thecouchdiaries

[thecouchdiaries]

Two Wheels and a Man in Slightly Less Pain

Italy for me was the most profound country to cycle through thus far, firstly because Sean and I got to retrace the steps of our 17 year old selves from a high school European art history, and secondly because through those few weeks I actually started to enjoy the riding (or at least hate it less).

After the quiet regal beauty of Slovenia, we charged towards Venice – our first Italian destination. To our surprise, the Italian roads were in horrendous condition despite a booming cyclist culture. The routes were often riddled with cracks and potholes for what seemed to be the length of the country, testing the strength of our bike frames and the integrity of our wheels as they creaked and cried under the strain of constant impact.

To add to poor road conditions, the bike paths also had a tendency to lead into the motorway – which we were not supposed to be on. At times trucks would scream past in thunderous rumbles, close enough to feel the heat of their engines and taste the dust kicked up by their tyres.

What the Italian roads lacked in infrastructural merit, though, was made up for tenfold by the enthusiasm of its people. There was a certain comradery with fellow cyclists, and on occasion motorists, who would wave, toot, or shout encouragements as we crossed paths.

It took us two days’ riding to get to Maghera, an ever so slightly desolate town a few kilometres outside of Venice. Closed shopfronts and unkempt lawns stretched through the streets, almost empty save the pockets of people waiting at the bus stations to go elsewhere. 

We took a bus in the morning into Venice, red roof tops and idyllic streets crisscrossing above the canals. Gorgeous wooden boats zipping in between the gondolas on the water as currents of tourists pour over the bridges and paths above. 

It was difficult moving in the summer heat, and negotiating the inflated prices of local goods also proved a challenge, but we managed to see a lot of Venice nevertheless – and even found a corner pub for a cheeky aperol-spritz. 

From Venice we began the odyssey to Rome, which coincided with one of my lowest points of the trip. On our first ride day to the capital we were faced with a steady headwind for most of the 150kms, and long straight roads with little to look at except an extensive gallery of flat farmland. We had trouble finding a campsite, and as rain clouds started coming towards us we chose a spot past some rose bushes next to a swamp.

Immediately upon stopping we were assaulted by parasites. I took a look around the thorns I was to set my tent up in, at the greying clouds and the swarms of mosquitos, and I lost my mind. Infuriated, I instead demanded we go to the paid campsite a kilometre or so up the road, and got us a mobile home for the night.

Of course, after the luxury of a mattress and a solid roof, I woke up to a broken spoke. Under the extra strain, another spoke snapped some twenty kilometres later and my back tyre punctured – revealing that the tyre was in fact starting to rip apart so required a total replacement. 

However, in Europe, cycle shops are never far away. We rode on to the next town (Arthur and Freddie taking my bags for fear of my wheel imploding under the weight), found a bike shop, and had everything replaced within the hour.

From there we rode on to Colonella, where we were hosted by the extended family of Arthur’s girlfriend. The house sat on a hill looking out to the sea and the mountains, and offered a full sized table tennis set up which came to dominate our time there. Arthur, to my shame of my Chinese heritage, won every set we played.

 The despair from the sporting defeats however were offset by the gracious hospitality of Melissa and Nino, our hosts, who not only made us a delicious pasta dish drizzled with homemade olive oil and took us around town – they also offered a bed to us in the next town before Rome, L’Aquila.

The ride to L’Aquila was a splendid climb stretching 30kms through valley views and lush green treelines. To Nino’s disappointment, however, the 130km ride took us a lot longer than the three hours he predicted. Sorry, Nino, we’ll do better next time. 

We lucked out and arrived in Rome on a Sunday so the usual traffic was absent, which meant a tranquil ride in through the cobblestone streets. We cycled through the Vatican City in the afternoon light, then past the Colosseum to the home of Alessia, our Roman host. 

The next morning, we lined up/suffocated for three hours in the scorching heat to see the Sistine Chapel. Both Sean and I had seen the collection already from our trip some nine years ago, but this time round it struck a deeper chord. Perhaps I was too young to appreciate the scale and beauty of the works then, or maybe this time around gained some significance from having cycled through Europe to get there. Regardless, the works were truly awesome, in that it inspired full blown jaw dropping awe, and I felt something akin to a religious experience.

Masterpieces by Michelangelo and Raphael are tough to follow up, but St Peter’s Basilica put up a good fight. It’s hard to find the right word to describe the sheer size of the interior, and the sensation of entering St Peter’s - feeling as though you’ve been transported to some divine realm.

On our last night in Rome, it was so warm that Freddie, Arthur and I decided to sleep under the stars in the courtyard of our host’s home – our meadow in the urban mess.

Thus ended our Italian detour, and we shot up to Florence. On one evening we ventured into a forest reserve and camped under pine trees, which made for very comfortable bedding. But the signposts showing wolves were somewhat disturbing, particularly during the night when every little sound threatened death. 

Thankfully, the wolves didn’t make a visit, or decided they had better game to hunt. And we made it to Florence through Siena relatively intact, meeting our friends from back home, Ainsley and Caitlin, in a rather extravagant Airbnb.

Sean had lived in Florence for a year during his studies, so he took us around to his stomping grounds (including the vampiric, bitingly small apartment he lived in), and served as our tour guide for our time there. 

The riding to Florence was a turning point for my attitude towards endurance cycling. The beauty of riding through the rolling Tuscan hills as the sun baked our backs served as an excellent backdrop to the punishing gradients. Each time the pain started to boil over, when the legs felt like they'd seize and when you've sweated a steady dotted trail behind you, each time the weaker parts of you plead for you to stop – you merely had to look up at the contouring landscape of greens and blues in varying hues, and relish the opportunity to see the world this way.

And, for the first time, the pain from the riding became fun. Because you feel like you’ve earned this view, because you can take pride in simply going this far, climbing to this height, because you’ve braved the heat and the mountains and yourself and you’re still here, still moving.

From Florence we managed a monstrous 360kms in two days to Milan. We had originally budgeted three days for the ride, but wanted to get to Milan faster to spend more time with Cori and Pietro, family friends of the Gillies’ and our hosts. With speed in mind, we cracked the 200km milestone on the first day, camping in fields by a Romani compound overnight, and pushed through 160kms the next day.

Once we arrived in Milan we were treated to air conditioned rooms and fine Italian cuisine under the care of our hosts. In the night time we bought wine and sat by the canal in the warm summer air, the riverbanks and the canal-side bars choked full of crowds and chatter. On one evening I had a few too many drinks and was separated from the group for some time, but managed to find them after a solo tour of the city – the resulting hangover however left me out of action for the next day. 

After some well deserved rest, we cycled to a gorgeous lake some 100km out of Milan, and prepared for the alpine assault into Switzerland. Two years ago, Freddie and I did a small European tour (in the middle of my Masters dissertation period), where we spent his birthday in Milan. Like going through the cities where Sean and I once staggered, Milan brought back memories from a younger self, in a different mind, and made for fertile ground for self-reflection.

You might have read my inaugural blog post, ‘Two Wheels and A Man in Pain’, which described the first leg of my journey with the boys as one defined by unrelenting agony and perennial struggle. What I learned through Italy was that the pain never really changes, only you do. Sometimes I wake up to the 6am alarm in a wet tent (my tent is not very waterproof), facing a journey up a mountain pass promising savage struggle, I think to myself – should’ve done this on a motorbike, why am I even here? But then you ride through Italy and realise, this is exactly where I want to be.

[thecouchdiaries]

Two Wheels and a Man in Pain

It was roughly 8.30am on a February morning in London when I finally decided to join The Big Bike Trip. 

I woke up that day at the usual 7.30am with a slight hangover, put my suit on, had a strong handrolled cigarette with a stronger coffee by the kitchen window, and got on the tube to work.

Perhaps it was being packed like sardines in rush hour traffic with my fellow grim faced 9-5’ers on a musty underground carriage, or perhaps it was the prospect of heading to another day in a working life that sees weeks and months blurred into a hazing grey, where one moment is indistinguishable from the next – either way, I came to the realisation that I’m starting my days already wanting for them to be over, and wishing for life to fast forward is no way to live. 

That afternoon I handed in notice, and a little more than a month later I flew to Istanbul to join the boys for the European leg that would see us ride from Turkey to London.

I was woefully underprepared for such an undertaking. Indeed, I had committed little thought to exercise for the two or three years preceding the trip – beyond late night walks from bars to kebab joints, that is. In fact, I could only boast of frequent engagements with family sized portions in takeaway meals, and was deeply committed intensive boozing and smoking regime which left me incapable of negotiating short flights of stairs without pausing for breath and outbreaks in sweat. 

So I arrived at the airport gates, severely overweight, spectacularly unfit, and happily ignorant of the pain which stood ahead.

Two nights after landing in Turkey, my bike was stolen. On the morning of April 10th I opened the door of our apartment where we were being hosted to Arthur and Freddie asking whether I had moved my bike overnight. My initial thought was that the boys were playing some sick joke, but it quickly transpired – to our increasing collective nausea that my bike was gone. 

My sweet bike, oh my sweet steel wheels which had been flown and carried from New Zealand, London, via Zagreb to Istanbul (and which had not seen a single meter of actual riding in its brief stay in my possession) had been spirited away.

Panic in the living room ensued, frustrated shouts, fists clenched in anger, head in hands and elbows on knees.

Nevertheless, a plan was quickly formed – Arthur tasked with alerting the authorities to the theft, Sean stayed to guard the remaining bikes, while Freddie and I went to find a replacement bike.

After several scurried phone calls, we found a potential replacement in a shop on the Asian side of Turkey. As typical in these moments of desperation, the cycle shop which was tipped to have a viable bike in store wasn’t answering their phone, but in blind hope we jumped in a taxi anyway.

Miraculously, the shop not only had the right model of touring bike – it was in the right colour, and the right frame size. 

The intercontinental bike shopping adventure was followed by the administrative maze of Turkish policing, in search of a report so I could claim insurance. Language barriers meant we were repeatedly referred to the ‘tourist police’ who had no authority in filing claims and were little more than glorified translators. Yet, after much pleading, several hours in a police station ringfenced by anti-riot barriers, and the help of our host as a translator, we procured the elusive police report and was ready to begin the odyssey once more.

