Tales from the City

By Thomas Vanderhaeghe

Diogenes is not your average homeless person. He roams the streets of The City willingly and uses his wit and power to attack the evil in The City. A wide variety of people see their life changed because of him. His mission to make good triumph over evil brings him to a confrontation with crime boss Marcus. Will he succeed or perish?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781794796362

Book preview

Tales from the City

Tales of The City a digital punk novel a Thomas Vanderhaeghe joint

Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.

I am willing to admit that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in that it induces them not to pay attention to certain rules – outside of which the species feels threatened – which we are all supposed to know and respect. But their profound indifference to the way in which we judge them, and even to the various punishments meted out to them, allows us to suppose that they derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend beyond themselves.

Andre Bretton, Manifesto of surrealism

ISBN 978-1-79479-441-2 90000

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9 781794 794412

Table of Contents

Tales of The City a digital punk novel a Thomas Vanderhaeghe joint

Chapter 1: Kyos

Chapter 2: Tunneling thoughts

Chapter 3: True talent

Chapter 4: The gig

Chapter 5 The walk

Chapter 6 Prime minister

Chapter 7: Pitbull

Chapter 8: Marcus G

Chapter 9: Modern times

Chapter 10: Kill the poor!

Chapter 11: What are you doing?

Chapter 12 Frank and fair

Chapter 13 The email

Chapter 14: Final Fight

Fancy dining

The etiquette in a grand decor

The money flashed and jewelry shown off

The spooning up of what is expensive

At a slow m’as tu vu pace

It’s all about us and our great taste

Hyperboles fly through the room

A real phenomenon when it comes to mushrooms

Veg and meat and appliance of heat

So simple yet with a masyer’s touch an immediate hit

Too bad the phenomenal, however varied it is

Ends up as shit

Chapter 1: Kyos

I’m shivering as I leave the darkness of the tunnels and make my way to the subway platform following the service path that I’ve never seen anyone use ever since I found the spot. As I enter the neon light I flick the switch of my flashlight. I walk through the commuting crowd mumbling howl by Alan Ginsberg to myself while holding my flashlight. People give me exactly the look I want to get from them.

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

These angelheaded hipsters look at me with a mixture of disgust and fear. They should thank me for breaking the routine of their grey, boring and monotone existence. They should thank me for the sheer beauty I proclaim amidst the endless rows of grey ant colony filth shooting past me running to a box that leads to another box in which there is a tiny cubicle holding their keypadded cart wheel.

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

Instead of a thanks I get nervous hands clutching handbags and briefcases. I get fearridden widening eyes who stare for an instant and next avert when my flashlight catches their stare.

My ears catch the mumbled judgements must be a drunk, that’s why I hate the subways, damn junkies, don’t look at him, where are the cops when you need them. But I know better and after having my fun with them and reaching the stairs to the surface I give them a good

"ho thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain…

the loudest I can before I shoot off towards the streets waving my flashlight in front of me like a sword. They can call me a bum, a madman, a junkie, a drunk, a parasite, but I know better. I am Diogenes, I am the dark angel roaming hell looking for those worthy of heaven. I am a new cynic, a lone wolf howling at a moon made invisible by their enormous steel and glass cages.

I am truly free! I can’t help but shout out when I hit the pavement sucking up the outside air. I have a good laugh at the startled wageslaves around me, but enough fun for today, business first, breakfast and batteries.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? I ask the lady at the till of the minimarket while throwing my money for the battery pack, a bag of assorted fruit and a coffee in her lap. She gives me a terrified look and I can see her hand slide towards a hidden alarm button. I tell her to keep the change and her attitude changes from What the hell is up with this psycho? to thank god for generous nutters! as she pockets the slime of the earth as if it were ambrosin squeezed from between the thighs of Aphrodite as I make my exit.

I decide to eat my breakfast on a bench in the financial district. It is good to face the ennemy when beginning the day and eating breakfast. The stare outs with the designsuited many passing me by with their air of infinite superiority while heading to their voluntary prisons feeds my desire to fulfill my mission and eat well to be able to muster the strength needed to do what has to be done. The more I shine my torch into their eyes the more their inner demons get stirred up and the more aggressive they become. I just finished my third apple and took my final sip of coffee when a security guard walks out of the rectangular hellhole in front of me, clearly ordered to get rid of me.

