Tag Archives: heart

A type of social

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It’s not a nice a place. I don’t believe a single word you say. I see your life. I see you living it. I see you write about it on facebook or on twitter or on your blog. It seems to be your life. It looks like a life. Your family is on it, your friends are on it. You reference things that happen. You reference them with nothing more than a reference. Everything, even the cancer that riddles your loved one’s body, pointed out, you are four squared at the hospital. You are sad. I don’t believe you are sad. I know you know you are supposed to be sad. I know you took a second to post that you are sad. I saw your friends comment on this post saying things that sound like condolences. It made your life seem more real. It made you feel better that your expected emotion and tags were responded to in yet another expected social networking way. Someone liked your post. You didn’t know how to feel about that oh wait yes you did, you thought because they liked that you were visiting your cancer ridden uncle that they were feeling compassion towards you, not that they liked that your uncle had cancer in his lung, kidney and liver and was most probably dying and that instead of calling or talking to you or even bothering to write a facebook message they did the thing where they click once to ‘like’ your “at the hospital visiting my dying uncle” status that meant they had sympathy for you. When he dies you can create a group event for the funeral. You can set the date and time and the text field what are you planning, because of course facebook thinks that all of life is a god damned party right, but this time, no, this time you want to invite people to a fucking funeral but hey, they don’t want this kind of morose shit on there, or else they think this kind of morose shit is best left off facebook, best left off this 600 million whatever people place…we don’t want this kind of “real life” people shit on here. We want parties and sluts and friends and university sluts and stuff right? For Christ sake why are you trying to use this site to organise a god damned funeral? Huh?
Well because you know we are all on here now. My mother is on here…my uncles are on here. We are all fucking on here and I need to tell them that uncle Tom has died and I saw him die and now I need to have everyone who loved him come and pay their respects and I want to tell them about it and I have been on here, sharing photos, sharing my life and now I want to share this and you make me fill out a form that says “what are you planning?”. OK, ok well I’ll fill it out. I’ll tell you what I am planning and it’s a fucking funeral, ok? A wake, ok?
I clicked ok after seeing that. The next thing: Select guests. Guests. Ok. Sure “Guests” it is. Christ.

There is a child that’s born. They call it Sebastian. They love their child, a boy. They take pictures and they make a profile for the boy. It is www.facebook.com/sebastian.fenwick and also www.twitter.com/sebfenwick. They want the rest of the family to see this loved child take his first steps, eat and spit and smile and sleep. They post everything on there. First words, the first time the little thing sits up. Inoculations. They write messages to their son, like “I love you so much my son” and “this is when I played with you in the backyard” and “daddy has to go to work and you didn’t want him to go” and tag all sorts of stuff on photos and videos they took on their phones. There is so much on there. So much love, so much for the grandparents and extended family (some overseas) and friends to see. So many comments and even the godparents are saying things like “hope to see you soon” and “bless you little one” and “wow so good to see you growing up” and the like. The boy grows, they post pictures and love and messages flow through. This boy unaware, growing under the microscope, other friends of friends commenting, the parents feeling that their child is loved and watched over. The boy grows more, in school, a child, learning, alphabet, colours, maths. More pictures, more videos. He is now facebook slash Sebastian. He has been tweeted for for six years. His parents let him tweet a little bit. He just tells the world things he likes. Things he ate. He even comments on photos of people he knows. His parents type for him. There is nothing that the world does not know, will not know about this young boy, growing up in this new world.

Do you have a membership card?
No.
Do you now about the benefits?
No.
Well you get 5% off every purchase after you spend $500 or more.
Ok.
Do you want a membership card?
No.

Oh wow darling wow, I mean wow. You are, like wow. I have seen pretty girls before but wow. You could be, like I mean, come on. OK, wow. Stop where are you going. Haha I know I sound stupid crazy, like lalalalalal crazy hahaha but no…no. Hey, are these your friends, stop wait! Hey! Guess what, I am serious here…but guess what. I want to give you five hundred dollars. Yes! I do. Uh huh yes you. God. This is not some weird ass gross thing. Look where we are! Ok? Calm down. Hey, your parents let you girls come out shopping huh? Good for them because guess what! You, maybe not just you, hey come here sweetheart, you both maybe, yeah, you two ok? And what’s your name? Sophie. Ok Hi Sophie I’m Mark, Anyway ok what we want is a few girls to be the kind of, face, no, just, ok, do you girls want to be on video? Huh? Mac’s makeup that’s who. Come on. Ok for starters, you. are. gorgeous. You know that though right, and I’m not even supposed to say that! What are you fourteen. God! Really? Thirteen ok. Wow. OK. So, we’re cool. You want to do this? Great ok. So, what we need to do is get you three, sorry love not you, you three sitting over there, we’re going to give you a proper New York make over, ha, yeah I know right! Ok sweetie here’s ten bucks go get some juices or food or whatever, you know, here’s twenty, go crazy, go get whatever you want ok, your friends are gonna be a bit busy for an hour, so…yes great um what’s your name? Kate! Ok Kate great what the hell you look almost twenty shit damn ok. So wait, you girls got phones right? What’s that iPhones? Perfect, ok, what we want you to do is start filming, ok? Just now just shoot whatever you want. Me, you, them, the people looking, anything. Whatever, I got to take this call so go crazy.
“Phil yeah no great great…I got like three chicks ready to roll…huh?…oh yeah yeah no worries…hahaha yeah they’re shooting now. Fuck they’re even recoding me talking to you (waving at the girls)……what?…….I’m sorry what?……….yeah of course, of course, what you think this is my first time?……..yeah yeah of course……….well there’s one………yeah I know…….Phil they are doing it right now……..I don’t know, iPhones it looks like……..huh?………yeah yeah, well one is……..ok cool call back in…(looks at watch)…half hour ok?…..ciao”
So girls! We ready to start shooting?

