Across the street from a nocturnal grease vendor, a closed charity shop frames my outline in a dark and recessed doorway. On nights such as these this blackened hollow multi-tasks as a convenient too public latrine. Litres of 'special promotion' alcohol are released streetward through fumbled hanging penises. Gagging throats gurgle with overflowing ingested surplus. Stomachs and bladders are purged of their sins; of chips, gravy and German brewed shouting water.
The daytime clientele of beige ladies and Alzheimer gents welcome the smells of home; of their own comfortable and soiled bedclothes where the smell of fresh urine at least reminds them they are still alive. Through the door they fuss round garments born of a time when trends and fashions still existed; before homogeny and apathy stalled the clocks. ('To copy' was cool, first yesteryear then yesterday, until an endless loop crashed the system into a pastiche of 'now'). Arthritic hands twisted like paws, slide deflated coinage to naïve young volunteers; good girls and boys folding items of history into recycled supermarket carrier bags. New mornings greet them with pavement breakfasts and a moist ammonia miasma. They have no love for the smell of the doorway, but cleaning it up makes them retch.
A young species male drops into the alcove; dazed by Belgian wife-beating liquor. Poisoned drowning eyes stare at depths in the back of his own head; a barren, vacant housing evicted of higher functions. A fistful of genitals are on display before my presence is felt. A short jet of urine bursts out of the gristle; flinging wet heat to my leg in a slice of a moment. A slim and vaporous mist rises from the stain bringing reality to my nostrils. A condensing mixture of human effluent reaches down my throat with the flavour of diesel exhaust. I don’t move. I don't care enough to move and stare holes through the faceless pissing male.
Over his shoulder the mulched corpses of animals are changing hands for crisp and disposable money. Consumers predictably consume - as is the way of their wanting; coughing down cuts of mechanically separated protein slurry under a polluting sign. 'American Chicken' hangs in the air and bleeds on the road in a blue and yellow banner of Perspex and glow. Bellow boys and cackle girls magnetise to grease like pied piper rats; unconsciously drawn to a fruit machine tune and the cloying plasma of super-heated lard. Society made you shit for brains, made you eat till you split, made you drink till your sick, let you live if you turn purchases into faeces. A non-stagnating economy flows through your innards and you flush away the receipts to make room for more.
The silhouette of the urinator moves with the mannerisms a multiple offender; a two dimensional hole throwing postures of a fighter concealed under normality. 'honest mistake' noises grunt from the cut-out's neck in an insisting demand for surrendering forgiveness. The silhouette is a blank and empty space; an inoffensive 'nothing' of dark matter between particles, significant only by the interest it displaces and hides. It waits for a response and I leave it waiting. Somewhere a laugh reverberates against a window, an engine revs and dies in the distance, a bacterium divides and conquers in a discarded pork-rib. I leave the alcove and cross the street. Somewhere behind, parting words rasp away from the lungs of the shadow...
"Fucking cunt" it breathes.
I leave it behind.
Fluorescent tubes illuminate 'American Chicken' with the headache radiation of invisible strobes. The white noise hiss of hot cholesterol on steel reaches out from the cooking area like radio static. A gaunt faced male cuts a cist from a chicken wing and pitches a shot into an empty oil bucket. Customers lob and wait their turns; resting swivel hips and bleeding fists on the salt and vinegar flavoured counter. A sliver of a man leans his lethargy at the head of the line, dressed in a short sleeved shirt exaggerating the sinewy sickness of his arms. Words fall from his mouth like Down's syndrome saliva.
"Kebab mate, with all the shit."
The grey Turk behind the counter blinks and pauses; visibly considering the appropriate use of 'stating the obvious'.
"We have no kebabs, this is American Chicken"
He states it in a tone of disposable confidence; a throw-away comment fortified through experience of Saturday night fuck heads.
"what? Eh? Ah… a fuckin’ chicken kebab then, whatever..."
'Sick arms' flicks his tendons in random acts of variance. The Lazarus limbs point vague signals at non-existent items on the menu board. The chicken pusher messes with buttons on the till and raises the temperature of his vocal colour.
"no kebab, we have fried chicken, chicken burger, beef burger, cheeseburger, chicken and chips, burger and chips, coca-cola, fanta, whatever you want... we have no kebab."
The accent is thickened with extra ethnic flavour and the customers lick it up like international gravy. It's what they understand, what they want, what they've seen on TV; The cliched greasy kebab shop owner and the greasy Turkish stereotype. Viewers are confused by perfect English from a foreign face so he does what is expected of a Turk behind a counter. He plays up the part and the audience fucking love it.
"ah... Gimme some of them fuckin' chips then... fucks sake"
An atrophied head scans the customer queue for eyes to contact. The arms twist like dead branches in a November wind; hollowed and stripped by insectoid hunger. A young blonde trophy picks at 'blu-tacked' posters of 99p specials. A mismatched couple whisper repetitions of 'it's up to you' in affectionate soprano. The needy gaze of 'Sick Arms' presses for allies and finds none for his actions. Embarrassment gets hidden under a facade of aggression.
"any chicken?"
"eh?"
"Chicken? Any chicken? You want any chicken?"
"no, no fuckin’ paki chicken… fucks sake"
"sorry?"
I stand at a door next to American Chicken and let the dialogue die in the drowning pools of interlaced conversation. Distant fights and proximity whispers gravitate into a choking fog of homogenised sound. Words interlock from unseen masses with the deafening audio of nothing and everything.
A smeared trail of mayonnaise draws glutinous streaks over the paint scabbed doorframe. Bare wood peers through the crackled gloss, a history of colours flake away like psychedelic pastry. A single portion sachet holds tight to a loose and beaten speaker panel. Condiment fingerprints dab thick spatter onto buttons and nameplates of scribbled biro. Handwritten names fade and hide inside the sepia tint of sun sullied paper. I decipher the labels from vanishing lines to comprehensible data; 'Steve Matson' prises away as a familiar name in the background brown. I poke at the corresponding button and wipe the filth off my fingers with underfoot litter.
A speaker rattles in its casing; quivering to a voice of scratched and distorted fuzz.
"Hello? Yes? Yes, who is it?"
I speak a name I fed to him earlier; stolen from a radio phone-in about deviant school masters. The name was unimportant; two artificial words that erroneously inform and encompass an entire identity. They are valued by the ones that wish to be remembered, discarded by some that seek to disappear. Philip Irving will never care if I borrow his own given label when underwear examinations and anonymity are on his mind. I pick up a splintered wooden chip-fork and scrape mayonnaise out of my fingernails. Somewhere above the shop, Matson would be fumbling around for the door release. Somewhere in Huddersfield, Irving would be fiddling with a training bra. The door hums like an electric chair and clicks itself open. I throw the chip-fork and go inside.
The Whoredom project - is the result of a constructed persona - formed with the intention of creating expressive artefacts free from the constraints of social acceptance.
Thursday, 10 November 2005
Wednesday, 17 August 2005
5 - Spit In The Window
My guilt tortures every purposeful step, but the chapel carpet is thick and forgiving. I slip silently in and up to the plinth where the coffin once was. Beneath the plinth are some discarded tools: an adjustable spanner, a blue electric screwdriver and a file or rasp with a broken handle. Some kind of repair has been going on; an open box gives easy access to wiring and other things I don't understand. What fun that must have been: the funeral where the mourners were not alone in their breakdowns.
