The Barbecue Man

They called him The Barbecue Man. Barbecue was his flavour; when pizza was ordered, he asked for barbecue; when he went to McDonald's, it was a McBarbecue he ate. He had a stash of barbecue sauce bottles in his house that he replenished quite often.

That one day, they were at a bar watching a football game. Everyone was having a pint of Jupiler, but for him. He didn't like beer. Well, he did, but only that very dark kind of beer. It reminded him of spare ribs with barbecue sauce.
His childhood had been hard.

Anyway, they were watching that football match and he was having that spare rib flavoured beer when the referee signalled half-time. And then, there it was. The new ad from Pringles®.
Apparently, the mad scientists that develop new flavours for the not-a-potato-snack company had synthetized the essence of the barbecue taste and so the new Pringles® Barbecue arrived to the market.

The Barbecue Man opened his eyes wide in disbelief. Finally, the field of not-potato-snacks opened to his tastebuds! Years of envy of other people when they popped open a can were over! Their satisfied smiles when they had a cheese-with-onion wave-shaped mouthful would be his!

They saw him leaving his beer on the table, getting his coat and rushing to the door, and they followed him. He looked like a lioness hunting, eyes and ears open, nose sniffing for a prey.

The shop's was the only light on in the alley. Inside, a pakistani man was reading the newspaper while listening to the news on the radio and watching a BBC News program on a muted TV.
He jolted in surprise when The Barbecue Man slammed the door open. And he was followed by a crowd.

The Barbecue Man looked with his red eyes to the shopkeeper and said:
- Pringles®. Barbecue.

The shopkeeper gave him the can and The Barbecue Man looked eagerly at it while he payed. Then he popped it open and pulled the lid out. A barbecue smell flooded the shop. The Barbecue Man took a single Pringle® from the can. He handled it like it was a newborn child. Then, slowly, almost reverently, he bit into it.

It tasted like egg.

Looking down

I am the floor, nice to meet you, it said.

Solid wood of rectangular shape
In a perfect, logical, grid.

Flat
It can not look up.
Though,
I can feel it staring at me
In the quiet of its shyness.

I can feel
Unfamiliar insecurity
Arising from a frame always being walked on
And never really admired.

Subjected to the bottom
It stays,
Soiled by tears of rain and snow,
Repaired by the wind turmoil,
Blind at the peaceful sunset.

And though
Part of the same home
Only one between us
Can reach the view below and above.

I am the ceiling, I say, nice to meet you too.

Rondemberg Vs. His Mom

"Man, she can talk", Rondemberg thought. He himself only talked when forced by his mom. "Peter, say hello to Ms. Largeois." or "Peter, thank the mister for that cookie." Damn, why should he thank him if the cookie was obviously more than three days old? And besides, he wanted to go play.
His mom seemed like she had ten eyes, she was always aware of everything that happened around her. "Peter, don't eat dirt." or "Peter, where do you think you're going?". Well, he had just seen the most beautiful earthworm and was going to check it out, maybe pick it up and throw it to the neighbour's daughter. Rondemberg admired her hay-blonde hair and her ponytails. He hadn't seen it was raining. Or cared about his new clothes.
It didn't matter that he left his mom to do her bidding. She was nosey and always messing with his affairs. "Peter, where's the lighter of the kitchen?" or "Peter, have you seen my iPhone?". Well, he needed those things for his masterplan. What was she doing inquiring about it? Why couldn't she left him alone?
Thinking those things, he was falling asleep in his bed. But then Rondemberg noticed that the night light wasn't on. She had forgotten! The shadows took a menacing appearance and he started hearing noises in the closet and under the bed. "Moooom!!!!!", he called.

J.P. vs. Tom

J.P was now staying at Tom’s flat for 3 and a half weeks. He liked Tom’s couch, he liked the atmosphere of his apartment (messy like his old place) and he liked the fact that Tom was away a lot.