Trent:
I hate you. I hate your face, I hate your friends. I hate seeing you in those fucking disgusting poses. Do you even care about me anymore? You fucking slut. You fucking bitch. I fucking loved you and now look at you. Why the fuck do you tag yourself with all these guys. Just to fuck with me? Just to make me look like fucking idiot. Well guess what! I’m not going to post this stuff anymore, you cunt. I did it. I told everyone that I wanted you back and now I see you running around looking like a fucking slut loser. Who the fuck is Tommy? What the fuck is he doing posting on his wall about you and him getting it on last week? I thought we could work it out but now I know you are just another fucking whore out there looking to get the next idiot to give you all his money and time and stuff. Fuck off.
Sandy:
Stop posting on my wall you loser small dick asshole. You are BANNED from my friends list I thought we could be cool and stuff and still be fb friends but you are such a jealous douche that no way can we do this, I hope you told all your friends you are a drunk tool who can’t even get it up after a few beers which was every time btw so yeah. Fuck off and stop tailing me every where. I can hang out with who ever I want. Get a life. Get a girl but you never will get one as good as me. Oh and fuck your body, your steroid ugly chest is so gross and we all think that. Ha ha peace out x

Footnote:
None of this actually exists. This disgusting hinterworld of fake realities, online selves, masked falsities, creations, imaginary existences created for others to see, judge, assess…comment on and worse, feel a part of. Our real true connections are never there. They are in the holding of a hand, they are in the quivering voice of a friend who just can’t do it anymore, and you say to them I know, I know, I can’t do it anymore either. And you sit on the phone with them, finishing another bottle of wine together and asking each other why can’t we go on, we will not kill ourselves yet will we? No we won’t and we smile at saying that, at finally saying that out loud. The triumph is in saying it. In saying “I drink too much” and hearing their steady, person voice. In talking to your mother or father on the phone and thinking “I don’t see my parents enough”. That deep feeling in the gut where you want to see them more because you remember you felt a strange despair when your grandparents died but you didn’t know why and now you can see how your parents felt. Their mother or father died. They lost their parent. And now you won’t let that happen. But you do. And you update facebook.

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Exit

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This is the endThere is no emperor
There is no lord
You get to die
All alone
and you can’t even choose
Who surrounds you
At the last
When you most want
To say the truth.
Look at them!
I wish I could have…
Leave me alone!
I love you
My darling
I didn’t know
I didn’t know
The dark birds
Can you see them
Oh god my life
I didn’t know
You could do that
I knew that it was
Something is wrong
I don’t want to go
It’s so stupid
I

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Adam and Eve (no escape)

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The snake curled it’s tail in a way that it flicked just the tip on her clit and she felt that laser shoot up inside her a little bit and she squirmed back away from it and the snake curled up into a ring and, sleeping, let the sun bathe on its skin. She closed her eyes and laid back, wanting to sleep or just at least dazed off and let her hand come down and gently touch on the hood of the clit and move over the soft flesh there up and down and it felt good and pure and the sun was just like a soft warm blanket that meant she could feel happy there. God killed a lamb and it was horrific, it was screaming and half dead and it’s stomach was open and her and the snake stood up and looked at that fluffy body writhing and crying and they had never seen that before and it wasn’t horrific because they hadn’t seen it before and it was just strange and confusing. The young naked man came back then at this time to see it all and saw the snake and stepped on the snake’s back and the snake flipped around and curled up and extended and bit the man on the leg but the man just watched it happen and looked over at the half-blood half-white wool mess that God had made and pressed down harder on the snake’s back, raising his other foot and really pushing down in a  half jumping way on the snake until the snake stopped squirming and the lamb was still and not crying and the woman looked up at the man and saw him changed, different, but the man was as blank as ever, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

In the afternoon he sat in the office kitchen, drinking his coffee, eating a biscuit and she comes in and she is wearing a tight skirt and an even tighter blouse, makes a green tea and looks over at him. He watches her eat the biscuit, watched her lipsticked lips close over the cookie and all but suck off the edge of the biscuit she takes into her mouth and then her closed small lips moving up and down slightly as her small teeth chew the small piece of hard biscuit she’s managed to pry of with those succulent, decorated lips. She almost looks over and he averts his eyes back to the table, finds a magazine there and pulls it closer, flicks it open and almost as quickly looks back at her body, the outline of her figure simplistically available, imagining her naked isn’t hard, her ass and legs, her waist, her breasts and neck and face all stand there and he looks back to the page again, mainly looking at words and reading them over and over. She finishing dipping the tea bag in the hot water, takes it and drops the finished tea bag in the bin, then a smile at him and leaves. He sips his coffee, tastes bad, looks back at the page, reads that line, over and over.

