Deciduous, A Novel by Gerry Mark Norton

1 Fish in the sea, you know how I feel River running free, you know how I feel Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel

Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, ‘Feeling Good’

…the ringing of the steel is sung in the stillness of the stone.

Russell Hoban, Pilgermann

2 1

You will close your eyes for the final time full of regret. This is a certainty and you must get over it. All those gaps between the living…so much squandered time…all those moments equalling hours equalling days spent picking your toes instead of your brain. This world is battering your skull, splitting fissures in your spirit, trying to crumble it and cave it in. To live and breathe in any semblance of a natural way will take all the effort you can muster, every day you ever live, and even that might not be enough. Every concept is just that, a concept, and if acted out by physical entities is still but an idea. We do not become anything more than human beings, holding all the potential we ever had, when we play out such models. Perhaps my younger self would be disgusted by what I’m about to say, by who I’ve become, like I always worried would and promised myself wouldn’t happen. Perhaps the me of yesterday would find looking at the me of today unbearable. But we must seize the day; point our cameras, aim our viewfinders and snap each shot we can before we are swallowed by whichever jaws reach us first. Life left alone is glorious, perfect. But we just can’t leave it alone. Each man has his very own pair of eyes that see very his own worldview, and if nobody else can see it then he shall have to try something else. Games of power played out by anybodies – those who chose the weight-throwing path. And each man eventually reaches the same conclusion: none of it matters, so long as I am at the top. It seems likely that any man who’d want to impose himself upon others like this is a psychopath, lacking the most basic empathy for his species that the majority of even the worst of us possess to some degree. Thus, we must conclude him to be even worse than the worst. But the persons themselves should not take all the blame. The way of the world – capitalistic, hierarchical, ego-led – actively encourages competition at every avenue – ‘you’re good, but you could be better’. It values and indeed esteems the individual, which isn’t negative in itself, but this is at the expense of everything else: every other person and living creature, and the planet itself; this while clinically smashing the slightest evidence of deviation from its homogenised mechanics, such as imagination, or basic sense of self-worth. But when everyone else is and always has been doing the same, how is anyone to know any different? How can a man transcribe a dream when the very word is absent from his lexicon? We are born creatures of nature but are instantly nurtured, shaped by what our senses receive. The world is still blobs of colour and sound, your body still fresh and baby-musty, but already they’re filling your world with nonsense, those big blobs – meaningless nonsense, because that’s what the world you’ve been brought into consists of (better to learn it now than later) – and I don’t mean the frivolities or the trivialities, which are valid and arise in the purest of lives, but the pretences, the charades. You are a novelty, so the topic of any room you are present in might often be you for a little while, but it soon wears off and they’re back to normal, and oh! the drivel they rabidly dribble: how are some other people we know or do not know inferior to us?; stop making mistakes and displaying traces of individuality and instead listen to what I would’ve done if I were you; I wish I had more paper

3 notes representing bank gold to exchange for things to decorate me and my domicile and distract me from the creeping hollow developing where my soul should be. People are shit-scared, though most of them don’t realise and in all probability never will. They live such self-serving lives because that’s what you’re meant to do – to fit in. They saw what happened to the boy who wore eyeliner at school. You must keep your head down and never raise it, let alone into the clouds through which the sun breaks every morning to illuminate the day. It will blind you. The sun is wrong, breaking through like that, only to light up the death-grey stone edifices and perfectly content people a shred of accidentally-revealed- personality away from turning their backs on you for ever. Thankfully, there are the few of us who question the status quo; who have the sheer audacity to ask a question or two; who dare to yell, ‘This is Me and this is what I like doing!’ It takes a very brave man to simply voice a thought, sadly. And yes, we do all feel dreadfully alienated and alone when among the throng, the ‘insiders’, but for good reason. The operating system of the world is deeply, profoundly sick, and it is our realisation of this, coupled with having traces of nature remaining, that produces such a reaction. If it hurts, there is hope. We are many, or at least many-er than we seem, but we are scattered, and countless never muster the courage to let the others know, to signal their existence, because they’re scared, or perhaps even because they never discovered that others existed, dying lonely and hopeless. If these paragraphs have stirred anything within you, have thrown open a floodgate or even simply flicked a switch, I urge you to stand up and be counted. I don’t mean in some militant way, but simply, please, let the world know you are here! Make your own noise, play your own tennis, create your own unique racket, using whichever tools ring the nicest to your ear. The more of us who chisel our names into the rock, the more likely some isolated one like us will happen upon our inscriptions and realise just how much resistance there always is and was to the endless leaden monsoon. So inscribe big, and inscribe often, and inscribe with your own signature, and each will be accompanied by an atemporal caption telling the reader YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I began this book with a rather bleak, pessimistic declaration, I know. But, as far as I see it, regret will surely surface at such a point; when the only place left to look is back, back on the things you did…and those you didn’t. Surely one cannot help but regret a life that will soon have no life left to live…aside from the hypothetical Man Who Was Always Fulfilled, who, in which case, having never known its absence, can actually never have known that he was fulfilled, having nothing to compare it to. And then there is the oblivious man…my point being that perfection is an unachievable ideal, regardless, but I’d like to reach that final day able to remember all the stuff I did do as well as the stuff I’ll now never get a chance to. So, here is a slice of my noise.

4 2

East London was enjoying the last few days of an early-October heatwave. The latch had coughed its confident click, today tinged with a cruel, skull-clattering knell that resounded all around me as I pulled the door closed and fumbled with my keys on the porch. In an instant I was engulfed by the heat; a repellent, overwhelming blast screaming at my immediately distressed body, silently searing each bare patch of skin, namely my toucan’s bill of a nose, my Desperate Dan chin, the rest of that freckled face, and my ginger’s-pale forearms and neck. It was stifling; the day would’ve rendered futile any attempt to focus on a single strand of joy. The accompanying daffodil-yellow light oppressed itself upon it all, the world outside my door, the rancid reality revealed with undeniable clarity; indefatigable, it showed naked the burningly ashen vista I’d stepped out into. Faces remained screwed into bumhole pouts; body odours unmasked, the armpit musk of passing boys and men nauseating, those belonging to the fairer sex beckoning, tempting tongue to lick and taste. Steadfast simian swaggers, semi-erections, each creature emanating, glowing, sticky, yuck; fearful bacteria contorted into gregarious gods, urban sex emperors; each action a dedication to a life indebted to the god in the sun. But none of that was important. I began the journey, each alternate pace seeming so very profound, the cowardly buckling clomp of Adidas on cracked concrete the pulse of the vessels of an organism that might today be finally freed to live its life in corporeal form, or eviscerated dishonourably. My faltering steps either funereal or nuptial, nonetheless a march towards an uncertain future that would nonetheless certainly result in the death of all that has become familiar during my tenure on this fetid, aborted rock. We are urged to be kind to the mistakes of our siblings, and so their continued pillaging of our hope goes unresisted. Any unions implausibly forged amid the carnage must as an ingrained insistence be varnished and varnished again; tarnished; embossed so that shit and dirt and semen do not scratch or seep into its ecstatic membrane, instead slithering down and settling into the putrefying carpet. We make figures of hate as we skate onwards; gap-toothed grins and frilly hems at the expense of flesh and that which it encases and any element ever leaving or entering. And this sealing off of men, insisting on their apartness from all else, is what leads us to stagnate, turns the purest springs septic. Because both you and him or her were born on and of this earth, and to reject it when you did was to sever any potential channels to further spiritual sustenance. You condemned the singular magic you shared to finitude; you sculpted a terminable love. Upon finding each other you were supposed to share your lives with each other, not discard them for a combined existence dependent on each other to survive. A cloud of doom loomed as I moved onward. Tugged at my innards. Some thing was impending. Ah! ‘twas but the succeeding moment. The linear life mapped of unintelligible mathematics: action need not breed consequence; or perhaps the opposite is true and all always knows all. There is no fear like being left alone to your thoughts, a unicorn steak thrown to an emaciated legion of wolves. Knowing your internal workings so well, it is

5 an effortless act to devise ingenious new methods of masochistic torture to add to the numerous chambers of the arsenal. One might even call it sadistic, such is your detachment; such are the frighteningly contradictory perceptions ephemerally dwelling within that single form. Your opinions oscillate with the tides of the moon or the saturation of your man-rag or some other mumbo-jumbo that maims your very essence till the resulting revolting heap before each reflective surface. There is such horror in hope, in the romantic; in the child who knows no better. It knows better things, yes, but not the watery succulence of the implanted breast inside of which such impossible imaginings it will be forced to shed. To survive in a metropolis you must first forget you were ever alive. I saw the glare off Her newly-dyed hot-pink hair before I realised it was Her. Smiles weren’t necessary, nor was even a smokemirror of gladness. Or the slightest acknowledgement of one another’s presence. We walked in the same direction but seemingly apart. She’d been waiting by the entrance to the most local patch of unraped-yet-fenced nature. We wanted to have sex with each other quite severely. We simultaneously spotted a wide wizened oak with the most perfectly apposite groove in its trunk, which I could’ve sat in as…but no…no. Besides, there’d be plenty of time for that in our future. An artist and an anthropology student in work hours; the place was deserted. We wandered through the woodland, our clothes snagging on blackberry bramble, the ground scattered with leaves of green and red and orange and gold, not to mention the irregular patches of daisies, daffodils and dandelions, plus we spotted some bluebells, which we resisted the urge to pick. Shaded by tall trees, the temperature was now at a comfortable level. Strands of Her shortish hair sporadically danced in light winds, my spirit whimpering and pawing at the dogflap to Hers. We surely both know everything already, but live ever in fear that the other doesn’t. So we must externalise it as best as we can with the insufficient compromise of a single mongrel language.

6 3

‘He only likes her ‘cause she’s prettier,’ or words to that effect. For so many years I could’ve, but three make such a difference when the elder has begun adolescence. I discovered wanking when I was twelve and it was fantastic! Revelatory. A novel new avenue to explore and indulge – compulsively. I’d look forward to getting home from school to my music magazines. Name a female singer- songwriter active in the early 2000s and I’ve reached teenage loin-nirvana to her glossy two-dimensional image. Then there was that poster of the WWF wrestler Lita. And, of course, the Friday night erotic thriller on Channel 5! And don’t Kylie Minogue’s feet look scrumptious! And Shakira’s. And Holly Valance’s. Each woman so wonderful, in her own…smorgasbord of ways. Like music and movies and poetry, like all art. Infinite combinations; such a glittering, limitless spectrum, and often holographic. Each element is unique, no matter how hard it tries to be otherwise. I love the honesty of the visually pure, the way there are some features that are – try as they might – impossible for a person to hide, and that’s what keeps me brimming with the love I feel so honoured to carry in this rather ungainly body of mine. But it seems more and more that these uniquenesses are only for the keen-eyed, and that the people in possession of such perceived blemishes on their mangled idea of perfection would be aghast at their visibility to anyone at all, and are only superficial anyway. Because, when their depths are sought, you – nauseatingly, crushingly – usually find only what you’ve found before. And so all that’s left to do is select your favourite fembot. And wait.

We’d now reached the heart of the small forest. I’d always imagined this event taking place on the ground, with us lying on our backs looking at the sky so that our minds might better tune into the intangible ideas-space, providing us with the necessary apparatus to articulate and manifest externally some vocalised approximations of the joys and pains of our souls. But as we approached the rendezvous, our little spot by the lightly trickling stream (the only place it could ever have taken place), we found that others had recently convened here too, bringing with them a bright white garden bench, and had either forgotten it or decided to leave it behind. We had a wee chuckle imagining them dragging it through the many mounds of foliage not yet mulchified by autumn rains, navigating the hanging twigs, prickly bushes and thriving nettles, then sighed in our separate ways and took our seats on this absurd Elysian throne, ready to begin our epic dialogue. For the first time that day we looked up from the ground and into each other’s pleading eyes, then shared a single luscious kiss that lasted many minutes, our snorts passionate (and breathless), every digit on my hand dug into Her torso, and Hers in mine. When She let go I could feel the indentations of Her nails in my back, and it done catched my breath.

7 4

She can only have been three when I first saw Her. Her brother pointed Her out to me in the playground after school as She climbed the benches by the wall where we’d play cricket with a plastic football using our hands locked into a double axe handle as a bat and I once played as a fielder and jumped for a catch and bounced off someone else and slammed my head into the brick wall and later puked up the back of the driver’s seat of a brand new taxi on the way to the doctor’s which was only up the road but I couldn’t bear to walk it. A couple of times a year I’ll get out the photo albums, and it’s sad to see Her as part of these books of concretised memories (tombstones?) My yearning for the purer time the pages tell of, to recapture that era of uninhibited experience and love in its simplest and arguably most profound form, is further marinated in sorrow by Her presence: a version of Her gone…gone…gone…and utterly unreachable. It is so very lovely that those happy times happened, but even though there is evidence before my eyes it still doesn’t feel real enough. I don’t trust my heart or mind to tell me the truth. Regardless, unreachable. Any attempts to recall are, and always will be, vague shadows. Imitations. Re-enactments by an unreliable narrator. And to reach for the ever-escaping hem can only further ground you in the petrifying certainty of the gown being forever gone. For Ever. Part of me wonders if it is worth anything happening if it cannot be eternal. I can be watching the most Hollywood-slick blockbuster imaginable and feel electrified. Yes, in the ways that master manipulators intend, but I mean something else. Love, that’s the word. Like you are opened, your core exposed, your petals juxtaposed in an expressive vogue. The fact of this lonely craving, like the poem that uses so few words but says everything: I would embrace anyone who would embrace me. I just want to be loved and to have found someone to love and to love them. Someone worth loving who thinks me worth loving. Someone opened, their core exposed, their petals juxtaposed in an expressive vogue. A self-inflicted wound of a human; blood oozing forth for me to suck the poison out of. I’ve not yet found anyone raw enough. Bulletproof vests and reflective jackets and so many polyester sweatshirts and woolly jumpers; such attire would be unnecessary if you’d only abandon the smog- soaked city and step to the side, to the island of equality, where everyone is different and there is effortlessness and sunshine. Barren of such blossoms, the world seems like a wasteland if you are seeking true love and empathy. And we all are. Sitting there alone on a Sunday night watching Transformers II, I think, If I can feel like this, feel so God-connected and unique, so incomparable, so perfect and pure, so exceptional a specimen in this world, then anyone who would refuse my love is a pitiable fool.

8 5

Indefinable smells float like notes of persephonic song above gardens, swirling allure, a scented silken aurora, then move along, for all these presents must be delivered in one night.

They are scattered, sporadic amid the misery, generally occurring when there is nothing else to cling to, when one of us is alone, hence me always and Her not always. Not tidal, but alwaysalwaysalways if we let it. The dastardly distractions we establish are dams to the truth, and damn them for that. Damn each other. Neglect or smother, and three fucking decades fucking pass and we never fucking want it at the same fucking time. But the moments occur, and Her words spray stardust into my eyes, catalysing the reawakening of the dormant fibres of Her left in my lungs, again erect, alert and in need of sustenance. I might penetrate Her tomorrow, but Jesus, how many actresses would I if the situation arose? What if right now Karen Gillan stood naked in my bedroom doorway, with her pale skin and fiery fur and gorgeous Inverness accent, hair loose and untamed, cosmetic-less, lips hungrily apart, beckoning me to please plunge that humongous appendage into her? Would I seriously refuse such sublimity, such arresting perfection? But with my love, I just want to know She’s there. I want to lie in Her lap and watch Buñuel movies; I want to hold Her hand and suck cake mix off Her fingers; I want to look into Her eyes and know that She needs me too. But She doesn’t need me.

As the aromas waft away a couple of copper leaves drop from next door’s oak tree, one being carried off on a brief gust, the other corkscrewing down on to the lumpy lawn. It watches us all the way as we lie on the trampoline watching the clouds shift their shapes and pass by, clear blue sky smattered with their lightgreyness, chatting whatever profound bobbins. An ethereal cello underscores, hiding in a cupboard with all senses aroused by the intimacy but not wishing to impose its bow upon the scene. I have risen on to my knees so She is behind me, and She enquires as to whether I might like a hug, but She was lying because it was a demand and She hugged me before I could reply and I was electrified…the scene when the blissful shared vehicle is hotwired into breath. In ecstasy I closed my eyes. Then my sister bundles out but without blame – the moment had to end. Then She was drunk two or three Christmases later with Her inhibitions and judgement reduced. I was repelled and averting my gaze from Hers, trying to reach my teacup behind Her to remove the bag, She swaying from side-to-side, and I simply snatched the cup from behind the swaggering figure and went over there. But She came over to hug me anyway, and I felt the same loinmindheartsoullifeloveall buzz. But this time I grimaced. She knows too many words to competently construct them into clauses with meaning. She hasn’t yet learned of the richer rewards of subtlety; that earthy shades slake selves better than luminous pinks and blues. And will, will, if She lets them. If She stops buzzing and be’es.

9 Today’s symposium was rooted in the now, and the future it would generate – totally. I brought along a label-less one-litre Lucozade bottle filled with tap water. Bees…Be…BB…hearsay. Without waiting to gather my thoughts, I began. “It’s so easy to keep things just so, just the way they are, and have been for however long. It’s not that I live in fear, but I don’t expect good things to happen. I don’t expect action to result in things being better. Everyone thinks I’m so selfish, but they don’t realise that I’m always looking out for everybody involved, everyone I care about anyway. I guess that’s the problem, that while I’m protecting everyone I’ve become this gnarled grotesque. And who could love that?” “I love you, I hope you know that. I always have. You’ve always been there, it’s so strange. I’ve lived so much of my life so apart from you, but I’ve always known you were just over there, you were always just there.” “Sometimes when we’d chat on MSN I’d think about that, that if you requested it I could reach you in ten minutes, five if I ran; that I could hold you any day if you’d let me. What you just said, though…I must be clear and honest with you: I’ve wholeheartedly hated you as much as I’ve loved you over the years. Because that’s exactly fucking it, how I thought you thought, because I’m always ‘over there’; even if I’m close I’m always far away in the distance, always across the fucking field, but would come to your heel at your beck and call. It’s as if you dabble with the others, prance about at the masquerade, because you know that once you’re all tuckered out, once you’re sick of all that, you can click your fingers and I will materialise, and then you can shove my face into your crotch and I’ll munch away until death. I’m just an option to you, and it goes against everything that I am. I’ve prayed for it to leave, my need for you, but you are so important, and I wish you’d stop acting like such a tit and see it, see how brilliant you are, and that what I see isn’t something that isn’t there but simply something you can’t see yourself yet.” “I know you think I’m special, but I’m not. I’ve tried to convince myself that the way you feel has some foundation, but I just can’t. You deserve something else, someone better…I don’t know. It’s not that I think I’m inferior to you. But clearly, surely, I’ve shown you over and over again that what I have to give isn’t enough for you?” “What you have is irrelevant: I want you, and anyone I try to believe is as special as you is but a poor substitute. You are everything. You are the only one it could possibly be. You are the link; you are the light that never dies. I was a child, a young child, puberty was a long way off, and I’ve now long been an adult, and I’ve never met anyone as remarkable, as utterly gorgeous, as perfect as you. I’m at a loss. I’m exasperated. That’s why I had to make this happen. A last hurrah.”

10 6

Bossy bitch I was. Demanded magic. Happiness. Mum and Dad part of some adult world a million light years away, not in my sight. Protecting me from the harshness – from the realities a lot of the time. The same old shite that currently pollutes my mind must’ve been raining currants down on them back then. My mother a year older than I am now when she had me. All the worries of the inflicted world, and you’re always muddling through it all, because that’s all you can ever do, and then POP! and you’re in charge of a whole other life. Selfish, really. But you shield them from it for as long as you can; assure them/lie that goodness can thrive in this hideous, insidious, idiotic, chaotic order. I often debate it – there after all being only one woman I could consider it with – and nearly always come to the conclusion that I simply couldn’t. Because part of me resents my parents for bringing me into this world, though they couldn’t have anticipated what I’d become (though it seems perfectly obvious to me, for though I am filled with hate, I only hate that which springs from hate). And I would either fashion my child into a terminally dissatisfied monster like me, or else they’d become another example of what I loathe and would have to face the agony and humiliation of being detested by their own father. I started school and for some reason he already had. It could’ve been the day before, now that I think about it. Or perhaps it’d been weeks, and perhaps it was because he happened to be passing or perhaps he had no friends but Miss chose him to look after me on that first day and we became bestest friends. The two cleverest in the class, and at that age you’re not resented by your peers for it, their minds vibrant and free. Children are glorious. I watch my young cousins now and feel like breaking down. I’m so proud and want to be their disciple, like hipster cunts relocating solely to be close enough to an artist to fawn over them. I want them to teach me how to become like them again. How do you forget everything your elders have taught you? How do you let go? So there is my best friend and I, then me and my sister meet his sister and they become best friends, then me and him fall out in our early teens but She remains my friend. That’s the short, simple truth of it – and of course, if you put two and two together and work it out from there, the long, lovely, complicated, clichéd, desperately romantic truth of it. She is my angel throughout all of the this all and all of the that, for I know She’ll always be there for me. I don’t doubt it. I never have. An instance, a total entity, plotted; my life, all my interpretations of the universe. And being that none of us experiences the same life as any other – no matter how similar they seem they are never identical – one must conclude that we each live in our very own universe, mapped out by our minds from some unseen satellite; some acataleptic elsewhere.

11 7

Guilt compulsorily induced because my labours aren’t manual, aren’t grabbable. Simply because you can’t bloody see them. Well, consider me a guide dog and trust me, then. I’m no liar. Materialists aplenty afoot. I labour plenty, I labour lots, I labour too much. To bother with a single one of you is a perpetual struggle; everywhere I go there is another one to deal with. Making Orphean turns erodes certain tender nooks that I simply cannot synthesise and replace. A patch of dark matter painted white does not deflect the blast – believe me, I’ve tried. So, with this in mind, have faith in the strength of the sprite working my mind’s levers; that the chronicles he or she carves are, obvious to you or not, providing a service. S/he is always in employ: halting the mind-hollowing by innumerable imperial termites, preventing them from boring into and nesting in the bubbling slop of decomposing brain cavities. Window cleaner; sewage worker; gum chewer; private jester with sparse quarters in the dilapidated cubiform bungalow situated like an erect nipple on the hilltop; unilateral dismembered counsel of councillors. Be thankful – I haven’t yet machetespreed a shopping mall, after all. To recover the skeleton as opposed to remaining a bag of bones. To assemble a circulatory system from found materials. A frankfurter without the opossum sphincter. A process not of refinery but of improvarchitecture, freeform prose, proselytise an alternative lawless existentially-responsible ligature, saturated fat strands coiled around a beating slab of oxygen, semi-automatic revolver, like the world’s safest seatbelt which is entirely necessary as you are presently in the front seat of the world’s highest rollercoaster at its absolute peak and you…will…dive. What is the moon? I look up at it tonight and it’s a perfect circle in the sky. Perfectly circular. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of you. Worrying that the twist in the tale is not ‘they were all in on it’, but that Christof was an amalgam; the single lie forged of a confederacy. Solely to lie to me.

It was after a period of recuperation (the farewell of my first love). Must’ve been winter: time was insular and dark. A suspension of living; holding your breath and waiting for the sun to crawl out again. Dicking about on MySpace in the living room, playing ‘The Shock Humour Short Story Game’ with Andrew. She sat beside me and my elbows retracted and I tensed and introverted outwardly inwardly. And a Gentleman has stolen my voice! My tear ducts puff in a smile now. What’s going on, eh? Months later we talk about things – She’s with somebody now – and She in passing mentions there being lot of sexual tension between us back then. Ah. The mystery revealed. Too late. That feeling I felt was the feeling when you both feel the same feeling but are afraid to perforate the bubble of security and familiarity and dive into the unknown outside by acting on this feeling. This feeling this feeling this feeling. And you forget each time that of course they feel the same – that’s what makes up the feeling! The reflection; the shyness Swingball of eye contact amid a swelling love… Run your fingers through their hair; playfully punch them on the arm; clumsily prod your fingers at their crotch. But, for heaven’s sake, do something.

12 8

But (there is always a but). Phantasmagorical, allegorical, horrible life. Mush together, feign untetheredness because the walls aren’t combed smooth but wiped away – removed. The chambers become pots for chemical chains. I’ve kissed Her cheek; it was soft like womanly skin. And the way She resisted was the softest way of resisting. The snacks weren’t Mediterranean, I lied about that part. To mask it ever so slightly. She ate quirky meats while we watched distressing television…I don’t remember much of it, only that Satan was there and I was bored. There was no heart there, just superficial imagery; juxtaposed and heartless.

Similar chiselling to human faces, though it’s totally irrelevant. Extraneous. What makes Her different is that Her apparent warmth isn’t there solely to support Her vision of Herself being a totally awesome, down-to-earth person: She, like, actually is. It’s clear as crystal, in a senseless. This attachment I have to Her. But there are so many interweaving threads. An emotional cat’s cradle. Interlocking links. How long is a piece of string? What measuring apparatus are you using? If She looked any different She wouldn’t be Her; however She looks at any millisecond in time is Her and therefore exactly right. Lost your hair and limbs? Come home to me and I promise to nurse you until the day one of us dies. Anyeverything is you, whatever anyeverything is. It’s a word I just made up, just for you. You are every river; every anatomical aspect of every single leaf on all the trees in the world, and no matter how close to my eyes I bring any one of them, it is still your beauty it possesses; your voice soars within every rainforest; on uncharted lands across the globe and beyond every star and frequencies never to be discovered is my love for you. This could be fanciful sentimentality, but it isn’t. It is realism. It is my mind as concise as I can make it and shared with you, and it is hopelessly devoted to the wait for you.

13 9

An acorn dropped into a puddle will make a little ripple. We are born as immortal caterpillars and build our own cocoon tombs; reduce our lives to little more than designing epitaphs for our headstones. Life is a lattice of fractals. Do we stray from the path or lay our own tracks before us? I feel an angry oyster uncoil and squirm in my stomach, a caustic spume. I want to project but my broadcasts are dampened by net curtains dirtied from their daily dirtying by goons going gaily about so that they may come back. I can’t believe this in any way constitutes a life complete, or any person’s potential fulfilled. Or that it is up to me to decide, but I’ve been regaled with tales of laments of the deathbed, and all are consumed by the same regrets, longing for second chances at what they were too cowardly to carry out: not enough time spent with loved ones; the ceaseless and futile pursuit of money, even if they had what they knew was more than enough – by starting off thinking that the end would justify the means, they made that (never)end the means by which they justified their continued existence. And this story will repeat ad infinitum: it can’t possibly cease while a capitalist economy exists; and each person has untold potential, but the fear of pennilessness is more than enough to abruptly and entirely eradicate all that, making yet another man a helpless, tiny part of an all imposingly colossal and impossible to overcome. It is easy to manipulate so many individuals when they are surrounded by others either deathly part of it all or just as worried and clueless as they are. Imagine it like a population clock – life, death, life, death, life, life, death, slowly increasing – only it’s death, death, death, death; every second another cluster fall into the event horizon.

She’s drifted away again. Busy beginning a new chapter. Can’t blame Her. Silly girl. We could traverse the globe, share our minds, explore our universes together. Perhaps they’d even merge. But it’s not to be yet. Writing summat on the whiteboard. Our bums not just touching but rubbing against each other in sensual friction. Me beginning puberty, She delightfully puppy-fatted and pre- all that psychological carnage. Still the chubby hippie, still unsullied and fresh, a mess but childishly so, and I wish I’d made a lifemask of Her face back then to torture myself with at times like these. Partially acquiesced but hanging from Mount Rushmore and presumably this will not last for ever. Foresight, dreamview, or recollections of a boy gone walkabout? Patchouli, mellow Bjork, dimmed lights, coconut water sipped from the shell, unsheathed lovemaking; before a bonfire we sweat and pretzelate seemingly as one to the child we made, nodding off in its cot across the room, so content in all the love it is surrounded by. And this child will never want for anything but to follow this example of a life of harmony and love, not scrabbling agitatedly for its partner but always aware of the warmth of its soul, brought into the world via the only certain beliefs of its loving parents: what is Right. True Will. I will smile at my child standing behind the fast food counter if I know their soul is content. Won’t I? Yes, I will. I will I will.

14 10

St-st-st-stuttering, trying to catch greenflies in a net. Having lost my focus, my vocal faculties, I find myself spouting clichés, emptiness, sentiments I don’t even mean. I stop myself, nauseated, and take some deep breaths. We are holding hands, our arses parked on a blanket on a beach somewhere on the Suffolk coast. We aren’t exclusive; we aren’t technically inclusive of each other. ‘Fear of commitment’: like the fuckwits in dreadful American dramas we wade through the puss and prick and are somehow, for some reason, never satisfied, and always end up leaning on each other’s shoulders for support. During our long eras of separation I invariably hear that she’s found someone new. My eyelids droop. I gave up giving a crap about Jane after finally growing tired of her telling me about some new guy she was ‘in love’ with every six months (it must’ve been literally ten times) – I hear she’s still with that same one after three years. But, y’know, it is testing. All these sexual satiators will play finite roles in Her life; like all fruits, no matter how succulent, they are perishable. I’d be tempted to call Her deluded if I didn’t know Her so well – far better than She does. I don’t think She’s found Her way in yet. She said as much Herself. As deep as Her attraction to me was or wasn’t, it just didn’t feel right. Hopefully the implication was that She wished it did, but it didn’t, and there was nothing She could do about it. Which is fair enough. It was chilly beside the sea, on our littoral perch. The winds were harsh; sharp salty air blew like jagged satin into our faces. We wore our biggest coats with hoods and gloves and scarves with me in my Caterpillar boots and She in Her DMs and we’d clomped down the steps on to the shingle and crunched along until a couple of feet from where the tide lapped the land. From the presence of each other we drew strength. Each other’s foreverrock. She rested Her head on my arm as we watched the waves. She gave the greatest warmth; it started as a small ball inside me, then circulated around my whole body, and She drew warmth from that in turn, and I from that, and I’m sure anyone else would’ve seen us as a glowing orb in the fog. Could it all be but a convoluted contraption so elaborate that it disintegrates (to those none who can detect it) all preconceptions of what is logical, evolved to more sneakily seek out the most suitable candidate, the most beneficial donor? And could all systems have origins in this compulsion to ensnare? Some of us never find what we are looking for…and spend our entire lives searching. Perhaps I could shape a reality tunnel that didn’t involve Her; convince myself that I could find what She gives me elsewhere, in someone else. But even writing those words has made me wobbly and tearful. If loving Her is wro-o-ong…then rightness is a bag of shite.

One time She licked mud.

15 11

We’d played a game at the Johnsons’ house for Halloween called ‘Wrap the Mummy’, which involved teams covering a consenting member head-to-toe in toilet paper. Now I can’t even remember if the aim was efficiency or speed – no one really cared. We thought it’d even more of a hoot if we played it on Maggie’s birthday a couple of weeks later, completely out of context. During the assemblies of our fivesome I’d generally man the camera and maintain a dictatorial directorial role to whatever I captured. I was watching some of the old home videos again today, the two that started it all, incredibly over nine years ago now – ‘Roboman Easter Special & More Pointless Activities’, then the original tape, ‘Fake Fall Time & Other Pointless Activities’ – and I tried to ‘wrap’ my head around that young girl there being the same person… We are constantly renewing, and I don’t mean discarding entire past selves as redundant, but becoming more; being added to by the line of time and the experiences appended to it, and in each moment ‘this is a new self’ can be truthfully stated because it is a self that has acquired more parts. I’ve made it sound mechanical and quantifiable, but intend only clarity. Of course, we lose so much as well. We become inhibited and virtually incapacitated by ideas of power and sex. Being told by our elders ‘it is time to grow up’ and pointed and shunted in the same direction as everyone else is understandable, because the pointers themselves were shunted there and told it was the only correct way by those before them. People assume a resignation to stifledness and indefinite stress is something they should prepare their children for as soon as possible – or rather, ‘once they’re an adult’. Absolutely reprehensible – ‘Bid your Self farewell and welcome keeping the melancholy at bay until the sweet relief of breathing one’s last breath.’ And in Her I already see the seeds of what disappoints me so; the craving for attention and approval, whenever, wherever, however it is obtained. And to me it seems like a distraction, more than anything: while the senses are gorged the thoughts are ignored. And it seems to be the same with everybody – most people, if pushed, would I think admit unhappiness, or at least dissatisfaction with what their life has become: too many compromises had to be made, too many dreams discarded to move forward. We reminisce every time we meet, so I know they all remember. I fear/know that it is because they all resigned themselves to everything a long, long time ago, and so, having long-accepted how disappointing adult life must be, fashioned boiler suits and decorated them with brooches and other brittle trinkets to protect and distract them from the dank devastation their predecessors perpetuated and their peers perpetuate presently, prolonging this crippling tradition. And so many of us feel like this, not realising that if we would only refuse it then it would not be such a way. Stop hitting yourself…stop hitting yourself…stop hitting yourself…stop hitting yourself… If I could paint I’d solely paint portraits of people I know. People whose pasts I was a part of too. A universe can be told in a single look. I’d feel privileged to be given the opportunity to attempt to capture an occurrence so unique; to foreverimprint a moment with a fist clenched around a stick smeared with coloured muck.

16 Our present selves are like the wreckage of our pasts; we wear the scars in our minds as our chubby childhood cheeks are lost in the gaunt, elongated, funhouse-mirror faces we grow and get stuck with. When I was at college a boy commented on my ‘interesting chin’ – to my friends a few seconds after I walked away. But they told me, so he can spin on it.

17 12

The swimming pool echo…the faraway foreverlasting chorale of a flock of children shrieking in delight…high-ceilinged, white and blue, tiled on all sides…a whistle trills like a soaring mountain bird…the water ever so slightly stinging your eyes and throat before you’ve even taken a dip…the exhilarating crescendo as you exit the changing room and pad down the corridor, listening to your feet hit the floor, holding your daddy’s hand, to the doorway marked POOL ONE…

It isn’t here; it isn’t somewhere in the sky. It is from some unseen cleft made by a subtle knife. My teary, gunky eyes mean my view is blurry, but I can just about see how virtually everything in this room is a depressing off-white. But I am not depressed. The only light comes from the strips in the corridor, which provide plenty as there is no door to speak of, just a foldy plastic thing that is clearly never moved – I can make out an elaborate, dusty cobweb connecting it to the wall. I am sure the beds either side of me are unoccupied. I am alone. Such an embarrassing turn of events. Mown down by a big red bus. I don’t clearly remember it happening but I know it did, though I can’t for the life of me imagine how. I strain my eyes downward and see all sorts of shit coming out of me: wires and tubes and strips of tape and bandage – basically every piece of peripheral medical paraphernalia I’ve ever seen on Casualty or ER. I feel phenomenally fatigued so decide not to move just yet. There are plenty of other things to be getting on with, for instance I’ve realised, at first noticing his unmistakable shadow on the grubby off-white floor, that another person has appeared in the room with me – it’s my dad. They were all here earlier, but only he has returned. He doesn’t have his bag or anything. He looks paler than usual and very tired. I make greeting eye contact but don’t try to speak, because to be honest I’m not properly awake yet. I feel like if I reached to touch his hands my fingers would pass through them. I recognise his behaviour though, or lack thereof. He seems switched off, not moving like himself; when he walked in it didn’t seem like him travelling towards me, but a cargo being transported from A to B. I recognise them from myself, when I said goodbye to my grandad, his dad. The looming presence of death almost repulsed me from his remaining life. Such a horrid, strained procession – relationships are personal, but there were people all around me. I didn’t want to play a part in a play; I wanted to suffer and mourn and get through losing this person as a presence in my life. In an instant this passes through my mind, and I attempt to speak but can only emit a low rasp. Dad looks up, replacing the glasses he’d lifted to rub his eyes, and a pained smile meets mine. ‘I luh you da’ey,’ I manage to croak. His eyes flash acknowledgement and tear up, but I barely hear what I say, my ears congested, my head throbbing as if blocked with heavy treacle. ‘I love you too, son. With all my heart.’ He strokes my hair, matted with sweat and dried blood. ‘Mummy’ll be back in the morning with Maggie. Everyone else wants to come and see you too.’ I screw my upper lip and manage to lift my hand in a vague dismissive wave. ‘Just mu’ and Ma’ie.’ That lockjaw spare heart of mine kicks into gear, the one that grows colder. I can’t cry and things aren’t suddenly clear: I am as crippled as ever, only now the

18 incapacity has spread to my outards. I feel like The Wire’s Omar, only I can see my fate before me. If someone turned that telly over there on the same old shit would spurt out; someone somewhere is listening to and enjoying chart music from the worst decade in the history of popular music; a fat ugly stockbroker is snorting coke off his own knuckles in a toilet cubicle in an overcrowded bar somewhere in the city; quasi-humans are partaking in heated discourse on money and politics like they mean anything. And I have seen the light, but have no one to share in the radiance. And what now? And what of the future? Am I to spend the remainder of my earthresidence enduring a fate like Mme Raquin’s, watching the same horrors continue their rampage without being able to do anything about them; incapacitated, trying to share a look with my distraught mother, trying to communicate to her that it wouldn’t be murder, please believe me: I want to die, please God let me die. Or do I pray for six pairs of arms so that I might wield that many blades? And all that my life has become is linked to that veiny meat tube and those tender hanging globes, like coins in a skin sock. Life might be pointless now…I don’t know yet, I haven’t tested the hypothesis. ‘I must urinate, son. Be right back.’ He walks out in that walk that my sister inherited; it feels like hospital. I’m aware that it’s probably very busy elsewhere, but as well as being a comfort this fills me with a familiar dread: I have nothing in common with a single person here. Because this is somewhere. Wherever I trudge, it’s certain: I hate all of you. Wherever I go, there I am, and I have no friends, no people I connect with. My books sell reasonably well – I’ve written several, all of which were picked up by a publisher eventually. I’ve written for TV and stage, had a screenplay optioned, recorded over a hundred albums. But I’m still me after each thing. I’d still go home at the end of the day, whether it was still with my parents, or the three years with my intolerable uni housemates, or the place I eventually bought for myself by the sea. However many people were anywhere, I’d still want to keep my head down; get away from them all as soon as possible and disappear into art, the only love that never died. The only thing worth anything was within me. The only person I could connect with was myself because there was so much I loved. I had a childhood, a history, with people in it, and I’d naturally smile and have fun and utilise my imagination because I had friends. From nought to eighteen I had friends. But once college was over I’d realised a lot, and the more I grew the less point there seemed in bothering. I still would, and believe it or not with an open mind, but would always leave disappointed. It consistently resulted in more negative than positive, so I stopped. I lie there blankly for a while, not that I had much means of animation anyway. Dad’s silhouette appeared again as my eyes were drowsy slits. He drifted elegantly in through the doorway, then came and sat back down beside me. A nurse dashed past in the corridor, which blew the slightest breeze into the room. And this breeze carried my father’s scent till it tickled its purplered perfume like silky lingerie into my left nostril…baffled, I opened my eyes properly. It wasn’t my dad at all: it was Her. I sniggered. ‘I thor’ you were my Da’. Mussa bin the beard.’ She beamed Her dazzling, heart-stopping/racing smile at me. She reached for then touched and stroked my hair, matted with sweat and dried blood. Electric surged through my body but I couldn’t move the stupid thing to embrace Her. A

19 tear trickled down my cheek. I basked in the womanly warmth of Her company a little while longer before I asked, ‘why are you here?’

20 13

I want to be concise here: yes, I feel self-aware, and in control of each faculty. I’ve never been able to wink or whistle, but the dexterity of my tongue was once complimented with the words ‘akin to a strange and sensuous ballet performed by a delicious pink mouth-slug’ by a poet lover of mine, though he was slightly sexually deviant now that I think about it. I have been penetrated by eleven men thus far, this is true, but not all of them felt entirely correct. Not all instances of me being penetrated were accompanied by the whole of my heart. Technically, if you were so inclined, you could consider penetrations involving four of these men as…let’s say unwanted. I didn’t want them to happen before or during, and presently in the afterwoods wish immensely that they hadn’t. But they always have. It often feels like life is just happening to me; that I’m not an active participant, not really. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m observing, like it’s some other thing, over there. One cannot ever be whole: this is the conclusion I’ve come to. I try to be concise in expressing what I have to say, but have realised that words can only ever deliver a scrap of the whole meaning, the meaning that I feel in my breast, and that even I can never be one-hundred per cent sure of anything I think, say or do. Perhaps I’m deceiving myself? I loved with all my being the third man who penetrated me. Each time we consummated our love it was far beyond his simply inserting himself into me…the movements we made together shuddered my soul, and I’ve not felt so alive since our last embrace… But I took a step back when he penetrated someone else; took a lear look at our time together. And in doing this I saw how my ideas about who and what I was were nothing but linguistic constructs, describing the ideas without actually being the ideas themselves, and that I could choose to be someone completely different if I wished. I’d drawn a picture of a painting, and even taking a photograph would only have captured the colour of it, not its innateness, not its truth. Unless I am all and whole and am sure of this fact I cannot discern a nebula from an amoeba. I look at things far more delicately now. I am careful not to thrust myself into situations, so that I have as little influence on them as possible. Observing life in this manner has changed me very little. My life is much the same. I’ve started to watch, truly notice, the conduct of people, the way they communicate with each other, and have observed a phenomenon I can best describe as ‘social buffeting’, whereby individuals let themselves be battered about by the ever-shifting prevailing mood or most assertive neighbour’s bark, without the slightest dissent, and as I watch them listening and attending to it all it is almost like I can see internal bruises sprouting, and their eyes betray feelings of such fear and loneliness, but they are convinced of it simply being the human condition, and that adding to the empty words the people around them are speaking is the best tool we have to shield us from this certainty. But, like I said, my life has changed very little. Moments of clarity are sporadic, really, and most of the time I have my head sunk into my neck like a turtle, to avoid the smog of alienation. I recognise the toxins in the air but haven’t any antidotes. Not one. I am a human, after all, and am just as much a part of Them as everyone else. Observing the distressed people is horrible, really very sad, but the instincts that subtly reveal themselves once in a blue moon to

21 someone like me – someone who is looking – kindle a hopeful flame flickering somewhere inside. I don’t think anyone wants the lies. Hopefully someday we’ll all say no.

22 14

Highlights of Her appearances in the home movies:

Dank autumn early evening aura illumined by the merry cackles of the fully clothed cherub-faced preadolescent delightlet as I playfully soak Her with a hose. ‘MOOOORE!’ She toots.

Prostrate in mid-air wearing an oversized riding helmet as She tries to climb off a horse.

Every song on the tape I made for Maggie’s birthday rouses a merry jig, aside from Nick Cave and Kylie, which incites twirling followed by a ballroom dance. Standard.

Buying my sister a bear called Roseanne that shouts ‘Happy Birthday Maggiiiieeee’ in Her voice each time you press its stomach.

Cushion fighting with Andrew.

Raving to Roni Size/Reprazent in my bedroom in the dark.

Sitting in my bed, telling the camera, ‘I stink like poo’.

Freshly crimped hair.

‘The Fist’…

Getting biffed with a sleeping bag by Andrew.

Party poppers!

Circling the birthday cake like fatty hyenas.

‘I’m here for the blue cheese!’

Planking (though we didn’t call it that back then) in Her chicken coat for no discernible reason.

‘How does it feel to know that you’re in mortal danger and there’s no escape?’ ‘A bit like…toffee.’

Building an assault course on the lawn as a thinly veiled excuse to whiz each other about in the wheelbarrow. Commentary: ‘right, you’re being pushed!’

Being an incredibly indiscreet and scene-stealing extra.

Being hunted and gunned down by my sister, then having Her ears stolen (She is a rabbit) as She collapses on to the grass and into a very unsubtle dead pose (tongue lolling, limbs spread out like a starfish).

23 Accidentally jacking Maggie’s jacket.

Standing fully clothed – yet again – while being slowly saturated by the ‘shower’ we fashioned by dangling the hose over the frame of the swing. Might as well, eh?

Andrew had given up before it’d even started. As we sang along to the appalling pop rap on the stereo, She really was trying but still sucked so hard, and Andrew was undoubtedly playing up to the camera I was capturing it all on but still, he understood it was a lost cause. My room was newly decorated then; no computer even. So clean and empty. Elmo wasn’t even alive yet. We had such a larf though. Maggie, with her patient methodical approach, could’ve been a professional embalmer back in the day, I do decree. Meanwhile Andrew had been made to look like a budget armoured Rambo, She eventually just binding a big white bog roll belt around his torso. ‘Bite on that,’ She says, as She wraps a piece around his face. Maggie’s patient mannequin Lorraine mentions how she feels wrapped up in her life; Andrew counters this with the declaration that he feels ‘like a piece of BEEEEP’. Coasting to an easy win, Lorraine dances a wee mummified boogie.

She really did lick mud: ‘She has been dared to lick the floor.’ Then She licked the floor. Mud caked on Her nose, chin, and funnily enough Her protruding tongue, She giggled mischievously, Her eyes squinting in frenzied jollity, then ran off indoors to wash the wet dirt out of Her mouth.

And what about…

24 15

An indisputable intellect. A wordsmith, a wordwarper, twisting them into new contortions, and if bones snap at the point of impossibility then so be it, their brittle finitudes don’t belong amid such elasticity, quantumillionaquarianmach! Tame incubo tributaries; equine brine of decline. One two three four nine Nine NINE. Hunchback leapfrog! Ride the horsey! Ride the piggy! Tiddly little clan. Clandestine creepers; put out the MI9 feelers; keep your eyes…peelered. Even in dormancy this flea impersonates a Clanger. Such clangour. Bumbling, Zadie said once. Some girls like that. Then again, some like an overlong schlong and a sock in the jaw. Most don’t want for the more I have to share. The weltschmerz hits me in welts; cumbersome whacks sometimes miss the back and sting yer right in the Babylonians, as it were. Vacuum nozzles set to Super…Suck… And then you are forced to slurp a six-pack of oil drums, and if you don’t sup ‘em now then we’ll freeze ‘em as lollies for later. It is Your Choice. Those first vocalised grunts; a Fade getting to grips with its capabilities. Chatting air I do declare. Oozing evaginated sphincter lips blowing summer fruits into your squidged trifle. The spice of modern life. My community service to be the blood of the unicorn. Scorn is the porn of the disheartened. Failed writers could’ve written it better…but they didn’t. Anyone could’ve done anything else…but they didn’t. But no one else could’ve been you…but you kept you hidden. Nullified, your star collapsed, became a black hole, and slowly sucked away at your matter and time until your ultimate implosion into a single impacted dot of hate. Worthless cunt.