In fact, Tom was always doing something. J.P. assumed he only understood 12% of the activities Tom frequently did. For sure most of them were evolved around politics, some kind of quite serious politics, not the main stream kind.

Tom was so much involved with idealistic deeds, that even watching television became a proper activity, in the sense that Tom enjoyed shouting back at politicians on screen that he disagreed with.

If watching television indeed can be called an activity, it was the only one that J.P. and Tom shared. When J.P. turned on the TV, he liked to switch to the Friday Night Quiz, or Animal Planet to watch cuddly bears and funny insects. A David Attenborough could calmly describe the orientation-instinct of ants for hours, and it would all be good for J.P.

It was this kind of situation when J.P. heard the door opening, followed by a big slam to close it again. Tom never says hi, J.P. thought. That’s OK, he figured, he probably has more essential things on his mind than greeting housemates. What is the point of saying hi every day to the same person? And besides, it would only distract him from the wildlife documentary. But at the same time J.P. realised he had just been distracted right now.

J.P. concentrated on Tom’s noises, while still staring at the TV screen. He heard some uncontrolled clattering in the kitchen, and then Tom sat down next to J.P, who did not move his head and eyes a single bit. He tried to analyse Tom’s behaviour just by the sounds he made.

“What’s on the news?” Tom asked.
- “Dunno, haven’t checked. But look, these racoons are funny little animals!”
“Yeah, and you know how they have less and less space to live? Human idiots are destroying the riverside, building houses and resorts, and where do these racoons go! Can’t believe they don’t mention these kinds of things on a programme like this.”
- “Well”, J.P. argued, “it is really about showing how these racoons live, you know. I mean, they seem to be doing pretty well there. It mustn’t be that bad for them.”

J.P. finally looked to his right side to see Tom, but he had just stood up already, and was putting on his coat. “Gotta go to a committee meeting of the Group”, he announced.

What could be so important that Tom had to leave in the cold up to some meeting on a Friday night, J.P wondered. Maybe he should have more interest in Tom’s activities. He might be a really genius guy, this Tom, maybe something like a future leader, or a spokesperson, or something.

So J.P asked: “Is it important?”
- “Of course it is important! If preventing the government from constructing a new nuclear power plant isn’t important I don’t know what is! It is unbelievable how these conservative idiots are trying to destroy the country. And the saddest thing is, people in my very own party are giving up as well. So if I don’t go, well, they’ll just do nothing!”

J.P. suddenly remembered how is ex-girlfriend Marie had once told him that she found it attractive if people thought they made a difference. She also had told J.P that this was not the case for him. It was just before they had broken up. Well, she had broken up with him.

J.P. pondered. He could actually say he admired Tom for trying to make a difference. And maybe, he thought, it might also make little difference if he joined for once. Now that would be something!

So J.P. tried: “Tom, this actually sounds pretty important, if you say so. Could I, er, like, come along?”

- “You’ll regret if you don’t! It’s never too late to develop a conscience!”

Yeah, it is never too late, J.P. thought. Good attitude.

They went to the meeting. It was at somebody’s apartment, in the attic. All 13 people smoked, and interrupted each other all the time.

My, this Tom has a high concentration level, J.P. thought. And the terminologies and issues he knows about! Tom always disagreed with fellow group members, J.P. analysed. He probably knew better than the others, it could well be. Although the others had arguments that seemed plausible to him, too.

J.P quite enjoyed following the conversation. It was a bit like watching a discussion on television in a foreign language. But then suddenly they had all become silent. J.P. realised, they were all looking at him. It was because Tom had asked him a question, but J.P. had not understood it.

“So what do you think, J.P? You’ve been silent for quite a while now” Tom confronted him. How could Tom just ask him like that? He knew that this was the first time J.P tried to develop an interest against nuclear power plants - how could he expect a clear answer from him? What’s the point of this all this debate, when finally you aren’t nice to each other?

Later, when J.P. and Tom walked home together, J.P. decided it might be a good idea to start looking for his own apartment.

