ABSTRACT
WE CONFESS TO LUST, greed, envy and hate crimes. We’re guilty of bad coughs, Chest X-Rays, Lithium and Librium. We lost our equilibrium. We lost our will to live. We lost our way somewhere just after the junction and never found it again. We had double standards. We put the psychiatric patients in cage-beds. We saw the economic advantages of warfare and destruction. We smirked at the Simpson trial. When the markets crashed, we laughed out loud. We never claimed to have halos and wings. Our show used adult humour. Our kids had broken ribs. We joined a network of disorganised crime. We crashed the spaceship on purpose. We got drunk too often. We nobbled horses. We made each other bleed. We dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki, Coventry, Seattle, Belize, Belsize Park and Hiroshima. We were rightly arrested under sections 7 and 23 and rightly charged under section 45. We planned the overthrow of governments, and holidays in the summer. We put love first. We broke our legs playing rounders. We were scumbags in a shooting war with other scumbags. We thought Gordon Brown was inspiring. We filmed events in which we could not intervene, events that spilled out of control, events that didn’t even exist. We altered documents and photographs to disguise the location of people and places that were dear to us. We knew that a professional foul inside the thirty yard box could lead to a penalty but in the 83rd minute we felt there was no choice – some of us went one way and some went the other, sandwiching the bloke and bringing him down hard – the referee was a Hungarian and never saw a thing. We were cold callers, scared of kryptonite. We were class traitors and cry-for-help shoplifters. We were murderers of sleep. Everything was a movie to us. We hacked and hoodwinked, we wounded with intent. When the food-aid arrived in the lorries, we started shoving and pushing. We had nose jobs, chin-jobs, eye jobs, tummy-tucks and bum sucks. We were bloody fools. We’re guilty of that look people have sometimes when they dare not speak their minds. We confess to radium, railways and romanticism. We were jealous of Helen Sebley’s personal transformation. We never made the rendezvous. We were deathless, never fading. We ate pet food straight from the can. We dipped our toes in the water and we got our fingers burned. We had a truce on Christmas day. In the last years of our rule we deteriorated both physically and mentally – we planned to eliminate even our most loyal supporters. We went to Blackpool and got caught in the act. We used a telescope to read other people’s newspapers and novels on the beach. We devised viral marketing campaigns. We wrecked the neighbours’ garden with a Strimmer. We registered Internet domain names based on the names of well-known celebrities and established brands of merchandise in the hope of getting rich. RobertRedford.com, DrewBarrymore.com, ChristinaMilian.com, Steps.com, JayZ.com and ABucketofMcNuggetswithSaucetoGo.com were all our work. We made a film using stock footage. We switched the medications when the nurse was not looking. We made mockumentaries. We made cockumentaries. We did not think that low budget and lowest common denominator were necessarily the same thing. We were broke and mistaken all the time. We were addicted to sadness. We worked for Enron. We got the cable turned back on but pretty soon the excitement wore o». We came as we were. We paid as we went. We said, ‘Let it be.’ We said, ‘So
it goes.’ We said, ‘Try to think of the heart attack as nature’s way of warning you.’ We lay in the hot-tub and fooled around with a handgun, taking aim at the stars. We were bag snatchers. We were stockbrokers. We threatened a cashier with a replica pistol. We threatened a nightclub bouncer with a kids’ plastic raygun. We threatened a fat white shopkeeper with a cucumber hidden under a sweatshirt. We gave Peter a black eye. We gave Ethel a cauliflower ear. We gave Jed a bloody nose. We watched too much TV. We did not believe that there was a hierarchy of su»ering. We tried to please our girlfriends by setting up three-and foursomes with several well-hung guys. We robbed peoples’ lockers while they were down in surgery. We had the St James’ Infirmary Blues. Our sarcasm was uncalled for in the circumstances. We had no last wishes. We left last wills and testaments which were confusing in some places, vague or even contradictory in others, and which in yet further places seemed to have been designed deliberately to cause disputes amongst the surviving family members, especially our assortment of ex-wives and ex-husbands, lovers, kids, step-kids and friends. Our dying words were, ‘Let the bastards fight.’ Our last words were incomprehensible. Our last words were deliberately cryptic. Our last words were totally inaudible. We were the judges in a third-rate televised talent show. We banned hunting. We pulled a knife. We pulled some girl from Southampton but couldn’t really fuck her on account of her period. We pu»ed and panted. We dumbed it down. We said that God would be our judge on Afghanistan and Iraq. We confess to Aerobics, Pilates, Power Yoga, Carb Attack and Body Burn. We were rap’s Grateful Dead. We were Death Metal’s The Carpenters. We were light entertainment’s answer to Charles Manson. We got all the girls in the crowd to shout YEAH YEAH, then we got all the guys in the crowd to shout YEAH YEAH, then we got the girls to wave their arms in the air and say YO YO, then we got the guys to shout YO YO and shake their butts around. Afterwards, sat together in the dressing room or on the tour bus with its built-in Jacuzzi, we laughed and laughed about how phenomenally dumb our fans really were. We drew a line under what happened. We made great friends with the neighbours. We made great friends with the bloke in the bed next door. We didn’t make friends at all. We frightened each other with the Ouija board. We coughed up phlegm into neatly labelled jars. We left Wendy tied to a tree. We left Johan tied to the railway tracks. We didn’t know how to party. We drank Velvet Crush. We drank Southern Comfort. We slipped a few points in the polls but we thought ‘So what?’ We o»ered cold comfort to strangers. We o»ered a kind of formulaic comfort to the families of the injured or deceased. We o»ered up our only daughters in exchange for the village being spared from the wrath of the Dragon. We said, ‘OK people – it’s time to rewind.’ We could not memorise the sequence of numbers. We pulled dead rabbits out of hats. We had opinions about things that we did not know anything about. We were number crunchers, lone drinkers, postal voters. We kissed babies and pressed palms. We wanted second chances. We wanted a simple life with Marvin and the kids. On talk shows we were silent and on chat shows we would speak not a word. We were a dime a dozen. We read the newspaper over other people’s shoulders. We o»ered support. We o»ered down-home guidance to our sta». We wanted war in the Caucuses – we didn’t care about the consequence. We paid through the nose. We dropped butter and crumbs in the marmalade. We left a trail of jam, honey or marmite in the margarine. We joked and chatted with the nurses but nothing could hide how frightened we were. We were de-motivational speakers. We were the flunkies and the yes-men that swarmed around uncharismatic leaders, fawning,
obsequious and grey. We were shallow. We were shadows. We were less than shadows. Our lives were a tissue of lies, our pasts were a web of deceit, our futures were a tangle of distortions, dark dreams and long unspeakable fantasies. We hid our emotions behind a brick wall of silence, strength and pride. We hid the kids where the cops would never find them. We left the kids in the apartment while the rest of us went out to get tapas. We tested people’s patience. We tested people’s limits. We tested our parents, trying to identify the weak spots, finding gaps in their defences. By the time we were ready to strike, what we did was quick, easy and totally devastating. We wrote words with the letters all in the wrong order. We robbed little kids of their mobile phones, trainers and dinner money. We were pimps. We were gangsters. We were goody-fuckingtwo-shoes. Our boredom threshold was too low for comfort. We imposed a state of emergency. We slept with Tracey Emin but she forgot to put our names in her tent. When they asked us our religions, we said ‘NONE’. We broke every bone in our victims’ bodies. We liked men with limited verbal skills. We took the easiest girls to the sleaziest clubs. As fathers, we saw our main function as explaining the dangers of an o»side trap. We had more than our fair share of bad luck. We lost Kirsten’s phone number in a fight. We lost the house in a card game. We lost our souls in a tap dancing contest. We went to the lessons each week but we never practised at home. We forgot to set the alarm. We were travelling salesmen who got lost on the back-roads, fell in with a crowd of drifters and never found our way back to the place we started out. We hung out in the Zombie Room. Our music only made sense if you were taking the right kind of drugs. We put our feet in the footsteps of those who went just before us. We traipsed along behind. We didn’t think for ourselves. We’re guilty of dice, of teletype and needles. We spread true rumours and wrote false receipts. On game shows we cheated and on quiz shows we lied. We lay at home with the flu and a hangover. We made the heartbreak face and then we smiled. We stank of chlorine and fists fell on us like the rain. We made a mockery of justice and a mockery of the American/English language. We doctored photographs, carefully erasing figures and substituting stonework, pillars and curtains to make it look like George Michael had stood on the balcony all alone. We sacked the town; we painted it red. We slipped through customs at Nairobi International, without even being seen. We were exiled kings, useless princes. We revamped our image; we were really working class. We made the crowd blush. We were driven by demons whose names we couldn’t even spell. We were white collar criminals, haunted by our pasts. We told Mrs Gamble that Helen was with us when she wasn’t. We were ex-cons trying to go straight. We thought that Freud was probably right about laughter. We thought that Hitler had a point. We had it in for Hillary. We had no moral compass, or if we did have one it had been badly damaged during the frequent electrical storms. We’re guilty of heresy and hearsay, of turning our backs to the wall. We saw Arthur Scargill’s blue movie cameo. We lied when it would’ve been easier to tell the truth. When we broke the law about satellites, there was no one to stop us or care. We sent death threats by fax machine and kept a list on a computer of the people we were going to kill. We put the bop in the bop she wop. We loved each other too much. We held each other’s hands. We spat in the beer when no one was looking. We’re guilty of murder, arson and theft. We gave Dr Taylor a good taste of his own medicine. We trapped Quentin in the showers and gave him what for. We read the same books again and again. We checked into a hotel and started work on the mini-bar – life seemed simpler that way. We had nothing much to say. We lusted after strangers. We
exchanged body fluids on the westbound platform of the District Line. We exchanged parcels on the uptown F train. We tried to take photographs of ghosts. We fixed prices. We lived on the streets. We loved nocturnal darkness. We climbed in through a skylight that someone else had left open on purpose. We lay weeping in the bed. We tried to contain the rioters in B wing but they set fire to their mattresses and we were forced to open up the security screens that allowed them access to the rest of the jail. What happened after that was more or less inevitable. We calculated an incorrect orbit for an asteroid as it came quite close to earth. We got sent back to the past to stop the future from happening. We got sent to the future to ask them for help but when we got there we found the place deserted. We were frightened to use adjectives. We made scale models of boats. We dealt swiftly with a bloke that came rushing at us with a hammer. We let our kids drink wine. We got a job doing security for the Beckhams. We got jobs as financial advisors to the Beckhams. We