_____________

imyourbottom, 18
Budapest

– I do it without emotions
– I’m not a conversation partner
– Dont touch my dick
– No hair pulling
– No tearing clothes

Guestbook of imyourbottom

Anonymous – Feb 8, 2023
He can come while being fucked hard with a totally soft dick and without even touching it and that alone made me come but he is still a boring dick hat

HH49HH – Feb 3, 2023
I couldn’t disagree with the previous commenter more.

tik-tak – Feb 3, 2023
a pretty face is nothing if you have an ugly heart

imyourbottom (Owner) – Feb 3, 2023
Only ugly people hate me

PoundCake – Feb 3, 2023
I hope I live long enough to watch you age into an ugly old man. Your attitude is repulsive.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Hungarian, English, German
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick M – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No answer
S&M Soft
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 150€
Overnight Rate 900€

 

____________

Iserve_u_19, 19
Dallas

When I was thirteen, an older man picked me up at the grocery store, took me home, made me strip and kneel and choked me with his cock. It was my first time.

Ever since, I have only turned tricks with men who pounded my throat, fucked me, fisted me. It is all I know.

I would love some company.

Guestbook of Iserve_u_19

anarchocapitalist – Feb 12, 2023
He’s a sweet boy so go easy on him… Haha I’m joking so hard hahaha…

UniqueProfileName – Feb 11, 2023
He was spun af, sweating, tina dick, pupils the size of dinner plates, totally in outer space, attention span shot to hell. Loved working him over while he was in orbit, the little pig.

Manufacturer – Feb 8, 2023
He’s just pretty.

Hornyguyingreenlycra – Feb 7, 2023
Wanted to treat myself to something and got a totally drugged boy who just laid there like a beached fish. Hands off!

ErosWired – Feb 1, 2023
Dissolute, full of drugs and semi conscious 😉 That better?

Sharp-edge – Feb 1, 2023
You say that like it’s a bad thing 😛

ErosWired – Feb 1, 2023
Dissolute, full of drugs and semi conscious

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Some
Smoker Yes
Tattoos Yes
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position Bottom only
Dick M – Cut
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Never
Hourly Rate 100$
Overnight Rate 400$

 

_____________

5letters2vowels, 19
Macon

I am “straight” white trash who lives alone with no family, no friends, and a meaningless job. I’m looking for a man to own me forever in return for financial stability at an income level that’s above my current state of being heavily in debt and living on friends’ couches. Ideally I would not want to think, not make any choices and just want to listen to what my owner has to say. I’m very picky when choosing my owner so please only hmu if you’re tall, masc, dominant, strong, very well endowed, smart, funny, and very aggressive. I’ve got a nice peach if you know what I mean and I’m pretty cute but you need to text me to get to know more:) I also am very weirdly attracted to rednecks or hillBilly’s especially if you live in a trailer like idk what it is but that just turns me on so much lol.

Guestbook of 5letters2vowels

yourcominghomewithme – Feb 10, 2023
I’m 44 and live in a trailer, currently very overweight but steadily loosing it. Sexy fucker or skinny ugly guy coming soon. Feel free to get in touch.

5letters2vowels (Owner) – Feb 9, 2023
Yeah, you are. (You didn’t mention that you told me you were in love with me 6 times.)

MDW – Feb 9, 2023
Am I a faggot? I just wonder because I sucked this faggot’s dick and fucked him up his faggot asshole with my dick am I gay?

5letters2vowels (Owner) – Feb 5, 2023
Need time to think about it.

DonkeyOwner – Feb 5, 2023
Just a 54 year old gay man with a bit of a novel kink. I want to make a boy my donkey. Force him onto all fours, strip off his clothes, make him bray, and be my pathetic animal. And this pathetic animal does whatever he’s told. Maybe even for a forever thing. HMU if interested

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Little
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position Versatile
Dick L – Cut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M Soft
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Sometimes
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

_____________

TwinkTwinkLittleStar, 21
Berlin

I am asexual. That does NOT mean that I won’t have sex! I just don’t have a drive myself that triggers a sexual desire. So you CAN HAVE SEX with me, but then it all comes from YOU.

Basically, I have no problem sucking your dick or having my hole licked. Even the harder versions, i.e. a slopping throatfuck and a smacking ass fuck, are ok. Being asexual is neither good nor bad. It’s ok for me.

I understand that men often feel horny and then need to do something about it. Since this feeling is foreign to me, please don’t be angry if I don’t notice it.

Guestbook of TwinkTwinkLittleStar

TwinkTwinkLittleStar (Owner) – Feb 9, 2023
Being someone’s toilet doesn’t scary me, but I have never tried it, and it may be just stupid.

Body Type Athletic
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages German English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick XL – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing Consent
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 80€
Overnight Rate On request

 

_____________

Sexmachines, 21
Paris

Two open minded kinky students who like to party and have fun but our lives are pretty boring, and that is why we are here. I am looking for an older man to keep entertained, as we will be entertained by keeping you entertained. We’re looking for an adventure, a trip, crazy night, something extraordinary that will blow all of us completely away.

Small game :
If you are: between 18 and 30 years old: 1 point / between 30 and 50: 2 points / between 50 and 80: 3 points
If you have a (short) beard: 2 points
If you are muscular (able to carry one or both of us): 5 points
If you are hairy: 3 points
If you are taller than us (1m81): 3 points
If you like winning arguments: 3 points
If you kiss like a lion eats: 3 points
If you like to power fuck us (alone or with 2): 2 points
If you like to give us long tongue baths: 2 points
If you have an interesting job or studies: 1 point
If you are passionately into us: 1 point
If you like magicians: 25 points
If you send you a dick on the first message: minus 5 points

Results :
Between 0 and 5: I will but I probably won’t enjoy it
Between 5 and 10: try, I might satisfy you, we’ll see
Between 10 and 20: you have good luck getting great sex
20 and +: when are we getting married?

Guestbook of Sexmachines

TopPigBB – Feb 11, 2023
The one with the long hair has such a cute ass it made me cry.

CuntWrecker – Feb 6, 2023
Sex should be an event.
I hate silent porn, and I hate silent sex.
If you’re being destroyed in bed, and there is TOTAL SILENCE in the room, then something is very wrong.
I fucked them both hard and to the hilt, and I’m like, what? What is even happening here? Are we even having sex?
The way I see it: When you get done having sex your throat should be sore no matter what position you did.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos Yes
Piercings Yes
Languages French, English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick L – Uncut
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Soft
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 200€
Overnight Rate 1000€

 

_____________

JorgUndNana, 19
Hamburg

This is the partner profile of me Nana (19) and my “master” Jörg (52).

I Nana live with my “master” Jorg but he is hardly around. He works for Red Cross and travels around the globe helping war victims.

I Nana graduated high school but haven’t attended college yet, don’t have a job for now, currently just work as a non-paying apprentice in an auto repair shop. I Nana am naturally good with cars and intend on become a professional auto mechanic someday, maybe go as far as owning an auto repair shop of mine.

Jorg is looking for paying dates who want to have threesomes, or preferably another dom/master … who wants to use me Nana.

If you are interested, please write to us with your ideas, ideas, and we will price them out 🙂

LG Jörg and Nana

Guestbook of JorgUndNana

XTRMPLAY – Jan 24, 2023
I organized with Jorg to use Nana as the dump last Sunday at a weekly horse fair I host.

Nana arrived at 15h, got hooded and tagged with a red mark to indicate he takes all cum. This suited the words “bottomless pit” Jorg had written on his ass cheeks.

By 16h, a group of about 20 men started filling the room. Nana has a pretty ass, so in the course of 2,5h he took around 20 cocks.

Jorg arrived at the club around 17h30, by which time Nana had 14 marks on his ass cheek. Jorg wasted little time. Large gusts of seed escaped Nana’s cunt while he fucked him, then he handed him over to other random men, and Nana took 24 loads before me and Jorg double fucked him and bred him. I filled him 6 times that evening.

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Some
Smoker Socially
Tattoos Yes
Piercings No
Languages English, German, Spanish
Sexual Position Bottom only
Dick M – Uncut
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing No
Safe Sex Never
Hourly Rate 100€
Overnight Rate 500€

 

____________

Weak4It, 20
Chișinău Municipality

Hi call me Mark .! 🙏 •Let’s Embrace It ❤️ Trust me I’m a very good and I know how to take care of a man so much .. I’m a young man of God and I believe the right person for me won’t stress me so much .. ! God bless us all 🙏❤️ I have everything to take good care of anybody .. Time is of the essence ⏳.. Please I’m too smart.

