by J.W. Carey
‘You know, I read once that when someone is in love, or at the very least involved in that juvenile crime of infatuation, the chemical balance within their brain is warped. In fact, it becomes warped in such a way that it bears a closer resemblance to the minds of those poor individuals suffering from OCD.’ I shook my head, as though I could shake those vile chemicals out of my own mind. ‘Does that not explain the beginnings of it? Does that not show you how understandable love is, and yet the individuality of love can never be comprehended by a separate person, at least, not in the same way as its original perpetrators?’
‘The trouble is, in this world of sheer, soul altering modernity; love is already an outmoded concept. Love tends to be forged in drama, of which there is very little of any consequence in our personal lives, no matter what those bitches posing in a hotel mirror seem to believe, no matter what those bastards whom seem to think that their entire life belongs upon the stage may hold to be true.’ The three of them no longer looked even the remotely bit interested in the stream of contentious nonsense spewing from my bile-branded lips.
‘Well, Rush said that ‘All the world’s a stage, and we are merely players’, I paused, hoping, praying one of them would recognise the saying and correct my falsified idiocy or, at the very least, perk up at the mention of the band ‘but that is bullshit. Personality, I will agree, is an act, something which our minds throw up to defend ourselves like a wall around a bottomless well. Love, when it is real, when it is the kind that keeps you awake at night with unnecessary talons across the flesh, ignores those moss-covered stones. It plays the part of the stereotypically incompetent, evolutionary dead-end that culminates in a variation of little Timmy, and plummets straight down into the shadows of the water below.’
‘Whether that is a good thing or not, I honestly cannot say. I have heard and forged arguments for both sides of the line. I have listened to men saying love is non-existent, and I have listened to women state the chemical properties of the emotion. I have sat in corners whilst men declared it the greatest thing in their lives, and how they would starve without it, and I have known women who believe it to be nothing more than a cheat code, one designed wholly to get them into a man’s bedroom, or he into hers.’
‘Ah well,’ I ran a hand through my hair, allowing myself to scratch at my jaw before I returned it to its ignoble position in my lap, ‘who am I to say, either way?’
Plato
Until recently, I had considered myself part of the increasingly attainable Counter-Culture, a term which means less and less with every passing declaration, every twin chord song with a lyrical glorification of some inane segment of a modern day life. It appears to me now, after long, depressing periods of examination, both internal and external, that everyone feels as though they are part of this idea, that they are a cog in the ever turning machine of revolution. Everyone above a certain age, or below a certain age, with a certain amount of wealth and without a penny to their name, wants to play the part of the rebel, to be individual, and they scream this desire out with their every movement, their every mind-rotting word. Hell, I’m no different, even now I’m placing myself outside this cultural analysis, an outsider looking in, when in actuality, I am as deep in the waters as you. The only difference between us, if indeed we both agree that such a difference exists, and is not another example of my awkward self-positioning, is that I can’t swim.
Whilst remaining a pretty damned good metaphor, it is also true. I simply never learnt. Not through a lack of trying, of course, I love being in the water, I love the feeling of forced, relative weightlessness, of being carried along by the whims of something bigger than myself, of being little more than a miniscule collection of carbon drifting on the waves. And then I sink, choking for breath beneath the calm waves, thrashing like a condemned man at the noose, my actions invisible to anyone besides the strangers alongside me, the air weakly escaping from their lungs, as it weakly escapes from mine.
Well, that is what I always thought. But the ‘Counter-culture’, this rejection of the ideals of the ‘mainstream’ in favour of a set of values I am supposed to define for myself, which are to be astonishingly in concordance with those of my peers, as though we all read from the same script. Well, people my own age are, typically, scum, the legacy of a Thatcherite generation, too far sold into a lack of community, a failure of an education system and a government exposed as corrupt, whilst still pretending to a moral standing.
Okay, so perhaps my politics, those half-baked, burnt out ideologies of mine, are creeping in, but would you expect anything different? Perhaps if I had a greater mastery of language, a more standardised feeling of pacing and the narrative trickery designed to keep your eyes flickering from page to page, then my semi-political rambling may have some attraction to it. I could take the form of a 1984 for modernity, or a Brave New World for a language developing into hash tags, replacing standard and law with one designed for the living human. Whatever that word may mean.
* * *
The jukebox spat out the last words, spluttering around them indignantly, some one-hit wonder overly-enthusing the fact that the singer, or some characterisation he present as truth, is trapped between a pair of comedic terrorists. I finish nodding my head idly along with it moments before the song ends, pushing open the door to the bathroom with one hand. The wood was cold, and its surface felt almost aqueous beneath my fingertips, as though it sweated under the pressure of its role. The handle was gone, to where I never knew, but instead it left a gaping hole, just big enough for an eye to comfortably glare past the splinters. I squeezed past it, allowing it to swing gently backwards. The little definition of masculinity at the centre of the rectangular portal was missing both his legs and one of his arms, the deformities revealing the pale texture beneath, mocking the once richly-painted, naturally manufactured wood with its sudden exposure to Northern air.
