Gosha
She whoops in laughter as he lifts her from her seat, up with just a hand around hers, and through the next arch into the third chamber. Her feet follow his to the centre of the space. Red brick is graced by white lights that spin and dance themselves to the strings and symbols waving out from the big black boxes in each corner. Everything outside of Gosha’s face was blurred, washed from the real as unimportant. Her right hand gripped his left. This haze was very pleasant. Burgess, he said to himself, maybe audibly, Burgess for goodness sake you better hide yourself or you’ll look the fool.
December 21, 2011 | Categories: Identity, Love, Romance, Social | Tags: Charles Burgess, Gosha | Leave A Comment »
Figure 66.1: Steve Jobs wears jeans.
At 7am I awoke. I got straight out of bed and had a hot shower. At about a quarter past the hour, Twitter illuminated me to the fact that Steve Jobs, Apple innovator, had died. Poor Steve Jobs had died.
I tweeted, as one might, about Steve Jobs. Among the plethora of “RIP, Steve Jobs,” tweets, or saccharine 140 character odes to that tune, mine was chalky.
“While I suppose I’m a bit sad for Steve Jobs and his family, I mostly don’t care. My MacBook is great but I paid Apple €1600 for it.”
Steve Jobs made the lives of people who could afford it slightly easier with functional but elegant electronic consumer products. It isn’t charity; it’s business.
Jobs led a company, drove numerous companies, to create profit. By common moral standards this is neither a bad nor a good thing in itself, but the fact that Steve Jobs led the company that developed my laptop does not make my heart beat for him.
Further irked, the more I thought. A minute later I tweeted again.
“Apple were the ‘alternative’ multinational money machine, cooler than Microsoft? Steve Jobs wore jeans and t-shirts instead of suits. Great.”
I used to have a Dell laptop. It was really good. I also had a Sony walkman at one point. I don’t hold any love for the leaders of those companies.
The Sony walkman, one of those old ones that played cassettes, that was my first bit of technology that was my own. I look back more fondly on that than any other electronic product I have ever had.
Many of my generation learned to use computers with Windows products on Hewlett Packard and Dell Computers, as the next may learn on Mac operating systems on Apple Macs.
Bill Gates, the multi-billionaire name most commonly associated with Microsoft and Windows, is not a figure of public idolatry in the same way as the unexpired Jobs was.
An interesting albeit rather obvious comparison is fit to be drawn between Jobs and Gates. Within similar fields, both are very different kinds of innovators, inventers and visionaries. Yet Jobs is the alternative choice, the underdog, undermining the dominance of the big evil, Microsoft.
As my previously half-baked opinions on Jobs found solidity, I tweeted again. It was about half past nine by this time and it was my last shout on the matter.
“Poor Steve Jobs. He made our lives slightly easier with products that we bought from his company for cash money. A true hero.”
In 1987 a charity organisation called the Stephen P Jobs Foundation was started. A little over a year later it folded having done nothing other than employ famous designer Paul Rand to create its logo.
Ten years later, Jobs terminated all of Apple’s corporate philanthropy programs when he rejoined the company. This was because he wanted the company to concentrate on becoming profitable again after a period of decline. These programs did not resurface.
I have no favouritism towards Bill Gates or any business person, but where the veneration of Jobs comes from is beyond my grasp. I don’t wake up every day and thank Adi Dassler for my shoes or Levi Strauss for my jeans, and they were pioneers in their fields.
Neither do I thank Rupert Murdoch for bringing me Premier League soccer every weekend. BSkyB innovate. They bring us Premier League coverage in new ways every week, giving us more access. Sky have directly empowered British football through their coverage, innovative branding and inventive market penetration, indirectly leading to the exponential improvement in quality of these leagues and, by proxy, our enjoyment of them.
Jobs was an innovator, but so is Jonathan Ive who has contributed just as much if not more to what supposedly justifies Jobs’ sanctity now: Apple’s innovation, invention and technological vision or, sleekly designed iPhones that are updated every couple of months rendering what they replace obsolete and the most depreciable consumer good since toilet paper.
I have no bad will whatsoever to Steve Jobs and I take no pleasure in his death. I feel bad for his wife who is, according to many sources, a nice person. I feel bad for his family and those who counted him as a friend.
The painful Twittering of millions of people in mourning over a megalomaniac business man does raise my ire though. Why this particular genius? Why not the others, the ones that aren’t the heads of multinational corporations?
A cult of personality rears its head now. Jobs may have been a genius, but he was also a man who wore denim jeans, turtle neck jumpers and (probably) endearingly tattered converse.
Jobs was his own best marketing tool. The sudden fall in Apple’s share price upon news of his death is as much a testament to that as it is to his capacity for invention.
The design team is still there. The people who developed five generations of iPhone in the space of four years – each shinier than the last – are still at Apple. So don’t worry.
The problem for us is that the same lovely face isn’t there to put the new product in our hands anymore. The ‘alternative’ guy – the lesser evil to Bill gates or some soulless Japanese technology company – is not there to keep us loyal.
But it isn’t Fairtrade iPods and iCoffee that we’ve been filling up on. It has always been the ‘alternative’ value of Apple, the Steve Jobs factor even when we don’t see him.
This tragedy means that now we have this vacancy in our lives, a lack of an intermediary between the product and our money. We’re lamenting it. The thing we associated with “innovation” and “invention,” is gone. And all we have is product, pure product, pure Apple.
And only now do we realise that the thing we worshipped all along, the thing we pay tribute to now, only ever hid our worship of the product, the consumer good that is Apple, in all its ‘alternative’ glory.
October 9, 2011 | Categories: Death, Economic, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Steve Jobs RIP, why everybody loves Steve Jobs | Leave A Comment »
Leather Light Needle
She is folded into the cosmic latte
leather cushions of a suburban afternoon,
either numb to or unaware of a joyous spring,
or the solitary shaft of light resolved
to peer through the poly cotton fence,
to reach between the graying magnolia curtains,
to ignite the brilliant crimson dripping
fresh from the tip
of her yellowed fore finger, dripping with a beat
from a little wound up further. Lame
her left hand hangs, off over the edge,
while the other lies
open upon her lap as if to receive
the holy morsel, or even crumbs from it,
even though her palm gives rest to the needle
responsible. Or perhaps the fault was her own,
for piercing her own self and selfhood, her own self.
She bats away the distant sight of her tea-stained
pyjamas, but the twinkle of the weapon holds her,
until the eye drifts off.
But one day’s sewing mistake cannot wet
the yellow and purple of her swollen cheek,
nor dampen the hot hand that touched her in
heat as she exercised her stoic calm,
accepting her lot from that
hot hand, the one that put the ring
upon her finger. Supper does not
prepare itself, its own self.
September 17, 2011 | Categories: Death, Poetry, Social, Waiting | Tags: Cathal Wogan Poetry, Leather Light Needle, PEOMS OR POEMS, poem, Poems about suburbia, Poetry, violent poems | Leave A Comment »
- Below is a link to something I very recently wrote for The Spanner e-zine, a funny internet magazine.
