The Neverending House Party

Beer crates in the kitchen are balanced high like an Egyptian monument, a proud testament to indulgence. I’m a girl who likes a couple of beers, just to get the night off and running. After that though, it’s spirits all the way. Dave stands guardian over a plastic bin of punch wearing a hoody and aviator sunglasses on account of getting horrendously stoned the night before. He’s happy enough to preside over the mysterious green intoxicant like a school dinnerlady stirring a vat of baked beans.

For some reason a weedy little bloke sent by the letting agency to do odd-jobs and minor repairs is hanging about with his bag of tools and an irritable expression on his face. I consider enquiring as to how much longer he’s going to be but decide against it; after all, I don’t want to risk offending him since once the party’s over the damage inflicted on the house will likely keep him in work till the end of term. And besides if he wants to linger on the periphery of the party in the hope of undetected ingratiation that’s his choice.

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The house is filling up, people I know, people I don’t, it’s all the same, it’s all good. Joe has his Macbook set up in the living room, the speakers emanating a grimy bass beat that’s provoking the door frames to shiver uncontrollably in the mould of the inner walls. A couple of lairy fuckers that I don’t know are spraying cans of cider around the dining room in a fit of hilarity but I’m too exhilarated at the moment to get at them to stop. I see my best friend Lucy who’s come straight from her evening shift at Pizza Hut. She wastes no time at all spieling on about a new trainee pot-washer, “my god, sooooo fit!” and their amorous glances stolen over dirty dishes stacked high with discarded pizza crusts, and how she’s so not going to fuck him, and I lap all this up in between promoting the necking of sambuca shots. In any case Lucy’s invited the guy along to the party and says we might see him later.

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The house is like a lung taking a deep intake of breath, as people edge and squeeze their way into the slightest recesses of the house, crushing their bodies into the hard surfaces of the house fabric, rubbing shoulders with the clinging damp. The living room is thick with a purple sulphurous smog, sweat particles cascading like Niagara Falls from the throbbing ceilings.

In the kitchen someone has laced the punch with some kind of acid, and everyone in there is starting to display signs of crazed reaction. Dave has an inane grin painted to his face as he drains bottle after bottle of booze into the punch bowl. Some guy is bent over the kitchen top, staring with wonder into the microwave as though it were a portal into a whole other world. There are shrieks from the dining room as some poor unfortunate in his smashed state has resorted to primal masturbatory urges and whipped his cock out in the middle of a game of Arrogance. His mates grab him by each arm and forcefully remove him; his fist still pumping his flaccid cock resiliently.

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Much later and no one seems familiar, no one is recognisable any longer, all light fittings have been cruelly destroyed, the only light source now proliferates from the cheap disco-balls in the living room and the blue neon light above the kitchen sink which by now has been clogged with several different expulsions of vomit from persons unknown.

An hour or so earlier I had been joining in with one of the drinking games in the dining room and, like most people, been getting increasingly pissed off with a girl called Kate who insisted on amplifying her pointless and banal proclamations with bursts of shrieking laughter. I couldn’t help but notice how, during one such outburst, the blood flowed straight from her face and her cheeks suddenly ballooned outwards like a hamster’s. I couldn’t be sure of the cause of this spontaneous facial inflation until I spotted a small trickle of vomit escape her pursed lips. Whilst the lads continued the game with unabated enthusiasm, I think I was the only one who watched with mild horror out of the corner of my eye as Kate proceeded to slowly re-ingest the mouthful of puke in long agonising gulps like a reluctant child forced to eat vegetables. It wasn’t long after that she staggered to her feet and left the room in silence.

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Jonathan is holding court near the stairs, regaling a small group with his favourite topic – the musical brilliance of Led Zeppelin – ranting with such passion as though he were championing a fledgling local band. He lecherously details to a wide-eyed young girl the ‘legend of the red snapper’ whereby a hapless groupie was pleasured using the previously-mentioned fish as means of penetration. He laughs at the beauty of such misogynistic hedonism as he is lead upstairs by the girl, throwing me a conspiratorial wink and carrying behind his back a pre-packaged mackerel from Tesco that he defrosted earlier in the day.

