Burn and Berlin...

Burn will tell you there was something wrong with me and maybe that's true. I don't know what to say about that, am in no mood to attempt a defense. I didn't want to talk about it, couldn't much talk about it with Burn, what is going on because even I don't know or can't describe it. Things will always hurt and I'm just trying to get through it and respect it fucking respect it but keep moving.

We were out on the town and there was one glaring problem with all of the beauties we ran across. Germans are fucking schooled in language, meaning that they know mine too well and last night, I didn't want them to. There's a body sleeping in my bed. I don't even know where I am right now. There's a computer in the room that I'm using that I must have ordered at some point last night when I got home. I'm still drunk so I feel okay and she's naked so I must've fucked her quite a bit because I feel like that's the mood I must've been in last night. No, I remember...

She didn't speak a lick of English. When me and Burn parted ways, I was approaching girls on the street, as long as they were pretty enough and I was asking them if they didn't know English. They all did, all so fucking educated make me feel like such a goddam peasant. But sometime around four, I found a girl. She didn't understand a fucking word I was saying so I took her hand and dragged her back here...checking the note pad on my desk - the Hilton in Mitte, and we fucked and fucked and fucked. I don't know what I said to her and I'm not sure if I care to know, but I can tell you that it was a lot, likely, because I had some stuff I needed to get out. I'm sure I fucked her for hours, talking the entire time, my lips and mouth and words moving out of me...about my life, about my hurt, about my fallen girl. I wonder what she was thinking as I was fucking her - my never shutting up, maybe crying a little bit - whatever it was she handled it because she's still here, her bare ass staring at me from on top of the covers.

I think I should order her breakfast - at least feed her before she leaves, which she has to do almost immediately. I have much to do but mostly just compose myself before I see my friend again, because we have business, much business.

Every now and again, I see them laying there and motionless and I get scared, fucking scared. Is she dead? Did I kill this woman? Intentionally or unintentionally? I usually then do what I am about to do now, like take this pen off the desk...and throw it at her. Missed. I take this bag of nuts...and throw it and hit her in her bare ass.

She stirs.

She is alive.

Now I can move on.

Burn is coming to town...

He's been talking shit about it for a long time now -- and now I've got to go to Berlin to see him. I haven't been there in a while. Actually, I don't remember anything about my times in Berlin. Maybe it's time to start something new. Absolutely, it's time to start something new. Burn is coming to town.

He wrote me at some point and told me he gave our book to the guy who wrote that book that that cunt Oprah bastardized. I shouldn't call her a cunt. I don't know Oprah. I don't want to fucking know Oprah. Frey, that's the guy's name and I never read his book but I certainly heard about it. I remember hearing from people that I should read the book when it came out, when it became an obsession - from people who thought it would help me get over my "problems." My "problems." Fucking wow. A Million Little Pieces. I read the wiki article on it and on him because I think in the end, me and Burn are going to have to meet him - because I feel like we are going to need him - a bright shining star to help us shine because I feel like that's how it works. That has to be how it works.

Or not, I don't fucking know. Burn keeps sending me these shorts that he says he wants to go shoot and make and bring me to life. I don't know what to say about that. He says he wants to being Jenny to life - to make her real - as if she wasn't real enough already, as if everything that happened between her and me wasn't real enough already. I don't know what to tell him. I think so much of everything is so fucked up. Burn is coming to Berlin and I am going to meet him. It's strange to think about. It makes me nauseous. Fucking nauseous because of the promises we made - because of the world we have to live up to. And now every time I see him, I have to become all and everything I am capable of and I think he feels the same way. We would be crazy if we told you that this was light...any of it...any of the time.

He said we might need a new chapter. Might. I guess it depends on how this turns out. I'm worried. Because at times I have no control, and I'm afraid about bringing him in on that...pretty Burn, safe Burn, collected Burn.

We have no choice but to rip this apart - any part of the world that dare host us. Berlin. Hello. Here we come.

After A Long Hiatus...

Burn just sent me an e-mail. He didn't say much about our book. To be true, I don't really care at this moment of my life. I know all the fucking wheels have to turn, a thousand fucking wheels to make anything concrete happen right now - and I suppose we have to sit back and wait for it to an extent. He had some good things to say, some encouraging things but honestly, I drift between wanting our words to get published and wanting them to be ours only, to keep them away from the shit world that would pretend to understand them so that they would in some way, give definition to aimless lives...something to talk about, something to live vicariously through. It's all shit, all of it, and I'm only doing it for the power of it all, to say I am something that I always wanted to be...a writer that people read, so that I can drift myself further above and remain there forever. The shit I've seen...the shit I've been through. Would stagger the soul of the world.

