Balloons @ Festevol, Liverpool: 25.09.09

Experiencing Balloons perform is like jovially skull-fucking a lobotomised cosmos – ethereal-wackjob-synth-sensualities thunder out amonst off-kilter time signatures which will slur your limbs into a delirium of twitching joy.

Set opener ‘I’d trade it all in for a hawk’, is testament to this – a jiving, dooms-shanty of pure psychotic genius that makes the audience erupt into a delighted, disordered mess. When the escapist-circus-fuckeries of ‘Part Hideout’ follow out, it has the effect of a bumper-pack of Smarties on a toddler, and riles one group of teenagers in particular into an over-excited, pogo-dumb, flailing mess – the likes of which haven’t been seen locally since Kerry Katona ‘sorted herself out’.

The set develops in much the same way – propelling itself forward with excitingly unpredictable gusto – relying on a sound which is as varied as it is consistent and experimental without abandoning the realms of its own specific, peculiar idiosyncrasies.

Ocarina hears the five-piece hit on Joy Division territory, exhibiting some impressive dual vocals and a gut-pounding stomp of an ending, whilst the epic, jaunty dramatics of AV 10 Broncho demonstrate the bands odd talent to produce a song that could be played at a disco-after-party for the premiere of a wartime docu-soap about spy-planes.

Amongst a revelry of body-popping-synth-moves and caterwauling-power-fists (bring back the power fist, we say) Balloons manage to blend the majestic with the truly disconcerting – the unnameable and the curios. The audience are lulled into sublime states of dreaminess only to be suddenly mauled by fantastically devious barrages of noise – kind of like getting attacked by a raptor in the middle of a sweet shop.

Ending somewhere around the organ-grinding psychosis that is ‘Old Anatoli’, the crowd is an ear-to-ear united grin – a fuzz of over-excitement and inexplicable, corrupt dance moves. Basically, Balloons are like a serotonin-Viagra, and if you didn’t leave this performance with a unending smile the size of King-Kongs cock, then you’ve obviously lost the will to live.

Zipper Dreamscape

What have I done?!

Sleep-self-harm –

I thought I was a snake –

that it was time for a new

garment of flesh.

Take the old to market.

Zip lines like

train tracks – my

face my throat my

left eye bulges out

out out from it’s

zippered frame

like stitches like

insect spines like

tube maps like

tyre marks like

bites. Gorge.

Little teeth on me like

Scowls Little scarlet scowls.

Little blistered tongues like emotional

Acne.

I think I just wanted to

Give you my flesh.

8.15 Dreamscape

8.15am: Wisecrackin workmen outside me window. Rattlin chains like slaves for attention I slip into a dream where I’m The Red Queen and I’m playin croquet w/ their heads, and everytime they bang their metal, it’s another hard hat – another head – kicking the bottom of a bucket.

I wake myself up,

Cackling (fuckers).

15.11 dreamscape

Paid! Made!

He hands you your wage – says he not sure when or if it’ll even happen, but when it does, just go with it.

Just think of the money, he says, just think of your family.

Death market.

It’s a big boat – we’re herded like flies are herded by a storm.

Starts.

Susie – smash – brain and bone from the 25^th floor & down down down – boom! Splat! Millionaire.

Wood chipper – piece of old gristle – grinding the cranium loose from a 52 year old. Rich rich. His daughter can finally buy herself one of those bags all the celebrities have.

Six-oblit(erated) in one – menagerie of forced fate – elevator shaft droppin fast. Blast. Boom - cut em loose! Dropped like a glass from the hand of a drunk.

The solution was simple, really.

Jump off!! Escape!! Abandon ship!!

Men flailed and sank into the deep, blank depths of the ocean. Pulled under by the ships motor like a pined for lover – human dandelion ‘gainst the ships blades.

I decide not to do that.

Walk out the back route.

Call for a taxi.

Obvious really.

Said, ‘fuck this…you can stick your money…’

And me - the only survivor!

...and poor, so fucking poor.

Tori Amos @ Manchester Apollo, 6th sept

Tori Amos’ stage entrance is typical of everything you’d associate with the flame haired poster girl of idiosyncratic, sexually scathing, choir-girl rock. Sashaying out before the audience to the first strains of current album opener Give, she takes a humbled bow reminiscent of a middle-eastern priestess and writhes majestically before her piano. The performance sets a high precedent for the rest of the gig – the piece is terse and teasingly restrained, but alarmingly powerful nonetheless.

Straddling her piano (which, for the record, she plays with the intimacy of caressing an old lover – personifying the instrument in a manner which can be deliriously witnessed in a number of equally baffling interviews with the performer), she is torn into a near Christ-like disfigurement when she also reaches behind herself to play the synth at the same time, looking like a woman in the midst of a ménage-a-trois.

The opening of the set is quite spectacular in fact, with Caught a Little Sneeze and fan pleaser Cornflake Girl pared down into grimy and intimate dalliances of raw, intuitive passion – the likes of which Amos is celebrated for.

Sadly, the set grows weaker from here on in. There’s an unsettling arrogance to Amos at times which sees her grimacing at the audience with what appears to be a sinister sneer of delight, and she has a habit of addressing the end of a truly amazing song with a jester-like wave of her hands that smugly begs for more adoration than is particularly necessary.

