Fahrenheit 120 (Days of Sodom)

I was browsing customer reviews on Amazon just this week, one of my many pointless guilty pleasures, stockpiling opinions, spelling mistakes, poorly executed turns of rubbish phrase, when I came across this review for ‘120 Days of Sodom’, under the heading “Horrifying to think that people can enjoy such torture”:

"I didn't finish this book and find it very difficult to rate it. At first I was interested in all the characters of the book and all their different sexual persausions (sic). But the further I got into the book, the more extreme I found it. Towards the end was a summary of the torture that was inflicted upon the victims. I found it quite sick, that human beings could think of such horrors, never mind do them. So before reaching the end I actually burnt the book, which may seem extreme, but that is how I felt about it. So, not for the faint hearted!"

They burnt the book.

It made me incredibly sad, reading this, and wondering whether this is the way many people think about books. I suppose the fact that this customer was moved to action, of any kind, by the book is in some ways a resounding success for de Sade, but the commonplace way they write it – “I actually burnt the book” – is both terrifying and awful, symptomatic of the ignorance and escapism – rather than a way to be challenged, linguistically, philosophically, whatever – that have become synonymous with too much modern fiction. Why would it even come into your mind, burning, as a satisfactory response to a book you didn’t like? Surely it isn’t the first thing you think of? One sexual perversion too many and you reach for the flammable material, stoking the white hot flames of de Sade and Bataille and even Bret Easton Ellis and James Joyce (o, the dreaded coprophagia! Hot Karl! Shitplay! In fact, a Hot Lunch – and I used to ponder the validity of this oft rumoured fetish – does very much indeed involve “the act of shitting in clingfilm stretched over someone’s open mouth then fucking the mouth and at the point of ejaculation bursting through the cling film giving the recipient a mouthful of shit and spunk”, although some of the... specific details are open to regional interpretation, it would seem [mild thanks to Urban Dictionary, although I corrected your spelling]) over a perpetually burning metal incinerator in among twin-coloured wheelie bins and flowerbeds in the garden of some modern semi in the home counties. “Bring me the Ballard and the Palahniuk and the Bukowski, love, it’s getting cold”. Why not just put it down, stop reading it, sell it maybe or give it away, anything but take the flames to it like a psychotic Nazi Montag in a room full of Torahs, the ceremonial pomp of it sickening to picture, to imagine.

Did he clutch a bible as he burnt it, was he shirtless or drunk? Were his objections political, religious, moral, intellectual (and I doubt the latter very much)? Let’s go back to the review. “At first,” he says, “I was interested in [the characters] and all their different sexual persuasions (sic),” which itself implies a certain looseness of morals, at least sufficiently so to bother reading as notorious a writer as de Sade in the first place, let alone garner some deviant pleasure from the outlines of the characters primarily excrement based – liquid or indeed solid – vices. Yet as he continues the book the sexual “torture” becomes simply too extreme, even for a man who admittedly enjoys reading about the libertines sexual persuasions and preferences. So wait a minute. Where did the arbitrary line get drawn? The reviewer – who, annoyingly, refuses to use their real name, opting instead for A. Customer – is obviously not the textbook prude who dismisses de Sade and his oeuvre as filth before even allowing a cursory glance at the text (as proven by his purchase and part-consumption of the book). He does not, therefore and apparently, dismiss and then burn all books of a graphically sexual content prior to reading, a sweeping condemnation of devoutly religious proportions, say. Instead something in ‘120 Days of Sodom’ seemed to trigger a knee-jerk response which culminated with the burning of a book, I assume privately. What pushed him over the edge?



Far be it from me to credit anybody with intelligence, but one must assume that a reader enters into a relationship with de Sade based on a certain foreknowledge pertaining to his notoriety, to the subject matter commonly associated with him, to Salo, and if nothing else then to the other reviews written on Amazon. Yet still he bought it, this customer, read it and then burnt it. Am I missing something? You can’t have everything, sir. You can’t enjoy the (comparatively) mild piss-drinking and fart-swallowing anecdotes of the first circle without the bloody torturous sex-murders of the book’s second half. And would you want to? “All things are good when taken to excess”, after all. The review continues, “Towards the end there was a summary of the torture...” (the book was incomplete, yes, lost in the authors transferral between institutions. I don’t think de Sade simply got bored and reverted to bullet points to get the bugger finished more quickly); then: “I found it quite sick, that human beings could think of such horrors, never mind do them.” Oh yes, sweet Lord, heaven forbid that man might utilise imaginary thought to construct a work of fiction relating to the sexuality of fellow human beings and the darker psychosexual perversions present in a life above the law! In a world of rape, murder, war, destruction, how hard it is to believe that any man could write a book about a dark sexuality! After holocausts and genocides, ‘120 Days of Sodom’ is really the straw that broke the camel’s back, the very essence of its words destroying any shred of the human the 20th century might have left us with, its publication – nay, its very existence – representing the very end of moral fibre, the death of all hope! It’s a work of fiction, idiot. It uses fictional accounts of fictional situations to explore something greater than the sum of its parts. Did no one ever tell you to read between the lines a little of your mass market paperbacks (although I’m sure there isn’t much to see between the lines of D. Brown, or B. Shit), or to just think about what you’re doing, what you’re reading?

