September 2001

Hi Rack,

Will try to write tonight from home. These pills I am taking are making me super-fuzzy. Apparently, they do when you take them at first. They are also called Deroxat. I may be coming to do a job in Palm Beach on the 31st of August for 6 to 8 weeks. After that a few weeks in NYC would not go amiss. I hope they let me through customs with my green card having been away for so long. I should find out later today what is happening, but it is almost a definite offer of work. I need to get away and make some good money so that I can think about getting a studio going again. I really need a break from London and the claustrophobia of the flat.

 

Later babe,

Love,

Ruin

 

Rackers,

I cannot believe that I am heading stateside tomorrow with my dodgy ‘Carte Verte’........there is little or no hope left for us interlopers, we are our own undoing......let’s see if this works and if I manage in ‘Fuck You Palm Beach’, home of perfect teeth and pecs and tans.......poor little insignificant, freckled yellow-toothed me, all lurgyed-up and irresistible, a sphincter waiting to happen. We is light years ahead of those clones, you and I. We have what they all want, and some........Beg, you bug chasers.

 

Love you to death,

Ruin

 

Ruin,

Tomorrow you depart? Excellent. To depart is always a brilliant riposte to life. Palm Beach, imagine? Trying to write here in the August heat, trying to turn off the critic and turn on the air conditioner. When will you drift north to New York?

 

Love you too, to death,

Rack

 

Rack,

As soon as I can slaver this poop on those fuckwalls, Venetian Stucco, no less, and convince them that it is beautiful and what we, the super-rich, do in Europe, private jets, the whole cabbodle, I'll have to find me some fellow cheap trash to feck just to stay sane.

 

Cnuted, lagged before jetting, ready for the scrap heap,

 

Till death does us do parted,

Give us this day our dairy spread (eagle),

Billzer Ruin

 

Furthermore.........Florida..........The Colony Hotel........Salubrious

 

5 Sept 2001

 

Creature, you poor thing.† I can't imagine it being much fun, but perhaps it will allow you some time in New York later.† I am recovering from Labor-Day weekend with the in-laws.† You know, my psyche is just not what it used to be, that is the plain truth.† I can't take it anymore. Their familial insanity has knocked me off course after I was finally feeling a little more stable.† I don't seem to have any skin, no matter a thick one.† I too am knee deep in dull money work.† God how I hate it, but at least it's not an office. That I think is the worst.† You may not get this but I will try calling you at the number you gave me later this evening.† In the meantime, sending you love and strength for the assault course.

 

Love,

Rack

 

 

10 Sept 2001

 

Ruin,

You poor creature, you sound a bit trapped.† However, I hope he's paying you properly, prostitution can be wonderful.† I'm looking forward to your visit here.† Glad the tranqs are helping you somewhat, though these things never appear to be the full answer - or maybe they are, and it's just a matter of getting it all right re. dosage etc., as in life.† I'm thinking, as always, of running away.† Just got some money from sale of restaurant shares and it's burning a hole in my debts.† Rather than pay them off I'm tempted to run away for a period of time, I just can't decide where to.† Any ideas?† Doing dull work, which I feel less and less able to apply myself to.† Anyway, you sound pretty good in spite of your captive situation.† It's good to miss the mate for a while.† See you soon I hope.†

 

Much love, Rack

 

10 Sept 2001

 

Ruin,†

You sound markedly more well equipped to deal with the heaving humps of shite now you are armed with les pillules.† I may take a leaf out of your beuke and start chucking some down myself.† Am horribly unproductive at present and perhaps it would snap this stale spell.† I can hear rumblings in my liver area and wonder should I take the dread interferon again.† I think I should and just bite it, part of my blue paralysis is knowing that, in spite of the horror - or because of it - I should be taking care of that little problem.† While I'm in moan mode:† have developed some horrid jaw 21st century thing, it feels like a cross between lock jaw, a mobile toothache roaming all the molars and the day after some far too vigorous dick sucking.† It's making me look and feel totally mental.† I keep being struck by the fact that this is my life and it's not really how I wanted it to be.† Perhaps the solution is to celebrate its complete removal from my ideals, dreams and hopes of youth.† To admit it and be done with it: it sucks, there, said it. If the fabulousness wasn't so all surrounding one could get on quietly with one's dreary life and follow the inexorable spiral downwards without interruptions of envy, greed, lust, and horror at one's own demise.† I fancy a small, dreary place with hidden charm and a lot of young fucks.† There's a lot to be said for the semi-nomadic.

 

Loving you lawn time and with thoughts of you in Manatee-ville,

 

Rack

 

12 September 2001

 

Ruin,

No, nowhere near and yet incredibly near: from my bed I watched it all happen as it was in stereo on the television:† explosion, implosion.† I refer you to "The Writing of the Disaster" by Maurice Blanchot.† Reminded again to live.

 

Much love to you,

Rack

PS got a nice e-mail of concern from Eduardo .

