Monday morning it’s cold, it’s raining, it’s England. Where prehistoric man hibernates for the winter months, modern man gets up at six o’clock in the morning and goes out to work in the freezing cold. The rain hits as it only does in the United Raindom, a constant pitter patter just enough to soak you through, but not of the gale force proportions which would allow one not to go into work. The sound of the alarm pierces Dean’s ears, there’s only so long he can ignore it before he has to wake up and face the world. Right now he’s stuck in that slumber of limbo between the real world and the dream one, between the warm snugness of his bed and the cold dreariness of reality. His room smells of old socks, body odour, and last night’s round of farts. Grotesque to most however somehow comforting to Dean’s stuffy nose, it’s his mark on his territory, it’s his home.
As our hero rises he hears the rain beating down onto the rooftop below, and views outsides coldness through the nip in the blinds. The visualization of it sends him retreating back into bed, under his soft satin duvet, desperately seeking that last bit of refuge before he has to brave the cold. Its 8:00 AM and Dean knows he better start making a move, he’s already left it too late to have a shower. He’ll just have to settle for a European shower as he calls it, basically washing privates, his armpits, brushing his teeth, then haphazardly flinging on his wrinkled work uniform. For a split second he fools himself into believing its Wednesday before figuring out today was actually Monday, ‘Fucking bloody Monday’, he has the whole long week ahead of him. ‘Shit!’
Dean leaves his house, making his way to the bus stop, walking at pace however not fast enough to escape the all-encompassing chill. He looks down at his feet and oops, he’s got a morning erection, not a sexual one, just the kind that just won’t go down, it stands to attention like a Lieutenant Sergeant saluting the fellow commuters. A woman at the bus stop notices it and gives him a cutting eye, quickly pulling her daughter towards her, muttering the word ‘pervert’ underneath her breath. Dean doesn’t know where to look or what to say. He refrains from boarding the bus and waits for the next one to arrive, even furthering his already lateness.
He broads the 365 and makes his way up the narrow spiral staircase, jolting forwards as the bus picks up momentum and sits on the front row directly above the drivers cabin. He loved sitting in this position as a child, for this was the ideal location to pretend to drive the bus. He would stir the fictitious stirring wheel from left to right, manoeuvring through the corners, stopping at each stop and collecting the invisible fares from the imaginary customers.
Sitting on the upper deck of the 365 bus, surrounded by strangers in far too close a proximity for comfort, traveling one mile per hour through rush hour traffic to a destination he didn’t even want to go. Kidnapped by the cooperate goons of free enterprise who dragged him out of bed and off to work every day for a minimum wage salary. Yet despite this gruelling ritual, he still admired his capitalist captors in a Stockholm syndrome sort of fashion. Dean looked out of the window at the grey-coloured surroundings; people wrapped up in their commute, rows of flats sitting above shops, and giant billboards advertising products he could ill afford. Head tilted against the perspex glass, he sighed and soaked it all in.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever gonna be someone, am I ever gonna make it? I sit so far away from success I couldn’t see it with a telescope, while am so close to failure it blurs in front of my retina. From one month to the next I seem to be forever chasing that elusive paycheck, wishing away the days in between and for what?” Dean forced a snigger to cheer himself up.
“When am working I trier of the routine, waking up at 8.00am after I‘ve ignored the snooze on my alarm clock which has been ringing since 7.00am. I get to work late yet again. Then I have to put on my fake persona ‘Yes Sir. No, Sir.’ When all I really wanna do is slap the shit out of you, take my money and go home.’’
The sound stemming from school children causing a ruckus on the bus briefly interrupts Dean’s chain of thought.
“Mornings, I hate mornings. I hate the kids so full of energy at this fucking time. Little do the fuckers know what they’ve got ahead of them, they won’t be so cheerful then. When I was a kid, I never knew life was going to pan out like this, wouldn’t have believed you if you told me. It’s gone past the stage of obstacles, life’s hurling bricks at me whilst I’m lying flat on my back. Ah well, I’ve always got my health, or do I? You never know what’s around the corner.” Dean’s mind processes all of his one-night stands: that girl from the nightclub, Tanya from the gym, Lola, Erin, the list goes on, making Dean contemplate the last time he had an STD test. He tries to think about something else instead but can’t now, he hates it when his mind does this to him; seizing control of his thoughts, not allowing him conjure up some form of jovial distraction.
