I went to see Marty today. He's really taking it badly with regard to the coming together of his girlfriend and Rosie. He seems lost without her. Thought I should try to cheer him up.
On the way, there was a big demonstration in Parliament Square. It'll probably be on the news tonight. They were barracking the Department for Children, Schools and Families. I don't know what it was about. I think it was something to do with the respect agenda. Anyway, it was an extraordinary sight because it looked like all the protesters had been busy using facepooch.com. I don't know if you've seen it but it's an online service where you upload a photo of your face which is printed onto latex and made into a full head-mask and then delivered to your home by post. The idea is that you can get one made for your dog so he can run around wearing a copy of your face. Well, these protestors had all brought along their dogs. It was chaotic. There were hundreds of them running around Parliament Square - every breed from little terriers and dachshunds to big Alsatians and Great Danes - running, squatting, barking, chasing, mounting, peeing... and every one, every single one with a rictal rubberised face of Ed Balls.
Imagine that.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Friday, 13 March 2009
Grrljool
I've managed to get down. There's a whole fleet of emergency services vehicles. I've just been led out by a couple of paramedics who've sat me down with a cup of hot chocolate and draped me in a foil blanket. I think they're still up there. I don't know. I don't know what they'll do but together... the police can't face them together. The rozzers need backup, heavy backup.
It's alright. I'm calm.
It all got out. Rosie heard about Bill - that her erstwhile paramour was back in England. Someone must have tipped her off. Someone out there is making a habit of causing mischief and I wish I knew who it was. Anyway, Rosie Hoal-Riemer found out not only that Bill Feltch was here but also that he was now in hospital and the precise means of how he had got there. It must have been true - she'd never quite got over Bill. By the time I heard, Rosie had already tracked down the cause of Bill's hospitalisation. I got here as fast as I could but they were already up in the roof garden. High up in the Japanese roof garden over Kensington High Street. I barrelled up the stairs and tumbled through the doors out on to the immaculately raked pebbles and there they stood, both prepared, both formidable - face to face.
The air was cool and clear. An exploded packing case had distributed a layer of tiny polystyrene pellets which covered the ground like pure, new snow. A slight breeze arose from the east, blowing gently through a row of sakura trees and wafting delicate cherry blossom across the faces of the two women who stood opposite each other, planted and intent, the swirling petals of pink blossom unnoticed by either as they focused, to the exclusion of all else, on each other's steely eyes. Slowly, crunching softly on the new-fallen polysnow, they circled each other, wily, wary of making a false move. I saw that, equidistant between them, some red object was on the ground. Rosie was the first to approach it, always maintaining the same distance from Marty's girlfriend, she edged forward, bent at the knees and, carefully maintaining eye contact, picked up what I could now see was one of Bill's red, out-sized clown shoes. Rosie backed up and Parmygal then did likewise, warily venturing forward and picking up the matching item of Bill's comedy footwear.
Rosie then shrugged off her overcoat. Underneath, she had on a pearlescent pink and white kimono, decorated with embroidered red roses. Though a slight figure, she was lithe and supple, and looked fearsomely focused with her hair piled up in a massive bun on top of her head and held in place by two ebony chopsticks. Very deliberately, she slipped off her wooden geta and carefully arranged them in parallel with her tabi-stockinged feet. Marty's girlfriend then violently whipped off her own coat to reveal, underneath, a close-fitting, 'Seventies-style blue Adidas tracksuit, with three white stripes running down the rippled contours of her sleeves and leggings.
As they continued to prowl each other in a wide circle, Rosie stepped up on to a flower bed and, from up high, cooed:
"You've made gwave ewwors.
Iwa fuwor bwevis est.
Pawa bellum... bitch!"
Marty's girlfriend just gave a grim snort of derision and anchored herself in a semi-crouched stance. One hand she held out, palm-outwards, for balance. With the other hand, she raised up the long clown shoe, drawing the length of it slowly in front of her face, as if it were a fine-tempered katana.
Responding to the wordless challenge, Rosie sprang from the raised bed, seeming to somehow float through the air before noiselessly landing on the niveous carpet of polysnow and blossom. In turn, she adopted her own duelling stance, whirling her clown shoe in a series of elaborate arcs around her arms and waist, deliberately stepping forward with each twirl in a display of martial skill, before abruptly thrusting out the shoe with both hands in front of her, inches away from the face of her opponent who neither flinched nor even blinked but merely let a cold, cruel grin grow across her mouth and exultant eyes.
I staggered up from my knees, scrabbling in the patterned pebbles, and loped over to the two frozen combatants. "Stop, please stop, can't we talk this through..." I cried.
Without any movement of heads or bodies, both women's eyes flickered to me. I stopped next to them.
"There must be another way..." I said, feebly.
The giant form of Marty's girlfriend took one step back, relaxed her warrior pose and then, with alarming rapidity, gave a deft flick of her wrist to deliver a playful but well-placed slap with the flat of the clown-sole against the back of my legs which, though only at half-strength, was enough to collapse me to my knees with a slight squeak from the comedy squeezy squeaker within the shoe. They both laughed as they surveyed my pathetic form, helplessly prone in the polysnow. I realised there was nothing I could do to stop them and, fearing for my own safety lest they tired of toying with me, I scrambled away on all fours to hide behind an ornamental stone bridge.
The two women resumed their preparatory positions en garde.
Again, absolute stillness.
A stillness of elegiac profundity.
A slight squall rose up and immediately ceased, whirling up the cherry blossom just momentarily in a conical vortex before falling back to earth in that forever of silence. From the street below, I could just hear the vague thumping of some beat-box megabass. Only the dull thump of the bass drum coming through, doomp, doomp, doomp, doomp... it seemed to echo my accelerating heartbeat as it passed away again into the stillness. Thin mists of condensed moisture belied the nature of the two adversaries, the clouds of their tense exhalations rising through the air the only clue that the two statuesque forms were not mere inanimate sculptures. A last single flower of blossom drifted slowly downwards, delicately tumbling through the air and settling on the tip of Rosie's rigidly outstretched clown-shoe. I saw the merest of movements in her eyes as her attention was, for just an infinitesimal instant, drawn to the motion. The terminatrix struck.
The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing. At times it seems to never leave one in peace with its incessant chatter and ruminative churnings. But there are also times when it is merciful, when the burden of sensory impressions becomes so great, so incoherently terrible, so aberrantly intolerable that it blocks it all out. It shuts down and protects us from being overwhelmed, protects us from losing that last fragile finger-hold on sanity, protects us from the dark abyss. Such was the compassionate functioning of my cerebral faculties for what followed. Only manic snapshots, isolated images, like photographs from a stroboscopically lit room, remain. Terrible images, fearsome images. Female figures fighting through the air, over the polysnow, at the precipitous edges of the roof... whirling, flying, somersaulting... uncannily quick, too fast to comprehend... But what has remained in my memory, what makes my fingers tremble still as I write this, are the sounds. Through the blackness, still I hear the sounds. The Amazonian war-cries, the bellowed shrieks of fury, the whoosh of clown-shoe cutting air with supernatural swiftness and the repeated comedic springy boinging noises and high-impact squeezy squeaks as the deadly clown shoes bent and twanged and clashed and smashed against each other in the maelstrom of lightning combat.
For how long this went on for, I can't say. The well-matched adversaries had at each other until the sun began to set, their disparate silhouettes set against its wide, red hemisphere, their war cries only slightly enervated from their epic struggle, Rosie one chopstick askew, her bun slightly shifted, the both of them with a handful of red shoe-polish marks on their attire, received from grazing blows. By that time, they had been observed from below, the two fighting figures dancing across the roof. Police had arrived but held back, unable to approach the fearsome duel.
I remember the end. As Rosie and Marty's broad battled it out in awesome ferocity on the very edge of the balustrade, I saw, rising slowly from behind them, its ominous outline rippled in the heat haze of its exhaust gases, the sleek black hull of a police helicopter. A distorted voice sounded incomprehensibly through the on-board loudhailer. I saw the powerful frame of Marty's woman sway for an instant as her footing faltered, her perfect balance disturbed from the unexpected downdraught of the rotor blades. The smaller Rosie, at an advantage in the rushing air, seized her chance and lunged forward with a wild, all-out haybaler of a swipe. At the last moment, the Parmywench blocked the blow with her own arms in a sickening crunch and loud squeezy squeak. Shocked by the force of the blow, she buckled for an instant with the shoe at her neck before, with her immense strength, she started to slowly push back on Rosie. In agonising deadlock they remained for those few seconds, defiantly oblivious to the loudhailer warnings, before Rosie suddenly seemed to notice, for the first time, the huge hands, the broad palms, the muscular fingers and the blue, popping veins of her opponent, pushing with every last ounce of strength at the shoe inches away from the coup de grace. Rosie gave a slight gasp and relaxed her attack. Marty's girlfriend, in confusion, allowed for quarter too, tentatively relinquishing her grip on the shoe. Then, Rosie reached over and with a look of rapt fascination and desire, slowly began stroking and fondling those great discus-like mitts.
"Your hands, your stwong, vigowous hands..." I heard her say.
Their eyes met, intense, bewildered yearning on both their faces.
I watched them, as I felt the pounding rhythmic thudding of the chopper blades echo in my chest, I watched them drop their clown-shoes and, as their clothes flapped like snapping flags in the helicopter's downdraught, they embraced and kissed, a long kiss of lesbotic intensity, a desperate kiss of wild abandonment and perennial pent-up passions - Rosie's bun finally bursting open and one bulging calf of Marty's girlfriend kinking back, demurely.
The wailing from the loudhailer ceased. The two women broke their embrace and stepped back, both facing the helicopter, hand-in-hand. I wanted to warn them. I wanted to shout out and warn the police. I wanted to tell them to get away, to flee this sapphic superduo but... but my lungs were frozen. I couldn't say a word. Instead, I felt myself being hauled away by the response unit who had just broken through the doors to the garden, dragged away to safety, to the soothing hot chocolate and foil blanket I cling to while silently rocking back and forth, back and forth.
It's alright. I'm calm.
It all got out. Rosie heard about Bill - that her erstwhile paramour was back in England. Someone must have tipped her off. Someone out there is making a habit of causing mischief and I wish I knew who it was. Anyway, Rosie Hoal-Riemer found out not only that Bill Feltch was here but also that he was now in hospital and the precise means of how he had got there. It must have been true - she'd never quite got over Bill. By the time I heard, Rosie had already tracked down the cause of Bill's hospitalisation. I got here as fast as I could but they were already up in the roof garden. High up in the Japanese roof garden over Kensington High Street. I barrelled up the stairs and tumbled through the doors out on to the immaculately raked pebbles and there they stood, both prepared, both formidable - face to face.
