64: Birthday

After all, what use is a lovely prize like that — the waiving and full refund of all your student fees — if the price of winning is your own death? As such, an accompanying, professionally certified, status vitae is a condition of submission of the holograph, of you falling, out the window, of the faculty building. The cascade of softly plummeting academics flickers in saturated neon — looking very much like the archaic sci-fi holograms of antediluvian filmic consensus — fuzzing and crackling down the sheer 300 ft windowless side of the building. A voice at my feet snaps me back to Loftie’s forecourt. “Brother!” a man shouts up at me from the curb, “spare me a coin, a genuine coin”, “I’m not your brother”, I glare down at him. And then I notice, he is my brother. “Aaron?” “Is that you?” I haven’t seen him for 14 years. “Brother, spare me a small coin for a spot of broth, brother. A small coin, I’m a genuine coin.” He doesn’t seem to have noticed I’ve recognised him. 14 years ago, he’d also fled academia. Now look at him. Screw this, I think, tossing him my smallest coin, and jumping back on the stolen BMX to bunny-hop down the service flight to nuzzle my way into the basement barn. This is where the real scene is. I see Martha ‘The Leg’ Brutoli working on a life size portrait of a Roman Catholic Minister in oil pastel. It’s photo-realist, in an endoscopic sense. She’s just blending the black of his colonic cassock in around his Sherry glass. In the pit just across from her, there’s Isobel ‘The Hammer’ Stockton, just spritzing the final glaze on her halloumi dalek. In the corner there, it’s Sharon The Planet, she sells chainmail for whippets, edible and non-edible. Actually, it’s her stiletto heel that pierced the rug dog’s eye: the floor of the club is carpeted with an intricate tapestry depicting huskies pulling a fat silver disk; they fan out in all directions from the centre, where the silver sled is positioned to reflect the mirror ball above. The tapestry has traction damage from the dancing, as well as from the monthly sniff safari, which occurs across the full expanse of the carpet’s face. But the pierced eye of the rug husky is particularly menacing, with the frayed strands exposing the chalky pink underlay beneath, which glows ominously in the UV light. When it’s on. All the music in this place is piped in through a tinny wall-mounted Huxley service monitor with its red casing flaking off at the sides. The source is a 1962 Solex reel-to-reel which plays tape originally recorded from a living room radio speaker via a Voice Master PM4 pencil mic. During the recording of Get Ready by The Temptations, you can hear somebody sneezing. It’s purportedly Loftie’s godmother, who eventually succumbed to the falling sickness. Lanky Mr Clevertouch, the burnt-out but tolerated one-time star of Gee Mom! comes across from the bar with a couple of snowballs in his hands and spots an old Stratocaster propped up on the stage. “Ah, guitarina!”, he chirps, vaulting onto the stage and sweeping the instrument into his arms. He’s clearly never played before. It’s all the wrong way round. The strings press up against his _____ shirt and get caught up in the buttons, while his flailing fingers stab, grate and pummel arrhythmically at the back. Underneath his scuffed brogues, a special children’s birthday paper — all impacted with the soppy brown crud of an anonymous adult — is slowly torn into soggy scraps. “Gee Mom!”, he croons into the unplugged microphone to nobody, “Look at you… Sitting there in all your special golden armour, all cufflinks and candlesticks - it it comfy? I know it really looks the business but do you need a wipe? Does flakey old humbug need a wipey? Shall we get the hydraulic arm? And the pneumatic hand? And put it on pinchy pinchy? Geeeee Mommmm!” The crafters keep crafting, unstirred. “This crowd’s an oafish stew”, he ostentatiously whispers to himself, hoping the nonexistant waitress with the silver fringe and rollerskates will empathise and manifest. She does not. Still, I find his efforts commendable, and so I try to do the heart sign with my hands. But it comes out the wrong way up, looking like a gentleman’s glans. “Hey doc”, his face spins at me, glass eye flashing huskily pink, “you calling me a glans with your hands?” “It’s a simple acorn”, I retort, “a gesture of encouragement…” … Lanky Mr Clevertouch sparkles in a dumpy effervescence as his lips curl towards me in a duck-like indignation. “I tell you where you can plant your acorn: in the soil of…” Just then a shrill pale whistle — like the braying of igloos — fills the air and a spotlight clanks on the face of Sharon the Planet, standing on a ___________ as she reads words scorched into the rubber of a ping pong paddle: A person like a parasite must be permitted a visitor to receive If only in order to permit their leave! And with that, one of the dark ceiling panels above the stage begins to creak, before splitting from its frame and releasing 470 kilos of rocket and watercress leaves, which bury Lanky Mr Clevertouch, instantly smothering him. Then, other ceiling panels start to pop and gush salad, and the sprinklers come on, dowsing the room with an orange & tarragon vinaigrette. I became drowsy, and as the room slides away in a haze of acetic acid, I can hear the crafters barking and gnashing. I’m being being pulled through a maze of narrow cardboard corridors, by I don’t know who or what. Eventually, I’m slumped into a wide, concrete crypt-like chamber where thick, wide black rubber straps radiate sweepingly out from the fat dark trunk of an oily maypole. The supple gluey tongues search about the floor for limbs like mine. Others have been dragged here too and slump in slumber at the base of the stump in a woozy black fog. I feel the slap of a strap, and I’m coiled|slurped in… Sometime later, I’m ejected though a chute onto the river bank. Face down in the silts and shingles, I hear footsteps crunching slowly towards me. I raise my head and see someone in a full-body banana costume towering over me, eclipsing the midday sun. Banana has one n He says It has two n’s, I reply, spitting sand from my mouth. Yes, it also has two n’s and two a’s But it has three a’s, I… Yes, there are three also, one could say. And the B is always at the beginning. And the E at the end. There is no E, I say. Ch! Madness, he says, walking into the river.