Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
In The Spirit...
Dear Nasa,
Sorry to bother you, good grief I can't believe I've been this foolish, however I seem to have lost my beagle in your back yard. Rather than snooping around and trying to retrieve it I thought it would be best to just own up and ask if you've seen it. I'd really like it back, see.
Yours,
Charles Brown
Dance Me to The End of Love
It was my friend John who suggested I take Jack up on his offer. John's father was a playwright and artist of international stature from Paisley who knew of Jack's work and sneered at it as derivative of a forgotten age. "Nowt and buggery to do with the hard reality of modern living. He's a dreamer and he'll remain a dreamer all his life" was Mr Byrne's assessment of Jack's work. John wanted me to help Jack out just to piss his father off. He even let me borrow his father's dinner jacket.
Jack stood me in his studio with my arms up, head turned away from him. The jacket was slightly too big but Jack didn't seem to care, he needed perspective and light plays on the material, he could fake the fit. He gripped my leg and had me lift one foot slightly from the parquet flooring of the studio. All my weight was resting on one strained calf muscle that had given up over an hour ago.
"Jack, I can't hold the pose, I'm sorry. Is there nothing I can lean on?"
"How about me?" asked a voice from behind us both. I began to turn to see who had spoken and Jack's hands closed around my neck and left shoulder, pinning me in place.
"Stay right there boy" he barked, "I'll see this harpy out."
"Oh don't be like that Jack," her voice flowed like velvet through the air, an enchanting lilt to it and the hint of an upper class accent, "I said I was sorry."
"I lost a day's work and two fine boys who won't have nothing more to do with me now. Can't get neither of them to pose for pictures no more. You're bad news missy, and you're more trouble to me than you're worth." Jack sounded as exasperated as he had done all afternoon giving me directions on how to stand and how to sit.
"I've even got the perfect dress for the job" there was a rustle of chiffon and the whisper of satin being drawn across skin, "what do you say?"
I heard a grunt of resignation and Jack told her to get changed over behind the spare canvases before coming back to where I was standing no longer feeling the cramped muscles in my legs, instead I was entirely focused on this new presence and the sounds of zips and clasps being unfastened in the corner of the room behind me.
The first glimpse I had of her was as she ducked under my arm and nestled her body into the curve of mine. One gloved hand reached up to touch my shoulder and the other reached out in front of us both to hold my left hand. Her hair was balled up into a perfect chignon and a pearl earing dangled from her left ear. She gave me a smile and whispered "He can't see the other ear anyway"
My eyes must have been like saucers as I stared at the wall. I remembered Einstein's theory of relativity about pretty girls and hot stoves and tried to count the seconds in my head but my mental timekeeper kept giving up and trying to see out of my ear and down her dress. I recognised the smell on her skin as Imperial Leather soap without even a hint of perfume.
"Relax, you're like a fox that's been caught in the henhouse. We're supposed to be lovers dancing on a beach somewhere. Try and imagine you've known me all your life. You know me inside and out, so well that you know what I want for breakfast before I do. Imagine you've slept naked beside me so many times that our bodies are perfectly attuned to one another."
"I'll try" I choked out rather pathetically. It was all I could do to not implore her to elope with me.
"The jacket's a bit big. Is it yours or did Jack lend it to you?"
"I borrowed it from a friend. He said I should do this to piss off his father. Not Jack's father, my friend's that is."
"Isn't that sweet. Jack isn't paying you for this?"
"No ma'am. Uh... miss... missus..."
"Miss is fine. You haven't seen my fingers through the gloves but if you squeeze gently you won't feel any rings under there." Her grip tightened on my left hand and my right arm instinctively drew her nearer me. "Careful, you'll spoil the composition. Ease off a little bit."
I let her go slightly and took a few deep breaths. My neck was starting to hurt terribly and the collar of my shirt was like a vice. I flexed my fingers and felt her giggle as if I'd tickled her, it was an innocent giggle that made my stomach do somersaults against her.
