Gliderhopping

Short Story:- A disillusioned fella decides to stop paying his public transport fares.

… Back in the spring of two thousand and twenty two (as the cherry blossoms bloomed and the grass wore a coat of cinnamon) I was in the midst of seeing this girl - she was someone who found comfort confronting the thoughts within herself;

‘I don’t think we should keep on using that music alarm, it might cook us’ -

this notion is thanks to a certain Soviet neurologist and his intensive studies into the field of dinner time and dogs - her conclusion (brought about from the dogs labour) was that said song would only ever be associated with dragging ourselves out of warm beds and soft embraces on dreary mornings. At the time I thought it was all psychoanalytic bullshit - but now the implication of ‘daylight licking me into shape’ inspires a peculiar position within of a spring long dead and gone - by now it was the depths of winter ‘twenty three, a year and a half proving enough to contort all - and Robert Smith was still a fucking brute.

There was a black mould growing in the crevice where the walls met the ceiling, pulsating with a kind of life - not the kind of life you or I pulsate with, but a perverted Lovecraftian kind of life - a twisted distortion of fungal growth I hadn’t the means to understand fully. It sat up there watching silently, breathing in and out, taking the shape of my own breathing as I slept - it’s spores morphing around the outstretched fingertips of my lungs, cocooning them. I let the alarm play it’s course - inhaled a deep, almost guttural, breath - then rolled out of the blanket palming the bedside table as I went. The bedside table was a mess, a shrine of sorts - I thought of those GQ interviews; ‘Ten things (insert celebrity) can’t live without’ - empty packet of liquorice skins, a wristband for USC, loose filter tips, a broken chain, empty condom wrapper, dead blue-iced-tea vape, spare change, student ID, copy of ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ and finally the thirty gram itself. Ah, the measure of me! Neatly packed and parcelled onto a seventy-five by seventy-five centimetre square table top, the heart (meaning) of a Saturday night - secret sound bouncing of the walls, my own boredom surmised.

I found the December air to be keen, as it always was - gnawing and biting at any and all exposed skin like a jumped up leech with the beer goggles on - I’d taken to sleeping with a few layers on myself now, a few layers and two duvets, five cushions and one throw. The price of gas was making a steady rise, and my wages weren’t rising with it - so in the toss up between heat and social life, I choose beer - I usually didn’t feel the cold the same after a few drops, every night after I brushed my teeth I mixed some Drambruie with boiling water, lemon, honey, cloves and cinnamon - this sent me over with a nice warmth in my head/stomach/heart - it was the third ‘winter of discontentment’ in a row, each year harder than the last.

Big Capri-Sun sucking hole was yet to bother it’s arse and climb up into the sky, so I saw no point bothering my arse opening the blinds - on clear mornings I could see David & Goliath sitting proud from this new gaff, the sun hanging out just above them. But not on these mornings, the mornings for the past two weeks at been besotted with a thick low laying fog that had the effect over the days of making them appear to be standing deadly still, as though they were dead - Belfast had been under siege, the fog fully investing the town - a procession that could be seen as His Hand laying down a punishment of Divine proportion for whatever misdemeanour had occurred.

It was a gorgeous enough view when the fog cleared, rows and rows of council housing with rooftops glistening and smoke slowly climbing into the sky, then dissipating away into the nothingness. I would sit and think to myself, ‘By God, there’s a beauty in all this noise!’ - so many lives and strangers I’d never come to know, each with their own agendas and souls reaching for something more. Not this morning, this morning the blinds were shut - cold dark room, meditating over a smoke - slowly booting up in the stagnant air - still smoke orbiting my head, like a Halo - only there was nothing Holy about all this. Sure, stale smoke was my musk now, O smoke - cling to my hair and the fabric of everything I own - you, and that smell of damp.

It was still dark by the time Mr. Smith described his dreams as Heaven - I could barely remember my own. I made it a ritual first thing in the morning, along with my morning smoke, to try and recall whatever it was I dreamt of the night previous. Somedays I’d wake up and lifetimes had passed - full of the victories and failures that all lifetimes surely contain. Other mornings I’d wake up and it’d be as though seconds had passed, I’d die and go somewhere for a few hours every night then become born again back into this cold chamber - torn from the womb once more. Blind and sober as we all were at the beginning. Last nights dream had something to do with a horse, of that I’m sure - I was riding a horse or the horse was taking me for a walk, leash around my neck - thick chain. It was one of the two, the memories are conflicting. I remember clearly though the horse laying down, with it’s back legs kicked out behind it like a dog - and I’m nearly one hundred percent sure horses can’t bend themselves in that way (I’m not the informed authority however). I couldn’t figure out the message it was trying to send, strange.

Dreams must be the stand-alone-isolated-indicators of deep seated marvel held within the dreamers heart, expressed half-heartedly through the medium of the human subconscious - usually leaving us with far more questions than answers.

The man who lived in the apartment below me sounded like a horse, maybe that was it - all guttural and hoarse. His bedroom was directly below mine, I could hear the bastard snoring and getting on constantly - I think he was always asleep, I could hear him spluttering away. Anytime I met him on the stairs he had dark bags under his eyes and spoke very little, just kinda grunted or neighed - exactly like a horse. I knew he was sad, I could see in his eyes - the way he held them. He had a face composed of brackets, commas, empty quotation marks, slants - the mosaic that composed the formula of his face was like that of the slick muscled body of a stallion unable to run free. His long sad snores would rise up through the floorboards and penetrate my subconscious - infiltrating my thoughts and taking sub-physical form in my dreams. There’s something sad about people going to bed, I knew this Horse-Man couldn’t give a fuck whether he fulfilled his waking dreams, so he resigned to the exploration of sleep dreams - maybe he would never find the answer of his unspoken ‘big idea’ - “why the fuck am I here?” … I knew I needed to figure out if a horse could lay down the way I had seen … it was just another piece of the puzzle.