She was washing away the blood between her legs, she hadn’t ever had this happen before and she thought she was dying. For three days she washed away the blood, in the stream and each time he came close she told him to go away. She lay on the grass beside the stream and waiting for more blood to come, closing her eyes and listening to the water to soothe her mind. On the fifth day the blood stopped, she finished washing herself and cried out to God to save her life. God said that now that you have had the pleasure of the flesh, you will now know the changing of the season, and every month you will know this, like the changing of the seasons, you are now unto the Earth. She was happy because she felt closer to the world she loved, the dirt the grass the sun and the animals, she collapsed sighing and feeling all of nature now inside her and without. God became furious, and so condemned her to feel an unnatural pain in childbirth.

Her father comes home, closes the door, hasn’t seen them all sitting there together on the lounge room floor yet, her and her sisters and her mother, playing a card game and they were laughing and playing. They all watch him walk over to the table they have near the door and empty his pockets like he does every night and the mother says “your turn” to her little sister and they all look back at the game and are aware that they are pretending now, not playing like they were but playing now as an exhibition, as a way of telling the father that they are happy and have a life too. He walks over and kisses the mother and they all savour that smell, the smell of their father coming home, like wood and smoke and old clothes, sweat they don’t know about yet but it is his sweat and the three beers he had after work with his co-workers. They try not to stare too long at him kiss their mother’s cheek but they love seeing it and he smiles at them and silently disappears into the kitchen and the younger one throws down a card that matches the one underneath and the mother looks back from her husband and says “Snap!”.

In the beginning Lucifer Morning Star was the first Angel, with the unwitting power of a true God, and as such the ever loving God who created him became scared of his creation and cast him down to the world of the mortals and so then Lucifer taught the mortals fire, life, love and companionship and told them that one day they would be like God himself and when he was finished instructing them God in his anger made Lucifer King of Hell where he was told to punish all those who did not heed The Word and when hell was overwhelmed God came down himself in the flesh of a man named Yeshua and felt the painful sting of humanity and hence forth changed what it was to be saved or condemned and so Lucifer, now righteous, holds his place by Gods side as a saviour of human souls.

Around the table in this meeting we talked about how having these poor sales performance figures was most likely related to how our sales people were getting old and they kept having things happen to them like heart attacks or hip replacements or sick children and how we could directly see their ailments reflected in our figures and we decided really quickly that we needed newer younger sales people and we discussed how that having the younger ones coming in would yeah sure take them a while to catch up to the expertise and capability of the older ones that in the ling run we would as a company be better off by having these fumbling, learning, need-to-be-hand-held new ones come on would actually in the long run be way better to the bottom line because, hell, surely these older ones would get worse and worse, right, I mean, this is symptomatic of having an ageing sales team, I mean like what’s next, you know: cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver failure, you know, what else kinds of old age stuff would we have to deal with, I mean, they need to use a computer at least and Christ like osteoporosis would mean soon we’d need to give them , what, aides and things to help them do their job and we’re not a charity I mean we need to let them go right? A young bright executive discovered a good way we could legally pay them out.

Adam was so in love that he cut off all his hair and, crying, told God that he hated him and thought he was an insane lunatic who didn’t care for anything other than to be blindly worshipped. God asked Adam where he got his ideas from and Adam said “from you, you heartless monster!”. God knew it was the snake who had filled his mind with sick thoughts and so madeEdena horrible place to live which of course only made Adam hate him even more. God was confused and asked Adam after a thousand years why he did not hate the snake instead and Adam replied “what snake?” and God told him the story and Adam knew then it was hopeless: God created the snake.

He had her head in his hands, lying on top of her with both his hands under her head and she was crying and they hadn’t finished making love and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said nothing in that half true way women say it and she had her eyes shut tight from the crying and he let his penis slip out of her, losing the erection anyway. He stayed there like that holding her and kissing her cheek, feeling with his lips how hot her cheeks were and looking at her clenched eyes. He started massaging her hair and kissing her cheeks more but she shook her head to brush him off so he moves off her and lays beside her, both naked and she rolled into a ball and cried harder and harder. “What’s wrong?” he asked but she didn’t say anything, just lay there sobbing. He stood up and put his pants back on, walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed wrong, not his. He wondered if he had raped that girl or did something wrong. He smiled at himself in the mirror, just to see if his own face was still there. He washed his hands and went back into the room. She had a blanket pulled over her and wasn’t moving.

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Princess and the Pea

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You want to strangle her
Because she is perfect
And that same feeling
Makes you hold her tighter
Than she wants
And tell her
You Are Wonderful.
There are crumbs in the bed
That itch at your skin
And you brush them away
Because she likes to eat in bed
And you like her eating in bed
Because she does it naked
And seeing her eat
What you have cooked
Naked
In the bed
Where you make love
Makes those little crumbs
Memories
And brushing them away
Clears the sheets
For more.
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WHAT DOES THE TRUTH TASTE LIKE? WHAT DOES THE TRUTH FEEL LIKE?

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It is the hope inside that wants a child, maybe not the birth or the responsibility, but the end that is something grand. The flavour of mud, or sickness or human saliva breath in the morning is truth. What it wants to tell you really are things you will hate instantly. There is no sense but the sun still shines and you all live together.

