HAMMER HOUSE OF HORRORS

i find myself staring for hours
at a reflection that is neither me,
nor christopher lee
i don't recognise myself
while outside lon chaney junior
is running up & down the garden path howling
is this real life?
or is it just fantasy?
my hands struggle for control of my windpipe . . .
was i born to run or kill?
boris karloff is making pop tarts in my kitchenette
the hammer is coming down
say did you ever see – rock on
its not so easy to strangle yourself
bela lugosi says to me
expertly flossing his fangs
while outside wise people stay off the moors
a disposable razor is no use at all
not to the disposable
while outside i can hear the mob baying for the monster's blood
light or dark has no effect
on peter cushing or vincent price
they have armchairs & the sunday funnies
i have a reflection i don't know – look into my eyes
it says to me . . .
only, i cant anymore.

post mortem inertia frame

sun kissed fruit
i wanna bite you
leave my molar & fang imprints
for the csi to find
as the ichneumens circle
& bearded dragonflies dance
around your corpse . . .
but not really
i was only kidding around
& id plead insanity anyhow
end up criminally insane
but an artistik genius like van gogh
so many letters & proposals
id get - from philanthropistic widows & dry-docked barbi dolls
but i was only joking . . .
about the biting
of bullets & flesh
because the current flows too strong
& my heart is an epicyclic train
so dont go thinking bad thoughts
summer kissed peacherinedream
not until . . .

into the castle of death with the doppelganger

After I'd been away from home for three or four years working as a chef, I went home one weekend just to say hi and see how things were. And things were pretty much how I'd left them as it turned out, only the arguments between my parents were worse and my brother was older but no wiser at all.
No, he was still a spoiled child, only now he was a spoiled child with his own drum kit and sound-proofed rubber room. But still, some parents will do anything to keep the last remaining sibling at home – just as a kind of domestic argument buffer zone. Yes, my brother had taken on the same status Switzerland had during WWII – the neutral newt. So there he was, his hair longer and his hearing considerably worse after a couple of years listing to Sabbath and Zeppelin through those quadro-phonic earphones that looked as if they cost more than what I earned in a month of busting my nuts cheffing. Did I despise him? Hell no, he earned it all living with my parents and that was way harder graft than mine.

Naturally he was pleased to see me. We went outside and kicked a ball around just like we'd done as kids and we laughed about the old times, many of which have already been recounted in this fine book. He was still a firestarter. Only now he'd progressed to petrol bombs; syphoning the two-star from the old man's ride-on mower and then going down to the small copse we used to hang about in. I went down there with him, dubious as I was, and let me tell you that that copse resembled something out of the opening scenes of armageddon. My brother's handiwork was all too evident on many blackened trees and scorched pieces of earth. And he was keen to show me his latest bomb, a cute little number he called Lady Penelope because it could say everything it needed to say in the blink of a false eyelash, maybe less. He lit it, glared at it admiringly for what I considered far too long and finally launched it - as I was already four-steps behind him. For a moment after its impact nothing happened, but there was no disappointment on his face, only expectation – just like he used to look like on Christmas morning before all his wildest dreams became wet dreams.
Suddenly there was an almighty whooshing sound and then a bright blue and orange and angry fireball lit-up the copse like we were in Cambodia. I half expected the Strolling Bones to rock-up unexpectedly and launch into 'Paint It Black.' The stench of insatiability filled the immediate environment and as my brother turned to look at me I saw the kind of evil wonderment on his face that I'd seen before; the one that all but certified him as both borderline psychotic and criminally insane. Easy come easy go. My parents had created a monster and they had no idea whatsoever about what made their golden cherub tick. One day for sure he would incinerate them and later be found standing smiling in wonderment at his skill with incendiary devices. He had been born too late; had he been available to the Allies during the early days of WWII, even as a prototype, he would most likely have been able to fry Hitler and the rest of the ragtag Reich high command alive inside some Austrian bordello while they fucked albino eunuchs and played with Mozart. Problem solved. But nevermind . . .

It was the following day when he told me about the castle. Not that I needed telling as it was me who'd first heard the legend while I'd helped my grandfather build my parent's very own blue stone mausoleum. We used to see its turrets when we were up on the scaffold scaffolding and shit and it was my grandfather who'd dug the dirt on it. He was an old man and old men have a way of getting the local lore from other old men while they leaned on a fencepost chewing the cud. Not me, I was young, fit and bearded and I was too busy trying to get my hands or another independently-inclined appendage into some part of the wife of the couple building their house next to my folk's plot. She was always out there in denim shorts and a bikini top in summer waiting for her old man to get back from work; just idly stacking bricks or chewing her hair. One day I helped her stack bricks and then I helped her stack on some unwanted weight and after that she and her old man split-up and their dream home remained just two-courses of breeze blocks. I had no time for haunted castles or bricks after that so I returned happily to cheffing, and cheffing as far away from my parent's house-to-be as was feasible.
But now I was back and as my brother told me about the castle I sat there smiling. Haunted my sweet ass, I told him. So what if the Count who owned it had run amok in nineteen-eighteen and hacked-up his family and a few maids into the bargain. It was war time or near as damnit, and that kind of shit in the greater ocean of attrocities went all but unnoticed. The guy probably had a good solicitor anyway, all those incestuously conceived royals who were put out to graze with an annual trust fund and a bogus title did. With that on his side he could have killed the whole town and still escaped clean as a whistle on some legal technicality like bribery or midnight calls from Buck House. Fuck yes.
The whole town was shit-scared of the joint anyhow. It stood in Christ knows how many acres of overgrown undergrowth and the sign on the gate said something like: “No entry under any circumstances. Trespasser's will be shot on sight, twice.” It was in German too which pretty much told you all you needed to know about the royal diseases of madness and infidelity. They were all at it, all over Europe. Arbeit Macht Frei and all that jazz.

As soon as we hopped over that rickety old gate wrapped in rusty barbed wire the temperature dropped about ten-degrees. I was already bleeding from a laceration on the inside of my thigh but being a professional chef I was of course immunised against tetanus. We crunched up the driveway and as we rounded the first curve we were somewhat disturbed by a line of fence stakes with the skeletal heads of rabbits on top of each one. I clenched one callused hand over my brother's lips to stop him from screeching. He had this terribly annoying girly reaction to horror – even though he himself was a monster. Look, I told him, don't be a baby, back when these rejects from Watership Down were hammered up here there was most likely another one of those myxomatosis outbreaks and maybe the humans got it too or mayhaps they just wanted to scare the crapola outta anyone foolish enough to come up here trying to hawk poached and infected rabbit. I removed my hand from my brother's mouth and we forged on, the temperature dropping, by my rough calculations, at a degree every half-mile. The long and winding driveway was about three-miles long, although why they just couldn't have built the thing straight and cut two-miles from the road to doorstep journey was no-one's business now. Lords and suchlike they have a tendancy to go crazy after a while with brain fluke and liver worm and gout and oozing appendages and they lose any perspective they once might have had for distance – think Lucan.
We could see the house now, Castle Greyskull indeed, a dark and sinister form all but consumed by vines and ivy and out of control climbing roses. Why the fuck David Attenborough hadn't been up here filming the life cycle of the ten-winged cyclopic dragonfly was an all- together separate unsolved mystery.

The shadow the house cast, crept toward us maliciously as the sun continued its perilous journey to the outer Western Faroes or wherever it set. As I've mentioned previously my comprehensive schooling was interrupted at regular intervals – mainly when geography was in session. There was an old sun dial with a toad sitting plump atop it – and no wonder with all this insect life swarming about like Japanese fighter planes piloted by kamikaze types. All that toad had to do was sit on top of that sundial from dawn to dusk with his mouth gaping and he could easily stack on a pound a day. Fortunately we had come on this journey armed. No boy in his right mind would venture into the dank interior of this museum exhibit unarmed, no indeed, I had my old cricket bat and my brother had his hockey stick – as I've mentioned before he always had this strange girly quality to him that unsettled everyone.
Anyhow, that was how the fat toad got summarily despatched to whatever afterlife toads and whatnots go to – maybe the great pond in the sky. And so much for that, add another one to my ever-burgeoning slate. That ugly fat bastard hadn't even had the time for one final croak before he'd croaked it. It'll all balance out on the day of reckoning, I told my brother, fear not, think how many goddamned dragonflies we've just saved.
We inched nearer toward the house, our eyes skimming windows for signs of life, movement that resembled life, or paranormal interference. It grew steadily darker and colder, oh, and mustier, like they'd just finished testing mustard gas hereabouts. In the porchway, where once I suppose stately carriages had spewed out the bejewelled landed gentry and maybe a few fresh young orphan boys looking for excitement, we stood a while thinking about whether or not to ring the doorbell just in case some phantom butler still resided, or simply to kick the thing in. Thank god my brother hadn't brought a petrol bomb with him. Anyhow, it was me who told him that kicking in doors was for chumps with more density than carbon monoxide or whatever gas it was that had a lot of density – my chemistry had suffered awfully too under the amalgamated education system so lauded by podgy old peers up in London town. If you're going to break and enter, I advised him in a brotherly yet still professional manner, then first we have to creep around looking for the most prudent point of entry. So, that is what we did. We crept around the perimeter of that house peering into blackened windows and seeing nothing until I got sick of peering at my own reflection and threw a rock I'd just requisitioned from the Brideshead Revistedesque rockery through the large rear doors. We were out on some kind of mid-nineteenth century patio by the looks of things as obviously when this place was built gargoyles and demonic water features were all the rage. And besides, this whole area had a history pock-marked with the telltale signs of pagan worship and devilry – nevermind incest, racism and bestiality. The glass gave way with a certain dignity I noticed as it first spider cracked and then simply fell away from its damp frame in what might be construed in some circles as a welcoming gesture. Well, I said to my brother, what are you waiting for? Get your arse in there boy and scout around and then report back to me.
What? He said to me.
What ho eh! You wanted to come see the castle so here you are – I gestured theatrically at the freshly broken door glass – in you go then young master.
Fuck that. He said to me.
Great, I thought to myself, just fucking typical, the little jackoff has less spunk than a neutered dachshund. Ho hum, no wonder I was sent forth into the world first – imagine having this as your older sibling. Which was about when I hit him with the cricket bat. I had a brief few seconds where when I glanced at him I saw a giant toad with a gobfull of dragonflies. Maybe this damned castle was exerting some evil mind control over me – or maybe I'd just always wanted to hit him with a cricket bat, either way the shriek he let loose sent a mushroom cloud of birds up from their roosts like monkeys off into space, jabbering and squarking insanely. A whole new bedlam. We stepped inside together, well I stepped in and then I yanked him after me by his not so iron maiden-ish hair. I was sick of the whole debacle already.

