Shadowboxer

 

You know what I’d love to be doing right about now?

Get deliciously drunk with Vitae and talk about boys and makeup, and it would be summer and we would empty at least two bottles of sparkling wine and rearrange the entire world by talking, because if anyone could make it happen it would be us, and watch Mermaids and Desperately Seeking Susan, and finally pass out on the porch.

Go wild dancing with friends, dressed up to the nines and stay out all hours.

Bed a nubile young person, preferably with brown curly hair and glasses. Just for fun, just because I’d love to know what it felt like right now, time or history or whether it’s wrong be damned. Those of you in the know, and dear observant constant readers, are perfectly well aware of my perversities concerning the bespectacled intellectual types with a headful of unruly curls. Mr. Chalamet, the Jaws -era Mr. Spielberg, the Evil Dead: Dead by Dawn -era Mr. Raimi, for instance (all names mentioned in similar circumstances here in earlier texts, too) admittedly made infinitely more attractive because I adore both Jaws and Evil Dead 2, and pretty much anything Timothée Chalamet does.

Be carefree, sleep until late, not give a shit.

Get a room by the sea, not take any calls or messages and be left alone for at least a week. Read, and be able to concentrate fully on what I’m reading.

Make silly plans for summer.

Have my parents over, whom I miss terribly.

Go on a road trip.

Wake up rested, and not spruce my ears first thing to hear if Markus is coughing again and if he’s already brewing coffee, always a sign of a good day, or if I should go check what is going on.

Kill Markus myself and be done with it instead of this FUCKING NEVERENDING BULLSHIT that has only just started.

Everywhere I turn, it’s cancer cancer cancer.

I had to shelf Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs in the second to last chapter when she gave terminal lung cancer to one of her characters. I hate Mieko Kawakami.

I started Ali Smith’s Spring, and what do you know? A terminally sick character.

I read Markus’ beautifully crafted story on Facebook about what is happening in his body right now and became so angry at him I felt like slapping him in the face like Will Smith did Chris Rock at the Oscars last night. Who the fuck are you to say you may not make it? You are going to make it.

STOP IT.

I WANT THIS TO STOP. I want this to stop.

 

The only way to deal with my life right now is not to think about anything too hard and just forge on. Make lists of what needs doing right now and what can be left until next week.

Right now:

Clean the furnace. She sensed I was pissed off this morning and blew smoke in my face for no reason at all, the bitch. I retaliated with a few choice obscenities and an unnecessary slamming of the hatch.

Shop for groceries. I guess people are telling me to remember to take care of myself. So, milk, yoghurt, sunflower seeds. Some things never change.

Go to the dentist’s. Appointment made way before the news. And I guess this is as good a time as any to have clean teeth.

 

Last night, I had another dream with Markus in it. I was attending the Cannes film festival with him, a new friend I made last year I’ll call him Dez, and Hanks’ dog, I’ll call him Obi, because that’s his name and I don’t think he’d mind me using his real name here, because like Markus - who has made perfectly clear ever since I started writing this blog in late 2016 that he will never mind no matter what I write about him or our lives here, making him pretty much the only one by the way - he knows my love for him is absolute and unquestioning no matter what.

I have never been to the Cannes film festival. I have created a mental image of the seaside town, though, over the years, after hearing numerous anecdotes, told by now a limitless amount of times at the dinner table, about both the glamour of the movie magic and stars and directors and whatnot, and the grueling realities of being the reporting journalist there during the festival week.

During the years when Markus was the film critic for Aamulehti, he was there, as well as in Berlin, every year. His stories are star-studded and entertaining, he is a good storyteller even if he has the tendency to ramble on endlessly if no one puts an end to his meandering ruminations at some point, that someone usually being me. The crown jewel of these stories is the tale about how Sean Connery helped him out of a motorboat before a junket held at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc located in the farthest peninsula of the city where the journalists were taken in this lavish fashion to meet the stars of Entrapment. Another time, Abel Ferrara took a liking in the young pretty reporter who happened to be present at the meet-the-press by honest mistake, and when security came to discreetly ask Markus to leave, Mr. Ferrara opposed heartily, yelling at the crew to leave him alone, he is a good friend of mine.

Markus has ridden in an elevator with Anthony Hopkins. He has basked in the halo of none other than Beyoncé herself and written a long piece about the gorgeous superstar, and then proceeded to be secretly outraged when the piece got pushed back from being the lead story of the culture section in the paper because that was the year Lordi won the Eurovision song contest and that became the lead instead.

He has done one-on-one interviews with hundreds of actors and directors, one of the most impressive being with Julie Delpy. The time he remembers most was when he did a junket interview with Dennis Hopper, one of his personal favorites, and takes extra special pleasure and delight in recounting the story and describing Mr. Hopper to any cinematically inclined friends, usually followed by a detailed top five list of his best performances down to the best scene in each favorite film.

 

I guess the dream surroundings came from last night’s Oscars. It’s crazy how things connect in dreams sometimes. Markus was rushing us past the red carpet, wearing very simple everyday clothes in sharp contrast to my elaborate gown. Dez was wearing a stellar Bond eveningwear tux, and for some reason, he was the one who had Obi on a leash.

I kept having to gather the hem of my gown in my lap, but Markus was adamant and wouldn’t slow down. He barely looked behind as he hurried past a set of swinging doors, telling us he’d be horribly late from admissions and he needed to grab a panini on the way.

I was left alone with Dez and Obi, and we decided to go to the screening. The auditorium was huge and extremely well lit, and the opening credits were already rolling when we found seats in the back. Dez sat right beside me and took my hand. He looked at me with such gravitas and calm, and I looked back at him and felt tears in my eyes. I have a memory of feeling both gratitude and a flash of complex rush in that moment. 

 

I woke up to my period starting. I felt violently ill and tired. This has been happening a lot ever since I hit my forties. I never used to get sick from menstruation. Now I do, every time. And the rage, the rage is monstrous and monumental. The three M’s. It’s so huge I feel I could easily knock the fucking cancer from Markus’ body out in the stratosphere. Don’t fuck with me. I’ll give you hell.

 

I have no idea what the dream was about. Perhaps it was just the hyper-volatile state of unease my body seems to go through every time right before and during the first day of the blood manifesting in this strange albeit not very action-packed dream sequence. I remember having very vivid dreams before, too, at the same time of the monthly cycle.

We have made some half-assed plans to travel to Cannes sometime. Is it like don’t worry, girl, you’ll get to go there yet?

 

Next in real life agenda, though: immunotherapy. The doctor calls to let Markus know what is going to happen next. That’s so nice of her.

 

I swallow my ocean of hatred I can direct at no one, really, and get cracking on today’s things.

 

 

 

Soundtrack for this piece: Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, only the best album of 2020. Shadowboxer is a title of another one of Ms. Apple’s songs from her first album, Tidal, 1996.