Parked – a day in the life of Park Street
Stuck rigid on the bus with the nauseating smell of stale sweat.
All of them were slightly overweight. Old plastic bags had been
reused and stuffed to breaking point. The flea-ridden dirty seats
were buckling, their rusty metal frames under considerable pressure.
Hit one and a plume of dust would explode, making you hold your
breath in the already stiflingly hot cage. There were seldom any
free seats anyway. I was quick to grab a grubby, once lurid bar
to stop me flying. I had to wash my hands. All the bodies seemed
approximately the same age, sitting on their way back from their
weekly impersonal shopping experience. Blank faces in blank places.
And then thrust into this sticky and foul wheel-machine, we unwillingly
shared ourselves, our smells, and all our incompetence.
Stagger, stagger and stumble out, trying not to hold onto anything.
Dirty, dirty, burst outside into the breeze of the midday street.
Hot waves of diesel broke the coolness; I choked like the newborn
retching by the roadside. Flipped over and smacked from behind by
the oncoming crowd, the bus screamed for me. The wheeled box pulled
away, alarmingly close to my eyes, and I doubled back again into
the stream of people. Cries for alms were on my tongue and in my
ears. There was no time to stay. I slipped and plopped into the
shitty flume, walking fast in an ill-fitting hood of a small, blue,
borrowed duffel coat. Floating past was the suit with his chin pulled
up to the sky, the noose slowly tightening in the heat. The rushing
torrent spilt and gushed out of sight on reaching the brow of the
hill.
Down the hill as the flow of the stream reached the start of the
gradient, some of the outer parts drifted to either side, siphoning
themselves off into new outlets. Some of them would never be seen
again. Some would join in again later. All of them were anonymous.
These escapees were attracted by what they saw off their course.
Flashing lights, big lettered words, sounds and voices offering
bargains that would change their day, week and year. The hustle
and bustle carried on down and down.
The smells grabbed my attention the most. Roast meats pirouetting
on the synchronised spits, acrid fumes rising from the road with
the heat, the alluring scent of a grassy common coming from afar.
But of all these glorious wind-borne exclamations, it was the ground
coffee bean that intoxicated the nostrils the most and told the
brain to sit up and listen. Beautiful scenes of nature were conjured
up by the melange of different blends; distant fields, dark-skinned
women with South American black bowler hats, wrinkled men shovelling
dirt, their backs close to breaking from a hard day’s toil.
Following the scent with my nose, I was led to a plush interior.
I moved to the back of the café with a newspaper, a coffee
and glass of water. In one fluid movement I fell back onto a beanbag,
relieved to the core to have left the street.
Where to go from here? Was I to stay in the warm fertile belly of
the coffee house, where there was safety in being inside, or was
I to dash back out into the inevitable and predictable hustle and
bustle of city life? As it got later and darker, the dusty old buses
creaked down the hill, their brakes screaming and their exhausts
spluttering. They slipped down at a forty-five degree angle, nose-diving
in a kamikaze descent. What was waiting for me outside? I saw everyone
I had ever known walk past the shop window, continuous lines of
family, friends and acquaintances all walking in drill along their
line of fate. Their confused and unsympathetic eyes unsettled me.
I couldn’t have emotions for them. A certain nausea washed
over me again as the bar-lady started pulling down the blinds and
ushering people out of her darkened shop. Rank desperation dripped
from my pores, as I knew it was time to join the flock for the last
time.
I emerged back onto the street, but initially didn’t flow
with the crowd of faces. Every step I took was with loathing, trying
always to move as slowly as possible. I wouldn’t be dragged
to the end of the street with everyone. Tripping, stumbling and
getting under the feet of the flock became more and more tiring.
I grew weary and the younger people mocked my efforts from above.
The bones around my lungs burnt and clenched, making my attempts
to resist achingly futile. Tied down to the crowd, the green pasture
beckoned, and as it approached with its clean smell, my mind fell
into place. For an instant the setting sun knelt down and was sorry
for all. The golden steeds stretched their wings and flickered their
fiery tips in anticipation of the stream’s descent. Through
the clouds I saw that I was an accident waiting to happen.
Marilyn Monroe
…this is because each night and every day I am tormented
by my vision of Marilyn Monroe. She dances round my bed, humming
to herself. Off-key, I might add. She’s beautiful, and she
doesn’t wear make-up anymore… I’m glad, it makes
her look more natural. She wears baggy flares and bare feet, a too-small
T-shirt stretched over her boobs, saying TENDENCE GROUCHO. I’ve
never told her that my imaginary production company would be called
Tendence Groucho, because she reads too many women’s magazines
to believe such a coincidence could be a coincidence.
Paris… She told me about the riots, and sucking lemons, and
fucking nameless students in the alleyways, she remembers stubble
rash and sticky thighs and soiled knickers. I don’t believe
her though, she would have been too old for all that. Yesterday
she showed me her pictures… she does these abstract blocks,
almost all in black and sometimes red ink. They are entirely derivative
of Rothko, but I don’t tell her that, because they are actually
really moving. Shades of grey…
She says she hates being so big, she’s size 14?, and sometimes
I catch her sitting on my bed, bawling into her Cosmopolitan, tissues
balled at her feet and cherry painted toes. Marilyn Monroe is obsessed
with being thin, all she eats is yoghurt and fruit, she checks her
weight at least twice a day, and occasionally I’ve heard her
being sick through closed doors, she doesn’t believe me, you’re
beautiful, so beautiful, but she doesn’t believe me. I can’t
make her happy, passive/active, because I’m just another mirror
for her and she fades from me, leaves me, she won’t look me
in the eye. Goodbye Marilyn Monroe. She has left me alone and unfulfilled.
I fall asleep. I awake. I fall asleep. I awake to a room with red
walls… but it’s my room! I have white walls! I check…
definitely my room… I touch the wall. It is dry, and has been
for a long time. There are marks from blue tack and teenage posters.
I lift a picture, the wall is darker where it has been protected
from the invading sun. I fall asleep. I awake to a room with green
walls. The picture is dark green behind the wall. The next day it
is blue. The next day it is black. The next day it is grey, and
here it rests, solid, indefatigable, block.
I awake continually to my grey room and my memories of Marilyn
Monroe. She sent me a postcard, nothing on it but tiny blocks of
grey and a note saying she has been experimenting with colour/shape.
I think, I imagine she is in Montmarte, doomed by Amelie, Paris
again, cobbles and graffiti and laughter and wine.
