This is a story, taken from a novel I am writing. 

All sad...If you can't laugh they say...28, 29...A child...Those deaths...My wife...My child...More determined?...Clinging...Years to die...At last...Left with nothing...

Moved...Left the quartier...The hotel was too expensinve...Went to a worker's foyer...Wood bunk beds...Shared rooms...completely utilitarian...at least I didn't have to see that depressing bedspread any longer...Grabbed my back pack and got out of there...The foyer was worse...Made me nostalgic...Those few moments...Anita and Emma...Black hole...If only you could've seen it...Those shiny grey walls..Like a prison...Breakfast...Cheap Baguette...Butter and jam...Bowls of hot bitter coffee...In the "dining" room...A long hall, with long tables and windows up near the ceiling...Opaque glass and no light except for the neon bulbs...Workers hunched...Eating silently...Other foreigners..English... Australian...American...Spread out amongst the workers in their bleu de travail...All silent..From time to time a few noisy Americans who quickly shut their mouths...Everybody had a hangover...I did..Every morning...A punishing headache...Felt like vomiting...Acting like everything was fine...That was the morning...Different at night...Around 7...7:30...Workers started coming back...plastic bottles of cheap wine...A guitar...Portugese music...Singing and playing the guitar...Other workers tipping plastic bottles with dark purple wine...Smoking...The air thick with tabac gris...

    I go out...What else can I do...Live in Cafés...Can't have dinner at the foyer...Not even lunch....Absolutely can't stay in my room...Lodgers always changing every night...Lots of stories about those...Too small anyhow...Anchorite's table against the wall and about two feet away the bunk beds...Like I can stay there, in that room...But you can't anyhow...LIke a prison...Only you have to leave...Anyhow I can't hang around with the Portugese workers...They all go off to work anyhow...O I was so far above them! A writer and an aristocrat!...I was far from the gin and tonics and the yacht clubs and my married life in New York...Too dumb...So far...I was the one who wanted to leave...Get out of there...As if you can run from the Apocalypse! Run from disaster! The earth trembling...Seas pulled out...Tidle waves...Earthquakes...Volcanos...War...The flames...Billowing...Imagine the flames...The smoke! The constant evil...Everything wrong...

Hanging out in the cafés...The place...Two or three...One down the way...Along the Seine...Not far from Sidney, Coleridge and Wilde...Hanging around there too...A lot of young writers...Older ones too...Sad...Put out...Poets...Novelists...Come in there with my  book bag and my tattered notebooks...Sure looked the part...tables piled with books...I got talking to an older guy that hung around there...seeing as though I come in everyday...Said he was a poet...creepy old guy...Boney long arms...Bird face...Long, long nose...Small puckered mouth...Teeth like a horse's...When he opened his mouth...See the two rows...Sometimes he wouldn't even talk to me...Just stand there...Cursing...Grumbling...Shit-ass poet...Real shit...Not worth the paper...Humpf! 

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    This morning...Stomach...angst...tears...want to turn around...go back home...leave my bags...fear...depression...thoughts...those classrooms full of unruly kids...Insulted again...Enculé...devastating...fear is the wrong word...Angst is better...Angoissé...That's the French word...Je suis un angoissé...I just want to sleep...

    Throw myself  back into this? How can I? How can I forget? 

    That day...Don't remember who he was talking about...Some poet...Grumbling...That's shit...holding the book...trembling...you don't write shit? he says...then he lights a cigarette...sticks it in his beard...the acrid scent of French tobacco...standing there...I look across the table...he's sitting there on a chair like some long-legged, bearded insect...I look away...Say nothing...Then how did you even know...Who else would hang around here? Think you're James fucking Joyce he says...Spells it out...Never thought I was JOyce I say...I fib...Aw come on...Mr? ...Tiedeman I say...Mr. Tiedeman...Have some ambition! We are all of us in the gutter he says...Write something great! Who thinks I'm capable of it! He does...His long white hair and his long curled eye-lashes...sparkling eyes...Sex...CRossing and uncrossing his legs...Oosing sex...This is just his dick talking...It's dripping off him...Snail trails...Thanks for the compliment I say...I want to get out of there...I turn...Take a look at the novels...Going through the shelves...When....Mr Tiedeman...I turn back...There...Next to me...O Horror! His eyelashes...The trimmed beard...The fatuous smile...Eyes half closed...Is he masterbating?! HUh HUh HUh Huh HUh HUh HUh HUh Huh Huh HUh...Brushing my ear...Maybe I can help he whispers...Holy Christ...I rip myself away like out of one of those nightmares where I'm falling to my death...Sucking...Sucking...A mouth...Sea creatures...Let go of the book...It falls...Smack! A cloud of dust...Take 2,3 steps...Walk out of Sydney, Coleridge and Wilde...Into the street...Air...Fall...weak sun...Breeze...