The air was cool and clear. An exploded packing case had distributed a layer of tiny polystyrene pellets which covered the ground like pure, new snow. A slight breeze arose from the east, blowing gently through a row of sakura trees and wafting delicate cherry blossom across the faces of the two women who stood opposite each other, planted and intent, the swirling petals of pink blossom unnoticed by either as they focused, to the exclusion of all else, on each other's steely eyes. Slowly, crunching softly on the new-fallen polysnow, they circled each other, wily, wary of making a false move. I saw that, equidistant between them, some red object was on the ground. Rosie was the first to approach it, always maintaining the same distance from Marty's girlfriend, she edged forward, bent at the knees and, carefully maintaining eye contact, picked up what I could now see was one of Bill's red, out-sized clown shoes. Rosie backed up and Parmygal then did likewise, warily venturing forward and picking up the matching item of Bill's comedy footwear.
Rosie then shrugged off her overcoat. Underneath, she had on a pearlescent pink and white kimono, decorated with embroidered red roses. Though a slight figure, she was lithe and supple, and looked fearsomely focused with her hair piled up in a massive bun on top of her head and held in place by two ebony chopsticks. Very deliberately, she slipped off her wooden geta and carefully arranged them in parallel with her tabi-stockinged feet. Marty's girlfriend then violently whipped off her own coat to reveal, underneath, a close-fitting, 'Seventies-style blue Adidas tracksuit, with three white stripes running down the rippled contours of her sleeves and leggings.
As they continued to prowl each other in a wide circle, Rosie stepped up on to a flower bed and, from up high, cooed:
"You've made gwave ewwors.
Iwa fuwor bwevis est.
Pawa bellum... bitch!"
Marty's girlfriend just gave a grim snort of derision and anchored herself in a semi-crouched stance. One hand she held out, palm-outwards, for balance. With the other hand, she raised up the long clown shoe, drawing the length of it slowly in front of her face, as if it were a fine-tempered katana.
Responding to the wordless challenge, Rosie sprang from the raised bed, seeming to somehow float through the air before noiselessly landing on the niveous carpet of polysnow and blossom. In turn, she adopted her own duelling stance, whirling her clown shoe in a series of elaborate arcs around her arms and waist, deliberately stepping forward with each twirl in a display of martial skill, before abruptly thrusting out the shoe with both hands in front of her, inches away from the face of her opponent who neither flinched nor even blinked but merely let a cold, cruel grin grow across her mouth and exultant eyes.
I staggered up from my knees, scrabbling in the patterned pebbles, and loped over to the two frozen combatants. "Stop, please stop, can't we talk this through..." I cried.
Without any movement of heads or bodies, both women's eyes flickered to me. I stopped next to them.
"There must be another way..." I said, feebly.
The giant form of Marty's girlfriend took one step back, relaxed her warrior pose and then, with alarming rapidity, gave a deft flick of her wrist to deliver a playful but well-placed slap with the flat of the clown-sole against the back of my legs which, though only at half-strength, was enough to collapse me to my knees with a slight squeak from the comedy squeezy squeaker within the shoe. They both laughed as they surveyed my pathetic form, helplessly prone in the polysnow. I realised there was nothing I could do to stop them and, fearing for my own safety lest they tired of toying with me, I scrambled away on all fours to hide behind an ornamental stone bridge.
The two women resumed their preparatory positions en garde.
Again, absolute stillness.
A stillness of elegiac profundity.
A slight squall rose up and immediately ceased, whirling up the cherry blossom just momentarily in a conical vortex before falling back to earth in that forever of silence. From the street below, I could just hear the vague thumping of some beat-box megabass. Only the dull thump of the bass drum coming through, doomp, doomp, doomp, doomp... it seemed to echo my accelerating heartbeat as it passed away again into the stillness. Thin mists of condensed moisture belied the nature of the two adversaries, the clouds of their tense exhalations rising through the air the only clue that the two statuesque forms were not mere inanimate sculptures. A last single flower of blossom drifted slowly downwards, delicately tumbling through the air and settling on the tip of Rosie's rigidly outstretched clown-shoe. I saw the merest of movements in her eyes as her attention was, for just an infinitesimal instant, drawn to the motion. The terminatrix struck.
The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing. At times it seems to never leave one in peace with its incessant chatter and ruminative churnings. But there are also times when it is merciful, when the burden of sensory impressions becomes so great, so incoherently terrible, so aberrantly intolerable that it blocks it all out. It shuts down and protects us from being overwhelmed, protects us from losing that last fragile finger-hold on sanity, protects us from the dark abyss. Such was the compassionate functioning of my cerebral faculties for what followed. Only manic snapshots, isolated images, like photographs from a stroboscopically lit room, remain. Terrible images, fearsome images. Female figures fighting through the air, over the polysnow, at the precipitous edges of the roof... whirling, flying, somersaulting... uncannily quick, too fast to comprehend... But what has remained in my memory, what makes my fingers tremble still as I write this, are the sounds. Through the blackness, still I hear the sounds. The Amazonian war-cries, the bellowed shrieks of fury, the whoosh of clown-shoe cutting air with supernatural swiftness and the repeated comedic springy boinging noises and high-impact squeezy squeaks as the deadly clown shoes bent and twanged and clashed and smashed against each other in the maelstrom of lightning combat.
For how long this went on for, I can't say. The well-matched adversaries had at each other until the sun began to set, their disparate silhouettes set against its wide, red hemisphere, their war cries only slightly enervated from their epic struggle, Rosie one chopstick askew, her bun slightly shifted, the both of them with a handful of red shoe-polish marks on their attire, received from grazing blows. By that time, they had been observed from below, the two fighting figures dancing across the roof. Police had arrived but held back, unable to approach the fearsome duel.
I remember the end. As Rosie and Marty's broad battled it out in awesome ferocity on the very edge of the balustrade, I saw, rising slowly from behind them, its ominous outline rippled in the heat haze of its exhaust gases, the sleek black hull of a police helicopter. A distorted voice sounded incomprehensibly through the on-board loudhailer. I saw the powerful frame of Marty's woman sway for an instant as her footing faltered, her perfect balance disturbed from the unexpected downdraught of the rotor blades. The smaller Rosie, at an advantage in the rushing air, seized her chance and lunged forward with a wild, all-out haybaler of a swipe. At the last moment, the Parmywench blocked the blow with her own arms in a sickening crunch and loud squeezy squeak. Shocked by the force of the blow, she buckled for an instant with the shoe at her neck before, with her immense strength, she started to slowly push back on Rosie. In agonising deadlock they remained for those few seconds, defiantly oblivious to the loudhailer warnings, before Rosie suddenly seemed to notice, for the first time, the huge hands, the broad palms, the muscular fingers and the blue, popping veins of her opponent, pushing with every last ounce of strength at the shoe inches away from the coup de grace. Rosie gave a slight gasp and relaxed her attack. Marty's girlfriend, in confusion, allowed for quarter too, tentatively relinquishing her grip on the shoe. Then, Rosie reached over and with a look of rapt fascination and desire, slowly began stroking and fondling those great discus-like mitts.
"Your hands, your stwong, vigowous hands..." I heard her say.
Their eyes met, intense, bewildered yearning on both their faces.
I watched them, as I felt the pounding rhythmic thudding of the chopper blades echo in my chest, I watched them drop their clown-shoes and, as their clothes flapped like snapping flags in the helicopter's downdraught, they embraced and kissed, a long kiss of lesbotic intensity, a desperate kiss of wild abandonment and perennial pent-up passions - Rosie's bun finally bursting open and one bulging calf of Marty's girlfriend kinking back, demurely.
The wailing from the loudhailer ceased. The two women broke their embrace and stepped back, both facing the helicopter, hand-in-hand. I wanted to warn them. I wanted to shout out and warn the police. I wanted to tell them to get away, to flee this sapphic superduo but... but my lungs were frozen. I couldn't say a word. Instead, I felt myself being hauled away by the response unit who had just broken through the doors to the garden, dragged away to safety, to the soothing hot chocolate and foil blanket I cling to while silently rocking back and forth, back and forth.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Hefty Waft
I went to see Marty at his offices. I'd called him earlier and told him about Bill and how I wasn't able to get the plot book back. He just hung up. I figured he'd called me over to cancel 'Badge'. When I got there, I had to wait, as usual, in the anteroom with his PA, Primula - Primula de Saveloy. I like Primula, with her chic specs and slinky svelte pelt. Ah, poor Primula de Saveloy, with her voluptuously sounded vowels and her lovely round assonance standing proud. The lovely Primula, long-suffering and sanguine as ever, the one dignified locus of sanity in Marty's empire of strange. I saw that she'd got herself an extra handbag and a set of noise-cancelling headphones. I thought it discreet to avoid enquiry.
I'd arrived early and had been killing time drinking lots of full-fat lattes at that new coffee chain - you know, the one with Hokey, the silver monkey. They tasted a bit like gravy for some reason. Anyway, after a few maximo waxibeakers, I was desperate to slash my liquistash so I headed straight for the Parmesan Production toilet facilities. The door was locked, so I paced impatiently for a minute or two outside before I heard a flush, running tap water and the lock of the door slide open. A very fat man with wrap-around sunglasses and a slicked-back ponytail of grey, thinning hair walked out, breathing noisily and laboriously through his open mouth. Awkwardly, we sidestepped together a couple of times before both going to the left of each other and, ignoring the fresh pungency, I hurriedly lifted the lid for to get done urination.
I don't know why, but I think it was more wistful dismay than outright revulsion that I felt when confronted with the unflushably turgid remnant of the last occupant. With a resigned equanimity, I covered the offending sight with a few squares of paper and hit the double-dot flush again. Noise and motion ensued but the obstinate blockage, apparently the digested residue of some meal fashioned from the super-dense degenerate matter of a neutron star, refused to budge - merely breaking into two chunks along its own critical fault line and stolidly rebounding around the pan before wedging tight with the mass of soggy paper, causing the bowl to fill right up over the rim. Outside, I heard Primula calling me in to see Marty. "Just coming," I said and, by then somewhat ruffled, I took the toilet brush and thrust it firmly into the swirling cloud of paper and non-baryonic ultrafudge. Unfortunately, so exotically compact the gutdirt was, that on the second plunge, the handle of the brush broke off and the plastic shard of shaft got sucked back down into the unspeakable mess with a loud squelching noise almost as if the defiant lump of megadump was mocking me. Primula called again and, in a mild panic, I just slammed shut the lid and hoped I'd be able to have another go at it after seeing Marty.
Marty was there, wearing his shiny silver-grey suit, sitting with his feet up on his vast mahogany desk. His Antianeiran object of adoration was perched nonchalantly on one corner, a pink tank-top stretched mercilessly over her immutable hooters, coquettishly filing her scarlet talons. The objects on Marty's desk were suspiciously arrayed - papers and files unnaturally stacked as if they had just been hurriedly piled there. Additionally, a faint hint of musky pong hung in the air, my thesis finally confirmed when I observed on the polished surface of the desk an unmistakable patch of condensed sweat, its bi-ovoid shape reminiscent of the fertile form of the Coco-de-Mer nut, only its angular edges betraying the precise provenance of such muscular buttock marks. Following my eyes, Marty noticed the moist mark himself and quickly slid a stack of files over the top to hide it, revealing behind them, as he did so, a kilo-block of Cheddar cheese, riddled with bite marks around the edge.
