Story That I Did Not Write But Wish I Did

There's a magazine that I am always on the lookout for because it seems to be very rare in Australia. I love it, and could subscribe I guess, but I also love trying to chase copies down. My last copy I found at the bottom of a sale bin at the MCA. Anyway, here's a sample. From Re-Magazine, #6, Artimo, Amsterdam, Spring 2001, pp. 19-20.

I was driving home with a girlfriend. It was late at night and we were dead drunk. We couldn't stop laughing. We'd had a great evening, we didn't know anybody at the party. It had become a hobby to drive to one of the more affluent villages on the outskirts of Amsterdam. We went in search of a villa with a lot of cars parked out front and rang the doorbell. We always had a present with us. The empty box of a champagne bottle that Agnes wrapped with great care. If the owners opened the door themselves, we said we had the wrong address and left all smiles. If the door was opened by an attendant we went in and usually held our own for a couple of hours. We drank enough champagne to make us puke and gorged ourselves on the expensive catering. Till we got to talking to someone who was stone-cold sober and asked us doubtfully: "Who are you actually?" That night we'd held out for a long time. It was six o'clock in the morning and the sun was due to come up soon. We were one our way home. Agnes asked me what I thought of the drawing in the toilet. I said I hadn't been to the toilet. Agnes began to laugh and pulled a rolled-up drawing out of her handbag. This must be worth about $2000 she said. She smoothed out the drawing to reveal an original Keith Haring. She'd taken the drawing out of the frame and put it in her bag. On the paper backing in the frame she had, with the utmost precision her drunken state allowed her, made a copy of the Keith Haring with her kohl pencil and different colours of lipstick. Seated in the car we screamed with laughter, non-stop for 10 minutes. Laughing so much made it difficult for me to concentrate. I noticed that the combination of booze, continuous hysterical laughter and a smothered depression made me dangerously careless. The car swerved over the road. We kept laughing. The car came to a standstill against the railing of a bridge. We flew through the windscreen. Suddenly it was quiet. It had been a sultry day, the asphalt was still warm. I heard nothing. Only my own breathing. I saw that my right leg was pointing the wrong way, in a sort of slapstick pose. Clearly broken. Agnes lay directly in front of the car. She looked at her dress. "Fuck, my Prada." Her arm also looked rather slapstick-like. I saw she was trying to explain the fracture to herself. Suddenly she began to laugh hysterically. Her nose was broken and with every laugh a sort of blood bubble came out of her nostril. We waited, laughing for half-an-hour on the warm asphalt of the road till someone came to help us.