Guestbook of Weak4It

Weak4It (Owner) – Feb 13, 2023
It would be interesting to chat with aliens from another planet and get to know their mentality, so I’ll be glad if an alien writes to me.

ShyBBFag – Feb 9, 2023
I believe that you can fall in love at first sight, at first word. I believe you are my man, my other half. We are already on our way to each other, I can feel it.

olive – Feb 4, 2023
You are psychologically unhinged. I have a straight jacket and you need to be put in it.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Latin
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Spanish, English
Sexual Position Versatile
Dick M – Uncut
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Kissing Consent
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 90€
Overnight Rate 350€

 

____________

21student, 21
Tacoma

Foto says it all.

Guestbook of 21student

21student (Owner) – Feb 7, 2023
I’m not against topping on principle, but given that I am not attracted to men it’s very difficult to remain hard enough to do so.

Selectfeww – Feb 1, 2023
looking to expand your repertoire

NHeat – Jan 30, 2023
Simple boy with simple thoughts

Body Type Athletic
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Little
Smoker Socially
Tattoos Yes
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick L – Cut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M No
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 100$
Overnight Rate 300$

 

___________

HeroImpulse, 19
Dallas

No, no, it´s just a BroJob bro, you know, no homo.

I’m a man, not a woman.

I’m still relatively young, but I know enough about me.

When it comes to sperm shedding, I have the problem that I need to very often and girls don’t want to eat that much.

I am not currently looking for a gay relationship.

I can’t deal with indifference about me, even on the smallest scale.

Kolya out

Guestbook of HeroImpulse

HeroImpulse (Owner) – Feb 8, 2023
This comment is from an uncontrolled sadist who is chasing me in a disgusting way. He raped me. He writes negative reviews to take revenge for not letting this mentally ill man rape me again. The police already understand the case, because it was a violent rape. I have evidence of the moment he attacked and then raped me.

FudgePacker – Feb 8, 2023
I’m an arse-obsessed top into fucks with young guys who don’t douche. This one fought a bit and yelled and very much needed a gag but his arse made me literally drip precum, I didn’t need any lube.

Body Type Athletic
Ethnicity Latin
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings Yes
Languages English
Sexual Position Top only
Dick XL – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M No
Kissing No
Safe Sex Sometimes
Hourly Rate 100$
Overnight Rate 200$

 

___________

Nightmare_, 20
Taos

Dirty minded boy looking for high rolling scatters.

The best way to really enjoy each other 💩 is to do a 69 shit eating, otherwise im into scatkisses and geting fucked with my 💩 over your cock.

I can eat my own too.

I also like well paying 🚽 who takes all my stuff, 💩💦

I want 💩 that is thin, hard, somewhere in between is the best though.

I’m really excited to eat 💩 and have my 💩 eaten you guys 🙃

Guestbook of Nightmare_

Toiletman666 – Feb 9, 2023
I arranged a spot. Waited for him. I pissed/shit/puked/came in his mouth and then he did exactly the same to me.
I’m complex.

daddykokin75 – Feb 5, 2023
he shits and ejaculates a lot he redid my face i gave him money and he went away

Sergo_405 – Feb 3, 2023
I thought I should try scat sex once in my life. I’m not sorry he was the guy I tried it with. Having an orgasm while nauseated is certainly unique but I’m not sure it’s something people need to experience.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, Spanish
Sexual Position Versatile
Dick L – Uncut
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active/Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Rarely
Hourly Rate 100$
Overnight Rate 450$

 

____________

god_ass, 19
Karlsruhe

Hello,

I am transgender and still a virgin and I have a dick.
I have my sex reassignment surgery next year. Since there is a risk that the ability to have an orgasm will be gone, I would like to feel something like that in a big way beforehand.

I’m not gay, but like I said, I just want to feel a really big orgasm, which I think I can only have with a man. So it would only be once.

Aah and one more thing, I’m pretty sure it would need to happen through anal sex that drives whoever fucks me completely crazy.

Guestbook of god_ass

god_ass (Owner) – Feb 1, 2023
You can fuck me as hard as you want. I’m fully serious.

dean – Feb 1, 2023
I’m Dean, a Gemologist and a Jeweler, and I can’t wait to Fuck you.

god_ass (Owner) – Feb 1, 2023
No, but feel free to rape me if you caught me on the street.

Samak76 – Feb 1, 2023
Wanna poz monster hung daddy and a free place to live?

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings Yes
Languages English, German
Sexual Position Bottom only
Dick S – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No answer
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Never
Hourly Rate 800€
Overnight Rate 2500€

 

____________

scumbag_teen_traveller, 18
Birmingham

yeah, I’m the kid breaking into your locked car or smashing your windows. lived in the traveller community all my life and looking for older tops who want to use chavy boys like me. police or authorities who wish they could give me a hiding welcome….but any older man who likes a boy to fuck get in touch… ready to be roughed up too

Guestbook of scumbag_teen_traveller

scumbag_teen_traveller (Owner) – Feb 10, 2023
I AM NOT AVAILABLE AGAIN UNTIL AUGUST 15

scumbag_teen_traveller (Owner) – Feb 8, 2023
no lasting visible scars.. have a gf (on my butt is okay)

willresistneedsgag – Feb 5, 2023
Hot, more then u can think.

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Some
Smoker Yes
Tattoos Yes
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick M – Uncut
Dirty Yes
Fisting No answer
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 130$
Overnight Rate 1200$

 

_____________

PunkyJoe, 20
Louisville

Slutty little male, looking for some $$$😈
I sell all my body’s contents 💕✨ $5 minimum and goes all the way to $100 only!

Legit seller💯

$punkyjoe – CashApp

To get my social media, pay first❤️

You may even get lucky and get me for free on certain days🫠

Guestbook of PunkyJoe

SatansDeathPerv – Jan 24, 2023
I’d suck all the filthy cock waste from his cold dead shit tube along with his rotting ass waste.

fkduppp – Jan 23, 2023
Fun fact, I was addicted to his Onlyfans and only just now found out that he killed himself. Had such guilt and joy offing myself to this news ☺️.

Bigpoppy43 – Jan 21, 2023
Sadly this escort is no longer with us. He committed suicide in December. I never hired him, but I was a subscriber and fan of his wild OnlyFans channel. Now I feel bad watching his porn and thinking about him in a sexual way and masturbating over him given that he is no longer here. My hubby, on the other hand, was never into him before but now thinks he’s very hot because he’s gone and especially from suicide and watches his porn all the time. Whats your opinion??

Iamhere – Oct 22, 2022
He’s pretty mopey in bed. He seems to like his hair being pulled.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Socially
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position Bottom only
Dick M – Cut
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Rarely
Hourly Rate 170$
Overnight Rate 2000$

 

_____________

PaperBird, 18
Wiązów

Broken-hearted artist who is looking for true love

Or I could suck you, make an offer

Guestbook of PaperBird

PaperBird (Owner) – Feb 9, 2023
I’m not gay, I can stop this anytime I want.

Body Type Athletic
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Socially
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Polish, English, German
Sexual Position Versatile
Dick L – Uncut
Dirty No answer
Fisting No answer
S&M No answer
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Sometimes
Hourly Rate 100€
Overnight Rate On request

 

_____________

holeofchina, 21
Dusseldorf

I’m a young whore. Experienced. Whore since 14 yo. I served many straight men around Asia and Europe and recorded content for Twitter.

I’m just a massive whore for straight men. I don’t do kisses, love… I’m here to make men’s hours easier. I’m a shit, your pubes hair is more important than me.

I hope that you like much younger boys because I still appear very young because I am asian and rather skinny. I have extreme fantasies about this. I hope they can come true.

I was straight, had a break up. The rest is history.

Guestbook of holeofchina

TommyOi – Feb 9, 2023
Fkn take it – sweet az boy! – submit ya little cnt!

WhateverDaddyWants – Feb 8, 2023
My XXL got its first taste of his ass last year and now it need it all the time.

seeyounakedagain – Feb 8, 2023
like a glove

Palegreenthings – Feb 6, 2023
I loved how much of a rush I got from getting to know you in an hour.