"I'll bet you he sells this one for a fortune and all we get is a glass of champagne at the opening," she blew a strand of loose hair from her face and her breath was cool and fresh on my flushed cheeks with a hint of spearmint, "not that I mind, I've been in dozens of them and its always flattering to know that you're desired by thousands."
Right then I felt like the only one.
"Would you like to dance?"
So despite Jack's protests and violent cursing we danced. We danced all around that studio until we fell laughing to the floor, exhausted from holding the pose for so long with the last of our energy used up in that burst of milonguero style tango. We had danced around the easle to the other side of the canvas and we sat looking up at Jack's canvas and knew it was going to be another masterpiece.
Choose Your Own Rendition of a Scottish Funeral:
We arrived in twos and threes by car at the crematorium. The day’s schedule had us slated for just before lunch. It was bitterly cold and as we stood in the foyer outside the chapel snow began to fall in laconic waves like static. We had heard reports all week that there would be record low temperatures and somehow that fitted the occasion nicely. Funerals are always better in the wintertime.
They spelled the family name wrong on the schedule but nobody felt the need to complain as they were playing Jethro Tull as we walked into the chapel and it elicited more smiles than frowns or tears. His daughter still didn’t seem to realise the gravitas of the situation, she’d only been seeing him every few weekends anyway like a divorcee dad with visitation rights. These days I only see my own father for funerals. Someday soon, it will be his.
And so my namesake was put to rest with hymns and prayers and poems and tales of fishing trips and Christmas watching The Great Escape. The family filtered through into an antechamber and the friends passed by us all one at a time, saying their piece. My sister turned to me and pointed out that the majority of people wouldn’t know who either of us were. I simply replied that we were now the younger mirror images of my mother and the deceased; my uncle David.
Or:
Through heather and thistle we came, congregating in that long-forgotten stone circle. The hills were awash with frost and snow and yet nobody dared wear anything but the clan tartan. Stamping through the underbrush we made sure our presence was known and bathed in the amber dusk we drew swords, cried out in Gaellic and toasted his memory. Each dram took the bite out of the cold air and as light faded from the highlands around us, the browns and greens fading to deeper grays, we told stories of the departed that turned the air blue.
The women frowned and the men cheered, for all had their memories to cherish and no two were alike. Stories were told from all angles and all ages and by the time the moon was high above us we had proclaimed his worth to those eldritch stone fingers buried deep in the heart of his homeland. We must come back again to this place ten years hence, those who survive that long, and again pour the last of our flasks into the middle of the circle where his ashes lie.
He has no son to follow him and as his nephew I forge ahead with his name on the lips of those who know me, setting aside my own, an unspoken promise written in family blood. As he was once what I shall become I am now the potential that he once represented and it falls upon me not to fail the clan and to ensure that our name be remembered.
Prologue
5 a.m. and my eyes are burning, I’m sitting in somebody else’s idea of a comfortable seat and I’ve yet to shed a tear. I have gone beyond the oneiric reverie of waking and out the other side into a harsh landscape of phospherent lights that cast ever-changing shadows, eliminating all depth perception.
The promise of deep storm clouds, saturated with rain, hovering over the impending funeral looms like confusion in the opening acts of a kabuki play. Despite my dreaded anticipation, I fully expect to see my mother and subsequently my sister break into tears. I’ve tucked handkerchiefs I didn’t even remember owning into every pocket I can in preparation, anger and hatred ready to burn through.
6 a.m. and my eyes are burning, I can’t trust what I see and I’ve still not shed a tear.
Nadir
You can try to scratch but the itching is still there. Whenever you pause for thought the back of your head tingles and your breath shortens in that moment of realisation reminding you its all for nothing. Everything you do causes you to re-evaluate everything you're done. And nothing lets you sit still.
There's a clock ticking somewhere, slicing tiny shavings from your day, your week, your month, your year, your life. Its all a big melodrama, all a game of "wait, look at me, I'm important" and you have to wonder what for? When everyone feels the same nothing makes you stand out from the rest.
