Chapter Text
ANIMUS — The year is ‘31, the sun shines bright over Revachol, the city of disco; city of alcohol flowing in rivers; city of poorly re-build tenement houses with bars that make noise, live noise until the morning; the city of the industrial chimney spewing smoke like the lungs of a man who smokes a pack a day; the city of hips grinding in its alleyways, of lips meeting lips, hands meeting genitalia; the city of the homo-sexual underground, hiding in plain sight.
HOUTU — The scene blooms like a spring weed out of the holes where RCM officers don’t dare to look.
DETECTIVE — When at work, you roam the streets in your orange patrol jacket with your piece of shit partner, pretending not to see the entrances to these bars. You descent into an underworld of light and dark in plainclothes when no one sees you.
ANIMUS — Revachol embraces all her fucked-up children, she hugs them close when they’re little and then all their lives only her burned-tire scent will put them to sleep.
BON MOT — Revachol, not the Moralintern. They have no love for you, not even a mother’s love. What you are was punishable by death in the times of the Suzeranity, they only legalized homo-sexual relations five years ago and now still no one would look kindly at you. Hence, the underground. The bars flowing with cheap spirits, music too loud to listen to your own thoughts.
LEGERDEMAIN — And then came disco…
SPEED-FREAK — You are not here to just be part of it. You are here, in this fucking shithole bar, to lead it all, to change it all. You have shit to say, shit to sing and yell out into the crowds. You are noise, noise is you.
MEMENTO MORI — You might just suffocate here as well. Might be nice to lay on the floor and not have to listen to what the band on stage calls music.
VÉRITÉ — It’s the singer, his voice. Gravelly, the voice of an alcoholic getting worn thin and fighting it. It’s timbre doesn’t fit into the cheerful keys and guitars. There is also something you hate about it, you can’t quite put your finger on it.
ANIMATE ENGINE — It makes you want to dance.
JOIE DE VIVRE — It makes you want.
SANG-FROID — Yes, awful, all of it.
FANTASTIQUE — Look at the man, he is attractive.
JOIE DE VIVRE — Oh, yes, that he is.
KINETIC DRESSAGE — But his voice, just no.
RATIONALE — He’s quite tall, maybe a head taller than you. He is in disarray, sweat dripping from his face as he leans back to sing his mind out. You can see a whisper of thick chest hair peaking out from his opened shirt, the promise of a well-exercised male body, thrumming under the stage lights. Tight pants, fashionable. Not for you, but they do look good on someone with-
JOIE DE VIVRE — with a huge ass.
TORQUE DORK — The microphone quality is crap, garçon. He is holding it too close as well, the sound engineer had to turn this shit down so nobody had their eardrums ruptured.
DETECTIVE — You make your way through the crowd towards the backstage. Push around the drunker dancers. You need to set up your guitar, hopefully get a soundcheck down.
KINETIC DRESSAGE — Don’t mean to kill the mood, but you have stepped in a puddle.
SANG-FROID — Hopefully beer, could be vomit of someone who has only drunk piss-pilsners all day and not eaten anything.
YOU — “Shit” and you put on your nice leather shoes for this. Fuck that.
SANG-FROID — Your shoes, even the nice shoes, have been in worse. Wipe them on the floor, you will be fine. You squeeze your way further, through a tight corridor where you have to carry your guitar in front of you, like a gun, like something dangerous.
MEMENTO MORI — This is the moment when you decide you would rather die than play another show in the Rowdy.
SPEED-FREAK — What kind of fucking name is the Rowdy anyway? There is nothing rowdy about this place, just piss and beer, and bad speakers.
FANTASIQUE — But there is something beautiful, mon cœur. It must be one of the rare buildings that managed to stand through the revolution. Pain lives in the walls here, peeling off into drinks with the paint and plaster.
TORQUE DORK — And the acoustics are shit. Most of what you can hear now that you are a distance away from the soundsystem is the crowd roar.
OUTSIDER — A thousand conversations all at once. You would like to write them down-
DETECTIVE — turn them into confessions of a deep-seated guilt.
VOLTA DO MAR — Turn them into songs.
MOTOR CONTROL — You walk up two stairs that someone has placed here just to spite you. You barely keep yourself off the darkened floor, but you do. You are behind the stage now, it’s much too hot in here. No ventilation, hot droplets of sweat drip down your back, underneath your thick nylon stage jacket.
