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STU ZSIBINSKY'S LOST CAUSE
As Radical Activist Stu Zsibinsky wondered about the thirty years of political struggle
that had led him to a peeling council flat in a tubeless suburb, he realised he
had unwittingly circled an ad in the Women Seeking Men section of a reviled Saturday
newspaper. His problem was that he had been involved with many causes but unfortunately
not with many women.
Looking back, he had campaigned against a range of isms and phobias,
against animal experiments, genetically modified food, food additives, fox-hunting,
hedgehog culling, the extinction of the tadpole shrimp, third world debt, first
world complacency, and the second world generally (wherever it was), deforestation,
motorways, ringroads, bypasses, banks, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, nuclear families,
NATO, US military adventures, the community charge, police brutality, the closure
of schools, hospitals, mines, shipyards and his own bank account, drug companies,
pesticides, live exports, emissions from cars, trucks and aeroplanes, stockbrokers
on horses, bailiffs with chainsaws, vivisectionists in Volvos and on and on and
on. In the same period that he had campaigned so vigorously for such causes, he
had known Jane.
In other words, in his life, causes outweighed women by a ratio of 24:1. He knew
this because he had worked out that, on average, he had to campaign for 24 different
issues before he met a woman who liked him. In the old days, calculated over time,
he could campaign for a dozen issues a year and get laid every two years, especially
if Christmas was a factor.
The trouble was, he was 48. He hadn’t seen Jane for over four years and, in
any case, the romance had only lasted three convoys of live sheep to France before
she’d packed in both him and the sheep. Neither had a future, she’d
told him. The struggle is forever, he’d replied. Not in your case, she’d
said, pointing out that he’d lost the struggle with his three chins and two
guts. He’d insisted that his body had successfully campaigned for freedom
and who was he or anyone to stand in the way of the masses?
His physique, she’d said, was the least of his problems. He was also a terrible
dresser, and being a Radical Activist didn’t mean you had to be either. This
was the new millennium, the age of connectivity. Who’d want to connect with
him? Radical Activists, she’d pointed out during a bypass protest, needed
to be photogenic, telegenic, and have a cyber profile. They needed laptop computers,
mobile phones, credit cards and the latest urban warrior fashion accessories, all
of which added up to the modern campaign lifestyle, a lifestyle from which Stu was
a lifetime away. After a frosty silence, Jane had carefully folded her designer
pure wool balaclava, and cadged a lift back to London in a cycle campaigner’s
Range Rover.
It was the very moment that Radical Activist Stu Zsibinsky stopped liking women
(and cycle campaigners). It was not that he didn’t support women’s rights.
Course he did. It was not that he didn’t listen to women. Course
he did. It was not that they didn’t like him in their own way. Course
they did.
But his souring looks, and the fact that new millennium single issue supporters
generally insisted on total lifelong commitment to looking the part, meant that
sex and relationships were not on the cards. They would, he thought, not even be
listed in the index of his life. To change this, he couldn’t very well take
to the streets: What do I want? A shag. When do I want it? Now...
It was clear to him that people would have willingly chained him to a railing and
the fire brigade would have left him there. Anyway, it would have been like campaigning
for himself, which was contrary to all his beliefs about campaigning for others.
Answering an ad, therefore, was the only way left to meet a like-minded woman and,
crucially, to improve his cause:women ratio.
The ad was looking for a non-smoking, non-beer-drinking, fashionable man with a
political conscience. At least he was one of these. A list of campaigns, his phone
number, and the line I’m badly dressed but I can change, brought
a swift reply two days later. The woman’s name was Jane, a coincidence that
did not escape Stu’s notice. She claimed to be an extremely young 40-something.
She used to be in fashion but was currently in campaigns. In fact she was launching
a new campaign that, she felt, was so ‘now’. It was a campaign against
badly dressed campaigners.
A week later, they met in a non-smoking independent fair trade café over
a soya decaff and a peppermint infusion. Jane was impressed that he had given up
active smoking and was now a committed passive smoker. She was less impressed with
his old brown Doc Martens, his black denim jacket and black jeans that he never
washed in case the anarchist black faded to sit-on-the-fence grey. They say retro
is never passé, she’d pointed out, but that’s one fashion that’s
never coming back. However, he won her over with the following ingenious argument:
I can be both a campaigner for your cause and the reason you undertook
it in the first place.
Soon they began to relate on a regular basis. They even had sex. It wasn’t
exactly the dirty socialist shags Stu had in mind but, with her extreme youthfulness
and his faultless logic, they were a team. Enthusiastically, he helped her to campaign
against himself. Although it did take some getting used to. You can’t take
on the police wearing that, she would say. And: If you think you’re going
out to reclaim the streets in those shoes you’ve got another thing coming.
And: That banner doesn’t match your socks.
Little by little, the outmoded garb of a people’s revolutionary was modified.
His DMs became hi-tech trainers, his black jeans became labelled combat trousers,
his checked shirt was replaced with a clubber’s t-shirt, his denim jacket
became a micro-fleece, zips and buttons became Velcro straps. He was fully accessorised
with an underarm mobile phone pouch, personal organiser belt-bag and more pockets
than he knew what to do with.
Barely three months into the campaign against badly dressed campaigners and the
fashion industry was flocking to Jane and Stu - or ‘J-Zee™’, as
they were known - with sponsorship deals. J told Zee when to speak, when not to
speak, what to say and what not say. After the sponsors came the photoshoots for
lifestyle magazines. J-Zee™ spearheaded sponsored rioters dressed in carefully
vetted outfits, and fashion photographers were on hand to record the synchronised
action.
After five months with J, there was no trace of Stu Zsibinsky, Radical Activist.
He was no more. He had been reinvented. Women, from teenaged animal lovers to reborn
‘grey pound’ activists, would have given themselves to Zee without a
second thought. His cause:women ratio would have been 1:9 if he’d bothered
to work it out. But with the money rolling in, Zee had it all: the woman;
the politics; the clothes. He even started to like the
newspaper. Before long, he bought his peeling council flat, and turned it into a
minimalist protest nerve centre, courtesy of a globally-aware interior design guru.
Out went the bookshelves with their dusty anarcho-syndicalist manuals, rare second-hand
Marxist contemplations, diaries of obscure proto-socialists, the memoirs of Trotskyite
prisoners, situationist ramblings, and the collected maxims of martyred revolutionaries.
In came wardrobe space, wooden hangers, high performance ‘intelligent’
washing powders, and a slim volume entitled ‘Pilates for Protestors’
by one of J’s Californian disciples.
J got a book commission of her own: ‘Riot Gear – a photographic journey’;
Zee got a pedicure for a lifestyle magazine photoshoot: ‘Treat yourself to
a pre-march buff and shine. Top protestor Zee says…’. But, while his
Communist corns and anti-Fascist cuticles were being pumiced, Zee began to feel
something he hadn’t felt in five months. He began to feel like a complete
prick. It was not a feeling he wanted to share with lifestyle journalists, and especially
not with J in case she agreed.
A few weeks later, while having what J called ‘third way’ sex, part
private, part public and a bit metrosexual, Zee experienced a nostalgic wave of
proletarian discontent. He used to shag in the spirit of class war; now he was being
used to mime lyrics to a pre-recorded pop song. Politics was just the soundtrack
to a fashion parade; sex was a 12-step programme devoid of bump and grind, slip
and slide, rock and roll. Out on the streets logotyped mass culture was being positioned
by brand consultants, developed by personal fulfilment specialists and satisfied
by customer experience directors. ‘Nostalgic waves of proletarian discontent’
could be bought on CD for £4.99. Free poster included. And the worst of it
was, nobody felt insincere. Just the opposite. Words like ‘honest’,
‘real’, ‘committed’ and ‘passionate’ were used
to describe ‘us’, and words like ‘wrong’, ‘immoral’,
‘hypocritical’ and ‘corrupt’ were used to describe ‘them’.
After sex, Zee slapped a Nicorette patch on his arm and imagined smoke rings drifting
to the ceiling. Then he turned to J and said: ‘I feel like a complete prick.’
Her answer, as she dialled her publicist, shocked him: ‘It doesn’t matter,’
she said, then to her publicist: ‘Hi darling, just to let you know, the colour
for today is saffron…’
It didn’t take Zee long to realise that this wasn’t the beginning of
the end but the end itself. He told J he was going to Pilates. But he wandered the
streets. Soon he was overwhelmed by an urge to sit in a stinking pub with a pint
of bitter, a roll-up and a copy of ‘Socialist Worker’. But he couldn’t
find such a pub. Instead, he sat in a glassy piney non-smokey gastro pubby over
a goat cheese quiche with leafy salad, a white wine and the latest edition of ‘Protest’,
the magazine for the lifestyle protestor, in which he was featured having a pedicure.
‘Top protestor Zee says: “I feel like a complete prick”…’
Only he wasn’t quoted saying that. ‘Top protestor Zee says: “If
it’s gonna make you protest better, just go for it.”’ Above was
a picture of him grinning and pointing at his left foot, a foot whose former address
had been a DM boot which, in turn, had stomped on Nazi heads and kicked in scab
doors.
I really am a prick, Zee thought. It’s just that it doesn’t matter.
Maybe everyone felt that way about themselves but didn’t mind. In other words,
maybe there were lots of totally self-aware pricks (and cunts) out there who didn’t
mind being pricks (and cunts). Maybe it was time to protest against self-aware pricks
(and cunts). And maybe the final battleground was right here: a fight to the death
between a roll-up and a leafy salad.
And that, according to the various eyewitness accounts, is more or less what happened.
Zee, screaming ‘Do you know who I am you pricks (and cunts)?’ apparently
shed his clothes, ripped them off himself, then tried to smoke as many roll-ups
as he could from his secret stash before the law arrived. When it did, two-headed
and uniformed, he screamed: ‘It doesn’t matter everybody, it doesn’t
fucking matter’.
