I Don't Like Your Crap Vegan Cakes (Wasted Rita stand)

To feel the bones shake inches deep in muscles that are soft and skin that is white.

To hear the heart beat to the rhythm of drum sticks.

To breathe in the smell of beer and smoke and bass riffs.

To drown in feedback.

Being in front of the stage, in between the speakers, on a good night is like being on life support:
you know you're only alive until they pull the plug.

Alive. 2014

And there we were, the three of us just after the sun had set and as that first, early darkness was dropping, with the infant in his trolley, the winds of Araby blowing like a lover's whisper in our ears, hot and husky and stealing away our breath and drying our throats, as all the cars in the country raced paste the Gulf Road, drinking contraband Cape champagne.

"Sparkling -."

Shush you. I won't ruin a perfectly good alliteration over some technicality. It occurred to me that it couldn't get much better than that. So I took an imaginary Polaroid picture and after they had all gone I stayed behind just a minute longer to see how it had turned out. Turns out it turned out alright. It really did.

Contraband Champagne,
written 50 weeks ago

I cracked again today, just like I cracked yesterday, and the day before that. It feels like I've been cracking for months. I have more cracks in me than dry firewood. You who always offered support, affection, and devotion hold out your hands for warmth. Like a spark in a fire, something crackles, snaps and bursts. I lash out at those that I can't keep away. The people that refuse to stay where they'll be safest. Truth is - and all cheap metaphors aside - I've been grumpy with my colleagues, angry at my friends, short-tempered with my family, and untrue to myself. 

I'm not ready to apologise yet, but I'm trying to change.

(-it's a twelve step program)

"Now, having since fallen into disuse, the sublime is a little hard to explain. To explain an emotion that nobody feels anymore is a little bit like describing a color that can't be seen, or a road gone missing between two cities that don’t exist anymore. But here’s my attempt."

(-from the bottom of a dusty drawer #3)

It had been a long week for me stuck in Paradise. Nothing was going my way. I was fighting with my bosses, I was fighting with all of the girlfriends that I had at the time, I was fighting with myself. I was drinking, I wasn't sleeping and I had taken to smoking from a stolen pack of cigarettes.

At the end of one night, I sent the boys to bed, killed the lights, poured myself a couple of drinks and let the music play. I was rinsing the customer's highballs in the dark and watching my two best friends make out on the beach. They had always hated each other and had no idea I was witnessing the start of their affair. I hadn't felt so miserable in a long time than as I rinsed that night.

The next morning, walking to class, under the clear canopy of the African sky, I crossed paths with one of my students: a house keeper, maybe forty, but it's hard to judge. She apologised for missing my class, showed me the heavy bundle of fresh clean sheets with their lavender smell and explained she had to go ready villas Two and Three.

She asked me how I was doing and I said I was okay and asked her back only out of habit I guess and because people seem to be so endeared by these little displays of interest.

"So-so," she said. "One of my children, back in the village" (the mainland, that is) "one of my babies died today. They have just told me over the phone." She shrugged and brought the sheets closer to her chest where we could smell them in the dusty, rising heat. She held back a tear.

"These things happen," she said and went to ready villas Two and Three for the next batch of guests and left me standing there with a new sense of perspective and the smell of lavender lingering light and soft and sweet.

(-from the bottom of a dusty drawer #2)

I was sitting on a corner of a long, white couch and she was sitting on the other corner of the same long, white couch. The couch itself was in the corner of a wide, white room. I don't do serious conversations well, but she had me cornered and surprised. With not even half a pint to hide behind, with no room for maneuver, no cover or distraction: there she was, so very serious, and there I was, a paper shadow at the end of the firing range. She was such a good shot too.

“I’ve been thinking, you know, thinking a lot,” she said. “You’re crazy. You just show up here, thinking I have no life of my own, thinking everything is just like it was so many months ago, thinking there are no more men in the world but you. You just show up here and want me to play along with your silly little games, to drop everything for you, and you don’t listen to me when I say no. You just show up, you’ll be gone soon, gone for months, and then you’ll be back and it’ll all be the same story all over. You’re crazy - and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this, but I don’t think I like crazy quite as much as I thought I did. You know, none of my other friends are like this. They have a life, they know where they are going, they’ll be somebody someday. You’re crazy, and I don’t think I like crazy anymore.”

(-from the bottom of a dusty drawer #1)

Hey there!
I've been having this problem for a few months already: I keep getting some other person's itunes receipts for purchases done, supposedly, with my apple id.
I changed password once, months ago, and the problem persisted.

The person in question comes listed as:

---- ----- Peres
Xxxxx Xxx Xxxx, xxxx xx - xx
XXXX-XXX Lisboa
PRT

I can assure you this is not, despite the common last name, me or anybody I know.
My store credit has been at 1.42 GBP for a while now, and as this account doesn't have (at least to the best of my knowledge) any credit card attached to it, I wasn't too particularly bothered about this.
Whoever he is, he seems to be using his own money for these purchases.

However, I noticed in the latest receipt, number 121053373103, received on Monday, the 27th of May, the fact that the two tracks and one album bought belonged to the artists: Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber and One Direction.
I'm not even joking, these were the three purchases, worth 12€ something.

My friends wouldn't speak to me ever again if they found this receipt.
I am also concerned that sixty or seventy years from now, my future biographer might come across this and lose all faith in me and cut his work short.

Please, is this something you can do anything about?
Best,
Francisco Peres