Tangerines so succulent, submerged in that jelly. But, like a toddler’s grubby stubby little fist dug into it to reach the juicy segments at the bottom, somehow it doesn’t seem as appetising any more. A once ambrosial prospect. To edify Edwin, hee of thee Saganfavoured dust, a degree of perceived unspoiledness is integral to implement the viscouslooking view of the individual. Perhaps in this I possess an element of the detestable, what with my slicing, my piecifying of what has no seams. Tattoo a thick black outline around each star in the sky. It doesn’t get to such an extreme, I just like to be clear and not let it be tainted by the hatred. There are still fumes trying to choke me with each intake of breath, and I am perpetually scared. Permit me a pen so I can box it up and do so again.

25 16

The worry balls circle each other, grind against one another. Four of them. In the grimy cupboard they chose to inhabit sporadic warning jawclamps resound uglily, like a kitten’s skull knocking against a porcelain lavatory neck. A grand nature shocked through the sky. The metal orbs, imbued with visions of freedom, cleansed, with no taut skin left to apprehend their parasitic shared skeleton, shot apart as cannonballs, each hammering a helix of scarlet vapour on to the celestial blue canvas, a-tacking a notice to the wall that simply read I AM HERE. The attempts to recover long-scrapped leaves were a slovenly praxis, painful to watch. Nature abhors the vacuity of a vial of vitality becoming a useless appendage, a polyp on all its fine work. Mother deplorably bore a big batch of brash brutish bastards, one of which kicked a hole straight through the ajna of her self-portrait and declared a new era where each man is God in His own image. Voided bowels of melon-created craters in the loam, thought lost amid the annals until dusted-over nooks sprouting vast tomes documenting each tug of every wank of all men are fatefully uncovered. The archaeology of the aristocracy. And as gulls flap this turgid phlegm into heavetillpukeishly pungent cyclones, those left uncontaminated are instead enclaved and driven to semantic dementia by this vile violating cloister; this dehumanising dungeon; this nowhere-land of the damned. Nevertheless, the fumbles, often feeble and eventually doddery and pitiful even to those who love him, do have an unspoken dignity. That the efforts are few and far between does not detract from the fact that this buffoon actually tried. This reprehensible little weasel failed again and again, but that’s only because he tried and tried again. He gave up in-between, of course, but those eras of inertia were necessary to do what he always knew he would, which was try again. And you hated those periods of lethargy for then he was your brother. Also worth mentioning is that for weeks you can be glancing those artichokes every time you walk through the kitchen, not knowing what to do with them, plus cooking is so boring anyway, so though you feel guilty that your neighbours gifted them to you and they’re going to waste you’re still more likely to wait until they rot then throw them away than find a recipe involving them; you can be glancing those artichokes for weeks, and then one day you pass them and they’ve blossomed into the most magical purple flowers, and you’re so glad you did nothing with them.

26 17

It is strange that for periods of time I’ve forgotten about you completely. Confident that our elastic tether would always remain, often stretching (sometimes unbearably) but never snapping, I’ve roamed to netherregions and neverregions. Gone so far astray. I once made another my whole life. Her and hers the only cake I’d eat. A year and a day, then a reassembling of the dejected membrane of my existence. Shameful, but once recovered I’d learnt nothing except that I’d do it all over again for someone else. Hence. Ever. Everhence. The power pulsates perpetually, sometimes reaching scope with its oscillations, and only then do we take notice. Mostly a murmur, a cellar door obscured by a dusty grey curtain, the beat becomes tribal on occasion, synapses finger-snappin’ and toe-tappin’ with a diamondhard ignition. Words are for agreed things so how do I explain? Hmm: take yourself to orgasmic nirvana; picture yourself as one with the very concept of love. Content in every conceivable dimension; surfing along the string. Your eyes slits of ecstasy. Warm breezes, sleeveless attire, all hair a tangle. Beyond androgyny, your partner is all, is you, is them. Two and all and one. To fully embrace the scene you open your compassionate eyes saucerwide, letting all senses free to breathe. The sweet sickly stink of rotting flesh stings your nostrils. Your love is dead. What fabric are you spun from? All is colourless, without division. There is nothing to discern. As if allthingsgood collapsed into itself. Encompassing all, judging none not, all was worthless. What is now? What truly is? Does it still count as life if I can perceive but there is nothing to perceive? There isn’t the shallowest puddle to drown myself in. Not the thinnest fibre to fashion into the most threadbare of nooses. Eternity awaits. A cosmic duality. Apparitions. Like a spiteful estate agent the loitering spectre comments on the empty space. Because what use is the end-all that art is to me? Where does one go from the end? Words and other constructs that might not even exist outside my head but that’s not the point yes but I need to know I’m not alone. I don’t know if it’s joy or agony I feel most of the time, during the increasingly frequent episodes where my soul is shocked into fleeting moments of being. You watched yourself crying in the mirror as a child and you know full well you still do it now. To watch yourself feeling. To try to amplify and prolong what you know will end and leave you back in the purgatory of daily life. Being a body to batter about is bloody barbarous. What does all this powerhungry wankery have to do with anything? We delude ourselves into thinking we’ve found meaning in the meaninglessness, when we in actuality actively take shortcuts to precipitate thrills to keep us from facing that question. The contemplation of a small settlement. This is how far gone we are: we must seek feelings. History is all man-mapped. The truths of the clueless. Everything is but we, who are was…is…have we…was it under our noses the whole time, nonchalantly pistonlygrinding its goo into our nostrils all along? We are the dark matter; we are the black hole. We are the inverse; we are the wrong. We are the vacuum, the sucker of life. We wanted godly powers – well, we expended them long ago. We executed our special ability – oh boy did we execute – and we reap its resonance. Ego. Fatal alchemy. Detachment from the universe. Smothered in a shroud it screams as it suffocates on the reprehensible flesh gag, a toxic corset tied tootootight around the turtle pleading whyohwhyohwhy because the only law is broken. And civilisation was built upon lies: that concrete is the only meat

27 to consume; that by the measly means we hold we can hierarchically equate the worth of the innocent ones who only wanted to live but were swiftly taught that dying was the only way to survive. All else is unnecessary weight, an arctic expedition slowed by a backpack full of ice-lollies. Come on now, imbecile.

28 18

“I had a huge crush on you for years. Everyone knew, I know. You were older, and I guess the de facto leader of our little foursome. You really were so bossy! But really kind, and intelligent. You were always so caring, and clever…the way you think, the conclusions you come to…your own truths. You really are brilliant. It’s made me quite horny and excited in the past. But we’ve grown up. Grown up so separately. Remember that time with the sexual tension? You didn’t know what it was until we talked about it months later, but by then I was with someone else. It does seem really sad sometimes, depending on how I look at it. But it feels like a dream most of the time; a story I feel strongly connected to but not that I actually lived through. Distant. There somewhere, but not right here. You just kept putting it off, and I know it wouldn’t have been right for a long time because you were becoming a man and I was still in my girl stage, but…I don’t know. Though I’ve loved you in a million ways since forever, I haven’t desired the onlyness with you since I’ve been a woman. It sounds harsh…fuck, it sounds totally awful, mean and heartless, but it’s the truth, I think. It’s too much. You pour your soul into your art…it’s breathtaking. And all these poems and stories and songs, and I sound like an egotistical bitch but I know they’re about me. But the saddest thing of all is that all these things you say you want…if you had me in all the ways you want, as your partner or your soulmate or whatever, it wouldn’t be enough. It’d be your equivalent of a mid-life crisis, because what would you do then? I won’t solve that riddle within you, ingrained in your DNA. You are beautiful; you understand me so well. You’re so wise, like an auburn owl. But it’s too much. I can’t bear to see the disappointment in your eyes. I’ve seen it before, in those soul-destroying moments. That pure agony you feel because none of us are good enough. I see it in your eyes in every glance. And I can see how you wish someone would just rescue you. I can see the eternity you feel; this endless unclimbable mountain, like you can see all the good that could be but know you’ll never reach it. I can’t bear the burden of carrying someone’s faith and hope. I can’t let you rely on me. I can’t be what you want.”

29 19

Our hysterical gurgles and guffaws boomeranged or dampened or loudhailed in bounds across the sandy terrain. As we scrambled up dunes, stumbling, slipping, tumbling, trousers and undies tugging to reveal pubic wisps, shoes filled with more sand than foot, socks patched wet with sweat and seawater, under a mulberry sky, as time became some scratchings on a clock face, as home became our shared presence, as clits and dicks became icky again, as we were friends, open as children, revealed, uninhibited, unrestrained by that clinging leaden film, reinvigorated, our tootoolong-idle vitality rerisen to its rightful environment in the everywhere, we reached a breathless halt in a bundle at the bottom. A tuft of protruding blades of longgrass providing the perfect-sized pillow for our weary heads, we lay close, our puffs and gasps becoming music, a soothing pulse. Her clammy angel’s mitt met my flaky claw, but only to wipe the clinging grain off. She made the tiniest snigger and kissed my earlobe. As we dozed, our arms gradually locking, fellow wanderers sporadically ambled by. Men with dogs, one of which came over to investigate the curiously prostrate raggyuprights (once it ran off I was briefly acutely relieved that it hadn’t pissed on us – I’d had past experience); a two-point-two family, the two girls having gorgeous long silver-blonde hair; couples younger and older than us, universally comprising a lady snuggling into her male saviour’s shoulder, looking like she felt as safe as she possibly could. Others usually inspire such venom in me, mandibular motions part of anyone’s perception of me. But what harm were these people doing? Simply part of the landscape. Part of the day She and I were experiencing entirely together. Three years after that other time, and back then She just needed my arm to hold and nuzzle into and my coastal Hemingwayish articulations. She wanted more but She didn’t want more really. Crushed by a break-up. Four years long, then…decapitation. Severance of so much faith. All we live breeds empathy, but that of course bred particular empathy. And She’d tried to fit Her slender fingers around me, swiftly growing semi-erect, but I shook Her off before She could get in my pants. ‘Don’t make something happen that you don’t really want.’ Some tears welled, She thought for a moment, and apologised. I wouldn’t prey on a Her so vulnerable and I wouldn’t make it about sex. But, a thousand and more days ago now. She’s had two more since. The ends are inevitable; I just wish they’d happen in summer or at Christmas. A time she might embrace the magic. Be cast under the spell of seeing flipping clearly. We set off back home when the sun had almost set. The most awe-inspiring silence can descend outside of the city. And true darkness. We took out our phones – offensively luminous – to light our way. My teeth chattered and the rest of me shuddered in the damp night air. She put Her arm around my waist, an affectionate belt, and I gasped and sighed and drew Her close to me as we walked. When intimate with someone you intuitively perceive all the subtleties of their behaviour, and everything is heightened and significant. She knew my heart rate increased, and I could hear the breaths drawn through Her pretty nose growing slightly more rapid and shrill. Such a cosy mania, love. Really rather painful but totally worth it. The disheartened decry romance, but romance is the intense feeling we could and should all feel but kill off. Feeling the significance of you, a single element. Another element holding you in such high esteem that it relies on you for the most personal, powerful, profound level of happiness. I

30 cannot abide cynics; blind men telling the eyed that what they see is wrong. I feel invincible, risen to reality. This is God’s work; this person here beside me is beautiful beyond compare from every angle and I know this and have always known this. This has been my truth since I discovered it. I have evolved naturally and She has remained the source of light. This is my normal, my reality. This is real and I have to battle the false away. I knew what the apprehensive lump that had been bobbing all day in my throat was. It was the knowledge that yes, the time was right again – this was true love, et cetera. But I knew that if I tried to encourage it again She would once again shun it. And there was nothing I could do about it. Absolutely nothing. So I ignored it and enjoyed the day. The night became morning as we gabbed non-stop; shared our favourite CDs, rare novelty vinyl, old lo-fi home recordings on cassette, strange pamphlets by outsider artists, semi-autobiographical independent films created by people with names like Jared and Cristiana; our thoughts and ideas spilling out, falling over themselves, slurring on our tongues as three try to escape at once. We’ve disclosed our darkest secrets, discovering them to be not so dark after all because we co-own several of them and well if they are just as dark and deviant as we thought then we will keep them together. We listened to the entirety of Trout Mask Replica. Later I switched on my aging computer and we recorded us wailing and screeching as I played the rhythm from ‘Fuck The Pain Away’ on an old Volkswagen hubcap; we watched Four Eyed Monsters together, finally, for the first time ever; I showed Her some of the less pessimistic poetry I’ve written about Her over the years. We ate cheese and crackers and drank fruit teas and throughout the night our eyes were glazed, glinting, shining with the shared knowledge that a night, and life, couldn’t get any better than this. But the night eventually retired behind the sun beginning to rise again. We heard blackbirds chirruping during a brief silence and realised we’d thrived through to the morning. Anyway, sleep gives you cancer, man, everyone knows that. We ran back to the beach to watch the day begin. Her train back wasn’t till eleven, so we had a few hours yet, but I knew no promises would be made by then. Our eternity would remain dormant. God, what a night! What a day! I breathed in deeply through my nose, took in that special sea air, let it prick up my arm hairs, let my torso milkaftermint. I considered what I might do once She left, and realised that all I could do was wait for Her to come back.

31 20

There are lengthy stretches of time – abysses, incomprehensible valleys – when we don’t talk at all. During one such phase is when I had my first girlfriend. I really loved her. It was exhilarating. You can’t imagine it until it happens; suddenly the socially awkward compulsive masturbator has someone who likes him back and adores his mind so much that she actually wants his cock inside her. The greatest unlocking our stunted race can achieve, love. A whole person, this big human person that is yours, not yours, but yours to reign, not reign, but explore…and sometimes consensually dominate a bit. So spongy, and soft, and warm, and so delicate. And a nose you can pinch and wiggle! And they are solid underneath the beauty, so you can prod them and be certain they are there. You are not dreaming. And they move in their own way and have their own special voice, and all the scents and tastes as well…you don’t dream of that when a wee little wanker; bells ring a round of roses at the slot machine. And sex isn’t like a jigsaw, like inserting a key into a lock. It’s so organic and nuanced and unique each time and infinitely enhanced by absorbing oneself and investing emotions and giving as well as taking. It’s pretty overwhelming. It feels too much for little old you. A whole person? Really? It’s an honour, a privilege, to be involved in any way with another human being; to truly share a degree of openness and intimacy with someone. Most are cold and closed. Such such an honour to witness another, in mind, body, soul or any combination of the three, because it shows they have trust in you and love for you and aren’t afraid to reveal themselves in a world where everyone hides. And from in the beginning feeling undeserved of such a channel of the beauty of the universe, you realise that by sharing themselves with you they are proving that you must be doing the same. Equality does not exist because when we exist truthfully there is no separation. You make love to God in its image, but not the religious God. I couldn’t tell you…but you know, unless you don’t. An avatar. A manifestation with at least some part of its core unpainted or unrounded off. An icon. A representation that you can enjoy, with the physical and mental and spiritual intuitive intangibility that is only nonsense to those who are dead inside, and should really complete the job. An incarnation of rightness. I could go on. Basically… Love: it’s tops! It fizzled out, the euphoria, in an agonisingly palpable, steep waning, and the relationship quickly became rotten from the inside out. It’s devastating. What was once given without question is now consciously hidden: those parts of yourself, the fears that can be shared with no other, and so you feel more alone than you would if officially alone but hang on to virtually non-existent ties because you don’t want to be alone. After a year and day she bravely snipped the last thread and we were both free. I was dead for a while but then magically came back alive! And a few months later, reborn from my own self-pitying ashes, and once again hoping but not actively looking, I fell for Her, and never fully recovered. It seems that She is the only one it ever could be. She is the only link between now and my childhood, the last time I was wholesouledly happy. She is two infinities in one.

32 21

You know, those little moments. Those little peeps. You catch a little glimpse of mother nature’s gash as she momentarily hitches up her skirt, revealing such alluring neatness, an sacred grove of immaculacy, then she suddenly tugs it back down with violence and venom and vitriolic vigour and staples it taut to her leg and flashes you the most soul-boring glare and clicks her fingers and gets some brawny fuckers to drag you away and one of them kicks you in the perineum and smashes your jaw against the curb. A fact of life – the fact, the only fact, of this skein of butterflies, of the grain of the reality you vibrate within. You suspend your rational disbelief as you glide along the slipstream, mouth agape at the audacity of particles refuting the will of oneself, turning away from truth and shunning everything but the bastardised funhouse mirror glow of Narcissus and aspiring only to light their own sulphurous breath. Soon your legs jellify as you try to make your way through Hamsterdam and out again, but as you take a breather on a street corner you encounter a man not unlike yourself, only a great deal older, his face bearing resigned wrinkles, and he tells you how he had similar hopes at your age, but after traversing the globe a few times finally accepted what he had long suspected: that the designated zone for this foul commerce was every inch of the planet, Earth’s skin scoured and seared by smouldering globules of dung lit purely to be watched burn by those with nothing else to fill their lives, which turns out to be everyone except you. But you learn to deal with it, he says, and wanders off, and you resist the urge to embrace him and pull him to your bosom because he needs to survive alone, to wait it out until life decides he’s endured enough. Perhaps it’s some illusory frenzy, I don’t know. But when we share our thoughts on Frieda Kahlo, divulging our disgust at the regret her husband displayed upon her death (your self-pity is useless: if you truly love someone you fucking show them while they’re alive); or the time we sat listening to The Guillemots’ Through the Windowpane; or the time we trekked to the vet together, and She carried a rucksack full of Megadrive games which we later played as we sat on the floor, then She fell asleep on my bed, and it wasn’t like when we were little and I used to steal my sister’s friends because she was ill in bed next door. I don’t have such halcyon-chromed times with anyone else. Like most people I spend my life trying to break through the crust and reach back to the lifeforce magma of youth. I want to lap at the rivers; I crave my mouth to be scorched by old flames. I want to look upwards, like morons do to God, but to the rest of the universe, and let its heartless eyes see the madness in mine: ‘I know my truth, and your steeldiamond soulraping web can annihilate my body but you better fucking prepare for my spirit haunting and taunting your every fucking breath.’ And She is just as much a part of it. It’s that clichéd dream where the ones you love most are on the other side of a rapidly widening chasm, and you can feel the heat from their fingers as you pleadingly grasp, your arm impossibly stretched, but you can’t reach the fingers themselves. It’s impossible. So you fall, brutally, to your knobbly knees, the impact sending a shockwave through your body, your life juddering in anguished retches, watching them get farther and farther away, and your only hope lies in the slim chance that please, please, discover your wings and fly to me. We can even jump into the chasm if that’s what you want. I just need to know you see the same light I do. You can’t do, but will you, and when, and how long

33 will I be forced to watch your outline getting fainter and blurrier? Will you eventually be but a dot on the horizon? Or is that a rock, or a cactus, or even nothing at all, and you disappeared a long time ago? The grolly froths heady, toxins locked into the knotted fascia of binding ore, and perhaps it’ll become necessary to expel it into Her face, to pretend the wait is over; because I can’t turn away maybe I’ll twist Her neck around. And maybe I’ll reduce Her to Her physical form, a carnate slab, a fuck-object to crave and hate, so while Her nape now faces me I can also viddy the tits and gaping cunt and coarsely and ferociously rub one out regularly, trying to get the glob to land on the other side and dead-centre on to the middle of Her cold dead chest so that it slithers into Her cleavage. Maybe I’ll do that. They can all sense it. My mum always knew music came first with my dad. None can serve me better than my own mind. Recreation is a sometimes- welcome decoy, but not often. I have to flagellate the part of me that enjoyed it, which is usually the heart so I’ve almost stopped altogether a few times. Manchild I am. Beating myself into a shape enough, enough to propel and puncture the tar-skinned bubbles – more pockets than at first expected but it just needs focus and finesse and a Glasgow kiss. I don’t shun the world, just the world of man. We wear clothes, for crying out loud. Ashamed of the outer, of our own natures, those dirty bodies we live life in, what hope is there for witnessing the inner? Most don’t even believe it exists! So we treat the few imaginationsaplings with suspicion and fetch the flamethrower. Hexashexashexas. The fallen fell coincidentally when they said ‘hang on…’, or rather the moment before the words bravely stepped forward; when it was evident a sound would be uttered. Like forcing your head through the hatch of your cell and it being met with the studded stomp of a jackboot, and while your head swims your stomach and throat and roof of your mouth twang with the stench of the leather, that animalskin construction mingling with the secretions of the foot of a serial child-murderer who will do it again before you finish your tasteless meal (they cut out your tongue). And all I did was get my nipples out and have an opinion. She is not always my main focus. Like most people, I have the vague, neglected quasi-belief in something so that I don’t have to deal with the existential despair of it all – so that I don’t have to take responsibility for my own plight. What hope is there really? Hopefully I’ll die in an avalanche.

34 22

When the night smells suspicious in the orchard of fleshly pleasures, and your time on the line has adorned each synapse with elaborate spasmodic interdimensional offshoots, and coils of self-deception chugging in choking plumes collect as a refracting visor before the entrance to the succeeding step in your tunnel, dents are belted into the middle of fingernails gripping seat so tightly, dents shadowing iron-deficiency lines, and you’ve bitten bleeding chasms into your lips, lopsided clefts, and only because sunk into thought, pondering whether man could invent a way of removing someone’s heart, or at least draining it of all its capabilities, while simultaneously submitting its proprietor to the Ludovican torture of watching this happen while somehow being kept alive.

We watched his eyes keep returning – unsure, confused. We remember that queer burgeoning within; that new and unknown swelling wave, honed like a jet like an everywhere crosshair. Fire burns things black. His encirclings, ugh, like a lion working out how to penetrate a hippopotamus’s hide. He will jump he will grind his teeth into her spine he will get through he will find the column and use it to floss his fangs. ‘Child’s Father: my mind is bursting with alarm. You must keep both eyes on his form. His eyes glint with the appetite of the wolf. His body arched in pursuit. His mind salivates, his hunger plain to see. How could one so young resist such tender meat? He will make his ambush: that is certain. She is a puppy and will not be able to resist his giving in.’ ‘Child’s Mother: fear not. She knows the act of resistance. She bears secret wisdoms. Inherent, traditional, but furtively discovered. She will reduce him to the whimpering dog he is. Though he inflames my fury, sticks in my throat like a chunk of broiling vomit, I do not worry. Her powers will render him harmless.’

I…I don’t get it. What is this filament that draws me? Something in another realm of her. Frequencies I can’t see. Her face…it’s pretty, but it isn’t Kate Mossman, or Joanna Newsom. But I can’t stop turning, looking again. I have the intense urge to study it. And anyway, it isn’t her face that hooked me, lined me, pulled me towards her. I was just passing the window and heard it, this exquisite river of song, a creamy dandelion snow. For want of a better term, I went all silly. ‘Doobie-doobie-doo, mundane day, off to the shops to buy a loaf of bread,’ then…soaring siren’s call. Can I describe such a sound? Like cocoa and a blanket with your loving family after a sad winter’s day; like the scent of tangerine soap as you watch a hot bubble bath filling; like a lullaby in the lap of Camille Dalmais. She wasn’t singing once I entered the pub. What do you do? I didn’t want to leave. You know the way you wait until the last minute, hoping to God He will make something magical happen…because you know full well you won’t. How can you tell a stranger, ‘I want to hold you and never let go. You have enchanted me with your voice; you quite literally controlled the air and shaped it into beauty.’ Holy as Blake’s succinctly profound words; his dreams of a world filled with wonder, innocence, colours and light. Like the sudden apparition of a Uranian sprite, eternally angelic, a never-ending pixel tessellation, shapes settling into beds in my head…peaceful and homely, now…bah, I’m just gonna leave, and I’ll

35 think about you all the way to the shops and all the way back and all day and night until my consciousness finally suspends and I’ll lie still for eight hours dreaming of impossibilities and when I wake up tomorrow you’ll be but a memory.

36 23

Wrapped around and in and out and with never without the other’s form, my lupine legs scratching hers (ever so slightly), her body lilywhite (I’m not lying), watching her diaphragm lightly rise and fall, scintillating, instigating a slightly smug tingling, the ribs, the belly button, heart bumping tender Braille outgroove, the smoothness between these interruptions, and that button once linked her to her mother’s placenta which makes her somehow seem even more lovely, that she was once a child, with tiny baby toes, with lolling oversized head, spurting gullcraphue pukejets on to Mummy’s black blouse, and she now sleeps for the first time in her new adult womb, serene as hurricane iris, eyes closed so tight she looks eyeless, I don’t want her to have to wake to little old me, so undeserving am I, with shins that could carve stone, Raskolnikov, collarbone popper, left ear biter, unravelling unempathy reveals the selfgratifeye, beardless boyman, hot poison bubble, knucklevaginas, Trojan giftshowers (some of them used), but a man bitter man but a bitter man, a man, mixed breed as my gloriously racist great-nan used to say, birth a half-monster from pansperm, gloriously great man keeping love through the ages, adagio for the great warrior great automaton great superceder keeping on keeping on, riding bitch to the unwavering glitch, hanging on by single strip of skin of pinky of left foot, secrete simpering sap that scars her formerly flawless flesh.

37 24

What is deserving of hate? Of molten spite? Of attack? If it deserves it, this hateful thing; if it has wronged you, and you counter this wrong with an eye-for-eye retaliation, with your own wrong, have you not morphed and congealed into the very thing you’re retaliating against? He killed your family, and you kill his, and now you are a killer. There may be a perverse satisfaction that you are now equal…but don’t you see? Now you are equal. Now you are no better than the killer. You are in the same terrible position. It doesn’t matter who killed first. If you are good you must remain good. If you do not, your family died in vain: they died for a different man than you’ve become. They would be ashamed, appalled. Mourn the loss, and never forget, but bring light instead of darkness into the world. Do not let the lowliest of deeds suck your life away. Show it you are an immovable king.

38 25

I’m not sure on the logistics of it yet – I’ll have to make a few enquiries – but I propose we elope to the stars. We’d be leaving the world behind, but it isn’t that big a sacrifice when you think about it. Daydream with me, darlin’: twirls and arabesques through meteor storms…zero-g drill sergeant and private…glittering graceful Tasmanian Devilish pirouettes around the rings of Saturn…pas de cheval onwards forwards through spectrum-traversing brick roads to the four corners then pivoting upon le quatrième to neodimensions ad infinitum indefinite indeterminate – irrelevant. Or we could make our home in Rye, where we’d eat plum preserve on fresh scones with tea that I bring us on a tray sooooo early every third Sunday morning before our epic trek to Dungeness, going part of the way barefoot before deciding against it because (we chuckle) our feet’ll end up wearing down to stumps, sparks flying as they chafe against the ground, and in a decade you could buy me the once-mocked rambling stick for my ever-stiffening left knee, and I’ll be known as the quiet young poet, and you’ll be known as the friendly young painter, and I’ll wear a silly black cloak and you’ll wear silly baggy jeans again, and we’ll both grow our hair, me going far beyond the Catweazle of my mum’s prayers and looking more like an auburn Alan Moore, and I’ll write about the pain I once felt, still so vivid to recall but distant on my timeline, and my words will give hope to young fellows who are just like I was, hopeless and drowning in the chronic despair of the lonely sensitive realist, and I won’t lie and tell them everything will be all right because it won’t necessarily but I will tell my story as purely as possible to help them tell theirs so that they may do the same, and it gives one the most precious reason to live, to help others, and when walking around town we’ll get to know everyone’s names, shopkeepers and regular residents, and holidaymakers (we’ll be ‘an interesting thing’ for them to tell their imbecilic friends about, but at least we contributed to their lives, which is an honour). Or are you too puss to be happy? Are you that fucking lame already? You’re only just three decades in, and were like it at two. I’ll feign optimism; blockade the tears with all the selfdeceptionmorsels I can gather. I’ll get my book published and we can run away. So many people entertaining things that don’t matter or don’t exist and those who would make the world better are starved. They just want love and company too. But from alive and open people, not apathetic gargoyles. Someone once told me I was the most negative person on their timeline; I replied with a neutral comment. It’s not worth trying to explain it to someone like that. I only ever deal out negativity to the negative, hate to the hateful. I hope to help people see, but being fundamentally egocentric in their outlooks they only ever look at the finger, not where it’s pointing. I am not a negative person. I am a wholly positive person, but am confronted with hate and I will not concede to and perpetuate the lie. If a few people’s sorry excuses for lives must be crushed then so be it. I am not some literary Guevara, but know the only way for the Earth to survive this is the undermining – the total annihilation – of the mindset. I recognise the consequence of this is to disintegrate a lot of people’s entire foundations for how they live their lives, but this is not my intention, just an inevitable and unavoidable consequence. I will not give in, and you should be by my side as we do our part to make the world better; to plant our feeble but just as integral handful of seeds so that one day our family, all of the beautiful creatures on this

39 planet, can live in Eden. Heaven and Hell are not imperceptible elsewheres reachable upon death if we relinquish responsibility for our own destinies for our near-centuries on this plane of existence (what a colossal waste): they are both potentials of this planet. Heaven could’ve been here now. The circles around the drain are getting shorter. Soon the world will cave in. I’ll be building over here with hope, like I always was.

40 26

“But you already are what I want. I understand your fears, but don’t you see? If you’d only let yourself, if you’d embrace what I know with all my soul you feel too, then I wouldn’t be this disenchanted creature. All I crave is you next to me. Your pure-as- springwater love would wash all this poisonous muck away. All these beautiful ideas I have would be free to spill forth into the existence it’s so long longed for; free to step out of me and roam. If only my mind was clear I could show you how full of goodness and light I am, but I need your fidelity for that to happen, so I need you to please trust me and finally give it a chance. If you haven’t desired me in an only-way…I don’t know what all those moments we’ve had can mean…but I promise you, with all that I am, with a primal spiritual yearning, that we will be happy together. I exalt you. You are my everything; you are the point from which the universe grew. In your body is the slice of soul that unlocked mine, opened me to the limitless magical possibilities of life. I make art from your existence. Nothing, including myself, would be as it is without your lifelong presence. All my art is sculpting idols of God, the everything, the irrepressible all. And you are the fountain that first touched my tongue with its fresh waters and gave me the taste for happiness; the catalyst for the journey to find anything better or even vaguely equal to those invincible times in our childhood when we just lived and loved without all the fear and external shit that has polluted what was so untouchable, so wonderful. I can’t sculpt idols in the traditional way, so my gift to you is every word I write, every movement I make, every idea that even transiently dwells within me. My life is yours to co-own. Not as a slave, but as a partner. If we shared ours we could traverse infinity together. And admit it: it’d be such a hoot.”

41 27

I like to experience the elements. I strode out into a bright but nosebiting morning, stinging winds sometimes striking you still for if you don’t move then you can’t be made any colder – it’s science, buddy. I wore my thermal gloves and black-and-red-striped hat my mother knitted me a few years ago and the Newcastle United scarf my father bought me when playing a gig up there. I operate in two main modes when out (rarely) and about (the local vicinity) in the outside world. When I venture forth it’s either with a stooping, outsider posture, my face down studying the cracks in the ground, my hands in my pockets, my pace brisk and irregular, jolting at every sudden sound, enduring the day so that it may be over; or I walk with a cocksure swagger, the charismatic alien, face clean-shaven and immaculate I-don’t-give-a-fuck attire of a tan two- buttoned jacket with one button missing, Caterpillar bootlaces in my Adidas, patched jeans and a holey hoodie. Today was going to be the latter, I knew, despite my being accessorised with my winter additions. It isn’t anything but a feeling, you see, and most people can sense it with basic intuition, this willingness to present yourself to the world (or lack thereof). I had to buy my sister a birthday present. She doesn’t bring any hot friends round anymore. Asian girls with tremendous thighs and spotless stomachs…mayne, times were good. Past tense. I can feel my tenure atop the tower lengthening, like I can feel the world down there moving in its centimetres on its invisible axis, and the tiniest most claustrophobic of chambers can’t contain the elusive warmth if it is so ephemeral that it never even existed. Each of my days is a rosebud groundhog. The spirits are out of ideas and so have left me on my own. I swallow and lift my head and step out into sunlit cold. East London is like a walnut, all craggy, crannied and cratered. Everywhere an explosion waiting to happen. On the train you fear for your neck, whiplash plausible during the jerky false-start then stop-start trip to a destination you don’t really want to arrive at (that and the vampires). Basildon facelifts, chewed- face scowls, little kids glower with hate. A weirdo might check you out but you know they must be buoyant on a solvent high. It’s the only explanation. Multicultures united in a rainbow of animosity, segregated into salivating armies within proximity of sniffing the cold dead sweat on the brows of their enemies as they violate their corpses. Hold your breath for when you smell the burning flesh it is because bits of that burning flesh are floating into your nose and being ingested. If you smell a flaming corpse you are already a cannibal. Unartistically vandalised mortar, ‘FUCK OFF’ written in dirt on a white van. Shaved girls in short skirts, Hollywooden, goosebumps the size of golfballs, futile attempts to cover blemishes simply cakes them in a flaky cornflour motif, accentuating insecurities, perhaps a subconscious cry out for love, for someone to embrace their vulnerability. Manic-eyed nearly-men, pupils dilated in the inconsolable terror of not being manly enough, would perhaps rape if there was no consequence, racist and sexist and chauvinistic and xenophobic and overflowing with hate without knowing why. I buy some pink fluffy shit from a girl who hates me, imagine fingering her in the stockroom, watch my change drop from her hand to mine, noticing her eczema and chipped nail varnish, and leave. On the train back, as we woodloused along, before the before moment I felt a before-before moment like when you wake up a split-second before your alarm goes off; as I waited by the

42 doors I was abruptly immobilised by a single moment of quantum acknowledgement, an indescribable prepostpresentverbcognition…no cognoscere…what is all this?…beginnings and ends…the shapes of leaves…orbits around orbits around orbits (with ginormous gaps in- between)…watching preposterous ideas made ponderable on TV (to those seeping buboes who didn’t ponder them already, and anyway forget them the moment the end theme begins and the voice intrudes over it to announce to tune in after the break to find out who’s being eliminated from Cocking About On Ice)…but none of the magic has touched me…eating stodgy cake when I could be climbing a mountain…we all came from the stars, the elsewhere…blue teeth…everything around, surrounding, in this 5’7” box giving you your own individual lookout, so connected but so separate…the terror of being plonked here, but why?…Blu-Tack, itching, acid rain…they all stare, they all know but keep it hidden, the key inside us all…we are still at the beginning… I’d been whizzing along; sometimes you twang the spring and it comes to a sudden stop before you twang it again, and I felt right here, right now. What a big congested frustrated clusterfuck the world is, I thought. Then I whited in to the misery again.

I got off the train and started walking. Up ahead I saw Her, holding the hand of some bozo. He’s new, I thought, what imaginary intimacy does She suppose with this guy? He could be best described as a hunchbacked bipedal guinea pig: his beady rodent eyes positioned far too close to his upturned snout; his Rohypnol King hair greasy and clumped like coconut rice; his damp, stubby little hands groping at the euphoric digitalism that are Hers. Like a flame hitchhiked on his emanating methane, every orifice leaking miasmic matter made to draw my rage and pull my pugilism closer to his face. I walk fast so had overtaken a few layers of the crowd and was now close enough to hear Her speaking: ‘cheese music festivals quirky Poeisms faux avantisms false modesty sycophantic flattery pop punk pedestal primitivism passive submissive masked make-up sex masochism predictable non sequitur alcohol sporks vampires I love the vacuum I am from outside I am just visiting I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted’ I’m used to Her empty nonsense talk. But seeing Her with someone like him…more than anything it made me hate Her. She should be with me – not that She deserves me. She needs Her fucking skin ripped off, I thought. Parents shake their babies in desperation, trying to shut them up. I wanted to shake some sense into Her: ‘Fucking say something! Don’t hide from your own self you stupid bitch, you coward.’ And if not some sense it might at least snap Her neck.

I got off the train and started walking. Up ahead I saw Her, holding the hand of some bozo. He’s new, I thought, what imaginary intimacy does She suppose with this guy? He could be best described as a lumbering sideburned walrus: his chapped brown rusty sheriff’s badge lips curving his slimy horseshoe moustache downwards; enormous cretin’s paw giving off a distinct butter stench and engulfing Hers; I crushed in a tangential universe where She devastates me with the fearful innocent look of Munch’s Puberty. Like a bait bitten along with some of the cord soaked in the maggoty juice, redsure eyes with a carnivorous crosshair stare to the quasi-human holding the rod, obliviously reeling me in to

43 kill. I walk fast so had overtaken a few layers of the crowd and was now close enough to hear Her speaking: ‘cheese music festivals quirky Poeisms faux avantisms false modesty sycophantic flattery pop punk pedestal primitivism passive submissive masked make-up sex masochism predictable non sequitur alcohol sporks vampires I love the vacuum I am from outside I am just visiting I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted’ I’m used to Her empty nonsense talk. But seeing Her with someone like him…more than anything it made me hate Her. She should be with me – not that She deserves me. She needs Her fucking skin ripped off, I thought. Parents shake their babies in desperation, trying to shut them up. I wanted to shake some sense into Her: ‘Fucking say something! Don’t hide from your own self you stupid bitch, you coward.’ And if not some sense it might at least snap Her neck.

I got off the train and started walking. Up ahead I saw Her, holding the hand of some bozo. He’s new, I thought, what imaginary intimacy does She suppose with this guy? He could be best described as a shiny mixed race replicant fuck-doll: lifeless waxwork eyes programmed only to AFFIRM. FERTILITY. OF. FEMALE.; curly hipster quiff garnishing melon with rabbitscut fluff; claw’s cold steely crabclench pre- empting unholy intercourse ‘twixt woman and machine, efficient pistonmotions impending with inevitable destiny. Like a Terminator sent back in time to protect the bringer of salvation, an impassive showdown looming as the hunter encircles his bounty, patiently awaiting the perfect position to execute a killshot. I walk fast so had overtaken a few layers of the crowd and was now close enough to hear Her speaking: ‘cheese music festivals quirky Poeisms faux avantisms false modesty sycophantic flattery pop punk pedestal primitivism passive submissive masked make-up sex masochism predictable non sequitur alcohol sporks vampires I love the vacuum I am from outside I am just visiting I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted I won’t get sucked in I won’t get addicted’ I’m used to Her empty nonsense talk. But seeing Her with someone like him…more than anything it made me hate Her. She should be with me – not that She deserves me. She needs Her fucking skin ripped off, I thought. Parents shake their babies in desperation, trying to shut them up. I wanted to shake some sense into Her: ‘Fucking say something! Don’t hide from your own self you stupid bitch, you coward.’ And if not some sense it might at least snap Her neck.

I got off the train and started walking.

44 28

With the absence of the love that I required, the onslaught of duality that simply must be did be. White light removed can leave only the blackest emptiest darkness. Like jagged obsidian crystals being dragged through an attic hatch, ploughing through the lifefabric…well, what do you think’d happen? The same space exists but contains a new onyx flow, carbon kisses leaving a residue until lips become host to obligate swarm, a brand new carnage of the soul. It’s no romantic rite when each night is the darkest it could be. The absence is what provokes the pungent fumes, everyone forced to take a toke to taste the chimney chugging your seething furnace into the oxygen all your love must breathe.

Because it always hovered, orbiting, neglected and believed indefinitely abandoned, and eventually presumed dead, it was easy for the forcefield to fail and for the satellite’s stability to waver and wander to walk new ways stirring Her so the planet’s perfume would waft magnificent magnetically over mountains making the satellite’s forcefield fail and the poor thing fall. I’d kicked the habit, frozen fowl, refrigerated poultry, har har, or at least stored it in a larder, which is worlds away from lapping its bubbling spoils in the steaming sun while rubbing your naked semi-flaccid phallus furiously against a splintering chair leg. I’d actually sweated Her out. I didn’t think about Her every day. She was just someone I knew, like I knew other people. But once an addict… Genetic or otherwise it’s nonetheless been a presence since my childhood. From planning, scripting and recording phonetically faultless radio shows, to the countless aborted months immersed in football manager games, to the ever- increasingly time-consuming exercise sessions, I’ve evidently a taste. If I tried an addictive substance chances are I’d get addicted, and quickly. If I join a gym I’m likely to become obsessed and need to at least equal the efforts of the preceding day – a day missed or unmatched will result in my body’s immediate deflation, weakening and quivering ache when I remember (flashes of dysmorphicishness sometimes creep in too – it’s scary). So maybe it’s the idea that I can’t kick. Placebos have been known to work with the patient’s full knowledge. But one goes through the motions, the reactions being part of the motions too. I can convince myself I’m clean but there is always a particle awaiting catalysis. Always.

45 29

You know my prahblem? I think too much, man. My mind’s a slow-cooking stew, tepid; more like slow-soaking, slow-saturating. And at all but one temperature it renders me incapacitated. Around a couple-centillion couplets of contaminants jostle for control. Let’s look at the universe. We only know life exists here. With all the possibilities it’s bound to exist somewhere. That somewhere is here. Why should it exist anywhere else? Earth could be the first. My point being that eventually an überbemused nucleus breaks free, not necessarily but in this case, and finds food and shelter, and it waits and waits and collects driftwood during the day to kindle a fire at night and watches the world happening, passing and everlasting, and just does. Then Nucleina passes the shack one day and he kind of explodes, kind of…a bit, and she kind of does too, and what do you know, they made something out of nothing. To avoid the frustration – it comes out in bits, fragmented; no one knows what I’m on about or I produce such monosyllables that only morons do – I often try to condense things into a single sentence that I can repeat. A mantra to rererereregurgitate, like us all agreeing a table is a table. Though it’s liable to change I sculpt this sentence to avoid the muddle and embarrasingforusall panic that usually ensues when social interaction involving me is instigated. For instance: ‘How are you?’ someone might say, and I’ll say, ‘I’m OK: each day is a day closer to death!’ ‘Oh, how droll!’ they’ll say, then fuck off to talk to someone who wants to. She won’t stand for this though. She knows what’s going on in here. I have the answers to every riddle, but I subconsciously consciously nihilise anarchise my own mind to deal with it. Life adjusts accordingly by not wanting to have anything to do with me. Time edges closer to the doorway while elsewhere sings of the future. The dimension that knew too much. Is this a role She plays? The galvaniser, giving me something to reach for, no matter how futile it seems – knowing I’ll never give up. Meeting Her always necessitates a self-assessment. It might be years between meetings, and every time She does this. If She even leaves the room…I die inside. Then She comes back with Her glass of water and I’m reanimated. Like a creature interbred of silence and weeping angels. On one such occasion She cut me down with the most derisive, mordacious laughsneer I’d ever heard, which still hasn’t been surpassed. By anyone ever, probably. Emitting it might’ve seemed hypocritical to anyone else, but I understood exactly what it meant, having made it many times before, only in a voice that was a smidgen more traditionally masculine. Probably no one else in the entire universe would’ve understood the sneer’s implication, or only inasmuch as they’d reach the conclusion that ‘dealing with conceitedness with conceitedness is just conceited, though’. But like I said, I’d made it before. When you see someone so arse-clenchingly arrogant with an arrogance that is so unmerited, owing to the person’s insurmountable ignorance. That studious ignorance. And there were other undertones: She knew I was better than the meringue I was spitting; that I was shitting on my remarkability by producing glib ponceyfragments from my mouth to placate and keep an ever-evolving nature at bay, below the surface.

46 I looked up at Her face, Her eyes, mouth and nose challenging me to riposte, and sat fuming with fury that I was contested, coupled with my anger at my inability to articulate either back-up components to my original statement or even a short percussive stream of wrathful expletives. Instead I stood up, strode across the room, and told Her to get up. She did, I surprisingly slighter taller (we were equal height last time), and eyeballed me. I wrapped my arms right around Her and held Her tightly. ‘God I love you,’ I said. ‘You really are the only one. You’re just the best.’ Her body was still tensed with irritation, but it soon relaxed and embraced and reciprocated my cuddle. And everything felt just so. Later that day I had a devastating epiphany, though. I was lying on my bed with Finnegans Wake coursing through my veins, deep in that waking REM dream-state that no other work of art has been known to induce in me, when I was suddenly snapped out. Tachycardia ensued. I gripped the bedstead and waited for it to pass. Then the demon descended. It grabbed me by the jaw with its jagged claw and tried to shake my skull from my spine. Unsuccessful, it lifted me and crashed out of the window, carrying me into the night. Using its technological apparatus it located Her lifestream and homed in, reducing the rest of reality to a colourless tofu grid. She was the only thing on it possessing any sort of vitality (which wasn’t that much of a change in these hopelessly romantic eyes). Until they were injected I was unaware, but from the creature’s multi- coloured mane slithered several hissing tendrils tipped with AV jacks to insert into my brain, into which gushed Her whole life’s tapestry, but from the very angle we might see it from now, high above the world of men, distant enough to recognise the insignificance and demean its supposed grandeur. And as I wasn’t down there I could see it for what it was, Her life and my part in it. And all those times we shared…the continuumcascade showed it beyond doubt. She was only ever there for me when She wanted me there for Her. To make Her feel better about Herself. My continued monsoon of affection validated Her existence when its purpose seemed distant and vague; drenched Her, giving Her a sense of self- worth in which She could soak, generally after a break-up or one of Her friends momentarily seeing the light and revealing some home truths about Her. This, and also some sick God complex. Convinced of Her innate goodness, Her condescending mugging chin that you’d always see five minutes before She turned a corner, the simpering simmering just above admittedly less intelligent heads She considers positively plebeian and oh so inferior but bless them, eh? Better than every person She interacts with; better than every situation She’s in, of course…but interact with them She does, and gain entry sometimes even forcefully to those situations She does, and there is really no proof of your superiority if your actions imitate those of the weak and worthless and your words don’t squat to scrutiny. She uses others as pawns for superficial self- gratification, to paint over the cracks, then discards them when they want for more. The more eyeballs acknowledging Her presence the better, but never dealing with the repressed creature cowering behind the bug zapper, shoved into the darkest furthest recess of the laundry room at the bottom of the husk Her brain idly operates twenty-four-seven, all sense of truth crammed into the heel of a foot. But I will forget this all tomorrow. And the only mementos I keep are those that bring me delight. I’d rather doom myself to eternally relive the lie, and thus to repeatedly remake the realisation, than have no hope in anything.