But it did matter. It mattered to the other customers and to the quality of their
dining experience; it mattered to their health, which had been damaged by the smoke,
and to their emotions, which had been traumatised by the sight of Zee’s left-leaning
penis. It mattered to the police, to the law in general, to the fashion industry
sponsors, to the journalists and, most of all, it mattered to Zee’s cause:women
ratio which he thought he had under control.
Some might have concluded that he’d reached the end of his tether. But Zee
was not a horse or any other quadruped. He was an anarchist, he explained, and he
did not like government in any of its forms. He did not like to be told what to
do and when to do it nor what to say and when to say it. Is that so? asked J. Oh
no, said Zee, you’re not dumping me, are you? In fact, J did not dump Zee
although she did email him to point out that his role as a stakeholder in the partnership
was terminated.
Shunned, lonely, desolate, and terminated, Stu Zsibinsky became a barely remembered
relic of a bygone and best forgotten age. He wasn’t to know it then but, one
day, while buying back a few of his donated socialist volumes from a charity shop,
he would meet a new Jane. They would attract each other instantly with their vacant
stares. Both would have protested against so many things that there was nothing
left to protest against, including each other. And so they would live, with the
occasional, shared, nostalgic wave of proletarian discontent, apathetically ever
after.
Back To Top
SMALL TALK
The night I speak of is the night someone cleans out the safe in the office and
leaves a tampon instead of the cash. The tampon is a Boots Super Plus with Applicator.
It is clearly used, and the fact of it being used whatever its brand makes it a
kind of calling card, a calling card that says: I bled here. It is also a personal
insult to Bonsai, who is the owner of the safe, the office the safe is in and the
club the office is in. It is a personal insult to him because Bonsai orders us girls
never to work when we have our periods. He tells us many times that if he catches
a girl working and bleeding at the same time she is most certainly fired. We call
him Bonsai on account of him being very small, very manicured and a total pain to
keep happy, not because he is Japanese, which he isn't.
I do not care about women's issues, he tells us many times in his high-pitched
non-smoker's voice. My clientele do not care about women's issues. My clientele do
not pay to see gummy knickers and tampon strings. What they pay to see is a bikini
wax, big hair, big shoes, a big Hello Boys up front and twenty minutes sexy small
talk. And that is all.
He has a long list of other rules such as no plasters on your toes, no chewing gum
in the gob, no five o'clock shadow on the lip, no stretch marks. He is even known
to make rules about teeth and check a girl's teeth like she is a horse. But the
rule about periods is without a doubt his favourite. So the fact of a tampon appearing
in the safe instead of the whole week's takings leads most people to get religious
about certain ideas. But most people get religious about three ideas in particular.
One, the thief is definitely a woman. Two, the thief is definitely a woman with
a period. Three, the thief is definitely a woman with a period and inside knowledge.
And all these three items, the woman, the period and the inside knowledge, obviously
come together at the same small hour in the same small place. Namely, at about 3.30am
in Bonsai's safe. So if you are the type who goes around suspecting other people,
you would suspect one or more and pretty much any of the women. In a nutshell, all
of us girls have motive and opportunity shared out between us like equal rights.
But I am getting way way way ahead of myself. As per usual. Press pause, relax,
rewind, soft cushion, glass of red, spliff, clear the mind, slow the heart, then
press play, roll the credits, set the scene.
The events I speak of happen around the time when the new millennium is not so new.
In fact it is getting on for old, and all the promises people make in the name of
the new millennium are still at the warehouse waiting to be delivered. The cheque
is in the post, the bus is due but meanwhile a lot of girls are having a hard time.
Everyone talks big about making a wedge or stealing a wedge and getting out, and
those like me who do not talk big about it think about it all the time. Because
when you are debted up and cannot see a way out, nothing but nothing is sadder than
a wig, a false name and a fake tan. At times like this a place like this makes everyone
rub each other up the wrong way and gets everyone pressing the wrong buttons. In
good times the rubbing is a laugh and even if you press the wrong button you still
get a can of Pepsi.
But the millennium is growing leg hair like an ape and needs a full body wax and
a good going over with a Remington Ladyshave because all the girls are waiting so
long for Bonsai's promises to be fulfilled. Instead of fulfilment all we get is
Bonsai ordering us about, verballing us down, clipping his nails, filing his nails,
inspecting his nails, making up new rules and getting tighter and meaner than ever.
He is so tight he buys special energy-saving bulbs then keeps them locked in a money-saving
cupboard. He is so mean he installs dummy cameras instead of proper CCTV. It is
well known that Bonsai is the sort to be tight and mean even if the key to the land
of plenty is firmly in his hand. As it is he has firmly in his hand two much lesser
things: the key to a lapdancing club near Centrepoint and the fun-size brains of
his favourite dancer.
His favourite dancer is Tara Ya-Ya. She is twice as tall and half as old as Bonsai
and has a day job as Bonsai's ever-clinging girlfriend. It is often suggested that
Bonsai should find a sex partner more his size, like a Honda Civic. But Bonsai feels
he is trading up and Tara Ya-Ya thinks she is too. One of them is certainly wrong
but it is very true that being Bonsai's ever-clinging girlfriend gives Tara Ya-Ya
more airs than she arrives in the world with. And Tara Ya-Ya arrives in this world
with more airs than is average on account of the hyphen in her last name. This is
why she is all ya ya and quickly learns to live up to the hyphen by being a snooty
ya ya bitch.
Of course neither her long legs nor her mock croc accessories nor her airs encourage
Bonsai to cough up any quicker. In other words he is as tight and mean with his
ever-clinging girlfriend as anyone else and she always has to beg hard for a biscuit.
The thing is though, everyone is still jealous of her because of course Tara Ya-Ya
is the only one with begging rights.
Before the pecking order reaches me (I am advised not to mention my working name
for legal reasons) there are three other girls. Mostly what we have in common is
no trust for each other, although everyone gets a big ego free when they start work.
After Tara Ya-Ya, the runner-up for the ego prize goes to Xana. She is a flashy
Italian dominatrix with a pvc wardrobe, a dungeon in Paddington and Engleesh that
is not very well. But her Engleesh is never a problem because Mistress Xana speaks
the international language of domination. She invites me one time to watch her work
in her dungeon. She says many things I do not understand, including things like:
you eslave batard, you edirty devil, like my boats, I say like my boats now.
Mistress Xana hates Tara Ya-Ya and to get back at her she is trying for months to
make Bonsai her slave. She says Bonsai is already a dirty eslave ina his emind.
Maybe. But Bonsai is not a slave in his wallet and since that is mostly where his
mind is, it stands to reason that he is not ready to part with a hundred pounds
for a half hour session. For that money he is only prepared to be Mistress Xana's
slave for fifteen minutes and that, she complains, is not nearly long enough to
train him properly.
Then there is Gold, who is an oiled up bodybuilder who tells everyone she is from
California and speaks to everyone, especially men, in an American accent. She is
actually from a place more east than California called East Ham. But everyone knows
she is famous because she is once on the shortlist for the tv show Gladiators. Physically
speaking she is the toughest of all of us but the condition of her triceps is out
of synch with the condition of her ideas. She is always confessing to some terrible
thing, like being an addict of some sort, a drug addict, a sex addict, a food addict,
a chocaholic, an alcoholic, a kleptoholic, a paramaniac obsessive or whatever. You
run into her in the changing room between dances and she starts chatting at you
in the following way: I think I'm addicted to knives… Or something.
But mainly what she is addicted to is confessing what she is addicted to. Some people
say she should never be on the shortlist for Gladiators at all but for Jerry Springer
instead.
After her is Aleesha, who is what some people are apt to call a bint. But she is
not a bint just a ditsy blonde who is naturally gorgeous and healthy and will naturally
go through life fit as fuck. In fact one day she will make the most fit as fuck
corpse ever. She is also open-minded. She has to be on account of her dad. One day
her absentee dad Tony turns up at the club with his mates. They are celebrating
Tony's unexpected release after five years in max security. So what does Tony pop
his eyeballs at first thing? Only his baby in nothing but a g-string upside down
on a pole. So he sees her pole-dancing and what does he do? Instead of dragging
her down and beating the fit-as-fuck out of her, daddy pays for the apple of his
eye to lapdance for him. And after that for all his mates. One by one. He and all
his mates are regulars now and they, Tony and Aleesha, become best friends. Of course
Tony is no mug and he sees straight off the business opportunities from this Kleenex-sponsored
reunion. He starts to supply Aleesha with coke to sell in the club, obviously on
a strictly fifty-fifty basis.
Several of us ask Tony from time to time if he and his mates can muller Bonsai and
then maybe charge him protection money. But Tony says he must keep a low profile
for a while yet before he makes any big moves. The truth is we think Tony fears
Bonsai's bouncer/cleaner who is known as Steve the Sikh and is generally humungus.
Steve the Sikh is not an easy man to reason with because he is an emotional person
with only four emotions: chuffed, gutted, well chuffed and well gutted. He also
has scars all over his head from bottlings and chair-leggings and weekly divings
through windows. But of course you should see the other guys.
Most of these other guys are like Tony and also fear Steve the Sikh. They know that
Steve the Sikh is once a real Sikh, maybe around the time he is born. They also
know that as a Sikh he has the five holy K's on his side. I forget the other four
K's but the one to remember is the Kirpan which is a long silver dagger that Steve
the Sikh keeps with him at all times for spiritual reasons. Steve the Sikh and his
Kirpan are very loyal to Bonsai because, according to Steve the Sikh and his Kirpan,
Bonsai is the only one who really understands them. What Bonsai understands is that
Steve the Sikh is as unemployable as a fully grown man can be in this town. And,
even if Steve the Sikh dreams of striking out alone in bouncing or cleaning, the
truth is he needs the little cash in hand that Bonsai gives him even more than he
needs his Kirpan.
All this is above the heads of the many law-abiding hostesses who also come and
go, such as Thai, Dutch and Spanish students scrimping and saving their way through
college, like Kiki, Mandi and Lola. Of course there are also hard Northern girls
like Shaz and Kirsty who prefer other people scrimping and saving and usually go
looking for these other people in distant places. So if you hear of a mugging in
Mill Hill and Shaz and Kirsty are in Mill Hill or anywhere near Mill Hill you would
not need a college degree to list the suspects.
