Paris Letters #53
Kahm was the last sort of person you would expect to meet in Newfoundland. A seven foot tall angelic soul with a bald head, he was looking to buy a house by the sea. Kham had been a prostitute, a bank manager, a dancer, a drug addict, and an egyptian prince — he’d lived so many lives.
Perhaps it would be better to say he was polyamorous than bisexual—for, instance, he had this green vintage mustang he called Jezebel who he treated like the gentlest of lovers. He wasn’t coming on to me, he assured me. He was more of a friend and, at times, a surrogate mother.
Kham’s biggest weakness, he told me, was weed, and as we drove me out to Cape Spear to see the whales, he lit up a joint. Somehow, I felt I couldn’t refuse, even though that sickly plant doesn’t, in any way, agree with my nature. However, it obviously put him in clairvoyant states, and I could see his eyes blaze with brightness as he drove Jezebell down the empty highway. As I started to sob, right there in the car, he chastised me:
‘Are you going to keep crying because of that woman? She wouldn’t even come to your funeral if you died tomorrow. And Look around you. Open your eyes. There are real whales in the harbour! There is lichen on this rock that is a billion years old. Look at the colourful seaside houses? Look at how the ocean protects them? There is so much beauty in the world. The world needs you don’t you see. The world needs A.’
I continued to sob away — I couldn’t find any words. He put his arm around me like the kindest of mothers. There are so many other fish in the sea.
I was pretty high by the time we got to Cape Spear. As we got out of the car and sat by the ocean, suddenly, he appeared in his full regalia, top hat, cape, and all. He then lay his magic staff into my heart, and, mumbling some words, and, reached through my ribcage, and removed a vat of black sticky tar. I cried out in almost physical pain.
Something was released, then. I began to recover slightly from whatever dark state I had been in, and open to the world in a way I hadn’t before; I made a slew of new friends. Kahm introduced me to a nocturnal world of queers, teenagers, and truck drivers — all kinds of marginal souls seemed to court his presence. In that world I was less judgmental of humanity, more able to see its odd beauty in every person.
What had changed? Something in the certainty of my doomed framework was punctured — I was reminded that there is a larger ocean. The reality which we impose on ourselves, is not so fixed. Our fate has a much wider berth.
