SHORT STORIES

LOVE MANAGEMENT [story 90322 new version]

2009-03-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

Remember your joke Steve? ‘What’s the difference between a wife and a prostitute? One’s Contract and the other’s Pay As You Go’.

You know what? I think that was the gag that set me off on this nightmare. Not that I’m laying anything on you. But you know what they say: ‘Loose talk costs lives’. ‘Cost’ being the operative word. I think I owe Love Ltd three grand and the boys at the Management don’t fuck about. You’re lucky with a broken leg.

We’ve not spoken for a while. Most probably that was about the last thing you said. That gag. And now Facebook reunites us. Aren’t we too old? Think I might be. By a decade. Two. Three…

You asked me how things are. You must have meant ‘are you getting laid yet?’ or ‘have you got a new boyfriend?’ or am I just projecting?

By last summer I was sick of all this being alone in my ivory tower bullshit. I got sex at sauna’s but I was bored of the lucky dip. I never knew what might be bobbing round in the cum scummed jacussi. If anything. I wanted something steady, something a little bit regular.

I don’t know why but true love just hadn’t come knocking. We’re talking about last summer mind. Things have changed. Or rather they had changed. But now they’ve changed back to not having changed. Or at least that’s what I’m worried about. Well actually everything’s changed and it’s all much worse than before. But I’m running away from myself here.

It’s last summer. Which, if you remember Steve, consisted of about six days of sun. Anyway. You remember. Cloudy. And I just started thinking to myself,

‘Enough!’

Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. Especially on Facebook. They own us, don’t they?

The point is it occurred to me that I could simply find love ‘pay as you go’. Get a nice lad out of Boyz and run up a tab with him. Twice a month. More if I had the money. A nice steady rent boy. Good plan I hear you say.

At first it went well. Morizio. Done time in Milan for drug dealing. Left him a bit bitter. But in September he got pneumonia and they put him under heavy sedation for seven weeks. I know Steve. It sounds a bit… I dunno. But basically they keep you sleeping till you’ve recovered. Less a cure and more just switching you off and switching you back on again. It works for computers.

So anyhow. Morizio had been switched off so I didn’t have my ‘pay as you go’. What to do? Buy another of course. I was following a natural logic, except I hadn’t thought it through.

This one was more pushy. This ‘pay as you go’. He started buzzing me in the middle of the night and asking for sex. Rather he wanted money for which he’d bend over any which way. Sorry Steve. I promised not to be graphic. But you know: take it up the shitter. That kind of thing.

The trouble was this: the more I said ‘no’ the more Dobby would start slashing prices. It was like DFS in January. What would you do? £20 doesn’t buy much sofa but if you’re faced with a desperate rent boy at four in the morning. Take it from me. After that first night I didn’t shit straight for a week. I got quite a bang for my buck. But you didn’t want to know that, did you?

So I’m starting to make sure I have a spare twenty tucked away under my pillow. I just can’t say ‘no’ to someone in need. unless they’re cold and hungry. But I suppose that’s city living.

The point is I’ve got Dobby. He’s Russian or Baltic or something. Lots of J’s and other low use consonants all pushed together. He said he didn’t mind being called Dobby. Don’t think he’s read Harry Potter. Not sure he can read. Anyhow. I’ve got him popping up like some strung out jack in the box at all hours when what should happen but Sleeping Beauty reawakens. This is the beginning of November. I’m thinking to myself:

‘I’ve got Dobby. I don’t need this shit.’

To be honest with you Steve, I’d forgotten how beautiful the beaut was. Suddenly I could see Dobby for what he was. Drug addiction close up lacks a certain glamour, like the veneer coming off a kitchenette.

Desperation might make you affordable but worthless too. Is that harsh? I despised him.

So I’ve got Dobby and then, ding dang dong here’s Morizio again. Another ‘pay as you go’. And suddenly it hits me: You only have one contract at a time but with ‘pay as you go’ the sky’s the fucking limit. Dozens of them why not? Hundreds and thousands.

Well. Maybe not the sprinkles but there’s no ceiling. And what’s more, it doesn’t seem to matter how often you say ‘no, no, no’. They just… you just can’t turn them off or send them away. They are always there. Just coming round uninvited swinging from my doorknob.

“What about the neighbours?” I hear you ask.

In the end I had not only both of them turning up willy nilly, but also their friends and fucking relations. I was like a brothel in reverse. Twenty whores. One client.

If I don’t pay those uber pimps at Love Management £800 by the weekend things could get very sticky.

This isn’t a begging letter. I’m just saying I’m in a scrape. I’m up to my fucking neck in scrape.

Apart from that everything’s fine. How about you?

THE REST CURE

2009-03-03T13:39:00.001-08:00

It had barely been a moment before I was awake again. There must have been some glitch. I had had serious reservations in the first place and this just clinched it. I wanted out. Then Dr Ramsey wandered in, brushing between the curtains that surrounded my bed. The place had the feel of NHS with the price tag of BUPA.

“Doctor,” I said, raising myself partly on my elbows. “You’re fucking this up a bit. I think I want my money back.” I was surprised to find I had a broad grin on my face. This wasn’t funny.

“How do you feel?” the Doctor asked in his broadest Irish.

“I feel great!” I replied. It was supposed to be sarcastic, but he dusted it away with a simple and satisfied “good.”

“We did some tests on you while you were out,” he continued. “All the indicators are normalised. You should be feeling 100%.” There was a short pause while I said nothing. I’d arrived for the procedure feeling hysterical.

“On the verge of a nervous breakdown,” my GP had said. But now I felt fine. More than fine. Embarrassingly, even my libido seemed to have returned. Part of me knew the procedure must have been completed, but the rational part wouldn’t believe. Had two weeks really passed in the past 30 seconds? “By all accounts,” he continued, “you’re flying.”

I lay back and closed my eyes. I could feel the tears starting to well up inside me. I slid my hand down between my legs to feel if the implant was still there, but it had gone.

“I must be off the Sonambulate,” I thought. The Doctor had left me to it. Suddenly I wondered if he was still wearing those hideous, grey, patent leather slip-ons. Maybe I’d like him better if he wasn’t. He was smug and arrogant. I got out of bed and put on my clothes. They, and some possessions, had been placed on a chair next to me. There was a new mobile phone and an A5 desk diary along with my keys and wallet. I flipped the diary. It was full of my own writing. Almost unconsciously I opened the phone and an image of a dog appeared on the bright new screen. It was mine.

“OK,” I thought. “Right!”

The stress from the death of my mother and a hundred other sores that had reopened with the trauma, had pushed me to the edge. It was only my sense of duty toward Simba, my mothers’ dog, that had kept me getting up in the morning, even though the dog was to blame for the accident, running out in front of my mother like that. But my mother had loved that dog so much and it had meant so much to her that I couldn’t do anything but take her in. I suppose it was the hound too that led me to this type of therapy. She was in mourning too and I just didn’t feel I could leave her in kennels while I went on respite or took a holiday or whatever it was I thought I needed.

“Two weeks gone and what have I done?” I wondered. Maybe I’d find the mutt dead on my kitchen floor. Maybe I’d find myself fired. I left the bed and walked across to reception to book a follow up appointment. Then I went out into the street and walked the three miles home. Since when had I taken to walking?

The dog was fine. I walked with her down to the coffee shop on Cleveland Street where I usually got my breakfast before work. There was an old man talking with a small boy, maybe his grandson. He spoke in some Indian type language while the little boy replied with the occasional earnest “yes” in English. Sometimes the boy would shake his head a little before saying “yes” and I wondered if he was really saying “no” to the old man. I suppressed a smile and flipped open my new diary.

I was a popular guy it seemed. In the past two weeks I’d obviously been painting the town red. I’d even drawn smiley faces next to a couple of dinner dates, one at a swanky place in Soho and the other at somewhere I’d never heard of. The smiles took me back to my dim and distant past where I’d used them to indicate a successful fuck. I wondered if I might have reverted to the adolescent script. Had I got laid in the last couple of weeks? And I was thinking that dry spell would never end. I checked the names in the diary. Had I had sex with Hilary and/or Vanessa? If I had, then I had no idea who they were or what they looked like. I scrolled down the phone book to H and found a Hilary. A picture of her popped up with her details. I did the same for V and there she was too. Vanessa. I recognised them both from work. Other departments, different buildings. I flipped through the diary further; out into the future. Improbably, I had a promotion interview the following Wednesday. On the Monday before that, in three days time, I had a meeting with someone called Bob. “Pick up script,” it said. Pick up script? I thought it best to investigate and popping a B into the phone found Bob’s number. No photo.

“Bob,” came a voice after a couple or rings.

“It’s Niles,” I said, hoping that would mean something to him.

“Miles of smiles Niles,” he said, but I didn’t recognise the description of myself. “Hellooooooo…” he intoned.

“Hi,” I replied.

“You’ll be wanting your Sonambulate prescription for that job interview,” he said matter of factly. “I’ve got it now, if you want,” he offered helpfully. I didn’t say anything. I could think of nothing to say. After what felt like an eternity, I hung up. It struck me then that there were implications. They made me anxious.

“No granddad,” the little boy must have been saying. “I don’t what to.”

IS THIS YOURS?

2009-03-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

“Sorry I’m late honey.” He plonked himself down on the seat beside her and gave her a quick and slightly awkward peck on the cheek. They had been going out for three months but still had not sorted out that initial greeting. “I have lost my mobile. I’ve looked everywhere. I give up. Unless it’s at mums.”
“It’s alright,” she replied. “I was just reading a message from a friend. She reminded me of a lover I once had.”
“We’re going to talk about the past now are we,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I thought all that was verboten!”
“Nothing is forbidden Mark. Not really.”
“So tell me about him,” he said, edging a bit closer for intimacy. “Assuming it was a him. Not that lesbian phase.” Charlotte looked at him coolly. She neither smiled nor looked annoyed.
“After the lesbian phase,” she said, deadpan. Mark had been joking of course and he put the reply down to her dry wit.
“And?” he prompted.
“He was one of the few I dumped. Usually it is me who is getting the old heave hoe. Not that it’s happened that often.” She looked down at her drink. Mark saw that it had hardly been touched.
“Looks like it’s still your round,” he observed. “Mine’s a bitter.”
“You missed my round Mark.” He smiled congenially and got up to go to the bar. He gave her the I’m offering you a drink but I know you won’t really want one yet look which she shook her head at.
“I’ll be back in a mo,” he said and headed off.
A couple of minutes later he had returned and taken a seat opposite her. It wasn’t as intimate but he could see her better. He was looking forward to hearing about the looser she had dumped. He might even learn something.
“He used to wear the same socks day in and day out until the whole bedroom stunk.”
“Oh come on,” Mark retorted. “I do that. You are not going to fire me for that.” He realised immediately the slip of the tongue. Charlotte didn’t seem to notice.
“And it wasn’t just his feet,” she continued oblivious. “His pits, were the pits.”
“Yeah!” he agreed. “Sometimes on the tube… There was this guy last week. Fuck only knows what he’d been eating. Aquaphobic.”
“Is that a word?” she said engaging him for the first time directly with her eyes. “Deoderphobic too.”
“I hate those sprays,” Mark said. “They make your clothes all white.”
“Plus,” she continued, “he seemed to have an unhealthy relationship with his mother.”
“Oh shit!” Mark spluttered. “That’s gross. How long did that relationship last?”
“Until she dies I suppose.”
“Not with the mum. Between you and him.”
“Let’s see,” she said looking up into the middle distance, remembering it all again. “Three or four months I suppose.”
“I hope I last a hell of a lot longer than that,” he smiled.
“But what really did it for me Mark,” she continued without missing a beat, “was him being a liar. If you are going to have deceit in a relationship it has to be by mutual consent, right? No good one of you being all open and honest while the other scurries around all cloak and daggers.” Mark looked at her and wondered if the unease growing in him was showing in his eyes. “Oh! By the way,” she went on, starting to rummage around in her handbag. ”Did you say you lost your mobile?”
“Well yes,” he said, peering down into her bag. Suddenly she stopped.
“And another thing,” she said, looking up to gaze earnestly into his eyes. “It turned out he was fucking his ex the whole time?” Mark felt the icy finger of fate trace a path, from the nape of his neck, down his spine, to his scrotum. His bowls loosened. “Is this it?” she said flourishing is Nokia.
“Oh Charlotte,” he said. “Of course it fucking is. Where did you find it?” She leant over and tossed the machine into the faux fire, at the same time getting to her feet and blocking his way to his melting mobile.
“Now fuck off,” she said. “And take that meddling mother of yours with you.”

FOR SALE

2009-03-03T12:59:00.000-08:00

The strains of Mendelssohn were wafting through the mocked up French windows and over the entwined couple. The eventual sound track would be anything but, however Steve Delaney, the director, was a Classic FM freak so they had to pump and grind to whatever. Even the adverts.

“OK,” Steve shouted, having eschewed the ‘cut and action’ shibboleths of the industry.

‘MONEYSHOT’ was still in its infancy, this indeed being the pilot, but it would go on to become the super long runner of Reality TV. It bonded home makeover with porn and the ubiquitous gambling of ‘now it’s time for you to have your say’ at 25p a word.

Daytime TV with a watershed twist.

The show claimed to rejuvenate the flagging sex life of a hapless couple by turning their tired old home into a sexy love nest. The live sex sequences that book ended the show were always filmed first in a mock up of the couples ‘new’ and sexy bedroom.

“Alex, darling,” Steve opined, “you look like you are having a baby, not making one. It’s supposed to be enjoyable.” Hapless husband Alex had grunted and strained his way through their first full on porn sequence only to shoot unexpectedly when the floor manager carelessly brushed his arse with her clipboard. It was these odd casual encounters that were setting his heart racing. When Peter from ‘makeup’ had shaved his sack, crack and back, his wet hard-on had screamed humiliation.

“Relax, relax,” Peter from ‘makeup’ had said, throwing him a lifeline. “It’s the same for everyone the first time. It’s all right. You’re not gay.” That day Alex had been close to tears so many times that ‘makeup’ was having trouble hiding the puffiness. “When it comes to porn,” Steve the Director had once said, “you just can’t hide that look of humiliation.” That is why he always did the face shots first.

The loss of the ‘cum shot’ or ‘reveal’ as they were choosing to call it, had caused widespread consternation amongst the production team. They would now either have to buy a cum sequence to superimpose over the bedroom ‘reveal’ (costly) or the flailing and ailing cock of our hapless husband would have to be pressed into service one more time at the end of the day. They had failed to get a decent penetration sequence and Beryl was resistant to a retake with a stunt cock.

“Amateurs,” Steve had grumbled, rather missing the point. One of the runners had agreed to fill in for Alex as a cock shaft but not for the cum sequence as they had a circumcision mismatch. There was also the condom issue. What had made the show such hot property was its’ bareback credentials without the whiff of snuff movie about it. Benjamin, the stunt cock had been certified HIV negative earlier that day but everyone knew that in this scenario it meant nothing. “I’m straight,” he kept saying until finally someone told him to shut it.

“If we can’t get this down in the next twenty minutes, it’s a no go. We’ll move onto Tracy and Dave.” Beryl’s eyes flickered like she was waking from a long dream. Their make over was about to be cancelled. She bit her lip and looked across at the runner and stand in dick; a tall, lean 20 something with an Australian accent and no foreskin.

“Alex,” Beryl whispered desperately. “I’ll do the penetration shot, but,” she said, grim determination lining her face, “you have to do that jack off shot before we finish.” Alex could feel his dick shrivelling beneath him, despite the head splitting effects of the two Viagra. “Get off me,” she hissed. Alex clamped a hand over his dick and struggled with the other to push himself free. He looked across at the Director. Steve could see he was close to tears and it pissed him off. Porn was for pro’s.

“She’s doing the stunt shot,” Alex said and stumbled off set.

“The stunt shot?” Steve said.

“The cunt stunt shot,” Beryl tried to clarify. She’d said the C word and she was mortified. She was also not making sense. She was sweating now and the body makeup was starting to run.

“Right!” Steve said, but now Australian Benjamin, the cock de jour, was nowhere to be seen, apparently off making tea for the crew.

“Right,” Steve said again about ten minutes later. “We are going to make this short and sweet.” He was looking down at Beryl. Body makeup was being reapplied. “We will pan down from a side shot of your face and in one take swing found the back for the penetration. So keep your legs wide. As soon as Benjamin is in position we will start. 20 seconds and you are done.” Beryl was flooded with hope. It could all be over sooner rather than later. Benjamin had been whitened to the same skin tone as her husband and was none too pleased about it.

