1
FILMS I HAVE SEEN
What have I become? Before tonight, I imagined I was kind. Perhaps
even someone with a degree of compassion. I give to charity when I can.
I kiss babies when I have the chance and my policy, of Eastern flavour, is
to harm no one, a policy which, because it works for billions of others, is
good enough for me.
It is twelve twenty five after midnight in Leyton, a dry part of Newham,
East London and I am benight on all counts. I am driving back from a
West End film and a late delicious Indian dinner when there is a
disturbance to my right.
Twelve or so ‘men’ but with the brains and demeanor of children are
running jingoistically. Six white and six black. The blacks following the
whites.
I stop and watch as a tall black guy (I’ll call him Mr. Tibbs gone wrong)
violently throws milk crates to the ground and, still at this point, I think
its just high spirits. A drunken commotion. Surprisingly though, he
creatively turns a crate into a shield and materialized a long piece of
wood. He charges then.
All the time the white men are trying to get away but an explosion of
violence occurs right there in the middle of the road, on a crossing if you
please!
The compounded imagery was too much and I thought of a film. Zulu. I
counted. Five, six, seven, eight, nine blows with the wood on one white
man’s head (let’s call him Noel Coward) and everyone was twitching,
darting into the action for a swift kick then back for safety. Mouths
opening and closing, shouting, screaming. The opening from Romeo and
Juliet. A badly choreographed corrupted ballet.
Their shouting seemed important but I could not hear them because I had
the volume of my stereo up quite high. Like everybody does. For those
interested, it was actually Beethoven. Let the synchronicity not be lost.
Now all this time, Noel Coward simply protected himself as best he could
but then, reasonably, he broke away from his daytime self. With the help
of others, rationality was lost and he degenerated and backslid just a
smidgen down that evolutionary ladder to a mindless, merciless,
uncivilized churl. Any modern film will do here. By this time, I had my
window open and had heard a grunt of “You got my meat” or something
lexically similar.
Mr.Tibbs gone wrong’s testicles were squashed by powerful blows from
soft trainers, if that be possible. Several it looked to me. Blood was
broken and teeth flowed. Or was it the another way around? Whatever.
Help came from other sources (presumably from the same public house
or breeding kebab shop) and the worse case of violence I ever witnessed,
erupted not fifty feet from my bonnet. Other cars stopped of course, their
owners (like me) safe, making the most of the late night entertainment.
In less than a minute though, it was over and they vanished like a red
mist, before 007 could get there, trawling home, probably to beat their
wives or girlfriends and sleep in their dustbins.
The traffic moved but I remained motionless, replaying it all, every blow.
It was as endlessly fascinating as a dead bird might be to a five year old
child who has just discovered that death exists. But because it was also a
drama of mean proportions and unimportance, it was pathetic.
Oh, but come on you say. This has been happening since we grew a
brain. I remember my brother telling me about the Sixties (I’m not old
enough to remember it myself you understand) Mods and Rockers on
Brighton Rock. “Hundreds of us” He used to enthrall “Bottles, bricks and
knives-go well after twelve pints!” Bless him. He is over fifty now, bald
and has difficulty holding a pint let alone drinking twelve.
Yes, I comprehend that. I understand the mentality of those unaware
enough to climb out of their own early conditioning. I accept their laziness
and unwillingness to change. I understand the alcohol and drug
influences, the boredom, the brute within us all, ready to pounce after
nine blows to the head.
I personally like to think that my own screaming mad shadow side would
rear up long before nine blows but that is my imagination and indignation
working. No, I understand all that.
What I cannot discern though is my unabridged apathy, my soul utterly
empty of compassion as I watched the comic cloud of the terrible fight
spilling closer and closer to me.
I am usually emotional. Very as it happens. But tonight, I felt nothing. It
was just another film and an ill made one at that. Too much action and
not enough plot. Mesmerized as I was, I wanted to switch over, make a
cup of tea and do something else for this had become boring.
But here was humanity so unhappy, so stupid that they might have
difficulty reading about themselves, bleeding, bruised and sliced and
diced before my eyes and I felt nothing.
Perhaps it was because I imagined myself surrounded by Tacamahac
trees and was reminded that this was how a population in a jungle
behaves. Naturally. Perhaps while fighting for food. Or pita bread and
lamb even. You see, I joke. I cannot feel sympathy.
I sat in mesmerized fascination, within the safety of my steel chariot and
felt nothing. I did not care what they were doing. I did not care how much
they were hurting, bleeding, or crying. I did not care what they were
feeling. All I cared about was myself and my lack of compassion.
So is this it? Racial fighting over bacterial-laden kebabs? On an inner
London street at night? Nothing new here. The only thing born was a twin
reflection. How did I get to think like this and what have I become?
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2
Just an evening out.
Like water running through fingertips, a pair of black nylon stockings were
drawn over recently waxed legs and fastened to a suspender belt of the
same colour. Rising from the edge of the bed, Gillian took matching bra
and knickers from a cream coloured drawer and pulled them on, adjusting
the knickers in a major effort to hide the tiny bulge of his powdered
penis.
A full-length mirror to his left showed a disconcerting, and perhaps to a
stranger’s eyes, worrying picture. Without his wig; three quarters female
and a quarter male. A composite of two fragmentary images. At twenty-
nine, most of his natural hair had been lost. Now, because of what
remained and shortened by a weekly application of an electric razor,
Gillian used the power of his imagination, pulled in his belly, pouted his
lips, widened his eyes and tried to look coy and sensitive but only
achieved the appearance of an improper nun.
The bedroom, his boudoir, was bathed in the fragrance of flowers and
essences. The last rays of a setting sun cast a parallel light, illuminating
not only his cigarette smoke but also a haphazard array of shoes,
underwear, dresses and coats. The carpet upon which he had liberally
dusted himself with talcum powder after his bath also bathed in this
pleasing evening glow. Automatically, Gillian choose a skirt and
complementary blouse to complete his dressing. By the time he had
combed and brushed his wig, adjusted his clothes and painted and fixed
his face, the nun had been exterminated, along with the life-long habits
and persona of a man. Earrings were chosen, rings, a necklace and a
broach for his coat baptized the image.
The emergence of this butterfly yanked and transformed the estate agent.
