Decided to continue an old story.
Don't know the name for it yet. So, the tag will be "El Greco" for some time.
Thom's POV (so far)
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Early in the day and I’m already smashed.
They serve Bloody Marys in the morning in that little café behind the club. It’s basically why their business still floats – blokes like me crawl those 15 steps to the entrance and the only thing they remember how to say is the name of the drink, and they gurgle in their throats, so I say – they ought to rename it to “Broody Mary”, apparently “L” is too hard to pronounce after a rough night.
The normal people who have omelets in there laugh at the concept, but for the rats like us it’s a blessing.
So I’m drinking my forth and I see that it’s not my last this morning. I put a little salt in it for the sake of the tomato juice and it tastes nasty, but what the hell. I could easily stay behind in the club, since I’m a DJ there, and have something more suitable for the hangover – cold beer comes to mind – but that way I’d be inside for days. So it’s basically not the drink I’m after, it’s the excuse to get out in the morning. Open my eyes a bit so that I wouldn’t bump into people around me. Straighten my hair.
Besides, the drinks in the club are questionable. Everything is questionable there, as a matter of fact. We are not listed in the local nightlife guides, and most of the people who show up here know the owner or heard of the place from their friends. People don’t go here to have a fancy cocktail and meet someone with much money – they go here because there are no bouncers, the drinks are cheap, and there’s no dress code. Apart from curious college boys who show up here because they heard it was a “truly underground place”, our usual contingent is local scum. That’s why I prefer not to stay back there for a drink or two – last month they forgot a case of strange cocktail mixes in the cans in the corner and a week after the liquid ate through the tin and left a large ruddy stain on the cement floor. Vodka here is not really vodka – it’s rubbing alcohol and water, in the proportion of one-to-two. The beer is all right, as far as it’s bottled and you are absolutely sure that no one ever opened it.
Every night there is debauch, which leaves my ears ringing. In the early morning I sit in the little café and fold the newspaper pages into doves – I almost build and army around myself by the time I’m done. I cool my cheek against the surface of the table and rake my fingers on it lightly. Then I gaze around the place and see the door opening, new faces appearing. Seeing the first one, I duck and pretend to be passed out, with the newspaper doves shielding my head.
Not that I worry, it gives me something to do, something to stay focused on. When I was younger, I used to hide behind the mounds of snow so that the people in the passing cars wouldn’t see me. That is, when there was much snow. I used to build a fort around myself and stay there ‘till I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. There was just so little to do at times.
Nothing’s changed really. The thought makes me slightly giggly and I struggle to keep quiet by biting my lip, but I lose cover by picking up my head and my eyes are obviously laughing. “Shut up,” I tell myself and struggle harder, “Shut up, shut up, you are going to get busted.”
And busted I am – the first cackle that escapes me is a bit of a gurgle and the newcomers turn their neat heads toward me. I take drink from my glass and pretend to be drunker than I am – this is shame stepping in and I hate it. In the morning light I can’t really control myself from being ashamed. I rest my head against the glass and look at the dust in the sun while those guys whisper between each other. I glimpse at them quickly and recognize one of them – last month he was passed out on the floor in the club by the morning. He must’ve remembered me.
“Hey,” I hear and turn my face to him, “You are from that place, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ve been to church,” I can’t hold back. Another fit of giggles is hovering over me.
“No, you are from that basement place.”
I really don’t like it when people think our club’s in the basement. To me it seems it’s much more deeper under the ground.
“What I want to say is, you are the DJ there, right?”
“Sort of. I don’t have half the equipment to be a proper DJ.”
That’s probably the most constructive discussion about music I’ve had with another person in months. The college boys all whisper among each other and I feel a slight headache coming in.
“My mates here want to go there tonight,” the bloke nods to other at the table. I run my eyes other them and then look at him again, “Is that alright?”
“I don’t care who’s there,” I blurt, shrugging my shoulders and losing the eye-contact, “Just don’t get beaten up badly and don’t bring anything dangerous, ‘cause the chances are, it’ll be used against you. Or against me, for people usually tend to go at the one who’s got more attention.”
