Who would be able to translate the French into English? I guess the English back into French. Patrick translated whoever that one poet was from Latin to English. Maybe he knows whether or not that Commodus thing Coprolalia did is a turn of phrase. The guy knows Swahili for fuck's sake. Wait, he said Kiswahili. Maybe it's a dialect. Maybe it's how the Swahili people refer to themselves or their language…what's that word again? Is it an endonym? Is this “Echoes?” I haven't heard this song in years. The last time was probably in Kevin's basement after we tripped in the park. I can't imagine listening to this while peaking. Jesus, that was almost three years ago. Time flies. What was I just thinking about? Oh yeah: Patrick. He certainly knows French.
But who says that an occupation has to be like that? Just because there are so many unhappy people out there doesn't mean, necessarily, that every hour between nine and five must be tedious and draining. After all, this search has proven to be more draining than I would have assumed, but I have enjoyed just about all of it even if I have nothing to show for it, save a shaky friendship with Aberdeen and Tomas. I may have become an alcoholic in this time, too. In all honesty, the only positive aspect of the situation concerns Vinati, though the relationship between the two of us seems far more ambiguous than it did a few hours ago.
Maxim 571: “When you cannot find your peace in yourself it is useless to look for it elsewhere.” Story of my fucking life. Is he breathing? There we go. Keep it up, Tom. Maxim 572: “We are never as unhappy as we think, nor as happy as we had hope.” Well that's a pretty dour sentiment.
I have met people who are content with their jobs. Maybe even happy. This is not just over the past few weeks, but throughout my life. They find their calling. They find love. And yet so much of this is phony, and I guess I always knew that. So many seem fulfilled on every level until they get to the bar, to the point of inebriation where they become fountains of grievances. Is it because the alcohol causes them to renege on their forfeiture, their forfeiture of that vain belief that they are entitled to something more? Or is it far more superficial than that? Does the alcohol just reveal that they have been feigning all along, and that they have learned only to wait, to endure?
What if Sean was right about Mordecai not being Coprolalia? I guess I have to entertain that possibility. Still, who else could it be? Patrick…. Patrick was a poet. Could he be Coprolalia? No, it wouldn't make any sense. He drew too much attention to himself. I can't imagine him being quiet enough to evade the notice of someone. People remember him. Those women at the bar were ready to jump on him like a fucking trampoline. And I don't think their husbands would have minded all that much, either. He's just too much of an extrovert. Someone, somewhere, would have put the pieces together. And it's not like he had big ears, let alone a Brooklyn accent.
I thought I was satisfied with Connie. I did. Even during the Animosity, I took the incessant fighting to be normal. To a certain degree, I still do. All relationships have their troubles, their fights. It would be incredibly juvenile to assume that monogamy can exist without jealousy, without some amount of frustration, without some display of frailty on the part of both parties. And it's the last part that both creates the problems and allows everything to work. It's what allows the relationship to flourish as opposed to remaining just an insouciant association between two subjects. You make yourself vulnerable. That's why everything becomes so polarized — the highs and the lows. Especially the lows. They know you too well — because you haven't lived without them for so long that losing them can occasionally appear refreshing, but still, even in the bitterest turmoil, impossible. It seems that this type of love can only exist when one abandons all pretenses and all boundaries.
If Patrick is Coprolalia, then I can't believe anything that he told me. It would mean that the A-R-E doesn't exist, that all of those people there that night were participating in a prank. But that would require too much time, too much energy. It would have to involve hundreds of people, months of planning. If it were so, the A-R-E would have to be nothing more than a joke. The JOKE.
This is why people cannot love the world.
It's all on me, isn't it? It's not that intricate of a plot. Someone owns a loft, they throw a party, and they just need to not let on when they talk with me. Patrick, Daphne and Willis were the only ones who really said anything about Coprolalia. And they just led me to one another — Patrick to Daphne, Daphne to Willis. No. There's no way they would simply decide to do something so elaborate just because they noticed a post on Craigslist. Which was Tomas' idea. Could he be involved in it, too? Yes, he could. That random woman from the bar down the block just happened to be there a second time, and we ended up there because of Tomas. She was there because Tomas told her to be there. She even went out of her way to mention Mordecai's derision of an article on Coprolalia. And I was to assume that it had been written by Sean. She knew that would happen. It was meant to appear coincidental. From Tomas to Patrick, from Patrick to Daphne, from Daphne to Willis. Esther was there only to corroborate. They were all there to corroborate, all of the people claiming to be members of the A-R-E. And why were they all involved? Because they are all Coprolalia. That's why no one can verify what he looks like. He is really They. It's one big prank that's been set up to…what would the reason be?
This is why people cannot love their fate.
Sean has to be the mastermind. Think about it. He's the leading expert. He's made a name for himself by writing all of that bullshit on Coprolalia. He's tenured at a top university. He's about to publish the definitive volume on Coprolalia. It will end up in hundreds of thousands of homes. It will make him a fucking millionaire. Every asshole hipster will have to have one. Anyone overcome by nostalgia for the former grittiness of the city will have to have one. All Sean had to do was hire out a few artists, remain patient, and create a buzz. He probably commissioned all of those pieces. That's how he knows about them. This has all been one scheme almost fifteen years in the making. Even worse, I have no real part in it. This is not a plot that required some naïve fool in order to set it into motion. There was no step blessed by Até, no one tragic blunder in which confidence betrays judgment. No, I am an accident — I was never considered. I am nothing. And no one will believe what I have to say because all of my evidence relies on the testimonies of those who have colluded with Sean.
Tomas stirs. His head turns as though he is addressing me, but I cannot tell if his eyes are open, as the washcloth still covers roughly half of his face. “You don't want the eggplant, do you?”
Vulnerability.
“Wake up, Tomas.”
“I've got, like, two eggplants. And this one isn't good. You know, it's…it's bad.” He scratches his head. “I mean, it's not bad…like bad. It's going to go bad. Like, soon.”