Thus was the prelude to my cycle tour, fraught with treachery and unexpected turns – before I had ridden even a single meter.

They say life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. Here I am peering over the edge, clawing at the cliff, and slipping my way down 

On my inaugural ride day we took a ferry out of Istanbul and cycled some 60km to our first campsite. When Freddie told me about the first lakeside camp spot I pictured grass by idyllic waters, instead we pushed through mud tracks into some long grass with a distinct swampish smell about. Mosquitos and a plethora of miscellaneous bug life flanked us as the night descended.

Pain beyond belief. Here you see my general lack of fitness and vitamin D, both of which have since been rectified  

The Turkish roads were full of undulating terrain, each climb more taxing than the last. Every extra helping of food, every cigarette, every day of lazy lie ins and glass of rum made themselves known to my tender body, screaming for me to stop, begging me to turn around and fly back to a cushioned seat in a cushioned life.

Yet, through the struggle I also learned euphoria. At the end of a tough ride when the pain finally ends and you cross the top of a particularly rough climb through to wide views of green plains and the sea. 

Quickly the little things I took for granted back in London became treasured luxuries. On the second day we stopped by a gas station and were given permission to stay in a small garden out back. The warm shower in a truck stop bathroom reeking of urine was pure aquatic delight.

It took three days to get to Çanakkale, where we were hosted by a local, Emrah. On our rest day we visited Gallipoli, where the Anzacs and Turkish fought and died almost a century ago. Eerie how on  the deathbed of thousands now tread laughing tourists, and on this island once enshrouded in cannon fire and gun smoke now ring quiet chirping birds and grass rustling in a breeze.

In 1915 soldiers fought their way up these hills towards Chunuk Bair, the highpoint of the peninsula that gave a tantalising view to the Dardanelles Strait. The Anzacs fought bravely but ultimately the Turks ousted them from this position and the campaign to take Constantinople (Istanbul) was lost

From Çanakkale we rode on to Çeşme – from where we were to ferry over to Greece - and early on I was party to the first crash. We were changing formation so the rider up front and take a breather, but Sean’s wheel collided with the leader’s in the process and he went down in a heap, his bike smacking the curb and sent him flying to the pavement. I was immediately behind Sean and rammed straight into his fallen bike and flew off myself – luckily away from the side of traffic.

Adrenaline hid my pain but Sean was much worse, with several deep gashes on his arms, knees, and hands.

Nonetheless, Sean remained in good spirits, and we carried on.

The Turkish roads were for the most part dusty and carved through an arid land, so through the rides the scent of the road would change from the dust to flowers to cow dung and the stink of rotting road kill.

But the Turkish people were also some of the most welcoming I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. One afternoon cycling through the motorway we were waved down by a man next to a strawberry stand who was himself a cyclist, and insisted we stay at his summer house for the evening.

He drove slowly up in his car ahead and lead us into a town called Dikili, through cobbled streets and coastal views he gave us a quick tour of his home and left to conduct some business on his own – trusting us, strangers who he had met only an hour before, to roam his halls of our own devices.

Aside from the gallery of generosity, the leg from Çanakkale to Çeşme also marked the beginning of an odyssey in mental struggle. 

Cycle touring, I quickly learned, is a game of pain and resilience, a test of mind and just how much punishment it can take. 

Some days I wake up already fatigued, and exhaustion sets in from the very first pedal. Legs and lungs in varying degrees of agony, never comfortable, in perennial torture. Arse progressively more sore, every movement a fresh wave of pain. Back and neck edging towards spasm, thighs occasionally threatening seizure. The mind trying to conquer itself, the voices telling you to stop and go home, the screaming monologue asking why you’re doing this, begging for rest. From depression comes anger, rage at the rider up front (Arthur) for setting too high a pace, at the wind for existing, at nature for making hills, at yourself for coming here in the first place.

Then you convince yourself it’s all going to be okay. In time this will end. One inch after another. One push after another. At the end there’ll be rest, and food, and cigarettes, and elation.

And so it repeats in a cycle of hopeless agony and resistance, between perseverance and bleak resignation like the wheels spinning underneath you. Willpower draining away like the grey concrete blur rushing when you look down.

But the pain, for all its struggle, also offers a lesson in the self. By pushing until you are at your limits, you see the outer edges of who you are, where you start to fall apart. And you realise that limits are less defined points of existence and more markers for space into which you can expand. Under such strain, what makes you up becomes more clear. That’s not to say this is the sole or even a comprehensive means to self discovery, for within the boundaries there is much to explore. But through this violence you learn to build something greater. 

[thecouchdiaries]

For Marlboro

Man oh man do I love a cigarette. 

The sweet dull puff, cloudy and thick with poison and flavour. Suck it into your lungs with glee. Glutinous for tar and nicotine. 

Yes. Please. 

The spark excites me, that amber glow as you smoke the paper into ash. Watching a cycle of being unfurling in front of you in all its glory and dirty rotten tragedy. The sound it makes, the fuzzing crunch of a slow burn, whispered crackles from leaves in flames. Wavering up there in wandering wisps, ebbing hazy rivers, silent shifting mountains. Meandering from the tip of the cigarette through your lips and lungs and back out charging into the air in a nebulous rush. 

Smooth and savage. A great push of swirling purple waves. Each puff a unique scene, like ripples left by a skipping stone. Violent as it is calm, a symphony of images at once dazzlingly profound and profoundly trivial. 

Man oh man, do I love a cigarette.

[thecouchdiaries]

The Lamentable Focus On Immigration

While the globe is warming up due to human activity, its many economies still staggering along at limping pace, wars and conflicts waging across continents and the medical world hurling towards antibiotic resistance — the issue in the spotlight is, of course, immigration.

That immigration causes friction between incumbent and incoming cultures is no novel phenomenon. If anything, people have displayed a persistent tendency to distrust other groups known by another name. Indeed, in its broad strokes, history can look like repeating cycles between tolerance and fear.

In comparison to other items on the global agenda, immigration enjoys a disproportionate influence as a catalyst for political change.

In a vote largely taken to be an implicit referendum on immigration, Britain shocked the world when it decided to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May has since stood by the oft-repeated promise of cutting immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ from around 160,000 now.

Then, still more shocking was the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. elections. Mr. Trump, whose election campaign was drenched with vitriolic and xenophobic rhetoric, has spent considerable effort since taking office to enact some of his most cynical ideas — this March, Mr. Trump signed into effect an executive order so quaintly titled as the order “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States” — a slightly attenuated version of an earlier executive order barring citizens from 7 Muslim-majority countries from entering the US (the new order bars 6 of the 7 countries, and exempts current visa holders).

Now, in this midst of rising anti-immigration rhetoric looms a series of European elections which will set the tone of foreign policy for years to come — the current mood of this election cycle exemplified by the disconcerting success of Marie Le Pen, of the French party National Front, who has campaigned vigorously on an anti-immigrant platform (specifically, against those of Islamic faith), and is expected to receive 26-27% of the votes in the upcoming French elections. Neither does it look a whole lot brighter in the rest of Europe — according to Pew Research Centre, a non-partisan think tank, anti-Muslim sentiment is prevalent across Europe, particularly in Eastern and Southern nations such as Hungary, Poland and Greece.

If stripped of the many connotations bestowed upon it by the fervent and ongoing political discussions, immigration is simply the movement of people from one place to another. Yet, it has become one of the biggest and most controversial talking points in the political mainstream, bringing with it a wave of populism that is at times hostile and at others, outright malicious.

But a sober study of the most commonly cited reasons against immigration reveals a word of distorted information and exaggerated fears.

The most dominant concerns can roughly be segregated into security, economics and culture.

People worry that increasing arrivals of foreign nationals may raise the risks of terrorism. And while terrorist attacks do occur, the likelihood of their occurrence has little to do with immigration.

In late 2016 the UN released a report stating that “while there is no evidence that migration leads to increased terrorist activity, migration policies that are restrictive or that violate human rights may in fact create conditions conducive to terrorism”. While this year the U.S. Department of Homeland Security compiled an internal report concluding that “the country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity”.

The more prominent concern has to do with the economic effects: pressure on state institutions and the welfare system, disruptions to the labour market and housing shortages.

While immigrants can and do place pressure on state institutions, and they do use welfare services, they also often turn out to be net contributors to the economy and the state. For instance it is estimated that migrants have produced a net economic benefit of approximately USD$50 billion since 1990. Or, consider a a University College London study of migration effects on the UK, which found that for the period of 2000-2011, immigrants arriving after 1999 were 45% less likely to receive benefits than persons born in the UK. The study also found that immigrants from the European Economic Area (EEA) contributed 34% more taxes than they receive in benefits.

More so, immigrants increase aggregate demand and contribute to GDP growth through increasing spending and tax receipts, which would allow for more jobs to be created. And in countries with ageing populations, young migrants help reduce the burden of dependents. Highly skilled migrants are also of particular benefit to innovation industries.

Some may complain that foreigners bring with them differences which dilute or change the native culture, or that some refuse to assimilate — this is absurd. We live in a world where you can choose to have dinner between a kebab store, a burger house or a pasta joint all along the same street, wearing shoes made in China and watching American shows on a Japanese television. Modern society is a globalised affair, to deny that would be ignoring a reality where cultures are already interconnected and changing with mutual influence.

The point being, certain arguments illustrating difficulties in managing immigration may hold merit, but the conclusions often drawn are far from sound. Shutting out migrants will neither curb terrorism nor cure economic ills. It would, however, undermine the progress consolidated in the latter half of the 20th Century to promote peace, cohesion and shared prosperity (or, at least the attempt at it).

Whether it be labelled dangerous, a symbol of social progress, a burden or blessing — the opinions encircling immigration, and the people who do migrate, are many and varied.

But to start talking about immigration without first acknowledging a shared humanity is to begin the debate with an imperfect premise. By limiting a class of people to being only ‘immigrants’ and nothing else, it frames the discussion as a zero sum, us-and-them adversarial system, where some party must come out either winning or losing. But immigration is not a competition, it’s people with real lives like any other — though a bit (or a lot) down on their luck — being displaced from their homeland for fear of their lives or moving in search of new opportunities.

