https://soundcloud.com/mister-ampersand/trufax
I ain't gonna lie
I ain't never tried
once in my life
fat and white and high
puppet
I can see the strings
I know I'm nothing
but a speck of dust floating by
caught in a sunbeam
stole my wisdom
from the gods kitchen
stove fire light my weed
now I'm tied to a mountainside
low times indeed
and the gulls are comin'
to peck out my eyes
at the end of each
and every night
at sunrise
O can't you hear their wings a-beatin'?
tonight's the night they're gonna eat me
tonight's the night
tonight's the night
I got big things
been promised to me
finally
my life will be
hard enough
to write about
and interesting
to somebody
outside myself
every morning I awake and
give my chains a shake
rattlin' like two battlin' die
on a losin' stake
halfway up this peak
I see everything
history of humanity's
laid out in front of me
at my fingertips
but I squander it
and still my punishment eludes me
comforting, I guess
to find stability in routine
so here I sit
eyes shot lips split
at the end of eternity
Zeus visits me
and asks me what I'm doing
do I need any help?
huh-- I did this to myself
what did the you do today
was it history in the making
or did you waste your time away
what did the you do today
was it history in the making
or did you waste your time away
Monday, December 22, 2014
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
the stuff of life
what is the stuff of life?
all responses base
to ancient shapes and lines:
a pretty smile upon a pretty face
all responses base
to ancient shapes and lines:
a pretty smile upon a pretty face
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The Imps on Our Shoulders
--
Briefly holding out my hand at eye-level and parallel to the ground I watch it tremble despite the heat. Before me is the ice-skating rink, a large dark squatting building with an entrance consisting of two black glass doors and I'm disappointed I can't double-check my appearance in them as my reflection is too dark and blurry. YOU LOOK JUST AS UGLY AS WHEN YOU LEFT shrieks the imp in my ear THAT PIMPLE ON YOUR CHEEK IS STILL RED AND GROWING AND READY TO BURST, HA HA HA. “I'm sexy as hell,” I mutter to myself and push my way inside where a rush of cold, stale air greets me. In one corner stands old timey arcade and game machines: a claw machine, Time Crisis II, Big Buck Hunter, a Terminator-themed pinball machine (helmed by an illustrated Schwarzenegger square-chested and wearing sunglasses), Whack-a-Mole, Air Hockey, and a Test Your Strength striker complete with plastic mallet, waiting. BEST STAY AWAY FROM THAT LAST ONE, HUH? shrieks the imp gleefully from my shoulder and I silently agree. Behind the reception counter on the opposite side lies rows and rows of large wooden shelves filled with plastic white skates. And of course there's the rink itself, centrepiece, white, littered with people of all shapes and sizes circling clockwise in lazy unison. For a moment the sounds from the arcade machines, blings and clacks and lo-fi music and the buzz of conversation and the gentle throb of the dance music emanating from the rink swirl together into a maelstrom of dizzying noise which overwhelms my senses.
Jason and I spot each other at the same time.
Our eyes meet and he grins and waves, beckoning me over. There's so many delicious details about his person that his profile picture didn't and could never show: the small gap in his front teeth. Deep smile lines crowning the sides of his lips. Light brown freckles all over his face. His eyes which are shining and clear. He's absolutely gorgeous. I wave back and I feel a grin form unbidden on my face. We walk to each other and I forget my opening line. He is so beautiful.
“Hey hey,” says Jason, smiling.
“Hi --how ya doin',” I say cornily.
“Good, good...”
A too-long beat later I throw out my arms and invite in a hug to squash the awkwardness. “Oh,” Jason says, not displeased. We embrace stiffly. He is so tiny and light and delicate. I'm tall enough to rest my chin on his head and for a second I almost do. EAGER, EAGER shrieks the imp in my ear, but Jason doesn't seem to notice. The imp seems pleased about something and dances excitedly from foot to foot on my shoulder.
Jason and I step apart and look around at nothing. The noise of the place comes rushing back, nonsense chatter and echoed yells from people skating on the rink. My face is flushed hot but I'm suddenly aware of how cold it is when my breath mists in front of my face.
“It's nice to finally meet you,” I say, “I've been looking forward to this a long time...”
Jason just keeps on smiling and says, “Me, too. I've been looking forward to skating-- I haven't been in a long time.”
“I gotta say, you're slightly different to what I expected,” I mock looking him up and down, “You seem more... chirpy, in person. Online, our conversations are so serious...”
“Oh, am I?” Jason looks down at himself involuntarily. “I suppose I am somewhat serious online...”
Jason looks up and smiles at me, “Well now you can get to know the real me.”
I smile back. For a second I look down but then I look back up again and meet his eye. “Sounds good. Well, let's go get our skates...”
“Okay,” Jason says. I tenderly reach out a hand and put it on his shoulder and spin him towards the reception desk. He doesn't seem to mind but the imp quickly pries my fingers off and shoves my hand in my pocket. YOU'RE SLOUCHING the imp shrieks and I automatically square my shoulders. DON'T FORGET TO SUCK THAT TUMMY IN the imp screeches HE'S BEAUTIFUL AND YOU'RE NOT AND SO YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO FOOL HIM IF YOU WANT A CHANCE WITH HIM. “Shut up,” I think, but I suck my stomach in anyway.
We get in line behind a small group of teenagers. I turn to Jason and ask, “What size are you? Shoe size, I mean.”
“Um,” Jason bites his bottom lip so fucking cute, “9, I think.”
“So small,” I tease and boast, “I'm, like, 14.”
“Mmm,” Jason smiles.
The line shuffles forward.
“Man,” I say, starting to relax, “Did you ever rollerblade, or whatever, when you were young?”
“Yeah, I did, when I was a kid.”
“You were one of those kids, huh?” I'm not really sure what I mean. “I skateboarded,” I say, “a bit, back in the day. But I never rollerbladed, or rollerskated, or whatever.” Jason looks at me, “So...” What am I trying to say? “So, I'm probably going to be terrible, ha ha ha. My butt is gonna get so wet and cold...”
Jason giggles. SOMETIMES ALL YOU NEED IS A KEYWORD, EH? shrieks the imp.
“That's okay,” Jason says, sultry, “I'll hold your hand so you don't fall over. We don't want your butt to get too cold...”
I open my mouth, close it again. Suddenly I'm aware of a heat in my groin. Right on time we reach the front of the line and grab our skates from the receptionist who is a dude with long hair and a bored expression. We get a key for a footlocker to stash our stuff in. Jason puts in his phone (iPhone, latest generation), keys (w/Mickey Mouse keyring), wallet w/chain (purple and black diamond pattern), and shoes (thin, black and white Converse). I put in my wallet (brown), key (solitary house key) and boots (big, black, steel-capped, heavy). Jason volunteers to hold onto the locker key and stashes it in the back pocket of his skinny jeans.
With our skates on we stagger like sluts in high heels over to the ice. There's a fun in the almost-falling over aspect. My feet hurt already. Once on the ice I promptly latch onto the wall and make it my home. Try as I might I just can't get the rhythm required for forward motion. At most I can push forward about three steps before I start to flail and quickly I'm not having fun anymore. “This was a bad idea,” I mutter to myself. I cling helplessly and watch twelve year olds zoom past me, laughing and doing spins and skating backwards and shit. Jason slows down and skates beside me, though sometimes he can't help himself but to shoot forward away from me thrilling himself with his own speed. WONDER WHAT HE THINKS OF YOUR INABILITY? the imp screams in my ear INEPT. IMPOTENT. INSIPID.Outdated 80's dance music echoes on the ice punctuated by the formless grunts and laughs of the skating crowd. The air is cold and hurts my throat. But Jason, the sweetheart, Jason always turns and comes back for me his cheeks flushed red and grinning a grin filled with teeth and breathing wispy clouds of steam. Sometimes when he scoots suddenly towards me I feel as if I'm a movie camera zooming in on a some big film star, beautiful and larger than life and my chest swells and I catch my breath. His eyes are big and blue and shining.
People drift by us. I stumble and Jason reaches out and holds my hand and for a moment it makes me happy and in my ear the imp shrieks SWEATY HANDS SWEATY HANDS and self-concious I pull away. Jason seems to read this and occasionally instead he leans on me or puts his arm around my waist and when he does I can't help but smile.
“They keep interrupting the music,” Jason complains to me.
“Huh?”
“The music. They keep, I dunno,” Jason waves a hand vaguely in the air, “They keep letting it build to a crescendo.”
Jason points at the DJ, fat and goateed, standing on a platform a metre above the ice awkwardly shuffling as if enjoying the pre-made mix, as if even if there was a good groove he would be in any way responsible for it, “Him. He keeps letting the music build to a crescendo, so it gets all exciting, so you get all pumped up, and then he cuts it out to explain a deal to us, or whatever.”
“Ah, yes. I see what you mean,” I say. Jason mutters, “Why even play music?”
As if on cue the DJ cuts the music and informs us, “Hi guys, remember that tonight is 80's night,” he pauses and then deadpans, “A blast from the past. It's also-- $15 a night over the summer holidays if you want to...”
“He's annoying,” Jason says over him, “And I can barely understand him, the sound is blaring so much...”
“Probably something to do with the acoustics of the ice,” dies in my throat, as I'm not sure how accurate a statement it is. The DJ finishes his bit and then the music starts up again, but it's a new song, slower, with synths and a breathy female singer. Instead of blaring the echoing makes it seem chamberly and dreamlike. Jason grabs my hand and says, “Come on!” and drags me off the wall. We hold each other, pressed chest to chest, slowly swaying in time to the music which swirls around us in heady swathes and people divert around us as if we were stones in a stream. DON'T FALL the imp starts chanting DON'T FALL DON'T SLIP DON'T DRAG HIM DOWN WITH YOU but I barely hear it. Jason and I look everywhere but at each other, embarassed, until finally our eyes meet and we smile and our cheeks flush and we continue to dance and that was our first date.
--
We get our gear (two mini-golf clubs, two golf balls, a pencil, a scorepad) from a smiling receptionist and head onto the course.
Mini-golf. Third or fourth date. The sun beats down on us bright and hot. Underfoot the grass is crunchy and fresh. It's windy and our clothes ripple and the imp gleefully reminds me of the sweat dampening my pits and hands and forehead at every oppurtunity.
In the car on the way over Jason tells me he's only been with one other person before me. Jason tells me it was a big one. Jason tells me they were each other's first and went out for over two years. Jason tells me they only broke up about five months ago, “Maybe four and a half.”
Jason tells me his name is David.
Jason and I walk close, our shoulders occasionally brushing. The imp hangs between us and with its legs pushes Jason away every time he gets close. I'm carrying the scorecard and pencil and we each carry one ball and one club. Hole one is kidney shaped and way too easy: we each sink in two hits. There's a family ahead of us, a dad and two kids. The kids shriek loud and annoying as hell and Dad's smiling but seems somewhat desperate. Jason watches them as I pick my ball from the hole, it's light and plastic and rough and cratered, like the moon.
“He reminds me of my dad,” Jason says, voice low, watching with a strange look on his face. “Taking me and my sisters to, like, fairs and stuff. Whenever we went to see him over the school holidays. He lived in a completely different state, so we had to fly out just to see him. He'd...”
“What state?” I ask, interrupting. I don't know why I want to know.
“He'd always fly us out on the red eye,” Jason continues, “Middle-of-the-night flight. Cheaper for him, but it made us kids awful tired...” Jason looks at me. “Northern Territory.”
“Heh.”
“You're telling me,” Jason sighs and runs his hand through his dark hair. “Excitement central. Absolutely nothing to do, there. I remember Dad taking us to some small-town fair, woulda been 'round New Years. Taking photos of us on the Merry-Go-'Round-- I remember him saying he wanted to create some memories.” Jason sighs, harder. “The only memories I have are of him trying too hard to have a good time. And...” Jason trails off.
I don't know what to say. “Uh, so other than that, he wasn't around much...?”
Jason says, “Yeah.”
Jason turns away from me amd says, “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”
“Aw, it's okay,” I smile encouragingly at the back of his head. “It's nice you can talk to me about stuff like that...” I'm hesitant to pursue the topic and truthfully just want to let it go.
Jason turns back and smiles but it's obviously strained. The family clears hole two and Jason and I shuffle over to the felt mat that signifies the starting area. The wind momentarily picks up, cooling the sweat on my skin and despite the heat I shiver. I take three strokes, par. Jason hits too hard on the first hit and the ball bounces against the far wall and rolls all the way back to the starting area.
“You have to follow through, but also be gentle,” I offer helpfully, cryptic. I smile but it fades when Jason says, “Don't tell me what to do.” Each stroke seems to detract not only from his score but his mood as well. Jason ends two strokes above par. Jason is sweating noticably and it gives his skin a glossy plastic sheen and the imp murmurs something to itself. I scratch our scores onto the scoreboard and we continue.
Hole four is the first major hole. The hole is divided into two sections: first, a hill you must putt up which is usually hard enough on its own. On top of the hill is a large green felt lump representing a mountain. The mountain is crowned by a model wheelmill that doesn't spin and is pierced at the centre by a plastic tube tunnel. The tunnel leads downhill to a bend on the other side and then finally the hole. Par: 4.
I bend to set the ball but with in a flash of inspiration instead take a knee. I close one eye and align my club with the tunnel, the model golfer. “Nice and easy,” I mutter loudly enough for Jason to hear, and standing, take a few mock swings. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? panics the imp THIS WON'T WORK.
“Nice and easy,” I say again. I can't help myself and start to smile.
I putt with far more than the required force and the ball flings airbourne off the hill and bangs against the windmill and bounces out-of-bounds metres away. “Ah, shit,” I say at Jason, grinning. The noise attracts the kids' attention and they run after the ball yelling at each other.
“You're an idiot,” Jason says with his arms crossed and his head tilted to one side but I can see his eyes are shining.
“I see you smiling...” I say still grinning.
Not unkindly Jason says “Shut up.”
Inflated by my victory I tease, “I just wanted to give you a chance to catch up.”
Jason tenses and his eyes harden. In a tone as cold as ice Jason says, “Don't let me win. Don't let me win. You have to try and beat me.”
HA HA HA HA HA laughs the imp. “Shit,” I think.
The kids, a boy and a girl with matching blonde hair and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirts bound up to me and shyly hand the ball back. I mutter a thank-you to their retreating backs as they fall back to Dad, who nods and glances somewhat worriedly at Jason and I.
Then I turn to face hole four once more. I can feel Jason watching me and so can the imp who shrieks on cue SUCK IN THAT TUMMY, BOY. I put the ball down and look from the ball to the tunnel and back. I feel mad itchy all over my body. My arm pulls itself back and I putt too softly. The ball slopes midway up the hill, hangs for a moment and rolls back down. I feel a tension on my mouth as I clasp my lips together. I push the ball with my feet and line it up again. My mind is completely blank. I putt again, carelessly. The ball travels up the hill and slots into the tunnel with a vague socketing sound. “Nice,” I mutter, quickly taking responsibility for the lucky shot. On the other side it takes me two more strokes to actually sink the ball. Scared, I ask Jason if I should count the first shot: his eyes have not lost their hard gaze. “Up to you,” he says, and I unhappily scrawl a five on the pad. My head feels way too hot but since there's nowhere to sit I squat on my haunches. WEAKLING the imp shrieks and I stand up again quickly.
Jason steps up. The wind picks up again but fails to be refreshing, the sound all but drowns the noises of the family out so that they seem very far away. “How the hell did they clear this hole so quickly,” I wonder internally and I stand on one foot and lean on my club but it is too small for me to get really comfortable. I face towards the hole but I'm staring intently at Jason and his ball out of the corner of my eye. Grim-faced Jason places his ball and lines up his shot and putts. Like my first true attempt it isn't with enough force and the balls lopes softly up and then back down in a gentle arc. The sun is hot hot hot and the wind is cold cold cold and the two take alternative turns blasting on me without reaching a happy compromise. On his second putt Jason again hits without sufficient force and stupid I open my mouth to give advice but close it again with a small squeak when Jason shoots me a whithering look. STUPID gushes the imp cheerfully clapping its clawed hands together STUPID STUPID IDIOT STUPID MORON STUPID. Jason is muttering to himself as he practice-swings and it almost looks as if the imp's words are coming out of his mouth.
“Damn,” I think when Jason putts up the hill on the third try but misses the tunnel entrance.
“Damn,” I think when Jason misses again on the fifth.
“Damn,” I think when Jason misses on the seventh. The silence is maddening and Jason's face darkens with each stroke and I develop an intense interest in the area of the ground around my feet.
I count through fourteen long, dark strokes. When Jason finally lines the ball up for the fifteenth I quietly say, “You know, fifteen is the maximum strokes per hole.” Jason slowly turns his head to look at me and his face is so foul with anger it causes me to stutter, “S-so, well, you've putted fifteen now... so I won't add any more to your score. In fact, uh, we can just move on if you'd like...”
“No,” Jason hisses, “I have to do this. You have to write my score down.”
“W-well, no” I say, and offer the scoreboard to him though he can't read it at this distance (and I don't dare move closer), “the rules say the maximum is fifteen.”
