On a November evening, a normal weekday evening, a man walked on Camden high road, London. It had just finished raining so the roads were glistening wet, the dirty lights of the city shining on the puddles and the pavement where one’s steps sometimes made splashes if one had a particularly strong stride.
Camden with its bars and restaurants was buzzing with those going to their place of preference yet this man walked as if he were in a wilderness. He didn’t know what he wanted to do nor did he have the desire to find something.
He was a man who looked around his mid thirties, blonde, wearing a hip length black coat, khaki jeans. He had a dark blonde moustache, glasses and a high forehead. This was a very aristocratic look which was completed by his thin, bloodless lips that had no perceptible curves and were as white as his bloodless face. A strangely repulsive but ultimately consequential appearance.
This man with the bloodless lips was about to pass a shop when he was arrested mid stride. A young girl with a bomber jacket hoodie came out of the shop, busy, talking softly on her phone. The man looked down and saw an even younger boy running behind her and then walking behind her and then running behind her and then walking behind her.
All this running and walking was done with no more than six strides, two strides running, two strides walking, and then two strides running again. The little boy was also wearing a bomber jacket hoodie, a toddler with canerows, a pretty little boy who could be mistaken for a girl easily and probably was done frequently.
The man with the bloodless lips allowed them to pass in front of him and saw the boy accidentally stepping on the girl’s slippers. The boy flinched backwards from the misstep. The girl quickly but softly said something on her phone, bent down, and then, slowly, jerked the boy up by his hoodie. While having him yoked up, pulling him towards her face, she extended her phone far away from her mouth as she whispered in the frightened boy’s face.
The man with the bloodless lips didn’t know what she said but the menace the girl then encapsulated made him part his lips a little. He could make out something like ‘walk so close behind me’ and saw the girl let go of the hood, go back to her phone, talking again softly, pleasantly, coquettishly, while strongly marching forwards again.
The boy momentarily watched her walk, gauging the right distance between him and her and then ran again, running like a child then walking like a man, and tried at the same time not to cry. The man put his lips back together, and once again walked along his way.
A little further on a queue was forming. He stopped to look at the smattering of youth excited about a show at the Electric Ballroom. He pressed his bloodless lips together which made no discernible change to his face and joined the queue.
‘Damn I hope he does Juice tho,’ one of the patrons said to the other.
‘It’s Pierre. Maybe he will. But I need 4U,’ the other patron said.
The man with the bloodless lips was listening intently, grabbed his phone, typed in ‘Pierre, London,’ into Google. He looked at the images and saw a man who subscribed to the mantra ‘purple everything’, including a purple durag. The man looked up and saw that the people in front of him were also wearing durags, black ones. It must be the right man. He went to the Electric Ballroom website and bought a ticket.
The line was moving swiftly and the patrons in front of him were getting their tickets and IDs checked. The man with the bloodless lips got his ticket out which had been sent to his email. He showed the guard his ticket.
‘ID?’ asked the security guard, studying him. ‘To show you’re over fourteen.’
The man with the bloodless lips opened his mouth in incredulity.
‘I don’t have ID.’
‘But you need to show you're over fourteen - with ID. It’s like that in all London venues.’
The guard studied him some more.
‘I have never been asked for ID. Not for a while. I’m thirty.’
‘You don’t have a picture of something? Anything to show you’re over…’
‘To show I’m over fourteen? My face is my ID. Can’t you see I’m over fourteen?’
‘We need to verify…’ the guard rasped, in a voice that said that he too thought it was absurd, vexed that he was put into a ridiculous position for protocol's sake.
‘Seriously?' the man with no blood in his lips exclaimed, looking around at some of the other guards for support. With his high pitched voice it seemed like he had been looking forward to this show for a long time and to miss it would be a disaster for him. 'I never thought that –‘
‘It’s good to at least have a picture…’ and then the guard added with a softer tone, ‘for future reference.’
‘Okay okay, for future reference. I’ll do that,’ replied the man with his normal, even, tone and walked in.
He was holding his phone with the QR code extended in front of him waving it like a water stick to this person, that person, until he saw a woman at the counter with a scanner. She smiled curiously at him with her head tilted to the side which asked ‘you want to come in’. He said yes by approaching her. She scanned his ticket and said ‘enjoy the show.’ The man nodded his head and walked down the dark staircase with flyers over the walls.
When he got to the floor it was shaking, vibrating him along with it. The DJ had started his hype session to get the crowd going. The room wasn’t completely packed but close enough, the end of the crowd being like a frazzled string thickening towards the stage. If he wanted to he could get pretty close up which he decided to do. The Electric Ballroom wasn’t a big venue but one that was sizable nonetheless capable of fifteen hundred people. So far there were close to a thousand. The man made his way through the crowd but only towards the back end, the frazzle. He stood there watching, vibrating, small ripples of a mosh pit beginning to form further in front.