“Sometimes I start wondering about things, just like anyone else does, really. I wonder why we’re here and what are we doing here? Am I the result of a Big Bang which sparked off evolution, leading me to evolve from fish, to monkey to man, surfing the universe at a hundred miles per hour on a gigantic rock, or does religion hold the truth? And if so, which one? I wonder if we’re trapped in a war between demons and angels like in the bible Revelation… Armageddon or something. Is it like the First World War on a biblical scale? Evil versus Good, the Germans against the British on the Western frontier, the battle ensues between the angels and demons while we as mankind scurry along totally oblivious to the war at hand, getting indiscriminately trodden on by both sides like ants on a battlefield.”
“Fuck working in a chocolate factory, been working here almost two months now, can’t stand it! You know what I’ve learnt since I’ve started this job? I’ve learnt Oompa Loompa’s do exist however they’re not dwarfs with orange skin, in fact they come in all shapes, sizes and colours and look like normal human beings. I learnt that mice favourite chocolate is Milky Way, trust me they love the stuff, but what I’ve learnt most of all is I hate this fucking job.”
“Shit, it’s my stop.” The temperature turns from warm to freezing as Dean steps off the bus into the pouring rain, outside’s chill creeping through his worn puffer jacket causing him to shiver underneath its duress.
“I wonder if people in the tropics are happier than us over here in the cold. I wonder if I as a black man am even supposed to be out here in this climate, it’s like putting a tiger in Antarctica and telling him to ‘go on, get on with it.’ In the mornings I think mad random thoughts, I know, I know this.”
Dean worked in a factory; unit eight of an industrial estate just off the A10 near Ponders End, it was a brown brick series of complexes everyone identical to its neighbour, except for the address number branded in silver plates on the front of each unit.
“Hi Dean, lovely weather out there.” Said a jolly looking Jim, greeting his soaked colleague.
“Jims a morning person, I despise morning people. He must sleep on a bed of nails piercing his back and just can’t wait to get up into the comparably comfy cold air, run out of his house escaping his screaming children and nagging wife. Me on the otherhand, my bed just won’t take no for an answer, it begs me to stay wrapped up in its warm embrace until I break free like a child escaping their mother’s womb, only to be smacked in the face by the cold hand of reality,” Dean thought, meanwhile replying.
“Hi Jim.’’
“Another day, another dollar.’’ Jim chuckled back.
In this moment Dean wanted to rip off Jim’s head in a Mortal Combat styling, turn him upside down and shake all the meaningless clichés out from his opened neck. Jim was like one of those insatiable teddy bears with a piece of string attached to its back, and when you pull the string, the teddy bear produces some manufactured commentary.
“Another day, another dollar, he, he!’’
“The early bird catches the worm, he, he!’’
“I wish he would stop chatting shit. He infuriates me.” Dean thought to himself, feigning laughter in the most transparent of manners.
“Ha, Ha. Another day, another dollar.’’ Dean repeated Jim’s morning catchphrase, inwardly thinking. “I hate this man, I hate having to laugh at these dead white people’s jokes, I hate this fucking workplace, apart from Janet that is. I like Janet, I would give her one. ‘Awe may God bless that ass in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Ghost Amen.’ Shit did I say that aloud? Hope not.” Dean smirked at his concocted image of Janet’s booty in a pair of French knickers.
Janet possessed one of those bums you’ll write home about. She could successfully perform ‘Gay Conversion Therapy’ just by bending over to pick up a pen. Thoughts regarding Janet arse often consumed Dean’s unoccupied mind at work. In his two months of employment he had imagined every conceivable scenario involving him and that ‘phat booty’ of hers.
“How I would love to hit it from behind. I bet that arse would ripple like skimming a pebble across a still lake.”
Dean stepped into the cab and turned on the forklift.
“Dam she hot though, she’s always smiling at me, I catch her sometimes in the corner of my eye but I can’t tell if it’s an; ‘I think your hot glance,’ or a ‘Are you stacking the shelves properly look.’ Besides, I hate it when she asks me to do stuff. I don’t mind ugly women telling me what to do at work, but it’s the sexy ones like her that bothers me. I should be telling her what to do. ‘I’ll tell her bend down and cock that booty in the air.’’
By this stage of thought, Dean was practically smiling from cheek to cheek, looking like a madman driving forklift. After lunch he ran out of thoughts surrounding Janet’s massive booty. Booty thoughts can only go so far, and by this point Dean had exhausted all avenues concerning his improbable interactions with Janet’s voluptuous bum.
“I need to get this business ting going. I can’t keep on working for people, can’t keep on waking up at god knows what time just to make somebody else rich. All I gotta do is finish up that business case and send off the application to the Prince’s Trust. Ain’t had no time to do shit since I’ve started this job. It drains me. I need to get back on it, stop procrastinating and make something of myself.”