So anyway, there we all are this one busy night, me, Tara Ya-Ya, Mistress Xana,
Gold, Aleesha, Tony and his mates, Steve the Sikh and his Kirpan, with the house
band playing Purple Rain very loud and the place full of hostesses and men, over-priced
champagne and under-the-table cocaine. Now, the needle between the girls and especially
the top girls starts with Bonsai's system. The more he likes you the higher up you
are and the more he intros you to the Big Wheels, the Big Wheels being the men with
the Big Money. A night in the company of a Big Wheel is worth a week of tourists,
two weeks of lads on stag nights and over a month of odds and sods trying to get
buzzed on a budget.
The only drawback is that nine out of ten Big Wheels are ugly. I do not know why
this is so but in the end it does not bother nine out of ten girls because of course
the more a man spends the prettier he gets. The Big Wheels could be anyone from
telecom executives, investment brokers and Ferrari importers to gangsters, dealers
and undercover Vice Squad sleazebags (like Desmond McGeolighan who should definitely
be named many times for legal reasons although with a name like that it is difficult
to name him at all).
What is at stake is more than what the Big Wheel spends in the club because the
club gets most of that anyway. What is at stake is the chat money (twenty pounds
for twenty minutes of sexy small talk) and of course the possibility of a buy-out.
A Big Wheel often buys a girl out and you can bargain the price (say a hundred pounds)
and you can cashpoint that off them the moment you step outside with them. Then
they take you to a club that you suggest like Stars because of course you know the
bar or the door and always get a taste of the business you bring. Then they buy
you drinks all night, an E or two, and all the time they think they will sex you
up or at least get a thorough caressing out of it, even though you clarify ASAP
one or both of two things: this may be the sex industry but sex is not on the menu;
you have a boyfriend who is a judo master. Of course men are men and the more you
say you won't give it up the more they want you to give it up and the more they
spend trying to make you give it up. The trick is to pace yourself for a long stint
on the tiles and to avoid bouncing off walls on account of peaking too early. In
a nutshell, Big Wheel equals Big Night.
And this is where the needle is. Because this one heaving night, with the house
band finishing Purple Rain and starting on Black Magic Woman, Bonsai tells us his
new strategy for the future, his visualising for the whole of the new millennium,
which of course takes a fair amount of visualising. As it turns out, his visualising
does not require any of us to live for a thousand years because it is mainly about
skinning us tonight and every night for as long as we work for him. And what Bonsai
wants to skin us for is twenty-five per cent of the buy-out money in return for
doing an intro, and even another fifteen per cent of the chat money for doing the
same. Of course it does not need me to point out that all this is like asking Americans
to give up guns or Steve the Sikh to hand over his Kirpan. But unlike Americans
or Steve the Sikh there is little we can do.
Then, to rub salt in the wound, Bonsai gets the ever-clinging Tara Ya-Ya to bend
our ears about how to make it in this business, about how to get ahead in lapdancing,
about how we should always respect the owner, and especially his millennium visualising,
because of course there are plenty of other girls out there, plenty of other wannabes
out there in times like these, plenty who would just love to step right in and take
over at a moment's notice if not sooner so we better watch our step all of us.
Bonsai thinks all this talking down of the girls is well timed because nobody is
going to argue when the place is rammed and there is money to be made. So, with
the air of someone who is just revealed to be the world's smartest man, Bonsai goes
back up to the VIP gallery overlooking the stage to file his nails and keep an eye
on everyone, although of course in a place like this you cannot keep an eye on everyone
all the time. Tara Ya-Ya is someone most people do keep an eye on, a green eye,
as she swans off to her Big Wheel intro. Tonight her intro is none other than the
Vice Squad sleazebag Desmond McGeolighan, a man so close to Bonsai that one or the
other surely requires a strawberry Jiffy.
And here we all are, the rest of us, lumping more than liking it and very minded
to scheme anything that can be schemed by way of revenge. All the Kikis, Lolas,
Lalas, Lilis and Lulus in the place act the herd and follow orders. Them aside,
there is much seething and gnashing of teeth. Tony and his mates are usually ready
to sit out disputes but all this is apt to arouse the king kong chest-thumping alpha
male in them. Tony's mates (who have confusing names like Nazza, Chazza, Dazza etc)
nurse their beers and keep an eye on Tony for a signal. Meanwhile, Mistress Xana
entertains them with her plans for Bonsai, such as tying him in her donjon
in order to weep ina his bolls. Aleesha wants a more permanent solution which
includes her dad getting a contract out on her boss before dawn. These ideas are
lost on Gold who wonders out loud several times why she is addicted to abusive men.
And who knows what hard skulking Northern girls like Shaz and Kirsty are thinking,
especially after slim pickings in Alperton.
Between dances we are all chirping in the changing room among our bras, g-strings,
glitter and six-inch gift from god mules, with the aroma of Obsession and
Wrigley's Airwaves and the sound of mobiles in the background. The chirping we are
doing mainly consists of everyone cussing off the world, the boss and his girlfriend
and thinking up ways of leaving big marks on all three. We are all doing lines off
the toilet seats and wishing we could make easier money erotic dancing on the internet.
Gold says that after her boyfriend gets out of rehab he is setting up a live webcam
site, so all of us can make a hundred pounds an hour for getting messy with our
favourite vibrators. Aleesha is more concerned that the coke she is selling should
go further and asks us whether to cut it with Vit C powder or baby lax.
But the basic problem is that while all the sharks are moaning in the changing room,
the prawns are cleaning up in the club. Lolas, Lulus and Lalas are being booked
and double booked and bought out like there is soon to be a national shortage of
them. Worse, the house band is playing a Madonna medley. They start with Material
Girl which everyone old enough to remember hates, and only the really young Lolas,
Lulus and Lalas love because it is what their magazines tell them is retro chic.
Retro chic or no, all this amounts to a very sorry state in the here and now.
So mostly we are left in two minds about what to do. But luckily we have only one
instinct. Which is to say we do the inevitable and go back to work. Although if
you ever see a girl pole or lap dancing when she is pissed off you will know it
does not make for a pleasant evening. Me myself I am dancing for two blubber buddies
in suits, one of whom just keeps on eating his spaghetti dinner in a very disrespectful
way. So he is the one whose lap I sit on and I make sure to give his crotch a good
grind until bolognese sauce starts to form around his mouth and his eyes start to
water because of course he is choking. Before his blubber buddy steps in to referee
or he swallows enough spaghetti to save his own life, a commotion begins at one
of the other tables.
The commotion becomes a ruction in no time at all and this development comes as
no surprise for it is none other than Shaz and Kirsty who are working this table.
Whatever the argument, Shaz has a broken champagne glass ready in her hand and there
are slaps flying from Kirsty and a certain member of the clientele is very much
on the receiving end. From the VIP gallery Bonsai is waving his polished cuticles
at Steve the Sikh in what you might call a frantic manner. Steve the Sikh is well
chuffed and hardly needs much waving at to get him to wade into the thick of a ruction.
In fact, with his five K's and a sixth sense he is already so near the ruction he
is the ruction, which is really a skill he shares with the cream of bouncers.
Most people who are not bouncers are inclined to give Steve the Sikh the benefit
of the doubt in such a situation, even when there is no doubt. The clientele in
question does just that, hands up, backing off and hoping to walk away from this
with his suit and face in the same condition his suit and face are normally in.
But Shaz and Kirsty are not the kind of girls to give a person a break until that
person gives up what he or she can towards their good cause. The rest hover around
and about keeping away from the trouble. Tara Ya-Ya is safe in the gaze of the Vice
Squad, Gold is dancing, Aleesha is by the bar, Xana is on another table and me myself
I get well clear of all of them into the shadows.
In a ruction it is management policy to side with girls until the situation is taken
care of and then fire them or, worse, reduce their hours to zero, which is
the terrible condition of being neither hired nor fired. But Shaz and Kirsty are
not types to be put off by zero hours and carry on accusing the slapped up clientele
of touching where they have no right to touch. One well gutted look from Steve the
Sikh and the clientele is leaving his car and house keys, watch and wallet, as security
while he goes to the cashpoint to settle his bill, a bill which as per usual is
revealing many hidden extras.
Bonsai is moving around the tables reassuring people and ordering the house band
to play something less likely to provoke people than Madonna. After this we expect
him to call Shaz and Kirsty to his office in order to reduce them. But on this twisty
old night, with the house band playing Sex Machine, Bonsai goes to his office only
to get severely heart-attacked. In fact he is more severely heart-attacked than
ever before in his short life. Of course this is because his safe is totally open
and his money is totally stolen to the point of no longer being there. On the other
hand what is totally there in place of the stolen money is a used Boots Tampon Super
Plus with Applicator.
Most people, if their safe is open and their money is gone, shout THIEF or POLICE.
But when the thief and the police are very much in the vicinity it makes more sense
to shout other words altogether. What Bonsai shouts is not easy to make out above
the din but his eyes are glaring and his well-kept little hands are well clenched
into little fists. It is the Vice Squad who first gets to hear the words Bonsai
is shouting, him and Tara Ya-Ya together on their table. The reaction of the Vice
Squad is to make a chopping movement across his throat, either because he believes
in the death penalty or because he is advising Bonsai to shut up shop for the night.
Closing before closing time is not something Bonsai can bring himself to do even
when he is the victim of crime. But the Vice Squad is very persuasive because of
course it is also the Vice Squad's money that is usually in Bonsai's safe. So very
soon Steve the Sikh and his Kirpan are enforcing an unnaturally early licence.
Ten minutes later the clientele is dispersed and there is a full lock-in, not in
a nice drinks-on-the-house kind of way but in a nasty nobody-leaves-till-someone-confesses
kind of way. This is because it is clear to both Bonsai and the Vice Squad that,
since stealing from a safe requires inside knowledge, it is best to keep such knowledge
inside. The Vice Squad rounds up all us girls in a very small space, which is what
the Vice Squad is mainly trained to do. The only one who is not rounded up in a
small space is of course the ever-clinging Tara Ya-Ya. Lady Twat, as Shaz and Kirsty
are more apt to call her, has a large space all to herself at a table and sits there
with her typical ya ya expression on her typical ya ya face.