Stuffing the block of nibbled cheese into a drawer, he hit his intercom and ordered some drinks, offering one to me. My relationship with the lavatory still unconsummated, I politely refused and re-tensed my muscles over my insistent bladder. Primula sauntered in with a brace of bottles. "Soda, soda, sodaaghhh!" Marty exclaimed with glee, greedily snatching the bottles from his PA with strange gurglings of excited contentment like an infant being spooned mushed prunes. He handed a bottle to his big woman who wordlessly hitched up her tank-top a few inches, inserted the top of the bottle into her exposed navel and, condensing her iron abdominals, cracked off the crenellated metal bottle top with a sharp hiss of released gas. Opening the other bottle for herself in similar manner, both took simultaneous swigs before Marty leant back in his chair again, ready to hold forth. Just as he was about to speak, I noticed a look of slight confusion fall on his face and a bulge under his upper lip where he was probing with his tongue. He reached up to his mouth and plucked a thick curly pubic hair from between his upper teeth, surveyed it, shrugged, flicked it away, and began his spiel.
As the Parmy yapped on about needing to want it bad enough and not showing enough commitment, my mind wandered despondently. I noticed, for the first time, that when Marty speaks, it's not just his lower jaw which goes up and down but both his upper and lower jaws move, his whole head oscillating - rather like the muppets talk. None of what he was saying went in. I was tired of it all and just sat there watching his head flap away as he emphasised his points with extravagant hand gestures. Something caught my eye, though. I noticed that, as he was gesticulating, he was pumping away at something in his left hand. It wasn't his normal spring-loaded wrist-strengthener - it was something else - something round and red that he kept squeezing. Finally, he slapped it down on the desk and, as it uncompressed itself, I saw that it had popped back into the familiar sphere of a clown's nose.
"...and that's why we're happy to take on 'Badge' but we can't make do with the puerile scatological rantings of your story lines - we need a proper MacGuffin." He paused for effect. "A proper MacGuffin, just like this!" and he thrust forward a box file under my nose.
I opened it and looked within. "Marty, I don't understand, why do we need a value pack of industrial-grade 'Luvlube'?"
"Huh? Oh, wait. I mean, a proper MacGuffin like this!" and he shoved forward another box file, sweeping the first one aside, off his desk.
Again, I looked inside. It was the plot book - Sandy's plot book.
"Marty - how did you get hold of this? I saw Bill, but..."
Marty leaned forward and playfully pinched my cheeks between his thumbs and forefingers. "My boy, my boy, I have my ways..." He gently slapped the sides of my face with his stubby little hands and leaned back in his chair again. "I know how Bill likes to vent his juices... oy! So, we just gave him what he wanted, even - we gave him a woman, alright..." and he started giggling girlishly to himself. Slowly, it dawned on me, the truth of who he had sent to retrieve the book. Then, rolling up from beneath Marty's chuckling, I heard another sound, a sub-sound, and infrasonic vibration that sounded like laughter recorded on tape that has been slowed right down to an unsettling slow-motion bass rumbling and, glancing to the square shoulders of Marty's girlfriend, I saw them subtly shaking and realised the source of that monstrous, mirthful reverberation. My spine, from the base of my neck to the top of my coccyx, went numbly cold.
Marty then opened one of his desk drawers and I heard him rummaging in a carrier bag before pulling out a plastic punnet of plums. He leant back in his chair as his woman took one of the plums and, holding it over his gaping mouth, squeezed out the juice for him. He slurped at it noisily before casting me a glance, pink plum juice dripping down his chin.
"Crushed plums?" he offered.
"No thanks," I said, crossing my legs. She just sneered at me.
Well, I left them to their soft fruits and let myself out. 'Badge' is back and that is that - a good day, I guess, though I can't help feeling that things are getting out of control. Still, it's what I said I wanted.
Oh yes, on my way out, there was a shrill scream. Primula came out of the toilet, pale and sobbing. "Did you do that? Did you do that terrible thing?" she asked.
I'd arrived early and had been killing time drinking lots of full-fat lattes at that new coffee chain - you know, the one with Hokey, the silver monkey. They tasted a bit like gravy for some reason. Anyway, after a few maximo waxibeakers, I was desperate to slash my liquistash so I headed straight for the Parmesan Production toilet facilities. The door was locked, so I paced impatiently for a minute or two outside before I heard a flush, running tap water and the lock of the door slide open. A very fat man with wrap-around sunglasses and a slicked-back ponytail of grey, thinning hair walked out, breathing noisily and laboriously through his open mouth. Awkwardly, we sidestepped together a couple of times before both going to the left of each other and, ignoring the fresh pungency, I hurriedly lifted the lid for to get done urination.
I don't know why, but I think it was more wistful dismay than outright revulsion that I felt when confronted with the unflushably turgid remnant of the last occupant. With a resigned equanimity, I covered the offending sight with a few squares of paper and hit the double-dot flush again. Noise and motion ensued but the obstinate blockage, apparently the digested residue of some meal fashioned from the super-dense degenerate matter of a neutron star, refused to budge - merely breaking into two chunks along its own critical fault line and stolidly rebounding around the pan before wedging tight with the mass of soggy paper, causing the bowl to fill right up over the rim. Outside, I heard Primula calling me in to see Marty. "Just coming," I said and, by then somewhat ruffled, I took the toilet brush and thrust it firmly into the swirling cloud of paper and non-baryonic ultrafudge. Unfortunately, so exotically compact the gutdirt was, that on the second plunge, the handle of the brush broke off and the plastic shard of shaft got sucked back down into the unspeakable mess with a loud squelching noise almost as if the defiant lump of megadump was mocking me. Primula called again and, in a mild panic, I just slammed shut the lid and hoped I'd be able to have another go at it after seeing Marty.
Marty was there, wearing his shiny silver-grey suit, sitting with his feet up on his vast mahogany desk. His Antianeiran object of adoration was perched nonchalantly on one corner, a pink tank-top stretched mercilessly over her immutable hooters, coquettishly filing her scarlet talons. The objects on Marty's desk were suspiciously arrayed - papers and files unnaturally stacked as if they had just been hurriedly piled there. Additionally, a faint hint of musky pong hung in the air, my thesis finally confirmed when I observed on the polished surface of the desk an unmistakable patch of condensed sweat, its bi-ovoid shape reminiscent of the fertile form of the Coco-de-Mer nut, only its angular edges betraying the precise provenance of such muscular buttock marks. Following my eyes, Marty noticed the moist mark himself and quickly slid a stack of files over the top to hide it, revealing behind them, as he did so, a kilo-block of Cheddar cheese, riddled with bite marks around the edge.
Stuffing the block of nibbled cheese into a drawer, he hit his intercom and ordered some drinks, offering one to me. My relationship with the lavatory still unconsummated, I politely refused and re-tensed my muscles over my insistent bladder. Primula sauntered in with a brace of bottles. "Soda, soda, sodaaghhh!" Marty exclaimed with glee, greedily snatching the bottles from his PA with strange gurglings of excited contentment like an infant being spooned mushed prunes. He handed a bottle to his big woman who wordlessly hitched up her tank-top a few inches, inserted the top of the bottle into her exposed navel and, condensing her iron abdominals, cracked off the crenellated metal bottle top with a sharp hiss of released gas. Opening the other bottle for herself in similar manner, both took simultaneous swigs before Marty leant back in his chair again, ready to hold forth. Just as he was about to speak, I noticed a look of slight confusion fall on his face and a bulge under his upper lip where he was probing with his tongue. He reached up to his mouth and plucked a thick curly pubic hair from between his upper teeth, surveyed it, shrugged, flicked it away, and began his spiel.
As the Parmy yapped on about needing to want it bad enough and not showing enough commitment, my mind wandered despondently. I noticed, for the first time, that when Marty speaks, it's not just his lower jaw which goes up and down but both his upper and lower jaws move, his whole head oscillating - rather like the muppets talk. None of what he was saying went in. I was tired of it all and just sat there watching his head flap away as he emphasised his points with extravagant hand gestures. Something caught my eye, though. I noticed that, as he was gesticulating, he was pumping away at something in his left hand. It wasn't his normal spring-loaded wrist-strengthener - it was something else - something round and red that he kept squeezing. Finally, he slapped it down on the desk and, as it uncompressed itself, I saw that it had popped back into the familiar sphere of a clown's nose.
"...and that's why we're happy to take on 'Badge' but we can't make do with the puerile scatological rantings of your story lines - we need a proper MacGuffin." He paused for effect. "A proper MacGuffin, just like this!" and he thrust forward a box file under my nose.
I opened it and looked within. "Marty, I don't understand, why do we need a value pack of industrial-grade 'Luvlube'?"
"Huh? Oh, wait. I mean, a proper MacGuffin like this!" and he shoved forward another box file, sweeping the first one aside, off his desk.
Again, I looked inside. It was the plot book - Sandy's plot book.
"Marty - how did you get hold of this? I saw Bill, but..."
Marty leaned forward and playfully pinched my cheeks between his thumbs and forefingers. "My boy, my boy, I have my ways..." He gently slapped the sides of my face with his stubby little hands and leaned back in his chair again. "I know how Bill likes to vent his juices... oy! So, we just gave him what he wanted, even - we gave him a woman, alright..." and he started giggling girlishly to himself. Slowly, it dawned on me, the truth of who he had sent to retrieve the book. Then, rolling up from beneath Marty's chuckling, I heard another sound, a sub-sound, and infrasonic vibration that sounded like laughter recorded on tape that has been slowed right down to an unsettling slow-motion bass rumbling and, glancing to the square shoulders of Marty's girlfriend, I saw them subtly shaking and realised the source of that monstrous, mirthful reverberation. My spine, from the base of my neck to the top of my coccyx, went numbly cold.
Marty then opened one of his desk drawers and I heard him rummaging in a carrier bag before pulling out a plastic punnet of plums. He leant back in his chair as his woman took one of the plums and, holding it over his gaping mouth, squeezed out the juice for him. He slurped at it noisily before casting me a glance, pink plum juice dripping down his chin.
"Crushed plums?" he offered.
"No thanks," I said, crossing my legs. She just sneered at me.
Well, I left them to their soft fruits and let myself out. 'Badge' is back and that is that - a good day, I guess, though I can't help feeling that things are getting out of control. Still, it's what I said I wanted.
Oh yes, on my way out, there was a shrill scream. Primula came out of the toilet, pale and sobbing. "Did you do that? Did you do that terrible thing?" she asked.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Filamentary Ribaldry
"I've got an IQ of 183," Bill said again. "I could have done anything I wanted but it was always clowning, always clowning, always... since that day..." He put down his tea. I noticed the discoloured verruca plaster swimming in the oily residue at the bottom of the mug. "You don't know me," he continued, "Merkin doesn't know me. Merkin. If it wasn't for Merkin... You know what Merkin did to me? You should stay away from him if you know what's good for you. Three years in Japan. Three years and I was the biggest thing on TV. I had my own show - started off doing the interstitials between cartoons but the part kept growing. They loved the gaijin clown - 'Lucky Big Clown' they called me, 'Rucky Bigoh Crownoh-san'..." he trailed.
