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William ShawApologies for being away so long. Life is busy. But there is a great big pile of stories waiting to go up so it's time to get going again. UNTITLED When people are young, having limited resources and money, living space has to be compromised. Roommates are sometimes necessary to keep up with bills. These roommates can be friends, family, or people who need to save money. Sometimes this living condition can lead to parties, fights, and police intervention when things go wrong. I speak from experience since I’ve had many roommates, most of which led to those problems. During 1993, I moved into an apartment in Manchester on Hanover Street. My friend Mike and I shared this home, with fewer of the problems found in shared living than usual. Although we had many parties, we kept ourselves out of trouble while having fun. Out of all the parties we had, one uneventful party quickly turned into a strange night.  The apartment on Hanover Street was on the first floor of a three-family Victorian house. The ceilings were high, and there were belt lines in some rooms. Cabinets with glass doors adorned the kitchen, and old cast-iron radiators heated each room. The living room had bay windows wrapping it on one side. Our modern furniture and appliances looked out of place in such an old-fashioned environment. Our dress styles also contrasted with this home; we were more party animals than conservative. Everyone who knew us loved this apartment, as if they were attracted to it like a moth flies into the light. Some people thought our apartment had a personality about it, an almost living quality that spoke to all who entered it. Mike and I had a good friend named Doug who came to our place often. He called us one night, and said he was coming over. Mike asked me if Doug was bringing beer, because we had none. Doug said, “I’ll have to get forties, because I only have five bucks.” Doug was the kind of friend who shared what he had with us, so I told him, “That’s fine, man. We got the food if you bring the beer to wash it down!” He arrived in ten minutes. Once Doug showed up, I began bringing out some food for us to eat. Just as I sat down to drink my freshly poured beer, someone knocked on the door. I peered through the peephole in the door to see a female face. It was Natalie, a friend of ours who frequently came over. I let her in, and within ten minutes she and Mike disappeared into his bedroom to watch a movie she brought with her. Doug and I listened to music for a while, and until someone else knocked on the door, it was an uneventful evening. This man was going to die soon, if he didn't stop bleeding... The knock came around eleven at night, and by this time Mike was back in the living room with Doug and I. Natalie peeked out from Mike’s room to see who was knocking. I got up to answer the door once again, only to see an unremarkable male face on the other side of the door. I assumed someone would know this person, so I opened the door. Our front door opened inwards, so I didn’t have a chance to see him in full until he was inside the apartment. The first thing I noticed about this man wasn’t visual; it was a feeling I had. Since both Doug and Mike had the opportunity to see this man before I did, their expressions made me uncomfortable at once. I stood there behind the door momentarily, looking at both of them, as they looked at each other with confusion. I stepped back to see a man in his late twenties, with a medium build and height. He had brown hair and eyes, and he was obviously drunk. In his hands he carried two tall Budweiser beers, and his coat pockets overflowed with four more. His presence in our home and his level of drunkenness was strange enough to raise concern about our safety, and stranger still was his silence. The man swayed like a small boat in the Pacific Ocean.Finally, after a few moments which seemed like minutes, Mike asked the man harshly, “Who the fuck are you?” The man replied, “I did something I think I’ll regret in the morning.” Blood dripped from his hand generously, and his jeans suddenly stood out in my eyes, for they were soaked with blood. I immediately assumed he murdered someone. Doug stood up and asked him whom he had killed. I asked him to leave, and mike returned to his room to get a weapon. With a Scuba knife held in his hand behind his arm, trying not to be obvious, Mike closed his door in Natalie’s face, telling her without words to stay inside. Mike walked up to the man and told him, “Get out.” “I need a place to stay for a while,” the man said without reservation. “I did something I’m going to regret tomorrow.” I reasoned with him, “You can’t stay here. We don’t know you, and why the hell are you all bloody?” The man continued his silence while he took off his jacket. “Didn’t you hear us?” Doug added. “We don’t want you here.” I could see Natalie peeking through the doorway again. She mouthed the words, “Who is he?” I walked up to the door and shut it again. The man finished taking his jacket off, and with it came a towel that looked maroon in color. Soon I noticed that it was soaked with blood, too. “What did you do?” Doug asked. “I had a fight with my girlfriend,” the man replied. “I was drinking all night, just don’t call the cops or the hospital and I’ll show you what I did.” We agreed not to call the authorities, so he pulled up his sleeve to show us one of the worst wounds I had ever seen. I asked him if he cut himself. He said, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I just wanted to kill myself.” Mike walked into the kitchen to grab a plastic bag, and put the towel into it. Then he got a new towel from the bathroom and returned to the man. Mike told me, “Go pick up that bag in there. It’s heavy as hell. You couldn’t fit another drop into that towel.” I examined the heft of the used towel, and mike was right. This man was going to die soon, if he kept bleeding. We fixed the towel to his wounded arm, and told him it was time to leave. The man put his jacket back on and grabbed his beers. He said, “Thanks for not calling the cops, guys. You’re cool people.” I told him, “You’re lucky you didn’t go to a different house, guy. Anybody else would have left you for dead and called the cops.” Mike wrote our names and address down on a piece of paper, and placed it in the man’s pocket. “Call us tomorrow and tell us how it turned out.” We watched the man leave through Mike’s bedroom window, all four of us. Natalie asked us why we didn’t want her in the same room as the man who was now walking past the window. Doug said, “That’s why we hang out here. Mike and Will were looking out for you. That guy could have killed three people for all we know.” “I wonder where he’s going?” Mike said. Just then he fell in the street. The man struggled to get back up and fell again. We started betting on if he could get up at all, but he surprised us once again when he got up and stumbled across the street. A car pulled up ahead of him and opened the door. The man who arrived in our lives so quickly disappeared into the night, never to be heard from again by us. William Shaw hails from New Hampshire. The photo was taken by Suvi Korhonen who found the blood on a street in the middle of Helsinki. 9:36 PM - 28/10/2007 - comments {0} - post commentFound Writing No 6 Thinking of 41 Places, my colleague Adrian found this a couple of weeks ago in Oxford while he was waiting for a train there, and photographed it with his phone. What I like about it is it's gone straight for a fragment of narrative. "...I didn't want anyone to see me cry." A project after my own heart. It turns out to be the work of Penelope Davis, who created 10 of these plaques for her final project at Oxford Brookes University. 8:15 AM - 6/7/2007 - comments {0} - post commentWilliam ShawTHE FORTUNE OF WAR, KING'S ROAD ARCHESSophie’s father came unprepared for the weather. He’s so cold they have to buy him an extra layer – a red No Fear hoodie. It’s hilarious to see it on her dad, the hood flying back up in the wind and him trying keep it back down. "Can we go in one that's a bit more gay?" he asks... He’s never really been around gay culture. He just wants to see.They have a half there, but he’s not impressed. "Can we go in one that’s a bit more gay?" he asks, as if he was expecting people in a Brighton gay bar to be walking round in leather thongs or something.
