26.2.05
15.2.05
14.2.05
news - 13-02-05 - i met coathangerhead last night
13th Feb 05: 1420: party was bad. here
13th Feb 05: 1114: yep, the party was last night. totally insane. will post about it later today. in the meantime.
12th Feb 05: 1513: tonight is beth's party.......wow.......back story
12th Feb 05: 1220: beth is the love of my life. here's a true story about me and her
10th Feb 05: 1241: afternoon all. just messing about with some more pictures. lots here, btw
10th Feb 05: 0050: just been transcribing another of my flatmate Richard's suicide notes.
13th Feb 05: 1114: yep, the party was last night. totally insane. will post about it later today. in the meantime.
12th Feb 05: 1513: tonight is beth's party.......wow.......back story
12th Feb 05: 1220: beth is the love of my life. here's a true story about me and her
10th Feb 05: 1241: afternoon all. just messing about with some more pictures. lots here, btw
10th Feb 05: 0050: just been transcribing another of my flatmate Richard's suicide notes.
pissflapwankstainfucktardio - ii
Screams and chaos. People stood staring at the body.
I said out loud, “Wow, that really is Really Bad.” People thought I was talking about Cal’s death, rather than the poison. I was trying hard not to smile. I looked up at Beth, three or four stairs up the flight. I started up those three or four stairs. She was looking at me in a way that made my insides melt and dribble out through my shoes a thousand times over.
“You’re in my Cell Biology class…” she said, staring at me, whilst her boyfriend lay dead on the floor beneath us. I had no idea why she would choose to say that, but instantly had the most perfect reply…
“I…
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE BETH?”
I knew that voice. Mr Bertram. How many times were my bowels going to try and betray me tonight? Beth’s attention was ripped from me to her furious, curious father, who stood over Cal’s body whilst several of Cal’s friends tried to resuscitate him. “Ummm.” began Beth
I turned to face the man slowly. Mr Bertram recognized me instantly.
“YOU!” he managed, before descending into a spluttering rage and, stepping over Cal’s body, started towards me, his hands in the “I’m really going to strangle you now” position.
Run.
I grabbed Beth’s hand and sprinted upstairs, and upstairs again, down a hall, and upstairs again to a tiny little attic, and up a little step ladder to a rooftop balcony area, and up onto the roof itself, and…
I stopped to assess the situation. Why escape to the roof? I’ve been reading too much Batman. Beth stood behind me - I hadn’t let go of her hand yet. I savoured it. It was a warm hand. Her warm hand. I could hear her father ascending the stepladder. Shit. Beth started saying something in singsong, “Paul, wait! What are you do
She stopped talking halfway through a word, frozen in an instant. I turned to look at her, but Beth wasn’t looking at me, nor turned in anticipation of her father’s arrival. She was looking at something behind my shoulder.
When you notice someone is looking behind you instead of at you, it’s a natural human instinct to turn and see what they are looking at. Unless that other person’s face has an expression like Beth’s did at that moment. What words would describe it? Certainly there was terror, but it was more than that, there was confusion there as well. An extreme combination of the two, as if she was confused about everything in, on and under the world except for one fact – that she was terrified. She was shaking her head from side to side at the exact same slow speed the clothesline was spinning last night, but her eyes weren’t moving, they were shifting their relative position - always focused on that one spot behind my left shoulder, up, higher on the roof.
When you see someone with an expression like that, your instincts go beyond trying to find out what the problem is. They know death is coming, freight-train like, definite-like. They don’t want any further information. They’d prefer to just stand there and wait if it’s all the same to you thanks.
And so it was with me. I just stood there, refusing to turn around to face Whatever It Was. Instead I concentrated on Beth’s face. Blood started trickling out of her nose – fear was messing with her physiology on every conceivable level. She lost control of lower body faculties.
Why would Stephen say that? It was so …common, toilet humour. Didn’t he know he was in mortal danger too? Damn it, it wasn’t right. Beauty must reign at the end. And the end was now apparently, so fuck it. I reached up to Beth’s face and wiped the blood from her upper lip. It smeared across her face, but she was catatonic, didn’t notice. Fuck you world, I thought, I got to touch her face and it was worth it.
In these seconds, Mr Bertram had arrived at the rooftop balcony. He saw what Beth saw, and was going through much the same experience as her.
“It’s him”, he said. This roused my curiousity enough to override my instincts. The “him” from last night. I wanted to know who this “him” was.
For the third and final time that night, I turned around to face a weird guy that I didn’t like.
At first, I didn’t see anything, just the night sky, the chimney, the TV aerial. What’s the probl…oh. ..
Not a TV aerial. A coathanger. A coathanger. An upside down coathanger that had its hook straightened out, like people stick in the back of their TVs or amputated car aerials. Except it wasn’t stuck in a TV or car. It was stuck in a young man’s head, a young man who now stood before them, up there on the roof, staring at Beth.
That guy up there, I thought, has got a coathanger stuck in his head.
“Alriii-i-i-iight gang. We gonna rock the house or what?”, said the Coathanger guy in what seemed like a bizarre impersonation of a commercial radio DJ.
“Hi” I said. There was no sound from Beth or Mr Bertram.
The coathanger guy casually walked down the slope of the roof towards where Beth and I stood. As he did, I looked down at my hand – blood smeared on my finger, Beth’s blood. I had killed for her once tonight. This coathanger guy didn’t seem hostile, but judging by Beth’s reaction to him, he posed some sort of threat to her. I made sure he stayed between the two of them as Mr Coathanger approached. He stopped in front of me. An awkward moment passed between us.
Coathanger appeared to be a few years older than me, by all accounts just a normal looking guy, kinda spaced-out looking, wearing a cheap, filthy black suit with a coathanger in his head. He didn’t say anything.
Ridiculously, I said, “Is there something I can help you with?” Coathanger smiled. From that smile, I got a taste of what Beth and Mr Bertram were currently choking on.
Coathangerhead, moving slowly, simply reached out to me and placed one hand on my neck, the other on the top of my head, and snapped my neck. “Why didn’t I stop him from doing that?” I thought vaguely, “And why can I still think things?” as Coathangerhead lifted my limp body up over his head and threw me off the roof, into the backyard. As I sailed through the air, I saw Coathangerhead take a step towards Beth.
I soon discovered why he could still think. It was because my last moments needed to absolutely jam-packed full of irony and humiliation. Otherwise, I hadn’t been punished enough, right God? And so I fell, and landed badly, spine-first on the old Hills Hoist clothesline. There was a horrible noise from inside me, best described as a wet snap, which was followed by the dull thud of my body hitting the perfect lawn. Head-first? Of course head-first – would the forces have it any other way? Then, finally, thankfully, the blackness came.
That should have been the end, but it wasn’t. Yes, the blackness was there, and it was the special endless kind of blackness called death, but not quite. It subsided temporarily. For a while, I distinctly experienced things – there was beauty, there was blood, there was water, there was lacy female underwear, there was tiredness, there was relief.
There was a cat.
Why was there a cat?
I opened my eyes. I was laying on the Bertram lawn, under the Hills Hoist, which was broken, bent out of shape, all saggy wire and angry metal bits. (Hey, looks kinda cool from this angle. Must remember to get a photo of it for my multimedia assignment. No wait, that’s right, I’m dead now.)
A cat was sitting by my head, peering down curiously at my face, tentatively sniffing my nose. The same one I tripped over twice last night. Bastard. Doesn’t make sense…
I said out loud, “Wow, that really is Really Bad.” People thought I was talking about Cal’s death, rather than the poison. I was trying hard not to smile. I looked up at Beth, three or four stairs up the flight. I started up those three or four stairs. She was looking at me in a way that made my insides melt and dribble out through my shoes a thousand times over.
“You’re in my Cell Biology class…” she said, staring at me, whilst her boyfriend lay dead on the floor beneath us. I had no idea why she would choose to say that, but instantly had the most perfect reply…
“I…
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE BETH?”
I knew that voice. Mr Bertram. How many times were my bowels going to try and betray me tonight? Beth’s attention was ripped from me to her furious, curious father, who stood over Cal’s body whilst several of Cal’s friends tried to resuscitate him. “Ummm.” began Beth
I turned to face the man slowly. Mr Bertram recognized me instantly.
“YOU!” he managed, before descending into a spluttering rage and, stepping over Cal’s body, started towards me, his hands in the “I’m really going to strangle you now” position.
Run.
I grabbed Beth’s hand and sprinted upstairs, and upstairs again, down a hall, and upstairs again to a tiny little attic, and up a little step ladder to a rooftop balcony area, and up onto the roof itself, and…
I stopped to assess the situation. Why escape to the roof? I’ve been reading too much Batman. Beth stood behind me - I hadn’t let go of her hand yet. I savoured it. It was a warm hand. Her warm hand. I could hear her father ascending the stepladder. Shit. Beth started saying something in singsong, “Paul, wait! What are you do
She stopped talking halfway through a word, frozen in an instant. I turned to look at her, but Beth wasn’t looking at me, nor turned in anticipation of her father’s arrival. She was looking at something behind my shoulder.
