The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #27

Transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

15 March 2021

Must fly. No time to talk. Going on holiday. Here’s the Proustie* Questionnaire I did for Vapidity Flair magazine. Make of it what you will.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Peering out of a drain near a primary school while dressed like the clown from Stephen King’s It.

2. What is your greatest fear?

The commissars of sanctimony will take over and ruin our fun.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

That I have to get out of bed.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

They don’t always do as I say.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

Azealia Banks and Lil’ Kim. It’s my dream to stitch them together and make a perfect human.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

Spending thousands of dollars on Comme des Garcons outfits that make me look like a mental institution escapee.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Delirious, demented, deceptive.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Being nice.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

I lie when I tell the truth and I tell the truth when I lie.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

My startling beauty. Like the Olympian gods, the mere sight of my effulgence can destroy mortal retinas.

11. Which living person do you most despise?

Meghan Markle, the Ex (thank Osiris) Duchess of Sus-Sex. Stole Harry from me, the cheap little go-go dancer.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

How to fence on a staircase and make it look like dance, like my dear friend Errol Flynn. My god that guy had a huge dong. Don’t know how he hid it in those tights. Could’ve used it as a sword, actually… Or a pole vault. To the moon. My dear friend Olivia de Havilland got shafted by him and couldn’t sit for a month.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Looking like Joan Fontaine and feeling like Judith Anderson in Rebecca.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

Out of my sight, slovenly hoyden!

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Edith Massey from the John Waters films. We were so in love. But then she died and rotted in my bed for three months without me noticing. I turned her skin into gloves, belts, shoes, pants, capes. Now she’s always with me.

16. When and where were you happiest?

In 1992 when Sharon Stone used me as a bicycle saddle.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

Self-gamahuche**.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

My inability to self-gamahuche.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Burning bridges.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

An Eiko Ishioka outfit.

21. Where would you most like to live?

The Palace of Winds in Jaipur. Good cover for my shocking flatulence.

22. What is your most treasured possession?

Christ’s skull. I drink cocktails from it every day.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Megan Markle, one of the most privileged women in the world, playing victim on Oprah and getting paid $9 million for it, when normal every day people are unemployed because of COVID. See, I do have a social conscious. It’s just very selective.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

Occupation? What is this strange word, occupation?

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

I’ve lived for 200 years and haven’t done anything. That’s quite an achievement, no?

26. What do you most value in your friends?

They know when to bring gin and ecstasy.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

Jackie Collins and Shirley Conran. Collins’ novel The Studis a masterwork of sexual politics that ought to be in gender studies classes. Conran’s Lace found immortality with the line, ‘Which one of you bitches is my mother?

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Nancy Fowler Archer in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, for raising up-skirting to an art form.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

A French 18th century peasant boy named Tarrare, who ate everything in sight, including corpses and a baby. When he died, the autopsy revealed he was all stomach and filled with puss. Isn’t that too ghastly?

30. Who are your heroes in real life?

Poet extraordinaire, Konstantinos Kalymnios. He doesn’t know it yet but I’m about to take over his body and mind.

31. What are your favorite names?

Tallulah Bankhead, darling.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Positive affirmations. It’s time we embraced negative affirmations. Every morning, look in the mirror and say, ‘I am worthless. My life will come to nothing, but that’s all right.’ Don’t you feel better already?

33. What is your greatest regret?

That I didn’t give birth to Rosemary’s baby. The Dark Lord and I tried, but it didn’t take. Apparently, I didn’t have enough gander fluidity or something.

34. How would you like to die?

Being spit roasted by Michael Fassbender and Mads Mikkelsen.

35. What is your motto?

Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

À bientôt, mes amies.

*A play on words, merging ‘Proust’ with ‘poustie’, the Greek word for ‘faggot’ or ‘poofter.’

** Gamahuche: 18th century word for oral sex.

The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. He is currently stateless and lives on gin and cigarettes.

Dmetri Kakmi is the author of Mother Land (shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia), and the editor of When We Were Young. His latest book is The Door and Other Uncanny Tales. He does not endorse the Sozzled Scribbler’s views.