. Tristian, one of the waiters, comes by, Mathilde orders a mojito. They make good mojitos at the Cafe Menil. Expensive, and not the best mojitos, but good. Mathilde needs a lil ethanol to unwind after all the caffeine.
Ernest and Candice are talking about something, and Isis is listening. Mathilde tries to figure out what it is they’re talking about.
I want to see you again.
I want to look into your eyes and see you looking into mine.
I want to feel your touch again.
I want the sight of your smile to melt my heart again.
I want to taste you.
“Really? Taste you?”
"Yeah.”
“like seriously… taste you?? that actually happened? people, like, actually say that sometimes?”
“yeah. well… one person. one time. but yeah.”
we’re just hugging, we’re just hugging, we’re just hugging, oooooohhh my god wow. Yes. WOW. This is so marvellous. Wow.
“really? a text message containing the words ‘if I told you I thought about while I was inside someone else, would you take that as a compliment’? That happened?”
“yes.”
smoking a joint, cheap street hash and Pueblo cigarettes, outside Pere Lachaise. It’s night. the warm orange glow of the streetlights makes everything look so beautiful. Mathilde passes it to Ernest. He’s going on about the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational. She’s only half listening. The warmth, of the light, of her friend, of the smoke and tobacco and hash … it’s nice. She feels happy inside. Her mind is free to dream. Her imagination plays freely.
It’s always a bit awkward to buy drugs from a dealer after you’ve told them you’re quitting.
Never stopped me before though.
Mathilde wakes up. It’s not Tuesday. She’s still pleasantly stoned-over from last night, but it looks like a wake’n’bake is in order. She rolls herself a small joint, and heads over to the window to smoke it. She doesn’t really feel like writing this morning. She just wants to get stoned and forget about the world. It’s proving harder than she’d like. She’s stoned, but reality is seeing it fit to remind her about the world she’s trying to forget.
What to write today?
Empty. Today Mathilde’s head is empty. And she doesn’t feel like walking either, she doesn’t feel like actually trying to fill her head right now. She’s fine with it being empty. Maybe kinda prefers it that way. It’s more peaceful when it’s empty.
Dick Butler passes a guitarist playing an arrangement of ‘Hey Jude’ on the street as he walks south from Gare du Nord, down to the Louvre. Paris has the usual imperial pomposity that she tends to have during such moments. It’s a cool, brisk day, and as Dick makes his way through a sidewalk populated with cool, brisk people, he gently wonders what the next part of the path to Gazza will be. There’s a certainty about his actions, an air of a man who is doing exactly what he wants to be doing, or at least what he would want to be doing if he actually wanted anything. He moves, purposefully, poisedly, perfectly, with grace and vigor down the street.
He reaches the Seine, crosses it, starts heading southeast, along the riverbanks. He ends up finding a suitable hotel in the 5eme arrondissement. He gets his room key, goes up to his room. It’s a simple room, a bad and a bathroom. Standard hotel amenities.
Dick drops off his bag, keeps his wallet and room key on his person and goes out. It’s about 4pm (16h, for the French), and Paris is lovely.
“wait a minute! what if I’m writing the wrong book?”
The Adventures of Skandiddlydudlius Skandilus Maximus Karkarus Proud Senator of Rome
Skandilus smiled, proudly. He was proudly reclining in the proud Roman sun in his proud Roman villa’s luxurious garden. He exhaled, with pride and satisfaction. He was satisfied. His prize Greek gardener slaves had done an exellent job. His luxurious garden was tastefully extravagant, like an Egyptian slave girl beaten within an inch of her life for impudence on a full moon.
Skandilus enjoyed tasteful extravagance greatly. He was a known member of the secret society of men enamored with tasteful extravagance. His prize Macedonian tutor slave had taught him many, many things about tasteful extravagance. He was something of a connaisseur in matters of tasteful extravagance.
Skandilus decided to make his way to town, to bathe proudly at one of the local Roman proud public bathhouses. Skandilus greatly enjoyed proudly bathing with his fellow proud Roman bathers at one of the many proud Roman bathhouses convieniently located around the proud city of Rome.
Mathilde has to pay rent and buy food and drugs somehow, which is why she has a job. Mathilde works at H&M, selling clothes.
She doesn’t particularly dislike her work. She wouldn’t do it if she didn’t need the money, but it’s overall a pretty decent day job. It pays the bills and doesn’t leave her feeling too exploited.
As Skandilus sauntered proudly through the proud public bathhouse, a young legionnaire with firm, muscled buttocks caught his eye. Skandilus was proud to see such fine Roman soilders. He washed himself, with pride and vigour.
“there’s no fucking way I can get an entire book out of this. Slavery and homoeroticism work for like a couple paragraphs, not a couple hundred pages. Fuck.”
There is a theory of creation which posits that all artworks exist ‘out there’, in some magical realm of the imagination, and the job of the artist is simply to help them come into the ‘real world’. If this theory is correct, then the job of the artist is basically that of the midwife - helping something come into being. Part of this can entail removing obstacles to the work of art’s existence. Very often, those obstacles can be found in the very self that is suppposed to be responsible for helping the art into the world.
“Well, yes, I was angry, and maybe that’s why I called you stupid, vain and self-centered. The fact is I still love you. I love you because you’re you, and if you’re stupid, vain and self-centered, well, I love that, because it makes you you. It’s not always enjoyable, loving you, but I don’t really have a fucking choice, do I? And even if I did… would I take it? If I could honestly not love you anymore, would I even want to? I was wondering what is worth living for, if it’s not love. I don’t honestly know if there is anything worth living for, outside of love. Life doesn’t really make sense without it, but what do I know, I’m just a stupid, vain, self-centered twat.”
There are times when Mathilde wishes she didn’t smoke. Life is in many ways easier if you don’t smoke. There isn’t the constant stress and pain of inhaling toxic fumes into the lungs, having the body send pain signals, and then ignoring those pain signals by inhaling more toxic fumes into the lungs.
In some ways it’s harder. Smoking is good at overridding pain from other sources. When it hurts for a non-smoker, you can’t just inflict more pain on yourself to ignore it.
On good days, the book writes itself. This isn’t a good day. Mathilde is stuck, she needs a plot and it’s not coming to her.
Her first instinct is to do some sort of cop-out: have Dick find some bullshit scroll telling him he needs to do 12 quests to find Gazza, and then think of 12 quests, ideally each in a different, fantastic locale (because Mathilde realizes writing accurate depictions of real places can actually be quite hard), and boom! plot done.
Honestly, it’s a good idea, so she’s letting it hang out in her head. The obvious question it implies is “what should the first quest be?”, but no obvious answers have come to Mathilde yet.
Sometimes, a piece of writing will appear basically fully formed in Mathilde’s head, and all she has to do is get it down on paper. This does not seem to be one of those times, regrettably.
At other times, she has a vague idea of where she wants to go, and as she writes, it becomes clear. She gets to watch the piece forming before her eyes, her hands following some unknown guidance, bringing the work in the world.
And then there are the times where she actually has to try to write. She’s not very ‘productive’ on those days. She shows up, because if there’s one thing the whole Leon fiasco taught her it’s that you should always show up, and ideally when you show up, actually show up, sober, well-rested, well-fed, and stop using your stupid break-up with that moron who didn’t even truly love you anyway as an excuse to be miserable, the world needs you right now and it’s kinda tired of your bullshit. She shows up, but on the bad days, she doesn’t stay long. Mathilde is not actually a good writer. People credit her with good writing, but all her best work is really just her showing up and God doing the rest.
On days where she shows up and God doesn’t… well, she’ll hammer out a few shitty lines over the course of a painful hour of so. And then she’ll go numb her pain with something - pornography, hashish, ketamine, alcohol, junk food, anything really, and she’ll pray tomorrow will be better. Sometimes, the prayer works, and tomorrow is one of the good days. It hasn’t quite yet occured to her to ask the question “is there a way we can get God to show up more often when we write?”
“okay, for the first quest, I want flying boats. Like I remember that one random browser game I stumbled upon once, the one with the djinn and the vaguely oriental vibe… I want that kinda vibe for the first quest. How do I do that?”
The port town of Cali is generally sunny.
“man, describing made-up places is just as tiresome as describing real places… at least you don’t have to worry about getting the description wrong I guess.”
The port town of Calivia is generally sunny, and the climate mild. It is a Mediterranean climate, similar to the climate in Marseille. Of course, in the particular parts of the universe, things are slightly different. Airplanes do not exist here, and neither do combustion engines.
There are, however, various forms of magic that circulate in this part of the universe. In addition to humans and the animals known to us from our world, there are various magical creatures that exist in this world.
How Dick arrived in Calivia is a topic best left to the reader’s imagination. He was there to get the Sacred Scroll of Silencia. He did not yet know how to get the aforementioned sacred scroll. Seeking to change this, Dick left the room he was renting in an affordable but well-maintained and highly respectable hotel in the center of town and headed towards the port. He was going to ask around.
“the djinns need to make an appearance. Soon.”
On a good day, when Mathilde steps away from her writing, she feels happy. She’s had days where she spend literally the entire day feeling like shit, and then finally, after dinner got around to writing a few lines, which led to a few more lines being written, which led to a few more after those being written… and next thing you know she’s happy again. Life is not so subtly reminding her that she’s here for a reason, and that reason is writing.
“oh fuck. Writing an entire, fucking credible description of a magical port town. And while we’re at it, imparting a few timeless lessons on the fundamental nature of the human experience. Fuck. I have a day job, you know. No one is actually paying me to write this stuff. And like… yeah. Okay, yeah, I do love writing. I love getting lost in flow on the page. I love expressing myself like that, I get to see all that is beautiful in my soul come out. But Christ… this shit feels like work you know? Like how the fuck can anyone actually enjoy inventing a fictional city? …
I remember when I was a kid. I didn’t have many friends, and I’d read those Redwall books. I’d get lost in them. I found the Redwall Online Community, back in the early 2000s, back when it was actually a thing. The geocities Dibbuns Against Bedtime website and all that. Back when Brian Jacques was still alive. The Vulpine Imperium… I used to draw out maps for cities, for entire continents.
and then…
I dunno.
Being cool started to matter. I started smoking, tobacco and weed. Other stuff too, but that’s different. Techno music, the day job, fashion… Writing was always there, but it went from Brian Jacques to David Foster Wallace. Maturity in some ways, I suppose. Or a loss of innocence.
Sex started to matter. I guess. Masterbation, porn… puberty.
Fuck it.
It’s about time I take those fucking truffles Steffy brought back from Amsterdam as a present.”
The truffles don’t taste too bad, as far as psychedelic fungi go, which is nice. It’s Friday night, half past 20h (that’s 8:30PM for you freedom lovin’ ’muricans). Mathilde smiles. It’s Friday night baby! She’s done with work for the day and she’s going to take a nice looooooooong walk along the river and wait for the shrooms to kick in. It’s May. Paris is lovely this time of year. There will be partiers all up and down the quais de Seine, but she’ll still have space to be with herself.
She’s kind of stuck on this book thing. The words don’t seem to be flowing like she’d like them too.
Maybe she should quit smoking again, she wonders. She hasn’t smoked in two days, mostly because the minor MDMA binge she went on kinda left her to weak to leave the house.
To be fair, there’s something to be said for MDMA comedowns inhibiting the creation of artificial worlds. Mathilde looks back on her childhood. She used to eat tons of chocolate, which, mine de rien, is actually a psychostimulant.
She does feel like in some ways chocolate can help the imagination, which in her mind explains the correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel prizes. She recalls her friend Manon, at the time doing a Neuroscience PhD, using that as an example of a spurious correlation, but in Mathilde’s mind it’s not a spurious correlation, anymore than the correlation between playing lots of guitar and smoking lots of pot is spurious.
Personality, Mathilde reasons, is largely influenced by biochemical factors. Mathilde knows it’s true for her. Feed her a beer and a joint, her body relaxes and she expresses herself more confidently. Feed her some MDMA, and she’ll dance more intensely - up to a point, she can feel that neuronal overstimulation right now. Feed her some mushrooms (oh wait), and she’ll alternate between hilarity and deep soul-searching. Feed her some ketamine…
okay, maybe not ketamine right now.
The point being, she could see regular chocolate intake, coupled with other genetic and environmental factors, as well as a certain psychology, leading to the sort of work that wins Nobel prizes. She could see it. She believes it.
The thing about reality though, is it doesn’t care much about beliefs. Reality is what’s still there, once you stop believing in it. That said… beliefs are real, aren’t they?
In the way all ideas are ‘real’. Which is to say… they exist. They interact with people.