4:54 PM - 16/5/2007 - comments {0} - post commentTanya MurrayTHE BENEFITS OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATIONThe big hurdle wasn’t the sex-change op. That was still at least a year away. I realised that this little physical adjustment, so significant to others, would remain between me, my gynaecologist and, probably, no-one else, at all, ever.  Nor did my social transition to Tanya hold any particular fears. I was “part-time full-time” already, dressing as and being Tanya everywhere except work. I’d started thinking of my work persona as “That Other Guy”, his work outfit of sober suit and tie the only real drag I was now wearing.I had arranged work so I had Fridays free. In theory these were writing days. In practice, whatever creativity I had went into trannying around town, getting used to the hostile stares and catcalls. Once, as I stood waiting by the lights to cross Western Road, two builder types stood either side of me. One leaned in close and whispered, in a flat, angry monotone “filthy fucking pervert, paedophile, kiddie-fiddling bum boy, you scum, you sex case…” It had been a bad day for this kind of crap. I’d already been heckled twice by yobs, and now… The stream of abuse continued until I rounded on him, and in my best Scorsese growl delivered Joe Pesci’s line as the psychotic killer Tommy in Goodfellas: “Do I amuse you? Do you find me amusing? I make you laugh, like a fucking clown?” I must have conveyed something of Tommy’s psychosis, because both men backed off, still muttering. Luckily for me. I've got something incredibly important to do next week... The lights changed, and I teetered away in my foot-crippling new heels, pride and facial features mercifully intact under the inch-thick slap I needed to hide my still-heavy beard growth, pondering as I did so: a) how stupid-lucky I’d been not to have been filled in right there, and b) how the subsequent chat with the local cops would have gone when they saw The Other Guy's warrant card in my purse.Still, as the weeks passed, the volume of catcalls diminished, as I gradually learned the tranny survival skills of invisibility, indifference, and slightly better dress sense. Meanwhile, everyone I needed to tell was told. With varying results. Some dropped me immediately. Gay men, in particular, seemed to view me as some kind of quisling. It was seriously suggested to me, despite the quarter century I had spent with my boyfriend, that I was only doing this because “you can’t face up to admitting you’re a gay man.” Hmm. Now let me think about this: cope with the social stigma of being assumed to have excellent interior design skills? Or chop my balls off and turn myself into a permanent circus freak, in the opinion of a goodly portion of the world? Tough call. Most people stuck around after I dropped the bomb, if only out of curiosity. I had a sense that for some, I now ticked a useful box, next to “exotic ethnic minority friend”, easily out-ranking my previous “gay shopping friend” tag. A few, fortunately - those I still call friend - were supportive. Once, that is, they got over what another trans friend called the “48 hour shock” (as in: “Don’t trust what anyone tells you they think about, it until at least 48 hours has passed”.) Which just left work. Now, the Metropolitan Police isn’t is the kind of place where you pitch up at the office one day declaring an intention to change sex, then say “Just kidding.” Of all the steps in my transition, this was the only one that was truly, socially, irrevocable. I need a job, and the reality is, most trans people don’t have one. So once I came out to The Job, I was committed to stay there. Changing my mind later would simply not be an option. I hatched a cunning plan. I had a big case coming up, a nasty baby-battering. Young, useless mum and dad in the dock, me centre stage as officer in the case. It would be That Other Guy’s swansong, a last outing for the suit and tie, then, a week’s leave, and bang, back at work as the new me, Tanya of the Tranny Squad. No problem. Well, they say no plan survives contact with the enemy… Things went well initially. I met the prosecutor, a sneaky QC with a plan of his own to get round the biggest risk in the case; because neither mum or dad were talking, both could walk since exactly who fractured the skull and tiny limbs of their three month old son couldn’t be proved… The Other Guy had his day in the box, giving the jury just the facts, ma’am, looking sharp in my last male suit, wearing the glasses I never wear, because juries think people wearing glasses are intelligent… We hit half time, on time. Now it was the defence’s turn. Things began to drag. The trial was set down for a week. By start of play on Thursday it was looking dicey for a Friday finish. I buttonholed my brief. “Do you reckon we’ll be done tomorrow? I’ve got something incredibly important to do next week.” He shrugged. “Really officer, I have no idea.” The jury went out Friday afternoon. And stayed out. No verdict. Come Monday, I had a decision to make. I chose a new suit. This one was lilac. The jacket had breast darts to accommodate my silicon breast forms. I spent quite a bit of time on my make up and wig. The Other Guy’s role in the proceeding was over, but I wanted to look my best for my public debut. Every morning during the trial I had sat in the same seat, behind my brief's chair, ready to slip him a note, exhibit, whatever. I took up my usual position. He breezed in, looking straight through me to the female usher who I had spent hours chatting to during recesses. “Have you seen the officer in the case?” he asked her. Both looked blankly around the half empty court. Shyly, I raised my hand. “I told you I had something important to do this week.” I ventured, in my not-at-all convincing female voice. The barrister contemplated me for a long moment. And then, I truly appreciated the benefits of a public-school education. His Eton-educated tone never wavered. “Oh… Good morning, officer.” Just that. Then he turned to the pile of papers in front of him. We got our verdict an hour later: guilty. The barrister shook hands with me briskly. “Thank you officer.” He strode off without another word. Tanya Murray wrote the stories Spinning the Drum and Dancing for Un-Made-Up. The photo is by flickr's Jo Angel, from a collection called On Being A Tranny. 8:59 AM - 26/2/2007 - comments {3} - post commentJonathan ChamberlainHOW THINGS WERE BEFORE YOU ARRIVED At that time we lived in a small flat at the top of a hill on a small island, an hour by ferry from the main island of Hong Kong. It is a very small island. With recent reclamations it is almost exactly one square mile. Two largish headlands of rotten granite joined by a wasp waist of a sand bar. Geographers call this type of island a tombolo. It is perhaps three hundred paces across at the thinnest point. The shape of it is like a dog, if you look at it in a certain way, or maybe a knotted root of ginger. The sandbar has been concreted over and built upon. This is the village where some thirty thousand people live. On the south side of the sandbar, six hundred or so trawlers, fishing junks, shrimpers, sampans, water boats, grain junks, short-haul cargo boats and fibre-glass skips occupy the waters of the harbour area. On the north side is the island's main beach which looks on to the south side of Hong Kong island - a scatter of lights on a clear night - and beyond it the furnace of the blazing city, alive with evening energies. Sometimes, late in the evening we watched it with a kind of awe. But mostly we faced the other way, looking across the inky harbour to the silent dark shapes of the mountains on the neighbouring island of Lantau, slopes that faded away in shades of grey. The flat, one of four in the block, stood just below the peak of one of the two hills of the island, overlooking some vegetable plots. One day, instead of going down to the market, I decided to buy directly from the farmer. "How much do you want?" he asked. We stood facing each other surrounded by the vegetables in the field grappling with this question of quantity. ...if we had known then... "A catty," I suggested tentatively, aware of the stupidity of talking weight when we had nothing to weigh them in. We laughed."OK, two dollars