Black Nights Full of Shining Buses

All other cities are not as my city. With its richness of tones, its hands across the ancient city walls, my city stands as a beacon for all the other cities that can only gaze (enviously, sadly, despairingly) to(wards) my city’s (majesty). They remain still, those other cities, stuck fast and dumb.

Other cities are not as I like them: they are not as per the perfect and mysterious grid of my city which is only understood as a grid by itself, by its own impenetrable, alien consciousness. To the city’s people this unseen grid is perceived as a random collection of (splashes) going one way and lots of ways, no studied paths, no straight lines nor concrete flats, no arrows pointing, no (certainties) of (reach).

Other cities are: analyse, discuss. From each city, maps, tour guides and paper shouts. Such as may be and, well, those other cities include:

1. The Black City of Raging Death.
You don’t want to go there.

2. The Flowing City of Pungent Gowns and Wisps of Life.
You don’t want to go there either. Full of fortune tellers and crystal pissers.

3. Waterville on The Water.
Good for ducks and swimmers.

4. Nottingham.
Ah, Nottingham. It sold me life back then. Where I grew up. Thus Nottingham of Old Radford, Harold Road. Gone now (demolished in the purge of slum demolition). I cannot go back, even if I wanted to. Street corners and small snatches of Matchbox cars in the fireplace. A prostitute’s house across the road, rubber johnnies in her bin, Holme Terrace. Mrs Atwal buying our coathangers, sixpence for two. The balance between low pavements and high walls. There’s flight down there, from this attic window, the older boys on the barrier in front of Player’s iron gates, doing impressions and telling lies about Superman’s powers of growth: Richard Bacon a snob and a bully with nothing to support his imagined superiority. His impressions of: I heard that, pardon.

5. Cuntford.
Full of cunts.

6. The City in the Sky Where Dreams Are Dreamed.
Cloud-based, ethereal, population of twelve thousand million. Two girls for every boy.

7. Tinkerville.
Folks, they say, just can't get enough of Tinkerville. This 1950s style city is jazzed up with the real scene and the hot fresh atmosphere goes along great with the warm friendly people. It's a comfortable place for living and for laughing – and, best of all, the pressure on your purse is minimal. The directions are as follows: as you are exited eastbound on T-009, taking the business loop into the city centre, make sure you don’t miss the appetite pleasing, belly-filling, put-a-smile-on-your-face attitude that makes Tinkerville such a hit with loons, crones and dumbos. Affordable for the entire family, Tinkerville boasts terrific amenities and the full works. If you are stupid, in a hurry, or just want to enjoy a great standard of all-American living, check out Tinkerville today!

8. Bosso Novo.
Its splendours are manifold, manifested through (surfing and dive-boarding) little cars and houses. Lilliputians live there.

9. Classroom.
In the city of Classroom there is a saying that, applied specifically (and always) to the current mayor (regardless of whoever he may be – and he is always a he) applies equally, also, to every other Classroom citizen (regardless of age, gender, race, colour, height, weight, shoe size, number of fingers, number of toes, language, eye colour, hair colour, hair thickness, hair straightness, hair length, hair style, hair smell and hair lip). The saying goes like this: Whomsoever behold the eye of the visitor also soever welcomes that visitor into his home as if they were a friend to themselves, their neighbours and their city-zens.

10. Rodstew.
Nothing to do on hot afternoons except to sit down and write lines.

11. The City That Never Sleeps.
You will need Pro-Plus. And piles of cash.

12. Wartness.
Built in homage to Terne Banks, the creator of the Wartness Method, whereby the wart is sanded down (until it bleeds) and then coated with a liberal amount of Superglue or somesuch. Amenities in this most modern of modern cities include waterboat rafting, lifterpulling and the sensual stroking of cocks - i.e. cock-stroking.

13. Romanfort.
In the daytime, the olden time city of Romanfort has baths, central heating and aquaducts. In the night time it is overrun by rats, cold fish and battalions of marching viaducts, marching, marching, ever onwards in despair.

14. Leicester.
Down the road from Nottingham.

15. Birmingham.
Down the road from Nottingham.

16. Derby.
Down the road from Nottingham.

17. Sheffield.
Up the road from Nottingham.

18. Cavity.
Full of steam and caustic surfaces, devoid of visible life. Cavity breathes on its own and, though inundated with potential, has explosive and destructive tendencies. It is teeming, as Dan Zuewski notes, with corrosive incipience. That is, it is beginning to rot.