People treat them like real things, people fight over them, and blindly follow them into the dark.
So…
Ideas are real. Beliefs are real. They are things in reality.
Just because you don’t believe in the number 7, or in the seperation of church and state, doesn’t mean that concept will go away.
Huh.
Looks like that “reality is that which is there after you’ve stopped believing in it” quote is kinda bullshit, isn’t it?
Figures.
That’s what you get for trusting other people’s quotes.
It’s like the Ken Thompson quote about “never trust software you didn’t write yourself”… except for fuck writing an entire OS and web browser from scratch, and you didn’t come up with that Ken Thompson quote, did you? So don’t trust it.
Quotes aren’t fucking software kid.
Now go outside, jesus, you need some air.
Well. Mathilde has started smoking again, that’s a bit of a bummer. She does truly believe she is happier when she doesn’t smoke. Smoking makes her unhappy in the same way writing makes her happy.
At some point during her walk Mathilde had the urge to go looking for Leon. It was probably the truffles.
Leon was predictably not found.
Mathilde had a dream about Leon once, shortly before she started writing the book.
“Once you gotten everything you need to get, and got rid of everything you need to lose, we’ll be together.”
Mathilde really doesn’t feel like writing today. She doesn’t even feel like asking herself the question of “what does this bloody town actually even look like?” She decided while out walking that it should be like Marseille, but with the pollution and misery replaced by magic. She’ll keep the corruption and the drug traffic though, those are an integral part of the charm of Marseille.
She briefly wonders to herself if it might not be easier to just set the damn thing in Marseille and throw in a magic genie, but then realises that it’s been a while since she was in Marseille.
She might get some details wrong, god forbid. To be fair, cities change. It’s a work of fiction, the details aren’t that important. Some of them can even be wrong.
And she could have the genie transport Dick to the magic version of Marseille.
What was it called again?
Calvia?
Jesus.
Yeah. Massila. Spelled backwards… Alissam… no… Alimass. That sounds nice.
Yeah, that could be good.
That could be two entire chapters, done properly.
One for finding the lamp in Marseille, the other in Alimass… doing… something.
“but I like being miserable! I’m having fun here! This is fun for me!
fuck happiness, it’s too much fucking work. Not fucking with that shit, no sir, not one bit.”
“people are really stupid, aren’t they?”
“oh yeah, totally. Did you hear that thing in Brazil, where there’s flooding due to climate change because they chop down all the forest, and the people there think of all these crazy conspiracy theories involving jet trails and weather antennas in Alaska to explain it, and meanwhile they just merrily keep cutting down trees because global warming and climate change are a hoax for them.”
“of course. It’s never your fault, is it?”
“yeah. One of the problems with being stupid is it oftens blinds you to the fact that you’re being stupid.”
“wait a minute though… we’re people too aren’t we?”
“uh oh. We might also be stupid.”
Mathilde stares at the page.
“there’s no way I can do this.”
She goes to the window, rolls a cigarette from the pack she just bought, lights it, smokes it.
Back to the page.
“fuck it, here goes nothing…”
Dick was wandering around central Marseille. The weather was predictably lovely, the city was predictably trashy, loud and chaotic. He meandered towards the Noailles market. The smells… not all of them good. The sounds. Contraband cigarettes for sale, always Malboro.
Someone made eye contact with him. Gestured him closer. Dick approached the person.
“you are Dick Butler?”
“yes.”
“you seek Gazza?”
“yes.”
“then you must have this.”
Dick examined the object that had been thrust into his hands. A lamp. Exactly like the one in the Disney Aladdin movie. Huh.
Well that was awfully simple.
Dick looks around discreetly.
In ancient times, certain Mediterranean cities had patron gods or goddesses. The patron god of Marseille is clearly Hermes, the god of thieves, travellers and traders. Crime is not just tolerated here, it is actively encouraged. If a theft is underway, the bystanders, who are anything but innocent, will not attempt to stop it, but rather find useful and creative ways to help the thief - or occasionally rob him of his newly acquired loot. It’s the basic concept of ‘depannage’ - you help me today, and I’ll help you tomorrow, for a definition of help that completely disregards the concept of consent when exchanging valuables. You didn’t need that wallet, it was weighing you down like a bad relationship.
In Marseille, picking someone’s pocket is a way of saying ‘hello’, and stealing someone’s bike is the traditional way to welcome them to the city.
Still, Dick prefers to ensure there aren’t any Disney copyright lawyers around. They can get nasty.
Just to be sure, Dick decides to put the lamp in his pocket, and rub it once back at the hotel.
Unfortunately, the city of Marseille is rife with pickpockets. It is the petty theft captial of Europre. Anything that isn’t nailed down will be taken. Anything that is nailed down will be pried loose and then taken.
It stands to reason then, that before Dick can actually get home and rub the lamp, someone will try to take it from him.
Pockets will be picked. Valuables will be taken, and their abscence discovered. Thrilling chase scenes will be had. The moment when the lamp actually gets used will be delayed by a precious few plot points, giving the harried author more time to decide what happens after.
Chase scenes can’t be that easy to write, as far as Mathilde can tell. She wouldn’t know, she doesn’t have much experience in the matter.
Mathilde is trying to quit smoking again. Her strategy this time is replacing “smoke a cigarette” with “vape a bowl of weed”. It is a little funner than smoking honestly, and much easier on the lungs, which she is happy about.
She is kinda stoned all the time though. The occasional holiday in reality might be nice, she thinks to herself. Also, why am I so hungry all of a sudden? Oh right, it’s breakfast time.
The proud Roman legion commanded by Skandilus fought bravely. Their firm swords thrust with switftness and alacrity, deftly weaving their hard blades into the soft, vulnerable flesh of the barbarian enemy. As they penetrated deeper into the enemy lines, packed tightly in formation against the rear of the enemy army, the enemy’s rear buckled under the enthusiastic assault. The proud Romans were firmly asserting their dominance, the enemy having to choice but to daintily yield and accept the power and majesty of the Romans.
Mathilde vapes another bowl and thinks to herself
“okay… the book gets read in order, but I don’t have to write it in order, do I?”
It’s a rainy spring day. There’s something about getting stoned while it rains outside that is supremely comforting, like a cup of hot chocolate is in 20th century literature.
Mathilde sits down on a chair at the group’s table au Cafe Menil.
“so how do you feel now that it’s over?”
“… I dunno. I’ve been getting high a bunch lately, which does kinda confound things as well. I guess.. in one sense relieved that it’s not going to work out, but at the same time, I’ve kind of lost a bit of hope in the inevitable goodness of life.”
” because you believed in this ‘inevitable goodness of life’ before it?”
” well, I mean, there were moments where… yeah, everything seemed like it was meant to be and everything would always be better no matter what.”
“wow. That sounds pretty nice.”
“yeah. It was.”
As the valiant Romans firmly rout their barabrian opponents, the proud Roman officers of the proud Roman legion gather to discuss their next actions. They are proudly located in the command tent. The command tent is proudly located in the center of the Roman legion’s camp.
“I like listening to music while I work sometimes. You just get into like this flow state, you know?
you’re kinda just bopping to the beat and you watch the words show up on the page like magic before your eyes.
it’s beautiful.
I guess you could say I kind of live for beauty. My definition of beauty, my favorite thing, is anything that gets me feeling a joyous sense of awe.
I have a friend who said she loved seeing people’s eyes sparkle. I love it when my eyes are sparkling.
Nothing makes me happier than moments that make me feel like that. My entire life is justs blundering around in the dark, hoping for more of those magic moments. ”
It’s end of day and Mathilde is stoned off her tits. I guess that what happens when you trade your cigarettes for vape bowls of weed, she thinks to herself.
Skandilus stood proudly, his polished breastplate proudly beaming with the soft radiance of a Retina display on a 2020 MacBook Air with a lusty Apple Silicon M1 chip. His proud legion had vanquished the enemy warriors and captured their settlement. The time had come to decide how best to integrate these meek barbarians into the proud Roman republic.
“How show we best integrate these meek barbarians?”, he asked the assembled officers. His strong, proud voice resonated gently off the fine cloth that his elegant and sumptuous command tent was constructed of, coming inexorably to titilate the ears of the assembled war council of officers, like a well-saturated picture taken with the tastefully extravagant camera of a 2024 iPhone 14 Max running the newest version of iOS in a warm Starbucks restaurant on a quiet street in London while it rains outside.
“okay, the answer is something like
ENSLAVE EVERYONE AND USE THEM FOR FREE LABOR BACK IN ROME,
but I’m not sure how to get from where I am now in the narrative to
there.”
Mathilde finds herself mecanically reaching for a rolled cigarette, realizes there aren’t any in the house anymore. No, matter, another bowl… but she realizes what her body is secretly craving is nicotine.
And yet, somehow, she’s managed to stay smoke free today.
Small victories. Small victories.
In theory, Mathilde believes, they add up.
“I’m serious, if you listen to yourself talk about the guy, it boils down to ‘absolute twat who gives me nothing but grief but hey he shows up and the sex is good’. Like that’s literally your relationship”
” … uh … well, I mean, I think I’ve grown as a person, maybe it helped with that…”
” maybe you can grow as a person without having to deal with colossal amounts of shit? In fact, maybe at this point the colossal amount of shit isn’t worth dealing with anymore and is stopping you from further growth as a person? ”
” … well… now that you mention it… ”
I remember the way your face looked when you asked me if you could kiss me. I’ll always remember it. It was so lovely…
“Like for real Stacy, get it together.”
“Words on the page. Just get some words on the page. Doesn’t matter if they’re bad, you can always edit them later. Just get some words on the page.”
The thief dashed to the left, ducking into another small, crowded side street. Dick was hot on his heels. He gracefully ducked and dodged around obstacles and innocent bystanders, the distance between him and the thief steadily decreasing.
The thief glanced back and saw Dick catching up. The thief’s eyes widdened. Wrong victim today.
“yeah, and so I switched to vaping, having smoked anything in like a few days… it’s a lot nicer like this, honestly. The high is nicer, my body feels soooooo much happier… Honestly, I feel more in control of my habit, you know? Like even if I am a deeply flawed human who makes bad decisions, at least I’m getting a bit better at decision making.”
“I saw an artice in the Guardian today… so there’s this lady, right, and she’s engaged to be married. Like two days before the wedding, her fiance dies - something wrong with his heart. Comes as a huge surprise to everyone. Lady gets sad, naturally, spends some time mourning her dead fiance. And then one day, she finds out he was seeing another girl like the whole time they were together.”
” uh… okay…”
” and he died, because of a heart problem that no one knew about… It’s like… his death mirrors his life. The whole time, there’s something going on with his heart no one knows about!”
“uh… right…"
Having recovered the lamp and regained his hotel room, Dick took a moment to sit down. He should have expected the theft, in hindsight.
Dick rubbed the lamp. A djinn appeared. The djinn resemmbled a wisp of magic vapor enemating from the lamp, that coalesced into the shape of a human female upper body: torso, head, and arms. It kept changing color - first a magnificient deep purple, then subtly shifting through indigo to a sparkling blue, which then smoothly transitioned into a deep green and then a golden yellow, then back to green, blue, purple, turning pinkish then back to purple again, endlessly iterating. Different parts of the djinn changed color at different times, giving an altogether spectacular effect.
The djinn spoke.
“Greetings, Dick Butler! I am Djenny. I shall be your magical companion and guide for the next part of the journey.”
“Delighted to meet you, Djenny”, replied Dick.
Djenny’s voice was light and clear. It had a certain ringing quality to it, like every word had been spoken inside of a cathedral and then teleported to the air just in front of Djenny’s mouth.
“The next part of the journey shall take place in Bassila, a city in a world much like yours. It is a port city. The people of that world do not use combustion, and there are many more djinns there. The mayor of the town is corrupt, autocratic, and inept. Because of this, the people of the town suffer.”
Dick raised an eyebrow. He was here to find Gazza, and he had zero intention of being the hero in any other stories right now.
“The mayor keeps a piece of treasure hidden in his hoard. A fine map, embroidered with a glittery golden thread. It shows the way to Gazza.”
Dick’s eyebrows returned to their normal position and he smiled slightly.
Theft.
Indeed.
Recurring theme in this part of the story, apparently.
Djenny continued.
“To journey there, we must find the hidden portal. In a fortnight, we shall journey to the Calanques. There, we shall be able to cross the portal into Bassila.”
Dick nodded and replied “in a fortnight.”
Djenny answered his unspoken question.
“Yes. In a fortnight, for the portal is only open at the full moon.”
“Anything we should do until then to prepare?”
“Maybe a few things. There are some supplies we might need to acquire.”
