The Burlesque Hour

I found The Burlesque Hour by chance, breezing through the local street press. I was looking for things to do at the Fringe festival. Of course, I haven’t been yet, because the universe plots against me going.

Anyway, I’m at the Street Theatre. The night has shifted down to being cool as an open fridge. The oven-heat of summer has gone. I finally feel I have energy again. I roll up my sleeves to take it all in. I feel brilliant. The Street Theatre sits on the edges of one of this city’s universities. New buildings have sprung up, absorbing vital car parks. Some of the construction is nearly completed, new cafes, restaurants and convenience stores are stocked and shelves stacked, setting up for trade. The evening light filters through the skeletal steel and concrete of unfinished buildings. I walk under street lights made of two-dimensional coloured shapes. In the distance I can hear the sound of drums and symbols, people practicing for a parade involving a Chinois Dragon. Bang, tisch, bang, tisch, bang, tisch, tisch, bang, bang, bang.

Inside the foyer of the theatre are people hanging around the bar, huddled and cuddling glasses of pinot noir, bottles of semillion and the occasional beer. I go over to the booth, and the girl behind the anti-theft glass asks me what I want to see (Answer: The Burlesque Hour), my name (Answer: Anonymous) and where I heard about the show (Answer: Some local street press – she seemed a little perplexed about this one). I hand over my bread and take my ticket. Then I wait. The people around me are theatre-goers. Or at least one half of them should be. The thing I find about people who like the theatre and the stage, normal move in packs. But sometimes, and I’m seeing a lot of this tonight, they also come as couples. And you can see that some of the pairs, that one partner was obligated to go. However, I am alone.

Eventually, the bell rings, tolling for us to enter. Inside, the stage is with a runway that descends into the front row. Tables and chair are arranged around the runway, giving people with drinks and booze an opportunity to continue watching the show. The curtains are red and crème. Red Chinois lanterns hang all around, like angry, or possibly horny spirits. The sign, advertising the title of the show, is set with bulbs in a heart shape, looping in a flashing cycle. Ushers direct the drinkers to their runway-view seats. I sit a couple of rows up, wondering how this will play out.

Now seeing as there is one more day that this show will air, I don’t want to spoil any surprises. However you should expect a trapeze performance, dancing, singing, blood, balloons, milk, numerous underpants, strawberries, a two hundred pound female gorilla, and some nudity. You should seek to sit as close to the stage as possible. And wear your most expensive, stain-vulnerable clothes. You want to look your best after all.

That all said, it was slightly different in terms of what I was expecting for burlesque. I was thinking more classical style of burlesque. Something along the lines of the Velvet Hammer, or a show that followed the vaudeville in the days before colour film and when Orson Wells was scaring people with Martians. By the time the show ended, I found myself leaving the theatre with a spring in my step, breathing in the cold night air. Goodbye Summer.

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Storm Clouds

The clouds hang above me, dark and rippled. It rained a little earlier and only just. The thunder doesn’t boom, it gurgles, like the distorted sound of a sink emptying.

I can relate. I feel empty after today. It’s like the noose is tightening. I don’t know anything at this point. I’m without the dark blue liquid wisdom of the Magic 8-Ball. My desk is now only covered in work-related garbage and Japanese language books. I need to get out. Sometimes I think that going back to my parents might be a viable option. I know, overall, it has the appearance of failure, that I couldn’t make it on my own. But right now – it feels like a consolation prize. If it does get that bad, that I have to cross the Antipodes back to where I come from, then I will burn every possible bridge I can here. I’ve wasted a lot of opportunities, but no way am I going to miss pissing off potentially thousands of people in one go. It may be criminal, but it feels like a crime to let that one go.

The rain is coming down in waves, like it’s trying to reach that brass ring, but comes up short. The thunder occasionally rips across and grabs hold of the sky, and my attention. But the thunder is just a follow-up for some mediocre rain. I want it to storm. I want sheets of constant rain and hale hurled from the heavens. I want nothing to be safe from this storm. I want to see cars overturned, streets flooded and every smartass huddled in corners praying it would all stop. I want be scared and terrified. It’s better to feel something than nothing. Better dying terrified and alone, than just alone. Never doubt the wisdom of a softer world.

I hate summer. I enjoy the daylight hours, but I feel that 6 am to 9 pm is beyond the joke. I never sleep well in this season. Too many dreams about parasites and crazy dead people trying to teach me how to cook. The heat I get used to, but it’s everyone’s sunny dispositions that really get to me. I feel like punching them. Just crowning them right in their smug faces. Winter I excel. The hate in my heart keeps me warm.