FANTASTIQUE — You feel like you might choke on your tongue any minute now, something strange is going to happen here. Don’t try to escape from it.
DETECTIVE — This is a place where crimes happen.
VÉRITÉ — At least the set has come to an end, there is loud feedback and then someone cuts the mic.
AIDE-MÉMOIRE — Keep in mind an inventory of who is here, who of the people here might see something, hear something. Who will be implicated and who will be guilty.
BOOZED-OUT SINGER — He is yelling something, only now that he has stopped singing you hear just how drunk he is. His voice slurs when he has not rehearsed every word after the other. Like he doesn’t exactly know what will come next in his own speech.
RATIONALE — This career path is destroying the man, his voice used to be much less gruff but he has never trained it to sing properly and he sings every night. He must have always been talented, since childhood: the voice of an angel, they would say. And there is the alcohol, the drugs in his system. He didn’t start drinking alone, no one does. He started drinking, because he was young and all his mates were drinking.
BON MOT — You see the sound man, leaned over his console to disconnect some cables. Talk to him, you need this mic louder and the guitar amp quieter.
DETECTIVE — He looks nervous, if he were to encounter a murder, let’s say, here in the backstage, he would spill everything.
SANG-FROID — You just need to practice your cold stoic cop persona.
MEMENTO MORI — You may hope this stoicism will keep you alive when the time comes. As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
YOU — “Hey, man. I’m the next set, Kim.”
LEGERDEMAIN — You shake his hand, say your hello, whatever. You need this soundcheck done and you will butter him up.
REGIME — You would have, if it were not for that fucker. He stumbles through the curtain, tripping on a cable. It distracts you from what you were just doing.
JOIE DE VIVRE — Listen, you need to get through this set, you need a drink, maybe you need a line off someone’s cock and you need a fuck after. This man, actually, he seems adequate. Look at that fucking necktie, he is not hetero-sexual.
OUTSIDER — But this is not one of those clubs you sometimes play, for the underground’s self-appointed elites, where you can sing introspective songs and be understood, and later find a man who will gladly fuck you against the bathroom tiles and pretend to know so much about poetry. But here, men belong to a different breed. This is not an underground club. It’s a miracle they even let you in, with that one song about being in love where you didn’t lie.
VOLTA DO MAR — Even if it were one of those clubs, this man is too drunk to spare you a look.
SOUND MAN — “Kim, you there?” He tries to follow your line of sight, but you turn your head too fast, looking away from the fucker. “The soundcheck. Uh, you got like five minutes, better make this quick.” His voice seems nervous and he’s eyeing up the drunk on the floor too, nervous. This is not the first time this man has been here and fucked something up.
RATIONALE — But they still let him play. Because he is good. His mediocre bandmates always pick him up and carry him to the barstool. He’s the only one of them that actually knows what he is doing and they only get the gig, because he is there.
TORQUE DORK — Garçon, let me wrap this up. You step on the stage, the lights blind you. And that’s good, when you can focus on yourself you can focus on your music. The mic stand is set too high for you, you would have to stand on your tiptoes to sing. It’s also sticky with sweat from the drunk, your gloves stick to it unpleasantly. You play a few chords on the guitar and sing a few words. You can barely hear yourself.
SOUND MAN — He seems to be reluctant to change anything on his panel as you yell back from the stage. You can barely hear him now anyway. Must be a Junior Sound Man or something, guy’s new. You beg and he listens somehow.
TORQUE DORK — You got the shit. You can sing, garçon.
FANTASTIQUE — You are ready, mon cœur.
VOLTA DO MAR — Look into the light and imagine it is the morning Revachol sun and you are a sailor coming to port.
HOUTU — Feel the thump of creaky floorboards beneath your feet, think of the sweat and smoke rising to the ceiling in this room, gathering in thick clouds.
ACE — You got this, Kim.
YOU — The words flow out, uncontrolled. You are the music, the music is you. Just for this moment.
***
ACE — After the set, you feel hot fire released from your lungs, music still alive in your ears. Vibrating from the sound system like it will live in your brain forever.
LEGERDEMAIN — The audience has been good, they have come to dance and they have somehow decided to listen to you ramble and beg, and brag, and whatever else you do on stage. Always lying, always elle, always son sourire.
OUTSIDER — They hated you, and they tolerated your songs.
VOLTA DO MAR — It’s in these moments you feel like a poet, speaking the words of the many, the words of the city into its empty streets. Not your own words, though.