Restless eyes flit across screens, desks, documents, even faces. You've got a six second attention span and very few thoughts about sex left in your day. Your boss says "good job", patting you reassuringly on the shoulder and you wonder if he means just in the last five minutes or since you started. Is the physical contact meant as a reminder of his presence to you or a feeble attempt at empathy between men?
My namesake drank himself to death. Whether he meant to or not I can't say, nobody says so. Its driving me slowly insane thinking about the overbearing legacy of parentage and the thought that this is just going to kick off another guilt-fest of "when are you two settling down", "when are you going to make an honest woman of her" or worse still "have you thought about kids at all?"
Have I thought about kids? Would you like to see what would happen if I had any? Smash an egg on a countertop, scrape it all into a coffee mug and tell the egg yolk everything will be fine when it becomes a chicken. This is your kid in need of drugs because the father is a nutjob and comes from a long line of failures. I've yet to meet anyone with a sane family. You're all as screwed up as the rest of us.
There's a word for the death shadows that were left burned into the walls of buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the bombs were dropped. If I could remember the word I'd write about the phenomena, but I can't, so I'm left romanticising the idea of leaving a lasting impression on the world and being assigned a name nobody can remember.
Stop.
Lock and Load
Grey Squirrel Cull Called For in Cumbria: Arboreal Rodents Head For The Hills
Soldiers, Sailors and Conservation Officers for the Cumbria Wildlife Trust: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of red squirrel-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave brothers-in-arms from the Weasel Eradication League you will bring about the end of the grey squirrel stranglehold, the elimination of squirrel tyranny over the oppressed reds of Britain, and security for ourselves in Beatrix Potter country.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. Adept at camouflage, subterfuge, sabotage and perilously cute and fluffy, he is armed with razor sharp claws and big pointy teeth. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 2004! Much has happened since the grey squirrel invasion of 1929. The United Nations have inflicted upon the greys great defeats, in open battle, using feather dusters as lures. Our air offensive, wih the use of defoliants such as Agent Orange, has seriously reduced their strength in the trees and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in peanut boobytraps and axes for chopping down trees, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. First one to bag Nutkins gets promoted to Field Marshall.
End This Charade
It was my birthday at the weekend and a surprise dinner and after-dinner game of charades was in order. Charades, how genteel you might think, well, think again as the beer flowethed. In attendance were Anna, Bo, Mark, Pix and Richard
Its a film. Two words... second word two. First word... sounds like flash. Dash, trash, splash... Splash, Too!
Its a film... no, its a one-handed boxing match. Sorry, okay its a film. Five words, fourth word "a". First word, Die. Second word... penis. Cock. Erection. Hard. Die Hard With A Vengence!
Its a play, and a movie. Was it a movie first? It was a play first. One word. Three syllables... hold on are these real syllables or are these Annables? Right, real syllables, fine. First syllable, Pix, Ann, girl, woman, boobs... fine, move on, second syllable, car. Shorter than car... "ca". Second syllable "ca", first syllable unknown. Third syllable sounds like toe. Row, sew, mo, po, bo, go. Go. Something "cago". Chick-cago?
Okay, its a play. And a book. Three words. First word "the". Second word... um... oo-er thats a bit rude, what is that? Is that a clit? Ah! Vagina! The Vagina Monologues!
Its a TV show. One word, two syllables. First syllable... horse. Pony. Equine. Trot, canter... oh, "Nay". First syllable "Nay". Oh dear, Mark's collapsed in a shuddering heap of giggles.
Its a record. An album. Four words. Second word, sounds like... driver? Driver smoking a cheroot and wearing a hat? Chauffeur? Uh... humping? Shagging... okay, moving on. Fourth word, two syllables, second syllable... key. Something key. Monkey? Sounds like monkey. Funky, spunky, junkie... Junkie. Third word, five syllables. Hoboy. First syllable "in", second syllable... porky, tubby, chubby, fat. Fat. Third syllable, you. Fourth syllable, a... right I think we can see where this is going. Can anyone remember the title of the album? No? You're just going to have to keep going until one of us can remember it. First word, three syllables...