After I thought all I needed to think about horses I rolled one more smoke, sparked it, and watched it roll around my index finger and thumb in delicate little movements, tracing the trajectory of the smoke, giving life to the filter, bestowing on it the grace of subtle motion. Meditation complete, I made my way to the pisser. I left a trail of ash as I went, and when I got to the bowl I filled it with pish so auburn it teased scarlet. If hadn’t of been there watching you’d of thought someone poured a pint of grapefruit juice down the bog. When I was a wee man I was obsessed with the colour of my piss - it was a necessity for it to be a pale green colour or I’d lose the rag. Pale green eyes of piss staring back up at me as I leered into the bowl - I think Lou Reed wrote a song about that once. It wasn’t for health reasons I became obsessed with it, I hadn’t a notion why it changed colour - I just found it mad how our bodies spoke back to us, the body kept score - all that shit. If I was knackered I’d go take a piss, if it was dark I knew all I needed was a glass of water and I’d be grand. It’s only as I’ve got older it’s became twisted - I know now if I drink certain things, eat certain dishes - my piss would talk back. If I drank red wine it got all syrupy and thick, like pineapple puree or orange juice with bits. If it was lager then it would be fizzy, like a pint of Harp. If I ate Sugarpuffs it smelt sweet. Razorblades. Red. Blood. The piss perversion was born of all this.

Pissing complete, wheeling into the tedium of the kitchen now - I ping a Beroca into the smeared Guinness glass my ex-girlfriend got me two Christmases previous - I hadn’t washed it for days, it was like stained glass - not the Biblical kind, council estate bathroom window kind - filthy dirty kind, the kind that lays neglected and forgotten until it becomes of use again. I had a matching one with Conrad - my old German housemate, she had got us a pair because we were such good sports at the time - they had a wee toucan full flight; “Lovely day for a Guinness!” I’d imagine him to be saying. Conrad took his when we left that old house, off to his new house - likewise with myself. Two glasses once thought to be a pair, torn away from one and other.

The hiss and sizzle of vitamin-C was to be the soundtrack of my breakfast, which was to be; Creamfields greek yogurt: four tablespoons, Tesco’s own brand chocolate clusters: three tablespoons, Holland & Barrett seed mix: one tablespoon, layered with a thick layer of ‘honey’ - the kind of honey that isn’t even honey anymore, honey so far removed from the origin of honey that it’s fucked you even refer to it as honey. I eyeballed the coffee for the French-press - that was left to the capable hands of God, His reason considerably more competent than mine. This whole scene cloaked in the dull yellow of the kitchen light - a private sun, given up on shining.

Like the light, I’ve known people to resign from the act of distinguishing what ‘is’ from ‘isn’t’. Slán go fóill the formless fragments of resigned resolution and tattered inner worlds.

My flat mate was away for his Christmas holidays, off to Portugal to see his Portuguese missus. He was some form of rapper, a Christian rapper - God fearing and such - meaning he rapped about the biblical merits of our Lord and Saviour. I never listened to any of his tunes, so I could never know for certain - I couldn’t be arsed figuring it out. He was devote, I was not - there was little middle ground between us. He hated drink in the house, I loved a drink in me. Sex before marriage was a mortal sin, I couldn’t even conceive the notion of marriage - you expect me to abstain? Indefinitely? We shared the same space and that was about as far as our relationship went. I needed a place to rest my head at night, to store all my shite, to sleep off whatever it was that needed slept off and he was a friend of an ex’s brothers current girlfriend and had a spare room going.

It was just me battering about that house at Christmas then, a hungry ghost, filling rooms with smoke that would eventually go stale. Layers upon layers of stale smoke - lapping up and over one and other, vying for dominance - a place where there was no upper hand to be had. The clothes horse that lay there just before the window had recently been dressed in a bulk of damp clothes, and I had no money for fabric fresheners - so with the cold of the room they would eventually stink, meaning I would stink wearing them - it was all a cycle I had become used to. I had those wee pods you’d fire in with the clothes, but it was barely enough for them - would’ve been just as effective running them under the tap or wearing them in the shower. Mind when kids were scranning those things online? There was a warning on the package and everything; “NOT FOR CONSUMPTION” - frightening thought that there. Maybe if the companies stopped making them look so fucking tasty it wouldn’t be a problem, all sleek and sweet looking. Begs the questions though - what do they taste like? Those laundry biscuits…

I’ve been occupying my life now with these ‘splendid roles’ of a Heart that propels forward but is snagged on an undergrowth - content yet growing bored of the necessities of luxury when life is lived comfortably - I wish to invent a life of action !.. yet my soul is tethered. I’m sure if someone was to walk through the door and rattle me round the ‘jas I wouldn’t have a scooby how to move happy within, because my ‘dry delights’ would be lost, and I would long for the midnight recollections of their sing-song-illusion. I’m twenty-four … I’m so-sure-blasé-not-so-native-son … I’m scared of living outside these streets, I’m comfortable with the cadence of our tongue.

I’m at an impasse, ‘up to my neck in weeds’ so to speak - unimportant drivel for someone outside of the ‘know’ but of the upmost significance to myself. I ask the questions, ponder big ideas - “where do I run when I feel my necessary madness diminish ?.. do I still shuffle my feet at the going out of the light ..?” - maybe the truth lies in cessation, yet I lack the constitution for finality. A stationary soul creeps up on you, the rot doesn’t reek until it’s roots are sank deep. Fukn yopa!

I’ll keep on treading fading footprints.

Thick odour of humming damp clothes swamped the room in a heavy musk and proved the perfectly imperfect compliment to the dry chocolate covered breakfast I had treated myself to this morning - the dry chocolate covered breakfast of a child who was trying under the pretence of adulthood to give off an aura of ‘put togetherness’. I remember saying when I first moved into this new gaff that I was really gonna ‘start cooking’ - both literally and metaphorically. It would be Turkish eggs one morning then Spanish omelettes the next, tartifleetes, cornetto, fresh fruit, all different shapes and sizes of Parisian pastries - nice coffee! Yet here I sat, eating the same dry pellets I had been for the past four months - four months of dog food. A bachelors breakfast - practical and plain. I hadn’t bothered my arse for any of it, it was too fucking cold to stand and make something complicated - the cold plays on you, you don’t want to move too much, all stiff - just stay perfectly still, huddle into yourself - pray for some respite.