Immigration has become the dominant battleground for the future of Western democracies. And make no mistake, liberal democracies are at a crossroads — in determination of whether to persevere in defence of the progressive, egalitarian values championed by post-war Europe, or succumb to fear and cynicism in retreat to a world of toxic suspicion.

[thecouchdiaries]

Coffee and Statistics

There comes a time, generally 3-4 espressos in, that a trembling sensation assaults the extremities, followed by a rather alarming feeling of emptiness beginning in the stomach which somehow navigates its way toward the back of the throat. If one should ever reach this point while indulging in the wonders of caffeine, I would recommend either an extended cigarette break, or a healthy dose of a fine scotch (or a bad rum should finances prove insufficient). The latter suggestion comes mainly from the folk wisdom that one should drink coffee to alleviate symptoms of intoxication, so I imagine it works in reverse- although I don’t find it particularly effective (drinking scotch to reverse caffeine-induced ills, that is), but I do like scotch.

Another option, a path for the truly desperate, is a long read of any statistics manual, preferably one which dedicates several lengthy chapters to standard deviation. For a well written text on statistics serves brilliantly in quelling any sense of over-excitement.

In the introduction of my current attempt to ameliorate my nausea (I have neither cigarettes nor scotch), the book very generously states that it makes ‘no claim that statistics are"fun"’. The author is evidently so alienated with the concept of excitement he feels the need to deploy quotation marks, as if a direct mention might just infect him with the ailment which seems to plague so many in this world.

By the 7th or 8th espresso, the experience begins to resemble something closer to bad cocaine: feeling rather fine, it could even be labelled pleasant, but something tells you that pleasant really wasn’t what you were looking for. A muted itch rests just above the teeth and the heart beats with needless haste; nausea fades into the background as a restless wave of flickering attention takes hold.

At this point it is nearly impossible to find calm. Even a determined read of your funless text proves fruitless. And after a feast of graphs and appendices in myriad forms you think- damn, should’ve stuck with that cup of tea.

[thecouchdiaries]

Conversation with a Prostitute

Late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Winter, the streets are wet. Crews of smokers in heavy coats congregate outside clubs and bars braving the night for some chance of adventure.

The Writer steps away from the crowds and approaches a dimlit sidestreet, a brisk walk away from the quieter clubs. In front of him a small unmarked door cast in a blood red light. A few smoking men flank the entrance and make small threatening mutters as the Writer opens two sets of doors into the building.

A pungent wave of smoke greets his entrance, the hazy eyed patrons inside turn to look at the newcomer with pointed disinterest and turn back to face the centre, towards the girl twirling around a metal pole cast in the same dull red light.

A barman dressed all in black walks over, “What will you be having this evening, sir?” He asks, “Just watching? Or with a bit more.. participation?” Sly grin.

“I’d like half an hour with the girl who’s been here the longest.” The Writer says, “Please.” He adds.

Taken aback by the wording of the request the barman hesitates for an instant before returning to his practiced courtesy and says, “Whatever you wish, sir.”

He brings over a drink, an old fashioned with just a little bit too much orange zest. The Writer tips him a few dollars after sitting down on of the plush leather armchairs in the corner of the room.

A petite redheaded girl swings gently around the pole in tired seduction, her skin just beginning to bear the marks of a hard life. Hints of cellulite on her thighs, too much makeup on her face to cover the bags under the eyes.

A slow and morose jazz tune plays, each note lingering solemnly before riding to the next like some noir sequence, like those long Miles Davis solos. It fits to this scene like time slows with all the people here wondering it is that they ended up in this club in the first place. Wondering how things went wrong. How those tiny choices so insignificant could manifest in such catastrophic surprises.

An older woman in a cocktail dress walks over to the Writer. She taps him gently on the shoulder as a mother might do to her child, and she smiles when the Writer looks at her.

“This way, sir.” She says with a well timed wink and gestures inside the club.

A tad cheesy, the Writer thinks. But he obliges, and the woman leads him up some stairs and through a series of hallways with closed numberless doors until they stop in front of one at the end of a corridor. She knocks, three gentle taps, with a pause between the second and the last. The older woman looks at the Writer with a reassuring gaze and smiles again, waiting a moment before opening the door.

Into a small room with a table, wardrobe, bed and separate bathroom. Beside the table a window peering out onto the street, the festivities of clubs in some distance ahead, just gaining some momentum. A fresh perfume almost covering a hint of tobacco smoke. A small red button between the nightstand and the bed, half hidden by the sheets.

The Prostitute sits with her legs crossed in a silken robe. Dark slow curling hair to shoulders. One arm folded over her stomach and the other holding a cigarette out of the open window.

She turns to look at the Writer,

“Welcome,” She smiles, and pauses, “Can I get you a drink? Would you like to shower first?”

“A glass of water would be nice.” The Writer says. Behind him, the older woman gestures to the Prostitute to say ‘a half hour’ before turning discreetly to leave and closing the door in her exit like a drifting spectre.

The Prostitute stands up and walks to the Writer, giving him a kiss on the cheek. Then, stepping to the wardrobe, she opens it to fish out some rum from the bottom and says, “I can give you water, if you like. But I think we should live a little tonight.. don’t you?”

The Writer chuckles, “Sure, let’s give it a go, then.”

They sit facing one another from across the table, the Prostitute picks up her still smoking cigarette from the ashtray and offers a fresh one to the Writer. He takes the cigarette, their gaze meeting for a fraction of a second while she leans over the table to light it for him.

Putting down the cigarette, the Writer reaches into his jacket and takes out an open envelope encasing a hundred dollars, and leaves it on her side of the table.

She counts the notes, it’s too much but she doesn’t say anything. She takes a deep drag from the cigarette.

Maybe she reckons I’ll do something messed up, the Writer thinks.

“So,” The Prostitute begins, “How are you tonight?” She asks sweetly, her eyes looking at him, but not quite focusing on the Writer like she’s seeing something else, or looking at something behind his head.

She looks to be in her thirties, and once upon a time she would’ve been the toast of the town. 

It’s not immediately obvious, and one might struggle to point to any particular characteristic or feature, but her gaze hints at a profound and visceral fatigue, but even the weight of time could not smother what would have been a dazzling face. Not completely. Not yet.

The Writer reaches into his jacket again and pulls out a pen he took from a hotel and a leather-bound notebook. Flipping it to an empty page around the middle, he jots - In another life.

“So..” The Prostitute repeats, “How are you? What are you in the mood for tonight?”

“Well, uh, what are you comfortable with?” The Writer inquires.

“Most things. Unless you’re after something more.. alternative.”

“How about a story?”

“Story?”

“Well. Look.” The Writer starts, “I’m not looking for anything.. sexual from you tonight, it might sound a bit strange. But I was hoping you could just tell me about yourself. Just a story, kind of. I’m a writer, you see. I need stories and.. I find them from people. Your job.. your profession.. gives you a window into the most intimate moments of some people’s lives. I want to know how that has shaped you, you know?”

The Prostitute looks at the Writer and sees him for the first time. “This, this is-“ She begins, but the Writer interrupts-

“Unusual, I know. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” He says, “I mean, it’d be good if you did, of course.”

Taking a drink of rum, she asks, “Well what do you want to hear?”

The Writer chuckles nervously, “Now that I’m here, I’m not sure how to start - didn’t think I’d even get this far, if I can be so honest. Well.. I suppose, how did you get to be here? What took you to this.. spot?”

“It’s okay,” The Prostitute laughs, “You can ask. Why am I here in a brothel, is that what you want to ask?”

He nods, holding the pen slightly above the paper. The Prostitute had been drinking throughout the day, and perhaps it was the eagerness with which the Writer spoke, or perhaps it was his curious eyes darting over her as people used to when she strutted through town, maybe it was just the lack of sleep. But, although initially meaning only to humour the Writer with an invented tale, felt a sudden urge for confession.

“I followed someone here. I was young, he was charming. Older. We didn't stay together long, I cheated on him with someone else. I mean, it was a bit more than that, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much now. It ended in me being here in the city with no way back, that’s what it mean,.” A pause to drink the rum, then she continues, “Worked a cashier job for a while, some cleaning, answered phones. But the money wasn’t enough. Now, well. Well now we’re here.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Twelve, thirteen years.”

The Writer is about to ask another when question when she says, unprompted, “Sixteen, I was sixteen when I arrived.”

“Do you.. do you enjoy what you do?” He asks.

“It pays.”

Bad question - thinks the Writer.

“Never thought about leaving?” He asks.

“Sure. Of course.” Her voice a little louder, like she took offence to the question, “But where would I go? Can’t go back tot he family I left behind. There isn’t a job out there for me that doesn’t include scrubbing floors or counting change. Where do I go? Married men who come here like to play out their Pretty Woman fantasies and offer to take me away. But who would be a fool enough to trust the word of a man cheating on his wife?”

“So, staying, then?”

“Don’t insult me. I know I’ll need to go at some stage, not like I think I can do this forever.”

“Right, sorry.” The Writer sips his rum, harsh all the way down to his stomach, “What’s next, then?”

“A small farm somewhere. My family are farmers. Were farmers.”

“When did you see them last?”

She lights her third cigarette and takes a moment to savour the first drag, not seeming to hear the Writer, she says, “I had a brother when I left. A little brother. Sometimes I wonder where he is now, if he thinks of me. It’s been so long they feel like shadows, I can’t quite remember what they look like. If I squint I can just about see the edges of their faces.”

“Perhaps you’d like to see them again. Surely they’d be glad to see you?”

A car honks aggressively at the drinkers outside the clubs, who have now spilt out onto the road.

“Maybe,” She muses, “For a while I thought I would go back. Eventually. But what would be the point? I wouldn’t have much to say, anyway. Not like we can forget the last thirteen years. If we meet on the street now we wouldn’t even recognise each other. What’d be the point?”

“Are you trapped, then?” The Writer asks, after drinking again from his glass. Someone is drunkenly yelling at the bouncer downstairs to let him in.

“Trapped? What do you mean?”

“Like the only thing you can do is stay here for as long as you can before leaving to the small farm because you can’t turn anywhere else. Trapped in the sense of not being able to make what you want true - like seeing your family - because you don’t know how?” The Writer asks, then immediately regrets his wording.