"Then they got hold of the photos in Tokyo. Someone must have sent them. It happened again. I got dropped again. I protested that they wouldn't be able to recognise my face under the make-up but they wouldn't listen."
Bill's breathing became more shallow and rapid. I could see his hands tensing into two big fists with the painful memories. He told me how he had had an 'episode'. He'd flown into a rage, refusing to leave the TV studios. He described how he'd smashed his way through the cameras, the production crew all jumping up onto his back, trying to restrain him, as he stomped around roaring like an enraged bear, whirling around and throwing them off, continually scattering them about the studio only for them to keep jumping back on again, frantically stabbing him with their biros.
Bill was in another world as he continued. "'Clazy kaiju - crownoh godzirraaghh!' was the last thing I heard before they overpowered me. You want to see what they did? You want to see?" He ripped off his shirt to show me his broad, pasty back. It was still peppered with hundreds of tiny red welts from the desperate biro attacks.
"Merkin," he whispered again, darkly, and sat down quietly next to a hideous mannequin.
"I never stopped clowning, though. I stuck to it. Always a clown, always a clown, always since..." I saw Bill's face soften and drop as though he was about to cry. "...always since school. Matron. Matron made me a clown. I did it for matron." He took a deep breath and seemed to compose himself, continuing in a steadier voice.
"Pater wanted me to continue in the family business. I was being groomed for it. The finest education money could buy. Oh yes, the finest, most despicably lonely education that money could buy. I was a boarder and the only thing that made it worthwhile, the only consolatory salve, the only element of untainted beauty was lovely sweet matron and her fifty-denier stockings.
"The lower sixth were all off for a run - cross country. I hated cross country, so I punched myself in the nose to make it bleed which meant I had to go and see matron instead. Off I went in my rugby kit with a scarlet-soaked handkerchief over my nose. I knocked on her door but she didn't answer. I just heard a faint groaning from inside, so I pushed open the door and crept in. It was the stockings I saw first. Those black fifty-denier stockings, crumpled around matron's beautiful white legs which were waving wildly up in the air, she on her back on the sick-bed and Dobber - Mr. Dobson - on top of her, dressed up for the school panto... dressed up as a CLOWN!
"'William...' she said softly as she noticed me, a sympathetic look of concern and dismay on her beautiful face. Dobber just sneered and imperiously shouted 'Feltch - out!' I had an episode. My first episode. I was carrying my spiked running shoes. We weren't allowed to wear them indoors. Anger convulsed me and, with an improvised weapon being at hand, I hurled myself forward, striking down with as much force as I could muster at the pale, still bobbing behind of Dobber. The shoe sunk into his left buttock with a resounding thunk, the deep spikes keeping it stuck there like Velcro. He cried out in an inhuman wail of pain, prompting a shrill shriek of shock from matron beneath. I ran. Dobber, red-faced with fury through the clown make-up, lunged after me mid-coition.
"The image I will never forget. Dobber, his still tumescent member waggling eccentrically like the convulsing neck of an electrocuted swan, coming for me, tripping over the baggy clown pantaloons wrapped around his ankles and falling, his murderous eyes still fixed on me, falling face-first into a chrome bedpan with a resonant clang. It was a freak blow, dispatching him instantly. As I sat huddled on the floor in a corner, watching sweet matron sobbing uncontrollably and peeling off the running shoe from Dobber's perforated buttock muscle with a loud ripping noise, I realised at that moment that there was only one vocation for me. Spurn my family though I must, lose my inheritance though I would, clowning - clowning was the path I had to follow."
Bill closed his eyes, took a long, deep sigh and opened them again, staring at me with pin-prick pupils. "You want this? You want the book? You get me a woman. The book for a woman." Slowly, a thin smile formed across his rouged clown lips. "I like to lick her tears."
"Did you... did you just say that you like to lick..." I started.
But Bill didn't answer with words. He just let out a long groan as if of pleasurable contentment, gently stroking his arms as he did so.
"Then they got hold of the photos in Tokyo. Someone must have sent them. It happened again. I got dropped again. I protested that they wouldn't be able to recognise my face under the make-up but they wouldn't listen."
Bill's breathing became more shallow and rapid. I could see his hands tensing into two big fists with the painful memories. He told me how he had had an 'episode'. He'd flown into a rage, refusing to leave the TV studios. He described how he'd smashed his way through the cameras, the production crew all jumping up onto his back, trying to restrain him, as he stomped around roaring like an enraged bear, whirling around and throwing them off, continually scattering them about the studio only for them to keep jumping back on again, frantically stabbing him with their biros.
Bill was in another world as he continued. "'Clazy kaiju - crownoh godzirraaghh!' was the last thing I heard before they overpowered me. You want to see what they did? You want to see?" He ripped off his shirt to show me his broad, pasty back. It was still peppered with hundreds of tiny red welts from the desperate biro attacks.
"Merkin," he whispered again, darkly, and sat down quietly next to a hideous mannequin.
"I never stopped clowning, though. I stuck to it. Always a clown, always a clown, always since..." I saw Bill's face soften and drop as though he was about to cry. "...always since school. Matron. Matron made me a clown. I did it for matron." He took a deep breath and seemed to compose himself, continuing in a steadier voice.
"Pater wanted me to continue in the family business. I was being groomed for it. The finest education money could buy. Oh yes, the finest, most despicably lonely education that money could buy. I was a boarder and the only thing that made it worthwhile, the only consolatory salve, the only element of untainted beauty was lovely sweet matron and her fifty-denier stockings.
"The lower sixth were all off for a run - cross country. I hated cross country, so I punched myself in the nose to make it bleed which meant I had to go and see matron instead. Off I went in my rugby kit with a scarlet-soaked handkerchief over my nose. I knocked on her door but she didn't answer. I just heard a faint groaning from inside, so I pushed open the door and crept in. It was the stockings I saw first. Those black fifty-denier stockings, crumpled around matron's beautiful white legs which were waving wildly up in the air, she on her back on the sick-bed and Dobber - Mr. Dobson - on top of her, dressed up for the school panto... dressed up as a CLOWN!
"'William...' she said softly as she noticed me, a sympathetic look of concern and dismay on her beautiful face. Dobber just sneered and imperiously shouted 'Feltch - out!' I had an episode. My first episode. I was carrying my spiked running shoes. We weren't allowed to wear them indoors. Anger convulsed me and, with an improvised weapon being at hand, I hurled myself forward, striking down with as much force as I could muster at the pale, still bobbing behind of Dobber. The shoe sunk into his left buttock with a resounding thunk, the deep spikes keeping it stuck there like Velcro. He cried out in an inhuman wail of pain, prompting a shrill shriek of shock from matron beneath. I ran. Dobber, red-faced with fury through the clown make-up, lunged after me mid-coition.
"The image I will never forget. Dobber, his still tumescent member waggling eccentrically like the convulsing neck of an electrocuted swan, coming for me, tripping over the baggy clown pantaloons wrapped around his ankles and falling, his murderous eyes still fixed on me, falling face-first into a chrome bedpan with a resonant clang. It was a freak blow, dispatching him instantly. As I sat huddled on the floor in a corner, watching sweet matron sobbing uncontrollably and peeling off the running shoe from Dobber's perforated buttock muscle with a loud ripping noise, I realised at that moment that there was only one vocation for me. Spurn my family though I must, lose my inheritance though I would, clowning - clowning was the path I had to follow."
Bill closed his eyes, took a long, deep sigh and opened them again, staring at me with pin-prick pupils. "You want this? You want the book? You get me a woman. The book for a woman." Slowly, a thin smile formed across his rouged clown lips. "I like to lick her tears."
"Did you... did you just say that you like to lick..." I started.
But Bill didn't answer with words. He just let out a long groan as if of pleasurable contentment, gently stroking his arms as he did so.
Hardly Badinage
I managed to find Bill under 'Feltch' in the phone book. He had an ad. The address was for a big tenement in south London. I'd called up earlier on the pretence that I was looking to book kooky clowns for a London Boroughs-sponsored clown-fest. I just hoped he wouldn't recognise me from the rabid shoeing. It had seemed like a hideous crimson veil of clown-rage had descended upon him at the time, like something inside had snapped, and I clung to the thesis that he had undergone a psychotic personality switch at the time, insufficiently possessed of his critical faculties to remember in detail those around him.
It was windy up on the walkway of the fourth floor at the entrance to his flat. The estate had a menacing air. From below, I could hear a dog continually barking and kids screaming foul obscenities in falsetto tones. My hand was actually shaking with fear as I pressed the doorbell. It didn't work. Through the frosted glass, I could see the distorted silhouette of a large man at the end of the corridor. He was standing, looking straight at me, his shoulders hunched and his arms held tensely in tight fists at his waist. I tried gently knocking on the frame of the door. It wasn't properly closed and it swung open when I tapped it. I could see Bill clearly. His face was downcast but his eyes were swivelled upwards under his heavy brow and looking straight at me.
"Hellooo," he said, "can I get you some tea?"
His voice was incongruous to his appearance. It was a mellow, refined drawl - very posh and softly languid. The flat was squalid. We stepped into the kitchen where he made two mugs of tea by running water straight from the hot tap instead of boiling it in a kettle. I declined his offer of milk and then followed him to his lounge. The curtains were drawn closed and it was dark inside. The room was bare save for a large wooden sideboard and about a dozen chairs set up in a big circle. Most of the chairs were occupied by shop-window mannequins, dressed in shabby clothes and with their faces clumsily decorated with thick layers of colourful make-up. In the centre of the ring of chairs was a television on a table. Next to the table, on the floor, were three more televisions - they were smashed up and covered in dust. We both sat opposite each other across the pile of TVs in the middle of the ring. I held my tea in both hands, unwilling to take a sip even though the mug was full right to the brim. He sipped his drink, a pinky finger held at a kink, evincing his pedigree.
"I thought you might be delivering my new television," Bill said in a slight whisper, "I think I'll be happy when my new television arrives. Happy then. Waiting for delivery."
"No, I'm here to discuss Clownrush '09" I said.