Then we get to the money shot (and how can such a short review feel so arduous?): “So before reaching the end I actually burnt the book, which may seem extreme, but that is how I felt about it. So, not for the faint hearted!” Indeed, not for the faint hearted. But then the faint hearted wouldn’t have bought de Sade, certainly wouldn’t have burnt a book. They’d be too faint of heart for that.

It’s the exclamation point, perhaps, that offends me most. So jolly, that cheeky little punctuation. Like he’s just thrown in a little gag at the end of the review lightening the mood from his entirely humourless and dreadful act of self-imposed censorship. Was it too inhuman, for him, this work of fiction? Was he protecting the human spirit from the evils of fucking and killing? If so, he was starting in the wrong place; the work of the long-dead de Sade is of little consequence to the horrors of the world, and if you don’t want to read something then please, don’t read it. Certainly don’t burn it. It can’t be good to be in the mindset where if you don’t like something your gut reaction is to burn it. Imagine the criminal implications of such unharnessed pyromania. Argument with the wife? Burn her. Don’t like your job? Set the fucking place on fire. In short then, it does, it does seem extreme. Parts of the book are pretty unpleasant, but that’s the point. It’s not erotica, it’s not Mills and Boon, it’s a devastating exploration of the darker sides of humanity, of social inequalities and – in these contemporary times – of mass production and material values, of the commodification of sellable sex. Entirely divorced from love and romance and without the shackles of a social system, sex becomes a truly free act (albeit a degrading one), primitive, very much taking its place at the forefront of human interaction, not relegated to the darkness of a repressed id. The Libertines themselves, four men of significant social standing in the ‘outside’ world who as such live their lives outside of the law, untouched, without interference. They are the law, as it were, a law unto themselves, corrupt and ghastly to the last, these Bishops, dukes and judges are the lords, the politicians, the CEO’s of today, the power and the money to be the freest men alive, a ticket out of anything.

When people start to burn books, when they think it’s a valid and reasonable response to a work of literature – irrespective of its content – this is a dangerous place to be. Even if this isolated – somehow tragically stupid – act of a particular reviewer is little more than his own moronic embarrassment, an internet-wide admission of his flimsy principles (the burning of this one book alone makes no difference, of course), it is still an attitude to be discouraged, vilified. It is censorship based on ideology (Nazi’s, Islam vs. S. Rushdie). No matter how poor, offensive, provocative a book might be it should not be burned. What is literature but a blueprint for further thought, a catalyst to contemplation, an invitation, even, to think and respond in kind? Not in flames but in kind. If not censorship it’s – and even worse – incitement to ignorance, or incitement to hatred.



I watched this programme about Rushdie’s fatwa, for ‘The Satanic Verses’, and I was surprised at just how violent it became, how fucking stupid people are. There were book burnings here, in the UK, in Bolton and Bradford, and effigies of Rushdie were burnt outside Parliament. In Central London. Like this is okay? It was inciting hatred and inviting violence; there was very real, internationally public death threat – or more of a death promise – in place, and so little was done about it. It doesn’t seem okay that you can burn effigies of a writer in public for writing a book deemed fucking blasphemous. On top of that, it seems even less right that nobody says a thing about these threats, this publically fuelled hatred, these real intents to cause harm, because they don’t want to tread on the toes of some religious belief. People did die, as well. Translators of the book stabbed to death. Even newsreader Peter Sissons got a fatwa after interviewing an Iranian representative about it all. He said something like “in a civilised [accentuation very much on the ‘civilised’] society we would not threaten to kill someone blah blah blah.” Dodgy choice of phrase, this civilised, but the sentiment was ultimately right (and civilisation doesn’t need to come into it): humane people don’t threaten to kill other people for a difference in opinion, and certainly not one expressed through a work of fiction. Thank fuck for Peter Sissons, the voice of (near) reason in any highly charged television interview scenario. And that was the funniest thing: half the fucking protestors hadn’t even read the book, and half of them said if Rushdie would merely print a disclaimer on the cover – like “this book is a work of fiction and in no way represents the actual truths portrayed with the Holy Qu’ran” etc. – then everything would probably be okay, no more fatwa. Absurd, to the highest order, more so because of the fact that the only people who would be offended by the question of truth or falsity in the book (‘The Satanic Verses’) are the same people who I would imagine ‘know’ that it is fictional because it does not correspond to the scripture, and are therefore acting solely as a result of some archaic religious law madness that demands Rushdie stoned, or something, to death. And this was, what, twenty years ago?

Reading Mr Customers review you see what progress we haven’t made. If he was still alive he’d probably have de Sade publically sodomized over a pile of his own burning manuscripts. That’d show him, blasphemous bastard.

Derek Obama, President

The two men, strangers, stood at the checkout. They weren’t patient, but had not been queuing for long. Both white, both adequately clothed, both male, they queued with baskets of essentials, not luxuries, and thought about the better times, the times that were or may be, anything but the times that are. The younger of the two noticed the other, the heavy smell of cigarettes almost bitter among the dry food items, tea, coffee, jams. He was watching his younger male counterpart, smiling with it, as though a secret were about to emerge.