JOIE DE VIVRE — Kitsuragi, you have promised me a drink. To the bar! And don’t stop by the sound man.
ACE — He seems impressed by you as you manage a nonchalant nod towards him passing by. You are cool, you are the heartbeat of the city.
FANTASTIQUE — You are my every thought, singer.
VÉRITÉ — You have not stooped low enough to linger around the backstage, hoping to score it with the sound man, the next band, whatever. You will go sit at the bar, find someone to fuck there. It’s less crowded than when you came in and you might just get a chance to get your alcohol in.
BOOZED-OUT SINGER — The only empty stool is next to him. Which is bad, because you don’t want to speak to this man whose breath smells like teeth rotting from Commodore Red and lack of care.
SANG-FROID — There is no way you get your drink if you don’t sit there. So you do. Cool, and cold. No one knows how stressed you are, no one knows your hands are shivering under the countertop. You light up a cigarette, one of those expensive chestnut slim Astras you like so much.
BON MOT — And you hope he doesn’t start speaking to you.
BOOZED-OUT DRUNK — “Hey, man! Shit, you did great!” his words seem sincere enough for some reason, he takes a big gulp from the beer in front of him. “I’m Harrier, Harry.”
YOU — “Kim” you are reluctant to come into contact with any part of this man. The skin on his hand is soft enough as it touches you but the handshake is still firm.
COMPASSION — He has something to prove.
RATIONALE — He is trying to prove that he too, is cool.
HARRIER, HARRY — “Oh, yes, I know already. I met with your shoe in the backstage, you were busy I guess. Well, shoot the shit! How was your first time at the ol’ Rowdy?”
VOLTA DO MAR — He knows your real name, you can never truly escape from him now.
VÉRITÉ — This man is trying to impress someone other than you: himself. He says all this macho bullshit like shoot the shit and calls his piece of crap bar the ol’ Rowdy like he is here every night. Oh, god, he is here every night, isn’t he. That’s a little pathetic.
ANIMUS — Suddenly you feel like a right fucking faggot, smoking this Astra Slim, chestnut smoke advertising your sexuality to everyone around you. You are not safe here, you are an intruder who sang a nice song that nobody understood and now he should leave, go back to where they keep bitches like you.
OUTSIDER — Evacuate.
YOU — “Well, thanks man. I think I’m gonna head out, actually.”
REGIME — What you are doing is suspicious. You just sat at the bar, and you are now getting up.
COMPASSION — Something in the eyes of this man tell you he is safe. If an assault were to be launched at you right now — if some macho hetero-sexual decided to question your right to be here — this man would somehow talk you out of this situation.
HARRIER, HARRY — “No, no. You have to stay, right of passage” he makes a very vague gesture, you get the feeling you are not supposed to understand what he means by this. “Oh, come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”
VÉRITÉ — He has just winked at you. With his left eye, a wink.
YOU — “Right. Khm. I’ll have a negroni, I guess.”
ANIMUS — Isn’t a negroni a little too-
VOLTA DO MAR — You like negronis.
HARRIER, HARRY — He nods over the bartender, like he owns the place. Is it not bad to be seen with a man like this? He’s rude to staff. But then the guy nods back to him, they know each other. “The usual for me and a negroni for my friend, pour a lot of gin in that.” It is a strange reassurance that someone knows this man and seems to have been tolerating him long enough to remember his usual.
VÉRITÉ — The bartender works fast, his dark hair merging into the black shirt he is wearing. He is used to the rush after the live music ends and people come to order their third or fourth drink. In a minute, if that, the negroni stands before you and next to it a something colourful in a tall glass for this Harry.
RATIONALE — Interesting, he orders this often, the bartender knows it’s his usual. And yet just a second ago he was finishing a beer in front of you.
YOU — What does that mean?
AIDE-MÉMOIRE — It’s an observation, might be worth to keep in mind is all.
BON MOT — Is he trying to impress you?
HARRIER, HARRY — “So tell me, Kim. The second song. Why so sad, god, so good though.” He looks at you with reverence. “Something about the melody just sucks you right in.” He hums the tune you sang at the beginning of your set, he has remembered for some reason. “Anyway, that breakup must have been hell of a story huh?”
VOLTA DO MAR — When you sing it to yourself, when you practice, you always sing to him. You never slip up on stage, though.
REGIME — He is being conversational, although there is something hiding beneath the surface of this question. And the song, hell. You cannot tell this man about your ex-roommate from juvie. Who you had a huge crush on for a year before you kissed him once.
