NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE VII

I HIROASHES

Hiroshima could be the end of many things, including Aikido and walking. I’m on a stretcher. Reiko and Takashi are carrying me. They both wear green scrubs and are walking real fast towards the helicopter, which has a massive Red Cross on its side. I recall that I’m in Japan with no travel insurance, so I assume that I’m on my way to jail. The left side of my body is half erased. “Don’t touch it,” says Reiko. “And don’t worry. We got him!” I look up and I see Ralph Lauren on his knees next to an old army man, both handcuffed, deadpan, until Ralph sees me.

Then he smirks like the last person you’d see before you die.

I breathe in deeply, and next thing I vanish.

II

(Hours earlier)

I’m illegally streaming “A Real Pain” in an undisclosed room, using a VPN, wondering if I’m risking jail or if I am to become the next victim of the unquiet American, the man who blew me on a train before attending his own retrial for murder —and whose true name is Ralph Lauren. He has spent the last 12 hours sexting me.

It was hot at the start, then it went Cold War kind of blue, and right now we are reaching mind-fuck proportions thanks to Benji Kaplan, Kieran Culkin’s character, the outstanding Pain in A Real Pain.

The movie is the account of the Holocaust Package Holiday to Poland that cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) embark on to honour the memory of their recently deceased granny. It is a harmless Hollywood film with Kieran Culkin in it, which is all you need to turn any movie into an extraordinary thing.

I’m conveying his unquoted quotes to Ralph, which is kind of fitting, since Benji is a USA shitty-zen in Holocaust land, while Ralph Lauren is an expat zen-shit of identical origin waiting for his own trial in Hiroshima.

Yoghourt Pyramids

Ralph sends me a photo of a giant resort he is building in Mexico. It looks like a giant banh mi –the Vietnamese sandwich— wrestling with an army of green peas. Kieran’s drops his line in perfect time to make it work as a caption for the snap: “Money is like fucking heroin for boring people.”

I type the line, add my Viet sandwich simile, and send it straight away.

“If I were a bored millionaire on heroin I’d probably build a yoghourt pyramid with your own sperm,” writes Ralph.

Hands down. That’s more like it.

I wonder if he might be the chosen one. The thrill of chatting up a murderer has never been harder —in the nicest hard way.

Sadly, nothing really good lasts for very long

I suggest meeting up at the Peace Memorial park, and he replies: “I’m going to stick the whole needle sculpture up your ass.”

Unimpressed would be an understatement.

Change or Block

To change the subject or to block him, that is the question.

Do I need to push reality in order to feed my fiction? I know the answer. Whenever writing can lead to your own death, you know you are in the right way. Ultimately, all writers are looking for their own eradication from life when they write, don’t they?

Dead right

If your subject is deadly and you are writing about life and death, it would be awfully negligent to ignore him, no matter how filthy he shall get. In the end, he will feed you and you will devour his hand, write, and eradicate yourself from life.

It is the perfect crime.  Benji Kaplan would be so proud.

A Real Pain could have been another frivolous feel good movie about the genocide you never lived if it were not for Benji, who keeps losing his zen-shit and humanizes the whole Hollywood-script-charade with timely, brutal lines, delivered with that cheeky loving face that you’d like to turn into a teddy bear, a doughnut, a football club, a ball, a ring, a planet, a mug, and, ultimately, a dream language.

While Benji and the rest of the Holocaust Holiday Package travellers are heading towards a concentration camp in a first class train, he loses it outside the deluxe, pornographic toilet. His cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) says, “Maybe there’s a time and place to grieve.”

“We are on a fucking Holocaust tour. If now is not the time and place to grieve…”

Magritte

Before the end of the movie, Ralph Lauren asks if I would like to rent an old man. I was about to hire one for tomorrow in Tokyo, so I say yes please.

He sends me the location of a seemingly wasteland in town. Before I leave I send him the photo of the Japan Times reporting his upcoming court case for murder. According to the story, the trial started two hours ago.

“Oh dear, my lawyer managed to postpone it. I hope it is not disturbing, I can explain”.

I tell him I’m used to criminals and ask if he is scared.

“Very much, but I’d have an old army man with me, so don’t worry.”

Army Dog

I get out of the room and walk the quiet streets of the city at dusk. I rent a city bike and pedal quietly towards the location. The city is eerily empty. The sky is pink and the clouds are punctured, and the music is lovely. I wonder who is playing the soundtrack. There’s no one else around, all businesses are shut down and you can feel a weird buzz in the air, start of spring kind of vibe.

I walk down an alley, and then the alleged wasteland opens up.

It is not a wasteland but a perfectly trimmed lawn and I see the wooden window of an adorable kitchen, chequered red and white drapes.

She is washing the dishes; the sun is shining, rainbow bubbles floating in the air. And there is a robin quietly singing on the edge of a branch. The tree is a majestic oak and she is whistling while she washes, bubbles forming and vanishing into thin air, a drop of iridescent water, their only legacy.

Then the dog walks diagonally across the frame into the lavish garden lawn, sinks its head, shakes, grabs something, and starts running towards me. I know the dog, and the kitchen, the drapes, the bubbles and every piece of subtext, all the ellipses and the clouds, every single particle. I feel an urgent need to smoke and when the dog looks at me and opens his mouth I know that there is going to be a human ear inside it, and I also know that it belongs to the rented army man.

Next thing I feel a snake texture on my neck and his rough fingers erasing my left side. He asks me to stay calm and then he says.

“A Real Pain is to wake up knowing that it is the first morning of your life without David Lynch.”