What else there but meandering like cattle from one bar to the next, out one door and in through another? Often I couldn't help but wonder what the point was. I could imagine the fun one might have had doing it of one's own free will, as I'd done initially, but enough was enough.
"Kinderton!" I barked assertively. He ignored me, humming something to himself. They might have been words, or a commerical jingle left over from the old days of hedonism or just a general stagnant mumble. What difference did it really make? He wasn't listening.
"Kinderton! How many more of these fucking places do we have to go through?" I shouted, my will to drink suddenly shattered. "What is the point of all this?" (This, I whispered to myself sotto voce) but he heard me anyway and stopped, spun on his heel and faced me.
"Marsaw, need I remind you that it was your idea initially to go out and have some drinks?"
"Kinderton, that was daaaaays ago. A few drinks I suggested, not an ocean of drinks I would float along on in a rubber raft with a can of beer in my hand. Don't you think we're taking this too far?"
(And yes, by this point I'd begun to suspect that Kinderton was behind all of this somehow, all the strange coincidences were not at all rather they were fabrications of Kinderton's mind which I'd somehow gotten dragged in to. That was my theory at the moment anyway.)
Kinderton pulled out two chairs from the shadows and set them down between us. "Have a seat, Marsaw." Solemn, hmmm. Kinderton wearing a mask of inutterable profanities.
We both sat down and faced each other. Kinderton shouted out for a pitcher of Margueritas and when I gave him a quizzical look because he was constantly ordering strange drinks which required straws, he shouted again: "And a dozen shots of Tequila..." Kinderton leaned down towards me. "Happy now, Marsaw?"
We sat wordlessly whilst waiting for the drinks to be served. A man wearing no shirt and in fact, nothing but a pair of chaps, scurried towards us with a heavy tray and only just managed to plop it down on the table before spilling it completely and cruelly. His brow was sweating. He was nearly hypervenitlating. He twitched in front of us for a few lingering seconds more and then tapped his right fingers on the table top and twirled off back towards the bar.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
There was no music in the background, no DJ, no band, no jukebox, no humming. Just human chatter. Insect chatter. I could see it clearly, a bar full of Praying Mantis' drinking grasshoppers and twitching their spiked forelegs, articulating their prothoraxis'. No wonder there was no music. They were dressed in matching pieces of beach clothes. When a beach ball bounced in it was immediately burst by the first Praying Mantis to try to grab it with a spiked foreleg. Pop! That sent them all askitter. It unnerved them. But eventually they returned to their grasshoppers and calmed.
"I sense that you are beginning to resent me a little bit Marsaw, as though you somehow held me to blame for your situation." Kinderton had suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was the burst beach ball which prompted him to speak.
"Well? Is it just chance?"
Kinderton held up a finger and bowed his head.
"You have to remember Marsaw that I was the one who found you out there, stumbling, lost, knowing nothing of yourself. Remember that I've taken you only as a guide. I am not leading you. If your thirst for drink was really abated, the door you opened would have taken you directly back outside. It is yourself who is keeping these doors opening to the next bar. Not me."
"Well, let's just try it now then..." I stood up. Kinderton stood up..
"Ok Marsaw, let's go..."
We walked purposefully, with me in the lead, towards the stairs leading to the front door. We mounted the stairs one by one, dripping with anticipation. I pushed open the swinging front doors, holding my breath, expecting the best.
We walked down the steps, one by one into a place called "The Pipe and Slippers", a fading wallpaper, cigarette-stained carpeting, dour lighting sort of place which opressed you from the first step in.
*****
You could feel the heaviness of boredom and resignation in the air like a black bean soup.
"Has every single person in here already surrendered?" I asked through the side of my mouth at Kinderton but Kinderton was no longer at my side. I stopped. I looked behind me. For the first time I wondered what would happen if I pushed the doors back open from the bar I'd come from. Would I return to that bar or would I simply disappear? Or maybe that was the trick to getting out!
I scurried back to the door and pushed it again.
I fell into a revolving door which had no exit but back into the foyer of "The Pipe and Slippers".
Ten heads turned simultaneously again at my arrival. I must have missed it the first time. They held my gaze for a second and then bowed their heads toward their pints again.
I thought I could hear Boz Scaggs coming from the juke box. Boz Scaggs. I shook my head.
I arrived to the bar itself, a typical semi-circle wherein the bar man was trapped with his towel of damp and mold and his sardonic grin.
I examined the taps to see what was available while the bar man allowed his face to morph into a brow of scepticism. I was miffed. The beer was shit. I wasn't surprised, I told myself quietly. I will not express my displeasure.
The bar man wasn't fooled.
"You're lucky that you're not in a red neck bar in Alabama or some place. There even Budweiser would be treated as some sort of suspicious intelekshall beer. Water with a trace of alcohol in it. Tasteless. Nothing foreign in it. You know? But here you are with the opportunity to drink some fine British lager. Now what'll it be?"
"What about bottled beer? I hate drinking out of bottles because good beer is not served in bottles very often but if it might net me the rare good beer, why I think I'd make an exception this time..."
The bar man wasn't impressed. He sighed and threw his dish rag over his shoulder for emphasis of his displeasure.
"We're all out of bottles, mate."
"I see." It was an extraordinarily aggressive conversation. From the bar man's end anyway. Belligerent. "Well in that case, Oyed lurv a pint of cider mate."
I fiddled with a tooth pick and wondered what I was doing. I was on auto pilot but I was wondering why and when I would want to come out of auto pilot and steer myself.
"So you really don't recognise me then?" the bar man slurred, slapping the pint of cider in front of me. It splashed outwards as if a frog had just lept into it. Maybe he'd actually slammed it down in front of me. It was not easy to say. Besides, I was already on my back foot from being accused of having failed to recognise him.
"What, do you mean have I been in here before? No. I don't think so. Do you sometimes work somewhere else? Perhaps we know each other from somewhere in the good old knee slapping days?"
"You'll see, Kinderton." He muttered, turning his back to me. "You'll see."
I turned to my cider and lifted it up to my lips. There is no world here. I am dreaming. If I tell myself this often enough perhaps I can allow myself to believe it. No one in this place was particularly chatty. They barely spoke even among themselves. One of them farted loudly and giggled to himself with pride. He tapped the arms of his mates. "Did you see? Did you see?"
Kinderton was suddenly standing beside me puffing on a cigar.
"So how are you getting on with the lads then?"
"Smashingly, Kinderton. The bar man seems on the verge of wanting to punch me in the face and thinks that I'm supposed ot know him from somewhere."
"You mean Barry?"
"Barry?"
"Barry, think about it..." He signaled for a snifter of Rumplemintz and opened a newspaper written in Cyrillic.
Barry Butterfield. He was burning crosses somewhere. No, They were flashlights. Dozens of flashlights waving up and down as they pushed through the foliage. They were looking for something. A lost child? No. An elephant? No.
They are looking for a field of butter. I was watching them in a hot air balloon, hovering over the clearing which awaited them.
Barry Butterfield led them out and they stood in the clearing and laughed to themselves joyously.
Suddenly from the wood came a Humvee hurtling headlights blaring, foot-to-the-floor speed, music pounding madly from enormous speakers and before anyone could break their fascination with the suddenness and inexplicability of what was happening, the Humvee rolled right over Barry Butterfield, squashed him right into the ground like a muffin and continued hurtling forward until it plunged back into the wood on the other side.
I am driving over small trees, steering around the larger ones as often as possible?
Did I really do that? Did I just run Barry Butterfield down?
I howled with laughter. The music was shouting out of the radio and I was shouting the occasional word or hook line I knew and in one hand the steering wheel, the other a bottle of cheap wine.
Barry Butterfield.
But if that was him, the bar man, well, he didn't seem that bad off. He didn't have a limp, he didn't flinch when an insect buzzed near his head. He didn't have any hideously visible scars and he wasn't bleeding from anywhere that I could see.
"Holy hockey sticks, Batman," I said, turning suddenly to Kinderton and gently easing his newspaper from down around his face. "How come did he...survive? I mean, he looks fine."
"Listen chum, I am not the ghost of Christmas past. I am not standing here reading about oil shortages and brown outs so I can make you relive your ugliest pasts. I've got real concerns about some of these wars, Out there. So whatever you've dreamed up in your little head, well it's just your imagination playing tricks on you. You're probably just not drinking fast enough."
"So is that Barry Butterfield or not?"
"Barry Butterfield is dead. That's not him. That's his replacement. But his replacement has Barry Butterfield's memories to keep him company from an otherwise empty history."
"So is that how Barry Butterfield died? I ran him down in the middle of the night in clearing within a forest? In a Humvee?"
"Well, I think it was on a highway. I think he was walking down the highway humming to himself with a gas can in his hand, walking back to his car stranded on the side of the road. You want to see pictures of his family?" Kinderton reached behind to his back pocket.
"No, no, that's certainly not necessary."
"This is where you wanted to be, man. Sitting in here drinking. So drink. If you drink fast enough and long enough that little pinch of a memory you just had will float right back out of you as quickly as it entered."
I wasn't enjoying my cider any more. Or was I?
I took a few more sips, just to test if I was still enjoying it or not. Yes. I was still enjoying it. I slurped it up like a dog. "More cider!" I squeeled. Kinderton smiled to himself knowingly, putting the newpaper back up in front of his face.
*********
I must have done alot of things to repress. It was becoming a little clearer by the third pint of cider.
That must be how I lost my memory of who I am. It's all in here somewhere. It's just like that fucking door that I can't use to get outside.
I have a fourth and fifth cider and even Kinderton raised his eyebrows with the speed with which they were knocked back.
The Barry Butterfield replacement bar man did not warm to me. He stared at me quite often which only made me drink faster. He seemed to be waiting for any excuse he could muster to smack me in the side of the head, punch me in the face, kick me in the kidney.
"Look, I regret it but well, maybe it was meant to be. You know I heard this story about Peter standing there with a little checklist of death. It's probably on a spread sheet to make the searches for every man's death day a little easier and quicker. Alot of work to do every day. Alot of dying. Alot of killing. But the date and time is predestined. You see? I was only performing as an instrument of fate."
Kinderton held up his hand because the Barry Butterfield replacement bar man was suddenly clenched like a fist of righteousness and listing heavily in my direction.
"Marsaw, I think it'd be better if we moved on from here. It's clear you're getting nothing out of this. Jesus, the audacity! To suggest that you were only a vehicle of fate! I've been doing this for years Marsaw but I have to say, you've got some serious fucking problems. You may have forgotten them for now but they won't go away. Real fucking problems. Do you see where you are? It's a prison."
He took me by the elbow and we walked back through the front door again only this time it wasn't a revolving door and this time we just walked out, into a wood on a winding road and then suddenly we were in an Inn.
*********
(possible rejoindre notes)
The synoptic gap is some sort of river running through Croatia, outside of Zagreb.
Before we embark upon it there is a terrible evening storm, dark punctuated only by lightening.
Think of that place outside of Zagreb in the mountains and they will be eating cheese and drinking beer in a river side
Café waiting for the timetable of the boat wearing they will traverse through marsaw’s own memories
Picture first the place, the discussion how much is explained
Then picture the ferryman, the boat, the night, the rain, the grass, the trees (types of trees)
Look for this café you frequented outside of Zagreb for photos use names.
*****
It's dark but we're out of the clubs, or so I thought. We open the door into another room and from there, Kinderton suggests that we look for a seat outside for a change of scenery.
The room we enter is homespun, rustic, foreign. I don't recognise the language of any of the signs that dot the walls and the black and white framed photos have no meaning for me. I recognise nothing yet it feels homely, it feels as though there is something infinitley less desperate and inhospitable. I'm grateful to be here for the change.
There are a few old men sat around a table speaking a language I don't know. A pair are playing checkers. Another pair are playing chess. They are all eating cheese plates and drinking beer and smoking, laughing.
the room is carpeted with a big fireplace as though it is meant to be a place of warmth from the cold outdoors. To me it feels like warmth anyway, a home I don't recognise and don't know but a home nonetheless.
I want to stay inside but Kinderton is rather insistent that we go outdoors. You don't want to mix with these people, believe me, he says, nodding to the fat older woman with too much make up and a bad red hair dye, clearly the unfortunate wife of the proprietor.
She pours too large beers and motions for us to wait outside.
"We need to be out here to see when the ferry arrives," Kinderton explains as we head out.
"What ferry?"
"The ferry we will be taking to our next destination..."
The air swallows me immediately. I feel as though I had not breathed in fresh air in years and for all I know, I had been indoors for years. I didn't know where I was or what year this was.
Rain slashes across the desk with a heavy wind. Wooden wind chimes go crazy in the background.
"Is it a beer ferry?" I asked, squinching my eyes as though temporarily blinded by a sunset.
"Oh no. The beer ferry is for reprobates and pederasts. The boat is always getting sunk. Mysteriously, of course. No other boats but the beer boats sink. Somebody suggested that it might be secret torpedoes fired from the synapses but those alleging it have provided tiny microscopic hairs of evidence, nothing substantial enough to involve the Cadre of Beer Makers who undoubtedly dislike the imagery that has been tied to their ferry."
"So which ferry are we riding on then?"
"You'll see. Drink your beer as quickly as possible. It fends off the rain. Don't ask me why. I think I read this in a paperback." He shouted something in a gutteral whisper to the inside, presumably to the bar maid. He barks. Drool forms at the right corner of his lip like a fang.
We sit silently trying to imagine that the blowing rain was not spatternig us like an ignorant puppy.
