Hello again, my devoted and loving fans (snicker). Been away for some time, but I promise to visit my meager but growing list of friends websites, as you might expect of any acquaintence with whom you felt some chemistry and might enjoy a closer friendship, if not for the fact that he gets periodically and regularly lost in the labyrinthine halls of LIFE! Finally putting to rest Ernesto Sabato's "On Heroes and Tombs" started 2 months ago, read sporadically on a flight to Buenos Aires, lost for two weeks in a bar in LaCrosse, WI, supplanted on the reading list, albeit temporarily, multiple times by other admitedly frivolous books, and finally finished in a mad rush with a massive caffeine high in my favorite beatnik coffee shop in the South Loop of Chicago. As I again settle into the habit of journal-writing, I can take comfort in my new year-long subscription to SG, and rather than expound the details of the intervening weeks, I would prefer to share a particularly well-written passage from the Sabato book, one of many passages I found extremely entertaining. Enjoy!


As on other occasions, my nervousness brought on a sudden call of nature. I went into the Antigua Perla Del Once and headed for the toilet. It is curious that in this country the one place where the terms Damas and Caballeros are still used is the place where they invariably cease to be precisely that: Ladies and Gentlemen. I sometimes think this is merely one of Argentina’s many forms of ironic scepticism. As I settled myself in the noxious little stall, I found it confirmed my long-held theory that the bathroom is the last true “locus philosophicus” we have left, and I began deciphering the palimpsests on the walls. On top of the inevitable, basic LONG LIVE PERON were XXXs violently obliterating the words LONG LIVE, for which someone had substituted DEATH TO, which in turn had been crossed out and superseded by another LONG LIVE, a grandchild of its primogenitor, and so on...

Hello again, my devoted and loving fans (snicker). Been away for some time, but I promise to visit my meager but growing list of friends websites, as you might expect of any acquaintence with whom you felt some chemistry and might enjoy a closer friendship, if not for the fact that he gets periodically and regularly lost in the labyrinthine halls of LIFE! Finally putting to rest Ernesto Sabato's "On Heroes and Tombs" started 2 months ago, read sporadically on a flight to Buenos Aires, lost for two weeks in a bar in LaCrosse, WI, supplanted on the reading list, albeit temporarily, multiple times by other admitedly frivolous books, and finally finished in a mad rush with a massive caffeine high in my favorite beatnik coffee shop in the South Loop of Chicago. As I again settle into the habit of journal-writing, I can take comfort in my new year-long subscription to SG, and rather than expound the details of the intervening weeks, I would prefer to share a particularly well-written passage from the Sabato book, one of many passages I found extremely entertaining. Enjoy!


As on other occasions, my nervousness brought on a sudden call of nature. I went into the Antigua Perla Del Once and headed for the toilet. It is curious that in this country the one place where the terms Damas and Caballeros are still used is the place where they invariably cease to be precisely that: Ladies and Gentlemen. I sometimes think this is merely one of Argentina’s many forms of ironic scepticism. As I settled myself in the noxious little stall, I found it confirmed my long-held theory that the bathroom is the last true “locus philosophicus” we have left, and I began deciphering the palimpsests on the walls. On top of the inevitable, basic LONG LIVE PERON were XXXs violently obliterating the words LONG LIVE, for which someone had substituted DEATH TO, which in turn had been crossed out and superseded by another LONG LIVE, a grandchild of its primogenitor, and so on alternately, in the form of a pagoda, or rather, a shaky building under construction. To the right and to the left, above and below, with pointing arrows and exclamation points or suggestive drawings, that original expression had been embellished, enriched, interpreted (as though by a race of rabid, pornographic exegetes) by various glosses having to do with Peron’s mother, the social and anatomical characteristics of his wife Eva; and what the unknown defecating scholiast would do were he to have the great good fortune of finding himself in bed with her, or on a chair, or even right there in the toilet of the Antigua Perla del Once. Phrases and expressions of desire that in turn had been partially or totally expunged, distorted, or enhanced by the insertion of a derogatory or laudatory adverb, intensified or attenuated by the intervention of an adjective; with pencils and pieces or chalk of various colors; with illustrative drawings that seemed to have been executed by a drunken, drooliing professor of anatomy. And in various blank spots, below or to one side, some of them enclosed in boxes with fancy borders (as in important newspaper ads), in different types of handwriting (anxious or languid, hopeful or cynical, persistent or frivolous, calligraphic or grotesque), were telephone numbers, supplied or wanted by men possessed of this or that attribute, eager to realize such and such a feat or fantasy, to carry out such and such a sadistic or masochistic abomination. Offers and requests that in turn were modified by ironic or insulting, hostile or humorous commentaries by third persons who for some reason were not inclined to participate in the precise arrangement suggested, but who at the same time in some sense (as their addenda proved) desired to share, and were in fact sharing, in that lascivious, delirious magic. And in the midst of that chaos, with pointing arrows, the anxious, hopeful reply of a person indicating where and when he would be waiting for the Cacographic Anal Prince, with a tender little note appended below that would seem to be an inappropriate or incongruous contribution to this lavatory bulletin board: I WILL HAVE A FLOWER IN MY HAND.
“The world hind side to,” I thought.
As on the crime page of the paper, the ultimate truth of the species seemed to be revealed therre.
“Love and excrement,” I thought.
And as I buttoned my pants, I also thought: “Damas y Caballeros.”