“Keep your stomach relaxed,” Steve warned dick stand in. “I don’t want hubby ending up with too much of a six pack.” The lights were in place and as they burned into life Beryl started to fry. She closed her eyes and for a moment was able to blot everything out. Nothing had meaning. Everything was purely sensation. A clock started to tick in her mind like the last scene from Village of the Damned and she could no longer hold back the thought:

“When will he start?” She felt ‘makeup’ mopping the sweat from her left armpit and in the same instant became aware of the pain in her lower back. She had been arching it for what seemed like an age in order to lengthen her stomach, giving her a leaner look, but now she seemed to be going into spasm. She opened her eyes and glanced amongst the constellation of lights for Ben. He was nowhere to be seen?

“For fuck sake!” she could here the director saying just inches away. He had started out all smiles and niceties. Now he was irritable and cruising the borders of vindictiveness. “Fluffer,” he shouted. “Any takers?” Beryl raised her head and could see an anxious looking Ben in a bathrobe. She glanced about till she caught the eye of ‘makeup’. He raised his eyebrows and drooped is lower lip but Beryl was non the wiser.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Ben’s as soft as your husband, Beryl. We are getting nowhere at eight grand an hour.” Steve seemed all at once to have given up. You can’t fake a hard on, and without one to hand, hard porn was just sitting around with cups of tea.

Much later in the series most of the hardcore sequences were patched in from HD home video recorded by the couple in private. This was Beryls’ idea and she never got a penny for it. But until her innovation was introduced the set could be a living hell.

“What is a ‘fluffer’,” Beryl asked to no one in particular.

“The lucky boy or girl who gets to blow the porn star till he’s hard.” Peter in ‘makeup’ was looking disconsolately over at Benjamin and almost imperceptibly shaking his head. Beryl looked at him and wondered.

“Peter,” she said. “What are you thinking?” He twisted his mouth round to one side in a lopsided pout and bit the inside of his lower lip. He seemed to be wondering the same himself. He flashed her a roguish smile but said nothing. Beryl wondered if Peter would stretch to a bit of ‘fluffing’ but then thought better of it. “Fuck it,” she thought to herself. “I’ll ‘fluff’ it.”

At that moment the lights went and the cramped studio was thrown into stygian gloom. While the sparkies set to work the happy home makers convened for a quick quarrel.

“Look,” hapless husband Alex was saying. “You are letting that Aussie bloke fuck you, why give him a blow job as well?”

“I’m not ‘letting him fuck me’,” she retorted. “You are.” Beryl’s face was red and Peter in ‘makeup’ was eyeing her nervously, a powder puff at the ready. “You’re impotent Alex,” she blurted out half under her breath and just for emphasis she lowered her voice further: “You’re fucking impotent,” she repeated. Alex’s face went slack and for a moment his mouth fell slightly open.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Alex asked rhetorically.

“We’re getting our house redecorated. What do you think?” Beryl retorted. “We’re having a makeover. So,” she continued, “instead of standing there like a prize cunt get on with it and give that boy a blow job.”

“Oh fuck off,” Alex said. He was as happy as the next man to think outside the box but this was a box too far. “And,” he continued, “I am not impotent. You are just sex mad.”

“I don’t think so Alex,” she said, a tinge of defeat in her voice. “Twice a week?”

“Well,” he replied. “Usually it’s not with a caste of thousands.” Alex glanced across at Peter and Beryl followed his gaze.

“What are you looking at?” Peter said, springing out of some private reverie. The earlier unspoken suggestion seemed to be back in the air and everyone could smell it. Peter batted it away.

“I’d do it of course but me and your husband are not compatible in this one I suspect.” It was an excuse, but true too.

“Well,” said Alex grasping the wrong end of the stick, “I’d much prefer Peter to have his way than bloody blond boy Ben.”

“Yes,” Peter in ‘makeup’ said. “There is something about me that’s just less threatening. Must be my bald patch.” As he spoke a contingent was making it’s way over from the Ben camp.

“Could you help out?” It was the director speaking and he was pointing his question at Beryl. “We don’t have another woman available.” Ben was enjoying his new role of porn star and unbelievably was now chewing gum and nodding his head in agreement. Alex coughed to get attention.

“Peter has very kindly agreed to step in,” Alex said.

“No way José,” Ben replied. “I’m not gay.”

“No,” said Alex. “That’s not what I meant.” There was an audible sense of relief all round. “I think Peter said he’d be the stunt cock.”

“I said no such thing,” Peter responded. “When did I say that?” He caste his head about, as if expecting to hear the echo of some earlier incriminating conversation.

“Right!” said Beryl. “I’m sick of this. Alex… You give Peter a blow job and let’s get this over with.”

“I happen to be in a monogamous relationship,” Peter stated flatly.

“So am I,” said Alex.

“Right,” said Beryl, “and I’m the Virgin fucking Mary.” Nobody moved. “Oh come on Peter,” she wheedled. “No one will ever know.” Another moment passed while this small group tried to process that last concept and then, with perfect timing, the Director spoke.

“Agreed,” he said and turned from the group. “I want the whole bed area screened off,” he shouted. “And everybody, bar lighting and camera… Out!”

Later it occurred to all and sundry that if Alex needed a blow job then Beryl could have provided. Rationality had however been in short supply and had finally dried up all together.

Three days later when the production company called to arrange the home makeover, they found the place empty. In the middle of the garden was planted a large and new looking sign. It read: ‘For Sale. Vacant Possession.’

ALL TALK STOPS

2009-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

The long, cold winter had preserved her. Now that the ground was softening, I was to cut her free and bury her.

In my loneliness I had lathed down the river’s surface to within a breath of her. By February I had polished the ice until her entire nakedness was under glass. There I would stand until the edge of death.

Now I must free her if she is not to be discovered, gas bloated, bobbing at the water’s edge down stream.

THREE DAYS TO DIE

2009-03-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

THREE DAYS TO DIE

You know how it is. A sudden tiny increment of knowledge comes to you and you think ‘Ah! That’s what that means.’ That’s why I’m in a hurry.

There’s that thing they say about three days before you die. I was reading in the Metro News about a nursing home in South America. They had a dog who would go and sit on the bed of those inmates who were close to the end. I thought the dog might be giving them something; an infection or what not; that maybe the cause and effect were reversed. But no. This dog had a death hunch. The trouble was it made no sense. How could your death be foretold three days ago?

Now I understand. I’ve had that incremental shift. I’ve got something. I’ve got a grasp of something I didn’t have before. Sometimes it’s only being in a given situation that permits you to understand it. It’s not until you fight a dog that it bites you on the bum. And last night something happened. Now I know. I know I have just three days to live.

Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, I’ll be dead. While I’m writing, something is withdrawing.

It’s not a premonition. You must understand that. It is a decision. Something deep down says ‘enough is enough’ and that is it. Enough actually does end up being enough and from that moment the inexplicable countdown begins. Why it’s three days and not weeks, minutes or seconds I have no idea. But that it’s to do with a personal decision, I now realise.

Years ago, back in 1995 when Chris learned for certain that he would never walk again. That was on the Wednesday and Saturday night he was up and gone. But I never put the two together. But for Chris it was clear. He had give up the ghost. Throughout his illness it was the one hope that kept him alive and when that nurse spelled it out for him, delineated the grim truth… Well. That was it: Bang! Over. Done and dusted.

He asked me once what palliative care meant. I lied, thank god. Otherwise, the weight of guilt may have killed me.

STORY 90223

2009-02-23T23:38:00.000-08:00

STORY 90223

What’s the difference between a wife and a prostitute? One’s contract and the other’s ‘pay as you go’.

And you know what Steve? I think that was the gag that set me off on this nightmare. I’m not laying anything on you. Loose talk costs lives though. We’ve not spoken for I don’t know how long. But that was about the last thing you said to me. That gag. And now Facebook reunites us. Are we too old for Facebook? Think I might be. By a decade or two

You asked me ‘how things were going’? You must have meant ‘are you getting laid yet?’ or ‘have you got a new boyfriend?’, or am I just projecting?

But by last summer I was sick of all this being alone in my ivory tower bullshit. I got sex at sauna’s but I was bored of the lucky dip. I never knew what might be bobbing round in the cum scummed jacussi. If anything. I wanted something steady, something a little bit regular.

I don’t know why but true love just hadn’t walked through my door yet. We’re talking about last summer mind. Things have changed. Or rather they had changed. But now they’ve changed back to not having changed again. Or at least that’s what I’m worried about. Well actually everything’s changed and it’s all much worse than before. But I’m running away from myself here.

It’s last summer. Which, if you remember Steve, consisted of about six days of sun and enough cloud… I can’t think of an aphorism. But anyway. You remember. Cloudy day after day. And I just started thinking to myself,

‘Enough!’

Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. Especially on Facebook. They own about everything we think don’t they?

The point is it occurred to me that I could simply find love ‘pay as you go’. Get a nice lad out of Boyz and run up a tab with him. Twice a month. More if I had the money. A nice steady rent boy. Good plan I hear you say.

But at first it went well. Morizio. Done time in Milan for drug dealing which left him a bit bitter. But in September he got pneumonia and they put him under heavy sedation for seven weeks. I know Steve. It sounds a bit… I dunno. But basically they keep you asleep for weeks on end till you’ve recovered. Less of a cure and more just switching you off and then switching you back on again. If it works for computers why not us?

So anyhow. Morizio had been switched off so I didn’t have my ‘pay as you go’. What to do? Buy another of course. What else. I was following a natural logic, except I hadn’t thought it quite through.

This one was more pushy. This ‘pay as you go’. He started buzzing me in the middle of the night and asking me for sex. Or rather he wanted money for which he’d bend over any which way for. Sorry Steve. I promised not to be graphic.

The trouble was this. The more I said ‘no’ the more Dobby would start slashing prices. It was like DFS in January. What would you have done Steve? £20 doesn’t buy much leather but if you’re faced with a desperate rent boy at four in the morning. Take it from me. That first night: I didn’t shit straight for a week. I got quite a bang for my buck as they say. But you didn’t want to know that.

So I’m starting to make sure I have a spare twenty quid tucked away under my pillow, being kind hearted. I just can’t say ‘no’ to someone in need. It’s different if they’re cold and hungry and living rough. But that’s living in London for you. The moral maze. But I’m getting off the plot here.

The point is I’ve got Dobby. He’s Russian or Baltic or something. Lots of J’s and other low use consonants all pushed together. He said he didn’t mind being Dobby. Don’t think he’s read Rowling. Anyhow. I’ve got him popping up like some strung out jack in the box at all hours when what should happen but Sleeping Beauty reawakens. This is the beginning of November. I’m thinking to myself:

‘I’ve got Dobby now I don’t need Sleeping Beauty.’

To be honest with you Steve, I’d forgotten how beautiful Sleeping Beauty was. Suddenly I could see Dobby with fresh eyes. Drug addiction close up lacks a certain glamour. It’s like the venire coming off a cheap kitchen.

Desperation might make you affordable but worthless with it. Is that harsh? Suddenly I despised him.

So I’ve got Dobby and then, ding dang dong here’s Morizio again. Another ‘pay as you go’. And suddenly it hits me: That’s how it is. You only have one contract but when it comes to ‘pay as you go’ the sky is the fucking limit. Dozens of them why not? Hundreds and thousands. Well. Maybe not the sprinkles but there is no real limit. And what’s more, it doesn’t seem to matter how often you say ‘no, no, no’. They just… you just can’t turn them off or send them away. They are always there. Just coming round uninvited to my doorknob. What did the neighbours think?

In the end I had, not only both of them turning up willy nilly, when they needed a bed or money more like. But also their friends and friends of friends. I was like a brothel but all upside down.

If I don’t find £800 by the weekend things could get very sticky. Which is not to say. I mean I’m not saying. This isn’t a begging letter you understand Steve. I’m just saying I’m in a bit of a scrape. In fact: I’m up to my fucking neck in scrape.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m having sex till it’s coming out of my arsehole, but to be honest with you. I don’t need it.

Come Christmas I had well and truly fallen for Morizio. I’ve not seen him for six weeks. He upped his rates. New Years Eve he had cleaned me out.

Apart from that everything’s fine. How about you?

HOME IS AN EMPTY HOUSE

2007-06-23T23:38:00.001-07:00

I never even saw him leave. He had been told to go and I never knew why. Not for certain anyway. It left a vacuum in the house and in my life. But no one asked me, a mere child, what I thought then of the expulsion.
Albert Spear was big in a way my father never was. He stayed in a small room, sharing its landing with the ‘cupboard of death’. Occasionally as children we would dare to clamber into its confines, in amongst the broken picnic table and mildewed tent and wait for the counting to stop. Otherwise it was just a landing, a necessary staging post on ones journey from the second to third floor where our attic bedrooms crouched.
Childhood games, stories read by my grandmother and adult tension, in a house without Television or Radio: These were the things of my childhood as a young boy in the 1960’s. And then one day there was Albert, bearded; that great stomach under those shapeless jumpers and the powerful Jewish drawl, foreign as Israel. I had no idea where he came from. At six years old I only knew he was from a different place where people were big and gentle, somehow blown in by the wind, a Mary Poppins from the world of giants.
It was only years later that I realised the incongruity of the name. But then I suppose he was born before the horror. My family was pockmarked and lame and from time to time folks would come to live in the gaps and craters: In amongst the conflict, witnesses who never spoke of it. Not to me at least.
One day, early on, Albert caught me on the stair. He beckoned to me. Though he was huge, with the growl of a bear, I wasn’t frightened of him. And me, so timid. I was making my way downstairs and he stopped me on the landing.
“Come in,” he said conspiratorially. “Let me show you something.” He took a small disk from a paper sleeve and fiddled it over the awkward spindle of his gramophone. Penny Lane was in my heart and in my ears for the first time. And from that point on I would go to his room whenever I could and enter another world. His world. The world out there, separate from my family.
What had seemed so strange at first: this man, his gramophone; slowly started its journey toward normality and somewhere on that path it met my home life, with its disjointed elders, coming the other way. I found myself looking at my father, my mother, my grandmother and wondering who they were. If perhaps Albert was my real father. Maybe he was the emotional normality that all children crave, without knowing it.

One day I made an announced to the dinner table. It was a repetition of something I had heard.
“I hate Jews,” I said.
Albert in his big, soft, gravely voice said, “I am a Jew.”
I was mortified.
Then I said: “But I love you Albert.” Now this is something that I had never even thought to say to my own father.
Then Albert said: “And I love you,” and after that I never saw him again. The vacuum he had filled, he left behind, and that September I was sent away to school.
I know now that love, like speech, must be learned early or never.

THE BUILDER

2007-06-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

Allison slipped the scones in the oven and pushed the door to. Sometimes she got the feeling of being on automatic, shadowing the movements of her earlier life so as not to cease moving all together. She turned from the stove and surveyed the kitchen. It had been tidied enough and the dog and kids always ended up making the place a mess again. It would be pointless to shuffle the same tired knickknacks more. The two cords that ran from her heart out beyond the grave were tugging again today, turning her mind back in on itself, away from the rain outside.
Claws on the wooden floor and a peel of yelps presaged some uninvited guest and Allison straightened up, recalibrating her being in the shift from private existence to public performance. She practiced a brief smile and was momentarily relieved by its easy flicker and the concomitant quiver of her spirits. But it was not the smile that lifted her, rather the thought of his atmosphere entering the kitchen. It could only be Bob. Who else would visit this arse crack of the Malvern Hills in such weather? The kids were still at school and the postie had been and gone. She pretended busyness but knew he would take an age getting from the van and making the short journey across the garden. He always did. Why, she had no idea. The dog was getting frantic as Allison started to fill the kettle.
Bob was her unfortunately named builder, a fact the children took great delight in.
‘It’s Robert,’ Allison would say, ‘not Bob,’ though she called him Bob often enough. To them he would always be: ‘It’s Bob the Builder mum’, and their smugness irritated her.
She had first hired him when deciding to extend the kitchen out into the backyard. Before the cull. She had gone for a two-storey job and to hell with the expense. She made a dining/kitchen area on the ground floor and an extra bedroom on the first, next to the musty, plasticated avocado shower-room. That would have been baby Jeremiah’s room, but, of course, he never made it to needing a bed of his own.
After Adrian and Jeremiah had died, it left just the four of them. That was the four of them and Bob, on those occasions he tired of his first wife and his looming insolvency and stopped by to mooch about or hit something with a hammer.