When you notice someone is looking behind you instead of at you, it’s a natural human instinct to turn and see what they are looking at. Unless that other person’s face has an expression like Beth’s did at that moment. What words would describe it? Certainly there was terror, but it was more than that, there was confusion there as well. An extreme combination of the two, as if she was confused about everything in, on and under the world except for one fact – that she was terrified. She was shaking her head from side to side at the exact same slow speed the clothesline was spinning last night, but her eyes weren’t moving, they were shifting their relative position - always focused on that one spot behind my left shoulder, up, higher on the roof.
When you see someone with an expression like that, your instincts go beyond trying to find out what the problem is. They know death is coming, freight-train like, definite-like. They don’t want any further information. They’d prefer to just stand there and wait if it’s all the same to you thanks.
And so it was with me. I just stood there, refusing to turn around to face Whatever It Was. Instead I concentrated on Beth’s face. Blood started trickling out of her nose – fear was messing with her physiology on every conceivable level. She lost control of lower body faculties.
Why would Stephen say that? It was so …common, toilet humour. Didn’t he know he was in mortal danger too? Damn it, it wasn’t right. Beauty must reign at the end. And the end was now apparently, so fuck it. I reached up to Beth’s face and wiped the blood from her upper lip. It smeared across her face, but she was catatonic, didn’t notice. Fuck you world, I thought, I got to touch her face and it was worth it.
In these seconds, Mr Bertram had arrived at the rooftop balcony. He saw what Beth saw, and was going through much the same experience as her.
“It’s him”, he said. This roused my curiousity enough to override my instincts. The “him” from last night. I wanted to know who this “him” was.
For the third and final time that night, I turned around to face a weird guy that I didn’t like.
At first, I didn’t see anything, just the night sky, the chimney, the TV aerial. What’s the probl…oh. ..
Not a TV aerial. A coathanger. A coathanger. An upside down coathanger that had its hook straightened out, like people stick in the back of their TVs or amputated car aerials. Except it wasn’t stuck in a TV or car. It was stuck in a young man’s head, a young man who now stood before them, up there on the roof, staring at Beth.
That guy up there, I thought, has got a coathanger stuck in his head.
“Alriii-i-i-iight gang. We gonna rock the house or what?”, said the Coathanger guy in what seemed like a bizarre impersonation of a commercial radio DJ.
“Hi” I said. There was no sound from Beth or Mr Bertram.
The coathanger guy casually walked down the slope of the roof towards where Beth and I stood. As he did, I looked down at my hand – blood smeared on my finger, Beth’s blood. I had killed for her once tonight. This coathanger guy didn’t seem hostile, but judging by Beth’s reaction to him, he posed some sort of threat to her. I made sure he stayed between the two of them as Mr Coathanger approached. He stopped in front of me. An awkward moment passed between us.
Coathanger appeared to be a few years older than me, by all accounts just a normal looking guy, kinda spaced-out looking, wearing a cheap, filthy black suit with a coathanger in his head. He didn’t say anything.
Ridiculously, I said, “Is there something I can help you with?” Coathanger smiled. From that smile, I got a taste of what Beth and Mr Bertram were currently choking on.
Coathangerhead, moving slowly, simply reached out to me and placed one hand on my neck, the other on the top of my head, and snapped my neck. “Why didn’t I stop him from doing that?” I thought vaguely, “And why can I still think things?” as Coathangerhead lifted my limp body up over his head and threw me off the roof, into the backyard. As I sailed through the air, I saw Coathangerhead take a step towards Beth.
I soon discovered why he could still think. It was because my last moments needed to absolutely jam-packed full of irony and humiliation. Otherwise, I hadn’t been punished enough, right God? And so I fell, and landed badly, spine-first on the old Hills Hoist clothesline. There was a horrible noise from inside me, best described as a wet snap, which was followed by the dull thud of my body hitting the perfect lawn. Head-first? Of course head-first – would the forces have it any other way? Then, finally, thankfully, the blackness came.
That should have been the end, but it wasn’t. Yes, the blackness was there, and it was the special endless kind of blackness called death, but not quite. It subsided temporarily. For a while, I distinctly experienced things – there was beauty, there was blood, there was water, there was lacy female underwear, there was tiredness, there was relief.
There was a cat.
Why was there a cat?
I opened my eyes. I was laying on the Bertram lawn, under the Hills Hoist, which was broken, bent out of shape, all saggy wire and angry metal bits. (Hey, looks kinda cool from this angle. Must remember to get a photo of it for my multimedia assignment. No wait, that’s right, I’m dead now.)
A cat was sitting by my head, peering down curiously at my face, tentatively sniffing my nose. The same one I tripped over twice last night. Bastard. Doesn’t make sense…
pissflapwankstainfucktardio - i
Considering yesterday was Day Minus One, then this must be Day Zero. Minor infractions like tripping over a cat (twice) can be overlooked on Day Minus One. But not on Day Zero. Day Zero must be flawless.
I had originally planned to arrive earlier than I did. It was about 9.15pm when I got to the Bertram house – using the front entrance this time - how novel. I left my house several hours earlier, but I was delayed by numerous personal crises on the way over. I was forced to stop and gather myself on more than one park bench. There were issues to be resolved. How close a look had Mr Bertram really gotten at me last night? Would I be instantly recognized? Would the psycho lawn man even be there?
“You’re not him..” – what the hell was that about anyway?
Eventually, finally, the answer came to me. If a heart-thumping atom-bending romance between Beth and myself was something that Forces wanted to happen, as I believed they did at that point, then this trepidation and risk was surely all part of my test. It would therefore make sense that this was my darkest moment, that the fear would be greatest just before the triumph. I didn’t have a plan for talking to Beth or trying to win her over. I just thought if it would happen, it would happen, and if not, well fucking typical then. This attitude in itself was among the first shots I delivered unerringly into my own foot. Nonetheless, the inner turmoil was now resolved. So go to the party and await your destiny.
I did so.
The party was in full swing by the time I arrived. Music blared – I placed it with an inward sneer – it was a band called The Comma Separated Values. Carefully disheveled alpha-males crying foul. Strike One - bad music. Was this a crack in Day Zero? Something that detracted from the Perfection? No – merely another part of that which was to be risen above.
Guests stood in clumps. A few individuals, perhaps those who could be considered popular, perhaps those who were drunk, spoke loudly, gestured wildly, made their friends laugh. Two girls danced together to the music. There were a lot of people here – that increased the likelihood that I was only invited here as filler, so that afterwards, when people said “Man, EVERYONE was there!”, it would be a more credible statement.
But that wasn’t definite.
The party was disappointingly well-lit as well. Where were the fairy lights and candles of the Imagined Party? Nowhere to be seen. These let-downs, though, (and others too numerous and insignificant to mention) could never have persuaded me to leave. Hell, everyone goes somewhere new with expectations, everyone makes a hell of a lot of hasty changes to those expectations upon their arrival.
All these observations, realisations and analyses ticked over on a sub-level processor somewhere at the bottom of my left brain. The majority of my head was screaming something else – WHERE IS SHE?
Neither Beth nor her father were visible. At any second I would be surprised with that singsong Beth hello, or, at the other end of the scale, a heavy hand on his shoulder and a poker inserted just below the left kidney. One or the other would happen. It was inevitable. It was as if I was standing in the queue of the recently-deceased in Limbo, waiting to see if I was bound for Heaven or Hell, having absolutely no idea which, and being utterly powerless to influence the result.
And just as I imagined Limbo would be, no-one had said a word to me at the party yet. I’m not an outcast in particular, I maintain cordial relations and a semblance of normality with a number of the guests. It was just the way things were set up – everyone was already assigned, there was little mingling. I approached a group of three girls (I can’t quite name them, but I do know all three of their names start with C) and said hello.
“Hi!”, they replied in a friendly unison.
“Have you guys seen Beth?”
The friendly unison hello had been nice. The giggles which constituted the reply to my question, however, were not. C-One got over her girl-humiliation-game-playing long enough to tell me that she thought Beth was upstairs. I looked her in the eye for a second or two and realised that Beth was undoubtedly downstairs somewhere. The C was enjoying the idea of misleading me, of all the cuntish...
Then the heavy hand landed on my shoulder, from behind.
The hand swung down and clamped hard in one single movement. A movement which continued in the form of sheer animal terror down through my body. I fought hard to control my bowels from evacuating. Fought hard and won, thankfully, in the instant before the voice said, “Well, well, well, who do we have here Beth?”.
Beth. Someone was asking Beth a question. Ergo, Beth was now in the room. Heaven or hell. I was now at the front of the Limbo queue, being assessed.