In our lives we eventually turn a corner where no new sensation can happen, the supposed completion of all experience - for new pleasure we retrace our steps back through it all, in the hope of a fresh angle, a break in the case - and there you will find it, yourself again.

Through the chinks in the armour of the horse in the window, I could see the day finally breaking. The sun was getting it’s arse up and over the peak of Black Mountain - offering the promise of another day renewed. Cars had started piling into the street below - I lived at a junction, where all the lines that connected East Belfast intersected and spat cars out in all directions. In the weeks previous to this morning I had imagined the streets jutting out increasing more every which way, with invisible workmen plowing through dirt and stone to create an even greater technological landscape than the one already carved out - looking out on this pulsing terrain I realised that the boundaries of my vision were all artificial .. that the hills of Belfast had merged with the junctions, that Earth’s Gift had wed with the human proclivity for domination. Nothing stands out against the background anymore, as often occurs when the fog takes hold - the shadows sink back into the nothing.

Folks would be throwing themselves out of bed much like I had done, bundling themselves into a wagon and making the commute to only God knows where. Five days a week we would all rise together, five days a week selling five days just to make sure there was coffee in the pots and petrol in the motor, all just to make sure we could make it there five days. The thought of there commute reminded me of my own - I rolled another smoke for myself at the kitchen table to get me on my way and sparked it as I opened the cupboard where I kept all my gear. It genuinely was a cupboard - my room was big enough for a bed and a bedside table, nothing else - meaning I was very graciously given a cupboard in the kitchen to store my shit which in reality should’ve been filled with crockery or scran yet here I was, sifting through stinking clothes in the middle of the kitchen. I pulled out a pair of black Dickies with a cigarette hole where my dick would live, I picked the damage up that time I was partying in the Lands and passed out on the sofa - I would’ve stayed there too if it hadn’t of been for the feeling of burning flesh and the smell of singed pubic hair. It wasn’t that much of an issue (the cigarette mark that is, finding out I liked getting burnt with smokes was a resounding success) except that if I wore white boxers everyone would know about it - black boxer day you’re sweet as a beat but on a day like today where it was to be white I would be left feeling a little exposed to things - sure look fuckit, if every cunt was to know then every cunt was to know. The shirt had a stain on the front fairly reminiscent of the Maldive Islands - maybe coffee - some stains are impossible to wash out, especially on an economy wash. I couldn’t remember when it happened, couldn’t even remember where the Maldives were or what they looked like - sure only God was to know these things. I took off the layers I was wearing and fired these new layers on, - those thirty seconds - Jesus Christ - those thirty seconds standing there naked, long long time. Cold creeping up around me, sending fissures and tremors through my skeleton, shortening the length of my breaths. I had to take extra care not to inflict any more damage with the lit smoke, and the ash was tumbling down forming a neat pile of the floor - sure I’d just clean it when I got back, there was no-one keeping tabs on these things - no-one was paying the mind it’s dues.

The morning was getting away for me, as it often did in the cold months - and it was a sure fire fact if I didn’t get my arse down the road and into the city I’d be autographing another late slip - my third one in as many months. I slipped into my socks and shoes, the left one and then the right - always in that order. I’d come to wearing two pairs of socks over the top of each other, not so much because of the season but because of my left shoe biting away at one specific spot on my left foot. They were an old pair of Doc Martens, tattered and chewed - a pair I’d found in a charity shop in Holywood. I preferred things that looked lived in, I’d wager they had seen a great many more years than I had - more manmade experiences too. I wore them to Rome a few months ago, battering about the city in a pair of beaters - aul Italian fellas looking on in disgust at the busted leather - “Shame!” one went as far as saying. I never got the need to be perfect all the time, the illusion of perfection was a notion I didn’t subscribe too, in my head no-one was without some form of dirt - wether that be internal or external. In my case, both. The boots sat and chewed at that same spot, if I wasn’t so used to it by now they would impede things, but they were home now - as much a part of me as my own two feet, I was at peace with them. An old boss of mine suggested I go see a foot specialist on the Lisburn Road, to sort out that rough patch - I wasn’t fussed on the idea of someone fucking around with my feet, they were a sacred spot - I didn’t even get them out when I was fucking, besides - everyone looks better naked with a pair of socks on. I’d actually even go as far to say that podiatrists have a few undisclosed desires of their own they’re unwilling to share - it’s an odd enough line of work to end up in. I’d read once that the part of your brain that handles foot stimulation was neighbours with the part that handles fucking or getting head / pulled off. The thoughts just hop over the line, the pleasure transfers.

I lived on the top floor of these flats, above a hairdressers in which the owner owned me - he was a short feline man with a boyfriend closer in age to me than he. He didn’t give much of a fuck about what I got up to in the flat, I’d flirt with him during inspections which kept him sweet and he’d continue to let me smoke inside. He even lowered the rent one month on account of a particularly good ‘inspection’, he had come over and I made him a cup of tea and wore the tightest white vest I owned. He didn’t even look the flat over - I let him fumble about with the imprint of my erect dick pressed against the grey paint covered joggers I was wearing, I imagined the lines on his forehead, the crowfeet sprouting beside his eyes, to be the rigid lines of some long mechanical vessel ushering me to some far-off gated place, hidden away from all this noise - heat, blood and semen were the fuel that would send me along, firing forwards along the bullet-train of my dick. All this was under the pretence that one day I’d invite him up and fuck him stupid. I knew he was a bottom, I could feel it with every word he spoke, every glance he gave - he’d roll over on his stomach and show me his soft belly - holding on to hope that just maybe today was the day he was getting bent over the glass kitchen table. His rotten smile, one that induced a fear within akin to revelation - fear first discovered on the receding of lips to show bared teeth leaving an imprint on my soul, nourishing and developing the monster that I thought to be living inside me, cloaked deep within, inhabiting all the dark places - a phantom activated by a rotten smile in the artificial light. You’ve got to work with the tools good gave you, I learnt this pretty early on.