Priest admits to having loads of sex with children…
July 29, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, News Story, Religion, Sex, Social | Tags: child buggery, Cloyne Report 2011, Priest fucks child, the word "satire" has lost all meaning | Leave A Comment »
Locked like a door, I approach the beor. I ask her how she’s getting on, with an emphasis on the “you,” as my vocal peaks atop a tonal wave at that point of my inquisition. She engages my eyes for a second and then looks off to her left, my right, just past my head. She says that she’s fine, pretty good, no complaints. I ask her how she takes her tea, what she likes upon her pizza, and how she likes her steak cooked. She does not like coffee, but sometimes drinks it if she needs it. I ask when she needs it and why. She says that in the morning she might have a latte to get her up and at them, usually from Café Sol before class. I remind her that I also asked why she drinks coffee and, with the information I have obtained from the previous question and her next answer, a shrug of the shoulders, I deduct that she is seventeen years old and, mentally, precious and young and virginal like Mary before she had sex.
July 4, 2011 | Categories: Fiction, Romance, Sex, Social | Tags: stories about coffee, Virginity | Leave A Comment »
Hospital, June
An air conditioning grate
hums in the hanging ceiling,
the very same as the
sky above the arid space of a
desolate cube farm, vast
and squared, while the walls moan
anaemic green and sterile white.
High in the corner, a metallic black
bracket suspends a window to
Short Strand and Damascus,
bricks and bottles and bullets
to the tune of scratching white noise,
until those static screams swell
to the choral strophe of
a new Athenian tragedy.
Bolted solidly into the lime linoleum,
three rows of plastic blue seats
host two other than I.
An autumnal lady figure sits
in blossoming flowered blouse and
red cardigan, thick and woollen
despite the season’s graces,
sourly pursing her lips in an
affront to the young nurse working
the x-ray department desk.
Untied tennis shoes kick back and
forth rhythmically, not far
beneath a neck tilted up
towards scattered bricks and
shattered eyes in Surman and Tripoli.
As my name is called
the little girl’s gaze
does not waver, her
fair curls do not bob at all,
as she is trapped in the
moving image, an orphan
to an orphan.
June 23, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Death, Nations, News Story, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, Waiting, War | Tags: poems about hospitals, Poetry Month | 1 Comment »
- To be one third of the way through this self-inflicted Poetry Month is kind of a relief. Again, thank you for reading, and any criticism or comment is more than welcome.
The Ants, 2011
A long, dark crack squints at me
from between the concrete path and doorstep,
and as I scald them all before they can even drown,
those hardy little workers,
I briefly wonder if I am a murderer
or if I’m merely kettling.
June 10, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Death, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Ants in my pants, double penetration, Poems about Ants, poems about double penetration, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
The Jetty
The tarpaulin shivers in the breeze.
Cigarette shooshes as I pull it into my body,
deep, and let it away by my side again.
On the other shore, two saplings lean west
and point towards a homely wood cabin sat upon a
log foundation on the grass. A short jetty
juts out into the water, harbouring
a little vessel built for no more than two men,
bobbing in and out on a leash of old rope.
Broad planks lead to a porch and glass door,
through which one might peer inside were
it not such a late hour and getting later,
or perhaps a little closer.
Some day, a man and his dog might walk
along this path, door to dingy, on a finer day
when the water glistens and ripples with
air more zephyr than biting. And off
they would float in their tiny wooden boat,
casting out for a late lunch of brown trout
with thick chunks of bread and butter,
or a few for the smoke house around the back,
but for now all is quiet, and the gentle lapping
of the water against the shore and the jetty
is all there is. There is no dog
barking from the middle of the lake.
June 9, 2011 | Categories: Death, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social, Waiting | Tags: double penetration, hipster poems, obscure tag, poems about fishing, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
A Large and Opulent House in Dublin 6
On the edge of a flock of penguins and doves,
he stands tout seul,
a black and white suited beanpole
creased at the top under tectonic
isolation, head and shoulders down,
eyes trying to engage with worn leather feet
that don’t blink or speak.
“This is Sam,” she says
with her mouth,
and they shake hands like tepid
old boys would, both adrift but reluctant,
looking at each other’s feet
for something in common.
Piano crushes four four, four four.
Their petals fall away
and gather somewhere else.
June 8, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Love, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social, Waiting | Tags: poems about wearing a tux, Poetry Month, Trinity Ball | 2 Comments »
With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
From where does your strength come?
Putting what one holds upon a shelf,
subsequent disconnection of the self.
The fetish, value invested in the piece,
now experiences a value release,
it feels its own value decrease,
until the idea of priceless love is deceased
and a new dawn breaks over another land,
as you look down at your empty hand.
Does another’s palm open, as you hadn’t planned,
raising what’s yours, because he understands?
Can value be inherent, self-generating; or created,
by the beholder who loves it, or who rates it,
according to numbers or something related
to how the object sees his spirit inflated?
With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
Or are you, desperado, immune to a past,
the future hurtling towards you so fast
that all you can see is potential most vast?
From where does your strength come?
The object for which your feelings now numb?
Never forget what is valueless to some,
may be priceless to others after they’re done.
The potential for value within the object you hold,
remains there no matter how battered or old,
if you carelessly leave it to rain or to cold,
even when you discard it for shimmering gold.
June 7, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social | Tags: poetry about fetishism, Poetry Month, really shit poems | Leave A Comment »
Large
“This is a huge game today, a six pointer,
a real cup final for both of these teams.”
Large, Freddy Chambers
sops his gurgling maw about
like a cartoon horse chewing
cartoon cud, managing to chew
his foaming ale.
“It is undeniable that both teams have players,
and that this will indeed be a game of football.”
Shlopping the muddy water
across similar accomplices -
who do not seem to mind -
the maw wails of undying love
for a football team.
“Neither team will want to lose this one,
as that will mean no points from the game.”
On the whistle, Freddy whelps,
and the pint glass erupts in shit and piss.
“Live! In HD!”
June 6, 2011 | Categories: Alcohol, Football, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social, Sport | Tags: Freddy Chambers, Large, poems about football, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
April
You will find him at the very end,
his feet buried deep in granite boots
bound to the earthen foundry,
rising through to silver head
bowed to the land around him.
Great oak arms with willow fingers
grip the shaft of a venerable old spade,
one shorn from tree and mine
before even he had breathed dew of morn’
or dust of dusk and closing time.
His Mjǫlnir turns the earth with
each thrust and heave. Thud.
Neither king nor god, he reaps the land,
and though he is bound, he is.
June 5, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: double penetration, Hipster chicks love poetry, Poems about April, poems about double penetration, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
- It has very quickly become apparent that it will be difficult to write a poem a day for this entire month. The process of doing so, while working three twelve hour shifts a week and conducting an ‘everyday’ life on the other days, is awful. While I have said before that I don’t enjoy writing poetry, as it it turns out to be obtrusively personal for me, prolific writing delves even further than usual into what is personal, or ‘personal.’ This is the third poem of my Poetry Month.
You Are The First Person Too
I, the first person singular,
proposition You, the second,
to break speech angular
and to briefly entertain
the thought of a pause from
your caustic sustain.
For You are an I, your own,
but your crafted repugnance will
waste you like awful cholera.
And surely you could part
from gender redress.
June 3, 2011 | Categories: Poetry, Poetry Month, Social | Tags: poems about feminism, Poems about women, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
- Another poem? Yes, that’s right.
Settling
Summoning copper for dusk
that settles to night,
crumpled currency, safe.
Traversing the traffic plane,
Finding home.
Does home lie
in the dust below the moon?