Mathilde is slowly pacing inside her tiny studio, talking to herself and occasionally pausing to inhale from her vape.
“Okay, what possible supplies would the protagonist bring on a magical journey like this one? The djinn is supposed to already know this, and so we can presume that everything that gets brought along will be useful at some point in the journey. Or maybe we could have the djinn say”oh, and maybe bring this thing, we might need it”, and then have some uncertainty as to the thing getting used.
No, wait - there’s that stupid rule where if you put a gun on the scene in the first act, it has to go off by the third act, isn’t there? Okay that’s for theatre, but still…
I guess I could get all meta and intentionally put a thing that isn’t used in the story as like… a nod to that…
Whatever.
We assume Dick’s got basically a basic traveller’s backpack.
A few spare clothes, toilettries, towel. Maybe a book and some writing material. Maybe a computer of some sort. Depends on the period I guess. I’ll leave out computers, it’ll be simpler.
Maybe a small pocket-knife like a Swiss Army Knife or an Opinel or something. A lighter, that’s always useful. A bottle opener. Maybe on the Swiss Army knife.
His wallet, obviously. If we’re leaving out computers we’ll leave out phones as well.
Maybe one mysterious set of keys. Or not. No keys.
Possibly one or two souvenir trinkets. And yeah, a journal and pencils.
A book, too maybe. Not sure what book. Maybe an old Chinese edition of the Tao Te Ching or something.
Or maybe no book. Like his one focus is his mission, so no book, unless it’ll be useful later on during the mission. Yeah. No book so far.
Once he gets the map, he’ll have that.”
The vape beeps and deactivates just as Mathilde finishes her monologue. Synchronicity.
“What else is he going to need? Food probably. Maybe some things that are easy to get in Marseille but rare and highly valued in Bassila.
Perhaps they can do some sort of training to prepare for the trip during the fortnight. And I suppose I could always go back and flesh out the chase scene more, but nah, fuck that, don’t feel like it right now.”
“I wonder if I’ll see her today. Probably not. It doesn’t feel like it.”
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she’s got a craving for couture, and she wants to induldge.
Mathilde really likes morning. It’s one of her favorite moments. Being awake before the rest of the world, savoring a joint while wearing slippers…
(the astute reader will notice that Mathilde has started smoking tobacco again)
“life is so perfect right now. I just want it to be like this forever. All time. Just this, pure endless bliss.”
She sighs. She hasn’t slept. She was lying on the floor contemplating death, making peace with the universe. That, and all the uh… excitement of the day. And okay, the drugs may uh… have been a factor.
She’s been doing some soul-searching, you know? And life has been… Helping her along, shall we say.
Like stuff happening. Random stuff, like coincidences, but… you have to wonder if there isn’t something unseen at work here. Some strange magic that can hear Mathilde’s thoughts, and change the fabric of reality in response to them.
Mathilde writes with black bic pens on printer paper, sitting at a small desk facing the wall. She likes this setup, it works for her. She’s not really fond of fancy computers for writing, and a typewriter strikes her as hopelessly cliche in this day and age, so she uses trusty old pen and paper.
It’s a very calm way to write. Therapeutic.
Mathilde is a happy girl if she gets to do a bit of writing every morning. It’s honestly one of her favorite things in life. Yes, spending wonderful moments with people she loves is really important to her, but she seems on some level incapable of truly enjoying the company of others if she hasn’t had that delicious moment of creative glee all to herself.
Bob likes lifting weights. It’s his thing. It’s his delicious moment of creative glee.
To each their own. Mathilde is not much of a weightlifter. She likes dancing, at parties.
She likes parties in general, and all the fun things you can do at parties, like talk to people, or eat, or fuck or get high and generally have a good time. Parties are nice. We should do more of those.
Paris is many things to many people. Right now, she’s still a little hung over from the party last night, but she’s looking forward to another awesome day of adventure with her friends <3
“The way I see it, there’s people who hit the ‘hey cutie, you seem interesting’ button, and there’s people who hit the ‘oh my god I love you marry me’ button. Bad things happen when you confuse to two.”
“Well it’s like, you meet people at parties, and you click, and you and the other person both say they’d very much like more hangout time. Then the party ends, you all go home and… at least half the time, the only time you’ll see that other person is at another, often similar party. I had a period where I often got frustrated because I’d keep meeting people at parties, being all 'oh hey we should totally make music together' and then the follow through would never actually happen.”
“Yeah, I’ve been having this whole ‘all day every day’ period with weed lately. Honestly, my current feeling about it is,”I’m diggin’ it, glad it happened, but I’m going to start getting bored if it doesn’t end soon. Like as much as I love just floating through life on a cloud of effortless bliss, sometimes it’s nice to not be stoned, you know? Like to just be normal, and experience life like a normal person doing normal things.
Also, like, it’s interesting seeing how weed basically morphs my personality into that of the typical stoner, but it’s also nice to ‘just be myself, not my stoner self’, sometimes. Like I get into a routine pretty fast with weed.
And like, don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty nice routine. I just do stuff I like doing - I smoke weed, I make music, I go hang out in the parc with my friends. Like it’s a simple, happy life.
It’s just… sometimes I want something else, you know?”
Mathilde is trying to write a little something everyday. She must admit to having skipped to occasional day or two lately. She’s been busy with her job, is her excuse. Plus, she’s still thinking about it, she tells herself.
She ‘thinks about it’ when she’s coming home from work. After she gets home, her current routine is to roll a joint and smoke it, and she’s not been doing much post-joint thinking lately, although she has had a few writing sessions whilst high, and they are pretty nice.
She’s not worried though. Despite her being a rather undisciplined auteur, the book is slowly falling into place. Having a ‘magical quest’ type story line enables her to basically make the different sections almost totatlly independent, which means she can basically write like 3 different stories at once and have them all be in the book.
She does have vague concerns about the editing process. Like, if the book is written completely out of order, which it is, does that imply spending a fair amount of time putting it in order? And if so, might that not be a rather difficult task?
The other option would be some sort of non-linear timeline. Which, you know, Mathilde actually really likes that idea, not only is it less effort, it’s more post-modern….
“Rhythm is kinda trippy if you stop and really think about it.”
Mathilde is high as a kite, listening to loud music on her hi-fi soundsystem while watching people play video games on her laptop. It’s a pretty blissful place. There may some digestion issues later, as her body helps her understand that mixing praline chocolate, ice cream and a cheese omelette all in the same meal wasn’t a really good idea, Still, she was feeling pretty awesome. Not just pretty awesome. Extremely awesome. Like just life is like being on a cloud right now. With a bit of intestinal bloating. But still overall pretty fucking sweet.
Tea and a joint. The good ol’ hippie speedball. Nice way to clear out the guts and clear up the mind at the beginning of the day. A high probablity way to get mo’ smiles in yo’ life. Savor it. Take your time with it, let the magic work slowly.
What an enjoyable induldgence.
Mathilde thinks that it’s actually quite useful to spend some time re-reading one’s work when writing a book. She didn’t re-read herself at all in the beginning, and then one afternoon she took the time to do it and was pleasantly surprised to find herself enjoying her own work, and very much so.
The problem with expecting the chase scene after a theft to be intense, fast-paced, and over in one scene is that sometimes, the thief gets away with the magic lamp. When this happens, it’s not just the chase scene, but the scenes after that, with the hero idly puttering around the city of Marseille, sad because he lost his magic lamp. How does he end up finding it again? What sorts of wacky adventures does he get up to in the meantime? Does he just give up on the whole ‘epic quest’ thing and settle for the life of a small-time musician and drug addict?
“okay, so when you left, Leon, I decided to devote myself to this book. I told myself that I’d been lucky enough to find love, and stupid enough to chase love away, so I resigned myself to a quiet life of solitude, with literature and various drugs for company.
And you know, it kinda worked. My lungs feel like ass all the fucking time, but besides that I’m pretty happy with life most days. I didn’t need to love anyone, I could just be alone and do my work.
And then… it’s like ‘hey, here’s a little reward for all the kindness you put out there kid. Someone wants your love again’. It’s not you obviously. But it’s someone, a real person, and I’m afraid that if I keep showing up, I’ll actually get somewhere.
So my first instinct is to run and hide, stay here with the book and the joints. But I know that’s cowardice. I know I have to show up. It’s what you taught me.”
Mathilde takes a looong inhale, and then lets it out with a sigh.
“…fuck.”
It’s around 7 in the morning. She keeps waking up early. This can leave her feeling pretty exhausted by the end of the workday, but she really likes having the morning all to herself.
Smoking a joint in the early morning, before the rest of humanity is quite ready to engage with the business of the day… oh, such loveliness!
Today, Mathilde has discovered that lying on the flooring and doing nothing for more than half an hour is actually extremely therapeutic. If she were the sort of person to try to optimise their daily habits, she would probably add it to her daily routine. Mathilde isn’t the sort of person to try to optimise their daily habits, however. She’s Mathilde.
Acid on a saturday morning huh? Well, it’s honestly not that bad of an idea, especially when you’re out of smokes and you’re supposed to go meet someone in the parc this afternoon. But first, you may wanna lie on the floor and do nothing for an hour.
It’s quite therapeutic.
“so I have an awesome day, trippin’ in the parc and going to eat ice cream with my friends, and I’m like”sweet, I’ve made it, I’ve quit smoking. Like I have my ‘last cigarette ever’, and everything, and I’m so happy because I’m finally free now.
And then the next day I’m bored after dinner and I go and buy a pack of cigs and some hash.”
“oh, nice, you get to have an awesome spiritually uplifting day where you shed the bad habits of your past self, and then you get to go back and enjoy being that past self and doing all the fun things you used to do back then!”
“…uh… yeah, I guess, I didn’t really think of it that way.”
“oh? How did you think of it?”
“more like… ‘Oh fuck, here we go again, maybe I’ll manage not to fuck it up for again soon’”.
“ah…”
“so… yeah I’m hoping somehow by tomorrow I’ll be finally smoke free for good this time. Like occasionaly psychedlics, maybe the occasional toke on a joint at a party, or whatever, but nothing else. And like never fucking spending money on that shit because that shit is a fucking waste of money. Well, except like acid and stuff.”
“oh nice. You got like any plans for that?”
“uh, I dunno, maybe like smoke a joint and do a bit of writing, why?”
“oh, just wondering. Good luck with that.”
“well… turns out that maybe that wasn’t the best strategy, even if the writing session was pretty damn fun.”
“I am afraid that I won’t be able to write as well, now that I’ve quit smoking. But I know that I have to quit, because…”
“because?”
“it’s bringing me down, you know? Like I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life alone in my room, too high to care that I’m missing out on everything that actually matters because hey, at least I’m here writing.
“nah… don’t worry about that, get out there, you’ll get inspired. You’ll meet someone nice at a party, spend the whole night talking to them, fall halfway in love and get heartbroken when they don’t respond to your text the next day. It’ll give you fuel for your writing.”
“… thanks.”
“yeah, don’t mind me, I’ll be pining for you while listening to Taylor Swift, you know, in case you wanna get your head out of your ass and be with someone who loves you at some point.”
“cool. Meet same time tomorrow to bitch about love and life in general?”
“yeah, sounds good.”
Skandilus swum proudly in his pround Roman pool. It was kept to the exact temperature of 22.5 degrees Celsius thanks to a luxuriously engineered heating system. His rare, valuable, top quality Carthinigian engineer slaves, selected in Carthage by the proud senator himself for their elite attributes, of which he had roughly two dozen male operators in their prime, as well as a multitude of females for breeding purposes and children of various ages which were being educated so as to be good operators, would heat a fire, boil water over that fire, and then pour the boiling water in the pool to keept it at a temperature of exactly 22.5 degrees Celsius.
Skandilus was proudly wealthy, but he was also proundly frugal. Once his slaves extended their maximum useful lifespan, he would decapitate them himself with his pround Roman battlesword, and then feed them to his dogs. His proud Roman dogs were strong and healthy. They feasted on barbarian genitals in battle.
It was morning. Skandilus was proudly swimming his proud morning laps with pride and grace. His firm, strong, sinewy body hurtled effortlessly through the water, powered by his enormous vitality.
“okay, I’m pretty sure I’ve found how I’m not going to smoke anymore”
“how?”
“I’m going to write drunk!”
“hahahahahahhahahahahahahahah excellent <3”
Skandilus gracefully exited his pool, having finished his morning swim. He inhaled, proudly. He exhaled, with not just pride, but a satisfaction that reeked of tasteful extravagance, and not just any tasteful extravagance, but that most sublime type of tasteful extravagance best exemplified by the iPhone 13 mini, with it’s delightfully small form factor, scintillatingly perfect high resolution Retina display, and blazingly fast Apple Silicon processor.
