Extract from Ten Storey Love Song by Richard Milward
‘Hello,’ says the wallpaper. Bobby the Artist scratches his eyeballs. He can’t sleep. He sits on the sofa arm, argyle sweater pulled hunchback over the top of his head, having a conversation with his living room. ‘Go to f* * * g sleep,’ he replies to the wallpaper. He sighs. It’s that tail-end of the acid – he’s no longer seeing the cat from Dr Seuss in place of the lamp-stand, but there’s still loads of annoying thinking to be done. Being an artist, Bobby the Artist’s only really in it for the visuals – earlier on him and Georgie danced round the flat to Bardo Pond (‘Tantric Porno’ and ‘The High Frequency’ are two groovy numbers off an album full of noise), Bobby watching the knobbly skirting board gradually form a zoetrope involving all these obscure froggy and bunny characters, and it even had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Usually Bobby the Artist would jump up and paint all this madness, but tonight he couldn’t be bothered. There’s nothing better than Georgie in a dancy happy mood, the only downside being she never joins in any of the drug-taking. Back on the sofa arm, Bobby breathes into his jumper sleeve, glancing at his girlfriend sleeping peacefully on the fuchsia cushions. He rests his head against the wall – two hours earlier it was soft as marshmallows, now it’s a pain in the neck – and there’s no chance him joining Georgie in the land of Nod. You just cannot seem to switch off. He stares wide-eyed at dawn sneaking in through the window, wondering deeply deeply where him and Georgie are going, whether he’ll ever get famous, whether he’ll ever get to sleep, where the Cat in the Hat went. He yanks the green sweater down from his forehead, then strides about the room feeling irritated, kicking the empty sweety wrappers round and round the carpet. The flat’s a mess, and being on LSD it’s quite hard to remember how it happened to get like that. All Bobby clearly remembers is twirling round with Georgie, her drunk on cheapo vodka, him tripping his numbskull off. Twirling twirling twirling. Whirling curtains. At one point they’d been dancing so much Bobby’s hunger came back unexpectedly and he had to make pills-on-toast for himself in the kitchen. Here’s the recipe for pills-on-toast: 2 crushed ecstasy pills, 1 slice of toast (butter optional). Yawn! Smoke-rings loop-the-loop past like dreamy spectacles. Where did that whole twenty-deck disappear to? Bobby considers going across the road for more fags, but the prospect of being taunted by scallywags while still slightly tripping feels daunting, and in any case he hasn’t got any money.
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