The Streets ©Robert Fullarton 2013

The Streets

   taken from the book---Our Lives as Fiction

 ©Robert Fullarton 2013

 

I cannot think back to when I exactly lost my mind, amongst the buzz of activity and sheer death of life around me. Walking down the street, I see neon lights blushing on the damp rain ridden pavements and hidden pains and stories etched on the faces of the old men meandering through the common herds. On the streets there are no lies to bury underground; here we have the land of contrasts and ugly heart wrenching truths.

I see the bearded man of mystery shouting out salvation at the corner of the street, with his black torn Bible, and his words falling to fill the empty hearted people and his arm stretched out to the stars. I take a glimpse at a wizened man of modern culture giving out his fine commodities to a gang of young boys, for the price of innocence in exchange for something to help these beleaguered urchins escape, just for a day from the sordid state of affairs.

Great mechanical wonders pass and chug through the crevices at either side.

These humans gather like termites in a great mound of collective energy and madness.

Oh yes, I can see all the fine damsels from the city gathering outside the booming orgy of the overcrowded bars, packed with characters from a movie, all playing games, like blind man’s bluff or Chinese whispers and as I walk past like a whisper I watch a young man fall in drunken stupor down the stairs unto a pool of vomit and it wasn’t long before the bouncers came to banish him from the game and the dungeon down below.

                                       
“Hey man have you got the stuff?”

“No”, I said merely grunting and hardly even acknowledging the scruffy glass eyed man before me who I had never met before, but still he looked dangerous and quite insane.

“Man, have you got the stuff, I’m good ya see I want an ounce next Wednesday and a half today.”

“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t know you, go home”

“What, we went to school together, come back here.”

I had to simply jog ahead amongst the fog of noise, and the growing tide of people which marched, and bleated out a song, while swaying back and forth beside some busker on the guitar. A deep well of confusion was seen as an image amongst the crowds and I saw myself lost in the belly of the whale which had devoured me and set me to sorrow, for all I could see was my individuality amongst their mass made conformity. So I went for a drink to a friendly cosy Jazz bar at the side of the street so to rest my heavy torso and aching mind from collapse.

“Barman, double Jack with ice please.”

This place is filled with noisy parkers and their all looking at me, there’s the commandants and the brain police, that must be them otherwise there’s a very big sign saying idiot brandished as an immortal memorial of my infantile self on my forehead for all to see. Otherwise someone’s passing wind or perhaps I happen to be the worlds most dashing and exquisite man. Even the music has stopped, what is this! What’s going on?

“Hey, barman turn up the jukebox what kind of place do you run here, I’m half expecting the undertaker to walk through with the coffin, that’s how gloomy it feels in here”.

“You’ve had enough, that’s you’re fourth, in the space of five minutes, you’re downing the whiskey like water and I’m tired listening to you chatter on to you’re self like a simpleton with that freak like grin on you’re face and also I’m fed up with you’re bursts of anger directed at my customers. Go on get out you loon.”

“Oh hell with you, you’re just another fool that thinks he can make a difference in the world, I’ve had enough of this prejudice. You’re all like Gestapo officers who hound a poor Jew such as myself as soon as you see my invisible Star of David and Yiddish gowns, and hear my Hebrew, mother tongue you start to turn into stern faced interrogation officers. Yes the inquisition began as soon as I walked into the place to hear just a hum of jazz and find a palace of comfort to my unusual tastes”.

“Oh shut up you daft shit.”

Ah yes the streets are dark and the shifty, semi-conscious living dead are starting to emerge from the ground and from the hidden doorways which open as if in sequence.

So I start to run in a semi- delirious sate of mind, passing by dark, shadowy figures and small packs of erotic looking ladies and fierce, butch, men on steroids looking like Ivan the terrible from the bloody Russian mafia.

The warm soothing effect of the whiskey, left a comforting feeling in the senses and put a glow of happiness on my face, with a piece of burning timber burning, almost embedded in my brain and a gleam of overconfidence (so rare these days).

Into the bookshop I go.

A group of men in trench coats gather in a semi circle at the doorway, each with their back to me, all of them are busily engaged in conversation and some are stuck in their novel with faces of seriousness. The girl at the desk is simply the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, look at her porcelain skin, with those features that entice and look at her wavy brown hair, the little curls and turns which fall down on either side. How many men have fallen on their swords for her affection and how many men have in false hope tried to win the heart of the fair maiden of the bookshop? Woof , Woof, I cant stop staring at her, her solemn pace of work, like a honey bee and her almost Vermeer like beauty have made the frog prince decide to make a daring proposal.

“Wow, that’s my favourite book, is that yours too.”

“No, I am reading a book on quantum physics and I hate it.”

“Yes me too.”

“But you just said it was you’re favourite book.”

“No, I thought it was wind in the willows or Charlottes web that you were reading.”

“It says quite clearly on the book, Quantum Physics for Dummies in big bold type.”

“Oh, so it does, that must be the drink repeating on me, or the whiskey making mirages once again.”

She laughed and smiled, and in her continuity she made my nerves come into force as I always felt the sharp pin prick of anxiety in my sides and near my heart around an intoxicating woman.

“Ill be back in five minutes, I’m just going to get my gear together, wait here”.

She went through a little side door in the back of the bookshop and after that I saw no sign of her again.

Out on the streets a crowd envisioned the spectacle of two tramps in fisticuffs together at the roadside, one young Asian man even took a picture of the pair, and smiled in gratitude to them. They seemed to be some form of entertainment to the club goers who stood in ignorance laughing. One of the tramps tried to bash the other to death with the lid of a dustbin and the other tramp bit his arm in resistance.

Up ahead, I watched a crowd of women gather with big leather boots and velvet leggings marching by accompanied with an adoring group of male fans, almost drooling with bewildered eyes and as I peered through the stained glass window of Murphy’s pub, I spot the desolate and the dissolved, the weathered and the withered in soul and mind. All the people in the city have gathered for the funfair, the sights, and the horrors, the commodities and mania, some to flaunt themselves in public and other to shelve their hollow lives aside, to drink and take hard drugs to forget the past and to forget their stained life with all its trappings and open graves around.

I decided unanimously not to go to the “cosy” tavern by the roadside, with its crazed, drunken cohabiters and the clamour of encouragement given from a group of lads to the busty barmaid who sang, old Irish songs half naked on the bar stool, before she stood on one of the tables to have the undivided attention of the carousing crowd. What kind of bar, would let her act like that? What kind of lunatics foster such sport on a Friday night? “Hey sing again love, take you’re knickers off for me” shouted one of the men roaring with a purple face.

I saw faces of indifference and faces of cruelty and I saw this when the midnight jackals came out on Gardiner street to toy with petty crime to feed their insatiable hunger for the lotus flower, the needle and the sweet release craved.

As I sunk beside the black recycle bins at the side of an empty street, in tiredness and hopelessness, I saw a thin, skeletal figure of a man, a dirty, dishevelled man emerging from the side of the steps at the bins.

“Find your own place to sleep, this place is taken. I’m trying to score, go score somewhere else.”

I walked off down the road and watched the carnival fade and fade, until the morning light burned away the last piece of timber from the night. That is all that I remember.