slept with, she called my penis my
‘raison d’etre’.
* * *
I once tried to write a short story with the theme being each person’s raison d’etre. In the end, I never finished the story, but for a while I kept thinking about people’s various reasons for living, and thanks to that it went from a strange habit to an obsession. It was a habit that had absolutely no effect on anything. This impulse stuck with me, chasing me for roughly eight months. Riding the train, the first thing I did was to count all the passengers, I counted the stairs in the stairwell, and if I’d had enough time I’d have counted my heartbeats. According to my records of that time, from August 15, 1969 to April 3, I went to three hundred fifty-eight lectures, had sex fifty-four times, and smoked six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one cigarettes. During that time, when I counted everything, I seriously considered telling someone about my habit. So I told as many people as I could, giving them what I thought were very reliable numbers. However, naturally, the number of cigarettes I smoked, stairs I climbed, and the size of my penis were things nobody was interested in. So, without losing sight of my own raison d’etre, I became very lonely.
* * *
Thanks to all that, I know that when I found out about her death I was smoking my six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-second cigarette.
24
That night, the Rat didn’t drink a drop of beer. It wasn’t a good sign. Instead, he drank five Jim Beams on the rocks in a row.
We drank in a dark corner of J’s Bar, killing time with the pinball machine. We fed who knows how much change to the machine to purchase this slaughtered time; a perfect waste. However, the Rat was as earnest as ever, and because of that it was nearly a miracle that I managed to win two of the six games we played.
“Hey, what happened?”
“Nothing,” said the Rat.
We went back to the counter and drank beer and Jim Beam.
Saying almost nothing, we listened absentmindedly to records playing one by one on the jukebox. Everyday People, Woodstock, Spirit in the Sky, Hey There, Lonely Girl…
“I have a favor to ask you,” said the Rat.
“What is it?”
“There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“…a girl?”
Looking a little confused, the Rat finally nodded.
“Why me?”
“Who else is there?” he said quickly as he took the first sip of his sixth glass of whiskey.
“You have a suit and a necktie?”
“I do, but…”
“Tomorrow at two p.m.” the Rat said, “Hey, what the hell do you think girls eat to survive?”
“The soles of their shoes.”
“No way,” said the Rat.
25
The Rat’s favorite food was pancakes. He’d pile a bunch of them up on a deep plate and cut them neatly into four sections, then pour a bottle of Coca Cola on top of them.
The first time I visited the Rat’s house, beneath the soft sunlight of May, he had them out on the table and was in the middle of shoveling that odd concoction into his stomach.
“The great thing about this food is,” the Rat said,
“it’s food and drink rolled into one.”
The overgrown yard was full of trees, and birds of many shapes and colors were gathered there, eagerly pecking at the white popcorn scattered on the grass. 26
I’ll tell you about the third girl I slept with. It’s really difficult to talk about dead people, but it’s even harder to talk about dead young women. It’s because from the time they die, they’ll be young forever.
On the other hand, for us, the survivors, every year, every month, every day, we get older. Sometimes, I feel like I can feel myself aging from one hour to the next. It’s a terrible thing, but that’s reality.
* * *
She wasn’t what anyone would call a beautiful girl. However, saying ‘she wasn’t a beauty’ probably isn’t a fair way to put it. ‘She wasn’t as beautiful as she could have been’ seems like an accurate way to describe it, I think.
I have only one picture of her.
‘raison d’etre’.
* * *
I once tried to write a short story with the theme being each person’s raison d’etre. In the end, I never finished the story, but for a while I kept thinking about people’s various reasons for living, and thanks to that it went from a strange habit to an obsession. It was a habit that had absolutely no effect on anything. This impulse stuck with me, chasing me for roughly eight months. Riding the train, the first thing I did was to count all the passengers, I counted the stairs in the stairwell, and if I’d had enough time I’d have counted my heartbeats. According to my records of that time, from August 15, 1969 to April 3, I went to three hundred fifty-eight lectures, had sex fifty-four times, and smoked six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one cigarettes. During that time, when I counted everything, I seriously considered telling someone about my habit. So I told as many people as I could, giving them what I thought were very reliable numbers. However, naturally, the number of cigarettes I smoked, stairs I climbed, and the size of my penis were things nobody was interested in. So, without losing sight of my own raison d’etre, I became very lonely.
* * *
Thanks to all that, I know that when I found out about her death I was smoking my six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-second cigarette.
24
That night, the Rat didn’t drink a drop of beer. It wasn’t a good sign. Instead, he drank five Jim Beams on the rocks in a row.
We drank in a dark corner of J’s Bar, killing time with the pinball machine. We fed who knows how much change to the machine to purchase this slaughtered time; a perfect waste. However, the Rat was as earnest as ever, and because of that it was nearly a miracle that I managed to win two of the six games we played.
“Hey, what happened?”
“Nothing,” said the Rat.
We went back to the counter and drank beer and Jim Beam.
Saying almost nothing, we listened absentmindedly to records playing one by one on the jukebox. Everyday People, Woodstock, Spirit in the Sky, Hey There, Lonely Girl…
“I have a favor to ask you,” said the Rat.
“What is it?”
“There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“…a girl?”
Looking a little confused, the Rat finally nodded.
“Why me?”
“Who else is there?” he said quickly as he took the first sip of his sixth glass of whiskey.
“You have a suit and a necktie?”
“I do, but…”
“Tomorrow at two p.m.” the Rat said, “Hey, what the hell do you think girls eat to survive?”
“The soles of their shoes.”
“No way,” said the Rat.
25
The Rat’s favorite food was pancakes. He’d pile a bunch of them up on a deep plate and cut them neatly into four sections, then pour a bottle of Coca Cola on top of them.
The first time I visited the Rat’s house, beneath the soft sunlight of May, he had them out on the table and was in the middle of shoveling that odd concoction into his stomach.
“The great thing about this food is,” the Rat said,
“it’s food and drink rolled into one.”
The overgrown yard was full of trees, and birds of many shapes and colors were gathered there, eagerly pecking at the white popcorn scattered on the grass. 26
I’ll tell you about the third girl I slept with. It’s really difficult to talk about dead people, but it’s even harder to talk about dead young women. It’s because from the time they die, they’ll be young forever.
On the other hand, for us, the survivors, every year, every month, every day, we get older. Sometimes, I feel like I can feel myself aging from one hour to the next. It’s a terrible thing, but that’s reality.
* * *
She wasn’t what anyone would call a beautiful girl. However, saying ‘she wasn’t a beauty’ probably isn’t a fair way to put it. ‘She wasn’t as beautiful as she could have been’ seems like an accurate way to describe it, I think.
I have only one picture of her.
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