No matter,
as by one’s self the dust is accusatory,
evidence of fixation or need.
Nectar as a metaphor,
but no God would know.
Or is it desire, desperation,
leaving me unable or simple,
only suckling
and all the while whimpering,
reaching downwards,
and willing the black upwards?
For until dusk’s dust settles,
I am mired,
And sinking in the slowly settling silt.
April 20, 2011 | Categories: Alcohol, Poetry, Social, Waiting | Tags: Dust, Giving the game away with tags, Literal Explanation, Poetry, Settling | Leave A Comment »
“How do you plead?”
“Not guilty, of course. I didn’t do it.”
“That is what we are here to find out, Sir. Be seated.”
John Johnson took his seat. The Judge watched him. The room was intimidating, wooden. Everything was wood fitted, old oak. It was a room fixed in competitive historiography, consciously designed to feel like it was of the earth, born from the ground, inside the hollow of a giant oak tree. If the Judge was an owl, his defence solicitor a badger and the prosecutor a weasel, the scene could have been a children’s story. Unfortunately, he was being tried for several serious crimes, none of which he committed.
“John Johnson has pleaded guilty on all twelve counts of rape-murder-rape, crimes committed in that order, on twelve different occasions since his birth.”
John Johnson leapt to his feet in dismay, trying to shout words of objection but only managing exasperated coughing noises. His arms flailed about his head.
“Please, Mr. Johnson.”
The badger solicitor pulled him down towards his seat again. John Johnson collapsed in a heap upon his arms, upon the table in front of him.
“Due to the shocking monstrosity of the crimes perpetrated by Mr. Johnson, I have no option but to issue him with 36 life sentences, to be served consecutively. My hope is that during this time he will be reformed and will, under God, eventually feel some of the regret and pain appropriate considering what he has done to the twelve women on my right.”
The Judge lifted his grey wing and gestured towards his right. Twelve women between the ages of sixteen and thirty smiled at John Johnson. They stood collectively and applauded. Slowly, the galleries behind John Johnson began to applaud too. He remained seated, face in his arms, sobbing hysterically.
“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do any of it.” John Johnson pleaded with the defence badger, but the badger merely looked at him in mild disgust.
“If you didn’t want to be found guilty, Mr. Johnson, you should not have pleaded guilty to all twelve counts of rape-murder-rape, crimes committed in that order, on twelve different occasions since your birth. Well, I say that, you just shouldn’t have committed the crimes in the first place. Good day to you, Mr. Johnson.”
“But I, but I didn’t do anything.” The defence badger turned to him once again.
“Mr. Johnson. You have damaged these twelve women. You deserve what is coming to you. Now, I must be off. Good day to you.”
“I, did I?”
John Johnson is currently serving his time in a minimum-security prison with tax dodgers and smugglers of exotic vegetables. He can essentially come and go as he pleases. However, he has not been physically able to speak since his trial. Instead he carries a pen and paper to help him communicate. This is harrowing for him but he feels that he probably deserves it..
April 11, 2011 | Categories: Crime, Fiction, Love, Romance, Sex, Social | Tags: badgers, court, denial, john johnson, Murder, oak, Owls, Rape, weasels | Leave A Comment »
“Em, could I, em, could I get a burrito please, with no sour cream?” I’m desperately nervous. This process seems so easy for the people ahead of me in the line, yet I’m stumbling over my words, flapping the menu card about in my hands like a lunatic. I want a burrito with chicken and mild tomato salsa, no sour cream. I think that’s all the options covered. For some reason though, I’m finding it very difficult to say.
“Sorry.” I’m very embarrassed but the lady behind the counter could hardly be any nicer. If we were not separated by wells of exotic Mexican flavours, I can only assume that she would have given me a hug.
“First time?” She smiles in the most comforting way. “It isn’t that hard. Listen, I’ll help you. Would you like pinto beans or black beans?”
“Em…” I hadn’t picked a bean when I previously scanned the menu.
“The pinto beans have a juicy texture and a smooth, smoky flavour. They’re really delicious. The black beans are a bit different. They’re more…”
I’m amazed at how nice the people at Boojum are. Five minutes ago I jumped off the Luas at Jervis wondering why the burrito had taken over Dublin city, why I was now going for one, and why I was so nervous. I was late to the burrito party, really late, and it was pretty uncool. Making my way around to Millenium Walkway, I feel like everybody knows that I’m here to lose my burrito virginity. Everybody is cool here; they’re all eating burritos. Right now, it doesn’t matter that I know about obscure hip hop from the early nineties, because I don’t know the difference between pinto beans and black beans.
“Pinto sounds good. Could I have some pinto beans please?” I am aware that I sound like a simpleton. I never ask for directions, I never read the instruction manual and I never ever let on that I don’t know what I’m doing. However, right now I am unable to bluff. I need to learn.
- Fig 25.1: Boojum, Millenium Walkway.
“Good stuff. See, it isn’t hard at all. Any meat?”
“Chicken please.” I had decided this earlier when I checked out the Boojum website. Their menu is online, along with lots of information about them and the food. When the burrito was invented in 2008, or whenever, the internet became its godfather. Burritos & Blues, Wexford Street, tweeted me only a few days ago to tell me that they’d be delighted if they could introduce me to Mexican food. Pablo Picanté, with a Baggot Street ‘casa’ and another on Clarendon Market, nearly got me with their website alone. All of these places have an internet presence, which is probably someway responsible for the burrito’s popularity with a middle-class ‘alt’ audience. Boojum won because one of my mates said that it was his favourite. I suppose nothing spreads popularity like some old-fashioned word of mouth.
Two more ladies help me in the process, each as lovely as the first. The food conveyor belt eventually leaves me with a chicken burrito with pinto beans, tomato salsa and grated cheese. No sour cream for me. With a bottle of soft drink, I get decent change from my tenner and, finally, it is dinner time.
Sitting outside on the terrace of Millenium Walkway, I marvel at the size of what I’m about to eat. This really is a meal. I would like a weighing-scales right now. It is a giant package of food, food that I can only assume is relatively good for you. This is not only cheaper than a Burger King meal; it won’t leave me contemplating an hour in the gym as penance. And then you eat.
My mind is blown. Where have you been, Mr Burrito? Or, where have I been? For a second I feel a mild regret that I waited so long, but it vanishes because now I know. I suddenly understand everything. It all makes so much sense. This is amazing. I can only imagine that this is how the quiet girl in class felt when, for the very first time, she got scaldy drunk and danced like her hair was on fire. There was no going back for her then.
All that flavour is perfect. The subtly smoky pinto beans compliment the grilled chicken; sautéed peppers and onions mesh with the tomato salsa and rice as the cheese melts into everything else. Everything here has a place, it all fits. Every single bite gives a little kick because each individual ingredient has a purpose. The chicken, for example, is seasoned and cooked in its own special way. So when you take a bite of your burrito, you experience that. Similarly, the tomato salsa, the mildest option according to the staff at Boojum, is not just level one salsa, sauce for beginners; it is a delight of flavour in its own right. So when it all comes together in this genius package, you get it all. Any single bite is guaranteed to be interesting, to give you something.
I force myself to finish it. I’m completely stuffed, which is quite a feat. Leaning back, I take a deep breath and treasure all the goodness in my belly. I feel cool now, in a very gluttonous way. Or less uncool.
