"Cardboard Boxes"
by
Tim Stillman
We live in these little cardboard boxes. Flats they're called. Cardboard coffins I call them. We call them. We can hear everything that goes on in this flea palace. So can the fleas. They can here Jimmy'meboy and they can hear the git upstairs, and the old poofs over cross the way. And it smells in here all over the East End. And we pretend we love in this sty. That Melba up there is not pacing slamming her feet against the floor, round and round the rotten circular rug from of course a flea sale. And smoking like a chimbney all the time. Mad as toast, see I got me humor and wits about me still, at me for being down here with Jimmy'meboy when that's what I want and don't wants at all the same time. Course it's a coarse life. Course its no freedom stand here I'm a'makin. Tells ya the truth, I don'ts particularly like him any better, him with his sour undershirts and his way of mumbling sos I don'ts have know what he's sayings half the time.
And its only fun fer me cause I know she's picturin' me and me man here doing the horizontal dipsy doodle like she imagines and its just not so, little sex would be nice, but with another person ins the rooms, not just him and me imagining each of us being someone else, same as her and me for that matter, lord cook a good goose egg and slaps me silly wit it, as thoughs its easy as that and shes me beard or whatever fag talk they use, and its me and Jimmy'meboy here in the kip close together, not that wes aren't a million miles from each other here and now, like she might as well be me and our rooms identical stink of poverty and pain and all sorts of encumbrances, and its just to bleedin' tick her a little. Just to trot her a little fancy like'n she mights be jealous of me if such a thing can be tucked with love letter or a French tickler I be bound. AS though there's not a orgasm I've done had since I was about 14 and still bys meself and I don'ts needs these fake humans being here skitting round as though they ares real and stuff and me not real at all.
Think they're so bloomin' desperate. They don't knows the halfs of it. They don't knows how I feels when I comes home from the greengrocer's and just all in and out and fed up with the ladies and all their ladadas and me gotta be nicen' to em and give a fuck bout their bleedin' kidney pies and their jokes and just a bit of rum m'dear for the goose or whatever lie they tell, forgettin' to buy the goose, they so happy they got something to knocks them out for a bit, and that's all they had in minds fer the first place. And Jimmy'meboy naked save for that bleedin' undershirt as though it doesn't count, the sex stufft wit' me and the other guys, I'm not an idiot by damn, as though I'm the ghost of a ghost.
And they think they gots such a hard knock life. And if he tells me I gotta suck him one more time, I'll take this bleedin' telly black and white jobbie and frankly beet him to death the hell with it, and that will be the end of that and the coppers fer me and they could put me in a cell with Jack D. Ripper and it would be better than this. That Melba raising holy hell, cursing so the Lords Gentry at the Castle could heer her, and its bleedin' hard to get it up with Jimmy'meboy and he says I'm good at it and that's all bleedin' gravy, whats you done with your life Patrick Gray, well, I got this bum bum down here who says I'm as good a cocksucker as he's ever in seen, and that could be on my grave stone, Jimmy'Meboy says Patrick Gray was a great cocksucker, but now all those who read this can go home, the show's over, so cheery bye and that's the end of that.
Dammit, I turns the telly up louder, gotta drown out that moaning Melba up there, gotta get my head in a gas oven and turns the thing up full quota, in this smelly stink of London mid summer, god, I jump out of the bed, off the sodden sheets and what is wrong with the world and me in it, I ain't the looking back in anger guy after all, see?, I gots meself some bleedin' noggin' culture ain't I after all? And Jimmy'meboy looks at me, his face needed shaving and his eyes were bloodshot as he vaguely passed the bottle me way and I looks at him and I knocks the bottle cross the room.
