Eight street preachers
The first brandishes a filthy mirror. He is covered in a layer of powdered moth and has wet dog smell. He shouts, ‘Repent!’ and criticises people who are buying flatscreen televisions. ‘That’s right!’ he says, ‘That’s what you need! Stuff that’s more flat! Make stuff flatter!’ Girls have their photos taken with him, one arm around his shoulder, the other giving a thumbs-up. Look at their smiles. Are they really smiling? I love that guy – he’s crazy! He’s crazy! He has bits of teddy bear stitched to his army surplus jacket! I love it! I love him! Everything will be better, I think, if we just all walk our dogs more. They’re bored and need the exercise.
The second daubs slogans on a sandwich board she wheels behind her TV = ANTICHRIST, INTERNET = TOWR OF BABEL. The tobacconist donates the sweepings. She is overlooked by blindless apartments inhabited by exhibitionists exposing themselves to one another. No harm in ice cream. Did she just say no harm in ice cream? No harm in asking. The Arse King lives in apartment 203B. He moons from his second floor window, a crown perched on his lower back. ‘You’re not even of the authentically disenfranchised,’ we say to her. Our cigarettes are slightly better.
The third lists – as in to the left, as in writes lists. A sharply-dressed, parboiled Dutchman, he records every passer-by and their sin. Slack-jawed sensualist, morbid gastropod, malignant polymath. On balance he’s right. He manages an online franchise called The Baby Fans of Dracula, selling bibs, milkbottles, baby-sized bat-wings, all emblazoned with a logo designed by his friend, a designer. He preaches the serene bricolage: he loves television, especially really awful television. I just want to go for a drink today: I want the frail joy of drinking. ‘The world got a headache,’ he says.
The fourth wanders around city centres, Saturday nights shouting, ‘You fucking idiots! You cities of fucking idiots!’ Last week: Bristol. Next: Sheffield. He has a sword made of gold – all of his money went on this, but he is fine without a job. ‘I’ve always been upset by the angels with swords,’ I tell him. There are invisible things everywhere, waving their arms in alarm. When did we stop protecting one another? It’s all going to be fine if we can just find the last two fragments of the deleted animated feature film. I think there is a clue in your mattress. (This is just a ploy to get you into bed).
The fifth is college trained and gives PowerPoint presentations at non-denominational churches. Approach / Infiltration / Re-education. The child gangs must choose between the factories with their seemingly benign wardens and him, with his free doughnuts. He has a skateboard: this is mindless superstition. He’s so anti-pilgrimage when you talk to him that it spoils your beer. ‘You’re so anti-pilgrimage,’ you say to him. The pilgrimage implies all kinds of things the anti-denominational church is dead against, construes as idol worship, etc. But I can tell that my companions think I’m as bad as he is for even wanting to talk about it. ‘Apostates,’ I mutter into my pint.
The sixth, a former television producer, pours a carton of non-dairy creamer into his coffee and says ‘I think this will be a great time for outsiders.’ (‘With that haircut?’ we snortle. But then we feel bad: our hair isn’t so special either). There’s so much going on! He took a crisp, reduced some other crisps to a fine paste and moulded them into a tiny model crisp factory which he placed on the crisp. What flavour? YOU’RE TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT! He is sallow: looks like he lives on sticks of rock with insults printed through them. ‘A great time for outsiders, eh?’ say the outsiders, swiftly changing allegiance.
The seventh is an eight year old boy. He teaches in the Cultural Studies department, having received his PhD at the age of five. A notoriously soft marker, he convenes a popular module called The Campus in a Funhouse Mirror: Satirical Representations of the University in Contemporary Literature. His mother is on hand to shield his eyes.
The eighth wears a flack-jacket and throws tennis balls into the crowds and if one hits you, you’re cursed. He can say, ‘What did you expect to find here?’ in eleven languages and fifteen further regional dialects. ‘We all think these things, but he’s the only one brave enough to say them,’ says an idiot. The outsiders are working on their autobiographies and I am engraving the following into the chapel pilasers: “There is something a bit Establishment about autobiographies in and of themselves, n’est pa?”, but on the other hand I am so sick of having opinions about anything. Better, in the end, to have broken bread with you, in your non-existent boardrooms, without your even realising it.