The Nest of Insanity
I am not into murders, these first few chapters go against everything I wanted out of this book, but then I am not the one dictating, it is Lauren and her cast of characters that determine that. Yesterday, to appease myself, I opted to take a drink at a local joint, I am an old male, and so it is not that fun to go out for a drink anymore, the drinking crowd is so young, so distant from my emotional world or my history, I feel out of place, all the good drinking joints are infested with callous youth, with all that hyper plastic magenta character that promises you, with a smile, that there inst a worry in the world, that everything is wonderful and they are themselves wonderful; I went to have a drink at Buffalo Joes.
Buffalo Joes was a bar voided of people like me, I don’t know what people like me are like, I have never found the bar that they hangout at, I always go into the bar scene knowing every discomfort will dress me with incertitude and alter my sense of fear. I feel that an entire world alien to me is watching my every move, I feel their bodies menacing the languishing pudgyness of my fondling fat cells; when I reach the urinal to release acidic content from my bladder, I smell within my lungs every man that has been in the room, part of them now burnished against the ceramic wall and floor, cankerous sores swelling my oxygen, cornering pungent acids filtering through osmosis to feel every cell I have duly created with sausages, hamburgers, and steaks; where cows and pigs must be equally frightened by my presence.
I order a martini, I should not drink martinis, they are the supreme drink, I don’t know of a more arrogantly elegant congregation of minimalist essence. A touch of vermouth, Vodka, two olives, a chilling touch and there is her majesty. No, no, no. A martini is wholly masculine, the vermouth is full of palpable emotions that can’t surmise themselves into anything, you don’t imagine that you can like it by itself, you don’t imagine that by itself it is tolerable nor can you say, this is what vermouth tastes like; the chaotic congregation of possible influences tells you it has a convoluted history of certainty but only certainly doubtful of its own self. Vermouth says, “I don’t know what I am but I want to be something to do with alcohol.” Vodka is precisely the opposite, you don’t have to ponder what Vodka is, the entire certainty of Russian culture which stirs the blood of anyone willing to touch it and suffer a little hard pain, the gulags and slaughters of Russian history, are there plenum. Those hard Russian winters, the Russians waiting for Napoleon, the Russians waiting for the Germans, the Russians waiting for Lenin, it’s all the same, waiting, waiting for somebody to come and kill them so that they can show their perdurance. A potato and the Russian character have everything in common, there was no need to try to convince the Russians that rooted potatoes were a national necessity; from there you have to purify the essence of the potato and you get your vodka, the Russians and Vodka know how to drink each other. The olive is a distinctively different matter, added after Tsar Nicholas and his family found out that all those souls that they tortured and killed and maintained in perverse poverty, would send the living hate in for natural retribution; the olive added to remind us that though vermouth is confused and vodka harsh, there is still room for a touch of aesthetic intervention. Every olive inside a martini is saying “I refuse to surrender to your barbarism.”
Yes, yes, I know what you will say, the Martini was invented in the west. You will never convince me of that.
My brain doesn’t like Martinis, I like them and I don’t like my brain. I drank, and drank until I forgot myself. This morning I woke up with blood on my hands and clothing, I am trying to recollect precisely what happened last night. Fuzzily disturbing fragments of recollections start to climb into my judgmental brain. There was a young beautiful woman, she portrayed all the ambivalence that causes me to break into a feverish rash. I kept on watching her, partly trying to admire her but I found her beauty obfuscating any desire that may have risen. She was saying “like me, love me, envy me.” I don’t know why I have such a strong conflict with people that say, “envy me.” We all want to be loved and liked but amongst us there are people saying, “envy me.” I wasn’t attracted to this woman I was mortified by her much as another woman might feel threatened by her; I kept on watching her incessant laughter as a direct assault, and so I dashed towards her with a fork and pricked her lips with it, I pricked her lips. Oh dear God, what have I done, why did I drink that devil drink! Why did I go to a joint where all the discomforts would accompany me!
I recall running out, running furiously, a gang of youth after me, I don’t know where I got the adrenalin to outpace them, fear does such a thing, legs keep moving fast and forever forgetting that muscles have physical limitations, my legs are now in excruciating pain, my wretched imagination kept the vivid images of this woman feeling the lacerations of a tool not designed for cutting, I stormed my brain to stop recalling, it was too late, I had inspired this pain loving brain that doesn’t feel the reconstructed images of the splitting blood, of my forked hand before me, of the anguish in her face, the constructs more monstrous with each evolution of the fork, and then the awakening of fear, my pounding heart, my racing body! At some point I saw Lauren, wearing a business light yellow pant suit, arrive at the crazed scene, she immediately made me out and rushed towards me but, by some magnificent miracle I floated upwards away from her. Upon seeing my heavenly rising body, she hastily looked all around her, and upon seeing no witnesses her arms and hands fisting towards the ground: “Shit! Why do this crazy things always happen when there are no witnesses! Shit! Shit. shit.”
