Was the Eurovision fuss a fuss or a situation?

He’s not sure.

It was a fuss and a situation.

A fussy interrupted situation.

He should not have done it and he knew better, but every year the compulsion of the Eurovision came around. Those two weeks he took holidays from work or pulled sickies. He’d eat, breathe and definitely not sleep for his pet The Eurovision Song Contest. He journeyed each day of those annual two weeks to a particular newsagent’s, where the man Mr Patel told him to “take your time, take your time” going through the newspapers because he knows Martin John’ll end up buying them all—nearly 10 quid each day for a week in paper sales.

When interviewed, Mr Patel—the most gentle of souls, arthritis in his left knee—could not credit the fight that took place and the bags of sugar that flew, and the tinned steak and kidney pies that were toppled in that brief five-minute bare-knuckle dust-up over the last copy of the Daily Express.

The Eurovision pullout special issue was what unhorsed Martin John and the man with his fingers on it. The ordinary Jim Smith of Clapham, who was never in these parts, only that he was calling to his mother and bringing the paper for her. And when it was something for his mother he’d fight to the last and he socked Martin John as Martin John silently stamped on his foot and tried to rip the paper from his hands. Much what the fuck and mate and come on then? And Mr Patel wasn’t sure what they’re at, but it was loud and his single, central food shelf was wobbling and people crowded the doorway and the police must be called. As Martin John was dragged away, victoriously clutching the Daily Express, Mr Patel defended him.

—He’s a good man, I known him for years. Not a violent man. A good man.

Meanwhile, Jim Smith was in the doorway regaling the crowd as to how this fucking lunatic tried to rip his arms out. He had my throat, he gasped. He showed them the scratches. The Irish are savages, one man remarked. Martin John is the victor. He’s the victor all the way back to the psychiatric ward and that night he slept, injected, still clutching the Daily Express under his armpit, rolled up tight.

The next fuss or situation was a fight in the ward over the television. It’s the Eurovision song contest rehearsal and a Jamaican fella and another fella with his leg draped over the arm of his chair in an unbecoming manner have the telly tuned to the football and Martin John is not taking it. Sorry now lads, he waltzes over and switches stations and Jamaica roars and the leg-draper springs from chair to television, while Ireland and Jamaica come to blows and security and nurses invade the frenzy with Jamaica landing a few nice lugs to the Mayo jaw while only sustaining sore toes when Martin John resorts to his best tactic, the heel-to-toe grind. And he’s off to have his face repaired, his chart now marked for seclusion. He wails like a baby as they X-ray him. Seclusion means no television. Seclusion means another day’s loss of Eurovision coverage. He has notes to make. He has observations to record. He has yet to decide whom he is backing. It could be Yugoslavia or Denmark but he hasn’t seen Belgium or the Netherlands. He’s worried about Turkey because the newspapers said they were swaying their arms in a whole new way and have never improved on their 1977 entry. Switzerland is wearing a worrying swan skirt. Spain is wearing two more such skirts. Greece he’s not backing. Greece has produced a doomed song and it’s criminal. The German singer prune-tightened his eyes and contorted his face like he was constipated, which makes Martin John think of bathrooms and Baldy Conscience. The thing that has almighty unsettled Martin John is Ireland is hosting the event and he harbours a deep suspicion of Pat Kenny because his name begins with P. He’s anxious about the combination of Pat Kenny and Terry Wogan’s voices but it all begins and ends with the P, which is why he puts his fingers in his ears to blot out Portugal.

That night things were terrible for him, the worst he decided. As the hallucinations came and came and never ceased, just more and more of them, he was visited the way he’s always visited by her voice in his head.

Get yerself out of there Martin John, get the head down, for God’s sake stop with this and put the head down and look at your feet and follow those feet Martin John, would you for the love of God follow them and stop all this nonsense. D’ya hear me now Martin John? I want you to listen and I want you to visit Noanie next Wednesday or so help me God I’ll land you Martin John and I’ll tear you from the place Martin John. I’ll drag you by the collar out of there. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this Martin John, but I’ll tear you from there and I’ll redden your arse before I am a day older.

