Hamsters Wheel

by Marc Booth on 5.07.10


“I’ll be back in a minute.”
A dry lipped kiss precedes two hours of inquiry from the scowls of the sober to the bowels of the dance floor corners. Here bug eyed smilers try their best to understand me and to help me on my way. So much shouting and confusion, every path and person leads the same: “I‘m sorry mate.”

One more path to follow now, an old man in a leather jacket. The girl that leads me holds my hand and dances while she walks, eyes alive in light and a heart that pounds for twenty when she hugs me, hugs a father. She’s definitely up, I hate her for it. Pretty girls always find so easy, showered with presents whilst guys like me toil for just a glimmer of the good time to come. Chasing water bottles and bouncer’s eyes, pupils mark the tide, I’m getting warmer.

Fists clenched in pockets, dirty nails scratch sweaty palms, fumbling through fluff and strips of twisted filter tips to find my fold of crumpled notes. Shaking hands with the stranger I collect. The searching, the booze, the hours lost, I forget. Marching back now to my feelers, my friends and love and everyone else. Arms in the air as I laugh my last breath of red wine out, and breathe deep three touches of oblivion. More money changes, as friends become more friendly after waiting in the wings.

My search then is life, like bills and work and pain. Between this earth and coming bliss lies purgatory, every time. The waiting, always the waiting. Who are these people? We talk about nothing at all, stretching of the mouths producing grunts that sound all the fanfare of blasphemy, ultimate banality in the face of what’s to come. But we need it, it’s a purging of the menial, the prison break escape plan spat forth one last time before freedom come. Waiting.

Twenty, thirty, forty minutes. Stop looking at the time.

“I‘m not coming up, you?”
“No me neither.”
“I think I‘m peaking a bit.”

Looking over at a friend, new to this, the first few times always hit you like a ton of shit. He goes to dance and I keep an eye on him. He should be okay, it’s just the tongue has a way of mingling with the teeth around the lips. Conversation is a luxury and misunderstandings, between drunkards and doormen, are commonplace. He’s smiling now, sweating and gurning, off his face. So now we know we’re loaded and the goods we got are fine. The question is effect, which has lessened as our tolerance has increased over time. Best not to dwell, I’ll ruin my night.

“Pills are just a supplement man just have a good time all right?”

We never used to have them we were just out drunk like all the rest, now I’m always asking and chasing like the night can’t start unless, I take them. I remember something someone said about serotonin, and then I stop – willingly ignorant. This is not the time for my head to wander to thoughts of hospital beds, to wonder what that guy could have spiked me with instead.

The girl I’m with is dancing now, she doesn’t need a name. Just the footfalls beneath her tracing rhythms in the dark, as beams of apotheosis cast her face a thousand Troy’s. Eyes rolled back as the warmest current swells the air to leave no pore unkissed, every leaden weight in mind is spun but to silk by an act criminal, and unmercifully kind. Where am I?

We see and speak only in soft focus and our pulse is thrice the beat, we’re trumpets of momentum friendly, and vulnerable. If the meek may inherit the earth then tonight we are just so. All my tobacco is lost to distant rubber hands, or as a favour to that guy who rolled me one as well, an unknown is now my saviour. What was I talking about?

I’m in the toilet. The girl from before is filling water from a tap turned to fast, splashing on my trousers where several stains await. My penis is a bright white almond. Small and silent, sexless and sweating I return to the dance, prompted by a sudden speechless need; I’m a hamster on a wheel.

“If you think about the word dwell it means like to linger or to live, so saying we shouldn‘t dwell is like saying we shouldn‘t live.”
“Maybe that just means the past, hindsight and all that.”
“Hindsight is regret, just a pretty sister of regret.”
“What?”

Splintered conversation where happiness and understanding are married to the death of short term memory.

“It doesn‘t matter mate.”

It doesn’t matter. That’s the point. That’s the smile that pains my cheeks, the waves of warm and cool that hit my startled spine and flood throughout goosehide. A mouth of dentists’ nightmares, a friend that bites his fist, then kissing; long dew across a rose rack petal strewn and spinning, I’m leaping though I’m bound.

I’m at her house confused and lower. Sat, the toilet smells of booze and sick and anxious enthusiasm’s decent to contention. I cannot smoke enough but I’ll try anyway, she saved some fags for now and then I love her. Tights across my face, swollen mouths purse, pursue embrace above two Eve soft breasts. And then my useless penis, lifeless and asleep. It doesn’t matter.

The Sun’s already teasing through the curtains. It should be beautiful, it is not. The light pushes past my pupils and the dreams behind of grace.

Wake up? I haven’t slept.

I look for my phone without the blessing of focus, and it’s dead. I look for the watch on my wrist, gone. Replaced by an ink smeared inscription instead. The morning news speaks out as prosecution, my sentence delivered despite my objections, two hours till work begins.

The age old dilemma now – to try to sleep or not to sleep. If I do manage to keep my eyes down there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to open them again. And the idea that some sleep beats no sleep does not apply here; pill sleep is madness and slithers of insane, a looping, cycling rhythm tortures. The waiting, always the same, between the bliss that came and then on return this purgatory. The prison plans are lost and all my accomplices have vanished, the bars and walls against reason and choice confine me again to necessity, the menial, to work. My eyes close.

I see a friend from the club garbling something incoherent, I see snakes round ladies legs and painted toes. Shadows on the ceiling, pushed back and reeling from the burning spread of light. Someone (Quincy?) shouting something. I jolt out of bed to see the TV still on and I’m late.

Terrified I stand and my muscles fight my bones for sympathy as I stretch wet clothes upon my crumbled frame. Nerve fear and depths of numbness, dull pain a core.

I hobble through the streets, the ceaseless wind burns through the fresh creases in cracked and flesh bit lips. People pass and stare with disgust at the wide eyed boy with matted sweat soaked hair, a child caught by pleasure then cast to earth from all that’s fair. Guilty pangs, and listless complaints as a stomach gives his all on poison magic pellets. Cognitions in a vice, the promise of “never again” holds no comfort or credibility, indulgence at a price.

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  1. Thanks for putting it up Jacko, but you spelt my name wrong! :)

    — Marc Booth · Aug 1, 10:20 AM · #