The Glutton

by A.K. Blakemore

Vidal says not everything has to be a story. Lozeau says yes, my friend, everything does. Everything is.

Sometimes he worries that hunger is all he is.

I’ve met some cunty nuns in my time.

Is it wrong, he wonders, is it blasphemy, to want a saint like that? Their bodies—spread, pierced, apportioned like nutcake—are the sites of their allure.

I would be driven mad for you, Antoine, he wants to say. It would be worth it to hold you lovingly.

What’s a name, anyway. Names can be changed, papers. You can run away. Leave all this nastiness behind you, and be well.

He has no shits to give for any Bourbon or Capet, but still he weeps. Because of time and all it has torn down and robbed from him. The gilt rubbed from the surface of the world. Because of time and all it has borne away, beyond his reach.

His life, played in tall wigs, before creaking scenery.

A year is really a kind of god. And I have lived, Tarare thinks, for a whole twenty-two of them.