Last night, Jeff Buckley visited while I slept and he climbed into bed beside me. I told him that he was dead, and he whispered gently into my ear. “That’s for the best. If I was alive I’d be 57-years-old and you might not like me anymore.”
It was late. Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet had spent a couple of hours devouring the flesh of human beings. Bones and All is a shockingly beautiful movie, and the end credits were rolling when Charlie bizarrely announced that he was hungry.
This might explain why he had been in a mardy mood. He once asked me in his cute French accent, “What is this mardy?” “Mardy bum,” I had replied. He raised an eyebrow like he always does when he is puzzled and disappeared into the kitchen to make something to eat.
He rattled about. The fridge door opened and closed and minutes later came the sound of sizzling. He was frying pork sausages, his favourite, something he consumed on an almost daily basis, which was infuriating because he never seemed to add an ounce of fat to that slender body.
I knew what lay ahead. The bloody plight that Chalamet and co had left behind was nothing compared to the chaos that Charlie would create. It might only have been sausages, but he would leave a dozen dirty utensils, a burnt frying pan, a filthy hob, and crumbs all over the worktop and floor.
I crept to the door to confirm my fears.
Charlie could turn a sausage sandwich into a work of art, one that requires skill and concentration, and a vast amount of mess.
He carefully sliced the bread roll in two, and then scored four golden sausages and cautiously stacked them onto the bottom half. Next, he sprinkled cheese, added mayo, hot pepper sauce, and tomato ketchup. He placed the other half of bread on top and delicately patted it, inspecting the finished article from every angle.
He passed me on his way back to the sofa, where he tucked his legs underneath him, and demolished this awful concoction. “Parfait,” he muttered.
Not once has Charlie asked if I wanted the same, neither does he consider where the sausages come from. That charming naivety suggests he believes that sausages magically reappear in the refrigerator.
I left him, sauce dribbling down his chin, while I cleaned the kitchen.
A smoked bacon sandwich and sunbathing on the Aisle of Aldi
And Dixon Dallas and his explicit gay country songs
And a winding canal of no-added sugar apple and blackcurrant juice
And a trip to the inconvenience store
And the dead writer Eric Jourdan who sits with a wet and dripping Jeff Buckley who has climbed out of the Mississippi River
And a stick man who jumps off the shelf above my desk
And Chrissie Hynde who steals my unopened pack of twelve sharp HB pencils
And jazz-funk played out of a wind-up gramophone
And a beach hut with a blue flag on top
And Grandmaster Flash who plays dominoes with a white-suited Johnny Cash and hum White Lines together
And a cucumber sandwich filled with juniper berries, crab sticks and piccalilly
And the boy’s a slag, the best you ever had
And the handsome guy whose hair is cut by Jar Jar Binks
And come see, come see, remember me
And Heartbeat on perpetual loop
And Timothée Chalamet dancing to Rush with Troye Sivan’s underwear between his teeth
And Taylor Swift biting the head off a street drinker on Tottenham Court Road and spitting it into the Thames
And train drivers who believe they’re poor
And dirty teenage boys who are shirtless and ride Vespas up and down the seafront at Cannes
And rusting Italian scooters dumped at the bottom of a Venice lagoon
And Pier Paolo Pasolini reading Enid Blyton stories to Cornish piskies on Bodmin Moor
And Arthur Rimbaud, who promises to be nice, quoting poetry, bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties,
And Noel Coward dueting with Nicki Minaj on a bandstand in Barbie World USA
And the Eifell Tower in French France weeping tears of diluted Gautier
And the photo of Derek Jarman that blows over when a house from Kansas drops through the roof of TK Maxx
And the sweaty rent boy that drinks Jack Daniels and bleach on the rocks
And the woman who has her clitoris pierced by Brigitte Bardot wearing jam jar glasses in Taco Bell
And the lanky lad with tarantula bites on his legs
And the boyfriend who says he doesn’t love me anymore
And Come On, Harry, We Want to Say Goodnight to You.
It is after midnight, and I want to sit outside on the balcony.
I want to read The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave.
It is starting to rain, like it has done all summer.
I look at the folded umbrella at the table with the two chairs propped against it.