“Oh Cal, that’s Paul – he’s from my Modern Culture class. Hi Paul.”
“Ah, Cell Biology actually”, I tried to say. Even in the world of deepest mindfuck to which I now was exiled, I was still compelled to correct mistakes. The hand on my shoulder squeezed harder. I turned around. “Yeah, Cell Biology, that’s right.” – singsong.
‘Cal’ – who was ‘Cal’?. The hand that had dropped from my shoulder as I turned to face my crappy fate did not belong to Crazy Lawn Guy. It belonged to Cal. Cal had his non-shoulder-clamping arm around Beth. Huge chunks of Day Zero Perfection broke off and fell six-hundred-and-sixty-six storeys to the ground, where they smashed into seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven pieces each. I smiled meekly as my mind raced much much too fast, desperately trying to come up with a logical explanation for Cal having his arm around Beth like he did, in a way that was sickeningly familiar. They could be close cousins. Shit – he could even be her brother for all I knew. He could even just be one of those annoying people who like to put their arms around people they aren’t really that close with.
It wasn’t definite that he was her boyfriend.
“This is Cal, my boyfriend.” - singsong.
I looked at Beth as she said this. She didn’t say it. Her mouth (o god, her mouth, her LIPS) moved. Words came out in singsong voice, and they were even perfectly lip-synced. But no. She didn’t say that. Please. Just…please.
No. No, of course it was all bullshit, this Day Zero stuff. I mean, how could I not have known? Don’t I like to think that I am even just slightly intelligent? So how did I decieve myself so easily and deeply? It was so FUCKING STUPID! Day Zero – what the fuck is that? The biggest irony on the planet is that the people who are most convinced that they don’t suck are the ones who most likely do. SUCK THAT IS. SUCK LIKE YOU. This internal rant came from a beastly voice that lives in my head. Its a voice that envies the control that the pursuit of beauty has over my mind. The voice’s name is Steven Lampshade. No-one knows where the name came from. Now Lampshade had seized the controls. He is a nasty voice.
“Cal goes to WITHHELD. Cal, this is Paul. He’s in my Calisthenics class.”
I looked at Cal.
He was better looking, taller, all of the usual stuff. He went to WITHHELD, so he was obviously richer too. I don’t usually have a problem with guys who possess these things over him – there are plenty of them after all. I’m happy with the gifts I’ve been given, (mostly). Really, truly, I would never swap places with them. Until now. Take it all, just give me the damn girl!
Cal leaned in toward me. For a second, I thought the guy was going to take me up on the swap, unbidden.
“Got a cigga for me mate? I’m fresh out.”
Ah yes, fresh insult. Of course. And why not? I retrieved said vice from his jacket.
“Do you need a light there Cal?”, I asked. The absolute stirling perfect picture of easy, nonchalant amiability.
“Do I need a light? DO I NEED A LIGHT?” Cal yelled, grinning. Some of Cal’s friends heard him and hurriedly urged their friends’ attention to where the trio stood.
“I DON’T NEED NO FUCKN LIGHT!” about five or six of his buddies then yelled in unison, and cracked up. Obviously some sort of in-joke.
How terribly amusing. Kill me.
Cal winked at me. A crowd of party guests gathered around us. Someone even had the wherewithal to turn the music down. “Check this out, buddy” said Cal. He stuck the unlit cigarette, tobacco-end, into his ear. Beth looked confused. I was confused too – how could this be any way to impress your girl in front of a potential competitor? But, o, it was. Cal frowned slightly, and his friends shushed the excited crowd. A sense of anticipation grew.
Slowly, cigarette smoke began drifting out of Cal’s other ear. The crowd oohed, aahed, laughed, and made those shocked delight noises. Then they applauded. Beth laughed, jumped up and down on the spot, then leant over to Cal and whispered something saucy in his ear. He smiled and nodded.
Kill me, kill me now. Fucking take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Cal took the cigarette out of his ear and took a puff of it. He blew out the smoke, twisting his mouth oddly. The smoke came out spelling the words “Beth is hot”.
As the letters hung in the air and slowly dissipated, Cal blew a love heart, and then an arrow piercing it. Guys laughed. Girls sighed and said “aww, that’s SO sweet.”
I barely managed a broken, “Hey, cool man” before backing away, away from Beth and Cal, their admiring rabble, and the cruel and unusual punishment that is my world. Only when I was almost there did I realise – I was headed for the back yard.
I stood in front of the very glass doors that Mr Bertram had burst through, enraged, last night. Other party-goers milled about, laughed in the kitchen, smashed a bottle of something.
I calmly noticed the German razor wire that now ran atop the back fence. Prick. Fuck. Cunt.
When I came back inside a few minutes later, I was changed. A spring in the step. A reason to continue. Something worth giving a shot. Flies on the wall would have noticed the difference in me. A collection of drunken party-goers however, did not.
Cal and Beth had moved to the staircase, so the other guests could see them better, presumably. I noticed that Cal’s cigarette was almost all gone. He was still doing smoke tricks. You have to give the guy credit on one level, some of them were quite impressive. He made a little smoke television, then a lamp and armchair, and then, god-DAMN-it, he made a little smoke man who actually WALKED over to the armchair, and sat down. Jesus. My dis- and re-appearance had gone unnoticed, as one might expect during such a display. Sure enough, Cal’s cigarette came to its brown-papered end as I wormed my way to the front of the crowd.
“Hey, cool tricks man. Got any more?”, I asked. The absolute stirling perfect picture of easy, nonchalant amiability. Again.
“You bet, if you’ve got another smoke for us!”, Cal half-joked. Even he knew it was a bit much to scam two smokes in a row off the same person in a room full of people eager to ingratiate themselves with you. Some people even threw cigarettes across the room towards Cal.
But I silently proffered another of his cigarettes, and Cal took it. This time, he lit it conventionally – he had a lighter in his pocket. Just the slightest little crease crossed his features.
That crease, I knew, meant the idea was going to work.
Maybe, if there had been less people gazing lovingly at Cal, or if he had been less drunk, or less eager to impress his girlfriend, he would have stopped and put the cigarette out.
Because it tasted funny.
But let’s not concern ourselves with the ifs. The what-actually-happens are much better.
Cal inhaled deeply, more deeply than usual, from the cigarette, as if to try and suck out all the bad taste from the cigarette. He took a full lung of the smoke, held it, held it, then collapsed dead on the floor.
I had originally planned to arrive earlier than I did. It was about 9.15pm when I got to the Bertram house – using the front entrance this time - how novel. I left my house several hours earlier, but I was delayed by numerous personal crises on the way over. I was forced to stop and gather myself on more than one park bench. There were issues to be resolved. How close a look had Mr Bertram really gotten at me last night? Would I be instantly recognized? Would the psycho lawn man even be there?
“You’re not him..” – what the hell was that about anyway?
Eventually, finally, the answer came to me. If a heart-thumping atom-bending romance between Beth and myself was something that Forces wanted to happen, as I believed they did at that point, then this trepidation and risk was surely all part of my test. It would therefore make sense that this was my darkest moment, that the fear would be greatest just before the triumph. I didn’t have a plan for talking to Beth or trying to win her over. I just thought if it would happen, it would happen, and if not, well fucking typical then. This attitude in itself was among the first shots I delivered unerringly into my own foot. Nonetheless, the inner turmoil was now resolved. So go to the party and await your destiny.
I did so.
The party was in full swing by the time I arrived. Music blared – I placed it with an inward sneer – it was a band called The Comma Separated Values. Carefully disheveled alpha-males crying foul. Strike One - bad music. Was this a crack in Day Zero? Something that detracted from the Perfection? No – merely another part of that which was to be risen above.
Guests stood in clumps. A few individuals, perhaps those who could be considered popular, perhaps those who were drunk, spoke loudly, gestured wildly, made their friends laugh. Two girls danced together to the music. There were a lot of people here – that increased the likelihood that I was only invited here as filler, so that afterwards, when people said “Man, EVERYONE was there!”, it would be a more credible statement.
But that wasn’t definite.
The party was disappointingly well-lit as well. Where were the fairy lights and candles of the Imagined Party? Nowhere to be seen. These let-downs, though, (and others too numerous and insignificant to mention) could never have persuaded me to leave. Hell, everyone goes somewhere new with expectations, everyone makes a hell of a lot of hasty changes to those expectations upon their arrival.
All these observations, realisations and analyses ticked over on a sub-level processor somewhere at the bottom of my left brain. The majority of my head was screaming something else – WHERE IS SHE?
Neither Beth nor her father were visible. At any second I would be surprised with that singsong Beth hello, or, at the other end of the scale, a heavy hand on his shoulder and a poker inserted just below the left kidney. One or the other would happen. It was inevitable. It was as if I was standing in the queue of the recently-deceased in Limbo, waiting to see if I was bound for Heaven or Hell, having absolutely no idea which, and being utterly powerless to influence the result.
