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I get so drunk and the craziest thoughts bounce between my ears

A crowded city bar. Night.

ALEX, a tall dark guy, drinks beer and sits opposite MARK, who is absorbed with his mobile phone. MARK drinks from a bottle of vodka.

*****

ALEX: Why are you always on your phone whenever we go out together?

MARK: It is because you make me drink too much and I get drunk.

ALEX: That doesn’t explain why you ignore me.

MARK: That is not technically true.

ALEX: But you are on your phone now and the only reason that you’re talking to me is because I’ve asked you a question.

MARK: Was I ignoring you earlier in the evening?

ALEX: No, you were good fun then. But now it seems that I’m boring you.

MARK: That was before it got dark.

ALEX: You’re not making any sense.

MARK: It is simple. I spend days in the sun thinking about what to write and getting nowhere. The moon rises over the horizon and I become evil and inspirational. A few minutes is all it takes.

ALEX: I don’t understand.

MARK: I’m a writer who writes best at night.

ALEX: Then spare me the embarrassment of sitting in silence.

MARK: You are an extremely important part of the process, but you don’t realise that.

ALEX: What are you writing on your phone?

MARK: Something amazing.

ALEX: Would you care to show me?

MARK: No, I can’t do that. I need time to rewrite and edit it, and I can only do that in the daytime. Otherwise, people will think I’m a bad writer.

ALEX: I give up.

MARK: Keep talking. I’m listening. I call my notes the Penis Monologues but somebody already used that title.

ALEX: Penis Monologues?

MARK: My phone is full of notes. Observations. Conversations. Ideas. I turn them into something wonderful. Right now I have a menace energy that comes when I drink vodka by itself. I get so drunk and the craziest thoughts bounce between my ears and then I write brilliant things… over and over again. Vodka is my best friend.

ALEX: Where do I come into it?

MARK: This conversation. It might end up in a book, a short story, or maybe an entry in my secret diary. I don’t ignore you, because you are an important part of the Penis Monologues.

Charlie / By the time I am old there will be a long line of people wanting to take me in

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Charlie is reading an old book about an old French actress called Arletty. It was face down on the floor while he painted something that looked like mashed-up graffiti. He noticed me looking at it. “The book is called Je Suis Comme Je Suis – which means I Am As I Am,” he said.

“I’ve never heard of her,” I replied, flicking through its yellowing pages. Lots of tired text and black and white photographs. Charlie stopped painting and looked at me. “A madame after my own heart. Mon cœur est français, mais mon cul est international.”

I asked him to translate because he speaks too fast for me to understand. “It is quite simple,” he smirked. “It means that my heart is French, but my arse is international.”

He was provoking me, a crude attempt to make me jealous, that had succeeded.

I googled the name Arletty and discovered that she was accused of treason and imprisoned in 1945 for her wartime liaison with a German Luftwaffe officer, during the occupation of France.

Charlie’s face became sad. “Did you know that by the nineteen sixties she was almost blind?” He sat up on his knees and began fiddling inside his underwear. This was something he tended to do a lot. “She was blind in one eye but put the wrong eye drops in her good eye and destroyed that one too.”

“What happened to her?”

“She was a recluse, blind, and living alone in a dark Parisian apartment, which is how I will end up.” He peered at me with mournful eyes and waited for me to respond. It was a ploy that he used when he wanted attention.

“I’m sure that you’ll manage to find somebody who will be dumb enough to take you in.”

His face brightened. “That is correct. I will always be okay.” He jumped up and studied his unfinished canvas on the floor. “By the time I am old, I will be a famous artist, and there will be a long line of people wanting to take me in.” He waved his hand in front of my nose. “Would you like to smell my fingers?”

Yes, I know what people say about guys with big feet

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“It’s been a tough day,” Tom said. “Let’s take a walk and we’ll sit outside a coffee shop.” And in that cold winter sunshine things started to look up.

He sat back, put his long legs on the table, and drank his latte. I noticed that he had extraordinarily big feet.

“I’ve just realised that I didn’t put on clean underwear,” he remarked, and then he took one of ten thousand puffs on a blackberry, blueberry and raspberry vape. Tom was the coolest guy in the world.