OUTSIDER — You cannot, can you?
YOU — “Yeah, um it was brutal.” You humour this man. Because what else could you do in this situation.
HARRIER, HARRY — “I’ll be honest, Kim, you seem like a right catch. I bet the other guy cried just as much as you did.”
YOU — “I bet he did, yes.”
LEGERDEMAIN — Chief, he has entrapped you. You didn’t need to say anything, this hump of a man knows from somewhere.
FORTITUDE — You try very, very hard not to choke on your negroni. You fail.
OUTSIDER — Quick, how does he know. Is it the clothes? The bomber? No, the bomber is macho. It’s the Astra Slim, isn’t it?
VOLTA DO MAR — It is not the Astra Slim. Birds of a feather. He knows because he knows, there is no reason he could point to, just as there is no reason you could point to.
HARRIER, HARRY — “Yeah, I got stories like that man. The lyrics though, you put it so well. I write like shit, they told me I could only sing disco because disco doesn’t need good songwriters. I like writing, lyrics. I don’t care, I like disco because people are too sad. Those fuckers need to dance more.” He taps the side of his head, like he is pinpointing the exact place that thought came from. “I’m boring you, aren’t I.”
BON MOT — You are at a loss for words. It has been years since you were last left speechless like this.
JOIE DE VIVRE — You are viscerally, carnally attracted to his man. To the fact that he destroys his voice and his liver for disco when he could be singing good music. To the strange poetics of his speech, that he could so easily turn into lyrics. To the fucking muttonchops that he has decided to grow out for some fucking reason. And this man is a homo-sexual in this strange place, navigating this world just like you are.
OUTSIDER — This man is homo-sexual?
FANTASTIQUE — You are attracted to what he said, about disco. It’s not a trend for him, that will pass for whatever else, anodic dance, hardcore rock, whatever. He will stay with disco because people are too sad.
ANIMATE ENGINE — And they do need to dance more.
COMPASSION — He is too sad, believes himself to be too sad.
YOU — “No, no. You’re not actually.”
BON MOT — Is there enough conviction behind your voice for him to believe you?
HARRIER, HARRY — He lights up in a smile. It’s honest for just a second, then it shifts. Not into a different expression, but the right side of his face lifts up and contorts. It still looks good on him, but a few more years of regular alcohol usage and this man will be torn to shreds and ugly as night.
KINETIC DRESSAGE — You need to distract yourself from this conversation, it is somehow too much and not enough at once.
VÉRITÉ — They have started playing music again, this time from a fucked-up cassette. You can hear the scratch something from the player leaves on the tape, wearing it thin. This life, it wears everything thin. You and this man just as much as the cassette.
HARRIER, HARRY — He has been silent for a while now, you have counted six sips from his rainbow cocktail. He must be turning something over in his mind, contemplating, his mouth opening and closing like he doesn’t really know if he should say what he is inevitably about to say anyway. “So listen, nice talking to you-”
OUTSIDER— He is about to leave. Don’t let him. Be the first out the door. A scared animal, a live alive.
HARRIER, HARRY — “but the drinks are expensive as shit here. So I was thinking, do you want to move this to my place? It’s two streets away. I’m not some kind of perv, you know, not creepy. Shit, does that make me sound like a perv, Kim?”
REGIME — You are about to say no to this man. Be polite, he has been nothing if not polite.
LEGERDEMAIN — Just say you are tired and are going to be heading to bed. Because you have a shift in the morning. Work, safe excuse.
VÉRITÉ — You look at him, look at his open eyes, the gentleness in his smile.
ANIMUS — You should say fuck it.
YOU — “Fuck it, yes. I would like that.”
ACE — Lucky your hair covers the tips of your ears, because they are blood red right now.
***
HOUTU — For the both of you there is a thrill in the air as you leave the bar, the whole city lives with you, lives around you. You are alive, you scared animal.
AIDE-MÉMOIRE— You walk the street, you don’t recall its name now. They renamed it some two years back, gifted it with a last name and the title of general before it. The man was aligned with the Moralintern. People who live here still call it by the old name, that of a mazovian writer. You read one of his books in school, years ago before it became frowned upon to familiarize disgruntled teens with communists. It was a sad book, about a sad man who was too scared to cry.
VOLTA DO MAR — You never got through the book, some pages hurt too much to read. When the man’s eyes would be dry and he would be heaving. You could cry for him, but not for yourself.
