One never sleeps with a corpse, maybe except for one’s own spouse
after twenty years of trite upheavals in the castle. But what got me there,
one might ask? That always-at-hand cliché of the great loves of my life,
I suppose: Audrey Hepburn, Marcello Mastroianni, Max Schreck—all
as dead as the celluloid that keeps them alive. At least I can still be a little
adventurous from time to time, although each film marathon eventually
becomes nothing more than an inconvenience. Probably like everything
else in life after a while. Perhaps that is why humanity’s greatest torment
is, in fact, boredom. No wonder that one has recently switched to voice
couching. Coital vocalisations are the latest challenge. Maybe unethical,
but how fulfilling! At least for now.