******
The sensory experiences are overwhelming. And the repetition gets boring. I crave a drinkless hole somewhere in a desert. Just water. Outdoors in the dry heat not outdoors in driving rain.
Kinderton continually nags me about my beer as though I'm straining to break from the pack and carry the ball all the way into a dark crevice through which I can exit on the outside.
Nobody finds solace in all this drinking. They are mimicking life in a series of unending caverns lit by the fiery eyes of the angry drunks. The shadows are hunched shoulders, like a buzzard oversees management of the scene, They were furry tongued with drink, slouched, lost in thoughts. What thoughts? Who knows. Miserable thoughts, no doubt. You can't make faces of pure misery in that shape if you aren't thinking miserable thoughts.
And here they are, everywhere, shuffling into each other like zombies. Drunken, fucked up zombies who don't want to eat human flesh they want to drink alcohol. any kind, all the time, in any form. They prowl around in circles around bar and at times I imagine I can see that they have furry hind legs they are standing on beneath their clothing. Of course it could certainly be my imagination. No matter how much drinking dulls the senses.
The rain is too loud to hear the ferry approaching but it uses lights. There are strobe lights attached to the front of the ferry announcing the arrival. Battery operated strobe lights. And in the darkness, in the stench of the driving rain that filled my nostrils with disgust, I saw those strobe lights approaching.
I snuffed out a cigarette and found myself impulsively straightening my clothes. Kinderton smiled to himself, exhaling a bluish stream of
Thursday 12 May 2011
What else there but meandering like cattle from one bar to the next, out one door and in through another? Often I couldn't help but wonder what the point was. I could imagine the fun one might have had doing it of one's own free will, as I'd done initially, but enough was enough.
"Kinderton!" I barked assertively. He ignored me, humming something to himself. They might have been words, or a commerical jingle left over from the old days of hedonism or just a general stagnant mumble. What difference did it really make? He wasn't listening.
"Kinderton! How many more of these fucking places do we have to go through?" I shouted, my will to drink suddenly shattered. "What is the point of all this?" (This, I whispered to myself sotto voce) but he heard me anyway and stopped, spun on his heel and faced me.
"Marsaw, need I remind you that it was your idea initially to go out and have some drinks?"
"Kinderton, that was daaaaays ago. A few drinks I suggested, not an ocean of drinks I would float along on in a rubber raft with a can of beer in my hand. Don't you think we're taking this too far?"
(And yes, by this point I'd begun to suspect that Kinderton was behind all of this somehow, all the strange coincidences were not at all rather they were fabrications of Kinderton's mind which I'd somehow gotten dragged in to. That was my theory at the moment anyway.)
Kinderton pulled out two chairs from the shadows and set them down between us. "Have a seat, Marsaw." Solemn, hmmm. Kinderton wearing a mask of inutterable profanities.
We both sat down and faced each other. Kinderton shouted out for a pitcher of Margueritas and when I gave him a quizzical look because he was constantly ordering strange drinks which required straws, he shouted again: "And a dozen shots of Tequila..." Kinderton leaned down towards me. "Happy now, Marsaw?"
We sat wordlessly whilst waiting for the drinks to be served. A man wearing no shirt and in fact, nothing but a pair of chaps, scurried towards us with a heavy tray and only just managed to plop it down on the table before spilling it completely and cruelly. His brow was sweating. He was nearly hypervenitlating. He twitched in front of us for a few lingering seconds more and then tapped his right fingers on the table top and twirled off back towards the bar.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
There was no music in the background, no DJ, no band, no jukebox, no humming. Just human chatter. Insect chatter. I could see it clearly, a bar full of Praying Mantis' drinking grasshoppers and twitching their spiked forelegs, articulating their prothoraxis'. No wonder there was no music. They were dressed in matching pieces of beach clothes. When a beach ball bounced in it was immediately burst by the first Praying Mantis to try to grab it with a spiked foreleg. Pop! That sent them all askitter. It unnerved them. But eventually they returned to their grasshoppers and calmed.
"I sense that you are beginning to resent me a little bit Marsaw, as though you somehow held me to blame for your situation." Kinderton had suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was the burst beach ball which prompted him to speak.
"Well? Is it just chance?"
Kinderton held up a finger and bowed his head.
"You have to remember Marsaw that I was the one who found you out there, stumbling, lost, knowing nothing of yourself. Remember that I've taken you only as a guide. I am not leading you. If your thirst for drink was really abated, the door you opened would have taken you directly back outside. It is yourself who is keeping these doors opening to the next bar. Not me."
"Well, let's just try it now then..." I stood up. Kinderton stood up..
"Ok Marsaw, let's go..."
We walked purposefully, with me in the lead, towards the stairs leading to the front door. We mounted the stairs one by one, dripping with anticipation. I pushed open the swinging front doors, holding my breath, expecting the best.
We walked down the steps, one by one into a place called "The Pipe and Slippers", a fading wallpaper, cigarette-stained carpeting, dour lighting sort of place which opressed you from the first step in.
*****
You could feel the heaviness of boredom and resignation in the air like a black bean soup.
"Has every single person in here already surrendered?" I asked through the side of my mouth at Kinderton but Kinderton was no longer at my side. I stopped. I looked behind me. For the first time I wondered what would happen if I pushed the doors back open from the bar I'd come from. Would I return to that bar or would I simply disappear? Or maybe that was the trick to getting out!
I scurried back to the door and pushed it again.
I fell into a revolving door which had no exit but back into the foyer of "The Pipe and Slippers".
Ten heads turned simultaneously again at my arrival. I must have missed it the first time. They held my gaze for a second and then bowed their heads toward their pints again.
I thought I could hear Boz Scaggs coming from the juke box. Boz Scaggs. I shook my head.
I arrived to the bar itself, a typical semi-circle wherein the bar man was trapped with his towel of damp and mold and his sardonic grin.
I examined the taps to see what was available while the bar man allowed his face to morph into a brow of scepticism. I was miffed. The beer was shit. I wasn't surprised, I told myself quietly. I will not express my displeasure.
The bar man wasn't fooled.
"You're lucky that you're not in a red neck bar in Alabama or some place. There even Budweiser would be treated as some sort of suspicious intelekshall beer. Water with a trace of alcohol in it. Tasteless. Nothing foreign in it. You know? But here you are with the opportunity to drink some fine British lager. Now what'll it be?"
"What about bottled beer? I hate drinking out of bottles because good beer is not served in bottles very often but if it might net me the rare good beer, why I think I'd make an exception this time..."
The bar man wasn't impressed. He sighed and threw his dish rag over his shoulder for emphasis of his displeasure.
"We're all out of bottles, mate."
"I see." It was an extraordinarily aggressive conversation. From the bar man's end anyway. Belligerent. "Well in that case, Oyed lurv a pint of cider mate."
I fiddled with a tooth pick and wondered what I was doing. I was on auto pilot but I was wondering why and when I would want to come out of auto pilot and steer myself.
"So you really don't recognise me then?" the bar man slurred, slapping the pint of cider in front of me. It splashed outwards as if a frog had just lept into it. Maybe he'd actually slammed it down in front of me. It was not easy to say. Besides, I was already on my back foot from being accused of having failed to recognise him.
"What, do you mean have I been in here before? No. I don't think so. Do you sometimes work somewhere else? Perhaps we know each other from somewhere in the good old knee slapping days?"
"You'll see, Kinderton." He muttered, turning his back to me. "You'll see."
I turned to my cider and lifted it up to my lips. There is no world here. I am dreaming. If I tell myself this often enough perhaps I can allow myself to believe it. No one in this place was particularly chatty. They barely spoke even among themselves. One of them farted loudly and giggled to himself with pride. He tapped the arms of his mates. "Did you see? Did you see?"
Kinderton was suddenly standing beside me puffing on a cigar.
"So how are you getting on with the lads then?"
"Smashingly, Kinderton. The bar man seems on the verge of wanting to punch me in the face and thinks that I'm supposed ot know him from somewhere."
"You mean Barry?"
"Barry?"
"Barry, think about it..." He signaled for a snifter of Rumplemintz and opened a newspaper written in Cyrillic.
Barry Butterfield. He was burning crosses somewhere. No, They were flashlights. Dozens of flashlights waving up and down as they pushed through the foliage. They were looking for something. A lost child? No. An elephant? No.
They are looking for a field of butter. I was watching them in a hot air balloon, hovering over the clearing which awaited them.
Barry Butterfield led them out and they stood in the clearing and laughed to themselves joyously.
Suddenly from the wood came a Humvee hurtling headlights blaring, foot-to-the-floor speed, music pounding madly from enormous speakers and before anyone could break their fascination with the suddenness and inexplicability of what was happening, the Humvee rolled right over Barry Butterfield, squashed him right into the ground like a muffin and continued hurtling forward until it plunged back into the wood on the other side.
I am driving over small trees, steering around the larger ones as often as possible?
Did I really do that? Did I just run Barry Butterfield down?
I howled with laughter. The music was shouting out of the radio and I was shouting the occasional word or hook line I knew and in one hand the steering wheel, the other a bottle of cheap wine.
Barry Butterfield.
But if that was him, the bar man, well, he didn't seem that bad off. He didn't have a limp, he didn't flinch when an insect buzzed near his head. He didn't have any hideously visible scars and he wasn't bleeding from anywhere that I could see.
"Holy hockey sticks, Batman," I said, turning suddenly to Kinderton and gently easing his newspaper from down around his face. "How come did he...survive? I mean, he looks fine."
"Listen chum, I am not the ghost of Christmas past. I am not standing here reading about oil shortages and brown outs so I can make you relive your ugliest pasts. I've got real concerns about some of these wars, Out there. So whatever you've dreamed up in your little head, well it's just your imagination playing tricks on you. You're probably just not drinking fast enough."
"So is that Barry Butterfield or not?"
"Barry Butterfield is dead. That's not him. That's his replacement. But his replacement has Barry Butterfield's memories to keep him company from an otherwise empty history."
"So is that how Barry Butterfield died? I ran him down in the middle of the night in clearing within a forest? In a Humvee?"
"Well, I think it was on a highway. I think he was walking down the highway humming to himself with a gas can in his hand, walking back to his car stranded on the side of the road. You want to see pictures of his family?" Kinderton reached behind to his back pocket.
"No, no, that's certainly not necessary."
"This is where you wanted to be, man. Sitting in here drinking. So drink. If you drink fast enough and long enough that little pinch of a memory you just had will float right back out of you as quickly as it entered."
I wasn't enjoying my cider any more. Or was I?
I took a few more sips, just to test if I was still enjoying it or not. Yes. I was still enjoying it. I slurped it up like a dog. "More cider!" I squeeled. Kinderton smiled to himself knowingly, putting the newpaper back up in front of his face.
*********
I must have done alot of things to repress. It was becoming a little clearer by the third pint of cider.
That must be how I lost my memory of who I am. It's all in here somewhere. It's just like that fucking door that I can't use to get outside.
I have a fourth and fifth cider and even Kinderton raised his eyebrows with the speed with which they were knocked back.
The Barry Butterfield replacement bar man did not warm to me. He stared at me quite often which only made me drink faster. He seemed to be waiting for any excuse he could muster to smack me in the side of the head, punch me in the face, kick me in the kidney.
"Look, I regret it but well, maybe it was meant to be. You know I heard this story about Peter standing there with a little checklist of death. It's probably on a spread sheet to make the searches for every man's death day a little easier and quicker. Alot of work to do every day. Alot of dying. Alot of killing. But the date and time is predestined. You see? I was only performing as an instrument of fate."
Kinderton held up his hand because the Barry Butterfield replacement bar man was suddenly clenched like a fist of righteousness and listing heavily in my direction.
"Marsaw, I think it'd be better if we moved on from here. It's clear you're getting nothing out of this. Jesus, the audacity! To suggest that you were only a vehicle of fate! I've been doing this for years Marsaw but I have to say, you've got some serious fucking problems. You may have forgotten them for now but they won't go away. Real fucking problems. Do you see where you are? It's a prison."
He took me by the elbow and we walked back through the front door again only this time it wasn't a revolving door and this time we just walked out, into a wood on a winding road and then suddenly we were in an Inn.
*********
(possible rejoindre notes)
The synoptic gap is some sort of river running through Croatia, outside of Zagreb.
Before we embark upon it there is a terrible evening storm, dark punctuated only by lightening.
Think of that place outside of Zagreb in the mountains and they will be eating cheese and drinking beer in a river side
Café waiting for the timetable of the boat wearing they will traverse through marsaw’s own memories
Picture first the place, the discussion how much is explained
Then picture the ferryman, the boat, the night, the rain, the grass, the trees (types of trees)
Look for this café you frequented outside of Zagreb for photos use names.
*****
It's dark but we're out of the clubs, or so I thought. We open the door into another room and from there, Kinderton suggests that we look for a seat outside for a change of scenery.
The room we enter is homespun, rustic, foreign. I don't recognise the language of any of the signs that dot the walls and the black and white framed photos have no meaning for me. I recognise nothing yet it feels homely, it feels as though there is something infinitley less desperate and inhospitable. I'm grateful to be here for the change.
There are a few old men sat around a table speaking a language I don't know. A pair are playing checkers. Another pair are playing chess. They are all eating cheese plates and drinking beer and smoking, laughing.
the room is carpeted with a big fireplace as though it is meant to be a place of warmth from the cold outdoors. To me it feels like warmth anyway, a home I don't recognise and don't know but a home nonetheless.
I want to stay inside but Kinderton is rather insistent that we go outdoors. You don't want to mix with these people, believe me, he says, nodding to the fat older woman with too much make up and a bad red hair dye, clearly the unfortunate wife of the proprietor.