It’s her voice. But it’s his head. Always her voice in his head.

He has made mistakes.

The phone calls were a mistake.

He nodded, agreed, signed. Nodded, signed, agreed and they let him go.

After the Eurovision incident, he was calmed.

They let him go, until the telephone calls.

Baldy Conscience drove him to the phone calls. If they’d done the right thing and popped Baldy Conscience into the ward or into a river, the phone calls may never have happened. He might never have lifted the phone. I would not have lifted the phone, he told the police who came for him.

It’s not right to blame another man for your own carry-on. That’s what mam would say. He can hear her say it, even though he’s not sure she ever said quite that. He can hear her. He can hear that said.

The fuss over the Eurovision was a mistake.

Nobody liked fuss.

Fuss had put him back in this ward.

It wasn’t his fault that the other patient wasn’t interested in chatting about the Eurovision. It wasn’t his plan that that particular insert about a woman in the circus falling from a hoop high in a tent would be on the six o’clock local news. The other parts were his fault. They were definitely his fault. All of them. All his fault. But not the patient and the hoop. Nor the patient distressed by the hoop story, who did not want to talk about Beirut. Beirut was not on the news. Now he remembers that was where it started.

—Beirut’s not on the news, do you see that?

He had told the patient in the chair over there inside the useless room they all sat or became angry in. He had carried on a bit about Beirut and about all the lies that have been told and he was leading up to describing his own joy in Beirut, when that patient started screaming about the hoop, the hoop and that the woman was going to fall from it.

He moved back, put his arms up and said he didn’t contribute. I don’t contribute. I don’t contribute was what he said. He left the room with his hands up still, remembering that trouble always started when the television went on.

Rain will fall, he said, Rain will fall. Rain will fall when the television goes on.

Because she was a woman in that room there’s bound to be a problem. Whenever he is alone in a room with a woman a problem follows. He waits for the problem to come and follow him. He waits for the knock.

Perhaps they won’t come for him any more because they have sent Baldy Conscience to annihilate him slowly?

Ah they come for him now in the form of Baldy Conscience, or Barely Conscious as he’s begun referring to him. That hoor could be sleeping in his bed. Or smashing his video­tapes or pissing in his coffee jar, while he’s stuck in this ward with a nearby woman angry about a hoop. That hoop woman is about to cause trouble, he can feel it.

Hoop woman told them he used a cushion to cover up what he was doing to himself with his right hand while she was sitting near him in the common room watching the news. He used a pillow, she said. He had his hand on his John Thomas. He was perving out. I could see it. Trapped! Martin John caught her. Was it a cushion or a pillow? At first it was a cushion, now it’s a pillow. She was confused. How can you trust a woman confused about a pillow or a cushion? They banned him from the common room. It was no loss, only a useless room in which they went to sit and be angry with each other.

Outside the ward he started slowly. He hoarded in. He stacked papers high. He closed all in and around himself. He lived on tins. Avoided the cooker and told himself Baldy Conscience was Barely Conscious up there and one day soon he’d die. Martin John would roll him out of the house in a wheelbarrow or a trolley borrowed from Tesco.

He imagined depositing his body in the street.

I’d leave it by the kerb.

Half-on/half-off.

I’d hope someone might run over his legs, sever the bottom half of his body. It would equal only half the trouble he has put me through.

The big struggle is time. Where is time and where was time and how has he lost it? Where did the time go in the places he does not remember being? Where was he at the times he cannot account for? What was he doing? Tell it to them slowly. Tell it to them precisely Martin John. Slow it right down or they’ll hop ahead of you. The circuits are the only activity that help him record time. Record it absolutely. Tell you absolutely where he was and what he has done. Now they forbid him or intrude on his circuits, he is having more and more trouble accounting for where he has been and what he has been doing.

With no day shift or night shift or circuits, time has become strange, neither protracted nor squat. Just strained. Strange. Estranged. Estuary ranged. There are days, inside in the room, that because the windows are blacked out, he can’t tell you if it is day or night. He can’t tell if it’s night or day? He can’t even tell you how he wants to make this statement.