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The crowd seems to have changed, as though those who were the first in have since conceded defeat and retired, allowing the more youthful and exuberant to enter and take their place. I’ve been hounded for seemingly hours by two guys who are both gagging for some action and whilst I am too, I hate having to decide between them. I keep yielding to one’s demands, necking in a dark corner of the laundry room until I think we’ve lost the other, only for him to pop up like a malignant spy, almost as if from out of the barrel of the washing machine or neatly camouflaged amidst the shadows of the coat-rack. In the interest of diplomacy I agree to a three-some.

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Mid-morning is fully awake by the time the house stirs. There is some lo-fi drone being playing on the laptop and odd bursts of slow conversation coming from the remnants of the lounge. Statements and odd quips are made and then hang like dead air before floating into nothing like dandelion seeds. When I stagger downstairs, rubbing my head in a useful attempt at exorcising the alcoholic demon from inside my dehydrated brain, I have to stifle a laugh at the living room scene.

Dave and his coursemates are bunched up on the sofa with eyes some acid-fuelled abyss, nodding sagely as ‘Fantasia’ plays out on the TV in painful Disney technicolour. Dave’s mouth falls agape slightly as the agile mushrooms dance with effortless fungi composure on the screen. In the kitchen the walls are stained with red wine like a slasher film, bodies are slumped in comatose disarray all around the dining table and propped up against the fridge. I search around the hygienic wasteland that is the draining board for a reasonably clean glass and hurl back a pint of tap water.

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Sloppy pizzas are ordered in and shared around as the collective try to wean themselves back into some sort of conscious state with greasy cheese and pepperoni. The laptop volume has been gradually increased in increments throughout the day and my head is already pre-empting the thumping bass beats like some kind of physic tinnitus. Fresh-faced revellers have descended, which injects the fragile victims of the night before into a state of resilience. It’s not long before the house is pulsing like a struggling organ with the dirty blood of the party.

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The house is on fire to the old-school tunes of acid house. A living room full of Bez imitations march in time to the rhythm, whilst the dining room is thick with the stench of sweaty, lustful eroticism. In the darkness I can make out four or five couples fucking in this improvised orgy, whilst in the kitchen Dave and his mates – as though inspired into action by ‘Fantasia’ – are struggling to open a jar of mushrooms that some guy called Malcolm has procured from somewhere, in a desperate attempt to keep their colourful detachment from reality flowing like a rainbow stretch across the parameters of their own internal skies.

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There’s screaming in the living room as some Stella-fuelled prick launches a pint glass at the melting wall, shattering the glass into a million fragments over the gyrating collective. I pause from my own fevered dancing and laugh as I see Dave’s mate Malcolm on the floor in the throes of a shroom-frenzy; apparently trying to headbutt his way through the skirting boards, as if attempting to re-ingratiate himself with his rodent brethren from whom he was unwillingly reincarnated.

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The next day and those remaining, like stranded expedition members on a mountain-side, are close to tears at the realisation that all booze supplies have been pillaged and the entire house is dry. A brave volunteer by the name of Darren is equipped with currency and dispatched outside where he makes his way to the nearest off-licence, playing the role of hero for the cause of the party’s survival.

Due to some commendable foresight, however, vodka jelly had been left in the fridge to set earlier and I can only watch with worried bemusement as Dave attacks it with a shoehorn, using this primitive tool to spoon it greedily into his foaming mouth in alcoholic desperation of Withnail-esque proportions.

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I am in dire need of a shower but find the bathtub has become a reservoir of urine and vomit over the course of the last few days. My efforts to unblock the plug-hole appear unsuccessful and the rancid smell from the vile cocktail is enough to propel my exit from there altogether, defeated and still filthy.

Meanwhile a colossal cheer erupts as Darren returns from his travels like a triumphant explorer from exotic climes, bearing a fresh suntan, tales of wonder and, more importantly, fresh supplies of beer, vodka, gin and whisky. He is the prophet by which the party can continue its predictable downward spiral.

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By sometime the next week the house walls resemble a diseased liver, whereupon tumours and cirrhosis have taken a debilitating hold. Down in the living room, numerous dishevelled and undressed casualties are entwined in an impromptu and spontaneous sexual union. My upper thighs and genital region have now been endowed with crimson sores, and I almost expect to see a local news correspondent come treading fearfully over the vast wilderness that is the sodden carpet, reporting on a serious venereal epidemic.