She had made the tea and they were now sat at the kitchen table with the paraphernalia between them.
“I’m considering hanging myself,” he said as his opening gambit. The rain was falling for the twelfth consecutive day and she herself had been eyeing the shotgun speculatively. Not seriously of course, what with the kids, but it was a fantasy option. Maybe for later.
“Could you find a joist that would hold?” she asked, looking at him with brows uplifted. She had been considering spending the last of her husbands insurance on ‘doing something’ with the stables and had pencilled Bob in for the job.
“Don’t kill yourself yet Robert,” she said. “There are the stables to do.”
“They’re made of wood Allison,” he said emphatically. “They are good for horses and nothing more.” She could tell he hadn’t finished. There was a coup de gras in there somewhere.
“And?” she prodded, tentatively.
“And also…” he said. “Only a psycho would want to take a holiday in this shit-hole.” They were both escapees from the ‘rat race’, from the big city smoke. The dream and reality of escape had turned out to be a disappointing mismatch.
“Fucking hell Bob,” she said. “Where is your Chutzpah?”
“It Chutzpahed,” he replied.
They both sat in silence for a moment savouring the time honoured gag.
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” he went on, gesturing weakly at the drizzled kitchen window, “but it’s June. The summer will soon be over.” Allison looked across at him and saw to her surprise that he was crying. Not sobbing, but one solitary tear had stumbled from a crumpled eye. Allison looked out the window again, giving him a moment to himself. There was a break in the cloud and for a brief second the sun streamed through, improbable rays like some old master: The Descending Dove of Peace, scoring the air. Then it was gone again.
“Would a bunk up help?” she said.
“It has been a while,” he replied. “I thought we might have…” he paused, “moved on.”
“Oh come on Robert,” she said. “Don’t be daft. People like us never move on. Unless,” she continued, her eyes crinkling beautifully with her smile, “you call blowing your brains out moving on.”
He decided to put off the noose for a while longer and instead retreat to the solace of her well-worn sheets.
“I’d like a bunk up,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Maybe even another cup of tea. What do you think?” The place seemed warmer. Robert could smell something cooking in the oven.
“I like spending time with you,” he said. “You’re nice.”

HORSE (P)RIDE

2006-06-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

“What would he do in this situation?” she thought to herself. She ran the programme like somewhere inside of her there was a fragment of him that was independent of his being. She turned the corners of her mouth down slightly like he did when he was thinking and narrowed her nostril, tilting her head back. He was turning it over in his mind. Next thing she found herself patting her imaginary pockets for tobacco but then remembered she had finished the last of it earlier that day, during midmorning coffee. She spotted something out the corner of her eye and for a moment clicked out of character to snatch up a piece of hard wood lying by the side of the bench. It was a bit of root or wood knot. A stem of branch came out one side and had been cut clean through, most probably with the long handled pruning sheers that hung in his garden shed. It felt just right. It was the perfect pipe. She parked herself down on the bench and gave it a couple of fairly hard taps on the front of the seat to clear out any old ash. She may not have any tobacco but several times she had seen him chewing on his unlit stem pondering a problem. She put the end in her mouth. It was too green to be perfect. There was a hint of sap there but the bitterness could pass for the acridity of tobacco. After a while she pulled her left foot up on to the chair as only the thinnest of men are wont to do, and held on to her shin. After a couple of muted clicks in the back of his throat she shook her head slowly.
“It’ll never do,” she said to herself. “The girl has done it to herself and now there’s no helping her.” Hillary was immediately unconvinced that her father would be so harsh. “Hillary,” she attempted again. “Whatever were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry papa,” she said. “I never realised it would do that if I let it out.” Her father looked at her with a quizzical gaze and took the pipe out of his mouth. “You are a very naughty girl. We’re going to have to shoot him now and I’m sorry to say that that is entirely your fault. You should never have let him out of the field.” Hillary could feel her eyes filling as she spoke. She had no choice. She would have to try and retrieve the situation herself.
Pride comes before a fall and she had been certain she could handle him. He was big and boisterous and on one of their long walks things had got a little out of hand. She loved him desperately and in the end all the inner admonishments of her father could not stop the impending disaster. Now she was pregnant and he had bolted. Where she knew not. In principle at least she could recapture the huge cart horse that was careering round the country lanes of Whittering, kicking out at cars and pedestrians, but she could never regain the other, or lose what she had growing within her. Deep within her darkestness. She had been insane to try to ride the horse to Beachy Head. Now she would have to drive the car. She had seen her father do it often enough. But she was not her father and now she was no longer her father’s little girl.

REMEMBER NOSTALGIA

2006-06-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

“A Bittersweet songing for things, persons, or situations past.”

She had passed him a crumpled page torn from a notebook. He read it:

“Weep not upon the pillow or the down
Cast not that is your grace upon the wind
As sweet is fair that shadows not the frown
Blown in by tempests that have come behind.

The solstice can portend an endless day
And too can herald up the longest night
The coldest hour’s before the morning ray
The greatest tears before all’s set to right.

And yet, within the sunshine of that youth
When every petal still was yet to bloom
The light was clearer and all illumined truth
Could comprehend until the edge of doom.

But now the years have forced their wisdoms taint,
And all I thought was good, I see just ain’t.

William Shakespeare 1778”

“It’s nice,” he said and held it out for her.
“It never occurs to us that our greatest writer may be yet to come,” she said looking at him earnestly. “William Shakespeare in this sonnet addresses the issue of nostalgia for the first time. We can return to Uclid or Euripides and will find nothing of nostalgia there. Admittedly Uclid was a mathematician, a discipline not known for it’s introspection on things past. But it’s a great name. They don’t make them like that anymore. Unlike Euripides which is still a first name amongst the people of Andora where a 2 litre bottle of Gin still only sets you back €12. But even these havens from national taxation are being swept away in the headlong rush to a reunited Europe.” Trevor couldn’t think of a response. “I remember the 1970’s like it was just 30 years ago,” she continued. “The paucity of my relationships. The power cuts of ‘74 and the three day week. All the consequence of industrial action. Do you remember ‘industrial action’?” But it was rhetorical. Trevor said nothing. “And I’m not talking about a one day tube strike. Oh no!” and she shook her head and made that ‘I’m serious now’ look with her eyebrows. She might start banging the table. But she didn’t. “This was the real McCoy,” she opined leaning back in her red plastic chair. “Class action: Capital versus labour. And I don’t mean New Labour either. I mean labour with a small ‘L’: Marxist labour. Can you recall?” Sure Trev was old enough. He remembered the three day week. And that shit kitchen they had seemed to live in back then. But did he want to go there. Enter in. Enter her mind. So he did nothing. Said nothing. She chewed on the inside of her mouth. “There were those Flying and secondary pickets.”
“Yes,” he said. Either way he could set her off. The occasional response might be just right.
“Closed shops, police brutality. I remember one time, the miners had built a snowman which the police ran down with an armoured van. The next day the snowman was back, only this time build round a caste iron bollard. How they all laughed, playfully pelting the ambulance with snowballs and half bricks when it eventually got through the crowd to the blood soaked occupants.”He knew Lillian was taking the piss. Playing with him. Playing at ‘me is crazy girl’. But hitting her would just make matters infinitely worse. He could feel a tightening in his chest. He had to leave. She wasn’t done: “And in those days there was no global warming either. The country baked itself to a crisp in 1976 but we were spared the unending whinging and hypothesising. It was all so much more straight forward: ‘Another 8 cows died of starvation in Northumbria last night.’ There was something comforting about it all.” Trevor smiled. He couldn’t help himself. For a brief second he wished this was the old Lilly. The one he had married. Now the sparkle had become a gleam and he thought about slitting himself.
“Now what?” he wondered as she leant forward opening a palm toward him. “Like Angela Rippon and her legs,” she proffered. “She didn’t have to get her tits out did she? See what I mean? And Nationwide!” she said like it was its own explanation. “If you came from elsewhere it must have been a nightly punch in the guts. An assault on your parochial pride. Just imagine how the Welsh must have felt. No wonder they were burning down holiday cottages.” Trevor got up slowly and kissed his wife on the forehead.
“Bye bye my love. I’ll see you soon.” He turned and walked as casually as he could toward the door. He thought about looking back for a final wave but the look of wet pain could be more that he could endure. He chose not to and departed.
“For great stretches of history nothing happened,” she continued, nodding confidently to herself. She would not dwell on his betrayal now. She could save that for the merciless dark of night. “One generation would live much like the next. Nostalgia would have been hard to foster. Not the case now. However, we are in danger of heading off to the other extreme: the past is different from the present to be sure but it is raked over with such intensity and regularity it no longer lives in the past as such. It is constantly being reinvented, updated to fill the multitude of colour supplements, glossies and TV channels.
I remember when Channel 4 first came on air. Someone was mourning the passing of an era: No longer would we come into work or school and be able to chat about the collective TV experience of the night before. With four channels everyone would end up in their own viewing bubble. Oh! How sweet and naive. Look at us now: TV bubbles, iPod bubbles, goodness knows what else. Hubbles, bubbles, toils and troubles as the Great Bard might have said. Mind you: I’m nostalgic for the iPod already ever since those phones came along broadcasting to the whole bus. Like we all wish to know for example that: “I want to be your wifey.” I don’t what to know. I suspose many do not. “I want to be your wifey.” Did you want to know that? “I want to be your wifey. I want to be your wifey.” I can do without it. But there you go. Things change, so people have to change with them. Wifey or no wifey. But it’s all bread and butter and short cake. Like the look at the old school rooms up in the attic of my soul. And let’s not forget. Let’s not forget. Let us never, ever forget…

Words: 1122

LOVE, AGGRESSION, BLINDNESS [draft]

2006-05-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

‘Clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularity accompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in a number of circumstances, hate changes into love and love into hate.’
Freud, S. New introductory lectures on Psychoanalysis. Translated by J Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1964.

The first thing I did was reach up and touch where my left eye should have been. There was some tape and wadding, a bandage round the side of my head. My good eye swivelled about surveying the ward.
“Ah! You are back in the land of the living,” came a muffled voice from my blind side.
“Piss off?” I suggested convivially. Offended silence. A flat screen played out a National Geographic ™ Special on Aggression and Bonding in Rhesus Monkeys and I blink my good eye closed. I could feel the prick of tears on the inside of the lid and bit my top lip to hold them back. I had felt so alive with him. And now I didn’t know where he was or if he even lived.

All I knew was I'd blearily opened the door the night before and fumbled for the kitchen light. I’d been robbed: The floor was strewn with old newspapers and cornflakes packets, junk mail and itemised bills. But there was no broken glass or splintered doorframes. Stuff like that. It only took a moment to fathom it out. My paper recycle bag hanging from a hook by the kitchen door had split. I’d been loading it up for a week more than it could take. I never knew if the industrial sized guilt bins by the station would be over flowing. On any workday morning I might take the super abundance of bottles and stuff out with me and then find myself left with the fuckers, unable to punch them through the brush slots hearing them smash, crackle and pop on the waiting losers below. So, back to the flat and suddenly I’d be eight minutes late for work. So I’d put it off and put it off. The toilet and the rubbish shoot are quick and easy. It's the recycling that reminds me who I am. Part of who we are.
And then there was that meek little rat a tat tat on the door. Somehow Aaron had let himself into the block without buzzing up.
“Hey baby,” I mocked. “You sneak thief you. How did you get in?”
“Same way you’ll get in,” he winked.
“Jesus!” I thought. “He was smashed as me.” Out loud I blur, “I can’t fuck now, I’m fucking fucked. See?" and I look down at myself just to make sure. "Completely. Just look.” Spliff shuts me right down, but he comes on an animal. But I mean… an animal. I see him lurching forward and realise I have nowhere to hide. I can’t run. It's my home. I’m going to have to deal with it right now.
“Piss off Aaron,” I try.
“Aye,” he says with that dirty grin on his face. We’d already crashed around the municipal bins on the way home and even then a blow job was just about all I could take. What did he want now?
“Come on darlin’,” he grinned wider. “You know you want it.” It was grotesque.
“Fuck off!” I spat back but it was lame. I reeled round and caught a glimpse of the Jack D proud above the spices on the top shelf. It looked like a figurine of the Virgin Mary from St. Peter’s square, sold along with the poster of the blinking Jesus and biros with the heart on the end which lights up when you write.
"Put him off and put him out," came a voice of redemption. Failing that, maybe I could just pass out myself. Then he could do what he liked. I wish I'd just faked it and crashed down on the floor amongst the shite. But I didn't. No. I can feel the regret grabbing at me with it’s filthy green nails. But regret’s too late. Instead I grappled the freezer door and yanked it open.
“Ice,” I said. “Just a cheeky one Aaron.” And I chucked the tray across the kitchen to the draining board.
“You like that big JD don’t you.” I purr in my best porn voice.
“Baby...” he lassiviates but doesn't seem able to complete the sentence. I lurch across for the top shelf like it’s the saving grace. Now all I need are two glasses and the where with all to pour ourselves the knock out drop.
“Mmmm….” He says as I bend over fumbling for the glassware to civilise the moment. “Nice arse,” and yanks at my jeans. Christ all mighty. My pants are down. Now I wished I wore a belt like everyone else my age. I wish now that instead of handing him that heavy glass tumbler I’d given him the £200 I kept in Spartacus for rent and just asked him to leave. But he was my boyfriend. Was that it? I was trying to remember. Back then I still wasn’t sure.
“Fuck off off me will you you fucking fucker. Just fucking leave me alone.” I turn and punch him hard in the face.
“Just fuck off,” I repeat. But then I get it: a flash of blinding white light across my kitchen, crashing into a thousand shards again the walls. There is something searing up from my ear and down into my left eye like an endless corridor leading blindly off. I think I’m going to piss myself and grab at my jeans. Christ, I’m reeling. He fucking hit me. I try to blink and lucidity strikes: you know the kind, where things make real sense: drink, I think and yank my jeans up.
“Drink!” I say and flip the cork expertly across the room. I surprise myself at the dexterity. I notice I’m violently shaking, but have no idea just how bad things are. “Drink it!” I demand and slop some in his direction.
“Careful,” he replies, flicking a lighter in his left hand, “or I’ll burn you.”
It all seemed like baggage: Aaron, the drink, the dope, all the irrelevant hangers on. But deep down inside I knew that throw it away and I’d be left without a thing: a tidy kitchen with nothing in.
“Hey Aaron baby…” I pause a moment and it’s like the whole world is suspended animation, except that it's spinning. “I’ll do something ghastly with this bottle if you don’t shut the fuck up.” It was a joke but came out nasty. Maybe my cut up face added to the filth of my mouth. He lunged across the tiny kitchen to the sink and for a thankful moment I thought he had reached his nadir. I thought he was going to puke. I took a gulp of air and tried to blink again, but the left side of my face was numb. I could feel my right eyelid sliding up and down across the smooth of my eyeball. The next moment he’d wheeled round and was looking at me, a sharp blade held up in the kitchen neon.
“That’s my best knife,” I said flipping the JD round to make a club of it. Insane excitement rushed through me. I could feel the fluid running down like it was emptying itself into my armpit. In a moment I was soaked: Bourbon and blood.

And now I’m here and it was all I could remember. I don’t know where he was or if he lives. All I know was that I was stuck in this hostile place and for the first time in my life in love. A nurse stepped up to my good side.
“Where’s your friend?” she asks. “He was just here.”

Word 1322

THANK YOU FOR CALLING

2006-05-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

“Look,” said Dr Walid Mohammed “I’ve performed more of these than you’ve had hot dinners, and not one complication.”
“Ok, ok,” said Peter Davinchy. “But I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the crap service from that restaurant, so listen: I don’t want you lot here screwing things up even more.” Dr Mohammed could not decide whether the attitude was due to the patient’s pain, anger or simply because he was an ‘A’ grade arsehole.
“I’ve never had a complication. You’d be the first,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Right,” Davinchy replied. The consultation was over. The Doctor had already unstrangulated his hernia and pushed it partly back into place. Only a pressure bandage was holding it now. At 9am tomorrow he would open him up and position and attach the internal gauze. He would need to reduce the size of the hiatus in his lower abdomen. All men had them to allow the seminal vessel from the testicles to enter the abdominal cavity. Under pressure from the intestines or trauma they can split wider and wider and coiled chunks of gut can protrude. This one had started to go on the other side as well but the Doctor would not mention this until after the op. He knew this type of man. He would be demanding a double hernia operation, a non starter. It just wasn’t done and the Doctor could easily avoid the aggravation by just not mentioning it.
“You’re fine,” said the Doctor as he walked away from the bed. Part of him knew this comment would irritate the patient and he felt better for it. But it wasn’t the doc that really galled Davinchy, it was the restaurant.
In some ways it was the best meal he’d ever had, not least as it was so out of the blue. You never expect that much from a buffet. He didn’t. It’s canteen food usually. But firstly there were waiting staff so you never had to get up, and secondly there were three chef’s in the middle of it all, knocking it up fresh. At £85 a head, it was a bargain. He’d not eaten since breakfast so come midday he was starving and had kicked off of all things with a little pasta salad just to take the edge off. The abundance of roasted strips of red pepper and cream sauce in the salad had got his juices going. His friend Ben had been raving about the lunch buffet at the Tower Art’s Hotel for weeks. ‘T and A’ Ben called it, but then he was obsessed with sex. T and A: that’s ‘tits and arse’ in case you were wondering. Peter hadn’t seen his own appendage for years, not without the help of a mirror anyway and he didn’t use the hotel in ‘that way’. For him there were other compensations and food was most definitely one of them.
The place was an Aitkins diet wet dream. Davinchy worked through grilled king prawns, steak, broiled ham with onions, a pile of lamb chops and French fries. Food till the cows came home. He’d lost count. It just kept on coming. It was a kind of paradise. There was something about the feel of rich bloody juices trickling down the side of ones face that felt delicious. His body would sweat in response, his forehead, armpits and groin getting wetter with each mouthful. He was going to thank Ben for this discovery but that was before the agony had began.
“For the love of god,” he’d said later to Philomena. “There is absolutely no point in just splashing water on it. You’re just spreading the puke all over my carpet.” She was useless. She would have to go. And now here he was needing surgical intervention because of the incompetence of that restaurant. His lawyer would sort them out. Someone’s lawyer would. His own seemed not to understand the obvious case against them. The place had almost killed him for fuck sake. The Doctor had said as much.

