I'm back. So, I figured I'd ease in with a short, true story. Or should that be a true, short story? The latter I think, but you tell me. It's just a 60-minute stab at the keys to ease me back in, but would like thoughts all the same.
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A shaft of ammonia shot from the public conveniences. I had to use them, but the stench informed me that they were actually minimally more convenient than actually shitting myself and walking home.
At the counter I searched my pockets for five roubles change. I wish I'd done this before as the scene and the continuing stink were overwhelming. A woman sat at the till chopping liver. She was tapping and scraping her knife into it and kneading it in her palms at such a rate it appeared to be living - swarming her hand in it's sopping, burgundy chunks. Her husband sat behind her, indifferent to all this, his face trained in hate at the dog on the floor - a pathetic beast, with a dead, flat, eyeless lizard for a tongue. The dog had given up trying for much a long time ago it seemed. Despite the woman's apparent obliviousness to my presence she piped up:
'Five roubles!'
'Yes, I know.'
I spilled the three coins I'd scraped from my jeans onto the counter and ventured in. Only one cubicle had a door, so no choice was left to me. The one with the door had it's drawback though - it was the most used and probably the least cleaned. If the entrance of this place were the large the end of the telescope this was the small. After this long in Russia I knew when I had to go though, so there was little point focussing on the crud all over the seatless bowl. I inched down my underwear and braced my leg muscles for supporting me an inch above the neglected porcelain.
At this moment an odd, rippling voice emitted from the bowl.
'Nice arse!'
I moved back up, but not as much I as I should have, convinced myself the stench was getting to me, and got back to it.
'Looks like a writer's arse to me.'
'Who the fuck is this?'
'I'm down here. Under the rim.'
'Fuck you! What is this?'
'I am here really.'
'So, who the hell are you?'
'I'm a song.'
'What!'
'A song. I'm an abandoned song.'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'A poetess left me. She'd had enough.'
'Enough of what? Wait I'm not talking to you! This is insane!'
'Please talk to me. I knew you'd be able to hear me as soon as I saw your sphincter flex.'
'Fuck me! You're kidding, right?'
'No, like I said, you've got the rear of an author. You can tell these things when you've been around as long as I have.'
'What is it about my bum exactly?'
'How can I say? Well, it's the way you verse it - in a way that could write me out of here. That's what I need - a writer to write me out of here.'
'Wait you said you were left here. How did that happen?'
'It was pretty vile quite frankly. She had to dress like a man to get in first off. All the time she was swearing at me. Saying things like 'you bastard got me stuck on flowers' and 'fuck you for ruralising me'. The usual things like that. Then she gathered me up in some toilet paper she'd brought and floated me in the bowl. Next she defacated on me, covered me. She then picked up the paper and rammed in under the hook of the rim, and that's why I'm stuck here. I remember her last words as shoved me up here.'
'Erm, what were they?'
'She said 'stick your fucking pansies up here you horrid cunt.'
'Jesus! What did she mean by that?'
'I was born in a country flower bed of purple pansies, on a breeze whistling a sweet summery cuddle round the floppy petal of a deep, indigo stem.'
'What the fuck?'
'That's the way I was born. All it takes is to make a line off a thing seen and a song is born. After that we latch on to a writer. My writer grew tired of me - said I needed to learn new things and brought me here. I've been here for months waiting for a suitable writer's derriere to appear. And, here you are.'
'And how do I get you out? I'm not sticking my hand down here - no fucking way. Not for anything and not for bloody song.'
'No, nothing like that. You 'line' me out.'
'Come again?'
'You give me lines which pull me out of here. Just like the poetess did. She described the little wind on a petal and I became hers. You've got to write me out of this.'
'I'm not very good with describing flowers to be honest with you.'
'And, this is hardly a flower bed now, is it?'
'Ah - I see. I describe this shithouse to get you out, right?'
'That's right, but you must never totally lose sight of the flowerbed. The one on the village hillock, with frog choruses and bicycle bells in the background. That needs to hum in their too sometimes. Do you think you can do it?'
'I'll give it a good fucking try. Let me just wipe my arse first.'
'There's no paper, I'm afraid.'
'Jesus fucking Christ! These Russian toilets are like a fucking Francis Bacon painting daubed in the cunt's own shit.'
'Yes! Yes! That's the kind of thing - keep going.'
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That was a Reason for writing - no.1 - there'll be others perhaps.
