Two old men. A young
kid. Columns of time. They ain’t got two good eyes between them but
the old guy on the left, the one with the one laughing eye, gets hurt
every time the young guy gets into an unexpectedly deep conversation
with the old guy in the middle.
And the young guy
gets hurt if the old guy in the middle seems to be paying more
attention to the old guy on the left.
This set of
circumstances has led to an uneasy alliance.
The barroom of the
Helsapoppin’ was their trading post and they sold a pile of bullshit
to each other. And to anyone else who would listen. These were the
good times. Each one of them looking out for the other.
The old guy on the
left didn’t trust anybody. He had trusted the old guy in the middle
for a long time. But he’d never worshiped him. He’d respected their
friendship but that didn’t involve trust. He never asked for anything
other than what he was due.
The old guy on the
left knew that he had one of the only two eyes in the room and the
little, young, guy on his far right was causing that vision to be
distracted. And all this one-eyed junkie had left was his vision.
The cruellest thing
you can do is distract a man from his vision – although, of course,
leaving him to it can be just as bad.
And here are the
three men who will play out at least part of this story.
The old man on the
left with his seeing eye that is always laughing … or crying. A
waterfall of love. A pain that is disguised by a flicker, a cocked
eyebrow.
What is that eye
saying?
His face is one of
those flickering roadside signs. You look one second and the girl is
smiling. The next second she is frowning. One message then another.
Then there is his
blind eye. Now thereby hangs another tale.
The Helzapoppin’
is the most hate-filled barroom in the world and all the malcontents,
hipsters, thieves and thugs, megalomaniacs and liars, cheats,
perverts, dog-fighting, ban-dog owning, shit-kicking fuckers gather
there to get violently loud and uncoordinated on anything they know
will damage their brains …
… Over there
against the fruit pastille slot machine is the ape. Ugly man, no
class. Shoulders on him like a motorway bridge. Lice speeding up and
down them. He’s got no hair but for some tufts that look like horns.
Ugly guy. Thinks
he’s tough. Scared shitless when the old guy on the left had
threatened him one time with a gumball. But he acts tough whenever he
gets into the old guy’s line of vision: Starts shouting and laughing
loud. Big mouth and stupid broken-nosed face. Flapping ears and a
dribble of spittle on his chin …
… A little skull
of a guy balances on the bar. He grins and raises his glass. He’s got
big brown teeth and spindly glasses. Hair gone slick across the white
bone of his forehead. He chews a cigarette like it’s matchstick.
Dangerous as shit. A faded dandy. He’s worn that suit too often. A
stain at the crotch like a layer of salt. Scratches at his leg until
his strides rise and reveal the suspenders on his calves. Takes an
olive from the saucer on the bar, sucks the pepper from it and
replaces the skin.
A little dead
squirrel of a man. Leigh wouldn’t have pissed on him if he’d been
on fire.
The young guy took
out a piece of dope like a knuckle and ate it.
“Oh!”
Leigh let out an involuntary cry and poked his elbow into Geoff. “He
jus’ ate fifty pound’s worth!”
“Naw,”
Geoff replied. “‘Bout a tenner’s worth.”
“Fucking hell,”
Leigh sighed.
This truly was a
baronial hall of helz-a-poppin’. Bowels were hanging from the beams,
feeding the birds. Dead colleagues.
Over at another
table Naughty Nigel is fidgety. Keeps looking over at Leigh – bad,
slitty, tired eyes. Got a down on Leigh and Leigh don’t know why.
Dangerous man.
Dangerous man to
know. You can’t ignore him. Watch him all the time. Nothing more
dangerous than a dangerously intelligent fool.
(Nothing new to
report. Been out again today. Took a walk down to the red rec. Saw
nobody in particular – and if I had, I couldn’t have thought of
anything in particular to say – just a lonely old lady now. Smiled at
the other old lady hanging her washing out by the Druids Door.
Noticed the old love wasn’t there by the window of her roadside
shack. Maybe she’s died. Hair! Dyed my hair. Grew it long. Makes me
look younger don’tcha think. Got me up in swively hips and
stockings. But my hips are too fat. I’ll go down to the shops next in
a tiara. Tiara bum-de-A. Tee-ara bum-de-A. Ha ha ha.
Hmm. I’m not even an
eccentric old lady. Tsk! So I went down to the Helzapoppin’ … to
see all those lovely boys!)
And there were
lovely boys standing around. All too many of them. All of them had
half-hards on as they rubbed up against the bar.
Now these guys used
to bother Geoff and the young guy. But Leigh, he didn’t mind them.
They were kind of rudely exotic. Embarrassingly so, actually, to a
man who had to remain ultimately masculine.
Lemming’s
Pie
INGREDIENTS:
Take one broken man
(it is best if he has been dropped, like a figurine on to linoleum,
and he is shattered).
Take the pieces and
place them before a beautiful woman. She must then smear all the
jaggedy edges with the thick saline solution she dips her fingers
into beneath her skirts.
