Tag Archives: lifestory

How can someone who says he is Polish be called Levi?

Leave a reply
Image: Darkness Drops

How can someone who says he is Polish be called Levi? What’s more you have more of a Yorkshire accent than I do. Yet you tell everyone that you are from Poland. The fact that you say it all the time suggests that you are probably lying, or at least living in some fantasyland. 

When I first met you, you bounced. It was like you jumped from a distant place and landed right into my path. That boundless energy makes you bounce. Never standing still, jumping from one person to the next, and you tell each one that you’re Polish when you’re clearly not.

Last night I came across a chubby guy, early twenties, who had a broken arm. He stepped out from a dark doorway and caught me by surprise and I nearly punched him. He looked me up and down and I knew that somewhere about his person would be a knife. 

It was a quiet backstreet, nobody around, but you bounced from nowhere. I was preparing to fight, and then you presented yourself as if it was the most natural thing to be there.

“You’re a fat pussy,” you told the lad. 

“Shut the fuck up, Levi.” 

“How did you break your arm, Szymon?”

“I broke it arm wrestling.”

“Leave my friend alone, Szymon.”

I looked at you. “Where did you come from?

“I followed you.” 

The lad called Szymon looked uneasy. Two against one, and he had a broken arm. 

“Why do you do this to me, Levi? I have never disrespected you. Why do I not disrespect you? Because you’ve never disrespected me before.”

“That’s not true Szymon. I’ve never liked you because you are a Polish cunt.” 

“You disrespect a fellow countryman?”

“I disrespect those that threaten my friends.”

Szymon looked at me. “Spierdalaj! I will let you off this time.”

Szymon slipped back into the shadows and I was left looking at you with your cheeky grin and slightly protruding ears.

“Why did you follow me?” I asked.

“Walk with me,” you said. “There is something I want to ask you.”

That Moment / He says he came to see Jeremy Corbyn at The Leadmill

Leave a reply

“The weather’s pretty shitty in the Isle of Man. It’s a fact,” said the young lad. “It always rains and is colder than the mainland.” He blames the Irish Sea. He’s having a good time away from home but finds the busy bars here claustrophobic. There is more room to breathe when you live on an island. When I ask why he’s here, he says he came to see Jeremy Corbyn at The Leadmill. I think, why the hell would you travel all this way to see Jeremy Corbyn? Is Corbyn a bloody singer now? Is that why he’s at The Leadmill? Get a life. The lad starts talking about politics which is unusual for someone so young. My eyes glaze over and my replies to his questions are predictable and uninteresting. I’m bored, and I wish he’d tell me how fantastic I am instead.

Nile Rodgers probably thought, “F**k these big stars next time.”

Leave a reply

‘I’m Coming Out’. I think that the crashing drum beats at the beginning are bloody marvellous. I think that Nile Rodgers was pissed off that they remixed his song and that Diana Ross was a difficult bitch to work with. She didn’t realise that ‘I’m Coming Out’ was a gay thing. I think that it should have been sung by a man. Johnny Mathis? But he made an album with Chic in 1981 and it didn’t get released until 2017, so Nile Rodgers might have been pissed off with him too. He probably thought, fuck these big stars next time.

That Moment / Jeff Buckley climbed into bed beside me

Leave a reply

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.”

That Moment / The Banana and the Zebra

Leave a reply

I walk through the railway station and see that there are lots of policemen standing about. They are bored and seem to be talking mindless shit to each other. They make me feel guilty for something I might not have done.

But I am guilty of thinking that the railway station might be a good place to pick somebody up.

There is a good-looking student guy who walks in the opposite direction eating a banana, a fresh banana, firm and yellow. At this moment, I wish I had a banana just like it.

He disappears and I see a young guy who could be a model. He is dressed in a zebra-patterned jumpsuit and fashion boots that would look ridiculous on anybody else, but he carries it off. He is incredibly handsome, with a tanned face and wavy black hair that is tinted with blonde and has long dangly earrings.

The guy is holding a small suitcase, and I speculate that he might be going on holiday somewhere warm. He is waiting for someone and scans the station looking for that person. I guess that he’s looking for his boyfriend.

Once or twice, he catches my eye and holds his gaze for a second and it makes me excited. Then I realise I’m standing gawping and he probably thinks I‘m a bit freakish.

A girl comes up behind him, kisses him on the cheek and they both walk towards a platform. I contemplate pushing the girl under an incoming train but remember there are policemen nearby.

Then the guy with the banana reappears, and I think that ten minutes is an awful long time to be eating the same banana. He walks past and casts a sneaky glance in my direction.        

Charlie and the Sausage Sandwich

Leave a reply

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 Boring Day Is What I Need

Leave a reply
Image: Darkness Drops

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.

I tap all these notes into my iPhone / I want to read the Sick Bag Song

Leave a reply

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.


Who is this Andrey? The one who signs it with a kiss

Leave a reply

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.”