FuckSkinnyBitches – Feb 2, 2023
Excellent ass-istant. Sorry for the lack of photos, this app is acting weird. Will try again later today.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Asian
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Chinese, English, German
Sexual Position Bottom only
Dick S – Cut
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 150€
Overnight Rate 1000€

 

____________

xChristopherRobinx, 19
Lyon

Hi my names James and I have a twin brother on here called Hayden and I thought this will be fun to try out so anyone he’s been fucked by I wanna get fucked by aswell and also I wanna sit on that persons face 🤤😊

Guestbook of xChristopherRobinx

xChristopherRobinx (Owner) – Feb 6, 2023
That mustve been Hayden

guyfromnever – Feb 6, 2023
He’s not afraid to be taken in creepy isolated places.

jackboat30 – Feb 1, 2023
I’ve only fucked James a handful of times but I’ve fucked Hayden more times than I can count

Anonymous – Jan 29, 2023
i participated in a gangrape of hayden or james when we were in lycée and i loved it

DoccyIsHorny – Jan 27, 2023
Horny as fuck, I’m in urgent need of seeing you nude, send me some pix I will rub my cock to them for hours.

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Little
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages French, Farsi, English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick S – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting No answer
S&M Soft
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly Rate 150€
Overnight Rate 800€

 

_____________

Itsnotanonlyfanspage, 18
London

I am feminine, fit & discreet. I am a young writer and adore all forms of poetry, and rambling about ideas.

I love public displays of affection in which I am always comfortable with.

Obscure topics always interest me and I admire people for the littlest of things.

When meeting you, I like to start with a heavy make out session so we can get to know each other a little bit.

I’m always smiling and have a giddy, hyper personality- almost child-like, a bottomless mouth, insanely great ass, and incredibly smooth skin.

Guestbook of Itsnotanonlyfanspage

Itsnotanonlyfanspage (Owner) – Feb 8, 2023
Possibly on a massive yacht in Cinnamon Bay, St. John Island in the Caribbean by four billionaires (while the sun was setting!), or one time in a vault full of gold, silver and other precious metals, but probably most distinguished place was in one of the private apartments in Kensington Palace in London, I cant say by who 😅

TravelGuy1956 – Feb 8, 2023
I’m just curious, what is the most distinguished place you have had paid sex?

Itsnotanonlyfanspage (Owner) – Feb 8, 2023
If you want me for a very long session, and everyone seems to, it’ll need to start in the morning because my parents want me home for dinner.

init2getit – Feb 7, 2023
My default mode was to express dread and disgust at the thought of fucking whores, as I was above such stereotype-perpetuating, sex-defined bullshit. But then this proud, post-gay millennial boy slut inspired me to step into the fray then killed my superiority complex.

Itsnotanonlyfanspage (Owner) – Feb 3, 2023
I never want or expect reciprocation. My penis is useless. I am told it looks like a clit and 2 ovaries.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position More bottom
Dick S – Uncut
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active/Passive
S&M Soft
Kissing Yes
Safe Sex Let’s talk
Hourly rate £100
Overnight rate £650

 

____________

kinkyb0y, 18
Seattle

TRYNA EARN SOME MONEY AND GET FUCKED — open to scat or whatever. I’m open and never judge. I love sitting on men’s faces.

I’ve decided to stop being so shy and scared. I’d like to explore this insanely greedy side that’s been locked away for so long.

I’m just a normal boy but when alone I fantasize about being rich.

Guestbook of kinkyb0y

kinkyb0y (Owner) – Feb 11, 2023
ALSO I LOVE USED BABY NAPPIES. THEY TURN ME ON, I LOVE HUNTING IN BABY CHANGING ROOMS AND STEALING THE USED ONES, THEY TURN ME ON SO MUCH. ANYONE WITH ACCESS TO USED BABY NAPPIES PLEASE GIVE ME A MESSAGE.

kinkyb0y (Owner) – Feb 7, 2023
I lean bottom but I do enjoy sliding my cock into an old guy’s hole.

ErosWired – Feb 7, 2023
We see boys like you all the time – bottoms who post profiles, in which they say up front that they’re bottoms, looking to get fucked – and yet their only pic is a face pic. For all our sakes, explain why you do this. It’s maddening. The first principle of marketing is that the thing you’re trying to sell is the thing you put in the shop window; if you’re trying to get people to come in and buy peaches you don’t put the trunk of a peach tree in the shop window, you put peaches.

kinkyb0y (Owner) – Feb 7, 2023
I also love when men rub themselves against my butt or dick in a crowded public space like buses or subways if that’s of interest 😀

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Little
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English
Sexual Position Versatile
Dick L – Cut
Dirty No
Fisting No answer
S&M Soft
Kissing Consent
Safe Sex Sometimes
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. So, I have a new laptop and my data, and blog life finally goes on. **. CAUTIVOS, Hi. Thanks. ‘Hopscotch’ is amazing, yeah. I did post about it years ago that I should look into restoring. Hugs back. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Interrupted again! The girl didn’t work out. We decided it would be just too difficult. We have another girl in mind, and we’re she says yes. When are you moving to Vienna? You’re not already there, are you? I predict it’s going to be a very happy change for you, even iff it feels strange or alienating at first, and hopefully not even that. If you don’t crush a Crush, it tastes like it wants very badly to be menthol, which is not a good taste. Anyway, I have two cartons of them now in case of emergency. Highly hoping that love made your shoulders feel invisible again. Love constantly reminding me forever not to place a full cup of tea next to my laptop, G. **. David Ehrenstein, Yes, that’s true. Ah, the ‘freewheeling’ ’60s. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I’m going to go find a sound file featuring a Yorkshire accent and try to learn it for future thespian opportunities. **. Nick., Hi, Nick. No problem, I just missed, what, three days thanks to accidental laptop homicide. I hope that friend’s event is still after glowing in some respect. The craziest, ditziest ones always reign supreme if you ask me, which of course you didn’t. Wait, actually dumbfounding reigns supreme, you’re right. Other than my computer being murdered and the hell that ensued, I’m fine enough. Mm, other than my friends, I think the thing I missed the most was great Mexican food, to be honest. I’m a cheap LA date. Something I used to do when I wanted someone to be friend or more than a friend was make this elaborate, multipart gift consisting of a grouping of gifts where each gift was targeted at one of the person’s specific senses (sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste), and I tried to make each of the gifts as imaginative and surprising as possible. I can’t remember anyone not falling at least a little for me after that. True. So, you could try that, although it is a bit over the top, I guess? How have you been since the blog blackout started? ** Philip Hopbell, Hi. Seriously? Wow. He lived not so far from where I used to live in the 10th. Or at least there’s a plaque the wall saying he lived there. No, I haven’t read ‘Killer Angels’, but you’ve sold me on it, and I’ll go find it. Thank you! **. Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m a lot better now that I have a working laptop again. Wow, about the wind up camera. Are television cameras still quite large? I used to go watch TV series be filmed back in the day, and I was always surprised by how gigantic they were. Can’t imagine they still are? Rather boringly or predictably, I like Shyamalan’s films up through ‘The Village’ and then less so after that, but I haven’t seen the last few yet. I suppose ‘Unbreakable’ is still my favorite. Delicious pizza! There’s this restaurant inLA called Masa that serves Chicago Deep Dish pizza, and it’s one of the first places I go when I go back ‘home’. You can’t get deep dish in Paris, I don’t know why. I like Steely Dan a lot too. They’re so fucking smart and clever. I hope Valentines Day lived up to its reputation for you. What’s the latest on your end? ** malcolm, We’re definitely in the same boat, it sounds like. Zac’s in LA doing the storyboards (with an artist) and the shot list and all of that. I’m doing a bunch of Zooms and working with the French actor and the person doing the score and trying to rassle up the last funds. I try to change my writing voice with each book as drastically as I can. Even in the Cycle, where I couldn’t deviate too much, I tried move as far away from the previous book’s style as I could. I think I would get really bored if I didn’t do that. For some reason, I want each of my novels to be really hard and challenging to write. I do a lot of experimenting before I write a novel, yeah. With ‘The Marbled Swarm’, for instance’, it took what felt like forever to make the voice I needed to do all the tasks and trickery that novel required. I have a super specific writing voice, or area that I feel comfortable working within, I think, so I kind of figure no matter how I change the style and structure and so on, it’ll always sound like me. But I don’t know. What’s your latest, pal? **. T, Hey! He’s good, no? Z-library is fully back? Holy shit. I’m so there. Yeah, write me. This weekend for the Pompidou would be good for me if that works for you? ** Dom Lyne, The jet lag’s gone. Now I just have a commuter-less life hangover. I started ‘The Shards’. Seems excellent so far. He’s a cool guy. I guess getting the hardcore therapy stuff is what its was all about? Revelation time? Man, I hope it takes you t the best place. You sound good. Eternally busy something I even overly understand. Love and hugs back from Paris central. ** Steve Erickson, I hope that Orbital album is better the last one, which was dreary and grim comparatively. Everyone, Steve has reviewed the new Orbital album here. Christophe’s fave films picks are pretty sweet. I haven’t seen his new one yet. Word here is that the boy in it is very good but it itself isn’t so great. But you tell me. **. Alex, Hi, alex! How’s the big, new desk settling in? You have to prioritize your writing, man. Well, ‘have to’ is pushy, but you know what I mean. But don’t worry if it takes a bit to adjust. Just working things out bin your mind is still writing, you know? Or it is for me. I’m glad ‘TMS’ seems to be worming itself into your head. Yeah, finding that writing style was a lot of work, ha ha. I read some books I liked a lot that’ll be in a post here tomorrow coincidentally. Have a great day and etc.! ** Misanthrope, It’ll be a very intense two months, but II feel weirdly confident that they’ll pass off in a helluva film. We’ll see. No, I don’t know anything about the publishing thing. Do email me, if you like. Happy to weigh in. But maybe it’s sorted by now? **. shadeoutmapes:O, It will be trippy and probably kind of exhausting to be in the desert that long, not so much for me but for the cast and crew, so we have to make sure they don’t go crazy. Zac and I directed a music video for Xiu Xiu a few years ago, starring Jamie, but the record company rejected it, so it never got released. And we never got paid either. Not a happy story. It having been a few days, are you ready to talk about the book? No pressure though. I’m easy. And patient. When I get back to LA I’ll skip down the Albertson’s and get me some Spaghetti-Os. Yep. How’s new stuff? **. Gus Cali Girls, Hi, G. Ha ha, I would actually like to know how to make my own squishes and slime, and in fact it might come in handy re: the haunted house in our movie. Hm. Do, do keep me up. I need to be kept up, at least where you’re concerned. ** Dennis Cooper, I know just how you felt. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, Thank you for the good thoughts, distinguished group. I seem to be back in action, and my coffee cup is miles away. **. Jack WV, Hi, Jack. Thank you very much for the good thoughts. Everything seems to be in one piece. And lesson learned. How are you? ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. My laptop finally arrived this very morning. And all seems belatedly well. What’s your story? **. Okay. Due to the blog outage you’re getting your escorts a couple of days late this month, but there they are. See you tomorrow.

