A Role For Jennifer Aniston

I watch as she jots feverishly in the corner, her shoulders arched high as her whole upper body presses down on the notebook, as though she is armouring whatever it is she is writing. She sometimes beats the pencil against the table, often gnaws at it, occasionally shrieks at it. I’m surprised it remains in one piece.

The barman tells me she’s a screenwriter, that she’s writing a movie for Jennifer Aniston. I see her counting the change in her pocket from time to time and this leads me to believe Jennifer’s participation in the project may be clouded by budgetary pickles.

The barman tells me that he once sneaked a look at her notebook, and was surprised to see that what she was writing was not ostensibly the screenplay for a Jennifer Aniston movie. In fact, it appeared to him to be a condensed and rewritten account of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

At 10.30pm, I’m playing some dice with the barman in the hope of a free drink when Jennifer Aniston walks in unexpectedly. The screenwriter stands up suddenly, hugging the notebook tight to her chest. I can’t hear the exchange between them as there is a lot of noise in the bar from a pony-tailed Navajo Indian headbanging at the jukebox to a Tammy Wynette song, but I can see Jennifer is not happy about something, and the screenwriter is rather anxious, probably about the same something, I’m given to postulate.
Suddenly the screenwriter yells a bad word at Jennifer. At least I think it’s a bad word. I can’t hear because of a crescendo in Tammy Wynette. Something in the way the screenwriter forms her mouth advises it’s a bad word. She throws her notebook at Jennifer Aniston and storms out of the bar.

After the screenwriter has made her explosive exit, I watch as Jennifer leafs through the notebook, reading the script of her new movie. Something about the role seems to catch her interest, so she sits down and reads in more detail.

The barman and I finish our game of dice and watch as the ghost of Hegel materialises to present Jennifer with Absolute Knowledge. He takes her by the hand, and guides her through the history of Western thought, stopping off for a brief shop at Bloomingdales along the way. All those troubling pictures of Brangelina wilt and fade in Jennifer’s recollection as all consciousness becomes slowly but uniformly levelled.

She leaves the bar smiling, confident and optimistic.

Personally, I really hope Jennifer gets the Oscar for this one.

Uaneen

Homelands Festival
Mosney, Co. Meath
March, 2000

‘That’s Bobby Gillespie over there,’ said Pen, pointing to a crag of a man amongst a few.
‘No, it’s not him,’ Tim said. ‘He looks too fresh. Gillespie would look like the end of an era.’

They sat down at a table to drink their beers. How they’d gotten into the VIP garden, they couldn’t figure out. Maybe they were able to slip in because of their unholy proximity to Johnny Moy and his entourage, a group of royally badged so-and-so’s, fully approved by club culture.  Anyway, they took their seats, and began to discuss their forthcoming headline set.

‘We’ll come out wearing top hats and tailcoats,’ Tim said.
‘Are ya mad?’ roared Pen. ‘It’s not Andrew Lloyd Webber, this is Gatecrasher in mud. All they need to see is a light show, and our heads shaking violently over a desk.’
‘Maybe we could wear bulbs on our heads like Orbital?’

They’d been discussing their headline set all day, even though they hadn’t been included in the festival’s lineup on account of their not being musicians. This was how the drugs worked for them. The dialogue was deferred however when they noticed close to their table, Uaneen Fitzsimons, the radio and television presenter – she was walking back and forth on her lonesome, talking to herself it would seem.

‘What the hell is she doing?’ asked Pen.
‘She must be rehearsing her lines or something.’

Uaneen’s existence did this mad hungerness to them, this skin like a white cheddar you would have gobbled whole, and hair crunchy delicious red.

‘Hey, Uaneen,’ said Pen.

She was evidently busy with her work, preparing her presentation, but she smiled a wide giving smile regardless, and walked over to them. Uaneen’s television show was called No Disco. It was very popular, and Tim and Pen especially enjoyed watching Uaneen doing interviews with the techno heads.