The door was little more than a precursor to the kind of room into which I had entered. The floor beneath my boots was stained, a panoply of the black of vomit missing the obligatory stereotype of yellow, the cream of piss derived from an over-abundance of sugar in the blood, the crimson of a fantasy writer’s image of old blood and the universal brown of unhealthy shit. The smell had been dressed up in some cinnamon scent, the nasal equivalent of an oversized bruiser wearing his illegitimate daughter’s leaver’s-do dress, the obvious effort involved completely failing to hide the natural strength of a working-class existence, and certainly failing to hide the hanging bollocks. The air felt oily, as though the small room, tiled and mirrored and hung with the uniquely flickering lights which only seemed present in the grotty bathrooms of grotty bars, no matter how much make-up and concealer the temporary management applied, was in desperate need of either a shower or a Molotov cocktail or, preferably, some combination of the two.
The place appeared empty, save for the only cubicle door closed, the little indicator in the greying plastic clearly fulfilling its purpose and indicating that, indeed, someone was present within the small cage of privacy, and he would thank you to mind your own fucking business. I passed it by, heading straight for the only intact urinal, the twins on either side of my target hanging off the wall like forgotten Christmas decorations from a tree, jagged edges sticking out into the thick air, cutting it as it steadily trudged past. As I began my ablutions, I allowed my eyes to wander, something that it typically inadvisable in a man’s bathroom, particularly if they begin to wander downwards but, alone as I was, wander they did. I saw the cracked ceiling, the whole mirror coated in greased fingerprints which would probably be extremely useful to the police’s database and the broken mirror, lying in shards in one of the yellowing sinks, with its tap still dripping out a solid rhythm no doubt capable of topping the charts with its dullness. Huddled onto the narrow counter, coiled like a serpent caught devouring its own tail; sat the real indication of humanity and existence in this semi-urban wasteland of grey-faces, grey-fields and grey-days.
It was
a bracelet, for a given value of the word. It was black, and well-worn, and mass-produced, but meaningful. It was the mark of civility and understanding, of the kind of life that I dreamed the imagined Counter-Culture meant. It was the one shared cry of outrage from those I would have thought to call peers. In letters and punctuation twisting around the plasticised material, white as empathy and a sin against the darkness, ran the legend:
S.O.P.H.I.E.
* * *
I fingered the wristband, slipping my crooked, bony index finger beneath the elasticised material, taking my frustration out on the small patch of skin beneath the circle. The crowd was getting on my nerves, I don’t mind saying. Why, in the name of Yahweh, Dagon or any other creature born from the phosphorus of human imagination, do people feel the need to ruin the atmosphere by whipping out their needlessly expensive, fruitfully branded phones and turning the glory of a shifting shadow into a parody of an incredibly distant urban skyline?
Even the most ‘hard-core’, the one’s with the tattoos, the ripped, fading t-shirts and wrinkling mouths spread open to scream along with the lyrics, all pause in their thrashing movements, raising hands unburdened by self-loathing to record the event, preserving it in their memory at the cost of the present enjoyment, sacrificing the event they were attempting to capture to the gods of posterity. I shook my head sadly, aware that even the rattling, spitting cacophony, which formed my current Northern-line of thought, was taking me away from the euphoric state in which I should reside.
The men upon the pedestal, a wooden stage whose metaphorical existence they had made with their own hands, but whom would have had less than no idea how to literally craft, either loved the view of a hundred blinking lights dotted amongst the dark, or they hated it. Either way, it drove them to greater and greater heights of performance, the pressure of a million YouTube viewers pressing down in uncomfortable places, particularly where the few thousand people in the crowd had failed to create any significant weight.
The cameras shifted, stray reflections of light caught in the waves of some shallow, black ocean. I tried, again, to lift my head above the water, to breathe the chill air in the warmth of sweat and spilt booze, of the overflow of urine and the sickly breath of the ‘Alternative’. Every second hand raised, either to support their phone or in some variation of the twisted goblet so favoured by Dio, had the same wristband hanging off it that I had, the thing that had become the mark of individuality, of presenting yourself as whom you are inside, instead of conforming to some massed stereotype. As I thought that, I raised my own hand, fingers extending like a striking serpent towards the stage, so that my uniqueness could be expressed in a replication of everyone else.
* * *
My stream ended, both that of consciousness and that of a liquid physicality, with the last few droplets hitting the ceramic target, as the last of those cameras snapped and flickered and faded in my memory. As if the sky shared my needs, I heard the rain resume, rattling against the opposite side of the wall I faced. I hid myself, zipped myself away and turned from the half bowl, moving towards the mirror. I avoided glaring too deeply into the reflection, despite feeling those hungry, desperate eyes boring into my bowed forehead. If I didn’t stare at myself, or rather, at him, did that simple act deny him existence? Just as a tree in the forest may make no sound when it tumbles to the dirty ground below, would a reflection be refused physicality, if that is indeed what a mirror offers such a thing, if it simply went unseen?
But even emerging from that, we could ask ourselves that, throughout history, if a person does not leave a lasting impression on the course of human events, so that they are remembered long after the last of their ashes are spat out of existence, can they ever, truly, have been said to exist at all? Or do they open up themselves to becoming somewhat of an easier target for whatever the real world variation of the Ministry of Truth will become? But then, by making such an impact on humanity, do they make themselves greater targets if said ministry ever comes into existence?
