HotWhiteJunk: February 2009

‘Bäär, is there anything you'd like to share with Heisse Weisse Junk?’

Yes. The cash machine next to the Rose and Crown is a classic model, the kind where you can’t tell if, nor where the inevitable skimming device begins and ends because the plastic has been melted and knifed beyond recognition. It absorbs a bankcard like an old Dutch stripper doing a trick with her rickety sphincter. Once you have withdrawn your meagre funds for the night it begins to distend it similarly in the most disgusting manner. Personally, I snatch it out with no ceremony because by that point the shame and guilt has already begun to kick in. I don’t want to encourage the thing, and I don’t need to make things worse by watching my plastic become a case of touching cloth. It makes the whole transaction feel sordid and unsanitary. Like I’m being paid to watch.
Shortly after I am huddled in The King’s Arms exterior, where I spend the first half of my night allowing my toes to numb. The beer garden is molested by the sounds of happy hardcore remixes of chart tunes from the pub’s speakers, though I have never understood why, as I think it is only the one bouncer who gets into it. The interior, where I retreat to after is full of fairy lights which blur pleasantly to counteract my alcohol intake and ongoing, mild and gentle confusion.
There is a strange equality in the air these days, one I have to admit I don’t feel entirely familiar or comfortable with. I guess because any inequality comes from me. I tend to growl at people too much when I don’t mean to, fumble for names and suffer from too much déjà vu to make any memories of this town feasible or reliable. Faces ring bells, and people I shared desks with greet me. But anything else about them has left what precious room is reserved in my head for thinking solely, unrelentingly about myself, so I flounder. It is not everyone, of course. But still…
Did you study German with me? How old would she be now? Didn’t he punch Sam in the face on Christmas Eve down the Hart? Who did I used to hang out down the multi-storey car park with? Was it you I was with when we met that kid on Windmill Hill chewing the condom? Wait, was I there? Or did someone else tell me about that?
My friends from college in Cambridge, now all relocated to London, know that story better than I do. I must have told it when I first joined. But it’s just plain fucking weird to go to a basement bar in Soho and be regaled with episodes from my own life, especially ones that even I am not sure of anymore, by people who were never there and will never know those present, since not even I know who they were now. Though I did at one time, apparently, and I was sure of that reality.
Or at least I think I was.
And then I realise I can’t even remember telling them these stories in the first place. Does everyone just remember everything I don’t? Or was I ever really there mentally when I was there physically? Did I ever get to know these people properly, or them get through to me?
At this point the six-foot-four man by the doorway grabs my shoulder to stop me getting past him because he has been demanding a photo of me in my striped bobble hat after bellowing Where’s Wally into my face and I have taken it off and told him to go fuck himself. It is an ugly scene which I am only half tuned in to because I am realising that a lot of my current life is spent constantly lost in memories that are probably distorting further and further. Especially the more I choose to envelope these new and old moments in alcohol or particular moods.
I have never been in a fight.
Maybe I have spent so much of my life focused on the future that I ignored the present; now that inertia has gone and life has caught up to teach me where and why I am wrong I am left treading water staring into a hazy past I’m not entirely sure I was around for.
Maybe it’s time to go?
‘Don’t fucking push me mate!’
‘Then let go of my fucking shoulder.’
‘I’ll fucking knock you out mate. Why are you being a cunt?’
‘You’re not taking a picture of me, now let me get past.’
‘Don’t fucking push me! I’ll fucking knock you out! You should lighten up, you fucking cunt.’
‘I’m trying to get to the fucking bar, you’re not getting a photo, now let go of my fucking shoulder and let me get past.’
‘I’ll fucking batter you, you cunt! Oh, oh okay! Fine! Fine, you know what you can do? You know what you can do?’
‘I don’t care, let me past.’
‘You know what people like you can do? You know what people like you can do?”
‘WHAT?’
‘You can FUCK OFF!’

Maybe it’s time to go.

‘You heard! You can FUCK OFF!’
And this is when I push him square in the chest to knock him out the way and shout in his face as I walk past:
‘THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO DO, YOU FUCKING PRICK!’
Maybe it’s time to go.
But I stay for two more because it is warm and fuzzy inside, it makes my eyelids relax and the fairy lights are dandelions. It is crowded with bodies and music I can't make out and I greet and hug many on my leisurely exit, people I know that I know, even if it has been too long and there is nothing in that time and distance between us to try filling the gaps right now. So I talk with them, but make sure it is about them and not me. What can I say? My own words are feathers, floating and without much substance.
It’s probably time to go.
So yes, there are things I would like to share. I’m just not entirely sure they are mine to share in the first place.