Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

My dearest Laura,

I hope you dont mind me calling you this still? It just seems right, okay? I guess its how I rember you, how I will always remember you and our short life together. These thoughts I have of you, they well within me, surge, they spring from within me, succeeding the last, they breed self-sorrow, that I wish to shed, I wish to leave behind now, I have shed too many tears, each day these thoughts have haunted me, the closer I get to this day. I just wish I had the wings, so I can soar to you, my spirit freed of sorrow for everything I did to you — all of it through love for you, my love for you. Must it prove so fruitless? Must I strive in vain, Laura? I yearn for the day we can meet again, fearful of it at the same time. But I fear this hope is to late, its someone elses domain. Yet theres just one thought in me that pleads: who supports you now with words and love? I must tear from my heart these dead words from our youth, they are rotten, they strangle me, they pull me down, closer to the earth. I have gazed upon you from afar for to long now, I have dreamed your charms towards me in ecstacy. I have wished for this the whole of my life, picturing your beautiful face, whose beauty sets my heart ablaze. This flame within me has remained throughout my bitter, ugly life, my vulgar days without you, and all of the nothingness you left me with — but this flame, this beautiful flame has brought me nothing but ill, now its time for loftier realms to direct my will. Everything sinse you has whirled around me — those days when I kept you, when you were mine to treasure, just for those few days, you were mine, Laura, you were mine. You must understand that my actions, as treacherous as they were, were born out of my love, my desire for you. Look where these torments took me: rising into vulgar nothingness without you. Lost in sublime reverie. I am sick with it now, I am sick with regret.

There are other thoughts that mingle within me, which have compelled my heart towards these lousy passions of mine, my feverish heart, growing within me all these years — in the hope that we will one day share the same grave, shed of flesh and temptation, where we can live side by side in the silence together.

This shadowy desire splits my poor mind. Shadowed now, were no other thought can grow. The seasons pass me by now without concern, I live, have lived through them, writing for you, unable to reach you, recording all my words for you, unable to right all the wrongs I made. And you know how bad I am with them … words I can barely spell correctly. My heart grows softer, basking in your flow that radiates from these eyes of yours I carry with me each day, that beautiful image I have of you. I cant allow these thoughts to leave me, to let them drift amongst the rocks at sea, that dangerous terrain. So I sit here confronting them, writing to you, one final time, confronting the end head on, the full stop of my life, in haste, unable to tie the noose that I hope will defeat me.

I know myself, Laura, I have failed to learn anything, let alone the truth, I am held by my love for you, I have left honour behind, I have entered a dark place, a dark wood of something, self-harm, all of that, ridicule and delusion. The stronger my desire for you the stronger my shame, and the louder my head screams blame, shovelling my way in heaps. Its all my fault, and for this Im sorry. And no matter how many years have passed, my pathetic little life, my grey hair, where death now feels my true lot, I don’t look for tomorrow. I look back, I look back at you and I fail. My loss is our past, I marvel at this failing, looking back at you in the darkness of my life. I have cast sail towords you, the leeway seems good towards death thinking only of you.

Such then, I am a song to you, a song of sorrow and regret. A song, like me, that must perish. Death, my old friend, hears me, offeres me company. It seeks me and I seek it, never forgetting you, never able to harm you again, and all because I loved you to much, all because my desires run away with me.

Read this letter, my beautiful, as one final look back towards you, one gentle look at your fair face. Your beauty, your body whole — one last gaze at that smile of yours whose wounding grace has soothed my death … all my hope is ended. You were my queen of the earth, decended from above in starlight, where you comforted me, the evil race of men and dogs. In my death I will burn within you. I was yours utterly … my heart cant take any more, I showered you in my desire, I sent you my words, my heartfelt words of sorrow and regret, these words I hope you’ll one day read, as broken as they are, as shoddily put together as I have made them, so youll know that I am eternally sorry. In this darkness, in death, my death, I offer you this, for always … untill the wind blows my words away.

Always

Rey

I fold up the envelope with the address and put it in my rucksack with the others. Then I rip up the letter I’ve just read and fling it into the air. The wind carries each piece, like petals, out towards the water’s edge, where they land in the black water to be carried out into the sea. I stay at the jetty until the sun begins to fall behind the oil refinery, the sky quickly darkening, the failing light twinkling on the choppy black water. Uncle Rey’s words long since washed away, sucked down into the silt and the shit, where they will remain, breaking down into particles, back to their own source, where his words will live again, somewhere else, in something else, living and dead, on and on, never ending, never going anywhere. I look out over the water, it feels like it’s about to rise up above me, like a giant duvet about to be pulled over my head. It’s comforting and frightening, I let it wash all over me before picking up my stick and rucksack and walking back to Uncle Rey’s caravan for the final time.

I sleep for most of the day. There’s nothing else to do. My sleep had been fitful with nightmares. I’d ended up drinking myself into unconsciousness, after I’d packed away the contents of the shed, taking extra-special care with the telescope and all its lenses and spare parts. I labelled everything, including the box of Dr Feelgood records for Cal. Mr Buchanan was very kind and sent a member of staff to collect it all and take it to Southend to be posted. I gave him a big tip, but I can’t remember how much. At some point in the evening Cal phoned me and we argued about Uncle Rey.

‘You only sent me here because you couldn’t be fucking arsed with him …’

‘I had work … A trip …’

‘You fucking hated him …’

‘So did you …’

‘I didn’t, I might have … Well, I might now, but I didn’t then …’

‘Yes, you did … You hated going to see him … You thought he was creepy, with all his cameras … we all did …’

‘Have you ever done anything for anyone instead of yourself, Cal?’

‘What are you fucking talking about, you fuck-up …’

‘You have no idea who Uncle Rey was …’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘…’

‘I said …’

‘I know what you said …’

‘Well …’

‘You’ll never understand … you’ll never truly know who he was …’

‘He was a fucking bum … An alcoholic … a loser who lived off the state, taking whichever handout was offered him … A fucking sponger, who was left money by parents he hated, soaking it all up, taking whatever he could from whoever he could …’

‘He was lonely …’

‘Did you know Dad used to send him money?’

‘…’