Chapter 6
Kelvingrove park had some kind of event happening. With Spring in full flow, and the weather improving, the festivals seemed to be starting. Various lorries had been turned into stages, and a couple of marquees were put up. Bands and other acts were playing everywhere. Dan was really looking for somewhere to sit for a bit and gather his thoughts, but a festival was a bit much. With the state that he was in, people seemed to be giving him an average of a ten metre boundary, kind of like a protective force field. He sat down on a bench. A small child walked towards him with what was presumably her mother.
	"Mommy what’s that smell?" she asked
	"I don’t know darling, just keep walking" the mother replied, and then began to drag the said child at a rather faster rate. As they came close Dan looked into the six year old’s eyes.
	"Shoot me." he whispered, so that only she could hear, before glaring at her desperately. 
	The kid began to cry. Dan never really was good with children, he seemed to enjoy freaking them out more than making them laugh. After they had gone he felt better. He even smiled, the first time he had done that in a while. 
	Looking over at the festival, Dan suddenly felt like a total outcast. Families were walking from stall to stall, attempting to win cuddly toys, and eating candy floss. A few Neds were skulking in the corners drinking Buckfast and trying to hide from the police. Students wandered about, some looking like they were still wrecked from the night before, generally acting bizarre and thinking that they could get away with anything. Each stage had a crowd of up to a couple of hundred people at it, making for an all round busy day. It was like the world had the indecency and ignorance to just carry on despite the mess he was in. Often he used to think that thought during a hangover, when you first walk outside after getting up at lunch time and the world is in full flow, but this felt different. He couldn’t bring himself to even try to interact with the normal world. It felt so alien to him. 
	But then his opinion quickly change. 
Dan no longer saw this as an alien world. 
He saw it as an opportunity.
A local indie band were playing on the main stage. At least it looked like the main stage. It seemed to have the biggest crowd in front of it, and they were certainly the loudest. This was the stage that was to become Dan’s target. Despite smelling revolting, he shuffled to the side of the crowd and watched the homegrown band do their stuff. 
Dan’s force field kicked in due to his stench, and a five metre no-go zone developed around him quickly.
"Perhaps I can use this to my advantage" he muttered to himself in a mischievous tone.
The band finished their set, and left the stage. After a few moments, the roadies went up, and began setting up  for the next band. 
"Testing … one two. One two. One two. One two. Holy SHIT!" shouted the sound man, as Dan jumped onto the stage and shoved him to the ground. 
Dan grabbed the microphone. He knew he wouldn’t have much time, and so began pacing about the stage.
"When I wake up well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna, be the man who wakes up next to you!" he sang.
Already, the other roadies, and a few rather large security guards were running towards him.
"When I go out yeah I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you!"  he continued.
The first security got close, but then slowed, and nearly wretched. Dan’s stench force field was working! The next guard came running faster, and went for a diving rugby tackle. Dan nimbly skipped backwards, and knocked the guard whilst he was off balance. The guard stumbled and crashed into a roadie coming in from the back.
"If I get drunk well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you"
By this point the crowd, initially dispersing after the end of the last act, had quickly reformed, and stood transfixed at the spectacle in front of them. Some started whooping and cheering, but most were just simply stunned.
"And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you" he continued
This was it, he’d been building up to this moment in the song. The chorus was always the time for the rush to kick in, and send his body to bliss
"But I would walk 500 mi…" he began, but was cut short as two large men grabbed him from behind, "Argh, fuck … no!" 
It was like being torn away from the most important moment of his life. To have his connection with the song severed at such a crucial moment left an emptiness that was only filled with disbelief. Dan kicked and screamed, but two more men grabbed his legs. The original sound man grabbed the microphone as Dan was carried off stage. He walked back to centre stage and placed it into the mic stand.
