SOFA SPONGE or FLIRTING WITH PARANOIA
Sat pleasantly clenched-up and cross-legged with alternating urges to urinate and expel rising panic bile. Warm beer bottle frozen in grip. Pushed through a cigarette burn-hole, deep into the dry sponge filling of my favourite doctor's Sofa of Therapeutic Conversation, Sympathy and Consolation. It might have been Apathetic Consternation, Flatulence and Resignation but the moon was high and it made little difference. Like myself, it was tightly upholstered in genuine chameleon-hide. In broad daylight it served as just another itchy and stinking bonking sofa, upholstered in nasty green corduroy.
In those carefree, semi-squatting days, I had no sofa of my own to sit within, so I sat often within this one. For, at the end of our last bout of wound-diving, my friend The Specialist had generously demanded a return match. Stretching generosity to the limit, he had also invited a horde of his lip-flapping case studies, on the pretext that something note-worthy was about to happen to the planet's karma. Everyone believed it. Various theories had dominated the evening news. For myself, I was convinced I would lose four inches of height from just above the nose, either due to a crashing helicopter, or, with better luck, during emergency remedial surgery. We discussed ourselves through a nicotine smokescreen till the weirdos arrived on the stroke of midnight. After ten minutes of respectful dead silence, the doctor unlocked a large first-aid-cabinet-cum-Sony-entertainments-centre, and distributed its liquid contents. Those who recognised the host easily loved him. He was endlessly knowledgeable and eloquent on many unfathomable topics. He was liberal scientist, party clown, casual prostitute and pain in the neck rolled into one. He introduced me annoyingly as 'He! The Showman! The Audience! The Critic in the Sponge!' Then, well aware of my acute allergy to grotesque flattery, loudly declared himself a fan of my matchless wit. As all eyes turned to devour mine, I immediately turned to measure the thread-gauge of the castor-bolts on the inside of my ouch-couch. Luckily, a few lip-flapping skirmishers hovered with their backsides a few inches above the carefully arranged gravel-stuffed cushions, making for fairly good cover. I then stapled myself for the duration into the sponge, whilst busting for a piss quite as usual.
The masses smiled understandingly more often than was called for, made games of dropping the words 'escape' and 'surrender' into every possible context; and referred boomingly to the 'insect ridden sponge' without a moments respite. I listened with hard red ears from my setting within the sponge. Tactics were always the same: gentle rebuke, tossed at three minute intervals, sickeningly ticking, in through my burn-hole. I took the advice always, staunchly chewing it over before posting it back with adjustments and two short words of thanks. If a joke arrived, I would suck on it until a chance arose to gob it surreptitiously into the turn-up of my trouser, to be ceremoniously disposed of later. On hitting my dead-ends, they would wink largely to one another, then squeeze themselves into their beer cans. Comfortably ensconced, they would start animated, eyeball-to-eyeball conversations with their own fascinated reflections, pausing only to remark to the mirrored ceiling that the first round was going off extremely well.
On throwing up a second crate of brown brain medicine, I too was able to admit that the first round was going off extremely well.
Marmite-filled chocolate eggs were passed around on a trolley - to the thunderous relief of all present. Someone gallantly crammed a cruddy fragment of shell into my burn-hole. After rearranging the camouflage, I swallowed it down to a cheering stomach, then ate a dose of sponge to cover the tracks. Hysterical anecdotes were exchanged for grandmothers' remedies. I felt the need to overflow with something larger than myself. I longed to travel to the window. To break it, and empty the contents of my skin-sack out into the rented coal-truck-limousine that waited below. I considered the logistics, but by now I was strapped down good and proper, deep inside the sponge. However. At this early stage I was, as usual, reserve and politeness encapsulated within a column of black ice, wedged firmly between the ceiling and the straining floor boards. Whether in two places at once, or nowhere to be seen, I was not only unwilling to move, I was unable to move.
I began dozing for safety in the sponge. The trip to the window would have to be postponed.
I opened my legs and relaxed.
"We could plug in that TV and watch a Russian movie, could we not?"
Nobody knew who said it. Knuckles whitened but nobody owned up.
Of course we could watch a Russian movie. We could shoot a Russian movie. We could each play a part; some voluptuously hideous part of ourselves. We could dissolve ourselves onto celluloid then project ourselves onto bed-sheets. We could send out for marinated chicken then shoot a porno version. We could watch endless repeats of our labors, then devour the vinegared sadist who wrote the script...
