by Jonny Glynn
Both angled up to me, fists tight, shoulders rolling, waiting for an excuse to hit me. I was happy to give it them. I pulled my arm back and landed one on Paul. I caught him hard against the left side of his nose. His blood started spilling and they were on me. They beat seven bells of shit out of me. I remember, as it was all going off, feeling strangely removed from it all. I wanted them to hurt me, to hit me and kick me and beat me and punish me, debase and humiliate me. And they did. Fists were flailing, raining down on me in every direction. Bashing the crap out of me. Punching and slapping and pounding into me. Boots giving me a shoeing, backwards and forwards with force, one after another, kicking and stamping and punting into me. My head was ringing and wet with blood. My clothes greedily sucking up all the piss on the floor. Bones aching and body bruised. It’s a seminal moment in any man’s life, the having the shit kicked out of him in a toilet episode. It hurt and didn’t hurt. Hurts less than you think. The pain of it is irrelevant. It’s the humiliation that counts. But I couldn’t care. They punched me and kicked me and spat on me until they had had their fill–fully engorged and laughing.
As they left I could hear Johnny Cash on the juke box singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. It made me smile and then I passed out.
When I came round I was lying in the street, slumped on my side next to a pile of bin bags. I’d been put out with the rubbish. Who put me out I don’t know. People were walking past me, ambling home, to and fro. No-one seemed to pay me any mind. No-one even seemed to notice me. It made me feel so sad. So disappointed. And alone. I felt heartbroken…
I sat in the gutter, hiding my broken face in the rubbish, ashamed of myself and of my tears and of me. Ashamed of me, and my awful venal stinking self. Ashamed to be, or to have been. A rotten loathing, full of anger and revulsion, stewed within…The day had started so well, I thought of Milka, and cried…I cried…But no-one paid me any mind, no-one touched my shoulder, no-one even saw…
And on top of all of that, I’ve lost my compass.
WEDNESDAY
I don’t know what time I got in last night. The wind blew me home in a befuddled haze. A sad lump of loneliness stuck in my throat, feelings broken and choking, as I hacked my way up the Essex Road, walking all the way. Red lights swirling green into orange and blue, bleached and bleeding in the puddles and glass. Down the Balls Pond, one foot in front of the other, lamp lights fading, streets deserted, the slow plod backwards through the night till dawn, quiet and by myself. The unassuming inconspicuous halfway time between tomorrow and today, those slow frozen hours of in-between, they’re something of a comfort to the drunk rolling home.
I got in and made myself a cup of the Earl, rolled a jazz cigarette strong enough to fell a woolly mammoth, and then lay on my bed in a sort of numb removed semi-conscious wired coma, twitching and tensing and grinding my teeth. The gouged-out ambushed ends of derangement. My face, my ribs and legs all aching and commiserating and complaining, trying to find some settled comfort. Eventually I managed to arrange myself in such a way as to not be in too much pain and passed out, but then had terrible troubled dreams. Strange tangled imaginings full of dark and twisted energy. Nightmares invading my subconscious, intruding and fiddling with me in the dead of night. It never ends, the long disgrace of life.
I dreamt of a man called Peter Crumb, but it wasn’t Peter Crumb, it was someone else. He had blond hair and worked for Kent Social Services. He was standing in my bedroom watching me sleep. He was naked but for a green plastic name badge, pinned through a bloody scab on his left nipple. He approached me, leant over me and whispered something in my ear. I can’t remember what. And then I woke and I was standing in the corridor. I could smell damp. It was familiar. He appeared and stared at me, and I at him, the same. He held out his hand and offered me two coins, gold coins. He dropped the coins into my hand and then, like a magician, smiled. I looked at the coins and saw that they were melting, thick dark chocolate was oozing out of them, sticky and gooey between my fingers. I looked at him and he shook his head. I looked back at the coins, and they were gone. My hands were covered in dark clods of blood. Valerie and Emma were lying on the floor. Something was wrong. They were wearing bikinis, whispering and giggling and making arrangements. I looked back at the man but his face had changed–it wasn’t mine–he laughed and showed me a knife. A penknife, shaped like a fish, with a green and yellow handle. He handed Emma a bucket and spade, she took it from him smiling. The bucket was blue. He whispered something in her ear, I couldn’t hear what, and then he slit her throat. There were newspapers laid out all over the floor. A wall-to-wall patchwork of obscene threatening headlines, and Emma and Valerie, dismembered. The sawn-off bits and pieces of them, laid out in no particular order–but arranged just so, placed and positioned, a head, a foot, an arm, a leg, a torso, a hand and so on…I was holding Emma’s bucket–it was full of white sugar. I started scattering the sugar all over the floor. I knew that I had to do this, but I didn’t know why.