Instantaneously, the male was gone, replaced by a twisting scented
flower who’s every influence and manoeuvre was feminine. But as Gillian
had been dressing this way since he was sixteen, each touch, each action
was graceful, uncontrived and unconscious.
Her nails were painted last, a deep blood red. Then, as she sipped a gin
and tonic, money and documents were transferred from wallet to purse.
The time was six fifteen when the sun disappeared. More perfume, a horn
sounding from outside her house, minor adjustments and smoothing by a
mirror next to the front door and three minutes later she was with two
friends in a taxi on their way to the West End of London.
The cab driver had seen it all before. Not only did he often get the job to
pick up from Gillian’s Parliament Hill house but being a taxi driver in
London for thirty-five years, he had often picked up fares who were
dressed in the opposite sex’s clothes. It was their attitude and the way
many of them behaved he liked; not loud or abusive but, rather, well,
lady-like in an old fashioned way. In his mind, many of them behaved
better than women. Deeper than that, many of them reminded him, in
attitude only, of women that he himself had once dated.
Gillian and her two friends were not silent tonight though. Not loud but
definitely not silent. Sat next to her was Gale. As tall as Gillian but
painfully thin, she gripped a handle with one hand while simultaneously
sweeping dark curls from her face with the other. Because virtually every
bone in her rather large hands and wrists were prominent, she usually
wore dark elbow length gloves and so her entire wardrobe pivoted around
those gloves. Tonight, she wore a long dress of black velvet, an item
which the third member of the cab had advised her not to wear because it
was not a cold evening.
Gale’s face, or rather her makeup, was from a different time. Older than
Gillian by twenty-one years, she had somehow resisted the natural
evolutionary urge to update herself. She still wore the same style of
makeup, clothes and hairpiece she first used when she had started to
dress in women’s clothes. Even when she decided to take everything a
stage further and become a transsexual, nothing in her appearance
changed. Existing only on a small inheritance, she tended to buy at
charity shops, many of which carried Seventies clothes and shoes, even if
they did not mean to.
But I am not writing about fashionable Seventies clothes but the type a
suburban woman might have worn. The housewife’s choice from the
‘Carry on’ films. Clothes with a style about them that rendered the woman
instantly identifiable as being a mother with little cash to spare. But
indifferent to her out-ward appearance, Gale was a mathematician and
spent part of her week reading, visiting museums and probing around the
dusty old book shops in WC1 looking for out of print volumes.
As you would possibly expect, her face was rather on the gaunt side.
Viewed from the proper angle, and, at a glance, you could be forgiven for
mistaking her for what she could really be; a middle-aged spinster who
taught mathematics. Her face bore the tiniest of scars; the result of
hundreds of hours under the needle in her bid to remove every trace of
her former beard. That was long ago though and because of that
determination, she now only needed the slightest trace of foundation and
a smear of colour on her lips to look passable.
She and Gillian had known each other for over eighteen years. Gillian was
the only one who had been by her hospital bedside as she slowly slipped
into unconsciousness under the influence of a dripping sedative, prier to
having the ‘Cut and Tuck’, the operation to remove his male genitalia and
replace it with an artificial vagina. Seven years ago. The operation
eventually changed her character beyond all measure. Within a year, she
had become lively and almost passionate about life. She had even had a
relationship with a man, test-driving the newly acquired apparatus.
Her voice was inherently strange though. It still had a hint of the bass
undertone of a man but it was fully femininely modulated as taught by a
speech therapist; the hesitancy of answering, the last word of a sentence
inflected upwards, her habit of not interrupting. Because she was often
mistaken for a man over the telephone she avoided using that instrument
whenever she could. Unfortunately, she also had developed the unsocial
habit of sub vocalization so she talked nearly all the time, her thoughts
only to herself.
Gillian’s sonic communication was pure male though. Although not of the
barking pub type, she was conscious enough to lower and soften it when
dressed but because she had not been professionally trained, it came out
breathy. She too had taken on the characteristics of how she thought
women talked and the result was a falsetto being an amalgamation of a
boy and a doll. When Gillian talked, people noticed.
The third member of the cab lived in Gale’s house. She rented the top
floor from her and had been there for nearly two years. It was a
relationship based on income really for they had virtually nothing in
common besides their interest in woman’s clothes. Gale secretly wasn’t all
that keen on her lifestyle for Martina was a drag queen. She earned her
living doing cabaret in the gay nightspots of the capital and she didn’t
have an off button.
She was the youngest and loudest of the three, having just turned
twenty. Knowing she was gay from the age of seven and suffering a
hideous childhood because of her natural effeminacy, she blustered her
way though life with sheer arrogance and power having discovered that
was the best way to cope. Martina’s personality coalesced into a dark and
narrow world. She suffered the attentions of straight people only when
she had to, discerning them with an ease that comes from suffering. She
had the instinctive and protective nature of a lion, even when she was
drunk, which was often. Gillian had noticed, when out, how often she
would sit and glare, eyes flitting from one person to another as if studying
her next meal. Always on the lookout for the next insult, the next verbal
blow. Ready to go into battle.
She was not afraid of a fight either as the other two had noticed during
their time with her. Martina was a born scrapper whether dressed in
woman’s clothes or not. If she had been born fifty years earlier and not
been gay, she may well have been a docker; a hard drinking slugger. But
in this life she was tall and well proportioned with small features ideally
suited for her profession. She sought and then choose the drama. She
loved to be on display, to trumpet her sexuality. She affirmed her
outpouring on every level not caring who was within her vicinity. Both
Gillian and Gale thought her dangerous to be with at first but her
tempestuous declaration of herself also allowed her considerable gift of
repartee to be on show as well. She was a born storyteller, a natural
joker, and a clown. Those in the cab, including the driver loved her for it.
She wore pants in the brightest organza and a see-though top showing
her ample silicon breast implants. She had her own hair, which was
flavoured dark red, and her generous lips matched that colour. Her eyes
were flame red too in three different shades and as she sat with her back
to the driver, well aware he could smell her fifty pounds a bottle perfume
through the crack in the glass, she fluttered her eye-lids and puffed
irrelevantly on a glittering cigarette holder looking with mock disdain
upon the people they passed.
“Look at that waist!” She pointed, smoothing down her own. “Darling,
shouldn’t be allowed on the street!”