 

“The review you are about to read is deceitful, arbitrary, subjective and useless. Julio Cortázar, whose novel, Hopscotch, is probably the best Latin American novel of our times, would suggest that any attempt to reduce a work so complex, profound, concrete, so labyrinthine and revolutionary, so desperate and tango-like, so entertaining and contradictory, . . . that to synthesize all this in a page, is to deform the book.”

‘These words were written in 1964 by a 22-year-old literary critic in Ercilla, then Chile’s most important weekly. The writer flailed on as he tried to convey the significance of the Argentine novelist and concluded by asking Cortázar’s forgiveness.

‘The man who wrote those words 50 years ago was me. And having commemorated the centenary of Cortázar’s birth this year, I find myself revisiting that old confusion. If anything, my dilemma has been compounded: In my youth, I was afraid of betraying his fiction. Now, so much older, I dread the prospect that I could betray the life itself of someone who considered me his brother.

‘But every act of writing entailed, according to Julio, some inevitable exercise of infidelity and duplicity. Silence, ultimately, was an even worse sin. May he forgive me yet again, then, for this homage, a form of keeping him alive.

‘It was thanks to the Chilean Revolution that I met Cortázar. In November of 1970, he flew to Santiago from Paris, where he had lived for nearly two decades as an expatriate, to attend the inauguration of Salvador Allende, the first socialist president of Chile.

‘Cortázar’s arrival drove young Chileans wild with enthusiasm, and I was the wildest of them all, his most ardent admirer. His first three books of short stories and his novel, The Prizes, turned ordinary life into a mystery and left us breathless, questioning our own sanity. And all this in the everyday street language of Buenos Aires, with a sly sense of humor.

‘But nothing prepared anyone for Hopscotch (1963), which became the foundational text of a generation: an earthquake of language, an assault on reality, anticipating, with its joy and radical demands on the reader, the social liberation that the youth of Latin America dreamed for our continent. “Hopscotch” challenged us to drastically break out of the prison-house of consciousness and history in which we were ensnared. We need, Cortázar said, to throw reality out the window and then throw out the window as well.

‘We became friends on that first occasion. Later, after the 1973 coup of General Pinochet that ended democracy in Chile, my wife, Angélica, and I had no home and no country, and it was Julio who received us and fed us and gave us refuge. No need to thank me, he would say — that’s what an elder brother does. I couldn’t imagine our roles ever being reversed.

‘In August of 1980, we went swimming in the bay of Zihuatanejo in Mexico, where our families were on vacation together. Our children had clambered back on the fishing boat Julio had rented for the day, and now it was Julio’s turn to climb up the ladder. I treaded water by his side, waiting patiently.

‘Abruptly, Julio said: “Ayúdame, Ariel.”

‘It took me a few moments to understand that he was asking for help. I boosted him up the ladder. In that brief, awkward moment that I held his body in my hands and helped him mount the boat, as I felt his bones, I was confronted by the irrefutable transience of Julio Cortázar. And indeed, less than four years later, the body from which Hopscotch and those perfect and hallucinatory stories had emerged was dead. Leaving me to search for some consolation.

‘A few years ago, on a visit to Buenos Aires, I noticed some words scrawled on a dirty white wall, addressed to Julio.

‘VOLVÉ, CORTÁZAR, QUÉ TE CUESTA?

‘Come back, Cortázar, how difficult can it be for you?

‘If so many of his characters could persist beyond death and the cascade of centuries, invading our everyday lives from ominous and malignant borderlands of fiction, why not Cortázar? Who is to tell us that he is not nearby, not only in his literature, not only in the memory of those who recollect him and who are also fading away into oblivion? Who can swear that Cortázar is not watching us, whispering to us from the other side of reality, and that he will continue to do so for century after century?’ — Ariel Dorfman

 

 

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Further

Julio Cortazar Website (Spanish)
Julio Cortazar’s Facebook Page
Works by Julio Cortazar (Spanish)
Julio Cortazar, his life
On JC’s ‘Hopscotch’ @ The Quarterly Conversation
Read ‘An Open Letter to Fidel Castro (1971)
Read JC’s ‘Cronopios and famas’ @ Google Books
Read JC’s ‘Continuity of Parks’

 

____
Extras

Lives – Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortazar, documental biográfico

Entrevista completa a Julio Cortázar – Programa “A fondo”

Julio Cortázar (Paris)

ENTREVISTA A JULIO CORTÁZAR EN PARÍS.

 

______
Interview
from The Review of Contemporary Fiction

 

EPG: Let’s begin with some general questions. How would you characterize your writing within the context of a literary generation in Argentina and in Latin America?