got jobs as magicians for the Beckhams’ kids’ Christmas party. We just wanted to work for the Beckhams we didn’t really mind in what capacity. We just wanted to get the ball rolling. We just wanted to get things done. We just wanted to give peace a chance. We just wanted the step-kids out of the way so that we could have Miriam all for ourselves. We accidentally summoned menus and incomprehensible option boxes by pressing random combinations of keys on the keyboard. We crashed the computer, right into the canal. We walked o» in the middle of other people’s anecdotes. We fell asleep while our partners made clumsy attempts at a reconciliation. We towed the line. We came from Planet Stress. We were deliciously vicious. We were student teachers, just having a laugh. When we removed Mr Chadwick’s appendix, we left a plastic wristwatch inside him as a kind of comical intervention. We played the same role in every movie we made. We played golf with a baseball bat instead of clubs and a hamster instead of a ball. We said we were rough diamonds but really we were heartless fools. When we got to the end, all we could hear was our own voices, echoing and echoing. We inflicted democracy on innocent people. We gave them ballot boxes, beatings and ten months in solitary. We were too brutal for mercy, too depraved to reform, too lost to be found again, too out of it to make much sense at all. As we fumbled for our change and made conversation with the checkout girls, we made everyone curse the moment that they’d chosen to stand behind us in the supermarket checkout line. We did not stop, look and listen. We did not look both ways. We thought the Americans should just go home. We took one look at the guy sleeping at the table near the window and decided to sit somewhere else. We spent our last night together making a Top Ten list of highs and lows of the relationship. We each made our own lists at first and then at midnight began to share them in a kind of awards ceremony slash long long night of drunken vindictiveness and melancholy. We got caught red-handed then we legged it. We stu»ed the ears of men with false reports. We confess to oil rigs and pylons. We’re guilty of landslide victories and throwing in the towel. We looked at pictures of rare skin diseases. We got drunk and got tattoos. We cut to the quick and were frozen to the bone. We read books to avoid conversation. We confess to the dimming of streetlamps on long tropical nights. We thought thuggery was better than common sense. We didn’t like modern Britain. We thought modern art was a load of shit. When we started to go bald, we grew our hair long in one of those Bobby Charlton haircuts, with a very long very thin strand of side hair plastered all over the bald bit at the front. We were cowards, strictly black market. We became nocturnal, inward looking, scared. We set men a new standard by which to
measure infamy and shame. We lived on diet of speed and chips. We fell o» the earth. We cut o» the hand of an evil-hearted pirate called Captain Hook in a fair fight and threw it to a crocodile which had also eaten an alarm clock. The crocodile so enjoyed eating Hook’s hand that he followed the pirate around all the time, hoping to get a second helping – but the tick tock tick from the alarm clock he’d swallowed always warned the pirate of the crocodile’s approach. We made false economies. We were one of those double acts from way back – onstage it was all love and laughter; o»stage we never spoke. We pissed on the flag. We made a soap for black people. We told long boring anecdotes. We worked for £2.90 an hour. We gave Helen fifteen minutes to pack her bags and get out of the house. We never thought. We never danced at weddings. They invented a new classification of lunatic just for us. We wrote biographies without bothering to research or ask permission. We lost the front door keys. We dressed Geisha and looked ridiculous. We did that Sharon Tate. We used laser treatment on hapless immigrants. We stood outside the prisoners’ doors all night and whispered nonsense so they couldn’t sleep. We sang the songs of streetlamps and paving slabs. We kept a boyfriend in waiting. We dug a few graves in the football pitch and buried the bodies at night. We were not quite at home in the world. We made a film called AMERICAN BONDING CRAP – it was mainly for boys but some girls liked it. We invented a TV channel called THE MONEY CHANNEL – 24 hours of nothing but long fingers handling money – it was a hit all over the world. We blazed the trail, set o» rockets and yelled from rooftops. We were small minded, rusty after too many years. We were wankers. We noticed, not for the first time, the look between Carol and Jessica’s boyfriend Martin Gardener. We held our savings in Deutschmarks, under a bed. We confess to autumn leaves, to fatherless children and shift work. We were regrouping fighters, looking for somewhere to sleep. We served up the beer in cups made from human skulls. Our trade was to tra¹c in human misery. We sold the records that we’d bought in our teens and which were no longer fashionable. We were bored of the poor. We killed the first daughter of all English greengrocers in an attempt to avoid any unfortunate recurrences of the last ten years. We confess to intercoms, faxes and prohibited places. We are guilty of arsenic, poor-laws, pass-laws and slightness in the face of adversity. We said we were the best there’s ever been. We fucked around. We were Neocons. We lived in condos. We sniggered at a Scotsman’s account of an alien attack – they ripped his trousers and left him in the pub. We invented rain-glare on tarmac and UHT cream which you could squirt from a tin. We were sceptics who didn’t believe in anything. We drew our own blood with a syringe to make ourselves anorexic. We injected ourselves with yeast to make the blood clot. We injected red dye to make the blood more red, more red when we were bleeding. We crept out when everyone else was fast asleep. We had eyes like the stars. We talked to the trees. We named our sons THIRSTY, LUCKY and MEMORY. We sat up some nights and talked about the future of history. We talked about doing time. Our lives were like a soap made in heaven. We cut open our own bodies to try and find the evil in them – we found nothing, lost a bit of blood, needed stitches. We confess to wasting promises. We wrongly prescribed medicines. We turned down the title Miss Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph. When morning came, we changed our stories. We confess to fraud and to forgery. We’re guilty of coldness and spite. We gave up too easy, hit our children too hard. We confess to trade routes, comedy scenes, kitchen knives and libel. We confess to microphones, water and polygraphs. We needed help but we wouldn’t take it. We wanted spiritualist ends through materialist means. We lacked faith and therefore patience. We spat on soldiers in the
