I am on a bus. Maybe a school bus. I am surrounded by all my past lovers, great and small.Fellini and Radiohead wept. One girl, a rich demented tormentor from college, gets up from her adjacent seat and kisses me on the scalp. I feel guilty, like I am trying to provoke all the once intimate onlookers. The bus lurches on and a Leonard Cohen song prayerfully trickles out of the radio. The tormentor makes an elitist gesture like we two are the only ones in possession of the great mans inner heat. I said a frank "No" and nodded my head in the direction of my right shoulder. My nod was in reference to a sincere girl I was involved with on my travels. She sat quietly and alert. I said that " She knows everything about the Man."A despondent scowl hung from the tormentor's face, like she caught someone else performing her one friend winning party trick. I had my hood up and was sitting beside a man. I was talking aloud to the tormentor but tried not to look at her eyes while I spoke. The man was confused and was unsure to whom I was speaking to. I laughed and assured him that I was speaking to that asbestos aura girl over in that seat and not talking to myself. I jokingly said "Kill" aloud, followed by "Kill him" and looked him dead in the eyes. He laughed but I'm guessing out of nervousness. I'm so good I can even make new friends in my sleep. The bus trundled on. I could hear somebody tell a story about how to survive a heavy rain shower. I listened and didn't agree with this man's point of view. He was so adamant about his rain evading techniques that he forced the bus to stop and we got out to test his theory.
DAY: 17th August 2012
Planes dart accross the sky like a needle and thread administered by an invisible tailor then the pure white lines momentarily fade into hostless spinal columns. I sit barefoot, aware of the sights and sounds of the afternoon. Baby wails, spoon hits the inside of a tea cup, white curtain bellows in the wind, far off childrens cries of euphoria erupt, light reflects off a spiders web, nondescript crockery collide, postman makes his way to and fro. I contemplate making a boiled egg.
Now eating a boiled egg. I think about the collection of words separately. Soft as in the texture, boiled as in the process of preparation and egg as in the object. Strange. Texture, process, object. "Oh hello John, how are you today? Oh not so good Belinda, I am Wet Crying Sad." I try to think of other combinations but fall short.
Elis arrives home and we speak aboout our financial situations. I don't get paid until next Thursday so must survive until then. She is paying for college and is in a similiar predicament. I suggest we pool our money together, share food and such. We speak about the abundant fruit flies and how we could consume them. They must contain fruit somewhere. Just think of them as religious angel raisins. We speak about making a film and how it should revolve around us talking and making tea.
She has a packet of Tim Tam's, the Australian Penguin bars, and I tell her about the trick with a cup of tea. She complains because she doesn't like milk in her tea. I plead with her and say the trick is ruined without it. Like a sweaty, bearded Uri Geller going door to door with a bent soup ladle, pleading for eye contact in order to feel human. She holds the cup aloft and says that if she drinks this cup then this event will be revolutionary. If that constitutes revolution my generation is definitely fucked. We perform the ritual.
Get bus to work. Essex Road stop to Kings Cross station.
Walking on the footpath I hear a man shouting "It's not fair. Bankers are taking all our money and it's not fair. It's just not fair" screaming at the top of his lungs. People stand around and stare, laughing and prodding each other. I notice a policeman enter the scene.
Put on the work uniform and can never button it properly. I make small talk with a fellow co-worker from Wimbledon and ask him how does he button his? He says dryly "from the bottom". Friend No. 1 in the bag.
I find out later that I was actually wearing a woman's shirt. I tell him this to quench his sense of my incompetence and he replies with a nice throwaway "What can you do?" Knowing the battle is lost I mumbled "an ill-conceived sex change perhaps." Not only are we going to be friends but we're going to be best friends.
I stand behind a co-worker and he turns and accidentally hits me in the chest. He immediately apologises and I joke that it really, really hurt. He laughs and I go to shake his hand but he tells me his hands are dirty. I tell him to just look at my hand and then shake his head. Friend No.2 caught in my loving snare.