Finally it decides to rain. Starting in spurts and then with the wind blowing, water is coming in from all directions. Thunder now tears across the sky, lightning flashes like small atomic blasts in the darkening clouds. Suddenly everything electric is out in a flash, lights, fridge and television. All dead and gone. Nothing left to do but wait out the storm. I sit back, pour myself another glass of Ringbolt and stare a the black screen of the television. My shades on, even in this twilight, the future can be bright. I invite the destruction of everything. And why not? You wait a lifetime, only to watch your own life to fall apart and not see possibly the final chapter of the human race. Think of the countless generations that waited for a day like this. Just to say: “This is It. About Fucking Time.” Screw heaven. That can wait. Damn Hell. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. This is thousands of years of cultural indoctrination, piles of guilt and sin and condemnation. This is pollution and populace and past times. We screwed up this world, and everyone from the hypocritical preachers to blasphemous scientists are saying we have screwed with this world and we are going to pay the terrible price. But I ask when? The bill never arrives. They give a due date. You watch the mailbox. Nothing. Yet. Right now this is the perfect for me. Alone. Sitting in the dark. Getting drunk. It’s dark now and my shades are still on. I wonder if these will be on my face when the future turns to a giant dark wave of pyroclastic ash? Hmmm. The thunder is gone. The only lights available are the minute flashes of lightning from the clouds as they disappear across the skyline.

With the storm gone and darkness settling in, I decide to lie back on the couch and take a nap. No power means no thing to do but sleep like my ancestors. And that is exactly when the electricity bring everything back to life. Lights flash. Noises beep and buzz loudly, announcing their rebirth. If there is no rest for the wicked, then I am certainly one of them. Time to get back to work.

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My Hiatus

Okay so now I’m a hypocrite. For a long time, I said to people that I wouldn’t do it. But in this terrible and stressful period that has been Xmas and New Years, I’ve become weak. Very Weak. Old habits are the hardest to kill. There’s a woman at my work and she’s trying desperately to quit smoking, but occasionally, I’ll catch her. She’s had one or two. Stress Management. That’s what it’s for. Everyone has a crutch. You need one now and then to Get Through, because that is where the Way Out lies. So I fall back into old habits. And sometimes, get a new one. And this is a problem for me. Especially if I want my life to go somewhere. If I want to go overseas. I need to be saving money here. Not that I have spent any yet, because the first hit, the sample, the test taste, that initiation is always free. At least for the moment. Wait until you get the bill when you order a month’s supply. Then you’ll wonder how or why you got into this rut.

I knew a girl once that became hooked on heroin. Problem was that she couldn’t bear to inject herself. So she got her boyfriend to do it. So when the dragon needed chasing, there was this faithful smackhead ready to pump her full of drugs. I can now relate somehow to this situation, but only because someone was kind enough to pay my way into this thing he is in as well. I mean heroin is terrible and even knowing someone who is on it is devastating. You can’t do anything, except watch them get thinner and thinner until they become a methadone-addled puppet, with a one-track mind.

However, this is the 21st Century, and some people have come to realise that they don’t need to snort a powder, or inject some base into their veins. They don’t even need to smoke from an old modified coke bottle or huff from a plastic bag. Those people, the same that claim they are pure, are addicted to the adrenaline running through their veins. Their source, their pusher is within their own bodies. And a hit is never far from home. A workout at the gym, the sweat- and blood-stained floor of the boxing ring, the click of a mouse button, and in some lonely fringe, the power button of a vacuum cleaner.

In some darkened Internet café, or in basements and bedrooms of the terminally lonely, there are thousands, millions of people who reach out into virtual worlds. Ersatz Human Contact through a screen. Just type the address and you’re there. They spend their days, playing games, running from one end to another of fantasy worlds. They create and build and collaborate. They kill and steal and screw each other. They work and play and die, again and again in this place. They live their lives elsewhere. But if they could be anywhere, would they choose to be there?

Like the others above them, they will find everything around them perishing. The purist addictions will demand attention. They have a life of their own. It’s a thing that needs to feed. You may not see track marks trailing up your friends’ limbs, or the blood running from their noses. But you might see their shakes, those terrible little delirium tremens. Then they’ll be gone. They will drop whatever they are doing and fix themselves up. And then you’ll see the difference. The addictions of this terrible new age are invisible Not until you’re actually there in the grip of chasing the new kind of dragon made of LCD tones and false futuristic marvel, do you see your life changed. For better or worse, it’s up to you.

