logophobia

Simon Gilks

TEASERS 1.

which day?
when?
that day?
then?
it happened then?
when?
then?

James has warty ears and an Adam’s apple that is so protuberant he can swing a coat hanger from it and on Sunday evening at the Sainsbury’s Local on Broad Street Fun Street Drink Till You’re Done For Street they refused to sell him alcohol and pissed him off big time. By 21.30 he was out of it and a cardboard cut-out security guy there said he was as stuffed as a soused herring on a hard shoulder which was as good as telling him he was sozzled and shouldn’t be attempting to buy liquor where CCTVs live. I had been tottering about the shop with a ￡10 note in my hand oblivious of the other customers and the staff and it must have looked like I was about to keel over when I sat down cross-legged on the floor by the drinks section to hiccup and cast a Hee Jibbery spell on the Queen like she needed some magic in her life. James came over to help me back up on my feet and I told him then as he took me by the arm that Elizabeth can undo the spell by sucking on the nose of one of her corgis but she will never think to do that before I write to her to let her know that this is what she has to do unless she wants to live until she is one hundred and forty and then she’ll know what it’s all about and it won’t be nice for her. Washing Powder Joe with his Eye In The Sky knew we had just walked from the Actress & Bishop where we’d listened to a couple of gays sing five Garbage songs with a zest that sent us scuttling to the bar for more drink to fuel a fun time and if someone had asked us about our zigzag itinerary from pub to store we would have felt a whole lot better about ourselves. Sophie sits beside me in her purple knee-length hand-knitted jumper and she squeals at me like a starving guinea pig. What? They refused to serve you? At the A & B? I smell coffee and the onions in hotdogs from a kiosk on Colmore Row where early-week revellers sit around sipping cans of Red Bull or munching chips from polystyrene trays. I say listen we were in Sainsbury’s when they refused to serve us. Sainze-ber-reeze. OK? Sainze-ber-reeze as in Local hot slot for the bot bigamist and bystanders. She Kookaburras and for a few seconds we’re back Down Under by a billabong singing Waltzing Matilda like we’re auditioning in the first round of this year’s X Factor and she’s compact and I compact her then drive a marble tractor round a square.

once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

under the shade of a coolibah tree …

It is really human of us to share in this teleportation and in the Blur Zone after we arrive in the outback and we’re on the riverbank we kiss and hold hands like boy meets girl for a day out with the Roos like Mr and Mrs and their baby-in-a-bag family. And then with her dumpling fists in her lap and her gaze fixed on the NatWest entrance opposite us (it’s like she’s reading from an autocue because the pitch and the rhythm of her voice are newsreaderish) she fires her questions at me: did you get the assistant’s name or number? do you think she fancied you? did she get the security guard involved because she fancied you? were you on your own in the shop because you knew she fancied you and you didn’t want to disappoint her? I can tell she’s in the mood to say anything to anyone about the incident and I guess to please her I ought to mention it to the store manager in case the assistant was out of order. If she was then someone should say something to her and who better to do that than the store manager?

Anyone who has an iota of sense tells me I shouldn’t drink so much but only Sophie knows I need alcohol to help me with my Adjustment because we’re in Birmingham for the winter and the winter could be killing if it’s one long cold spell from December through to spring. I want to tell her she’s a winner as she sits beside me in her home-made jumper and when I open my mouth nothing comes out so I think it to her inside a blue halo that spins and wobbles between us for a long time before she receives it. She stands by me even when I am as glum as a discarded bookend and without a Thinking Spot to collect my thoughts on she is all I have. I think though that she might decide she can take advantage of me if I bare my soul to her as I doze beside her and talk in my sleep about top secret Analogues and the petty crimes of the bourgeoisie here in tidy country where the bins are emptied frequently and charities thrive. Even though she’s the ungainliest thing ― and it wouldn’t do my ego any good if she turned on me and started to manipulate me ― I have taken to her and she strikes a chord in me with her silver hammer on my piano strings with a disarming charm I can barely resist and coupled with her looks and manner I sound her out as often as I can and so reinforce the coupling. And now she wants answers I can’t give her because I can’t remember that much about what happened in Sainsbury’s until she sends my blue halo back to me and then it begins to fall into place but as there is nothing inside my ring of azure light (which means she’s bored with me) I ignore her questions and switch my gaze from the side of what I think is a pretty face to the NatWest entrance and say I wouldn’t be here without you. I want you to know this in case anything happens to me. I hope it doesn’t but we are in a strange place. I am not quite fully awake when she Kookaburras again and we’re back Down Under again singing Waltzing Matilda again by a billabong some hundred miles northeast of Perth where lizards hug the desert and the first lakes lie littering like blue paper twists with a big welcoming heart for the bathers