There is a deep unfulfilled sadness that, through being ignored, manifests (festers) as malice, complacency, indiscretion, blandness, moroseness, suicide, false-happiness, acceptance, malignancy and that thing where you can just go on living and living until you die no matter what happens or what sickness comes or how alone you are or how much you are missing and how removed you are from what you yourself consider life based on your dreams and how you see others your age living those (or even other fantasy now) dreams and your wishing that everything could be different and it’s not actually regret because you never did anything in the first place to deserve or even expect that outcome but it’s more that you never could have had those things you wanted in the first place because now that you are ‘getting on’ it has become clear that you are not one of ‘them’ or are even going to be that thing you imagined ever so now it’s set in that your life is this, just this, no more dreams, no more hope, and now it’s also no more lying to yourself that you can still achieve this.[1]

The ability (propensity?) to behave given any number of social situations that, including any hardcore punk or other such anti-normality types, force us to act in a desired expected manner. Mainly the ‘big ones’ Funerals, Weddings (they can get avant-garde but even then there is a certain ‘respect’ for the bride/groom/widow/children’s wishes…their aesthetic permeates), but also even just waiting on line at the supermarket. We all look forward or around, we shuffle, we look at our groceries, we know how to act/behave/appear. We know what to do at any given social moment. Is the goal of truth then a separation from the norm into a kind of laissez-faire democracy type thing whereby our instantaneous feelings come to bear or is there supposed to be  such a thing as deserved communal reverence, respect, appropriateness and all the trappings of the (essentially) class system? Do I want some young idiot wrecking my mother’s funeral with his boom box and his lack of shutting-the-fuck-up-about-how-we-all-gotta-die?[2]

Seeing something that’s wrong (not actually wrong wrong, like evil or unjust or against love or anything) and deliberately not doing anything about it because, in the grand-scheme of things, it is very unimportant (usual) and pointless and basically just seeing the way in which you could fix something that doesn’t actually benefit you but it would, in some respects, make the world a better place or at least resolve this issue at hand and perhaps advance this or that person or company policy or deal or whatever. Now, the next level is telling the truth in this scenario to your personal detriment. What does that feel like, or, what are the reasons anyone does this? Social altruism, for an inner sense of peace (resolution, victim is no longer a victim (and remember, not a real victim, just a made-up work-based life-scenario type of victim), a general want for the right thing (in your assessment) to prevail, a real urge to contribute where you see you can contribute), or perhaps a dream that you will be rewarded (eventually). In place of this, for the majority they play by the rules we created in this western (and eastern too, so) culture where shutting up and doing nothing are lauded in place of controversy, individualism, contesting, questioning. In fact, the better you perfect those abhorrent servile traits to more likely you will succeed. So in this sense any act of dissention or suggestion of personal motif for the ‘right’ is punished in one way or another.

The ability to deliberately hold information, important information no less, in your head, conceptually ‘away’ from someone you actually care about because (a) it would hurt them (simple and honest enough) (b) it would destroy what they think of you for no real-world purpose or reason that needs to be considered for the moment as it were; out of context; theoretically (c) you do not want them to hold this in their head as well, you like seeing them not knowing it whilst you do (perverse but like a serial killer who cherishes the sweet moments of freedom following his murderous act up until they are discovered) (d) there is no conceivable reason to tell them because I has nothing to do with anything yet it bears down on you for not telling it for no other reason than the desire for complete transparent honest i.e. unburdening or the fact that you have tried to build your relationship on the precept of pure honesty (in that as you get older and have many many failed long term serious relationships the prospect of transparent honesty becomes for you the thing that really is the only thing that is important anymore, to the point that saying “I want to fuck someone else” is allowed because it was spoken truthfully out in the open and so then when you do it although it hurts the honesty aspect is revered above this carnal act thing that happened as a result.[3]

Now we’ve cultivated the insane idea of ‘personal truth’…”what’s right for me” etc. This concept allows you to consciously exist inside someone else’s truth and, understanding them as such, where they are in a  fantasy that has no real walls, which through using careful analysis and understanding are able to be moved, in and out, their fears heightened, their perceptions sharpened closer to the devils they have invented as inhabitants; the backstabber; the cheat; the false-prophet; the supposed friend etc until of course their own truth (which they think is real don’t forget, really real) is nothing but a fragmented strange and externally incoherent mess of half-truths, phantoms and unstructured feelings based observations made under misinformation that are tentatively held together under the one notion: that because they have created it it must be true. Such a feeble instance of reality, and such a scary prospect for the person trapped inside this prism where any one sentence from an imagined trusted source can dispel and enhance so many other aspects of their ‘truth’.[4]

[1] There was a show on TV today and it was horrific in it’s honesty (people now want to see other people on screen, and, most people aren’t equipped to understand that although, yes, it’s a ‘real’ person, they are acting and behaving in a way fit to be displayed and have learned that ways in which to behave on camera and if that’s not enough have even been told/prompted/directed by trained TV producers who know what they want out of the very expensive and critical shoot they are ‘starring’ in so are guided towards an end but, yes, the viewers are to feel that they are watching someone ‘real’, like them, the closest they get to feeling warmth towards the cold TV they have become used to getting all their emotions from.

