Implicity

By Paul D Robertson

Bitumen, 95 x 75 cms.

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This is of my ex-girlfriend, Sarah, and is currently in her possession. She wrote a beautiful poem about me, about US. She was mean to me after we broke, and I had crashed into despair. But I don't think she bore me any true malice, and whilst we were together we had a wonderful time. Until my mania realllllllllly went out of control. I owed her this painting for posing for me so many times, and I had said, I had, I suppose, promised her a painting. After I had fallen to hell once more she would not wait. But... well. I had promised this to her. I HAD. And it was better for us both, given the degree of our passion and subsequent hurt, for this finality to be met.

This is a continuation of text temming from THIS page (the above image was the latter created at Sarah's behest, the below mine own will. The image below will also take you to the page with the inception of this text.)

As I still see you. Cruel to even ask, sucker punch to the creaking ribs.

I've got stains on my nails from smoking too much, bags under my eyes cause I don't sleep enough. I tend to smell of some alcohol or another, I've got muscles in my arms because I get angry all the time and I try and take it out on things by picking them up and putting them down again instead of breaking them, and I am risking the best relationship I have ever had by even writing you this letter. And I risk myself. I hope that in this, for you, there is a desperate gamble. Far more than I hoope for your safety apathy. Blandness. And happiness.

This is not enough for me.

I need a reaction.

Don't you?

Huh?

The woman who knows so little and functions alongside me. Her whom I treat with such ill-gained contempt by the unthruths these letters unfold… well she has flown off into the not so wild blue yonder for a couple of weeks, which has left me with nothing to do but work and think, think and do some more work. I have beer but it is rapidly running into short supply (I just mashed an empty one on my forehead), but I am feeling rather together and haven't had a sanity deficit for a little while now.

Want to come over?

We could compare stories and fantasies about all the things we thought we'd be and aren't. Then we could talk about the kids we might have had by now if we had have screwed up a little more seriously than we were lucky we didn't. Then, if we get really drunk we could start telling each other about the horrible nightmares and how sometimes it hurts to think about getting up the next day and trying that hard just to breathe, just to breathe.

I haven't cut myself up or got drunk to the point of idiot oblivion for a long time. It is different in a way that I cannot understand from the way that other people live. How do they smile without a sick flinch?

My life is… unreal to me now.  Sometimes something happens and I think "Aw, c'mon, that's got to be fiction."

I don't feel now that anything has changed apart from the excuses I had to myself. Their breadth. The scale of it all…

At the same time as searing quickness fills me and makes me want and want and fuck and fuck and want and fuck…

While I burned myself out into a flat carbon despair I cannot imagine in the eat the lust and speed of it all.

In those weeks or months, I could take it all.

Any woman, any drink or drug, madness doesn't care at all.

I am not even legally responsible. I hit a cop, for fuck's sake, and spent ten minutes in a courtroom declaring insanity before doing something else weird enough to get locked away and drugged so deep, so deep that the meds chewed quietly through my soul and I did not laugh for more than a year.

I held no desire. Somewhere I was so afraid I never stopped crying. I saw my death under each car. I saw my death, a rope I would barely feel from the beams of a shopping centre roof or any sturdy tree cooling in the evening.

I cradled knives against me. I cut so many times but my hands shook. I could not tie the ropes I collected in want. There was no killing strength left for me. I remembered that I throbbed with a kind of lust for the heavy steel of train tracks and sharp wheels, but only long slow moments after the rushing mass had passed or slowed.

I saw my staring humourless eyes and broken body in a quicksand of sluggish envy.

Have you seen this? As your sweet skin loosens? As you fade and grey before my eyes?

Do you KNOW ME?

Can we heal enough to eat from each others’ bodies in the sweat slickened raptures of summer lust.

IN IMMERSION?

IN EACH OTHER?

Can we? Could anyone..?