19. Mini-London.
A smaller version of London.

20. Alt-New York.
An alternative version of New York.

21. Blindspot.
The men in Blindspot are slobbering pinheads. The women are the same. You could cut the harmony with a switchblade.

22. Tazundiz.
The rats that once plagued this city’s streets have all but disappeared, thanks to the rat-killing expertise of the two giant electronic cats that patrol the streets at night, killing the rats that once plagued this city’s streets. Hurrah for those cats!

23. Beautane By The Sea.
Ah, the city on the coast, all those cliffs, sticks of rock and seagulls. You can smell it in the air, the difference of Beautane which, not content with being merely beautiful, transcends all those arguments about art and love and the lovers who dwell at the bottom of the sea. Lifeboats are no good to them. Beautane is, of course – with its crashing waves, salt and dramatic skyline – a beacon to poets who, drawn as moths to the literal fact of Beautane’s stately lighthouse (like a huge fucking barber’s pole) flame, wander the city in many states of distress, orating loudly, crying out for the hand of the divine they know doesn’t exist. But creeping in the dark, fish and chips in hand, these bovines are, at the least, aware of the lack of the emergent metaphysic within the root structure of this city by the sea. Or, rather, are fatally not aware of it.

24. Grand Central Staish.
The illumination from the caroming caravans passing ‘neath – those shining buses – light up the already bright faces of, yes, the little children, hands clasped tight inside their grandparents’ hands. Within this city, the very old and the very young are privileged. At both ends they govern, in one particular way and another particular way, meeting, it is hoped, somewhere in the middle. And those people in the middle, neither young nor old, are kept in cattle trucks – those shining buses - fed through iron bars, transported from the very ends of the city to the other very ends. Until they reach the day when they too reach their very old states. There is, of course, no going back for them.

25. City-X.
Interplanetary communication reveals the lengths this city will go to.

Containing The Preservative

Ointment on the bathroom sink. It burns, you know, when you put it on open sores. You should replace the cap because it sticks sometimes like glue.

Testament at the chemist’s, the long queue through the back. I have, here in my hand, my ticket to salvation. All I have to do is sing out, sing out!

The coiled like seagull was away above the rooftops. I said my chips may be enough to tempt him, not fish. The smell of the ointment kept him away.

The last time I rubbed my hands with copper, the soles of my feet with a pumice stone. I touched wood. I pressed dry ice – and it burnt – on my skin.

The eye was black in the middle, blue outside, white and then red. Puffy, she said. The lid loose, I pulled down my eye lid, and applied some ointment.

They tell me that the mirror is a looking-glass for me to step through. I wipe away the mist with a bunch of toilet roll. It mists again so I can’t see.

The pub on the corner with its olde worlde charm where I went there once. I was a singer in the back room with that Fred. Him and his aniseed sweets.

I put a coin in the top and watched while it circled into the hole in the middle. Raise the Children or something. Find the Kids anyway, at least.

My turn came at the counter and the girl there, I said to her speak up so she could fetch them. My ointments. I dropped them, all over the floor.

There was no need for that kind of language, like I said. It’s no wonder he’s not out at work, at a job. I said you should get yourself some kind of a job.

They press it sometimes so it goes all red, round the outside. Then they peel it off so I can breathe. You should see how much I like it then in my bath.

There was a church there, years ago, across from the clinic. They built bonfires on the grass and the council kept taking them down. They set fire to all the wood.

I could have gone a lot longer if they’d let me. I would have been all right doing that, but they said no. And I haven’t got it wet or even a bit damp.

Your Artistic Blasting Needs

The paradox, of course, is that the very people who work so hard and so desperately to keep the, er, cogs of capitalism running - who grow fat and rich at the same time as providing opportunities of income for the thin and the poor - are also the very last people you’d actually want, if you could choose, to keep the cogs of capitalism running.

The further paradox is that Pab Stencil, our hero, is a walking, talking collection of disparities that have neither origin nor substance. That is and further: he is a walking – or crawling, or however I want him to get from point A to point B – cipher. His history nil, his story nothing, his face open, honest and blank. Enough of an empty space for you to want to fill it with your fist.