JC: The question is somewhat ambiguous because there are many ways to belong to a generation. I suppose you are referring to a strictly literary generation. Let’s leave Latin America aside until later since the Argentine panorama is complicated enough. In order to understand generations you must have distanced yourself in time because while you are experiencing that generational context, you don’t realize it. I mean that when I began to write, or rather publish in 1950, I wasn’t aware of any generational context. I was able to discern some strengths, writers I admired in Argentina and others I detested; but now, twenty-five years later, I believe I’ll be able to say a few intelligent words about it. The first part of my work is situated along extremely intellectual lines, the short stories, Beastiary for example. It is rather logical to imagine that in the fifties I was inclined towards the most refined and cultured writers, and to some extent influenced by foreign literatures, that is European, above all English and French. It is necessary to mention Borges, at once, because fortunately for me, his was not a thematic or idiomatic influence but rather a moral one. He taught me and others to be rigorous, implacable in our writing, to publish only what was accomplished literature. It is important to point this out because, in that period, Argentina was very unkempt in literary matters. There was little rigor, little self-criticism. Someone as extra ordinary as Roberto Arlt, the opposite of Borges in every sense, was not at all self-critical. Perhaps for the best, since self-criticism might have rendered his writing sterile. His language is untidy, full of stylistic errors, weak. But it has an enormous creative force. Borges has less creative energy in that sense, but he compensates for it with an intellectual reflection of a quality and refinement that for me was unforgettable. And so I automatically leaned towards that hyper-intellectual bent in Argentina. But it is all ambivalent because at the same time I had discovered Horacio Quiroga and Roberto Arlt, populist writers. You know the division between the Florida and Boedo groups. I had also discovered those in Boedo. And what I called “force,” a moment ago, impressed me. So, for example, the whole “porteno” side of city life in the short stories of Bestiary, I owe—not as a direct influence but rather as rich themes—to Roberto Arlt. Because despite all that has been said about Borges’ Buenos Aires—a fantastic, invented Buenos Aires—that Buenos Aires does exist but it is far from being all that the city is. Arlt perceived things from below for cultural, vital and professional reasons and saw a Buenos Aires to live in and stroll through, to love in and suffer in, while Borges saw a Buenos Aires of mythic destinies, of a metaphysical mother and eternity. So you see, my place in that generation—which is not mine but the previous one—at the same time fulfills a kind of moral, ethical obedience to Borges’ great lesson, and a teluric, sensual, erotic (as you like) obedience to Roberto Arlt. There are many examples, of course, but this one should give you an idea of what I mean. Others in my generation followed similar paths at times, but I know of no one else who simultaneously encompassed those two poles. There were pseudo-Borgeseans who produced an imitative literature.

The worst one can do, as far as Borges is concerned, is try to imitate him. It would be like wanting to imitate Shakespeare. In Argentina, those who tried to copy Borges, with books full of labyrinths and mirrors and people dreaming they are dreamt by others—you know all those Borgesean themes—as far as I know, didn’t produce anything of value. On the other hand, those who tended towards a more populist approach, towards the Argentinian wan, like Arlt and Quiroga, there, many achieved extraordinary works. I would cite Juan Carlos Onetti’s case. He’s not Argentinian, but we make no distinctions between Uruguayans and Argentinians in literary matters. Quiroga was also Uruguayan. A man like Onetti, whose greatest early influence was William Faulkner, but, at the same time, the direct contact with the streets, the people, the men and women of Uruguay, had a personality that, in my opinion, made him one of the greatest novelists of Latin America. Onetti is a little older but we can be included in the same generation of those who were inclined towards realism and produced a more important work than those who sought the purely intellectual and fantastic side of Borgesean mythology. Unconsciously I ended up straddling the two sides because if you think about the short stories in Bestiary you will find what has concerned many critics and what everyone now knows, that my stories are, at once, very realistic and very fantastic. The fantastic is born of a very realistic situation, an everyday, routine episode with common people. There are no extraordinary characters like Borges’ Danes or Swedes or gauchos. No, my characters are children, youth, ordinary people; but the fantastic element suddenly appears. That was all completely subconscious for me. I’ve needed to read many critical studies to realize that. Really, I never know anything about myself; you critics are the ones who show me things, and then, I realize.

I’m going to tell you something, Evie. I don’t believe I’ve ever written anything intellectual. Some works lean in that direction; for example, Rayuela emerges from a concrete fact and the characters begin to talk, so they launch into theories. Well, you and I can also theorize now if we like. But it’s always on a secondary level. I wasn’t born for theorizing.

EPG: When you write, how do you choose the genre?

JC: I don’t. Before I begin, I have a general idea of what I want and I know automatically it has to be a short story. Or I know it is the first step towards a novel. But I don’t deliberate over it. The idea from which the short story is to be born already has the shape of a short story, its limits. Even long stories like “Reunion” (“Meeting”) or “Las babas del diablo.” I knew they were not novels but short stories. On the other hand, I sense at times that some elements begin to coalesce: they are much broader and more complex and require the novelistic form. 62 is a good example of that case. At first I began with a few very confused notions: the idea of that psychic vampirism that is later translated into the character of Helene. The idea of Juan as a character. Immediately, I under- stood that that was not a story, that it had to be developed as an extended novel. And that’s when I thought of chapter 62 in Rayuela and said to myself that this was the opportunity to try to apply it in practice to see if it could work. To try to write a novel in which psychological elements did not occupy center stage but rather the characters would be dominated by what I called a “figure” or a constellation. And they would react by doing things without knowing they were moved by other forces.

EPG: If you could save only five books from a fire that would consume all other books in the world, which ones would you pick?

JC: That’s the kind of question you cannot answer while the tape recorder is on.

EPG: Should we turn it off?

JC: No, because then the answer will be too pat, too well thought out. You say books, I don’t know; I think, for example, that one of the five works that I would like to save is a poem, a poem by Keats. Do you understand?

EPG: Yes.

JC: One of them.

EPG: Which one?

JC: Any one of the ones I love, the great odes: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or “Ode to a Nightingale” or “To Autumn,” the great moments of Keats’s maturity. And while we’re talking about poetry, I’d like to save the Duino Elegies by Rilke. But five is an absurd number.

EPG: I know it’s an absurd number and it’s very difficult, but I’d like to know now, right now.

JC: OK. There’s a book of prose that I’d save, Ulysses. I think Ulysses is somehow the sum of universal literature. That would be one of the five books. I really should have punished you for this kind of question. Do you know how Oscar Wilde answered? They were more generous with him. They asked which ten books he would save. And Oscar Wilde answered, “Look, up till now I have only written six.”

EPG: You’re very humble to have not included any of your books.

JC: I don’t have to, I always carry them within me.

EPG: And what about Marx?

JC: I was thinking of literature. Of course, when you said books, I should have thought, from the historic point of view, of course, Marx and Plato’s dialogues.

EPG: You already have four of five. And now I’m almost ashamed to ask if you would have chosen the same books ten years ago when you wrote Rayuela?

JC: Yes, except perhaps for Marx. Because when I wrote Rayuela problems of an ideological or political nature didn’t interest me as they did afterwards. Perhaps the only exception would be Marx.

EPG: Nowadays which authors interest you most?

JC: It may seem strange to you but these last years, more than pure literature or fiction, I read books on anthropology, on certain kinds of contemporary psychoanalysis or psychiatry that fascinate me because I believe they are filled with possibilities as interesting as those of literature. And something I’ve done all my life and will always do is read poetry. I read vast quantities of poetry. No one asks me, no one interviews me or questions me about poetic themes, basing themselves on the principle that I’m not a poet but a prose writer. Nevertheless poetry is absolutely necessary for me and if there is some sort of nostalgia that I possess, it is that my work is not exclusively poetic.

EPG: But you include much poetry in your prose.

JC: Of course, and moreover I think part of my prose is thought out and conceived poetically, for example, Prosa del observatorio, not entirely because it is interspersed with those passages. But I believe it is a poem, above all the last part. It is very lyrical.

EPG: When you say you have to read poetry, that it is a necessity, which poets do you refer to?

JC: Since my youth I’ve leaned towards poetry in English, and now I still prefer poetry in English to any other, including French poetry that I have read with a greater sense of depth because I know French better than English. Nevertheless I have the impression that English is the language of poetry. Since my early years I felt profoundly touched by the English Romantics. Later I discovered medieval English poetry and I began to read anthologies. And later on I discovered Shakespeare, whom I’ve read more than once in English. Every once in a while I read him again, not all of him, but the works I prefer. Poetry in the English language is what really counts for me.

EPG: You like to compare the art of writing to boxing, to jazz and to photography. They’re your favorite hobbies. When did you become interested in them?