I force myself up and head to the wreckage of the kitchen. As I fumble around for an unbroken glass I hear a faint scratching sound coming from the broom cupboard where, as far as I’m aware, we keep no brooms. As I unlock the catch the door swings open and out crumples the ashen and withered body of the odd-job man. He crawls a few yards and then pulls himself up, dust clinging to his aged face like a dungeon prisoner.

“Fucking students” he mumbles before ambling to the door and out to freedom.

'The Social Network' review

One of the most eagerly anticipated and talked-about films of the year alongside ‘Inception’, David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ more than lives up to the heavy expectation it’s been weighted with.

Unless you’ve been living in seclusion the last few weeks you’ll already be aware that the premise of this docu-drama is centred on the prodigal computer hacker Mark Zuckerberg who essentially creates Facebook in one drunken night and, upon unleashing it on the world, becomes embroiled in a number of legal battles over his billionaire fortune and the website copyright.

The film glides along at the trademark frenetic pace that made Fincher’s earlier work – ‘Seven’, ‘Fight Club’ – so entertaining. It has the same sharp sense of character and punchy dialogue (credit to a fantastic script by Aaron Sorkin whose recent writing credits include ‘The West Wing’) that ensures the film never stalls or feels like it’s treading water amidst the subject matter, which, taken at face value, had plenty of potential to be slow and un-involved. Credit should also be given to the highly nuanced and feverish electronic score by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) that wonderfully streamlines the whole film.

It is perhaps the first film in which the central focal point is the internet itself, and the leading role taken by the intangible entity that is, of course, ‘Facebook’. The narrative swirls around this transient cyber-character at such a rate that it truly captures the surreal impression of this monster breaking free from the human characters who struggle to keep up with their creation as it ascends into the stratosphere from the confines of their Harvard dorm.

The film is brave in the way that it never seems to pander to the mass audience to which it’s been marketed; it requires the viewer to really engage in order to fully appreciate the unfolding story. For this reason I don’t think it’s anywhere near as watchable as ‘Fight Club’, nor as dark and engaging as ‘Seven’, but is ultimately a far more intelligent and important movie; brave in its depiction of Zuckerberg and the majority of the characters as essentially quite unlikeable people, thanks to brilliant performances from both Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield as his former best friend Eduardo Savarin. Even Justin Timberlake puts in an impressive turn playing Scott Parker, the charismatic founder of Napster.

The moral underbelly of the film is particularly discernable, in that it recognises that whilst the Facebook phenomenon has transformed 21st century networking and communication for better or worse, it also threatens to impinge upon actual human engagement and true relationships. This is reflected in the thought-provoking final scene that leaves Zuckerberg languishing as the youngest billionaire in the world but lacking the bravery to add as a friend the girl who dumped him back in Harvard. I believe that in 20 or 30 years ‘The Social Network’ will rightfully be held in high regard as one of the defining films of this generation and as a work of great social significance.

Notes

Notes on a loss of control:

Only one fell-swoop needed to push you to the brink, to shred nerve-endings and decimate personal stability. From clear crystal ripples to a storm of unpredictable tides, that leave you stranded on an island with no discernable direction in which to swim. Unlock the bars to your cage of inhibitions, send your fury and prejudice marching down the hall.

Out on a street, the kerbs illuminated at intervals by lamp light, you come face to face with an altogether more reserved individual on his way home from meeting a friend for a quiet drink; he is bookish and self-contained, a consumer of glossy newspaper supplements and documentaries on a culture of which he harbours contributory aspirations. You will be forgiven should you abandon your elementary grasp on claustrophobic control, and exact savage repudiation for reasons better left unknown. Reasons are worthless when honing the basic art of aggression, for nothing is solved on the apex point of knowing why.

Notes on a lack of belief:

You are held hostage in a prison of nerves, where jailers jangle infallibilities before your eyes. Not half as important as you’d like, nowhere near as popular as you imagine you ought to be. We’re at war with the idea of oneself, battle-lines marked in the sands of the mind, divisions drawn and then amended as the passing of the years work to deaden the fight.