Dean spent the latter half of his shift in pursuit of another one of his common pass-times, dreaming about opening a music studio, he knew how he wanted everything from the: furnishing, the location, the equipment, how he would market it.
“I know I can make a success of it, I just need some money behind me and a chance to put in that work.”
As Dean maneuvered his forklift through the narrow aisles of the chocolate factory, passed the Cadbury Milk Chocolate Eggs, sharp left at the Kit-Kats and on to the home straight towards the loading bay, with all the skill of Lewis Hamilton around the Grand prix. His mind detached from the mundaneness of his present activity, being alternatively engaged in envisioning owning his own business. ‘Broken Homez Records’ he would call it.
“No more playing ‘Yes Sir Master”, for once I would be the master of my own destiny.”
He was seated at his imagery studio, adding the final touches to his forthcoming hit. To his left was Puffy Daddy and his right Kanye West, both of whom intently bobbing their heads to the newly produced beat. Dean rises from his seat and calmly walks into the microphone booth. Puffy and Kanye glance up at him. He wipes his brow, licking his lips to moisten his mouth, then waits for the beat loop to drop before he begins his rap.
“What’s the difference between Bush and Mugabe?
What’s the true meaning of the Illuminati?
Who funds the British National Party?
Why would you give your life to the Army?”
“So many questions when I look at life,
Mugabe’s black, and Bush is white,
The media shows the surface, but I wanna look inside,
If I was getting paid to deceive you, then would I lie?”
“Something, something, something, the all-seeing crooked eye!”
Dean recited his raps line by line, perfecting them until home time arrived, and with its arrival he departed his imagery world of Broken Homez studios, to return to the real one of ‘Tresham Chocolate factory.’ Dean’s raps kept his mind occupied, providing creativity to his otherwise utilitarian existence, transporting his focus momentarily away from his high-flying career as a forklift driver and into an imagery one of rap superstardom. Driving the forklift back and forth, loading and unloading through a maze of crates would serve as a fitting metaphor of our hero’s life; simultaneously doing a lot whilst going nowhere. When working a dead-end job which doesn’t mentally stimulate you in the slightest, you have to immerse your mind with some kind of trivial pursuit to cease your brain from completely shutting down. These thoughts were the only thing separating Dean from the self-checkout machine or the forklift itself. The more interesting the chain of thought, the faster time would go. ‘Avoid looking at the clock’ that was the main key to survival in this battleground of boredom, a considerably hard task when a massive clock stood eyeing you at every direction from the highest point of the central aisle. What seemed like hours elapsed before the minute hand would move from one digit to the next. Dean would often question whether time was travelling slower for him than the rest of the populated universe. This job was idyllic for the brain dead like Jim, but soul destroying for our champion. Each day he feared his brain cells were slowly dying, maybe one day soon his mind too would be topped to the brim with meaningless clichés and inconsequential information about the weather.
The close of day alarm sounds, Dean collects his belongings and makes his way home as he has done for what already seemed to be an entirety. “Is this what’s life’s really about?” He questioned boarding the overly crowded bus, walking up the spiralling staircase and securing the only vacant seat right by the radiator, he feels the warmth creeping up his leg. It feels nice.
“Hmm.’’ He sighs as his body fills up with that glow of going home after a long hard days’ work, a feeling he supposed foreign to the ruling classes but all too common for commoners such as himself. Once more Dean enters back into the comfort of his thoughts on his favourite journey of them all, the one going home from work. “Nothing like being free if only it’s just until the following morning.”
“What a life. Do you live to work, or work to live?” Dean considered, taking a wide yawn then slowly dozing off. Before Dean could answer his own question, he wakes up right at his stop. He developed a knack in doing that; ‘falling asleep on the bus and getting up at precisely the right moment.’ Dean exits the bus, walks down the road, through the park, around the corner and arrives back at his house. He lives on the second floor of a two storey Edwardian terrace house, converted into flats. He’s been there nine months now, having acquired the property after living in a hostel for four years. It seemed like a palace compared to that shit hole. The hostel was teeming with refugees, drug addicts and ex-convicts. It would have been the BNP’s worst nightmare on steroids. There were more races in that one dusty building than the United Nations, and the residents were in receipt of more benefits than ‘MP’s Gone Wild Volume one, two and three.’ ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’ Dean reflected before he quickly stopped and tried to retract that thought. “Shit, I’m turning into one of those nobodies at work with all of those bloody clichés.”.
