Showtime!

Of all the things you could let guide your path through life, spite was one of the most underrated. There was a specific kind of fire inside oneself you could get from throwing an achievement in someone’s face that you could never recreate from optimism or carefully rational decision making. It wasn’t a positive mindset or a desire to change the world that got me out of bed each morning – it was bile. I was the product of bloody-minded stubbornness and pathological antagonism, of parents who gave me both too much rope and not enough of it. The number one source of my drive was being told ‘no’.

“No. I’m not paying for that. Why would I?”

The man folded his sunburnt arms and stared at me defiantly, small eyes receding into a round, pink face. I sighed pointedly, in a way that I’d had a lot of time to practice.

“Same as any other service, my man. You see that guy over there?”

I pointed to the other side of the street, where a visibly wheezing man covered in silver paint was attempting to put on a robotic display for a jeering group of French exchange students.

“He’s here every day, like me, and he doesn’t do shit. He spends hours on makeup and then exhausts himself moving a couple of feet at a time making whirring noises. He adds no value. He is a leech. But people still tap the card reader or chuck some change into his hat, if they’re old. Why would you pay him, and not me?”

The man seemed genuinely confused for a moment.

“I wouldn’t pay either of you” he said, without a hint of malice. “You’re both a bit shit, aren’t you?”

I was prepared for this. You don’t put in your time as a street artist without developing a skin thicker than a redwood trunk and wits sharper and deadlier than a boxcutter. I readied a retort, fully in the knowledge that I might not only ruin this man’s holiday but crumple his ego into fragments in the process.

“You’re both a bit shit, aren’t you” I sneered back, in a near-perfect impression of his voice, only at a much higher pitch for maximum mockery.

“You know, love, you came up to me” my opponent replied, then shook his head in defeat and shuffled away back to his waiting family, presumably emasculated. I didn’t do it for those people, anyway. There was no point in catering to the intellectually weak. I returned to my folding chair, put on a pair of novelty sunglasses I’d found in the gutter that morning and put my arms behind my head, soaking in the boardwalk sun. Seagulls squawked overhead patrolling for unguarded chip butties. Single cones of ice cream were sold for the cost of approximately one month’s rent, two if you wanted a flake. It was a dog-eat-dog world out here on the seafront, even if most of the signage did say they were supposed to be kept on a leash. But at least I was offering something unique. I leaned forward and straightened the handmade sign I’d spent roughly twenty minutes making, or an hour ten if you counted when I had to run to the shops for more markers: ‘Let Me Talk You Into Giving Me Money. £5’

“You’ll never be one of us.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“Well, we wouldn’t let you be, anyway.”

“But I wouldn’t try in the first place.”

I’d had a number of variants on this circular conversation with Miming Chester since I’d established myself on the boardwalk scene. There was a lot to learn about this particular group of street performers. Firstly, they preferred street artists in terms of nomenclature, but I never said it so as to try to keep them humble. Secondly, they were intensely hierarchical. Chester, with his hack Marcel Marceau shit, saw himself as the street senior. Juggling Irma, seated to his left on a slightly shorter stool during this interaction, was his trusty lieutenant. Robot Ken, Tarot Deborah and Clive, the Master of Illusion were all at least a tier down, but this assortment of talentless jesters was united by two things: a tenuously shared occupation, and their hatred of me. It did make going to the pub with them a bit of a hostile experience.

“We could make this an artists-only corner?” Irma chimed in, desperate for validation.

“You don’t own the pub, IRMA,” I sneered. “Plus I was here first! You five clowns chose to sit at my table.”

“Verily, the only remaining tables in this blasted tavern did not have adequate seating!” intoned Clive, swishing his cape.

“Hey, Master of Illusion, put down the spell book and pick up a dictionary. Chucking ‘verily’ in doesn’t work here. Luckily for you I’m almost doneth with mine ale.”

Clive snorted haughtily. “Fool. Referring to an ale when thou art clearly sipping from a flagon of lager, forsooth.”

I pondered for a moment. “I’m not sure of the definition of that one but that feels closer to correct.”

Chester held up a hand for silence, or possibly to feel the wall of an invisible box. “Stop changing the subject. You know what we want. This boardwalk isn’t for you. This life isn’t for you. When you’re out there, you’re bringing the vibe down. This is our livelihood you’re screwing with!”

“Yeah!” Irma piped up again. “You’re about as much use as a sixth juggling ball!”