Peter flipped his phone open and scrolled down the menu. His phone dialled and he hopped nimbly through the options at the other end till he was through to the matre de again.
“Davinchy,” he said.
“Ah yes. Mr Davinchy. I trust you are fully recovered? Would you like to place another booking?”
“No I fucking wouldn’t! I’m in hospital because of you, you prick. And don’t just hang up on me again you arsehole?”
“Thank you for calling. Goodbye,” cut in an automated voice at the other end before the line went dead. Davinchy narrowed his eyes and smiled a little.
“This,” he thought to himself, “is a war I am going to win.” And that’s how it was. He won his case against them. After all, he was the kind of man who always got what he wanted. Always got what he deserved.

DANGER: NO FLOOR

2006-04-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

It did not kill him, but it could have done. He pushed gingerly at the door. So far as he could hear there was no one down stairs but he was worried that he might dislodge something more. The door was stuck. He didn’t want to shoulder it for fear of falling. He stepped back and looked at the door of his living room again. There was the sign, hand written and stuck in place with silver gaffer tape. He glanced about. The electricity had been switched off but not the gas. It felt arbitrary, like what had happened to his front room.
And it was his favourite room too. Ben Worthless had wished it had happened to the back room which he barely use. But that’s the kind of pointless thinking he’d been trying to get away from for the past two years: If only this was like that, then that wouldn’t be like this. What do they say?: “If my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.” Pointless thinking. He tried to look on the bright side. He was lucky it didn’t give away under him, or during Saturday’s now postponed party. The idea of them all crashing down on the family below, glasses of red wine thrown involuntarily at the walls as they dropped the three meters, made him feel sick. The shock of it and the smell of faeces and blood like when Jenny had been mown down in her new driveway in Waverly. So maybe he was lucky: ‘Fortune in misfortune.’
But it was his living room. It’s where he lived. Where he had lived. And lucky’s not what he felt right now. The walls were still painted ‘Jamboree Yellow’ from when he and Jenny had lived together. The colour just seemed too happy now. He wanted to go for the all white look with the ‘signature’ colour in the window bay, a brilliant blue, maybe ‘Retonic Blue’ by House Hue Executive. It’s the fashion: a block of bright colour to set off the white. But one needs fascist flat walls to pull off that kind of thing successfully, not textured wallpaper, which must be there to hide something nasty in the plaster finish beneath. Something too damaged to filler over.
He’d built this small platform by the window so as he could sit up there and type and gaze out up Warren street to the new hospital for inspiration. The surveyor suggested it might have been the extra weight that caused the initial joist to give. The first Ben knew was when ‘downstairs’ rushed up to say their ceiling was coming in. He never heard a thing. Apparently there was a crack like gunfire.
Everyone seemed to have gone out. They were coming back but Ben didn’t know when: Later perhaps. The engineer, ‘downstairs’, the surveyor, the builders. Suddenly, after all that activity the place had gone dead, everyone vanished, leaving him alone again and this time without the sanctuary of his front room.
“Fuck it,” he thought and gave the door a good kick just by the handle. It shot open and banged about in mid air like a loose shutter on the second storey. He edged toward the doorway and peeked his head over into what had been his room. Two thirds of the floor had dropped out emptying most of his possessions into the flat below. His upturned couch, computer, oak table, potted plants and guilty platform were all strewn below in amongst the possessions of the downstairs flat along with a mass of rubble and plaster.
Ben sniffed in the powerful smell of dust and rotting joists and then hurled himself from the ledge of his doorway head first into the room, diving forward toward the glass coffee table below like it were a far off swimming pool or a window back to the past.

Words: 652

NATTER

2006-04-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

“Yes. And without even opening the box,” said Catherine.
“It’s like a bit of Las Vegas by the sea,” said Helen.
“Bournmouth’s the entertainment hub for the whole of the West. I mean Torquey is all very well if you want to look at the same bit of art for six months but…”
“Well. You know I prefer the cinema.”
“Well yes, of course.”
“You get to take the weight off your feet for an hour or two.” Helen shifted the receiver a bit while she spoke. She was getting a crick in the neck. This had gone on and on.
“Yes,” said Cathrine.
Blue
“Although you never really know what you’re getting.”
“I just look at the blurb in the freebee and try to read between the lines. Actually that’s not true,” said Cathrine. “I just follow the herd. Not much point watching a film no one else wants to watch. You can tell them about it but they won’t really know what you’re talking about unless they’ve been there.”
“Unless they’ve seen it, yes.”
“Yes. Unless they’ve seen it. Otherwise it’s a bit of a non discussion. Like talking to yourself with someone else in the room.”
Black
“Mind you, I talk to myself.”
“Not with someone else in the room.”
“Well, no. It’s the first sign of madness isn’t it, talking to yourself?”
“First sign of madness, Helen.”
“Call me crazy.”
“Crazy Helen.”
“Thanks,” said Helen.
Blue
“Could be worse.”
“Oh I don’t know. I wouldn’t fancy it myself.”
“You don’t know till you’ve tried Helen. I think I’m cracking sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“The school is driving me nuts.”
Black
“Really?”
“The PTA.”
“Oh yes. That. Father McFearson says that most parents are bastards.”
“He Does Not!” said Helen, genuinely shocked. “Oh Cathrine really. Father McFearson’s a very nice man.”
Blue
“Oh I don’t know. Nice like Christopher you mean?”
“Of course. He’s gorgeous. Your husband I mean, not Father…” There was a long pause: the kind you can get away with face to face, sitting in the same room together. “Cathrine?” said Helen.
Black
“Laurence of Arabia was gorgeous and he was a sadist.”
“He was a masochist.” Helen corrected her. “Burning matches and all that. I saw the film. We saw it together didn’t we? You want to see something next week?”
Blue
“Helen I can’t. I’m...” There was another pause. “I’m busy,” while the tears ran down her face.
Black
“Cathrine. What’s wrong?”
Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue
Black Blue

LOVE IS AN AWKWARD CHILD

2006-04-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

Bunny pushed back in his chair and looked out through the grime to the familiar trees beyond. If it did not stop raining soon he would either shit his pants or get very wet. There was one cracked print hanging lopsided on the caravan wall. It was someone else’s broken dream. Bunny had forgotten it was there.
He had grown used to the mildewed smell of the place but its mood inveigled itself into his soul, like the proverbial rotten apple in a barrel.
Outside there was a Christmas tree, now ten foot tall. It had appeared one January from the big house as a sideboard decoration and had prospered from neglect.
Last year a couple of men had arrived while Bunny was rolling asphalt, patching roads for the English. They ran a pale wood fence all round ‘his’ field just skimming his home by a hairs breadth. But it was no more his field than was the tired green caravan. He was a guest of the family that lived in the white house on the far side of the gravel drive. He had wondered at the fencing. After a couple of days a horse box arrived for the daughter of the house, the little girls birthday present, soon to be forgotten to wander disconsolately round it’s too small plot. That first night it had butted the window of his caravan frightening the bejesus out of him. After that he stopped using the back room and slept in his chair. Bunny was a small man and the equestrian beast was massive.
You might have thought that Bunny was born in his late fifties and died there too. But he was born young and died old like so many. He had not always lived like this: alone and during the winter months, cold as stone. Before he lost his teeth, apart from the ‘Bunny’ tagged front two, he had had a full set, the complete mouth and face of a younger man, the possibility of a home, independent of his mother and room enough for love.
But love is an awkward child and once when the little girl from the big house had been playing by the bonfire outside Bunny’s door, Bunny had invited her in. The child had stood in the doorway unable to discern a place where she might be, a patch of floor or a stool, and so had remained standing there, blocking some of the late afternoon light with her small frame. Eventually she asked Bunny how he was and Bunny had replied that he was ‘fine’ and then went on to say:
“You see those blues over there?” The child had looked at his work overalls hanging on a peg on the wall. “Well,” said Bunny. “They’re mine.” She had not been able to digest this piece of information and after a while had backed out of the caravan like it had been an indecent proposition. With studied casualness she had made her way back to the big house. Bunny had sat there a full hour after that, keeping his mind a resolute blank. Just once he had asked himself what he had said so wrong but then stopped before the tumult of answers that came, rushing down the years to break him up.
For almost as long as he could remember he had looked at life through the bottom of a bottle but had found no answers there, no message, not even a cry for help. Now it had become pure habit and a Guinness could last him all evening during winter, maybe three during summer.
Life had held out more to him once, many years before the caravan, even before the roads, though he had always laboured. He came to England for work. Maybe his soul had been washed over board somewhere between Cork and Fishguard. Maybe leaving Mary behind to live amongst Protestant wealth was the greatest mistake of his life. But back then it was a gallant move to win her with his foreign money and tales of work abroad. Little Mary. Not even a photo to warm his frozen heart.
The rain beat so hard on the caravan roof now that he could not hear himself regret and that was better than a Christmas whiskey or an extra bottle of beer. Even so it was as relentless as a bad idea, and Bunny’s anus was aching.
He picked up a sheet of news and took it into the back room. Squatting over it he crapped and wrapped it to a neat parcel. He placed it in one corner. The rain thundered and he wondered why he had never thought of it before.

Words: 790

THE CANCELLED APPOINTMENT

2006-04-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

She was as jumpy as hell. Having had to wait at the salon, everything was now half an hour behind. She clipped across the parkey flooring glancing at the answerphone as she headed for the bedroom. There were two messages she’d need to check. She had an hour and forty to dress and makeup, do-able except for all the help she was getting which was bound to slow her down.
Just ten minutes behind schedule and the whole team of them bustled out to the waiting cars. Traffic permitting the delay was fully acceptable.

Later that day her hardened face looked again at the answerphone. Those two messages. Unread. She pressed play. The first was her step father wishing luck from Mozambique. The second was Carl. Her chest tightened:
“Hello Bella my love how are you? You doing okay? All nerves? Look, well of course, I’m ‘all nerves’ too. I mean, well you know. Sorry about this my love, I know I’m not supposed to see you today till the big moment and I guess you’re at the hairdressers but I know you’ll get this before hand. I know I shouldn’t speak to you on the big day. It’s bad luck and all that but, well you see, well I’m in Guernsey with my brother. I know what you’re going to say: “What the fuck are you doing in Guernsey you little shit?” And yes it’s true Jason was here, I mean there, I mean in London yesterday with me on our stag night and everything. I know I told you he wasn’t coming but he just bowled up. And then we all got drunk and we ended up moving the party from La Barca to the night train along with Trev and Jilly. I know what your going to say: “Not that bitch?” Right? But we just bumped into each other at Trevor’s house by chance, as she’s staying there and you know and then I got all panicked like I do and she said that you…”
There was a brief pause.
“Well never mind that. I mean. Oh no. Can I delete this message and start again? How do I do that? Shit!” There were a couple of beeping sounds as he punched the hash and star buttons, then lower tones as he tried one and two. “Bollocks.” He said under his breath but clearly audible from the little white box.
“What I mean is that it got late. Well not that late, as we got the last train, but… You know: We started early and the last thing I wanted was just to have you standing at the church and have no one turn up. Especially me. I mean, not no one, just not me…
“Not me turn up and the best man and Jilly. Well not her, because you wouldn’t let me invite her, didn’t you. You said “No old flames,” so no old flames it was, even though somehow both Bill and Stewart wheedled their way onto the guest list. I’ll be honest, if Jilly had turned out to be a dyke I can’t see you having allowed her along, but it was all different with Stewart and his big gay kisses and cuddles and as for Bill. I mean what’s that all about Bella? When was he ever a photographer? No way did he have to do the photos. I mean, he’s shit and my dad’s a pro. What’s wrong with my dad for fuck sake. He wanted to do it. No. Had to be hunky Bill. Bella. Anyhow, that’s not the point. I’m too far away and me and Jilly…”
She flung her forefinger out and stabbed at the delete. “Bleeep,” said the machine. One bleat sounding much like the other. She stood in the middle of her hallway dressed like a complete fucking fool and started to think about all the other ways she could have blown sixteen grand.

TRUCE

2006-02-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Sad to say, I never had a friend till I went to school and Martin. There were my two older brothers but no friends at the family nursery. Maybe the racial bar did it. Perhaps being a son of the owner was the cause. Or maybe just because I was shy. But once at school opportunities slowly grew as I settled in and it became my life and my primary society. Richard LeFevre was a good friend and alley but he came later.

No: I couldn’t class him as my first ever friend. Richard came as part of a pair: Richard and Martin. Martin and Richard: the two demon cartoonists. Or was that Martin and Duncan? Most of the early seventies is lost now to holes in my brain, but I guess I must have got to know Richard through Martin. That would be it.

After Martin and me had that falling out over love, Richard endured, almost to the very end of my school days, the last of the good life. We lived in the same small village and he was an only child. We were a marriage of convenience in a way.

As a young teenager he worked in a pub, before opening time. I’d hang around with him, maybe help a little. The strong smell of stale beer grips my senses even now, ushering up those long term memories again. That’s real beer. Not gay beer.

But back to Martin. One time he found himself invited back to my parent’s home in London and my weekend residence away from school. I’d been to his in Pinner by then. His room was a sea of wealth and destruction, broken and unbroken toys all jumbled up together obliterating his bedroom floor. In London, toys were in shorter supply but we had a dressing up box. Theatrical parents I suppose. Now all the kids have them. They have everything.

I still remember Martin standing in the windowless corridor between our bedrooms at the very attic of the house, dressed as a wench, his blond hair resting on the shoulders of his blue serving maids dress. He might have been nine or so, I can’t remember. But however you looked at him he had the face of a boy. Not good looking. Just ordinary, apart, that is, from those large, dark, conversational eyebrows.

And to think we fell out over love. On the Saturday evening I locked the door to my room and jumped into bed with him. He didn’t seem to mind. It seemed to me to be an exciting thing to do at the time. I just jumped into bed with him. That was all. I never knew why my mother was so furious at being barred entrance to the room. Maybe she knew more than I did, even back then. It just seemed like an exciting thing to do.

One day in school Martin announced to me with hyper solemn eyebrows that he had news, and come play time we would have to talk. Well it was love. Her name was Caroline. She was in our class. I’d barely clocked her before, but soon I was in love with her too. I didn’t want to miss out on the being in love thing, even though I had and I wasn’t. I didn’t get anywhere with her either. We were just kids playing after all but she soured it, or rather I did. And that was that. That was that.

Years later, in our early teens the Caroline affair and I suppose more so the bed hopping event, had their corollary, with fairly good natured poof jibes coming from the Martin/Duncan axis.

And then finally I remember Martin asking me about my first real girlfriend, Francesca, with a kind of wonder in his voice, like I’d actually got me one. The jibes were never spoken again like they’d never been spoken before. Like they had never been. And that was that: after seven years, a truce. But that’s all it was. All it ever was.