47 30

I awoke violently vomiting musty molluscs into the air not powerfully enough to eject them very far from my face so like feeble fire extinguisher foam they hopped from my mouth hovered ever so briefly in the air then slapped back into my bile-moistened mush as more poured out like clumps of dusty custard in desperately weak jets but copious in number. Before I ended up drowning on these homeless snails I forced myself on to my side, sightless in the darkness and allergic to carrots, and let the remainder of the onslaught career wildly and juicily on to the carpet or thereabouts. Unseen specimens silently and statically seeped into the matted pile. After the flood subsided I blindly fumbled for the open door, slipping on sticky stragglers, and levered myself out, whereupon my heavy head toppled me and slammed me on to the laminate flooring. Like a sonic boom, like a looping jet-powered warped acetate discus forged from thunder, the sound hurt more than the skull hitting wood. The stench coming off my skin was…inapprehensible. Malodorous. Like I was sweating sewage slime, like I was oozing liquid death. The point of contusion sent a hard pulsing fissure through my body, an unreal sensation where every molecule of me felt split in two, or at least had attempted to. A gelatinous glue globule prevented complete cleavage and left my pounding head feeling bifurcated, the hammering striking into my head the image of its fishy namesake and I thought of Eraserhead and of the toy rubber shark menagerie I used to play with in the bath as a child; the plug chain would be the tightropebridge they had to cross to survive their adventure, and I would become emotionally invested in the saga as I sat soaking, my skin slowly pruning in the lukewarming water. I retched again then and spewed out another slug, catching a glimpse of its apathetic eyes on stalks as it clung to my chin before falling to my chest and shuffling laboriously off down my pyjama top. A couple of small and confused millipedes scurried out of my ears. There was expelled froth in puddles around me. Umami residue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My eyes stung with cat o’ nine tails sharpness. There was more liquid about than I thought had accompanied the blood vessel-popping spume. One of the slugs told me he was off to engage a highflying target. Another told me that technology was advancing at an ever-increasing rate. A rumble in my belly told me there was more to come.

48 31

It was around 2:00A.M. Unusually for me I’d been asleep. I hadn’t known why I felt as tired as I did…but then I found out: to cue this event. I was awoken by a single ahem of the doorbell. Brought out of the land of twenty blinks and back into reality my heart sank. My flat was small and hard and cold. Dank as a dungeon. Smelt like a wet slipper. I was covered with six blankets just to be comfortable enough to sleep. Throughout winter frost would form nightly in the corners of the windows, creeping centripetally as I slept. Plus I had my shitty job that I worked six nights a week, which just about paid for rent and food and maybe a couple of books a month. I hated waking up because my life didn’t seem worth waking up to. I kicked off the layers and sat up, blinked a couple of times to bring the world into focus, and got out of bed and walked to the door. Opening it I saw Her. Her face was grey as death, it seemed, and Her classic thick eyeliner, running slightly for She must have been crying, coupled with Her complexion made Her look like a ghoul. I’d never seen Her looking so dreadful. ‘Hey, you,’ I croaked in my sleepiness. ‘What’s wrong?’ She moved Her gaze from the ground to me but couldn’t maintain eye contact for long. ‘Can I come in? I need someone to talk to.’ Upon saying ‘talk’ She started sobbing so I cuddled Her to me until the sobs subsided. ‘Come on. Let’s put the kettle on.’

She kept the mug close to Her face, relishing the heat it gave off. Breathing in the beefy aroma She gulped down most of Her Bovril within a few minutes. ‘Mmm, delicious meatshake!’ She grinned, then relaxed and reclined into the armchair with a sigh of relief. She closed Her eyes and I watched Her for a while, chuckling as She sank further and further into the chair. She really did look quite peaceful. Because everything is everything you sometimes need to see the light to remember to believe it’s still there. A sky tide, aurora borealis; only certain secrets recovered, codes deciphered by an organic enigma machine. You might miss the full moon behind the shine of a streetlamp. I really don’t know how I’ll ever calm the internal churning. Plates of sense and reason shift, buffeted by unidentified objects and distant or local shockwaves; congealed depictions of underlying currents, flurried dorsal stabbings into physical realms then a withdrawal into nothingness. Another unobscuring; a grand opening, curtains torn down; excavated truths like a heart-reaping by circumstance. Unshrouded panorama, soulgasp; solidification of a desert mirage, sudden stop of a spiked sandstorm. Here. Here and now. The power of a moment. The future I could begin; the history I could create. The present I am ever-in. Grab a scattercushion and press to a frail human face. The power of a man. Kick a kitten across a room. The power of a man. Man employed to club seals in the head until they stop being alive. They look up, wondering, pleading, not understanding, not confused just not understanding, attempting to escape but the man is too big and swift and so certain, and he keeps clubbing and the seal is not fast enough on land and the other seals watch it happening with slight curiosity and a primitive disgust. The seal is crying out in pain and in recognition of the futility of its struggle and not

49 knowing when the clubbing will stop and it really hurts and it has children waiting and then its brain switches off. This is a man, like I am a man. How could I inflict my mind upon another? It will nip and tear and rabidly slash and bludgeon and belittle and patronise and force to submit and inflict unreachable standards and demand the impossible and ostracise while simultaneously demanding intimacy and anchor while simultaneously tugging away and at every opportunity castigate and berate for not living up to its dreams while piling more on to the never-ending mound. She will disappoint me over and over again and I will punish Her for it. Because I am the one with the problem and She is just trying to get on as best as She can. My world is a world of one and how dare I bring anyone into it? Force their head into my dark waters. Sick. Vile. Selfish. I need to be left to die. I would’ve covered Her with a blanket; I would’ve cooked Her a vegan spag bol; I would’ve run Her a bath; I would’ve waited until She woke up before bidding Her goodnight with a kiss on the head from a standing position behind the chair while holding Her hand and without my penis even slightly twitching. Instead I drank a glass of carbonated sugary shit to bring about a burp loud enough to wake Her from Her light doze. Then I sat on the arm of the chair and tried to pull Her face in for a kiss, not violently but improperly, unlike me-ly, so that She would pull Her head away and realise what a mistake she’d made. But She didn’t pull away. She moved in and our lips did meet and Her mouth tasted of beef extract and I was fully erect within seconds and I was sloppily snogging the love of my life for the first time ever but it was wrong. This disgusting orifice- mushing. Pink tongues, unhealthily tinged with browns and beiges, cola and cow, animal overpowering, the pretentious ape’s riling ritual. Cunts lubricate, cocks distend, three pumps and a squirt and the quantum realisation re-emerges. Regret before the action. I pulled away and saw Her eyes closed for the kiss. My stomach lurched. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…it’s just wrong. I didn’t think you’d kiss me back.’ I stumbled into the open kitchen for no reason and decided it was for a glass of water. While I was running the tap She padded over in Her fluffy ladybird socks and cuddled me from behind. ‘Please stop. It’s not right. It doesn’t feel right for me.’ She knew I was paraphrasing Her then so let go. I felt Her angry look boring into the back of my head. I knew Her teeth were gritted, Her jaw was jutted, and Her arms were folded. She gave up waiting for me to turn around and huffed and puffed back to Her seat. What could I say? This wasn’t the time either. Perhaps one day I’d forget to be unselfish and go for it. I didn’t even know why She was here. ‘Why did you even come here? What good could it have done?’ ‘Funnily enough I wasn’t thinking so clinically. I was feeling really sad and you’re the only one I can really talk to about anything.’ ‘Yeah, I’m used to being your go-to guy. Another boyfriend?’ ‘I have had one since we last spoke, yes, but I’m not here on some silly little girl rebound thing. We broke up weeks ago. But…I’ve been thinking, and I’ve finally noticed the cycle of things. It always ends the same. And you’re always here for me, even though I know it always hurts you. I wanted this to be the last time. I wanted to come to you and not leave this time. It’s finally laid itself out clearly for me. You’re the only one it could ever be. I know it’ll be difficult but I know you’ll never do what the others have done to me.’

50 ‘Difficult because I’m such a fuck-up and so are you?’ ‘Exactly.’ Certain as I now was, it was like I’d surely known all along. All those little niggles I felt, all the intangibles floating about…now the anagram had been arranged and it spelt things exactly. My mouth could only fumble for this perfect unword. ‘When I think of our lives, a lot of the time it’s in the form of something like a line chart. We’re these two separate lines on this chart, which represents life, I guess, which oscillate and of course sometimes converge. These times are represented by massive golden stars. But these times of confluence are always between two long, lonely parallel lines that aren’t even vaguely close to each other. We’re so separate. And like a split screen, as analogous meanwhiles, do I picture these apparitions of us, and we’re running along on our odysseys, all alone, and so brave, and all the more fearless for continuing so valiantly when we’re both at heart so fearful, and we’re trying to find each other, and sometimes one of us thinks we’ve finally reached the kingdom where the other waits. And one of us embraces the other love-firmly and kisses their beloved face, but it isn’t really them. They look like us, in every way seem like us, and are us, but it’s not the right us yet. And this time – and you must believe me – it really was me sitting there waiting, but the right warrior hasn’t battled to their throne in my heart yet. I don’t want you now. I am not doing this against my will, but you can’t crawl towards me like a weasel and expect me to raise you to your feet as my bride. You know it’s not time yet. I understand why you’re here because I’ve done the same thing many times. But you’ll know when the time is right and it isn’t now.’ She knew all this, of course. She’s the female version of me. The other half of me as I am to Her. She just needed someone to lay it out clearly. She knew we both needed to be the best we could be to ever do justice to the life of the other. We don’t deserve each other until then. With another mind like ours to rely on and be relied upon…we could quite literally kill each other. We weren’t ready. I don’t know when we will be…someday…but not yet.

51 32

Starvation results when insufficient quantities of nutrients are ingested to maintain a life. It ensues in three stages. The body of course wants to prolong its life for as long as possible, so has measures in place for such an event. Firstly, blood glucose – the primary source of energy for the cells in the body – continues to be produced from glycogen (though the liver annoyingly only stores enough to last a few hours), and thereafter proteins and fats. The majority of the glucose is formed from the amino acids of the proteins, some of which can also be converted directly to caloric energy. Fats also contribute via decomposition into fatty acids (of particular use to skeletal muscle, so that the rest of the glucose can be used on maintaining the brain); glycerol can be used to create small amounts as well. The second stage can last several weeks. Fats are the primary energy source during this time. Fatty acids are metabolised into ketone bodies by the liver. After a week or so without food the brain begins to rely on these compounds, alongside glucose, for energy. The demand for glucose lessens, as does the breakdown rate of the proteins, of which the least essential are used first. Once the fat reserves are greatly depleted, the third and final stage begins. Proteins are now the major energy supply. Muscle tissue, being the largest source of protein in the body, rapidly depletes. This stage concludes when there is not enough protein left for the essential purpose of cellular function, culminating in their degeneration. What does this all mean in personal terms? Well, there is of course the immense weight loss, but you’re unlikely to die from this directly. Most succumb to an infectious disease before it gets to that. Being that depriving your body of energy means that it will essentially slowly shut itself down, most of the symptoms are unsurprising: the vital organs shrink, including the heart, lungs, and ovaries or testes, and eventually cease all function; immense loss of muscle mass and the consequent debility; abdomen and lower-limb edema; deafness, blindness, virtual incapacity because of weakness. It is not a good way to die – you have to do a lot of living in agony beforehand.

52 33

It doesn’t surprise me that you never read the book I lent you. You have far too many words to spew – I appreciate how difficult it must be to find the time to absorb any. I don’t trust my own judgement anymore. How much of you is the charade? Perhaps there is only a single sliver of you left in that case, and even that is pushed deep down into one of the lines in your left heel…perhaps you’ll leave an imprint in the sand one day. You skim-read life. You won’t let its poetry change you. Perhaps you died years ago. Eyes are fallible, deceptive, they see in frames – perhaps you have long been a data ghost. If I threw myself over the edge of a cliff you wouldn’t try to stop me, but would spend the rest of your life doubled over in agony at your perceived complete and sole culpability. If the Clover rampaged through this city, you’d be the girl I went back for. Every love story I witness leaves me shivering, staggering listlessly back up the stairs, to fall face-down on my bed and strain my eyes closed provoking forebrainache while I desperately pray for the deus ex machina.

53 34

On a clement morning began the most succulently segmented of days. To come were pithy quips and pithy fruits to be zipped about as caustic lesions and acidic legions clashed in a game of lightning lacrosse spanning handspan windows (of admittedly Atlas scope) really rather improbably but it’s true. Being a relatively small fellow I had to manoeuvre and weave through the crowd, and even then had to crane my neck and duck and jump and fume as more cunty punters pushed in front of me, but I saw it that morning, before it had happened but it was to come. I was supported by the heavens so you can appreciate there was some alteration in proportion, so take it further and suspend your silly concrete beliefs – which always have crumbled under sunlight or lamplight or matchlight or the tiniest speck of rain anyway – and picture me having dominion over time also. Call me Ginger Manhattan, for I can see all, but this doesn’t mean I have any hand in its shaping, beyond that of any other individual. Me not God, me just Big Man. A little Big Man. And what happened later today, just now, as I speak? Certain douchebags claim ownership over the ether! Ridiculous, no? But just as ridiculous is claiming ownership over space. You can’t touch absence. It’s a visual thing, or rather an envisaged thing. We eat and we taste. Things mingle spectacularly. But someone wants more, wants the power of possession…or rather, looking at it from the individual’s perspective, wants everyone else to not have it. Power and superiority and are concepts that would not exist without the other persons to feed it – the everyone else. This thus proves their utter equality: they can never escape being but humans when it boils down to it. The possessions are outside of the vessel that perceives itself so betterly separate from the rest. The egos themselves have nothing. Upon perishing two other rabid beasts will scuffle for the indeterminate morsel that is just a composition of anything else anyway. Just an arrangement of particles. Delicious carbon. A rising moon brings the worst out of us. Doom Metal of the Spheres. Merzbow Dawn Chorus. A choir screams duologues at the apex. A futile, deafening mania. Harpies shrieking gibberish, with occasional monotone singsong projections of brutal, splanchnic lucidity:

‘Apathetic and aimless We shall claim this,’ it goes on, and we must endure it with our lug-ears. Lobular length is immaterial, but I can’t help feeling a certain perverse pang of jealousy towards the man with the sealed canal who I met that time on the number 86. My mind did conjure up the concept of the Tinnitus Party a couple of years ago – much like they do with babies and chicken pox in the US, only it’s exasperated ponces and close- proximity listeningtotheentiryofRageAgainsttheMachine’sself-titledalbum. The beautiful rupture, their own smug rapture: ‘My ears are bleeding but I can’t hear you sheeple bleating!’ But was this day solar or stellar? Was I wearing snake-eye contacts or my dark patch? Depending on where I sat shovelling tortilla chips into my craw it could’ve passed unseen or encompassed all spacetime. But I’ll offer my own personal account of what happened, from which you can take what you will/can. Emanationism. An approximation of a representation of a phantom of a reflection. There is always the yearning; a positive desire to evolve and uncover

54 new horizons. But most want certainties and won’t stop to smell the roses that compose their fragrant runway as they journey through life. People don’t want to have to take responsibility for their whole lives. They want to arrive at a point of no more, not comprehending that once life is over death happens. That is all there is to look forward to: this, then something else. Since we don’t know what the something else is, it seems foolish to abort the present to become absorbed in a worry that could well prove to be without foundation. It’s gonna happen to us all. It was going to happen and did happen to everyone you’ve ever known or heard of, and everyone else too. The ballgame was played out by the two obvious foes. The bare, polar opposites. Raw and roaring. The dark versus the light. All that customary shit. Repression is the enemy of imagination, thus of art, thus of truth, thus of life. The tug of war is a universal one. One must always die but neither ever does. To reach an infinite velocity would render life futile: a point would eventually be reached where nothing else could happen. We need carcasses to step over (read: on). Goodness feeds on opposing evil. It is parasitic to live off things for we are things too. The most altruistic empathy has roots in selfishness: the knowledge that being treated well feels good means you dish it out to others to know you’ve made them feel like that. Why would you be good to someone if neither party got anything out of it? Everybody so very fearful of being left alone to become societal spectres, performing operatic soliloquies that may never have happened – no one ever hears them. Sex is the only release; without it is only frustration. The absence of pleasure can only leave pain. Inverting the colours of life would make every sight grotesque, an image of wrongness. ‘Yspot-yvrut’ does not have the same ring to it.

55 35

On the way back he stopped off at the cornershop to buy a Twix. When he got in he dumped the shopping bags in the corridor, put the kettle on, and dialled 1571 to check his messages. There was one, from his ex-girlfriend’s sister. It went as follows: ‘Chris, it’s Amanda, she’s gonna…this is Laura, I…why couldn’t you have just talked to each other…everything’s gone wrong, what happened…she’s gonna jump, Chris. She’s gone to fucking Beachy Head and she’s gonna jump. You need to get to her, you need to get there now. I’m stuck on the motorway; I won’t be able to reach her, not in time anyway…I won’t make it in time… Oh God, why did she pick today? She called your mobile and the house phone and you didn’t pick up, so she called me. She told me to tell you…she…she told me to tell you she loves you. She said that words were useless, that you both always said they were so never demanded them of each other, that you always told her, ‘my one and only demand is that you simply remain you’. And she told me to tell you that you don’t need to feel it beating under her chest to know that her heart is always yours and that it will always beat for you. Just…please save her. You must.’

His battery had conked out earlier that day. It was mid-December, and he’d reluctantly chosen today to begin the aimless, languid trudge around the shops for all the ungrateful, cadaverous cretins he’d begun to hang around with again. He’d grown quickly and drastically utterly sick of every one of them once he met Amanda. Everything settled. All the niggling, stinky little things gradually fell away, leaving only the thrill of complete happiness. A foil, a sidekick, a partner, an equal. They recognised the absurdity of everything so indulged in a profound symbiotic play every day. Pampering each other with externalisations of their joy: reciting Poe on a bouncy castle in the dark; mathcore bubble baths; frolicsome mutual masturbation sessions in front of a mirror; matching ‘Why the Platypus?’ tattoos; appropriating YMO’s ‘Rydeen’ as a nightly-sung lullaby; slagging off smokers, drinkers, fatties, skinnies, and everyone else in the whole world ever. Everything they did they did together. And there was no bullshit about it, no withholding nagging worries to at least keep their mouths smiling, because there was none: they were happy, they truly were. All it takes is one mistake. And in this story it was his. It was dark, it was meaningless, it was animal, it was over in an instant. With some Fosters-drinking, Coldplay-singing twerp. A friend of a friend. Against a wall outside the venue, at the top of the stairs, while waiting for Amanda as she used the loo. In an animal flash. It wasn’t even that strong. He felt that guilty lump as the girl laughed and stumbled off down the steps, but it was nothing. But Amanda saw. Through the doors. It was the sloppiest, most meaningless of kisses. She wasn’t sure if this made it worse or not. It couldn’t have lasted more than four seconds, but that wasn’t the point. He was only meant to do that with her. They never spoke this but they always knew. Anyone else was unnecessary. That motion, that thing he used to kiss her, to do that lovely, intimate, caring, foreplay-motion with. Those lips had now tasted someone else – not that they hadn’t before, but they hadn’t after, not since. The immaculacy was broken. The ambrosia was curdled. He had cracked their crème brûlée. Of his own will, of his own volition. She stumbled back, unable to breathe for a few

56 seconds, and turned and backed up against the wall and slid down it, bawling silently in the packed music venue. Around eight minutes passed before he came looking. He spotted her sitting there, and knew from the epic sorrow in her eyes what was wrong. There was no hate, even, which filled him with self-disgust. There was only fear, a total and sincere and devastated fear, devastating to observe in this vulnerable, doe-eyed, perfect creature, whom he’d die for without a millisecond’s thought, without the breezeblown quiver of a single eyelash. How does one leap such a canyon? For the first time since their lonesome eyes first met this was a decision that had to be made as individuals. Separate. They mightn’t come up with the same answer but it was the only way to move on from here.

They both decided to continue with the other, but the fruit had been infiltrated. There was a worm in there. And the few snowflakes that Christmas Eve offered…boy, the fantastic times they’d had in the snow. The sound of their boots padding through it that time; the snowcrunch, the thick vapour from their mouths, her red button-nose, when he wrote her name… Things that couldn’t be expressed, that couldn’t before be shared…now they could. Their bond penetrated innumerable, untellable layers. It ran so deep, like the crumb of snow that had melted and trickled perfectly down the length of her spine, that was her to him, and it felt blissful. But this year, on a December afternoon, when in the cold silence they saw the first few flakes fluttering on to the lawn…it filled them with sorrow. It was just hard, white water. That night they made love for the first time in eight days – a record for them by approximately seven days – and he couldn’t come. Love syrup, they’d always called it, with a chuckle, before they melted into each other again. But this sex was loveless. Not completely loveless, but restrained and timid and embarrassed and scared. An invisible Camille lay between them; unvisual, bloated, with laboured, silent breaths. Restraint…how could that be there? It felt bleak. It felt indicative of their fate from now on. From their nightly frenzy of exultations, unicorn apparitions, Niagara plunges, torrid touches, becoming Fuck Almighty, this was now what those measly normals did. They were ‘having sex’. Awful. They were shell-shocked, devastated, numbed, crippled, paralysed. He went flaccid inside her before they gave up. During it all they had reached tomorrow. The opposite of love is hate.

By the time he’d reached the jolly season in his sixteenth year – eight years prior – pretty much all traces of the magic had been lost. Santa long-hanged; Mum and Dad living separate lives, doing that creation-motion with some other idiot; receiving money instead of toys because no one remotely knew him anymore. His adolescence was undoubtedly awkward (to put it lightly), and he’d subconsciously known that this feeling would likely last well beyond his teens, perhaps never leaving. After that, life became a wilderness. A farmer, stumbling blindly through the night, wielding his blunt machete with its tattered hilt. External life simply a procession of damage limitation; arriving home at 6:15P.M. each day and retreating into the internal, which was darker and harsher than anything out there but in here at least someone knew him.

57 It was a quest to keep the crystals of youth where he could see them. Greedy goblins would connive and pilfer them for their own unknown ends. In his head he was a gallant knight, bravely fighting off all dragon fists and iron claws to maintain this kingdom; to keep it as unspoiled as he humanly could. With an upturned scarred face each day would end with him surrounded by no one, but there never had been anyone there and he was still the same – he could sleep knowing it had been another successful day. Outside of this, though, he fell into the only life that people knew. Mirrors displayed repellent images so he didn’t keep any around him. Living only for the next day, without knowing purpose except survival. Surely there must be another to find…? His heroic psychological exploits need never have happened otherwise. But the world didn’t value uniqueness so there didn’t seem to be any destination for any of what he was. What could he do with it? Useless. Valueless. Pieces of paper picked up at educational institutions noted his intellect, his supposed superiority to the others in his age bracket. But sitting atop a turd you can see all the constituents under you, the garnish no one cares about. The top layer of filmy scum of a septic spillage on the roadside. And he never forgot those words his mum would annihilate racists with: ‘scum is scum.’ Different parts deadened; conserving energy by shedding the surplus nerve- endings. At least, it felt like it. This was something far removed from wilderness. Wilderness implies a maniacal, desperate search for meaning, harking plantae the only addressees for your struggling, anguished vocalised throes – this was a decade of zombification. There was no struggle. He didn’t try to prevent it happening. He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t tug the baggy sleeve of a sweatshirt to pull away from a rosebush, let along protest against any circumstance or demand of him. This was life, then, he thought early on, and braced himself. Then, all of a sudden… BOOM! WHAM! Winded in the irises. Multiple-orgasmically searing his retinas. He was staring at the sun, parked perfectly between those bumcheeks… In the quietest corner of the bookshop, immersed in To The Lighthouse, he saw It. That meaning. It was in the form of a Her, a female sculpture of flesh. She felt that mysterious sense of being observed and looked up from her book. Frozen in an atemporal rapture their Technicolor scene blurred all else into an irrelevant grey smudge. He seemingly floated towards her, led by nothing except an unshakable newness burgeoning somewhere within him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He stopped toe-to-toe with her, which wasn’t the threatening gesture it sounds because the same moment had been shared by her. They glided, or perhaps it was the shapeless forms of their future selves gone back in time to push them with all their might so that they would get to spend a few more seconds of eternity together. Then again, time was totally extraneous to their newfound hyperuranion caprice. Regardless, they met. They met they met they met.

They woke in the afternoon that Christmas Day, the one preceded and bled into by their first deficient intercourse. Hungry, like runty scavengers, greasy-pelted urban foxes, skittish rat people, they ate last night’s cold pizza and drank days- old coffee. They chewed with their mouths open, farted melodramatically, coughed and swilled around the warm phlegm, and their eyes looked crack- addled and their clothes looked like rags ineffectively draped over them to hide

58 the cracks from which their bodies were leakingbleedingoozingsqueezing out the last droplets of their souls. Everything they looked at was beige or green or yellow. Every element of life was poison. He picked his nose. She picked her toes. It wasn’t snowing today. Everything on telly was shit. It’d be getting dark again in a couple of hours. He watched her take a sip of her drink. He sighed.

And that was almost year ago now. She moved out that February, and it was surprising how quickly and easily he slipped into his former life; his before-her life. Coasting with his head sunk in inactivity, waiting without hope, or the slightest expectance, to be reanimated. He didn’t know where she was or what she was doing, but he knew what she’d be doing, and where she was. Pretty much what he was: waiting for life to make it all better again; knowing it would never happen. Damned to purgatory; condemned to an unwanted inertia; apathy. One could make, but why bother carving idols when you have seen the stars? A poor substitute, not worth the brief instance it appeared in your mind as an idea. Now, he drives. He drives far too fast. Recklessly. But his life, and the lives of others…pffft. Fuck it. Right now he must take control of a slice of destiny and prevent a certainty. She must be sure, to have chosen to conclude her life. She must have searched within and searched without for all these months, finding nothing worth staying alive for. Whatever’s beyond, she’s had enough of this. She’s letting go, something I couldn’t bring myself to do. I feel hyperactive, feverish, like it’s rattling my bones, it’s like I can feel my brain bouncing around in my skull. A frantic, asphyxiating terror. Like a demonic girdle it’s clamping me. I don’t even care. What about her? When I get there what do I say? How can I persuade her to stop? I have no reasons. I have no answers. I just want to be with her and happy again. There are no reasons. There is nothing I can do or say but I know I must save her because I love her and that’s what you do for someone you love: you protect them from harm. I don’t want her to stop. I don’t want her to switch off. I want to see her happy breathing. Even if it’s without me I just want to know she is happy. I parked up and began to run. I’d only taken a few steps when I saw her silhouette in the distance; she stood at the cliff’s edge, her long fierce-orange hair fluttering gloriously in the breeze, in an intricate ballet with her billowing gown glowing white like a flag of surrender. The first time I’d seen her in ten months. Three-hundred-and-something days. I kept running and running and began to attempt to shout using my feeble means. I hate my voice. She remained so still, even while withstanding those ferocious winds. I remembered that day we first met, and all those days after when it was so exciting to be alive. I never thought of misery anymore. It became so long gone as every single day was perfect. Thrilling. Elation. Elevated to rightness. The contentment-of-spirit level. The only level. The completion. The prize. The only treasure. This single jewel. She had ears and elbows and a navel and a silly laugh and her ‘oo’ sounded like ‘ew’ and it made me laugh all the time. And she knew about philosophy and biology and she loved animals and colours and smelling flowers. She was my best and only friend; the greatest, bravest, toughest, most vulnerable, beautiful, perfect, odd little human I’d ever known and would ever

59 know. There was none but her: this was a certainty. It needn’t be said, it was so clearly true. I kept running. I kept calling her name. The wind caught my breath, stinging. Perhaps it could all be said with a cuddle? Our life flashed before my eyes. Then she jumped.

As he watched her limp form willingly disappear over the edge, he imagined her falling, already a corpse-in-waiting, vividly picturing the final hinge-like movement of her limbs as she connected with the rocks below and died an instant death. He imagined those silly frilly knee socks she always wore moving with her lovely spindly legs, before all of her became still. He imagined her face, all the nuances in her last few seconds of life as she fell, knowing she was going to die. What was she thinking as she went away? How did she feel as death ran towards her? Was she serene? Was she sanguine? Were her eyes open or closed? He was gasping, suffocating, sure his ribs would pop out of his chest at any moment. She’d be dead by now. She was dead. She was definitely dead. Life finite, death for ever. She was gone. His eyes liquefied within his skull into a dull protoplasm and left endlessdark caverns. His body curdled to brittle ash. Existence introduced an enema into his soul.

He reached the edge thirty-two seconds later. Around the time, he noted, it took to buy his Twix.

60 36

“You have invested far too much faith in me. I think you’ve held on to me, or rather the idea of me, for too long. You are deluded. It won’t be enough. I will still be me, this person sitting next to you now. I will still have done all the things I’ve done, and will continue doing all the things I do that you don’t like. I’ve never said yes to you; to your pleading for us to become ‘us’, for us to come together for ever. There is bad stuff that will sour the sweetness we might feel; that silly schoolkid honeymoon period. Poisoned before it has even begun. All those secrets I’ve shared with you…that’s me. It may have become mythical to you, sitting there talking to a faceless text version of me, or thinking of a younger face, but it was me. I live twenty-four hours a day; I’m me all the time. I did all those things; I lived them in real time. I’ve had sex with other people. I’ve smoked cigarettes. I’ve drunk till I’ve puked in my bra. I want people to like me. I like friends – they don’t all have to be geniuses. I like to piss about, be silly, forget myself. But…well, I don’t have this urge to recapture the old times like you do. I remember them with happiness, sometimes wistfully, but I’m not the crushed person you are. I enjoy life. I like people, socialising with them, hearing their stories, observing their nuances. And I know you think I see all these things that aren’t really there, but…well, you aren’t me. I see them. I live my own life and though we come together and have the most remarkable moments, an exclusive devotion to each other would result in the love we share now – a unique, profound love, and I’ll never once deny that – turning bad. We have so much that binds us…our bonds…it’s unbreakable. But an ‘us’ is something that can never be. As sure as you are about everything, I am sure. But evidently in a different way.”

61 37

Sometime in the eighteenth century a girl hears a rumbling outside the window. Her heart skips at the prospect of an impending storm. Like a west wind testing the terrain it breaks the silence, stirs emotions, riles passions to move with its motions; an organism, a happening, an unconscious art with a heartbeat blistered feet pulse. Wondrous adrenaline impels the scene: friends and family bustle, the planet alive with life and experience. Someone kindles a fire; blankets are searched for and found; meanwhile, the men talk about this and that for hours on end without really saying much at all. The girl notices how each one of her companions has their own special giggle: hers is deep and husky; Rebecca’s quick and high like a little mouse; Mary’s hysterical like a baby playing peek-a-boo; Mummy’s warm, cosy and comforting; Grandma’s almost silent but from deep within her belly. They’re all dashing around, and it’s these times, these times so full of life, when she gets to see everyone come out of themselves to share an experience, that she’s always cherished the most.

The phone rang at 1:17A.M. I picked up, and all I heard was a police siren and what sounded like gunfire, then it cut off. I dialled 1471, thoughtlessly without a pen to hand, but recognised the number – it was my father’s. So I called him, but it went to his answer machine. I left a message, telling him to TEXT ME IMMEDIATELY to ensure that, y’know, he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead; it’d called me from in his pocket as he walked home from what he told me was an excellent DJ gig where the last song he played was ‘Time of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing.

Later I heard a rumbling outside the window. My heart maintained its sluggish, biscuit-clogged pace as I knew it was probably an aeroplane passing overhead. Fumes flare from millions of metal orifices in a city that never sleeps, a constant numbing insomniac hum, passionless pairings move in mechanical missionary motions; a feeble orgasm, almost nothing, a conscious start to try to sleep to wake up to trek to an artless heartless cancerous coma. Lifeless dread long the ambience: few friends and a family for whom I must muscle, the planet inhabited by undead potential. Ration the central heating; so many pennies spent on the little ones; the women act like slags everywhere, talking shit and crap for hours on end without realising they could be anything at all. I appreciate how everybody has their own special problems: mine my want for more than this; Rebecca’s her rather pronounced misandrist streak, but then why did I choose her?; Mary’s just had her first period; my mum’s dying of throat cancer – I don’t know what Mary will do without her Grandma. They’re all plodding along, wondering why they’re so dissatisfied with their lives, everyone hiding themselves and enduring it alone, scared and wanting someone to cherish them the most.

62 38

As much as we are flooded with anger and misery, bombarded with dirt and diamonds from a single ladle, all senses assaulted by an indistinguishable and inescapable discord, there is in actuality room for a lot of subtlety in the world…proclaimed Hippocrates. A single city mind is warped, viewing the inside as so vast that it encompasses the outside; the suffocating sum of sweaty miserable bodies the tar-black bogies in an already milky mucus, it thinks this simply the way of things. Mine anyway. I forget that there is always an outside, be it taking a train out of a low-ceilinged grey town and into lustrous fields and visible horizons, to attempting a personal clairvoyance to realise how there is nothing inherent about this world, and that there are infinite angles to view a single cluster of veins on the brownest crinkliest fallen leaf. What is this fear that inhibits us, inhabits us? Of a failure to be like everyone else? But what escape is there from this when everyone else is everywhere and anyone else but you? Emitted from many mouths was that statement – ‘YOU HAVE ENTERED THE LABYRINTH’ – but it was never a maze at all, just a sentient nervous spiral with coils getting progressively closer until you, unavoidably, reached the Minotaur and he feasted on your organs. The walls were moist and covered in cave drawings, and intriguingly each seemed to be of a different hand. They were evidently carved long ago, but seemed to be regularly restored, each having a glutinous gloss, a smattering of them also embossed with an indeterminate decorative powder. You were endeared to them more deeply, but the others got steadily more outrageous, really funky colours and made by totally crazy people, like totally nutty. Somehow you managed to get lost, and countless times, even though it operated a one-way system. Distractions. Obstructions. You might get there quicker, or you may even turn back. But you must get there, and this way is almost one-hundred per cent effective. Almost…

63 39

Hang on a minute…Bees…Be…BB…Bees? To be like a graphite pencil? BB? The richer rewards of subtlety. The bag becomes a sack, the sack overwhelms the sleigh, the sleigh crashes on to the rooftops, and out spills all that jelly down her chimney, down her throat, inundating her lungs; she claws for her escape. At a certain loss, the courier continues to funnel the gloop into her, knowingly murdering her as it blobs and dollops, but he is adamant and full of doubt and she has a permanent mouthful that she longs to spit out, to breathe again. Knowing she is going to drown in this liquid and die she juts out her arms in one last desperate reach…and a young man grabs her hand and calmly pulls her out of the way of the flow, the tube falling to the floor and leaking the rest of the muck on to the pantherskin rug. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Are you OK?’ She gasps and clutches him to her. He is so warm and dry, like a big cuddly wolf. She smiles a cosy smile. ‘You saved me! You’re so warm. And dry.’ He kept his sweaty pits clamped to his sides as he thought of something boring to keep Little Colin at bay. He inverted a vindaloo burp. He ran his hand through her hair. He’d been watching the whole time as she struggled, he just didn’t really care until that last moment. Lucky, really. Without meaning to spitefully insinuate, and without implying some inherent negative nature about him, one might’ve observed a calculated aspect to the proceedings, like he’d waited until the most opportune moment so as to carry – or more precisely not miscarry – out his scheme to be her saviour perfectly. One might even go so far as to say that he executed his role with consummate ease; played his part like a pro, almost as if he’d had a lot of practice, with a slightly cocky effortlessness that endeared him to his already adoring public but sent other men of a similar age into seething spirals of rage.

I was not heeding my own advice as I saturated the temperate vixen with my invidious reserve of envy. She bore nine starlight tails that waved dazzling pyrotechnic possibilities in the sky. Her cerise locks, showing chestnut roots, ringleted right down to her womanly hips, blouse slightly riding to reveal some cellulite scars, proving her to be so full of woman that she was almost bursting at the seams. More woman than most so must be mine. I cannot be subtle. I need only one and they should only need me. And they will take it all on, and as I am a conduit when I say all I mean all, it will never stop, and they will want it, they will love it, because they want me and they love me and this is all of me. You will suck on this pipe and you will glug and gag and you will enjoy it. But look at what I did to her, man. I watched her weep into the airwaves – I still hear the echoes now. I watched her whimpering because of me. I, solely, made her cry. Some of the water she drank that day was drunk because of the tears I made her spill. Self-flagellation would pale in comparison to the flurried tenderising of my insides I already perform daily. And my go-go-gadget arms held her at lengths that spanned oceans, but on those self-absorbed days would quickly retract and she’s in my venomous vicegrip again. So one day, teary-eyed, I made her cut my arms off.

64 40

I remember the spring light flooding into my room. I remember hearing the letterbox slam. I remember the perfume floating gentlysurely out of the envelope, making my heart flutter and my whole body tremble. I remember the butterflies, the all-consumption, the new hope, the superhero soul. I remember you telling me you would kiss me. I remember knowing you loved me when we’d say it (it felt warm in my tummy like swallowing tea, a cosy blush). I remember the dreams I had of beginning infinity in California. I remember your eyes. I remember you telling me to stop with that heavenly, brave, vulnerable voice when I made you smile just so I could see your dimples. I remember the fear and anxiety, how you occupied every waking moment, and I made my days more and more full of being awake so I could spend as much time with you as possible. I laughed to myself a few minutes ago. It’s coming up to tomorrow now, and I laughed when I thought of how distant it all seems; how even the happiness of mere months ago is laced with nostalgia. I remember how immediate it all felt, and now it’s another thing that happened to me; that’s been and gone. You put out the word of your concern a few months back, which I returned right away (of course – always). But no word back. I know you’re not dead, but I guess you’re another love who may as well be to me. Because we’re not part of each other’s lives any more, are we?

65 41

Black and white comic panel (don’t bite his tongue, he hates it) Tipp-Ex or liquid paper Devo in powder-blue uniform Hilary in a sling three pink plasters one orange cat some model obscured squiggles glamorous woman doing a poor job at conducting an orchestra hooks and daisies the joys of the worm golden applecore an ugly clotheswhore the joys of sticker makin’ a focussed monkey eating a vinyl record upside-down legs wearing clogs crying eye ever asshole (déjà vu) pink-and-black-striped bowtie woman flexing biceps frog king butterflycassetteplayer an arm a glove a shin and a foot of another model and noise makes the love go around

66 42

‘We’ve all been to Brazil,’ began the lecture, precipitating the exit – at least as far as concentration was concerned – of Adam for the remainder. ‘We all start afresh as the monsters we are. Science hasn’t quite got history-editing far yet, so your past will always be a part of you. If you come across a white hole spewing time then you get more of it; a black hole, less. Perhaps your tenure will be sucked up completely. But is existence a yo-yo? Will the universe someday stop expanding and start contracting? Even if it was made to not have happened, it happened, did it not? We’ve all been to Brazil. We should each be able to produce a fuck-off tract from our pockets, and the sound when it hits the table should be a resounding thump. So where are they? My dad has had bad knees for as long as I can remember. I used to say to him, ‘Dad, go to the bloody doctor, you silly old sod’. But he never did. And now he can’t walk. If you sit around eating reconstituted crap all day and watching television that you know deep down doesn’t even content you slightly, you probably deserve the equivalent of his immobility. So many of our siblings dope themselves up on this narcotic of apathy – it’s the old cliché – to numb the pain. And most of these were almost entirely numbed by their permanent vacation already. They’ve got families of flies feeding on their holiday from personal responsibility; from taking charge of one’s destiny. And the dreamer, hating all things, but doing nothing to change them. And hate…hate is the perfect platform. You know which stance you begin from. Let’s flip this pancake. One flip is all it takes. But that first push…you taste the bile. You are sick of dining on rind. A real slice of prime liver quivering on your plate seems the distant dream of the leering kingdom of a schizophrenic king. You have a complex tree visibly sprouting offshoots by the day. But this disarray, these disparate personae you’ve manifested…you know them well. The urine-soaked seat is always warm. Your shit smells good to you because it’s your own shit. But ‘your own’? There’s a veritable confederacy of yous trapped in there, conspiring against one another, and there aren’t any to stop it. People procreate, often aided by fermented vegetable drinks. They enjoy the profitlessness of an activity that somehow survives in a world run on striving to gain. It’s logical that a society will develop, and agree upon particular rules and regulations, and…I’ve gone off-track a bit here. You can be happy. You can flourish. It’s difficult to purely live, I know. I fucking hate talking to you little shits, most of you not even listening, just to pay bills and be taxed again and again by a government that does not serve its people. In a couple of years I’ll get my pension, all of which will be taxed again. And members of our society can still believe in theirs being a good life, voting bipartisan every election when there are children prostituting themselves to survive…voting at all, it’s so silly, it’s…none of this works. It isn’t good enough. We aren’t valued. None of us. Not one of us. We each need to rise in our way. We each have a whole world within us. A nature. A part of the total-soul. Hiding any part of you is lying to yourself. Any part of you avoided is wasted. Don’t abort your lives, especially as young as you all are. A few of you have started wearing grey jumpers already. I saw you wearing colours only a few weeks ago. Bring the colours back! Or just ignore me if you simply like wearing grey. Your only plan should be to live naturally, whatever ‘living naturally’ entails for you personally. Why sit in this hall listening to my dissatisfied gospel, with all this false warmth, nylon carpets, and hard economy chairs? Experience your life; don’t be told about experience, seeing

67 it as some faraway land. What are you all, imbeciles? This was the next logical step, wasn’t it? What one does next. You embarrassing little twerps. I’ve written books, they predate all this existential-resurgence crap. I stand here, twatting about in tweed, leaning wearily on this rostrum, a very disillusioned man. Disenchanted. It’s my wife’s go. We take it in turns to write something. So I’m stuck with this for however long it takes, and she told me she thinks this one is going to be her epic, her magnum opus. I might be an old, old man by the time I next get to sit at my desk with my beloved typewriter. Yes, a typewriter! The true writer’s-tool! But now? Extinct! Obsolete! Awful. And when I’m old I might not want to write any more, just sit chewing my own face in slippers that smell of rye, wet dog and unrealised dreams, lamenting what might’ve been. I was once seventeen and at college. I sat next to a tiny Indian girl, my only friend, but she left me all alone early in the first year. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. We had a teacher, Liam Mitchell, who – I was acutely aware of this even then – was a perfect example of what I could become in the future. A ferociously intelligent man, teeming with self-deprecation, self-doubt, with a genuine warmth, but also an endearing measure of cynicism, cultivated over a lifetime. He taught us the stunted amount of ‘English Language’ the curriculum allowed. But as you grow up, bits of you constantly flaking off, inhibitions arranging in a serrated, bellicose environ around your scorn-pocked core, if you are of a sensitive disposition you are aware more acutely – presumably because it happens so rarely now – of when you come across something or someone special. He was such a man. I understood him. And I appreciate how all things are a matter of perspective and proportion. I was surrounded by imbeciles. No one else got his cutting humour, his music references, his surreal asides. But life is a constructed path. We pave our own way. It was sad seeing him coming in to work every day from right across town, often late, putting on a brave face and doing something he didn’t want to do. Life wasn’t good enough for him; he was disheartened by every succeeding day when it didn’t suddenly magically make everything all right. And one day, as the first year was coming to a close, the class began talking about the impending Philosophy exam happening later that day. And Liam, being the kind, erudite fellow he was, abandoned our planned lesson and taught us some of the basics of philosophy. This was all new to me. And oh man! it was the day I discovered that the cliché exists for a reason, for in a life of linear time everything must start somewhere. And that was the beginning of my odyssey. That off-the-cuff decision to help a few of his students out with another subject inadvertently spawned the mutant before you now. And I am so thankful to him for that, despite…well, you know what I’m getting at. I’ve – unwittingly you must understand – continued his legacy somewhat, and I’ll bet you my right arm he’d done something similar. No, I didn’t worship him and no, I didn’t want to bum him either. I should’ve given him a hug or let him know how I felt, though, and he’s probably dead now. Don’t live in regret. I’m not an old, old man yet but I am already filled to the brim with regret. I’d had my fill. Live a life true to yourself, not based on what others expect of you – don’t work hard your whole life for something you don’t even desire. Express yourself in whichever ways you can or want to. Don’t let anyone tell you the results aren’t good enough: if you’re happy with them, they’re good enough. Communicate with others, talk, be friendly, your soul will be rewarded even if your kindness isn’t returned. Keep in touch with your youth, your friends and family, your joys. Don’t shed true parts of yourself just because it’s ‘what you’re meant to do’, and don’t abandon things

68 just because they don’t fit with your pompous ideas about yourself. If something brings you joy, keep it with you. You deserve all the actual pain you get if you willingly submit yourself to spiritual destitution via the mainstream sham. Obviously there is a degree of artifice in everything but breathing, but every man knows when they are following their star or using their palm as an eyepatch. The most important thing is to let yourself be happy. Realise that it is a choice. If you let yourself be happy you’ll be surprised at how much you accomplish, how much internal stuff you manage to get out, how a healthily flourishing godflower produces pollen that disperses itself: all you have to do is sit back and truly observe to see how much there truly always is to observe. It’s difficult to find your groove in the dirt, because it takes a long time to realise you have to dig it yourself. And…I think that’s all I have to say today.’ Adam heard none of this. He was off swashbuckling in Brazil.