SUPPOSED FORMER INFATUATION JUNKIE! Christ, pick an easy one why don't you? What was with the fucker? How does fucker sound like former? Oh, you were supposed to be a farmer!
Right, its a song. Five words. Second word, little word. On, at, in, of. Of. Third word A. Of A. Fifth word Anna. Pix... woman. Girl. Girl, gotcha. Fourth word... cat... dog, duck... Sounds like ow. Can you mouth things like that? Surely that's cheating. Legend of a Cow Girl.
TV show. Two words. First word... good god... stop that right now! Not on the carpet! Fine! Come! Come something! Dancing?
Etc, ad infinitum, until we all ran out of inspiration and energy.
Black Knight
It was only a few years ago that Quentin was cleared to tell us what he had been doing for a living the past three decades. He said he'd received the message that morning in a non-descript government stamped envelope that his project was now declassified and would I like to come over and hear about it? He had also invited his son and family to hear about it too.
Over tea and coffee Quentin explained to us that he had working for the British Aerospace Establishment in the sixties on the Black Arrow satellite launcher project as part of the ballistics team. His role involved reengineering the rockets to carry conventional and, potentially, nuclear warheads, otherwise called Black Knights. His work became redundant when the United Kingdom fell under the protective umbrella of the US missile defense program.
He'd been harboring guilt for all these years about building weapons of mass destruction that he had felt the need to tell everyone as soon as he was freed of his responsabilities under the official secrets act. His wife Mary gave him a hug and his grandson started to cry (he was teething). I made the obvious joke about him looking forward to progressing to the next stage and consuming solids, which got me a faint smile from Quentin.
Later on that night after dinner and after Mary had chided him for feeling guilty all these years for such a trivial reason we sat and talked about the nature of things, about weapons of mass destruction and the way they're thrown around by nations in the political arena, about how succesfully developing them will elevate the country to a global player and why there had been such a race to arm during the cold war. This was prior to September 11th so we were mainly talking about actions in retrospect.
"I've heard the idea that war is the extension of politics, but what's the point of stockpiling missiles and nukes that you can obviously never use without mutually assured destruction? Surely that's just global stalemate" I said.
"I'll tell you a story D. One day a government official was visiting the test silo we were building the prototype Black Knight in. He glanced up the length of the silo, with his legs slightly apart and his hands clasped behind his back and he said 'Gentlemen, this gives me the most satisfying erection I've had in years'. Its not about nations or protecting the people or fighting for what's right, it will always be about having the biggest penis."
"I never thought about if that way before" I said.
"Sometimes it does take a rocket scientist."
Diamonds in the Rough
Two moments of unintentional humor I noticed through the usual dross of banal conversation:
Situation 1: Pix and I are finally back in the Crown Estates offices about to get our deposit back. The Crown Estates commissioner (representative of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) has strewn our file across her entire desk and starts gathering up the pieces of paper. As she does so she says "Lets get this all back together again", to which I said "It didn't work for Humpty Dumpty" alluding to the fact that she is one of "all the king's men".
Situation 2: I'm sitting across from someone when he declares that his legs have gone (ie, he's been sat down so long that he can't feel them anymore), I ask if its gone for a walk and he says "yeah, and left me behind" which can mean they've abandoned him as well as they've disengaged themselves from his ass. Unintentional pun, I'm quite sure.
I wonder if anyone else notices... where's a canned audience when you need one?
Bimbo
American democracy is a wonderful thing, but can someone explain just one niggling little detail to me please?
Why do they call it the seal of the President when its obviously an eagle?
Rewind, repost, regret
Since I know that the judges are out there short-listing short lists for the 2004 awards, I repost the following from about this time last year as a warning:
Bloggies: The Musical
THIS IS A DISCLAIMER! No other posts today, I wanted to do something musical, so instead I've written out a fairly quick and wildly innaccurate ditty. This is a light-hearted poke at all the fuss that has gone on around the Bloggies. Seriously here folks, I don't know anything about these people other than what's been written online and this isn't the introspective piece of investigation that Eastwest recently ran. If you want anything closer to the facts. I say fairly quick... I had nothing better to do, okay?
