Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

before executing this revenge with miniature violence

Of course I wasn’t sure exactly who had threatened us from the salon, and it was possible that in fact neither of the choppers who had attacked us were employees of the salon itself. I knew that my revenge might not have the perfect symmetry that the usual revenge should possess, but I couldn’t help that: I had to make do with what I had and I think in the end that’s enough, or at least it often has to be. And so we entered the salon like some nightmare scenario, bearing hammers, and a spade, and a dead heavy dog. I was surprised by this, but now it could not be altered: Hiro had perhaps inadvertently — since the dog had been lying on his lap, in its shroud — just brought the dog in with him. Certainly it was interesting to notice the effect — where the single customer just stood there with her mouth open, then

— Scram, said Hiro, cradling the dog, and she did go –

and the receptionist who owned the lovely portrait of a saint began to tremble, very fast. There was deep fear on her face and I must admit I liked that. Once again I was having a miniature glimpse of the power that maybe gang leaders feel or mad dictators, the total power anyone can have if they can abandon all their restraints, just take them down like dismantling a Lego castle — if, I suppose it needs to be added, they can also do this without any fear at all. Fear of consequences, I think, tends to obfuscate the picture. If that’s something you can reconcile, then it really does allow you a tremendous range. And so with that power deep inside me, I began the scene, while Hiro placed our dog very gently on the floor. In moving him some blood had slightly squeezed out from his wound.

— The fuck? said another girl.

— Shut the fuck up, said Hiro.

— Here, I said, — is your money.

I placed the notes carefully on the desk, because I did not after all want to lose any. I wanted them to see that we had paid them back in full. And it seemed to me obvious that it was the right place, that this was indeed the correct object of our vengeance, by the very fact that they said nothing. It was exactly, I was thinking, as if they expected it. And therefore with this doubt resolved I smashed the hammer down onto the receptionist’s desk. I was exulted. I was very large. The silence that followed this tumult seemed very long, and I understood it was because no one knew how to respond, and that did please me, very much. Also more kinds of liquids were emerging from my dog’s body, and the effect was very gruesome and upsetting. Then I smashed the telephone with the hammer and it slightly broke but mainly slipped to the floor, where it fell noisily and with some impact. The receptionist bent to pick it up and I understood that she seemed to be testing or using it, just talking very softly or at least seeming to do so, but I did not quite understand this because at this point the violence inside me was totally huge and I was not sure how I would stop it. There was a small hand mirror and I smashed that too, and it was making me wonder if I could smash the mirror in front of each customer’s chair. I had no idea how much violence that would require. I did regret now that we had no real gun. If I could have fired bullets into the ceiling, and made holes in every possible surface, I would totally have done that. But then slowly, very slowly, with this grace in her movements which I now noticed for the first time, the receptionist moved from out behind her desk, and into the middle of the salon, where she kneeled down beside my dog. Then she took a towel from a pile in front of one of the mirrors, and wrapped him, and she did this very gently, and I appreciated that gentleness very much. It was like something now was understood, even if perhaps she did intend it as rebuke. Her face was very grave. Then she handed me my dog, and he was totally swaddled and ensconced: only his black nose was protruding, the way it used to protrude from the bedclothes when he was sleeping under the duvet. And suddenly I felt no power at all. I felt very sad and very tired. All I wanted to do now was bury my dog somewhere, quietly. I understood that people were staring but I did not care. A fine rain was falling, very faintly, at a slant, like the most invisible curtain, and in this rain we made our fast escape.

that is surely our hero’s right

In the street, happy people among the damp palmettos were shopping or speed-dating and were delighted. In a parked car a man was sitting, listening to some cool jazz, tapping drumsticks on the steering wheel. Whereas here I was, with a dead dog in my arms, and Hiro sparkling and beeping beside me. It saddened me how I could not be absorbed in the verdant scene at all. There I was, in the same street, and I had forgotten what happiness was. I hugged this thought to me, as if it were some hot-water bottle to soothe me in the dark. The only possible conclusion was that a cruel injustice had been done to me. Why had these last few months been so exceedingly complicated for me? If you thought about it long enough, it was all incredibly unfair. I really did deserve, it seemed to me, a small vacation, perhaps panning for gold, or exploring the South Seas. I owed myself, I thought, at least that much. It did not seem unreasonable. For perhaps, I wondered, as we slammed the car doors shut, it was possible to do good in different ways? The effort that is necessary to create a better world! No bravo in a mass brawl in a pastiche hostelry had it worse than me… I looked at Hiro beside me in the car, holding the dead dog very tenderly, and I felt so tenderly about him too, just as I tenderly also remembered the similar way in which Candy had carried our dog home, in the car, when he was only a month or so old, and she looked into his eyes with love.

or so it seems

To drive at high speed in a built-up area is a very specific thrill. To complete the mafiosi picture, we only needed to be shooting out the windscreen from inside so it crumbled up, like icing sugar. And if in the annals of history other children have been transformed by time into drug baronistas, or hit men, why couldn’t I be transformed too? I felt like an outlaw and in many ways, I reflected, I think I was, if by outlaw you include those excluded from their normal world. I was so grand I was benevolent, and it occurred to me that in this matter of trying to restore some calm, before I went out to the woods I could take this sorry car, whose paintwork might well be briefly stained with canine blood, to the car wash. And this was especially generous because that kind of situation is never one I like — to be served by sad waterproofed people who do not disguise how unhappy they are to serve you. But still, I will let myself be served, after all, even if this kind of practical situation always perplexes me with the various things I do not know. Behaviour is difficult, and perhaps the difference between those who can do things and those who cannot is one of the hidden divisions of our time — much more than capitalists and workers, or blacks and whites. Like for instance people were tapping on the bonnet and asking me to open it, while looking concerned at some miniature piles of sodden leaves that had gathered in the well in which the windscreen wipers sat — but I had never opened the bonnet before and did not know how it might happen. So I gave a gesture that was intended to mean that really I did not care, but they did seem still to care and I cursed this obsession with professional appearances. So to indicate how unimportant these leaves were I tried to move forward but this only made them shout, and therefore I tried to argue that it really was no bother but they were implacable and so finally I admitted that in fact the task was beyond me, and with this admission I thought that this would disarm or charm them, because in general such honesty is to be admired, but instead a man just opened my door, a gesture I found perhaps intrusive, especially in my nervous state, then leaned down beside my leg where the catch was, and in obedient unlikeable response the bonnet gave its miniature sprung spring. I did a gesture of thank you but it was possibly too late, if by that gesture I intended to imply a kind of level between us, a sort of flatness of equality as men. Silently they opened the car doors and then vacuumed the inside edges. Then silently they were putting the bonnet down and telling me to be on my way, and in good-bye I raised a confident hand. For I was trying to maintain a careless blissed-out mood, the kind of equable excitement that makes you basically divine, according to some philosophers and sages — even if, talking of such sages, what I was about to discover in the environs of Toy Town was how many more depths and darknesses in reality existed, as the talmudic sages have known all along. But then, to understand the workings of Fate, it needs no study of the ancient texts. You can do it with that cartoon — where the cat relaxes and is all happy before being malleted by the mouse. I think such cartoons should play on endless loops in every high school and other college.