Worst. Person. Ever(4)
Population: 105,000
GDP: $206 million
Internet top-level domain (TLD): .ki
International calling code: +686
02
When I arrived in East Acton, I looked about: nice enough day—but then on Henchman Street some verminous panhandling dole-rat squatting on the sidewalk stuck out a soiled Caffè Nero coffee cup and begged for a few pence, instantly blotting out my good mood. I kicked him on the shin. I mean, for fuck’s sake, here he is, the same age as me, but I’m out in the world, work, work, work, making the world a better place for everybody, and this guy? All he does is sit around all day, expecting the world to throw him cash.
“What was that for, mate?”
“Get a fucking job, you lazy shit.”
“Job? You want me to get a job, do you?”
He stood up then. He was sunburned, somewhat larger than me, dressed in oily rags arranged in a manner that would have been considered Duran Duran stylish in 1982, but, thirty years later, flecked with feces, discount fag cinders and the spattered remains of meals-in-a-can, constituted a rather terrifying mite-breeding facility. “Say that to my face, mate,” he growled. He was wearing a name tag: NEAL—like anyone gave a shit what this street-fuck’s name was. His left eye was a milky cataract white.
Seeing as I’d kicked a hornet’s nest, I decided the best course of action was to flee.
“Come on mate, don’t be a coward!”
Just fucking speedwalk out of here, Ray, don’t let him smell your fear. Why, look up there—its Wolfstan Street, where you can turn right and never see this unoccupied dickwad ever again.
Whump!
Tackled from behind … fuck. Two hundred pounds of man stink crunching my face onto a sidewalk papered with lung oysters and chip wrappers gone transparent from oil.
You’d think I’d find a shred of mercy or concern or even interest from the citizens of glamorous West London, but no, they were all so fucking busy with their drug-taking, their lotto-ticket-buying and dole-robbing—assuming they were even fucking English—that seeing a visibly sane man like me being attacked by an obviously violent nutter like Neal elicited not a whiff of protest.
A colon–scented mouth and the one working eye asserted itself in front of my face. “We like ourselves, don’t we?”
I shut my eyes.
He twisted my right arm behind my back, “We like ourselves, don’t we? So, what’s your name, then?”
I twisted around; there was no escape to be had. My eyes opened. Fucker.
He smiled at me. “And our name would be …?”
The smell of street grit reminded me of childhood. I’m not telling this low-life fuck my name. “I’m not telling a low-life fuck like you my name—Neal.”
“Right then.” Neal did something I still don’t quite understand to this day, but it resulted in a jolt of pain in the shoulder that was a gourmet blend of stubbed-toe-meets-hot-boiling-chip-fat.
“Raymond!” I moaned.
“Whazzat?”
“Raymond! My fucking name is Raymond!”
“That so?” Neal rubbed his dreadful, dreadful hair in my face. “My name is Neal, and my hair is called Neal, too. I can give my hair a name because I’m nuts and live on the street and I haven’t washed it since Princess Di died. It’s my way of letting my love for her live on and on.”
“You sick, contaminated fuck, what is wrong with you? Get off before I get fucking superAIDS from your fucking beard.”
“Can’t do that, mate. I have a lifestyle, and part of me being me is me keeping my style alive.”
He is off his fucking rocker. “Are you off your fucking rocker? No one dresses like Duran Duran anymore. The eighties revival came and went. People barely dressed like that back in the fucking day and all of those wankers can’t change their own fucking diapers anymore. If you have to dress like some haircut band, at least make it Echo and the fucking Bunnymen instead of Duran fucking Duran.”
Another profound jolt of pain racked my shoulder. I shrieked.
Grannies with vinyl tartan grocery carts passed by as if Neal and I were tweens sharing a chaste kiss.
“Right,” barked Neal. “Echo & the Bunnymen thought they were so cool, but it was just Ian McCulloch acting all fucked up with asymmetrical hairdos so that birds would form a line outside the bus and chain-bang him one by one.”
“Well, that’s why anyone becomes a musician, Neal. Why the fuck else would you do it?”
The pressure on my shoulder was eased.
“You have a point.”
“Neal, I would like you to stop crushing my skull into the pavement. You may like life on the street, but I, myself, am not used to smelling evaporating lapdog piss close-up.”