[2] The problem here really is one of acceptance. We are so careful to accept others yet so self aware of external judgment. The problem is that in order to ‘improve’ ourselves we need to become more accepting, but, in becoming more accepting, we are better able to ignore, I guess, all the transgressions of others who aren’t so ‘improved’. Yet, by becoming more accepting, that is, working hard at achieving this, we are to then accept others who don’t bother to do the work of becoming accepting, thereby negating, basically, the whole endeavour to become understanding and accepting and what people would call ‘enlightened’. So what s the point of seeking such enlightenment anyway, if the goal of this is to accept all anyway (that is, the base unenlightened). Do we condescend to help them or be so perfectly attuned that we understand and accept?

[3] And of course the confusion in thinking “if we didn’t instigate this honest policy, perhaps we would have curtailed or otherwise managed our base instinctual urges and not simply blurted it all out to each other in order to get away with fucking right in front of our eyes and then sort of feel as though we love them each other more because we have this true true honest one to one bond thing.”

[4] What if you didn’t actually care about people’s unique truths? What would the truth look like to you? Well, it would appear as an ether cloud, a fake thing, a huge mess of versions and beliefs and ‘grasps’ and perceptions and up-to-the-minute understandings. Worse is, because you don’t care, these gasps of life, although spoken in all earnestness by others, were incomplete, funny, strange, pitiful, unaware and basically full of thousands of holes and gaps because through these gaps, you see, form a regular ‘complete’ honest person. Someone who believes, who strives for an ideal, someone who actually thinks they are what they are, really. And though the ways in which you treat them by, say, pointing out a massive inconsistency in their Themness has absolutely no impact on them whatsoever, because it is not within their power or desire to either update or fundamentally change their Themness, their own unique truths that gives them the real stamina to persest, to believe in something, to go after something, to go on, although subconsciously pretending to themselves and the word that what they are is 100% real and solid. This insane destructiveness is what permeates all facets of the human condition, this bold, seeking triumph essence to be something, to choose as it were against all the available knowledge, to stop and stay and be that thing. To just say “I know what you are trying to do but stop it”.

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We had a child

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We had a child
That died
But that was so long ago
It now feels like
We had a life
That will never exist.
“Why don’t we have another baby?”
“Because you are so upset.”
“I think I am ready.”
“But you will always have lost a child
Forever
And the personality,
Our hope for this child,
Will be always
An imagination.”

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There is only a viscousness left

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I had her by the cunt you could say because we didn’t fuck anymore but she wouldn’t leave me because I got the money, I went out at 8 ah em and I came back there 7 pee em and that suited her just fine. I come home to her half pissed, half naked in clothes as impossible as that sounds:

“Did you leave the house today” I yell, first thing, spitting.

“No I didn’t fucking leave the house why the fuck would I leave the house, nothing out there nothing in her it’s all shit”

“You wouldn’t leave the house because where the fuck would you go. There is no place for you to go. Where you gonna go?”

“I’m not going anywhere. You get some smokes?”

And I did and I throw them at her and I take a cigarette from my own pack and we are in the place we live moving around smoking and not talking. I get a beer from the fridge, the last one and I open it a drink half of it and I open the fridge looking for another one that isn’t there.

“You can’t keep some fucking beer in here at least!” I yell across our home.

“What?” she yells back.

I walk back into the room, she is exhaling a plume into the open space.

“You are fucking useless”

“And who the fuck are you, huh? You walk in, throw my some cigarettes at me, now you’re gonna call me a piece of shit. Go get your own fucking beer you piece of shit”

“And what the fuck have you been drinking huh? You’re pissed already”

“Yeah well I’ve been drinking with Tommy today”

“Tommy is another fucking loser. You fuckers know how to get your hands on alcohol, right. You know what? Fuck this. Get the fuck out of there. Get your skanky ass clothes, shove them in a bunch of plastic bags and fuck off!”

“Yeah? Yeah? You want me to go? I will go if you want me to go”

“Get the fuck out!”

 

x                              x                              x

 

He was trying to get some work done after work, you know, real work. The stuff that keeps him going; to know He is still a person who has something beautiful to give that’s not bought and paid for by a bunch of moronic assholes (etc etc). Staring at the computer screen and the keyboard, screaming at him to create, make something, do something. The fucking world wide web has all of this shit on there come on and add to it. And then he added to it and it’s just some more shit into the pool.

 

x                              x                              x

 

There is no advertisement that can persuade you to purchase anything anymore. They all have the evil stink of self-interest. Worse; the advertising industry know this and have employed teams to get you to recommend products to your real-true-friends so that they buy what you have been convinced (by some means) to buy already. The fact that you genuinely tell someone about a product or service these days has been carefully calculated by ad agencies so that you are equipped to deliver the one line benefits straight to your nearest and dearest so that they too become purchasers (read: lifelong customers) of a particular brand or product (synonymous).

 

x                              x                              x

 

“Ah fuck you know I’m sixty now, sixty! and you know what I did love this girl, this one girl and she married my best friend, you know, what forty, fuck, forty years ago and, christ I was their first born’s godfather. And I still loved her. And I went there and did the thing in the church and I helped them paint their first house and still, still I loved her and I just wanted to be near her so I said ‘yes’ to being their kids godfather and I bought him presents and I was there on his birthdays and, and when he was a child they put him to bed so we stayed up drinking and it was always so close, the more I got drunk, so close to me telling her I loved her but that husband, my best friend, was there and it was so strange because I loved them both and I didn’t know how to say it and after more drinks it went away and it came to that thing again where I just talked about my life and how shit it was and they laughed because it was funny, really, and I made it all a joke but what I was really saying was how bad my life is because I was in love with a woman who was married and had kids and how fucking strange it is that I am one of those kids’ godfather, I mean go damn what the fuck happened to my life that this kind of shit would happen?”