“Can I help?” asked the younger male, uncomfortable in the gaze of others. The shop assistant glanced up from service, disgruntled with the public use of her professional phrase. Pulling a packet of a forgettable biscuits into his basket the older man smiled further.

“You don’t recognise me, do you?” he said, apparently relishing the confusion which greeted his conversation.

“I... should I?” asked the younger man, looking to the other two members of the queue, behind them, as though for moral support, for unity against the interaction, for the shared humour garnered from weakened sanity.

“I should say so,” smiled the man. He looked about forty, his dark hair greying and shaved clumsily, close to his bulbous head. His ears were thick and long, his skin smeared dirty and cracked, his lips like sausages, his beard new and untidy. Thick green socks housed the tapered bottoms of blue sports trousers, his hands were yellow with a smoking commitment. “Look again. Think political. Look again.” There was something assertive about his tone, but comforting. The younger man looked, his face moved within an inch of the one he was inspecting. He let his eyes drift around the face, stopping at the ears; he pulled back and looked up and down the man’s five feet and five, then leaned in, closer still. An incredible intimacy had passed between them, but neither man made comment.

“Can I help?” queried the shop assistant rhetorically. The younger man looked toward her. She seemed impatient. The queue had grown behind him, the older smiled. He did look familiar, but why or where from was uncertain.

“Excuse me,” said the younger man and edged forwards, placing his basket down at the till point. The shop assistant looked at him, disgusted. Milk and toilet rolls, some canned meat. It was disgusting. He was saving his vegetarianism for another day, something to look forward to, the promise of vitamins somehow sufficient to get him through the weeks, the months. She rang a till-mounted bell, and another shop assistant appeared behind the neighbouring checkout. The older man approached it, laid his basket down. Biscuits and a handful of greetings cards, all for different occasions.

The two staff scanned the items robotically.

“You do, don’t you? Recognise me.” The shop assistants sneered to one another, the first mouthing a word that the younger man couldn’t identify. He felt panicked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” he said.

The older man’s eyes pointed towards the television that was kept next to the tobacco behind the counter. It showed constant news. “There,” he said casually. “There I am, recognisable me.”

It was Obama. The men both paid for their shopping in the silence that precedes further conversation. They left the shop but outside stayed together.

“Derek Obama,” said the older man, awkwardly shifting his plastic carrier bag between hands, extending the right in greeting. The younger man shook it.

“Samuel,” he said. “But people call me Goebbels.”

“Goebbels? Unflattering. Why Goebbels?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s because I worked in advertising.”

They watched the traffic together in the grey light of afternoon, the glare of the shop front warming in its way. Derek pulled a half-smoked roll up from a pocket somewhere underneath his jumper and lit it past a throaty cough.

“You’re not... I mean,” Goebbels struggled for words. “Are you really... Barack... Obama?”

“No. Derek Obama.” His reply was obvious, firm, somehow considerate.

“Then you’re equally not, I mean, not, of course, that it’s a question of status or rather, ho hum, identity, or, what have it, you’re not, therefore in association, the President, of, the United S. of A.?”

“On the contrary,” he replied, glibly relishing the cigarette. “President Derek Obama, leader of the free world. I am.”

“Shall we walk?”

They set off north at a pace, towards the heath. The traffic was annoyingly consistent, sparse but present, a mocking hum of mechanics through the residentially derelict streets. There was a distant rumble of children, school’s out, it approached like a solid mass, a tangible experience. At ‘King Wang’s Chinese Portion’, the two men stopped and consulted the sun-faded menu. The takeaway was closed, opened only once a week, its interior a mess of off-white plastic and leather-scuffed linoleum, the smeared ancient stainless steel of the hotplate somehow devastating in its sadness. The fridge cast the only light past garish New Year regalia, bottles of coke becoming somehow symbolic in their alien brightness. They left the sorry menu without a word, its Arial curves destined to forever alienate it from purchase.

Turning onto the heath the smell of dogshit drifted from the grass.

“The president, though,” Goebbels said tentatively. “The president is Barack. Barack Obama. Barack with a B.”

“And?” Obama had altered his walk when his thin soles reached the mud, his steps longer, quicker.

“And? And, he’s, you know.” He nodded sympathetically, euphemistically.

“I know?”

“Black,” he said quickly, “he’s black. The first black president Barack Obama. He’s black.”

“I am black,” said Derek. Goebbels laughter was out of place in the trees, the heath ached with unsatisfied need.

“He’s American,” he said. “I suppose that you’re American.”

“You know I am. I’m Derek Obama. Can we win it?”

“What?”

“Can we win it?” He shouted.

“Yes?”

“Yes. We. Can.”

They looked at each other blankly.

“You’re not Barack Obama.”

“No, I’m Derek Obama. Barack is my professional name. It was a media construct. Said it sounded more black, whatever that means.”

“I thought you said you were black?”

“I am.”

“What?”

“I am.”

“You’re not. Black.”

“I am. Look at me.”

“I am, and I can see you’re not black.”

“What does black mean?”

“What?”

“What does it mean to be black?”

“It means... you are... black.”

“I am black.”

“No you’re not.”

“I know I am. I’m Barack Obama, first black president of the free world America. I must be black.”

“You’re Derek Obama.”