A manager gives me a few pointers about stocking drinks. He says you must make it look like the stock is overflowing. I tell him I could construct a few mirrors which would give the illusion of abundant corridors. He laughs. Higher level Friend No. 3 feasting from my caressing palm.
Clean a table and overhear a young adults conversation on the phone. Nathan Barleys understudy. He talks about having a Sunday roast. Probably an ironic Sunday roast. On Ash Wednesday. He finds it hard to hide his makeshift Machiavellian contempt. Probably made his millions by inventing an app that tells you were the nearest kravat(that doubles as a heroin sling) shop is located.
Started to face off the fruit section. Another manager approaches and tells me were I am going wrong. I agreed and told him I would do better next time. Choking back the tears. Serious strange fruit.
An employee stands up and ambles about due to the blood rushing to his head. I joke that if you're small then the blood isn't a problem because your head is very close to the ground already. Friend No.4 is bathing in my rejuvenating stream.
I walk around the shop and try to look busy. It's crazy that as humans we have to act out this role. Furrowed brows, eyes scanning, lost in thought, like your trying to work out some elusive equation unconsciously through the use of a dustpan and brush. The Orlando Bloom school of acting. Thousand yard stare, anticipating a phantom sneeze that may never come.
See a newspaper headline saying Pussy Riot won't beg Putin for a pardon. Young Tories are saying British people are lazy and need to get off the arse and help England to become a dominant power again. Vomit in my mouth.
I serve a father and his little daughters. One of the daughters is wearing an elaborate and detailed Where's Wally? map t-shirt. Highly inappropriate. The little tease. Maybe this could be used as a cost effective way to capture paedophiles?
Use the public toilets with the infra red motion sensing flusher. It violently splashed me. Perhaps it mistook me for Henry VIII.
Going to the toilet during a lunch break is probably the only time in human existence when using the toilet feels like a waste of time. I should be doing something more constructive with my precious time. Like checking if the soles of my feet are actually weeping.
Woman walks past and is transfixed by my yoghurt. She really stares at it. Hypnotised. Perhaps her mind is trying to comprehend the object by means of it's shape and the more I eat the contents the more her brain is lost. Phenomenology by means of dairy products.
An insensitive thing to say after an abortion: Ta Dah!
I am logged into a till now but have to use another persons card. Her name appears on the screen as a chef walks past. He says "Michelle is a good name". I told him my parents were hippies.
I clean the table of a family that look like a violent bunch of individuals. The father has a red scar darting down the side of his face. He looks like the type of man that would wallpaper an entire livingroom using just his head. I quickly move on.
I try to hide my yawn so as not to arouse suspicion. But the act of cover up makes my yawn look even stranger. From afar it probably looks like I am going through a growth spasm. Or impersonating a mute lion.
Talk to a co-worker who is studying politics. He is from Brazil and looks like he has never had an ounce of self doubt in his whole life. I feel like my forehead is a polygraph my parents attached to my head and then spent my life lying to me. We speak about the world and I tell him about the man shouting "It's not fair" in the street earlier. How we need to come up with a more productive way of protesting. A lone voice shouting on the street is not good enough. He tells me his plans about becoming a journalist and travelling the world. I get the feeling that he thinks he can hypnotise women, could talk a velvet bra off a ledge.
We prepare to close up the shop, sweep underneath the tables and chairs, wash the windows, preparing the fridge for the morning. Two co-workers speak about an ex-manager who was gay. They imitate him and mince around singing "I'm a Barbie Girl", wrists bent. It's amazing how as human beings sometimes to get by we need to nod our heads and chaperone homophobia and misogyny. They told me its fine to joke about it because the manager didn't know they were doing it, they said they spoke in parables. Just like the bible.
We finish up and play a game of spin the bottle were the winner gets a hug. Spin the bottle for determined priests.
Get the bus home from Kings Cross.
Arrive home. Katarina and Martin are watching a film. We talk about fashion, elephantitis, photography, flying squirrels and God's lack of imagination.
I see that Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years. My mind darts back to the solitary shouting man on the street.
No comments:
Post a Comment