Slapshot 3 - Neighbourhood Watch

Polo tube falls apart and I have a pocket full of sugary holes intermingle-mixed with small coins and other bits of dreary debris. Rizla packet falls apart and clusters of sulphite lined paper wings flutter to the ground. Pen dries up and leaves nothing but scratchy marks. Lungs cough up phlegm and blood. Cups run dry. I sigh. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Some days begin with menace and then they end in shame. Some days play it the other way. I’m staring out my window at reflections in the rain. I watch the school pervert watch the kids at play. I watch the crossing lady wonder what to say; and the angry motorists held up on their way.  And in the stormy autumn day the pelican gently sways. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Then across the street a movement out of beat. Something unexpected, unusual, out of the ordinary, not normal, simply weird.

It starts with a single slate at number thirty eight, slipping from the roof. Brought down by the persistent rain. These houses are getting on for a hundred years old. Built to northern European weather expectations of the twentieth century.  Not to typical forty days of biblical torrents over and over and over again. A single slate , slip, slither sliding and tipping over the exaggerated drains bolted on in a futile attempt to adapt, evolve to change and yet to still remain the same. I watch it tumble towards the ground.

But then nothing. No fragile splintering shattering smash. For a moment I wonder, did it fall on grass. But then I remember, grass is a phenomena of a phenomenal past. The tile blinked, completely from existence. Looking to the roof I see a beautiful twinkling patchwork quilt of that that yet still is and that which never did exist. But this house is no empty shell.

The body count is six. Or would be if there would be bodies left to count. But that’s not the nature of The Blink. Pam and Dave. Siblings Britney, Courtney, Alex and gale. I scratch out the phonemes of their names with a pen with no ink, embossing the page of the ledger. An almost runic form intended to withstand the oblivion of The Blink. To preserve this once great civilization of man. Minus six, October eleven twenty eleven. Four million nine-hundred and thirty seven thousand  seven hundred and seventy five remain, worldwide.

The shadowless penumbra seeps outwards, leaving in its wake a hole in the memory of those who’d ever cared to look upon this place, and a rune in a book that may or may not survive. Until, I am the Cheshire Cat. But with a blank expression on my face. With no support to hold it there in its right and rightful time and place, as I too become a victim of The Blink. With no one who remembers me enough to scratch my name. I sigh. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Slapshot 2 - Empath

Shiv was glad to sit down. He’d been knotted up inside since the hold-up, not even the pleasure of Nico’s slap had unwound him. Normally he’d have revelled in that, but guns made him nervous. Now he slumped in an old upholstered grotesquery of a chair. He knew it was alive with bugs but the feel of a material weft pleased him.  He said he liked the organics of it. Others said the organics of it liked him. He absently picked an armoured scurrying thing from his forearm. He wondered what kind of creature ate this. Everything gets eaten.

Nico preferred the floor.

She shuckled her jacket from her slender frame and allowed it to languidly slip to her feet. Languid shuckling, one of the many benefits of engineered materials. Any girl can strip as though she had the grace and favour of Monroe. Not that Nico needs such gross tactics, she just likes the way the cloth folds itself neatly beneath her as she sits.

And as she sits she sighs. And as she sighs she weeps.

Shiv feels sick. Her tears do that to men, even him.  He doesn’t touch her.  If he did he would lose his mind in the labyrinths of grief she carries. She’s infectious like that. And the simplest things, like getting mugged with what was almost certainly an empty gun, would trigger her.  All of her days and all of her nights were spent subconsciously absorbing the petty hates, worries, fears and dreads of those around her. That’s why they don’t go out so very much. But today had been special.

Today is an anniversary. Shiv tries not to dwell on it for the fear that his mind will further poison that of his sister. They had set out atthe appointed time, as they did every year. Walking. Nobody with sense, or without a firearm, walked these days. But that was how it had always been, how they had always done it. A short walk up a steep hill to one of the few green patches left in a carbolic city of cut throats and chancers. To buy flowers and stand for a few empty moments. To take a refuge in the stillness of dead minds. The last gift a parent can give to one such as her. Sometimes cut stems do have healing powers.