“Derek’s my personal name. Barack Obama is my professional name. Sounds more black, they said. Important for demographics.”

“Demographics?”

“Voting demographics. Derek, Barack, doesn’t matter. I am Obama.”

“Look,” Goebbels felt frustrated and excited. Maybe he was Obama? Stranger things had happened. “I’m not saying you’re not Obama. All I’m saying is you’re not black.”

“How can Obama not be black?”

“He can’t.”

“But you just said I was Obama?”

“I...”

“Yes. I am black, and I am Obama. I think black. I dress black. I sleep black. I am black. That makes a black man.”

“Your skin though. It isn’t... black.”

“Racist.”

“What?”

“You’re a racist.”

“How?”

“You’re talking about my skin. ‘I will not be judged by the colour of my skin but by the kind of person, etc.’ M. Luther King. A very brilliant black man. I know me to be black and black I am and I will not be judged by the colour of my skin and I am Derek Obama, President, professionally known as Barack.”

A dog walker approached the two men, she stopped when she heard them talking. Obama smiled at her, a big smile. His teeth were very rotten.

“Don’t I know you?” she asked. He offered her his hand.

“Derek Obama, President.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at his face, clicked her fingers in recognition.

“That’s it,” she celebrated. “You showed Bush’s monkeys, sir, and congratulations.” She asked if she could take his photograph, and Derek Obama of course agreed. She had a camera phone, and asked Goebbels if he would mind taking it. He took two, portrait and landscape. The dog walker left them very happily, holding her phone like a trophy.

“This is insane,” said Goebbels when she had gone.

“The lights. The television lights make people look different.”

“It’s unbelievable. You’re not American. Chicago.”

“The thing is,” said Obama.

“What?”

“I am.”

“No.”

“I am American.”

“Then why are you here? Norwich, England?”

Derek Obama seemed surprised by the question. “I live here,” he said.

“Obama lives in Washington.”

“I am Obama and I live here. I commute.”

“You commute? To America?”

“That’s right. We came here for vacation a few years ago and decided to live here. It’s a fine city.”

“That’s as may be but you can’t commute to America.”

“It’s not so bad, off peak.”

“Off peak? It’s thousands of miles.” Obama shrugged. “And the president lives in the White House.”

“The White House? Have you ever been to the White House?”

“No.”

“No. No one has, and I’ll tell you why. It’s a symbolic property. It only exists in a symbolic context. Do you understand?”

“Symbolic?”

“It’s false. A model.”

“The White House is a model?”

“Yes. It’s a scale model of an imagined building. They house it in the pentagon and use it for news footage and as a symbol of American pride and patriotism.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true. You ask any American if they’ve visited the White House and they’ll tell you ‘no’. Anyone who says yes is probably a paid actor. There are a few of those, used in stock White House footage. There’s no need to visit it, they’ll say. We can see it on TV. That’s the point.”

“TV.”

“Exactly.”

Goebbels opened his milk while he thought things through. He knew he’d regret it later, but his mouth felt dry.

“So you are American?”

“Yessir.”

“And black?”

“Uh huh.”

“And you commute to work in Washington and undertake most day-to-day presidential duties here?”

“Yup.”

“And you are Derek Obama, President of the U. States of A.?”

“One hundred per cent.”

He took a pensive sip of milk, refusing to doubt the veracity of a self-proclaimed black president. The intricacies of race issues were not his forte, and he felt sensitive about his colonial past, about his distaste for postcolonial literature at university.

“Pleasant to meet you, Mr President,” he said.

“Yes we can,” smiled Obama, his inspirational catchphrase already wearing thin.

*

He saw Obama a few days later, cutting the ribbon at a new existentialist hairdresser called “Outsider’s Hair Futility”, a by-line of “Where Epilation Precedes Essence” hand painted on the windows, most of the key vowels back-to-front. The walls were plastered with Xeroxed photographs – footballer Camus, gruesome Sartre, grave de Beauvoir, paranoid Kafka – and the place was run by a couple of Arab boys, who cut hair with cut-throat razors, highly polished to catch the glint of the bright salon lights, blinding and artificial. They heated the place to boiling, which made for a disorientating experience. Although they did not want to detract from the authenticity of the haircut, subtle signage read “Please do not kill the Arabs. Thank you”, in text barely legible from the styling chairs.

The computer-made poster in the window, which demonstrated little competence with the Microsoft suite, proclaimed ‘Derek ‘Barack’ Obama’ in a size twenty font, with the parenthetical exposition, ‘US President’, only worthy of an italicized size sixteen, the insignificance of the international title exemplified in software choice, in presentational decision, in Norfolk simplicity.

