"However. I hated the French and their slippery tongue. But I shrugged this away. I had no real reason to hate the French and could barely remember why I did. It had something to do with my grandfather and a prostitute during World War II and a mouthful of stolen gold teeth."
"And what the hell did I know. Maybe she was bisexual. Who wasn’t a little bisexual at the end of the day, alone with the black fingers of memory and silence? The heart was a frail but curiously stubborn organ. I knew that much."
"I’m a fool, of course. But in the bright or anyway less shadowy regions of my heart I think I was hoping to come home and find a little peace. Which is funny, don’t you think. Home is a word with such uneasy and fragile and ultimately menacing overtones that anyone else on the planet would have fucking known better."
"I could probably venture into a sex and disco scene tonight and sell it by the nickel to college kids. But that would be too hideous and depressing for words and I would probably fuck it up anyway. I would soon find myself distracted by some shiny little girl with manic blue eyes and plump, unrestrained tits and the cat would run away with the fiddle and I would start giving the coke away."
"Really, the worst thing about being alone was that there wasn’t anyone to turn to and say : hey, that was fucking weird, wasn’t it?"
This book was great. Really great. Noir and existentialism mixed. Kind of. A twisted love story.
It was just good. Even though I wasn’t ever entirely sure that I liked the idea of the Game, I liked the idea of losing yourself completely and battling the different aspects of self.
I really liked Phineas Poe as narrator.
I wish I would have read KISS ME, JUDAS first, but I didn’t and haven’t been able to find either of his other books in my local bookstore. Will, obviously, keep looking.
—–