Week #27 – Lost in translation
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| Parisian Nautical Object by Guy Yasko |
| Explain by Damian Pullen
“Suburbia is totally fucked up,” Maia announces, as she rips open a croissant. She slept out on the front lawn last night. Dad looks like he wishes he’d stayed in bed. Toni sneezes and blows her nose. The cat on their bed worked. She looks awful. “What’s ‘suburbia’?” Ellie singsongs. They must have practised this. “And clean their cars,” says Ellie, “when they aren’t even dirty.” Dad washed her car yesterday while she sunbathed and I jacked off. That white bikini. “Exactly. Who the fuck mows their lawn at 7.30 in the morning – on a Sunday?” “Maia…” Dad’s warning lacks teeth, but his eyes plead. Toni’s eyebrows go up. Maia’s swearing has been tolerated since Mum left. “Do you mind?” “It’s totally decadent.” “What’s ‘decadent’?” As if, Ellie – it’s been Maia’s favourite word since the divorce – it replaced ‘miasma.’ “Sounds like a kind of toothpaste.” Nice try, Dad. Toni smiles, but she’s way out of her depth. “Bimbo/ bimbo/ legs akimbo!” That’s the poem Maia wrote in soap on the bathroom mirror last night. Dad hasn’t said anything, even though it has been wiped off. “More croissants?” Toni’s doing breakfast. There’s a puff of smoke as the oven door opens. She burns herself on the oven tray, screams, and runs over to the sink to run cold water on it, her shoulders shaking. |
| EL ASESINO by Marcus Speh
04:46 hrs – Habana, Cuba. I can’t sleep. Too much to think about. Jim’s a handsome fellow and I figure he’d rather spend his day fucking our creamy whores, smoke our cigars and write slimy novels instead of teach me (I read this somewhere that all therapists are blocked novelists). But I’m Castro’s last and deadliest weapon, el asesino cubano. To bring down imperialism, I must understand American from the inside. Jim gave me Hemingway to read, un escritor bianco, who wrote: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” When I inquired why I was not taught Huckleberry Finn instead of the cheesy For Whom The Bell Tolls, Jim said that Mark Twain’s sense of irony was not contemporary enough. I sensed ambiguity, which I hate. I look out the window of my hut at las putas, and I stroke my cock, and there’s no ambiguity there. Ambiguity is the death of the revolution. Long live El Máximo Líder, chupame ahora. |
| Three Questions for Any Doctor by Robert Vaughan
i. I ask him, “Where did you go for your last vacation?” And I’m not being nosy, I swear, it’s because doctors go to these exotic places. Doctor French does. He’s been to Bermuda, and Barbados. He speaks a few hundred languages. He brings back thinly- framed pictures from the natives, like a Grandma Moses only filled with color, like one of those paint-by-number. Most exotic place I’ve been is Chicago. I got lost so many times I ended up in Wisconsin. ii. My favorite question to ask my dentist, before shoving his gloves into my mouth, is “What are you doing for dinner?” And if he doesn’t respond, say yes, commit, then I just find another doctor, and ask him. You have to pick the perfect moment. It’s all about the timing. Sometimes it falls on deaf ears. Gets lost. Best moment is when he reaches for that drill or is about to syringe your upper gum with novacaine. iii. This might seem strange. I also ask, “How deep is the sky?” Because if he’s unable to answer something odd, then can I trust him? I’m not there for the cookie- cutter treatment. I want to know he’ll give me the benefit of my doubt. So I ask the unanswerable to shake him out of his medical stupor. Get his nose out of those textbooks. More often than not, he just stares at me like I’m nuts. |
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