And just as I imagined Limbo would be, no-one had said a word to me at the party yet. I’m not an outcast in particular, I maintain cordial relations and a semblance of normality with a number of the guests. It was just the way things were set up – everyone was already assigned, there was little mingling. I approached a group of three girls (I can’t quite name them, but I do know all three of their names start with C) and said hello.
“Hi!”, they replied in a friendly unison.
“Have you guys seen Beth?”
The friendly unison hello had been nice. The giggles which constituted the reply to my question, however, were not. C-One got over her girl-humiliation-game-playing long enough to tell me that she thought Beth was upstairs. I looked her in the eye for a second or two and realised that Beth was undoubtedly downstairs somewhere. The C was enjoying the idea of misleading me, of all the cuntish...
Then the heavy hand landed on my shoulder, from behind.
The hand swung down and clamped hard in one single movement. A movement which continued in the form of sheer animal terror down through my body. I fought hard to control my bowels from evacuating. Fought hard and won, thankfully, in the instant before the voice said, “Well, well, well, who do we have here Beth?”.
Beth. Someone was asking Beth a question. Ergo, Beth was now in the room. Heaven or hell. I was now at the front of the Limbo queue, being assessed.
“Oh Cal, that’s Paul – he’s from my Modern Culture class. Hi Paul.”
“Ah, Cell Biology actually”, I tried to say. Even in the world of deepest mindfuck to which I now was exiled, I was still compelled to correct mistakes. The hand on my shoulder squeezed harder. I turned around. “Yeah, Cell Biology, that’s right.” – singsong.
‘Cal’ – who was ‘Cal’?. The hand that had dropped from my shoulder as I turned to face my crappy fate did not belong to Crazy Lawn Guy. It belonged to Cal. Cal had his non-shoulder-clamping arm around Beth. Huge chunks of Day Zero Perfection broke off and fell six-hundred-and-sixty-six storeys to the ground, where they smashed into seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven pieces each. I smiled meekly as my mind raced much much too fast, desperately trying to come up with a logical explanation for Cal having his arm around Beth like he did, in a way that was sickeningly familiar. They could be close cousins. Shit – he could even be her brother for all I knew. He could even just be one of those annoying people who like to put their arms around people they aren’t really that close with.
It wasn’t definite that he was her boyfriend.
“This is Cal, my boyfriend.” - singsong.
I looked at Beth as she said this. She didn’t say it. Her mouth (o god, her mouth, her LIPS) moved. Words came out in singsong voice, and they were even perfectly lip-synced. But no. She didn’t say that. Please. Just…please.
No. No, of course it was all bullshit, this Day Zero stuff. I mean, how could I not have known? Don’t I like to think that I am even just slightly intelligent? So how did I decieve myself so easily and deeply? It was so FUCKING STUPID! Day Zero – what the fuck is that? The biggest irony on the planet is that the people who are most convinced that they don’t suck are the ones who most likely do. SUCK THAT IS. SUCK LIKE YOU. This internal rant came from a beastly voice that lives in my head. Its a voice that envies the control that the pursuit of beauty has over my mind. The voice’s name is Steven Lampshade. No-one knows where the name came from. Now Lampshade had seized the controls. He is a nasty voice.
“Cal goes to WITHHELD. Cal, this is Paul. He’s in my Calisthenics class.”
I looked at Cal.
He was better looking, taller, all of the usual stuff. He went to WITHHELD, so he was obviously richer too. I don’t usually have a problem with guys who possess these things over him – there are plenty of them after all. I’m happy with the gifts I’ve been given, (mostly). Really, truly, I would never swap places with them. Until now. Take it all, just give me the damn girl!
Cal leaned in toward me. For a second, I thought the guy was going to take me up on the swap, unbidden.
“Got a cigga for me mate? I’m fresh out.”
Ah yes, fresh insult. Of course. And why not? I retrieved said vice from his jacket.
“Do you need a light there Cal?”, I asked. The absolute stirling perfect picture of easy, nonchalant amiability.
“Do I need a light? DO I NEED A LIGHT?” Cal yelled, grinning. Some of Cal’s friends heard him and hurriedly urged their friends’ attention to where the trio stood.
“I DON’T NEED NO FUCKN LIGHT!” about five or six of his buddies then yelled in unison, and cracked up. Obviously some sort of in-joke.
How terribly amusing. Kill me.
Cal winked at me. A crowd of party guests gathered around us. Someone even had the wherewithal to turn the music down. “Check this out, buddy” said Cal. He stuck the unlit cigarette, tobacco-end, into his ear. Beth looked confused. I was confused too – how could this be any way to impress your girl in front of a potential competitor? But, o, it was. Cal frowned slightly, and his friends shushed the excited crowd. A sense of anticipation grew.
Slowly, cigarette smoke began drifting out of Cal’s other ear. The crowd oohed, aahed, laughed, and made those shocked delight noises. Then they applauded. Beth laughed, jumped up and down on the spot, then leant over to Cal and whispered something saucy in his ear. He smiled and nodded.
Kill me, kill me now. Fucking take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Cal took the cigarette out of his ear and took a puff of it. He blew out the smoke, twisting his mouth oddly. The smoke came out spelling the words “Beth is hot”.
As the letters hung in the air and slowly dissipated, Cal blew a love heart, and then an arrow piercing it. Guys laughed. Girls sighed and said “aww, that’s SO sweet.”
I barely managed a broken, “Hey, cool man” before backing away, away from Beth and Cal, their admiring rabble, and the cruel and unusual punishment that is my world. Only when I was almost there did I realise – I was headed for the back yard.
I stood in front of the very glass doors that Mr Bertram had burst through, enraged, last night. Other party-goers milled about, laughed in the kitchen, smashed a bottle of something.
I calmly noticed the German razor wire that now ran atop the back fence. Prick. Fuck. Cunt.
When I came back inside a few minutes later, I was changed. A spring in the step. A reason to continue. Something worth giving a shot. Flies on the wall would have noticed the difference in me. A collection of drunken party-goers however, did not.
Cal and Beth had moved to the staircase, so the other guests could see them better, presumably. I noticed that Cal’s cigarette was almost all gone. He was still doing smoke tricks. You have to give the guy credit on one level, some of them were quite impressive. He made a little smoke television, then a lamp and armchair, and then, god-DAMN-it, he made a little smoke man who actually WALKED over to the armchair, and sat down. Jesus. My dis- and re-appearance had gone unnoticed, as one might expect during such a display. Sure enough, Cal’s cigarette came to its brown-papered end as I wormed my way to the front of the crowd.
“Hey, cool tricks man. Got any more?”, I asked. The absolute stirling perfect picture of easy, nonchalant amiability. Again.
“You bet, if you’ve got another smoke for us!”, Cal half-joked. Even he knew it was a bit much to scam two smokes in a row off the same person in a room full of people eager to ingratiate themselves with you. Some people even threw cigarettes across the room towards Cal.
But I silently proffered another of his cigarettes, and Cal took it. This time, he lit it conventionally – he had a lighter in his pocket. Just the slightest little crease crossed his features.
That crease, I knew, meant the idea was going to work.
Maybe, if there had been less people gazing lovingly at Cal, or if he had been less drunk, or less eager to impress his girlfriend, he would have stopped and put the cigarette out.
Because it tasted funny.
But let’s not concern ourselves with the ifs. The what-actually-happens are much better.
Cal inhaled deeply, more deeply than usual, from the cigarette, as if to try and suck out all the bad taste from the cigarette. He took a full lung of the smoke, held it, held it, then collapsed dead on the floor.
13.2.05
introducing stephen lampshade
this is stephen lampshade. he's probably the most influential of the voices in my head.
.
.
12.2.05
last night's craziness - ii
My view was very much restricted by the tininess of the crack in the shed wall, but I could still see a very disturbing little cross-section of the interior. It was well-lit in there. Funny that I hadn’t noticed before. The shed had windows that faced into the garden, but no light had ever emitted from them. I figured that there must be more than one room in the shed. Its certainly big enough. What I could see now was something like a well-budgeted laboratory from the year 2200. Flourescent lights, glass cupboards, strange machines with digital readouts, beakers, aluminium benches and tables, those weird-ass taps and sinks you find in Chemistry labs. Laptop computers, monitors, cables laid in an orderly fashion. Biological hazard stickers and radiation suits. Fire extinguishers with strange chemical symbols on them. Little posters on the wall detailing safety procedures. And the back wall, a small section of which I looked directly onto, was one huge glass shelving unit filled with identical bottles. Large bottles, 4 litre capacity, each with the same large label. Mostly unreadable from this distance, but I could still make out the warning at the top. It read “POISON! POISON! REALLY BAD POISON!”.
