AC/DC

I really don't know

which way to take you

From the Diary of Dwayne Kafka Jr (I)

Clocked in at my mother's 85th birthday party. Her faculties are failing but she still recognises her children. All except for me that is. She keeps squinting at me and asking "What is the lemonade man doing here?". Good question.
My sister Ruth's son, precocious, secretive Benjamin is clutching his stamp album. Making a ponderous stab at sociability, I ask him to show me his collection: they are all common-or-garden, domestic stamps, pages of them. Cheaper he says.
Meanwhile. my brother Josephus looks more bloated and his complexion more florid and unhealthy than ever.Some years ago he enjoyed a golden spell of success with a series of self-help books which tapped into people's infatuation with the new technologies (you may recall "Reconfigure your Soul: How to Upgrade Your Capacity for Joy" or -widely viewed at the time as his meisterwork-"Infect yourself with the Success Virus"). The waning of his star coincided with the collapse of the dotcom boom and he never came to terms with the loss of his guru status; since his wife left, he has been methodically drinking his way through the royalties.
The television is always turned on at seemingly maximum volume in my mother's house, even on this day.She rarely, if ever, watches anything on it, but the constant succession of voices and faces in the background apparently give her a comforting sense of still being in the thick of things. My eye is drawn to the screen : a repeat of a long-discontinued soap opera, Malvolio Avenue. That girl,playing the part of a nurse- I know that face with the slavonic cheekbones, the permanent suggestion of a pout and those olive eyes. I recognise her beyond doubt from a business trip to Sofia in my days as a rising junior executive. A tacky disco, back to my hotel, some rather unsatisfactory sex (I was midway through my cocaine period). And now a further memory returns to me with the shockingly unexpected impact of the car behind bumping into you; as she left at dawn that morning she explained to me that she was on the early shift in the central hospital. The scene switches abruptly to a courtroom where the Mayor is being indicted for the murder of his wife's female lover (who if I recall correctly later turns out to be still alive, masquerading as a fireman).