A small crowd of Norwich’s few ethnic minorities had gathered, seven, eight people, all keen for some kind of representation from the new president, Chinese and Indian men primarily, all smoking furiously, in silence. Obama was wearing a small paper thin suit, grinning obscenely at the opening buffet, halves of scotch eggs, sausage rolls, egg sandwiches, bowls of crisps, the ceremonial savouries of the working class. There was black grime under his fingernails, his beard was longer, more matted. White bread crumbs flew from his mouth while he spoke idly to the manager, who seemed pleased with the turn out, pleased with the presidential authority his new salon demanded. Obama’s visit represented the first of its kind in Norwich’s long history, and was to all there present a symbol of hope: of race, of future, of haircuts.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” started Obama, his voice rich in its quintessentially English tropes. “I am President Obama. One score minutes ago, this buffet lunch bridged a gap in your fine city. A gap between the races.” He saw Goebbels standing at the back, peeling the sausage meat from a scotch egg. “You’ve come here today because you believe. You believe in a better tomorrow.” The manager applauded alone. “As the new president of the United S. of America – and the first ethnic president to have” – his voice was drowned out by a passing bus, reluctantly headed towards Sprowston – “and that specific, defiant triumph, I thereby embrace my responsibility as figurehead, martyr, sage. I represent a future of tolerance to all men, and be you Chinese or Indian, Arab or English, I know without doubt that you will find this tolerance within the four honest walls of “Outsiders Hair Futility”.” He held the scissors above his head, smiling broadly. “Can they cut it?” he asked.

“Yes they can!” cried the manager, jubilantly, waving his arms like a conductor. The Chinese were nonplussed, the Indian’s bemused. Oddly, Goebbels was in tears as Obama cut the ribbon, standing back from the doorway to grant passage into the authenticity of the hair salon. The crowd dispersed. No one wanted a haircut.

“So,” said Obama, wandering over to Goebbels, who was drying his eyes with the back of his hands.

“So.”

“What did you think? Of the speech.”

“It was good it was... very English.”

“When in England,” said Obama, satisfied.

“I never imagined the president would open a hair salon.”

“It’s an important gesture to win the trust of the common man, to put politics in an everyday context that he can understand. These racially suppressed,” he said. “They’re the exact people my global policies reach out to. They need to know that their brother’s votes weren’t wasted, that their voices are heard, that someone is representing them, not just Stateside but here: Norwich.” The two men looked at each other. “I noticed your tears,” he said, like a punchline.

“They were for something else.”

“I see. Coy.”

“They were,” said Goebbels firmly. “Although you were terrific. Gave life to the corner.”

One of the Chinese men had returned and stood a few feet away from Obama.

“Can I do something?” asked the president.

The Chinese said nothing but pushed forward a picture.

“He wants you to sign it,” explained Goebbels. “The picture.”

Obama looked at it. A portrait of the Clinton’s, cut from a glossy magazine. He didn’t say anything, but wrote on it all the same. ‘Best wishes from Derek Obama’. His handwriting was very neat, practised. It looked unreal. The Chinese bowed his head and scuttled off. His friend would be waiting.

“Must happen all the time,” said Goebbels, eating an egg sandwich in layers.

“Yes. Part of my presidential lot.”

“How’s Washington?”

“Poor weather.”

There was not much else to say.

“I need an aide,” said Obama finally.

“An aide?”

“For campaigns. And diary management. Perhaps protection.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Racial tension. As a black president I have enemies and a full calendar. Interested?”

“In almost everything.”

“Perfect. You can start this afternoon. Let’s get you a haircut.”

Obama led Goebbels into the salon. His glasses steamed up immediately, he felt sick with panic, lost in blindness. The Arab boy led him gently to the seat.

“What can it be, sir?” asked the Arab boy, his razor glaring in a hundred watts.

“Short past and future please,” said Goebbels, short of breath and already dripping sweat under the heat lamps. “Bit of mousse on the freedom.”

*

The letter came a week later, although it felt longer because Obama had been making two or three public appearances a day around the city, giving readings and speeches, openings, encouraging massive support for his democratic ideals. People were very certain that he was Barack Obama, despite the physical discrepancies, and he spoke with all the flair of a dynamic young politician.

It was delivered by hand to Goebbels’ flat, envelope written in red ballpoint. ‘Abarma’. Goebbels tore open the envelope carefully. Obama was at an Italian restaurant, giving a short talk on pizza bases throughout American history. He read the letter, then read it again:

‘Abarma,
We’re kill you in a morning, boy.
Shoot you ded.
No blak presidens in Norwich.
Thursday be bye-bye that be.’

That was it, then. The threat had come. Goebbels punched the letter and picked up the telephone. Norwich wasn’t ready for Derek Obama.

*

Wednesday followed Tuesday and another package arrived, this one bigger than the last. Opening it together, Obama and Goebbels were surprised to find a sugar beet wrapped within the thick brown paper of the package, Norfolk’s unofficial agricultural mascot. The beet had a knife forcibly inserted through its hard centre. It was accompanied by another letter, exhibiting the same blatant disregard for vocabulary and syntactical accuracy:

‘Obalmer gonna be next beet.
He be beat. Beat up beet.
Real ded to morra boyo.
From,
THE VHS CREW.’

They had signed this one: the VHS crew. A small group of self-confessed luddites who refused to let their audio-visual entertainment systems progress beyond VCRs and video cassettes. Perhaps Obama represented something altogether too modern for them, and it was only through a violent act of assassination that some semblance of order could be restored to their distant isolated existences?

“We could contact the police,” Obama suggested.

“Pointless,” said Goebbels hopelessly. “This is Norwich. The VHS crew are the police. By day they keep steady jobs in high places. By night their luddite tendencies take on homicidal intensity. They’ll have an arrangement in place.”

