BJ Tunstall

Author: BJ Tunstall

  • My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

    Even if you hate heavily produced music you have to admire Kanye’s willingness to crack open his sloppy noodle brain and let us dig in with chopsticks.

    The longest cry in my life was to Runaway on repeat. It felt like my lungs were coming out of my mouth. A distorted electronic symphony clawing out the last bits of my broken heart. The song shouldn’t work but it does. The whole shebang that is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a nervous breakdown in the wake of a massive bender wrapped up in clean 1 hour and 8 minutes. Even if you hate heavily produced music you have to admire Kanye’s willingness to crack open his sloppy noodle brain and let us dig in with chopsticks. Hell of a Life still gets me up in the morning when I’ve embarrassed myself the night before. Addiction, stupidity, fatalism, self pity and hooks, lines and plinkers of pop genius. It’s also a big fat sorry if you’re at home self harming because he only wanted you for sex. Last track Who Will Survive America samples Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken-word “Comment No. 1” says “America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey” and this is 1970! I wonder what he’d think about Trump 50 years on. Music writer Ann Powers interprets the big theme on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to be “the crisis of the jet-lagged cosmopolitan … the exhausted cry of one who’s always new in town, chasing whatever goal or girl is in the room, fueled by consumer culture’s relentless buzz, but finally left unsatisfied” Kinda makes it sound less sexy now ya say like that…still.

  • Amelioration

    this year my scars spread like wild roots, scraping along my bones and sometimes knuckling through 

    ​my mane turned an old mirror grey

    but I’m no horse, just a cart full of splinters and nails and warped planks

    interventionist friends with blushing lips making shapes​ through the mist of red wine 

    dinners of soft cheese on water crackers and to bed

    and the clumsy hands of a stranger

    always makes me feel better

  • Pub drawl

    “I could smell his sweaty sideburns”

    I love sitting at a bar having a beer. It’s a very masculine thing to do. No one questions a man at a bar having a beer. Even if he stinks a bit. If a woman sits at a bar even for a few seconds, she must be waiting for someone or she’s a drag queen.

    Eating alone is a bit different. For some reason this comes across a little suspicious, the kind of man who might also read comics. A few years ago I ate alone in a pub for Christmas and I received plenty of suspicious and sympathetic stares. No one asked me to join their table but I was sent an anonymous sherry which I thoroughly enjoyed.

    Whether you want to know this or not, here are the most popular names for pubs in Britain.

    Red Lion, Rose & Crown, New Inn, The Swan, White Horse, White Hart, Royal Oak, The Crown.

    My favorite Rose & Crown is in South Ealing. I’m convinced it’s the best Rose & Crown in Britain. I eat and drink there a lot and not once have they served a questionable meal or poured a shit beer. The roast belly of pork, dauphinoise potatoes, red cabbage, apple compote is mouth-watering. Makes you snort softly when you take first bite.

    To prove my point, a few months ago I set out to eat and drink at every Rose & Crown in Britain and only got as far as the Rose & Crown in Wimbledon. Lousy effort really but I was in need of a drink. I found a guy at the bar drinking beer and I sat beside him. We nodded at each other and I told him the one about the guy who tried to visit every Rose & Crown in Britain. He said “how many have you done so far?” I said “two”. He suggested I get a job. I could smell his sweaty sideburns.

    I said “there’s 8 pubs in Britain called Slurping Toad and 76 called Cock”

    We agreed a tour of Britain in search of the best Cock had great marketing potential but I was more likely to make the 8 Slurping Toads in one piece. The first is in Bishopsgate, London. If you want a pub crawl done properly, call an Australian. Looking forward to my first dining challenge. To eat and drink in every Slurping Toad in Britain.

  • Scars

    This year my scars spread like wild roots

    scraping bone and sometimes knuckling through

    my mane a mirrorish grey

    Interventionist friends

    red lips making shapes but not a word sinking in

    too much of everything, even advice

  • Roast boast

    “Often a fillet from Tesco can deliver this or any raggedy rotten slab of cow, just drown it in Hot English mustard. If only we could drown the weather in Hot English mustard”

