Last Exit, Baby

I started reading a book titled "Last Exit To Brooklyn" on Christmas morn. Written by Hubert Selby, Jr.

This is one dark book. Seemed appropriate.

It is set in the late fifties and revolves around the lives of those who exist on the fringes. Petty crooks, transvestites, dopers and drinkers. It also includes the lives of average people, but people who are one step away from broken; desperate people smiling through clenched teeth and barely maintaining the facade.

Like you and me.

Selby is heavy duty. He wrote a book titled "Requiem for a Dream." Haven't read the book yet but I have seen the movie. A few times.

It is the darkest, most hopeless movie I have ever seen.

Understand, I watch many a dark movie. Not to feed my depression, not to build on my own despair, but as a way to explore life. Experimentation. To see how far a movie will go to get to the truth.

"Requiem" takes the cake. Do not try to watch it. You will not be able to handle it. And because you are more deeply rooted in the blasé American norms than I am, you will quickly dismiss the movie as trash.

I am fine with that. I understand the concept of gratefulness as anesthesia, and the entire lifestyle that implies.

Anyway, from "Last Exit". The scene is in an apartment filled with transvestites, and drunken guys looking for a thrill but not sure how far they will go to get it. Everybody is digging on speed, pot and booze. Georgette is taking in the experience and musing about love. These are "her" thoughts:

"She took another bennie with her gin and listened to the music. The Bird was playing. She tilted her head toward the radio and listened to the hard sounds piling up on each other, yet not touching, wanting to hold Vinnie's hand, the strange, beautiful sounds (bennie, tea and gin too) moving her to a strange romance where love was born of affection, not sex; wanting to share just this, just these three minutes of the Bird with Vinnie, these three minutes out of space and time and just stand together, perhaps their hands touching, not speaking, yet knowing,...............just stand complete with and for each other, not as man and woman or two men, not as friends or lovers but as two who love.............these three minutes together in a world of beauty, a world where there wasn't even a memory of johns or punks, butch queens or Arthurs, just the now of love."

Later in the book. This is Harry: "....gripped the pillow with his hands, almost tearing it, his face buried in it, almost crying; his stomach crawling with nausea; his disgust seeming to wrap itself around him as a snake slowly, methodically and painfully squeezing the life from him, but each time it reached the point where just the slightest more pressure would bring an end to everything: life, misery, pain, it stopped tightening, retained the pressure and Harry just hung there his body alive with pain, his mind sick with disgust."

Describes a lot of lives.

I recommend this book for light holiday reading.

Ciao.