3.06 a.m.

It's that thing when you slide back into the room hoping no one noticed how long you had been in the bathroom, and your right leg is completely DEAD so you walk so slowly, admiring fucking everything in detail, nodding like a Pope, praying you don't collapse in a heap, destroying your fibula and varnishing the leg of the antique mantelpiece with your gelled head of hair.

"Where have you been?"

"Outside ... needed some AIR!"

"I missed you, and I don't even really like you - that's how long you were..."

"Can you, perhaps, keep it down? Everyone is staring."

"PSSSSSSST!" It was Hutch. "Jonas come next door! We have unlimited supplies of gin and a German globe for light!"

"Hutch I'll be with you in a sec ... right leg is ... deader than HELL!"

"Right-o, I'll save you a space under Tasmania!"

E continued,"what were you doing J? You were gone for an age. I had to make excuses, lies and tales of nonsense. Like you on a daily basis."

"I've discovered my 'patoullie' E," I tell her. "And it turns out it's all mine!"

She scoffs and turns back to our hosts. I grit my teeth and drag my leg through to the globe room.

* * *

Blinkered

I'm not quite sure who I am right now. Seriously. I'm slightly slouched on a stool (or a tall chair, I can't remember what it looked liked before I slumped onto it) looking down at my shoes, my throat feels rough and hard. My lower jaw has extra weight and my voice, I only just discovered, sounds dark and detached. I'm blanking those I care about and shooting nonsense with someone I just met and instantly disliked. I may even have pulled my hood up - I feel blinkered by something.

The guy I only just met believes my subconscious is experimenting with my physical self, forcing me to hide under another skin but I'm not into his talk one little bit. I shout back at him that I hold that huge, black balloon in the sky responsible but he is just shaking his head and rolling his eyes while I point wildly at the ceiling.

Tomorrow I must try to make amends.

*   *   *

Post Reality Check something or other ...

"I have one leg longer than the other," she said, seriously.
"Longer? You mean in length?" I asked, shaking my head. I couldn't think straight. "Or time?" I asked, as I shrugged and raised my hands, aware that I made no sense. Then I laughed, and she laughed, and I laughed more until I reached that point where I was too aware that I was laughing loudest and it was my own joke. Laughing at your own jokes is like sniffing an aerosol - dumb, but enjoyable and difficult to stop abruptly.  Today reality kicked in though, and that stupid afternoon seems rather unreal ... and I have been shocked to discover that its still possible to feel the same as you did when you were seventeen and something came along and knocked you sideways emotionally. The difference between now and then is that back then I wasn't aware such things were possible, and now I'm just shocked that they still are. Is this making any sense? Not to me (I just read it back). I thought I was in control of some feelings and it turns out I'm not so with that I am going to eat something and lay down for a while. °

Speed and distraction

• let me

I sucked on the end of my index finger and poked it into the plastic bag

• my seat is still warm from that girl who was getting off when we got on, E informed me as I put my finger to her mouth. She opened wide like a good citizen and let me rub the substance on her gums

• I'm not sure, I told her, but this seat may have been kind of warm too. Did you see who got up?

• a large man.

• God no, I whispered. That was the last thing I needed to hear. I squirmed and clenched my ass cheeks a little.

E was sticking a wet finger into the bag

• that for me? I asked. She answered by poking it into my mouth. It was three in the afternoon. The other occupants of the carriage were either looking at us with annoyance or disgust, or simply pretending with great force that we weren't there.

• I love having a warm seat on the Metro, she said. It like traveling first class, underground.

I looked into the eyes of the disapproving lady sitting opposite us and nodded at her.

• we have warm seats, I told her whilst wondering why I was even bothering. She would never understand. I could feel my veins pulse in my eyeballs.

Sparkling loon-hat

I'm seeing razor sparkles around the edges of my vision again, the result of my inability to relax, sleep or just kick back. E is giving me the caffeine talk as I sit here, which is amusing me no end because I've actually been pondering a return to the mute, sedated world of hard drugs these days and nights - mainly the days.

Surviving is becoming a tricky business - Nights, normally considered the hours of panic for anyone in this condition, are in fact are the easy part - I conquered wild-eyed insomnia years ago by just not going to bed and hitting the streets instead, feeding from the neon and sirens and finding inspiration in the habits of night people. Days are another story altogether but I'll get to that later. Time to get my thinking hat on.

°

One hell

I just can't sleep,

Starting droning - 2 bottles of red will see you off,

That's a downward spiral ...

