Banjo Telemark meanwhile is a piratey arthouse motherfucker with three actual gold teeth and he carries a cane with a skull on it. Doc has put gloop into—like IN TO—my face to make my forehead more prominent and my lips fatter. She swears this stuff will dissolve in a couple of months and I will be the same but you know: Doc is Doc and plus also she has always wanted to rework my face into aspect ratios conforming to her personal triggers for sexy evilness so I may just never be the same and that is fine I was not so attached to the old me that I want to make a thing about it.

Frau Désirée is right now talking art and I say something about fashions in self-actualization, which is apparently a sort of low jibe one can throw in and she laughs and tells me I am yoshing. I do not know what I have said and nor does she and I guess that is probably what art conversations are like. She palms Banjo off on a geezer called Herr Doktor Doktor Paul. In high Swiss formal you give everyone all their titles in a line because missing one out is rude. Herr Doktor Doktor is old like fucking horse-drawn carriages. He must be a hundred.

Consider that for a second and understand what he has seen. He is old enough to have seen the actual Second World War as an adult. It happened all around him. Then he saw the moon landings and Vietnam and the end of the Cold War and now whatever the shit this new thing we’re doing is that is so utterly dick.

“I have dementia,” Herr Doktor Doktor Paul says. “Do you have dementia?”

“We’re going straight to that? We are not going to talk about how was my flight?”

“Did it crash?”

“No sir.”

“Then who has time to talk about it?”

“Hah.”

“I am ninety-eight years old frankly I barely have time to sneeze. I was at a funeral last month and the priest asked me if I really wanted to go home or just sit and wait for mine.”

“That is some hard-core priesting.”

“Catholic humor, it is edgy.”

“I’m an atheist.”

“Yes well, you try atheism when you can feel God pulling your penis.”

“I—wait what?”

“It is how God calls you home to judgment. He pulls you out of your body by the penis.”

“I was not aware of that.”

Herr Doktor Doktor shrugs: “It is not common biblical teaching.”

I like this guy. I ask how it is having dementia.

“It is fucking shit. Even if you’re rich and they cannot kick you out for saying the word penis. You know why it is shit?”

“I’m guessing because dementia?”