Skandilus was slated to give a rousing speech at the proud Roman Senate today. He had proudly prepared his speech. It was going to be very rousing.
“okay, how can I make the suspense mount here?”
“so the thing is, you’re not supposed to yell at people, or call them ‘stupid pieces of shit’, or ‘stuck up white bitch’ or stuff like that, right? You’re supposed to be nice, that’s how the fucking game works. You get rewarded for being nice to people. You forgive their sins, you love them despite their faults, and the reward is a life full of love. Right?”
“yeah… I mean, for me it’s more like ‘you get what you give, so be nice’, but yeah, I actually like your way of putting it, it’s very poetic.”
“right. Well, I write her a nice little essay calling her a stupid piece of shit and a stuck up white bitch. I send it. And I’ve lost all desire to smoke or drink or really take anything since. Like I’m sitting in this fucking bar drinking fucking tap water. How the fuck do you explain that?”
“… the truth will set you free?”
Mathilde is lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling,
She’s wondering if she actually regrets anything she said. She does. On a fundamental level, she knows she kind of fucked up somewhere. She shouldn’t have yelled and said those things but…
They had to be said. It hurt too much to keep them in, and to give herself credit, she’s not being too hypocritical.
Yes, yelling at someone for refusing to be happy isn’t exactly being happy yourself. But Mathilde is trying. She shows up, she’ll ask random people on the street if they want to talk. She puts herself out there.
“I never had anyone like me. I wasn’t lucky like you, with your loving mom and dad and family. My mom yelled at me and kicked me out of the house. My dad walked out on us when I was 11 and I’ve barely seen him since.
I loved you. I loved you with all my heart. I wanted nothing more than to be with you, but you were too busy being sad because some jackass hurt your precious little feelings.
And yeah, now I’m angry, and it hurts. But you know what? If I’m ever lucky enough to find someone who loves me the way I loved you… I’m going for it. I’m going to delight in telling you to go fuck yourself when you come knocking and I will happily let that person take me in their arms and love me like I deserve to be love.
Like everyone deserves to be loved.
It would be nice, if I could actually have that. Someone to love me.
I feel like I’ve spent the past two years trying to find that. I got out, I met people, I fall in love, I get treated like shit for it. Over and over and over and somehow I don’t know how I fucking do, but hey, at least I keep trying, right?”
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she’s a middle-aged dad trying to quit smoking.
After being dressed in the finest of Egyptian cotton togas, Skandilus strode proudly through the proud streets of Rome on his way to the Senate, to give his rousing speech. He encountered many proud Romans that he knew. Some of his proud legionnaires proudly saluted him as he walked past them. The proud Roman sunlight glistened off their firm, muscular torsos.
He acknowledged their salute with curt nod, showing both appreciation and restraint, with a dash of tasteful extravagance. He entered the Senate chambers like light coming from the new iPhone 14 Pro Max’s gorgeous high-resolution Retina screen softly penetrating a human eye. Flawlessly.
The noise in the Senate chambers stopped as he entered. The proud Roman senators had been eagerly anticipating his speech. They wanted to be roused.
Skander strode proudly to the speaking platform. He waited silently there for a moment, like a thumb perched daintly above the virtual keyboard of an iPhone 7 Product (RED) limited edition. He inhaled proudly and began his speech.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, prepare to be roused!”
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
Brolivier the bearded bear walked softly through the woods. Brolivier was a happy bear. His woods had plentiful delicious berries and rivers with plentiful delicious salmon. He was a happy bear with a happy belly.
His one regret was that his bearded bear claws could not use the delightful touchscreen interface of modern iPhones. Fortunately, his bearded bear claws did enable him to use Windows computers, so after walking through the woods and feasting on delicious berries, he went home to this natural habitat and pwned noobs on the internet.
The Carthinigian slaves of the proud Roman senator Skandilus were happy living under his enlightened dominion. Thanks to his firm grip on the yoke of their lives, they would no longer be sacrified to the gods, for the Roman conquest of Carthage had liberated the oppressed peoples of Carthage from the terror of human sacrifice.
Skandilus was a strong, manly man who enjoyed the company of other strong, manly men. He possessed many gladiators. They were strong and manly. He enjoyed their company. They had rugged beards and manly hair on their chests, like big, strong, manly bears.
A gladiator owned by Skandilus had won the Proud Roman Gladiator Combat Premier League annual championship each year for the past 7 years. The most valuable gladiator in Skandilus’s roster was three time Premier League champion Bro Jogan, a large gladiator captured by Skandilus himself during an African campaign who moonlit as a standup comedian. Thanks to the delicious and nutrious Senator Skandilus’s Skandilecious Nutrious Whey Protein proudly made on the senator’s sumptuous estate Bro Jogan’s optimal nutrition, coupled with a sophisticated training regimen developed by the senator himself, enabled him to win many combats.
Skandilus was a sophisticated trainer of men. Indeed, much of his life had, in one way or another, been devoted to telling men what to do. His proud legion had won so many triumphs becaused he trained his legionaires so well. When the chaos of battle descended down on them, his legionaires would always react with proud Roman discipline. This proud Roman discipline enabled them to mercilessly cut down the barbarian hordes and garantee peace for the peoples under the proud dominion of Rome.
His estate was highly admired in Rome for its productivity, and the productivity of his estates owed much to his highly effective methods of training slaves. For example, the average grape picker on his estate was estimated to be two to three times as fast as grape pickers on other estates. His book on the proper whipping of slaves was widely regarded as not only the most authoritative book on the subject ever written, but also a heartwarming example of the beauty of proud Roman culture. The book was said to “encompass the eteranl soul of Rome” within it’s pages. Skandilus wrote many books. He was currently writing a memoir. On some mornings, after his morning swim in his luxurious heated pool, he would retire to his tastefully extravagant study and work on his memoirs. He was writing up the details of a rather volatile chapter of his campagins in Germania.
“Trust me, there is no ‘them’.”
“THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!”
We had chased the vulgar Germanic beast back across the Rhine. The filthy
barbarian scum had been no match for our proud Roman discipline. I ordered
my Legio VII to camp on the bank of the Rhine.
We built a small fortified encampment in a few days, thanks to our proud
Roman engineering techniques. Across the river, we saw no sign of the
barbarian enemy.
Our fortified encampment proudly broadcast the liberty and order of Roman civilization into the surrounding area. I noticed the local forest animals and the fish and birds the river standing a bit more proudly, and I fancied that their animal vocalizations developed something of a Latin accent.
Somewhere across the Rhine lay the enemy warchief. We planned on virilently defeating his army in battle, butchering most of them and taking the rest home to Rome as slaves.
Mathilde rubs her eyes. There’s music playing, she’s stoned, she’s writing. She’s been productive lately. Real productive. Opportunities opening up to start getting paid for writing. Getting paid for writing, can you imagine that? That would be so cool.
No more dayjob. No more alarm clock. No more having to shower and wear pants that are a little too tight because they’re they only clean pair and you haven’t had enough time to go to the laundromat this week. Freedom. You get paid to do what you were going to do anyways - write. Write, smoke weed, and write. As many Oxford Commas as you like.
Mathilde really likes that idea. Paris giving her money, real actual money to thank her for writing. Mathilde feels like she’d cry if she weren’t so stoned. My God, she thinks, I’ve been useful! I did it Mom! I’m a real grown-up now! I’m actually useful!
“getting actually paid to write? Wow, nice!”
“I know right? THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!”
There’s some legal and administrative stuff to sort out before Mathilde can really start getting paid. So she’s still going to have to shower and wear pants more often than she’d like for the time being.
She can’t help letting herself occasionally dream about the life of a full-time paid writer though. She’d be able to travel! She could go see William in Toulouse, basically whenever she wanted! That would be so awesome!
She finds herself putting exclamation points everywhere all of a sudden. There’s a new spring in her step at work. And it’s still there after work, when she alternates between getting drunk au Cafe Menil with her hipster friends and late night writing binges, and spending the evening at home, ignoring text messages to smoke weed and write.
For the first time in a long while, she’s forgotten about the series of romantic misfortunes that have been her love life. She’s not wasting her time obsessing about someone who can’t be with her right now. She’s doing Mathilde, hard. She’s actually going to get what she wants this time, she can feel it. It’s actually happening :DDD
We had reason to be optimisitic about the success of our mission. We were Romans! On top of that, we had a good estimate as to the number of enemy soldiers. They had roughly half of our number, yet their host comprised almost every fighting age male in the region. If we managed to defeat them in battle, the women and children would be ours for the taking!
As always, I remained puzzled as to why anyone would refuse the gift of Roman civilization, but I understood that the barbarian was on a lower level of humanity compared to the Roman, and sometimes his inferior nature prevented him from seeing the world as it truly is, and realizing the superiority of the Roman way. We were going to liberate these barbarians from their ignorance, with the might of the Roman legion!
The Senate had tasked me with this delicate mission owing to my reputation as a fountain of tastefully extravagant wisdom. I accepted my duty with pride and determination. This pesky warchief, who had ambushed and slain proud Roman legionnaires, would be ruthlessly eliminated.
The lands beyond the Rhine were outside of the grand dominion of Rome. They were wild and uncivilized. After arriving in the region and taking control of the region, I had spent some time drilling the men. We marched to meet the barbarians on our side of the Rhine after this. The overconfident fools dared think they could wistand our might in battle.
They had never truly tasted the taste of hard Roman iron, wielded by highly skilled Roman hands. They assembled a rable of lightly armored ruffians. A few of their nobles were on horseback, with admittedly impressive coats of chain mail armor and tastefully extravagant helmets, but even they were not much better equiped than even the humblest of our proud Roman legionnaires, with their large shields, coats of proud Roman mail armor and tastefully extravagant helmets with their proud Roman design, whose elegance and simplicity cannot help but bring to mind the elegantly simple iPhone SE, with it’s delightful thumbprint reader and lush high resolution touchscreen interface.
The lack of discipline and organization inherent to their inferior civilization was evident in their approach to battle. We approached them in our typical proud Roman way, an aesthetically pleasing formation of extreme tactical effectiveness. As we approached, they charged us. They fell upon with a most exciting, vigourous fury, but we held proudly firm. Our shields and armor allowed us to shrug off their assault, and then we started to crush them underneath the might of our superior arms. Our standing firm shocked them greatly. It seems they had not heard, or did not truly believe what they had heard, about the legendary firmness of the Roman legions. It is a firmness unlike anything the world has never know. Slightly supple, this firmness will occasionally allow itself to bend ever so slightly, with a coy flirtiness, before springing back into a hard, erect rod, capable of penetrating the very soul of the enemy and violently inserting the seed of Roman wisdom therein. It is a firmness for which men would die for. To have tasted that etheral firmness is to have known the essence of Life, for that firmness is the very firmness of the essence of Life.
It was not long before the foe realized the error of his ways, and the remaining barbarian nobles rallied their troops for an orderly retreat. They had fled across the Rhine, and destroyed the bridge after them. The lands across the Rhine were Terra Incognita. We had no ships, having arrived via the proud Roman roads. In order to bring war to the barbarians, we would have to build a bridge across the Rhine and start constructing a logistics train capable of sustaining our army (beyond what we could pillage from the area) across the river.
The construction of a bridge was to be a complex undertaking. I wondered if the barbarians had access to any boats or canoes that they could use to cross the river in order to conduct raids on proud Roman territory. I posted sentinels along the riverbank, to keep an eye out of barbarian raiding parties. Not having the time to wait for the construction of a stone bridge, I opted to build a bridge out of the plentiful timber found in the area. I tasked my proud Roman engineers with this task. They set themselves to the task, and started taking measurements, making calculations, drawing up plans and cutting down trees. I was so proud to see them work.
Seeing these proud Romans under my command working together with proud Roman efficiency, their communications enabled by the beauty and expressiveness of the superior Latin language, their adorable little heads filled with the knowledge of Roman education, their brave, tender hearts lit by the fire of Roman greatness and their strong, manly arms glistening with sweat in their proud Roman uniforms gave me a great feeling of satisfaction.
“it’s been an awesome day. I should get to sleep, I have work tomorrow. But I just wanna stay in this little bubble for a while, with my music, my weed, my cigs and my writing. It’s so beautiful. I love re-reading it. It makes me so happy.
Even if no one else ever bothers to read this stuff, or even if everyone else who reads it hates it, I’ll still have made one person happy with this - myself. That’s a victory.