A slight gap in the curtains gives cut shaped views through a hatch in the wall. Visual slices show the coffin in the next room; its weight pressed down on parallel steel rollers. It rests horizontally on a familiar plinth, just a foot away on the other side of the wall. Maybe this is what they meant when the polite ones said he had 'gone to the other side'. The room through the hatch appears pleasantly devoid of anyone living, so I try to find an entrance of the vertical kind. I feel the wall behind the curtains and find a shape recognisable clearly as a door. Near the handle I find the key still in the lock - of little consequence as the door is already unlocked. Doors like that are just asking to be opened, so I feel no tugging shame when I find myself the other side of it.
The walls of the room are covered with a grid of white ceramic tiles of the kind found in hospital wards and public lavatories. The smells of bleach and pine fresh disinfectant burn red on sensitive membranes; a double-edge sting for the nose and the eyes. The greeting impression is one of a sterile workroom, a purely functional space clean of any religious apparel. Wall mounted dispensers hold latex gloves and soapy green liquids. Stainless steel trolleys carry gloss varnished coffins in readiness for another place. Everything in sight is 'wipe clean' and smooth with porous and organic matter banished into boxes.
Around a corner I find another room, fitted and styled in the same decor. A metal table exhibits its age in a 'Paisley' of scratches; a swirling patina of scrubbing and abrasion. A large steel plate breaks the monotony of the wall, itself interrupted by two stainless steel doors. They are tea tray sized and cold to the touch - unusual considering the function of the machine. I open one while ducking down, expecting a blast of heat to the face. Nothing. I look into the dormant machine, the burner, the incinerator... a slow easy heat emanates from inside like afternoon sunlight.
Asbestos blocks line the tunnel-like oven. Gas nozzles protrude like nipples on a dogs hairless stomach. A gritty residue of particles gathers in the cracks and holes of the floor. As if testing the iron I spit some phlegm on the insulating bricks and they stay wet without the fizz of evaporation. Clearly this hasn't been used very recently. I spit in again just for the fun of it. An ash engrained chute catches the dripping saliva beneath the main chamber. A streak of moisture runs a wavering line through untold remains.
Close to the table a plastic bristled brush holds a greasy dandruff between its synthetic hair. A copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche rests on top of a worn out grinder. Lined up against the wall a queue of coffins on trolleys wait to be processed like casualty patients in an NHS ward. They are wooden missiles ready to be loaded into the fiery tube and launched into the next life.
I see a large heavy door that I had previously missed; set slightly away in a recessed alcove. It follows the running theme of cold stainless steel; the favoured material for a sterile design. A lockable latch flips easily open for an inquisitive hand...
I find myself shivering in a walk-in freezer and exhaling smoke without cancerous repercussions. The shelves are stacked with bodies on trays, covered with thin paper sheets to protect any remaining modesty. Lists, toe tags and clipboards exhibit impressions of order and organisation, of paper trails and bureaucracy. In the far end of the freezer a dirty green tarpaulin disturbs the array; throwing chaos at uniformity. I lift up a crumpled corner and find a mound of rolled up carpets, black bin bags and plastic sheeting. Just for once I wish for emptiness; to find nothing inside the confusion of packaging. My wish dies in a breath of vapour when I see a frozen hand sticking out of a ripped open plastic sheet.
The hand is raised and motionless in time as if stuck in the act of clawing for the ceiling. Its nails are broken and brittle like ice cracked on a window pane. From a rolled up carpet the crown of a head bares male-pattern baldness; dark and matted with frosted hair. An old orange bucket holds the body of an infant stamped into the base with the force of a boot, its imprint stored in the distended head. Rubbish bags cling with static and ice to the shape of a face; solid and still like a statue in a gimp mask.
I tear at the bag and look into the face. A young woman stares back with pupils of clouds; coloured and textured like solidified cooking oil. I run a finger down her cheek and feel the cold and the smooth; touching what 'is' and thinking of what 'was'. I imagine the warmth of her life, the nervous blink of her eyelids, the moisture from her breath. I touch the paradox of her mouth; a conflict of soft curves and solid frozen matter. It is the kind of face you never tire of studying; an image that tattoos on your eyes and pervades all subsequent vision.
The chapel air vibrates with interrupting voices; a duet of banal and vociferous chatter. Unenthusiastic shoes scrape tracks through the carpet pile.
"...plane into the pentagon, or something... some American building anyway."
"that's mad. A plane?"
"Yeah a plane... anyway this guy... what was I saying?"
"Some guy flying a plane into some American building?"
"Yeah anyway, so he flies this plane into the Whitehouse or something..."
The dull talk rises in decibel intensity; signalling a closer, approaching proximity. Physical laws remain constant and comforting when everything else feels disturbed. I step away from the scene and let the tarpaulin fall. I feel something crunch under my shoe.
"And this is all in this book?"
"Yeah, Tom borrowed it me. Anyway he gives this big long speech about..."
"Is he still in the plane?"
"yep, he's on the plane and on about stuff that's gone on and all that..."
"A plane...that's mad"
The conversation progresses while momentum takes a breather at the curtained entrance door. A handle turns and the boring speech grows ever louder.
"...apparently some guy read this book and blew up a lorry outside some police building"
"that's mad, like, after reading a book?"
"yeah he read it and got the idea and made some bomb out of cow shit or something"
"aww man that's mad, cow shit heh heh!"
"I don't think it was cow shit but it was something like that. But he got the idea from this book."
"mad"
I find a rough chipwood door leading off the main workroom and hide inside before the voices move closer. I hear the blood in my veins and become sensitised to everything that moves. I suck air economically when the climate of sound allows it. My heart beats through my head like a punching fist. Over my lungs I hear the banter of two males and the irritating squeak of metal rollers. In the distance, organ music begins a reprise. Soon, someone else's relatives will be miming archaic lyrics. I will have to sit this one out.
Sing stuff, say stuff, sing stuff, move stiff, the ritual repeats with the priests self-satisfied tones MC'ing the performance. I swallow away my yawns and investigate the cupboard I find myself in. The smells of dust and pinewood struggle in silence against the outside bleach clouds. Broken down coffins stack like self-assembly furniture, brass-look handles and other adornments glint in interlocked plastic boxes. It seems like everyone's recycling these days.
Outside the crying is reaching a crescendo while electric motors hum an accompanying bass line. Through a crack in the door frame I see the two chatting workers, uniformly dressed in paper overalls and blue disposable aprons so thin you could wrap your lunch in them. A new visitor arrives - one equally lacking in conversation skills and lying cold in a shiny pine box.
Muffled through the dividing walls, the priest brings his pitch to closure. The workers watch through the open hatch, while the saline dripping masses organise themselves out the door. As the last one leaves, cheap cigarettes and disposable lighters appear from overall pockets. The men disappear the way they came. When the way is clear I exit the building quickly to avoid getting caught in the loop again. Outside, the chimney still stands dormant.
I walk the crematorium grounds, freshly cut lawns sprout with shaped slabs of stone; marble and granite monoliths marking centuries of forgotten accidents, diseases or crumbling, pissing exits. Segregated areas of flowers and planting fail to disguise this place as a garden; the remotely natural just camouflage the rubbish removal machine. Incinerated or landfill? Wives and mothers make your choice. They say they love you, then chuck you in a box and let the council take you away. Those fortunate enough to be buried here are only designated to natures disposal process; as stone nominated bacteria food. Here is no glorious ending, no wonderful mourning, just the throwing away of human shells; the expended exoskeletons of dead verminous insects.
A slight gap in the curtains gives cut shaped views through a hatch in the wall. Visual slices show the coffin in the next room; its weight pressed down on parallel steel rollers. It rests horizontally on a familiar plinth, just a foot away on the other side of the wall. Maybe this is what they meant when the polite ones said he had 'gone to the other side'. The room through the hatch appears pleasantly devoid of anyone living, so I try to find an entrance of the vertical kind. I feel the wall behind the curtains and find a shape recognisable clearly as a door. Near the handle I find the key still in the lock - of little consequence as the door is already unlocked. Doors like that are just asking to be opened, so I feel no tugging shame when I find myself the other side of it.
