Diary of a Loser

Classification

The poetess L. is a nice gal. She's nothing special, though. Class D. I have them all in class D right now.

Sonya – the Jewish girl from my months of loneliness – used to be in D, in America however, she's E because she's a Russian. My agent C. is definitely a B, but I haven't fucked her – we have a strictly business relationship.

I very much want to run up this ladder and make a transition into at least class C, but a total absence of money, success and, most important, connections stand in my way. The best place to meet people is at parties, of course, but again I'm invited to D parties only.

The millionaire's housekeeper stands apart – she probably belongs to the category of angels, not women. A sexless peasant angel, standing on the side of the road leading toward church. I respect her more and more. She's my only relative on this earth that's why I exclude her from classification.

Almost all the girls and women from the Italian journalist's entourage – he wrote an article about me – are class C, and some are even B.

Class A are very beautiful, very talented, and very rich, I met some them at a few parties when I had just arrived in America and still had rich acquaintances.

I believe that below D class there's still E, F and maybe I. Yes, I'm sure that's the case. So, my girls get to be right in the middle. They're medium.

I believe there exists only one creature above A class. That's the one I'm after. But I have no idea where that is.

A lousy hot summer. The dead season.

My book is at four different publishers at the same time where it's being sluggishly read. Again, I'm waiting. Days go by, and there you have the everyday murder that civilization subjects us to.

Last month, I whitewashed and plastered two apartments; now, once a week, I vacuum and scrub the millionaire's house for which they pay me medium wage. My life hardly moves, the only change in it is getting some free vegetation – sixteen green plants: the rich family has moved to San Francisco. There are two palmtrees among the plants. Watering the plants-my new chore-gives me pleasure, and while watering them, I also converse with them.

The publishers are like dark towers looming in the backdrop of my consciousness, and I peer at these dark towers with hope and hatred. The murderers!

A writer lived across the street. He had no curtains in his fifth-floor apartment – the writer lived openly. Almost every night, in one of his windows, precisely where his bed stood, a girl appeared – putting on or taking off her clothes. There was a new girl every few days. Some of them, having put on their clothes, left – they didn't stay overnight; the others stayed and didn't leave. In those cases, the alarm-clock rang in the writer's apartment in the morning – the girls had to get up early to get to work (those were the kinds of girls the writer had). The writer wandered around naked, stumbling – half asleep – into furniture. He swore, cursing the girls and their work, feeling happy when they left, and falling asleep he promised never to get involved with them again. By nighttime, though, having had enough sleep, he again called some girl, invited her to come over and hear what new thing he had written. The writer, as you have obviously already understood, had a soft spot for sex. And this fact was plenty clear to the fifth floor residents in the house across the street.

Hotel Embassy, my most recent dwelling, was shut down because of sanitary and security considerations, because of its filth, brawls, robberies, terror and desolation inside. This was conveyed to me over the telephone by a short girl Teresa. «How could you live there, Edward?» the girl Teresa asked me. How could I? Just the way I did – I walked with a knife hidden in my boot. No one ever bothered me. I could live anywhere, no sweat. It's a pity about the Hotel Embassy, and I feel sad about it – I've spent eight months of my life there – pretty good, memorable ones. In the morning, sun flooded through my window. Life is life. And even when it appears to be bad, it's good.

Standing in the rain – it's been raining for three days now – I called my old friend. «Why on earth did you come out in such rain?» he asked, frightened, hearing the thunder in the receiver.

«Big deal!» said I.

«I'm reading a library book here, it's about life in Paris in the 1910's and 1920's, I'm rereading it. Yes, those were the times, nothing like today – doldrums…» He went on groaning in this way about the terrible weather, saying some more old and decrepit words.