street. In a parody we published, high state o¹cials were portrayed in an insulting manner – the public and premeditated humiliation of their honour and worth was reproduced widely in the mass media in an unseemly and counterproductive fashion, adding greater insult to our already reprehensible words. We wanked o» for money. We were at Tet and My Lai. We kissed Tom on the mouth before we killed him. We had butterflies. We wanted to write love songs, really good love songs that would really last but we didn’t know music and we couldn’t write. We had unorthodox thoughts about the economy. We burned people’s faces o» with a blow-torch. We got nostalgic for Spangles. In a previous life we had a previous wife. We rubbed salt in other people’s wounds. We thought that class was more important than race. We accused the people at our birthday parties of stealing. We slept in co¹n hotels. We measured our cocks with a plastic ruler borrowed from the kids’ pencil case. We scratched ourselves raw. We drank water to keep our blood pressure up. We smoked fags to keep our weight down. We were remix artists. We exploited the workforce. We scoured the second-hand record stores looking for beats, breaks and stu» to sample. We always ducked when the shit hit the fan. We only wanted tenure. We had a party when we finally made payroll. We were inadequate, indi»erent and afraid. We launched the death ray. We passed o» crap as good stu». We drove the planes right into the towers. It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and it changed the world. We lost our grip. When daylight came we lost our limited charm. It was our job to insinuate strange objects into the crowd scenes of cinema – the man carrying a surfboard in Anna Karenina at the station, the child in Bertolucci’s 1900 who’s wearing a bum-bag and the woman in Basic Instinct who’s leading oxen to the slaughter – all these were our work. We confess to lip-synching, eye winking and overturned lorries. Our good deeds would not take much recounting. We ate Kimberly Saunders’ arm. We waited till Jim was completely drunk and then beat the fuck out of him. We went to the dogs. We drank our own tears. We farted on the first date. We said the Lord’s prayer backwards. We fell asleep in the middle and so didn’t understand. We killed children. We practised false chemistry and worshipped graven images. The company we set up was fictitious – just a trading screen for another company which in turn was just a trading screen for a third company and so on – you could chase the money halfway round the world if you wanted and still never find the place where it ended up. We drank our own tears. We bathed in Diet Lilt. We had to get up in the night with a stomach ache. We had the doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime. We perpetrated a hoax. We shot people in the head. We thought in shapes rather than words. We wouldn’t talk about things; we just bottled them up. We photocopied our own semen and excrement. We bargained for immunity. We watched the light changing. We loved the sky. We dreamed in black and white. We rumbled with other gangs. We dreamed of drained swimming pools. We went into shock for a year. We didn’t give anything; we were just there. We shouted for so long and we kept shouting until it didn’t even sound like our voices anymore. We told simple stories to children. We put family first. We were opinionated and sloppily dressed. We burst into tears. We confess to driftwood, safe breaking and teletype. We said, ‘Come on, come on, let’s drink and make up . . . ’ We were stowaways. We left tapes with bad instructions. We wouldn’t read novels at all because we found ourselves so taken over by the characters. We tested the animals with approximately 345cl of the serum. We used force to get people’s attention. Our big Broadway show was a total flop. We lived on sliced water and bottled bread. We made licence plates and sowed mail-bags in jail. We played a lot of chess. We worked with Justin Timberlake, Kanye West and a
load of the other big names in pop. We thought there was nothing more to ‘security’ than wearing dark suits, dark glasses and those funny little ear-piece communicators. We cried at family photos. We played the field. There was love in us somewhere but somehow it got lost. We scratched Nigel’s face out in all the wedding pictures, turning his head into an angry whirlpool of biro marks, the scribbles and scratches spiralling out from his fat stupid grinning face. We were top of the fucking food chain. We dreamt of hammer blows. When we looked back at the Super 8 and video of ourselves, we could not recognise anything. We were cop killers. We were comedy sub-plots. We got jobs teaching sarcasm to censors. We’re guilty of astrophysics and heavy gases. We confess to truth serum, old tricks and stratagems. In the ID line we smiled. In Tesco’s when we saw each other again, we just pretended that nothing had happened. We found a way of digitising death. We confess to canned laughter and circular saws. We were cheeky little monkeys that need teaching a lesson. We dreamed of Tokyo, snow monsters and John Ford on his deathbed. We stood at the altar but couldn’t say the words. We gave cabinet posts to all of our mates. We tied cans to the back of Martin Gardener’s hearse – it’s what he would’ve wanted. Each morning when we put the kids on the bus to school, we took their photographs – it was less a piece of photography and more an act of magic – making