Their destination was an art gallery in the Cromwell Road. Martina’s
boyfriend owned it and tonight he was putting on a display by new gay
artists. With each painting selling for a minimum of a thousand pounds,
the chances to rub shoulders with the rich and, possibly, the famous, the
prospect of exotic food but really, just simply a different place to be seen
in, Gillian was looking forward to being there. It would be an exiting start
to the weekend.
As Martina had ordered the cab, she sprang out first and tossed a tenner
to the driver, ordering him “Not to spend it all at once darling” Then with
a provocative wiggle of her backside, she minced her way into the gallery,
one arm akimbo on her hip and the other, with the holder, waving already
to a friend.
“Aaaaagh! Darling” She screamed to the first pretty and much painted
lady she met. “Mwah, Mwah, Mwah! Oh you look so gorgeous sweetheart.
Love that colour. Where’s David?”
“He’s seeing to some drinks darling. Are these your friends?”
“Oh yes. Now, this is Gillian. She’s so...hot.” Martina smoldered like a fire.
“And this is Gale, who taught me just simply everything darling about
comedy!”
As about seven pairs of eyes suddenly focused on us, particularly Gale,
for a second, nobody spoke. Gale looked uncomfortable and anyone could
see the puzzlement in people’s eyes as they fished for the explanation.
Seeing Gale’s dark, quiet ungainly, dour figure next to Martina’s bright
explosion of colour and energy, nothing made sense.
But suddenly there was a crack of laughter.
“Oh, fiddle de de! I was joking babes. No, Gale lives with me and now I’ve
got to find David...”
With her stilettos tapping and clipping on the polished wooden floor, she
minced away to the back of the shop leaving Gillian and Gale alone for no
one had bothered to remain with them.
“She can be a bitch sometimes Gale.”
“It’s just her, I’m used to it.”
“You ought to stand up for yourself.”
“No, what’s the point? That’s Martina for you.”
The emotional atmosphere in the gallery was cold. As if anyone wishing to
be there ought to provide his or her own form of heating in the guise of a
warm personality. Couples strolled around aimlessly, drinks in hand,
some looking at the pictures on display but others mostly using the venue
as a meeting place.
It was a frothy mix. From middle aged mustached men in leather pants,
most of them eyeing each other rather than the artwork to the opposite
extreme; floating brigades of lace and flowers, like bees, flitting from one
person to other and not paying much attention to anybody. Beside her
self, Gillian only spotted two other transvestites present and as they were
arguing hotly with, Gillian presumed, the owner of a picture, she decided
not to introduce himself or herself for the present. Neither of them could
see a woman anywhere but the evening was still in its infancy.
“I’ll get us a drink.”
When Gillian reached the drinks table, she found the choice staggering. A
small, chatty man was serving and he gave her a smile.
“Oh Sweetheart, look at you. What carriage did you come from?”
“Actually, it was a taxi.”
“What can I get you darling besides me?”
“You’re very sweet but I’ll just have two G and T’s please.”
“Not both for you surely!”
She was still smiling. “No. I have a friend.”
“You are looking so gorgeous darling.” Then with a minute lifting and
shaking of his head he made a demand.
“I’ll serve you if I get a kiss.”
Gillian’s smile grew broader, showing more lips.
“And I’ll give you a kiss if you’ll show me where I can hang my coat up.”
“Darling, it will be a pleasure, allow me.”
The coat and the kiss exchanged, Gillian walked back with her two prizes.
“You made a friend quick enough.”
“He was just so camp, bit of a sweetheart actually.”
“I see. I’ll get the next round.”
Now feeling she were part of the greater whole instead of being an
outsider, Gillian began to lead Gale into the heart of the gathering
stopping occasionally to examine the works of art, positioned correctly
under pointed pyramids of light. All of them without exception depicted
sex in one form or another. Whether it was fruit, as oranges
masquerading as a pair of breasts or a banana caricature illustrating
something else or simply coloured mud smeared upon a canvas describing
forms of making love, Gillian thought it all highly weird. Patterns of large
pink dildos, gaping shadowy holes and sprawling hairy thighs. There were
pen and ink drawings of highly distorted orgasmic faces; renderings of
acts of sodomy; ill defined painted chains and whips in grim and crimson
epitomizing the cruelty done from one section of society to another. The
nucleus of every artist there, the meat, was painted with the groin. Each
one thrust itself at the onlooker in a self-discovery of joyless torment.
“Where’s the landscapes Gillian?”
She giggled then. Gale had this ironic and much buried ability to make
her laugh.
“They’re awful aren’t they?”
“Not the most uplifting of pictures I’ve ever seen I must admit.”
More people continued to trickle into the gallery and Gillian noticed, for
the first time, two women, obviously with each other but desperately
trying not to be. She recognised one of them from a news program and
nudged Gale.
“Is that who I think it is?”
“Yep, always thought she was. I love her. Maybe I’ll get to speak...”
“In your dreams Gale. Yeah, she’ll want to chat to us won’t she? Gale!
Close your mouth, she’ll see you.”
Smart 120 beats per minute dance music flooded them both at that point
and Gillian felt the place come alive with the arrival of it. Even over that
though, she could still hear Martina’s voice travelling around the three
rooms. Darling! and Aaaaagh seemed to be her main introductions and
endings with sometimes a, 'fabulous' thrown in as well if there was the
merest chance of anybody starting to speak seriously.
The smell of poppers began to pervade and complement the room.
Cheques were written, glasses dropped, wine spilled and people
disappeared into the toilets. Martina’s boyfriend, a curious
What happened next? E-mail your version to Jean.
3.
No Lamenting Here.
I swung my full and rich blood-red cape across my wide bony shoulders as a
defense against the settling low evening sun as I left my tiny shop in the
precinct of Grays in Essex, inserted my spiky key into its rusty lock and
twanged it shut. The weather was quite foul on this celebratory weekend of
Jevil, hot, light and sticky and winter seemed only a dream away. Why our
Saviour did not choose to die during a more pleasant time of year, I never
understood. And never questioned it aloud either. But I should not
complain. We Vampires have many things to be grateful for, so it is not all
hope and light.
My name is Broakcan and I am eighty-six this summer. Born in the
beautiful and fearful occult shadow of night, which accounts of course, for
my clear tight pale skin, dark strong hair and my angled physique. Full-
bodied suckling added my growth, made my eyes the colour of carmine and
my sharp teeth as edgy as nature. I snort. I work. I’m keen. A perfect
specimen for my race. Strong, virile, bull-like yet lean, powerful and
untamed...just as my wife likes me.
