The phone rang in the hallway by the lounge.
Howard answered.
'Gallie, it's for you,' he shouted at the bathroom
door that abutted the hallway.
'I can't answer it now, I'm in the bath, I'm
all soggy,' came the reply.
'You girls are always
wet,' yelled Greg
from the lounge.
'She can't come to the phone now, she wishes
to be wet,' said Howard.
He slammed down the phone and answered a knock
at the front door and was delighted to find
Dominic on the doorstep. Each day he was growing
fonder of Dominic's company. He instinctively
felt that being connected with a chap as affable
as Dominic would ingratiate himself to Gallie.
The only caveat was he had to ensure Gallie
didn't get
too fond of his friend, and
he was sure there would be no problem there.
Dominic was such a harmless fellow; he surmised
there was no danger of that happening at all!
The bathroom door opened. Gallie stepped into
the hall, pink from her bath, with a skimpy
towel wrapped around her torso and another coiled
upon her head like a fragrant cobra. Dominic,
looking shocked, averted his eyes, even when
Gallie radiated her warm welcome to him.
Dominic shuffled on his feet awkwardly and persisted
in peering in any direction except hers. As
Gallie brushed past Dominic, her towel was dislodged
and fell to the floor. Howard willed his eyes
to drink in as much light reflected from her
fair - and ever-so-slightly plump - curves as
possible. Having retrieved her towel and recovered
herself, Gallie looked at Dominic as she slowly
sidled to the end of the hallway and climbed
the stairs. She looked more glisteningly gorgeous
every day. Howard sighed. How he adored her!
'I say, does Gallie always saunter about the
place sans togs?' enquired Dominic, 'I take
it you're fortunate to say the least, encircled
by such... such works of exquisite
fine art.'
'Oh, you get used it,' stammered Howard.
His good mood showed no sign of abating: it
manifested itself as a blast of goodwill to
all mankind. They settled down in the lounge.
Howard and Greg slumped in armchairs. Karen
and Dominic reclined on the sofa. A few minutes
later Gallie stole into the room. She wore a
seductive, low-cut frock. Smiling, she squeezed
between Dominic and Karen on the sofa. Howard
felt that Gallie had contrived to squash more
snugly towards Dominic than circumstances deemed
necessary for the comfort of the mutually impartial.
'Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot: why is the fridge
full of lager?' demanded Karen in a ruthless
voice.
Wrenched from a warm reverie to a sudden realisation
of danger, Howard's disposition became graceless
and defensive. The recollection flashed into
his mind of the night before and how he had
ejected a mouthful of lager into the fridge.
The corners of his mouth turned down slightly
and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. With
the synchronous shocks of her formidable voice,
stare and posture, Karen assaulted him incessantly
with her protestations about the contents -
especially
her contents - of the fridge
being showered in lager.
'I'm very sorry, it was an accident,' whispered
Howard once Karen had eventually paused.
Her pause was transient.
'I mean, actually, the fridge absolutely, like,
reeks of the stuff! Like,
all
my food is totally
dripping with lager,
especially my fucking quiche! It's gone totally
gooey, it's soaked totally fucking through!
And it
tastes of lager too!'
Greg redoubled his efforts to suppress his mirth.
His features strained and contorted.
Howard leaned even further back into his armchair
by way of subconscious retreat. He felt as if
he was being accelerated into orbit in some
shaky rocket.
'Ah, yes, I, erm, accidentally
spilled
some yesterday night,' he mumbled.
Karen hissed angrily and looked towards the
ceiling as if appealing to some heaven-domiciled
deity to grant her the capacity for mercy and
forgiveness.
'Chill yer nerves, Kas, baby,' chipped in Greg,
his face showing every sign of suppressing mirth,
'no need to get yer bleeding knickers in a twist.
So you've been chomping on wet quiche? Big frigging
deal! Leave the silly bugger alone!'
'If it was an accident then
why was it
accidentally not cleaned up?'
barked Karen. Her hands clenched and unclenched.
Dominic cleared his throat.
'Would you believe a jolly fine friend of mine
suffered a most unfortunate
accident
once?' he said. His characteristically melodic
and calming voice cleared the air. 'And that
debacle was also to do with fridges. Poor devil
was knocked off his bike by a lorry, apparently.