“So?” My company for the evening, an experienced burrito man, looks for a reaction. He smiles. He knew all along. I stopped talking after my first bite and haven’t said anything since. Thanks, Boojum.
March 5, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Food, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Boojum, Burritos, Coolness, Dublin Burritos, Food Review, Hipster food | Leave A Comment »
Linus Spacehead and Target
There was no movement on the street. Everything was bathed in the orange half-light radiated by the street lamps. Linus sat stationary behind the wheel of his unmarked car, which itself sat stationary about thirty yards from the junction that sees Cyprus Avenue cross Green Dolphin Street. His left hand was tense, stuck to the top of the steering wheel. Tucked inside his pants, his right hand was wrapped around his gun, the tips of his fingers tickling his testicles.
“Target exiting The Squatty Roo alone. Target walking slowly east on Green Dolphin Street. Over.”
The ear piece hummed incessantly when there were no transmissions coming through. The chatty kid that does the electronics told him that it was the last one he had left after the budget cuts that central had enforced.
“Aw dang Spacehead, they bleedin’ me. You know I ain’t got shit else. These fools down in Central, they tell me do this and do that, but do it all with no damn money. Gotta learn them some shit about what we doin’.”
“That really is terrible. I was wondering if you could please make it work so that it doesn’t ring like that? I would really appreciate it.”
“I’ll try man, but you ain’t know what they leavin’ me with up in here. I ain’t got no damn tools.”
“Thanks kid. I really hate noises. I get migraines, you know, like really bad headaches. I don’t think I’d be able to get the job done with a migraine.”
“Target approaching crossroads of Cyprus and Green Dolphin. Prepare to engage Target, Spacehead. Over.”
Linus had been sitting in the car for more than two hours, humming different tunes from radio and television advertisements to keep himself amused. It seemed so long ago now that he had been trying to remember the jingle from the toilet paper ad with all the little puppies. They run around a lovely house in a dreamy suburbia, dragging toilet paper everywhere. Needless to say, the family that lives there are very unimpressed when they arrive home. You can’t stay mad at little dogs though, so as soon as one of the young children cracks a smile at the paper’s softness on his face, the rest of the family all have a nice laugh about the situation. Linus expects that they bought quite a lot of this brand of toilet paper after the incident, but also a gate device to keep the dogs from going upstairs.
“Target turning south onto Green Dolphin. Spacehead, prepare to engage Target. Over.”
Officer Linus Spacehead locked his right hand on the handle of his gun, his index finger around the trigger. He focused his eyes in the poor light, fixing his gaze upon Target. He matches the description given to him by The Chief earlier in the day. Written on a beer mat, it was to the point.
“About three and a half feet tall. Tight blonde hair and blue eyes. Could be wearing an eye patch.”
“Target nearing your position, Spacehead. Engage Target. Over.”
The throbbing in his head was getting worse, but Linus knew that once he had killed the little fellow then he would not have to listen to the ear piece. He would drive home, picking up Chinese food on the way. His cat, Escargot, would curl up beside him. Escargot loved watching the blue comedies that played late on television. So did Linus. They were made for each other.
“BANG!”
Linus shouted as he shot his gun, firing a bullet into the side of the little man’s head. It was very quick. He reached out the window, aimed, and then pulled the trigger. The little man toppled over with the force of the shot and was dead.
Fig 23.1: Escargot, Linus' cat.
February 20, 2011 | Categories: Crime, Death, Fiction, Sex, Social, The Human Condition, Waiting | Tags: guns, jobs, Linus Spacehead, little person gets killed, Murder, police brutality | 1 Comment »
- Happy Valentine’s Day!
Old Patsy in her Tiny Flat
“It would be very sweet of you to come along,” she says, “but I am afraid that I would not be able to hear you speak. Yes, the walls are screaming very loudly again today.” Her voice is delicate, not far from crumbling.
Paddy sits on a three-legged wooden stool beside a yellow door that is itself gathering as much dust as the trinkets that litter the shelves and cabinets of her small living room. Silver roots betray the crimson product that she has prefered for a number of years. In truth, her hair has fallen into a rather unfortunate state of disrepair recently. It hangs down listlessly, partly covering bright blue eyes, completely covering the thin black pencilled brows that are refreshed every morning with an ever shortening 8B.
“Of course not, don’t be silly. You take it easy, pet… That’s right, yes. Yes, and I’ll see you some time soon.”
She pouts after she puts the phone back on the hook, like a young girl posing for her school picture, idly thinking of the boy who sits near her in class, the one who always shares his chocolate bar with her at lunch. He is such a nice boy.
“Okay, Patsy. Don’t worry. Say ‘prunes,’ and you’ll be fine.” The photographer smiles at her before retreating behind his clunky photographic apparatus. Patsy is careful not to move, even going so far as to hold her breath to preserve the pose engineered for her by the delicate hands of the working artist. She has been holding her breath for nearly a minute now, since his forefinger softly brushed the nape of her neck and then lingered just behind her ear. She thinks of chocolate and, from a smiling start, does as she is advised.
“Prunes,” whispers Paddy. “Prunes, pruh-pruuune, pruuunes.” She picks at the cracked paint on the door, tearing off a shard of failing yellow. She examines it suspiciously only for it to crumble as she passes it through her wrinkled fingers. Remnants of pink nail polish from months past speckle nails that have been unchecked since, nails extending an inch from her digits.
The room is very small with no windows. There are two doors, the yellow one that Paddy is currently picking at, and another blue one, in a similar state of disrepair. A wingback armchair covered in plain beige material faces a table that hosts a tiny television. Shelves, bookcases and cabinets close in, heaving with sea shells and rock candy from twenty years ago, chipped china saucers, plates and cups, and picture frames bearing the uneasy faces of people who do not call anymore. That is, if they could call. Paddy had cut the cord that connected the phone to the little box on the moaning magnolia wall. It was around the same time that a note was pushed under the yellow door.
“You have not paid rent or maintenance for the past three months. It would be best for you to leave as soon as possible.” On that day, Paddy locked the latch on the yellow door. Nobody had disturbed her since.
“Come on now, Patsy. Stop doing that with your hands. It won’t look good in your picture.” The photographer walks towards her again, smiling in a deliberate attempt to calm her. She appears very nervous to him, wringing her hands like a damp cloth that will not dry. He kneels down in front of her and takes her tiny hands into his. He looks up from her knees, directly into her eyes.
“Don’t worry, its only a picture. Just smile and say ‘prunes.’ You’ll be fine, trust me.” He places her left hand onto the grey skirt that covers her crossed knees, and her right hand upon her left, smiling again reassuringly before letting her go. He slowly walks behind her and brushes a stray wisp of golden hair behind her ear. Patsy takes a breath and he caresses the nape of her neck again, slowly tracing the contours down her shoulder. The rough skin of his calloused fingers finds the hollow inside her collar-bone and she begins to wring her hands once again, squeezing her fingers and trying desperately to pull them off.
“Patsy. Patsy.”
The blue door is open, just a crack of a few inches. Paddy cannot see what might be inside. She does not remember having crossed that threshold before.
He moved around and took her hands in hers once more. He did not smile this time, but looked directly into her trembling eyes. He spoke slowly and deliberately while placing her hands back upon her knee.
“Stop that, stop that with your hands, Patsy. Please. Come on.”