I wanted to tell him that ultimately, by the most honest account, he's simply lazy, that his wife is efficient and has protected him from life – tough, hard but also joyful. And this has harmed him a lot. And that though he's been in America for a few years, he still doesn't know the language, doesn't know the people, and that if he continues like that, he'll come off track, won't finish his lap, and his daily work in the arts at home won't help him. Secretly I understood that this has already happened. He's weak, he has no strength to go on. He ought to go into life but he's holding on to his wife's warm skirt and lives in the shell of his apartment. There's a vast world outside and he's scared. It would be good for him if his wife died or left him. He's a gifted man, there's no doubting that, only one has to have strength in addition to being gifted.

Alone I remain – now, there's no one around who started on this road with me. Elena was devoured by a void and nothing, and now my friend is being sucked in by the quagmire. He's become an old asshole.

A dear old hag from the house across is probably happy and delighted – she has something to watch now. A house next to mine collapsed while it was being demolished, so the old woman has her fun and pleasure – she watches how the workers scurry about, how they clear the ruins, she watches the police, the crowds of people, and the firemen.

She's been enjoying this for five days now.

It's a godsend to her. Without it, she was bored – it's true, there was nothing special happening on our street. Then, practically before her eyes, the house fell down.

My house is partially damaged – there's no gas, and some tenants had to be evicted. I'm always accompanied by some natural disasters: in the Hotel Embassy I survived two fires – kept running around with my suitcase full of manuscripts – and now that house collapsed…

Out on the street, I chose the weakest, most pathetic, wretched, and ugly girls, I hunted them out, pursued them, and invited them over to my place. With long noses, liliputians, girls with no breasts at all, those who almost dragged their butts on the ground, girls with bad skin and thin hair, those with gaps in their teeth, with very thin necks, or girls with big bellies and very fat legs – they all have visited me. Some had no hair and wore wigs.

I chose them not only by their wretched looks but also by their peculiar harassed nervousness which distinguished their behavior on the street. Now they plodded along, now they suddenly sped up, almost running, constantly looking back, smiling for no reason, talking to themselves.

I've discovered that these rejects are much more sensual and interesting in sex than ordinary women, and they're vastly more interesting than beautiful women.

These melting candles whose lives appeared to be hardly flickering, turned out to be voluptuous and tireless. The big-bellied girls radiated such lust as would Mother Earth. I wanted to roll into the folds of such a belly and hide from misfortunes under it. And the girls with the anorexic skinny bodies of skeletons (my favorite ones), so skinny that you could easily see and feel your own penis in them – these were burning with the infernal flame.

I've started hunting for freaks because of my own misery. Beautiful women, spoiled by attention, wouldn't fuck me. I had no money to take them to the restaurants and public places that sustained their weak sensuality. That's why I've turned to the pathetic rejects who steal along the streets and who are afraid to look up at people in their self-abasement. Now I don't want to exchange my collection of defected creatures for the harem of beauties. For me, nobody will take the place of the anorexics and lilliputians.

Yearning after a prick, they cling to me like hot plants.

The millionaire's housekeeper, whom I had trusted like myself has left me. That's how it always happens – you never know where it's going to hit you.

Even though I never loved the millionaire's housekeeper, I feel restless, noxious, and hurt. Before this happened, I knew that someone (she) loved me on this earth, and that I had somewhere to go. The millionaire's house was like a club to me, and I – a lonely tramp – had found a teacher and a conversationalist in her. She gave me money and food. In short, the news about her betrayal was bitter to me.

It all happened in California. There she found a peasant like herself. He owns a book store, and the millionaire's housekeeper always had a soft spot for culture – I'm evidence. When I left California after a fight over some silliness, she stayed there and fucked the book store owner. Did he feel that she's totally frigid? Perhaps he too doesn't feel much? Or maybe they're compatible, while she and I weren't. I don't know. Nonetheless, the millionaire's housekeeper is now getting ready to move with her furniture and all her belongings to California. My apartment will become bare. The millionaire's housekeeper will take the furniture, and I'll remain hungry and skeptical of simple, kind girls who are able to walk hand in hand with a gifted man to the end of his entire hard journey, and die with him on the same day.

