Kuhbeere Kinepiffle: Alexander

Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)

The Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960)

My name is Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov and I, like my father before me, am a confirmed sinner. This is hardly merely a matter of a shared ardour for vodka, though that is assuredly part of it. I’m a good guy and I’m a bad guy, but the face of evil I am not. I think my father believed that the balance of power was always somehow, somewhere out of whack. He grew cockeyed and dyspeptic. My sinful expenditures, usually fully conscious, are related to confidence connivances in which I artfully fleece everyday people of their hard-earned money and also a tendency to get habitually drunk, surly, and avoidant in my relationships with women, who are sometimes with some justification referred to as the fairer sex, these in my case tending to consist of exotic dancers, low-rent fashion models, and weary, crooked realtors or lawyers of sturdy stock. The case I want to make at the outset relates to the God of the Big Three Monotheisms. What monotheisms, you ask? Judaism, the Big Daddy, which began over three thousand years ago; Christianity, which began with rebellious itinerant Jews in Judea in the 1rst century CE (obviously); and good ol’ fanatical Islam, which began around 610 CE in Arabia after the Prophet Muhammad had visions and started telling folks about them. What we know about the God of the Big Three Monotheisms is that He in His wily Omnipotence has a wild sense of humour while at the same time being a confirmed sadist of great vehemence Which is to say: God is a good guy and a bad guy. This God does not hate sinners—the Christian version especially!—he hates evil (corporations, governments…serial killers), but at the same time He must to some extent sort of at least passively enjoy evil as a spectator sport—in His Omnipotence—or else how come He hasn’t vanquished it yet? I believe we can largely chalk it up to a strain of divine sadism.

Most of what I do for money is inherently criminal and touch-and-go, but I have always liked to team up for easy no-fuss jobs with lawyers, especially lady lawyers. What most people maybe don’t know or just casually forget is that lawyers act as intermediaries between power brokers from different strata of public life. They hear an awful lot and work at a cool veneer, intent to keep transactions active and ongoing. Even when everything is falling apart in front of you, you need to look like you know what you’re doing.

Loretta is a certified attorney-at-law. Loretta is not her real name and she is from some hazy distant place that ain’t none of your business. I met her at a card table and she’s the kind of person who takes endless passing amusement at odd little details. I enjoy her recounting of any number of odd details; she’s good company and she’s savvy. Believe it or not, last night in my small apartment with the electrical air conditioner, Loretta said she’d been thinking of odd things pertaining to the Roman God Mercury. Not only was Mercury the God of commerce, eloquence, epistolary letters, travellers, sleight of hand, and thieves, she argued, he was also the God of the 24/7, unstinting flow of electronic capital and of network glitches too. I was in several senses compelled by this idea. I immediately had a picture in my imagination of the Milky Way Galaxy with all kinds of money flying around at the speed of light and small amounts of it disappearing now and then into obscured parcels of negative space. To Loretta I simply observed that the path from point A to point B hasn’t ever been straight. Maybe a letter gets intercepted, maybe your whole battalion does. On the way to the concrete realization of an idea we face the obstructions inherent to the idea itself. In trying to sell an idea to some other party—as though ourselves convinced—we face the basic roadblock of human communication. Travellers can find themselves in a predicament very quickly. People focus on the task and the goal, and their pockets are hanging there for the picking.

Sometimes when I’ve had a good bit more to drink than could be considered reasonable and am therefore sloppy of demeanour, it is actually easier to run a sleight of hand trick on bar staff, like getting change back for a larger bill than I end up slipping them, because they simply are not expecting such hijinks from somebody in as unseemly a state as myself. It sounds simple and it is: sometimes the best way to avoid being noticed is to look like someone from whom your average person would be likely to avert their eyes. That’s right, just keep moving along. If you want to skim a little something extra off the surface it'll help if there isn’t anybody really looking. I guess it is toxic pride that makes me want to outsmart people, but deeper down within my fundamental character runs an enthusiast’s penchant for amateur playacting. Sometimes we amateur players can be reckless by nature or momentary inspiration, but it is always best to keep to those jobs you know you’ve got licked. It’s how one butters one’s bread.

In response to my recent musings on the liaison role played by attorneys, above board or not so much, Loretta pointed me to a quote from crime novelist and grift maven Jim Thompson’s autobiographical novel Bad Boy, which I confess I have not as yet had the opportunity to read in its entirety. Quoting at some length: “It was the bellboy who was always in closest contact with this hurly-burl world, a world always populated by strangers of unknown background and unpredictable behaviour. Alone and on his own, with no one to turn to for advice or help, he had to please and appease those strangers: the eccentric, the belligerent, the morbidly depressed. He had to spot the potential suicide and soothe the fighting drunk and satisfy the whims of those who were determined not to be satisfied. And always, no matter how he felt, he had to do those things swiftly and unobtrusively.” Jim Thompson was a hardcore drunk with lifelong emotional instability issues, often unproductive for long periods, but notably in 1953 and 1954 he published twelve of his best novels, a run the likes of which tawdry, angry, and cerebral paperback genre fiction won’t ever see again, you can count on that. If you pulled something like that in Vegas you’d be set for at least one lifetime. You would probably also be so stymied by righteous awe that you’d be too afraid to ever gamble again. As an old man Jim Thompson could mostly be found holding court at the legendary Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. He can also be seen as the cuckolded older husband in the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely starring Robert Mitchum.

I have never been one to engage in violent crime, I am not myself especially sadistic, but I’ll break up a fight if I have to. I don’t want to confront a living thing in pain. I went hunting with my father once and it was more than enough. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov famously wrote that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. He wrote that not too terribly long before Jim Thompson had his otherworldly run. That aphorism speaks loud and clear through the fog and blarney, requiring no fluff or finessing. The world is forever kneecapped by lobbyists acting on behalf of the munitions industry. When the American military blows off a whole hell of a lot of ordinance in some foreign land for no real tactical or strategic reason, just as a blind show of force, they call it a million dollar minute. Hardy har har. I couldn’t spend a million in a minute if I had a team of professionals at the ready. My grandparents fled atrocities and there is no end to my contempt for atrocities. Sometimes I think everyday life is an atrocity, but when I sober up I remember that this sort of thinking stems from self-pity, which nobody I’d want anything to do with finds attractive. I know I don’t. I never had to flee anywhere in a panic when it wasn’t my own fault. Once the bombardment starts you duck and cover, and that’s about the size of it. It might not be fair but if it’s real you have to deal with it anyway.

Earlier this evening Loretta and I were watching a 1080p porno clip on the Samsung LCD television in the bedroom. It featured three young women and a Slavic-looking guy posing in the role of lucky fashion photographer. They shot it well and it was basically tasteful. At some point I realized that the three young women and the Slavic-looking guy all resembled different people I had known over the years, stretching back a long ways. I felt old in that moment. I think I see why those who have died briefly or come glancingly close report seeing their lives flash before their eyes. It’s like a backed-up drain. We are each of us for our contracted time in this baffling, plein air purgatory positively inundated with life.