Also, nobody tries to round up Tony and his mates even though some people might
say that Tony and his mates are the criminal fraternity and ought to be rounded
up on principle. In return for not being rounded up, the criminal fraternity behaves
very well, innocently choosing to sit out the dispute until proven guilty. The Vice
Squad then takes charge of the investigation and Steve the Sikh is instructed to
take charge of the searching of the changing room.
Mistress Xana, who is not used to being dominated in this way, is the first to protest.
Who know fucky money where beetch Tayaya no? Which means the bitch Tara Ya-Ya
is the thief because nobody else knows where to find the fucking money. But the
truth is everyone knows where to find Bonsai's fucking money. Not only that, everyone
knows Bonsai's safe is dodgy because of course Bonsai is too tight and mean to fix
it or replace it. The question is how to get even a dodgy safe to open. And that
is the kind of knowledge that truly is inside knowledge.
Steve the Sikh is meanwhile turning handbags and clutchbags and bumbags and shoulderbags
inside out looking for signs of illegal activity. It does not take him long to find
thirteen cashpoint cards, four credit cards and six Blockbusters video cards all
crusty with coke. Then he finds five straws with traces of the same, as well as
eight wraps, three razor blades, unidentified pills, tablets and powders. Then he
finds two dole cards and a dole cheque that do not match any known names, twenty-four
bottles of Obsession clearly for retail, and two binliners stuffed with more
glamour-wear than is reasonable for personal use. All of us girls are connected
to one thing or another, and the only new discovery is Gold's fix kit because it
is not widely known before that Gold is a brownhead or that she uses Rimmel No.
5 to cover her needle marks.
Still, all this only tells Bonsai and the Vice Squad what they already assume. In
fact, the Vice Squad says he would be quite stunned not to find evidence of such
wrongful lifestyle in such a wrongful place. But him and Bonsai know that any attempt
to use this evidence to threaten one or any of the girls into confession is sure
to result in generally bad publicity for those making the threats. Then the Vice
Squad hits on what is very likely the first policeman-like idea of his long career:
a DNA test on the tampon and a fingerprint analysis of the crime scene. He has an
old mate in Robbery who is well used to unusual requests and could oblige on a 'no
win no fee' basis. Of course nobody needs to be a big fan of courtroom drama to
realise that all this testing must be carried out in accordance with the sort of
rules that big fans of rules like Bonsai really hate.
So Bonsai hits on a much simpler idea. He asks Steve the Sikh what evidence he finds
in the changing room by way of women's monthly affairs. What he actually says is
more like: What I want to know is, is any of them girls on the blob? Steve
the Sikh of course finds too much evidence of girls on the blob. He finds Lillets,
Tampax, Illusions, Always, Bodyform, with wings and without, with applicators and
without, all of which amounts to flagrant abuse of Bonsai's favourite rule. In Bonsai's
mind, which is very neglected when compared to his nails, all this points to one
thing and only one thing: conspiracy. Of course you do not need to be a big fan
of detective thrillers to see the totally absorbent hole in this conspiracy theory:
none of the evidence is a Boots Tampon Super Plus with Applicator. This is because
of course most girls would not be seen dead wearing a Boots Tampon Super Plus with
Applicator.
Except perhaps the one person yet to be rounded up, searched or robbed of her dignity.
Tony's mates are quite vocal on this subject and one of them, Nazza or Chazza or
possibly Dazza, points out that Tara Ya-Ya is now due for the same treatment. But
the Vice Squad and Bonsai decide that it is Tony and his mates who are now due for
the same treatment if they fail to leave the premises immediately. Of course Tony
is not the sort to leave his naturally gorgeous fit as fuck baby Aleesha in a bind
and refuses to leave without her. So Bonsai glares and clenches the way he glares
and clenches when he is angry and tells Aleesha that she is reduced to zero. And
then while he is on a roll he tells me I am also reduced. And then he tells the
same to Gold and then Shaz and Kirsty and then any of the Lulus and Lalas in sight.
And he would say exactly the same to Mistress Xana but luckily for her she is temporarily
out of sight.
This is the cue for the house band to pack up their instruments in a well-rehearsed
hurry, suck the dregs out of their complimentary beer and leg it to the exit before
they too become part of the reduced workforce. The reduced workforce is just as
keen by now to leave but Bonsai says everyone stays until he says everyone goes.
Until could be a long time off, especially if Bonsai starts to give himself
a full manicure.
Steve the Sikh obviously twigs that if a night fails to die of natural causes one
must stab it to death because this is the very sudden moment he chooses to astonish
everyone present. Stepping forward, he holds up a mock croc shoulder bag and produces
from it the sort of magic rabbit that closely resembles a pack of Boots Tampon Super
Plus with Applicator. It is well known that mock croc and Tara Ya-Ya go together
like two names with a hyphen in the middle and it does not need me to describe the
general surprise and delicious malicious cocktail of joy when the snooty ya ya bitch
is revealed to be the thief. Everyone waits for Bonsai to speak. When he does, he
complains bitterly that his ever-clinging girlfriend has the period, the inside
knowledge and the most opportunity of all to steal from him and that no girl ever
betrays him like this before and that she will never work again if he can help it
which he certainly can.
For her part, Tara Ya-Ya acts the most surprised and least joyful of anyone. She
tries to cling to Bonsai and to protest her innocence by saying she is clearly framed.
She says she is never in her life cheap enough to go to Boots to buy cheap necessaries
to put inside expensive accessories. Furthermore, she says, there is no sign
of Bonsai's money anywhere. This, as anyone with public school on their CV can confirm,
is the only proof that counts. She also spells out the words facile est inventis
addere or something, which she says anyone with Latin on their CV
would take to mean: it is easy to add to things that are already invented.
Or to put it another way: it is a stitch up. Whatever it means it cuts no ice with
anyone who does not have public school or Latin on their CV, which if truth be told
is most of the reduced workforce. In fact, the stuff old Tara Ya-Ya comes out with
is the sort of stuff that would Fedex a saint to max security and keep that saint
there with no hope of parole. As it is, it convinces everyone, especially Bonsai,
that she is just a smart skinny bitch. And a totally guilty smart skinny bitch at
that.
The Vice Squad tells her to accompany him outside to his motor for formal questioning.
The generally satisfied rest of us are generally free to leave. So me myself, Tony
and his mates, Aleesha, Gold, Lalas and Lulus, Shaz and Kirsty all start to go in
our own directions. Mistress Xana is still nowhere to be seen but Steve says he
will find her since he is staying to clean up the place.
So with my wig in my bag and the dawn coming up I trot down Tottenham Court Road
to take my place on a stool in Stars, my favourite bar. I guess if I am way ahead
of myself earlier I am now almost fully caught up. Actually I feel I should celebrate
because with Tara Ya-Ya branded a thief, Gold revealed as a brownhead, Aleesha and
her dad out of favour and Xana nutty as a bag of dry roasted, I am in with a very
good chance of being number one as soon as Bonsai increases everyone's hours from
zero.
But of course some people might say there are still one or two loose ends to tie.
Maybe there are. Because as I sip my Bloody Mary and chat with the barman I am waiting
for Shaz and Kirsty. Because it is quite possible that me myself and Shaz and Kirsty
have arrangements to meet here. It is quite possible that me myself and Shaz and
Kirsty have arrangements to meet here for certain purposes. Because although I cannot
say for sure it is always quite possible that Tara Ya-Ya is never the thief. Maybe
her eye strays that way from time to time but she is not the type to think a thing
like this through. For instance she would not know how to get girls like Shaz and
Kirsty to start ructions and create diversions. Because although Shaz and Kirsty
are types who often start ructions and create diversions, they will only actually
organise these things for the right person and for the right price, which is usually
a big laugh and two drinks. In this case it is for the same plus twenty per cent
of the safe.
Of course if Tara Ya-Ya is not the thief with inside knowledge then it is most likely
someone else. And the someone else is quite possibly none other than the ever-loyal
Steve the Sikh, a man of not many emotions but capable of visualising the millennium
as good as anyone. And what he visualises as good as anyone is nothing if not the
good life. And the means of getting a piece of this good life is busting in to a
dodgy safe with a Kirpan while a ruction kicks off. And the means of getting clean
away with the same piece of good life is to make sure Someone Else gets rumbled
instead for the whole thing. It is also quite possible that it takes a certain other
party to bring Shaz and Kirsty and Steve the Sikh together as well as to place tampons
where tampons need placing. But of course even if I know for certain of such a certain
other party I cannot reveal them for legal reasons.
All this may be the loose ends finally tied but unfortunately it is not because
of what Shaz and Kirsty say when they arrive. After their two drinks each, they
have their one big laugh: it seems Mistress Xana is not missing after all. In fact,
says Shaz, while everyone is being reduced, it seems that Mistress Xana is just
hiding. And the place she is just hiding, says Kirsty, is Bonsai's office. And when
Bonsai goes in there to wait for the Vice Squad to come back with a confession and
the money from Tara Ya-Ya, Xana closes the office door and locks it. Then what she
does, says Shaz, is well serious by anyone's standards. Because, says Kirsty, after
locking the door, Mistress Xana throws the key out of the window.
Sure the Vice Squad is planning to return to the scene but, as everyone knows and
Shaz and Kirsty remind me, formal questioning in a Vice Squad motor takes at the
very least half an hour. And half an hour is easily enough for Mistress Xana to
work up a head of steam in the international language of domination and make edirty
edevil Bonsai her edirty eslave once and for all.
Shaz and Kirsty find this very very funny but of course it means that in half an
hour me myself I will have no chance of being number one at all. Well this too could
be the gloomy loose ends really and truly tied up. But the night I speak of carries
on and does not end here. In fact it continues not to end because Steve the Sikh,
who is supposed to be arriving to divvy up with Shaz and Kirsty and a certain other
party, does not arrive at all. In fact he continues not to arrive at all well past
the night I speak of and well into what most people call morning.