Excuse me friend, he says with a look on his face that tells me he is anything but my friend. Some of our employees were really bothered with your flashing around with that light you got there. I’m going to have to ask you to stop doing that or else we want you moving on before we get the police over here, okay.

Well, friend, I can’t do that, see. I flash him my craziest smile and give him a good flash in the eyes. Immediately he’s on me. "Right that does it, get out of here before I have your arrested you fucking bum, I have better things to do than care for insane assholes, get out of here before I get some backup over here. Ahh, sweet surprise in the gorilla’s eyes when the hunter becomes the poached and a selfproclaimed lion gets his butt kicked by a roach. His landing on his back is just as powerful as his attempt to pull me up and throw me to the pavement, such is the beauty of Aikido, the greater the cruel power of the attacker the greater the pain when it is averted.

I am Diogenes I tell the vanquished guard as I plant my foot upon his rapidly heaving chest as if he were a trophy animal I shot on a safari, and I can’t turn off the flashlight nor stop shining its light into the eyes of passersby. I look for human beings amongst the demons. Compassionate, intelligent and empathic humans amongst the crue land vile beasts of hell. And you my friend, are not what I am looking for. As I stroll off I enjoy the flabbergasted looks of the yuppies and I feel powerful. Yes, everything feels right again and whistling Beethoven’s ninth I begin my exercises with a good run around the glimmering cages of modernity.

As always when I do my exercises my mind switches to my mission. The great why behind the everlasting antagonism. And just like the omnipresent cameras my mind’s eye zooms in. I start widelensed, broadview, Imax. The great rot, the great injustice, the great wrong. I let it thrust me forward, I make it accelerate the pace f my legs to a gruesome maximum. My running in itself is a protest a cynical snub in the face of society. A surrealistic dadaistic gag in the face of deadserious selfdestruction. Oh yes, THEY are superior, THEY are better, wrapped into their straightjackets of luxury. Doing their professional dance around the golden calf, in every act sacrificing everything in servitude of the most debased urges and desires. But not me, not me! I am Diogenes and I am different than them! I live for the purest of experiences, emotions and goals! My goal is not to make a meagre contribution to a big pile of virtual money randomly collected and lost behind these steel, glass and aluminium cages! What !? they think that slapping some logo on it makes that a more noble enterprise? At night I see their true faces, at night when I roam those quarters of the city where evil is present in its purest form I see the same faces sliding by boxed in in ever more layers of restraints. Every layer and its logo standing for a pricetag. It is really all that they are, layers of price tags and like onions, when you peel every layer away there’s nothing left but a shitload of tears.

Ohh I see them gliding by, labellayered as if it were an armour while in fact those layers are attracting the predators instead of warding them off. Looking for something in the darkness of night in exchange for some printed paper that can only be found in the light of day in exchange for the greatest of efforts and sacrifice. Sacrifices they demand from those they shun and exploit. The least virtuous of us all gain the most yet in a display of spectacular hypocrisy and selfglorification, they claim virtue, intelligence and bravery instead of plain luck and selfish cruelty as the principal justification of their bounties. Even worse the direr your circumstances by comparison the lesser virtuous you are claimed to be, the more swollen and pathosblown their explanations and solutions become. THEY already have everything anyone should be happy with yet they do the worst to get more, yet the lesser one has the lesser those persons seem to be allowed to use any means necessary to do and get the same.

Could someone explain me that? I can’t help but say out loud when I stop running and start pumping a few bricks I found while doing some powergymnastics to build muscle. Why is it okay to have seven jets and wreck the world economy and the lives of billions in a mad gamble to acquire your eighth one while someone in a day-to-day struggle for food and survival can’t steal food from a store that is overflowing with it and that daily discards huge quantities of food because it will go bad within a week? Why are the rich smart when behaving cruelly and selfishly just to get richer and the poor the scum of the earth for being selfish and cruel just to make it through one day?

