La Capital

I made my way through crowds, across squares, with rain clouds over ahead, to get to strangers and give them money. I got in and out of cars. I was given my cut and a kiss on the lips. They wanted me to stay and party with them. Strangers. I bummed a smoke and said OK.

I was alone and cold inside.

I’ve been trying all day to put the pieces back together, but that was some Spanish Fly minderaser shit we were drinking, so those memories aren’t coming back. All I know is that afterwards, I stumbled beneath shafts of early morning sunlight to bang on the chrome plated door of an after hours hole with an open palm. Ostensibly, it was for that one last drink. I ended up propped against the wood paneling by the bathroom instead, begging for drugs. The place was a mix of drag queens and underage trash, although I guess in Europe there's no such thing as underage. A fetus could walk up to a bar and buy a drink.

A beret wearing Sudanese lady led me into one of the stalls. She spouted pop psychology platitudes in French and called me her “little peach fuzz boy” in English while sticking coke up my nose and unceremoniously rubbing it on my clit.

“I don’t care for your nihilism,” she informed me. “There is such a thing as a depth of soul. If the conditions are right, I can see down a person’s interior passage—that never-ending hall of mirrors. I can see all the twists and turns; I know all the decisions they’ll make before they make them, like a master chess player.”

I sat on the toilet with my legs spread and my arm slung across my face, trying to argue with her, trying to make her see that there were certain things that people did which could never be explained.

My points got fucked-up though, as I became breathless thinking of the big black cock hiding beneath that cheap cotton dress.

“How does it feel,” I asked—indignant even as I pressed myself against the queen’s wide, lipsticked mouth—“how does it feel to always be right about everything?”

U.S. leaflets dropped on Iraq