WORDS: 679

NATTER

2006-02-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

“Yes. And without even opening the box.” Said Catherine.
“It’s like a bit of Las Vegas by the sea.” Said Helen.
“Bournmouth’s the entertainment hub for the whole of the West. I mean Torquey is all very well if you want to look at the same bit of art for six months but…”
“Well. You know I prefer the cinema.”
“Well yes, of course.”
“You get to take the weight off your feet for an hour or two.” Helen shifted the receiver a bit while she spoke. She was getting a crick in the neck. This had gone on and on.
“Yes.” Said Cathrine.
Blue
“Although you never really know what you’re getting.”
“I just look at the blurb in the freebee and try to read between the lines. Actually that’s not true. I just follow the herd. Not much point watching a film no one else wants to watch. You can tell them about it but they won’t really know what you’re talking about unless they’ve been there.”
“Unless they’ve seen it, yes.”
“Yes. Unless they’ve seen it. Otherwise it’s a bit of a non discussion. Like talking to yourself with someone else in the room.”
Black
“Mind you, I talk to myself.”
“Not with someone else in the room.”
“Well, no. It’s the first sign of madness isn’t it, talking to yourself?”
“First sign of madness, Helen.”
“Call me crazy.”
“Crazy Helen.”
“Thanks.” Said Helen.
Blue
“Could be worse.”
“Oh I don’t know. I wouldn’t fancy it myself.”
“You don’t know till you’ve tried Helen. I think I’m cracking sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“The school is driving me nuts.”
Black
“Really?”
“The PTA.”
“Oh yes. That. Father McFearson says that most parents are bastards.”
“He Does Not!” Said Helen, genuinely shocked. “Oh Cathrine really. Father McFearson’s a very nice man.
Blue
“Oh I don’t know. Nice like Christopher you mean?”
“Of course. He’s gorgeous. Your husband I mean, not Father…” There was a long pause: the kind you can get away with face to face, sitting in the same room together. “Cathrine?” Said Helen.
Black
“Laurence of Arabia was gorgeous and he was a sadist.”
“He was a masochist.” Helen corrected her. “Burning matches and all that. I saw the film. We saw it together didn’t we? You want to see something next week?”
Blue
“Helen I can’t. I’m...” There was another pause. “I’m busy.” While the tears ran down her face.
Black
“Cathrine. What’s wrong?”
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue
Black
Blue

LIFE IS VALUELESS

2006-02-06T23:45:00.000-08:00

“And now for yesterday’s weather forecast for London. The day will begin clear, becoming cloudy during the early part of the afternoon. Temperatures will kick off around 2C and increase marginally to about 3C by late afternoon. There will be an overnight zero.”
Thomas clicked off the radio. For years he had accepted the habit of News forever telling him what was about to happen (today the Prime Minister will deliver a speech to the CBI in which he will say… etc.) but “Yesterday’s Weather” struck him as completely pointless. Not only that, despite its claim to be “always on the money” sponsored as it was by PaddyPower, it was not in fact always on the money. Far from it. A case in point: yesterday morning had been frosty. Surely there should have been mention of it. They most definitely should not have started the day at 2C. When Thomas had whinged to Greg about the lack of frost in the forecast, his oldest friend had shouted at him: “Who the fuck cares?” But if no one cared then where would the world be? It was the principle of the thing. That’s how Thomas had seen it.
Then there was “How Do You Feel Right Now?” where opinionistas would tell the nation how to react to the latest news, news that on occasion had not as yet happened. The little girl trapped up a tree over night by her snagged pony tale we were to feel immense sympathy and compassion for, although we were to feel anger at her mother, possibly because she was not married and also because she was out buying £12 worth of lottery tickets on the same day that the incident occurred. We were also to find the tale slightly and naughtily amusing even though the child in question had come out of it with frostbite.
Thomas wondered sometimes if the media was intentionally playing with his mind. Didn’t KFC offer some of their food in a family sized bucket? Wasn’t a bucket something you vomited into? Now we are being asked to eat from one. And then there was McDonalds: Being market leaders they had been serving burgers and fries in airline sick bags for years.
Thomas knew better than most that the only way to break even in business was to sell something costing almost nothing at an eye blistering price. He had once tried to run a café himself and failed. Shops like Poundland, The 99 Pence Shop and in Birmingham The 98 Pence Shop (going for the competitive edge) were embarrassing and eye opening exceptions to the rule. And yet in a way they were not exceptions. As far as Thomas was concerned they were as confusing as the bottle of water costing 80 pence when it was almost free from a tap. Price and value seemed to bare little relation to one another any more. Perhaps, he conjectured, they never had. And yet here he was attempting pathetically to ascribe value to yesterdays weather, surely a worthless commodity.
Finally and after much consideration Thomas came up with a foolproof plan. He managed to get himself prescribed an antipsychotic. It could have been any number of drugs but his Doctor gave him the cheapest generic phenothiazine on the market. Thomas realised that after the usual running in period, and once production of dopamine2 had been blocked in his brain, the world would either look just as insane as it had always done, in which case he would be sane, or it would look normal, in which case he would not be.
Too late for him he realised that either way it was going to be ugly.

Words: 611

HOME IS AN EMPTY HOUSE

2006-01-25T00:45:00.000-08:00

I never even saw him leave. He had been told to go and I never knew why. Not for certain anyway. It left a vacuum in the house and in my life. But no one asked me, a mere child, what I thought then of the expulsion.

Albert Spear was big in a way my father was not. He stayed in a small room, sharing its landing with the cupboard of death. Occasionally as children we would dare to clamber into its confines, in amongst the broken picnic table and mildewed tent and wait for the counting to stop. Otherwise it was just a landing, a necessary staging post on ones journey from the second to third floor where our attic bedrooms were.

Childhood games, stories read by my grandmother and adult tension, in a house without Television or Radio: These were the things of my childhood as a young boy in the 1960’s. And then one day there was Albert, bearded, that great stomach under those shapeless jumpers and the powerful Jewish drawl, foreign as Israel. I had no idea where he came from. At six years old I only knew he was from a different place where people were big and gentle, somehow blown in by the wind, a Mary Poppins from the world of giants.

It was only years later that I realised the incongruity of the name. But then I suppose he was born before the horror. My family was pockmarked and lame and from time to time folks would come to live in the gaps and craters of our home: In amongst the conflict, witnesses who never spoke of it. Not to me at least.

One day, early on, Albert caught me on the stair. He beckoned to me. Though he was huge, with the growl of a bear, I wasn’t frightened of him. And me, so timid. I was making my way downstairs and he stopped me on the landing.

“Come in.” He said conspiratorially. “Let me show you something.” He took a small disk from a paper sleeve and fiddled it over the awkward spindle of his gramophone. Penny Lane was in my heart and in my ears for the first time. And from that point on I would go to his room whenever I could and enter another world. His world. The world out there, separate from the family.

What had seemed so strange at first: this man, his gramophone; slowly started its journey to normality in my heart and somewhere on that path it met my home life, with its disjointed elders, coming the other way. I found myself looking at my father, my mother, my grandmother and wondering who they were, if perhaps Albert was my real father. Maybe he was the emotional normality that all children crave without knowing it.

One day I announced to the dinner table repeating something I had heard.

“I hate Jews.” And Albert in his big, soft, gravely voice said.

“I am a Jew.” And I was mortified. And I said.

“But I love you Albert.” Which I had never even said to my father. And he had said.

“And I love you.” And after that I never saw him again. The vacuum he had filled, he left behind him. And that September I was sent away to school.

Words: 562

A MARRIED MAN

2006-01-25T00:42:00.000-08:00

I’m Lucy Turnblatt, 43, and I’ve been dating a married man of 30.

It’s not as easy to fill the empty spaces in a mature orchard as one may suppose. Places where trees have fallen. You plant a sapling and it struggles, poor thing. It battles against the lack of light, it fights for nutrition and water, hungrily taken by the deeper roots of the other, older trees. Leave it too long and the canopy starts to close over. Not fully of course, but enough to turn yellow her poor drooping leaves.

Well. My much beloved apple orchard is a metaphor. And when Martin went out of my life, after more years than I care to remember. Well… I won’t talk about that. Except to say that its time to start plugging that gap before life fills out around the empty space, squeezing it: making it impossible to fill with a significant other.

I met Gabriel before Christmas. It was a children’s party. I was there with mine, and he was there with his. I promised him over for a dinner party in the New Year while we meddled with our mobiles.

And so there we are, sitting on my sofa having the first drink of the evening and I’ve already commented on his flattering t-shirt. It struck me that flirting with a married man could do no harm. I have to keep my hand in. Imagining myself attractive. Roll it around a bit. Strike up a “vibe” (is that what they call it?), with someone a barely know. It’s important. So. I chastise him for dressing quite so sexy and he doesn’t react. But that was earlier in the kitchen while I struggled with my potato gratin, him giving good advice from the side of the ring.

So there we are on the sofa and I mention his wife. I can’t for the life of me recall what I said exactly: how long have you been living with one another or it’s great to see a couple that can keep it together. Well, anyway. He sort of jumps back in his seat, so to speak and says:

“We don’t live together. We’re getting a divorce.” And you know what? Literally there his a flood of blood to my groin. Who could have thought the word “divorce” could be such an aphrodisiac? That’s never happened before and no mistake. Lord! The evening fairly picked up after that I must say.

Anyway, that was months ago and since then we’ve been in this most agreeable sort of limbo. Until last night when we are lounging on my day bed again with the obligatory glass of red wine staining the communal lips when he says all out of the blue.

“I’ve some bad news.” And I think immediately that he’s decided to go back to Puerto Rico.

“Yes?” I say.

“I’ve fallen in love.” He says and I think to myself: Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. But I suppose I hide it quite well. And I say.

“Don’t think I’m not sorry. Maybe it had to happen sometime. I just hope I can still see you.” And he says.

“Of course.” And I say.

“Who is she?” and he says.

“You.”

Well my first reaction is to… I just think that he’s playing with me. But then all at once:

“I know you’re not looking for a relationship at the moment Lucy. I know it’s not what you want. Martin is still so much a part of your life. But I can’t help myself. I’ve been falling for you ever since we first met.”

I look at him, trying to keep my gaze steady and all I can think is: “Fuck Martin. Who gives a fuck about him.” But I figure this could come across as a bit whorish. But it’s how I feel.

“I can’t think of a better person for you to have fallen for.” I say measuring my words. “You know I’m in love with you Gabriel, surely you do?” And he just looks at me and I swear that all at once he starts to cry. I lean over and hold him, wondering what exactly is going on and praying that the sex, which we haven’t actually had yet, will be as good as the courtship.

And then I think to myself, “why are you crying?”
Martin never would have cracked up like that. And that’s when it came to me, along with tears of my own. It’s not that the break in the trees is too small to allow new life. No. It’s too big to be filled with a mere sapling like this.

Words: 762

WHAT MEETS WHAT

2005-12-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

“I turn into my heart. I look into it, trying to see myself. Or is it perhaps to see you in me. I try to understand myself. Understand why you abandoned me as you did. Now I can see you from afar off. Far out in the distance. There you are. A tiny figure, like a model from a toy army, gazing back at me. Stock still. Solid. Unmoving and unmoved. Caste in painted tin. Brittle as toffee.”

Patricia was lonely now. More lonely than she had been since her years at boarding school, those years in Broadstairs during the second world war. She had promised herself back then that once she was grown she would break free from the pain of others: from her mother. Her silent father. Mrs Hesselmire. Veronica, her best friend.

But it was all coming back to greet her now at the other end. A long way off.

“Charlie.” She had told him on his last visit. “You were my sweetheart. We fell for each other long before no one else would have us. When we were firm, ripe for eating, desirable.” He had looked at her impassively as though he had already made up his mind. “I remember the first time you touched me Charlie.” She had continued regardless. “I don’t mean like that.” She corrected herself just in case he was thinking of that first night in his digs. “Not felt me. But just touched me. You… Well, all at once you became enthused by something you were saying and like a girl put your hand on mine for a second to push home the point, to express yourself more forcefully. Like a girl.” He shifted slightly, readjusting his bulk on the red plastic chair. “My heart leaped just a little, partly from excitement and partly from dismay.” She remembered it all as though it were almost now. She looked out the window, seeing it all again. “It was only then that I realised my feelings for you. It was only when I feared you might be one of those that I recognised the feelings I possessed in my heart.”

The room was cheap and nasty and in need of repair. The staff wore civvies so one could not easily tell them from the patients. There was this though: they would follow those who suffered from certain psychoses ceaselessly about to insure no self harm. They would peer down through small viewing windows to check that those who felt the unending pain of paranoia would not become so distraught as to require further medication. One of the chairs was torn and some of its foam filling had been picked away, piece by piece. Another had an unfortunate stain.

“Hold your hand up to me my love.” She had requested. His large hands remained where they were but it was no matter. “No.” She continued unconcerned. “See there? There is no glow. No halo. You are not one of those chosen ones.” Charlie started to think about how best to make his exit. “You are not one of the special people I meet sometimes on the streets. Like the cobbler near the corner of Chestnut Grove. Special beings. Agents of God in their own way. But I loved you none the less, despite your weaknesses. Despite your arrogance, stupidity and violence. I loved you because you were handsome and I was beautiful back then. And that is what people did, and still do I suppose. Pointlessly. Without shame”

He had taken that last insult as his queue to leave and eased himself slowly to his feet.

She passed her hand idly over an ashtray and watched as the dust responded to her magnetic forces. They seemed strong in her right now. She lifted her palm and the security door on the other side of the room clicked open in response. Someone entered. Casually she got up and walked across the room. Eyes from every corner watched but she focused her mind and their thoughts turned away from her. She became almost invisible. Her departure went by unnoticed. She stepped through the door, down the stairs and out into the open air below.

Gower Street was empty a minute, waiting for the lights to change at the Euston Square end. Patricia stood there patiently waiting for the next onslaught to come.

Words 729

LETTER TO AMERICA [draft]

2005-12-04T00:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Frank

I must admit that the first I knew about the coup was when Shaun Rafferty was cut off in mid stream to be replaced by the Brandenburg Concerto. I naturally supposed it to be one of their occasional ISDN line hitches which carries BBC Radio 3 outside broadcasts. For all I knew it carried live studio broadcasts as well.

Need I even say I had no idea that the pleasant strains of Handel wafting through my living room, were coming from a secret broadcast centre somewhere under the Chiltern Hills. While I sipped on some remicrowaved mulled wine left over from a party the Saturday before, crack SAS troupes were attempting to secure the transmitters for the previous Government.

To be brief, the philosophy had always been that so long as the great unwashed never got to know about it, all was not lost. It turns out that this was the fourth attempted coup against the elected British Government since 1976. And now, the first successful one.

Get one thing clear: up till now, or yesterday, this was so secret as to be well beyond top secret. The information was not classified as such, as it was never actually written down. Whenever such events occurred a brief outline was formulated of what had occurred and what agreements had been reached to pacify the situation. This ‘document’ was then committed to memory by the essential players. All others were forbidden, potentially on pain of death, to speak of the affair again.

Away with all that however: it is history. Now all this information has passed into the public domain. We have gone from being a constitutional monarchy without constitution, to a constitutional monarchy with one. At least that is the plan. Several different constitutions are being drafted even as I type which we will get to vote on within the next two months.

Before almost anything else and with immediate effect we already have our first constitutional right and that is a far reaching Complete Freedom of Information Act which was passed earlier today. The Complete Personal Freedom Act is also to be passed early tomorrow. That will strike the death knell for all those illegal drug pushers and pimps. Organised crime will not like this at all, especially as the death penalty is to be reintroduced for heading up mafia style organisations.

Being a little different than before, in future the Executive will be appointed by a slightly expanded Privy Council, which will continue to advise the Queen as normal. The House of Commons will be elected by the people, as it is now and continue to act as a barometer of public opinion. The Prime Minister will have a fixed eight year term to coincide or slightly lag behind your American Presidency and naturally will be appointed by the Privy Council. From now on, all elections will be by proportional representation. The House of Lords is to go. Titles however will be bestowed by the queen in the usual manner. Carpet knights will abound.

Shot in the arm for the Brits, what! Now that there is complete freedom of information it is naturally more or less impossible to claim that something is not clear or fully out in the open. Therefore what I’m about to say is kind of mad and purely due to my own muddleheadedness, but though I’ve switched channels and been glued to BBC Radio 4 for the past day and a half, I’m still not clear who was behind the coup. I may need to metaphorically scrub this last para in the next day or two as the Complete Freedom of Information Act comes fully into force, so do commit to memory.

Save for a few doubters I think most people feel this is a step forward. Very much hoping to see you in person alive and well in the very near future.

Me and all the family are well. All my love and warmest thoughts.

Nick.

P.S. Had a bit of a code but it’s clearing up now. I’m taking ‘Lemsip’ capsules which are the ‘first word’ in cold cures.

***

THE LATE-NIGHT SHOPPER by Oliver Maxey

2005-11-30T07:25:00.000-08:00

As the sliding doors rolled back and he crossed the threshold of the supermarket, the darkness and stillness of the night gave way to the sterile glare of the lights and insipid muzak. He picked up a basket and wandered past the newspaper racks as slowly as he could without attracting attention.

Good news: he wasn’t on the front page, at least.

He scuttled past the fruit and veg, scooping up a fistful of bananas. An old Asian lady unloading giant bags of potatoes onto the display looked round at him lazily and he glanced the other way, then felt compelled to follow his gaze towards the fresh herbs.

He looked at his list again – it seemed a random jumble of letters, so he screwed it up and resolved to pick up what he needed from memory: just the components of a sandwich, some crisps – and some razors and shaving cream. He had to have a shave or it would be obvious he’d been sleeping rough. Plus a beer or two – anything that would help calm his nerves.