Though I've cheated on the millionaire's housekeeper an infinite number of times – I did it with anyone I could, even with her friend – I've always carefully hid this, and I haven't told her about it even now. I'm not a spiteful person, and despite all the betrayals, in my own way, spiritually, I was always faithful to her and didn't want to hurt her. I'm sad that the millionaire's housekeeper didn't have enough patience, and so she will remain where she's been: among her semi-provincial friends-forever. And it seems to me that peasant of hers in a checked shirt won't stay with her for long-his face is too oily. And it's possible that the millionaire's housekeeper will sink deep into her marijuana and will remain alone forever. All the women I've been involved with throughout my live have had bad luck.

Sometimes I have dreams about the housekeeper and her peasant making love, and though I tell myself that she's frigid, I hurt all the same.

In the old plays by Chekhov and O'Neill, I'm of one of those indicated by the stage directions: «A servant enters carrying a cup of tea,» or, «The factory workers sing.»

I'm also a cleaning man. I can also be referred as a «vacuum man,» since I work with a vacuum cleaner. I'm also a floor polisher because after vacuum-cleaning all five storeys of the millionaire's house, I spread the yellow polish (the stinky one) on the floors and then I polish it with a special brushing machine. I do this on Saturdays and for that purpose I take the train to New York.

The other five days of the week I'm a laborer, a mason, and a carpenter in a village one hundred miles from New York City, in the deep waters of the Hudson River Valley where I fled from the millionaire's housekeeper.

I (we) usually appear at the «side door,» from the «back stairs.» Our place is in the servants' room or in a basement where we stoke the stove, do laundry, iron, and more. And if we get old, we lie on the stove and exude an unpleasant odor.

During the day, I dig the ground and lay bricks. In the evenings, I usually pig out on food.

I get wild whenever I manage to discover something special in the refrigerator at the house of a lady I work for.

For example today I discovered up a very good salami. I was eating it through the entire evening. At first, I was hesitant: «I'll have just one more little piece.» Then, having found more meat at the other end of the house, I went on eating with energy and resolve.

«After all, she still has other meat,» I told myself.

Suddenly a loud blue October fly, a fucking bomber, landed on the salami. Her disgusting and rude – heavy – buzzing had been bothering me for a long time, and now he landed on my sausage! Enraged, I killed (one sharp, swift hit) the fly with the first chapter of a book I'm too lazy to write. And I returned to eating this superior, garlic flavored salami. This is how, more or less, I spend my evenings after work. Wearing two pairs of pants and five sweaters (the heat is off), I sit by a big dirty table under a desk lamp, and I keep pigging out.

Whenever I dig deep in the ground, I always find some dead animals – mice, frogs, even ground squirrels and moles.

And so it is now – we've dug a deep pit, and keep discovering dead animals there almost every day. The frozen frog (it's late fall), the ground squirrel – dead – with his little tail between his legs; the mouse lying with his little white helpless belly to the side – the belly is swollen. Perhaps, he overate.

The pit we dug is very big. We cleaned it out, we swept it out, we've prepared it like a bride. «Our pit is a bride!» I declared to our gang. The homosexual Carl thought it a brilliant metaphor.

I'm standing inside the pit and am drinking coffee that Carl had handed to me. The pit is like a pregnant bride. And inside the pit there's a white rock like a belly. It's white and it's brown like a stomach.

On May Day (and other holidays in Capitalist countries) women always get tipsy. They blush, they become merry and soft to the touch. They start smelling of perfume, they become mysterious. And by late night, after dancing, you better give them your cock. Not one of them wants to leave without getting it. Then a moment of silence and expectation follows.

Some, the very ugly ones, do leave without getting the cock.

You have to meet your death with resolve and panache – posing, defiant, acting up, celebrating, and best of all – smiling.

Like it or not, able or not – you have to.

