Story for performance #878
webcast from Sydney at 07:35PM, 15 Nov 07

If he walked East more than ten blocks he entered his own past. Rexon (that was his name) did not really like to go that way cos too many of the ghosts were still living and too many wanted something from him. He preferred it better to stay in the present or sometimes he walked North which for him mostly was the future.

The future—anything much above Krieg Strasse—was a complicated maze of new stores and incomprehensible roadblocks, easy to get lost in. Plus it had a funny habit of turning into the past. Some old fucking corners came out of nowhere or bars/residences he didn’t recognise at first but then like whoa. Aghh. Past. Past. Get out of there. Ghosts crawling the walls. Skin like dust. The knives. Talking in that way they still talk back then all yeah-yeah-yeah and sing like Caruso, sing like that or I jump-cut-out your sister’s eyes.

The apartment was safe. All present. A little bit of future sometimes. A girl that spended the night on alternate weekends. A door that double-locked. A kick-ass Home Cinema that played Muscle Cops IX all night if he wanted it to. Man. It wasn’t much, but his sleep was steady, and it could pass for a Life.

For work he dug graves—low paid piece-work, mostly drop-dead prices—shallow graves, the unmarked kind, just one step up from a dig-it-yourself deal. If the ceasefire ever lasted too long he switched trades and waited round on corners, as far West you could go without time stopping altogether, in that place where freight trucks arrived. Drivers needed guys to load, unload or stack and carry—all cash, no cameras, no questions. Most people there had no fixed abode, no papers, no hope and no faces, some even burned off the fingerprints. They didn’t just look like the street, Rexon told the girl that stayed over, on one alternate weekend, they were the street. She shrugged. For his disguise Rexon just wore a hood up always and a scarf wrapped tightly around. Invisible they called him, from Invisible Man. The name stuck. Hilarious. Invisible. Hey Invisible. Haven’t seen you in a while. Come with me, help unload this trailer.

* * *

Not long after the First Lady gave birth to those weird fucking twins, there was rumour of a meteorite shower. Fools were talking it up on internets all month. Man, even that fat ass comic dude on the Fat Ass Channel mentioned it. Cosmic he said cosmical, cosmopolitan. Like the cocktail. Yeah. Hilarious.

Come the night Rexon climbed the fire exits as far as they went, right to the roof where already some party went down. BBQ on tin tray. Melted pitch on the roof. Some beers in an Ice Box. Some weed in a pipe. Lot of people. Hey, yeah. Come over, pull up a crate. Rexon kept himself lonely, eyes reading sky and all those neons that signed it, announcing the new perfumes and a Vodka called SANE.

The shower came down after midnight. Beautiful. Rexon wished he had a phone to just call the girl one time and tell her he was watching, what he saw. The way the meteorites strafed the clouds, with only that old blue blue Moonlight shit, that was amazing. And the glisten on those Motherfuckers. That stung. Man. It jump-cut the heart.

* * *

When the roof party mostly passed out or down the ladder, Rexon was left alone with some kid from another building, but who said he came up here cos this one was higher.

The kid was looking East and pointing stuff like where some fires were already burning. Or where it looked like a skirmish—the old firefly thing sparking in between the buildings. Come look he kept saying but Rexon said No, it’s okay. Truth was he feared greatly to look out and into the past, and only when the kid (called CLAY) got agitated did Rexon relent it and join him, looking pastwards, sitting on the ledge.

He could see all the past then, all worse cos it really hadn’t changed. Like what the fuck? The past was not meant to sit there and wait like that bullshit. He didn’t like to see it—not even at distance. He knew there’d be ghosts down there and they would still be all yeah-yeah and sing like that or maybe the past would’ve changed a bit. Ughh. Gave him creeps just to think about it, plus how much money he owed in the past and what they’d make him pay for it if he ever went back again.

What they call you?

That was the kid CLAY that was talking to him.

Invisible he said.

The CLAY kid laughed. Sure. Tell you what, he said, Tell you what Invisible. I cut you a deal.

What you mean a deal? I don’t want Nothing. I got all I need.

And the CLAY kid said Look, look at this.

And Invisible was glad of an excuse not to be staring the past in his motherfucking face like that so he looked.

What is it?

This here, said the CLAY kid, talking like an old wise Black Motherfucker in a horrors movie. This here is one of the bullets they used to shoot Kennedy with. Wanna buy it?

Invisible said, What for? Like. Why would I want that? I got bullets already.

And CLAY said Yeah but this bullet, this bullet is HISTORY.

And Invisible laughed and he said How much you want for it?

And the kid said 50 and he said No 25. And the kid said 30. And he said Done. And then they spat hands and shook them. And then they performed the transaction (so CLAY had 30 and Invisible had one of those bullets that supposedly killed Kennedy).

And then the night ended.

CLAY kid went down the ladder. Invisible sat left holding the bullet, and turned to look North where construction work was supposedly

starting.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Tim Etchells.