“Things aren’t easy. It’s true. But I wouldn’t say trapped. Makes it sound like I don’t have a choice, like I’m some victim, like I just got unlucky. I knew the risks when I left. I knew what could happen, I didn’t think they would, but that doesn’t matter now. I don’t need to go to family or anyone else, because I know it won’t make things any better.”

Here falls a natural silence, the Writer recording in dedicated detail their conversation while the Prostitute smokes now her fourth cigarette, surprised by her own words for their candour, but also as if this was the first time she had articulated thoughts lurking hidden until now. She offers the Writer another cigarette, seeing the first had burned to the butt sitting in the ashtray, but he declines,

“Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”

“A Writer who doesn’t smoke..” She gives a nasally chuckle.

The Writer gives a warm laugh and ruffles his hair, “I know, I know. Just never could stand the taste of tobacco.” He shrugs his shoulders, “So, does this mean it's definitely the farm, then? That's where you’re going next?”

“Seems that way.” She responds.

“Why the farm? is that what would make you happy? I mean, why not shack up with some of those rich married guys? Could at least get an apartment or something out of it, even if they’re liars. Wouldn’t you get lonely out there in the farm? Why not share that place with someone? Have your own family, even.” Having been at the bars earlier, the Writer is quite drunk now, and he is beginning to feel a warmth about the Prostitute. He pours both of them a refill, adding, “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrogate you there.”

“It’s fine,” The Prostitute smiles. She gets off the chair and lies down on the bed, passing the Writer and stroking his arm briefly on the way.

“I don’t know what would make me happy. I know what I want now, and what could go give happiness today, right now.. maybe even a few days or weeks from now. But beyond that, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows, really. Happiness comes pretty cheap, though. Nothing a few pills won’t cure.. I’m going to the farm because I’m tired. It’s simple. I’m tired. I know I want to be alone, to rest.. I could leave with one of those men, sure - and I’d be taken care of. But the trouble with men like that is that they think they can own you. Besides, why do you think an apartment would be any less lonely than a farmhouse? That’s not leaving, not really, it’s just switching employers.”

“Sounds fair enough, but why isolate yourself?”

“Why not?”

“You might meet some people. Who knows? You could fall in love.”

“I think I’ve seen enough people to know that I don’t need to meet any more.”

“You don’t think someone could surprise you? Sweep you off your feet?”

“Love? You think that’ll make you happy?” The Prostitute asks, impatient as if irritated by having to explain a concept too obvious to warrant attention.

“Yeah,” The Writer asserts, “Pretty much the only thing we got, I think.”

“Have you ever been in love?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he answers, “And we split after a while together. I know what you’re gonna say.. it ended anyway and I was in pain after. But I regret nothing, not even the heartbreak that followed. Because that kind of profound pain could only follow from a profound joy. It made me a better man, I’m sure it. Besides, you’re never as happy as when you’re in love.

“Sure, it feels great. But there’s nothing special about it, you know.” The Prostitute starts, “You ask me why I don’t think love will make me happy. Well, why do you think anything will make you happy? Beyond a passing moment kind of happiness, I mean. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe you’re supposed to always be slightly dissatisfied so you have reason to do things, to improve yourself, to create in the name of finding happiness. I don’t know if there is something out there that could give me the kind of happiness you’re talking about, the long lasting type — I don’t think anything like that exists. But I do know that I am tired, that I want to rest. I’ve seen people from every walk and culture come and go, none of them seem to have an answer. We all have to suffer life, I’m just saying that I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Okay, but why not dive in anyway and see what you find? Don’t you want to know if there is something that could make you content? Why not fall in love? Suffer a little less?”

“Because falling in love,” She says with a seething scorn, “It solves nothing. Love is a feeling like any other, it’s more intense and lasts longer. But like any feeling it will pass and fade. It’s a drug, you know. It’ll get you high, really high. Lasts a while, a few months, a few years. But when you come to the flat, and you will, the trip will end and you’re left with only the instincts which drove you to trip in the first place. Love’s instinct is lust. You think those men who come here don’t love their wives? They do, or did, kissing them goodnight when they come home after lathering his tongue all over me a half hour before. At some point some time something will happen, someone will lose interest, they’ll get bored or curious about other things. Whatever happens, these feelings, call them love or infatuation or something else, these feelings - and that’s all they are - will fizzle. Lust underpins everything we do, and love is just lust hidden in a pretty dress.” She pauses another moment and adds, “Love is cheap, lust is forever.”

The Writer begins to speak, but the Prostitute, seeing the clock hand ticking over half an hour, says, “Looks like our time is up, handsome. It’s been fun talking.. hope you got what you came for.”

The Writer finishes up his notes and mutters his thanks before leaving. He turns around, feeling the need to say something, but nothing comes to his mind. He leaves having said nothing.The older woman is waiting for him a polite distance down the hallway from the room, she escorts him to the exit through the maze of stairs and corridors back to the main foyer, the same few old men are still sitting silent sipping drinks in the main room. He opens the door and staggers into the night.

From her window the Prostitute watches the Writer shuffle back towards the clubs, reading his notebook as he walks. Lighting another cigarette, she sits legs crossed, waiting for the next knock on the door.

[thecouchdiaries]

Trump and Mr. Burns

On Episode 12 of The Simpsons’ eleventh season, Mr Burns goes to the hospital and is informed by the doctor of his grave state of health—

“Mr Burns, I’m afraid you’re the sickest man in the United States. You have everything.”

But, the doctor explains, it’s not as bad as it sounds— there are in fact so many diseases in Mr Burns’ body vying to kill him that they are actually preventing one another from completing the job— like too many people trying to rush through the door at once, the doctor says.

“So, what you’re saying is, I’m indestructible.” Mr Burns deduces.

“Oh no, no! In fact, even a slight breeze could-” The doctor starts, but Mr Burns walks out before he could finish the sentence, muttering to himself “I’m indestructible..”.

There is a somewhat comical, but mostly tragic analogy between Mr Burns’ disease ridden body and Trump’s scandal ridden rise to the presidential office— and what this means for at least the near future of American politics.

Like Mr Burns, Mr Trump is so plagued by scandal, and his profile so riddled with points worthy of moral condemnation, that one struggles to focus on any single story. With each new case of poorly-thought-out Twitter rants or spur-of-the-moment threats to upset the international order, there’s a new story for the world to be shocked by. Another illness at the door. A blot of paint may be a blemish, but cover the canvas and you’ve changed the tone.

Perennially shameless and viciously vindictive, Trump in mere days accumulates more scandals than most politicians— or anyone, for that matter— could in entire lifetimes. Yet, the man has become almost immune to critique. From mocking disabled reporters and rampant misogyny, to dodgy business conflicts and attacks on the free press, Trump’s trail is dogged by a plethora of outrage and revelations that in most other cases would amount to career sinking incidents— yet here he stands, at the apex of the American political system.

Through ‘alternate’ distorted truths, twisted words, blatant denials of glaring facts and outright lies, he dodged many an accusation of wrongdoing and misconduct. By capturing the anger and dissatisfaction shared by some 60 million Americans against the economic and political establishment, he rose to become president despite serious questions regarding his character and capacity to fill the role.

The trouble is, like Mr Burns, Trump thinks he has become somewhat invincible. Whether Trump was elected because of or in spite of his xenophobic and sexist antics is irrelevant now. Because he thinks he can do whatever he wants and get away with it, and his ego has just received the backing of 60 million people. Consider when he was questioned about his tax returns— he responded by declaring that the American people “don’t care”, and when asked how he could know that, he replied— “I won”.

Shameless? Yes. Laughable? Maybe. Terrifying? Absolutely.

Because this spectacle of fracturing democracy isn’t funny anymore. Because the guy who said he might not accept election results, condones hacking by a foreign state and despises the press has been ushered into the seat of power. Because Trump sees the ethical constraints of his office more as obstacles to avoid, rather than obligations to fulfil.

However you spin it, being placed in the oval office has just given power to Trump’s hateful rhetoric, to his searing fear of strangers and outsiders, to his dangerous skepticism of scientific facts and his hostility towards cooperation: declaring NATO obsolete, shrugging off the EU, shirking international trade and responsibilities. Trump believes he is impervious to criticism from a dishonest media, he thinks his way is the best way, and an election just told him he’s right. It’s no surprise he has been steamrolling through one controversy after another, inviting a frothing squad of sycophantic billionaires for cabinet positions one day and picking fights with the constitution the morning next.

The threshold for absurdity has been raised high; it almost seems normal for Trump, who once declared on Twitter that “Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again--just watch.” (Actual quote), to now be using the very same account to launch verbal tirades — as the president of the United States — against a federal judge for halting his travel ban, “if something happens blame him and the court system. People pour in. Bad!” (again, actual quote).

We have come to expect the worst of Trump — a caricature of himself, acting in every which way as we just feared he might. So many flash points we don’t know where to look. This is why it is so important to persist in scrutiny and brush over nothing; it is crucial in maintaining the integrity of the standards by which we hold people in power.

But, who knows, a breeze might just strike.

[thecouchdiaries]

TIRED

Circles under the eyes, as dark as those sleepless nights. 

Sunken into sockets, in retreat from the waking world. 

Eyelids heavier than weight itself, 

sleep, now an unrequited love. 

Oh how I want you, sleep, 

how I dread the violent intrusion, 

of that morning sound, 

which claws me from my Winter slumber.

Perhaps it is not sleep I love,

but the freedom to sleep, 

to own my time, 

as a monk his desire.

To sleep, or not to sleep, the perpetual war. 

Whether to lie in dreams, or by opposing, end them. 

To take up arms, against the orgy of duties, 

duties imposed but not conceived, 

tis the question.

[thecouchdiaries]

A Day

“Am I smoking again?” he thought to himself, “Is this a joint or a cigarette?”

He was sitting on a camel coloured couch, worn to the wood. In front of him a table full of empty bottles and waste; a stinking bowl of discarded butts and spit sat on the corner, teetering. In his hand was either a cigarette or a joint, he didn’t remember lighting it, but its smoke floated about in defiance of his memory.

Winston barely recognised the room.