The sun was pouring through the skylight on the stairs, near enough blinding me. It was part of my commuting ritual to stop on the penultimate step and bathe in the sunlight. Sometimes I’d stand for ages, letting the light in, letting it lick all around - I let it kiss and suck and caress every inch of exposed skin, I let it dig it’s fingers into the roots of my hair. In these moments it was easy to get into my senses, it was easy to just think of me, the sun and that penultimate step. Daily practices like these are important, a few times a day make love to the moment - my days were made up of these now, they broke up the mundanity of it all, kept everything fresh, exciting. Without these moments all I would be is a half-formed cumshot grown within my Mother, cooked on medium low for nine months and then pushed out and forced to make sense of the sobering experience of living second to second.

Maybe that’s the trouble with it. The trouble with being born. Year by year, day to day - thinking what to do and what to say. The mental tax of hearing yourself speak, then the procession of your minds reply. Ballix. No way to switch it off unfortunately, well - no way that isn’t ultra-permanent. Like I’ve said, I lack the constitution for finality.

Morning in full swing now - with cars bating about every which way whooping deep mechanical yaps if another cut them off at the lights which brought the road into the street. I always got so anxious walking alongside cars, especially in busy junctions such as this. Not so much because of the danger of it all, I couldn’t give a fuck if I was clipped by a motor - imagine the claim! It was more about the people inside the motors, sitting there in a metal cage, looking out at me on my ones and twos over the tarmac. These cunts thought they were better than me, flying about, getting places quicker than I could - I never even tried to get my license, never on the radar. I knew I couldn’t afford one of those wagons, so it felt pointless learning how to use one. Still the feeling of inferiority sat in my chest, I tried to choose routes in which I wouldn’t meet much traffic - but here it was unavoidable, what with living on a main road - this was an exposure therapy of sorts, sink or swim - so very fried.

Although the sun sat proud in it’s big ocean of blue the fog hung low about my head, and the December gales were still strong enough to cut you in two irregardless of the precipitation in the air - I tried to prepare for adverse weather always, as for me anyway - there’s nothing worse in this world than being too fucking cold. The wind as well had me raging, something embarrassing about being tossed about - I found myself in the undertow, jammed underneath an unrelenting and ceaseless torrent that scoops up from the ground and threatens to unearth all - I was like Marilyn Monroe or something. That bastard wind was even worse when it wed with the rain, it would come sideways and hit the ground then bounce up - umbrellas would do fuck all, would just make the winds job easier in battering me. Templemore Avenue had become one great big long wind tunnel, leading a full frontal assault against me - for no fucking reason. I lost an earphone a few weeks ago, one of those wireless ones you just set in there - now I don’t know if it’s the wind or the size of my ears but the cunt just flew across the road interrupting Eyes without a Face - now I’m usually a desperate enough person but I’m not lowering myself to the level of desperation that fumbling about a busy street for Billy Idol would bring me - I resolved what was for me surely wouldn’t end up behind me.

The Glider stop was what should of been a two minute walk (but now a ten minute walk) from my apartment. At this time of the morning - prime commuter time - one would be stopping every six minutes. Every single one would be packed to the gills, with my stop being one of the last before the city centre - a full journey from Dundonald picking up every cunt under the sun. It wasn’t so much the bodies taking up space, it was the big stupid fucking appendage everyone had on their back - backpacks, knapsack, rucksacks whatever the fuck they’re called - no-one could rotate themselves properly for fear they’d knock some poor bastard into no-mans-land - that area in the middle of the Glider with nothing to hold onto. If you were no good at surfing or skating you were gone. Plain and simple. You’d be left there praying for the good grace of strangers to offer out an arm - but there was no good grace on the G1 through East Belfast. I had elected to stop carrying a backpack months ago anyway, I couldn’t be arsed carrying the same sandwich that wouldn’t be ate and the same book that wouldn’t be read - I was barebacking commutes now, completely naked as far as the working man was concerned.

Approaching the stop I came to recognise the usual suspects with which I had become accustomed and acquainted - although none of us spoke we all shared a common plight. There was those two young boys in school uniform munching on a sausage roll from the shop up the road, then there was that North-African looking fella in his chefs whites, smoking darts back to back - pacing back and forward. A rough looking musicians with tattered trench coat, guitar and hopeless expression (I always wanted to try strike up a conversation) and finally a young women with a laptop bag the size of her torso, struggling with the thing - I imagine it weighed as much as herself.

I always thought the stop resembled a police lineup, we would all stand there looking blankly across the road at the orange lodge across the way - if we were lucky we could bare witness to the pet shop man rearranging his shop front - looking on it horror as he poured bags full of live insects into clear boxes. I couldn’t work out if they were for sale as pets or pet food - I hadn’t the courage to head over and ask. As I watched him I could feel my eyes drawn upwards towards the sky, where a propeller plane was taking off from City Airport - we were directly underneath the flight line and it still sat low enough to see the pulsing of it’s takeoff lights piercing through the fog. I thought of it as a kind of archangel in the sky, beaming down on Belfast - taking stock and keeping note of all the saints, sinners and revellers. I followed it until it was directly overhead then traced my eyes back down towards street level - loosing myself in a storm drain, it’s mouth wide open and gaping at the point where the pavement met the road - footwear of various brands beating away over the top of it, tapping out a nonsensical rhythm across the tarmac - the soundtrack of the day. What lay below this city, a whole world I couldn’t fathom - this would remind me of a Tom Waits song - ‘Underground’ - The rattling of big black bones in the danger zone, the dark towns, mine shaft roads, roots hanging down from town to town - there was a whole world going on below our feet. I bet there were no Glider stops down there.