It all comes down to power, to elites, but also to desire and expectations. Everyone knows that a million-euro fraud will get you two or three years of house arrest and a bookdeal while stealing a 20-euro bottle without decent representation could lead up to ten to twenty years of confinement once words like homeless or insane are involved. Everyone knows it’s unfair, but nobody cares. They all just want to get theirs too. They all want to be layered in labels and pricetags up to the point that you don’t even know what’s up or down, right from wrong anymore. They all want to drive down a darkened society’s backstreet amidst the scum layered in, spied upon by envious eyes but protected to a degree they’re invincible and can get anything, literally anything done by that scum in exchange for some of that printed on paper.

They all want to be able to suck someone’s dignity out of him or her in exchange for something they don’t even have to care about because they are drowning in it while others are starving for it. And the worst is that everyone believes that is all there is, that is all that makes you into someone. But not me, no siree, not Diogenes, I’m the new cynic. I’m the guy that looks the devil in the eye and says, no thank you, now go fuck yourself.

I don’t play that game, never, ever, ever I tell myself while pumping until I halt and the zoom has reached its focal point as I think to myself, not aymore.

However, I try not to give into the memories, give in to those thoughts that seem to suck the strenght and fervour out of my very body and soul I suddenly find myself engulfed in them. I remember the time when I was just like THEM, one of THEM, even worse than THEM. I remember a name, a cursed name that haunts me, a cursed name that forces me to do anything possible to keep it from popping up. George Richard Winters. I can’t help but say out loud as all strength leaves me body more with every letter pronounced and my body collapsing into a street corner.

I try some Shakespeare to get rid of every image, memory, word and act that wretched name evokes in me:

"Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;"

But it fails to do the trick. I remember defeat, disappointment, and disillusion. I remember two green eyes staring into mine overflowing with the warmest of feelings of love and adoration and next those same eyes cold, scathing, and hateful disappearing behind a shut door forever. I remember fixes that fixed nothing, promises broken by that name. I remember hopes and plans, ambitions and plans connected to that name and the endless streaks of failures disappointments and defeat the name the person bearing that name suffered. I remember the flames in which I wanted to dissolve the name forever but ghostlike it has outlived any and every element I let loose on it.

"Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days."

No, be gone you hated ghoul, you erinyes of a past denied. I am Diogenes and all that matters is the mission I set for myself. A past is no longer real when not notulled and recorded and therefore irrelevant, a future is nothing but an extension of the everlasting now I taste every second and it tastes sweeter than anything before because it tastes of true freedom. And since I have been unable to find humanity inside of myself when being just like THEM, I look on holding my torch, looking for humanity and proving that humanity doesn’t bring about the greatest weakness but instead brings about the greatest strength. And while I make some fencing moves with my trusty flashlight I recite a bit of Virgil to strengthen my heart, mind and soul and prepare myself for another day full of battle against the great wrong that had such a horrible influence on the small former I:

"Endure, and conquer! Jove will soon dispose

To future good our past and present woes.

With me, the rocks of Scylla you have tried;

Th' inhuman Cyclops and his den defied.

What greater ills hereafter can you bear?

Resume your courage and dismiss your care,

An hour will come, with pleasure to relate

Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.

Thro' various hazards and events, we move

To Latium and the realms foredoom'd by Jove.

Call'd to the seat (the promise of the skies)

Where Trojan kingdoms once again may rise,

Endure the hardships of your present state;

Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate."

I decide sit down on the pavement and read a bit in one of my favorite book to drive away the angry throughts and the endless analysing of the fucked upness of the world. I shut out the world around me and only allow myself to think of what’s in the book and I finally calm down.

What...The...Fuck...Are... You...Doing!?

I look up from my book and I see this group of kids. A few guys and two girls are standing in front of me. They’re labelled and tagged to the extreme like all of them nowadays. But however expensive the jackets, trainers or caps, however shiny their piercings and their spliffs odoring penetrantly of rastafari quality they’re doomed by birth because of this one label they have that they didn’t pay for and still is the first one noticed. None of them is from around here as people he used to know used to say with that strange air of intellectualized disdain that was so common in Das abendland lately.