Some songs, particularly those off Boys For Pele, which are undoubtably some of the best of her career, get lost in a meandering middle-of-the road monotony which endanger the middle of the set with a samey-lack-lustre quality – for a woman famed for her talent of the provocative and the damning, it’s a shame that she ends up wearing the same job-worthy expression of a woman darning a pair of socks. Even worse is when she attempts to overcome this mediocrity by grinding her crotch at the audience in the middle of a song and looks far too rewarded by the onslaught of wolf whistles that inevitably follow.

However, she does bring it back, with what is truly a heart-achingly brilliant version of Putting The Damage On, in which breathlessly repeats "Boy, you’re still pretty…" and manipulates her lean, red dress Jessica Rabbit figure to full effect for the cheekily suggestive The Power Of Orange Knickers.

But it’s Precious Things that truly saves the day. A veracious, heavy-as-fuck rendition of an already hard-hitting, bitter edged song – it’s as dramatic, enlivening and angry as it deserves to be heard and serves to demonstrate everything there is to love about Amos that was sadly missing for most of her performance tonight.

Storytelling w/ visuals tests...////

Static

I remember the day it began. I can recite to you the way the air smelt that day (like a sewage system). I can recite the exact composition of every beer can and wine bottle that had been left strewn on the street since the weekend (A large box of wine bottles directly outside my front gate. A vodka bottle left half drank and abandoned on the wall of the building opposite. Three crushed, sad looking tinnies of supermarket own brand lager on the pavement about three doors up. A smashed bottle of Lambrini in the middle of the road).

The street was empty and held the silent unease that arrived with every Monday morning. The sky was the reflection of a ruin.

I was walking to work, it was 7:24AM. What makes Monday worse is that everyone else in my building, and on the street in fact, appears to start work at 9. Not me. 7:30 - on the fucking dot. The street is usually empty. A small parade of empty beer cans leftover from the weekend parade the pavement and mountains of empty wine bottles are heaped together scruffily in, or rather toppling out of, recycling bins. There’s them and me on the street. That’s usually it.

Today though, there’s a woman. Early thirties, frizzy hair. A long tweed coat that reaches her knees, with a scarf neatly tucked under the lapels. As I get closer I begin to realise that she could be any age - late teens, twenties, thirties, perhaps even early forties, amazingly. I begin to wonder if I need glasses.

As she passes me, I can hear the music loudly ruminating from out of her headphones. It’s the only sound on the street, except for the din of our slouching footsteps and the unruly, aggressive wind. Except, it’s not music. It’s a distinctive static fuzz. A TV unable to receive a television signal. A radio poorly tuned in. An electrical current surging to somewhere indistinct and ultimately, unattractble. An everlasting emotional sniffle, from an immortal with lungs that can support it for eternity.

I walk to work thinking about it.

I start work and continue thinking about it.

I have no answers.

What a ridiculous waste of a thought.

On Tuesday morning I again brave the abject walk to work. Me, again, alone. The beer cans are gone, thank Christ. I walk past the woman again. On this particular day I notice that she definitely looks as though she could be in her late thirties / early forties, though I doubt she’d thank me for the observation. Her expression is anguished - terrified, in fact.

Out of her headphones screams a high-pitched static. It hurts to hear. Shocks. It is the aural equivalent to a static shock.

I walk to work worrying about it.

I start work and continue worrying about it.

I still have no answers.

What a ridiculous waste of a worry.

Wednesday morning is much of the same, only this time I’m expecting the woman. I walk slowly, making sure as to time my journey carefully and in pace with the strangers. I want to figure this out. Want to understand the why’s and the what’s of the noise frequenting her headphones.

I wonder whether they’re even plugged into anything.

She passes me, finally. She’s wearing a sweet perfume which enlivens every one of my senses. She looks younger today - a frivolous early twenty-something. A smile curling her chin into a charming little point. The noise emanating from her headphones is jovial. Romantic, even. If that’s at all possible. It skips and twirls. It is the happiest noise in the World, but it’s still static. It elates me. I feel detoxed and light - as though someone has taken an exfoliation scrub to my insides and cleared me out.

I walk to work smiling about it.

I start work and continue smiling about it.

I still have no answers.

What a ridiculous waste of a smile.

By Thursday, the feeling has worn off. But in it’s place is a definite excitement. A curiosity. I decide that today will be the day that I confront the woman. That I ask her what she’s listening to and why she isn’t just playing the same music as everyone else.

She walks past me, and I notice immediately that she isn’t wearing any headphones today. She looks sad. She stares at the pavement, and her bag knocks me hard as she walks past. I want to speak to her! And today she has no headphones on, it’s the perfect opportunity. I stop and watch her walking away from me. My mouth is open and ready to spew questions at her. I even clear my throat a few times in preparation for it, but by this point she is too far gone. She stops mid-way down the road and angles her head in my direction, as though expecting me to follow her. As if expecting my questions - my conversation - my curiosities.

But I definitely can’t say anything now. Instead, I feel empty. I am a hollow, pathetic human being. As most people are.

I walk to work.

I start work.

I still have no answers.

What a ridiculous waste.

