(“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen”)

We relieved ourselves on the left flank of Christiansborg Palace, in plain view of the Folketinget, the Supreme Court, Office of the Prime Minister, and—we both hoped—directly below the chambers of Queen Margrethe II. We had travelled from Potsdam to Berlin, two brown boys on a stolen scooter in horizontal rain, then crossed on a ferry at Ahrensoop. Neither of us spoke Danish.
We were hungry and we had no money. So we sat on a kerb in front of the Copenhagen Kommune, across from the National Museum, and begged.
Three consecutive nights we slept on a bench inside Vesterport train station, but eventually we were hustled out by two policemen on bicycles.
A middle aged prostitute put us up in one room on the promise that we would clean her flat and both bathrooms.
We spent two nights there.
In the daytime we smoked her black hash and ate bread.
There were no jobs for two dark skinned Bulgarian transients.
I spent one afternoon digging out dog shit from the channels cut into my soles.
Anastas picked at a lesion on his cheek.
We had no food that winter in Copenhagen.
Finally, for nine days we were sub-contracted by a Chinese family to clean flats and houses.
And then we put up our own fliers in coffeehouses:

hi, we are student of denmark and we are greek and nepal, 22 year old males. we are looking for cleaning job in copenhaven, as we can do good in cleaning. we had cleaned since we was in denmark and we know how to go for it. so, it wil b thankful if u provide us this short of job. we peomise to do good in this feild.
thanking you
Prakash Budhathoki and Stavros Costagavras
telefon. 26744075
Rebæk Søpark 5, 6, -748
2650 Hvidore

The telephone number belonged to a public handset in the train station. No one ever called.
Anastas prostituted himself to a handful of Japanese businessmen.
We smoked Kent cigarettes.
And then Anastas

Second Time’s The Charm

You’ll have to go through me.

It was stupid, me standing in front of the door, arms outstretched horizontally, grabbing the frame like some glib, white Jesus, as if it was going to make any difference. She had been at the window most of the year. Smoking. Or…dreaming of something else. Anything.
It was stupid. I wasn’t going to be able to stop her.
When a woman leaves you, all the bravado macho energy you’ve piled up over the years and shoveled from corner to corner of the house, looking to impart some perfect balance to a fundamentally unstable structure becomes a pyre of horseshit infecting all the arteries like a cancer.
And all you can muster is a weak, fleshy barrier, resembling a modern first class dunce attempting to stop the momentum of a freight train carrying much baggage.
And afterward you cry like an emotionally undeveloped fool.
And then you drink.
And all the while you feel sorry for yourself because no one else will. And even if they would, you’d still do it.
We are not altruistic animals; to be that we have to work hard against nature. We are selfish and self-centered, socially inept and mostly ill educated about one another.

You’ll have to go through me.

After she left, I raised the Underwood above my head and smashed it on the pine floor. The carriage and the cylinder and the ribbon and the regulator and all of the parts went sliding across and into the radiator valve, scurrying away like little Lego pieces.
Or roaches.
The windows had been left open.
The air smelled like railroad.
There was no wine left in the house.

My Obsession With Leica

The absurdity is believing in something other than a cyclical life. You hang around long enough and you start seeing them fall in line and begin to merge into the pre-cut grooves. And off to the slaughterhouse with. Them.
You.
When I was a boy, my grandfather took photographs with a twin-lens reflex camera. I could read by then so I asked him what Leica meant. That was what was written on the apparatus. Leica. And he told me about her.
–It’s actually a Rolleiflex. I scratched in the word Leica myself. With a piece of metal wire.
But it was too late. I was obsessed with Leica. Every night I fell asleep I prayed for Leica. Which was stupid, because Leica had been dead for years. I also prayed that I don’t get swallowed up in the giant maelstrom Captain Nemo and the Nautilus got sucked in.
Sometimes you need to have another perspective. I hated the Soviets. But for different reasons. I hated them for putting that dog up there and letting her starve. Or run out of air.
Asphyxiate.
And all the other monkeys that went up after Leica. Or whatever other kinds of animals they sent. All in the name of Human Progress.
All in the name of Human Progress.
Sometimes you need to have another perspective. When you think of Leica, you think your life is not so bad.