I made my way up and, to be fair, people were engaged in conversations on the metal stairs but no-one was out of it enough yet to actually sit on them. I imagined that, even at a party this heated they were cold to the touch and not exactly forgiving to the average arse. I barely managed to grunt out the necessary ’scuse me, sorry, tas to get me around or through or whatever. I’d picked the peak of the fucking party to get misanthropic and why I just hadn’t headed out of the door I don’t know. A wonderful mixture of claustrophobia and... Katherine once said that the correct word for “fear of open spaces” wasn’t “agoraphobia,” because that means “fear of the marketplace,” and that there was another, better, more accurate word for “fear of open spaces” but she never elaborated, possibly because she was high as a kite conference and when that happens she’ll argue very fiercely and intensely about something with passion and fervour and gesticulating and only a bit of slurring but then pyow! she’s off on some other tip, which could be anything from alien abductions to wallpaper, but usually something more scatological.
Where was I?
Heading up to the gallery floor, which runs like a catwalk around the first big, open space downstairs and is lined with smaller, flatter pieces bounded between the walls and terminal freefall by high metal railings, perfect for leaning on when looking at or expounding on Art, doubtless. The catwalks opens out to a milling-around place, which could well be where they hold the “meet the sponsors with a glass of wine”-type evenings, but which was currently darkened and filled with chattering, gesturing, bouncing people. Loud people with enthusiastic opinions and some with intense and serious points to make and others with an epic need to pull, from the look of them. There was music up here as well, which didn’t help.
So that’s where I was: heading into information overload.
As casually as I could, I wandered. Always heading away from noise and towards empty spaces. It took a while. I found respite on a sofa somewhere for a bit, but then had to quit it for a couple. Very much a couple. Or an intense simulacrum of one. Further on, further in, finally, I was in a quieter part of the building, but there were still people around. Where in the name of arse could a woman go and not be walked in on by some random artist or wannabe?
I found myself looking at a sign on a door:
There was even a canvas bag hung on a nail by the door, with a sign above it that said: deposit your fags, lighters, matches, spliffs, bongs, tinder and flint, Rizlas and the like here. Unless you enjoy dismemberment. A further post-it had scrawled on it: see above re: nicking other people’s stuff from here...
Exophobic? I thought. Ectophobic?
I poked the bag cautiously. It was empty. Excellent. I tried the handle. It turned. Perfect...
Now, I thought to myself, I wonder if she has strictures against guests banging their heads against the walls...
I pushed the door open and made my way into the corridor, thought about turning on the light and then saw that, this being the top of the building, there was plenty of ambient light coming in from the skylights. Barely-illuminated suited my state of mind.
It continued to be a corridor, essentially - narrow and winding and complicated and this was clearly - from the smell, from the signs painted, scrawled, stuck on and carved into the doors that this was the place of the working space for the various artists who supplemented the Art and Kira’s rent. I walked along it for a while.
It would have been really, really convenient if I’d had another flashback while I was wandering around. Something that illuminated the mystery, or at least gave me another fucking piece of the puzzle. But no. Further flashes of this mysterious woman called Sandra, who may or may not have anything to do with an interview I was supposedly conducting, failed to burst over me. I walked up, and then down, that corridor, pummelling my poor brain, trying to find the key to the imageshift that occurs when I access my memories - like the correct search terms for Google or even the right letter for the card index. Nothing. All I got for my pains were Wednesday night dissolving into a big empty space and a tight, breathless feeling of anxiety and... guilt. I reviewed the images that had come to me in the café. Nothing. This woman was clearly the same as the woman I’d woken up with last night/ this morning, and that was all. That was it.
That’s all, she wrote, I thought, after a good long time of fruitless mind-mauling.
As I said, were this the more lurid and obvious type of fiction (which, naturally, I would never find myself reading, darling), something dramatic would have happened. I’d’ve looked out of a window or at a particular piece of art and things would have been made clear to me (as it was, most of the doors in this section were locked by secretive, paranoid or wealthy artists with stash to secure). I’d’ve walked along that corridor and ended up somewhere where I accidentally did bang my head somehow (startled by bats? Thrown down a laundry chute by a psycho? Falling down the stairs to escape said psycho?) somewhere in the second half of the film, and all the pieces would fall together and there’d be a perfect explanation followed by retribution/ reconciliation/ redemption. Or, okay, at least a partial reclamation of the memories, or I’d’ve been chased by a thrilleresque conspiracy goon, during which harum-scarum I’d either have banged my head (see above), or he (naturally he) would have said something in a distinctive accent or... why am I bothering? None of it happened and nothing came back.
I did, however, discover that art imbues/ is perpetrated in every part of this building - even the toilet, a bastion for cold water on my hot and aching neck wasn’t safe and besides I took one look at my own face in the mirror and flung myself, dripping, out of the claustrophobically scribbled-on space. “How do they stand it?” I found myself saying, out loud.
Something about hearing my own voice bouncing off the walls, about the art, about the strangeness of where I found myself, about the best part of 24 hours of sheer frustration, confusion, not to mention god-awful and terrifying moments of control over my own mind being snatched away in pieces, triggered a stabbing sensation from within me. A rush of an old, familiar, icy heat. That’s the only way to describe what happened next. It’s lucky that most of the art rooms were locked. It’s lucky that no-one else was there with me. It’s lucky at moments like this - long, all-consuming moments like this...
How do I put this? I was angry. Angry. The kind of angry that women, apparently, don’t get. The kind that punches walls with all its weight. The kind that blows itself up for the sake of revenge. Thick, bright rage clenched in me and I was shocked, once I’d got my bearings, realised this for what it was, at how good it felt. You don’t smoke for a while, you don’t drink for a while, you cut out refined sugar, caffeine, chocolate for a while, or any other mood-altering substance you care to name then, when you next take it, bam! Luminous hit. God, I’d missed actual ire. In my current circle of friends it would be akin to saying I’m addicted to kicking puppies... because it feels so... fucking... good.
No doubt: being rage-clean is generally good for my karma, my blood pressure, my moral bank balance, but damn - this was like taking the biggest, most self-indulgent bite of fresh, sugar-laden, chocolate syrup-coated pastry with extra caffeine sprinkled on top. And not even that, because the feeling of energy is so incredibly pure - because it’s your own, you’ve released yourself. I felt that sinful sweetness pooling in my belly while all the right neurones lit up pop! pop! pop! all the way up the line to my starving animal brain.
Fuck it, I’m going to say it: I love rage. Nothing can hit the spot quite like it. Nothing gives an adrenaline hit quite like good, old-fashioned irrational, reflex ire. The type that pulls the tendon triggers that close your fist and flicks, lightning-fast through your increasingly dark, uncrowded head, the images of everything you’d pound until they or your fist were fragments, raw meat or worse... and you’d just keep on pounding.
Pick up a bat and whale at something until it can’t squeal anymore? Sure.
And this, of course, is what gets called fiend, or demon, or dark and petty, animal god - something that just wants to fuck the world until it screams then burn the pieces.
I should say at this point that I have a problem with rage. I’m not going to because I don’t - everyone else is just epically fucking lucky they don’t actually have the problem with my temper that they think they do have and I know they could have if it wasn’t for the rest of me standing in the way.
Not if they knew that, at times like this, I want to beat the world until it screams, then beat it until it stops screaming, then piss fire on it.
It was very dark in here. Especially in contrast to the fire licking at every nerve end. Luckily, as I said, the only breakable thing in that corridor was me.