Where I live all the graffiti is concentrated in one fetid tunnel under the A45. On a typical day I go through this tunnel several times. It's like the id of the neighbourhood. You are walking down a bright, clean, avenue then you go down the ramp into the underpass and you are immersed in sexual anxiety and ill-directed anger.
Most of the text consists of insults to named people. In particular assertions that their mothers are fat and ugly, and that they and their mothers are prepared to fellate all and sundry.
One item gets me every time. It's on the facing wall, so it is staring you in the eye as you walk down the tunnel. It gets larger, but it doesn't get any clearer. I've been reading this sentence every day for over a year now.
RICH C SUCKS HIS FAT MUM KNOB
What the hell does it mean? It isn't an ungrammatical sentence: it's a completely meaningless one. What is it that Rich C is supposed to be doing? Is it a sentence with emotional content, but no actual reference? Or does it represent the Freudian anxiety of someone with only the haziest idea of human anatomy? Did it arise spontaneously through all the other insults on the walls combining into one meta-insult, written by the walls themselves, in response to the years of abuse that have been inflicted on them?
To me it seems like a sentence that emerged from a bit of the mind that doesn't usually have access to language.
And tonight it will be there again. It's doing my head in.