“So then. The lists of history are being rewritten, here, tonight, Norwich Norfolk. Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama.”

“We can’t let it happen. We have to hope. They may be bluffing.”

“Bluffing? Look at this!” Obama thrust the sugar beet into Goebbels’ hand. Something about such wanton destruction certainly made it a serious act, intense, the work of madmen. Goebbels wept as he threw the sugar beet into the wastepaper basket.

“You’re a symbol of hope Mr President.”

“I will die a symbol of hope. Hope of the coloured of the free world.”

Derek’s bravery was deeply powerful, rooted in the absurdity of his overlooked Caucasian features.

“You can’t go out there tomorrow,” pleaded Goebbels, steeped in tragedy.

“It’s what I do, Goebbels, you know that. What kind of a man – what kind of a president would I be if I didn’t?”

“A living one.”

“Precisely. Who takes inspiration from the living these days? Death is the message, my friend. Death is the final policy.”

“But...”

“Nothing. Tomorrow is the Dragon Parade and this city needs me. The speech will go ahead as planned. It’s all I’ve got left.”

“What about me?” asked Goebbels inaudibly.

The men fell silent and the rain hit the window.

*

The crowd had gathered on the steps of the Forum. Local primary schools were competing for best dragon (by design and by theory), but the limits of their resources were clearly exhibited by the low quality of their materials, the ugliness of their dragons, the confusion of their participating pupils. Some local DJ played songs with a fire theme, but only seemed to have sourced two tracks, which he rotated among the ten competing schools, ‘Firestarter’ for some, and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ for the others.

Obama stood at the top of the steps behind a small microphone and a group of teenagers, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, fingering loose change, no more than pennies. Goebbels stood slightly behind him. After the eight schools had finished their poorly choreographed routines, the DJ introduced the Lord Mayor, a man long-faced and forgettable alongside Derek Obama, President. He wore full ancient regalia, somehow absurd in this context of steel and glass, the modernity so celebrated in the architectural specifics of the Forum building. Leaning towards the microphone, he spoke.

“My ladies and my gentlemen,” he said. “The dragons have danced!” A flutter of polite applause, like death throes, motor spasms, epileptic convulsions. “A spectacle of sorts it truly was!” The sound of sobbing children was pervasive in the acoustic trap created by buildings and concrete steps. “To announce our victor, I hereby introduce one: US President Obama, sir.”

The silence was disbelieving, confronted by D. Obama’s white English countenance. Odd claps sounded, as if by accident. There were four or five security dotted around the circular perimeter of the main performance area. They weren’t police but local heavies, football players, in reflective jerkins with thick shaved heads, white flesh bunched up at the peaks of their necks, matching short beards, all moustaches united with a chin-grown beard in some hirsute orbital, cheap aftershave for lewd effect. Unarmed, the threats to Obama had been dismissed by City Hall, the paid security revelling only in their physicality, their adeptness at hand-to-hand fighting and not their strategic disarmament of primed assassin luddites.

Who was this man they called Obama, pondered the unenthusiastic gathered? Surely not a president, of any land. But then a Mayor wouldn’t lie, and the television does change people, and no one in Norwich had ever met the new president before, that much was true and... and by Jove, it is him, it is Obama, and here, in our humble fine city. It is Obama! It is Obama!

“Oh-ba-ma!” chanted a fifty-something man in a wax jacket, his body possessed by an incredible excitement. “Oh-ba-ma!”

Others joined in, first a couple, then more, five, ten, all chanting, all clapping in measured solid beats, palms striking dead on the syllables, Oh-ba-ma, Oh-ba-ma. Passing pedestrians stopped, caught in the frenzy of communal experience, the need for unquestioned unity, and themselves chanted anew. Goebbels urgently looked, cold in the brisk air, desperate for a glimpse of a rifle barrel, but he saw nothing. The crowd was enraptured, the sightlines were clear. Maybe it had been a hoax.

“Norwich,” said Obama coolly, with the audible twang of a Herefordshire accent. The applause roared. He held his hands flat against his sides, apparently unfazed by the threats, the letters, the mutilated sugar beet now a forgotten memory. He was in his element. Goebbels couldn’t help but smile. Derek. “Norwich,” he said again, “I have a dream.”

The crack of the rifle was deafening in the silence of concentration, so loud it felt unreal. Goebbels saw the bullet go in, just one, through the forehead, and it felt like minutes before he heard the noise. Obama pirouetted with the impact, span around to face his aide, an arc of blood so red against the concrete. He was killed instantly but didn’t fall, Goebbels lowering his body to the floor in delirium, in tears. The flesh was warm from the exhilaration of public speaking.

No one had seen the gunman but the audience started to scream, everything happening with a delay. One of the security guards lifted the Lord Mayor into his arms and slowly jogged him towards City Hall, like a woman or a child.

Goebbels wept above his friend, held his dead hand, stroked his dead cheek. The bravest president, his Derek ‘Barack’ Obama. The crowd had dispersed quickly, children running in all directions clad in the odd single pieces of a larger dragon, eternally outshone, panicked parents rushing for the familiar sanctuary of the shopping centre. Several people remained before the Forum, now drowned in the din of active emergency vehicles, but all kept an unwritten distance from the body, from Goebbels, desperate not to feel the death of another, feel it on their skin. They watched quietly from their sanitised proximity.

