DISCLAIMER: This was a (failed) uni project about finding a real life document (could be anything really), and elaborating a story from it. The module was called Written World. I really enjoyed what I ended up submitting tbh.

I have become obsessed. I am catching myself, numerous times, looking through windows and tilted doors to connect with my surroundings. I am endlessly looking for the McGuffin, the lost map, the magic item that would open my mind cathartically and stop the never-ending spinning in my mind.

No item, no archival ethos, no epic quest to unveil the secret world that lays around me, so close and yet so far away. Cheesy as fuck yes, but I took this module quite personally. Something about a challenge that I could not be surpassed by ego or charisma, but by staying connected to the surroundings and luck.

Staying connected to the surroundings is terrible for someone so self-centered like me. And yet my therapist tells me to keep on doing it so instead of getting bitter I took it as my eleventh pathway to enlightenment. Done. I will go without headphones (Thanks Richard) (Richard was my Written World teacher), I will listen to the mundane conversations in the northern line in between Archway and London Bridge, London Bridge and Kings Cross and all the way back to Archway.

I never believed in luck. This metaphysical concept appears as a combination of someone being ready at the right time in the right place, so the individual must be prepared, must be able to get to the right place and also able to recognize the right moment. Luck is just a religion for those who think that the world is unfair. Yes, the world is unfair, but it is many other things too. Luck is for those who have a tendency to constantly dwell on what is missing and what is lost.

Toby Litt (an author spotlighted in my class. He was actually very interesting, and everyone should research / read his book Wrestliana, because elevates the concept of a recurring metaphor to the next level) really shook up my daily task of looking for narrative treasures. When I was leaving my house, right after we had the class, I greeted a black and white cat that I ironically call Adolf in my mind (He has a clack stain on the shape of a square moustache right on top of the nose, was my housemate’s idea anyway), and I started playing with a wild idea. I didn’t need an object. I needed a plot. A theme. Something open enough so would be easy for me to bump into an interesting document or empirical proof, but specific enough that would make the story interesting.

Wrestliana showed me the way. The metaphor of wrestling to explain the alleged constant ego fight that appears in storytelling is a brilliant way of building a theme around an aesthetic, intertwining form and function. Of course, the fact that the piece was conveyed after an original wrestling manual is the icing of the cake. That was it: I needed a cake before covering it with tasty icing.

As a queer male I have never been ashamed of embracing the simplicity of the themes I want to talk about. I love being gay and exploring the hidden universe of it. One day I was feeling especially mad due to some transphobic thread on twitter and I craved some sort of poetic cosmic justice over the queerphobes.

I wanted vengeance.

I wanted to feel the joy of knowing that where once people were hateful and narrow minded, nowadays boys had sex. Four of the currently functioning gay sex clubs / dark rooms are in great locations across central London.

Presumably, the rent must be high, and even if the venues do belong to the owners of the clubs, how did it come to be that way? A sex club has quite a specific layout. Is not only a bar and is not a club made with an open space to host dancing nights. Most of the spaces oriented to facilitate sex encounters usually have a small bar, a changing area and an intricate maze that acts as the background for all those sexual fantasies.

What was in those buildings before becoming gay sex clubs? Did the buildings endure the numerous disasters London has suffered through the years or are they new constructions?

How did they end up transforming into queer spaces? Is it a gay sex club actually a safe queer space?

I thought, how funny would it be if in the past the same locations served as any sort of space for homophobes to gather. How hard could that be? Everyone was a homophobe back in the day! I tried to contact some of the venues via email receiving silence as an answer, so I went there in person, with various degrees of disappointment as result. No one knew nothing about the historical value of the buildings. Perhaps there was none.
I found a website that tracked old listings of buildings in London (historicengland.co.uk) and I proceeded to check all the locations. I was very unhappy to use a tool based on the internet and not an actual tangible document.

Underworld – Kings Cross
174 Camden High St, London NW1 0NE
In the basement of The Worlds End pub. The Worlds End also allegedly had famous patrons including Charles Dickens and many famous Londoners. I could always accuse Dickens of being a homophobic bigot, I guess. No entry on historical England.

Bunker (formerly East Bloc) – Old St
217-221 City Rd, London EC1V 1JN
No entry on historical England.

The Vault – Warren St
139-143 Whitfield Street London W1T 5EN
Some data about being one of the few terraced houses that survive WWII in that area.

Sweat Box – Soho
Ramillies House, 1-2 Ramillies St. Soho London W1F 7LN
No entry on historical England.

Failure. Nothing interesting or exciting to follow up. Theme scrapped. On my way back home, a cat shaped bush catched my eye.

When I first moved to Archway, I noticed something weird going on with the cats. The very famous Whittington Stone, marks the site where allegedly Dick Whittington, coming back home after a bad attempt to make his fortune in the City, heard the bells of Bow ring out, ‘’Turn again Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London.’ On top of the memorial a cat appears. When I discovered this, I assumed that every other cat paraphernalia would be linked to the pantomime of Dick Whittington and his cat, based on the historical character of Richard Whittington.

But somehow, that bush made me connect with all the feline objects in the area. The same day, I was walking home with my flatmate while he was giving me a lecture on how I was being a coward by scrapping out the gay cosmic justice so quickly, I found another nugget.

“In loving memory of one of the sweetest little cats Who is so dearly loved and missed by many”
TREACLE XXX
2021

This was pretty recent and not connected to the fable at all. But it gets weirder. Suddenly, my brain clicked, and I remembered seeing a giant cardboard cut out of a cat nearby, around Thorne Park. I could not remember exactly where though. I rumbled and mooched the area on different days to look for it, but it was gone. I saw it on a summer day, and I did not pay much attention to it.

I wondered if I have dreamed it or if my writing soul was just trying to connect non-existing dots. The itching on my brain did not go away, and one day, I was just having a coffee walk when I asked some fellow Archway citizens about the huge carboard cut out.
A lovely elderly woman was the only one that somehow had any memory of it. She told me, fully convinced and deadly serious, that was the number 36 of the street above. I greeted her farewell and hesitant, I strolled my way there.

How could it be possible that no one else could point me in any direction thinking that I was crazy? How could anyone ignore a giant cardboard arts and crafts cat in front of a house like that?

Maybe because we are looking at our phones way too much.

The number 36 seemed like an ordinary house. It didn’t quite ring a bell. I left.
The next day, my guts told me to contact whoever lived in that house. That the lady was right, and I was being not playful at all. Fuck it. I quickly wrote a note, and I threw it in the mailbox.

I left my number, not on display here, and I also gratefully thanked them, just in case.
Couple of days after, on the 17th of May, they answered. So I will know what is happening in Archway with this Egyptian devotion to cats. And if it has something to do with Whittington… Well. I think I will need to start all over again.

I had a lovely chat. Over a lovely tea. It turned out, they just like cats. They live in archway and like cats. That’s all. Moral of the story?

Sometimes, there is no story.