This is something I wrote whilst considering the flipside of teenage angst-ridden rebellion.
Warning: contains Alcohol & Anarchy
TITLE: It’s the little things in life…
The man to Travis’ left, perched precariously on the bar stool, was definitely past the stage where coordination blurred into the spasmodic, and nearly over the pearly gates that separated the upright from the horizontal. Travis sneaked a glance sideways. The barman was very carefully moving bottles and glasses away from the man’s wildly gesticulating elbows, moving slowly in case he upset something.
The man’s arms were moving so fast, Travis thought with the slowness of absinthe, because he was talking. Orating, in fact. Addressing the crowd of usual suspects that surrounded the bar with the incredible earnestness of the inebriated.
With a great effort he roused himself from his morose thoughts (Dead end job, evil wife, too far gone to even realise how stereotypical he was) and tuned in to the man’s conversation.
To his surprise, he realised that the man wasn’t slurring his words at all. He spoke with the exact intonation and precise language (despite having a faintly foreign tinge to his words) that Travis associated with men in suits – and, as he peered closer into the dim neon shade of the bar, he realised that the man was wearing a suit, and despite being very drunk still had his top button done up – and even had a tie on.
“Don’t you understand? Can’t you see that you’re doing yourself no favours, sitting here whilst outside the forces of petty bureaucracy threaten to drown any chance of feeling, any possibility of realising your own power?”
He stopped, as if exhausted by his efforts, his energy sapped by the immovable complacency of the crowd.
For a few seconds they sat in silence, as if contemplating his rhetoric with concentration normally only reserved for locks at the end of the night. No lofty Greek philosopher, alone in his cave, had ever pondered with as much style as the dregs of humanity appeared to then.
Then one of the regulars spoke up
“’nother beer please.”
The spell was broken. Within seconds the bar was again filled with the sounds of those unfortunates who had been crushed beyond redemption by life’s great machine.
Whilst lesser men would have been discouraged by such evident apathy, the speaker appeared to draw inspiration from it, and began again.
“That’s exactly what I mean! Every time a visionary emerges, someone to really turn the masses into a powerful force that is not controlled by a greedy few, some part of the human psyche kicks in and returns you to the small change of life!”
Travis was surprised to find his collar grabbed.
“You! Have you ever heard the expression ‘building sandcastles at high tide’?”
He slowly shook his head.
“It’s what we’re doing, all of us.” The man appeared to lose his initial fervour. He set Travis down on his stool gently, and turned to face his audience.
“Trust me, I’m a professor of social anthropology. Can you tell me how much your traffic regulations are worth to the universe? What price garbage collection to a supernova?
It has happened to every civilisation”-he appeared to lose his thread, and the barman nodded (the alcohol was surely kicking in)-
“It has happened to every civilisation.” He nodded to reassure himself. “The Romans, once they had established their empire, sat back and let their customs grow more and more complex, until their government strangled itself to death with its own red tape. Ditto the Aztecs, too much ritualized sacrifice and not enough humanity.”
He plunged to the bar, downed a shot and returned to the fray.
“And now newspaper columnists talk of the problem of Islam having no centralised authority! Is it any wonder it has become more powerful than the church in Rome, despite the latter’s vast wealth-“ Here his voice dropped to a dramatic whisper-“and its long and complex rituals, bizarre offices and apparent influence? The world media trembles in fear of threats from radical Moslem clerics! And why? Because, to them, every man is his own spiritual leader! They are not afraid of being labelled heretics because to them there is no such thing as heresy!”
Again returning to the bar, he pounded the faded mahogany, long stained by nicotine and beer to a foul patina that echoed the clientele, emphasizing each word with a dull thud.
“Those – who – hesitate – are – lost! If we sit back and allow our lives to be protected by thousands of dull little laws proposed by dull little men with dull little lives, we will fall to those who still have the will to fight!”
