He was no longer a virgin. Yet he had proved nothing. He
had discarded a supposedly dread stigma. But not an iota of pride stirred within him. His goal was
achieved, he had received the crown, but of what kingdom? Of Worthiness? Of
Valour? Of Gallantry? Alas, he had conquered a fecund paradise and, through
war, seared it to a sordid wasteland. He had despoiled the sweetest girl he
had known, for Gallie seemed to weep each time she saw him. But for the most
part, she avoided him. He would prove himself, there was still time! He would
coax a different girl into bed: he would nail this girl, and thus demonstrate
to Gallie, and to the world, what a fine hero he was!
He set out upon his tricky mission on the evening of the
next day. He failed horribly. All the women he approached rejected him, and the
keener he was, the more scabrous the rebuke that smote his ego. The matter upset not only his emotions, but also his schedule. He had planned to kick off his revision for the looming
end-of-year examinations that weekend; he had over-prolonged his procrastination
as it was. But his stalling continued through some kind of anti-momentum.
The following morning he trundled into the lounge. Greg
reclined on the sofa and flicked through a red-top tabloid, spouting frequent
remarks about the 'size of the jugs on
that bimbo', and flashing Howard
a picture of a comely, fleshy lady. Howard sighed. He had not seen Greg since
he had fallen into the crowd, but it was as though precious little has changed.
'Where've you been, Greg, you utter bastard?' he blurted.
'Mind your own frigging beeswax, Grasshopper!'
'Why the fuck did you do that disco thing to me and Gallie?
I suppose you bribed the security guard with charlie or something.'
'For
Beelzebub's sake, it wasn't supposed to happen
to
Gallie was it? I had some mangy whore lined up for you. But you
wouldn't take the frigging hint would you? By then it was too bloody late,
talk about a bloody fiasco.'
'You twat. She's upset. Greg?'
'Yes.'
'I can't understand why she wanted to suddenly get it together
with me.'
'Go on.'
'Go on, what?'
'It's plain simple, you bleeding fuckwit.
Nothing is spontaneous.
Something
must've
happened. With any chick you screw, there's a turning point,
you know: the event horizon of bonk. Before you reach that point, the deal
is open:
you want to screw, and
she might, or might not, let
you. Then
blam! You close the deal.' Greg snapped his fingers. 'You
cross the event horizon of bonk, you're gonna get sucked into her hole. There's
no going back, no way, Jose.'
'I was no salesman playing at seedy deals, Greg. All I did
was tell her about Jacintha, and then I, I think I, well, I just couldn't
stop these fucking tears, it was terrible. Hardly a come-on is it?'
'In her eyes, mate, that was when you stopped being a total
wanker, for once in your sorry frigging life. Well, for a temporary break
at any rate. Thing is, you might not know it, right, but you were tweaking
the twin nipples of compassion and romance. I know what you're thinking, that
she took pity on you. And you're wrong! That was definitely not the bleeding
point. Look, in the whole of history, pity never led to a single screw. In
a woman's peepers, what happened betwixt you and Jacintha was
romantic,
because that's how it is; women have some kind of urge to see it that way.
Give a chick some sort of horrible, sordid tragedy and she'll take a frilly,
pretty, soft-focus romance. She'll go weak at the knees and tremble, and blow
her little schnozzle in her hankie, and sob like a babe that's lost its lollipop.
And Gallie's no exception, mate. At
that moment she saw you as some
sort of romantic figure, believe it or not. She saw in you a bleeding romance
story and she was drawn to it, the daft, passionate little bunny.'
'And
you fucking
ruined it!'
'Yeah,' laughed Greg, smugly.
Howard was reminded, by that gleeful countenance, of Greg's
backwards fall from the stage. The crowd caught and carried his bulk: a sight
that was almost reminiscent of Moses' alleged bifurcation of the Red Sea.
How did they bear Greg's tonnage? He had marvelled at the sight of Greg floating
away upon the ocean of students, and had noted that Dominic was one of the
bearers that swept away the beaming body.
'You fucking ruined it!' repeated Howard.
'Listen, you soft git, what happened with you and Gallie
is simple. You blew the gaff, not me. You want to pull a chick? Then you have
to get pigeonholed. Simple as that, mate. You got pigeonholed. That is the
biggest, and the most secret, key to unlocking them chastity belt knickers'
'What?'