JC: What I do is pretty deliberate. For example, when I use metaphors or comparisons. In Latin America there is still the Romantic and somewhat quintessential tendency to search for metaphors and similes, the most noble comparisons possible. Now one can no longer compare someone to a swan but if one could, he would. Very early in life, I felt that one ought to approach the everyday elements in life that could be filled with beauty. A good boxing match is just as beautiful as a swan. So why not utilize it within a system of comparisons, within a scale of values. That’s why, almost from the start, there are many references of that sort in my books. It is purposely in order to desacralize, to bring literature down to earth because it should also have its feet on the ground. “High” and “low” are references in a Western scale of values, but at this moment they are changing and may already have changed for many people. When I was very young and began to work and had some money to buy a very poor camera, I began to take photos in a very systematic way, trying to perfect my technique. Later, my second camera was a little better. With it I took good pictures. I don’t know how to explain to you the reason for that interest. Down deep I think it was a literary one. Photography is sort of a literature of objects. When you take a photo, you make a decision. You frame some things and eliminate others. A good photographer is one who knows how to frame things better. And besides he knows how to choose by chance and there’s where surrealism comes into play. It has always seemed marvelous to me that someone can photograph two or three incongruous elements, for example, the standing figure of a man who, by some effect of light and shade projected onto the ground, appears to be a great black cat. On a profound level, I am producing literature, I am photographing a metaphor: a man whose shadow is a cat. I think I came to photography by way of literature.

EPG: So that for you photography holds a certain relationship to literature with regard to your approach to reality and perspective.

JC: Yes. And after, it became a way of completing certain texts of mine like Ultimo Round (The Last Round), where many photos are placed intentionally so that the reader may complete the selection with a visual image. The idea of collage—photo and text—fascinates me. If I had technical means to print my own books, I believe I would keep on making collage-books.

EPG: Can you choose one of these two sentences to describe Cortazar? “To live is to write” or “to write is to live?”

JC: “To live is to write,” of course not. As far as “to write is to live” is concerned, it is somewhat accurate. Writing is living a part of life, in my case a very, very important part, probably the most important, but not all of my life. I’m not one of those writers whose vocation takes over so that everything else lacks importance. I believe this was the case with Balzac, to some extent, and perhaps also with Vargas Llosa. He says so: to live, Vargas Llosa needs only a room, a table, a typewriter and to be left in peace with a lot of paper.

EPG: What would happen to you if you couldn’t write?

JC: I don’t know, I don’t know.

EPG: You’d be like the man in your short story who loses his head but they cannot bury him until suddenly he regains all his senses.

JC: Of course. If I were living in a country where they prohibited me from writing or if I were a prisoner and they gave me neither paper nor pencil, I don’t know. I can be very lazy about writing and spend long periods of time without writing anything, and I don’t feel worse for it. I do other things. I read, for example.

EPG: Do the nightmares and exorcisms emerge in a different form?

JC: Probably, no doubt.

 

___
Book

Julio Cortazar Blow Up and Other Stories
Random House

‘A young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams…A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer’s victim…In the stories collected here — including “Blow-Up;’ on which Antonioni based his film — Julio Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious, perhaps even the terrible. This is the most brilliant and celebrated book of short stories by a master of the form.’ — Random House

‘A juxtaposition of reality and dream sequences begin when the protagonist of The Night Face Up is hospitalized after a motorcycle accident. Asleep after surgery, he dreams that he is in flight from the Aztecs in a ritual war and must stay on a trail known only to the Motecas. He wakes, thirsty and feverish, to find his arm in a plaster cast. He eats and sleeps once more, dreaming this time that he is off the trail. He grasps his amulet and prays, but is captured. Awake again in the hospital, he thinks of the strange, almost infinite, loss of consciousness he had experienced after his accident. Dozing, he awakens this time pinned to the ground by ropes. His amulet is gone. He knows he will be sacrificed and the priests carry him away. He awakens one last time, but this reality quickly merges with the dream. The priest is coming toward him with the stone knife, and he realizes that he is not going to awaken; that he is awake, and that it is the other consciousness which was a dream.’ — The New Yorker

 

________
Excerpt

The Night Face Up

Halfway down the long hotel vestibule, he thought that probably he was going to be late, and hurried on into the street to get out his motorcycle from the corner where the next-door superintendent let him keep it. On the jewelry store at the corner he read that it was ten to nine; he had time to spare. The sun filtered through the tall downtown buildings, and he–because for himself, for just going along thinking, he did not have a name-he swung onto the machine, savoring the idea of the ride. The motor whirred between his legs, and a cool wind whipped his pantslegs.

He let the ministries zip past (the pink, the white), and a series of stores on the main street, their windows flash ing. Now he was beginning the most pleasant part of the run, the real ride: a long street bordered with trees, very little traffic, with spacious villas whose gardens rambled all the way down to the sidewalks, which were barely indi cated by low hedges. A bit inattentive perhaps, but tooling along on the right side of the street, he allowed himself to be carried away by the freshness, by the weightless con traction of this hardly begun day. This involuntary relaxa tion, possibly, kept him from preventing the accident. When he saw that the woman standing on the corner had rushed into the crosswalk while he still had the green light, it was already somewhat too late for a simple solu tion. He braked hard with foot and hand, wrenching him self to the left; he heard the woman scream, and at the collision his vision went. It was like falling asleep all at once. He came to abruptly. Four or five young men were get ting him out from under the cycle. He felt the taste of salt and blood, one knee hurt, and when they hoisted him up he yelped, he couldn’t bear the presssure on his right arm. Voices which did not seem to belong to the faces hanging above him encouraged him cheerfully with jokes and as­surances. His single solace was to hear someone else con firm that the lights indeed had been in his favor. He asked about the woman, trying to keep down the nausea which was edging up into his throat. While they carried him face up to a nearby pharmacy, he learned that the cause of the accident had gotten only a few scrapes on the legs. “Nah, you barely got her at all, but when ya hit, the impact made the machine jump and flop on its side . . .” Opinions, recollections of other smashups, take it easy, work him in shoulders first, there, that’s fine, and someone in a dust coat giving him a swallow of something soothing in the shadowy interior of the small local pharmacy.

Within five minutes the police ambulance arrived, and they lifted him onto a cushioned stretcher. It was a relief for him to be able to lie out flat. Completely lucid, but real izing that he was suffering the effects of a terrible shock, he gave his information to the officer riding in the am bulance with him. The arm almost didn’t hurt; blood dripped down from a cut over the eyebrow all over his face. He licked his lips once or twice to drink it. He felt pretty good, it had been an accident, tough luck; stay quiet a few weeks, nothing worse. The guard said that the motorcycle didn’t seem badly racked up. “Why should it,” he replied. “It all landed on top of me.” They both laughed, and when they got to the hospital, the guard shook his hand and wished him luck. Now the nausea was coming back little by little; meanwhile they were pushing him on a wheeled stretcher toward a pavilion further back, rolling along under trees full of birds, he shut his eyes and wished he were asleep or chloroformed. But they kept him for a good while in a room with that hospital smell, filling out a form, getting his clothes off, and dressing him in a stiff, greyish smock. They moved his arm carefully, it didn’t hurt him. The nurses were constantly making wise cracks, and if it hadn’t been for the stomach contractions he would have felt fine, almost happy.

They got him over to X-ray, and twenty minutes later, with the still-damp negative lying on his chest like a black tombstone, they pushed him into surgery. Someone tall and thin in white came over and began to look at the X rays. A woman’s hands were arranging his head, he felt that they were moving him from one stretcher to another. The man in white came over to him again, smiling, some thing gleamed in his right hand. He patted his cheek and made a sign to someone stationed behind.

It was unusual as a dream because it was full of smells, and he never dreamt smells. First a marshy smell, there to the left of the trail the swamps began already, the quaking bogs from which no one ever returned. But the reek lifted, and instead there came a dark, fresh composite fragrance, like the night under which he moved, in flight from the Aztecs. And it was all so natural, he had to run from the Aztecs who had set out on their manhunt, and his sole chance was to find a place to hide in the deepest part of the forest, taking care not to lose the narrow trail which only they, the Motecas, knew.

What tormented him the most was the odor, as though, notwithstanding the absolute acceptance of the dream, there was something which resisted that which was not habitual, which until that point had not participated in the game. “It smells of war,” he thought, his hand going instinctively to the stone knife which was tucked at an angle into his girdle of woven wool. An unexpected sound made him crouch suddenly stock-still and shaking. To be afraid was nothing strange, there was plenty of fear in his dreams. He waited, covered by the branches of a shrub and the starless night. Far off, probably on the other side of the big lake, they’d be lighting the bivouac fires; that part of the sky had a reddish glare. The sound was not repeated. It had been like a broken limb. Maybe an animal that, like himself, was escaping from the smell of war. He stood erect slowly, sniffing the air. Not a sound could be heard, but the fear was still following, as was the smell, that cloying incense of the war of the blossom. He had to press forward, to stay out of the bogs and get to the heart of the forest. Groping uncertainly through the dark, stoop ing every other moment to touch the packed earth of the trail, he took a few steps. He would have liked to have broken into a run, but the gurgling fens lapped on either side of him. On the path and in darkness, he took his bear ings. Then he caught a horrible blast of that foul smell he was most afraid of, and leaped forward desperately.