Dramatis Personae:
Nikolai Nolan: 20-something web-geek extraordinaire. The DJ Qualls in this little movie
Ed K: A confused man in the Dallas Fort Worth area who lives entirely in silhouette, unlikely to be giving out prizes (so I'm bitter)
Jessica Thinkdink: Married woman with mad designer skillz who oughta be a Digital Diva
Denise: Wife of SixDifferentWays Charles, talks about cats lots
Philo: A San Francisco blogger who won't let a good story lie, owns hotpants
The Blogging Chorus: Onmipresent horde of amateur desktop publishers, they see everything they know everything. Wrong them at your own peril.
Continue"Rewind, repost, regret"
Good grief
There's a Peanuts comic strip that starts with Snoopy looking up from atop his kennel as Woodstock drives a tiny tractor into the first panel. Woodstock is wearing a straw hat and chewing an ear of corn. Woodstock has taken up farming. Snoopy asks him how he intends dealing with the usual farming blights like potato bugs and Woodstock kicks at the air, punting imaginary potato bugs away from his crops.
There's a warmth and innocence in that strip which has stayed with me all these years. Somehow I always end up thinking about Charles Schultz and Snoopy when someone I know dies.
Milk Minefield
When I was younger, so much younger than today, my mother would tell us it was bedtime and then tango with us down the hallway to the bedroom I shared with my sister (I had top bunk). We'd tango all the way down the hallway, turn, tango halfway back, turn again and then go back to the bedroom door. I'd get into bed as she tangoed with my sister and then it was goodnight kisses and lights out.
One evening before bed I was sitting across from my sister at the small kitchen table, both drinking a glass of warm milk through a straw. Only, we weren't drinking the milk, we were blowing bubbles. It started to become a bit of a competition. Who could maintain the bubbles at the lip of the glass for the longest? Who could fill the glass full of bubbles the quickest?
Burbleurbleurbleurbleurbleurbleurbleurbleurble...
When suddenly our eyes locked like gunfighters waiting for the clock to strike high noon, chewing on the straws, there was a moment of mental sibling telepathy, with one deep breath that filled our young lungs to bursting point, cheeks inflated painfully and still the demon stare went unbroken and...
Boom! Two landmines went off in our faces, drenching us both with warm milk, the pressure too much to be contained in the transparent vessels before us.
I looked round and there was my mother, shaking her head, incredulous that we were still so young and stupid. But after we'd toweled off we still danced the tango.
Toku e Ikitai
I was walking, and I didn't realise it but I was always falling forward. With each step I fell forward slightly and then caught myself. Over and over. My footfalls beat out the backbone to a tune only I could hear but I wasn't paying it any attention, I was just walking.
In the dusty recesses of my mind words and phrases were being sought out. Words that hadn't been used in what felt like an eternity. Was it nostalgia I felt or regret? Was the concrete embrace of the city comforting me or stifling me? Can you ever go somewhere the streets have no name but everybody knows yours?
Through a slick sheen of soft rain the broken surfaces of the pavement spread out before me. Was I following where it led me or was it taking me where I wanted to go? I could be walking in circles for all I knew, my attention focused inward to my own thoughts, looking for the words needed to say what had to be said.
I flicked the cigarette forward with practiced precision, arcing out and downwards. It struck the wet surface in a shower of embers, each ember falling and dying slowly as the cold and the wet sucked the life from them. Then my foot came crushing down on it, grinding it flat into a damp grave. What is one flickering flame within an inferno?
And yet I continued my path forwards through four dimensions, ever conscious of the Japanese phrase "Shikata na gai", meaning there is no choice. I walked onwards and the rain was a comforting veil over my thoughts.
Experimentation
He peeled back the wrapper carefully and took a bite from the end of the chewy chocolate bar, munching thoughtfully on it. The classical music helped him to concentrate, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue underscored his thoughts.