The curtains, thick with dust, were closed; the midday sun streamed with violence through its tears and gaps.

The walls were white when he got here, now smudged with handprints and wine stains, drawn on, cracked.

A television lay on its side, paused on a flickering image of a middle-aged man eating lobsters in an empty bar.

Sparsely decorated, the room stunk of stale smoke and drink and piss; the air was heavy, stagnant, suffocating.

His hair, dark, long, dishevelled, but held a certain charm in its chaos. His eyes, brown and unfocussed. Eyebrows, thick. Nose, straight. His lips, full. Cheekbones, almost protruding, but not offensively so. Perched on top of a tall, skinny frame, he gave a distinct impression of a visceral uncaring.

“Where is everybody?”

Twelve months ago, in the first summer out of university, he was made the heir of some grandfather he didn’t know had existed. Through a tangle of complex legal workings he didn’t bother to understand, he was bequeathed a fortune.

Initially, it excited him and he thought it would give him direction: he had grown to be a nihilist and developed what his peers labelled with their petty minds as ‘existential vertigo with a twist of hedonism’, and from his nihilism grew a twisted charisma. The wealth, he thought, would release him from the fetters of empty work and quotidian concern, so he would be free to ponder purposeless in endless pleasure.

Yet, he was no longer.. curious, experience waltzed along to no effect. Time, a daze, as if watching some show with a deep and desperate boredom- saw his life from a screen, happening in front and doing nothing about it, could do nothing.

On occasion, some thoughts would penetrate his daze and claw their way into his consciousness; for the most part, the numbness, the daze, presided.

Mornings could bring unbearable clarity. Winston woke up to earnest thoughts of suicide, about escaping the inevitable revelation of his mediocrity: for in all his endeavours he was a fraud, pretending worth. In music he played broken tunes to empty rooms; his writing reeked of insincerity; in action he was the failed birth of his arrogant heart; in romance, he had lied to himself with such persistence and frequency it was no longer clear whether he had ever loved or even could.

Shaking himself awake, he took a long drag- only tobacco. With a sigh of smoke he got up, picked up a piece of charcoal and wrote on the wall:

‘swept away by tides of fate unseen and so feared. What am I now but some raft in waves?

Memories cannot be trusted, too often they become fantasies weaved by my timid heart.’

He had to stop. Thinking was the great danger, his thoughts could soon burrow their way into the darkest parts of his self unless he left to be amongst people and the distraction of their drama:  being alone did not suit Winston, it opened a world of endless analysis of himself and all around him; lost, thinking and not understanding. He needed distraction.

Winston staggered to the bathroom. Several mysterious lines of powder sat quietly on a silver plate next to the sink.

‘From last night?’ he asked himself, voice husky from drink and smoke.

It didn’t matter. He searched around for a note, rolled it, took a line.

So it was coke.

*

Outside. The sun was fierce, the air simmered and cicadas were singing their summer chant. A lone, white cloud swam through the blue sky, unhurried.

In the distance a figure strolled towards him with a certain listlessness, its outline dancing in the heat.

Winston was sitting on the hood of the car, looking at palm trees waving in the breeze as his heart jumped with impatience.

The figure approached. It was a man, too tall and too skinny, wearing a tweed suit too large for his frame, he had a grey ponytail and a still greyer moustache, and held in his hand a smoking pipe.

“Beautiful afternoon”, the man probed, he looked around and took a long draw from the pipe.

“Are you lost?”, Winston replied

“I suppose I am,” the man said, “I just retired, you see.”

“Right.”

“I dedicated some thirty years to this idea of making purpose from work, to being a… cog. I drove buses, you see, took thousands around this city, and after thirty years I’m leaving and no one will notice… I celebrated my retirement alone, you know.” another draw from the pipe, “I have built nothing, will leave nothing… it’s awfully easy to feel like a failure, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, why?”

A pause, “I was unique once, then I switched off for thirty years and now I’m here, I don't think I really existed in between, you see.”

“Right.”

A longer pause, another draw, “I thought it would be good to say something to someone, that way I won’t be forgotten entirely.”

“Right.”

Almost disappointed, the man stood for a moment in expectation, then left in his listless shuffle without another word.

It was getting hotter, a drop of sweat ran down his nose and waited for a playful instant before falling, he watched it hit the ground and dissipate in the heat.

*

It was the only house on the block that made any noise, in the bored elegance of suburbia this house stood out, lawn unkempt and full of rusting junk, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone playing loudly amongst lewd laughter and occasional bursts a loud pop sound.

He entered without knocking and was greeted by Bernie, his dealer. Always dressed in a faded singlet and shorts, Bernie had bleached blond hair, enjoyed strong rum and only wore shoes on occasions of significance.

They went into the living room, in the corner a small circle of six were smoking a bong, several others lay entranced on a miscellany of bean bags and couches.

Bernie poured Winston a large glass of rum and handed him a paintball gun.

He gestured at the large canvas leaning against the wall, “loaded with paintballs of every colour, shooting art, man.”

Winston fired a few rapid rounds at the canvas, splattering dots of blacks and purples and reds and whites.

He put down the gun, then sipped his drink, vicious.

“Just got a new batch of lsd, ridiculous.” Bernie said with a smile, “Ridiculous.” he repeated as he nodded in approval.

“Yeah alright.”

“Alright, man. Anyway, I was thinking about what you were saying the other day, you know, about how value is made and searching for meaning is fruitless and futile or whatever, since they don’t really exist outside of the human mind and is just make belief. Right?”

“Well?”

‘Well, even if value is made and not given, I don’t see how it means any less… I mean, why care that reality is constructed? Who says you need to have some transcending, objective purpose anyway? Make your own purpose, make your own truth, it’s as real as the next but that doesn’t make it less real.

Pausing to divide up lines of coke on the table, Bernie continued-

“Besides, if value and reality and truths only exist as far as our constructions and perceptions do, then those constructed values and truths and realities are in themselves true by virtue of their existing. It’s one truth among many.”

A long drink of the rum, Winston’s tongue was starting to lose feeling. He began to speak but was interrupted by Bernie.

“I know what you’re going to say, that you don’t doubt that some thing exists, and maybe even truths. But you doubt moral truths, fucking values, opinions. Things are here, they exist, so what should we do about it? It’s all.. guesswork. Right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I think people weren’t built for long lasting joy, it’s unsatisfying to be in comfort for too long, always there’s a drive to achieve the undoable and vanquish the undefeated. Some live in Rome and have never been to the Colosseum, but they might’ve visited.. the London Eye. Because the Colosseum is easy, accessible, even normal, unenticing, uneventful, banal, common. Reach for the exotic, seek adventure, excitement, difference. That’s where all this drive for searching for meaning and having dissatisfaction with circumstances comes from. So, we are, really, rigged for struggle and this natural.. need for more.

“Right.”

“You said were saying before, so many ways to live in this world, some say seek pleasure, others shedding desire; love, friendship, fun, adventure, work, family, virtue, vice, immorality, rationality, combinations of them all, mixed and matched like that paintballed canvas. Each as right as the next. Which do you choose? It’s the desperation of not knowing and not being able to know.”

“Sure”

“That just seems like apathy, man.” said Bernie, he railed a line, then shook his head in disapproval, “I mean, if you are going to doubt and deny all, you may as well doubt doubting. There might be moral truths out there, our not being able to perceive them now doesn’t entail not finding something in the future. You may as well keep looking.”

“So, a quest without a goal?”

“Na, man, the quest is the goal.”

They chuckled in unison, and launched an assault on the cocaine to Dylan’s croaky serenade.

*

The car rushed smooth and silent along the road. Once again in search.

“The pain of choice is the need to analyse,” Winston thought, “everything observed and scrutinised. Shifts in self like ever-changing seasons. I flip between different paths, and I switch so often nothing seems to matter much, their impermanence revealed. People need stability, my thoughts drive me away from calm.

I’m floating in an ocean with no land in site, and I’m swimming and swimming and swimming and… what else can I do?

Perhaps it is a difference in disposition, we can both see that humanity rushed around in their frivolous pursuits, unthinking. Ants, working and doing and moving for reasons that are barely veneers. They can see that things kept running, yet nobody knows why and are afraid to ask. Where I find bleakness, Bernie sees invitation.”

Winston stopped outside a house. Preceded by a wide lawn of grass in a pleasant green, the home shined with a glorious white and could only be described as quintessence of comfort. Winston knocked several times and took a step back. He was greeted by Olivia, who wore a tennis dress and had bright red hair. Her eyes were of a soft hazel, her face was freckled; with full, red lips, and she carried with her a fragrance not unlike strawberry.

She smiled brightly and said with warmth, “Hello there”

“Hey”

She took Winston’s hand and led him to the living room, where she poured two glasses of orange juice. Winston leaned close and kissed her. She was soft, warm, sweet. Olivia undid her ponytail and hair fell between their meeting lips. His thoughts stopped, fading as he became lost in her embrace. He was consumed in her warmth, her scent.

The phone rang.

“It’s him,” she sighed, and answered, “Hey you.. sorry I’m busy at the moment.. A bit later?.. I love you too.

She hung up and moved to the kitchen, where she sat down on on a high stool and drank from the glass.

“Long distance is such bother.”

“Yeah.” Winston replied, and moved over to a stool opposite.

“Orange juice is swell, don’t you think? I like how the pulp floats. But you have to have it cold, otherwise it’s a rotten drink..” She started.

The air was still. He could hear the cicadas chirping their anthem. He liked Olivia for the sound of her voice, and did not care much for what she said.

“..Although, sometimes pulp is not so good with ice..” unaware of his inattention, she continued.

At times his scathing for the world seemed to him a mask, his denial of meaning the child of his apathy. Perhaps he was afraid of searching, and failing.

“..I like how cold it is, like all my mind can stop for a second when I..”

He was always in search of distraction. It wasn’t a decision as much as a necessity vicious in its need.

“..it’s good because nothing gets stuck in your teeth..”

Perhaps it was in the effort to see that he became lost, being involved in life meant distraction, things were so opaque up close. Only when he was removed could he really see, and he became so distant he forgot how to be involved in life, so he searched for distraction in a cry for a return to.. some better state long passed.

He looked her in the eyes, she stopped talking and shifted uncomfortably.

