1787 c/o Stephen O'Toole

Two cool friends (male) are huffing Huggies baby wipes, 
          right out of the packet, 
          uncut.

Damn.
          This gentle eucalyptus scent got me faded.
          You feelin’ it, bro?

Yeah.

          He shrugs.          

          I guess so.

          He sighs.

          It's just. . .
                    the name,
                    you know?
          ‘Baby Wipes.’
          All I can think about is a toddler,
                    knocked off his surfboard,
                    over and over again and
                    yes, he's wearing cool dude sunglasses, sure, but. . .

You watch him, every time, hanging two at best, and you say to yourself:

(together) What if he never gets to hang ten?

Yeah.
          Damn.
          You get me, dude.

Always , bro. Always.

          They pause.

          Listen bro, I
want you to know that
                    you are not that baby. Okay?
                    I promise you.
                    Bro,
                    you’re gonna get to hang all sorts of ten.

You,
          you really think so?

Do I think so?! Bro!
          Answer me this:
          What was the name of that burlesque dancer who followed me on Instagram?

Uhm, Claire?
          Wait. . .
          Claire Voyant!

Exactly, bro.
          Exactly.
          Which means that I'm qualified to predict stuff.

          He taps his head.

          These balls is crystal.

Thanks, dude.

Hey!
          Don’t you ever say that.
          That’s lesson number one, son.
           You never thank anyone for telling you the truth.
          That shit'll
                    get you killed. . .

          He looks off for a second, somewhere into the distance.

. . . ?

Look at you.

          He laughs.

          Bro,
you don't even know how good you are. . .
          Your hair,
your hair, it—can anything apart from tones be dulcet? Cos these locks is on some smooth, honeyed, horsey shit, bro. It’s like you’re already a magazine cover. I touch you, I’m expecting to fucking crease you or something. And when I
                    take a breath in from over here it smells like
                    paper?
                     But with, you know,
                    like when they put those strips of perfume in the pages,
                    like you just,
                    tear them out that's. . .
                    what I’m saying.

Well uhm
           it's,
          it's not just all about me, uh,
          dude.
           It’s us! The band! Together!

Oh! No doubt, bro!
          This band’s about to blow up!
          The interest we’ve been getting already?
                     Just think what'll happen once we’ve written that first song. . .
          . . .
          My dad says he’ll totally be our manager now too, which is
                    a-mazing,
                    obviously.

Oh.
          Yeah?
          . . .
          You asked him, then, that’s,
          that’s great.

Everything he's heard so far,
          he loves.

Which is?

You know. . .
          the band name,
                    the title of our album. . .
          He said that off our album name alone we'll sell a million.

A million?

A million.

He said that?

Oh yeah!
          Can you believe that?

Well,
          he’s
          the one who named the band, so. . .
                    And he named the album too, he. . .

Whoa whoa whoa, bro.
          I'm sensing something off about your 'tude here.
          You don't
                    like the names that we've chosen?

‘Snakes with Tits by The Unreasonable Bleeders?’

Yeah!

Am I not a fan of 'Snakes with Tits by The Unreasonable Bleeders?’

Yes! Are you or aren’t you?
          ‘Cos you agreed with me that the name should be provocative.
          Get the sheeple shaken from their shell, you said, or. . .
                    their wool. You. . .
                     get the turtles shaved from. . .

Sure, fine, we’ll shave them, whatever,
          but,
          I think we’re being more
                    problematic than provocative here.

I
          don’t follow.

I’m saying that
          I can’t be a part of
                    your dad’s weird shit about women.

About women?!

Dude!

Well. . .
          just because women have tits doesn't mean. . .
                    These are snakes we're talking about!
                    Busty snakes!
                    In corsets!
                    It's cool as all hell!

And who are the ‘Unreasonable Bleeders?’
          Have you asked him?

No! I don’t have to ask him.
          They're Draculas. Spooky Draculas!

But, dude,
          there isn’t even a Dracula on that logo he drew for us.

Well,
          no,
                    but,
                    there is a wolfman.