Notes on an infringement of choice:

Why allow yourself ambition when forever being coerced into accepting a VIP pass to a non-too-prestigious exhibition of what you will eventually become? Working yourself to the rhythmic drum of underlying heart attacks, chasing a quick buck like a greyhound to a racetrack rabbit, drinking far more than necessary to make up for previously-established lack of belief.

Scaling the barbed-wire fence in deference to roving searchlights, in pursuit of the perfect body, perfect soul-mate, perfect kids, perfect cloistered existence, perfect sex all of the time, early retirement and a flashing green EXIT sign when it’s time to leave the show, inevitably devoid of any ringing applause.

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks used as Structural Accompaniment to a Mental Breakdown

“...on the cusp of something really riveting here, I really do. Don’t you think so?”

I snap out of my reverie on the leather sofa and revert my attention back to Dr. Hammond who is pacing excited as usual in front of the window. The bright glare from the milk-white sky is casting a pallid aura across his sharp suit and face. I feel the strange sensation one has upon flinching back into focus from a daydream, not entirely sure how long the doctor has been carrying on his incessant spiel for, and already I’m mourning the banishment of that ambient placental daze that so cleverly sneaks up on oneself.

“I guess so, yes” I mutter, keen not to lose face with the doctor by displaying my all-too-obvious inattention. In any case he is far too absorbed in his own thoughts and theories to notice. He has, over the past few weeks, developed a curious habit of pacing behind his desk whilst talking and brandishing a vintage fountain pen which he thrusts forward like a dagger when hitting upon what he believes to be a point of some substance.

The result of this involuntary action is that ink tends to fly from the nib to erratically redecorate his previously plush cream carpet; almost as if he were subconsciously painting his own piece of abstract art across the canvas of his floor and occasionally the white walls, using psychoanalytical theories as his font of inspiration.

“Just think Robert, we could finally be on the verge of nailing down all the surrounding dogma, expelling the cynicism of outsiders, and compounding our ideas into that simple architectural formula which has alluded me for so long” he continues, and the pen flicks between his fingers some more in the same way that an excited puppy wags its tail. He pauses at his desk for a moment with a far-away, slightly crazed glint shrouding his eyes.

I wouldn’t mind so much that he proceeds each session with a hyperbolic rant bursting with high-minded theories cluttered with medical jargon, except that as my psychiatrist I would expect him to listen to me ramble on for an afternoon each week, when in actual fact I am being subjected to this role reversal.

The first few sessions had been fine, nothing out of the ordinary, but gradually Dr. Hammond seemed to become more animated and domineering of the conversation, steering the subject matter away from my issues and onto wild psychological theories relating to the destruction of buildings, becoming ever more frenzied as the time wore on. He had even begun trying to appoint me multiple weekly slots to which I had had to protest even though the hurt in the doctor’s face was clearly visible.

It was when he started setting up several large computer monitors around his office to stream viral content from the internet continuously throughout the sessions that I expressed my discomfort at the situation, but he had assured me that this was normal practise and that with my help he could unravel a new psychoanalytical doctrine that he was convinced lay at the root of my personal problems.

It was the content of the viral streaming that initially alarmed me somewhat – he would select footage of the 9/11 World Trade Centre atrocity to play on a constant loop. These would variously be news reports of multi-national origins, post-event documentaries, and personal eye-witness footage from those in the city at the time. This stream of resonant images and distressing pictures would serve as a backdrop to Dr. Hammond’s ranting, whilst now and then he would frantically rip medical journals and professional textbooks from shelves in order to clarify a technical point he was making, pause one of the videos in order to emphasise something, or turn the volume up from mute in order to let the screams and sounds of shock and awe permeate the surgery.

Whilst initially disturbed and confused by what relevance this had to me and my own problems, I began to find the scenes of death and destruction on such a grand scale oddly soothing; as if they held some sort of calming agent, until the point now where they barely register on me at all. Seeking perhaps to wrest some catharsis from these unorthodox methods I have acquiesced with Dr. Hammond’s madcap ravings all the same.

“Never before has a psychological theory been developed that points to the correlation between an absolute mental breakdown and the destruction of buildings” the doctor says, flicking the pen and positively frothing at the lips in growing derangement. I glance at the screen nearest to me in time to see slow motion pedestrian footage capture in shaky hand-held detail the second plane swoop low like a hawk over the concrete canopy before being swallowed whole by steel and fire and smoke.