“You’re going to fall off the bed,” said the patient next to him. “Stop bouncing around, old buddy.” He opened his eyes and it was afternoon, the sun al ready low in the oversized windows of the long ward. While trying to smile at his neighbor, he detached himself almost physically from the final scene of the nightmare. His arm, in a plaster cast, hung suspended from an appa ratus with weights and pulleys. He felt thirsty, as though he’d been running for miles, but they didn’t want to give him much water, barely enough to moisten his lips and make a mouthful. The fever was winning slowly and he would have been able to sleep again, but he was enjoying the pleasure of keeping awake, eyes half-closed, listening to the other patients’ conversation, answering a question from time to time. He saw a little white pushcart come up beside the bed, a blond nurse rubbed the front of his thigh with alcohol and stuck him with a fat needle connected to a tube which ran up to a bottle filled with a milky, opales cent liquid. A young intern arrived with some metal and leather apparatus which he adjusted to fit onto the good arm to check something or other. Night fell, and the fever went along dragging him down softly to a state in which things seemed embossed as through opera glasses, they were real and soft and, at the same time, vaguely distaste ful; like sitting in a boring movie and thinking that, well, still, it’d be worse out in the street, and staying.

A cup of a marvelous golden broth came, smelling of leeks, celery and parsley. A small hunk of bread, more precious than a whole banquet, found itself crumbling lit tle by little. His arm hardly hurt him at all, and only in the eyebrow where they’d taken stitches a quick, hot pain siz zled occasionally. When the big windows across the way turned to smudges of dark blue, he thought it would not be difficult for him to sleep. Still on his back so a little un comfortable, running his tongue out over his hot, too-dry lips, he tasted the broth still, and with a sigh of bliss, he let himself drift off.

First there was a confusion, as of one drawing all his sensations, for that moment blunted or muddled, into himself. He realized that he was running in pitch dark ness, although, above, the sky criss-crossed with treetops was less black than the rest. “The trail,” he thought, “I’ve gotten off the trail.” His feet sank into a bed of leaves and mud, and then he couldn’t take a step that the branches of shrubs did not whiplash against his ribs and legs. Out of breath, knowing despite the darkness and silence that he was surrounded, he crouched down to listen. Maybe the trail was very near, with the first daylight he would be able to see it again. Nothing now could help him to find it. The hand that had unconsciously gripped the haft of the dagger climbed like a fen scorpion up to his neck where the protecting amulet hung. Barely moving his lips, he mumbled the supplication of the corn which brings about the beneficent moons, and the prayer to Her Very High ness, to the distributor of all Motecan possessions. At the same time he felt his ankles sinking deeper into the mud, and the waiting in the darkness of the obscure grove of live oak grew intolerable to him. The war of the blossom had started at the beginning of the moon and had been going on for three days and three nights now. If he man aged to hide in the depths of the forest, getting off the trail further up past the marsh country, perhaps the warriors wouldn’t follow his track. He thought of the many prison ers they’d already taken. But the number didn’t count,only the consecrated period. The hunt would continue until the priests gave the sign to return. Everything had its number and its limit, and it was within the sacred period, and he on the other side from the hunters.

He heard the cries and leaped up, knife in hand. As if the sky were aflame on the horizon, he saw torches mov ing among the branches, very near him. The smell of war was unbearable, and when the first enemy jumped him, leaped at his throat, he felt an almost-pleasure in sinking the stone blade flat to the haft into his chest. The lights were already around him, the happy cries. He managed to cut the air once or twice, then a rope snared him from behind.

“It’s the fever,” the man in the next bed said. “The same thing happened to me when they operated on my duode num. Take some water, you’ll see, you’ll sleep all right.”

Laid next to the night from which he came back, the tepid shadow of the ward seemed delicious to him. A vio let lamp kept watch high on the far wall like a guardian eye. You could hear coughing, deep breathing, once in a while a conversation in whispers. Everything was pleas ant and secure, without the chase, no . . . But he didn’t want to go on thinking about the nightmare. There were lots of things to amuse himself with. He began to look at the cast on his arm, and the pulleys that held it so com­fortably in the air. They’d left a bottle of mineral water on the night table beside him. He put the neck of the bottle to his mouth and drank it like a precious liqueur. He could now make out the different shapes in the ward, the thirty beds, the closets with glass doors. He guessed that his fever was down, his face felt cool. The cut over the eye brow barely hurt at all, like a recollection. He saw himself leaving the hotel again, wheeling out the cycle. Who’d have thought that it would end like this? He tried to fix the moment of the accident exactly, and it got him very angry to notice that there was a void there, an emptiness he could not manage to fill. Between the impact and the mo­ment that they picked him up off the pavement, the pass ing out or what went on, there was nothing he could see. And at the same time he had the feeling that this void, this nothingness, had lasted an eternity. No, not even time, more as if, in this void, he had passed across some thing, or had run back immense distances. The shock, the brutal dashing against the pavement. Anyway, he had felt an immense relief in coming out of the black pit while the people were lifting him off the ground. With pain in the broken arm, blood from the split eyebrow, contusion on the knee; with all that, a relief in returning to daylight, to the day, and to feel sustained and attended. That was weird. Someday he’d ask the doctor at the office about that. Now sleep began to take over again, to pull him slowly down. The pillow was so soft, and the coolness of the mineral water in his fevered throat. The violet light of the lamp up there was beginning to get dimmer and dim mer.

As he was sleeping on his back, the position in which he came to did not surprise him, but on the other hand the damp smell, the smell of oozing rock, blocked his throat and forced him to understand. Open the eyes and look in all directions, hopeless. He was surrounded by an absolute darkness. Tried to get up and felt ropes pinning his wrists and ankles. He was staked to the ground on a floor of dank, icy stone slabs. The cold bit into his naked back, his legs. Dully, he tried to touch the amulet with his chin and found they had stripped him of it. Now he was lost, no prayer could save him from the final . . . From afar off, as though filtering through the rock of the dungeon, he heard the great kettledrums of the feast. They had carried him to the temple, he was in the underground cells of Teo calli itself, awaiting his turn.

He heard a yell, a hoarse yell that rocked off the walls. Another yell, ending in a moan. It was he who was screaming in the darkness, he was screaming because he was alive, his whole body with that cry fended off what was coming, the inevitable end. He thought of his friends filling up the other dungeons, and of those already walk ing up the stairs of the sacrifice. He uttered another choked cry, he could barely open his mouth, his jaws were twisted back as if with a rope and a stick, and once in a while they would open slowly with an endless exertion, as if they were made of rubber. The creaking of the wooden latches jolted him like a whip. Rent, writhing, he fought to rid himself of the cords sinking into his flesh. His right arm, the strongest, strained until the pain became unbear able and he had to give up. He watched the double door open, and the smell of the torches reached him before the light did. Barely girdled by the ceremonial loincloths, the priests’ acolytes moved in his direction, looking at him with contempt. Lights reflected off the sweaty torsos and off the black hair dressed with feathers. The cords went slack, and in their place the grappling of hot hands, hard as bronze; he felt himself lifted, still face up, and jerked along by the four acolytes who carried him down the pas sageway. The torchbearers went ahead, indistinctly light ing up the corridor with its dripping walls and a ceiling so low that the acolytes had to duck their heads. Now they were taking him out, taking him out, it was the end. Face up, under a mile of living rock which, for a succession of moments, was lit up by a glimmer of torchlight. When the stars came out up there instead of the roof and the great terraced steps rose before him, on fire with cries and dances, it would be the end. The passage was never going to end, but now it was beginning to end, he would see sud­denly the open sky full of stars, but not yet, they trundled him along endlessly in the reddish shadow, hauling him roughly along and he did not want that, but how to stop it if they had torn off the amulet, his real heart, the life center.

