29th July 2001 - 7:37 p.m.
"Above me towered a brutish vending machine, complete with celestial chimes, rotating lights and a steely synthesized voice beckoning the assembly of dupes. A miserable young lad approached, dragging the body of his package-laden mother. He searched her eyes repeatedly until she finally fed the machine, got a Rocket Ranger toy and stuck it out to her child.
He slapped it onto the floor and screeched for still another selection. Mum stuffed in more notes until finally the boy was out of choices. 'Well, for God's sake, what do you want?' she bellowed.
In a confused rage the boy bawled, over and over again, 'I want something, I want something, I want something'."
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What do you do with spare days? I plan and concoct and reformulate, and invariably go to bed before 11pm each night. On Saturday evening, I spend in excess of 50 minutes getting ready, ironing a shirt, primping and powdering before a mirror. To 'Uptight', the club night run by members of Baptiste! To dance and strut and chatter and drink and live sufficiently to allow me to tell the truth to my workmates when they ask about my weekend. Midway to the train station, I pause, detour down an alleyway, spark up a cigarette and look down at the tracks from the railway bridge. Why on earth am I going out? Cut your losses, Nicholas. Think of it: 40 minutes in a cramped tube carriage to get there. Arrive at club. Know no-one. Leave after an hour. Another 40 minutes. Back home to dwell on my regrets. And that's it? That's the best you can do? Don't even bother, Nicholas. Don't even bother.I comfort myself with the thought that I had a big night on Friday. That will be sufficient for the weekend. Moments later, I check my memories again. What did I do on Friday night? Lay on the sofa, flicking tv channels, in bed before 11pm. Damn.
When Sunday comes, I make a valiant attempt to throw myself into things with gay abandon. It doesn't work. The delights of Oxford Street pass before my eyes - the throngs, the signs, the road-traffic accidents. I spend all day shopping, and don't buy a thing. Everywhere I look, I am confronted with objects, boxed and priced. Everything I see, everything I stop to study, I reject, asking myself constantly: "Why would I want that?".
I imagine people phoning, and me telling them that it is not really worth it. That perhaps they shouldn't bother. That I wonder whether it might be a bit of a lost cause.
"Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to experience, because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify it or push it outside or find its beauty within. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be."
The book falls open on this page. It is perhaps my fifth reading. I time them to perfection.
