The Human Resources Consultant

Tears stir just below the surface, it reminds me of live bait - I will think of my father, the grubs and worms he used when he fished, which is all he ever did after they shut the steelworks - I have to look straight into their eyes, I'm paid to do that, and I say '...your job is at risk' - their emotions are stampeded - they would cry, but you don't, do you? - the stink of gut oily fish on my redundant father, wasn't so unlike the stink of oil-smut and steel he used to carry home. Home. Work and home - they must be kept distinct - one cannot impinge on the other - it, it would be impossible - yet, they make this mistake, endlessly. It's the young that get it - though they get the least - they are never concerned with columns of figures, just the sum, the total at the bottom - they don't want to consult, they want it quiz show style - they see whatever they get as a prize - they're too young never to work again (they don't care if they never work again). The rest - those in livery, those in the cheap suits, right through to those in the bespoke, all of them - they 'empty out' - it's what makes it easy for me, they are deadened, an emotional fuse blown - hollowed, they leave the room, invited to take the rest of the day off - they leave the building - look out into the car park, you can see them in their cars, paused, hands on steering wheels, the office or factory evaporating, home looming large, larger than before - home colossal. You can insure against 'redundancy' - you can. There are those who are 'violent' - 'there, girl, your daddy's not going to hurt you, or me, or anyone - he's just expressing his anger, that's all - he's been ill-treated, and many of his friends, like Uncle Jus and Uncle Si, and he has to let it out, what he feels - he's shaking his fist at the moon, girl' - they pound the table - everything used to spring and clatter down, the plates, the cutlery, the glasses and bowls, everything skipping with each blow - 'who the fuck are you?' they'll accuse me, I state my name and my role (transposing the 'who the fuck are you!' I reply with inside) - and, yes, we are strangers - we're meant to be strangers - except, we are not. I've met them thousands of times, it's Groundhog Day for me. And they - they might not know who I am - but they care - they care who I am - it seems vital they know who I am - 'what are you?' some ask - I'm H.R.. Human Resources. I never say 'consultant', not to a punter - I prefer they associate me with 'head office', with some pantheon of bosses and directors - after all, I'm not to blame - I'm not the cause of job losses. I've even helped them find new employment, a few of them. Uncle Si found work - mother and I came South along with him - left my father on his riverbank - Uncle Jus followed soon after - of course, Uncle Si wasn't really my uncle, he was Uncle Just's best mate - they got on their bikes, they re-skilled - I haven't seen my father now in twenty years, I've told my kids that he's dead.

A Representative

What I do, is nothing.

I don't mean I do nothing. I'm a bleeding grafter. It's - just - it's like Tinkerbell - what I do it exists because it is seen to be done - it's believed because it is seen to exist. Do you get that? Tinkerbell is a figment of belief, and you want to believe in her or else she's not there to believe in.

I'm the knock, knock man - I'm a foot in the door. What I do, is I wrangle appointments with buyers, budget holders, with commissioning managers, with head honchos. If somebody wants an in with, say, Mister Elusive of IBM, or whatever, I go get.

It's self-employment, I'm self-made, I made me up, but it pays. I'll take a percentage of the profits on any volume business done via one of my introductions. I am 'Hicks-Sudbury Solutions'. I'm the Rep's representative. I'm Rumpelstiltbloodyskin spinning gold out of straw. The whole firm consists of me, myself, my iPhone, my laptop, a spanking website and my BMW. All I've got to sell is a need to believe in me. Nobody really looses out. So, I might persuade a client to purchase something that doesn't need replacing or upgrading, yet - they pay a reasonable price for quality goods and service. I dish my clients up to decent companies, I can't afford to be associated with any shoddiness, it would puncture the bubble. I am naked, I know it - it's the clients who dress me in Emperor's clothes - they can't afford for me to be naked, not once they've bought into me. Business-wise, I walk about swinging my dick for all to see, but they don't see. My nakedness is their nakedness, it's a fairytale they're caught-up in.

I've no need of an office, any of those overheads. Right now, I work out of a cafe in an art gallery - they've free wi-fi, spot-on coffee - and, because the art's all this, that and tat, contemporary or whatever they say, it's quiet - I like it there. The cafe staff, youngsters, they're good people - they all are, the gallery staff - paid the shittiest money, stretched this way and that, trying to please - I've never seen turds so well polished - that's belief, there, the power of it. I am inclined to be convinced myself.

The other day, I was looking at this photograph of, well, nothing - there was an orange, plastic bench against a red tile wall, an expanse of grey floor - some railway station somewhere - everything was well-lit - nothing stood out. Nothing is what stood out. I found myself seated on the bench, looking out of the photo - I felt I fulfilled the space, like the seat was mine - my throne. I was standing there ages, watching myself and experiencing the elsewhere depicted. I asked if it was for sale - of course, it was - I asked the price - it was okay, it could've been more. Nobody tried to convince me to buy, so I went back to my cold calling. Only, all afternoon, I was aware that some part of me was still seated on that bench in the station in that photograph. 

