Thirty-Something Blues

The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down
into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly,
as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.

André Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism

In memory of Fernande Savage (1919-2006)

Warning

What I’ll tell you about isn’t petite biere. So if you’re not sitting, sit down. If your sensitive at heart, go back to the bookstore and ask for a refund. If you like Mary Higgins Clark, do the same. There’s no place for pity here. Indeed, it’s a dangerous territory but it’s mine. I define the rules: follow them. If not, you can go fuck yourself, clear enough?

There’s no place for compromise here, this ain’t real life, it’s not a true story where you can whine and go through 3 boxes of Kleenex. It’s not about the little madam who divorces and has a fit about her relationship for 45 minutes, then talks to her girlfriends about it; they tell her to make a beauty of herself, to work out and go out and meet people. It’s fiction. I hope you understand what it implies and where it can lead you. I frankly don’t give a fuck about cute feelings and stories to whimper about with your ball-and-chain. So if you’re ready for the ride, good. If not, you’re at the wrong place and time. Cause I’ll have no mercy for the unexpected victims that could cross my road: I’ll beat them down to their last drop of blood, I’ll burn their flesh and I’ll drink the liquid that circulated in their arteries. I won’t be cheap in bloodthirsty beverage. In fact I’m even thinking of commercializing it: Blood, that would be a catchy name…

July 15, 2004

All this useless feeling spill started at the supermarket, obviously, cause that’s where the most horrible dramas reveal themselves to surveillance cameras and are replayed by pathetic reality shows. Maybe it’s the smell of outdated meat or the sight of shop-spoiled apples that made me tilt, dunno. All I know is that since July 15th 2004, I’m not the same. My senses seem to have increased tenfold, I feel strange waves, extraterrestrial maybe, but one thing’s for sure: something triggered off inside me and I don’t find the Stop button. Worst, I don’t wanna find it: let’s go at the bottom of things.

All I want is to go all out. In Loblaws’ alleys, I don’t spare anyone, yet I’m of a polite, social nature. I turn corners round and I hit a grandma (but what was she doing at Loblaws at 11:45 PM?). Yet I love my grandma, I don’t see her enough but it’s not a good enough reason to run over grannies who like to shop after six! I don’t recognize myself. I whistle at the cashiers… and thinking about it, they don’t deserve it (well, not all of them).

(If you already find me quite horrible, close the book. I’m not thinking of censoring myself and my editor told me he’d do a good job. He won’t try to make a best-seller out of it, anyway it’s really not the point of this exercise.)

A couple of university dicks do their groceries, Summer’s new couples, old couples who can’t stand each other anymore, thick-glass hopeless singles, has-beens who continue to study for one reason, to find chicks: at their age, unless they want to hang out at The Lovers or to cyberdate, there’s not much left in the meat market anymore. Obviously, the supermarket looks like an Iraqi village after mass deflagrations: broccolis hardly hold in place; they’d want so much to be relieved and cut in little bouquets to be dipped in Country Western sauce; apples fight on the shelves to find the most light possible: it’s a well-known fact, a well-lighted apple has much more chance of being bought since it dazzles consumers: its reflection is divine, we’re back at Adam and Eve’s time, our apple hitches.

I feel like opening a cold one. What the fuck. We’re not in Afghanistan as far as I know. I can open a beer without offending anyone. Seems not. They look at me weird. Grannies avoid me. Their grand-children should present me at Easter. I’d be a hit.

While I’m at it, I light a smoke. If there’s something we can’t do anymore, it’s to grill a little cancer stick, even less at a supermarket (I should’ve tried at a drug store). So I wander in the alleys with my Molson and my Marlboro: I make a few laugh; the less subtle cough (those are the ones I prefer). I bet you the manager will be “alerted” by some holier-than-thou prick. Won’t be long.

Like I was saying.

July 17, 2004

I’m very mad.
watashi wa totemo hara wo tatete imasu

I’m a card hunter.
watashi wa ka-do no kurekuta- desu

It takes me a long time to write letters.
watashi wa ji wo kaku noni jikan ga kakarimasu

It’s only been a week since I arrived in Japan.
watashi ga nihon ni tsuite mada isshuukan desu

I’ve been taking Japanese courses for less than a year.
watashi ga nihongo kouza wo ukehajiemte youyaku ichinen ni narimasu

It’s been 6 months since I started learning Japanese.
watashi ga nihongo wo hajimete hantoshi ni narimasu

Because at the time I’m writing to you I’m tired and I’m sleepy.
toiu nomo anata ni kaite iru jikan niwa watashi wa tsukarete ite nemui nodesu

Tonight I’m off.
konya watashi wa kyuukachuu nandesu

Does it bother you that I’m of Chinese origin?
moshi watashi ga chuugokukei demo anata wa ki ni shimasen ka

Maybe I made a mistake in the password.
watashi wa tabun pasuwa-do wo machigaeta nodeshou

Like I was saying.

