A Celebration

To celebrate our savagery and contempt, as well as my imminent departure, we go to the red light district of Brussels for a Sunday night drive. Unfortunately, Juana rear-ends some Moroccans as we get into a heated debate about the prototypical misogynist. Everybody piles out but me. During the debacle, she gesticulates like a prize fighting Italian, meeting the Moroccans head on. Even French sounds ugly when the speakers are negotiating the logistical response to a fender bender, figuring out which party is the culprit, and I'm guessing Juan won't claim guilt (not with this mood that grabbed her, a revived vendetta against all husbands and men). The other cars behind us, a bit anxious for the next peep, lay on their horns. The hookers behind the windows check us out now. Yet despite the commotion of the beeping, and that blabber of Juana and the Moroccans, I can't help but direct my attention to a decrepit elderly man limping along the pavement, with a cane and an Irish cap, sporting huge bottle bifocals: an emaciated version of brouhaha packed into the wrinkled sack of a lame Occidental. What business does he have here? He's either a Viagra enthusiast or the godfather of this underworld, or both. In this symphony of car honks and French guttural curses just ahead, this sewage duct reveals itself–an extracted cloaca of some primordial organism, and this bloke must be the acidic middleman that keeps the whole canal well lubed, with a fat thumb on the bank book of each gal, shoving that dreadful out-dated member of his into poor Germaine's mouth. With Juana in front, our Citroen engine humming, this King Pin shuffling along (counting the inventory of his warehouse), and those meaty Moroccans calling the shots and throwing their arms about like angry orangutans, I chuckle and enjoy the spectacle, because even if poor Germaine has to gag on that wilted phallic thunder, even if Juana can never understand men and their ability to sever sex from emotional connection, even if those Moroccans are probably going to gangbang a poor defenseless under age hooker this evening (with that geezer in the shadows, counting some crinkled bills), and even if I can do nothing to prevent the pains and cramps of the pubescent night, then I can at least stand over the masses and decry the inclusion of my comportment with theirs. I can hover over the evolved species and gaze into the fish bowl as an extraterrestrial visiting, calling myself an exile after 200,000 years of the same crap, the same warring tribes and scuffles over the choicest selection of meat. So when Juana surprises me and rips open the passenger side door, growling ferociously, "get out and help me get these Moroccans into line," I refuse to help her, and then she irritably snatches a black binder from under my feet and walks back to their group, swaggering a bit. A skinny earthworm looking one, with conical head and no bones to speak of, whips out some new age wonder from his back pocket and records the necessary facts. I notice that they all chortle before parting ways, and then I receive a few lewd looks. When Juana gets back inside the car, horns a veritable surging ocean behind us, I ask her what the Moroccans were laughing about, and then she says, "I told them you would blow them off if they forgot about everything. I don't need my insurance payments to increase. This is my third minor accident in one year. " A bit taken aback, I say, "jeez, thanks."

As we start creeping along again, the languorous eyes of the prostitutes follow us. That lame Occidental turns into one of the joints, disappearing as a fly into a mouse den. This place is the encephalitic center of the cafe-lounging-beer-numbed brain of Brussels; all the short circuits end up splayed all over these streets, baggy eyed and grumpy with bent cigarettes stuffed in their mouths. This bordello will never disappear, as this dialogue of Juana and mine will not disappear . . . this drivel of how can you men be such and such; forever imprinted on the memory, that lonely sound of high heels slapping the asphalt of a deserted alley, these women, these men, and Juana, emboss themselves on a damask of a pagan dinner table. Those Moroccans, the whole lot! Everybody gets a chance to stain their nicely folded dinner napkins. How can you men be like this? she asked. What does she want from me? What does a woman ever want from a man? We're lithe creatures, designed for slipping through cracks, for sneaking into a daughter's bedroom as a mother sleeps nearby, slightly nappy and incredibly miffed. There's a general septicemia within our society, and we all want blood transfusions; but we have no better types, no resilient anti-bodies, just a horrible iridescence that we see flashing in the streets, calling to us even though we cannot move, lashed to the male wheel as we are, tearing our wrists to undo the ropes that bind us. And it's in this state that Juana asks me about the general conduct of men, these bipeds with a second Will attached anterior to their pie holes, with nothing but the craving for meat and alpha male status glued under their dirty fingernails, dollar signs for eyes and First World hysteria leaking out their earlobes with the buzz of La Crisis echoing around and Somalian pirates the least of their worries . . . and as we drive back to the creaky abode of her dying grandmother, that terrible silence of sour marriage falls over us, and Juana and I dance separately with the spouse we have chosen: Juana with her vengeful solitude and myself with my empty convictions. When we get home, we do not say a word to each other and sleep in different rooms.

I think our relationship has evolved. We have given each other freedom. I leave for Madrid tomorrow, but that wedding band still glimmers on my nightstand and the air suffocates me. I am poor, wifeless, and the happiest man alive. I have swallowed my hate and love; and my stomach only gurgles.