The Projectionist

Never could abide hot beverages hot—nor take them milky, though the milk cools them—I've always waited on luke warm. I used to drink tea from the saucer, as a nipper, it was something my gramps did, he taught me. But I grew up and I had to make do with cups—now I'm overgrown, I could be a gramps myself, I can drink from a saucer again—I don't have to wait.

  

 They assume I'm a film buff. I'm not. It was a job. The picture house opened, they advertised for a 'Projectionist's Assistant'—my father marched me down there, I got taken on—I was the only applicant. I liked the work, it was habitual, it was undemanding. I had to watch for the seams where cans are switched, otherwise—well, I prepared what needed doing and I waited—I'd recall my past lives.

Furthest back—I recollect sleekness—I was sleek and wet, the air was water and it tumbled about me, so polished and easy, or rough and shattered, or kneading, or jellied—I'd break into brilliance now and again, into a lightness, into a siren call.

 You belonged to a church or chapel when I was young. A church or chapel you didn't go to—that your grandparents or their parents went—where you were christened or dedicated, where you'd be married, where your progeny would be 'given up to' God—a place that made sense of a suit. Our church was Spiritualist. We were a family who listened to the dead. Mam held conversations with them, the departed—she'd cluck her tongue into the roof of her mouth, grimace, falter and they would talk, through her. Mam channelled Harry Houdini, Alexander the Great, Leslie Howard (she loved to channel Leslie, doe-eyed, English blond Leslie). Now, mam loved the pictures, she'd go after a service, to the double-bills. It was mam told father about the job, the job I got and kept for sixty years. She didn't need a ticket when I was there, I'd arrange for her to be walked through, we kept a clutch of seats back for family, friends and bribery (Councillor's didn't pay, the local plod, the clergy we recognised - by sight, not by sanction). I never saw a movie from the auditorium, I watched few from the booth. I'd my past lives to recall.

Grit biting on knuckles; sure muscles, uplifting; weights and temperatures of smell; everything at once, all of it meaningful, throughout me. She-form is tender fruit where I am pleased to touch her form, like wet shining stone from a less burning pool. The reading tip of my reach against the slip of exposed bone shown when her face is open, as if ready for feeding. The slip  depth my reach falls into where body branches meet, where I am striking weapon, sparking rock. Close under, the near space, closer under, us, the emptied skin that is ours, my success, me for her, for both holding, under, in its dark weighty with us, warm from our spill.

 Once God had me, he could keep me. A hat and scarf given at Christmas don't wear the person they were gifted to. I am God's to wear. I'd never disoblige him. So, I got on, did what needed doing in my life, presenting the latest cinema to those that cared, to those that wanted to fondle in the darkness, obtaining and maintaining what I cared to, and reliving my previous incarnation. I might've become a practicing Spiritualist, taken to the pulpit-stage of the steel or creosote churches of the circuit, a messenger boy between here and there - it bored me though, other people's lives, the mediocre salutations from beyond. I prefer life, all the lives I have remnant wherever inside me.

A heft of sore cloth on me. Everything about me is in these garments, not just in them as I am in them, but imbued into the fabric: the oils of what I've eaten, sweated and spilt; the yeast of ale, sweated and spilt; arse rub and cock spit; dung, urine, others, leeching up from the hems. Tiring to wear, too worn into comfort to take off. And strange, disturbing, alluring stinks clasp me. Smoked, caramelised, fused and evacuated smells. Ash discoloured fingers, evil tinctures, startling blemishes and bloodless pimples dirty my hands and forearms. My beard tastes of rot, many rots, of woodland mulch and festering meat and metalled water. I grind, gut, blend, pinch, cinder, clinker, fume, distill, capture, glass, putty, infuse, defuse, refuse to be deterred from making, summoning properties, unpicking the thread essence. I will come to a greater understanding of divinity through incision and the blessing of flame and the suckling nature of water. I will have wonder in my palms, which will illuminate the night of people's souls.

  Women don't concern me. People don't. I'll tolerate shades, I must, they will always come to me. I am a weakness in the fabric of this world, spirits pass through, pressing forward towards me. I have company in myself.

Pale and pliable as kidney fat, the moist breath of the rig suckles the straw to my back, straws jabbing and blunted against my flanks as I am shucked, side to side, by his pressing and nuzzling body. He is a firmness of distance inside of me, trying to travel far, and further. He journeys well enough for me. He is someone, a trinket that I will fondle and lose, the fields are busy with gaud I've let fall. And the nubbins of flesh I've shaken off. I'm just a poor lass, shackled and freed by that poverty. I do as I want, as I can. I take pleasure, before pleasure is taken from me. The farm is a brute, yet it keeps my rind soft about leather sinew and carthorse muscle. It is a wrestling match, a grappling and shin kicking, goes on between me and the farm. It will win out, I will give out, taken in wedlock, sired and hollowed, become no more than a ladle to stir and to serve, and I will pass away, all must, and ancient in the youth of their passing - only the landed live to be old. We live like spit passed on, spat into the mouths of our calves, as it was into us, and on, on. There must be a death to it too, all things end, they must.