'Look, every chick you meet puts you a box called "dickhead";
or a box called "friend"; or a box called "fuck". What happened with Gallie,
right, was she took you out of one of the other boxes and put you in the box
called "fuck".'
'Oh yeah?'
'Why do you think a daft frigging fool like me can get laid
anytime? It's not because chicks want a friend, I can tell ya.'
'OK, how do I get into a chick's "fuck" box?' asked Howard
meekly, feeling he was out of his depth, as usual.
'
Sodom and Gomorrah! You already know the answer,
mate, suss it out. If I frigging tell you, it will not work. I'm a bleeding
Buddhist, not a teacher.'
The subject of the conversation moved to football, cricket
and boxing.
That night Howard ventured alone by bus to Redater city
centre. The evening air was close and the buzz was exhilarating. His port
of call was a spaceship-styled building that was illuminated with freaky green
strip lights: Bates Wine Bar. He shuffled awkwardly through a bouncer-guarded
entrance to the inner sanctum, ordered a strong lager and spied on a group
of women that chatted hyperactively around a table. His eyes locked into those
of one of the women, she was a friend of Sue's that he recognised but barely
knew, a virtual stranger. Sue herself was nowhere to be seen. His brain was
on edge, his muscles twitched. The embers of his triumph with Gallie were
still warm within. He felt diabolically good. Sue's friend smiled a hint of
recognition, and he wandered over with a mind to seduce her.
Surrounding them were the trendy, the cool, the hip: dancing
and chattering and waving their arms. Women spoke with exaggerated urgency.
Strutting men strove to out-class one another in their desperate endeavours
to impress. They vied, wielding gestures like swordsmen, and they grinned
and smiled and charmed, acting out some perverted fisticuffs of competition.
Who would be the 'alpha male'? Which of them would be the grittiest, the most
steely? Which macho stag would batter his opponent on the ends of his thrashing
antlers? Which devil would convince the willing female to jive along willingly
to the tune of sociopathic evil: the testosterone dance? Howard played the
game. He played it with precision and insincerity. He moved to the beat of
mindless cool, and convinced Sue's friend that he was a laugh.
Does anyone think that they are being destroyed by life?
Does anyone feel that cool is suffocating them? The meaninglessness of life
is ambivalent. Either life matters, or it does not, and no thing that ever
happens can distinguish one from the other.
***
*****
***
Howard sweated. It was surprisingly hot for a late-spring
teatime. He stumbled through the front door, into the house, loaded with plastic
bags of shopping. The handles of the bags dug into his hands like wire. As
a rule, he only ventured to the supermarket when urgent necessity demanded.
The alternative was takeaways: a desirable option, but one that was ruled
out by his withering financial affairs. In the supermarket he had dashed about
with the trolley post haste, as if the oxygen was running out and he had to
be away before asphyxiation snuffed him out. He had grabbed at assorted cans,
cartons, boxes, bottles and packets and headed for the checkout with the least-formidable
queue. He had performed a mental calculation involving the number of people
in the queue, multiplied by the quantity of stuff in their trolleys, divided
by the speed of the girls at the till, multiplied by the number of confused
old ladies in line. His carefully weighted integrations had come to naught
as a totally unpredictable chain of events had dictated the other queues all
moved swiftly, and his own stalled. His own queue had been delayed by the
cashier asking a colleague to look up the price of a mini-sized can of baked
beans in curry sauce. Worse, everyone in front of him had insisted on writing
out checks at a pace that would not have harassed a snail. With gout. In the
other queues everyone had paid with cash. Even the cat-food-laden elderly
women had their purses primed for snappy transactions. To finish off the effect
of wasted life, Howard noticed that no one had joined the queue behind him.
Once he had left the shop, there had been no queues at all; the shoppers had
evaporated into the street. The experience had been a petty torment: in the
general scheme of things, it had been an insignificant happening. Yet he had
felt anguish.
So it was in a state of stress and perspiration that Howard
wondered into the smoky kitchen, where Greg was whistling as he fried a burger
and eggs in a blackened, crusty pan. His cigarette smoke mingled with the
acrid vapour of burning fat. The Heaven 17 track 'This Is Mine' played on
a crumby, grease-stained transistor radio.
