Before finishing one drink it was always best to slide in another. That was his way of dealing with aeroplanes. Some read glossy magazines, others gulped down pills of varying hue, size and shape whilst the majority simply plugged themselves into the monotony of in-flight radio, drooled a bit, and finding it a pleasant enough match to the listlessness of their own interior existence peaked at that exhausted point of inner bliss - devious swine. Sinking back he sighed despite himself; he was returning from South East Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, a bit of Cambodia - great stinking hot and mysterious places.
At the time it had felt like a good idea to go; his job had reached the end of its contracted run, his woman and he were inexorably killing each other, and others, so called friends, had become superficial judgmental bores. So, his world in a state of general collapse he’d upped and left it toppling there. Thing is, as things are, things didn’t really change - same old same, wherever; the faces can change, the protrusion of brow or spread of lips, the way people eat and what for breakfast, brunch or lunch and maybe they had no concept of brunch at all; their dances of courtship, their ceremonies for the dead, goodbye.
Though a culture may change, one is a fool to think he can elude his terrors by eluding the people that have beset him for culture weaves the robes flowing about a race, no different than the clothes on his back, really. Strip us down to our fundamentals and what you have left is a load of bare assed mumbling and fumbling. People, in a word. With the same way of loving as hating, the same grievances and protestations at the ready to illicit your attention and drag you kicking into their lives; the very snare that clamps them down. Only a fool could concoct the notion that some time spent on a plane equated to an escape of some kind.
Wherever you went they were waiting for you on the other side, people, same as the ones you so recklessly believed you had left behind. The names may change but they remained the same. Simply the same: a change of ring for the same old clown act. You couldn’t escape people he now realised, and worse, he couldn’t escape himself. Being towards the back of the cabin he sparked up as a burly character, parboiled red with a hair style like a bison had taken a dump on his pate plopped in the vacant seat next to his and grunted at him for a smoke.
How long had he been waiting to make his move? That vacant seat up to now had been the most glorious and beautiful and profound thing. Now, its absence stirred him with a weariness, a melancholia that made him feel not a little ashamed at himself. Who could figure it? Dumpy sported a misshapen oblongoidal head with small knotted ears quite like someone, in a fit of anger, had chewed them off and then spat them back on again in disgust, fascinating things seeming set to drop off any second. Reason enough for staring.
“S’up...” he enquired, “doesn’t the fiancée allow you to buy your own?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dumpy guttered.
Squeezing out a smile of anything other than empathy, “Oh I see.” he continued, “ it’s the problem you have communicating with shopkeepers that prevents you from procuring smoking materials.”
Dumpy made to reply but instead came forth a sound like he was choking on his tongue; his small circular eyes wrinkled inwards. Eventually he wheezed, “You trying to be funny?”
He groaned. That was the kind of answer Dumpy deserved. Out of nowhere Dumpy swung and caught him on the eyebrow splitting it clean. He retaliated with the base of his palm to the bridge of Dumpy’s nose. After this it was all over. They sat and stared dumbly at each other, bleeding over their stuck faces.
The rest of the cabin proceeded as it had before: a disinclined stewardess with the troweled on make up sprinkling from her cheeks strolled up the aisle a few steps before turning and heading back behind the curtains for a nip of gin. Heads lolled over the aisle in the drone. A baby gurgled and spat. Headset cords hung everywhere motionless, mute and the atmosphere slumped over all with the ooze of putrefaction. Dumpy got up and went back to his seat. ‘Shame that’ mused he, ‘I was gonna offer him that smoke after all’. Taking the tissue from his drink he began to gingerly mop at his eye; things, people especially, just didn’t make sense, almost as if they didn’t want to as if they were petulantly lashing out at some unseen, benevolent authority figure who had scolded them. Repeating, again and again, that which had landed them in trouble in the first case; only, to one another. Peering out the window with one eye closed - out at those fat snore clouds below, pale and silent and intricately serene, ‘Why cloud’ he pondered, ‘can’t I be like you, left to float peacefully no matter what or what not you know?’ If he knew the answer to that one he’d be in Heaven already. Or at least have both feet well dusted on the welcoming mat. Peering out the window one eyed: a plane seems to move so slowly, not at all other times, and if not for the sound you might never know at all. Yet it carries you with the greatest expediency across the distance between two points. An implication of a subtle subterfuge rather than the necessity for deception. Something incredibly profound and reassuring permeated him from this simple thought. His mind unravelling along this thread he closed his eye. Leant back. Dragged deep on his cigarette exhaling long, long, harmoniously long. Someone had once told him that all is art and when art fails what remains is pedestrian, discardable, perishable, yet taking that as it is, if all be ‘art’ then any failing, so called, lack of penetration of grace, serenity, comes down to the foibles and prejudices of one’s perception: in effect seeing what isn’t there, a barrenness of art, of expression in itself and of itself. The clear sighted see art everywhere and at all times. Even in their sleep. In such individuals art is alive in them. Yet apart from being in the minority the world was amuck with them – the nutters that is, and the irony couldn’t be any more amusing, for to think, most people believed it to be the other way round. It has reached such a frenzy that the truly insane in their dim sighted churn and grind have conquered the norm, captured the flag and declared all whom see clearly as outlaw. And you can’t say that isn’t funny, make you laugh til you cry…Yes, this he’d been told, but in what place and when and by whom he could not recall; simply the notion lingered, immortally, and maybe there is your art that it should waft on past, and long after, face, tongue and assuming time; illuming a new identity with each new mind though changing never. No matter be it right or wrong or significant or otherwise. No, he couldn’t remember where he’d first heard all this or from who, but he’d experienced a measuring of it for himself since that time and that was enough. Truth has been coming at us since before the dawn of our civilization, in a manner as if it would never arrive. His eye was beginning to throb like a motherfuck, pounding its tiny stinking sledge hammer all the way into the back of his brain.