The walls of the room are covered with a grid of white ceramic tiles of the kind found in hospital wards and public lavatories. The smells of bleach and pine fresh disinfectant burn red on sensitive membranes; a double-edge sting for the nose and the eyes. The greeting impression is one of a sterile workroom, a purely functional space clean of any religious apparel. Wall mounted dispensers hold latex gloves and soapy green liquids. Stainless steel trolleys carry gloss varnished coffins in readiness for another place. Everything in sight is 'wipe clean' and smooth with porous and organic matter banished into boxes.
Around a corner I find another room, fitted and styled in the same decor. A metal table exhibits its age in a 'Paisley' of scratches; a swirling patina of scrubbing and abrasion. A large steel plate breaks the monotony of the wall, itself interrupted by two stainless steel doors. They are tea tray sized and cold to the touch - unusual considering the function of the machine. I open one while ducking down, expecting a blast of heat to the face. Nothing. I look into the dormant machine, the burner, the incinerator... a slow easy heat emanates from inside like afternoon sunlight.
Asbestos blocks line the tunnel-like oven. Gas nozzles protrude like nipples on a dogs hairless stomach. A gritty residue of particles gathers in the cracks and holes of the floor. As if testing the iron I spit some phlegm on the insulating bricks and they stay wet without the fizz of evaporation. Clearly this hasn't been used very recently. I spit in again just for the fun of it. An ash engrained chute catches the dripping saliva beneath the main chamber. A streak of moisture runs a wavering line through untold remains.
Close to the table a plastic bristled brush holds a greasy dandruff between its synthetic hair. A copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche rests on top of a worn out grinder. Lined up against the wall a queue of coffins on trolleys wait to be processed like casualty patients in an NHS ward. They are wooden missiles ready to be loaded into the fiery tube and launched into the next life.
I see a large heavy door that I had previously missed; set slightly away in a recessed alcove. It follows the running theme of cold stainless steel; the favoured material for a sterile design. A lockable latch flips easily open for an inquisitive hand...
I find myself shivering in a walk-in freezer and exhaling smoke without cancerous repercussions. The shelves are stacked with bodies on trays, covered with thin paper sheets to protect any remaining modesty. Lists, toe tags and clipboards exhibit impressions of order and organisation, of paper trails and bureaucracy. In the far end of the freezer a dirty green tarpaulin disturbs the array; throwing chaos at uniformity. I lift up a crumpled corner and find a mound of rolled up carpets, black bin bags and plastic sheeting. Just for once I wish for emptiness; to find nothing inside the confusion of packaging. My wish dies in a breath of vapour when I see a frozen hand sticking out of a ripped open plastic sheet.
The hand is raised and motionless in time as if stuck in the act of clawing for the ceiling. Its nails are broken and brittle like ice cracked on a window pane. From a rolled up carpet the crown of a head bares male-pattern baldness; dark and matted with frosted hair. An old orange bucket holds the body of an infant stamped into the base with the force of a boot, its imprint stored in the distended head. Rubbish bags cling with static and ice to the shape of a face; solid and still like a statue in a gimp mask.
I tear at the bag and look into the face. A young woman stares back with pupils of clouds; coloured and textured like solidified cooking oil. I run a finger down her cheek and feel the cold and the smooth; touching what 'is' and thinking of what 'was'. I imagine the warmth of her life, the nervous blink of her eyelids, the moisture from her breath. I touch the paradox of her mouth; a conflict of soft curves and solid frozen matter. It is the kind of face you never tire of studying; an image that tattoos on your eyes and pervades all subsequent vision.
The chapel air vibrates with interrupting voices; a duet of banal and vociferous chatter. Unenthusiastic shoes scrape tracks through the carpet pile.
"...plane into the pentagon, or something... some American building anyway."
"that's mad. A plane?"
"Yeah a plane... anyway this guy... what was I saying?"
"Some guy flying a plane into some American building?"
"Yeah anyway, so he flies this plane into the Whitehouse or something..."
The dull talk rises in decibel intensity; signalling a closer, approaching proximity. Physical laws remain constant and comforting when everything else feels disturbed. I step away from the scene and let the tarpaulin fall. I feel something crunch under my shoe.
"And this is all in this book?"
"Yeah, Tom borrowed it me. Anyway he gives this big long speech about..."
"Is he still in the plane?"
"yep, he's on the plane and on about stuff that's gone on and all that..."
"A plane...that's mad"
The conversation progresses while momentum takes a breather at the curtained entrance door. A handle turns and the boring speech grows ever louder.
"...apparently some guy read this book and blew up a lorry outside some police building"
"that's mad, like, after reading a book?"
"yeah he read it and got the idea and made some bomb out of cow shit or something"
"aww man that's mad, cow shit heh heh!"
"I don't think it was cow shit but it was something like that. But he got the idea from this book."
"mad"
I find a rough chipwood door leading off the main workroom and hide inside before the voices move closer. I hear the blood in my veins and become sensitised to everything that moves. I suck air economically when the climate of sound allows it. My heart beats through my head like a punching fist. Over my lungs I hear the banter of two males and the irritating squeak of metal rollers. In the distance, organ music begins a reprise. Soon, someone else's relatives will be miming archaic lyrics. I will have to sit this one out.
Sing stuff, say stuff, sing stuff, move stiff, the ritual repeats with the priests self-satisfied tones MC'ing the performance. I swallow away my yawns and investigate the cupboard I find myself in. The smells of dust and pinewood struggle in silence against the outside bleach clouds. Broken down coffins stack like self-assembly furniture, brass-look handles and other adornments glint in interlocked plastic boxes. It seems like everyone's recycling these days.
Outside the crying is reaching a crescendo while electric motors hum an accompanying bass line. Through a crack in the door frame I see the two chatting workers, uniformly dressed in paper overalls and blue disposable aprons so thin you could wrap your lunch in them. A new visitor arrives - one equally lacking in conversation skills and lying cold in a shiny pine box.
Muffled through the dividing walls, the priest brings his pitch to closure. The workers watch through the open hatch, while the saline dripping masses organise themselves out the door. As the last one leaves, cheap cigarettes and disposable lighters appear from overall pockets. The men disappear the way they came. When the way is clear I exit the building quickly to avoid getting caught in the loop again. Outside, the chimney still stands dormant.
I walk the crematorium grounds, freshly cut lawns sprout with shaped slabs of stone; marble and granite monoliths marking centuries of forgotten accidents, diseases or crumbling, pissing exits. Segregated areas of flowers and planting fail to disguise this place as a garden; the remotely natural just camouflage the rubbish removal machine. Incinerated or landfill? Wives and mothers make your choice. They say they love you, then chuck you in a box and let the council take you away. Those fortunate enough to be buried here are only designated to natures disposal process; as stone nominated bacteria food. Here is no glorious ending, no wonderful mourning, just the throwing away of human shells; the expended exoskeletons of dead verminous insects.
Wednesday, 22 June 2005
3: Wake Up Dead
I wake up dead; lost in a circling day of relived trauma; a vampiric life sucking memory whirlpool.
My thoughts struggle feebly through a viscous sludge; matted and tangled like a ball of starving gut worms. Ideas, feelings and cognitions wrestle in a futile fight for domination or death. Something moves as if for the kill; inspiration manoeuvring through grease and putrescence - a confused attack - ending in consumption of its own knotted tail. I pull at the head of a singled out notion to extract it from the slithery muck. The mass tightens and strangulates the thought like a constricted bowel.