This year they didn’t even make it there. With no money, no tribute, she wouldn’t go on. She wouldn’t take without giving, not even from the ten year old corpse of her father. Now she lay approaching a trauma state. Depression they used to say. But it is the old curse of the empath, in a city of 20 million dark thoughts.

Shiv puts out the light and takes his own screaming mind from the room. He can only be of help by being elsewhere.  But that’s this city’s life all over.

Slapshot 1 - Shabby

Jacket and trousers are both pinstripe but the one is quite dark and the other too light to ever have belonged to just the same suit. But what really disgusts is that tight covered drum of a hairy pot belly protruding above the totally tight expandable cloth of your waistline. Straining to constrain it your shirt spreads open between buttoneered buttons in a vertical series of leering slits. Revealing a web of purple veins on patches of ruined skin and a grey disappointing treasure trail of matted hairs with sweat baked in.
The shirt is a blue and white checked cheesecloth, the kind I'd donate rather than buy from a charity shop.

But then you've got at the very least, the shiniest shoes upon your feet. I guess you notice those too readily, what with that used up middle aged man's stoop. Your eyes they are bright and your nose it is wet. So although you are altogether undeniably shabby, there's a flickering in you that betrays a sense of humanity. Just some muted subtle clues. As though you were born human.

That camera over your shoulder looks as though it has been through a war.
Top of the range but now like you battered and abused. The rubberised casing has peeled away leaving a webbing of gum that has since picked up layers of grime and dirt and the squashed bodies of occasional bugs. A sign that you work hard, or that you squeeze every  drop of life out of the the things that are around you? And of course, your phone is an android. Machines serving purpose. Not bestowed with the love of an enthusiast. Rather, rigorously daily put through their paces. Sunglasses perched atop of your head. Nesting in the thinnest part of a once magnificent mane. Expecting to be on street corners most of the day earning your bread. I'll wager paparazzo.

At Oxford Circus we all squeeze off, a fleshly mass as one with each struggling bumping jostling to break free and take flight up the stairs. But you're more toad than sparrow. Lumbering along, one of your own wide thighs knocks the cap of your camera lens off and it clatters all of the way back down the stairs. I see you weigh up it's relative worth versus the effort of trudging after it against the tide. You're about to turn your considerable bulk when some fey young boy picks it up and passes it back. You take it in awkward stubby fingers and as hand brushes hand a spark of memory ignites.
Of a young a fiercely hopeful man determine to carve out a space and a name for himself. Of a time when you still had ideals and belief.  With mean piggy eyes betraying the shock you extrude something close to a smile. "Nice camera", the kid says.

Despicable

Whilst there are shit days and less shit days, Mondays are always the former. After a good twenty minutes of deleting e-mails on various tedious subjects I'd decided it was time enough for a cigarette. Most of the lifts are fucked. Most of the lifts are always fucked. The building crumbles. Air-con circulating the damp diseased breaths of a thousand wheezing co-workers. Christ, it's disgusting. Now I'm stuck making small talk with some rat boy punk from the eight floor as the steel chamber creaks and grumbles itself to ground. What the fuck is he blathering on about? Then I'm irritated to realise a smile and a nod isn't going to cut it. All of a sudden rat boy is in a floods of tears. Something about a friend dropping dead. Dammit, I never get those kinds of e-mails. News that's at least good for a morning off. I don't say that. When the doors groan open I let him stumble out ahead of me so I can cut off in the other direction with a vague "chin up" or some such crap. Half way through my tab I get suddenly angry. Fancy putting me through that. Sharing such a thing as if and as though I should give a damn. Why didn't the cunt take the stairs? I fucking hate Mondays.

Back at my desk and of course I find there's no chair. One of the grunts is visiting the lank haired squint eyed freak of a programmer that nabbed the window seat next to me. They're deeply engrossed in some discussion about recursion. Neanderthals. My look of disgust must penetrate the dullness of their minds because Freak looks up and says "Oh, do you want your chair back?". Do I want my fucking chair back. No, I'll fucking stand. That's why they pay me fifty fucking grand a year. "Nah, I'm cool. I've got a meeting in a minute anyway" I say sweetly. The grunt didn't even look up.

