Pulped Fraction - JLG Clift

All wasn’t fine on the Piccadilly line where I trudged through the slew and the sludge of London decay under the scorching scorn of the vindictively bright sun against worn track suits and train tracks and the burning roots of sun sapped plants; I got the train at sunset and rode down down to the dark where the stark reality of recessive culture was lurking I saw a dealer working a whole carriage at Bounds Green I saw a mum bags from her eyes to her chin to her straining hands scavenging in a bin for her crying kids knackered action man that he’d thrown in a rage an action man very similar to the one I played with when I was his age he’d thrown it in amidst the screeching thuds as his trainers drew traction against the floor his mother dragging him flailing one handed up the stairs and everyone stared but nobody helped; the throwing of the toy was something the boy clearly and dearly regretted after he released what he’d thrown away the train took off too fast to tell whether or not she found it but I hope she did I doubt she could cope with her child crying on top of everything else on top of her bag tearing and the contents spreading across the greasy tiles of the grey platform vagisil vaulting the tattered yellow line and the worn bronze rim where the train meets the stains of the station for the first time and rupturing under hot black wheels that peel away with a slightly raspy squelch.

the train ploughed on and I turned away into a bikers belch a behemoth of a man a man so wide and so terrifying I dared not even cough at his gas for fear that he would think of my reaction to his crude action as rude and therefore his leather clad fists would meet my face and I’d paint the glass with the lining of my cheek and tooth and tongue this man looked so unstable I probably wouldn’t even need to speak to piss him off I mean he probably hates toffs he’s probably looking for an excuse to kill us all off; the smell of the man’s breath did make me meek but not as weak as I felt at the thought of fighting the fucker who I’d already dubbed in my head as the Kilimanjaro Killer who could crack mountains who could turn human necks into spewing fountains with a flick of his forefinger a man so savage that he could ravage both contenders at the Thriller in Manila with ease tearing the whole arena into screaming shreds like still warm bread for fun and a man who had laid waste to everyone who had ever crossed his path grinding them up like an ogre into a lumpy porridge paste only darker and redder and deader, as dead as the Quaker Oats guy.

‘oh they’d really be Quaker Oats if this bloated barbarian was shaping the recipe; you know he probably eats people’

‘no he doesn’t’

‘yes he does he captures them and juices their heads with his hands he likes girls the best he likes the way their bloodied hair threads through his tensing tree trunk fingers’

‘well where would he put the bodies?’

‘he’s like Dexter he drops them off the side of his boat and the bodies are so scared of him they don’t even float they just sink’

 I had an internal Withnail moment the cruellest part of my brain would not stop taking to me he would not let me be he was making me strain and driving my skin pale with thoughts of how this grimacing thug was to crush me under his candy coloured jack boot like a Hummer crushes snails or slugs and I had to try to feign calmness all the while pretending that the man to my immediate left who I’d need a crane to make eye contact with couldn’t turn me to paste on the tiles; a little bit of my head kept reminding me of this story on Rotten dot com that I had gotten sent to me when I was twelve a story that had been stewing on the darkest on my mind’s internal shelves hanging on by shrewd screws that refuse to fall out; my darkest thoughts are there shouting into constantly shattering mirrors annoyed that they can only scare themselves waiting to haunt me again and now this Withnail had taken it from its wailing jail and was taunting me with it; the story about how a body builder had picked up his child and given her a bear hug and how this child’s head hit the ground 10 feet away with a thud blood coating the body builders face and muscles yesterday’s Brussels sprouts gushing from the beneath the little girl’s flower dress with her bowels and all the rest of her no-longer-interior she was like a tube of chunky toothpaste sagging in her father’s swollen arms; it came with pictures and Withnail decided to bring them along too just to add a slightly more menacing hue to the tale heavy breathing I flew off the train fast at Finsbury Park and watched as the train departed the biker had not started to follow me and I watched with a smile as the vile beast was swallowed into the dark dragged along by the motion of a train still leaving tracks of that woman’s wasted lotion on the black steel wheels squealing on the ground.

I lost my way outside I was still fried from the Harley Davidson disciple and the stifling array of ways in which he could make me suffer I was hiding from the melees of midday in the shade and trying to shake the image of the biker filleting me and then devouring me with oil and maybe some bree (I know he was trying to play it low key but I did see a loaf in the oaf's canvas bag for life or until you put it through too much strife tear it making that whole for life statement no more than a marketing gimmick crooked and phoney as a Hallmark pre-watershed limerick the ones that are so dull they actually make you sick) and there was this guy touting his wares his cockney lisps like snares against the air he was shouting about fresh fruit that I suspect had been there since sunrise with no shade to speak of I stayed around a while and then I met Alice the Red and then (below the Shard where numerous postcards were being snapped as our shoes tapped against the heat of central concrete) another Alice this one with blonde and brown dreads threading across her head down to her shoulders complete with quirky attitude and banjo and lime green skateboard she was so immediately cool it was almost cruel and after the movie she played a jaunty little tune in the little park we found after dark telling me about how she'd sieved through several instruments from violins through to bassoons but that she had finally now found an instrument she wanted to stick with.

