The Sleepworker Read online

  It was John who, one day, decided to tell him everything.

  What really amused John was the expression on Paul’s face while John talked dirty to him. Fist fucking, foot ­fucking were the dirty words, the explicit words. Besides, explained John calmly, the words themselves imply the acts.

  In order to flesh out his proposal, John produced some computer animations.

  John has always maintained that to educate a heterosexual, every possible means must be used. Computers, among other things.

  As a result, John was fired on the basis of extravagant sexual harassment against a financial analyst.

  Irrefutable. John found himself out of work, forced to live on a meagre compensation allocated by his former employer. What do I do now? he wondered in the evening while drowning himself in clear liquors. Recalling the short texts, the personal ads to meet men that he wrote during his free time and had published in specialized magazines, on dating sites, in forums, in public places, in parks, in halls, in the locker room at the gym, propositions that he graffitied on the walls of buildings, that he carved on public benches, recalling the texts he would slip into library books when he was returning them, texts whose composition evoked a style of free verse, texts brought to life by a density and tension that bore more than a passing resemblance to poetry, he decided to focus: he would reinvent himself through poetry, he would become a living poet.

  3

  Three friends look for and rent an apartment. They find themselves living together as friends who, wanting to become inseparable, wouldn’t have it any other way. In order to talk about friends, at least two are required – in this case there are three, one more than the friendly minimum, which says something about how things stand between them.

  Three is the perfect number, the golden digit, the welcome combination. So that we’ll be convinced, let’s repeat it three times.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Thrice.

  Three is the magic number in the sense that, more than any other, it allows for a possible roommate situation. Say three to a real estate agent and you’ll see the magic happen.

  It’s sort of like summer now. There’s an anachronistic warmth to the air. A totally out-of-season cloud of moist heat has descended upon New York New York. At the same time, there aren’t any seasons in New York New York. The three friends have just moved into this apartment that fits this perfect figure, this number three that corresponds to them so well. Their apartment is located downtown.

  The roommates are three out-of-work artists. But John, Bob and William haven’t always been unemployed. In the past, they had salaried jobs from which they were fired, all three for the incompatibility of their morals with their professional environments. For making jokes that non-sodomites were not ready to hear, they were kicked to the curb. And on the curb, poor guys, unemployment awaited them.

  After a time of collecting unemployment, they were due for back-to-work training. Or even to get new jobs altogether. Except they had it in their minds to make their unemployment last. Now, to make unemployment last – to not go to the employment office to get another job – in other words to play dead, to refuse work, to say fuck that to the working life – puts you outside the law. When did you ever hear of people being allowed to do fuck all in New York New York?

  In order to rent the apartment, the three friends produced fake work contracts. As far as the rental agency was concerned, Bob was a self-employed tiler, John a freelance croupier and William claimed to be a part-time secret agent.

  Fake names on the documents, fake documents, fake work contracts, no work, a little bit of money saved and a whole lot of free time.

  The apartment of the three out-of-work friends has three bedrooms. One for John, one for William, one for Bob. Which says something about the quality of their relationship with their living space. Everything would have been absolutely perfect if the apartment hadn’t been equipped with a fourth room, which also happened to be the biggest one of them all. What do you do with a fourth room when there are only three roommates? A problem arises. It calls for a solution. Bob?

  Bob: Most importantly, we must baptize this room. First let’s give it a name – guest room, workshop, foyer, storeroom – whatever we like. Its function will follow.

  Three brains reflect on it.

  Upon reflection, they agree that: 1) enough with the numbers already! 2) this big white room with skylights and columns stabilizing the structure will bear the name the Workshop, 3) for furniture, they’ll use mismatched chairs, a hand-me-down sofa and upside-down crates for coffee tables. All’s well.

  Soon after the Workshop’s creation, the three friends claim they love this idea of a common area, a space to collect as many things as possible, beginning with their free time. They spend their days in the Workshop doing this and that. No activity, thought or daydream goes unshared. They form a community of minds. The three friends think, write, draw, cut, ass-fuck, though not necessarily in that order.

  The three of them (John, William and Bob) make up one of those groups of friends who are always heading in the same direction, walking side by side or strolling along single file. Inseparable, always together, whatever they do, and even if they aren’t doing anything, no big deal, they’re still together. The moment you see one, you see the other two. The threesome: there is no better name.

  According to our calculations, each of them spends on average twenty hours a day in the Workshop. Multiplied by three, that makes sixty hours of daily presence in a single place, even though a day has only twenty-four of them. Go ahead and say that isn’t just like working.

  When it comes down to it, there’s hardly any time other than the evening when the three roommates agree to leave the Workshop, where they have so many things to do, where they are so at ease. Because in New York New York, there’s always something to do in the evening. And even when you think there isn’t . . . well, no, there’s never nothing, there’s always an art exhibition that needs opening.