I say if, but already the Conservative government, albeit with a few yellow-tied cowards amongst their ranks, have removed a decade of speeches from their official archive. This, of course, comes after the words of the Mandela-hating Prime Minister, who once claimed that the Internet's archive would add a further degree of democracy to the business of politics. I found my eyes, clearing from the haze of the last glass of whiskey, drift towards the mirror filled with a sudden, twinned desire to offer the helping hand of existence to my reflection and, in some way so minor as to be barely worth mentioning, to cement my own existence through a sensory input relying on myself, and no one else.
As I caught sight of the lower half of my torso in the mirror, I heard the sound of a thousand rushing canals, the sound of rapids crashing on stone in the rivers of the ageing, distant British Columbia, the waves in the dead of night and most accurately, albeit lacking in a certain poetic imagery, the rattling of ponderous waste spilling through a sewage pipe.
I don’t know about you, despite my apparent profession to understand everything about everything, to be the Alpha and the Omega of this entire narrative, but I have an image of the Counter-Culture. An image which has been no doubt impressed upon me by the overreaching presence of the entity, despite my experience informing me otherwise and I expect this image to be one you share.
Perhaps hair grown overly long, in some manner which clearly states to the world ‘I am in no way prepared to take on a managerial position’, clearly disregarding any sense of obligation or justice to whatever talents may lie beneath that mass of dead protein. Whether it is grown wild or oiled and lacquered carefully into some overly-feminine bob, dyed at the fringe, and more referential to some steam-punk version of Thatcher than the Rock icons they claim to understand. Some vest, displaying an obscure Punk band ‘you’ve probably never heard of’, whilst remaining famous enough so that you are completely certain to understand exactly how obscure their t-shirt is.
Thin and pale, dressed almost exclusively in black, one arm heavy with armbands displaying all those ‘Alternative’ events they have attended. Surly and angry, lacking in emotional maturity and, instead, locked in a permanent haze of middle-class teenage angst.
When the cubicle swung open, I caught a glimpse of the man whom I immediately and slightly ashamedly, assumed could not possibly be the bracelet’s owner, before my habitual insecurity took control and my eyes twisted downwards like the spiralling wreckage of some horrendous, internationally tragic mid-air collision. I moved to the side, leaning my hands on the chilling sides of the next bowl, the ceramic biting into the tightly sagging skin between my thumbs and index fingers. The mirror, half fractured, shards lying in the sink below me, glared back with startling animosity, as though every foul thought, every supposed sin and guilty memory hiding within my subconscious had materialised, had attained physicality in the over-used metaphor of the shattered reflection, no doubt karmic retribution for the ignorance of my reflection in the whole mirror.
The strangest thing about him was, simply, the lack anything strange. His hair was a dark brown and cut in a way which, whilst not exactly rebellious, possessed little more than a suggestion of sensibility. He had broad shoulders, in relation to my own, and stood a little shorter than I did. His features, as far as that fleeting sight offered me, appeared honest, though his eyes, hooded like the more intellectual cunt during a riot, and the hint of stubble hanging from his jaw like the mark of Cain, offered a paradoxical explanation to the cut of his smart black trousers and well-fitted blue shirt. His collar was undone, and the black tie had been stretched out, hanging around his neck like a well-made, expensive noose. I caught sight of his hands as he moved to the basin, watching the white water run, like a lake in the district of the same name, over his reddened knuckles and the silver of a wedding ring winking at me from the refuge of his fourth finger.
Right, this looks weird. I’m half bent over some filthy sink, staring at a hundred fragmented reflections
of myself, each one blinking back with undeniable curiosity or, in the cases of those imagined reflections hidden beneath their peers, a deserved animosity. I back away from the ceramics, heading into the cubicle this respectably disrespectable stranger had so recently vacated. As I gently pulled the door towards me, I saw the stranger pick the wristband up in solid, confident fingers, and slip it over his wrist. I drew my lips back in a tight, unseen smile which felt more like a grimace, and my trembling fingers slid the bolt shut.
Leo Tolstoy
Are you beginning to feel a little more comfortable now? That the shift from these randomly positioned interjections from the keyboard of a stranger towards a narrative style more simplistic, one easier to read without wincing at the ego within the mutterer’s words? Did you like the whole ‘Counter-Culture’ thing? The tentative presentation of the idea that this international community, within which we wallow like abandoned shit in some Skelmersdale pond, will allow even the possibility of an alternate existence?
Is that the overarching message which I desire you to take from this? That the sub-section of society that I have, naively, judged to be the place where I had found a place to of belong, a group wherein lays the opportunity for my personal acceptance, is not what I thought it was? That Punk, that Goth, that Rocker, that all these other titles, tossed around like leaves on an old man’s lawn, do not actually mean a damn thing? Is it to bridge the divide, like the unwanted attentions of a Caesar, to knock down the fence like an overly-aggressive child or to salve the wounds of the last generation by pointing out, as though I were some sick combination of an elder, loving Brother and the Conservative Party, that ‘We Are All In This Together?’