 

x                              x                              x

 

I shouldn’t have given her my number, fuck, so I hang the phone up thinking thank fuck I have a phone you can hang up hard a proper with a handle not just a button. It rings again, so lovely to know someone wants you, or wants to tell you something that they have burning in their belly. I do it, I do, I pick it up.

“Fuck you don’t you fucking hang up on me”

“Sorry, ok? Sorry. But man you were talking all kings of made up imaginary bullshit there”

“What?! Yeah because you’ve worked it all out right, you already now what I’m gong to say”

“No, no I don’t but guess what I can probably work out why you’re bothering to say it”

“Oh fuck you”

“And, so, what’s up then? Hm?”

“I can’t event talk to you anymore”

“Really…really? And here we are on the phone. You know what I’m doing? Hm? I’m staring at a plain white wall, a cigarette in hand waiting to go outside and smoke it. That’s all. That’s what I can see and feel and I have a voice, you, on this thing. Okay? Too literal?”

“Christ you’re annoying”

“And you still aren’t saying anything interesting”

“I…I don’t want to see you this weekend. And…” long pause, me sitting there staring, holding back the urge to say anything, impatient, sure, “and I don’t want….this, anymore, this, thing we do, over the phone, this bullshit, text and call and…” and she exhales in an ‘urgh’ like that

“I get it ok, I get it. Guess what? That’s why we don’t talk. What are you bothering for?”

“Goodnight then”

“Okay”

And I hang up and get to feel horrible and cruel for the rest of the evening.

 

x                              x                              x

 

We, I, well we, I mean. Okay. It was one in the night and there was only that orange light that the council set up two weeks ago to stop all those junkies breaking into cars but what it did was give them all night to work and bathe our apartment in a sick glow that made us mad and crazy and awake too long. The baby was crying. We had a baby, we did that. We had a baby and it was weird. We didn’t really want a baby but we wanted a kid and we talked about how good it would be to have a good one, like, have a good kid that would grow up and be better than what we were and could be the best person ever and we talked about it and talked about what type and all of that and started having sex where I’d have to come inside of her to make a kid. It was funny because I’d say “what if I didn’t like it” or she’d say “what if it didn’t like us” and in these ways we’d laugh but now she was full of the thing and it was six months going and you could see it kicking and see its footprints pushing against her stomach skin and it’s like ‘whoa’ and I go back to my job and miss all those things and come home and want to watch TV but she wants a back rub and holy fuck of course there’s a thing inside you. I need to stop talking about it sooner or later. Can I skip ahead? We had the baby out of her and into our life and we did so well for so long, I mean we had a room next to ours, fuck the ‘lounge room” we never had a lounge anyway.

 

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Reunion Voices Sing

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I can tell you that I didn’t ever think I’d see her again and if I did I would have to talk to her instantly, away, by ourselves and tell her who I am and how sorry I am for what I did even though it wasn’t so bad and evil and all of that but still so wrong and stupid and that I know it now and that I am so very sorry and I would want her to talk, say whatever, say everything she thinks. I mean, Christ I have no idea who she is now or what she’d say or anything or even if she thinks the same or even needs me to say all of it out loud like I want to but as soon as I saw her, dressed in a nice proper dress and with her combed back and held back hair, walking into that room with a man on her arm I can tell you all of that and more came straight though me and I was transfixed and heard someone talking to me right next to me and that was the only thing that snapped my out of it and I answered and slurped down some beer and looked back at her but she was talking to someone and I thought “later”.

 

Look if I tell you now it’s going to sound…no, really, I wasn’t there for the high school reunion, and, as bullshity and improbable as it sounds YES I was there seeing a friend, yes also from high school, but it was coincidentally the time when he was moving interstate ok? So we had lunch and oh god what a bunch of unknown weirdos were congregated there that I had to sit near and because I was late I was at the crap ass end of the table where all the loser people who got pity invites were sat so I knew I was in for a bad hour or so but luckily being late meant lunch stuff was over and these morons where leaving. I only had to endure a few conversations like “what do you do” and I lied and they told me what they did and I said “that must be so boring” and like that until me and my friend and his now ex-girlfriend (thank god) were alone-ish to do the goodbye stuff you do but the real story lies ahead in that I was the same damn town that my high school reunion was in and for fucks sake the same old people I went to school with filed into the pub I was meeting my friend at so there we all were, me from the city back where I grew up and all of them touching me and drinking and being friendly so yeah sure I got caught up in it and yeah sure so I agreed to follow them down the road to the reunion.

 

High school reunions have all those people who come from your misty history and have maybe appeared as weird representations in your dreams where you forgot a whole bunch of information and you thought “I should have prepared, god damn it!” but of course you wake up and think fuck that I am glad I am not there anymore. That’s a reunion, being awake inside a dream and seeing pretty much the worst apparitions or reflections of your past because they are real and more horrific than you could have imagined. I walk around in the fog and every person I bump into has a big smile and so do I I feel and we say three lines and each one I can feel makes me seem so callous and theirs are so honest as if they are real people who actually live lives and believe the things they say. It happens so often that I end up sitting with those I have known for long time/were friends with in high school and they say “what’s wrong” and I answer “what the fuck is going on” and we laugh together.