"Yes, I know," Bill countered with just the merest hint of snappiness that still made me jump slightly, spilling a little of the tea on my hands. He showed no evidence of recognising me but the atmosphere was extremely unpleasant. Beneath the smooth, refined voice, it felt as though there was a barely-restrained violence, like he could erupt at any moment. I'd forgotten what a huge man he was - big and square-shouldered with that small bald head on top. He was still wearing most of his clown make-up, or, at least, it appeared as though he never bothered washing it off. Some of the white paint had dripped off from one side of his face, revealing the sweaty pallid skin beneath. His head looked like a pink and white mottled slab of off-cut beef, raw and fatty, ready for the mincer. Where the paint had seeped into one eye, it was red and swollen. The other eye was still that vivid, light-blue hue I remembered. We talked. His smooth, posh voice delivered preternaturally quietly, undulating slightly as though he was struggling to maintain control of himself. Each sentence he spoke seemed to end in the barest of angry hisses as he breathed in noisily through his clogged nostrils. And all the time he listened to me, he gnawed. He gnawed on the rim of his mug, he gnawed on the corner of a cushion, he gnawed on his knuckles which were red and raw from continued gnawing.
After a couple of minutes, Bill asked me if I wanted some toast with my tea. He placed his own tea on the sideboard and went to the kitchen. Immediately, I took the opportunity to furtively search for Sandy's plot book. The sideboard was the only furniture in the room, so I rummaged through its drawers. They were full of reams of paper, every inch covered in dense, handwritten notes. Under one pile, I found an old black and white photograph, curled at the edges with age. It was a younger Bill, still with hair - a mass of dark hair, his big frame clothed in a black polo-necked jumper. It was slightly blurred from the movement but you could still see clearly the semi-mangled Swiss roll and Bill's face contorted in an unwholesome mixture of climactic release and vague incomprehension.
I continued to rummage in one of the upper cupboards but it was filled only with a heap of green-tinged used verruca plasters which spilled out as I opened the door. I recoiled from the foetid aroma, picking up the errant plasters with the tips of my fingers and throwing them back in to close the door again. I tried the other cupboard and drawers but found nothing. Finally, too nervous to search elsewhere, I went to sit down again but noticed, with horror, that one of the plasters, some traces of yellow skin still attached, had fallen into Bill's mug of tea. I turned to look for something to fish it out and found myself staring straight at Bill who was silently standing behind me.
"Looking for this?" he asked, holding up a small black notebook.
One of his long arms shot forward, my stomach dropped in cold fear, but the arm continued around me and picked up his mug of tea.
"I know who you are," he said, "I've got an IQ of 183." His red and blue eyes stared intently at me over the rim of his mug as he took a long, deep draught of his tea.
It was windy up on the walkway of the fourth floor at the entrance to his flat. The estate had a menacing air. From below, I could hear a dog continually barking and kids screaming foul obscenities in falsetto tones. My hand was actually shaking with fear as I pressed the doorbell. It didn't work. Through the frosted glass, I could see the distorted silhouette of a large man at the end of the corridor. He was standing, looking straight at me, his shoulders hunched and his arms held tensely in tight fists at his waist. I tried gently knocking on the frame of the door. It wasn't properly closed and it swung open when I tapped it. I could see Bill clearly. His face was downcast but his eyes were swivelled upwards under his heavy brow and looking straight at me.
"Hellooo," he said, "can I get you some tea?"
His voice was incongruous to his appearance. It was a mellow, refined drawl - very posh and softly languid. The flat was squalid. We stepped into the kitchen where he made two mugs of tea by running water straight from the hot tap instead of boiling it in a kettle. I declined his offer of milk and then followed him to his lounge. The curtains were drawn closed and it was dark inside. The room was bare save for a large wooden sideboard and about a dozen chairs set up in a big circle. Most of the chairs were occupied by shop-window mannequins, dressed in shabby clothes and with their faces clumsily decorated with thick layers of colourful make-up. In the centre of the ring of chairs was a television on a table. Next to the table, on the floor, were three more televisions - they were smashed up and covered in dust. We both sat opposite each other across the pile of TVs in the middle of the ring. I held my tea in both hands, unwilling to take a sip even though the mug was full right to the brim. He sipped his drink, a pinky finger held at a kink, evincing his pedigree.
"I thought you might be delivering my new television," Bill said in a slight whisper, "I think I'll be happy when my new television arrives. Happy then. Waiting for delivery."
"No, I'm here to discuss Clownrush '09" I said.
"Yes, I know," Bill countered with just the merest hint of snappiness that still made me jump slightly, spilling a little of the tea on my hands. He showed no evidence of recognising me but the atmosphere was extremely unpleasant. Beneath the smooth, refined voice, it felt as though there was a barely-restrained violence, like he could erupt at any moment. I'd forgotten what a huge man he was - big and square-shouldered with that small bald head on top. He was still wearing most of his clown make-up, or, at least, it appeared as though he never bothered washing it off. Some of the white paint had dripped off from one side of his face, revealing the sweaty pallid skin beneath. His head looked like a pink and white mottled slab of off-cut beef, raw and fatty, ready for the mincer. Where the paint had seeped into one eye, it was red and swollen. The other eye was still that vivid, light-blue hue I remembered. We talked. His smooth, posh voice delivered preternaturally quietly, undulating slightly as though he was struggling to maintain control of himself. Each sentence he spoke seemed to end in the barest of angry hisses as he breathed in noisily through his clogged nostrils. And all the time he listened to me, he gnawed. He gnawed on the rim of his mug, he gnawed on the corner of a cushion, he gnawed on his knuckles which were red and raw from continued gnawing.
After a couple of minutes, Bill asked me if I wanted some toast with my tea. He placed his own tea on the sideboard and went to the kitchen. Immediately, I took the opportunity to furtively search for Sandy's plot book. The sideboard was the only furniture in the room, so I rummaged through its drawers. They were full of reams of paper, every inch covered in dense, handwritten notes. Under one pile, I found an old black and white photograph, curled at the edges with age. It was a younger Bill, still with hair - a mass of dark hair, his big frame clothed in a black polo-necked jumper. It was slightly blurred from the movement but you could still see clearly the semi-mangled Swiss roll and Bill's face contorted in an unwholesome mixture of climactic release and vague incomprehension.
I continued to rummage in one of the upper cupboards but it was filled only with a heap of green-tinged used verruca plasters which spilled out as I opened the door. I recoiled from the foetid aroma, picking up the errant plasters with the tips of my fingers and throwing them back in to close the door again. I tried the other cupboard and drawers but found nothing. Finally, too nervous to search elsewhere, I went to sit down again but noticed, with horror, that one of the plasters, some traces of yellow skin still attached, had fallen into Bill's mug of tea. I turned to look for something to fish it out and found myself staring straight at Bill who was silently standing behind me.
"Looking for this?" he asked, holding up a small black notebook.
One of his long arms shot forward, my stomach dropped in cold fear, but the arm continued around me and picked up his mug of tea.
"I know who you are," he said, "I've got an IQ of 183." His red and blue eyes stared intently at me over the rim of his mug as he took a long, deep draught of his tea.
Monday, 9 March 2009
Reportage
MINISTERIAL AUTHORITY FOR MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES - FORM 9R-K/32 [M.A.M.A.100839]
09-03-09 WATCHZONE 1a-8273
TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPTION
Consumer Units under surveillance: J H Fisk 7-2521 call to S Merkin 1-5537 made 12:04 7th March 2009
SAFE UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT -
JHF: Hello, Sandy?
SM: Er... who's calling, please?
JHF: It's me, Jeremy - you know, 'Terry Badge' Jeremy.
SM: Oh, hey kid...
JHF: ...yeah, it's Jeremy, actually. Listen, Sandy, I've been worried about you. I mean after the clown attack. I, perhaps I should have done, well... hello...?
[static]
JHF: Sandy?
SM: It's okay, kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: ...I knew the day would come, the day of reckoning. I knew it was only a matter of time before I saw Bill again. It's almost a relief, in a way.
JHF: Bill? You knew that clown, didn't you? You recognised him.
SM: Yes, I knew him, Bill Feltch. We go way back. We were both part of the scene. Both trying to get work as actors. Back then, there was all sorts of craziness going down, all kinds of experimentation, all kinds of consciousness being expanded. You wouldn't understand, kid, with your Facebook and...
JHF: ...it's Jeremy, and I don't actually have a Facebook accou...
SM: ... computers. We were real. We were politically active, we cared, we really cared. Well, back then, there was one theatre company that was way out there - it was the grooviest of the groovy. It had no costumes, no props, no seating for the audience - none of the bourgeois nonsense that ties you down - it was pure, pure like golden snow, it connected to the core of what it is to be human, it was out there, it was avant-garde... and I wanted in. I would have done anything to get in. I... I did do anything.
JHF: What do you mean?
SM: There was an audition piece. Something that they told me everyone had to do. We were in a big hall with a wooden floor and high, narrow windows which had no curtains. A bell was ringing continually and the cast were all dressed in black turtle-neck sweaters and black-rimmed glasses and were running around the edge of the hall, carrying the curtains on their shoulders - trailing them around like carnival snakes and howling. In the centre of the hall was a table, where I stood and there, they made me... they had it on a plate...
[static]
SM: ...they made me penetrate a warmed-up Battenberg...
[static]
JHF: Sandy? Did you just say that you...
SM: That's right kid, they made me f-ck a sponge, forced me to rape a cake.
[static]
SM: Look kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: ...you have to understand that I wanted in. You ever wanted something so much, you found yourself doing things you wouldn't normally do? Huh? Things that you never thought you'd do? Well, back then, that was what I wanted. I was desperate, I would have done anything. That group was it. Besides, it was pushing the boundaries, it was art, it was an installation piece, it was political. You wouldn't understand these days. It was important. Anyway, after I got in, they decided they were going to make it into a movie - a protest movie.
JHF: I don't understand. How is penetrating a tepid Battenberg meant to be a protest?
SM: I told you, it was political. Anti-war. You wouldn't understand with your iPods and...
JHF: ...I don't have an iPod, actually...
SM: ...flatscreens. So, as the newest member I had to find someone who could play that part on film.
JHF: And the next guy just happened to be Bill Feltch, right?
SM: You got it kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: I knew Bill needed the work too. I'm just glad the next guy was a guy. What they made the women do was even worse. I tell you, there's some famous grande dames of the theatre around today who I know for a fact have had Bakewell slices firmly...
JHF: ...so Bill knew what he was getting into, right? What was the problem?
SM: I wasn't quite open with him on all the details. We filmed in secret.
JHF: What did you do with the film?
SM: The film we burnt, baked it in an oven with some coconut macaroons - it was all part of the installation. But there were some still photos that were taken. The more radical elements in the group used those to launch a campaign. They took hundreds of copies and intended to go around the shops, sellotaping them to cakes on the shelves with the slogan 'Seeds of Guilt'. I told you, it was an anti-war thing. Well, fact of the matter is, when we all came down from the acid, we realised that none of it made any sense at all so we stopped the whole thing and switched to Gilbert and Sullivan operetta instead. But the damage was done.
JHF: Damage?
SM: Yes, some of the photos got loose. You see, by that time, Bill was doing his clown act and having some success with it on the TV. I heard that one of the photos of Bill emptying himself into a Swiss roll got seen by his producers. It finished his career. After that, I know he did some shows over in Japan where they didn't know about the cake incident. It finished his time with Rosie, too.
JHF: Rosie Hoal-Riemer?