Trying to pull her fingers from her hands, Paddy stands from her stool. She walks towards the blue door at the other side of the room. Behind her, she can make out a distant banging from outside, perhaps people screaming her name. The walls wail at her and she begins to cry heavy tears.
Patsy cries too. The photographer touches her cheek and says that she is a good girl, that her picture would end up looking great. Her wet cheeks allow a smile. Mum and Dad will be happy with a good picture. She thinks of Michael, who she sits beside at lunch time, and the tears fall harder because she is dirty now.
The blue door is wide open. Paddy brushes the hair from her eyes but still cannot see anything further than the threshold. She walks into the blackness and turns around to close the door. It shuts with a heavy thud. There is only the sound of the latch locking from the other side.
Fig 22.1: Some prunes displayed in a pleasant way.
February 14, 2011 | Categories: Death, Fiction, Social, The Human Condition, Waiting | Tags: Death, dying alone, loneliness, mental scaring, Old people, Paddy, Patsy, small apartment, Valentine's Day | Leave A Comment »
Daisy and The Bull
“Give it to me straight please, Daisy.” Daisy gave it to him straight, a large bourbon in a dusty tumbler. She stood back and continued polishing the same glass that she had been polishing for the previous week or two, with the same dirty cloth that she had been using for even longer. Her graying white shirt was stuck to her chest. It was that kind of day, sticky and close, just as it had been yesterday and the day before that. The Bull was waiting for a man called Edwards, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He did not know when he would arrive, so he just waited.
The Bull’s left elbow had worn a small crater in the wooden bar over the past few days, with the weight of his head providing the necessary force. His right hand swatted flies and kept him hydrated with tangy liquor. A ten gallon hat sat on the counter beside him, tan stained by the dirt and the sun. Wispy grey had fallen across his eyes.
Daisy stood behind the bar and looked out through the open doors across the room. She saw a parched yellow land and a horizon that faded into sun and sky. Sometimes she would sing in an off-key honeysuckle, with an accent that swung gently between sweet Texan and a deep pan-Latino.
“Come to me,
beside the sea,
and we can be,
just you and me.”
It was almost a decade earlier that Daisy had arrived at the bar as a young Mexican girl without any family or memories that she could recall. Even more pitiable to The Bull, who found her curled up at the front door when he arrived one morning, was that she had neither English in her pocket, nor dollars in her mouth. He named her Daisy because she was beautiful, and that was the only name he could think of that could suit such a beautiful young girl. He gave her a room in his home near town. He helped her to learn English while she worked a little in the bar, cleaning glasses and sweeping. When John Matley died in an accident, she begged The Bull to let her repay the kindness that he had shown her; she could run his bar for him.
“Daisy, you are the smartest, most perfect little woman I know, right there with Momma and the Virgin Mary. Why in heck do you wanna spend your time in this dump, with a bunch of drunk-ass vermin?”
“Please, Adam.” Of course, The Bull was never going to argue with Daisy. She was everything to him. He had thought that, maybe, with the right teaching, she could be anything she wanted to be. This might not be something prestigious like law or medicine but, if she wanted to be his barmaid, he was never going to be the one to stop her.
She moved into the room at the back of the bar on her sixth birthday. Between them both, they decided that her birthdays would be marked as the yearly anniversary of the day they found each other, October 14th.
Now, nearly ten years old, Daisy was still the apple of The Bull’s eye. Indeed, the well workers affectionately called her ‘Bullseye’ for that very reason. Sometimes, in moments of humility such as when she had to reprimand them for getting a little too rowdy, it would be ‘Miss Daisy.’ Most of the time though, the boys were well behaved, probably due to the calming presence of a lady.
“I don’t know if I ever told you, but… I don’t know. Did I ever tell you about my Daddy, Daisy?” The Bull adjusted his huge girth upon his bar stool. He swung his legs back and forth, several inches from the ground.
Daisy had known The Bull’s mother, Patty, very well. Before she fell ill, he used to bring her to the bar every Saturday and she would match him drink for drink. Patty was a funny old lady. She used to poke fun at her son’s huge hat, saying that he must have been wearing it to make up for something. Sometimes they would play pool together, taking on anybody who wanted to try them. Not many would, of course. The Bull’s bar never really attracted much of a crowd, and even those who did spend time there were all working for him on the wells; no need to get to know the man who pays your wages, as long as he keeps paying them. It was only when The Bull arrived one weekend without Patty – bringing the unfortunate news of her weakening health – that Daisy thought of what a vulnerable age she must have been. Her son was a man of fifty years and seven months by the time she died, which, Daisy assumed, would make her at least a few years older than that. Daisy cried when The Bull told her that his mother had passed away. He had travelled to her little house outside Austin to be with her as she went.
“It don’t matter pretty girl, keep your chin up.” The Bull lifted her chin with his forefinger, his blues meeting her browns. He smiled, baring at least three gold teeth, teeth that were almost natural punctuation to a sun bronzed face. “The old lady went out smiling, drunk as a Chatanooga lawyer. She said that’d be best. Didn’t look such a bad idea, bless her soul.”
Daisy’s eyes turned to The Bull again, several months having passed since his mother had died.
“You know me as well as anybody does, but even you never heard about my Daddy.” The Bull brushed the falling hair from his eyes.
January 26, 2011 | Categories: Fiction, Frederick B Benway, Social, Waiting | Tags: Benway, Daisy, Fiction, Frederick B Benway, Novel, Short Story, The Bull | 1 Comment »
- I started writing this a while ago and then The Hipsters vanished, so I stopped.
The Hipster is much maligned, but who is he?
The Hipster is much maligned. He can feel it as he walks. He knows that at this stitch in time, his popular culture has turned on him. He is designated as socially redundant, almost evil, by an essentially similar other that is in the ascendency of print media for that demographic, The Aware. Acknowledgement of the excess of the popular alternative social direction now marks the cut where The Hipster is relegated to the position of laughing-stock and silent receptacle of the scoff, whereas The Aware – as a new social splinter category unto themselves – maintain a grasp upon self-deprecating irony that evades The Hipster. Alignment with that group, The Aware, has been en masse. The Hipster disappears to the shadows of the amusingly easy to castrate hate figure.
Via the emergent juxtaposition of The Aware and The Hipster, one might proffer the observance that popular alternative culture as we know it has encountered a juncture where it must split and divide. Rather than the continuous evolution through alternative cultural phases that has been the case over recent years, alternative or indie culture is now shedding itself.
Fig 20.1: What is a Hipster?
This leaves the Hipster, The Unaware, as a fold. He stands in drainpipes and leather, rolling his cigarette and listening to Galaxie 500 on comedy headphones. The self-designated counterpoint that now exists broadly is the anti-Hipster, the alternatively aware who has rejected the allegedly superficial foray deeper into alternative culture as too alternative for the sake of that movement. This anti-Hipster probably is coated in leather, atop drainpipes, rolling a tobacco tampon to smoke, creating a haze to enjoy his Galaxie 500 in. He vehemently rejects the allure of an indulgence that is merely a postmodern simulacra of cultural engagement. The Hipster existed, or does still exist, for the all elusive, a seemingly hollow alternative element that is now vilified as too much.