They are stupefied a little and I count the seconds before they enter the phase of thinking that I’m just horsing around. But they don’t, for some reason. One of them looks at me with his large eyes and sort of a sad expression. Who knows what he is thinking.
“D’you think we should just stay away?” their speaker asks me and now I’m who is stupefied. By all laws they must laugh at me and tell me to relax, that they’ve done much
more dangerous stuff. So before I become disillusioned with them I lean close and speak very evenly:
“Don’t drink or eat anything. Don’t pick fights. If someone tries to get to you – back off, or better yet, get lost in the crowd. Leave before everybody gets completely smashed. Keep an eye on each other. Don’t stare.”
Then I’m back at my seat again, finishing the glass, after which I throw a few quid on the table and exit the café.
The following evening I spend behind the equipment with the soldering iron, which means I achieve nothing. My rather tender education has a flaw – while giving me a background on philosophy and art, it left me blind as a bat in electronics. So I huff and puff and poke in the dark until a friend of mine shows up with a smile on his face.
“What are you doing?” he asks briskly, taking away the iron from me and turning it off.
“Nothing,” I scratch my head and shove some wires away to make space. He looks slightly disapprovingly at me, then sits down on the floor, his legs crossed.
“What a rat hole,” he says softly, “Does it at least bring you any inspiration?”
“No,” I pull my sleeves over my wrists, looking down, “I mean, yes. It gives me that static buzzing in my head from which I can create something.”
“Yes. Like creating universe from dirt,” he flashes a bit of teeth in the dark. I smile back, rubbing my nose against my shoulder.
“I can make allusions too,” I say.
“Really? Haven’t heard any for quite a while,” he cocks his head, “I thought you were the artistic type.”
“’m not,” I say, getting up, “I just add some rhythms together.”
“In a totally unartistic way. Do you have anything to drink around here?”
“Sure. Are you allergic to cyanide?”
“They say the only way to find out is to try a small amount.”
“D’you reckon it’ll get you high?”
“Of course. As high as the sky,” he smiles again and I wave my hand at him.
“Whatever. Are you staying for tonight?”
“Now that I got you all giggly, of course.”
The college boys do not show up, although I pick my head up to survey the room every 15 minutes. It does not concern me, apart from the small ache in my shoulders, which I shoo away with different thoughts. At first those are thumping, beating, moving thoughts, like the gush of wind in October, picking up leaves and dust. I remember walking in the sunny afternoon, seeing everything around me moving, and the first moment in my life the world stopped to be flat. There was depth in the air, it seemed, and there was a way of finding something invisible. I think about that feeling first.
Then it’s a mixture of colors. Rich, bulgy, tangible colors that are mixed around me. They are clean, too – a completely pure red, blue, and green.
Then, when my hair is sticking to my temples, neck and forehead with sweat, I close my eyes and think of the sea. I feel the water pushing at every part of my body and I feel myself dissolving in it, until I’m evenly dispersed. It’s early in the morning. Somebody’s passed out in his own vomit. The floor is slippery. My friend and I are the rare people who are still on their feet.
The sun’s probably rising outside, but here it is dark, still. The natural light never reaches here. When it is about 5 in the morning I tug on my friend’s hand and we go into the little room where there’s a mattress and where it is a little warmer. We sink down and he lies on his side, his back to me, his greasy hair falling on the pillow case. I look at his thin shoulders and carved shoulder blades.
“Fancy a shag?” I ask, my voice sounding as disgusting as everything around us. He turns to me and I look into his clear gray eyes as he wraps an arm around me and pulls me closer.
He’s foreign and his taste is foul, and judging by the amount of thoughts we’ve had in our lifetimes, by the amount of kicks in the stomach we’ve got, by the amount of alcohol and chemicals we’ve taken, this act, that can’t be really fit into the frame of love-making, can be as abstract as our fantasies. I imagine I can see the color leave his skin in waves, and I imagine his bones are ringing, and I imagine he’s faceless, and I imagine I’m not myself.
tbc
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