lorries weigh a lot. especially car transporters, but there aren't too many of them around. they fly through here doing 50, while people chat happily a couple of feet away on the pavement, surely blocking from their minds the very real risk they are running. my toes are level with the edge of the kerb, and if i wanted to i could reach out and touch the juggernauts steaming past me. fly-spattered wing mirrors wing past mere inches above my head, and in front of me hip-high wheels promise economy plastic surgery if i dare sign up. greasy hair flaps around my doubtless inane grin, my heart and lungs working twice as they need to thanks to the adrenalin burning through my system, and my meagre frame is buffeted by air displaced in a scania's earnest quest to get from A to Slough. the confusion eddying in the air is nothing in comparison to the turbulence in my head, laughter and tears seeming just extremes of the same jaundiced emotion, and so in an attempt to delineate a hitherto limitless mental existence, devoid of landmarks and therefore direction, i choose a dutch freight lorry, step off the kerb, and achieve 0-60 in record time.
today is sunday. i wake up with a start, instantly too awake to go back to sleep, and know without opening the curtains that the weather is grey and humid. no, dark grey. my bedroom is a depressing mess, getting progressively messier towards the bed, with me in the centre as the most messed-up article in here. although i've been here a good few months, i still haven't summoned up the mental energy to change this goddamned mattress - a mistake, because i wake up every morning feeling worse thatn when i went to bed. i don't want to open the curtains because i know it'll start raining as soon as i do, and it will officially put a start on the day, meaning i'll have to think of things to fill it with. nevertheless i'm governed by the same morbid curiosity which induces me to initiate conversations with people i know i'll dislike immensely, and so open the curtains onto a narrow street framed by a rusting fire escape. little people going round in careful circles fill my consciousness, stopping and starting, doing things in stages, one and two bedroomed flats, 1.2 litre engines, clearly-defined limits and wage ceilings. only the sky goes on forever. i turn my back on the safety and sense that it has started raining. at least mornings can progress so far under their own power, driven by a set schedule of wash, dress, and eat. unfortunately this kickstart never seems to provide the inertia necessary to get the day rolling and progressing of its own accord. after breakfast it's up to me.
when i want to think, which isn't very often, i come across town to this area of semi-used buildings, and bum around for a while. you don't find disused buildings anymore regrettably. if a building does fall out of use it's pulled down and built on before you can say brown-field shite, so you have to find places like this which are officially in use but have fuck all going on in them. these are all old industrial units and they're completely derelict, but someone's keeping hold of them for some reason. i enjoy walking along the tops of walls. it's just like walking on kerbs, you've only got one way you can go, and when you get to the end you've just got to turn round and go back again. it aids clear thought and i need to figure out what i'm going to do. tomorrow evening i will split up with helen, my girlfriend of four months, so i need to compose my acceptance speech, and decide the direction of my love-life from then onwards. my feet are unwavering in their path along the bricks, sure-footedness being a family trait - my dad used to climb trees with me before he inherited a small fortune and became a boring old fart. to be honest i know what i'm going to do because i don't have the resolve to do otherwise - all roads lead to rome, and at the centre of my empire lies mary, as like me as helen is unlike me. i found helen irresistable for her conviction and affection, and her immediate openness, but quickly began to see not affection but affectation, and she's grown hugely frustrated with my inability to see as far as tomorrow. in my experience tomorrow always sucks no matter what i do and so i see no need to waste my time worrying about it. the units back onto the railway line 30 feet below, and i stop at the end of the wall to watch a DMU beetle past. i wonder if mary's on it, and briefly fantasise that i can see her in a window seat, but realise i'm being stupid and retrace my steps. a gust of wind unsteadies me, and i take a couple of seconds to regain my balance. my dad's inheritance means i'm financially secure for life, he can get me out of any trouble, so i seem to spend all my time making myself insecure in other respects - walking on walls, losing my friends - which is such a fucking predictable thing to do. i hope i'm impressing someone.