A hungry Dean arrived at home and went straight to kitchen. He wasn’t much of a cook, ask him to prepare anything more complicated than sausages and mash and you would come up with lint. Cooking for Dean comprised; warming up something in a microwave, sprinkling salt and pepper, then pouring the favourless contents onto a plate, which was exactly what he did this evening. Opening his freezer, searching through his wide selection of TV dinners second in range only to Iceland supermarket. He grabbed a curry, warmed it up, reached for a bottle of Stella out of the fringe and seats himself down to his evening entertainment, which began with the: The One Show, EastEnders, a documentary, Family Guy, then maybe a few rounds of his latest PlayStation game.
He sat hypnotised in front off the telly bored out of his brains, watching a series of adverts, enticing him with their manufacturer rhetoric to buy, buy and buy some more.
“I need a new TV and a new phone, I need to get a car and a washing machine, I need so much shit I can’t afford. Need to try and start saving. Need a better job. I want to do something new, I need some direction in my life, I need a career or something. I did the whole Uni Scam ting, the teachers try and make you think going to university is the be all and end all, that once you get a degree, you’ll get your dream job apparently, well it didn’t work out that way for me.” He switched the television off, aggressively pressing the remote control.
Dean was six foot tall with black short skin faded hair, a dark brown caramel complexion and dark brown eyes. He was fairly good looking, possessing gentle, slim features. He viewed himself a handsome chap and considered himself to do quite well with the ladies when he wanted to. He was half English, half Nigerian. His mother Pauline was English and his father Ben, being Nigerian. England however was all he knew, having never travelled to Africa and not seeing his real father in years.
Having nothing else to do after dinner and looking around at his over cluttered room, Dean started tidying. The logical method applied to tidying would be to tidy one room at a time, however Dean’s approach was more of a haphazard stop and starting process: starting with tidying a bit then stopping, going to the next room, tidying a bit then stopping, being distracted by the television or his phone, sitting down for a while bunning a zoot. Turning what should have been a thirty-minute task into easily a two hour’s exercise. There was only one sitting room, a bedroom, one bathroom, a storage cupboard and kitchen. Not much in the way of decorative finishes to the apartment, the walls were bear with only one exception, a photo of his sister Sarah and himself mounted on the bedroom wall which Dean presently stood unstirring absorbed in, momentarily distracted from his household chores.
The siblings used to be so close in their childhood years; he looked up to her immensely. Dean believed she could do anything. She was an unstoppable force, a force of nature. Sarah was almost five years Dean’s senior, she was to all intents and purposes his “Big Sis.”
Staring at the photograph Dean recalls when the picture was taken, he was around the age of five and Sarah took him to their local youth club. He wanted to go for what seemed to be forever, but as the days drew near, second and even third thoughts began creeping in. A young Dean wondered what was to be expected of him upon arrival. What was he to do or say, what if no one liked him? Sarah sensed these feelings brewing inside her little brother and reassured him.
“Don’t worry your gonna love it.” She said as Dean walked through the gates head down, surveying the concrete floor, his grip firmly attached to Sarah’s hand, feeling if he were to let loose he would instantly be sucked into a deep dark black-hole of uncertainties. Sarah flung open the big blue entrance doors. He wondered if Sarah was scared the first time she came, but doubted it. He couldn’t picture her ever being scared, nervous or anything else along those blurry lines. As soon as he got inside Dean was surrounded by a sea of children yelling and screaming in an excited fury.
“Are you Sarah’s brother, what’s your name, how are you?”
Master Dean relished every moment of that day. It was as if he was afforded a special privilege solely for being Sarah’s brother.
“Am not entirely sure if a God does exists, but I pray if you are there God please take care of Sarah for me. More than anything, God, please let her be okay.”
Dean found himself seated on his bed, zoot in one hand and dustpan in the other, transfixed on the photograph. Sarah in a brown school blazer, gleaming green eyes smiling confidently out of the frame. As our hero’s thoughts turned to Sarah, Dean had to stop and censored himself, blocking out the pain of missing someone you love and not knowing whether you will see them again. So he cranked the volume up on the television and flicked through the free-view channels using the remote control. “Boring, boring, boring.”
Channel 1; a glorified talent show of some sort, Channel 2; a reality television program, Channel 3; a soap opera, Channel 4; the news. Channel after channel permeated with nothing but crap. After a few failed attempts at channel hopping, he dejectedly opted in settling for the news.
The News Reporter droned on about an extreme group of Muslims who were burning bibles at Speaker’s Corner, another black on black crime covered with all the stereotypical accessories. Then there was a BNP success story in the local election, with this bit of news Dean gave up on the television and turned his PlayStation 7 on, playing ‘Call of Duty: Operation Middle East Invasion’ for a couple of hours before going to bed, house at the end of the night still not completely tidy.