By Friday I’ve given up. Something in me still wants to talk to her. But I’m a coward, and resign myself to the fact that I most probably wont.

Last night I had a dirty dream about the woman. I hadn’t noticed before how beautiful she was - the mole just below her left eye. The smattering of freckles across her nose. Her long, shapely legs. I fucked her against a jukebox. A Nick Cave song got banged on by our busy bodies - I realised that it was probably the sexiest song I’d ever heard. I was in love with her.

I woke up. Sticky. Light. Delighted. I was completely, irrationally, loathefully in love with this woman.

Walking down the road, I was afraid of the pace by which my heart was thumping. It was like when you did any sort of strenuous cardio activity, and you can hear your heart hammering out of every pore and crevice - beating your ears into a panicked frenzy, like standing too close to a speaker at a gig.

I saw her walking up. She was looking straight at me. This didn’t help matters. I realised that I wasn’t walking, hadn’t even got farther than the front gate of my building, which my hand was still holding. She came up close and something amazing happened. She spoke.

“Hi--” that was all. She stopped next to me. Her voice was sweet and high-pitched. It was nervous but self-assured. She had taken one of her headphone pieces out, and it hung from the other at the base of her throat. I studied her collarbones and trailed them down to her breasts, which were pert and beautiful and perfect. I hoped she didn’t notice. She had the same perfume on as yesterday and the static danced majestically out of her headphones. It was ecstatic and joyous. A waltz. But that wasn’t to say it was structured or melodic. In fact, it was all over the place.

“Hi--” I replied. I sounded stupid.

“I’m Andie” she reached her hand out towards me, I shook it and held it there. As I did, a song hummed out of the headphones. A piano. Sweet and tuneful - it sounded like something by Claude Debussy. Her eyes lit up, she pulled my hand close to her chest. “Thanks!” she cried, ecstatically “I’ve been waiting for this thing to finally work!”

I didn’t understand. In fact, I thought she was little bit crazy, and I thought to myself Oh no, here we go again. Falling in love with a fucking crazy woman again. But instead I asked her - “What thing?”

She scanned the street to check there was no-one else around, and then pulled the collar of her t-shirt, which was loose-fitting as if she were planning to do this to me, down. Her headphones were taped into some part of her chest. Near the heart, I guess. It was then that I knew she was definitely fucking crazy.

“What’s that?!” I asked, slightly terrified. I should have run, but I couldn’t. I was fucking in love with her.

She laughed, and pulled her top back up. She still had hold of my hand. The tune was still playing. “It’s a err…well, I don’t know what you’d call it. I have a pacemaker you see. Weak heart.” she smiled, nervously. “I got sick of listening to music that other people made, you know” she looked into my eyes for some form of understanding that I couldn’t quite give her. “Just, you know, love songs and all that. It seems like every song was about lost love and found love and searching for love and not finding love and abusing love and being in love and not having love returned and---” she took a big sigh that was so sad I felt it bolt through her fingers into mine. “--I’ve never, you know, been in love. I just wanted to listen to something that reflected how I felt and didn’t try and force a feeling onto me. I wanted to hear myself. Only problem is, I haven’t been able to tune it in since I first tried it out.”

“When did you first try it out?”

“About five years ago”.

“That’s an awfully long time”.

“Yes. It is.”

We stared at each other for a while. I was already thinking about ways I could save up money to buy her a ring with, and shit I could throw out of my own flat in order to make space for hers. I was sold. I was owned.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”

She grinned, and nodded her head, she had already opened my gate and started walking me back into my house when she asked “Haven’t you got work?”

“Not today. That’d be a terrible waste of both of our time”.

We undressed each other, every time I let go of her, the music would stop and detune itself, and a new song would play or continue from the last one when I once again came in contact with her lovely flesh. We made love all day. I took one ear-piece and she took the other.

I eventually found a way to connect her up to the sound system in my flat, and we turned it up full so that the bass vibrated through the walls and the floorboards, and shook every book, CD and vinyl off everyone of my shelves.

First

Sauntering wet fish & arrogance of youth/ in a cupid mask/ got a slapping/ skewered w/ its teeth/ num-num-num/ tasty/ Bottoms up! (Nice to meet you, I’m Moby Dick – you must be Ahab, lover)/ Romantic that -/

Teenagers are easily bribed with tongue like/ kids for Christmas/ can’t talk back through the kiss/ (bullshits shit-tip)/ Gave me a gift to babysit/ on your days off/ Tastes like me babe; stays like me babe; stains like me babe; stings like me babe; burns like me babe – me for you/ uuurrrrrrrggggh/ Whiskey hipflask/ I was 16/ fuckin idiot/ silver jamesons strapped to me thigh/ like a block of dyna-

(POW!)/

mite/

Smalltime suicide bomber/ Don’t destroy much beyond the perimeter/

it was my peg-leg/ crutch/ That Love/ That jubb-jubb-do-me-good-Belzebub-gulp-gulp/ Calling out to God w/ a stuffed/ gormless/ gash/ silence but for your dogs reply/ mute/ he spits up against the latex net/ placing bets/ for the prize/ lies lies lies/ like pimento/ I can’t watch….

