out there!’ says the young assistant lassie and I switch into banter mode. A mere observation about the weather turning her from drone snack-parcel conduit into chatty fuck-target.
I sit in the kitchenette and go through the net-checking procrastination I always need to do before work. Some guy has Facebooked me about Tramadol Nights. His daughter is disabled, blah, blah, he’s going to kill me, blah, blah. Of course, I can’t really say that I think some people get sympathy and attention from their link to a disabled person. That (like anything) people laughing about it dilutes the horror but also dilutes the attention those people get. That all the disabled people I’ve met hate those people, blah, blah. Instead, I befriend him on a page where I’m pretending to be a woman and think listlessly about destroying his marriage.
I understand but genuinely despair of people speaking up for the disabled. They have enough taken away from them in our society without taking away their voices as well. People like that sector of society to be invisible. I had a lynch mob on my tail for making a joke on tour that wasn’t disablist in any way and that nobody had heard. Luckily, I’m mature and sophisticated enough to realise that being given a hard time by the papers doesn’t mean you’re a bad person (I’ve read a lot of Spiderman). Rather than feeling prejudice, I’m just someone who doesn’t see why there’s anything that shouldn’t be talked about. I was criticised by people who stereotyped the disabled as ‘weak’ and ‘vulnerable’, something I would never do. People with disabilities are people, just like anybody else and, strangely, that is a real taboo.
We live in a culture where the only time you see someone with a disability is on a freak-show documentary. The Man with an Arse for a Hand and a Hand for an Arse, that kind of thing. Is that really where we’re at with this? Where the Victorians were? I’m generalising, but disabled people are often more fully realised human beings, in that they have been forced to think about the nature of existence a bit more. It’s the ‘average’ person that should be in a freak show. The Man Too Busy to Love His Kids. Show that on Channel 5.
I get a cab down to BBC Scotland studios. It’s brand new and at its centre is a big staircase with bits off it with couches, tables and so on. The idea being that people meet in a village-type way, sharing ideas and energising each other. There is no cunt there.
My company is making a game show for Scottish TV called Dullion. It’s based on a dead-arm game from school. Contestants can win the opportunity to punch their opponent on the arm before they perform a manual-dexterity test.
Kevin Bridges is doing a fine job of hosting it. A gallus local DJ contestant is well in the lead until the other contestant plays her joker, which here is called Hauners. World boxing champion David Haye comes out to deliver the dullion. The DJ is not that bothered, clearly thinking it’ll be a bit of a love tap for the cameras. Haye gets a big laugh by putting in a gum-shield, then punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming. We make the cunt try to play a game of Operation afterwards and it’s hilarious.
I go home and try to have an early night but there are big scratches on the front door. I think someone tried to break in, so fuck, it’s normal for the area. Then I go back a minute later and they look like animal-claw marks or something.
I take two Valium and try to sleep but downstairs is blasting out cheesy Top 40 pish. I will try to buy downstairs’ flat off them in the morning. I go through to the stateroom and get the model of the guy downstairs and I think I’m cool about everything but I end up holding him up by his wee neck, this tiny wee man, and punching the fuck out of him against the wall.
I used to think that we live in a wedding rules society. Like the way that the playlist at a wedding will be a load of shit records that nobody really likes. Because, while everyone can be disappointed, not one person can be offended. Conversations at weddings have the same rules … conversations everywhere have the same rules. So we all go through the motions, while the DJ plays ‘Born to Be Wild’ and some shit from The Commitments soundtrack.
Sat on my bed feeling the actual throb of those records, the hum of that conversation, like a spider at the centre of a web of banality, it occurs to me that it’s less than that. Most people don’t give a fuck what records get played or what gets said, so long as they can get drunk and have some prospect in the future of fucking a stranger/the wife of a work colleague/a slit they have cut in an uncooked steak.
The guy puts on a Daniel Johnston record and I feel sorry for having hated him so intensely. I remember this old Daniel Johnston drawing of a guy choosing to put on his happy or sad mask for the day. I text a few of my pals and suggest that they come round tomorrow, and we scoff in the face of reality. Stewart texts back, ‘You mean take acid?’ Yes, now that I think about it, I do.
The guys come round and we have a cup of tea and watch Florence and Connell in this BBC Scotland sitcom about an unemployed former metal band called Bitches Buroo, and drop the microdots I scored. It starts as this philosophical, futuristic buzz and when the show ends Stewart goes over and puts Dr. Octagon on the stereo.
Paul has this completely asymmetrical face. He got a bad eye injury as a kid, which exaggerates it, but I start to think how it’s expressive of him, the bit that wants to visit the 23rd dimension and the tense bit that wants to be normal. His face, it suddenly occurs to me as I come up, is a yin–yang symbol.
Stewart is talking about Terence McKenna, who he’s got right into. He starts quoting this thing about how we can choose to enlarge our consciousness or remain brutish prisoners of matter.
‘Yes!’ I laugh, as the acid drips me that loose physical buzz. ‘That’s that quote I used for that HMV thing! They wanted a quote from someone who’d inspired you for a poster campaign at Christmas. I gave them brutish prisoners of matter!’
Stewart: ‘That’s cool man!’
Me: ‘They didn’t use it – they used someone quoting Ferris Bueller.’ I’m overcome with the giggles.
Stewart is grinning. ‘That’s fucked … these fuckers are … brutish prisoners of matter!’
I shrug. ‘I dunno, man. I think you can choose to be amused by the hopelessness of the world. Laugh at every … crass awful thing, it’s like this fucking universal armour! You know that Buddhist thing where they say you can’t choose what happens, but you can choose how you react to it? You can choose to just laugh.’
Paul is struggling badly to make a joint and looks up.
‘“You can’t choose what happens” sounds kind of apolitical … like, laugh at stuff instead of doing anything about it.’
‘I’d love to debate this further but I seem to be losing my mind,’ I interject in an English voice and lurch towards a porthole.
Sheets of rain are lashing down and I feel a surge of excitement. For some reason it looks like it all starts below us, like we’re above the weather system. These flats sway a bit and we’re all standing there, and I know we’re all thinking it’s like a ship.
‘Haharr!’ I turn round roaring like a pirate waving a rolled-up notebook as a cutlass, but they’re laughing and giving me a look like What the fuck?
I’m
