USEFUL SIGNS

Shouting; bricks melting; cats suddenly something that they shouldn't be, like an empty space for air to stand in: all signs that a nuclear warhead has just been detonated.

Incredible sweat where your clothes are; fist with an index finger sticking out, shaking, joining your arm and body to a big button; sudden desire to call up Baldwin and ask him, say 'Hey, Baldwin. What's up?', not listen or wait for an answer, just move your head and lips and say, 'Well guess what': all signs that you have just detonated a nuclear warhead.

Stainless steel table underneath some snaps of Baldwin and your wife sharing cherry tomatoes on a tartan blanket, laughing; drawing of a duck billed platypus, penis for a head, crawling into your wife's eye at an angle, with 'BITCH' written on the shaft; wedding band halfway down your colon, the gold a bit dull looking, brown looking, wrapped in a slice of bread: all signs that you have just detonated a nuclear warhead to teach Baldwin, and your wife, a lesson.

Red handle in the corner, from a red mug saying 'World's Greatest World Leader”, the mug in the other corner, in two or three bits; the Pope in a photograph, two rabbit's ears pointing up from his skull cap, the ears Baldwin's fingers, spread as wide as the smile on his face; KFC bucketful of 'Re-elect Baldwin' badges, sticky with piss: all signs that you have just detonated a nuclear warhead to teach the President, and your wife, a lesson.

Four black linen suits on the floor, with a little singed hole over each breast pocket, a single secret service man behind every hole; two breasts hiding inside a camouflage patterned brassiere, Jessica Simpson's, the brassiere, the breasts, on a poster on the cold bunker wall; one tin of corned beef, the use by date missing: all signs that rebuilding civilization from scratch might be difficult.

(Stephen O’Toole is 25, 31, 12 and sometimes 2.")