Love is the Drug

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 Love is the drug

 

 

Painted c. 2001, oil on card, 6.5 x 9 cm

Wednesday: Office

I had been to the office just above Camden, a towering Deco edifice guarded by gigantic black cats. It was to discuss my work: I negotiated my way through the dismal grey labyrinth of plastic room dividers that led to the meeting room. 

At the large oval table sat my boss. There was also the team leader, an intern and another engineer.

“Ah! sit down, thanks for coming in. Don’t see you around much?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s easier just to work at home.”

“But you are missing out on our new intern.” The young woman laughed. She had unusually large teeth. "Yeah." she said.

“Sit down,” he said. “Actually, don't sit down.” He pointed to his laptop. “This is fine.  Suction power data graphs. We loved it. Keep it up.” 

“Really?” I said.

“Yes."  He addressed the team leader, a pallid man. "Do you have anything to add?”

“Caspasian, great stuff. Keep it up. But we still need the one on energy efficiency.”

“It’s on its way.”

“Can you get it in by Monday, first thing?”

“Monday? I thought I had two weeks.”

He fiddled with a pen. “You did. The schedules were changed. We now need it by Monday, at latest.”

He stood up. “I hope that’s ok.” And he escorted me out the room and, in the windowless corridor, continued, “Thanks for coming in. I’m sorry about the change. I only just heard about the deadlines myself this morning. You know how it is….”

 

Thursday afternoon

Tom had paid an impromptu visit and was drinking a cup of coffee while I, in my dressing gown, was trying to work, seated at the table in the kitchen in front of my laptop.

“Is this what you do all day?”

He bent across the table to see the screen.

It should be emphasised that this energy conversion efficiency has no relationship with cleaning efficiency or ability to pick up dirt where absolute levels of suction, airflow and suction power are more critical. 

“Jesus.  Now I know why you’re so weird. I see you don’t even bother getting dressed any more." 

“Come on,” I protested. “I'm not weird. I'm an engineer. And I have to earn a living. We weren't all born with silver spoons sticking in our arses.”

Tom brushed aside my protest with a wave of his hand.

“You can't carry on like this. You're like a nun. We’re going to a party.”

“What party?”

“On Saturday. Freddy’s.”

“Who’s Freddy?” 

“A friend. A normal person. Who loves life, and having fun."

“I can’t. I have to finish this.”

“ I thought you had until next month?”

“They changed it.”

“God. Well, bugger that. You’re coming anyway. No ifs, no buts.”

He took a slurp from his coffee, then began a lecture.

“You’re a disgrace to youth. And I deserve better. Britain deserves better. The women of north London deserve better.”

“I rather doubt Britain’s womanhood are desperate for vacuum cleaner engineers.”

Tom thought for a moment. “Probably one or two are, you know. The female mind is quite incomprehensible. Defeated Aristotle. And drove Nietszche insane. But I must admit engineer isn't perhaps the most glamorous of professions. Maybe we can call you a designer? Women seem to go for them rather.”

Saturday Night

 

We got quite late to the party. 

It was in one of the old Georgian blocks, round a square.

The door opened with the sound of disco and a gust of majiuana smoke. Two bearded men, one in a crimson ball dress and the other in a gold, welcomed us.

“Don’ you just love my dress?” said the first.

“Oooh god those tacky bows!” said the second! “Miner is diviner, I know you’ll agree.” 

 “Oooh bitch,” said the first. “And bullshit grammer.”

“Are you coming in?” said the second.

In the kitchen, a tall, waif-life figure in flowing pinks.

"Freddy!"

“Wonderful timing, my dears. Here, you open this.” He passed me a bottle of rose Champagne which I poured into wide glasses. 

There were perhaps two hundred there, cramming into the hall, kitchen and a large living room. Bizarrely, the intern was also there. She was wearing incredibly high heels.

 “Hi, how are you getting on in the office?“

“Yeah,” she said.

“I think you'll be fine. It can be a bit chaotic though.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“They'll love you. You have wonderful teeth, you'll go far. Just don't fall over.”

“Yeah.” And she started giggling uncontrollably.

Tom disappeared. 

A hippy couple stood in the kitchen entrance gazing at me and into nowhere, sharing a little red crystal bong.

