Consumerschism

The difference between me and a polo mint is that I'm rarely bored. Today, though, is an exception. As I spend yet another day in this F$%£*!*@ mall I'm in danger of losing it. I've seen all the movies at the movie house, I can read no more books in the coffee shop, I've gone to the gym so many times I can actually use the Crosstrainer. I'm reduced to sitting around eating tic tacs and trying to fight off the temptation to join facebook. There's nothing to do but spend money. Strangely, although this has never appealed to me in the past, this place seems to have given me a deep lust for luxury goods. I'm wandering around in a cash-driven stupor, stumbling into shops with less on display than the local women, salivating at micro-embellished crocodile skin wallets, dribbling over designer goods so ice cool the attendants wear gloves. I've already gone back for a £100 belt in Armani, that fortunately they'd sold out of, I tried to book a massage at a five-star spa, but they were fully booked, and I nearly bought a £300 pen. Although maybe the guilt at that purchase and subsequent credit imbalance would make me do some frigging work.

Live to Buy

I'm having KFC. Not a regular KFC; a Dubai KFC. Never has the idea of eating dead chicken bodies been rendered so effectively. I'm surrounded by a hundred and twelve earsplitting kids, the admonishments of the parents raising the hubbub to a brawl. I spit the battered meat from my mouth and leave before the static makes my head explode. I'm creatively broke out here, I've got less inspiration than an Ikea catalogue. The all consuming nature of this town is under my skin. They whip up a cityscape in a decade, the roads are long and straight; straight, long roads that you can't get off of, roads that take you inevitably to your destination. Luxury is everywhere, but it is an eerie kind of opulence, like it doesn't really fit, a glamour with no integrity, no structure. It is like dust. And all the while the sun. The sun beating the land back into the dust, the sand swirling, waiting to recapture what has been lost. The city has all the indestructability of a fast food wrapper.

Poolside Draw

The first time I jumped in the pool I nearly drowned, coughing and spluttering like a ten year old on a shisha pipe. The only stroke I could pull off was medical. My eyes turned to blood oranges, water went up my nose and in my ears, making everything sound like soup. I swam for all my life and managed only two feet. Vertically. Not good. But I’m not a man to be put off easily. Especially by something petty like physical pain and weakness. I used to wear goggles as a kid, I remembered, so I go and buy a pair and this time, when I jump in the pool (the deep end naturally), it turns out I'm a waterbaby. I snorkle to the bottom and resurface, I do laps, front crawl, back stroke, butterfly, breaststroke, I even invent a new one, the feet of front crawl, the arms of breaststroke; I call it freshcroak. I love it down here beneath the surface, and when I surface and see the bikini clad women surrounding the pool, I love it anew. I’m like a dog on a bike, swimming back and forth showing off my new found prowess. Until water gets in my goggles and I sink like a stone and have to be pulled out by the lifeguard.

Blues for Monkey

   ‘Bong.’
   …
   ‘BONG.’
   …
   ‘BONNN-’
   ‘What are you doing?’ asked Mr Bojangles.
   ‘BONNGG! I’m being the news at ten,’ replied Sebastian, ears oscillating.
   ‘How many are you up to?’
   ‘Forty-seven.’
   Mr Bojangles returned to the book-keeping. Sebastian began to tap dance softly on the tiles, his paws padding on the porcelain. He stopped and looked for a moment at the pencils on the table.
   ‘Do you think Sir Trevor McDonald would come to my party?’
   ‘He’s very busy.’
   ‘Yes, but I have to be in bed by eight and the telly-screen is only in the corner so he wouldn’t have to go very far and maybe I could help him with the news and stay up late like that one time when I fell off the clownhorse.’
   ‘Why don’t you write to him.’
   ‘Yes, I might, if I can find some more paints, because the other ones are in the soup.’
   Mr Bojangles crossed a line through a row of sums.
   ‘Is bear minimum going to come?’
   ‘Yes.’
   ‘What’s he going to dress up as?’
   ‘A bear.’
   ‘Oh. I sort of hoped he might come as a parrot.’
   ‘You’re going as a parrot.’
   ‘Yes, but they’re my favourite animals cos they can talk.’
   Mr Bojangles looked at Sebastian.
   ‘So can you.’
   ‘Yes, but if he was a parrot I could talk to him in parrot language rather than regular boring english language.’
   Sebastian sniffed and stood for a moment, looking at the floor, then he went to his room.
   As the door clicked shut Mr Bojangles looked up, paused, let out his breath, and put down his pen.