My birth

My birth. Well, it was a total mess. There were my useless parents, at the age of nineteen, hippies for God sake, could it be more pathetic then that? They did not know anything about life, responsibility, children, they just wanted to sleep around and forget about the consequences. Well, here is the consequence, hahaha! I mean myself, you know, that I am the consequence of all that flower power crap. So then my mother got pregnant, and I’m sure they wanted an abortion, because they were of that kind, but they were too lazy to figure out how to do it or they didn’t have the money and by the time they begged enough money from their friends it was too late. And a few months later there they were, in the hospital, my useless father waiting in the hospital’s hallway for my useless mother to stop screaming.

As he often said to me,

‘Little did I know that he real trouble would only start when she stopped and you started screaming.’

And inside the maternity ward, there was my mother, who knew nothing about childbirth. She didn’t attend one course, she didn’t read one book about it, she didn’t even ask her own mother about women’s duties. So there she was, lying on the white bed like dead meat, surrounded by hospital waste: the nurses.

Useless women shouting useless words to each other, yap-yap-yap, and no one did anything practical to make me born. It was a total chaos, until the doctor arrived. The doctor knew what he was doing but he didn’t get along well with my mother, as my mother couldn’t take people bossing her around, she had to know everything better. She told him to back off so the doctor pushed her belly which made her shat all over the place, so you can imagine the place where I arrived as no one cared to clean the shit up.

My mother called the doctor a bully and the doctor called her a spoiled child, who she actually was. So my mother started to lecture him about authoritarian personality traits, which made the doctor angry so at the end he slapped her face.

‘Push it, for God sake!’ the doctor screamed at my mother, and my mother screamed back:

‘Jawhol, Herr Obersturmbahnführer!’

and that was the moment when the doctor left the room, telling my mum that she could do the whole circus herself from then on. So it took one hour to get the other doctor, a substitute who was probably a baker by profession, hahaha, and in this hour my father heard my mother screaming louder than ever, and she was screaming:

‘Take this thing out of me! Take it out!’ And she begged the nurses to cut her belly to end the pain.

So at the end I understood that I had to do the whole thing myself, and so I just did it. I just came out. My mother wasn’t even pushing. I solved the problem, hahaha. Really.

And then my father came in and the nurse put me on the belly of my mother, who was too self-centered to even touch me, so they gave me to my father who didn’t know what to do so he gave me back to the nurse who held me under water and at least the shit came off my skin.

My mother didn’t wake up in the next two days, and I was fed by the nurses and spent the hours alone in my white cage. After three days, my father took me and my depressed mother home, and my mother didn’t even wake up to go to the toilet so after a couple of days her parents came and took her to a sanatorium, and she only came back when I was already six months old. My father took care of me in these months My grandmother said that I stopped crying after the second month, realizing that there was no use of it. My father fed and changed me in every two hours, and after each baby session he closed the door of the baby room carefully and went back to study, and the doors were quite thick in our house if you know what I mean. He put me to the childcare when I was three months old, and of course I don’t remember how the childcare was, but I think that in the childcare at least there was some order.

Legacy

(By Nick)

Helicopter blades, chopping, whirring, scything. Cold glass, morning condensation rising. Fields below, green and greener still to the horizon.

"15 minutes, sir".

Deoderant, rolling between sweaty armpits and clean white shirts. Two buttons undone. More condensation on the glass, motorway lights snaking through the fog. Houses, sports fields. More motorway lights, implacable and straighter, leading into the next grey mass.

"10 minutes, sir".

Moisturiser on the cheeks, affable smile. Cars down below, keeping pace. A schoolbus, and ambulance. Evidence of change, or the opposite, or… simply data. A dossier, town, industries, profile. Bigger, smaller, poorer, more disillusioned, aspirational, rust belt, green belt, transport hub. The need for better housing is…

"5 minutes, sir".