I tried to say something clever, but it sounded like “mwah,” and he gave me a funny look.

And so, I made discreet notes on my phone before realising that the guy standing behind me was reading everything, and I hoped that he wouldn’t say anything that might embarrass me.

Charlie / You been down to the bottom with a bad man babe

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I have never been a Bob Dylan fan. Not that I don’t like his music, but he was always from a different era. But there are two tracks that I do like – Lay Lady Lay, and a forgotten single from 1978 called Baby Stop Crying that begins with the marvellous line, “You been down to the bottom with a bad man babe.”

Charlie showed me an image of a young Dylan on his phone. “What a handsome guy he was.”

I am reminded that Dylan may have been extremely attractive, and yes, I would have fallen in love with him, but I had once read that he was rude and obnoxious.

“He doesn’t take his clothes off when he goes to sleep, and the guy doesn’t clean his teeth, horrible breath,” a former staff member had said. And then there was Joni Mitchell who said she hated every moment of sharing the stage with him and blamed this on Dylan’s horrible breath.

I related this to Charlie, and he stared at Dylan with disappointment. “I hope that you realise how lucky you are to have me around.,” he sighed. “Not everybody is perfect like me.”

Tsundoku / That pile of books you glance at every day, but never read

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I once read André Aciman’s Homo Irrealis: Essays, and to be honest, it was a difficult read, partly because I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. Aciman’s approach to fiction is different, and I bought The Gentleman from Peru for Charlie, the French boy who once met the author, and wanted it because it was a signed copy. He keeps reminding me that I once had an original copy of Call Me By Your Name that I inexplicably threw away. I read The Gentleman from Peru because Charlie never will. His attention wanders after a few chapters, and that is why we are left with shelves of half-read books with slips of paper showing how far he got. But after finishing this book, I realise that this is more of a novella, and if Charlie is ever going to finish a book, this might be the one.

That moment / The urinal gap doesn’t come into it

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I go for a piss at my favourite urinal. It is always the only urinal with piss all over the floor around it. And yet, I must still piss at that urinal.

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That moment / It’s not really what I want, so my attempts to get it will fail

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Joe was once off his head on something, and stuck his head through a plate glass window. I then spent the next hour saving his life. I remember being covered in blood and being incredibly angry. He had major surgery, but escaped with a huge gash on the bridge of his nose that was a bit too close to his eyes. In all fairness, he thanked me afterwards, and offered me his arse with a discount of twenty quid which I politely refused. Last night, I wasted another hour of my life staring at Joe’s crotch.

Electric boy blue who wants to be loved

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I woke up in the middle of the night and the light boy was dancing around my bed. He comes often. No name. No face. A swirl of sparkly lights that moves from one side to the other. The electric boy blue who wants to be loved.

Pistachio Velvet Lattes, Murder on the Orient Express… and Blotter from Hebden Bridge

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Starbucks. A woman has a meltdown because she’s asked for a Pistachio Velvet Latte and finds out that they have stopped selling them. She screams at the staff as if they have conspired to do this on purpose. A delivery driver arrives with a cage full of new stock and she turns on him. “Are there any pistachios on there?” He is Polish and doesn’t understand what she’s asking.

An old woman walks in with friends, they have been to see a matinee of Murder on the Orient Express, and says loudly, “I can smell coffee.” And follows it up with, “they must sell coffee here.” One of her friends says, “You should have been Hercule Poirot, Margo.”

There is a woman with a rucksack on her back, who is standing in the middle of the room looking at me. I smile, but her grimace never shifts, and she glares as if I might be a former lover who scorned her. I look at my raspberry and coconut brownie hoping that she will go away.

But she walks over and demands to know if I’m Blotter from Hebden Bridge?” I assure her that I’m not, and that Hebden Bridge is hundreds of miles away, but she storms off muttering under her breath. “You always were a liar, Blotter!”

A young guy with tattoos on his face leans across from the next table and says, “Dude, the chances of somebody being called Blotter AND coming from Hebden Bridge is really cool.”