'Greg, I scored.'
'I know, I was bleeding there.'
'Not with Gallie, with a
real bird!'
At that moment Gallie walked past the entrance to the kitchen.
She accelerated up the stairs. Howard was too excited to be too troubled about
any offence that may have been conveyed.
Greg shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette into a used
dinner plate. 'A
real bird? That's cool.'
Greg's indifference was a savage blow, and Howard's relation
of his one-night-stand with Sue's friend, though passionately told, failed
to elicit a congratulatory reaction. Over the next few weeks, Howard managed
to persuade half a dozen women to sleep with him. It had been a difficult
endeavour, requiring the capitulation of dignity, perseverance, and, above
all, luck. The price he paid for his mission was high. He failed his end-of-year
course examinations, and condemned himself to having to study over the summer
holiday for the retakes. Gothic, and - far more infuriatingly - Steve, passed
with solid scores, and this bestowed a toxic bitterness upon the ignominy
of failure. Yet neither Gallie, nor Karen, nor Greg warmed to him. Nothing
had changed, he was, as ever, on the periphery of the circle but unable to
enter. Having boasted with great vim of his excursions into women's beds,
they still did not seem to truly respect him. He was shocked.
One thing had changed, however: Greg. Again Howard recalled
the Friday night disco: the expression upon Greg's face as the crowd had held
him aloft had been one of serenity, of release. Since that day, Greg had slept
with no one at all. There was only one woman he coveted, and she insisted
he 'Get a fucking AIDS test first.' That person subsequently showed astonishment
at a demonstration of a responsible act.
'Pumpkin, I can't believe it, I actually can't believe you
would, like, do
that just for
me! That's tops!'
'Anything for you, Kaz.' Greg's eyes fell. 'Kaz, baby, there's
some shit news about the verdict.'
Karen's face froze. 'The test is positive, isn't it?'
'
Sodom and Gomorrah! Bleeding
negative, more
like! Means I get to bang your dirty brains out!'
Karen screamed hysterically, and, grabbing Greg by the hand,
she pulled him from the room. Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
Howard had not seen Dominic since Karen had abruptly dismantled
their relationship. According to Karen, he was badly cut up about it, and
had approached his real love, Sue. Unfortunately, he discovered that Sue was
dating none other than The Shark.
'Poor Dommie! Now the poor munchkin will just have to wait
until the Shark literally dumps her; which, frankly, is bound to happen sooner
rather than later, and then Dommie really has every chance of snagging her
on the rebound. Terribly good luck to him, I say!' So had said Karen, with
sympathy so lacking in sincerity that it would have shamed the Devil.
'Or until Greg dumps you,' Howard had muttered.
'You what?'
'Nothing.'
Howard ascended the stairs in the wake of Karen and Greg,
in a mode of stealth as opposed to frantic passion. He gently tapped upon
Gallie's door. She issued an invitation and he edged into the sweetly scented
chamber of rock star posters, cosmetics, clothes, books and the occasional
teddy bear. He noticed that the poster of The Shark was no longer hanging
above her bed, replaced by some glitteringly toothed one-hit wonder du jour.
Gallie, clad only in black lingerie, sat in front of the mirrors of her dressing
table. She applied a hint of mascara to her sad eyes. She did not seem glad
to see him. He, on the contrary, admired the twin beauties of her eyes and
her breasts.
'What can I do you for?' sighed Gallie.
'Greg and Karen really are...?'
'An item, yes.'
'But Greg swore against having a girlfriend. And with Karen
of all people!'
'Karen's not Greg's first girlfriend, you know.'
'Oh?' said Howard, surprised.
'Be a darling and pass me my handbag. Greg was seeing Jacintha.'
Howard dropped the handbag.
'You don't say?'
'Ahhhh, yeah, he met her back in Fresher's week.'
'But that was a month before
I met her!'
Well, yeah, you know what he's like, he gets everywhere.
I kept telling him off: Greg, I will not have you getting everywhere, and
putting it everywhere, but did he ever listen?' Gallie seemed to ponder her
own words, and blushed.
