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A PORTRAIT of the ANDROID as a YOUNG MACHINE
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You’d better watch out. I’m a Crazy and I’m really speeding. Hitting the uppers and watching the future fade. A real temporal kick. Mainline medulla, vein to clock. All the people slide by, but I can take it. Here, on the edge of things, I see a concrete tree with plastic leaves, set in a Formica field. And the faces. Crazies like me with sharp eyes, needles in the city dark flesh. Shining blue. Radioactive sweat on corpse features. We go jerking down the street. Frame to frame. This is so real. It’s vivid, like a documentary.
Now the light comes washing down. Like a crack in the sky. The flash of neon. ‘LOONY BIN’ in big red letters. But Crazies don’t stop to read. So maybe I clicked it on my screen once. Anyway, it’s the Sign. Where we collide. Like a car crash. Erotic but cerebral. Orgasm and amputation. Shooting up on semen anaesthetic.
The door slithers open and I penetrate space. Into the overhead glare. Like a theatre. Stage or operating
table or scene of war. It’s the same fix. And it’s… clinical…
Here, I’ll project the scene. 3D and social realism, right? It’s open plan with strip lights and plate glass. Over there’s the E.C.T. Jumping and sparking, where we pick up the beat. And there’s some Crazy coming down, rattling like a half empty Librium bottle. And there’s a Terminal. Red ribbons and his pants full of shit.
This is really moving, don’t you think? Here comes a Real-people. Compare the motion. Ain’t she slow? With her grainy grey skin. 405 lines black and white. Her eyes stuck in ‘now’. I mean, claustrophobic.
I slip into synchro and my mouth says, “Help.” But you’d better watch out. I’m a Crazy and I’m speeding. There’s a knife in place of my heart. Real-people don’t know. We’re just a blur. They’re vinyl records crammed in a CD player.
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“Welcome to the future,” she says. “This is 1984.” Of course, she’s right. The Picasso girl. The one with the single, distorted eye. Set into the side of her face. Like a stained glass window. Smile like a crucifix. My mandrax Madonna.
It’s hard to believe. Big Brother’s a junkie. He wears flowers in his hair. Kaftan and beads. Pleated flares and granny specs. The uniform of the karma police.
Sometimes, I wonder whether this is really happening. Perhaps the neo-psychedelic revival is only taking place in the minds of a few journalists. A montage of articles and evocative photographs. They provide a superficial framework. A couple of tabs of acid and we fill in the details.
Picasso girl doesn’t care. “Reality’s just a bad trip,” she tells me, delighting in cliché. How can I argue? When her body drifts down on me like a scented cloud. There’s no denying the vibe. Peace and love. Soothing liquid air dreams of Aquarius. Skies polluted only by the gentle smoke rising from incense and burning sandalwood. We merge on a bed of flowers. Their tranquil song strengthens our harmony.
O.K. The grubby facts. It’s a quick grope on my afghan coat. The sickly yellow grass is damp and dying. The sky is grey. Not grey like Picasso girl’s real eyes. Grey like concrete. Like factories. Like belching plumes of industrial waste.
I don’t want this truth. Numb me out, baby. See the carnival streamers of your hair. The firework flash of my tears. Bitter and mad celebration of this fucked up decade. Rushing headlong away from the old millennium. Fast forward wind. Screeching babble of obsolete reality tapes.
Picasso girl, your canvas will soon be torn. Paint peeling from your mini skirts and patchwork denims. I want to break your frame. Roll you up and steal away with you under my arm. The gallery is crumbling. Yours is the only treasure I wish to save.
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Observe. The cars embrace. Violent intercourse of steel and chrome. Manic screech of auto-lust. Brutal rape. Torn radiator grilles. You lift your hood enticingly. The windscreens break in ecstasy. I kiss the glass. My head breaks through your brittle hymen. I dive into the metal mayhem. Join the orgy. My blood anoints your number plate. I will always bear your lover’s mark. Forehead stamped with your registration.
I enfold your steering wheel. Clasp it tight to my chest. Enraptured, I am shitting blood. Lung tissue spurts between my pouting lips. I expire in sweetest agony.