    I smother my steak in Hot English mustard and stab at it with a steak knife that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tower block in south London. It’s raggedy and rotted. Bills serves it up with watercress but even the first lady of garnish can’t cheer up this fuck up of a meat. I suck the stale tainted fat off the watercress and apologise to it. I say out loud how much I could murder some Kobe beef right now and Rob, my Tinder date an tonight’s dinner companion says “You know they are massaged daily with sake, the Kobe cows? It’s an ancient tradition” But this sounds like a lazy cultural stereotype to describe a covert method of murdering cows. Why does everything the Japanese do get shrouded in a myth about ancient practice. Cue the Kugo 箜篌 a harp used in ancient times. I wonder about great steak. I sometimes sneak off by myself to Sukiyaki-Tei for Kobe Shimofuri Yaki Shabu Cuts with Truffle Ponzo on the side. But when I can’t afford 90 pounds for Kobe beef I grab a steak from my local butcher. For me when I go cheap I go for a beef that has a fibrous texture to err on the side of caution. Often a fillet from Tesco can deliver this or any raggedy rotten slab of cow, just drown it in Hot English mustard. If only we could drown the weather in Hot English mustard. Scirocco on the island Naxos in the Cyclades does the world’s best steak but you have to change in Athens to get there. Hot English mustard is less than £2 or £4.94 at it’s most posh at Fortnum & Mason so just drown it in that, if you can’t afford a flight to Greece. A tasty austerity measure.

  • One long sentence

    years months days hours wide eyed and wet in the middle

    flooding the grass with grim reaped tears and teenage girl harmonies

    down the farm wet shuddering despair full to the ear’s brim

    every minor chord of gutting regret  

    struck

    I could never promise you a future a four am without fear

    I belong to two islands a thousand miles apart with an epoch long aching to wander like a dog in search of a resting place to wheeze and fling one final critique on life’s superfluous complication across the polypropylene carpet

    now you have a thump thump thump into the two thousand mortal coils and under you

    his arms will unravel

    my lovely sphinx forever buried in my dna fur snuffling truffling like the mysterious dancing light the tor presides over

    right there in the murmur of an algae hue we lie

    peace kindling, waiting for the wicker flames to rise

    licking each other clean

    the farm falls dim damp dark, exhausted from marching rites through mud and stone

    the earth strong and loud, I squeeze his hand

    and burn with hope and nettle

  • Kiss

    John: a 50 year old sex therapist. Observant and funny. Magda: a 40 year old prostitute. She speaks with a strong Polish accent. Concetta: a 26 year old Italian woman. PhD student. She is English born with Italian parents. Duncan: a 24 year old English man. Softly spoken people pleaser, works for a Charity

    1.PARKBENCH

    John talks to camera

    John: When I was 17 it was illegal to be gay in my hometown. I was in my first year of university and the local gay and lesbian activist group organised a Kiss-In. The Kiss-In was to happen at the gates of the university carpark blocking students and teachers from driving in or out. We had instructions to gather at the gates, find a partner and when our leader Gai Lemon waved her Queer Workers in Solidarity Socialist flag and blew her rape whistle it was time to begin kissing. We were kissing for equal rights, our freedom and our lives. A peaceful protest that was about being visible and legitimising same sex love. If we blocked the university carpark we might get media attention which is ideally what we wanted. I arrived by myself and watched as everyone paired off. I was hoping to find a boy my own age who I could kiss for way too long and fall in love. The paring was quick and most paired off. I looked around, there seemed to be no one left to kiss. Emerging from a sea of student activists came a lesbian punk with pink hair and a very high green fringe. Gai Lemon waved her flag and blew her whistle. The lesbian punk and I spontaneously grabbed each other and began kissing. Our leader Gai Lemon pointed at us and yelled into her rusty megaphone. ‘Right here queers, solidarity in action and the very definition of irony’. This is how I came to understand the meaning of irony and the value of strident political action.

    2.BEDROOM / BED

    Duncan and Concetta lie in bed post-coital

    Duncan: Do you remember your first kiss?

    Concetta: You have to be careful asking that question. Not everyone’s first kiss was consenting you know.

    Duncan: Oh god, why do feminists have to ruin everything nice about the world

    Concetta: I’ve met your Uncle

    Duncan: My Uncle, what has he got to do with anything?

    Concetta: Can you imagine your Uncle shoving his tongue down your throat when you were 5? What if that was your first kiss?

    Duncan: Well I wouldn’t consider it my first kiss. I’d remember a good kiss, a kiss, not a kiss from a pervy uncle. Not that my Uncle is pervy.

    Concetta: What if you enjoyed it but later thought you’d done something bad?

    Duncan: I don’t know. Did your Uncle kiss you like that?

    Concetta: No (laughs)

    Duncan: Do you like the way I kiss?

    Duncan turns his eyes toward her.

    Concetta: More tongue maybe

    Duncan: Uncle style? Oh god, what am I saying?

    They both laugh. Duncan jumps on top of the Concetta

    Duncan: So when was your first kiss?

    Concetta: I was 16 he was 15, so somewhere in between him fumbling to take my shirt off and him prematurely ejaculating. Somewhere in there I guess. It wasn’t memorable. I assume he kissed me.

