this is what I wrote for my friend Owen's performance on Saturday

This is a rhapsodic story. And it starts with a tongue in a field of rose petals. Its fragments invite you to let go of the handbrake and follow its sloppy paths. It is a story about a small trolley, on top of which there is a man sitting. A man who cries shit, who doesn’t bother to finish you off, who hopes that something will eventually occur, last or somehow end: Let’s start something! Come on! Let’s start something now, he says. A man who likes surfaces: a smelly carpet, a porcelain vase, a wallpaper with rose petals.
Sometimes, he rubs himself against them.

I’ll just be standing. I’ll just be here, he says. And his legs do not reach the ground. Lick my juice, lick my cunt, he says, and he remains unmoved, on his little table trolley. This is a rhapsodic story, in the literal sense of the word, the word ‘rhaptein,’ which means stitch or sew together. It is a sewn story. Random images come together: A funfair party, the boy who jumps in his stripy pants, who jumps up and down, the curly-hair boy. Two bare legs, which do not touch the ground. Keep your feet on the ground. A crazy dance in a hoodie, a boy in a plastic bag who hands in the microphone. These are the images I recall. And there is something about their randomness that makes them last and last longer. Lick my juice, lick my cunt, come on, you know what you like, he says.

Despite its fragmented nature, the performed text acquires almost immediately a context. The specificity of detail, although we don’t know precisely what the situation is, or what it refers to, draws me closer to the story and rubs me against its surface. The man on the little trolley, with his feet on the air, his bare legs wide open, in front of us, remains still. We know he can walk, we have seen him walking before, he is not incapable of walking. Yet, he remains still. Anyone, at any moment could push him off the trolley with the little wheels. Yet, he does not seem defenseless. His vulnerability is a forceful one, exposed in our eyes with a violent helplessness. Something about that stillness makes me wonder whether he chooses to be still, or he has no choice, like Winnie, perhaps, stuck up to her waist in a mound.

What is the worst thing I could tell you today? Suck on my big titty nipples. Mother fucker...oh yeah…give it to me…oh yes. To me. Me too, never again…lets just do it, he says. Horny, lustful, yet at the same time deeply sentimental, the text refers to a love story that you long to be part of. Soon you realize that this could be any story, any love story that has ever existed, any love story that involves a man sitting on a little trolley, a tongue in a valley, an evening sunset, a funfair, a dance.

What is the colour of the thread and its texture. How to stitch the fragments together. How to take them apart. Or is it important.

Do you know what a medal is or a trophy, he says. I let go of the handbrake. I am there too. This is my small trolley. I put on the leather jacket, my medal trophy and I start rolling down the slope. My little trolley takes me to the room with the small bed that he talks about, where it is easier to wake up in the morning, to the place where the branches and the leaves and the fruit are pissing over my legs this time.
This is why I never keep my legs on the ground.
Now, I wonder what you think of me. If you like me. If I am ok.
The light will come on soon. It is quite simple.
And I am standing. I am there.
My medal or trophy commemorates that event, the event of being there, of not keeping my feet on the ground, of being pissed, splashed, spanked and shat. And I am still there, standing, with my feet off the ground.

May 2009