worth." My Cantonese was up to that. The farmer nodded and started laying the white cabbage along his arm. From wrist to elbow one dollar, from elbow to shoulder two dollars. For two dollars I got an arm's length of Chinese greens. Here, above the village, we shared the nights with the croakings of a hundred frogs, rich bellowings like cows' mooings. I loved these frog sounds, each burping like bubbles bursting, that greeted us as we came home in the evening. At night it was sometimes too tiresome to go out into town. We stayed where we were and closed out the world. Our closest friends were insects and trees. Spiders weaved their cobwebs unmolested, skinks darted out from the wardrobe. Blue tailed skinks – lizards that looked as if they had been designed by Bugatti, skittered around the room on electric nerves. Sometimes a tail was missing leaving a glistening red lump. Within a week the tail had grown back. Cicadas grated their legs together in sudden frenzies of sound. In the drains and cracks around the house lived armoured centipedes up to ten inches long. In the grass there were snakes. We were not alone in our solitude. They were happy times, times of deep contentment and a strange, disquieting need to escape. I recognise this only now, looking back, there were deep currents of energy that felt constrained. And as I look back at this companionable, contented time, I guess Bern too was escaping along her own tracks of wood and stone. Dear Stevie, I loved your mother and she loved me. These are truths that I know absolutely. But perhaps there was - in me, in her - at the centre, a hard core that could not be dissolved in the acid of love. And, anyway, love isn't all there is to it. There's more. And did we leak away from each other slowly, a slow steady drip-drip-drip of soul and spirit and heart and being? So very slowly we didn't notice it? So slowly that even if we had seen it we wouldn't have thought it mattered? Is that what happened? It's hard to think of it. But then of course the drip, if there was a drip, was small and the reservoir of feeling was deep. And life, in any case, means friction and people are different, grow differently, react differently. These are simple everyday truths. And then, Stevie, there was you. A seed planted in the very heart-soil of our lives. I knew it before she did. I knew the firming of the breast meant more than temporary hormonal dysfunction. This time was different. The days passed and the subtle ballooning of her breasts continued. I grew more certain. But she was confused. There had been a slight flow of blood at the proper time and again a few weeks later and again and again, each time after we had made love. When it was confirmed she said we'd have to stop for a couple of months. It could be dangerous. How did I feel about it? There I was, excluded from the body I loved for the sake of the usurper. I thought of the burden, the irritations, the complications of it all. But that mood didn't last long. I became affectionate of the little abstraction that daily grew bigger and bigger. You. I felt this nameless fruit of love ripen under the palm of my hand; saw it swell. Her nipples stuck out straight as if at attention. We lay in bed holding hands and contemplating this mysterious child that had chosen to be ours - or had it been chosen for us by some unseen fate? Was it that eons of karma were meeting at this intersection of fate and time? Magical and mysterious being. What were we going to do with you? What were you going to do to us? We understood a truth. The future had arrived. And what we saw as the future would always be your continuous present. And looking back, Stevie, as I sometimes do, I feel a kind of horror rise up in me. If we had known then. If we had suspected. If we had had tests, then we would never have known you. That thought scares me to the depth of my soul. If I had never known you, why then, then, I would never have become the me I am today. This another piece of Jonathan Chamberlain's memoir of his daughter, Wordjazz For Stevie. You can read more from Jonathan here. The photo is by Falk who blogs here. 9:40 PM - 5/2/2007 - comments {0} - post commentWilliam ShawFRAGMENTS OF SPEECH OVEHEARD AT THE FRIEZE ART FAIROver five days, at London’s Frieze Art Fair, artists Jake and Dinos Chapman offered to paint portraits of anyone who would pay £4,500 plus vat. From 11th to 15th October 2006, dealers, buyers and the curious public craned their head round the small doors of their enclosure to watch the two brothers at work gallerist Jay Joplin’s White Cube space at the International Art Fair to watch the event. Man from the BBC: “This is, a, ah, different thing for you.” Jake Chapman: “Not really.” [pause] ..."Jake and Dinos Chapman? Which one is which?"... Man from the BBC: “How long have you been interested in portraiture?”Jake Chapman: “Since about ten o’clock this morning.” [pause] Man from the BBC: “What made you want to do it?” Jake Champan: “Jay did. He kidnapped our children.” -o0o- Sitter 1 : “Oh well. It doesn’t look like me. But it’s quite nice.” Sitter 1’s friend: “The eyes are quite good.” Sitter 1: “But where did the ears come from though?” -o0o- Interviewer: “This isn’t so much about the portraits, but about you being here with the subjects…” Jake Chapman: “Well... it would be very difficult to do portraits without us being here…” -o0o- Bystander 1: “You see? You get your portrait from the Chapman Brothers, and afterwards you get into the Tate Liverpool…[Pause] The trouble is I’m not sure I want to get into the Tate Liverpool…” -o0o-  Sitter 2 [nervously jovial]: “I don’t think sitting for Rembrant would have been like this, do you?”Dinos Chapman [flatly]: “No.” -o0o- Tracey Emin, after kissing Jake on the cheek, takes off her coat: “The breasts are coming out.” -o0o- Sitter 3 [unable to see what Dinos is painting]: “I want to look like Hugh Grant.” Dinos Chapman: “Well… if I painted Hugh Grant he would look like this.” -o0o- Kate Moss: “Can you do me?”Dinos Chapman: “You’ll have to come back…" Kate Moss: "When?" Dinos Chapman: "We’re busy, you know… And you’ll have to sit still.” -o0o- Sitters 4 [a rich American who has just been depicted with his wife, sitter 5, as a bloody head on a stick]: “I love it. We have so many serious ones of us at home.” Sitter 5: “This is fun. I wouldn’t want it if it wasn’t fun.” Sitter 4: “And I don’t have any without my glasses on.” -o0o- Interviewer: “You don’t really foreground yourselves in your art usually…” Jake Chapman: “No.” Interviewer: “But in this you are… You’re very much part of this performance.” Jake Chapman: “But not in any particularly glamorous way. You know… we’re idiots.” Interviewer: “Idiots?” Jake Chapman: “Yes. There’s something idiotic about our project.” Sitter 6: [Laughs nervously] Jake Chapman: “Yes. But if it’s good it’s because it’s audacious… [sighs] I don’t even know what that word means.” Interviewer: “I’ve been watching people when they see the finished portrait for the first time. They tend to stand up and say, ‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’ And then walk away with this uncertain look on their faces.” Sitter 6: “Do they?” Jake Chapman: “Yeah yeah. There have been a few nip and tucks that don’t work out too well in oil paint.” -o0o- Bystander 2: “I didn’t know they could paint. I thought they just made shit.” -o0o- Dinos Chapman [as Jake removes his trousers to replace them with his overalls after arriving at the stall on the third day of the exhibition]: “Don’t look. Artist willy.”-o0o- Radio interviewer: “Some of your portraits aren’t very flattering.”Dinos Chapman: “They’re all flattering. It’s very flattering to have your portrait painted by great artists, wouldn’t you say, Jake?” Jake: [says nothing] Radio interviewer: “What styles do you paint in?” Dinos Chapman: “All styles… except good.” -o0o- Bystander 3: “This is such rubbish.” -o0o- Jake Chapman: “Some of these people are pig ugly.” -o0o- Interviewer: “There was a beautiful woman here on the first day. You painted her as a skull with worms coming out of the eyeballs and a swastika on her forehead…” Jake: “I’d had a conversation with her about burkas the night before and she took the Jack Straw position. So I said she was a Nazi. I thought she deserved a swastika on her forehead.” -o0o- Bystander 4: “Who are they? I don’t know them.” Bystander 5: “Jake and Dinos Chapman.” Bystander 4: [Pause] “Which one is which?” -o0o- Interviewer: “Are you gently nibbling the hand that feeds you?” Dinos Chapman: “We’re up to the elbows I think.” -o0o- At the end of the five days, Jake and Dinos Chapman had completed 125 portraits. Their provisional title for the event was Painting For Fun And Profit. The 125 portraits will be displayed at the Tate Liverpool in 2007. One of mine. There is all this material left over from writing features that never gets used. This is like using the leftovers from the Sunday roast. The photo is by art blogger Paolo Murphy, one of those people who craned their heads around the booth doorway. 