If your knees are shaking, make it stop. Move around to conceal it. If your eyes are running, laugh – they'll think it's because of your laughing.

Dying is the most important business there is. You have to prepare yourself for it.

A bad death can spoil the most distinguished life.

Our birth does not depend on us, but our death does.

Hysteria and haste are just as bad.

You need to be measured. All the same – you have to go, though you never feel like it.

You should go either in a grand, reserved and staid manner, or even better, go hooligan-like, whistling, cheering: «You, motherfuckers!»

It feels good – to be a little tipsy, in white pants, digging with a short shovel – to plant asters with two girls, sisters, in October. I'm wearing a black sweater, a velvet mauve close-fitting jacket, solid boots, white pants soiled with mud, and a light cap. And an aster in my breast pocket.

And one of the sisters just survived a serious surgery, her lips and cheeks are pale, her gaze is meek and reserved.

Coming to this empty country house at the very edge of a township – beyond that hills and fields stretch out – I sit on the terrace for a long time, swaying in a wooden chair and looking at the tree crowns while leaves fall on me. It was such an abundant red leaf season.

Through the bushes and trees, I went up a hill. I sat on the logs that someone had dumped by a fence a long time ago, and I waited for twilight. Or I drank tea or lay on my back in the grass and was quiet.

Whenever I swung on the swing, it kept singing the same tune to me: «You-are-good-Eddie… You-are-good-Eddie… You-are-good-Eddie…»

The leaves were telling me about the pointlessness of any structures, and tea – the tea was for reminiscing. The cigarettes are also good for reminiscing, but I ran out two days ago.

This is how I visited this old country house, checking its empty rooms, peeking into its closets, sitting lackadaisically on a wooden bed that was painted like an icon. I had a feeling that my life was over, that I was a retired old man, that this was my estate. But my melancholy had no personal pain. One more week and my work here will be over, and I'll leave this township – it was just a pause in my breathless race.

I felt good at the old house yesterday where on one side there was only an open sky.

I keep lugging in sand for making mortar, or I level off the ground at the country house, as the owner asked. And there are so many worms! They squirm under the shovel.

Nice simple worms.

I love worms. They're my favorite animal.

If they happen to get into the cement, I carefully take them out.

It's just that they're cold at the end of October.

And in the morning the soil freezes.

Working here in the cold and in mud, without hot water or any kind of entertainment, I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing terrible with keeping people in concentration camps. Yes, it's work, it's cold, and the fact that they're deprived of their personal little initiatives (love, restaurants, etc.), why, that's actually good. After all, the majority of people has no idea what to do with their lives, or where they ought to take them. As to whether Jack gets to go to a restaurant today – the earth won't split into halves if he doesn't. All the same, people's lives are useless – the majority consumes everything it produces, so why not collect them into groups and engage them with some work. This will save them from all their worries. Otherwise, try and support your children, your wife, pay taxes…

The time has come for me now to change my name to «Comrade Z.» and to start a new life. The medieval Chinese adopted a new name every time they began a new period of their lives. One has to hide from all the old acquaintances, to go underground, to declare war on everyone.

Fighting is better than digging the ground, right? Fighting is a lot easier. It's just the risk of being killed.

«Mister Zed.» The millionaire's housekeeper – she has remained my closest friend – told me that Americans will pronounce my name as «Zee.»

Wonderful you are, oh bullet! Avenging! Hot!

It feels good to fire point-blank into the flaccid, protruding belly of the President of the United States of America protected only by a farmer's checked shirt, to get him right in between the two broad backs standing in the muggy exhibit of the farmers' achievements in Iowa, somewhere among the gigantic corn cobs and bulls who irrigate the soil with their yellow streams making holes in the ground. To run in the direction of new tractors, to burst into an experimental cottage and shut the door…

And while they push through the doors and windows, I can stand upright on top of the fireproof roof and put a hot bullet into my temple.

Farewell!