Poison Poison Really Bad Poison? Surely this wasn’t an official hazardous materials rating? Perhaps it was. Perhaps poison came in three grades: Poison, Bad Poison and Poison Poison Really Bad Poison. Didn’t seem likely. Its not the kind of labelling system the scientific community generally tends to employ. But what other explanation could there be? Homemade labels? That would imply homemade products. That would imply that Mr Bertram was making his own lawn products, and labelling them himself, and choosing the words ‘Poison Poison Really Bad Poison’ as a warning on the label. That would imply its time to go, to jump the fucking fence and spend some time seriously wondering if it is worth returning for the party tonight – flowered underwear and jazz dancing aside, I don’t want to get on the wrong side of an unbalanced backyard chemist with a poker.
Poison Poison Really Bad Poison? Surely this wasn’t an official hazardous materials rating? Perhaps it was. Perhaps poison came in three grades: Poison, Bad Poison and Poison Poison Really Bad Poison. Didn’t seem likely. Its not the kind of labelling system the scientific community generally tends to employ. But what other explanation could there be? Homemade labels? That would imply homemade products. That would imply that Mr Bertram was making his own lawn products, and labelling them himself, and choosing the words ‘Poison Poison Really Bad Poison’ as a warning on the label. That would imply its time to go, to jump the fucking fence and spend some time seriously wondering if it is worth returning for the party tonight – flowered underwear and jazz dancing aside, I don’t want to get on the wrong side of an unbalanced backyard chemist with a poker.
last night's craziness - i
I tripped on the cat in the moonlight. I didn’t fall over, but still felt embarrassed, like when people trip on the footpath and look back at the spot they tripped on, as if to indicate to others that there must be something wrong with the path, coz I’m no spaz. Anyway.
Some people live a life where Tuesday is unremarkable, a day like any other. I pity those people, but I’m glad they don’t know. Don’t know that Tuesday night is laundry night at the Bertram household.
I live in an older suburb, a leafy one. The streets are lined with oaks that reach across and held hands with each other, turning the streets into surreal green tunnels, where moonlight filters through shattered and intermittent. The streets in the area have cobbled little back alleys like the one I was walking down. In the years before the city’s sewerage system, the Poo Man would use these alleys to collect everyone’s Poo. I guess you can’t blame people for not wanting to see the Poo Man walk down the middle of their street, complaining loudly about the unusual stench of the Joneses. So they built back alleys – Poo Man Lanes.
Last night was one of those much too beautiful summer nights, about a degree or two warmer than a comfortable room temperature, and with a full moon to boot. The stink of magic everywhere – I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the streets turn to canals bearing massive decorative barges from which ancient Egyptian Goddesses would throw rose petals. Or something.
This particular part of my suburb lies in a weird little valley at the base of three hills. Its tucked away from the rest of the planet by those hills, supersaturated with these massive trees that overshadowed everything. Even the streetlights can’t compete, instead becoming embroiled in the branches slow little twisting games, engulfing them with leaves, thereby blanketing the area with a grid of soft green lights. The houses here are like the trees, wide and sprawling. They were built back in the Age of the Poo Man, when for whatever reason, people liked the higher ceilings, the multiple levels, the attics, the cellars, all the good old stuff that has somehow since been weeded out of house construction. Beth lives in such a house with her father. Her house has three storeys, a large backyard with fairy lights and a swimming pool.
I know a lot about Beth’s back yard.
The activity I refer to as ‘peepsniffering’ has been going on for over three months, since late 2004. Every Tuesday. Before this time, I had been merely peeping on Beth. Then I happened to peep on a Tuesday, and found, in the backyard, the Bertram clothesline (a Hills Hoist), full to the brim with lacy white underwear. The underwear of Beth Bertram, the object of my peeping (and undying pathetic stalker love).
So do I need to explain how ‘peeping’ became ‘peepsniffering’? Surely you get the idea. I didn’t mind that the underwear I’m sniffing is clean - having thought about it, I actually prefer it that way, the alternative is altogether too mind-blowing, something so darkly appealing that I can’t handle contemplating it.
Its gotten to the point where its my Number One Reason to live. It takes me out of my animal body into oceans of art and love and purity. Its not that the underwear is expensive, or even silk for the most part. Such material values are irrelevant in the face of my loser sentimentality. Its just HERS.
So, with cats tripped over and senses of reasonable Behaviour completely eradicated, I arrived at my destination. Its the accepted tradition to begin by sitting in the alley with my back against her fence. Here I would smoke a cigarette and ready myself. I observed this tradition last night, although last night was something special – it was Day Minus One. Today is Day Zero. I’m nervous.
Even now I’m looking at it again – the invite. It bears my sacrifice-blood, my overcome-tear and my fever-sweat stains, but the original crappy inkjetted words are still legible – “Paul is invited to Beth’s birthday party next Saturday night.” The address and phone number follow, as if I don’t already have them burnt on my brain, carved into my cortex with a blunt tool, interfering with my normal thought processes, my speech patterns, my very depth perception. Where my name, ‘Paul’ appears on the invite, it is in fact hand-written, by HER, onto a blank line created with the intention of later individualisation. How I’ve studied that handwriting, desperate to find some sort of hidden message in the base of her P and the backstroke of her L. She’s never spoken a word to me before. Why, then, would she invite me to her party? How does she even know my name, if not by accidental observation? Maybe it means nothing, maybe she just wants as many people to be there as possible, maybe I’m merely filler.
Maybe.
But maybe it means something. Thats a “maybe” that will certainly spell the end of my sanity. That’s the only definite thing about that particular maybe, that it’s gonna fuck me up. (For a stalker, I’m very much aware of the ridiculousness of my psychology, but I don’t care, I like it).
The cat followed me down the alley from our original meeting place. It stared at me as I sat there with a stupid grin on my face, letting the cigarette burn unattended.
I came back to my senses (not all the way back, just to where I usually am, a fair way off ‘sensical’), took a final puff of the cigarette and turned to climb the fence.
The sheer beauty of the vista over that fence made that dangerous “maybe” seem a definite “yes”. If my thoughts mean nothing to the universe, I surely would not have been rewarded like this, prodded into action by this splendour, too rich for sane human consumption. The full moon shone on the Bertram back yard like a marshmallowy spotlight. A baby breeze spun the underwear laden clothesline around slowly slowly, its rusty mechanism squeaked quietly quietly. The underwear gently float-flapped in the summer breeze, light shining off and hiding in its shimmer surfaces. Even the spider-web in the window of the garden shed glowed invitingly in the moonlight. The fairylights scattered throughout the garden were reflected wobbly-wrong and blue in the whispershift of the swimming pool waters.
Too much, it’s too much, it’s too much, jesusicantdothis. It was a sight that could have spelled the end of my peepsniffery. I don’t think of myself as a Bad Person, but I know my habits are base and motivated by sexuality. These were elements I didn’t feel I could willingly introduce into the Bertram backyard last night. Better just to leave, go home and die happy than risk polluting this moment. At the end of the day, shit, there will be other girls. But this was too much.
Too.
Much.
Then her bedroom light came on.
Her hand touched the switch, (one assumes), and electrical current travelled at the speed of light to the bulb, which lit the room. That light, in turn, travelled at the speed of light into my retina. Along my optic nerve, into my brain. This had never happened before during previous peepings.
Before this instant, things were too much. Now, the concept of volume, of things being too much or too little, was lost to me. It was all I could do to remain on the fence, keep my eyes open, and, in all seriousness, try and remember what planet I was on. I was no longer able to mentally process the experience as it happened, instead I was reduced (or heightened) to only being able to experience it raw.
The too-muchness of things just would not stop intensifying last night. Everything just kept multiplying exponentially. Alright. OK - getting out of hand. Let’s just be matter of fact for a while and I’ll leave you to surmise how I reacted.
Shortly after Beth’s light came on, she drew her bedroom curtains apart, and put on some light jazz music on an old LP player she had (I’ve previously used high-tech night-vision goggles bought on the internet to ascertain the contents of her bedroom). The summer night carried the music with an alarming degree of clarity. Of course it did. Of course I could even hear the semi-regular scratch of the needle on the vinyl. The Day Zero Committee wouldn’t have it any other way, would they? The music carried with perfect clarity, and co-existed peacefully with the creak-creak of the clothesline, lap-slap of the swimming pool.
Remember how I said it wouldn’t stop intensifying?
Beth came to her bedroom window – now she had taken off her dressing gown and was clad only in a bra and underwear. A matching set of underwear that had little flowers on it. Little flowers on the cheapest cotton beats the purest silk hands down. She started slowly dancing to the slowly music in front of the bedroom window in the slowly night. The kind of dancing where you stand in one spot and gently sway.