it's a bit weird tripping out clichés like 'the rest of my life' because it implies you've got ages left, until you're 80 or something. say i died this saturday, i'd have been middle-aged in my teens, over the hill two years ago, and by now well and truly senile. lucky i wasn't one of those teens going out for pub lunches and pretentiously drinking £12 bottles of vin rouge, else i truly would've been middle-aged at seventeen. anyway, for whatever length of time i have left remaining to me, every time i see one of those glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to someone's bedroom ceiling, i'll instantly be taken back to lying in a mountain of mary's carelessly re-arranged bed covers, in young post-coital bliss, a stupid smile on my face, saying stupid things, acting my age. any minute now i'm going to notive the wonderful feeling ebbing away, and bitter at its loss i'll reflect on how little it takes to make me forget everything, tell myself how shallow i am, i always do, but for the moment i've thrust all such thoughts from my mind, the city seems encouragingly small, and i'm in love with mary. sex makes everything better. me and mary are made for each other in the worst possible way, she's so unbelievably similar to me that i never have to explain my problems to her, she just knows. this is because we've slowly grown exactly the same, and any problem i have she does too. although we haven't been together for over three years, and at least one of us has had a partner at every point in the intervening period, we've never broken off our sexual relationship, and i've never been as close to any of the other girls as i have to mary. she knows everything. we can't get away, and it's killing us both. set cycles are the key. one of us begins a new relationship, convinced that this time it will work out, but is unable to keep away from the other and so comes running back and is helped to grieve for the new relationship by the latter. the relationship then dies a slow death whilst mary and i conduct an energetic affair. we're self-pitying, as those who bring about their own unhappiness usually are. the other main cycle is in holding down a job, mary's cycle being the shorter. i'm presently between jobs, whereas she has been taking phone calls for about three weeks now, and so is approaching the end of her cycle. she generally quits when she starts coming on, and picks up a new job the day she comes off her period. easier for all concerned, she says. being currently employed, mary is bankrolling my nicotine addiction, so we share a damp cigarette in the fading sunlight. this is the only time of day that direct sunlight penetrates into her bedroom, and somehow it's never worth the wait. not true mary, life-rending smile and all, i think she's beautiful. mary thinks i'm imbecilic, that if something isn't done then i'm going to spend my entire life bouncing back to her, and she's right. she also thinks she'll maybe put a stop to it now before it's too late, but what she doesn't realise is that it's already far too late. she won't say anything about all this today, that won't come until wednesday, so i can enjoy my happiness while it's still a resource open to me. why does everyone want to break my heart? mind you, me and mary do it to each other on a serial basis. the sun's going down. i put the cigarette in her mouth, and do something i wouldn't tell my parents about.
i reckon the person night-time most effectively hides me from is myself. it doesn't matter how many times i do this, i just keep on coming back and doing it all over again, wandering side streets, hands in pockets, complacent and about to be punished. how can i not merely hope for the best, but have total faith that the best will occur, when i know that it won't? i meant to do it differently this time around, but somehow just didn't, meekly followed my own script to the letter, the opening act at least. i meant to be someone else, but my character is too firmly entrenched.
i'm mouthing along to helen's litany. did i think she wouldn't find out? how stupid do i think she is? i seemed on the exterior such an unconventional personality, but underneath i'm just a cynical boring stick-in-the-mud, positively agrophobic. she can live her life just fine without me, just see if she doesn't. i am genuinely sorry, but i can't help reacting against this barrage; what does she expect to achieve? she doesn't need to prove her moral superiority, i was convinced of that long ago - helen's an intimidating person to love. she often takes a cautious playing-it-safe statement as a personal insult, and for someone as slow to commit and unsure of myself as i am, such statements are hard to avoid completely. however, in the animated manner of her broadside i recognise all the heart-stopping immediacy which i adore in her, and so i have to endure the next half an hour's condemnation in an agony of desire to touch her face and kiss her mouth. i can't do it of course. if i do then she shrieks "don't touch me!", i know. so i sit and listen, the condemned waiting to hear his inevitable sentence. every time i hear this i'm so choked with self-loathing that i can't drown myself for hatred of my reflection in the water. i fucking hate playing my life, but i must admit it's a part i was made for.