SM: Yeah, she'd only just finished school - same fancy prep school as Bill's. She was that much younger and completely infatuated by him. Loved his hands. You see, I kind of caught her on the rebound but it didn't last. Just couldn't compete with Bill. She didn't care about the sponge spunking but Bill couldn't face her. I don't think she ever quite got over him, you know. Anyway, Japan was the last I heard of him until...
JHF: ...the frenzied shoe attack.
SM: That's right, kid.
JHF: It's Jeremy. Look, Sandy, I'm glad you're okay but I need to ask you something. I saw Marty the other day. We... er... had a little bike ride and he told me that you thought I had your plot book.
SM: Yes, you have it don't you?
JHF: No, I was hoping you did.
SM: F-ck kid! Without the f-cking plot book, we're f-cking f-cked!
[static]
SM: Bill must have it. If you didn't pick it up, Bill has it. He knew what he was doing. Kid, we need that book. I can't go. You have to go. You need to get that book back off him if Badge is going to happen. Without that plot book, there's no f-cking MacGuffin, kid.
- TRANSCRIPT ENDS]
SAFE UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES
M.A.M.A.
09-03-09 WATCHZONE 1a-8273
TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPTION
Consumer Units under surveillance: J H Fisk 7-2521 call to S Merkin 1-5537 made 12:04 7th March 2009
SAFE UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT -
JHF: Hello, Sandy?
SM: Er... who's calling, please?
JHF: It's me, Jeremy - you know, 'Terry Badge' Jeremy.
SM: Oh, hey kid...
JHF: ...yeah, it's Jeremy, actually. Listen, Sandy, I've been worried about you. I mean after the clown attack. I, perhaps I should have done, well... hello...?
[static]
JHF: Sandy?
SM: It's okay, kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: ...I knew the day would come, the day of reckoning. I knew it was only a matter of time before I saw Bill again. It's almost a relief, in a way.
JHF: Bill? You knew that clown, didn't you? You recognised him.
SM: Yes, I knew him, Bill Feltch. We go way back. We were both part of the scene. Both trying to get work as actors. Back then, there was all sorts of craziness going down, all kinds of experimentation, all kinds of consciousness being expanded. You wouldn't understand, kid, with your Facebook and...
JHF: ...it's Jeremy, and I don't actually have a Facebook accou...
SM: ... computers. We were real. We were politically active, we cared, we really cared. Well, back then, there was one theatre company that was way out there - it was the grooviest of the groovy. It had no costumes, no props, no seating for the audience - none of the bourgeois nonsense that ties you down - it was pure, pure like golden snow, it connected to the core of what it is to be human, it was out there, it was avant-garde... and I wanted in. I would have done anything to get in. I... I did do anything.
JHF: What do you mean?
SM: There was an audition piece. Something that they told me everyone had to do. We were in a big hall with a wooden floor and high, narrow windows which had no curtains. A bell was ringing continually and the cast were all dressed in black turtle-neck sweaters and black-rimmed glasses and were running around the edge of the hall, carrying the curtains on their shoulders - trailing them around like carnival snakes and howling. In the centre of the hall was a table, where I stood and there, they made me... they had it on a plate...
[static]
SM: ...they made me penetrate a warmed-up Battenberg...
[static]
JHF: Sandy? Did you just say that you...
SM: That's right kid, they made me f-ck a sponge, forced me to rape a cake.
[static]
SM: Look kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: ...you have to understand that I wanted in. You ever wanted something so much, you found yourself doing things you wouldn't normally do? Huh? Things that you never thought you'd do? Well, back then, that was what I wanted. I was desperate, I would have done anything. That group was it. Besides, it was pushing the boundaries, it was art, it was an installation piece, it was political. You wouldn't understand these days. It was important. Anyway, after I got in, they decided they were going to make it into a movie - a protest movie.
JHF: I don't understand. How is penetrating a tepid Battenberg meant to be a protest?
SM: I told you, it was political. Anti-war. You wouldn't understand with your iPods and...
JHF: ...I don't have an iPod, actually...
SM: ...flatscreens. So, as the newest member I had to find someone who could play that part on film.
JHF: And the next guy just happened to be Bill Feltch, right?
SM: You got it kid...
JHF: ...Jeremy...
SM: I knew Bill needed the work too. I'm just glad the next guy was a guy. What they made the women do was even worse. I tell you, there's some famous grande dames of the theatre around today who I know for a fact have had Bakewell slices firmly...
JHF: ...so Bill knew what he was getting into, right? What was the problem?
SM: I wasn't quite open with him on all the details. We filmed in secret.
JHF: What did you do with the film?
SM: The film we burnt, baked it in an oven with some coconut macaroons - it was all part of the installation. But there were some still photos that were taken. The more radical elements in the group used those to launch a campaign. They took hundreds of copies and intended to go around the shops, sellotaping them to cakes on the shelves with the slogan 'Seeds of Guilt'. I told you, it was an anti-war thing. Well, fact of the matter is, when we all came down from the acid, we realised that none of it made any sense at all so we stopped the whole thing and switched to Gilbert and Sullivan operetta instead. But the damage was done.
JHF: Damage?
SM: Yes, some of the photos got loose. You see, by that time, Bill was doing his clown act and having some success with it on the TV. I heard that one of the photos of Bill emptying himself into a Swiss roll got seen by his producers. It finished his career. After that, I know he did some shows over in Japan where they didn't know about the cake incident. It finished his time with Rosie, too.
JHF: Rosie Hoal-Riemer?
SM: Yeah, she'd only just finished school - same fancy prep school as Bill's. She was that much younger and completely infatuated by him. Loved his hands. You see, I kind of caught her on the rebound but it didn't last. Just couldn't compete with Bill. She didn't care about the sponge spunking but Bill couldn't face her. I don't think she ever quite got over him, you know. Anyway, Japan was the last I heard of him until...
JHF: ...the frenzied shoe attack.
SM: That's right, kid.
JHF: It's Jeremy. Look, Sandy, I'm glad you're okay but I need to ask you something. I saw Marty the other day. We... er... had a little bike ride and he told me that you thought I had your plot book.
SM: Yes, you have it don't you?
JHF: No, I was hoping you did.
SM: F-ck kid! Without the f-cking plot book, we're f-cking f-cked!
[static]
SM: Bill must have it. If you didn't pick it up, Bill has it. He knew what he was doing. Kid, we need that book. I can't go. You have to go. You need to get that book back off him if Badge is going to happen. Without that plot book, there's no f-cking MacGuffin, kid.
- TRANSCRIPT ENDS]
SAFE UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES
M.A.M.A.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Mechanical Advantage
So there I was, round Marty's, in that ridiculously short dressing gown, eating smokey bacon crisps and drinking enormous cocktails of immense potency with him and robobint. I have to say, it's all a bit of a blur from then on. Since that evening, certain painful memories inflict themselves upon me at random intervals - neurological kindling which rise up and tear at me like jagged blades of obsidian rock breaking the surface of a dark tumultuous sea, treacherously clawing at the helpless hull of my frangible sanity in an irresistible black tempest of nauseating giddiness.
I remember the dancing first. Me, awkwardly pogoing around with my legs tight together and one hand clamped over my tackle, stultified in my terpsichorean expression by that absurdly brief gown. Marty, half crouching with his bony rear sticking out and frantically hand jiving and doing the 'mash potato', visibly enervated by his frenetically flapping forearms. And her... her, slowly contorting and writhing in an overtly erotic grind, gyrating blithely around a virtual pole, sinking to a full splits position and back up again with seemingly no effort from her powerful, piston-like pegs.
It was then that Marty yelled out "Trikestrike, sexitrikestrike!"
His girlfriend awoke from her writhing rhythmic reverie, left the room and returned with three tiny tricycles hanging from her vast arms. One was red, one was blue and one was green.
"Time to toke trike-like" Marty said, taking out an enormous spliff from behind the bar.
"I... I don't normally tend to..." I began.
Marty put an arm around my shoulders, supporting his weight and slumping forward to conspiratorially whisper to me. "If we're doin' 'Badge', I wanna know you're a Marty kinda guy. Are you? Are you a Marty kinda guy? 'Cos I'm beginning to have my doubts about you..."
Of course, I took that fat doobie and I got on the miniature tricycle. You knew I would. What little self-respect remained was effectively dealt with that night. What vestigial trace of artistic integrity that ever was, was thus forever erased that fateful hazy eve. I straddled that tiny trike in my tiny gown and I rode it. I rode it for all I was worth, like the worthless trike-truckler I'd become. I rode it round and round, the squeaky wheels sounding out loudly like the tormented trappings of my distrained mind, my shoulders hunched over the little handlebars and my white legs pumping away, my knees bent up right next to my ears, my bollocks flapping loosely in the breeze of the speed, my eyes pricked with tears of shame. Faster and faster I pedalled, the tiny frame of the tricycle bending and groaning from the unreasonable forces I applied to it, all the while Marty singing "Hava, hava nagila..." and his girlfriend clapping in time with those huge hands of hers - each beat sounding like the violent report of a concussion grenade.
Faster I pedalled. Firmer I gritted my teeth down on that joint. Wilder my distended knackers bobbled about. Deeper into the abyss of permanent psychological trauma I descended, until... in an insensate haze of alcohol and weed fuelled mania, I clipped one of the wheels over the edge of the jacuzzi and into the churning water I fell. Marty screamed in delight and he, immediately followed by his girlfriend, both jumped in with me.
The details become sketchy again. I remember the three of us reclining in the bubbling tub, our respective gowns cast aside. I remember Marty's curly hair completely fuzzed up by the moisture so it looked like a giant round microphone cover and his big retro glasses all steamed over. I remember snorting lines off of the glistening, adamantine abs of his broad. I remember Marty sticking to the coco coladas while his girlfriend and I swapped swigs from an iced vodka bottle. Yes! The vodka bottle - I remember now. It was the same brand as Sandy poured into his soup in that restaurant. I asked Marty about Sandy - if he was okay after the clown attack.
"He's okay, he's okay" Marty said. "Oy, that big schmuck - I tell you, you gotta know how to treat the writers. Carrot or stick, carrot or stick, stick or carraagghht! I don't schlep around with the carrot or stick - enough already! I make the carrot into the stick. I hit them with the freakin' carrot, yeah - ha ha - I beat 'em up good wit' the stick made outta carrot!" And he started laughing manically in that high-pitched nasal way of his.
He stopped abruptly. "Waittah minute..." he drawled, "did you pick up Sandy's plot book that day?"
"Plot book?"
"Yeah, yeah, his plot book. He ain't not'in' wit'out his plot book. He said he ain't got it but I figured you got it, right? Sandy can't do 'Badge' wit' no book."
"But we can still use my story lines in the meantime, can't we?" I asked.
"No book, no 'Badge'." Marty took another swig of his rum-laced mucus-juice then started screaming out laughing again. "Hit 'em wit' the carrot, yeah - hit 'em wit' the freakin' carrot!"