Yes, Quella my wife, whom I am about to meet. What a female herself! A
crown of two thorns, part human creature, part Vampire, a deep orange
edible source of a woman. Full breasted and bloodied, her red milk runs
from her nipples like no others. Fountains of goodness. Our children are
cursed I tell them. Cursed like no other and I order them to be grateful but,
as you will discover, often they are not.
I have two. A boy and a girl. The female already has had coitus I am glad to
tell but the boy Lavis... What a disappointment he has grown to be. Two
years younger, sure and intelligent but he shows no interest in our beliefs
and to be clear about him, sometimes I wonder where he gets his strange
ideas. A lamb within is so strong it is difficult for my ever patient Quella to
get him to suck real nourishment with us instead of that heathen and
impure vegetable scum he nibbles on. He has no stick. His balls are watered
and I have seen his eyes glow with some unearthly light sometimes when
the sun is high. He’s sickly, weak and, as much as I love him, for he came
from me, hopes he will die and leave the rest of us in peace although with
the luck Heaven has given him, he’ll probably outlive me and my allotted
quota of centuries. The times I’ve caught him studying over his prescribed
reading times for school when he should be hungering, simpering and
yelping with his friends like a normal young vamp I cannot tell you. He is,
in short, an embarrassment to my family name of Jaspetic.
But my female... Wasis gave away her virginity at school during her one-
hundredth and eightieth dark moon and I remember the pleasure my wife
and I felt over our evening meal the evening she told us. As usual for her,
she described in detail the physical event itself and what the half-Vamp was
like. As I soaked up blood from my plate with some soft cow’s skin, I could
not have been more proud, especially when she told us that he had to be
taken away by his friends to a clotting house for a transfusion because she
had soaked and sucked him just about dry. I remember that feeling only
too well in the early days of my courtship with Quella although, she still
bleeds me well enough, sometimes more so if I am rough and take my
time.
I am meeting her and the nestlings at Kaveller’s restaurant in the High
Street and it’s only a short walk. But long enough to be fair pestered by
young people imitating humans and their behaviour. They look completely
stupid I must say with their human-like masks and gracious platitudes and
I was about to mention that I don’t know why the parents allow them to
do it when I remembered that Lavis dresses and acts in a similar manner
nearly all the time. Really, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that he’d
prefer to be a human rather than a member of Vampire Sapiens.
I can see them now through Kaveller’s green front window waiting for me
in our usual area and I reached into my pocket, withdrew a pleasant-
smelling horse’s nail and slipped it into my mouth. The last thing I ate was
some baked cheeks for breakfast and besides being hungry, I had a feeling
that my breath was unpleasantly sweet. No need to put Quella though
that. I could see already by the way she silently sat, her chin resting lightly
on four fingers, that she was not amused by Lavis' appearance. Wasis was
softly scratching her mother’s long and lean arms with a hard red fingernail
in a drifting sort of way but was equally silent. As much as I loved my
family, I wasn’t looking forward to outing. I hate these family traditions
that insist we eat out on Human night. Perhaps when the nestlings leave
the home we'll have an end to it.
Kaveller’s was a family owned business and served good wholesome food,
nothing special or fancy, although Sertis Kaveller had been known to boil
a whole carcass or two for a festival or a Union. Unusual, I can tell you for a
man who insists on his food cold and wet but business buys business so
they say. Moreover, it was Kaveller’s ability to serve nourishment beyond
what he would normally eat which made him an elegant businessman.
He was a dark red glowering sort of a man, eternally locked away in his oily
kitchen, huge-bodied with red-wide-mouth and lips from years of eating
flesh and bits of bodies. When called out or visited, he would usually be
chewing the gristle off a stick of bone or sucking at some other organ.
I kissed Quella, glad to have her scorching red lips touching mine and I
know she smelt the horse’s nail. Her teeth also tore at my lips, gently but
long enough to silently imply that she wished we were on our own.
But we were not. Wasis and Lavis looked their usual bored selves. Both
were dressed unusually. Even for them. Wasis was in the sinful colour of
white for a start and that overrode any sort of unflattering style that the
garment was in. Which was short and cut away from both legs. She looked
like a tramp not a Vamp and I looked away quickly, shaking my head, glad
we were in our corner. Wasis...After I looked him up and down in silence,
Quella and my eyes met and she was as shocked and felt as hopeless as
myself as I showed a face of extreme disappointment. Before I sat, I could
not contain myself.
“What in the name of Hell are you wearing boy?”
He never answered as the question was rhetorical but let me describe it. It
was a suit. A thin, pale blue, single-breasted suit. Underneath he wore a
plain white shirt and a dark tie. A glance down under the flaxen table and I
saw brown leather shoes. Lace-up shoes. Plain. His face was covered in
white makeup, lightening the obits of his eyes and rosy cheeks sank his
pallor into humanness. He looked outrageous. I sat.
“You are walking home on your own, because I’ll be blessed if I’ll be seen
with you in the street looking like that.”
“And he's ordered a plate of vegetables.”
“And you let him Quel?”
“The boy’s old enough to do what he wants Broakcan. We cannot force him
to eat what he doesn’t want. It's only a phase. Let him be.”
“It is not a phase mother! I’ll want to look like this and wear this forever. Its
smart and everybody of my age is doing it.”
“Its sick Lavis and you are embarrassing the family. I’m telling you again,
you are not walking home with us looking like that.”
“I don’t care.”
I smacked my fist down hard on the table and for a second, just a second,
the conversation between the thirty or so Vampires, which were eating
there, stopped.
“You bloody well will care when I stop your allowance boy and you’re eat
properly if I forbid any vegetables to be brought into the house.”
“Then I’ll starve and die father..."
"Lavis?" Quella's arm reached across and gently placed her long forefinger
quietly across his mouth for she could see their food arriving.
"Hush now. Broakcan? I ordered your usual."
I was grateful to see it and Savne, one of two waitress' and Sertis' only
daughter, eased her way through the crowded tables and, as head of the
family, had my starter served first; Magryana. A steaming warm bowl of
kidney, liver and nail bits. My wife and my daughter had chosen thin spits
of undercooked red muscle prepared in a sauce I could smell but not
identify.
