I first encountered Diegalas near a Best Buy in Union Square. They asked me what the flickering red digital numbers meant on the sign hovering overhead.
“It’s the climate clock,” I explained, indicating the time left—just a few years—to save the planet from imminent collapse. I added that perhaps the doomsday clock should go beside it, to lift the mood.
“Doomsday–what sweet relief that day will be!” They laughed maniacally and blew into their trumpet, making a harsh bleating noise that pissed unexpectant bystanders off. I asked how long they had played the trumpet and they said ever since trumpets were invented. When I googled later to see if this might shed light on Diegalas’s age, I learned the earliest ones date back to the ancient Greek and Roman eras, 1500 BC and earlier –too vast a ballpark to aid my speculation. They didn’t seem that ancient.
Apparently Diegalas (pronounced dégueulasse, or, de-ay-gu-las) had curated a few monumental group art exhibitions in various undisclosed locations across the city, and had several supporting roles in obscure indie films I always meant to see but never did. They had published a collection of fragmented poems they had scrawled on napkins and loose bits of paper. For a time, they were in. They spoke of modeling on runways and a musical career, though there was no archived evidence of their ambient band online: no dedicated Wikipedia page, no defunct MySpace account, only a twitter username with a bio that said “plata o plomo,” meaning “money or bullets.” Surely, a red herring.
It was impossible to verify a single claim they’d made about their life in general, since I never had a full name to work with. They seemed a perfect articulation of what happens when you spread yourself too thin. Despite many encounters with affluence over the years, a formerly decadent lifestyle had left them in such debt that they considered fleeing the state. Diegalas resented not having property of their own and having to pay rent, finding themself in and out of guest rooms, and once they’d overstayed their welcomes, available accommodations gradually devolved into shelters, churches, and bank lobbies.
I should have been peeved about picking up every check at the end of each platonic rendezvous, but I wanted company and appreciated their cartoon-like qualities. The way they wore the same thing at all times: baggy tracksuit pants with “Balenciaga” scrawled across the legs with a sharpie, a patchwork jacket, and fake fur-lined leather mules. Though Diegalas wasn’t particularly photogenic, my mind has retained a fond imprint of their artificial Agent Scully hair that flamed around their native-shaped face and near translucent eyes and devilishly chapped lips that suggested a lover had been devouring them for hours.
Diegalas consistently looked spent and underslept. I could see that they were dismayed by where their life had wound up and that they felt too damn old to turn it around. Diegalas had myriad addictions and stories of longings, yet they didn’t have a stable enough temperament that is required to write. The aughts had been tougher on the Diegalas than any previous epoch, though they said it had more to do with centuries of accumulated heartache. Modern life was a personal affront to Diegalas, summed up according to them by the piles of trash bags in the streets. “Disgusting! This city used to be…” and so on. They hated the city, but didn’t seem to know how to leave. I wanted to leave with them, but neither of us had much of a plan, and with my meager salary we couldn’t get very far, so instead of leaving we wound up staying in my broom closet of an apartment each night watching movies. We both appreciated Ozu – the way the characters smiled through their suffering, rarely ever saying what was on their minds.
The decorum of those films left me frustrated about how to make a move on D, who confided that their libido had diminished substantially over the centuries, afflicted by the discouraging effects of sexually transmitted diseases. They described themself as the ultimate long-hauler. They’d fall asleep in my lap and I’d caress their hair and stare at their lips, only slightly ajar. There was nothing erotic about it, I had undertaken a strange maternal role, and D was returning to a childlike state, curled up halfway fetal beside me. Occasionally they sleepwalked, but they didn’t get very far, shuffling to the bathroom and staring blankly at themselves in the mirror before shuffling back. One movie night we both fell asleep, and D dreamt they were brushing their teeth, awakening to discover they were, in fact, brushing them with one of my old rusting Bic razor blades.
I waited in the non-emergency emergency room while their entire mouth was stitched up. The result looked like the residue of a performance piece exploring the historical spectacle of a condemned human. Even when the stitches were eventually removed, Diegalas couldn’t bear to look in the mirror, though I still found them alluring in this evermore tarnished state. At my instigation to cheer them up, we went to a cheap and cheerful Polish joint with a small courtyard out back. A sullen Serbian waiter delivered potent bloody Marys without the nonsense of a celery stick. Diegalas licked their lips between sips on a paper straw dissolving in the ice-cubed liquid. They never seemed curious about my life, which was fine by me, since I was barely interested in living it. I didn’t care that I couldn’t afford these outings much more than they could. At some point we would go our fuzzy separate ways, and I was left in a daze, never quite comprehending what it was that had magnetized me to this particular being, and the subsequent nights alone in my apartment had me feeling wretched and used.