“Wait, you stop at five?”

“Stop changing the subject! I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.” Chester leaned forward and took on a stance that one might take when telling off a naughty toddler. “You do not have an act. What you do is not performance. Stop doing it.”

He had made this pitch numerous times before, and it had absolutely no effect on me. If my own mother couldn’t get me to quit, what chance did a 44-year-old man in cheap face paint and a monk’s balding haircut have. I said absolutely nothing, and smiled. Ron shook his head and put down his pint, leaving two smeared metallic hand prints on the glass.

It had all started off as a joke. I was living back at home in Surrey for the third time, just coming off the back of dropping out of the second year of my second doctorate. I’d felt that the faculty structure at that university had been far too rigid and stifled genuine academic though, and also I’d failed to show up for 30% of the classes I was supposed to teach on boredom grounds. Dinner table conversation typically and boringly revolved around my future – how I planned to make a living, when I was going to move in to my own place again, when I was going to finally change out of pyjamas given it was three in the afternoon, things of that nature.

“Perhaps it’s time to get off the old academia wheel, eh Denise?” said Dad, through a mouthful of dry fish. “We’ve been happy to support you all this time. But we did say it couldn’t go on forever, and it’s feeling a bit like…forever.”

“You’ve got an education, darling,” added Mum. “It’s time to use it and join the rat race, we think. Why not use some of your Father’s contacts in the city?”

I held my knife and fork up in the shape of a cross and thrust it at her. “What would I do in the city, Mum? Banking or equity or arms dealing and boozy sit-down lunches with the other vultures? No. I’m not going to be a part of that disgusting, churning machine. I’m better than that.”

“Your Father was in equity, you know that” said Mum chidingly. “I can’t imagine what’s made you so cynical. It strikes me as a little ungrateful. Don’t you think so, Richard?”

Dad nodded vigorously and mumbled a squeaky “mmhmm”, but he was looking up at the ceiling and his eyes seemed to be watering.

‘I’m not ungrateful, I’m ambitious,” I countered, preparing to land my opening blow in this round of verbal sparring. “I can’t help it that I have loftier ambitions than you and Dad. It’s not all about making money.”

“Nobody’s saying that it is. We just want you to be realistic. We love your passion, you know we do, and want nothing more than for you to keep doing things you care about, things that excite you. It’s just that…you don’t seem to know what those things are?”

Solid rebuttal. A glancing blow for Mum, but I rallied, sword held high. “You don’t get to put your guilt for your complicity in the system on to me, Mother. If you make me wear a suit and commute into Canary Wharf and learn how variable interest rates work it will literally kill me. You’ll be able to watch the light and joy disappear from my eyes over time and you’ll know it was your fault but I guess that’s what you both want.”

Dad re-entered the fight, flanking me to try and turn the odds in Mum’s favour. “Please stop being so deliberately difficult, Denny. You’ve got so much potential, and we’re just afraid of seeing you not use. It’s from a place of love, you must be able to see that.”

Mum saw me on the ropes and went in for the dirty kill shot, a sharp rusty dagger slid under the ribs with a smile and a warm hand on my shoulder. “Come on darling, you don’t want to end up like one of those street performers you see embarrassing themselves in town centres, do you?”

What a miscalculation. A historic misfire from Mother. All of the ingredients were perfect: a challenge, the threat of familial shame, and a new avenue of personal exploration. I shot up, launching my chair back with entirely too much force, and looked Mum right in the eyes with feral glee.

“Actually, I’d LOVE that!”

My parents spent the next few weeks tiptoeing around me as they realised the enormity of their mistake. When asked what I was doing, I was working on my act. When asked where I was going to live, I said the seaside. When asked what my performing talent was, I changed the subject since I didn’t have one that was discernible. My strengths lay less in the physical and more in the theoretical – I was an ideas woman, and I knew one would rear its appealing, financially viable head soon enough.

I was ultimately at home for another four months until I had finalised my plan, an incredible feat considering the constant nagging I was subjected to, not to mention the omnipresent cups of tea I was offered and time-consuming free dinners that I had to attend. I had decided that to truly stand out in the boardwalk scene, I had to offer something that none of the am-dram losers and art school dropouts who stalked the salty boards could. Anyone could stand still in the same position for hours on end, or sing in the style of famous divas, or swallow one or more swords. I would show them something daring, intellectual, transcendent even, and one evening after a few glasses of wine to get the ideas flowing I knew that my act would be

“’Let Me Talk You Into Giving Me Money’? Oh, Denny, that’s…cute? I think?”