4:17 PM - 14/12/2006 - comments {0} - post commentTanya MurrayDANCINGOne year ago. Our last breakfast together. We sat at the counter, in the sleek modern kitchen of his sleek modern house. Outside, a flat white sun hammered down, eye-scorchingly bright, and it felt all wrong. It was 9 a.m, thirty degrees in the shade. In January. Australia. ...I tell people: “David took it well; he moved to Australia...” This whole country was wrong. Hot when it should be cold. Parched, no green anywhere, just shades of red. A bunch of loud, sporty white people clinging to a semi-verdant fringe; and a big, blank, red desert for the rest, inhabited only by invisible black people, rumoured to still be around there, somewhere. Probably getting drunk, according to the whites, if they ventured any opinion at all.No wonder they got excited about that big rock in the middle. It was the only thing amounting to a view. On a local scale: Adelaide. Main claim to fame: the first Australian city not founded by convicts. Oddly, this made it worse. It meant that Adelaide’s city fathers had chosen to come here. Out of one impressively huge picture window, acre after acre of grid-squared, tin-roofed bungalows, rising to distant hills, where smoke wisped, and helicopters flitted; they had been fighting forest fires up there for a week now. Out of another, the pocket Manhattan of Adelaide’s downtown business area, one square mile of not very commanding office blocks. It took twenty scorching minutes to walk there. In another twenty, you had seen everything, and wondered why you bothered. It was three hundred miles from Adelaide to the next place of interest. And that was Melbourne. Why had he abandoned me, and England, for this damned place, after twenty four years together? Well, it was obvious, wasn’t it? He never had to explain himself to our friends. Just tell them the facts. They would nod, and sigh, and agree with him. Feeling sorry. For him. How had he put it? Bluntly. David always did have a streak of ruthlessness. This was what had made him a success. “Look, it’s simple. I’m a Gay man. I don’t want a relationship with a woman. Not even…” Not even a freak like me. I “filled him with horror”, he told me, once, in a rare access of truthfulness. Never mind that we had lived together, and loved one another, and shared the adventure of our lives together, down all the years since we met in 1980. Just two horny, wide-eyed working class kids away from home for the first time then, out of our depth but paddling frantically in the scary, sexy waters of the GaySoc freshers’ disco, Strugglers Rest bar, Sussex University. Ironically, the first thing we ever spoke about, the reason I summoned the courage to self-consciously shuffle my way onto the dance floor, to meet the first cool gaze of his beautiful blue eyes, was the thing that later destroyed us. In our beginning was our end. Remember. It was the 1980s. Curly perms were in. Big flappy trousers. Make up on boys. New Romantics. And he looked the spit of someone I’d seen on telly. A grim slice-of-life documentary that scared the bejesus out of me, and for the first time put a name to the lack at the centre of me. George & Julia it was called. A show about a rare, wonderful, sad thing. It was about a transsexual. Weirdly, David was Julia’s doppelganger, down to the bubble perm and curves. Operating on a principal of sympathetic magic, I concluded that if he looked like a transsexual, he probably was one…  …Magic, of course is a flawed belief system. And so it proved. But not before he had taken the semi-rent boychick I’d been, the sexually experienced, emotionally crippled hustler I thought I was, and opened me up, seducing me with gifts of macaroni cheese, and other things I couldn’t cook, (which was pretty much everything). He fed me, made me laugh, and, eventually, made me love. So for love, I spent the next quarter century burying my strangeness. I very nearly got away with it, too. Until, one day, while he was away on business, I found myself on the Downs, belt in hand, testing tree branches for one that could take my weight. Something had to change. It turned out to be me. I tell people: “David took it well; he moved to Australia…” It usually gets a laugh. …So now it’s the last day of my first visit after my change. My flight leaves in a couple of hours. David has a new boyfriend now, Desmond, a man apparently intent on keeping his cock, something for which David is clearly grateful. Desmond, out of deference to my feelings, is not here this morning. It’s just the two of us. The radio is on. Leonard Cohen, “Dance Me To The End Of Love”. David, never one for lyrics, catches only the waltzy beat. “Let’s dance,” he says. “Now you’re a girl, it’s allowed.” It used to be a joke between us. Back when I was trying, so hard, to be a boy, I never danced, not even when drunk, which was often. He gathers me in his arms, and holds me close, and we stumble through a sort of waltz, on the polished wooden floor of his shiny, me-less home. And I’m glad he holds me close, because I’m remembering all the other times he held me down the years. Not dancing, just holding me: watching old movies on the sofa on a wet Sunday afternoon; at the end of a shitty working day; next to me in our bed. His arms, around me. I feel his male strength, the promise of security, that turned out to be a lie after all, and I bury my face in his shoulder, and stifle my sobs, as the music plays, and Leonard sings: “Show me slowly what I only know the limits of, Dance me to the end of love.” Finally, after all these years. We’re dancing. Tanya Murray used to be a lot of things. These days she just is. Photographer Steve Collins took the picture on the South Downs. His photos are online at momofoto. He is also part of digitaldoc, an organisation dedicated to "easing the pain of the digital lifestyle". There are naturally times when I wonder whether Un-Made-Up is a good idea or not; whether it's worth it. Opening the email from Tanya and reading this story for the first time was really, really, really, really not one of those times. 4:20 PM - 3/12/2006 - comments {12} - post commentJenn AshworthFROGSTOOLSI am sitting in the bright yellow strip light of a paediatric assessment ward, holding Skye tight in a vomit stained blanket. It is eight o’clock in the evening. The blanket is white with a waffle pattern, and it smells. We have been in the hospital since one in the afternoon, and Skye has been sleeping on the floor of the waiting room for four hours. She has been sleeping on the floor in the waiting room (from where we can see rows of starched empty cots) because it has taken seven hours for a doctor to come to see her. She is sleeping on the floor because, I think, (she can’t talk) she is in too much pain to be held. And they tell her she is not allowed to have water but the only thing she says when she wakes up is, "juice, juice."  