down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong

up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee …

Just for a moment we disappear from the bench then we’re back and no one has noticed we travelled eighteen thousand miles without twitching a muscle or thinking too much about what we were up to leaking through worm holes at the speed of light and pulling ourselves together as we peel the white lines off the roads we run lit blue like the lakes around us. And it’s as though I could have done anything to deserve what happened to me in Sainsbury’s after forgetting which route we took from the Actress & Bishop to Broad Street and she’d understand it wasn’t really me but she isn’t letting on and that’s the way it is between us. I haven’t told her this yet but since we arrived here I’ve had this demon inside me who takes over sometimes and he’ll slip peeled ginger up a horse’s rectum just for kicks and when it kicks off it’ll disappear up its own arse and pop out of one of its nostrils flared through fear as a twice-life doppelganger. I mean when it comes to Sophie and me it’s like we’re in love and have been for years despite the fact love is practically unheard of where we come from. If we do ever get irrational yearnings to be with someone we use drugs to correct the imbalance in our thinking and to keep us Spock-like for the rest of our lives. It’s a sad way to end things but wellies being green in the well brigade and we are well so we could join them means a lot more. People who know nothing of our origins and believe us to be Brummies would assume we were a married couple if they saw us sitting on a bench together as we are very touchy-feely with each other and our voices when we decide to use them have an up-close and personal ring to them like we’re Mr and Mrs who are enjoying a very special rapport because we’ve shared positive intimate experiences for decades and know each other inside out. You what-4 here quite often and we can too except Sophie’s the awkward B on the bench because she keeps asking me questions which I have no inkling how to answer so I what- 4 her and she what-4s me and we keep the peace Smiley happy. Telepathy takes over and I keep telling her James and I were out of it but she keeps telling me we weren’t so far gone otherwise how could we make such arseholes of ourselves in a public place?