Just time to delete a few more e-mails, but one catches my eye. It's from rat boy apologising for, and elaborating on his mental breakdown. Jesus, the conscientious little tit didn't even take the morning off. Just spent five minutes blubbing in the car park. That must have been some friend, to have moved him so completely. I dash off a reply so that there's an electronic trail recording what a nice guy I am.

The meeting will be interminable. I'm only going because it kills the hour before lunch. It's our team's daily review, which, by the way, freak is supposed to attend. He's too engrossed to make the connection through.

Daily review. Some American abortion the chiefs all think is terribly progressive and bound to promote team feeling and productivity. How they think standing around with this bunch of psychos, prats and peados is supposed to enhance productivity is beyond me. And yes, STANDING around. The meeting room has no chairs. That's supposed to ensure we get straight to business and don't hang around chewing the fat. The whole daily review is supposed to take about 15 minutes but it invariably drags out to the hour. There's always something worth bitching or carping about.

Johnson takes the lead. That's not his name but it's the kind of can do prick that he is so it's what I call him. It does confuse him. Then there's Squealer, the one who's bound to keep this charade going. Pretty Boy, who clearly fancies snapable scrawny dirty boys since he backs Squealer up in everything he says. Freak, in absentia. Toad, Fuckwit, The Dame and me. Eight solid guys. All pulling in the same direction for the good of the project, the company, the queen herself. Yeah, right.

"Morning Team" bellows Johnson in faux joviality. I know that 'Morning Team' means 'look at ME now, because I'm in charge and if I tell you to bend over, take it up the arse and say thank you that's exactly what you're gonna do'. He never leaves it in any doubt. And they all pipe back "Morning Johnson," in unison, 'please rape my arse'. I say nothing. I never do. The devious bastard doesn't even mention it any more.

Then he did it. He swept his beady eye round the room. Letting his gaze fall on each in seemingly random order. Probing. Seeking a weakness. Toad thrusts himself forward in a lurid twisted manner. Keen to please the master. Toad was the kind of human flotsam that is left when parents look disappointedly at the child that they did not abort. Toad has a hard-on.

Today he goes straight for the money shot and asks Squealer for a progress update. Asking Squealer when something will be done is guaranteed to bring on a force 9 tantrum. I'm going to enjoy this. Squealer is a dirty bastard. Not in a good way. I don't mean he'd fuck anything with a hole like The Dame would. He's not a sleaze, more a tramp. He's the kind who gets pissed, sleeps in his clothes and rolls in at maybes 11 stinking of BO. He hardly knows the day of the week let alone the progress status of his crappy tasks. Hang on though, what's the treacherous little twat saying in his whiny scouse accent?

"...you can't expect me to code that, the architecture's just a joke"

"I can see his point," this is Pretty Boy of course, foppishly brushing his hair from his brightly flashing eyes, "I mean aren't we building on the bleeding edge?"

Yeah, that's my job they're talking about. The weasel's worming out of it by blaming me, and Pretty Boy is giving him credence. I'd quiet happily kill the cunt.

"I've worked in every conceivable dialect from hand coding binary strings into PLUs to holding a narrative dialogue with an Ada compiler...", you cunt, "...I'm certain the framework is solid and achievable."

As solid as the fag packet I scrawled it on anyway. Johnson says something about taking Squealer-Weasel through it later. Just what I've been avoiding. An hour locked in a cubbyhole choking on his stench explaining shit neither of us gives a damn about. I really could kill the cunt.

It rambles on and on. The Dame is worried about the holistic whole. The Dame is always worrying about holes. Fuckwit keeps saying stuff nobody gets, but it doesn't matter because we all know, without talking about it, that he's going to get the axe any day now. I'm just starting to figure how long I can spin lunch out when Johnson's closing bulletins strike my ears.

"...so that'll be team drinks in TC01. We're cleared to charge two pints a head on account."