‘I keep your hoe upstairs,’ the song resounded, along with voices from the crowd. ‘When she wanna fuck I tell her ring the bell.’
Someone tapped on his shoulder. He turned to see a guy with a jerry curl and dark sunglasses and the darkest lips he ever seen holding a cup for him. Reflexively he grabbed it. He then watched the guy get a brown vial out of his coat and pour the contents into the light coloured drink to make it darker. He looked closer at the vial and saw something like a prescription on the side. The guy with shades screwed the vial back up and took the cup back, smiling, nodding a ‘thank you’. The man with the bloodless lips, waist length coat and blonde moustache turned to the stage again, saw an empty space a little closer to him and moved up.
Looking around him he could see people grooving in front of him, particularly one guy with a white coat and hair dyed blonde. He was vibing to the music saying ‘yale, yale, yale, I got that bitch outta Yale,’ dancing with his group of friends then other people around him and pointing at one person then the next trying to get them to catch the groove like he was.
One dark haired girl with her belly button out was vibing with her friend nearby who also had her belly button out. He noticed that she had caught the same groove and went up to dance with her. He radiated good vibes and smiled at her in appreciation for vibing like him, having a good time like him and he rewarded her by dancing with her. After a few seconds of dancing with her, he turned around to groove with some more people. The girl suddenly grabbed her friend and moved to another spot, right next to the man with the bloodless lips; grabbed her moistened hair, using her fingers to comb through and whispered to her friend and started dancing again. The good natured guy turned around to see the girl had moved away from him. He noted her with a frown and some words with one of his friends, a Creolean man with his hair sleeked back. The music changed and so did the energy, fired up.
‘A brand new pack like Kid Cudi,’ half the crowd started to shout. ‘I smoke dope like Kid Cudi,’ And the beat dropped. In near unison, bodies pressed against one another, making a wave first to the right and then to the left. The man had never heard the song before and so was taken off guard, swept away to the side – but he fought against it. He became motionless, unmovable, while the crowd got hype as fuck, jumping, swirling, subject to sway, ebb and flow. They were bouncing off him, laughing jubilantly initially and then seeing that they had hit a wall they hadn’t expected. They were confused, looked around, saw the moshpit still ongoing and started laughing again, jumping around again. The girls that were next to him got swept away leaving only guys, triumph and exultation exuding from them as they shouted the lyrics. The song changed.
‘I got, I got, I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA,’ now the rapper rapped and the shouts of the crowd got even louder as they repeated after him. Now a different opening occurred within the crowd, not that of a moshpit, but of a woman needing room, a big dark skinned woman who had dyed her hair green and red. She was pushing through to get closer to the largely empty stage like a moment of love revelation of an opera brushing the minor characters away and as if the rapper from the song was in front of her she rapped every word of his brimstone lyrics.
‘I was born like this, since one like this, immaculate conception.’
It was like the words were coming out of her soul or her soul had opened up to receive the words. The guy that had been dancing with everyone was on his knees, his hands up in front of him like she was shining too much for him to handle. More than one person looked at her, slightly frightened, as even the lights started to flash like this song was part of the performance even if it was just a hype song with no association to the performing artist.
‘I transform like this, perform like this, was Yeshua’s brand new weapon.’
Her deep voice nearly overpowered the music itself. But the man stood motionless still with his blank face and even noticed that she has a cleft lip. It added a little to her demonism.
‘Sex, money, murder our DNA.’
The music cut off and the DJ got on the mic.
‘Who’s ready for Pierre?’ he shouted.
‘When I say Pierre, you say come out here.
Pierre!’
‘Come out here!’
‘Pierre!
‘Come out here!’
‘PIERRE!’
‘COME OUT HERE!’
The beat dropped. Pierre came out, with his purple durag, and screams and camera phones welcomed him. Pierre was a short handsome guy with a mini afro, trimmed mustache and a goofy smile.
The show started and Pierre ran through his records by himself, he had no DJ, the warm up act being surplus to requirements. Pierre operated the laptop and the mic.
‘It’s 4U, he’s doing for 4U!’ said a young guy who had turned to the man with the bloodless lips once he recognised the beat. He simply looked down at the young guy whose baby-face said he was barely an adult. The kid didn’t notice the blank face nor the bloodless lips turning back to Pierre with his phone out, beaming, so caught up was he with his own happiness and his love for the song. Pierre did the classic, 4U, finished it and went to his laptop to play the beat for the next song.
Suddenly the man with the bloodless lips shouted out:
‘Hey Pierre! You’re my most listened to artist on Spotify!’