i wanna know you like i know myself

i’m waitin’ for you there ain’t no one else

Since we left Spain to come here Sophie’s been like this with me and I think this is because she knows how vulnerable I feel away from my tribe. I have instinctively copied her because I like to fit in when and where I can and it wouldn’t do if I didn’t. I can’t always manage it and often break into song but she’s very understanding when it comes to my Be Bop Deluxe moments and I really can’t thank her enough for standing by me like she does. It might be worth you knowing I was carrying eight cans of Stella and imagining the Queen at a hundred and forty when the assistant told me she couldn’t serve me and little did she know I was hovering half an inch above the floor and laughing at everyone around me who hadn’t noticed I was floating with my libido raring to go. At this elevation my penis was so hard I could have spun on its end as part of a breakdancing routine and because I’d been on the Kestrel Super since eleven that day and I’d been practising levitation in my room a couple of hours before I left for the Actress & Bishop to listen to the gays sing Garbage I was up for it. Mysterious and beautiful though your planet is I wouldn’t like to die here so what is it about this naughty habit of mine that turns me on so much more than you do? I mean I didn’t want to end up here with you. It has an effect on me. I mean why do I so enjoy being up in the air when every time I lift off I age at least a year? I like taking risks I guess but I don’t want to be too decrepit before we return from our sojourn to write up our reports for the chiefs who will expect me back in top form for the inauguration and the subsequent intergalactic tour to fix me in the psyches of the many. And I want to leave here with all my teeth still in place because having a specialist insert synthetic ones into the holes in my gums won’t be a pleasant one and seeing as I wince at the thought of food entering my mouth and sometimes even my tongue feels alien to me I’m sure I have your sympathy. Some days it gets worse and even Sophie doesn’t have a clue how awful it can get when we aren’t together and if I was upbeat every moment of the day I am sure I’d quit messing with gravity and settle for something more civilising like building models of your cathedrals out of matchsticks and selling them to tourists after nicknacks to add to their dens’ dislocating pleasures. The way I see it way back in July 2007 when we promised each other we’d meet up only once a week after we decided to take the trip out of our galaxy to find out more about life on Earth it felt like the right thing to do. I get strength from her aura when we are together and it’s a vice versa same with her situation although she has never said as much to me. And it isn’t like all she thinks about is the money I spend on my wine and beer. I know it isn’t me she’s worrying about when she asks me why I can’t afford to buy her lunch or treat her to new shirt. It’s you she’s caring for out of what I believe is a misplaced sense of duty. If you ask her whether she loves you she’ll say yes. She loves you Brummies on the cusp of everything good for a city like this and her beacon is your faith. And that’s because we’re here to infuse your culture with something different that sooner or later will permeate the core of your thinking. And did you know that it’s possibly your mother I’ll kill with a mis-thought if I ever have the misfortune to have one? I am fallible so I have to be careful and cheerful and full of charm and wit with a what-next wondering about me. And it’s my money so I can spend it how I like and with who I like and when I like and she can’t interfere with it. She says money isn’t made for us. It makes us. So what the fuck’s that all about anyway? And it’s what I wanna shout from the top of the Eiffel Tower Money! Money! Money! next time we get up there. And she says money doesn’t makes us. We make it. So what the fuck’s all that about anyway? And what do I care what it’s about when I myself am about nothing and nothing can touch me like she does? I really wanna do this Money! Money! Money! trip from the top of the Eiffel Tower. France is so much fun I will do it. France gets so much sun I will do it. France is fashion I will do it. But there is no one around to say anything to last time we do it from the top of the Post Office tower. Easy Access my alias says really. Understanding a cipher from him you say really? I say really you two should get on better given what’s going on between you. Easy Access my alias says honestly it’s your problem not ours. And missing his point but getting your own you say honestly? I say everyone’s got their own thing to worry about and mine isn’t either of you two so lose it. If you think you can have it both ways with me and then moan about my lifestyle choices you try it. And you know with her it’s my drinking that gets in the way of my happiness whilst with you it’s my drive to succeed where you fail. And with me it’s me who always gets it in the neck for letting on so this time I’ll keep quiet and no one can touch me. As light as a feather we are together and you’re a crab so you say ga-ga? Easy Access my alias says goo-goo to you too you can’t leave me alone. And I say it’s the same old story I’m afraid to say why but there’ll be an article by me in the Times next week and if you read it all will become clear. I play Starman by David Bowie on her iPod as a way of saying thank you to her for being who she is. So the volume is up real loud for her chorus and her eyes light up and she smiles at me as dopey as I’ve ever seen her here.