I cover my self in an old dirty duvet that has seen many better days with evidence remaining. It smells stale with old sweat and desiccated skin cells. Blood and cum stains provide a unique biological pattern of spatter camouflage. I lie half asleep and half way dead, concealed and considering the immediate options:
1. wake up
2. starve, rot and end as a biological print on 'Turin Shroud' duvet.
Waking up suggests some kind of point or reason; placing significance on that extra body stumbling across the surface of the globe. I try to determine the logical reason why slowly dying on the edge of sleep, starvation or dehydration is the wrong thing to do. Real logical reasons are few and lost in a twist of matter and synapse. Invention and imagination will have to move into the vacuum again.
I lie in a bed of stink, pushing propaganda on myself until I am stupid enough to believe it. I lie... I feel consciousness. I feel reality and fear the nothing that it will bring. I try to remember what sugar tastes like, what masturbation feels like, what a car crash looks like. I feel nothing. Memories appear like pictures without meaning; like diagrams in Korean instruction manual. I hear my breathing; deep and regular as a sleeping man's. The sun drops unwanted rays on my eyelids like pecking vultures eager to eat at the insides. I smell my breath; like a farting anus.
A conversation shouted across the street invades my ears. Somewhere a phone rings in the distance. I reason my way into consciousness.
I open a glued down slit in my head and peer at amorphous blurs; checking for movement before committing the full fragile eye. I widen the gap and focus. I see dead spiders in old webs, spiders that have lived, built property and died without being disturbed by human intervention. Dust clings to the webs like dirty flour; creating an undulating snows-scape of dead skin cells and spider parts. I imagine young spiders playing in this snow, throwing dust balls, building dust men and running away screaming from the brittle corpses of auntie and uncle spider.
A telephone rings muffled like a bee in a crystal glass.
The room is a dirty mess; an untouched shrine to sloth and apathy. Clothing heaps carpet a probable floor, a godlike floor; unseen yet unquestionable. A strange blue grey mould peppers the mounds, consuming fibres and creating holes at time-lapse speed. Piles of books and files lie wondering what knowledge they had stored inside to deserve all this. A single large window stabs light through a skin of deceitful curtains. The fabric hangs lazily, disguised as a barrier against the outside world yet flooding in enough light to kick off the day with a migraine.
I feel my head beat with blood; throbbing thick and fast through a bottleneck of weak and overloaded vessels. A string of sounds cut painfully, slicing to the point of vision. The telephone buzzes like hangover sunlight. The grating noise moves my stomach with an acid churning pre-vomit reflex. I kick the phone and answer it just to stop the sensation.
"Good afternoon! I am calling on behalf of Beta Solutions, this is just a courtesy call. How are you?"
I regret kicking the phone, but regret answering it even more. A generic cold caller chirps sham contentment down the line; a shiny grin and empty eyes almost audible through the static fuzz. I consider slamming the phone down but something bad inside makes me play Juliet to his Romeo.
"How am I what?", I answer. Alas not as comical as I would wish.
Somewhere in time some marketing whiz with a 'fun' tie, sci-fi obsession and few friends became aware of general hatred towards hard selling telephone calls. While masturbating over doctored photos of porn stars with 'Wookiee' heads he had a 'eureka!' moment and decreed that all call centres would now pretend to be concerned about peoples wellbeing out of 'courtesy'. This was only empty sentiment and not however a new pro-active branch of The Samaritans.
"Yes ha ha! er... one of our agents will be in your area this week and we were just wondering if you would like a free quotation for..."
He laughs nervously and dutifully returns to the script; a secure warm place where you can leave your morals at the door. I tell him I don't want to buy anything, even though I know he has a scripted answer for that. My voice rattles the words like the last cigarette in the packet, like thunder in a vodka bottle.
"I'm not selling anything sir, just giving you the chance to take advantage of our offer for..."
I tell him he is a worthless corporate scythe that reaps people like corn, that I want to die and die in a public place, that his children will be born without faces. Somewhere along the way the line goes dead but I continue for a few moments anyway. I sympathise with the phone parasites and their thankless work, especially when the alternative is chopping pieces off your hands in a cold dirty factory. The environment is more comfortable and your colleagues are less likely to be banal stink monkeys and the criminally retarded. I did the job myself for a while until I felt it sucking at my soul. I did a lot of things for a while. My Curriculum Vitae is a diverse list of temporary encounters with meaningless activities. I sympathise with the call centre worker to a point but this doesn't stop me from telling them to fuck off. I swear repeatedly at the empty line.
Through the wall a dissonant child screams for attention. It's mother of volume throws shouted replies in a game of decibel tennis; an irritating exchange where only the loudest prevails. It's a resonant and eternal image like the Madonna and child, the chicken and the egg; individually insignificant organisms reaching meaning through dichotomy. I pull the 'Turin' quilt over my eyes and sniff at a stain; scratching the surface to reach live substance. The sounds from the wall are blunted to mumbling audio ooze. Imagined visions of the scene continue like a kicked-in television.
Memory. It is night. It is last night. Shouting, slamming doors and a bed thumping a wall to a rhythmic crescendo. The carnal gasps of fucking colour the air with a damp grey funk. Slugs of salty flesh press themselves into greasy fissures, grunting like rabid addicted zombies and humping in seizures. A telephone sound pierces through time.
It is day. It is today. A bell, an electronic buzzer vibrates in a scarred plastic telephone body lying semi-submerged in a crusting ocean of socks. The ringing grinds like a bone saw; buzzing at my skull like a wasp with a craving for brains. It is consumerism fighting its way in, sonar marketing; winding adverts round sound waves and vibrating them directly into the head. It is punishment for not buying enough, or not selling enough. It was a phone ringing. It stops.
Next door the conversation continues. Two generations of female voices screech at each other with venomous syllables. The screaming little bastard is the perfect advert for contraception... or strangulation; domestic violence and condoms are never around when you need them. The traffic outside sends shivers through the house, and I am comforted in the thought that one day that child will be old enough to take a walk. Sometimes the cure can be more satisfying than prevention.
I take a step on the floor and wade ankle deep through underwear, pocket change, nail clippings, and till receipts. Something alive, something alarmed skips past a toe and disappears into an empty aspirin bottle. I look at an image of a deformed and retarded ape on my wall. I pull a finger through the powdery film coating the mirror and the reflection turns away. I engage myself in sniffing clothes from piles to find the cleanest and more socially acceptable to wear. With time I find a sock or two, a t-shirt saying 'Cyprus!' and a pair of jeans with an ashtray kicked over them. Dirt is always more favourable than smell; you can't pass off dick cheese as a fashion statement.
The telephone rings again; whistling its irritating robo-sparrow mono-tune. Hot blood pushes at the insides of my skull trying to pressure its way into freedom. The telephone rings and the taste of acid fills my mouth. I resist an anger, an ancient instinct to violence and breath cool calm air. 'I am man not ape,' I repeat, letting the vowels resonate through voids and airways. The telephone rings and something breaks as I pick up the handset.
"Hello it...."
A voice screams rasps of word shaped hate, arcing with spit and blackened air. The voice is mine.
"...just er..."
I tell them I am not a resource that can be milked like a cow. I tell them I cannot be described as an alpha-numerical value.
"...yes ah..."
I say I hate everything they stand for, that they do not contribute to society, they suck out the juice and spit out the rest. I rant on.
"...but I..."
Earn and buy, eat and shit; this is not all I am. My possessions are not yours to manipulate away.
"...can you..."