This Pab, short for Pablo, was not, as you might reasonably expect, of any kind of exotic origin. That is, exotic as (merely) a broad definition of anything that isn’t from round here. On its own terms, of course, the exotic alluded to (the name Pablo of, what, Mexican origin?) would, in its actual so-called exotic reality, be, in actual fact, crushingly mundane and, paradoxically, much less exotic than even what we could muster up from round here. That’s as may be. Pab’s name was short for Pablo which, in itself, was a derivation (or something) of Paul. But we’ll go with him on this and let him have his Pab.

Pab’s birth was a good time ago and has nothing at all to do with the fact of his evolution (to be grand about it) into an old-fashioned advertising man. Which is how he manages, as inadvertently (and thus, he imagines, somehow innocently) as he may feel this to be, to keep the rusting cogs of capitalism nicely oiled (to exhaust this most clichéd and barren of metaphors). His birth and his childhood have very little bearing on what we currently have in front of us. It’s not as if, for instance, there was ever a chance of capturing him at the age of five, pen in hand, copying ads from his mother’s magazines. (Who is still alive, by the way, his mother. And his father.)

Our Pab then, working in an advertising agency, a copywriter in the creative department (creative, I ask you!), was as much a part of the process as anyone else you might care to mention who wasn’t actually in control of, or directly responsible for, the process. Which is to say that he was no Rupert Murdoch, as most people aren’t. He was, however, like most people, enough of a part (I could have said cog) needed to keep the whole thing in motion. In short, he was doing his bit even as he underplayed his bit or pretended that his bit was somehow of absolutely no significance.

At least though, you may imagine, at home and king of his castle, he was, this Pab, happy. Or rather, happy? Contented? Leaving aside the definition of happy and blah, he was, to some degree, reasonably accomplished, settled and, as far as he could care, reasonably satisfied. He wasn’t, as the phrase has it, at a complete loss. His wife, she was a bit of this and a bit of that. He loved her, of course, and she was good in the way she was expected to be good, and bad in the way of all the usual stuff that keeps couples up at night talking it through. Their two kids, teenage girls, were also part of the painting. Which was kept over there, dominating a different wall.

The whole point of this Pab can be gleaned (as if there was any other way of doing it) by way of his position in the here and now. Let him stand alone. Let him sweat under his own spotlight. Let him reveal himself. Or, at least, let him submit himself to our trial of revealment. We’ll get him yet.

This Pab was, by any definition, a pudgy, four-eyed loser. Forget the wife and kids, forget the job, forget the whatever else it was. He was, first and foremost, a pudgy, four-eyed loser who loathed himself only slightly less than all of the other people he loathed. Jews, wests, blackies, birds, poofers - he hated them all. Or maybe that’s a different version, a different tale? His name doesn’t fit, for a start.

This Pab was, by any definition, something of a pudgy, four-eyed loser. As he so often and so self-deprecatingly described himself to his vast collection of friends and family who he loved beyond all reasonable comprehension. This pudgy, four-eyed loser, far from being a figure of fun or hate, was, in fact, a much-loved and highly prized attraction at parties, pub quizzes and gatherings of all kinds. That is, you could always rely on Pab to be, at the very least, a bit of a laugh. But let’s not get carried away. At the same time as being that laugh, he was held in the highest esteem for all sorts of other sound and sensible reasons: his diplomacy, his intelligence, his ability to get straight to the point, his clear and open mind, his friendliness, his winning smile, his noble paunch, his cherry red boots, his way with women, his unerring knack of always being right, his collection of soiled doo-dahs, his massive knob, his turning tides, his humility, his generosity, his caring nature, his liberal tendencies, his love of animals, his spoils of war, his captains courageous.

Established thus, we have an emerging picture of this Pab as – well, as the above. Sketched out maybe, perhaps not fleshed out, he is at least now able to step forward into whatever adventures and ludicrous scenarios we wish to cast him in. The ‘fun’ of this, of course, is playing the game of seeing whether he lives up to all the fantastic expectations we have of him. That is, educatedly guessing – from what we now know of him – how he might react (not act) to the things that get in his way. Or maybe instead – although highly unlikely - how he will glide along the easy path that lies ahead of him.

So there he is, this Pab, on his own for the time-being, a remembrance of family in the background, wondering how he will resolve the conflict he.

Wondering how, rather, he will be supernaturally guided through the obstacles before him. So one minute he’ll be happily walking along Path A – or even crawling along Path A – and the next minute he’ll be in a position where he has to choose Path B or Path C in order to, you know, get to Path D. The ‘fun’ of this, of course, will be had in what happens to him on either Path B or Path C.

But Christ, who on earth can be bothered with it all?