Faces, black ones, white ones, mostly ugly ones, hostile eyes, prying questions. A smile for the pensioners, a handshake for the local businessmen. An itinerary. school, factory, jobcentre, helicopter, 30 minutes.

"Landing in one minute".

Grey rooftops closing in. Times up, count down, the living dead, where did all the money go? Hospital waiting lists, young soldiers in body bags. Keep on message. Threat to economic stability. Supermarkets, supercasinos, banks shitting out money through horizontal arseholes in the wall. Legacy. An opening door, a tug on the sleeve, jumping to the ground and… Where the fuck am I? Ex-mining town, north-west. Helicopter blades slowing and ceasing. Silence, full of images. That won't bring my son back. Faces, young ones, old ones. Botched operations, she needed those cataracts. Earnings, savings, scroungers, money launderers.

A tug on the sleeve, a road like all the others, houses with blank facades and flags draped out of windows. More faces. It's all about trust. I mean change. Trusting that we can change. Or not. A school filling up with children, more faces and lunchboxes. How old are you? 8, 11, 75, 36. Foreclosures, waiting lists, disappointed faces. Your choices, your fault, your burden, your responsibility, your party, your government, your broken promises, your deficit, your deficiencies, your fallibility, your fatigue, your mismanagement, your interference, your recession, your choices, your fault. Your legacy.

Losing power over night

-Come Wilma, it’s supper time! Would you like to eat, pumpkin?
-No, I want to draw and play and have a bath with Jo-Jo!
-Wilma, darling, we all have to eat to grow big and strong!
-I don’t want to eat
-Come on, honey, it’s getting late
-You’re stupid
-What did you call me?
-STUPID. Stupid, stupid, STUPID mommy
-That’s enough, Wilma, now come here and eat. What would you like?
-Dotted sausage sandwich
-There’s no sausage, Wilma honey. Cheese sandwich, or yoghurt?
-Dotted sausage on hard bread
-There is none
-But I want that! I want, I want, I want... Mommy, that’s what I want!
-How about a ham sandwich? That will be yummy...
-No
-Come on, Wilma, it’s almost time for bed
-No
-It’s ham sandwich or nothing!
Silence
-Here you go, honey, a nice ham sandwich with nice cucumber!
Arms-crossed-over-chest silence
-Wilma, little one, don’t you like cucumber?
Arms-over-chest-while frowning-silence
-I want to eat banana, mommy
Silence
-I want to eat banana, like you, mommy!
Big sigh-silence
-This is my banana, that is your ham sandwich
-But I want banaaaaanaaaa
-There is no banana. Now eat your sandwich
-I want bananaaaa

Abandoned-last-banana-on-the-dinner table-silence
Banana-swap-silence
Child-munching-banana-silence
Failed-discipline-silence

-It’s late, Wilma pumpkin. Shall we go to bed?
-No
-Come on, honey, tomorrow you have preschool again
-No! I don’t wanna to go to preschool
-Wilma sweetheart, you have to go to preschool
-No!
Tired-silence
-Wilma, mommy is tired. Let’s go to bed
-No!
Tired- on-the verge of desperation-silence
-Come on pumpkin, let’s go together!
-No! You’re stupid!
-What did you call me, Wilma?
-Stupid, STUPID mommy!
-That’s enough, Wilma. I’m going to bed, now you come with me or stay here all night!
-No!
-Well, I’m going. Bye, Wilma, good night!
Waiting-for-child-to-obey-silence
-No!
Mommy-losing-power-silence
-NO!

Hungry-child-alone-in-the dark silence
Child-eating-nice ham sandwich with nice cucumber-silence
Parents-snoring in the background-silence

Morning-silence
Mother-entering kitchen to make coffee-silence
Mother-finding a monster in her kitchen-silence
Teenage girl with a black leather jacket with the text DARKNESS sleeping on the kitchen table-silence
-Wilma?
Teenage girl poking out pierced tongue-silence
-Wilma, pumpkin, when did you become so big?

Mommy-pumpkin-when-did-you-become-so-stupid-silence