“Do I have something in my teeth?”

“Gotta go, thanks for the juice.”

Winston left the house and got back into the car, then lit a cigarette. He touched the end of it, and winced. He repeated the exercise a few more times before leaving the car and laying down on the middle of the road. No cars, no people, only cicadas.

Winston closed his eyes and fell asleep.

He woke up. The cicadas have stopped singing and made the silence pronounced. He could feel the heat of the road on his back.

“Is this a joint or a cigarette?” He thought to himself.

[thecouchdiaries]

A Jazz Singer

Through the thin curtains came the morning sun. Its yellow rays illuminating the swirls of dust dancing about around the bed.

On the bed rests a middle-aged woman. Her white, frizzled hair drops down to just below her ears; her brows are frowning slightly, accentuating the lines on her forehead; deep wrinkles run down her cheeks, leading to her full lips, where the lipstick, slightly smudged, remains from the night before. Her face is supported by a sharp, heart shaped jaw line, which in turn is supported by a long, thin neck. She breathes deeply, each outward breath sending the clouds of dust into renewed ecstasy.

A piercing ray of sunlight, permitted by a gap between the curtains, moves steadily upwards from her bare chest to her neck and after some time, finally finds her eye. Her sleep disturbed, she awakens uneasily from the deep slumber. Frantically her eyes dart around, almost not recognising her own room. There has been a lot of moving around in the last few years, how did she get here?

She drags her feet off the sheets and lets out an exhausted sigh. Rubbing her face slowly, she relights a half smoked cigarette and inhales deeply. For a moment her eyes close, and her mind wonders into pictures of times before. The bittersweet taste of tobacco reminds her of those clubs, the air thick with perfume and hazy with smoke. It reminds her of soft velvet armchairs and whiskeys and dimmed lights and old wooden pianos. It reminds her of all those times she would strike a match and watch the flame burn for a moment before deliberately, almost laboriously, lighting her cigarette. The end of the cigarette would burn furiously, emitting a glorious wave of smoke, which would waiver in the hot, still air and finally join the growing fog. Then her eyes open and she exhales and she is back in this room she barely recognises. How did she get here?

The makeup on her face from the night before feels heavy and uncomfortably dry. But she likes the sensation, it is dirty and unkempt and it makes her feel like she is still alive. Still ready to explore and experience. She looks around the room, it is a simple room. There is a small desk in one corner where a few unread books lie in rest, suspended in inertia, peppered with a fine layer of dust. On another corner is an old turntable and a small selection of vinyls. In the back of the room, where she is sitting, is the large double bed, with grey patterned sheets and a thin blanket. Scattered around the floor is a miscellany of cocktail dresses and feathered hats, all scrunched and tossed aside unceremoniously. Her attention settles on the dress she donned last night, it too put aside unscrupulously; the dress's mesmerising scintillation obscured beneath a wave of crinkles and creases. In an almost thoughtful manner she rises out of the bed, and dazedly looks at the wall for a moment before the beginning of her exodus.

She staggers out of the room into a small hallway and turns into the bathroom. After an involuntary moment of hesitation, looks into the mirror and begins removing the paint on her face. The operation begins slowly, methodically, meticulously. But in an accelerating procession her movements quicken. Starting from a slow crescendo to a flurried attack. Then, in broad, violent strokes she tears the makeup off. And from this unsuspected rage her movements stagger, and her hands fall in surrender.

***

She is on the tram. This line will take her to the town centre, where she can sit with the masses of patrons who seemingly are on a perpetual coffee break. The interior of the tram is of a sterile plastic gray, interspersed by bright red poles. The passengers share nothing in common except a look of bored disdain. They stare in disparate directions, in determined silence, almost desperate to avoid catching another's glances. She, too, conforms in this ritual of isolation. And for several stops she sits like the others, hearing and feeling only the tram's movement, enshrouded by fantasies of release from this soundless prison. Then, a man waves in her direction with the look of recognition in his eyes. Her heart beats a little faster, she smiles at him. He recognises her, he must have seen her perform, or maybe he owns some of her records. There is no other feeling like being recognised for your work. A fiery river of pride curses through her heart, her body is almost shivering with arrogance. This is why she performs, this is why she is better. Royalty cheques can't compliment her voice, or admire her figure. This, this is why she sings. This feels like living. The man walks towards her, but she sits still, feigning ignorance. He shall have to work for her company. He speeds up, good, he is eager. But he doesn't stop at her seat, why? The man keeps walking a few steps behind her and proceeds to give a warm greeting to a young woman. A wave of embittered rain falls over her imagined encounter, now resting in ashes of sour disappointment. What is she doing here?

***

Her walk from the tram to the cafe is slow and pensive. The sky is of a light grey and the air is chilled. Around her the patrons of the various cafes are filtering indoors, but she does not notice. Eyes open but unseeing, the woman slumps into a seat in the open quad. She lights a cigarette, and as she draws that first lungfull of smoke a memory comes to her: a fragment of a song from eons ago.

Time is incessant, it carries on without even a semblance of care.

To be impatient is to misperceive time's mechanics-

That her passage is an inexorable train.

But you are the driver of your own perception,

so slow down, or speed up.

Learn to steer your mind and

you will learn control in uncontrolled chaos.

And in the quagmire of being, you will find your feet.

But has she learned control? Is she the driver of her own train? Where is she now? How did she get here?

[thecouchdiaries]

A Toast To The Absurd

A toast, a toast for those seconds when you look around and see the strangeness of the wheres and whats and hows of a moment: that instant when you see the absurdity of it all, and can do nought but laugh.

A toast for when you realise how small you are- this speck on the landscape, a dot, a single number of a family in a province of a country of a continent of an earth of a solar system, which sits humbly in a galaxy amidst galaxies. For when you feel the heat of the sun on your arms, and know that it comes from a fucking explosion in space, billions in age. For those warm moments in soft lit rooms falling for someone, the way how time seems to slow down around the gaze of her eyes. For the simple joy in a bonfire with old friends. For the absurdity of being able to enjoy anything at all, that in a vast and irrational universe creatures such as us live in the somewhat inexplicable condition of recognising our own existence.

For what is more strange than life? Stardust distilled into consciousness. Beings that feel boredom and joy and surprise and fear.

We sit in Camus’ theatre of endless, meaningless drama, and we can either laugh or languish.

True, it is created significance. Despite knowledge of unreality, meaning is born, and stands tall in defiance of the inherently irrational, the supposedly superficial.

Too often are such moments deprived of their essence, their colour bleached by repetition and neglect. Too often the mind fails to notice the poignant and sees only the mundane; or too readily acquiesces to monotony feigning beauty.

You can create purpose, for sure. Be it fortune or fame or fatherhood, But in the back is the sheer strangeness in the facts of life; that you must live by invisible contracts called laws and etiquettes, that you choose to follow these dictations, and worry incessantly despite an entire universe enshrouding you.

But why not pick one option, or a select few, and commit to those? Sure that could satisfy. We don’t need objective meaning to derive pleasure for we are but human.

Well.

What if you’ve dug to the bottom, and you find only air? So you sit on your cardboard throne, now vacuous vain vapid and ashamed. Doomed to repeat some life lived a thousand times before. And then you realise that even your supposed misery is unworthy of thoughtful pause, and all you have left is drink and smoke. Besides, I’m a digger.

When Alexander reached the end of his campaigns he wept for he had no more worlds to conquer, this is similar. It is the precise and quite deliciously devastating sensation of ‘this is it’, the knowledge that there is no more beyond where you stand. Your created meanings, your insignificant goals for a fleeting life, they are all there is. Perhaps it’s greed, maybe that’s the cause of such dissatisfaction. Etches in the wind, castles in the sand.

So let’s smoke ourselves to stupor, let’s loosen in the embrace of uncertainty, surrender to a cold and purposeless universe. Let’s give a toast to the absurd.

[thecouchdiaries]

The Lazy Romantic

Last night I dreamt.

I was in a small concrete room with harsh white ceiling lights that gave off a constant buzzing at an unsettling pitch. A metal table in the middle, two wooden chairs on either side; a rusted door in one corner.

It was an interrogation room, of sorts: showing on the wall was a video- silent- of a middle aged woman, naked on her back, legs spread and her fingers deep inside herself. I sat down on one of the chairs and watched her. I watched her body twist and pulse in pleasure until she contorted to climax and lay still twitching.

It occurred to me that there was no one to keep me prisoner and that I could very well leave, so I walked to the rusted door in the corner and turned the handle.

The doorway opened into a bustling street market, food stalls and bookshops or antique stores lined the buildings on either side and spilled into the pavement. The smell of steaming food cooking and fresh fruits and mulled wine in the air. Throngs of patrons in the background giving off mumbling chatter.

Someone was walking beside me and I realised that she was holding me hand. I turned to see who it was and saw Olivia. Olivia with soft brown eyes and auburn hair swaying in the wind. I was surprised to see her there, surprised and jubilant. I turned to kiss her and the scent of her hair enshrouded me in eversweet fog and she moved close. I could feel the heat from her body, I could taste her lust.

So we walked. And as we walked the sky began changing, painted into undulating hues of effervescing light, morphing and breathing from one shade to another. As we walked the crowd parted, they slowed then came to a halt. Silent.

Then, with unannounced savagery they pounced on me, rushing over me in a great torrent, beating and chanting with brutal rhythm. I lost hold of Olivia and felt myself pushed into the ground. Through the ground. I was being swallowed by the street, pulled into the concrete.

I appear in a large church filled with pianos of different colours and sizes lining its sides. I walked up to the piano up front by the alter and started playing Chopin’s Ballad no.1.

As I played the piano got quieter, the keys stiffer and the pitches off key. It got darker like someone was turning down the lights. It got cold, a deep and bitter cold that cut through my chest. I shivered and shivered and a crushing black came over me. A thousand unseen hands stabbing me with needles injecting dread

*

I wake up convinced that I'm the last one left. The fear grips me as I take my first conscious breath. The conviction is visceral and unwaveringly absolute. I don't know how but I just know. I know I'm the only one here. Panic sweeps over me like the sunlight blazing through my window. I can't hear people outside, no sound of cars nor laughter. They've finally found out how worthless I am, that I've been a fraud all this time, and they've left me to rot.

