Of the essence

He’s on the sofa, lost for things to do. He’s eaten three bowls of sugar frosted cereal already. A defrostable microwave meal sits unopened on the side as he stares at the switched-off television, exhausted by the thought of three and a half minutes. The filter on the fish tank trickles recycled water into the background. It’s then that he notices the ticking, like hearing a voice in his head that he can't really hear. He looks around. Tick tick click tick. There is no clock in this room. He sits up and feels down the side of the sofa, he stands and looks on the shelf, or the mantelpiece, or whatever it’s supposed to be called. He walks to the kitchen and checks the oven for timers, he listens to the back of the fridge and stands by the microwave a full minute. He goes to his desk and pulls out the drawers, he empties the cupboards and turns the cd player off at the wall. He throws out a novelty golf ball clock, even though it hasn’t worked for a year. He turns pockets inside out and kicks over cushions, he accuses lamps of shenanigans and glares at the cutlery. He switches the ceiling light on and off and notices he has coving. He finds a three week old tv listing and is overwhelmed by the urge to read it. He turns off that goddamn fish filter that he didn’t even want to buy in the first place and all the fishes rush to the front of the glass, mouthing silently in alarm. And still the ticking continues, soft slices of seconds evaporating one by one. He runs down the stairs, slipping on the final two. He falls, hits the wall heavily and lands on his watch, swearing loudly as it digs sharply into his wrist. And then, as he sucks the pinched, bruising skin, right next to his ear, he hears it; tick tick, click click. The watch; this watch, that he bought himself suit-shopping one Thursday afternoon; this watch that went unnoticed for three weeks and seven days by all closest to him; this watch that no one had thought to buy him sooner, or had even considered to purchase, even though he had made at least three remarks about replacing the old Casio that he had worn since university and could change the channel; this watch that in all the one and a half years of ownership had he never stopped to realise made such a racket- that watch. And in the final quiet that at last allows him to hear what has been there all the time, his fingers curl tighter around the strap, his knuckles whiten, and he punches that watch into the wall, glass breaking with each blow, slicing into those neat, underworked fingers, over and over until his wrist snaps. And as he sits there cradling that useless joint, the click tick, tick click of his companion continues, barely audible.

This is what love is(n't)

did i have someone?
i used to have someone.
not anymore. they are in my head now
in a space that i keep

a space for the dead now
i don't let anyone else in there
just them.
sometimes late at night i forget to stop thinking about them.
and all i can do is to think about them.
sometimes i'm not sure whether they are there or not
like when you hear something and you wake up
but then you are not sure whether you really heard something.
sometimes they are a memory that i cannot taste anymore
and i have forgotten all the colours.
and sometimes they are like a memory that I don't remember
that I am not sure if it is mine or not.
and for a while I feel a bit lost
and not myself.
sometimes it's like that.

Screen Idle

Actors are paid to lie for a living, so it should come as no surprise when they do. But I, for one, have seen just a few too many interviews where big movie stars fall over themselves to convince Joe Public how worthy their latest movie is:

'Well, when I read the script I thought, wow! What a great script! I have to do this movie, if only for the script! I mean, it was such great writing, to tell you the truth, I haven't seen a script with such good writing for a long time. And, of course, when you're making a movie, the most important thing is the script.'

I wish they'd be honest, for once, and say what we all know:

'Well, when I read the cheque I thought, wow! What a great cheque! I have to do this movie, if only for the cheque! I mean, it was such great writing, to tell you the truth, I haven't seen a cheque with such good writing for a long time. And, of course, when you're making a movie, the most important thing is the cheque.'

A lamp under my feet

Two nights ago, as I walked alone down an empty street, I trod under a streetlight that blacked out beneath my step. Snap. I wouldn't worry but for the past three weeks it's been happening to me a lot. Last night, at the same light on the same street, it happened again. A man could start to get a complex. This lights out is worrying, especially in this time of year when we celebrate the other coming of Light came into the world. Darkness is horrible, cold and clammy and horrible, for me, it is the worse. I spend much of my energies in the pursuit of safe-keeping, a roof over my head and arms to fall into. I try to pretend to myself that the achievement of this will be eternal, that love will transcend, but really, everything is finite, and it is only a matter of time until what we have, what we have fought for, bloodied and scarred, is broken, taken away and broken. And as I write this, sat next to a blinking, teasing christmas tree, flashing on and off, on and off, I do hope God isn't just all made up.