There are too many of us in here behind this curtain; it catches on people’s backs and billows out. I try to take my mind away from what is happening by listening to the mother in the next cubicle tell the doctor about her three-year-old’s unexplained vaginal bleeding. No, I haven’t left her with anyone all day today. She’s been with me. Always with me except for five minutes when I was loading the car, and then she was inside with my mum. She’s never been on her own. The curtain has pictures of frogs wearing glasses sitting on toadstools. I am very tired, and I think the frogs should be toads or the toadstools should be frogstools. I think I am probably not the first person to have thought this. They are definitely frogs and the stools are definitely toads. If I worked here it would drive me slowly mad. ...he's been eating tea at the house of a girl he's been knocking off... I am holding Skye, clamping her head to my chest with one hand. A nurse is holding her arm out so tightly she will have bruises in the morning. The doctor is poking her hand with a needle, trying to find a vein so he can get a drip into her hand. She needs the drip because she is dehydrated. She is dehydrated because they have refused her water and left her vomiting in a waiting room for seven hours while they get a doctor to come to see her. There must only be one doctor in this hospital so large it takes us twenty minutes to get to the front door. Or half a doctor. One half of a doctor. I look at the doctor pushing the needle into Skye’s hand so hard that it hurts me. I could halve this doctor if it would help the waiting times.Oscar is to my left in his own chair, holding Skye’s leg so she can’t wriggle. She’s crying. My mum is standing near the curtain, frowning. Skye’s father is to the right of me, stroking Skye’s other leg and crying. He’s crying because he did not realise she was so ill. He had no idea, despite repeated phone calls, because he was eating tea at the house of a girl he’s been knocking off for the past fortnight. She lives twenty minutes drive from the hospital and it took him four hours to get here. I wanted to argue with him but you see separated parents arguing over the heads of their sick children in Casualty all the time, and it isn’t tasteful. Everyone knows what it looks like. The doctor has fucked it up and everyone changes position while he tries the other hand. The drip goes in and Skye must stay the night. Oscar and me drive home quickly so I can get some things for her and me. When I get back, she and dad are in the ward, and dad is reading her a story. After I have eaten, dad goes back to the girl he has been knocking off for a couple of weeks. He has been at the hospital two hours, and complains about how much it will cost to get a taxi home. At two in the morning Skye starts screaming, banging her head against the bars of the cot (they are metal, and remind me of the Blue Peter and Newsround footage I saw of orphanages in Romania) and slapping herself. She pulls out the drip and the gauze they’ve splinted (splunt?) her arm with sucks up the blood. It is bright red from the vein and it looks like a lot. The nurse comes and tells me I need to keep her quiet or she’ll wake up the other children. I try to breastfeed her. The nurse asks me why I didn’t tell her she was still being breastfed, and tuts as she writes it down on Skye’s chart. The nurse tells me the doctor has said Skye can have clear fluids only. I tell the nurse I don’t have milk any more. The nurse slaps the chart closed and clicks away over the hard floors. In the morning the nurses handover. Skye’s night nurse tells Skye’s morning nurse that Skye was screaming and hitting herself in the middle of the night, and took two hours to be calmed down. She says Skye was fantastic with dad, and only started screaming when mum arrived, and wonders if they should get dad back in and send mum home to get some sleep. Mum is sick, and is vomiting into a bowl, is calling Oscar to be taken home, is crying and feeling sorry for herself and is leaving Skye in the metal cot until fantastic dad arrives to take over. Fantastic dad could be ten minutes, or hours, mum does not know but mum is not allowed to stay in case she infects the other children in the room with the virus. There aren’t any other children in the room; the night nurse moved Skye to a bay on her own because she was making too much noise for the other children. She looks out of the bars of the cot and asks for juice as mum and Oscar pass by, and mum looks away from the glass she can see Skye through, banging and waiting for someone to come. This is the fifth of writer Jenn Ashworth's stories written for Un-Made-Up. The photo was loaned by Drayke Larson of Minneapolis who took the picture of the drip while in hospital during the birth of his own daughter, Inara Rae. I always look forward to clicking on the Word document when Jenn Ashworth sends in another; they all have a fantastic chalk-squeaking-on-blackboard edge... Send her comments. Send ME comments for that matter. 2:06 PM - 21/11/2006 - comments {0} - post commentSusannah HarrisonTHE BIRDWOMAN OF THE OLD STEINEI saw the Birdwoman one Friday evening as I walked home from work. The first thing I noticed was a very large number of gulls on the grass opposite the Pavilion just by the monument of Queen Victoria. Then I saw the figure standing in their midst. The Birdwoman wore a finely patterned trilby hat, a dirty navy raincoat and some dark blue flared trousers. Her skin was brown and weathered and her knuckles knobbly with arthritis. It was these hands, strong and worn, the edentulous lower jaw and her upper set of dentures that slipped when she smiled that betrayed her age. She bent over a pram with a black and white checked cover and from deep inside pulled out a selection of prepacked meals.  I stood beside a tree, where others had gathered to watch her. I spoke to the couple. They were visitors to Brighton and were taking pictures of the Birdwoman. I guessed they were in their late teens or early twenties, studenty, but maybe older. They had come down from Maidstone for a party that weekend. The girl had very long black hair, streaked through with red. She told me that the Birdwoman had even given the birds smoked salmon. We speculated on her background. “She’s probably a millionaire really,” said the girl....She'd fed the birds every day for sixty-seven years... The Birdwoman stood in the middle of a flock of gulls. There were several grey and speckled juveniles amongst the many adult birds. When she threw them the food they dived towards it forming a flapping, jabbing mess of feathers and sharp yellow beaks. They called and squawked; they hovered around her face. She cried out, she was euphoric. “They love me,” she screamed, “some people think I’m mad, but you understand.” The girl with the black hair was striding towards her. I followed. The Birdwoman extended her hand towards us.The Birdwoman was seventy-nine. She’d fed the birds every day on the beach for sixty-seven years, normally at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, she told us. When the food ran out she collected all the packaging from the grass, packed it up in her pram and pushed it away. She was stooped as she walked, like an elderly grandmother with a baby. I left to walk home. At the other side of the grass I met the young couple. There the girl told me that the Birdwoman used to be given out of date food from supermarkets. When they stopped doing that she collected the food herself from the skip. How unfair it was to make an old lady go through a skip for food to feed the birds! One day recently she went to the skip and found that it had been locked. Now she’d have to go somewhere else for the food. The couple left and headed off towards the town and their party. I continued my journey home. I’ve been to look for her on the beach since then, admittedly I’ve rarely been there at 4 o’clock, but now and then I’ve got there on time. But it was normally the weekend when I could get there so early and on sunny days the pebbles are covered with tourists. Later on in the day the beach is quieter and I’ve walked alone by the edge of the sea. Amongst the pebbles are lengths of brown strap-like seaweed, chalky cuttlefish bones, a hair bobble or a diamanté flip-flop. The gulls walk across the beach or circle above the pier, grey like ribbon ghosts in the fading evening light, but I’ve never seen the Birdwoman again. Susannah Harrison is a doctor and former Brighton resident. She sent her last piece to Un-Made-Up back in June. She is, she admits, no longer 29. You don't often find a photograph that's this exact a match for the story, but Clive Andrews kindly supplied the very thing. Susannah has another in the pipeline, coming soon. 7:30 AM - 18/11/2006 - comments {0} - post comment"Jodi"A PIECE OF MY STORY She is fragmented. Little shards of all the yesterdays. Smokey, unclear, lost. Bits and pieces of useta-bes, smeared all over with who she wants you to see. Nothing speaks of who she is and where she has been. No one will ever know. But she will tell you. She