Now, there are some people, mainly psychics and suchlike who will readily testify in law courts for a flat fee that the ghouls and ghosts are all about. But, they will add as their cleverly-worded disclaimer demands, that only a select few can see them. These psychics call those who can see the frolicking dead the privileged ones – although most other people call them fruitbats. The rest of us mere mortals – folks like me, scare the dead nightlights out of the dead and thus the dead hide from these kinds of people. Mainly it is all gibberish but nonetheless I do not see dead people whereas my younger sibling does. Obviously his mother's psychic ability gene was transmuted to him in utero or she was on the Pimms bigtime during pregnancy. Which all explains why he is hanging onto me like a dandy in the underworld and why I am forcing him into every room I break into, as I still have my breaking-in gene functioning, making him say howdy to all the spooks. Yes, I am no kind of brother to a boy with psychic vulnerability.
Eventually with him muttering bastardised rosaries and Latin exorcisms I find an old newspaper – the Ratworthy Chronicle or something and it's faded headline is about Chamberlain and Lord Haw Haw playing footsie at Windsor Castle pre-war while the pox-ridden and soon-to-be adulterous king shot clay pigeons straight off the gamekeeper's head for kicks. More examples of great English traitors with less backbone than that toad I recently sent to an early demise. Let's go, I tell him, I'm sick of all this musty air and mildew and these cobwebs and nothing but dead memories and futile ambitions. The only thing that got killed here was wildlife, ghost stories my sweet arse . . .


I went back to my job and forgot about castles and Chamberlain and toads. Frogs I remembered, as we were battering their legs and deep-frying them daily in the name of our earnest profession. Snails too, and partridges, even the odd rabbit or two certified clean by HM's aides up at Balmoral. Then I got a call from my mother. She was in a panic, the Titanic was going to sink. Sink? I said to her, that's not news lady, now if it was going to re-surface she'd be onto something. Then she remembered why it was she'd actually rung me, yes, too much psychic interference on the line. Look, I told her, get a diddle on okay, I've got eight quails sitting snuggly in a copper saute pan on medium heat. Medium heat! Ha! She didn't get it . . .

No, I had to come home immediately.
Mother, I said to her, the professional code of conduct chef's toil under would never permit it.
But it's your brother! She wailed dramatically.
Is he dead? Am I getting the Porsche?
No, he's seeing a doppelganger?
What? Whose?
His own goddamnit!
Listen, I told her sternly, calm down, there are no such things as doppelgangers, even Hitchcock admitted as much. What he's seeing is his own monsterous reflection because he's high on high octane and heavy metal, go to my old room and get my cricket bat out and don't worry about that toad juice all over it . . . willow is the only thing he understands. Then I hung up. The quails came up rather nice with a cognac and full cream sauce and the Lord who scoffed them all down told the waiter Diego to tell me that I was a culinary genius. But by then I was in a nearby bar regaling a few interested parties with this very tale – overly-garnished naturally.

trans federal express

they can keep me in the interrogation booth until i miss my flight
until i rust
they never quit
hedging their binary bets
although the adult stores are full of it
& all without an M rating
under the counter amyl deals
buy quick relief from invasionary stalling tactics
there are only two boxes available to tick
no neither or unknown
for corresponding details
up on a stage my voice betrays my physicality
they get interested or remote
controlled
then turn off & score low
so i get slam dunked
then get a turn in the booth to answer questions on my specialised subject
which is always horticulture
how they grew in the garden
but out on the cross we're okay
dynamic exotic specimens for import export
the oyster is plump
the losers original at least
& no one really gives two shits
whether you win or not
because the other game is far more dangerous
with a gun to your head
& a fed in your bed
doing paperwork
in duplicate for paper tigers
wise monkeys & papal whores
odds i lose
evens i lose
i lose

bounced

the bouncer wouldnt let me back in
because he said i was i-n-t-o-x-i-c-a-t-e-d
even after i said id spell it
twice
no go
heave ho
tally ho
but none of that explains how the planter
came to be in a place
i could fall over it
when it wasnt there before
some knites you just cant win
when your glass sprouts wings & flies,
when the din closes in,
where angels fear to tread,
in a garden of delights,
on a corner,
listenin to bad bands
cheap phonies
dead poets
small time mr bigs
& chicks who all look & sound the fuckin same
so yes, i drink,
to obliterate the ordinary
madness of our times
to escape the bars - no pun intended
of mortal confinement,
; never go outside to smoke
if youre intoxicated/smashed
or if you cant spell it
because a word like that
can be detrimental to your alcohol/bloodstream ratioo;

i drink alone,
i drink with the angel of death,
with the blood countess,
with the hillside stranglers,
with the freeway killer,
with the moors murderers,
with the stocking strangler,
with the want ad killer,
with the trailside killer,
with the mad beast,
with the sunset strip slayer,
with the boston strangler,
with the killer clown,
with the skid row slasher,
with the mad biter,
with me . . .

necromancy dance # 7

if you did it
it could be so glamour-us
you could wear eyeliner
that black velvet dress with -
those white shoulders of yours
jutting out
like sun bleached ivory treasures
waiting to be found on a dusty savannah
ravaged by wolves & lionesses
even slit wrists would add
mystique to the last fatal image
the richness of the blood congealed
the wounds like crevasses
beckoning to another
to follow & drink
yes i see it all
the emulation, adoration, idolisation,
the hits in their millions
you could be so beautified
after -
& hanging has its merits
if you chose nylons - seamed
shot in black & white for effect
as life is fantastic voyeurism
a moment encapsulated
by wide green eyes
staring hopelessly vacated
& you could be a star
shining beyond the mortality crisis
like a shimmering virus
paled with pouted lips
welcoming seductively
your flock -
the poseurs, twinkers, academics & theologists
holding you high as the meticulous exemplar
in imaginations & dangerous liasons
like a war pin up;
your name on bombs - delivered
think of eternity - destruction - sweethearts
even sisterhood
how little the cost
bravery levies
& remember
cruelty is in the eye of the beholder
beauty in the lens of the camera
death merely a click away
like a bad exposure
& everything in-between
a meaningless slideshow.

トランズジェンダー著者＆詩人: mutilated punk tg author footage

トランズジェンダー著者＆詩人: mutilated punk tg author footage

mutilated punk tg author footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqdusDj0-AE

he was hoping to be forever blowing bubbles - dedicated to shane jesse christnasstime

There was no crime in supporting West Ham United – still isn't unfortunately, as Luiz himself had once done before wee Georgie shashayed into his life. Yes, Luiz was a hammer, all for Moore, Hurst, Peters, even Greaves at one time. He had the shirt because he liked the colours, which complimented his Celtic complexion. Often, in his formative days of languid evenings spent with claret and blue shirt tail trailing in his wake, you could find Luiz seriously involved in a game of fifty-a-side football on the local rec.
The kid had talent, but alas, like so many of his heroes, he had an attitude to go right along with it, and a bad one at that. Even though he had trained diligently with the school football squad, which was after all rightly renowned and feared across the home counties as a team to be reckoned with, Luiz's continual backchatting of the coaches invariably led to him not being selected. Luiz, as was his wont, took this rejection well and merely continued playing and training, often alone, in all weather conditions – which were, this being England, mainly sodden. Luiz's break came in a match he played one summer holidays for a local team called the Golden Shots during an all-day tournament. Luiz, not adverse to a spell wearing the colours of Wolverhampton Wanderers, scored two startling second half goals, the second a lob of some thirty-yards executed with the audacity of wee Georgie himself, which not only took the Shots into the culminating final, but also caught the eye of the new school coach Mr. Bremner, a wily Scotsman with no time for sideways passes and a stagnant back four. In that final, played in the twilight of a glorious summer's evening as the swallows swooped and the bugs flitted around gaily, Luiz went on a dribble which began just outside his own penalty area and ended on the opposing goalline, eluding seven of the opposing team's players in-between.
It was to be alas his finest football moment, though of course he would not have known this as he over celebrated by the public toilets. Mr. Bremner, pipe in mouth, was thus suitably enamoured with the silky foot skills of the red-headed claymore zipping down the right wing time and again, and invited Luiz to the next squad session.

Perhaps, in hindsight, only a Scotsman could handle a fireball like Luiz, a man in the ilk of Stein, Busby, or Docherty, men renowned for their cunning and guile in coaching the best out of the wayward geniuses in their mileu. So, as the training sessions progressed, Mr. Bremner spent time yanking his enigmatic charge from the practice pitch, his face crimson with anger, his neck veins like swollen leeches feasting on bloated corpses in the Clyde, lambarding Luiz for continually ignoring explicit game plans and technical instructions. Luiz took all of this in the spirit in which it was intended and time and again would return to the practice pitch – skin the last defender and decide not to cross the ball for his strikers but instead go for the ultimate glory himself. In the world of football, be it schoolboy practice on a boggy field or at the Estadio do Maracana, River Plate or Olympic Stadium Berlin, players who continually flout the team rules, get canned. So it was with Luiz, who, erring one too many times to the side of individuality, found himself not only fallen from grace with god, but more importantly, with Mr. Bremner too, a god in his own sphere of activity.

Banished to the reseves, Luiz spent a good half a season under the watchful eye of Mr. Jordan, another Scotsman with a crude mouth and an eye for burgeoning talent. Finally, beaten down by team rules, the ugly 4-4-2 system, and the national team's debacle in world cup failure after world cup failure, Luiz finally sucked-up the message and leaned how to cross a ball from the bi-line. Having spent hours in his own back yard wearing a football boot on his left foot and a slipper on his right to force himself to play left-footed as well as right, his natural inclination, by season's end with yet another flu epidemic sweeping England and the school first team squad all but decimated by illness, Luiz was finally called back up to the firsts to participate in the then ongoing, counties cup.

That of course, was where the scouts from professional clubs hung around looking for promising schoolboys, or indeed a scoolboy with promise . A school team wins its own county knock-out cup and thus goes on the following season to represent its county in a national competition against all of the schools across England who, the preceding year, had won the right to represent their county. No small deal indeed, a deal in point of fact which included many in-school training hours which negated the needs to learn such useless skills as woodwork or science and where the heated school gym became, for several months at least, the sole domain of Mr. Bremner and his collection of county-representing schoolboys. Yes, they were a happy crew. Feted, well-fed, well-trained, worked like thoroughbred racehorses day and afternoon and three evenings a week too to achieve and maintain peak physical fitness and mental awareness. Virtually isolated from the remainder of the sniffing and coughing school body, the football squad took on an aura of gladitorial status. One confirmed and enforced by their crushing, over two-legs, of the team from Hampshire, who were despatched in ruthless fashion on their own ground. Yes, travelling to away fixtures on a heated coach was also a bonus the glorious young heroes of Luiz's school football team were enjoying, while the wild ride continued.