talismans to try and ensure that they’d come back OK. We confess to never having an original idea. We feigned disapproval of things we’d done ourselves. We loved the rush of wind and ran when the lorries thundered by. We said, ‘Hold on, hold on it won’t be long now . . . ’. We sat back in a pose of indi»erence; we stank of sweat and the Yankee hash. When a few housing benefit cheques arrived made out to Greg Samson, we used them to open a Building Society account in that name and then cashed the cheques. We were antheads, chickenheads and snaggle-toothed deviants. We were just a bunch of fucking arseholes. We had unnatural talents, we used supernatural means. We confess to night vigils that left us tired and lonely. We wept with the aid of glycerine and caught the red-eye home. We struck it lucky on the hit parade. We knew god-damned ALL there was to know about the rumba. We didn’t want to blow our own trumpet but it blasted anyway. We said, ‘Oh, any old how darling, any old time . . . ’. We held a shredding party in the basement at midnight. We sat with our backs to the wall and posed full-frontal. We lived in a city of fainting buildings; we lived in di¹cult times. Our smiles suggested something more of surgery than of pleasure. We sat by Rachel’s bedside and read stu» to her, hoping to wake her from the coma – we read her Tolstoy and Peter Pan, we told her stories, we told her all the wrongs we’d ever done. We thought cheap thoughts in risky places. We called our children Dawn, Leslie and Lisa-Marie, Chantale Duran and Young Whipper Snapper. We went on Swap Shop the same day that Edward died. We were often seen in the background of other people’s holiday snaps, blurred, out of focus, staring downstream. We had identical operation scars – it was too uncanny, just something meant to be. We designed the Bull Ring Centre. We designed the Millennium Dome. We had enigmatic smiles. We wanted to be Michael’s love child because he had such deep-set eyes. We were dizzy with happiness. We saw ourselves as commodities. When we got to the island, the natives told us they looked after a huge monkey god called King Kong – we thought it would be a good idea to capture it and take it back to New York to exhibit – the rest is history. We were inaccessible, inaccurate, inadequate, inadmissible, inane, inanimate, inapplicable, inapposite, inappreciable, inappreciative, inappropriate, inapt, inarticulate, inartistic, inattentive, inaudible, inauspicious, inbred, incalculable, incapable, incautious, incendiary, incessant, incestuous, incidental, incivil,
incognito, incoherent, incommensurable, incommensurate, incommunicable, incompatible, incompetent, incomplete, incomprehensible, inconceivable, inconclusive, incongruous, inconsequential, inconsiderate, inconsistent, inconstant, incontinent, inconvenient, incorrect, incredible, incurable, indebted, indecent, indecipherable, indecorous, indefensible, indictable, indi»erent, indigestible, indignant, indiscreet, indistinct, indolent, indulgent, inebriated, ine»ective, ine¹- cient, inelegant, ineligible, inept, inert, inexpert, infamous, infantile, infectious, inferior, infested, inflammatory, inflated, inflexible, inflicted, inglorious, inhibited, inhospitable, inhuman, inhumane, iniquitous, injudicious, injust, insalubrious, insane, insanitary, insatiable, insecure, insensate, insensible, insensitive, insentient, insidious, insignificant, insincere, insipid, insolent, insomniac, institutionalised, insubordinate, insubstantial, insu»erable, insu¹cient, insular, insulting, insurgent, intimidating, intolerable, intolerant, intoxicated, intransigent, introverted, invalid, invidious and invisible. We took what we could get. We took the Fifth. We did long slow kisses that lasted three days. We confess to tidal waves, hurricanes and magnetic storms. We’re guilty of everything. We were clumsy – we got lipstick on our boyfriends’ trousers. We loved language. We hated Jews. We dated Asians out of curiosity. We knew the place but we didn’t know the time. We sent dirty faxes. We signed our names. We christened our children DEATH, SOLITUDE and FORGETTING. We ate like pigs and never left home. We confess to mud and bleach. We perpetrated a fraud. We set the clocks forward ten minutes to counteract our general tendency to be late. We reserved six tickets for a show and then never turned up to collect them. We chartered planes but never flew. We charted the Straits of Magellan. We lived with our mothers too long. We sold sex for crack. We told lies to the people we were supposed to represent. We robbed Peter to pay Paul. We staged a dancing dogs competition. We had wheels of steel. We had tits made of titanium. We zoned out. We played an old-fashioned sweeper combination. We thought that John McCain wasn’t old enough, that John Betjeman was a misogynist and that Stalin was misunderstood. We said, ‘Lets keep on going like we were before, like nothing changed at all.’ We said, ‘Look, please, look’. We asked the patients a question to distract them from the pain. We did not listen to Cynthia’s advice. The last thing we said to Joanna before she died was, ‘Fuck o» bitch.’ The last thing we said to Florian was, ‘Sorry Dude.’ It was probably the e»ects of the heroin. We served up death for breakfast. We pushed each other’s buttons. When the kids came shivering out of the water, we were not ready with the towel. We ordered the prisoners to take a walk for a while and stretch their legs. We held a wet T-shirt competition for the women and a wet trousers competition for the men. We were scum. We passed out drunk on the floor of a garage. We watched a film with bad language; it got four stars. We wrote death threats to ourselves. We made a film called OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA. We thought that Black Watch was a musical. We made false promises. We never sat down. We tried to bring about the false death of President Kennedy – false in the sense of co-existent or alternate. We left the best bits on the cutting-room floor. We sulked and skulked and stamped. We confess to breaking three ribs in our sleep. We said we’d speak again soon and then never called back. We were accessories. We gave names, names and more names. We mistranslated. We drove too fast. We admit to announcing personal problems instead of the next train approaching platform four. We asked awkward questions on the Granada studios tour. We never had our fill of bombing and shooting; we were cry for help shoplifters, bingo callers with cancer of the throat. Long after Stalin died we pretended he was alive – wheeling him out for public appearances, waving his hand from the balcony. We never wore seat belts. We got