She pours too large beers and motions for us to wait outside.
"We need to be out here to see when the ferry arrives," Kinderton explains as we head out.
"What ferry?"
"The ferry we will be taking to our next destination..."
The air swallows me immediately. I feel as though I had not breathed in fresh air in years and for all I know, I had been indoors for years. I didn't know where I was or what year this was.
Rain slashes across the desk with a heavy wind. Wooden wind chimes go crazy in the background.
"Is it a beer ferry?" I asked, squinching my eyes as though temporarily blinded by a sunset.
"Oh no. The beer ferry is for reprobates and pederasts. The boat is always getting sunk. Mysteriously, of course. No other boats but the beer boats sink. Somebody suggested that it might be secret torpedoes fired from the synapses but those alleging it have provided tiny microscopic hairs of evidence, nothing substantial enough to involve the Cadre of Beer Makers who undoubtedly dislike the imagery that has been tied to their ferry."
"So which ferry are we riding on then?"
"You'll see. Drink your beer as quickly as possible. It fends off the rain. Don't ask me why. I think I read this in a paperback." He shouted something in a gutteral whisper to the inside, presumably to the bar maid. He barks. Drool forms at the right corner of his lip like a fang.
We sit silently trying to imagine that the blowing rain was not spatternig us like an ignorant puppy.
******
The sensory experiences are overwhelming. And the repetition gets boring. I crave a drinkless hole somewhere in a desert. Just water. Outdoors in the dry heat not outdoors in driving rain.
Kinderton continually nags me about my beer as though I'm straining to break from the pack and carry the ball all the way into a dark crevice through which I can exit on the outside.
Nobody finds solace in all this drinking. They are mimicking life in a series of unending caverns lit by the fiery eyes of the angry drunks. The shadows are hunched shoulders, like a buzzard oversees management of the scene, They were furry tongued with drink, slouched, lost in thoughts. What thoughts? Who knows. Miserable thoughts, no doubt. You can't make faces of pure misery in that shape if you aren't thinking miserable thoughts.
And here they are, everywhere, shuffling into each other like zombies. Drunken, fucked up zombies who don't want to eat human flesh they want to drink alcohol. any kind, all the time, in any form. They prowl around in circles around bar and at times I imagine I can see that they have furry hind legs they are standing on beneath their clothing. Of course it could certainly be my imagination. No matter how much drinking dulls the senses.
The rain is too loud to hear the ferry approaching but it uses lights. There are strobe lights attached to the front of the ferry announcing the arrival. Battery operated strobe lights. And in the darkness, in the stench of the driving rain that filled my nostrils with disgust, I saw those strobe lights approaching.
I snuffed out a cigarette and found myself impulsively straightening my clothes. Kinderton smiled to himself, exhaling a bluish stream of
"Kinderton!" I barked assertively. He ignored me, humming something to himself. They might have been words, or a commerical jingle left over from the old days of hedonism or just a general stagnant mumble. What difference did it really make? He wasn't listening.
"Kinderton! How many more of these fucking places do we have to go through?" I shouted, my will to drink suddenly shattered. "What is the point of all this?" (This, I whispered to myself sotto voce) but he heard me anyway and stopped, spun on his heel and faced me.
"Marsaw, need I remind you that it was your idea initially to go out and have some drinks?"
"Kinderton, that was daaaaays ago. A few drinks I suggested, not an ocean of drinks I would float along on in a rubber raft with a can of beer in my hand. Don't you think we're taking this too far?"
(And yes, by this point I'd begun to suspect that Kinderton was behind all of this somehow, all the strange coincidences were not at all rather they were fabrications of Kinderton's mind which I'd somehow gotten dragged in to. That was my theory at the moment anyway.)
Kinderton pulled out two chairs from the shadows and set them down between us. "Have a seat, Marsaw." Solemn, hmmm. Kinderton wearing a mask of inutterable profanities.
We both sat down and faced each other. Kinderton shouted out for a pitcher of Margueritas and when I gave him a quizzical look because he was constantly ordering strange drinks which required straws, he shouted again: "And a dozen shots of Tequila..." Kinderton leaned down towards me. "Happy now, Marsaw?"
We sat wordlessly whilst waiting for the drinks to be served. A man wearing no shirt and in fact, nothing but a pair of chaps, scurried towards us with a heavy tray and only just managed to plop it down on the table before spilling it completely and cruelly. His brow was sweating. He was nearly hypervenitlating. He twitched in front of us for a few lingering seconds more and then tapped his right fingers on the table top and twirled off back towards the bar.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
We sipped our Margueritas silently until Kinderton pushed a shot of Tequila towards me. He lifted his glass and popped it down his throat. His face remained statuesque. I followed suit.
There was no music in the background, no DJ, no band, no jukebox, no humming. Just human chatter. Insect chatter. I could see it clearly, a bar full of Praying Mantis' drinking grasshoppers and twitching their spiked forelegs, articulating their prothoraxis'. No wonder there was no music. They were dressed in matching pieces of beach clothes. When a beach ball bounced in it was immediately burst by the first Praying Mantis to try to grab it with a spiked foreleg. Pop! That sent them all askitter. It unnerved them. But eventually they returned to their grasshoppers and calmed.
"I sense that you are beginning to resent me a little bit Marsaw, as though you somehow held me to blame for your situation." Kinderton had suddenly exhaled. Perhaps it was the burst beach ball which prompted him to speak.
"Well? Is it just chance?"
Kinderton held up a finger and bowed his head.
"You have to remember Marsaw that I was the one who found you out there, stumbling, lost, knowing nothing of yourself. Remember that I've taken you only as a guide. I am not leading you. If your thirst for drink was really abated, the door you opened would have taken you directly back outside. It is yourself who is keeping these doors opening to the next bar. Not me."
"Well, let's just try it now then..." I stood up. Kinderton stood up..
"Ok Marsaw, let's go..."
We walked purposefully, with me in the lead, towards the stairs leading to the front door. We mounted the stairs one by one, dripping with anticipation. I pushed open the swinging front doors, holding my breath, expecting the best.
We walked down the steps, one by one into a place called "The Pipe and Slippers", a fading wallpaper, cigarette-stained carpeting, dour lighting sort of place which opressed you from the first step in.
*****
You could feel the heaviness of boredom and resignation in the air like a black bean soup.
"Has every single person in here already surrendered?" I asked through the side of my mouth at Kinderton but Kinderton was no longer at my side. I stopped. I looked behind me. For the first time I wondered what would happen if I pushed the doors back open from the bar I'd come from. Would I return to that bar or would I simply disappear? Or maybe that was the trick to getting out!
I scurried back to the door and pushed it again.
I fell into a revolving door which had no exit but back into the foyer of "The Pipe and Slippers".
Ten heads turned simultaneously again at my arrival. I must have missed it the first time. They held my gaze for a second and then bowed their heads toward their pints again.
I thought I could hear Boz Scaggs coming from the juke box. Boz Scaggs. I shook my head.
I arrived to the bar itself, a typical semi-circle wherein the bar man was trapped with his towel of damp and mold and his sardonic grin.
I examined the taps to see what was available while the bar man allowed his face to morph into a brow of scepticism. I was miffed. The beer was shit. I wasn't surprised, I told myself quietly. I will not express my displeasure.
The bar man wasn't fooled.
"You're lucky that you're not in a red neck bar in Alabama or some place. There even Budweiser would be treated as some sort of suspicious intelekshall beer. Water with a trace of alcohol in it. Tasteless. Nothing foreign in it. You know? But here you are with the opportunity to drink some fine British lager. Now what'll it be?"
"What about bottled beer? I hate drinking out of bottles because good beer is not served in bottles very often but if it might net me the rare good beer, why I think I'd make an exception this time..."
The bar man wasn't impressed. He sighed and threw his dish rag over his shoulder for emphasis of his displeasure.
"We're all out of bottles, mate."
"I see." It was an extraordinarily aggressive conversation. From the bar man's end anyway. Belligerent. "Well in that case, Oyed lurv a pint of cider mate."
I fiddled with a tooth pick and wondered what I was doing. I was on auto pilot but I was wondering why and when I would want to come out of auto pilot and steer myself.
"So you really don't recognise me then?" the bar man slurred, slapping the pint of cider in front of me. It splashed outwards as if a frog had just lept into it. Maybe he'd actually slammed it down in front of me. It was not easy to say. Besides, I was already on my back foot from being accused of having failed to recognise him.
"What, do you mean have I been in here before? No. I don't think so. Do you sometimes work somewhere else? Perhaps we know each other from somewhere in the good old knee slapping days?"
"You'll see, Kinderton." He muttered, turning his back to me. "You'll see."
I turned to my cider and lifted it up to my lips. There is no world here. I am dreaming. If I tell myself this often enough perhaps I can allow myself to believe it. No one in this place was particularly chatty. They barely spoke even among themselves. One of them farted loudly and giggled to himself with pride. He tapped the arms of his mates. "Did you see? Did you see?"
Kinderton was suddenly standing beside me puffing on a cigar.
"So how are you getting on with the lads then?"
"Smashingly, Kinderton. The bar man seems on the verge of wanting to punch me in the face and thinks that I'm supposed ot know him from somewhere."
"You mean Barry?"
"Barry?"
"Barry, think about it..." He signaled for a snifter of Rumplemintz and opened a newspaper written in Cyrillic.
Barry Butterfield. He was burning crosses somewhere. No, They were flashlights. Dozens of flashlights waving up and down as they pushed through the foliage. They were looking for something. A lost child? No. An elephant? No.
They are looking for a field of butter. I was watching them in a hot air balloon, hovering over the clearing which awaited them.
Barry Butterfield led them out and they stood in the clearing and laughed to themselves joyously.
Suddenly from the wood came a Humvee hurtling headlights blaring, foot-to-the-floor speed, music pounding madly from enormous speakers and before anyone could break their fascination with the suddenness and inexplicability of what was happening, the Humvee rolled right over Barry Butterfield, squashed him right into the ground like a muffin and continued hurtling forward until it plunged back into the wood on the other side.
I am driving over small trees, steering around the larger ones as often as possible?
Did I really do that? Did I just run Barry Butterfield down?
I howled with laughter. The music was shouting out of the radio and I was shouting the occasional word or hook line I knew and in one hand the steering wheel, the other a bottle of cheap wine.
Barry Butterfield.
But if that was him, the bar man, well, he didn't seem that bad off. He didn't have a limp, he didn't flinch when an insect buzzed near his head. He didn't have any hideously visible scars and he wasn't bleeding from anywhere that I could see.
"Holy hockey sticks, Batman," I said, turning suddenly to Kinderton and gently easing his newspaper from down around his face. "How come did he...survive? I mean, he looks fine."
"Listen chum, I am not the ghost of Christmas past. I am not standing here reading about oil shortages and brown outs so I can make you relive your ugliest pasts. I've got real concerns about some of these wars, Out there. So whatever you've dreamed up in your little head, well it's just your imagination playing tricks on you. You're probably just not drinking fast enough."
"So is that Barry Butterfield or not?"
"Barry Butterfield is dead. That's not him. That's his replacement. But his replacement has Barry Butterfield's memories to keep him company from an otherwise empty history."
"So is that how Barry Butterfield died? I ran him down in the middle of the night in clearing within a forest? In a Humvee?"
"Well, I think it was on a highway. I think he was walking down the highway humming to himself with a gas can in his hand, walking back to his car stranded on the side of the road. You want to see pictures of his family?" Kinderton reached behind to his back pocket.
"No, no, that's certainly not necessary."
"This is where you wanted to be, man. Sitting in here drinking. So drink. If you drink fast enough and long enough that little pinch of a memory you just had will float right back out of you as quickly as it entered."
I wasn't enjoying my cider any more. Or was I?
I took a few more sips, just to test if I was still enjoying it or not. Yes. I was still enjoying it. I slurped it up like a dog. "More cider!" I squeeled. Kinderton smiled to himself knowingly, putting the newpaper back up in front of his face.
*********
I must have done alot of things to repress. It was becoming a little clearer by the third pint of cider.
That must be how I lost my memory of who I am. It's all in here somewhere. It's just like that fucking door that I can't use to get outside.
I have a fourth and fifth cider and even Kinderton raised his eyebrows with the speed with which they were knocked back.
The Barry Butterfield replacement bar man did not warm to me. He stared at me quite often which only made me drink faster. He seemed to be waiting for any excuse he could muster to smack me in the side of the head, punch me in the face, kick me in the kidney.
"Look, I regret it but well, maybe it was meant to be. You know I heard this story about Peter standing there with a little checklist of death. It's probably on a spread sheet to make the searches for every man's death day a little easier and quicker. Alot of work to do every day. Alot of dying. Alot of killing. But the date and time is predestined. You see? I was only performing as an instrument of fate."
Kinderton held up his hand because the Barry Butterfield replacement bar man was suddenly clenched like a fist of righteousness and listing heavily in my direction.
"Marsaw, I think it'd be better if we moved on from here. It's clear you're getting nothing out of this. Jesus, the audacity! To suggest that you were only a vehicle of fate! I've been doing this for years Marsaw but I have to say, you've got some serious fucking problems. You may have forgotten them for now but they won't go away. Real fucking problems. Do you see where you are? It's a prison."
He took me by the elbow and we walked back through the front door again only this time it wasn't a revolving door and this time we just walked out, into a wood on a winding road and then suddenly we were in an Inn.
*********
(possible rejoindre notes)
The synoptic gap is some sort of river running through Croatia, outside of Zagreb.