69 43

I. Made. People. There aren’t the words… My son was born today. A new person… I watched him emerge, his first seconds in the world. I saw a video of a woman giving birth at school once, and in real life it was nowhere near as icky. It was beautiful, in fact. Making a child…it’s the purest work of art two human beings can create. Words, pictures, sounds…they’re all approximations, artefacts fashioned of the mind. But making a new human being is pure, could not have happened unless you made it so…a miracle. A new, seemingly supernatural version of love erupted. Invincible; a king, an heir to the court. A tiny youngling, a mammalian doll, a reliant bundle. I immediately took arms; became a fierce, ardent protector if ever it should be called for. And sprouted from that artistic copulation, that creative unison. Truly, truly creative, and truly the fruit is a union, a merged emergence. A solution. And the correct answer to the puzzle of why all this. My little man…but perhaps I have bequeathed my defects upon the poor blighter? If so, may life be uncharacteristically merciful on his young soul. Fresh and optimistic…well, not yet even fully aware of his own sense of reality. But I will show him there is no ceiling, even if it is a lie. This super little man can supersede my limitations. Who knows, he may even advance our sacred lineage further than I ever conceived. If my reality is sickness then I will let him live in health…I won’t inflict my idiosyncrasies upon him…it was selfish of me to make him at all. And my lovely lady. The most magnificent, honour-giving commitment. She let me. I was the one she chose as co-creator. No fear. No eggshells. A natural unity. Holding hands on a harmonious wavelength. Bring on eternity. She is an empress…empyrean…a sumptuous celeste. Stars swim like lovers…parallel dartings of old now a composed, close ballet…observed from the sky a fuchsia freeway…two lanes but one direction and one destination and one vehicle floating along it.

I couldn’t conceive of the magnitude it’d have, though. That little fucker. Why should I suddenly have to share her tits? I liked to interchange; now I always get the less succulent funbag, the one that looks the most like a shrivelled balloon. And he has known her vagina better than I ever can…face pressed against it, inside, whole body immersed in it, in her. And her time as well. I miss her. Those empty moments meant we could at least bask in each other’s presence. But she never has any empty moments anymore. Those times that aren’t filled with him are filled with him. Or filled with him. Or spent sleeping those times filled with him off. And it’s not like she and I are having to share now; it’s not like we’re still adjusting to find the right balance. It’s almost like – God, I feel so vile saying it – but it’s almost like I’ve served my purpose now. I’ve done my job. She found the perfect man to impregnate her, sure, but I’ve done it now, so am unnecessary. She carried him and birthed him. Though we co-created him, and though it’s never spoken, I know she ultimately thinks of herself as his owner: she sees him as hers. It was her oven the bun was baked in. She was the one puking every morning…afternoon, night, and morning/night. She was the one with the bad back…having to deal with strangers deeming it acceptable to caress her without

70 introducing themselves or even making eye contact…craving ring doughnuts with Tabasco sauce. She was the one with the giant parasite living in her for three quarters of a year. But when she squeezed it out, and saw its tiny toes and ginger tufts and those big lapis lazuli eyes, suddenly it was Her Child and nothing was more, or even came close to being as, important. It wasn’t that she stopped loving me: I’d just been displaced from my Her Favourite Person In The World throne. This was the way it was to be from now on. So, from this innocent spring, an unease grew, like his evil twin was slowly gestating in my belly. Because life is not just milk and honey and rainbows. There are bodily fluids and fogbows and sometimes absinthe and just fog. I felt discarded. I thought about all the other crossroad moments in my life. Those times you know will alter your course drastically. I can never believe it when a woman fancies me. Being the militant gynephiliac I am I simply cannot fathom finding a man attractive sexually, not least my imperfect self. So, mingling with the lust that will arise in the best of men, whether they like it or not, is always that sad sense of astonishment and flattery that I am actually desired by somebody. This happened before and after finding my baby’s mother, and the way I made my decision was always the same: I followed my heart. I’d only ever had two relationships before her, with the only other women I’d ever loved. I was tempted physically, but my mind and heart and soul, as well as my mouth, simply thanked them for the compliment and moved on if the entirety of me wasn’t in it. But now…I wasn’t contented in any of those ways. I thought of those two past flames, of all the other matches poised by the sandpaper but never lit, with regret. If only you could live a hundred million lives and experience everything…I didn’t know what to do. Surely she wouldn’t stand in my way if I met someone who we both knew would make me happier? And it wouldn’t mean the good times had never meant anything. They would always have happened, and isn’t it better to leave now than sully what was previously so perfect? But I love her… So I stayed with her, and tried to swallow the portentous lump. But the ball was so dense, so poisonous and strong, that I couldn’t ignore it. Everything good became miniscule peripheral adornments to this magnetic orb, ever-swelling. There was a sourness now. Momentary glances of hostility. New patronising tones. Wanting to get out. We once had a rabbit and another rabbit, not realising one of them was male, so the female had babies. Then the male escaped from its cage and she had some more. She started attacking the older babies once the new litter arrived. They’d been usurped as their mother’s priority. Like a boy tugging at his mother’s trousers in a supermarket, begging her to take him to the toilet, I wished she’d turn around and I’d see the love in her eyes again. But it couldn’t be the same now. It was impossible. And I loved the little dude – with all my heart – but this was all his fault. I didn’t always sit wallowing in self-pity, however. I now had a dependant in an entirely new way. I slaved away doing a job I hated, that starved my mind and soul, to feed and clothe him, to buy all the wonderful books and videos and music and everything he ever wanted. I doted on him, I really did. Children are the most fabulous human beings. He was full of wonder about everything, and I got to share time with him and impart all my wisdom to him, this endlessly curious creature. I took him to see his first film – some anthropomorphic crap, but it was with my son – and I’ll never forget his tooty little voice groaning as we left, his belly swollen with popcorn and fizzy

71 pop. He looked like he was about to pop! Those long orange curls he insisted on keeping, and all the little behavioural nuances he displayed as grew into himself, like taking all his clothes off every time he had a poo, or adamantly saying ‘donslasses’ instead of ‘sunglasses’. So happy as well. Innocent and true. I could see echoes of myself, naturally, and didn’t want to inflict all my pains on him. Or, if they were latent in him already, genetically ingrained, then I’d do my best to prevent them arising in his mind, and if I couldn’t do that then I’d try my complete cunting utmost to stop them surfacing and hacking his physical world to pieces as well. Keeping a safe distance, of course, I’d prevent him from making the same mistakes. Let him breathe but always with a watchful eye. He mustn’t, whatever he does, vest all hope in one poor, unsuspecting entity, like I did.

72 44

Each piece of the horrifically trifid foxdemon trilled a trinity of tripthongs amongst its desperate death throes. Fire flew from every orifice, many of them incisions made by my own hand with my faithful blade. Long strands of its coarse, bloodsticky hair were knotted around the war-worn sword, and as the fragmented carcass convulsed in certain panic, prolapsing unplacenta which instantly curdled and dissolved in the sun, each wound whistled, more voices gradually joining in, erupting into a sublime chorus, and fountains of blood pulsed like haemal hydrants into the squinting sky that overlooked the battlefield where I killed this monster, this evil hellhound that sunk its dirty, inferior teeth into the neck of my brother as I sauntered through Cuntsville, in self- aggrandising rapist robes, sipping Sancerre. Could I forgive myself if I let it be? Can I forgive myself now, a killer? Revenge instantly sinks you into the shallows of whatever inspired your vengeance, wherever it may be. Having slaughtered the creature I was now on its throne, its successor. I watched the corpse, immense lumps of worthless meat, burn that night on a grand unforgiving fire. Resolutely aflame, uncompromising, unyielding; in calm rage, upper layers of viscera tumbling as the remains underneath melted and charred to black dust. With an abrasive brush and a pail of water I scrubbed the saliva and blood from my skin, rubbed and rubbed until red-raw and a few droplets of my own blood were drawn, glistening beads forming in random spots across my battle-weary body. I fell asleep with the sponge in hand, which soon dried in the heat of the blaze.

73 45

I pretended to be a human tonight. There was so much milk to her thigh. There was a radish, formerly fused to a two-headed beast: the port to his…ship. Her…she…I don’t know. Her smiling face speaks a whole ’nother lexis – how can two eyes, a nose and a mouth say so much? Without speech? None of this happened, but it is all true.

…Our bodies stand before each other, bounties of flesh, altars of exaltation. Kind, ravenous eyes, make-fuck eyes, all-penetrating stares. Glimpses of small folds, cute hidden creases, blemishes, bristle-socket follicles, perhaps I’ll find his/her birthmark? Ears! Beautiful ears. Beautiful ears that will hear the voluptuous friction, the deep breathing, the poetry juxtaposed rudely alongside monosyllabic expletives, mostly percussive: voiceless labiodental fricative-open-mid back unrounded vowel-voiceless velar plosive me. Voiceless Labiodental Fricative-Open-Mid Back Unrounded Vowel-Voiceless Velar Plosive Me. VOICELESS LABIODENTAL FRICATIVE- OPEN-MID BACK UNROUNDED VOWEL-VOICELESS VELAR PLOSIVE ME! Hourglass trunk, third leg, seamless abdomen, thickets…

The most awkwardest of fellows you ever did see. This room is too tiny and well lit. This is an alien world: it involves other people. He can swagger in a jacket as good as any of them, but do you see the way he looks at the floor, as if hunkering into himself to hide from the cold world? It ain’t no act. He can act as good as any of them, but it ain’t no act today, and I’ll thank you not to suggest otherwise, on this day of all days. Can you spasm in stasis? Can you die from taking laxative pills? PLAY it cool, they always say. That’s that girl from thingy, on the net. Keep looking around like you’re interested in your surroundings, trying to motion capture snapshots for the inevitable private vault located in bed in the dark when you tire of existential puzzlement and the ensuing bottomless woe-pit. Think she left though. Quite rude of her. Didn’t even get to wipe my willy on the arse of her Wranglers. I’m hungry, and I paid twice the amount to have the meal so I’m going IN. Shit is gonna go OFF. I am a twat.

Nice friendly girl serving, said she liked my poems. ‘Thanks for saying that.’ ‘No, I mean it!’ Talking, like. And that. With a human female. I have my plantain so I guess I’ll go sit down. No cutlery. I’ll eat with my hand out of awkwardness. No drink either, and this chicken is jerked to the MAX. Motherfucker’s throat is on FIRE. Fuck-all, then the slow-burning DING! of the oillampswitch. She was quite literally the only person you didn’t feel awkward around tonight, so you should go properly talk to her, the knowledge of which instantly plunges you into awkwardness and a quite diuretic fear. A new light is shone on her, sitting there all alone. Look at her, all shy and by herself. Her face is a smile. She isn’t smiling, but her face is a smile… Around 5’9”, so a couple of inches taller than you, with a smile broader than any other girl’s, and dinnerplate eyes, and if she be the rare type whose whole face lights up like a pinball machine during laughter – which she is – then she must have the smiliest face in the known universe. She may even be red-haired,

74 though it’s hard to tell in underground bar light. Coppery, chestnutty… The concept of twitching made a respiring organism, you do a strange dance on the spot, like the wee dance but with a stronger link to the tear ducts and the tiresome spectrum of your awkwardness. Your jaw juts and locks. On a cusp, impending maybe-thing, the bud of something, maybe, maybe it’ll remain a bud, brown and crunchy on your mantelpiece like those ten-month-old rose remains (you received them on Valentine’s Day. From your pitying sister.) You sit on a table as the staff attempts to put them away. You apologise to them, though it’s really a chastising of yourself. Just go over, petty little poltroon. Profligate of hope. Holy shit, I’m walking over! Her eyes flash, or is that double-glazed? Whatever, she realises what’s happening, that I’m coming over to talk to her. I take strides like a confident person might, with my clothes and my daring to show my face to the outside world; to inflict it upon them. I approach her seated behind the food-serving table. ‘I just wanted to say thanks for…praising my work.’ ‘Oh, that’s OK! I’ve been thinking of starting up a monologue night here myself.’ This poetry scene isn’t my kind of people, but that sounds right up my alley. What does a monologue entail in this context? Expressing yourself by yourself, not that soulless posturing, not that playing at feeling: not that playing at being a poet. ‘That sounds great, I…yeah, I’d love to be involved. I’ll probably see you next month, I’m gonna leave and stop being awkward now.’ I talked to a real-life female woman, and didn’t even care when I got lost in the dark and ended up in Holborn.

…Her tendrilous garters smell of female leg. Three moles form a constellation on her collarbone. She is squidgy like an overripe mango. Her hips are bouncy and firm. I want to press her in so many different ways…I want to exhaust the possibilities – and please note: I believe that they are infinite. Her breasts are small in proportion to her frame, making her shoulders look broad, giving her an androgynous air that makes my special purpose twitch. Her hands are petite too, smaller even than my eczema-ridden werewolf cub claws, and her big toes kind of turn inwards, but I don’t care, I really don’t care, and all over her skin is immaculate, like a fresh sheaf of printer paper, or a jug of milk poured slow-mo in a chocolate advert. Part of me doesn’t want to soil the undisturbed beauty, defile all the perfect angles and curves she possesses. The sexual hunger is but the very tip of a brittle glacial epidermis that when cracked reveals an insatiable craving for something more, the underneath that we can’t reach, though many of us pretend. But I’m liable to forget as she lets me in…

We exchange emails but never manage to catch each other on the phone, so when I arrive I am extremely late as the night started considerably earlier than was originally planned; it is almost finished. I talk to her though, and she is serendipitously currently living – with her boyfriend – in the exact same shitheap town I have for my entire life. If you are a real-life human female who has completed puberty and I have met you then I have definitely imagined what a life with you might be like. Marriage, children…those are ideas I have abandoned now. But you have to be perfect, so none of that shit music, or really anything to do with popular culture, and you

75 have to truly understand me, and appreciate art and its siblings to be the only reason for being alive, and not give a shit about money or any other made-up thing that has nothing to do with life.

…We arrive in her bedroom. With a cursory look I notice that it contains a bed covered in sky-blue linen with white spots and a trio of cream-and-brown scattercushions and a wooden desk with a lamp and various stationery and a TV/DVD combo and a bin containing a banana skin and a scrunched-up box and curtains the colour of dried apricots and two pink fluffy slippers and an old chest of drawers and an Ikea wardrobe and a small bookshelf and an easel holding an unfinished pencil-drawn portrait of Debbie Harry…

So part of me thinks the whole thing to have been a waste of time. Couldn’t she have just told me and saved all the worry she couldn’t possibly have known I was unnecessarily having for the entire month? She’s lovely, and he’s nice enough and clearly makes her happy, so obviously I got it all wrong again, and you can do it a million times until you get it right again, and then you remember this was what happened all the other times and that as it is wholly different-yet- the-same every single time it is impossible to ever learn. So disappointing though, knowing you’re definitely going to be alone again tonight. Something magic definitely will not happen, for instance where you fall madly in love and contemplate a dreamy for ever in a melodic musk of sexual ecstasy. So you’ll lie foetally in bed again, tongue lolling thick in your mouth, staring emptily at the ceiling, knowing that, if you look for long enough, you will find the bit of someone that you truly hate, so it was probably for the best.

…Standing, naked, tingling, just us two, we embrace. I feel her skin against mine, smooth and warm and cool, sticking together with perspiration and oils, her soft breasts pressed against my chest. Our kissing reminds me of apple-flavoured sweets and removing a girl’s wellies after a long walk holding hands in the mud and rain. My hands feel around like a blind man searching for something he needs but will never find, exploring every inch within my reach. My erection squashed between us, pressing against our stomachs, patient, waiting, calmly anticipating. We separate and smile, then animalsensually slink in pantherlike unison to the bed. Kissing her twice lightly on her freckled nose, I then nuzzle into her slender neck and inhale, whereupon I am greeted by the faint pepperoni stench of stale cigarette smoke…

76 46

He vomited a tangy blancmange on to a section of skirting board and up the wall a bit, belched acidly into the back of his now sick-encrusted palm, and heaved himself up again. Fumbling for the lightswitch he found an edge of the frame that held a print of Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. In his extremely poorly drawl he made an loud exclamation of veneration, becoming wistful when remembering it – as it was pitch black he couldn’t actually see it. The amount of near-replicas he’d drawn before even knowing who Friedrich was, then his Mum ordered it at the same time as a Keith Haring she bought for him, which he was delighted with, and he looked to see what she’d bought and it hit him, of course: An outcast against the world, not with an arrogant goading or even an iota of opposition but with a wild embrace, exuberance and equality and connection…grand reality as he knows it…unshackled by invisible measurements and synthesised heat. Primal, cerebral, but with that betweener’s mind. Self scholar. Parabolic polaris. Concentric satin infinityswirls. Words cuskrashsticking shatooooming, electric lightning cracks, crackling and burning carbons like hog fat. Finally brimming. You wonder about every man’s story. They’ve all been told before, moons and stars and an endless astral audience, attentive, all (dust)ears. The face of a man, with a larynx and an imagination, behind each tale; originality always illusory, ignorance in action (do you even know whether you existed yesterday?) ‘Shakespeare, surely?’ …Nope, back…further…further…time is all...further...everything has already happened…infinity exists and we are part of it…further… We are variations of the monotruth, believed confined to our booths because every day a punch in the face hurts. But study the modern game and you can learn to dive. Feral and uncivilised as a person I might respect more for at least not pawning off his destiny to someone who looks like him but is superior and fecking Godzilla- massive and isn’t here right now but this book here bloody well follow its every word or he will smite thee. Upside the head. The journey to point A. Children convening at the mouth of a forest. In search of an island paradise, a shimmering Shangri-La, or at least a place more isolated than pictures could convey, remote from the cacophonous frequencies – no wonder the rest of the sentient universe gives us such a wide berth. Anointed in the boxed-in blood of mother and father, the resplendent whole fanning out from in, a systematic stretch of resources unrealised; time present, always present, to experience clear chunks, portioned to be better absorbed. Something from nothing, but the something always existed as potential, each man a part of his every ancestor, until we have no grounds to deny that we are all connected in the most fundamental way. We all come from one, so must’ve been part of it, and as we are alive now, still are. He hadn’t realised he’d lost bodily consciousness again until he regained it. Meanwhile the splodgy, squelchy things had squidged off down the corridor, found their optimal dark damp cranny, and secreted a saline paste to which they were somehow invulnerable, which solidified, forming indestructible shells around each specimen. Also, all their names were variations of ‘Gary’.

77 47

‘I’m only trying to help, through the bleak visor of my self-loathing. I pity myself as a separate entity, like a toppled cockroach futilely flailing its limbs, only I’m intelligent or stupid enough to dream of scurrying again. I pick fluff, not fleas. My mouth occluded with soggy, counterfeit money. The young autistic boy roughly squeezed his teacher’s breast. He got in a lot of trouble, but he just liked the softness. That, and from the earliest age we are all sexual creatures, just aren’t in comprehension of it as it lies latent and patient for the inner surge. Boy bands and boy idols exist to make money off it burgeoning in young girls. Through the thin pretence of freedom of expression, most things exist to generate capital from our natures, or to manipulate us into ‘knowing’ there is only one logical way of doing things: to propagate consumerism, to force us to strive to obtain object- exchange paper to acquire the possessions that if not obtained will result in the absence of happiness or self-worth. I feel a stirring, an unease, but what am I to do? I made a deal, and now live in permanent debt. I tell you to prepare for the future while shunting it in the arse as I finger the present. I hate you and I love you. I am scared for me, for you, for the girls, that happy times will become evermore rare. I was just a kid – how was I to know how it would all become? I’m not as intelligent as I sometimes seem and often act. I was a kid, and times really were brighter back then. Everybody mixed together. There are always adult bitternesses, sexual jealousy and the like, but it was a new land of potential. The scents of Indian spices in the air; buy some sugar cane from Wenty’s; Street Fighter II in Mr Patel’s; West Ham Park with the orang-utan swings. One day you asked me, confused, why a passing group of boys were all Asian. I told you that they just happened to be a group of Asian boys hanging out together. I hadn’t the heart to tell you it was because they were teenagers from the senior school; that once you reach that age of inner-explosion and turmoil, issues of territory and masculinity and sex and violence arise, and that above all people just want to feel some sense of security during a period of such turbulence and uncertainty. So they attempt to find people like them, everyone scared to share these new alien feelings, and gravitate towards the most obvious connection. And cling on for dear life. On another day we might’ve seen a group composed solely of white boys. You were so confused, which was heart-warming in its own way, that in a town of such diverse cultures this could happen. Mathematically speaking it’s always possible, though unlikely, but you were only six or seven. Your classroom consisting of the offspring of the whole town, your view was warped in the most beautiful of ways. But as you transition into adulthood you realise how there is only one culture: that of fear in its manifold horrific faces. I’m sorry for saying all this to you, son. But I’m just as scared as ever, and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I used to, but…you know. I remember my dad sharing things with me, and I wished he wouldn’t. I had troubles enough of my own, and out of sight means slightly less in of mind. I don’t really know you anymore, and I know you don’t like me, because you don’t like anyone, and actively hate most people. This doesn’t stop me from loving you and caring about you though. That indefinable devotion will always be there: I am Your Father.’

78 48

It’s after anti-climaxes like meeting that girl and finding out she’s already with someone that steer me here. To Her again. I deceive myself into thinking that it won’t be just for the instant gratification, like a booty call for the soul. I’m not like the rest. With me it’s not like all the others. Such peasant words do not apply to me. Not a rebound as such – for not enough time had passed for me to develop an emotional attachment to the monologue girl – but a safe haven, no matter how wanting I’m always left. I always forget that. And all the rotten shit she’s done. Tonguing the arsehole of the heavens at a sibling’s wake. Hide the sausage with pink glazed steak. Mascara gets one raving like a scene cunt. ‘Oh, so untamed and free! But he talks to you and stuff!’ Metro Man, awakening the bisexual in all of us! Is this a societal evolution or proof of the most intrinsic aimlessness? What do we want? To forget that this isn’t good enough. For anyone. None of us is content with being dissatisfied, with wanting and not getting. And there are far fewer rapes on the equator. So, please: fill any and all of our orifices – to block out the noise, or at least dampen the echo. The phone rang and rang until I gave up, then chastised myself by not having a cup of tea, instead lying on my bed in the cold (I don’t turn on the heating until around four, to save money. I wouldn’t turn it on at all but my mum likes to come to home to radiator slippers.) There is a certain numbness that tears chunks from you, like your soul is leaking. Sometimes you know it is still there, but it is grey, translucent and lifeless. You want to poke it with a stick but can’t face the possibility of unreactive contact; the knowledge that you can grab its shoulders and shake it and shake it all you like but it won’t ever wake up and tell you to stop. But this numbness wasn’t that. This was just the normal c’est la vie numbness, the twiddling your thumbs numbness, the life is death and dumb numbness. Why do people make it like this? Why the grey, saggy-eyed architecture? It doesn’t have to be like this. This is The Era; will be chronicled as the time when humanity stopped caring about anything; when they no longer expected happiness. I linger on Facebook, checking the football news and gossip, eating biscuits (I’m allowed eight a day) and a satsuma, and sipping several large mugs of Earl Grey before my teeth start to feel furry and I decide that’s enough tea for today. When a man feels the touch of God, he feels it. It comes from him. From his confused internal workings. On an unproductive day I can feel the disapproval of the universe. It’d be moronic to assume that we are here and experience things in this way for a reason, linearly and with our paltry sensory reach, but more moronic is to relinquish even that which you possess with no effort whatsoever. What are you alive for? People like that infuriate me. Then I realise how easy it is for anyone to slide into such a cycle. There is little reward for the dreamers in this culture of authoritarianism. It seems pretty futile to hope, most of the time. The absolute and immediate dependence on wage rendering everyone slaves, truly and utterly. The fuckers reap while the fucked toil. What would be the working- man’s worth otherwise? Each must rent their Self out to survive; must whore their physical nature to eat and keep warm. Then they are taxed on top of that to fund all sorts of foreigner-pillaging, madcap schemes! Totally potty! I crack one off to a video of Jessica Biel doing a striptease in a film I’ll never watch. Some wintertime, influenza-type virus swims in the air like a shark – most dorsally! – planning its attack. Currently fortified in the family members I live

79 with, it seems only a matter of time. I already feel nauseated from the cab ride to the vet I took earlier. There was a woman there, who was I guess in her fifties, who smiled at me when I told my cat to ‘stop looking then’ when he was working himself into a frenzy by watching trucks passing by out of the window. I imagined what a relationship with her might be like. Not very rewarding, I concluded. What are those chambers? I hear hissing, strange thuds, and too too much silence. Underwater ears but a feeling, a brief submersion, but then a small trickle leaks out on to my pillow, or I get the faintest whiff of chlorine as I walk through town. I feel a bit phlegmier than usual. I discover strange patches of desiccation littered about my person. I need to start moisturising again.

80 49

‘I dunno…I know it’s been all sticky for so long. Tainted and dirty. My stomach’s like a soup of stones. I know my mind’s flights have flown it to places that never were; to places you never even knew about, still don’t…we never talked about it, that’s the thing. We had a few times where some stuff slipped out, but they were anomalies, mistakes really. Though they were what should’ve happened trying to get out, they were wrong as far as I saw things. ‘The time would be right. We would know.’ Et cetera. It was meant to be a certain way, as far as I saw it, and we hadn’t reached it yet. But yeah, we would know. But then I realised that meanwhile we were living more time before then; countless years of false starts and restraining whatever might be waiting to spill out. And this was part of our experience of each other, you know what I mean? That if/when we did get together, and we were old and regaling the past to our grandkids, if we were truthful we’d have to mention how a hefty section in the middle was barren, was wilderness years. Years lived without each other. Awful. I didn’t want to prematurely birth a beginning of us as a unit, but nor did I want any more squandered years. It’s so boring…pointless…I know who I want. It’s unfair on anyone else to involve them in my life – to make promises when I’ll slam the door in their face as soon as you make that call. But these years are just a fucking limbo. I’ve been living in nowhere. Making plans with you for when this silly façade finally breaks and you realise, ‘of course’. It’s been trying, trying to find a reason to get up each day. For if one begins without you in it, it seems frighteningly like the one that happened yesterday, and that one ended without you in it too, and really wasn’t worth living.”

81 50

‘I will dab your pusy, weepy wounds with cotton…legends will tell of me as The Bare-Fisted Firestorm, for like a primeval inferno I’ll massacre entire armies unarmed for you…I’ll sit through terrible, truly terrible teen vampire movies if it means I get to have you in my arms for those six or seven or eight or nine arduous, arduous hours…I’ll bite my tongue when you buy a pack of Silk Cut…I’ll hold your hair back while you vomit profusely from drinking Jäger shots with your motley posse of cretinous associates until the sun began to rise…I’ll implement expert tonguetechniques with a technician’s technical prowess upon and upin your chocolate starfish if that’s what you fancy…I’ll sweep all the leaves on Pomona’s lawn into a formation spelling ‘Mongoose’…I’ll punch a fridge…I’ll sit on the roof yelling expletives at blackbirds for as long it takes for them to get the message (‘this is MY roof’)…I’ll eat my own feet…I’ll watch the sort of pedestal-orientated, ‘let’s ferry out the freaks’, legitimised bear- baiting Saturday night television that’s continued success shits and pisses on every true artist – indeed every true human – who has ever lived, as well as knowingly and unashamedly poisoning and/or demolishing millions of minds and lives and shaping then perpetuating a perverse surface-self-serving-then- aggrandising culture that spreads rapidly, all for the sake of – what do you know – a bit more money and power being earned by already undeservedly rich and powerful people whose positions by the very nature of capitalism can only have been attained by a ruthless and selfish attitude with no regard for any other human being, not least themselves, their souls gagged, bound and starved and kept in cold dark isolation with just enough energy occasionally and covertly injected into them to prolong their excruciating torture for the length that they choose to carry out their chosen reprehensible deeds (likely lifelong), which they execute with a serpent’s relish and a satanic song in their hearts…sorry, let me take a breather. What was I…ah yes: I’ll do anything for you if you’ll PLEASE. PICK UP. THE FUCKING. PHONE!’

82 51

I’ll go for a walk to take my mind off things. Sometimes it’s necessary to lose yourself, to abandon any hope of getting anything out of remaining immersed in your plight. And anyway, nevertheevertheless, I’m still a product of a navy-blue zeitgeist, of a regimented dream-state; frosty vapours from hyperthyroid throats: my deep-seated alienation gives me a sense of belonging. Topsy the cat howls her vulnerable yellow eyes out downstairs. Her once timid mewls have recently given way to what sound uncannily like a human infant’s cries. She has the biggest, prettiest eyes. Ginger, lithe and mental: if we were of the same species my search would be over.

I was once taken to a monkey sanctuary (God bless humans, protecting them from…nature) and while briefly alone I watched one of the inmates nonchalantly eject a firehose-like jet from its simian penis from up high (as if it was any consolation to their imprisonment the place had running through it a network of cages, like a pipeline, which meant they could go anywhere they liked! [To watch the freely roaming incarcerator-apes watching them trying to make the best of their situation.]) Whatever, it was ‘an activity’; something external to do for the sort of people who’d lost all sense of personality by the time they were legal adults. I was there as well, first-loved up, eternity awaiting.

Overall, it’s with a degree of pity that I’m looked upon. They see how I suffer, by virtue of consciousness. But it’s from behind a wall. With sympathetic detachment, like seeing starving Africans on the news. Every word of consolation is the equivalent of ‘there there’ and a tentative pat on the shoulder, then they abruptly turn and gallop up Diarrhoea Drive. I haven’t got myself into the situations that have numbed me enough like they have. I haven’t accepted this misery yet. Everyone I love just wants to forget it all and ingest trash; do not oppose being fed such a twisted consensus version of contentment because it’s an easy escape. But I don’t want to escape: I want to fully submerge in life, no matter how bad it is, because if/when it starts getting better I will the turning of the tides in every particle of me. I won’t have a nine-to-five. I won’t have a mortgage. I won’t have children. I won’t have a wife. I refuse to represent anyone but myself, because I am honest and striving to remain pure and I won’t invalidate my life by submission to others disrespecting their self-worth in such a way. People hate themselves. All their idiosyncrasies – all the elements that give them validity and a purpose for living – are what they endeavour to crush at all costs.

He doesn’t even let his cat in the house. And you wonder how can you be with someone like that?, but soon remember that not everyone is searching for perfection like you are. And there is nothing but wasteland to see in every direction, but you – foolishly or admirably, I’m still not concrete, my opinion fluctuates erratically – keep hoping anyway; keep hoping that the opal is right there on top of the dirt, waiting, just out of sight.

Wandering through Ilford I ask my dad if there’s a war going on. ‘Yep,’ he says. Flanking the steps are two musical set-ups, one showcasing a sub-par opera singer who people stop to watch because she’s an opera singer, and on the other

83 some middle-aged-and-older folks in Christmas hats playing ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ and the like. I ask my dad if there’s a Japanese word for ‘collective grimace’. (Other highlights of the day include watching a baby the spitting image of Marlon Brando being pushed along cobblestones in its buggy, and in passing observing two male thirty-somethings discussing in Russian which balloon they want to buy from the primary colour-attired seller [who must have been about 4’11” tall.])

84 52

The brutality. Every man knows what it feels like to receive a contusion, yet will himself deliver them in flurries, without a second thought, to any other living creature in order to protect himself. A menagerie of differently wounded but equally lame monstrosities trying desperately to limp to the nearest mildly comfortable rock to crawl under and wait the war of life out.

The brutality. Every man sees out of his own eyes, his one and only viewpoint. Everything else is everything else. The rest of the world, then him. So he must be separate. And so everyone lives like this, knowing they are distinct and more entitled and more important than anyone else. Every single one of us knowing we sit in the centre of the universe. Huiocentrism. You might say that this in turn proves the fallibility of such a notion. That’s not to claim we can ever be sure of a shared anything, having unique lives from single perspectives, but this is like pointing at a Smurf and calling it crimson; tantamount to a mastodon in the phone booth. Here we are, crammed in, physically, suffocating, with limbs twisting our faces like histiomarionettes into agonised grimaces. But as with any fundamental laws that are lived by, if even a single one is debunked it necessitates a complete re-evaluation and overhaul of everything we hold as true. Opening a fresh, frothing volcano of anacondas into the sky. A canyon of possibility; a trek that might never conclude. And we’d come so far, thought we’d got at least some of the futile search for truth sussed, so though we know it to be a lie we instead continue as before, blindness as bliss, gritting our teeth and trying to prevent our eyes from darting and betraying our terror.

The brutality. Soft sexflesh, even a fully engorged super-schlong has a cheerful spongyness to it. And the female’s cleft, the mysterious velvety split, a sumptuous blanket, a snuggly banquet. But even the softest cloth is doomed to the hardness, the dispassionate touch, of fearful skin. In men, a single version of masculinity, which they must live up to or they’re not men at all, unnecessarily muscled and using women as cock-milkers, as disposable fuck-machines. In women, a commodification of their own unique bodies, oiled and plucked and primed like sports cars, the most devastating thing being that these ladies were once little babies. Every woman who has ever lived is someone’s daughter. And under that bronzed, ballooned, pop-arted skin is a human being’s heartbeat; it’s the same human being’s heart.

The brutality. Mat Pat Frat Sor/a quartet of lies that give way to war. ‘Yeah, exactly, sore front- eye from pushing that screaming little shit out!’ Children have the life bludgeoned out of them for the adult sport of it. The lying game becomes the game of life; life is the game and the game of life becomes life and life no longer has precedence or a small sideward smattering semblance of relevance in life and barely whimpers a contrail of the tail of a phantom of a fairy into existence.

85 We corrupt nature by our very acquired natures. We are the cancer that spreads atop it, festering on the helpless fruit underneath. Where did this oppression begin? Or is it – pray not – the beginning now? Not even the end of the beginning, but the opening monologue of the ligatured monolith; the prelude to a kiss of drawn-out death. An animated hysterectomy, brimming with its own wicked lifeforce. Like peacocks, attracting attention by our plumage, our monotones instead ensnare via appendage, and this is all anyone needs to know. Ripples like mountainous ranges or potholed freeways, run a slimy palm OTTography and delve into the kiddie pool. A feigned concern; contrive to convey an appreciation for something seen but not heard in the rhythm of your DNA, but maybe someone could pap it out with a jab and a speculative scoop. There ain’t no manual. Suddenly the child has been surpassed as child and some littler guys are called what he once was. He feels no different but has to act completely so. So what then? An underground man or an overground ham? Niceness latent or isolation? Will he ever be able to chat with the lifefull ones again without facing suspicion and animosity from his peers and elders (and soon youngers?) It’s the culture of hysteria that’s the apparition of the age. Moments pass – with my utmost gratitude – but time is relative and an incomprehensible dimension in itself. Innocence and ignorance are not the same. Innocence is the absence of corruption; ignorance is to smile, unblinking, unblinkingly, in the faces of hungry dogs chewing off your legs.

86 53

Heart pumping stupidly, stupid heart pumping bluh-blum, bluh-blum. The biomachine clogged with snot and saturated fats. Practice kissing on soft upper arm, golden cables on to stomachs, autofellating till the spinal damage is irreparable, nuts and heat and secretions. Fabled trophies a distant glint, deaf to the world because it is no longer in your frequency range, a charcoal effluvium of pessimism, transient tempting nymphets. Prune-skinned dugs on decrepit damsels desperate for dick, her ancient hairless pussycat convulses and statically undulates on her bed, linen scented lavender. Ring a round of retching a radioactive muesli – the dehydrated cube of condensed foodstuff impaled on the prongs.

87 54

Exercise: Sit-ups: three sets of sixty; press-ups: three sets of thirty-three; knee- strengthening exercises: two or three sets of ten for each leg.

Food: Water throughout the day; cornflakes with milk and sugar; a coconut macaroon; a banana; a cheese sandwich; a couple of handfuls of pastrami- flavoured bagel chips; a forest fruits yoghurt; a bowl of vegetable soup and a big chunk of crusty bread, with a glass of orange squash; three amaretti; and about six cups of tea.

Dreams: Raven-haired violinist in a concert hall; allergic reaction to washing powder so when I get to the Doctor Who set I take off my clothes and lie cooling on the floor; flying through the sky of my own volition; moving to Termonfeckin; moving in with someone; I think there were crows; uncertainly knowing with certainty. The most recurring dream is the one where I’m doing stuff, smiling and moving and doing, without worries, confident in myself, having fun. Living.

88 55

Like scratching a scab to sniff it – why would you? It all seems fresh for I’m that very same observation chamber. Though the images become unclear – sometimes I wonder if they’ve disappeared for ever – I remember everything. I am always in the present; at the beginning of the continuation of this thread of experience. Existing with sentience, with elaborate psychological systems, developing concepts before inventing the apparatus to prove their grounding. But maybe I don’t wanna live in the ground? Maybe I’d like to float on my lonesome, drifting through facets of perceivable universe, uncovering more indecipherable riddles amid the stardust. Maybe I’m quite content to be unsure; to be on an eternal quest. I’ve always dreamed that all the secrets will be answered once life ends, but there could be so much more. And I welcome it. I just wonder if I can be bothered doing it alone. I know we all do, but most don’t realise this. They couple off, often to the detriment of their animal natures – the only ones with which they remain in regular contact. Misery sparks fly as the paint-flake flesh of others chafes against them. Limescale lines the kettle, and they find themselves spitting shards from each tiny sip of winter brew. Saucer eyes seem a beacon, like bright jewels in the mist, but the lighthouse is too often but a strangely-shaped shack. Seeing something that isn’t there far too frequently. I want it to be there so badly, and though I’m not hallucinating I’m avoiding the gnawing truth. I know I’m meant to be alone. Goggles might protect your eyes but they add a glaze to everything you see. The rose is a plant which grew from the ground, where the worms and the corpses live, where we all go in the end, and though she can rise above and let her petals unfurl in a sublime visual sonata she will eventually wither and crust and fade and die.

I can only ever tell one side of the story. All the sides are mine. So many sides I don’t know what you’d call it. A flipping lusus naturae, that’s what. (And perhaps evidence of teratism? Must investigate.) But I’m happy with that title; I’m content for that to be my role as I live, the part I play in society. A scrawny ginger golem in jeans. Hunched, hands pocketed, leading with the head like a battering ram cutting through the air, barging it aside to get to the away-place. It does feel like this is the way it is going to be. Almosts, half-realised ideas, infatuations and schemes; masturbating until my palms are two pink callouses. Sitting on the toilet, my head on my arms on my knees, pushing and grunting, and I can feel my cheekbones heating up like hot rocks in my face, reminding me that I am just one of those screeching monks of flesh and bone. That’s why it hurts so much, I think: because there is no escape. From life, I mean. Melodies, truths, wounds on display. I enjoy my tears, if that’s the right word. Purged of the noxious grunge I must dip into. Reenergised, reignited. It will burn as fast as it will but it will burn and the burn glows spectral. I was not trained at RSC so believe what you see on my face, in my face, in my eyes, half-filled with you looking, the rest an unknown. But if you love me I will love you back. It’s always on offer, just no one seems to want it. Cutting strips from the underside of my forearm. It is only meat. We used to dig chunks from the tables at school. It was nice laying out the strips in a row as the lesson slowly progressed, having something to show for the hour’s boredom.

89 Let the man beat you to a pulp and never lift a fist. The man was weak, a fool. You were never going to retaliate, were never going to sink into being his equal.

Like the darling, devoted Cordelia, the real will resonate within the chronicles of space and time while all evil becomes representative of how not to be.

90 56

Stranded.

Strangers offer you candy on the promenade. To feel the bounce of youth; to perhaps ingest some of their secret. Candy with ribbons in; candy with Real Fruit Juices; artificial candy, the gelatine ground from the fleas on a horse; melt-in-your-mouth candy; poison- your-spirit candy. I prefer dried mango chips.

The children shall never inherit the earth. In packs the men attack, blunt instruments guided by prehistoric voices. The sickening thuds sound loudly, as if added in post-production, a strange bone squelch, the thin layer of cranial skin ever so slightly softening the burst of blows. Eventually the sounds do become noticeably softer, as they have reached the brain. With the head almost completely caved in, long dead and unrecognisable, and their barbarous adrenaline beginning to wane, they withdraw from surrounding the figure: a young girl of no more than four. And this scenario happens in the millions each year. The children can never be the future, or they wouldn’t be children anymore. Hot coffee breath always lingered in the air, a sordid up-there land. Adults with all their mysteries, our protectors, our saviours of our innocence. You know about alcohol and how it makes them dance around and try to talk to you in a cumbersome way and be sick on the doorstep. Then there’s sex stuff, like compost, which stops you having babies, and head, which is when you give someone special kisses on different parts of their body. Cigarettes, driving cars, knowing what a mortgage is; going out and leaving us with a nanny or an uncle; roaring like a iron. Distance is a unit of measurement that can be reduced, and if you know it’s there, if you can see it, then you unwittingly precipitate it happening, like trying to chase the squiggly line: the faster you chase it, the faster it will scurry away. It’s subtle, with light little taps, at first. Shrewd and sporadic, like a single horrific frame spliced in with the cartoon – Did I…? Oh look, the bear is doing a rap. But there is an undoubted, indisputable planishing taking place, with instances of such brazen chiselling that it brings bile to the taste. Adults try desperately to beat their child into a certain shape; to sculpt them into personal magnum opuses. ‘I know best, so my utterances are its gospel.’ Like a platform video game it gets progressively more difficult to avoid the disfiguring blades littered about the terrain, wielded by the id-led, until eventually the child has no option but to lay his head on the guillotine and hope that a nerve ending remains unsevered, so that he may live on in perpetual agony. Then, one day, he finds himself in the adult’s position, and passes on the plague, oblivious that he’s done so until he did it years ago. We are undoubtedly purer, uninhibited, as children, but upon emerging from the womb are immediately buffeted by the demands of the world we were selfishly brought into, full of frustration and greed. We are not ourselves – children, children of the world, grown from its soil, unpolluted and blossoming freely – once we reach maturity. We learn and become from the mistakes of

91 others; our underdeveloped elders, those who guide us. We truly are the innocent lambs led to the slaughter. (Why wouldn’t we? Mummy sheep said you don’t have to walk anywhere…) We can only learn from the examples presented to us: what to value, how to act, why one does anything one does. A child can’t be expected to know any better than its sensory environment. Reponses require stimuli; curiosity begs access to the infinite. If a child is given rotten foundations he will only strive for the life of a woodworm.

The only conclusion I can come to is that human beings have become a cancer living off the organism rather than being an extension of it. We are the destroyers of truth in all its manifestations. Our very existence is a throbbing wreath of myths – ownership, hierarchies, a bastardised moral consensus, mock-social at the expense of the individual, the pursuit of novelty and gimmickry to save us the effort of becoming. We have stunted the planet’s growth, and who knows if it will ever flourish again. Not with us on it, I’d argue. Everything natural and real is secondary, or something-ary, or discarded altogether in favour of futile pursuits. Some imaginary capital to place you somewhere among other valueless statistics. A hallucinatory Iceland spar effect, that somehow the glow of your motionless digit permeates more profoundly than the rest, even though a 7 is always a 7. And binary code only ever requires the two. Even the few who seek intelligence only do to feel so in the context of being around stupider people. For a feeling of superiority around others rather than any sense of soul enrichment or spiritual fulfilment. And these sureties are just another mode of ignorance, that of quantitative information equating a grasp of certainties, of inherent universal truths, some things to cradle to your bosom and claim as yours as rocks of solace when the empty expanses inevitably intrude on your peripheral vision and rip open your blissful little tunnel and let all the light and dark in.

My cousin sings and dances; performs, excels in expressive forms. I watch the ideas flow through his head (they are visible in the way they animate his face) and roll off his tongue. I watch in awe. He could talk for days and days and not express the same idea twice. He is about to enter his teens, and it’s so sad knowing that his unique magic will be all but entirely lost in a sea of self-doubt by his adolescence’s anticlimactic sputter of a close.

92 57

So now I know: I would literally die, like so many say but none means, if I could not write. If I could not do that thing as important as breathing. Something there that has no outlet, no means of expulsion. Of its essential exit. Claustrophobic in one's own skin. This is how people go mad – ‘WHAT IZZZ ITTTTT?’ Deranged and pounding palms into temples and scratching around, trying to find it; permanent mealy texture of scurf under cuticles. Why does it ache; what is it anyway? It isn't physical. I can't find in on my person; it has no location. It’s everywhere and nowhere; non-existent, omnipresent. I’m on my own. ‘It’s all in your head,’ they'll say. Of course it is – that's all anything ever is. We pretend we've got a clue what another person is about, what any of this is about. We’re fused to a giant spinning lump of rock floating around in space being lit by an almost perfectly spherical ball of hot plasma three-hundred-and-thirty-thousand times bigger. We’re each living our own demented line, treading our paths totally aimlessly, no matter our claims and self-deceptions otherwise. ‘So he’s getting paid to be a greedy bastard?’ Arnie got it in one. Encapsulated humanity. A golden nugget he found on the hem of his smoky sleeve. I can't believe how awful the world is. I refuse it. I reject it. But I can't cut my throat or heart or wrists. Who’s to say this will end it? The plight could be exactly the same, doomed to an eternally recurring nightmare. Waking up as if from a dream to find you were dreaming the reality. The universe could be one. Or I could actually be Dexter T. Southland - only, the only thing that exists. Doomed to this response to existence, existence being all there is. I just want it to stop, or to have some respite. Can’t I just have a break from this mind, at least? It’s too intensely present to be numbed. When faced with those opiates, which work so well on the masses, I feel even more pain on top of it all. The nightmare has bled into my reality. I dream of the trauma of my reality, then I wake up to the same life I dreamed. I’m backing up my PC for the final time and can smell electrical burning coming from within its seven-year-old casing, and the past half-decade hangs in the air, held derisively betwixt fate’s thumb and forefinger. We were discussing why everyone buys into this endless technological scramble, coming to the conclusion that if they weren't being distracted all the time they would be left to moments of silence, moments of thinking, moments that always should’ve been there. But weren’t. And during such times they'd realise they forgot to exercise their minds, neglected to develop a personality, to evolve a nature, and the millions of existential crises that would ensue would tear the fragile equilibrium we teeter upon to confetti; would roll and wedge the Sisyphean logan into a bottomless chasm.