Okay, true, if that victory makes a bunch of other people miserable, yeah, maybe that’s not really a victory, but… honestly I don’t think this will make anyone feel bad. At most, people will be indifferent to it. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a couple people out there who might actually like it. Heck, maybe they’ll even love it. That would be wondeful, making someone’s day like that. That would be so fucking incredible.”
Mathilde is smoking out her window. She’s talking out loud, nobody is listening but Paris. Paris always listens. “I think the smoking is blocking me from… having a good love life this summer. Because honestly, I think it might actually happen this time. I might actually finally be ready for it now. But I’m not sure I’m ready to let go of the smoking. Maybe I want to stay a bit blocked because I’m secretly afraid of another heartbreaking disappointment.
And I mean, I’m productive when I smoke. I fucking write, you know? Pages show up. Words get written. Stories get DONE. I feel like I’m actually getting somewhere, and if I can be perma-stoned on bomb-ass weed all the time, I don’t have to really worry about like emotions and all that bullshit. I don’t have to get sad, and I’m afraid if I get too sad I’ll stop writing.
But like this, I never have to love anyone here every again! I can escape! I can keep writing until I’m ready to leave this place and I can go live in William in Toulouse and I’ll be happy there because I’ll get to see one of my best friends every single fucking day and it’ll be awesome! We can get stoned together!
… and then I’ll be sitting out on his balcony smoking after he’s gone to bed and I’ll think of you again, Leon. And I’ll remember that I will always love you, and I’ll think to myself that I’ll probably never find anyone else I can love like I love you. And that I’m hiding from you with this smoking, and I’m only hurting myself by doing that.
But I wanna keep these occasional larval stages! These are really, really fun! I love not having to care about anything other than drinking and smoking and writing! It’s a pretty great life, most of the time!
I mean shit, I actually enjoy fucking Tuesdays now! I get home, I roll up, light up, blast some tunes and write! This is like my best life.
Okay, almost. If I got to see you like everyday, this would be my best life. But this is pretty close.
Gosh, I remember how beautiful you looked that night. I remember your smile. I’m always going to remember that smile. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Fuck… I’ve got an appointment with my therapist tomorrow. We’re supposed to discuss how I’m going to quit smoking. Jesus. Not sure I’m ready honestly. I guess one last joint right?
Right, until I buy more like tomorrow.
Okay but like, I mean I told Steffy I was quitting soon. And Jug too. So like, I’m going to look like an ass- no wait, I’ve already done that before, multiple times.
Lol, alright then, that’s not a real objection.
No the real objection is if I keep waiting until I’ve quit, I’m never going to quit, and I’m never really going to be happy, because I’ll always be keeping myself away from you.
Fuck, I actually have to go through with it this time, don’t I? Like for real. Well, I guess monday might be a bit tricky, I’ll go see if there’s anyone chilling in the parc, maybe Ludo and Charlene will be there with their guitars, that’ll chill me out. Then I’ll eat a fat bowl of beef stew and pass the fuck out, and Tuesday will be fucking awesome!
… in theory. Jesus, can I actually do it this time?”
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she’s happy just listening. She starts to smile as she listens. You might be onto something here.
“is there like a special ritual I should do for this last, but like actually really last joint hopefully for the last time in the a really long ass time, like at least 100 days or something joint?
I mean, that time I actually quit for a really long time a few years ago I had this awesome last joint and then I just fucking quit. Why can’t I do that this time?
Fuck if I know. Ritual for last joint? Enjoy it I guess. Then have a few cigs afterwards.
I wonder how I’ll feel after a week of not smoking anything. Will I be happier? Will I still write like this? Will I still be able to get lost in writing like I do now?
I want to keep this. I mean, I remember when I was writing those things for Lise back during when I lived in Marseille. I was fucking sober back then, minus the occasional acid trip. I wrote. I enjoyed writing then.
Shit, I’ve always enjoyed writing. Okay, maybe I’ll spend less time enjoying writing and a bit more time enjoying the company of my friends in a parc or like clubbing, I mean actual clubbing with proper good DJs, not getting drunk au Cafe Menil and then coming home to keep drinking and write more in lieu of an actual cultural life, but I’m still gunna fucking write.
Hell, maybe if I’m not stoned all the time I’ll actually write better because I’m all healthy and shit.
Eh.. nicotine really helps with writing though. It really helps. So maybe I’ll write less, I dunno.”
There’s a song playing as Mathilde speaks her thoughts out.
“Time ain’t gunna fix it honey, it ain’t gunna stick”
An encouraging omen.
“Jesus. Life. Actual sober, normal people who get upset about politics life. Love stories. Meeting someone at a party, having a great connection and not getting their number. Meeting someone at a party, having a great connectiong, getting their number, texting them and having them not respond.
The type of shit that inspires love stories and works of postmodern literature. You know, actual fucking life, not some drugged up zombie writing alone all day.
Like yes, still writing, probably alone because I’m more comfortable like that, unless it’s like with William hanging out or something, at home, but you know, not just that and drug abuse anymore.
More… variety I guess. More walking. More dancing. More laughing. More adventure.
Okay, weed can be an adventure sometimes. But like… yeah, maybe more magic.
I think I’ve used up the magic of the plants at this point. I need to let them go or I won’t get anywhere. I’ll stay stuck. I’ll miss out on the real stuff. I won’t get to see what’s happening outside of this comfortable little trap I’ve locked myself in.
Okay sounds nice, but then I won’t be able to lock myself back in this comfy little trap I love so much if I quit. I’ll have to be fucking LIVING all the time, whether or not I feel like it. I won’t be able to just burn out and disappear from the world for a while. I’ll start to actually get bored just sitting at home.
Fuck. Boredom. How am I gunna handle that?
I guess I could just write. Maybe listen to some music, I feel like that tends to inspire me to write more. And you know, other stuff inspires me too sometimes. Parties for example…
Okay, to be fair, I’m not always sober at parties. But I am sometimes! Honestly if the music is good and I have fun with the people there, I feel happy!
Maybe that’s all I really need. Good music and good company.”
Mathilde’s room is somewhat messier than usual right now, which means it is really, really messy. If you were a judgy person from the South American continent who really cared about hygiene, you might judge her for it.
As she smokes out the window, memories come dancing through her head in time with the music. Locking eyes for the first time at that party. Being led by Leon to sit and talk for the first time. Exchanging numbers, promising to see each other soon.
And then…
And now, this.
“You’ve become something like my imaginary friend in a way. When I’m bored, when I’m alone, I think of you. I get lost in fantasies. I dream of you still, sometimes. Those are my favorite dreams. I can still see your face so clearly…
I want to see your smile again. I want to feel that current that flows when we look each other in the eye again. I want to be with you again, to taste your kiss and smell your hair. I want to want you again, to feel that primal urge to love you with every fiber of my being until we both surrender, completely and totally, to our love.
My God, you’re so beautiful. I miss you. I want to see you again.
But…
I also wanna keep smoking. So.
Is there some sort of compromise we can go for here?
Like some way I can get you and the drugs?
…
probably not without a long period of atonement.”
Mathilde sighs.
Jesus.
Here it comes.
Fuck.
The end of the joint.
The moment where she stops fucking around and starts to follow her heart and do that thing that she kinda admitted Leon was right about hinting that maybe she might want to do.
“I hope drugs will play a smaller part in my future too, Leon. And I hope you’ll play a larger part in my future. I love you.”
Mathilde has been sober for a week now. It’s been quite nice. Life is still fun.
The bridge’s construction was much advanced. The engineers of my proud Roman legion had once again demonstrated the surperiority of Roman culture, and the disorganized, barbarian forest was slowly turning into an elegant and ordered bridge. It was roughly a week from completion, when word came from one of my informants that the barbarians were planning a surprise attack to burn out beautiful bridge. I had bribed one of the locals by giving him one of my prized slave girls, a fine young specimen originally from Asia Minor, with a generous, firm bosom, lucious thighs, and a tantalizing smile. Needless the say, the local became captivated by this lovely creature, and rapidly aligned himself with the Roman cause. He was smart enough to see the benefits of helping to spread the glory of Roman and the light of Roman civilization throughout the world.
“So I’ve been reading a bunch of Agatha Chrisite lately. And I’m thinking to myself…
You know, one of them Sherlock Holmes/Hercule Poirot type detective characters would actually be really cool.”
“uh oh. Here we go again.”
Dick crept sleathly along the roof. It was night in Bassila. A new moon, so little moonlight, and calm, clear summer skies.
The tiles of the town hall were old, and badly maintained. Rather unsurprising, given the mayor’s propensity for embezzling city funds rather than using them to actually improve the city.
Dick was vaguely aware of a proverb he’d heard once about robbing a thief being morally okay or something. He was actually enjoying this. It was a proper adventure!
With the exception of chasing the thief to get the lamp back, he’d spent most of his quest going from train stations to hotel rooms and wandering around cities. Fun, certainly, but nowhere near as fun as this. He was dressed in black trousers and wearing a dark grey long sleeved shirt. He had on a light backpack, which contained some lockpicking equipment as well as the lamp. Djenny was gently floating along behind him, having altered her appearance so as to be almost invisible.
Dick stopped. He listened. The wind blew softly, then died down. Silence, or almost.
“I wonder if I shouldn’t spend more time fleshing out the city. Like as it is I’m just cutting to the chase… enfin not really the chase but like to the action. No long descriptions of the surroundings…
jesus, like sex without foreplay.
except like… okay there’s foreplay and there’s sitting there on the couch watching the news together. I’m not sure long as boring descriptions of fantasy towns count as foreplay. I think they just count as boring.”
John Sebastian was an angry man.
He was stuck, and he’d been stuck, repeating the same mistakes over and over and over for years.
The worst part was, his anger and his being stuck was the result of bad decisions that he kept on making, over and over and over.
I was like him once.
I’m grateful that I was lucky enough to stop.
It’s tempting to say that I was lucky and brave enough, or lucky and determined enough, to stop, but I’m not sure that courage or determination were the deciding factors. I think it was luck.
Luck, and Leon.
“Darling, you’re not going to get rid of me that easy.”
“so I found a book by Frederic Beigbeder somewhere and started reading it. It’s nice, honestly, I dig it. Makes me wish I were a heterosexual dude living in 1990s Paris.”
“as opposed to?”
“a fictional character that is vaguely female in a novel set in the 2020s. Or maybe in a novella set in the 2020s. Not sure how many pages this story will go for.”
“you could probably write a book about being a heterosexual male…”
“ewwwwww who fucking wants to read that?”
“er… aren’t you reading a book about a heterosexual male and actually really enjoying it?”
“… see I’m recalling this political discussion I had a with a good friend right now that ended with them yelling ‘I DON’T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT OKAY?!’”
“yeah, open and enlightened discourse is pretty nice.”
“discourse in general is pretty nice. I like discourse. Enfin, the word, not the fucking software.”
“Don’t ever tell not to hope that we end up together again. I get that you’re trying to protect from disappointment or whatever, but fuck you, don’t ever tell not to hope like that again. You damn near broke my heart when you did that. More than anything, sex, money, drugs, I want you. Don’t you dare deny that and try to let me down my gently by suggesting I settle for a parade of randoms art school party people again. I love you and I want to be with you more than anything. Deal with it.”
We could add in another character at this point. We could turn this meta-fictional piece of literature into something with pronounced autobiographical elements. We’d call the new character ‘Charlie’, and then we’d basically narrate his life in third person. But fuck that noise.
“I went on a business trip for my job. We were staying in this nice little residence, they had a library. I stole a book.”
“that’s deep bro, you should write haikus.”
“I suppose we could get properly multi-lingual, English and French and German, but I don’t think the book buying public could handle it. Not even the pseudo-intellectuals that read the New Yorker. That’s the problem with Americans. Even the ‘smart’ ones are monolingual.”
“uh… Mexican/Hispanic-Americans?”
“don’t be silly, they’re not actual people. They don’t buy books, they watch Youtube like the rest of the plebs.”
>tfw the rapid cuts in the book are designed to recall the anonymous image boards of the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s.
“You know that LCD Soundsystem song ‘Losing My Edge’? Where he talks about how he was there for basically every big moment of modern hipster pop music? Yeah, that’s me and internet culture I feel like. I was on /b/ in like 2007. I was krautchan when polandball and wojack came into being. I was on 420chan before QAnon drove Kirtaner crazy. I was on superfuture before they all became actual fashion icons. I even posted on WAYWT, I got laughed at and never posted again. I remember how Temple of Jawnz started on Styleforum. I remember mASF, althoug I was there after Style had published The Game. I realize now that everything’s gone to shit except maybe Hacker News, which, to be fair, I missed out on for like the first 10 years of its existence, that all those moments alone on the internet while my peers were out socializing and getting laid…
Yeah, maybe they were worth it.”