You have no heart, no soul. I will not buy anything you ever produce. I do not want anything you own. I don't care if you don't reach your targets. I don't care if you never get a bonus. If you want something from me you will have to fucking steal it. You make me want to fucking kill somebody. Tell me where you work and I will wreck your fucking building. I will cut your throat and watch you cough out your blood. Fucking die you cunt, I hope you fucking die.
The line softly crackles for a moment.
A pause passes uncomfortably by.
The caller sighs and stutters:
"ah... er... your uncle... he... he died this morning. Hello?"
My thoughts struggle feebly through a viscous sludge; matted and tangled like a ball of starving gut worms. Ideas, feelings and cognitions wrestle in a futile fight for domination or death. Something moves as if for the kill; inspiration manoeuvring through grease and putrescence - a confused attack - ending in consumption of its own knotted tail. I pull at the head of a singled out notion to extract it from the slithery muck. The mass tightens and strangulates the thought like a constricted bowel.
I cover my self in an old dirty duvet that has seen many better days with evidence remaining. It smells stale with old sweat and desiccated skin cells. Blood and cum stains provide a unique biological pattern of spatter camouflage. I lie half asleep and half way dead, concealed and considering the immediate options:
1. wake up
2. starve, rot and end as a biological print on 'Turin Shroud' duvet.
Waking up suggests some kind of point or reason; placing significance on that extra body stumbling across the surface of the globe. I try to determine the logical reason why slowly dying on the edge of sleep, starvation or dehydration is the wrong thing to do. Real logical reasons are few and lost in a twist of matter and synapse. Invention and imagination will have to move into the vacuum again.
I lie in a bed of stink, pushing propaganda on myself until I am stupid enough to believe it. I lie... I feel consciousness. I feel reality and fear the nothing that it will bring. I try to remember what sugar tastes like, what masturbation feels like, what a car crash looks like. I feel nothing. Memories appear like pictures without meaning; like diagrams in Korean instruction manual. I hear my breathing; deep and regular as a sleeping man's. The sun drops unwanted rays on my eyelids like pecking vultures eager to eat at the insides. I smell my breath; like a farting anus.
A conversation shouted across the street invades my ears. Somewhere a phone rings in the distance. I reason my way into consciousness.
I open a glued down slit in my head and peer at amorphous blurs; checking for movement before committing the full fragile eye. I widen the gap and focus. I see dead spiders in old webs, spiders that have lived, built property and died without being disturbed by human intervention. Dust clings to the webs like dirty flour; creating an undulating snows-scape of dead skin cells and spider parts. I imagine young spiders playing in this snow, throwing dust balls, building dust men and running away screaming from the brittle corpses of auntie and uncle spider.
A telephone rings muffled like a bee in a crystal glass.
The room is a dirty mess; an untouched shrine to sloth and apathy. Clothing heaps carpet a probable floor, a godlike floor; unseen yet unquestionable. A strange blue grey mould peppers the mounds, consuming fibres and creating holes at time-lapse speed. Piles of books and files lie wondering what knowledge they had stored inside to deserve all this. A single large window stabs light through a skin of deceitful curtains. The fabric hangs lazily, disguised as a barrier against the outside world yet flooding in enough light to kick off the day with a migraine.
I feel my head beat with blood; throbbing thick and fast through a bottleneck of weak and overloaded vessels. A string of sounds cut painfully, slicing to the point of vision. The telephone buzzes like hangover sunlight. The grating noise moves my stomach with an acid churning pre-vomit reflex. I kick the phone and answer it just to stop the sensation.
"Good afternoon! I am calling on behalf of Beta Solutions, this is just a courtesy call. How are you?"
I regret kicking the phone, but regret answering it even more. A generic cold caller chirps sham contentment down the line; a shiny grin and empty eyes almost audible through the static fuzz. I consider slamming the phone down but something bad inside makes me play Juliet to his Romeo.
"How am I what?", I answer. Alas not as comical as I would wish.
Somewhere in time some marketing whiz with a 'fun' tie, sci-fi obsession and few friends became aware of general hatred towards hard selling telephone calls. While masturbating over doctored photos of porn stars with 'Wookiee' heads he had a 'eureka!' moment and decreed that all call centres would now pretend to be concerned about peoples wellbeing out of 'courtesy'. This was only empty sentiment and not however a new pro-active branch of The Samaritans.
"Yes ha ha! er... one of our agents will be in your area this week and we were just wondering if you would like a free quotation for..."
He laughs nervously and dutifully returns to the script; a secure warm place where you can leave your morals at the door. I tell him I don't want to buy anything, even though I know he has a scripted answer for that. My voice rattles the words like the last cigarette in the packet, like thunder in a vodka bottle.
"I'm not selling anything sir, just giving you the chance to take advantage of our offer for..."
I tell him he is a worthless corporate scythe that reaps people like corn, that I want to die and die in a public place, that his children will be born without faces. Somewhere along the way the line goes dead but I continue for a few moments anyway. I sympathise with the phone parasites and their thankless work, especially when the alternative is chopping pieces off your hands in a cold dirty factory. The environment is more comfortable and your colleagues are less likely to be banal stink monkeys and the criminally retarded. I did the job myself for a while until I felt it sucking at my soul. I did a lot of things for a while. My Curriculum Vitae is a diverse list of temporary encounters with meaningless activities. I sympathise with the call centre worker to a point but this doesn't stop me from telling them to fuck off. I swear repeatedly at the empty line.
Through the wall a dissonant child screams for attention. It's mother of volume throws shouted replies in a game of decibel tennis; an irritating exchange where only the loudest prevails. It's a resonant and eternal image like the Madonna and child, the chicken and the egg; individually insignificant organisms reaching meaning through dichotomy. I pull the 'Turin' quilt over my eyes and sniff at a stain; scratching the surface to reach live substance. The sounds from the wall are blunted to mumbling audio ooze. Imagined visions of the scene continue like a kicked-in television.
Memory. It is night. It is last night. Shouting, slamming doors and a bed thumping a wall to a rhythmic crescendo. The carnal gasps of fucking colour the air with a damp grey funk. Slugs of salty flesh press themselves into greasy fissures, grunting like rabid addicted zombies and humping in seizures. A telephone sound pierces through time.
It is day. It is today. A bell, an electronic buzzer vibrates in a scarred plastic telephone body lying semi-submerged in a crusting ocean of socks. The ringing grinds like a bone saw; buzzing at my skull like a wasp with a craving for brains. It is consumerism fighting its way in, sonar marketing; winding adverts round sound waves and vibrating them directly into the head. It is punishment for not buying enough, or not selling enough. It was a phone ringing. It stops.
Next door the conversation continues. Two generations of female voices screech at each other with venomous syllables. The screaming little bastard is the perfect advert for contraception... or strangulation; domestic violence and condoms are never around when you need them. The traffic outside sends shivers through the house, and I am comforted in the thought that one day that child will be old enough to take a walk. Sometimes the cure can be more satisfying than prevention.
I take a step on the floor and wade ankle deep through underwear, pocket change, nail clippings, and till receipts. Something alive, something alarmed skips past a toe and disappears into an empty aspirin bottle. I look at an image of a deformed and retarded ape on my wall. I pull a finger through the powdery film coating the mirror and the reflection turns away. I engage myself in sniffing clothes from piles to find the cleanest and more socially acceptable to wear. With time I find a sock or two, a t-shirt saying 'Cyprus!' and a pair of jeans with an ashtray kicked over them. Dirt is always more favourable than smell; you can't pass off dick cheese as a fashion statement.
The telephone rings again; whistling its irritating robo-sparrow mono-tune. Hot blood pushes at the insides of my skull trying to pressure its way into freedom. The telephone rings and the taste of acid fills my mouth. I resist an anger, an ancient instinct to violence and breath cool calm air. 'I am man not ape,' I repeat, letting the vowels resonate through voids and airways. The telephone rings and something breaks as I pick up the handset.
