Scott Capurro

I was just so so offended by some culturalist retard’s reaction to my little area, that I wrote the following. Actually the end result was much improved, an appropriate, lovely man is now looking after my flat, but at the time of this violation, I turned violet with rage. Hand to pearls, I was so hurt, I wanted to kill the below mentioned Kraut cunt.

Gay Times
February, 2009

Some Belgian sounding cunt that was supposed to drop by my top floor flat for a look-see, with the possibility of subletting, just called my cell.

“Yes, well, we’ve had a walk around the area, and we’re not impressed.” Apparently he has a girlfriend, probably a toothless concubine. “We did not want to waste your time, or ours.”

I wanted to yell, “Not impressed?! By what? The fashionable Brick Lane? Or the lovely Columbia Road Flower Market, five minutes north? Or the park I overlook? Why don’t you go back to whatever fucking off-ramp you drove in from, you chocolate promoting, language flipping, EU loving leeching piece of shit.”

However, because I’m middle class, I hung up on him and instead scribbled a lazy, slightly racist retort.

Look, I know Bethnal Green Road is the ugliest high road in Central London. From the defunct Walgreens to the beat up Tescos, and every browned fruit and wilted vegetable stand in between, the street looks like Wales. It’s grim and it’s shit. It has sixty – yes, SIXTY – sari shops between my front door and the tube, which is a seven minute stroll. I might be missing some, since I wouldn’t dare set my Paul Smith encased foot inside any of those narrow, terrifying little ‘malls’ that dot the long runway toward Liverpool Street. There might be eighty or a hundred sari shops nearby, but wouldn’t three be enough? It’s not like the fabric or styles change. Ever. Once you’ve seen one shiny white plastic torso wrapped in thin orange cotton, you’ve seen too many.

But the area has its charms. Pelucci’s, an old, camp Italian restaurant with ancient woodwork and a red neon sign that sometimes buzzes, is cheap and good and the food is prepared by a woman as gracious and old as – might I say it, although the comparison is silly, since this lovely lady cooks well and so offers pleasure - the Queen. And speaking of queens, the staff is as mincing as the holiday tin pies above the cash drawer.

After a hearty meal of chicken parts and tomatoes, if you’re feeling emasculated, you can stumble around the corner and buy steroids from any one of several beefy street vendors outside the last remaining “Rocky” inspired gym within thirty years. Whenever I see bloated sweaty mammoths barely jogging through Weaver’s Field, I know where they’ve been rubbing armpits recently, and that’s as reassuring as the warm pinkness of a stuttering local discussing, with austere respect, his first encounter with Reggie Krays.

“He stabbed my eye.” The guy lifted his fringed grey patch to show me the hole. It was late, I was in a pub called The Sun, which is dark and dingy and owned by an old queer, like so many of the pubs on BG’s strip. The hole left behind was more of a wrinkly cross. The type cartoon characters have when they’re intoxicated, which seemed appropriate.

“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.” I was distracted, wondering where I could get more cocaine. The bartender was singing ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ with a tiny Moroccan near the Karaoke Machine. Everyone was smoking cigarettes, two years after the ban. It was like the Blitz, without the gay sex.

“Naw, mate. He needed me. I found him boys.”

Pause. Back up. Cancel previous remark.

“Did you ever have sex with him?” I felt risky. Bombs were dropping.

“Not here. In prison, but he broke my arms and legs after, to prove a point.”

Like the British economy, this guy was barely standing. The walls of The Sun were damp, they seemed to be leaking, and the music had morphed into an ABBA rant, so I buttoned up my cardigan and headed home, sure I could find a Bangladeshi groom from Whitechapel on line and desperate for a Valentine’s night blow job.

I watched several young Pakistani gentlemen bang their fists into a Barclay’s cash machine. Suddenly I heard a screech, and when I turned quickly (ish) I saw a D3 bus stop suddenly, hitting a stray dog so hard the canine’s head flew off and rolled to within two inches of my nearest gutter. Its tongue hung out of its head, and it smiled up, relieved I think to be spirited to a warmer, kinder place. A fast food employee took pity on the beast, and gracefully swooped its skull up with a blue plastic bag, disappearing into his work. The customers at the counter eyed each other warily, but ordered burgers nonetheless.

I was just so so offended by this retard’s reaction to my area. Actually, the end result was better, someone much more appropriate and lovely is looking after my flat, but at the moment when BG was criticized, I felt attacked. Violated. And Violet colored with rage. Hand to pearls, I wanted to kill that fucking Kraut cunt. Read on.

Gay Times
February, 2009

Some Belgian sounding cunt that was supposed to drop by my top floor flat for a look-see, with the possibility of subletting, just called my cell.