There's at least one person who knows this. His name is Burn. And this e-mail he sent was something new, like I said. He said he had to keep moving forward with something, to keep working on something because he was starting to go insane...was starting to feel normalized again and rested and stable. The last thing I knew, he was working on some script that he was calling mindless - because it was some big comedy, still vicious but supposedly funny - and I don't know what happened...if the wheels came off or what, but he wrote me this morning and said something exactly like, fuck I'm too obsessed with you. Then he said that there was something he had to see - the idea of me on screen, Clive Owen playing my bastard father. He told me he was writing the story of my fucked up existence (personally, I don't see it that way and it kind of hurt to see Burn describe it that way), from before the two of us met under the Eiffel...a story constructed from the stories I'd told him over our drunken times in the cities we shared. He said he already started writing it and that he didn't want to change my name and that he didn't want to make it fictional because he didn't really have to. I am simply that riveting.

I've never met Clive Owen, only seen him in Soho bars or in Harrods buying some sort of fucking scarf and perfume. Burn says he sees him all the time. I think Burn can pull off anything he wants in this world. He'll tell you this too. A lot of people will tell you things like that and never come close. Burn isn't like that. He wont be like that. Clive Owen will play my father. I'm more interested in who will play me.

If This Isn't Legit, Then I Don't Know. My Boy Can Roll...

This Fucker Burn has been posting me for some time now, dropping my testicles on the cutting board and keeping his tucked inside his pants.  True, he's been doing all the edits so I don't have a ton of access as per my request, but today I told him to send me a chapter he had finished, the most recent one and so he did.  I'm a self-loving piece of shit, there's no denying that, and you should throw a flag at the fact that I'm posting his writing that's essentially all about me - but this one has to go up.  I know Burn's cadence, and if you don't sometimes it takes a paragraph or two to get down - so my dropping you right in means you have to pick it up on the fly.  But I got through the end of this chapter we lived together and I felt a chill - because I'm a smart man...a very smart man...and if this isn't everything we need it to be, then I'm going to give up...because it is.  My boy can fucking roll. 

John moved to Emmett and Malkia and said exactly, it’s true we came here to give out the money and it’s true I have close to 1 million Rand in this suitcase…I was going to spread it out but now I don’t want to do that anymore…I want to leave it all with you.  There was a long beat, silence before Malkia wound up and slapped John across the face.  Tisha began to cry and grabbed my hand.  Malkia saw this.  She stepped to the kitchen and grabbed a knife.  I looked down to Tisha and told her everything was okay and that me and John were leaving.  Then I looked to John and saw he wasn’t finished, and from that point, nothing was vague for me.  I can recall his words, word for word, because everything he then said and did changed my perception of him.  There are moments I hold onto.  This was one of them.  John stepped into her and said exactly, I know you’re proud I know…but I also know that you love your children…I can see it and I could feel it when you walked inside…it’s up to you…you can take them away and you can have bright days or you can stay and have bright days but whatever choice you make you can’t deny what I’m trying to give.  Then he told her with less eloquence that money is bullshit, all bullshit but that we weren’t leaving Langa with the briefcase.  He said if they didn’t take the money, we would walk the streets until someone found us, then exactly, if they kill us they kill us…me and Burn made a pact to be dead before we were 30 anyway so if that’s how it’s going to happen we’re fucking ready for that.  His eyes stayed on Malkia and he asked her if she would be ready for that, admitting he now had love in his heart, in that moment, maybe for the first time in his life and that she would be responsible forever for extinguishing it.  I think he was implying love for them.  I think she understood.  Then he asked her again, shortening his clips into a rapid succession of would you, would you, would you – faster and with growing intensity.  Malkia looked to Emmett and said something we didn’t understand before he darted out the door and jogged away.  She told us to sit, stabbed her knife into the wooden wall and asked if we were hungry.  Durban actually said yes. 

Been A Long Fucking Time...

And I just got this e-mail from Burn and it said something like, "Think you might want to get off your ass?  3 months...what you want, applause?  Even you're not sensational enough to keep someone checking in after 3 months.  Even you, Durban.  This is just the beginning.  I bet you tied one on last night, huh partner?  What are you celebrating, I'm curious?  We're just getting started, brother.  Just getting started."

