The street is square, rectangles and oblongs all right angles. The street is grey and repetitious in its shades. Grey scale 16 plus but beyond that who can say. An accent of ketchup smear, like a conceptual throw up on the pavement. The dull afternoon greyness of a Tuesday in October. I feel ridiculous but beyond ridicule, ensconced in a recess of concrete in sight of the taxi rank. I’m not proud of what I’m about to do but not ashamed enough of it to think about its wider implications. Today has not been a good day for me. If you’re asking me to give a s**t about some c**t coming off the train at Lewisham then your asking the wrong guy. Do you understand me? Having to factor in the suffering of another human being is really not on my agenda.
This morning about five am I slapped my girlfriend across the face. I hadn’t slept then and I haven’t slept now. She came in as I was finishing up the last of the gram that I had set aside for that night. Except it was the second gram that I had finished up as I had started on it at work. The previous gram I mean. This meant that I had to get stuck into the second gram when I got in after I’d opened the bottle of Smirnoff that I’d nicked from the store cupboard at work. Again I suppose this was an immoral act as I have no intention of replacing it. It would be offensive to me to contemplate the prospect of replacing it to be honest. Like that fat drunk prick Pete would notice, he’s drinking that pub into the ground anyway so what difference will it make if I give him a helping hand along the way. I love my job. I can feel my career in hospitality is really starting to take off. I aspire to be like those hard ons who have their noses wedged in the arsehole of Roux Jnr. I have a commitment to making louche drunk c***s satisfied, as they gulp down shitty ale from lines that haven’t been cleaned in a month, too depressed or ignorant to complain, just like everyone.
Excuse me, am I having a moan I do apologize lets focus on the pertinent shall we. So girlfriend comes in, five a.m. when I’ve turned the music up and starts shouting at me. I can’t remember what was said, her mouth was moving and I’d proper hit the void by this point so I just lunged at her trying to close her mouth with my fingers which sorted of transformed into a slap or maybe a shove to the face. I can’t really remember.
She had tears in her eyes when she left the room, I’ve done this sort of thing before and at the moment I can’t allow the magnitude of it in, because I need to focus on keeping this going. Work is gone, she’ll be gone by tomorrow but I can’t allow that in, if I just keep going I can block it out at least for another day, maybe two.
However, there is another slightly more pressing problem than the inevitable decline of my professional standing and my relationship. That is the small matter of where the cocaine that has got me into this situation came from.
The bleakness of it all is what astounds me. Looking into the grey cityscape that surrounds me I feel distanced yet entrenched in a Thaumatrope. Unable to separate the images, knowing that it is fraudulent but unable to get my dirty fingernails into the cracks and pull back.
I stepped forward towards the street lamp and leaned, dug into my pockets and retrieved a battered packet of ten Mayfair’s. A brand of cigarettes that had been a laughable badge of poverty when I was a schoolboy, an icon of vilification for the gold plated Benson smokers. Now they were all anybody could afford.
My skull throbs and feels like it is contracting, I would really love a can of lager but I can’t bring myself to be standing around outside the station smoking Mayfair’s and chugging at a tin with that strained desperation of somebody trying to outrun a hangover that is clawed deep in, cross hatch to the frontal lobes.
Options, options and options.