And you-!!/ Snip!/ Snip!/ Stop acting like a child!!/ Chop!/ Chop!/ Hack it off!!/ Hung from the crutch/ Still suckling at your silver teet/ Tastes like me babe; stays like me babe; stains like me babe; stings like me babe; burns like me babe; hurts like me, don’t it, when it all go-go-gone/

Burn baby burn/ bye-bye-papa-pop/ pop-cherry-cheerio/ 5 years senior/ 5 years sinister/ one more off the ‘things to do’ pile/ (kids).

Lifeboat

Nah – wasn’t right.

We were the drunk in the lone stiletto/ staggering from last/ orders.

Were poor origami – a rose in the guise of a/ crumpled heap/ A paper fist/ scratching up against its own/ sharp corners/ for comfort.

Was ashtray – me- open dish/ enabling/ permitting/ stubbing yourself out on me/ (freebie)/ after each deep toke/ and the smoke would billow/ up/ like a ghost in the guise of/ (you know who).

Clung on/ still/ village idiot humping/ the leg of a statue/ bee in Autumn/ still kidding itself for pollen/ killing itself for the lasts// Lost nothing.

Was a lyric somewhere

Echo

Stroke of paint

Vocal

Broken bass drum bleating

A bottle washing up on the shore/ vacant/ no note/ no ship/ nothing/ but litter.

Read into it whatever you must,

But just what does a lifeboat cling to when

It goes down

Itself?

Morning Whiskey Noose

These are the symptoms they/ don’t warn you about/ waking/ bleary eyed and blind/ and maddened for someone/ the eyes two stale socks/ wrung out and tethered/ two bloodied egg whites with the whisk/ still in/ dripping out of their little units/ with the black yolks/ straining out through the sockets/ like a half-burst blackhead/ mind-cry-dickhead!/ Dickhead!/ Dickhead!/ sent-box/ heavy//

Last night’s certainties – boggle-brained/ soufflé’d/ - last nights definite get-out-clause/ last nights definite get-back clause/ is today silent/ and unquenched/ and ticking like a terrorist/ why is drunk so/ vengeful for sobriety?//

Eyes/ Poor bastards/ Two regretful witnesses/ spilling out of themselves/ in an attempt to escape.

Home

The Church Photographer.

He couldn’t think of a greater farewell.

A more satisfying Fuck You.

A greater gift-giving than a life.

He set his camera up on the tripod in front of the doors of his local church. He had the lens facing a brutally busy main road.

Swathes of traffic hummed speedily through like bullets at a firing range.

As he set up the self-timer on the camera, he thought about everything that had been captured through it – processed – cemented.

Marriages. Christenings. Dances. Fetes.

He thought, most importantly, of Mary unbuttoning her suspender belt – rolling her stockings down into murky, sheer puddles – of her ribs lifting her tits like Atlas lifting the World. He wondered now how many other cameras had dazzled and flashed at her.

This had to be timed perfectly, he realised – he counted down –

14 – and – 13 – and – 12 – and –

Walked toward the road –

11 – and – 10 – and –

Watched the cars, took measure of the flow of traffic; the rhythm of his fate –

9 – and – 8 – and – 7 – and –

Started shaking. Steadied his legs. He prepped his stance like an athlete preparing for a sprint – thinking only of winning.

6 – and – 5 – and – 4 – and –

Blank. Weightless. Terror.

3 – and – 2 – and –

God forgive me –

Bolt blindly before a taxi

The camera pops with light. Self-timed. Shutter speeds and shudderings:

1! Ribs breaking. Legs curled under.

2! Head bursting against the shattering windscreen.

3! Bouncing off the roof.

4! Floating incandescently between the sky and the floor.

5! Icarus!

6! Break dancer on the pavement.

7! Lovers twitch. Coitus. Love you Love you Love you Love ….

The film snapped to a halt. Rewound. In the as yet blank film he was resurrected. Zombie Christ. Easter.

His wife worked in the only photo developers in town. She’d been having an affair w/ the wedding photographer.

Standing outside the photographers house one day, he watched the stop-motion intimacy of his wifes’ sins embroiled with another mans – lit up by the self-timed flashes of the camera they’d used to preserve the moment with.

He stole the camera the next day.

Decided to finish off the film for them.

Corpse Fauna.

Ever heard an insect cum? Sounds just like a bullet bursting a heart.

See - this is how an insect fornicates with a human. Predatory – it hunts down that tombstone of cold, translucent flesh – the heart, still and passionless – body breathless – and the insect performs a stilted cunnilingus of the bones and the eyeballs. It’s the open wounds they like best – the easily accessed. The suicides and the murdered. Slip themselves in the gory slits and lick, sip, dine. Writhe. All that bacteria!! filthy bitch. Dirty girl. Tasty morsel.

And then the rigor mortis – twitching hips. Clawed fingers-

-Put your tongue away. She’s faking it.

Romance Often Leads To Cannibalism.

It developed fast within the body, like a virus. Sometimes, for better or for worse, two people are magnetised towards each other with a force far greater than the force with which they’re bonded to their own bodies. They develop a kind of a compass within them from which they’re directed to another – and the only vital part of their existence is to twitch the tip of it’s arrow up against the other persons in the satisfaction that they may have finally met their destiny.