Life was there for me to see, me and my entourage - questioning the logic of Machines through the fog of Port-City air - carrying secret messages from God to God, whispered in a language that our technology couldn’t fathom - the shape of a Heart haunts me, it taunts them - I see them everywhere, yet not in Machines. I have to regulate this inner proclivity towards life - established under the ever loving grace of blood.

We all stood motionless watching the Glider carving it’s way through the fog … the hazy quality of the air making it as though we were confronted with an apparition … purple vinyl pouring through the days cracks - lurching toward with an incessant wave of traffic kept tight in tow … the faces of passengers through car windows formulating an unnerving gallery of placidity - the stagnant energy of our twenty-first century … not powerful enough to propel anyone toward a new orbit but retaining enough kick to tighten the scene. Us commuters all stood resigned to our half-baked threadbare philosophies - the world becoming a slowly motioned pause, waiting for ‘more news from nowhere’ … embracing our combined palpitations beneath the weight of route G1’s forty-eight stations.

The fella smoking darts took a long stride out from our impromptu police lineup and left the toes of his left foot dangling off the pavement into the bus lane. Franticly he waved his arm at this Great Big Purple Beast as it edged towards him, coming for his toes - he had made a flesh windmill of himself. I always thought waving down a bus or Glider was a wild thing to be at - surely your man operating the big yoke was gonna pull in if he saw ones standing at the stop. It all felt very pathetic, panicked and forced. Desperation to make it to work. A blind panic to be punctual. I found it all very strange. Everyone, myself included, went for their phone to quickly download a ticket, or fingered their pockets in search of a yLink card. I slipped my hand into the right pocket of my trousers where my phone usually lived but it wasn’t home - I did the dance we all do when looking for something on your person - slapping arse, cheek and stomach in search of a mobile shaped growth. I’d taken to leaving my phone at home in recent times due to the fact that I’d been thinking, I shouldn’t have been but I had been, and all this thinking lead me to a point - a conclusion, culminating in convincing myself there were demons in my phone, and as a direct consequence of this - I developed a phobia of it. I thought I knew when the wheels were beginning to rattle, because the edges of my bedsheets would come undone and I’d be content in leaving them in such a way. Turns out I’m no regular commuter and producer dressed in tatty two piece shirt and tie. I just felt that I was living through the thing you see, one vibration and I’d come. All the hours would pass through the looking glass, and I’d grow worried that all my years would begin to show. The looking glass was the phone, even through it looks to nowhere in particular .. - I’m really forcing the symbolism here, but there’s a distinct lack present - metaphor and symbols are the pagan religion of bullshitters - the phone has been, will be and is being.

No ticket. I felt a knot tighten in my chest, skin slid over flesh and bone. I wrapped the hair from the back of my head around my right index finger - a typical anxious response from myself, pulling strands of hair out in the quest to climb back inside my body.

I had promised to start buying tickets from this point out - a few months previous I had made it my mission to not give Translink another penny, on account of the rising prices of tickets - in my mind public transport meant public transport, for the public irregardless of financial circumstance. It was also just a real thrill evading the fare - the whole journey just became a pile of ‘what ifs’. Usually I’d just fire the music on when I used a bus or train, zoning out - disassociating. Not when I used a Glider though, not when I was Glider Hopping - I had to be completely present, it was meditative. In essence I became a form of prey, prey to the purple clad Glider Police - I returned back to my ancestral form, a naked monkey once again. It was all very exciting, and filled the mundanity of my mornings with much needed oomph - I actually grew to look forward to morning commutes, it didn’t matter if the thing was bunged - I was committing petty crime. A saboteur. Flying underneath the radar of ‘Big Transport’ and pulling the rug from under them. It was a form of Edge Work, and I was the willing Edger. I was fined after a while, scooped a cracker by the Glider Police - some fat old doll carrying a fourteen inch pizza climbed on - I just assumed she was cleared up for the day and wouldn’t be inspecting any tickets - but of course she came over to me (and only me) with her Pepperoni-Passion-Waft and asked in her dull tone if I had a ticket. - I turned to her then and said something along the lines of ‘awk wise up love go home and enjoy your pizza aye' - but she wasn’t having it, she was pretty adamant that I had to pay the fine for having no ticket - this stupid bastard - this was some cosmic joke at my expense I thought, I felt singled out - betrayed by my kin - this smelly pepperoni eating bitch who was just an everyday average person like I was was willing to fine me for refusing to pay the heightened fair. I gave her a fake name and all but it was besides the point, I told her I was from up West which I most certainly was not - it’s the principle of the whole thing that annoyed me really. In submitting to the whims of this Glider-Bitch I was obeying a dominating order which my conscience found impossible to serve, for if I was to bend, I would break - and a morally pompous Glider Hopper would become nothing more than a bedside soother of a plum coloured conquerer. I mind telling my girlfriend about the ordeal, expecting some support and tender love due to my mistreatment - we had been living together for a few months prior to this, and I could tell she was getting fed up by me and my ‘ideals’ - this was the straw that broke the camels back, she was raging I couldn’t just behave like a normal person - which I suppose in hindsight was completely fair. I had my morals, my principles - and they were all I was ever going to have when I lay on my death bed waiting for the big sleep to come on. She packed all my things up and off I was - that’s why I’m living with this do-gooder Christian and that’s why I whore myself out to my pervert landlord for cheap rent - I blamed Translink for it all - but I resolved that I’d stop Glider Hopping and behave myself. These bastard Gliders had already taken so much. Fifty quid fine, I didn’t pay a single penny.

The Glider was basically on top of me now, and as I peered through the bodies onboard I couldn’t spy any Purple Jackets - I’d take my chances - I was about to relapse, Glider Hopping once again. I inhaled a deep drink of the cold December air and stepped over the threshold, armed with only a handful of wiry black hair.