All part of his plan you see. His plan to starve Baldy Conscience into remission. To see him disintegrate like a flea with no blood to feed upon. But as with all plans progress will be slow and tepid. A Baldy Conscience takes a lot of weathering. They don’t wilt easy. Will his inquiry take him to Euston? Oh yes it will. He will walk this inquiry around his favourite station. He will visit the flippy ticket window. He will walk and walk until the answer unto Baldy seeks him. Everything comes when he walks on it. When the circuits are intact. When the letters and the circuits add up to an equal.

We’ve to get you out, mam said.

It was surrender that sentence.

He was back there again.

Harm was done.

But he liked it.

It was hard to credit that harm could be done when you liked it.

It was hard credit why something you liked could be harmful. Harm was done.

He knows this.

I had it in my mind to do it and I did it.

He had a mind to do it and he did it.

That’s a fact.

He knows this because people in the psych ward group told him.

They told each other. Not just him. It was the code.

Did they agree it was the code?

He cannot remember if it was officially the code.

The same way they’d tell you it was Monday.

It is Monday.

Harm was done.

They had come for him after the incident outside the SuperValu shop, down the lane with the girl.

They had come for him with the one on the bus.

They had come for him that time with the girl who said he put his hand down the band of her skirt.

The other girl where he put his hand between her legs.

They had come for him.

They were her brothers. It was brothers who usually came. Well their fists mostly.

Inside (t)his London house, they couldn’t see him. They couldn’t come for him anymore. This is why he locked them out. But they’d sent Baldy Conscience in.

Which one has Baldy Conscience come for him over?

The Estonian? The Ukrainian? The Brazilian? Or the one on the Tube?

The one on the Tube sitting next to him right now.

I had it in my mind to do it and I did it, he told the British Transport Police as they carted him away. They were waiting for him at the top of the escalator. Four men. Four policemen. No women. They never sent women for him. He rode up the escalator and sailed into their arms. Except they were not waiting for him and had no idea what he was talking about. Until they did have an idea what he was talking about and chased him all around Euston Station. Technically, he said, I’ve already reported to you. I’ve done it twice today. It took two of you to come for me. Two of you ’til you heeded me. That’s a fact.

He had been arrested for sitting at the top of the escalator and refusing to shift until they removed him. The first few people had said excuse me, excuse me, stepped over and around him until they arrived with suitcases. These had to be lifted over his head.

Finally though it was a woman with a buggy who raised hell. Get out of my fucking way, she said. I mean it, get the fuck outta my way. He didn’t budge but the police arrived. His old nemesis the British Transport Police who took so long to arrive despite the “transport” in their name.

I had it in my mind to do it and I did it, spoken again as they dragged him away.

Martin John has refrains.

His fifth refrain.

It put me in the Chair.

This is his number five.

It can be a he, she or they situation. A situation did not put him in the Chair. A collection of situations did. A collection of situations caused by she’s and he’s and sometimes even them’s. That’s not true, mam put him in the Chair.

Things outside himself. He has no control. Mostly it was a she that put him in the Chair. She put me in the Chair, he would bleat to the doctors.

Perhaps he gave her the idea for the Chair?

The Index does not tell us whether we will know how she conceived of the idea to put him in the Chair. We will not be told with whom she conceived Martin John. It’s none of your business, she’d reply to both them questions. (That would be a them situation. Them asking what’s not theirs to know.)

(From the doctor’s notes:)

The patient believes external forces are putting him “in the chair.”

There are whispers. Three times a whisper. What they don’t know, what they know and what they can’t know because Martin John doesn’t tell them

He is whispering now. You may find it hard to hear him. Lean in. Try to breathe quietly. You may kick the leaves between the whispers.