‘Remember that?’ he suddenly barked. And I woke. My doorbell was ringing.
My face was encrusted with dry blood and stuck to the pillow. Scabs, bruises and bash marks, blue, yellow and purple, were punched into me and all over me. My left eye was heavily swollen, my lips split, bloody and tumid. Milka looked horrified. It was a fair reaction, I looked monstrous, literally like a monster. Poor girl. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say, I just opened the door and stared at her. She didn’t say anything either, which I thought was telling, she didn’t even ask if I was all right, she just took my arm and walked me slowly into the front room and sat me down. It was strange, and unusual, but I instinctively feel safe with Milka. She has no side, or seems not to, and is very young, but I digress. She went into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of warm water and a dry tea towel. She knelt down next to me and nursed my wounds, dipping the towel into the water and then padding me and wiping me. We didn’t speak, I just let her get on with it. I closed my eyes and tried not to think. It was nice–the warm moistness, damping me. When she’d finished, she sat with me for a moment, noiseless and still, and looked troubled and concerned, as humans do. And then she said, ‘Okay. I clean now.’
I nodded and shuffled back into the bedroom feeling weaned. It was a weird episode. Another weird episode.
She’s been at it for two hours now. Scrubbing and washing and sweeping and hoovering, picking things up and putting stuff away, folding things and closing drawers–the washing machine is screaming. I spied on her cleaning the bathroom, she had her fingers down the plughole clearing out great tumorous glumps of knotted hair coated in a greasy soap and spat-back toothpaste gloop. It was vile. The rotting decomposing bits of me, lumping in a greasy pipe–urgh. A fitting end to you, Crumb–stuck in a blocked pipe. She’s on her knees in the corridor at the moment, scrubbing the back of the front door, cleaning his dirty sperm stains. I’m hiding beneath my blankets, feeling ashamed, and writing this. A soggy bruised self-indulgent sadness warming me. He’s hiding behind the coats in the wardrobe. He thinks I haven’t seen him, but of course I have, the fool. He’s always quiet after a night on the booze.
I think it’s about eleven forty-five, but I’m not sure–I’m lost without my compass and I don’t trust the inside clocks, they don’t have arms, but it’s Wednesday. There are five days standing. Two days down. And time rolls on.
I’m not going to go out today. It looks dirty, cold, uncomfortable and grey. A doleful, plaintive, London day…I’m going to hole up and stay in. Yes, it seems wise. I’m full of feelings–stuck-in-the-throat feelings that I can’t make head nor tail of–gloomy, sullen feelings. The shameful effects of a paranoid hangover, I dare say, and the opium blues…Feelings…And memories.
There’s a squirrel in the garden burying a scone…
Milka knocked on my door and said she was all done. I asked her what time it was. She said it was twelve fifteen. The short arm north, the long arm east. I gave her thirty pounds, she’d done a good
job. Three hours’ work, ten pound an hour–for a Pole she should be laughing. She said if I wanted she would go up the shops and get me some food–she said she saw the fridge was empty, and the cupboards. Her comments pricked me and made me feel ashamed and defensive. I told her not to worry about it. I said I’d go out later and get a kebab–which just sounded ridiculous. She insisted, saying I was ‘injure’. I couldn’t be bothered to argue with her and was starving hungry so I said it was kind of her and gave her another twenty-pound note and made a small list of ingredients for a pot of brown. She left and took the key to let herself back in.
