Desperately Seeking Slutski

I first saw it written in the tunnel and on the poster hoardings of New Cross station. Some one was asking, in black marker pen, for someone to ‘Phone Me Slutski’. It got painted over in the tunnel but a new plea appeared a day or so later. ‘Phone Me Slutski’.

Then we were walking up from the Ravensbourne River the other day toward Lewisham and there is was again, ‘Phone Me Slutski’, scrawled across a phone box near the station.

It could all be some sort of art project, of course, there was a chap who would write “Do not move, this is street art” on the fridges, old tires and other stuff that had been dumped in New Cross last year. He did it for reasons that, I’m sure, made sense to him. There were posters pinned to the lamp posts around Goldsmiths and the Marquis of Granby last August pleading for someone called Viv to get in touch with some sorrowful someone and that the sorry one loved (maybe still loves) him or her. It could have been art or it could have been someone writing out their desperation on the streets where their love walked.

‘Phone Me Slutskí’ hasn’t got the manic edge of something like the Viv posters (I wish I’d photographed them), there’s no pleas, no number, just the command: ‘Phone Me’ and the named ‘Slutski’. Maybe a nasty rash, not love, has blossomed between the two, or more, people involved in the Slutski affair or perhaps the Sluteé (as opposed to the Slutski) craves more from the Slutski but the Slutski, as the name suggests, had left without leaving so much as a phone number, PO Box number or details of their regular drinking hole.

Or maybe this a different language for love or lust, one I don’t know. There’s more out there, at least one for every person in the world, and most of them are only understood by those directly involved (if they’re lucky).