Tag Archives: Writing

Both sides untouched. Not for listening. Display only

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Betty Blue – 37°2 le matin – Gabriel Yared (1986)

A second-hand record store. Old French chansons played over the speakers. “Très bien,” Charlie beamed, because it made him feel at home. But this wasn’t France, it was an English suburb on a quiet Saturday afternoon. I Shazamed a song on my phone. It was Jeanne Moreau singing Les Voyages. 

Charlie rummaged through a cardboard box of old cassette tapes and I pointed out that had he found something interesting, then he wouldn’t be able to listen to it, because we didn’t have anything to play it on. 

And besides, I told him, I was surprised that he even knew what they were because they were obsolete before he’d been born. “That is not the point,” said the Millennium Child. “I have a good reason for looking.”

At last, he found something that pleased him. “This is what I want,” and he held up the soundtrack album to Betty Blue, or 37°2 le matin, if we want to give it the proper title. (I later discovered that it was released in 1986).

“But how are you going to play it?”

“I am not going to listen to it. If I wanted to do that I would listen to the music on Spotify. I have something else in mind.” With that, he borrowed a pound coin with which to buy it. 

The apartment. The office (which used to be Levi’s bedroom). The cassette tape is stood upright on a shelf alongside vintage postcards, pebbles and shells collected from beaches, and a wooden model of the Arc de Triomphe. “It is simply for show,” said Charlie.

Jour de Charlie. A reincarnation of Jacques Tati

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Jacques Tati

A few weeks ago, Charlie introduced me to the works of Jacques Tati. We started with Jour de fête (1949) and over a week watched his Monsieur Hulot, featured in Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and Trafic (1971). I’m late to Tati’s work, but it wasn’t hard to catch up, because he made so few films, and the ones that he did were genius. 

Charlie knew I would like Tati’s humour but confessed to knowing little about him. Intrigued to find out more, I bought one of the many biographies and spent warm evenings on the terrace absorbed in the life of this French legend.

Tati had a gentle spirit, and a quiet dignity, but behind the camera he could be elusive, stubborn and emotionally distant. This was easily confused with arrogance and I was left with the impression that he wasn’t a nice person. It troubled me because I discovered too many similarities with the person I lived with. I thought, ‘Fuck me! Is Charlie a reincarnation of Jacques Tati?’

Charlie, who tries hard to be good at everything, but doesn’t really know what it is he is best at. Painting? Photography? Modelling? He’s a complex person, committed to artistic vision – sometimes to the point of obsession – and to an outsider he can seem a bit of a shit.

He’s quite the opposite really, but his devotion to art can seem almost monastic. He pushes for the purity of his vision, as though wanting to leave behind something beautiful, and that pursuit can sometimes be baffling. 

I explained this to Charlie, and as the English like to say, he got ‘the face on’. “You do not understand my ache of misunderstood devotion,” he replied. “But I appreciate your concern, because it is mine also, and I need to decide what it is that I am going to be brilliant at.”

Fake and be friend. The dance of Caesar and Brutus

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Image: Charlie Marseilles

Urban adolescent. Prowling the streets. Catching stares. Bringing himself to orgasm and waiting for one that will be.

Colvey is number one and will die before he is properly a man. He is angry and suspicious of everyone. Wary of his enemies and more so of those who say they are friends. (Know what I mean bro?) Some will argue that this streak of uncertainty gives him an advantage, but one day he will meet the person that will plunge a knife into him and then knowing who to trust and who not to will be irrelevant. One thing I do know is that it will be the person he least suspected.

Angry with everyone. Controlling the uncontrollable. Respect from those who have no idea what it means. (Respect bro!)

Until then, Colvey must control this unruly band of boys – tearaways, petty thieves, and miscreants – who cannot muster up a brain between them, and who idolise him because they are afraid of the consequences if they don’t. Look around the city and you will see the tags on shitty walls, doors and metal shutters that protect empty shops in rundown streets. Our territory, our ground, our space.

Grooming. A word that has become part of modern society. A bad word. A careless word. Colvey might be accused of grooming kids to swell his ranks. But it is something he started when he was a small boy who shit his pants in school.

Provincial demon. Misery. Mayhem. 

Keep your enemy close to you and let him do your dirty work.

