Frankie the Sycophant

The news was hastily relayed over a dubious mobile connection as Frankie tried desperately to get some bus-sleep. Exploring new arenas in contortionism whilst trying to maintain dignity was always a challenge, but one he relished. Frankie was many things, uncomfortable with his sleep deprived body he was not. Legs were flailing across the tops of seats, his backside pointing proudly to the sky and his neck protected from the window by a sliver of coat material. He didn’t mind advertising this fact, he was trying to fucking sleep.

His shuffle set to stun he listened to Arcade Fire's Wake Up and laughed at the appropriate nature of it all. Sleeping is giving in, indeed. Though the ear phones were now, he felt, irreversibly changing the shape of his ears, he refused to take them off, mousily smilenodding to the bus driver when he checked the tickets.

Frankie thought about his return to Galway the night before, stepping off the lumbering Feda, facing into the wind and smugly reminiscing. I "owned" this place once. Flooded with Flood street memories, Corrib and Cherry park, alcohol drenched and Dictaphone recorded, the now infamous Cabbage lane where he was an absentee burglary victim, with nothing to steal, shedsleeping in Tudor lawn, garbage disposing in Portmor, rent skipping in them all. The highs of the cloudy student days in the residence halls, sleeping till four, fogging his mind till dawn. Every wedding crashed, every bouncer duped, every pint or bottle or flagon downed, every braincell numbed with idle drugtaking in the name of escape. Frankie laughed, for someone desperate to escape he had managed to pick the most recreational route imagineable.

The torrential heart plucking that plunged him selectively back into happy times was short-lived however, as Frankie had stepped off the bus to discover they had changed the direction of traffic in his absence. Suddenly, painfully, everything assumed a newer, more sinister reality as he took his first disorientated steps into town. The reputation he had imagined himself having upon arrival, vanished in the exhaust fumes of the taxis that had nearly run him over. He was here to meet an old friend, to stay with an older one. Their lives had moved in directions he was only mildly aware of. He felt the reality of his foolish notions smack him, and trundled off to find a bathroom, cruelly self-aware and shrouded in painful anonymity.

The meeting had gone well, memories forged and friendships renewed he thought to himself. Lynne had been overjoyed to see him, and that in itself had been enough to force Frank through the awkwardness and shameful realizations of what he had let himself become. Sweeping what felt like overwhelming inferiority aside, he relaxed himself with wine, compliments of a long lost confidante. As the drunkenness overtook him, the conversation becoming impassioned and quasi-political he felt himself at home again, albeit briefly. The natural ease with which Lynne had carried herself had been a godsend, and being around her again, in comfort, made his heart swell. I will be a better e-friend from now on Frank vowed to himself, hoping he meant it, as he carried her bags to the door in one last chivalrous act. Saturating himself in her friendship one last time as they exchanged sleepy hugs, he watched her drag her baggage down the street on her way to completeing the final leg of her oversea adventure, the best bit, the journey home.

Irritated with himself for having devoured the Bukowski on the bus down, and unable to sleep despite himself, Frank turned up his pre-prepared bus journey mix in an attemt to block out the world. He too was going home, and the excitement at the thought of his reunion with his lover warmed him where the heater could not. The tracks shuffled once more, and whilst he was perpetually angry with himself for his inability to remember their names, at this particular moment, on this bus, watching the snow fall and staving off the fluctuating nausea it didn’t seem to matter, not one bit.

In his semi-meditative state, Frankie didn’t notice the buzzing in his pocket at first. And although he was all too aware of the inevitable phone call from the latest of his applied for soul destroyers, he never thought it would be them ringing, on this bus, whilst he lazily watched the snow. Answering at last and realizing it was boss man, he desperately tried to sound enthused as he offered him, in broken sentences, the position of sales guy. Muttering through inanities like "yes i enjoyed the induction, very much", " of course I don’t mind I didn’t get the team leader gig, i happy to be involved with you guys on any level" and "I’m looking forward too seeing you at the end of the month", Frankie hung up the phone and thought I've got a job. The fact that he had just, how ever unconvincingly, pandered to the honchos every whim, didn’t seem to bother him, not then. "I’m a fucking sycophant" he said too loudly, the earphones still expelling high quality tunes in his phone less ear. And the premonitions of the many forced smiles and handshakes to come shook him.

As the ticket master did his second round Frankie fiddled with his wallet and saw, amongst the photos and buttons contained therein, the solitary fiver he had left for the week. "Im a sycophant" he said again, softly this time, and smiled, "a well paid one". He thought not, for the first time, of his personal destruction at the hands of corporate big wigs- although it would be ever present he knew, but of his girlfriend, sleepily expecting his return, how they would plan together to spend the money, to save the money, to finger the system proudly and burn their shame palace to the ground. Its going to be a good day, Frankie thought, and finally, without resistance, as Wake Up made its second appearance on the shuffler, he fell asleep.