Insha'Allah

Become a father, he said to me. When you become a father you will truly know love. I’m two hundred meters above sea level in the sky bar of the Burj al Arab, a 7 star hotel full of nothing but footballer’s wives and bad taste. It’s like Harrod’s threw up in here. And I’m chatting it down with two sheiks, me and these dudes quaffing the verbs as they explain the holiness of the Olive tree, quoting the Qur’an and translating as we go. One loses interest, turns back to the bar, munching on the holy fruits. The other, seeing his chance, changes, it’s like his aura visibly focuses; he goes from chat mode to stun. Truly you will know how your parents have love for you. How they carry you inside each day. Do not worry about income. As God provided for you, so he will provide for your family. You are young now, but the time is almost here for you. Raise them in the light; as God is light, raise them in him. And remember this moment; remember me. The right message at the right time, and right at that moment, I found something to live for.

The Daily Lift

The most impatient button in the world is the close-doors button in an elevator. It saves you all of two seconds, but once you press it that first time, you can't stop. Must ascend faster, you think, and soon enough your jabbing that button like it's a malfunctioning cashpoint. How quickly do you need to get there? I think when you die they should add up all the time you saved closing the doors on the way to your office, and compare it to the time you spent forwarding hilarious emails once you arrived in that cubicle of death.

Visitors

I found her waiting outside my door when I got home that night, her black hair dripping wet to her waist. She took the beating the rain gave her, just like she took it from everyone else. I unlocked the door and she walked in without a sound. I went to the kitchen and put some water on the boil, I buttered some bread and dumped some pasta in the pan. She headed straight for the couch, sunk into it and seeped. I watched her while I waited for the food to cook, I put the plate in front of her but she didn’t even flicker. I took a shower. When I came back she was lying on her side staring at a cactus, the plate untouched, her hair spreading a black puddle on the carpet. I looked at her for a minute, then turned out the light and went to bed.

Maul

I’m at the bottom of a ski slope in the middle of a desert. Something's gone badly wrong in this town and everybody knows it. Yesterday a mascot penguin went loco on the slopes. Three punk kids began throwing insults and snowballs, the girl in the suit was ex-military; wrong chick to pick. Penguin suit or not, she messed them up. That’s the kind of pressure we're under here... Days and nights spent in the fluorescence of a shopping mall, the outside becoming steadily more mythic. In Starbucks I see a baby the spitting image of Sinead O'Connor. This town is cracked, a city of a thousand lights, blinking in disbelief, a hole in the sand built on vice and bad karma. When people arrive, she tells me, they land reinvented, they leave their former selves on the luggage belt, a make-believe mass of mirages, living the lives they've always wanted. She looks to the dust and lights a cigarette. I listen to the hum of conditioned air spat back into the night heat, the churn of swallowed, guzzled fuel. Global warming is a concern for others. The planet heats up, and these people are cooling a desert. Earlier today, as I left the flat, I switched off the lights. The most futile of gestures in the land of the desolate.