'But
Jacintha?' cried Howard, mortified.
Gallie confided that Jacintha's unsuccessful suicide attempt
was not entirely down to the optics lab photograph debacle. In fact, it was
mostly due to her being pregnant with a child she felt she could not cope
with. Although she survived, the barbiturates caused a complication that killed
the foetus. The child was Greg's. She remained in close contact with Greg
despite his negligence. He could get anyone to like him, if it suited him:
that was his genius. And perhaps she had liked him because he had been so
non-committal, especially at first. After all, Greg was never
really
your friend. Yet he secretly loved her despite knowing she would not have
him.
'No girl he met since was quite the same,' said Gallie.
'But now she is, like, dead, I think he feels he really can stop searching.'
'Why?'
'Well, because, you know, now there's nothing better to
compare to. He's free.'
Howard's mind reeled. All this time he had thought he understood
Greg: the transparent Greg; the crass Greg; the emotionless Greg; the psychopathic
Greg. He had even thought he understood Jacintha: the shy Jacintha; the Jacintha
whose defining trait was her enigma, but who was all the more comprehended
and bounded by those terms. Now he knew nothing: it was as if he had never
met them. Only a few days before, he would have been horrified to learn of
this covert relationship, but now it released him of guilt. He sighed. He
had liked to think that he had been at the centre of what had happened. It
was as if he placed himself at the centre of the Universe through his feelings,
despite his acquaintance with the Cosmos of Copernicus.
'Gallie, can I ask you a question?'
'Ohhh, well, maybe!'
'Will you go out with me?'
'Will I not?' She paused, he eyes widened. 'On
one
condition.'
'Anything! Just name your condition and you will see me
capitulate on the spot! I promise!
Gallie told him there would be no sex indefinitely, so that
she could be sure he was "serious". A wince flickered across his face, but
he soon became rapturous in spirit. His elation was born of a sense of serenity
as well as excitement: he was encumbered with the burden of proof no longer.
Life was weighed with so much more profound matters, questions and affairs
than sex, sex, sex!
'Gallie, while I'm showing you how
serious I am about
our relationship, can I have do it with other girls?'
'Only if they're very much fatter than me!' Gallie sighed,
and giggled.
He sincerely agreed that it entirely for the best to lay
off the sex. He jumped onto her bed and Gallie did the same. Placing his head
upon her lap, he luxuriated in her tousling of his hair, and he felt relaxed
for the fist time since the last of Granny Grail's weed had burned away. More
so, for even the magic puff Granny Grail used to dole out, which soothed the
underlying fears so completely, did not vanquish those fears. And, on the
downward slope from her drug's sacred summit, the paranoia ached like a devil
renewed. He looked up at Gallie's smile and sighed cheerfully. He didn't care
whether he was on the inside or the outside, or what they thought of him.
Screw them all, he was just doing his job: surviving until there was no point
in surviving anymore. But now he would survive by helping others survive,
and that was the sole object of survival itself. He reached up and caressed
Gallie's cheek. She kissed his hand. They indulged in sex.
***
*****
***
Outside the house, in the familiar cobbled terrace, Howard
shielded his eyes from the light and peered at the blue front door and blue-framed
windows. The long summer break was upon them and the housemates were due to
leave the house within days (although no one knew Marlon's plans). Why
had
he come to that little terrace in Redater? Because his mother had recommended
it! How had he heard about the house? His mother had mysteriously known about
it: now that he thought about it, her knowledge must have been gleaned through
Granny Grail, who had heard about it from Greg, her client. Chance meetings
led to connections that led to events that led to lifestyles and to death.
The next-door bedroom window was vacant. The furtive smoking girl was not
there. He missed the sad sight of her, blackening her virgin lungs with that
wanna-be innocence in her face. He was enraged! Why was she not there? At
that window, without warning, a face appeared: Jacintha's face. She peered
down at him and smiled with warmth and happiness. He smiled back at her, lovingly
and joyously.
He blew a kiss, but as he glanced up from his outstretched
palm, the window was empty.
The battered blue front door opened. '
Sodom and Gomorrah!
What you doing out there, you daft knave?' boomed Greg.
'Just wasting time.'
'Hey, there, there. Come inside.' Greg's voice was now uncharacteristically
soft.