But one fine day, you will wake in that filthy hovel you once called your castle. You’ll walk among the debris of rotting clothes and furniture. Everything is unfamiliar. You’ve crash-landed onto the alien landscape that is now your life. Welcome back. Because this is where you belong. Your stupid mistakes, your decision or not, have brought to this point in space and time. As you trip over empty cardboard boxes that may have once contained food, consider how many rodents and insect have fucked each other in them. Take a long look at the soda bottles filled with sour-looking yellow liquid, knowing that you never remember buying that much Passito. Look around at the place where once kept a nesting instinct at the empty places your once had furniture, now trashed or sold while in the thrall of your habit. You’ll go into the bathroom and find it hijacked by Lovecraftian horrors. Slime and grime and creeping things that have made it worse than any Scottish public toilet. You’ll wipe the mirror only to see human wreckage. And like some burnout modern-day Ozymandias and look upon your ruinous work and despair. Take in a deep breath. Hold it. Your addiction has left that stench. That is the smell of “you’re lucky to be alive”.

Now’s a good time to quit.

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Everyday is Exactly the Same

The elevator I take feels haunted, it makes its actions slowly, to close the doors, to rise or descend. Sometimes it gets stuck. Its as if it is doing this deliberately to build tension inside of me. Like at any given moment, it will drop into freefall, giving me an all-expenses-paid trip to hell.But it never does. It descends gently with the least amount of g-force compared to its brothers that service this building. The doors open on the ground floor and as I leave I can hear the elevator shaft sing, like some muted ghostly children are trapped inside. Out in the street the acid of the rain has long since passed, but the streets are still empty. Corrosive pools still remain collecting in the smoothed stone of pavement. The bus, black ironclad of the streets, thunders towards. The only thing that stops it is a fare. I hop on board, feed my ticket into the machine, which acknowledges that I am worthy enough not to get stomped by the driver. The lights inside are a bright blue. This stops the riders from finding a vein if they are in for a long ride. Too many have been crashing and burning when they finally hit the terminal. The bus company doesn’t like lawsuits I guess. The twilight at the end of the day is setting in. The storm clouds are breaking up and moving to the tidal winds of the sky, like sick, black jellyfish. There is so much forest around, you hardly think there was a war on.

I press the button to queue the next stop. I step out onto soil made toxic from the rain. And I make every effort to not slip over. You can always tell the people who have good balance and excellent skills for telling when it’s going to rain. They don’t have scars on their faces. They’re probably pretty good in a fight too. When the war started, they picked out all the kids that thought they had some self-diagnosed mental illness. That’s exactly how they recruited them. You be surprised how many people seem to cure themselves of their problem when faced with the possibility of death or dismemberment. In the end, they either: fly-right and become a human being, they snap and go on a spree or they get shipped back in a box after a short career in the first wave.

I walk through the empty park in the dying light. It’s nine and the sun is just going down. It’s still light enough to see the possibly psychotic addict amble down the path in front of you. Or the girl taking her slamhound out for a walk. That Frankenstein of a dog is twice as big as her. It’s got a jaw like a steel bear trap and probably kills to the slightest command syllable. I pass by all these people like ships in the night. No words, just wary glances are exchanged. Glances that just say, “So is it you? Are you the one that kills me? Come on, I’m ready”

I’m not worried. In my pocket, I can feel the only weapon I ever need. Fear-In-A-Can™. One spray sends the most crazed individual into a rampant assortment of their worst terrors, paralysing faster than UltraMace. I don’t carry a gun, too much noise and normally pulling stuff like that causes all kinds of Mexican Standoffs and often end up in a purchase order for a dozen body bags. Has our world become more violent? I don’t think so.

Sure there was that artificial intelligence that kicked off another world war. Some entire countries look more like a prison than a place to live. Panopticons dominate entire landscapes. Some places are just toxic wastelands. But things still find a way to live there.

I pass by a downed spacecraft. Its fresh - I can still feel the warmth of their mysterious engines. The entire crew is dead. A handful look like they survived the impact, but took their own lives, the neon insides of their skulls are splashed against the mangled hull of their ship and smeared on the ground. Crows, black as death, are already on the scene to pick at the remains. They caw at me as I get close, warning me that this is their meal. H.G. Wells was a prophet. Our world, so isolated in its own arm of the galaxy, has become a breeding ground of some of the most dangerous things in existence. Well, at least to life not of this world. Our bacteria, animals, plant life, pollution, music and entertainment are poison to extraterrestrial life. Most of it is lethal, and it’s not quick, nor is it comfortable. That is why the crew is dead, they’d rather face their own weapons, rather than the bowel-churning, nerve-twisting, skin boiling agony that awaited them just by touching terra firma.

I don’t think the aliens see us with envious eyes. I can only imagine it’s fear. The human race encounters violence on a daily basis. And not just survival-violence. Thrill kills, murders, riots, mass graves, and chemical weapons programs. Every person on this planet has witnessed such things at least once within their lifetime. Since day dot, we have carried this violence in our genes and culture. The human race really hasn’t changed, just the way we break each others skulls open just to see what’s inside.