i lie in bed dreaming alternately of the strident self-belief in helen's voice, and a determined look in mary's eye. i'm running out of time.
wednesday, and right
on cue, mary tells me that it's time we both went our separate
ways and escaped the restrictions we put on each others' lives.
she gives herself away there immediately - i know she craves limits
and restrictions - she's working on a misplaced selfless impulse,
believing that i can move on and change. i don't mime along this
time, this is the crucial on. i have to argue her down.
"i'm not doing this in your interests" she is saying,
meaning to lie but speaking only the truth, amending it to "not
solely". somehow all my reasoned argument falls apart when
faced by her pained expression.
"you don't understand, i can't do this without you"
i begin, stumbling blindly from the broad tarmacadamed road of
my prepared dialogue.
"no, i do understand, and you will get over us." she
states firmly, but i can tell her belief in what she is saying
is wavering. i comprehensively fail to press home my advantage.
"please, mary." and that's it, she closes herself off
from sight, and talks automatically at me not-stop re-affirming
her belief that this is for the best, i can survive the big world
without her, and above all grown men shouldn't cry. despite this
last supposition, she allows me to cry on her shoulder, and is
soon weeping as uncontrollably as me, relishing the pain her fingernails
inflict on my grief-stricken shoulderblade.
by friday night i'm unable to leave my falt, cringing from the overwhelming scale of the city surrounding me. i've surprised myself with the sheer volume of alcohol i've managed to consume in the last 48 hours - the debris is strewn around my miserable form, getting progressively clearer the further from me it gets. the bottles within reach are organised neatly into concentric rings, and all contain at least ten cigarette butts each - if i could tell you the number of bottles then i dare say you could do the maths. i'm heavily drunk, and feeling like absolute shit. without mary, nothing makes any sense. i desperately need an ending in sight to make the pain seem survivable, but outside the plan there isn't one. i'd go to the wall, but i'd only fall off. it's no consolation at all to know that mary's feeling exactly the same. my brain tells me it's never known anything like this, but a rational part of me knows we've been here before. a possessed voice i dimly recognise as my own is screaming at me to end this now, the faces spinning round are too much. where the fuck am i? not even a ripple disturbs the surface to give me an idea of bearing, an idea of scale. i'm all alone i a big old forever of nothing, and no matter how loud i scream, no answering echo comes back. it gives me vertigo. terrified i grip my head in both hands and try to find limits by burying my chin in my chest. i shudder, retch drily, and finally vomit into my lap. i'm out of drink.
i sit in the same posture, cross-legged, looking down the tracks. they direct my path on into eternity, steady and reassuring, predictable and inevitable. due to unforeseen circumstances, the 5.25 to folkestone will not arrive until 6.10. please accept my apologies for the late running of this service. red light. green light. going round in careful circles. so i fucked up again, what a surprise. now i've got to endure the whole fucking mess all over again, no doubt only to do exactly the same thing. i could make the choice not to go back, carry on and find my way in the big wide world. the rails tingle familiarly beneath my fingers as the train appears in the distance. i'm in the shadows beneath a bridge so he won't see me before it's far too late. but why not step aside? be a real person, experience life, forget the rehearsal. fall in love again. so much to lose. i step out from under the bridge and look up. mary's eyes are on the train and she doesn't see me. she looks so serene as she begins her descent, hair streaming upwards, arms open wide. the adrenalin is pumping and the sleepers are bouncing underneath my feet with the train's approach as i open my arms to receive mary. she sees me at last halfway down, and the look of surprise just has time to fly across her face before she falls back into my arms and the 5.25 to folkestone takes me back to last sunday, to my saved game.