FANTASTIQUE — But you read the last page. You wanted to know how it ended for the sad man. The last words of the book were: “and warm tears filled his eyes, they didn’t spill but they were true.” A strange sense of hope filled you, it shouldn’t have. You wondered for the years since then what made the man finally cry.
AIDE-MÉMOIRE — There was once a coffee stand on the corner of this street, you worked there briefly. You would look at the writer’s name, imagine his sad face, then his sad face in a mass grave after the fall of the Commune. And now you can’t remember his name.
VOLTA DO MAR — You had drifted through those basements here with the measly pay they gave you, some 3.2 reál for an hour of standing in the cold where your fingernails wanted to freeze off or in the blasting sun that left your face’s first layers of skin peeling.
AIDE-MÉMOIRE — It was below the minimum wage then, but only they wanted to hire a teenage delinquent. Then you joined the RCM because barely scraping by, barely living off the street was not a life.
OUTSIDER — All those basements with all those people, and you in between them, lost in thought, not quite there yet still standing heavy on the pavement in your only pair of summer shoes.
MEMENTO MORI — You have died here a million times, maybe a million and one.
FANTASTIQUE — And each morning, you rise up, sling the guitar over your shoulder and walk home, mon cœur.
JOIE DE VIVRE — Here, you have been the ghost that walks too late and too fast. You’ve met wonderful, ugly men here, on these steps. Smoking cigarettes, drinking from bottles and snorting from keys of strangers’ houses. You have hugged into coated shoulders and smelled the patina of cheap old leather. You have breathed out fake laughs and unexpected real ones.
CAMARADERIE — But not with men like this one.
HARRIER, HARRY — “You know, I’m a gym teacher” it comes out of nowhere and the information is so consistent with how he appears you are sort of surprised you haven’t figured it out yourself.
BON MOT — This is an attempt to start some sort of conversation with you, engage.
YOU — “And yet you drag yourself through bars where teenagers like to hang out. Ever met a student, Harrier?”
HARRIER, HARRY — “Yes, actually. I was too embarrassed to look her in the eye for the rest of the year. She heard me singing and I was fucking beyond pissed, drunk I mean. And I think I cried on stage, you know I was in a dark place.” He laughs at himself, he shoots you finger guns.
SPEED-FREAK — He actually fucking shoots you finger guns. Unbelievable. Amazing.
RATIONALE — Why is he saying this?
LEGERDEMAIN — He is drunk, that’s for one. He feels awkward in the situation you are in, this is unfamiliar ground to him.
RATIONALE — Is it unfamiliar, because he doesn’t do hookups or is it because you are a man?
SANG-FROID — Does this Harrier, Harry know this is a hookup?
OUTSIDER — Is this a hookup?
COMPASSION — My sweet, you have this all wrong, he is saying this so you feel safer with him. He gets drunk and cries even though people are looking, he doesn’t brag about meeting underage students in a club, he is embarrassed about it. He likes to sing and he likes to exercise.
VÉRITÉ — Look at his thighs, he runs.
JOIE DE VIVRE — Look at his thighs! You would run after him, you would chase him.
HOUTU — A wind sweeps leaves, little papers and cigarette butts from the street into the air. A shiver runs through the man, it runs into you.
HARRIER, HARRY — “So, uh, what do you think about getting some free stuff?” He stops at an intersection, where the general/mazovian writer street meets a side one, almost a little alleyway tucked between two rows of buildings.
LEGERDEMAIN — Harrier, Mr. Disco Singerman, the gym teacher wants to engage in some light theft.
DETECTIVE — And you are an officer of the Revachol Citizens Militia now, you cannot shoplift like you used to.
BON MOT — You are a juvenile officer, they might as well officially change your title to coffee-order officer. And a little crime would impress this Harry.
YOU — “An interesting example you set for your students, Harrier.”
KINETIC DRESSAGE — Great job, boss. He blushes hot red and starts to mumble something and ruffles through his pockets to find loose coins. You flash him a toothy smile and wink very, very fast.
YOU — “I would love something free right about now, let’s go.”
DETECTIVE — You will be a decorated lieutenant in the future. Hopefully in the near future, maybe a decade from now you will become a lieutenant-yefreitor, and this will be below you.
LEGERDEMAIN — But now you are a little drunk, and you want to get more drunk with this strange man you have just met. You want to kiss him, you want to be the first man to ever kiss him.