For his part, Luiz had been confined to the occassional on-field stint as a late second half substitute, thrown on when the game was all but won and the result in no doubt or when Mr. Bremner thought it prudent to rest a better player for the hard yards that lay ahead. As the team cruised through the first and second rounds, all but crushing teams from nearby counties in the local pool, expectation grew to fever pitch in the school, the town, and wider county beyond. Parents were sent dietry notices, curfew sheets and instructions on how the boys ought to be cotton-woolled when outside of Mr. Bremner's absolute care. No point was overlooked, no pebble left unturned, no exclamation point omitted from the end of a sentence; the home pitch was mown so carefully and precicely by a professional groundskeeper brought in from Brighton and Hove Albion that it resembled the Aztec stadium itself. Then the school were given permission to play their home matches at the ground of their semi-professional town team, where there were floodlights, stands and removable corner flags. As they neared qualification for the national knock-out round, where by virtue of random luck they might have to play anywhere in England, the winter cold season struck with a particular vengeance and no amount of half-time oranges could remedy it. On top of this the weather turned spiteful, pitches were frozen solid and games were abandoned and re-scheduled across the country, and much to Mr. Bremner's chagrin, his charges had to travel to the foot of the country because it was mild and the frost hadn't bitten, to play the team representing Cornwall. It was a vindictive affair from woe to go, a game full of unnecessary stoppages, sideline abuse, players snapping at one and other's heels and jaws, and the occassional stray sheep wandering onto a pitch which looked as if it hadn't been mown since the Romans had quit England in disgust. It was to be however, a game remembered for a late goal from a young Cornishboy who stood about six-three and headed in from about thirty-eight yards. Luiz did not serve any pitch time and the team, vanquished at last, travelled home in a mournful state to consider how best to deal with a return leg a fortnight hence. Mr. Bremner, dour as he was, nonetheless devised a game plan which mitigated defending against a six-foot cyclops and instead was built around attack after attack. Wingers were needed, and Luiz, to his good fortune, found himself one of only two deemed fit enough to play.

The authorities, in the guise of Mr. Bremner, the selection committee, the PTA and the mayoral brigade, decided, behind closed doors, to make the return fixture a night time affair, something as then unprecedented in schoolboy football. Naturally the Cornish team was far from happy, many of their stars came from farming folks and most of the boys were expected to be up at five the following morning for milking, but despite appeals, the ruling body ruled that the match would be an interesting experiment and should thus proceed as planned. Luiz's school team trained at night on the floodlit pitch - playing games against local sides so that the canny Mr. Bremner could perfect his flying wing philosophy much like bomber command had done during WWII.
The night of the match drew around, it was a slick-frosted night, leading to more pre kick off dramas in respect of ball selection, studs, tackles, substitutes; the whole nine-yards. Finally, playing with a luminous orange ball which bounced higher than the regulation ball, the two teams squared off in front of a full grandstand and a plethora of sideline-stalking old men in raincoats and cloth caps yelling contrary advice while walking the numerous breeds of the isles.
That orange ball skidded and jumped about mercilessly, causing all manner of pre-game nerves to grow more nervous, culminating in a remarkable own goal by Luiz's team. A back pass which skidded straight through the legs of the goalkeeper as he stood arguing with a rogue granddad. A hush fell upon the ground, not a reverent hush, a hush of complete dismay. The Cornish had been gift-wrapped an away goal within five minutes. The mountain Luiz and his comrades-in-arms now had to climb, ice-slicked as it was, had begun to take on a Herculean aura. Undaunted, Luiz's team when back to the task at hand, and three-minutes before the half-time break netted an equaliser. At one apiece, and one down from the first game, and facing an away goals count double rule, the equation was straightforward and no one needed the math's teacher's advice. Luiz's school had to score twice more within normal time, any other score was null and void. Two goals on a pitch getting slipperier by the minute, without conceding on a counter attack, or the dream would be over.
Seventeen minutes into the second period Luiz found himself unmarked in the opposing penalty area as the orange ball came skidding into the box, and deftly he side-footed the ball into the gaping goal. There were cries of “offside” but to no avail. The miracle was beginning to look feasible. And so it was, as in all great heroic dramas, that Luiz the hero, should, moments after he had re-inforced that hero status with a spontaneous volley out of nothing to score his tean's third goal of the night, become almost instantly, the villain. On what ought to have been his most memorable night, Luiz found himself hacked crudely to the ice by a rugged Cornish boy with legs like fence posts. His game would have been over anyhow, had schoolboy football have had proper medical attention available instead of a half-cut school nurse, but instead Luiz finally got back up and then became embroiled in a series of tit-for-tat retaliations. Cautioned by the match referee, Luiz was seen, via the vapour clouds emanating from his mouth, to utter something to the referee who then, much to everyone's astonishment, dismissed him. Luiz, head bowed, still muttering and being goaded by ruddy-cheeked Cornish boys, left the pitch. He was thinking, he says now, of Georgie Best's then recently-announced decision to quit Manchester United to instead lay on a Spanish beach all day drinking sangria and de-frocking a procession of Miss Worlds. Luiz understood why, then.

His team triumphed, but the triumph was soured. Luiz, forced to make a report of his words and actions, finally stated that he had in fact said to the referee: “Who the fuck do you think you are, Clive Thomas?” He was subsequently summarily banned for five matches. A harsh punishment indeed at any level of association football.
Earlier that fateful week, we have to report for accuracy, George Best had been dismissed in a league fixture by the professional referee Clive Thomas, for calling him a wanker.
Luiz's school eventually capitulated in the counties cup to a team representing Cheshire, Luiz did not play again. A few weeks after that fateful appearance however Luiz received a letter, it was postmarked East London and carried the emblem of West Ham United on the envelope. Luiz studied the still-sealed missive a while and then opened it. Due to his exploits in the counties cup he had been selected for a schoolboy trial at Upton Park, once home to England's very own world cup winning captain Bobby Moore. There were directions with the letter, and Luiz followed them precisely, arriving at the ground two-weeks later some hour and a half beforehand to savour the atmosphere. Boys from all over South-East England loitered around nervously, for them, just like for Luiz, this was the window of opportunity ever so slightly ajar.

AIN'T THE TOWN FAYRE ROUND HERE

It went through the windscreen of Delia's Datsun and straight out the rear window clean as a whistle. No detours, took the head and all of the left shoulder with it. Farewell Delia. They held a small memorial service down by the river. She always liked it there, especially after what happened to her sister.
And then Larry went down to the cemetary five-days later to lay a bouquet he'd stolen from the drug store – and there wasn't even a plot. He told me this sitting in the cemetary picking the petals from the flowers . . . told me that I could believe it or fucking not but there wasn't even a FUCKING GRAVE MAN and how the FUCK could that be and don't fucking say she was CREE-MATED because he knew for a gooddamned fact she hadn't been. I never saw Larry again. His line was dead.
Craven, the truck driver, who got wiped out on Highway 4 three-months previously, after something shot through his windscreen and took everything down to the belt, didn't have a grave either. Lou Ellen found that out, because she works in the library. After she told me that, and swore me to secrecy, I went to meet her down at River and Blackwood and all I found there were shadows. You couldn't fucking drive anywhere, if you had a brain and wanted to keep it where it was. Bess and Ryan Jenkins had hitched, out through Anderson, over the old postal track cum lovers lane, and they didn't just walk out of town, they walked right out of existence. People stopped driving, in or out, even the authorities. They sent a chopper in two-days ago to drop supplies, it smashed into Jeb Manner's hay loft and there weren't no body and it hadn't been FUCKING IN-SIN-ERATED! So don't tell me it had.
People stay indoors. They brick up fireplaces and board the windows, slat the door at night, because whatever it is comes through . . . the holes. Up at the hikking hut on the Last Pass four kids, three of whom I knew, spent eleven-hours having something small but invisible hit them until the youngest, nine-year old Braden Lurkey got hit so hard his spleen burst. Only two of the kids came back and one of them Jordan David he's in ICU in a room with the windows steel-barred – while there's still a hospital to be I suppose. People are getting hit all the time in here, in this vacuum, and a lot are going crazy. Sempkins shot his neighbour of thirty-three years dead the day before yesterday . . . claimed it was an offering.

Whatever it is goes clean through. Or if it's smaller it just hits you. It FUCKING hurts when it hits you and Dwight says it's bad souls but Lewis says fuck that man it's super-fucking-UNNATURAL, and Lewis was most likely right because he died this morning when something shot up out of his toilet bowl and took most of his jaw with it to wherever it was on it's way to. You can't live inside you can't go outside and you can't fucking RUN and you can't fucking DRIVE.
We got no tv now either. Like we, or the rest, don't even exist. School's closed, library too, even the drug store. Main Street is empty bar the things that howl up and down it most nights from dusk until dawn sounding like the tearaway kids used to when they dragged cars up and down it on a saturday night. All the tearaways got torn way to some place else. The cars are still here, those left won't even dare sit in any of them. Bits of houses are going missing too, like the whole FUCKING town is made of LEGO and something's taking whole chunks for it's own collection. The church and bakery have almost already gone. Cemetary went a good while back, just a field now, hospital too and the David kid right along with it. What the FUCK is happening here and why isn't anyone doing something to fucking HELP us? The less of us there are left and what with the buildings going and Main Street possessed to all hell the more likely it is I'll go soon. Only I ain't never been hit yet – I just heard from others that it hurt like FUCK. I think I'm the only one who's seen them too because everyone else says they're invisible but they're FUCKING not! I see them ripping up and down Main Street and they look like folks in those old depression photographs they used to have down at the museum only that's all but gone now to . . . old timers . . . and too young timers . . .

They stop and stare at me and holler only the holler is silent. But I KNOW why they're FUCKING hollering only I can't tell no one because there ain't hardly anyone here TO TELL. So I'll tell you. They're hollering at me because they can't hit me and that's making them madder than all hell. That's what I thought two-days ago anyhow, until it suddenly dawned on me when I was down in all that was left of the library rummaging through old sepia photographs of this damned town when I found a photo of a picnic and I was in the fucking PHOTO-GRAPH sitting on a tree stump smiling at whoever took it with a REAL BAD SMILE.
That was when I realized why they're hollering at me – because I won't play their games with them. And ain't no one coming to help because ain't no one can help, because anyone who tries sometime just gets hit and hollered at or just plain left out of all the games. That's always been the way they've been, as I recall it now – ANGRY.

