A chill

12Nov06

The dream has no beginning or end and I always wake up at the same time: just before the door opens and the tall man is about to enter the room. The experience never lasts beyond this point. There is no continuation.
But it is the way with dreams that the dreamer is both actor and [...]

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A mayfly in the Regent Palace Hotel

09Nov06

I smile at my reflection in the flawed mirror as I shave. The eyes are the same eyes that stare back at me as a boy, now set in an older face. With my razor I trace the course of the scar – hardly visible now, just another fold of falling skin – through the [...]

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To be blessed

08Nov06

Three bar scenes, 2am lounge scenarios, backstage kitchen sink sets. Imported stench from the ghettos in perfumed candle or aerosol formats. A few blacks, spics, bubbles and micks around the place, strategically situated on bar-stools and banquettes, just to brighten up the setting and muddy the narrative, for the paradox that’s in it.
“You know that stumbling feeling?” Ted asks. [...]

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An old praejudicium

08Nov06

There is a noticeable curvature of her spine. Curvature is a nice word but it’s really not quite there yet. Over a period of time it hits home that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
Anyway, Ms Curvature-of-the-spine, let’s call her Julie, is getting down to it with Ted Silversteen in the back of [...]

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A close approach

02Nov06

The Weird Metropolitan is an extremely unusual sandwich invented by Sergio Zacharini, the proprietor of an obscure London eatery called the Cafe Tina. It’s also the title of a novel in progress by Jon Hilltown. That’s me. I’m a regular patron of the cafe and one time secret lover of Tina Zacharini, the cafe owner’s [...]

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An epistle

26Oct06

To the man alone in the overhead gallery the cocktail counter is a blur, a crumpled facsimile of a Saturday night, a hung-over dream-scape of unwashed glasses, overloaded ashtrays and under-exposed desires. He reaches into the breast pocket of his overcoat, takes out a notebook and places it on the table. With sluggish movements, like [...]

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A taste of ammonia

23Oct06

It’s Halloween in the June Bride and I’m an invisible man sipping a large Irish behind a twist in the wallpaper. They’ve just discovered a body in Banglatown. Billy the Pill’s telling Crazy Carol and Zimmerman:
“So, Charlie’s having a curry in Brick Lane and he’s just about to order another couple of poppadoms and a [...]

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Subway, someday

15Oct06

Down there in the big black, beyond the turnstiles and the ticket machines and the spies, there’s only the grinding pain and the emptiness and all the money gone, lost or wasted or cheated away.
The grey trains stop and go and stop and go in endless revolution, picking up and dropping off, making it and losing [...]

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Animus

14Oct06

He insists on the move. But her garden means everything to her and all they have at the new place is a small square of paved-over back yard with a potted plant and some creepers. She isn’t happy and she deeply resents him.
All attempts at communication fail. He smells her resentment all over the house. It’s in [...]

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Cloudy

13Oct06

It’s just before dawn when I come to. I lie still on my back for a while just staring at the ceiling then I drag myself over to the desk by the window and open up my lap-top.
The people from the labyrinth are awake too, walking around inside my head, talking, watching television, having dinner, [...]

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