 

 

Dear Billzer Ruin,

Ran away on Thursday to Cape Cod for a long weekend.† The air here was scary.† Sometimes you can afford to be a coward.† And now back. It's odd.† One realises what a freak one is, don't know any financial types, not that that lessens the horror.† Always there is the shadow of the last disaster, the vestiges of which we share in time and blood.† Odd now to share it with a whole city, a whole world.† Oh, so you all finally tuned in to the horror...?† Anyway, conflicted, crazed and unsure.† But sure of wanting to spend time with you.†

 

Much love, Rack

 

20 Sept 2001

 

 

Dear Ruin,

Yes, it does smell of Diana, but more so of those years we lived through together here, only compressed.† I got very angry when Pete Hamill on last night's Charlie Rose said that there was a "golden parenthesis" from the end of the Cold War until 9/11/01, an age of innocence now come to an end.† What was that recent commemoration of 20 years of aids?† Not to diminish this disaster but it feels alarmingly similar in its contours even if its particulars are very different.† I just want to drink alcohol, eat carbohydrates, sleep and avoid work.† In Union Square people have established a make shift memorial, you've probably seen it on the news.† I went yesterday, it's incredible but it also irritated me.† You know those inappropriate emotions one gets in these situations?† There were so many photographers and TV crews that it made the whole thing a sort of self-conscious exercise.† I'm feeling very out of touch with my emotions; physically pretty awful, I'm not sure if it is the foul air or just the stress.† I'm sad you may not come but understand under the circumstances.† Things are imitating normality now, though people look sad and troubled and are still being more civil to each other.†One story made me laugh:† Foggy had a meeting with Marlene the morning of 9-11, she is the graphic artist for the new restaurant.

She was concerned that Foggy would go to the arranged meeting place, but she had to pick up her daughter from day care.† She left the house without her phone book so dialled our house from memory.† She misdialled one digit and got the answering machine of Dr. Oliver Saks, he of the mistaken hat/wife.†

 

Love, Rack

 

 

22 Sept 2001

 

Yep, the old plastic emotion.† Don't you ever just long for a real, un-self-watched one though?† I do.† I suppose it's a little late in the day for all that.† It still smells of burning here.†

Much love,

Rack

 

23 Sept 2001

 

 

Billzer Ruin,

You lovely pink thing.† It makes me deeply tender to think of you there amid all that toasted, boasted flesh.†

 

Today I walked down to near the disaster area.† I went with an Israeli friend who flashed her still delectable self at the cops and they let us through.† We got as far as Chambers St.†It was incredible to see.† I had no idea of the scale until I got up close.†† It truly looks like an image of hell.† It is fast becoming a tourist sight, with streams of pedestrians (still no cars allowed below Canal St.) going as far south as the various authorities will allow them.† There is so much mangled steel, a mountain. The "rescue" (believe me there is no one alive in there) mission is a huge logistical feat with buses full of men, mountains of bottled water, MASH tents, food being carted in, priests in flowing garbs, screaming bigots dressed from head to toe in flag garb, holy rollers, animal handlers bringing in velcro boots for the search dogs, the whole works.

 

I think I have survivor's gloat.† I feel strangely vigorous and renewed.

Would love to hang with you, as they say in these parts.

 

Much love, Rack

 

 

Dear Rack,

Hi Sweetie, back in blighty and not anthraxed that I know about.

Love you miss you and will contact you fully when I am over this lag.

 

Ruin

 

Another Window on the World.

 

[17:31, 11/09/2021] WhatsApp

 

Ruin: Kissy kissy!

 

Rack: Kissy kissy to you on the anniversary of one Armageddon. I feel more compassion for all those closely affected by it than I did back then. At the time, all I could think was, now you know what it feels like. The beginning of the end of America. The weather today is exactly the same. They roll it out every year. Anyway, what makes me think is the way we are all so compartmentalized in our own disasters. AIDS. 9/11. COVID. Whatever.

I do remember a brief moment in NY where we were all very tender with each other after the towers fell. It lasted a few weeks and then it was gone.

 

Ruin: I am watching it now on wall-to-wall television here. I was in Florida at the time, shocked but untouched. It’s more bewildering now. We were jaded

 

Rack: We had been through our own major trauma. One only has so much space for it. What were you doing in Florida? I don’t recall.

 

Ruin: Sorry, I missed that question and never answered it. I will answer it now. I had flown over to Florida, from London, to do an interior for some millionaire (possibly billionaire, but who knew or cared) or other in Palm Beach. It was a Venetian Stucco Job over 2 floors of thousands of square feet, one of those palatial palm-treed estates, some estates down from the Mar-a-Lago monstrosity. It was about six weeks of hard grind, mostly up scaffolding, smearing walls with ‘artisanly’ concocted ‘luxury’. I remember being up a scaffold, early morning, when the first plane hit home. That island was a queer place. Every evening the ‘help’ would be ushered off the island and back to ‘West Palm Beach’. We, us stucco ‘specialists’, were staying in ‘The Colony Hotel’, on Palm Beach itself, privileged guests in a sea of privilege. It didn’t feel at all like the America we knew, our New York, our abused ‘Home’. New York was home to me, a home that London could never be. I remember you telling me about the smell of the place in those awful weeks around this time. I wanted to be there with you.