Close Call

“So I’m driving back, and the trunk is loaded, I mean loaded, tequila,
whisky, vodka, gin, I got it all. And I get pulled over. Shit man, I’m
sweating man, I mean I am sweating. If they bust you on this stuff,
that’s it, your life, over, you’re in jail, for life, and we’re not talking
one of those nice English prisons with a colour tv and room service,
we’re talking an Arabic jail my friend. So I’m on this road, the middle
of nowhere, sand whipping around me, and I’m pouring with sweat.
We have to search the car, they say. C’mon man, I tell them, I gotta
get home. Sorry, they say, stone cold, we gotta search it. I climb out
of the car, and the steering wheel is dripping where my hands were,
I mean, it’s the desert so maybe they couldn’t tell, but sweat is
pouring from me, I'm shedding pounds. They look at the seats, the
open the glove box, they look at a bag I’ve got, then they look at the
trunk. We gotta look in the trunk, they say. Man, my hands are
shaking, I’m fumbling the keys and my hands are shaking, and they
see it, I can see they can see it. So I’m looking at these keys, and my
eyes are blinking and I'm walking as slowly as I can to the trunk
when out of nowhere, right out of the sand, this guy drives his jeep
smack into the back of my car. Some arab guy, drunk, doesn’t know
where he is. And these guys start running around, shouting at him,
pointing their guns at the car and he’s spinning his wheels in the
sand, and his alarm’s going. So anyway they pull him out of the car
and they’re busting him, and I think, that’s it, I can get out of here.
So I go to leave and this guy comes back over, the same guy that
pulled me over, hey, he says, his hand on his gun, we gotta look in
the trunk. Shit, I’m a ball now, I don’t know which ways up, so I get
out and go to the trunk, put the keys in but it won’t budge. When
this guy drove into the back of me he busted the lock, it won’t open,
doesn’t matter what they try it’s jammed shut. So they let me go,
nothing they can do. And I’m driving back home, my shirt soaked,
crying and laughing, man I don’t know what to do, I stop and puke
on the road, but I made it, and I'm laughing as I puke.”

Aparty

In the Filipino canteen at the bottom of the apartment I watch a Bruce Lee film on a Sunday afternoon, eating beef and salted rice. A week later I’m back alone and order a frozen ice with beans and milk. I read a book, eat facing forward. On the screen is a show with karaoke kids and dancing girls. They compete with radical fury for, and I kid you not, vitamin supplements. It's night now, as I walk back upstairs the neon sign outside the apartment is sputtering and fizzing. If I were a song right now, I'd be a harmonica break. My flat is filled with a hundred people, music pounding the walls and people I've never met fill the air with their smoke and jokes. At the door an ex-RAF pilot has his arms around two sublime Kenyans. His mustache spreads across his cheeks, extending for balance, a pair of Rayban's swell his eyes to goldfish bowl proportions. He talks off centre, you ask him a question, he shoots the reply over your shoulder. He struggles to navigate a kitchen, how he managed a thousand feet under I wonder. I walk past them all, I grab a towel and head to the pool. I swim beneath the night sky, the water suspends me beneath the stars.

This is how well it’s going

him: I saw you in the mall yesterday, doing your show.
me: why didn’t you say hello?
him: I was ashamed.

Late Night Mistakes

It was the kind of letter you'd write whilst waiting for the water to boil; we’re talking restraining orders at dawn here. ‘Dear Natalie Portman,’ it began, but let me go back. I'm in Soho House, home of a thousand mistakes, and sober as a chilled pebble. Maddy at reception tells me Natalie Portman is here. What can I say? My excuses are as thin on the ground as the waiters. Natalie Portman! I say, wow, do you know she is exactly one year younger than me, to the day! Hmm, interesting, says Maddy, you should tell her! Do you think I really should? I say a bit too quickly, overexcited by the encouragement. Yes, definitely, says Maddy, eyes twinkling at the possibility of a fool making, but she’s with her boyfriend at the moment. Oh, that could be awkward, I admit, I wouldn’t want to look weird or anything. No, agrees Maddy. I know! I say, I’ll write her a letter! Yes, nods Maddy, that would be much better. Dear Natalie Portman, I write, Hello! My name is John van der Put and I am one year older than you... to the day! It continues from there, but I'll save you the details. After a few drafts I've written two pages, I seal it up, scrawl Natalie's name in large writing (just in case she forgets who she is) and hand it over. I skip joyfully out of the club go home. It’s a whole hour before the terrifying nature of my behaviour catches up with me. What have I done? All of a sudden I’m overcome with that sickening dread that perhaps it’s not quite as funny as I thought it was. I spend the day in bed. The next time I’m at the club I see the letter behind reception. She didn't get it!! I ask for it back, Lydia at reception asks what exactly I want with Natalie Portman’s mail. Ah. I explain myself very sheepishly. Lydia looks at me for long while, I can almost hear her refiling me. Finally she relents and gives it back. I open it, just to check what I wrote, and the contents make my hair stand on end. Oh Natalie, I'm very sorry, I promise to leave you alone now. You are more than the date of your birth.