My son had ordered water and he sat there as sullen as ever. When the
first morsels touched the insides of my mouth, it became awash with saliva
and for a moment, until I first bit into a wedge of liver, I forgot about him
and his fixation with being human and turned my attention to my host and
the mysteries, which made up his menus.
What was that special ingredient that Kaveller used to turn something so
plain and almost vulgar, into a dish so tasty? I could smell that what I was
spooning into my mouth was a mixture of human, pig and chicken but my
tri-forked and rasped tongue hinted at something else. Something
unidentifiable. For the moment. Perhaps I would ask Sertis for a tour of his
abattoir out the back sometime. Perhaps I might see or identify something,
a bag, a horn, a leg...some hair...anything which might help solve my
problem of how Sertis had managed to turn something so bland into a dish
so exquisite.
But I knew holy well that he would never tell me. He would never betray
the recipe to an outside family member. Propriety would have dictated that
he would have slit the throat of every live animal and human that he had
out back rather that reveal that. As the offal and the magic ingredient slid
down my throat, my often scarlet imagination suddenly pictured Lavis, four
hands width higher than he was in real life, in a dark cape, a strong jaw
jutting, eyes black as a ravens, nails as sharp as an eagle and teeth as
sharp as mine, standing proud and tall with a magnificent crop of long dark
hair standing next to Savne Kaveller in the House of Conjugation, their
Union about to allow him in to the inner sanctuary of the dark secret world
of Sertis' kitchen...
But Lavis spoilt even that by coughing on a piece of turnip. Being the
closest, Wasis slapped him on his back and cleared it but it brought my
attention back to the table and the four of us continued eating silently. In
the background, a trio of mournful violins filled in the atmosphere. I cast
my eyes over what the nestlings ate, slightly annoyed at the extra cost of
Lavis' meal for Kaveller, I knew, had to buy those revolting and colourful
knots in since his growing licence to farm them out back had been revoked.
And that was only recently, a few months ago I believe. A half woman, the
type we are supposed to socially accommodate nowadays, obviously one of
those New Age types, a vacuous person of probably of no merit
whatsoever, complained that she could taste blood in her clear vegetable
soup. An inspector was called; an examination took place and some blood,
mostly human for dark's sake was discovered to be seeping through some
earth where it had been seeping through to the vegetable patch.
Unfortunately, the examination of his wild yard did not stop there for
several bodies; both human and animal were found in various decomposed
states. Some dead and others in the process of. Those that were dead were
taken away for examination and those that were not he was told to destroy
immediately which he did.
Thankfully, Sertis was allowed to keep those although he was given an
outrageously huge fine some weeks later when it was discovered that the
dead human bodies contained a number of viral organisms. However, as
most of us are immune to many of those, virtually everybody I spoke to
could not see the point of judging and punishing the owner of the grill
house. Except the point really was to bring even more attention to those
kill joys who seem to excel nowadays in upsetting the traditional values so
many of us hold so dear.
And unfortunately, I was sitting next to one of them. Even though he was
my son, I had no idea what he wanted to do with himself. He was so
strange! As I glanced at his powdered face and suit, part of me felt like
eating him and that would dispose of the problem. However, as we are not
allowed to do that (not since the law was changed a hundred and fifty
years ago anyway) and after suffering his weak ways since he was a sickly
child, I had run out of solutions. Probably he would leave and fall in with
some bad lot. I guess he would be dead within a few years.
The main course arrived and its fragrance filled our part of the room while
Lavis covered his white nose in a mock act to annoy me I imagine. Strange
boy because he used to love this dish when he was younger and before he
had these irrelevant and homeless ideas put into him.
Our main meal arrived, a combined dish, Posryava, steaming hot, on a
burnt black bone dish of ribs, edged together to make a seal and was as
huge as a pig's belly, oval and deep and partitioned out into three
compartments. On the right were a heap of golden tongues, eyes and
genitalia of every different species of animal and human we were legally
allowed to eat. To the left were dozens and dozens of mouth-sized grilled
portions of animal and human meats, each with its own wooden forked
stick ready for dipping in the deep brown oily sauce, which moved gently
about in the middle tray. As Savne gently placed the feast on our table, at
least three of us licked our lips with anticipation. Lavis had to wait another
few minutes before his muck arrived.
We three proper members of my family did not stand on ceremony. Sticks
were taken; meat jabbed, dunked in the mouth-watering brain, white-
blood and bone sauce and ate. A previously ordered bottle of warm mixed
blood wine accompanied our meal and after satisfying my hunger with a
few first pieces, I lifted my glass, noticed how opaque and clingy it was, as
it should correctly be and smiled at Quella.
“To you my dearest. May we live forever in propinquity”
“You are getting weak and emotional Broakcan” She smiled with a slight
grimace, her earrings glinting in the glowing green light of the fire
smoldering and occasionally flickering in the hearth. But I could see she
was flattered and her already stained lips became infused with the gently
effervescent quality of the wine. It made her and her irrepressible long dark
hair look even more beautiful than she already was if that were possible.
Lavis’ food arrived and the way Savne banged it down in front of him
should have warranted some sort of reprehensible reply from me but I
hadn’t the mind to do it. Were I serving, I would have done the same.
Quella had also, upon her early arrival, ordered side dishes of eggs and part
of the joy of this particular meal, or one way of enjoying this dish, was
cracking them apart with our front teeth, ripping off their tops before firstly
fully immersing the meat from the plate into their yolks before then
plunging the morsels into the sauce. It was a savage way to eat and not
altogether fully accepted by the so-called more refined members of those
we ate with occasionally but we liked it and we spent some moments
snorting our way around the table.
I was on my third egg when it happened. My normally silent boy spluttered
violently and stood, his chair flying backwards as he grasped his own neck
swaying gently as if a breeze was about him. It was a surreal few
moments, this suited boy spoiling our evening.
He quickly fell to his knees crunching his chin and breaking the sharpest of
his upper front teeth on his own china plate as he crashed downwards
taking most of our food with him. There he was, covered in mostly monk
and animal body parts and still. We were told later that his immediate
unconsciousness had a great deal to do with his non-recovery for if he had
been able to cough, it may have been quite possible to loosen the offending
chunk of undercook carrot.