What Martin John doesn’t tell the doctors, doesn’t tell mam, doesn’t tell a soulful sinner, wouldn’t tell you, except for this Meddler letting you know, is his knowledge Baldy Conscience is after him FULL-TIME, OVERTIME AND DOUBLE TIME. The man is dedicating his life to humiliating and eviscerating Martin John. He must patrol his home, as well as his work, from which he is presently barred, but this has not deterred his patrols. Security will report on the presence of the non-desired former security guard. You can suspend him, tell him he has no job, but you cannot stop Martin John from patrolling. HE MUST GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO. HE MUST BE ALERT. The moment Baldy Conscience has plotted will unroll. He is determined to be a witness to this plot. THE MAN IS COMING FOR HIM. THE MAN IS HERE. ALMOST.

He put me in the Chair, he will eventually tell them when they find him. He will be pointing upwards at the roof when he says it. What will follow is howling protest about the pain in his knee as the firemen try to lift him.

Technically it was mam who gave him a full bladder.

The full bladder thing. That pressure thing.

The pressure from the full bladder thing.

That full bladder pressure that he liked the sensation of. That he never wanted to empty.

That becomes a sexual turn-on.

That forces him to walk even more circuits on the job.

The actual reason he is walking circuits.

To avoid going to the toilet.

To keep his bladder full.

His bricked up bubble.

Right above his exit hose.

The power in the discipline that such control provided: the agony and high of harbour. Every twinge. Each pressure a pleasure. Each demand he piss—refused. Sent to the back of the line. Then, when he eventually did piss—it wouldn’t come out. Gah the beauty in that! His bladder’s refusal to perform until finally it gave way to an aaah. Sometimes when it would not come out, he would hold it longer. If he could have held ’til it came back up his throat, he would have tried.

After came cramps. He welcomed them. Like he had boiled the pan dry and waited to hear crackled confirmation.

IF MAM TOLD HIM TO DO IT

IT WAS RIGHT

RIGHT?

He was forever not listening to her. He had failed to latch. She told him that. You didn’t latch on then and you don’t latch on now.

Now he had listened.

STOP going upstairs, she said.

She was right.

He liked his bladder full.

Steaming full. Ah Ah Ah Full. Up that hill full. Further full. Further. Further. Further.

His bladder would be plenty full if he never went upstairs. If he never went upstairs then he never went to the toilet.

Eventually he would have to let it out because of the other thing, but even the other thing can be kept at bay he has discovered.

You know, the fella at work said.

You know, the fella at work who had just caught Martin John with his pants down to his ankles claiming he’d spilled a bottle of HP sauce on them said.

You know, the fella at work, who returned to the toilet, claiming he’d left an umbrella said.

—That’s a serious spill. How did it happen? I’m keen to avoid it.

The man is seeking an explanation as to why he, not five minutes ago, found Martin John with his trousers not just down, but very, very down with his dangles dehors the usual standard Y-fronts that housed them.

It’s drying out, Martin John had said calmly. I have to keep it out until it’s dry. Once it is dry I will pack it all back up.

—You know, the man said, I don’t understand how it soaked all the way through to your skin when there is a double layer of cloth. He is indicating Martin John’s hands, which surround-pound his member and make little effort in the supposed quest of mopping up a complete absence of any sauce spill whatsoever.

Umbrella man was lying. Umbrella man was digging. A digger. Martin John knew the signals. What none of this lot knew was he was living with Baldy Conscience, the sneakiest pig on this earth, so there was nothing that could travel past Martin John. He was Baldy Conscience trained. BC Certified. He wasn’t fooled. This was no Innocent Inquiry. It was in his arse. He was angry. Rain will fall, he told himself.

Rain will fall was what he said when he was angry. Rain will fall, he told the fella.

He, misplaced umbrella man, moved away with a look that Martin John trusted even less. Rain will fall, Martin John shouted after him.

I was in the men’s toilet, how would Sarah have seen me so? Is she there often? How would she imagine she’d come upon me if she had to go in and clean? We never work the same shifts.

In reply to the question by the Manager fella, Martin John assured him he was not in the habit of spilling a bottle of sauce on himself, so it was unlikely to be a regular occurrence.

But, he added, in the event the Manager fella might be having concerns about him, what would the Manager fella propose he, Martin John, do if, say, his access to bathing facilities was temporarily or for a period of time unavailable? Such as was the case in this circumstance.