There is an ash tray, that is really a pudding basin, overflowing with cigarette butts.
There is also a thin paint brush, an empty can of Diet Coke, and a piece of white Lego.
They say that The Sick Bag Song began its life scribbled on airline sick bags. I don’t scribble.
I tap notes into my iPhone, and people think I’m on Grindr all the time.
I open the sliding door and listen to the raindrops. I hear a girl shouting in the street below.
“Wait Laura, I can’t keep up in these shoes. You’re a fucking slag!”
My phone pings. It is a group chat.
“Hey Anthony, will you take a photo of the full moon?”
I can’t see the moon because of the rain clouds.
I go to the bathroom and run a bath.
I go back to the window and think that I’m probably in a bad mood.
I’m in a bad mood because there are many things I want.
There are lots of books I want to read. There are movies I want to watch.
I want to write a novel like The Catcher in the Rye
I want to be a recluse like J.D. Salinger.
I want to be a photographer.
I want to make the balcony into a lush garden.
I want to redecorate this crumbling apartment.
I want to be able to eat chocolate like I used to.
I want to do a lot of things.
I think about all these.
I go to take the hot bath and realise that I’ve added Oral-B 3D White Mouthwash to the water instead of bath creme.
I empty the bathwater.
I go back to the window.
Thunder rumbles.
I want to go outside and put the umbrella up.
I want to sit underneath it and read The Sick Bag Song and listen to the rain.
I tap all these notes into my iPhone. One day these notes will make a story.
It is time for bed.
Charlie is sitting on the sofa and looks restless. He drinks a glass of red wine. Mouthful after mouthful. This means that he wants something, or there will be an awkward question.
I slump in the chair opposite. He picks up an old magazine and flicks through it, all the time watching me. A photograph falls out and lands on the cushion. Charlie picks it up and looks at it with a look of surprise. What is this photograph? He is a poor actor, and this routine has obviously been rehearsed. He holds it up for me to see. It is a black and white image of a pair of feet and the words, ‘My feet, Andrey.’
“Whose feet are these?” he asks. “
“Are you jealous of a pair of feet?”
“Why should I be jealous of feet? I’m merely interested as to who this Andrey is, the one who also signs it with a kiss.”
Charlie is staying here and has given no indication that he’ll be leaving anytime soon. He feels threatened. “Where is this Andrey?”
That is a good question. What happened to Andrey? I have no idea.
Andrey was from Krakow and was here because somebody recognised his potential as a model. He stayed in the apartment for a few weeks and did a photoshoot for an arty magazine for which the photographer placed snails on his face. Like many Polish boys, he was blessed with the look of an angel, but the harshness of the language sometimes made him sound abrasive.
The thing about Andrey was that he cared little about good looks but was obsessed with his feet. Big bony feet: his shoes were size twelve. We were never lovers; he was far too good looking for me to consider it. But he used to lay on the sofa, the one where Charlie sits now, and liked me to massage those exquisite feet.
Andrey wanted me to rub and tickle them and he’d squirm with pleasure until he nearly had an orgasm. (I once knew somebody that reacted the same way when I rubbed his nipples). He told me that the part of the brain that processes the sensation people get from feet was next to the area that perceives genital stimulation. It seems bizarre now but appeared perfectly normal then.
One day, Andrey had gone. I never knew where. But a few months later I received the photograph by post. The one being waved accusingly at me now. I once looked up Andrey online and it appeared that his modelling career hadn’t taken off. There was nothing. Not even a hint on social media.
I tell Charlie. “The photo must have come with the magazine.”
There is an old woman who lives across the street. She says she is 95 but seems to have been telling me that for the past ten years. She never sleeps because she seems to watch TV 24/7. She rarely goes out, which is quite understandable for someone who might be 105.
But once a week she gets a bus into town. It stops outside her apartment building and when she returns it waits ten minutes for her creaky bones get off. She pulls a red shopping trolley with big white spots and walks slowly along the pavement.
When she gets to her door, she rests on her walking stick and stares into a large plant pot that contains a palm tree. She does this for five minutes as though looking for somebody.