These solo nights evaporated into weeks and months – D had disappeared. I was pissed that they would cease all contact without explanation, yet this was also typical D-behavior. The history of D-transactions was fueled only by my occasional usefulness. I was just a place for them to stay, nothing more. I entertained ideas about where the D-mooch, as I had newly dubbed them, had landed, who was now subsidizing their lifestyle, in whatever country or town they’d drifted into. Several years later, D called to say they were in hospice, that their lungs were filling with fluid, and can I please get them the fuck out of there so they could come die on my couch. Naturally, I obliged.
My presumption that they’d maintained an inner circle of friends proved to be unfounded. If there ever was a circle, it had contracted to a blunt point. Waking up each morning to see D—a sculptural, immobile fixture in my living room—I found it difficult to mask my yearning for this being to yearn for their life again. I divulged several erotic scenarios to them, one in which I sat on their face suffocating them with my gyrating crotch. Euthanasia by cunnilingus. They just chuckled in response, saying that would be the best way to go, even though it clearly pained them to laugh, and even though I clearly wasn’t joking. They found me only funny, perhaps even a nuisance—a nuisance in my own apartment, pestering them with my desires when they were so fully evacuated of their own. Why was I being so inappropriate? Couldn’t I see they were dying.
The final morning we shared together, they were too fatigued for reminiscences. They took it upon themself to let me know that their name wasn’t Diegalas, which was just a name they made up during a short-lived stint as a classical composer in the 19th century when they were writing music for a Rosicrucian sect to which they were briefly attached. It didn’t matter, they didn’t want a gravestone or any marker of their presence. Why take up more space than they already had in their excessive existence. I asked them if they believed in free will, which I knew to be a tiresome old question, but I wanted to keep the D awake by any means…
They motioned to reply, going on to say they thought I was… but the following words trailed off. They puckered their lips at me, then traced around the edges of their lips with one of the long, filthy, uncut nails of theirs, and I thought it might slice into the flesh of those more ravaged than ever lips – their wrinkled texture of which at this point looked more like an anus. Then their own hand hovered above their eyes and gently closed them – their long-lashed eyelids sealed up like cardamom pods.
There they go, I thought, extricating themselves, moving on, summoned by some interdimensional realm. Their anus slackened to reveal the paper thin tips of their canine teeth protruding from receded gums. I tried to close the anus but it kept opening obscenely wider, a near comical effort which only made me laugh hysterically, so I gave up. I sat there a while longer. They looked relieved at no longer having to be there, so far from the object of my passive fantasies. I could fib and say I farewell kissed that anus mouth tenderly. But no, I was repulsed by my former attraction to this corpse, which when animated had sapped away my desirous vitality into nullity, only wanting, no, simply needing me, pragmatically. I felt bitter. Their resentful outlook transferred to me.
Once I gathered composure and the wherewithal to call a company to remove the body, I discovered that they had kept their trumpet hidden under a pillow on the couch, wrapped in one of my bath towels. The battered old thing didn’t look worth much. I don’t recall them having played it once after our first encounter, though it had accompanied them everywhere like a potential, or a pet.
Each day now, I walk to Union Square to sit with the trumpet on my lap. I have never played it, although I do fondle the valve keys as it calms my nerves in public. The climate clock is still doing its dwindling thing. The usual jerk has drawn large unavoidable circles in chalk on the pavement with “bad luck zone” written inside them. There’s a guy with his shirt off with a huge protruding belly. There’s Pigeon Lady covered in her dirty doves. Nearby, a middle-aged guy euphorically sings “Say What You Want” by Texas into a portable mic system. Between the cover songs, the chattering voices, the traffic and ambulance sirens, there’s so much noise that I never feel an urge to add more. Occasionally, some weirdo approaches me and tries to touch my trumpet, or asks if they can play it. I always refuse. Sometimes someone passes by who is less interested in the trumpet than they are in me, asking for my name, and I tell them.
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Favorite Drink: Vodka martinis, though she’s started to develop a taste for the good ol’ old fashioned!
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Jessica Almereyda has work published in Fence, Hotel, Juked, Roi Fainéant, and others. She’s a contributing editor at The Ersatz Experience. X-twit: jalmereyda
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 