There’s a certain politics involved when it comes to how the Glider divides itself up - I had coined it ‘Glider Politics’ - and it’s in the Glider Hoppers best interests to keep this unspoken covenant well in mind when climbing aboard the Purple Lacquered Slut in hopes of a cheap ride. You’d find hugging the perimeters close to the sliding doors school children, teenagers, overspill from the congested central areas and uninitiated Glider Hoppers. The act of Glider Hopping involves a relatively simple set of tactics, yet complete attention is required to manifest absolute success - keep dick on the stop ahead and if you spot a ‘Purple Jacket’ (Glider Police) hop off ta fuck. The less experienced Hopper might stop and engage when they feel an arm spread out across them, might shite themselves so to speak when talk of fines and that are brought up - let it be known, if the cunt tries to stop you, walk on. They’re not Peelers, no need for bending, baby - keep the head. I’ve seen a Purple Jacket twist men and women in strange strange ways, it’s nearly as though the polypropylene fibre of the jacket coupled with the plum tones morph the common man into a hard-headed-boot-licking-pillar-of-the-upper-percentiles. Maybe it’s an Eastern-psy-op of the Stanford Prison variety. Note how quickly a born commoner will become a vindicator of a system that does not serve them, note how quickly they’ll turn on their kin. I need it to be known, it’s not the fault of the individual - my qualms are not with the humans underneath The Jacket, but rather the effect of authority over the person - rot sets in and interactions become hostile and dehumanising, sense of self is heightened by a stupefying amount, all matters of the soul become tainted - a mould develops that will never wash off.

On the corrugated seats surrounding the door you had regular commuters just eager to make it to work, not even taking their backpacks off for fear of fumbling the vital three seconds with the door ajar, bastard ! scuppered again ! - over the ear headphones, volume wacked up full blast - some bullshit podcast on the spiritual merits of small ‘kindness’s’ (?), or maybe a discussion on Forex, where best to place you’re coin, whose palms to grease, whose pockets to line. One boy has a copy of ‘How to win friends and influence people’ neatly ensconced on his lap, both his hands holding gently the sides so as it doesn’t ‘fly of the handle’ of his plump thighs - it’s like a newborn babe statement of intent that maybe some day he will win a friend ! and he will influence a person ! - mixed in around this fella was a confusion of the elderly, the pregnant, the less manoeuvrable of society. Circumstance had robbed these ones of the athleticism required to navigate a Glider in motion.

The Glider and The Body - constant velocity, invisible intercourse - the casual intimacies exerted over me by this Purple Bitch. The science of the matter is lost on me, but I know there’s a shift in terms of motion between The Glider and The Pavement. A surprisingly high amount of balance, coordination and stamina is required when tackling the trip, staying upright on the yoke can be difficult enough when snaking about the Greater Belfast Metropolitan Area. Like I say, it’s surfing the waves, ice-skating, upright-doggy. I keep a slight bend in my knee at all times (slight forty-five degree angle usually works best) - push the pelvis up from the hilt, wrap a forearm around the varnished appendages, feet shoulder width apart with an upward bend of the foot (think ten to two ten to two ten to two) - ankle support, so very necessary. Keeping a strong grip onto one of the many hands available was a must, She reaches out to you and offers a palm - an opportunity for stability. My personal favourite was the dangling digits above my head, erotism gushing from them - like some kind of BDSM prop. I’d be able to ebb and flow with the movements of Her, as she turns over I’d go with, I’d chase her around the streets of Belfast - we would lock in a state of still synergy, we’d become eternal, I was dirt. As a true Glider Hopper, and to showcase my devotion, I developed my grip strength through the use of basmati rice in a fuck off bucket - I’d open my hands, feel the rice resisting the trajectory of my movement, pushing against my will - some nights I’d think then of my fingers wrapping around the love handles of The Glider. I’d think of how many fingers had squeezed at the cold touch points - I’d build mythologies surrounding a mechanical gangbang happening right below our noses. TransLink felt like a brutish pimp, for a fiver I’d have a twenty minute go - my notions would become muddled.

The sexual personae of the Glider suffused with my own sexual intricacies some months ago now. I was still with my girlfriend, the girlfriend who was growing tired of hearing Robert Smith in the mornings, and I had been let off work early for the reason of the gaff being dead as fuck - it was that quiet period between Halloween and Christmas, no-one was swalling much due to the impending loom of Christmas pints. Myself and the missus hadn’t been getting on, as I’ve described previously, due to my rampant idealism on this and that so I took myself around to that dive bar down the alley with the stiff chick in a short skirt - her backdoor beauty eyes … Grace. She was a muse, in more of a sense than I ever meant the word - not just her appearance (she was fucking gorgeous let it be known) but her demeanour, her philosophy - she was like Genet, or Millar, Nin, Céline, Byron, Bolaño- whatever gallivanting romantic you can imagine - moving through life fucking and eating and living and ‘being’. I was under the weight of the horn big style, and my desire to act was only lessened by my surrender to moral obligation.

This particular day she got off about an hour after I - sweet mother of coincidence - and suggested we drink a-bit then catch a Glider up the road and check out this new spot that had just opened in East, her mate was playing a gig blah blah I’d tag along. Standing at the stop I explained my obsession with Glider Hopping, with nearly perverted vigour - she was all for it - so using all my expanded upon knowledge we skipped the fair and Hopped on.

