Monday 14 February 2011

''allergy girl and the other mary''

The Ballad Of Allergy-Girl And The Other Mary.



What do I see before me? I see my battered Converse boots, once were red now a dirty muddy ruddy colour. Like leaves in autumn that cling on for as long as they dare before sauntering to the ground. Above my Converse my legs, stalk-thin and uncased in lime-green skinny-fit jeans. I know lime-green! But one has to stick with what’s fashionable to avoid even more ridicule. Above my legs, the rest of me. My boots dangle over a drop of, okay I don’t know the exact measurement but I’m sat on the balcony rail on the twentieth floor of an apartment block so below me is a considerable drop.
The apartment block is ancient and decrepit and due for demolition in a day or so. Obviously there are no inhabitants still and all necessary precautions have been made in the last week to make sure no one could get in or out of the building. But I got in because I can do anything I want to because I’m a superhero. I’m Allergy-Girl!
Okay so I don’t have any super human powers or anything, but hey neither did Batman. Beside me is Mary 2, she’s my big sister and entirely fictitious. I know that now. It’s why I am here. She showed me the way and gave me the courage to perform what I must do.
The few months since the birth of Mary 2 have been so eventful and bizarre; she certainly opened my eyes up to a lot of things that went unseen. Let me tell you how I came to be here, one jump away from my death.


Have you ever just been that bored, that distant, that brain dead that you sit and stare at the inside of your eyeballs, or like me, the inside of the glasses your wearing? Noticing the minute specks of dust and grime that you’d never see unless you phased out and went out of focus for a while. You don’t even realise you’ve zoned out until someone or something gets your attention and you snap out of it. And when you try and think about what it was you were thinking about you never know. White noise, just the beating of your heart in your head?
I have moments like that a lot, time will pass by and I don’t even see it, the TV will be on and I couldn’t even tell what had been on.
I wonder where my mind goes at times like these, I feel like a zombie and if I could see myself my tongue would be lolling out of the corner of my mouth, chin in my chest and eyes half open. A vegetable.
I want to feel alive again. Alive, not just simply surviving. Take one of these high caffeine energy drinks and put it in an intravenous drip. “Anxiety in a can”, that’s what the Scottish comedian called it. Those beverages, the wake up call of millions of Jeremy Kyle fans, never do anything for me; just make my heart beat faster and me more jittery.
Bleep.
It’s amazing how I can do this as well as have my mind in a completely different place entirely. How many hours do I spend in auto pilot?
Bleep.
People treat other people like machines, so why not just act like one? I’m a glorified automaton. Sit me on my docking device and I’ll play you a tune until it’s time for you to switch me off.
Bleep.
Before I have a chance to say anything a twenty pound note is held out to me between immaculately manicured fingers lazily like a cigarette. Not a word is said as I pluck the note from the woman’s hand. I am the servant, you are my mistress. She doesn’t even look at me as I complete the transaction, doesn’t even dare do anything that takes her mind away from her precious mobile phone. Look at her with her pristine face, perfectly made-up, clothes probably more expensive than they look. Her hair doing exactly what it should be, shiny glossy. She spends a lot of money on nothing, expensive food that’s made and processed by the same companies that manufacture the value produce. It’s the same but specifically chosen to make sure it’s untainted, not mis-shapen or scarred, perfect like her. But she deserves all the best. The best clothes, the best make up, the best men, because she’s worth it.
Her laugh is styled to sound flirtaceous and mischievous, no doubt as integral to her image as her designer garb and trophy boyfriend.
Boyfriend packs the groceries excruciatingly slow, sensibly, neatly so everything is organised. Go on put the tin of water chestnuts on top of the bread, go on I dare you! He or she has made him look as perfect as her with his expensive clothes and stubble so short and perfectly cropped it’s as if it’s been painted on. Their skin is so flawless, not a blemish on either of them. A carefully selected tuft of hair hangs down his chiseled jaw line from beneath his woollen hat. How much did you hair cost you Mister? More than my monthly food bill? He looks at me sympathetically for a second as he takes his change off me, his girlfriend too busy chatting about her latest purchases in some fashion boutique to even care about a few measly coins. Why is it always sympathetic looks that people feel like giving me? His fingers brush mine, the warmth is nice on my cold thin digits. I bet you even have the perfect body temperature too don’t you?
Mister and Missus Perfectisimo take their bags of thoughtfully packed groceries from me hand in hand, smiling clean, even white teeth. I watch them depart. She hangs her phone up as soon as she’s ways from the till and places it in her hand bag without even saying farewell to the caller. Was she even on the phone? Of course she wasn’t, it was a ruse to avoid communication with me, not just because I’m one of the lesser folk oh no. because I served her the day before with her lover. As if I would say anything! Who would believe, let alone listen to, little old me?