Broke his leg in eight places, no less.'
'What's that got to do with
fridges?'
snapped Karen.
'Yes, good point, Karen, you see, the lorry
was carrying fridges, it was a fridge lorry,'
came Dominic's reply in his soothing voice.
He continued in a similar disarming vein for
some time.
'Well,
I'm off to see Steve,' said Karen,
her rage now diffused. 'Actually I need to get
a bit high, and I can do that, quite frankly,
by just being with him. He's my absolutely wonderful
mecca of desire!'
'Pass the bag, Gallie,' said Greg.
'Uh,
which bag?' said Gallie.
'The one marked
for your convenience in case
of nausea.'
Karen rattled off a few insults in Greg's direction
and, to Howard's immeasurable relief, she left.
The quiche bomb had been defused.
The remaining students began to talk shop.
Gallie seemed to lean towards Dominic as he
discussed his studies. He explained that he
was a genuine philosopher and he never tired
of discussing philosophy. That was why he was
not doing too brilliantly at his philosophy
course: most of it was bullshit and totally
irrelevant. He bemoaned the fact that they
always
studied philosophy, but deigned
not to sit down together in a group and actually
discuss the deep questions, hence they never
really
did philosophy. It was, he said,
like undertaking a language course based on
books but without speaking the tongue.
'Spiffle! Its all tremendous waffle and humbug!'
lamented Dominic. 'You see, at the moment we
are studying the nature of reality. Reality
and everything, don't you know? Well, almost
everything in this discourse is blah de blah
de blah. I'll not bore you to death and enter
into the exact details, but take a child. Lets
say this poor child has been brought up with
absolute sensory deprivation.'
When Dominic's gaze was turned aside, Greg caught
Howard's eye and twirled his index finger over
his ear.
'So our poor child,' continued Dominic, 'has
been raised without his senses, he has lived
without seeing, hearing, smelling or touching.
And now he's an adult. This adult's brain has
been altogether deprived of sensory information
and stimuli. Question is: would the brain be
able to perceive of anything at all? To ply
you with an example of what I'm saying, would
such a brain be able to deduce even a straightforward
axiom such as one plus one gives two?'
Greg stared at Dominic, deliberately gaping
and mugging to amuse Howard and Gallie. Then
he shrugged his broad shoulders.
'Dunno! Give up. Would this geezer be able to
add up or what?'
'I have to say,' said Dominic, 'that I honestly
couldn't elucidate an out-and-out answer. You
see, the question was hypothetical, metaphysical
even. Reason I asked it was to illustrate the
fact that there are two schools of thought.
One says that all knowledge we have is obtained
directly from our senses: a brain that has never
been lavished with an ounce of sensory input
must, by definition, harbour no knowledge.
Meanwhile, the other school of thought says-'
'It's bollocks,' interjected Greg, striking
a match.
'Well,' divulged Dominic, with unwounded enthusiasm,
'I don't mind telling you I belong firmly in
the school of thought which says this is, to
use your expression Greg,
bollocks.
I will sum up my argument thus: space, time
and mathematical truths are beyond our senses.
They are unable to be seen, heard, smelled,
tasted or felt, so our knowledge of them must
be ingrained, implicit, inherent, instinctive,
basal, locked into our consciousness. It's a
killer contention, what?' Dominic smiled a modestly
triumphal smile.
'
Sodom and Gomorrah! It's bleeding obviously
you've never taken acid mate,' thundered Greg.
'I can tell you, hand on ticker, that things
are
different on acid! Space
smells
of vanilla ice cream. Time
looks like
fireworks that glow in the dark. And numbers,
numbers
taste like pussy.'
'Pussy?'
'I made that last one up.'
Dominic looked crestfallen. In a low voice he
admitted that Greg had dealt a fatal blow to
his philosophy. Gallie laughed tenderly and
tried to console Dominic to the best of her
powers.
'Vanilla!' Dominic muttered darkly to himself.
'Fireworks! Oh God I miss Sue!' He shielded
his face with his hands and sniffed noisily.
'I must go back now.' He sounded strangulated.
'Hey, Dominic,' said Howard, 'you can kip here,
no problem! Would you like some more coffee,
or a pizza, or-'
'Thanks, Howie, but I need to be alone.'