It is now a week later and Lavis has arisen, deemed not to be allowed to
continue, something I did not contest at the enquiry and therefore been
sold on for meat. The white service at the disassembling theatre went well
enough and many came. Some were even his friends. It is ironic that my
useless offspring’s life, such as it was, was ended by the very same mad
and insane habits which he senselessly promoted. Before he rose, it was
my duty to read the address but there was no prosody of sorrow within my
voice.
My friend Sertis Kaveller found himself under investigation once more but I
did not press charges and nor did Quella impress on me the need to. For I
also knew how she felt about her only son. The truth was, he was just a
wicked and evil boy and he deserved to be sold on. However, as I made it
clear that he was to be sold on outside of Grays, at least there will be no
possibility of any part of him entering into me when we visit Kaveller’s
again in two weeks time for Quella’s one-hundredth birthday. We do plan to
have another son one day.
4.
Revenge.
It
was the look he gave me. That was the look that destroyed me. I waited for the
hurt to go away but it didn’t and I don’t expect it ever will now. That look is
imprinted on my memory, as if a hot knife had been dragged over soft butter.
Indelible.
The
modern fixation of ballroom dancing should not instigate cold-bloodied murder
should it? No, I think of gracefulness,
swishing pretty dresses and elegant curved arms and backs. Not conducive to
murder I would have thought. Not conducive at all. However, the tight rhythms
of foxtrots, waltzes and tangos only remind me now of the tight thin wire I’m
going to use to garrotte his fucking fathead off.
Let
me tell you a little about myself. I acquired the ability to dance more than
forty years ago and people regard me, as I regard myself, as a man of manners
and letters with a clearly defined sense of honour and dignity, which
unfortunately, occasionally goes out of step in our modern world.
It
was my mother who originally insisted that I pop along to the local church
hall, saying it would be good for my social development. I disliked it
intensely for while my old school chums were out having a good free time making
nuisances of themselves as boys should, I was knocking knees with the elderly,
the bony, the baneful, the unfriendly, the fat and the plain of face. However,
after getting physically close enough to women of my own age, close enough to
smell their inexpensive but teasing perfume, I understood the usefulness of the
art and persevered.
Moreover,
after a while, I did understand what my mother had been driving at for it did
turn out to be a clever way to meet and talk to women. Perhaps her aim was to
prevent me from becoming that which society struggled so hard for me to avoid;
bachelorhood. Although my dear Mama is still alive, enjoying the remarkable age
of 104 in private care, I’ll never know now.
Yes
I warmed to it eventually, enjoyed the company of those in the scene and
welcomed the sociability of those who found me bearable as well. Many of their
personalities I’m glad to report were like mine; dapper, primp and proper.
And,
remarkably, considering my leg situation, I found that I was not too bad a
dancer at all. I didn’t have a natural brain ready for dancing but I made up
for that by practising night after night until my feet were sore.
After
a few years, with young Elsie, a wonderful and elegant young lady whom I was
honoured to square up with as a permanent dancing partner, we even won several
cups. Not for a first prize of course for I was never that good on account of my ever so slight limp which
only ever plagued me in the coldest months, the sloppy result of a mean rugby
scum when I was thirteen, but I, and by that, I really mean, Elsie and myself,
earned ourselves several second places in the tournaments we undertook on both
a local and regional level by the time we were in our mid twenties.
The
most agreeable and extreme of those times was some thirty years ago now, once
even reaching third in the Huntsmare Southern England Challenge Cup for our
Argentinean Tango for which we were, at the time, extraordinarily proud. Our
local group or club still has the cup in its possession because a slightly
younger couple won it that evening for their Rumba but our names are still
indelibly etched on it. I wonder how much it will be worth tomorrow?
Yes,
the world of ballroom dancing was a civilised world within a world at the time
and I embraced it with enthusiasm. A world of English tea, thin sandwiches,
polite conversation, goodwill, humour and gentle competition, the kind which
one never finds exhausting but simply serves to gently push a chap forward, to
excel more.
Beside
myself, in our small ensemble, there were a number of fellows. Mostly about my
age, which, in a dozen week’s time, will be seventy although, that information
is a little redundant now. Recently, each of us has slowed down and lost some
of the edge of our performances that we used to give but as our partners have
also matured alongside us, our aging muscles never worried us as I’m sure, it
never worried the ladies concerning our abilities either.
Away
from the dancing we, and by that, I mean Elsie and I felt a strong bond to
three other partners to the extent that we would spend birthdays, bank holidays
and other special occasions together. We were known as the QLBG or the Quick
Legs Barmy Gang and the eight of us spent many, many happy times together in
our early halcyon days, whether that be on holiday together on the Isle of
White or sharing a Christmas dinner with some or even all of their families.
Two
of the partners were really that; partners as in man and wife but the other
pair were, like Elsie and I, just good friends. I’m sure wherever she is, Elsie
would not mind me mentioning this now, so long after but she and I had spent one
glorious (I thought) night making love one Christmas about thirty-five years
ago when we were far younger and foolish but our brief and ardent love came to nothing in the pale light of the next day.
We both agreed, in the most embarrassing of ways that it was probably the dark
sherry in the works Christmas punch that caused us to be so reckless with our
emotions. It was only my second time and apparently, her first and to my
knowledge, her last. I sometimes wonder, if it was me that put her off sex for
the rest of her life. I’ll never know now.
Did
I acknowledge that we worked at the same furniture factory? That was where we
met. Myself as a production manager and she a typist and it was myself that
first invited her along to dance. As mentioned, our indiscretion never happened
again and the incident eventually forgotten. At least by her although she
remained a bright star in my heaven.
So
despite my learning to dance for one reason only, that was the only time that
my original intention bore any fruit. For nothing intimate had ever happened
before, not even a kiss with a spare woman, and certainly, nothing ever
happened again intimately.
Elsie
and myself still spent a great deal of time together growing almost like a
married couple ourselves but a couple who lived apart. For as much as I lived
the gay bachelor life, she remained a spinster in name and manner if not in
traditional disposition. For she was a jolly old thing, always laughing you see
and it's a terrible loss that I now mention her in the past tense. I ate and
sometimes even stayed overnight at her house several times a week, sharing my
pension to help with the food bills and when the incident happened I, at last,
found myself at my most protective.
Two
of our close friends had died within the last ten years, both, thankfully I
suppose, married to each other. In fact the six of us, which remained, were not
surprised when Frank went some three short months after June because they had
been terribly close. Like a pair of swans they were.
