|
|
Wordsworth, popping into a
ruined cottage, sees it as a place for meetings and relationships:
a roofless
Hut; four naked walls
That stared
upon each other! - I looked round,
And to my
wish and to my hope espied
The Friend I
sought
Without it, there is nothing 'stationed in the public way'; nothing to bring
individuals into a community. Mooney picks up on this, quoting Casey: 'the
modern subject is a placeless subject'.
The cottages Mooney writes of at the start of DCLP are public toilets used
for 'bits of action' (wanking, blow jobs, buggery). Government legislation has
ruined them: 'The Sexual offences Act of last year seems to suggest that
someone who is *suspected* of being in a lavatory for sexual purposes can be
arrested'. Local councils 'close public toilets because [they are] too
costly'. The question is, 'what is left for all sections of the community'?
Mooney make clear that public toilets have community significance by quoting
Berkoff on the 'dilapidated public toilets where the Jewish traders used to
meet to put the world to rights. The toilets were known as the Parliament of
Petticoat Lane'. And he makes clear that the intent of Waltham Forest Council
is to close down community by noting their 'closure of St James Street public
library, and the secret pulping of some 236, 000 books'.
While a bj in a bog may not be everyone's idea of a nice evening, the heavy
use of quotation from internet cruising sites clearly shows that these are
meaningful places, complete with community spiritedness ('do be careful').
Since the individual exists only as part of a community, it does not matter
that these encounters are often nameless. Naming, and the use of personal
details, is often entirely meaningless in terms of any deep understanding of
the individual. Mooney splices his text with examples of government and business
using ID to alienate, judge and (wrongly) define. One letter reads: 'We have
recently been advised that you purchased television receiving equipment in
January 2005 from Dixons Stores Group. However we have no record of a TV
License in your name at the above address.' The recipient replies:
I take
exception to the threatening tone of your letter,
and great exception to the acquisition of my
private information, and the intrusion involved
in that. I
find it surprising that a public organisation such
as yours can
get away with such an operation.
I heard it on
the radio/
As it happens
your communication has been curiously timed,
as I am in
the process of writing two long poems dealing with
the
increasingly invasive totalitarian and anti-liberal tenancies
in our
culture.
The confusion as to what makes an individual is brilliantly summarised by
this extract: 'The Wharf can reveal that men are using public toilets at the
heart of the estate for homosexual sex, also known as "cottaging", right
under the noses of some of the world's most powerful companies.' If personal
information and statistics define an individual, then a company can be an
individual too - in this case, a prudish moral aunt. While business is
personified (the estate has a heart, the companies noses), the community
becomes impersonal - 'homosexual' and alien ('also known as "cottaging"') -
and vilified.
Beginning the book with sex is a good strategy. The first two pages are an
uninterrupted quotation, giving details of cottaging sites and
practices. This is voyeuristically exciting - but just as we're looking
forward to the money shot, Mooney pulls out, and the rest of the 77
pages of the first part consists largely of radically fragmented, often
official, language:
mind the
& platform & there is a good
window movement
Dagenham Heathway
the gap
this side only swipe
your oyster
card
your identity he CCTV
surveillance for your safety and 15:30
drop enjoy our low low Oxlow
cinemas now stop only drop
£10 fine seats for not for drop attacks
against our staff accept no
This frustration at the text serves to heighten our awareness of the
frustrations to our freedom of movement, thought and time we experience in
our everyday lives at the hands (to continue the personification) of
'invasive totalitarian and anti-liberal tenancies in our culture'.
The second part of Mooney's book is bleaker than the first. While the first
presents a community, the second qualifies it. A community is not immune to
the dominant culture: 'You can't keep playing the same game every day without
subsequently giving in to it'. People no longer meet in toilets but pick up
email addresses there: 'GOT UR ADDY FROM THE BARKING TOILETS!!!' What ensues
is a fantasy played out virtually, in which the characters are types, 'boys
with fetishised identity': 'hi, you want cyber? dad, son - sergeant, recruit
- straight boy, queer mate - prison - whatever?' The types often seem to be
dictated by a disapproving society; Mooney gives five pages over to someone
who wants to be called 'a sleazy indian fuck slut'.
Identity is something that can be stolen and abused, invented and
deleted. The language in this book exposes this, but offers no
solutions. Just before the final statement - 'XB-33 - Mlada Fronta' - we
read: 'I'm not sure that piping classical music into Stratford Bus Station at
ear-splitting volumes is actually a strategy'.
© Tom White 2008
|