Some Enchanted Evening

In love’s landscape we abuse liquor, chase our shadows, and listen to whispers…

The next night was the twenty-third.

“I’m the main man in a 9-piece all drag Creole swing-band”, she said somewhat incongruously to the fat bartender; and it got kind of quiet for a moment. I didn’t believe it could have been entirely true. Or choose not to. The tired stoop of her neck and shoulders made me want to lift a weight for her. But she seemed sort of self-proficient. And I felt way too small to be lifting weights in the wake of one such as she. I could only stare and make believe that she could talk to me. The sneering pot-bellied drunkard to my left put his glistening lips around another glass of whiskey and sneered something no-one caught; which might have been a shame if he hadn’t been cynically deranged.

This joint was a dive.

There was a whole lot of hustling going on.

The looming, over-confidence of the hookers and the pushers, “Hey Big Man, how can I do you?”

The constant brawls over money out back in the pool hall.

The stink of the toilets evident on the dance floor.

The skittish fits of the skint beggar; “Can I ask you a question? It’s not about drugs”

The screech of tram wheels outside, ploughing furrows in the hordes of tourist onlookers.

The vision of the maid of New Orleans slumped in a corner; wondering if she could be responsible for any of this madness.

“Oh yeah, sure” I told the beggar, who by now was in my eye-line. The pushers pushed off when I shrugged my shoulders and the hookers didn’t even walk over for less than a ten.

“It’s very cold and I’m -“

“You want some money?”

“Er, yes”

“Take 5. I think that’s good”

“It is good”

But by then she had slipped off. Can’t blame her. It was a dive-joint.

So the beggar got his coins. The pusher pushed his drugs to some teenage fuck-up pool-playing thugs. The hookers took a couple of slaps. The drinker took a slug. I pushed myself off.

Outside I had to fend off the prying hands of three French hens, two pick-pockets, and an organ farmer who I’m sure was feeling my kidneys up, just to cross the street. The city sure seemed to be in season.

I saw her walk to the nearest canal, and I saw her start to cross. I think I may have seen her stop, before a tram broke my view of the scene.

Anything is possible in this too sordid life. In the time it took for a tram to pass by, I found myself believing I was watching the taking of an all-drag human life. I didn’t believe it could have been entirely true. So I dashed to the spot I imaged, and there was no sign I could discern.

Christmas eve day had broken with a yawn.

That morning I’d heard 169 not dissimilar renditions of ‘God rest ye’, suffered three broken ribs in a crowd-crush outside of Woolworth’s, and drunk myself in to a little pool of caffinated coffee. And bought no more than one present I didn’t need. Which is entirely different to buying any number of presents other people didn’t need. Because that means nobody needs them less than you. And she didn’t need them at all. I ordered another coffee.

Staring moodily at a pointless gift, a somewhat expandable woman’s purse. Staring quietly. Perhaps drooling a little as my mind wanders, struggling to call forth the sound of her voice. To fit it to some new words. To keep it alive, in some new scene.

Maybe she can be the belle of the ball, or an African Queen. A New York doll, or the Maid of New Orleans?

“Each love lost is one step further down life’s path.” She declared to the birds in the park, who took flight. I believed she meant it. Or tried to. The glisten of unshed tears made me want to swim the channel for her. But she was a champion swimmer. And I felt too far adrift to catch up. I could only flounder toward the beach to take up sanctuary in a moment of shared history. The December-wind -frozen, naturists playing tennis all screamed. An ululating screech in unison that had no meaning, for they were all hysterio-maniacs.

This day wasn’t no picnic.

Too many dark clouds looming over yet another scene, yet another possible past.

The main avenue trees have been felled, to save them from the ravages of Dutch Elm’s.

The ice-cream parlour forlornly lays open.

Sense of smell laid raw by frost in the air.

The flitting skits of a life spent together…

Flashing oars in the middle of the lake.

Not only in dreams, but in bars we’d never frequent. Or even here, on an anonymous park bench - visions come and go.

Someone standing up in the boat.

The naturists slip covers on to the heads of their racquets, it pours down with rain and they’re off, in a panic.

Shoes in one hand, bag in the other.

The rain stings and fills my ears and eye sockets with its water. At least my feet are dry as I rush for cover.

The visions come and go; but always play to the same, terribly damp, end.