"One two. One two. One two. Two two one one one " he continued as though the last minute or so of his life hadn’t just happened
Dan spent a while struggling against the four men now carrying him, but quickly came to realise that his efforts were futile. The men had all seemed to have constructed facial masks to block the smell. Some had handkerchiefs wrapped around their faces, but one man seemed to have constructed something involving a sponge and some elastic bands.
Fast work, impressive he thought. Respect where it was due, they did only have a minute or so to come up with something. They carried Dan out of the park, and threw him to the ground.
"Fuck off." one shouted at him. Concise and to the point. Again, Dan found a respect for that. 
"Fucking kara-junkies." mumbled the one with a sponge on his nose.
	The street was quiet. The festival went on at the opposite side of the park, and so the chirping of some birds combined with the distant drone of cars on the main road is all that could be heard. Suddenly the clouds burst, and rain began to drench the streets of Glasgow. Dan began to cry. Not because of the rain, he couldn’t care less about that, but he was still recovering from having had his hit taken away from him. He felt like his heart had been ripped out, leaving no more than an empty space. As he stood up, he took advantage of the natural shower, running his hands through his fingers and wiping his clothes down. It seemed to work too. Yet being outside was no place in weather like this, and Dan knew by no that if he didn’t get somewhere dry until it died off, his night was going to be a very uncomfortable one. He began to walk
	As the rain got heavier, people began to rush around, seeking refuge under trees and shop awnings. During Dan’s old, pre-karaoke life, he would enjoy walking down the street during the rain, if only for the reason that nobody else seemed to like it very much at all. It was a small thing that helped make him feel more unique. Today, however, Dan wasn’t enjoying the rain. He hardly even noticed it. In fact, his body seemed to be on auto pilot, looking for somewhere dry he could sit for a few hours, but his mind was racing with the desperate thoughts of an addict.
	Several blocks and some time later, Dan’s body led him into a public toilet. The toilet was set in a basement under a quiet street just outside of the city centre. It was little used, dirty, and run down, but at least it was dry. Dan’s body took him into a cubicle and he sat down. 
	It’s times like this that Dan hated being a Karaoke addict. He’d thought it plenty of times before, and yet every time it just felt worse. 
The cubicle was covered in graffiti and Dan began to read them. Anything to keep his mind off his life. The walls had a whole host of  dirty words, scrawled phone numbers, bizarre jokes and plenty of name tags. Dan looked through them, it wasn’t long before he noticed one particular line that really took his interest.
For karaoke time … meet here midnight every Wednesday
	Dan stared at the last one. It took him a moment to realise what it said. Just in case it didn’t say that, he squinted at it an unusual way, and moved closer. Nope, it wasn’t koala time or even carousel time. It definitely said karaoke time. 
Dan suddenly got very excited indeed.

*	*	*	*
The time was 12:05
It was Wednesday night.
(Or Thursday morning if you want to be pedantic about it)
Dan was running down the street.
He was late.
Dan didn’t mean to be late. In fact he was kicking himself for it. How could he be late for anything when he had nothing to do? He had no excuses, having spent most of the day sat in front of a large clock in town. But he didn’t have time to think about who got moved on from where, who fell asleep in what, or who started a fight with who, he was nearly at the toilets. As he approached the top of the steps he took a moment to compose himself, before venturing down. He felt like he was going on a blind date. Not that he had ever actually been on a blind date, but he was sure he would feel like this if he ever did.
The toilets were as dirty as ever. Puddles of urine lay under each urinal. The walls had an obligatory slime dripping down them. One of the strip lights on the roof flickered slightly, with a slight buzzing noise at each on/off moment. As Dan entered the room, he didn’t notice any of that at all. All he noticed is that the toilets were empty. No one else was in there at all, and certainly no karaoke. 
"Shit," he said, angry at himself, "what kind of fucking twat am I? A fucking karaoke joke on a fucking cubicle wall, and I turn into some kind of crazed gullible lunatic."