By this time me myself and Shaz and Kirsty are too bladdered to think straight.
Eventually they stop laughing and stop retailing the story over and over to the
barman and get as gloomy as me. This is because it dawns on them like it dawns already
on me that Steve the Sikh will in fact never arrive to divvy up. This is because
of course he is gone for good. Most likely he is setting up a cleaning business
in a place far away from this place and even in a town far away from this town.
And this all means that the night I speak of amounts to just another night of heaps
of big talk swept clean by commuter time like so much waste. And it means that most
of us, like most of us people, are left in the daylight with what we should most
likely stick to all along: a false name, a wig, a fake tan and twenty minutes of
sexy small talk.
Back To Top
From ‘New Writing 12’ – British Council - Picador
‘A virtuoso modern love triptych’ New Writing editors
‘verve and energy’ The Independent
DEAR ELLA
Does one stand at the exploded window following the lines of jagged shards with
a knowing eye, with sixteenth-floor gusts flapping the curtains and driving dust
and loose papers towards the back wall; does one stand there scraping clots off
the sill, along with ancient pigeon shit, and say: this is where it happened? Or
does one crouch over a cracked skull on the pavement, in among the murmuring crowd,
and say instead: no, it must have happened down here actually?
Well the bruises have come up. Submerged, they appear as purple anemone decorating
a strange fish, too large in the bath to move meaningfully. The sudsy efflux from
an apricot bath bombe clings to the contours of my breasts. The water is long cold.
I thought they'd be here by now. I thought they'd have made it long before the water
got cold. Someone should have put two and two together, glanced up, seen the broken
pane, counted the floors, made the necessary arrangements or exclaimed, simply:
look.
And they would have been up in a jiffy, well within their response perameters. But
every second after it happened, whether it happened up here or down there, is an
infinity too late. They'll still come of course. I suppose they just got held up
in traffic. Because they'll get here. And head after head will poke through the
hole to imagine a body spreading its wings in semblance of flight. For a second
they'll wonder about the aerodynamics, the defying of gravity, before turning to
the facts. Now then miss... And I would tell them what? Say what? He's dead? My
God. No. I can't believe it. It cannot be true. Yes yes I thought I heard something.
But then again one hears lots of things. And the bath was running.
Or did I run it later, after finishing my replies? I was deep in thought. Too deep
to hear a thing quite frankly. I get so wrapped up. Don't hear the phone sometimes.
Friends say I'm a bit mad. Goes with the territory, I tell them. But all this doesn't
help to unravel it, does it officer?
Shit. I crumpled the letter. I can see it through the open bathroom door lying under
the Himalayan wind-chime on the £17.99 per square yard basket-weave matting
recommended to me at a party by a psycho-spiritual counsellor. Stimulates healthy
blood-flow from feet to scalp, she said. Invigorate your sex life,
she said, not that you need it. You're so amazingly sorted out. Friends
say I'm a bit mad actually, I said.
I crumpled the last of the letters. That was silly. Thoughtless. Not very sorted
out of me. Not really what you'd call skilful life management. Could end up as evidence.
Of sorts. But of what? It's odd the way both the guilty and the innocent have to
cover inconvenient tracks, one to hide the truth, the other to prove it. That letter
should have remained in its pile, read, thumbed, even blurry as if cried on, but
uncrumpled, ready for the publication file complete with my reply. Only I have yet
to write it. The other half dozen might as well have been on a loop with just the
initials altered for authenticity. Mrs. D.K. Ms L.T. Mrs. F.F. Dear Ella, I've got
an eating disorder. I love it when they self-diagnose. Eating disorder?
I should be so lucky I write. So many problems but eating's never been one of them.
It's the throwing up...
Dear Ella, I just can't seem to shake my cellulite. Well then you're a
sad loser. Dear Ella, all my friends died in a horrendous fireball. Bathe
in aromatic oils; treat yourself to a facial. Dear Ella, I think my husband is abusing
our teenage daughter. Has he tried a loofah brush?
Of course they'll look around, wonder why the water's cold. Sergeant Plook'll scratch
a pimple: You say you were in the bath when it happened? When it happened,
officer? When what happened? When he masturbated himself to sleep last week? No,
I wasn't in the bath then. I was in the bed right next to him. Asleep, supposedly.
Dear Ella, thank you so much for your advice. I feel so much better now.
Bitch. Yes, well, where was I? He often goes to the window, officer. He was probably
trying to save a spider. They hang from the ceiling sometimes. Abseil down to the
incense sticks. Right there in front of the window. He'd save them alright. He was
like that. He'd do that. He drank his tea like a pint and saved spiders. That's
the sort he was. I'm shocked. Devastated. Didn't hear a thing. The bruises you say?
Mysterious, aren't they? No of course we didn't argue. We don't. Do you know who
I am?
Do I know? My toes are like prunes; my nipples like potato roots. Two cupboards
full of herbal remedies, balms, cream cleansers, sauna packs and a couple of loofahs.
But nothing beats a cold bath, officer. Dear Ella, what's the best way to hide a
love bite? Hide it? Ella says rejoice you moron. He bit me alright but
it was never love, so goes the joke. And now the only tell-tale marks are clots
on a sill and oedimal bits on a shard, separated finally from relentless happening,
from urgent problems naively posted first class to a monthly.
Dear Ella, he burps. Dear Ella, he farts. Dear Ella, he snores. Yes, it's
a rich tapestry. Ella says try hypno-regression to discover the horrors that make
you unique. At least it'll put all his percolating airs into perspective. Worked
for me. Alternatively, a three-month stint in the eating disorders unit. Hell yes.
Bit of bulimic company makes you love him more. Worked for me, officer. Until, that
is, I remembered he came from a pre-clitoral age in which there was no mystery about
bruising. You didn't have to make excuses back then.
Would I really say all that? Could I? The water's freezing. But I've become quite
attached to my alibi, necessary or not. By the time they get here I'll be cryogenically
suspended. No, ladies and gentlemen, it's not what you think, it's not at all a
Siberian behemoth. Here we have an example of fin de siècle female, frozen
in time, perfectly preserved... bung a coin in the slot and it lights up.
Sergeant Plook'll just have to piss on me to save my life. So what's new?
Do I hear them? I can almost see them checking their partings in the mirrored lift.
I've left the front door open to save them breaking it down. But I should do something
about the letter. Which is worse: to mean to do but not do or not to mean but do,
inadvertently, as it were? Dear Ella, I accidentally poisoned, bludgeoned, scalded
him. Dear Ella, the stab wounds in his back were unintentional. Dear Ella, I fired
a warning shot into his head...
My nerves went, I admit. Briefly. On occasion. Once. Twice, perhaps. Friends say
I'm a bit, well, mad. But at least I woke up. I remember my first time. Dear Ella,
what was it like? The first time I felt revulsion during sex? Wonderful.
I knew I'd woken up. Je suis femme, I thought. From then on, I could hate him with
abandon. That was a happening. Not like my mother spilling cocoa in bed most of
her life and never noticing. Just got cold, I suppose, like a bath. Just got cold
and the bruises came up.
There: a definite shudder in the lift shaft, I believe. A ripple in the water touches
skin that is warmer. You can feel that officer, you see, feel it in your bones because
it sort of creeps up on you, moment after moment. Not sudden. It wasn't that I could
smell the cat's fanny perfume of some mutant whore. God no. Nothing like that. It
wasn't that I came to despise his sock-shoe combo. Although some might say he should
have been put down on humanitarian grounds for that alone.
But no, seriously. I could tell you stories, officer. I could write a book. Or a
collection: Ella's Top Selection. Sometimes I don't even hear a knock at the door.
Or a window shattering. Or a scream or a storm. If such there was.
Footsteps? A shuffle, yes. Almost certainly something. A grunt, a fart: the boys
are on the case. Snooping about. Rubber-shoeing. It's one big adventure playground.
One whirly merry-go-round of clues. Ah, the spotting of the exploded window, the
defining of the defining moment, then the exchanging of looks as they spy Woman
in Bath. Dead? No, she's bloody waving.
Alright, miss? they'd surely ask. Why shouldn't I be? What's the meaning
of this... this invasion? Hm? Why now, right when I'm taking a soak? How dare- Do
you know who-
But things move on, happening even as thinking. Sergeant Plook searches, absently
scratches his crotch, hoists his pantaloons by the belt: Ah, now then, what's this
here crumpled piece of paper doing on the floor beneath the Himalayan wind-chime?
It was an accident. That's all. I shouldn't have crumpled it I know. I mean I wouldn't,
not usually. We all make mistakes even me. But why make excuses? Do you know who
I am? Sometimes it's just nice to say shit to the world and take a bath. Crazy aren't
I?
But of course we're leading ourselves down the same path, the boys and me. Putting
it all together we are, the bits, reconstructing the chronology, the route from
A to B and back, from Above to Below but not back. Pondering deeply we are, whether
it was not down there, after all, where it happened, but here, right up here, in
the bloodless corridor, beneath the wind-chime. Conjecture is sublime. Peps you
right up. Better than Zesty Zing herbal infusion. Better than Happy Pill. Better
than my best advice. Yes, let the imagination take to the air. Don't hold back for
a second. Delay the diet; throw your weight. And take a sodding good run at it,
says Ella. Worked for me.
Would you like a woman officer? Christ no. May I? says the top
of Plook's head, his body already half bent. Already reaching, picking, fingering,
uncrumpling. For at last, sure as landing follows flight, there is the painstaking
unravelling of the evidence. Plook, reading: Dear Ella, what would you do if your
man...?
God, I know what I'd do. Says Ella.
Back To Top
REAL THING
Control, listen, listen to what I am sayin. I am tryin to… It happen…
It happen like this… She get in loose an dangerous with ha chest all slippin
an slidin an ha big twisty hair like a Saturday Night Loretta.
Oi Fola, stop fuckin broadcastin. It’s a busy circuit.