Jason frowns and turns back to the ball, his body tense with anger. I tenatively walk to him and though Jason seems to tense up even further as I approach him when I say, “Look. At least it can't get any worse,” Jason glances at me and I offer him a smile and he smiles slightly back and exhales and when I see it leave him I realise Jason holds onto an intense and deep anger, not for me or for this game of fucking mini-golf but an ancient anger, perhaps from childhood, something embedded deep within his being. Maybe for his father, or for himself. Jason misses the fifteenth but hits a perfect hit on the sixteenth putt which travels all the way through up the hill, through the tunnel, around the corner and finally into the hole itself. Relieved I gasp and clap and smile, and Jason laughs and looks at me and says, “If only I did that to begin with, I'd have a hole-in-one!” We play through the rest of the course and though I earnestly play worse than Jason on almost every remaining hole Jason never quite overcomes his deficet and I end up the victor, which Jason congratulates me on with a hug.
Later Jason and I are sitting on an oval over the road from the mini-golf course, facing each other. The sun has ebbed into its late-afternoon plummet so the heat levels are actually optimal for the still-strong wind to be refreshing. My face has the feeling of being once overheated but is now cooling down. The sun is shining in my eyes and making me squint. The imp, seemingly tired from a long day out, is sleeping fitfully on my shoulder squeaking inhumanly but quietly between restful breaths. The grass is soft under my ass and when for no reason at all I lift a hand I'd been leaning on to look at my palm the white of my skin is criss-crossed with the pink hatches of grass imprints. “I'm cold,” Jason says and I notice his skinny arms are covered in goosebumps. Wordlessly I stand and as if in a daze walk around behind him and sit down with my legs spread, enclosing Jason in my lap. “I'll block the wind with my body,” I explain to Jason, who nods very slightly. Somehow this also allows me to put my arms around his torso and pull him even closer. His skinny arms rest on mine and feel smooth despite the goosebumps. HE'S NOT LIKE YOU the imp notes but his heart isn't in it and he barely shrieks YOU HAIRY FUCK before turning over and falling back asleep. Jason and I sit against each other for minutes, just breathing. I can't help but smell his hair and look at the nape of his neck and though I feel calm and content there is a whirr of activity just under my conciousness and I become hyper aware of Jason's weight and warmth pressing against my crotch. My dick slowly swells and I am not ashamed to minutely press it into him. A small but sharp intake of breath informs me that Jason has felt me, and he later tells me that it made him too get hard under his denim jeans. But for now it is enough to just sit together and we rock on the grass and in the wind and I press small wet kisses into his neck and just above his shoulder blades. At one point Jason murmurs guardedly “I want to take this slow,” but I don't pay him any mind.
The sun sinks further and further and it gets darker and darker and colder and colder. Finally Jason stands and without a word begins to walk to his car; I watch him in a kind of shock before quickly standing, adjusting my erection so it isn't noticeably jutting out in my pants, and running after him. We reach the car at the same time and get in. Jason's head is turned away from me and I watch him for a few long seconds. “I was,” I say, stuttering slightly, “I was, uh, hoping for a kiss, actually...” I chuckle nervously.
Jason turns and looks me in the eye and says “Okay.” And then we kiss so much that when we finally stop the sky is black and the car windows are entirely blanketed in fog.
--
Jason is an amateur photographer and carries an overpriced camera around his neck everywhere we go, taking shots only when, he says, “the light is right,” which typically occurs late in the afternoon when the light is soft and waning. On a thousand dates we go to all the cliché places: we go to the arcade and play laser light games with clacky plastic guns (Time Crisis II, Point Blank, a generic dinosaur shoot-'em-up being our favourites) and horde the piss-yellow prize tickets with intent to someday trade them for the too-big Magikarp plushie on the wall behind the counter (at last count we reached 28 tickets out of the required 7,500). We take drives going nowhere talking and joking all the while. We go on endless walks through parks and nature trails and the like. We eat at fancy restaurants, we eat at fast food joints, we zap and eat boxed frozen pizza in my oven at home. It quickly becomes evident to me, and Jason agrees when I mention it him, that it doesn't really matter what we do or where we go as long as we are together. We watch television at my place; Jason insists on watching and rewatching Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Audrey Hepburn movies whilst I'm on an animated binge; The Simpsons, The Ventures Bros., Disney films.
“David had a big TV,” Jason says when we're half-way through Aladdin, cuddled together on the couch. The Genie is explaining the rules of his magic wishes to Aladdin and the gang. I tear my eyes from the screen and look at Jason and say, “Big?”
“Big,” Jason says his eyes looking straight ahead, “Thing was huge. It was, probably, four times as big as your one...”
I'm silent a moment and the imp chuckles on my shoulder.
“It's okay,” Jason says and turns to me, placing a hand on my arm and smiling, “It doesn't really matter,”
Jason says, “It was just fun to watch stuff on a screen that big, that's all.” After another beat Jason offers, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I reply automatically, and fall silent. We turn back to the screen. Our hands rest in each other's. I stop watching and instead notice a large crack in the plaster of where the wall reaches the ceiling.
The imp says nothing but bites down, hard, on my ear.
We go to a fair and in the sideshow alley, laughing, fail utterly at the plastic crossbow range, the plastic BB gun range, the Try Your Luck rip-off games, the rip-off claw machine and the rip-off coin machine. We don't win a single prize between us. At the BB gun range Jason mentions that David once won him a giant blue teddy bear at a similar fair and the imp, using its fanged mouth hangs and softly swings from my ear which makes my face contort in pain. We ride the Ferris Wheel and get lucky when our carriage comes to a halt at the very tippy top. We look out over all the lights and the crowds and rides and our fingers entwine and we rest our heads together and the world is quiet. We watch fireworks. We go to comic book stores and book stores and go shopping for clothes. We go to the cinema no matter what movie is playing and mix our store-bought Maltesers with the overly expensive cinema popcorn.
We're taking a typical long walk on the beach when Jason intimates out of nowhere that David “has a big dick,” but reassures me that “it doesn't matter,” because “he typically-- didn't last longer than a minute.”
“...Big?” I ask. IF IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY BRING IT UP? smarms the imp.
“Big,” Jason says matter-of-factly.
There's a pause and I can't help but ask, “...Big...ger?”
There's another pause. Jason hesitates and then confirms, “Bigger.”
The imp, its jaws clamped on my ear, grabs my face with its pointy needle claws and begins to frantically hump my cheek and I think I feel a small trickle of blood ride down the side of my face but Jason doesn't mention it. It's so distracting I barely hear Jason say, “I love you, though. I just want to be honest with you. About anything. And everything.”
“I love you, too,” I say robotically. I say, “Thank you.” This last emission disturbingly makes the imp convulse violently against my cheek before finally coming to a rest.
The sand squeaks underfoot, rubbed by our heels and the sun reflects off the sea in a thousand broken fragments. Jason oohs and lifts his camera to his eye and contorts his face with the effort of finding the right frame and seagulls circle overhead like vultures and try as he might Jason can't seem to get the shot he was after and I watch all this sullenly with my mouth downturned.
We're at my place and for whatever reason Jason is hot, too hot, even though it's a mild 23 degree afternoon and figuring aloud that “Heat rises!” I drag my mattress off the bed frame and let it flop to the floor with a loud harrumph and hurriedly spread the blankets across it. Jason lies down and I lie down and it's soft and we start talking and we're hardly aware of what we're talking about, talking like we don't know what's going to happen next. Jason is looking at me and I am looking at him and soon we are leaning in towards each other and the minutes melt away and though somewhere in my mind I'm aware of the gentle darkness of my room and of our physical location on the mattress on the ground it feels as though we are floating through space, idly drifting between patterned stars. Jason's kiss is cold and timid at first and though his lips look a little thin on his lithe face against mine they feel full and wet and lovely. At first Jason keeps pulling away from me, expecting me to finish (he tells me later David would only kiss him for seconds at a time) but I keep on pulling him back, hungry for more, more, more and soon our tongues are clashing together and our hands travelling all over each other's bodies and we are each breathing hard through our noses, breathing out warm mmms into each other's mouths, the vibrations of which cause even more dreamy tingling sensations. Jason climbs on top of me and keeps kissing me and his dark hair falls on my face and we rub against each other and I feel lightheaded and high and when I look at him I see a gentle face with eyes full of tender love and if the imp is saying anything I cannot hear it.
--
Jason is driving me home after another fun day out and on the highway the light is so beautiful it's as if we're inside one of Jason's photographs. There aren't many other cars on the road and since for some reason we're not listening to music like we usually do the gentle thrum of the car engine and of its tires on the road are the only sounds we hear and it makes me feel like Jason and I are floating in our own little bubble far, far away from the bustle of the real world. The air, the space around us has a warm yellow tinge and the trees and lightpoles and fences we zoom by blur as if gone over by a paintbrush dipped in water. Every edge looks soft and it makes me think of a dream I once had. I feel happy and I sense the appreciation of this light is a gift given to me by Jason and just as I go to share these sentiments with Jason he misses the turn we needed to take. Swivelling my head I keep my gaze on it as it shoots by.
“We should have gone down there...” I say happily. Jason with his head down his eyes sharp and his arms rigid straight gripping the wheel of the car at 10 and 2 doesn't appear to hear me.
“We missed a turn, my lovely,” I say tenderly, squeezing his left thigh. “I guess we gotta take a U-turn somewhere...”
“No, we didn't,” Jason says tonelessly.
“We did...” I turn my head unconciously in the direction of the missed turn but it's already far gone, “Um, umm, the 19, right? That's what we usually take to get to mine...”
Jason shakes his head, frowning. Jason says, “I always turn at the red windmill. I haven't seen the red windmill yet; so I haven't turned.”
I'm suddenly aware of how stale the air is inside the car and long to open a window.
“Maybe...” I say and squeeze his thigh again. I offer, “Maybe you missed it? Because I'm pretty sure...”
“Don't touch me,” Jason snaps, and for a long, sad moment I look at him with my hand still resting on his thigh. I lift my hand off of his thigh and cross my arms and the imp on my shoulder starts giggling nonsensically. SO THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE GOING TODAY, HUH the imp cackles delightedly MAYBE THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING.
“You missed the turn,” I say.
“No, I didn't,” Jason insists.
“You gotta make a U-turn and go back.”
“You don't tell me what to do,” Jason hisses through clenched teeth. Jason looks beautiful when he's angry. Something about the way his frown sharpens his forehead and brow and how his lips purse into a tight kissy pout and how his eyes glare and seem almost overfilled with passion. His cheeks flush red and give him this sexy glow. I'm watching him and his reflection in the driver side window and for a second I think I fucking see another imp on Jason's shoulder, jumping up and down and clapping its thin arms and pointy hands above its head and it freaks me out so much I start and some unintelligible utterance falls from my mouth and I look away and when I look back it's gone.
I put a hand under my chin and glumly look out the window; the light is shining more lovely than ever but its brilliance now irks me. SOON IT'LL FADE the imp whispers hoarsely in my ear WATCH IT GOING TO WASTE.
“We gotta turn around...” I say softly, in a sing song voice. I don't know why I do this. When Jason, successfully goaded, screams it's high pitched and wide-mouthed and piercing: “YOU. DON'T. TELL. ME. WHAT. TO. DO.”
I flinch automatically and when he's done I uncross my arms and put my hands on my lap and then I scratch my ear and then I don't know what to do with my hands. YOU'RE SWEATING shrieks the imp YOU'VE BEEN RELAXING TOO MUCH AND HAVEN'T BEEN SUCKING YOUR TUMMY IN. My heart is beating real hard all of a sudden and the bloody thumping in my ears mixes with the sounds of the car on the highway to become almost deafening.
Jason mutters something. Jason glares, staring straight ahead. Jason says, “and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of you. David...”
I groan over Jason saying “...always told me what to do...”
“Aarrghhhh,” I growl, “for fuck's sake. Fucking look--” I press an angry finger against the window, “we just passed over the fucking Murray River. You know that's past where I live, Jason...” Jason isn't saying anything, still he's staring straight ahead and his knuckles are whitening on the wheel. Louder I say, “Jason. Jason!” I look at him and he's fuming and I sense in him again an almost omnipresent rage, a stomach acid burning up his insides. A terrible rage at his life and at his self. I give up with a loud sigh and for a while we just drive.
I nurse my frustrations by thinking of quips and barbs to throw at Jason should he pipe up again, part of me hoping he'll start some shit and part of me hoping he doesn't. I stare out the window and watch the light slowly ebb away and as it gets darker and blacker it gets colder and I break out in goosebumps. When the sun finally fully sets a full half hour later I'm so caught up in my own thoughts I almost miss Jason softly saying, “I'm sorry,” and when I look over at him I realise though there was something sexy about Jason when he was angry it was a demonic sexiness that contorted his face. The power and hot rage turned something inside me on for whatever reason but what I was now looking at was the real Jason. The real Jason is soft and tender and gentle and the real Jason is truly beautiful. Feeling tears welling in my eyes I lean over in my seat and kiss his soft cherub cheek over and over and over and over and over until Jason exclaims “Hey!” and playfully waves me off. “I'm trying to drive here!”
I wipe my eyes and smiling say, “I'm sorry, too.”
“Thank you,” Jason says, gushing, “Thank you so much. I'm really sorry. I don't know what happened, what came over me...”
“It's okay, it's okay. It's not your fault,” I say, relieved, “...Where are we, anyway?”
“Yeah...” says Jason, and we each look around. “I think we're nearly at Bunbury by now...” Jason says, and our eyes meet, “Bunbury! We drove all the way to Bunbury for no reason?!” I say and we both laugh at the absurdity.
Jason turns the car around and we drive back to my place, it's a long drive but we share it with laughs and talks and more kisses on cheeks and I forget about the cold and the imp shrieks something like YOU'RE UGLY WHEN YOU CRY but it just wants attention and I ignore it.
As we pull into my driveway I sigh and I can't stop looking at him and I say, “You're beautiful, you know that? You're fucking beautiful.”
“I'm not,” says Jason, smiling.
“I love you.”
“You're wrong.”
--DAVID IS RICH. DAVID STILL LIVES WITH HIS PARENTS BUT THE PLACE IS PRACTICALLY A MANSION. DAVID IS A SEMI-FAMOUS ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN. DAVID HAS A BIG DICK. DAVID IS ALSO AN AMATUER PHOTOGRAPHER. DAVID IS TALLER. DAVID IS SKINNIER. DAVID IS CRUEL. DAVID IS KIND. DAVID BOUGHT JASON THINGS. DAVID TOOK JASON PLACES. DAVID RIDES MOTORBIKES. JASON'S PARENTS APPROVED OF DAVID. DAVID PLAYS THE DRUMS. DAVID HAS A YOUNGER BROTHER. DAVID HAS FRECKLES ON HIS NOSE. DAVID HAS A GOOFY SMILE THAT BREAKS UP HIS ENTIRE FACE. DAVID WROTE SONGS JUST FOR JASON. DAVID HAS AN AGENT. DAVID LIKES ALL THE SAME MOVIES AS JASON. DAVID HAS TOURED AMERICA. DAVID ONCE BUILT CUBBY HOUSES WITH JASON. DAVID BOUGHT JASON FLOWERS. DAVID HAS HIS OWN WEBSITE. DAVID HAS A FANBASE. DAVID WANTED TO BREAK UP. DAVID WANTS TO GET BACK TOGETHER. DAVID HIT JASON ONCE. DAVID TALKED ABOUT HOW HE WOULD NEVER CHEAT ON JASON BUT DAVID WOULDN'T MIND AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP. DAVID HAS BEEN AWAY. DAVID IS BACK. DAVID IS BACK. DAVID IS BACK the imp shrieks gleefully as I try to sleep.
--
“This is a shot of my sister,” Jason says, showing me the photo on his camera's screen, “sometime in the afternoon. Not quite sunset. It was down in our garden, actually. It's got an almost, magical texture, to it. Like The Secret Garden, you know, the movie.”
“Mmm,” I'm saying, feeling like I wanna stomp his camera to bits, “I like the angle. Like it looks up at her, and yet she's looking up, too. Like she's lost in thought...” I don't know what the fuck I'm saying. “Yeah,” Jason says, not listening, looking at his photo, “It was like 5pm. The light is beautiful around that time.” I'm thinking, I know, I know.
Jason shows me a picture of a city by a river, “A reflection,” Jason says, “The duality of the city, and of life. Reflected in the water.”
BUT WHICH IS THE IMAGE, WHICH THE REALITY? the imp shrieks sarcastically in my ear and I have to turn a giggle into a polite cough.
Jason looks at me and then tells me “David has an eye for these kind of things,” and despair washes over me. Despair is a strange, lonely sensation, that makes you feel sick in your stomach. Despair is the opposite of hope, despair is exclusionary. It makes you feel out of place, like you don't belong, it is a sense of wrongness and displacement. The world is meant to be a certain way but it isn't and there is nothing you can do about it because you are simply wrong, just wrong. And that is the meaning of despair. As if on cue Jason starts talking on a different tack, all the while flipping through the gallery of photos saved on his camera which I finally figure out must have been a gift from David. Glancing over his monologue I pick out certain keywords. Love. Relationship. Commitment. And then Decision. Openness. Honesty. And finally, a new one: Polygamy. BUT REALLY HE HAS JUST SAID DAVID. DAVID. DAVID.Jason finishes his prepared statement and looks up with me with an expectant smile which seems to me like the saddest thing I've ever seen. I realise with an itch that I'm at a crossroads and I feel paralysed by the weight of the decision. Though Jason intimates otherwise I can't help but agree when the imp says YOU HAVE TO SAY YES OR YOU WILL LOSE HIM.