"Hello it...."
A voice screams rasps of word shaped hate, arcing with spit and blackened air. The voice is mine.
"...just er..."
I tell them I am not a resource that can be milked like a cow. I tell them I cannot be described as an alpha-numerical value.
"...yes ah..."
I say I hate everything they stand for, that they do not contribute to society, they suck out the juice and spit out the rest. I rant on.
"...but I..."
Earn and buy, eat and shit; this is not all I am. My possessions are not yours to manipulate away.
"...can you..."
You have no heart, no soul. I will not buy anything you ever produce. I do not want anything you own. I don't care if you don't reach your targets. I don't care if you never get a bonus. If you want something from me you will have to fucking steal it. You make me want to fucking kill somebody. Tell me where you work and I will wreck your fucking building. I will cut your throat and watch you cough out your blood. Fucking die you cunt, I hope you fucking die.
The line softly crackles for a moment.
A pause passes uncomfortably by.
The caller sighs and stutters:
"ah... er... your uncle... he... he died this morning. Hello?"
Tuesday, 12 April 2005
2: An Eye Full of Dirt
Looking out of the train window the landscape slowly changes from civilised hills and vertical structures to a flat slab of dirt and plant life. A perfectly straight line rules the division between land and sky like a child's crude painting. Slim roads twist and snake like retarded worms bending at random to avoid invisible obstacles. Old houses, fallen down barns and yards full of rusting junk dispose themselves around in remote and pointless locations. Signs of life materialise in the form of queuing cars at beeping level crossings as human shaped objects wait endlessly on humble and nameless railway platforms. The image is one of a flattened 'Nagasaki' like world razed of life with streams of survivors and refugees making pathetic attempts to flee a deadly radiation.
The truth is as always less glamorous. This is Lincolnshire; a desperate and lonely landscape of horizontal nothingness spattered with the vertical litter of electricity pylons and telegraph poles, standing uncomfortably like candles on a stillborn's birthday cake. This is a flat and banal land of vegetable farms and vegetative people. Those with imagination, intelligence and money attempt escape before roots can anchor them down. This is what governments and authorities consider 'rural': a label that presents an idyllic vision of wildlife, nature and a simple way of life. The truth is always less glamorous. While attention and resources are focused on 'inner cities' as the seeds of all human crime and depravity, this 'rural' area has become a haven for those unwilling to be caught in the net. The 'brain drain' of escapees with any sense has caused schools, councils, police authorities and industry to be the home of all those unskilled, incompetent and unable to find employment elsewhere. Ineffective teachers in ineffective schools churn out an annual spew of undisciplined and uneducated monsters. Ineffective civil servants squander pitiful funding on inefficient practices and bureaucracy. Spartan police authorities starved of imagination, vision and basic equipment pick at the surface of the scab before deciding the effort is not worth the paperwork.
The climate is exploited by groups and individuals, while the substandard administration fails to log, report or notice deficiencies in education, policing and employment standards. Cumulative bungling affects a statistical false positive situation, prompting further cuts in funding and resources. This area is invisibly deteriorating though the inability to recognise and report its own inadequacies.
The landscape scrolls past the window as if on a roller, cranked by hand on a bad 'B Movie' film set. Someone has written 'Fuck' in lipstick on the scratched glass, which almost seems like a subtitle or minimalist review. I smudge the lipstick with my finger to make sure it is not a projected thought. A man with a tattoo on his face and old army surplus parka is knocking back cheap lager three seats away. His belching makes the air thick with the odour of hops, vomit and cheese and onion crisps.
"eh? this the Sleaford train? Eh?"
He says, desperately searching for eye contact. I pretend not to notice or hear him, even though we are the only two people in the carriage. We had already passed Sleaford. The carriage doors swish open like a Star Trek parody and a rail guard steps through the opening armed with ticket machine swinging at the hip.
"Tickets, tickets for Sleaford" he drones, boredom oozing out of every nasal vowel. His top shirt buttons are undone revealing a gold chain and two tone sunburn. A home made tattoo on his wrist exclaims "DAD" in blurred green/black capitals. I imagine him standing in the corner of a room, drooling and staring blankly into space with whitened eyes. Two inquisitive children play skipping games around him and whisper secrets to each other. They wonder what the object in the corner is and notice the letters on his wrist. They spell out the letters "D... A... D..." and look at each other more confused than before.
"Does this train go to Nottin... er Nottingham?"
Face tattoo man dribbles the question as a desperate plea for attention. I imagine him tiny and lost in a department store, crying for his mother and grabbing at any giant adult hand that passes by. DAD taps buttons on the ticket machine looking for answers. I look out the window and their words join into a muffled soup, as if my neglect causes them to be suffocated by murderous hands when out of sight.
The train slows from an uneasy crawl to a free wheeling slither, every rivet and crack now translating through the seat as individual punches rather than the collective vibrations of the previous 'speed'. The green and brown lattice of ditches and fields dissolve into the flat-line horizon as urban industrial parks make an unwanted entrance like a salesman through a pensioners doorway. I look into the gardens of red brick houses backing onto the railway line and see broken plastic scooters and frail cages of self-assembly climbing frames. Bright white UPVC conservatories conspicuously shine out like new trainers on an ageing tramp. A metallic squeak launches into a grating rhythm accompanied by a dull odour of burnt oil and diesel fumes. The carriage dances a convulsive shimmy as if mesmerised by the voodoo drumming of iron wheels over girders and sleepers. I begin to see a town I remember as we struggle round the corner. Much in this moment could shake me with nausea : the movement, the smells, the company but my stomach is instead filled with an unusual tension by the sight of the town. My intestines fight an internal conflict of memories vs. memories; a stalemate match between revulsion and sentimentality. Imagine a sensation conjured by the notion of 'home' with hot food and warm slippers bound tight with a belt of contrasting fear, cold rain and pure hatred. The train grumbles to a stop; complaining all the way in a language of creaks, scrapes and squealing strung out tones. The carriage doors open semi sci-fi style and people wrestle to get in and get out at the same time and space. I sit for a moment and read the station sign as if willing it to change. 'Boston', it reads in flaking sign-written letters. 'Boston', again in the same old brushstrokes. 'Boston', it says in a functional workmanlike tone, always the same, no matter how many times I read it. "Boston sir?" says DAD, as if offering up a fresh silky turd on a silver platter. "Boston, your stop?" he muffles, becoming strangulated again by my ignorance. I read the sign again; 'Boston' - no change. "This is your stop sir" says DAD like a voice out of a cloud. 'This is my stop', an idea I grasped several years ago. This is my stop and I can't get out.
I touch down in Boston, the town where I was born and the symbolic reminder to my lack of progression. Life = movement, development, progression and evolution. Death = stasis. Moving backwards always grates on natural and physical laws. Returning to your mothers womb would be an unpleasant and tasteless experience and in the same way, returning to the origins you left behind can be as uncomfortable as a dark hair in the throat.
I stand on the platform in my interview suit, feeling like a caterpillar in a jar of maggots. Commuters with laptops and cell-phone monologues never get off here. A suit in Boston is always a rare sight, seen only at funerals, weddings and unpromising court appearances. The station is devoid of human life, apart from a flashing glimpse of 'face tattoo man' disappearing into the distance on a much too small bicycle. Unseen pigeons 'coo' a boring conversation as cigarette butts trace circles in the wind. Silence. Relative silence; cars pass in the near distance. The bass of expensive stereos in cheap second-hand cars mumble rhythmically like senile grandparents. All these sounds are only realised through the relative silence now the train has gone, departed, its lights now heading for the horizon. I wonder how long I have been standing here staring and motionless - I check my watch to see if it will give me any answers... 7:14pm and no answers.