can no longer hide it away.He was a mountain of a man. She lived with him, worked for him, got high with him, feared him and clung to him. He stormed around the room, bloody lust in his eyes, breathing hard anger, hate, retaliation in his gait. "Where is it you stupid bitch? You stole my dope. Where is it?" She could see the headlines. STUPID WHITE GIRL FOUND DEAD IN A SLEAZY HOTEL ROOM WITH A HUGE BLACK EX CON. Convicted of every violent crime to man... high on crack... found dead... She deserved it... she had no right to be there... She asked for it... What was she doing there in the first place, STUPID CRACKHEAD WHORE? ...What if he beat her to death right there... "Would you stop thinking about what you are going to do to me, and start thinking about where you put it?" She could think of nothing else to say; no words would come.Vividly she flashed back to that scene over and over again. What if he had killed her before she remembered he had hid it in the empty Kleenex box holder that was built into the bathroom wall? What if he had beat her to death right there, right then, for something she hadn't even done? What if? What if? But he hadn't. He had found it. It was OK. She had escaped his wrath... that time. They lived on to laugh about it. Still, it haunted her today in this life she now led, in this foreign land she called straight. After nearly eight years out of the life, she still lived with it every day. Just one of the many broken little pieces that she called self. As she sits her today in front of her computer, her dogs by her side, her job waiting, the shower calling... she relives it, the fear, the pain, the past, over and over again till all her time has slipped away. Time to begin another day. From her tentative blog why paisley???? we learn that Jodi lives in North California and much prefers being 45. She describes herself as "a scared little child in grown woman's body". The painting is by Joy Hester, an Australian contemporary of Sidney Nolan, who lived a short and often tragically turbulent life. Possibly the most disturbing story I've put up here - on all sorts of levels... I toyed with asking Jodi to delete the black/white thing, but decided against it. It arrived entirely in upper case; though her blog is notable for the absence of any use of the shift key. Jodi says she writes as she speaks. 11:28 AM - 14/11/2006 - comments {0} - post commentWilliam ShawWORN Last week Paul got a parcel from America. It made him happy. Fifteen pairs of shoes. At home in his bedroom, Paul's got about fifty pairs. Women's shoes. Worn. He doesn't say what he does with them though. He just likes them. High heels are his favourites. Especially black sandals. Brown ones he doesn't like so much. Why? Not sure really. ...She'll squish you like a bug with her beautiful arches... He buys them on eBay, mostly. "LADIES WORN & SMELLY SHOES - THESE ARE MY OWN PAIR - CAN PROVIDE A PHOTO OF ME IN THEM" or "Nice Well Worn Slippers Size 5".The important thing, above all else, is that they've been worn. By women. New shoes don't do anything for him. He can't explain it, exactly. He's not very good at explaining why. It's difficult. But yes, he was very pleased with last week's package. Fifteen pairs at a dollar a pair - plus 28 dollars postage. Even better, it had a letter in from the sender, telling him a little about the shoes. He always likes that. He selected the nice ones, rejected the others, like the brown ones. The others he sells on to other fetishists. The web has been good. It's made life so much easier. He visits www.trample.com, or www.footworship.com. "Watch these girls such on toes like they were a lollipop!" and "She'll squish you like a bug with her beautiful arches!" Yeah. He is a submissive. Lots of people are. It's all about feet. When did it start? Don't know. Well. It seems like it was always there. Or maybe it started when he found himself, aged ten, gawping at his mother's own footwear. They seemed so special. True, yes, some people find it strange. He wouldn't tell his family, in case they didn't understand. But the women who send him the shoes, they seem to get it. "I'm a shoe/foot fetishist," he writes to them, up front. Nothing wrong with it. It's the same as being turned on by legs or bums, isn't it? Not hurting anyone, is he? Story by me. An old worn one from a few years ago. Smelly even. The photo is one of a set found in La Lagunilla in Mexico City by Karen Apricot Gimme stories. Gimmie gimme gimme. 9:53 AM - 31/10/2006 - comments {0} - post commentDerec JonesAFTER ALL I'VE DONE FOR THE VILLAGE"She stabbed him in the legs, both legs. He’s besotted with her.” I lifted my eyes from the village hall plans laid out on the kitchen table. The dour architect had finally conceded and included a stage, and two dressing-rooms, male and female, one each side of the stage. The hall was big enough. Would have been nice if it was bigger but it would do. “Why?” I tried not to look surprised; after all, that sort of incident was part of his daily life. He is the father of two criminal sons, the younger openly declaring his ambition to be a “real” gangster, the elder in and out of prison and crap relationships with drug-addicted women. ...an old crusty tried to sell tranquilisers to younger members of the cast... He sighed. “She dobbed him in to the police for breaking his bail conditions. So did I, I had to. He’s got to learn somehow.”“It’s tough.” I said. “Well, will you come to the meeting tomorrow night?” He shifted his attention back to the important business of planning the switch-on of the Christmas lights. “Probably not . . . ” I said, leaving my answer hanging unfinished, hoping I wouldn’t have to elaborate. Truth was, I couldn’t cope with the politics, the egos of the councillors; one in particular - let’s call him Raymondo. I based a character in the play I wrote for the millennium celebrations on him. His catchphrase was, “After all I’ve done for the village.” Raymondo himself came to see the play. He didn’t laugh. Neither did the other councillors, except my friend, the current Chair of the Council. He was now bravely sipping a cup of aromatic Chai, made with soya milk. He winced at the unfamiliar taste, as we discussed the new village hall, Christmas lights, and wayward sons in the kitchen of my stone-built semi in the heart of the village. The Players haven’t done anything substantial since. I lost interest when, after our first production, a host of new members joined, most of whom were young teenage girls who wanted to be pop idols, and one, an old crusty, tried to sell tranquillizers to the younger members of the cast. Plans for the new village hall had already been mooted then, and as we were designated an official “group or association” we were invited to join in the discussions about what facilities should be included. But after five years and scores of inefficient, badly-run meetings, my enthusiasm has been killed stone-dead by the egoistical ramblings of Raymondo and his ilk. My mate, the Chair, however, is still going strong. “The phone’s been disconnected,” he said, “my disability money isn’t enough. I’m glad really, the boys were taking the piss. They never have any credit on their own phones.” “So, is he still out then? After you dobbed him in?” “Yeah. The police arrested him. Then they phoned me up and asked if I’d take him back. I told them I couldn’t guarantee anything. He’s a law unto himself. And he's got his girlfriend pregnant.” “Mad” I said. “Before or after she stabbed him?” He shook his head. He didn’t get the joke. “She phoned me the other night, about half past one in the morning, demanding to know where he was. They’d been arguing. I told her it was his life, it was up to him what he did with it. She gave me a mouthful. I put the phone down on her.” He smiled at the memory of his assertiveness. “Before it was cut off?” “No, it takes incoming calls.” “Not when I tried to phone you the other day.” I said. “I don’t know then.” “Did you e-mail that woman from the County Council for me?” He asked. “Yes, I printed out the reply. I’ll get it for you in a minute. Do you like the Chai?” “You know me,” he said, “try anything - once.” He took a sip and winced again. “Interesting taste.” “Cinnamon and ginger I think.” “Good for you.” He nodded his approval.  “The woman from the council said that the computers earmarked for the village have been stolen. The guy who stole them is up for sentencing at the end of the month. After that they are going to contact the funders to see if they can get replacements.” I explained.“You’d think they’d have insurance,” he said. “How are we supposed to update the village website?” “You can do that on any computer,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” I led him into my office-cum-lounge and typed in the URL. “What’s that picture of the council? That’s not up to date. Who’s that with the Mayoral chains on? Oh bloody hell, that’s a few years old. Useless.” “It’s a community portal,” I said. “There’s nobody specific to keep it up to date. You have to register as a user and then you edit the pages yourself.” “So, will you be at the meeting tomorrow night?” “Um, I don’t think so. Truth is, I’ve had enough of the village. Don’t want to get involved. I’m fed up of people like Raymondo dominating everything. Just want to get out of here now. Been here too long.” I’d given away too much information, but what choice did I have? By Christmas I would have had to revive the theatre group, update the website, join countless committees and no doubt act as unofficial PA to the Chair of the council. “Ok,” he said as he left, “it will be sad to see you go, but after you leave, you’re going have to come back and stage a play for the official opening of the village hall. I’m going to hold you to that.” I smiled and nodded. “See you soon.” “Bye.” Derec Jones blogs as Skint Writer. Through his own imprint Opening Chapter he has published a novel The Three Bears, a collection of short stories, The Walker and a book of poetry, The Words in Me. The photo of Walsoken village hall is copyright Kerry Smith. "I remarked to one of the students I work with, 'Have you seen what's been put on the front of Walsoken village hall?' And he replied 'Yeah,.. I think Sammy Carman's alright actually'." Skint Writer is one of the new tidal wave of internet-based self-publishers; whether the phenomenon is a blessing or a curse remains to be seen, but good luck to him, and thanks for the story. 11:25 PM - 21/10/2006 - comments {1} - post commentJohn HumphrysABERFAN Forty years ago I drove along this same road through the Merthyr Valley towards Aberfan. The little terraced houses lining the valley in those days were miner’s cottages – almost all of them. And as I drove past, women were out on their doorstep gazing up the valley towards Aberfan. They sensed that something bad had happened; none of us had any idea how bad. It had been two hours earlier – just after quarter past nine – when a group of workmen were sent to the top of the Big Tip Number 7 that loomed above Aberfan. There had been ominous signs that it was sinking more than usual. A deep depression had formed within the tip, like a crater in a volcano. As the men watched, the waste rose into the depression, formed itself into a lethal tidal wave of slurry and roared down the hillside, gathering speed and height until it was 30 feet high, destroying everything in its path. It crushed part of the school and some tiny terraced houses alongside like concrete dropping on a matchbox, And what that filthy mixture didn’t flatten, it filled; classrooms choked with the stuff until the building was covered and the school became a tomb. The moment the awful news reached them, the miners abandoned the coalface at the colliery that had created that monstrous tip and raced to the surface. And there they were when I arrived, their faces still black save for the streaks of white from the sweat and the tears as they dug and prayed and wept. ...Lord Robens had tried to claim this tragedy was an Act of God... They were digging, of course, for their own children. Every so often someone would scream out for silence and we’d all stand frozen. Was that the cry of a child we’d heard coming from deep below us? Sometimes it was. And some were saved. I saw a policeman carrying a little girl in his arms, her legs dangling down, her shoes missing. She was a skinny little thing, no more than nine years old. Thank God she was alive.The men dug all that day, and all night, and all the next day. They dug until there were no more faint cries, no more hope, but still they kept going. Now they were digging for bodies. I watched over the hours and days that followed as the tiny coffins mounted up in the chapel. There is nothing so poignant as the sight of a child’s coffin. By the end of it there were 116 of them. One hundred and sixteen dead children, twenty-eight dead adults. They’re buried here, altogether, in this cemetery looking down on the village. The sight of so many children’s graves in one spot – a generation of children – still has the power to move to tears and to anger. The NCB and its chairman Lord Robens had tried to claim that this tragedy was an Act Of God. It was not. It was the result of negligence by man. It should not have happened. There will be no more Aberfans. The mines have gone and so have the tips they created. You will find some still who mourn the end of the mining era and the rich culture it spawned, but I never met a miner who wanted his son to follow him down the pit. And as you walk past the graves, Paul Aged nine, Clive aged eleven, and Phillip, his brother, also aged nine, and so on and so on, you know that the price of coal forty years ago was too high. As a teenager, John Humphrys left school to become a reporter on the Penarth Times. He has been a presenter on the BBC's flagship Today Programme since 1987. His most recent book is Lost For Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language. Today is the 40th anniversary of the catastrophe at Aberfan. I woke up this morning hearing John Humphrys reading this. Thanks to the Today Programme for getting back to me to say they were sure John Humphreys "wouldn't mind in the least" me putting it up. Let's hope. You can listen to him reading it here. 5:58 PM - 21/10/2006 - comments {0} - post commentBrian ArundelTHE THINGS I'VE LOST Fleece hat and gloves: in the backseat of a Boston cab in 2002, before driving back to Maine. Round, purple sunglasses: in an Atlanta pool hall over drinks with Ashby, whose wife was determined to save their marriage by having a baby. A measurable dose of self-skepticism: at about 14, when I realized I was very good at both playing violin and baseball, while not necessarily everyone else was. A school-wide presidential election in sixth grade, after I was drafted to run by Mrs. Sticoiu, the most frightening teacher in the school, while I was out of town. A copy of The Little Prince, in Mrs. Sticoiu’s class the previous year. A floppy disk that contained my paper on ideological subversion in Wendell Berry, the first essay I’d written after returning to graduate school following a four-year respite. A black scarf from Pigalle: somewhere in Maine before moving west.The chance to kiss Leslie Wertmann, and, later, that redhead in seventh grade with a smile that could buckle steel—Kim, Christine, or Kathleen maybe—and the blonde at the freshman dance because I couldn’t recognize flirtations, even when told that I looked like Bruce Springsteen. My virginity: in 1980, a couple weeks short of 16, in a ritual so brief, awkward and forgettable that I have, in fact, forgotten it. My heart, or so I thought, in 1985, when Susie dumped me; my naivete, three months later, when I learned that she’d slept with at least three other guys I knew while we’d been dating. ...The chance, in 1986, to meet Raymond Carver... Belief that my mother was somehow more than human: in 1972, the first time I saw her fall down after getting drunk. Belief that my father was more than human: a few months beforehand, after learning that he’d had an affair and was being thrown out of the house. The belief that my sister was stable: 1976, when she began pointing at random objects and saying their names, a few months before getting arrested, the first of many times, for disturbing the peace by refusing to leave a Western Union office until they gave her a job. A ten-dollar bill on a DC subway in 1985, on my way home to my friend Tommy’s, where I was staying after leaving my father’s house—after he’d moved back in, once my mother remarried and moved south.The chance, in 1986, to meet Raymond Carver: the only person invited to sit in on an interview, I instead