--
New Year's morning.
Knock knock knock. Jason.
I open my front door and then my arms and Jason falls into me. It's a quiet morning and for a moment we share it in peace. Birds chirp mindlessly in a tree near my house. Somewhere a car turns down a street and drives away from us, the sound fading into nothing.
Finally I say, “So,” and lead Jason inside with a hand on his back, closing the door behind him, “How did it go?”
“Good good good...” Jason says, looking around at nothing, “We talked. He gave me... well it doesn't matter. A book. One of my favourites. I lost my old copy, actually, David lost it...”
I step forward and kiss him. I don't know how much I wanted to. Maybe it was just to shut him up.
“Ah...” Jason sighs and looks at me from armslength with an eyes-crinkledsmile, “That felt nice.”
I smile awkwardly and embrace him again. I don't want to look at him. “You know,” Jason says into my chest, “I don't feel weird, at all, you know? Seeing him this morning and now seeing you. I feel fine, about it. I feel good.”
I don't know what to say. “Okay.” I can't even process how I feel about it. The whole thing feels like a blur. I say, “That's good.”
Later, we're cooking nachos, well, really Jason is. It's a simple procedure and I watch him do it. We talk, tell jokes. I look at Jason's hands and at his neck. Jason is slender, pale, beautiful. This was our New Year's plan, to eat nachos and watch The Grinch, Jim Carrey prance around in a stupid green costume, because we never did for Christmas. I had been looking forward to it, not thinking about David at all. Really. But now Jason is here and something feels off.
On a tray and sheet of aliminium foil Jason spreads a layer of corn chips. Then a layer of cheese shavings and then a layer of salsa (mild). Repeat. On about the second cheese layer Jason gets a phone call. We don't look at each other, just at his jean pocket. Before he even pulls it out to see who could be calling Jason says, “I need to take this,” and walks into another room. I stand still a moment at a loss of what to do. I look at the half-made nachos and it unlocks some awful feeling deep inside my stomach. The imp says nothing but I can feel it smiling.
I follow Jason and stand in the doorway and look at him. He gives me this look that says, “Really? Zero privacy with you?” and brushes past me and walks outside some distance into the backyard. Through the screen door I watch him pacing, throwing his hand about, ducking tree branches. “He's angry,” I tell myself, “which is good. But he's also not hanging up.” I'm straining to hear him but I can't make out any words. I about face and walk back into the kitchen. I'm wishing wishing wishing hoping hoping hoping David has screwed it up somehow, or is screwing it up right now. My heart is beating hard. Nervously I start another layer, chips, cheese, salsa. Typical-- my layer is the worst, is scrappy, messy. My stomach acid burns my in gut.
I don't know what temperature to set the oven to. I don't, I can't even put any thought into it, my mind is entirely blank. My heart is still hammering. I don't know what temperature to set the oven to. I pivot back to the garden and open the screen door. “Jason,” I desperately half-whisper. “Jason.” After a beat and a blink he looks up at me, his face isn't furious but it isn't happy. “What temperature do I set it at...” he can't hear me. I whisper louder, confused, “What temperature do I set it to. The oven.”
“I don't know,” Jason hisses, “Two hundred.” Jason turns away from me, head cocked, phone pressed against his ear. I feel all of two inches tall. I close the door carefully behind me and reenter the kitchen. My saliva is bitter in my mouth. I shove the nachos in the oven and set it to two hundred degrees and light it. It must have taken all of five seconds but I didn't think far enough ahead and now I don't know what to do. I pick up a tea towel and put it back down. I watch Jason some more in stolen glances. I know he doesn't want me watching him.
“I hate him I hate him I hate him,” I say under my breath, “Fuck off fuck off fuck off hang up hang up hang up. Come on.” There's nothing for me to do. My hands itch. I sit in the living room and wait.
Finally Jason comes in. “I had to take the nachos out,” I say, my lips turned so firmly downwards they're making my cheeks ache, “They were gonna burn. And now they're cold.” As I say that I realise I could have left them in oven with the flame turned off.
Jason distractedly says, “I don't care. We'll have them cold. Let's watch the movie.”
There's a pause.
“Well...?” I feel so fucking helpless.
“Well what.” Jason makes me ask, “Well what did he have to say?”
Jason flashes another look at me, eyes ablaze, “Don't ask me questions like that. It's between me and him.” I'm thinking, I thought we shared everything, I thought we were honest with each other, I thought this is what you wanted, “He doesn't like that I'm with you. He wanted me to stay with him. He doesn't understand.” I'm thinking, Yes, he's pushing Jason away. Pushing him away to ME. Jason sighs. “Come on.”
We walk into the living room. I fumble with the DVD, get it out the case, shove it into the player. The nachos are cold and tasteless, the cheese set hard. We stare a hole through the TV. I don't think either of us see the movie. Just the wall behind it.
--
We're in Jason's car... and we're driving somewhere, forever, and we're listening to his music, his music that is our music, and is my music. We're listening to Silversun Pickups (but only Carnavas, we don't like Swoon as much) and Fitness Forever (some French band Jason likes). We're listening to Yeasayer, and we're listening to Best Coast, and that is our favourite, and when the song is over we do a little acapella duet together, Jason singing in good pitch When I'm with you, I have fun, yeah when I'm with you, I have fun and we're laughing and I'm singing out of key Yeah when I'm with youuuu, I have fuuuuun, yeah when I'm with youuuuuu I have fuuuuuun and I'm drum-drum-drumming away on my knees, keeping time and doing leg-snare rolls when the silences call for it, and we're laughing and it's so much fun and I love him so much.
I look over at Jason and I lean over and I kiss his cheek, and it's soft and smooth and warm and so I kiss it again, and again, and again, and again, so much that he's laughing, and blushing, and asking me what I'm doing, but I just tell him that I love him and he says “I love you too,” and I'm happy. And we're listening to The Measure [SA] and Vampire Weekend and the Aladdin Soundtrack (Prince Ali is my favourite) and we listen to Island In The Sun by Weezer over and over on my behest because it makes me happy and we're listening to Explosions In The Sky and Modest Mouse and the light is blinding, and brilliant, and soft, and beautiful.
–
Whilst I know it's a formality at this point I can't help but cry and cry and cry and tears burst out of my goddamn face and I try swallow them down in wretched gulps. Jason leaps up and says “Oh, oh, oh,” and puts a skinny arm around my shoulders. It's a horrible moment. Even through the sadness I find Jason's touch and tone comforting and that makes me feel worse, because I know he's already gone. Everything is gone, already, so soon... our in-jokes and memes, the habits we formed together, all gone. All the trivial knowledge about him I mentally banked. Jason's birthday is April 30th, Jason hates Thai food, Jason's middle name is fucking Mallory...
Later Jason stands up and starts getting dressed. Jason quickly glances in the mirror and sneers and says, “Ugh, I hate my thighs. I have wide hips. My hips are too wide.”
I watch him and glumly mutter, “That's not true.” Jason's body is lissom and his skin pale and I realise again how very small he is. TAKE A GOOD LOOK CUZ IT'S THE LAST TIME YOU'RE GONNA SEE HIM the imp shrieks and I sullenly agree. I know I'm never gonna see Jason naked again. He is so very beautiful. I watch him and the corner of my lips are heavy on my face and weigh my lips unhappily down, down, down. I don't say anything when he pulls his jeans over his legs and zips them up and I don't say anything when he pulls his shirt over his head and I don't say anything when he does his jumper up and I don't say anything but just watch when he looks around himself for his things. He picks up his bag and for months afterwards I will find little trinkets, remnants of Jason he left behind, a shirt here, a sock there. We embrace but there's no warmth to it. Jason says, “Well, see you later,” but we won't meet in person again. Jason turns and I watch him walk out of my life into a sunny afternoon.
Long after he leaves I keep repeating his name aloud and hearing the familiar distort and in my ears become alien through repetition. “Jason, Jason, Jason. Jason. Jason. Jason. I remember the first time we held hands, I remember walking through a fair with you, some people stared, but that was okay because we were together. Jason. Jason. I remember us being cheated by the coin pusher. We were always that one coin away from winning big. I remember the smell of the dirt and the sweat of the crowd and ducking behind a tent to make out. I remember the softness of your lips. Jason. I remember...”
THE END
Briefly holding out my hand at eye-level and parallel to the ground I watch it tremble despite the heat. Before me is the ice-skating rink, a large dark squatting building with an entrance consisting of two black glass doors and I'm disappointed I can't double-check my appearance in them as my reflection is too dark and blurry. YOU LOOK JUST AS UGLY AS WHEN YOU LEFT shrieks the imp in my ear THAT PIMPLE ON YOUR CHEEK IS STILL RED AND GROWING AND READY TO BURST, HA HA HA. “I'm sexy as hell,” I mutter to myself and push my way inside where a rush of cold, stale air greets me. In one corner stands old timey arcade and game machines: a claw machine, Time Crisis II, Big Buck Hunter, a Terminator-themed pinball machine (helmed by an illustrated Schwarzenegger square-chested and wearing sunglasses), Whack-a-Mole, Air Hockey, and a Test Your Strength striker complete with plastic mallet, waiting. BEST STAY AWAY FROM THAT LAST ONE, HUH? shrieks the imp gleefully from my shoulder and I silently agree. Behind the reception counter on the opposite side lies rows and rows of large wooden shelves filled with plastic white skates. And of course there's the rink itself, centrepiece, white, littered with people of all shapes and sizes circling clockwise in lazy unison. For a moment the sounds from the arcade machines, blings and clacks and lo-fi music and the buzz of conversation and the gentle throb of the dance music emanating from the rink swirl together into a maelstrom of dizzying noise which overwhelms my senses.
Jason and I spot each other at the same time.
Our eyes meet and he grins and waves, beckoning me over. There's so many delicious details about his person that his profile picture didn't and could never show: the small gap in his front teeth. Deep smile lines crowning the sides of his lips. Light brown freckles all over his face. His eyes which are shining and clear. He's absolutely gorgeous. I wave back and I feel a grin form unbidden on my face. We walk to each other and I forget my opening line. He is so beautiful.
“Hey hey,” says Jason, smiling.
“Hi --how ya doin',” I say cornily.
“Good, good...”
A too-long beat later I throw out my arms and invite in a hug to squash the awkwardness. “Oh,” Jason says, not displeased. We embrace stiffly. He is so tiny and light and delicate. I'm tall enough to rest my chin on his head and for a second I almost do. EAGER, EAGER shrieks the imp in my ear, but Jason doesn't seem to notice. The imp seems pleased about something and dances excitedly from foot to foot on my shoulder.
Jason and I step apart and look around at nothing. The noise of the place comes rushing back, nonsense chatter and echoed yells from people skating on the rink. My face is flushed hot but I'm suddenly aware of how cold it is when my breath mists in front of my face.
“It's nice to finally meet you,” I say, “I've been looking forward to this a long time...”
Jason just keeps on smiling and says, “Me, too. I've been looking forward to skating-- I haven't been in a long time.”
“I gotta say, you're slightly different to what I expected,” I mock looking him up and down, “You seem more... chirpy, in person. Online, our conversations are so serious...”
“Oh, am I?” Jason looks down at himself involuntarily. “I suppose I am somewhat serious online...”
Jason looks up and smiles at me, “Well now you can get to know the real me.”
I smile back. For a second I look down but then I look back up again and meet his eye. “Sounds good. Well, let's go get our skates...”
“Okay,” Jason says. I tenderly reach out a hand and put it on his shoulder and spin him towards the reception desk. He doesn't seem to mind but the imp quickly pries my fingers off and shoves my hand in my pocket. YOU'RE SLOUCHING the imp shrieks and I automatically square my shoulders. DON'T FORGET TO SUCK THAT TUMMY IN the imp screeches HE'S BEAUTIFUL AND YOU'RE NOT AND SO YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO FOOL HIM IF YOU WANT A CHANCE WITH HIM. “Shut up,” I think, but I suck my stomach in anyway.
We get in line behind a small group of teenagers. I turn to Jason and ask, “What size are you? Shoe size, I mean.”
“Um,” Jason bites his bottom lip so fucking cute, “9, I think.”
“So small,” I tease and boast, “I'm, like, 14.”
“Mmm,” Jason smiles.
The line shuffles forward.
“Man,” I say, starting to relax, “Did you ever rollerblade, or whatever, when you were young?”
“Yeah, I did, when I was a kid.”
“You were one of those kids, huh?” I'm not really sure what I mean. “I skateboarded,” I say, “a bit, back in the day. But I never rollerbladed, or rollerskated, or whatever.” Jason looks at me, “So...” What am I trying to say? “So, I'm probably going to be terrible, ha ha ha. My butt is gonna get so wet and cold...”
Jason giggles. SOMETIMES ALL YOU NEED IS A KEYWORD, EH? shrieks the imp.
“That's okay,” Jason says, sultry, “I'll hold your hand so you don't fall over. We don't want your butt to get too cold...”
I open my mouth, close it again. Suddenly I'm aware of a heat in my groin. Right on time we reach the front of the line and grab our skates from the receptionist who is a dude with long hair and a bored expression. We get a key for a footlocker to stash our stuff in. Jason puts in his phone (iPhone, latest generation), keys (w/Mickey Mouse keyring), wallet w/chain (purple and black diamond pattern), and shoes (thin, black and white Converse). I put in my wallet (brown), key (solitary house key) and boots (big, black, steel-capped, heavy). Jason volunteers to hold onto the locker key and stashes it in the back pocket of his skinny jeans.
With our skates on we stagger like sluts in high heels over to the ice. There's a fun in the almost-falling over aspect. My feet hurt already. Once on the ice I promptly latch onto the wall and make it my home. Try as I might I just can't get the rhythm required for forward motion. At most I can push forward about three steps before I start to flail and quickly I'm not having fun anymore. “This was a bad idea,” I mutter to myself. I cling helplessly and watch twelve year olds zoom past me, laughing and doing spins and skating backwards and shit. Jason slows down and skates beside me, though sometimes he can't help himself but to shoot forward away from me thrilling himself with his own speed. WONDER WHAT HE THINKS OF YOUR INABILITY? the imp screams in my ear INEPT. IMPOTENT. INSIPID.Outdated 80's dance music echoes on the ice punctuated by the formless grunts and laughs of the skating crowd. The air is cold and hurts my throat. But Jason, the sweetheart, Jason always turns and comes back for me his cheeks flushed red and grinning a grin filled with teeth and breathing wispy clouds of steam. Sometimes when he scoots suddenly towards me I feel as if I'm a movie camera zooming in on a some big film star, beautiful and larger than life and my chest swells and I catch my breath. His eyes are big and blue and shining.
People drift by us. I stumble and Jason reaches out and holds my hand and for a moment it makes me happy and in my ear the imp shrieks SWEATY HANDS SWEATY HANDS and self-concious I pull away. Jason seems to read this and occasionally instead he leans on me or puts his arm around my waist and when he does I can't help but smile.
“They keep interrupting the music,” Jason complains to me.
“Huh?”
“The music. They keep, I dunno,” Jason waves a hand vaguely in the air, “They keep letting it build to a crescendo.”
Jason points at the DJ, fat and goateed, standing on a platform a metre above the ice awkwardly shuffling as if enjoying the pre-made mix, as if even if there was a good groove he would be in any way responsible for it, “Him. He keeps letting the music build to a crescendo, so it gets all exciting, so you get all pumped up, and then he cuts it out to explain a deal to us, or whatever.”
“Ah, yes. I see what you mean,” I say. Jason mutters, “Why even play music?”
As if on cue the DJ cuts the music and informs us, “Hi guys, remember that tonight is 80's night,” he pauses and then deadpans, “A blast from the past. It's also-- $15 a night over the summer holidays if you want to...”
“He's annoying,” Jason says over him, “And I can barely understand him, the sound is blaring so much...”
“Probably something to do with the acoustics of the ice,” dies in my throat, as I'm not sure how accurate a statement it is. The DJ finishes his bit and then the music starts up again, but it's a new song, slower, with synths and a breathy female singer. Instead of blaring the echoing makes it seem chamberly and dreamlike. Jason grabs my hand and says, “Come on!” and drags me off the wall. We hold each other, pressed chest to chest, slowly swaying in time to the music which swirls around us in heady swathes and people divert around us as if we were stones in a stream. DON'T FALL the imp starts chanting DON'T FALL DON'T SLIP DON'T DRAG HIM DOWN WITH YOU but I barely hear it. Jason and I look everywhere but at each other, embarassed, until finally our eyes meet and we smile and our cheeks flush and we continue to dance and that was our first date.
--
We get our gear (two mini-golf clubs, two golf balls, a pencil, a scorepad) from a smiling receptionist and head onto the course.
Mini-golf. Third or fourth date. The sun beats down on us bright and hot. Underfoot the grass is crunchy and fresh. It's windy and our clothes ripple and the imp gleefully reminds me of the sweat dampening my pits and hands and forehead at every oppurtunity.