You pirouette coquettishly. In this fatal pas de deux, your door flies open. I am cruelly cast aside. But you keep my leg as a bizarre memento. Crushed in the fierce grip of your engine. My phallic stump ejaculates blood. A crude expression of machine age desire. Cars and carnality. The new erotica.
In the afterglow of our savage intercourse, we relax together. My limbs entwined with your cold extrusions. You sing a strange and gentle song. Your radio buzzing out of tune between stations. Your wreckage settles like the folds of a tattered dress. Here, on a hard bed of concrete and tarmac, we share a momentary quietude. The soft moans of the injured. A few distant sirens. We await the arrival of the TV cameras. We will then announce our consummation formally.
I daydream of our possible issue. With wheels of flesh and metal hands. Eyes like yours, I hope. Large and shining. A streamlined body, warm and sleek. Four star blood. A cute little chassis.
The ambulance arrives. Have they come so soon to preside at the birth? I see them in their luminous uniforms, clustered round your bonnet. One man peers in at me, the father to be, with a worried expression. Are there complications? I try to ask, but my emotions keep me silent. My vision fades, no doubt in a haze of tension fraught tears. The man seems to understand. He touches my brow with a soothing hand and folds down my anxious eyelids.
§
You know, I’m convinced the world came to an end some time ago. Back in 1972, or thereabouts. But no-one seems to have noticed. We’re all carrying on as if nothing has happened. It’s the age of the casual spectator. I’m a mourner at my own fragmentary funeral. Watching the gradual interment of my body. The room slowly fills with dust. The dust is my own dead skin. I take another handful of pills and cram them carelessly into my mouth. These days, I eat them like Smarties. Perhaps they are Smarties. They might be, for all the effect they seem to have.
Outside, the buildings stand like headstones in a vast cemetery. Markers for the victims of the – what is it? – Third… Fourth… Fifth World War… Taking place on the motorways and flyovers, in the offices, in our homes. Sniping across the no-man’s-land between the muddy trenches of our own bloody minds. The war to end the war to end war. I wish I was a Crazy. I need the illusion of speed. But there is only the relentless progression of organic time. It’s worse even than being a Real-people. If I stopped taking drugs, I know, I would come to a complete halt. Solidify here in stony thought.
I return my attention to the story I’ve been trying to write for several months now. I’m back to page one again with nothing more substantial than the title. ‘A Portrait of the Android as a Young Machine.’ It sounds like a science fiction parody of James Joyce. But I’ve not been able to produce anything even half as imaginative as that. Repeatedly, I’ve been churning out an awful, unsubtle poetry of violence. A blatant rip-off from the ‘New Wave’ writings of the late sixties. O.K. It’s fashionable. The hippy culture is the latest craze amongst our brave young necrophiles. But I’m hardly breathing new life into its corpse. Merely tarting it up and hoping no-one will notice the funny smell.
Oh, fuck this. I can’t be bothered thinking up plots and characters. It’s all so phoney. Artificial. Life itself is one enormous fiction. Sit back and watch it unfold. Page by page. Macrocosmic in scope. Operating on both personal and universal levels. The smallest, most trivial and banal of reaol events are still more poignant and profound than anything I could possibly write.
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In the end, it comes down to this. Waking up in bed next to the familiar stranger. I married a monster from out of town. The alien invader who took over my personal universe. Still, if she’s the Bride of Frankenstein, what does that make me? I rise from my dreamless slumber as if from the darkness of my tomb. I crash clumsily into the bathroom and regard my looming image in the mirror. The animal hair on my face. The primitive bone beneath. I can see the ape behind the artist. The skull behind the smile. Cold steel strips away the simian mask. Through a haze of steam, I emerge reborn. The pale, flabby form of urban man. Eyes like scars. Two ugly black holes in my synthetic flesh.
I am not in control. My body moves through the flat on its pre-programmed route. I am a passenger inside its head. Flying on automatic pilot. I am ready to seize control in the event of an accident. This is unlikely to happen, but I am still nervous. I am so out of practice. I may have forgotten the skill of being human.
Seeking affirmation, I look in on my child. His curled, sleeping shape like some tiny, hibernating animal. My son, the dormouse. I melt in the silly, soft glow of my love. I make a far better father than I do a husband. My Picasso girl is not an original. She is a cheap, reproduction print. One of a thousand, all identical.
