an evening like this one requires me to disclose what song i'll be listening to on repeat for the duration of this contemplation: red hot chilli peppers' desecration song... i tend to do just that: listen to one song on repeat when composing, i rarely compose while listening to several songs or an album: i want to capture something and listening to one song alone, on repeat, allows me just that: a heightened focus on several details...
i'm starting to think that the managerial staff at Wembley
are sadists, the original times for the shift
for the Taylor Hawkins tribute were:
external teams 10am to 12am...
and internal stewards the timings were
3pm to 11:30pm...
now? apparently no internal stewards and everyone
in the company is part of the external teams...
timings? get this... 9am through to 12am...
what the ****? do i look like a surgeon hacking
away in a hospital?
i'll be lucky if i don't have to leave the house
for 24hours... i'll be very lucky...
given that they'll probably close the Wembley Park
station doors in my face and i'll have to catch
the usual N18 > N25 > N86 > N365 back home...
having to walk about a mile if not two
to actually get on the N18 in the opposite direction
to where i'm going... sadists...
plus, i wanted to this gig prior to the Wembley
shift in Basildon, for the Garage Music Festival:
start times 3pm end time 12am... i could have done
it... but not if i'm supposed to start
a Wembley shift at 9am... ****'s sake... sadists...
that's the problem with Wembley...
they employ too much stuff... they are **** are
coordinating staff: because there is too much staff...
but Wembley is a capitalistic behemoth...
can you imagine how much money they make from
one even if they can throw so much money about?
i'm guessing each even brings them roughly
one million's worth of profit if not more...
price of a ticket? astronomical i'd suppose...
never mind the price of a pint of beer and a burger...
and people do want to get drunk at a concert...
we're talking roughly £10 for a pint of beer...
and about £15 for a 450ml cup of gin and tonic for
the ladies...
but i'm not here to talk about that...
i seriously had the weirdest shift at Fulham today...
it was so weird that i felt compelled to write about it...
work: i never write about work:
more? the people i work with...
the shift was plain enough... we were waiting to sign
in... me and cerebral palsy Martin decided to sit
outside of someone's house: the people of the house
were throwing out their sofa... next to a heap
of black bins... i became tired of standing around
doing **** all... i saw Martin on the opposite side
of the road: yo! Martin! rest your legs...
he came over and sat down next to me...
in that funny walk of his... what wasn't funny
was the fact that Fulham banned him from taking shifts
at Craven Cottage because he was accused of being
drunk on the job... cerebral palsy? it's a very visible
disability (maybe it's not cerebral palsy, whatever it is)
he stumbles when walking... tries real hard to keep
eye contact but his eyes sometimes wander to look at
something behind you... and he slurs and speaks like a drunk:
but he's funny... and there... all these football grounds
stick to security, safety, service mottos... "not all disabilities
are visible" with regard to someone wanting to use
the disabled... ahem... sorry... "accessible" toilet...
but yet one ground managed to fire a guy with a clear
disability... i like Martin... he's funny because he's funny
and not because of "X": he's actually self-aware enough to use
this to his advantage... soon a few other guys lined up
next to the sofa and we just chilled...
it's impossible to not note the following:
the bigger the ratio of men to women... when working?
the smoother the shift is... honest to god...
in this line of work... you need about 20 men and 2 women...
even today all the guys stood their ground
but one girl among us? she ******* ordered
an UBER McDonalds... and this wasn't even on her
break... no one would have minded if she did that
on her break... but she wasn't on her break!
what happened? she had to hand in her accreditation
and her bib and was sent home!
i mean: the audacity of some people!
on my break i ate three chicken
and bacon Caesar salad tortillas and was finally content...
but this doesn't reach the pinnacle of weird...
i was working with this guy... a colt... maybe 24...
i couldn't really tell... a certain Mr. Hussein...
a Yemeni... let's just call him Mr. Hussein Yemni...
i don't think i ever worked with anyone weirder:
and i'm not saying that in a bad way...
i'm saying this like prostitutes call me Biggie
or the good sort of mad...
i don't think i ever worked
with an Arab before... i don't think i've ever
been so close to Mecca in the ghost-medium...
a strange people: eerily strange...
we must have talked about almost
everything... what book he was reading...