Before we embark upon it there is a terrible evening storm, dark punctuated only by lightening.
Think of that place outside of Zagreb in the mountains and they will be eating cheese and drinking beer in a river side
Café waiting for the timetable of the boat wearing they will traverse through marsaw’s own memories
Picture first the place, the discussion how much is explained
Then picture the ferryman, the boat, the night, the rain, the grass, the trees (types of trees)
Look for this café you frequented outside of Zagreb for photos use names.
*****
It's dark but we're out of the clubs, or so I thought. We open the door into another room and from there, Kinderton suggests that we look for a seat outside for a change of scenery.
The room we enter is homespun, rustic, foreign. I don't recognise the language of any of the signs that dot the walls and the black and white framed photos have no meaning for me. I recognise nothing yet it feels homely, it feels as though there is something infinitley less desperate and inhospitable. I'm grateful to be here for the change.
There are a few old men sat around a table speaking a language I don't know. A pair are playing checkers. Another pair are playing chess. They are all eating cheese plates and drinking beer and smoking, laughing.
the room is carpeted with a big fireplace as though it is meant to be a place of warmth from the cold outdoors. To me it feels like warmth anyway, a home I don't recognise and don't know but a home nonetheless.
I want to stay inside but Kinderton is rather insistent that we go outdoors. You don't want to mix with these people, believe me, he says, nodding to the fat older woman with too much make up and a bad red hair dye, clearly the unfortunate wife of the proprietor.
She pours too large beers and motions for us to wait outside.
"We need to be out here to see when the ferry arrives," Kinderton explains as we head out.
"What ferry?"
"The ferry we will be taking to our next destination..."
The air swallows me immediately. I feel as though I had not breathed in fresh air in years and for all I know, I had been indoors for years. I didn't know where I was or what year this was.
Rain slashes across the desk with a heavy wind. Wooden wind chimes go crazy in the background.
"Is it a beer ferry?" I asked, squinching my eyes as though temporarily blinded by a sunset.
"Oh no. The beer ferry is for reprobates and pederasts. The boat is always getting sunk. Mysteriously, of course. No other boats but the beer boats sink. Somebody suggested that it might be secret torpedoes fired from the synapses but those alleging it have provided tiny microscopic hairs of evidence, nothing substantial enough to involve the Cadre of Beer Makers who undoubtedly dislike the imagery that has been tied to their ferry."
"So which ferry are we riding on then?"
"You'll see. Drink your beer as quickly as possible. It fends off the rain. Don't ask me why. I think I read this in a paperback." He shouted something in a gutteral whisper to the inside, presumably to the bar maid. He barks. Drool forms at the right corner of his lip like a fang.
We sit silently trying to imagine that the blowing rain was not spatternig us like an ignorant puppy.
******
The sensory experiences are overwhelming. And the repetition gets boring. I crave a drinkless hole somewhere in a desert. Just water. Outdoors in the dry heat not outdoors in driving rain.
Kinderton continually nags me about my beer as though I'm straining to break from the pack and carry the ball all the way into a dark crevice through which I can exit on the outside.
Nobody finds solace in all this drinking. They are mimicking life in a series of unending caverns lit by the fiery eyes of the angry drunks. The shadows are hunched shoulders, like a buzzard oversees management of the scene, They were furry tongued with drink, slouched, lost in thoughts. What thoughts? Who knows. Miserable thoughts, no doubt. You can't make faces of pure misery in that shape if you aren't thinking miserable thoughts.
And here they are, everywhere, shuffling into each other like zombies. Drunken, fucked up zombies who don't want to eat human flesh they want to drink alcohol. any kind, all the time, in any form. They prowl around in circles around bar and at times I imagine I can see that they have furry hind legs they are standing on beneath their clothing. Of course it could certainly be my imagination. No matter how much drinking dulls the senses.
The rain is too loud to hear the ferry approaching but it uses lights. There are strobe lights attached to the front of the ferry announcing the arrival. Battery operated strobe lights. And in the darkness, in the stench of the driving rain that filled my nostrils with disgust, I saw those strobe lights approaching.
I snuffed out a cigarette and found myself impulsively straightening my clothes. Kinderton smiled to himself, exhaling a bluish stream of
Monday 10 January 2011
The oar is a spoon stirring the soup of the river.
Kinderton has warned me that this stirring is unsettling, that each moment has a renewed potential to evoke memories, to wake the dead or bring these past lovers to life.
It is not long before I smell something familiar, a perfume or perhaps a melange of perfume, hair conditioner, skin creams, perhaps, I imagine, even the undercoating of base foundation to mascara. A bottle hits me in the head.
"There you are, Marsaw! Why did you run away?" I recognise the voice immediately as Helen's. Her voice resounds in accusation before the pain of the bottle hitting my head has even registered.
"I didn't run away," I correct into the darkness. "You drove me away. Is it any surprise? You announce your presence by throwing a bottle at me..."
The human voice, or perhaps in the instant case it is only Helen's voice, manifests into a recognisable timbre yet at the same time, dependant upon the memory. It is not her voice that I recognise. Instantly I am travelling through an assortment of memories, a cacophony of different variations in the lung's output to vibrate the vocal chords; in anger, passion, tenderness.
The accusatory tone amends the articulators into one recognisable pitch but I find myself battling against those particular memories, attempting to will her form into one less intrusive, a non-combative confluence. I am fighting to gain control of a memory as I wish to experience it.
The memories, years of them accumulated, do not envelope me in a flood, a surge to drown me. In fact I find it quite difficult to mine them individually. These precious stones have been buried for years and the sediment of time is difficult to dig through.
Instead of the tenderness I am intending to find I unearth only lust. Sexual images. I cannot recall each moment of fucking individually. Rather it is a collage of moments, a sexual summary; mild, mometary sadomasochistic instances. A perfect companion, I see, to the incessant conflict between us.
But I am confused about the chronology of appearances. One moment I was reliving what appeared to be a teenage memory and the next moment I am experiencing the full-blown possibilities of adult passion; lust and rage.
"You were always a coward, Marsaw." she continued bitterly.
"You wanted me to feign choking you during sex," I countered.
"You cheated on me over and over again!"
"You accused me of cheating before the thought had ever entered my mind. Your accusations were subliminal encouragement. You wanted me to cheat on you simply so you could accuse me of cheating on you. If anyone was the coward it was you; constructing imaginery, paranoid scenarios to avoid the reality of your emotions...."
"You tried to choke me to death...."
"It was the passion of the moment...exotic asphixiation. The lower supply of oxygen to the brain was supposed to enhance your sexual sensation..."
It was quite amazing that from nothing, from a blank sketchbook of memory this one of Helen suddenly arose with no subtlety in the same way she must once have become a part of my daily life. One moment there was no Helen and life was endurable. The next moment Helen had inserted herself or perhaps it was I that had inserted her, into my daily subconscious. And the moment after that, she was gone.
Kinderton stirred at my side. "Is it you who is judging the memory or the memory that is judging you?"
"I would have liked to have remembered her in a more pleasant light but..."
******
And so it went across this river. On occasion I thought I could hear a voice of another lover. False alarms or mere faintnesss of memory? How richly each memory was transformed was dependent entirely on the richness of each interaction.
Some were overnight, nearly anonymous couplings. These were like a simple inhalation or exhalation. The rhythm of existence. Yet even one night stands had memories. Sometimes the shape of a breast, the height and width of a nipple, the texture of skin. These were human beings with whom I'd exchanged bodily fluids. Should they have had a weightier importance? The act of fucking strangers created no more memory than the act of masturbation. What if every individual sperm ejactulated in masturbation had been a potential human being? Ah, there was no danger in creating another being from a handful of sperm. Yet I found myself considering the individual histories I did not know behind each individual I'd slept with. I felt a sadness, a loss of what could have been. The potential of deeper memories evaporated.
Yet fucking in and of itself was not the potential. Was every girl I'd ever slept with a potential lover? Perhaps if I'd selected more carefully, more purposefully.
"Your ego always got in the way of your heart." Kinderton reminded, as though he could read my thoughts.
But just as I'd begun to think all hope was lost, that the connection to memory was a futille endeavour which would only create a history of disappointments, a timeline of futility, I heard another voice calling me, growing clearer and more musical with each push of the oar through the waters.
*****
"I'm not ready for heartbreak," I warned Kinderton. "I'm feeling too fragile."
"You could have escaped at any time. But you were like that proverbial child putting its hand in fire. In your case, you rarily learned the lesson of the sensation of painful heat for very long..."
"The heart must be a very flexible and reilient instrument."
It was Pamela in shadows, slowly emerging.
"Pamela," I whispered in a gradual awe all over again.
"I remember you fondly, Marsaw," she said, still a mere outline before me. "Despite yourself you had moments of singular beauty..."
"What happened to us?"
"What happens to any of us who embark on a relationship that does not take? A word imagined but not uttered."
"But we shared so many conversations. We spoke of the memory of so many tender moments....how did we begin to embark on such a journey without completing it?"
"We did complete it, Marsaw. Sharing a relationship never meant sharing "The" relationship. Fate does not determine the ending, merely the beginning."
"But I loved you..."
"You did say those words many times and in that specific order and yes, so did I. But such a phrase is merely an incantation and if repeated frequently enough it begins to take on the shape of reality even if it is only a temporal reality...."
Her form was now completely visible yet it was in a constant state of flux. There was a repeated tryptich of forms; the vulnerable Pamela, the playful Pamela and the Pamela of so many indecipherable moments. I was uncertain of which spector I was speaking to.
"Didn't you love me?"
"Of course I did, Marsaw. Just not eternally. You confused fate with destiny."
Her transforming physical forms were the embodiment of memories over time. How she appeared the first time I ever met her. How she appeared as we shared the most intimate moments of our history together. How she appeared, diminishing, at the end...
Kinderton has warned me that this stirring is unsettling, that each moment has a renewed potential to evoke memories, to wake the dead or bring these past lovers to life.
It is not long before I smell something familiar, a perfume or perhaps a melange of perfume, hair conditioner, skin creams, perhaps, I imagine, even the undercoating of base foundation to mascara. A bottle hits me in the head.
"There you are, Marsaw! Why did you run away?" I recognise the voice immediately as Helen's. Her voice resounds in accusation before the pain of the bottle hitting my head has even registered.
"I didn't run away," I correct into the darkness. "You drove me away. Is it any surprise? You announce your presence by throwing a bottle at me..."
The human voice, or perhaps in the instant case it is only Helen's voice, manifests into a recognisable timbre yet at the same time, dependant upon the memory. It is not her voice that I recognise. Instantly I am travelling through an assortment of memories, a cacophony of different variations in the lung's output to vibrate the vocal chords; in anger, passion, tenderness.
The accusatory tone amends the articulators into one recognisable pitch but I find myself battling against those particular memories, attempting to will her form into one less intrusive, a non-combative confluence. I am fighting to gain control of a memory as I wish to experience it.
The memories, years of them accumulated, do not envelope me in a flood, a surge to drown me. In fact I find it quite difficult to mine them individually. These precious stones have been buried for years and the sediment of time is difficult to dig through.
Instead of the tenderness I am intending to find I unearth only lust. Sexual images. I cannot recall each moment of fucking individually. Rather it is a collage of moments, a sexual summary; mild, mometary sadomasochistic instances. A perfect companion, I see, to the incessant conflict between us.
But I am confused about the chronology of appearances. One moment I was reliving what appeared to be a teenage memory and the next moment I am experiencing the full-blown possibilities of adult passion; lust and rage.
"You were always a coward, Marsaw." she continued bitterly.
"You wanted me to feign choking you during sex," I countered.
"You cheated on me over and over again!"
"You accused me of cheating before the thought had ever entered my mind. Your accusations were subliminal encouragement. You wanted me to cheat on you simply so you could accuse me of cheating on you. If anyone was the coward it was you; constructing imaginery, paranoid scenarios to avoid the reality of your emotions...."
"You tried to choke me to death...."
"It was the passion of the moment...exotic asphixiation. The lower supply of oxygen to the brain was supposed to enhance your sexual sensation..."
It was quite amazing that from nothing, from a blank sketchbook of memory this one of Helen suddenly arose with no subtlety in the same way she must once have become a part of my daily life. One moment there was no Helen and life was endurable. The next moment Helen had inserted herself or perhaps it was I that had inserted her, into my daily subconscious. And the moment after that, she was gone.
Kinderton stirred at my side. "Is it you who is judging the memory or the memory that is judging you?"
"I would have liked to have remembered her in a more pleasant light but..."
******
And so it went across this river. On occasion I thought I could hear a voice of another lover. False alarms or mere faintnesss of memory? How richly each memory was transformed was dependent entirely on the richness of each interaction.
Some were overnight, nearly anonymous couplings. These were like a simple inhalation or exhalation. The rhythm of existence. Yet even one night stands had memories. Sometimes the shape of a breast, the height and width of a nipple, the texture of skin. These were human beings with whom I'd exchanged bodily fluids. Should they have had a weightier importance? The act of fucking strangers created no more memory than the act of masturbation. What if every individual sperm ejactulated in masturbation had been a potential human being? Ah, there was no danger in creating another being from a handful of sperm. Yet I found myself considering the individual histories I did not know behind each individual I'd slept with. I felt a sadness, a loss of what could have been. The potential of deeper memories evaporated.
Yet fucking in and of itself was not the potential. Was every girl I'd ever slept with a potential lover? Perhaps if I'd selected more carefully, more purposefully.
"Your ego always got in the way of your heart." Kinderton reminded, as though he could read my thoughts.