    Duncan: Do you remember our first kiss?

    Concetta: Yes. The only kiss worth remembering is the one that blossoms into love.

    Duncan: Oh god, that’s nice

    Concetta: See feminists don’t ruin everything nice

    Duncan: Can I kiss you?

    They kiss.

    3. PARKBENCH

    John talks to camera.

    John: The kiss after a rigorous debate can be hot, if both people feel like they gained some power in the debate, otherwise the one that got the upper hand presses harder and the one that lost some ground holds back. If it’s two men one man can just give up his arse to level the playing field. If it’s two women one can submit to the other to redress the balance. What does a heterosexual woman do if she feels powerless?

    4. GYM

    John’s voice is taken over by Concetta now working out in the gym doing squats, she finishes her set and talks to the mirror.

    All heterosexual sex is rape. Andrea Dworkin never said this in her 1987 book Intercourse. She said actually that “violation is a synonym for intercourse.” She also said later that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. There I go again ruining everything nice about the world. Kissing after a healthy debate is hot. Kissing after an argument is something else. It’s salvaging. ‘I love you even though we disagree’ For the French thinker Michael Foucault, power and knowledge are not seen as independent entities but are inextricably linked – knowledge is always an exercise of power and power always a function of knowledge. If the woman thinks he has demonstrated greater knowledge in the debate she’ll probably kiss him anyway. What does the man do if he feels like the woman demonstrated greater knowledge than him in the debate, does he still kiss her? Or does he wonder what he has left to offer her, if he doesn’t have intellectual superiority? Who is he? Does his dick go limp. Do you need to feel superior to someone to get an erection. Can a man feel powerless and still dominate a woman. Maybe that’s the point. All sexual dominance is a physical manifestation of powerlessness? Sex levels-out an uneven playing field.

    5. PARK / POND

    Duncan standing beside a lake eating a ham roll. He talks to the ducks.

    Duncan: I’m not sure what if feels like to be powerless? I don’t think I need to be passed around at a gay orgy to understand powerlessness?

    He throws a bit of bread at a duck. It lands nowhere near it. The duck slowly swims toward the bread that’s absorbing water and sinking. It dives down to eat it exposing it’s bum. Close on duck bum.

    We hear a voice of the Park Ranger off camera.

    Park Ranger: I hope that’s not bread?

    Duncan quickly puts the remainder of the ham roll in his pocket.

    Park Ranger: Bread has no nutritional value for ducks

    Duncan walks off. Close on duck bum.

    6. PARKBENCH

    Magda talks to camera.

    Magda: I kiss. Sure. Easier to kiss a man I hate rather than let him fuck me. But that’s just me. Other girls will tell you something different. Maybe because they can’t fake a kiss. Kissing is the most intimate act in the world, I’m not disagreeing but it’s also the easiest thing to do when your trying to make up the hour.

    Close on her gentle kissing the air quivering with passion.

    Magda: The mouth only has to open once or twice, the vagina doesn’t have this option.

    She picks up a leaf and a forked twig.

    Magda: French men just push the tongue in and leave it there (pushes leaf into twig and lets it hover to make her point)

    Magda: Italians stop and start and tease your mouth (uses leaf to caress the twig)

    Magda: Greeks are wet and curious (uses the leaf to slowly slap the twig)

    Magda: Spanish bite your lips (she closes the forked twig on the leaf, it snaps)

    Magda: Chinese peck and poke excitedly (uses leaf to poke the twig back and forth)

    Magda: African’s tickle your lips with theirs (uses the leaf to tickle the twig) before allowing the tongue to descend into your mouth (shoves leaf deep between the twig)

    Magda: American’s assert the bottom lip and slide the tongue in fast when you least expect it (uses leaf to repeatedly nudge the twig and then pushes it in)

    Magda: The British open their mouth very slightly and the tongue pops out like a turtle head popping out of it’s shell (she pushes the leaf through the twig tentatively looks left to right)

    Magda: The German’s clean your mouth with their tongue (rubs it all over the twig) like a toothbrush

    Magda: But kissing is subjective. I might not like the way you kiss but someone else might like it. So very happy we are all different. Very happy.

    7. PARKBENCH

    John talks to camera.

    John: My first boyfriend taught me how to kiss. He told me to go slow, act a bit shy even and gradually build up to the tongue. He always kissed with his eyes closed. He gave everything. He was a desperate kisser like I was giving him life saving oxygen through my mouth. When we had our first threesome I discovered he kissed everyone like that. Turned out our kissing wasn’t special. But it felt special to me. When I was young I believed I could tell by the kiss if he was the one. Since then I’ve felt fucking fireworks kissing some men and they’ve turned out to be right fizzlers in a relationship. Why do we think that the kiss holds all the answers when it tells us nothing about the future?

