Notes on Gunk
an essay on my name
erscheint auch in: narratif magazin | Ausgabe #3 - dirty
Mislav, the name I’ve borne since I was born betrays me — and not because it’s male. It bears an invisible imperative that has contracted over the ages; “Mislislav” is its original form, Think About Glory! it commands the bearer. And think about glory I do my best to do, as I mop the gunk off the darkroom floors, sweep the dusty angular stairs, lick 86 windows with a silicone wiper, drench the cum-and-shit-stained walls in chlorine, and vacuum the tiny green splinters of glass whilst I wait for the decay to dry. I rarely go clubbing, as the place needs to get cleaned up for its guests, and the local residents won’t do it. So during the week I clean up and on occasional weekends I play in the very same junkyard, preparing it for what I will get to scrub in the week that’s to follow, weaving my own threads of fate like an urban Lakhesis — your favorite alt-circuit oracle. It’s a cycle of life. My favorite parts are several: the first is the iridescent nail polish, as it chips away towards the weekend, allowing for a fresh coating by Sunday, shimmering like the eyes of a goat at the altar. If you see it as a sacrifice, it gets harder to write off as collateral damage. The second is phone calls with Dad, who’s in Stuttgart. We couldn’t connect over Carson or Siken, but we did get closer after I followed in his Gastarbeiter footsteps, so once a week he calls me and we shit-talk our respective German colleagues. They hate that I wear headphones during my shift, and I pretend not to hear as they mock the sweet language he taught me. The visceral sharpness of its sibilant slurries does not bear translation: German does not speak the blood-infused past of the tongues that it’s seized and melted in cyanide. Mislav. Me, Slav. Everyone sees it; it doesn’t escape me. Migration is the most expensive cut of meat, says my favorite Pearl and both of my Masters. Well, why don’t you move then, why don’t you go back where you came from, Elias asks me, knowing the reason might be as simple as free painted nailtips and a slice of good gossip. Dad hates nail polish, and all other forms of flamboyance. He hates that he hates it, for he still wants to love me — maybe that’s why he calls me more often — the reason escapes me. Sorry, I was saying. The third is the constant changing of gloves to keep my hands from becoming calloused and soil-covered like Dad’s. After prolonged usage, however, black latex finds its way into cuticles. So I take sick leave often to keep my palms as soft as my job would allow — after all, I mustn’t lose value on the modern hookup market. I’m a bad Gastarbeiter. Did I mention I’m also a writer? Did I mention I’m another one of the city’s starving artists, one of the way-too-many? Did I mention I’m more than a tired head, elbow and tongue deep in nobody’s toilet? Did I mention I’m skilled at mental gymnastics, to the point that I derive satisfaction when I watch as the glass-bejeweled gunk clogs the drain before I leave it to one of my colleagues to clean up? Did I mention that thinking of glory, like cleaning, is a repetitive, laborious process? Me, yes. Me, Slav. Finally, did I mention that “slav” (coming from “slovo,” meaning “word,” meaning people who speak the same language) stands opposed to “nemci,” meaning “mutes” or “mumbling people” — which, where I come from, is what we call Germans? My name is to remind me that I am a dirtbag. My name sticks to soil that no one is proud of, for its infants are held down inventing new countries. My name migrates with me (as people misread it), so now it’s Miss Love — and that is one thing I never am missing. (Didn’t I mention that my name betrays me?) My name’s but a word, and yet, it reminds me that language and glory are already one and the same: a paper-thin coating of glittery polish to cover the dirt that lies underneath. My name is a cycle of staining and scrubbing, and glory the glistening waste.