They’d communicated only through flesh, cells and chemicals. They’d brushed fingers, locked eyes, spoke (briefly) and felt the trembling tone of the others voice bristle like a slow, pleasuring tongue against the others ears.

They fell into bed with an unnatural ease for two strangers – as though they were old lovers separated by death and re-united in the afterlife. The whole act felt rehearsed, as though their fate had been pre-written with such precision as to prepare them for each others bodies, tastes, fetishes and desires through years of relationships, flings, flirtations and one night stands. All of which were fiendish failing run-throughs, manufactured, it seemed, so that they would fit together perfectly like a pin to a grenade.

They weren’t aware of the time. In fact, they barely came up for air - and spared no time for food or for sleep. They were gone for each other like a man who’s thrown himself into an ocean, determined to drown.

They forgot, as people often do, about the fatality of love. In the animal kingdom, for instance, it often results in serious injury, if not death. And in their re-arranging of each other - you could see the disastrous beginnings of all life. The primordial. The primitive.

The snake at its own tail.
Chasing. Choking. Curious. Starving.

Applauding Our Own Turds

It’s ridiculous the things you attempt in order to escape your humanity. In order to simply regain a bit of identity - to separate yourself from the general boring, monotonous, doomed for death, 9-5, miserable masses. To think of yourself as better than that. We’re all audacious and idiots in our own special, unique way. All chasing our own dicks. All laughing at our jokes. Applauding our own turds.

Doesn’t everyone think they can out-fuck, out-love, outrun, out-drink, and generally out-do their own humanity? Racing Death and escaping him past the finishing line? That we’re nowhere near as pathetic as our neighbour. That our wanks are far more sophisticated and our pussies sweeter smelling. What a joke. Come Friday night we all become equal. The banker with 50 grand more in the bank than the builder will become the same blithering, gibbering, erectile dysfunctioning, gawping, alcoholic, pissed soaked mess as the bloke he looks down upon for acting in the exact same fucking way.

But we try and escape it. We try and build up an ego - a weird kind of pride based upon a mental shelf of trophies we’re rewarded ourselves with in due course of successfully doing something that someone somewhere has no doubt done before and far, far better. That is all we amount to, really.

And it’s for this reason that I felt sorry for Peter. He had a kind of arrogance about him that only a man of great success, charm, beauty, money, power and kindness could possess. Peter didn’t have a great deal of any of these things. He had a body full of half finished tattoos that he could never afford to get completed. Japanese flowers grew colourless, empty petals out of vibrant green stems. The upper stubb of a mermaid sat incomplete and finless on his bicep. A set of cartoon characters were living half-lives on his fore-arm. Colourless and blank, they’d failed to reach their only reason for existence. One of them didn’t have a mouth or a smile or a smirk or even a grimace. Just a pair of eyes above a muted chin. Gagged.

He had the word H A T E tattooed on his right fist. He’d got it done when he was a teenager and thought it was badass and rebellious, when in fact it was tawdry and cliched. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t have the word L O V E tattooed on the adjacent fist to balance it out, as all the other tawdry, cliched, ridiculous tattoo casualties seemed to have. It just seemed to fit him. After all, you never punch someone with Love do you?

He reminded me of a rodent. He was 26 and already his hair was thinning, and it always seemed to be either greasy or wet with a nervous sweat. He had bulbous, exhausted looking eyes which always seemed to be simply melting off his face. The kind of eyes that the face struggled to carry. So heavy were they that lines upon lines of bags had formed underneath them. He had a smile like a frog.

It seems redundant to me now to even attempt explaining how I met him or what we spoke about in those unmemorable moments between being strangers and communicating with each other. Perhaps he did possess a great deal of charm then? Perhaps I did even, God forbid, find him attractive? But whatever opinion I had of him then has since been white-washed and voided. Everything about him has changed. Maybe before everything that happened between us, he had complete tattoos. Beautiful, colourful, vibrant, artistic tattoos. Maybe he had big, bright, soulful eyes and the sort of smile teenage girls self-combust over. I would love to think that we judge a persons looks on their actions and their behaviour and their personality.

Why did I sleep with him? Why did I sleep with him? Why did I invite that vile little prick into myself and my life? Most people - and it is most people - want to be better and do better things than the average person. They want the best for themselves.

I didn’t.

I found it exhausting. Pretending that my shit didn’t stink and that I was talented at everything I did. That I was kinder, prettier, more charming, better in bed. That I attracted only the coolest, most interesting, best-looking people. Perfection was unachievable and yet I was reaching out for it.

I think I was out to prove a point. I didn’t need to do great things. I didn’t need to go out with the most eligible men, if anyone. I didn’t need to look good - physically or by reputation. I didn’t need to pretend that I felt good about everything that I did. I just didn’t care. My shit stank and wanted to share the stench.

I wanted to declare to everyone - I’m a fucking human being and I am just as pathetic as the rest of you fuckers – just stop giving so much of a shit.

And so I got drunk. Terribly, awfully, degradingly drunk for what might have been months, but who was counting? Who knew? I got terribly, awfully, degradingly drunk and I fucked Peter. I fucked Peter, woke up in the morning and couldn’t especially remember anything.