    8. GYM/SHOWERS

    Concetta is in the shower soaping herself down after her workout.

    Concetta: After the Last Supper Judas identifies Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss and this leads to the arrest of Jesus by the police force of the Sanhedrin.

    Concetta: So a Judas kiss has come to mean an act appearing to be an act of friendship, which is in fact harmful to the person receiving the kiss. The mafia made Il bacio della morte, the kiss of death famous.

    She puts her shower-cap on a bottle of shampoo and it becomes Fredo Corleone, she’s Michael Corleone and she kisses him on the lips.

    Concetta: “I know it was you Fredo, you broke my heart, you broke my heart”.

    Concetta: Such a male thing to do, ruin something nice, like a kiss.

    9. BUSTOP

    Duncan is sitting at a bus stop near the park in a line of old ladies. He eats his ham roll.

    Duncan: Michael thought he did the right thing by killing Fredo. I’m not sure it was the right thing to do for the Corleone family.

    10. GYM/SHOWER

    Concetta strokes the soap and suds up her.

    Concetta: A man can kiss another man as long as he counterbalances the inexcusable intimacy by killing him. I guess I also use the kiss to work out whether a man is going to kill me. The first few pecks are testing the waters. When two bodies come that close there can be only two outcomes, pleasure or pain. Never ambivalence.

    11. BUS (CROWDED)

    Duncan stands on a crowded bus, wedged between two large women and two large men. Every one is frozen as the bus moves at a snail’s pace. Close on Duncan’s ambivalent face.

    12. GYM/CHANGING ROOM

    Concetta pulls her pants up.

    Concetta: A kiss states intention but it can’t predict the future. Nothing can. Kissing is about hope.

    13. PARKBENCH

    Magda talks to camera.

    Magda: The kiss from an 18 year-old boy who wants to lose his virginity to a prostitute is like a persistent tap on the shoulder. His tongue speaks on behalf of his penis. It just keeps poking the roof of your mouth until your legs open. He is ejaculating into a woman for the first time. I take this seriously. Virgins always make terrible conversation after sex.

    Occasionally there is chemistry. The kiss is loving. The bottom lip becomes a cup ready to catch the secrets of your inner world that might fall out your mouth and in another reality where I’m not a prostitute and his not paying, we could be in love. Sometimes the lips collapse on yours exhausted by the strip bar, the job, the kids. The kiss that spooks is the one that heaves with loneliness, you can feel gusts of yearning rushing up the throat from stomach. I’ve never felt hate in a kiss. Fear but never hate.

    14. PARKBENCH

    John talks to camera

    John: I got married once, to a man and you know I’d never seen myself kiss another man even though I’d been kissing men since I was 16. When we received the wedding photos I was repulsed at the sight of me kissing my husband not because I hated being gay but because from the side I looked exactly like my Uncle Don. It looked like my Uncle Don was kissing my husband. That was weird.

    15. STREET

    Duncan walks along the street talking to camera.

    Duncan: Why can’t a kiss be about being happy to see someone? Why can’t a kiss be an expression of happiness?

    16. STREET

    Concetta walks along the street talking to camera.

    Concetta: Of course a kiss can be a simple gesture of hello or goodbye. If you’re a dog. But it’s also full of intention, anticipation, hope and power.

    17. STREET

    Duncan walks along the street talking to camera.

    Duncan: I just kiss. I lay my lips on her lips and we kiss. I don’t expect to get sex. I just want to kiss.

    Concetta walks along the street toward him.

    He continues to talk to camera

    Duncan: To feel her lips. To feel her breath. To know she is alive. To know she still loves me. TO KNOW SOMEBODY LOVES ME.

    Duncan and Concetta come face to face, their lips move closer and closer.

    18. PARK

    John talks to camera.

    John: Kissing can be a sign of weakness because it’s associated with feeling something and feelings are dangerous because they don’t win wars. I remember the days when it wasn’t uncommon to have sex with a man who refused to kiss because kissing meant he was gay, not sucking cock. This was ok when I was young, kissing was important but so were all the other sexual acts. Now at 50, kissing is the only sexual act I insist on, the rest I’m grateful for. In every gay male story the gay man is battling with his sexuality, struggling to understand what it means to be man. He finally meets someone that forces his lips upon his lips and he does all he can to wrench these lips away because lips on lips means feelings. And feelings are evil.

    Magda talks to camera.

