Short Story: Social Disorder: A Brief History

Short Story: Social Disorder: A Brief History

Frane steps back the better to observe the swing of a passing girl’s white and black striped pleats, her tapering legs milky smooth and glistening disappear towards the love nest he likes to imagine can soon be his.

Take it from me, no take it from me, Frane is drunk and holds onto the wall for support. Don’t pity him – he’s been drunk before and enjoyed the experience.

The swing door slams at her rear as the tail gate gunner fires off a burst that sends him spinning into the piss and fug of a gents in which he finds a spot to aim deferentially but misses whatever he was aiming for. Hand and elbow, forehead and nose rest against the slimy wall, letting go a stream of satisfaction to ease the burning in his groin. He grunts and farts, shakes and trots to the washbasin mirror reflecting back a face he doesn’t recognise.

“That’s not like….” He starts to say, but there’s no one to listen. He’s scared them all away. He laughs to ease his sense of disappointment, heading back into the crowd where music takes his head off; such a chatter chatter chaff and laughter greets him as he returns to the bar. A sudden eruption of mirth or anger or disillusionment or panic sweeps the bar but he’s holding hard onto rough corners containing fingerprints indented by former inmates, trying to catch the serving woman’s eye but she’s too swept up into a rhythm of contortion to want to serve another ungrateful man. In his hand the fumbles of coins, the wretched pennies he sweeps to the floor in annoyance at their bulk holding out his fingers in a silent plea. The mirror reflects his voyage; this moment in time as Frane cranes forward to watch himself as if it was TV. It eats into his insides as he attempts to drown it out with drink but it floats like a cork bobbing and taking bites out of his intestines.

Turning, turning, spinning and searching, looking for the woman seen on her way into the ladies. It’s not his day; it never is. There’s no one there for him. All the eyes he scrutinises look away or burn with that inner disdain he once gave a name to but soon forgot in the craving for flesh. And now the longing to touch, to taste, to linger over beauty have got a hold on his soul. Would he recognise beauty? Would he know enough to appreciate what he found in another human being? Someone with feelings and ideas of her own. Would he be able to communicate and to hold a decent conversation? No such luck. A fumble and a shag is good enough. Good enough for a drunkard in spades. Now there’s a need to be drunk and to stay drunk, and to feel so good anything is possible. To enter a zone where the horrible dark and hostile world is shut out forever and what occurs in the consciousness, in the frenzy of imagining, is all that can be.

But then a bell sounds awakening him to an end to what has been. Always a bell beyond which everything gained is wiped away. The slate is swept clean. Parties break up, disputes begin or are ended, kisses are given and taken apart. Words exchanged too swift to mean anything beyond sounds played out and forgotten. Beyond these walls it’s a terrible night with hurrying figures hastening past as Frane crawls wall to wall, post to post, missing piles of puke and softly steaming heaps of shit. It’s all he can do to keep his footing and often stumbles; stumbling keeps him steady and it’s a fine way to walk, weaving a path that takes him towards the unknown. He’d like another drink. He’d like to sit down. He’d like to sleep. He’d like to imagine someone is waiting up for him but he knows no one will. If he was a millionaire he’d have a car and a house full of servants ready to put him to bed. So many people passing by with ne’er a backward glance. Will he see them again, even by accident? Houses drift about beneath shafts of light; rain pools into puddles soaking his feet and wherever he steps it’s a quagmire of mud and slime and wet. Cold eyed people floating by; swimming now. Frane is swimming now, down on the ground, backstroke, butterfly. He hears himself shout out ‘come on in the waters fine’, it’s not really, it’s cold in there. There’s an angry God pissing on Frane’s head and he cannot miss; Frane has no control over his legs now. Vomits out the last of the beer. Brick on brick counts the gaps. This wall is a fine specimen of the working man’s art. Can’t find a way to zip his jeans, wipes his dick back and forwards across the skirts of a screaming harridan. No one looking, got to run – running like a demon, ducking his head behind the gate post. Sinking. Sinking down.

Thinking. Frane is thinking. He’d love to be in love. Someone warm to drift home to; maybe never go out. Has to get up. Get up and go. The doorway he pulls into is dark with desolation but he bursts into its obscure confines, collapsing into a patterned carpet. It’s a hard landing to achieve a soft embrace. Closing eyes to imagine flights of fancy. Dark and cold and empty as Frane awakes. His bruised lips kissing concrete, his prick hanging out; he’s pissed himself all down one leg. He’d like to laugh; he’d like to puke, and did he puke already or was that a dream? His nose is sore as if it’s taken a mighty punch. He feels worn and bloody, put through the blender; twice blended. Hungry now, besotted with the need for food. Thirsty too; so bloody hungry and thirsty – like an elephant. There must be something open – some all-night eatery.

Cruising taxi’s ignore flailing hands, speeding up as they catch sight of his predicament. Two girls cross the street, arm in arm and wrapped in excited talk. He’d love to chatter, babble babble babble. They steer a wide berth that takes them off the pavement into the gutter where one of them sticks out her tongue. Even so he laughs, watching paradise on four legs waddle past. Too late he makes his plea ‘excuse me…excuse me…’ No excuse for losers, he ought to know. Wobbling he makes his way arms stretched wide to catch anything, anyone, someone with knowledge of where he should go next. Tired now; sits on a wall with feet dangling. At least the rain’s let up. Cops fly by ignoring him as if he were a gremlin sitting there, legs open wide, trying to remember the words to a drunkards song but it won’t come. Closes eyes and starts awake, trying to recall who he is and why he’s where he’s at – like an alien from outer space trying in vain to make sense of the human race. Scents of food fly on the wind and he’s drawn, recalled to the quest. The holy grail of after-hours sociability – over Doner and chips.

Did Frane get home? How did he make it? Don’t pretend; nobody knows, but raising his head he recognises his own room and can’t imagine a better time than the night before even when his head aches so badly he feels as if his brains are crawling out of his nose. His jeans are coated in piss, his shoes are covered in shit and sick and there’s a stain he can’t identify down the front of his shirt. It’s not as if he drinks to excess, and he does it only when he’s feeling lonely with a need to forget who he is, even if it’s just for a single night. It’s social, convivial, and it’s what he chooses to do. It’s a hobby, a past-time, it puts him into contact with men and women who enjoy a little company. He sees no reason to change. There’s no one looking over his shoulder to examine his behaviour. He’s a regular man about town who’s contracted a social disorder and feels the desire to act without conscience, and to infect whomsoever he comes into contact with. Frane’s a convivial spirit. A carrier; a believer; an addict of affability. One day soon he’ll get lucky and bump into a non-believer; how will that work out?