On the worktop beside him in a small wire cage sat two white mice, they'd been bombarded with radiation, injected with malignant cancer cells, they'd each had a leg amputated and yet they were growing back to full health as cell division rebuilt strong healthy cells and the old dead ones fell away. Through the microscope he was able to see that the Telomere strands were reacting as he had predicted, cell degradation was halting altogether and in some cases reversing.
Chrysalis, rebirth, regeneration. His revolutionary biomodifications had halted apoptosis at the cellular level and the mice had even developed an immunity to nerve gases and biological agents. It was as if they had mutated into mice-shaped white bloodcells, capable of fighting off all manner of infection. Now if only he could find a cure for the common cold.
Of the two mice only Charlie mouse had been given the cold virus, in an attempt to see if progressive cell regeneration therapy would reverse the devastating effects of the common cold on the human population. He was about to dictate into his recorder about the progress of his work when his mobile phone rang. Digging into the pocket of his labcoat he answered the phone to an earful from his wife.
"Yes dear, no dear, three bags full dear. I'm not being glib dear, I'm busy dear, of course work isn't more important than you dear."
He wasn't paying attention and didn't see Charlie mouse sneeze through the bars of the cage, droplets of fresh mouse DNA, genetically modified to regenerate and regrow from a single live cell sprinkled across the work surface. Instead he got up and walked out of the room, locking the door behind him as the CD switched from Gershwin to The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas.
He would be seeing a lot more of Charlie mouse when he got back to the lab.
Suits and Shoes
Time for a little linky-love. Well, when I say love there's love for the new and improved Shoe Project, Mig's little project which was meant as a parody of the Mirror Project looks set to become the new black.
And no love for Adam from Tailorstoday, linked here for the first time. I hate him, because reading him makes me feel like an amateur. If you haven't read the Whack-a-mole post then you really should, its a contemporary piece of diamond-bullet genius. I hate him.
Art for Art's Sake
I must apologise to those of you who loved the woman eating pussy image for changing it, but I'm afraid that's just something that happens around here. I had a better image and the pussy eating had to go. Hopefully this new one will distress less of you, and Carlene, hopefully you'll enjoy the content despite the lack of pussy. Nice shoes by the way, in case I didn't mention them already...
There is a story behind the new one of my friend Hitomi holding a sniper rifle whilst wearing a bride's maid's dress, which partly ties into her life-long search for the perfect man but I'm afraid that her impending book, to be written from H.M. Holloway Women's Prison, won't be out for another few months and I can't spoil the ending for her.
Anyone who can identify the rifle gets a cookie.
Extraction
I lay back into the chair and the dentist gave me that cheery smile that says "You're going to make me a lot of money m'boy" before looking inside my mouth. his mirror and pick zipped around the insides of my mouth, pricking here, reflecting there, my jaw muscles started to ache and I started to understand what a bukkake champion feels like.
He was chanting that strange language that only exists between a dentist and his nurse, you know the sort of thing: Right base seven impact crater, six missing, five discoloration, four fine, three little maids from school, two craws sat upon a wa', one love, one life, two, three fine, four leaf clover, five and six makes a duck in a wheelchair, seven cataclysmic system failure. Lower jaw fine. Nice tight uniform there.
He stopped partway through though, as if he'd forgotten the next part of the chant and was trying to remember at what point the drill Gods had to be satisfied.
"Have you had that long?" he asked, jabbing me with the pick.
Um... yeah, I think so, I said. Or rather, thats what it would have sounded like through a Universal Translator. What I actually said was: Esh, ah ghink show.
"It'll have to come out. Right now. I'm not kidding, this is life threatening, and one of the most common causes of brainrot"
Brainrot! I had no choice but to nod, impaling the roof of my mouth on his blunt rustly instruments. Within seconds he'd anaesthetised my entire mouth and sucked on a few mouthfuls of nitrous oxide (to keep his hand steady he said). He took a fresh blade for the scalpel and the last thing I remember seeing before there was a spurt of blood and I fainted was the nurse leaning forward to see what the hell was in my mouth. Her expression wasn't pleasant, but her uniform sure was tight.