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Streets...the river...leaves blowing up the sidewalks...stands full of books...Books covered in cellophane...look...looking...aging tresors...colllector's items...rare books...mostly...If only I had the money...tugging...spend the money...spend it...buy the book...sit and read all afternoon...find a café...read all afternoon...Marcel Proust...beauty...long sentences...impossible...for a long time I went to bed early...a dream...go to bed and dream...sit in a café and dream...

Dreampt all afternoon...Marcel Proust...in a café...Proust in French...What little I understood...a dream state...sitting in a corner...one of those little round tables...the leather-bound volume...thinking I was some thin moustachioed fin-de-siècle aristocrat...elegantly nursing my p'tit crème...the pages...stroking the bible-paper...gold...cost me...O the refinement...didn't write...in a trance...sitting there...listening...gazing...the windows...the street...cars...people walking...hunched against the wind...smoked half a pack...piled butts in the ash-tray...my notebooks sitting on the table under the volume of Proust...A dream book about illusions...

All a part of a writer's education...I thought...reading instead of writing...dreaming instead of working...still clinging to that book...some sort of pacifier...unable to face life...unable to conceive of it without something big like ART...didn't Proust say you had to stop reading?...one thing I couldn't do...always reading, constantly reading...reading and dreaming...dreaming and reading...But the novel wasn't going anywhere...nowhere...meantime...always thinking about it, obsessing about it...worrying about it...refusing to believe that this was yet again another failure...but I had a couple of chapters written! written and re-written...form...style...the old demons of literary ambition...haunting me...running me down...inaccessible azur...perfection...start all over again...tear it up and start all over again...a lone mad man tearing up  pages in a café in the middle of Paris...a chronic disease...a fever...a sickness in the pit of the stomach...fear...no one talks about literary fear...terror...Paulhan did...didn't know that then...Terreur dans les lettres...read that years later...terror down there where the gastric juices churn...wanted to throw it all back up...so frustrated I wanted to rip my hair out...finally be done with it...move on...sickness only went away when I was lost in my day-dreams...reading...lost in some sort of literary trance...just that was the thing...whenever I touched beauty...touched is not the word...touched by beauty...think about that...something happened...anyhow that day I was reading Proust, lost in that trance, that was the day I met Candy...From Des Moines...The daughter of some filthy machinery salesman...out there in Iowa...I was there, reading and dreaming...I saw her come in...Wow...She filled the place...Sat down at one of the tables not far from mine...a waft of perfume...her long legs...that chest...under a sweater only made her boobs look bigger...knee-jerk reaction...instant hard-on...right there in the café...in my black mourning suit...cock bent...aching...I ordered another coffee...tried to go back to Proust...I could see her sitting there out of the corner of my eye...hard to concentrate on old Marcel...couldn't help it...her sweet face...that innocent look...almost shock...like the world shocked her...or surprise...maybe that was it...surprised by the world...that very un-european smile...with a heavy accent she ordered a glass of champagne...flûte...tall glass on the table..those bubbles making me thirsty...tall, thin glass...sitting there...bubbles...trails...champagne fer Chrissakes...expensive...that body...my eyes drifting away from Proust...like how in three little minutes you can stop thinking about everything...I was supposed to be in mourning and I had a hard-on...I had lost my wife nad child and here I was looking a some girl's crotch...longing for those boobs...could smell her perfume...made me even hornier...but my wife and child...molten death...how could I be feeling this...want this...couldn't concentrate...lifted my head...thought she wasn't looking...women always looking...staring straight at me...Hi my name's Candy...What's yours?...Ralph I say...What are you reading Ralph? ...Marcel Proust I say...in French...I'm showing off fer Chrissakes...29 and showing off...Oh, what's that about she says...eyes sparkling...haven't seen women's eyes sparkling at me for years...can't remember when...her tits are shaking back and forth...I can't believe this...some woman's shaking her tits at me...Me Ralph Tiedeman...a man who sleeps I say with much literary enigmaticness...OOO bed time stories she says...I love bed time stories...Maybe I should read one to you I say...It just comes out...my dick talking...I'd like that Ralph she says...wanna glassa champagne she says...sure I say...hot hot hot...I hadn't had any for a long time...just like craziness...insanity...wiggles her boobs again right in my face...can't believe this...take my stuff...pull up a chair...so where ya from I say...Des Moines she says...ah the wonderful state of Iowa I say...she smiles...rows of white teeth...whaddaya doin in Paris I say...I just graduated from college she says...eye lashes...tits...I look down at her crotch...shameless...legs slightly spread...hot hot hot...her pussy's on fire...feel the heat...can smell it...huh huh huh huh huh huh huh huh...I drink off my glass of champagne...what?what?what?...she's letting me look...tight jeans stuck in her crotch...stupid...dumbfouned 's the word...I'm looking...seam dug in...darker blue...hot hot hot...