For a Bowl of Stew

I could not tell you the day of the week, nor the time of day; I could not say if the sun should or should not be out; I work when I have to work, and when I have not to work I find I am lost. I go for meals alone in a world where people drink in unison, where glasses are raised to lips as one, and companions laugh and chatter amongst friends. My afternoons are empty, I go to the movies and watch empty films in empty rows, couples sitting elsewhere lest their bliss be hexed, their arms entwined, their heads on shoulders. I leave and unhappiness is a small dog that trots after me, tied to my wrist by a string, who sits at my heels each day waiting for the lights to change. I earn banknote after banknote doleing out doses of magical narcotics to those who have to work for a living, to those who clock in and clock out routinely. They should have the sadness, they should be crippled by this melancholy, and I, the untethered, the unhindered, the come-and-go-as-I-please one, I should be the free one, the unburdened one. And yet as I bleed out these card tricks, those trapped in these nine to five's, in these mortgage plans and repayment schedules, those people they watch and stroke the arms of their loved ones, they smile as their child's eyes light up in delight, and as I give them these moments I realise how much I have set aside, how much I am without. And at that moment, I am fading in their very sight.

The story of a nobody

waitress: Is this your book?
vanderput: Yes.
waitress: Yours?
vanderput: Yes...
waitress: What- you wrote it?
vanderput: (beat) Sure.
waitress: So this is your name?
vanderput: Yep.
waitress: anton... chekov?
vanderput: Anton Chekov.
waitress: This photo doesn't look like you.
vanderput: It's not my real picture. I use a different one. So people don't recognise me.
waitress: Are you famous then?
vanderput: Very. So I don't want people coming up to me all day, asking if I'm chekov.
waitress: Wow, you must be really good?
vanderput: Overrated.

Two Thirty

I have to go to the dentists again this morning as I've split another tooth, best get ready. The pre-dentist brush-up is nothing if not thorough, a last minute attempt to undo those past six months of neglect. When I was a kid I'd be in there thirty or forty minutes, scrubbing until I could see my face in them. Today I realise the damage has been done, so I give myself a quick half hour scrub up and, suitably chastened, arrive at the waiting room to find... I've got a new dentist... and she's hot! Put that drill back in the holster lady, polish my teeth until they squeal! That kinda hot! So I put the charm on, full, I swagger round the room, pratfall into the chair, she laughs and blushes, did I mention I was a magician? I chuckle. Now, as pretty as she may be, it would be utterly impossible for me to ask her out of course. There's the whole doctor/patient relationship thing... we work very different hours... And more importantly she's stuffed my mouth full of swabs and is drilling out my rear molar as we speak. Makes it difficult to be smooth: 'Ooo uuont oo go ora gofffee ummime??' Nevertheless, I came out smitten. What a great dentist! I thought, what a great job! It's probably the best job anyone's done in the history of dentistry! And then I got home and saw she'd given me a dirty great metal filling instead of the pure, clean invisible filling of vanity that I just paid seventy-five thin and crispies for. Still, you can hardly blame her; I am awfully distracting.

Look

The bookstore, our bookstore, where we drank endless coffees and lost each other amongst the aisles. The bookstore where they played our song, and then we realised it wasn't. Go there, our there, to that place in the corner where I kissed you with your back to the wall, to the fourth bookshelf on the right, fiction, G, look under Gavalda, the blue book, our book, your book, it's there, an envelope, that's all, an envelope slipped in between two copies of our book, those books, mates, partners, side by side, lovers? no too far, just books, two slim volumes, like people, like us, like we were, like when we were us. Perhaps someone will get there first, someone will read the words I left for you, someone will take the envelope meaning to read the words for themselves, forget, throw it out with their trash and chewed chewing gum sticks. Those words will be discarded, incinerated, forever unread, the black ink peeling off crisp burning paper, words melting in all-consuming, drowning waste. So go, fast, faster, before this befalls, and find me, find us.

apart Two

We walk to hyde park. All the way. It's fifteen minutes, the walk, and we don't speak, don't say a word once we've agreed the plan. The plan is to go get some cones from where the ducks are at and find a bench, it's a pretty good plan as far as I can tell, and as she sheds her coat and I offer to hold it, the traffic hums around us.

When we get to the grass, I go gather the requested and she finds a bench minus the splinters and the drunk. I come back with the ices, double flaked, and we sit side by side, watching a man jogs past in too short white shorts and a sweat soaked t-shirt, expelling air from his nose like a horse.