Full of so-called ‘guilt’ for this cruel observation, I return to the scene of my habitual crime. Morning sunlight now oozes between the curtains and splashes, cold and insipid, against the bedroom wall. Like a shapeless blotch of vomit. The whole cosmos is an expression of my sickness. I yearn to reach out and shred it like a faded photograph. But I don’t. I put my clothes on calmly. Back on automatic pilot. I relax and my attention begins to wander. I am vaguely aware of myself walking out of the front door. A bland, unevocative impression of the outside world. Somehow, I find my way to the station. Onto a train, which carries me into the City for the one thousand, two hundred and ninety second time in my life.
The rest is not important. I’m no longer personally involved.
§
Do I want a cup of coffee? I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for not answering straight away. I don’t mean to be rude. Do I want a cup of coffee? Do I want a cup of coffee? Do I want a cup of coffee? Do I want a cup of coffee? Do I want a cup of coffee? You see, you ask me one question, but it’s really half a dozen. And besides, that’s not what you’re really asking. When you offer me coffee, you are, by implication, extending me your hospitality. Therefore, my acceptance or refusal of a drink has a far greater significance. If I reject your coffee, I also reject your friendship. In which case, I’d better have a cup. Thank you.
It’s a hazardous sport, sometimes. Skating across the thin ice of personal relationships.
Pardon? How’s my latest story going? Well, let me tell you. It has no obvious beginning, middle or end. There’s no plot. No dialogue. No underlying moral. No action to speak of. And a central character who has no readily perceptible personality. In fact, it’s no better than a blank sheet of paper.
A writer’s block? That’s one way of describing the situation, I suppose. My own view tends to be less dignified. I see it as mental constipation. Work out the implications for yourself.
What’s that? You think my writing reveals a great deal about my inner self? My dear, I reveal only to conceal. You think I’m baring my soul. You think you know me. So you don’t feel the need to probe. My true ‘inner self’ remains safely hidden. A few swear words and a hint of perversion, garnished with blood and wrapped up in cheap psychology – and you think I’m naked to your gaze.
Oh, I’m sorry again. Sometimes, my pose of being the ‘angry young man’ gets out of hand. I’m not angry at you, love, You’re so patient with me. Always prepared to listen. I don’t know how you can possibly tolerate me in this mood.
Yes, you’re right. My coffee’s gone cold.
§
Would you like a moral? Or, more to the point, would you like my moral? Are you that desperate for meaning? And what about your moral? Isn’t it any good? Or haven’t you even got one? Well, if you haven’t got a moral, you can piss off. You’re not getting mine.
I come awake. I could be anywhere. I stare at the ceiling. Off-white. Patterned with cracks. They evoke no other picture. I remain stuck in the reality of a surface that needs a new coat of paint.
Is this a hospital? Am I undergoing treatment for my addiction? Just another Crazy, coming down. Heading for the shakes. The grim, snotty coldness. Monochrome grey. Hungry for a blur of colour… Or is this the commune? Haven for representatives of the alternative culture. Huddled on bare floorboards in our urban guerrilla chic. A nuclear family, primed for detonation… Maybe a garage. Where I’m being re-assembled. A mad fusion of spare parts. Torn from cannibalised auto-wrecks. Gleaned from mortuary slabs. An M.O.T. service bay is my womb… Perhaps I live in a pill-box apartment. Gun sights instead of eyes. Standing sentinel over a world found guilty of treason. Its population court martialled and sentenced to death. Waiting for the dawn… Are you beside me? Are you also disenchanted with our marriage? When we make love, do you feel as lonely as I? Gazing into oblivion. The abyss of your glazed eyes. Focused on something I cannot share. Nor even comprehend… Will I rise and speak with you again, my friend? Will our conversation follow the same spiralling course as always? Like the grooves on an old vinyl record we play compulsively. Over and over again…
These are the alternatives. The choice is mine. Here and now, I must decide. Sitting in this room. A word processor for a brush. I paint a portrait of me. The android. The young machine. A victim of my rigid programming. There is only myself. The meagre and tawdry parade of my obsessions.
Time presses in on me. The future contracts. Grows smaller. I am Real-people. I am claustrophobic.
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