Wolf—
          woman, dude.
          With an apron,
                    some lipstick, a cigarette, and,
                    a mole on her cheek for some reason,
                    howling at a blood red moon with a rolling pin in one hand
                    and a box of Tampax in the other!

Now who’s being unreasonable?
          That drawing means a lot to him!

Oh really?

Yes, really!
          It’s based on an actual tattoo that my mother made him get.

And when you say,
           ‘made him get…?’

I mean,
          ‘drove him to it with her constant, uncalled for nagging!’
        
Alright.
          You know what, dude?
          I’m done.
                    I can’t be around people with this point of view.
It’s. . .
too fucked up.
          I’ll see you.

No!
          Bono, please.
          Don’t go.
          I’m. . .
                    I mean, The Edge is
                    sorry, I. . .
                    pushed our friendship
                    to the me
                    and I’m sorry.
                    . . .
          If it
                    if it’s a choice between you and my weird dad, then,
                     I choose you.

Dude, I
          I choose you too.

          They hug.

And if you have, like
          any ideas of your own
          for
          band names or anything,
          I’d
                    love to hear them.

Well,
          now that you mention it,
                    there was
                    one name, I’d thought of.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.
          It’s
          pretty simple.
          Just
          two words.
          You ready?

          He nods.

          Maroon.
          Five.

1739 c/o Stephen O'Toole

  

The Ass of You and Me

I will assume that steam is the ghost of water, and that therefore boiling a kettle is straight up murder, so that when you say I can come home with you for a coffee, it's okay for me to feel scared and cry.

I will assume that you'll believe me when I say, as cover for crying, that I'm really just glad that Sandra Bullock made it back to Earth okay, even though she couldn't speak Chinese and had a dead daughter.

I will assume you'll never ask me to juggle, because I'm about to tell you I can juggle; in fact I'll even examine three of your eggs and say, I'd show you with these right now, but they're just not ripe enough yet.

I will assume that you weren't saving those eggs for anything, because you've more or less let me just smash them on the floor.

I will assume the same goes for these towels I've just ruined.

I will assume that you won't scream at me, and will, in fact, be all be-still-my-beating-heart about me, when I say, with my knees in egg yolk, and my hands massaging the floor through your flatmate's Princess Jasmine beach towel, that, Actually, I've just remembered: it's yo-yos that I'm good at.

I will assume that it's okay I've kept my socks on, because socks are just condoms for the feet, and our legs have already started doing some beautiful DNA impersonations—they're linked up under the covers like double helix, double ankle-ix, double toe-ix, double sole-ix.

I will assume that when you picked your phone up there, you were checking the GPS to see if the earth had moved.

I will assume that it's not raining today; in fact, I will assume that, from this second, I will never be rained on again; that when I leave your bed and turn your shower on, instead of making me wet, it'll actually give me the perfect suntan; and that if I was a stripper, and I was having pound notes flicked in my face by men who loved nothing, they would all origami themselves into swans, these pound notes, and fly off out of a window rather than touch me—though where they'd land had better be my bank account, because, you know, I earned that money, I earned it with my hot golden bod and superlative twerking, and just because I'm untouchably in love with you now, doesn't mean that I'm dizzy enough to be cheated out of my own cash by a bunch of sentient pound note swans.

I will assume that 'bunch' is the wrong word though.

I will assume that the correct collective noun for sentient pound note swans is splash-register: a splash-register of sentient pound note swans; though when they're in flight let's call them a windfall.

I will assume that when you roll over and say, These are the sort of puns my dad would do, that you're finally voicing some deep, long-buried Freudian feelings, and that you secretly always wanted to marry your dad and do French kisses with him forever.

I will assume that the phrase is actually 'biting my time', and as I wait patiently for the chance to ask you to marry me, I will crack open wristwatch after wristwatch and feast on their delicious innards.

I will assume that 'seen by' means you've skimmed my message, but that you haven't had a chance to go through it line by line, because admittedly that itinerary was quite detailed, and maybe, just maybe, five months of frolicking in long grass is a month too many—but I was trying to factor in, what, fifty, sixty years together, going forward?