there’s a starman waiting in the sky

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times if Glitter Rock doesn’t turn me on Glitter Rock doesn’t turn me on so it’s a 1 2 3 the fern feeds off the pigeon shit because whatever you want to think or say Life is like that and drat it can’t help it and neither can we. Pleasure comes at a price so we have to think the truth so like the jellyfish jams the jaundiced gyroscope mutant’s mouth wide open with its transparent brain and spits the contents of its stomach down the motherfucker’s throat to show it who’s the biz now the Behova Seas have shrunk to pools and huge sandflies flicker in the sun over the new sand plains of Jillis Havva and we have to brave the worst of it. And we don’t know what it is and if that sounds too crap to be true to you it’s bollocks to you and your race with its backward technologies and disgraceful beliefs in divinities and its retarded sense of humour and for good measure I’ll add an etc. ten percent on so you don’t feel cheated and I have your good will. As you will have noted I have a rhythm to my language so I am not an idiot who thinks he can save you like my mate Christ did all those years ago yet I guess that if I kiss Lavinka aka Sing-along Sophie on the lips to stop her joining in with Bowie on the choruses I’ll hang around here long enough to share something with you. I didn’t really want to come and now I am here I would like to make an impression on you and not necessarily a lasting one but I won’t have time if Sophie keeps singing about letting the children boogie and I call it a day and return to Merkle posthaste with a Postlethwaite in my knapsack and a P-dry pair of all-weather pants to remind me of you. Free of here I am almost free and free is the most important word in the dictionary and damn it should be and the song is for her and playing it was my way of saying thank you to her for being who she is and I expected her to sing along like this and drive me crazy like this. I hoped she wouldn’t but now she has and she isn’t clever with her voice she just is and on a wave of love that shook me out of myself I thought I wouldn’t be able to cope with it and now I know I can’t I am not sure what I should do or what I should say and if I do or say anything I am not sure how she will react because doing or saying anything will interrupt her flow and it’s essential to her well being that she flows well otherwise I will come a cropper in different ways. If I worry she might not contact me for days so I’ll worry and she’ll know it so let her sing so I have time and you know what I’ve decided for you? A bonanza day where everything is yours for the taking but you take nothing because you have everything you need already and then after entertaining then dismissing a string of misgivings I’ve decided I’ll be kind and tell you before the song is over and Sophie and I start to commune with each other again that your ever-so-brave-and-silly adventures in space are not doing much to promote the sanity of the human race because there is no chance of you surviving to tell the tale if you travel further than 250000 miles from the Earth’s surface in one of your whatever you like to call them. I’m really being myself here and even though I know I shouldn’t care I should warn you that there are Beezers out there beyond the safety of Earth and they will pick your astronauts off one by one as and when they choose once the spaceship passes through the orbit of the Moon into true solar space. All your ideas about where you are in the universe will be blown sky high and it isn’t like the sky’s the limit so I may as well tell you that when you are that far from your sky you will see Sophie’s face as painted as a Geisha girl’s behind every constellation and like it or not you’ll have put up with its bright whites and garish reds because she is the woman in you fighting your corner with a lifting touch and wide open eyes. I am the man with his arm round her waist and I am the man in her so you have us both where we should be with cosmic purpose and a love of the divine in Life. And you know that nonsense no one is fallible until they are proved infallible and they fail in the truth stakes when asked who is right? Let me say you have a choice between the man of wisdom and the man of might when neither of them make much sense to you. It’s true all infallible people do is twiddle their thumbs like they know but aren’t telling. You’ve seen them at it at banquets and on buses while their fussies comb their hair and the fallible admit their ignorance in such matters as the value of mortal stature in the eyes of the masses and the king and whoever else is interested in who’s the best at being someone. And my advice is if you want to be the best at being someone don’t expect to be able to be yourself very often but back to your space race and Sophie’s face which will be everywhere you look once you’re really out there. Because he’ll understand a little more about outer space once he’s seen her face everywhere an astronaut worth his salt will fail to mention that he’s seen her even after he’s re-entered Earth’s atmosphere (let’s assume he’s escaped the Beezers who will bomb the shit out of you if you cruise within a thousand miles of their territories) and is happily encrusted and tangled and weak because he’ll know no one will believe him and no one should given that what you’ll be up to will come to no good in terms of saving you from extinction which is inevitable now weather systems are destabilised and species extinction is on the rise. And don’t you know robots know it and don’t you know Sophie’s doing my head in right now with her singing and her rocking to and fro like she doesn’t know which way to go or how to go it if she could make her mind up? I am sure I would know if I were her and