Somehow I made it home, but now I knew that I would be remembered by all eyewitnesses, the bar was only four kilometers from my apartment, I was locked in, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know why I did what I did, I don’t know why I am confessing this to you, I am trapped and now Ogle’s star detective is hunting me down.
After much thought I cut my long wavy brown hair completely, went completely bald and started to grow a moustache, I love hair and I hate moustaches, but now I had to not be me, I had to not be me. And continuing my documentation of Lauren’s life becomes now for me a burden.
Lauren had never gotten angry at Ogle for insisting that she be locked up, she knew that he had to act as if there was every possibility of her being guilty of murdering the major, and then allow for the system to vindicate her, which was precisely how events had unfolded. She is now in Ogles office, “Captain this whole city is going nuts, we have a dead priest, a dead major, a bunch of massacred citizens and now some crazed fuck with a fork running amok! I don’t get it what the hell has been added to the water, we must start imagining that there is some contaminant in the water or food supply, at this rate the entire city will be a funny farm in less than a week.” The captain’s eyes were blood shot, he certainly wasn’t getting any shut eye, his frustrated masculine hands running the length of his face as if to mask the anxiety building within, “I don’t know Lauren where we go from here, we got no clues, nothing, this is really a nest of insanity and I am not sure reasonable conclusions will help us any. Lauren places her hand in her pocket and takes out a bottle of medicine, placing it on top of his desk, “well I do have one clue Capt” “What is this where did you get it?” I don’t know yet what it is but Danny is working on it, I found it outside the cathedral where lay the dead priest, I have a hunch that this bottle is a start, with nothing else, we gotta a hold on to this bottle Capt.” “I didn’t see this bottle in the list of evidence?” “Yeah, I sort of found it outside by accident, I think it best not to mention it to anyone for now, who knows what will pop up.” Captain opens a drawer, takes his gun out of its holster, places it inside and closes the drawer. “Maybe it is a good time not to think like a cop. Keep me posted, right now I got a dinner date with something in my refrigerator.”
I don’t get the papers, I don’t like reading newspapers because they are full of bad news, because they are written by the worst writers, reporters are not writers, and there is no law that says they should be, reporters are just that, reporters, it is wrong for any of us to demand that they write better prose, that they ink a little fortune and imaginative narrative to their extroverted introspections. Anyway reading a paper bores me and reading news is for those people that want to make a difference in the world, I never wanted to make a difference so I didn’t read the papers, I didn’t vote, I didn’t even believe that democracy and information were the key to an intelligent society. But now, I needed to read the paper, so at 6am this morning I committed my second crime, I stole my neighbors newspaper.
“Crazed male attacks woman with fork.”
I don’t know what I thought at that moment, I knew that guy, I didn’t want to know him. The article read:
“In what can only be construed as an incident muscled by insanity a man attacked a woman with a fork, aiming straight for her lips, causing severe injuries to her jaw, cheeks and lips. The incident took place at the popular Bermuda’s Bar, a place where many yuppies gather for happy hour.” Witnesses were many as the place was crowed and the full tragedy of the event is well documented, including a clear description of the male, an older man, presumed to be in late forties early fifties, long curly brown hair, husky, 72 meters tall, he had drank five shots of whisky, was alone, and apparently did not know the woman involved.” Joe Monger, a software engineer described the scene “It was harrowing, she was not doing anything to him, she was just in standing there in shock, and so were we, we could not believe what we were seeing, you are used to seeing that at the movies or on television but when you see it happen like that you just freeze you cant believe that’s real.” Many of the other witnesses were equally in shock and some are being assisted by the red cross to seek counseling, Mandy Williams a frequent customer of the place, was all tears, “How could some one do that, how could such people exist, why this is horrible, I will never be able to come here again.” Obviously many people deeply affected by this terrible incident. “A composite of the man will be released by police today, and detective Lauren, charged with the investigation, is urging the public to collaborate but use all caution, “We have a very accurate description of this male suspect, a composite will be draw up from independent interviews with the witnesses, we will release the profile to seek assistance in the capture of this man, but we urge that anyone making contact with the suspect should use extreme caution as only a deranged man could have accomplished this atrocity.” Police will further release a psychological profile of the suspect, expected to round out misogynistic traits and psychotic anti social behavior patters. Already the police have requested that mental institutions report any missing lunatics.” “Your reporter promises to stay very close to this tragic story. Alfred Mangled.”