Then he leapt up out of the jacuzzi with surprising swiftness and, completely naked but for the froth of the bath, ran to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city, hitting it with a fearsome slap. There he stood spread-eagle, legs wide apart, arms lifted in a victorious stance: "I'm Marty Parmy," he yelled to the lights below, "I'm Marty Parmy - I'm the Parmy - I hit 'em good with my carraaghht! I hi..." his voice trailed. He teetered for a moment, then slowly fell backwards, slumping to the floor, leaving a starfish pattern of suds against the window.
The last thing I remember, as Marty lay unconscious, is his girlfriend in the jacuzzi, pointing sternly for me to leave, me shamefully climbing out of the bath, acutely aware of her critical gaze surveying my exposed form as I rummaged for my sodden silk gown, forbidden to collect my clothes from the bathroom, forced to traipse the streets that night with only that inadequate gown and my wits.
But the plot book. I need to get hold of Sandy's book or all is lost with 'Badge'. I'm just going to have to face Sandy again after the clown incident.
I remember the dancing first. Me, awkwardly pogoing around with my legs tight together and one hand clamped over my tackle, stultified in my terpsichorean expression by that absurdly brief gown. Marty, half crouching with his bony rear sticking out and frantically hand jiving and doing the 'mash potato', visibly enervated by his frenetically flapping forearms. And her... her, slowly contorting and writhing in an overtly erotic grind, gyrating blithely around a virtual pole, sinking to a full splits position and back up again with seemingly no effort from her powerful, piston-like pegs.
It was then that Marty yelled out "Trikestrike, sexitrikestrike!"
His girlfriend awoke from her writhing rhythmic reverie, left the room and returned with three tiny tricycles hanging from her vast arms. One was red, one was blue and one was green.
"Time to toke trike-like" Marty said, taking out an enormous spliff from behind the bar.
"I... I don't normally tend to..." I began.
Marty put an arm around my shoulders, supporting his weight and slumping forward to conspiratorially whisper to me. "If we're doin' 'Badge', I wanna know you're a Marty kinda guy. Are you? Are you a Marty kinda guy? 'Cos I'm beginning to have my doubts about you..."
Of course, I took that fat doobie and I got on the miniature tricycle. You knew I would. What little self-respect remained was effectively dealt with that night. What vestigial trace of artistic integrity that ever was, was thus forever erased that fateful hazy eve. I straddled that tiny trike in my tiny gown and I rode it. I rode it for all I was worth, like the worthless trike-truckler I'd become. I rode it round and round, the squeaky wheels sounding out loudly like the tormented trappings of my distrained mind, my shoulders hunched over the little handlebars and my white legs pumping away, my knees bent up right next to my ears, my bollocks flapping loosely in the breeze of the speed, my eyes pricked with tears of shame. Faster and faster I pedalled, the tiny frame of the tricycle bending and groaning from the unreasonable forces I applied to it, all the while Marty singing "Hava, hava nagila..." and his girlfriend clapping in time with those huge hands of hers - each beat sounding like the violent report of a concussion grenade.
Faster I pedalled. Firmer I gritted my teeth down on that joint. Wilder my distended knackers bobbled about. Deeper into the abyss of permanent psychological trauma I descended, until... in an insensate haze of alcohol and weed fuelled mania, I clipped one of the wheels over the edge of the jacuzzi and into the churning water I fell. Marty screamed in delight and he, immediately followed by his girlfriend, both jumped in with me.
The details become sketchy again. I remember the three of us reclining in the bubbling tub, our respective gowns cast aside. I remember Marty's curly hair completely fuzzed up by the moisture so it looked like a giant round microphone cover and his big retro glasses all steamed over. I remember snorting lines off of the glistening, adamantine abs of his broad. I remember Marty sticking to the coco coladas while his girlfriend and I swapped swigs from an iced vodka bottle. Yes! The vodka bottle - I remember now. It was the same brand as Sandy poured into his soup in that restaurant. I asked Marty about Sandy - if he was okay after the clown attack.
"He's okay, he's okay" Marty said. "Oy, that big schmuck - I tell you, you gotta know how to treat the writers. Carrot or stick, carrot or stick, stick or carraagghht! I don't schlep around with the carrot or stick - enough already! I make the carrot into the stick. I hit them with the freakin' carrot, yeah - ha ha - I beat 'em up good wit' the stick made outta carrot!" And he started laughing manically in that high-pitched nasal way of his.
He stopped abruptly. "Waittah minute..." he drawled, "did you pick up Sandy's plot book that day?"
"Plot book?"
"Yeah, yeah, his plot book. He ain't not'in' wit'out his plot book. He said he ain't got it but I figured you got it, right? Sandy can't do 'Badge' wit' no book."
"But we can still use my story lines in the meantime, can't we?" I asked.
"No book, no 'Badge'." Marty took another swig of his rum-laced mucus-juice then started screaming out laughing again. "Hit 'em wit' the carrot, yeah - hit 'em wit' the freakin' carrot!"
Then he leapt up out of the jacuzzi with surprising swiftness and, completely naked but for the froth of the bath, ran to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city, hitting it with a fearsome slap. There he stood spread-eagle, legs wide apart, arms lifted in a victorious stance: "I'm Marty Parmy," he yelled to the lights below, "I'm Marty Parmy - I'm the Parmy - I hit 'em good with my carraaghht! I hi..." his voice trailed. He teetered for a moment, then slowly fell backwards, slumping to the floor, leaving a starfish pattern of suds against the window.
The last thing I remember, as Marty lay unconscious, is his girlfriend in the jacuzzi, pointing sternly for me to leave, me shamefully climbing out of the bath, acutely aware of her critical gaze surveying my exposed form as I rummaged for my sodden silk gown, forbidden to collect my clothes from the bathroom, forced to traipse the streets that night with only that inadequate gown and my wits.
But the plot book. I need to get hold of Sandy's book or all is lost with 'Badge'. I'm just going to have to face Sandy again after the clown incident.
Deference
Well, I did accept Marty's invitation. I thought I better. When I got to his place, Marty and his moll greeted me together at the door. Both were only wearing gowns - exquisite, ornately embroidered Oriental-style silken dressing-gowns. Apart from the colours, they were matching designs: his, a blue one hanging loosely from his puny frame; hers, a red one barely managing to wrap around her muscularly pneumatic form. Marty then threw me a small tied-up green bundle which I realised was another such gown and invited me to kick back and join them "Parmy-fashion".
I shuffled off to one of the bathrooms to change and, putting on the gown, realised that it was alarmingly short in the hem. My boxers actually hung down underneath, which looked stupid, so I figured it would be better to go the whole hog and just make sure not to bend over. As I opened the door to leave the bathroom, I looked in the vast gold-rimmed mirror, my reflection casting a shameful, accusatory glance back at me - a ridiculous figure obsessively primping at the hem of a comically short dressing gown. I stared and I pondered gloomily on quite what I'd become in order to sell 'Badge'.
So thus I ventured out to the lounge in a series of careful, short steps, continually tugging down on the hem of my gown, in a nervous tic-like way. Marty's lounge is a huge open-plan affair, with two complete walls looking out on the lights of London below. One section is raised with a huge marble jacuzzi set in it and a drinks bar along the side. I remember the cream, ludicrously deep shagpile carpet running down the stairs to a polar-bear-skin rug. The whole thing reminded me of an 'Imperial Leather' advert from the 'Seventies.
Marty and his woman stood at the bar, watching me with a wordless, almost prurient, intensity. It was then that I realised that we were the only three people at this 'party'.
"Is anybody else coming?" I asked, self-consciously pulling down at the hem of my gown again, my legs feeling cold and exposed.
"We don't need no one else to have fun, party-style - not when we all get a little bit Marty-style!" Marty said, hitting a button on the bar which triggered the jacuzzi noisily into life, the lights dimming and piped groove music also starting in unison.
Defensively, I sat down in the only single chair, my knees clamped together and my hands trying to stretch out the gown over my lap. Marty went to the bar in that manner that people do when they half-walk, half-dance to the dance floor in a disco - sort of locomoting along with elbows pumping round in circles like they just can't resist the rhythm. His girlfriend strode over to where I sat and silently offered me a plate. As she bent down, I could hear the fabric of her silk gown stretch and crack as it strained tautly across her wide, muscular back.
"Smokey bacon crisp?" Marty said from behind the bar, "they're the best there are - I get them imported specially. Oy - not so kosher, my boy!" Recently Marty has dropped the contrived Brooklyn accent a little and has gone a bit 'Jewish'.
With one hand firmly clutching my dressing gown over my crotch, I carefully took a crisp from the pile, unable to help noticing as I glanced over the plate, that, though my hostess' silk gown freely hung down to reveal the cavernous cleavage below as she leaned over, her massive immalleable breasts retained their upright configuration, apparently impervious to the force of gravity. "Drink?" Marty's voice offered from behind the bar and, without waiting for an answer from me, a large coconut suddenly sailed through the air from Marty's position and was caught, with one hand, by his girlfriend. She handed me the plate of crisps and took the coconut back up to the bar where she took an empty ice bucket, placed it on the floor, squatted over it, placed the coconut between her legs and, with a slight perfunctory grunt, cracked open the shell with her vice-like thighs, letting the cloudy milk flush into the bucket below. She handed the ice bucket back over to Marty who started mixing and shaking.
"You want pureed banana in your daiquiri?" Marty asked. I glanced back at his girlfriend, my eyes drawn to the thin rivulets of coconut milk running down the bulging muscles of her huge, long legs. For a moment, I was caught in indecision, impelled by curiosity to see quite how it would be contrived to effect such an ingredient but also scared, scared to witness a sight which I knew would be seared in to my consciousness forever.
"N-No thanks Marty, no banana puree. None. Ever."
Marty just shrugged and came over to me with a couple of turbid pus-yellow cocktails in huge bulbous glasses with red foil parasols. He offered me one, for which I instinctively started to reach out, before realising that I needed one hand for the plate of crisps and the other for my gown. Momentarily nonplussed, I twitched back and forward a couple of times before converging on the solution of balancing the plate of crisps strategically on my lap while then freeing the other hand for the cocktail. Man, that plate was cold.
It was once we started on the booze that the pain really started.
I shuffled off to one of the bathrooms to change and, putting on the gown, realised that it was alarmingly short in the hem. My boxers actually hung down underneath, which looked stupid, so I figured it would be better to go the whole hog and just make sure not to bend over. As I opened the door to leave the bathroom, I looked in the vast gold-rimmed mirror, my reflection casting a shameful, accusatory glance back at me - a ridiculous figure obsessively primping at the hem of a comically short dressing gown. I stared and I pondered gloomily on quite what I'd become in order to sell 'Badge'.
