So I'm staggering through Embankment station with this kind of breezy drunken arrogance that people staring at me probably don't think I deserve, sniffing condescendingly at tourists trying to work out where the surprise chocolate comes out of the oyster card and slapping mine on the reader nonchalantly. It doesn't work because I overcompensated how simple and inconsequential this task is so the reader doesn't actually get to read it. My mask slips a bit and instead of laughing out my embarassment I choose to huff at the indignation of it all. How dare the world around me not bend over backwards to uphold my uselessness as a human being? The person the commuters would be seeing if they didn't all have frustrated tunnel-vision is not embarassed. Londoners don't get embarassed, what could possibly ever be embarassing when you're the most important person in the world?
There's a massive hole in the crotch of my favourite jeans, not because I can't afford a new pair but because the idea of taking ten minutes out of my eventless day to stroll through a clothes shop sickens me so I'm playing chicken with the ever growing hole until I can put it off no longer. If I were to be honest with myself I think these jeans passed the public decency threshold several weeks ago. I'm sitting open-legged on the District line and the timid young Italian couple opposite me don't know where to look. I'd have thought anywhere other than my cock would be the obvious answer... I shouldn't have worn baggy boxer shorts I guess, but I tell you this denim cock-hole has been a dream come true during the recent heat wave.
That period where you're already a bit drunk but are an undisclosed length of time away from being able to get another drink is quite nauseating. Sobering up prematurely has a sort of knock-on effect on the rest of the evening. I sometimes get this stinging sensation around the jaw when this happens, and the next pint doesn't go down too well but the one after that does. How long is this journey anyway? I never take any notice, instead I just tend to call it half an hour. Central London to anywhere by tube is half an hour, flat out.
When I stand up I reach down and fumble around to make sure nothing's escaping the denim cock-hole (I wish) and stroll out of the dreary zone two station into the blinding light, which does no favours for my weird non-sober pre beer hangover thing.
'There's a five pound minimum to pay with a debit card'
'Alright then I'll pay for two and have the other one in a minute'
What is the minimum age for a man to sit in a pub by himself and not look strange? It isn't twenty-five, but I've got friends on their way and I have a problem with punctuality; I'm always on time. My jaw is stinging through renewed activity (I think next time I'll just sing on the tube to keep my jaw exercised. Fuck you Boris, fuck you and your drinking ban. Reckon tourists will be less freaked out by a 25-year old Harry Potter lookalike singing Abba songs to the ceiling of the tube train?) and as predicted this beer is not going down well but my headache is going away. See I haven't had much sleep because I went out last night, got back home to the intrusive sound of birdsong and started work at 8.00am. Then I had a beer when I finished and instead of killing a pointless two hours in my room where I would have let the last few days catch up with me and dozed off, being then too lethargic to go out again, I just carried on. Jaegerbombs are like espressos anyway, surely? Then I haven't really had time to eat, so everything I have to drink is taking no detour en route to my brain. So am I already steaming pissed or just drowsy? I need to up my race with the limits of my body.
'Two jaegerbombs please'
'Two?'
'The other one's for my friend when he gets here, and there's a five pound card limit? Oh and I'll have that other pint as well.'
The art of 'going to the fucking cashpoint before you walk into a pub' is dead. Is the minimum spend requirement a half-arsed attempt at discouraging card transactions or is it the complete opposite of that; embracing the plastic revolution and capitalising on it? Yes, actual cash is dead, but you're going to pay through the fucking nose if you want to latch on to this bandwagon, sunshine.
My friend turns up, finally (I'm trying to turn a drunken blur into prose so forgive the sparse characterisation. Anyone reading this who thinks they were there can pretend its them, if they want). We neck our jaegerbombs.
'How long have you been here?'
'20 minutes or so'
'And you're already drunk?'
A dismissive gesture and slurred grunt tell him that I started early. Anyway, I'm not like those gassy old alcoholics that I quietly deride from the other end of the pub, I'm young and I'm, like, a vegetarian and, um I don't smoke and I'm an artist so its okay when I do it.
