Saturday, March 13, 2010
I'm a fucking head-case I've always been a head-case. So what, I'm not the only crazy cunt on the planet. The reality of dreams and the dreams of reality. I had a head full of contradictions, big style. I made myself a Bloody Mary..
I stirred it all together and filled it to the brim with tomato juice.
A large swig burned all the way down. I chopped a couple of lines from a pile of powder on the glass-topped table, a mix of heroin, cocaine and amphetamine, snorted them then rolled a big skunky spliff. I put some music on - The Orb - a favourite to chill with. The spliff was lit, the glass was gulped at again. Feeling myself leaning back and relax in the easy chair I followed myself and waited, listening to the music and hoping that my head was going to explode.
A slow-motion film started stopping and starting, going backwards and forwards, speeding-up and slowing down. The old lady discarded her knitting, picking up a knife she lunged forward, slicing the air. An image was fluctuating, there and not-there. She stared at the undulating image for a long time. The image fluctuating somehow and not there a long time. Phantom projection curved at the undulating time, into it her hand and into it she looked. She with her hand in, withdrew it, into the hole a hand long time receeded. Sound walked around her. There appeared her hand, a hole and into it for a long time her hand wept.
I gave my head a shake. "Fucking hell, do I need a fucking pint," I said to the silence.
I got my supplies together and went off to find the pub, it looked quiet and seedy, the place was nearly empty. The barman looked o.k., not too friendly, not too unfriendly. I took my beer into the Gents, locked the cubicle door behind me and dipped a teaspoon into the bag of coke/speed mix, stuck it in me gob and washed the powder down with some beer. Walked out and sat down at a table to quietly sup my beer and mind my own business. Reg walked in and got two beers, he came over, put one down for me, sat down down with his and started rolling a spliff. I drained my old pint, put it back on the table in a different place, put my new pint on the beermat my old pint had been on, belched, leaned slightly to my left, and farted. "Cheers, Reg." "Good arrrse Bob, good arrrse mate," he rolled the rrr's, elongating the word. He answered his mobile and lit the spliff at the same time. The conversation was in code, a spot of business, so we finished our drinks and went into the bogs for a bit of nasal entertainment.
We got in his car and Reg drove out of the city, we eventually stopped in the middle of fucking nowhere, it was pitch black. Soon a car approached us from the opposite direction and pulled-up, windows were wound down and after business was conducted they drove off one way and we the other. Soon we were back in the pub.
"Quiet night," Reg observed.
"Ik kwijt ook niet," I replied.
"Fuck you, you fucking clever-arsed, double dutch cunt," was Reg's rejoinder.
A couple walk over, say hello and sit nearby. I am out of my fucking skull.
The interpreter speaks beautifully, words float on the cool breeze, untarnished by time. A weird mosaic of music flowers in a blaze of energy. Scarlet sunlight refracted through an autumn sunrise, building crystal palaces in dreams. Electric light explodes into harsh reality. A large hand reached across with split fingers, oozing exotic jade fragments. It was Reg passing me a spliff.
After the pub shut we went back to Reg's. He was waving a bag of Es around in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. "The taxi will be ten minutes, this is where the party really starts," Reg poured us a whisky each and we took turns demolishing a pile of coke on the kitchen table. "These are so good you only need half, apparently," advised Reg as he passed me the Es. We both instinctively took three each. The taxi came, we got in and drove off. tides of ecstacy sang their fantastic joy over the hills of silence. An ice-cream van chimed far away. Voices echoed. Birds sang gently in the distance. A thousand tiny mirrored fragments gasped sexily. Creation from chaos. Frozen callipers of movement. Silhouettes echoing in space. Blobs and globules. Jagged wisps flow into air and darkness. Everything metamorphosing. Faint crackly telephone voices. The sound of distant traffic. "Fucking Hell!" we say in unison. Spirits sing framed in silver. The intoxication was unique. A smile. Shivers down the spine. Flying through space. Smells of fairy-tale food. Nemesis convulsed. Goodbye into yesterday. Pure beautiful notes impossible to describe. Metaphysics. Slow moving traffic past twelve. Leather cough resonates feverishly. Vanishes. This fleshy contraption is a fresh glistening rainbow through neon lace ming vases. It's hysterical. Everything talks backwards. Plastic smiles on plastic faces, rubber features contort. Breathing long and fast. They are sneaky, they hide in corners, in places where you can't see them. A strange application goes wild. Back to the old, back to the new. Formation dancing. What was lost, what was not lost. What you knew, what was new known. All my senses in turbot ecstacies. Tiny sharp fragments. Bubbles rise. In it's wake vast time is at hand now as we fall part of the way. His face grew limitless the more intense it got.
