Diary of a Somebody

by Brian Bilston

  ‘You have so much negative energy.’

  I found it hard to disagree. The street party was nothing but a nuisance.

  ‘Your energy fields have turned black! That can only mean one thing: death is coming!’

  I realised she’d moved on from talking about the street party. I attempted to bring up the subject of her sawing but she slammed the door in my face before I could continue. I went back in, thinking dark thoughts, and waited for news of a job.

  Thursday August 30th

  Three rejection letters arrived today. I headed off to book group in pugilistic mood.

  Frustratingly, they broke the first rule almost straight away and began to talk about Fight Club. They then proceeded to break the second. I yelled STOP! and went limp but they carried on regardless. If I’d known they were going to talk about it, I’d have taken the time to read it.

  I sat there sullenly with my dry roasted peanuts for the rest of the evening, unresisting to their jabs concerning my lack of commitment, slowly getting punch drunk.

  Friday August 31st

  It is Friday night. I am sat at the kitchen table, with four more rejection letters spread out around me, and with a cat on my lap and a glass of wine in my hand. In order to get everything into perspective, I have made a list of all the good and bad things to do with my current situation:

  Bad Things

  1.I am broke. I have squandered my redundancy money on a writing shed I do not use. This is all thanks to Toby Salt’s advice in a poetry magazine.

  2.My attempts to become a writer have been a total failure. Unlike Toby Salt’s, whose rise to fame is as dramatic as it is inexplicable.

  3.I now have to find myself a proper job again (see 1 and 2, including Toby Salt-related sub-points).

  I appear to be unsuited to every vacancy.

  4.I have messed things up with Liz. Although this is mainly Toby Salt’s fault.

  5.Dylan is leaving. This is because of ‘Stuart’ although there must be some kind of Toby Salt connection in there somewhere. Perhaps they are brothers.

  6.I have forty-three followers on Twitter. Toby Salt has 7,872.

  7.I am on the verge of being kicked out of book group on account of not reading the books, due to all the distraction with this Toby Salt business.

  8.I did that thing I shouldn’t have done.

  Good Things

  1.Poetry Club is now mercifully free of Toby Salt.

  2.The cat still loves me.

  3.I have this bottle of wine.

  Dylan once told me to concentrate on the positives so I shall try to do just that. I will pour myself another glass of wine and write a poem to cheer myself up.

  The pleasure of a glass of wine

  to toast the passing of the week;

  the merlot serves to wash away

  its sour and sweat-soaked reek.

  Sitting back I let it soften

  the dog-toothed edges of my mind,

  thwarted frown, unfurrowed brow,

  I pour another glass of wine.

  I try not to think of TobyS alt

  &my disused writing shed,

  replenisch my glass a fewmore times

  untilthe bottles onlydregs

  two emptied botttles infront of me

  so rubbage around in the cubpoard

  find 2stellas and some whiskers

  drinkem down! like a drinky think

  sing bomenhian raspberry

  yes! I loveyou cat!

  mommajustkilllledaman

  gin

  theres some

  SCARABOUCHE!

  gin

  nothing

  nothing really

  matches

  any way the windows

  September

  Saturday September 1st

  A bell was clanging in my head. I attempted to open my eyes. The operation met with limited success.

  I tried again. The clanging continued. It was coming from downstairs, I realised.

  I crawled downstairs and opened the door. Dylan was there. With Sophie

  ‘Brian, we’ve been waiting outside for ages,’ she said.

  ‘I . . .’ My voice trailed off because I couldn’t think of any more words.

  ‘Can I come in for a few minutes? We need to talk.’

  I made a vague invitational gesture and they came inside. I noticed them both appraising the empty bottles and cans strewn across the kitchen floor. Dylan went into the sitting room to stroke the cat while I stayed with Sophie in the kitchen and watched as she made tea.

  She started talking about their plans. My mind wandered back and forth as she spoke but I heard the key words: America – January – Stuart. They were followed by vague reassurances about the future: Cheap flights – Holidays – Skype. But I’d almost stopped listening by that stage.

  I hadn’t spoken a single word throughout. Sophie thought it best perhaps if Dylan didn’t stay with me today. She understood that this would be a shock for me. It was a lot to absorb in one go. She wondered whether it might be helpful for me to talk to somebody about my problems. A professional. She knew that I didn’t really like talking about things but, who knows, it might be of some use.

  I continued to sit in silence, heard them leave.

  Sunday September 2nd

  This month’s book may have been The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde but it was The Pictures of Toby Salt that were foremost on display as I made my way around the bookshop. There were posters everywhere, advertising the launch of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave on Thursday.

  I did my best to lock up the picture of his stupid face in the attic of my mind and focus on the rest of my shopping: Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd; Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; A Time to Kill by John Grisham; In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; Murder Most Vile: 18 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases; and, because it was on special offer at the till, The Little Book of Hugs.