A warm and appreciative round of applause for this magnanimous gesture. Makes it all worthwhile. TC01 is the team's hilarious joke where they pretend the pub (a pit of seething media whores, The Cock) is actually another one of our meeting rooms. Ha ha ha ha ha ha aaargh. The funny bastards.

I take the stairs to escape to lunch. No chance of small talk or of getting caught up with one of the execs wanting to discuss over lunch some hair brained half baked scheme their two year old burbled out. No one clocked exactly when I left, which should help swing an extra twenty minutes. Or so.

Walking down to the little known haunt I hang out in there's one of those cripple beggars littering the pavement in front of me. The kind where you're not sure what country they're from or what language they're trying garble or if the legs are real or if the crutches are fake. It has a piece of filthy cardboard hung from it's neck saying 'hungry'. As I walk past it grabs a hold of my leg and I almost vomit at the touch. I pull free and I'm about to give it a quick kick when a funny thought strikes me. I scoop a handful of change out of my pocket and scatter it across the road. The tramp spits towards me, which I sidestep, and wastes no time clambering up onto his false crutches with his real legs. With a sneer I walk away, calling back

 "If you want it you can fucking walk for it you starving cunt"

Some old biddy tuts. I wonder if I should watch my language a little more, nah, fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. The long and the short and the tall... The fat, the skinny, the old, the young. The smart, the thick, the kind, the cruel. Especially the kind. Especially them. Mind, I'd fuck a nun. Just to see the look on the repressed slapper's depressed face.

Three pints four tabs. That should fortify me for an hour with Squealer-Weazle. Walking back to the office I get caught up in some crowd milling about muttering and rutting and clattering on to each other around a cordon, a cop car, and an ambulance. 'Some poor old beggar run over by a rubbish truck'. I don't even know why they bothered with the ambulance. All of a sudden I feel like public enemy number one. It feels quite good. For the first time in months, I break into a warm and genuine smile. It's not hungry now, is it.

In an unusually good mood I spend an hour fiddling with omnigraffle, knocking up the sweetest architectural map this bunch of grunts have ever seen. Totally wasted effort, but hey, they are buying drinks.

The meeting goes exceedingly well. So well I really, for a moment, really wished I cared. The map clearly blows the snot nosed twat's mind.

"I get it," he says pointlessly, "it's like this beautiful, er, thing. You must have a beautiful mind man". Say what? Is he coming on to me now? It's obvious Pretty Boy wants him, but I always assumed this dull fuck was androgyne. His head stuck too far up his soft interfaces.

"I wish you could spend more time taking me, through this stuff". Definitely a beat there, after 'taking me'. He's a goddam gay. Then a funny thought strikes me. I can Barrymore this cunt. I'm going to Barrymore this cunt. 'Oh no officer, I was upstairs sleeping'.

"Well, Adrian," his given name sticks a little in my throat, "we can talk through some of the principles over that beer tonight. Might take more than the approved two pints though haha". His feeble mind recognises something friendly and the sap beams, positively beams at me. For good measure, I tip him a wink and he floats off somewhere. I hang around a while, pretending like I'm working. When I finally emerge Pretty Boy is there, looking daggers at me.

Wrapping the day up at my desk to be sure to get down the pub good and early when all of a sudden I feel a pair of arms thrown around me. It's rat boy. On the verge of tears again. "Thanks so much man", then he damn near kisses me. My e-mail missive obviously touched him. During all this Squealer-Weasel is looking on in awe. I give him a 'what can you do' arch of the eyebrows and a little firmly disengage myself.

"Pub", I command.

Johnson's blood pints slither down quickly and just as quickly Toad, Freak, The Dame and Johnson himself make excuses and crawl off to whatever sorry hovels they shit in. Leaving Fuckwit, Pretty Boy, Squealer-Weasel and me.