Closing time was drawing near, and the barman began to gently expel patrons through the door. Such was his system that Travis and the angry man left together, both of them kindly supporting a third man, who was sadly too drunk to find his own way home.
As they wandered through the lonely streets, cold air performed part of the duty of strong coffee for Travis, and he felt moved by a sense of companionship to start a conversation with the other man.
“Who are you?” He began.
The man snorted.
“I’m an under professor for sociology at the ex-polytechnic round here, but I haven’t turned up to my job for the past three weeks. Instead, I’ve been sitting in bars like that one, trying to persuade people of my ideas. No-one wants to listen.”
Travis pondered.
“You were very impressive, I thought,” He volunteered.
“Well, you’re the first person to have thought that so far. Everyone else sits there, obeying closing time and other rules, like they’ve had their capacity for rebellion removed.”
He spat onto the road, as if to dare someone to tell him to clean it up.
Travis was just drunk enough to make the suggestion.
“Why don’t you try a demonstration? Break as many byelaws as you can, now, and in the morning maybe the people will see what you have created and realise the va- the vali-“
“Validity” The man in between their supporting arms slurred.
“Thank you, validity, of your arguments.”
The professor appeared to consider this. A slow grin spread over his face.
“You’re right!” He declaimed to the world in general. “Let’s make a competition of it! Come to think of it, I’m winning – at this very moment I’m inciting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace!”
And so it was that the three men, who had scarcely spoken to each other more than a few sentences and were completely ignorant of each other’s names, began what the chief of police would later describe as a ‘Spree of Vandalism.’
Travis hadn’t had so much fun since he was a child. No traffic sign was safe, no bin left upright. They rampaged through the downtown district, pillaging as they went.
And all the while, the drunk between them, who appeared to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the byelaws, slowly slurred a list of what they had done.
“Let’s spraypaint ‘Closing time is an oxymoron’ on this one!”
“Graffiti-ing…”
“Where will we get the spraypaint?”
“We’ll break into a hardware store!”
“Breaking and entering…Taking without owner’s consent…”
Dawn found them alone in the central square, with upturned cars blocking every thoroughfare and the central statue of The Founder of Our Beloved Borough whitewashed, with puerile slogans on his plinth.
“What now?” Travis yelled with a voice hoarse from the constant effort of infringing the Public Noise Act (1993).
The professor staggered down the steps of the plinth like an avatar of anarchy, covered in various unidentifiable fluids from the night’s endeavours.
“We sit and wait for the police”
At this, the drunk, who had been sitting quietly at the sticky white feet of Our Founder, opened his eyes.
“I’m a policeman” He revealed to the world, with the air of a small child offering up some priceless treasure. “Got a badge and everything.”
The professor laughed.
“Not for very much longer, my friend. Can you hear those sirens in the distance?”
The policeman raised his body up from the cold ground and stared with bloodshot eyes at the car-blocked avenues.
“Blow that for a lark,” he muttered.
Before Travis could make a move to stop him, he raced towards the nearest vehicle and began attempting to climb over it.
Travis gazed up at the Professor, who had now climbed to the top of the plinth and assumed a heroic pose.
The professor shook his head sadly.
“I have shown the people fire from the Gods, and they have extinguished it with the sweat of their fear.”
He swung back down again.
“Prometheus’ Lament. Not that soliloquizing will do us much good in court.”
He stared down to where Travis sat like a mockery of a cherub, a fawn to his Dionysus.
“Aren’t you afraid of the consequences of what we’ve done?”
Travis shook his head dumbly, as befitted a man in the presence of his personal Messiah. Had the professor but known it, he had earned a devoted follower for life. Something in his actions had changed Travis. At that very second he was mentally preparing himself for the long hard fight against whatever came to take his hero away. Travis had been a fairly good boxer in his younger days, and they still had some eggs left over.