“I’m stuck again. I don’t know what to write. See, this is why we like drugs! I never had to deal with this not knowing what to write shit when I could just get high! The worst part is, I’ll get all these ideas when I’m like out there, walking around, going to parties and everything. And then I get in front of the page to write and it’s like ‘uh… what the fuck do I do?’ And then I get a text from someone asking me to hang out and I’m off, because I’ve decided that spending time in person with people I love is more important than spending time alone, writing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sticking to this sobriety kick, just because I said I would, but I’m really wondering if I shouldn’t get right back on the drugs after this. I guess at some point I could bother asking myself why I write, beyond just ‘it makes me happy’. Maybe also ask myself if now that I’m not constantly high all the fucking time, I’ve picked up any habits that might interfere with my writing. I guess also I could try writing with music from time to time, that might be fun. I guess I’ve kinda dropped music now that I’m not permastoned. Maybe that was part of the equation too.”
“you know what? Maybe I’m just not going to do this anymore.”
The barbarian attack came when we were expecting it. They tried to surprise us, by crossing the river on a multitude of small canoes after nightfall. We awaited them, silently, with great firmness. We knew they were coming, and steeled ourselves with steely determination for the ensuing conflict.
Then, to our surprise, stormclouds started to form, out of nowhere. What had been a clear night became, in a matter of minutes, a vicious thunderstorm. Rain came pouring down, lighting and thunder and hail. The wrath of the great god Jupiter.
We watched, silently, as Jupiter’s great storm destroyed the incoming barbarians. Their pathetic canoes were no match for the divine fury of our great god, and the river, excited by the storm, swallowed them all, one by one by one.
Not a single one of them survived. We waited silently until the storm passed. We waited, with pround Roman firmness, until the sun rose. The sunlight confirmed what we already knew.
They were all dead.
“oh my god I actually finished something! This is so awesome!”
Mathilde steps back, happy. She lets out a sigh of relief. A win.
Finally, a win.
“This is the one”, Djenny whispered. Dick nodded, silently. He was standing above the window to the room containing the map. He crept silently to the edge of the roof.
“I love it when my lack of inspiration helps increase the suspense.”
Paris has a character rather unlike other French cities. Anyone who spends some time with her, and whose mind is open enough to experience her rather than small-mindedly focus on their own petty problems, will notice certain things about her. She is the capital for a reason. She is proud, often to the point of vanity. She is zealously devoted to beauty, and more than willing to suffer for it. She will not suffer fools. She will swear, scream and shout. Her problems will very quickly become your problems. She will speak freely, whether or not you’re ready to hear it. She is loud. She has no qualms about completely destroying some young, naive hopeful for her own personal gain. There are days when she is a furnace, incinerating the hopes and dreams and lives of thousands of souls who come her way, burning them alive to fuel that magnificent creative energy which flows through her. She has no respect for the established rules of hierarchy. Kings either flee her or lose their heads. She has a facade of elegance and politeness, behind which hides the capacity for extreme violence. Those who lack the strength weather her storms or the courage to love her as she is will inevitably leave, but those who can handle her she will hold close to her busom and lavish on them the things that only she can provide: adoration, adventure, and exhorbiantly overpriced real estate.
“you have no idea how much I miss you sometimes darling. No idea. And I know you can’t be here right now. I’m not sure I really know why, I know part of it is my having acted like a total ass, and I do understand at this point that my suffering is entirely self-inflicted. I love you. I accept that now. I’m not going to fight it anymore.
I’m sorry I chased you away like I did. I’m very stupid sometimes. I hope you’ll come back. I miss you.”
The window is unlocked. A mildly quizzical expression crosses Dick’s face. This is too easy. He enters the dark room softly, a shadow on the wall. There is a safe on the opposite wall.
He carefully surveys the room. It’s square, with the window on one side and the safe on the other. Roughly 10 long paces across. It’s on the 4th story of the building, many meters above the street below.
Every time I see you, my heart goes “wow”.
You stand there more resplendent than Versaille and more elegant than a little black dress, simple and smart like Cantor’s diagonal argument, with the effortless grace and raw power of a Jaguar E-Type and more emotion in your stillness then in I’ve seen in any riot or rave party, and the truth hits me like a ton of bricks. God put me on this earth for a reason, and that reason is to love you. I can fight this truth and suffer, or accept it and rejoice. The divine consiousness of the universe will not be trifled with. There is nowhere to run, no excuse to make. I can try killing myself with a heroin overdose to get away from it, but I’ll simply be reincarnated to suffer in another life.
I feel all of the hurt I’ve caused you. The pain is horrendous, but I welcome it, because I know I deserve it. I’ve hurt the most beautiful thing in the universe. I’ve hurt the nicest person I know. I am the cause of all of my suffering and the architect of my own torture chamber.
And yet, gazing upon your person I cannot help but hope, that maybe, just maybe, I can still somehow be forgiven.
Beauty does that to people. It gives them hope. You do that to people. You give them hope.
I love you.
And every time I see you, my heart goes “BOOM BOOM TCHA BADUM BOOM BOOM TCHA WUBWUBWUBWUBWUB”
<3 <3 <3
This is too easy, he thinks. There’s no way it can be this easy. Sure, the person writing this story may be lazy, but getting the vitally important map can’t literally be as easy as walking across the room, opening the safe using the code that Djenny magically happens to know (she’s a djinn, they do magical things like that), putting the map in his bag, and walking out.
I don’t care how lazy the author is, there’s got to be a twist somewhere.
“so Kianna was going on about how waiting is a blocking action. And I’m trying to convince myself that you’re gone forever now, even if somewhere in my heart of hearts, I know you’re still out there, and you’re listening, and you still love me like I still love you, despite your best efforts not to, and you’re coming back. Oh darling.
I miss you so much sometimes. I’m always missing you, ever since that first date, I’ve been missing you. Before even. Could barely contain my joy when you gave me your number to go climbing. Of course, I still thought you were a healthy person then. That was before I found out about how fucked up you were. And you found out how fucked up I was.
I don’t wanna be broken anymore. I wanna be happy. I guess I’ll just keep trying to work out my karma.
When you’re ready to speak again, you know where to find me.
I can feel you sometimes. Little reminders of you, a picture of you or a message from you on a WhatsApp group (fucking WhatsApp), and my heart gives that little flutter. Sometimes a big flutter. A really big flutter. You make me feel things darling. You really do.”
The twist is actually fairly predictable. The moment Dick takes the map out of the safe, a very loud alarm starts ringing. From outside the room, footstep, running, coming closer.
Oh god, not another chase scene.
“seriously, like how the fuck do I write a good chase scene?” says Mathilde, with the special type of enthusiasm that comes after the third heavily charged Mojito.
“well….. you know that idea that quantity begets quality right?”
“uh…”
“okay, like basically, they did this study, on like famous scientists or something. And they find that the scientists who published the most influential papers were also the ones that published the most papers. Right? And they look at composers or whatever. Mozart, Beethoven… those guys wrote hundreds and hundreds of hours of music. They were also the most prolific. Basically the conclusion is, if you wanna do great work, a lot of work. You make one song, it’ll probably be meh. You make ten songs, one of them will probably be good. You make a hundred songs, ten will be good, one will be amazing. So… yeah, try the same thing with chase scenes. Write a shit-ton of chase scenes.”
Iris takes a drag and continues
“there’s also something to be said for learning by example. For the first couple chase scenes, you may want to read chase scenes you like and kinda copy them, to get a feel for the other authors do it. Then start making your own.”
Iris is a painter who hasn’t painted in a while. She’s great at giving advice, not at taking it.
Mathilde sips her drink slowly and nods. Chase scenes it is.
The memoirs of Skandilus
I recall once having to chase down an escaped slave girl. It was during the Germania campaigns. I’d assigned her to be used as a sex object by my legionnaires, so as to improve their morale. It seemed she’d forgotten her place as a servant of the Roman legions, and decided she’d had enough of being penetrated by a score of proud Roman penises on the daily. We had been camping near the forest, and she tried to run away in the middle of the night.
“so I was with some friends in the parc recently, and Guenievre and Robin were going on about this like law of attraction stuff. Basically, as far as I understand, there’s this thing where you like trust the universe, and if you’re ‘aligned’, which I think is a state that depends on the person, Guenievre said for her it was joy and play and shining, you can playfully think to yourself ‘oh, it would be really cool to have X’, while not actually caring that much about the outcome, and then like magic, X appears.”
“cool story bro.”
“I’m wondering if I can use this to get a book written somehow.”
THE RAVE SCENE, BITCHES!
Coming up like a mega-dose of MDMA disolved in a bottle of Absolut Vodka and orange juice. Getting down like Stacy in the club with a nose ring. Going wild like a college kid on camera in 1999.
WE ARE HERE 2 PARTY BB!!!
“so anyways, I’m lying there on the bathroom floor, just puked my guts out and had a nasty case of the shits right, and I’m still sick as balls, like my gut is being honest about the whole ‘dude what the fuck ketogenic diet my ass never again’ thing, and like just everything hurts and I feel like total shit, and I’m just thinking to myself ‘no, you know what, this is fine. I fucking deserve this. This is karma for what I did to Leon’. So I fucking embrace the agony. And then I puke again.”
“… and then I called her a stupid piece of shit.”
“oh…”
“yeah, that was a fuck-up.”
“was she being a stupid piece of shit though?”
“honestly… yeah kinda but …`
“but it’s still a fuckup.”
“yeah.”
The slave girl darted between the trees, with myself and two of my most beloved legionnaires in proud pursuit. Her feeble slave legs were no match for our proud Roman legs, and deep down she knew it, yet she persisted in trying to get away. Because we were not wearing armor, it was only a matter of minutes before we were able to close the gap. The look of fear in her eyes as she glanced behind herself and saw us about to apprehend her was one I’ll never forget. Absolute terror, mixed with total despair.
I was the closest, so I lept forward and tackled her to the ground. She screamed. She tried to bite and claw me, but one swift slap across the face left her stunned. I think it was her first true taste of violence. Until now, she’d been passed around as a sex object, but always shielded from the carnage of battle. No more. Her escape attempt, and continued resistance, meant that she was now to live in a world of pain.
We brought her back to the camp, still stunned under the weight of the blow.
Her punishment was to be tied up for free use for the next three days, after that we untied her, and allowed her to return to the comfort tents.
She tried starving herself, so we punched out her teeth and took to using her mouth as a cumdumpster, in order to provide her with vital nutrients.
Discipline.
Discipline must be enforced.
“Okay, so. I been thinking lately.”
“uh oh.”
“And.”
“here we go.”
“The universe is conscious. It listens. This consciousness is benevolent, and it is what people call God. In addition to listening, it is possible for God to speak. So in other words, the universe has a benevolent consciousness which it is possible to communicate with.”
“…”
“right, and uh… okay this is going to sound really weird but uh…”
*eyebrow raise*
“I don’t think it likes me masterbaiting.”
“… wat.”
“yeah, I know. Like basically… okay, honestly I think part of the issue is for me I kinda have a porn addiction. And if I try just like a casual session with my imagination… inevitably I’m back on porn within a few hours. And then it’s like fucking 5 times in one day porn binge. And…”
“… yeah?”
“you remember that super hot Austrian I told you about?”
“the vegetarian?”
“yeah. So like it’s going good, right? We’ve had like two sex sessions already, and they’ve been pretty great. Like yeah, I’m hyped. Then I decide to have a little handmade orgasm for the first time in a month. And then I go on a porn binge, and then I see them the day after that porn binge, and you know what they tell me? ‘Not feeling any chemistry’. Like I’m still hella attracted, but they aren’t anymore. And I’m like… oh fuck. It’s the fucking porn. It’s fucking with my fucking mojo.”
“damn.”
“yeah. Fuck.”
It is somewhat surprising that it can at times be harder to not do something than it is to do it.
Indeed, commenting on this paradox, Plato is said to have opined that “they don’t think it be like this, but it do”.
Look who it is, shaking her sexy ass in front of the speakers. It’s
fucking Roxy, bitch. Look how sexy she looks. Double nose ring. That red
top that clings perfectly to her body oh my god you can see her tits it’s
awesome. The tattoo that says create on her right hand. The
sexy pirate earings.
And oh my god she just did a bump of ketamine I FUCKING LOVE GIRLS WHO DO KETAMINE BRB GOING TO ASK HER TO MARRY ME
“no really, and you wonder why you don’t get laid?”