But
it broke us as a group and we found that the demise of perhaps the two
strongest characters amongst us was just too much. For one good reason or
another, over the course of two years, the two other couples left the dancing
club and retired, one pair even going to live abroad, leaving Elsie and myself
as the oldest couple on the floor.
And
that’s where the problem lay. My age. I had more than my fair share of
Victorian values pumped into me as a child as one might expect in someone of my
years but however much I tried to temper that with the modern age, I could not.
Manners
to me are everything and almost on a daily basis, I could see the personalities
of those around Elsie and myself being eroded by the lack of them. It was the
young men of course. The-out-of-towners. You could recognise it before they
even opened their mouths, in the flamboyant way they wore their suits and then,
having finally preened and groomed themselves into a fluff, the way they took
themselves onto the floor.
I
had been taught to make sure one’s partner was comfortable and that to obey the
social etiquettes was paramount but these upstarts seemed to have no common
decency within them at all. Moreover, I heard a vicious rumour that many of
them did not actually enjoy dancing with women, which was a serious accusation
to be levelled at anybody.
I
have failed to mention the growth of our club which is not terribly important
to the telling of this story but nevertheless over the many decades that I was
a member, it did of course grow considerably, going from strength to strength
until we had over three hundred members. In fact, by the time the Quick Legs
Barmy Gang finally dissipated, some forty years after we met, I was enjoying
Presidency and the club had moved into ever-spacious premises over four times.
At
the time of my main incident, we were allowed to meet on the first floor hall
of a cosy but modern school at the back of the town hall, a place with a smooth
wooden aged oak floor, a modern kitchen and even a public address system for
our music. So we were more than content and the rent was agreeable to the
extent that I did not have to increase charges which was tolerable to our more
elderly friends.
However,
that was until recently when ballroom dancing became popular once again because
within a few weeks we were inundated with requests to join our cosy little
club. Apparently then, it became the thing to do but it only, in my opinion, brought nothing but undesirables to
the scene. Especially those undesirables about which I have already mentioned.
There were a few complaints but as the young men did nothing wrong, at least
not in the form of being accused of troublemaking although they were certainly
accused of a few other things, there was little my small management committee
could do.
However,
as their numbers swelled over the course of a year, naturally their confidence
grew until many of them began taking to the floor quite openly with each other.
This eventually became too offensive as many of our members imparted to me and
over the course of a few months of the early part of last year, I would
estimate that perhaps half of our current members declared that they would not
be renewing their membership. This was a terribly fractious blow. Not only to
the group for we relied on their membership but for many of them personally as
well for socially, many considered the group to be a second home to them.
Complemental
to this state of confusion and disorder, there
was the incident in the front ladies cloakroom one Saturday evening, which
Elsie should really explain, but as she cannot, I will do my best.
Three
of my most elderly lady members, each of them in their eighties, spoke to me in
some distress one evening imploring me to send someone into the ladies powder
room to eject what they thought was a man. This so astonished me that I
immediately thought that they were playing some form of practical joke but the
intensity of their indignation convinced me quick enough that they were not.
Thinking back, I should have realised immediately for old Mrs White was
incapable of understanding humour on any level.
Calling
Polly, the twenty something granddaughter of Hilda who sat on the door issuing
tickets, I sent her in to see what was what and within moments, the poor young
thing came out with cheeks as red as a pillar-box.
There
certainly was a man in there she informed me...dressing as a woman. At which I
lost no more time and ordered that a policeman be summoned without delay.
However, before he arrived, the female impersonator appeared, much to our
surprise in the hallway and flashed his ticket under my nose demanding to be
let into the main hall which I resolutely refused of course.
An
argument then sprung up between myself and the preening ruffians who were
already inside. His friends. Elsie, who had become aware of the commotion,
thankfully came down from organising the music to support me, as did Hilda. As
there was not a single chance of myself allowing the young lad inside dressed
the way he was, although I offered to return his entrance fee back, our
confrontation was black and prolonged until two policemen arrived and dragged
him away. Neither Elsie or myself ever saw him again.
However,
things did not quieten down that evening and with hindsight being a wonderful
thing, I should have closed down the evening altogether.
The
pederastic men could not blame alcohol for their behaviour
for Albert and Mary behind the bar told me afterwards that they had not drunk
that much. No, I think it was sheer bloody-mindedness that ruined the evening
for me and changed the course of my life.
It
was about nine o'clock when it happened. I was taking a break, letting my leg
rest for a few seconds and was taken the time to sort out the following month’s
program when Eric, our music man put on a Charleston, manly for those younger
members.
As
the tune proceeded, a fair amount of merriment ensued which was good for
everybody but then a shadow began to cover my table and worse, my foot was
suddenly trodden on. As I already had a hammertoe, you can imagine the pain
that caused and my body reacted suddenly and instinctively by kicking out. By
the time I looked up, a fat brute of a man stood over me, his belly almost
filling my field of view. One of the pederasts. It was then that he gave me that
look.
It was one of abject disgust,
as if he were looking at someone else's vomit, laid bare upon his own chest.
Not a startling type of look. More like one he carried around with him, to be
brought out on special occasions. It was a trained look. I was sure, in an
instant, that he had spent many hours or even days perfecting it. Sneering and
repulsive. Such utter buried venomous anger.
With
this on his face, he magnified its effect by bending down until he almost
buried his face in mine. He became so close that, without my glasses, I lost
focus of his puffy and bloated skin. If you kick me again, he warned, then I
will get very nasty. That’s all he said. Each word was deliberate and spat. My
world became him and in those few seconds, nothing else existed. In a heartbeat
I went from being a man to becoming a victim. From behind him I heard some
laughing and one of the owners of one of those laughs touched his shoulder.
So
with his insistence ringing in my shocked ears, he lifted himself up and
resumed to make a fool of himself at a dance in which he was so clearly not cut
out to do. But as he was, and I hesitate to use the term dancing here, moving
and jiggling with three or four far younger men, the laughers, I felt
instinctively that I should keep my peace.
With
the help of a friend, I limped outside to our foyer and Hilda ordered me a cab
assuring me that she and her husband Eric would see to everything. My excuse
was that my foot was playing up. Gratefully, they believed me and within five
minutes or so, I was being driven away after kissing Elsie goodnight.