HARRIER, HARRY — “Uhm, call it redistribution of capital. Let’s go, comrade” he laughs again, joyful like a child.
AIDE-MÉMOIRE — You have been this child, happy that school has ended so you can go into a shop and steal a can of soda, later you would be giddy to take a pack of cigarettes and run away instead of paying and then smoke them behind the orphanage building.
HARRIER, HARRY — “Okay so this Frittte here is a weird layout so you can do this. They mostly don’t notice, the clerk has never cared enough to remember me. I have talked to her, she is just after high school, wanted to go to university as well but she didn’t have the money for a place to live” he gets distracted in the middle of the though, goes somewhere for just a second and then looks back at you. “So here’s the plan: we go in together, talk about something loud enough for her to know we know each other, you know, shit” He is stumbling over his words, messy. “that we came together, then you go to choose a pack of cigarettes and take your time with that, I fuck around the sodas. I will bring one to the counter and I will have a bottle of vodka in my inner pocket” he opens his very eccentric suit jacket and gestures to the lining.
BON MOT — He speaks very fast, not because he is stressed this plan will not work. He doesn’t know how you will react, if you will go along with it.
LEGERDEMAIN — A nice and ordered plan, man. He has done this before, a few times at least if you go by the details.
RATIONALE — He is big, tall and muscled, and he likes to drink. A teachers salary doesn’t pay for enough alcohol to get him drunk every day, even every other day.
KINETIC DRESSAGE — Smile, but like in the cool way. Just the tip of the left corner of your mouth so he barely notices.
OUTSIDER — Or escape now. Don’t steal anything, what will they say if they catch you. You do actually have work in the morning. Go home, listen to TipTop on the radio, because you won’t be able to fall asleep either way.
JOIE DE VIVRE — To me it seems like you can have this disco-singer between your legs tonight or masturbate to the thoughts of his disco-hands on you and ravishing his disco-ass.
MEMENTO MORI — Mon cœur, within this man, you could have life and death. Don’t be scared, live a little. For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.
YOU — “Take something expensive if we are doing this.”
CAMARADERIE — He is light-headed from joy, excited to just have fun with you. He is drunk in the best way, he swallows the sun and stores in his lungs for you to look at. The world will slip down his throat, this man will be happy.
MEMENTO MORI — Until he isn’t.
FANTASTIQUE — Be happy, until you can’t.
***
SANG-FROID — You come out of the store trying to keep your face prim and proper, you are unfazed, you tell yourself. But an insidious smile breaks out on your face as soon as you set your foot back on the hard pavement.
CAMARADERIE — He is at your tail, you are one machine.
SPEED-FREAK — You have a pack of Drouin Red 100s, you panicked and blurted out the first brand that came to mind. These are not the cigarettes you smoke, you despise them, in fact.
VOLTA DO MAR — Sometimes it’s good to do things that you have despised in the past. You change, sometimes.
HARRY — When you pass the corner again, your feet wander into a puddle and he pulls out the bottle, holding it by its neck treasuring it like a holy grail, like a gift from the universe. It’s made of dark glass, brown under the street lamp. A pre-revolutionary farmer smiles at you from the label, he’s ploughing a field of potatoes. Some kind of symbol, for something. Harry looks at you then, with the same reverence he hold towards the bottle. This is a gift from the universe.
HOUTU — This is a gift from the universe. Two men stand there, on the corner of Rue général Béraud, the street of the general who escaped to Sur-la-Clef when he could no longer stand the Revachol he built, on the corner of Rue Louis Ekaterinovich Alarie, the street of the man who they had to shoot in the back of the head, because he wanted to see the grave as he fell into it. Here on the corner, stand two men. They smile at each other like fools, their faces contorted in joy and worry. They lean over a bottle, they lean over into each other.
VOLTA DO MAR — The guitar slings on your shoulder as you move. You kiss him gentle on the lips, he doesn’t expect it but he welcomes it, a gift from the universe.
HOUTU — They will stand under the sodium lamp; a ténèbres, a not-quite-there darkness, an ignorance to the world envelops everything outside of them. There is dark coloured glass of the bottle smashed between their shoes, clear liquid spilling out. The air smells like rain incoming from the sea, fresh and salty, it smells like alcohol in the back of your throat, it smells like promise and cologne. They have tasted each other, they taste like each other now. These two blooms of Revachol stand in the wind; not unaffected by it, but the shivering and trembling against the winds will make them stronger someday.