A pimply teenager pushing a trolley laden with dog food nudged past him, clipping his ankle. “Sorry mate,” the youth muttered. He mumbled something back, without looking. Don’t make a scene, he told himself.

To make things more difficult, he’d never been in this store before. Asking for help was impossible in the circumstances, so he just had to follow his instincts: the marge would be near the milk, the cheese near the marge, the ham a short hop from the cheese.
His shopping done, he headed for the tills. A full-figured older lady was sitting at a till with no queue, so he half-ran towards her, then stopped himself and slowed to a walk.

As his purchases rolled along the conveyor belt, he picked up a copy of the Radio Times to thumb through; anything to avoid making conversation. All the while, his ears were tuned in to the sound of his buys beeping through. But then a new noise registered. A deeper noise. A bad noise. The razors weren’t scanning. The cashier put her mouth towards her intercom and made an announcement to the whole store.

“Geoff, can we get a price check on Wilkinson Sword, 10-blade pack?” His heart almost stopped as they waited for assistance. The cashier repeated her call over the tannoy before a tiny manager eventually appeared.

“That one’ll be £7.89, love,” he said. “You nearly clocking off now?”

“Chance’d be a fine thing,” she chuckled back. “Another two hours yet.” For god’s sake do your talking in the staff room, he thought. Not here. Geoff smiled.

“Oh well, nearly the weekend, eh?” He strolled leisurely back into the store, in the direction of the warehouse.

The cashier handed over the change.

“Have a good night dear,” she said. He nodded without speaking or meeting her gaze, and walked as briskly as possible towards the sliding doors. Once outside, he sucked in the cold night air like a newborn baby, then stopped for a second.

“Sod it,” he thought: “I didn’t use my Nectar card.”

SEEKS DISSIMILAR by E J Hunter

2005-11-28T23:54:00.000-08:00

After Bobby-Jay left me, us, for kinda like, the eighth time, I guessed as how it was ‘bout right that I stood on my own feet. He didn’ love me. I can see that now. I was jus’ a place to lay his head, if yous know what I mean, before he hit the road agin. It weren’t always like that though…

It was so romantic when we first met. Like something outta one them silly films. He had this way of making me feel so damn…special. There was a time when he had me eatin’ out of his hand. Damn those baby blues, hey girls?! You know the kin’. Doncha? You’d’ve done the same as me, wouldn’t ya?! I knows it!

You see, this is how it went, I work tables at the Stetson Bar’n’Grill, and on Friday nights we got ourselves a music night. Bobby-Jay was playin’ that slide guitar o’ his, and oh my gosh, honestly I ain’t been nearer to tears, but it was so beautiful. He played like an angel I tell you. An’ the night that he first played, that we first saw each other, tequila sunrises were on special. And he goes right on and buys me a pitcher, jus’ for me. And he tol’ me I could keep the change an’ all. Now he didn’t have to do that did he? He musta loved me a little bit. Then.

But that was way back when. An now he’s gone. I guess that part of me hopes that this time it’s for good. He can go off an play honky tonk and sing about all them broken hearts for someone else.

He ain’t got the balls to be in love. Not properly. An’ I did love him, I really did. And that’s why he ran. He jus’ couldn’t handle it. He weren’t no real man I tells you!

I got round to thinking that maybe, me an BJ Junior and baby are better off alone. Well maybe not totally alone, but without him. Maybe.

I really thought as how I could do it all on my own. And for a while it worked…you see, after he stomped off this last time, when he found out that Tyler was on the way and he made out like that weren’t nothing to do with him, I decided that I had had enough of men. I mean they weren’t nothing but trouble. I mean I knows I always liked them a bit rough and ready, but there were times when Bobby-Jay was just that little bit too rough.

He never meant it though you unnerstand. It was just something about us together, I guess. It was like I jus’ kinda managed to rub him up the wrong way someways. I mean he said I weren’t no angel either.

But my baby boys, now, they, they are angels. I loves them to tiny little itty pieces, and I knows that they love me too. I know that some people think that they’s a handful, and they give me back chat sometimes, but they good boys. An’ they love their Mama. They love me back as much as I love them.

Which is all I ever wanted from anyone. Which don’t seem like too much to ask. Although sometimes it feels like I is asking God for too much. Least that’s the way it feels.

Here’s the thang, I thought I might try me one of them lonely hearts things. Coz you sees, sometimes I do get lonely. I need some adult time, and I don’t never seem to get that. At home it’s all about the babies and then at the bar the men there are just as bad as the babies. If not worse! So, I do get lonesome. Listen to me! I sound as sad as one of Bobby-Jay’s songs!

So I’ve written this here, but maybe I needs some help with it – what do you think? I think it sounds like me and I am clear about what I’m asking for. I just want to makes sure it sounds right. That I still sound like a lady, and don’t come across as desperate as all get out!

I know there ain’t no shame in it, I just don’t seem to be able to meet the right sort at the moment. But I’m hoping that’ll change right?.

Mama said that I would be better off with one of them agencies, but that feels a bit cheap to me, and this way I get to chose proper before I go and commit to a date or anything.

So here it is: ‘Still pretty at 25, brunette, G.S.O.H.’ (that’s good sense of humour you know – Mama always said that one of my good points was how I could laugh it off, even when life was getting’ tricky and Bobby-Jay was bein’ spiteful an all. So that’s why I’ve included that.) I’ve also put that I’m solvent…well between my tips and what lil’ alimony comes in to the house, we gets by – an’ I don’t want people thinking that I’m a gol’ digger. No sir! I’m an independent woman, jus’ like Beyonce says.

Sorry, I was reading for you all, I’ll start agin: ‘Still pretty at 25, brunette, G.S.O.H. solvent woman seeks rough diamon’ for fun, romance ’n’ maybe more.’

I think that’s OK, I think that it is important that they is a diamond, but I ain’t no snob. My daddy was a honest hard workin’ truck driver, and he was a still a good man. I mean, at least he waited until we was all grown up until he ran off with his fancy woman.

That’s what I mean by diamond. A real man, jus’ like my Daddy. Sometimes I don’t think it hurts to be a little ol’ fashioned.

And I was gonna say about the boys, but it cost more if you went over 20 words.

I’ll tell them about them, if it looks like it’s going someplace. But I can tell you now, that if they are mean to my babies, then they can jus’ git! Straight off the bat! I ain’t gonna be on no Jerry Springer ‘It’s me or your chillern’ like my Aunt Leslee, no way!

We a whole package.

I think that says enough. Don’t you? I mean it’s got all the important stuff – what I look like, how old I am and that I got my own money.

Wish me luck, I’m goin’ to the office to file it right away. I’s got a good feeling about this.

POLES APART Draft

2005-11-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

He gazed blankly out the window. A young couple were walking down the street, their big night out having turned from sweet to sour.

The Essex Road looked no better from the number 73 bus than it did from the 495. The bendiness held no especial novelty. He’d been riding the trams for years in Warsaw. Sure the double decker had something. He would go upstairs just to reassure himself that the drab petticoats of London really were more dismal one story up than at street level.

Not true of the 205 though. He took the 205 to Liverpool street and had to concede the view from upstairs was good: the occasional gargoyle and fancy piece of Victorian brick work. And all that glass real estate. In Warsaw the skyline was still dominated by the Birthday Cake despite the explosion of building since 1989. Even the Marriott could not compete with that bizarre Palace of Culture. So much had happened in Poland since the safety of the Iron Curtain had been torn away.

Suddenly the Saturday night couple caught his eye again. The guy had just hurled a huge bunch of flowers down on the pavement. Dmitri Polanski noted wryly that he kept a firm grip on the magnum of Champagne. The bus jolted forward.

“Good,” he thought to himself in his mother tongue. “I get to watch a little.” This was no silent conflict. Nevertheless he could hear nothing above the constant irritability of the streets. They were obviously giving it some though. He could tell by the gesticulations and the grotesquely opened mouths.

A couple of elderly females in front of him were discussing the merits or otherwise of dried apricots. Their voices seemed to synchronise with the action outside. Were you supposed to soak dried apricots and if so why bother buying them. Why not just get fresh ones. Or tinned ones. No: tinned ones tasted completely different. Dmitri imagined it. He concentrated as he peered through the pane. Yes: these young English lovers were having a massive and destructive public altercation over apricots.

He had been in London only two weeks but already identified with the broken and tired population. Like communism before, capitalism seemed intent on snuffing out the mortal flame, turning our natural colour to a monochrome, these poor irreligious folk struggling with their handbags and glad rags. And yet the old regime had been good to him. He had worked, had a home, food on the table, security, a family. Life was simple back then. He drove a tram, and it simply followed the tracks. Not like these bendy buses.

Unlike Britain, Poland had become indominatable in the face of invasion and conquest. The Poles had learned to survive the winds of change, however sadistic and amoral. Not so the British. They were without inoculation and had embraced brash North American consumerism as though it would not kill them all, given time. When the winner takes all, almost everyone looses. To Dmitri, the people on the Essex Road did not look like winners.

The Polish knew an invasion when they saw one and would use it to their advantage if they could; steel themselves against the onslaught. They might even try to stand up to it like they did with the Nazis. They would get the great capitalistic beast and force it to work for them. He, Dmitri Polanski, was a case in point. He was part of a new vanguard now. Part of the great Diaspora that was flowing from the East. The boot was on the other foot and if need be they would bring it down hard on the drowning face of this withered Empyreal State. It made him laugh in a dry unamused kind of way.

Once, the World Service had broadcast a program on emigration. Somehow the transmission had got to Posnan. Even as a child in the 1960’s, the young Dmitri nurtured hopes of lifting the iron curtain sufficiently to slip to the West and more particularly, England. Even then he had the beginnings of an intense anglophilia. He had listened, enthralled. A woman from Somalia had come to the UK in the 1950’s. She had thought the huge signs saying “Take Courage” were Government hoardings, designed to raise the spirits of a beleaguered and battered post war nation. Dmitri wondered if the British Government might consider their own public information campaign now: massive posters proclaiming “Do Not Despair”. He pondered on it a moment. Do not despair. Looking at this London now before him he wondered why one should not despair. Why not? The other happy couple in Downing Street would have to come up with an answer to that one first.

The bus jolted again and Dmitri thought of all those compatriots who could drive this bus so much better if only they were recruited. If British Rail could do it in the West Indies why not Transport for London in Eastern Europe. The whole system could be run, owned and staffed by Poles. How much more pleasant the transit systems could be with a little piped folk music to keep a smile on the face, a song in the heart. He had sought a job but his English was still too shaky.

He was up parallel with the feuding couple again. The boyfriend was searching for something, probably cigarettes, and absently handed the magnum to his girlfriend. She grasped it by the neck. In a split moment she had brought it smashing down, shards and fizzing fluid making a surprisingly large black stain on the pavement in front of them. He could hear the explosion. The couple in front of him stopped talking and looked out the window.

For a moment the world stood still, the bus stood still and everyone stopped and stared. Now they had nothing. A clock ticked inside Dmitri’s head.

And then the moment passed. The great big city machine went grinding on. Lover boy seemed at a loss to know what to do and after another moment of incredulity marched off full pelt ahead. Dmitri could just hear the words: “ you fucking bitch” ringing out in amongst the ceaseless city racket.

“Loud.” He thought.

For a moment the woman looked up the street after her diminishing boyfriend and then slowly turned. As she did her eyes locked with Dmiti’s as he stared, gormless from the sealed window. The two of them were no more than three metres apart. He raised his eyebrows involuntarily. She blinked and his blood ran cold. But then she was off, back the way she had come. She had a mission. For a moment the Pole hesitated and then got to his feet. The couple in front of him said something about ‘young love’ and the ‘happy couple’ as he made his way quickly to the back of the bus. He peered out the rear window. Sure enough, there she was, picking up that big bouquet discarded there on the street.

With a growing smile he found himself another seat.

“Good for you,” he thought to himself sweetly. “That’s good for you.”

Words: 1039

FLOOD LINE

2005-11-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

Even in sleep I could not escape.

“Does he know what he’s doing?” Hillary must have asked. The brilliance of the ice blue sky crackled out a warning to us both. This was the Swiss Alps where Opthalmist’s are an invention for city dwellers in their dark corners and shaded walls.

Our cab may have been lost. Ahead of us we saw once again the gap in the narrow hillside road where the raging brook had torn away the tiny bridge. This time banks of snow had appeared. The road was ungritted and compacted white. Insanely the car did not stop but spun forward for a second attempt at the leap.

Back then even we were young and happy, teenagers with best part of life still to come, could we but survive this landslide. I closed my eyes. I would not watch, but clung to the nasty plastic fittings.
All at once the dreams viewpoint switched. I could see the car from outside, its front wheels clear of the gap, its back spinning in the void, slowly upon slow it loosing faith, eking back toward the hysterical waters falling.

I fumbled for the door latch and leaped clear, the open door waving a final farewell as the vehicle turned sideways and vanished from sight.

“Hillary!” I must have cried. And then again, the sound of my own voice and the phone ringing slowly waking me from that guilt soaked nightmare. It was dark. The future did not exist. My eyes would stay closed.

The phone was louder now. The powerful odour of rotting vegetables and sewage hit me like a worse dream than the one I was just waking from. I was in bed. I reached out, feeling for the phone and eventually drew the receiver to me as it might be a beloved child or hope of salvation from the wretchedness of my remorse.

“Barry?” Came a voice from three thousand miles.

“Ah… yes?” I replied, trying to find myself. Playing for time.

“You ok?” I did not understand the question but gave the stock response.

“Yes, yes. Er…?” I was hoping for a clue to draw me from my limbo consciousness.

“It’s Bill.”

“Bill. Ah yes. American Bill.” It was Bill from New York. Mr Ground Zero himself.

“Yes.” He said.

“Father Bill.” I confirmed. The real world was starting to coalesce around me, yet it was formed of putrid shrouds seemingly less real than my sleeping self. I said nothing. My mind was somewhere out there still, falling hopelessly to my death. Clinging to her, white blind and turning. Or worse still. Alive in sleep, as in life. Her: gone.

“Yes…” He continued after a moment. “I was just calling to see if you were ok. The lines have been down.” Somehow BT must have got the system working again. I had not spoken to a soul in days.

I remembered calling Bill during 9/11, the phone announcing that due to a storm there were no lines into New York. I wondered what the world had been told now, given that London was under siege.

“Are you ok?” I diverted.

“Yes I… I was ringing to find out if you were all right. Did you get caught in it?” Suddenly this new world flashed back, punching me in the forehead like some rules free boxer. The phone tremored in my hand.

“We are up to our eyeballs in shit.” I offered slowly. “Every time the tide goes out it leaves a nightmare behind.” Yes, I thought, worse than that. “I didn’t realise that water could cover so many sins.” I was reorientating myself fast now. “hold on.” I said. “You know it’s early.”
I fumbled blindly for the lighter and lit the bedside candle. I twisted my neck to get a better look at the clock.

“It’s three in the morning.” I said without thinking.

“Sorry.” He replied. I had smoked the last of the blow so as to sleep and now I had been woken at the brooding hour. I did not hide my irritation even while denying it.

“No, no. That’s fine.” I lied. “That’s good.” I dredged back to his earlier question. “I’m fine.” I replied. “I was deep in.”

“Were you caught in the flood?” He asked urgently.

“No. I mean I was deep in sleep. Dreaming.” My mind was blank all at once.

“I should let you go.” Bill said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know that you were alive. I’m glad you weren’t caught in it.”

“What?” I responded. On this one fact I was clear. “No, I was… Oh my god yes. I was up to my eyes and ears.”

“Oh Lord no!” He exclaimed. There was genuine dread in his voice and I felt the fear rushing at me. It was coming at me.

“Yes.” My voice had that wobble. I imagined myself all at once as an old woman: my grandmother, panicked by change, staring out from her wheelchair at me. I ploughed on. “I’d gone down to see if there would be a breech on the North bank. I never imagined things could get so bad so quick.” The words were starting to tumble out. “I ended up stuck in a Pub.” The image flashed before me. “Oh dear!” I said weakly. “Yes.” I tried to push myself off topic. “As if we hadn’t known for years that this was coming.” Bill said nothing. After a moment I began to wonder if he’d been cut off. I hoped he had, just to stop the flood.

“Barry?” He said. No. He was still there.

“Yes, yes. Don’t mind me.” I said as a kind of filler. Bill struck out tentatively. He was always a stickler for facts.

“I didn’t think they were fully aware.”

“What the fuck?” I responded. It sprung out of me like a gob of vomit. “Are you kidding me? We’ve been preparing for this since the ‘70’s. The 1770’s for the love of god! I cannot believe those evil bastards.”

