James Pate - The Fassbinder Diaries

There were these nights that summer. Then further nights. And the forgotten nights. A few miles outside Memphis. The nights I’ve attempted to forget. The nights that felt as if they’d already forgotten me even as I walked through them. The humid stark nights and the nights that emptied out into larger and more terrifying nights like thoughts flowing toward later and more terrifying thoughts. And something else entirely, always something else. I crashed at her place more then a few times and her at mine too. A few minutes outside the city. Our longest talks on those nights with us in bed and the ceiling. Our most private moments with us in the kitchen and the windows. Our most careful moments with us swimming and the radio. She taking a course on ancient China that summer, and me asking about their empires, where they went to or what remained of them in the books she read, the tests she took.

But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? One morning in August we went to this neighbor’s pool and they were in some European town or another and took off everything but our underwear and listened to their radio and made mojitos from their supplies. But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? I listened mostly to old music, Ray Charles, some of Dylan’s super early shit, a few scratchy blues records, the singers’ voices like water dripping from leaves after the rain has already passed, and also scary Russian music, glacial Russian music, the harsher more radiant side of Shostakovich, eerie Russian symphonies like angelic flickers in the dark summer sky. But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? There was an old man at the café, a homeless man, his shirt and hair were filthy, he used to come in once a week, and I’d see him open little plastic packets of ketchup he’d gotten from some McDonald’s or Burger King, and he’d eat the ketchup on the café patio, his hands trembling, his beard stained red. But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? That summer, I got a tattoo. I took a road trip to New Orleans and got this Asian dragon tattoo. That summer, I watched a film about a night that never ended and I read about a book about a sun that never set, but only hovered near the edge of the horizon at midnight, waiting to return. But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? The gloves with gnawed fingers on the café table, an early Bob Dylan song playing in the back, possibly the kitchen. But was any finalizing outcome forthcoming? The midnight sun at the edge. The man with shaking hands opening small red packets. The hands raising each packet to his lips. The moon never setting. The café never closing.

I asked her what did she like better, Confucian thought or Taoist thought. I asked her when did they start to build the Great Wall of China. I asked her when did they complete the Great Wall of China. I asked her what would a Chinese farm have looked like a thousand years ago. I asked her what would a Chinese palace have looked like two thousand years ago. And sometimes she was on the phone with me. And sometimes she was in the room next to the one I sat in, dyeing her hair. And mostly it was Taoist thought, though once or twice it was Confucian.

Q #1:

Where was Petra von Kant born?

Q #2:

What was her first homosexual encounter?

Q #3:

What was her first heterosexual encounter?

Q #4:

What was her favorite Jean Genet novel?

Q #5:

What was her favorite line from a Douglas Sirk Film?

Q #6:

How did she die?

Q #7:

What was found on her body at the time of death?

Q #8:

What was found in her body at the time of death?

She started writing one day and she started writing one hour and she started writing one night. Her hand in an empty house. Or rather a house empty except for carpets and furniture and a few stray dishes. This was the fourth day of June, 2002. What is writing? It might be a red thought followed by a series of intermittent violet effects. Or a lemon smear in a circle of quivering red sensations. Or an isle of desire in a turbulent lake of nausea. She began writing her dreams, especially the ones with gaunt cheeks and extravagant hair. She started writing down her dimmer memories, especially those that took place in hotels with dirty carpets that lingered too long by the highway. The fall she spent in Baltimore, the night she lost her shoes in Tucson. She could ask her boyfriend about his first sexual experiences and when he was at work she could write those experiences down in great detail. She could write down her own first sexual experiences. She could write down what she wished her first sexual experiences had actually been instead of what they actually were. This was the seventh day of May, 2008. What is writing? A soft noise followed by a softer noise. A red light intrigued by a redder light. She could write the same word over and over again, a random word picked from the dictionary. She could copy scenes from famous novels but add her own name for certain words, such as “rain” or “thunderous.” She could find her copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh and write out the dream dreamt by Gilgamesh’s spiritual brother Enkidu, the one involving the dark house of death where the dwellers eat clay, and she could extend the scene, making the house larger and larger until it took in entire nations, entire empires. What is writing? A red smear in an empty house, an isle covered with bird shit.

The woman who played my torso and the man who played my tongue and the flayed rabbit that played my heart and the flayed rabbit that played my brain and the wall with flecks of shit on it that played my chest and the million tongues of grass licking at nothing that played my hair and the scorched dollhouse that played my genitalia and the suicidal movie star that played my lungs and the electrical outlet that played my mouth waited in the field for me to fire my gun.

The film critic searches in the dewy weeds for her glasses. The sky above her spotted by pink and purple clouds. The film critic in silk pajamas tapes a postcard of a Neapolitan skull over his stricken and comatose desk. Outside it is snowing, great gusts of it swirling against the black mirror of the window. The film critic stands in a patch of tiger lilies looking for the switchblade a boyfriend had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The film critic feels the hair on his legs twitch in the dark. She wears a red raincoat and is thinking about the canvases Edward G. Robinson paints in Scarlet Street, works with jagged shadows and smashed daylight, his heart a charred wad of leftover beef. The film critic watches a short film in a cold movie theater, his eyes lit like city streetlamps. His memory occasionally feels like a series of white walls on a beach, their bottom halves puckered by gunfire and their upper halves faded by continual daylight. The film critic wears an emerald robe with a dragon on its back as she searches in the grass for the slender gin-flavored cigar she has dropped. She is twenty-three and thirty-six and forty-one and her most recent nightmares flash with a glacial light.

The film critic passed by in the back seat of a blue Pontiac at the age of six, the radio playing, with the desert all around her. She counted cacti shadows until she fell asleep. Her forehead was warm, the window cold. The film critic drank Jim Beam as he rode quickly around on his bike, searching for the right address, or a part of the town that looked familiar. A bird chirped in a film set centuries ago, along the leafy outer boroughs of an empire. In the film critic’s most recent dream she made love to a high school boyfriend on a bed that was really the desert, a pink desert consisting of salt instead of sand. It burned their eyes and mouths and scraped away at their bare skin. Under their skin was a landscape of irregular beauty, like layers of stained marble. The film critic bought another postcard from the only café that remained opened in the town. A faded postcard and an empty café. In the backseat of a blue Pontiac, the radio going, shadows to the left and wind coming from the right. The angular paintings by Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street, the naked girl forced to eat shit with a fancy spoon in Salò. The first scenes in the film unfolding during a never changing dusk. The film critic talked to her mirror, the film critic spoke with his cat.