In the car on the way over Jason tells me he's only been with one other person before me. Jason tells me it was a big one. Jason tells me they were each other's first and went out for over two years. Jason tells me they only broke up about five months ago, “Maybe four and a half.”
Jason tells me his name is David.
Jason and I walk close, our shoulders occasionally brushing. The imp hangs between us and with its legs pushes Jason away every time he gets close. I'm carrying the scorecard and pencil and we each carry one ball and one club. Hole one is kidney shaped and way too easy: we each sink in two hits. There's a family ahead of us, a dad and two kids. The kids shriek loud and annoying as hell and Dad's smiling but seems somewhat desperate. Jason watches them as I pick my ball from the hole, it's light and plastic and rough and cratered, like the moon.
“He reminds me of my dad,” Jason says, voice low, watching with a strange look on his face. “Taking me and my sisters to, like, fairs and stuff. Whenever we went to see him over the school holidays. He lived in a completely different state, so we had to fly out just to see him. He'd...”
“What state?” I ask, interrupting. I don't know why I want to know.
“He'd always fly us out on the red eye,” Jason continues, “Middle-of-the-night flight. Cheaper for him, but it made us kids awful tired...” Jason looks at me. “Northern Territory.”
“Heh.”
“You're telling me,” Jason sighs and runs his hand through his dark hair. “Excitement central. Absolutely nothing to do, there. I remember Dad taking us to some small-town fair, woulda been 'round New Years. Taking photos of us on the Merry-Go-'Round-- I remember him saying he wanted to create some memories.” Jason sighs, harder. “The only memories I have are of him trying too hard to have a good time. And...” Jason trails off.
I don't know what to say. “Uh, so other than that, he wasn't around much...?”
Jason says, “Yeah.”
Jason turns away from me amd says, “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”
“Aw, it's okay,” I smile encouragingly at the back of his head. “It's nice you can talk to me about stuff like that...” I'm hesitant to pursue the topic and truthfully just want to let it go.
Jason turns back and smiles but it's obviously strained. The family clears hole two and Jason and I shuffle over to the felt mat that signifies the starting area. The wind momentarily picks up, cooling the sweat on my skin and despite the heat I shiver. I take three strokes, par. Jason hits too hard on the first hit and the ball bounces against the far wall and rolls all the way back to the starting area.
“You have to follow through, but also be gentle,” I offer helpfully, cryptic. I smile but it fades when Jason says, “Don't tell me what to do.” Each stroke seems to detract not only from his score but his mood as well. Jason ends two strokes above par. Jason is sweating noticably and it gives his skin a glossy plastic sheen and the imp murmurs something to itself. I scratch our scores onto the scoreboard and we continue.
Hole four is the first major hole. The hole is divided into two sections: first, a hill you must putt up which is usually hard enough on its own. On top of the hill is a large green felt lump representing a mountain. The mountain is crowned by a model wheelmill that doesn't spin and is pierced at the centre by a plastic tube tunnel. The tunnel leads downhill to a bend on the other side and then finally the hole. Par: 4.
I bend to set the ball but with in a flash of inspiration instead take a knee. I close one eye and align my club with the tunnel, the model golfer. “Nice and easy,” I mutter loudly enough for Jason to hear, and standing, take a few mock swings. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? panics the imp THIS WON'T WORK.
“Nice and easy,” I say again. I can't help myself and start to smile.
I putt with far more than the required force and the ball flings airbourne off the hill and bangs against the windmill and bounces out-of-bounds metres away. “Ah, shit,” I say at Jason, grinning. The noise attracts the kids' attention and they run after the ball yelling at each other.
“You're an idiot,” Jason says with his arms crossed and his head tilted to one side but I can see his eyes are shining.
“I see you smiling...” I say still grinning.
Not unkindly Jason says “Shut up.”
Inflated by my victory I tease, “I just wanted to give you a chance to catch up.”
Jason tenses and his eyes harden. In a tone as cold as ice Jason says, “Don't let me win. Don't let me win. You have to try and beat me.”
HA HA HA HA HA laughs the imp. “Shit,” I think.
The kids, a boy and a girl with matching blonde hair and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirts bound up to me and shyly hand the ball back. I mutter a thank-you to their retreating backs as they fall back to Dad, who nods and glances somewhat worriedly at Jason and I.
Then I turn to face hole four once more. I can feel Jason watching me and so can the imp who shrieks on cue SUCK IN THAT TUMMY, BOY. I put the ball down and look from the ball to the tunnel and back. I feel mad itchy all over my body. My arm pulls itself back and I putt too softly. The ball slopes midway up the hill, hangs for a moment and rolls back down. I feel a tension on my mouth as I clasp my lips together. I push the ball with my feet and line it up again. My mind is completely blank. I putt again, carelessly. The ball travels up the hill and slots into the tunnel with a vague socketing sound. “Nice,” I mutter, quickly taking responsibility for the lucky shot. On the other side it takes me two more strokes to actually sink the ball. Scared, I ask Jason if I should count the first shot: his eyes have not lost their hard gaze. “Up to you,” he says, and I unhappily scrawl a five on the pad. My head feels way too hot but since there's nowhere to sit I squat on my haunches. WEAKLING the imp shrieks and I stand up again quickly.
Jason steps up. The wind picks up again but fails to be refreshing, the sound all but drowns the noises of the family out so that they seem very far away. “How the hell did they clear this hole so quickly,” I wonder internally and I stand on one foot and lean on my club but it is too small for me to get really comfortable. I face towards the hole but I'm staring intently at Jason and his ball out of the corner of my eye. Grim-faced Jason places his ball and lines up his shot and putts. Like my first true attempt it isn't with enough force and the balls lopes softly up and then back down in a gentle arc. The sun is hot hot hot and the wind is cold cold cold and the two take alternative turns blasting on me without reaching a happy compromise. On his second putt Jason again hits without sufficient force and stupid I open my mouth to give advice but close it again with a small squeak when Jason shoots me a whithering look. STUPID gushes the imp cheerfully clapping its clawed hands together STUPID STUPID IDIOT STUPID MORON STUPID. Jason is muttering to himself as he practice-swings and it almost looks as if the imp's words are coming out of his mouth.
“Damn,” I think when Jason putts up the hill on the third try but misses the tunnel entrance.
“Damn,” I think when Jason misses again on the fifth.
“Damn,” I think when Jason misses on the seventh. The silence is maddening and Jason's face darkens with each stroke and I develop an intense interest in the area of the ground around my feet.
I count through fourteen long, dark strokes. When Jason finally lines the ball up for the fifteenth I quietly say, “You know, fifteen is the maximum strokes per hole.” Jason slowly turns his head to look at me and his face is so foul with anger it causes me to stutter, “S-so, well, you've putted fifteen now... so I won't add any more to your score. In fact, uh, we can just move on if you'd like...”
“No,” Jason hisses, “I have to do this. You have to write my score down.”
“W-well, no” I say, and offer the scoreboard to him though he can't read it at this distance (and I don't dare move closer), “the rules say the maximum is fifteen.”
Jason frowns and turns back to the ball, his body tense with anger. I tenatively walk to him and though Jason seems to tense up even further as I approach him when I say, “Look. At least it can't get any worse,” Jason glances at me and I offer him a smile and he smiles slightly back and exhales and when I see it leave him I realise Jason holds onto an intense and deep anger, not for me or for this game of fucking mini-golf but an ancient anger, perhaps from childhood, something embedded deep within his being. Maybe for his father, or for himself. Jason misses the fifteenth but hits a perfect hit on the sixteenth putt which travels all the way through up the hill, through the tunnel, around the corner and finally into the hole itself. Relieved I gasp and clap and smile, and Jason laughs and looks at me and says, “If only I did that to begin with, I'd have a hole-in-one!” We play through the rest of the course and though I earnestly play worse than Jason on almost every remaining hole Jason never quite overcomes his deficet and I end up the victor, which Jason congratulates me on with a hug.
Later Jason and I are sitting on an oval over the road from the mini-golf course, facing each other. The sun has ebbed into its late-afternoon plummet so the heat levels are actually optimal for the still-strong wind to be refreshing. My face has the feeling of being once overheated but is now cooling down. The sun is shining in my eyes and making me squint. The imp, seemingly tired from a long day out, is sleeping fitfully on my shoulder squeaking inhumanly but quietly between restful breaths. The grass is soft under my ass and when for no reason at all I lift a hand I'd been leaning on to look at my palm the white of my skin is criss-crossed with the pink hatches of grass imprints. “I'm cold,” Jason says and I notice his skinny arms are covered in goosebumps. Wordlessly I stand and as if in a daze walk around behind him and sit down with my legs spread, enclosing Jason in my lap. “I'll block the wind with my body,” I explain to Jason, who nods very slightly. Somehow this also allows me to put my arms around his torso and pull him even closer. His skinny arms rest on mine and feel smooth despite the goosebumps. HE'S NOT LIKE YOU the imp notes but his heart isn't in it and he barely shrieks YOU HAIRY FUCK before turning over and falling back asleep. Jason and I sit against each other for minutes, just breathing. I can't help but smell his hair and look at the nape of his neck and though I feel calm and content there is a whirr of activity just under my conciousness and I become hyper aware of Jason's weight and warmth pressing against my crotch. My dick slowly swells and I am not ashamed to minutely press it into him. A small but sharp intake of breath informs me that Jason has felt me, and he later tells me that it made him too get hard under his denim jeans. But for now it is enough to just sit together and we rock on the grass and in the wind and I press small wet kisses into his neck and just above his shoulder blades. At one point Jason murmurs guardedly “I want to take this slow,” but I don't pay him any mind.
The sun sinks further and further and it gets darker and darker and colder and colder. Finally Jason stands and without a word begins to walk to his car; I watch him in a kind of shock before quickly standing, adjusting my erection so it isn't noticeably jutting out in my pants, and running after him. We reach the car at the same time and get in. Jason's head is turned away from me and I watch him for a few long seconds. “I was,” I say, stuttering slightly, “I was, uh, hoping for a kiss, actually...” I chuckle nervously.
Jason turns and looks me in the eye and says “Okay.” And then we kiss so much that when we finally stop the sky is black and the car windows are entirely blanketed in fog.
--
Jason is an amateur photographer and carries an overpriced camera around his neck everywhere we go, taking shots only when, he says, “the light is right,” which typically occurs late in the afternoon when the light is soft and waning. On a thousand dates we go to all the cliché places: we go to the arcade and play laser light games with clacky plastic guns (Time Crisis II, Point Blank, a generic dinosaur shoot-'em-up being our favourites) and horde the piss-yellow prize tickets with intent to someday trade them for the too-big Magikarp plushie on the wall behind the counter (at last count we reached 28 tickets out of the required 7,500). We take drives going nowhere talking and joking all the while. We go on endless walks through parks and nature trails and the like. We eat at fancy restaurants, we eat at fast food joints, we zap and eat boxed frozen pizza in my oven at home. It quickly becomes evident to me, and Jason agrees when I mention it him, that it doesn't really matter what we do or where we go as long as we are together. We watch television at my place; Jason insists on watching and rewatching Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Audrey Hepburn movies whilst I'm on an animated binge; The Simpsons, The Ventures Bros., Disney films.
“David had a big TV,” Jason says when we're half-way through Aladdin, cuddled together on the couch. The Genie is explaining the rules of his magic wishes to Aladdin and the gang. I tear my eyes from the screen and look at Jason and say, “Big?”
“Big,” Jason says his eyes looking straight ahead, “Thing was huge. It was, probably, four times as big as your one...”
I'm silent a moment and the imp chuckles on my shoulder.
“It's okay,” Jason says and turns to me, placing a hand on my arm and smiling, “It doesn't really matter,”
Jason says, “It was just fun to watch stuff on a screen that big, that's all.” After another beat Jason offers, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I reply automatically, and fall silent. We turn back to the screen. Our hands rest in each other's. I stop watching and instead notice a large crack in the plaster of where the wall reaches the ceiling.
The imp says nothing but bites down, hard, on my ear.
We go to a fair and in the sideshow alley, laughing, fail utterly at the plastic crossbow range, the plastic BB gun range, the Try Your Luck rip-off games, the rip-off claw machine and the rip-off coin machine. We don't win a single prize between us. At the BB gun range Jason mentions that David once won him a giant blue teddy bear at a similar fair and the imp, using its fanged mouth hangs and softly swings from my ear which makes my face contort in pain. We ride the Ferris Wheel and get lucky when our carriage comes to a halt at the very tippy top. We look out over all the lights and the crowds and rides and our fingers entwine and we rest our heads together and the world is quiet. We watch fireworks. We go to comic book stores and book stores and go shopping for clothes. We go to the cinema no matter what movie is playing and mix our store-bought Maltesers with the overly expensive cinema popcorn.
We're taking a typical long walk on the beach when Jason intimates out of nowhere that David “has a big dick,” but reassures me that “it doesn't matter,” because “he typically-- didn't last longer than a minute.”
“...Big?” I ask. IF IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY BRING IT UP? smarms the imp.
“Big,” Jason says matter-of-factly.
There's a pause and I can't help but ask, “...Big...ger?”
There's another pause. Jason hesitates and then confirms, “Bigger.”
The imp, its jaws clamped on my ear, grabs my face with its pointy needle claws and begins to frantically hump my cheek and I think I feel a small trickle of blood ride down the side of my face but Jason doesn't mention it. It's so distracting I barely hear Jason say, “I love you, though. I just want to be honest with you. About anything. And everything.”
“I love you, too,” I say robotically. I say, “Thank you.” This last emission disturbingly makes the imp convulse violently against my cheek before finally coming to a rest.
The sand squeaks underfoot, rubbed by our heels and the sun reflects off the sea in a thousand broken fragments. Jason oohs and lifts his camera to his eye and contorts his face with the effort of finding the right frame and seagulls circle overhead like vultures and try as he might Jason can't seem to get the shot he was after and I watch all this sullenly with my mouth downturned.
We're at my place and for whatever reason Jason is hot, too hot, even though it's a mild 23 degree afternoon and figuring aloud that “Heat rises!” I drag my mattress off the bed frame and let it flop to the floor with a loud harrumph and hurriedly spread the blankets across it. Jason lies down and I lie down and it's soft and we start talking and we're hardly aware of what we're talking about, talking like we don't know what's going to happen next. Jason is looking at me and I am looking at him and soon we are leaning in towards each other and the minutes melt away and though somewhere in my mind I'm aware of the gentle darkness of my room and of our physical location on the mattress on the ground it feels as though we are floating through space, idly drifting between patterned stars. Jason's kiss is cold and timid at first and though his lips look a little thin on his lithe face against mine they feel full and wet and lovely. At first Jason keeps pulling away from me, expecting me to finish (he tells me later David would only kiss him for seconds at a time) but I keep on pulling him back, hungry for more, more, more and soon our tongues are clashing together and our hands travelling all over each other's bodies and we are each breathing hard through our noses, breathing out warm mmms into each other's mouths, the vibrations of which cause even more dreamy tingling sensations. Jason climbs on top of me and keeps kissing me and his dark hair falls on my face and we rub against each other and I feel lightheaded and high and when I look at him I see a gentle face with eyes full of tender love and if the imp is saying anything I cannot hear it.
--
Jason is driving me home after another fun day out and on the highway the light is so beautiful it's as if we're inside one of Jason's photographs. There aren't many other cars on the road and since for some reason we're not listening to music like we usually do the gentle thrum of the car engine and of its tires on the road are the only sounds we hear and it makes me feel like Jason and I are floating in our own little bubble far, far away from the bustle of the real world. The air, the space around us has a warm yellow tinge and the trees and lightpoles and fences we zoom by blur as if gone over by a paintbrush dipped in water. Every edge looks soft and it makes me think of a dream I once had. I feel happy and I sense the appreciation of this light is a gift given to me by Jason and just as I go to share these sentiments with Jason he misses the turn we needed to take. Swivelling my head I keep my gaze on it as it shoots by.
“We should have gone down there...” I say happily. Jason with his head down his eyes sharp and his arms rigid straight gripping the wheel of the car at 10 and 2 doesn't appear to hear me.
“We missed a turn, my lovely,” I say tenderly, squeezing his left thigh. “I guess we gotta take a U-turn somewhere...”
“No, we didn't,” Jason says tonelessly.
“We did...” I turn my head unconciously in the direction of the missed turn but it's already far gone, “Um, umm, the 19, right? That's what we usually take to get to mine...”
Jason shakes his head, frowning. Jason says, “I always turn at the red windmill. I haven't seen the red windmill yet; so I haven't turned.”
I'm suddenly aware of how stale the air is inside the car and long to open a window.
“Maybe...” I say and squeeze his thigh again. I offer, “Maybe you missed it? Because I'm pretty sure...”
“Don't touch me,” Jason snaps, and for a long, sad moment I look at him with my hand still resting on his thigh. I lift my hand off of his thigh and cross my arms and the imp on my shoulder starts giggling nonsensically. SO THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE GOING TODAY, HUH the imp cackles delightedly MAYBE THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING.
“You missed the turn,” I say.
“No, I didn't,” Jason insists.
“You gotta make a U-turn and go back.”