Note: this is a rejected story - ha!

it aint workin (song lyrics)

the real politik makes me sic
the central bureau is a lie
its a federal mess a federal shame
so dont smoke pot n dont quit ya job/ coz theyr to blame

labours never workin
the coalitions jerkin
i feel green n i feel unseen
i hate election time
i hate question time
bcoz nothins workin
nothins workin
up on the hill up on the hill

compuslory votin is a communist joke
2 party preferred is the peoples yoke
the big debate creates more emissions
a bloke a woman in the binary session/ n theyr to blame

its time for change its time for war
go kill a whale n cut down a tree
bcoz bloody strip mining is killin me
n carbon tradin is knockin on my door/ n theyr to blame

too much government is to blame
theres too much gst n theres too much slack
theres fibre optic cables n theres heart attacks
theres abbott n costello n obesity / n theyr to blame


n theyr killin me
n labours never workin
n the coaltions shirkin
n theyr killin me
bcoz nothins workin bar hypocricy
hypocricy

n jill lives on her hill
n she takes the fckn pill
n shes all for status quo
n forgetting the pink vote
n shes killin me
n shes killin me
bcoz nothins workin
nothins workin
nothins workin
bar hypocricy – ee ee ee ee ee

A Concise History Of The West

your cataclysms & catechisms
rebound from obliques
creep around the crypts
of martyrdom

as age seeps
into the pores of herstory
you watch valentino
pilot the vessel to anchorage

on the deck moments before
the fetid stench
of the blueberg
arrives at its destination

no one cries nor wails
in the silence of depravity
or under the lash
of the barbarian hordes

innocence is mutilated
around a flaming cross
watching bigotry flirt tempestuously
with fascism

the axis of impartiality
tilts in your favour once more
as garbo spits in the face
of farcical royalty

on a boulevard of decayed dreams
behind drawn shades
lying amongst glittering opiates
lays the naked queen

tarnished & jaded
in the travelling show
you swallow snakes & swords
nurturing the infidels

the man with forked tongue
rides the chariot across the plain
laughing gaily
as he slaughters tapestry

& on the spectacular night
you triumph again reborn
a star set in lava
as pompeii rains supreme

Philosophies Of A Leper In Many Small Parts

back into the mausoleum
you step
tears about to give liquid life
to no meaning at all


exchanging pleasantries
is the most insinuous
form of biological warfare


count all the bad things iv done
all the lives iv trampled
put them on your tally board
reckon where i kneel
in the cuntbastards sweepstakes


that smell isnt at all like death
its more like life routinely bleeding
away


i am rotten to the core
all disease
becomes inherent to me


i feel as if iv given you a life sentence
in a well-provisioned cell
perhaps you should grow your hair longer?


when will misery
cease being your mistress


nothing evolves bar shadows
which draw longer
as oxygen is strangled
all days end – nights continue


ties broken remain unhealed
as time sidesteps your bad grace & inadequate posturing


where the light does not fall
is where you grow


electrical tape wont bind that incision


invariably my eyes always turn up
where i last saw them
staring at me murderously


the pioneers stole
so that they could reap before theyd sown


i volunteered to be god for a day yesterday
but at the station it turned out
id forgotten my cross

queen vic knives

teri louise kelly wandered into literature much the same way lee marvin used to wander into saloons. she came looking for a brawl. a self-taught anti-classroom heretic with a long and illustrious heritage stretching back to conquistadors and gypsies and she has invaded many lands and infected many species with her bad seed. the author of two memoirs and one poetry anthology - her latest book 'American Blow Job' is due for release by Paroxysm Press (Australia) as soon as its publisher is released from rehabilitation after taking a mandatory plea bargain over a failed urine sample at the Big Day Out. she refutes all knowledge of ever actually offering her work for publication and condones the use of happy hours as a remedial cure for everything from writer's block to the mother of all hangovers. she can be found therein regularly at 5.30pm waxing lyrical on the states of regression depression and consumption. she also plays bass guitar and has been known to ride a unicycle on occasion.

http://queenvicknives.blogspot.com/2010/07/one-short-story-by-teri-louise-kelly_16.html .Back to MessagesEdit Subscriptions.Create an Ad
CHIQDo you like these funky shoes posted by a user on CHIQ.com?
Les Bitronica and Angel

learn how to swim (but not at Luiz's school)

The brave new world of comprehensive nee amalgamated schooling came so quickly, that one minute the kids at Luiz's school had a know-everyone environment, and the next, an asphalt jungle - full of all manner of kids from thirty-odd other schools. Naturally, the pickings grew rich. It was a time of plenty, and in such a times, as young Mr. Attenborough will attest to, only the very weakest and very stupid found themselves a viable target. Predators grew fat and lazy when the going was easy. And given that Luiz was both weak and stupid, but not veryish in either trait, he enjoyed a golden age of hassle-free schooling and unmolested journeying. With all that dough rolling in the school elders decided that the great miniature unwashed should have a swimming pool. So before you knew it, it became a do-gooders frenzy of charitible activities while the brawny brainless kids from the tech blocks were given shovels and told to get busy digging under the watchful eyes of Alsation dogs. (Not German Shepherds).
Luiz had never eaten so much cake, even Mrs. Beeton herself would have admired his cake-gorging ability. Everywhere you looked, there was cake. The good ladies of Luiz's town were buying up flour wholesale. Odd that they would induce kids to gorge on cake, but maybe the fact they were building a very large swimming pool: indoor, heated, high boards, foot dips, meant that a few hundred chubby kids rendered docile on Victoria sandwich, made the whole kooky idea necessary to those higher up the cash river. Those who controlled the fiscal sluice gates of educationary budgets as it were. So the tech boys kept digging their way to China, the ladies kept their ovens on day and night, and in amongst the fetes and jamborees and beer and skittles nights they raised enough cash to not only commence building the best school swimming pool in the Union, but probably what they saw as the best damned swimming pool this side of the moon. Everyone was proud, even Luiz, though he seriously doubted it would ever be anything but a fifty-foot hole in the ground which would fill with muddy water eight-months of the year and claim about two-dozen lives per annum.
The English are not raised to be optimists.

And then Luiz fell out of a tree. Probably a result of eating all that cake as he'd never fallen out of one before. When he got home his mum told him that worse things happened at sea. Maybe if they'd lived at sea she would have said that worse things happen in trees. They say naff stuff like that because Englanders live on an island, an island with a population that from which, only about five percent even so much as dip a toe in the brine once a year. Trees however rarely get a rush on. Plus they can be chopped down. All of that aside, Luiz fell out of a tree onto a rubbish dump – from a tree that had maybe stood since before the first English king got executed or syphlitic and was now surounded by old electrical appliances, rusting bed frames, and rolled-up carpets. Have some cake his mum said, we've got plenty.

It'll all end in tears, or another polio epidemic his mum said later over yet more cake. She always fell onto the pessimistic side of the coin of the realm. Not Luiz's dad however, he was always on the practical side, proved adequately enough when he said: well, at least the boy'll get a wash twice a week, save on the goddamned electric bill here at least. There were the usual dissenters about the pool, but strangely, not about a tree being surrounded by discarded household waste. Naturally given that every town has it's 'anti-progress' movement there was a small floatilla of geriatric petitioners who believed that tin baths were good enough for them, so why not for modern kids, and they thus began a 'no pool' lobby group. Them aside, work pushed on with a gusto, and by the following autumn, low and behold, Luiz's school was the proud owner of a swimming pool that fair reeked of chlorine and the blood, sweat and tears of an army of sponge cakers, oh, and not forgetting the manual labour of fifty-odd retarded kids with long criminal careers and plenty of ditch digging ahead of them.

Even Luiz got into the swing of things, and not only him, a whole cement mixer full of other boys too, who all suddenly realised that it was the dawn of a new era of seeing girls all but naked. Then came the lists. Lists that all those parents who had supported the pool, now found highly inconvenient; shit like personal hygiene, cold sores, tinea, correct urination procedures, towels and bathers with name tags - disclosure and liability forms, swimming caps, goggles, floaties, the whole kit 'n' kaboodle associated with educational swimming facilities. Jesus, Luiz's dad groaned, all this stuff'll end up bankrupting me. Off everyone traipsed to the opening gala, where the great pool was to be officially opened by some ex-Commonwealth swimmer who'd once finished fifth in the Commonwealth games of 1848 or something. All the town's dignitaries and signatories were in attendance, along with parents and teachers, everyone in point of fact who was anyone, and naturally some people who weren't anyone at all but thought they ought to be.
After the opening ceremony there was to be an open lesson, the inaugral dip and all the years and classes had gone into a tombola and the winning class from a year two below Luiz's had prevailed. As they lined up on the pool deck most were fear laden. The closest most of them had been to water was a tin bath in front of their nan's fire. They were a ghastly sight - pale white sickroom specimens with ashen faces, like a swim team from Transylvania. The swim coach, Mr. Spitz was proudly walking around in way tight trunks that left less than little to even the most infertile imagination, proudly blowing on his whistle while a couple of hundred horny housewives sucked in big ones. Not too many fathers had turned up, despite there being
an armada of illegal flesh hardly attired at all. There were a lot of speeches, too many speeches, and after the speeches, the riff raff, namely the rest of the pupils, were quickly ushered away to classrooms a long way from the action. Their day would soon arrive, or maybe not, as not long after they were safely ensconced in temporary outbuildings being ridiculed by temporary teachers everyone could hear were whistles and screaming.

