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.
Status Symbology
There are currently more saved drafts in the Acerbia Editing Menu than anything else and it occurs to me that I'm probably boring you or losing the audience with this self-imposed silence so here's a bit of an explanation as to what's going on.
The Shahrazad post below was supposed to be the first in a series that explored various aspects of the Arabian 1001 Nights formula of storytelling with stories within stories within stories. The second and third posts are planned out, even partly written, but somehow I just can't go through with publishing them.
Publishing isn't that big a problem though as I recently received my copy of the Blog Book I was included in. There is a very special feeling that I had previously never experienced upon seeing my words in print and my name right there in ink on paper. Its almost like realising that there can be such a thing as a legacy that lives on beyond you. I could get quite used to seeing my words in print.
I have embarked on an attempted cure for my writer's block which involves working directly with my nemesis. Some of you may get a bit excited at that prospect but I urge you not to set your expectations too high as we recently cancelled each other out during a game of Trivial Pursuits.
Comments have been switched off and removed from the site because of some particularly insistent Russian/German spammers filling my old posts with multiple comments each time for forms of pornography that I find repulsive (I'm a big fan of pornography, really I am, but some people are just sick) and so until such time as I can be bother to find a workaround that works I'll just live off your adoring e-mails. Remember, I'm Dave and this is my website. Alternatively my AOL IM handle is AcerbiaDave. Imagine that, the creativity never ends, eh?
In other news I've discovered that the earphones that previously hurt my ears fit better if I put the right one in my left ear and vice versa. However this leaves me with the worry that I am now facing the wrong way when I listen to music. Curiouser and curiouser.
Shahrazad Reborn
"I can't sleep"
Her body emerged from the darkness like a shimmer of light playing across a velvet curtain. The contours of her olive Persian skin were accentuated by pools of shadow and whisps of moonlight as she stalked over to the bed in nothing but the ethereal hint of a slip and the golden thong heels she wore instead of slippers. Her harem heels, as I called them.
"Neither can I, why don't you join me?"
Her thighs made the smooth sound of skin on skin as she climbed onto the bed and curled up beside me. Black, fragrant hair tickled across my chest and I could smell almonds and cocoa butter.
"How about a story?" she asked.
"How about sex?" I fired back with a grin that could only be seen and not heard.
"I'll tell you a story, one that would have made my grandmother proud."
And this is the story that she told me.
Adam & Eve
"You're nervous"
I'm not nervous, I replied.
"Yes you are, you've been chewing on that fingernail for fifteen minutes now. It's looking like a peeled shrimp. They're going to love you, stop worrying."
Eden's parents had come to London to meet me. We'd decided that we were at that stage where we were happy with the way the relationship had progressed and were looking to see how compatible our lives could be. After friends and friends of friends comes parents. Then maybe we'd start looking at flats. The argument over whether we'd be living in London or Tel Aviv had yet to be had at this point.
"Relax, they'll love you just as much as I do."
I can't relax, your father's one of the heroes of Entebbe and your mother is in the Knesset. My father's a retired dentist and my mother works for Disney. I'm slightly intimidated by your parents you know. They're on the forefront of politics and the struggle of the Israeli people and... what are you doing?
"I brought a yarmulke for you to wear."
But I'm not Jewish.
"Yes, I was going to talk to you about that before my parents arrived. Remember all those Yiddish words I've been teaching you? Well you might want to sprinkle them liberally into the conversation. Avoid all direct conversation about religion and just let them get the wrong impression. Talk to dad about guns and planes or something. It'll make life a lot easier."
I see.
"When mother asks about children just ignore her, I'll take care of that part of the conversation. Don't worry about it when she asks where we plan on living, I'll be coming here. Also, if you find yourself doubting yourself or the relationship at any point during the evening just remember that what we did last night we can do again tonight and both my parents are rich. Here they come."
All I could say was "Bubeleh!"
West End Blues
I was sitting in Regent's Park with Louie Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles. Ray's dog Blinky was with us, chewing on a bone Ella had brought for him, as we all sat round a square of cloth and a wicker picnic basket, just chilling and shooting the breeze. The silence was only broken by the continuous buzzing of a fly.
"Ah" said Ella, lying back on the grass. "Summertime, and the living is easy."
"Who said that?" replied Ray. "Is there a fly buzzing around my face?"
No, I said, it's Louie making that noise. Louie, stop that, play with the dog.
"Zoo-ba-zoo-ze-zoobie-zoo" said Louie.
Isn't this a lovely day, with blue skies watching over us? The very thought of it all makes me misty. They can't take this away from us.
"Let's go get stoned" said Ray.
"Easy for you to say, your father's rich and your ma is good looking." retorted Ella.