“You don't tell me what to do,” Jason hisses through clenched teeth. Jason looks beautiful when he's angry. Something about the way his frown sharpens his forehead and brow and how his lips purse into a tight kissy pout and how his eyes glare and seem almost overfilled with passion. His cheeks flush red and give him this sexy glow. I'm watching him and his reflection in the driver side window and for a second I think I fucking see another imp on Jason's shoulder, jumping up and down and clapping its thin arms and pointy hands above its head and it freaks me out so much I start and some unintelligible utterance falls from my mouth and I look away and when I look back it's gone.
I put a hand under my chin and glumly look out the window; the light is shining more lovely than ever but its brilliance now irks me. SOON IT'LL FADE the imp whispers hoarsely in my ear WATCH IT GOING TO WASTE.
“We gotta turn around...” I say softly, in a sing song voice. I don't know why I do this. When Jason, successfully goaded, screams it's high pitched and wide-mouthed and piercing: “YOU. DON'T. TELL. ME. WHAT. TO. DO.”
I flinch automatically and when he's done I uncross my arms and put my hands on my lap and then I scratch my ear and then I don't know what to do with my hands. YOU'RE SWEATING shrieks the imp YOU'VE BEEN RELAXING TOO MUCH AND HAVEN'T BEEN SUCKING YOUR TUMMY IN. My heart is beating real hard all of a sudden and the bloody thumping in my ears mixes with the sounds of the car on the highway to become almost deafening.
Jason mutters something. Jason glares, staring straight ahead. Jason says, “and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of you. David...”
I groan over Jason saying “...always told me what to do...”
“Aarrghhhh,” I growl, “for fuck's sake. Fucking look--” I press an angry finger against the window, “we just passed over the fucking Murray River. You know that's past where I live, Jason...” Jason isn't saying anything, still he's staring straight ahead and his knuckles are whitening on the wheel. Louder I say, “Jason. Jason!” I look at him and he's fuming and I sense in him again an almost omnipresent rage, a stomach acid burning up his insides. A terrible rage at his life and at his self. I give up with a loud sigh and for a while we just drive.
I nurse my frustrations by thinking of quips and barbs to throw at Jason should he pipe up again, part of me hoping he'll start some shit and part of me hoping he doesn't. I stare out the window and watch the light slowly ebb away and as it gets darker and blacker it gets colder and I break out in goosebumps. When the sun finally fully sets a full half hour later I'm so caught up in my own thoughts I almost miss Jason softly saying, “I'm sorry,” and when I look over at him I realise though there was something sexy about Jason when he was angry it was a demonic sexiness that contorted his face. The power and hot rage turned something inside me on for whatever reason but what I was now looking at was the real Jason. The real Jason is soft and tender and gentle and the real Jason is truly beautiful. Feeling tears welling in my eyes I lean over in my seat and kiss his soft cherub cheek over and over and over and over and over until Jason exclaims “Hey!” and playfully waves me off. “I'm trying to drive here!”
I wipe my eyes and smiling say, “I'm sorry, too.”
“Thank you,” Jason says, gushing, “Thank you so much. I'm really sorry. I don't know what happened, what came over me...”
“It's okay, it's okay. It's not your fault,” I say, relieved, “...Where are we, anyway?”
“Yeah...” says Jason, and we each look around. “I think we're nearly at Bunbury by now...” Jason says, and our eyes meet, “Bunbury! We drove all the way to Bunbury for no reason?!” I say and we both laugh at the absurdity.
Jason turns the car around and we drive back to my place, it's a long drive but we share it with laughs and talks and more kisses on cheeks and I forget about the cold and the imp shrieks something like YOU'RE UGLY WHEN YOU CRY but it just wants attention and I ignore it.
As we pull into my driveway I sigh and I can't stop looking at him and I say, “You're beautiful, you know that? You're fucking beautiful.”
“I'm not,” says Jason, smiling.
“I love you.”
“You're wrong.”
--DAVID IS RICH. DAVID STILL LIVES WITH HIS PARENTS BUT THE PLACE IS PRACTICALLY A MANSION. DAVID IS A SEMI-FAMOUS ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN. DAVID HAS A BIG DICK. DAVID IS ALSO AN AMATUER PHOTOGRAPHER. DAVID IS TALLER. DAVID IS SKINNIER. DAVID IS CRUEL. DAVID IS KIND. DAVID BOUGHT JASON THINGS. DAVID TOOK JASON PLACES. DAVID RIDES MOTORBIKES. JASON'S PARENTS APPROVED OF DAVID. DAVID PLAYS THE DRUMS. DAVID HAS A YOUNGER BROTHER. DAVID HAS FRECKLES ON HIS NOSE. DAVID HAS A GOOFY SMILE THAT BREAKS UP HIS ENTIRE FACE. DAVID WROTE SONGS JUST FOR JASON. DAVID HAS AN AGENT. DAVID LIKES ALL THE SAME MOVIES AS JASON. DAVID HAS TOURED AMERICA. DAVID ONCE BUILT CUBBY HOUSES WITH JASON. DAVID BOUGHT JASON FLOWERS. DAVID HAS HIS OWN WEBSITE. DAVID HAS A FANBASE. DAVID WANTED TO BREAK UP. DAVID WANTS TO GET BACK TOGETHER. DAVID HIT JASON ONCE. DAVID TALKED ABOUT HOW HE WOULD NEVER CHEAT ON JASON BUT DAVID WOULDN'T MIND AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP. DAVID HAS BEEN AWAY. DAVID IS BACK. DAVID IS BACK. DAVID IS BACK the imp shrieks gleefully as I try to sleep.
--
“This is a shot of my sister,” Jason says, showing me the photo on his camera's screen, “sometime in the afternoon. Not quite sunset. It was down in our garden, actually. It's got an almost, magical texture, to it. Like The Secret Garden, you know, the movie.”
“Mmm,” I'm saying, feeling like I wanna stomp his camera to bits, “I like the angle. Like it looks up at her, and yet she's looking up, too. Like she's lost in thought...” I don't know what the fuck I'm saying. “Yeah,” Jason says, not listening, looking at his photo, “It was like 5pm. The light is beautiful around that time.” I'm thinking, I know, I know.
Jason shows me a picture of a city by a river, “A reflection,” Jason says, “The duality of the city, and of life. Reflected in the water.”
BUT WHICH IS THE IMAGE, WHICH THE REALITY? the imp shrieks sarcastically in my ear and I have to turn a giggle into a polite cough.
Jason looks at me and then tells me “David has an eye for these kind of things,” and despair washes over me. Despair is a strange, lonely sensation, that makes you feel sick in your stomach. Despair is the opposite of hope, despair is exclusionary. It makes you feel out of place, like you don't belong, it is a sense of wrongness and displacement. The world is meant to be a certain way but it isn't and there is nothing you can do about it because you are simply wrong, just wrong. And that is the meaning of despair. As if on cue Jason starts talking on a different tack, all the while flipping through the gallery of photos saved on his camera which I finally figure out must have been a gift from David. Glancing over his monologue I pick out certain keywords. Love. Relationship. Commitment. And then Decision. Openness. Honesty. And finally, a new one: Polygamy. BUT REALLY HE HAS JUST SAID DAVID. DAVID. DAVID.Jason finishes his prepared statement and looks up with me with an expectant smile which seems to me like the saddest thing I've ever seen. I realise with an itch that I'm at a crossroads and I feel paralysed by the weight of the decision. Though Jason intimates otherwise I can't help but agree when the imp says YOU HAVE TO SAY YES OR YOU WILL LOSE HIM.
--
New Year's morning.
Knock knock knock. Jason.
I open my front door and then my arms and Jason falls into me. It's a quiet morning and for a moment we share it in peace. Birds chirp mindlessly in a tree near my house. Somewhere a car turns down a street and drives away from us, the sound fading into nothing.
Finally I say, “So,” and lead Jason inside with a hand on his back, closing the door behind him, “How did it go?”
“Good good good...” Jason says, looking around at nothing, “We talked. He gave me... well it doesn't matter. A book. One of my favourites. I lost my old copy, actually, David lost it...”
I step forward and kiss him. I don't know how much I wanted to. Maybe it was just to shut him up.
“Ah...” Jason sighs and looks at me from armslength with an eyes-crinkledsmile, “That felt nice.”
I smile awkwardly and embrace him again. I don't want to look at him. “You know,” Jason says into my chest, “I don't feel weird, at all, you know? Seeing him this morning and now seeing you. I feel fine, about it. I feel good.”
I don't know what to say. “Okay.” I can't even process how I feel about it. The whole thing feels like a blur. I say, “That's good.”
Later, we're cooking nachos, well, really Jason is. It's a simple procedure and I watch him do it. We talk, tell jokes. I look at Jason's hands and at his neck. Jason is slender, pale, beautiful. This was our New Year's plan, to eat nachos and watch The Grinch, Jim Carrey prance around in a stupid green costume, because we never did for Christmas. I had been looking forward to it, not thinking about David at all. Really. But now Jason is here and something feels off.
On a tray and sheet of aliminium foil Jason spreads a layer of corn chips. Then a layer of cheese shavings and then a layer of salsa (mild). Repeat. On about the second cheese layer Jason gets a phone call. We don't look at each other, just at his jean pocket. Before he even pulls it out to see who could be calling Jason says, “I need to take this,” and walks into another room. I stand still a moment at a loss of what to do. I look at the half-made nachos and it unlocks some awful feeling deep inside my stomach. The imp says nothing but I can feel it smiling.
I follow Jason and stand in the doorway and look at him. He gives me this look that says, “Really? Zero privacy with you?” and brushes past me and walks outside some distance into the backyard. Through the screen door I watch him pacing, throwing his hand about, ducking tree branches. “He's angry,” I tell myself, “which is good. But he's also not hanging up.” I'm straining to hear him but I can't make out any words. I about face and walk back into the kitchen. I'm wishing wishing wishing hoping hoping hoping David has screwed it up somehow, or is screwing it up right now. My heart is beating hard. Nervously I start another layer, chips, cheese, salsa. Typical-- my layer is the worst, is scrappy, messy. My stomach acid burns my in gut.
I don't know what temperature to set the oven to. I don't, I can't even put any thought into it, my mind is entirely blank. My heart is still hammering. I don't know what temperature to set the oven to. I pivot back to the garden and open the screen door. “Jason,” I desperately half-whisper. “Jason.” After a beat and a blink he looks up at me, his face isn't furious but it isn't happy. “What temperature do I set it at...” he can't hear me. I whisper louder, confused, “What temperature do I set it to. The oven.”
“I don't know,” Jason hisses, “Two hundred.” Jason turns away from me, head cocked, phone pressed against his ear. I feel all of two inches tall. I close the door carefully behind me and reenter the kitchen. My saliva is bitter in my mouth. I shove the nachos in the oven and set it to two hundred degrees and light it. It must have taken all of five seconds but I didn't think far enough ahead and now I don't know what to do. I pick up a tea towel and put it back down. I watch Jason some more in stolen glances. I know he doesn't want me watching him.
“I hate him I hate him I hate him,” I say under my breath, “Fuck off fuck off fuck off hang up hang up hang up. Come on.” There's nothing for me to do. My hands itch. I sit in the living room and wait.
Finally Jason comes in. “I had to take the nachos out,” I say, my lips turned so firmly downwards they're making my cheeks ache, “They were gonna burn. And now they're cold.” As I say that I realise I could have left them in oven with the flame turned off.
Jason distractedly says, “I don't care. We'll have them cold. Let's watch the movie.”
There's a pause.
“Well...?” I feel so fucking helpless.
“Well what.” Jason makes me ask, “Well what did he have to say?”
Jason flashes another look at me, eyes ablaze, “Don't ask me questions like that. It's between me and him.” I'm thinking, I thought we shared everything, I thought we were honest with each other, I thought this is what you wanted, “He doesn't like that I'm with you. He wanted me to stay with him. He doesn't understand.” I'm thinking, Yes, he's pushing Jason away. Pushing him away to ME. Jason sighs. “Come on.”
We walk into the living room. I fumble with the DVD, get it out the case, shove it into the player. The nachos are cold and tasteless, the cheese set hard. We stare a hole through the TV. I don't think either of us see the movie. Just the wall behind it.
--
We're in Jason's car... and we're driving somewhere, forever, and we're listening to his music, his music that is our music, and is my music. We're listening to Silversun Pickups (but only Carnavas, we don't like Swoon as much) and Fitness Forever (some French band Jason likes). We're listening to Yeasayer, and we're listening to Best Coast, and that is our favourite, and when the song is over we do a little acapella duet together, Jason singing in good pitch When I'm with you, I have fun, yeah when I'm with you, I have fun and we're laughing and I'm singing out of key Yeah when I'm with youuuu, I have fuuuuun, yeah when I'm with youuuuuu I have fuuuuuun and I'm drum-drum-drumming away on my knees, keeping time and doing leg-snare rolls when the silences call for it, and we're laughing and it's so much fun and I love him so much.
I look over at Jason and I lean over and I kiss his cheek, and it's soft and smooth and warm and so I kiss it again, and again, and again, and again, so much that he's laughing, and blushing, and asking me what I'm doing, but I just tell him that I love him and he says “I love you too,” and I'm happy. And we're listening to The Measure [SA] and Vampire Weekend and the Aladdin Soundtrack (Prince Ali is my favourite) and we listen to Island In The Sun by Weezer over and over on my behest because it makes me happy and we're listening to Explosions In The Sky and Modest Mouse and the light is blinding, and brilliant, and soft, and beautiful.
–
Whilst I know it's a formality at this point I can't help but cry and cry and cry and tears burst out of my goddamn face and I try swallow them down in wretched gulps. Jason leaps up and says “Oh, oh, oh,” and puts a skinny arm around my shoulders. It's a horrible moment. Even through the sadness I find Jason's touch and tone comforting and that makes me feel worse, because I know he's already gone. Everything is gone, already, so soon... our in-jokes and memes, the habits we formed together, all gone. All the trivial knowledge about him I mentally banked. Jason's birthday is April 30th, Jason hates Thai food, Jason's middle name is fucking Mallory...
Later Jason stands up and starts getting dressed. Jason quickly glances in the mirror and sneers and says, “Ugh, I hate my thighs. I have wide hips. My hips are too wide.”
I watch him and glumly mutter, “That's not true.” Jason's body is lissom and his skin pale and I realise again how very small he is. TAKE A GOOD LOOK CUZ IT'S THE LAST TIME YOU'RE GONNA SEE HIM the imp shrieks and I sullenly agree. I know I'm never gonna see Jason naked again. He is so very beautiful. I watch him and the corner of my lips are heavy on my face and weigh my lips unhappily down, down, down. I don't say anything when he pulls his jeans over his legs and zips them up and I don't say anything when he pulls his shirt over his head and I don't say anything when he does his jumper up and I don't say anything but just watch when he looks around himself for his things. He picks up his bag and for months afterwards I will find little trinkets, remnants of Jason he left behind, a shirt here, a sock there. We embrace but there's no warmth to it. Jason says, “Well, see you later,” but we won't meet in person again. Jason turns and I watch him walk out of my life into a sunny afternoon.
Long after he leaves I keep repeating his name aloud and hearing the familiar distort and in my ears become alien through repetition. “Jason, Jason, Jason. Jason. Jason. Jason. I remember the first time we held hands, I remember walking through a fair with you, some people stared, but that was okay because we were together. Jason. Jason. I remember us being cheated by the coin pusher. We were always that one coin away from winning big. I remember the smell of the dirt and the sweat of the crowd and ducking behind a tent to make out. I remember the softness of your lips. Jason. I remember...”
THE END
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
scrapped chapter/scribbles
I
sit down down at the dining room table. I see Jason's body lying face
down in the kitchen. I sit at the dining room table with my head in
my hands and stare at Jason and the space around him. I watch the
sunlight play across the linoleum, dust motes hanging in the air. His
hair seems to slowly bob, moved by some unseen breeze. A thousand
sounds from the outside world-- birds singing, car engines,
construction starting up somewhere. I sit motionless and look and
listen and think and breathe.
I go through the mundanities of murder, the tidbits of the terrible. What I could do with Jason's body. Constructing my alibi. Formalities. I wasn't concerned, to tell you the truth. When I'd woken up this morning I hadn't planned to kill Jason, and now that he was dead, I hadn't planned to deal with it. Maybe it was something he said, or a way he had looked at me, I don't know. I didn't feel anything, as is customary at this point. When you get it all out there is nothing left. So I sit and think.