I walk the streets of Boston, putting off the inevitable and giving fate and destiny every chance to throw something new my way. Unfortunately fate and destiny never get off the train at Boston. I drift into the town centre kicking at occasional litter and detritus left over from the days shopping frenzy. A gang of seagulls swoop down erratically to pick at chunks of discarded food trodden and mashed into the asphalt until passing cars send the panicked raiders squealing for cover. This is the 'dead time'; the no-man's-land divide between zones of 'shopping time' and 'drinking time': when the town's young blood gets watered down. The only activity comes from the steady stream of 'hot-hatches' and boxy runabouts stopping at cash-machines and throttling away ready for the next session of consumption.
I sit for a while in the central roundabout and watch a middle aged couple kissing and indulging in the kind of baby talk that only an adult could utter. They are both dressed in a style much younger than their years; either an attempt to enthral and capture the opposite sex or to recapture some of what time has gradually stolen. Unfortunately they have sculpted themselves from images and memories of their own past youth; as reflected fragments of Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton dressed in modern chain-store clothing. Wandering hands search for gaps and buttons or accessible flesh. Dolly's hide seems loose, hanging off the bones like the skin of month old roadkill.
I listen to the conversations of passing pub-crawl socialites; the giggling jabber of fat girls performing balancing tricks on vertigo heels and barking males swapping chat up lines and battle orders. In this dialogue only volume is important; in both decibels and word count. Frequently those that shout the loudest usually have the least to say, but unfortunately only in content not quantity. I become convinced that somehow the process of evolution has been set into reverse and wonder what specific event in time was responsible. Was it the invention and mass production of lager or the birth control pill, or is the evolutionary process somehow elliptical; a pre-programmed loop reaching a peak then returning to the foundation? I feel slightly cheered by the thought of all of this reduced to a crude chemical soup and wonder if John George Haigh was in fact a visionary instead of a murdering scumbag.
Elvis and Dolly spring into song surrounded by a chorus line of flabby thighs and Adidas clad legs high kicking can-can style at floating heads. A head bounces to highlight words in a karaoke lyric stream while a sign constructed of burning tyres spells out 'Presley & Parton". A sea of tattooed hands rise to flick the wheels of cheap disposable lighters as Dolly sings an emotional lament:
Yeah! Boston, what are you good for?
Only road deaths? heroin?
Unemployed illegal working and bigoted small town ideologies?
Elvis knee-slides into centre stage and throws shapes with a stringless guitar. A shaking sovereign ringed hand points like a pistol as he drawls a substandard verse:
Ah! ten, twenty, thirty, forty years away.
Listen to the answers, they will always be the same,
Let me tell you of the 'small town' disease.
A car glides in on a cushion of mail-order neon. The Ford Escort's blackened windows reflect distorted versions of twisted faces until virtual normality is reached. A vicious rhythm beats muffled and restrained in the metal shell like a next-door neighbour's argument. A rapid surge of power sees the windows disintegrate into a billion shards, creating a sky full of razor fireworks. The free sound, loose from its mobile bondage enjoys petty liberty by killing the ears of strangers with samurai precision. An eruption of dancers discharge from a fractured sunroof coated in leisure suits and Americana; creating a jerky epileptic ballet of fake sexual positions and urban fight moves.
Out of the troupe a hooded figure self-generates, murdering a tune by riffing and singing clusters of notes when one would suffice. A trail of alcoholic urine drips from polyester and acrylic clothing, forming the word 'COCK' on the asphalt. Scale runs and vibrato dominate the soundscape and somehow, somewhere between the vocal ornamentation, words are heard:
The people adverse to change,
Hostile towards diversity
Insistent against evolution
Critical of Progression
Killing the spirit of civilisation and the social instinct
The ensemble builds with layered repetitions of "Boston, what are you good for?" in overlapping crack whore harmonies. Elvis fakes Kung Fu as overweight women throw dirty laundry in automatic appreciation - seemingly oblivious to the lack of rhyme, metre, or anything in particular. The unarticulated vocal machine intensifies its spiralling perpetual white noise, looping for infinity before unpredictably halting in a tableau of bad breath smiles and detox jazz hands. Fists punch the air and the faces between as 'hi-fives' and amphetamine wraps are exchanged as celebratory prizes. Presley and Parton are robbed, killed and eaten as ritual sacrifice to the lords of chaos, Columbia and for the sake of something to do.
Elvis and Dolly sit giggle-talking and feel-searching each other for erogenous zones. Stray dogs sniff at dropped burgers and then mount each other. I vomit into a discarded kebab carton and head to my brother's house.
The truth is as always less glamorous. This is Lincolnshire; a desperate and lonely landscape of horizontal nothingness spattered with the vertical litter of electricity pylons and telegraph poles, standing uncomfortably like candles on a stillborn's birthday cake. This is a flat and banal land of vegetable farms and vegetative people. Those with imagination, intelligence and money attempt escape before roots can anchor them down. This is what governments and authorities consider 'rural': a label that presents an idyllic vision of wildlife, nature and a simple way of life. The truth is always less glamorous. While attention and resources are focused on 'inner cities' as the seeds of all human crime and depravity, this 'rural' area has become a haven for those unwilling to be caught in the net. The 'brain drain' of escapees with any sense has caused schools, councils, police authorities and industry to be the home of all those unskilled, incompetent and unable to find employment elsewhere. Ineffective teachers in ineffective schools churn out an annual spew of undisciplined and uneducated monsters. Ineffective civil servants squander pitiful funding on inefficient practices and bureaucracy. Spartan police authorities starved of imagination, vision and basic equipment pick at the surface of the scab before deciding the effort is not worth the paperwork.
The climate is exploited by groups and individuals, while the substandard administration fails to log, report or notice deficiencies in education, policing and employment standards. Cumulative bungling affects a statistical false positive situation, prompting further cuts in funding and resources. This area is invisibly deteriorating though the inability to recognise and report its own inadequacies.
The landscape scrolls past the window as if on a roller, cranked by hand on a bad 'B Movie' film set. Someone has written 'Fuck' in lipstick on the scratched glass, which almost seems like a subtitle or minimalist review. I smudge the lipstick with my finger to make sure it is not a projected thought. A man with a tattoo on his face and old army surplus parka is knocking back cheap lager three seats away. His belching makes the air thick with the odour of hops, vomit and cheese and onion crisps.
"eh? this the Sleaford train? Eh?"
He says, desperately searching for eye contact. I pretend not to notice or hear him, even though we are the only two people in the carriage. We had already passed Sleaford. The carriage doors swish open like a Star Trek parody and a rail guard steps through the opening armed with ticket machine swinging at the hip.
"Tickets, tickets for Sleaford" he drones, boredom oozing out of every nasal vowel. His top shirt buttons are undone revealing a gold chain and two tone sunburn. A home made tattoo on his wrist exclaims "DAD" in blurred green/black capitals. I imagine him standing in the corner of a room, drooling and staring blankly into space with whitened eyes. Two inquisitive children play skipping games around him and whisper secrets to each other. They wonder what the object in the corner is and notice the letters on his wrist. They spell out the letters "D... A... D..." and look at each other more confused than before.
"Does this train go to Nottin... er Nottingham?"
Face tattoo man dribbles the question as a desperate plea for attention. I imagine him tiny and lost in a department store, crying for his mother and grabbing at any giant adult hand that passes by. DAD taps buttons on the ticket machine looking for answers. I look out the window and their words join into a muffled soup, as if my neglect causes them to be suffocated by murderous hands when out of sight.