Oh no, not only did I now have Lauren assigned to my case, but I now too had my very own reporter, Alfred Mangled. From hence forward I would undoubtedly become an avid reader of this Alfred Mangled fellow.
Buffalo Joes was a bar voided of people like me, I don’t know what people like me are like, I have never found the bar that they hangout at, I always go into the bar scene knowing every discomfort will dress me with incertitude and alter my sense of fear. I feel that an entire world alien to me is watching my every move, I feel their bodies menacing the languishing pudgyness of my fondling fat cells; when I reach the urinal to release acidic content from my bladder, I smell within my lungs every man that has been in the room, part of them now burnished against the ceramic wall and floor, cankerous sores swelling my oxygen, cornering pungent acids filtering through osmosis to feel every cell I have duly created with sausages, hamburgers, and steaks; where cows and pigs must be equally frightened by my presence.
I order a martini, I should not drink martinis, they are the supreme drink, I don’t know of a more arrogantly elegant congregation of minimalist essence. A touch of vermouth, Vodka, two olives, a chilling touch and there is her majesty. No, no, no. A martini is wholly masculine, the vermouth is full of palpable emotions that can’t surmise themselves into anything, you don’t imagine that you can like it by itself, you don’t imagine that by itself it is tolerable nor can you say, this is what vermouth tastes like; the chaotic congregation of possible influences tells you it has a convoluted history of certainty but only certainly doubtful of its own self. Vermouth says, “I don’t know what I am but I want to be something to do with alcohol.” Vodka is precisely the opposite, you don’t have to ponder what Vodka is, the entire certainty of Russian culture which stirs the blood of anyone willing to touch it and suffer a little hard pain, the gulags and slaughters of Russian history, are there plenum. Those hard Russian winters, the Russians waiting for Napoleon, the Russians waiting for the Germans, the Russians waiting for Lenin, it’s all the same, waiting, waiting for somebody to come and kill them so that they can show their perdurance. A potato and the Russian character have everything in common, there was no need to try to convince the Russians that rooted potatoes were a national necessity; from there you have to purify the essence of the potato and you get your vodka, the Russians and Vodka know how to drink each other. The olive is a distinctively different matter, added after Tsar Nicholas and his family found out that all those souls that they tortured and killed and maintained in perverse poverty, would send the living hate in for natural retribution; the olive added to remind us that though vermouth is confused and vodka harsh, there is still room for a touch of aesthetic intervention. Every olive inside a martini is saying “I refuse to surrender to your barbarism.”
Yes, yes, I know what you will say, the Martini was invented in the west. You will never convince me of that.
My brain doesn’t like Martinis, I like them and I don’t like my brain. I drank, and drank until I forgot myself. This morning I woke up with blood on my hands and clothing, I am trying to recollect precisely what happened last night. Fuzzily disturbing fragments of recollections start to climb into my judgmental brain. There was a young beautiful woman, she portrayed all the ambivalence that causes me to break into a feverish rash. I kept on watching her, partly trying to admire her but I found her beauty obfuscating any desire that may have risen. She was saying “like me, love me, envy me.” I don’t know why I have such a strong conflict with people that say, “envy me.” We all want to be loved and liked but amongst us there are people saying, “envy me.” I wasn’t attracted to this woman I was mortified by her much as another woman might feel threatened by her; I kept on watching her incessant laughter as a direct assault, and so I dashed towards her with a fork and pricked her lips with it, I pricked her lips. Oh dear God, what have I done, why did I drink that devil drink! Why did I go to a joint where all the discomforts would accompany me!
I recall running out, running furiously, a gang of youth after me, I don’t know where I got the adrenalin to outpace them, fear does such a thing, legs keep moving fast and forever forgetting that muscles have physical limitations, my legs are now in excruciating pain, my wretched imagination kept the vivid images of this woman feeling the lacerations of a tool not designed for cutting, I stormed my brain to stop recalling, it was too late, I had inspired this pain loving brain that doesn’t feel the reconstructed images of the splitting blood, of my forked hand before me, of the anguish in her face, the constructs more monstrous with each evolution of the fork, and then the awakening of fear, my pounding heart, my racing body! At some point I saw Lauren, wearing a business light yellow pant suit, arrive at the crazed scene, she immediately made me out and rushed towards me but, by some magnificent miracle I floated upwards away from her. Upon seeing my heavenly rising body, she hastily looked all around her, and upon seeing no witnesses her arms and hands fisting towards the ground: “Shit! Why do this crazy things always happen when there are no witnesses! Shit! Shit. shit.”