‘Well, lads,’ she said. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’
‘Oh, we’re loving our time,’ said Tim, embarrassed as he suddenly became aware that his jaws were going 90. He couldn’t remember taking anything. He looked at Pen, and Pen’s jaws were also going 90. The voice from Bullseye roared 180! in his mind and he thought maybe Uaneen heard it also.

‘I’m exhausted, lads,’ said Uaneen. ‘I need a break. Wanna play some Jenga?’
‘Yeah, definitely,’ shouted Pen. ‘Let’s go for it!’
Uaneen told them to hold on for a second while she popped into the building nearby to get the Jenga set.
Tim and Pen chinked their plastic pint glasses together in delight.

‘You’ll never guess what, lads,’ said Uaneen, upon her return with the Jenga set. ‘Bobby Gillespie’s in there, he’s a demon for Hungry Hippo’s.’

They played Jenga for an hour until Uaneen was called away by her producer probably.

This is a true story. Tim told me about this incident only very recently, with many years having passed, and I felt the need to write it here now, as the event of Uaneen Fitzsimon’s tragic end in a car crash some months after her Jenga meeting with Tim and Pen, has, I believe, caused poor Tim some terrible nuisance over the subsequent years. Whenever a flavour of that period manifests, whether it be a Leftfield track, a Primal Scream video, or a pub called Fitzsimon’s, Tim turns away from goings-on, looks up to the roofs of buildings, and says, ‘No more disco in the fields. It looks like the end of an era.’

Chapters

I bought a book in a shop called Chapters.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

The security guard:
'Do you have a receipt for that?'

I rummaged for the piece of paper, all eyes upon me.

I found it finally, and the security guard let me go.

All eyes upon me, I left in a fog of undefined guilt, considering the sodden formulaic banality of my life in chapters.

Louise Brooks and the Photophobic Scene

In the severe lighting of the studio, Fritz could see his face reflected in the shine of her legendary black hair. It seemed to cause him great annoyance.

‘Schiesse! I can’t do the scene. Her hair, it blinds me!’

‘Well, schiesse to you, honey,’ Louise declared. ‘This mop is most always precise in its judgment of a performance.’

‘Oh, your hairstyle’s a critic, oh?’

‘This hairstyle’s the executioner, my husbandly wife.’

Samuel Beckett and the Moon

Paris, 1952

‘Sammy!’

‘Sammyyy!’

Sammy went to his window and there on the street was Brendan typically ravaged by drinking hours and typically untouched by stillness.

He went down to let him in, best to take him off the streets.

‘They kicked me out of the Two Maggots, Sammy, my boy,’ Brendan roared upon falling in the front door.

‘Bloody bastards, the lot of them.’ Before going any further, he remembered to wipe the soles of his shoes on the floormat at the entrance. However drunk he was, Brendan always aimed for politeness in Sammy’s company.

Once inside, they went to the kitchen and Brendan sat down at the table while Sammy put some coffee on.

‘I was reading about this Chinese poet today, Sammy. Li Bai is his name. You know?’

Sammy nodded and smiled. Even though he found Brendan incredibly tiresome these days, it was true the man constantly surprised him.

‘The mad bastard loved his wine. Poor blaggard was so drunk one night he killed himself trying to grab hold of the moon’s reflection in the Yanksee river, fell in and drowned himself dead.’

Sammy sighed, and shot a look of insight at Brendan.

‘Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,’ said Brendan. ‘That’ll be me one day. Thought the same thing myself. So I took a walk down there along the quays to try and put myself in Li Bai’s slippers. Got up on one of the ponts down there and looked down into the river Sane. But I couldn’t see the bloody moon at all, only my own sludgy reflection looking back at me. Then I got sick.’

Sammy smiled once more, and began pouring cups of coffee.

‘I’ll tell you, Sammy,’ said Brendan. ‘However much I try, I just can’t get a clear fuckin picture.’

They drank coffee into the night together, and talked very little.

Li Bai and the Moon

When the story of my life is told, I do hope they point out the happiness of that night with the moon, and may they refer to my last moments not as the misfortune of a drunk falling into the river and drowning, but as a man hugging the moon in delighted quixotic love.

Until Funerals

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

'I'm happier.'
'No, I'm happier.'

The argument went on and on and on until