I had a strong urge to take a leek. I had a bucket wedged in the toilet bowl. I’d have to get out of this flat soon. It was my ex-wife, Hillary or cholera. Suddenly my waking dream hit me again. Living amongst sewage meant you never had to smell your own shit. A minute later, having pissed, I was on a roll. I told him about our catch 22:

Without dire warnings of what was coming, the finances could never be raised from the City to fortify us against the inevitable flooding of London. But if we had made those dire warnings, the City itself could have crashed, its confidence gone, being so close to the flood zone. I ranted on, thankful to be almost blaming someone else for the situation. Bill listened. After a while I came up for air.

“But you’re alright?” He questioned.

“Jack!” I shot back. I was angry now. I had been working myself into a light frenzy, like a child striving for tears. “Oh yes. Kicking people off my feet while I’m clinging to a beer tap. I’m fine and dandy.” I had as good as killed that woman as she clung to me for life. I felt a hopelessness shuddering through me. I had kicked her off my foot. I had killed her as good as if I had pushed her down into the bathtub with my bare hands, forcing her head below the milky water, seaweed haired, her eyes bulging with utter desperation, utter hopelessness looking up at me, begging. Me waiting for the release without compassion. I had kicked her off. And now she was dead. I saw a body lacerated by the plate glass of the bar window out on the street after that initial whoosh and vomited up my horror and disgust at what I’d done, before rushing from the next possible onslaught. I awaited Bill’s response. Frightened.

“What was the…? What happened there?” Bill queried. Please forgive me, but I could not bring myself to explain to him as I have to you. Why could he not have just understood? I diverted again.

“Strong east wind, Atlantic surge, very heavy rain.” I said, all matter of fact, but shaking. “The sewers backed up, Essex became water logged. About the only thing to hold up was the Thames Barrier. What’s the point when we all knew at the Department that the water would go round it?” I paused. “Mustn’t spook the City though.” I let my shoulders drop. I had worked at the Department of the Environment. Bill knew I had. I felt blame. Even there I found guilt looking back at me: inhuman like the weather.

There was a long pause.

“Sod it.” I thought. “Let Bill do the talking. I’m awake now.” There was no way I was letting this guy go. Not at three in the morning. I waited for him, like a batsman might wait for a fast spin bowl. Like a boy in the confessional.

“I guess you need your sleep Barry” Bill tried. “I’ll love you and leave you.” But if he wanted to call me, he would have to work for it, for that priestly virtue. Now he could work for it.

“How’s Noah?” I chirped.

“He’s good.” He replied edgily. Even over the phone he was nervous about talking of his ‘special friend’. “Worrying over you all of course.”

“And you?”

“Oh Yes.” He said as if having God on your side meant always fine, always good. There was something about being just fine when you talk to someone who clearly was not. It seemed almost rude. Bill was trying to keep it bland.

“How was the Grand Canyon?” I asked.

“Oh…” he paused. “Awesome as ever.”

“You go to a place like that,” I needled, “you realise just how irrelevant we all are.” I just wanted to make him say something meaningful: something to redeem me.

“Well Barry.” Bill said. I guess he could feel a storm brewing. He was going to head it off. “I guess we’ll just have to agree to differ on that.”

Agree to differ. “You are so full of shit” I found myself saying out loud. I suddenly had a powerful image of his home: so white; so clean. I reached over slowly and placed the receiver back in its black cradle. Agree to differ. Your sins are but the sins of the flesh but mine are mortal. He did not and would not forgive.

I got up and walked over to the window. It was pitch black outside: dark and filthy. The phone started ringing. After a while it switched to voice mail. I rocked my head from side to side. How could I live with myself? The phone started its’ trilling again.
Words 1858

JAYA AND CHETAN'S CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER [draft] A children's story

2005-11-22T00:51:00.000-08:00

It was cold and neither Jaya nor Chetan wished to play outside, despite the crisp, clear sky and the frosted trees.

“Why don’t you light a fire mummy Pam?” said Jaya, looking at the cold grey grate in front of her. “I want to send my letter to Father Christmas. We can’t do that without a fire.”

“I want to send my letter to Father Christmas too” said Chetan. Mummy Pam continued with her Seduko. Jaya looked at Chetan. “Haven’t you” she said “told him what you want already?” Chetan looked back at his sister. “No!” he replied. He had been a little shy of the Father Christmas at Harrods and had only mentioned his love of animals to him. He much preferred the idea of mailing his wish list direct to Father Christmas himself. That way there could be no confusion. Pamela glanced over her paper. The central heating had broken down. Her feet were cold as ice and suddenly making a fire seemed like a very good idea.

It was not long before the grate was ablaze, thick smoke coiling from the wet coal. Jaya had prepared paper and pens for brother and herself and was now busily engaged in the task of writing her letter. Mummy Legi had parked herself next to Chetan and they were both working out a brief message of their own.

Now: apart from those present, who is to say what was upon those lists? Only Christmas Day would reveal their contents to everyone and yet it seemed so far off to the children. Having to wait was little less than a cruel and unnatural punishment. But little did they know, a much worse disappointment could be awaiting them on Christmas day.

As they wrote, the sound of the fire appeared to get louder and louder. A large, dry log was hissing and crackling in the centre of the hearth and every now and again it would let off a loud bang, a shocking crack and a shower of sparks.

“Come!” it seemed to be saying to the children. “Post those letters now before the fire dies!”

“Hurry!” said Jaya, “Let’s post, post, post.” Chetan agreed and for a moment they danced in front of the fire like a couple of Elves conjuring up a little magic. Both their letters were ready and now there was not a moment to lose. The fire was hot and hungry and for a moment they felt transported to the world of Harry Potter and the Weasley’s Flu Powder. They would throw their letters into the blaze and magic would take their messages to a Grotto far away: somewhere at the North Pole to be sorted and filed by a multitude of real Elves.

The children, clinging close to their mothers, flung the scraps of paper into the fire. A loud crack and a bang and in another great shower of sparks the burning missives flew up the chimney. Gone! But were those letters complete, or had the children forgotten something important?

Christmas was a cold one. It was to be spent in the depths of the countryside at Ruspa which was colder still than the natural city warmth of London town. Ruiri and Ellana had joined the family group for a couple of days and all the children spent their time rushing from room to room, wildly round and round.

Through the main sitting room with its huge humming fireplace they would fly, into the front lobby. From there the kids would clatter across the stone flagged floor of the long cool kitchen where adults spent endless hours holding tea towels and talking about nothing at all, seemingly without excitement or fun. Then the children would rattle along the carpeted corridor next to the toilet coming out into the dining area and grand stairwell.

This was the danger spot. Adults would suddenly appear in the doorway and it was easy to pile into them or have near misses followed by the inevitable “Careful children!” and “Look where you’re going!” But in truth, this was the children’s domain and they ruled it with flying feet and cries of delight.

Occasionally there would be argument or injury, but there was always the comfort of a parent who, with a kiss and a rub, would send them back to their world of fun and games. If it all got too much or too boisterous there were a myriad of bedrooms in which to take some quiet time. Apart from the coldness this could be a welcome relief.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT

Christmas eve came and Jaya, Chetan, Ellana and Ruiri decided to hang their stockings by the huge fireplace in readiness for Santa’s midnight arrival. But would there be gifts in the morning from Santa’s heavy sack or would their stockings look as empty and sad as they did on that Christmas Eve?

Well, here is your answer: The Elves had been busy. They had received the children’s letters and had built their every last wish. Santa’s huge slay had been loaded up and with the reindeer tossing their heads, ringing out the tiny bells attached to their bridals, the big man and his massive cargo had lurched, then launched itself up and up and then by degrees ever higher into the swirling snow filled air above.

“Oh, ho, ho!” Father Christmas had cried “Up and up and away we go!” the invisible birds of Christmas time catching in his beard.

Christmas night was the high point of Santa’s year. He loved giving gifts to the children of the world more than meat or drink, though he loved those things too.

He enjoyed it so much that on Christmas night his heart would fly with joy as high and as fast as did is great red sleigh. That wondrous night would go on and on. Delight would sparkle in his eyes allowing him no fear, even when his landings were especially difficult.

And this was no easy landing. Santa parked himself amongst the chimney pots of a rakish roof and shot down the first chimney he saw, his sack squeezing improbably behind him.

Finally he had arrived at Cheti and Jaya’s. He bundled their gifts up by the cold fireplace and caste about him for his minced pie and carrot. There was nothing and the room was strangely cold.

“Well” said Father Christmas “It is no matter. A Merry Christmas to you all” he called and his words echoed round the room and returned to him with this reply: “The house is empty and all are gone.” And so it was. 23A Manor Road was silent as the grave. “What could this mean?” he mumbled to himself riffling his pockets for the children’s letters.

“Ah!” he said. “Here we are. I see no special address.” He flipped the letter over and pushed his glasses up his nose. Nothing. Quick as he could Santa placed all the children’s gifts back in his sack and shot up the chimney once more, back the way he had come. And what of the poor house? It was left as cold and empty as before he had arrived.

DREAM CATCHER, DREAM WEAVER

While the children slept the dream catcher worked. She dipped her nets down deep into the wells of sleep to see what she might find. Sometimes she could reweave and patch the broken dreams she found but sometimes she could not. Nevertheless, every dream she came upon she’d kiss and say:

“Return my sweet at break of day,
I’ll mend your dreams as best I can
And send them on their way.”

The threads of dreams were made of hope and fear and Christmas night was always a busy time for this dream weaver.

“Look here” she said “What dream is this,
You dream of what’s not there.
Your lonely sacks are giftlessness
And filled with only air.
Your sorry sacks are whistfulness
And loss is hard to bare.
Beware my pretty sleeping ones,
Beware of loss. Beware.”

A small pearl tear fell from her moon white face as she looked upon the dreams of these beautiful children. The tear fell upon the dreams and broke up into one thousand million shining diamonds and stars, a galaxy of sparkling points leading away ten billion years into the future and the past where everything that could be, both was and was not.

Magic, beyond understanding, shimmered and glowed through all the colours that could be seen and through all the colours that were invisible to the human eye. Waves of hope rippled out to the farthest moons of the most distant planets and back again. The Universe became no bigger than an eggcup then expanded once more to meet itself on the other side of always.

The children opened their eyes and knew what they must do: The four of them crept down to the front sitting room. They listened out for the sound of adults but the big old house was silent. It would soon be morning, though the night was still dark.

"Oh no!" said Jaya as they stood in front of the fireplace.

All four stockings were empty.

"I think" said Ruiri "we must do something".

"Yes" said Ellana, "But what?" The children looked at each other. The room seemed cold despite the remains of the fire.

"Look!" cried Chetan all at once and the other children hushed and shushed for fear of waking the parents. "Look." he said again in the voice of a mouse, pointing straight into the heart of the fireplace.

Right at the back, behind the grate, they saw a stairway that had not been there before. At least, until now they had not seen it. The glowing embers of the fire parted themselves to make a cool and perfect path for the four children.

What an adventure! The children looked at one another. All at once a strange wind whirled about the house. The children could hear it speaking to them with words they could not understand:

“Seize the day!” it whispered. “Those who hesitate are lost.”

“Oh come on!” Said Jaya. Suddenly she could not bare the standing around any longer. There was only one thing to be done.

Chetan, as the smallest of them, took the lead, not even needing to duck his head as he stepped into the fireplace. The others followed bending over as they climbed through the opening at the back of the fire and up into the clear stillness of the starlit night.

Ever higher they climbed until the whole of Sussex lay below them, the orange florescent street lights a cheap imitation of the ever brighter stars above. The street lamps faded further and further as the stars grew stronger and more brilliant.

Now, beauty and wonder surrounded them, comets hovering above, trailing their long, dusty tales. Shooting stars shot by making the children’s hair buzz and tingle. Tomorrow and yesterday vanished into the never endingness of here and now and in that single instant they saw it.

THE MAGICAL MEETING

Far in the distance they all could hear the unmistakable sound of bells. But these were no ordinary chimes. It was as if ten thousand angels where calling out their names. Each one as clear as the next. The children could feel their hearts swelling and their breath coming fast in the cool night air.

A great arc was being traced across the sky. The children gazed across the Universe to see its wide and immeasurable sweep. It was as if the hand of a giant was drawing a huge curved path past the waning moon and shimmering stars and in amongst the bottomless blackness of deepest space. And though time stood still while forever and a day could pass, all four children knew that this enormous trajectory was destined only for them.

Santa Claus was coming, and for the first and last time in their lives the children would watch, open mouthed, as he did so.

“My loves, my darlings, my dears. Where have you been? And now to meet you on the Interstellar Highway. However did you get here?”

Santa Claus was struggling to keep the reindeer in check. They were hot with their journeying and thick white steam rolled off their wet flanks and mingled with itself in the deepening chill of the night. They smelled of mulled wine and wet dogs and it frightened the children not a little to stand so close to the twelve of them.

There was no break to the sleigh and from time to time it would jerk forward as one of the deer became too frisky. The children found themselves having to shuffle along by the side of the sleigh just to keep up.

“My darlings, my dears” the great man said, chunks of minced pie falling from his beard, “Jump aboard. I can tarry no longer.” And with that, the children, clinging on for dear life to the massive wooden and metal craft, lurched up into the air with the strangest of twisting motions. After making a wide circle, they shot off, straight and fast, Northwards.

As you may have guessed, time stands still on Christmas Night. Many moons it takes to deliver a gift to each and every child. And all in an instant.

The children saw and did many things that night that only their imaginations can reveal: waterfalls made of happiness falling to lakes of placid calm. Rivers of feelings weaving to great seas of emotion, running down from the high peaks of clarity and understanding to the depths of the great unknown. Myriads of mysterious mysteries all wrapped up in an acorn shell.

And amongst it all, there was the discovery of their gifts, high up in a mountain of toys at the end of the World, to be carried home to bed.

And what a deep a peaceful sleep it was. The children did not wake till late, the adults having clattered about for hours with their coffee pots and endless talk.

The children awoke and for a moment could remember the night that had just passed. They looked at each other in wonder; still seeing the starlight in one another’s eyes, the sound of celestial bells yet ringing in their ears.

Was it all true? Will their sacks be full? Or are these fading memories nothing more than children’s dreams? They leaped to their feet. There was but one way to find out. And so, in a mass of arms and legs they rushed downstairs to see what the night had brought.

EPILOGUE

Well, it goes without saying that Jaya, Chetan, Ellana and Ruiri all know how this story ends. After all they were there and saw it all themselves. And who knows, one day you may get to meet them too. When you are old and grey perhaps, you may find yourself at a bus stop or a friend’s party and be introduced to someone by the name of Ruiri or Ellana or Chetan or Jaya. They are not the most common of names. But if that ever were to happen, you may venture to ask:

“Were you ever once a character in a story many, many years ago?” And if they answer “yes” then they can tell you how this story ended themselves. You can have a personal account. But just in case you do never get to meet this quartet, let me reassure you now:

They found by that ancient fireplace, still with the smell of minced pies and mulled wine in the air, all four stockings, stacked full with gifts from Santa’s sack.

For however busy our Saint Nicholas is, and busy is indeed the word, on each magical and mysterious Christmas night, he always seems to find some time to make our youthful dreams and desires come wonderfully to life.

The End

PERSONAL AD

2005-11-16T23:36:00.000-08:00

Disgraceful!

And a man of my stature too, whittled down to a mere three dozen words. This, and after a lifetime of experience, is all I boil down to.

Reduced and reduced like some French sauce, to be pawed over by lonely, half disinterested females, all of whom are strangers to me.

For the love of life, I’m 51 years old. Nevertheless I have been mulling over the idea of placing a personal advert all summer break. All I’ve seen so far for inspiration is graffiti, scrawled messages on that toilet wall offering sex, seeking same.

Maybe youth doesn’t need to present itself well in order to be seen as alluring. Youth is it’s own best advert. I’m assuming these missives hail from some of the gay student population of London. I might be wrong. But I use the student toilets. They are right next to my office. And there they are: these epithets shouting out at me. They mock me with there big cocks and ungracious offers of anal sex. Beautiful youth.

But see here. What could I write? How about: “Balding, ugly, lonely bean pole of a man in the death throws of his mid life crisis, seeks glamorous young female for nights of passion, days of happiness, a life of joy and mutual understanding.” Yes! That about sums it up. Fits the word limit. But somehow it needs more.

The Professor gazed disconsolately at his irony. Loneliness was not a word he would use to describe himself. But alone he was. Sure, he was married once, like most, back in the ‘70’s when being tall wasn’t deemed to be a social handicap. At 6’ 4” and as thin as a rake he was now viewed as something of an oddity.

Yes, it was true. Youth was it’s own beauty balm, an idyllic beachscape in which to frolic. But with the ebbing of the tide the wrecks and rocks of impending age are soon revealed. Mud and seaweed. His spindly height was noted more and more with times recession.