It was chaos out in the playground after the kids finally broke loose from their inadequate moorings. No one knew what had actually happened, although, from the look of the teachers and the parents - it was something pretty shitty. Word filtered through the great pond of school life; some boy had drowned, he was dead, no more exams, no more worries about tinea and communal showering, his worrying days were over. No one believed it, death was an alien thing but to have to die in a school swimming pool, seemed the most pitiful of deaths. Unjust. Corrupt even. They held a ceremony for him three-days later in the assembly hall. Luiz knew him vaguely, in a vague way. It later transpired that no one had thought to add 'no chewing gum' to the 'dos' and 'donts' list and the kid had gotten his gum wedged in his throat under water. No one had seen him due to all the excitement and broo har har, until it was way too late.
The pool stood forlorn and ghostly for many months, like a big grinning death machine. No kid wanted to go swim in water where one of their own had been taken. Luiz never did swim in the pool, as after that it became a voluntary and not mandatory part of the progrom. Luiz learned that far worse things didn't just happen at sea - they happened in school swimming pools too.

transgendernews : Message: [People/Books] [Australia] A Feast Of Honesty Between The Pages

transgendernews : Message: [People/Books] [Australia] A Feast Of Honesty Between The Pages

Out In Perth - Gay and Lesbian Perth WA News - Book Reviews- Summer Reading Special

Out In Perth - Gay and Lesbian Perth WA News - Book Reviews- Summer Reading Special

Girls Like Me: A Book of Modern Poetry by Teri Louise Kelly：die verkürzte Version meines Lebens (in fucking english) | Facebook

Girls Like Me: A Book of Modern Poetry by Teri Louise Kelly：die verkürzte Version meines Lebens (in fucking english) | Facebook

White Girls - by Teri Louise Kelly

White Girls - by Teri Louise Kelly

Teri Louise Kelly's MySpace Blog | Teri Teri Teri

Teri Louise Kelly's MySpace Blog | Teri Teri Teri

"the night before my execution" by Teri Louise Kelly

"the night before my execution" by Teri Louise Kelly

54th

54th

the bank job (by Luiz – another punishment essay)

For a time I actually thought my uncle John (his real name) was a bank worker, everyone always talked about him and banks, and of course on many levels he spent more time in banks than actual bank workers, only in an unofficial capacity. When he wasn't in banks, he was either leaning on bars discussing banking, or behind bars discussing banking. That was probably why, when I was offered the opportunity to partake of a looksee at a career in banking, I immediately said yes.
Initially I had presumed that the trip to the bank, to see how the other half lived, was going to be conducted in school hours. But no, for whatever reason, the bank trip was going to be at night. When I told my uncle John this, his eyes lit up. He told me to make sketches of the lay out and to keep an eye on any security devices. Obviously, that was what bankers did. Even stranger, no teacher was going to accompany us. We were, as young, responsible adults, supposed to make our own way to the bank in question, be on our best behaviour, and ask pertinent questions when it was pertinent to do so. Which would have been fine had I understood what the word pertinent actually meant. Nonetheless, it was the only occasion I can recall that I wore that three-piece grey wool suit with cream pinstripes my mum had had tailor-made for me despite my vehement protestations that she ought not have gone to so much trouble and expense on my behalf. The whole thing about the suit still bothered me a lot. Sure, it was fashionable, in 1928. It had those dangerously wide and flared lapels with exaggerated points, the ones which if the wind caught ahold of them, could easily pluck an eye out. The pants were so flared that it was virtually impossible to wear them on any day where even a stiff breeze was blowing, and no boy, no matter his constitution for fashion, should have to listen to the shipping forecast just to judge weather conditions in respect of whether or not to risk flared pants. They had a nice two-inch turn-up on the pants too, and once safely ensnared within it, no boy could have looked more like a gangster other than baby face whoever when he was actually a baby. The damned thing itched like crazy and what with the trench coat over the top and the four-inch compound rubber platform shoes, it was virtually impossible to walk anywhere and look pertinent, or even pertinently pertinent.
Still, somehow despite the abuse, mockery and juvenile piss taking of various members of maladjusted youth loitering here and there, I finally made it to the bank on time, via a branch line. I stumbled in and almost fell onto a table loaded with what I thought was orange juice. A kindly old man helped me up, I looked around, obviously there were more people interested in a career in the banking sector than I had appreciated, although none of those interested parties looked as suitably attired for a fast-tracked career through to branch management than my goodself. I had a drink, it tasted funny. They had the heating in that place cranked-up to max, I began to feel rather uncomfortable, cloaked as I was in the wool of half a dozen sheep. I loosened my tie, who on earth invented ties anyhow? I listened diligently, even pertinently I suppose, to the speech on banking on how great and needed a service it provided, and how it was one of the cornerstones of a civilized society, and then I watched the short film on banking, and then I drank some more orange juice and generally walked around looking like a banker keeping an eye out for pertinent moments. Sooner, rather than later, I discarded the suit jacket and my tie, unbuttoned my shirt as far as it would go, having left my waistcoat on, and rolled-up my shirt sleeves. Rolling up your sleeves and getting stuck-in, was a most English of virtues.

All of the funny tasting orange juice had gone, so they brought out wine. Hell, banking was a civilized industry sector. It never struck me as odd that they were handing out wine to twelve-year olds, it struck me as pertinent. Which was about the moment impertience seized control of my motor neurone sector. No wonder my uncle John was always talking about banking. Insofar as I could see, in banking you got paid to handle cash and alcohol. Who wouldn't want a job like that. I was stumbling around looking for the dotted line, the one on which I could sign my body and mind over to the banking industry. All I kept finding instead was more wine. The more wine I found, and drank, the faster my envisioned career in banking, my bottom line if you will, was diminishing.
When I started jabbering on about security and vaults and alarms, a few of them started to get twitchy. They were hardcore banking types, pin-striped and stiff lipped. I drank more wine, then I needed to piss, like big time. They didn't have a toilet apparently, but someone told me, the bus station was right next door. They were nice people, they gathered up my jacket and coat and escorted me outside, even shoved me gently in the direction of the bus station. It was a simple walk, no more than thirty-yards or so, amazingly however, it took me almost an hour. I knew it had because the giant clock in the bus station said so. I'd never known that we had a talking clock in our town's bus station, so I sat there a while, looking like a dishevelled banker, until I remembered why I was in the bus station. It took me a fair while to remember why, but eventually I groped my way toward the toilets.


Inside, I vomited down my own pants. Then I pissed in the hand basin while simultaneously trying to rinse vomit that tasted like funny orange juice, from the legs of my pants. If my mum saw these pants, after all the trouble this damned suit had caused, and in fact was still causing, I'd be in a brand new world of corporeal punishment. Or so she said. A guy came in, looking like a dishevelled banker himself, and upon seeing me with my pants down, asked me if I needed a hand getting them off. I told him to take a hike, and after I vomited again, he did.
The situation was escalating, I needed to find my jacket and coat, then a bus, then my way home from wherever it was I got thrown off when the conductor found out I didn't have any money. I mean, who has ever seen a dishevelled banker with money? No, money is the root of all of their evils, plain and simple, money and grape juice. Jesus, where in the name of Threadneedle street were my clothes? Oh god, while I'd been wasting time retching, the bus station had filled-up with vagrants, or bankers, hard to tell the difference. One of them was wearing my jacket, I was sure of it. Then I heard my bus called, oh my sweet lord, there wasn't another one until five-thirty the following morning and it was too cold to walk without a jacket and just like a real banker I had no cash on me . . .

I was sitting upstairs on the bus shivering, waiting for the conductor to throw me off. They invariably did. Many of them had failed to get into the banking sector I suppose. Up he came, I smiled droolishly and rather insanely most likely. Then down he went. Uhm, maybe he'd had problems with rogue banking personnel before. So I stayed there with my head bumping against the dirty window in sync with the bus's locomotion until I heard someone yelling up the stairs. I got up gingerly and concentrated hard on not falling down the steps. At the bottom I heard a familiar voice, not god no, my aunt someoneoranother who wasn't actually my aunt by blood or whatever. She said I looked a right mess.
Accused me of being drunk on vodka.
Told me my flies were undone.
Said I stank of gut stew.
In response, I tried to touch her breast (or so it was later alleged), though to be honest, I have no recollection of the incident, or her breast. There was some kind of bus company interrogation and then I was chucked-off the bus by the company. I trudged home, trying to cobble together some excuse which might have sounded even theoretically plausible. My brain was closed for business however and reconciling the day's takings in a secret chamber. I tried to put my key in the front door lock quietly and it was only when Mr. Turpin our neighbour appeared in what I'd presumed was our porch, that the whole Ichabod Crane story somehow congealed in my head. If I could have done my English assignment then and there, I'd have been a shoe-in for banking. No such luck however, and what with Mr. Turpin shouting and me trying to placate the whole situation with verbal abuse, it was not too long before my own father appeared, looking like Charlton Heston at an anti-gun rally.


I had no idea why I was still sitting at our dining room table at six-thirty in the morning. Either I was way late for tea, or, super early for breakfast. When my parents re-appeared, I was asked to again, in the cold light of a fresh day, explain not only where I had been most of the previous night, but who I'd been with too. Why do parents always need to know who you've been with?
So, I regurgiated the sorry tale again in its sickly entirety. And again, they counterclaimed the whole tale as a pack of lies. It was too confusing, my head hurt in strange and unacceptable ways, and then the phone rang and I breathed a sign of relief, having been afforded yet another stay, until I heard my mother say – oh hi whatever her damned name was.

Oops, yeah, well okay, scrub breakfast I suppose.
My ledgers, as it were, could not be tallied. I had been to the bank, the bank itself confirmed as much, but still my parents wouldn't believe me as they distrusted bankers with a vengeance. According to my bogus aunt's version I looked as if I'd stumbled out of a Russian pub, and that was moments before I'd attempted to molest her. She had an affidavit (whatever the hell that was) from the bus conductor which had already been sworn in front of a bank manager. When I told my uncle John all of this a few weeks later on prison visiting day, after my home detention sentence had been reduced for good behaviour, he told me a very similar tale about a banker and my bogus aunt. I told him that if he behaved he'd get his sentenced reduced too. Obviously, it all ran in the family, like red ink: financial mismanagement, impertience, lost suit jackets, unbuttoned shirts and bogus aunts. The ties that bind, and talking of ties . . .
I was happier after that, happy that I hadn't been sucked-in to the cruel and merciless world of enforced bankruptcy and forfeiture and interest bearing terminology. Banking was not for me, I was far too kind on many levels for a predatory industry like that.

biographer's note: having myself been at the very evening young Luiz was referring to in the rather witty preceding chapter, I can atest to everything said, other than the alledged molestation of a bogus aunt and the psueudo homosexual interlude in the bus station toilets. Luiz was indeed totally hammered and after the kindly bank personnel had escorted him off the premises, and they returned (after said escortation) and told everyone still therein that that (meaning Luiz) was a perfect example of the type of people banking didn't need on its payroll.




http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/sex-knives-and-bouillabaisse/2008/06/06/1212259092425.html

the battle of britain in miniature

Chef Teri Louise Kelly has memoirs running hot | Courier Mail

Well, I don't know, it just seems to be one dumb decision after another in my house. First, my dad let me have a catapault, then after I'd all but lobotomized my younger brother, they wouldn't let me have anything, not even a decent pair of scissors to cut pieces about Georgie Best from the newspapers, and, there's a lot of stuff about Georgie that needs cutting out. Now, I see, they are buying my younger brother model aircraft kits, and, the paint and model affixative (glue), that he needs to assemble these WWII planes of mass destruction. Will I never be free of the damned war? I don't know, it strikes me as hypocritical that I can't use scissors, or, even paste glue, yet my younger brother can use razor knives, adhesive, metallic paints and turpentine, as is his wont. He is a spoilt child and just because he almost died when he was six-months old, doesn't mean he should be treated like the next-in-line to the throne, even if he is always second to use our lavatorial family seat after my father – and believe me, he is more than welcome to that place in the queue.
It stinks, all of it, the can after my dad's sat on it for an hour contemplating the electricity bill, the uneven treatment in respect of the use of weapons of destruction, and all that glue and paint my brother has splashed all over his bedroom and himself. I feel as if I am living right next door to some insane creature - constantly giggling to himself as he tries to unpeel his fingers from his bedroom furniture, or, bedding. This cannot be right, why can't he use the shed like a normal geek boy?
Your brother cannot use the shed dear, my mother explains to me as she rips a strip of wallpaper from the kitchen wall with more deftness than any interior decorator you could hire, including Laura Ashley - because as you well know, in winter the it's too cold out there for his chest and in summer it's too cloying for his sinuses, now, pass me that scraper there, will you? there's a darling. Uh, yeah, okay, I think as I skulk off, but obviously solvents and adhesives in his bedroom don't affect his chest? only mine? What a scam the little womble has got going.