Pierre stared at him when he had heard him, but didn’t reply. His look was almost like he didn’t know if he was being mocked or not.
‘Look see, I’m in the top 0.005%!’ the man added with his phone in his hand, pointing to it. The phone screen was black. He didn’t smile or even really raise his voice. His face had such a blank look on it that it arrested the artist because usually when people express devotion or admiration, they say it with more emotion or excitement, smiling, all of them. But he just had a blank look. Was he being mocked?
Pierre began to sing a song, mumbling when he would normally put his chest into it.
‘Lame niggas everywhere. Do you see this? I feel like Ripley’s…’
He went from one end of the stage to another, giving the people the attention they asked for, paid for, but sparingly. His gaze kept going back to the man with the bloodless lips. Did this man feel as out of place as he looked? The people were bouncing off him while he himself never moved, like a sculpture in an ocean with excited waves lapping against him, sometimes hard against him, but chipping nothing off him, moving him nowhere. The man's entire bearing said that he didn't want to be there but he still rooted himself to the spot. But then a thought struck the artist. If this man was not mocking him, but was truly there for him, truly loved his music, looking like that, so different from the demographic, so emotionless, it meant that he touched more people than he thought, stranger people than he thought – emotionless people even. His voice started to shake.
‘...do you see this…Ripley’s, dog, wouldn’t even believe this.’
The words fizzled out and the beat continued to ride.
‘Thank you London. Love you,’ ended Pierre, to disappointed groans and shouts. ‘Get home safe.’
Pierre made a little heart with his hands and left the stage with a glance at the statue in the crowd. The man with the bloodless lips watched him go, the music stopped, and turned to leave. He saw everyone with their eyes still turned towards the stage. Because the stage was on a dias, a raised platform, people looked up and he was a taller man, so when he turned around, people looked him in the face. He started to look from one to the other when suddenly the music boomed again from a timer set on the laptop: A looped synth that was like a snake charmers melody.
‘I’m manning up, I’m manning up, I’m manning up,’ Pierre’s voice resounded as he ran back out on stage. ‘Lets go!’
The man with the bloodless lips was still looking at the people, not having turned around at the music coming back on and Pierre making his encore. A couple of people recognised the song and shouted along.
‘I f-ran it up, ran it up, ran it up.’
‘Girl when we fuck you better not scratch me up,’ continued Pierre, half singing half rapping.
The man still didn’t turn around. He looked at the people going nuts, seeing their faces, eyes and smiles light up. They were pushing forward trying to get closer to the stage, some of them forming a circle for a moshpit.
‘Man that girl was rough,' sang Pierre.
The man with the bloodless lips had his eyes only for the fans. Was he trying to gauge how much love they showed? Was this a test from mister .005 percentile?
‘Give her fifteen minutes like the next bus.'
A couple of people were trying to look past the strange statue and at Pierre, to sing with Pierre.
‘OVO AND XO HELPED ME GET THIS CASH,’ a Thai girl yelled with beautiful lip fillers as she crashed against the man with the bloodless lips. She showed heart.
‘Customer service where you at,’ rapped Pierre – an alley oop bar.
‘I FUCKED THAT HOE AND SENT HER BACK,’ caught the light skinned, Creolean guy with his hair sleeked looking like a New Orleans jazz player, also crashing against the man with the bloodless lips. He showed love.
‘KEEP MY OLD BITCH DIRTY YEA MY HEART ON PUNISHMENT,’ said another, a guy with baby twists flailing everywhere. He showed devotion.
People were trying to rap with Pierre, and catch his eye, to show him that they loved him and his songs, but the man with the bloodless lips seemingly blocked them in multiple ways. Pierre was looking at him too, at the back of his head rather, for he was still facing the crowd like he was the artist himself. But the people, the crowd, the fans were so happy, so consumed by the synths, the holy loop, that they didn’t really recognize the strangeness of a man in the crowd with his back turned towards the artist and instead looking at them while they were having a good time. He should be on the balcony if that’s what it was.
‘I CAN’T FALL IN LOVE WITH HER, HOPE I DON’T REGRET IT,’ a kid with a skully on shouted with his whole soul. On this one the man with the bloodless lips fixed his eyes for longer. The kid was sweating, near peak exhaustion and still he was rapping like it was all his life meant to him.
‘I’m manning up, I’m manning up, I’m manning up.’
The bloodless lips started to twitch. A little colour started to spread. A smile started to creep. He turned around.
‘I f-ran it up, ran it up, ran it up.’
He reached his arms wide to grab the people around around him and started jumping, shouting:
‘I’m manning up, manning up, manning up. Manning up manning up manning up!’
Pierre smiled his own goofy smile. He was undeniable and he knew it.
‘Ran it up, ran it up, ran it up!’