He kicked one of the urinals, and moved to kick it again. Before he did, however, a cough came from one of the cubicles. Dan stopped. This wasn’t one of your regular ‘I’ve got a cold’ cough, or even a ‘I’m a smoker’ style cough. This was a definite ‘I’m in here’ cough. 
"Hello?" he asked, and yet his enquiry was received with nothing more than another cough. 
He walked over to the cubicle door and knocked. No answer. The door was unlocked, and so he slowly pushed it open. Inside, a rather aggressive looking man was sat on the top of the toilet seat. The man was wearing a black suit, with a dark shirt, and a deep red tie. His hair was slicked back with too much gel, and kind of looked like a go-getting eighties businessman. But as Dan looked upon him, all he saw was the large black box on the top of the cistern. A Karaoke machine! He hadn’t seen one of those since he’d been booted out of the ‘Frog and Duck’ so many weeks ago. In fact as Dan spent so long gazing at the machine, that he failed to realise that the man wasn’t sat on the toilet seat at all. He was standing . But when Dan did notice, his jaw dropped and his tongue stuck out. 
"Fuck me, you’re a dwarf!" he shouted, perhaps a little too loud.
"I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me a dwarf. You may like to live in a fantasy world, but this ain’t no fucking fairy tale mate" replied the small man.
"Sorry dude, would you prefer the term midg…"
"DON’T USE THE FUCKING M-WORD!!!" screamed the diminutive person
"Whoa, sorry, shit man, I meant no offense, what you prefer I referred to you as?" asked Dan, getting rather defensive. 
"How about Sylvester?"
"Why Sylvester?"
"BECAUSE THAT’S MY FUCKING NAME!!!"
Dan put his hands up in apology.
"Look man, er, Sylvester, I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just that I haven’t really interacted with anybody in weeks, and to be honest, barely anyone at all that’s a…" Dan tailed off
"A what? A fucking dwarf? A midget?" answered Sylvester through gritted teeth.
"No, I mean a … er, " Dan thought fast, "fellow karaoke singer!" 
Sylvester’s tone changed instantly.
"Ahh, so that is why you are here then" 
"Well, yeah, it seems a little odd though. It feels a bit like cottaging for karaoke"
" Like it? That’s exactly what it is."
"Well, hang on," replied Dan, "You’ve got the set up, but where’s the crowd? The buzz just isn’t the same without a good few people."
"Hey buddy, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You’ll get your crowd. But first, you don’t think you’ll be getting karaoke for free do you?"
Dan looked rather confused and desperate at this point.
"But look at me, Sylvester, I’ve not had a home for over two weeks, I don’t have any money, or anything at all I can give you"
"Who said anything about money?"
	Sylvester jumped down off the toilet and walked out into the middle of the floor. He turned to look at Dan.
	"What I want from you won’t cost you a thing."
	Sylvester un-zipped his fly. Dan’s eyes widened in horror. He didn’t know what to do, or how to react. Was Sylvester actually asking him to do what he thought? Dan considered this for a moment, and then considered running away. But the thought of that beautiful black machine sat on the cistern. The sight he had not seen for weeks, and he realised that he was willing to do anything for a go, anything.
	"Err …" started Dan.
	"What’s your name boy?" asked Sylvester
	Dan, still in a moment of shock, hesitated.
	"Er. … Dan"
	Sylvester fumbled in his trousers and pulled out his midget penis.
	"Dan, that’s a pretty mouth you have. How far are you willing to go for karaoke?"
	Dan stayed silent. He knew what the answer was, but he just couldn’t bring himself to actually say it. Instead, he just closed his eyes, got down onto his knees, and leaned forward. He stopped when his head cracked against something. Opening his eyes, he realised that he had just head butted Sylvester. 
	"Oh, sorry. Look, if I have to do this then you might wanna get up on the toilet seat again" 
	Moments later they were set. Sylvester was stood back up on the toilet seat, Dan kneeling in a puddle of urine before him. Dan checked his target, standing proud and ready. Dan closed his eyes, leaned forward, opened his mouth and began to suck.