Mason is number two and must wait. Living under a shadow that must surely fade. It is one thing knowing those who will cause you harm, another when that threat comes from within. Catch these hands. Colvey knows this. (You’re my best mate bro). The dance of Caesar and Brutus. Fake and be friend. 

I watch. I see. Tattletale, snitch, informant, telltale, squealer. Colvey’s bitch. The one person he says he can trust. The one person who could bring him down if I wanted to. But that ain’t gonna happen because I’ll be a good number two.

Secrets and lies. Scrawny and slim. Wiry. The violent sex. “You want to know something?” Colvey lies next to me. “I ain’t gay bro. I like pussy. This is only bud sex.” ‘I ain’t a batty boy either,” I tell him. Colvey kisses me. “This is sheesh. Don’t tell anyone that I like bussin’ you bro.”

That Moment / There is a penis in my Guinness

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The bartender pours me a pint of Guinness. There is something exciting about him. The fantasy, service, and the desire are charged with a kind of unspoken drama, where connection and expression flourish. 

He stands at the centre of this world: confident, attentive, just out of reach. There’s power in the dynamic where he’s part host, part performer, and part confessor. That mix of emotional availability and physical proximity is incredibly compelling. 

He leaves the Guinness to settle and waits. It’s a subtle performance of masculinity, of beauty, and a flirtatious smirk. There’s a silent dialogue: who’s paying attention to whom? He represents a safe focal point for flirtation and fantasy. He’s someone I want to admire, talk to, maybe even imagine a story with, without needing it to be real. It’s an aesthetic moment as much as an emotional one. 

He’s a kind of canvas – with a quiet understanding, a rescuer, a rebel, a secret crush. Each interaction, no matter how fleeting, is charged with possibility. 

He starts pouring again, and I ask for a four-leaf clover on the top of the Guinness. When he hands me the drink, I see that he’s tried to draw one in the foam. 

I think there’s something haunting and poetic to explore in this distance between us – the observer and the observed where we are both muse and mirror. That space between emotional hunger and aesthetic distance – that quiet pull toward someone who may never cross the line into intimacy. 

I realise that he hasn’t drawn a four-leaf clover after all and can see that it is a penis instead. He leans over and whispers that only wankers draw a four-leaf clover. I take a sip, and he smiles, quietly calling me a cocksucker.

I’m on a beach with nothing to do except write shit on my phone

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Image: Readymoney Cove / PHG / 2025

Sometimes, you have nothing to do except watch and think. It’s Tuesday afternoon, it’s overcast, and I’m sitting on a beach… I tap random thoughts into my phone… and later, it reads like a diary, but also conjures up memories of being a child when we had ‘news books’ in which we wrote any drivel that might have happened.

This is my drivel…

Megan tells me a story about Peran of Polruan, with his salty brown legs, who lives alone in an old fisherman’s cottage called The Buoy. Never a visitor. Not a word to anyone. The girls think he’s a Cornish Saint and want to have sex with him. Every morning he catches the river ferry and returns at teatime. Where does he go? What does he do? On summer evenings he reads on the doorstep. I’m intrigued, but I want to know more about the books that he reads.

***

I’m looking for a bit of phwoar on the beach. I want a handsome young guy who strips to his shorts and goes swimming. But on this cloudy Tuesday afternoon I’m blessed with old ladies in one-piece costumes who do sedate breast-strokes to the pontoon and back. Shortly after four o’clock, a blonde schoolboy appears and parks himself close by. His shirt is untucked and the school tie hangs loose around his neck. From his bag, he pulls out a copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and starts reading. He seems happy being with Ralph and Jack, and I wonder which one of them he’s sympathetic to.

***

It’s been a month since I had a cigarette. I realise this whilst standing on the quayside. Instead, I’ve been using my Pro Max Double Apple – 10K puffs. What might you get up to with ten thousand puffs? Behind me, a sour-faced woman moans to her husband that I’m vaping. I turn around and give her a deadly look and she tuts. There wouldn’t have been any remorse if I’d pushed her into the sea.