  An ‘opening’ designates the start of an art exhibition. And exhibition spaces are just like apartments. As if you couldn’t inhabit a space without first inaugurating it with a party, without organizing a time for encounters between people who are pleased to see each other again or enjoy meeting one another between the installations and the buffet, glass in hand, mouth full of microwaved sausage, and something on their minds.

  The three friends go to all the shows. They want to see as many of them as possible, to know what’s been done and by whom. No downtown opening escapes their curiosity. They’re in a basement gallery, in a warehouse, under an archway, in a hall, in a cellar, in a stairwell, in the lobby of a building. They turn up in an apartment that’s thirty square metres, twenty-two square metres, sixteen square metres. They’re at a group show organized in a hotel room. You’d believe them to be in a hotel room looking at and commenting on the pieces on display, but no, they’ve already dashed off to a screening of artists’ videos in an underground parking garage. Standing in some dark room, in a neon-lit basement, glass in one hand, the other busy with the quickly vanishing finger foods, when the sudden proximity of a muscular body that would be nice to stroke requires the immediate liberation of a tactile organ.

  Hey there. Haven’t we met before? What do you think of the show? You wouldn’t happen to be a friend of . . . ?

  You have any plans later? You know about the Workshop parties, right?

  Ah, the Workshop. Within a few weeks the Workshop has become known to all the out-of-work artists. And, in other words, to all of the opening-goers who make up downtown. Artists, gallerist(a)s, critics and writers, all non-professionals, come to the Workshop when the openings are over, when there’s nothing left to drink, when the alcohol stash has been wiped out and they’re still thirsty. No need for an invitation, accreditation, badge or who knows what – it’s enough to push open the front door and say: Hi, I’m here, it’s me, I brought a bottle of something but my pockets are also full of drugs mad
e by a little hyper-specialized manufacturer in the office below my place, he’s super-­particular about the quality, he only makes a limited amount, now that I’ve tried his shit I only go to him, take this with a shot of vodka, wait twenty minutes, then tell me what you think.

  The parties go on for a good part of the night. The last one to leave shuts the door behind him, a sign that it’s over for today before it starts again, the next day, at the same time, with the same open-door policy and group high.

  Initially a place for nighttime sociability, fuelled by booze, drugs, smoking, music and dancing, the Workshop very quickly turns into a place for sexual antics. There is music, which means dancing: there is movement, which leads to contact, which means touching, which means fondling, which means groping; the temperature rises, T-shirts stick to skin, arms raise, humidity soars, a boiling-hot spirit possesses all the participants. And it doesn’t stop there: bodies undress, clothes fly, music wails, dancers respond by wailing, hands find their way onto others’ bodies, now everyone is completely naked. The orgy begins. Code name: letter A.

  The letter A. The first letter in the order of alphabetic appearance. A for ass-fucking.

  Ass-fucking is one of the components of love between man and man, between man and woman, between man and animal. It can include love or even lead to love, or because it can be done without consequence, you can just ass-fuck for the sake of taking it up the ass, ass-fuck and then you’re done.

  Think of ass-fucking like you would anything else – certainly it’s more of a pain in the ass, but other than that it’s the same as any other thing.

  Ass-fucking is optional, and, like the letter A, left to the user’s discretion.

  It’s practised with mutual consent, and because it’s pleasant and good, it’s subject to the approval of all the sodomite roommates: you can take it up or ban it, recommend it to your friends or prohibit its practice, saying, No sir, no ass-fucking here, I will have no ass-fucking under this roof.

  By common consent, the three friends have decided to get some for themselves. They said yes to the use of the letter A in their pad. In this era, in this part of the city, among those who make art and are unemployed, ass-fucking with an A is all the rAge.

  Ass-fucking, art, unemployment: the ideal trinity.

  There are two types of sodomites: those who give and those who receive. The three friends belong to both categories. If sometimes the three friends fuck each other in the ass, this act occurs on the basis of a solid friendship and a mutual admiration that no botched ass-fucking can jeopardize. The proof: William loves John’s poetry, John loves Bob’s art, Bob loves William’s prose, William considers Bob and John to be true artists, John and Bob think it isn’t possible, in this part of the world, in this day and age, for there to be anyone more intelligent than William.

  Jonas shows up and the group changes its name. Three plus one equals four – you can’t argue with math. With Jonas added to the others, the threesome turns into a foursome.

  On top of being the fourth friend, Jonas is also the man with the video camera. If you catch sight of a man behind a camera in the apartment of the three friends, you can be sure it’s Jonas.

  Jonas is a little bit like John, but without an h in the middle, and with nas at the end. How’s that for lexicology?