Somehow I made it home, but now I knew that I would be remembered by all eyewitnesses, the bar was only four kilometers from my apartment, I was locked in, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know why I did what I did, I don’t know why I am confessing this to you, I am trapped and now Ogle’s star detective is hunting me down.
After much thought I cut my long wavy brown hair completely, went completely bald and started to grow a moustache, I love hair and I hate moustaches, but now I had to not be me, I had to not be me. And continuing my documentation of Lauren’s life becomes now for me a burden.
Lauren had never gotten angry at Ogle for insisting that she be locked up, she knew that he had to act as if there was every possibility of her being guilty of murdering the major, and then allow for the system to vindicate her, which was precisely how events had unfolded. She is now in Ogles office, “Captain this whole city is going nuts, we have a dead priest, a dead major, a bunch of massacred citizens and now some crazed fuck with a fork running amok! I don’t get it what the hell has been added to the water, we must start imagining that there is some contaminant in the water or food supply, at this rate the entire city will be a funny farm in less than a week.” The captain’s eyes were blood shot, he certainly wasn’t getting any shut eye, his frustrated masculine hands running the length of his face as if to mask the anxiety building within, “I don’t know Lauren where we go from here, we got no clues, nothing, this is really a nest of insanity and I am not sure reasonable conclusions will help us any. Lauren places her hand in her pocket and takes out a bottle of medicine, placing it on top of his desk, “well I do have one clue Capt” “What is this where did you get it?” I don’t know yet what it is but Danny is working on it, I found it outside the cathedral where lay the dead priest, I have a hunch that this bottle is a start, with nothing else, we gotta a hold on to this bottle Capt.” “I didn’t see this bottle in the list of evidence?” “Yeah, I sort of found it outside by accident, I think it best not to mention it to anyone for now, who knows what will pop up.” Captain opens a drawer, takes his gun out of its holster, places it inside and closes the drawer. “Maybe it is a good time not to think like a cop. Keep me posted, right now I got a dinner date with something in my refrigerator.”
I don’t get the papers, I don’t like reading newspapers because they are full of bad news, because they are written by the worst writers, reporters are not writers, and there is no law that says they should be, reporters are just that, reporters, it is wrong for any of us to demand that they write better prose, that they ink a little fortune and imaginative narrative to their extroverted introspections. Anyway reading a paper bores me and reading news is for those people that want to make a difference in the world, I never wanted to make a difference so I didn’t read the papers, I didn’t vote, I didn’t even believe that democracy and information were the key to an intelligent society. But now, I needed to read the paper, so at 6am this morning I committed my second crime, I stole my neighbors newspaper.
“Crazed male attacks woman with fork.”
I don’t know what I thought at that moment, I knew that guy, I didn’t want to know him. The article read:
“In what can only be construed as an incident muscled by insanity a man attacked a woman with a fork, aiming straight for her lips, causing severe injuries to her jaw, cheeks and lips. The incident took place at the popular Bermuda’s Bar, a place where many yuppies gather for happy hour.” Witnesses were many as the place was crowed and the full tragedy of the event is well documented, including a clear description of the male, an older man, presumed to be in late forties early fifties, long curly brown hair, husky, 72 meters tall, he had drank five shots of whisky, was alone, and apparently did not know the woman involved.” Joe Monger, a software engineer described the scene “It was harrowing, she was not doing anything to him, she was just in standing there in shock, and so were we, we could not believe what we were seeing, you are used to seeing that at the movies or on television but when you see it happen like that you just freeze you cant believe that’s real.” Many of the other witnesses were equally in shock and some are being assisted by the red cross to seek counseling, Mandy Williams a frequent customer of the place, was all tears, “How could some one do that, how could such people exist, why this is horrible, I will never be able to come here again.” Obviously many people deeply affected by this terrible incident. “A composite of the man will be released by police today, and detective Lauren, charged with the investigation, is urging the public to collaborate but use all caution, “We have a very accurate description of this male suspect, a composite will be draw up from independent interviews with the witnesses, we will release the profile to seek assistance in the capture of this man, but we urge that anyone making contact with the suspect should use extreme caution as only a deranged man could have accomplished this atrocity.” Police will further release a psychological profile of the suspect, expected to round out misogynistic traits and psychotic anti social behavior patters. Already the police have requested that mental institutions report any missing lunatics.” “Your reporter promises to stay very close to this tragic story. Alfred Mangled.”
Oh no, not only did I now have Lauren assigned to my case, but I now too had my very own reporter, Alfred Mangled. From hence forward I would undoubtedly become an avid reader of this Alfred Mangled fellow.
posted by Ricardo Correa at
8/31/2006 05:55:00 PM