I’d had a wack of pints by this point, the sweet point so to speak where the tongue and inhibitions are loosened to such a degree than depravity is near a inevitability - Grace asked me to take the seat closest to the window, near the back of The Bitch - it wasn’t crowded at all - surprisingly dead considering the time of night. She was wearing a pleated skirt and a pair of fishnets with depictions of a flamboyant Crucifix etched throughout - they were chewed at, ripped in bits. I watched as her wandering left hand explored the contours of the seat ahead, meandering across the precipice and then Gliding along the railing, pausing over the ‘STOP’ button, teasing it with her ring and middle finger. Seizing me, as though some kind of serpent engulfing a rat, she worked her free hand through an opening in my liberally buttoned shirt and clamped my left nipple between her index finger and thumb - suspending me in a position of lust aboard this hollow shell of glass, metal and vinyl. Her two legs spread like the spreading of the Glider doors after the Green Button is fingered and I moved a free hand over the curves of her hips and legs, imagining them to be the plastic edges of the seats in which we were sitting - I tore a hole big enough to fit a hand through her dilapidated fishnets like the busted faux fabric of a worn out Glider seat. I found her to be already wet in a mixture of diesel, oil and brake fluid. I worked my fingers over the STOP sign of her clit, each time I applied pressure the DING! came out as a moan. She swung a leg over me in as close to a state of trance as she’d ever known while I fumbled with the seatbelt buckle of my belt and pressed my now erect dick across her clitoris, this surge of excitement brought about in me the first surge of cum to trickle down the exhaust of my penis. I thought of all the rules in which we were breaking together - fair evasion, public indecency, infidelity - I thought of purple clad Glider Police lurking under illuminated shelters waiting to scoop me for skimping on a fiver …. both Grace’s elbows were planted into the plum scented vinyl about my head as the automated voice above called out “NEXT STOP: HOLYWOOD ARCHES” and during the halt brought about by the bell the Glider started jolting quickly to a stop - I felt in her the first rising frenzies of an orgasm - all her human qualities; the small beauty mark above her left nipple, the scar on the inside of her thigh, her long subtle fingers - were all contained within the long, bending walls of the Glider - the benevolence of both her and it’s sexual technology.

After this experience, we both decided to make a regular occurrence of our mutually beneficial perversion. We fucked on buses, she tossed me off in taxis, I ate her out in carparks - my erection was brought about by the thought of misdemeanour and the harmony of her bends with those of A Machine. She brought me back to her house after one drunken night, which was to be our first time fucking in a bed - bread and butter style. I couldn’t get it up, she took me in her mouth, I stuffed it in soft - no dice. On the short car journey home we stopped in a gym carpark close to mine and we fucked for what was to be our last time - I remember the exact details of her final orgasm - her pushed into the leather of her carseat (shuddering), my hands in the arch of her back as though it were the contours of a motor bridge, the jut of her pubis as she drove ninety MPH into mine, her hands applying pressure to the steering assembly of my chest, the explosion of my cum (as though someone had taken out my catalyst converter) - I watched as a cocktail of our breaths materialised on the double plated passenger window, our breaths collecting and dissipating atop the glass .. my right foot playing with the gearstick - teasing it.

Herself threaded through by myself, we had become something other than ourselves in our perverse union of sex, technology and Edgework - we transform into strange subsections of ‘the other’ devoid of that which made us ‘he’ and ‘she’. With two minds placed in opposition, we divulge that which yearns to share in mutual pleasure. At my very moment of coming, I open to her the undisclosed desires of that which set me reeling against the glass wall of my consequence, and with her face (clouded over by her will to experience the maximum amount of ecstasy my idiosyncrasies offer) falls the countenance of an animal only concerned with the instant of individual transcendence. We can both be sure of one thing, that at the summit of both our pleasure a secret hatred looms around the framed edges of our heart. In the bedrooms of skewed love, perversion is the orange zest hiding in the background of a well crafted Old Fashioned - it’s presence isn’t always remembered, but when it’s devoid - it’s felt.

That all ended as quickly as it began, and here I am again - Gliderhopping.

It must of been a few weeks ago now, maybe two ? (I digress, it’s all a matter of minutiae) - that I watched some poor potbellied wallpaper bastard climb on just in time before the Glider doors turned him into a airbag sandwich. There was fuck all room nowhere and in hindsight he probably should’ve just stood waiting for the next one but alas his desperation for punctuality prevailed and he was stuck like a matchstick rotated on it’s axis - with no space to get a good grip at Her he was forced to stand slap bang in the middle of no-mans land. Everyone, myself included, lit a candle within our heads for our soon to be tatty bread comrade as the door slid shut and the Glider slinked off - you could see the bones around his jaw tightening and his skin stretched with those two big eyes widening, big stupid look of panic befalling his countenance. Nearly as quickly as we had taken off he fell straight back into me, with his big fuck off commuter backpack landing right in the middle of my sternum - with one clenched fist I drove it right into the small of his back sending him propelling off forward in a pinwheel motion of lost cause - maybe not the most neighbourly of things to be at but what the fuck am I to do - I’m in the business of self interest and my self interest directly correlates to how upright I can stand, there’s no point in two men sinking when one can do. Fear-of-God man was sent straight into a group of twats to my front, who gave him that good good neighbourly love that I had just treated him too - this fleshed coated pinball was rattling about the Glider floor now like a blue-arsed fly, bag still tightly clad to his back - a testament to the buckles that bind him. No man, women or child extended their hand in an offering of help - Christiandom was dead here. We had killed God within the confines of the Glider - all His children standing resolute in their insolence, their eyes bouncing back and forth at the game of tennis taking place on the sticky Glider floor.

I knew not the efforts made to clean these yokes, I knew not the names and faces of the men and women who climbed aboard at the death of service for the purpose of rebirth - but I did know it to be impossible to rid The Thing of the residue of passengers-gone-by. The heel marks of a variety of trainer brands around the footrests persisted still, a pink Lost Mary long forgotten and replaced jammed roughly between the backrest and arserest of the seat, an unfashionable shade of lipstick slarried around the teat, strange scratches across the matte vinyl seats - evidence perhaps of a struggle? Two lovers, quarrelling? It was nearly as if two apes had subjected each other to a vile display of baby making. As I eased into the journey, I was aware of the volumes of strangers who had taken this pilgrimage many times before, our shared journey through the streets of Belfast bringing us closer than we had been, the empty spaces between us far smaller - I thought of their escapes, their chores, their sexes, their nights, days, dreams and as their thoughts accosted mine my head emptied into the air, the thick fog slowly dissipates, I feel chain and wire slowly come undone - there is an idea, a notion even, that the simple act of just being alive, truly alive, is rebellion enough.