It’s bad, straight away it’s bad, I mean the venue is bad to begin with, as if the pensioners have left because bingo is finished and there’s one middle aged woman behind the bar not knowing what the fuck is going on because there are people there after seven pee em and we want drinks. Oh god do we want drinks and after I’ve had maybe five glasses of wine she shows up. Oh man fuck I say in my head and I knew her and I can see what she looks like now and I think oh fuck that better not be my fault. She walks over and we see each other but she is hugged by some massively overweight ‘friend’ who I sort of remember but I guess they know each other since those days and I finish my drink and finish talking to this muscle bound moron who I used to know was ridiculed by everyone for being basically feeble and ugly so he pretty much found hid place bulking up and joining the army and I can only say over and over “you’re fucking HUGE” to my detriment.

 

She comes and sits with us because we are from the same clique, that’s how we met and in the most natural of implanted-in-our-psyche way we end up sitting next to each other, not listening to anyone else and talking. It is so lovely and we are smiling and it is as if the decade meant nothing. She had three kids and I have none. This doesn’t matter, I touch her knee and tell her she is so thin (we used to like being incredibly thin) and she says my face is chubby and I say ‘hey, I am healthy…fat and happy!’ but she reassures me in her way that I am not chubby and we laugh at ourselves now and how we used to be so incredibly insensitive to fat people. And we look over together at a fat woman we went to school with grotesquely kissing a much older beared male she brought with her and we screw up our faces and like “ewww gross” or similar and laugh and I light a cigarette and when she says ‘oh you still smoke’ I feel stupid. I try to make her see me as independent (i.e. different to her) so I say “Yeah” casually, blow out smoke and take another sip of wine.

 

Making my way though the idiots, trying to reminisce over things I could hardly care about anymore and some are really trying to sell me the idea of moving back and I can only say “Back? Doesn’t that sound bad to you? ‘Back’?” but they laugh because I have always been strange to them. I am next to her and she eventually finishes up the jargon to some other stranger and I say “Hey” and she says “Wow, you’re here. I didn’t think you’d come” “Why? Because I’ve always said reunions are stupid and weird and that I’d never come to my own?” “Well pretty much and also because why would you bother?” “Well that’s pretty complimentary, I mean, thinking I’d have way better things to do or even that I would b so occupied with my life that I wouldn’t even know about it or something” and she laughs dismissively remembering she knows what I’m like and all that so it goes on. I tell her I think about her every day and I can tell my her reaction that I need to finish off the sentiment by telling her “no not like that I mean you come up, you pass through, you are a thing that happens and, here’s the funny thing, as soon as you pop in I am forced to think of all the others, so funny, like a conga line, ha ha…her and then her and her, you know…it’s funny”.

 

It’s a weird moment, the end. We’re all getting up, finished reminiscing, finished watching and looking one another over. I am just looking at her. To girl I first loved. She is looking at me and we are smiling. I tell her I want to talk to her again and she promises me we will. I get an email address and I giver her my mobile phone number. It’s so terrible because we both know I will never write and she will never call. She has her family and her life and I have so much to write. I compose hundreds of emails every day, but to write her is something different. In the age of paperless transmissions, where we can communicate every five minutes or less, still there is something powerful in writing to someone who you used to love, and have seen them again, and have had that ting again where you remember what you had, and the beauty in knowing that you had to exchange something in order to let yourself go again, this time to a fate much different when you stupidly broke up over childish reasons twelve years before.

 

I get four more glasses of wine from the bar because I don’t want to go back there and I am sitting with them in front of me and she takes one and says “thanks” and I say “they’re all yours…”. She drinks half the glass down and says “Don’t worry. It’s ok.” “What?” “What you did to me” “Christ fuck, yes I know. That’s just so, oh man so fucking gross you know, I don’t mean you I mean me like, what the fuck kind of asshole juvenile dick was I?…thank you, thank you though for understanding…Christ I mean what has it been like, twelve years? Oh god its so,…I think about it every day. Really…every…day. I can’t even kiss a woman without thinking about it. And I wasn’t even drunk or anything!” “Okay okay calm down, geez. You’re acting all crazy” “Yeah? Ffff God okay I’m sorry. I guess, I’ve just been thinking about it, you know, in isolation, like, just my ideas and stuff. Can I say…I am so sorry for that, I mean, it was stupid and weird and wrong and…” “I get it, okay?…I was there you know, I was…pffft well, we were kids right, stupid little kids. I know, no.. I mean, I’ve been with a bunch of guys and you know, it’s always fucking weird, you know? It’s a fucking rape game this sex shit I tell you” and we laugh and chink glasses (plastic cups at this shit place) and we are smiling so it’s all good and I just needed to day it all out loud to her and it fades away; this sick feelings I’ve had.