But this is self-regulation. There is no Aware or Unaware as separate social groups; The Hipster never existed as a person. The Hipster is a creation of those who wished to denigrate, yet was appropriated as a viable means of reaffirmation by the social group for which the jestingly derogatory term was originally coined. I am not a Hipster, but look at those stupid Hipsters, so shallow, in pursuit of credibility. What ho, credibility is thus attained, but not for The Hipster, for The Aware, which is every single self-consciously possible-Hipster. That is, every individual who could accuse themselves with genuine introspection of that undesirable status. That pursuit of the all elusive alternative is vindicated once more, as The Hipster is cast away, and everybody is clean.
January 17, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Observation, Social | Tags: double penetration, Fashion trends, hipster definitiion, Hipster extinction, Hipsters | Leave A Comment »
- This is the second part of the current series on irony and cultural consumption. There will be more installments.
Ironic Application Part 2: Contrivance, Fade Street and the Ironic Fetish
In the previous post of this series, I discussed the disavowal of a natural taste in the development of a more rounded or, dare I venture, complete personal opinion. While Frank Gelett Burgess may not have known art, he knew what he liked. Conversely, the great many appear to be more at odds with what they like and instead know art or, more appropriately considering wider trends of cultural consumption, they know ironic contrivance. The broad brushstrokes of these juxtaposed pictures of consumption does not give a particularly nuanced insight into the idea of ironic application, but perhaps TMWRNJ’s Ironic Review can lend a humourous hand to the dissection of ironic contrivance of consumption and the application of irony to the product. This is the Ironic Fetish.
Editor: The whole reason we called the magazine The Ironic Review is because it takes a sideways glance at society and no one really knows what we actually think.
Deputy Editor: Or what we think we think… Or what they think we think we think…
The Ironic Fetish has, quite noticeably over recent months, found itself expressed in the consumption of RTÉ’s Fade Street. A reality drama of some sort, inspired by and based upon MTV’s The Hills and The City among other such shows, Fade Street follows the lives of a group of Irish vicenarians in Dublin, charting their exploits as they negotiate ‘real life.’
I have never sat and watched Fade Street for any real period of time, nor do I ever intend to, and I will not criticise the program as such, at this point at least. However, I do find the show’s audience a curious phenomenon. Fade Street, by design devoid of any irony in the honest opinions of most, surely cannot inspire the intrigue of the educated and culturally aware middle-classes, can it? It seems that it can. The show has proved a ratings success and RTÉ, the state broadcaster, has approved and, to the best of my knowledge, basically completed a second series for broadcast in 2011.
Consumption, primarily, has been via the Ironic Fetish. Viewers who “take a sideways glance at society,” can watch Fade Street, ingesting it, and nobody can really know what they think, or what they think they think, or what somebody else thinks they think they think etc. Guffawing and scoffing, the educated youth of college years has swallowed Fade Street as an ironic taste, applying a sense of cultural anthropology to their endeavour. Unable to look away, inspired to gaze on at these despicably irresponsible, intellectually stunted and emotionally volatile characters, the Platonically enlightened viewer affords himself or herself an ironic critical distance. The enlightened viewer is seemingly not responsible for what they consume as part of an otherwise vulnerable collective, nor do they have need to destroy it or rail against it. However, the product, the show itself, being consumed in any fashion gives it a momentum as a product for consumption. While the contrivance may lie as part of the taste of the enlightened cultural consumer rather than what is consumed, the product is nonetheless validated as a capitalist endeavour, one that makes money from its existence. In the case of Fade Street, created by the state broadcaster, our Television License fees are pushed towards the validated product, with demand creating supply of similar products.*
The Ironic Fetish displaces intellectual value from the consumer to a product, while always maintaining itself as an active process from consumer to product. The active process of the Ironic Fetish elevates the consumer and affords him or her a status of high-consumer, cultural anthropologist, a position where there is an awareness of a personal critical distance. While a psychological fetish is invariably an involuntary process, and a Marxist fetish is clearly derived from the factors of production involved and market values, the Ironic Fetish stands as one that is voluntarily proffered by the consumer as a contrivance of the self and taste.
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like,” said one man to another.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to like anymore.”
* Were it not a project of RTÉ, our state funded state broadcaster, with “state funded” obviously meaning from direct tax reserves, Fade Street might not be the focus of this argument.
January 8, 2011 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Observation, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Fade Street, Fetishism, Ironic Review, Irony, RTE | 1 Comment »
- This is the beginning of a new series, my own perusal of contemporary taste.
Ironic Application Part 1: INTRODUCING QUOTES, TASTE & TMWRNJ
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”
- Gelett Burgess
The above line is, I assume, familiar to most to some degree. I came across it most recently while watching a Monty Python sketch featuring the Pope and the famed artist Michelangelo. After His Holiness reprimands the artist about the extent to which he pushes his artistic license in depicting Christ and the Last Supper, Michelangelo opines that the Holy See is an artistic fascist. The Pope, of course, responds with the wit and grace of a man of God. “Look. I’m the bloody Pope, I am. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!”
After a little research, I found that the original quote is most often credited to the artist, poet, author and cultural critic Frank Gelett Burgess. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the line itself inspired the cogs of my mind to motion in any remarkable way, but it situated itself amongst thoughts that had been forming over a period of time.
To begin a lengthy personal discourse upon the question or problem of what art is, certainly is not my intention here. I do not know art, as it were. Perhaps I might be able to recognise or perceive art in some instances, if indeed art is at all, but the idea is inherently problematic. Instead, I find myself bound to discuss the assertion made by Burgess; that while he may not know art, he knows what he likes.
Crucial to what I am discussing is that Burgess does not disregard art. Rather, he affirms its existence. In saying that he finds it easier, as an essentially natural process, to discern what he likes, and situating that assertion upon the discussion of cultural and artistic connaissance, there is an implication that there is a denial of the natural by the typical artistic consumer. The artistic consumer seeks to discern what is art, through various avenues of oratory or varying degrees of intellectual discourse and, upon that discernment, can know what he or she, or a functioning social group, likes.
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
- Marcel Duchamp
A level of tempering or disavowal of one’s own natural taste as a function of the perceiving, subjective self is inherent to the development of a fuller taste. At one point on a spectrum, it may be the viewer of a pornographic text who then experiences a natural post-masturbation guilt linked to the problems of consumption of such material and their implications within the psyche of the viewer or a wider issue of society. At another it may be the grasping of irony and its layered application on a primary text of music, literature, film etc.
The Ironic Review, a comic segment on Richard Herring and Stewart Lee’s late nineties BBC show This Morning with Richard not Judy, or TMWRNJ as is lovingly known by many, muses upon the latter idea, considered ironic application. It is something comparable to the similarly satirically charged Sugar Ape magazine feature of Nathan Barley. The first installment that appeared on Lee and Herring’s first series is symptomatic of the whole. I implore you to watch it because it is very funny and pretty relevant to how this series of blog entries will go. Link below:
Watching that may prove enough work for now. Ideas of irony and its cultural application will be the basis of investigation for the next couple of posts.
December 31, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Observation, Polemic, Questions?, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Artistic expression, Ironic Review, Irony, Quotes, TMWRNJ | Leave A Comment »
Cigarette, Rope, Tweed, Knife, Woman
It was unlikely that she would survive the fall. He knew that. And of course, survive she did not. What surprised him was how swiftly the event passed. His mind did not present the scene in histrionic slow motion, nor a momentary poetic silence between the instant that her trailing foot left the rope and the next, the moment that her person crumpled to the solid ground. There were screams all around him. The crowd that had silently gazed upon the majesty of her performance only seconds earlier were now an hysterical collective, some running towards the scene and some running away, climbing over what had quickly become a scattered mess of fold up chairs and novelty hats, partly consumed hot dogs and other such things. However, he only stood inanimately, pondering what she might have thought en route, if indeed conscious thought could force itself upon such an extraordinary second, and if that thought was simply extinguished with the thud, vanishing from itself.