    Magda: The thing we fear the most is the thing that is most true. We can’t face it because it contradicts the lies we’ve told ourselves to survive. Black people of the land are the original people so to live on the land without guilt we must destroy the black people. The vagina is Our Creator not the God so the vagina is a reminder of the lies we tell ourselves to survive, so we must destroy the vagina. Everybody hates women, even women. Because woman gave us life and therefore death.

    John talk to camera.

    John: My first kiss with a girl was when I was 10 and she smiled when we kissed. I kissed her teeth. It was beautiful. The smell of her breath. It was the first time I smelt another person’s breath and it made me feel alive. My first kiss with a boy was when I was 14 and I thought I’d swallowed an ocean of saltwater, froth pouring from my cock. It was the strongest I felt about anything in my short life up until that point. I could see my future. I wanted more of this, all of that, one after another.

    But the best kiss I ever had was a political one with a lesbian punk. A kiss where there was a complete absence of desire on both sides. That’s the kiss I remember. Even her prickly chin against my smooth chin. The one that meant more than just the love between two people. It was the ‘fuck you’ kiss. The kiss that fought for all those kisses to come, kissing without fear in the full light of day.

    How can two men kissing each other hold such power?

    I remember seeing a film once and when the two male protagonists kissed, a teenage girl beside me let out a bloodcurdling scream and hid her face under her boyfriend’s armpit. It was as if she was watching a horror film. It was just two men kissing. That’s all. Two men kissing. 

  • Merlot and poutine

    “I get the back table near the loos most evenings and talk with my writer friends about death”

    Janet’s Bar is a drinking hole slapped about with tat in the fading opulence of South Kensington. I love this place. I get the back table near the loos most evenings and talk with my writer friends about death. Last night we stayed later than usual and Janet came in. it was like sitting at KFC and spotting the Colonel Sanders or having Ronald MacDonald serve you a Big Mac. We were nearly at the end of our second bottle of £30 Merlot when Janet said “right gentlemen?” I think she was letting us know she was in the house and it was time to buy a third bottle or get the fuck off the cool table. She looked exactly like all the cartoons and sketches of her on the walls. I said goodbye to her on our way out and she snarled a smile. It was great to finally meet her. As depicted on he walls she is quite the caricature. She keeps South Ken a bit boho. Hungry, we stopped by MORE THAN JUST SUBS across the road. Not a sex club like the name suggests but a take away joint designed by drunks for drunks. The place serves Poutine relentlessly, a dish originating from the Canadian province of Quebec, consisting of French fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy. No hungry bottoms here just lots of hungry trustafarians slumming it.

  • Pile it high

    “I felt like I was floating above my dinner companions enjoying the high of pork meat that tastes like smoke and cream”

    Sunday’s for me are often a Bloody Mary at 11, Gin and Tonic at midday and a bottle of Pinot Noir at about 1pm. Then I get out of bed and check my phone to see whose invited me to lunch. Pork is an ironic meat. Nothing calms the soul quite like pork and yet it’s a meat possessed with pain and suffering. Pigs are slaughtered in frenzied distress. Perhaps the calm I feel is relief that it was not me. Pigs are happy in mud, it’s all they know, of course pigs are happy in mud. If a pig knew a bath was an option I’m sure the pig would appreciate a bath. I had pork at the Duke of Cambridge in Battersea today and after a few slithers I felt like I was floating above my dinner companions enjoying the high of pork meat that tastes like smoke and cream. The Sunday roast is a trophy to English barbarism. A massacre on a plate. Remember guilt can enhance taste. I say if the carrots are good the rest of the roast will be too. The carrots had the consistency of pâté. You could smear them over rye and splash back a soft red. The broccoli had a hint of basil and was cooked al dente. It was a memorable roast. I snorted though a white napkin and thanked my dinner companions who’d declared this the best Sunday roast in London. Write to me and tell me what constitutes the best roast in the UK and where to find it. If you use the expression “all the trimmings” I’ll glaze over even if the rest of it’s biblical in epicness.

  • Brexit fondue party

    “For dessert remind your guests of the horrors of World War II”

    Why not hold a Brexit fondue party? Seat tightly Remainers and Leavers in equal portion at a round table and tell them to rub the inside of a pot with garlic, boil up some wine and lemon and melt fists full of grated cheese. Then tell them to use the long pointy forks provided to dip in a variety of edible items. Say things like “anything goes with fondue!” Try a scotched egg, a pickled onion, a cold chip. Dip it in then pull it out and eat it. For the full Fondue experience get them to close their eyes and feed each other! Fondue was popular in 1973 the same year Britain joined the European Union. For dessert remind your guests of the horrors of World War II, a dark chapter in our history before fondue.