RuKsaK

I’ve been walking home this week. It’s near to my summer holidays and my wife and daughter have flown to Russia already. So, home is dreary and I need to lose a few kilos. It takes me about ninety minutes of Seoul-on-foot to get there. I see a lot, but I feel like the switched-off daylight neon I see on my way. I’m diluted without my family. I know this in their absence – it brings out the love in me.
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First I have to get past the obstinately superior towers in the centre. Their glass watching me – those buildings look like Gods. Bunches of them together make me feel like I’m walking in man’s manufactured heaven. Omniscient concrete. Man built God in his own image and all that - after all, didn’t he? And, the doggedness of people is a prime ingredient in the creation of deities and skyscrapers alike. We love to make powerful fleas of ourselves. Anyway, back to the walk.

The ancient Namdaemun gate, with its Korean tourists doing yet another wacky® pose for tiny digital cameras, turns me into scruffier, more attractive parts. In this slice of the journey the smells pick up. Spicy, bubbling tofu tubes sit in small open vats – keen old ladies dishing them out to the paying. All kinds of meat on wood skewers waft up to me. Chicken, pork, spice, onions, seaweed, soy – all fighting for a nostril and I have to repeat the words ’88 kilos’ in my head to prevent me plunging in. Those words are my ropes for the mast.

The music on my iPod walks me – changing my paces to certain songs. Some of them give me determination and menace, others a breezy stroll and a few the gait of a guilty killer. Some of it’s boring – in-between tracks come on, but I’m too lazy to fiddle them out of my ears. I keep going. Today’s second album had several of these. They climbed the wrong way into my body, took my mind to the wet heat of the city, to my aching legs, to the perspiration lapping on the back of my neck and then my bowels. The music becomes poor aural porridge – my body takes over. I fish the iPod from my pocket, flick for something spiriting. It works and I’m a mountain climber again. For three fucking minutes only. Then the next dire song gives a dulled kick to the body again and it all comes again – faster. I rush to another song, my stomach fluttering. I find something in time – I’m a great philosopher now, striding with more purpose than the whole of this fetid mankind. Alas, three bastard minutes later, my ideals vanish under the weight of another crap song and my fuming, sweaty intestines. Anyway, I’m a few minutes from home.
‘Suffer the fucker.’ I say to myself.
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Turning from the bridge, past the cheap laundry and the Indonesian takeout I see a small boy. He’s walking peculiarly.
‘What’s he bloody listening to?’
I humour to myself, thinking I’m funny, just me and me laughing again.

As I get closer there’s a fresh shit on the floor – on the hot pavements of this city the stench is flying off it – following me like a genie’s missile vapour. Then I see the boy has it down his legs, scraped down the back of them. He’s walking, well, like he’s crapped himself – looking down and there’s a slow, pathetic weep coming from his eyes and mouth – a confused whimper. I stomp on, with my own belly to think about. I’m just a minute from home. Fuck him. But, then I can’t ‘fuck him’ – I’m missing my wife and daughter too much. My love is in me – I can feel it. I can’t leave him. I go back.

A tap on his shoulder:
‘It’s okay - just go home.’

His crying looks like it’s really going to welt out strong. I squat down.
‘It’s really okay.’

I say:
‘Look,’ because the answer has come to me.

I smile at him with the happy confidence of a good older brother, flip the earbuds out, the massive city hotness slams on to me. I let loose. Out it comes. Pillows my briefs. Slugs down the back of my legs now. The same urban concoction – it fucking stinks too. I keep the same smile and say again:
‘It’s okay – you see.’

I stand slowly seeing a small smile appear. We walk to the end of the street – shat pants matching. I leave him and go home to shower and wash.
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I better not see the little incontinent fucker tomorrow.
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Charity – one coming soon and keep voting for the Black Ramps - the band have promised to suck me off for every fifty votes

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Charity - two