WHY DID I LEAVE CALAIS?
1. Is it any wonder. The bars were gone from the windows
and the filthy, Gauloise-smoking cop who always sat there
had left. I was unattended and didn't care. In the other room,
the stinking matron who patrolled the girls' corridor was still
at work sniffing her fingers, the whore-bait bitch she was.
2. I struck out for places on my own. I knew no one at all
no Richard or Peter or Marcellus or Brenn. All by myself,
I was walking those streets like some American tourister
looking for sweet-meats and water, something somehow
tied in with his travel-guide book's itinerary.
3. And then, once I learned the language, I began to
hear the stories - the kids all lived together, fornicating
at will, piling up debt and throwing old clothes out the
varnished window. I didn't know what to do and had
never faced this sort of thing before.
4. I finally decided I had had too much; striking out for
the landing pier off the edge of the nearby river, I was
able to steal a watercraft and - starting it quickly enough
and nearly silent in the middle of the night - sneak out
wearing nothing past what I had on my back. If this
wasn't to be a port-city, after all, I'd have to reassess
both where I was and what I was leaving. Lesser men
than me have done such marvelous things like this.
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