rumbled and frisked. We found panoramic views. We transmitted deadly advice. We switched labels just before the checkout but didn’t realise that the bar-code would betray us. We never spoke another language. We flipped channels quickly when the film got embarrassing. We wrote in to the magazine WIFE BEATER MONTHLY. We peeled the skin back and looked. We made no di»erence. We made no sense. We were the worst kind of people in the world. We’re guilty of bright light and rum. We altered flight paths and planned alternative routes. We confess to static, break up and climactic change. We broke into phone boxes. We weren’t comfortable in our skins. We were witches. We stole hotel soap. In the scene of community singing filmed in an air-raid shelter and designed to show the goodwill and high spirits of Londoners during the Blitz, we were the ones in the background whose lips were hardly moving. We were bloody fools. We were sick as a parrot. We ran a numbers racket and we dug our own graves. We were loons that danced naked at harvest time. We never wanted children anyway. We confess to zinc and shopping malls, to bad dreams and collectivisation. We fucked the economy. We talked about democracy. All we wanted to do was to tempt into life things that were hidden and strange. We went into town and stopped dead in our tracks. We had a bag full of controlled substances hidden in the toilets. Our hobbies were card playing and time wasting. We drank too much champagne. We were a slick act; we were stadium rockers – every mumble, every gesture every bit of impromptu patter was the same at every gig, all over the world. We had HUNGER for breakfast and STARVATION for lunch. We were suicide bombers. We made a film called STREETS OF YESTERDAY. We’re guilty of heart attacks, car crashes and falling o» bridges. We agreed with Albert Einstein the scientific genius. We confess to X-Boxes, Gamecubes, Megadrives, PSPs and PS3s. We sewed a horse’s head onto the body of a cholera patient, replacing his feet with hooves and his hands with the tentacles of an octopus. He didn’t last long but once cleaned, pickled and placed in an outsized jar he made an excellent attraction. We were sheep, eyewitnesses, minorclerics, prostitutes and baseball fans. We dreamt of heat and of solitude. We wished for peace, or a cease-fire at least. We cut the head o» a live rooster and drank the blood – we thought it would help. We fucked our brother. We were smugglers, heathens and pirates. We lied about our age and then hoped for better things. We showed a gun in the first act, in a drawer, hidden under some papers – the central character kept staring at it and mumbling, crying almost, but we weren’t prepared to let her use it; the dramatic tension was all wrong and so by act four the audience were still wondering what the gun thing was all about. We burned e¹gies of trade negotiators. We were fraudulent mediums, working the crowd. We were not beautiful or especially bright but we had the strange gift of being remembered. We were hate-filled children with ice in our veins. In interrogation our voices got quieter and quieter, and the detectives, not wishing to break the mood, got quieter and quieter too, until, by the end of it, stage by stage, we each were only moving our lips and no sound came out, the tape recorder running for posterity. We altered the limits of human action. We loved a piece of time too small to give it a name. We came to the place where the tape says POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS and then we crossed it. We were funny without meaning to be. We listened to Stairway to Heaven 13 times in a row. We played in the show houses on the edge of the estate. Long periods of boredom were our fault. We spent long hours at the bus stop. We were long lost cousins in love. We liked the way Sarah smiled. We liked the smell of napalm in the morning. We missed episode two. We lied through false teeth. We watched repeats of everything. We did thankless tasks. We were continuity flaws. We jumped
ship before the world had taken one full turn. We took three sugars in our co»ee. We confess to parricide, conspiracy and Pearl Harbor. We all wore clothes our mothers made. We were blacklisted in car manuals. We evacuated whole communities overnight. We buried our pasts in shallow graves. In the baths we spontaneously combusted and in the park we talked while the kids played on the climbing frame. After a long time of fake deliberation over the menu at the motorway services, we went for the special o»er RECESSION BUSTER BREAKFAST (2 kids eat free with 2 adults). We confess to personal interest, hobbies and irrelevant experience; we are guilty of landing awkwardly. We are responsible for the coasts and the moors and cumulus clouds and great vistas and vast landscapes and poignant winters. We read the map the wrong way up. We confess to sarcastic suicide notes, to Aeroflot and diagrams. We sni»ed lighter fluid and spat through our teeth. We took the gun shot, we took the ricochet; that’s all there is to say. We were extras, walk-ons, stand-ins and losers. We were just there to make up the numbers in some of the crowd scenes. We knew we were gay from the age of five. We had plastic surgery to look oriental or black so we could supposedly report on what it was like to be di»erent – we reported our findings on Good Morning Television to the pleasure and interest of Richard and Judy. We confess to knowing Sam and refusing to wave to him. We bled in open spaces. We climbed without a rope. We revealed secrets to the Russians and cheated for small change. We were cautioned for loitering under Section 35. We were test patients, sitting in a hospital room and waiting