Circular Intersections

I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m driving of course; I know that much. I mean, I’m not sure why, but since finishing another soul draining shift of taking orders over a tannoid in a boring little cubicle with nowhere to stay, or more specifically nowhere I want stay, I find myself lost.

 Without thought, I engage with aimlessly bounding around Trinketon waiting for something, anything to happen. The more I anticipate it however, the more I simply don’t want anything to do with it. Whatever it may be.

 I try to imagine myself as more of a confident loner you see in the movies, wearing one of those basic fitting grey palette outfits that the somewhat good-looking character makes fashionable. He/she drives in complete radio silence, determined to dissolve into oblivion. I crane around corner’s, purposefully hunching over the steering wheel like those actors do. My car, Barry, I call him, has more weight to his turning as does the journey ahead.

 I try and stare at everything I see as if I’m looking for something while evading it at the same time. Maybe I’ve been escaping for a while – no – I’m looking for something and my eyes are so solid and sore from not giving up.

 I have two options this type of character has given me: I could drive to a layby or more dangerously just stop with my hazards pulsing amongst the rainfall that pesters the roof of Barry with relentless taps in the middle of a random road. As I’m pulled over, I stare ahead at the passing cars slamming their horns and swerving around me in frustration. I’ll squint at every angry car disappearing behind the foliage ahead. I’ll be thinking about the things in my movie that have passed me by. Some random driver slows down parallel to my side window. He’s yelling at how inconvenienced he is by my lack of consideration for parking where I have, but the viewer doesn’t hear his angry words as everything is happening in slow motion to emphasise how I’m not in sync with reality. I Just stare back at him until his last words gain volume at the same time I absorb and transform his angry shout into some epiphany for my own drama. Without warning, I stamp my foot onto the accelerator and perform an illegal U-turn as I flee to solve the issue I’ve been ignoring, to rectify the problem I’ve caused, to fight for some love that I was too self-absorbed to acknowledge before.

 The other option to this character is to pull up to some motorway service station. The camara pans across a row of wide windows reflecting the pink sky where at the centre of one window, I’m sat staring thoughtfully into the distance. We jump cut to me with a single black coffee and untouched toast at my desolate booth. I watch the family ahead of me having a generic family movie moment in a little chef which conjures that fake half smile that no one in the real life ever uses unless they’re trying to be pretentiously attractive. If I were to smile, I’d smile, I feel like it takes an unnecessary amount of concentration to focus on one side of my mouth.

 Everything is fake.

 Ultimately, I pick neither option for this character. Because I am not this character. I do not possess the confidence to stop traffic, nor do I have the patience to stare into space long enough to be noticed. I have no money for a diner, especially not Little Chef. “Little thief” my dad would call it.

 Dad… it’s been nearly a year.

 I don’t have the petrol to find a diner either.

 ‘Nothing,’ I say aloud as my shoulder’s jiggle In the same way a dog might shake water from its fur.

 I’m currently sporting my work uniform under a cotton zip-up jacket that clings to said uniform further clinging to my skin that’s drenched in oil, salt, and the natural grime of an unwashed 20-year-old. Yet, despite my hygienic handicap, I find myself constantly checking in on my appearance in the rear-view mirror. My vanity feels like the last part of me to really be trying to keep myself grounded.

 Still there, I sigh through my nose and immediately check in on myself again, scruff my hair until it’s perfectly dishevelled, tweak one stray strand only to mess the whole do back up and start over.

 ‘I’m not particularly sure,’ I say out loud randomly, and I try and say it in a way that sounds like I’m deeply engaged in some casual conversation where my opinion on the matter is so prevalent that even my indecisiveness is soothing and cool to those I’m talking to.

 ‘I’m not sure, really’. I’m mature – I’m serious. Someone has withheld information from me – no – I have found out information from someone who was lying to me, and another friend has brought it to my attention. They’re asking me if I knew. What am I gonna do? ‘I’m not particularly sure’.

 ‘Yeah, I guess. I’m not sure myself’. This time I cheekily grin with a new context.

 There’s much going on for me! How can I expect to know all the answers, I’m so busy living life!  