But just as I'd begun to think all hope was lost, that the connection to memory was a futille endeavour which would only create a history of disappointments, a timeline of futility, I heard another voice calling me, growing clearer and more musical with each push of the oar through the waters.
*****
"I'm not ready for heartbreak," I warned Kinderton. "I'm feeling too fragile."
"You could have escaped at any time. But you were like that proverbial child putting its hand in fire. In your case, you rarily learned the lesson of the sensation of painful heat for very long..."
"The heart must be a very flexible and reilient instrument."
It was Pamela in shadows, slowly emerging.
"Pamela," I whispered in a gradual awe all over again.
"I remember you fondly, Marsaw," she said, still a mere outline before me. "Despite yourself you had moments of singular beauty..."
"What happened to us?"
"What happens to any of us who embark on a relationship that does not take? A word imagined but not uttered."
"But we shared so many conversations. We spoke of the memory of so many tender moments....how did we begin to embark on such a journey without completing it?"
"We did complete it, Marsaw. Sharing a relationship never meant sharing "The" relationship. Fate does not determine the ending, merely the beginning."
"But I loved you..."
"You did say those words many times and in that specific order and yes, so did I. But such a phrase is merely an incantation and if repeated frequently enough it begins to take on the shape of reality even if it is only a temporal reality...."
Her form was now completely visible yet it was in a constant state of flux. There was a repeated tryptich of forms; the vulnerable Pamela, the playful Pamela and the Pamela of so many indecipherable moments. I was uncertain of which spector I was speaking to.
"Didn't you love me?"
"Of course I did, Marsaw. Just not eternally. You confused fate with destiny."
Her transforming physical forms were the embodiment of memories over time. How she appeared the first time I ever met her. How she appeared as we shared the most intimate moments of our history together. How she appeared, diminishing, at the end...
Wednesday 5 January 2011
A river crossing
The surface is not water yet it is a river they are crossing. The river they are crossing consists not of water but of memories. Memories of past lovers. Perhaps every single one of them. How does he know this? Or specifically, how does he know they are HIS past lovers not some random gathering of the ghosts of women collected randomly? Because each does in fact evoke a memory. And those memories, transient and temporary as they are, do connect him in some way with the fleeting sensation of a past which he is struggling to recollect.
The oarsman raises his arms and pushes his oar into the bank, shoving off. The water is shallow and we feel the bottom of the boat scraping along the shoal underneath the surface of the water until suddenly they surpass the shoal and they are finally moving. But just before they do, whilst still dragging along the shoal, as the oar is digging into the sandbar for propulsion, the first murmur of complaint, the first vague memory is speaking out to him from the water.
"Marsaw, the question", his ear translates through the watery gurgling, the misinterpretion of a brook, "is not who you are in your past but where you are in your past."
He hears nothing again for several moments. His ear cocked, he glances quizzickly to Kinderton who is busying himself with a pocket map of a city Marsaw cannot make out from the cover. "Did you hear that?" he asks Kinderton but Kinderton is lost in his own thoughts, unavailable at the moment.
"No one can hear me, Marsaw. No one but you." the voice assures. There is no figure, now shadowy outline to accompany the voice. "I am your first love. Don't worry, I understand that you don't remember, that you have no recollection of your past so it is not insulting to me that you cannot remember your first love. You must be lost in this absence of memory and my heart hurts for you, your pain is mine. There is not much of a history to recollect anyway I'm afraid. It would be more precise to say you were infatuated with me rather than you loved me. Hence why I am so close to the shoal. The deep sea is where you will find your real, abiding loves. The painful, wrenching loves...."
"What was your name? Or sorry, rather what IS your name? How come I can't see you?"
"You can't see me because you do not remember me. I am not even the shadow of a memory. You see in some cases, with the correct technology, even the blind can make out a shadow from time to time, or shadowy figures. But in your case, you are completely without sight into the past. You are lucky you can even hear my voice, a radio frequency happened upon by chance in the middle of the night. But in answer to your question, my name is Lara."
"Is your voice the same voice you had when as you say I was infatuated with you? I ask because it seems memory or not, I cannot recognise your voice and I would have imagined that hearing the voice of a girl I was infatuated with would strike a chord somewhere..."
"Well, I hadn't thought of the question before Marsaw but no, I suppose my voice is not the same. I was 12. You were 12. I suppose in that time since there has been an increase in both the thickness and length of my larynx. The breathiness of my voice as you might have remembered has decreased and the tone of my voice has become fuller and richer."
"Do you know how, if I was infatuated with you, that the infatuation faded?"
"Of course. I could tell you it was not the infatuation that faded. I could tell you that the infatuation was simply the inundation of your brain with Plenylethylamine."
Kinderton clears his throat loudly. "That's bullocks." he mutters to himself, whispering into his hand something about capsule forms of neurotransmitters and cheap mind-enhancer supplements. He coughs again but is ignored.
"The cycle of inundation concluded," Lara continued. "But look, we were young. Too young to even know what it was that attracted us to each other in the first place. You liked me and I liked you. We were not torn apart by that attraction. The school year ended. You became infatuated with breasts. Or specifically, the more enhanced breasts of another girl, just before the end of the school year. My breasts were underdeveloped at the time. You even told me once, just before the end of the school year that you'd have liked me better if I'd have had larger breasts. It was honest but it was a cliche at the same time. You weren't even sure what you would have done with larger breasts at the time. You hadn't even had a nipple in your mouth other than your own mothers' at the time."
"But I don't understand. This seems like a rather insignificant encounter. A brief infatuation when I was too young to even understand what infatuation was. Why do you appear before me now or, I suppose more precisely, why are you talking to me now, especially after all these years?"
"Because, Marsaw, I remained a small-breasted woman even after puberty. I remember trying to will enhancement of my breasts. I remember how useless your throw away comment made me feel, how inadequate. I carried that sense of inadequacy with me, year after year after year. My breasts remained small. I became preoccupied with them. I didn't find myself attractive. Even though I had a pretty, one might almost say beautiful face, it didn't matter to me. All I could think about was the inadequacy of the size of my breasts."
"But surely you don't hold the remark against me after all these years? I mean, even you admit it was a throw away comment. How could a 12 year old boy possibly be held responsible for it?"
"Oh Marsaw, it is not the comment itself. You're right. The comment itself was not something you could reasonably be held responsible for. It was the sincerity of the insult that stung the most. You see even then you were too stupid, or let's say too unaware to realise that something you considered to be a harmless, honest remark could have such a lasting, harmful effect on someone. You will always be like that, Marsaw. Carelessly honest, incessantly insenstive. This was just the first lasting example of it. Me."
"But surely you found love eventually anyway, didn't you?"
"That isn't the issue at all here, Marsaw. I am not here necessarily to provoke guilt. I am here perhaps to make you a little more aware of your historical propensity for insensitivity, particularly where it concerns women. And to feed you a memory of your past. Ironically, I am called upon to feed that memory to you through the breast. An unremarkable, unlactating breast, but a feeding breast nonetheless."
The oarsman is remarkably quiet other than his steady breathing. Penderton has fallen quiet too, as though in a trance.
My heart beat races and a vague fear surrounds me. Everywhere around me is black and yet through this blackness I feel the touch of a hand behind my head and neck, guiding my face slowly forward and downward. I can only imagine it is a hand because I can imagine that I feel fingers It could have been a foot and toes I suppose, for the sake of honesty but my imagination was fueled by the vague memory of what a hand would feel like.
And as my head was guided slowly forward and toward I felt what I presumed to be a nipple brush against my lip.
"Open your lips, Marsaw. I know how much the size of my breasts once displeased you but if you open your lips and allow my nipple inside, if you caress the areola with your tongue, go on, gently. I know you can't remember doing this and certainly you have never done it with me before because you found my breasts too small to consider fondling but there you go Marsaw, mmmm. You see? My breasts are not so displeasing after all, are they?"
Kinderton is muttering again, coughing into his hand. "The piloerection of her nipples is being caused by the hormonal distribution of arousal, not because of a maternity cycle. She is not lactating and the milky sensation she is trying to make you imagine by sucking on her nipples is in fact a bitter memory, not an increase in Oxytocin which, I would point out is another form of neurotransmitter. Don't say I didn't warn you...."
But I cannot deny arousal by this sensation, particularly in light of her own clear arousal which she emphasises with deep, protracted moans.
I do taste something released into my mouth. Is it fluid? Is it the secretion of milk? It's difficult to tell. The only fluid I have any recollection of is alcohol and this is most certainly not alcohol.
Gradually, her gasps become almost inaudible. I continue to be enveloped in darkness, a thick blackness. Her gasps are replaced by her voice at 12.
We are in a class room. I see a boy, short blonde hair, heavily freckled face standing in front of a small breasted girl with long straight black hair. They are conversing. At first I see them conversing although I cannot hear a word that is spoken and gradually, as though donning clothing, cloaking myself in a hooded garment, I find myself in the flesh of the boy, I feel my mouth shaping the words the prepubescent is speaking. I hear a voice that for a moment, I recognise as my own.
I am overcome by an inexplicable sadness as though I have visited the grave of a dead friend whose memory is too faded to recollect with any clarity.
I assume the girl beside the body or memory I am temporarily inhabiting is Lara. I feel nothing for her. I know deep in some recess of the memory that I did in fact feel a great infatuation for her once. I could recall, for example, that my initial infatuation for her was stimulated not so much by her as a change in my perception of her which had been invoked by the fear that she was being wooed by my strongest chess competitor. There was an afternoon of wanting to win her simply because she was not mine and leaning, so it seemed to me, towards another and I'd wanted to possess her as my own.
And months or perhaps only weeks later, it was over.
I had in fact, moved on to a blonde with more developed breasts. It had been apparent to all of our classmates and I had chosen in the ensuing days, to pretend that Lara would feel as happy as I did about this movement. But I could hear in her voice that she was making things difficult, that she was not as understanding as I'd have liked to imagine.
I could hear her asking me why I had abandoned her, why I had chosen to be with someone else, a blonde with more developed breasts when only a few weeks before I had been proclaiming some undying emotion for her, Lara.
I could think of nothing but the truth to lean upon as an answer. It was an underdeveloped truth, no doubt. A 12 year old's sense of truth is dulled by a lack of understanding and context.
"She has nice tits," I heard myself explaining. "Look at yours. They're small. Tiny. There is nothing for me to touch. Nothing for me to put my mouth around. Believe me Lara, if you had bigger tits, we could be together right now and who knows, maybe over the summer your tits will get bigger too. It happened to Diana and it happened to Annette. Yours will probably too. And look, we'll see each other over the summer break. Call me..."
I feel a slap across my face. It is Kinderton who is shaking me by the shoulders. "You were too far in there, Marsaw. You stopped breathing. I had to wake you. Sorry for slapping you but it seemed you were undergoing some sort of syncope episode and I was concerned you would not come out of it in time."
"In time for what?"
"In time to avoid brain damage brought on by the loss of oxygen to the brain, what else? Now stop asking silly questions and keep focused on the darkness out there. Soon enough the next image will find you..."
"But what is this all about Kinderton? You didn't really elaborate on this at all. Am I really going to have to sit on a boat ride living through all these negative past experiences?"
"What makes you think they will all be negative?"
The surface is not water yet it is a river they are crossing. The river they are crossing consists not of water but of memories. Memories of past lovers. Perhaps every single one of them. How does he know this? Or specifically, how does he know they are HIS past lovers not some random gathering of the ghosts of women collected randomly? Because each does in fact evoke a memory. And those memories, transient and temporary as they are, do connect him in some way with the fleeting sensation of a past which he is struggling to recollect.
The oarsman raises his arms and pushes his oar into the bank, shoving off. The water is shallow and we feel the bottom of the boat scraping along the shoal underneath the surface of the water until suddenly they surpass the shoal and they are finally moving. But just before they do, whilst still dragging along the shoal, as the oar is digging into the sandbar for propulsion, the first murmur of complaint, the first vague memory is speaking out to him from the water.
"Marsaw, the question", his ear translates through the watery gurgling, the misinterpretion of a brook, "is not who you are in your past but where you are in your past."
He hears nothing again for several moments. His ear cocked, he glances quizzickly to Kinderton who is busying himself with a pocket map of a city Marsaw cannot make out from the cover. "Did you hear that?" he asks Kinderton but Kinderton is lost in his own thoughts, unavailable at the moment.
"No one can hear me, Marsaw. No one but you." the voice assures. There is no figure, now shadowy outline to accompany the voice. "I am your first love. Don't worry, I understand that you don't remember, that you have no recollection of your past so it is not insulting to me that you cannot remember your first love. You must be lost in this absence of memory and my heart hurts for you, your pain is mine. There is not much of a history to recollect anyway I'm afraid. It would be more precise to say you were infatuated with me rather than you loved me. Hence why I am so close to the shoal. The deep sea is where you will find your real, abiding loves. The painful, wrenching loves...."
"What was your name? Or sorry, rather what IS your name? How come I can't see you?"
"You can't see me because you do not remember me. I am not even the shadow of a memory. You see in some cases, with the correct technology, even the blind can make out a shadow from time to time, or shadowy figures. But in your case, you are completely without sight into the past. You are lucky you can even hear my voice, a radio frequency happened upon by chance in the middle of the night. But in answer to your question, my name is Lara."
"Is your voice the same voice you had when as you say I was infatuated with you? I ask because it seems memory or not, I cannot recognise your voice and I would have imagined that hearing the voice of a girl I was infatuated with would strike a chord somewhere..."
