Club Dub

 
Club Dub was her favourite cafe, buried at the back of a bookshop full of smoke and rising damp.

She loved the cool jazz, the addicts, eclectics, and especially eavesdropping on faceless adulterers conspiring over tryst and alibi.  

On those occasions when life becomes vaudeville, you might even find Conan The Accountant O'Brien lurking at a table in a dark corner, in secret conversation with the Invisible Man, a regular at Club Dub and renowned for his clever aphorisms.

The other day, during a monologue on post-modernism, he bravely announced that shit happens, and that history, Marxism and love were like Americans - they may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.

Some patrons applauded, others threw coins thinking he was a busker.

Whoa! Here she come! Our heroine!

Maxine found a table and sat down on a perspex chair luminous with embedded grains of phosphorescence. Lighting her last cigarette, inhaling deeply, she scanned both the menu and wildlife. The band played Rocky Mountain High, the Club Dub re-mix.

As always, Harry was late. She ordered black coffee and profiteroles, lots of them, with lots of chocolate. She said to the hapless waiter: "Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things. Now bring me the profiteroles!"

“Fuck him”, she said out loud. “Never on time. Ever.”

Looking around, she spotted the shifty O'Brien in animated conversation with a person swathed in bandages, and wondered if culture was a side-effect of drugs. A journalist with a penchant for pharmaceuticals, she once told me she had a sweet synapse, and each waking moment of hanging out was a re-run of life on the edge.

She closed her eyes to cope with an imminent anarchy of perception. Flash back, flash forward ... her desperation to re-upholster history, even before it happened, could never transcend the vortex of her desire to abuse one dangerous substance or another - usually, one after the other.

Pills, ampoules, powder and plants, they were all grist for her psyche’s mill. Redemption, she once told me, lies in euphoria, and never mind the self-indulgence. Purely a means to THE end.

“Autism is fascinating”, announced Lucky Dipp without warning. He was Club Dub’s resident philosopher and pusher. “It’s convincing proof that the being of phenomena cannot be reduced to the  phenomena of being”.

Maxine clenched her mind, opened her eyes and found Lucky Dipp sitting beside her.

Yellow with impending liver failure, he smelled worse than week-old roadkill. The only thing she could do was to vomit a profiterole over him. This gave his pallor an interesting palette. Now, he really did look like shit. Maxine however, felt better than she had for minutes.

Oblivious to circumstance, he narrowed his eyes, opened a fist, and offered her a foil of white powder. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Brain gone bungy-jumping again Max?”

“What is it this time, Lucky?”

“Something special, Max, very special, new to the planet, I mean, this gear’s supposed to download the cosmos!”

“Woo hoo! Am I impressed? In a word, no. Come on Lucky, you’re talking to me. I’ve got more habits than a wardrobe in a nunnery. You know my motto ... SO WHAT? So, what?

“What? Max, this stuff is SERIOUS! the latest in smart molecules, bionic nano tech, self-replicating neurochemical Von Neumann machines. One hit of this, and your ego becomes utterly unraveled. It connects you to the collective unconscious, or if you really want to feel the love, the US Midwest, share a psychosis, a red neck, own your own bazooka, make a bomb ... you can become one with everyone!

"Astral travel, be an out-of-body cyber slut.... I’m on it now. Wow! Max! you’ve got great DNA!”  

Froth began to collect in the corners of his mouth. “

(What Maxine didn’t know was that Lucky Dipp and his sister, the ravishing Aida, were robots, the first of a new breed, with advanced AI, simulated skin and sexual service capabilities.

Aida had already appeared on the David Letterperson Show after Letterperson discovered her quoting Rimbaud in Club Dub’s basement car park.

“The best thing is to sleep, dead-drunk, on the beach”.

But then, she blew her cover in the face of Letterperson's relentless and probing in depth-questions.

“No David, I won’t fuck you.  I’m sleeping with your best friend.  Yes David, if you say so. I am really nothing but a robot with sexual service capabilities. Really? Your heartbroken? I'm a bitch?! Life’s a barbecue, Dave. We all get our sausages burned. I beg your pardon?

"What do you expect from a robot, ethics? guilt? Get real! buddy!"

Rumor had it that she engaged in a brief affair with Letterperson's best buddy, the Invisible Man, before he became invisible, and that he became invisible immediately after. Aida also disappeared, soon after the interview, despite the best efforts of Letterperson and his bandaged buddy. Being invisible had suddenly become popular).

“Sounds progressively more hilarious, Lucky. How much does this complete cortical cataclysm cost?”

“This is a free sample, Max, but only for you. All I want is your undying gratitude, and a long, wet kiss.“ He smiled, and in doing so, revealed his teeth. Maxine heaved again.

This time, there were no profiteroles, only acid and bile. And a remarkable thing happened!

Slowly, his skin began to dissolve, followed quickly by things internal, technicolor bubbles and what looked like indeterminate condensed soup sliding from and between his bones.

“You whore, Maxine!”

Soon, the melt-down was complete with most of Lucky Dipp was a puddle on the floor.

Maxine stared blankly at the collapsed skeleton on her table. Ever the opportunist, she regained her senses, grabbed the foil from between his phalanges and stuffed it in her jeans pocket.

“Ars longa, vita brevis,” she mused.

“Waiter! there’s been an accident! I’ve spilled my soup.”

The waiter arrived with a bucket and mop. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the skeleton. Baudrillard's vomit?

“Art,” she replied solemnly. “An installation, a reminder to us all of the consequences of slow table service”.

(“Fucking wanker”) said the waiter, sotto voce.

"I don’t feel so good,” came a plaintive cry from the bucket."


The End (thank god).