'Come on mate, we'll have you feeling better in no bleeding
time. Tonight we go out and get pissed. Just you. And me. We'll have a drink
for Jacintha. Wait right there.' Greg disappeared into the house, and returned
promptly. 'Remember this? I hid this little baby from you just to get you
into trouble!'
Greg handed to Howard an object he thought he would never
see again: a red folder, a meticulous red folder. Within it were notes, diagrams
and equations set out in perfect geometry. As he inspected the artful pages
of gorgeous, serpentine script, he felt faint at the idea that the pretty
hand that sketched them, and the immaculate brain that guided the hand, were
no longer existent.
'Greg! Why the fucking hell? You had her folder all this
time? You bastard!'
Greg shuffled uneasily and looked down at his enormous boots.
'
Sodom and Gomorrah, you don't know the bleeding half of it, mate.
I reckon by now Gallie told you I was screwing poor Jacintha.' Greg took the
folder and percussed his thumb against it. 'Look, I was going to give it back
to you too, but I saw the way Jacintha looked at you at the disco, and I didn't
like what I saw. I could tell that she liked you. In her odd way. Listen dude,
motor over to her parents' house and hand over them frigging notes. Give them
this message from me. Say I'm truly sorry. I biked it over there a dozen frigging
times but I just couldn't face...'
Howard nodded and looked up. The girl in the next-door window
rested her chin upon her cupped hands. He cursed her. Her attempts to smoke
were pathetic: the juvenile desire to smoke: to age prematurely, the desire
to smoke: to intoxicate her blood with black poison, to oil the lungs with
grunge, to suffocate her soul, to scar her flesh with plaques of cancer, to
wrinkle her youthful face into the hideous visage of middle age, to cough,
to hack, to splutter and wretch up the foul scum of death. How dare this child
defile her life and for what privilege? How dare this child choose poison
and cool over the only thing that matters in life: youth! At that moment he
realised she was not smoking: he was! He threw his cigarette to the cobbles
in disgust.
He actually liked being young, and, even though he had not
sampled the alternative, he dreaded it. To squander youth for premature age
was the dumbest of follies: the folly behind television; the folly behind
drink; the folly behind drugs; the folly behind the tacky cigarette. He was
guilty. He hated in himself what the world was becoming: a world dictated
by marketing; a world where money dictated what was cool; and where his friends
fell for the lies. A world where the middle-aged decreed to his generation
how and when to rebel; a world where his friends thought it hip to wear branded
clothes; and listen to conveyor belt-produced music. Howard knew from that
moment that his life was doomed to be dejected, for it was to be a life raging
against the entertainment machine. He would rebel against the selfish, faceless
moneymen that ordained fashion according to its capacity to stuff their fat
wallets. He would rebel against the merciless machine that defined what was
hip based on accountants' say so. Lackey youth culture itself would be the
very depravity he would rebel against. His generation was climbing into bed
with the grey corporations. He could not be fulfilled if all that lay around
him were profit and decadence. The world was infected by greed, by crime,
by pollution, by the rape of the environment, and these would accelerate until
the death of everything was achieved, destroyed by civilisations' mindless
consumption of every resource that nature bestowed. His rage would be dismissed
as heresy, or as a fleeting collapse of sense: but it would be proven truthful
by their denials, and finally by history.
Overhead, the sun was blazing and the world was milking
its waxen rays. The world, in its innermost heart, knew it was happy. No matter
what evil and injustices that were performed by the degenerate, insectoid
inhabitants of its paper-thin peel, Mother Earth was happy as she swept her
way through insensible space. The imperfection of the world is consummate.
Grisly spirits contaminate the peace of even the most loving souls. Nature
gestates beauty and Nature annihilates it. But there
is beauty, as
there
is foul outrage: that beauty exists at all is our most overlooked
blessing, for there are no sweet angels to protect the beautiful. There are
no guardian warriors to fight their pain: the fate of the beautiful is to
suffer slow, horrible decay. Howard shrugged. Serves the buggers right.
The battered blue door slammed shut.
 | | | | |
| From: |
JGR | Subject: | 2003-06-19 22:45:45 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2003-07-20 16:22:48 |
| | | | |
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