///A Will to Self///
Written by Rupert Munck on Thursday the 6th of January 2011
///A Will to Self///
BEHIND THE SPAR MINI-MART, rain tripped thin and straight through the limpid grey night. Tugging hard on the last of a Benson, Self - an oblong rectangularist - surveyed the corner he'd just turned, exhaled, then lubricated his rim with a turgid gob flopping from the end of his nankeen figure nails.
'Eh, thirty quid yeah?' Drooled punter682 with a graft, excitable, vigour.
'Yeeesss -' Dripped Self, still preposterously lean from the tenners of scratch he'd consumed but half an hour before.
Amid a litter of stale Warburton's and chewed cans, Self uniformly assumed a snapped position against the brick and whipped his cacks to his knees. "Arrrgggh...” Slopped punter682 as a hard, thick, infinitesimal calculus was thumbed rigidly through the night into darkness. Beyond the distance, a siren leaked through the city's streets. Manchester was vile Self mulled. This city, this decade, gunned and flooded with low rent scratch seeping along the canal from the Mersey docks. Let it rain he thought: rain petrol and blood, for to be sure, to be sure, the paddies would come, and from here; a new course be set.
As whats his chops spunked he made the zip of a balloon kissing the lipless; followed by a moment of nothingness. Silence. The word subsides. Creaking his neck from left-to-right and pulling up his trousers, Self reached into his Macintosh pocket for a ciggie and promptly sparked it without the precision of memory. The rain had abstained; night begun to crack.
'Eh, I'm not fucking bent ya now!' Punter682 suddenly spat at Self whilst turning to button his Levi 501's.
That's queer,' breathed Self. 'Neither am I.'
Saturday night on Canal street was haying season for Will: a fiver a tug, tenner a nosh, and fifty the whole shebang. Fifty because, such beauty and youth had he, to a point, a personality would only drown amongst it. He'd started on the streets as a Philosophy undergraduate, just working the weekends, ingesting enough for food and rent. But now a PhD student of Logic, currently creasing his impeccably smooth forehead over Mr Wittgenstein's theory of numbers inability of dealing with transfinite numbers; he'd taken to working a four day week to supplement his fees. Though past his lucid blonde years, his generously lacquered bouffant with frosted tips did a rye job in attracting passing traffic and, throughout the years, had steadily built up a handful of regulars. The last of the which - for tonight at least - being Jib, a broad Falklands vet - moreover juiced with steroids - ravenous for a quick nosh-o.
And so it happened.
The pavement was wet, so Will squat instead of knelt. Jib's member skewed in the middle like a television ariel and took a while for Will to get a signal. "Ooh... sir, yes sir! Sir yes sir!” Jib barked into the night as Will's chops gathered some momentum. "ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG BABY!” he continually repeated with venom as a sniggering Will concentrated hard on controlling his titters when his mouth was precariously deep. 'Jeez., what a virulent attack!' concluded Jib, after Will playfully gurgled his spunk in-and-around his thorax - keying an Em - then swallowed it without as much as a winch. Wit: thought Will whilst smacking his lips. From a man that used ribbed condoms. It was all too much.
The night was over.
Stuffing cash into his pockets and fluttering ta-ra to Jib, Will sauntered beside the Canal into the new morning sun.
Towards Piccadilly "Jenny's” was the last stop for any spent canal rat, and was perhaps reasonable to expect at least five or six of them stewing over tea 'n' toast after a busy Saturday night. As he entered, immediately surveying the greasy spoon, the only rat he identified was Self - an allusive acquaintance - slumped at a wall table; still damp from the rain. Objects - such as the ones inside the café - were just a conglomerate of colours, odours and facts: coffee that whistled from the linoleum floor to the glycerol filmed ceiling, had all the distinct aromas of coffee; nicotine stains drenched eggshell wallpaper; two or three mirrors deluded space to the senses; unfettered blindness captured the eye and Dracaena Marginatas battled for oxygen amongst the refuge of conversations passed. Ordering a bacon barm from the counter, Will slid himself onto the seat opposite Self to the tune of Forever Young blaring from the Kitchens de-tuned radio. He'd first met him on a fine day in 84, Will remembered it well. He were as big as an ox, straight as a dye - wise, erudite - a previous guise back then, long before the scratch had become infected.
'Yous luke like Shyite.' Will bleated in a foe Mancunian jive.
'///'
Responding through a yawn that flopped effortlessly into a macabre snarl, Self straightened himself on the plastic seat, then reached for a ciggie. 'Will you faggot,' finally peeved Self through a clump of singed eyelashes. 'How were your night of sodomy?' He limply harangued during the snap of a match, his face past sceptic and injustice sorrowfully emerging through his sardonic eyes with each glimmer of a bloodshot vein. It wasn't always this way though. After his tertiary years in Leeds he'd worked admin for one of those pits outside Castleford; then - like so many - had grown all to uncertain of his place within the ensuing decade.
'Yeah not bad considering the rain' Will chewed through a mouthful of barm. 'Bastard Winter a-brewin though.'
'Yes... Winter, Fucking Winter -' Pontificated Self, flicking a dangling ash into a foil ashtray. Scratched from scratch, it was the little things he did so delicately: grains of salt slowly pushed to and fro with the stroke of Renoir; the blurb and ingredients of an HP sauce bottle forensically over examined to a Proustian point of nausea, and the anticlockwise stir of a sugarless brew; repeated and repeated and repeated. Often, as the time passed, he slipped beyond consciousness, nodding through the silence and why Will chose to stay compelled even himself. By now an hour had slipped, and Jenny's was half full with scratchers, rats and pros from the nearby Star & Garter. Then he came. All of a sudden, Self came from the seat with a pang and launched across the table.