“Take the World Trade Centre attacks as the case study” the doctor continues. “In parallel to your mental condition the towers represent symbols of stability and sanity within your conscious. They are firm and strong and unshakeable against the petty trials and tribulations of your day-to-day life.”

On the sofa I stretch my neck to view a muted Fox News bulletin with the black stain of smoke spreading like a paint spillage across the canvas of the sky.

“Now the first plane – this represents a terrible occurrence that subsequently blights your life, jolts the structure of your mind for ever after. Awful though this is, you gradually learn to battle on – because you have to – and the damage incurred can therefore be coped with over time as it fades in traumatic potency.”

I know the first plane that he is referring to. My mother died a very sudden death when I was just 12 years old. Shards of memory recall her dropping me off at the school gates in her battered old Corsa, same as any other morning, and me then being called out of Geography class by a flushed school secretary to make my way to the head-teacher’s office, which sparked initial confusion and panic as I wracked my brain trying to think up excuses for crimes I may or may not have committed. My memory is wiped for about the next fortnight afterwards.

“That first plane – the untimely passing of your mother – was a complete shock wasn’t it?” the doctor says as though scanning right through my troubled thoughts. “It was out of the blue, a complete rupture of your carefully constructed sensibilities, and way of viewing the world. You have confided to me of the tail spin you went into as a result; unable to communicate with anyone, increased tendency towards violence with your peers, a subsequent inability in your young adolescence to form lasting or meaningful relationships with women.”

I can see the thread that Dr. Hammond seems to be pursuing here and whilst I think it ludicrous, I am intrigued at the same time. At the least I’m grateful that he’s begun relating his wild ideas towards the issues I initially divulged to him before he began his flights of fantasy – holding court on details of tensile steel strength in parallel with the frailties of brain neuroses and such like.

“Now by your own admission you struggled to keep that remaining tower of strength in tact, beating it on all sides by drink and drugs as you gradually became an adult.”

“Yes that’s right” I say.

“And then what happens is that you meet Sarah. Lovely, darling Sarah. Your beacon through the smoke cloud. The love you two shared signifies the second tower that you clung to with all your heart. You clung to it out of the desperate desire to repair the damage incurred on the first tower, the primary pillar of your mental wellbeing.”

On the screens there is a montage of vantage points showing the second plane appear into camera shot from nowhere, flung like an unwieldy slingshot across the state from a mischievous airport somewhere over the horizon. The tower remains unflinching as it envelopes the plane within its own structure as though made of sand, before erupting in a fountain of flame.

“Whilst the structural damage to the integrity of the mind manifested itself over a number of years, the second attack was far more deadly, more conceited; the act that confirmed malicious intent on the part of the perpetrators. You were completely unaware of your wife Sarah’s deceit weren’t you Robert? All those years you’d thought true love had been the driving force, whereas she’d been two-timing you all along. Two-timing you with a work colleague - Simon.

“Simon and Sarah, what a delightful couple they made. A delightfully secretive couple that is. Although it was hardly a secret, their affair, was it? Common knowledge according to all accounts. But no one was prepared to break the news to you, for fear you might finally snap. A fear that would have been entirely justified with hindsight, isn’t that right Robert?”

My mind is swimming with past and present fears and recriminations; all the while I’m hopelessly impervious to Dr. Hammond’s obvious attempts to provoke a reaction in me. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Instead I keep my eyes locked on one of the monitors replaying news footage, then the next, and then the next like a roulette wheel of carnage and destruction. One of the monitors is playing out the descent of one hapless man falling through the air like a stricken bird. Another clip shows two people leaping hand in hand through windows from which they must have often day-dreamed across the Manhattan sprawl beneath them. They could have been lovers, could have been strangers, both bound together by the mutual fear of not meeting death alone.

“The ones' who jumped Robert, represent the agony of having to make a decision when destruction is all that awaits you...”

One of the news reports slowly creeps in on a photo still of a man’s face as he embraces gravity with open and flailing arms. To my mind his expression is one of confusion but also of serene acceptance, as though he has been subject to a host of recurring dreams of such a deathly fall all his life, and fully expects to reflex back into consciousness just before the sudden impact.