I awoke, blinking into the light. Everything below my nose was wrapped up in thick gauze and I felt like I'd taken one too many blows to the jaw. Mike Tyson must have passed by while I was out and asked to tenderise my chin for practice.
Turning my head to one side I saw the dentist and nurse standing between me and the sterilized work-surfaces, prodding at something on a metal tray. Sitting forward slightly I was able to make out... a tongue? My tongue!
The dentist turned to face me with an evil glint in his eye.
"All done sir, don't worry about the bill, your friends have taken care of it already. They even left a very generous tip."
What You Leave Behind
I sat across the table from K and she looked over at my girlfriend, standing at the bar, surrounded by a crowd of laughing and joking friends.
"You don't believe in love, do you D"
If you mean the whole thing with red lovehearts and Valentine's gifts and flowers and wooing someone then no, I don't. I believe in loyalty and companionship and frequent bouts of wild monkey-sex. Love has always been some undefined intangible quality in human emotions. A chemical imbalance, a hormonal legacy from our species' procreation drives when all a man was looking for was a woman with wide birthing hips and teats to feed the young.
"How delightful. It was a rhetorical question of course."
Of course. I was just thinking about the consequences of love.
"In what way?"
Well, that scar on your forehead, just above your brow, that tells me that you had the measles or varicella as a kid and you picked at one of the spots, and its left you with that impression for the rest of your life. I recognise it because I've got the same marks, see?
"I see"
But this scar here for instance, this was caused by love. An Ex gouged me with a fingernail, digging right into the flesh. These nicks and cuts across my knuckles, those were caused by love when an argument with another Ex got out of control and she smashed a drinks glass over my fist. I could show you a scar on my back caused in the spur of passion that I can attribute to love as well.
"Love isn't about just scars and fights"
Oh totally. There's a much deeper level of scarring that can happen on an emotional level. You'll find entire collections of music can't be listened to anymore without the bitter taste of failure coming back to haunt you. Movies take on new meanings when the age-old plot device of two people falling in love is used.
You project yourself onto that screen, into those lyrics and you feel that yearning again, deep down in the bone marrow. Your fingers ache to touch, your skin tingles at the memory of ghost fingers touching you in return and you'll get a chill running down your spine. That's why I don't believe in love, if love was the way it is glamorised to us then the pain wouldn't still be there behind it, or waiting to replace it when love ends.
"But our experiences make us the people we are. Its unrealistic to think that you'll always be happy. There's always going to be some measure of bad to go with the good."
So what's the secret to eternal love?
She leaned over the table and kissed me firmly on the lips for a second. My eyes closed instinctively and the kiss ended before the first wave of guilt hit me, she timed it perfectly. My lips still burned from her touch as she drew away and sat down again.
"There isn't one. And you might not believe in love, but you obviously exist in its embrace"
A L'Attaque!
When I turned eighteen I had been living in France for over five years and became eligible for French National Service. It was the final year of the National Service, the army would be phasing into a voluntary career force the next year and the entire structure was already in the throes of reorganisation. France didn't have any serious NATO commitments that year so the worst assignment going was likely to be some outpost in North Africa after basic training was completed.
Or so we figured.
Unbeknown to those of us of Deuxieme Regiment, Peloton Alpha, French Polynesia was about to see some illegal weapons testing of a different sort to the nuclear bombs that had been covered in the news.
A strange side-effect had struck the local regiment's stocks and supplies of tinned deserts and an industrious Lieutenant Colonel had made a proposition that had struck a chord with his superiors. We, as the final batch of conscripts to go through the system would be used as test subjects in the trials of this devastating new weapon.
When the Lieutenant Colonel heard that there was someone of British progeny in his ranks he called for me and I stood to attention as he unveiled his vile master plan, as all true villains do at some point or another, gloating seemingly being part of the madness that drives such men.