 The sky above me is this ashy endless blur that has rudely deemed the sun as non-existent, which bothers me on the same lines of unwelcomed fear I’d get from having a stranger’s fingernail drag lightly down my spine when I went to that concert a long time ago – you needed to be there. It teases with the occasional drop of rain but reframes, knowing that I’d most likely wash in the nearest car park; I’m robbed of any practical use for anything. I try to ignore it as a retaliation.

 In fact, no. I pull down the sun visors on both mine and the passenger sides of Barry in a redundant attempt to block my view of the sky I shouldn’t be focusing on anyway.

 You can get too much from anything, I shuddered, thinking about how simply driving in the gloomy whether, the look and smell of the opposing hedgerow on each side re-awakens endless memories I can’t make any emotional heads or tails of that remain as prominent and uselessly important as each other.

 Driving back at six o’ clock from Thorpe park with Beverly, ignoring whatever she was talking about wishing that I could forever travel back to anywhere I’d not have to commit to staying at or actually knowing the location of, not even the reason why I’m going.

 Endless rainy days spent on my halfway bunk bed completing games on my own wondering what a Saturday as an adult will be filled with and ultimately assuming I’ll be forever waiting to go and play outside.

 funerals I’ve never been to.

 Sitting indoors, completely bored because of the horrible day at hand. Wishing I had a reason to go out so that I wish I could come inside. The lone sounds of a basketball echoing between wooden fences on the walk around Brisk Ford trying to figure what to do with myself while my friends were with better ones. Finding a new job. Will I ever make it as a musician? Will I be famous from it? What will I be like when I’m famous? What will I resort to when I’m no longer famous? Will I change my wardrobe and be obsessed with an obscene piece of clothing that I singlehandedly try to bring back to the public? I think it would be hard to be famous. That’s why people focus more on their day job. It’s too hard to be unique.

 The uncomfortable tickle of an unexpected touch drives my left arm under my collar, and I vigorously claw away between my shoulder blades until the texture of my back hunched over with each red raw inducing line creates those little skin nobbles where your spine tries to surface, then I retract.

 I’m constantly meeting merging roads that would presumably take me to another town provided that I wanted to, but I don’t because that would be pointless. I can’t stop driving because I would have nothing to do other than fail to sleep or wait for work to swing around again. Instead, when finding myself verging on leaving Trinketon, I make an immaculate full rotation around the roundabout for an audience of none and begin purposely heading towards the town centre to repeat the cycle.

 Circular intersection would make a better name than roundabout, I pointlessly suggest to myself.

 I stare at everyone I pass, squinting into the snapshots they display on my lost journey to nowhere. I’m thinking that I want to see someone I recognise as much as I don’t at the time. I don’t even like anyone at this point. Every inch of clothing they wear, the way they style their hair, the meaningless hordes of expensive ink draped on hairy arms to express individuality in the same way everyone else does it. I grip the steering wheel, causing only friction that affects the calluses on my palms. In retaliation to this self-inflicted torture, I grit my teeth. It doesn’t stop me from relentlessly gawking at the public like I’m trying to work them out, that if I just simply find the correct combination of features lined on a face it will all make sense, and I can stop.

 ‘I’m not particularly sure’.

 Then it hits me. It’s not a person I’m looking for, it’s a place. It’s always been a place and I know just the place that will give me inspiration brimmed with warm memories able to remind myself that I was once in a better condition with many possibilities ahead of me.

 I waste no time wasting more fuel I don’t realistically have the funds for driving to Hamperthrope, more specifically my childhood home.

 Along the way, my last cigarette sized joint is whittled down to nothing and spread across the dual carriage way in dribs and drabs.

 It makes sense to me to come here at first, but as my fuel runs low, my anticipation and excitement follows.

 It occurs to me when I drawing closer to my old neighbourhood, that I am in fact driving down my old streets as opposed to running around it or traversing on a bike. Speaking of cars, I recognise, none of the ones outside the usual garages. Either new ones from the same owners or new neighbours altogether?