The internal mechanisms of the Glider operate in such a way to induce a dull harmony of placidity so as not to inspire any movement within the Hoppers Heart - the lights above our heads emitting a single tone without a flicker, much like the kitchen light. Everything was designed so as to provoke no grand feeling, to ask no question, to divinely uninspire. The font of the text describing the stops and route maps were smoothed out at the edges, information sliding along seamlessly projecting clear cut images of this and that. Pre-recorded messages, perhaps of an AI generated women, giving announcements - dictating where and when we’d climb off. Even the ring of the bell to announce a stop was sterile.

When I don’t assign my own secret meanings to the world in which I endure I happen upon the outright white-walled stupidity of it all, the more radical elements of my mythology push me towards the belief that perhaps this was all purposeful - that someone somewhere doesn’t want me asking questions of myself, but the older I grow the more I consign to the belief that maybe the simple truth of the matter is; we have crafted a stale existence. The evolutionary kink in which brought about our state of consciousness has perverted itself in such a way so as to live in fear of introspection - awk fuckit sure, the mind wanders …

Every morning I climbed on this Purple Shell and decided to pay my five pound fare I would switch off for the duration of the trip through East, there were no questions asked of me and I asked no questions of it - the feelings refused to rise. However, on the instances where the fare was avoided, where I saved myself five noop, I felt my hidden lines coloured with such luminosity, bursting this way and that way, falling between the cracks - I breathed air and for once actually tasted it. I could notice the underrepresented expressions on peoples faces as they confronted the thoughts stirring within themselves under the spotlight of dull light, devoid of empathy so to speak - yet still soaking in the casual intimacy of just existing. I could actually look out the window with the intention to see instead of just letting all the light reflect off everything and bounce back toward my eye with no mission.

Every time the Glider glided over Albert Bridge I could feel the heat of the sun beaming through a handprint smudged onto the window, left forgotten there by someone who I’d maybe walked past in time - the sun would break through the fog finally, clearing over the waterline, precipitation rising from the surface like an apparition - the sky serenading this whole scene with it’s flourishes of crimson from beginning to end, the water shimmering in subtle splendour, reflections shooting off along the meanders and bends softly carried along by a magnetic pull unfelt.

Perfect harmony maybe - on occasions life can be like this, small instants separate from the last, when it feels like the spaces between widen and give way to a completely new feeling, one of quiet. I have my nose firmly pressed against the glass of a one sided mirror, looking out toward this marsh - yet the shape makes no concessions. The mundanity of work meant nothing to me, nor the dry chocolate covered pellets from this morning and every morning hereafter (in-fact, during moments like this I noticed the aftertaste to be all that sweeter), nor the bite of this cold December air. Here I am, brought back into the world again, a slave to experience maybe ? alert, alive, present. Before, when I thought of moments like this, I would describe ‘strange music ringing out in my ears in fantastical tones’ but during reflection I know that’s not true, I’m merely stylising presence - there is no real noise in the now, a calm hand lays over everything - perhaps the hand of noncommittal death.

The fear and exhilaration of life in the borderline crescendos within my chest and reverberates through my arms and fingers, the edges of my mouth may perhaps break into a grin - teetering on the edge has a habit of bringing that which is disconnected together. I could hypothesise on the merits of Edgework for pages and pages, I could make a social commentary on the state of petty crime and why it’s committed, I could comment on perversion, conceptualisation … whatever whoever - I’m twenty-four, I barely understand myself - I leave questions of our collective soul to my future self, I’m still stuck on the puzzle of me. Like I said, I’m not a revolutionary, and have never claimed as such, my form of anarchism is one that aims at bringing my own private systems in about their head, it’s one that banks on my own self expression shining in such a way that the tether of obligation is snipped - that the weight on my chest weighs less heavy in time.

It’s funny the affect saving five pounds can have on you - the opportunity for twenty minutes to escape expectation because the only expectation is to sit still and let the Bitch move, slink round corners, Glide. Swimming in the intersection of days, because for the most part days pass without a hitch, nothing ever ‘really’ happens depending how you approach it - days collide with the following one and that’s it, unremarkable. Maybe I’ve let weeks pass me by like this, months, years. I’ve had too maybe years like this one now, doing nothing, moving nowhere, pulled along by the current of the long night - my life has been sterile except for a few ‘perfect moments’. I try to see the inspiration hidden within the mundane, I make love to what I can, I cry and die every time I step foot on a Glider. Maybe I’ll always go to work like I do, drink the same shite coffee, behave as usual - inside I’ll fight wars and win revolutions over self imposed tyranny.

I remember reading in a book once, some French author; he says - “inside I’ll live to the point of tears.” - I could spend forever figuring out what the fuck he meant.

We all Glided past Lanyon Place, rolling without obstacle - and thankfully there was no Purple Jackets to be seen, I had got away with it by the seems of things. All the adrenaline seemed to dissipate then, evaporating into the heavy air of the Glider’s body. I only had two more stops to go, until I reached City Hall. Glider Police never operate on May Street. In two stops I’d have to climb off the Glider and cross the road towards Margot, where I’d stand and wait for the nineA bus up the Lisburn Road. It was much more difficult to avoid the fair on a Metro, what with the bus driver sitting right there as you climbed aboard. Thankfully the buses were a more pleasant travel experience than the Glider, nowhere near as exciting, but far more pleasant. I hadn’t figured out how to Metro Hop yet, I don’t think there was such a thing as Metro Hoppers - but if there was I’m sure I’d find a way. I’ll have to keep on living I suppose, I’ll keep Hopping on towards death - I feel this assignment run deeply through my life, and I know it’s all merely coincidence - that philosophising the trivial aspects of existence is merely a symptom of existential dread, but what am I supposed to do when staring my inner life right in the face? At times like this I grow unsure of who to rattle for answers - those who go on living regardless of the circumstances of it, or those who died beneath the weight.