"Well, I hadn't thought of the question before Marsaw but no, I suppose my voice is not the same. I was 12. You were 12. I suppose in that time since there has been an increase in both the thickness and length of my larynx. The breathiness of my voice as you might have remembered has decreased and the tone of my voice has become fuller and richer."
"Do you know how, if I was infatuated with you, that the infatuation faded?"
"Of course. I could tell you it was not the infatuation that faded. I could tell you that the infatuation was simply the inundation of your brain with Plenylethylamine."
Kinderton clears his throat loudly. "That's bullocks." he mutters to himself, whispering into his hand something about capsule forms of neurotransmitters and cheap mind-enhancer supplements. He coughs again but is ignored.
"The cycle of inundation concluded," Lara continued. "But look, we were young. Too young to even know what it was that attracted us to each other in the first place. You liked me and I liked you. We were not torn apart by that attraction. The school year ended. You became infatuated with breasts. Or specifically, the more enhanced breasts of another girl, just before the end of the school year. My breasts were underdeveloped at the time. You even told me once, just before the end of the school year that you'd have liked me better if I'd have had larger breasts. It was honest but it was a cliche at the same time. You weren't even sure what you would have done with larger breasts at the time. You hadn't even had a nipple in your mouth other than your own mothers' at the time."
"But I don't understand. This seems like a rather insignificant encounter. A brief infatuation when I was too young to even understand what infatuation was. Why do you appear before me now or, I suppose more precisely, why are you talking to me now, especially after all these years?"
"Because, Marsaw, I remained a small-breasted woman even after puberty. I remember trying to will enhancement of my breasts. I remember how useless your throw away comment made me feel, how inadequate. I carried that sense of inadequacy with me, year after year after year. My breasts remained small. I became preoccupied with them. I didn't find myself attractive. Even though I had a pretty, one might almost say beautiful face, it didn't matter to me. All I could think about was the inadequacy of the size of my breasts."
"But surely you don't hold the remark against me after all these years? I mean, even you admit it was a throw away comment. How could a 12 year old boy possibly be held responsible for it?"
"Oh Marsaw, it is not the comment itself. You're right. The comment itself was not something you could reasonably be held responsible for. It was the sincerity of the insult that stung the most. You see even then you were too stupid, or let's say too unaware to realise that something you considered to be a harmless, honest remark could have such a lasting, harmful effect on someone. You will always be like that, Marsaw. Carelessly honest, incessantly insenstive. This was just the first lasting example of it. Me."
"But surely you found love eventually anyway, didn't you?"
"That isn't the issue at all here, Marsaw. I am not here necessarily to provoke guilt. I am here perhaps to make you a little more aware of your historical propensity for insensitivity, particularly where it concerns women. And to feed you a memory of your past. Ironically, I am called upon to feed that memory to you through the breast. An unremarkable, unlactating breast, but a feeding breast nonetheless."
The oarsman is remarkably quiet other than his steady breathing. Penderton has fallen quiet too, as though in a trance.
My heart beat races and a vague fear surrounds me. Everywhere around me is black and yet through this blackness I feel the touch of a hand behind my head and neck, guiding my face slowly forward and downward. I can only imagine it is a hand because I can imagine that I feel fingers It could have been a foot and toes I suppose, for the sake of honesty but my imagination was fueled by the vague memory of what a hand would feel like.
And as my head was guided slowly forward and toward I felt what I presumed to be a nipple brush against my lip.
"Open your lips, Marsaw. I know how much the size of my breasts once displeased you but if you open your lips and allow my nipple inside, if you caress the areola with your tongue, go on, gently. I know you can't remember doing this and certainly you have never done it with me before because you found my breasts too small to consider fondling but there you go Marsaw, mmmm. You see? My breasts are not so displeasing after all, are they?"
Kinderton is muttering again, coughing into his hand. "The piloerection of her nipples is being caused by the hormonal distribution of arousal, not because of a maternity cycle. She is not lactating and the milky sensation she is trying to make you imagine by sucking on her nipples is in fact a bitter memory, not an increase in Oxytocin which, I would point out is another form of neurotransmitter. Don't say I didn't warn you...."
But I cannot deny arousal by this sensation, particularly in light of her own clear arousal which she emphasises with deep, protracted moans.
I do taste something released into my mouth. Is it fluid? Is it the secretion of milk? It's difficult to tell. The only fluid I have any recollection of is alcohol and this is most certainly not alcohol.
Gradually, her gasps become almost inaudible. I continue to be enveloped in darkness, a thick blackness. Her gasps are replaced by her voice at 12.
We are in a class room. I see a boy, short blonde hair, heavily freckled face standing in front of a small breasted girl with long straight black hair. They are conversing. At first I see them conversing although I cannot hear a word that is spoken and gradually, as though donning clothing, cloaking myself in a hooded garment, I find myself in the flesh of the boy, I feel my mouth shaping the words the prepubescent is speaking. I hear a voice that for a moment, I recognise as my own.
I am overcome by an inexplicable sadness as though I have visited the grave of a dead friend whose memory is too faded to recollect with any clarity.
I assume the girl beside the body or memory I am temporarily inhabiting is Lara. I feel nothing for her. I know deep in some recess of the memory that I did in fact feel a great infatuation for her once. I could recall, for example, that my initial infatuation for her was stimulated not so much by her as a change in my perception of her which had been invoked by the fear that she was being wooed by my strongest chess competitor. There was an afternoon of wanting to win her simply because she was not mine and leaning, so it seemed to me, towards another and I'd wanted to possess her as my own.
And months or perhaps only weeks later, it was over.
I had in fact, moved on to a blonde with more developed breasts. It had been apparent to all of our classmates and I had chosen in the ensuing days, to pretend that Lara would feel as happy as I did about this movement. But I could hear in her voice that she was making things difficult, that she was not as understanding as I'd have liked to imagine.
I could hear her asking me why I had abandoned her, why I had chosen to be with someone else, a blonde with more developed breasts when only a few weeks before I had been proclaiming some undying emotion for her, Lara.
I could think of nothing but the truth to lean upon as an answer. It was an underdeveloped truth, no doubt. A 12 year old's sense of truth is dulled by a lack of understanding and context.
"She has nice tits," I heard myself explaining. "Look at yours. They're small. Tiny. There is nothing for me to touch. Nothing for me to put my mouth around. Believe me Lara, if you had bigger tits, we could be together right now and who knows, maybe over the summer your tits will get bigger too. It happened to Diana and it happened to Annette. Yours will probably too. And look, we'll see each other over the summer break. Call me..."
I feel a slap across my face. It is Kinderton who is shaking me by the shoulders. "You were too far in there, Marsaw. You stopped breathing. I had to wake you. Sorry for slapping you but it seemed you were undergoing some sort of syncope episode and I was concerned you would not come out of it in time."
"In time for what?"
"In time to avoid brain damage brought on by the loss of oxygen to the brain, what else? Now stop asking silly questions and keep focused on the darkness out there. Soon enough the next image will find you..."
"But what is this all about Kinderton? You didn't really elaborate on this at all. Am I really going to have to sit on a boat ride living through all these negative past experiences?"
"What makes you think they will all be negative?"
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Circle Five: THE WRATHFUL AND THE SULLEN
vehemently incensed and condemnatory; "they trembled before the wrathful queen"; "but wroth as he was, a short struggle ended in reconciliation"
He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be.
Fables by Aesop View in context
There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
White Fang by London, Jack View in context
With a wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but it was slammed hastily in her face and the key was turned.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Crane, Stephen
sul·len·er, sul·len·est
1. Showing a brooding ill humor or silent resentment; morose or sulky.
2. Gloomy or somber in tone, color, or portent: sullen, gray skies.
3. Sluggish; slow: the sullen current of a canal.
[Middle English solein, from Anglo-Norman solein, alone, from sol, single, from Latin slus, by oneself alone; see s(w)e- in Indo-European roots.]
sullen - showing a brooding ill humor; "a dark scowl"; "the proverbially dour New England Puritan"; "a glum, hopeless shrug"; "he sat in moody silence"; "a morose and unsociable manner"; "a saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius"- Bruce Bliven; "a sour temper"; "a sullen crowd"
glowering, moody, morose, saturnine, glum, dour, dark, sour
Mournfully and low the man of God began his eulogy of the dead, and his doleful voice, mingled with the sobbing which it was its purpose to stimulate and sustain, rose and fell, seemed to come and go, like the sound of a sullen sea.
Can Such Things Be? by Bierce, Ambrose
He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be.
Fables by Aesop View in context
There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
White Fang by London, Jack View in context
With a wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but it was slammed hastily in her face and the key was turned.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Crane, Stephen
sul·len·er, sul·len·est
1. Showing a brooding ill humor or silent resentment; morose or sulky.
2. Gloomy or somber in tone, color, or portent: sullen, gray skies.
3. Sluggish; slow: the sullen current of a canal.
[Middle English solein, from Anglo-Norman solein, alone, from sol, single, from Latin slus, by oneself alone; see s(w)e- in Indo-European roots.]
sullen - showing a brooding ill humor; "a dark scowl"; "the proverbially dour New England Puritan"; "a glum, hopeless shrug"; "he sat in moody silence"; "a morose and unsociable manner"; "a saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius"- Bruce Bliven; "a sour temper"; "a sullen crowd"
glowering, moody, morose, saturnine, glum, dour, dark, sour
Mournfully and low the man of God began his eulogy of the dead, and his doleful voice, mingled with the sobbing which it was its purpose to stimulate and sustain, rose and fell, seemed to come and go, like the sound of a sullen sea.
Can Such Things Be? by Bierce, Ambrose
Chapter Four: THE HOARDERS AND SPENDTHRIFTS
CIRCLE 4 - Misers and Spendthrifts
The room is dark and reeks of stale urine. The music throbs unpleasantly, like a persistent reminder of death, or the will to die. Shadows appear and disappear, fleeting faces, twitching in an occasional, unbearable light, appear to seek out a friendly gesture.
I stand motionless for awhile, a drink in my hand. When the throbbing desists for awhile you can hear scurrying as if these rat-like humans, standing on their hind legs, are gathering goods for the winter months.
The build piles of possessions. They pull them in loaded shopping carts with squeaking, malfunctioning wheels that stick in place. They yank the carts at times when the wheels refuse to cooperate, shouting angerly as though the shopping cart were plotting against them.
When I begin walking again it is because I realise that all around me these people are carrying piles of junk or garbage or stale food containers, a trail of rodents following them gleefully as they appear then disappear into corners of the cavernous bar.
It is dance music. This finally dawns on me. And the dance floor is a swarm of passing people who carry these things, this collection of meaningless possessions, bumping into each other, cursing, bumping into shopping carts and becoming enraged. They all shout at each other yet each of their voices, each slogan of ranting that they emit are drowned in the music, the persistent, throbbing bass, the waning will to live.
Fortunatel all of them manage to avoid me. When I stand still, I can feel their oily skin brushing against me, I can smell their stench as they move past me. When they are not shouting at their carts or others who bump into them, they are mumbling to themselves. They are mumbling persistently and infatiguably. I cannot trace even the language they are speaking. It is as though they are grunting more than they are speaking.
Finally I spot Kinderton seated at a table in one of the shadows. He is drinking a tropical sort of concoction with fruit poking out of the top of a tall glass with a straw. He has paid a woman to perform felltion underneath the table while he sits there, sipping his drink and watching the dance floor with suspicion.
"I see you finally found your way in." Kinderton moans momentarily, closing his eyes. I can see nothing in the shadows but the bobbing head of hair just beneath the table.
"Is that a girl underneath there?"
"What do you think, a troll? She is trading services. When she is finished, I will tell her where to find the nearest viable exit. I am her guide but she is so fucking lost, so fucking gone, that she can't even hear.me. In fact, I never proposed this exchange. She just knelt down wordlessly and started in on me...." He winces as he grabs the edges of the table. His eyes are shut tight, his chest heaves momentarily. His eyes open again. He takes a sip of his drink.
The girl disappears back into the crowd.
The music changes. The DJ has evil intentions. The change in music causes a minor uproad. For a moment, every one stops pushing and pulling and carrying and stand instead, straight up, shouting and protesting, waving fists. I see the DJ in a far corner laughing and waving his fist as well. People attempt to climb to his booth and when they start to get close, he takes a hammer he has on one of the turntables and bashes them in the head with it. They fall immediately back to the floor and disappear beneath trampling feet.
"What happens to all of these people at the end of the night?" I ask, seating myself across from him.
"End of the night? What do you mean? There is no end of the night. These people will stay here forever. Someone from the outside will push more garbage down the chute and it will be as though these peoples' cages have been filled at feeding time. There is a perpetual supply from street level. Garbage, food, spare tires, carcasses, dirty clothes, disposable diapers, you name it. The DJ hasn't slept in three weeks. He's experimenting with some new drug causing sleeplessness. He knows the minute he falls asleep or tries to leave the safety of the sound booth, he will be torn to shreds. He doesn't take requests. He plays the same music over and over again. He keeps all the good music on his own headphones and listens to them during the long repetitive songs he plays for every one else in the club."
"Is he just an asshole?"
Kinderton shrugs and sips his drink. "Well, a real assholle would probably just play the same song over and over again, louder and louder each time until each of these people trying to kill him would probably just lose their minds entirely, frothing at the mouth before falling into some benign catatonic stare...shall we get up and get another drink?" He hold up his empty glass after slupring loudly. I didn't hear the slurping of course. I merely saw the intake of his cheeks, his lips wrapped around the plastic straw and the subsequently look of satisfaction that caresses his face.