what he liked: drink? no... smoke? no...
but you must have a weakness... every man has a weakness...
coffee? yup... sweets, baklava? yup...
well... you can't beat the baklava of Edgware Road...
the best that i know of, i said...
so what did you study? Physics, Mathematics,
Arabic... smart kid...
now he's studying criminology - because he wasn't
to become a police office...
he informed me about these degree apprenticeship:
debt free studying and working in the field...
i told him i wanted to become a science teacher...
then again i'd rather become a primary school teacher...
because i told him:
it sometimes doesn't matter WHAT you teach,
what sometimes matters more is WHO you teach...
that old chestnut saying... it's not what you know:
it's who you know...
i told him i wrote poetry on the side when he asked
whether this was my only job...
i told him i sometimes come back from a shift
and sit down to write in the early morning...
although i don't stay up until 5am like i once used to...
so what are you going to today?
go home, hopefully get in before 12am
and have a drink and write...
turns out... he's a rich kid...
he lives opposite the Wembley Stadium...
his father? a banker... who he sees maybe twice
a year who works for a private bank in Saudi Arabia...
i did actually mention the Saudi-Yemen war...
must be difficult... esp. after he owned up to his father's
job... born in England... but never been to Yemen...
i did disclose to him that i'm not English but an Anglo-Slav...
what's that he asked? i'm ******: i speak Polish...
so why didn't you take an A-level in that?
easy grade... what's the point, i asked:
if i already speak it, read it, write it... what has a grade
have to do with my belief in my proficiency in
it? is it a difficult language to learn?
well... that depends Hussein...
i gave him an example:
most English people complain that there are too many
consonants in the language, for example:
RZ = Ż = the French of JE (suis)...
CZ = the English CH = akin to chatter...
you'll have to look it up yourself...
Arabic is beautiful, i have to agree...
so he retorts... Chinese, ooh! so difficult...
that's the thing about Chinese...
it's a complicated writing system...
we're talking ideograms... hieroglyphs...
but in the end? it's not a complicated language to speak!
difficult to write: to read... but to speak?
hardly... for example... what's... for example:
明? phonetically it's nothing more than
m-i-n-g... but the simplicity of the sounds when
returning to the ideogram morphs into
an idea: hence the ideogram... ming is not simply
bright... it's the: illumination (of the obvious)...
clarity... understanding... but phonetically Chinese
is a very poor language... it's the Chinese of ideas
that's the crux of its endurance...
so what do you write about?
me? life... the day to day... since starting this job
i'm writing about it (obviously i wouldn't tell him
that i write about the people i work with,
i wasn't going to tell him that i was going to write
a poem about him tonight)...
his mother? a doctor... a pediatrician...
your parents?
my father is an roofer... working industrial scale
construction sites... supervisor... once he had
10 men under him sub-contracting until a cousin of ours
who married my maternal "aunt" ****** him over
and started mutiny among the workers...
he's doing o.k., after that incident i returned to work
with him... and worked in the roofing industry
for a while... rewarding work... tiresome but rewarding
like all physical labour... it allows your mind
to wander...
mother? she used to be a secretary in
a metallurgical plant... she then was a cleaner for
rich Jewish ladies... then she worked as a carer for
two old Jewish ladies... now? she's a home-maker...
is that what they call it in America? she's a housewife...
did i miss something? yeah...
when i talked i sometimes looked at him:
do most Arabs have those beautiful brown eyes?
at some point i don't know what i was to him...
oh, right... he hate writing...
he's about to do his NVQ level 2...
he's completely bemused by the questions...
all the idiots say its easy: sure! it's easy!
it's ***-squeezing mind-numbing! but for someone
who has studied physics and knows arabic
it's not easy: it's hard because it's mind-numbing...
i found it mind-numbing... people with very tiny
horizons who are best suited to violence
for the thrill of it find it easy... more intellectual people
don't find anything hard in it: just the mind-numbing
tedium of what's clearly a regurgitation...
so he asked me for a favour...
could i send him the answers, otherwise my mum will
have to help me with it...
i was like: i know this boy isn't a free-loader...
but i warned him...
listen... i'll send you all the answers...
i still have them...
but at Edinburgh i was doing this sociological course
to just pump up my points on the side...
and they had in place this anti-plagiarism programme...