"You see, mon ami, for decades now under ze cover of zis European treaty we have been examining all uzer countries defences and we have found ze perfect weapon should we ever have to go to war against ze United Kingdom."
He paused to chop the end off a long thin cigar, lit it and continued, tapping it occasionally and grinning past the smoke.
"When we deescovered zat ze dezzert supplies of our troops in Rikitea had been contaminated by ze radiation fallout of ze tests, I saw zat we could combine them into a devastating zelf-aware weapon."
He rose and placed his kepi on his head before striding out into the middle of the parade ground. I followed dutifully and kept pace two steps behind him to the right as was my place. I realised with some alarm that he was carrying his automatic in its holster and it appeared to be loaded.
"Ze beegest trouble was finding ze right kind of sponge. Fortunately, ze atolls here act almost exactly like cake. We poured all ze finest English sherry over it as poseeble..."
At this point the parade ground began to tremble, a puddle of water flurried with impact vibrations and a looming presence began moving through the surrounding tropical forest towards us.
"...we mix in ze irradiated gelatine, creme Anglaise and voilà!"
The forest parted before us and a massive amorphous glutinous three-layered blob slithered across the flat parade ground, stopping before us. It shivered menacingly, never still, as if it would take only a single command for this radiation abomination to absorb us all and digest us slowly inside itself like by osmosis. I imagined I could almost make out the chucks of pineapple and papaya I knew for sure would be in the clear red gooey mix that made up the middle layer.
"Mah finest creashon. Ze Assault Trifle. One day we shall unleash it on all you Roast Biff, Johnny Englander snobs, and zen France shall finally be triumphant!"
He laughed the laugh of so many evil geniuses before him, but I had already realised how we could defeat it. I knew something he didn't; we would simply dismiss it as a mere trifle...
Sleuth
Where did things go wrong with Nancy? You thought we were a perfect match, a well-balanced couple, she had the brains and the looks and I carried the shopping.
Well it was a variety of things, and not just that she had never really stopped loving Ned Nickerson, her ex. I really hated Ned, he was always such a goody-goody two-shoes and she would frequently ignite an argument with the phrase "Well my last boyfriend..." Ned was in the basketball team, the baseball team and the football team and yet he always came across as this effeminate girly-boy. I could never understand the attraction, and its true that I spent a lot of the relationship looking over my shoulder.
And it wasn't her over-achieving father either. I like lawyers, some of my best friends are lawyers that have helped me out of tight jams. Well, when I say friends, I mean aquaintances. And when I say tight jams I do of course mean prison. Well maybe it was that he was always encouraging her to try harder, to push further, and I took that to mean that she shouldn't settle for me as a boyfriend. He and Ned always got on well together.
Maybe it was her two friends who annoyed me. The athletic one and the fat one. Christ knows what Nancy saw in them, Bess was obviously a binge eater and George a closet lesbian. With a name like George and her athletic build I couldn't believe Nancy hadn't considered it before, so much for the great detective. George and Bess just needed a couple of good strong, hardy boys to come along and look after them.
The final straw of course was when I came back to the apartment complex we lived in after a night out with my friends and she'd managed to get the building super arrested, as well as most of the maintenance staff. I don't care if they were gun-running Cubans plotting to assassinate high-ranking politicians, that apartment was very cold that winter. She shouldn't have been snooping around, still I tell myself that they would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for that pesky Ms Drew.
Discourse
A: Its raining
B: Is it raining men?
D: Hallejulah. You know the bit that always bugged me? "God bless Mother Nature. She's a single woman too". Wouldn't that mean she's been having loads of kids without being married?
B: Wedlock. There's an expression you never hear without pejorative connotations.
D: You mean "out of wedlock?"
B: Yes, that makes us all illegitimate bastards.
A: Speak for yourself, I can read.
D: Ouch, recursive paradox brain bruise...
Thanks, now go nominate the site for one of these. I have a long tradition of being nominated but never winning. See? 2003, second best European, 2002 as Bulletproof Punk, not as funny as Wil Wheaton. I'll win one of these if it kills me... or Tom Coates, whichever happens first.