the plaster-cast penises and smoking Moroccan black. Edna was dead now, four years back, maybe more. He passes the new blue recycling bins. There was an authentic Banksy somewhere near here. The locals had protested that his anarchic graffiti had pushed up property prices, forcing them out. The irony of it would have made Saul laugh, or puke over the original Banksy on the wall. Now they’d be welcoming as many Banksys as they could get.
The warehouses have been mostly converted into studio flats. He passes the sex shop now called Sh! – devoted to women’s pleasure – gentlemen only welcome when accompanied by a woman. In this very same alleyway, he had gone down on his knees and begged Dot to let him eat her cunt. There had been a Chinese here, and a bin. She’d joked about the smell of sweet and sour.
Hoxton Square. White Cube gallery. Blue Bar and Kitchen. Yelo. Ziegfried and Underbelly. Another gallery he has never been to. An exhibition called
Through a Glass Darkly
. He puts his face to the glass and sees that one of the artworks is a hole in the gallery floor and that had been another joke Saul had said, a dare to an artist – ‘Why not just dig yourself a fucking hole. Let’s form an escape committee and get the fuck out of here!’ He walks to the top of the square and hears the screams of children from St Monica’s. The faces as before, black, the laughter is as it always is with all children. He walks the hundred yards then to the dole office that is called a jobcenture now. As soon as he turns the corner onto Hoxton Street it will be two blocks to 102 Whitmore Road. Saul had always said that the thing the place was lacking was more wit.
The old pie-and-mash place, then Bacchus – the franchised S&M chain. Hoxton Kicks – another new sex shop. The new Hoxton community garden, a pile of weeds and stones and broken bottles when he first saw it, before it became a community anything. The green metal signs for Hoxton Market arching over the street. The FOR LEASE signs diminish as the council houses grow around him. Miles of state-subsidised housing, inescapable poverty, incorruptible and pure in its way. Untouchable by the wealth in the square behind, which is now receding again.
The Queen’s Head is boarded up and a sign says under new management and he is thankful for that because he hopes now not to find what he was looking for as he is about to turn that corner and is searching for any excuse not to go there.
She passes him in a miniskirt and he turns to look. She has a tattoo of a Manga character on her ankle. She’s eighteen, maybe twenty, Japanese-looking but Williamsburgesque, her arm in that of her androgynous beau. Just look at them. Their matching dyed green hair and deliberately slashed clothes. One earpiece in each of their ears sharing the iPod, the cable stretched taut pulling their faces closer to each other. And he feels for how they feel. Your angriest music in your ears and the world is only what you allow in and what you steal to give you enough hatred to laugh as you march through it. You see how much your games offend the order, and the eyes that stare with judgement only fuel you and tell you you are breaking nothing less than all the rules. They are all nothing and you are really something, you are really happening.
They stop and take a photo of themselves, just before the sign for Hoxton Market and now they seem fake. Everything now is copies of copies of copies, just as Saul’s Baudrillard predicted. He watches them walk away, and now the disappointment turns to himself. Youth is wasted on the young, Saul said, but that line too had been copied.
He has to stop for a cigarette. But he is on week three again on his eighth attempt at quitting. A pack of Marlboro Lights from the pub. But it is boarded up and smoking in pubs is now illegal. So it has to be the street and no smokes, just the smouldering need.
Owen, look at you. By the time you are home and turn off the burglar
The warehouses have been mostly converted into studio flats. He passes the sex shop now called Sh! – devoted to women’s pleasure – gentlemen only welcome when accompanied by a woman. In this very same alleyway, he had gone down on his knees and begged Dot to let him eat her cunt. There had been a Chinese here, and a bin. She’d joked about the smell of sweet and sour.
Hoxton Square. White Cube gallery. Blue Bar and Kitchen. Yelo. Ziegfried and Underbelly. Another gallery he has never been to. An exhibition called
Through a Glass Darkly
. He puts his face to the glass and sees that one of the artworks is a hole in the gallery floor and that had been another joke Saul had said, a dare to an artist – ‘Why not just dig yourself a fucking hole. Let’s form an escape committee and get the fuck out of here!’ He walks to the top of the square and hears the screams of children from St Monica’s. The faces as before, black, the laughter is as it always is with all children. He walks the hundred yards then to the dole office that is called a jobcenture now. As soon as he turns the corner onto Hoxton Street it will be two blocks to 102 Whitmore Road. Saul had always said that the thing the place was lacking was more wit.
The old pie-and-mash place, then Bacchus – the franchised S&M chain. Hoxton Kicks – another new sex shop. The new Hoxton community garden, a pile of weeds and stones and broken bottles when he first saw it, before it became a community anything. The green metal signs for Hoxton Market arching over the street. The FOR LEASE signs diminish as the council houses grow around him. Miles of state-subsidised housing, inescapable poverty, incorruptible and pure in its way. Untouchable by the wealth in the square behind, which is now receding again.
The Queen’s Head is boarded up and a sign says under new management and he is thankful for that because he hopes now not to find what he was looking for as he is about to turn that corner and is searching for any excuse not to go there.
She passes him in a miniskirt and he turns to look. She has a tattoo of a Manga character on her ankle. She’s eighteen, maybe twenty, Japanese-looking but Williamsburgesque, her arm in that of her androgynous beau. Just look at them. Their matching dyed green hair and deliberately slashed clothes. One earpiece in each of their ears sharing the iPod, the cable stretched taut pulling their faces closer to each other. And he feels for how they feel. Your angriest music in your ears and the world is only what you allow in and what you steal to give you enough hatred to laugh as you march through it. You see how much your games offend the order, and the eyes that stare with judgement only fuel you and tell you you are breaking nothing less than all the rules. They are all nothing and you are really something, you are really happening.
They stop and take a photo of themselves, just before the sign for Hoxton Market and now they seem fake. Everything now is copies of copies of copies, just as Saul’s Baudrillard predicted. He watches them walk away, and now the disappointment turns to himself. Youth is wasted on the young, Saul said, but that line too had been copied.
He has to stop for a cigarette. But he is on week three again on his eighth attempt at quitting. A pack of Marlboro Lights from the pub. But it is boarded up and smoking in pubs is now illegal. So it has to be the street and no smokes, just the smouldering need.
Owen, look at you. By the time you are home and turn off the burglar
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