do you even know how little interest i had in
the course... but the course gave me an ulterior
interest... how to beat an anti-plagiarism programme...
but then again: this was at university...
i hardly think people training people for an NVQ
have an anti-plagiarism in place...
for that essay of "mine" which i found on the internet
and heavily employed the thesaurus to reword
it i managed to get a first... come to think of it:
100%... you'll have to do the same...
i'll send you my answers and you just reword
them and send them back to me to proof read
and compare...
oh... i'll just get my mum
to help me with it...
whatever you like...
but just use the thesaurus whenever you can:
if i can beat a programme that was intended to
suspect plagiarism: i'm pretty sure people who are
training people for an NVQ qualification will not
be as smart...
can you send them to me? tomorrow i'm doing
the London Stadium... Thursday...
i'll surprise him... my shift only begins at quarter
to four... i'll have enough time to send him the soon
to plagiarism to him tomorrow...
it's not even that i'm trying to look for favor from
a rich boy... he's on the ground...
he's not his father's son in that...
when i asked him: so you father wasn't the sort of
father that demanded of his to follow in his footsteps,
like most fathers who are bankers or doctors
or lawyers ask of their sons: to be like them?
no... oh...
well... if you only see your father twice a year...
funny story... he actually went to see the last world
cup in Russia with his father...
his father's friend blah blah this... blah blah that...
oh sure... i've been to Russia... used to have a Russian
girlfriend... stayed there for a month or two...
she brought me over to be a tourist,
to be a *** pet and to see Metallica in Moscow with her...
but that's not the whole weirdness of tonight...
i sometimes spoke to him looking at him directly...
and as usual... when i try to conjure up something
abstract i look away looking at nothing in particular...
in between conversation and silence i could
feel him watching me in the corner of my eye...
is this a Yemeni thing? was he really burning an image
of my face in his mind? i could see his stare...
i only saw it with the corner of my eye...
but i could feel him looking at me...
an inescapable stare... must be an Arab "thing"...
he just kept looking... i exclaimed about the beauty
of the night breeze and the bristle of leaves
gently moved by the wind in the sunset...
he just... kept staring... every possible "awkward" silence
was broken with a question:
he kept asking the same question several times:
so what will you do tonight?
i'll have a drink and write...
now... the point why i'm listening to Desecration Smile
is pretty obvious... the song is about a man's
lament about sleeping with too many women...
and not finding the one women to settle with...
i felt something similar with Hussein tonight...
why can't i find a girl to have this nervous-tension
of conversation with: with the opposite ***?
ah... i split the yoke from the egg-white...
i speak two tongues to women...
i speak with the body and i speak with the mind...
Hussein... was all mind...
most women are all body to me...
i hardly think any woman would have the audacity
to so blatantly stare at me in the way he did...
it must be an Arab "thing"...
the dynamic obviously changed when that arrogant
prat: ooh! ooh! i have an SIA badge...
anyone see me walk around and boast about having
a chemistry degree?
there's a certain level of people who... simply don't think...
those SIA ******* are boring...
no one goes around boasting that they have
a driving license... yet they boast about being able
to inflict pain on rude customers... kneeing them
in the back of the leg... choking them...
i told Hussein: i don't like confrontation...
i'm dreading being equipped with this badge of dishonour...
as a steward i prefer to talk sense into people
rather than use overt violence... choking them or what
not...
it's a ****** environment sometimes... with people
who have no intellectual capacity reading to someone
their braille of the fist...
this guy Rob had to attempt to be the centre of attention...
i know what a schoolyard looks like...
how he boasted: he did this to that person...
dislocated his shoulder... PROPER: PROP'AH
"ALPHA"... male... if you don't have the money
you don't have the honey and if you don't have the honey
you don't have children, therefore no legacy...
so what the **** are you doing?