She rarely speaks, but this morning, as she followed the same ritual of plant pot gazing, she caught me leaving our apartment and summoned me with her walking stick.
“How are you, Mrs Hayward? How are you finding the secret of eternal life?”
She frowned. “That boy,” she said. “The latest. The one with the old car. He walks around without any clothes on… and with the lights on.”
“I’m sure he isn’t, Mrs Hayward.”
“Oh yes. I’ve noticed this is what foreigners do. Please tell him to put clothes on.”
I keep telling Charlie that when he struts around the apartment in his underwear then people will see him. He will tut. “Who wants to see inside?”
“It is because he is an artist,” I tell Mrs Hayward, “And when he paints, he likes to paint in his underwear.” This is true. “But I shall tell him that you like looking at him.”
I’ve been going out on Sunday nights for longer than I care to remember. There used to be ten of us, but girlfriends, boyfriends, marriage, kids, and growing up, gradually cut us down to two. Now it’s just Ants and me.
We chat about our week, share our secrets, and drink too much. I never appreciated that Ants would become my best mate. He’s seen me through some serious shit and my feral past amuses him. I’ve got older now.
When weekends became part of my working week, after I crossed that divide between host and customer, Sunday night became the start of my weekend.
We drink until midnight, much later than we used to. And when we say goodnight and Ants heads home, he contemplates what I will get up to.
I shall let you into a secret.
I am a night walker. I wander the murky streets of the city, ones that are empty of people, and where life seems only to exist behind the lights of high rise apartments. Once, I wanted to be the centre of attention, now I find that I like my own company instead.
I’ll wander the streets for a couple of hours, anywhere I choose to go, a new route every week. This dark and lonely world is one where you see things differently.
If you look closely, the city never really sleeps.
Lurking in the shadows are the homeless and the street drinkers. There are the screams of students who couldn’t give a shit that people are asleep. Sometimes you might see a copper in a car but it’s in their best interest to ignore you. There are the fire engines that wail into the night, silent ambulances that light everything shocking blue, and Ubers that dash from one job to another. But you can also hear the chimes of church bells that strike on the hour. For the most part, the city is still. If it rains, all the better, the dirty streets get wetter, cleaner, and the air is fresher. Nighttime is when the city is at its calmest.
At times like this I am inspired. I can think clearly, choose subject matter to write about, and the foundations of the next story appear to come from nowhere.
There is a downside.
We forget that alcohol makes you brave, and it takes you up dark alleys that people won’t dare enter even by day. If I do meet someone, we’ll eye each other with suspicion because these can be perilous streets too. I’ve had a few fights and years of brawling in bars and clubs prove convenient. I fight dirty. And the human body wants to get rid of the drink, more and more frequently, and I’ve pissed in more shadowy corners than I’d like to admit.
But I’m usually on my own, a lone wanderer, innocent and inquisitive, taking photos on my phone because nobody else wants to.
The night never ends here, because afterwards there are the bars that open obscene hours, ones that close when the sun comes up, but this is always another story, one that I shall tell Ants about next Sunday.
I want to take a photograph of you. On my phone that is. No, I don’t know you. We are total strangers. We almost walked past each other but something made me stop and turn around and shout after you. I want to take your photo.
I know that you think I’m strange, but it’s what I like to do. I take photographs of things and put them on Instagram and if I’m lucky about three people will like them. It’s a record of my life, the things I’ve seen and done, things I like. It’s a bit like keeping a diary.
Why do I want to take your photograph? Because I saw you in the street and thought you looked interesting. In plain terms, I liked the look of you. If I don’t take your photo, I’ll never see you again and will forget all about you. I’ve learned that the best photo opportunity is the one that presents itself, that moment, and if I hesitate it is lost.
I’ll show you my Insta page to prove I’m not unhinged. You are kind enough to say that you like my images. No other person does, and I thank you. But I’m glad you agreed to let me take your photo.
And you stand by parked cars in the pouring rain with your arms outstretched and raise your chin so that raindrops splatter your face. You think it looks good. I don’t disagree. You stand shivering, with short wet hair, boyish smirk, and a soaking wet white tee shirt that shows your nipples.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 