Then he will be
whole again.
Cook for however
long in a chamber pot. Until the vile bubbles.
When it is
candescant with ignominy – cast it aside and let it bake on the
window ledge in the sun.
And when it is
finally done – intuition will tell you the moment – you must cast it
aside without a second glance.
Your meal must
become as pigswill.
Like a dog’s vomit
on a rocky beach.
****
In a corner of this
baronial hall was a place called Montellimare. Theirs was a table
full of dreams. A corner that everybody gravitated to, even though
they didn’t know it.
That corner of the
room was a square, a handkerchief of snow. Tall, leaning and
unpredictably unsteady buildings, ladders of lights and curtains
surrounded it. These were almost all whorehouses.
In that white square
dwelt a Chiquita of a boy. He had the handsomeness of David and he
had honed it with abuse. He was a god whose eyes moved all the time
seeking approval. His skin was olive … like a Pole. His hair was
slicked back … like a Spaniard. His mouth was a ring of fire.
Even his shoulders
moved from the hip. He was maybe thirty years old but he could have
been fifteen. He was sex at the flick of a switchblade. He had the
kind of body anybody would have killed to nuzzle.
And he jus’ kep’
flickin’ those eyes across at the old guy on the left who lived in
another world – and they both kep’ sneakin’ a peak into each other’s
world. And neither of them knew why. They just knew there was an
attraction.
Montellemare La
Hombre, a sign said over the door. And all the streets went teeming
by outside. Fast traffic in five lanes, swishing lights and honking
horns. Rain coming down. Half a tramp on a skateboard whizzing along
by the propulsion of his knuckles. He got rain in his eyes as it
blowed off the peak of his cap. He is heading for the underground
where he can beg in the dry.
The old guy is going
in there. La Hombre.
But as that Art Deco
door clicks shut behind him, you must remember that this old man,
who is now flicking up a cigarette and ordering a glass of beer, is
only aware of one thing – he’s lost everything that he ever pretended
to own. And that is a profound thing for a man to have to face …
that the nothing he ended up with came out of the nothing he owned
when he thought he had everything.
So he goes in to La
Hombre, step by step.
The boy has a mouth
like a salty cavern. It is deep and tastes of garlic, tobacco, beer
and cheese. The metal in his teeth glints like diamonds. There are
beads of sweat on his top lip. A string of saliva joins their parting
kiss like a rope. The old man licked it away with his tongue and
swallowed.
He was a simple
soul. Two and two made four to him – and nothing else.
And a kiss is just a
kiss when there’s no-one there.
His hand slipped
into the shadows beneath the gnarled wood of the table and rested
like a butterfly on the boy’s egg. It squirmed like a turkey
underneath his feather-light touch. It stretched its neck out towards
him. The old man recognised that movement immediately from years of
having his hand down the front of his own pants.
The Devil makes work
for idle hands – no matter how you try to keep your pecker up. It’s
the way of the world. The old man’s perversion was eroticism, make no
bones about it. He loved to touch.
He felt his own
bones go hard. What a beautiful feeling. A hardening from the
arteries. Turned to stone by a feeling. The whole geography of your
body is changed in a moment. All the mountains of your body are
turned to granite. All those fallow fields grow instantly. Sprouting
adornments, jewellery, a tinkling voice.
His car was outside
and he would’ve liked to have taken the boy to the back seat but he
knew that his oil pressure was low and he might have wanted to drive
him somewhere.
His car was actually
the most important thing he possessed. And if the truth was really
known he didn’t want any young boy’s naked arse sliding across his
hide.
He had to legislate
against all these things because it was all unreal and on the day he
came back to reality he would not be allowed to have any tell-tale
stains anywhere.
The young man sucked
an olive and pointed his lips at the old man.
But the touch had
been enough.
Leigh went back into
the baronial hall. He put on a brave face but inside he was falling
apart with fear.
Too many people knew
too many things about his secrets.
When he was drunk
he’d always had the knack of admitting things he didn’t want to
admit. But he wasn’t special in that particular proclivity. All
drunks, drug addicts and perverts had this particular problem – a
potent mixture of insecurity and exhibitionism. The only benefit to
being this way was that it kept your stomach knotted and flat. So
tight with anxiety that you couldn’t eat.
Still, that was okay
for the times you had to appear naked before your fellow man.
Head-on-`is-mmmm.
Hmmm. Dirty boys.
This was one of his
secrets:
In a back room of La
Hombre, up a dark passage, he was lying naked on a cold slab like a
white fish, his thighs were parted and his thin sinewy calves were
over the sharp edge of the stone and his feet were flat on the bare
floorboards. His preposterous proboscis stood out above his belly
like a frozen eel. It felt as if it was a yard long and sweated as it
cried for attention.
Now he feels so
naked that the hairs round his nipples are as lively as the tentacles
of a jellyfish.