Time to kick this up a gear. 'My round' I declare. Pints and chasers. Several rounds. Enough rounds to find Fuckwit falling of his chair in the middle of a raucous chorus of Wonderballs by limp fucking Madchester karaoke stars Oasis. Pretty Boy, who hates me but not as much as I despise him, makes a big fuss about it. By now Fuckwit is cradling his head in Pretty Boy's lap. Pretty Boy is torn between leaving his long term quarry in my company and corrupting the imbecile. 'Take him home and make him gag on your cock like you want to.' By the expression on his face I considered I may not, have only thought that. Pretty Boy flashes Squealer-Weasel a look but he's just giggling like a naughty school boy and looking at me as though I were Spartacus. That's probably due to the special mixer I've been feeding him most of the night. A good tun's worth.  Pretty Boy looks at me and his face drains of colour. He looks at me as though he knows I am going to kill tonight. He bundles Fuckwit up and mumbles as he stumbles out the door with his silver medal. He's such a pussy, he can't even piss with a hard-on. And we both know it. For a moment I regret deciding to do Squealer-Weasel over and think Pretty Boy deserves it more. But hey, you know, softly softly... I know I have a catch-up in the diary with that cunt soon.

"What we doing now boss?", the little shit has started calling me that. Wise fucker.

"Time for something hardcore trooper?", I ask him knowing the very suggestion is going to make him say yes.

We cross the river over Victoria bridge. Half way I stop and light a cigarette. He stops a few feet ahead. I give him a long and searching look until he starts to feel self conscious. Blushing and squirming a bit. And at just the right moment, just as a girlish giggle escapes his lips, I make a suggestion. "why don't you walk along the wall", I ask. There's no way in his state he's managing that. It's fifty fifty which way the cunt falls. With no more than that, like a puppy dog, he bounds up and runs, RUNS along the wall of the bridge hopping niftily off at the end chanting "triathlon champion". Fuck it.

But it's okay. I'm going to Barrymore this cunt. We slip down a back passage and I spark a joint. His brain's already liquified but I reckon a whitey in the mix can only help. I pass him the spliff and say "take it deep back" and I watch him intently. His sallow eyes closing languidly. His hollow cheeks sucking so far in that his head takes on the essence of a skull. As though it had been peeled and bleached. As though he'd had a fucking wash for once. His little belly inflating as he inhales. His knees buckling. "Easy trooper", I say steadying him, 'there's the end game yet.'

According to the club rota it is naked night. I had over a tenner and wait for change. It's that cheap a joint. Steadying Squealer I catch the doorman's eye. He knows there's something wrong here. Handing over two complimentary condoms he gives me a look that says 'whatever you bring here, you take away'. I nod imperceptibly and the door lock is released.

The place is a heaving mass of naked flesh barring the occasional gimp mask. Squealer, in his groggy state is agog. I strip quickly. Then I go over to squealer and pluck the condom sachet from his fingers, discarding it carelessly. Looking him cooly in the eye I hold him up while he peels layers of rotten clothes from his skinny skeletal frame. A fat man, somewhat akin to a walrus,  looks over. I give him my Paddington stare.

As I lead Squealer the long way round the club we pass various captive devices. All occupied by slaves, fuck pigs and cum buckets. Deeper into the caverns there are less savoury sights. At the far recesses we pass down a narrow corridor that is wall to wall with naked gimps. Chained in place by their masters and mistresses. Each and everyone with a discoloured engorged rapture. At times I feel as though I am a blind man stumbling down a rat tunnel of razor blades. Then I find an empty room.

Barn doors hanging limp offering scant seclusion, but it is adequate. Damp flaking walls, the building is crumbling. Dry crystal patches on the floor as a reminder or a thousand spilled juices. And a sadly sagging middle aged bondage rig with frayed ropes and cracked leathers. Squealer is beyond suggestion now. He simply mooches along muttering the thoughts of a feeble mind. It takes minutes to string him up, even though I have to fashion the ligature for my self. I am about to leave when a funny thought occurs to me. I pick a scab of plaster from the sickly walls and not too carefully scratch a word into Squealer's arse cheeks. It says 'hungry'. By the time I walk out he's already red in the face. There's a solid framework for you, you cunt. Before I even clear the gimp line I spy a beast head the way I have come and Squealer lives up to his name. By the time I am dressed and heading out the general screams have started. Perhaps tomorrow I will have that catch up with Pretty Boy.

