I find myself in Brighton now. It's small and the people are scruffy. It's very different to Seoul. I have found a place where the wealthy enjoy to dress like bums. The worst kind of wealth. Wealth that robs garments of poverty from the poor is one of the worst kinds of things. I dont know who is who anymore! It's very confusing to not be able to have the safety of traditional class boundaries to base your prejudices on. Not that I am saying these Brightonians are breaking any boundaries. They are whitewashing an ever increasing fence made of stupid antique bric-a-brac stores and staffordshire bull terriers, with misunderstood liberalism and petty green codes as a cover for their vices. The rest are alright though. Peoples faces here have a reddish hue and thickened texture to it, a susceptibility to the coastal exposure and summer sun. And what with the smoking and drugs I have seen many wrinkled ones here.
Luckily we have a mix of people here. More often than not you will here the loud wails of Spanish and Italian teenagers who understand only that more noise = more fun. I am glad they are having a good time, bring 'em on! Without them I wouldn't have a job. Strangely enough some of my Spanish students dislike their own kind though, wishing a curtailment of Spanish human importation.
"There is too many Spanish people." Laura (pronounced Lowra) says.
"There are too many Spanish people", I correct.
"Yeah, everywhere."
"No. I was correcting you, you should have said there are."
"Yeah, they are everywhere."
"No, you... are, for more than one person."
"Yes, many more Spanish persons than one." She looks at me like I'm stupid. Maybe I am, I think. I decide to give up.
"So homework!" I announce.
"Ah! Why do you hate us so much Teacher Ameen!" Manuel, a Spaniard from Granada, says.
"Because I was badly beaten as a child. And the Spanish are too lazy, you need to do some work."
Entrepreneurial inclinations possessed me at the famous gay pride festival in Brighton; so with 40 packets of Saudi's finest Marlboros, fierce intent, eyes to read the street and ears to hear the buzz of the fuzz, I crossed the paths of eastern European hard-men loitering at the bus stop (drunken and altogether less ambitious versions of Nico Bellic), young Spanish girls thrilled to shout some more, pilled up men with rainbows on their faces and people like myself trying to get a cheap deal on cigarettes for their girlfriends - all the while ducking and diving from the drunks that wanted to try on my trilby.
Two guys did cause your humble blogger some distress as they tried to take my hat and glasses from me.
"Go away! Leave me alone!"
"What! It's the least you can do. We gave you some money." One chap slurred.
"For fucking cigarettes... which you have!"
"Yeah but you still have my money." he replied. I was desparately trying to claw a pathway to his logic, but the clever fuck kept on eluding me with his stupidity.
"What!?" I said, at which point he lunged at me. I managed to duck and swerve. The good old duck 'n swerve, a maneuver that has stood me in good stead in my old childhood fighting days, where I threw not punches but exhibitions in nimbleness. As I ran away I looked behind me at the guys who were now not following me, already tired of teasing me.
"You're lucky I don't tweet!" I shouted. This time it was his turn to look at me with confusion, clearly trying to decipher the threat behind my words.
"But I do blog" I thought to myself, "I do blog."
Inconvenience has been my karmic return. The monster under my bed deems it necessary to attack me with tiny scratches. I wake up with a new one all the time. Yesterdays was particularly visible, a thin scratch right across the tip of my nose.
"Playful beast, wont you harness your mischievous ways," I wonder. "Your power knows no bounds, and instead of planting wicked thoughts into my mind whilst dreaming, like making me think that rap music is the cause of social unrest or thinking it is somehow alright to point and stare at a girl you like on the street (ah, you may have done that one) - instead of inflicting a disability upon me, like fat hair/small follicles, you find it amusing to cast confusion upon me, as every morning in the mirror I see the footprints of your fingernails.
It's little consolation that the night terrors I never receive are only the shattered forms of half desired nightmarish adventures that may, in their thrilling capacity, force me to sometime focus and write down the ideas I have. But maybe shoving my face full of puffs of salty nothingness, only to suffer the intestinal pangs of undigested kernels, will help. I doubt somewhat, as the very kernels in my head remain dormant, undigested, eager to agonise a mind that finds little relief in its shared plight as my stomach.
I know! The monster needs to eat my head like a popcorn! Just pop it into it's head, like that. Just like that! Scratch me no more you vile fiend of taunting persuasion. Finish me off, so that I too may fulfil a dream that in your now troubled stomach, becomes a nightmare for us all!