The Manager fella would go to the sports centre. London is full of them. Look at the state of people after they play squash. Martin John has his answer and his solution and would hold the Manager fella in ever-rising regard. The man was a ringmaster of solution.

He could see him (the Manager fella) lassoing Baldy Conscience and making him ride stood up on a horse ’til his face turned green and his eyes popped as he surrendered Martin John’s front door keys. He imagined eating Christmas dinner with the Manager fella and his family. He felt they understood each other. The Manager fella clattered him on the back and reminded Martin John he was the most punctual person who’d ever worked for him, but there was only so much he could turn a blind eye to. Martin John assured him militarily that whatever had concerned him would only get worse. There was a blank pause where both men nodded and neither man addressed the puzzling adjective. It went the way such meetings always went. For Martin John, any new information, even if it were robust criticism, was a victory. For the Manager fella, worried Martin John was increasingly unhinged, but still he appreciated a reliable worker. Plus the woman who complained about this Irish man also complained about every other man in the place. It was a mistake to hire a woman in these circumstances, but the equal opportunities person had rung and threatened she’d turn his twisties if he didn’t do something about the sorrowful state of the workforce on that site. He had deliberately hired the fattest woman he could find because he felt fat women were the right people to sort out problems. It had proven true. He now realized he was a manager who did not want to sort out problems. Just wanted staff to behave so he could be at home by 8 pm and the phone would not keep ringing.

For a week things were calmer.

The full bladder thing forces Martin John to walk even more circuits on the job. The only way to ascertain it’s truly full is to walk and live that pressure from above.

The original reason for the circuits now has a double purpose.

Each circuit would arouse him more and more.

Until he’d “Bucket It.”

Now with the full bladder and the increased circuits he is sexually higher than he has ever been.

Thanks to mam.

Thanks to not going upstairs.

Thanks to not being able to use the lavatory.

Thanks to avoiding Baldy Conscience.

They caught him.

She caught him.

Sarah caught him.

Called his name.

Followed by:

For fuck’s sake.

He turned, trousers down.

He could have pulled them up. He had the choice. Could have pulled them up. Could have pretended he was looking for something in that bucket.

But no. He turned, trousers descended, defiant.

Enjoyed it.

SUSPENDED FROM JOB PENDING INVESTIGATION.

Check my card was all he said, when she screamed at the sight of him.

It was in the report. Typed out as her testimony.

Sarah said she did not wish to say out loud what she had seen Martin John doing up in the rafters of the building where they both worked. She said for private religious reasons (all security guards resort to religion when trouble brews) it would pain her to use the language required.

First she said private.

Second she said religious.

Third she combined the two.

Doubled her conviction.

Martin John maintained he was caught short and innocently piddling into a bucket that happened to be lurking under the roof beam up there. He claimed a bent kidney. The Manager fella said he’d never mentioned any bent kidney. Martin John agreed and said Ya, right you are, he had no bad kidney. He was just “caught short.” The Manager fella looked puzzled by the admission.

Sarah said this is some high tale and he should tell the truth of what he was doing. Martin John said the woman had a vendetta against him and she needed to drop it. Check my card, Check my card, he added.

Nobody ever understands Martin John’s instruction to check his card. They usually ignore it. If they asked to check his card, Martin John would present an expired Travel Card. All parties will examine it blankly and this is the most likely reason nobody asks him to expand on the demand to Check My Card.

The card that he is actually referring to is the card he believes registers his circuits of the building. The card he is confused about. Is it deliberate, this confusion? He knows there are cameras. He knows they are spying on him. He knows Baldy Conscience has likely made contact with the people behind the cameras. He likes to make this easier for them, by tapping his Travel Card on the light switch of every floor.