“There is something you should know,” she had said. As soon as he raised his eyes to meet her gaze she looked down at her cigarette, surveying it from every angle. She always held it between her ring and middle fingers. She said that to hold it any other way gave her a cramp in her hand.
“I walk the highwire.” They stood together in the dark, outside an electrical store in the city. Dozens of televisions flickered in the window. There was a goal for the team in blue and they were now up by two with fifteen minutes left. A little boy was missing, thought to have been abducted as he played outside his home on Sunday afternoon. Heavy snowfall had caused traffic mayhem earlier in the day with more snow expected over the rest of the week. A woman answered correctly and advanced to the final round where she would play for the jackpot.
A man with a very thin grey moustache pushed a pair of golden frames up his nose, closer to his eyes. He hunched down and inspected her, still folded where she landed. His autumn tweed figure paced up and down her length several times, back arched in thoughtful cadaver perusal. Finally stopping at her feet, the man began to resolutely rummage around in the pocket of his jacket until he found what he was looking for. He appeared to extract a lit cigarette from those depths. He spoke, conducting himself vigorously with his right hand, the hand holding his cigarette, while taking off and putting on his glasses every few seconds with the other.
“Well, friends,” he announced, pausing to ensure that the only other soul remaining in the circus structure was listening. He breathed deeply and began again.
“It looks as if this young woman, this most beautiful young woman, has died. While I cannot say for certain what the cause of death was, I suspect that it may have had something to do with her fall from the ghastly rope above us. It looks terribly evil, all the way up there, plotting.”
The tweed man halted his wildly theatrical gesticulations to throw his eyes about the empty expanse. He smiled and put his cigarette back in his pocket.
“Well now, I should be getting off. It must be at least eight o’clock now and I haven’t eaten anything all day, bar those two digestive biscuits I had with tea this afternoon. Good day to you all.”
His first step was towards the body on the ground. He looked down at her, clicking his tongue in affectionate disapproval before spitting on the back of her head. Turning on his heel, he briskly walked away, whistling merrily as he went.
“She was carrying my child.”
The tweed man stopped in his tracks. He stepped around himself, and gazed at the body from his distance.
“My boy, I daresay she still is.”
He drifted slowly back towards the centre of the circus. The two men now stood facing one another, about six feet apart, divided by the heap.
“I’m pregnant,” she had said. She threw her cigarette into her glass of wine, a gesture saying that she would not be smoking or drinking anymore. She picked up the wine glass and stood up at the table. She raised her arm slightly, her teeth biting her lower lip, and then threw her arm downwards, towards the ground. The glass shrieked as it died and the patio upon which they were dinning became silent. The rest of the customers tried to temper the rubber elements of their necks, but to no avail. She took her seat once again and continued to eat her mayonnaise covered mushroom risotto as if nothing had happened at all.
The tweed man once again thrust himself deep into his pocket. The determined furrow of his eyebrows suggested that he was looking for something very specific.
“I asked her to leave the ropes until the baby was born. These dangerous walks killed her and the child.”
“Now my boy, you know very well that what you are saying is not exactly true. Really, you know that -”
His eyes burst into flames momentarily only to revert back to their tiny grey state within only a fraction of a second.
“Bingo! I’ve found it, at last!”
He drew a long knife from his pocket, so big that one could almost have called it a short sword. Brandishing it high in the air, as he did with his cigarette earlier, he began to conduct his own oration.
“She can’t have been long, you know, up it, as it were. Two or three months pregnant, maybe. I used to be a doctor, and an abortionist, but I’m still not very good at these things. And the child was yours? Are you sure, because you never can tell for certain with these things.
“I once had a child. I was living with a tribe of wild natives along a tributary of the Amazon. A young woman became quite fond of my pink skin and told me that I was the father of her child. Being a gentleman bound by high moral standards, I did the only thing I could do. When she went into labour I brought her deep into the forest, as was tradition with that tribe. After some time had passed, I returned to the other villagers to inform them that evil spirits had taken my love and my child. I could only communicate in basic terms of course, their language was very strange, but I believe they understood.”
Both men looked down at the heap.
“Here you go.” A tweed sleeve reached across the gap, handing over the knife.
“What is this for?”
“You, my dear boy, are going to skin this rabbit.”
He produced a white rabbit from his pocket. He held it up by the back of the neck and looked on imploringly.
“No.”
He bent to one knee and let the rabbit run away.
“No, that’s right. You are going to retrieve that child of yours!”
Fig 16.1 : The lego man should watch his step.
December 28, 2010 | Categories: Death, Fiction, Observation, Sex, Social | Tags: abortion, cigarettes, circus, Death, highwire, pregnancy, tightrope, tweed | Leave A Comment »
- This is the first chapter of the Benway series as as it was printed in Icarus, a literary publication based in Trinity College, Dublin. It is basically a repost, but the changes justify the deed in my mind.
Frederick B. Benway and The Void
The dulcet tones of real class ring through the room. Crystal glasses, fine porcelain plates and sterling silver are the instruments clinking the dampened clinks of fine dining among those of who are entitled to dine finely. This is consumption and ritual. This is the luxurious evening meal.
A dining room is the setting. There are walls and a ceiling of some kind of impenetrable black. They are obscure and indefinite, perhaps not even tangible, but they exist as blackness. The only firm sight along the perimeter is a small brown door that is somehow fixed in the opaque abyss. It swings back and forth, never revealing anything but blackness, as food and drink arrives and the discarded remnants of that sustenance leave in the hands of the Waiters. Scattered around the room on a red plane of carpet are tables clothed in immaculate white silk. Around those tables, the People occupy soft candlelight that perpetually burns low but is never extinguished. The light goes no further than the area inhabited, not daring to touch the dark expanses of the Void.
Sitting on cushioned leather that, almost inevitably, is of an absolute black, the People eat and drink. They exist and consume.
The Women are ageless by their own design. They project maturity that is immeasurable by the quantitative scale of years, but can only be measured by the qualitative scale of pinched savoir-faire. Each sports their finest gown, all of which are structurally identical, and radiate different shades of red, red and red materials. Plunging necklines reveal enough to catch the eye, to publicly flirt with the idea of manifested sexuality through implicit rather than explicit communication. Their faces are a slop of red lipstick and black mascara on what may once have been blank, porcelain canvas. Assorted jewels dangle from their ears and around their necks, melting with the gravitational pull from below, as if longing desperately to get away from what they hang from. There is little behind cold eyes.
For each Woman there are several Men. The Men all wear the compulsory black tie dinning regalia of black dinner jackets, black trousers, black shoes, white shirts and black bow ties. They smile benignly at each other, sharing winks, nods and knowing looks. Wry torsion of the cheeks follows stray glances at forbidden fruit. Stains of red wine colour their lips and years of fine food have plumped their stomachs and faces slightly, enough to distinguish them as distinguished. Some chew the ends of smoking cigars, some intermittently slick back their hair in a conscious expression of nonchalance, some swirl glasses of wine or snifters of cognac to show that they have the Knowledge. They exude a sickly stench of class, societal decay and rotting flesh.