Where was my mind when this was happening? No one knows, least of all me. Can anyone else really have any idea of the effect all of this had on me? I guess it could be compared to what a witness to Moses’ parting the Red Sea might have felt (if it wasn’t a bullshit myth). I mean, you live your life, you’re told that this God exists and everything is, at its centre, beauty and light, and there is justice and love everywhere, all that crappy religious stuff, and yeah, you THINK you believe in God, but you still have to shovel your donkey’s shit. Then Moses parts the Red Sea and you realise all the things you have barely dared to believe are actually true, that there is shit happening on a level about a million floors up from what you thought was the roof.
But I didn’t lose my mind. After she’d been dancing for a while, there came the familiar voice in my head. It said “you are watching a girl dancing in her underwear. That’s all it is. It’s not a sign of the end of this world or the beginning of the next one. It is, in fact, devoid of meaning. It’s consistent with the nice weather, it fits in with how she would be happily anticipating the party tomorrow night. That’s it. No star crossed lovers, only physics, jazz and biology. Just a girl dancing. They like dancing, girls. You know this.”
Despite the voice, I was unable to process thought while the dancing went on. Finally, the record stopped and Beth, grinning euphorically by way of goodbye to the night, turned back into her room. The yellow glow of invitation that her room spilled out was replaced, as she turned the light off, with the moonlight’s reciprocated silver invitation in her room, asking her to come outside. Which she didn’t do, much as I willed her to.
Instead, in light of recent jazz-related events, I resolved to forget my earlier worries about beauty pollution, and complete the peepsniffery. (leaving without performing this act was never really an option, as you have no doubt guessed).
The cobwebbed garden shed stood against the fence, a narrow gap between them is where I climb down, and crouch hence, waiting for a self-granted psychological all-clear. I never steal any underwear, so no-one is suspicious, no-one is on the lookout for anything. I’ve always come and gone without a trace. So the all-clear is always a mere formality. Again last night, I crouched, waited a few seconds until it was apparent I hadn’t alerted authorities to my presence, and began the short but oh-so-agonizing journey from the shed, across the lawn, around the swimming pool, to the clothesline. One step. Two. No sign of trouble, just the heartbeat, the adrenaline, the sheer joy of anticipation known only to the serial panty-sniffer. Better to move quickly, silently. Remember a ninja movie, draw from it. The first bit is the most dangerous, where you are the most exposed, right in the middle of the well-manicured lawn. In fact, when I looked at the lawn in the full moonlight, it wasn’t just well manicured – it was incredibly well-manicured. Each blade seemed to be the exact same width and length and have the same angled fold in its middle...more about that later.
Distracted you fool! Keep moving…
Right in the middle of the lawn, that’s where I was standing when the alarm went off. I’d done this many times before, stood in this exact same spot. There had never been an alarm before. But it wasn’t an alarm after all – it was the damn telephone ring-ring-ringing. Jesus. I decided to return to the shadowy crawlspace and wait. But I found that I could not move. I was frozen to the spot. Completely terrified. Through Beth’s open window, over the sound of my double-time pigeon heartbeart, I could hear everything transpiring in the house.
The phone kept ringing. There were heavy footsteps. The phone stopped ringing. A muffled voice. More footsteps, this time ascending the stairs. A knock on Beth’s bedroom door.
“Beth! Phone call!”
“Okay, coming!” the singsong Beth voice replied.
“Tell your friends not to call here so late! It’s past eleven!”
“Okay, Dad. But if you let me have my own extension this wouldn’t happen, would it?”.
“Don’t start with me on that issue again, young lady, or there won’t be any party at all tomorrow night.”
“Good one Dad” – singsong sarcasm. Beth gets up and hurries down the stairs.
The light in Beth’s room came on, and I, rooted to the spot on the lawn, was drenched in that yellow light, that somehow didn’t seem so inviting anymore. Now it exposed me and my crimes. Still I could not move.
Silence. I looked up at Beth’s bedroom window. No sign of life. OK, now things could calm down, now I could start to move again..
It was like a car accident. You can see it is going to happen, that collision is inevitable. This was how it was for me as he saw the man, Beth’s father, approach her bedroom window. Why would a man do this? Why would he, upon being unexpectedly called to his daughters room and having completed his business there, linger in the room, go to the window and look out of it? Why? Goddamnit, it’s not fair. I looked down at my feet, the perfect grass beneath. There was the answer. The lawn. The man was checking on his perfectly manicured lawn, whose very perfection any self-respecting Muslim would consider an insult to Allah. How dare a mortal soul attempt to create perfection? they would have cried. Well, Mr Bertram is one soul who attempts it, and as far as I can tell, attempts it pretty damn successfully.
These thoughts occupied the few fractions of a second it took for Beth’s father to see me through the open window. Absurdly, counter-productively, I still could not move. But I knew, as soon as that man spoke to me, acknowledged my presence, I would be able to flee. I just had to wait out this moment while Mr Bertram tried to comprehend what he was seeing. It wouldn’t take long, it was only a wayward stranger in his backyard, by all outward appearances nothing more than a slight bit of trespass.
Bertram spoke, in a voice barely more than a whisper, “You’re not him…”
You’re not him? Not who?
“Who the hell are you?” – that was louder, better. A bit more of a normal response. Enough to unlock me from my statue pose and send me piss-bolting back to the fence. As I did so, the moon quicky dipped behind an immense cloud bank. Surely that can’t be a coincidence, I thought. I knew the Firmament was on my side.
“GET THE BLOODY FUCK OFF MY LAWN!” – Bertram had processed his initial shock and disbelief, and had now advanced to rage. He turned from his daughters window and ran downstairs, grabbing a poker from the fireplace as he dashed through the living room on his way to confront me.
This gave me precious seconds in which to make my escape, and I approached the fence like a startled gazelle, was almost there, began to leap..
..it was the same cat as before, under my feet again. The cat got trod on, yowled angrily and was back over the fence into Poo Mans-Land in a flash. This time though, I not only tripped, but tripped and fell, fell badly. I felt a crunch of things that shouldn’t crunch inside my left foot, and a surge of pain as I attempted to climb the fence despite my injury. I heard Bertram slide open one of the glass doors that opened into the yard, and yell, “YOU ARE DEAD YOU LITTLE SHIT!”.
As I tried to climb the fence, my foot was forced to remind me that it wasn’t currently in operation. The initial surge of pain I felt was a gentle warning compared to the harsh rebuke that ripped up my central nervous system now. Damn you, climb the fence! I thought, but the pain screamed worlds of “NO. FENCE NO CLIMB NOW.” The sound of bare feet sprinting across lawn. Seconds left in which to act. The poker being wielded menacingly.
Somehow, I managed to drag myself into the narrow gap between the shed and the fence and dry-retched with pain in the pitch black gap.
Bertram patrolled the perimeter of his lawn for a good 20 minutes before being satisfied that order had returned, during which time I crouched and concentrated on fading the pain. It was already a lot better, now that I was trapped in the dark. But the darkness wasn’t quite total. Light was coming from somewhere. A small crack in the shed wall. Why would there be a light on in the shed? The idea of Mr Bertram as a hydroponic marijuana enthusiast doesn’t seem realistic. Even as the nasty poker man was winding down his search for lawn-befoulers, my interest in the shed overcame my fear, and I shifted position slightly so as to be able to peek through the crack in the wall…
Remember how I said it didn’t stop intensifying? CONTINUED
Some people live a life where Tuesday is unremarkable, a day like any other. I pity those people, but I’m glad they don’t know. Don’t know that Tuesday night is laundry night at the Bertram household.
I live in an older suburb, a leafy one. The streets are lined with oaks that reach across and held hands with each other, turning the streets into surreal green tunnels, where moonlight filters through shattered and intermittent. The streets in the area have cobbled little back alleys like the one I was walking down. In the years before the city’s sewerage system, the Poo Man would use these alleys to collect everyone’s Poo. I guess you can’t blame people for not wanting to see the Poo Man walk down the middle of their street, complaining loudly about the unusual stench of the Joneses. So they built back alleys – Poo Man Lanes.
Last night was one of those much too beautiful summer nights, about a degree or two warmer than a comfortable room temperature, and with a full moon to boot. The stink of magic everywhere – I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the streets turn to canals bearing massive decorative barges from which ancient Egyptian Goddesses would throw rose petals. Or something.
This particular part of my suburb lies in a weird little valley at the base of three hills. Its tucked away from the rest of the planet by those hills, supersaturated with these massive trees that overshadowed everything. Even the streetlights can’t compete, instead becoming embroiled in the branches slow little twisting games, engulfing them with leaves, thereby blanketing the area with a grid of soft green lights. The houses here are like the trees, wide and sprawling. They were built back in the Age of the Poo Man, when for whatever reason, people liked the higher ceilings, the multiple levels, the attics, the cellars, all the good old stuff that has somehow since been weeded out of house construction. Beth lives in such a house with her father. Her house has three storeys, a large backyard with fairy lights and a swimming pool.
I know a lot about Beth’s back yard.