An emptiness fills me like my stomach had just been carved hollow, and my chest tight and heavy, squeezed. I suppose despair is meant to be hollow, how else are you supposed to feel about a life without hope? I can see the future play out in front of me- the last one left, condemned to solitude for the rest of days. Stalking the earth like some vile ghoul. Detested and abandoned by his own kind. How can I be the only one left?

I sprint out of my apartment onto the street, legs buckling, almost in tears, covered in cold sweat and still half naked. The sun blinds me for a moment when I charge out the front door but I keep running and almost collide with a man walking with his kid.

They stop and both him and the kid are staring back at me with this identical baffled look. Nostrils flaring, left eyebrow raised too high and mouth open in a square shape. I realise I'm only wearing underwear and am sweating profusely from panic but I can't even begin to feel embarrassed because I'm so glad to see someone still here. So relieved that I'm not alone.

I want give the man and the kid a hug, tell them how grateful I feel and I start walking towards them. He sees the cuts on my arm and starts to back off, dragging his kid behind him. I want to stop them and explain but my nose starts bleeding and drips all over me as I move. They look back and start running, turning their heads every few steps to make sure I'm not chasing them.

So I stand there, one outstretched arm frozen in air. Face and body covered in drops of blood, looking on at the fleeing father and son. I chuckle humourlessly to myself, defensively. I am vile, I am repulsed by the world in daylight.

I guess I am the last person left after all.

The irony is not lost- in fear of being alone I have reached out, quite literally, and in consequence the first people I run into are sprinting away. Sprinting into their safety and comfort zones. Sprinting into their warm family homes and trivial-grocery-store-type problems. Running back to their practiced mundanity and outstandingly unremarkable lives. I feel like I'm in Notes from the Underground, like I'm some masochistic misanthrope who only wants to join the world. I reject the world because they reject me. But my rejection is born from spite and theirs from distaste.

Can't take this, can't be alone. I run back to get dressed then jog down a few streets to get to a busy road. I'm standing across from a park, kids playing basketball, runners bobbing across the field. Blurs of cars speed past me, the air heavy with the sound of their passing. My eyes are closed, I'm listening to the traffic and the chatter of people passing me by, I'm listening and float into relief.

Busy roads almost always calm me down, the noise tells me that people are still here, and the drivers are too preoccupied to care about me so it gives me little obligation to be anyone else. I can feel like I'm a part of something and I don't have to worry about them leaving me, I don't have to worry about them asking me.  I'm still a part of this world, people are still here, I'm still a part of them. I'm not alone.

*

“Hi there mister, I'm Toni, Toni with an i.” He says, “Sorry to bother ya, sir, but could you spare a bit of spare change? I'm just trying to get a bite to eat, you see.”

I’m on Bethnal Green Road, the main street in the area. After this morning I needed to be with other people, even in the company of strangers I can extract relief. The sky shines a clear blue and crowds stroll chattering, people of all walks filling the scene: a banker in a blaring purple suit swaggers, a beer-gutted alcoholic standing idle by his favourite pub holding his favourite lager smoking the cheapest cigarettes he could find, a tired mother with three screaming kids tugging at her sleeves. Among them is Toni with an i, the ragged haired ginger vagabond in old clothes with a piercing stench asking me for a bit of change to get some food.

He’s looking at me in the eyes with feigned indifference, like it’s a simply matter of fact that he ought to ask some stranger for money in exchange for nothing, and that stranger should oblige for some unfathomable motive. With shameless expectation. But I suspect it is an act, the last ditch effort to exert free will - If life will push me down to lowly depths, then I shall sink, and become as undignified a man as I can be.

I feel a sympathy for his cause, maybe it’s his struggle against isolation, the bitterness he feels from the betrayal of life’s promises. He is an utterly unenviable byproduct of an indifferent society, and having been neglected, he is responding by indifference in return. So, I decide to give Toni with an i a break.

“Alright Toni, how about I get you a decent meal in one of these restaurants around here?”

He hesitates for a moments, thrown off.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean get you some hot food and a pint. I mean, you said you wanted to get some food, didn’t you?”

Toni frowns, then quite subconsciously licks his lips.

“Alright, then. Thanks, sir, that’s very kind of you”. His voice is reluctant, suspecting.

“Well, which one do you want to go to?” I ask.

He looks all around and contemplates for a moment, “I.. I don’t know. Whatever you think is best, I suppose.”

I take him to the pub with the beer garden around the corner, we walk up to the bar to order. The barmen are stiff and awkward, and I find it amusing how easily they are disturbed by a change in their routine. After a long while, Toni orders a beef and ale pie, and a pint of guinness. I get my rum and we go outside to the garden.

We sit, and each sip our drinks. He’s staring down at the table, silent. I offer him a cigarette and we stay unspeaking for a long while.

I take a large gulp of the rum and start speaking, “So, Toni. In exchange for the meal and pint, I want you to tell me your story. You know, how you got here and whatnot.”

“My story?” Baffled again.

“Yeah, you don’t have to tell me right now. Wait till after you have your meal, let’s just smoke a cigarette and enjoy the drinks for now.”

He nods slowly, “alright, then, mister,” He pauses, “what’s your name, anyway, sir?”

“Walter.”

“Nice to meet you, Walter.” Toni say, “What do you do, anyway, if I may ask?”

“Yeah. I’m a ghostwriter for pop singers.”

“Oh yeah, and how’s that?”

Before I can reply a waitress arrives with Toni’s meal and asks if we'd like anything else, Toni orders another beer. She looks at him and hesitates for a moment before taking the order, her face is tight with discomfort.

Toni is staring at his meal in silence. He looks up at me with a confused frown then starts eating. He rampages through the dish in minutes, and washes it down with his guinness.

Patting his stomach, he exhales. Satisfied and visibly merry, he says, “Right. Well- can't tell you how happy I am to have a meal like this, mate.. Really can't. Eating like decent folk again. Been on the streets so long I think I forgot that feeling, forgot that I had ever felt it.. You know, being treated like a person, with some bloody dignity.”

“Anyway, you want to know how I got here. Where do you want me to start?” He asks, then adds, “By the way, mate, must say this is one of the strangest things I've done in a long time. Came to you asking for a bit of change and you take me to this fancy spot for a warm meal. And all you bloody want is a story from my life. Never met nobody like you before.”

“Are you uncomfortable, Toni?' I ask.

“Well, no. Just a bit strange, that's all. Now, where do you want me to start?”

“Wherever.”

Toni chuckles lightly, “Alright then.. Well, way back when I was a kid I went to this boarding kintergarden, right. Monday to Friday we'd be there and our parents would come on Saturdays to pick us up. In the nights we had these cots we'd sleep in. Cots, you know cots? The baby beds with the wooden bars? They always looked like cages to me, and I could never get out without making noise and getting yelled at.”

A long drink of his beer and smiles as he wipes off the foam from his lip, “Anyway, the kintergarden was by a main road with all these shops and my cot was right next to the windows facing the road. Most nights, after the kids have fallen asleep, I'd stay up kneeling on the edge of my mattress pressing my hand against the window and I'd look out at the shops and all the people walking around going where they pleased. I was envious, you know. Because those people, the people in the shops.. they  could choose when they slept and where they walked. Cos I was trapped and abandoned in my little cot. Cos when I looked outside and imagined myself there I felt happy. And I thought that once I got out and joined that world I'd be happy too.”

Toni pauses, in thought, hand still gripping his glass, “I was an electrician before all this. Had myself a woman and a kid was on the way, we had a home and car and all that. But after all that, after leaving that kintergarden and school and going into work, going into the world- the world that promised me happiness, the world I used to look out at through that window- I realised I didn't feel any happier, just got sadness with more layers. Got out here and nothing changed. Still stayed up at nights feeling trapped. Still looked through windows out at a world I couldn't join. Only now I can't see my cage and there is no window to look out of. I still felt the same. Still an outsider, still alone.”

He laughs, shaking his head slowly,  “So I got drinking and getting all fucked up on this drug or that.. just didn't know why I couldn't join the happy happy people, or maybe I realised them people out at the shops on the road were just as trapped as me.”

Another long drink, “Two years.. It took two years before they left me. My woman took the kid then took off, lost my job, then lost the house. And I fucking deserved it, I did- just couldn't see it cos I was too far gone. Maybe I'm just jumping from cage to cage, you know? Maybe I never even left my cot in the kintergarden, maybe it just kept getting bigger.”

Finishes the rest of the beer, “And now you know. Thanks for the meal, really. I want to give you some parting words or something.. You know? Just.. Just don't look through windows like I did, man. It's all the same shit whichever side you're on.”

*

I'm sitting by myself in the corner of the garden of a run down pub and thinking about my dream about Olivia. It left me in longing so I'm here. The insults are screaming again- tearing into my mind like someone yelling through a megaphone into my ear. I shake my head but nothing changes because it's inside. I know it is. But I turn and look around me to see if anyone is talking anyway. I'm alone. I shake my head again and take a large gulp of a glass of rum.

You fucking fraud you. Slime, slithering through life like a bad taste. You are so pathetic. You're not broken, you're just a needy bitch crawling on your belly. 

A burning mouthful from the glass, gagging at the taste. I cower into my corner.

The drink is hitting  now and fighting its way up; I dry wretch a few times and finally give in, leaving the pub and finding a corner somewhere. The vomit comes in small painful bursts, regurgitated food and drink splattering over this wet concrete pavement.

I guess it's time to go to the party.

*

Squeezing past throngs of people in the narrow hallways I walk to the bathroom and lock the door behind me, muffling the sound of the party outside. I look at myself in the mirror and take out the bag and my keys from my pocket. Dip the key in the bag, take out the silly snow, the wonderdust, and breathe it in with the desperation of a drowning man would air. I look hard in the mirror, into the widening pupils and the tiny beads of sweat springing up from my nose.

Fucking nobody. Like the world fucking cares.

Another hit. Then a little bit of blood comes out of my nose, I watch it slide to my lip then wipe the blood off with my pinky and dip it in the bag then rub the blood and coke together into my gum. Just before I almost felt like crying but now the allnumbing frantic ecstasy is coming over me. I can barely feel my face. 