I understand the idea that I was presented this choice, this dignity in self sacrifice. The notion that collapse was imminent was well within my logical capacity at that time; these towers of strength and wellbeing had now been damaged beyond any possible rehabilitation, the steel framework buckling and contorting under stresses far beyond their routine parameters. Responsibilities, expectations, ambitions, desires, hopes and fears, memories and regrets were now mere paperwork smouldering and fluttering like confetti through the air.

Dr. Hammond meanwhile is continuing to exhale his hyperbole but I am now no longer listening, lost once again in my own recollections of the choice I had to make, my eyes glued to the scenes of devastation that pass in striking cohesion alongside my own mental failure.

I had known that this second attack would be the catalyst that signalled the end of me one way or the other; I could sense the synapses of my brain crackling and sparking with electrical fervour as I struggled to comprehend the lies I had been living through for so long. When I saw them through the slightly ajar bedroom door of our family-sized flat I saw them in the throes of their deceitful passion, fucking like pigs on the marital bed.

As I stumbled back, recoiling as the shock ricocheted through the architecture of my body, rattling the foundations of my mind, my initial impulse – that of self-destruction, of jumping before the ship sank beneath the stormy seas of turmoil and anguish. Indeed I had that choice in those critical seconds and indeed I went to the kitchen in search of hasty realisation to my suicidal inclinations.

But blindly I had grabbed the steak knife from the chopping board and staggered like a ten-pint drunk back along the corridor, following the smell of their sex. As I began to stab at their screaming bodies with the knife the towers fell to the ground and my breakdown was complete.

The proud and gleaming towers that had held firm until now were swallowed up as though each floor was folding neatly away inside the one below, ready to be packed away into storage until the structure be deemed safe to stand alone once again. My mind was immersed in billowing ash clouds as I ceased my frenzied attack and stood back to observe the carnage I had wrought, the destruction of human life lain in waste on the abattoir of a bed, their flesh mangled like an array of rotten fruit.

“...think I’ve now developed the basis of my court report Robert. On the surface you remain functional, responsive and, believably, sane. But inside I am quite confident that you are deeply psychotic, a troubled individual who suffered a homicidal meltdown and now can’t quite come to terms with his own actions or emotions. I feel I have no option other than to recommend to your defence counsel a plea of cognitive insanity.”

He dials through to some adjacent voice, there’s an intermittent pause, doors open and I am lead away leaving the doctor alone to his deranged theories and video images and ink flicking. In the middle of the smokescreen, in the wreckage of atrocity, in the landscape thats left when the towers and everything they represent are gone, is right where I want to be.

Snapshot of a City Dislocate

iron bridges prop up pondering people as they survey paper cups that struggle on along the gutter – blonde waitresses steal cigs in back alleys composing bitchy soliloquies and erotic sonnets on phones – cars progress like cancer cells on a torrent of false destination and monotone routine, so predicable their path along cobbles and asphalt, drivers caged inside with revs per minute intricately correlated to heartbeats – blood shoots round their soft machinery, their muscled hydraulics and nervous systems fragile with the winter chill –

the most exhilarating moment of their day is the double-decker passing the traffic lights mere inches from their face, they feel the rare thrill of being within a footstep of death, they could almost reach out and grab it – daily masturbation now a modicum of pleasure, an extrication of lust, an expulsion of fluid desire that would render us disasters waiting to happen were the ritual not religiously adhered to – policeman on the beat no hope in his face, follows in his trail a vapour of snide rumours and innuendo, dirty aspersions levelled on him –

pedestrians texting into phones are cruise missiles burrowing their way through the invisible smog – and every time I ignore a homeless man selling magazines and praying for a change a little piece of my soul goes through its death throes inside me – a troupe of amateur dramatics play out some kerbside Shakespeare, harassing shoppers with high-fluting lexicon and displaced narratives – these streets are eroding more and more and still we wade our way through to reach the half-price summer sales –

the banks and building societies and financial institutions play with our lives until market’s end, growing day by day, swallowing up everything we hold dear like a tumour – the other day I stood examining graffiti on the side of a municipal building, deciphering the illegible tags and crude sloganeering, wondering if there was any way I could profit from this venture until the light fell and I had to go home – and I wish I could get my hands on some medicinal substances to retreat into numbness and never come back –