In a single jump he came out into the hospital night, to the high, gentle, bare ceiling, to the soft shadow wrapping him round. He thought he must have cried out, but his neighbors were peacefully snoring. The water in the bottle on the night table was somewhat bubbly, a translucent shape against the dark azure shadow of the windows. He panted, looking for some relief for his lungs, oblivion for those images still glued to his eyelids. Each time he shut his eyes he saw them take shape instantly, and he sat up, completely wrung out, but savoring at the same time the surety that now he was awake, that the night nurse would answer if he rang, that soon it would be daybreak, with the good, deep sleep he usually had at that hour, no im ages, no nothing . . . It was difficult to keep his eyes open, the drowsiness was more powerful than he. He made one last effort, he sketched a gesture toward the bottle of water with his good hand and did not manage to reach it, his fingers closed again on a black emptiness, and the passageway went on endlessly, rock after rock, with momentary ruddy flares, and face up he choked out a dull moan because the roof was about to end, it rose, was opening like a mouth of shadow, and the acolytes straightened up, and from on high a waning moon fell on a face whose eyes wanted not to see it, were closing and opening desperately, trying to pass to the other side, to find again the bare, protecting ceiling of the ward. And every time they opened, it was night and the moon, while they climbed the great terraced steps, his head hanging down backward now, and up at the top were the bonfires, red columns of perfumed smoke, and suddenly he saw the red stone, shiny with the blood dripping off it, and the spinning arcs cut by the feet of the victim whom they pulled off to throw him rolling down the north steps. With a last hope he shut his lids tightly, moaning to wake up. For a second he thought he had gotten there, because once more he was immobile in the bed, except that his head was hanging down off it, swinging. But he smelled death, and when he opened his eyes he saw the blood-soaked fig ure of the executioner-priest coming toward him with the stone knife in his hand. He managed to close his eyelids again, although he knew now he was not going to wake up, that he was awake, that the marvelous dream had been the other, absurd as all dreams are-a dream in which he was going through the strange avenues of an astonishing city, with green and red lights that burned without fire or smoke, on an enormous metal insect that whirred away between his legs. In the infinite he of the dream, they had also picked him up off the ground, some one had approached him also with a knife in his hand, approached him who was lying face up, face up with his eyes closed between the bonfires on the steps.
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Ian, Hi. No, I too think the repugnant aspect is part of the interest at least for me. Your Mexico sounds very nice. I can feel the toasty weather in your words. Being in a chilly place helps the imagination, I’m sure. I like the idea of a novel by you with a sci-fi underlay at least. That’s an area I can’t seem to work with at all, probably due to very limited reading experience and despite liking sci-fi movies. So, if the mood holds, why not? Hope whoever you wanted to win the SB won. Have continued big fun. ** David Ehrenstein, I’d prefer Harry Nilsson myself. Or Ozzie and Harriet. ** Dominik, Hi!!! My jet lag sucked yesterday but feels lessened today, I pray. Zac and the AD met with the girl yesterday LA time, but I haven’t heard how that went yet. Zac wasn’t hopeful the last time we talked. What, you’re moving to Vienna?! Wow! That’s kind of huge news! And seemingly really great news? Can you continue your work there? Honestly, from what I know about circumstances in Hungary these days, I’m very happy to hear you might be away from all of that. Interesting experiment by your Saturday love, but, yes, it’s good that love has infinite changing powers. Love making sure that if you’re ever shopping in an airport’s Duty Free and ask for two cartons of Camel Blue that they don’t sell you two cartons of Camel Crush that you don’t find out about until you’re 9,080 km away from the Duty Free, G. ** Bill, Hi, Bill! I think maybe the lag is better today, but I dare not count my chickens. The meet-and-greet was at a Mexican restaurant called Casita Del Campo in Silverlake. it’s a cool place, been there forever, serving very old school, pre-California cuisine Mexican food. Great, I love that Ray Johnson doc. One of the best artist docs ever. ‘Crumbs’? No, never heard of it before. I’ll find it. Thanks a bunch. Are you managing to get any sound/computer work in? ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. Thanks! The next time I go back to LA I’ll be there for almost two months all in all, yikes. Well, it’s good that David escaped, but, on the other hand, well … you know. Publishing opportunity! Cool! What are you having to think through, if you can say? Tentative congrats! ** Cody Goodnight, Thank you very much, Cody! Yeah, the house is suitably spooky from the outset, and hopefully we can make it look even more so. I think gross is a fair assessment. Hair = gross = odd/interesting. Too bad about the camera, but … there’s always an iPhone or its equivalent around, I guess? There are some sitcoms from the 1960s that are kind of genius, I think. ‘Green Acres’, ‘The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet’, ‘Dragnet’, others. It seems like back then you could be an actual auteur working in the TV show format and no one in power minded or maybe even noticed. It’s great that you’re getting to imbibe so many interesting films. That’s good to hear about the new Shyamalan. I’m curious about it. I think you’re the only other person I know who likes ‘The Village’. High five. Excellent music list. Yeah, the Tiny Tim is great, and ‘Song Cycle’ is a huge favorite of mine, especially ‘The All Golden’, which is just kind of exquisite, I think. Hm, I think I tend to listen to artists over and over more than specific tracks or albums. I was obsessed with the most recent Playboy Cardi album for a while. And the first Kali Malone album was on constant repeat for a bit. My favorite band, Guided by Voices, puts out, like, 7 albums a year or something, so I never stop listening to them in some fashion. Every time I hear a song by The Fall I tend to listen to nothing but them for a few days. Those spring to mind. How is your week starting and in what form? ** alex, Hey, a! Yeah, the one thing we need to be careful with is to make sure the house location doesn’t look too ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’-style ominous so that viewers don’t automatically think the family living there is psycho. I am going to read the Rohmer novels. I checked around yesterday, and I found a bookstore that has a couple of them in stock. Thanks a lot for that tip. Awesome about finishing the ‘chapter’. I too never think of my novel sections that way. Oh, sure, I start with a pretty pre-formed structure in mind, but I totally rip it apart and rebuild the thing at whim once I’m writing. If you don’t do that or leave the possibility of doing that, you’re just, like, styling a corpse or something, you know? Novels should be more alive when you’re writing them than when you planned them, I think? Anyway, excellent news! What now? ** King Jon Un, Honored, your … majesty? It has a been ages. A peon like myself can’t begin to imagine the difficulties someone like you faces, but I can try with your permission. Has it been 30 years? Lord! Cake or some equivalent it is. Don’t drink too much. ** Her majesty’s shit Denise, Would a pastry do? Thank you. How did your hair turn out? Dare I ask? Love in return. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I guess there could be an argument that therapy should be difficult? I don’t know. No, it really did turn into an orgy. There are polaroids of it somewhere out there. There was a Hito Steyerl retrospective here a couple of years ago. I was taken with the work at first, but, after walking through the whole, large show, the work started seeming too flashy and showoff-y to me. Everyone, Mr. Erickson has weighed in on the new stuff by Kelela and Sam Smith here, on KNOCK AT THE CABIN here, on NO BEARS here, and on ONE FINE MORNING here. You’ve been busy! I always have a little music searching time, and I’ll try out SKECH185, thanks! ** Conrad, Hi, Conrad! Long time, no see, pal! Awesome that you loved Chris Olsen’s album. He’s incredible. Amazing sculptor too. We’re really excited to work with him. I’ll go find that one Fecteau sculpture. I think that might be Vince’s first Paris showing? Huh. You’re a teacher? Of what? Teaching is a noble profession, man, no? Yes, the Peter Rehberg tribute shows are happening, I think in the fall, I think at the Pompidou and also at Gaite Lyrique. I’m going to miss Sonic Protest this year ‘cos I’ll be shooting the film then. Sad about that. I’ll listen to Elvin Brandhi. I don’t know her. Thanks! Lovely to see you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, damn, I would’ve included that Friedman piece if I’d remembered it. So sorry about Leeds’s precarious situation right now. I’ll keep the old fingers as crossed for them/you as hell. ** Gus Cali Girls, Hey, Gus! How’s going, my friend? Michael Salerno’s new film is wonderful. And its amazing star is also one of the stars of Zac’s and my new film. ‘Dinner’ is also in my short fiction book ‘Wrong’, which I think is still in print and easy to get? I don’t have a pdf or text version of it with me, sorry. When is your thesis/novel due? I hope you do publish the short fiction collection and the zine ‘cos I want them. And your new music too. Sorry to be greedy. My best is flying back in your direction. ** Okay. The spotlight falls on a great collection of short fiction by the great Julio Cortázar today. May you and it get along famously. See you tomorrow.