for the side-e»ects. We got mixed up; we got into the Occult. We dreamt the whole of the Second World War before it happened. We had the faith of no faith. We thought that less was less. We failed the breath test. We gambled everything on the chance to win diamonds, camcorders and holidays. We were bogus asylum seekers, bogus refugees. We travelled through the German night; we met the German girl. Our marriage was just part of a plan to blow up the train. We had sex in the visionary position – sat far apart on opposite sides of the room and gazing and, masturbating, staring at each other in a mixture of fear, desire and disbelief, certain in the knowledge that even if we came together we would not come together at all. We stayed up after midnight. We worked at Guantanamo. We worked at Abu Ghraib. We were described by photofits. We sighed when the evening had to end. We were invisible. We sadly lacked in the subject of botany. We switched the bags while no-one was looking. We noticed, not for the first time, the look between Brian and Peter’s boyfriend Neville Darby. We christened diseases with beautiful names; we cut o» the villages and sealed o» the streets. We drew the curtains when the window cleaners came. We mispronounced URANUS and SCHEAT. We thought we were funny, funnier than anyone had ever been. We took afternoon naps when we should have been working. We fell in love with every co-star. We cheated at cards. It took us three hours to cut o» the head with an open knife. We dreamt about dinosaurs and planes crash-landing in back gardens. We never said how much we needed each other. We washed up badly. We never thought. We never danced until the end of the disco. We got tattoos done on our foreheads saying PAX AMERICANA. We stole some electrical equipment which looked expensive and complicated but which we couldn’t understand; we plugged it in at home and got some nasty burns – objects began to arrive from the future; we were puzzled and then later imprisoned. We made small talk. Some of the paperwork we submitted was a little bit irregular. We asked the hairdresser about his recently dead father. We stole fish. We worshipped cruel Aztec Gods. We were careless with the truth. We patented an obviously crackpot device for listening to the songs of angels. We built
extensions on our houses without the necessary planning permission. We treated people like scenery. We treated the whole place like a hotel. World War III was just a thinly painted backdrop for our love. We kept lifting up the curtain and peeking behind. We hit rock bottom. We found our own level. We tried to guess the presents by feeling through the wrapping paper. We filmed a frog’s leg, twitching on a slab. We hated robbing banks – it got boring after a while. We handcu»ed Lee Morris to the railings in the playground and pulled his trousers down. We lived a harsh fast life. We were glad to be alive. We didn’t have an opinion on anything except how crazy the world was. We’re guilty of attic rooms, power cuts and bombs. We confess to statues, ruins and our older brother’s Gameboys. We confess to aborting our children for research, killing our parents for the house and putting granddad in a home. We were not at our best in the mornings. We did not feed the neighbours’ cat. We lost the thread. We laid down our lives for someone else’s country. We smiled invitingly at Antoine, thereby raising expectations that we had no intention of fulfilling. We frequented gaming hells, low hostelries and the late-night supermarket on Jasmine Street. We passed folded notes and whispered at the back. We sang o»-key and stared at the person to our right. We weren’t ready for our opening night. We were sex tourists. We liked Steven but he smelt funny. We told stolen jokes on The X Factor. We sang out of key on Pop Idol: The Rivals. We sold defective oven gloves door to door. We lived in clutter. We were top of the pops. We stayed out past bedtime, past curfew, past caring. We knew what we were doing. We looked on at the ecstatic twilight of technological society. We saw nine great motorway pile-ups. We were always interested in missing things – time, people and history. We fenced stolen farming equipment. When the mermaids tried to warn us, we threw stones at them. We snored loudly while other people were trying to eat. We read novels with unhappy endings. We wept for slimmers. We learnt how to fly but we did not learn how to land. We were intellectual pygmies. We flung mud. We dug up mass graves. We played truant. We taught Russian roulette at A level. We dubbed silent movies; we coughed in dramatic pauses. We chanted meaningless or silly slogans to put the other marchers o» and when the stewards tried to stop us, we ducked under the crash barriers and ran o» into the park. We played musical chairs. We believed in the spirits of dead astronauts. We were scared of volcanoes. We sent each other used underwear through the post. We countenanced forever as an expression of mortality. We honoured without exception all church architecture. We said, ‘Love is like floating in duckweed.’ We were dead meat. We stand accused of Saturday nights and early Monday mornings. We were jealous in a sensational manner. We used supermodels in war documentaries – they were excellent. We were poisoners. We put the last bu»alo to sleep. We went to Stonehenge and didn’t like it. We ate an irregular meal. We watched a man die in six inches of water. We’re guilty of making weak tea. We drove madness into the hearts of good folks. We broke all the rules of ice hockey in one day. We forged doctors’ notes. We could never return. We broke down doors, smashed windows and blamed Philip Lawson. We took a lot of liberties. We took advice from demons. We pretended to know people. We took too long getting ready. We inflicted viscous attacks and horrible injuries. We stole from a warehouse on Last Minute Street. We practised strange tactics for interviews including The Long Sustained Silence, Repetition of the Previous Question and Sudden Welling Up of Tears. We idolised Raymond and Lesley. We liked uniforms and signs of obedience. We held him down – it was fascinating. We had piss stains on our trousers. We had shit stains on our shoes. We had no hope. We linked our arms and skipped in a desperate imitation of the wizard of Oz. Our