I wish I could administer an intravenous injection of hard drugs into the veins of the city, see the walls collapse over time, the tensile strength of steel-framed structures OD and fall to pieces, the lifeblood of the city, the resilience and pride of the people contaminated and in need of thorough cleansing – office workers are wired on espresso and microwavable panini’s, accountants are living their fucked-up childhood fantasies, graphic designers and advertising execs are conjuring up new ways to transform their own graffiti tags and exotic slogans into banknotes and glossy reality – an amateur band rehearses over the internet, full of attitude and ideas, they will part ways acrimoniously before a rough collection of demos can find their way to anyone’s ears –

two lovers are kissing on stone steps as the rain falls upon their shoulders, nothing else matters around them as far as the imagination can stretch, as long as the very concept of time and the false promise of riches and success, recognition and respect, because between the two of them, from the ruins of the city, they have found something infinitely better.

Some Kind of Bliss

Jake was sat next to Anna on a long-haul flight from Heathrow to Tokyo. They had felt the mutual attractive discourse emanate between them as exit rituals were played out and the plane banked a confident launch into the sky.

They engaged in light conversation about their respective groups of friends, careers, and their recent failed relationships and became increasingly enamoured within the connection they had accidently forged as the journey progressed, as though they were passengers on a solo flight to a destination no one else was travelling to.

Jake thought Anna was strikingly beautiful, but in a subtle way that meant she didn’t display any signs of being aware of it. Her eyes betrayed an unflinching honesty, earnest in the trusting affection she had begun to display. He noticed the way her nose would crease slightly whenever she found something funny, and he felt grateful for his noticing.

Anna thought Jake was effortlessly attractive but mysterious and alluring all at once. For the first time in weeks her mind was no longer painfully lingering on thoughts of Ben, and she said to herself that this must surely be a miracle in itself.

Anna and Jake became flirtatious as the altitude heightened the effects of the mini bottles of wine that were handed out and rested their heads on each others’ shoulders to watch the in-flight movie – some corny American comedy to which neither paid much attention.

The flight slept and the plane glided through rainclouds in pursuit of the flashes and dots on navigation screens. Anna felt Jake stir against her and she blinked into a semi-conscious state, attempting to adjust to the darkness of the cabin. Jake was staring into her eyes with a deep furnace of emotion blazing away inside his own. She felt mild relief as a gentle smile sketched its way across his face.

She asked what he was smiling about and he replied, “I think I’m in love and now I have no fear of dying alone”.

He had just enough time to register the sleepy confusion yawn across Anna’s pretty face before the bombs packed inside his shoes exploded, giving birth to a blissful corona of fire that lit up the sky.

Sex Objects of the World Unite (part 3)

The intention, obviously, was to create a momentous stir, a stunt that would ripple through celebrity culture and society as a whole. Looking back it was all too clear that something of the sort would come to the fore and act as the catalyst, the culmination of many minds, the tidal shift from which the waves would be unable to break back.

The new brand of feminine rebellion – or ‘neo-feminism’ as it became known – had been ricocheting through the mainstream’s subconscious for a long while, commonly attributed to a radical magazine cover story that was catapulted around the blogosphere until the theories presented had been adapted and warped to such extremes and conclusions that it barely resembled the original article any longer. The writer was some woman who, whilst initially elevated to a level of cultish notoriety, was now languishing in some obscurity of her own creating.

There had been an epidemic of ‘tell-all’ interviews and gossip columns in which glamorous movie stars, pop stars, models and media personalities came forward and ‘outed’ themselves, with identical protestations of sincerity and bursting pride, as having taken vows of celibacy. There were even cover stories featuring stars like Britney Spears revealing in lurid detail the hymen reconstruction surgery that they had undergone. Jordan sensationally did a naked cover shoot following her 90% breast reductive operations to which there was revulsion amongst the public, but at the same time an undeniable compulsion to keep on looking, as though they were decelerating to crawl past a traffic accident.

So when, at the premiere of one of the year’s biggest summer blockbusters starring Hollywood’s leading power couple – ‘Brangelina’ – both turned up on the red carpet in front of the waiting media, they were fully aware that together they were about to push the bizarre phenomenon into a whole new arena.

