Kerri asks me if I want a Sweet Tart, handing me a wad of dirty tissue wrapped around a crumbling bit of ancient looking candy. Um, I say, Cool Thanks and, not wanting to refuse any kind of fucked up squatter hospitality, I shove it in my mouth and suck, don’t think I’ve eaten in a year. At first it’s hard to understand what the fuck Kerri is saying cause her Scottish squawk sounds permanently slurred from years of chugging so much whisky. But after these seven or eight or fifty days spent succumbed to her supply of ketamine and pisstaste cider stolen from the shop, I’ve learned the lingo, letting her voice scatter in my skull as I sit still, trying to decode my hands that look so like, whatever, weird right now, slipped someplace in between the crack that separates her scabby mattress from the wall.
When I first get to London I take a train from the airport to Green Park. It’s a destination that I choose simply because I’ve got no other place to go so going on the name alone, it seems like temporary paradise. The most pleasant way I can avoid all the panging panic building up inside me as I’m forced to face the lack of direction I’ve arrived with. Tired from the late night flight, I spend the morning sleeping in the grass. I use my tiny weekend bag as a pillow, not worried for its safety as I sneak a nap in public space cause, save for the passport and small wad of bills I have stashed inside my underwear, I’ve got nothing that I’m scared to lose.
Karley’s pink slip is on the floor, I put it on. She’s standing spaced out in her bra, gasping as she touches her huge tits against a mirror and shivering like it’s ice. You Look Good Like That she says to me, moving closer. Her lips are the same colour as her hair, red like fire, wild, electric. Everything is rippling. What’s Happening I say to her and Karley moans, then laughs, spitting streams of horny giggles punctuated by Kerri in the hallway who I can now hear screaming as she’s manic banging on a drum. What Are You Guys On? I ask Karley. She keeps laughing, then stops sudden, looks at me so serious as she says softly: Sweet Tarts. Thump thump thump, the drum beats on, ripples down my spine.
At an internet cafe near Oxford Circus I check my e-mail to find a response from a message I sent yesterday last minute to my friend Lauren who I know from school. She moved to London a while back to be closer to her girlfriend, this insane Scottish chick called Kerri who once stayed with me in Brooklyn where we bonded in my bathroom as we barfed up the remnants of a regretful three day binge of pills and poppers soaked in orange syrup from all those endless cans of Sparks. Yeah you can totally come stay with us. We live in a squat Southeast. Kind of a shithole but easy to get to… Call us when you’re here. How long you around for? I write back to her A couple days and scrawl her number across my arm.
In the kitchen there’s this fat kid sitting on the counter playing with a kitten. Simon’s microwaving frozen chicken wings, Dale’s dying his milk blue. I pass Gary passed out in the bathtub, Kirsty’s nearby, speaking slowly to the sink like it’s some foreign tourist asking for directions. Hannah pokes her head out of her room and asks me how I’m doing and if I have two condoms. I look behind her and see some guys slumped over shirtless and blindfolded on her bed. I shrug sorry, smiling, as I climb onto the roof where I find Matthew wearing a white robe and chanting in the centre of a circle made of candles. Karley’s writhing naked next to him and Matthew stops chanting for a second to take a picture with his plastic camera. Weird, I think, I’ve never felt so fucking right. That thump thump thump thing rattles at me one more time, don’t ever let it stop.
The 12 bus takes you straight to Hell. At least that’s what it looks like as I snake down Walworth Road, watching a parade of sideshow rejects plucked from Freaks fumbling limbless as they stumble from the thousand pound shops that seem to stretch forever down the block. As I wait for the stop called Westmoreland Road, where I’ll get off and walk South searching for the brick house at the bottom of street like Lauren told me on the phone, I press my face against the window of the bus and wonder if it’s gonna rain. Outside, everywhere, a dull grey lull that in this moment calms me as the flat black clouds that bruise the sky roll past my eyes, back rolling, reeling, lost somewhere, I don’t know where, a hollow deep inside.
x Bunny
sometimes I think this blog, its contents comes straight from my soul. or…the soul that could be if the world wasn't such an uptight fucking mess.
amazing.
bunny's writing is really quite good. i wish i could think about things in such a simple but beautiful way.♥i'm so sad that you are leaving karley! i'm from australia and i wanted to come visit you in london. maybe it will be a good excuse for me to mosy-on-over to NY though. you'd better make it worth while.
bunny this is beautiful x
your writing is soooooo good
I used to sleep on the 12 when I lived in Camberwell and was too drunk to find my way home. Good times on that bus.