Would you rather not be astounded? Wouldn’t it be easier to cope if lobotomised? The fact that I can contemplate these things, and you can read and ponder them, means neither of us has gone through with it, and so must deal with such conundrums; my hope effloresces with each new reader, as we writhe and manually forge connections in the terminal furnace.

93 58

It was a dilemma, there’s no denying it. Slug slime snaking, splashed and overlapping, intersecting across every surface: the tables, worktops, milky-white walls. Like a lost Pollock canvas, the chosen canvas being absolutely everywhere. It dawned on me, in my admittedly woozy and delirious state, that I would probably have to kill them all somehow. Being a staunch pacifist, coupled with my innate indolence, it seemed an altogether unappealing prospect: there would be mess. Though I couldn’t and wouldn’t admit it to myself then, I knew the most likely and efficient way of ridding myself of these slithering squatters would involve liquefaction. And, unless I rounded them into some kind of makeshift pen in the garden before committing the genocide, it would mean this liquid would still be in my house once the lives had been taken. I tried to be pragmatic and called up an inventor ‘friend’ of mine.

94 59

I have just observed from my bedroom window a child of about ten scampering down the street wielding a massive stick. School has just finished, and as they pile out I realise just how much children run. It’s such fun to run. Gets your heart racing, the adrenaline pumping. That’s the reason why children enjoy fun – because it’s fun. What more excuse do you need? Provided you aren’t hurting anybody then do whatever the fuck you like if it delights you. Isn’t that what life is about – being delighted? We could learn a lot from children.

The scope of my art? The realms it spans? I set out at night for a bout of lamping. I drive around for as long as it takes, headlights blaring bright piercing through the fog, and on spotting a jacklit rabbit drift in front of it, the pitiful creature dazzled statuesque and dumfounded by the beam, and clinically shoot a dart into its neck, scoop up the limp but intact and still breathing body, and drive off to the shack where I can begin the dissection. But of course, that’s a metaphor, and I sit here night after night, by the window, listening to the rain pelt the road and barely articulate idiots struggling to construct simple sentences during conversations conducted on speakerphone. I sit on a throne decorated in the most ostentatious filigree. It’s cold and hard to the rump. My interdimensional exploits get evermore audacious and improbable as I lose more and more feeling in my muscles. I’m beginning to shut down. Of course, we always are. Life is always ending. We all have our clocks and are exceedingly fortunate if we get to live them out till their final tick. But there are always mysteries, and no matter how sure a scientist is they are still but human, supersedable discoveries he has made. Perhaps it is possible to override our systems, to ‘give up’, and end one’s life, or at least precipitate it – not even via physical suicide, but purely mentally. Or perhaps my physical decline is a fantasy conjured up by my subconscious as a distraction while I drift always- farther from hope and innocence’s grasp. Sometimes I fear that by imagining something it automatically means it can never happen. Then I imagine telling her that I dreamed of meeting her and that I dreamed of telling her that I dreamed of meeting her and that I dreamed of telling her that I dreamed of telling her that I dreamed of meeting her, and if I did meet her I would have to be completely honest with her or I would live knowing I was lying withholding a truth is lying so I would tell her and she would completely and understandably freak out think shit a brick this guy is batshit think I was obsessed but it was only thoughts. (Can such a thing exist nowadays? – way back when it was considered romantic, but in such hostile times it’s a thin line between ‘romance’ and ‘elaborate and persistent stalking’. People have forgotten what true romance is. Before my mum and dad got together she went to a gig of his and he followed her home on his scooter. She was on the bus and he was behind them all the way, then he suddenly disappeared…he’d fallen off and was at the side of the road. Nothing major, just lovestruck and tipsy.) Or are they plans? They are at the very least intense hopes. And I’ve thought it now if I didn’t write it down I still would’ve thought it and always will have no matter what happens. I eternally hope without expectation that I’ll find someone not just someone but the right one the one who knows the secret unspoken code the one who makes my soul sigh and with hers pinches out my internal inferno of pain like the wick of a candle. And I write about this now so if I meet her I have to tell

95 her that this bit is all about her and was written before I’d even met her really I should tell her this first off but I won’t because why would you instantly ambush that on a stranger plus I’d like to have at least a small amount of time basking in her presence before we never share each other’s again and it seems like I’m obsessed but this is just one krill plucked from the sea which would make it sound worse would it not that what already seemed like a creepy infatuation was just one in a line of trillions but that’s not what I meant but actually if anyone showed me the slightest bit of positive attention I would would I in all probability instantly plunge heels below head or at least have my vision warped but isn’t that how it works? Once in a blue moon someone likes you for you and you do the same back. I’m not mental I’m not but I do tend to focus and lock on to one person only until I suffocate all the minutiae of every molecule of our love to death and all that’s left is a smattering of hate and a whole lot of emptiness a veritable crevasse a husk of reminder not that I’m drawing from an experience that if counted would span two hands or even two whole fingers and not that I’m talking in the past five years. Not since I’ve become who I am, not since I’ve become the man I am. Then I’m alone without the tiniest smidgen of love friendless for half a decade, a lugubrious lustrum, until hopefully the scenario I think of but dare not speak plainly of now in case it makes it not happen happens. Oh OK…: I ask her if she’d like to design some ideas for the cover of my book because I absolutely love what she does it’s expressive and personal and completely her-own-angular and reaches my soul stirs natural superstuff within me empathy and compassion and on our first meeting we really hit it off a natural connection we relate in some transcendent way sparks fly not flirting or fawning like fuckhunters but dare I say it the burgeoning of a profound indescribable unwritable love and I don’t freeze up with social ineptitude and I am articulate and amiable and somehow attractive to someone in the world and she is fascinating and warm and doesn’t patronise me or make me feel like an unworldly naïf like everyone else does and then we meet up again when she’s drawn a few ideas and I love one that is imbued with her usual endearing silliness but has a dark realism to it a coupling which I find deeply personally relatable because the bravest thing you can do in darkness is laugh in its face and so it gets published like that her art emblazoned and mine within and it’s our first collaboration together but anyway before that we become friends and although she has many of all genders and backgrounds and talents and so many could I guess be considered sexy and interesting she wants to be exclusively with me and we love each other and make and prove so and hold hands and go to places together as a unit knowingly as a unit and people know we are a unit and don’t think what the hell is she doing with him what is there to love about him and on the first day we walked out together she only once let go of my hand when I had to use a public toilet and I really needed to have a dump towards the end of the day yet I was still utterly content because I was with her and didn’t complain at all just held it in until we got home where I wouldn’t have to cover the seat with toilet paper. And we create art together and we’ll always remember that first thing we did as We and she knows about everything that he wrote this chapter about me one day it was 19th December 2011 he’d heard me on the radio three days before and couldn’t get the thought of me out of his head and that was it he sat at his computer and just let it flow out as rush hour traffic powered through the rain outside and he dreamed that he wouldn’t seem like just another one of the countless frustrated obsessive internet weirdoes and hoped he’d get to

96 prove it but acknowledged that writing several-thousand words of creepy stream-of-consciousness was perhaps not the best way of proving his equanimity and quelling such reasonable worries…well, at least he didn’t write it in human blood. He dreamed that he could know dreams as realities that he could be a part of the world have a place in it and feel at home in it that he could be loved and it isn’t too good to be true he deserves it that everyone has their own version of beauty and look at all the flak she got in Hollywood simply for not meeting their vision of what beauty is even though she is perfect in every way. Heaven sent. And if she reads this when I give it to her to read before she comes up with the ideas and doesn’t get it and thinks I’m mental if it all goes tits up and she wants a restraining order with immediate effect then fuck it it was obviously not meant to be we’re all gonna die anyway you either get it or you don’t but at least I was brave enough to let it happen let the opportunity hang in the air and indeed made it there I made it there I did I did it I dared I blimmin’ well dared and what a crazy world it can be! But imagine oh man imagine how wonderful it is to be in love to be loved by another whole human being imagine she reads it and like in films romance actually happens it occurs it can exist it manages to break through without being stifled or silenced by the societal wankery without stuttering or mundane mists and she reads it and thinks wow and understands completely and something swells within her just imagine if it all went right and she can’t believe of all the women on Earth this spectacular possibly insane but brilliant yes undoubtedly brilliant jewel would favour her as his companion and thinks her a spectacular possibly insane but brilliant yes undoubtedly brilliant jewel too. I’d be in disbelief if someone chose me. Imagine if someone dreams of you would like to be with only you imagine you are their vision of perfection or not something that robotyandroidy sounding but their person of rightness for their life who gives their soul more satisfaction and contentment than anyone else could. Someone might just get it with a single look not love at first sight or something so speculative as equality but a certain wavelength you can both dance life upon an all-permeating string threading through dimensions like a saddle-shaped-candy necklace a spectacular rightness and all is calm and exciting and nothing else matters. Like when you share looks and unspoken understanding in moments nobody else could comprehend and not even facial expressions are needed because you know you just know. Is all this real could this happen be one of those dreams that seamlessly blends into real life and while basking in the twilight you realise what happened. Can the written be lived given nerves to become reactive breathing feeling the winds of what was once a dream making the written prophetic and highlighting the hysterical absurdity like Donnie Darko content on his deathbed for he has lived and this is the end. Hope that doesn’t darken the tone to me it is the most beautiful dance to acknowledge how fucking freaky this all is existence is completely weird but smiling in a nowreverence laughing not because it’s funny but because it’s everything and if you live and enjoy the present you needn’t fear the end. So we sit there happening it while it is happening in the transcript lying on the table before us telling the tale we are living. And I know how I’ll be I’ll be like oh shit oh fuck I’m doing it I’m already in it that thing I wrote it’s actually happening that intense ambivalent panic those fluttering butterflies building to an unpredictable climax the feeling of making life happen making events like you’re moving the universe because of course you are if you take charge of your destiny.

97 But then in an instant it vanishes and I’m simply communicating with a lovely human being and there is a warmth in my tummy like it is filled with light. If it all happens like I dream then I then you then we can be happy and live all those made-up scenarios in my head! Then even the throbbing toxic maple fumes of London are a reminder that I have a nose and am alive and am loved and love someone in return. She can be living her independent life doing all the brilliant things she does but next to me holding my hand while I’m collaborating while unique while whole while being confident with being and doing and acting and writing and musicing and living and happying and fulfilling and we encourage each other to continue being brilliantly singularly ourselves but share one same hope and dream of having more of each other in our futures a fixed lovely point in our crazy paths and we make each other happier than we’ve ever been and I’m not just sitting here by the window listening to the rain pelt the road.

98 60

The longing to look outside while Mike devours his half-sachet of renal food indoors. I open the back door thinking I best close it immediately after so the heat doesn’t escape, for winter has surely descended now. The blue light of an ending day the type of light me and Maggie and Muffin and Fairy Cake would play in not long after school was out (but the days are short) while they waited to be picked up by a parent. Football or chasing or filming us dicking about but happily, truly perfectly happy hanging and smiling even though the daytimes are terrible today, yesterday and tomorrow. The happiest smile of a blue light; not brash and overwhelming like the canary-yellow summer day but a reminder of the opening and closing like flowerheads; the ephemerality of all things: of days and nights; of life; of emotional states. All can be endured because for ever and infinity are theories but the here is now. Above the wall an arrangement of streetlights like stars in a triangle…but oh, there are only two: one is the reflection of the right side one in the window of the little house; the house that looks too narrow to live comfortably in. They crown the outline of the trampoline with the flanking overgrown shrubbery overhanging, and the watering can rests on its side on the lawn, the black bin to the side full of glass bottles and jars, the drain clogged with straw and human hair. Blue light and endurable gloom; the ties to balance are tenuous and twenty- four hours in a day is one of the few certainties.

99 61

We were driving home from either Collier Row or Bluewater. It was night but well lit with the pollution-green-yellow London glows with, and as we turned the corner…it could be best described as a car graveyard. A row of them, six or seven or eight, lined up in the middle of the lane, seemingly abandoned. It was spooky, man. Why on Earth were they there? Zombie apocalypse? Dogging festival? Our curiosity was soon nauseatingly quelled as we steered round them and pootled a bit farther along. An ambulance sat wonkily parked on the right, two paramedics loading an unconscious woman on to a stretcher, surrounded by a dozen or so gawpers.

I wouldn’t throw myself under a truck. If I saw one coming towards me I’d jump out of the way. But if I was certain in that moment that it was going to hit me; that there was nothing I could do about it; if I knew I was going to die…for that split-second of remaining life I know I’d be unimaginably happy.

I awoke and, aggressively, pushed out the sort of epic, booming fart that judders your medulla; the sort of fart that asserts that, while you were once most definitely the joyful child you remember being, you are now most definitely a man. The experience is akin to your first time vomiting as an adult, and realising you sound exactly like your dad did when he barfed that time after getting food poisoning from a fast food cheeseburger.

All I need is for Mummy to tell me it’ll be all right and I’ll believe her again, like I used to. But she stopped telling me. If I could’ve met you I would’ve held your hand, as literally as you wanted. I know you racked your brain, desperately searching for a reason why. You felt the magic too. And you too had it snatched away. Couldn’t they have simply taught us to see the real magic instead? Then we wouldn’t have had to deal with such a descent; a descent that happens so suddenly, while you’re still the same child who believed in it all. A plummeting, an earth-shattering fall; the fall: a drop of devastation inconceivable to them. And all those parts of life we didn’t dream of questioning to be anything other than as real as everything else…all of a sudden bits are revealed as cunningly culled, then plucked out and combusted, seemingly at random, and we are left with holes in our lives, holes in our souls, holes in our hearts. Made unwhole, just like that. ‘Why?’ you say – ‘why?’ And today it seems right. It seems correct. In the past there were plenty of attempts at attempts. It didn’t take. The commitment. But today the wind feels like the pragmatic air of a life’s coda; you can hear the soundless, ethereal first few notes of the beginning of your perish song. A virtuoso performance, encompassing the entire gamut of experience – and what else could it be, for you sing concurrent to it all flashflooding to the foremostfront of your mind, almost bursting from the cortex. And you realise how significant it all was, and how it is your choice alone when you decide to stop singing and let the silence inhabit your former-space. From outside, one can look at it with an enormous sadness, or with a sanguine grin: it was the most honest decision you ever made, realising it could never live up to the lost magic.

100 I am, oddly, in a way that might seem to despoil and undermine the preceding words, but that I know you’ll understand, reminded of ChatRoulette. You’re sitting with your loose cock in your right hand (severely overcooked spaghetti consistency), eyes ready to feast on the 2D liquid crystal delights, in that seventeen per cent kind of way, and it’s bloody difficult to steer the mouse using your left hand, but the first flesh you come across is a total trainwreck of a human: slack, cracked, needle-scarred skin, hued a jaundiced yellow; male, with patchy chest, armpit, facial and nasal hair, and shrivelled, sagging man-breasts; eyes like cabbage and cigar smoke, stubbing stubs out in your ear as his two-inch cock searches the other, but eyes dark and weak and wide with a self-hating sorrow that makes you wish his mother drowned either him or herself or did shake the baby or somehow at least made him unalive as a child…and in that instant you decide to click the cross to close the window and look for something else.

101

62

Creepy eyes, sad Michael Stipe eyes; cloudy, almost-cataract-blue; always looking towards a sadness beyond. Or not? An internal mania, wordless as life, or is there a little death in them? Slanting cartoonishly, sloping dopily, green with a spiral galaxy glinting somewhere in that beyond-you gaze. She is never looking at you. Colour! Animation! An iced gem or two to obstruct the demons’ incursion. Eyes lit with laughter, with that sweet witch’s cackle. Plus – importantly – looking at me. Some don’t like to. Pointless. Unrewarding, gives out no affirmations. I guess I try to be civil but can’t hide my disgust very well anymore. There’s just so much; it becomes a blanket that life keeps knitting and knitting and knitting, which is the most useful thing I could ask for really ‘cause it covers me so I can hide from the rest of it going on. I don’t sneer, and I don’t think I look like I do, but I think they see my introversion, my vigour withdrawing, the invisible notice tacked to my chest demanding that you keep your distance, on penalty of unease, and none of this is done rudely, but simply for mutual damage limitation. Spending time with people kills me. But she looked when I spoke and sometimes looked when I didn’t because she at least acknowledged that I was sitting there the whole time. Someone looking at me means I exist, which means I can have an impact if I make one. It means I can reach like any other man with hands, but I doubt I’ll ever feel super or superior, because it isn’t so: all I did was use my hands, the hands I was born with. I am me and that is all.

It is the city that has poisoned me. It is the city that pushes down, down, so you think the small world it allows you to see is all that Earth has to offer. And, eventually, all you can see is the inside of your head – you rolled your eyeballs into your skull to save them from burning in the ash. Because, eventually, your head is interfering with the ceiling. The sudden nature of the realisation of your confinement exacerbates the panic further. And if you are claustrophobic in your own skin then ripping it off seems to be the only logical thing to do. And what happens then? You live either as an open wound, or you let the blood flood forth and your organs flop out and tear the muscle tissue from every anatomical nook until all that’s left is the skeleton, to decorate how you will. Perhaps you could buy some baubles to festoon your ribs with at Christmas? Or some budget frozen meat to pack in all the cracks, so though you may look kinda lumpy and DIY the inoffensive onesie you picked out in the same shop will hide the seams from the world. Then hold your breath when you walk into every room, and hope the buttons don’t pop off while anyone’s looking.

Sopping wet, swathed in sweat, the same suit worn all year round, the peanutty distress twenty years lived now. I can handle it. You plough on through, smirk at women; precious glows leave crisp, digital-quality imprints, with all the intricacies captured in this momentary exposure. Then the relief to remove the loafers and release the cheesy bouquet, kick them off in a bachelor’s domain, and grab the corn chips and recline in The Chair with feet on the special pouffe you call The Gaylord and unzip and zap on the tube and melt into a crank of

102 incandescent speed and ferocity, scary to observe during those little gaps between adverts and shows when you dizzily glance the rapid movement in the fleetingly blank TV screen.

Your first kiss. Soft, fruit and honesty and care. Because technically any time could be any other way. A wonderful moment shared with anyone is a moment they could’ve been really angry at something, but you have each gifted the other some time in your life. Holding, holding in value, in care, without want or demand. Stroking her skin, some patches stretch-marked because she was a bit larger in her youth, though you’ve seen pictures and she was just as gorgeous, and it gives her skin the silkiest texture, smoother than anything else. And him…his skinny arms warm me fine, wrap me up in him. Short but I’m shorter and even if he only reached my knees nothing could take away his cuddle…I can’t explain it. I can feel the love in it. Have you ever lain together, studying each other’s bodies? One day it was his arms and legs, and I looked closely, until I could see each pore as his hairs stood erect from my caresses. Each pore lived for me. Men more angular and hard to the touch, but such care in his movements. Protective, which I guess is kind of an animal thing really, we’re still stuck in that in a lot of ways, but it means he values me and wants no one else to have me. And in the moment was nothing else. No past or future, and what is the present? You can’t acknowledge it before it’s the past. But here we are. The world spinning around our embrace. Life is a rom-com. Who’da thunk it?

103

63

I do find myself racking my brain, laying out the jumbled remains for a good stretching…or rather trying to clear it. I find myself regularly searching for an excusable way; a way no one could contest. If the pain of those you left behind doesn’t matter then why was your pain any different? How come you had to stop yours? What made you so special? The creeping possibility that empathy is an illusion. So, I try to formulate a plan; a single system of synapses, linked sequentially, one by one, which bypasses all the chicanes, all the detours. I always come unstuck. A limbless man can still smell the dew on the morning grass after a long night’s rainfall; blind and deaf but his face can feel the vitalising winds on a beach by a stormy sea. No matter the flames knifing at you from every angle, there is always so much to live for. And do not demand more life of a man who cannot say that.

Passive. Aggression builds like stone-grey Tetris inside. Systematically, built patiently, methodically. And steadily. Well-oiled machine. Blinking, we forget. We see our whole lives in frames. All those gaps we miss. I’ve missed entire moments, moments that have gone down in history, purely to remoisten my eyes. And the way people dismiss you, form their impression without knowing a single truth about you. Have they enquired? And even then, it’s people one cannot trust, and all the ones know that but think themselves the exception to the rule as they spin out their yarn, but of course they walk a path of righteousness. Skin-saving is all it is, to continue with…what? Happiness? I drift in a non-space. I feel echoes of humanity; ghostlike memory fragments drive by tentatively, calling my name to see if I look. If I did, and the faceless faces unloaded a few rounds into my skull, I could be a Lucky Gel, and let myself be tugged this way and that. Let some cold clammy slag wrap her dead lips around consenting centimetres of myself, give me the hickeys of a toothless vampire. And perhaps the deathness would appeal? It’s something else, at least. Like make-up sex, the anger and sexual intensity blending into each other, and if you have a soul and the conditions are right it is the most glorious vanquishing; magnificent, like hate has been defeated by love, completely inverted, made into nothing, and you dance on the grave of a recent-past evil.

Claret crescents mark her tear ducts. The girl got grown up too fast. Time was she’d scream upon seeing me. Just a baby then. Now she brings light into my life. Her eyes bear the fear of scolding. Giants booming at her for being a child. It’s a reflex for them all. They know not what they spew. She spends her life on tiptoes. I remember her cowering as an even younger child, never crying, enduring the blaring hate, like a crushing bugle, the resigned look of having to constantly brace herself evident in her tiny toddler’s face (to those who looked anyway). You should see it now, it looks so world-weary – she’s only nine. And yet, have you ever known her to lead by your terrible examples? Adults are such shits. And physically she’s growing too, reached that gangly pre-adolescence. It’s going to be sad the day she can’t sit on my lap and talk to me about her life anymore. Because I will not scold her just for being her, and I will not force her to extinguish her light while beckoning her into the darkness of ‘Real Life’.

104 Suddenly it hits you, ‘Real Life’; kicks you in the still-hairless crotch that is only good for one thing to these barbarians. Because most of them hang behind, really do operate on mere carnal motivation only, their main and often sole reason for getting up in the morning. But it’s so instant, and always replenishable. Vibrating on such a base, arthropodic wavelength, it makes (this) one instinctively reach for the swatter and visualise employing it with relish. Refrigerators, that’s what they are: refrigerators keeping the sperm or egg in optimum condition for their future deployment. And all they think about is keeping the hum audible enough to follow them everywhere, like a boxing coach massaging the knots of conscience from their shoulders. I don’t want to screw her – we are related. Why must we all vanish into these conventional positions? Are we all that scared? Like a conveyor belt, churning out the same wholesale vileness, economy meat puppets, just because most of the animals can’t be trusted to keep their obsolete fangs retracted. Why can’t God stop growing them in their mouths? And the future and the future and children and children pay the cost for the worthless and pessimism becomes realism and the best mentality to stay sane and living – in pain, but living. I want to be eighty-six, her seventy-three, and for her to still feel like she can sit on my lap and tell me about her life. But, soon, the last time it will ever happen will happen.

105

64

“This has been my big worry; the major thing keeping me from being brave like I know I should be. Yes, you’re as complicated as can be…I mean, you’re a spectacular, fully- realised person. But I can see you fine. It’s never been any trouble for me. But, yes, your life is death. You don’t feel like you have anything to live for. I see how grand it all is. The epic romance, how it can flourish… but me, filling that space in someone? Not just someone, but you, the king of the…I dunno. A magnificent mess. Standing there, looking like a man, a person, not all godly glowing, just a person in a jeans and t-shirt, inarticulate in conversation. I know your mind though. Your soul…God, it’s so frustrating! Words are unfit for us. I know we’ve spent these past many many years not living an us properly…I want to now. Too much wasted time. But there’s mildew and rotting in it. It’ll always be there. It can never be perfect any more, don’t you see? By getting frustrated at it not being right, it makes it even less right, and we’ve done this for most of our lives. There’s always been a lie between us, things kept ‘for the right time’. We should’ve just been honest.”

106

65

War is inevitable because a man will defend himself from attack. If one man tries to assert a power over another that the other deems unacceptable then he will endeavour to prevent it. So, then, a punch for a punch; a harder punch matched; then blunt instruments; then sharp ones; then ones that go bang; then indiscriminate horror. Eventually the attacker, who all along has unfalteringly and fervently believed that the power he attempted to assert had and has grounds, asks a few of his buddies to help him out. The defender does the same. Now the lives of several are involved in this conflict of two men. Now small armies are formed, gradually amassing further; opposing units each representing a simple ideal. And they will get bigger and bigger until one of the units submits. But of course, there are deviations from the simplicity of this idea. People have a seemingly endless capacity for dishonesty; for shamelessly deceiving others and even themselves. The values they hold, often insolently, ignorantly unchanging, are brought to the fore when it really isn’t called for. People can perceive slights that were never intended; slights they can convince themselves were directed at them personally. So what they considered an attack never was, and what they considered their defence was, in truth, what instigated the entire conflict – in other words, was the opening attack. People can involve themselves in conflicts that don’t concern them, believing themselves empathic when really acting from a position of uninformed self- righteousness. When someone is so sure about their rightness amid such wrongness, it can reach the point where they feel obliged to ‘heal’ the entire world, a world that revolves entirely around them, and that it’s entirely up to them to protect the meek (meaning weaker than himself, meaning pretty much everyone else, for he be über) from the forces of oppression. And whereas a war of opposing factions – though of course still utterly unnecessary and barbarous and monstrous and fuelled by hate – is a to-ing and fro-ing where eventually one will have hold of the whole rope and the other will just have to deal with it (or at least nurse his rope burns and formulate a superior battle plan), this idiot is getting in the way, soothing some problems while exacerbating others, so that individuals within the ranks of both sides of the varying conflicts he has got himself and his slavish regiment involved in have radically opposing views themselves, leading to confusion and conflict in armies intended to be united in single causes. Resulting in chaos.

107

66

rabbitrun, beyond mare afrères, to coasts of uncertainty from deserts of heterosexuality, flings them into an odious sihtty rite forwards from Hastings Castle and vicinity. Madame Cholet, chef ó nostos algos, straddling the fictional divide, re- emerged a capite ad calcem from South Shieldsed Chestnut Avenue far away the flat expanse of Major Tom to ringpossess her globeular love: nor had lockheedsmith’s lugs by the treunclated trickle diced else thems from Lorne Road’s pikeys as I stayed hastin my sweetshirt intermittently: nor afart from wetcho yellowsed ruadh buoys to wischwash Agnes: long met and till the cowandgaotes came home scout cockfought a death young Charlotte: long met, for life’s shite then you diet, where offal covens writ without twoteen JoNats. Glug a gallon of Ma’s fault to Hughch or Brantch ferment via darkplight and distend to the raven midasleet wasn’t everheard weltschmarching in the doughtermind. The wank (viiiurfff’tahomankoshatakktatardecsuspisemiklykhihinehooohate- nfoldarelestaleikashamrushintwofreeehweeeh) aft’a twice stoolbend doubill is rheumoored lately annexed and curlier fried up for all atheian men to see. The feeble crawl drew the caterwaul tailswung for such long drawn ‘hullo?’ of Skarsgard, swede sturdy man, that the ganglygackhornier of cacorbit numptily bumps mmmgagging ugly unwell to the south in mouth of his yummyumgooes: and the cardholdshoulder was from the field of easelatrium where muffings must be laid be buttered as the red singe since quincefirst loved jones.

108

67

My son hates me. Understandably. And I hate him. The lumbering, pretentious young oaf I once was. No one can hate me as much as I do; thus, as he is just like me, no one can hate him as much as I do either. A point in parenthood will be reached: your child will live alongside you as an adult. Not fully grown, for that takes a lifetime…scratch that, you never are: ‘fully grown’ doesn’t exist – you (should) never stop growing. But you know what I mean. Take my example, that of the father and the son. He is a youthful, less tainted version of you, growing stronger as you deteriorate; as you become increasingly frailer of body and more twisted of mind. Then, if ‘it’ is kind, you watch him getting weaker, and pity what he has ahead: hereditarily becoming the virtually incapacitated creature you already are. Then again, if ‘it’ was really kind, none of this would happen at all. If you manage to remain with the one with the innie genitals – the innie- genitaled one with whom you co-created the creature who turned out to be a boy who then grew into this man – then you might’ve noticed something most would consider unspeakable but the reason why there are taboos is because we frequently ignore things that we all know are there. Refuse to deal the cards laid face-up on the sill of a washed window. This man, a fruit of your loins, is essentially a better model of you. Obviously you have imbued him with all your knowledge; he’s learned to be (or, if you were bitterly inclined to say so, turned from being,) from yours and his mother’s examples, among others of course, but it was mainly the two of you who eased him into being an entity in the world, made him aware of his separate individual existence. The way he moves and speaks and thinks and feels have all been greatly shaped by this parental hub. And every boy eventually grows to hate his father, because although he’d never admit it they are desperately similar; within him are infused traits that aren’t affectations or a product of nurture but are simply ingrained in his nature, wound into the fabric of his DNA, and as our bodies are only capable of so much when he displays them it looks a hell of a lot like how his dad does the same. So he attempts to shed all the negative aspects that remind him of that arsehole: all that bitterness and worry, all the desperation and frustration that split his composure and spilled out into evidence as life unravelled; unturned out how he wanted it to. And everything is about sex, you must understand. Like it or not, that’s the way it is. It doesn’t make what I’m about to say perverted. Sex is our primitive way of reaching out for that bliss- state; we know there is something great out there, but it’s out there to us – we don’t know where it is. It sure ain’t fucking here. And sex is a kind of hotwiring we do, like the nun and the alarm clock. An accessible rush. A way of floundering for the connection we know we should share. But don’t. The most intimate state we can reach if we love the one we’re with. Opening ourselves up for another. Perhaps we’re under-evolved, or perhaps we devolved from far more advanced creatures and it’s a subconscious grasping for the memory. Perhaps it’s the last grasp. Or perhaps I’m making it all up and we are just over- elaborate sex machines looking to locate an orifice…no, I can’t believe that. I have to believe we are more than that. Essentially, the mother sees her son as a better version of this man she loves; a less dilapidated model, an upgrade, and though he’s already developing his own

109 he at least possesses less of the rotting cavities the father let inhabit his mind. Smaller, less-progressed and visible ones anyway. And on top of this is a mother’s love, the most powerful force in the known universe, and though she doesn’t want to screw her son, sex is humanity’s way of reaching for infinity…it’s the best and only way we know…and it comes up way too short. But she feels protective of him, and we shroud our lives with emotions or mannequins of emotions but deep down it’s because we’re protecting ourselves, our genes, and a child…it’s something I helped create; it is the part of me that I’m protecting. If this undying unconditional love were allowed to purely unravel, who knows where it would lead… It is embedded in our natures that procreation with one so…recent is wrong. Though we are ultimately all related, truly – every human, and every other living creature, and all the plants and fungi, everything that dwells here, right down to the unicellular…and every atom of every mineral composing every rock, and the planet itself, and all other matter constituting anything and everything that can be comprehended or cannot in the entire cosmos, that has ever been and ever will be – …this is too local. We are meant to spread, not sit making children with our mothers in the very same nest we were born in. I still see some of those first twigs…the son might say. So I was supplanted. I was shed from her affections. I was no longer needed. I was obsolete. She had a newer model; a more streamlined machine; a man less clogged with the anguish that steadily accumulates when you live a long time and to your horror watch the world not only get not a jot better but infinitely worse, with less of the niggles that most wouldn’t notice but that to her were contributors to yet another imperfect day, and to tie it all together with a humiliating ribbon they were united in their disdain for me.

The days blurred into each other; several years passed as he breezed through his adult life. I think so anyway. I sat around ruminating a lot, God knows how long, when one day seemingly all of a sudden it was ending. She was telling me to leave, that she’d found ‘a new lease of life’ with someone around the same age as me but who’d reinvigorated her. It had been so many years before our son left; once he finally did I’d become used to the death of mine and Heather’s time together. So we’d resided in the same household but what we shared had long been a cadaver. There was no going back. When he was a kid we’d occasionally attempt to reignite the excitement of our love, in-between doting on him, but were always interrupted or mentally elsewhere and then when he left it’d been two decades gone. It wasn’t anything as romantic or clichéd or cinematic, but picture this: the love of my life and my son stood in the front doorway, arms over each other’s shoulders, forming a defiant barrier to our home at the threshold. Disconnecting me from the unit. In my mind she still looked so young, not that I see wrinkles or grey hair as at all negative, but she simply looked as she did when we were happy together, so far back on our timeline, in our lifetimes, and though it now always dwelt alongside the throat-ache of mourning I still remembered every moment of when our love thrived, when it hurt because it was so exciting! And he was basically me, only he wasn’t me. He had my tattoos and my scrawny arms and my hair and my sneer that I reserve only for imbeciles – which he was pointing at me – only I knew he was a baby at the same time. Another me, but younger, always younger. And the pavement was dashed white with powder

110 snow as I hobbled off, not looking back, because I’d see her smiling face that wasn’t really there and hadn’t been for a long, long time.

111 68

To truncate the tale slightly, my inventor friend brought me a homemade flamethrower and we slaughtered them all. Melted the effing lot of them. To fill in the gaps, here you are: as the torching continued, over the roaring and crackling of the flames, and the tiny pops of explosion, through the thick black smoke, he looked at me over the rim of his spectacles, and his eyes disclosed the type of doubt that might shatter a glass house.

Before his arrival I had tried many things. There was such a thick blanket of them, like algae on a centuries-old seawall. I tried chiselling them off, pouring a boiling-water-and-salt solute on them, clubbing them with a St. Louis Slugger, but they were resilient, as if unable to be harmed during this strange hibernation they’d begun. Impervious to all they might have to weather, to every element and devious device devised by the wickedest of minds. And, alien as they were, I wondered where on Earth they could come from? I know they were spewed from these crusty lips, but…que? What the hell were they doing in there, inside me? Did some malevolent force plant them in me as seeds and wait for them to grow, to ‘hatch’? My pragmatism was atypical of me. I guess because I was deep in the situation. By then you know you must deal with it in some way. I felt little fear while I had a mission. It felt like any other vomit to be mopped up with towels given as a gift by distant relatives. Vomit-mopping towels. Everything has its place. Everything has its purpose. Perhaps vomit exists solely to be mopped up by vomit-mopping towels. But oh, when he arrived…my beautiful man. My saviour. A mind of maths but the delicate touch of an angel – my angel. Imagine. The clarity of links linking to links, but in-between each link a phosphorescent watercolour, like an infinite roll of fabric from the haberdashery. Gorged till bloated would thee be. And he’s mine mine mine! He knew the solution. Easy pease pudding. Sometimes he sinks though. His face seems in permanent shadow. Saturnine; his longing to be among the stars, away from all this nonsense. What sort of plight is this? A massacre is what it was. I saw the tears in his eyes when he looked over at me, and it was because of the way my face was firelit, vengeful. He could’ve dealt with the killing, no matter how much he hated himself for the rest of his days, but seeing me sunk too…what hope is there left then? If I couldn’t be his ray of virtue during times of despair then what else could he do? He felt dirtied, I could see it. Unclean, everywhere was unclean. The goo and the residue would take plenty of paper towels and relative-linen but eventually be soaked up, sterilised, and vanished from the terrain. But he would still remember the manic eyes flaring on his boy’s face on that gloomy evening. Still so unbalanced after all this time. He thought he’d calmed me but I never changed. Still a fart on the canvas. Catalysed moments of perfume but it’s all electrickery.

The solution was, of course, to work together. These were advanced creatures, vibrating their weirdness in waves disobeying physical laws. A cancer feeding on the weakness and stewing of negativity permeating each fibre of thread of the vicinity. It really is the greatest of magics, love. It’s all we have anyway, humanity evolved. We make up humanity so what more could there be? But advanced or regressed versions of humanity.

112 The creatures had undoubtedly multiplied during the course of events, quarantined from the outside world. All they had to feed on was me and my thoughtwaves, so they were treated to a feast, and there would be a moist schlepping sound, and the body would split like a crab taking a single sidescuttle in a slimy sleeping bag, and one had become two. And we melted their physical forms, but it was more like they retreated back into non-existence than died. Melting them into composites only made them smaller and more, but they soon faded away as our mood heightened. Or rather mine. It wasn’t his battle but he was my only weapon. Once they were all gone I basked in our victory, but he was distant and silent. ‘If there’s nothing else,’ he said, ‘I’m gonna go back home and get some sleep. I’m tired.’ ‘Oh. OK.’ I said. And he left.

Nevertheless, I was contented as I padded back off to my bedroom. The corridor’s carpet was dry and smooth and piley and unclumped of consistency again and I enjoyed the feeling of it brushing against my toes. I was really feeling the carpet on my feet. I breathed in the air-freshened air, sprayed to mask the barbecue stench, and went into my room, undressed, and made to clamber in to the sweet relief of BED. Then I felt a squelch underfoot.

113 69 (titter)

Atop the hills a roar, a shockwave quaking the equilibrium. Like a forcefield, not discharged to defend an attack or attack an attack, but as a message of defiance: no matter how my hands tremble they are sure – that is why they tremble. On all known frequencies, from every pore to every morsel of matter and non-matter, to all things that are, were, and ever will be, my message is the same: this is me, this is me being, this is all I can be. There have been disturbances, uncountable disruptions, derailings, insurrections, mutinies, wars across realms I couldn’t even conceive of. I am as sure as I can compute. Call it a silly belief, a peace of mind vested in a fable, a want that seems all the more true as I wish it so, but as I said: this is me being. And everything is projected code, equations, and obeys laws and has forces that balance or don’t and everything is ever-shifting. Chaos is implanted to shake the springs. Perhaps this evil force only knows life while orbiting a black hole; only knows good disappearing – the fear, the grief, the desperation. The extracted fingernails, the panicking lungs clutching for what there is nothing left of. The trying everything then relinquishing responsibility for their destinies; the call to a speculative better power that never answers as the torment draws out. Cloaked, because cloaks are where it’s at, the only apposite attire for bellowing assertions to many lands, I let the winds billow them freely. The violent flapping was all the confirmation I needed. I was on top of the world – no, I didn’t feel like ‘a god’. But look down at these feet, on the ground: I am on top of the world. We are all on top of the world. I can move these feet from here to there. Sometimes I even perch on one foot while I scratch it with the other. And this mind houses many ideas, and an idea is what all things once were. What allthings once was. Who knows what the planet will choose to listen to? I fear mainly that which confirms their automation as meaningful. I should be more specific – the human planet. But who knows – there is plenty of good stuff in the world, so it is possible for them to get it right sometimes. However, proportionate to the insignificant mentalities that best thrive… I just try to look at the shadows they cast rather than the bodies casting them, like most do, but for different reasons: I don’t want to look up and see my certainties confirmed: that they are gone and want you deleted along with them. It is a double bind, and like all double binds it is up to you. Then there is another one involving either making a decision regarding it, or not making one at all and letting the natures of others choose the course for you. But chances are all that is left of you will be devoured with it. You know revealing the truth is best, because a life based on a lie is a lie, is making the sanctity and preciousness of it a joke, and on a personal note it can’t be there invisibly poisoning your lives without anyone fully understanding if it is glaringly obviously always with you. And perhaps that tears you apart, but it’s better than decaying or pining in the clammy arms of someone you hate or who hates you or both, or not loving one another completely because there are bits you haven’t revealed. But you also want to protect people, it’s not in your nature to cause harm, whether it be with malice aforethought or simply a side effect of doing something honest. And I am a reticent fellow. I know they do not and will not understand. Saying nothing is for the best because I don’t want this anchor multiplied, duplicated and superimposed into the lives of others. I’m searching

114 for the best way to let it drag me fully down to the seabed where I can’t be found, and it can no longer be the invisible poison in our lives.

115 70

Glorious, the revolt…noncommittal centurions wiggle pointy sticks for posterity.

Shit in the pool; scattered brains. Defiantly reliant. Sun shining smiles on placid flaccid faces. Love and loss, fucking to please the gods. Intelligentsia, minus any intelli, inside they tell of their gentry, gently puppetry, fine-female fuckery. Highs and lows orbiting dormancy, the doorman seeing normalcy, gatekeeper of cormorants a-fishin’ n’ never a-wishin’. Comprehending the concept of extremities is fanciful; they laugh at me. A piece of shit smells like shit from tip to tip. Flashy dismissals; Fascists sit over the hill, so thrilled! Their cells not squarely divided, grimly painted with bubbles proclaiming the poetry of life, thus an outlook must be found through opium funnel – imagination sure is such a craaazy tunnel! Via filters, peepers and deeper receptacles to perceptions: this dark mind could find the flaws in a utopia. But my sleeve pulses red meat, my mind teaching my tongue to speak, my agenda to mend the broken fender wherever it’s found. And why play the clown, why even play the character actor? I do not play, and that’s with a full stop, not a nervous cough when I realise I don’t realise if I’m acting or not. Mass hallucination; collective delusion. Suicide squid. Brushing the gossamer wings from the torsos of free spirits you find the thorax blue and unwilling to see anything anew.

Rampant inhibition. Reality corked, totally borked. Shaken to a vicious fizz and ready to burst and blast the glass and fire shards into eye of apocalyptic Cyclops. Living life as a loner, no strong bonds, spending hours of the day recoiling at the revolving door of humanity, braying mass spraying gas on to crop that wilts before day’s end. ‘Give me hope or I shall take. They shall not deprive me of life while they gargle their dilute.’

No one is super; there is no Doctor. Extremes are the stuff of dreams. We are alone and the world is flat. Quasi-anarchist idealism spouted from podiums to be lapped up till tasting tarmac of racetrack aaaaand you’re back. Dreaming hoping praying better to come or face number than number sucking thumb and curling as a foetus. There will be a braver mass. Planting and sowing seeds, dreaming during the peace of tipping the watering can, those few precious moments on dry days, tranquil; plus steroided fruit would produce naught but an insubstantial mess. Make the best of, but also make better. This world. By being brilliantly yourself. We should all be artists, putting our soul into our lives, bringing it to the horizon, letting the sun shine upon it, so that the sun shines on your soul and can photosee your strength. The world is now better.

116 71

Smiling at her, my eyes narrowed like she’s an adorable little lady, not the laptop screen perched atop the washing basket. Sometimes I’ll even say aww or emit a little knowing ‘just between us’ giggle out loud as I spend one or two hours looking longingly at HQ images and feeling so many modes of aching, searching for the perfect one of her freckled button-nose, to be starwiped in a shuffle of my five right knuckles. You should see her freckles, russet-coloured and dotted about her cheeks like fairy kisses, some on the curve of her cheekbones so they warp slightly, adorably. Her mouth is kinda crooked but it’s cute her lips ridiculously full and kissable and her forehead is kinda big but her hair gracefully crests it and besides it’s littered with freckles as well and her cheeks are silky and crinkly like rose petals and she has those barely-open-looking smiling eyes with tiny pixie pupils and all composed together make up the sweetest angel. Smiling at her, my eyes narrowed like she’s my adorable little lady, like there’s intimacy between us, that she moves throughout her days knowing she is the partner of me. And she thinks of me all the time and all the ways we could make love (not always sexually, but manifest and commemorate the feelings) when we’re both home – which happens far too rarely as we are out or in doing our art our dance our life – and she isn’t just a 2D liquid crystal image, motionless, displayed on a tablet to be snapped closed once I snap out of the fantasy and masochistically decide to write about it.

Perhaps I work myself into a corner and the only way is…beyond. Scooping out the fruit the innards to be chewed and/or pulped. Where can this go? A success for being you is terrifying, hence why so few choose it (plus it’s virtually impossible). Playing a role doesn’t invite scrutiny, at least not of anything real. Undeniably I am a rarity, but not an only. There are examples of those who’ve done it: a confessional, self-spilling manner of existence. But confessing what? Actions, things that have happened, things that could’ve been observed. My method goes so much deeper, into my heart, into the most trivial but potentially damaging thoughts, into things that perhaps shouldn’t be shared. And even this pillar is debased…there is so much more emptiness in anyone’s day, and so much more sculpting than basking. In idleness is when our undistracted minds roam, when we are free to explore ideas and find our own personal epiphanies, when we develop an individual sense of the world, which is surely more valid than being active doing something for the sole reason of obtaining bread to tide you over till tomorrow. And what are words anyway? Even if I knew every word of every language, using them to describe experience can only ever result in parody, a distorted caricature of experiencing life. It’s no surprise that fewer and fewer people are reading – while you’re sitting looking at symbols on leaves of paper you’re not busy authoring your own unwritten story by living. Not that anyone’s doing that either.

We often have to decide to delegate and dedicate some time to meditate, and as we spend most of it navigating our way through the jarring dissonance, trying to straighten out some strings into a vaguely audible melody or to at least alleviate and mellow the discord, what room is there to breathe?

117 And now, look at one who has found that ball of self: aching for famous women in his bedroom, or in the bathroom, lethargically drawn out to indefinite… Frighteningly close to a quarter of a century of living, and nowt to show but respiration. Which is remarkable and honourable in itself, but I’ll leave that for now.

