the art of forgetting

I've had three dates with two men since Friday and have also managed to finally finish The Cigar Roller by Pablo Medina. The story is about an old dissolute Cuban, lying paralyzed and unable to communicate aside from blinking, in a nursing home. The narrator is not at all likable, but his story is compelling. Good, complicated stuff.

Desire - for women, for money, for work, for respect - has made Amadeo an exile
from himself. He knows he has lost the narrative of his life and all he
has left is the flotsam of memory and language, which move inside him like
figments of the past... She remained distant, encouraging him to continue
with his snares that trapped only him, kept him from living his life - he was no
father, he was no husband. He was a singon, a fucker but not a lover. That is why she, the distant one, stayed away. Amadeo has lost all hope but for whatever comes to him during the day and flees from him at night. And language? It fills his head, makes him slobber, it churns around in his stomach, but it refuses to come out of
him. It lives on in his memory, tied to a scene or a consequence of
something he did or neglected to do. From the darkness of his room, Amadeo
Terra tries once again to think of the future, to see himself on the other side
of the river that divides life from death, but all he can visualize is the same
parched earth, the same circular roads, the cloud of dust that floats over him.
How does it feel to be whipped, to be touched? He cannot remember.