Never Feel the Sun [U.V. Ray]

I’d always been attracted to a kind of decay. Like a once decadent building now in a state of ruin, a glimmer of its majesty still apparent; or an aging photograph of an actress or pin up girl from a bygone age. Only when just a fragment remains of something that was once completely beautiful do we feel its absence. I loved the feeling that drugs gave me. I only stopped because my body couldn’t take it any more. I wasn’t in the business of destroying myself. If I had my time over I’d do it all again. But now I’m like one of those bombed out buildings. The plaster is falling from the walls, the grand, sweeping staircase has rotted away and there are only ghosts of the past inside me. I am flesh and bone. I am broken nose and broken teeth. I am broken spirit.

I got in the Toyota and closed the door. Turned the key.

My heart is beating / I am alive / But I don’t call this living… no no no no no no…

Radio on.

Stars were still visible in the early morning sky but fading now. Everything was grey and lifeless. The streets were still wet from the previous night’s storm. There was nothing but the sound of the engine ticking over and tiny flashes here and there in my peripheral vision as automated street lights began switching themselves off.

Of course, I am nothing but a conglomerate of failures, neuroses and other assorted psychological glitches that ensure life in the everyday world is nigh on impossible for me. But I have always worn nice ties. My whole attire, in fact, has always been something of an aesthetic that has convinced others I’m something I am not. I wear my clothes like a suit of armour. Most people do. The 20th Century saw the birth of the media created society. Every era since, every decade, the media has provided the aesthetics and the soundtrack. And whole generations suck it up, adopting whatever the TV shoves in front of them as a lifestyle choice. When they look back at us in history from the safety of their fully homogenised societies, they will see the first socially engineered humans in our infancy. They will marvel at the chaos still present amongst us. But being born of machines in factories, they will never know or understand our beauty. They will never know the humanity in the spilling of blood or the salt in tears. Scientists talk of overcoming death when they haven’t even overcome themselves. Yeah, well anyone can make plans.

It’s all fine until they get hit by something bigger than themselves. Some people are full of shit until they get punched in the mouth.

I knocked it into gear and pulled out of the parking bay.

Angelina, now there was a girl who had a nice pussy. I mean that girl had a really nice pussy. As I drove away I glanced up at her flat window. I saw her, only half-dressed in her underwear, reach up and pull the curtains to. That was the last I saw of her.

The headboard of the bed in Angelina’s 5th floor apartment was against the window and it was pissing down outside. There was only a low red light immersing the room in a rich, sensual glow. The rain beat heavily against the window; it was so severe it splashed against the glass and washed down in unending waves. I had my head between Angelina’s thighs and she raised her upper body up on her elbows, silhouetted against the city lights. As I glided the tip of my tongue along her labia to her clitoris she said, “oh yes, I’m going to fucking come in your
mouth, I’m going to come all over you.”

She tasted good. She tasted good and she felt good when I slid my cock inside her. Her orgasm wasn’t real, of course. It was a little show performed just for me. And I left her place £400.00 lighter. But what the fuck did I care? I am not a sensitive man. I’m not a sensual lover. I throw a woman around, bend her into positions that I like to look at for my own visual edification as I fuck them. And what’s more, they love it that way.

Turned onto Broad Street. It all looked so beautiful, so sparse and serene at this time in the morning, no one around. The streets all tinted with blue, reflected in the wet pavements.

Love is nothing more than an ideology anyway.  It’s a concept; something that doesn’t actually exist in the material universe, just like hate. All we have is the manifestation of our feelings in how we react. Women wear jewels and make-up, or tattoo their bodies to pretty themselves up because they themselves are bloodless. Angelina’s naked skin was as white and pure as cocaine.

I like hurting people. When I got in the ring I didn’t see the face of my opponent – he’s just a man like me, so I never thought about him. When the bell rang and I looked over at the opposing corner I only saw the face of evil, I saw the face of everyone and everything that has ever hurt me in my life. And I pulverised it. In the ring I was just facing my demons and conquering them – just as every man should, whatever his walk of life. It’s just unfortunate for anyone who faced me that they had to represent that. But that’s just the way it is, and that’s just the way I fought. Without fighting I’d have been a dead man long ago, rotting in an alleyway somewhere. I hardly ever lost a fight. Ronnie Keldo runs the unlicensed fight game in this city. Mostly it was all rigged. But I was never about taking falls for anyone. Although some heavies would come knocking on my door, telling me this was the way it was gonna go down, I made my money the hard way, the right way.

As I drove I leaned over and looked in the glove box. I was all out. I needed some Marlboro’s.

You gotta remember I am a fuck-up. All those years I wanted to be a fighter, a champion. And then I became one and it didn’t feel like anything. There is a void inside me. I thought I could fill it with drink. Then it was drugs. Women. Smashing up cars. Smashing up people. Smashing up myself. But none of it filled the void. It was still there and it still is. But I’d still rather be me than some douche bag in a cheap suit walking around with a blue-tooth headset stuck to his ear. How the fuck could anyone end up like that? But I’ll tell you, I’m really not any different to anyone else. No matter what front the rest of them present to the world.

That is why the media creates monsters out of certain people, icons of evil like Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler, so we can all point  our fingers. But in truth, the same demons lurk within us all. If enough shit happens to us we can crack and this simmering energy that is beyond any dichotomies of good and evil comes spilling out of us. There is no way of stopping it. We just choose the targets of our hatred.

But what do I know? I’m just an old, retired, washed-up fighter now. Maybe I really did take too many blows to the head, as they say?  I’d ended up driving a fifteen year old Toyota with a bumper hanging off and working on a factory production line. When I was a kid my mother died. I was only three and one time I remember standing staring down at her grave as my father knelt and planted some flowers. I didn’t understand any of it. But now I look back and realise what a lonely, forlorn, sad image the two of us must have looked to anyone with a heart.  It was from these beginnings that I’d amounted to very little. Capable of inflicting pain on others but of feeling nothing. Mine was a life spent so far down in the dust I could never feel the sun on my skin.

I pulled into a petrol station on Bristol Street and parked on the forecourt. The main doors were still locked so I had to go to the little security window. The assistant was reading The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. He put the book down; spine upwards with the pages spread. He passed me the pack of cigarettes under the flap and took my money without a word.

I got back in the car and lit one up. I could still taste Angelina’s cunt on my fingers. And to me, that’s about as close to love as you can get.

It was light now and the city was sparking into life like clockwork. In the distance I could hear the clatter of a train pulling out of the station.