(“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

3rd Week in Rehab

Still there’s nothing. Just false starts. Blank sheets of paper. Scribbles sometimes.
I am reminded by the director that I checked myself in here voluntarily.
See? There’s your signature. And initials. Here and here. And here. You are not well yet.
I am not well.
You were not well then.
Should that be grounds for internment? No one is well.
We know best, she says.
Even Van Gogh was productive in the sanatorium at St. Remy. The little yellow room and all that.
It wasn’t yellow, she says.
The chair was.
No it wasn’t.
We go back and forth arguing details.
The ear he cut off, I say, was not for the prostitute. It was for Gauguin.
She argues that. People love to argue history. Stalin was best at re-writing it. People love to believe in love stories.
She says they’re changing the pills. Or the amount. Or the amount of shit in them. It takes time.
There is no work though. It takes time and there is no work.
“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen.” I have a title.
That’s good, the director says. There’s that. At least.
Time spent in incarceration is redundant. You start counting roaches scurrying across the floor and thinking of things like steaming broccoli. Making cheese out of hot curd. Legwarmers. Arms shipments to Jalalabad.
Your initials here and here. See?
You start thinking of clean calligraphy, semi-sweet chocolate, and Rolleiflex cameras. Schnitzels and a cold beer. Freedom. Outside.
When I was ten I flung myself off the main stage at Lido’s thirty feet below, into the pool. The club was empty. No one saw and no one heard. I had jumped the fence early, before even the housekeeping staff had arrived to wash towels. Mop floors. The restaurant served breaded pork cutlets to Central Committee members in the afternoons. And profiteroles.
“Surviving Winter in Copenhagen.” It’s a good start, she says. That’s all anyone ever needs.
They all talk in clichés, reading off three by five cards.
There is no work. There is all this time and no work.
She fills out some forms and tells me to take them to Admissions. Even the ink smells like formaldehyde.
I owe someone something. I’m sure of it.

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.