  Monday September 3rd

  My unsuitability for employment knows no bounds; I am a jack of no trades and a master of none. The rejection letters keep flooding in. Four more today, including this one from the University of Oxford:

  Re: Your Application for the Position of Oxford Professor of Poetry

  Dear Brian,

  Thank you for applying / I hope you don’t find this too distressful / but your application was unsuccessful / Your verse is unsatisfactory to the nth degree / a cross between a dog’s dinner and a catastrophe / It’s the kind of drivelling doggerel / more suited to a sheet of bog roll / Your villanelles are vile / your haikus quite hopeless / your sonnets have as much class as soap-on-a-rope. Yes / and I’m afraid your ballads are bollocks / We wish you suffered from more writer’s blocks.

  You write about buses and bin bags and crocs / you think you’re profound but you’re actually pro-lost. / And as for your poems on Clarkson, they’re close to litigious. / On the plus side, your spelling’s quite good / and your output’s prodigious.

  Yours sincerely,

  Professor A. P. Brearley

  In other news, Toby Salt has tweeted that he has been appointed Poet-in-Residence for the BBC.

  Tuesday September 4th

  Thief

  You caught me stealing a glance at you.

  Ordered me to empty out my pockets.

  I shook my booty onto the table:

  a swiped charge card,

  a nose I’d pinched,

  one poached egg,

  a ruler (half-inched),

  a gaze I’d shifted,

  some spirits lifted,

  and selected other stolen moments.

  You told me to stop thieving

  and start behaving.

  Fat chance.

  I’ve even nicked myself

  shaving.

  Oh, what have I done? What on earth possessed me to do it? All is lost, irretrievably! I am cast out! I am forsaken!

  I had meant to pay it back. It was only a temporary measure until I was back on my feet. There
were yurts and holidays and all those books to pay for, and as soon as I’d landed a job or earned some money from my funeral poems, I was going to put that £10,000 back. With interest, probably. Everyone would have been happy. I didn’t think this would happen. Not this.

  I thought the response to my poems had been more muted than usual. I sat back down to silence. Mary was the first to break it:

  ‘Where’s the money gone, Brian?’ she hissed. All eyes were on me.

  ‘I don’t – I don’t know what you mean?’ I stammered.

  ‘Yes, you do. Our money. Our battlefields money. I checked the account and it’s all gone.’

  ‘Oh, that money!’ I replied, thinking how I might calm the situation down. ‘Dr Miller needed it. To sort out all the payments and everything.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Dr Miller already,’ she said, stonily. I stared down at my pistachios, knowing the game was up. ‘He’s been trying to get in touch with you since April. He’s not received a penny from you.’

  I glanced up. Mary was furious. Liz had turned away in disgust. Kaylee looked as if she was going to thump me. Disappointment dripped from Chandrima’s eyes.

  I tried to explain but Chandrima interrupted me before I’d even got as far as the yurt.

  ‘I think it is best if you leave, Brian.’

  ‘And don’t reel your ugly head in here again,’ said Kaylee, ‘except to give us our money back, you stupid, pathetic, self-centred mother—’

  I was out the door before she’d finished so I had no idea how her sentence ended.

  My sentence was just beginning.

  Wednesday September 5th

  not a poem

  this is not a poem

  only a combination of words

  broken up in such a way to make

  you think it is

  spacing is important

  as is the series of

  line breaks

  that I have skilfully

  manoeuvred on the page (note, too, the absence of

  upper-case characters

  see how

  they make it seem

  deeper somehow)

  it is still not a poem, though

  enough of this now

  What the hell is poetry anyhow? The tearing open of a heart? The baring of a soul? The sharing of a universe? Or is it all mere posture and pantomime?

  Ask someone who cares.

  I have far more important things to think about.

  I am thinking about how I have been cast out.

  I am thinking about how all I hold dear is slipping away from me.

  I am thinking about everything that has led me to this point.

  And I am thinking about Toby Salt.

  And I am thinking about when to do it and where to do it.

  And I am thinking about how it might be done.

  September 6th to September 16th deleted.

  Monday September 17th

  Nothing to See Here

  I was carefully coating my life

  with a thick layer of creosote,

  when – suddenly – out of the blue,

  nothing much happened of note.

  Life somehow got back to normal,

  its rhythms flat and mundane,

  but one evening – to my surprise –

  nothing much happened again.

  Now they come with endless abandon –

  I’m spinning around like a top –

  all these incessant non-happenings.

  Oh, how I wish they would stop.

  Nothing much to report today. Just like yesterday and all the days before.

  I absolutely did not go out to the shed again.

