Tag Archives: storytelling

The ancestral sons of Adonis who grew up on council estates

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Image: Darkness Drops

Enthusiastic boys, unaware that they are being watched from a distance.

Energetic boys who don’t appreciate the luck they are blessed with.

Passionate boys who are not like the persona they project.

Naughty boys who talk like gangstas but are deep-down sensitive.

Fashionable boys with silver threads around their necks, who dress like they think they should, and not how they they would like to. Moschino, Hoodrich, North face, Stone Island.

Boys who stuff their hands down their underwear because they think it makes them hard. Boys who pretend their sweet smelling piss and cum fingers are guns.

Handsome boys who don’t understand that they are ancestral sons of Adonis who grew up on our council estates.

Boys who like boys, but must like girls, who are always fat girls.

We are envious, and we weep at the unfairness of it all. 

I would like to go with Charlie / I need a holiday more than he does

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There was a time not so long ago when I was alone. The apartment was mine only. It is big and lonely, not that I spend much time in it, but it’s a place where I can retreat.

That was also a time when I had more money. It’s easy to save money when you are living alone.

That changed the day Charlie from Paris arrived in his old Austin car. He needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks and everyone thought my big apartment was the solution.

I agreed and I gave him a room and bed, a door key, and the run of the place. Charlie liked it, and it was soon apparent that he had no intention of leaving.

A van appeared one sunny morning and a man said he’d got several boxes for me. Not for me, you understand. There were about fifteen neatly packaged crates, each containing books, DVDs, vinyl records, and lots of clothes.

Charlie spent hours unpacking his possessions and carefully placing them around his room.

The following week more boxes arrived containing canvases, paint brushes, sketch pads and more clothes.

Charlie had moved in, and I didn’t really mind.

“This apartment has character,’ he said. It does have a charm about it but he’s never offered to pay for his stay. Nor does he pay for the food that he eats.

Charlie’s way of saying thank you is to offer small gifts. A poem he’s written, a picture he’s painted and sometimes a book he’s seen and knows I will like.

It’s all quite nice really.

‘We are like a couple,” he once joked. Except that we aren’t because I continue my liaisons with other men, and Charlie keeps disappearing to London and Paris to visit galleries. I never ask him what else he gets up to.

He always comes back.

Most people think we are a couple, and that is a nice thought. They think our nights consist of sharing a bed and being lovers. We aren’t, but I’d like to think that one day we might be. 

Am I jealous of Charlie? I’m beginning to realise that I am.

He’s announced that he’s going to Barcelona for a week in September. He showed me photos of the hotel he’s staying in. The Monument Hotel. Four stars and all that. I asked him how much it was costing and he said it was only €800 which sounded a lot. I checked out how much that would be in English pounds and it came to £700 which still sounded a lot.

“You don’t mind me going away?” Charlie asked.”I need a holiday.”

I wanted to say that I did mind. That I would like to go with him. That I need a holiday more than he does. That he can afford to go because he’s living for free. That I can’t afford to go because I pay for everything.

I said none of these things.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said. “I hope you have a lovely time.”

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

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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

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“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.

That Moment / Jeff Buckley climbed into bed beside me

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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

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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.        

A Boring Day Is What I Need

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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

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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.