It is then I notice that a trio of bankers are being crucified in the space just to my left. I see their hands and feet being hammered into boards. I know they are bankers because when the nails are hammered into their palms, for example, instead of blood shooting out there are cartoonish balloons filled with money floating out of them. Whilst one group hammers in the nails there are others who jump and grab at the balloons. And when one of the ballons is captured, it is popped open and an immediate struggle ensues between everyone to grab at the money while the banker moans and begs them to stop.
*****
a disembodied series of paintings
smells in your hair
that belong to other
women
The room is dark and reeks of stale urine. The music throbs unpleasantly, like a persistent reminder of death, or the will to die. Shadows appear and disappear, fleeting faces, twitching in an occasional, unbearable light, appear to seek out a friendly gesture.
I stand motionless for awhile, a drink in my hand. When the throbbing desists for awhile you can hear scurrying as if these rat-like humans, standing on their hind legs, are gathering goods for the winter months.
The build piles of possessions. They pull them in loaded shopping carts with squeaking, malfunctioning wheels that stick in place. They yank the carts at times when the wheels refuse to cooperate, shouting angerly as though the shopping cart were plotting against them.
When I begin walking again it is because I realise that all around me these people are carrying piles of junk or garbage or stale food containers, a trail of rodents following them gleefully as they appear then disappear into corners of the cavernous bar.
It is dance music. This finally dawns on me. And the dance floor is a swarm of passing people who carry these things, this collection of meaningless possessions, bumping into each other, cursing, bumping into shopping carts and becoming enraged. They all shout at each other yet each of their voices, each slogan of ranting that they emit are drowned in the music, the persistent, throbbing bass, the waning will to live.
Fortunatel all of them manage to avoid me. When I stand still, I can feel their oily skin brushing against me, I can smell their stench as they move past me. When they are not shouting at their carts or others who bump into them, they are mumbling to themselves. They are mumbling persistently and infatiguably. I cannot trace even the language they are speaking. It is as though they are grunting more than they are speaking.
Finally I spot Kinderton seated at a table in one of the shadows. He is drinking a tropical sort of concoction with fruit poking out of the top of a tall glass with a straw. He has paid a woman to perform felltion underneath the table while he sits there, sipping his drink and watching the dance floor with suspicion.
"I see you finally found your way in." Kinderton moans momentarily, closing his eyes. I can see nothing in the shadows but the bobbing head of hair just beneath the table.
"Is that a girl underneath there?"
"What do you think, a troll? She is trading services. When she is finished, I will tell her where to find the nearest viable exit. I am her guide but she is so fucking lost, so fucking gone, that she can't even hear.me. In fact, I never proposed this exchange. She just knelt down wordlessly and started in on me...." He winces as he grabs the edges of the table. His eyes are shut tight, his chest heaves momentarily. His eyes open again. He takes a sip of his drink.
The girl disappears back into the crowd.
The music changes. The DJ has evil intentions. The change in music causes a minor uproad. For a moment, every one stops pushing and pulling and carrying and stand instead, straight up, shouting and protesting, waving fists. I see the DJ in a far corner laughing and waving his fist as well. People attempt to climb to his booth and when they start to get close, he takes a hammer he has on one of the turntables and bashes them in the head with it. They fall immediately back to the floor and disappear beneath trampling feet.
"What happens to all of these people at the end of the night?" I ask, seating myself across from him.
"End of the night? What do you mean? There is no end of the night. These people will stay here forever. Someone from the outside will push more garbage down the chute and it will be as though these peoples' cages have been filled at feeding time. There is a perpetual supply from street level. Garbage, food, spare tires, carcasses, dirty clothes, disposable diapers, you name it. The DJ hasn't slept in three weeks. He's experimenting with some new drug causing sleeplessness. He knows the minute he falls asleep or tries to leave the safety of the sound booth, he will be torn to shreds. He doesn't take requests. He plays the same music over and over again. He keeps all the good music on his own headphones and listens to them during the long repetitive songs he plays for every one else in the club."
"Is he just an asshole?"
Kinderton shrugs and sips his drink. "Well, a real assholle would probably just play the same song over and over again, louder and louder each time until each of these people trying to kill him would probably just lose their minds entirely, frothing at the mouth before falling into some benign catatonic stare...shall we get up and get another drink?" He hold up his empty glass after slupring loudly. I didn't hear the slurping of course. I merely saw the intake of his cheeks, his lips wrapped around the plastic straw and the subsequently look of satisfaction that caresses his face.
It is then I notice that a trio of bankers are being crucified in the space just to my left. I see their hands and feet being hammered into boards. I know they are bankers because when the nails are hammered into their palms, for example, instead of blood shooting out there are cartoonish balloons filled with money floating out of them. Whilst one group hammers in the nails there are others who jump and grab at the balloons. And when one of the ballons is captured, it is popped open and an immediate struggle ensues between everyone to grab at the money while the banker moans and begs them to stop.
*****
a disembodied series of paintings
smells in your hair
that belong to other
women
Circle Three: GLUTONS
CIRCLE THREE GLUTTONS
Cerebus - Look up (is he the bartender, bouncer, proprietor?)
three hungry heads that are appeased with clumps - his three heads represent the past, the present and future of the narrator. Cerebus was Hades' loyal
watch dog. Guarded the gates that granted access and exit to the underworld.
"Where do you think you're going, bub?" A large hand pressed against my chest with authority, stopping me in my tracks. Whereas once again I'd imagined that
I had been leaving, in fact I'd been entering.
The bar is filled with bankers, financial parasites, drinking blood.
******
an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
*******
"How much alcohol does one require? There are levels of need. On the one hand, there are those who could go throughout their entire existence without ever
once sampling alcohol." This man, a seemingly homeless collection of skin and rags and filth, smelling powerfully of human excrement, stops in mid query and
picks up the shot glass without reflection, draining it in one motion. Without pausing to even allow the effect of that shot to enter him, he signals
immediately for another. "On the other hand, for some, the alcohol is the blood stream. You see, generally speaking the liver can usually metabolize one of
these drinks; a glass of beer or wine within 60 minutes. So perhaps you can measure the need for alcoholic consumption in hour increments. If you drink
more than this or faster than this, the alcohol cannot be processed by the liver quickly enough. And this is when the blood becomes saturated and the
alcohol finds new venues, like the blood stream, to wait for the liver to process."
He takes the next shot glass and again, empties it in one quick motion.
"How long can you go on like this for?" I wonder absently. "If what you say is true, your blood stream should be inundated in no time at this rate and lead
to alcohol poisening."
"Alcohol dilutes itself in the water volume of the body as it travels through. Muscle tissue contains more water than fat tissue. More muscle tissue is
more water and more water dilutes the immediate effect to some degree. So when I am not drinking, I am exercising. This allows me to drink more."
*****
Around us, the Binge Drinkers. Their leader is a bare-chested man wearing a kilt with an inflamed pancreas which juts out of the side of his torso, thinly
veiled by a yellowish skin, reddened. He occasionally lifts the kilt to emit a bulky, whitish, sticky, greasy, floating, foul smelling stool. All around
him is a small puddle of these stools, a miniscule lake of diarrhea. The new members of the Binge Drinkers club are forced to walk through this bare foot.
It is part of the ritual of indoctrination. I nearly gag watching this.
They imagine themselves enjoying themselves. They are mirrored reflections of a dream that has disintigrated into an incessant nightmare. But
occasionally, they are having fun. They are laughing and never at themselves but perhaps at each other or those around them. They sing songs like "I am
having so much fun!" and "Man, I want to get wasted." The group consists of those who have just commenced their binge drinking and those who stayed on.
Those who have stayed on slur, spit, vomit, pass out. They are continuously replaced. There is a massive queue of people waiting to join in the fun. It is
a queue consisting of men and women. They feel addicted to this illusion of fun. It has become home. The only thing they find discomforting is the nausea
and vomitting that inevitably follow.
"I was part of the Binge Drinkers Club once," he continued allowing another shot of liquid to pass through him although this time savouring it slowly as if
it were his last.
"Why only once? Why did you stop?"
"I detested the social element of it. The people were idiots. They had no thoughts. Look at them, bringing themselves to a lowest common denominator. It
is a nihilism devoid of the acknowledgement of nihilism. A pointless exercise, a superficial convenience that sickened me more than the alcohol." As he
speaks he moves slowly away from the bar and I find myelf following him. His words trail behind him like a series of dead leaves blown along an empty street
on a bleak October afternoon.
We make our way into a corner where he pulls back a curtain and a room of immense light is revealed. In that room there is what appears to be a buffet
table. It is difficult to discern an exact size and dimension as only pieces of it are visible threw a swarm of naked people who are climbing all over it,
swatting each other back, biting each other, making horrible noises of incredibly audible chewing.
When a waiter appears carrying another tray of meat, he is immediately attacked. These are human beings, or have the physical attributes of human beings but
they lack completely any semblance of trained civility.
In attacking the waiter however, they are unaware that they are cutting off their own supply. The trays of steamed venison and stewed pork clatter loudly to
the floor and are swooped down upon by these naked savages. They fight each other off, grabbing at what they can and pushing it greedily into their mouths.
I cannot tell if they are even bothering to masticate what they are pushing greedily into their mouths or if they are simply swallowing chunks of meat whole.
I look back over to the buffet table again and see people climbing over the top of each other, yanking others back by the shoulder to squeeze into a position
closer to the source of the food. They are not saying words but they are grunting and belching and shouting with great abandone.
In sum, they appear to be one living organism of consumption spread out over the entirety of the buffet table. But I can make out the inviduals, or the
backs of individuals. Faces are not visible. The faces are striving as far as physically possible toward the table, the source of the food. Some grab and
yank food right out of the hands of others. This prompts others who are closer to the table to forget their hands entirely and merely shove their faces
directly into the food, gnawing, chewing, grunting.
We watch this spectacle for perhaps 10 or 15 minutes. With the attack of the waiters the source of replenishing the buffet is cut off and eventually of
course, particularly at such a rate of consumption, the supply of food runs out. Some are still chewing and grunting even though there is nothing to chew.
Gradually the notion that the feeding frenzy has ended sinks into them, one by one and one by one, they begin to pull away, sated but disappointed at the
same time, saying nothing to one another, merely slinking off into the background.
"If we wait long enough," Hierbringen tells me with the authority of experience, "eventually the waiters will emerge again carrying trays of food to
replenish the buffet with. And eventually another horde of people will discover this and you will see the entire scene played out all over again. The funny
thing I've noticed though is that it never seems to dawn on any of them that the buffet will be replenished. To them, the supply is finite and once the
supply has been consumed the best they can hope for is to move on to another room in search of another buffet. But this is the only room with a buffet and
although they don't realise it, they continue to return to the same room and the same buffet...." His shot glass has been replaced with a large snifter
which he sips from liberally.
******
"So, how would you like a little liquid Lysergic Acid Diathylamide to ease the dull aching brought on by all this drinking?" Hierbringen has grown impatient.
We are back at the bar and he is tapping his index and middle right fingers incessantly against the counter. He has two drinks beside him already, the
large snifter and another shot glass. "I'm bored..." he explains apologetically.
He's noticed of course that my own pace of drinking has slackened. He has taken note and is now proposing a deeper phase, concerned that I too have grown
bored with both the drinking and the sights around me.
I say nothing but follow him. He has already decided on his own that this is the next step to take and so he turns from the bar, grabbing a bottle off the
rack to take with him.
"I cannot remember my troubles," he hums to himself. "I am no longer chased by a horrible thing..."
We walk through a series of hallways, each emitting a strange series of lights of varying colours, pulsating to a beat that does not exist. There is no
silence but there is no music. Everywhere around me I hear shouting both in anger and in happiness yet I see no one. It as though the empty hallways we are
passing through are haunted with the ghosts of dead revelers. Perhaps it is only their echoes.
Finally we exit one hallway and enter a cavernous bar area, another extension. This one has large picnic tables which are filled with alcohol and food and
people consuming both simultaneously. It is a joyless consumption. No one is speaking. There is music filling the room, a dull, hypnotic music.
Hierbringen stops me with a hand to my chest. "Some of these chaps are rough," he explains. "They don't know you and might take offence at you or worse,
might believe you have come to take some of their supplies. The addition of another person signifies to them a decrease in supplies. Allow me to do the
talking. Just wait here."
He disappears into the throng. No one notices me standing there alone, sipping my beer as inobtrusively as possible, pretending I don't exist so that no one
would notice me. I could hide my face behind my hands and feel invisible.
After a few moments, Hierbringen returns. "It's all arranged. But the dealer insists on meeting you first before he will give me anything. He doesn't want
any of his supply falling into the wrong hands."
"The wrong hands?"
"There are spies here, don't kid yourself. Spies are here among all of us and they are checking in to make certain that everyone is consuming their maximum
intake. Believe it or not there are times when even these people need a nap. And when they do, the spies appear, materialise seemingly from nowhere but in
fact they are all around us. If someone passes out or naps, they are immediately awoken, brutally at times, to make sure they do not stop consuming."
He leads me to one of the tables and there is a parting of people to allow us the space to enter their circle around the table. At the forefront is a Jabba,
his clothing covered in food stains, his shirt unbuttoned to the belly which is like a huge medicine ball. His face is pockmarked by blisters and angry red
blotches. His hair is greasy and so full of dandruff that the dandruff accumulates in small piles on the table in front of him.
"A visitor but not a spy, so Hierbringen tells me," he mutters, nodding over at me and shoving a piece of chicken in his mouth, taking a sip of white wine.