drank all night with friends and overslept. A quarter-inch off the tip of my left thumb, in 1987, while slicing Muenster cheese on an electric Hobart slicer. My shit, figuratively, that same summer when Bob Weir sang “Looks Like Rain” just as my acid trip was peaking at a two-night Dead stand in Roanoke, Va. The Buick a friend had given me as a tax write-off in 1996, which I let someone take for a test drive without holding collateral. The thought that officials were somehow more evolved than those who elect them: in 1972, listening to my father explain the Watergate burglary. Faith in politics—particularly a two-party system relegated to fundraising contests perpetuated by shallow sound bites, mudslinging and outright lies for the Mindless American Voter so that each party can pursue a majority with which to repress the other, with complete disregard for actually trying to improve the lives of citizens: gradually over time, culminating in 2000. Fundamental hope that Americans really would overcome their vacuity, fear and greed to evolve beyond sheep determined to re-elect George W. Bush: 2004. The ability to drink until late at night and go to work the next day without feeling like I need to be zipped inside a body bag: sometime in my early thirties. General insecurity and inadequacy: during the past seven years, as I’ve tried to allow myself to be loved without guilt or judgment. Self-pity and -importance, at least most days, while striving to look beyond the borders of my own desires in a steady ascent that some might refer to as maturation. The desire to remain in this country: since 2004. A black beret: in a Minneapolis bar, just a few days before relocating to Georgia in 1993. A taste for soy sausage patties: inexplicably, sometime in the past six months, leading up to a Saturday brunch three weeks ago. Brian Arundel has published fiction and non-fiction in magazines like The Strange Fruit, Bryant Literary Review,Under The Sun and Mid-American Review. He lives in Seattle with his wife, where he works as a magazine editor. The photo is by bitpuddle, whose flickr page announces, "I believe these are the end times. I'm documenting the apocalypse." For years I used to have dreams about looking for stuff I'd lost; I could never remember what it was I was looking for, either. This story first appeared in Dinty W. Moore's fine magazine Brevity. 7:15 AM - 14/10/2006 - comments {0} - post commentGregory AndersonUNTITLEDFrom my first few weeks working in this inner-city school in Hull, I realised that I didn’t connect with the pupils easily. The riot-mentality of most classrooms - casually punctuated by breaking windows and shouted threats outside – usually put me on edge. Still, I’m sure you can imagine less exciting places to work.  However, as the weeks flew past and the pay packet flew in, I began to feel increasingly out-of-place talking to these kids. My interests related to nothing in their lives, and they knew it. One pupil in particular, Jack, seemed especially belligerent towards me. Unable to write, perpetually aggressive and massively built, this lad took a vocal dislike to me from the start. You should know I didn’t admire his behaviour towards me either. He would continue with perpetual, if trivial, acts of rebellion. You want examples? How about never taking his hat off, purposefully putting his feet on the table, or swearing freely? Typically he would arrive without a pen. I would invariably give him mine, before watching him dismantle it and asking for another. Despite these nefarious characteristics, he was a generally amiable lad. He didn’t physically threaten me, and didn’t smoke drugs in my presence. Unfortunately, there seemed to be nothing that could connect me with him. I commented on this to one of the senior teachers. “You should talk to him about his boxing. He likes that.” Soon, in the next few days, I saw Jack again. As usual, his reaction was a belligerent stroll past before throwing himself heavily into his chair. I ask him, “How’s the boxing going Jack?” Hearing this phrase he looked at me. You must understand that Jack hardly, if ever, looks straight at me. With a boy his size, you don’t usually want him to look straight at you. “How do you know about that?” The way he said this wasn’t aggressive. He seemed surprised. Explaining that his boxing talent was well-known amongst the teachers, I suggested that I take Jack out to the library to write a boxing article. Despite the risk that this might seem like work, he agreed. He did not know where to start. I did. Simply by hearing his enthusiastic talk of boxing, the sections of our essay were created – where he first started, what it was like going training the first time, how he felt during his first fight. Confident that our efforts would make something like a coherent article, we left the classroom to use a computer in the library. ...Jack's nose exploded. Blood dribbled profusely... Imagine a concrete shoebox, a 1970s social experiment. Grey concrete paths pitted with black chewing gum. Battered trees with torn branches crouched over you. Blackened plinths of ploy-concrete served as seats. The only thing alive about the school grounds were the plethora of rag-tag pupils wandering outside lessons. Mud splattered grass clods were liberally spread outside the PE changing rooms. I remember seeing a burst football, kicked for a final time against the library wall. We were almost past the football when a shout from behind us stopped Jack.“Oi, w*nk*r! Stop where you f*cking are!” How would you feel hearing this behind your back? Profanity and shouting were daily experiences my profession, so I should mention I did not feel scared. Jack, however, did. “I didn’t say anything,” Jack retorted defiantly. The tone of this quick exchange made me uneasy. I was hoping this would be a quick shouting match. A few more words were exchanged. A tall lad stepped forward. This boy/man seemed older and more aggressive than his friends. His hair was cropped short and hidden under a backward cap. His lean bulk filled a striped T-shirt, and the trousers of his long legs were tucked into his trainers. His face, pitted with cream-smeared acne and albino stubble, was reddened and tense. Walking up to Jack, this boy pushed his chest against his and peered down. The rest of his boys, who had begun to congregate around us, were beginning to shout encouragement. Despite my professional responsibilities towards Jack, I hesitated to put my body into this bustling melee. “F*cking do him!” “He dissed your mum! “ At this the lad leant down as if to kiss Jack, before intimately smashing his head against Jack’s. Jack’s nose exploded. Blood dribbled profusely. I stood, unable to react but knowing in a matter of seconds I would have to. Fortunately the boy jumped back and walked away quickly. His boys followed him. Turning to Jack I tried to think of something to say. He had already begun to walk back to the classroom. When I arrived, he had asked the teacher – the politest I had ever seen him – for the keys to the toilet. He simply washed his nose, and headed back to the library. I followed him. The library didn’t have a free computer, but I explained to the manager Jack’s situation. A free computer was found. As we began typing out the article, I wanted Jack to write that he had just been assaulted on his way to writing the essay, how he himself had found a way to channel his frustrations. But he refused. “I just want to write the article,” he insisted. I didn’t say anything else about the assault. To refer to it in an article was perhaps to condone it, or to admit that it upset him. Jack was a hard man. I wasn’t. Jack didn’t come into school often after this incident. I left soon afterwards for a far plusher school with a hockey team and fat, black computers. Jack still boxes, I hear. He’ll leave school in seven months, without any exams. Gregory Anderson is a teacher living in Hull. He runs the site www.real-writing.com. The photo is from a beautiful series taken at Salford Lads Club by the photorapher Trevira; the photos were originally published at Nothing To See Here. The club's fame was boosted in the mid-80s by that well-known photo of The Smiths, taken by Stephen Wright just outside its front door.
12:42 PM - 25/9/2006 - comments {1} - post comment
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