"Hey, what the mother---" And he's out of bed on his bandy legs like a shot, short little half naked poof looking up at six ft. 2 in. me, and he says he's gonna beat the livin' hell outa me and I push him down so easily, like I does Melba, and they both sit there on their asses, while I'm gassed to death in this tinder box and wonder how love ever happened anywhere at any time in the world, I can barely breathe in here. All three windows open and its like I'm an ant on a hot brick in this Mid July night, and I wanna go out, I wanna go to a bar or get something to eat or take in any movie at all in the a.c., preferably porno and I wants some man or woman or whatevers to sit beside me and I rub them off or put it in their quiff or something in all that blessed cool air when the flesh does not have a stench to it that makes me wanna barf. Ever notice how silly sex is. All that moaning and groaning and it's for someone else most the time, and you just wanna exhibit yourself so the other person can lie about how great you look and reverse the other way round, and it's just for a piddle of white gunk or a rush of fluids and a quick dead for a moment and don't it feel good faking away leaving earth for outer space for a second or two and then down to earth again for all the cleanin'up and all that exertion, and all that humpahumpah and that's all it is, a little coital sneeze and then you have to wait a while older you get to be able to do it again--a freak show really, embarrassing, white butt sticking in the air, legs scissored round you, oh baby you are the one oh baby oh come come baby come with me-can't tell me God don't have a right sense of `umor. You keep waiting for the applause or something.
"Get outa here, NOW!" speaketh the great Jimmy'meBoy getting naked butt off the hot linoleum covered floor, and I'm standing their naked, beating his water weight by a stone almost and I look at this stupid little man and his stupid little dick and his stupid little dirty smelly body and I think my Gawd how can I even come near to him? How can anyone? Melba is better lookin' than that and she has halitosis and all these stupid little veiny spiders in her legs and little mustache on her lip and she looks better than this stupid little man, and he is up and crashes the top of his head right into my chest and knocks me for a loop, and as I falls down, I unintentionally take the little TV with me and we crash glass and me and tubes and all sorts of electronic geegaws and the fame and all, as the picture that had been MacDonald Carey in a forties movie now became light and powder and electric poppings all over me on the floor as I jump and stand up and wipe the white hot off my naked body and I hold myself and jump over the glass shards, or try to, but lots of glass in me soles and all over my body.
"Oh great GOD WHAT DO I DO NOW????? GIT OUT GIT OUT NOW GIT YOUR SORRY BUM AWAY" And Jimmy'nolongermeboy cause I broke his damned TV set, the center piece of existence of pretty much everyone, yes, that is true Melba, mostly what we do Jimmy'oncemeboy and me dids down here was whats me and yous do up there when I'm up there in an identical flat to this one, we watches the telly and tries to not scream at each other as we select the programme we can both surrender a bit too, bout the only diff'rence is he has a cock and she has a slit, and her boobs not great are kinda nice to suck on, when I used to long times ago, likes Jimmy's cock was okay to sucks on now for the past and he's holding the set frame pieces and the screen shards and the electric geegags in his arms likes they're a bloomin' baby of his'n that's gone and a died or somethin' and I hears him scream and Melba heers him fer sure and the other lice in the ant palace toos and I gotta gets away from hers and her and him and it and I scurry to my clothes gets them halfs on and departs the premises afore he remembers he's got a blunderbuss of a gun in the closet, and I can'ts go back up there cause Melba will spend the rest of my life laughin's how Jimmy done got mad at me as a wet hen as mad as she and she'll make me sleep in the park her flabby stomach flapping and her doubly over with the giggles, so I cut the mid part of the adventure out, and half dressed, I rush out the bleedin' pest hole and out the building and into the night hot as hell but cooler than in there.
I leans against the wall and I takes a fag and light it and decide breathing deep and hard and wounded though I don't know how wounded just yet, go by the chemists' get some stuff. Then I guess I'll take in a film. Might as well. Could use a good suck right now. Don't think my cock's been hurt. Physically I mean. Needs to get with someone I don't know who'll do me. But then what the ell, I've never been with anyone who knows me at all, and they can say the same, so it ain't bout to be a big switcheroo or nothin'.