I’m reading a book, one of my favorites, Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn.

Don’t you have a job?

The biggest of the bunch looks at me with a mocking smirk, it’s clear to me that this is a guy willing to do anything for any kind of attention or to make any kind of impression. He’s constantly looking at the others for confirmation of his coolness as if he were a baby looking for a bit of nipple. Attention is the new mother’s milk, also he’s constantly waving this expensive Iphone around and looking at it immitating the suits I visit every morning when they’re heading for their cages.

Just like I should have a job, you guys should be in school, I guess that makes us the same.

This remark causes hilarity among them. I can’t help but notice all of them taking out pricey phones as if grabbing a totem or talisman for support.

We’re not the same, you’re just a lazy bum. We’ve got money, we don’t need school and we don’t need losers like you to tell us what to do.

I see a flash of evil shooting through the leader’s eyes as he steps closer and his body language becomes more threatening. His minions gang up behind him as the girls sigh twisting their hair around their index fingers and start looking at their phones.

I wasn’t telling you what to do, there’s no point tot hat because in your eyes I’m nothing because of the way I look and people do that to you guys too.  But do you really think that I’m lazy, poor and weak? I’m not like them, I live on the streets, I know the streets and I know who rules the streets. Do you know Isham? He’s a good friend of mine. If you see him tell him Dio said hi.

And the pack of wolves turns into a flock of sheep begging to be barked around by a border collie instantly. The girls’ fingers freeze and gape at me now instead of some imaginary message. The guys go from aggressive body language to submissive averted eyes, dropping shoulders and they back off instantly.

Sorry we didn’t know you were Dio.

No problem, I haven’t seen you around here before, but then again I don’t come here that often. I ended up here after my work out. But you asked me what I was doing here. Do you got a beat on that phone you got there?

Sure.

And as the beat starts playing I give them some KRS One.

"Everybody's bad and everybody's tough 

But how many people are intelligent enough 

to see through the lies 

and open their eyes 

Discipline themselves ourselves to stay alive 

Not many 

That's why the universe put me here today 

on this stage 

with this to say

The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer 

and in the final hour many heads will lose power 

What does the rich versus poor really mean? 

Psychologically it means you got to pick your team

When someone says the rich get richer visualise wealth and put yourself in the picture

The rich get richer because they work towards rich

The poor get poorer 'cause their mind can't switch from the ghetto

Let go

It's not a novelty you can love your neighborhood without loving poverty

follow me? 

Every father, mother, son daughter

There's no reason to fear the new world order

We must order the whole new world to pay us

So we can rise above the new world order and the all state chaos

The big brother watching over you is a lie you see

Hip hop can build it's own secret society

But first you and I got to unify stop this negativity and control our creativity

The rich is getting richer? While we ain't richer

Could I be we're still thinking like idiots?

Educate yourself make your worldview bigger

Visualise wealth and put yourself in the picture"

They seem to really dig it and I like the distraction from the daily bullshit.  The leader steps up and gives me a dose of what he got lyrically.

"I don’t give a fuck

Whether whiteay acts stuck up

I be collecting my cash

going straight to the top

i already got the look

Spend days skipping school

Because I got to work on my hooks

You think you know about beats

In that outfit bitch please

I live on the streets

and I can immediately spot wannabes

I know about the hustles

the drugdeals and the guns

Step up against me in the ring

you won’t make it past round one

Life favors the troublesome

with a motormouth working like a stun gun

Do you want to battle me

the best tactic is run

I’m going for the money

And investing in property

get rich or die trying

without a rep you can’t be wealthy

you bite quite well

but what the hell are you trying to tell me?"

Is that really how you feel? I ask him. Is that what you perceive as the best life there is? So, you just want to collect a lot of stuff and be taken hostage by public opinion which will dig deep into your life and history while your hustles guarantee that there will be some nasty secrets you don’t want them to dig into?

Hey Dio, everybody knows what you do. How you earned your respect on the street

Yes, but I don’t do it so I can dress to get robbed and I’m very picky about the jobs I pick. Besides, my whole way of going about those jobs is completely different from any hustle or get rich quick scheme. Let’s leave it at that, explaining why I look this way, act this way and how I think would take too long.