'Do you think I'm weird?' she asks.
'No.' I lie.
'But you don't know me.'
'But I don't think you're weird. Are you weird?'
'No.'
'A little?'
'A lot.'
'Everyone is a little.'
'I've never done this before, you know, met anyone.'
'No?'
'Not for real.'
'Right.'
'I haven't!'
'Ok.'
'Have you?'
'Never. Twice.'

A dog comes over, I pat his head and he looks at my ice cream, I hold it out and he schlups it in one take. I throw the cone in the bin beside me. It doesn't take much to make you feel good in the sun.
part one

The way we left it

What is our obsession with prolonging the new of it all? If we buy a couch, a shirt, a towel, whatever, that initial sheen is preserved for as long as possible. Don't use that one! It's new!!! There is such terror in staring decay in the face; I have friends who keep their remote control in its plastic wrapper. But I don't want to live in this sanitised cleanliness, I want to get grubby and discard, to get my paws dirty and leave footmarks. I don't want a world left untouched and unscathed by my presence, a world as clean as if I'd never been there. I want to leave holes in the walls and wine stains on the carpet, a history of spills and scrapes to map out my existence. And is that wrong? Well, if I want my holding deposit back, apparently so.

Hot Air

Bagpipes. There's only one song there. Really, admit it. It's just one song. Everywhere I go, everyone I hear, it's the same song. It's a long song, sure, that's what's clever about it, but what there isn't is a sequel. And there's very little melody either, it's thinner on tune than an x factor finalist covering Rod Stewart. The more I hear the more I feel it's just a guy blowing air into a bag and squeezing it out through a weasel.

for no one

not alone but without
I'm staring into a void
not alone but without
i'm staring in to avoid

Until the next time, never again

I wake up with half a ten pound note stuffed in my pocket to find I've been sleeping on the door knob I stole from last night's restaurant. It's difficult to focus on these things though, as a monkey in stink is climbing through my head clashing his cymbals in my eyeballs. Surely a new low. I stagger out of bed and try to keep balance as my room sloshes from side to side. The sea is choppy today my friends, and I clutch to the walls, hang on to radiators, just to stay vertical. I make it to the door by edging my way around the house, clinging to kitchen surfaces, jumping from jutting cupboard to cupboard. Out on the street things are no better, bushes keep attacking me, hedges jump out and jostle my tousled hair with their stray branches. I sway and almost vomit three times. I make it to the cafe, order two of everything fried, drink a full glass of orange juice and pull on my sunglasses.

Conservation

The train station I go to each morning has a timber yard next door. Imagine, if you will, you are one of the many trees in leafy north London surrounding this woody abattoir, having to wake each morning to the shrieks and screams of your long lost brothers being sawn and splayed into lumber over breakfast. How could you ever relax?

John Quixote

I'm thinking of changing my name, John just isn't cutting the mustard these days. I need something snappier, something to live up to the glory of the vanderput surname. Those are big boots to fill. Rufus? I could be a Rufus vanderput. Or I could go alliterative, vince, vinnie, vinnie vanderput? How about I use my initial: j vanderput? 'Sup j? Where you at j? Sounds pretty hip-hop eh! I like it! but... first letters are sooo kafka, and I need to be original here. What about frosty? Frosty vanderput? That could work... or Pi vanderput? Or! I could ditch conventions and take after my favourite place to eat: McVanderput! I could open a chain of McVanderput's, selling milkshakes, biscuits and sit-down bowls of cereal.

Special

Six months ago I joined myspace. Then I forgot all about it. I remembered today and when I looked at my forgotten page a little Christmas miracle had taken place. I have a new friend! Tom!! I've never met Tom before... but I hope we get on, because according to myspace he is the only one I have. I have 1 friends. That made me feel a little sad. But then I looked at Tom's smiley face and I got all happy again. Tom chose me! I felt special! Tom chose me out of all the people in all the world! Tom says I can email him if I have any questions (so long as I check the FAQ's first). Tom is 30 and lives in Santa Monica! I like Tom very much and he has a nice photo so maybe I will go to Santa Monica to visit my new friend Tom. I clicked on his photo and it took me to Tom's myspace page. I don't feel so special now. Tom seems to know a lot of people. Tom has 137.9 million other friends. I hope Tom doesn't send Christmas cards. When Tom was asked who he'd like to meet he said: 'I have a few close friends I've known all my life. I'd like to make more.' Tom strikes me as a bit of an overachiever.