And over a polystyrene cup of dish-water tea I’m troubled as, out through the window and gristly rain I see one small rowing boat, set adrift and barely afloat…

Christmas Eve night had flown in on wings of vengeance and sat on my shoulder with its talons pinching at my heart. This is how it feels when you lose your shield. This is how it feels when the last match is spent. This is how it feels when a phone rings in an empty hall. No one home. None of the dreaming recaptures her soul. I feel like I’m lifting a heavy weight. And I feel like I’m never coming out of this wake. And as some countless number of maniacs launch again into ‘God rest ye’, and I sleep, clutching a slightly pointless somewhat expandable woman’s purse.

Christmas day thunders and lightening.

The lamps on the tree flash in a way that’s a little bit frightening to the semi-combustible angels strung up and dangling. Twisting in the draughts that near-empty houses always seem to have. Tiny typhonic fingers scrabbling in the corners which used to be lit by life’s loves and occasional laughs. Whipping up pools of shadows of memories of times gone past, until only the histrionics of the angels are left to last. A maelstrom of last year’s good intentions wakes me. And I wake in a typical frenzy. I pull my socks on typically frozen feet, rise and switch off the typical plastic electric tree.

I wonder, how long can it be - that life can be sustained by a cushion of grief? When some day will seem less terrible than the last? When my mind will forget the patterns of the past, and I find it impossible to dream. To dream of a new scene. To keep alive our life as it was before.
Maybe we could fly this world on a perpetual motion machine? A fantastic impossibility or just another impossible fantasy?

“It had to happen, nothing’s built to last” she whispers in my ear, and I take fright. She knows I can’t believe it. I can’t let her ghost live for that consigns her to the past. She’s the swimmer and I’m trapped on the shore. Then she hits me the blast. That I am the haunting, not the haunted.

And still she taps, in the corners of the room. Maybe I’ll have to listen. Maybe sometime soon. Maybe that tapping’ll start to soothe. I almost think that I can learn to gain more than loose. But that’s my belief, in impossible fantasies - and I listen to the drizzle of the rain.

Funeral

I let the ash from my part smoked fag fall into the open grave of the cancer consumed cadaver of my best ex-friend. It is what he would have wanted. His wife spits at my feet, the crone. That is what she has always wanted. Her spittle forms tiny pies of mud I absently kick into the pit so to the cheap veneered wood they stick. A little piece of her bitterness and envy for you to take into eternity my friend. Lest you forget. I say nothing. That act, that look, quite enough. I just smoke, until I've smoked beyond the butt. And in it goes. To expire in a fizzle in the damp muddy pit of a freshy opened grave. 'Now see here'. 'Have some respect'. And other grunts of made up outrage.

Somebody gasps, and drops her bag. And it bounces, once, twice, thrice. And then in it goes. A general bewilderment. What to do? Like dropping a shoe on the track. What to do.

I don't recognise old men. I am blind to them. Nieces and such. Old men, with their faces wrapped in creases and their eyes clouded are a mystery to me. I have no idea who it is, but at his age he should know better than to creep so close to an open grave, no matter what chivalry has to say. Maybe it just seems to be unseemly to leave it lying there. Perhaps if someone had held his belt for him it never would have happened. He almost had it for a minute. Surprisingly elegant fingers twitching inches from the strap. So very nearly did he snag it and rescue the fallen bag. But yawning graves are treacherous and of course in he goes, in he goes.

With a terrible crack and a feeble scream he smacks his head on a finial of brass and lays very, very still. Why do they pad them on the inside I wonder, where health and safety is a concern of the past. Some people gasp. I almost laugh. One bright spark says 'oh my god. We've got to get him out'. The young bucks start to scramble in after him. First one, two then three of them. In they go. In they go.

The coffin lid is slippery and they tumble around as though they were dancing on E to an early eighties acid house track.

'Get his feet' one of them commands.

'Leave him alone' somebody shouts.

'We don't even know if he's breathing'

'if he isn't then he's in the right place'

'could you pass me my bag?'

This last comment ignored as by now the widow is wailing like a wasted banshee. Then the hubbub breaks into a melée with scrambling bodies trying to climb free of the yawning grave. Arms and legs entangled. Feet pressed atop of heads. Elbows in crotches. An evil pulsating mound of mourners under mining under pinnings and subsiding sliding into the hungry ground as one after another they tumble, tumble down - and in they go, in they all go.