I
did not sleep. Not one second. That night I hurt him, stood up to him, wiped
the cruelness from his face, humiliated him, beat him down, made a laughing
stock of him. Over and over. In different scenarios and places. I acted for the
men who could not. I broke every rib, every bone, smashed every muscle, beat
him to a pulp. Beat him so thoroughly that he
would never be able do what he did to me ever again to anybody else. I sent him
away in a wheelchair. In my imagination I broke his brain, his spirit and his
soul. Despite not sleeping, the following morning, I was exhausted.
That
might have been the end of it had it not been for yet another incident which
occurred at the very next dance. To this one I was late and it was almost eight
thirty by the time I had arrived.
But
what greeted me was not a hall full of dancing merriment at all but the sight
of Elsie on a stretcher immediately before being driven away to hospital with
an injury on the right side of her face the size of a small oval dinner plate.
Her new gold dress was soaked with blood. Down past her waistline. Loads of it
and I panicked, not understanding what could have caused such an injury. Her
pearls were soaked in it.
I
am unhappy to report that my Elsie died during the night. From an embolism the
doctor said. She had not regained consciousness so that was both a blessing for
her yet a tragedy for me as I never got to say goodbye. The factory girl I
always loved.
The
next day, despite being in shock, I took myself off to Hilda and Eric’s and
gave them the sad news. From Hilda, it spread around our small community like
wildfire and a special notice was sent out to all members whom I thought
relevant giving details of her funeral and suspending the club until further
notice or at least until after she had been laid to rest.
So
it was a month until another club night occurred and I publicised it well. I
wanted to for an evil plan had found me. The local police had of course made a
complete investigation into the events of that awful night but found nothing
out of the ordinary. They concluded that she had slipped in the ladies powder
room and caught her face on one of washbasins as she fell but I became
convinced otherwise.
No
one unfortunately saw it happen but a set of thoughts began to grow within me
and I came to some firm conclusions based upon events, which were only known to
me. To begin with, that night in the foyer with the boy dressed in those
ridiculous clothes, Elsie almost had a straight-up argument with the brute that
I was to face just a week later on the edge of the dance floor. Then, earlier
that week, she had come home in floods of tears, extremely distressed saying
that the very same bully actually pushed her whilst leaving Mr. Jackson’s, the
chemist whilst she was out shopping. When she remonstrated with him and his
friends, the fat one, as she called him, pushed her again causing her to
stumble and hurt her shoulder against some ill-placed railings belonging to
Brunsford Junior School. It was at that point, she said, that he advised her to
never set foot in the club again because they were going to take it over and
that had frightened her more than anything else. By the time she reached home,
she could only manage a little more than gibbering until I forced some brandy
inside her. This was bullying on a monstrous scale.
So
I was convinced that the fat man was to blame. No, I knew it. I knew it in my
heart and as I stood around her grave and watched her being lowered into it,
knowing she was inside the dark oak box, I vowed there and then to extract my
revenge.
My
friends wondered why I continued with the club so quickly. One even took me
aside and gave me a bit of a friendly talking to but I simply assured him that
I was well, that I was grieving in my own way and that I knew that getting the
club back in business would probably be the best thing that Elsie would have
wanted. He believed me and my acting performance surprised even myself for as a
child, I even made a pig’s ear of a sheep in the nativity plays at school.
That
evening went smoothly enough and the fat villain turned up with his sodomitic friends
as usual. I kept a low profile though.
In the middle of my grieving for the only woman I had ever loved, I had done
some research. I had read forbidden books, which I found in the most revolting
of bookshops in London’s West End. I had learnt of their history and of what
the latest English law said of them. I did not dance that evening myself but
firstly preoccupied myself with other mundane duties before excusing myself
telling Hilda I had the beginnings of a cold coming on. She understood
completely of course.
However,
once home, I dressed in darker clothes and slipped out of my driveway in my old
Ford and waited some two hundred yards away from the school entrance for the
crowd to fall out and dissipate.
It
was not at all difficult to follow the fat man and his group for he and four
others took a cab and headed North. Keeping as discrete a distance as I could
comfortably manage, I followed them out towards Wembley where the cab pulled up
outside an exquisitely beautiful Victorian double-fronted house and the five of
them piled out. After the cab had driven away, two of them left immediately,
walking down a hill leaving the fat one and two of his cronies chatting by the
side of the road.
Whether
by luck or design, I was not seen, able to position my small car behind a curve
and a few trees and I was able to perfectly spy on them through my binoculars,
which I had brought along for just that purpose. As I watched, I pulled a thin
grey blanket around me, brought to keep my circulation going.
They
spoke for perhaps five more minutes underneath a streetlamp which happened to
be outside the house before there was a kind of muted hug between the fat one
and the others but then he was suddenly on his own and walking towards me,
obviously heading home by himself.
I
ducked down, covering myself and the ruse was successful for he passed my car
with only the clipping of his shoes sounding out in the still night. After he
passed, I rose, uncovered myself and saw him disappear around a bend. I opened
my car door and crept to the bend, edging around it, following him. As it was,
I did not have far to go to test my nerves.
He
entered a large shabby house, perhaps Edwardian, perhaps later and as he
disappeared inside, I crept to the other side of it and slowly walked past.
Soon the sight of the top right windows becoming illuminated rewarded me and
the shadow of a fat person became silhouetted against them. Now I knew.
Crossing
the road, I walked back and with my heart in my mouth, walked to the front
door, which was not such a bold thing to do really as it was inky dark and
there was plenty of cover provided by trees and bushes.
I
saw four buttons. Four flats. One and two would be ground floor so the pig
either lived at three or four. It was enough for one evening. The drifting
sound of a band came to my ears and from the general direction above me. Enjoy
it for now fat pig I mumbled.
I
was back again at six the next morning and now, what with autumn leaves filling
the road, a gusty wind tossing them and everything else about and some gay
sunlight, not only did I feel stronger in my purpose, as if the day was
energising me, but happier somehow.
Again, I had not slept but I had planned. And also done something that I had not done since leaving the Army; I had shaved off my moustache. I had to admit, it did take a few years off me and with my father’s old cap pulled down close over my eyes, my appearance was greatly altered. Altered enough for me to trail the pig by bus when he left for work. Altered enough for me to follo