Notes on the Author

My room is a collection of dust and dirt and hair and sickness. Everybody's hair; in colours and contortions of red and gold and black; blonde and auburn and long and short, men's and women's, curly or not; my own, and not. Looking down at my toes, I think how I used to bite my toenails as a kid. Now I pick them, pull and tear a little, causing catechisms on my fingernails to appear. Half black and full of grit and gristle and jerkily protruding like sick splints of wood- my nails on my fingers and toes, both. I'm filthy. Not necessarily, nor exclusively, in that adolescent, hormonal and lusting way, either; just plain dirty. I feel old in my unwashed self- a thick layer of fresh on top of old, dried, sweat stuck to my skin like a penetrable shield as I slide my fingers down my self and scratch off a flush layer of grime. Little spots cover my face and my uncut facial hair hides all manner of pocks and scars, and my chest burns as it forms a concave indenture and I cough up a small wad of phlegm. Sweat trickles across my upper lip. It's 20 past 4, and I'm still sat on my bed in just my boxer-shorts, stuck on myself as a figure of some dirty old man- a cheap booze-hound, and I like it. It appeals to me. There is an appeal to the dirt and the grime, the catarrh, the fabricated smokey setting like an ethereal haze and the bin full of used condoms which suggests sex.
   And then it becomes a masturbatory act to be sat in the dirt and the grime and the human gristle, and so I prepare to take a shower, and vacate this little, filthy, room of mine that I've hardly left in 4 days.