He is not truly sure if those behind the cameras are his employers, yet he does believe in the rumoured machine in the office that they are never allowed to enter. This rumoured machine, which logs all of their movements. The machine that primarily Martin John has rumoured. The threat of the rumoured machine that records what the manager cannot see. Martin John has become so confused about what is where and who is watching him that from the moment he lifts his head off the pillow, he understands he is being watched. This is why he knows that the many times he does the thing to the women’s legs and feet or has his trousers undone and it out he will be seen. He has told himself he is doing these things to register to them that HE KNOWS THEY ARE WATCHING HIM. I’ll give them something to look at, these bread-stealing fuckers. This is partly how he resolves what he’s doing. I am letting them know I know they are watching. I know that Baldy Conscience has been sent.

This doesn’t explain to him or any of us why he has a history of doing these things. A history that began before Baldy Conscience and a history that commenced before he had any notion of “the trackers” and “their tracking.”

This falls into Harm Was Done over Check My Card.

When Martin John admits harm was done, when that refrain circles his mental turntable, it can cause him pause.

The pause quickly fills with self-appeasement. I had an opportunity. I coulda taken full advantage of the Estonian when she was up there. She was up there waiting on me. She wanted me in a way none of the others did. She offered herself to me and I didn’t touch. Well not entirely. I touched a bit. Same as any man would. I took her to the hospital, I bought her a magazine, I took her home. I nodded.

Sort of. But not exactly. There had been some time before he called the ambulance. He had cleaned her up after he had delivered on her. He had cleaned himself up. He remembers clearly the upward strokes with the bunched-up toilet paper. Wipe. Swipe. Wipe. Swipe. Afterwards he worried. Was there a smell? Did the ambulance men suspect something? He thought maybe they might. But he’d checked her pulse and had been quick about it. How quick had he been? He noticed a stain on the roof while wanking over her and made note to check the loft for leaks. He had made himself come by repeating the words jammy jank, jammy jank, jammy jank. He worried now. He had rolled her over facedown to be relieved of her eyes, lifted her dress, yanked down her tights and faded knickers to give him bare bum to toss over. He knew this because he kept one hand pushing resistance against her skin, propping himself over her and his arm had protested his own weight, which only intensified his primary pull. Was she still facedown when the ambulance men arrived? He was worried now. But she had come back, she had returned to the house into the room. She didn’t want to leave. He had forced her out. Had she not wished to leave because she liked it? He would never know. Did she know what he’d done? She must have known. She must have liked it. That was it. That was that.

Mam does not like the talk about Beirut. She has made this very, very clear. Abundantly transparent. She has told him not to mention the place again. You have never been there, she has been heard to say. Very loud. Very frustrated. Very angry.

You’ve never been anywhere, except Noanie’s!

She is wrong.

Martin John has been to Beirut.

He just can’t prove it. The way they can’t prove anything about him either. They just know what they know and he knows what he knows and what he knows is he believes he has been to Beirut.

The Manager fella sat between the two of them stated he was not present and therefore reliant on witness statements and repeatedly queried the two of them in rotation as to the activity that Sarah saw and that Martin John insisted she could not have seen.

Sarah requested to speak alone to the manager.

She expressed to him what she had seen.

Martin John was suspended from work for two weeks. It suited him as he was behind on collating his Eurovision files.

Sarah was triumphant.

Martin John was more triumphant.

There’s misery in triumph, thought Dallas, having endured the dual carriageway of bickering in each direction.

—I have a confession to make, Martin John eventually said to the Manager fella.

—Right.

—I was having a problem, but it is all finished with now.

—Right.

Martin John did not expand on the problem. The Manager fella repeated the word Right. It ended the way these conversations always ended between the two of them. The Manager fella reminding him he was the most reliable person who worked for him and Martin John maintaining he took great pride in doing a good job.

Martin John again to the Manager fella.

—Could I have a word?

—Yes.

—I was having a problem, a medical problem.

—Right.

—I was having a problem like you know, going.

—Right.

—So that was how I was caught short.

—Right.

—It is fixed.

—Right.

Martin John supplied no further details. The Manager fella said Right one more time. His phone rang. He disappeared. He returned. Martin John made no further effort to converse, choosing to announce he was due a circuit and wouldn’t want to get behind.