Howard showed his fiend to the front door. As
Dominic stepped through it, he skidded on the
vomit on the doorstep and plunged into the putrefying
slime. Muttering illegibly, he scrambled to
his feet and ran off into the night.
Howard reassured Gallie's concerned enquiries
to the effect that Dominic was safe and well.
They moved into the kitchen where more coffee
was made.
'Dominic gets soooo... upset!' lamented Gallie.
'Yeah,' said Howard, 'it's probably because
his mum and dad died a year or so ago.'
Gallie looked horrified and with earnestly solemnity
she repeatedly expressed how sorry she was.
Howard shrugged.
'It's sad, but he's over it.'
'Had he been seeing Sue for long?'
'No I don't think so. A few weeks I suppose,'
said Howard suspecting that Gallie already knew
the answer.
'Do you think Sue's...
pretty?'
'Yeah, she is,' said Howard reflectively.
For a fragment of a second, Gallie showed displeasure
at this positive assessment of Sue.
'Soooo, do you think they'll get back together?'
'Hard to say. It sounds like she uses people
though. I reckon he's probably better off without
her, myself.'
Gallie sighed.
'I hope he doesn't do anything
silly!'
As usual, Howard had been watching Gallie a
disproportionate amount of time. She was the
stuff from which his fantasies
du jour
were made of. He reminded himself to be more
remote and aloof to her. She yawned and announced
she was going to bed.
'Nightie-night, Gallie,' said Greg, 'and for
Sodom's sake, do try not to talk so
loud
in your sleep!'
'Whaaaat?' said Gallie, 'I talk in my sleep?'
'Sure! You make these loud moaning sounds and
say things like, "Oh,
Greg, yes,
yessss! It's so
big!"'
Gallie snatched up a cushion and, with a hopeless
action, hurled it. It missed by a wide margin.
'When you're asleep tonight, Greg, I'm going
to sleepwalk into your room and chop off your
willy with a carving knife! Well, I'll leave
you
men to your
men talk then!
Goodnight Gregory dear. Goodnight Howie darling.'
And she was gone. Howard glowed with pleasure
at Gallie's affectionate parting words. He
listened to the sound of her little feet as
they padded up the stairs and he ached to follow.
O to lose his virginity to
her!
***
*****
***
Howard decided to skip the morning lectures.
He felt that he had missed a fair few already
so skipping a few more would make a trifling
difference. It was early days and there was
always time to catch up. He was determined
to avoid the university for the whole day.
However he was running low on food so at lunchtime
he wandered into the Students Union bar. He
bumped into Dominic and they queued up at a
booth for a burger and chips. The food was
duly served up on a paper plate. There were
no free places to sit, so, eschewing the white
plastic cutlery for their fingers, the friends
wolfed down the salty, greasy rations standing
up. They played a couple of games of pool in
a dedicated room abutting the bar. Within, red-clothed
tables were arranged in a quirky distribution.
Howard, a Pink Floyd aficionado, requested
Comfortably
Numb from the nascent technology of the
CD jukebox. Dominic betrayed an irksome ability
at potting the red balls whilst Howard suffered
from a fit of clumsiness when it came to dealing
with the yellows. Despite this minor nuisance,
he was glad to meet Dominic again and went to
great lengths to urge him to call round to the
house in the evening. Dominic threw up a couple
of objections but eventually assented.
Feeling gratified, Howard had a change of heart
about his studies and descended upon the physics
laboratory. His reluctant lab partner, Jacintha,
was readying a resistor for emersion in the
bath of liquid nitrogen. He apologised for
being late and meekly offered to calibrate the
voltmeter. She told him bluntly that she had
already attended to the chore. He felt awkward,
suspecting that she considered him a hindrance
to her work. She continued to prepare her sample
as if he was not there at all. Then, like a
thunderbolt from the blue, she made an appalling
decree.
'Howard, I must ask you to return my notes!'
'Yes, yes, they are at home. I will bring them,'
replied Howard.
The invaluable notes were still unfound. Icy
dread scraped his heart.
 | | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2001-10-12 16:02:49 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2001-10-12 16:04:23 |
| | | | |
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