COINCIDENCE CITY!

I can tell what people are writing just by listening to the faint sound the pen makes when it scratches against the paper. It's the same with the sound of chalk squeaking off blackboards and so on. It's a talent but I'm not sure it's all that useful. It did get me on telly when I was a little boy though. I was all the rage for a while. I was in advertisements for stationary products and everything. You might remember me.

Things went really well until everyone got a bit fed up seeing me do my thing over and over. The bookings stopped coming in so my agent decided we should add a new element to my routine. That's when my agent announced to the press that I could tell what was written on a piece of paper just from listening to it go through a photocopier. That wasn't true but he announced it and I had to learn how to do it. I tried. I really did. But I couldn't. I cried a lot though. 'Those tears won't earn us a bloody penny', yelled my agent, 'now try again you pathetic little pansy'. My agent was the pushy sort. Very pushy in fact. So pushy that he had pushed to gain custody of me from my parents. And so pushy that he had succeeded. I was at the pushy bastard's mercy. I wasn't a happy child, despite the public adulation.

Anyway, I was booked to appear on some primetime show that everyone used watch but no longer remembers. I was stood there in front of a studio audience as a photocopier was wheeled out. Then the host of the show wrote something on a piece of paper and ran it through the copier. The copier started making noises and I listened. I listened in the vain hope that I would somehow be able to perform the trick. My agent was peering at me, mean eyed, from the wings. The pressure was immense. I was silently praying for divine intervention and some came but not in the way I'd expected. You see, as I was stood there hoping for a miracle, I realised that I'd heard the host's pen scratching against the sheet of paper as he wrote on it before placing it in the copier. I had heard what he had written! 'My wife doesn't understand me', I shouted out as the photocopy appeared out the other side of the machine. That was indeed what he had written and I was patted on the back and got a big round of applause. The show then closed with the host inviting his wife on stage to join us and serving her with divorce papers.

I was booked on many more shows after that and could be found endorsing photocopiers and divorce lawyers in magazines and all that. My agent was delighted but, needles to say, this second wind of fame also abated. That's when my agent started making a second round of untrue claims about my abilities. My agent released a press statement that said I'd developed the ability to tell what words were being projected by an overhead projector just by listening to the transparency being placed on the glass. This was utter bullshit. I hadn't a hope. My agent didn't care though. He had me practising every day. He roared and roared and roared at me and when I wept he roared some more. 'Them sissy tears won't land us any juicy new contracts you weak little fuck', he encouraged.

So, as I'm sure you've guessed, I ended up blindfolded with my back to an overhead projector that was pointed at a screen on some bloody show everyone loved watching but no longer recalls. The host of the show placed a transparency on the overhead projector's glass and a drum rolled. After a moment, the host asked me what words were being projected behind me. I had no idea. No fucking idea at all. But, I did have another idea. I had a really good idea about what I could do and what I did was this: I screwed up my face and began to sob. I began to sob and bawl and make bitter tears roll down my little face. 'What's the matter kid?', asked the concerned host and I answered him. I pointed to my agent who was stood in the wings and I shouted out the words 'that man touched my willy'.

Turned out that my tears earned me more than a penny that day, the result being that I was awarded the entire earnings made over the course of my career. I was also returned to the care of my parents. As for my agent, he became penniless drunk. He ended up on the streets and was eventually beaten to death by vigilantes for being a nonce.

And so we have a happy ending to this strange little tale that I invented and wrote in just over an hour (excluding checking for typos) as a challenge to myself. Amn't I great? There's more to me than just being able to tell what people are writing from the sound of their pens. Oh, and there's one more thing that I think I should add. You're probably wondering what words were written on the transparency the telly host placed in the overhead projector. Well, I'll tell you, ...and this is the best part. The words on the transparency read: 'that man touched my willy'. Seriously. What are the fuckin chances of that eh? Coincidence city!

WHY BOTHER?

(pictured above: waiting for me to call)

I’m working on a new play. It concerns a naked woman in a wheelie bin. She pops out occasionally and shouts ‘feck the cosmos’ at the audience. Feck the Cosmos is the name of the play as well as the only three words spoken for the entire production. I think it’s going to be a hit. I think it’s going to put me in the limelight. That’s why I find myself contemplating the impression I’d like to make as an artist and a public personality.

I’d like to be seen as a gritty nihilistic sort, a misanthrope whose anti-social ways are tolerated because he is so highly regarded. I’d be known as a drinker too but not the type that has an Africa shaped piss stain on the crotch of his pants. I’d like to be the louche sort. Pissed in an elegantly witty way. Suavely inebriated. Like a non-bowsie Brendan Behan. Brendan Behan but dapper. A kind of Brendan Behan meets Bryan Ferry if that’s possible to imagine. I’d be debonair but also down at heel, earthy, genuine. I’d also like be known as a convention breaker. I’d be a source of both great worry and fascination at social functions. I’d know no airs and graces and wouldn’t suffer fools gladly. Oh, and I’d like to punch a critic at some stage. I’d punch a snivelling little critic on the jaw and roughly take his willing spouse on the same night, and in his bed.

It would be great to leave many lovers in my wake. I can imagine it, a trail of dishevelled and heartbroken debris wailing the words: ‘I can’t live without him!’ I would be the dirty secret of the rich and famous. Famous husbands would look at famous wives and know these wives are thinking of me, minds unmoored and blissfully adrift in the memory of the devastating things I did to them. Sassy female journalists would attempt to catch me out in interviews but instead they would meet my penetrating gaze and struggle for words. They would buckle and moisten and awaken in a hotel room the following day, too late to get their copy in for the next edition and unable to find their knickers.

I’d like to be seen as a philosopher also, a grim sort. A dispenser of uncomfortable yet irrefutable truths. I’d talk of ‘The Cosmic Jax', an existential bowl in which we all float about like pieces of shit. I’d describe Nietzsche as ‘a syphilitic gobshite’ and an ‘optimist’. ‘The Abyss my arse’, I’d say, ‘the Abyss is a holiday camp compared to The Cosmic Jax’. Pundits would gasp but know that I am correct. Leaders of religious faiths would step down upon hearing my words, declaring they simply can’t continue in their sham beliefs.

I’d also very much like it if I was still a point of discussion, study, and debate years after my death. I’d like my identity to become increasingly enigmatic as centuries pass. I’d like future generations to wonder if I ever even existed or if I was an aggregation of other people or maybe a woman or a child or a visitor from another dimension or maybe just a frequency, a sound, a hum, or a buzz with a faint crackling voice lost within it. An eerie broadcast that can only be heard on shortwave radio in the dead of night. I’d like people to theorise all these things before finally concluding that I must have been God and treating my works as holy texts. I can see it now, women kneeling and whispering praise as their fingers glide over the words I have written, transfixed by the pages before them, doe eyed and adoring.

This is the impression I would like to make. This is how I would like to be regarded and eventually remembered. It’s not too much to ask. I feel it is my due. I feel it merits my worth as an artist. My work is good. No, it is astonishing. I am without peer and should be venerated. Why else would I write? Why else would I make art? Why bother? What would be the point? It’s not like I have anything to say.