How to make cement?
“How to make cement?” he asks himself as he pulls up his pants over his bellybutton and tightens his belt to the furthest hole. The bricks have been lying in the courtyard for about a week. The dogs have been peeing on them. Of course, where they came from, they were already soaked in piss; man’s piss.
It’ll make this old wall look really authentic, old bricks, amateur brickwork, and it’s mortar anyway, not cement. Under the wall lies the grave of a village, a small village inside another village inside the city. It’s just rubble now, and the walls that are still standing have been made part of other buildings. History holds up the present, while the present sinks into history. The old cellars are either filled with debris or filled with water and muck. The empty cellars will soon cave in, and, well, won’t need to repair that wall then.
Fortunately, it’s raining now. For one, to get the piss situation under control, and for another, well, it’s a decent excuse not to do any work. Just stay inside and stare at the rain coming down.
Doctor says I must drink more water. She asked, “Do you drink enough water?”—To make mortar; cement and water.—I’ve got these bloody shits. Not bloody in the sense that they’re full of blood. I just get blood when I wipe. Each morning, I feel my asshole rip.
Meanwhile my boyfriend and I have been having this baby-shit colored shit. Flush the toilet into the little old village. Where does it go? Does it just collect down there, like that time when the shower leaked, and the water got stuck between the floor and the ceiling? Where did this house even come from? Did it used to be a street, a small alley, between the neighboring buildings?
She counts the beads on the string, Lydia. She’s not stupid. White beads, black beads, brown beads. It makes me think of soup. And in the meantime, the weight of the house keeps increasing. It’s like an elephant sitting on a mouse, only, very very slowly.
“No,” she said, “that’s not what I mean.” What she meant was that the idea alone gave her the creeps. “Having sex with Brooky. I’m not a dyke, and Brooky’s gross.”
