Beirupdate, circle

We awake as though from sleep into our final week like the throat of a great landscape and the scriptured ceiling drops through the glaze and onto my face like the fug that overhangs this place. Our hosts from times-ago join us for dinner and S rides his all-american suzuki with A on his arm after pouring pitchers to the bars of rhymes we know too well. J and I linger and fail not to pay the Monday round by backchatting the security I pushed down the steps and called a cunt but says hi to E anyway. We don’t tip the best service we ever had and instead hit Gemmayze and bump W and L into the monkeyhole where not for the final time J and I note the circularity. Someone brings vodka and with sincerity a single measure of chaser that tastes to me of devilry so we walk the deadzone road and shout at taxis. L spears a parked car with his shoulder though later claims he fell and the owner takes to debate like a wronged mother. He holds a sandwich as I say fuck you check your car have you checked your car fuck you and L roars the roar of wolves and then a sandwich slaps me on the cheek and sprays bluecheese over my world. Alcohol and consensus quell my effort to end his life so we walk the remaining road in cigarette smoke and adrenaline. In the morning J explains to Yassar Arafat why there’s a monster box of vegetables on the floor while I steal paint in Hamra to make custom threads we wear to neighbors in the night. I tell the bar I don’t ever want to ask for more and soon I’m outside tonguing a dog. We bisect the alleyway bar to bar wherever a heavy allows but I win with an ashtray to my lips and I drink as though I don’t know and then muscles relaxes and doublefists bottles we don’t need. At dusk like silhouettes behind a salad of ash and apple and almaza we realize Beirut has swallowed our lives.

Beirupdate, heroes

We invite Yassar Arafat round to maid our palace and she prioritizes laundering our bedsheets which she describes as black and then she points and laughs when I sneeze. We hide plainview in Sanayeh surrounded by hajj and hijab and not a liquor store for blocks when our neighbours march upstairs to complain of latenight babywhails and waltzing stiletto shackers and a different perp every week and threats of police to which we say give a fuck and M takes as an invite to go full fuckyou and scream even louder. J and I shower while M swills half the Bombay from the blue to cash our supply so much we sack her off at the first bar after she falls asleep and off the chair and empties her insides into bags in front of teenage barstaff and younggun businessbods. Her phone lights to the call of someone called Joe Cunt and I say answer fucking answer it but she throws it to the ground and breaks the straw so J and I split to meet MJT and his companion whose book I admit I haven’t read but entertain us with tales of Hitch in Hamra and maybe the reason I’m here. He knew nothing of the SSNP and nothing of the martyrdom only the swastika in a spin enough to sharpie that shit and return with paint and fire. With tears we cheers to Hitch and I know on this day I came as close as can be.

Beirupdate, glazed

Looking back at notes written in a hand drunk on poisons we sack off our lives for a week. Generous gunfire whistles between the nearby trees and flashbangs damage nothing so we drown our ambivalence at the bar where earlier they fleeced local lines to mount a screen on someone’s home. A girl called E arrives from Texas or London and again it’s all a game and we run around ruining her mind with glazed faces and blue label I don’t steal from my employer without indifference. J and E leave me to turn arabic to a room full of better women when I realize I’m still hanging and smell of breath but I go full gosling on the little americans and they agree to maintain our celebrity at hard rock later that day. On the walk home I’m wearing sandals and shorts and a cut-off tee that may well blaze a star of david into the eyes of every passer-by. I open the door to M who says the army are in the streets and that was definitely not celebratory gunfire and groups with black flags kill all foreigners on sight but J and I say we’ll take it. Together we split with E and join the little americans on the waterfront to walk the stairs to the deadzone that smells of diamond beer and buffalo. Shit in my sinuses has fucked my ears so I can’t hear a word barelylegal says to me but I grin and nod and it passes the hours before she bounces back down the stairs. The other waits an hour before inviting her boyfriend to the table and he seems impressed when I wedge four of his cigarettes between my fingers and suck the nubs as though depraved. J and I cash a row of glasses in haste and later J admits not remembering losing. By now the americans have left us on the ledge and we’re awash with booze and wilting like dandelions in a storm. In the morning E tells me I called the waitress a cunt and shows me pictures of men that look like us dancing with wet floor sandwich boards and talking down our security entourage while wearing hard rock Beirut t-shirts intended for minors and we agree we must return. Before she leaves E says she wants to do something blogworthy and she does.