The rest is like greasy hands violently smearing themselves across my face so I lose sight and wave frantically to shrug my weird attacker away to no avail, they keep rubbing my face and laughing and it fucking hurts. Everything I should be able to see is a stretched blur behind the hard-pressing, coarse fingers. I lose balance and direction and when they finally tire of this pointless abuse I just want to trip dizzily to a barstool and dangle my drunken, bloated face over the bar, daydreaming about putting my penis in things that it doesn't belong in and burping annoyed, pissed-up cliches at nobody who will listen. This is all fiction as far as I'm concerned, trying to remember it is no easier than writing something new so I will (and already have) dip in and out of actual fact and make things up when necessary. Semi-fictionalising my life is decent compensation for having no ideas of my own and still looking like I deserve to be a writer. Maybe I'll change my character's name to Jim or something. There. Now it's an original story.
So Jim spends the rest of the night going 'AH LAV THIS SHONG' and dancing like a traumatised grandparent at someone's wedding. The last pint is always redundant in this state. Jim has two warm, flat sips and won't even remember it, and it sits on the bar for an hour until the uncertain bartender plucks up the courage to just get rid of it. Jim doesn't care.
Awkwardly swirling colours that don't appear to show any gradient of change yet change nonetheless dance and quiver around what was Jim as an incomprehensible barrage of unlinked thoughts divorced from any context pound on his functionless brain. Why does he manage to remain so articulate in his ill-advised texts and facebook rants when he can't even perceive whether the person in front of him is friend, stranger or reflection? Thoughts of treacle-like blood oozing from the bottom of a black boot as it is lifted from the crumpled skull of the former man beneath it. Sharpened fingers piercing eyeballs like cellophane and clawing away at the fractured bone outlines of the seeping eye sockets. The spiral goes progressively more chaotic and the thoughts mesh and distort until nothing more than smears of red and stifled screams curdle in Jim's mind. He is a werewolf and the very poison that will thump his brain with every uttered syllable next morning is his moon. He wants to smash bones and twist necks, swipe at jaws with blunt objects and slash at throats, stamp out genitalia with steel toe caps and spit blood on the twitiching remains. Or dance some more.
Jim groans back into consciousness in a house that's further away from last night's venue than his own, but a drunk man loses grasp on his perception of finality and at the time there was no end of the night. If the pub closes then there is the nightclub. When that shuts there is a willing friend's studio flat. When they sleep there's that last sip of whiskey and flat coke and if you're still awake beyond that then you truly are a monster.
After self-deprecating, pseudo-intellectual and pointlessly metaphorical reflections on a night nobody can remember, Jim bundles out into the afternoon rain, clutching his thin layers against his shaking skin and whimpering pathetically over his thumping head. He darts about confusedly trying to remember the way to a tube station and eventually comforts himself with the theory that there is always one around the corner. There is. He feels biting cold around the groin and realises that the worn hole in the neglected jeans is now gaping, his bits flapping freely under his thin boxers. Probably all that dancing. He takes the tube journey back, now entertaining guilt, pain and regret in replacement of excitement and arrogance. His entire week has been like this. Jim breaks into a cold sweat as he remembers his drunken tendency to compound his deep-set, bitter thoughts through facebook on his smart phone. It will be the better part of half an hour before he has any signal. He will just have to stew in dread until then.
DELETE.
DELETE.
That one's quite funny and two friends have already liked it anyway.
DELETE.
I was sober when I wrote that, all is good.
Finally Jim gets to crawl into his own bed, sweating poisonous alcohol into his unwashed sheets and staring at whatever ugly-sounding American crap is glowing out of his TV. But he has to be at work in an hour and preparing to spend the next nine hours convincing people he is a fully-functioning human is only worsening his hangover, thus making the impending task all the more challenging. Fucking recursion.