  Jonas and his brother share a stylish ground-floor apartment on a street parallel to the Workshop. A thin drywall partition separates the apartment into two tiny rooms, more or less equal in terms of living space. It’s always dark in there, too hot or too cold, the air reeking of moisture. That said, Jonas couldn’t care less. He’s only ever home to sleep. Most of the time he’s gone. Video camera in hand, strolling around, making friends who introduce him to their friends, and then together they make a film among friends until fatigue overcomes them. Then Jonas turns off the video camera, goes home to go to bed, and in his dark room he dreams of his film.

  The material for the sociable Jonas’s films is made up only of encounters between people – he doesn’t film anything other than people meeting, dating, breaking up. Jonas’s brother was a recurring figure in the first films but, since he hardly ever goes out except to go to work, he’s no longer a part of the cast. As inseparable as the two brothers were for such a long time, now they just bump into each other sometimes: Hello there, my brother, how’s it going? with a polite kiss on the cheek and nothing more, end of story.

  Jonas and his brother come from a small village located in a traditionally little-known country. It’s one of those landlocked countries difficult to locate on a map. It’s one of those countries whose name is hard to spell, which can’t be pronounced without also mispronouncing the name of its inhabitants. But even if a lot isn’t known about it, it’s one of those countries people can’t help but have some idea about. It is, they say, a country whose inhabitants never venture beyond its borders. Not because they would have to leave in some clandestine way – it’s because of the well-known poverty that seems to reign over the land that no one thinks about going on trips to places they can’t afford.

  It was while cutting across fields of rubble that the two brothers began a trip of their own, a trip to a foreign country. When their path, as risky as it was, crossed a train station, they boarded a train and took the first unoccupied seats they saw. Ignorant of the rules of public transportation, they hadn’t thought to buy a ticket. We no understand language. We not know read well. We writing like dogs. Such is the story they told the ticket inspector. The inspector, not taking himself for the idiot they hoped him to be, stuck them with a fine and kicked them off at the next station. The two in-debt brothers reached the nearest town, where they had to resolve to take the first job that came along. They slaved away moving pallets for eight-hour shifts. Nevertheless, they earned money. They paid their debt to the railway and, with the rest of the cash, financed the next leg of their trip. They hit the trail. Oh, the towns they saw! They forgot them methodically, that is to say one after the other. Seen from a warehouse located in an industrial area, the towns no doubt resembled one another. Small towns: once you’ve forgotten one, you’ve forgotten them all. The way they tell it, the two brothers had to change languages multiple times, to become accustomed to new ways of lugging around pallets, and to get their ears accustomed to new ways of being called every name under the sun by the nasally voice of a bastard foreman. Still, wherever they were, they found a way to scrape by, making use of their willingness to work. They moved a lot, using a large variety of means of transportation. They travelled with no destination in mind. They left wherever they were at season’s end with the feeling of having accomplished their mission, or rather what was done was done and no longer needed doing. A nice-sounding name was enough to make them stop in its corresponding town. At one point, they almost considered settling down somewhere. It’s hard to say what was going through his head, but one day Jonas invested what little savings he had into the acquisition of a secondhand video camera. This tool gave a new direction to their wanderings. From then on, the desire to film would guide their trip. Along the way, they hit New York New York. So many places to explore, so many images to capture, so many friends for a night or longer. This city was made for Jonas to film. As for his wet blanket of a brother, once he settled down, he no longer wanted to go out. These adventures had exhausted him. Shortly after his arrival into the city, he found an honest girl, and as he himself was an honest boy, together they formed an honest, self-sufficient couple. They spent their free time just the two of them, staying at one’s place, staying at the other’s, nobody between them. There’s no denying, they convinced themselves each evening upon returning from work, there’s no place like home.

  At the end of this journey, we are able to confirm that these two, Jonas and his brother, form what we’ll call a family. A what? A family. Never heard of this word. Oh, well, a family is a unit in which ass-fucking is forbidden. In no instance did Jonas nor Jonas’s brother ever give themselves over to it, not even with a third
party. No big A for the Jonas brothers, but rather a J as in Jonas, and a C as in camera.

  At the sound of this letter, Jonas turns on his camera and films the opening where the group has led him.

  This evening, the art lovers have arranged to meet in a space that’s about sixty square metres. Rumour has it that this apartment has been empty for years, that the landlord is a filthy-rich old man who owns so much of it – real estate, that is – that he’s forgotten about this one. Young artists have set up there. They’ve made it into a place for living and a place for exhibiting. They’ll stay as long as the authorities will tolerate them. A day will come when the landlord will wake up, react, get angry. A day will come when the young artists will be forced to leave and hit with a crazy fine, which will forever dissuade them from squatting on others’ property. But before this cruel denouement happens, a groovy opening is taking place this evening.