The train slows from an uneasy crawl to a free wheeling slither, every rivet and crack now translating through the seat as individual punches rather than the collective vibrations of the previous 'speed'. The green and brown lattice of ditches and fields dissolve into the flat-line horizon as urban industrial parks make an unwanted entrance like a salesman through a pensioners doorway. I look into the gardens of red brick houses backing onto the railway line and see broken plastic scooters and frail cages of self-assembly climbing frames. Bright white UPVC conservatories conspicuously shine out like new trainers on an ageing tramp. A metallic squeak launches into a grating rhythm accompanied by a dull odour of burnt oil and diesel fumes. The carriage dances a convulsive shimmy as if mesmerised by the voodoo drumming of iron wheels over girders and sleepers. I begin to see a town I remember as we struggle round the corner. Much in this moment could shake me with nausea : the movement, the smells, the company but my stomach is instead filled with an unusual tension by the sight of the town. My intestines fight an internal conflict of memories vs. memories; a stalemate match between revulsion and sentimentality. Imagine a sensation conjured by the notion of 'home' with hot food and warm slippers bound tight with a belt of contrasting fear, cold rain and pure hatred. The train grumbles to a stop; complaining all the way in a language of creaks, scrapes and squealing strung out tones. The carriage doors open semi sci-fi style and people wrestle to get in and get out at the same time and space. I sit for a moment and read the station sign as if willing it to change. 'Boston', it reads in flaking sign-written letters. 'Boston', again in the same old brushstrokes. 'Boston', it says in a functional workmanlike tone, always the same, no matter how many times I read it. "Boston sir?" says DAD, as if offering up a fresh silky turd on a silver platter. "Boston, your stop?" he muffles, becoming strangulated again by my ignorance. I read the sign again; 'Boston' - no change. "This is your stop sir" says DAD like a voice out of a cloud. 'This is my stop', an idea I grasped several years ago. This is my stop and I can't get out.
I touch down in Boston, the town where I was born and the symbolic reminder to my lack of progression. Life = movement, development, progression and evolution. Death = stasis. Moving backwards always grates on natural and physical laws. Returning to your mothers womb would be an unpleasant and tasteless experience and in the same way, returning to the origins you left behind can be as uncomfortable as a dark hair in the throat.
I stand on the platform in my interview suit, feeling like a caterpillar in a jar of maggots. Commuters with laptops and cell-phone monologues never get off here. A suit in Boston is always a rare sight, seen only at funerals, weddings and unpromising court appearances. The station is devoid of human life, apart from a flashing glimpse of 'face tattoo man' disappearing into the distance on a much too small bicycle. Unseen pigeons 'coo' a boring conversation as cigarette butts trace circles in the wind. Silence. Relative silence; cars pass in the near distance. The bass of expensive stereos in cheap second-hand cars mumble rhythmically like senile grandparents. All these sounds are only realised through the relative silence now the train has gone, departed, its lights now heading for the horizon. I wonder how long I have been standing here staring and motionless - I check my watch to see if it will give me any answers... 7:14pm and no answers.
I walk the streets of Boston, putting off the inevitable and giving fate and destiny every chance to throw something new my way. Unfortunately fate and destiny never get off the train at Boston. I drift into the town centre kicking at occasional litter and detritus left over from the days shopping frenzy. A gang of seagulls swoop down erratically to pick at chunks of discarded food trodden and mashed into the asphalt until passing cars send the panicked raiders squealing for cover. This is the 'dead time'; the no-man's-land divide between zones of 'shopping time' and 'drinking time': when the town's young blood gets watered down. The only activity comes from the steady stream of 'hot-hatches' and boxy runabouts stopping at cash-machines and throttling away ready for the next session of consumption.
I sit for a while in the central roundabout and watch a middle aged couple kissing and indulging in the kind of baby talk that only an adult could utter. They are both dressed in a style much younger than their years; either an attempt to enthral and capture the opposite sex or to recapture some of what time has gradually stolen. Unfortunately they have sculpted themselves from images and memories of their own past youth; as reflected fragments of Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton dressed in modern chain-store clothing. Wandering hands search for gaps and buttons or accessible flesh. Dolly's hide seems loose, hanging off the bones like the skin of month old roadkill.
I listen to the conversations of passing pub-crawl socialites; the giggling jabber of fat girls performing balancing tricks on vertigo heels and barking males swapping chat up lines and battle orders. In this dialogue only volume is important; in both decibels and word count. Frequently those that shout the loudest usually have the least to say, but unfortunately only in content not quantity. I become convinced that somehow the process of evolution has been set into reverse and wonder what specific event in time was responsible. Was it the invention and mass production of lager or the birth control pill, or is the evolutionary process somehow elliptical; a pre-programmed loop reaching a peak then returning to the foundation? I feel slightly cheered by the thought of all of this reduced to a crude chemical soup and wonder if John George Haigh was in fact a visionary instead of a murdering scumbag.
Elvis and Dolly spring into song surrounded by a chorus line of flabby thighs and Adidas clad legs high kicking can-can style at floating heads. A head bounces to highlight words in a karaoke lyric stream while a sign constructed of burning tyres spells out 'Presley & Parton". A sea of tattooed hands rise to flick the wheels of cheap disposable lighters as Dolly sings an emotional lament:
Yeah! Boston, what are you good for?
Only road deaths? heroin?
Unemployed illegal working and bigoted small town ideologies?
Elvis knee-slides into centre stage and throws shapes with a stringless guitar. A shaking sovereign ringed hand points like a pistol as he drawls a substandard verse:
Ah! ten, twenty, thirty, forty years away.
Listen to the answers, they will always be the same,
Let me tell you of the 'small town' disease.
A car glides in on a cushion of mail-order neon. The Ford Escort's blackened windows reflect distorted versions of twisted faces until virtual normality is reached. A vicious rhythm beats muffled and restrained in the metal shell like a next-door neighbour's argument. A rapid surge of power sees the windows disintegrate into a billion shards, creating a sky full of razor fireworks. The free sound, loose from its mobile bondage enjoys petty liberty by killing the ears of strangers with samurai precision. An eruption of dancers discharge from a fractured sunroof coated in leisure suits and Americana; creating a jerky epileptic ballet of fake sexual positions and urban fight moves.
Out of the troupe a hooded figure self-generates, murdering a tune by riffing and singing clusters of notes when one would suffice. A trail of alcoholic urine drips from polyester and acrylic clothing, forming the word 'COCK' on the asphalt. Scale runs and vibrato dominate the soundscape and somehow, somewhere between the vocal ornamentation, words are heard:
The people adverse to change,
Hostile towards diversity
Insistent against evolution
Critical of Progression
Killing the spirit of civilisation and the social instinct
The ensemble builds with layered repetitions of "Boston, what are you good for?" in overlapping crack whore harmonies. Elvis fakes Kung Fu as overweight women throw dirty laundry in automatic appreciation - seemingly oblivious to the lack of rhyme, metre, or anything in particular. The unarticulated vocal machine intensifies its spiralling perpetual white noise, looping for infinity before unpredictably halting in a tableau of bad breath smiles and detox jazz hands. Fists punch the air and the faces between as 'hi-fives' and amphetamine wraps are exchanged as celebratory prizes. Presley and Parton are robbed, killed and eaten as ritual sacrifice to the lords of chaos, Columbia and for the sake of something to do.
Elvis and Dolly sit giggle-talking and feel-searching each other for erogenous zones. Stray dogs sniff at dropped burgers and then mount each other. I vomit into a discarded kebab carton and head to my brother's house.
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