There is no experience here. I... I open the curtains. Sunlight. Trees. Birds. Yes, there are a few words left. Not too many. I study the law. The law studies me. I sit here without language.
A basement apartment is my hermitage.
I live underground, under the super green lawns of Amerika.
The law is difficult.
I fail everything.
The basements of the universe are in the suburbs. Rent is cheap. My parents are immigrants. They leave me alone. Send me money.
I am an artist.
I am a writer.
Nobody believes a word I say. I must speak with an accent. My only friend is an immigrant. We fail together. Solidarity.
This is an experimental document. Every thought is a reality.
The law.
There is always something else to do. Shirts and jeans open. We fool around. My girlfriend is an immigrant, too.
We watch Star Trek. She gives me a blowjob. I lick her pussy.
Ink and paper.
So, little makes it to the page.
Why is that?
Getting nervous makes me nervous.
I feel anxiety.
What more is there to say to people other than hello and goodbye. Talk, talk, talk. My ears implode. Brain attack.
My immigrant girlfriend is teaching me to talk.
She says:
Open your immigrant mouth.
Say the letter O.
Final exams are coming up. We need to watch more Star Trek.
Torts.
Contracts.
Criminal Law.
Legal Writing.
Civil Procedure.
Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.
The law is not interested in human loneliness. People are reduced to: Plaintiff v. Defendant.
Did some boogie-boarding in a wet suit at Shinnecock. Always afraid a Great White is going to mistake me for a harbor seal.
In Torts, Judge Frazier called on me using the Socratic method. He asked me about Palsgraf v. Long Island Rail Road Co. (1928). I was like, what...? Then I recovered, and I said: Ray sips a liqueur. Res ipsa loquitur. Judge Frazier said I needed to study harder.
Alas, alas! I am a man of literature.
Pilsner drinking is the only thing that makes the law bearable. I go to the tavern, often. It is there I sing karaoke, and I can be whoever I want to be. I sing Axl Rose’s cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” to a few clapping hands.
Half drunk, my immigrant girlfriend and I, we make love in the Anglo-Saxon style. “Where do we go?” she says.
Hard to read the newspapers nowadays. Every day the headlines say: It’s the End of the World! Nevertheless, whenever I’m at the law library, I try to keep up. This case against the whistleblower intrigues me. Perhaps I can be of some help.
Tiger lilies on the side of the road. I ride my bicycle to the beach. Boogie-board strapped to my back. Wet suit in a rucksack.
Original soundtrack of Jaws is playing inside my head.
Atlantic waves crash against Rockaway Beach. Zig plunges into a crest headfirst. Ready to fight the Kraken.
The whistleblower is being charged with the Espionage Act.
If you stare at a wall long enough, you see the fractures and cracks of existence.
Nietzsche says, Ich liebe die Unwissenheit um die Zukunft!
I love not knowing the future!
We make love, in a basement apartment, come what may...
She says Christmas is coming. I don’t understand what she means. We go to the movies and see Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
She calls me boyfriend/my love in Arabic.
Habibi.
Zig is a text of fragments.
Zig is a fragment of texts.
I am... Unfinished.
Dark-eyed Persian princess, where are you now?
Memory and perception are twisted and tangled to form a Being.
People talk of a place called New Jersey.
Are they for real?
Amerika.
Zig swims against an electric current. The Kraken lurks in the black waters of the tidal strait at Hell Gate, submerged in the whirlpools of Charybdis and Scylla. Beware, Zig... Beware.
Language is everything.
The electrified trains of New York are a thing to behold. Blue sparks of the Third Rail. People pressing faces against the Plexiglas. We are the plastic people of the Underground.
Night falls, again and again. The air in the basement apartment is damp. Legal casebooks are on the carpet. Tarkovsky’s Stalker flashes across the giant screen of a Zenith cathode ray tube TV.
I can no longer study under these conditions.
I need a woman.
The immigrant girlfriend wants to talk. We meet at a diner. She wants to give other men blowjobs. She wants other men to lick her pussy. She wants to know how I feel? I am displeased.
I throw a fork.
It’s not like we are getting married, she says.
She is not wrong.
Still... the blow stings.
Amerika is bizarre. I no longer want to participate. Everything is a lie.
Final exams are a disaster. I get a D+ in Torts. The plus is supposed to make me feel better.
Christmas is coming.