Which explains why, when the police filed their complete report pending court proceedings, it contained details of injuries to the jaws of three officers, and a chitty for the dry-cleaning of a third one’s uniform after, as the report stated dryly, the officer contained had had “Avian produce manually propelled at great speeds towards him.” As the tabloids put it, the boys in blue had been left ‘with egg on their faces.’
And all the while, through the apprehension of the suspects, while his loyal rebel tussled below with the forces of law and order, the Professor swung from the outstretched hand of Our Founder, screaming at the crowd that had gathered to throw off their shackles of habit and convention, and embrace the personal freedom of ignorance.
In a sense, his continued oration proved his downfall. Travis looked up from his business in admiration for a particularly clever metaphor, and a young officer (who had let his desire to arrest the suspect overcome his obedience to the Police Brutality Act of 2003) stepped up and smacked him smartly on the chin.
“Master!” Travis cried, as blackness welled up to surround him and the policeman reached for his handcuffs.
The Professor paused.
“Travis!”
All the fight appeared to go out of him. He climbed down meekly, and was remanded in custody with his unconscious friend.
Later that week, in court (For even legal circles have a silly season, and this was the most interesting thing that had happened for weeks) the judge was about to reach her sentence.
The case had been relatively uneventful, much to the disappointment of the media. The defence had refused counsel, and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity. The only thing that took a while was reading out the crimes of the accused and deliberating over the punishment each was worthy of.
Then, the judge made her first mistake.
“Does the defendant have anything to say, before I pass sentence?” She asked kindly.
A little light came on in the professors eye. He rose.
“Anything to say, your honour?” He cried. “Anything to say? I have tried speaking, and when that failed, I turned to action, which is why we are all here! You should not have given me the chance, but the bag is catless now!”
He turned to the public gallery, and addressed them earnestly.
“My friends, do not suffer this pathetic collection of meaningless ceremony to represent your justice any longer! Return home! Cast out your social workers, your local government and those who perpetuate the nanny state! Rip any badge that declares “Hello my name is Sally” from its owner, cast it on the floor and spit on it. Take more than ten items through check-outs! Show the world you don’t care!”
The judge was one of the old school, grey hair permed tightly and half-moon glasses that she peered over as she addressed the defendant in icy tones.
“Mr. Mayura, I demand your silence. This is not an opportunity to address the public!”
“See how she tries to silence me, because I have shaken the foundations of this court! Observe how the soldiers of this paper empire strive to destroy opposition!”
The journalists in the gallery were scribbling desperately, hoping for a finish worthy of these two implacable opponents.
“Mr. Mayura, I will charge you with contempt of court!”
A small tic had appeared in the judge’s zen-like face. Her voice trembled slightly with anger.
In contrast, the professor remained perfectly composed.
“Do your worst, you outmoded symbol of authority in decay.” He sounded faintly amused.
“I find you in contempt of court!”
“Your honour, I find this court contemptible.”
With that, the court adjourned, as the judge didn’t trust herself to speak further.
The next day, an unmarked grey police car was driving quietly down a back lane somewhere in Sussex, with blacked-out windows and two criminals in the back.
The professor was awakened from his slumber by the sound of a police siren close at hand.
Their car came to a halt.
The driver wound down his window.
“Very sorry about this,” the uniformed policeman outside the car began,
“but you were speeding: this is a 30 miles an hour zone, and you were doing in excess of 60.”
The driver sighed.
“I’m on police business. There are two convicts in the back of this vehicle, en route for the psychiatric facility near Turner’s Hill – they’re due for a mental health checkup.”
The cop looked uncertain.
“Could I see your license and police ID in that case?”
The driver was getting frustrated.
“Look, you don’t need to see anything. I’ve told you I’m a police officer; cut me some slack. It’s hard to drive calmly with two known lunatics in the back, you know? Can we go now?”
The roving policeman shook his head slowly.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to see some identification. There are forms to fill in and so on, and it’s more than my job’s worth.”
What the driver replied was drowned out by peal after peal of insane laughter echoing from the back of the car, as the Professor finally realised the joke.