I don't know exactly what Richard says, but it's enough. My face is flushed and hot, my skin goes prickly, covered in a thousand stabbing needles. Maybe he's insulted me, taunted me. No, I don't like that-- maybe he's insulted Jason, yeah... Objectified him. Turned him into a prize to be won, and claimed him as his own. Jason, helpless, fooled, stands off to the side, mouth open, hands limp. I draw my arm back and throw my fist at Richard, pivoting my hips and shoulders to add weight to the punch like I was taught in 5th grade Taekwondo class and it explodes in his face, breaking his nose and covering my fist in blood. Maybe there's even a spurt, a splash of blood that pops from his face and flies in a perfect arc like in a Sin City comic. With just one powerful punch Richard falls to his knees, sobbing, begging, snot and blood running down his face. Coolly I glance at Jason and offer to help Richard up. Or, no, no, I'm calling triple zero, “Hi, I need an ambulance, my-- friend has broken his nose...” and sensing that I'm distracted Richard can't help but make a desperate go at me, flinging his body up at me from the floor, fingers outstretched and face twisted, contorted, a devil out of hell. And, of course, I slap him down, I don't even break a sweat. I raise my leg and bring my boot down, a terrible hammer of justice, this time knocking him unconscious. Without missing a beat I cock my head and resume talking into the phone, telling the lady our location and Richard's injuries. Jason rushes over and joins Richard on the floor but he's looking at me, he's a little horrified and angry but he's turned on too, impressed, and I look at him and I don't say anything, ignoring him and that turns him on more and in my head I'm screaming Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
I go through the mundanities of murder, the tidbits of the terrible. What I could do with Jason's body. Constructing my alibi. Formalities. I wasn't concerned, to tell you the truth. When I'd woken up this morning I hadn't planned to kill Jason, and now that he was dead, I hadn't planned to deal with it. Maybe it was something he said, or a way he had looked at me, I don't know. I didn't feel anything, as is customary at this point. When you get it all out there is nothing left. So I sit and think.
I don't know exactly what Richard says, but it's enough. My face is flushed and hot, my skin goes prickly, covered in a thousand stabbing needles. Maybe he's insulted me, taunted me. No, I don't like that-- maybe he's insulted Jason, yeah... Objectified him. Turned him into a prize to be won, and claimed him as his own. Jason, helpless, fooled, stands off to the side, mouth open, hands limp. I draw my arm back and throw my fist at Richard, pivoting my hips and shoulders to add weight to the punch like I was taught in 5th grade Taekwondo class and it explodes in his face, breaking his nose and covering my fist in blood. Maybe there's even a spurt, a splash of blood that pops from his face and flies in a perfect arc like in a Sin City comic. With just one powerful punch Richard falls to his knees, sobbing, begging, snot and blood running down his face. Coolly I glance at Jason and offer to help Richard up. Or, no, no, I'm calling triple zero, “Hi, I need an ambulance, my-- friend has broken his nose...” and sensing that I'm distracted Richard can't help but make a desperate go at me, flinging his body up at me from the floor, fingers outstretched and face twisted, contorted, a devil out of hell. And, of course, I slap him down, I don't even break a sweat. I raise my leg and bring my boot down, a terrible hammer of justice, this time knocking him unconscious. Without missing a beat I cock my head and resume talking into the phone, telling the lady our location and Richard's injuries. Jason rushes over and joins Richard on the floor but he's looking at me, he's a little horrified and angry but he's turned on too, impressed, and I look at him and I don't say anything, ignoring him and that turns him on more and in my head I'm screaming Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
Seconds
dragged minutes dragged hours. My ass gets sore sitting in one place.
Occasionally I crack my knuckles and think about Jason. My hand,
always at groin level, brushes my dick through my jeans and I think
about Jason, his neck, his stomach, the little hairs leading down
from his belly button, his dick, short and thick in girth and stench,
that mix of saliva and sweat and semen that emanated from his pubic
hair. I miss him, I miss that, already, though I knew I shouldn't. It
is quite silly and unfair to, when you think about it. This is my dream I had.
We finally arrived at the docklands, somewhere on the fringe of Fremantle. A nice area, clean, deserted (everything is closed on Sundays), full of new shops and the sweet salty smell of the sea. It is sunny but windy, so we alternate between freezing and thawing out as we walked along a white concrete path under large trees. For a while nobody says anything, and if I turn my head right and look out onto the ocean I can pretend I am alone, taking a leisurely stroll by the sea with my hands in my pockets. The cawing of gulls, the gentle throbbing wash of the waves is calming, and I feel at peace until I turn my head back and remember who I'm with. We're walking shoulder to shoulder-- Jason, the shortest, in the middle, a strange half smile on his face, his gaze fixated forward. Richard seems uncomfortable, he keeps scratching the back of his head and looking around nervously. Neither of them acknowledges me looking at them. Eventually we stop at a speckled grey concrete bench. Jason and Richard sit down while I, not wanting to make either of them shift over, pace back and forth in front of them.
I look out at the ocean horizon, the sun bounces off the water making me squint. “Nice day,” I say to nobody, who don't say anything back.
Despair washes over me. Despair is a strange, lonely sensation, that makes you feel sick in your stomach. Despair is the opposite of hope, despair is exclusionary. It makes you feel out of place, like you don't belong, it's a sense of wrongness and displacement. The world is meant to be a certain way but it isn't and there's nothing you can do about it because you are wrong. That is the meaning of despair.
Jason and Richard are talking-- well, mostly Jason is giving a speech, with Richard chipping his monotone “Yeah”s and “Mmm”s but I can't hear them. Glancing over their conversation you can pick out certain key words: Relationship. Love. Decision. Breaking. Friends. I'm looking around, searching for something to focus on. A fishing shop, with dead fish lined in frozen rows in the window. Bug-eyed and awful. I like fish, I like their movement, the slow careful hovering into quicksilver darting, effortlessly moving through three dimensions. Like aliens, hanging in space. Jason hates their eyes, and their smell, and their taste. I don't really like their faces all that much, expressionless, and those damn glass eyes, I just like their movement. They seem free. I'm thinking about how darting fish are animal and kinetic and alive and looking at the store fish they are product and marketable and dead and I feel even more nauseous. I become aware that I am scratching my arm when it starts lightly bleeding.
Jason finishes his prepared statement-- the looks he exchanges with Richard at certain points tells me they'd already run through the script together. Jason looks up at me with a sad, expectant smile. I feel like crying and whilst I know it's a formality at this point, I can't help it and tears burst out my goddamn face as I try to swallow them down in wretched gulps. Jason leaps up and says “Oh, oh, oh,” and puts a skinny arm around my shoulders. It's a horrible moment. Even through the sadness I find Jason's touch and tone comforting, and that makes me feel worse, because I know he's already gone. Everything is gone, already, so soon... our in-jokes and memes, habits, gone. All that trivial knowledge I have mentally banked: Jason's birthday is April 30th, Jason hates Thai food, his middle name is fucking Mallory...
We finally arrived at the docklands, somewhere on the fringe of Fremantle. A nice area, clean, deserted (everything is closed on Sundays), full of new shops and the sweet salty smell of the sea. It is sunny but windy, so we alternate between freezing and thawing out as we walked along a white concrete path under large trees. For a while nobody says anything, and if I turn my head right and look out onto the ocean I can pretend I am alone, taking a leisurely stroll by the sea with my hands in my pockets. The cawing of gulls, the gentle throbbing wash of the waves is calming, and I feel at peace until I turn my head back and remember who I'm with. We're walking shoulder to shoulder-- Jason, the shortest, in the middle, a strange half smile on his face, his gaze fixated forward. Richard seems uncomfortable, he keeps scratching the back of his head and looking around nervously. Neither of them acknowledges me looking at them. Eventually we stop at a speckled grey concrete bench. Jason and Richard sit down while I, not wanting to make either of them shift over, pace back and forth in front of them.
I look out at the ocean horizon, the sun bounces off the water making me squint. “Nice day,” I say to nobody, who don't say anything back.
Despair washes over me. Despair is a strange, lonely sensation, that makes you feel sick in your stomach. Despair is the opposite of hope, despair is exclusionary. It makes you feel out of place, like you don't belong, it's a sense of wrongness and displacement. The world is meant to be a certain way but it isn't and there's nothing you can do about it because you are wrong. That is the meaning of despair.
Jason and Richard are talking-- well, mostly Jason is giving a speech, with Richard chipping his monotone “Yeah”s and “Mmm”s but I can't hear them. Glancing over their conversation you can pick out certain key words: Relationship. Love. Decision. Breaking. Friends. I'm looking around, searching for something to focus on. A fishing shop, with dead fish lined in frozen rows in the window. Bug-eyed and awful. I like fish, I like their movement, the slow careful hovering into quicksilver darting, effortlessly moving through three dimensions. Like aliens, hanging in space. Jason hates their eyes, and their smell, and their taste. I don't really like their faces all that much, expressionless, and those damn glass eyes, I just like their movement. They seem free. I'm thinking about how darting fish are animal and kinetic and alive and looking at the store fish they are product and marketable and dead and I feel even more nauseous. I become aware that I am scratching my arm when it starts lightly bleeding.
Jason finishes his prepared statement-- the looks he exchanges with Richard at certain points tells me they'd already run through the script together. Jason looks up at me with a sad, expectant smile. I feel like crying and whilst I know it's a formality at this point, I can't help it and tears burst out my goddamn face as I try to swallow them down in wretched gulps. Jason leaps up and says “Oh, oh, oh,” and puts a skinny arm around my shoulders. It's a horrible moment. Even through the sadness I find Jason's touch and tone comforting, and that makes me feel worse, because I know he's already gone. Everything is gone, already, so soon... our in-jokes and memes, habits, gone. All that trivial knowledge I have mentally banked: Jason's birthday is April 30th, Jason hates Thai food, his middle name is fucking Mallory...
Monday, August 4, 2014
05/08/14 Brand Name Coffins
our debts were there before our births
we own no land or horses--
to breathe is to consume, to waste--
to use up--
we shuffling corporate corpses
for their causes--
we sullen forces--
we're born and then we suffer--
we're born and then we suffer
we feel the whip crack 'cross our backs
our chains we hear them rattlin'
"that's life" the billboard sighs and shrugs--
and smiles sweet--
and stifles thoughts and actions
we live plastic--
static; placid--
then lie in brand name coffins
we own no land or horses--
to breathe is to consume, to waste--
to use up--
we shuffling corporate corpses
for their causes--
we sullen forces--
we're born and then we suffer--
we're born and then we suffer
we feel the whip crack 'cross our backs
our chains we hear them rattlin'
"that's life" the billboard sighs and shrugs--
and smiles sweet--
and stifles thoughts and actions
we live plastic--
static; placid--
then lie in brand name coffins
Monday, July 28, 2014
sick
what is "home"
what is childhood
what is serenity
just get a shovel
and a shed
and put me out of my misery
what is childhood
what is serenity
just get a shovel
and a shed
and put me out of my misery
Friday, May 9, 2014
Untitled
What Steve loved more
than anything was shitting on company time. He'd pee, sure, when he
first rocked up, usually ten minutes before 9am, yawning. He'd make
his coffee in the company kitchen. Free milk, free sugar, free
coffee, tiny, tiny mugs. So tiny he'd go back for a second drink,
around forty five minutes into the day, whistling, stirring so
vigorously as to cause a spill, which he happily wiped up. That's a
good ten minutes gone, including the walk to and from the kitchen (as
leisurely as possible, especially on the way back-- spills on the
company carpet is an entirely different matter), fifteen if there was
a co-worker to talk to.
The double coffee would urge forth another pee, just before lunch but of course never actually during lunch. Steve peed with great care, even if the toilet block was completely empty he would never use the urinal, always the toilet cubicle, not out of shame. He peed straight and true into the bowl, sometimes skirting around the water, experimenting with the sounds he could make. He took his entire package out, balls and all, and tugged his boxers down so there was absolutely no pressure applied on his penile tubes, absolutely no chance of misfire. The steady stream would slow to a few drips. Steve dabs the tip of his dick with one, two, three sheets of paper, delicately, watching the tissue blot with moisture. He'd flush, wash his hands hospital style, sleeves rolled up. Soap up his palms, the backs of his hands, circled around his wrists. That's another seven minutes there, more if he drank water like a fiend, which he often did. In fact his boss often praised him for staying so well hydrated on the job, and aiming+throwing the empty water bottle into the bin was a fun 30 seconds off the day.
Steve would never use tissue to dry his hands, however, he did not want to be wasteful. Instead he turned to the blow-dryer-- ah the blow-dryer, such archaic technology! Steve would shake his head, and sigh happily when he first extracts his hands, still dripping wet. It always required a second go around. The loud jet noise was calming to him.
Lunch was an hour long. A glorious hour. Steve could walk outside-- outside the office building!-- and get burgers from the fast food chains that hovered around. Maybe another coffee, read some more of his book. Steve made sure not to be late back from lunch more than three times a week. On off or rainy days he could stay inside, talk to his co-workers, share jokes. Eat a sandwich he made the night before-- though this was rarer. Maybe watch some funny YouTube videos, or play a Flash game.
But it was the shit, the dump, he took, an hour after lunch, that he looked forward to the most. That made the whole day worthwhile. 1:00pm, 1300 hours, was zero hour. Steve's body had attuned itself to the office clock. Steve would be watching it, of course, watching the second hand tick tick ticking away, watch the minute hand climb the arduous climb of the second half of the hour. A gurgle would stir in the depths of his guts, his breakfast of eggs, canned spaghetti, bacon, two tomatoes, pepper, toast (buttered) hastily eaten on his way out the door to work, only half digested, still in big, wet chunky wads roaring within his intestines. He would excuse himself graciously, and walk with his head held high to the bathroom. It was clean, in there, white on white. It was like nobody else ever used it. It was his kingdom. He opened a cubicle door and admired his throne.
White. Open. Willing. Ever ready.
First, though, were some minor preparations. Every day he did this. He locked the cubicle door. He bent and withdrew six sheets worth of toilet paper. This he folded in half and lay on the left side of the seat. He drew another six sheets, folded, and placed it on the right, and again on the front and the back. A little square pillow. Steve undid his jeans front, unzipped, and in one movement turned, sat, and slid his pants 'round his ankles. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and sighed, and savoured that small moment of silence and respite. Then he sat straight and parted his legs. He unfurled some more tissue, rolled it softly into a casual ball, and dropped it into the water. This would provide his droppings with a net when they landed, preventing splashback. He could feel the shit putting pressure on his asshole, but that eternal conundrum-- to piss or shit first? Steve could pee now, relieve his bladder, but in doing so would weaken his safety net, increasing the danger of splashback. Worse yet, pee-splashback-- a most hideous factor. He could just pee on his shit, but that would mean he'd have to hold it back throughout the deed. Steve decided today to piss first. Today's shit held some gravity, and he wanted all of his concentration on its passing. As he peed his body relaxed and his mind, with Steve barely even realising it, wandered freely throughout imagination. For a second he thought he heard music.
Then came the shit itself. Sometimes at home Steve had trouble with his bowel movements, he would strain and push too hard, wanting to get back to whatever it was he was doing. Sometimes he would hastily sit, push one or two turds out, wipe and hurry back to his room, only to realise half an hour later he still had three more lurking in his nethers waiting to be evacuated. So he would have to shit again, and again, each time dabbing recklessly at his asshole, which only got more and more tender, and sometimes stayed sore for days. That was not the case with work shits.
These shits, these glorious, peaceful shits-- with these shits, Steve's asshole had time not only to prepare itself to stretch around larger and larger shits, but, critically, time to recover afterwards. Steve would not strain, no sir, with the work shits. He did not even have to pull a face. A warm calm would encapsulate him. The shits would not be pushed out, nor would they simply fall out. They would move with a slow serenity throughout Steve's body. His asshole would slowly fluctuate, accommodating for size, and they would slide out into the water, like a newborn into a loving husband's arms. His farts trumpeted proudly and heralded the coming of yet another son. Since it was the company paper, Steve could pause mid-shit to wipe himself, catch any stray nuggets caught in his ass hair. Because he had time to think and assess each shit, he found that if he paused and wiped himself before the final load, his asshole, stimulated, tingling, would relax, allowing it to handle even the greatest brown hot dog. He could use two, three, four, five, as many sheets as he liked, for company toilet paper is eternal and endless, to clean himself. Of course, a serious shitter would examine the day's discharge, noting consistency, colour, stench, and so on, to check for disease or irregularities. Steve was no such turd virtuoso, however, he was happy to participate but once it was finished he was equally happy to wash his hands of the entire business. The pillow, that had protected his butt skin from phantom co-workers' butt diseases, was swiped softly into the bowl, blanketing the payload from sight. Steve disliked touching his jeans and belt before being able to wash his hands, but there was always the chance someone could enter, so he did himself up, flushed twice, and finally walked out of the cubicle a lighter man.
The double coffee would urge forth another pee, just before lunch but of course never actually during lunch. Steve peed with great care, even if the toilet block was completely empty he would never use the urinal, always the toilet cubicle, not out of shame. He peed straight and true into the bowl, sometimes skirting around the water, experimenting with the sounds he could make. He took his entire package out, balls and all, and tugged his boxers down so there was absolutely no pressure applied on his penile tubes, absolutely no chance of misfire. The steady stream would slow to a few drips. Steve dabs the tip of his dick with one, two, three sheets of paper, delicately, watching the tissue blot with moisture. He'd flush, wash his hands hospital style, sleeves rolled up. Soap up his palms, the backs of his hands, circled around his wrists. That's another seven minutes there, more if he drank water like a fiend, which he often did. In fact his boss often praised him for staying so well hydrated on the job, and aiming+throwing the empty water bottle into the bin was a fun 30 seconds off the day.
Steve would never use tissue to dry his hands, however, he did not want to be wasteful. Instead he turned to the blow-dryer-- ah the blow-dryer, such archaic technology! Steve would shake his head, and sigh happily when he first extracts his hands, still dripping wet. It always required a second go around. The loud jet noise was calming to him.