Control, just listen. Please listen. They warn me before about ha. They warn me
she come quick an disappear like a flash into tha night. They say: Fola
Bulubayo, maybe you are SuperFly to all tha chicks but you will end your days in
your radio control cab with a knife in tha back an your big mouth still talkin boosh.
My sister Rosie she said she look in ha cup an that is what she saw. An of course
ha number one Cherry she always say what Rosie say an do what she do.
Fola, for fuck’s sake get off of the airwave.
But what do they know? They wah sittin pickin over chicken bone an watchin Eddie
Murphy video like Queen Tikkitakki an Princess Pullipulli. Both of them wah drinkin
gin an smokin king-size an smellin like tha downtown fruit market. They wah readin
tea leaves an signs that don't make no sense an sayin: No money no honey:
Fola Bulubayo: this is the story of your life.
Then they wah rollin an laughin with their gold mouths bright like headlights. An
their laughin soundin like windscreen wipers on high-speed. So I say to them: look
if I go die some day it will surely be at tha wheel of my cab. But I will have gin
drippin from my fozzy chin an boosh comin from my big mouth because I am Fola Freedom
Lifetime SuperFly an I will be livin large on tha power of my natural high. They
laugh at me more an more an more. An then Cherry she say: A big mouth lead
to tha grave sure as a cab take you to tha railway station. An in future don't talk
when Eddie is talkin.
God but tha rain fall hard this night. Of course Saturday Night Loretta is lookin
for Saturday night action. I am drivin AD, which mean as directed. This-
AD? I told you point to point, you silly muff. I got cash jobs stackin up. Fol-
This is ok by me. So Loretta she is directin me this way an that through tha steamin
dark. Tha wipers are on with red blue rain washin over my face. My life is flashin
at me from tha pavement an yellin with a thousan voice. People-
People are fightin to get into tha clubs an restaurants an tha panic is settin in.
Like everyone must find their place in tha world before tha end of tha night. Which
is not easy because of tha parkin restriction.
But Loretta she don't look like she care. She tell me she is not early not late
just right on time. She say to me she say it is just good to be out of tha rain
an off tha street an that is that. Loretta ha voice sing to me an fill tha whole
cab.
But me I tell Loretta I don't mind if she stay a while goin nowhere. Tha day has
gone an I am not inspire to skank more fare like Driver SlickDick from Paradise
Car across tha High Street.
Loretta she begin to like my attitude very much. My eyes an ha eyes they meet in
tha mirror as yellow shadow fall on tha back seat. If ha voice sing then ha black
eyes dance. I must say Fola SuperSmooth resist charms from anyone, especially on
Saturday night. But Fola Bulubayo he is fallin in love, that is sure, an soon Loretta
she has tha exact same feelin back. That is what Rosie should be readin in ha tea
cup. Outside some dirty place they are fightin like there will be no tomorrow. Already
blood mess tha pavement an still they go on an on. Two gangster boys are scrappin
an fightin an everyone is climbin over each other to get through tha blood.
But nothin move backward or forward at all. Tha traffic was slow tonight. More slower
than ever.
The traffic’s slow he says. I’m givin yours to Jimbo. I’m warnin
you…
Rosie she warn me I know. She an ha number one Cherry wah entertainin two fly-by-night
men: Casual Johnson an his number one Polycarp. They wah wearin silk shirt an gold
watch an crocodile shoes that require no sock.
Rosie say they are importin tha goods from all over tha world. All of them they
wah drinkin whiskey cola an watchin tha latest Eddie Murphy video. When they see
me Rosie she say: Look, Mommaboy Bulubayo is home.
Casual Johnson he laugh an he say: No, it is Eddie's idiot lovechild. Polycarp
he laugh an he say: Ahar har. Rosie she also laugh an she say:
Ahee hee. An Cherry point an she say: No money no honey.
Soon they are all foolin an applaudin theirself. An as I am drivin I am still hearin
their laughin. Even Loretta's voice is like nothin compare to their laughin. But
I see ha in tha mirror, ha big lips sayin somethin I cannot hear but I know she
is tellin tha story of ha life. Then Loretta she is pointin with ha long gentle
finger at four persons on a street corner. First I think she want to introduce ha
friends. It is important to meet the friends of your lover. But tha four persons
they are comin straight at tha-
Fola, you been told. You understand?
They are comin straight at tha car wild from angry drinkin. Loretta she roll down
tha window an show tha fourface night a toothbrush razor. A beer bottle strike on
tha roof. That is when Fola Freedom push tha pedal to tha metal an drive away FormulaOneStyle.
Loretta she say she only do what she do to save me an that she do not normally act
this way from windows. Maybe she do not say it in words but from ha honey smile
Fola SuperFly can tell. Now it is just me an ha.
Loretta she say to keep drivin nowhere. Sometime we cannot drive because tha lights
will not change. She could be late for the last airplane. But she do not mind. Cash
jobs are stackin up. But I do not mind. We do not mind just driftin drivin together.
Or just stoppin still. Love is like that. An it prove our love for each other not
mindin tha very same thing. Rosie she warn me. Control he warn me. They all warn
me before. She an ha number one Cherry an Casual Johnson an his number one Polycarp
wah eatin special rice behind my back. I break shift one time an find them stuffin
their face lookin bigeye at each other like it wah all secret from me. Casual Johnson
he say: Maybe it is a secret us eatin tha special rice. But what secret
are you keepin from us?
They laugh more harder than before. Then even more harder than ever. An when I tell
them my true secret eight eyes are lookin at me like snakes are comin out from my
ears. YOU ARE IN LOVE?
That is what they ask with one voice. I reply: yes, it is tha real thing. Casual
Johnson he shake his head an he hold up two finger: Only two real thing:
coca cola... an ‘moi’...
Rosie an Cherry scream with laughin: Prove it to us SuperFly Bulubayo.
Prove your real thing. Give us ha name. We want ha name. Tell us ha name...
Tha rain fall hard tonight. So hard. Then even harder than ever as tha night begin
to fade. Loretta an me we are stop at tha light. We are dreamin tha same dream.
That is tha proof of everythin, the proof of our love to dream tha same dream. After
a whole traffic light silence I say to Rosie an ha number one Cherry an to Casual
Johnson an his number one Polycarp, I say: Loretta... Loretta is ha name.
Liar they say. Liar...
My head begin to feel heavy. Like I am rememberin so many-
Fola, for the last time: where the fuck are you?
…so many things sudden as rain. I am rememberin all tha things I have said
to Loretta. All tha things they have warn me. All tha Eddie Murphy movie I have
ever seen. An now with cash jobs stackin up on a busy circuit tha back door is open,
tha back door is open wide an Loretta is gone an I am sittin still as tha death,
control, listen, still as the death I am sittin at tha red. I am holdin my face.
I am sittin an bleedin. Control listen, listen to me. I am bleedin an I am wonderin
how to take a hold on my love or how to take a hold on any love when all love slip
away so fast, so so fast, more faster than tha night, more faster than the fastest
traffic, more faster even than-
Oi Fola, you know what? You’re fuckin history.
Back To Top
THREE IS MORE
god wha’m I like - I can’t believe I just said that - go on say something
- stop laughing - no no wait I know what you’re gonna say but truth be told
me myself I’m not like that - people just think I am - they can say anything
they want but they’ll never know the proper truth unless I proper - no no
listen - cos even if I do proper tell them they can believe what they like cos believing
and knowing is different things even though in a way they’re - no no listen
- they’re the same because at the end of the day what’s it - no listen
- matter what people believe or know?
anyway I know me myself I’m not like that I’m not and I wasn’t
like that when it started - when he tore his maligament and got himself out of the
whatever army or police - I can’t remember what he said now - he could have
been a traffic warden - probably was - god wha’m I like is that terrible of
me I’m not usually like that - well whatever he was a man in uniform - not
that I saw him in uniform but after he told me he was in the army or the police
- I’m sure it was the army - you start imagining you know all those buttons
and everything - I’m suggestive - I am - that’s what my best friend
kylie said - she’s a receptionist in a fitness centre -
so I’m imagining all those buttons and everything and course one button led
to another - it was round my friend kirsty - dave her boyfriend was there and me
and him had well already you know - they met through me put it like that - but I’m
not jealous or anything - I don’t mind cos she’s my friend and he’s
more her type - well that’s how it started with mark cos he was dave’s
friend and he turned up that night and well once there’s something going on
in a room - like there was between kirsty and dave - and I’m in that room
I get all you know like my nan’s dog - and I just have to you know have it
- god wha’m I like but it’s true - it’s true - so when mark turns
up I’m thinking I won’t be such a gooseberry - not that I mind being
one - I mean just watching can be a right laugh - as long as there’s something
to drink and I like the people -
but no I mean mark I’d met before and nothing happened or anything but I knew
he fancied me in that top - you know the one I was wearing when I met you - god
sorry wha’m I like - why am I saying sorry? you understand - I mean when a
top works it works - but thing is mark he was with carly at that time and she was
pregnant - not from mark from dave - not that dave he’s a pud-puller - I shouldn’t
say that should I - but it’s true - I meant the other one - you know - who
used to be with lana - lana who you used to fancy I know you did cos she told me
you’d had a snog or two in the wellington - that was a mental night - and
I know you didn’t end up with lana - you don’t have to end up with someone
just cos you snog them - although there’s snogs and there’s snogs like
the first snog we had wasn’t a snog snog just a snog and I never thought it
was gonna - god wha’m I like - anyway who were we - carly? well carly she
was you know pregnant about a month and you can’t expect a bloke to stay with
you while you’re baking someone else’s - I mean that would be love -
wha’m I like but it’s true - it is - love’s expensive and who’s
gonna spend love money for a snog?