‘Alright Lizzy?’ a low dirty gutteral voice calls down at me. The Voice sounds like It has just crawled out of an underground reservoir full of the excrement and filth that is too rancid for the sewers above to hold. It’s dragged It’s stinking putrid carcass through rivers of faeces shat out of the sphincters of gangrenous paedophiles and surfaced on the streets of Walsall to spread it’s foul contamination upon the innocent. The owner of The Voice makes the comparison before seem like a giant fluffy pink marshmallow being orbited by a flock of flying pink space babies in bunny costumes giggling and googling and leaving behind a vapour trail of pink glittery fairy dust.
It’s Mr Donald, or ‘Mike’ to his friends, and unfortunately for yours truly, I have the privilege of filling the criteria for a placement on board his friendship. What did I do to earn this once in a lifetime, chance in a million opportunity I hear you cry? Why all I had to do was listen to him, smile and serve him three times a week for the last two years.
Why don’t these intolerable old fuckers realise I’m only polite because I’m being paid to be? And surely then they should set aside a bonus on our monthly salary for showing enthusiasm at the inbred customers.

Mr Donald had loaded his shopping on the conveyor and taken up root in his usual place, directly in front of me. I don’t even need to see what he is doing as his ever repetitive supermarket mannerisms will be in action. Without looking I can see him standing leaning on his shopping trolley. Let me take a moment to describe the embodiment of evil, the vision of vileness, the icon of idiocy, the lord of lethargy, the sack of shit that is, always has and will be, Mr Michael Donald. For your mind’s eye’s viewing pleasure picture this: a fat jowlly, ever sweaty head, bald with long yellowy white hair hanging around the sides. Tiny little piggy eyes buried amongst fat, crease and grease, stare out with a surprising sharpness through glasses as thick as the bottom of a jam jar. Some kind of growth sits on his forehead, big and brown with long wiry hairs sprouting from it like a squashed spider. His nose is bulbous to the point that it appears to have just exploded across his ruddy dry face. His mouth is a hatchway of halitosis; teeth like yellow-crusted stalactites hang down precariously as if about to splinter.
Forever is he to be seen in his knee-length navy blue raincoat, buttoned to the top to exaggerate or maybe even compliment his double chin which hangs like a saggy pink water balloon decorated with the odd speckling of egg yolk and phlegm.
He has the fragrance that most Perfumists would tear out their hair in their unsuccessful attempts to disguise. If you could just, after reading this part of course, imagine the strongest smell of sweat you can conjure up. Done it? Well add a large measure of Gorgonzola, a soupçon of urine, a wee dram of whisky, and put it all in a cocktail shaker with just a sprinkling of, dare I say it, semen. Yes semen! Put it all in the cocktail shaker and give it a good old shake, through it up in the air and spin on one foot 360 degrees if you’re really talented, and then take the lid off and inhale deeply. Sex on the beach? More like Sicks on the beach!
He looks like everyone’s impression of a child-molester.
But I have a confession. I am so deeply, deeply in love with him. He is the man of my dreams, whom I long to be with.
Ha! Not really, although he has cropped up in a few of my dreams unfortunately.

 I briefly look up and use every bit will power to magically transform my grimace in to a grin. Would he know the difference anyway?
Oscar-winning customer service coming up be sure not to miss it.
‘Good afternoon Mr Donald, how are you today?’ I could never get the hang of his surname, it didn’t sound right. I pick up his first item, always the same products, a chicken and mushroom Fray Bentos pie.
‘oh Elizabeth, it’s been awful!’ he says puffing and panting over me, white spittle forms at the corners of his mouth as he speaks to me.
I try to look concerned. What is it this time, bereavement? One of the other old bastards from the British Legion has smoked his last pipe? Or maybe a new ailment? My money is on the ailment. What’s giving you gip now Mr Donald?
‘Oh,’ he huffs, looking over his shoulder, quite feminine in his ways, ‘my feet have been giving me gip more than ever!’
Oh Jesus, the images in my head that this one sentence induces is amazing. I frown and say ‘oh dear’, as I scan the block of stilton.
The following two minutes I concentrate on the products of his purchase rather than listen to the intricate details of his latest problem, although like a pair of leaky wellington boots in a field of manure, some shit still gets through.
‘…their like pork scratchings!...’
A four pack of beans gets zapped; I try wondering what other of Heinz’s 57 varieties I can think of to stave the urge to be sick.
‘….and the smell!...’
Value white loaf goes past and finally the prunes. As I ring up the total I pray and hope he doesn’t decide to show me the disgusting trotters he calls feet. I don’t need to see them; i can already see them in my head and know that the real thing would be a thousand times worse. I don’t know how people in the healthcare profession can deal with clients like these. Surely when they unveil their syphilitic appendages they must dry heave at least?
‘That’ll be four pounds thirty seven please Mr Donald.’ I say with that oh so hard to achieve fake enthusiasm.
‘Four pounds thirty seven!’ he exclaims eyebrows arched, a look of horror upon his face. Here we go again with the pretend to be shocked at the price routine, in my head I roll my eyes heavenward.
Grumbling about the cost of things in his day and that he can’t afford to eat he fumbles in his warm pockets for a handful of change. Okay, three things, one: when exactly was his day? Two, if he couldn’t afford to eat why was he such a fat bastard? And C,[a little Bushism that I can’t resist] why doesn’t he ever have notes? I always have to pick out the correct money out of his clammy paw, trying to avoid the little clouds of god knows what and sweet wrappers.
I finally give him his receipt and after telling me the usual ‘you’re a marvellous girl’, and ‘a credit to society’ not to mention ‘ a beautiful young thing’ he leaves my till to the sound of tambourine crashes, trumpet toots and a choir of angels singing hosanna, strictly limited to my own personal mind space obviously.