(Only if you try to stop, otherwise it's one hell of a ride.)

*

Below the below

Trapped underground with nothing but iron noise-makers to bang against the stones. Slippery stuff underfoot, spores in the lungs, oppressed by many phobias.

Let me out.

•

Long Gone

I found Norf on the bathroom floor, long gone, messed-up. His shirt was long gone too, although one of the sleeves had first been torn off and tied very tightly around his arm. A nice state to find your friend in. The expression on his face was as ghastly as the scene itself, a tap on the shoulder from my own temptations, the reflection of a score of possibilities.

I got my arms under his and heaved him to his knees - you don't need to hear the rest.

•

Unnecessary fruit

My mailbox was stuffed with fresh oranges this afternoon, which would have been a pleasant surprise on any normal day, but I had been expecting a rather important padded package and a mailbox full of fruit was, today, just an unnecessary and unwelcome event.

Yesterday it was full of apples, the day before bananas, the day before that - lychees (literally thousands) and before that a couple of grapefruit. Someone's up to something, but I'm not rising to it. I have other fish to fry.

•. •. •.

Welcome to the night train #28

Oh too late once again - next time I'll jump in front of this damn train, even if it kills me - which it should right? Eurgh what a mean thing to do or say. I was joking of course.

No in fact a man just came up to me and asked me if I had a cigarette, again , and when I told him that I tend to avoid anything chemically addictive these days he snarled and spat that he should push me on front of the next train. Nice right? Cheers buddy, have a good night too.

People. Don't get me started.

*

Lines

I've begun to see lines in front of my eyes once more. Three vertical lines, evenly spaced signifying, I believe, a doorway.

God this is bullshit! I just read that out loud and it sounds like the most ridiculous, pretentious crap imaginable. It's true though about the lines before my eyes though and it's also true (I think I mentioned it somewhere before) that the doorway to Chime has three vertical lines painted on it, but I'm putting the whole thing down to coincidence. My eyes have also been gritty and inflamed recently.

Perhaps something is up ....

And there she stood ...

And there she stood, staring at nothing, telling me what I wanted to hear (although I had most likely misinterpreted her words to suit my own fantasy).

I ho-hummed to myself and went back inside, where the walls repelled me and the ceiling attempted to starve me, again.

Anyway, that was today.

*

Facts

Ha well yes; all that almost spelled disaster, what a thing to admit (yesterday's post). Whatever.

I learned 2 things during the last telephone conversation I had yesterday:

Número uno - pole dancing is all about stomach muscle use, and

Two - eye zapping is possible.

And there we have it.

*

Fucking Starbux

Fucking starbux at 6.50pm - the music is making me retch but we're so hungover and the donuts called us in here ... not the coffee. Is there worse coffee? Perhaps it's just this one. I have a new T-shirt on and it's making my body itch and the music is still making me retch. The whole affair is a disaster on every level. Fucking starbux.

*

E & K, Feb '10

The television was loud again from next door, this time broadcasting in English. I wonder why. Subtitled, I suppose. The dialogue was laughable and suggested Victorian England, all backed by strange, industrial, ambient music.

“You’re not lying to me, are you Mary,” a man spoke. “Ah Mary, if only we could all see inside each other, through each other as I do you, right now. I can see so much, so much I never knew … Oh Mary, I never knew. I should leave now. Mary? What's wrong?”

“That ... that,” a woman’s voice replied, shivering yet determined. “Don’t ever do that again to me. Ever.”

“I won’t apologise Mary. You’ll never make me apologise. Never.” 

It all sounded quite dramatic.

With my coffee mug in one hand and cigarette in the other, I sat down with my back against the wall and turned my attention back to E and Kaisha. Only the sides of their faces were visible in the dark, the glow from the uppermost X emitting the only light which touched their bodies. I had drank too much rum again, and as they swayed together to the sound of imagined music I could only catch the briefest snatches of conversation between them. What I could hear didn’t interest me, only the sight of them interested me. The sight of E laughing and smiling once again.

E whispered into her ear and in a fit of laughter Kaisha fell towards her, placing her hand on E’s arm to steady herself. E fell forward and wrapped her arms around Kaisha’s body. They fell down and were almost lost in the deep scarlet quilt which covers the bed. I looked to window and then back to their bodies. They had turned to face each other, close together, and with their hair over their faces I could no longer tell Kaisha from E. As the headlights from passing cars crawled across the ceiling and down the walls, their bodies were highlighted in sections.

*