We are valuable now (I mean us with our experience of pandemics, with over thirty years of living with this stigma and uncertainty).

 

Rack: I agree. I’m glad to be more human now. Younger (regarding being jaded).

 

Ruin: And angry

 

Rack: Yes, very angry. But that too has subsided for me.

 

Ruin: That’s what I want to talk about. Did you read the last part? I am using your words, your voice.

 

Rack: I suppose we are. I am hearing our young neighbors come and go from their apartment opposite us and realize they were not yet born in 2001.

 

Ruin: Funny

 

Rack: I’m dense. You mean on Flickr? Not seeing it.

 

Ruin: Yes, under the last image.

 

Rack: OK. Will look. Getting ready to go to the beach, Fire Island with Jan and Foggy (my ‘him indoors’). The thought of a swim!

 

Ruin: I don’t want to exploit you at all, I am not trying to make money or a career.

 

Rack: Oh, exploit away. Take it. I feel no ownership of it.

 

Ruin: But you know that already.

 

Rack: I know. Hah! Our messages crossed.

 

Ruin: I will tell our story to the best of my ability. And if I peg it half-way through, it’s yours

 

Rack: Thank you. I don’t seem to be able for it. But I’m not ruling out something. Deal.

 

Ruin: Or you could tell the anti-story from the exact same source and contradict everything that I write

 

Rack: I could, but at this point I don’t feel the need to contradict.

 

Ruin: You are amazing, a huge influence in my life, and I will honour you. But you, like me, will be a filthy bitch!

 

Rack: Anyway, I think the wonder of it was, in large part, that we were so different in our origins and yet so locked together.

 

Ruin: Catholic and Protestant, those polar opposites.

 

Rack: Thank you. I could not have plodded through those pre-treatment years without you. Yup. But some burning thing the same.

 

Ruin: Or me without you. You are there with a small group of women. Set me free and I will honour us.

 

Rack: I had bloodwork last week. I have more T-cells than I’ve ever had. Kidney alerts though, but I think I know what it is. Not serious.

 

Ruin: But you have already, set me free, I mean.

 

Ruin: Yes, I have that kidney 'do-do' too.

 

Rack: So interesting that you were rebirthed by women, in part.

 

Ruin: Just give me 4 years to sort this out (now there’s unbridled optimism speaking). Completely, to that idea of being rebirthed by women.

 

Rack: I guess it’s inevitable that those two beans in our back will dessicate from all the meds. Peter had one kidney when he died that an MRI showed to have shrivelled to a penny.

 

Ruin: I might call on you for memory corrections. 4 years to screw it into submission, with no payback, and I couldn’t care less. A rollicking tale of walks through New York, and being ‘stranded’ on the lower east side. (Our walks were the thing that kept us sane, perhaps).

 

Rack: I have so little memory. Really bad. However, I do have a diary of every year. Not lengthy shit, but what we did every day. For years I’ve been meaning to write it down in a timeline sort of way. 36 years.

 

Rack: Hah! I do remember that (being stranded).

 

Ruin: I knew you would. (I was such a melodramatic idiot, that hasn’t changed, and might even provide some light relief in the proceedings. I will be the fool, that would be the easy part).

Anyway, I need you to correct me when I am wrong (memory is fickle), about you, I mean.

 

Rack: Is there a wrong? It’s what you saw.

 

Rack: You always lived in posher places (than the Lower East Side).

 

Ruin: Clondalkin!!!

 

Rack: Well, I mean you were always fleeing that, and I was always fleeing Howth. Opposite flights.

 

There it is, the intervention of the ‘immediate message’ into the old-world cache of the voluptuous email habit, generated over 25 years. Letters never died; they were transformed. ‘Clarissa’ became ‘The Sluts’ when we weren’t paying attention, and perhaps a new immediacy was added, an immediacy that enriches. We can decry the death of language, the dropping of punctuation or whatever, but this opportunity has never existed before. That I need to correct rushed mistakes, that immediate thing, marks me out as an old codger, that’s me just struggling to make things clearer, by adding stuff between brackets, or whatever. Perhaps it’s an underestimation of youth, of the new direction language might be taking, of punctuation-less writing where a full stop is seen as an insult, the closing of an idea.

 

That being said, I would love to read that diary, written over 36 years, I have no doubt at all about its value. Thankfully, time doesn’t press at all. It’s possibly more important that it gets read, than that I actually read it.

 

I trust you completely. I will very gladly be your fool, or even one of your chorus of fools.

 

Gratiano answers Antonio:

 

GRATIANO:

Let me play the fool!

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;

And let my liver rather heat with wine,(85)

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Why should a man whose blood is warm within

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice

By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,—(90)

I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;—

There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond;

And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion(95)

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,

And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!

O, my Antonio, I do know of these,

That therefore only are reputed wise,(100)

For saying nothing; who, I am very sure,

If they should speak, would almost damn those ears

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers, fools.

I'll tell thee more of this another time:

But fish not with this melancholy bait,(105)

For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion.

Come, good Lorenzo:— Fare ye well, awhile:

I'll end my exhortation after dinner.

 

The Merchant of Venice.

 

 

 

Done