Lunch was an hour long. A glorious hour. Steve could walk outside-- outside the office building!-- and get burgers from the fast food chains that hovered around. Maybe another coffee, read some more of his book. Steve made sure not to be late back from lunch more than three times a week. On off or rainy days he could stay inside, talk to his co-workers, share jokes. Eat a sandwich he made the night before-- though this was rarer. Maybe watch some funny YouTube videos, or play a Flash game.
But it was the shit, the dump, he took, an hour after lunch, that he looked forward to the most. That made the whole day worthwhile. 1:00pm, 1300 hours, was zero hour. Steve's body had attuned itself to the office clock. Steve would be watching it, of course, watching the second hand tick tick ticking away, watch the minute hand climb the arduous climb of the second half of the hour. A gurgle would stir in the depths of his guts, his breakfast of eggs, canned spaghetti, bacon, two tomatoes, pepper, toast (buttered) hastily eaten on his way out the door to work, only half digested, still in big, wet chunky wads roaring within his intestines. He would excuse himself graciously, and walk with his head held high to the bathroom. It was clean, in there, white on white. It was like nobody else ever used it. It was his kingdom. He opened a cubicle door and admired his throne.
White. Open. Willing. Ever ready.
First, though, were some minor preparations. Every day he did this. He locked the cubicle door. He bent and withdrew six sheets worth of toilet paper. This he folded in half and lay on the left side of the seat. He drew another six sheets, folded, and placed it on the right, and again on the front and the back. A little square pillow. Steve undid his jeans front, unzipped, and in one movement turned, sat, and slid his pants 'round his ankles. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and sighed, and savoured that small moment of silence and respite. Then he sat straight and parted his legs. He unfurled some more tissue, rolled it softly into a casual ball, and dropped it into the water. This would provide his droppings with a net when they landed, preventing splashback. He could feel the shit putting pressure on his asshole, but that eternal conundrum-- to piss or shit first? Steve could pee now, relieve his bladder, but in doing so would weaken his safety net, increasing the danger of splashback. Worse yet, pee-splashback-- a most hideous factor. He could just pee on his shit, but that would mean he'd have to hold it back throughout the deed. Steve decided today to piss first. Today's shit held some gravity, and he wanted all of his concentration on its passing. As he peed his body relaxed and his mind, with Steve barely even realising it, wandered freely throughout imagination. For a second he thought he heard music.
Then came the shit itself. Sometimes at home Steve had trouble with his bowel movements, he would strain and push too hard, wanting to get back to whatever it was he was doing. Sometimes he would hastily sit, push one or two turds out, wipe and hurry back to his room, only to realise half an hour later he still had three more lurking in his nethers waiting to be evacuated. So he would have to shit again, and again, each time dabbing recklessly at his asshole, which only got more and more tender, and sometimes stayed sore for days. That was not the case with work shits.
These shits, these glorious, peaceful shits-- with these shits, Steve's asshole had time not only to prepare itself to stretch around larger and larger shits, but, critically, time to recover afterwards. Steve would not strain, no sir, with the work shits. He did not even have to pull a face. A warm calm would encapsulate him. The shits would not be pushed out, nor would they simply fall out. They would move with a slow serenity throughout Steve's body. His asshole would slowly fluctuate, accommodating for size, and they would slide out into the water, like a newborn into a loving husband's arms. His farts trumpeted proudly and heralded the coming of yet another son. Since it was the company paper, Steve could pause mid-shit to wipe himself, catch any stray nuggets caught in his ass hair. Because he had time to think and assess each shit, he found that if he paused and wiped himself before the final load, his asshole, stimulated, tingling, would relax, allowing it to handle even the greatest brown hot dog. He could use two, three, four, five, as many sheets as he liked, for company toilet paper is eternal and endless, to clean himself. Of course, a serious shitter would examine the day's discharge, noting consistency, colour, stench, and so on, to check for disease or irregularities. Steve was no such turd virtuoso, however, he was happy to participate but once it was finished he was equally happy to wash his hands of the entire business. The pillow, that had protected his butt skin from phantom co-workers' butt diseases, was swiped softly into the bowl, blanketing the payload from sight. Steve disliked touching his jeans and belt before being able to wash his hands, but there was always the chance someone could enter, so he did himself up, flushed twice, and finally walked out of the cubicle a lighter man.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
beast
A nameless fear washed
over him as he realised he was being watched. He was mid-step, right
foot hovering over a crack in the pavement when he'd spotted it out
of the corner of his eye. Impossible to put to words exactly what he
saw, a blur that had flitted between the shadows of the trees lining
the pathway and disappeared, his brain registering the image half a
second too late. He realised he was holding his breath, that every
muscle in his body had tensed. He opened his hands, then balled them,
opened them again and wiped them on his pants. Sweat stung his eyes
and he blinked madly. His mind filled the uncertain void the blur had
created with monsters, creatures of hair, and sharp teeth, and gore.
He knew he was doomed. He knew, with a grave certainty, he could not
outrun his foe, could not overcome or overpower it, could not reason
with it. He could not escape. If he were to break into a sprint, and
in one, two, three bounding strides take to the sky in flight, he
would not be five metres above the ground when he would feel the
creature's teeth sinking into his neck. It would not even take that,
he knew quite certainly, it would not even take the creature
physically attacking him, its presence alone, in the back of his
mind, would anchor him and drag him down. Maybe the first bound would
be weightless, even joyously buoyant, and the second even more
powerful than that, his body flung airborne with grace and speed. But
the blur, the blackness, he knew, would be there, watching mildly and
maliciously, and smile as the third leap would- just- not- be- high-
enough. The fourth leap would be shorter than the third. And by the
fifth leap, he knew, tears of frustration would spring from his eyes,
and his body would not even reach two metres off the ground, until
finally he would be in the middle of the street jumping up and down
like an asshole to no effect as the beast gained upon him.
So, what, then, is
there for him to do? It was foremost important that he must not
display any signs of fear, that is to say knowledge of the creature.
Though his death upon the creature's claws was inevitable and the
most he could do was delay it but a few precious minutes, to that end
it was crucial to outwardly maintain the appearance of normalcy. It
took several tries for him to find this, with his rearranging of how
high his shoulders were to be held, if he should slouch, coolly, or
hold a straight masculine back. If he should look his head around, as
if surveying the surrounding environment of trees and houses, or if
he should stare at his feet eating up the ground, as he was oft to
do. But then would the creature read that as an invitation? A
failure, even, to look the world 'in the eye'? Would that be the
perfect opportunity to pounce? Should his arms swing, gaily, or would
that be goofy, should they be held static at his sides, displaying
strength, and self control? Should his hands be in his pockets, would
that give the beast pause, thinking he held some weapon in his palms?
He eventually settled
for a nodding stroll, head slightly inclined downwards but eyes
fixated on the horizon. The relief of having decided on some, on any
course of action quickly gave way to the reminder that he was being
followed, tracked, by the horror. He remembered an old delaying
tactic from his schooldays-- perhaps he should bend the knee, and tie
up a shoelace. Of course both were done up tight already, double
knotted, as was his custom, still tight and solid from the morning's
preparations. He would have to mime exasperation at some string's
phantom faulty, but the action would buy him a few seconds to look
around, and to think. Perhaps even lure the beast into striking,
thinking him distracted, and of course the crouched position is the
perfect position from which to spring into a dead sprint, that's how
the Olympic sprinters start their races, after all. But, no, he
admonished himself, biting his lip a little too hard, that was stupid
thinking. Stupid stupid stupid. He was not an Olympian, far from it,
and besides trying to fool such a creature, a master of hunting, and
of killing, was to mock it. He was nothing compared to it. He wanted
only to be killed quickly, to have his body lifted up and slammed
against a wall head first, to break his neck like a fish, or a
rabbit, so as to prevent him flopping about too much when the beast
began to eat him. He did not want the beast to play with him, like a
cat would a rat with a broken leg, to bat him around, to eat him
alive one bite at a time, to relish his screams and his spasms. He
did not want to anger such a creature, so dreadful and cruel, he did
not want to provoke it further. "Just over like that," he
accidentally muttered aloud, again forgetting himself. The beast was
majestic, in a sense, so supreme in its power as to be authoritative.
It could snap his bones as easily as snapping finger and thumb. It
was godly in its control of the situation. It was a wall. It was a
black wave, that had started as a thin dark line on the ocean
horizon, and had grown and grown and grown until it obscured all
else. It was surrounding him. Encapsulating him. It was naught but
fur and claw and it had him in its grasp.
He shook his head.
There was little else for him to do. It was not fair, of course, it
was not fair. Nothing is. Nothing ever had been. But it should, he
thought, it should be. It could be. It would be so easy. If the beast
had given him some preparation. Some small years to train, to work
out. He could be a worthy adversary, of course. In just a few years.
He could train, every day. He would have muscles, and skills. He
could learn to build weapons and how best to use them. He could build
himself a body designed to fight. All the beast had left him with was
his flabby self, not even his real self, a husk. If only the beast
had given him some kind of warning. Some way of knowing. He knew the
beast was coming, of course, he'd always known, he'd always been
waiting for it, it had never been far from his mind. But it was a
matter of when. The beast had not given him any sign-- not one
sign!-- of when it would appear. If he had known it was today he
would have started training years ago. He would have run every day,
to build his stamina. He would have lifted to build his strength. He
would have studied to hone his mind. He would have sought out others,
and learned from them. How was he to know? It was not fair. It was
simply not fair. The nerve of it. To deny him this. His one chance.
His one chance of vindication. He had potential, he knew, he'd always
known, he'd been told his whole life. He had the potential. If only
the beast had let him showcase it! If only the beast had faced him,
on an open field, on a flat platform with no shadows to hide in. To
face him one on one, fists up, like all the movies and video games
and dreams had shown him. Instead the beast, the coward, had pounced
on him at such an inopportune time. He had no armour to strap on. He
had nothing. That is what the beast was to gain from killing him
now-- nothing! It was the beast's loss.
But he knew, too, that
this was folly, that this was lying, that this was not going to save
him. Now was now, and in the now the beast's jaws were tightening all
around him.
Monday, April 21, 2014
dire lies
until
they die, they die
most will
buy, to buy
never
try to try--
just waste
time, and mind--
stare
at
the
clock--
and sigh, and sigh--
workin' hard for
high a price
never asking--
"why? O why?--
should I shy
my time awry?"
for the boss man--
so snide, and wide--
come march the
swine, in line--
O they'll
whine and whine--
yet watch 'em make
good time inside--
to the factory
lines obliged
only but
inside their minds--
in the binds
of dire lies
they die, they die
most will
buy, to buy
never
try to try--
just waste
time, and mind--
stare
at
the
clock--
and sigh, and sigh--
workin' hard for
high a price
never asking--
"why? O why?--
should I shy
my time awry?"
for the boss man--
so snide, and wide--
come march the
swine, in line--
O they'll
whine and whine--
yet watch 'em make
good time inside--
to the factory
lines obliged
only but
inside their minds--
in the binds
of dire lies
Sunday, April 6, 2014
The Statue in the Basement
Someone had moved a statue of Venus, all her beauty
cast and moulded in bronze, into a darkened basement. She had served
many years as centrepiece and
landmark in the town-square, envied by young girls, sighed over by young men-- and their
gazes as time had weighed heavily upon her clear grey skin, causing it to become slightly rough and pebbled.
“I served my time well,” thought the lovely statue Venus to herself, smiling brightly in the dark, “I more than deserve a rest. And this basement, though, yes, a little small, a smidgen lonesome, and just a shade dark, is comfortable enough. All in all, it is a grand place to retire.” And so, smiling ever on, she settled in to sleep.
But alas, sleep would not come, and soon the statue Venus grew irked with her new setting. “These first hundred days have been a bore!” she thought, “This place is altogether dusty. And where are the children, who used to run circles around my feet, laughing and smiling upon me? Or the kind old folk, who threw superstitious coins and prayers into my fountain pool? Where are,” she smiled her mischievous smile, temper momentarily abated at the thought, “Where are the young men who would sigh with every passing glance at my smile, my naked breasts? Who sometimes, after a few night hours and drinks had washed over them, would creep to my courtyard to plant kisses on my stone lips? I thought,” she grew sad, her eyes full, pupil-less and wide, stared into nothingness, “I thought they loved me.”
Heralding this realisation came from above a great scraping noise, like a violent violin screeching some wretched musician's despair. The statue Venus was overcome with self-pity, and began to cry. Tears began to stream down her stone cheeks, chest and stomach, gathering in a puddle at her feet with a drip, drip, drip.
“Hold on,” Venus thought, “though my beauty has driven many a mortal man to weep, as my outstretched arms are immobile and can thus never return his loving embrace; likewise, too my eyes are stone and cannot weep tears. What is going on?”
With that, a single ray of sunshine no wider than a pin pierced the darkness of her new home. “Oh, how joyful!” thought Venus ecstatic, “The morning sun! And what's this...?” She listened closely for a moment, and sure enough she heard the sounds of-- “My old courtyard! I can hear the familiar noises of it-- the clip clop of the villagers' shoes and horses on the cobblestone! The ring of the blacksmith's hammer on his anvil! The song of the blue sparrows overhead! I suppose a stone must have come loose somewhere... what fun, to retire right under my old lovely spot, and now to have an ever-so-slightly-small window to listen through the sounds of my darling town!” She stood a moment and smiled and listened to the familiar sounds, when then the statue Venus noticed another sound not so recognisable:
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Oh!” Venus thought, “The water! Well, it is quite loud... now that I notice it, it seems to dominate even the sounds of my beloved town! It can't be helped. It must be,” Venus thought, remembering the fountain she had adorned for many hundred years, “a run-off from my old abode, why, then, I must be exactly underneath my old spot!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“It is persistent...” the statue Venus thought, “and consistent. But at least it's giving me a lovely bath-- yes, it shall help to keep my face shining and lovely!” She smiled ever into the darkness, tears running forever down her face.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
And so it was for many many years. During the day Venus the statue listened to the sounds of her old life under the sounds of the constant dripping, smiling at the thought of all the villagefolk milling and buzzing about through their day. She thought of the farmers going to till the fields, and the young lovers to walk hand in hand to nowhere in particular. At night she looked at the stars, what few she could make out through her coin-slit window, and often slept and dreamt of the day she would come out of retirement, to once more be looked on and adored by all.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
There was only one sound more annoying to the statue Venus than the sound of the dripping, and that was the sound of “Mary”. She wasn't quite sure who or what a “Mary” is, just that it seemed to be the word she heard most amongst the village talk. And everyone seemed to be saying it! Every village timbre touched upon the word "Mary"-- the village elders' rasped it, wheezing and coughing, the children, laughing, would sing songs that heavily featured the word, and in such loving, breathless, adoring tones!
“Bah,” she thought, “Mary, Mary, Mary. Myself, I don't see the appeal in it. Such a grating word, ugly, even-- Maare. Mary. I don't see what they love about this word Mary so much. To me they sound like bleating sheep when they say it. Mary, Mary, Mary. Bah!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Thought the statue Venus, “Despite the dripping, and the Mary-ing, and the,” Venus stared into the darkness of her home, “lonely, dark place they've put me in, I know that I am still a beautiful and cherished creature. In fact, yes, I'm quite sure of it. I'm quite certain I will soon be dragged back out, into the light, and installed into my lovely old courtyard. Or maybe,” Venus thought, “somewhere entirely new, and better. Yes! That must be the reasoning behind my so-called 'retirement'! They are constructing now a new fountain for me to be placed in, loved by all! Perhaps in a bigger town, so that I may grace a greater number of people's lives with my smile. Perhaps, even,” Venus smiled ever on, “a royal palace! Yes! That must be it! Soon I will pleasure a royal court and all its noble patrons with my presence!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Ttwo ghastly realisations came upon the statue Venus that night. The first was the meaning of the mysterious word “Mary”. The sky was clouded, so the statue Venus could see no stars or moonlight and was steeped in darkness eternal. It wasn't bothering her tonight, though normally it would make her quite sad: she was still pleased with herself for being eligible for the royal courts. Suddenly she became aware of the voice of a young man, who sounded very drunk..
“You're beautiful!” He was slurring, “Your eyes, your smile, your body, all of you makes my very heart ache!”
From her dark hiding place Venus couldn't help but smile, though she knew the drunk was not addressing her, and probably instead was accosting some poor village girl. For a moment the statue Venus indulged herself and imagined the boy was talking to her, as many had in the deep night hours such as these, and, of course, as many would again in the near future. So caught up in this fantasy, and in the young man's voice, was the statue Venus that she forgot all about the dripping sound of the water splashing at her feet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She listened: “Your lips, so full! Your eyes, so kind! Your hips,” the drunk burped; Venus continued to smile, “so curved! Like a river! I wish only to run my hands along and over them, O I do, everyday, as I walk by you.”
“Go on,” Venus thought, “Go on, tell me more, give me more!”
“Yes,” said the drunk, “Your hips, and your breasts, all of you, drives me to distraction...”
“More, more, more!” thought the statue Venus.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Every day,” the drunk slurred, “Every hour. I am thinking of you, and O my passions are stirred, every day, O yes, O my sweet and adorable Mary.”
At this Venus prickled. “Mary? That word uttered so adoringly by so many? Mary is a name? And what's more, a girl's name?” She thought, and listened hard, horrified.