Creatures walking round with insect vision. Zombies with robot eyes stop and look to see where the turning was. Dark purple sky luminous with mirror sheen reflecting yellow lights that live and die in the blinking of an eye. Footsteps up above the fragile shell of make-believe where fantasy ends and reality begins. If what it is, is not what it is, then it is, what it is not. Shades of purple pink and blue.
We were stood staring at the sky and the lights in the center of the city. There were people everywhere.
"Fucking Hell Reg."
"This way mate."
I followed Reg down a side street. Less people, less lights. That's better. Lesser and lesser. Back streets, shadier and shadier. Some right dodgy fuckers hanging around.
"Fucking Hell Reg, they're all on drugs!"
That did it, two crazy fuckers, ripped to the tits on drink and drugs, laughing our bollocks off. We were safe.
"My mates got a fucking club round here somewhere if I can fucking find the cunt," Reg managed to say.
I couldn't speak.
A flash of neon, music booming, a doorway full of promise framed by two big blokes in suits. We strolled in slow-motion through noise and light, lasers and dry-ice. I followed Reg to the bar, he ordered four double vodka's and two bottles of water. We poured the vodka's down our throats, then the water. Gasping, we looked at each other and burst out laughing again. I followed Reg as he followed someone who led us through some doors, up flights of stairs. A door was knocked on, it opened, we went in. A shiny bald head and a massive grin. We all sat down. I sank into the sofa.
"Frank, this is Bob, Bob, this is Frank." We did the handshake bit.
"Hello, I'm crazy," I said. Frank laughed and poured some whiskey out, he washed down an E, which Reg had placed on his tongue.
"Me too," He smiled, "Me too."
"Help yourselves," He gestured, "I can't be arsed." There was some coke on the glass-topped table and Reg fashioned a few lines with his knife. I started rolling a spliff, Reg lit one, fuckin' hell he was fast. We sat chewing the cud, sorting the wheat from the chaff, smoking, drinking and snorting. When it was time to go it was down some flights of stairs, through doors and back into light, sound, heat, people - all at once. The place was packed, it was too much, I wanted out.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," Reg shouted in my ear.
We found our way through the bodies and the heat, out into the chill of the street. We walked through back streets, dark and menacing, lost in our own skulls. My thoughts wandered afar, one side into another. The prestidigitator uses slight of hand, skill in manipulation, that's not magic. Conjuring tricks. Three distinct clues. Fibrous umbrella webs furled and unfurled majestic principles. Ghosts calling seek restoration. Slow moving of hands in soft blues and greens, tinted in exquisite darkness. I took the spliff from Reg and put it to my lips, inhaled. A guy jumped out of a doorway, grabbed Reg from behind by the neck, put a blade to his guts and said - "Gimme your fucking money!" I see movement from the opposite doorway, coming towards me. Spliff in mouth, I crouch, level my gun and blow the cunt's fuckin' right kneecap off. It exploded in action replay. He dropped to the floor going "aarrgh, aarrgh, aarrgh," as the other one ran off, his dropped blade tinkling, echoed. Reg went over and knocked the kneeless cunt out, saying "Shut the fuck up!" We walked off laughing, hearts pounding. I passed the spliff back to Reg.
"I need a fuckin' drink Reg."
"I know just the place mate."