Once the hangover had worn off, so had the sheen of the night previous. But I was curious about the boy. Interested in the boy. Bad for me. Wrong for me. Had scattered little thank you notes of bruises all about me. Was rough and vicious like no-one else I’d ever had. I found out that he had a fiancee. I saw photos of her online - she was a local artist, and very successful. But she wasn’t very attractive. I was just as pathetic as everyone else. I embraced my humanity.

And so I slept with him again. Two months and three e-mails later. I don’t know why. Despite everything I’ve just said - I can remember meeting up with him, sitting at a bar with him, drinking with him and not feeling anything for him. An alarm setting itself off somewhere about me - a fire door opening and a whole bunch of common sense fleeing. I felt cold and terrified. I felt a looming disturbance. Everything was wrong. But I just didn’t know how to get myself out of the situation. I drank all my fear and my doubts down. I just thought about how satisfied I’d feel when I was naked and smothered in his sweat. When I’d have every piece of my own flesh that I abhorred being hammered into a quiver. The cellulite, love handles, beer gut and bingo wings all jiggling into a silent mock. Maybe some of that humanity would get drilled out. Knocked out. Gouged out.

I was somewhere else by last orders. Someone else. Slurred and distant. Starry eyed. Putty. I can remember agreeing to go back to his flat. I can remember tripping over outside the bar. I can remember him feeling me up in the taxi. I can remember slapping him and how it only spurred him on. That I liked his reaction. That a part of me welcomed his hand in my knickers. His dirty, calloused finger tips groping about my pussy.

I remember him trying to fuck me in the middle of the street. I didn’t let him. Wanting to be sick and wanting to just go home and be in my own bed. Looking at him and wondering what the fuck I was doing. His face had changed. His smile. His eyes. His tattoos. He was a threat, not a cohort.

Going back to his flat. Getting changed into his pyjamas. Dozing off on him on his couch. Being woken up by his hands rubbing my tits together . Downing some vodka. Alarm. Panic. Being able to smell myself. Retching.

I didn’t know who this man was. I didn’t know how to get out.

My head banging against the frame of the couch. Him slamming himself into me - saying something. I was dry and sore and probably that only made my snatch tighter for him. I couldn’t talk to stop him. I remember my arms having just enough strength to keep my head from hitting the couch too hard.

Waking up on the couch. Alone and naked. Fucking freezing. Throwing up in his toilet with his fiancées toiletries fucking scattered merrily about the fucking place.

Crawling into his bed and resenting it. I didn’t know where my clothes where. I hated myself.

Being woken up by him fucking me. His cock slipping itself in and out of me with such selfish speed and such vitriol - one hand on a tit and the other shoving my face into the pillow. I stared at a picture of him and his fiancée. I decided to participate in the act. I didn’t want to be a victim. I didn’t want for what was actually happening to be fucking happening.

He didn’t kiss me back.

He didn’t look at me.

He came in my mouth and went back to sleep.

Getting up sometime around 7 and finding my clothes. I didn’t smile or scowl. I didn’t skip or slump. He got a shower while I sat on his bed. We didn’t talk when he got out, got dressed and returned to his bedroom. He shooed me off the bed and poured some peppermint fucking fragrance on the sheets.

“I’m sorry” he muttered, not looking at me. “I’m not very good in the mornings”.

He turned his computer on and put his music library on shuffle. I insulted every song that came on. Every musician. I broke my silence in a loud and abrasive manner, and it was probably misconstrued as flirting.

I was late for work somehow. I turned up and didn’t talk to anyone. I had to make 500 fucking sandwiches that day and serve them to 500 men. I took great relish out of the thought that I hadn’t washed at all. That all that abuse and it’s vile residue was all being digested in 500 bellies. 500 cases of food disease was caused by my bad experience. That was shared humanity.

I didn’t eat. I didn’t think much about anything. I was like those people who find a loved one dead, very suddenly, and don’t tell anyone for days. They get on with their business. They go to their jobs or to school or to pick their kids up from the nursery and no-one has any idea that anything’s wrong.

I went home after my 8 hour shift was finally over. Drank a glass of water and then threw up in my kitchen sink for half an hour. Sobbed. Found myself on the floor - awake finally and wondering where the fuck I’d been and what I’d done and with whom.

And like I said, I feel sorry for Peter. That was a trophy for him. That was a medal. That was a proof of ego. That was a high-five. Maybe his sorry little year didn’t get better than that. So unaware was he of his weakness - his animalistic desire to dig up bones and piss on territories. His pathetic and predictable sense of humanity. Want and take - another flag on the fucking ship. Woooo!

I, on the other hand, saw the low; felt the low. Was tasting the grit of the barrels bottom. Had been pissed into, beat onto, shit upon, used up, shot up. Could only start again. Clean slate, sentiment and clichés. Could exist comfortably beside my fellow man and his failings and could trump them.

Peter still couldn’t finish off a fucking tattoo.