What really niggled was that even his mother had come to view him as a family aberration. A giant amongst dwarves.

His eyes had locked onto a capital “B” for “But” and now the ink seemed to shift slightly on the page. He wondered why the beautiful phrase “And yet” so beloved of Shakespeare had come to be replaced by the abrupt and unforgiving “But”. He resolved to employ “And yet” a little more in his everyday speech. Language revolution by degrees.

He had not been in a solid relationship for over 12 years and had consequently come to carry his work around with him wherever he went. It was his greatest passion. And yet art history was not to everyone’s liking. Sometimes the passion was too great. He suspected that it could even frighten prospective partners away. A pleasant stroll in the woods could morph itself into an aggressive art rant. And the louder he ranted the less they were inclined to listen.

He had self awareness and yet it did not seem to help him. He still did it. In his darker moments Felicity’s words came rushing back to haunt him from the swirled black and orange of the serious seventies.

“Baldwin” she had almost whispered, “you are the most utter and complete bore.”

And yet that was not him at all. It was untrue. He was kind, honest, someone to be trusted and loved. Kind and honest, someone to be trusted, someone worthy of love.

By this time the Professor had become so wrapped up in his reverie, he had not noticed Evelyn standing in front of him. He looked up to catch her, head cocked, reading the scrawl on his pad. In her job, no handwriting was beyond decryption, upside down, sideways, however it came.

“Professor” she said. “That, I suppose, is some kind of joke.”

When in doubt, he thought to himself, say nothing. He did not speak. “Right” she said. “Here are the papers to mark. There’s a 48 hour turn round.” Evelyn turned round and left the room.

Baldwin scrunched up his nose. “Time for a coffee” he thought to himself and cantilevered his long length up to a standing position. The caffeine might inspire him. And yet it did not. Moreover he had 13 papers to mark and the best part of the day was gone already.

On leaving the building prompt at five he had a quick rummage in his pigeon hole to see what he might find. And there it was. Only visible to touch, a lone scrap of paper. A memo from Evelyn.

Some half forgotten feeling jolted awake inside of him. It was only then he realised how he’d half expecting something from her. After the fact, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world. He stopped on the steps outside. A warm light from the late afternoon sun bathed him in a flattering glow. He read the memo:

“Kind, honest male, 51, tall, slim,
looking for female 35-55 to
share similar interests.
Visiting art galleries and
museums, walks in the countryside
and cosy nights indoors.
Interested?”

NATURAL SHOPPING TENSION

2005-11-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

There are less than 2600 shopping days left till the end of the world.

I don’t know if that’s a cause to celebrate or bemoan, but according to the Mayan calendar it’s all over come November 2012.

I hate shopping. I’ll be out there on the streets along with all the other burn outs, wishing for it all to end. But not today. I’ve got this list see. It’s a shopping list. Stuff to buy that I never would if it were me.

Which it isn’t. Me: I’m all Basic Buy this and Pocket the Difference that myself. But not Lucy. She’s more a Buy, Buy, Buy this and Taste the Difference that kind of a woman. Not that she has two sheckles to rub together of course. Not two sheckles of her own that is.

When I look at the organic display all I can see is my monthly allowance for the kids going down the pan. Literally turned to shit and gone. Look here!: Honey from Australia. So they ship this stuff 13,000 miles so as we can taste a hint of nuts and citrus. How delicious can it taste when it’s my balls being squeezed. I’ve got a long, long, long shopping list here. Yes.

Somewhere in it I expect to find scribbled a warning. Between the avocado and mozzarella there’ll be a “careful James. Don’t piss mummy off too much” all broken up so the casual observer might take it for a list of herbs. “Just add a little Careful James and Comfrey before serving.” Maybe that’s pushing it a bit. What would “Mummyoff” be? Something Russian perhaps. What do you think? Russian?

It’s different buying for the kids. You ask them what they want then buy the acceptable version. They know my boundaries by now. They know I have limits beyond which I get cranky.

But adults have all become Shoguns and cheaper versions of Humvees. They bulldoze through and smash you down. With this list it is imperative that I get it right. That’s very very important. There is a particular kind of parmisan and if I fail to find it, it could spoil everything. It will be the wrong sort of cheese and that will mean pain. But how could I ever have managed to end up in this situation, cheese and pain all blended together?

It’s largely my fault. I know that. Naturally I do. If someone’s sitting in shit, there’s a fair chance it’s theirs.

In my case I took what I thought were a couple of easy options way back and this is how it has panned out. Those religious freaks talking about the straight and narrow turned out to be right after all. Is that irony or is it simply life?

So, look at me. Go on. Take a quick look. You’ve seen me before haven’t you? Here I am now standing in the middle of Hades Delicatessen on 4392nd street Fucksville London with the kids, three weeks before Christmas, looking for the life of me every inch the family man. Folks nod and smile, as though my wife were just round the corner getting her hair done. And here I am pushing all this stuff. All these possessions out in front of me in a cage on wheels.

All this life, food, kids. The invisible wife. None of it mine.

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS

2005-11-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

“Come in my dear, come in. Now, just take a seat here. That’s right. Just there. Good. Now. How are you doing?”

He looked at the young women with warmth and intensity. She was beautiful. He knew that he was going to like her already.

He smiled at her then changed his expression. Pressing his lips together harder he let her know that there was something he wanted to tell her which was important. Something that would have to come first. He knew in his heart that it was not truly important, not important important, but for him it was always better to get the matter out of the way to save embarrassment later. It was a small thing but it could plague him if he did not address it straight off.

Even as a child at school his capacity to hold information had been limited. He had even been regarded as backward in his younger years, what with learning to read so late in the day and is inability to grasp even the most rudimentary basics of physics, chemistry or foreign languages.

It was not that he was stupid per say, but that he could not hold information long enough to make any sense of it. As he’d got older things had improved until eventually he had been sprung into the wider world of adulthood where to his shock and relief people genuinely appeared to know very little indeed. Almost nothing in fact.

In real life it turned out there was no motive for recalling the capital city of Malay and so people on the whole did not.

Those middle years of life were something of a respite but as he’d grown older his memory problems had by increments increased until his customary methods for avoiding embarrassment had no longer been sufficient. For years his standard opener to a story had been “stop me if you’ve heard this one before” which usually did the trick. There is nothing more tedious than finding that you have just related an anecdote for the second time to some overly polite listener.

But of late, this no longer sufficed. It wasn’t just anecdotes that were getting repeated but general clumps of conversation. Standard questions. Pleasantries. In the past year or two after a series of embarrassing moments he had taken to giving folks a brief pep talk at the outset of a conversation, one of which was in order now.

“Well my dear” he said. “The thing is, my memory is not quite what it should be, which is all well and good. I am not complaining. Such is life. However I would be most grateful if you could do me a little favour, just to save my blushes.”

The young woman looked at him with what seemed to be almost a sadness in her eyes. The vigour of youth looking at the frailty of age. The thing was, that apart from the wretchedness of his memory he did not feel like the proverbial frail old man.

In fact he was not old at all. At 63 he could still class himself as middle aged. Nevertheless, her look was unsettling. He moved in his chair.

“Forgive me” he said “but my memory is not what it could be. It never has been up to much but now I find it to be somewhat shot to buggery, so should I… If you find me repeating myself I’d be most grateful if you could do me the decency of stopping me there and then.”

There was a look on her face now that he recognised, part way between embarrassment and sorrow. He knew that look.

“Oh God!” He exclaimed. “Don’t tell me I’ve given you this little pep talk already.”

He thought about it a moment and realised the idiocy of the idea. She had just this instant come in and sat down. She moved forward in her chair. He moved back very slightly not sure of his situation. She was about to speak. This would clarify things.

“William” she said, her voice filled with a heartbreaking affection. “You’ve said it before. Of course you have. Of course you have dad.”

SICK

2005-11-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

Nobody need know he was there. After only a few moments he could surely back up a step or two and retreat to the comparative safety of the family home. But he had compassion in abundance as is children’s wont, even those we call “little bastards”. At six years old there were no police to call when witnessing a wrong. It was his grandmother that fulfilled that role along with judge, jury and executioner. Justice was an arbitrary emotion that Martin had to manipulate as best he could if he wished to survive it. His life was lived in a sometimes hostile and dangerous environment, which Martin as an adult presumed to be like that of all children. Those that told him otherwise had merely suffered a forgetting, strangely only recalling the sunny days of summer, snow blind to the cold of wintertime. To Martin his parents and most particularly his omnipresent grandmother, were all powerful gods who could both give and take away. At turns too weak, leaving Martin and is brothers at the mercy of their own emotional storms or too overbearing, crushing and damaging the as yet unopened blossom.

He had stepped from the sunlit family hallway into the darkness of the enclosed stairwell. This led down into the basement’s windowless central corridor. The house was large and Victorian, tinged with gothic. Balham in the late sixties was a predominantly African affair. His grandmother’s basement nursery and his home were islands of white barbarism in amongst the tightly packed rented rooms of his street. It had happened once that there had been a fire at the back of a similar sized house opposite and Martin had watched from the lip of is grandmother’s windowsill as twenty or thirty tenants disgorged down the front steps. His family numbered just six. A bedroom each and one to spare. Ice cold in winter, his bedroom a cooking pot in summer, eaten by the acid of his own sweat as the slate tiles baked. But here it was. He stopped at the top of the stair adjusting his eyes for a moment to the terracotta and green gloom.

Vomit had been spilled out over the tile floor. It was nothing more than part undigested canned food and slightly yellowed water. His grandmother was forcing the small black boy to pick up and eat his own malady, he, gingerly fingering the less digested of the peas. This must have been a punishment. Even a child of six knew that illness was not the same as naughtiness and he wondered at the sight. If this was justice then Martin was duty bound to baton down the hatches and wait for life at the end of the long and sometimes foul weathered scrubland of childhood. But he was a son of the house and could wield his power too, did he but know it. He need not stand there and watch as a boy just two years younger than he was mistreated so. He could call on the love of his grandmother. She loved him dearly with the free and open love that only the elders of a family can. She lived with him and cared for him when his mother could not. He had power over her. He need not be merely a witness to his life but could be a player too and right now his sympathies lay not with her, his blood, but with that small boy. He took a step and then another until he was at the top of the stair once more. Slowly he opened the door and retreated silently into the light.

PROBABLY NOTHING

2005-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

“I saw this film a couple of days ago” They looked at each other. “It was about these two guys. This relationship between these two guys. At least, that’s what I thought it was about. It was great. I loved it. I mean…” he sucked his teeth. “The film? No. I didn’t like it. You know me. I like a happy ending. But…” Pepe caste around for inspiration. “It was love. You know what I mean? Man love.” A smile wandered across is face, whistful like he could do with some of that right now. “I’m not talking about your faggoty thing going on here. That’s the trouble with you guys. You let women destroy you. You haven’t got the balls to take them head on. You think you can run away to Gayville. But you can’t Betsy.” Bert did not like being called Betsy. But that was a battle he had lost long ago. “It’s the most normal thing in the world to fuck. Everybody knows that. You take what’s available. You live on a farm you fuck a pig. If you have to. If you want to, that is. If that’s what’s available and it does it for you. You live in the big city of course you get to fuck anything that moves. It’s normal. That’s right for a guy. But you and you gays. What the fuck is wrong with you? Setting up home like two little love birds so you can get to fight and scratch like a couple of bitches on heat. Jeese. It’s disgusting.” Bert looked at him, impassive. He was getting good at impassive.

This arsehole was telling him. Telling him what? Fuck knows! Something or other. “You see. You put a load of women together in a situation. Leave it long enough and it’s an emotional quagmire. Men. If they’re not bristling up to one another like a couple of ballet dancers then they’re just rubbing along. Getting laid when they can and coming home for a beer.” Bert pouted. “Sure.” Said Pepe, taking the point. “It can’t go on forever. But why is that?” Bert kept eye contact. If he didn’t, Pepe was sure to get stormy. “Because we get old and ugly. That’s why. Nobody wants to fuck us no more. So we have to go for second best. Uh.” Pepe grunted and as an afterthought. “And the kid thing. But you gay guys. Fuck that. You can do what you like. Get a decent job. Hire in rent. Make some friends. Whatever. But no. Bill and Ben have to set up home like a couple of stupid faggots. Get a poofs pooch or two. Who’s game are you playing anyhow?” Pepe sighed. Bert wondered if lecture was over or if chapter two was coming. There was just the background noise of the street outside to fill in. The sound of a taxi. Someone laughing. What were they laughing at?

Bert suddenly remembered that there was a beer in the fridge and life picked up a little. He started to smile. “What?” Said Pepe. Bert niffed up a bit of loose snott. “We’re not like that. We don’t ‘rub along’. You piss me off on a regular basis.” For a second Bert wondered if Pepe looked genuinely hurt. “Yeah” Said Pepe “But we don’t love each other.” Now it was Bert’s turn to feel a little pain and he wondered at it. Did that mean something or was it just a spot of hurt pride? Probably nothing.

SUICIDE NOTE

2005-11-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

It didn’t seem to matter anymore. When Tom had not turned up as usual that Saturday she called in the babysitter and made her way to his flat. She had an inkling. After all this was Mr Reliable.

Jessica still had keys. When the front door wasn’t double locked she feared the worse. He had not been answering his phone. There it was. Unplugged. The flat was unnervingly cool. It even felt like death. She made her way slowly toward the bedroom. There was the occasional sign of abandonment: a shoe in the hallway.

The door to his bedroom was open and she stepped in. On a desk in the corner of the room she could see a screen saver turning and weaving its geometric pattern, and on the other side, furthest from the window, the bed. Light chinked in through the crack in the curtain.

Father Peter had said to her that nothing looked more like death than the dead. She stood there for an instant. This was fear she felt. Two semblances of life vied for her attention. The body, lost somewhere in the soiled sheets and that other final message. She could not face it just yet.

While she called 999 on her mobile she moved over to the laptop and sat down. She jogged the mouse, explained the situation over the phone, and then started to read:

“What it is to be stupid. I should know: years at it. Aeons finding myself: perhaps one of the most stupid people in the room. There’s no “perhaps” about it, surrounded by other children who had more of a grip on things than me.

And on top of that to have my face rubbed in it. Ritual abuse. I remember being instructed to write my name. Version after version: each one as wrong as the last. Finally the agony has ended.

“ Here, that’s how you spell it. Thicko”.

And thinking, “I’m sure one of my versions looked something like that” but having no recourse to justice.

I’ll never know if I was dealt a wrong, but it felt like it. Maybe one of my scrawled spellings had been a correct one after all. What did it matter amongst so much error?

Why was there an H in my name anyway?

Who’s big idea was that?

And why put me through the pain of trying to do the impossible?

They were nasty little events, which, while masquerading as a sort of care and interest, had neither at heart. Little wonder I trust no one. I hold out no real hope of help in moments of need. Not from family… friends. Those who cry usually do so in the privacy of their own home.

OK. So I’m on my knees. So what?

Abandoned after seven years by someone who still loves me. That’s ‘love’ used as an accusation by the way...”

Jessica twisted her lip. She wondered if she should have a thought about that now or save it till later. Her neck was seizing up. It could keep. She kept on reading.

“That’s why I’ve always been drawn to a joke and a cause celebre. They are small stories one can tell that bear no relation to ones own personal life. Not really. Not directly. They keep the topic of me and who I am at bay. They circumvent the fact that I’m a loser and a fool. But… I’ve been into save the whale/dolphin/seal for as long as I can recall.

It turns out now doesn’t it that it was just a device for deflecting myself from myself: and those around me.

I remember thinking once, “I don’t mind if someone hates me for my beliefs so long as they don’t hate me for who I am”.

I wonder how old I was then. Did I already have a notion that I wasn’t like the other kids? That somehow deep down inside there was a gay teenager…”

Jessica broke off.

“Gay?” she thought. Her mind kept a cool blank for a second. “Shit!” She thought. “What a fool.”

She backtracked a bit, “That somehow deep down inside there was a gay teenager waiting to blossom with puberty. I must have known it. Despicable really. It’s not a pretty combo: stupid and gay. It doesn’t fit with the stereotype. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted love and marriage but… It’s all long ago now. Surely it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

No point in dragging round the past. Except I know what you’re thinking: How much has really changed Tom over the past thirty years? Are you straight all at once? Are you clever now? Isn’t this just a bad joke?”

It stopped there. Jessica was hot and her breath was coming fast. It was incomplete. There was no apology.

“What a moron” she said. “What an absolute moron.” How could he have been so selfish? There were the children. She would deal with this just as she had dealt with so much. She reached forward and deleted the file. Click. Click.

She turned in her chair and looked towards the bed. The covers were down. Tom was up on one elbow looking at her. In the distance they could both hear the siren’s wail.