We got moving to the movie and found it downstairs in a really cool bar just a bit past London Bridge on one of those ridge like roads where freighter trucks unload and where unchecked cars are towed away and scrapped; I swear I’ve never seen more needlessly worn glasses in all my life there was this girl off on the right a chequered scythe across her tissue tampered chest that just got bored of wearing her frames half way through the film because as she remarked to who I guessed was her boyfriend ‘the glare was lame’ it’s a semi miracle I could actually tame my temper I’ve torn people down for a lot less than wearing coke bottle frames as fancy fucking dress but I moved on a round later and got into the zone fairly quickly afterwards Bruce Willis was starting to feel sickly about the loss of his father’s watch that was on the glazed kangaroo I was trying to get my straw to stop being so askew in my glass trying to figure out what people had against dignitas (as you do) but I didn’t really follow any of these thoughts through and I didn’t chew on them for too long either they just occurred and then were gone along with the other hundred thoughts I had during that screening about so many things from the biker to the housewife I saw preening the hedges not 200 metres away from the ledges at Arnos where those ghosts of people were lurking when I boarded the people that are only lauded over en masse when people of new means mumble about the death of the working class who can’t pay the gas man to keep their water warm but people that don’t care to help and people that would in fact yelp with disgust and shy away with distrust if they ever came into contact with these people like they’d caught a gust of sewage or like they’d been caught in the scrimmage of blunderbuss propelled ballistics.   

Fast forward through the film cut through the fumes in a small park in the barely dark of the city centre and see us getting licked but the zoot had to be toked quick because the two Alice’s had school the next day and didn’t want their parents shooting them down with negatives and imperatives about how they had to improve their timekeeping and about how they have to stop sleeping their mornings away the minute they rounded on their front doors kicking of freshly scored draw; it was a small and a green alcove, well more of a hollow grove, that we’d found and I looked up and around the Shard was in the stars like it always is the cars were hueless soundless cityscape's caress had darkened the trees on the far left all the way to black and the mento moon had boiled into recoiling clouds that looked like wet candy floss all the colour diluted and lost rooting around the high rises finding no pleasant surprises and no places to rest on the ride home there was a tramp on the carriage dressed in soon to be rags his club foot dragging behind him he told us that he lost his home when the bank took it up from underneath his hardworking constantly moving feet and that they’d thrown him out onto the street without batting an eye and that they even had the cheek to pat him on the back and wish him luck even though they knew they’d fucked him over he told us all that he’d heard successes call and had strode gallantly towards it only to fall into the pits laid out by greedy consumerists that made us the ninja generation the only generation in the history of population to be completely fucked and absolutely rinsed of luck and faith subject to the wrath of terrible men that don’t care and don’t see us as children but as acceptable casualties needed to mop up their mess there’s no mind paid to our distress and we’re all so cynical that we feel our rebellion would be utterly useless and would amount to nothing so we don’t even try and we go along with what we know in our hearts is wrong and we get our meaningless degrees and we get on our knees and we suck away and we hope that one day it all pays off; well not me, I’m not going to one of these guys that confines himself to a lot and a life that he did not choose I’m not going to let myself lose I’m not going to be one of these guys cruising with a conservative agenda going round the bends with the stupid men in Savile's suits chasing political trends like kids with nets chase non-existent butterflies of apparently amazing colours but how amazing can they be when they cause good people to bleed and blubber stinging them with the sharp of their stained glass wings that only beat to fill the pockets of kings; the guy was about to start crying so I dropped a couple of coins into his callused hands he said thanks and I smiled looking down at the flaky cup in his shaking grasp it was empty apart from my contribution practically there were men and women well-dressed successful tactically glancing into papers and smart phones until we, the lucky ones bound for home, were alone again; the crying man exited at Euston and headed into the Piccadilly line to be among his own kind who are all too far from fine to describe the impoverished tribe that are living in flivvers if they’re lucky while the people that should be the givers dither in their detached districts of a truly disturbing suburbia where no one is poor and no one’s stomach is sore with hunger where lungs are not raw with the pollution of man’s retribution on what he see as a neglectful mother or a lazy lover or just another alien failing to pull their weight the fires on both sides of the tracks are now smouldering to through the spectrum all the way to black with hate for those across the way but at least we have a place to stay at least when we have bills to pay we can pay them we are the lucky ones and the people on the other line are the pulped fraction juiced by the actions of noble men that will never meet their noose, you know, the ones we all let loose to run the world, you know, the ones making society unfurl; you know; the ones that we’ll probably become some day.