When the woman I was making love to turned into a pig I knew that I had become too cynical. I watched her face fill out, her cheeks lose their definition and her nose turn up at me to form a perfectly cylindrical snout. Her skin became rough. It became pockmarked and covered in fine grey hairs and then her mouth widened and opened up to reveal a coarse and unclean set of teeth. Then her ears retreated, grew longer into sharp points that flopped over like a dog’s ears. And her eyes too lost their shine and their beauty. They contracted and sunk into the skin and they became red and as fired as a madman’s. I watched her and I laughed and cried for atop of this perverse metamorphosis was her hair, untouched by the transformation and spread loosely across the pillow: a wig on the head of a pig… It was the one hope for my salvation.
My white van is carpeted inside with dark blue pile to stop the sounds from the keyboard escaping. It is parked on a street in Camden and I am in the back, squat down and playing, my face close to the keys. Simple sounds, chords in C, then one octave arpeggios, trying not to make the sounds escape the van, or to move… Making sure no one knows I’m there.
People are walking outside going through their daily routines. Then two girls in their twenties open the back of the van. They close the door behind them and lie down next to me.
They are dressed in autumn colors. One of them is in a denim skirt and heavy black stockings and she raises up her feet, pushes them into my face. I can smell her stockings, sweaty or musty against my nose I cannot tell. Not sure I like it. She giggles.
Then I am driving a red London double decker, taking it on a joy ride round circles in a darkened mall. Two different (?) girls are beside me. I am showing off my maneuvers, round the other parked buses. Around tight corners. I clip one but not too badly. And same again around another corner, but overall pretty good. A cop and a couple in the deserted mall look on. I do a full 90 degree, the bus tilts heavily but the turn is clean.
Then I am sitting in the middle of a market square on a raised platform, higher even than the stores that line the perimeter of the square. I am lying face up, a sunny day and a dancer explains how her feet ache. She will have to get back to her practice soon. She pulls up one sock, it is not long enough and is thin with holes and tearing. The backs of her flats come over her socks and rub into her ankles. I show her my own socks. They’re black, with horizontal stripes, mainly white but some orange and red too. I volunteer them even though they are old and loose with wear… They are woolen and thicker than hers. She declines my offer.
The patron of the dance company tells her to hurry up, she can mend the socks at one of the stores on the square. She calls out below and a storekeeper reaches up to gives her a ceramic tile with white and blue squares, covered in clear tape. And I take the tile from her and unpeel the tape but the white enamel peels off as well and reveals a black base underneath. I contemplate fastening it back in place to hide the damage.