“There’s no such thing as luck”, like Another said. The self-righteous, the pecksniffians did give me away. Two days in the hole, makes you think. Needless to say that a beautiful battle took place at the corner of Côte-des-Neiges and Queen-Mary Road. “What a scandal!” we could hear in the aisles. “It makes no sense! He must have been stoned out of his mind to have done this…” They rambled, they rambled… A bit of action in their boring lives probably did them some good. A story to tell your neighbours, to parents who don’t come over often (“It was terrible! He must have drank at least 7, right Bob?”). All this to say that being different doesn’t kill you, it locks you up.

You should’ve seen the braggarts they called to their rescue to restrain the “anarchist”... As if I was the next-worst-thing after Bin Laden. Christ! I was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette! Twenty years ago, no one would have said a thing, except a couple of stuck-ups from Westmount, but that’s it. That’s life after September 11. Civil rights? Niet! With such a speech, I could do talk radio at CHOI FM. I see myself well next to Parliament independent deputy André Arthur: ”Salut ma gang de crottés! (Hi there bunch of slobs!). Christ, I’m about to recycle myself into radio!

That would scare them too much…

So when the pigs arrived at the supermarket, I really froze. Stoned. What kind of imbecile does it take to call 911 because a fed-up thirty-something, weighing 145 pounds soaking wet, lights and opens one up? The manager will surely get a promotion for his courage and his ability to react in a crisis situation. If a Canadian Olympian hadn’t got caught smoking up, I might have made the cover of Journal de Montréal?

Goddam weed…

July 20, 2004

I use a computer for my work but I don't master it very well.
watashi no shigoto wa konpyu-ta wo tsukaimasu ga
doumo nigate desu

I know very well how to send the money to Japan from France by postal mandate,
but I don't know how to do the opposite.
nihon kara furansu he yuubin furikae kouza wo tooshite soukin suru houhou wa shitte imasuga sono gyaku no houhou wa yoku wakarimasen

I want to make love to you.
anata to aishiaitai

Even though I'm really not a nuclear energy activist.
watashi wa kaku enerugi- no yougoha dewa arimasen ga

I modified it since May 5th, so everything's OK now.
5 gatsu itsuka ikou sono kairyou wo okonai ima wa subete umaku ugoite imasu

July 26, 2004

Two days in the hole. For some, it would've been like dying. Explain that to the wife, kids. That's not my case. My cat who I affectionately call ''El Loco'' didn't worry too much. Went to eat at my neighbours', as usual when I don't come back home and decide to get hung. So two days. Mixing with society's elected members. Thrilling. Visionaries I tell you, cranks rather. One who wanted to patent an idea about twistable caps (hum...), one who narrated his neighbour's murder, but of course he didn't do it, that's for sure, another that said the police picked her up for prostitution, but by her looks, I pity her clients.

Good people I tell you. People you should hang around with. We could almost award the honour medals, honorific doctorates, even small scenes in FOX sitcoms. But no, they're misunderstood, hazed. I can identify with them. Misunderstoods, I'm-not-ables. I encourage them in their fight against... something. It's with furious fanatics that we build a better world, not with suits and database sysadmins.

Two days listening to nonsense stories, luckily I wasn't sleepy. My story was trivial: I had drank a beer and smoked a cigarette in a supermarket. ''No! They arrested you for that? Man... if I had been nailed by the pigs each time I did foolish stuff, I would have passed the last 25 years staring at vertical posts!'', joked one of my temporary roommates. ''No, but what were you thinking?'', continued the whore. ''You couldn't wait until you had finished your groceries?'' Well no, precisely, I couldn't, I didn't feel like it, it felt insipid to conform to a municipal rule that doesn't protect a lot of people because the bottom line is that the same people that are supposed to be protected from my smoke and, oh!, from my drunkenness (sic), are those who drive smoke farters... So I make urban pollution my business, thank you.

''Don't you find it a bit stupid to be in jail for that?'', said the non-murderer. It all depends on your definition of ''stupid''. If I had killed my neighbour and was accused of first-degree murder, I think I'd shut the fuck up. But you know everything's relative, better: everything's in everything. So...