 The houses look the same, smaller if anything…

 All the mysterious cracks alongside buildings and abandoned bits of rumble with strange graffiti are still there and disapprovingly ignored by the council. Before a young Fletch would be pondering the existence of such aesthetic blemishes, making up stories or playing out with the other kids around these oddities that captured our imaginations as kids.

 I finally lay eyes on my old house. Number seven. Still stood proudly in the middle. Nothing had changed. It doesn’t matter, this is still The house I grew up in. The house My mother raised my sisters and I in without the help of our father. The house where Christmas was once cancelled due to the cat constantly climbing the tree and my mother in a rage throwing said tree down the garden. The house where I developed my first taste for everything, music, games, friends, colours, education. The house that would act as a central hub for endless cups of squash to fuel the limitless energy of a child in the summer wanting to engage in more activities than imaginable. Perfecting each task and game to the same occurring day in the heat over and over as if each day I mucked around through was going to be the same as the next one for every day of the rest of my life.

 The more things change, the more I adapt, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

 I want to approach the front door, but I know that’s futile. Just to maybe see who’s there now? what kind of people are they? Would they be interested to know I grew up here? No, they wouldn’t. Instead, I just sit and stare at my old house with tired, heavy eyes infused with the weak effects of weed.

 I should not have come here. I didn’t need to come here.

 After all, what was I expecting? That I would wander around the front garden while the owner appears through the flower distorted glass at the front door. Then, it slowly creaks open as she sees me walking slow-like within some nostalgic trance. As my left foot drags around my right, I’m looking intense and thoughtful towards every crack in each brick as my hand gently grazes the wall.

 Sceptical of my presence and intention she steps out, arms folded and asks, ‘Excuse me. What are you doing here, do I know you?’

 ‘No,’ I’d reply solemnly ‘But I used to live here’.

 This information with no other concrete evidence is enough for her to loosen those uptight shoulders and ask if I’ve left something behind that I’m looking for. For dramatic effect my red watery eyes would descend slowly off the childhood wall I’d throw a tennis ball at for hours on end, lock eyes with her and simply state, ‘Myself’.

 We’d jump cut into the dining room space where my old table has been replaced in favour of the new owners taste. Sat parallel to one another, I’m looking at my watery reflection as the steam from our generously milky cups of tea dance and curl up the awkward silence. She warmly places her hand over my wrist and lets off that concerned smile of “I-know-this-gesture-doesn’t-mean-much-but-I-hope-it-let’s-you-know-I’m-here” type smile. Then I would leak my whole life to her, the ups, the downs, where it went wrong and where the right parts were neglected. She doesn’t respond back with any significant motivational speech or a kind of sentence that triggers some new energy within me. It’s just my ability to completely vent to someone that actually allows me to hear my voice externally rather than coming up with useless ideas internally through my insecure thoughts.

 ‘Thank you,’ I say, abruptly rising as the chair screeches back on the laminate flooring.

 ‘What for?’ She gasps, genuinely shocked.

 I gulp down my tea triumphantly, look down at her and ambiguously declare, ‘I know what to do’.

 I storm out of my childhood home with a new understanding that the past doesn’t have the answers; only I can find answers in the present.

 I dart out the house, skip out of the garden, bolt it to my car and go to… well that’s the issue with this movie sequence fantasy. I don’t know where to actually go from that point. Only experiencing these events could potentially help me out.

 You don’t know until you try.

 Very true.

 I jump out of the car and perform that pathetic half-baked jog, where you move more but don’t actually travel faster at all to my old front gate. My muscle memory unlocks the bolt from the top of the brown gate, and I barge in like I still live there.

 The rapid jangle of a chain unravelling until it pings to its tightest capacity as I’m greeted by the hot aggressive breath of a huge German Shepard biting and barking at the air inches away from my face. Following this furry security siren, the front door with its distorted flowered glass, that is now complimented with extra steel bars attached to it opens fast and hard. Instead of the inviting old lady I imagined slinking out in her dressing gown, I’m greeted by a fat bald bloke in a vest with beer and gravy stains down it going absolutely ballistic. I take no time in trying to get the man to empathise with my plight and instead take to sprinting with such a fright that I end up running past Barry and deep into the local park for escapism.

 I don’t even like Tea anyway.