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.