Young and English and Free

Dann Casswell

Trapped in an economic prison of tax debts and direct debits for rents and telephones and the like. Trapped by the social conventions of how to and how not to behave.

Tomorrow in my semi freedom I intend to run semi naked through the streets, past rows and rows of semi detached house in a semi stupor.

My Indonesian penis gourd poking proudly from my semi erect groin. Half-mast.

Half measures half past one they let me out of this place, to rush home and pack for the coming weekend of peddling a few inches above difficult terrain. I look from the window at the forbidden world out side and see children mindlessly hacking holes in the manicured lawn of the park. I see flagrant abuses of traffic law, Verbal indecency, Bare midriffs on schoolgirls of fifteen and 7/8ths years of age, a mass of seagulls catching chips from the air where and old man throws them from the high walls above the river. I feel now like the flying brick buttresses of the cathedral pinned to the ground by my own weight of responsibility.

Cannot let the house of god go slipping into the air like some kind of gothic spacecraft.

And still, I wait. Quarter past twelve, the silent well-oiled arm of a clock fails to tick the seconds away. Its white face circled in cheap black plastic. One potato two potato three patato. Door!

Locked from the inside I've watched reams of idiots slam wildly against it. Unaware that they need only press the button on the right and a buzzer might sound and I might hear that sound and let them in. Idiots you would never think that this was an I.T. company "International Computers" and I see them lining up to jam the photo copier and grumble about modern new fangled gadgetry and shuffle off redundant and sterile, flaccid.

All the life sucked from them by fifteen and 7/8ths years of wood effect cupboards, the same green carpet day in day out. At five O clock the bell rings and with mouth watering precision they wriggle towards the lift flapping there arms for balance. "Bloody lifts, always takes an age." A frenzy of pressed buttons and re-pressed buttons sends the lift into a psychotic swirl confused by too much in-put it hovers between floors. Help!!

But I am to leave early today. Just four hours early and already the saliva is building up. Sweaty liquid mouth. Phone call. "Good afternoon, International Computers how can I help you?" ... "No we're a computer company." ... "You've got your 8 and your four the wrong way round" ... "its ok it happens all the time"

More plants than people, not that the people are more plant like than they are human but there are more plants than people in this building now. So many have be laid off and the ones who are left cannot be Bothered with Friday why should they be? 12:45! Forty five sweet minutes till the grueling race up the winding hill to MY house.

Home.

Copyright ©2003 Dann Casswell. All Rights Reserved.

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March, 2003 Issue #78

512 Words

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