Kant didn't have children: but he has children
of German Idealism... an idea is as much a child
as a child is not really an idea... because a child is usually...
a father and his son going to a football match:
indoctrination...
i have to admit: Hussein's staring freaked me out
a little... no woman in my entire life ever did what he did...
sure... Ilona... when she saw me making pancakes
having to take over two girls attempting to make pancakes
fail... while looking through my Ipod collection
of music give me that look of "love at first sight":
nope... that didn't: doesn't compare to the stares Hussein
gave me when we were talking...
it's different when a woman looks at your during
*** and it's quiet another when a young man looks at you
without him thinking that you know he's looking at you
like you're something... fire-prone...
i have no words to describe it...
it's not even ****-erotica... it's Platonism at its highest
mountain with a knife-edge...
i can't describe it, properly...
perhaps this Robert... this Cypriot spent too much time
with the managerial staff who play off this
macho-"alpha" attitude too much...
the game: it's a game of looking and sounding
intimidating... sure their large Goliath posturing gives
them away... they speak of nothing but a framework
of boasting... Rob has these many dogs...
trained them to become attack dogs...
good with children and families... blah blah...
but when some "****"... blah blah...
funny fact: you know that if one of those dogs
with impregnable jaw-bites has a grip on you:
the way you make them release their bite is by sticking
******* up the dog's ****?! ever heard that one?
and his SIA crew congregated around him listening
to him gloat and boast...
he's not bad: just the usual "good"...
the men feel "herded" while the women feel slightly
pale and out of place... Hussein was listening
on the monologue of Rob... but when Rob left
Hussein returned to me with a litany of questions...
do you like dogs? i used to own two dogs...
an Alsatian and a Dobberman...
but i'm not a boy-man anymore... i prefer cats...
Toni (a girl's name) came to us
and showcased her cats... i showed her and Hussein
a picture of my 10kg Maine ****: Quarus
sleeping in the chair i sit on when i write
crouched like a crow: oh ****! i saw Peter Crouch
up and personal... me and the guys joked:
one said! oh... he's 7ft tall!
i turned around and folded all my fingers
exposing my pinky: yeah... he might be...
but the fact that he's so skinny probably extends our
perception of his height... laughter...
Hussein is the first person to call me after a shift...
i was sitting on the toilet when he called:
i have a funny phone... i hear people but they
sometimes hardly hear me...
we exchanged takes: hey, Hussein... it was nice working
with you today...
will you send me the answer by Thursday?
of course mate...
we compared telephones...
you don't like Iphone, you prefer Samsung?
yeah, easier to use...
how much did your Iphone cost...
£1,200... wow! you're not afraid of having so much
dough stashed in your pocket?
if i had something that expensive in my pocket
i'd probably glue it to my hand!
so much digestion... we're talking about a boy
of a rich banker... we're talking...
Mary Poppins' type of neglect of a child...
he sees his father twice a year...
i was gagging to ask him: Hussein! what do you
see in me, that you keeping staring at me so much
when i'm pretending to not look at you looking at
me?
women just avert their eyes:
Hussein... you know what you remind me off?
only a few weeks ago i had only 4 "friends" as contacts
on facebook... now?
i don't know why i have over 900 Arab contacts...
do i look familiar to you?
Longshanks was talking to and fro... Hussein was
roughly 30 metres behind: Matthew! Matthew!
Hussein! i need to eat something! you charge your
phone i'll go and eat something...
the interaction between men has become
somehow... mysterious...
more mysterious than among / between men and
women...
after experiencing what i have with Hussein...
the Yemeni... i'm thinking...
maybe i ought to enter a "homosexual" relationship
with a man... based on a Platonism of conversation...
we're both **** women left right and centre...
but? we'd come back to each other and talk...
we wouldn't be gay... in the need to explore each
other's ****-roller-coasters...
we'd come back to a friendship...
he would do his bit of ****** aspirations and i'd
settle for what prostitutes do...
why am i thinking this? his, ******* STARING...
at one point i was almost tempted to ask him...
did the Turk did a terrible job on my beard?!
is it badly trimmed?
those eyes were burning... and when a spider
frightened our supervisor i simply exclaimed:
i was afraid of spiders once... i did succumb
to arachnophobia once... now? i'm like a fly magnet:
why wouldn't love spiders?
i once managed to catch a mosquito by its legs
and feed it to a spider... it was lovely to watch...
i sort of enforced man strangling nature into
obedience: it wasn't exactly equivalent to saving
a poor homeless kitten...
i caught a mosquito by the legs and fed it to a spider...
there's a Surah in the Quran about a Spider...
this night i just escape his staring....