They say that familarity breeds contempt, well what's more contemptible is that it breeds familiarity too! There might be four of us in our familiar family unit, only, we aren't the fab four but if we were, I'd most likely be John - the one looking to jump ship first. As things stand at the moment, I have to sleep with one eye, both ears, and a window open. Not simply in an attempt to be rid of this passive solvent inhalling, but in case Madame Cholet next door to me, somehow sparks that chemical cloud hanging over his bed into combustion. It is not fun, and to be honest, it is parentally reckless, and if there were a children's court, I would haul both of my parent's arses into it on the grounds of wilfull endangement of a sibling caused by making said sibling sleep alongside what is obviously a pyromaniac-in-waiting. I can see the signs, and sometimes, I can smell them too. What I really need is third party fire and theft coverage, mainly for the fire element of the policy . . .

Then there is food. Food is a constant bane in my life, or the lack of it. I have a fast metabolism, too fast actually, I burn my calories quick as I'm always running (from assailants), cycling (from assailants) or playing football (where I regularly get assailed both inside, and outside the rules of the game), and when you have that much assailment to contend with, you need a good level of fitness, oh and food able to maintain that standard, like say protein, and not, as is the common English mentality on nutrition; starch.
A continual diet of suet puddings, mashed potato, and animal extremities stuffed into condoms makes me ponder (when I'm not dozing off), how on earth the English won any war, let alone march into Scotland and then fight those high and lowlanders. Maybe it's a good job we've been colonized by more intellectual and food-savvy races than ourselves, at least there's hope. I train three nights a week for the school football team in my year, it is a big squad, and the football coach, Mr. Shankley, doesn't really appreciate my lip. I am too mouthy for his liking, and I have a tendency to not play as a part of the 'team'. Which is easy for him to say, given that he has the whistle and the clipboard. Mr. Shankley will hate me later and then dote on me later on, and then fully despise me much later – although he doesn't know it yet. I am dogged by problems, being me is not easy, but I have no option but to soldier on, little christian defector that I am. At least I have been picked for the upcoming away 'friendly' game against some other school in some other galaxy, and that at least, gets me a day off school and a bus trip. I like bus trips. I liked the school excursion to Longleat where they had lions and baboons running wild, although it seemed to me that there were more baboons inside the bus than out. I got into big trouble anyway, after that trip, because before it I stole out of the house at four in the morning taking five pounds from my mum's purse. It's a big debt to have to re-pay, especially from seventy-five pence a week paper round money. I will never be free of war, debt, or assailants. This is what it is like to be born English; you start with a clean slate and by the time you're nudging twelve, you are so far in debt that volunteering for the next war looks like a damned good idea, if that is, we can find anyone to fight, which is highly unlikely on all fronts, even the cold ones.

Anyhow I go on the bus trip and we go to a posh school where the pupils wear blazers and bowler hats and carry umbrellas and shooting sticks. They have track suits, new balls, a Brazilian-looking coach, and water bottles. A school with facilities as good as these ought to be playing in the football league each weekend against some bunch of losers like Charlton Athletic. Still, good facilities and Carlos Alberto or not, we soon have the better of them - especially physically. Our defense is about as solid as they come at this level, and despite Carlos's pre-match gesticulations of a Latin bent, birth certificates adequately prove that while our two central defenders might look twenty-five, they are in fact within the legal age parameters for this level. So what if they shave?
With that kind of brawn behind you, punting stray balls up into their six-yard box, we don't even require a midfield, all we need are goal hangers; enter me. With eighteen-minutes of the second half expired and us already six goals to the good. I love it when we trounce private schools, and I love it even more when we not only trounce them, but verbalize them too. There is no such thing as sportsmenship in the kingdom, well, queendom, not after we won the world cup in sixty-six, Sir Alf Ramsey or not. Those days, days of gentlemen managers, deerstalkers, pipes, and smoking jackets, are long gone. Mr. Shankley is no Alf Ramsey, and when you've already scored half a dozen, he expects a baker's dozen, or you walk home. I go on full of my usual bravado, and within mere seconds, find the ball at my feet and an empty net smiling beguilingly at me, like taking candy from your invalid aunt. Six-minutes later, I jink in from the left wing looking for my right foot and then curl a peach of a shot into the top corner of their net with such aplomb, that it would have graced the River Plate stadium. Mr. Shankley obviously concurs, as he is on the sidelines shouting loudly about Attack! Attack! Attack!, Mr. Shankley missed the war. Well, we fly forward again, only this time, as I shoot through their lumbering central defenders like an artillery shell, my trajectory is abruptly halted by a stray arm straight across my face. I act up the incident, worth a BAFTA, obviously I have watched too many South American teams. The referee, a balding man with effacious malignancy, tells me in no uncertain terms to get up, or he's sending me off. Me? I get up, spit on the ground (like they do on the Big Match), then, without thinking, pinch the nearest private schoolboy on the nipple. He screams in pain (or maybe ecstacy), then promptly falls to the ground and does a better rendition than me of overacting - because they have their own theatre at his school and he is in the repertory company as understudy to the lead boy, or girl, or whatever. As he rolls around like Hamlet, I spit on him, because I'm both English and unimpressed with his theatrics. And besides, wasn't Hamlet, Scottish anyhow?

The referee then tells me to 'sod off'. I think he means to go away, like my dad means when he says it, but no, as I saunter off, up field, he runs after me much like that bull had once done, only unlike the bull, the referee actually catches me, and then unbelievably, throws me to the ground. At that, out manly central defenders, and Mr. Shankley, all pile on top of the referee while I still stand there totally confused as to what is happening, has happened, or will, happen next. The match is abandoned and we shuffle onto our chariot having been denied a hot shower or after match nibbles. We smell pretty ripe being caked in good quality mud, and are all starving. I get back home at four the following morning and climb into bed with my pyjamas pulled over my mud-caked skin and football kit, whereafter, I realize I can smell smoke . . .
I get up, go next door, switch my brother's bedroom light on, where I see, smouldering in his rubbish bin, a twisted and charred piece of plastic model aircraft. Above his rubbish bin is a hand basin, funny that, so I tip the bin into the basin and turn on the cold tap, which wakes up my brother who sits up in bed and looks at me blankly and before he can say anything, I slap him around the face, turn off his light, and then go climb back into my own bed. I have parental control.
Then my father wrests it back. He is pulling into the driveway in his chocolate brown Mercedes, listening to Bach, when, glancing up, he sees a flaming model of one of Wilhelm Messerschmitt's designs hurtling from an open window, rapidly followed by another blazing fireball, and then what remains of a Wellington bomber - maybe a Lancaster - trailing thick black smoke as it spirals onto our front lawn. I hear my father yell Shizer! Later, after my brother has been made to stand outside and watch all of his models, kits and plastic accoutrements burned to a cinder in the back yard, his fiendish eyes aglow with delight, I am wondering what it must have felt like for my dad, seeing that battle of Britain in miniature. He had after all, been a runny-nosed oik during the real thing and was one of the blitz babies evacuated to North Wales. Even the Nazi's didn't care about North Wales apparently. I'm thinking that maybe my brother should be evacuated there too, permanently.

from Russia, with Icepicks . . .

. . . and that was the story, basically.
But as ever, there was a postscript. And isn't there always? Even the fucking dead won't quit ragging your arse, yeah, the dead, but at least they don't force you to go out drinking with them, that's one positive. Anyhow, like I said, the postscript, well, you know she arrived on an Aeroflot jet, alive too. Not too many people could say that, she was always blessed up in the air, it was on the ground she had serious problems. Probably at sea too, she'd have been a Titanic on the sea, going down on her maiden voyage and all that while the band played Sweet Little Rock N Roller or whatever the hell it was when that Irish built chunk o'shit vanished. I digress however, as I'm apt to do when I'm trying to cobble together something barely resembling a story using beer coasters on a sodden bar top. I always fucking lose the ones with the most important bits on . . . so, I'd gone to meet her. That was all arranged by Seamus (who hadn't had a hand in building the Titanic), and Oleg (who had probably had a hand in positioning that iceberg), I'd met Seamus on a Brittania airways flight. He was on his way to some attol in the deepest Pacific, where his runaway bride had shacked up with a Vietnam Vet. He'd asked me, in Singapore while we drank warm beer at overinflated prices, whether I'd wanted to tag along too. Like fuck. That's what I told him. I had my own problems, lots of them, more problems than Captain E. J. Smith had ever had. That fucker went down with the ship, wise decision, if he hadn't have, they'd have keel-hauled his sorry arse for incompetence anyhow.
Oleg was a different tale. A cold war one. I'd first met him in Helsinki, at the icebar, he was slugging back 80% proof shots like they were Gatorade. Him and some fly boy Norwegian called Olaf. I could never tell those commies apart, not that either were commies. Oleg, he was ex-KGB, but on-the-run. The Reds had his whole family under house arrest in Tallin, his three wives and eight kids. Dumb commies. Olaf, he'd just got a job on Aeroflot, he'd been grounded for two-years having flown some jet into an Andean mountain on account of bad weather and getting a BJ from a Panamanian stewardess while he was supposed to have been watching out for bad weather. Anyhow, I was there on other business, unconnected with weather, or whether or not. We ended up drinking shots for shots on the pool table until Olaf lost vision in his right eye and fell through the hotel window. Ugly scene. Oleg and me decamped for Sweden, we had a common friend there who sold hosiery. No harm in that. Which was when we borrowed the free bikes bars in Sweden give you to stop you drink driving, and rode them straight across an arterial highway because we were smashed, and consequently spent a comfortable night as guests of the Kalmar constabulary. They are good types, lugubrious, serve a decent breakfast though a tad too heavy on salted fish for my taste.

