Beirupdate, please

At least by day I hear this is Lebanon or welcome to Lebanon or we’re in Lebanon like some ironic but proud excuse for idleness or insolence and today A, an American, schools me further by rolling her words through her breath as though talking to a boy when she tells me eeeverything is a game in Lebanon and I don’t understand but she’d do well to tell me why I don’t want to. Working again a local man almost breaks when I speak of males near here. Do you have someone I’m asked. Do I have. Then he says please please don’t listen only make your own opinion and he says I have a friendly face when he disappears. As I linger at the bar a young man comes to me with his face in his hands and rubs his hair and shirt and wails for his brother. Just for supporting them he says not even fighting just supporting. He’s been in jail in Damascus for six months. If I hear word tomorrow he says that he is dead I will go and fight for the free army. Who am I he asks. I do nothing. Together we drink jack and smile at the TV but when he leaves I want to go with him. When M comes later she waltzes round the room with knives before your very eyes and I’m resigned this could turn Friedkin so I whip her to the ground and tell her don’t fall. What if I’m already falling. Then I break your heart. It’s already broken. She traces the words in my notebook to remind me why I’ll never love again.

Beirupdate, T

Alone I pull pints and smash bottles to the roars of men like they’re watching football when T walks through the door in airport threads and tattoos. We shout smiles at each other across the bar and of a sudden no one matters beside Johnnie Walker and the twelve ounce glass I fill for him to the brim. I walk the length with Mexican gold and through the fug I watch T take celebrity like corpses to coffins. The next day together we walk downtown with M and V and drink smoothie martinis made with blood before Hariri mosque SS cloak the girls in black and dress down J for tonguing females on holy real estate. He splits with V and three of us visit neighbors for Lebanese brew and doodoo. T relates dropping three thousand rubs on a whore and doesn’t twitch when a monkey in Gemmayze says fifty for three drinks and I practice my arabic shouting pour it back pour it back in the fucking bottle and on my way to the concrete I pass punchbowls and pink gorillas lunging chicks to Korean pop and the strong men put arms across but let me pass from I work in a bar fuck you ana bsteghel bi bar and I didn’t fucking drink anything bchirib waleshi. M collects me from the curb and later claims she didn’t push me to the gents and didn’t ride me on the john and didn’t leek blood over my clothes and then she says there’s something called implantation bleeding so little Lyndon might be on his way for which T and I realize I’m beiruining my life. As the last drops fall from the empty cloudless sky a small boy reaching up his hand with a rose asks me if such a thing were possible for valentines. I take the flower and bite its head off while staring into his eyes and pouring crimson wax on M’s wrist. Alone again T and I pour double black like revolutionaries down our throats as though willing toward the dead zone so much so the karaoke barstaff throw the paper upon which we write radiohead creep dickhead. Resting fails so we feel fresh whiskey for a morning meal all golden in the glass like a syrup grail glazing our eyes and minds like girls. We learn Hamra means red so that’s where we hit for all you can drink poliakov and it’s almost written off when a native gives me tobacco mixed with something else he refuses to name but we dance with chairs and neck from tequila optics and the night is gone long before the warehouse where wolves and happies waltz to euphoric generica and hipster heavies tell J he can’t do that with his girl and shirt in the sky and a killer line do you even lift bro that everyone but us finds unfunny but it’s irrelevant when a hundred people jump to time and monster eggs kettle the crowd. And so we send T away with eggshells in his hair and the faces of brunette shakiras knowing that for four nights we bloom minds.

Beirupdate, romance

Talent like yours, Mr Idiots, should not go wasted in Beirut. V visits from Switzerland. She has blonde hair and of a sudden I understand I’m growing used to this place. J romances her with sunset suppers and seafront roleplay while I explain to M that the roach she saw was just a mouse and nothing to worry about except that I’m bad fucking news. J and I do pushups on the terrace while the girls look good and we all hydrate each other with black label and bombay in teacups. Soon we leave to test Lebanese patience and with M and V we’re the envy of a small world. After seven hours and a bill no one recalls settled J and I blow minds and ruin lives. Over fifteen pitchers I tell the story of the river and we agree that infidelity is admirable but when M’s mother arrives and I offer shots and sex with an unbuttoned shirt it goes down badly and yet her daughter sticks around. By now we’re Beirut celebrities and I know I am the same way a baby knows it will live forever so I dance the stage while the DJ packs away and sing in rival circles and harass short skirts to where a waiter we never tip tells me to take it easy. In the zone we waltz to McDonalds and I throw bills across the counter and yell take it fucking take it like a man as J mixes his own dessert. At home I hear myself say let’s have kids and I tie M’s neck with my belt and she falls asleep in tears.