 

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The War

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The witch lifted up her gown to reveal a horrid stench the likes of which I’d never smelt and it wasn’t what was under her skirt, she released a little creature hunched over, like a half baby thing with a thin white skin and she said “so now you see what there is” and I had my hand to my mouth, or more, I had my shirt over my mouth and nose. “I wanted you to give me what I wanted not give me this, thing”. The thing as it was fell over and hugged itself, like it was dying and I moved over to it but the witch hissed at me and said “don’t you dare touch it!” and I stopped there and asked “what is it?” and she said “This thing came from me because of you”. I moved back, put my clothes back in place, looked at the thing and then back to the witch. “Do I need to do anything with it?”. “No” she answered. “You gave me nothing”. “I can only give you what they give”. “They?” There is nothing for me here, only waste and disease. I give her the five hundred dollars, collect the little dying thing in my arms, against her screams for me to leave it alone, I push her over onto her bed and get the hell out of there.
 

Antoine calls and tells me a name. I barely get to say anything back, really, I say ‘ok’ and that’s it. The thing squirms next to me in the passenger seat. I don’t know whether to clothe it or kill it. It has the face of a man but the body of an infant platypus, that’s the best way to describe it. It has the essence of wings and the legs of a chicken. Perhaps it is a child angel? Who knows what she is capable of producing. She brought Angela back to life, her rotten corpse giving me a few more lines from her dead carcass, her jaw barely able to make the sounds needed to tell me who her killer was. She was yelling for most part, screaming about how the afterlife is so horrible and all that hate inside coming out in a gross guttural blathering until she gave up a name and we could let her soul rest and her body went limp as soon as I called it off and snuffed the blood candles. Fucking witchcraft.

 

I don’t know why but I wake up and have to vomit. I can only get as far as the sink and it comes out, it’s yellow and black and blood. Christ what the fuck is happening, these black magic arseholes getting inside me. I go back to bed and the thing is there, already bigger, about two feet now, its wings growing and its face more beautiful than you could imagine, I start crying and holding my stomach, something is wrong. I move it over and there is mucus or whatever it is on the mattress. I try to pick it up but it starts to beat around like a wounded bird so I leave it. I get my phone and call the witch that gave it to me but she doesn’t pick up so I call Damien instead. He answers straight away and I tell him what I’ve got. He laughs and tells me to feed it fruit and I ask him what to do and he tells me to wait until it’s bigger and moving and I ask “then what” and he says “just call me”.

 

Days pass, I leave strawberries near its face and watch it grow and shed its soft early feathers and grow proper limbs and more and more it smells of flowers and not the gross death smell the witch had. I decide to leave it in my apartment and go out. It’s not five minutes after I get a coffee that an old man in a brown suit stops me and says “Do you know of the Christ Saviour” and I tell him I do and he says “He knows about you too” and I say “I know” and he holds my arm and says “He wants to love you” and I let him go and know that he is both right and assuredly has no idea what he is talking about. I have a new born angel of god in my bed. If I told him that he would try and give it to a priest or someone or else he’d have a half alive child thing in his hands and he would be killed by a demon as soon as he left his domicile. The people do not know about the war but some of them can feel it.

 

It’s a child now, what looks like a ten year old boy but it’s not a boy, it has large wings and thin legs and a face that looks like a Botticelli painting and makes a soft lyrical sound like a woodwind instrument coming from a soprano. It hums a faint melody that makes me cry again. I cry as I make a pot of coffee and roll a cigarette and finish my coffee and pour myself a scotch and want it to stop this crying/singing/soulful lament thing but I go back in the room and see it’s even bigger and I put a few apples and half a watermelon near its face and it looks at me and I cry harder. I leave and smoke my cigarette in the kitchen. As I finish my cigarette, dousing it under the tap and throwing it into the trash it appears in the door frame, full, glowing, looking right at me with its soft wings loosely spread. “Hello” I say and it sings again and I can do nothing but cry.

 

“It’s here” I tell Antoine and he tells me “Ok good. Did you call Damien?” “Yes I called him, maybe two weeks ago”. “And?” “And? What do you mean…um, yeah, he told me to feed it fruit”. “Ok good. And you did and now you need to call him again”. “Christ Antoine, this thing, I…I can’t fucking look at it….every time it’s like…fuck”. “Ok ok calm down. Call Damien right now ok?”. “Sure”. I call Damien of course and he tells me to wait, that it’s not the time yet and that he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. I tell him “Great! What the fuck do I do in the meantime?” and he tells me to put handcuffs on it and I explain there are no hands anymore and he says “well lock it the fuck up somehow” and I say I will. I walk into the room and it is perched on my lounge and I gesture for it to move but it actually speaks now and says “you are a child of Yeshua” and I know what it is saying and I rush over to it but it moves so softly and quietly that I am crying again as if its movements sung to me and it says “Your soul wants love, not this” and it moves again, this time next to me and it lets me know it is okay for me to lock it in the basement so it follows me down and lets me close the door on it.

 

It is the morning and I open the door to the basement and bring Damien down with me and his eyes roll back and his fingers become like daggers and his voice, deeper than always tells me “is this the place Jeremy” and I am scared and say “yes” and he moves past me into the darkness and I scramble back up the stairs and turn on the lights and he is on the bird creature and they are struggling and its feathers are coming off and Damien’s claws are going into it but it looks like the white creature moving under him rises over him and it’s singing a soft song and now it has its feet on Damien’s neck and is standing over him and breaking his body into two pieces and when it is done it rushes up from the basement and past me and out through the front door and as it does it changes into something I have never seen and it disappears so fast, leaving me with a warmth I’ve never felt and the heat becomes hotter and hotter and in my chest I feel it hard until I can’t stand up anymore.

 

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