118 72

They both looked down then and enjoyed a pensive silence. Helen gripped by its vessel her Muttley mug (which had HEE HEE HEE painted on the other side) of tepid unsweetened decaf coffee with her left hand, her right delicately tracing the circumference of the cylindrical receptacle’s rim, running a lingering musical ting around it that sounded like a hidden crystal cave tinkling in a shallow abyss. …Much like the silence was already doing, which had descended after Corinne’s soliloquy. There was a tingly impending in the air – H2O + pins and needles. Not a foreboding – an impending, an…idea. Like a thought 3D-ing at every opportunity. Like a dust storm bathed in sidelamplight, or morning sunbeams through tears in the curtains. …Which one might’ve considered strange, that they really were enjoying this pensive silence – well, Helen was anyway, though Corinne did feel relieved. Purged. But we all feel anointed when and after witnessing someone expressing their vitality, their inherence. It’s so rare that purity spills out…it’s never less than breathtaking. And what if it’s your first time beholding such an event? Can you remember back that far? As a child I’m sure you spent hours in front of the mirror entertaining yourself, rapt under the knuckles of your own magnificence. …Strange though, for Corinne had used that scythe with venom; that scythe of a tongue from that throat of such venom. Not to bite at the throat of the weak…not the weaker of stature anyway…Corinne despised virulence, detested malevolence. Phenomenal cynicism; hopeless and dense with contempt for the countless fountains of verbal diarrhoeal monosyllables salting every lawn. If tongues could kill, hers would bestill the entire Earth. (Probably. Go on, prove that it wouldn’t.) She had no answers for any of her quadrillions of questions… And yet, it ignited something in Helen. Sure, Corinne had no answers for any of her questions, but Helen had never even considered the questions. Before now, that is. A grand opening was occurring as she absent-mindedly tapped the ‘Fuck The Pain Away’ rhythm on the cup’s rim with her ring finger. A grand opening of a million gateways in her mind that until moments ago had been completely obscured and unknown. And, quite fabulously, it was Helen who had precipitated it all: the chain of events leading to this multiple-orgasmic starburst of epiphanies. She’d invited Corinne round for their monthly men-bitch (mĕn-bĭtch v.t. quite simply, to bitch about men) and Corinne, having recently evolved greatly but unevenly and drastically, concurrent with her existential grasp being pocked and clattered with unforgivable hurts, the ones she loved most suddenly displaying inexplicable malice and truncation of goodwill towards her, before finally concluding it all with their mass-desertion, at last, in unbearable pain, let it flood out into the ears and brain of the only friend she had left: the idiot Helen from that communication skills course. It was more, in fact only, at her than to her, but nonetheless it was Helen and Helen alone who bore witness to this shard of the workings of her queer friend’s mind. And, as this was the first smashing of such a window, Helen was the only one who ever had.

Helen said: ‘Who would you say is the most wonderful person you’ve ever met?’ Corinne opened her mouth, and contorted her neck into a talking-like motion, but all that emitted was invisible dust. Then a croak kind of sounded, but it

119 could’ve been a shoe heel across the laminate floor, or the brakes of her next-door neighbour Luigi’s van parking outside the window, and her eyes fixed into a thousand-yard stare, and she sunk into the chair, which pfffed, deflating, like Corinne herself. ‘Do you know what?’ she said after a significant pause, ‘I don’t think I’ve met a single wonderful person in my life. I don’t know if I’ve met a single person I even like. Ever. Not even vaguely. Sorry and all, but there is just…nothing here. On Earth I mean. Fuck-all to love. Whatever colour there was has been drained, and there is no sepia tinge to it. Black and white TV is really varying shades of grey, and this life isn’t that. Grey has some sparkle about it, some place among the other colours. Each individual hue has its own niche within it all, and sure, grey’s kind of uncool, the withdrawn fuddy-duddy around the fulsome youth with exciting names like electric pink and sky blue, but he has his own thing going on. It shows itself, has presence, says, ‘Here I shitting am, y’bastards’. In fact, it’s almost all colours. But all we see is the scraps of grey that flake off in the frostiest crags of winter; the dead cells shed from carcasses in the back alleys behind butchers’ or in the illicit interracial midnight flings in the bushes. A tossed fucksack flake; the powdered scraps of offal stuck to the outsides of dumpsters we happen to be passing as we stagger through a metropolitan wasteland where the only way out is to segment the humours and narcotise them senseless. The world is spinning, ‘life goes on’ as they say; we orbit the sun on a rock in space and this is what we make life. It’s beyond embarrassing. Self-flagellation? Self- effing-beheading more like. If they could see themselves. There are no jewels here…I dunno, perhaps there are, but the eighty-year tenure is not long enough to find one, and that’s if you look twenty-four hours a day, every day, for your entire life. And there are all kinds of distractions. A glut of interruptions. You can never gather any momentum, the walls slippery with fearful sweat so you can never get any purchase, any grip to propel yourself. There is no from, no to. It’s terrifying. Beads of panic bobbling out of my anus, bullabullabullabullabulla. Wrap my lips around anything to plug the shrieks emitted from the fissure, the bottomless canyon. Motionless on the spit. The spirit of all things pleading to let them die, please let them die, to escape this incarceration; the humiliation of having it beaten to dust and used to form one of ‘them’. Suffocate them, starve them, stab them frenziedly in the heart, just let it end now. But I’m a coward, a creature in limbo. No logic to any of it. All of them left, my family and friends. Not that they were any help, but they left. I didn’t do anything. And there aren’t answers, there will never be answers. The questions should not exist. It is all wrong. We have done this. People. I am a person. I hate myself for being one of them. Killers. Serial killers. Listen to a human scream – you hear the primate. Smooth-skinned chimps in varying shades of brown. That’s all we are. We will exist and wander about and eventually we will become something else. We think we have the power of gods…I saw this video a family did online where they attached a camera to a balloon and sent it into space, literally into space. It was just hanging there; you could see this blue orb, this harmless ball with a blue hue around it: Earth, the decorated terrestrial planet we sit in this house upon now, surrounded by the vast darkness, blackness, nothingness. Whatever we do, no matter how great it may seem, it only ever alters this tiny rock. At our most extreme all we can become are tyrants or martyrs. And only for humanity; for a careering lump of something surrounded by the rest of the universe. Death will halt us all. We aren’t the toenail of a flea. Or maybe we are. And this is all in the realm of the

120 material. Emotions…I don’t doubt the devastation inside of so many of us. Everything alters a person, shapes them into their present. Everything that came before makes up now. Now is the result of the before. The before and the after. Where they meet. Where history and the future converge and ignite. I can feel the world changing, shifting with the pressure applied. I can feel the future of my fingertips, what they might do if put somewhere. I can feel the link to everything else that exists as it should when I am existing as I should. There is no mystery. I know how to live, and I might still be disappointed that all the science fiction I devour hasn’t happened yet, but if I was allowed to live as I want to live this electricity would never stop flowing. But we are trapped and I am just one woman and I am not clever enough to invent a time machine or live without fear and on the run from relentless forces. I am oppressed by my own individuality; perhaps, ironically, I would be able to flourish better, achieve more, if I wasn’t so…myself. I might be able to ignore the evil better; make more trivial changes but far more frequently, plus I’d get to see the results. I feel so trapped by this present, my fate amid the rest. Lost. Submerged. Where is someone to love? Where is my something to clutch to my chest and kiss, to keep striving for? Everything points to one door. All roads lead there. Where is the ideal? Hoping and never obtaining sounds like an unimaginable pain…but I’ve never felt it. The relentless plodding. Like Alex and his droogs have ambushed and are now in the act of desecrating the one thing I love. But in a dream, where I don’t know what the thing I love is, and I can hear the blood-chilling screams betraying that it knows the struggle to be futile, it being everything really, this event just another crocodile clip holding the aborted document together in definiteness, but what are they coming from? A mouth? The thing sounds sentient, like it grasps its plight, but or what if maybe could it all be a puff of smoke, a macabre kaleidoscope? Could it be, really, a person? My own head as they pillage this elusive part my soul, a part that I know I need but not why nor what it is or if it will last till the day’s end? Is it my man or woman or androgyne, with the worst pain being that to them the worst pain isn’t the violent violation of their mind, soul, and body, but that they feel like they’ve let me down, that in some way they were asking for all this, that they deserve it, that they didn’t love me enough, and that this is thus adequate punishment, and they only wish I didn’t have to witness it, that I’d never met them, that I’d found someone better. Someone good enough. My One. My One. Used, abused, used up, discarded. Utilised by chimpanzees wearing Venetian masks. Everything good can be used as a resource by the bad. Nothing is sacred to those without soul. There is no gauge when there are no elements left to measure. Husks, but the skin holds in its fabric that hereditary protocol: to prove them the dominant, the superior, the alpha. Women bitch and men brawl and blooming brings insidious blows. And life goes on. The eyed lollop along in disbelief. We are just like sea lions or land lions. We do the same shit but have that golden evolved concept of deception. We can even lie to our own DNA; trick it for long enough till we croak and don’t have to worry anymore, don’t have to witness the consequences of carrying this cancer on. Oh, love love love! Imagine if it were allowed to thrive, allowed to live! All those movies starting fires in hearts because it never happens like it does there, but that’s because we don’t let it! It comes from an honest place, but we coat it all in lies! That’s fucking why! It’s purity without the impurities. Surety without the insecurity. Love, without humans allowed the opportunity to fuck it up. Give them an empty room and they’ll find something to ruin. Cloaks and hats and

121 whitening toothpaste. Lightning bolts left to wither in telephone cables. Pillows filled with cement. Poison in the cat food. Bow-legged children. Smoking during pregnancy. Afghan hounds with their ears dangling in the water bowl. People as shields, children as weapons, shaping how happy they will be, as sure as the global warming you insist doesn’t exist you complete fucking dullard. C’est la death comes to all regardless. Thank Christ for the time limit. Thank Friday your virus can only be borne when there is air in your lungs. Perhaps I should squeeze it out of those who don’t deserve it? No – who am I to judge? Look at me, hear me roar, if by roar you mean sentimentally sadly badly unmadly moan and hope my saviour can hear me across the galaxy, across the billions of galaxies, across the universe, perforating universes beyond, broadcasting on all frequencies, in every discovered dimension, in every hidden certainty, anywhere theoretical hypothetical belief-pathetical, amid the cacophony, among the calls far prettier than mine, that some ball of love chooses me and takes me away from here, here, here, where there is nothing for me. Oh, Helen: I really am so very sad.’

122 73

Hoping this latest mental revelation, reached by thinking, will finally be the one that reboots the universe. Always asking, whether directly or not, and demanding a reply. Waves rise and fall, aureate nuggets surge through then evanesce, and I am still the bag of bones at the end of every day.

I can feel the finger touching my lip, and the lip being touched by my finger. My finger to my lip-my lip to my finger. My eyes see the finger being lifted to lip; I feel my arm bend to reach. My window is open; it is spring and I can smell jasmine. The net curtains got pulled down a few days ago by our new kitten who I love uncontrollably and his name is Paul, and Old Kenneth walks past with his dog Clancy and happens to glance in my direction and sees through the window me lifting my finger to my lip. My hand smells of banana. It’s been following me around for hours, that vomity saccharine stench. I wasn’t sure what the hell it was. It seemed faint yet constantly so – always there. I turned off the gas, thinking it might be a leak, and sniffed around the bathroom, thinking maybe it was the lingering odd odour of my most recent excretion. I thought it might be the butter from my unimaginative pasta dinner – pasta with butter – but butter smells like butter and I could smell banana. It was deep under the cuticle of a single nail, the big one on the left thumb, but all of my fingers on that particular hand are pretty close together so I could smell it clearly now. Later in the Old Spotted Dog Old Kenneth told Old Mart how he’d seen me in the window doing what I was doing. Old Mart was blind, but chuckled as he imagined what it might’ve looked like: ambling by a window, minding your own business, and you happen to look to the side and there’s some scrawny carrot- topped chap brazenly acting all queer in plain sight. (I guess I should also mention that I was totally naked except for a single Spongebob sock. On my foot.) Old Mart used to be able to see quite clearly – although he’d never been super book-learnin’ smart he always prided himself on being a perceptive chap – but lost his sight in the war against cataracts almost a decade ago now. My torso itches something awful. After showers I often get all blotchy, and I can see the scarlet patches littered about me now. It used to happen to my face when I cried at school as well, which was often, and some kids would take the piss. So I killed them. Killed them all. Every last one of them. Only joking. I could still taste the toasted wholemeal bread and honey I ate for breakfast, and the ginger tea I’d whipped up, and two pieces of shortbread. Outside were bibbings of cars and twitterings of twazzocks twatting about on technological personality-make-up-for-ers. Later in the day they might impress their twonky mates by memorising something of which they have no grasp, read up on on the internet, and regurgitating it before the half-dozen agape mouths, moistening a moron named Mary’s southerly one. It was so noisy out there – absolutely atrocious, the degree of disrespect they were showing for the planet. It made me want to close the ruddy window! But I did not. While in the shower I noticed how the soles of my feet sort of puffed out on to the smooth surface of the bathtub. I think it’s a balance thing, spreading your weight out over a larger surface area. I had fun lifting them and setting them

123 down again. Got a little march going. I imagined how ridiculous I must’ve looked. My mid-length hair was also spiked up with shampoo and I was lathering myself up with a white wash mitt with a single dollop of a Christmassy red shower gel in the palm. It looked like a soiled sanitary towel. This initiated a series of tangential thoughts that for your sake I won’t go into. A man sat on the tube in rush hour, stuffy as fook in that tin transportation tube, listening to U2 on his headphones, nodding vacantly along in no particular rhythm, obtuse grin, pencil goatee, overbearing cologne. Lah-dee-dah. A motionless man in the quaint little park he’d often take a pleasant detour through if running late for something. The scene was this: a barren willow tree with a pink balloon caught in its twigs, the shrivelled bulb flailing in the breeze. Against the trunk sat a raven- haired teenage girl, her spindly legs entirely suited to her gangly frame sheathed in stripy leggings (orange and black) and cuddled to her chest, to which she also clutched four books. One of them was The Subtle Knife. She wore a colourful knitted jumper with a clown on it. Above the clown were the words FEAR ME. She also wore red converse and men’s baggies too long for her, the cuffs frayed and muddy from dragging along the ground. She wept alone. A few dark strands fell from her skewwhiff bird’s nest of hair, so she stretched out her legs and let the books tumble and flicked the hairs back behind her ears, her eyes green emeralds now rimmed red, her cheeks blotchy and absolutely beautiful. She tidied the books into a neat pile and set them on her lap. Then she sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. The man was awestruck by the beauty of the vista. He saw the balloon in the tree, which was overwhelming enough, but then he saw the creature slumped against it… He hadn’t cried since he was a child. He began to tremble with the emerging emotion. Soon to be overpowered he collapsed to his knees. The girl sensed the movement and looked up. A squirrel avoided venturing out because it sensed now was not the time. The man, who had reached the big 3-O today, bawled while sitting on the laundry basket. He was remembering Christmases when his family were still together, like when he got his first remote control car aged three and was terrified when he first saw it move, his mind exclaiming in its own way ‘What is this devil’s alchemy?’; when his mum and dad would spend a gazillion quid every year and think nothing of it, living on the never-never, fuelled by their children’s smiles. Mainly, though, this Christmas, it was when he was fifteen and had been jokingly requesting World Peace for several months before, and his mum got his sister and her friend to craft a picture of loads of green balls with faces holding national flags and call it ‘World Peas’. A chicken felt the urge to flap its wings. It did so and crashed, shaken but unhurt, into the fence. A blackbird shat right next to me on Tuesday. I know it was him because the tree was apetalous and bare and when I looked up there was only him there. He said he was frightened she wouldn’t find him attractive anymore now that, no matter how comprehensive his cleaning regime, patches of plaque kept forming in the gaps between his teeth and spreading, brown and tacky. She told him to stop being such a silly toot and to open his mouth, and kissed his forehead and tenderly licked each one of his teeth she could reach. The sinews of her back were as intricate, unique and sublime as the anatomy of a leaf.

124 The inquisitive eight-year-old asked his father if there was a football team named Hamilton. His father knew exactly what he was going to ask before he asked it. Life was but sounds and colours for the baby, who thought it was absolutely hilarious. Like a carnival in my mouth…a million pixies gleefully whooping and applauding with their tiny sprite’s hands and prancing about on my tongue…the cool taste, the effervescence prickprickprickling an invigorating icy sting across the palate, and to finish the whooshing gleam of aftertaste…my first glass of cherryade. It was a subconscious action, but once done I knew why I’d done it: raising my finger to my lip was me demanding myself to stop flustering around, flapping about like a dumb cluck; to stop striding frantically through the world, counting the cracks in the concrete; to hush myself, shhhh!; to shut up a minute and take it all in.

125 74

Blood pumped out and spilled from the incisions, gritty and thick, chalky and dark, the abrasive texture of heavy-duty toothpaste – think ‘Arm and Thorhammer’. Like tomato purée. It had been a clinical attack. Without hesitation, the in-out of the puncturing swift and neat, one movement and they fled. Vampyric, of course, in their styling, such is the fashion. But human saliva or whatever they used does not contain the necessary coagulants that render vampires such clean killers, so the celerity and efficacy of their attack still occasioned a protracted and excruciating death for the ill-fated victim of their macabre murder-play. While he lay dying he thought it remarkably sad. No matter the way, no matter the glory lived for however long, death was not glorious at all. It was the fragility of the human body finally showing itself – it always could’ve expired like this, at any time. All that consciousness, and all the control he’d applied, or at least what had appeared as such…he didn’t fear it would be lost, but it was definitely an odd kind of panic he felt. A pummelling hysteria. Death wasn’t scary, but being trapped in the certainty of it was. Not being able to point and click, as it were, in those countless human ways that make life so spicy, such a banquet, every which day. Not having the choice to live more; not being able to unsee this end to a beginning that always was until it stopped – there was always a present, but soon there wouldn’t be. The feeling reminded him of the story of Eileen Blake.

Eileen was born towards the end of the Second World War. She never knew her father – he was a fireman, and had died of smoke inhalation while trying to help others from their burning houses after an air raid. This a mere two weeks after Eileen came into the world. For Eileen’s mother it was but another plot on a long line of grief. ‘But another’ sounds heartless, but the human spirit can only take so much, and she’d already lost her mother and sister, and her father was presumably drinking himself to death somewhere, that’s if he wasn’t dead already…thankfully, she managed to partially numb herself to it all, or at least managed to find some impossible place to store it all in order to make it possible to endure it – she had Eileen to look after. It could have been just another day for Eileen’s mother when she turned eighteen, if Eileen hadn’t chosen that day to say her first words: ‘Mummy sad?’ And the way it was said as a question…Eileen’s mother bawled her eyes out – she thought it would never end, the salty deluge. The fact that her daughter had figured out the meaning of sad before even knowing how to voice the word, and silently monitoring her mother’s behaviour had come to the conclusion that yes, sad was how she was feeling, but she wouldn’t just flat-out say it because it would be insensitive, so she inflected it like that so as to allow her mother to reply divulging as much or little as she wished…she knew that day she had truly given birth to an angel. Though Eileen’s mother tried to conceal her chronic sorrow – she never cried in front of her daughter again – Eileen knew that something simmered, something they’d never speak of but would never go away. She became a pensive and perceptive girl, and once fully aware and able to speak was

126 essentially her mother’s carer. She never made any proper friends, missing school more days than she didn’t, her mother subconsciously making herself ill for she couldn’t bear the thought of the only thing on Earth she cared about being out of her sight. She hated herself, thinking she only kept her near because she was scared of being alone. The inescapable depression inhabited every moment, casting a constant shadow on their lives, but Eileen did everything within her power to make life as easy for them both as she could. Meanwhile, her mother was coming to the conclusion that there was only one way to save her daughter. During Eileen’s tenth year her mother committed suicide by hanging, leaving her alone. She swallowed the pain and kept going; she hadn’t cried since she was a baby. She went into care, and without anyone relying on her she plunged herself into school, finally making friends and having a social life outside of that festering relationship; she read enthusiastically, gorging herself on anything she could get her eager mitts on; she went out, to parks and parties in other people’s houses, and not just to the same old shop to buy food to fill their empty cupboards and sneak another bottle of whiskey under her coat for her mother’s bedside. She never resented her mother for putting her through that terrible time, and then abandoning her for ever without explanation, but secretly hoped it would be one of those things one learned once they were grown up and truly understood the world. She was only fifteen when she met Fred. He worked behind the counter at the local cinema. They fell in love without a single word having been uttered. Their eyes met, and they didn’t so much smile as pull awkward faces. Who else could be as bumbling and clueless? Fred even forgot his own name when she asked it (even though he wore a nametag with it written on in bold capital letters). He was eighteen, dark-haired and lanky, and had appalling eyesight (even after they’d been married for several years, he once walked straight past her on holiday while cleaning his glasses, completely failing to recognise the love of his life, leaving her alone in the hotel lobby, bent over with laughter at his ineptitude). For both of them it was an immense relief. Finally, someone there. That impossible thing out of the way; that finding. They hadn’t known where to look, or that they had been looking, and there was really nowhere they could’ve looked until that moment, and all they had to do was turn up and let the story unfold. They were married within weeks of her eighteenth birthday, and had their first child eighteen months later – Beryl, named after her late mother. In the following years they had two more – Peter, and Alice. With the safety net of each other, they felt brave enough to bring others into the world; some lives to fill with the magic that had been absent from theirs. The family did a lot of living together. He’d brought her a bouquet on their first date, naming each species of flower and the image its scent evoked to him as they walked hand-in-hand. Eventually, in his mid-twenties, he started up his own florist business, where he could be in his element all day, and then come home at night to his favourite element of all (he called it out to her as he entered the front door once, and from them on it was his pet name for her – ‘My Favourite Element’). Eileen and Fred were so proud of what they’d achieved. A household filled with love; bright, compassionate children, who eventually flew the nest and went

127 on to more wonderful things, like starting families of their own; the business never made them rich but always kept them comfortable. Things were more perfect than they could ever have imagined.

Seventeen years before the man was stabbed, on a glorious spring Saturday, he’d received a phone call. Licking the cake mix from his fingers in a minor flap he’d tottered into the hall from the kitchen, lifted the receiver, and was addressed by a stern, emotionless voice: ‘Hello, am I speaking with a Mr Frederick Blake?’ ‘…Yes…who is this?’ ‘This is Constable Pearce of the Metropolitan Police. I’m sorry to inform you, Mr Blake, but at around 6:05 this evening your wife Mrs Eileen Blake was a victim of an attempted robbery, during which she sustained multiple injuries. Paramedics arrived the scene and attempted to revive her, before rushing her to hospital. Unfortunately, they could not save her. She was pronounced dead at 6:43. I’m ever so sorry, sir.’ At the police station, they gave him the bag she’d been murdered holding. A plastic shopping bag. In it was a tube of icing for the cake, a cheap bottle of wine, and – for him, he knew, because she brought him the same thing every Saturday – a packet of fruit gums. ‘Lord almighty,’ she would say to the children, ‘your daddy does love his fruit gums!’

128 75

“But of course you could fill that space in me. The space is yours. It’s you-shaped; it’s your groove ready for you to nestle your cute little butt into. Your splendid rear! Honestly, the way your legs blend into it, like a sexy gazelle…I won’t go into it: you know how luscious I find you. But anyway…um…yeah, your space: if you think you can’t fill it…and I know you don’t think yourself worthless, but I wonder if you respect yourself as much as you should…I don’t mean you’re disrespecting yourself by not being with me, or anything as narcissistic as that, but in a way that doesn’t even involve me…sometimes I wonder if you think yourself good enough for the world, like you know you have potential and that you’re doing it a disservice, but I know it’s hard to stay true to yourself… I don’t care what you’ve done, how much of yourself you manage to display, because you have something resolutely in you, immovably true and beautiful, and I’ve spent years wishing I couldn’t see it but I always can, on every horizon. I will raise you atop the highest plinth if that’s what it takes – not for you to be worshipped, by me or anyone, because I don’t need anyone else to tell me how I feel for you, but so the sun can better shine on your face; that the winds might better rustle your hair, so you can feel the elements and know how true and earthbound my love for you is. My ears are to the ground – I’m not living in a dreamland, always seeing a hallucinatory version of you, a version I’ve conjured in your absence…I know how I feel and how right it is, like I know I love the taste of parsley, or coconuts; like all my senses are contented by the seaside. But it’s incomplete. Life isn’t right yet. You are the final piece. You will bind the book of my story; give it its golden monograph, resplendent on the bookshelf of infinity.”

129 76

The weight on anyone’s shoulders has got to be the fluctuation within it all. That same satoric vocal performance, each velveteen note sliding into your ears and imprinting and fortifying its tapestry into each cell, can conceivably become wallpaper if employed as such. If there is a grain of magic your eyes cannot part from, following it all the way as it careers into unknown territories, places far murkier than the pondwater you unwaveringly considered as epitomising murkiness, then there must a reason why it never escapes your gaze. This granule of fairydust, glinting only in light, light used to lighting dark, can only glint when surrounded by dark lit by light. To simplify: it is a visible granule of magic because the granules surrounding it are not magic. If it were among its siblings perhaps it wouldn’t seem so vital. And tomorrow, or the moment after now, is a view anew. We pour in quick- drying cement and stick a stamp on it. I name thee so-and-so, so I can catalogue you and shut you away. We move on to our next novelty while the pellets of truth we find languish and decay in the very environment we saw them glimmering in and brought them out of to adore. And being that this object only ever existed in dialogue, meaning that for it to have been appreciated there had to be the appreciator to appreciate it, if we turn away from it we are also leaving a part of ourselves behind. Eventually the very memory is a confabulated Chinese whisper breathed into one ear and out of the other. It now gone, we now emptied, we begin a new hunt; a trek through the smoky forest to find another spirit to bottle and file away and convince ourselves we’ve made temporal. This is a dark time, when our souls scream and the pits of our stomachs implode and we cover one eye and feverishly stare with the other and back in the jar room are those few lonely sparkles frantically banging on the glass.

130 77

He pricked up and hunkered into his collar, hiding his chin and mouth as it brushed against his earlobes. His black loafers were scuffed, unpolished and greying. He was, in fact, externally anyway, entirely clad in black, though the effect created was not especially melancholy. Having said that, his wearing black was almost like his way of saying no to the light, to the colour and vibrancy in the world. Refusing it. Wearing black was a simple way he could regularly do this – when the sun had set he would disappear. He always wore black. He carried a drawstring bag holding clothes, a few old CDs and a portable player, the letters, some fruit, nuts, sandwiches and water, and two-thousand- and-four pounds in cash – all the money he owned. Not that he really cared for the evil stuff, in fact he despised it, but he'd need lodgings and more food. On the doorstep he serenely surveyed his surroundings, then the first step initiated the second, then he moved his legs alternately forward again, and the flat and the pavement leading up to it and the sign that introduced the street were soon behind him. It was by no means a gloomy day. He was glad of this. He hated the romanticising of things that didn't deserve it; of observing himself as the clichéd underground man who disappears into the night – this was him, he couldn’t help how he was, and he loathed those moments of realisation: how we can always fit an archetype if our self-effacing souls so wish it. It was day, and f-f-f-freezing, but bright and clear, which meant he could adopt his usual stooping, refusing- the-world stance while watching sunlight dazzling off of car bonnets, and while feeling the mood of those around him risen to that peculiar SAD optimism sunny days induce when men have resigned themselves to nothing but short days filled with clouds for the foreseeable future. Breathe that in, sonny: fresh like the Cornish moors. What a send-off. It is worth noting that he was virtually mute. He could speak, sure, but always found conversation so…unsatisfactory. Disappointing. What good could be gathered from hearing someone speak? All it would reveal was how the speaker wanted you to hear them, to perceive them. What is that horizontal line between a pair of closed lips? It’s a lie. We are either lying, or…well, there is only one other time when they purse so, upon the only true respite from the emotions we spend our lives trying to conceal. And he was just as bad as the rest – mouth a permanent potential opening, a permanent sliver of unrevealing. Because all an active voice reveals is how far one man is from another. And he didn’t need to be told twice. Of course, he wasn’t solitary as he strode briskly through the city streets. It was the usual game of human dodgems. Every now and then someone would forget to not be a cunt and decide to spontaneously transform momentarily into a bumper car, and every time this happened he would contemplate swiveling one- hundred-and-eighty degrees and kicking them up the spine. He’d always tell himself he was better than that, but deep down he knew that he wasn’t. He could be violent. He could relish inflicting pain. If he was attacked he would attack back, and he couldn’t guarantee he’d be able to stop any more. It’d been a long old life without attacking back. He was used to the stares. As much as he didn’t care…eyes were scary (shiny white windows into the soul – shudder), and scary shocked him out of his numbness. Sometimes the numbness would last for close to a month; a month of

131 starvation and self-harm and uncontrollable crying and loneliness and hopelessness. He wouldn’t notice it disappear, until after a few days of it happening he’d realise he wasn’t dying anymore. He’d started to not die. His body had endured it and he was free of that demon again. But every waking moment was threatened by its menace – helpless to the creature’s next descent. But to descend something must have somewhere high to swoop down from. It was in the sky somewhere, somewhere up in the ether…somewhere he couldn’t see, but regardless, it was elsewhere, and he could live the way he wanted again. Except, of course, he couldn’t. Who can? Who get the opportunity to? Only the rich, and they spend their time attempting to get richer or dossing about in a state of…well, what? Kind of a syrupy stupor, like what arises after a fast food pig-out. In the end the struggle is to escape, to claw some of yourself back. That’s what we’re made to do, anyway, and he found this unacceptable. His name was Jude. He soon arrived at the train station and bought his ticket from a cuddly man who wore bifocals and had a bobbly beard patched grey. He looked like Father Christmas and his nametag said ALBY. Jude was remarkably sanguine. He parked his bony arse on a bench and looked at the train track, which looked like a train track. It was made of metal and dull-grey. The dull-grey tacked a full stop to the end of his sentence. As he waited, he eavesdropped on a few conversations. A couple of mixed race girls, their hair straightened, cheeks rouged pink, talked about school. One was telling the other how ‘once we reached year nine the nerds and the populars started to mix, but obviously not the proper quiet geeks’. So, there were clever people and the popular people, who we can deduce were not clever by virtue of them being popular. A hideous woman in a hideouser-still flannel tracksuit talked about her pregnancy – her first – with a man with terrible teeth, and his friend; the man with terrible teeth wore a Super Soaker baseball cap, and his friend may have been the father, and seemed to have recently ingested cocaine. Jude knew it was very sad. He was leaving behind his mummy, his little sister, his infant cousins who adored him. He knew it was selfish, but it was time to be. He wanted to continue living and simply couldn’t do so here any longer. It was time to live. Nearing thirty, time to live. It had been a long road to nowhere. The only literature he read was the sort of stuff that confirmed his sorrows. It wasn’t romantic, but it let him know he was not alone, that he was of a lineage. But he hadn’t the right to consider himself so unless proving himself so. He had nothing to show for his pain, and that was his fault. Yes, it was a plague pit he’d been born into, but he had a sharp wit and two fully-functioning legs and was used to starving. He could’ve escaped long ago. He simply hadn’t been strong enough. But here he was now. We each have our own journey to make. His had taken a little longer…a lot longer…than whom? Most of his peers had been long out of university, begun working their lifelong job, met the person they were going to marry and have kids with, or even done that already…but none of that was anything to do with him. Even the greats did their fair share of shit-wading. And some went back to it when they had nothing else to say. Coasted to the end. He was a liver. A live-er. An organ; a bit of beautiful organic viscera. He would serve a purpose, the only purpose he could possibly serve: his purpose, his duty.

132 How it would all turn out God only knew. But he had finally reached page two, blank and juicy-white, smelling of fresh paper – that sublime scent of infinite possibilities. The train wheezed in and stopped and was there to take him away. The doors parted, and he stood up and jostled onboard with the others, sitting in a window seat with his bag between his legs.

133 78

There was a display dedicated solely to Kardashian books, so surely the world can find a place for me on its bookshelf. It was positioned halfway up the stairs, presumably so that, should the opportunity arise, anyone who even so much as stops to look at it can be swiftly roundhouse-kicked down them by a passing non-idiot. Later, I also saw a biography on Jason Statham.

Got asked how old I was again when at the checkout paying for DVDs. ‘I’m twenty-two, actually,’ I answered. I was probably older than the girl serving.

Had another of those dreams where Forest Gate seems like an immense scary world, like an urbanised early-90s Middle-earth, and is deserted, and I feel so small, small as an innocent child, and I am a child, concurrent to being the man I am now. Upton Lane; West Ham Park-feeling. It is home, despite its vastness. I became here. I was a baby and after a while my sister was a baby and everything momentous apart from losing my virginity happened here in this town. But nothing has happened for a while. Nowadays I exist pretty much solely in my head. Interactions are pointless and unsatisfying. My knees are deteriorating, have gotten stiffer this winter. The same population but stagnated. It isn’t with sentimental eyes that I see it all: it really has gotten greyer and greyer here, everyone says so. Even in the coldest days of winter it was summer back then. Optimism, multicultures mingling, could communicate, and back then people smiled. Secondary school ruins it all. Corrupts us. Picture a corrupted image file, pixelated and warped – you recognise what was once there but it is lost. Irretrievable code. We were perfectly fine, actually. You didn’t need to force the fist down upon us, like the parent who raped her own child to ‘gift’ it sex education. Suddenly, though it is called the same thing – ‘school’ – you are prisoners in an institution whose sole aim is profit. Not present to help us become fuller human beings, or really even to rigidly educate us on the basics of given fields, it is there to prime us for a life of servitude, to divulge as early as possible the inevitability of disappointment, and to teach us that finding the little pleasures within this system you will definitely be a part of will provide the only respite during the torment of the next 4/5th of your life. And the more efficiently these institutions do these things, evidenced by high grades easily achieved by memorising – they’d drug us if there was an undetectable way – the more cash reward they receive, which they can easily siphon off to fund holidays abroad. And these are the years when we grow into ourselves, and once we’ve finally escaped a select few are mangled and misshapen, with perhaps a modicum of identity locatable if you can navigate the tangles, but the majority are braindead husks. A job well done, secondary education. Anyway, I accidentally walked up Upton Lane to my old home in Chaucer Road. Twelve years since we left now. And there was a disabled old lady and I offered to wheel her chair back up the hill. The place was deserted like 28 Days Later.

I don’t think I’d ever experienced such strong winds. On that first morning, after that first night, I had to sign on, so put on a hat and gloves and went out there.

134 As I passed under the green bridge that takes you high above the two lanes of road and the train track running parallel on the other side of the wall, they appeared. It had been spitting, but the winds picked up and then some, and the rain became hard as hail though I think it was still rain, stinging my face, falling diagonally, almost horizontally, as I walked inwind. I made record time by using all my strength (read: not that much, but slightly more than it looks like I’m capable of) to power on through it. I thought we’d only have a day of them, but they raged for days after. One morning I went out into the garden and the roof of our next-door neighbour’s shed was on our lawn, pieces of it propped up against the trampoline. That morning the news also mentioned that some people had died. A tree fell on a man and I think someone may have been blown into a river.

The grass over there…lush, greener. I long to step out from my patch; I sneer at it as it swallows and surrounds me, a verdant spotlight. And if you look closely you can see how it is always the same patch, and if you bend down to feel the blades brush against your fingers you hit ceramic and discover the grass is painted on, and your boots are attached to this base, indeed are part of it; boots of cement, welded together with God knows what; soldered, stapled and bound. Army ants just carry you along day after day. You are but a patch of patio that they move from place to place. Diced mortar piled lifeless atop fecund lifeland.

135 79

Her palm glowed with the hundred hues of a handful of sand. She let it fall between her fingertips, a few crumbs remaining that she brushed off on her jeans. She stood up and surveyed her surroundings, hoping to perhaps catch a gull or an ocean liner in the distance. Seeing the landscape empty, she squatted down to the dune again and this time plunged both hands into it, lifting a big pile of the golden dust into the air, letting the wind carry it, both watching with wonder and wincing to save her eyes.

She rushed home to see her son in time before he set off for his big interview. All on his lonesome. But when she arrived he’d already left, without anyone to send him off, or even so much as pat his back, and she imagined him walking now in the dark, going about so solitary and brave, like the man she could never imagine him being. He would always be her little boy.

Breezing through, lighter than feathers sculpted from air. Not ignorant per se, but oh so…human. Can deal with anything life presents, but couldn’t conceive of the countless things it hasn’t. She is happy and sociable, so many chums to tit about with. At pretty much every gathering of her and one or more of her friends there is a minute or two of absolute, I-can’t-breathe-hysterical laughter. With that highly literate, intelligently crude, slice-of-life, perceptive-of-people-and-their-quirks, pessioptimistic sense of humour. Like the best of humanity mixed in an impractically enormous and metaphysical cauldron and poured into a brain and given a circulatory system and a skeleton and muscles and skin and hair and wicked home-sewn clothes and sentience and plonked into a reprehensible hobbling golem of a society, highlighting her as a beacon of possibility – a pinnacle of what we can be, really. She lives in her own world, no more or less real than the world of you or I, and at least hers doesn’t involve deceit and suppression and disappointment and aggression as a given. Art and living. The only sustenance needed. But, like it or not, the serenity, for better or worse, I’m not yet sure, will soon be shattered by the introduction of a person into her life – a boy – who will open up a new door in her world; an inexplicable door she never even knew was there. She will do the same for him in his more smelly, hairy, boy-way…what he will do for her is much prettier. And that look on her face when she first sees him…priceless, for a floating incorporeal narrator such as myself. To describe it I shall use these words: it will seem to say ‘What the fuuuuck?!’ but with the widest grin you could imagine. Out of breath, anticipating, eyes sparkling maniacally – a childish, naïve glint, hungry to learn more. Not a sexual hunger – not purely anyway – but more the hunger of an avid reader eager to carry on with a book, having just finished an exhilarating chapter which ended on a veritably tantalising cliffhanger, but she is too tired to read another entire chapter so must wait until the morning, and so she lies there on her pillow for almost an hour, buzzing with excitement, quite literally shivering and shuddering with the tension, with the agonising wait… All he will do is walk into the room, and in her it will induce the most beautiful despair.

136 80

Maybe I’ll light a stick of incense, turn the main light off and switch on my bedside lamp with its sixty-watt bulb, and lie down with my hands by my sides as if awaiting a medical examination from a visiting spirit. I could take some deep breaths like my mum always told me to when I felt carsick. Maybe this will calm me. ‘To me, depression is a logical reaction to existence.’ ‘Well, it’s a reaction.’ Yes, but it is my reaction. No frills. No pretence. My actions are but a solute of what I’ve absorbed and the way I’ve naturally processed them. This is a liquid of despair. And I don’t want to make anyone else drink it. I don’t want to be selfish with who I am and what I possess. And of all the things…they want me to do things that I must refuse, I really must. I simply have to. Because if I submitted to conditions so against the way I am composed then I would have to end it all, permanently, having invalidated myself. Voided myself, right in my pants. I’m not being overdramatic. I’ve not sat mulling this over, swilling it around my mind until I’ve convinced myself it is the truth. It simply is the truth. I feel really old now. Enjoying the schoolgirls means I’m a paedo. It’s been countless years since I’ve felt the closeness of anyone. Someone’s wobbly, womanly softness. Smooth skin and kind, loving eyes. It seems unjust that I don’t get to be someone’s favourite. Sometimes I become infuriated, thinking of all the bastards that are blessed with such an honour. But none of the women sucking the lead out of their pencils are good enough for me anyway. There isn’t anyone. By being humans they instantly verify themselves not enough. I want more than life has to give. Perhaps I should just surround myself with cats. A simple relationship, a man and a cat. None of the bullshit we insist on stirring into things. No pretending that the reason you do anything isn’t because it makes you happy. No: if I want to spend time with you then I’ll spend time with you. I’ve tried the cat thing though. But I want a person, someone to explore me, to fumble with my cock at night, to wrap her arms around my torso and squeeze me with sheer delight at my presence beside her. And not because I’m anyone, but because I’m me, and me is who she wants beside her: I’m her choice of beside-her-er. It has got dark without my noticing again. Every day seems grey. The days never seem to properly begin before the light waves goodbye again. A woman with long, wavy hair. A real woman, not some gold-plated doll. I want to see split ends and dirt under her cuticles. I want her to smell of her own body odour, not a bottled concoction shared by a million other people. I don’t care if she totally fucking reeks, if it is her own reek. Or she can have short hair. Someone who knits her own jumpers emblazoned with words like ‘BOSOMS’ or ‘THOMAS PYNCHON’. Someone who reads, but reads what she likes, not just to feel smart, not just to facilitate poncery. None of that smug postpostpostpostmodern consciously-cynical-and-satirical shit. Someone who reads Crime and Punishment with heavy heads, but at the same time feels enthused because there’s someone out there who gets it. A real romantic: a reveller in the real. A creature of nature. Someone who loves the taste and texture of skin, who’ll let me smell her hair and gruffly moan with pleasure.

137 It’s so noisy. This world is so noisy. Why can’t people just shut the fuck up for a minute? Breathe the air, or suffocate through the lack of it. Feel something real today – go on, give it a try. They might look like smiles, but they’re really just arrangements of white teeth. Veneers. Keep calm and carry on. Grin and bear it. Frown and spit at me with honesty. Mean what your lips are curled into. I tune my guitar to a Jandek scale and begin a trance-like rhythm. Images of purple sands and black swirls like Van Gogh’s The Starry Night gone putrid and wicked; creatures with blades protruding from their forearms, eyes black gemstones, ridged and hexagonal, halitosis breath blinding like mace; and they are not human, but still they go in and out, in and out, in and out, of the one you love the most, who winces and bites her bee-stung lips but ultimately accepts her fate. Her lips are painted shiny with artificial gloss, pink and vulvar, and all your friends and every man you pass on the street has sat in his room wanking over her, reducing everything you love in life to an object only of use for three minutes of hate-filled self-gratification. Half the human race violently tugging in sequestered unison, in a telepathically synchronised bukkake-circle like three- and-a-half-billion overlapping masculine symbols every single night.

Our entire civilisation was built upon desire paths. Linkways to what we make. Industry and landownership and an endlessly cyclic nature that the successor never learns from. It’s wondrous to notice them emerging in forests or woods or other such untamed places, observing the way we make our way through the land; as part of it, rather than using a tool to batter an artificial route through. It’s funny noticing how few of us there can seem. Once you escape the city you can breathe again. You realise how difficult it was to back there. And the way a person moves…they seem so separate from every other. Watching their elbows bend, or the way they treat animals, or how they absorb music. They are so scattered, and so sole, such singular units. That’s why they lie to themselves, immerse themselves in the crowd: it drowns out the solitary echo, the reverberation of their disenchanted breaths. Probably almost fifty, mid-length brunette, crow’s feet and other more pronounced wrinkles. Him and her both. They wear wellies caked in mud and puffy nylon jackets in primary colours, red and blue usually, and their arms are locked as they take their weekly woodland walk. And those grins aren’t plastered on, and if you were to see their faces at any other time of day on any day they would bear the same expressions. Two of these lone figures have come together, impossibly attained a union, something shared. But surrounding them is air, empty land, for they are an anomaly: most couples you see share more distance between each other than either do with most strangers. Imagine knowing someone so well…and knowing that you hate them.

A young man, boyish tresses, a strange dirty-pale complexion. He sits at a grand piano in an otherwise empty room, looking not small and insignificant but human and vulnerable. Ungesticulating, which seems refreshingly, sublimely abnormal. You couldn’t call what he is playing a rhythm, by the sense that we generally mean it. His eyes are closed, he knows where each key is, and his fingers move in a music of movement in themselves, like it for as long as it lasts is one fluid flourish of soul pouring out of him. Deep in something unknown to anyone else,

138 like ripples in a river or bubbles in a soft drink. On a trip, a voyage, to his own depths, his own unfathomable leagues. He looks like he’s home; like this physical land watching him now is somewhere he’d just been visiting, and like a personal peregrination he brings this to there then back again. That’s the best way I can find of explaining it, because I hear echoes of Ray Charles in there, and a recurring melody swells something within me like the ‘Aquarium’ movement in The Carnival of the Animals. Something in my stomach swells and I am transported, at first woozy and then I am gone, to my childhood when I’d sit with my little sister watching videos, the way that theme from The Beauty and the Beast echoes the peculiar, dreamlike magic, like turquoise and strange lilacs in the twilight, wing-ed and fluttering with curiosity around your hair, sticking up static with strands fluttering in small gusts. Outwardly, I am writhing in a rhythm like he conveys his music, in a state of being, in the moment, time a dimension extraneous to this experience. I have gradually slunk to the carpet in the doorway from which I watched the pianist. In delicate convulsions my body tenses and rocks, but so smoothly, and without jerks or jolts. It isn’t spasmodic but a seamless event. Together we pulse. This is life. A togetherpulse. Concave to convex, intertwining, undulating, riveted in this oneness event. A man blunders in, intruding on a scene that wasn’t meant to be seen. Our faces carry the dopey grins of junkies, he perceives, like those weaklings who want to escape from themselves. It looks disgusting, the way they move in lissom ribbons, unnatural swirls without definite dents, pathetic seizures. Because they’ve managed to escape…like you’re not meant to witness the intimacy of lovemaking…it was meant to be shared of the soul, not reduced to its composite parts or experienced unfully or fragmentally. Of the mind, not of the tools it powers. FUCK. HIM.

139 81

There was, and is, an old lady. There are many old ladies – have you been to Eastbourne? – but this particular old lady is a young lady alive today, but I’m seeing a possible future of hers in the thread of my crystal dressing gown. She has very dark eyes, so dark that you can’t tell their colour. I’ve tried many times and failed. Ewan once deemed them ‘completely black’. They’re like two big beguiled/beguiling pupils bathing in limpid pools too small for it to be comfortable. She’s never lost the glint in her eye; a tear-swelling glint that can only be found if you’re looking for it, that offers you a window into her soul and by Jovis she’ll let you in because so few have ever so much as simply glanced into them and together with you why she’d be quite content to soar out of the Earth’s atmosphere and float for ever. The walls of her bungalow are mostly bare. There are a few prints found at boot fairs and markets and other such places, plus going up the stairs too narrow to get a proper look at it is a postcard of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. She did have another, of The Scream, but one of the grandkids tore it down. She was sitting in her rocking chair, knitting something for her third daughter’s third baby, when a figure appeared before her. Looking down in double-knit concentration as she was she only saw the feet at first, but then looked up at the rest of it, beholding the translucent form of a clothed human female. It was composed entirely of light, but not very bright light, perhaps 4/5th of what we’re used to when we see a real person before us. Perhaps whoever or whatever projected it had one of those difficult-to-operate dimmer switches. The apparition materialised in a second-long motion of converging zigzags, like the components had come from different directions to unite in this one form. And the form was of a young version of her, aged approximately twenty-two. ‘Ah,’ said the old lady, ‘I’ve been waiting for this to happen. I must say, it’s been a long old wait.’ The apparition smiled maternally. ‘Oh Laura, you silly thing: you know full well time is an illusion. This happened tomorrow and yesterday!’ ‘Absolute nonsense!’ chuckled Old Laura, to which Apparition Laura did not react.