An arm covered with
black fuzz reaches up from the darkness between his thighs. It
becomes a ribbon of smoke and it buffets along his body until the
gentle hand rests, finally, on his breast. It squeezes. His feet do a
little involuntary tap dance and he moans suicidely. It is his ideal
bedtime story.
A man between his
legs. A Gee-man. The hand caresses him. The hand has the touch and he
feels so lean with a little, renewed, muscle definition. He is worth
touching. On the wall of the room, through his liquid slits of eyes,
he half focuses on a doily that belonged on the table of a barroom at
the festival of the Day of the Dead.
Sadly, that had some
meaning for him too. It was an unfulfilled pleasure. A knowledge.
Somewhere he’d meant to go one day, the Day of the Dead. The one and
only day when there is no tomorrow. The day of total abandonment. The
day of the Blessed Abuser who is handing out rewards like penitences.
Here, at the hands
of the Blessed Abuser, we have no satisfaction. An orgasm that the
heart finally gave out at the vinegar stroke. Pursed lips forever.
Self-satisfied inconclusion. A Devine failure. What a way to go!
Dissatisfied.
He likes this hand.
It’s the hand of an unknown friend.
And then there is
the kiss in his most secret place.
And how can you kiss
a man there when he has no secrets?
His feet dance and
he writhes on the cold, smooth, slab. Ready to be skewered and
sacrificed on his erotic altar.
There is a fishy
smell coming up from the floor and he knows that the guy has a hard
on. He realises that the guy between his legs, like him, hasn’t
bathed for a while.
That’s when he saw
the guy’s red hair in the dim light. It outshone his own pubic hair.
What was about to
happen next would be so beautiful.
Oh God, he is
hallucinating. His temperature has gone through the roof. He is
sweating salt. His bed is a swimming pool. He sees tall people, small
fat people. He is burning up. These men are jolly and stylish. Wicked
thoughts and so sexy. He needs a doctor, he knows. But, somehow
penicillin would kill it all off.
Gosh, his thighs are
raised as if he is about to give birth and he feels a tongue licking
him into readiness.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes. He’s ready.
He is engulfed in a
ritual for the lost and the lonely. Spunk is the ambrosia of heroes.
`Show some spunk lad!’ he used to hear the real men cry when they
wanted him to carry out some act of bravery on the school football
field. `Show some spunk lad!’
Outside this room it
is the days before Christmas and everybody is consuming everything to
excess. Snow is falling in a grey-white shower. A girl with thin legs
wrapped in spangled leggings plays a fast flute. She has a ring
through her nose and ten in her ear. Her face and her hands are
grimy. She raises a thigh and twirls on one leg as she plays. Her
fingers flicker up and down the length of the shaft altering the
shape of the air she is expelling.
The redhead rises
slowly holding the old man’s legs in place on his shoulders. The boy
smells musky, like a skunk. He leans forward to kiss the old man’s
chest, deliberately folding him into a position of complete
servility.
He was a beautiful
youth, tall and Y-shaped with a kicking cock. While he carried out
these acts he kept his eyes shut, making it all the more mysterious
for the old man to behold.
The youth had a
tattoo on his right hand and his torso was sweating. He hadn’t a
natural blemish. He was perfect perversion.
The woman who had
become an old lady and no longer trusted her swivelly hips slipped
through the door into the bar. She’d come looking for her son. (She
knew she could find him in the backroom, if she looked. Something
made her didn’t look. It wasn’t that she minded what he was doing, it
was more that he looked like an old man now and she didn’t want to be
associated with him on social occasions. He made her look old. No
swivelly hips and a queer old man for a son. Oh Veh, she wished she
knew how to swear properly in Yiddish, it sounded so much better than
these English curses)
Geoff let onto her
and sent the young guy to the bar to supply her with drinks. She
liked Geoff. Kep’ n eye out for her queer son.
She hitched herself
up onto a stool and coughed phlegm, masking her mouth with a
drip-mat: “Ooohoooh, it’s such a vile nighttt… thank Go-efff
for me won’t you.”
She slipped the
powder from a sleeping pill into her glass of beer and whizzed it
around with a flick of her bony wrist.
That was her second
sleeping pill powder and her third beer. She felt her mind get mixed
up. So, she got serious.
“You see, with
my son,” she told the fat man at the bar: “W’en ‘is mind
gets mixed up, he just thinks it’s funny … but when my min’ gets
mixed up, I thin’ it’s a very serious business.”
The fat guy moved
away like a slug.
She laughed vacantly
at this vast room of people whom she pretended to see as no threat.
“Len? Len?”
She sounded distracted and waved her arm out behind but felt nothing.
The little old lady
accepted another beer and realised that the last one had gone down
too quickly.
Some thoughts should
never be spoken. That’s what Len used to say. Funny man, she often
thought what it was she first saw in him, because she never saw
anything in him again. He’d looked like the strong silent type on a
cold dark night, fists on him like hams, buttoned his big black coat
up right though, black unruly hair and vacant eyes.