Beirupdate, evil

Someone sucks whiskeysours and shakes my hand with warmth as though I didn’t blag the mix and tells me of the three monkeys. The first he says doesn’t speak. To the tune of chants astride the bar a boy beckons me forward. You know ee dee ell he asks and I say what like he’s spelling my name. Ee dee ell. Ee dee ell. He wears a white sweater with a red cross but a sun cross and I understand EDL like pulling on my ears and puking down my mouth. EDL as though he’s English as though he’s been to England as though they wouldn’t kick shit out of him as though I want him in my bar and I poke his knights templar sweater like a girl kissing a toy. I ask what the fuck through a grin but he doesn’t speak. The second he says doesn’t see. Z takes me to his wing for solitude and whiskey and out the blue he says I have a problem. With my son. Z bleeds and weeps to me for his boy who’s lost to his world and for whom I ponder and cross lines with empathy. He has everything but wants nothing he says, which we know is okay but for the trees he doesn’t see. The third he says doesn’t hear. In rags and feathers J and M and I play tables with embassy staff and hotshot capitalists and green people with alcohol. We cling to bottles so much so that J smalltalks our ambassador's earpiece and I’m sauced for tomorrow’s job interview but I land the gig so who’s counting. Alone we move from beer to wine and wine to arak and play I’ve never but hear nothing that wasn’t already known.

Beirupdate, M

I meet M whose father hears voices and who dropped out of life to become something unreal, to act and commit herself as though to hospital. She tells me of earlier years and older men and fired teachers and married men and ruined lives like one of us. All the while I talk through teeth and can’t believe she’s real with eyes like fields and her voice a mirror to passing guys all envy and stares. Because I show them garbage and flowers she says and I have a beautiful face she says but the men here treat me like a cockroach. Tomorrow she cooks foul for us and launders and sings and laughs and fucks and asks for violence and not to stop and says she’d forgive her man with offers of others so with her I’m the most hated man in the room. For me she pulls favours and friends and spends the day but she can’t be real while I see it through those around me watching in the Hard Rock café, through cameras and bile where J swills local beers and tells his wildest tales to MTV and orders wings for the first time in years. Later M and I lay to Damien Rice in the halflight and the next day she rings to the same songs to bring me tea and oranges and send me pictures and talk of morals and visas and England and marriage and I see the rocks beneath the berth and I know she’s falling in love so this is where I stop writing.

Beirupdate, self

J falls asleep at the bar on nothing but illness while a guy tells me about hashish in Lebanon and compares it to politics. Like a drug he says. A fear he says. A ten year-old boy knows more politics he says than you. Hitler he says wanted peace in his way. Ask anyone around the world. Even terrorists communicate a culture he says with bombs and threats and deaths and fear like selfhood. Meanwhile I work where wanderers fall, an English bar with football and Danish ale and Guinness. I work for my identity only and support a team no one knows and split the bar like a sword while J sings songs at home alone to echoes of rifle fire from moped thugs with reverb as though at war with houses. The next day we walk graffiti streets and disused carparks to the smell of piss before a call to prayer rallies a hundred men and we cross a sandbag walkway not unknown to northern France in nineteen seventeen. Martyrs Square sits inside highway tarmac and vandalized walls and bomb-shelter architecture. Of bulletholes. We answer the call among the shoeless others but as we enter the blue roofs and marble arches a van astrides the sidewalk all in earpieces and crewcuts and suits and Glocks away from which our gaze averts. A silence ripples the carpet all aligned in symbols as four women anonymize their selves behind a line of raised behinds. A clock tells all of time and a chandelier made of lies and lives and money dominates. We exit beneath a green man running through an open door. Later J gives a speech to a room full of hackers and lawyers about morality and theft and Aaron Schwartz while I meet a crazy with a United shirt who kisses and kisses and pushes me to be from England even though she’s never been. I make her vomit and the next day I steal from H&M but before I waltz I ask the guard for a pharmacy to buy own-brand rubber from which no one benefits.