You're supposed to learn in jail, you're supposed to look at your belly button and say ''you were a really bad boy'', but the bottom line is that I have nothing to reproach to myself, I'm irrecuperable. I can't wait to go back to my favourite supermarket.

July 31, 2004

The end of the month. Empty bottles to bring to the 7/11. The rent will have to wait again. The bills. The income taxes. Fuck that, royally. As if I only have that to do. Spend my money for assholes. They can go cook themselves an egg or an ox, ask me if I care (Do you care? — No.).

My buddy left for Japan and it seems they don't sleep a lot around there. It's not really different from here then. Sleep: abstract notion. Since I don't sleep anymore, Christ the world is beautiful: chicks are sexier, bills are smaller, even reality shows are almost interesting. The other day I watched Oprah, yeah yeah, you know the one who gains weight loses weight gains weight loses weight and has a nice magazine with her on the cover every month and who makes us take out the Kleenex box every afternoon at four thirty? So I was watching Oprah, fascinated that people would want to make a show of their personal life on TV. Really fascinated. You really have nothing to do, don't you? Hello?!? Wake up and smell the burning coffee and shit your sitting in?!?

I must be a reactionary, that must be it. I can't conceive that a million locos (sorry, ''El Loco'') are glued to their plasma screens every afternoon and fill themselves up with this bullshit sensationalism. It's beyond me. You have to be real low to be satisfied with such low pleasures, or maybe the others' misfortune... That must be it. Oprah is reassuring, it's feel-good TV. After we can go on with our shitty lives and feel less rotten, we continue our little stupid habits, we smoke, we look outside the window if the neighbour is still doing his dishes while listening to Joe Dassin, we continue not to put winter tires because in Quebec, we know how to drive for fuck's sake, we continue to encourage Lotto-Quebec because if we'd win, it would change our lives, wouldn't it?

Yeah yeah, dream on honey. You may as well hope to act a torrid scene with Brad Pitt in the next 10 minutes. Oh yes Brad, harder you piece of shit, ram that dick further in you whiny mother fucker. The couple of the year. They say that Angelina gave birth to a beautiful baby (or that Jennifer's waiting for one, I'm confused). Do you really think I give a flying fuck?

I think I need to go to the supermarket, or the drugstore. It's just besides it anyway.

July 33, 20XX

Perfect facade you must become a visionary while youth isn't too far away the aisles are full of cheap deodorant it's completeness she drinks like badly shaved shampoo it's a cacophony behind the toilet paper walls you must beat the iron while it's hot the poet becomes a visionary through a long disorder of the senses it's a well-known fact I've had enough of those pills I'm not crazy the upstairs neighbour's being raped every night can't you hear it?!? no I'm not demented I only have a slight fondness for toxins diapers are on special this week I'll buy some for Emily who's gonna give birth to her 13th child the grand criminal the grand damned soul the supreme being isn't himself but Another he can't control the starlets in heat who bestride magazine displays they all sing like Jessica Simpson and we're their guarantors God grant that the reader, emboldened by those sexual bombs, will be able to resist to my heart's vivisection table this language will be the soul of fabric softeners on sale only bullets can solve the fieriness of the helpless and bend the spine of impromptu drunks.

Perfect softness that slides on your urine smell boil my balls in a cloth of friction alcohol honey you're only tanned in your brain the bullets want to spring out of the barrel and produce an extravaganza a myriad an infinite prosopopeia of bloody streams it's time to market Blood it's time to open the valves to let them flow Yankee doodle came to town on the Avignon bridge the dissoluteness of all my senses is unwinding as expected my sergeant pepper's lonely hearts but no but no we must be absolutely shitty we must bath in our excrements to wallow in our vomit drink and eat it make absolutely new hypermodern contemporary sushis with it or haikus or even fibs the cash register is full of emptiness this is how life goes and do you have an air miles card do you have a fucken air miles card nurse nurse!

Do you remember the ending in Lost Highway oh man that was too fucken cool check out that chick oh yeah I'd ram her up the ass shoot her make it click put that barrel down her throat down her crotch rip her skirt off and shoot her yeah take your dick out and stick it down her throat while you caress her with the loaded barrel force her to masturbate check out that dude man he looks stupid shoot him between the eyes oh yeah good idea (no don't) look at that old woman oh yeah she deserves a bullet (no think of your grandma) shut up mother fucker shoot her she's an old bag (no don't for Christ's sake!) oh shut the fuck up put in your mouth pull the trigger put in her mouth pull the trigger put in your mouth pull the trigger eeeeeeeeeeeckckcckck!