SCRUBBER (11.99)

Short fiction & poetry collection, published by The Foundation Imprint



includes the texts:

City Lights
Land of the Lost
Too Dazed To Fuck
Bowlcut Boy
Shearer
From ‘Clone’, Chapter Four
That
Eclipse Variations
Dirty Hari
Ambivalence Powder
George Garfield
Dutch Lager at the Media Bar
Intro to ‘The End of Nothing’
Outback Greenhouse
Onamission
From the E to the A
A Discussion on Fishometry
Black Box Recorder
Monkey Tan
Scrubber

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that

it's the first time in my life i've ever been called 'that'.
"take 'that' back to where it came from," she says, "they can't just expect me to do it here and now. i'll need to bring someone in." somewhere my sympathy and my venom are wrestling together. i don't know whether i want to spit on her or send her flowers. maybe i should spit on the flowers. get it over with.
get it over with.
i'm flat down, eyes peeled to the ceiling, kidney exploding with urine.
i'm a fucked up mess on a slab, drooling, crying and sucking on painkillers. five x-rays, soon as you like, please. there's a man tugging himself into the adjacent vacinity, smelling of shit, dragging excrement on his toes. he tells the nurse he's sorry, ever so sorry, ever so. the stench arches my body into a retch. toe smear on the floor.
a jolly scotsman wheels me to the lab, cracking jokes (he knows i'll find them funny) about too much buckfast. or was it thunderbird? and i'm telling him not to make me laugh, it'll only cause a rupture somewhere and he's tugging away smiling and i'm thinking "this isn't so bad" and then she calls me 'that'.
let me out of this stretcher and i'll fucking floor her.
i'm beside myself. painkilled.
"fair enough" says the buckfast man and i'm supposed to suddenly flip into understanding. give me a bun for christ's sake.
"where have you been" the doctor (mike) says.
"new york" i say. pastures knew.
"anywhere more exotic?" he says.
i laugh and he tells me he's being serious.
so now new york isn't exotic.
"and did you feel bad in new york?"
i felt : guilty, cold, skint, tired, frustrated, horny. but bad?
i tell him i caught the flu. it had been going around, someone said. a week long thing.
he hums.
my back tooth was beginning to hurt.
where's the game, boy?
and they (the other thats) say i'm a hypochondriac. always got something the matter with me. the matter (reminds me of a joke).
it's toothache. it's american flu. it's a stone in my kidney. it's heartbreak. it's lonliness. it's despair. it's abject pessimism. and i tell them i'm getting it out the way before the summer comes. i want all my ailments cured and sorted before june, before the sun rises.
they tell me it's an excuse. i tell them i'm ridding myself of excuses.
i can get it out and deal with it now, not then, not when it's too late.
i can clean myself, i can fast and flush and get the viruses out of my system.
discharge all the matter.
stop feeling 'bad'.
getting ready for the warmer months.
the months where optimism and promise wash in from the west.
they cleanse houses and attics and gardens and company cars.
i cleanse my body.
that's why i'm happy to be here, trussed in a trolley, pumped to the neck with codeine because it'll soon be over and it'll be done with and i'll have nothing to hold me back
nothing
i remember what it was like to finish school for the summer. to run across the tarmac and fall and get a skint knee, to feel the pollen in my face as I smile and I sneeze and the tree trunk with the gash in its side and the car-wreck nearby and the sun and the projects, long summer-long projects, reading a whole series of comics then making my own, staying up past my bedtime, everyone's bedtime, and laughing and laughing and laughing because nothing could stand in my way
the rain is coming down on the a&e roof.
a beautiful ambulance driver wheels by.
i laugh.
a fight breaks out on the telephone. green shirt, white shorts and she's screaming into the receiver. two charcoal officers grab her by the armpits, "tell him it's all over" they say, "when are you going to be here?" she says. hurry the fuck up. she makes a break as they drag her to the pen. green shirt gets caught in his fist and he heaves her back under control. she screams and spits and jamms her body into a raindance. "fuck you".
i remember the camden man asking for directions. how to get out. he returns, lost and found. "i just wanted to go home". she thought he was drunk. he blames the pills.
the buckfast man arrives. wheels me back for more abuse.
"they're ready now"
keeping it impersonal.
i'm told to strip to my boxers and i slip on a white gown and they take five shots, keeping their distance. i breathe through the aperture, as requested.
she acts like she's seen it all before. whatever i am in my head, it means nothing to her. tell her that i'm doing it for her own good. tell her that i won't see her again until the winter. but she'll only raise an eye and turn to the wall. flip her chart and draw a tick and get on the phone.
i wait for the exposure. sitting tight, feeling naked. in a box no more than two metres long. pull out the guardian and pretend i'm not in this situation. tell me about the war.
she tells me what's wrong.
tells me there's nothing she can do.
she gives me more codeine.
i ask her what i can expect.
"let nature take its course," she says.
i laugh.
and that is that.
 

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