The Worst

Last night I dreamt of suicide/ natural as a knee jerk/ or picking off a scab in your sleep/ no-one gave a damn/ I was gone; pushed out like a Valhalla crew/ or a nocturnal omission/ had permission/ we shook hands/ said our farewells/ and apologies/ no-body cried/ we knew it was for the best/ that the germ of my living had to be dismantled like a bankrupt business/ and boarded up and crushed/ with me attatched/ When I left there was a solitary gasp/ a draught/ there were lovers who swore they felt a twitch/ of a cold shudder/ a pinch/ as I cinched off/ but nothing permanent/ nothing that could leave a bruise/ or an elergy/ in it's wake

Then I awoke/ breathing the deep gasps of a drowned survivor/ the fingerprints of suicide had pressed little ruminated blood vessels against me/ little delighted bursts of capillaries/ that excited themselves open into little dirty blue paintballs/ love bites/ of living/ of life.

and the ripped innards/ the split skin/ the entrance and exit/ that licked wildly at you last night/ dribbled all over you/ like a person who's lost control of their neuro-sensory impulses/ proclaiming it's love in a sarcastic, spitting tone/ you tasted so sour afterwards/ transeference, I guess.

Told you about it/ you proved pitiless and bored/ shocked that I could speak/ maybe/ and the cadaever in me giggled/ though it might have been rigormortis/ and I could have sworn I heard it wolf whistle at that picture of you and your girlfriend together/ as I counted the cracks in your ceiling/ wondering how fast I'd be crushed if it were to fall in on top of me/ how sweet a moment/how brief a kiss/ how instant a karma.

What We Do In Lieu Of Actual Life

Lyndsey Bergman. Lyndsey Bergman was not my friend. Lyndsey Bergman was my rival. When I’d sprained my ankle attempting to walk in a pair of 7 inch Kurt Geiger platforms, she’d broken hers in 4 places whilst dancing on a table in a pair of fucking Vivienne Westwoods.

To The Clash, no fucking less.

When I’d finally had a song played on Radio 1 (at 1:46am on a Sunday morning), she’d had a poem of hers used as lyrics by an up and coming hipster band who managed to knock a jailbait faux-lesbian off the number one spot in a matter of days.

When I released my first magazine (self-funded, self-penned, effortlessly cool, effortlessly glamorous), she had a collection of self-portraits displayed in the most celebrated and underground of art galleries, followed by a self-published magaizne in which she cleverly critiqued and tore apart her own work under the pseudonyms of anagrams of her fucking name. The scene kids lapped it up.

When I was dumped by a boy, she’d always go out with them not too long afterwards. And she’d always dump them.

When she threw her chewing gum on the floor, I’d always be the one to walk in it.

Last week, I stole the bitches glasses.

I don’t need them. If there’s one thing I have over that superlative bitch, it’s that I have amazing fucking eyesight. And yes, I suppose that by wearing these, I am in some way destroying my own vision - therefore ridding myself of the one crappy advantage I have over her. But I don’t care - because somewhere out there Lyndsey Bergman is probably licking the gums out of an incredibly ugly boy because she’s too blind to know better.

I think I suit them. Bit of Clark Kent about me. That is to say that bespectacled Lyndsey Bergman is weedy, over-achieving, dull old Clark Kent and I am the mysterious, God-sent, man of steel and enigmatic, Superman.

I’m pondering this over salad. Digging the fork into a spewing tomato. All the pips and substance slushing out periously, like a spawn of eggs. Gross. Sarah’s talking about her weekend. I don’t know when it happened that it became impossible to talk to Sarah, but today is evident of that fact. I’m listening to her - or, at the very least, I’m giving her the signals of listening to her, the nodding and smiling and agreeing - but I can’t focus. The background seems effervescent and inviting; a mirage of colour and opportunity. Sarah is none of these things.

I’m not wearing the glasses right now, I had them on during the walk down the café but then chickened out when approaching the door. But now it seems appropriate. I keep thinking that maybe if I put them on, I’ll be able to focus. The background will look clearer and as it is really is - the collage of some inner-city art student who’s a few years off intermediate, and Sarah will suddenly beam at me. My whole being will open up to her. I’ll listen, be charming and articulate, I’ll stun her with delectably witty anecdotes involving people too cool for her inner circle. Good idea, I think.

“Sorry, I just need to put my glasses on…” I put my fork down and pull out the specs. Ray Bans. Wide and eminent. Frames. Sarah gawps at me, mid sentence, her brows furrowed in confusion.

“You don’t wear glasses….” she comments, in a frankly suspicious tone.

“…I only generally wear them at home. But fuck it.”

She continues gawping at me. Jealousies such an ugly trait.

“So anyway…” I continue stabbing my salad. Homicidal woman found guilty of butchering pleasureless food. “…I was out with Stephen Franco the other night. You remember him don’t you, recorded an album in LA and then caught herpes off an American Apparel model he’d shagged whilst he was over there and came back and gave it to Tracey Flemming after she’d written that review about his brothers band in the paper? Well, anyway, he was just the funniest…” I start snorting through my nose in lieu of actual laughter, and I think of the details of the story I’m about to tell and realise that it isn’t funny at all. He did 5 lines of coke, threw up in a coat and then ate a stale biscuit he found in his bag. “-actually, no, never mind. It wasn’t…” I clear my throat, Sarah’s playing with her phone, she looks blurry. “-isn’t funny. At all.”

“You don’t need glasses do you?”

I take them off. My eyes hurt. Terribly.

“No. I don’t”

“Why wear them?”