“no, I don’t. I know it’s because I’m a dude trying to bang girls, and girls are harder to bang than dudes. If I were gay I’d be drowning in dick.”
“uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.”
“how the fuck do I not smoke?!”
“uh… I dunno, do something else. Distract yourself.”
“like what? I’m at a fucking party and everyone else is smoking how the fuck can I distract myself.”
“… dance?”
“huh… you might be right. Dancing is really fun for me. Like really, really fun for me. Honestly… right up there with sex as far as ‘favorite things to do with my body’.”
“cool story bro, you wanna get on with the actual plot?”
Something that Mathilde is actually quite happy to notice is that since she’s started doing this whole writing a book thing, a lot of other things in her life have started to get better. And not just that, but her actual writing habit has improved. It’s kind of taken on a life of it’s own. When she can, she’ll start writing before work, so it’s done for the day. Sometimes that isn’t possible, so it’s after work. Some days, like weekends after a particularly heavy night out, she needs a really long walk to actually be able to sit down and write. Enfin, a long walk, and a fat breakfast. And a nap after breakfast. And like half an hour of reading. But she gets there eventually. There is something magic about it.
Sometimes she wonders to herself if the universe doesn’t really want this book to be written, and so it’s subtly nudging her into writing it. No writing, pain. Really. Bad stuff happens. Dates get cancelled. Buses are late. Good dealers get busted, and mediocre ones don’t have any good product in. When she does write, however, joy. Good stuff happens. Random meetings with absolutely marvellous people. That whole adventure with the environmental engineer, even if they’ve gone on vacation for the next three weeks. There’s really some truth to the idea that “having fun is a side effect of doing the right things”. Of course, determining what the right things are can sometimes take a while, but at this point Mathilde has a vague idea of what she should be doing. Writing, for one. Dancing at parties, because… it makes her happy, and that’s actually where she gets a fair amount of good ideas for her writing. Not smoking. Because smoking makes her mean, and she doesn’t like that, and Leon really did not like that, and deep down she knows that even if Leon really if far from perfect, and probably has just as many issues as Mathilde, if she hadn’t yelled at Leon, Leon would probably still be talking to her. So not smoking. She’s still okay with occasional use of other stuff, although she’s got to be careful around alcohol because it makes her want to smoke. So does weed, bizarrely. Or maybe not bizarrely.
Mathilde is French, which means she grew up smoking weed like a French person - with tobacco. Americans will have their bongs and their pipes and their vapes and blaze pure Cali kush, but French people roll their weed (or hash) up with tobacco in a spliff. Mathilde is a really good spliff roller. One of her many talents. She’s also a pretty cunning linguist, a highly respected player of the fellatio flute, and she’s been known to work some minor miracles with her hands.
Unfortunately, it turns out happy romantice relationships require a little more than just being a fairly competent human sex toy.
That, she’s working on.
Today, maybe because it’s a Thursday (thank god… that tuesday was so bad it seeped over into wednesday and if it hadn’t been for the somewhat unsuccessful but hugely enlightening date at the end of the day and running into Cameron on the way home, she probably wouldn’t be happy right now), but she actually feels some confidence about this whole endeavor.
Like it’s somehow, someway, going to work out, and success at this point is, bizarrely completely in her control.
She will show up, she will continue to show up, and God will take care of the rest, and eventually the book is done and Leon is back.
And this time, Leon is going to stay. For good. Forever.
Dick stuffs the map in his bag, and glances around the room. There’s a window, the window he came through, and right now that’s probably the only thing he needs to know. He runs to the window. He gets the grappling hook and attached rope out of his bag, because obviously, he has a grappling hook and attached rope in his bag, fastens it securely to the window ledge, and starts rappeling.
He hits the ground and looks up. He hears loud, angry voices. Not sure what to do about the grappling hook and attached rope, because, while ideally he’d like to remove it from the window in order to keep this useful piece of gear in his bag and not give his pursuers an easy way to catch him, he has absolutely no idea on how to actually remove a grappling hook from a window ledge, so he decides to leave it and start running.
Djenny, being an incredibly useful sidekick/advisor type character (if ever Dick Butler and the Quest for Gazza gets made into a videogame, you can bet your ass Djenny will play the role of ‘calming voice that tells you what the next thing to do is’), advises him to go left, so he goes left, hard.
The Tale of Olivius, chieftan of the Germanic Wanderweg tribe, and his struggle against the tyrannical, patriarchal Roman oppressor
A storm frustrated our attempt at a surprise attack against the Roman oppressor. Fortunately, we could swim. We were not weighed down with heavy armor like those arrogant Roman oppressors. The storm was clearly the work of the great god Wutan. The Romans had been expecting our raid, and if we’d landed on the opposite shore, they would have cut us to pieces.
Pieces of our kit lay floating in the river after the storm. With a bit of luck the Romans thought us all dead. Cleary, the gods were on our side. They had saved us from a disastrous ambush, and instead given the Romans a reason let down their guard. We regrouped, and I started pondering my next move. I wondered if the Romans would bother finishing their bridge now that the reason for its existence was gone. I supsected they would, it seemed fitting with the Roman character. They liked ‘order’, at least a certain defintion of order.
Of course, the fragile, simple constructs of man, while seemingly ‘ordered’, are in many ways more chaotic than the dance of nature. For the constructs of man are destroyed by the slightest whims of fortune, while the dance of nature…
I have been lucky in my life. I have known love, and I know that there is nothing that can stop love from finding a way. And what is love if not the purest expression of life? Life that is so happy to be alive that it merges with another living thing to create more living things?
Those who, like the Romans, count on their so called “civilization”, who value their gold coins and their iron mail, who need to have their food delivered and prepared by slaves and servants, who must be transported in palanquins or litters… they will be lost when the end time comes. Those like us, who hunt and farm our cook our own food, who fight barechested and walk barefoot in the woods… we will be just fine when the end time comes. We will be just fine.
I do not think the Romans will ever truly understand this, and that is why they will never conquer us. The gods back those who are in harmony with nature. We have their blessing.
“you know, I’m watching this Hollywood movie with like explosions and stuff and wow… modern Hollywood is shit. Like they can still do action scenes, but good god, the dialogues have gone to shit.”
“hey I know right? By the way, read your draft of the book Mathilde. It’s nice. Bit boring, but nice.”
“oh cool, thanks for the feedback man ^^”
Mathilde is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with her hands behind her head, and thinking. This whole ‘being a productive artist’ thing really isn’t that hard, is it? It boils down to the fundamental fact that in the long run, it’s probably more enjoyable to do the work than it is to avoid it. She shows up to the page, scribbles random bullshit for a bit, and steps away some time later feeling happier. And then everything after that is just nice.
There’s no more drug cravings. Yes, her love life isn’t perfect, for obvious and perhaps somewhat less obvious reasons, but overall life is pretty good. She keeps almost kinda expecting it to be worse.
She has moments late at night when she’s alone where it almost feels like Leon is there, like they’re together again.
There’s a stupid part of her brain that sometimes says something like “time and space and the self are all illusions, so I’m always with Leon”, but honestly in a way it does feel right. She remembers this total wasteman she talked to once at Cours Julien in Marseille. He was going on about the love of his life, how they were “together but not together”. Honestly, from Mathilde’s point of view it seemed like the guy really needed to get his shit together, but she kinda gets what he was getting at.
It’s probably just a hallucination, but she does sometimes feel like there is this magical psychic/spiritual bond between them, and they will inevitably end up together.
Or almost inevitably. Mathilde and Leon are both very intelligent, and do have a history of finding incredibly ingenious, creative ways to make themselves miserable. When Mathilde looks back on her life and contemplates the immense amount of effort she’s expended trying to not be happy, fleeing her responsiblity as an artist, beating her brain with the liquor and drugs, finding excuse after excuse after excuses not to write…
She could still fuck it up. But right now, for the first time… ever? It feels like it’ll be easier to do it right than to fuck it up. It feels like if she keeps up this quiet little routine of “show up and write everyday, avoid smoking”, pretty fucking soon it’ll be a habit. And it’ll become more and more deeply integrated into who she is, until that’s all she is, and people will keep commenting about how happy she is, and how much she writes and…
and maybe Leon will come back. Or maybe, at this point Mathilde is finally somewhat prepared to accept that maybe Leon won’t come back, but that possibility doesn’t bother her now. She’s actually okay with that happening, because she knows that if it doesn’t work out, it’s Leon’s fucking fault this time, and also that ridiciously pretty law student she met on the metro today.
Jesus.
Why is it that sometimes it’s super easy to have a great relationship with someone you’re totally in love with, even if they seem unattainably beautiful, and yet way harder to have a relationship with a less interesting but theoretically “easier” person?
Listen to your heart. Never settle.
The rave continues. Bros with long hair and sunglasses in the middle awkwardly dance next to girls with abstract tattoos and nose piercing while fat kicks pulsate out from the speakers. As the beat goes on, the hurt and trauma of daily life is released by the dancers pulversized by distorted sine waves and pitch shifted vocal samples.
Oh fuck I just saw Roxy make out with someone else I’m going to spend the whole week crying like a lil bitch why am I such a fucking pussy what’s wrong with me.
“so. Rock climbing.”
“oh. fuck.”
“yeah. He does rock climbing.”
“oh man.”
“His idea of ‘communion with nature’ is driving out to the middle of fucking nowhere, bringing some weird-ass shoes made with fucking rubber from Brazil and a rope made out of god knows what and the weird-ass glasses and the stupid fucking carabiners or whatever and all this other bullshit and don’t even get me started on that stupid ho he always goes with and her stupid fucking vegan leggings made in China out of fucking synthentic fibers by exploited sweatshop labor and her god damn matching sportsbra and climbing up a piece of rock so he can say he did it and then rappeling down.”
“I swear to fucking god, rock climbing is like the white girl with a MacBook Air at Starbucks of sports.”
“like fucking seriously, can we not just go for a fucking walk and like find a nice place to sit and make out? Nooooo we’re going fucking ROCK CLIMBING.”
“fuck that shit.”
“seriously. You wanna go clubbing?”
“spend a few hours in a room lit my lasers, moving in rhythm to music generated by a computer and amplified by a sound system hooked up to a nuclear power plant, possibly whilst under the influence of chemicals that require a high-tech chem lab to synthesize? Hells yeah!”
Clubbing without drugs can be an interesting experience. It’s generally better to go for early nights - for example, in Lyon the Sucre is open Sundays 6 pm to midnight and in the summer, Tuesdays 7 pm to 1 am Wednesday. When you’re not hoped up on MDMA or LSD, you’ll have an easier time not falling asleep. Also, when you’re sober, dealing with stupid drunk people’s bullshit gets bothersome, and at 4am on a Saturday night, 90% of the people in the club or stupid and drunk. Sure, a lot of them will also be on other stuff, but as it turns out, finding party people intelligent enough to avoid alcohol whilst induldging in safer, more modern, and generally funner substances is harder than you’d think.
Okay. Roxy just made out with another dude. Okay. This means she’s probably just rolling hard on ecstasy and making out with everyone. Cool. Okay. I might still have a shot.
“I’m fucking serious, what the fuck is wrong with people that they fucking go rock climbing? Like you’re so fucking bored as a wealthy westerner that you just feel the urge to go climb some rocks? Like oh my god I remember this one girl… ‘j’aime bien me challenger’. It’s like you have no idea how fucking crazy she was. Like fucking wow. Girl with prestigious education says she likes to challenge herself, fucking run.”
Sometimes, of course, you can’t fucking run. You love the person, despite all their crazy.
And maybe, if you wait and hang on to hope… maybe they’ll get better. Love heals.
Dick doesn’t usually do cardio. It’s a well-known fact that cardio kills gains. He just lifts weights occasionally, eats a lot of beef (because beef is objectively the best food ever, even if certain stunningly beautiful vegetarians might not agree with that) and walks places.
Right now, he’s running his fucking ass off. He hasn’t felt this fucking ALIVE since he was dancing at fabric full of mandy and acid when he was 18 for the first time.
Man, that was a really good night.
Anyways, Dick is running. He hasn’t looked back behind him since he started running. He’s been going as fast as he fucking can, occasionally turning when Djenny tells him to. His entire world since he started running has just been feet pounding pavement with the fury of a traumatized alcoholic beating his redheaded stepchild.
His breath comes in ragged, loud gasps now.
He chances a glance behind him.
It’s silent.
Not dead silent, just silent. Middle of the night on a Wednesday silent, not ambush incoming silent.
He stops.
He breathes in big, breathes out big.
Again.
Breathe in, breathe out.
We’re alive.
We’re safe.
We made it.