Until all that is left is the black handbag perched curiously on someone's twisted broken leg. I look on bemused and light a cigarette. Well old friend, it seems you can take it with you.

"Shall I cover 'em up now?" asks the gravedigger who appears beside me just like I were mister Ben.

I say 'yes', and flick the ash of my cigarette.

Customer Service

Can I help you with that?

I don’t know, can you?

Well, I could. Do you need some help with that?

Some help would be good

Don’t get me wrong, I’d really rather not

Then don’t

But if you need it

I don’t need nothing

Yeah, but if you want help

I said

Yeah I know, you said

I said some help would be good

So can I help you with that?

If you’d like

I wouldn't like

Then don’t

But I wouldn't like not to more than I wouldn't like to if you need -

Want

- want some help

Yeah, I do want some help, but not if you don’t want to

I do want to, if you want me to

I don’t want you to

Why not me?

Because you don’t want to

No, but I want you to have some help if you want some help

I do want some help but not if you don’t want to help

I said

Yes I know, you said you didn't want to

Not if you didn't want it, but if you need it

I said I don’t need nothing from you

You said a lot of things

We both said a lot of things

We did.

I wish I didn't need any help

I wish you didn't want any

I wish you wouldn't

I wish you would

I wish you weren't here

I wish you weren't there

That’s all our wishes used up

That’s us used up

But we were already were

Then I suppose we’re stuck

Well I am

Well we are

If you wanted it

If I didn't need it so damn much

But you do, but you don’t want it

No I don’t but yes, I do

Then let me

It isn't so easy

You’re not so easy

That’s why I need some help with this

All you gotta do is ask

All you gotta do is offer

I did offer

Yeah, you did. Bastard.

Yeah I did. Fucker.

Twat.

Cunt.

DICKHEAD.

A Day In Mumbai

When I woke up that morning I didn't know that at some point in the day my life would be at stake.

It was a typical morning, what with the neighbour's elephant trumpeting me awake as he prepared for the journey to work. I rose and checked my shoes for lizard shit and spiders. A habit I'm still romantically attached to, although these days in Essex it's mostly a case of checking for flecks of cat vomit. At least there's relatively few cockroaches in the pantry. Horrid scurrying scrabbling things, occasionally squishing beneath bare feet. A feeling more sickening than the picking of insects from beneath your skin. In case you were wondering. A typical day on Mumbai's mainland in voluntary exile, age 29 and 3/4.

I'd done 3 months and was in for 3 more. With it being a Saturday I opened my care package and carefully inspected the various wrappings. News from home, impelling me to do something interesting so I can write back with fervour and panache. Friends and family resolutely being not dead yet demanding I give them tales for the grand kids. The goddam cosy England cosseted bastards. S'pose I'd better head out into the heat, see what kind of craziness I can find with these wearied feet.

The hovercraft is phenomenal. Seating 12 in a tiny plastic encapsulated bubble. And thankfully everybody smokes. We're adrift and lost in a choking mist of bidi fumes and harbour stinks. Alien behemoths lurk all around. Wooden cadavers of proud prows bobbing on the swell as we snake in and out. Sometimes a man can feel very small. And at that moment we dock at a wall.

A hundred feet or so of green mossed brick with a tender filament of sea-washed steps leading up beyond your peripheral vision. You don't look up. You don't look down. You don't grab madly for the banister rail that isn't there. You don't stop and wonder how many have plunged and gone irrecoverably under. You just keep out of the way of the others and inch your self to the top of this precarious rock face.

Finally your eyes draw level with the street and you peek over the harbour wall, between cluster bombs of rubbish and trailing trains of feet, mostly bare. You peek across the wide open square and you're astonished to see not India's India Gate but rather the Gateway to India. Quite different things, it seems. Plonked inconsequentially out of place, due to lack of funds no approach road has ever been built to it. No discernible sign that any great journey started or ended there. Except, on that day, for mine. And the other 11 passengers of my tiny craft even now jostling and pushing and barging to be past. I scramble the last few steps to clear the way. Then I stop and for a moment I attempt to hold my breath.