  Life goes on, it seems to vary its pace, it doesn't, I know its beat, the heartbeats that fill a day. I live in my sleep, life continues, it isn't a pause. What sleep is to me is a change of reels, I recognise the scratch that signifies the switch from wakeful visitations to shut-eyed visitations. I am habitual. And nobody ever leaves me, they always return. I am a cinema, in myself, I am a cinema.

It tickers inside me the passing of time, frame by frame, twenty five each second, it's a rhythm I've fallen into, bodily. I know the tail end of a reel is... now, it's counted out in me. I stand, adjusting the clothe about my knees, there, see the score that signals the run-in, and now two projections in perfect sync, then, one. Load the next reel, and return to... Never could abide hot beverages hot.

The Barber

Guess what, they never ask. Heads coat me in the bird shit of their desperate need to natter, they come out with...[shakes his head]. Well, they throw snippets of their tedium in the air like bird seed, like I'm a bird, like I want feeding - when it's them, they want reassurance because it's intimate, barbering. I mean I touch them and they blush, they do, it's what starts them off, attempting to talk up a distraction. I might think they're gay, tad over-sensitive to my hands in their hair, the firmness of my manoeuvring their skull this way and that. So they talk...they yawn words. When they have got a worthwhile story, they desiccate it or they over-inflate it. They stupefy you. And, yeah, I'll puncture a silence with a question from the barber's arsenal - you know the ones. It's akin to a mercy killing. Otherwise, they tighten in the chair, trapped in the moment, hating themselves for seeming gay, for not being bloke enough, for being so fucking ordinary. There are plenty of folk who ought to hate themselves, I'm not being kind when I ask about their weekends or holidays or cars or the football, I'm making my job easier. Talk is a muscle relaxant. I want to be fast, proficient and tipped - a stiffened neck slows me down. Punters want to be in and out quick as. But, it's just, if I were in the chair and I looked up and saw, I'd be curious, suspicious. I'd feel threatened, perhaps. But, they don't ask. Not once. If they did, now, that'd be talking.

 Hey they could say what's behind that tattoo on your right forearm?

 What? This one? The Barber scissors with a bloody ear between its blades? Oh, yeah, it's an memorial to my father, the old...[a blunt sigh]. He taught me to cut. I didn't want to know, but he insisted. He was a wide man, my dad. Not a big man. He stood five feet four. He had this step he used to reach the tallest of heads. He was broad. Not fat. He filled a door sideways. They say a man is built like a brick shit house, well, my dad was, but only on the one dimension, the width. He was a hard man. And I don't mean for a barber he was a hard man. If he'd been a docker or a Marine or anything tough, my dad would've been hard.

 What he couldn't beat into me, as a kid, he'd beat out of me, until there was room. Yeah, he was mean. He thrashed my mother, she never left him, she'd even provoke him, I think she liked it. I'm not being flippant. I think mum used to get off on a spanking, on being dominated. She'd never any bruises to her face, and she'd never have a word said against him. Mum, she'd feed me, keep me in pocket money and out of the house, she was a passable mother - we got on okay. Dad, I hated his guts, which suited him.

 I was cutting heads before I'd done with school. I was going to bolster dad's business, he thought. At fifteen, I finished with education. I was due to go full-time in the shop - was I heck. It was Nineteen Seventy-Seven, and my rough upbringing and being a working-class oik and being unfussy in my desperation to get away and the fact I could cut hair meant I could uncut it, made me a Punk - I was a Punk I said. Tatty Harris, his brother invited us into a squat he had functional in Camden. Can't say I was expecting dad to take it well, I knew I'd take a beating. I was prepared, meaning, I was ready to be pounded. The ferocity of his attack might signify the depth of his affection for me, that he'd miss me. Anyway, he knocked me fairly senseless, then, to mark it as a special occasion, he picks up his scissors and lops off my left ear from behind. That's the last memory I have of dad, him standing there in the shop door, as I stumbled off down the street, deaf with blood and swelling - and he seemed to be shouting, not at me, but into my ear that was in his hand.

 So, when I turned forty, and I was still cutting heads, because that was what dad beat into me and I couldn't unlearn it, I got the tattoo - my dad's scissors, my ear - to remind me we aren't masters of our own fortune, not really, others shape us, make us what we can become, if not what we are.

 But, they never ask about the tattoo. And they never mention my lack of an ear. It's a pity, I think. I don't mind talking about it, it's real and feels meaningful. I can understand its not being a story you'd want told you by someone wielding a scissors - someone who seems as pissed off with his lot as me - I can appreciate they might prefer to talk about the cricket or fuel prices or anything else. Makes them seem gutless though. When I was younger, and Punk had given way to a faux Italian Barber Salon in Hammersmith, when I was utterly bitter, I'd loose a plumb of gob down the back of a punter's head and rub it in, rub it right the way in.