Experiments in Friction (Part 1)

There is a man who walks blindly (whetherhe is blind or not, I do not know) down one of the streets joined to Djemaa el-Fna, proffering a palm and tapping a cane infrequently as he grinds out from his mufflerless larynx, "Ana! Ana!" That is, "I am! I am!" Another mutters "Allah! Allah!", and another prostrates himself before the multifarious assembly with one hand in the road and his head to their feet. I stick to the lesson I learned in Florence to give only for the sake of giving and pass by the beggars with the rest of the crowd.

Our hero finds silence only in the vampiric hours, a great din being had by the orgies of coin and paper skin 5 hours into moonlight. Luckily, he sleeps like a grave. Certain bands of the natives have accepted him into their hunting parties rather than make of him their prey (and what a strange powdery odor he has!). The blood is making its slow return to their veins, sanguinity is arriving.

The initial stage of calibration passed, I'm looking more towards the possibilities of this space than its limits, feeling more confident in my abilities to act and alter. I know better now than ever what it is to be alone, to wake up for your-self and know the day ahead will be had only through your-self. The boundaries being established, there is an infinity of pointnesses in the field.

I take a walk and get stopped every hundred meters with offers of hashish or to have mint tea in an antique shop with the salesman or to ask what it is I'm looking for. I'm just trying to walk, man. Can't it be that simple? I meet up with Naoufal, a young Marrakshi painter I met in his friend's spice shop. He is monomaniacal, speaks of his idea of "la ville qui bouge" (the moving city), which he claims holds the key to life for whomever views his paintings. He is not interested in other ideas than those to which he has laid claim. Experiments in friction, I try to deflate his head by way of gently critiquing his theories and practices. Not much short of a blow to the skull with a blunt object with a sharp object poking out from the end of it seems to have any hope of registering, so I direct the conversation elsewhere and the night swims on.

Late the other night I went out to use the bathroom down the hall. A few Moroccan guys were talking outside of one room, one of them was very drunk. Drunk Moroccans say "I'm sorry" over and again as an apology to God for drinking, this drunk did not. He invited me to come into his room and have a drink with him. He was insistent and I have a penchant for giving myself to others simply to feel to what shapes their wills will bend me. We drink some wine, there is a woman in one of the beds he calls a whore. She is not a whore, but a secretary with whom he's been having a fling for his last ten days in town. The drunk says he invites me to watch a film with him and I submit. He ruffles through papers and discs in the night table drawer, inserts a dvd, and comes back to sit with me. It is hard-core porn, the kind that looks like the sex is being performed with mechanical efficiency and eroticism. The drunk laughs, the woman laughs, I laugh. He points to the screen, declaring "There is Italy and Morocco--no visa! no visa!" He asks if I want to pay for the woman in the bed and then points to the screen again, "toutes les routes!" I've seen this behavior before, playing porn for uninterested parties, and understand it as a warped assertion of masculine dominance. We drink some beer and he calls up his ex-wife for phone sex. The woman in the bed says he's crazy. I take my leave and get a knock on my door the following night. An invite to drink. A kiss on the neck? Is this Moroccan affection or a come-on? Though I do appreciate the practice of extracting myself from unattractive situations, of giving my will a shape of its own, I don't need this tonight.