But that's kind of tough with a hundred thousand couple o'million tiny little fingers grasping at your feet. Worse than cockroaches as it's strictly not cool to stand on these. I knew the routine, but the numbers overwhelmed me. As ever I had a pocket full of change for fending off occasional beggars. Having given one or two out I was making little impression on the thronging mass. Needs must. I scooped deep into my cavernous pockets, rounded up a full fist of coins and flung them as hard and as far as I could manage. Fortunately not into the sea. The sight of all those little bodies tumbling over the harbour wall to a certain, albeit cheap, death would have defeated even me. But my way was almost clear, barring scraps and racklings.

I didn't count on the snake charmer or the behaviour of the eunuch however.

The snake charmer was your average tout with a cobra. Now I've ridden elephants and ran from rhinos. Brushed tarantulas from my pants and stood in awe a front of tigers. But I've never seen as sorry a living specimen as that snake in that snake basket. The whole performance took no more than 5 toots on a flute between lifting the lid and then using it as a wicker shield to cram the angry creature back in it's place. Just long enough for me to take a single shot, as I was clearly obliged to do. And that unrequested deal wiped out the rest of my change. At least I wasn't bitten.

The eunuch was a different matter and would hapilly have bitten me if id ever gotten a little bit closer. Tall and fierce. I never expected eunuchs to be fierce, but I guess it makes a kind of sense. You may be wondering how I knee for sure it was a eunuch haranguing me. It wasn't so much the lack of bulge in the skirts as the skirts themselves. Certainly not a transvestism fashion. Never before have I seen a man dressed as a woman looking so unabashedly a man. Possibly the greatest of India's famed contradictions. But what concerned me more was not the lack of dick or balls but more the infernal spitting. This wasn't begging. This wasn't touting. This was demanding money with menaces. As if and as though this person had a right to expect payment in respect of their condition. Perhaps they did. But it was unclear to me what my role in the arrangement should be. I mean, my own dick isn't exactly of Jeff Stryker proportions but I don't expect a hand out on the strength of it. Perhaps I miss the point. Perhaps the eunuch missed the point too. But it wasn't a time for cock philosophy. After two steadfast hours of being followed round the city, spat upon and abused in a language I could just about comprehend I blundered into a saviour.

A simple guy who understood enough to simply hand over some small quantity of cash. He assured me all of the major curses would be lifted. I'd made some bad calls. Sometimes a man can feel very small.

By now it was late afternoon. I'd crossed wide seas on a perilous craft. Climbed a dangerous busy wet path. Avoided a host of gaggling kids. Kept clear of the bite of an angry cobra and avoided the worse of the eunuch's curses. But I still didn't know my life was in peril.

It had been a typical afternoon. Torrential rain that seemed on the verge of washing me down a storm drain. Streets were rivers and people were gasping fish. The bank clerk looked sniffy, until I withdrew my twenty thousand rupee allowance for the month. God I was hoping there'd be no more eunuchs dogging me.

With that kind of cash there was only one thing to do.

The bar was one of my regulars. All lassi and dosa in the respectable frontage but with a back room that housed a blues reggae ska grunge refugee combo. Often we would belt out summertime with my unique vocal stylings. Perhaps that was even the trigger.

But it wasn't the trigger. The trigger was the small piece of metal gripped by the finger of the unto now demure soldier in the corner, sat about two feet from me. Funny, I thought, that they get to take their guns home with them.

I was particularly conscious of my thoughts as the room had turned a deathly, post apocalyptic, quiet. The demure soldier was slowly taking us each in turn in his sights. I looked the rifle barrel full on from a distance of some two to three inches. I was thinking remarkably little at that point.

Then he fired.

The bullet went well wide of me, but took my hearing with it. The bullet went less well wide of the man opposite who had some kind of unacceptable relationship with some member of the demure soldier's family, it seems.

Everybody else had already filed out. The brave bastards. I was sitting so quietly thinking that if I didn't move he couldn't see me. It worked and at least meant I got to see the Indian police diplomats talk him down. Well, that is to say, I got to see a dozen or so poorly dressed coppers rush the room and play all pile on, on the basis he couldn't wield a rifle beneath such a mound if flesh. It worked. They carted him off for a beating.

I sat and finished my drink. When the waiters finally returned so that I could order another they were somewhat astonished. I explained that I felt I was in the safest joint in all Mumbai. After all, what can be the chances of two gun sieges in the same bar on the same night?

It remained one of my regulars, but it was a while before I sang again.