I hadn’t seen Shannon McGuire since my first university degree course almost a decade prior, and I’d been managing just fine with that. I had strolled down that morning around 11 to set up my booth, kicking amber-dregged bottles and what was hopefully the remnants of a kebab into the gutter to make room, and it hadn’t been more than half an hour when I saw her, pushing a pram with one hand and holding the hand of a chubby, pram-refusing toddler with the other. I’d squinted to look at her in the overcast gloom thinking she looked familiar, but then of course it looked like I was staring and she made a beeline for me as she made her way along the beachfront. Her face, more lined and fraying around the edges than I’d remembered, lit up when she recognised me. I couldn’t quite conjure up a smile at that time of day yet, so I threw her a little salute instead.

“Well. It’s not really cute, is it Shannon? It’s radical. It’s upheaval in cardboard sign form. It’s two fingers up to the street performance establishment!”

Shannon tilted her head and furrowed her brow. “There’s an establishment now? Like a union, or something?”

She didn’t get it. I hadn’t expected her to. “Nothing so tangible. I meant more that, like, I’m shaking up the social order of things. You expect to walk along here and be entertained, right? That’s the agreed transaction, between tourist and clown. Right?”

“I suppose so, yes,” Shannon nodded. “We saw a wonderful street magician yesterday, I don’t know how they do it. My partner Heinrich, you remember Heinrich? He was studying international relations? Anyway, we’re down here for a couple of days to visit some of his friends from back home who’ve moved, and –“

“That’s great, but I feel like that’s not really the point of what I’m doing, right? It’s almost an exposé, in my mind. The entirely of existence is transactional, even fun holiday bits. Like that ice cream your son’s holding, what’s his name again?”

Shannon tousled his hair and didn’t look at me. “It’s Nathan, I think I’ve said that a couple of times now. But that’s ok. How’s your ice cream, Nathan? Tell the nice lady what flavour you got?”

The toddler held up two sticky hands with a gap-toothed grin, brown sludge melting down the cone and coating his forearm, and yelled “choc-it!” at me. I looked down to check that he hadn’t sprayed any of it on my sign.

“Yes, yummy chocolate!” said Shannon proudly, though I wasn’t sure why. Identifying kinds of ice cream was very simple for most people, particularly the most popular flavours. Show me a toddler who can pronounce Neapolitan, then I’d be on my way to impressed.

“Yes, we all like chocolate ice cream, young man. But how many people do you think were mindlessly chugging through the machine on the way to getting you that ice cream, hey?” I turned back to his mother. “That’s what I mean. I’m trying to get the scales to fall from people’s eyes, man. This whole thing is a façade. A charade. Probably another word that rhymes with those, too, but do your own research. All I’m doing is cutting out the middleman. It’s to show, like, hypocrisy under capitalism.”

Shannon took her sunglasses off, rubbed her eyes (bloodshot, I thought. Looking tired) and looked at me in a way that I normally only saw at home.

“Look, Denise. I’ve been stood here chatting to you for nearly 20 minutes. I’ve been trying to be polite. But you haven’t asked a single question about me, or my life, and… I’ve asked a lot about you! I’ve listened to a LOT about you.”

She looked out at the ocean. I thought about cutting her off, but decided against it. I’m sure I’d remember my point.

“I don’t want to fight. It was nice to catch up, I guess. But I don’t think what you’re doing here really makes sense? It’s intellectual begging, to my mind. Faux-intellectual, really.”

Something must have changed in my expression, because she said: “I know you think I’m stupid, Denise. You think most people are stupid. That clearly hasn’t changed. But maybe stop to think about what you’re offering, and you’ll realise that you’re not quite as profound as you think you are.”

She stopped again, and put a hand to her cheek. She lifted the toddler into the pram, wriggling and protesting, and strapped him in.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cruel, and I hope you don’t think anything of it. I really do hope this goes well for you. See you around, maybe.”

I watched her walk away into an encroaching fog, mist spattering the sides of the pram and her toddler’s cries receding into the distance. I believed her that she didn’t mean to be cruel. But that didn’t mean that she was right with her facile reading of my business.

That said, though, if I did continue to succeed, was I not just feeding back into the system anyway? Maybe it was time for a change. My sign might look better in the gutter with the beers and the kebab after all. The main thing was that it was my idea.