in any case you didn’t end up with her lana I mean because it wasn’t
a snog snog for you either - it better not have been - no no wait I know what you’re
gonna say but it’s ok cos lana’s my friend and I don’t get jealous
- not proper jealous - just don’t snog snog her while you’re with me
- it’s not the Aids thing I mind cos snogging’s a toilet seat - wha’m
I like but it’s true - snogging’s the toilet seat of sex cos you can’t
get Aids off of it - unless you lick the blood off of it - that’s what dave
said he is so gross I - hate it when men talk like that - it’s like me quack
quack quacking about my favourite vibrator or something - but anyway he stopped
being gross after he met kirsty - I just wish he’d stopped being gross after
he met me - cos he’s toned down so much now I’d share him with anyone
- god wha’m I like but it’s true -
cos you can fancy someone then stop fancying them and then after a while you refancy
them again cos even if your brain’s saying catch a bus your body remembers
why you fancied them in the first place - or maybe you refancy them cos you see
them like you’ve never seen them before or just wearing a new shirt or something
- and it’s like my nan’s dog all over again - only my nan’s dog
can fancy anyone - more or less - forever and then some - and what my nan’s
dog fancies you wouldn’t wish on your worst and for def you wouldn’t
refancy them - not that there’s a rule against refancying but it leads to
situations and the worst situation is when you refancy an ex while you’re
fancying the one who’s one day gonna be your ex - god wha’m I like but
it’s true - fancying the new ex while refancying the ex ex puts you in a right
one - not like putting all your mobiles in a bucket at the end of a night out -
cos I mean that’s just lucky dip - do you mind me talking about past relationships?
me myself I don’t usually talk about past relationships but that was before
I fancied and refancied at the same time - it’s like having a split personality
with one bed -
so I couldn’t help thinking about dave and kirsty and you and lana and kirsty
and you and I thought why hedge my bets when I can have it both ways? and if I’m
honest who will mind and who will know? unless I proper tell them or you do and
if you or me tell anyone it’ll be for a laugh cos nobody’s a gooseberry
and even if - so we can double up and still be friends my new ex and my ex ex and
me myself - it’s not like we’re kids and even if - cos who’s to
say what love is or was? and truth be told if there was love with any of us the
first time round or during the action replay - wha’m I like but it’s
true - if there was love then or in the meantime do you think me myself I’d
be here now with the pair of you?
I mean at the end of the day they say two is company but what do they know? cos
me myself I swear on my nan’s dog three is so much more - god wha’m
I like but it’s true - no listen - stop laughing - go on say something
Back To Top
InfinityCity
Infinitycity
It was not the first time a body had turned up in a canal. A floater. Body of a male. Young. Twenties. No signs of assault. No signs of external injury. Obviously, there was the story of how he lost his clothes. Most of them. Underpants still on. Country flag imprint. The first clue as to the man’s origins. Alcohol in his blood and water in his lungs pointed to the cause of death. More, they suggested a sequence of events. Young tourist. Big night out. Drinks a skinful. Staggers bedward. Falls in canal. Drowns in canal. He drinks, staggers, falls, drowns. One plus one plus one plus one equals four.
But those kind of sums were outmoded. The investigating officer knew that. She knew a lot. Some in the department said she knew the city like the back of her hand; others said that you only had to look at her to know the city. Last of a kind, they said. Old worlder. Salt of the earth and sea. Soon to be retired. Soon to be phased out. They said the new light-sensitive uniform didn’t suit her complexion anyway. The lines of her face were labyrinthine, complex, crossed with the now discredited emotions of anger, love, pain, joy in simultaneous and subtle gradations.
What she knew for sure was that in the self-conscious city, Infinitycity, which looked at itself and analysed itself continuously, which generated an infinite data stream, a stream of consciousness like a light always on, outmoded sums meant nothing. They certainly meant less than water running off a hoisted corpse’s fingers. There were no ‘ones’ to add any more. This was a new age, so the papers said. This was Infinitycity, where fractions ruled, where kilobytes swarmed, where islands of information spread out to the edgeless horizon, each a city within a city, each a living dot of data on an infinite loop: ∞. On the bank of L-gracht an officer’s torch skipped across a dead tourist’s face.
The investigating officer glimpsed the peaks and troughs of her own face in the black water. Miles to the west she could see the lights of the North Sea Highway. It connected the arcing lights of scores of eco-burbs, teeming satellites or ‘token zones’ of Infinitycity stretching to an optical zero. This was the new age and it was a total pain. Death in the new age meant one thing: Retrospective Assembly. A new technology had given people a new desire for a communal spiritual currency to replace religions and belief-systems to the advantage of all taxpayers.
That’s how Retrospective Assembly, no more than a trick of data-sculpting, had become a human right. The dead had the constitutional right, retrospectively, posthumously, to have their life ‘assembled’, recorded, in a positive light. The form of the record: a diary. The style of the diary: the style in which the deceased would have written it. The method: a simple brain scan; a series of electro-philosophical triggers, memory scenarios and psycho-emotional prompts; data analysis; data collating; syntactical arrangement; stylistic embellishment; a language of choice; city issue grey vellum-plastic publication as standard, including an electronic version. Maximum file size 0.5Mb, a figure arrived at after much public debate but acknowledged by most to be adequate for the narrative of the average life. Total assembly time: approximately ten seconds depending on brain age.
Super-efficiently egalitarian, people would thus be recorded for posterity, forever, in their own unique voice, nurturing urban diversity, assuring an afterlife, and providing a significant memento for surviving relatives. The narratives of the citizens of Infinitycity were stored deep underground in a special public vault excavated beneath the Museum of the Present (formerly the History Museum). People had traded rights in life for rights in death, life for immortality. Ultimately, citizens had gained the right to an afterlife. Foreigners even came to die in Infinitycity. The admission procedure was complex: first, a lengthy questionnaire needed to be completed, with graded questions ranging from ‘What is Infinitycity?’ to ‘Why choose immortality?’; second, if the grade was adequate, there were hefty fees and taxes to look forward to, payable up front. In Infinitycity there was no credit. Even so, the waiting list was infinite.
For investigating officers, these big ideas added up, like the best of old sums, to a long night’s work. Why? Because they were tasked with reading all the diaries for extreme elements which were then censored. The citizens of Infinitycity were neither one thing nor another. They were in between. They were cyclists and recyclists most likely working for Infinitycity’s biggest employers, the recycling companies. In the world of social repurposing strategists and domestic engineering consultants, things never ran out. Nor did they.
But if citizens lived on, so did their crimes. Any ‘live’ crime that crept into a Retrospective Assembly needed to be investigated and deleted. Sure, Crime-Scan software was in the pipeline. The investigating officers would soon be cut out, recycled, their uniforms repurposed, their life data scrambled and sold as souvenirs to tourists. Meanwhile, the system was in transition, in flux. In short, the investigating officer knew she would be reading the diary of a drunk tourist. Like other diaries she had had to read, this one would most likely contain nothing extreme, just RA’s systemic cycling and recycling of predictable mixtures: self-cancelling stupidity or cleverness, half-regrets, dull sexual encounters, jokes that only the originator found funny, ambiguous achievements, confessions way past their sell-by date and, of course, terrible poetry.
But the investigating officer, whose wrinkles crossed and hatched and crossed again her archipelago of freckles, was wrong. For what she encountered in the RA of this apparently drowned young tourist’s life bucked the trend, stood out of the crowd like the old worlders who still called the Museum of Acquiescence the Resistance Museum. The RA was, in the jargon of anyone familiar with jargon, non-standard. If publicised, questions would be raised about the credibility of the system, its validity. Citizens would be stirred up. The crime rate would soar. People would return to their old ways, wanting everything now, using it, wasting it, fucking things up, dropping dead, instead of living forever, instead of ∞.
*
Dawn came first on K-straat in the City of Early Risers on the western arc of Infinitycity. It remained suspended there for two hours. On N-straat, the main street of the City of Self-Cleansing, it rained hard at ten-minute intervals. The officer’s coded uniform allowed passage from one token zone to the next. Of course there was a glimmering of a black market in zone tokens but it was petty stuff compared to a non-standard RA. The investigating officer crossed into the City of Lux. The bar near L-plein had the brightest sunshine between 3am and 5am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course it didn’t always work. Microclimates glitched more often than computers. There were rumours of gaps in Infinitycity’s climate zones, bubbles of emptiness between cellular worlds. The first sunshine theft had occurred only weeks before. She ordered a saline drip which she attached to her arm. Then she sat in the blinking sun and tried to read between the lines. As it turned out, she actually tried to read between the line, for there was only one, shocking, alone as his body, that represented the dead man’s life, the sum total of his existence:
‘I am the drowned sailor.’
The Retrospective Assembly consisted of five words, a fraction of a kilobyte, five words like survivors clinging to the safety of a remote sentence in the middle of infinity. The investigating officer ran through the possible meanings of this solitary line. Each deepened her anxiety. The line read like a confession, which might have been in keeping with a diary, only it seemed to be an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked, like an old world criminal under interrogation who denied something he hadn’t been accused of. It also had the implication of having been written post-mortem, a voice from beyond, the brain still talking after the heart had stopped. Then it seemed to refer to other drowned sailors, by virtue of the definite article. The sailor: the one who had been sought, whose body had been lost at sea, perhaps found, never identified, now risen, water dripping from its fingers.
Then her mind turned to psychics, to the help they had given the department in the old days. For years the city had encouraged psychic development in its citizens to foster an understanding of things greater than themselves, to help them optimise the city’s future. They tended to live in the City of Foresight, an encircling development scattered around the outer ring to concentrate occult energies. But the City of Foresight had been an expensive failure: too much foresight made the citizens of Infinitycity anxious. They became terminally indecisive or else they tried to meddle in other people’s lives because they thought they knew better. So the city, using microwaves, eradicated psychic ability within a few months. They also eradicated artistic tendencies which, most taxpayers agreed, had been an unnecessary burden on the city economy.
One psychic had been a rotund man who lived near the outer ring. He talked too fast and often had unforeseeable accidents. But he had an ear for sea shanties, a nose for the truth and an eye for tarot. When he looked out of his window, he saw the future like a cityscape, complete with landmarks. When he had looked at her he had noticed the lines and freckles of her face and he had read them like a tourist would read a city map. He’d asked her to pull a card from his deck of tarot cards. She pulled the Drowned Phoenician Sailor. He had explained the meaning of the card, replaced in later tarot by the Hanged Man. Both cards pointed not to death but to suspension, to suspended animation, inversion, a place or a space between worlds. He’d told her how Odin inverted himself upon the tree of life to intuit the runes. A corpse hoisted out of a canal. Upside down. Water running off its fingers into the L-gracht. Black water without depth.
