RACKING

A short story about padlocks!!

I met a squatter who reminded me about love
He was so handsome sometimes I couldn’t look at him - it was the light in his eyes.
He had no home but he lived rent free in my head. I couldn’t get him out.

I was more of a hitcher myself, waiting for a ride.
I learned to read and fake Megabus codes, or I’d wait on slip roads with direction or city initials on card.
We was just these people, mastering something by mastering the opposite. He knew more about home than anyone. For me it was about arriving.

I asked him one time,
about that painful moment when his friends betrayed him - because I knew they had.
What did you do, when those who said they had no home or family went back?

He said it hurt so bad. But it’s just not worth being mad.
Did you tell them how you felt?
No, said he.
Me either, said I. There’s no point.

I told him how even at the worst moments, I never got the straight sickness; I never turned on myself. Because of this, in the end, hitching was more than arriving, it was appearing, and I felt I’d got the rudiments of teleportation. How to set out with no idea how to get somewhere, just total belief.

We were picking padlocks in my sitting room. He had a bag full of them.
Before he showed me how, he made me promise I’d never pick a lock that wasn’t mine - and I never have.

I love the feeling when it goes in, and the teeth click.
One by one they give in, till on the last one it then pops open. with a twist of the second pick. Some are harder than others but I’m total patience.

I also love racking - running the pick up and down, just winging it. When it works it feels so good. Like giving yourself over to something.
Like you’re just watching your hands do it, not making it happen.
It only seems to work when you fully allow being out of control.
And you really do not care - then its like a lock sprite takes over and pop! No effort.

He was picking my lock, and I don’t know if he knew it or not.

But lately I’ve been feeling like love is a trap.
They tick one box, then another.
Then five and - oh piss, here we go.
It feels like a setup.
Enough boxes and - pop - a story starts playing out, almost by itself.

And I know its a bad reasoning to have suspicion of love. Like some pipeline to hell.
But it’s embarrassing, how predictable I am. How predictable the boxes are. The locks are. This isn’t the first time…

He finds something irreconcilable about the world, something he resists.
He uses words I’ve never heard.
He says nuanced, beautiful things that are basically just about solidarity - but you have to dig for it. He ain’t no charmer like me.
He can disagree with women without misogyny
He has an allotment, or a transit van, or massive speakers. And when he hears horrible loud music, or smells manure, he pulls the same delighted disgusted expression.

It’s not consciously my list. But it’s always the same.

So I decided it was stupid that I couldn’t look at him.
So I did. I got a good look. Because I didn’t want love, I wanted to see through it.

Well - that made it worse.
Then there was the smouldering too.
I forgot it could be like that, now I am also baffled.

Fuck sake. He knows he’s picking the lock.

How do I get this squatter out of my head?

Image 1 - ADM Amsterdam 2018ish

Image 2 - B&Q Bristol 2017ish (DIY OR DIE!!)

THANKS FOR READING!!!!

FREE PALESTINE !!! FUCK THE AUTHORITIES !!!!! LONG LIVE ANNA CAMPBELL !!!!!!! ABSOLUTELY NEVER EVER EVER FORGOTTEN!!! Cannot believe its been 8 years!!! BIG LOVE TO ALL WHO KNEW HER IF YOUR READING THIS xxxxx