Oleg was running some way dodgy Russian bride scam. I was interested. Both in a Russian bride, and the scam involving them. Back then I knew a few hundred pasty English types who'd kill for that kind of action, and in fact, some already had and were doing life in Dutch prisons. The Dutch might be liberal on drug use, but they draw the line at crazy English men hacking up their native females on cobbled back streets.
Svetlana was her name. Oleg showed me her mug shot, lifted straight off the Interpol database. She looked like my kind of woman, desperate in other words. Then he asked me if I fancied doing him an all expenses paid favour. Stalin used to ask the same thing of lots of fools who were never seen nor heard of again. Okay, I told him, what's the catch? I was only half listening to the catch, my eyes had wandered off to pastures nubile. Airport bars are full of nubile pastures to visually graze. On my flight to Copenhagen, the Kroner dropped. What? Daytona Beach? Wasn't that in fucking Florida? It had all seemed seamlessly straightforward when orated in the rustic brogue of an ex-KGB flunky.
Had I mentioned anything about my ban? No, probably not, there wasn't a checkpoint on the whole of the US that'd allow me legal entry – oh, yeah, a get out card. Nice work if you can get it. I faxed Oleg this pertinent detail from a hookah bar in downtown Copenhagen, a city that was never a swinging joint. Then I relaxed. Two days later a woman in a biscuit coloured uniform thrust an envelope into my hand. I had had run ins with summons servers before but when I dropped it in the hotel lobby, she picked it up and followed me halfway down street with it. When I studied it properly, I realized it was a telegram. Not another bloody funeral - good people were dropping faster than mice dropped faeces. I opened it. Oh, I had to go to the nearest Western Union office to collect my fee.
Interesting.

The lady in there was dubious about my claim. I sat there patiently, aware as I was, of the Danish fetish for triplication. Finally, I left with a giant wad of cash. I didn't feel nervous, no one ever got mugged in Copenhagen, sodomized yes, but mugged no. That crazy Russian, sorry, ex-Russian who was always an Estonian, even when Estonia was little more than a backwater suburb of Moscow, had actually wired me the money and faxed me an explicit list of instructions in regard of the delightfully svelte and non-English speaking Svetlana. I was to meet her at Stockholm harbor, where the Baltic ferry docked. Without me there to iron out any messy immigration formalities, Svetlana would be containered straight back to the gulag. She was six feet two apparently, too. That was a lot of woman in any language.
I met the ferry, diligent was my middle name before it got changed to dickwad after the correct period of common useage. No Svetlana. Well, easy come, easy go.
That was when we found out about her fear of water. There isn't much in Russia anyhow so I presumed it was normal, but, she'd have to acclimatize to it if she had even the faintest hope of assimilating in a paddling pool playground like Daytona Beach. Fuck yes. New instructions arrive via the desk jockey at the Hotel Skipo. The plane, yes, no problem, but the plane to Heathrow, who's crazy fucking idea was that? Didn't that idiot realize I was in Stockholm?

Off I went on a twin-engined 24-seater, then up there I sat, circling the home counties waiting for a landing slot about eight-miles from a terminal. No shuttle. Long walk. Over to Aeroflot, where of course, there was the usual security and scrutiny. I sat around there for a few hours, watching the boards. Svetlana's flight, AF411, had been delayed due to fog in Gdansk. What the fuck were they doing flying via Poland anyhow.
It arrived about seven hours behind schedule. There was no argy bargy at the counters. I watched a troupe of ashen faces pass by me, then I saw Svetlana, right at the back, giggling with the Egyptian pilot. Typical. I utilized sign language to direct her to immigration, where, somehow, I had to gain her entry and argue my way through the messy procedures that accompany legal entry to the United Kingdom of Great Britain. What a joke. Luckily, I caught ahold of the immigration personnel post shift change. Celebrity Squares indeed. The guy Svetlana came face-to-face with, had obviously just been fed and watered. He looked her up, and then down, deliberately, I could tell that a strip search was buzzing around his frontal lobes someplace, which is when I stepped in. I explained to him, what was occurring, he listened in a disinterested manner. Transit visa yes, full responsibility, yes, leaving – certainly, funds – no problemo, accommodation – sorted. Sign here, sign there, dot this, cross that, suck this, fuck that. The usual streamlined formula.
I had to pay attention now, you'd be a prick to let a woman like this loose in a country like this. I held on tight. She had icy hands, hands like my granddad had had after he'd layed in the chapel of rest for five days. No sooner were we off the tube, looking for a iron horse west, than Svetlana started pointing to her own crotch. Look, I told her, this is England okay? You can't point at your genetalia over here, these are decent people with a sense of decency. She carried on, pointing, then putting that pointing finger to her own nose and pulling a disgusted face and then offering the pointing finger to me to smell. I declined. People were starting to look at us from over the tops of newspapers and from behind mugs of tea. I didn't like it. Have you pissed yourself? I inquired.
She pulled a queer face.
I pulled one back.
She pointed at my crotch.
I pulled a queer face.
She pulled one back.
We were going noplace fast. Neither was the train alongside us. I accompanied her to the restrooms, waited outside, five minutes later she re-appeared, looked at me very sharply, then slapped a pair of scrunched up panties into my hand. As they unfurled, a stinking rotten odour began to fill the air in my immediate vicinity, a stench only barely masked by the slightly more appalling stench emanating from the craphouses. I immediately threw what had once been pristine Soviet made and issued undergarments, into the overflowing English trash can. They sat proudly on top, opening up like a blooming rose. I did not stop to consider that those might have been the only pair of panties she had, or indeed, owned. Why would I?


London is not the kind of town where lingerie comes cheap. Good news that we were leaving, I didn't fancy rifling through synthetic undies over in Brixton, not unless they were being worn by a limbo dancer at the time. We sat on the train looking at mile-upon-mile of dreary English backyards: limp sodden laundry hanging dirtier than it had been before washing, beaten up kid's toys, beaten up kids, football paraphernalia, sullen looking housewives, the whole mish mash of suburban English life, I wondered what Svetlana made of such squalor, whether she thought that this Western way wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as they'd led her to believe in the Gulag. She had nice hands, a nice complexion, crystalline eyes, pale lips, and a very pungent aroma. I shuffled closer to the window, two weeks seemed an awfully long prognosis, could anyone harness a bitch like this for two weeks? Small wonder they'd let her go.

Yes, Bristol, a swell dump. A university town, cheap beds, music, booze and women. Jewel of the South West. We shacked-up in a nondescript bedsit on a two-week lease. She needed underwear, badly, and then she needed food, too much damned food. After three days I had to go find a fax, aint no kinkos in Bristol, kinkies, yes, kinkos, no. I scribbled an angry message to Tallin, it simply read: more cash or I turn her loose.
Two-days later, I got a reply, it read: no more cash. You turn her loose, we hunt you down.
These damn swine, my options were sparce, getting sparcer. She was putting on weight. I noticed as she got undressed for bed each night. A little more than an inch to pinch here and there. Too much western food, too many fries, pies, hot dogs, roast pork sandwiches, toasted cheese sandwiches, pizzas with the lot plus some to go. For each pound she gained, I lost one in kind. I put it down to stress, and poor diet. For each dollar she cost me from the slush fund, the nearer I got to destitution, false identities and an Interpol file. There had to be an answer someplace, there is always an answer. I went to sit outside of St Barnaby's church, St Barnaby was the patron saint of non-English speaking brides to be. He was next to useless, no, he was useless. No help from above . . . oh, wait up, above, yeah, malnutrition or not, something upstairs was still functioning, running on a longlife cell, yes, I rummaged around in the pockets of the faux leather coat I'd been wearing since that pool game in Helsinki, hadn't I transferred all the crap I'd had in my parka into this piece of oilskin taken fairly and squarely off the back of a rogue trader from Minsk? Ah ha! Yup, here it was, Singapore airlines, a great way to fly, and on the back . . . come on Barnaby put some fucking effort in, and on the back . . . I closed my eyes, flipped the napkin over, opened them, oh lord praise to you, Seamus's phone number in Dublin. Yes Dublin, where the girl's are so pretty, indeed, beautiful in fact, but I digress, what if I dragged the now not so svelte Svetlana across the Irish sea, jayzus, that was more than halfway to the new world and by christ that indy car driver from Florida could just come over to Shannon his goodself and collect her, if he still wanted her that was.

I made plans in haste and chaste. Always wise. When everything else has been eliminated, what remains, no matter how preposterous, must be the solution. Elementary. And thanks Edgar A. Poe. Off we went, after a hurried fax to my ex-KGB puppet masters outlining the change of plans and the reasons behind the change of plans. I didn't expect a reply.

Seamus met us at the ferry, Svetlana was green, like Erin, like the sea, like a bile duct. Too fucking bad, that's why Q-uells were invented. We drove fast, down windy country lanes and through 18th century villages. All very quaint indeed. We found out that Svetlana had motion sickness in cars too. More bad news, especially for her waiting indy car beau I guessed. We got into the warm embrace of the fair city several hours later, sneaking in under cover of dark like republican hitmen. Four days to go. Tick tock. Seamus had had more bad luck than the whole west coast of Ireland. His tattered ancestry was a litany of leprachaun abuse, sodomy, bestiality and root vegetable rooting. He fair stunk of debauchery and ale. The brewery was close, too close for comfort, I could smell it hanging in the air like imminent ruination; barley.
Aye aye aye aye aye. Russian roulette on the black stuff with a little people bandit. A mess yes, but there was always a tiny glint of salvation – Ireland had been all but built on that glint.
I waited on the fax. Seamus waited on the facts. Svetlana waited on the fat. Patience was a virtue, look at that band on the Titanic playing Sailing for the umpteenth time. I kept going down to McKrinkles office supplies. They had a fax machine there. Good people, salt of the earth, the peat in the bog and all that blarney stone bullcrap. If that stone had been nearby, I'd have gone hung upside down with my torso dangling over a four-hundred foot drop into the Atlantic and kissed the damned thing myself, to be sure I would.
Word came, it was angry, McKrinkle wasn't a circumspect type, kept hovering by the Garda hotphone nervously. I was to be at Shannon by this time on that day and wait for flight TWA626 to arrive. Ha ha, sweet news, all's swell that ends well. To the hops my bogus friends, to the hops . . .