***

“The Tesco delivery is coming tomorrow morning,” says Megan. She makes it sound like this is the highlight of the week. It might well be. She’s changed a lot since moving down here. Where is the Megan I once knew? The girl who drank Aperol Spritz by the dozen and got her tits out afterwards. “That’s exciting, I look forward to it,” I reply. She gives me a wicked look. “I was hoping that you might stay in and wait for him. I think that you’ll be less sarcastic after you’ve seen the Tesco guy.”

***

I write at the kitchen table with the door open and ignore the wasps that fly in and buzz above my head. I’ve realised that they soon get bored and leave the same way that they came. Megan appreciates my eclectic music tastes and has recommended an album called Senza Estate by My Friend Dario. It plays on my laptop while the wasps gather around the Corn Flakes. One of the tracks is called Keep on Cruising which is calming and innocent, and far removed from the cruising that I’m used to. 

But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day

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Image: Sid Vicious / Ebet Roberts / 1978

“The Laurels Residential Care Home is pleased to announce that the Space Kids will be here on 8 June 2045.”

The pending arrival had been flashed onto the wall of every bedroom. Old people liked it when the Space Kids came. They came across the fields on Ducati Thrust Bikes, not a sound, and only the shaking of the hedgerows gave any indication that they had arrived. They gathered in the ChatGPT room and shouted for everyone to leave their pods. The Space Kids had brought holograms of dead stars and allowed them to mingle with the residents. Patrick Swayze and Kurt Cobain chatted with them, Prince and Amy Winehouse waltzed around the room, Bruce Willis cracked jokes, and Michael Jackson reeled off poetic verses from Thriller. But their favourite time was when the Space Kids fired up the ‘retro spectro disco’ where the likes of Pulp, Oasis and Take That got them all dancing. Towards the end, there were traditional food dishes like Big Macs, Nando’s Chicken and Pepperoni Pizza with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream to follow. It had an emotional ending when the Space Kids paid tribute to the home’s oldest resident who was treated to a Sid Vicious avatar singing a punk version of We’ll Meet Again. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

“If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.”

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The day was hot and sunny like most days were in California. It was a good time to eat outside. A car growled along the freeway and for a moment I thought it might be you. 

“Yes, it brings back memories. But old age plays tricks and I haven’t heard that sound for a very long time.” 

I asked the new boy what the date was and he said it was 29 September. “That makes tomorrow the thirtieth then.” He looked at me like young people do. “I guess it does,” he said kindly and went about clearing the breakfast remains. 

The new boy, who was called Trent, put a copy of The Hollywood Reporter in front of me. “I know you like reading the showbiz news, Joe.” I flicked through it but I only recognised old studio names. 

“The people that we once knew have gone and so did the good movies.”

I heard Trent talking to Maria, a Mexican girl who had been here for years. “I think Joe is talking to himself,” he said. “They all talk to themselves here,” she told him. “Or they talk to somebody who isn’t there. Sit with him for a while.”

“Did you hear that? They think I’m senile. Old age isn’t nice. The truth is, there aren’t many people to chat with these days. The ones who want to talk are strangers, but even they get up and go.” 

Trent sat at the table and lit a cigarette. He was in his early twenties and I suppose might have been considered handsome. He was blonde and blue-eyed like most boys around here. He hadn’t shaved and probably hadn’t slept. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth and I couldn’t help staring. “Is everything okay, Joe?” 

“Look at him. Remember when you used to do that with your cigarette?”

The boy made small talk. He needed to make old people feel part of this strange world, and wanted me to act like everything was normal. But I was lost to the memories that lived inside my head. 

“Are you looking at him? This boy cares nothing about how he looks but his soul shines. He is what you should have been.”

“So tomorrow is the 30th of September. Is that date important?” I’m roused from my thoughts and saw that Trent was waiting for an answer. 

“I want to tell him to get in his car and find a good road to kill himself. That way he will be remembered as he is now.”

A breeze blew across the fields and made the trees around us sway and whisper. 

“I knew that you couldn’t resist coming back to look.”

“Sometimes you die because living is not an option,” I told Trent. He looked confused. “I have known people who destroyed themselves to continue living.”

“What do you want me to say, Jim? What do you want me to say that I’ve not said a thousand times?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying Joe.” Trent leant across the table and took my hands in his. “What is it that you’re trying to say?” I looked at his worried face and saw myself as a young man.

“A long time ago, I knew a boy about your age. He had everything and didn’t realise it. But he died and everything stopped.”