There is chat, small talk and the obligatory hollow laughter that such banal exchanges require. Smartly spoken parties negotiate their conveniently flexible valuations of and opinions on morality, sin, virtue, taste, sexuality, politics and dollars between mouthfuls of crimson nectar and golden brown. The oral defecation of slithering dames and dukes, whores and whores or, as they might prefer, ladies and gentlemen; it is insatiable. And while it never threatens to boil, the soundtrack of the scene simmers incessantly like a quietly furious beehive that is casually pondering an explosion amongst its collective.
On the plush carpets underfoot, carpets of the hottest rouge, the terrified feet of terrified men scamper to the tunes composed by the darting reptilian tongues of the commanding gentry. For fear of death by unemployment or fish knife, these tiny men, wearing nothing but black bow ties around their necks, conjure magnificent and exotic cuisine for the pleasure of those with the gold. These men, the Waiters, are homogeneous products.
The Waiters are altogether hairless and exquisitely tanned, like honey-stained mahogany that has aged beautifully. Their slim and supple limbs quietly glisten in the warm glow of the candles. Brilliant white eyes shine from the sunken recessions of their sharp faces, eyes only punctuated by grey irises and black pupils. Their cheekbones are distinctively pointed and their lips are thin and brown, forming the narrow slit that would be a mouth, if one could call it a mouth. Across their depilated heads and curving necks there is not a single wrinkle or furrow. Indeed, the only mark upon their respective persons is between their legs, lonely atop their thighs. The Waiters do not bear genitalia, only a clean, vertical scar that is common to each.
Were they not so short in stature, the Waiters would look unhealthily thin. Not much higher than the tables they tend to, they are perfectly proportioned to serve their function. On the balls of their bare feet, they move in fluid locomotion, back and forth between the animals they feed and the small brown door away in the blackness. They bob and weave efficiently around the People, the tables and chairs, fully aware that if they make a single mistake, if they so much as whisper, they will disappear from the room by one means or another. Following disappearances, another Waiter replaces the previous Waiter. This new Waiter will in turn hold the same fear of his own death by disappearance and, indeed, that time will come. This chain continues infinitely.
A small, round table is at the centre of the room this evening. Three Men sit around it. They swill claret and deliberate over cigars as wide as fists, seeming to hover in the very faint haze of their own very faint crapulence. Two of these Men are Characters. One of these Men is Frederick Balthazar Benway. He speaks.
“The worm.” Benway orders the worm. His accomplices nod to the attending Waiter in agreement. The Waiter ghosts away silently.
Benway’s voice is shapeless caramel. It has an ambiguous quality that is indefinable. It adapts to any situation without his conscious effort. No certain accent can be grasped from his lips, nor can any regular human tonal inflections be properly identified. Rather, it is as if his words are always presented for the interpretation of the audience, the abstruse nature of his elocution somehow encouraging whatever aural reception appropriate to his cause. His actual words mix formal speech with casual utterances as he draws from all sorts of lexica to create his own subtly distinct manner. His unique patois cannot be placed.
At this point in the scene, Benway continues to seduce the attention of his lapdog consorts with a tale of a past love.
“… I was on the way up at the time. It was back when I was selling dollars for doubloons, and rubles for pesos; I was cutting it out real fine, you know. But I knew this girl. Her name was Samantha, or Cassandra, or Jane, or something. I don’t remember now, it doesn’t really matter. It was peachy.
“She had a place I’d go to see her at and we had a time. We used to go to the theatre to watch movies, or we’d get dinner somewhere classy. Sometimes we’d just walk for hours without saying anything, just walking along in the rain or the sunshine, or under the stars. I don’t mind telling you this my friends, fine gentlemen that you are, that this girl was quite dear to me.”
Of course, as Benway makes this hollow gesture to tonight’s bright lights, they almost squirm with an orgasmic rush that starts in the depths of their loins. They refrain from nodding along to his story, just for a moment, just long enough to close their eyes and savour his latest words. For their friend Benway to verbally afford them such status, as his friends, is almost fantastic. To be let into his life like this is a sign that he really accepts them.
However, in contrast with what Benway may say, he does not have any friends. Benway has flocks of accomplices, herds of acquaintances and swarms of connections, but he considers none of these in terms of any kind of personal relationship. Every person is a means and Benway is the end. While each Man and Woman in the Void considers Benway a friend, envious of those he shares his evening with now, he does not reciprocate in kind.
“So Annie, or Martha, eventually she left her job. She had been an airhostess or a schoolteacher. I was making plenty of money so she decided to nail a coat hook into my forehead and call me a home. You know how it goes.”
For dramatic effect, the careful actor in Benway chuckles from his stomach and then lowers his head slightly. He softly traces the fingers of his right hand back and forth over his forehead, as if to massage the faded scar of a coat hook wound that never actually existed. He grimaces and shakes his head to snap himself out his carefully pensive moment of introspection, reverting to tenderly fondling the stem of the crystal chalice before him, as those listening silently will for him to continue. Measured pause complete, he continues in his rhythmically flowing oratory that, by this stage, has attracted considerable attention throughout the Void.
“Well, it goes down, you know. I began to notice that her golden locks were all bottle blonde, real dirty like. And her little dog, Pepe or Jose, I think, something anyway, he never shut up. That dog, it used to leave hair all over the back seat of my car. There was a time when she insisted it went everywhere we went. That rat dog really got on my wick, you know.
“She eventually pipes up with what had been on her mind. She says that all I cared about was making money, and that she didn’t care for my drinking either. I wasn’t looking after her properly she thought. Sure, I had to tell her that, only for the pleasures of a cool beer or a fine wine, I would have killed her and that rat dog already. I didn’t mean it. As I said before, this girl was quite dear to me, but these are the things you say in the heat of it all, you know. There was red mist between us.
“So she tells me to get out of her sight right there. Never let it be said that Frederick doesn’t know when to take a step back. You have to give a woman her space, you know. Sensitive creatures, precious. I said I was sorry, said I didn’t mean to be so short with her, and that I didn’t mean what I said. I told her that I’d be back the next day to patch things up with her. I’d get her a bunch of daisies, you know, and we could share a bottle of wine. Everything would be rosy.”
“So I thought about her all the next day. I strolled along the boardwalk picking my mind. In the late afternoon I picked up a bunch from Patty’s on my way to her house. Well, I never really thought that it was going to work out. I had this nagging feeling that we were star-crossed, you know. I’m not a superstitious type of guy but, I don’t know, I had a feeling. Maybe it was just a hunch, or maybe it was all the smoke.”
Benway cracks a sparkling yellow smile and shakes his head. He looks around, inviting The Void into his past.
“So I pulled onto the street where she lived and, sure as day, there were guys from the fire department spitting all over a real blaze. I mean, these flames were huge, and the water didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. It was terrible.
“But, you know, life goes on, doesn’t it? So I left the daisies with one of the firefighters, something for his wife, or something, I don’t know, and headed over to Phillie’s for a cup of coffee.”
The Void is rendered silent for a second. Uncomfortable smiles, all hoping to be the right reaction for Benway. Dinner is served.
December 14, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Frederick B Benway, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Consumption, Frederick B Benway | Leave A Comment »