Profit

I have a deep fear of separation. Last night I had a dream that someone was taken away, someone I care deeply about, though you wouldn’t think it to know me. I’d tell you the dream but in the light of day it seems laughable; they often do. Underneath though is a feeling I have been hiding from for some time, a cloud that looms more each day; that we are slipping into darker times. The days when the choice of our being together may be coming to an end, these decisions may soon be taken from our hands. The media is becoming more rabid by the hour, the latest opinions are crushed into our hands at the train stations, adverts tell us what to think and medicate us with luxury, fear is our new motivation, and how long will we remain on the winning team? As I cross a bridge over the river I see the skyline, the roofs with their antennas, all looking toward the truth. I have a sickening feeling of the approaching gap, how little is in our hands, the time for action has passed, we have let it slip by without raising a finger. Things will happen now, they already are.

this is what it's like to be me

It’s a wall of heat, a wall of pure, solid heat. You could rest babies on it, lean luggage against it, slice it up and serve it with custard. I am cleaned out, bankrupt with exhaustion, and somehow, despite the hot, I have a cold. Colds should have a different name in the summer. Like hots. But then the hots is what you have for someone else, so maybe not. Look, I said I was tired. I go to the cash point to get some money out. Five thousand dirhams I say. Insufficient funds it says. That's odd, I think, I’ve got more than a £100 in my account. I shrug and hit three thousand. The machine whirrs and spits out the notes. I get in the cab and an English number calls me up. I ignore it. Moments later a text chimes in. It's from the credit card people, someone just got out £478.23 on my account it says. I think I may have misunderstood the conversion rate. As I get out of the cab, my subconscious, wanting to do its bit to make a bad day worse, leaves my phone on the seat. It’s an hour before I realise and I spend the next two calling it to no avail. I sit in a Filipino restaurant, far past my bedtime and order water with rice. The water comes but half an hour later there’s no sign of the rice. I’ve lost my appetite, but I chase it up nonetheless. Oh, the guy says, I thought you said water with ice. Another day I’d have laughed and laughed, today I nearly cry. I pour a little salt on the puffy white mound and gulp it down. I crawl back to my apartment, and lie on the bed staring out of the window. The air-conditioners of Dubai sing me to me sleep. When I wake the next day I’m talking to the three opera singers I'm working with (naturally). I tell them how I lost my phone last night, and, as it's my blackberry, I don't have email either. How funny they say, because there was a phone that kept ringing and ringing in this cab they got last night, and it was one of those blackberry things, like you said you lost, and we kept asking who’s it was and it wasn't any of ours and- oh! The penny drops. Calls are made, cars are traced, the phone is found at the airport safely with the chauffeur. Twelve hours later it's back in my hands and I'm definitely crying now, but this time they're the little tears of happiness that come when you know that Someone is looking after you.

Test Match Magic

Here are the Rules:

1) Tips are runs. Someone tips you £20, that’s 20 runs.
2) A table that doesn’t tip, that’s a wicket.
3) The number of tables you do, that’s your overs.
4) A table that doesn’t want magic, that’s a duck.
5) If you go home early, that’s a declaration.
6) £20 is a four, £50 is a six.
7) If you walk away from a table, that’s a run out.
8) If the music is too loud, or the venue too dark, bad light stopped play.
9) If the food arrives mid set you’re LBW (Limited By Waiter).
10) Performing magic outside work is a follow on.