"I love Paris, or Manhattan, but everytime I come to London I end up with the West End blues." bemoaned Louie as Blinky the dog tried to chew on his trumpet.
I wish this park had swings, I said.
"We don't need swings, we've got that lucky old sun. And you, D, you are my sunshine" cooed Ella in that mellow throaty voice that had made her so famous.
Ah but Ella, I sighed, it don't mean a thing if the park ain't got them swings.
End of the Line
I hold the long metal cylinder in my left hand, my right clenched around the grip of the pistol and twist the silencer into place. This is the vulnerable moment, when I have both hands occupied and the pistol cannot be fired. I should be focusing on what I'm doing but instead I'm looking out of the windows of the rental car making sure I'm not being watched.
With the pistol and silencer laced together I take the Tribune and fold it over the top. With a quick pat of my ankle I verify that my back-up is still tucked into the slender ankle holster and then pull the door release and step into the quiet parking lot. I won't be coming back to the rental and it should sit unnoticed until the company reports it overdue in a week. By then I'll be long gone.
I enter the bar and walk right up to her. She doesn't hear me approach and I sit on the barstool beside her. There is a sigh and her head tilts down to look into her half-empty glass.
"So this is how it ends?" she says, without looking away from the bartop.
I have the pistol pointed into her ribs, the barman is at the other end of the bar and nobody has looked at me twice yet. But somehow I can't quite bring myself to pull the trigger, she exudes a radiance I've never seen before.
"A lifetime of exile, comes to an end in a shitty dive in middle-America. The last daughter of a dynasty that lasted for a thousand years shot at a bar while she drinks cheap bourbon, by a..."
She pauses to give me the once over.
"...a ratty little man with crooked teeth and bad hair. Christ, my ancestors would have rolled over your kind in their carriages on the way to church and still had the priests kissing their asses. You look like you haven't even got the IQ required to comprehend what this is all about; why you were sent here to do this. You're probably some small-time crook who thinks he's hit the jackpot with this job. I'll bet you can't wait to spend the cash on cheap crack whores and junk. My contempt for you goes beyond loathing, you're like a subspecies of vermin I wouldn't take the time to..."
About this point I realise I have no problem pulling the trigger anymore.
Extraction
After some complications last night with a pork chop in a sweet mango and ginger confit I made an emergency appointment with my dentist for this afternoon. He'd done a sterling job on repairing the front four that were in a rather grim state of decay and extracted the top left wisdom tooth.
The top right wisdom tooth had been salvaged but apparently all it takes is one good bite of a pork chop to put paid to that. There was a risk the tooth had snapped below the gumline and would be as impossible to extract as U.S. hostages in Tehran. Knowing already that there would be injections and pliers and possible weeping I went along anyway.
The dentist didn't even bother with the "you might feel a little prick" joke. The tooth wasn't broken and came out as easily as something embedded at the back of your skull can with only the slightest hint of a cracking sound. I was actually quite relieved at how painless the whole thing was.
So that's two wisdom teeth removed in two months. I'm 50% down on my wisdomyness. You can expect the content around here to be subsequently dumbed down accordingly.
To cheer myself up I went and bought a 2-disc Best Of Magnum P.I. DVD and sat on the couch with a rubber chicken and a gun, sucking water through a straw.
Parenting by Proxy
A friend of mine took a day off work last week to visit his sister in hospital, she's just had a baby. When he came back we conducted the usual pantomime of finding out all these things about newborn babies like weight (in case I ever need to punt it across the hospital courtyard) and whether there were any gory complications.
He admitted to me that he was relieved that she'd had a baby boy as he really hadn't fancied becoming an auntie.
Le Dauphin
You can tell that your company is doing well when the rooftop helipad is suddenly needed for something more than just golf practice. Although I think that Arthur would disagree as his swing is likely to suffer but I doubt he wants to be up there when the CEO's SA 360 Dauphin 2 civilian transport helicopter comes in to land.
Within a week every member of the board had found an excuse to take a trip somewhere in it despite the ridiculously prohibitive cost of having a repair crew and crew chief on permanent stand-by. It reminded me of the apocryphal tale of the Rolls Royce mechanics that appear halfway up a Swiss mountain to fix a faulty gearbox then refuse to charge the owner for the repairs because a Rolls Royce never breaks down.
The Dauphin 2 will comfortably seat eight passengers and is most easily described to the wide-eyed, slack-jawed incredulous customers as "that one from the start of Baywatch that skims over the ocean between shots of Pamela Anderson's tits". I say incredulous because such an overt extravagance makes justifying our costs to clients nigh impossible when we've just set three wheels down at the nearest heliport to visit them with the CEO tagging along for the ride.