What did this mean? The single line invited interpretation, provoked reaction, the last thing a Retrospective Assembly was meant to do. RA was about closure. It represented the end of the city’s contract with its citizens in the guise of immortality. It was a myth in which a truth and a lie cohabited. Anything too specific, too extreme, would expose it. A crime was already too specific. But a resurrected sailor was clearly an urban menace.
The investigating officer put her head back to catch the last six minutes of sunshine but she was interrupted by a data alert from the department. It requested her to ‘prioritise the rectification of the incident’. People were already nervous. Delicately engineered eco-systems did not support ‘incidents’ just like they did not support free thinking. Waste is not an option, as agents from the City of Enforcement, a series of brutalist concrete bunkers spread throughout Infinitycity, used to say. New data followed. It seemed the man’s trousers had been found by a traffic light near the brewery. It seemed a credit card found in one of the pockets was in the name of ‘Selkirk’. It should have been easy to fix the identity of the deceased. But the card was an antique from a pre-biochip banking age. ‘Selkirks’ had been traced but none had claimed genetic connection to the deceased. So it seemed that ‘Selkirk’ was not Selkirk. He was not missing. Nor, by that logic, was the dead man even dead. He was the drowned sailor, whatever that meant.
As for the remainder of his clothes, his T-shirt (i ♥ ∞) was found with one of his shoes; the other shoe was found close to the canal in which he drowned. Separation of clothes and body suggested a murderer’s attempt to hide a crime. But it seemed that ‘Selkirk’ himself was responsible for his clothes. These had been linked to the deceased by a variety of tracking devices which revealed chronological segments of what must have been ‘Selkirk’s’ last minutes.
He was shown emerging from the coffee house on the corner of V-straat and J-straat in the City of Heavens. The streets looked down over the former port, now dry and undergoing reassignment. Why had he come here? A closer shot showed that he was possibly laughing or grinning or grimacing, teeth bared, face blurred. Then he removed his trousers. The manner in which he did so seemed strange. He had torn them off, pulled, yanked them, expending far more energy than necessary and thus in clear violation of city waste regulations. He was also emoting without due cause, another waste violation. It seemed that one of his shoes remained on, while the other was cast aside with the T-shirt. Tracking cameras later recorded the other shoe and the T-shirt heading north in the possession of a cyclist who would obviously recycle them.
The sun switched to the south. The investigating officer acknowledged the data alert, then headed for darkness of the City of Heavens. There was work to do. There was an ‘incident’ to rectify.
*
The corner of V-straat and J-straat was at the highest point of the City of Heavens, some 250 metres above the old sea level. It was also its semi-derelict heart. Here light had been banned and clouds diverted to create a permanent pristine night in which the bowl of the heavens was always visible overhead. It was a way of preserving the pure night, free from light pollution, for future generations. The area was popular with service workers, who lived virtually rent-free in cellular life-units that they could pack up and take with them to their next job. It was also a hit with astronomers, who sat on rooftops wincing into their telescopes, and with redundant sailors, who went downstairs to the coffee house to recount navigational fantasies or complain about the emergent City of Recycled Sea which was to replace the port. At ground level, the City of Heavens welcomed nobody.
Steps leading to the basement coffee house stank of ancient urine. The investigating officer knew that the owner encouraged this smell to deter undesirables such as foreign tourists. Windows, bricked up in accordance with regulations, revealed nothing. No light was allowed to leak. Light inspectors enforced the darkness with heavy fines. A vitamin complex was added to the water supply to counteract the absence of daylight. Of course, people could live in another of Infinitycity’s cities if they accumulated the zone tokens. But regeneration was promised and the tax breaks for staying put were considerable.
The officer pushed open the steel door, a former city authority’s attempt to seal a condemned property. A dozen figures, regulars, were clumped together in the central fluoro-booth like a suicide pact. They were the once oily now flaking men and women of the old world, the dregs of Infinitycity who refused to die and refused to live. Their bones were brittle from night, their eyesight enfeebled. In Infinitycity everyone was equal except them. They sipped fruit-flavoured soda through straws immersed in a communal bucket. Their genetic predisposition to alcoholism had been removed in a city-wide health initiative. It had been replaced with an addiction to artificially sweetened soft drinks. As the officer approached, their backs turned, and their lips closed over straws. Their hostility towards investigating officers had not been modified. It was calculated to be more cost-effective to restrict the supply of soft drinks solely to the City of Heavens, microchip all the dregs, then wait for them to die of natural causes.
But the investigating officer was of the old world too. Her face said so. Its complexity was old world complexity. She remembered things from before, like people with artistic tendencies, like psychics who saw beyond the city limits, like sailors who could describe the belly of a whale, like alcoholics who broke each other’s hearts and committed suicide. Why had ‘Selkirk’ come here? Clearly because he thought he was coming home, returning from a voyage, bringing a piece of a foreign land, a souvenir, something not of Infinitycity, like a foreign object, like a message, five words for his comrades, sitting in a morbid clump, treading water in an infinity pool, neither dead nor alive.
The investigating officer did not like herself for what she did next. Her experience told her it was necessary, her experience, like a thing she carried with her, a piece of baggage that grew in weight with each passing moment, that had shaped her face, routed its lines, effaced its ignorance in a slow curve tending towards absolute wisdom. But of course experience was being phased out as an inefficient method of data acquisition. Mindless idealism offered immediate solutions, was more eco-friendly and completely bio-degradable. She knew her experience was just enough to make things happen her way, exactly the way Infinitycity wanted.
By the time she had finished thinking these things, one of the dregs was clutching his right buttock where a needle had punctured his skin. The other dregs had scattered into the perma-night. He stank of rancid fruit piss and, beyond that, was a background odour of water, sea water, canal water. At times like this she felt the whole city teeter on its non-existent edge. The dreg cried, told mummy he loved her, sucked his thumb, promised he would never lie again: the typical sequence of symptoms associated with the amniotic serum. Then she held his head in her arms, reminded him in soft maternal tones that silence was not an option. She asked him several questions about ‘Selkirk’ and he began to babble, dribble, his words staggering at her out of the dark, tripping over themselves as if drunk. Then by turns he was sentimental, tragic, infantile, self-pitying, finally self-important, a witless child-king passing on secrets in some forgotten oral tradition, recycling an ancient story, ‘Selkirk’s’ story, as if his own. When the infant-dreg finished, his finger reached out to touch the investigating officer’s nipple but she put his straw back in his mouth.
What had she heard? In the darkness the lines of her face were unclear. Was she laughing? Scared? It seemed the darkness was overpowering her. She felt herself choking. Or was she grinning? She looked around. She emerged from the coffee house. Or was she seen emerging on a tracking device?
*
She wasn’t sure how she had got to the edge only that she had travelled to get there, crossed bridges, turned corners, chosen routes along canals that she knew by smell. Smell? Hadn’t she been brought here, to the edge, as a child? Hadn’t she been taught the smell of each canal? ‘Selkirk’ hadn’t known how he’d got there either. It seemed that one perma-night ‘Selkirk’ had simply appeared, a young adventurer with a long past, a stranger yet familiar, the dreg had said. They recognised on him, on his clothes, the smell of the sea. Then they recognised the story he told, its type, with the teller’s expansive hand-gestures depicting fish bigger than imagination, with the teller’s eyes sometimes focussed on a point so distant as to prove its nautical truth: only sailors saw to the edge. They even recognised the details of his story, which were reordered, repositioned within the story or emphasised or understated like so many narrative spare parts stuck together for effect, for a new purpose, recycled for reuse, for the re-entertainment of people once entertained by the very same story, the very same details, only in a different order, with a new perspective, recycled for reuse, like so many spare parts, and so on, and on, and on. And at last the investigating officer began to realise like she had realised before but forgotten, that the dreg had spoken ‘Selkirk’s’ Retrospective Assembly because ‘Selkirik’ had told it, had made it up out of his own head as if out of the blue.
‘Selkirk’ had reached the edge by imagining himself there. He had imagined crossing the canals and bridges and ringroads and junctions and more than that he had imagined himself crossing non-existent bridges and junctions and canals, the conceptual ones, the planned ones, the desired ones, the ones that could be or would be but had yet to be. ‘Selkirk’ was not marooned. He marooned himself, on a remote island, an island remote not from land but from common knowledge. It was remote because its existence was not suspected or imagined except in rumours about gaps in the city fabric, gaps only visible when climatic conditions were right. An island within Infinitycity.
And here she was, at the edge of the city. Beyond the outer ring. She had got the idea from a drowned sailor. A moment so specific that it glitched infinity. She had retraced ‘Selkirk’. Like him she had ready-reckoned the stars and second-guessed the constellations. She had crossed the cities within cities. It took her years or it took her ten seconds, the time of her future Retrospective Assembly. In Infinitycity the length of a life was edited but its bigness was censored. Poetic gestures were a public nuisance. Inversion was the only option. That’s how the drowned sailor had slipped from sight between microclimates, between cycles of recycling. He had shed his clothes because they reeked of the sea. He threw them away and threw himself away. It was the only way to reach the space between worlds, between himself.
The investigating officer wasn’t sure how she had got to the edge. But she had shed her clothes too. Shoes. Belt. Equipment. Dumped. She took her clothes off until she was starker than a sailor. Her face was a map of the infinitely freckled islands. Islands spattered to the horizon beyond the horizon. The city was a sealed bubble of connectivity in which clouds stood still, time fluttered, a sun shone, lives flashed over and over and over. She wondered what words would be written for her, what her 0.5Mb file would contain. Then she gently placed her face in the black water of L-gracht. Inverted, she saw beneath the surface for the first time. She was leaving Infinitycity. She was leaving for good.
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From 'New Writing 14' - British Council - Granta : 
From Westside Storeys, an XPress anthology : 
From ‘New Writing 12’ – British Council
- Picador :