At first the banks of zoom lens paused like an army ceasefire, as the couple began to strut hand-in-hand up the carpet, but within an instant, as soon as everyone became fully attune as to what they were witnessing, the place exploded in a grand mal seizure of flashbulbs.

Brad Pitt was wearing the finest tux with his hair cropped into a shorter cut than it had been in recent years. Purposely short to be able to reveal as much as possible of his famous face that smiled wide and shameless for the waiting lens. Across his left cheek there ran a striking deep gash, clearly recently inflicted since the surrounding tenderness of the flesh looked like it would weep blood at the slightest provocation.

It was clear that the wound needed stitches, as it was nearly 6 inches long from the base of the jawline upwards and flirting with the eye socket, although as yet clearly no medical treatment had been sought.

Angelina Jolie beside him had an identical facial laceration, carefully hewn into her porcelain features by a caressing hand. Everyone in the immediate vicinity knew that these injuries, these scars of protest, had been inflicted upon each by the other; there was a loving symmetry in the way the wounds snaked their course deep into the facial tissue like a gorge.

The hysteria generated by the couple’s self-mutilation was enough to ensure the film’s box office success; in fact so healthy were the profit margins that many began to question whether the stars had been pressured into the stunt by some clause written into their contracts by scheming film executives.

Once the defining line in the sand had been traced there was no limit to the level of depravity that such celebrities were prepared to go to in order to instate their commitment to this protest against their sexualisation. Pop star Beyonce stunned fans when she appeared on stage for the first night of her American tour with an impressive array of body scars, all emphasised by the scant costumes worn throughout the show. Jude Law expanded the parameters of method acting when he agreed to undergo facial reconstructive surgery in order to play the part of a car crash victim in a heart-wrenching drama-biopic that won him rave reviews and his first Oscar.

At publicity junkets and celebrity parties in exclusive nightclubs, the beautiful people revelled in the genius of their self-abuse, and gushed over champagne cocktails at how they were getting one over on the public that until recently had idolised and envied their glamour to such obsessive levels. They would stand around spontaneous bonfires upon which effigies of past sex icons like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn and Jim Morrison were cast.

Madonna, never one to be outdone by the younger generations, appeared in public with her sinewy, muscular left arm having been amputated, as part of some desperate appeal for late-career relevance to support a fledging new album campaign. Former supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer launched a new fashion campaign that adorned billboards the world over with their hair shaved into a punk skinhead and sporting a myriad of bruises and shining black eyes, beneath the tag line ‘Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful’.

The peak of this anti-sexual revolution came a few weeks later at a London fashion show amongst a galaxy of scarred stars, where Kate Moss was set to model a new range by Tom Ford. Rumours had flourished and spread like a virus through tabloids and internet forums that the style icon would attempt something sensational in order to lay claim to every headline across the western world. Perhaps due to the level of hype and expectation surrounding the event at what perversities might follow, there was a grim predictability about what happened.

Clearly doused in gasoline that ran down her face like mascara threads, Kate strutted to the end of the catwalk amidst a blizzard of flashbulbs, sat cross-legged on the stage and focussed in to meditation as she set herself alight. There was an almost forced uproar amongst those in attendance as they tried to find the right expression of shock to wear and stagger back away from the catwalk.

It was the perfect culmination of the celebrity protest, the act of self-immolation on fashion’s most glamorous stage, cameras capturing every minute detail as her perfect features rippled and burnt as the flames engulfed her waif body. And yet no one in attendance sought to extinguish the blaze; they could all see so clearly, through the smog and smoke, how fantastic the protest, the mimicking of Vietnamese monks, the self-destructive climax through a cornucopia of exquisite pain. They all knew what a defining moment this would be and all they could think about, as the smoke plumes danced higher amidst the spotlights, was that they couldn’t believe they were lucky enough to have witnessed it first hand and cement their own small footnote in contemporary culture.

As it happened, in the aftermath the excitement and hysteria returned to normal, like an awkward and bashful post-orgasmic chill. The estimated circulation of Vogue and Hello magazines and online traffic to celebrity websites, were roughly parallel in their drop of about 18%.