Ah you you fucken arse. You with your roses and your rain and your King of the World bullshit. Fuck you man. You were supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to be that simple clean ingredient in the tragedy that made it all bearable. I trusted you motherfucker. I spent months of my fucken life listening to your stories and even went as far out of character as to believe you. I thought you were worth something asshole. You chickenshit two-timer with your cheesecake smile and all those nights full of literature. All that sweet talking was just camouflage, your tactical methodology, a means to ingratiate yourself into my trust. What do you mean King of the World? Oh yes, you�re the King all right, but only if the world is a shrunken shrivelled ball sac. That�s all you�re king of my friend, one hairy little conquest, one grisly notch extra on your sad totem pole. I LOVE HER MOTHERFUCKER AND SHE LOVES ME! Who the fuck are you with your post-modern shirt sleeves and your endless Homeric quoting? You said you were my friend. That�s not a four letter word. That�s supposed to mean something. O Jesus. Ah fuck. This is all so vulgar. And it hurts. Do you understand that O learned one? It hurts.
Her name was Casey. A makeup artist. I met her on the set of a short film I was doing for the NPS for the money. The script didn�t mean much to me, it was written by some vegetarian who was against violence. There was a campaign going on in Holland at the time against �Meaningless Violence�. It was all a load of bullshit. Violence is always meaningful. But Casey agreed with the sentiments in the script. That�s why she was working for a reduced salary. It was absurd, all the cast and crew were working for reduced salaries because they believed in the ideals of the script and all of the money the producer saved on their salaries was being used to pay my salary. And I didn�t care about any of it but the producer knew he could make more profit out of the film with my name on the credits than with the name of some left-winger who believed in the project. Crazy shit. But Casey had these soft green eyes and millions of floating bubbles on her face called freckles and at the end of the day when she loosened the bun holding her hair up and that red avalanche came cascading down I was, obviously, lost. Falling in love was not my mistake. My mistake was introducing her to Kwast.
So we sat there, the three of us. My baby Casey and my buddy Kwast. I had told Casey what an ok guy he was. How well read he was but not a snot-nose like most kids of his age. I had told her about the translation he did of Homer into Dutch and how good it was, I had told her about his excellent taste, he was smart enough to recognize me, shining in the shitheap. And of course I had told Kwast about Casey, about that incredible trick she could do with her agile body that put her pussy and her mouth on the same plane and the training she had done in Thailand that gave her supreme control of her feet, how she could jack me off with them. In short, I had given everything away. I was the fall guy in a set-up scenario of my own making. Oh yeah, I was the shtumper all right. There we sat, the three of us, and I suppose that both of them knew it right away. Me? I just oiled the activities like Father Christmas, buying them both drinks. Doubles! I tell you I was not feeling very pretty the next day when Casey told me what had happened. Nor was I feeling very smooth when Kwast denied what had happened. And after the whole ugly incident was over, guess what? The producer had to fire me from the Violence is Meaningless production because it didn�t look kosher, all of the crew and cast working for half salary or nothing while the director gets arrested for gross bodily harm on a weazel called Kwast. Which means "brush." Yeah. My brush with Kwast.
I took Casey with me to see Kwast. In order to punish him. The beating had been nothing more than an admission of pain on my part. But I revelled in the look in his eyes as we sat in his shitty little third storey apartment and drank the last of his beers. Casey understood it all. Quite honestly I think she was enjoying it. She�d had her little fling. I had rescued my pride by flaunting her in front of my ex-buddy Kwast. He lay there with his bandaged ribcage and his ugly bottle of Grolsch and I felt like telling him that only scumbags drink Grolsch but at that moment a swelling of pity erupted in me and I could hear God and the Devil laughing at the both us while Casey looked on at the brothers who had fallen for her and fought for her and lost each other; and I held back my harsh words and I kneeled before broken little Kwast on his single bed and I took his hand in mine and I kissed it. I looked up at him and his eyes were locked into Casey�s, he did not see mine, they were shining with tender tears. I thanked him for his hospitality and that night Casey and I made love until we were unconscious.
When she dumped me a year later for some ex-lover of hers that had made good I went to see Kwast again and he was gentleman enough to spend a night on the crawl with me but all our old haunts were suddenly filled with Morroccans and none of it felt like Amsterdam anymore. He gave me a paperback copy of his Homer translation, hurriedly scribbled a dedication using a bic pen and left me with this cryptic message - "Casey solved my Oedipus complex."
There was no twist in this tale. No secret message that made the shabby sense of loss bearable. I had been duped and then dumped. That's all.
AUTO DA FE by Elias Canetti
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED by Bob Dylan 
WOMEN by Charles Bukowski
THE BOOK OF DISQUIET by Fernando Pessoa 
Everything by VELVET UNDERGROUND 
THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST by Herman Hesse 
COLD FACT + AFTER THE FACT by Rodriguez 
FINGERED by Richard Kern & Lydia Lunch 
Everything by DAMON RUNYON