Old Laura knew the reason for this seemingly paranormal appearance. Of all the possibilities she’d contemplated in her youth, she’d known, with vehemence, that nothing magical would ever reveal itself to her. I expect this to be a feeling that many reading these words will empathise with – wishing for more than what the world offers and hoping that black holes and aliens and time travel will materialise and not be just the stuff of wonder…but knowing in your heart that wonderstuff can only ever be what its name implies. And perhaps, should newness emerge suddenly, not gradually like how we replaced tapes with discs to watch our films, we would be captivated for a while at a new horizon blinking into existence, letting us know it was here waiting all along. But after a while, surely, like everything else does, it would become as familiar as an aeroplane in the sky, or talking to someone thousands of miles away via a stick with holes in? That wondering about stuff is how we keep moving, never satisfied, and is responsible for all the good and bad: all was once but an idea.

140 But Old Laura had given up. Betrayed herself. Cut off her own wondering- stations. Shut that part of herself down long ago. She had a daily ritual, a ritual she’d performed since about fifteen years of age, where every evening it was feasible she’d run herself a glass of water and stand by the sink, taking small sips, contemplating the question: ‘Would the me of today disappoint the me of yesterday?’ She was in her mid-twenties before she realised the answer would always be ‘yes’, would continue to be ‘yes’, like it had been every day she had ever asked it. But she carried on asking, each day acknowledging the steadily accumulating pain as as familiar as DVDs had become. It just…was. Her open mind was a secret history. Something that was just for her. There wasn’t anything else…but her memories…she would always have her memories, her memories. They were imprinted, the only recordings the vivid frames stored in her mind. Every marvellous kiss of the muse, the fantail flares of amazement, each luxuriant snag of curiosity that kept her awake for yet another hour’s extra reading…so many sleepless nights, she would laugh looking back at how tired she always looked. Seeing those perma-bags drooping below her eyes in each reflective surface she’d pass in the afternoon, so so tired and still only half the day gone, was a reminder of the thrilling night before and the one that was ahead after her brief after-dinner sleep. Nausea. Swallow your vomit. ‘Stuff got in the way’. You’ve heard those words, I know you have. Would you eventually wave your hand in dismissal if you lost your only child in a crowd? There is no need for compromise or collateral damage: simply fucking tighten your grip. There are many lies that we’re forced to concede are true even when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If our natures will not sit alongside them then it must be our natures that are wrong, as if there is anything we can do about them, and even if we could why should we? I, your humble narrator, admit my stupidity, but will not abide you thinking yourself any better or worse. Who says? I haven’t met a single person who wasn’t and isn’t still going about life utterly clueless. And generally they’re either supremely scared or supremely stupid. But there are so many other options, and it infuriates me when comfortable people say it is but a matter of mindset, that one can simply choose to be happy…as if it is that simple. The sort of people saying that have, unanimously, been extremely fortunate, in that they get to live the way they want to and not have to worry about finances or face the unremitting ridicule of their fellow men, plus they’re getting good sexing every day from someone who loves them. BUT, if we can recover more of the fertile land from beneath the hateful fumes streaming and billowing through seemingly every window, weighing our already heavy chests down; if we can use our collective lungspan to blow this scum far away from the basin we are based in (or at least blast it high enough up the sides that us floundering insects can only dream of someday reaching it); if we can help each other to see how much elsewhere-to-here there is… We don’t realise how much light pollution affects us. When you can’t see the stars you don’t think of them as often, and so when all you see are planes and clouds it seems like everything stops there, that the universe is the world is a shallow cell, and logically must be the same on all sides, so we imagine ourselves in a box as opposed to the ever-expanding universe that is fact. We will escape this way of things one day, but it’s going to take a lot longer if our only saviours are dropping like flies, and if these saviours aren’t willing to accept that it’s going to have to get a hell of a lot worse before we can rebuild things in a better way.

141

The two Lauras just looked at each other for a while. Lovingly. Tenderly. Sharing subtleties undetectable to anyone but them. After a few minutes’ thought, when both knew exactly what the other was thinking, being the same woman experiencing elements of herself subjectively, the apparition spoke: ‘I had no plan prepared for once I got here. There isn’t really much I can do. I can’t interfere, and wouldn’t anyway. Maybe it’s interfering to be here like this…but I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here, that I always have been. I know you’ve never fully forgotten, not really. I’m something of a relic in your material world, in your actions, but there were always the memories that kept my faint glow just about lambent. And really I just came here to shake my head at you, to let you know that I’ve never fully forgotten either. And I never will. I am still here. And this is my head shaking: shaky-shake.’

142 82

Snow-capped afros; snow-dotted hoods; snow-shelled cars; snow-slushed pavements; snow-killing salt; snow-rimmed walls; snow-tracked trainers; snow- dusted hedges; snow-blanketed marshlands; snow-bemused cats; snow-angered killjoys; snow-blushed cheeks; snow-white angels; snow-balled battles; snow- covered everything!; snow-infused zeitgeist; snow-delighted humans; snow- united humans; snow-lit night sky; snow-contented Me.

143 83

Fourteen hours since she last…so, sex with another man? As I write is she whinnying with anyman brown-haired phallus sloppily slipping in her, gasping in pleasure as nerve-endings welcome piece signals…like a vortex ringing around that pink singularity…am I gonna have to extract the blade from the bayonet to better viscerally feel the righteousness as I plunge it into his neck as he pumps his vinegary seed into her opening? He is soiling her, contaminating her with his scum, his…decomposition. On the full stop of the third squirt it is the seed of a dead man, and as his corpse slumps on to you you see me over its shoulder and are greeted by a grin. Surprise!

144 84

I felt overwhelmed by life, like I might suffocate or my ribcage might implode, and collapsed to my knees. Leaning on my forearms, looking at the floor, I observed how revolting the blue nylon of the carpet had become. Once cosy and soapy-smelling, now scattered with remnants of biscuits, bread, dirt and rabbit droppings, dispersed amid the human hair and cat fur coiled atop the numerous tea and cat puke stains. Then we received three phone calls in approximately fifteen minutes from the bank, and my stomach sank, and I tried to keep writing to distract myself from the world. While doing some research I read about cerebral achromatopsia and ‘The Case of the Colorblind Painter’, then the book of case studies it is taken from, one of which was on Temple Grandin, whom I was already aware and an admirer of (in fact the title of the book, An Anthropologist on Mars, is take from a quote of hers, describing how she often felt in social situations – a sentiment I heartily empathise with). This diverted me from negative tangents for a while, but once the bracket was closed I was shocked back into awareness of my surroundings. My sister slept in her room next door, Mum knitted in the dark downstairs, and my limping cat slept on my swivel chair yet again, hence me having to write sitting on my bed for the sixth day running, the laptop sat on a copy of the Match Annual 2000 to prevent overheating. I hoped the Occado man would arrive soon with the shopping, then Mum would put some music on, probably the new Sammy Davis Jr. album my dad got for her birthday, while she put everything away. Then the despondent vapour of silence might dissipate for a little while, hopefully until it was time to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which was one of the presents I bought for her birthday, which was yesterday. Then Mum called for me to help, for it had arrived. She put on Little Barrie instead.

I remember seeing the last Harry Potter at the cinema. You couldn’t call it anticlimactic by any means, but I’m long into adulthood now…the magic is still as all around me as it ever was, at least I suppose it is, but on frequencies I’m rarely attuned to nowadays. And I’ve grown up with the books and films… I felt the magic throughout, connecting with the inner child that just won’t die, won’t give up, though I often wish it would, wish it could. But it was a full stop, a bookend if you will, at the very least a chapterend. Regardless, without me embellishing it with hindseen thoughts, it seemed a clear and crashing official end to my childhood. Even now, regaling the little I can remember as clearly as possible, I will sully it with dirty adult perceptions; the ghastly cynicism of age. That is the place the world has found for me. I apologise for being honest about it. My dad was there. Some bloke with unpluralised brain cells trying to finger his girlfriend was there. A squealing gaggle of nine-year-old girls were there. And, of course, my soul dreamt and danced and wept and leapt – enchanted, charmed, spellbound. I remember when it all began. Like watching the seasons pass – you count four, then a year is gone – time hobbled pigeonly by in a chunked flash, each year feeling worse than the last, for each took me further from the time when I was happy. Memories of memories aren’t enough to hold on to. I have to actively search for my real now, ironically in some bastardised recapturing of what once was. That which takes me or deludes me into thinking

145 that I’m in any way closer to that time…it’s the only thing I strive for. The invention of time travel without any scientific familiarity. A Frankenstein’s monster approximate of that segue to the pure. And its definition just flashed into my head: hope.

There is no God in a digesting duck, only the senseless sense men of ignorance inject into then extract from it: one, two, three; point A to B; close, the, circuit. Karate-chopping a dough map the size of the universe. Compartmentalise interpretations of your cluelessness. Cumslugs slither down serpentine oesarcophagi; the rising inhuman mephitis of disposable enemas before a gangbang.

Envision that feeling, the frenetic newness of your first love. You are renewed, as truly as the sky is blue. Why does the world seem so big now? So generous with its ample fruits; vivid, divinely colourful, even on dank days? Because they will be there with you, still the same, still them. If one could feel that for ever; if you could see the perfection, reality tunnel, avoid the trenches, avoid the mines. Hundreds of lives! All in pairs, each someone’s special one. To be young! To still be connected, bounding through burgeoning novae.

White holes invert and suck us dry, and where love is present the making of it absent equakes to a despair supermassive. The magic is the first to go, lighter than dust, only ever a floating coating, a sheen for foreseeing facets. Harrowing are the walking miscarried – what reason is there for your malformed features? Bad creatures dwell; haunters, making me look and see and be afterwards. Live on or life gone.

Life is so long and short, and I don’t want hindsight. I don’t want more. I want to go back, live a shorter life, without death’s looming shadow; without hair growing in strange places, and caring about other parts of girls besides their faces. Joy! Love! What a time, and it’s barely an eighth. A snap of the fingers and the lightswitch flicks eternally off.

Then you’re dying, dying so very slowly. Agonising. Tedious. You don a hat and all is sex. There is no respite from existence. I hate the burning pain of scratch wounds so have never tried to burrow furrow into flesh to see if it might set free my soul. My guess is it won’t work. So, like Tyler and Marla, I and I watch the buildings crumble on our lonely castle in the sky.

That was how I felt. And with an almost militant regularity, perhaps a subconscious insistence, do I contemplate my mortality after viewing films that affect me emotionally, spiritually. Because, as beautiful as it can be, it always comes up short, is always unsatisfactory. It always ultimately tells you that there are limits, thus limiting is what you must do to your expectations to avoid continual disappointment. And my answer will always be the same, every time I walk up to that TV screen, my face flushed beetroot with pent-up fury: ‘NO!’ And, coupled with the death of my childhood, there was the realisation that although Harry’s time at Hogwarts was partially a truly terrible time, full of pain and fear…at least that time meant something. Stuff happened. His emotions brought like personal capillaries to the surface. He’d look back as an old man and feel its significance, its legend. The epilogue was beautiful, with the

146 heartwarming reprise of that original magical ‘Leaving Hogwarts’ theme underscoring the scene, as he gets to be there for his son like his murdered father couldn’t be for him – parenthood with his childhood sweetheart a whole new adventure. I’m not dismissing that, though I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But what about the rest of his life? Even the inhabitants of this dreamed-up world, a storyland of wizards and witches and magic where anything could’ve been made possible, still have to get jobs to pay for their mortgages, to provide for their families; have to work every day to stay alive, because ‘that’s the way the world works’; have to be something, some thing, a title for another to pronounce thee. It’s too close for comfort; it’s not faraway enough. Even the world of wizards doesn’t want anyone who has nothing to contribute to capitalism! The realpolitik poison even permeates our magic. Because our magic stems from our place in the world; our underdeveloped comprehension of reality. Why should an invented land require the same meaningless hierarchies as us stupid apes, us muggles? Because they are the same as us, just with a bit extra. From a childhood of adventure we must all eventually give up, spend the rest of life wearing a suit, getting fat, and breeding. Coasting… And those who refuse to ‘grow up’ will find the next eighty per cent of life very difficult indeed. Even the dreams of the people in this world are not magical enough.

Let me try to put it into words…I can’t put it into words…because it isn’t words. It’s an internal world. Emotions. Emotions that our brains thoughtlessly evolved. What purpose do they serve? I thought we were here solely to procreate, to perpetuate the genes? All they do for me is make me want to end life, not make it. They prove to me that no one is worth having sex with, sharing life with, making life with. All the magical music…why can’t my internities be made real and tangible so that I can live in happiness and share myself with the world.? After the song ends I am sunk back here, but I want to live in the place that only exists in my head where being happy is possible.

147 85

A theory: this universe is on the other side of a black hole; is a straight inversion of the universe it is a conduit to – one that would make far more sense to us. Because what happens in this universe? We were perfectly content in our mother’s uterus, literally perfectly content, as happy as a human can be. It was so cosy, so safe in there. Then all of a sudden we’re shot out into this cacophony. There are no calming, comforting, velvety walls pressed against us, and suddenly there’s all this sharp noise, and the light…a new sensation, so bright, unbearable. But we get used to it – necessarily – and indeed find that actually, with the frequency range available to us, we have entered a realm of seemingly limitless wonder, soon forgetting the bliss of the womb. Play. An expansive ground to play upon, uninhibited, frivolous… Skipping! Talking and listening. Pretending to be a helicopter or a hammerhead shark or Axel Foley or the princess of the fairies. Whatever. And why not? Music and cartoons and films. Bums! Farts! Funny faces! Falling over! And I’m just scratching the surface…childhood is simply stupendous…the best of times…ends far, far too soon… But what is youth? A period of time in the context of a longer period of time. One’s earlier days. One’s formative years, I suppose. We grow what we’re going to shed later. The spring of our content; the bounce before the fall. The premature acme. Then comes the acne. Sex was always there, the amplified JOY! of shared joy prepping us for the inevitable, but though it was pretty gradually but always surely introduced as a dominant prerogative it is still somewhat shellshocking. Beastly developments: new angles, stanchly stenchly emanations, patches of meaningless hair. Vacillating moods like thorny, morning shooting star, nunchaku fission…carefully selecting words, a lexical hot potato. The creativity, formerly brimming, always at the fore, always in abundance, gets brushed aside like a solitary polystyrene S as tunnels and tubes muscle their way into every waking moment. Imprisoned among hornets we cling to our bumbling brothers. ‘Safety’ in numbers. ‘Who were you fighting for in The Massacre of One’s Teenage Years?’ ‘The losing side…I mean, the losing side that lost the quickest.’ It’s irrelevant later on. The worst time of anyone’s life, whether they remember or not. Like the womb-time it is lost to a new stage. The clarity of vision, of immersion. Consciousness of oneself…the death of potential…the death of dreams…the death of being…later to reemerge as a bunion on a toe, or a tumour in the brain. Your soul is still there…somewhere…for the rest of your life. Obscured, though. How could it just disappear? It couldn’t. It doesn’t. It is simply ignored. You simply forgot. You escaped the slammer, as everyone is allowed to. GAOOOOL! And your head is either held ignorantly high or stooped in bracing anticipation of the oncoming blizzard. Imagination is dead; a human life becomes less and less valid. Exiting the factory they have become husks, ambulatory shells. So you begin the ascent. The pits…armpit-warmed cells…the mezzanine, a visual cliff…the arch of Rachel from the office’s foot…the beckoning vulva, so rosy and welcoming, so dark in there, framed by burnt-sugar wisps…a phnuh on the wind…a sprog in the somewhere in there, I don’t really get how it works…a

148 sprocket in the cuckoo clock…shouting at more people every year…Lead Shouter…ad finitum. From the moment of conception we are fated to wither and die. Ultimately, biologically, we’re meant to be fucking everything within reach and perpetuating our genes as adolescents, when aimless and at our most sexually vivacious. Because pretty soon after puberty we begin to shut down. It gets harder to do the things you’ve always done – eating, walking, peeing. It becomes uncomfortable to live. Joints stiffen; crows stamping age across your face; hair grows dull and wiry; younger replacements; your youth always becoming further from the right now. With every tomorrow comes a brand new yesterday. We are dying all the time. All we have to look forward to is less and less to look forward do. Death will happen; the end to the possibility of fitting any more good times in. Our forms become frailer and frailer until, if the countless other possibilities haven’t done the job, we die, like and when we were always meant to, and that life is gone – any more of it is nothing. Then there is the void.

‘Meanwhile’, on the other side, in the inverse universe… We alive. From the nothing of the void we are born. Frail, and barely mobile, but alive. But it is no kind of life. However, our forms gradually grow stronger, healthier, become less and less fragile, and ahead is the possibility of more good times. A whole life stretches ahead, more and more made worth looking forward to as we are living better all the time. With every tomorrow comes a brand new tomorrow. Joints relax; face smoothens, flattens out, rejuvenated; hair grows colourful and lustrous; your decrepitude always drifting further behind the right now, youth always ahead. Eating, moving about, even going to the toilet becomes easier. And sex…spreading your seed across the land with ever-younger partners. And, from the moment we blink into life, the instant we plummet into being, we are destined to reach the bliss of the womb. A wonderful descent ensues. Less and less responsibility…the clock repairs itself…the children are sucked contentedly back up the mother…we have our last intimate encounter then never see each other again… fresh air is ahead; delicious, bracing, embracing winds…we at last reach the final rung… Kind of. Here is where the notion of it being better wavers slightly, but please bear with me. Because we then have to go through puberty backwards. Your gender-specific gajumbas withdraw back into you; you forget everything that’s been important to you. But something is uncovered as the many mounds and then the first flakes of bodily secretions blow away. The blizzard subsides; a tingling amasses in your solar plexus, glows and flows through your bloodstream. You begin remembering things…it’s something new, new but old. Fresh. It is your soul. Clouds collect in the sky before your eyes. Droplets drawn from every angle. The vapour of potential. All connected by bolts of light. Your neck cracks as you raise your head into them…so fresh, revitalising, sinuses clear and invigorated, the most luxurious, decadent nausea, woozy, brain so unused to the clean, uncontaminated oxygen and ideas you are imbibing through your mouth, your nose, your eyes, your skin… We share our wonderment:

149 ‘Guys…I…I…I feel like holding hands with you…I feel…no, I know, that something brilliant is just around the corner…soon something great will happen and things will never be the same again.’ ‘Dude, that’s pretty weird, what you just said…but I totally get you.’ They clasp hands and watch… After the storm everybody scatters. Anarchy. When adults talk of anarchy it’s anger and bombs…because it’s a response to the insidious fists of order – it’s the only way of escaping this they know. But the anarchy of children…the fist hasn’t hit them yet. They are free. And in this universe it never will again. The children wave as the giant hand floats out of the atmosphere, lifeless. Sky-worms gnaw at it. And it was worth it. It was worth all that dead-life to arrive at the oasis of liberty. No more effluvia to evade. Concise communications. Or endless labyrinthine tangents explored. The mind now always open, open to everything the road presents. Every girl, boy, woman or man is a potential friend. Ideas are shared because that’s what they’re for, durrr. …Valiant knights, sexy machines, ‘Beetlejuice’, Mummies and Daddies, ‘Casualty’, mutants…making, creating, alchemy of ideas…but you know all this. Remember it from your long-ago… Then one day, when you’re all tuckered out, you close your eyes, and lie down on a blanket. While you sleep your mother moves you to her lap, where she strokes your hair and kisses your forehead, so honoured to have you in her life. And then another day, when your eyes have been closed for a little while, your mother still cuddling you close to her bosom, your daddy drives you both to the hospital. And some people lay your mother down, your daddy holding her hand, and you cry your last cry, and you return into her, satisfied, perfectly content, no memory or concept of time or even of your own individual existence, absorbed absolutely in the bliss of the womb.

150 86

Words that assist, or attack, or love, or loathe; words that ease the pain or offer it a shoulder, a sibling; words that question without answers; words that answer what was never questioned; words of honour, of courage, of honesty; lying words are not words so have no place here, so ignore that last clause; words to immortalise, to imprint, to make up for the spoken whimper of the author, to say what needs to be said, succinctly or elaborately, however it needs to be said, to know there is something of you to share, to know you are valid, that you are not empty, that someone sees something of you, even if only in those laughably generic farcicles we call letters and words.

Words disregarding forms apart from themselves (and even then with reluctance but accepting the necessity of their manifestation, no matter how short it always falls), scrawled on walls, without narrative, starting at the start which is anywhere a finger can be placed and anywhere it cannot, infinityslices of a singularity, the skin only he or she could shed and suspend in time, mind dandruff, authentic shavings of the soul, each serving a framed fruit segment, each segment as sweet or sour as the truth is, honest as homemade cake with the tinned whipped cream shovelled off and dumped aside, no frills, no thrills sought, no adventures bought, flash of the gash, skin-pink and vulnerable.

Words like streamers, or an oscilloscope, or a Theremin, punching existing polysyllabic ones in the tits, smashing phonemes into a massive pudding, a bejewelled mash, the human skins left in, like bisecting blood sausages and letting the meat pump out of the resulting orifices, or simultaneously attempting both brain surgery and fingerpainting (what the hey – you only live once), like revolving marbles of refracted-then-reflected light, or dressing up, wearing masks and hats and cutting and stitching and attaching and sewing and sticking and hacking and tugging and tangling, torn curtains, relishing the random and raggedy, or an impossible collage, scrapbook stylings, tripolar brows, all is as valid because I witnessed it, I experienced it, this is my story, or some of it scratched down in symbols representing sounds we make to communicate…so this is some of my story, which I have chosen to share with you.

Hopefully the words brand a permanent scar on to and into your every panorama…cracks across the universe…scrawled automatically by the hosts of experience…a voyeur named Claire never forgot the calligraphy she learnt beforehand, before she felt the weight of it in her hand…the clarity of the word and the succinct brutality of the sword were techniques that soon integrated in that one machine, with a single mind to direct each movement, an auteur not for a finite-minute act of life but for a lifetime of minute acts of infinity amounting to that universal bladestroke standing before your every step, insisting you take notice at every turn, almost like it’s burnt into your eyeball…but it can’t be…it doesn’t hurt…not the eyeball anyhow…the suffering of your people…

151 87

All I want is someone who will coalesce with me…someone who gets it, every time…someone I can say anything to: ‘Can I just sit and smell you for a wee while?’ ‘Let’s buy a kitten and call it Sultan!’ ‘The feeling of walking atop the pathway of tights reminded me of the taste of avocado.’ ‘Sometimes the pain of living outweighs even my love for you, but I love you so much more than I hurt, but one day I might kill myself, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on you…and you must understand this.’ I’m not saying ‘you should tolerate everything that I am’; that you should put up with me even if I don’t make you happy. You can leave whenever you wish. But you must accept who I am; love me both because of and regardless of the things about myself that are impossible for me to change, because they are all components of an inherent me whom you love unconditionally. Otherwise our love can only ever be finite. And I don’t want finite love. I want infinite love. I want a love that will last for eternity.

152 88

Steak is the food of men. What a Real Man eats. If you do not like steak you are not a Real Man.

If you do not wear make-up you will be ugly, because women who wear make- up are not ugly. If you are ugly no man will ever find you attractive and you will spend your life alone and die alone.

CHILDREN! I AM SHOUTING! SHOUTING BECAUSE I AM EXCITED! EXCITED BECAUSE I HAVE THIS TOY! IF YOU WANT TO BE THIS EXCITED GET MUMMY TO IMMEDIATELY BUY YOU THIS TOY!

A family is the most important thing in anyone’s life. To best enjoy the most important thing in your life, spend thousands of pounds to come here. You deserve it.

Mmm…buy this deodorant, and me and countless other naked women will have sex with you, hungrily and continuously, for as long as you wear it.

Free money* here.

Edgy! Unique! Craaazy! Rebellious! Rock n’ roll! Wild! Untamed! Individual! Like all of these people.

‘Things with melodies Make. Things. Fun!’

The most baby-faced babies, dubbed with the most hilarious baby laughs. And, upon finding a more baby-faced baby, simply replace the least baby-faced baby of the most baby-faced babies, but keep the exact same hilarious baby laugh, unless a more hilarious baby laugh is found.

Gambling: it’s the new doing something.

You can be a mummy like Mummy!

Take your glasses off or you’ll never be beautiful.

Young girls: do you get strange feelings sometimes? Feelings that aren’t on the outside, or even on the inside? Like there’s something fizzy erupting somewhere inside you? Secret feelings? Like hot blackcurrant cordial whizzing through you? Those feelings…they’re exciting, aren’t they? Don’t these older boys make you feel them?…

Don’t go outside and explore and experience things for yourself: stay on your sofa and take a shortcut. Why not go on the net and order a chamber pot, then you won’t even have to get up.

153 These are the things you need to be happy. And you not owning them is probably why you aren’t.

Unsatisfied women: indulge yourself.

WAR! UHH! IT’S FUN! Even ones that actually happened; the ones where thousands of people, most of them completely innocent, were switched off from their lives by tools designed solely to switch off lives, operated by the sort of people you pass on the street every day.

Elegant and arty, or something. Look, just fucking buy it, OK? You stinky cunt.

The happiest times in your life are the times when you escape from it. Escape here.

Let us serve you, we only ask for an exchange in exchange.

*(evil snigger)

154 (22nd February 19)89

I had backache. Your dad had phoned to check in and said I should ring the maternity unit at the hospital, who told me to come in. I was going to catch a bus, but it started to rain so I rang for a cab instead.

They told me I’d gone into labour. I hadn’t picked up my hospital bag because I didn’t think I’d need it; on TV they make such a big deal of it, screaming all hysterical – I just had backache. They broke my waters. The reality of it all set in, and I started to panic, my bottom lip trembling all silly. I asked them to ‘phone my husband, please,’ and he walked through the door minutes later, which was so magical and weird. He’d left work as soon as we got off the phone.

It was a few hours until you were ready to be born, during which time I had to poo in one of those cardboard bowls. Dad said it looked like Revels coming out.

As you were being born your dad said, ‘It’s Gerry, Allison.’

You were so tiny, and sooo like Dad! And though you didn’t have any hair yet we could tell you were a ginger. Your head had an auburn glow. It felt like Christmas.

I was wheeled in my bed to the ward, holding you in my arms as we went through the swing doors. I felt like a princess with a prize.

Dad stayed with us for as long as he was allowed.

After three days they let us bring you home. On the way we couldn’t stop looking at you.

155 90

I want you to picture the bronze of fallen leaves. Imagine the smell of soggy foliage trodden into a mulch and into the soil that the cat treads into your white shirt later on. You were asleep, and awoke to the brown smudge and soily stench. It was lovely. Smelt like outside. Like anti-inside. The space of the space around the tiny bits of stuff…there is so much room for dreams. So much space for love to vanquish hate if it believes in itself. Self- belief…imagine the idea and imagine the magic and the magic will make the idea appear. The music of bright crystal pianos. Melodies played on bright crystal keys. Smouldering whirls of ultraviolet song, jigging along to an enchanted ditty; sorrowful turquoises, beetle blues, hypnotic broken chords, broken hypnotic notes, musical elemental remnants. Silence, the breath, a smattering of short attention-seeking coughs that go unheeded. An organism hangs in the elsewhere here. Somewhere around and within. A unique metamorphosis decomposed and recomposed at each aerial. Feasting on oxygen. Dancing on bare feet. Unravelling oneself on the runway of revelry. Next to the bronze leaves are leaves that can only be described as golden, catching the light and glinting brilliantly. Let us home in on those feet. Hold a magnifying glass over that. A man’s feet, my feet. Yep, definitely: look at those bloody ankles, like blimmin’ bone hubcaps. Not the exquisite deformed hands of women, but the dusty size-seven dog claws at the end of my hairy penknife shins. I swivel on my toes side-to-side in sixty- degree fans, jamming along to Captain Beefheart’s ‘Sweet Sweet Bulbs’. My heel gets tangled in the hem hanging from the right leg of my jeans (I have a premonition of tripping up and smashing my knee against the frame of my bed, and I lie there whimpering and wondering whether I might be a little bit sick, but the nausea quickly subsides). Elbows and fingers jut and twinkle, head bobs harshly, ginger mop swooshes; I visit my sister in her room during ‘Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish’ and she asks me what the flaming heck is going on.

The way John picks that guitar…reminds me of a passing train, and said train existing purely in my mind as a metaphor for the passing of time. You’re twenty…twenty-one…twenty-nine…thirty-five…and time passes the same. You plod along still. Resoled your shoes, and when you can resole no more you’ll buy a new pair. Hungry for something more, wishing for that moment…when you can finally do that relaxing sigh you so often dream about, when it all fits into place and you can have a good sit, the first glorious sit sat without a single worry. When you don’t have to be scared any more. It is a rocking chair you’ve slumped into, in the corner by the bookshelf of the front room of Home, Your Home, and the room is lit by a lamp shaded red, the room glowing a dim burgundy, but every step your shoes take in your dreams is lit by crepuscular rays. Perhaps they’re Ray’s?

Sunday lunch. We used to call it ‘Picky Dinner’, when we’d have pittas and halloumi and houmous and celery sticks and breadsticks and a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes. We’d have it late afternoon rather than in the evening. That was part of it. Sometimes we’d have guests over to share the fun. Once Grandad Sam came.

156 My idea of a fun Sunday lunch now would be one ate far away from here, in the middle of what city folk patronisingly call ‘nowhere’, or my mum calls ‘Dingley Dell’; away from all the people who think that just because they hear noise all around them all the time – even in the silence of night their stupid fat heads are humming with meaningless babble – it means they know it all. Because the only world they know buzzes with the same inanity they spew individually. It’s appalling, ridiculous, sick, that I’d rather die than be alive. Why do I feel this way? Because of what people say and do. I spend every waking moment trying to focus on the good; meanwhile everybody else is trying to snap my neck back the other way. Chronic whiplash. They’d rub my nose in their shit if they’d feel no remorse afterwards. Please, leave me alone.

157 91

I was trudging to the bus stop on my way to work when I heard two gunshots. Suddenly alert, I scrambled to the floor and cowered behind a car (I’m not sure what sort it was – a green one). Petrified, I kept my gaze locked on to one place: in a section of the groove of the underside of the front left tyre. The pattern swelled then blurred. Soon I wasn’t there. I was present physically, but my mind was elsewhere. I remembered looking out of the window of the flat that time. My dad and somebody were loading his instruments in the back of the van. We heard it backfire and my already worried mum worried about him some more. Later on we found out that it wasn’t the van backfiring, but a bomb going off in Canary Wharf. It was 9th February 1996. Thirteen days before my seventh birthday. I remembered when I accidentally turned the volume up to seven as my little sister toddled in the room. She just toddled off again. A few minutes later my mum came in and told me she’d just had to change her nappy because she had cacked herself with fright. I remembered lying on the bathroom floor, stroking Polly. She was a beautiful black-and-white cat with a soft, graceful face. It was so sunny and happy in there, and her pupils were elliptical slits, which might’ve scared me if it weren’t so sunny and happy. So peaceful, so bright, so content, and I remember watching the dust floating around in the sunlight. I think I was about four then. When I snapped out of my daydream I noticed the shape of something auburn ducked under the car. At first I thought it might be my reflection in a puddle, that perhaps the car had been leaking something. I lowered my head and saw that it was a fox. It looked well fed. I try not to hold prejudices – aside from the one that encompasses the whole of humanity – but since one of its kin killed one of our rabbits before my eyes I’ve had little sympathy for them. But, though not wide-eyed with terror, it was obviously seeking shelter for the same reason as me. It’s interesting how animals instinctively instantly search out the eyes. We looked into each other’s, looking to gauge temperament and intent. I thought about the things I thought about, and one of the things I thought about was what the fox might be thinking about. I wondered: does an animal in danger think of how sad it would be to live without its children, or worse if the children had to live without one of their parents, waiting for them to come home but they never do? And they die malnourished in the cold or get snatched up by a predator, probably another fox, using their precious little darlings as nothing more than a option of food. And so much of this world is man-made, incomprehensible to the rest of nature…so are they terrified of us all the time? Another shot sounded, closer this time. We looked at each other again. If it were a person I might’ve said its bottom lip then wobbled slightly. I thought of the countless nightmares I’d had since that fox shook Loland to death in its jaws, white fur scattered about the two figures like confetti fashioned from clouds. I even had one where it was more of a fox demon, manoeuvring about Forest Gate railway station like the wolf gods in Princess Mononoke. And I’ve had others, where there’d be a massacre, a tag-team of them slaying the remaining two rabbits and one of the cats as well, only to leave all the torn carcasses behind for me to discover on my own, or with another cat, stepping over the corpses on the

158 battleground, berating the senselessness of existence, and how easy it is for a life to be permanently stolen. The shine of its canine eyes said something I’d long understood. That this fox was in charge of its own brood now, was battling through the world, was A Fox, but it’d never felt any different. It was still the same cub that had frolicked with its brothers and sisters so many years ago, only now…there was other stuff. It didn’t want all this, still being afraid, but now there was no one to look after it. His parents had died years ago. In his youth he’d dreamed of being big like his daddy, of having no fear and swaggering about all big and strong. He’d grown up and fucked a lot of fine-lookin’ vixens, and was of course well fed and also quite large for a fox anyway. But there are much bigger things than a big fox, things a fox could never understand. He was, if anything, more scared nowadays, because now he had to look after himself. I know how the dude feels. Even at my most majestic, when the pen needn’t even be present, my touch so intense and sure that a light dab of a finger could carve poetry into the fabric of existence, easily, I am acutely aware that there will always be the bullying giants of the world, smashing cresting waves of the unstoppable machinations of antiquity into the defenceless. There are men who couldn’t conceive of my mind and its workings, much as I couldn’t conceive of the ease with which they inflict misery upon others, often with relish. What power, what glory, is in pushing down a weaker man? The pusher has proved nothing. And so, with less trepidation than expected, I invited him on to my lap. I adjusted my legs so I was sitting with them crossed, looked at him with as friendly an expression as I could manage, and twice lightly patted my lap. His eyes darted from my eyes to my legs a couple of times, then he made to go forward, looking into my eyes once more to make sure, then carefully slunk over to me and climbed on, turning a few times to nest. They’re not super big, foxes, but the size of this one meant it was big enough to look silly. I’m 5’7”. And the streets weren’t deserted or anything. A few people passed, keeping to the other side of the road, cautious of a smaller animal while not seeming to give a shit about the fucking killing machine having rung three shots into the day. Some of them smiled and pointed, and whereas I’d usually be too cripplingly self-conscious to even entertain such an attention-inviting action, today I’d shared with a creature of another species an empathic moment, and in that regard I’d long been starving. So I yummed the opportunity up, hoping to show this bringer of goodwill how much it meant to me. It was magical sitting there with a wild, probably flea-ridden, cone-snouted ginger dog muddying up my trousers. Something one doesn’t forget. Something one writes about as the ninety-first chapter of his first novel. Then a final shot sounded at the top of the road. I looked up into the wing mirror of the car and saw turning the corner the battered old transit van that I’d heard backfire four times in the past five minutes. ‘Ah,’ I thought, then, about myself, ‘what a twat’. As it passed it raised its arse at me for a final patronising what-now-seemed-to-be-a-mere-parp, and once it’d turned out on to the main road the fox rose to its paws and scampered back off the other way. I untangled my legs, dusted the dust and grot off my trousers and coat, and resumed my walk to work.

159 92

Tightening the loop of the yo-yo string around my middle finger. Even in warm clothes and a dressing gown I feel most disposed towards hibernation in the very near future. My Lewis Taylor Trout Mask Replica covers CD someone burned for me does not work in my computer. My eyes are dry and sore from the radiator heat. It reminds me of being in school, having it cranked up and blasting all the time to keep us drowsy and lethargic (it’s a well-known technique). I can’t stifle the laughs as my fat cat bats at it as I throw down and forward pass. She connects a couple of times with some tough little thwacks, and it does make me giggle, it looks like she’s punching it away, really they’re more like biffs. I woke my twenty-year-old sister up to ask if she wanted her onesie washed. Half asleep, trying to focus on what I was saying, her eyes went all bulgy and boggly, and she just shook her head, kinda. Then I went and ate a moist bran muffin. They’re going to send me on the same course I’ve already been on. I’ve got a month. Fuck, I’ve just remembered how short February is. At least it’s a leap year. While I was sitting there I laughed to myself a couple of times, and also felt very angry at the moron in front of me. His name was Ed. I wanted to knife the dreadful automaton prick and leave him to bleed to death. Instead I was more polite than I’ve been to any one of them ever, telling friendly lies and thanking him for his help. Coincidentally, my mum is now playing Lewis Taylor’s The Lost Album as she cooks downstairs. It smells like fish, so I hope it’s fish.

I am no longer sure any of this makes any sense. Like any man who writes as opposed to authors there is the ubiquitous symbiotic worry that what is an expression of myself is not good enough, and thus I am not good enough. It doesn’t make sense to feel such a way, but nobody said things have to make sense. Yes, I have validity, because every man deserves to live naturally. I deal with the perpetual pain in my soul by tattooing the woe somewhere else; making it infinite so that I can share it, if only with myself. But which of my brothers and sisters has lived comfortably? What taboos are there any more? My analytical mind sees only one: what if someone was honest? I am honest, but no one will notice. People aren’t shocked because they’ve heard everything before, only then it was a sequence of lies, but how are they to know I’m any different? The few of my kindred spirits to do well have been hated and loved in equal measure…but there might be many more who die unknown and in squalor. Perhaps I’ll be the one to strike the happy medium. Or have my cake and eat it, depending on how you look at it. Besides…‘my brothers and sisters’…what does that even mean? Just the humans I’m empathic with today. Artists shaping art aren’t universally impoverished. Some of them are even revered for being peerlessly brilliant, actually appreciated by the majority – Daniel Day-Lewis, for example. I don’t have to be as destitute as Van Gogh to have something to say. So long as I let my art remain untampered with, success is acceptable. The moment I let myself be edited is the moment I collapse a star. Or maybe I pray for the critical position that grants me the freedom of a ‘preferred text’. Yes – the right one. Billy Childish’s five perfect novels all essentially circle around the same idea. That is, they tell his story. They are fragments of him. I’ve worried that people

160 might think my more rambling chapters are just me sitting and dashing out anything. But what I write depends on so many variables. All I ever say is what I feel I need to say at the moment I’m sitting there with my fingers poised above the keyboard or paper. Sometimes I hate life; sometimes I am filled with love; other times I hate the thought of love – the purest hate. I’ve considered getting a simple diagram of a door tattooed on my wrist, and I’d tell everyone that it symbolises how the power is in one’s own hands, or something like that, when it really exists as a personal reminder that there is always a way out. But there’s no guarantee it’s a way out…we could just plonk back into an indistinguishable variant of the same drudging life. And besides, people will remember me, won’t they? I’ll still be alive here. Everything is everything so there is no such thing as total death.

161 93

As Mike dies the future seems certain. It always comes, it’s always now, it’s always gone. Trinity only in my lexicon because of the college and being forced to study religion at school (though at the time I quite enjoyed it). Noticing sequences only proves our capacity for noticing. But…three cats, each one a familiar to someone. A family of six; three sapient, three feline. And one is certainly soon to leave their home, and her familiar begins to fade. Mine seems clingier than ever, so hopefully I am too. I don’t want to leave her but I must escape from here. I suppose then she’ll fade and die too. I couldn’t possibly get across just how momentous this time is. The scattering of ‘The Southlands’. Obviously, we are adult and living already, and it didn’t seem grand and critical. And what do I mean by ‘it’? I mean there was no single moment of transition, and a transition into what? We just were, and we are, and we go about our business, and we’re doing stuff, but we’re always the same us. And of course, we always will be, no matter what is appended. Even if one of us is taken away. Mum, Dad, Maggie and Me, and of course the cats. We will still be us. The unit is unbreakable. We are a family.

162 94

There’s that few seconds’ wait before a CD starts. The dead time before your ears are flooded with sound. Waiting for the thing that is going to happen. See also: video game loading screens; doctor’s appointments; arranging to meet someone in an otherwise empty week. I loathe those seconds because, like the insomniac interval between hypnagogic states I endure under the duvet every single night, it allows me time to think about anything it is possible to think about. The awkward moments steadily accumulate and never vanish from memory; I think of the time passed and the things achieved proportionate to those of the same age, or younger or older; I try to focus on the things that are nothing but good, like my family, the way they’ve loved me unconditionally and been there for me throughout it all, but remember that tomorrow they’ll bring bile to the taste again when they resume talking about money. But once the first bars of Brenda Holloway’s ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’ were processed by my brain I realised I was filled with an inconsolable sadness. The song doesn’t usually have a particular emotional resonance with me, but today the waltz time, and the love-dirge of the chords, and the almost deflated vocal, all stirred into this song of not even three minutes, seemed to speak so much; to reveal starkly the plodding nature of human sorrow. An image appeared of an unfurling epic journey, or perhaps just a long, empty path. But there were no phosphorescent colours, or fantastical creatures, or battles, or friendships forged or lost. Just the bluish sand of an evening desert and the sound of footsteps that were probably mine. The melancholy felt communal, a summary. Like there were countless others across the planet sharing the power this song was choosing to exude at this moment, whether an inhibited middle-aged housewife ironing in front of daytime television, remembering it from her youth, her eyes distant, absent; or a mechanic under a car, wrench in mouth, hearing it through a single tinny radio speaker; or a 21st century gadfly sitting alone in his over-expensive room, coming to the bottom of yet another bottle and wondering what true human warmth feels like. So perhaps we were each the single person walking this path, all feeling so isolated from feeling but connected in a way we couldn’t touch. And the timeless way the song passed…do you know what I mean? A song will always be a song. That recording will always be that recording. The humbleness of now, at any present time, is always a crystal in the infinite snowflake of a universe. So precious is experience, is time, is nature, is beauty. Is civility, is empathy. If people would only show it I would embrace their sadness, I thought. And at that moment all the others were, if they existed. ‘Please,’ they were thinking, ‘if you would only show it I would embrace your sadness.’ If we all did this then we might forge the links necessary to find true love, create opportunities for artistic expression, new discoveries, tap into formerly unseen wells of potential, animate untouched emotional receptors, and might one day find ourselves in the situation where we have become truly, utterly, unequivocally happy.

163 95

The saying goes that ‘once an addict, always an addict’, and in my experience this is usually true. Drawing from both internal and external examples, I can only conclude that once you have a taste you don’t tend to forget the taste, or if you forget the taste you’ll inevitably want to taste it again to remember what it tastes like. I would describe love as an addiction. An addiction to another person. Their presence becomes necessary to function properly. You cannot live comfortably without their attendance. Your mind and body develop a dependence on them. They assimilate into necessity. Physically, psychologically, physiologically, you feel you need them. And while they are there, while they are proximate, you mightn’t even notice this. You operate fine. But sometimes there are little things…like why does it hurt every time they leave the room, even if you aren’t looking in their direction? Why do you fantasise about frantically stabbing every single person they talk to, particularly if the one you love shows even the slightest bit of affection towards them? Because we are animals, we still have the competition in our blood; we fear we won’t be enough, that a new alpha will usurp our position, and if they take the person you love away they will take the most important piece of you away and you will be nothing, worthless. And when you love someone that much you want to protect them, keep them precious and pure, not let the inferior rest-of-the-world sully them with its dirty mitts. But then you find yourself doing this at the slightest provocation, until eventually you’re shielding them even from themselves/from parts of you/from oxygen. Eventually your love has become a prison, rather than the new freedom it began as, and is suffocating them, is bringing death. Perhaps it is an ingenious biological device to ensure consummation…or perhaps it’s something far more mystical; something brewed on plains we haven’t yet discovered, on inconceivable frequencies. But why must the best thing in the world also be the worst? How can such blissful plateaus soon drastically sink into lonesome dungeons? Are we meant to have hundreds of loves throughout our lives, totally absorbed in each other then shed for ever by the end of the month? Some are lucky and stay with the same person for a long time, and I know there are infinite variables, but it surely can’t remain the same throughout? Surely there are times when you aren’t enjoying life as much and you meet someone else whom you know could reinvigorate you, give you more than this long-time companion? But does that taint your past together, that you’d give it up for something more exciting that hasn’t been nurtured and blossomed in manifold ways for however many years? Nothing lasts for ever, or does everything? Time and such concepts are inventions, and surely the aim is to be as happy as possible at all times? But that’s when we return to the notion of it being an addiction: remaining with the same person because you can’t bear to live without them, can’t imagine life without them, even if their presence doesn’t make you happy enough anymore. Even if you know you would be happier elsewhere. If one of you is brave enough to cut the ties of the decaying remnants, decomposing remains that are repellent and effluviant but nevertheless evidence of something that was once beautiful, faultless and vital, so the ambivalence that arises with every gaze at the mutated mound it has become wrenches your heart

164 into strained knots locked so tightly that a decision is impossible, the mind wincing in a torrid stalemate, wrapped in and out of itself abominably, then to suddenly be free is tantamount to a drug addict going cold turkey. The total withdrawal of a necessity. Your blood wonders whether it is worth pumping around your body any more if it is to never again be fed that sweetest elixir. There are many withdrawal symptoms. You cannot find the strength to do the simplest things, can find no joy in any area of life. In fact, life seems not only unsatisfactory but utterly pointless. A human without love in its life may as well be a cadaver. What is the point in a life that will be lived and ended without altering anything? Without being important to someone? Would it be worth continuing? Perhaps that lost love will be the only you’ll ever know. Besides, who could compare? I don’t want anyone else, you say, because no matter how spectacular they are they won’t be you… Somehow, you don’t know how, and don’t remember when, because you don’t notice for a while after, you get over it. You don’t need that person any more. But we can only ever judge things based on our own experience, and we are essentially addicted to the idea of love. That always remains once it has breached the surface of a life. So you are always looking for it again, to repeat that ecstasy, conveniently forgetting or not caring about the pain that accompanied it. And, in my opinion, it is totally understandable. And always worth it.