I think about the question. I can’t tell her about Lyndsey Bergman. She wouldn’t be impressed. She wouldn’t particularly care. I decide to just wing it.

“well” I begin “They make me feel a bit drunk without the calories.” she gawps at me again. “bit drunk without the calories, and …” I have nothing. Am garbage. Am failure. Sarahs phone goes off. She opens it and reads the message, quickly. She looks back up and nods at me with a patronising, polite smile.

“Ready?” She asks, packing her phone and her cigarettes into bag.

“Yeah…” I respond, dutifully, wishing I’d ate more of my 10 quid salad rather than torturing it.

“I’m off to go meet Lyndsey.”

My blood runs cold. Cold with spite. Cold with posession. Now she was pinching my friends.

“Lyndsey?” I enquire, stuffing a desperate lump of halloumi into my mouth.

“Yeah, you know - Lyndsey Bergman? Had that thing with…”

“I know who she is…” I blurt out, as a verbal belch, rolling my eyes about.

“ She’s got new glasses, so I’m gonna go check them out on her. Good to see you…”

She dashes off.

Bollocks.

Grounds For Divorce

There aren’t many people who become a widow by choice.

Walking out of my own house and into the street, the whiskey on my own breath only becoming apparent when it hits the fresh air, I realise that I need to suddenly remember the most basic of skills, and can’t.

The Green Cross Code, for example, escapes me. I walk out into oncoming traffic and check the wrong side of the road for cars. BMW’s scream to a smug, authoritative halt inches from me and garish, ugly words bellow out from an unwound window in an accent that’s distinctly arrogant with wealth. I flip them the finger – it’s the only dialogue twattish yuppies like that understand.

At one point I forget even how to walk, and then when my legs fall out of rhythm with each other, I stand in the middle of the street, terrified. It’s then that I also realise the following: I haven’t any idea how to interact with people anymore.

Children stare questionably up at me as their parents drag them away with one hand, and billow smoke through their own respiratory system with the other.

Old women I’ve never met before smile appreciatively at me and say hello.

A pack of awkward teenagers more or less sniff at my collar.

It all manages to cement me further to the floor. I’m suddenly a trophy of the community that created me, and I’ve no idea what they want from me in return.

Even my breaths aren’t correct. Deprogrammed, almost, each breath feels too contrived – too planned out – too systemised. My respiratory system feels like an enormous factory with just one, exhausted, incompetent man to operate it.

I get back to our house eventually. It’s not easy. My feet feel like hollowed out eyeballs. You can imagine walking on your eye sockets, can’t you baby? That’s how you saw your future, with your head bowed against the carpet as though in prayer.

The place is haunted now. Stinks with you.

Half eaten dinner on the table – a carrot, half gnawed like a spent offering to a reindeer at Christmas, some beef, more empty wine bottles than people. And you’re in the garden. Against the kitchen counter. Over the toilet bowl. Under the duvets. Over the duvets.

But, you don’t come anywhere near me.

I thought the bedroom would be a crime scene, at least. The disco lights of Police sirens - the fences of tape around the perimeter like a rosary of an aborted affair. But nothing. You were just another body. You weren’t a question mark. You were sentenced to death in self defence – they arrived in time to see the beautiful indigo imprints of your fingers round my throat – the almost holy handshake of the trachea.

Nice to meet you. Nice to worship at your alter. Amen Amen Amen.

They arrived in time for the scratches and gashes in that dry time between blooming and wilting (which is precisely when I took you). They weren’t present for the time previous when these wounds were itches. When they beckoned to you and you licked at them with silver and chrome. I loved that. Not many would, but I did. Absolutely I did. I cherished each little scarlet plume – you were in my pulse; my blood; my scar tissue; my scab. I thought you’d be eternal, just like the scars. But everything fades, or at the very least it finds a way of hiding within the unknown and unreachable.

At least, when you tied me up the other night, it felt solid and secure. The rope gripped me to the bed – it blistered my wrists. You left me for hours – a day may have passed. I pined for you like a young lover. My mind paraded with paranoia, and fear. My heart bleated fervently against my chest. It begged to beat against you, like it did when we first met. But you still came home and untied me eventually. And then I was just blistered, sticky, spent – free to leave. If you don’t pin a butterfly to the wall, it will escape.

It all got out of hand, I know. Goodbyes aren’t easy, and we both knew it was ours. I’ve never been much of a waver. I’d rather drown than wave. We reached our peak, baby. We were Kurt Cobain, James Dean, Edie Sedgwick – we bowed out at the right time, preserved ourselves.

We’d never need reach the unromantic depths of the law court, or the monotonous indignity of deciding who owned what CD’s, books and movies.

We wouldn’t have the awkward meetings. The what if, what happened, and remember when, conversations. We wouldn’t have the heartache of new partners. The heavy heartedness of careful treading parading new love through the streets and praying not to encounter the previous. We wouldn’t have the drunken phone calls. The desperate, innocuous sex of the broken - a tired, blotted jigsaw.

A funeral is the proper occasion to mourn its loss.

To be the last woman you loved.

The last thing you tasted.

The last scent.

The final moment.

I pressed my lips against yours and inhaled your last breath.

You would have done it to me, baby.

I just happened to do it first.