He left with his pretend swipe card, faster than the Manager fella could express confusion or muddle out words such as What exactly are you on about?

Martin John realized on the 23rd floor that the Manager fella had returned to speak to him after the phone rang. He interrupted his circuit to go and find the man. Arrived at the 13th floor on foot and changed his mind. He climbed the stairs again to the 23rd floor repeating the words Rain will fall, Rain will fall, at the summit of every floor ascended.

Complaints were subsequently raised about Martin John’s personal hygiene. Martin John maintains poor hygiene because he wants the putrid smell off him to drive Baldy from his house. If he smells bad enough, the man will have to up and leave. This olfactory battle strategy seeps into his day job where smells trail him and oust him there.

Because Martin John had worked 7 days that week, including one double shift, the Manager fella did not pass along the complaints to him. Instead he did what the dentist does and put a watch on the tooth.

Martin John observes the Manager fella leaving the office much more than usual. Each time the Manager fella approaches the guard’s desk, Martin John—never doing anything more illegal or illicit than reading the Bible to keep Dallas happy—brightly tells the Manager fella that Rain will fall.

Rain will fall, he’ll announce even when rain is indeed falling and has been falling for the past 7 hours. His choice of the same statement troubles the Manager fella, who is actively patrolling for signs of poor body scent. Martin John is onto him. And onto them. And onto talcum powder. Lily of the Valley. Every orifice dusted with the stuff. Shoes lined with it. He is springing lily puffs, if he moves swift. Martin John is onto them. He even pats a layer of it into his underpants.

The thing none of them factor in is the thing none of them know.

THEY DON’T KNOW THAT BALDY CONSCIENCE IS AFTER HIM FULL-TIME. He is on the run from Baldy Conscience even in his own home. Baldy Conscience wants to be the landlord. He doesn’t go upstairs because mam said she didn’t want to hear another word about him upstairs. Gary told him to tell Baldy Conscience to move out. They don’t understand Baldy Conscience. He will never move out. The earth could stop spinning. It could turn upside down and that fucking flump will remain at his kitchen table.

This is why he has stopped washing.

This is why he is holding in his urine.

The plain person cannot understand the punishing details of what the random man who has Baldy Conscience AFTER HIM must endure.

Martin John comforts himself with the prospect that Baldy will ever be after someone, someplace, thus any man or woman who scorned or doubted Martin John was a mere spot behind him in the queue. I’m keeping the fucking seat warm, he would tell them if pressed. It’s a fucking charitable act. This man would have his hands around your neck if he did not already, metaphorically speaking, have his hands kept busy around mine. You understand me now?

All Martin John’s sentences start terminating with you understand me now? If he’s buying a ticket or asking the time or even saying hello he leaves nothing to false interpretation. Occasionally a person will respond that, in fact, they do not understand him. He will nod a few times and immediately make haste. It indicates Baldy’s gotten to them. They’re tainted. Stained with Baldy’s stump if you like.

He has made mistakes

Baldy Conscience was a terrific mistake.

He was a blood clot of a mistake.

On account of Baldy Conscience

He only rented if he had to.

He only rented if he had to.

On account of Baldy Conscience

He only rented if he had to.

No more women.

No more women.

There would be no more women.

This was how Baldy Conscience slipped by him.

He preferred the upstairs empty with the windows wide open. Rooms free: life good. He shut them only if he used the telephone, after which they would be promptly opened again. In the empty rooms he walked in circles. Sometimes he just stared at their ceilings. A negotiation between him and the plaster: Do you see you are empty? You are empty because I have made you that way.

When things were going grand:

The upstairs rooms were empty.

Each day he followed his rituals on time.

Letters and circuits matched as they should.

His walks were a pleasure.

The newsagent had his papers.

The pork pie did not leave a greasy taste on the roof of his mouth. His urges stayed quelled. Hidden deep under a mental duvet.

He knew things would be grand if he put his head down, kept to himself and stayed in at night as she had told him to. Then they would not come for him because there was nothing to come for.

When things were bad he felt they were coming for him. He felt it every minute of any day when things were bad.