Raising the Roof

I had always wished that something great would happen to me. To me, at me, in me, or with me. I wasn’t overly fussed. I just wanted to be brushed by the greatness I felt I must be owed. I guess that sounds a little naff, which is why it is something I don’t say out loud. So very often.

But you know how it is. You were never one of the kids who would hang out on the street playing rounders with the gang. You were never quite applied quite enough, to quiet play leader board in the school chess club. You were neither that, nor never quite this. And it has never been, them and us, but rather them, and them, and me.

I didn’t settle for a job in an office, envious of window seats and fans - at least, not immediately. And even when I did it was okay because it was always different for me. And although I’ve done it for twenty odd years, I’d never converted it into a career. Except for once, almost by accident. I’d behaved like a cunt, like I ever do. But she was there to remind me, to help me to re-ground me. As she ever is.

At some point, I had fallen in love. And I knew it was real for I’d never seen it coming. It’s just that one day I saw her in trouble and I fought the mountain to be by her side with a strength and a ferocity that I’d only had before in cartoon style self portraits - not in any sense, could I ever have believed, might really ever have, ever been, ever really real. This was new to me. New and strange. These things I’d always believed were true, but always believed were far too much to touch, had all of a sudden, suddenly touched, me. Love, courage, strength, all of a sudden I was some kind of a man. She makes me bloom, so it seems.

It is never quite as dramatic in the living as in the telling, what life ever is? I could talk about wiping clouds from my eyes in the highest of the high Andes. Or of dodging bullets in backroom clubs in the darkened alleys of India’s Chandigarh. Or of escaping horny rhinos at mating time. None quite as dramatic in the living as in the telling. But I have been touched by awe. And I have been touched by fear. Is it a wonder I’m waiting to feel greatness massage not just my ego but also my id? I fear, I am going to be terribly well admired, one of these days.

Such a curse, having to live up to a rep you don’t yet get. But you can’t dream that Greece may yet be free, not these days. Not without about 300 billion Euros to buy them out of gaol. And however much we love the fall or how high we love to raise the roof; it is hard to be a hero in this world, in this truth. What is a writer without that, without heroic acts – typically a booze hound, a fey and wanton whore? Or a bookworm, a tedious grey and uninspired bore. Who’d choose that? But there aint no way I’m going to go to god forsaken Afghanistan to fight either with or against the Taliban. There is no longer glory in liberating man from man. My heroes all got it wrong, but I mean, thank fuck. Imagine if you’d had to follow in the steps of giants, if the best you could do was to arrive in another’s Nirvana along a path well trod. But for all of that, you’re left wondering, where are today’s heroic acts?

So in the interim, when I should be writing or living nobly, earning my stripes as the unnamed man, instead I write up a sizeable bohemian beautiful tab at another faded-to-be-fabled Formica faced bar. Flirting with the city in his or her night clothes, whatever side of the road you chose to walk. Feeling formidable. Feeling that the world will bend to your will, because you will, write it so. Yet for all of my thinking, for all of my smarts, for all of the fights in the past I have won, I’m just some guy, sometimes, stumbling in the dark. There are some bullets you don’t dodge. Somewhere in the midst of these kinds of musings I’m aware I’m no longer alone. The vulture has come. My thoughts have created a creature in me; made me myself some Prometheus. For a moment I am bound, transfixed by this unlikeliest of things. A thief’s hands touching, rolling, probing, groping – at me. Fingers under ribs, thumbs brushing nipples. You can’t be touched like that without some sense of sex, he’s a dirty bastard, the kind who’d finger frot the frenulum of a fucking dog – if someone said there was a pound in it. And all at once it is done. He is gone and I am robbed.

Of course I don’t I can’t leave it there. I won’t be bound by one life or another. I won’t live in fear in a case of them and me, but rather of them and them and us. And if in over-reaching so I get knocked down then I’ll get up. And therefore so to find some small heroic act. Just to live my life unbound and to raise high the roof beam