'Oh, what a pretty girl she was~!' He cried an inch from Wills face, before throwing himself back into the corner, vomiting, then beginning to weep; hard.
Noticing the commotion from behind the counter, Jenny - an equal-lateral Greek guy - quickly scurried over to their table and ordered them outside.
'Can't you see he's upset.' Will protested in a full octave above Jenny, startled that his finger was pointing at Self. '
Ahdannagiveafuck.' Jenny rumbled, whilst negotiating Self's limp frame up from of his seat and out of the door.
Although passing cloud allowed for snaps of sunshine, the air outside was insipid. After the refusal of two cabbies and a toothless snarl at any mention of hospital from Self, Will dragged him onto the back of a bus heading south from town. Slumping him in the corner out of view. He was quickly asleep by the turn into Oxford Rd. Drenched in an autumnal glaze, Manchester was divine thought Will; a city at standstill - whispering ever so slightly into the decay of Winter. Through Rusholme, a feast of spices, saffron, turmeric and garlic all warmed through the window. Rose petals lined their beds in Plattfields Park, whilst children on their way to Sunday service waved farewell as the bus trundled past.
Opposite Ladbrooks, above Solomon Grundys' in Withington - stood Will's ugly flat. Slunk in Manchester's deep south, the main solace he took from this dullard end of town was the fact:
Ludwig studied in Manchester
All students live in Didsbury
Therefore, Ludwig lived in Didsbury
A neighbouring village to Withington and, ample walking distance along Palatine road.
Flopping off the bus, through the door and up the stairs, Will plunked a muttering Self onto the couch and fetched him a quilt from the bedroom. Stepping to draw his fowl, pewter green curtains, a chill from the single glazing stiffened his bones for an icy moment; quickening through to flaccid. To say Self had a kind face was tautological. But as Will sunk into the armchair opposite and pulled a duvet to his cheeks, he gazed past the scratch, beyond the cankered hollow chops before him, and, as his business tensed impishly, he quietly kneaded it until the point of contraction, subsequently thrusting him into a deep lucid slumber.
Martin, short armed and obtuse. A phizog aesthetically Socratic; lair-hidden eyes veiled with a hanging brow and a fore skull baring the last of his mousey/grey memories. Swanked about his Holiday Inn room, bumming a cigar (he'd obliged himself to enjoy); awaiting a fax from London. Since his father's demise, he'd taken over the running of the family business (Jellystone Developments) and, currently weathering another semi-public divorce, had moved to Manchester until the clouds had past. "Bhaaaazingar” he responded jovially to a knock on the door, quickly straightening himself in the mirror, then opening it to reveal a pretty rent boy he'd secured for the evening entertainment.
'Do come in...' He lurched - slowly; flashing his arid teeth the colour of a used car shammy. 'Champagne? Yes, yes of course; let me fetch you a glass.'
Hanging his anorak on a hook drilled into the hotels fire instructions, Will stood and watched Granada Reports as Martin scurried about the room. 'There you go,' he flapped passing Will a champagne flute. 'COKE! Yes-coke,' he clicked urgently, 'do you want a line?' He asked from behind a suitcase, hurriedly flinging clothes into the air.
'Eh...' Will shrugged heedlessly, and after excepting a couple of slugs of the beak - lined up of the back of Showaddywaddy's 1979 "Crepes & Drapes” LP - moseyed over to the balcony, leaving Martin dancing in his pants and braces singing:
You spin me right round Baby right round,
(Like a record baby)
Right, round round round.
Amidst a sea of tangerine streetlight, the hump from central library, hung; submerged. All hats and sticks, an old couple lowried into the wind heading toward Salford as dudes on Bauer's skipped in-between the bus interchange. Lighting a ciggie, Will thought of Self. Over the last few days he hadn't straightened much, thought the rawness of his eyes had passed and was progressively eating more Weetabix. His experience, existence, was far broader than Will's and wowed him with scratched tales as a frigate captain, Turkish beard trimmer and a peepshow jizz mopper. Will had not foreseen this, any of it; and only just realised it.
'Will... I'm way-ting.' Martin cooed from inside the hotel room. Shuddering, Will kicked at the fag butt with his Reeboks, turned, smiled, and began to loosen his belt.
Awaking before dawn, cooled and tender; Will immediately dived in a taxi home. The rain that pelted upon the back windows of the speeding Rover SD1 washed him in adolescent nostalgia as he raced the raindrops to its base. Reaching home, entering the bedroom, morning slunk through the curtains and smoke befriended the void. Self was still: ever so. And an empty dropper of scratch lay on the bedside table. Removing his pumps and socks, Will quietly limboed himself under the duvet onto his side facing Self's back. Frightened with hesitance, he did well to catch his breath and curst each tarn of saliva that earnestly filled at the back of his throat. Penitently swallowing, raising a heavy right hand, he steadied it over Self's frail frame for cool moment before delicately placing it against his chest. He was silent. Not truly though, but alas; passed over. Softly resting his lips against the back of Self's neck; he closed his eyes and dropped a final breath.
Now wasn't the time for logic.