It is here. Blink towards the sunrise. Free the busy knees. Them that turn and drop and carry you forward. Cherish the bones that move you forward, the thought thats been thinked of and the thought thats been mobilised. Like your eyes that see at one hundred and eighty degrees and your ears invaded at every moment by unwanted words. The whisper that carries your mind backwards. The thought can be repeated. Speech can evaporate, through the eardrums and out of the nostrils as you blow a derisive snort at their empty, ever present words. Fool you, fool everybody.
I see fortune rising on the back of bent up workers. I see money pouring through the fingers of a corporate gladitoral lasher. Whip, whip up the tide of movement for business must grow and buildings get higher. I see planes burst on their solar banks and bodies drop a thousand feet. Still, they multiply and weep and turn back to that Cat O Nine tails, ready for more.
Some do, some always do. And others? Give us our daily bread...
They seem to me as worker bees. An army dressed in suits of black walk parallel to my stroll across the lighted bridge. Over waters, still currents, rounded ripples calling me, tempting me in. I see things in green, a rebellious notion they seem to say through unseeing, glazed eyes. Do ya think I'd beg you for money. They think I would.
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"Wodju say?".
"I sed there is nothing equal to the pain of realising that there is nothing I can do to change an already disagreeable situation."
We drive over bumps the council had invested into the roads. That, is disagreeable to my stomach which is filled with booze. At each bump, i feel it slosh and dribble over my tongue. I turn left to the opened window and spit out a gloob of beer.
Tonight I will be perfectly exuburant. Tonight I will not let the alcohol take a hold of me. I will not, I repeat not, fail in my pursuit of fun. Fun; until, the beer crawls up to my head and makes me numb to outside influence. Sitting flat, unable even to speak. That turns out to be the very said situation. I cannot move, I can barely breathe, I have pissed on my trousers.
The disagreeable situation has arrived. Mofo has forgotten her I.D. The bouncer eyes us disdainfully as we stagger up to the door. He will not let us in without I.D. I proclaim dates of birth, people they can call to confirm our age. He is ugly, with a small nose and smaller eyes. The small eyes squint at us and grow smaller. He repeats that he will not let us in. My voice gets louder, most likely slurred. "I am twenty!" I cry. He does not let us in. We leave and go to the pub. Bughead trills a jolly sermon. We listen to Bugheads operatic versions of Take on Me by A-ha all the way home. What she said was the disagreeable situation i completely, entirely forget.
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I see, through eyes of circumstance.
The situation is, I have no more money and nowhere to live. So, off to the benefit office for hours of waiting in a stuffy grey room, to pick up form after form.
My turn is eventually called out. I sit at the desk in front of a large woman that looks strangely like a pug dog with a fake tan, many chins and beady eyes. I am here to claim me a home.
I had phoned and phoned the council only to be told that "because of Mrs. Thatcher, there's now a shortage of houses. Are you pregnant?" If I was pregnant, I'd av quickly got a place. "But Thatcher was in power twenty years ago!", I burst out. "That's not my problem" came the reply.
This woman at the desk talks to me without moving her mouth, teeth clenched, through a false white grin. She takes down my details. Race? Sexuality? Sexuality! Well, thats stumped me. Hetero, gay, bisexual and something else I can't quite make out as I lean over the desk to look at the form, in disbelief. I let out a stuttered "errgh" and am suddenly jolted by flashbacks of my past, Gemma's soft green eyes, her beautiful white limbs... this would be a declaration and an undenial of my love for her, which she would never hear, being so many miles away from me. I feel my cheeks heat up into a blush and answer "Bi." The office lady gives me a quick unperturbed "Ok", still with teeth clenched, and ticks the box for permanence. I feel my heart sink inside me. After that I cant make any eye contact, listening to her repetative nonsense with my sight focused on the end of my trainer, on the floor, on the form with its big fat tick in the box, anywhere but into her little black eyes.
Afterwards I go into the college library to look up books on philosophy. Ah, the humanitarian Camus, with his sexy Bogart looks, a cigarette perpetually hanging from his lips. I have one of his black n white portraits stuck on my wall, the only picture on my wall in fact, quite odd I guess.
I walked the three miles back from the college and God threw rain and hailstorms on me all the way, so I balanced the books on my head like an African tribeswoman, 'til the weight of them sent a circle of pain through the top of my skull. Then, i stopped, worrying about how weird I looked, and then worried about the fact that i was worried about what other people thought. Hint of madness. I was soaked to the bone, the wind blew my hair in all directions, I resembled the wild woman of the woods. I took a shortcut and tramped across muddy fields and down little hilly paths that were full of puddles and slippery, only room for one foot at a time.