A few billion years ago (maybe just a decade or two) there was this band called morphine; a three piece, bass, baritone sax and, shit, I don’t remember, a piano would make sense, maybe a guitar. Among other things they had this song; you speak my language.
I recently used that with a friend of mine. I was both trying to be flirty and one hundred percent honest. It’s odd; some of y’all might remember when I first came back to the wastelands the anarchist figured heavily in my entries. Anarchist wasn’t a clever way of coming up with a pseudonym, there is nothing to protect, I could give you his full name, date of birth SS# and you still wouldn’t be able to track him and, of late, you wouldn’t be able to track me through him. I’m not that kind of paranoid anyhow. He is the anarchist because he is dedicated to being an anarchist in deed and word.
And I don’t mean a kid who spray paints an A inside a circle on a bridge. More of an intellectual and artistic anarchist. At any rate I haven’t even spoken with him since last autumn, um, I think I mean autumn of 2012. I tried to, I texted him a few times, the last he said he had some things going on and would get back to me. He didn’t speak my language exactly, but I did speak his, and that’s sort of close to the same thing, I mean he liked my language, like anyone else they translate it into something they understand. But he liked it.
If we had a falling out it was a gentle falling out and likely my fault. Long story short I asked him what he did about intimate company and he said he frequented prostitutes --- oh, wait, no that’s too long story short and inaccurate --- he said sometimes he went to prostitutes. I think he was expecting disapproval and so when I weighed my words carefully because, I was in fact talking about me and not probing him, I said something like “I’m not ready to give up yet.”
I was thinking other things and, yeah, I wasn’t giving tacit approval, and perhaps there is an inherent judgment in that, the implication that he had given up. His answer was “I’m not very good at relationships.” It’s not the last conversation we had, it was in the middle of a trip out to a park some distance from here and we talked about other things. But that trip was the last time I’ve seen him face to face.
The important part of all that is that he was one of the few people I had a common language with. And sure, y’all are sharp enough to know what I mean, that the actual language is English perhaps peppered with a bit of Latin and Spanish and German, but, you know, a common cadence and inflection and understanding where you don’t have to stop and explain. A really silly and stupid example would be, for instance, I haven’t said tear jerker out loud in years, I always say jeer turker, and, more importantly, I say it to fly in the face of cliché and convention. Tear jerker itself implies a formula, a cliché about a cliché. It’s the type of example that doesn’t explain anything, but that should be obvious.
This other friend is the embodiment of what I meant by “I haven’t given up yet”. I rarely speak of her and won’t even go so far as to give her a pseudonym. I could have given a lot of other answers to the whole prostitute thing by the way; like I have never considered that an option, it’s not a pride, money, health or moral thing, it’s an exploitation thing. I’ve known a lot of prostitutes in a professional capacity, my profession not theirs, and there is an unbearable and pervasive sorrow as a social construct, something, in a general way, that is the opposite of erotic. I’ve always kind of wondered how a john ever gets it into his head that it is erotic. I don’t think I’d even be able to get it up.
This other friend wouldn’t even engage in the conversation which is fine by me. I typed it recently and have said it often; I know a little bit about a lot of things. A great many of those things I hope to never think about or discuss again. Some of the very few things I know a lot about I hope never to discuss again. My language is often not casual at all and when it is casual there’s a lot of quick tongue in cheek and arcane references. I realized this Christmas that my daughter can fall into that language too. It’s almost a game, like speed alternative comedy, or, rather, clever, not necessarily funny.
This friend does not come across as someone who speaks that language either hot or cold. I’d be just as attracted to her if she didn’t, but that she does is like, I don’t know, a pool and fig tree in the desert. It makes me able to stay here where I am becoming less and less capable of doing the gig I came for. Ok, to be fair, my father is becoming worse to the point where I can’t help and I do have a great deal of the king’s horses and men in my service, but Pater Humpty Dumpty is cracking. He falls more often than stands.
It’s possible too that the decision will be taken out of my hands. It leaves me here with just the one friend. It’s ok; she’s portable and at some point here is not where we’ll be. I’m at the wrong age for all this. At thirty I wouldn’t even be thinking in terms of how close I am to being in my father’s situation, it would be a half a century gap. It’s a mere few decades and part of my inability has to do with joints and muscles of my own that aren’t working so well. That I can only recall some of the highlights of the previous few decades. One of the reasons to maintain an online journal, one of the reasons I tell some of the same stories multiple times, is to use the web as sort of flash cards for my memory.
As mysterious as feelings are (try explaining how one works to someone who hasn’t felt it, try being accurate. Anger, for instance, isn’t really red, doesn’t really taste like blood, the physical manifestations sound more like a panic attack --- and anger is one of the easier ones, it’s black and white, it’s difficult to mistake for anything else) they aren’t dependent on memory or intellect. If one decides they are no good at relationships and puts their intimacy eggs into the whore basket, what will they do when they are too memory gone to cruise for them, to dial a phone, to remember what it is one does when that longing creeps up? Or maybe the anarchist was just talking about sex. I wasn’t. Maybe we don’t speak the same language. If it were an either/or type deal I’d trade in sex for intimacy and affection any day of the week. In theory the idea of me coming out here was so my father could live out his life in this intimate palace he has built with his wife of sixty some odd years. It was important, or it seemed important. If I’m wrong about feelings and memory then it’s sort of cruel to keep him here.
It’s possible that I’m both wrong and right. I don’t know, I speak my language, I think I speak your language as well but I allow that I might be mistaken. Ok I found the youtube link. Hmmm, seems to be a bass a drum kit and a baritone. I don’t know, they might use a machine for things – it’s still a three piece band.
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