He tells himself that 'I'll stay home tomorrow', watch TV or read that book he started four cunting weeks ago. It's not even that long. 'You are an inarticulate, uncultured prick making vain attempts to look clever and convince yourself you're not interested in the same mundane shit every other cunt is into' he tells himself as he stares at the neglected volume at his bedside. He wants to spend just one day recuperating and allow himself to be reminded that he is human, just go for a walk, sit down, stay off drink for one day. What's one day? Even the severest pissheads in the world can manage 24 fucking hours without a beer. Are you worse than them? But he gets a more interesting offer. Time and time again. Best friend is coming home from abroad! Can't miss that shitfest! Offered a last minute gig? That rarely happens these days, take advantage! So he's back at that godforsaken oyster card reader sidling through the gates of sensibility into a lashing rift of depravity and mindlessness.
Its easy to comfort oneself with bollocks reasoning when one is a degenerate fuckhead alcoholic. 'I have to keep doing this' thinks Jim. 'If I stop then I allow myself time to reflect on how despicable the world is. Humans are cunts and if I drink enough I can periodically forget that I am one. 90% of the casualties in Iraq are civilians and yet we set up a second charity to help the gun-toting bastards that are killing them. Strangers make snap judgements about me on the street and feel compelled to shout them at me as I pass. When I'm in company I'm not familiar with I either lash out, grumble snide remarks that undercut their hollow philosophies or just leave. And between leaving and getting home the overwhelming beckon of self-destruction proves near-irresistable. There are plenty of high platforms and fast vehicles. Why don't I just do it now? Or I stay and rip into people.' A drunken run in with a lost stranger, a fellow binge drinker, ended ugly this time.
'YOU'RE A FUCKING STUPID CUNT' (him)
He's ugly and his clothes are shit but I never reach for easy targets. He seemed like a nice bloke before (even though right now I want to grab him by the jaws and tear his head open at the mouth) and I don't want to contribute to any lasting self-esteem issues. I have no qualms with calling him a prick, because he probably isn't one therefore it shouldn't cut too deeply.
'STOP LAYING INTO MY FRIENDS YOU DULL PRICK' (me)
A previous, similar exchange ended with me hospitalised with a fat eye and a dented skull that I'm yet to have fixed so I drunkenly bow out of this one with drunken conviction in tact.
Next day I dwell on the drama, the fury of it all and the bile rises up in the back of my throat. I can feel my face turn fire-red and what shreds of hope I may have had for humanity are strewn across the floor like the innards of animal carcasses in a slaughterhouse splashing grimly against the hard stone. I want to grab the heaviest thing I can find and destroy the second heaviest thing. Then I receive a text message and I'm saved. I don't need sleep, the abuse I'm giving my body on a nightly basis has hardened me to fatigue and numbed me to remorse. I'm leaving my seething brain at the door this time, I'm going to blitz whatever leftover consciousness there is with rivers of alcohol and I don't care how much I'm running my life into the ground. I want to remove myself from this abomination of a species and I might as well do it through means I enjoy.
Mercy grants me a sunny day (though neglects to omit the arbitrary hangover) and I take some old advice and crawl to the nearest park for a lie down in the shade. I'm flat on my back under the clear blue sky with my headphones drowning out reality. Everything is beautiful and I haven't even thought about ducking out for an afternoon pint. I periodically open my eyes and am greeted by sweltering, sweat-dripping bellies bouncing across the green, children dribbling pink ice cream and snot, tripping over footballs and inhuman shades of tanned, leathery skin shouting things at their equally-cooked mates. I glance up at a distant plane overhead and despite the serenity I would love for the plane to dip right now and plummet toward me, not soaring gracefully to the ground but defying all physics and right-angling so it hurtles nose-first right into me. I close my eyes and I can actually see its looming shape, growing by the second until all is darkness and I'm sprayed like shrapnel from a landmine into all corners of this park.
I still haven't replaced those jeans, its getting beyond a joke now.
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