“ Yeah man,” said the man, blurrily.

“ Positivity, right?” said the girl, in a fake cockney accent.

“Yes, indeed,” I said. “Definitely.”

“What are you into?” asked the man.

“Vacuum cleaners,” I replied.

“Wow man. Sucking.  Blowing. Inn-ess, out-ness.”

“Awesome,” said his girlfriend. “ That's sooo totally holistic. Want some?

I took a little smoke from the hubbly bubbly, just to be polite.

A fat Japanese woman in a pink jumpsuit joined our group. “Instagrammable moments. Love it.” She took a photo with her phone.

“Yeah man,” said the hippy, nodding slowly. “Yeah.”

“I'm launching a new range of clothes. They’re going to say “Instagram = life on them.”

“Amazing,” I replied. “Such profundity and concision.”

She beamed, “yeah, right? Positivity.”

“Open wide,” said a man in a cowboy hat. “Tic tacs.” “I opened and he popped something in my mouth. That'll get you going.” It had no effect  at all. 

A girl had entered the kitchen and found the champagne. She  slurped greedily from a goblet  with one hand.  She held a snow-white chinchilla in the other.  

“What's his name?”

“My names Bill and I'm an alcoholic,'' said the chinchilla. 

“He always gets out of his face at parties,” said the girl, taking a long slurp, then adding, mysteriously, “I’m a Catholic”. The chinchilla farted loudly.

Guests packed the hall and kitchen, drunk, high or both, laughter and chatter filled the apartment. A woman appeared wearing nothing but balloons, which I found a little distracting. “Don't you dare pop them. Mr Naughty.”

I backed off, bumping into someone. His eyebrows were low and his moustache gigantic. 

I said, “I'm sorry, I didn't see you behind that huge moustache”.

“I am Turkish.”

“That's wonderful. I love pide.”

“Oh God, yes, pide, pide, pide!” he cried.

“Are you Kemel?”

“No.”

“Deniz?”

“No.”

“Suleyman?”

“Yes! Yes! I am Suleyman,” and he embraced me with tremendous force.

We did not talk much about vacuum cleaners. I was very very drunk. 

 So was everyone else.

Tom reappeared with two girls, one under each arm.

“Look what I found! One for me, one for you.”

“You are completely crazy!” said the girls in unison.

“Hello,'' I said “Who are you?”

“I’m Gabriella”

 “I’m Isabella.” 

Isabella looked at me quizzically. Tom said “His name’s Caspasian and he's a designer.” 

“Really?” said Isabella.

 “Yes, exactly.”

“Like a fashion designer ?” she asked suspiciously.

“Electricals,” I said quietly.

A pause. Her brow creased. 

“Oh. Like... an engineer?

“Yes,” I said, “like that. Domestic appliance engineering”

“Oh, God! How wonderful! I love engineers. They are so so sexy. Especially if they do stuff with vacuum cleaners.”

“I do!” I cried, grateful for recognition, "I'm an expert on suction."

“Jesus, how amazing. I can’t believe it. And I just adore suction.” 

 She hesitated for a second. “I was worried for a moment that you might really be a designer…..my ex was a  designer and he was a complete creep...Anyway, I’m Isabella.”

“I know, you already told me”. She was really very drunk. “I’m Caspasian.” 

Tom was plying Gabriella with more wine and she wasn’t putting up much resistance. “We’re off to the lounge,” he said, “see you later.”

The two transvestites appeared in the hallway where they’d found a mirror.

“Who are those transvestites?” I asked Isabella.

“They aren't transvestites. They're my brothers.”

“Does that prevent them from being transvestites,” I asked, as we observed the pair fussing with a powder compact. 

 

But Isabella ignored my question. 

"Let’s go through there", and she took my arm and we squeezed our way through the guests to the half darkness of the lounge where there were several sofas.  Tom and Gabriella reclined on one, he offering her more wine, which he poured so it splashed onto her arms and breasts, and which he then licked. 

A dj played tracks, twenty or so moved with the beats.

“Let’s dance,” said Isabella. 