Needless to say it was a tough sell but I managed it, and the client drove us back to the heliport just to see the forty-foot twin turboprop machine. We shook hands and I climbed back aboard to rejoin our CEO. There was the lurch of takeoff and the coffee and pastries I'd had during the meeting got friendly with parts of my body I'd rather they stayed clear of.
Gazing whistfully out of the side window as we flew over the suburbs of London my CEO seemed forelorn and distant. Over the cruising purr of the rotors I could just barely hear him mumbling something about how peaceful the world looked below. How people didn't even look up when a private helicopter flies overhead. This from a man who rides a 989cc Ducati in his spare time and dates supermodels.
"What next? What next?" he murmured rhetorically.
I suggested he invest in some air to ground missiles and hardpoints, a chaingun attachment for the front and a copy of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie, that'd cheer him right up and solve congestion in London in one easy stroke.
Substitute Hell
It was the first morning back after half term and there was a buzz in the courtyard that Mr Mazda had been in an accident and wouldn't be back to teach us for the rest of the year. Fanciful tales of cut brake cables and sabotaged gas tanks, the severity of his wounds and which substitute teacher we would be landed with circulated like flotsam in a perpetually flushing toilet with small huddles of pre-teens interacting at a social level that would have given Harry Seldon a headache.
I was more focused on watching Elizabeth though. In just a few short weeks apart she seemed to have passed from being a girl into being a woman. I could see the first hint of breasts and her shapely legs in long socks under the navy pleated skirt she wore as part of her uniform set my heart aflutter. I was trying to integrate myself into the group she was chatting with when our new teacher arrived.
As the first cloven hoof struck asphalt in a small bubbling pool of flames and liquid ichor, we realised our fate for the rest of Year 9 at Avesta Comprehensive Grammar School had been sealed. We were now the charges of Mr Ahriman.
Semasiology
Ellyn had the irksome habit of always being right. Right up to the day she died. Her meticulous nature and ponderous pauses would lead to drawn out silences that could terminate any argument in a concise finale, leaving you in no doubt who was right and who was wrong. It was not unknown for Ellyn to start arguing your case for you when you had broached the heart of the argument and convinced her you were right. Such arguments would eventually barrel-roll into an endless congratulatory series of agreements and smiles.
Close to seven feet tall (in sensible heels) and with skin that reminded you of the smooth creamy shimmer of milk chocolate, Ellyn once admitted to me that she descended from an Abyssinian tribe that had fought the Italians and the British across the devastated landscape of Eritrea and the Sudan. In her last few weeks we discussed traditional tribal burial rituals and she asked to be buried in a ring of fire, I said the best I could do was set the grass around her burial plot on fire with some lighter fluid and a Zippo.
Mate
I spent the latter part of last week in Stockholm presenting to members of our board. On the Thursday evening I had time to kill so I wandered the pristine and deserted wide boulevards, past the library and into the Kungliga Humlegården where I sat and read my book for half an hour in the crisp sunshine.
When I became bored of reading the heroic exploits of the SAS rescue mission in Sierra Leone I wandered south west and found myself in a large cobbled area, flanked with tall ornate buildings of burgundy and sand tones. Rows of cherry blossom trees sprinkled the breeze with spiraling pink petals and I sat at a bench beside an eight foot square chess board. Two players were moving wooden pieces each about two feet tall about the board by grasping handles that protruded from the top of each piece.
The black player was a towering Samoan man who had either burst his bottom lip or refused to keep his tongue in his mouth. His limbs were like tree trunks and I was amazed as I watched him slip through the ranks of pieces to make his moves.
The Male Muse
The first time Andy destroyed my stereo came as a surprise. He booted the small Sony tower clear across the room, taking a chunk out of the drywall. The second time was forgetfulness on my part and the glass doors shattered and of the three CDs that had been inside it only one of them was ever playable again. The third time was entirely my fault, I deliberately goaded him into doing it and it wasn't much of a loss. The fourth and fifth times were simply because I couldn't get to the remote fast enough. Each time he paid for the replacement and apologised but I was always left fascinated by that outburst of rage.
Andy had written poetry since he was able to grasp a crayon, he seemed to be able to look at words the way engineers look at structures and understand the variety of components that bind them together inside. Andy could tell you the myriad of meanings for any word you'd care to mention and had been awarded a prestigious award by the Queen at one point for being the only man to ever work a rhyme to "orange" into one of his pieces. I forget what it was though.
It was inevitable that he and Jayne get together. She'd been playing showcases for what must have seemed her entire adult life. If it wasn't a showcase it was a coffee shop, if it wasn't a coffee shop she was playing a wedding or a children's party. She was very good with her guitar, but just didn't have that spark of originality that would set her apart from the rest of the single female accoustic guitar players out there. Until she met Andy, that was.