Round a few corners, down an alley. No sign of anything. Reg knocks on a door in a dead-looking doorway. A shutter slides, a pair of eyes. The door opens and we go in, it smells like a Dutch coffee shop. Dimly lit, with a small bar at one end, a dozen or so tables, about half-full. Reg gestures and I sit at a table. He goes to the bar, comes back with a bottle of vodka out the freezer and two glasses, sits down and pours the treacly vodka. The glasses ice over. We neck three before sitting back to roll joints. I was half-way. Reg lit his, inhaled, held it, then exhaled. We went to the bogs and snorted a few lines off a shelf of white tiles, next to two guys doing the same. No-one spoke. Back to the vodka. The Es had levelled out so we took another two. Spooky when you're both on the same wavelength. Touch a button, the lens works. Flick a switch, the machine works. Pull the trigger. The sea flows through my veins, sharp salty tang... spray... crystals... wind on foaming surf. I stepped into a faded sepia photograph. Phantoms seep through the fractured occasion. Outside as Inside. The droplet rolls and returns. Mirrors. Eye sees the irony. Bubbling tapestry of psychick activity. The wind has passed. tremors. An unfamiliar place. Altered the controls. Modulate the frequency. Hand moments design us. It's like creating 23 only with colours. Wet and fishy. Through forests of eyes, the intricate web of confusion spins.
It's not awkward, she thinks we're loonies. My plasticity. I'm made out of fucking plasticine. No meat. Staircases. Heathen birth spectacular. Out of the woods, into the digital forest. The same old song in a different voice. Explore further, and back. This madness all around. On a rubber see-saw. Heliotropic vanguard colliding, forming slowly, shifting and turning through all dimensions. Ugly men in sports jackets. The whispers.
"Reg, turn your bicycle-clips inwards!"
"Just doing it now mate, no worries!"
We are the heavy mob. Fibre-optic chameleons. The lizard incubus. An invisible circle obscured by a blanket of clouds. Unaware, when I'm doing it, that it is actually me who's doing it. With something buzzing and fidgetting. Two men still and silent, dreaming this together at the same time. I could see twice the size.
"Fuck me, Reg, I need another line."
Return of the white tiles, nostril predicament solved. Camera zooms. It's only a film. An intricate, ornate balance. Reminds you of the abyss. Spoon contained dark velvet fur. Each decay a further surge. Time as an envelope you are allowed to caress. Proportions do not weigh. Silvers of frosted silver sheets pierce delicate nerve fibres. Tissue and membrane explode ina shivering attack, senses reel in claustrophobic tension. Beautiful delirium. Whirling vortices of patterns. Shiver and blink. Sudden peculiar avalanche of freedom.
"There's nothing to say," I said.
"I know," Replied Reg.
We were asked to leave, they were closing. As we left I slipped the guy on the door three Es and a wrap of coke, wrapped in a £20 note. He nodded. Staggering down the back streets. Suddenly a main road with taxi waiting, we get in, drove to Reg's, we both got out. I wanted to walk home.
"See ya soon Reg."
"Aye, o.k. mate."
Rotting concrete wastelands. Frightening tall menacing flowers. Leaves rustle in the breeze, t.v. sounds drift through the air. In the gardens ominous blooms chuckle, waving fur trails. Slowly rotting away, mouldering composts of flesh, screaming into the night. Blindly staggering backwards through tremendous pools of snot, dribbling vomit, blood and broken bone. This strange sad tale. A blind frenzy. Sinister in the darkness. Where is where? A man is helping police with their inquiries. Again and again, fear of pain. Uncertainty, waking and dreaming. Howling and shivering, cold wind cuts like a knife. Day breaks, a hideous sheet of torn lightening. Soft wisps of silence, cool and fresh, streak across the moss-covered boughs. The sky glows red. When I get back to my room I pour myself a Bloody Mary, snort a line of heroin and light a spliff. After that - nothing. A beautiful nothing. No-thing. I awoke with a head like no-where. "Shite!" Alarm-call from hell. I lay still. tried to think.
"Trust me, I'm a doctor."