The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #6

As transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

1 April 2020

Your corresponded is still holed up at the Hotel Cortez in LA. Might stay here indefinitely, with the ghosts of indiscretions past. It’s the best place from which to watch the world fall apart and politicians make jackasses of themselves.

Look at Donald Trump, trying to be all adult and take-charge about the coronavirus, after labelling it a hoax that will nevertheless disappear with April’s warmer weather. And, proving that male hair dye saps intelligence, Emmanuelle Macron made a handsome but hysterical appearance on national television that more rightly belongs in a Gaspar Noe movie.

Putin is the only one who’s true shown leadership in the matter. Was it not he who suggested chopping off Angela Merkel’s head and holding it aloft to ward off evil, like Perseus with Medusa?

‘Anything that hideous,’ he said to me during a telephone conversation, ‘is bound to scare off the worst calamity.’

‘We bow to your greater wisdom, oh Russian bear!’ I replied, knowing we were in good hands.

The world’s senses are definitely deranged. If further proof is required, we need look no further than Australia, where shoppers are panic-buying toilet paper. Why toilet paper?

Because people down under have a fetish for the boom-box, the dunny, the crapper, the shit house or any other colourful variant you care to use. And they live in fear of having nothing with which to wipe. Hence stockpiling.

As of this writing, supermarket shelves are empty as Gwyneth Paltrow’s head. (She, by the way, recommends vaginal steaming to get rid of the virus. For men. And a coffee enema for fun.)

Back in Terror Australis, a truck carrying emergency supplies of toilet paper to Queensland supermarkets crashed and burned. The usual rioting and pillaging ensued as Queenslanders—a variant of the Appalachian inbred hillbilly—rampaged, reducing the suburb of Inala to rubble. Not that anyone could tell the difference.

Adding insult to injury, busloads of Chinese-Australians (neighbor Clancy Smith among them) are raiding country supermarkets, buying all the toilet paper, and selling it online at prices only their capitalist-oriented communist brethren can afford. Elsewhere thieves held up a Woolworths delivery van to steal ‘date rolls’, as they’re commonly known in Ocker circles, and stores are putting up signs that read ‘No toilet paper kept on premises’.

Today the Morrison government passed a law restricting citizens to one square of toilet paper per loo visit. Exceeding that is ‘un-Australian’ and will be punished by five years as senator Michaela Cash’s personal arse-wipe. Out of sheer desperation citizens are using wombats and koalas to wipe the fundament. The man who used the head of a Tasmanian devil is, as of this writing, sans cul.

To help during this crisis, I should like to offer a quote from Gargantuaand Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais:

‘I maintain that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains.’

Excuse me. The phone rings…

It was my good friend Tom Hanks, calling in sheer panic to bid his final farewells. There was the most dreadful ruckus in the background as he spoke and then the line went quite suddenly, and very ominously, dead.

You may know that Tom and his Albanian-Greek wife Margarita Ibrahimoff—otherwise known as Rita Wilson—have been incarcerated at the Gold Coast Hospital, with COVID-19. Apparently, they brought it with them from the U.S. and spread it far and wide while schmoozing with sundry Australian industry professionals and celebrities.

Who would have thought an innocuous creature like Forrest Gump was going to turn nasty and wipe out ‘the arse end of the world’, as ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating put it, with a cough and a sneeze?

So there’s Tom calling me to say goodbye as rabid Queenslanders break into the ward and perpetuate what history will surely view as a mercy killing. Secret hospital sources later revealed the horror began when Rita stepped onto the terrace to regale the Gold Coast with a rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Even before she finished the first verse, incensed radical lefties with no patience for cultural appropriation, let alone any form of colonialist nationalism, gathered outside the building, booing and hissing.

‘Strewth, mate, a Wog-American sheila is singing the bloody Astralyan national anthem.’

‘Who does she think she is?’

‘Let’s fucken kill ‘er.’

I heard it all. The outrage. The offence. The crude utterances. The screams that ensued. The shouts. The badly constructed sentences. The swallowed vowels. The disregard for niceties of punctuation. And finally: breaking glass. Celebrities ripped apart and eaten before my very ears.

Tom’s last words were: ‘This is so embarrassing.’

Rita followed with, ‘Παναγία και Χριστέ μου, σώσε μας,’ before her larynx was ripped out and tossed from the window. It fell with a splat on someone’s head and he used it to wipe his bottom. Before feeding his family.

It was horrible. On the bright side, Rita Wilson will never sing again.

Until next we meet.

Cheerio!

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PS My bosom buddy Dickie Arbiter, commentator on the Royal Family, called to say Prince Charles and the Queen were put down this morning at Windsor Castle after contracting coronavirus. The drastic measure was taken before they turned rabid.

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The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. Of no fixed abode, he has subsisted in Istanbul, Rome, London, New Orleans and is currently hiding out in Melbourne. He partakes of four bottles of Bombay gin and four packets of Dunhill cigarettes a day.

His mortified amanuensis, Dmetri Kakmi, is a writer and editor. The fictionalised memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia. He edited the children’s anthology When We Were Young. His new book The Door and other Uncanny Tales will be released in May 2020.

The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #5

As transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

16 March 2020

Greetings from the Hotel Cortez in beautiful downtown Los Angeles.

I’d like to say I hunker down here while the coronavirus cleans out the planet, but I’m just avoiding having to deal with the four recycling bins rolled out by the Victorian state government in Australia. One for glass. One for garden clippings and food scraps. Another for paper and some plastics, and yet another for everyday rubbish. All too hard and confusing.