“well”, says Djenny, “you did it. You’ve got the map.”
“yeah”, responds Dick, still winded as fuck, “great teamwork.”
“you know what I’m thinking about right now? The difference between good and great.”
“… uh-huh. You been reading business books again?”
“no, it’s I’m thinking about like a few quotes.”
“oh gawd, that’s even worse.”
“Like you have that Warren Buffet quote about how ‘the difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful people say no to almost everything’.”
“Warren Buffet quotes count as business books dude.”
“Whatever. And there’s the concept of a ‘larval stage’ in hacker circles, where you basically go on multi-day coding binges and just code all day erryday, hygiene be damned.”
“uh-huh. Good way to not get laid.”
“appreciate your earnest feedback amgio. And there’s that line from… whats-his-face about if you really wanna be a mathematician, you have to love it more than anything else in the world.”
“mmm-hmm…”
“so like I think about my own life, and basically all the stuff I’m really good at, I’ve spent some time basically doing a larval stage of. Like guitar. Like I’m good at guitar, okay? It’s gotten me laid. And basically, that’s because I had a phase where I basically lived on William’s couch and did nothing but smoke joints and play guitar. And recently I had kinda a similar phase for programming. Nothing but smoking joints and coding all day. Like even math, which I’m officially ‘good’ at… had a phase of doing basically nothing but that as well.”
“interesting.”
“like maybe there’s something about eating, breathing, sleeping an activity where it makes you really good at it.”
“yeah, maybe.”
“she yelled at me again. It hurt. I got over it, went to my corner, did the thing that makes me happy, but it hurt. Honestly, a lot. Like I put all this work into being emotionally stable - the meditation, the journaling, the creative writing, yoga, eating well, all that shit. And so I didn’t panic, didn’t freak out, kept calm and carried on. But it really hurt. I remember something my boxing coach told me once:
‘You have a good capacity to take punches. Don’t use it.’
I don’t wanna keep getting hit like this. And okay, could I have handled stuff better sure. I was a bit rude. But then she bit my fucking head off. I remember when she used to physically hit me. My body remembers. I felt so scared, so hurt, so helpless.
I went to bed just wanting to leave. Pack my bag, buy a train ticket, and get the hell out.”
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she wants to be respected, and she’s going to express this in the most disrespectful way possible.
“yeah, I mean besides you and maybe like two other people, I don’t think anyone is actually going to read it.”
“oh. Well you never know. It might unexpectedly resonate with someone so hard they feel obligated to tell all their friends about it, and one of their friends might like it enough to tell someone about it, and it actually… you know, get out there.”
“yeah. It probably won’t though.”
“Honestly? yeah, it probably won’t.”
“Still going to write it though.”
“yeah, obviously, do it. You get all miserable otherwise and then I have to deal with your shit.”
“yeah obviously there’s that. But also, because like, okay, maybe it’s the engineer rubbing off on me, but like, I’m actually good at writing, you know? Like for real, I’ve written people love letters so beautiful they cried reading them. Like I’m sorry if this is pretentious, but I got a fucking gift for this shit. And like, I wanna help people with that you know? So even if it’s just the three people who read this, maybe one of them will actually… get something from it. And then I’ve actually done something. Maybe that’s why life is basically forcing me to write this book.”
“uh… okay first off, that whole wanting to help people with your gift thing is actually really like, cute. And noble. But also, uh, what the fuck do you mean ‘life is forcing you to write this book’?”
“well like… basically, I write, I get lucky. I don’t write, I get unlucky. Like okay, there’s the whole, I’m happier writing than not writing, and I mean, that’s… like that makes sense. Writing makes me happy, I’m happy when I do it. Like same with fucking honestly. All other things equal, I’m happier getting naked with someone I love on the regular than not. But I don’t mysteriously get life throwing me lucky breaks when I’m getting laid regularly. I don’t randomly get offers to start actually being a real life professional writer, even if, okay, I’m not actually sure it’ll fucking work out -”
“-yeah been meaning to ask you about that, by the way, how’s it going?”
“I’ll tell you later. My point being is like… I’ve been meeting people lately, you know? Like not just the engineer. There was that law student as well. A pair of American tourists on the train when I went to see William in Toulouse. I know it’s all probably like a coincidence or whatever but…”
“but it really feels like the universe is gratuitously rewarding you for writing?”
“yeah.”
“thats… interesting.”
Dick walks back to the hotel, following Djenny’s instructions. In this magical world without iPhones, djinns handle the duties of Google Maps.
Speaking of maps - he hasn’t actually looked at the map yet. He’s planning on getting back to the hotel first. The map in safely in his backpack, next to Djenny’s lamp, and it is probably not going to get stolen there. If it were in his hand, it might attracted unwanted attention, and get stolen. It’s in his bag, his bag is doing an excellent job of looking completely uninteresting,
It’s just before dawn. The city is quiet. There’s a slight breeze. It’s quite beautiful. Dick isn’t really paying attention to where he’s heading, he’s just mindlessly following Djenny’s directions, enjoying the trip. As he walks, daylight starts to slowly light up streets. It’s peaceful. The city, nomrally a bustling beehive of noise and movement, is quiet, calm, still.
Dimitri Quentinovich works for the nefarious Russian government. He works to overthrow peaceful and prosperous Western democracies on behalf of the tyrant Badimir Putain, a sad, confused man who, unable to feel joy for himself, wishes to stop others from being happy as well.
I love my work, and it loves me.
Dick finally arrives back at the hotel. The reception is empty, he takes the stairs up to his room, throws off his bag, takes off his shoes and breathes a big sigh of relief.
He throws himself on the bed.
“fuck.”
Another deep breath. He savors it like a homeless man enjoying the first sip of a can of obnoxiously strong beer. Peace at last.
At some point, he’ll have to actually look at the map but… right now…
he just wants to breathe. With his eyes closed. And before he knows it, he’s off to sleep.
One might ask, why exactly Dimitri Quentinovich is currently working to overthrow peaceful and prosperous Western democracies on behalf of the tyrant Badimir Putain. One might also ask what actions he is undertaking to achieve this goal.
The why is probably the more interesting of the two for intellectually pretentious wankers - er- readers… intellectually curious readers, you’re not supposed to insult your audience…
Let’s try that again.
Anyone who has read George Orwell knows that a totalitarian system has only truly succeeded when it has robbed its people of hope. So long as hope lives in the hearts of men, so long as there is beauty and joy in the world, truth and liberty will eventually flourish. They cannot be kept down. Like Roxy standing in front of the left-side speakers at Le Sucre on a Sunday, they are simply irresistible.
The tyrant Badimir Putain has suceeded in completely robbing the noble Russian peoples of hope. He has banned rave music, and the only car allowed in the entire country is the BMW X6.
In such a post-apocalyptic teenage wasteland, Dimitri Quentinovich was born and raised. It is all he knows. He has never seen a Jaguar E-Type. He has never felt the warm rumble of a dubstep wobble bass careening through time and space at a hundred and seven decibels at an underground rave in a warehouse north of Lyon. He has never seen Roxy dance.
In a world without beauty, what is there to live for? Nothing.
There is only survival. The regime feeds him, because he serves the regime. The regime houses him, because he serves the regime. If he disobeys, the regime will switftly and brutally kill him.
Despite seemingly having nothing to live for Dimitri likes being alive. Hence, his continued cooperation with a totalitarian regime that has replaced beauty with a portrait of Badimir Putain.
His current mission is to use a newflanged technology known as ‘The Internet’ (not to be confused with the similarly named musical artist) to sow fear, uncertainty, confusion and doubt in the hearts and minds of the free peoples of the world. In other words, Dimitri is paid to shitpost on the internet.
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
“OH MY FUCKING GOD STACY, WHAT THE FUCK!!?!?”
Dick wakes up. That was a long sleep. He needed that.
He takes a moment to wake up. The plot comes back to him. He’s Dick Butler, he’s on a quest to find Gazza, he was given a magic lamp in Marseille, he rubbed it a djinn named Djenny came out. They took a portal and arrived in this town… what’s it called again? Bassila? Like Drum’n’Bassila?
Lol. Drum in Bassila would be a great name for a party.
Anyways. Corrupt mayer of Bassila had magic map locked up in his safe, and now Dick has it. Cool.
And the next logical step would be to look at the map and… hopefully there will be something telling him what he needs to do next. That would be handy.
He doesn’t particularly like Bassila. It’s too damn hot, and too damn sunny. Dick is a creature of the cold. He likes rain, and snow, and cloudy weather. He dislikes the sun, it burns him. He much prefers the climate of his native England to that of the Mediterreanean.
So. The next logical step would be to look at the map. The map is in his bag, along with Djenny’s lamp. Djenny herself is not currently visible… she’s probably in her lamp. His shoes are by the door (Dick has exactly one pair of socks, and he almost never wears them), and he feel asleep in his clothes. Exactly three different places in the entire contain things that Dick needs, and one of those three places is ‘on him’. How convinient.
For some reason, Dick decides to glance out the window before getting the map out of his bag. Uh-oh.
Police.
Now how exactly it happened that Dick glanced out the window right as the police were enterting his hotel… well, probably because there’s another chase scene that needs writing, and having Dick get arrested and spend a long time in jail would be a pain in the ass to both write and read.
So. Police, just walked into Dick’s hotel. Dick is English. He doesn’t speak any language that isn’t English. There is no way in hell he’s going to be able to smooth talk the feds. His one hope is to be gone before they get to his room.
He swiftly puts on his shoes and grabs his bag. He reaches in and rubs Djenny’s lamp. Nothing happens.
Rubs it again. Still nothing.
Wonderful.
Djinns. They do that sometimes.
Dick sighs.
He’s on his own for this one. He did casually look at a map of the city of Bassila. He has a rough idea of where his hotel is, and he remembers where the portal back to Marseille is hidden. He knows that the hotel has a fire escape, which will come in handy because he lost his grappling hook and rope.
Well. It’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen next, isn’t it?
Dick opens the door, closes it, and heads for the fire escape. This chase scene is going to be a little different.
Dick won’t actually be running, he’s going to be walking casually yet rather rapidly through Bassila and hopefully not making any wrong turns on his way to where the portal is hidden.
Paris is many things to many - oh my fucking god if I have one more stupid olympic tourist get in my way when I’m rushing to work in a fucking suit on a tuesday in august I swear to god I will
meanwhile, Rick James takes her nude.
“I’m exploring the concept of rest days.”
“really? How’s that working out for you?”
“well… I dunno. I mean sometimes, taking a day off is just what the doctor ordered. Like I’m stuck, writing isn’t fun anymore, I take one day off. Just for one day, I allow myself a break from writing. But just one day, or else I start getting all the symptoms of ‘not writing when I should be’ and that’s just painful.”
“and what happened to the whole concept of a larval stage? Eating, breathing, sleeping your art?”
“yeah, but you can’t do that forever. You need to take breaks. It’s that whole ‘slow and steady wins the race’ concept. In the long run, you’re better off writing 2 pages a day for a year than 10 pages a day for a month.”
“makes sense.”
“it’s bizarre how sometimes not telling myself I should be doing something is the best way to get it done. I try to give myself a daily piano practice habit, I quit after a week. I tell myself I should be learning how to do machine learning stuff so I can get a good job, I procrastinate by playing piano.”
Dick is back out on the street again. He’s heading… vaguely south, he thinks. He can see the hill in the distance. It’s still rather far, and there’s a good chance he’ll lose sight of it in the labyrinth of narrow streets between him and the hill, but he can at least see his destination, which is encouraging. The street isn’t any more agitated than usual. It’s late afternoon, the vicious Mediterreanean sun has somewhat abated. Hot, but no longer unpleasantly so.
“if this shit happens on a Friday, I can cope. I tell myself ‘fuck it, weekend’ and I stop thinking about it. But it happened on a fucking Tuesday. I have to fucking deal with it for the rest of the fucking workweek.”
“is it even if a job if you actually love it? Isn’t the whole point of a day job to be just unsatisfying enough to remind you to work on your fucking art when you get home, all while fufilling certain basic human needs, like being able to buy food, pay rent, and socialize?”
“…”
“if you’re really lucky, you even learn useful shit on the job.”
“you remember how I told you I called her stupid piece of shit and I felt better afterwards?”
“yeah..”
“well, three days later the drugs had worn off and I find myself crying in Steffy’s arms because I realize just how much of a colossal fuckup that was. And now she won’t talk to me me.”
“understandable I suppose. Ah well, live and learn right?”
“… yeah. Moral of the story: be kind. Always, always, always, be kind. And pray. It helps.”
Paris is many things to many people. Today, she’s free.