“Yes, well, we’ve had a walk around the area, and we’re not impressed.” Apparently he has a girlfriend, probably a toothless concubine. “We did not want to waste your time, or ours.”

I wanted to yell, “Not impressed?! By what? The fashionable Brick Lane? Or the lovely Columbia Road Flower Market, five minutes north? Or the park I overlook? Why don’t you go back to whatever fucking off-ramp you drove in from, you chocolate promoting, language flipping, EU loving leeching piece of shit.”

However, because I’m middle class, I hung up on him and instead scribbled a lazy, slightly racist retort.

Look, I know Bethnal Green Road is the ugliest high road in Central London. From the defunct Walgreens to the beat up Tescos, and every browned fruit and wilted vegetable stand in between, the street looks like Wales. It’s grim and it’s shit. It has sixty – yes, SIXTY – sari shops between my front door and the tube, which is a seven minute stroll. I might be missing some, since I wouldn’t dare set my Paul Smith encased foot inside any of those narrow, terrifying little ‘malls’ that dot the long runway toward Liverpool Street. There might be eighty or a hundred sari shops nearby, but wouldn’t three be enough? It’s not like the fabric or styles change. Ever. Once you’ve seen one shiny white plastic torso wrapped in thin orange cotton, you’ve seen too many.

But the area has its charms. Pelucci’s, an old, camp Italian restaurant with ancient woodwork and a red neon sign that sometimes buzzes, is cheap and good and the food is prepared by a woman as gracious and old as – might I say it, although the comparison is silly, since this lovely lady cooks well and so offers pleasure - the Queen. And speaking of queens, the staff is as mincing as the holiday tin pies above the cash drawer.

After a hearty meal of chicken parts and tomatoes, if you’re feeling emasculated, you can stumble around the corner and buy steroids from any one of several beefy street vendors outside the last remaining “Rocky” inspired gym within thirty years. Whenever I see bloated sweaty mammoths barely jogging through Weaver’s Field, I know where they’ve been rubbing armpits recently, and that’s as reassuring as the warm pinkness of a stuttering local discussing, with austere respect, his first encounter with Reggie Krays.

“He stabbed my eye.” The guy lifted his fringed grey patch to show me the hole. It was late, I was in a pub called The Sun, which is dark and dingy and owned by an old queer, like so many of the pubs on BG’s strip. The hole left behind was more of a wrinkly cross. The type cartoon characters have when they’re intoxicated, which seemed appropriate.

“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.” I was distracted, wondering where I could get more cocaine. The bartender was singing ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ with a tiny Moroccan near the Karaoke Machine. Everyone was smoking cigarettes, two years after the ban. It was like the Blitz, without the gay sex.

“Naw, mate. He needed me. I found him boys.”

Pause. Back up. Cancel previous remark.

“Did you ever have sex with him?” I felt risky. Bombs were dropping.

“Not here. In prison, but he broke my arms and legs after, to prove a point.”

Like the British economy, this guy was barely standing. The walls of The Sun were damp, they seemed to be leaking, and the music had morphed into an ABBA rant, so I buttoned up my cardigan and headed home, sure I could find a Bangladeshi groom from Whitechapel on line and desperate for a Valentine’s night blow job.

I watched several young Pakistani gentlemen bang their fists into a Barclay’s cash machine. Suddenly I heard a screech, and when I turned quickly (ish) I saw a D3 bus stop suddenly, hitting a stray dog so hard the canine’s head flew off and rolled to within two inches of my nearest gutter. Its tongue hung out of its head, and it smiled up, relieved I think to be spirited to a warmer, kinder place. A fast food employee took pity on the beast, and gracefully swooped its skull up with a blue plastic bag, disappearing into his work. The customers at the counter eyed each other warily, but ordered burgers nonetheless.