“O Mary. O my sweet Mary. How I long for you. And yet,” the drunk grew quiet, and for many long moments Venus strained within the darkness, longing for his next words, and yet, with a heavy dread, somehow knowing already what they would be: “And yet,” the drunk sobbed, suddenly quite distraught, “and yet I can never have you. O my Mary, were it that I could turn you human, and make you my wife. Were it that you could smile upon me with warm fleshy lips, instead of mocking me from upon your pedestal, smiling upon all who pass you by,” the drunk's tone had grown angry, and bitter, “smiling at all with your whoresmile, your smile that should be reserved for me alone! Your lips I so long for are not warm things, but cold, and cruel, and stone! O my Mary! My Mary! My Mary! My Mary the whore!”
The drunk had whipped himself from lust to despair into a blind rage, as drunks are oft to do, and to punctuate his last spitting words threw his bottle at his feet, which broke with a loud crash. He then stormed off somewhere in a stomping huff. When it was again quiet the statue Venus found herself in the dark, alone and crying hard, the water running down her nose in a thick stream falling heavier than it ever had before.
Through her sadness, and anger, and rage, and jealousy, and her feelings of desolate and absolute betrayal, the statue Venus heard the Drip. Drip. Drip. echo throughout her basement and with a slow horror realised the water had worn down and eroded her nose from her face.
“I served my time well,” thought the lovely statue Venus to herself, smiling brightly in the dark, “I more than deserve a rest. And this basement, though, yes, a little small, a smidgen lonesome, and just a shade dark, is comfortable enough. All in all, it is a grand place to retire.” And so, smiling ever on, she settled in to sleep.
But alas, sleep would not come, and soon the statue Venus grew irked with her new setting. “These first hundred days have been a bore!” she thought, “This place is altogether dusty. And where are the children, who used to run circles around my feet, laughing and smiling upon me? Or the kind old folk, who threw superstitious coins and prayers into my fountain pool? Where are,” she smiled her mischievous smile, temper momentarily abated at the thought, “Where are the young men who would sigh with every passing glance at my smile, my naked breasts? Who sometimes, after a few night hours and drinks had washed over them, would creep to my courtyard to plant kisses on my stone lips? I thought,” she grew sad, her eyes full, pupil-less and wide, stared into nothingness, “I thought they loved me.”
Heralding this realisation came from above a great scraping noise, like a violent violin screeching some wretched musician's despair. The statue Venus was overcome with self-pity, and began to cry. Tears began to stream down her stone cheeks, chest and stomach, gathering in a puddle at her feet with a drip, drip, drip.
“Hold on,” Venus thought, “though my beauty has driven many a mortal man to weep, as my outstretched arms are immobile and can thus never return his loving embrace; likewise, too my eyes are stone and cannot weep tears. What is going on?”
With that, a single ray of sunshine no wider than a pin pierced the darkness of her new home. “Oh, how joyful!” thought Venus ecstatic, “The morning sun! And what's this...?” She listened closely for a moment, and sure enough she heard the sounds of-- “My old courtyard! I can hear the familiar noises of it-- the clip clop of the villagers' shoes and horses on the cobblestone! The ring of the blacksmith's hammer on his anvil! The song of the blue sparrows overhead! I suppose a stone must have come loose somewhere... what fun, to retire right under my old lovely spot, and now to have an ever-so-slightly-small window to listen through the sounds of my darling town!” She stood a moment and smiled and listened to the familiar sounds, when then the statue Venus noticed another sound not so recognisable:
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Oh!” Venus thought, “The water! Well, it is quite loud... now that I notice it, it seems to dominate even the sounds of my beloved town! It can't be helped. It must be,” Venus thought, remembering the fountain she had adorned for many hundred years, “a run-off from my old abode, why, then, I must be exactly underneath my old spot!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“It is persistent...” the statue Venus thought, “and consistent. But at least it's giving me a lovely bath-- yes, it shall help to keep my face shining and lovely!” She smiled ever into the darkness, tears running forever down her face.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
And so it was for many many years. During the day Venus the statue listened to the sounds of her old life under the sounds of the constant dripping, smiling at the thought of all the villagefolk milling and buzzing about through their day. She thought of the farmers going to till the fields, and the young lovers to walk hand in hand to nowhere in particular. At night she looked at the stars, what few she could make out through her coin-slit window, and often slept and dreamt of the day she would come out of retirement, to once more be looked on and adored by all.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
There was only one sound more annoying to the statue Venus than the sound of the dripping, and that was the sound of “Mary”. She wasn't quite sure who or what a “Mary” is, just that it seemed to be the word she heard most amongst the village talk. And everyone seemed to be saying it! Every village timbre touched upon the word "Mary"-- the village elders' rasped it, wheezing and coughing, the children, laughing, would sing songs that heavily featured the word, and in such loving, breathless, adoring tones!
“Bah,” she thought, “Mary, Mary, Mary. Myself, I don't see the appeal in it. Such a grating word, ugly, even-- Maare. Mary. I don't see what they love about this word Mary so much. To me they sound like bleating sheep when they say it. Mary, Mary, Mary. Bah!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Thought the statue Venus, “Despite the dripping, and the Mary-ing, and the,” Venus stared into the darkness of her home, “lonely, dark place they've put me in, I know that I am still a beautiful and cherished creature. In fact, yes, I'm quite sure of it. I'm quite certain I will soon be dragged back out, into the light, and installed into my lovely old courtyard. Or maybe,” Venus thought, “somewhere entirely new, and better. Yes! That must be the reasoning behind my so-called 'retirement'! They are constructing now a new fountain for me to be placed in, loved by all! Perhaps in a bigger town, so that I may grace a greater number of people's lives with my smile. Perhaps, even,” Venus smiled ever on, “a royal palace! Yes! That must be it! Soon I will pleasure a royal court and all its noble patrons with my presence!”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Ttwo ghastly realisations came upon the statue Venus that night. The first was the meaning of the mysterious word “Mary”. The sky was clouded, so the statue Venus could see no stars or moonlight and was steeped in darkness eternal. It wasn't bothering her tonight, though normally it would make her quite sad: she was still pleased with herself for being eligible for the royal courts. Suddenly she became aware of the voice of a young man, who sounded very drunk..
“You're beautiful!” He was slurring, “Your eyes, your smile, your body, all of you makes my very heart ache!”
From her dark hiding place Venus couldn't help but smile, though she knew the drunk was not addressing her, and probably instead was accosting some poor village girl. For a moment the statue Venus indulged herself and imagined the boy was talking to her, as many had in the deep night hours such as these, and, of course, as many would again in the near future. So caught up in this fantasy, and in the young man's voice, was the statue Venus that she forgot all about the dripping sound of the water splashing at her feet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She listened: “Your lips, so full! Your eyes, so kind! Your hips,” the drunk burped; Venus continued to smile, “so curved! Like a river! I wish only to run my hands along and over them, O I do, everyday, as I walk by you.”
“Go on,” Venus thought, “Go on, tell me more, give me more!”
“Yes,” said the drunk, “Your hips, and your breasts, all of you, drives me to distraction...”
“More, more, more!” thought the statue Venus.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Every day,” the drunk slurred, “Every hour. I am thinking of you, and O my passions are stirred, every day, O yes, O my sweet and adorable Mary.”
At this Venus prickled. “Mary? That word uttered so adoringly by so many? Mary is a name? And what's more, a girl's name?” She thought, and listened hard, horrified.
“O Mary. O my sweet Mary. How I long for you. And yet,” the drunk grew quiet, and for many long moments Venus strained within the darkness, longing for his next words, and yet, with a heavy dread, somehow knowing already what they would be: “And yet,” the drunk sobbed, suddenly quite distraught, “and yet I can never have you. O my Mary, were it that I could turn you human, and make you my wife. Were it that you could smile upon me with warm fleshy lips, instead of mocking me from upon your pedestal, smiling upon all who pass you by,” the drunk's tone had grown angry, and bitter, “smiling at all with your whoresmile, your smile that should be reserved for me alone! Your lips I so long for are not warm things, but cold, and cruel, and stone! O my Mary! My Mary! My Mary! My Mary the whore!”
The drunk had whipped himself from lust to despair into a blind rage, as drunks are oft to do, and to punctuate his last spitting words threw his bottle at his feet, which broke with a loud crash. He then stormed off somewhere in a stomping huff. When it was again quiet the statue Venus found herself in the dark, alone and crying hard, the water running down her nose in a thick stream falling heavier than it ever had before.
Through her sadness, and anger, and rage, and jealousy, and her feelings of desolate and absolute betrayal, the statue Venus heard the Drip. Drip. Drip. echo throughout her basement and with a slow horror realised the water had worn down and eroded her nose from her face.
06/04/2014
When one returns home
from a lengthy holiday, often is there felt a great and hollow
sensation; it is with no great ceremony that one is plopped back into
the homestead; indeed, there are no trumpets sounded, no banners or
announcements unfurled, no parade led; it is with a cool pomposity
that one returns home; no, in fact, not cool at all, it is a warm and
enveloping sensation, akin to walking through sluggish water barely a
half degree Celsius higher than that of one's own body temperature;
the difference is slight, but in its modicum is a noticeabley
terrible length, barely able to be grasped and yet inescapable. Like
the onward drudging march of time, like a child outgrowing its
favourite clothes that fit it not a year ago. One views familiar
sights, familiar walls, plaster, and of course cracks in said
plaster, unconsciously; aware only of the shapes these objects make
when one squints ones eyes as if peering into a dotted impressionist
painting; these things so dreadfully familiar, gazed over not one but
many too times in the idle moments that construct the day to day life
as to be rendered invisible; and yet, at the same time, with that
warm prickling wet itch, one is sharply aware of the discrepancies,
the flaws, as it were, in the floors; uneven steps one becomes
accustomed readily and with no small grace when one must pass over it
several times a day, on the way to and back from the kitchen, or
something, as it were; these discrepancies become hideously
noticeable, offensive to the senses. One's bathroom mirror; its
various streaks and spotted flecks unconsciously familiar, clinging
to the image of ones face is suddenly deemed disgusting; in fact, one
often gave a harsher treatment to the various hotel mirrors one has
encountered on ones journey; yet in comparison shine like Jupiter
next to Ganymede, a polished silver of most exquisite brightness. One
distinctly remembers cleaning the bathroom mirror to a sheen; it was
only in small steps that the spots and dots gathered one at a time to
finally make a picture grotesque.
The fantastical items one brings home; often chosen in fits of madness, or “impulse”, one decides in a final sort of way that this plastic figurine or tick-tack or whatever nonsense so perfectly slips into the mode of ones tastes, formulated and honed through ones life from indeed ones very birth; unshakeable and perfect nostalgia clashes with hip, chic choice; one decides in one moment to carry said unfathomably tasteless nick knack for the rest of ones natural term, to attach it to one's hip; but of course, when finally set out, against the backdrop of the burrow, the den, the living room; these items become at once pointless and gravely insignificant lumps of plastic; they seem to melt into the background of one's home, dissolved into its very blandness; indeed swallowed up by the normality of the setting, becoming irrevocably a permanent part of it. And one remembers with gravity visits as a child to strangers' houses, often littered with likewise said lumps of plastic that are held dear only to the homeowner; as a child one found these things bizarre, confusing, almost alarming; and yet observed they brought no bother to the homeowner; in fact the homeowner seemed comforted by their presence; and on rare occasions to the despair of all present would lift one up, turning it all round as if holding in their hand an artefact of great scientific importance, and claim it holding many a great memory for the owner; though of course the plastic remains silent in their hands.
The food is gone; there is no food, one usually remembers to use up or give away the last of the food before one leaves as to not let a crumb go to waste; consequentially one must then refill the stocks before being allowed to retire for the first time, upon returning home; no matter how long the journey was, how many miles and hours and noises withstood; one trudges to the supermarket, and grabs items at random; old, familiar, easy items, frozen pizzas, canned soup; and, having remembered the exotic food on ones journey; resolves to do away with old favourites, and to institute new and better foods; healthier foods; rice, maybe, and cinnamon and egg. For one is tired enough to want to change, for the better, but far too tired to adequately plan such a drastic improvement. And one grabs entirely too much for a basket (but of course not enough for a trolley) and takes it to the self serve aisle; and several times the automatic machine breaks down, out of malice or design; and out rings the artificial ringing of a digital bell; and the supermarket employee, a boy of endless hostile boredom and rakish limbs walks over and without listening to ones apologies or explanations swipes his card and hammers an unknown but obviously simple code into the numberpad and moves on, as if he had performed the manoeuvre a thousand times already that day; as if he too has become merely another cog in the supermarkets machines; a perfect robot that responds to the smallest tasks with the confidence and worldly know-how of its programmer.
--
written whilst tired and OD'ing on kafka
The fantastical items one brings home; often chosen in fits of madness, or “impulse”, one decides in a final sort of way that this plastic figurine or tick-tack or whatever nonsense so perfectly slips into the mode of ones tastes, formulated and honed through ones life from indeed ones very birth; unshakeable and perfect nostalgia clashes with hip, chic choice; one decides in one moment to carry said unfathomably tasteless nick knack for the rest of ones natural term, to attach it to one's hip; but of course, when finally set out, against the backdrop of the burrow, the den, the living room; these items become at once pointless and gravely insignificant lumps of plastic; they seem to melt into the background of one's home, dissolved into its very blandness; indeed swallowed up by the normality of the setting, becoming irrevocably a permanent part of it. And one remembers with gravity visits as a child to strangers' houses, often littered with likewise said lumps of plastic that are held dear only to the homeowner; as a child one found these things bizarre, confusing, almost alarming; and yet observed they brought no bother to the homeowner; in fact the homeowner seemed comforted by their presence; and on rare occasions to the despair of all present would lift one up, turning it all round as if holding in their hand an artefact of great scientific importance, and claim it holding many a great memory for the owner; though of course the plastic remains silent in their hands.
The food is gone; there is no food, one usually remembers to use up or give away the last of the food before one leaves as to not let a crumb go to waste; consequentially one must then refill the stocks before being allowed to retire for the first time, upon returning home; no matter how long the journey was, how many miles and hours and noises withstood; one trudges to the supermarket, and grabs items at random; old, familiar, easy items, frozen pizzas, canned soup; and, having remembered the exotic food on ones journey; resolves to do away with old favourites, and to institute new and better foods; healthier foods; rice, maybe, and cinnamon and egg. For one is tired enough to want to change, for the better, but far too tired to adequately plan such a drastic improvement. And one grabs entirely too much for a basket (but of course not enough for a trolley) and takes it to the self serve aisle; and several times the automatic machine breaks down, out of malice or design; and out rings the artificial ringing of a digital bell; and the supermarket employee, a boy of endless hostile boredom and rakish limbs walks over and without listening to ones apologies or explanations swipes his card and hammers an unknown but obviously simple code into the numberpad and moves on, as if he had performed the manoeuvre a thousand times already that day; as if he too has become merely another cog in the supermarkets machines; a perfect robot that responds to the smallest tasks with the confidence and worldly know-how of its programmer.
--
written whilst tired and OD'ing on kafka
Monday, February 24, 2014
Slick
Creepin' through the hall of mirrors
grinnin' at myself-- it's just me
and me
and me
and the dust
and I'm stinkin' fuckin' trash tonight
thinkin' all hips lips slits tits and thighs
prowlin'
I wanna take you on a ride
broken down & defunct
stalkin' through the haunted house
canned screams AAAAAAAAAAAAA plastic skulls
I'm bitin' down on fake vampire teeth
I take my thrills cheesey and cheap
all the better if it's free
forehead slicked with sweat
it ain't easy being sleazy
your legs slicked with...
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
circlin' on the ferris wheel
roundandroundandroundandroundandroundandround it goes
I'm playin' Devil's Advocate until you're bored to tears
and I keep wondering-- is this real?
it's just an inklin'--
just a feeling I've been feeling-- is this real?
coulda swore that I saw you before
trackin' through the funhouse mirrors-- all distorted proportions
they're showin' me as a normal-lookin' man
and you as something I could hold
coulda sworn that I've torn you before
in a dream...
it's just an inklin'--
late night tinglin'
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
grinnin' at myself-- it's just me
and me
and me
and the dust
and I'm stinkin' fuckin' trash tonight
thinkin' all hips lips slits tits and thighs
prowlin'
I wanna take you on a ride
broken down & defunct
stalkin' through the haunted house
canned screams AAAAAAAAAAAAA plastic skulls
I'm bitin' down on fake vampire teeth
I take my thrills cheesey and cheap
all the better if it's free
forehead slicked with sweat
it ain't easy being sleazy
your legs slicked with...
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
circlin' on the ferris wheel
roundandroundandroundandroundandroundandround it goes
I'm playin' Devil's Advocate until you're bored to tears
and I keep wondering-- is this real?
it's just an inklin'--
just a feeling I've been feeling-- is this real?
coulda swore that I saw you before
trackin' through the funhouse mirrors-- all distorted proportions
they're showin' me as a normal-lookin' man
and you as something I could hold
coulda sworn that I've torn you before
in a dream...
it's just an inklin'--
late night tinglin'
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
Oh baby mine / with your shape / you'd make one fine / chalk outline
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
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