Burn.  Burn.  And I'm laughing as I say it, laughing as I'm repeating his name to myself and out loud.  We just finished a book.  I know it's not done, I get it...and Burn will be the first to go on and on about re-writing, about this discipline you have to have, about the shit you have to carve out of rough words to make them presentable and I get it, I fucking get it.  Something happened in the course of the story we were telling that I can't divulge, but what happened...basically and exactly, was that I had to write the last 10,000 words myself.  He sent me this e-mail at his 3am one night and he went off on this rambling tangent - I think he might have been sleep walking on his computer because most of it was non-sensical, but the jist of it was this epiphany of where we had to take our tale - and it ended up leading us to a place where all the work was mine.  I had to bring us home...me.  This was Burn's fucking idea and I'm doing the heavy lifting and then he has the nerve to drop me the cute little fucking hate e-mails.  Fucking Burn.  He's amazing to me - because he is such a pussy, really, truly...such a pussy.  And then he's ravenous and he's pressing and he's the scariest motherfucker I know in the world and I think that's amazing.  And now, we've written a book together and it's going to be huge because how could it not be?  How could something forged from the efforts of the two of us not reach out and topple the world?  

So yeah, I sent my draft of the last chapter, Los Angeles, to Burn sometime yesterday and he sends back this reply that said something like, "Now we go.  Tighten your belt."  And I have no fucking clue what that means and so I sent back this response that said something like get fucked and I haven't heard from him.  I think he's brooding or working on his chapters and he's going to send me another e-mail in a little bit that's going to tell me where he is and he'll imply that I'm dragging ass and that I need to get moving and I'll say something back like go fuck yourself and we wont really get anywhere but for some reason, I'll end up guilty and so I'll work and so maybe he's got my fucking strings tied around his fingers after all...just like he always does.  Fucking Burn.

I'd tell you the title...mostly just to spite him, but I think he'd fly across the pond and cut my dick off.  So no, you're just gonna have to wait. 

This Is Hard.

I'm writing a book with my compatriot across the pond.  I didn't know what the it was about until Burn wrote what he thought it was about and so I'm stealing that slick fucker's line that goes something like - "Me and Durban are out to jerk ourselves and each other off for 200 pages.  That's our idea."  I couldn't have thought it better myself.

Here's the problem with writing a book...it fucking sucks.  I'm sitting here in front of my laptop and I'm in Berlin right now for a couple weeks and the world is happening out there - all the fucking time in this city - and I'm sitting here taking my turn writing a chapter about time I spent in Prague, alone, when I was broke and had to pull some shit to get out of that country. Actually, you can read the abridged in my back logs - "The Worst Shit I Ever Got Into."

Fucking Burn.  Fucking Burn pulled me into this shit.  When we agreed to do this, I figured I could binge out a weekend bender and float a couple ten thousand words his way and that would be that - he would take care of the rest.  Instead, as it turns out, I'm responsible for whole fucking chapters - I have to hold up whole fucking chapters.  And not just that but Burn wants to do this thing where it's all in order if you can believe the fucking stones on this guy.  It means that our story starts the day we met in Paris and we do this tag-team narrative that totally worked for me but then we finished Paris and now I'm up on Prague, alone, and Burn can't do his chapter until I finish mine for what he calls sake of avoiding repetition or theme or maybe it's just so he can babysit my juvenile tendencies and completely absent work ethic and he's writing me every fucking day just nagging and pulling on me and giving me shit and keeping me in line and I've been sitting here for the third day in a row because the fucker is whipping me from behind and my eyes are bleeding and my brain is bleeding and sometimes I think I haven't a fucking clue what I'm doing.  Fucking Burn.  Fucking Burn.  Fuck you Burn. There is nothing easy about this, nothing enjoyable. 

I don't mean all that.  Because, well...

Reading back what I'm getting down goes something like this - just a taste...

"I woke up the morning of Christmas Eve on the hardwood floor of my Boscolo Carlo presidential, covered in cold, rank piss.  Someone was pounding on the door.  I ditched my pants and approached to find the general manager standing with 2 heavy brutes.  He was holding a copy of my bill in his hand, telling me that my card had been over-extended, that I was no longer welcome at their establishment.  In Paris, London or Rome, or anywhere in the states, or anywhere but what seemed to only be Eastern Europe, I could have made a phone call and been fine - and would have been graciously accomodated.  Problem with Prague, it was my first visit - no one knew or gave a shit about who John Durban was.  They didn't know of my worldly status or worldly friends and I wasn't going to begin to tell them.  To them, I was just a broke deadbeat with a bum credit card.

