Rodin’s the Bard with a Broken Nose is staring down at Laurel because she’s epoxied her hand to its pedestal to stop oil, just stop it—Why? Because the government doesn’t give a fuck, that’s why. Not a single sorry fuck about its responsibilities, as the organization’s website says, and the country is in ruins … tap water so much seeping sewage … NHS gutted, zombie nurses shuffling sickly halls … universities hiking fees, an investment with no return … can you even call Britain a proper country? … not so great anymore, tattered remnants of a despicable empire … John Bull, demented, obese, drooling in the corner over his twelve-pound fish and chips and bitching about Polish lorry drivers …
He’s not bad looking, Rodin’s Bard, the bronze cast head with butternut squash soup running down it courtesy of Laurel and Masie, of Just Stop Oil, orange tears, the future weeping over our selfish present … not bad looking for a poet, for the depiction of a dead poet by a dead sculptor … Rodin, that egomaniac! Look what he did to poor Camille Claudel! Sucked up her energy, her creativity, her future, left her a husk … we’re all husks, people, the planet, withered … the patriarchy and Big Oil, petroleum products as the patriarchy’s lube as it fucks us, fucks the world … Art history, despite Laurel majoring in it, is nothing but the history of elite rape culture …
Masie is glued to the other side of the pedestal and decided to wear imitation leather boots because she’s a vegan, Peter Singer, the expanding circle, Upton who-gives-a-fuck Sinclair … doesn’t she know imitation leather is made of oil! Oil! The very public menace we’re trying to stop here! Just stop!
“Ooh, he’s fit,” Masie says, pointing with her free pinky at the docent who’s on the phone with the bobbies, those fascists … back the blue … back them right into a ravine … thin blue line keeps thinning …
Laurel looks at the docent. A decent face, trim, scruffy beard. Pensive sexiness. Though she prefers Rodin’s Bard … her father certainly wouldn’t approve … the weariness … the lines … because I’m fucking weary too! “The world is cooking,” Laurel screams, “Cook-ing. On fire. And you don’t care. Art? You’re playing the violin on the Titanic! This is a hall of shame. Shaaaaammmmeee.” This country is cooked … Drool Britannia! Britannia’s boomers drooling over waves of idiotic nostalgia … levelling down … the Queen’s Corgis were euthanized … the royal family is riddled with cancer and ruling over a rubbish bin …
“Shame,” Masie echoes, while as sure as eggs is eggs she’s still checking out the anxious docent.
People are taking pictures of them now, and videos, as Laurel rattles off her memorized speech “we need action, bold action, we need activists, we need to take a stand …”
But she spies one man indifferent to her spiel, to the little chaos they’ve wrought … fat, unassuming chap struggling to lean forward to inspect a pointless still-life … Bourgeois bullshit! Decadence of the petit-bourgeois! The PMC performing an interest in art! Midcult with a massive midsection! Probably has kids, a whole passel, the selfish porker! A second home in Spain … yearly camping trips to the Lake District … Laurel knows she shouldn’t notice his fatness, that this noticing betrays her privilege and Protestant heritage … brainwashing … internal body shaming … but she also thinks, since she’s just thinking here so who’s to know and judge her? it’s all tied together, Big Oil, obesity, Brexit, Partygate, Lettuce Liz on Leaf Support … a rotten nexus of pain and privilege and pollution … all connecting in this fat museum-goer’s gut!
Masie takes over now. “We. Are. Being. Lied. To. Lied to!”
Laurel’s bum is beginning to ache on the marble floor … museums have become nothing but secular churches, ostentatious grifts … what’s this? The fat man is crying … crying over a still-life … a Chardin, no?
Laurel cranes her neck to see the painting. A cup of water … a brown coffee pot beside it … some garlic or shallots, herbs … the world is cooking and this fatso is looking at an old painting of a glass of water and weeping like an overfed baby! Wah! Baby wants his bottle full of elitist art! Wah! Needs his mum to push his pram to the next exhibit! Wah!
“You know your boots are made of oil,” Laurel whispers to Masie.
“And what’s your fleece made of then, Laurel-loo, dearie? What’s this epoxy made of, hm?”
Laurel ignores Masie. She’s over her, suddenly, over it … over, over, over … over this world, whether it stops oil or not … over Labour, over the Tories … she’s twenty-two, pissing away her years of peak hotness, cocking up a perfectly good summer, and for what? To annoy a handful of posh pricks in a museum and give herself an epoxy rash? … What’s that fat chap so moved by? She leans as far as she can to better see the painting but her skin tears, the epoxy is holding fast … Shakespeare’s bronze head is hovering over her, over everyone … what’s its judgement? A security guard is coming towards them with a grim look and a can of solvent in his hand …
The fat man sits down, winded from his moving experience … Beauty with a capital B … the aesthetic sublime … transcendence … Laurel sees the subtle white paint on the top of Chardin’s glass … not bad … the delicate white paint creating a reflection on the homely coffee pot … she starts to cry … we’re fracked, we’re fucked … the ozone has another hole in it! the bloody greenhouse gasses are even gassier! late capitalism! the uniparty! the neoliberal consensus! fuck your mama, Fukuyama! Bite me, long-haired hipster Tony Blair! … To flee or not to flee … the chronocentric doomerism is insatiable and Laurel is a tiny pea on its plate … Laurel wants to buy a big American car, a supersized monster, and muscle it across America with the Bard with a Broken Nose in her lap! Face down, he’s inhaling me, his broken bronze nose is rubbing my clit … we’re climbing the Rockies or some other grand American mountain range … fuck, the scale of it … Claudel’s ghost is riding shotgun and singing a French burlesque tune … the engine growls … the apocalypse brews under the hood … this decapitated Bard is writing sonnets to me … all the gauges in the dash read FUCK YOU … someone’s removed the brake pedal … Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? … the entire continent rolls out in front of me like a welcome mat … Rule, Brittania!
“Who cares?” Laurel says, eyeing Chardin’s painted can, the way the light is dancing along the metal top of it, delicate, beautiful … wondering if you can rent a Mustang, vroom, vroom … if the docent is single because he looks soft but maybe he fucks hard … what is the question? … she can fly to New York, rent a car, drive west … America or Britain, London or New York, is that the question? … the summer is still possible … sure, the future is doomed, the gases are greenhousing … no one’s going to save us but can we save ourselves? … the road is long … the Rockies tall … summer break’s short … the present or the future? … petrol prices are low … America … is the world cooking or is it cooked? … the question …
After serving his country at various CIA black sites across the Near, Middle, and Far East, Jon Doughboy has decided to leave the workforce to pursue his passion: writing very short stories and publishing them online. Enjoy the rush of his waterboard prose @doughboywrites