“Who was he, and what was he like?” Trent knew that I am an ex-smoker and offered me the cigarette. I took a drag but handed it back when I started coughing. 

“Are you listening, Jim? I don’t want to shatter an illusion but I’m still pissed with you, and it might do me good to tell the truth, but I know I’m going to lie again.”

“He was kind and gentle,” I said. “And very talented. He was one of the finest actors I ever saw.”

“Well that’s what the world chose to believe, isn’t it?”

I looked at Trent and realised that he was from a generation who cared nothing for the past.  When he was older, he might be interested in history and remember this conversation. He was supposed to be working and looked around to see if the bosses were watching. When he squinted, I saw a boy too vain to wear glasses. “I’m going back home to see my parents,” he said. “I haven’t seen them in months.” I was struck by his accent and asked where home might be? “I’m from Branson, Missouri, Joe.” 

“That street corner on Overland Avenue where we met. You rode a motorbike and made small talk. ‘I’m from Fairmount, Indiana,’ you told me, and then you asked me if I wanted a blow job.  Here’s another boy, far from home, in a place that promises everything, but gives nothing.”

Maria appeared and gave me my medication. Five tablets, three times a day. If I don’t take them I will die. Except that I’m on borrowed time anyway. 

“I shall see you in hell because that’s where people like us end up. You’ll still be a handsome son of a bitch and will grunt when I ask you something, and I’ll be an ugly old man. How is that fair?

“Remember when I told you I loved you? The next day you came around and sat staring at me. Not a word for an hour. Staring like a madman. And I looked back, trying to make you talk, but you wouldn’t say anything. Then you pissed in the corner of the apartment and left.”

Somebody was in trouble. There were sirens on the freeway. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. A chopper flew overhead. Everyone was in a hurry to help someone who might be trapped in the wreckage of a car.

“Tomorrow is the 30th September, and seventy years on, I believe you deliberately crashed. Was it because of me? Did you intend to die? Did you think that they could put those fractured pieces back together again? Did you want to be immortal?

Just another waste of a Tuesday night

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Image: Carla Lorca

The angel didn’t come, not that I expected it to, but it didn’t, nevertheless. Angels are undeniably unreliable. Instead, I got an alcoholic Irishman who kept offering me drinks. I told him that I’d have a double gin and prune juice, and the silly paddy asked for one at the bar. They told him that they had prune juice but no gin. Every few minutes somebody came by to chat and I told them to go away because an angel might appear at any moment. They gave condescending looks as if to say, ‘angels never come out on Tuesdays’ which fucked me off because that explained why it hadn’t turned up. I scrolled my phone and Mail Online said that all angels were benefit scroungers anyway. I realised that I’d got my priorities wrong and hoped that the devil might come in its place, but it seemed that even the devil didn’t come out on a Tuesday night. I ordered a taxi and, on the way home, the driver played Bob Dylan songs which must have gone down well with the youngsters. I couldn’t help thinking of a guy I once slept with. ‘Lay, Brady, lay… lay across my big brass bed,’ but then I remembered that it was just a mattress on the floor.

Where strangers take you by the hand, and welcome you to wonderland

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A fat girl in a prom dress sings Club Tropicana on karaoke. She has quite a good voice but looks like an elephant dressed as a ballerina. I think of an oversized Miss Haversham with an unhealthy obsession for Wham.

An angel with black latex gloves / You’re not expecting anything to happen, and it doesn’t

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An angel with black latex gloves. He tells me that he suffers from eczema and that it is flaring up everywhere. He shows me his hands, arms and chest, but I can’t see anything. He says he even has it on his arse cheeks but isn’t brave enough to show me something that isn’t there.

He’s from Wythenshawe which means that he has five sisters, five younger brothers and an incestuous pit bull. His grey sweatpants keep disappearing up the crack of his arse and he keeps rubbing his dick. Every few minutes he flirts with girls and that pisses me off. A cock tease. Then he starts chatting with a lowlife lad next to me and I see that there is more to this than I like.

But he returns and says that I have beautiful blue eyes, and when he smiles, I notice that he’s wearing braces on his teeth, which is kinda cute. He turns his back and the tee-shirt says ‘authorised personnel only’.