I will assume that you've got hayfever; that the grass should never have been 'long', and I'm sorry. I promise you I'll mow it. I'll put it in a room where we can watch it, safely, from a distance, on twenty four hour surveillance cameras. A special room that keeps the grass green. I'll arrange to have it guarded by an army of Israeli and Palestinian soldiers, whose nations will have agreed to work together just this once because of you and you only—until, after a year, or however long it takes for your next birthday to arrive, I'll dismiss the guards and have the room flooded with thousands of bees, hungry bees, hives and hives of them, and they'll eat up every piece of pollen in there and then fly out through the bee-chute again, all of them, straight up, like sentient pound note swans, up towards the ozone layer, where they'll stuff the hole full of five months worth of long grass pollen, fixing it for good and saving everyone, the whole world, from catastrophic climate change, because I saw you went on that protest march once in Edinburgh. And then I'll have the grass dried and turned into hay, and I'll take you to it. Sniff, I'll say. Go on! Breathe in! And your nose will never get red, there'll be no itch in your eyes or narrowing in your throat, and I'll put my arms around you and say, Hey, how about a quick roll in this, baby?

I will assume you're just not interested; fine; I'm not an idiot.

1564 c/o Stephen O'Toole

Voices of the Kissing Ban

The ban, it was good for us. My friend and I. We hadn't worked in months, and suddenly there were things that needed doing. Enforcement. Demolition. I was enforcement first. The long arm of a law.

The arm, anyway.

My friend, he is saying something about the size of my penis.

*

At the start, we had defined 'public' as 'anywhere that wasn't under a roof', but this had its problems. Hitherto innocent outdoor toilets were hollowed out, their tops taken off, becoming the infamous 'kissing cylinders'. You remember. The sounds were unbearable. We needed new ways of knowing what was happening inside. I had my ear against one in particular when I hit upon the now familiar definition. 'Any place where air can pass through'. I'm still proud.

*

They employed us to wave fans at weaknesses of the wood.

I met my wife in a kissing cylinder.

Sometimes the walls weren't weak enough. We had knives to open them apart. Then they felt our breeze okay.

I'm sorry, I meant: I met your wife in a kissing cylinder.

*

Yes, that's right. I started the Chapped Lips League at the time when they were taking walls off houses. My mother caught pneumonia in a breeze. Her bedroom open on all sides. Why? She hadn't put her lips on anything in years. When I found her they were blue.

*

They were working for us, that lot, the CLL, and never realised it. Who wants a great red 'X' on the side of their house? Dead mothers indeed! We had mobs hammering at our doors. Begging us to take their walls from them. Entirely unnecessary, of course; we'd had no doors for months. The doors were in piles in the dust by the dogs. The dogs had made a sort of pissing against them.

*

Because no one ever had their revenge by putting things back to the way they were, is why. Yes, the early days were difficult: you try running a sloganeering campaign when there are no walls to draw on. But we found other ways. More permanent ways. It's much easier to learn something when everyone is looking at you, but thinking about themselves.

*

I like my scar.

I like your scar.

My scar is a great red 'X'.

*

The business with the blades was a problem, yes. We had to retaliate. But I am nothing if not a man of ideas. Here. Would you like to see my lips? I've kept them all, pressed in a book.

*

I cope. One's plosives, and eating spaghetti, are most difficult.

1539 c/o Stephen O'Toole

Introducing Pigs to North America

The night of the thing.

Pigs is giddy. She's taking clothes from her wardrobe, holding them against herself, twirling. Twirling the appropriate number of degrees so her face and front are in the mirror; so her eyes are there. Either of those ways. The meaning's the same.

The twirling is irritating. I'm starting to think I've made a mistake.

The mistakes she makes she drops at her feet. Kicks them to one side. Errors in colour, length, sleeves, that sort of thing. A pile of clothes that don't work; that she won't need now. Later, I help her. We carry them out to the bins, and make a bonfire. Expect this is symbolic, but then I have Spanish blood; am something of a misogynist.