He took Obama’s wallet from his trouser pocket, before the ambulance technicians moved the body and the police sectioned off the three concrete slabs that the death had infected. It was something he needed, a memento of his friend. He was asked a few questions by two police officers, but he realised that he couldn’t tell them much. He told them about the VHS crew, the two letters and the sugar beet, but they didn’t seem to take him seriously. It felt inappropriate to be talking about him like this: the deceased, the victim; he was neither of those things. He was Derek Obama, President, and now he was gone.

A technician from the radio station was dismantling the rig, carrying the speakers and PA to a red Transit van. The DJ had long since gone. The disco lights were still running, their blues, reds and greens illuminating the city’s history, distorting its future. The technician carried a bundle of promotional t-shirts to a bin and forced them in, struggling to push the white cotton material through the hole, designed for small amounts of personal refuse. He swore as he pushed, his cheap blue jeans slumping down the flatness of his buttocks, his belt a pointless artefact.

Goebbels watched, watched until the lights were eventually dismantled. It was near dark. He wondered where the news crews were, the mourning parties, wondered why the huge screen that crowned the glory of the shopping centre had not reverted to a primal reportage, the world dumbstruck and grieving by this heinous presidential assassination, trying to construct a narrative out of soundbites, interviews and hypothetical bullet trajectories. Defined by his sadness he opened the wallet. On the screen Obama toured Washington; he had a wife, a vice president, he shook hands. He did look different up there. The wallet held a driving license, the card of pizza place, scraps of paper. Derek Lush, it said on the driving license. It had a picture.

Goebbels put it back into the wallet and followed a family towards the shopping centre, buzzing under the weight of its own air conditioning, the shop fronts illuminated like neon hearths in the Norfolk night.

a father poem

Love,
I asked father
How do you tell when
you meet mom?
It was beneath an ole oak tree
It was beneath me.

out the front door, carefully

Once when I was very small my dad came home unexpectedly from work in the afternoon, which didn’t happen too often because he had a very busy position in his work life, and in his personal life, but he came home and asked me to go outside to the driveway with him. Being small and of a slightly guilty constitution I immediately thought that I must have done something really wrong.

Dad’s voice was always rather stern and he had the look of punishment in his eyes that were blue as the sky. Maybe he had found out that me and my sisters had spent the afternoon throwing chewed forbidden chewing gum onto our next door neighbour’s outside wall and making a mess that took days to clean up, or perhaps that I had busted the stem of the grand old conifer in one of my fantastical voyages behind its thickness. It was hard to tell with my dad’s expression.

My hands trembled with anticipation as he reached for the front door. We can’t be going far, I thought, because I still have my carpet slippers on. Dad stopped when he got to the door of his blue work van. It was a glum day and the air felt bland in my mouth, but I was probably swallowing more of it than usual because of my nervous stomach.

He pointed at the back of his van.

“Look in there,” he said. It was almost a whisper.

Lying half-wrapped in a blanket right there in the van was a seal. It was alive, I noticed straight away. It looked up at me with eyes like sparkling food plates and opened its mouth gently. I laid my child’s hand on its side and felt its heartbeat.

“It got washed up on the beach,” my dad told me. “I have to take it to the shelter.”

I could barely breathe as my dad drove the seal away.

the vegan buffet

“All finished there?” The plate was moving away and so was the table, and my chair seemed to be following it into the murky underground kitchen. Two strapping Indian men in loincloths and oiled chests swung meat cleavers around their heads like half-full shopping bags, and their first born adult son, strapped to the manacles on the stainless steel work surface, embraced his rapidly nearing sacrifice, crude black fiber-tip lines illustrating the incisions 1-2-3-4, and the first seemed to be straight across the chest, and the men and the boy both sang American folk songs, "Chimes of Freedom", and the sign outside said ‘Vegan Buffet’ so I wondered, still holding my fork and serviette, if there wasn’t maybe another kitchen, in-keeping with the Vegan ethos, where a boy wasn’t going to be cut apart in merriment as another city sacrifice.

the girl with hands like an alien zygote

There is a girl I know, local girl, with hands like an alien zygote. Her fingers red and unusual, like suckered gripping tendrils to wrap unmoving around humanities weakest points, depositing eggs in an act of aggressive reproduction. They flit nervously – the hands – from task to task, the tendons pulsing beneath the cellophane-thin skin like a bizarre musical instrument, like an alien zygote. Perhaps their rigor-mortis hue is explained by a poor circulation, a baby strangled by her own umbilical cord with lasting life-effects, or perhaps it is the product of something far more extraterrestrial? When they approach me in purple – brandishing paperwork or cigarette lighters – I feel nervous, even afraid.

Addicted to coffee she prowls the aisles of the city’s leading department stores emitting a deep, rich aroma, crushed by the weight of her hands alien properties. They pass me and I shiver impulsively, unavoidably imagining them in a sexual context, running down the xylophonic rack of her ribs, circling her imperceptible aureole, the cold palms clamped remorseless over my thighs as we buck together in abandon of the horror of it all, my sweat drying cold in the muffled light of afternoon.