The activity I refer to as ‘peepsniffering’ has been going on for over three months, since late 2004. Every Tuesday. Before this time, I had been merely peeping on Beth. Then I happened to peep on a Tuesday, and found, in the backyard, the Bertram clothesline (a Hills Hoist), full to the brim with lacy white underwear. The underwear of Beth Bertram, the object of my peeping (and undying pathetic stalker love).
So do I need to explain how ‘peeping’ became ‘peepsniffering’? Surely you get the idea. I didn’t mind that the underwear I’m sniffing is clean - having thought about it, I actually prefer it that way, the alternative is altogether too mind-blowing, something so darkly appealing that I can’t handle contemplating it.
Its gotten to the point where its my Number One Reason to live. It takes me out of my animal body into oceans of art and love and purity. Its not that the underwear is expensive, or even silk for the most part. Such material values are irrelevant in the face of my loser sentimentality. Its just HERS.
So, with cats tripped over and senses of reasonable Behaviour completely eradicated, I arrived at my destination. Its the accepted tradition to begin by sitting in the alley with my back against her fence. Here I would smoke a cigarette and ready myself. I observed this tradition last night, although last night was something special – it was Day Minus One. Today is Day Zero. I’m nervous.
Even now I’m looking at it again – the invite. It bears my sacrifice-blood, my overcome-tear and my fever-sweat stains, but the original crappy inkjetted words are still legible – “Paul is invited to Beth’s birthday party next Saturday night.” The address and phone number follow, as if I don’t already have them burnt on my brain, carved into my cortex with a blunt tool, interfering with my normal thought processes, my speech patterns, my very depth perception. Where my name, ‘Paul’ appears on the invite, it is in fact hand-written, by HER, onto a blank line created with the intention of later individualisation. How I’ve studied that handwriting, desperate to find some sort of hidden message in the base of her P and the backstroke of her L. She’s never spoken a word to me before. Why, then, would she invite me to her party? How does she even know my name, if not by accidental observation? Maybe it means nothing, maybe she just wants as many people to be there as possible, maybe I’m merely filler.
Maybe.
But maybe it means something. Thats a “maybe” that will certainly spell the end of my sanity. That’s the only definite thing about that particular maybe, that it’s gonna fuck me up. (For a stalker, I’m very much aware of the ridiculousness of my psychology, but I don’t care, I like it).
The cat followed me down the alley from our original meeting place. It stared at me as I sat there with a stupid grin on my face, letting the cigarette burn unattended.
I came back to my senses (not all the way back, just to where I usually am, a fair way off ‘sensical’), took a final puff of the cigarette and turned to climb the fence.
The sheer beauty of the vista over that fence made that dangerous “maybe” seem a definite “yes”. If my thoughts mean nothing to the universe, I surely would not have been rewarded like this, prodded into action by this splendour, too rich for sane human consumption. The full moon shone on the Bertram back yard like a marshmallowy spotlight. A baby breeze spun the underwear laden clothesline around slowly slowly, its rusty mechanism squeaked quietly quietly. The underwear gently float-flapped in the summer breeze, light shining off and hiding in its shimmer surfaces. Even the spider-web in the window of the garden shed glowed invitingly in the moonlight. The fairylights scattered throughout the garden were reflected wobbly-wrong and blue in the whispershift of the swimming pool waters.
Too much, it’s too much, it’s too much, jesusicantdothis. It was a sight that could have spelled the end of my peepsniffery. I don’t think of myself as a Bad Person, but I know my habits are base and motivated by sexuality. These were elements I didn’t feel I could willingly introduce into the Bertram backyard last night. Better just to leave, go home and die happy than risk polluting this moment. At the end of the day, shit, there will be other girls. But this was too much.
Too.
Much.
Then her bedroom light came on.
Her hand touched the switch, (one assumes), and electrical current travelled at the speed of light to the bulb, which lit the room. That light, in turn, travelled at the speed of light into my retina. Along my optic nerve, into my brain. This had never happened before during previous peepings.
Before this instant, things were too much. Now, the concept of volume, of things being too much or too little, was lost to me. It was all I could do to remain on the fence, keep my eyes open, and, in all seriousness, try and remember what planet I was on. I was no longer able to mentally process the experience as it happened, instead I was reduced (or heightened) to only being able to experience it raw.
The too-muchness of things just would not stop intensifying last night. Everything just kept multiplying exponentially. Alright. OK - getting out of hand. Let’s just be matter of fact for a while and I’ll leave you to surmise how I reacted.
Shortly after Beth’s light came on, she drew her bedroom curtains apart, and put on some light jazz music on an old LP player she had (I’ve previously used high-tech night-vision goggles bought on the internet to ascertain the contents of her bedroom). The summer night carried the music with an alarming degree of clarity. Of course it did. Of course I could even hear the semi-regular scratch of the needle on the vinyl. The Day Zero Committee wouldn’t have it any other way, would they? The music carried with perfect clarity, and co-existed peacefully with the creak-creak of the clothesline, lap-slap of the swimming pool.
Remember how I said it wouldn’t stop intensifying?
Beth came to her bedroom window – now she had taken off her dressing gown and was clad only in a bra and underwear. A matching set of underwear that had little flowers on it. Little flowers on the cheapest cotton beats the purest silk hands down. She started slowly dancing to the slowly music in front of the bedroom window in the slowly night. The kind of dancing where you stand in one spot and gently sway.
Where was my mind when this was happening? No one knows, least of all me. Can anyone else really have any idea of the effect all of this had on me? I guess it could be compared to what a witness to Moses’ parting the Red Sea might have felt (if it wasn’t a bullshit myth). I mean, you live your life, you’re told that this God exists and everything is, at its centre, beauty and light, and there is justice and love everywhere, all that crappy religious stuff, and yeah, you THINK you believe in God, but you still have to shovel your donkey’s shit. Then Moses parts the Red Sea and you realise all the things you have barely dared to believe are actually true, that there is shit happening on a level about a million floors up from what you thought was the roof.
But I didn’t lose my mind. After she’d been dancing for a while, there came the familiar voice in my head. It said “you are watching a girl dancing in her underwear. That’s all it is. It’s not a sign of the end of this world or the beginning of the next one. It is, in fact, devoid of meaning. It’s consistent with the nice weather, it fits in with how she would be happily anticipating the party tomorrow night. That’s it. No star crossed lovers, only physics, jazz and biology. Just a girl dancing. They like dancing, girls. You know this.”
Despite the voice, I was unable to process thought while the dancing went on. Finally, the record stopped and Beth, grinning euphorically by way of goodbye to the night, turned back into her room. The yellow glow of invitation that her room spilled out was replaced, as she turned the light off, with the moonlight’s reciprocated silver invitation in her room, asking her to come outside. Which she didn’t do, much as I willed her to.
Instead, in light of recent jazz-related events, I resolved to forget my earlier worries about beauty pollution, and complete the peepsniffery. (leaving without performing this act was never really an option, as you have no doubt guessed).
The cobwebbed garden shed stood against the fence, a narrow gap between them is where I climb down, and crouch hence, waiting for a self-granted psychological all-clear. I never steal any underwear, so no-one is suspicious, no-one is on the lookout for anything. I’ve always come and gone without a trace. So the all-clear is always a mere formality. Again last night, I crouched, waited a few seconds until it was apparent I hadn’t alerted authorities to my presence, and began the short but oh-so-agonizing journey from the shed, across the lawn, around the swimming pool, to the clothesline. One step. Two. No sign of trouble, just the heartbeat, the adrenaline, the sheer joy of anticipation known only to the serial panty-sniffer. Better to move quickly, silently. Remember a ninja movie, draw from it. The first bit is the most dangerous, where you are the most exposed, right in the middle of the well-manicured lawn. In fact, when I looked at the lawn in the full moonlight, it wasn’t just well manicured – it was incredibly well-manicured. Each blade seemed to be the exact same width and length and have the same angled fold in its middle...more about that later.
Distracted you fool! Keep moving…
Right in the middle of the lawn, that’s where I was standing when the alarm went off. I’d done this many times before, stood in this exact same spot. There had never been an alarm before. But it wasn’t an alarm after all – it was the damn telephone ring-ring-ringing. Jesus. I decided to return to the shadowy crawlspace and wait. But I found that I could not move. I was frozen to the spot. Completely terrified. Through Beth’s open window, over the sound of my double-time pigeon heartbeart, I could hear everything transpiring in the house.
The phone kept ringing. There were heavy footsteps. The phone stopped ringing. A muffled voice. More footsteps, this time ascending the stairs. A knock on Beth’s bedroom door.
“Beth! Phone call!”
“Okay, coming!” the singsong Beth voice replied.
“Tell your friends not to call here so late! It’s past eleven!”
“Okay, Dad. But if you let me have my own extension this wouldn’t happen, would it?”.
“Don’t start with me on that issue again, young lady, or there won’t be any party at all tomorrow night.”