The flat is immaculate. It’s amazing–the girl has done wonders, especially in the bathroom, I’ve never seen it so clean. Everything shining and polished. Towels folded, chrome glistening, soap on the side–pubes removed, a little flannel draped over the edge of the basin, my toothbrush with the toothpaste–cap on, in a glass–it was all like a Trust House Forte, an immaculate white brightness with the fervent stink of cleanliness tickling my nostrils. The pungent valour of health and hygiene, wholesome and unabashed. And the water in the toilet is blue. Bravo Milka! I felt awful sitting down to do my dump and dirtying the bowl. I thought perhaps I should do it in the kitchen bin to weigh down the new empty bin liner. But as things turned out I needn’t have worried. This morning’s stool was off the scale–it didn’t appear, there wasn’t one. An enormous crack of thundering wind and then nothing. Nothing but an awful sulphurous stink. I thought the Devil had entered.
The kitchen is a triumph too and a completely different colour. I’ve always thought of the kitchen as being a dark brown, but it turns out it’s more of a light ochre. Everything is in its proper place and looking righteous and smelling proud. There’s nothing on the floor, everything has been found a home or put away. All the furniture is arranged and placed and positioned. All the chairs in the front room are angled towards the television, and she’s stacked all of the boxes in the spare room…I should get rid of those boxes, full of all that junk. Burn them all–make a bonfire in the garden and burn the bloody lot of it. All the captured bits of me, the scraps and pictures and notes and letters, burn it all, burn the lot of it–every last trace of me. Every last bit of me–up in flames and gone for good. Forgotten and gone. Rid me of these memories…Yes, that’s something to do this afternoon. Get out into the garden, and burn the past…To ashes with it.
Milka returned with seven bags full of food and an assortment of extras from Tesco. Not a retailer I usually frequent, but I have to tell you, I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea twenty pounds could buy so much. I normally just go to the Turks on the corner. I’ve suspected for some time that they have been overcharging me, and I confess I never check my change, so I’ve only myself to blame, but this is a revelation. I am almost forced to reconsider my socio-economic standing. Now all of a sudden I’m a Tesco Finest man. Organic, no less!
Milka is non-stop. She’s like a force of nature. A bright white chimera, vivid with electric blonde locks crackling wild with static. She put everything away. Opening and closing cupboards and drawers. Stacking boxes and tins and emptying and clearing and throwing away. In and out of the fridge. Chopping and peeling and sparking up the old Baby Belling. She knows her way around the kitchen better than I do. She has the natural way of a woman about her–knowing where everything is, moving from this to that–it’s like watching a dance, and because my eye is so swollen it appeared at times as if there were two of her, performing a sort of ghost-like synchronized kitchen pas de deux. It was beautiful. Not like me and him lumbering about and bashing into everything. In next to no time she’d rustled up a pot of thick broth, steaming hot and bubbling away, scents and smells seeping into everywhere. You could smell it all over the house. She even set the table. Something I haven’t seen since…Hmm. A place mat. One spoon, one napkin. A side plate and a challah. It all looked so lonely.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘won’t you join me?’
‘No, I okay,’ she said. ‘I just stand. Is okay–you eat–is okay. I stand.’
And so we had lunch together, me sat by myself at the table, she standing, leaning against the fridge.
Her broth was delicious. And just what I needed. It filled me and restored me, warmed me through and left me glowing. She’s a lovely all right. A beautiful hallucination in blue velour sweatpants–her pert little bottom sticking out behind. Fragile and delicate and porcelain white and kind. Her lips are a perfect pink. And she’s a quiet one too. Hardly says anything at all. She just gets on with it. You feel safe with her, at ease with her. It’s strange for me to feel this, but I think I trust her. I said to her, ‘Thank you for all you’ve done this morning, Milka. You’ve been very kind.’ She cleared my bowl and said, ‘Is okay. You injure.’
