There’s a man on the television. He wants to kill me. He’s bright and big, tall and wide. The man lives behind the screen, but sometimes I wonder how much he steps out - rummages through my things and trinkets, tinkers around the flat. He potters about my mind, that’s for sure. I fancied a drink, so I turned the man off and made for Peckham. Through the roads and under the overpass. Streetlights shot through leaves, and the black of the sky was a particularly perfect shade of nothing. The walk was familiar, though tonight I was in a peculiar mood. I’d ducked and dived into many nooks and crannies in London, but today I was going somewhere I knew - one where I knew the exits, and the staff poured the pint before I made it to the bar. One where I wish my ashes could be rubbed into the stale carpet, and thus my spirit would be subsumed into the stench of cheap, imported ale. It was usually a quiet place but tonight it was busy. A regular haunt for the ghosts round here. Pay them no mind, for you’re part of the haunting. I got my pint, headed through to the back - a small smoking area, a couple tables, backed onto Crack Alley.

I liked Crack Alley. It was free entertainment - better than the bread and circuses, for it was a real portrait of the disembodied and disempowered. Drug addicts fought over nonsense, sometimes badly so - and for the admission fee of a pint and a side of a cigarette you could watch the show for free. In their minds, of course, they were battling over cosmic fates - spilled blood and knocked out rotten teeth over bottle caps and scraps. The alley was quiet this night, though. Like they’d flocked somewhere else. Instead, the usual lonely square was abuzz with people. Too many for the small place. I found a corner, and heard two people talk - one with the ruggedness of the East End, and another with the harsh dulcet tones of a Slavic.
“She’s 25 - at home. Why she no work? Why she no leave? It’s - it’s kids-“
“Ya daugh’er?”
“No - my husband’s. He does no - not drink as much anymore, you know, no smoke. He try to tell her: go! Go make mistake, go live. But all she do is-is sit, sit around house. She pretty, she young… He’s a good person. She just - you know, she didn’t turn out.”
“Sounds like mine.”
“You’re - you’re - parent? Father?”
“A boy and a girl. And lemme tell ya somethink, ‘bout girls-“
“Go on.”
“They’re fackin’ psychopaths.”
“Why?”
“She’s - y’know, me son - I can have a laugh with him. He’s lovin’. She just don’t seem to see me-“

 “Always different, boys and girls. You good father?”
There was a lull and I got interested. They’d just met - you can tell when two people are trying to feel each other. Tracing the boundaries of a conversation usually illustrates the soul. I was well into my pint, stared at nothing to blend in - and I sank into the words.
“I’d say I was present.”
“Ah! So you … were there?”
“Around, yeah. Y’know - her mather don’t think much of me, but I did my bits. School and that.”
“So… you blame self? You blame yourself for her?”
“My daughter? No - as you said, they don’t turn out sometimes. Don’t mean you’re a bad dad, just means somet’ ain’t right in the mix. That’s all.”
“But, your son?”
“Me son’s a lad. A man, you know. He turned out what I expect in a boy. He’s a man. He’s-“
“Like you?”
“Guess so.”
“And your… daughter?”
“Ain’t a woman.”
A table of young south London ladies, who were just talking about pressing freshies in a Brixton Morley’s, chimed in:
“What’s a woman 'meant' to be?”
“I don’t mean nothin’ by it, y’know, but - I got expectations, for what a man and a woman is. Like, take it this way. Your dad. Right? Your dad - if you seen him cry, right, would you respect him less?”
The table thought. The Slavic woman had nearly finished her Bell’s and Coke, the cheapest mixed drink on the menu. She was stout, with a cherubim face -- though the dark around the eyes told me she didn't sleep too good, maybe kept awake by a specter of something. The man's knuckles were rough, dry cement cracked over the lines of tough skin. Labourer. 
"I don't got a dad. And I don't need one." Said one of the girls. The cockney shrugged. 
"Well, there ya go -- he ain't a dad, is he? Not a man."
They all talked some more. My pint was waning empty, and my bladder was full with bubbles and beer. I excused myself, as a friendly observer, made myself inside and downstairs to the gents. Kept the door open for an old man. He thanked me as he shuffled inside a stall. It's nice when the old thank the young. I wondered if his grandkids call. Maybe he saw a slither of an estranged one in me. I had a piss. Didn't bother washing my hands, for the moment they touched the door handle they'd be filthy once more. We're too scared of germs, these days -- we should take a note from our ancestors. Roll in the dirt. Tear a bison down with our bare hands. Blood pumping through Howitzer muscles, fangs borne in battle, not for supermarket lunches and stiff pasta. 
I returned to the smoking area with a fresh pint. The Cockney and the Slavic were alone now -- they were closer. I took a wet seat. My eyes glazed over to Crack Alley. Someone, on that rain-slicked asphalt, was crouched, fingers pressed into the ground. They groaned something unintelligible, and a smell of sweat and liquor emanated from their ratty brown overcoat. Having lit a sophomore cigarette, I thought of the bars and the boulevards of the Left Bank. Those writers and poets in Paris, lauded for sitting around all day. I'd love to sit around all day. I'd love if people waxed lyrical about me, having my life in print. Maybe this night would be in the memoirs! The hovel that was a home, a portrait of the artist as a young man. As my mind digressed, so did the Cockney and the Slavic. 
"I-I drink, yes - he, my husband, he no like. But. I drink."
"Naffink bad about it, coupla pints, no 'arm--"
"Exactly! No harm. You know why I, uh, why I drink?"
"To chill out?"
"The noise."
"Ya what?"
"Noise, noise! You ever had a noise, in head? Buzz-buzz-buzz! Noise?"
"Can't say I has, love."
"Not love, you are not a chauvinist -- you a good man. Present. No, noise. Ringing."
"That sounds like tinnitus."
"Tinni-? No. This come from above."
They spoke some more. Ended up talking about the man in my television. I chose to leave. On the way back I felt lighter, softer. I thought to myself:
Who cares about the man in my television, with friends like these?