Page 31 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
With horror I saw myself decked out in enormous cabbage−bows, not of ribbons, but of rubber in the form of pricks.
“It'll be a drooping, dangling bow,” added a mocking inner voice. An old man's droopy ding−dong. A bow limp, or impish! And in what hair? In an artificial wig or in my own dirty, curly hair?
As for my dress, I knew that it would be sober and that I would wear it with modesty, whereas what was needed to carry the thing off was a kind of mad extravagance. Nevertheless, I cherished the dream of sewing on a cloth rose. It would emboss the dress and would be the feminine counterpart of Stilitano's bunch of grapes.
(Long afterward, when I met him again in Antwerp, I spoke to Stilitano about the fake bunch hidden in his fly. He then told me that a Spanish whore used to wear a muslin rose pinned on at cunt−level.
“To replace her lost flower,” he said.)
In Pedro's room, I looked at the skirts with melancholy. He gave me a few addresses of women's outfitters, where I would find dresses to fit me.
1 “You'll have a toilette, Juan.”
I was sickened by this butcher's word (I thought that the toilette was also the greasy tissue enveloping the guts in animals' bellies). It was then that Stilitano, perhaps hurt by the idea of his friend in fancy−dress, refused.
“There's no need for it,” he said. “You'll manage well enough to make pick−ups.”
1. Translator's note: The term la toilette also refers to certain kinds of wrappings or casings, for example, a tailor's or dressmaker's wrapper for garments, as well as to the caul over mutton.
Alas, the boss of the Criolla demanded that I appear as a young lady. As a young lady!
“Myself a young lady
I alight on my hip...”
I then realized how hard it is to reach the light by puncturing the abscess of shame. I once managed to appear in woman's dress with Pedro, to exhibit myself with him. I went one evening, and we were invited by a group of French officers. At their table was a lady of about fifty. She smiled at me sweetly, with indulgence, and unable to contain herself any longer, she asked me:
“Do you like men?”
“Yes, madame, I do.”
“And... when did it start?”
I did not slap anyone, but my voice was so shaken that I realized how angry and ashamed I was. In order to pull myself together, I robbed one of the officers that very same night.
The Thief's Journal 29