She put the dishes in the sink and started running the taps. I sat silently watching her. Her body slumped forward over the sink, one shoulder higher than the other, the slow gentle tumble of pots splashing and knocking. The radiators pumping, thickening the air…It made everything slow. And then I don’t know why but all of a sudden I felt very awkward and uncomfortable. I started to imagine things that she might be thinking, bad things about me, and so I got up and traipsed back into the bedroom. I don’t know why I started thinking, and I don’t know why I got up and left her, I just did–just to move, I suppose, and dissipate the oddness. I do feel odd when I’m with humans, even if they’re lovelies like Milka–I get to feeling difficult and stiff, especially if there’s a silence. I just start moving, sometimes it’s just my head that moves, looking up or sideways, other times it’s my legs jiggling or crossing and uncrossing, or it’s my arms folding and unfolding or scratching, often it’s scratching, and then sometimes it’s all of me, moving randomly from one place to another without any motivation or reason, or consideration for the situation–which is what I did in this instance. Milka was washing the pots, I suddenly felt odd, and then stood up and traipsed to the bedroom, feeling glum for doing so and hoping she wouldn’t think me weird but suspecting that she already does. I don’t understand myself and am forced to conclude that having insight into one’s own condition is no guarantee of control over it. It’s a bummer. Anyway, when I got to the bedroom he was watching me, but said nothing, just stared at me from behind the coats in the wardrobe. I knew what he was thinking–and it was hateful. I ignored him and looked at myself in the mirror–a horrifying deformed monster. It made me feel sad, sad like Quasimodo. I shuffled back into the kitchen and found Milka drying the last of the washing up.
‘I was wondering,’ I said, scratching my head and then folding and unfolding my arms. ‘Those boxes in the spare room. I’ve been meaning to get rid of all that junk for ages now. I was wondering–if you’re not doing anything this afternoon–I was wondering if you could help me burn it all in the garden?’
She said she’d be happy to. It was as simple as that.
We carried all the boxes out the back and stacked them in the garden in three uneven piles, awkwardly leaning and about to topple. I went round the front and got one of the old galvanized rubbish bins, emptied all the crap in it out onto the pavement and then dragged it round the back. One of the towers had collapsed, a couple of boxes had split and burst and spilt their contents all over the grass. Milka was on her hands and knees gathering it all back together.
‘Chuck it all in here,’ I said, setting the bin down.
She picked up the split boxes and emptied their contents into the bin. Photographs, letters, diaries, tumbled, torn and twisted. I emptied a half-litre of white spirit over it all, lit a match and threw it in. The bin exploded, bursting into flames, a greedy inferno, ravenously licking the air. We watched it for a moment and then slowly began to feed the rest of my past into it. I could see her looking at the photographs of me and Valerie and Emma. I could see her noiselessly having thoughts–but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to ask, or have it explained. She knew, and stayed silent, diligently feeding the recorded moments of my life
into the fire. Burning me. She understood. It revealed a cold, detached hardness in her that I liked. She caught me watching her and smiled at me, and then dropped thirty-four frozen Kodak moments of a holiday in Cyprus onto the passionately flaming entries in a half-burnt diary I kept as a teenager. I’d have liked to have re-read that diary. Steamy stuff, as I recall–all bullshit, of course, teenage dribblings–but still, it would have whiled away an hour.
‘Burn it–burn it all,’ I kept repeating. The boxed forgotten proof of my existence. The personal unremembered bits and pieces of us all, the letters and keepsakes, the mementos, remnants, heirlooms, tokens and trophies. The useless minutiae of nothing very much at all, kept solely to remind…Photographs, hundreds and hundreds of photographs–the tyranny of photography, every moment of my life captured and paraded–from nappies through shorts into trousers. Sleeping infancy and my first steps, my first teeth, my first birthday, my first Christmas, my first day at school–marked, appraised and boxes ticked. My first car–Toyota Corolla, yellow–stolen in Leeds, found burnt in Manchester. My first girlfriend–Lisa Jackson. My first flat–another squalid shithole. A Cub Scout in uniform toggled up tight. A boy in corduroys with strange hair and a jumper. Skid-mark expressions, tedious posturing, affected displays of normality. Rough approximations of something like the others and time’s unsparing way with it all. A mother and a father at this age and that, in this house and that. On holiday here, on holiday there. Christmas, Easter, summer in the sunshine, the winter it snowed. A boy called David Warner–remember him? I camped in his back garden aged eleven. It was an awful night. I had a terrible cold and couldn’t stop sneezing. I desperately wanted to blow my nose but didn’t have a handkerchief and so kept on sniffing. I knew my sniffing was keeping David awake. And I knew it was annoying him, but he didn’t say anything, he just kept huffing and sighing and tutting, miffed. I wanted him to like me. I remember feeling so embarrassed. Frightened in a tent, aged eleven, sniffing and sorrying from dusk till dawn. In the end I blew my nose into my underpants. Just one of the many calamitous childhood atrocities I was made to endure on the road to manhood and eventual madness.