And it’s this that the aliens fear. All of humanity has the clue that there are other worlds out there. They just have no means of arriving on these distant and strange vistas. Yet. The aliens fear that a single boot-tread mark their sacred planets will mean the apocalypse. Because soon after that boot-tread, is a Zoo Burger franchise, or a billboard sporting an ad for Afghan Opium Cigarettes, or one of those video zeppelins, spouting the latest viral media. In the end, the downed spacecraft and dead spacemen tell one good thing: the batteries of the defense network is doing it’s job.

I arrive home, unlock the deadlocks and step through the threshold. I find my place a mess. My housemate, after several days in a self-induced coma, has returned to life and turned over anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor. He’s sitting on the floor, his hand hovering over an old coin. He’s swearing and cursing at it. I can’t help but notice the tourniquet around his arm.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.

“I got a good deal on some positron,” he says, totally fixated on the coin, “I was moving all kinds of shit with my mind. I think it’s run out now.”

“Well great, clean up this mess, you retard.”

The guy gives me a baleful stare, as if he would be thinking that there was enough of whatever he poisoned his body with, to explode my head. I raise my hand and threaten to smack him with the back of it. He gets into gear and starts turning over the couch and righting the television back into its hutch. I open the fridge and reach inside. I withdraw a beer, then reach for a pack of Afghans on the counter. I open the back door and step out onto the patio. I slump on an old bison-hide couch, crack open the beer and light my cigarette. Soon I exhale the malt-scented stream of cloud that wafts in the even breeze like a Chinois dragon. I look up at the few stars emerging in the clearing dusk sky.

Someday, I will step onto foreign soil and see things no other human has seen. I will visit strange and unique and ancient places. I will see dawns made by the rising of alien suns and then watch them drop beneath the horizon. I will be greeted by, talk to and kill many people that are not like me at all. But until then, everyday will be exactly the same.

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No Company to keep but my own

Long nights, considering the choices I have made. When your only company are roaches, porn stars and the four walls, you eventually snap from the opium-haze and begin to reflect. You stare into a black mirror. Torn is the past. Familiarity breeds contempt. I destroy things, its part of my nature. That’s why I go to great lengths to take care of the things that I have. But all of my care and attention can mean nothing. And in the end, there’s nothing but shattered headlight plastic, paint chips, twisted metal and blinking hazard lights. You should never drive away from accidents, but I did. And now I guess some people hate me. I need to keep running. It’s in my blood now. I had to lock away the nesting instinct. I cannot stay in one place any more. I need to be elsewhere. To see things. Do things. And be somebody else. I have spent too long asleep, dreaming of a future that doesn’t come. Drifting nowhere.

My manager has quit his job, making him the 5th person to run the Help Desk. The Desk of Doom rolls on. This is the same manager that announced three people on the Desk that they no longer had a position. And they all left. Now that he’s gone, another guy has replaced him. Micromanagement seems to be his thing. He gets down with the floor with the need to guide and steer the ship at every possible opportunity. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing yet. I haven’t talked to him. I seem to be invisible sometimes. Am I haunting the place that I work? Am I too busy? Sometimes I’m not sure, only because all of the new people we took on ask me questions about every minute or so. It’s hard to maintain a train of thought.

Hot summer days are setting in, turning everything, everywhere, into saunas. Photos and posters peel from the walls. Insects seem to be everywhere. Cool and clear summer nights are the only respite. I have never been a fan of this season. You can only get naked in order to cool down. Beyond that you either need a fan, air conditioning or scantily clad slaves with large fans made of the finest peacock feathers. I grew with distaste for the beach, only because it was pretty much the only place my parents would take my brother and I on holidays. In the end, I hated the whole affair. The sand, the sun and the surf. The family arguments, the long endless drives past white concrete condos, the bitter silences that we shared. Each member of my family does his or her own thing. It’s how they worked it out and how I was raised. So in the end, we get selfish and do our own thing. We spend time together, but only really when it matters. We work well, after a fashion, because we have our space.

Sometimes, I’m happier when I am alone. When I’m around people too often, I just begin to hate them. Or at least the parts that annoy me. I can only take most people in small doses, if at all. That doesn’t mean I am incapable of love, which I feel for a small select group.

However, every night I am reminded that I sleep in an empty bed. And that ultimately, my only company is myself. I’m not sure if I should ever consider a relationship and even bother to try. Would someone understand me? Or would my touch destroy them? I don’t know. I guess right now the only certainty is that I am merely passing through your lives. To some I will just be a footnote. Others may keep me as a chapter. But I know no one has me as the whole book. Not Yet. And that’s the only wisdom I can scrounge from the macadam, looking into stunned and shocked faces as I jump back in my car speeding off to the sound of sirens.

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