"What is your name, visitor?"
"He doesn't know." Hierbringen intervenes quickly, nervously as though I have been lying the entire time and once I open my mouth, my lie will be mercilessly
exposed and crucified. "He simply woke outside without knowing..."
"What?" he spits food out in various directions, muttering again something unintellible but to himself. "Let the visitor speak for himself Hierbringen, I
don't trust you..."
"it's true," I begin. "I don't remember my name."
"And so how did you get in here?"
"I was delivered here...by Kinderton..."
"Kinderton?!" he bellowed, more food falling from the corners of his mouth. "Kinderton has been dead for years! What kind of lies are you telling me?!" He
demands now, no longer a simple line of enquiry. Those sat around us have stopped eating and drinking momentarily and as they do, the spies appear like
ghosts to poke them with sharp sticks and motion for them to continue.
"I only tell you what I know. I woke with no concept of who I was or how I got there and the next thing I knew, Kinderton was bringing me here..."
The Jabba chewed thoughtfully for a moment and swallowed another half glass of wine. Slowly he reached a conclusion and picking at his teeth, he nodded for
me to sit down beside him. "Let's have a closer look at you then..."
After I'd sat down beside him he poked at me, suprisingly gently given his girth and demeanor. "You seem to be made of flesh and bones yet the tale you tell
me implies you are dead, that you are a ghost guided by that Ghost of Ghosts, Kinderton, so I am rather puzzled. Just what is it you are doing here?" I nod
over at Hierbringen. "I was told we were going to be able to obtain liquid LSD from you."
"And if I were to give you a quantity of liquid LSD, what would you do with it?"
"I would take it of course."
"All of it, no matter the quantity?"
I said nothing for a moment, looking uncomfortably at Hierbringen whose own eyes were furtive and nervous. "I would take what you give me," I said finally
after that pause. The Jabba guffawed and slapped his fat paw on the table sending glasses of wine flying in all directions. "You are either very stupid or
very trusting but in any event, I will give you what you like on the condition that you leave from here immediately afterwards. I don't know who you are and
you are making me uncomfortable. Do you understand that? You are making me feel uncomfortable and I don't like that feeling at all visitor. I'd just as
soon eat you as look at you but I am afraid about the indigestion you might cause me. So take this. You and Hierbringen take this and fuck right off out of
here and I don't want to see either of you again, ever. Is that clear?"
"Clear."
The Jabba motioned to one of his subordinates who pulled a vile out of his pocket and handed it over to Hierbringen. We left immediately as the group around
the table returned to their food and wine.
*******
******
Cerebus - Look up (is he the bartender, bouncer, proprietor?)
three hungry heads that are appeased with clumps - his three heads represent the past, the present and future of the narrator. Cerebus was Hades' loyal
watch dog. Guarded the gates that granted access and exit to the underworld.
"Where do you think you're going, bub?" A large hand pressed against my chest with authority, stopping me in my tracks. Whereas once again I'd imagined that
I had been leaving, in fact I'd been entering.
The bar is filled with bankers, financial parasites, drinking blood.
******
an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
*******
"How much alcohol does one require? There are levels of need. On the one hand, there are those who could go throughout their entire existence without ever
once sampling alcohol." This man, a seemingly homeless collection of skin and rags and filth, smelling powerfully of human excrement, stops in mid query and
picks up the shot glass without reflection, draining it in one motion. Without pausing to even allow the effect of that shot to enter him, he signals
immediately for another. "On the other hand, for some, the alcohol is the blood stream. You see, generally speaking the liver can usually metabolize one of
these drinks; a glass of beer or wine within 60 minutes. So perhaps you can measure the need for alcoholic consumption in hour increments. If you drink
more than this or faster than this, the alcohol cannot be processed by the liver quickly enough. And this is when the blood becomes saturated and the
alcohol finds new venues, like the blood stream, to wait for the liver to process."
He takes the next shot glass and again, empties it in one quick motion.
"How long can you go on like this for?" I wonder absently. "If what you say is true, your blood stream should be inundated in no time at this rate and lead
to alcohol poisening."
"Alcohol dilutes itself in the water volume of the body as it travels through. Muscle tissue contains more water than fat tissue. More muscle tissue is
more water and more water dilutes the immediate effect to some degree. So when I am not drinking, I am exercising. This allows me to drink more."
*****
Around us, the Binge Drinkers. Their leader is a bare-chested man wearing a kilt with an inflamed pancreas which juts out of the side of his torso, thinly
veiled by a yellowish skin, reddened. He occasionally lifts the kilt to emit a bulky, whitish, sticky, greasy, floating, foul smelling stool. All around
him is a small puddle of these stools, a miniscule lake of diarrhea. The new members of the Binge Drinkers club are forced to walk through this bare foot.
It is part of the ritual of indoctrination. I nearly gag watching this.
They imagine themselves enjoying themselves. They are mirrored reflections of a dream that has disintigrated into an incessant nightmare. But
occasionally, they are having fun. They are laughing and never at themselves but perhaps at each other or those around them. They sing songs like "I am
having so much fun!" and "Man, I want to get wasted." The group consists of those who have just commenced their binge drinking and those who stayed on.
Those who have stayed on slur, spit, vomit, pass out. They are continuously replaced. There is a massive queue of people waiting to join in the fun. It is
a queue consisting of men and women. They feel addicted to this illusion of fun. It has become home. The only thing they find discomforting is the nausea
and vomitting that inevitably follow.
"I was part of the Binge Drinkers Club once," he continued allowing another shot of liquid to pass through him although this time savouring it slowly as if
it were his last.
"Why only once? Why did you stop?"
"I detested the social element of it. The people were idiots. They had no thoughts. Look at them, bringing themselves to a lowest common denominator. It
is a nihilism devoid of the acknowledgement of nihilism. A pointless exercise, a superficial convenience that sickened me more than the alcohol." As he
speaks he moves slowly away from the bar and I find myelf following him. His words trail behind him like a series of dead leaves blown along an empty street
on a bleak October afternoon.
We make our way into a corner where he pulls back a curtain and a room of immense light is revealed. In that room there is what appears to be a buffet
table. It is difficult to discern an exact size and dimension as only pieces of it are visible threw a swarm of naked people who are climbing all over it,
swatting each other back, biting each other, making horrible noises of incredibly audible chewing.
When a waiter appears carrying another tray of meat, he is immediately attacked. These are human beings, or have the physical attributes of human beings but
they lack completely any semblance of trained civility.
In attacking the waiter however, they are unaware that they are cutting off their own supply. The trays of steamed venison and stewed pork clatter loudly to
the floor and are swooped down upon by these naked savages. They fight each other off, grabbing at what they can and pushing it greedily into their mouths.
I cannot tell if they are even bothering to masticate what they are pushing greedily into their mouths or if they are simply swallowing chunks of meat whole.
I look back over to the buffet table again and see people climbing over the top of each other, yanking others back by the shoulder to squeeze into a position
closer to the source of the food. They are not saying words but they are grunting and belching and shouting with great abandone.
In sum, they appear to be one living organism of consumption spread out over the entirety of the buffet table. But I can make out the inviduals, or the
backs of individuals. Faces are not visible. The faces are striving as far as physically possible toward the table, the source of the food. Some grab and
yank food right out of the hands of others. This prompts others who are closer to the table to forget their hands entirely and merely shove their faces
directly into the food, gnawing, chewing, grunting.
We watch this spectacle for perhaps 10 or 15 minutes. With the attack of the waiters the source of replenishing the buffet is cut off and eventually of
course, particularly at such a rate of consumption, the supply of food runs out. Some are still chewing and grunting even though there is nothing to chew.
Gradually the notion that the feeding frenzy has ended sinks into them, one by one and one by one, they begin to pull away, sated but disappointed at the
same time, saying nothing to one another, merely slinking off into the background.
"If we wait long enough," Hierbringen tells me with the authority of experience, "eventually the waiters will emerge again carrying trays of food to
replenish the buffet with. And eventually another horde of people will discover this and you will see the entire scene played out all over again. The funny
thing I've noticed though is that it never seems to dawn on any of them that the buffet will be replenished. To them, the supply is finite and once the
supply has been consumed the best they can hope for is to move on to another room in search of another buffet. But this is the only room with a buffet and
although they don't realise it, they continue to return to the same room and the same buffet...." His shot glass has been replaced with a large snifter
which he sips from liberally.
******
"So, how would you like a little liquid Lysergic Acid Diathylamide to ease the dull aching brought on by all this drinking?" Hierbringen has grown impatient.
We are back at the bar and he is tapping his index and middle right fingers incessantly against the counter. He has two drinks beside him already, the
large snifter and another shot glass. "I'm bored..." he explains apologetically.
He's noticed of course that my own pace of drinking has slackened. He has taken note and is now proposing a deeper phase, concerned that I too have grown
bored with both the drinking and the sights around me.
I say nothing but follow him. He has already decided on his own that this is the next step to take and so he turns from the bar, grabbing a bottle off the
rack to take with him.
"I cannot remember my troubles," he hums to himself. "I am no longer chased by a horrible thing..."
We walk through a series of hallways, each emitting a strange series of lights of varying colours, pulsating to a beat that does not exist. There is no
silence but there is no music. Everywhere around me I hear shouting both in anger and in happiness yet I see no one. It as though the empty hallways we are
passing through are haunted with the ghosts of dead revelers. Perhaps it is only their echoes.
Finally we exit one hallway and enter a cavernous bar area, another extension. This one has large picnic tables which are filled with alcohol and food and
people consuming both simultaneously. It is a joyless consumption. No one is speaking. There is music filling the room, a dull, hypnotic music.
Hierbringen stops me with a hand to my chest. "Some of these chaps are rough," he explains. "They don't know you and might take offence at you or worse,
might believe you have come to take some of their supplies. The addition of another person signifies to them a decrease in supplies. Allow me to do the
talking. Just wait here."
He disappears into the throng. No one notices me standing there alone, sipping my beer as inobtrusively as possible, pretending I don't exist so that no one
would notice me. I could hide my face behind my hands and feel invisible.
After a few moments, Hierbringen returns. "It's all arranged. But the dealer insists on meeting you first before he will give me anything. He doesn't want
any of his supply falling into the wrong hands."
"The wrong hands?"
"There are spies here, don't kid yourself. Spies are here among all of us and they are checking in to make certain that everyone is consuming their maximum
intake. Believe it or not there are times when even these people need a nap. And when they do, the spies appear, materialise seemingly from nowhere but in
fact they are all around us. If someone passes out or naps, they are immediately awoken, brutally at times, to make sure they do not stop consuming."
He leads me to one of the tables and there is a parting of people to allow us the space to enter their circle around the table. At the forefront is a Jabba,
his clothing covered in food stains, his shirt unbuttoned to the belly which is like a huge medicine ball. His face is pockmarked by blisters and angry red
blotches. His hair is greasy and so full of dandruff that the dandruff accumulates in small piles on the table in front of him.
"A visitor but not a spy, so Hierbringen tells me," he mutters, nodding over at me and shoving a piece of chicken in his mouth, taking a sip of white wine.
"What is your name, visitor?"
"He doesn't know." Hierbringen intervenes quickly, nervously as though I have been lying the entire time and once I open my mouth, my lie will be mercilessly
exposed and crucified. "He simply woke outside without knowing..."
"What?" he spits food out in various directions, muttering again something unintellible but to himself. "Let the visitor speak for himself Hierbringen, I
don't trust you..."
"it's true," I begin. "I don't remember my name."
"And so how did you get in here?"
"I was delivered here...by Kinderton..."
"Kinderton?!" he bellowed, more food falling from the corners of his mouth. "Kinderton has been dead for years! What kind of lies are you telling me?!" He
demands now, no longer a simple line of enquiry. Those sat around us have stopped eating and drinking momentarily and as they do, the spies appear like
ghosts to poke them with sharp sticks and motion for them to continue.
"I only tell you what I know. I woke with no concept of who I was or how I got there and the next thing I knew, Kinderton was bringing me here..."
The Jabba chewed thoughtfully for a moment and swallowed another half glass of wine. Slowly he reached a conclusion and picking at his teeth, he nodded for
me to sit down beside him. "Let's have a closer look at you then..."
After I'd sat down beside him he poked at me, suprisingly gently given his girth and demeanor. "You seem to be made of flesh and bones yet the tale you tell
me implies you are dead, that you are a ghost guided by that Ghost of Ghosts, Kinderton, so I am rather puzzled. Just what is it you are doing here?" I nod
over at Hierbringen. "I was told we were going to be able to obtain liquid LSD from you."
"And if I were to give you a quantity of liquid LSD, what would you do with it?"
"I would take it of course."
"All of it, no matter the quantity?"
I said nothing for a moment, looking uncomfortably at Hierbringen whose own eyes were furtive and nervous. "I would take what you give me," I said finally
after that pause. The Jabba guffawed and slapped his fat paw on the table sending glasses of wine flying in all directions. "You are either very stupid or
very trusting but in any event, I will give you what you like on the condition that you leave from here immediately afterwards. I don't know who you are and
you are making me uncomfortable. Do you understand that? You are making me feel uncomfortable and I don't like that feeling at all visitor. I'd just as
soon eat you as look at you but I am afraid about the indigestion you might cause me. So take this. You and Hierbringen take this and fuck right off out of
here and I don't want to see either of you again, ever. Is that clear?"
"Clear."
The Jabba motioned to one of his subordinates who pulled a vile out of his pocket and handed it over to Hierbringen. We left immediately as the group around
the table returned to their food and wine.
*******
******
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