I Switch the TV On

I switch the TV on without even realising I've done it. It's just one of those soothing rituals that my body steps through every day, like brushing my teeth, or having a shower, or playing with myself before I get out of bed.

I switch the TV on and the picture lights up the room that had gone dark while I took a shower and made myself some pasta and cleaned up my flat, to clear a space for myself after a long day at work.

I switch the TV on and the blare of the soundtrack and the bright colours and the fast chopping scene all hit me in the face at once.

I switch the TV on with the remote control, slouching into the sofa. Before the picture there's the crackle of static and the whoom of the tube going on.

I switch the TV on and open a can of beer and the stress hisses out of me with the tsch, crinkle, tup of the pull tab sinking in and bending back.

I switch the TV on and after the adverts a woman is sitting at a kitchen table in a normal looking house, recounting her ordeal. Her name appears at the bottom of the screen, in white letters, with her title beside it, her designation, Rape Victim.

"He demanded to have sex with me. He had a knife. He knew my baby was sleeping next door, and he said, 'If you don't have sex with me I'll kill the baby.'"

"He kept demanding over and over that I have sex with him. I panicked and said the first thing I could think of, I've got an infection. I can't have sex because I've got an infection. So he said, 'Will you suck me off then?'"

"I said okay."

The scene cuts to a brightly lit office with a policeman sitting behind a desk. My room gets brighter too, in sympathy with the office, with the TV beams spreading out and lighting the walls and falling across my face, and it's as if I can see my own face, unshaven in the thin glow. I can hear something too, a high tense buzz, hovering above the policeman's stolid drone, as if a piece of brightness has turned into sound, as if the effort of putting out all that light has made the TV whine like a tiny engine trying to drag itself up a hill.

I change the channel and a gardener is picking up soil, rubbing it between his fingers. His fingers are big and stained with dirt, and the camera is crocked at an angle like an old man's neck. He rubs the soil and it tumbles between his fingers, dark and rich, and he says, If it won't grow in soil like that, it won't grow at all.

I take another glug of beer and the cold froth courses down my throat into my stomach. I think of a water park I went to when I was young. A waterslide we went down on hollow plastic logs, sloshing through the red plastic tube, red light leaking all over us with the sun bright above it, and all of us shrieking and whooping as we hit the splashpool at the bottom of the tube.

I change the channel. The screen is black and a baby is screaming, screaming, screaming.

I change the channel and a woman and a man are doing stomach crunches with the aid of a plastic device that cups their backsides and clips around their feet, the two parts connected by springs. Their bare bellies twist and contract, their muscles fluid under tanned skin. In the cracked brightness of the studio behind them a smile in a suit plugs the product and repeats the prices, disbelieving, that scroll across the screen.

I change the channel and a close up on a man's face gets slowly closer. You can see his confusion and stupidity in his open mouth, fringed by blonde tufts, in his narrow eyes that dart back and forth as the camera closes in, in the way his breath comes in pants.

I change the channel and a family stares back at me. My eyes rove around their unsmiling faces, ugly and normal in the outside light. A low breeze is blowing and their hair is moving, wispy strands dancing up on crowns of heads. The daughter tucks her fringe behind one ear. The father sniffs and half wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

I change the channel and a woman looks up at me, eyes docile and open wide.

I crack my knuckles against the side of my neck, hands bunched into fists. I do it this way to get the warm fat sensation in my fingers and neck at the same time. The sound reaches me two ways, deep and almost simultaneous thunks rising through the air and resonating through the bones and blood in my neck.

I feel like I know where I am now, like I know exactly where my body stops and the space around me begins.

I change the channel. The top half of a woman's face fills the screen. Her eyes are screwed shut and her head is bobbing back and forth, back and forth, woodpecker fast, strangled gobby noises coming from her mouth.

I take another swig of beer and change the channel and another advert comes on. Uplifting music plays, brightly coloured people shine and smile in all corners of the globe.

I change the channel. A porno station starts up for a second before fuzzing out. Through the black and white snow and the vague pink shapes that shift behind it I can still see what's going on. But then I watch further and the picture gets lost in the horizontal bands sweeping up the screen, and the colour dirt all over it, and I find myself willing the screen to clear, willing the actors to reappear, and willing myself into being him, willing him into her, into pushing her down, face down into the pile of cushions on the nondescript couch, and then I get that block, that sliding valve that won't let my heartbeat get too hungry, because I can't, I can't bear that violent force because my insides are torn with insolent, everyday fear, and they need to heal. They need an hour of calm to heal. And then a tremor, like a liquid wavering on a screen, like the recalibration of an old monitor. Another tremor, I drink more beer. I let the syrupy taste, the cold hard hiss, wash over my tongue. I let the rage wash through my blood. I watch it from the outside. I know I will be safe now. The calm and its smooth returning is not a thought or even a state of mind, it is a flood of liberated feeling, like the relaxation that leaks out from a thumb pushed into a pressure point in your back.

I close my eyes. My hand is limp around the beer can, holding it upright so it doesn't spill. There's a place on the arm of the sofa where I know it can sit safely. I find that place with my eyes closed. Now my jaw is going slack and sleep is there, pulling down blinds behind my eyes. I know it's not good to fall asleep in front of the television, to wake up with a stiff neck and drool stringing from your chin and the stale blare of the television in your ears. It's like eating bad food, or letting your body get out of shape. But when the moment comes you can't reject it, because there is so little that is unconditionally blissful in life.

I take another swig of beer without opening my eyes and wait until the after-image of the screen blurs into a brightened square, fringed with electric colours. The dream images start to come, the hypnagogic stream that flows from the unconcious into waking life. It feels like they will last forever but I know that in a few moments I will be asleep.