Sunday Stories: Llamadas telefónicas

“Me gusta variar, le dije. Si follo en la misma postura dos noches seguidas me quedo impotente. Por mí no lo hagas, dijo ella.”
Llamadas telefónicas, Roberto Bolaño, Editorial Anagrama, 1997, p. 137.

Is variety the spice of life? Is change what we need? My translation is as follows: “I told her I like to mix things up. When I fuck the same way two nights in a row, I become impotent. Don’t do it for me, she said.” The thing is: we force the issue, and that is the issue:

  “En su corazón, Leprince ha aceptado por fin si condición de mal escritor pero también ha comprendido y aceptado que los buenos escritores necesitan a los malos escritores aunque sólo sea como lectores o como escuderos.”
ibid., p. 35

The truth is that impotence isn’t caused by repetition. Lack of acceptance of how things are causes the frustration that causes it. Since I understood and accepted with Leprince that  I am a bad writer, I know good writers need me, if only as a reader or a Sancho Panza. Since then I also stopped reading, in particular writers that are still alive. One of the main reasons for me liking Bolaño is that he allows me to read contemporary literature whilst avoiding that I thereby help anyone’s actual career.

But I don’t give up on writing. Neither did I give up on fucking. I just give up on expecting something historical to come from it. Instant and delayed gratification combined is what it is because when I do it, it is done knowing that that’s that and that there is no reason for any complications like these.

“Mi padre, por entonces, tenía un alto puesto en el gobierno de Allende y su preoccupación mayor, pobre viejo, era que la prensa momia desvelase los afanes en que andaba metído su primogénito.”
ibid., p. 85

In my case there would no hostile right wing press that would want to reveal what my eldest son was involved in because there would be no left wing power to be broken with it. Being a nobody not only creates opportunities in the area of privacy but also in the area of remaining uninfected by the illness of opinionitis, the condition by which an opinion swells and breaks open in the public whatever the subject is.

Take me to be B and A to be one of the many people who, once famous, if called always express some opinion, then the following is true:

“Para B, en resumen, A se ha convertido en un meapilas.”
ibid., p. 52.

Which has brought me to where I wanted to be: famous people want to fuck us in a constant variety of ways because they need it to continue to feel their power. It is to them I say: you don’t need to do it for me. Not that I’m going to try to stop you or something, no. Go ahead, I’ve been fucked in so many ways I don’t really mind it.

About these ads