before we say bollocks to her please hear me out on this one delicacy you British have introduced me to: pole in the road or is it roll in the woad or toad in the howl? You’re proper smiling aren’t you but don’t worry because if you think you’re weird I love starch in my shirt collars as it enhances the flavour of the cotton after I’ve dropped spots of peppermint oil on the points and left them in the sun a while. We have our sun lamps too but they won’t tan you like they bring the bronze out in us. I know you know how white you really are and if you’re with me you know so I’m about to crack so I join in with her (and he has been waiting in the skies an awful long time sending you his hazy cosmic jive through radio interference out of boredom more than anything else) and I pick up on the let the children lose it line of the third chorus and tug on her earlobe as I whine with her along the lines of kitty come home hog a bench and get stuck in. And then I kiss the sublime curvature of her neck and this is the most foolish thing I’ve done since I arrived here abhorring everything human and wanting to influence your lives with my own unique brand of entertainment which I hope to experiment with on Britain’s Got Talent early next year if I stay here that long and if I do it’s no thanks to Sophie who is even now oblivious of my plight and determined to see the song through. Little did I know as we stepped through the frosty coppice in our white suits that we would end up here in the city of Birmingham. Right here where you all come to see the clown and the mime artist and the bands. Where you will have a new library whose architectural signature will be drawn from stacked shoeboxes. Where on the tenth chime of twelve o’clock on Sunday 14th February 2016 the pigeons in the city will fornicate like there is no tomorrow. I am waiting for this and in the meantime I will have made a sacrifice for you and it tells you a lot about me I think even though you may never know by how many years I have shortened my life for a slot on terrestrial TV with it’s so ce soir and bonhomie monsieur avanti avatar VAT-free piano-and-guitary feel falling over backwards to entertain nutcases like a man on a stack of suitcases balances and dances laughing and waving his arms like a dying gulliver on its way in an ambulance to a morgue. Because you are all deficient in so many ways I can’t begin to explain it to you without making myself look an idiot and who wants to look like one? I’ll hit on the truth and this TV caper of mine will let you know I have and won’t you like it? In the hush-hush of middle class suburbia a circus of opportunity thrives behind the floral curtains and in the event of it happening I am not sure which song I’ll sing but I’ll guarantee you that if you happen to be watching the episode I star in I’ll change your life like save me from the dropbox brother OK i’ll drop you in my dropbox folder you OK wid it? if you want to subside become a landslide underground and be the being you are ment to bee as busy as an orchid in its bizzy-bizzy tree some Holy Trinity without it Lord we are doomed to Eternity bekoz San Fransisco style Jackie ain’t gone yet she like me near her she like to pet then get thee eck owt ov it koz she no shee iz bovvered by de boot on de udder foot an thiss iz ow it is wid er bekoz shee failed to purr wen we met in de sooperstaw an it getz me singin’ like gangsta no wot I meen u get the seen must be seen to b skweeky cleen dizzy wid sex? oh no ‘eck me it dee deck if me tink de set is me for me for me four mes in a squeeze let’s see who’s the wheeze oo lose iz knees in de bruv pack luv pack hear it from above pack dove pack two-pack three-pack four mes in a skweeze crinkle-cut chips forget the peas pass me the vinegar and the salt please Ease LPs for the best in vinyl Duchamp messed with a urinal my daughter has to take her finals his injuries are mainly spinal shall we call him Len or Lionel? I am like this and so I might pull you over when you’re in your car and remind you carless life is less wonderful and has less spice than a life with one. It is always written into our acceptance of the inevitable that one day things will change but it’s up to you how you spend your time carless or not. I ain’t got a lot to say right now when it comes to how you spend your time but if I were you I’d kill the coke and the smoke and get healthy while you can. I know a man who can do it how you like and even so I think you can do it how you like. It is how ever you like it so it’s really it’s up to you. It will always be like I said up to you. If it isn’t up to you I’d make sure it is but if I were you I’d rather be dead than make sure because you won’t be who you really are until you have this sense that you’ve made sure you are yourself flying your flag from the back of your steed in a loin cloth like Tarzan yodels and you do too swinging in through your arc from the East on this sleek engine of a beast ploughing up the soggy turf with hooves the size of dinner plates so in you come clods flying behind you your pounding stallion whinnies and frothies at the mouth rears up like Champion the Wonder Horse before plunging forwards up a change in incline to the ridge and there silhouetted against the sky you are on top of it flag raised for the regal shot for a coat of arms with thoughts in your head you shouldn’t have because you’re nowhere near getting there then the light in the sky descends like a second sun but silver and at noon and above the tree tops hovers rotating to let you know the intentions of the pilots are benign and it’s the sign you need to dismount and to let your stallion go crop the meadow while you wait for the beam to take you up into the silver spinning ball of knowing you knowing me it’s the best it can be.

from Teasers, Simon Gilks, © 2015