“Good one Dad” – singsong sarcasm. Beth gets up and hurries down the stairs.
The light in Beth’s room came on, and I, rooted to the spot on the lawn, was drenched in that yellow light, that somehow didn’t seem so inviting anymore. Now it exposed me and my crimes. Still I could not move.
Silence. I looked up at Beth’s bedroom window. No sign of life. OK, now things could calm down, now I could start to move again..
It was like a car accident. You can see it is going to happen, that collision is inevitable. This was how it was for me as he saw the man, Beth’s father, approach her bedroom window. Why would a man do this? Why would he, upon being unexpectedly called to his daughters room and having completed his business there, linger in the room, go to the window and look out of it? Why? Goddamnit, it’s not fair. I looked down at my feet, the perfect grass beneath. There was the answer. The lawn. The man was checking on his perfectly manicured lawn, whose very perfection any self-respecting Muslim would consider an insult to Allah. How dare a mortal soul attempt to create perfection? they would have cried. Well, Mr Bertram is one soul who attempts it, and as far as I can tell, attempts it pretty damn successfully.
These thoughts occupied the few fractions of a second it took for Beth’s father to see me through the open window. Absurdly, counter-productively, I still could not move. But I knew, as soon as that man spoke to me, acknowledged my presence, I would be able to flee. I just had to wait out this moment while Mr Bertram tried to comprehend what he was seeing. It wouldn’t take long, it was only a wayward stranger in his backyard, by all outward appearances nothing more than a slight bit of trespass.
Bertram spoke, in a voice barely more than a whisper, “You’re not him…”
You’re not him? Not who?
“Who the hell are you?” – that was louder, better. A bit more of a normal response. Enough to unlock me from my statue pose and send me piss-bolting back to the fence. As I did so, the moon quicky dipped behind an immense cloud bank. Surely that can’t be a coincidence, I thought. I knew the Firmament was on my side.
“GET THE BLOODY FUCK OFF MY LAWN!” – Bertram had processed his initial shock and disbelief, and had now advanced to rage. He turned from his daughters window and ran downstairs, grabbing a poker from the fireplace as he dashed through the living room on his way to confront me.
This gave me precious seconds in which to make my escape, and I approached the fence like a startled gazelle, was almost there, began to leap..
..it was the same cat as before, under my feet again. The cat got trod on, yowled angrily and was back over the fence into Poo Mans-Land in a flash. This time though, I not only tripped, but tripped and fell, fell badly. I felt a crunch of things that shouldn’t crunch inside my left foot, and a surge of pain as I attempted to climb the fence despite my injury. I heard Bertram slide open one of the glass doors that opened into the yard, and yell, “YOU ARE DEAD YOU LITTLE SHIT!”.
As I tried to climb the fence, my foot was forced to remind me that it wasn’t currently in operation. The initial surge of pain I felt was a gentle warning compared to the harsh rebuke that ripped up my central nervous system now. Damn you, climb the fence! I thought, but the pain screamed worlds of “NO. FENCE NO CLIMB NOW.” The sound of bare feet sprinting across lawn. Seconds left in which to act. The poker being wielded menacingly.
Somehow, I managed to drag myself into the narrow gap between the shed and the fence and dry-retched with pain in the pitch black gap.
Bertram patrolled the perimeter of his lawn for a good 20 minutes before being satisfied that order had returned, during which time I crouched and concentrated on fading the pain. It was already a lot better, now that I was trapped in the dark. But the darkness wasn’t quite total. Light was coming from somewhere. A small crack in the shed wall. Why would there be a light on in the shed? The idea of Mr Bertram as a hydroponic marijuana enthusiast doesn’t seem realistic. Even as the nasty poker man was winding down his search for lawn-befoulers, my interest in the shed overcame my fear, and I shifted position slightly so as to be able to peek through the crack in the wall…
Remember how I said it didn’t stop intensifying? CONTINUED
10.2.05
richard's suicide note - ii
The reason I'm killing myself, I'm still only halfway through telling you why.
So what happened next was that Mister Wix was sent to trial. That girl, the one I knew, she had her face stitched back up. looked like this:
.
And Mister Wix went to jail where he was immediately eviscerated. they kept him alive for a while, long enough for him to be pack-raped, lying there, with his guts hanging out of his slashed tummy, gagging with the pain, his limbs thrashing, twitching, slick, spattered with his black gutjuice. Then he died.
The prisoners sent the wixguts to the girl. She kept them in a glass jar in front of her. She wrote an article about about her experience while her face healed. But when it came time to remove the stitches, she refused, electing instead to keep them in permanently.
When her article was published on the front page of our local paper, the girl became famous in this town. Thats when the trend caught on. People started having the Procedure done to their faces. You see it everywhere round here these days. People paying thousands of dollars to have their faces cut in half with scissors and sewn back up again, all wonky and wrong.
Thats why I have to go. I can't take it. Something about the idea that this could happen freaks me out. I don't want to be with the humans now. I don't feel disgusted, or outraged by this. I feel confused. Just so confused. I can't take it any longer. Goodbye world, signed, Richard Sex."
Was Richard right to attempt suicide, based on this story from his life? YES NO
Hey, it's none of my business - I just need him to keep paying rent and stuff.
PR.
So what happened next was that Mister Wix was sent to trial. That girl, the one I knew, she had her face stitched back up. looked like this:
.
And Mister Wix went to jail where he was immediately eviscerated. they kept him alive for a while, long enough for him to be pack-raped, lying there, with his guts hanging out of his slashed tummy, gagging with the pain, his limbs thrashing, twitching, slick, spattered with his black gutjuice. Then he died.
The prisoners sent the wixguts to the girl. She kept them in a glass jar in front of her. She wrote an article about about her experience while her face healed. But when it came time to remove the stitches, she refused, electing instead to keep them in permanently.
When her article was published on the front page of our local paper, the girl became famous in this town. Thats when the trend caught on. People started having the Procedure done to their faces. You see it everywhere round here these days. People paying thousands of dollars to have their faces cut in half with scissors and sewn back up again, all wonky and wrong.
Thats why I have to go. I can't take it. Something about the idea that this could happen freaks me out. I don't want to be with the humans now. I don't feel disgusted, or outraged by this. I feel confused. Just so confused. I can't take it any longer. Goodbye world, signed, Richard Sex."
Was Richard right to attempt suicide, based on this story from his life? YES NO
Hey, it's none of my business - I just need him to keep paying rent and stuff.
PR.
richard's suicide note - i
One day I found this suicide note. It was my flatmate Richard’s - he’s still alive, btw :)
“Dear everyone,
I knew a girl. She went to my school. Bad things happened to her, but don’t worry, she’s still alive.
Here is a bad thing that happened to her: She was an orphan. Everyone knew about it. Her parents died in a train wreck. She had been plucked from the wreckage as a babe. Everyone knew about it.
She was a naughty girl at school. She was known to behave badly. Everyone knew about it. She got away with it though, mainly because she was an orphan.
Until one day. The day the new teacher started. Mister Wix.
Here is the other bad thing that happened to her. During Period 4, she was smoking a cigarette in the girls toilets. Then Mister Wix came into the girls toilets, and he cut half her face off with a large pair of scissors. Snip snip snip. Just + so + much + blood.
Of course, her bloodcurdling screams quickly attracted attention to the horrid scene. Hall monitors, then paramedics, police, counsellors. And counsellors for the paramedics and police. And counsellors for the counsellors. And a lot of cleaners.
The next day, the headline was “Teacher cuts orphans face off with scissors”. It’s true, I’ve still got that newspaper. Its in my files somewhere. I kept it. The sentence pleased me somehow. How odd it is that such a thing could happen. I want you to have it, Paul. You like that kind of stuff.
But that’s not the reason I’m killing myself. continued
Here is a bad thing that happened to her: She was an orphan. Everyone knew about it. Her parents died in a train wreck. She had been plucked from the wreckage as a babe. Everyone knew about it.
She was a naughty girl at school. She was known to behave badly. Everyone knew about it. She got away with it though, mainly because she was an orphan.
Until one day. The day the new teacher started. Mister Wix.
Here is the other bad thing that happened to her. During Period 4, she was smoking a cigarette in the girls toilets. Then Mister Wix came into the girls toilets, and he cut half her face off with a large pair of scissors. Snip snip snip. Just + so + much + blood.
Of course, her bloodcurdling screams quickly attracted attention to the horrid scene. Hall monitors, then paramedics, police, counsellors. And counsellors for the paramedics and police. And counsellors for the counsellors. And a lot of cleaners.
The next day, the headline was “Teacher cuts orphans face off with scissors”. It’s true, I’ve still got that newspaper. Its in my files somewhere. I kept it. The sentence pleased me somehow. How odd it is that such a thing could happen. I want you to have it, Paul. You like that kind of stuff.
But that’s not the reason I’m killing myself. continued
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