30th August. I wouldn’t like to excessively bare my narcissistic self-scrutinizing but I often wake up in cold sweats around 5 am after a night of intoxication, paranoid about what I’ve said and done. Did I look smart, intellectual, artsy and edgy but in an unassuming, self-deprecating-way? Was I offensive, maybe? Grotesque?It's a symptom of my inability to forget about the disembodied mommy/daddy monster that always calls me to order, asking me if I’ve been a good girl/boy, worthy, conscientious and ambitious, if I did my homework, my prayers, stayed away from impure thoughts and washed behind my ears. I try not to respond, fake I don't hear it, but it is lodged somewhere outside my reach like an itchy point that makes you chase after your own tail, first furiously, then desperately, until you’re left panting and shamed. From there it pours its nocturnal call into my inner ear. I then crawl, whimpering, wet, a child debased by her gods again. We, the stodgy class, are dreaming of being the split receptacle of pleasure and death and end up splayed out in a doomed battle to be lost nightly at 5 a.m. in a puddle of bodily secretions.
We are in Berlin, in this apparently famous “Bar 25” place, chatting, intoxicating and watching a smart play I quite enjoy.
Next morning I’m in agony: How did I look? Was I too eager about the play thus loosing avant-garde credentials in front of the cooler sceptics? Was I, au contraire, pretentious? Did my accent sound fake? I’m considering giving up intoxication, but Primrose tells me that people find me weirder and more irritating when I’m sober. Anyway, it’s bloody hard to impress the European artsy crowd, they are so self-assured, so immutable:
“Young Parisians are so French, they eat patisserie.
Young Parisians are so French, not like you and me!” (Adam and the Ants)
tchuss-tchuss, la mordue.
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