postscript to the postscript:

. . . I'd thought of everything, bar the inevitable. I wasn't thinking about that as I was in the bar, studying Morag the barkeep's daughter. While I was studying her, the inevitable happened. That filthy rat Seamus, sowed his oats in foreign fields. I knew they were at it went I got back to the cottage. Then I definitely knew they were at it when I flung open the guest bedroom door and saw Svetlana spread in a position Nadia Comaneci would have been proud of. It was a perfect ten, no doubt, probably on the floor and the pummel horse. Soiled goods. I checked the many faxes. Nothing about pre-useage or secondhand merchandise. I took Svetlana to the airport, we sat there for seven or eight hours, I forget which. The plane landed. Svetlana was whisked away into the transit lounge, dosvedanya.
I hadn't any time to lose. I took a standby to Bombay. Goa was cheap, Ranjid in the curry shop had said. I needed cheap. All was going well. Then I heard the pilot, Olaf, say something about fuel gauges, pelicans and fellatio. What the fuck? The man next to me, a brusque rusky with a hedgerow across his eyes, told me we were being diverted to St Petersburg. Ha, of all the bograt luck. Fuck you St Christophe, probably a rusky too. I found out, in interrogation, that St Nicholas the III was the unofficial patron saint of emergency landings. Well, good for him. I was allowed to leave, in fact, they insisted, took me in a Skoda to the aerodrome, all very James Bondish indeed. The aircraft looked like a Skoda with wings. Where the fuck is this piece of shit going to? I asked nervously. The three men laughed, it was a hearty fuck you kind of laugh. Siberia. They answered. The Russians do have a sense of humour. In fact, I took a low altitude flight to Ireland. How nice, home again. I caught a cab to Seamus's house. It was dark, milk still on the doorstep. I drank it.
I slept at the bus station, took a bus to the ferry the next day, pleaded for deportation.

postscript to the postscript to the postscript:

I received a fax a few weeks later, it had been sent by airmail. I opened it up. No words, just a deftly sketched drawing of an icepick . . . someone had an artistic bent and a malicious streak.

Poetic Justice De Mer by Teri Louise Kelly

Poetic Justice De Mer by Teri Louise Kelly

Poetic Justice De Mer by Teri Louise Kelly

Poetic Justice De Mer by Teri Louise Kelly

Teri Louise Kelly {Insomniacal Maniac} (Teri Louise Kelly) | MySpace

Teri Louise Kelly {Insomniacal Maniac} (Teri Louise Kelly) | MySpace

Facebook | Teri Louise Kelly

Facebook | Teri Louise Kelly

Facebook | The Outsiders Festival

Facebook | The Outsiders Festival

Chef Teri Louise Kelly has memoirs running hot | Courier Mail

Chef Teri Louise Kelly has memoirs running hot | Courier Mail

Stranger Than Fiction

I didn't know the guy.
My neighbour did, apparently.
The block wasn't communal, though a lot of them used it that way, always dropping in unannounced, lacking plausible reasons to visit. I kept to myself. When I could. He walked in, said his name was Harry, as if, I ought to have known it. I didn't like him; I have an aversion to guys calling themselves Harry, and especially Harrys who have a v-neck sweater about their person someplace.
Harry sat in the chair, as if he'd been there before, only he hadn't, to the best of my knowledge. I waited a while as was customary when entertaining, not that I was, technically, entertaining. I was waiting for the plausible reason. Harry just sat there, rubbing his forehead viciously. When a man falls into a chair and immediately begins to massage his brow, he has either recently committed a crime, is about to commit one, or he has ended an affair or is about to embark upon one, or a combination of any of the preceding reasons.
I know men. That was an integral part of my brief, as a man.

So I permitted him the uninvited luxury of staying sat there, rubbing and contemplating: crime and punishment, the ramifications, the pros and cons, whether mandatory sentencing laws applied in his particular case, stuff like that. I turned my attention back to reading Proust, another guy who read like he'd be the type of guy who strolled into other people's apartments uninvited, then collapse in the nearest armchair or woman's lap and start going at his throbbing temples in a manic fashion. Women always fall for those 'lost in thought' type of guys.
Suddenly Harry asked if I had any wine. I didn't answer – immediately.
I was a drunk. So of course I had wine. If I'd been a writer, I might have had notebooks, but I wasn't. I was a drunk without friends, and especially the kind of friends who'd drop by unexpectedly and then ask if I had any wine. Not that this 'Harry' was my friend anyhow.
Then again, he might have been. Either previously or currently. I couldn't say for definite because I was a drunk and I lost time, huge chunks, whole slabs of the stuff. There were gaps in my memory, probably in the liver too.
I still hadn't answered Harry. Not that he appeared fazed by that. I was thinking that if I said I had wine, then this guy would take that as an inference; that maybe I wanted a drinking companion, which I didn't. I drink alone, and any serious pursuit from flying a kite to procrastination, from bank robbery to drinking, ought to be undertaken solo. Drunks have no time left over for small talk, let alone large talk. Large talk frightens me, it's a voracious eater of time and once you lose that much time you're on a fast slope to defeat, regular employment and the twelve-step program.
So I said no.

Harry simply carried on rubbing his forehead. I didn't know what to say after that no, so I said nothing and went back to Proust, and so we sat there a while in silence two-feet apart like a couple of crocheting maids. Proust was talking about drinking, serious stuff, the bastard. First Harry, now Proust.
Ever decreasing circles.
Meaningless oration.
Uninvited men.
Weekends goddamnit.

I really needed a drink. I couldn't have one with Harry sat there, brooding, and especially not after I'd just told him I didn't have any. Chinese stand off. He just sat there thinking about something. Something bad, against the law, against nature's law, something untoward, foul, ghastly – and he needed the juice to either dull that thought, or float it.
Then he said that he could murder a drink, maybe two, eight, sixteen, who knew? I was glad I hadn't fessed up to being in possession of wine right then, not to a guy hauling a thirst like that around. Then, I asked him what it was he actually wanted, excluding a drink that was, in my apartment. I have no idea why I hadn't asked this previously. It may have saved valuable time.
He looked up at me strangely, not queerly, strangely, then told me we'd been friends for just about as long as he could remember.
I asked him how long he could remember for.
After some temple-rubbing deliberation, and a chuckle, he said for about four days or so.
Thus, we had, according to this Harry, and as then unverified by any independent witness, been friends for about four days. Maybe less, certainly not more. I asked him if he was sure, that we were friends.
He admitted that he couldn't be, sure – not one hundred percent, given the black spots in his memory, but I was Marty, wasn't I?
I said no, I'd never been known as Marty, not to the best of my recollections, which I also admitted, were rather hazy at times.
“Ah goddamnit!” he yelled, startling me, and then he smacked the arm of the chair, the arm of my chair, quite aggressively. “And you look just like him too!” he moaned.

“A lot of people say that.” I responded, calmly.
“What? That you look like Marty?”
Not just Marty, anyone they think they know, Peter, Paul, Ringo, you call it.”
“So who are you?” he asked defeatedly.
“I can't recall,” I began, honestly, “no one's used my name in . . .”
“Too long?” he intervened.
“Many a moon.” I finish.

What was my name? Jesus H. Christ. No, it wasn't that, I was sure, well, as sure as I could be given the holes and multifarious missing links I was plagued with. It wasn't Virginia either, or Marcel, or Ernest or Jerome, of those I was certain, more or less.
Unexpectedly then, for me, and for him by the look on his face, he appeared to be overcome by a great notion – much like Proust, or maybe Nash the numbers guy, and he said: “How about a game of truth or dare?”
“No.” I answered, immediately.
“I dare you.” he taunted.
“I said I wasn't playing.” I reiterated.
“Tell me the truth.” he dared.
I was falling into the sinkhole uninvited guests dig. It was drink time, way past actually, the urge was on me: clammy and clawing, begging, haranguing, nesting, excavating. More holes. “Who was your first girlfriend?” he assailed me with.
“Hot Lips, that one from the hospital.” My retort was unexpected and inadvertent.
“That wasn't a woman, it was a guy, in a frock.”
I realized then, that he hadn't offered me the truth or dare before the question and that I'd been foolish to lurch into the answer . . .
“Shit!” he swore, “I didn't fucking ask you truth or dare first goddamnit!”
“I know.” I said, in a smug manner.
“Okay truth or da . . .”
“Forget it.” I said.
“Ah come on, how could it hurt huh?” he pestered.
“It'll waste time,” I said, “more time, time I don't have to spare, and besides, I've got a terrible memory, everything I say would most likely be a lie anyhow.”
“Me too,” he moaned, “so, what in the hell were we talking about, Marty?”
“Time,” I ventured, “and the lack thereof.”
“Where's it go eh?”
“Into optics.” I replied, seriously.

He sits there, rooted, apparently. I begin to twitch. Then he says: “My friend John just had a fatwah put on him.” This throws me, big time.
“Spell it.” I say.
He looks at me suspiciously, “F-A-T -WAH!” he shouts accusingly, “don't you watch tv?”
I don't. Haven't for sixteen years – I see it, I don't watch it.
“What about octopus?” he tries next.
“What about it?”
“Not it, them, what about them, you mean.”
“Then you ought to have said octopi.”
The clock ticks on, waiting for no man, dog, drunk . . . “What are you, a marine biologist? Anyhow, you ever have it?”
“What?”
“Octopi?”
His questions are becoming more and more meaningless in the greater scheme of time, licensing laws, bar stool ownership. “No.” I say, to placate him as my already withered attention span curls up and dies a dehydrated death.
“Japanese swear by it.”
He waits, seemingly interested in my response, and when none is forthcoming, he ploughs on regardless. “Crazy they are, those hari kari kami kaze sons of bitches.”
“The Japanese or octopi?”
“Both.” he muses.
He goes back to his temples for a while, then blurts: “Shit Marty, how come you don't talk any more, you used to be the real life and soul of the party too . . . once.”
“I know,” I tell him, as I begin to stand up, “Lot's of people have said the same and now if you'll excuse me, I've got business to attend to.”
“Sure, sure, don't mind me pal, do what you've got to do.” he says as he waves me away.

I go to the drawer, get my wallet, lift the coat from the back of the door, glance at him sitting there rubbing his forehead. Then take a last glance around my apartment – sparce as it is, then I open the ajar door, and go to step through it and say “See you again then Harry, maybe, one day.”
He looks up, framed in the portrait of my diminishing apartment and replies “Sure Marty, drop by any time, I'm usually home.”
“Sure.” I find myself saying as I step through my own front door and then close it gently behind me.
Then I head for the bar where no one ever asks my name.