Amitriptyline

AMITRIPTYLINE

READING FESTIVAL 1988 2.15PM
Sat with some bitch amongst the fag ends. Lit a fire. Here is no water
only rock.

MAGDALEN COLLEGE 1990 10.50PM
I crave fags from Honey's, fresh bread from Harvey's and a pint of milk
from a cow. Too lazy to get out of bed just yet. Yesterday was May
morning. I slept right through it and I slept in a room glued to the
bells of Magdalen tower. "You sleep at the wrong time," I think to
myself. So I walk over the bridge, empty, now except of litter and a
few snatched attempts at suicide. No death by water today. Cigarette
ends and cardboard boxes herald the slaughterhouse of finals. April is
the cruellest month. It brings us May. I make it to The Angel &;
Greyhound where finally they know me by name. "Where the ice? Need a
big bag even though I got no fridge?" I spurt like a stabbed jaffa. I
look and smell like someone with fresh spinal injury but I persist/
"Grapefruit juice, I like grapefruit juice. Don't get scurvy?" I begin
to sound intelligent, if only to myself, for I don't want a sip of the
stuff when it comes. Meet Rolf. Rolf is tall, dark with a pocketful of
grass, so I say heeloo.
"Weere'v eyou beehn Jlolph" I say.
- TO THE JOBCENTRE, TO CLAIM SOME DOLE.
"Oh," says I.
- HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
"Got essays to write," says I.

CORPUS CHRISTI BAR 1991 11.05PM
- HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
"Got essays to write," says I.
I make my excuse, and make it to the top of someone else's staircase,
one with corrugated iron for shower curtains, wooden pallet for
floorboards, shared by girls and boys and used only when you smell like
oncoming epilepsy.

LONGWALL STREET 1991 11.41PM
I tumble into the eiderdown that is my best pal's room. And he is Rick.
Rick sees ice maidens in Lenin's eyes. His door is a Russian flag. He
sees roaches that need to be exterminated. I decide I am not up to
essay writing. Not even at the best of times am I up to essay writing.
Like day time, when there are plays to write, people to chill with and
a soul to liberate. Because Lithium's not working and Caffeine is
meaningless and Proplus is such a fuss; so when you have 8 hours of
darkness, hollow solitude and an empty page, plagiarism is all the
rage.

DAUBENY SCIENCE LIBRARY 1991 4AM ISH
This is like, the greatest paper of my life, all about pondlife and
ecosystems and animals, or is it plants? The library is closed and so I
can never find out. And the Chaplain keeps taking me to a nameless
nuthouse three times minimum so I can get sectioned and that's the law
and there's this note on my door from someone who cares and this is
fiction baby, so you don't have to worry.

BOOTS PHARMACY 1992 3.12PM
Boy are pharmacists anal. They have their heads so firmly up their ass,
how do they breathe? I just want to be like them, I want to wear gold
shoes, gold bag and a matching Laura Ashley hairband but it grips
around my ears so tight my head aches. So I'm dropping out because of
the goddamn Pharmacist matey. They are so so nice to you until they
read your script and see that word, Amitriptyline; it makes them
scared, like I'm going to steal all their Strepsils and make mischief
with the Durex counter. Then they look angry like it's catching and
it's coming their way and how dare I piss on their stoop today.

OXFORD CITY 1992 10.12AM
Lunch break, 10 till four. Like a bad electrician I can connect nothing
with nothing. I keep going because I'm waiting for a clue that will
mean I can juggle tulips in the Botanic Garden once again. In between
all of this, I feel normal, like when pins and needles first begin in
your shins.

WOLVERCOTE 1994 TIME? SUMMERTIME
Sitting outside The Plough, I play barefoot boogie with the gravel
hoping one day I will feel the concrete scrape my feet. I take another
pill. And I hope it's the right one this time. I sip some ale. Probably
the worst ale in the world, I don't know; certainly not the one that
refreshes the parts of you that are dead. I look out at Port Meadow
through sunglasses at sunset. There's dead bodies out there. Breeding
lilacs out of the dead land. They made it through so can you. I'd
rather be buried under the brown fog of a Winter noon and have it all
again so I can get it right this time, but hope sticks like a prick in
my stomach and so I go on. Besides, there's a bloke singing Karaoke.
Even though he has severe scoleosis, he fancies himself. He says things
like:
- CLAP, YOU BUGGERS!
And each man fixes his eyes before his feet.
- YOU KNOW WHAT WE SAY DOWN HERE WHEN YOU DON'T CLAP? WE SAY 'C'MON YOU
BUGGERS!'
And I long for someone to take me home. But where it is, god only
knows. So I sit and I clap. C'mon you buggers. Clap.

Shanty, Shanty, Shandy.

? Lita Doolan
887 words