As a neighbor said afore I fled the country, ‘I haven’t a fucking clue what goes in which cunting bin and when to put ‘em out, mate.’

The eloquence of the average Australian cannot be underestimated.

‘Dump it in the streets,’ I told him. ‘It doesn’t matter. The world is drowning in rubbish and the Chinese will soon take over.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Who would have thought the Chinese would wipe us out with a virus,’ I went on, oblivious to the trap I was walking into. ‘The consensus was they’d do it through finance and infiltration of Western universities and schools.’

I should have been more careful with my audience. Turns out the neighbor—a Caucasian named Clancy Smith—‘self-identifies’ as Chinese. Taking on the mantle of victims everywhere, he was greatly offended by my insensitive comments.

‘You are racist,’ he shouted as I fled up the stairwell. ‘I’m going to get the Chinese government to harvest your filthy organs.’

So here I am in the Cortez, safe as virgins in Harvey Weinstein’s orifice.

After freshening up in my room, I made my way to the Blue Parrot Lounge on level two. There to be greeted by the elegant bartender, Liz Taylor.

‘How are you, old piss pot?’

Liz and I go back a long way; I knew her when she was a salesman called Nick Pryor.

She slid an extra-dry gin martini across the countertop.

I tossed it back and said, ‘Feeling rather misanthropic. The coronavirus can’t come soon enough.’

‘My, my, we are in a bad way.’ And when I didn’t play word ping-pong with her, Liz added: ‘The personification of the virus sits yonder.’

She aimed a gleaming talon at a booth occupied by bombshell with long black hair.

‘Who is she/he/it/them/they?’ I said to Liz.

‘Corona.’

‘The Italian Eurodance singer?’

‘Strictly speaking she/he/them/they is Brazilian. But yes, that Corona.’

‘Baby, baby.’ I leaped to my feet with more zest than I’d shown in ages. ‘Bring a martini for the esteemed personage.’

‘She/he/them/they only drinks Corona beer,’ Liz advised, lowering her voice.

‘Furnish me with a bottle forthwith, fair lady, and stop dawdling.’

Excited, I approached the Corona booth with a fresh martini in one hand and an ice-cold bottle beer in the other.

‘May I join you?’

Corona looked up and said, ‘Slide your toosh in, baby, and hand me that piss.’

I dared not disobey.

Beer chugged and burped, Corona said, ‘Ah, cold chill down my spine. No no more tears, give me a smile.’

I showed my pearly whites and, in a sign of the times, asked: ‘And what pronoun do you prefer?’

Corona looked at me as if I was barmy. ‘I am She.’ Head tossed back, she sang, ‘I’m every woman. It’s all in me,’ in excellent imitation of Whitney.

‘I’m glad that’s sorted,’ I said, settling in my seat.

‘What about you,’ she said. ‘What pronoun do you prefer?’

‘We,’ I told her. ‘I have sixteen different personalities, like Sybil.’

‘And are you into men, women, or goats?’

‘Yes.’

Corona smiled. ‘I’m going to like you. Okay, spit it out. What do you want?’

‘I hear you’re the embodiment of the coronavirus.’

She preened, serious when an opportunity presented itself. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Help me destroy civilization as we know it,’ I said, putting my cards on the table.

‘You better have a good reason.’

‘I don’t like having four recycling bins.’

‘That’s good enough.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ I pointed out. ‘Trump has used magic to erect a forcefield that stops Mexicans and viruses from entering citadel US.’

Corona bristled. ‘Trump erections are useless. He is a powerful mage from the hellmouth, but he is no match for moi.’ She stood, resplendent in figure-hugging red latex catsuit. ‘Come.’

I came, dear reader. And then I followed her to elevator. It took us to the rooftop. The view as the sun set was across ragtag buildings to the Port of Los Angeles. A giant cruise ship, big as an apartment building, was about to berth.

There was triumph in Corona’s voice when she cried, ‘Behold.’

‘Is that what I think it is?’ I said, astounded.

‘The Diamond Princess cruise ship.’

‘From Yokohama?’

‘The same.’

I could barely believe it. ‘But that’s like the Demeter arriving at Whitby with Dracula’s coffin and the rats.’

Corona’s proclamation rang over the basking city. ‘Let’s party.’

Upon her word, the plague ship opened, the quarantined spilled forth in their thousands, and invaded the streets. And when the avenues and boulevards of the movie capital thronged, all stood still, took their places and waited.

Techno pumped out of nowhere. Corona stepped onto the parapet of the Hotel Cortez, spread her arms, and began to sing.

I want to roll inside your soul
To know the things you need and feel…

By magic, the world broke into spontaneous synchronized dance. A seething mass of perfectly timed movement, as if all of humanity had been practising its moves and awaited only this summons to show its expertise. The music was infectious.

Every time that you’re by my side
I can’t get serious, because you got me…

The refrain swept the width and breadth of LA, encompassing the high and the low— even Steve Bannon was momentarily light on his feet.

Baby baby, why can’t we just stay together, yeah yeah yeah…

After a while, I began to pirouette and gyrate, giving myself over to the spread of the Corona Virus as it dispersed nationwide, infecting all of North America so that in time the Un-united United States stopped tearing themselves apart and tripped to the light fantastic.

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The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. Of no fixed abode, he has subsisted in Istanbul, Rome, London, New Orleans and is currently hiding out in Melbourne. He partakes of four bottles of Bombay gin and four packets of Dunhill cigarettes a day.

His mortified amanuensis, Dmetri Kakmi, is a writer and editor. The fictionalised memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia. He edited the children’s anthology When We Were Young. His new book The Door and other Uncanny Tales will be released in May 2020.