So thus I ventured out to the lounge in a series of careful, short steps, continually tugging down on the hem of my gown, in a nervous tic-like way. Marty's lounge is a huge open-plan affair, with two complete walls looking out on the lights of London below. One section is raised with a huge marble jacuzzi set in it and a drinks bar along the side. I remember the cream, ludicrously deep shagpile carpet running down the stairs to a polar-bear-skin rug. The whole thing reminded me of an 'Imperial Leather' advert from the 'Seventies.
Marty and his woman stood at the bar, watching me with a wordless, almost prurient, intensity. It was then that I realised that we were the only three people at this 'party'.
"Is anybody else coming?" I asked, self-consciously pulling down at the hem of my gown again, my legs feeling cold and exposed.
"We don't need no one else to have fun, party-style - not when we all get a little bit Marty-style!" Marty said, hitting a button on the bar which triggered the jacuzzi noisily into life, the lights dimming and piped groove music also starting in unison.
Defensively, I sat down in the only single chair, my knees clamped together and my hands trying to stretch out the gown over my lap. Marty went to the bar in that manner that people do when they half-walk, half-dance to the dance floor in a disco - sort of locomoting along with elbows pumping round in circles like they just can't resist the rhythm. His girlfriend strode over to where I sat and silently offered me a plate. As she bent down, I could hear the fabric of her silk gown stretch and crack as it strained tautly across her wide, muscular back.
"Smokey bacon crisp?" Marty said from behind the bar, "they're the best there are - I get them imported specially. Oy - not so kosher, my boy!" Recently Marty has dropped the contrived Brooklyn accent a little and has gone a bit 'Jewish'.
With one hand firmly clutching my dressing gown over my crotch, I carefully took a crisp from the pile, unable to help noticing as I glanced over the plate, that, though my hostess' silk gown freely hung down to reveal the cavernous cleavage below as she leaned over, her massive immalleable breasts retained their upright configuration, apparently impervious to the force of gravity. "Drink?" Marty's voice offered from behind the bar and, without waiting for an answer from me, a large coconut suddenly sailed through the air from Marty's position and was caught, with one hand, by his girlfriend. She handed me the plate of crisps and took the coconut back up to the bar where she took an empty ice bucket, placed it on the floor, squatted over it, placed the coconut between her legs and, with a slight perfunctory grunt, cracked open the shell with her vice-like thighs, letting the cloudy milk flush into the bucket below. She handed the ice bucket back over to Marty who started mixing and shaking.
"You want pureed banana in your daiquiri?" Marty asked. I glanced back at his girlfriend, my eyes drawn to the thin rivulets of coconut milk running down the bulging muscles of her huge, long legs. For a moment, I was caught in indecision, impelled by curiosity to see quite how it would be contrived to effect such an ingredient but also scared, scared to witness a sight which I knew would be seared in to my consciousness forever.
"N-No thanks Marty, no banana puree. None. Ever."
Marty just shrugged and came over to me with a couple of turbid pus-yellow cocktails in huge bulbous glasses with red foil parasols. He offered me one, for which I instinctively started to reach out, before realising that I needed one hand for the plate of crisps and the other for my gown. Momentarily nonplussed, I twitched back and forward a couple of times before converging on the solution of balancing the plate of crisps strategically on my lap while then freeing the other hand for the cocktail. Man, that plate was cold.
It was once we started on the booze that the pain really started.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Supplantage
Well, I must say, a big help you lot were getting me out of that pub. I had to call Marty in the end and he came round with his brassy broad to rescue me. I managed to persuade him that it was an emergency and he rearranged his busy schedule to oblige. I wouldn't come out of the toilets until I could hear Marty's whining tones softly wheedling through the door. When I did, thumbs-guy and the northern terror had gone. Apart from Marty and his squeeze, the only people there were the barman (holding the sieve ready) and Hans Moretti sitting in the corner. It was definitely him. He wasn't saying much, he was just sitting there with his eyes closed as if in deep meditation.
Marty let me tag along in his limo. He's set it up like a mini editing suite so he can continue to work when on the road. Problem was, the only seat was just about a double one with not quite enough room for the three of us, so I had to sit wedged between Marty and his girlfriend. It was very uncomfortable with my elbows tucked in, one buttock suspended mid-air over the seat, half sitting on the flaccid, pipe-cleaner-like legs of Marty and half sitting on the steel-hard lap of his girlfriend. Whenever we turned a corner, I could feel her thigh muscle tense to stop herself leaning over and my whole body would be lifted perceptibly upwards. She and I stared forward self-consciously while Marty watched his giant TV, apparently unabashed and oblivious to the awkward seating arrangement.
He was checking out the pilots of potential new shows. First up was 'Prankhunt'. It's a low-grade amalgamation of various stunts fronted by a smarmy runt who dances around manically in lurid fancy-dress amid shrieking torrents of studio laughter squirted out discretely in a Pavlovian response to his catch-phrase "I'm a total prankhunt!" Each week it's the same set of 'running gags' just performed on different members of the public. Tawdry anchor man performs some of them himself. There's one where he sticks his head through the open windows of cars waiting in traffic queues and screams "Look at me!" inches away from the terrified faces of the drivers. Another one just has him exiting restaurant toilets and yelling "Bummer!" back through the door before running away. At the end of each show, anchor man also hosts 'Yooza Looza' which is sort of a spoof award thing which has him tracking down the minor celebrity who is deemed to have undergone the most humiliating personal degradations of the week. Captured on wobbly hand-held smirk-o-vision, the team crash the celeb's home and force on them the 'award' which is usually just mutely accepted with confused resignation.
Next was 'You Deserve It', in which two members of the public have wedges of money wafted in front of their faces, just out of reach, by celebrity taunters who repeatedly feign handing over the money but whip it back at the last moment. This goes on for fifty minutes, plus ad breaks, with the celebrities each time pretending that they were just joking before and they'll really hand over the money but, each time, sharply withdrawing it again. At the end, both contestants have their saliva chemically analysed and the one exhibiting the greatest physiological stress response, shown by elevated levels of hydrocortisone, wins both lots of money. The other one is tied up inside a sack full of monkeys pumped with ketamine and rolled down a hill.
What Marty's really excited about now, though, is a new concept he's working on with interactive reality TV. He's working on a bit of kit that connects the new Phatbox V to a webcam and allows viewers to, wait for it... watch each other. He's calling it 'Mutualtainment' and, basically, it means that viewers just sit and stare at each other. Sitting, staring, chewing, sniffing, chewing, staring, chewing, staring, for hours and hours and hours and hours.
Marty got the idea from that newscaster on the Fox Infospout Channel who cracked up the other day. Did you see that? She was half-way through reading a story on celebrity pancake endorsement when she just paused, stopped reading, took a deep sigh and slumped back in her chair. For a few seconds you could hear vague background noises of concerned shuffling off-set, then the camera zoomed in to her eyes, briefly wobbling and having to refocus as it did so. You could actually see something die inside her as the light went out in those eyes and a half-tear slowly welled up on her lower lid. The amazing thing was, they made that the new lead story and, for the next two hours, stuck with rolling-news coverage of the newscaster herself, sitting in her chair, staring ahead and silently weeping, while the superimposed news-ticker kept running along the bottom of the screen with captions like "Breaking story: sultry anchoress stares newspair in the face."
Marty's been in a really good mood lately and just signing off everything - including, as you would have seen from that flyer on the bus, 'Badge'. When he dropped me off in the limo, he told me he'd arranged a little party back at his pad to celebrate getting 'Badge' into production. I don't really feel that comfortable accepting but I think I better go.
Marty let me tag along in his limo. He's set it up like a mini editing suite so he can continue to work when on the road. Problem was, the only seat was just about a double one with not quite enough room for the three of us, so I had to sit wedged between Marty and his girlfriend. It was very uncomfortable with my elbows tucked in, one buttock suspended mid-air over the seat, half sitting on the flaccid, pipe-cleaner-like legs of Marty and half sitting on the steel-hard lap of his girlfriend. Whenever we turned a corner, I could feel her thigh muscle tense to stop herself leaning over and my whole body would be lifted perceptibly upwards. She and I stared forward self-consciously while Marty watched his giant TV, apparently unabashed and oblivious to the awkward seating arrangement.
He was checking out the pilots of potential new shows. First up was 'Prankhunt'. It's a low-grade amalgamation of various stunts fronted by a smarmy runt who dances around manically in lurid fancy-dress amid shrieking torrents of studio laughter squirted out discretely in a Pavlovian response to his catch-phrase "I'm a total prankhunt!" Each week it's the same set of 'running gags' just performed on different members of the public. Tawdry anchor man performs some of them himself. There's one where he sticks his head through the open windows of cars waiting in traffic queues and screams "Look at me!" inches away from the terrified faces of the drivers. Another one just has him exiting restaurant toilets and yelling "Bummer!" back through the door before running away. At the end of each show, anchor man also hosts 'Yooza Looza' which is sort of a spoof award thing which has him tracking down the minor celebrity who is deemed to have undergone the most humiliating personal degradations of the week. Captured on wobbly hand-held smirk-o-vision, the team crash the celeb's home and force on them the 'award' which is usually just mutely accepted with confused resignation.
Next was 'You Deserve It', in which two members of the public have wedges of money wafted in front of their faces, just out of reach, by celebrity taunters who repeatedly feign handing over the money but whip it back at the last moment. This goes on for fifty minutes, plus ad breaks, with the celebrities each time pretending that they were just joking before and they'll really hand over the money but, each time, sharply withdrawing it again. At the end, both contestants have their saliva chemically analysed and the one exhibiting the greatest physiological stress response, shown by elevated levels of hydrocortisone, wins both lots of money. The other one is tied up inside a sack full of monkeys pumped with ketamine and rolled down a hill.
What Marty's really excited about now, though, is a new concept he's working on with interactive reality TV. He's working on a bit of kit that connects the new Phatbox V to a webcam and allows viewers to, wait for it... watch each other. He's calling it 'Mutualtainment' and, basically, it means that viewers just sit and stare at each other. Sitting, staring, chewing, sniffing, chewing, staring, chewing, staring, for hours and hours and hours and hours.
Marty got the idea from that newscaster on the Fox Infospout Channel who cracked up the other day. Did you see that? She was half-way through reading a story on celebrity pancake endorsement when she just paused, stopped reading, took a deep sigh and slumped back in her chair. For a few seconds you could hear vague background noises of concerned shuffling off-set, then the camera zoomed in to her eyes, briefly wobbling and having to refocus as it did so. You could actually see something die inside her as the light went out in those eyes and a half-tear slowly welled up on her lower lid. The amazing thing was, they made that the new lead story and, for the next two hours, stuck with rolling-news coverage of the newscaster herself, sitting in her chair, staring ahead and silently weeping, while the superimposed news-ticker kept running along the bottom of the screen with captions like "Breaking story: sultry anchoress stares newspair in the face."
Marty's been in a really good mood lately and just signing off everything - including, as you would have seen from that flyer on the bus, 'Badge'. When he dropped me off in the limo, he told me he'd arranged a little party back at his pad to celebrate getting 'Badge' into production. I don't really feel that comfortable accepting but I think I better go.
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