  Tuesday September 18th

  An awful night’s sleep. Another ghastly dream to destroy the night and haunt the day to come. I have been dragging the ghost of it around with me all day. Not as far as the shed, of course. No, not that far because I obviously didn’t go back in there today.

  Wednesday September 19th

  Take this Hand in Yours

  Take this hand

  in yours,

  bury it

  beneath the trees,

  and I will get

  the rest of him

  out of the

  deep freeze.

  Midnight. I was in a forest, digging. Digging further and further down into the blackness. The thing I’d carried with me from the shed was lying next to the hole. It had been wrapped in an old, moth-eaten blanket. Digging. I had to keep digging. The grave needed to be deep. Deep beyond discovery. And, as I drove the spade into the soil once more, I sensed the thing beneath the blanket begin to twitch and come to life . . .

  I woke up with a gasp. All further sleep was futile. I picked up The Picture of Dorian Gray to take my mind off things. It made me think of all the secrets we carry around with us and how many of them ever see the light of day.

  Other people, that is. Not me. I have no secrets. I’m an open book.

  I wear my heart on my sleeve.

  Thursday September 20th

  The Man with the Enya Tattoo

  Precious, secret watermark

  above my left elbow.

  Your ink flows like a river,

  as multi-channelled as your vocals.

  Fade away, fade away, fade away . . .

  My dark-haired Donegal beauty,

  you’ve been mine since nineteen eighty-nine,

  the year the world held its breath

  at your mystical feet.

  Please fade away, fade away, fade away . . .

  No, of course you do not embarrass me!

  I cover you up only to avoid

  a chill in my upper arm.

  Do not cry now. Your ink will run.

  Fade away, fade away, fade away . . .

  Hey, Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin!

  Guess what, my pretty Celtic pixie?

  The scientists have named a new species

  of fish after you! In the Orinoco River!

  Please fade away, fade away, fade away . . .

  The rejection letters are still rumbling in; to think of all that hard labour wasted in the pursuit of gainful employment. And people wonder why I rarely roll my sleeves up!

  After I didn’t go out to the shed, I checked in to Twitter for the first time in ages. My Twitter following seems to have stabilised at forty-three. I may have reached my social media pinnacle but Toby Salt hasn’t. His numbers continue to rise; he now has more than ten thousand followers, despite not having tweeted for nearly two weeks.

  Perhaps, at long last, he has run out of things to say.

  Friday September 21st

  In Vimto Veritas

  I am sorry

  but I have no real ale

  or genuwine left.

  I would offer you

  some proper tea

  but all proper tea is theft.

  Dave, Martin and Marvin are back. They popped round to ask whether I could lend them a teabag. We shared a pot of tea and they talked about their studies. It’s their final year, and they’re planning to really get down to things this time: no more heavy drinking, no more parties, just good old-fashioned studying. By the time they’d left and their guests had begun to arrive next door, they’d somehow managed to deprive me of the three-quarters-full bottle of red wine that was out on the kitchen table, as well as an unopened bottle of white and six beers that were in the fridge.

  Saturday September 22nd

  Another disturbed night filled with disquieting dreams. Even Dylan has noticed how tired I look. I was expecting another team talk from him but it seems he’s through with the whole motivational-speech business. Stuart’s unflagging positivity has really begun to irritate him, he told me. I sympathised. That kind of relentless cheeriness can wear anyone down.

  We began to plan our remaining Saturdays together, while we still have them. We decided that we’d go to the zoo next week. We used to go there a lot, before the break-up with Sophie and before his chil
dlike wonder metamorphosed into something more adolescent and moody.

  Today, though, we dripped around indoors. I asked him whether there was any homework I could help him with but he said he’d rather watch a film.

  We settled down to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I put my arm around him. We had nothing to hold on to – except each other.

  Sunday September 23rd

  The deadline for this quarter’s Well Versed competition is tomorrow. The chosen topic is ‘guilt’. I sat for a few hours mulling this over before deciding to give it a miss this time around.

  Monday September 24th

  Où est Toby Salt? Il a disparu! Pooof!

  He didn’t even make it to his own book launch, by all accounts. The assembled rabble in the bookshop that evening waited two hours for him but he never showed up. They all shuffled off home, dejectedly clutching their unsigned copies of This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave.

  I discovered this upon opening the door this afternoon to a magnificent beard, beneath which was a man. The beard was vibrant, well tended, possibly perfumed: everything, in fact, that mine hadn’t been. Its owner introduced himself as DI Lansbury and then nodded at his assistant behind him, a younger, fresh-cheeked figure, who he announced as Detective Sergeant Tuck.

  They were making some general enquiries of anyone who happened to have seen Toby Salt in the last month or so. His disappearance had been causing some concern although they assured me there was no reason to view it as suspicious.