Monologue: Nothing at all
When he said “I’m not a dealer”, I knew.
99% of the population aren’t drug dealers but you don’t find them coming up to you, out of the blue, just to let you know they’re not. Why would they do that? In fact it doesn’t take a squit load of streetwise to know that if you’re serving up you’re not gonna go round with a belisha beacon on your head saying:
“Explicit denial, explicit denial, explicit denial” anway, are you? Are you fuck. Not if you’re pro. Not if you and God both straightened up before you joined the queue for brains. No. You just ...
...
Exactly.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Which leaves the only possible group of losers in the Venn Diagram of the narcotic underworld sitting in that small elliptic overlap of munchkins too razzled on their own stuff to know that they are making it ever so damn obvious with a denial which launches right off the rock in Acapulco to land on the ocean ...
Ker-Plaaaaap!
It stings.
It stinks.
Now I ain’t saying he’s a gold-digger.
But he ain’t messing with no …
Whatever.
Cos I knew all of that to be true. It’s like reading the Highway Code. Is there any other way to cross the road? You don’t need to look twice, whatever the Jolly Green Giant say. There is no other way. I did not
beware
all who enter here. I did not. I saw the signs. Big. Red. Triangles. I saw his living space, the temporary nature of a person. We’re all temporary. I hear you. Yeah, but, some more than others. Passing through, rootless, rolling stones, drifting - dry bones on the side of a dusty road. Whose are they? No one knows. Once, they moved in harmony, the frame of a conscious being, that loved and felt, that meant something, whose fellows cared if it was there or not. Then the body fell, flesh gone to rot, now ...
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
If only there was a truly cataclysmic incident. Knockout punch.
There wasn’t. But his tells showed themselves, they showed him. His closed cupboards, that only he could look in, his fat head, obscuring my sight. He twists back round, with an even face. A buff wall. Imperceptible.
Shit, does Intimacy breed Friction? Really? Wait, no, me, wrong. Start again ... does Friction breed Intimacy? The cadence drags - so I’ll spit it - Fric-a-tion ... In-ti-ma-cy.
This was the fiction he flew, like the flapping standard of a force unseen, a conceptual cavalry racing up Love Hill. Save us! from being overrun. A talisman, a get-out-of-the-maze map, crumpled, gripped tight. Our Great White Hope. Dope.
These tramplers, they push forward doggedly - knowing their time has come, forever. Inexorable. They march in Conflict’s Name. Peace through Annihilation. Friendship by War. Love from Hate.
Give me a fucking break.
Tell yourself a story. A bedtime story. One to make you feel alright. One to ward off the demons and the ghouls that prey on your longing for love. In the Night. Tell yourself a story of a little boy who did not understand, who could not understand, hurt. The bombs and the bullets fly back and forth. Shell-shocked he lies face down, gibbering. He clings to Mother Earth. Why should he be treated so? Why should he not know, safety. He knows:
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Ignorance breeds Fear. So everyone Here! Hear me! I have words. Forgiveness is the power to transform. The ultimate gift to ourselves.
But the price?
How much gold have you got?
The horsemen come. The ground shakes. We do too - rattled with incomprehension. The habitual wrath rises. Old Faithful. Yes,
Beware those who enter here - beware the warmth that boy seeks in the cold of battle. For he will seek it again, and again, to know strength, normality, it is the secret rack of shame he writhes on in those back cupboards. The Great Red Glow, that place where we go, when we let ourselves know, that we see the face of the conquered, cowed. We, above. They, below. With heat in hand, heart is safe. Trenches no more. It’s your super defence. Doomsday device. M.A.D.
Do you feel small?
Pull the trigger.
Fire in the hooooooole!
Now there’s nothing, baby.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