I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally taken care of my nose thing. My septum had become twisted after a nasal infection 6 years ago. Then in 2003, rushing to buy a pair of jeans at Harvey Nich’s in the UK, I ran into a glass door. My nose bled a lot, but the jeans were on sale. My doctor seems to think that injury might have left scaring as well. Or not at all. Who knows. Doctors say so little. They just want to cut first and diagnose later, so I was wary of any surgical procedure.
Then I saw some promotional photos, taken in a comedy club in Soho, and my nose just looked so, i dunno, swollen. Like I’d been punched, but only at the very tip, where the septum ends. I’d never loved my tiny nose, it had always seemed to small for my face, but suddenly I found myself obsessed with the end of my nose, and the worry that this growth might take on a life of it’s own, like Karl Malden’s schnoz. I mean, he did lots of TV. He must have been rich. Why didn’t he fix that thing?
My doctor told me the growth would only grow stranger. Noses grow. That’s what they do. And soon the nostril would be blocked, I wouldn’t be able to breath through it, and I’d die in my sleep. Actually, the death part I added, but we all die. We’re all the same. We all distrust our noses. Or is that the painkillers talking?
Doc wanted to break my nose, making my bridge bigger, and then reshape both nostrils, bringing the tip of my nose down. He’s basically Picasso with a scalpel, and he become almost exhuberant about the possibilities of what he and i might achieve. But I didn’t want perfection. I didn’t want a classic profile. I just wanted my old nose returned to me, without the twist.
I woke up during the surgery. Twice. Oddly, there was a second doctor standing over me. Well, not standing. Digging. Both doctors looked as though they were scraping away at my face with putty knives. They were leaning forward, grimacing, like it was hard work. I felt a great deal of moving pressure against my cheek bones, but my hands were tied to the table, I couldn’t move, so I moaned, “I can see you. I can feel that.”
When I had my consultation with my doctor the following day, I asked if I’d dreamt that a second doctor had assisted. He said, oh yes, that’s my technician. Right. And were you both scraping away?
“Might have been.”
Weird the trauma one must go through in order to return to whatever one was. Or thinks he was. I’m not sure if the surgery was successful. I’m still bandaged like the invisible man. I really thought it would be a ’slice and you’re outta here’ kinda thing, where he’d cut me, sow me up and i’d be out dancing and drinking at Daddy’s that evening. But I’m not going anywhere. Apparently there were more obstructions than had been presumed. Typical. I love building walls. Then walking into them.
Actually, I went out for a meal last night with my sister. If there’s anyone that likes seeing me bandaged, it would be her. Not that she’s malicious, but I have won a lot of arguments. Anyway, on the way into some Vegan Trendy San Fran Hell restaurant chosen for proximity’s sake, a guy skateboarding by said “Skateboarding?” He’d assumed I’d injured myself flying off four wheels.
I said, “No, I’m 46.”
His reply: “So am I!”
San Francisco is full of people seeking their youth. Either through baggy shorts or nose surgeries, we want back what we think we missed out on. So I’m including a photo of myself here at 19, and one of myself yesterday, 27 years later. It reminds me my nose is a bridge to nowhere. I can’t go back. Breathing clearly is as much as I can ask for.

Update, a few days later:
I’m still bandaged, but less drugged. A bit less. Actually I’m on steroids to reduce the swelling, and my apartment has never been cleaner. I’ve cleaned it three times, starting from three different angles because that dust is clever. However I always finish up naked in my bathroom. So who’s the cleverest? I guess that would be my tiles then. My shiny, clean tiles. And my grout.
So, yes, I spoke with my Doc yesterday. He’s handsome, 60 ish, with soft, confident hands and a lovely, melodious, reassuring voice. I’m honored to have shared a putty knife with him. Anyway he offered more surgical details. Are you sitting? Have a barf bag nearby, if you don’t already.
He started my surgery by filleting my nose, then peeling it back. I know. HOT!! Look at me, I’m a trout. Finally. Then, he scraped grooves into one side of my septum - the lucky side, obviously - so it would bend easier.
“You know, the way you do with a piece of cardboard.”
Yeah, whatever hot stuff.
Then, my septum, which was pointing one centimetre to the left, he bent so it’s straight. There goes my French film career. He then secured my septum in place by sowing it to the bone behind my upper lip. Hence the stitches in my gums, which I thought had magically appeared because I’m - what? - evolving. I’d always wanted gills. Oh well.
Then - oh yeah, there’s more - he grafted cartilage onto my air holes, where bone had grown over. That sounds dirty, which I like. Of course he had to GRIND down the bone first. Hence the pressure on my cheekbones that woke me up. And the lack of dignity.
Immediately after the procedure, I demanded I be allowed to piss. And boy, did I flow. For about 3 minutes. The nurse was concerned, she called me at home to suggest I get tested for diabetes.
“You urinated before and after the surgery. Is that normal?”
You mean, do I pee a lot when I’m having face work done? Who wouldn’t? it’s all so exciting to be renewed. What a bitchy question: I’ve NEVER had work done to my face. if I had, do you think I’d look like Kevin Bacon? I mean, voluntarily?
Thing is, I didn’t urinate before the surgery. I just told them that. I pooed, but I was too shy to mention my poop. However, being drugged into complete passivity so I could have my face sliced open and then raked, that’s fine. Go for it. Severe my sinuses, but I’d rather never discuss my brown star.
Actually, the doc’s job seems to have worked. Already I’m breathing better, and my nose is still packed. I’ll report more on thursday, after my new face is finally revealed for all the world to see. Then it’s off to a gay sauna, to see if all this has worked to my cock-attracting advantage.
Oops. My nose is oozing. I’m sure there’s a chat room for that.
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