And so:

Face to face, toe to toe

Heart to heart as we hit the floor

Lumbered up, limbo down

The locked embrace, stumble round

I say go, she says yes

Dim the lights, you can guess the rest

 

Sunday Morning

 

I woke up.

“I’ve got to go.”

“God.”

“No really, I do. I have to.”

“Christ,” said Isabella. “You're so weird”

“I’m not weird,” I said, “I’m an engineer. And I have a deadline.”

She laughed.

And I went back to complete my report.

 

 

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Read to: Cyberstrobes, 23 August, 2021 

Face- monotype

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Face, Monotype, c. 50 x 70 cm, c; 2007

 

 

 

detail- eye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is one of several monotypes that I produced to escape from the rather dark styles that I'd been working with for some time prior. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Some people I know

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 Some people I know, monotype, 45 x 61 cm

 

 

 

 

detail- thug with earring

 

 

 

detail- dandified thug

detail- generic low life type

This piece features various low human types: the dandified touches in thugs are excellently observed in David Lynch (as well as Scorcese) films: vanity and brutality stepping out, hand in hand.

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Companion Animals

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Snake, acrylic on hardboard,  6.5 x 9 cm c. 2001

 

 

 

 

 Companion Animals

 

 

Autumn, north London. Long shadows cast down avenues from a low golden sun. And that sweet damp smell.

 

 

I lived alone and ate alone and worked alone and slept alone.

Morning. I was in one of those funny moods in which work seems unusually difficult. I was seated at the kitchen table where I normally worked, quite incapable of motivating myself to begin to summarise a report on vacuum cleaner engines. 

In an attempt to kick-start myself I went down to the corner shop to get milk.

In the hall downstairs above the mailbox was a board on which were pinned notices for the residents of the block and on my return I went to check if there might be anything of consequence. There was the usual: an announcement stating the fire alarms were to be tested, a piece of misaddressed mail, a notice about the sorting of refuse and a sheet with the previous year’s accounts. But there was also an A4 sheet with the word PETS typed in capitals, underlined by hand with a black marker and followed by two rather hysterical exclamation marks.

“ FLAT 22a., WILLIAM MATHERS, Flat 22a, was sadly a victim of his pet. All residents are advised to exercise caution in their choice of companion animal and to respect the comfort and safety of other residents. Signed Barry, Building Manager” 

And beneath the text were two photographs, one of a beaming Mr Mathers, a middle aged man with a huge smile and robust, masculine features, and another photo of a gigantic boa constrictor with a conspicuous bulge in its middle: also Mr William Mathers, presumably. Someone had stuck a heart-shaped sticker of a teddy bear next to the first photo. 

I returned to my apartment. 

I had not known William Mathers of flat 22a well, but I recalled him, some years back, helping me with the kitchen table I’d just bought.

The delivery men had parked their van in the street in front and had placed the table on the pavement outside the block. I’d descended to meet them.

 

“Hi. It’s up on the second floor, I’ll open the door..” 

They replied with bland expressions, “Nah mate. We just deliver to the block, see. Nothing about stairs.” 

 

And his mate showed me the delivery note. “If they’d meant us to take it up the stairs they’d have written that.” I looked at his fat dull face. “Just sign this, mate,” he continued. “Down ‘ere”.

Thus, I stood there with a 5 foot kitchen table on the pavement outside the block, scratching my head, when a sturdy fellow in gym clothes appeared.

 “Leave it to me,” he said, easily raising the vast pine table onto his massive shoulders before marching grandly up the stairs, my only duty being to hold the doors open.

"Need anything else?" he asked with a smile.  And we chatted briefly, his stolid virtue impressing itself upon me, and thereafter he never passed in the block or street without a greeting.

 With that recollection, a wave of melancholy crashed over me, and I sat at that same kitchen table immobilised by sadness, the milk carton still sealed on the table and my laptop open apathetically at:

Hardware design considerations for an efficient vacuum cleaner using a BLDC motor. 

For how could a man ever find it in himself to research suction systems when his own neighbour has been swallowed by a snake?

Was it sentimentality on my part or had the atmosphere in the block, usually so impersonal, changed? I fancied that it might have, that my fellow residents were careful  to greet me in the stairwell or exchange cordialities at the mailboxes or to hold the door at the entrance or even, on one occasion, for two of their children to help carry my supermarket bags up to my flat.