It took an hour of queuing at a ticket booth in the tube at Heathrow to purchase his ticket back to Greenwich. All the ticket machines, naturally, had demanded exact change. At the far end of the platform he squatted on his sack and became riveted by the rats skittering merrily and greedily through the dust and grime down by the rails. As the train roar grew someone moaned loudly, sleepily you could say, something about ‘why’ and ‘god’ and something else before taking a flying leap onto the tracks. After the screams and insanity and fainted women had been attended everyone was evacuated from the platform. He took a seat in the nearest boozer, propped his battered old sack against the bar and decided to wait it out. After several quickly dispatched whiskeys he began to even out to cruise. He wondered about his friend Tommy, one of the few real, decent people he knew amongst many. Just before he’d left Tommy’s missus Juliet had dumped him. This had scrambled his connections bad and in grief he’d left the house and just kept on walking, like one of those old wind-up soldiers, eyes glassy and dry, arms as constant as the metronome, until he’d collapsed forty miles later. When the police found him all he could do was babble like an alien. Poor sod, they’d promised to drop him back home, but the police station was only twenty miles back the way he’d come and being the shiftless country pigs they were he’d ended up having to walk the last twenty miles home again. Broken one way or the other, or in more ways than one, there was no one, nowt, to get you back where you belonged. Fate, divine comedy or insult, chance, luck…it’s as if the only thing differentiating one person from another are the shoes they wear. Walk in someone else’s shoes…etc. etc. We all have roles to play; today the plunderer, tomorrow the thief, by Thursday a rapist and by Sunday, by god, a chief. Role after role after role yet no director. Role after role with every actor stuck in the part mouthing the words of some other, doing what they never would have even considered…fate, insult, divine comedy, luck or chance - call it what you will, it fucking stinks.
‘It fucking stinks’ he concluded privately, though for the life of him, and Tommy’s for that matter, couldn’t figure why he was worrying about it in the first place.
The tube was packed and hot, the day darkening. The carriage stank of mortality and armpits. The air clung heavy with death; everybody knew this and looked the part; they despised all else and advertised it with moronic hatred behind their big empty eyes. Remaining face down he sweated silently to himself. Everything he’d drunk was oozing out all over in some infernal jelly-capsule crawl. Suffocating. The split above his eyebrow was seeping gently now and that, combined with the rags he wore, proved a great point of interest for the disinterested. ‘Say what’ he mulled, ‘it’s nice to be able to give something back’. But eyes staring across at eyes, them two eyes and those two eyes over there and that way too. Those two eyes mean less for my two, and those two too. You don’t seem like much but I’ll take all you’ve got; eyes means mine’s under threat and I’ve taken all I’ve got. The sound of all those staring eyes culminated and wracked his brain with their insidious starvation. Squinting his eyes closed he lowered his head. Eyes never were interested in what a body had to say. He shook with a fever, ‘This train’s going to hell!’ he almost shouted, but casting around composed himself quickly. Not one person smiled, or half-grinned, no wry little thing of mischief even....no, if this thing were going to hell they’d all be smiling, because nothing would ever change until the lot of it and us shot to hell in a handbag. That way, the survivors, if there be any, might then be allowed the revelation of the great blessing of life and commence again with refreshed, pertinent perspective. That, at least, ought to be worth a smile in anyone’s book., so he smiled; no, it wouldn’t do to have a fit in these conditions. Then the train broke down. He lowered his head again and felt a fat gloop of sweat-jelly drop from his forehead and plap onto his sack propped against his legs in the claustrophobia.