Agreement was not reached. I watched with a lazy eye and an envious pulse as a low band-member crossed to the window, smashed it to pieces and dropped out.
"I like to soak for long periods in the bath while drinking hot butter through a straw."
Much applause. This was better.
I like to go for long periods drinking nothing at all, then bathe majestically, dying of thirst, in hot Japanese butter. I call the Japanese fire-brigade and wait for them to arrive as the butter hardens. By the time they do arrive (I usually give the wrong address) I certainly need rescuing. As a remedy, and to clean out the bath, I pile beneath it books of lippy-philosophy, light them, and drink the melting butter from underneath using a good copper funnel.
A second inmate, nodding his head whilst ripping up paper-chain shackles, dashed to the window and dashed through it.
I trembled with sponge-bound jealousy.
The butter-bath solution was traded in for another:
"Let us drop in at the Gargoyles, they know how to party. They just had a baby. We should wet its heads."
Standing ovation. A man hiding beneath a hat broke open a crate of medicine with a crow-bar borrowed from a complaining neighbour.
The Gargoyles! Haven't seen them since the birth. Heard they have rats. We should visit at once, sing gothic nursery-rhymes, tell tales of orgies and take turns changing nappies. If they are up to it, joke about rabies, glue down the shutters, put on graceful habits and paint the house black. We should teach the rats about religion, ring out the cot and make a cauldron of soup; pass around Baby and tickle it to bits. We should mull over suitable names for it, invite the local press, organise a demonstration on the roof and allow Baby to watch its very first sun shooting up.
Unanimity for once. Things were perking up. A shout was cast into the night:
Let the Gargoyles come to us!
As they arrived they moved straight to the window and passed themselves out of it.
They had been a bundle of laughs, the Gargoyles, and would be sorely missed.
A girl with a clay head hovering close to my sponge hovered in closer and whispered:
"You are just like all the others, are you not?"
My confidence peaked.
I said, "Do you want a light?"
She said, "Do you have a light?"
"No."
"I like you a lot." She put her feet through the burn-hole and onto my lap.
"Pay me a compliment," she hissed.
"These feet are pretty. Are they all yours? Do you clean them? Do you shave them and bleach them?"
She grimaced teasingly. "I only bleach my ear-wax. Does it notice?"
I said, "Put your ear close to my hole," and she actually did.
I entered her left ear. I explored; paddling among the echoes of all the conversations this woman had ever casually instigated. They ended abruptly, every last one.
"Well, yes," I continued, answering a question she had once posed to a dark journalist hanging from hooks.
"You are sensitive! You notice all the little things."
Returning reluctantly to the present, I noted the following:
"You have no knees and you have no elbows. Where are your knees and your elbows?"
"(You are considerate!) It is my work, you see. I am a sand-paper-tester. Actually, as I understand it, I have recently been promoted. I am now a sand-paper-grader." She blushed easily. "They tell me there are more hours and more perks. And I receive money. I tell them I don't care for it, but they insist. They are kind. (You are kind!) They give me flowers every evening. More than I can use. I am a lucky girl!"
I said, "But you are not a clever girl, are you?"
She blinked then, but continued:
"I have many responsibilities. I unlock the factory gates in the morning and if anyone arrives late I am allowed to execute them on the spot. (I never have, of course. Only the partners arrive late and I would never execute a partner!) I also park the cars and unload the delivery vehicles. Is that not marvelous?"
"Not in the least."
"(You are perceptive.) I serve lunch at lunch-times and tea at tea-times. I am the Asian cloak-room assistant and the friendly security officer who batters his wife. I am the ugly-mouthed man who looks in once a week to take the bugs out of the computers. (You have enormous hands. I do like them.) I am the jolly-cockney window cleaner who has never had a girlfriend, the orange-lipped secretary who only makes mistakes, the greasy post-boy who smells of chips and studies encyclopedias; and the dashing accountant who even the Vietnamese cleaners despise. Occasionally, I exhibit myself during conferences - and next month I start laying a new sewage-network under the old-wing. (But your nostrils flare and your pores are gaping. You pinch my feet.) Why do you pinch my feet?"
Before allowing my heart to race I shifted my position:
"I admire your language but cannot condone the lifestyle you lead. I respect the tongues you employ but your loose flesh makes me crawl. Your teeth are discoloured; and I believe you are dishonest. Empty your pockets."