I show them my old black coat, shirt, pants, vest and shoes. You know I can afford better, but I prefer this outfit, see instead of living by cliches and prejudices I use them to my advantage. This outfit was chosen for the sake of not being remembered. I don’t have a house but I keep myself clean and sheltered. I can decide when and what will be remembered and when I can be like a ghost. You seem to think that some expensive camouflage will make prejudice and judgement go away. But you’re wrong there. If you want I can show you what I mean by that. But first, tell me your names. 

The two girls were called Chaim and Adnan. The guys were Luca, Ilias and Hamdi. They were all from the blocks surrounding the city center. It just so happened that in skipping school they had been forced out of their neighborhood by an overzealous headmaster who had started patrolling the streets looking for absent students. Myself, I ended up away from my regular hang outs because of the incident in the financial district. I had decided to lounge here at the very edge of the safe residential blocks only separated by the outer ghetto circle surrounding the centrer and upperclass residences by a railroad to read a bit. But since I thus found out we were both blocked from any interesting activities, I ask them if they want to hang out.

This brings me some suspicious looks and hesitant body language. I couldn’t tell them all about Isham and what I do for him and with him, but hyperboles being inherent in the language of gossip I suspect a certain amount of fear to be involved. I decide to get into touch with Isham so we can do something interesting and to try to wake them up to my reality, get them to doubt their reality a bit.

I understand none of you know me well, but you must know Isham and what he does, I tell them in a reassuring tone and ask: Has he done anything for you or your family? Ilias tells me Isham had saved his brother from a feud with some criminals and helped him get his life together, Adnan tells me Isham had made her sister’s abusive husband tone it down. Hamdi mentions how Isham had fronted the money for an aunt’s surgery and had also made the doctor’s bonus go down so that they weren’t into too much debt.

Well that makes me feel kind of proud, every time I get the chance I like to check up on Isham to make sure he doesn’t take advantage of me, but it seems again that Isham is legit;

I can’t tell you what and how, all I can say is that I was involved in some of the things you mentioned. In that way you should be able to put two and two together and realize what side I’m on. Also, it means that you guys owe me and what I ask in return is for all of you to acompany me and to have lunch with me.

I tell Ilias the number to dial and I speak to Isham. I tell him to meet me on the street corner and to bring me 12000 euros.

While we’re walking to the street corner I tell them to stop nagging about what I want to do with the money and ask them to tell me a bit about who they want to be. What life do they envision for themselves? This shocks them a bit and it takes them a few minutes to start speaking again.  If I’d asked what do you want to buy? instead of what life they want to live, the shoppinglists would have been endless.

Ilias says he wants to be a hustler and rapper like biggie, Tupac and Fifty Cent, I’m going to be a celebrity. Hamdi smiles and says he is going to be a famous football player. Luca says he is going to be a business owner. I ask Ilias how he wants to bring about his future.  Ilias tells me he’s well connected in his hood and that he spends as much time as he can on the streets to maintain his rep and connections.

His approach to the hustling game is one of screwing bolo’s out of their money. He tells me that he sells some hash to white kids but proudly states that he’s able to buy top-notch stuff and mixes it up with a mixture of chocolate and crappy hash and always triples his investment. Whenever he comes across a good deal he makes a one-time big move. I ask him if he isn’t worried one of his clients gets caught and snitches on him.

He smiles when hearing this and says they’re too scared to do so. Besides his connections guarantee him an early warning and a great array of hiding places and alternative cities to live and hustle in. His profits go to his image in the form of clothes and gadgets and music equipment. He practices every day and although he hasn’t really made it big he reckons that it’s just a matter of time until one of his You Tube clips or downloadable or streamable tracks is picked up by a big suit from a record label and he’ll be living the dream soon.

I ask him what he expects being famous is like and he tells me he has dreams of walking into exclusive parties with a string of bad boys and girls on his tail while people take pictures and scream for autographs. Waiters, butlers and managers bow for him and escort