I have also been addicted in the more traditional sense. Even now, bringing it to the forefinger of my mind to explain it, I feel the pangs, the usually tamed hunger. I am a recovering Football Manager addict. It may sound silly to categorise it alongside love and drugs, but I don’t know where else it could be categorised. An addiction to computer games is still an addiction. Some are addicted to sex, which I find quite boring without love, and couldn’t imagine becoming addicted to. Each addict to their own addiction, I say (I have never said this). People often talk of being rescued by a person, of being swept off their feet by a saviour who renews their vitality, who shows them that life is worth living. When they’ve got nothing else… And when my addiction truly began to thrive – when I was going through the horror half-decade of secondary education – it was a calming presence, knowing I had a constant source of distraction once I got home. It’d either be a relieving wank or trying to get Newcastle United to the top of the Premier League. ‘But why?‘ Well, I’ve always hated the way the world is run on numbers (we still use notes representing gold to barter, for Christ’s sake, and as ever people are considered by those in positions of power as statistics rather than the unique creatures they are); crudely, and like all other systems as an instrument of control. But if unattributed to bullshit there is a satisfaction in numbers, a strange peace. Much like Keith Haring’s influence on my drawing style – everything has a thick black outline, as if to make something definite, to give it a box, a frame, a sense of completeness – there is no deception with a universal system like mathematics. Everything is there in front of you. Kind of. Regardless, it is a world in which you can take logical steps. At least in my limited understanding. This is all bollocks, of course; an addiction trying to explain his addiction…Final Fantasy Seven.

165 Plus, you are playing on your own. You are king of this world. You control the numbers like some master magician, some grand warlock, some mighty sorcerer, making decisions and battling everyone off to achieve more technical dominance and financial supremacy. There is a sense of chaos as well, looking at football league tables, everyone playing at once, statistics altering by the minute. I think this is why I still follow it in real life, coming up to twenty-three years of age. There is a childish glee in watching all the separate units jostling for position, to reach that next foothold, to climb above and be better than one more… So many primal instincts remain untapped into in ‘civilised’ human experience; the thrill of the battle lives in me in its own twisted way. We search for and indulge it in different ways, and I’ve always hated seeing physical conflict, because obviously one of the two is weaker, so it isn’t fair. I also like the way I am separate at the same time. I can walk away if I wish. I can walk away whenever I want. But I didn’t ever want to walk away from the game. Dinner and sleep were a distraction. I did nothing creative; weeks were spent without writing a word or touching a piano key, without exercise, without leaving the flipping house. And I wasn’t even happy the whole time, eventually regularly shouting at the screen for not letting me win by the correct goal difference to take us top of the table or for letting Man Utd snatch up Mexes or Lucio from under my nose at the last minute on deadline day. But I was addicted, and knew a happy time was definitely around the corner. In my mind I could always see that scoreboard reading 7-1, the scorers (several of them brought through the youth ranks, and a couple purchased with shrewd business acumen,) with the times of their goals listed underneath. And when the final whistle blew I would sit looking at that list, that little victory in my life. If I turned it off, what would I do? I wore a couple out, scratched till unplayable by my daily frenzied shovings into the disc slot. Then I’d stumble aimlessly around for a few days until, with reluctance and trepidation, I’d successfully attempt to do something else. Then after a few months I’d come to yet another passage of depression, and while lying on my bed virtually lifeless I’d remember the joy it brought me. A saviour when at my lowest ebb. In many ways it was rescuing me from my own despair, but deep down I knew it was something else that needed escaping from. But I kept that thought deep deep down. Deep deep deep undercover. I wasn’t getting any better, I wasn’t living, and about the only thing it did was at least prevent me from dying. But like I said, I wasn’t living either. I was simply there, eating and excreting. It was not a life. Most recently, a bit over a year ago, the three football manager simulations I owned all dead, I resorted to a regular football game. My frustration soon escalated until eventually I was self-harming – punching myself in the legs and head, jutting my jaw forward toward the TV screen in confrontation, my eyes burning with rage, growling like a wild dog. It was ridiculous, embarrassing. It was just a fucking game. So one day I took a deep breath and a pair of scissors and cut the bastard thing in half. It hurt, and hurts, but the empty space now left in my life is free to fill with delight.

166 96

In an existential deus-ex daze I move outside to the January cold that feels so real. Real coldness. Real flow of gases. The cherry tree next door that blocks out an hour of sun in summer branches out, stark and proud; stretches and self- similarises from the ground into the sky, like a natural fractal. Unbolting the rabbits’ hutch for their daily run-out, they be still with me; let me stroke their fur and tell them they are beautiful. Usually they chase each other about in anticipation, wrapping around each other like chubby, stubby polecats. But I have come out from that unknown interior land and into reality, and they seem glad I’m all right. A biplane bobblefarts overhead. Ivy climbs the wall painted yellow and white. The clouds don’t part to reveal impossible new worlds beyond, merely show the limitations of ours. If there is any reachable otherness it’s keeping well without reach at the moment. I wonder bloody why… Though he exists only as potential right now, this spectacular warrior surfing across the stars, he exists; he is real. My dreams are becoming increasingly more dense with information, packed with ideas. Words hang in the air, linear time not always precisely interpreted when laid out so flatly, and play Whac-A-Mole throughout the day, hoping for eyesolus to capture and strike their emergence. Everything that will happen will happen, as it is meant to, as we make it, as we always have made it. But we see it all in a line, so we don’t know how it turns out yet. But we can see the possibilities, which are infinite. I’m probably not a messiah or anyone particularly remarkable in the grand scheme of it all. But I hope I find peace. I hope I find a place to sit in it where I can wait for it to end. And I have to hope that I am important in some grander way to justify continuing, not as an icon, or a hero…but I have to believe that striving to reattain the purity of my youth will render me uninvalidated. And I guess it will, at least in a way, as I will know this an authentic and honourable search and I will feel honester and honester until I have reached Honesty again. I would hope, even if it is unreachable, and by virtue of it being an ideal this is almost certain, that I will keep getting better and better and when it’s time to stop I will be climbing a mountain wielding a fountain pen of my blood. I feel dissociated when I contemplate reality-based notions, but I also have occasional moments without prompting that stop me dead in my movements…because what is it? Why do we have that sense of not knowing the whole truth? We have evolved it – it is a new thing. We cannot be overcomplicating things if this is what is happening – we make it a certainty that there be more by considering that there might be more. Our brains have stretched, feeling for somewhere they can’t reach, and there cannot be nothing there. The universe doesn’t just stop. This is not a platform video game. We have unanswered questions, and it is up for the rest of the universe to catch up. Reveal yourself! I come indoors to that stodgy, clammy warmth. Really it’s cold, because it’s winter, but it feels so false. Protected from the elements; cloistered in all senses by the walls that one need never leave. Food and aid can be delivered to your door. Tiles twang like goat’s milk. I empty the dishwasher. First I empty the cutlery section: knives, forks, tablespoons, teaspoons, grapefruit spoons, the ladle, the garlic crusher, and some

167 tit has put the cheese grater in there! Then the plates, dishes, mixing bowls, glasses, mugs, Tupperware. Then I load it again, full of dirty stuff: plates and knives and forks covered in chocolate pudding and shepherd’s pie, cereal bowls and spoons, the chopping board, stained mugs and teaspoons and teacups, dirty lunchboxes, the cafetière (which I have to disassemble first), glasses with bits of orange clinging to the sides, yesterday’s water glass the size of a vase, and the three cat bowls. It’s become a daily ritual. Something, in the midst of failure, completed. Accomplished. Something neat and perfect has been created. Like that first clean strip of vacuumed carpet. Later on I look in the mirror. Look, there’s my face! My face that everyone sees! The features are quite close together, really. No, my face is not pretty, too craggy and angular, neither old nor young, but my eyes are pretty intense, shine like a collecting waterfall, telling, iridescent and blue, and even without knowing the mind that they see for they do show a sorrow, a yearning for someone to break their way in and cuddle every synapse. I think those eyes are portals into a soul that yearns to be tenderly lovingly caringly tended to. I think they want to watch darkness, specifically and invariably eyelid-darkness, as their possessor lays his head in a comfortable lap as she runs her fingers through his hair, humming lullabies, soothing his bruises, not with creams and kisses, but by him knowing she is there. This is just the beginning. Even when lifeless and leafless, or evergreen plants frosted, haggard and dulled, glaucous till almost grey, it is still the most beautiful sight – living, living as they are. There is a cosmic mystery to this consciousness thang, and I haven’t done any extensive study so can’t explain in words things that I know can be explained in words, but really, how can we think we’re doing anything but scratching the surface? And any surface is fallible to the eye. You can turn left into new labyrinths, but you can’t bite the spark of life, and besides, all labyrinths are ultimately one labyrinth anyway. The unexplained. What is unexplained is unexplainable, else it would’ve been explained, wouldn’t it? So we can’t vest hope in a certainty that if we search for long enough we shall find concrete answers – we just have to traverse as far into our capabilities as possible in the hope that we might stumble upon something. And the fuckers want me to get a nine-to-five, want me to build a façade to launch myself from, to sell myself to prove myself worthy to be a 0 in an embedded code, in an operating system. Not even that – the candy shell encasing the case. And I need to sleep but I don’t want to sleep because I’ll never get those hours back. So many spent watching the back of your eyelids and imaginary images. And I think I’ve forgotten what I felt like being outside. My head feels all bunged up. I’ve been living at night and sleeping through the days so I don’t have to listen to them prattling on about things that mean nothing, and deep down they all know it but are lost, long lost and too far gone to save. I think my head wants to shut down. Perhaps I’ll let

168 97

Ahead was a wasteland of purple sand. With felt-tipped pens he tattooed two bracelets, one of scarletred and one of black, around each wrist. It felt like he was wearing special gloves for a special occasion, like some kind of futuristic explorer-dandy beginning an exodus to a grand space-ball, meandering through woodlands, past quasars, accumulating experiences to go on his mind’s CV. ‘Something to go on your CV, innit?’ Mabel used to say, when he was but a petty land-and-linear-time dweller. ‘Well I flip your words, make them somersault into themselves. I orbit a thousand suns, flit like a kingfisher, phoenix beating wings of fire, quaking quaquaversally, sending shockwaves shimmershattering across centuries of light, pulsars across dimensions, visiting species both primitive and innovative and pummelling their preconceptions, devastating damsels with my debonair demeanour, then buggering off to new galaxies, breaking hearts like a bastard!’ One of his adventures involved visiting the Andromedan Alps and scaling the tallest peak to appease the psychopathic three-headed tyrant king who ruled the entire galaxy, who’d left his favourite hat behind, the baseball cap with ‘FUCK EVERYTHING’ sewn on the front. The insane despot ruled with a fist of glittering and roughly cut diamonds, serpentine rings encrusted with jewels and the teeth of dead foes, eyes like earthquakes, his stocky frame concurrently seeming to twist a jagged, sinewy course deep into and far beyond your eyes, looking to feast on the heart of your soul. It was understandable that nobody would refuse such a request, no matter how ludicrous and pointless, from the sort of man who’d cut a new orifice in you solely to fuck you in it.

As I surfed the coma of a comet – snatching an ickle doze while I was mentally unoccupied – I drifted into thoughts of my childhood. The past totally sucked. I lived on Earth in a terraced house in the slums of a scornful city. The only time travelling I did was in my dreams; a silly child, hidden away in the dark like a pallid little goblin, dreaming of finding ‘the right girl’ and hoping to escape the monotony but knowing I never would if I continued as I did. It really does seem preposterous now. Ridiculous. I was such a nothing, nothing but potential, fantasising about being a something, about making my mark on someone even if it was just a sum of one. The phrase ‘humble beginnings’ doesn’t cut it. I was such a Low, in all respects, and looking back on this creature, the me of before anything had been achieved, filled me with revulsion, magnified centifold by the fact that it was once me. But then silence fell, a cataract, and I was sucked out of those vivid atemporal realms. I wish I could rid myself of them permanently, but something doesn’t want me to forget. It was a while before I regained full comprehension of my senses, so the buzzing faded into earshot in a creeping, protracted crescendo, and even when my ears were working fine again it was still just about audible, even though there was not another sound to be heard.

A quite hideous rattle; a trio of short trills. It comes from over there, atop the chest of drawers to the left of my childhood bed as I lie in it (I’ve come to stay with the fams for the summer. Attempting to relive those halcyon days, I

169 suppose.) I’m playing the same old compositions in A-minor on my dusty old keyboard by the window. The sound is my phone vibrating. I’ve not had a ringtone since my first breakup. I pad over and see I have a missed call and a message. I dial 150 – YOU HAVE ONE MESSAGE – and listen. It is Her, returning my call. God knows how much time has passed since I made it – days, weeks at least, surely. It could even be months, I really don’t have the foggiest. She never picked up. In the message She said how She knew it must be important if I’d made the effort to call Her, but hadn’t called back until now because She couldn’t deal with it, and there was no point in explaining because I’d just get angry and frustrated with Her. Then She apologised and told me to ring Her back, said She knew I was in town so we could meet up if I wanted. I hadn’t realised I was living one of those aforementioned valleys. The weeks segment nicely, colour-coded by the Radio Times, compartmentalised and put away into the past, tucked away into the annals of yester-me-time. The weekend comes quickly and the week returns quicker and a few of these later and it’s time to turn the page on the calendar. So, now I must formulate a plan of action. It’s time to finally win that prestigious nutcase I call Her or She. The only woman it could ever be. But…you know, I haven’t thought about Her for ages. I guess She’s always a presence, I mean I know She exists. I’m aware of Her being alive as opposed to dead. But I was doing perfectly (un)fine without Her. Getting on with things as best as I can, like I always do, nearly always without Her there. You know how it goes – dragging your maimed legs along to the next base until you’ve made a round. And repeat. And be defeated as slowly as possible. Or as quickly as possible. But play you shall. It felt pretty anticlimactic when the decision made itself known, something like ‘yeah, well, gotta, y’know?’ This was to be it, the last attempt. Yep, the decision is made. I was reflecting on the decision, it having already been made, so there wasn’t the opportunity for chroming the decisive blade I’d wield as I strode boldly forth into the melee, slaying countless beasts to reach Her and claim Her, the Ultimate Prize…or something. You know what I mean – it just was; there was no exaggerating it. Most of us, our relationship, the entirety of our shared experience, the various happenings and never-weres…it wasn’t that spectacular at all. It was more of an ache; an ever-present lump of mashed potato clogging somewhere up. Molasses in an empty fish tank. I guess it was more the idea of Her than Her. The only other of my kind; someone who’s been there all the way, who I’ve loved from childhood to adulthood, who made the journey alongside me. Only She didn’t really. She was but ten minutes’ walk away for well over two decades, and even before I moved to the coast, with that little distance, we hardly saw each other at all; never made the effort to visit one another, to give each other the gift of any of our time. Ridiculous. Yes, we’d have enchanting, enthralling conversations – online. She’d captivate me. My heart and stomach, my molten core, would rumble in reenergised rapture, a girandole of affection, always forgetting that tomorrow we’d go about our crap again and it’d be another six months before I let myself fall into the memories of a time I’m no longer sure even happened. I regarded Her so highly for so long. But, ultimately, what She most brought to my life was an epitomising disappointment. Even the greatest person in my life inspired such loathing, made my sinking back into despondency a certainty.

170 This…wastrel, squandering Her brilliant self, gilding Her failures with elaborate self-delusions and meandering excuses. And yes, I’ve called Her the female version of me…I’m not saying I’m perfect and that She should beg to be with me…or am I? The simple fact is that there has been no one else for a long time. If it’s not Her, it will be no one. She is the only one it could be, who I could sit next to on the bus or the train and know ‘yes, this is right’. With a suddenly present poop pending and a gasp of caught breath I hesitantly dialled and put the phone to my ear. I could hear a few strands of my auburn mane crunching between them. I forgot to breathe again when She picked up. ‘Hello?’ ‘Hi…erm…it’s er…it’s me.’ Gulp. Deep breath. ‘Oh…hi, you.’ ‘Hi. Erm…yeah, so, um, I think we should meet up. Just been thinking about it. I think we need to have a, like, proper long talk. A proper one, after all these years.’ (This was all said without breathing.) ‘Hehe, yeah, it is about time isn’t it? Been a bit sporadic really – actually, like, knowing each other. There’s been a lot less of knowing each other than there has been wondering what you’re up to.’ ‘Yeah, I know. It’s embarrassing really. So much wasted time…’ ‘I know. Um…we could meet up today if you like. Like, now, if you’re not busy. I heard you were in town.’ ‘Um…yeah, sure. Meet in an hour at the birdshit park?’ ‘Hahaha! Ahh, I’d completely forgotten about that!’ ‘Hehe, yeah. Was one of the greatest moments I’d ever witnessed. Still is, really. The rest of life since has been a huge disappointment.’ ‘You’re so seeelly! OK, I’ll have a shower and see you in an hour. Check my accidental-rhyming swag!’ ‘What on earth are you on about, woman? ADIEU.’ ‘Byyye!’

The phone call pretty much summed up our relationship. A meeting incredibly brief, stilted to begin with, then all smiles and reminiscing. Our friendship has survived all these years pretty much solely on non-sequiturs and in-jokes. I ended the conversation smiling, but then I thought about it, and when people talk of magic spells they really do mean spell, as in words. To utter the right combination in order to inspire a desired effect. And I couldn’t guarantee that this wasn’t what happened every time; that She knew the exact right combination of words to make me smile, and every time I’d lift my hands to show I was unarmed and let Her cast it, my eyes to the skies and closed in ecstasy. It pretty much summed up our relationship because we were ignoring a whole lot, consciously and purposely, to instead sun ourselves in one another’s glow. I can’t stress enough now, with the benefit of the back legs of a million millipedes, how it was always the wrong decision. While we left it unattended it wasn’t being sorted out. I mean, what were we doing? I guess when you love someone so wholeheartedly you want to keep them pristine, don’t want to soil them with…you. Don’t want to be one of those people who expects to have to compromise and expects you to as well. So, when they’re acting like a total cunt, you let it slide. And when his or her actions are to all intents and purposes spitting in your face and defecating on all you thought your relationship stood

171 for, you let it slide. And soon enough there is a ball of hatred there as well, substantial enough to notice, big enough to hurt, and remaining untouched as it accrues with every secret kept and every tongue bit – becoming more and more alive the longer you don’t dig it up and kill it. Like when a break-up is happening, and you don’t want to believe it, you refuse to let it ensue. You overcompensate and overstress every gesture – ‘LA LA LA EVERYTHING’S FINE EVERYTHING’S FABULOUS OH MY WE ARE SO IN LOVE!’ – to delay what you know is going to happen. You can feel it in every movement they make, every time you make eye contact before one of you looks away, the way their skin crawls, the way you repulse them so, the kind of repulsed you can only be with someone who knows your skin, your inside, your mind. Dirtied by this demon. This person who is not good enough any more but whom you once loved so completely that you gave them the honour of dominion. And the biggest contributor to our hate was this aspect in itself. The cowardice we both displayed, by not biting any of the bullets, not even firing any blanks to taste the powder. And all those intimacies we would divulge to each other…like how sex can be meaningless or epiphanic, it all depends. Even the most revealing words can say nothing; can be a primed slice of blubber, flavourless. And the saline solution might’ve hurt, but it would’ve absorbed the moisture… It doesn’t matter what we say if we never display such vulnerability in any of our actions. To know aspects of you are there and yet always hide them from the world…you’re as bad as the rest. I don’t believe you. I could plan what I’m gonna say. It’ll probably be a square dance, as usual. Pretending we’re content with a life of four sides; treating ourselves like pies to easily portion and share with who we, essentially, arbitrarily select. Guess I’ve just gotta do it. It’s scary though. I mean, if anyone can get it She can…I needn’t worry, though I do. I bumble through life, really. But She gets it. She always has. That’s why I don’t get it. Why this now? Why did it have to get to our fourth decade before one of us was decisive? Pfff, a big old huff and a puff. Fear in my throat, I grab my hoodie and keys. Kiss the cat on the head, hear her purr affectionately. Trembling because life is going to happen soon. We’re going to make something, make a point in life, a big black dot on the map. And there will be a caption etched below it, and it will say something.

172 98

She sighed deeply, resignedly, wearily, reluctantly, and so tiredly. She faux-nonchalantly averted Her gaze from mine, then actively prevented them meeting. Her mouth was closed, unmoving, but I could feel Her tongue in the air, licking about for the right words. Sticky linguistic-gecko licks. She was chewing the best pellets for me. Pellets that would provide the utmost nutrition while also being easily digested by my depleted immune system. Being of the same species, not predator and prey, She didn’t want to choke me. A couple of young children laughed in the distance. Probably on a trip to the lake to feed the ducks. A single caw of a crow. She sighed again – deeply, resignedly, wearily, reluctantly, and so tiredly – and straightened Herself up. With a short declarative nod and a wetting of Her mouth that seemed to equate a colon, then speech marks and a capital letter, She spoke again: “I know you won’t, because you never do, and I don’t mean that offensively, but you must not take what I’m about to say lightly. We’ve been talking and, though it’s been lovely, getting nowhere, and though we’re vocalising things properly for the first time ever it is clear to me that it is simply another dimension in which we’d continue as we’ve always been. That felt like a clunky sentence, but I think it makes sense. I knew what I wanted to say before I got here. I picked up your message a long time ago, and it wasn’t on my mind the whole time, but I thought about it and us a lot over the months. A little while ago now I realised what had to be done, what needed to be said, and it took the time after this revelation to find the correct words to say everything. My thinking time just then was simply me finding a way to introduce it, and I know how I want to articulate it but obviously can’t memorise the whole thing, so I’m sorry in advance if I don’t say everything I need to say, though of course you’ll never know, though of course if anyone could know it would be you. I came to a conclusion, and the conclusion is this: I no longer want to play any part in your life, and I don’t want you in mine any more. There is a light within you, somewhere in there, in your soul, but with it comes so much darkness, too much darkness, too much for me anyway, and the only possible way to avoid this certain pain, to leave room for a pure light in my life, is to remove yours. It inhabits every corner, waits in every shadow. I love you, and I know you love me, and there is no way to avoid this, and it would be futile to try because it will last until we both die and then who knows. But your presence is a parasite. It drains so much of my energy. Our time spent in each other’s actual presence is convoluted, disparate, disproportionate, from seconds to months together and apart, but you just won’t leave, and it is suffocating. I don’t want it. So this is the last time we will ever see each other.”

173 99

“Wh…what?” “You heard what I said. We can’t see each other any more. Ever again. I won’t let it happen.” She stood up and pocketed her hands, a noncommittal action of decisiveness. “You can’t be serious? Our whole life…all those years…our childhood together…the…the…the history, the legend of Me and You…” “I know, Dexter. And I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, I really am. I don’t suddenly not care about you. But we’ve tainted it and tainted it and tainted it. It’s barely recognisable any more. I hate how sour it has become. That makes it hurt all the more, that this monster before us now is the same thing that was once so innocent and perfect. Ugh, I hate to think of it.” Ugh? God, I felt sick. Juddering vertigo. I didn’t try to stand. I couldn’t. “But…you can’t. I don’t want to never see you again.” “Well…that’s the way it has to be.” What does Her face say? Could I read Her mind in its subtleties; if I touched it could I collect its dust from the contours? I want to be in there with Her, to know how Her mind could do this. I couldn’t ever, I could never do this. Cut Her out of me. What would be left? This is not going to happen. Stupid world, trying to trick me. But then She gathered Herself. So very devastatingly, She gathered Herself. She had removed nothing from Her pockets, and Her jumper was still tied tightly around Her waist, so She simply tightened it some more, needlessly wiped down Her jeans, and looked into the distance, digging the toe of Her boot into the dirt. She was now waiting, putting off, delaying, Her leaving. Which was understandable, knowing that She’d never return, that my face would grow old and wrinkled and I’d have however much more life and She wouldn’t get to share any of it. The lump in my throat was very large. The lump in Her throat was very large also. “So this is it then? You’re rejecting me, rejecting us; letting all this suffering in wait we’ve both endured be for nothing. I wish I could remember all the good…my mind’s gone blank now. I’m too scared to care about the past, to look on the bright side like a chump. All I can do is beg you to give us a chance.” My voice was flat, defeated. I knew saying anything was futile. There was nothing I could say. She wouldn’t even voice the idea without being absolutely certain, without the decision already being long-made in Her mind, as well as stamped and logged and filed and shut away and quadruple-locked with all keys melted in a furnace of certainty then evaporated with the vapours sprayed into space. My body was on the island of strange calm that can only be reached in times of insuperable panic. This was something I could not grasp, could not bear to face. My body would not be able to take the reality of the situation. Perhaps it would combust in the submerging woe. I don’t know. Lost, I heard the jangling of coins or keys, and melted back into the now, where She had turned to face me. Standing there, eyeliner smudged with those first escaped tears, the scattered crow’s feet of a thirty-something framing the immaculate glow of Her cheeks, umbelliferous fuchsia fringe a third border of beauty (you could perhaps say Her ever so slight chin completes the frame, but I’ve always seen Her face as open, leading to the rest of Her…)…the tops of Her Spock ears peeping out like frolicking pixies from Her hair…and that cumbersomely unfurled tall-girl stance, clumsy and gangly, perfectly imperfect – you know how it is, all the parts of someone making up the perfect sum…Her kind starstorm eyes, incapable of cruelty, next to Her delicate-but-present nose, forming a

174 triangle like honey, soft and sweet…Her vulnerability and insecurity in the world evidenced by light make-up elsewhere, I know it’s there but not where, concealing whatever areas She hilariously perceives as ‘flaws’…Her tomboyish clothes, ripped jeans and Converse, Spiderman t-shirt, refreshingly resolutely refusing to ‘grow up’ like the rest did and suddenly start wearing greys and blacks and drinking coffee and wine and shaving their pubes and bleaching their buttholes…and watching Her heavy breathing, eyes fixed on mine, Her form blurring, and She is shaking and Her jaw is wobbling, and Her chest rises so high, lifting Her shoulders and breasts, as She stands poised like fight or flight and She wants to fight but not fight like with punches but to fall into my arms again to make them challenge Her certainty…but She knows She can only flee and so stands before me like that, like that right there, like how She is standing right now before me, in that awful way, that way of waiting for something to happen, but it won’t, it never will, She will just stand there looking at me like that, in that way, in that horrifyingly majestic way right there. And I do something braver than I thought I possibly could, though I had to look away, though I had to mumble the two syllables, though I had to pretend I hated Her as I said them, though it wasn’t in any way brave because I was doing nothing but lightly prodding a dot at the end of the corpus, the collected works of our experience, when I said: “Just go.” So She hyperventilated, I dared not look up but Her breathing became audible and heavy, Her bosom heaving with those shoulders again, and Her hands were blunt instruments hanging beside Her thighs like a human standing ready. I could see it all peripherally. And I only looked up again when Her feet had slowly dragged to turn and began to slowly step away, She was seeing each step singularly like I was, and She slowed to a stop and looked down, stifling a sob, composing Herself for the rest of for ever, then looked up, still turned away from me, and though I couldn’t see Her face I knew She looked so brave, so proud, and I knew that Her decision was the right one for Her, and She didn’t look back, She never would, She dared not, and then She briskly and assuredly clambered through some of the forest, brushing twigs and bracken from Her path, and I could still see Her, but less clearly, then barely, and then She must’ve reached the path, for She made an abrupt right turn, and She walked a bit more until…She probably kept walking, but I could no longer see Her.

175 100

So, then. This is it. That impossible time. That dot on the line where knowing you has a before and after. Love has been defeated. I can’t stop panicking. The beats of my heart sounding pounding a tachycardic cat’s purr, uncountable. Stomach acids whipped, fermenting. Fingers tingling, trembling. Aching muscles, quaking in quintuples, agony, stiff to brittle to near-snapping. Embodied pain scattered across strewn remnants. The dexteritus. Can’t breathe, like sucking an exhaust pipe with nostrils sealed. I keep inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, intakes without release, hyperventilating, asphyxiating gasps, choking on my own dry mouth. I can’t cry. I am not even slightly sad. All there is is that all-over ache; that capitulation of mind and body, of will. My cheeks are hot. My eyes are sore and half-closed and the sockets feel pummelled by stones. Grief, like a death, it is a death. What else can a removed presence of life be? There is no answer to the question. You know the answer. Please make it go away. Go back, let it all be a joke. This whole life. Let it all have been a joke where after thirty-four years of me waiting you tell me you don’t love me as I love you and never will and that we will never see each other again and then you walk away but then come back and like PJ & Duncan say ‘PSYCHE!’ Let it be that, OK? Please. But you already have walked away. And been gone for far too long for that. Time is so irrelevant now but I guess it must have been at least ten minutes ago. Before we even arrived I knew what was going to happen anyway. I knew during the phone conversation we had arranging the meeting. I knew it had to be a finality. I told you it had to be. But I pushed it as far back as I could, pleading with life to let me be wrong about everything. My certainties are founded. People make themselves so simple so I can read every one I meet. They are so obvious; disgusting animals, walking aborted foetuses pointlessly bestowed with ambulatory capacity. Wiping their dicks and lips on your mother’s dress. But they – you – stand by and watch, because it turns you on. You get off on watching the world destroy itself. If that were untrue you would be doing something about it, would at least have tried to once. We are not helpless. We made this world; we could shape it in whichever ways we wish. Life is so full of sorrow and it is needless. I can’t believe it. This world is so ridiculous; a humiliating culmination of life. It is like they have not only deferred responsibility, but happiness. Knowingly drained themselves to prevent living. Feelings are too scary. They’ve seen what their race is capable of so it’s best to develop quarrel-proof skin. I thought I was a warrior whose arrows, tipped with my own willingly spilled blood, would be able to penetrate the mausoleum of someone. I couldn’t get in. I tried but I couldn’t get in. I could hear you screaming. You, not that daft furless ape’s body of yours, but the shard of universe inside that I loved, and I was trying to get through to save it from the event horizon. And then, experiencing time linearly as we do, in a bifurcated second you were past the threshold. I was too late. There was always a sentimental aspect when remembering our moments. Like we were pieces of the cosmic all remembering our shared home, so long ago, so far away. We dream of different worlds and they seem so much more right than the one we live in. But from where do the images derive? Is that world there for us somewhere, waiting; Mummy and Daddy and Maggie sitting waiting, watching, on thrones, and not as kings or queens or princesses but as the honour of being alive where things are right and love is everything. And you are there

176 too, hair grown long till brushing your buttocks, skin untouched by the synthetic, robes woven from plants and worn only for warmth. The sky is the best blue and the clouds are white and rich and the air is clean and clear as we sit at the peak of a valley where the river flows into the sea. The wholeness displays a serene violence that we all five are connected to. The day is warm but sometimes winds give us goosepimples, and you and I huddle together, and Mummy and Daddy were and are and always would be happy together, and Maggie has found her true love too. And you and I, though our genitals had long ago grown hair around them and would sometimes connect, it was always as children of God, truth, all, the totality, the universe, the multiverse, the the, the rightness, art and love and bliss. The soul and the only beauty is honesty. Playful yet profound. Children but wholly become. But this is not the world we are in now. You have rejected the possibility of us, of any this or that as ‘we’. I have left you to the vampires because there is no alternative. You gave me no alternative. Perhaps this is your truth: that you must only know suffering or the absence of feeling, of death, which is your fate without me. Perhaps you do see it all in the same way as me and yet still turn away from it as the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to yourself; making yourself only the darkness, everything true and good an inverse, because you see you as separate from it and undeserving. Perhaps I live in a universe entirely separate from yours, my longing burning so fiercely that it gives luminescence to a pallid ghost in some other chamber of existence, honoured that it should be loved by one it can never hold or be held by. And at night it sleeps on a sumptuous floss knitted from its thoughts of the day, and dreams of growing its nails until a foot long, then using a strip of sandpaper to patiently sharpen each one to a point, so that it can tear a hole in the fabric of the universe and come and rescue me. And such is its desire, its yearning, so deep that it imbues its heart with an attack that booms herself awake each morning, to embrace me and save me from the hurt, the rules of spacetime do not apply, simply dissolved by the power of its desire. It needs no oxygen or food or water or sleep and if flight is required then it will fucking well fly. This ghost…I thought it was you…and it weeps oceans for I desire the love of something that is not it, doomed to spend eternity watching me watching you. And it was once you, but another you, a somewhereelseyou. So not you. A different you is not you. A former you. And if it is a former you I’ve desired for so long, a you who will never return, I might as well have spent all that time desiring another, someone who might at least have shown me a crumb of their love, who might if not satisfy my soul then at least turn my head briefly from watching it decay. I have pined, become emaciated, unfed. I could’ve impassively fucked, destroyed some families, obtained some exotic sexual diseases. Instead I remained good and despondent. Dejected. Porn necessarily became wallpaper. Art was all there was to love so I shunned everything else. Everyone. Wings folded into an impenetrable carapace, my only external motion was to occasionally shunt the mass away from my tender and vulnerable core. Oh God, I’m so so scared. What do I do? Where do I go? How can I find another? How can you be succeeded? The infinite gaze of the one carbon granule, the to-and-fro swash sending multitudinous bottled messages to cherish, to treasure to my chest. I cough and spit blood on to the dirt. What will the devastation be tomorrow, in a week, at the tearing of the calendar, by this time next year? What worth is in a dragonfly now? It’s a disgusting giant insect. Rainbows in a violent sky and dancing and snorting in fallen blossom. Maybe

177 I’ll…no, I can’t bring myself to say it. Never another. Never ever ever. I will not concede to your nonsense. I will prove myself to you. I will not fight fire with fire. I am immovable. I will burn with honour. I meant it true, wholehearted, allsoul-in with a dotless dice, and will continue my loyalty, undying, steadfast, adamant evemant adamant evemant atoms and eve unfissioned of a diamond nucleus with patience and conviction. Lone cactus, home in desolate desert. Transcendent plumage, sometimes snow-tipped, bleached with heat, saturated till bowing till tickling the ground but never collapsing never even chewed lassi. Cunt. I hate you. I hope you choke on clotted bukkake. Hypoxic asphyxic citric asparagic diuretic, lungs a cumdumpster, accommodating willing obliging so gorge, engorge till bursting you WHORE. I oughta kick your teeth in. You embarrassment. I’m ashamed of you. You worthless all-giving geisha. Raw until bone knocks. I’ll pull your fucking spinal column out through your fucking throat oh no no no I can’t believe you’re gone. Wake me up. Shake me into life. Someone come and rescue me. Our whole lives. All this time. All those memories, those stories we regale…it all happened. It was all real. That was me and that was you and oh how we smiled. Enthralled by the voyage, captivated by discovery; uncovering new dorms to add to the high-rise, acquiring truths and the random inconceivable grandeur, the splendour of air-vented spleens and mental membrane absorption aborting all the false kinfolk, seeds of hate against the clearly right. Of course, our inarticulacies were countless back then. So much terrain was yet to be explored. But I held your hand and I wish I’d gripped tighter, circled my pointer in your palm, felt the softness, took in each line. And everywhere else. Skin mole- dappled and milky, tone of cookies and cream ice cream…children, constants, every second of every day we were both existing, simultaneous as the whole world and the orbits of all the suns spinning as we live…but the glory of finding roots that feed your soul… It was the greatest force. And you have removed it. Discarded it. Deemed it unnecessary. You are a lost hope. A flower now made former. Uprooted from our bed you took our tuber with you. My sickly roots had long tangled and fused to yours; the instant you left I was felled. I think I’m finished. As you lie on your deathbed, or watch me on mine, what will you feel? Regret at all that stupid lost time? I used to imagine that scenario, imagine putting it to you. But I should never have trusted anything I thought. If you came to me, how could I know for certain that it was not through guilt? I didn’t want to pre-empt events with my impatience. I believed everything should be organic and to adorn or obscure or induce anything with cunning or artifice or any kind of prompting was to invalidate life. But all I ever had was my own bastard belvedere and I was never better or worse or equal to any of it, to anyone else. It was a psychological, personal mythology. Metaphysics. Another belief system; a quest for The Individual. My own mathematics. My own dogma. The map is not the territory. And I did what I told myself I’d never do again every time I did it: I relied on something external to grant my soul’s contentment, to prevent my pruning my own veins. Not something, but someone, someone equally unique, with their own ideas, and I had to clutch the idea to my chest until it coalesced into my skin and seeped into my heart and assimilated into my soul because without it in my sight there would be just a wasteland, a purgatory. Colourless, emotionless, lifeless. A nothingness. Existenceless. But that yet, somehow, I am in.

178 And all time is stored, immortal in my mind. Immortal in time. The supreme opus. The awesome corpus. You’ll grow old and I won’t be there. You’ll grow and become without me. The first few glorious wrinkles have emerged already, and I won’t get to watch your body sag so spectacularly, your bones grow stiffer so beautifully, your incontinence unappreciated without your final piece there to hold your piss-sack. This scenario…it’s fucking incongruous. It’s wrong. It’s sick. You’ve got the devil in you. You’re possessed by demons and they’re telling you they love you but they don’t. They can’t hold your hand like I can. The wand chooses the wizard, you know. It’s symbiotic. The only outcome unless dark magic is imposed in which case you’ve fucked with the equilibrium anyway and I best vamoose before the vortex sucks me in. But it’s too late. It’s always been too late. Fucking humanity. In-betweeners: animal and thoughtful. The transcendent simian now being prodded like cattle. There must be so much pain in the world when everyone is always killing. Thankfully I have little empathy for the species. You were privileged. I don’t like anyone, let alone love them, let alone love them as interdimensionally and totalitytotally as I did you. Not to leave too big a burden on your shoulders, on your life in my absence, but you are responsible for destroying the universe and I hope you realise that. All that’s left is the wait, killing time, and what a bore it will be. It just seems such a waste. We needn’t have bothered carrying on if… And not only have you missed out on being completed, but you’ve drained all the colour from everything I love. And there was so much I loved, but you have killed it all. Every element is dead. None of it has any meaning in my world without you. Everything I love is worthless, is meaningless to me now. All those good things – 1991; 808s; A Clockwork Orange; advent calendars; affectionately insulting someone; agnosticism; an unsoiled notepad; Anchorman; Wes Anderson; Androids and being asleep; ankles; apples; arms; aromas; art; Emilie Autumn; autumn leaves; Babar; the babbits; backs; ballet; basil; Beachy Head; being loved; being naked, preferably next to someone I’m being loved by; The Bell Jar; Beverly Hills Cop I, II & III; birds; Bjork; black outlines; black pepper; Blackadder; James Blake; William Blake; Booker T & The MG’s; books; Boredoms; Hieronymus Bosch; breasts; breathing; breezes; Jacques Brel; Charlie Brooker; bubble wrap; Buckethead; William S. Burroughs; button noses; Albert Camus; Captain Beefheart, specifically Trout Mask Replica; George Carlin; carrot juice; cassette tapes; castles; cats; Jessie Cave; CDs; cellos, and those who wield them; cherry blossom; Cody Chesnutt’s The Headphone Masterpiece; Brian Cox; childhood; Billy Childish; children; chives; Noam Chomsky; ‘Christmas In Hollis’; Clerks; clouds; Cloverfield; coconuts; collaboration; collage; The College Dropout; colour; compassion; Paddy Considine; contortion; coriander; cosmetic-less women; cream cheese; creation; cuddles; daffodils; Camille Dalmais; the Dance Pop beat on my Yamaha PSR-320; dancing uninhibitedly; dates (the fruit, not the heinous marketising of romance); Russell T. Davies; Daniel Day-Lewis; Rob Delaney; Sandy Denny; Denny-Boy; Desertshore; Despicable Me & Despicable Me 2; dew; dimples; discovery; Disney films; Doctor Who; doing; Gustave Doré; Fyodor Dostoyevsky; dressing gowns; the drum solo on Black Sabbath’s ‘Rat Salad’; Dungeness; each one of my senses (with taste being the least important to me); E- Type Jaguars; Earl Grey; ears; Richey James Edwards; elbows; elderflower cordial; elfin-eared women; Elmo; Ralph Waldo Emerson; empathy; expression; Le Fabuleux Destine d’Amélie Poulain; family; farts; female B.O.; female feet; Will Ferrell; fingers; finitude; Finnegans Wake; flexibility; Flight of the Conchords;

179 flowers; Forbrydelsen; freckles; fresh mint; freshly squeezed orange juice; friends; fucking; Futurama; Garden of Earthly Delights; Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace; gifts; Karen Gillan; ginger beer; ginger-haired women; girls with colds; Philip Glass; grammatical pendantry; grass; gravel crunching underfoot; Grease; hair; Keith Haring; harps; harpsichords; Harry Potter; herons; Bill Hicks; hippos; His Dark Materials; Alfred Hitchcock; holding hands; holding the gaze of someone who loves you; holly; home cooking; honesty; hope; Horse The Band, particularly ‘Rape Escape’; Illuminatus!; imagination; incense; infinity; interracial couples and their offspring; inventing words; isassingflaff; Jackass; Jandek; Jim Jarmusch; jelly tots; The Jerk; Spike Jonze; James Joyce; Miranda July; K’Nex; Kaos: The Anti- Acoustic Warfare; Charlie Kaufman; Kevin Turvey; keyrings; kidney beans; Kinder eggs; King Lear; Alex Kingston; kisses; knees; lambs; laughter; lavender; Stewart Lee; legs; Mike Leigh, specifically Naked; libraries; light S&M; Lonesome Jim; long walks (and putting your feet up afterwards); love; Lyra Belacqua; Madlib; making love; making stuff; Terence McKenna; Shane Meadows; melodicas; Melt- Banana; Mexican food; MF Doom; The Mighty Boosh; Mike; Henry Miller; mocking the xenophobic; moles (both the small mammal and the skin lesion); the moon; Moondog; Alan Moore; R. Stevie Moore; mouths; Mr Men; mud; The Muppet Christmas Carol; Muppet Treasure Island; Muriel’s Wedding; Bill Murray; Muse Live, 17th June 2007; music; my cousins; my lounge pant collection; my sister’s sense of humour; navels; nebulae; necks and their magical scents; Newcastle United FC; Joanna Newsom; nostalgia; orgasms; Gary Oldman; Oldboy; orchestras; OutKast; painting; Amanda Palmer; parsley; Harry Partch; pasta; Mike Patton; peaches; pebbles; Pee Wee’s Big Adventure; physical artefacts; pianos; pimples; pine trees; playing the ‘making others feel uncomfortable by pretending we have an incestuous relationship’ game with Maggie; poetry; Pokémon; popcorn (salted, never sweet); Terry Pratchett; prose; pubic hair; Philip Pullman; Henry Purcell’s ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’; purple; QI; quantum theory; Rage Against The Machine; rain; rainbows; realised soulfragments; Red Dwarf; rice; robins; Roboman; Seb Rochford; romance; Ruins; Carl Sagan; Saint Etienne’s ‘Nothing Can Stop Us Now’; sand; the scent of fennel; scratching an itch; the sea; The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole; The Seventh Seal; William Shakespeare; Sherlock; The Simpsons (the early series); singing; skin; Skins; slippers; smells (though not the smell of slippers); ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’; snow; so many singular thoughts and ideas and feelings and dreams and situations of both creation and happenstance and indescribable things that are simply impossible to put into words; Socrates; SoKo; song; Sonic the Hedgehog; sounds; South Park; Austin Spare; spearmint chewing gum breath; The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’; Spider; springtime; Spyro the Dragon; squirrels; Doug Stanhope; stargazing; Edwin Starr, specifically ‘25 Miles’, which will always have a particular place in my heart; stationery; stickers; Studio Ghibli; sunlight; swearing; Swingball; Tilda Swinton; Sympathy For Mr Vengeance; tangerine soap; Quentin Tarantino; Jacques Tati, particularly Play Time; tattoos; the way Dr Alice Roberts says ‘food’; There Will Be Blood; Therese Raquin; thighs; thinking; Hunter S. Thompson; toes; Topsy; Toys; trees; transience; Duncan Trussell; TV themes; Liv Tyler; Ulysses; Vincent Van Gogh; vinyl; Kurt Vonnegut; Scott Walker, particularly ‘The Seventh Seal’; walking; David Foster Wallace; Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog; water; Alan Watts; Weird Paul; wet rattailed hair; Harriet Wheeler; when green sweets are apple-flavoured rather than lime; when that flu-like virus finally fucking disappears; Ben Whishaw as Richard II; Robert Anton Wilson; The

180 Wire; Withnail & I; Patrick Wolf; women; women doing stuff; wonder; words; Wu-Tang Clan; Wurlitzers; X-Men; Ming Xia; Y Tu Mama Tambien; The Young Ones; Frank Zappa, specifically ‘Watermelon in Easter Hay’ – and this list is meagre compared to the boundless splendour, the limitless majesty, of what life has to offer. And there are countless indescribable things…perceptions there aren’t words for…I can’t describe what I mean, obviously, but there is an infinity out there, where every moment witnessed has infinite angles to it and is always succeeded by another moment with infinite angles to it too, and life becomes a precious tapestry, always is, always was, unique and sacred and immovable, and it will be there whether you choose to observe it or not…but what’s the point in it all now. None of it means anything to me without your love twirling throughout it all. So I stood up, my joints and tendons stiff from all that time spent so still, and bent and shook some life into them, then stretched my arms and the rest of my body, twisting my torso till it clicked, and yawned and sighed, looking up into the sky, only the moon and a few stars and a straggling crow and two aeroplanes visible, their contrails crossing, then untied the sweatshirt from around my waist, put it on, hitched it up a bit to untuck my t-shirt, pulled both items of clothing down neatly, shrugged comfortably into them, and sat back down, pulled up my socks, and retied my shoes. Then I leant back, loosely folded my arms, nestled my chin into my chest, closed my eyes, and died.

181