philosophy was do them before they do you. We fingered our arses. We thought we were relatives of Robert Duvall – but we weren’t. We confess to rubbing up against tables. We redrew maps to slowly excise certain areas – this was a slow technical distortion (nothing as crude as omission) by which unwanted areas were minutely compressed over long periods of time. When the government changed, and with it our political fortunes, we had to slowly distort it all back. We sni»ed lighter fluid and spat through our teeth. We took the gun shot; we took the ricochet. We came from a country where smiling was considered dangerous. We were tricksters, pranksters, practical jokers – we put meat in someone’s tea; we left the bedroom looking like a raid; we wore funny noses, bow ties that went round and round – for the grandchildren we pretended to be powered by electricity, drawing energy from the light bulb in the centre of the ceiling and moving in a strange jerky way. We blocked the fucking fast lane. We rang the wrong number twice, no, three times. We bought the same magazine for years. We had tattoos done on our arses saying LONG LIVE THE HEROISM OF SENSELESS PURSUITS. We had tattoos done on our heads saying LET NO MAN ENTER HERE. We had tattoos done on our stomachs saying WHY EMPTY? We ran out on Vic – it was a gamble. We missed a train. We were death mechanics. We were sleep throwers – when we woke up in the mornings there was nothing near us. We were loud drunks and fornicators. After dark was a time of hate and burning for us. We fell asleep at the wheel and woke up some miles down the road. We were pirates. We were lawless. We sailed beneath the black flag. We had our hands in the till. Stumbling lost and disorientated, we realised the world was full of dames. We confess to bellowing sweet nothings. We believed in UFOs. We believed that Jung was probably right about women. We believed that truth was always the best policy. We dealt in imaginary videos. We got drunk on half a pint. We entered the wrong room and backed out hastily. We had sexual intercourse that night, not once, but seventeen times. We sent our daughters o» into prostitution and one of them came back dying of AIDS; we could not understand why she was dying, or even that she was dying at all – with her sweats, her blisters and her strange agonised deliriums we thought she was becoming a shaman, a magic priestess, but it didn’t work out that way. When the lights went out, we swapped places. We were YTS vandals – losers on job-creation schemes. We pretended to fall over outside a hospital. We lied about our age. We looked promising in mirrors. We lied twice, denied three times. We killed ten men, burned sixteen houses. We wrote two love songs twice on the trot, we made six threatening phone calls and six gentle apologies. We saw six crows sat on a fence, we wept sixteen gallons of tears, we drank fourteen vodkas, we issued several writs. We saw each other 57 times, we threw nine coins in the fountain, we threw seventeen coins at the goalkeeper, we made three wishes, we had seven dreams, we had ten seconds of silence, ten years of peace, ten scars on our arms where the rotor blades had hit. We tore five pages from the back of the book, we crashed 200 cars, fathered 39 children, walked backwards for nine days. We wrote six novels with the same plot, we whispered seven desires, we murmured eighteen pleas, we broke nine mirrors, seventeen plates, 36 cups, a window, a washing-machine and three statues. We shouted 36 curses, told three thousand cautious jokes. Our lounge was like Bosnia – divided into two – the two of us looking shell-shocked across space. We cut the crime rate by introducing a new system of counting. We said, ‘Don’t call here again; it’s dangerous.’ We spoke OCTOBER LANGUAGE. We dreamt of hammer blows; we trained as cosmonauts in Star City. We were spastic bashers. We were the captives of our own metaphors. We danced naked for money. We tried to export things without
all the proper documents – it wasn’t deliberate fraud but you could see why the customs men at Ramsgate were suspicious – they kept looking over the paperwork and tutting and then making phone calls to a man in one of the other portacabins. It was 3am when they let us go, and only then because it was the end of their shift. We told mortician jokes at weddings. We betrayed our friends through silence. We were lonely for twelve years. We loved the way the rain ran o» the windscreen. We confess to making love for an irregular amount of time. We smiled secretively, faking orgasms as we did. We sold our kidneys to a rich Arab. We escaped with the help of the netball team. We burned and maimed in recognition of our illustrious past. We were drunk in charge of a telephone. Our nicknames were muck-mouth, filth-tongue and toxic avenger. Our town was famous for its mud. We burnt the grass ’cos we got sick of waiting for Bruno to mow it. We suspected our husbands of having a bit on the side. We suspected our best friends of espionage. We asked our boyfriends to drive the getaway car. When we met in a gay disco, we could never have known what horrors lay ahead. We had savage compulsions. We knew the law, not because we wanted to obey it, but because we wanted to get away with things. We used Ju-Ju to bind people to us. We did not like the big goodbyes. We refused to succumb. We refused to suck Colin’s cock until he had been to the bathroom and washed it. We turned the tables on Jason. We saved our trump cards till last. We killed ourselves so that we could spend more time with the kids. We saw the moon reflected in a pool of our own blood. We saw the future in the face of a dead civillian. They traced our travel through the credit cards. We were freeloaders. We switched o» the SatNav. We had lecherous plans. We locked our eldest daughter up at the top of a very tall tower so that she could not escape. We said, ‘Lets go back to the hotel. No one will notice.’ We secretly shat ourselves whilst halfway up the climbing wall. Most days we doubted things, some days we doubted it all.