"Anything."
She spread the contents of her pockets before me. I laughed aloud for the first time ever. The world beyond the sofa fell into jealous silence. Everything she owned had at one time belonged to me.
I said, "You are unfaithful: I wish to couple with you."
"Just as you please," she whispered.
"Enter my sponge," I demanded, and I prepared the sponge.
"You are more like all the others than all the others," she coolly remarked, and just like that she floated away.
Only her eyes were wide and possibly regretful. They appeared moist, then glassy, then deathly cold as she floated away through the gaping window.
There are so many women in the universe, I thought; and I was easy for an instant.
My skin-sack split. The stench-cloud momentarily stunned the atmosphere.
A deep-tanned, tight trousered professor whom I had spied through a ladder in the gauze at the rear of the sofa conspired with his partner:
"Party-pooper!" he croaked. His partner, a lady who seemed to be a small girl beneath an enormous raven-black wig, burst into a fit of giggles. Holding their noses they continued to neck. As I continued to watch them, I decided again to resign. Stuffing my fresh wounds with sofa sponge, I screamed through the hole to the general assembly:
Let us construct a treaty! A fabulous compromise. Let us gather around a heavy wooden table and demand terms. Let us persuade one another vigorously; threaten ominously, give in graciously, shake hands heartily - and trot off home. I feel a final solution rising...
"Yes!" they screamed back. A solution had indeed been raised:
"Let us construct a magnificent pizza!"
Scanning the room in dwindling awe, I discovered myself strangely agreeable. My stomach after all had all but expired from boredom.
Indeed! We could summon up Lord Thomas from below stairs. The man is a cook of sorts. An over-cook. He knows the Trade. He has never been known to panic. He was once chief baking negotiator over in Panama, or St. Tropez, or somewhere in-between. He is experienced in the old arts of best pastry production. He lost a great many fingers in proving his doe-making skills. He has an incredible floury truncheon, to boot.
I succumbed to the wisdom of it.
"Summon him!" they yelled in a voice. "Where are all the mobiles?" they added.
As the heavens beyond the window lightened, the room darkened and so, finally, did my mood.
A change in pace was due. I had to think of another way out. I had eaten so much sponge by this time that there would soon be nothing left to escape from. Camouflaged again within deep sleep, dismantling phones under cover of coats and cushions, I hurriedly devised a method. Wolfing down sponge, I measured the implications:
All that screaming had at least widened my burn-hole.
Using the lengths of my arms to good advantage, I began to pull the doctor's petty, sterile world into my ouch-couch. I unscrewed the powerful fluorescent bulbs, disarmed the Russian TVs, peeled off the William Morris wallpaper, un-hinged the pressed-paper doors and eked up the black sopping floorboards. The remains of the column of ice I ate. It tasted fine.
After the opening assault I rested a while beneath a family-sized bottle of malt whiskey. Then, using a child's compass and an array of things I had discovered in the hem of the sofa, I plotted a brave new course through the wasteland to the window. Eyeing my host as he wrestled to contain a patient in the doorless doorway, I raised myself up. Signalling to him as ambiguously as I could contrive, I was suddenly forced to hesitate.
With the top four inches of my head dangerously exposed against the wreckage of the landscape, I noticed that all the members of the horde had modestly deflated. They lay in flat heaps about the border of the room.
No sudden movement, neither from flapping lip nor ravenous eye, disrupted the smoke-laden air.
I covered my own eyes and waited for this scary new vision to pass. It did not pass. I tried to adjust, but the thoughts made me sick. With nothing now to worry about, I inhaled the last line of sponge through both nostrils: then attacked the sun-drenched loungers in an embassy of honest drunken passion. I exchanged lingering glances, declared friendships, explained principles and theories, flattered the elderly and infirm, proposed marriage six times...
Not a soul was alive to the event.
For much of the morning I was too excited to move. Eventually I paved a brilliant yellow route to the window. This I decorated with jewellery stolen from the torso parts of dribbling females. I prettied up the runway with crumpled bear cans and shards of coloured glass, then demarcated its borders with a mountain range of vomited sponge.
Ducking and weaving like a Showman of enormous experience, chatting now at my own reflection through the bottom half of a tequila bottle, I at last made it to the window.
One of the larger bodies stirred. A tongue and eyeball lolled to meet the risen day.
Got wedged in a knot in the window-sill; chilled out and looked on.