i sometimes wish women had the same audacity to be
be able to stare at a man worth their: "contention":
but that's not going to happen..
a contention that can be resolved by a perseverance
of: merely conversation...
that lays no basis for an argument to begin with...
interacting with such Arab youths
i'm finally allocating a "psychology" to myself...
it's becoming painfully obvious...
i do know why i want to do the shift at the London
Stadium tomorrow... i want to see this one,
particular woman... she's in her... i guess mid-40s...
she looks oh so frightened...
she's beautiful for a woman her age...
she has a knack for surrounding by these "alpha" males...
she watches me... i watch her..
i tease and giggle at all the "alpha" males jokes...
her eyes speak a different picture:
this little ****-wit is not intimidated?!
what the ****'s wrong with on the basis of
the women i've been with?!
i already have a child with one of them!
i like her... i like scared: scarred creatures...
given that what i truly have to offer
is either hidden or is too personal...
what is revealed about me
is what allows to be revealed...
Hussein?! am i known in the Arab world?
why are you looking at me with a beard-envy?
i was never going to make it "big" in the English-speaking
world... i already commute in and out of shifts
looking at people rotting their minds watching flick flick
flick flick UP tick-tock videos...
i pretend to pretend to sleep... i was hoping to read
some Ovid poetry... instead i'm reading people...
i don't look at people: simply.. i read them:
akin to the ****** proverb:
jak cię widzą: tak cię piszą:
how they see you: is how they write you...
i'm starting to conjure up these fancies in my head:
not that i'd want to explore **** *******,
but that i might explore something else:
more sinister...
the quill's worth of **** of our "fathers":
how strange to find oneself incompatible
with the presence of a woman's conversation...
how: unsatisfying it has yet to become...
i'm bound to Hussein in a way that dictates to me
the categorisation of: NON-NEUROTYPICAL...
i stopped envying opposite *** couples after having
eves-dropped on their conversation...
like most couples: they "think" they better than the next
couple: they're happier, more successful...
than the random, "other", couple...
i was out of a relationship sooner than "never" when
the girl i was with started to create these castles
out of clouds... i was out...
because?! she was slandered in the open
by girls who said out louds: she shouldn't be with him!
magnets... man and woman are compatible...
their conversations might flow on for days...
but... turns out?! there's no intellectual friction....
sure... there's a ****** friction...
but demands never meet demands...
it's unlike being an older man with a younger
man... there are covert ****** frictions
with already: in situ intellectual frictions...
intellectually like-for-like are more inquisitive
of each than what's otherwise non-intellectually
like-for-unlike physically compatible...
i'm not a homosexual... but...
i'd sooner choose a male partner intellectually than a woman...
so much so that i'd require a harem of women that were shared
by multiple partners than fake a forgery
of a "monotheism" of " monogamy"
of swans... i'd rather talk to a man for all of eternity
as i might want to **** a woman for all of eternity...
what's that casual "phrasing"?! it's... it's...
"complicated"... like assured **** after eating enough
it's assured with ****!
i'm sorry... but i find women great
when it comes to ***... but complete *******
bores when it comes to conversation...
that's my modus operandi! i can't help it!
at least with men i want to keep talking to them:
because i don't want to **** them...
with women? i don't want to talk to them
for the simple reason that i want to **** them!
what would i talk to a woman about?! what?!
philosophy is not a money spinning mechanism!
philology neither... grammar?!
Chinese ideograms contra phonetics
of the Latin script?!
can i please leave my familial issue aside?!
can i stop worrying?!
it was simply Hussein's staring at me that gave
the secret away...
not all misery loves company...
some miseries prefer to be locked up...
treated in the same way as the fertility of mushrooms
are treated: kept in the dark...
i'm the sort of miserable **** that much prefers
his own: keeping of solace than having
to share it by boasting it with a Thespians' array of masks...
alphas: ha! siła razy gwałt: strength multiplied by ****...
you need a subtle touch...
you can easily appease the alphas...
you just give them what they crave....
and their craving has a low threshold:
they easily bruise...
you "Hussein" the bigger picture...
you allow hierarchies to take
their natural form of exposure to abstracts...
shadows...
you tend to perform intimate demands of
conversation... rather than perform intimidating
details of oration...
these ******* "Goliaths" are sand on paper.