I go to the back bedroom, text North America.

'I think I've made a mistake', I say to him

Flames quite high now. Birds look troubled and children have gathered. Sticking their hands into the flames, trying to get a brassiere.

'Still time to cancel', I say instead.

I delete this, say, 'Still time to cancel', then add an exclamation mark and an ';)'. Delete the ';)'. Add an ';)'. Send it, then rue my ';)'; rue it.

Listen: I live with Pigs but I'm not in live with Pigs. I'm standing in the back bedroom, thinking about burning North America. Sticking him with something hot.

North America is Australian. We went to the Art School together, though neither of us are artists, are anything. He has grey hair that he dyes grey, usually over the bath. I have stood in the bathroom doorway, looking at his neck. Putting his beard together in my head.

I'm in love with North America. He is—one word—a Renaissance man. He can, and does, do many things. At once. I know. He can hold my attention and still do just about anything else at the same time: drink, breathe, blink, swear, think about someone else. I've watched him do it. It's remarkable.

He has piercings that people can see. On the earlobe typically, but often on his nostril. He has a long nose attached to the earring, to the nostril, and so on. Might describe it as a 'probing' nose, a 'controversial' nose. He would like it, North America, if it was described like this. He spent a summer as a shepherd; is immune to criticism; came to our fancy dress party (theme: the famous dead) dressed as me.

'You've only ever been partly warm', he explained.

(It was stronger on theme than execution. Big laughs, obviously, but none of the clothes fit.)

Pigs giggled and he looked at her. One of five Lady Dis, I hadn't noticed her standing there. She was looking too, looking at him. It was towards him that her giggles were directed, and I was just getting in the way. Both of me. Me, and North America dressed as me. She wanted to tear the me off him, and have him, with me in a pile next to them. The outgrown me lying there, kicked to one side, waiting for a bonfire.

(This, I thought of later. I am thinking of it now. It was never so neat as this then.)

I introduced them like a fool. I mean that I introduced them foolishly. My way of going about it was the way a fool would go about it: wearing a paper hat to keep the rain off, for example.

'This is my North America', I said. The possessive just stood there, stuck in; a flag with my face on it wobbling at the top. I tried to push it down further into the ground. I thought that if it went in far enough, it would be invisible. The claim that I had made.

(Imagine that we are on a mountain top. We have climbed all the way. We are alive and have not eaten ourselves. I take my flag and turn to them, say, 'I'd like to take this mountain into my mouth. And love it. Love until it is raw.' The other two just look away. They are whistling on the balls of their feet, then whistling on the heels of their feet, then again on the balls of their feet, and so on. They are doing it to keep warm, and give no indication that have they heard me.)

I just sat and sulked in a stovepipe hat. Watched Pigs dance for North America's mouth. Watched her start the steering wheel round her neck spinning. I watched and sat and pushed my hat back until River Phoenix spoke to me.

'Lincoln isn't famous for being dead', he said. 'He's just a famous person who is dead.' River Phoenix clenched his fist.

'But he was murdered', I said, sitting forward.

'Lincoln was a man of many achievements. His being murdered was just one of them. You have misunderstood me; you have misunderstood the theme of this party; you have misunderstood everything.' He took a sip of something from a small paper cup.

'I am the host of this party', I said.

'It's no thing at all', he said, crushing the cup in his hand, 'to misunderstand your own party.'

Bits of a burnt child sprinting across the grass. The bits I can see through the smoke. An arm held high with a smouldering floral print dress wrapped round it. A pair of cotton underpants on a head. Shouts.

North America hasn't answered me. I dial his number to tell him that he hasn't answered me. It rings out. I think he has just missed me, has got to his phone and is holding it. I dial his number again. I think about him staring at his phone. I am standing behind him and his neck is red. He has just shaved his neck in my head. He's annoyed that he has just missed my call. It feels like the ache where the hair of his neck once was. He wants this, North America. I give North America what he wants.

I give it to him again, and then again.

He returns it unopened. It is sitting in a pile in the hall. Pigs kicks it on her way out the door.