The next customers are two young men, loud leery and stacking crate upon crate of beer upon the never-ending conveyor. One says something to the other, the first half is out of my earshot, the remainder of the sentence which quite coincidentally is the part with the filthy innuendo gets in through the wax ‘….giving her one any day, know what I mean?’
How many times have I heard the phrase ‘hey, check out the check-out girl!’
Oh the trials and tribulations of a check-out girl with such a physical disfigurement!

‘Roll up, roll up, six-pence to see The Freak! Right before your eyes! Never before appeared in front of a live audience! Marvel at the monstrosity!  Recoil at her rashes! Squeal at the scabs!’ the Ringmaster leads me in with a thick linked chain. I am somehow in the audience and on the stage. I wear a filthy cloth sack covering the most of my body, all you can see is my wrists and feet, the skin wrinkled and pale but covered with a network of red rashes. Two ragged eye holes are cut in just the wrong position for my eyes. I can see the crowd wide-eyed, waiting for me to be unleashed. The Ringmaster has piercing blue eyes with the darkest of eyelashes, his face is dirty and his black beard looks shiny with grease. His teeth are bad and his clothes are tattered but his red jacket is immaculate. He reaches to grab the sack above my head and yanks it off. The audience make verbal their disgust and disapproval. Wearing just a two piece bikini i pull the poses as instructed by me, basic beauty Paget poses. Hands on hips, left thigh slightly across and in front of right one, and smile smile smile. My skinny body is pale. A series of red blotches blossomed over my skin making the parts that weren’t red dry and wrinkly. My scalp was virtually bald, red and flaky with straw coloured hair sprouting out in tiny clumps. My face looks like that of someone forty years older, I have crows feet around my bulging eyes and enough lines on my face that if you threw a deck of playing cards at it at least half the pack would stick in the grooves.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ the Ringmaster shouts at the top of his voice, ‘I give you, Allergy-Girl!’
The crowd whistle, cheer and leer.
‘She’s allergic to chicken which makes her really plucked off when her friends go to KFC!’ Oh good one Mr Ringmaster. The audience encouragingly groan. ‘And they’ll be no chance she’ll ketchup with them anyway as even tomatoes cause blistering blotches all over her legs!’
The people laugh and how bad the Ringmaster’s puns are. I smile and blow kisses at them.
‘She’s even allergic to bananas.’ He whips out one of the yellow fruit and holds it in front of his mouth curved downwards like he is sad. ‘
However there’s no way she’s stupid, she didn’t come here on the last Banana Boat!’
I rub my hands over my eyes and make pretend crying noises.
‘The only eggs she can eat are Easter eggs; real ones get her skin cracking.’ He winks at the crowd and puts his hand to the side of his mouth in a conspiratorial manner, ‘and lads, be careful if you fancy your chances as she’s allergic to latex!’
Wolf whistles from some of the menfolk.
The Ringmaster spreads his arms wide and shouts at the top of his voice. ‘Let me hear it now, give it all you’ve got, for the one, the only Allergy-Girl!’
The crowd go wild, stamp their feet, a speeding missile is flung from the mass, small beige-coloured and oval. The egg explodes against my forehead and the yolk and white slide cold slime down my nose, over my mouth and drips onto my chest and into my cleavage.
My skin starts to crawl as if insects are moving beneath the surface and fat yellow blisters bubble up and seep toxic yellow smoke.
I open my mouth to scream but the egg yolk drops in and gloops down my throat.
The crowd watch on in horror as I scream silently and the Ringmaster uses his sleeve to wipe away the egg white off my chest and breasts. It makes it worse and my smouldering skin comes off with each wipe.
Everyone goes quiet when I stand stock still and my eyes pop in my head and my stomach implodes and ooze the colour of egg yolk seeps from my navel. I collapse to the floor in a hissing stinking pile.

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