I did, however, still manage to negotiate 30 minutes to take a shower and change into some clean clothes, all the while trying to piece the pieces of the previous night together.  I've always found the shower to be an excellent avenue for recollection and thought and right as those warm and resurrecting ropes of water hit my face and ran over my scalp, I remembered everything.  We were at Girl's house the night before, somewhere just outside the city, having dinner with her family. They were serving Goulash of some sort - I think that's what Girl called it in translation.  I remember trying to eat it and my entire face being so numb from the cocaine -- that's right, we had picked up an uncut key on the way over -- that I couldn't chew.  I put a bite in my mouth and just sat for what seemed to be either two hours or two minutes. Everyone was speaking Czech and arguing and I think they were insulted by my being there, some rich American/Euro boy fucking the life out of their overnight rich Czech Italian Vogue cover girl and I could see it in their eyes, their bleeding envy, every one of them wondering when their cut was coming."

And I'm not even the anchor.  Fucking Burn...

In Dreams...

Burn Used to talk about this shit all the time.  He still talks about this shit all the time, about going to sleep and of a mind that wont let him let go of the parts of his past...long after he believed to - some kind of hitch in his kingdom of giant calves and closeted homosexuality...his pristine and simplistic Los Angeles life of trophy fucks and a righteously unstable, insatiable and judging mind...of the men he's killed and of the skilled crimes he's escaped.

Some of the aforementioned are true...

He talks a lot about going to sleep and always dreaming, odd shit, yeah...but relevant shit too.  Mostly of people.  People that held a candle somewhere along the line.  I don't know if I never noticed it before...like if it was always right there but I never paid it any mind -- that or that I wasn't capable of paying it much mind -- that or that I was always too bent to remember anything in my life, let alone my dreams. 

When I stopped getting so fucked for a stretch -- and I've actually been holding semi-steady lately -- I was dreaming about Jenny almost every night.  The girl clipped herself, knifed her wrist and just hung out and bled out and sometimes, I think about the things she must have been thinking -- right at the end there, as the world finally calmed and slowed...maybe for the first time in her life.  And I always wonder, because I'm self obsessed and because I loved her and because I don't have to justify my fucking right to wonder if I crossed her mind, if I ever crossed her mind.  Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.  Maybe she knew me, too well, knew that all I was was a fucker, that I was probably coked out somewhere across the globe, fucking some nineteen year old hundred pound Chanel model...because that's exactly what I was doing, not thinking of the girl I left behind -- not thinking of Jenny -- like I should have been -- the only girl who had what it took - to put me on my fucking feet and her entire life was pouring out on that floor and in my dreams, all I want to know, the only thing I want to fucking know is whether or not she was thinking of me.  I'd give my life for that knowledge.  

Enough.  You know the story.  Excuse my obsession.  Excuse and forgive.  I close my eyes and most of the time, that's exactly what I see.  I think about it now, what I've affectionately labeled to myself as the incident, even just for a flash and something in me starts to take over and buries it and buries it because guess what, it's 2009...and it's a new year and in the new year, we're moving away from self-destruction.  For now at least. 

Everything that happened...it would have been as good a reason as any to jump back in...into the painies and Jack...back into the stuff I don't ever want to talk about anymore.  I didn't.  And I'm not proud or anything, and I don't want any fucking props, it's just relevant to the tale.  Something about the pain was clearing.  Something about a look I'd get in the dream, something about the feeling I'd wake up with - this mess of regret, of some kind of sick fucking yearning and the rest of it just pain -- just grief and fucking sadness that I only recently began to recognize, let alone talk about.  Burn showed me a thing or two about being a pussy -- that sometimes, being a pussy is acceptable -- that sometimes, being a pussy is absolutely necessary...if you can believe that - and coming from my mouth.  Fuck me.  Fuck us all -- after all that's all we all are...fucked.  Embrace it. 

I'm okay.  I'm sitting in a hotel room in London and it's fucking cold and dark.  And I don't know why I keep coming here, to this city.  Something about it keeps pulling me back.  

I'm tired but I don't want to sleep.  She's been there for 3 sleeps in a row.  It's not that I don't want to see her...I do.  But coming out hurts.  Coming back here, it can hurt like nothing else.

Not always, though.  Sometimes, sometimes, my eyes open and I feel right, like I know she's waiting for me out there, somewhere, somewhere down the line.