Watched it quiver, like a smile made disconsolate.
Eyes owl-wide at the frontroom window his girlfriend, Dolores, watched him stumble through the rain to the door. Despite this she didn’t let him in.
“Why didn’t you let me in?”
Dumping his sack, finally, on the settee. She stared at him through the tube of her face - still beautiful after everything.
“I know why you’re two weeks late returning.” she seethed, “you met another girl out there you’ve been fucking.”
All this was true. He tried wondering how the hell she knew this, but gave up. It wasn’t worth the effort; the way the world is now with satellites and internets and cameras on street corners and buses, and bugs and telescopes and vigilante groups and vigilante groups with telescopes everywhere, she’d probably seen him in action during the adverts to the fashion show.
“It’s over.”
The words fell from her mouth like wet cement.
“All right, all right - well there’s the door.” he thumbed over his shoulder.
She stared at him some more, the pressure building there behind the mask, making it glow, until eventually the crying started. The cat plodded halfway up the stairs and threw up. He searched himself but couldn’t find a thing. Nothing to say. He grabbed up his sack and left. Best to do what she wants at least. It was her house after all. He sat on a bench opposite the Cutty Sark, grand old dead thing. And stared.
“Oi! - think yer ‘ard d’ya?”
A gangly youth with gold earrings and chain to match stood to one side of him pointing at his glowing eye. How long hadhe been sat tere? A full minute? Two? He looked back to old groaning Sark, then to ground, but didn’t ask.
“Ooh...and smart. Fink yer ‘ard and smart den do ya?”
The youth had grabbed the book he’d been reading from his jacket pocket, waving it through the air.
“‘it ‘im Luke - ees a cunt...”
Another one, much like the first, appeared at his side. Shit. For the longest while he’d been truly aware of the fact that, really, he knew nothing and now doubts were creeping in over the validity of even that simple admission. Chuckling to himself he stood up wearily. The one with his book took a swing at him missed and dropped the book. Calmly he retrieved it and placed in back in his jacket pocket.
“O.k - who first? You or you - or both together? Lets get it over with.”
They backed off.
“Fuck you ya cunt - you’re dead!”
And with that they turned and pegged it.
Estate kids...
So sat again. Chances are they’d return soon in a bigger pack. The dark wet tarmac shimmered timorously. Suddenly, he threw his head back and howled laughter up at the sky. Unstoppable, uncontrollable, belly ripping laughter and it felt good to laugh, as if for a long time now he’d been constipated with it. Once this was over, he thought about a drink. The state he was in one step in most places here and he’d be kicked off their precious premises. Greenwich does have its tourist trade to coddle after all. The only place he might find sanctuary would be the gay pub near the theatre. He wondered where he’d sleep, settling on the park - well, it wouldn’t be the first time. The only other alternative was asking to kip at the places of people he’d flown to escape; yet escape he hadn’t so what difference should it make now? Tried pondering is predicament and again, from the livid, vibrant meaning of himself, nothing bubbled mindwards. Maybe if he went out and raped a few or murdered someone it’d all make sense. But what the shit did that mean or matter anyway?
The last twenty miles...
He looked back the way he had come, from the street, the train, the plane, all that water and land within space, all turning through the circle. Turning the other way he looked towards the direction the two kids had recently pegged it off in; there were lives out there, ones he could only imagine, scuttling pincer wielding lives of every variety no more sensible than if he knew them by name each and every one. Turned back towards the way he had come, then back the other way and again, again; it seemed there was a cord joining from where he had come to where the kids had vanished; two inexorable regions linked as one. And yet here he sat, on the outside seemingly, watching the cord unravelled and useless. Much as his travels themselves had seemed. There were people living right now on the other side of the world, right this very moment transpiring whilst snapping their pincers and battling with their antennae. Lives everywhere instantaneous and disconnected; he tried very hard to imagine just a few of those lives thought for thought, action for action yet found nowt but himself. The cord of his life stretched beyond and behind him, inside to out, a mighty fuse blazing towards the grave. The world turning silently like some pig on a spit sizzling spitting towards the steaming sun. He could go anywhere, anywhere at all and this was why he had come home. Quaking he peered at his strange hands. An insane liberation beset him. His head swam deliriously. Flopping back on the bench he started giggling again, madder and madder until he was barking, neck stretched and chin arrowed, howling up to space in the glare where the moon hung shielded by the promise of night.
Home again.

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