Quick check in the mirror for residue on the nostrils, then walking out to get a beer from the kitchen. I see Olivia sitting on the dining table with a glass of vodka in her hand and a small group around her. She has an odd beauty, her features are individually beautiful, but each so distinct that as a whole you sometimes don't know which part of her face to look at. Long dark eyebrows framing a sharp face with large soft brown eyes, high cheekbones and a slightly crooked nose dotted with freckles. Lips a light hue of pink and swirling dimples when she smiles. Auburn hair just past her shoulders that dance when she turns her head.

She's swinging her legs, listening to a guy describing his new poetry collection, he's speaking to nobody in particular but is moving his hands to emphasise the importance of what he's saying,

“Poetry.. at least my poetry, they are born from the shattered dreams of my naive self. Because.. because the persistence of vicissitudes is a fact of fate. We are pebbles in a stream, dust in the wind. We are lost to rebellion without triumph, revolution without change...”

Olivia sees me and gives me a warm smile as I grab a beer from the fridge and walk over to her.

The beer can makes an audible hsss when I open it. “How you doing?” I ask.

The poet flicks a glance at me and continues, “.. Besides, what hope do we have when most of us are trapped in addictions to misery? The failure of humanity is unrelenting narcissism. We are reduced and condemned to existential myopia, seeing only our own sorrows. Seduced by our self importance. So lost to introspection that the world is burning down and we're still worried about waistlines and identity...”

“Where have you been lately? I haven't heard from you in days.” She says, then jumps off the table and takes me aside, “You haven't answered my messages, everything alright? You okay?”

“Yeah, just been swamped with work. What you been up to?”

She ignores the diversion and gives me a knowing smile, “Don't give me that shit, trying to change the topic.. are you tumbling? Tell me if you are, I don't want to see you go do stunts and get all reckless jumping off roofs and all that kind of shit,” a pause, “It’s so immature.” She adds.

Putting down the beer and pouring myself a glass of  vodka I say, “Hey, sometimes you gotta get close to death to feel alive, you know?” And I chuckle.

“That's absurd, go for a run and get your heart beating or something. Getting depressed and trying to find answers in self abuse, and don't tell me it isn't, that close to death to feel alive shit is such a lie. The self abuse doesn't work, Walter, it's so stupid. It makes me so mad ever time you go into those moods.”

“Don't worry about me,” I reassure her and put my arm around her, “I'm more than fine, honestly just swamped with work. No tumbling. Promise.”

This is such a lie. You like that she worries, you like thinking you mean something, don’t you? The Selfish Sadist. You like her pain. Don’t you?

“Okay. Good. Because I was talking to Sam and he told me you had too much to drink last weekend and got into a bar fight and threw a bottle at a cop. You know that makes me worry about you.”

Her arms wrap around me and her face is pressed against my chest.

The self anointed poet is getting louder, “Life is a piece of shit, you didn't ask for it, just.. happens to you. But why care? Why not indulge in fantasies and intend ignorance? Because pretence is far simpler than truth. Because honesty is toxic. Because man without his masquerades is a petty, jealous, bitter, cowardly creature.”

“Hey, no need to worry. Just having a good time, that's all.” I say, and I kiss her on top of her head.

“Alright, now would you be a gentleman and go get a glass of cider for me?” Olivia asks, then steps back and looks me up and down, “You really need to eat something, you're looking skin and bone these days.”

“Of course, be happy to get you a drink. But only if you give me a kiss.”

She smiles and kisses me on the lips lightly, “Happy?”

“Delighted.”

As I leave I hear the poet deliver his ending lines, “Because in sleep are dreams. And dreams matter because they are the most real unreality into which we can flee, to live by proxy because of the chronic dissatisfactions with our own lives.. Reality is a pill too bitter.. frivolous preoccupations penetrate porous will... Now, who's got the coke?..”

I'm coming back from the garden with a glass of cider and just before I get into the kitchen Olivia's laugh spills out- sings- into the hallway, I pause and lie against the wall and sip my beer. The music is shaking the sides of the house slightly and my fellow partiers are each little instruments in a symphony of background chatter. But her laugh, her laugh cuts through like the first note of the lead violin, like all this noise and sound is here only to frame her laugh. There's something about it, it sounds so real, like every time I hear her laughing I remember what happiness is supposed to sound like, and she sounds so happy. I'm smiling when I walk in and she is being lifted by some guy up onto his shoulders and she's downing her vodka, giggling. Her eyes are smiling and I feel a slight pain in my chest when she laughs again.

I haven't heard Olivia laugh like that in a long time, not with me, anyway. I'm angry. I'm angry because this vile vacuous anonymity of a cunt can make her laugh and I can't, I'm angry because I'm jealous and ashamed and disgusted with myself. I'm angry because I'm nothing and I know it.

You're so weak you make me sick. 

Moving onto the rum, I swallow a few bitter shots with closed eyes before pouring myself a large glass and leaving for a corner in the main room where all the people are. I'm sitting here in silence prodding my stomach to look for fat. I'm sitting here with these creatures enthralled by the thumping beats. Among the drunk and the delirious, enchanted by rumbling bass, bass so deep it passes through your body in waves like violent shivers.

You fat piece of shit. You lazy worthless scum. Just listen to her laugh, listen to how happy she sounds. You have never made her that happy. You can't. She doesn't want you. You are nothing to her. You are nothing to anyone. Go on. Keep drinking. Go on. 

I can still hear her laugh. I don't know if I'm imagining it but every time I hear it I get a little worse, a little angrier. I'm sitting on the couch staring absently at the empty bottles on the coffee table when the song changes and I look up and see a girl looking at me. Our eyes meet and she doesn't look away. It's hard to see what she looks like in the dim light but I could make out shoulder length blonde hair and an inviting smile. I get up and walk to her after pouring myself another drink from some bottle on the coffee table. She's leaning on one leg and looking at me with sky blue eyes. I'm next to her and I mimic her pose, leaning on one leg, grinning slightly and say nothing. She's bites her lips lightly and smiles, dimples.

I lean over and try yell something into her ear but she interrupts, “Don't worry about talking.” Then she smiles again and takes my hand, leading me away from the crowd past the hallway and kitchen where Olivia is giggling and whispering something into the guy's ear.

We're in a bedroom upstairs and she closes the door behind us and looks me dead in the eye unblinking and takes off her jacket, biting her lip again and glancing sidesways almost timidly then cracks a sly grin.

A white t-shirt hugs her body, she runs her hands slow and delicate across her body and down her sides then lifts off her shirt. No bra.

She steps towards the bed but I'm incensed and lunge at her, lifting her by the thighs so that her legs are wrapped around my waist and I kiss her with hunger then throw her onto the bed.

I tear her skirt and panties off and start fingering her and she's already wet. I'm impatient.

“I don’t have a condom, do you?” I ask.

“On the pill,” She says, “Now fuck me like you hate me.”

I'm looking into her eyes when I go inside, Olivia's laugh still ringing in my head. The girl gasps, closing her eyes and biting her lips in ecstasy. She is lying on the bed on her back with her thighs spread wide. On her inner thighs scars - a knife, straight marks, evenly spaced. I count nine, five on one side and four on the other.

Look at her, she is so weak. Cutting lines trying to bleed out the misery. Pathetic. You deserve each other.

The asymmetry is distracting, then irritating, then infuriating. I can't stop looking at the scars and I want this to be over so I close my eyes and imagine Olivia undressing and walking slowly towards me and my mind is in the scene and she is getting closer and stops right in front and I stand up to face her we're nose to nose looking at each other with an unbreaking gaze and we  kiss and I'm holding her and I can feel her heart beat on my chest like in the dream this morning and-

I cum. We fall back heavily into the bed beside each other. After I regain my breath I turn to look at her. She's lying on her back facing the ceiling with her eyes closed. Taking long, deep breaths like sighs. Carnal catharsis.

I'm looking at her lying in her contentment, in her relief and I can't fucking stand it. In the lustless light I can see her flaws. Her weaknesses and vulnerabilities. A sudden revulsion erupts and I'm soon shivering with hatred. I won't suffer joy, not if I don't have it. She doesn't deserve this. She can't. She's a reminder of what I don't have, a symbol of what I don't deserve. She is the image of my every wrong, my every pathetic crack. I don't like mirrors and I don't like this.

Pointing to her scars, I say, “Hey, why don't you make them even?”

Her eyes open and she looks at me quizzingly, then follows to where I'm pointing.

A pause. “Oh, you know, use of negative space.” She tries to laugh but I can see the shock in her shaking pupils and she begins to well up then is sobbing.

She's weeping when I get dressed. I toss her a box of tissues and say, “Pull yourself together, this is pathetic. You are pathetic.”

It won’t make a difference.

I look back at the girl and I try to feel pity for her. I know I ought to apologise, I know should have sympathy, I know I should care. But I'm looking at her and I can only taste disgust. She lets out a whimper as I open the door and it's lost in the rush of noise.

*

The small serrated knife pulls across my forearm, leaving behind a narrow trail of dotted blood where the skin was cut deep enough. I watch it ooze and slid down over my skin. The pain focusses me. For that one instant I'm thinking and feeling nothing but the knife ripping flesh. This is what I need. This is what I deserve.

I’m back in the apartment, sitting in front of the lone lamp light on my desk. Smoke drifts through, illuminated by the lamp in their passing turning purple. I came home with a nervous shake. The guilt of my cruelty lashed back and I felt like throwing up. I tried to cry to induce catharsis and relieve the torment but couldn’t so drank instead.

Another cut. It's not that I'm numb and trying to feel something, I'm here because of the rage against myself. It's not that I'm trying to manifest my misery, and I don't want to bleed out my shame - I know this can only be temporary. But this is what I need. This is what I deserve.

Another cut. I'm breathing through gritted teeth and looking at these red lines and still I think of the girl I left in tears, I wonder if she's holding a knife to her leg now. I wonder if she knew we were the same.

The misfortune here is the persistence of infatuation. For all my rationalisations about the fiction of love grown in the soil of solitude, I can't help that her scent shadows my every breath and her laugh trails my every step.

But, like the poet said, in sleep are dreams.. and I'm just trying to fall asleep.