But whatever feelings the news of my helpful neighbor’s decease might have generated, the advice included on the notice can have had little impact for just two weeks later a second A4 sheet appeared.

“ FLAT 40 MRS BLACKMORE. Mrs Blackmore, Funeral. 7 April. Mrs Blackmore, known to many as Nelly sadly passed away, an unfortunate victim of her parakeets.  I wish to take this opportunity to urge all residents to exercise caution in their choice of companion animal and to respect the comfort and safety of other residents. Signed, Barry, Building Manager” 

A neighbor joined me at the noticeboard.

“Well... ” I said.

“Lovely lady,” he replied. He was an older man with fine silver hair. “Lovely birds too. Green, yellow, red, pink. So charming.” He broke his reminiscence sharply. ”But that's the thing with parakeets.”

“Really?” I said, “They seem harmless enough.”

“Let them out of the cage, she did. Never let them out of the cage. I always said that. Never let them out of the cage. She left the cage open at night, she did, and they got her while she was sleeping.” He continued with a sigh, shaking his head from side to side. “Started with her eyes. ” He paused for a moment.

“Oh dear,” I said.

He then looked directly at me, and I saw his eyes were welling with tears, “I always said that, I did,  never let them out of the cage.”

 And with that woeful wisdom he disappeared to his apartment.

 And another neighbour approached the notice board, a youngish woman who I think lived above me. She gave me a nervous glance, came over closely and, leaning her head to one side conspiratorially, whispered, “her feet were all gone”. 

“Christ. That’s insane”. 

“Yeah. There’s something not right about that,” she added, and wandered off.

*

 I lay on my bed imagining Mrs  Blackmore, known as Nelly, being pecked to death in her sleep less than fifty metres away, first her eyes removed then what? Tongue? Fingers? And her feet? What was that about? And how many parakeets were there? - their pastel plumage turned ruby red. There must have been quite a frenzy. I pictured them wheeling about her slumbering corpse, nightgown tattered, feathers floating in the turbulence above her.

 These thoughts made me feel quite uncomfortable, though I had no recollection of meeting the lady or her birds.

*

There were, happily, no more such messages. 

There was no announcement of an Extraordinary Residents Meeting. The block did not work in that way. There was, howeve,r an impromptu gathering in the entrance foyer: about twenty residents were there- quite what the specific cause was was not clear. The man with silver hair was there, head sadly bowed, as was the youngish lady, who gave me a little wave. I also recognised Neville and his wife, a couple who lived on the floor above and whom I'd helped with the loan of a vacuum cleaner. 

He was the most vocal, his voice bellowing, “it's those imported pets. I knew it. Those imported pets. Cause nothing but trouble, I told everyone. They should deport the lot of them.”

 His wife added, “yes you did Neville. You were right on the ball”.

Neville continued, "They shuld deport the lot of them." 

 But another man, perhaps Indian in origin, added, “find me a truly English native pet? You think Siamese cats and goldfish are native to England?” 

“And what about tortoises:?” asked a child who I saw was one of the two children who had, some weeks earlier, helped me with my shopping. 

“Will my hamster be deported?” asked his sister looking up to me nervously . 

"I don't think you should start worrying ," I replied. 

All his seemed to rile Neville, “oh you lot are just nitpicking!” he declared. 

“Come on everyone, “ came an authoritative voice: it was Barry the Building Manager. “You can’t hand around here. Health and Safety. And he pointed to a notice:

 

 "No more than 5 persons are permitted to gather here at any time. By Order”.

“Let's go, Neville”, said his wife.”We're definitely off to Portugal if it carries on like this”. And she took him by the arm and with their departure the rest of the group dispersed.

There were no further incidents. Perhaps Barry’s advice had finally been heeded, and we duly returned to our previous mutual indifference and I carried my own shopping up the stairs. 

Autumn became winter. We shivered. And, in my solitude, I wrote:

“Maximum suction occurs when a sealed suction gauge is used…”

*

 

Read to: The Writers Group Gainsville, 14 August, 2021, Albuquerque Cyberscrives, 17 August, 2021, Astoria Writers Group 22 August, 2021

 

 

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