Her body had entered the public domain. The inexplicable tightness of her vaginal tract means that she has taken myriad lovers, but each of them would always eventually reveal some terrible fear of the very hands that aroused them, screaming out at the girls gestures, the image of John Hurt – comatose and fallen prey to so personal an invasion, a helpless vessel of the alien infant’s unorthodox methods – simply too much to bear, overshadowing even the might of a crooked orgasm.

Her yearning for love was matched only by her crushing self-doubt. Not a glove in the world could hide the hands that hung at her sides with all the calculation of an alien zygote, the fingers of disproportionate lengths, the palms mottled like an injury. At home she wept to see them, compulsively scrubbing at their oddity with soap and scouring pads, somehow hoping to wash their truth away, to immerse them in a secular baptism of regularity by consensus, of humanity. By morning they were always still there, more alien than ever in demonstrative rebellion of the previous nights exorcistic purging.

What did she do with her days, this girl? Did she walk or run, laugh or scream, did her hands glow through the din of modernity with their red red blood vessels, their stringy physiology? Where were her friends and where lay her family? She intrigued me from my melancholy, she fuelled my fantasies.

She moved encircled by loneliness. She bought drinks for one, an isolated organism defeated by the dance floor. She made her meals with the minimum of preparation, the cheap ingredients held together by nothing but the crockery. She wrote conversational responses to her own tepid questions on pieces of scrap paper, which she hid around the house; when she unearthed them days or even weeks later it felt spontaneous, like an unexpected chat with a person she almost knew.

Eventually she secured a job as a hand puppeteer for a children’s television show. She always played the alien characters, using her nasal and slightly fractured voice to good effect. The director said that the best thing about her was that she didn’t require any puppets to play her characters, because her creepy sausage-coloured fingers already looked so much like the antennae or tendrils of an alien zygote, a hideous extraterrestrial symbiosis with arachnid characteristics somehow formed on the ends of her arms. This made significant savings to the shows budget. The palms dotted with crude make up, her hands took on a life of their own, interacting with the camera with incredible proficiency. She drew massive audiences for her performances, but it was due more to the kind of morbid curiosity that attracts us to accidents than it was for the validity of her representations. The public demanded her abnormality, even idolised it in their revulsion, at once fascinated and disgusted by such deformity to the point of reverence.

When she had first started the job the sound engineer had told her that his name was Adrian and, uninvited, described himself as a man of bizarre sexual passions. She didn’t ask what this meant, and they ended up on a makeshift bed in an unused room somewhere in the studio. After their sex, he had thrown up on her. It came through his fingers, as though he had tried weakly to stop it, and he did look disgusted. She couldn’t be sure if it was a routine part of his penchant for bizarre lovemaking, or if it was a response to the hands that looked so much like an alien zygote.

The coffee on her breath had more than a tinge of decay. “When oh when shall I ever be happy?” she thought. “Or, even, less sad?” She applied the alien make up to her hands herself, and slipped into character: Emperor Filament – Beast of the Moons.

It was a life, of sorts.

can I be the Starsky to your Hutch?

We only met because you know someone I like, but it doesn’t stop me wanting you all the same, and spending my time in thinking about sleeping with you. It would be good to see the way your face looks when I stroke your entire body with the tip of my tongue, and kissing you on the mouth, and looking deep into your eyes while I push myself right up inside you.

Please ride the beachside electric railway into my soul.

Play with my shirt buttons.

Rub your hairless toes against my erratic shins. The skin feels taut like a nectarine, sweet and full of promise.

We will kiss each other’s faces tired on a mattress until morning, when we can finally fall asleep with the curtains open and the cold sun pouring in, as if we have passed some test or won a competition.

The month is February.

My awkward hands don’t know where to lie when I learn your body for the first time again.

You remind me of outside, far from these walls.

The dust drips from the ceiling in a beam of light that we made blue with cigarette smoke.

I will make you breakfast with bacon and eggs and hot fresh bread. Even if it never gets made we can enjoy it to pieces with our conversation.

“Can I be your Starsky?” I will ask with blue eyes.

You will hold me tight and won’t whisper anything.

a pancake story

This fat friend of mine and I once decided - after his mother had gone out of the house for a while - to try our youthful hands at making up a batch of pancakes. I gently beat the ingredients together while he watched, excitedly gasping with his meaty glistening tongue ever-so-slightly jutting out of his mouth because he wasn't that bright. When the batter had reached the appropriate consistency I heated a knob of margarine in a medium sized frying pan and coated the non-stick base in the creamy mixture, tilting the pan with an air of professionalism to ensure a full coverage.

The first pancake came out way too thick, as first pancakes often will, but we scoffed it up anyway with artificial lemon juice and sugar. The doughy texture seemed to agree with my fat friend. To my surprise, the second attempt was not any better, nor were the third, fourth or fifth attempts.

"Shit," I probably said.

By this time I had completely lost faith and hope in the project and just wanted to watch TV. Just then my fat friend inexplicably panicked about what his mother would say when she found out that we had tried to make pancakes, and I waited on edge for the inevitable moment when he would thoughtlessly hyperventilate while I tried to comfort him and dry the spittle from his downy moustache.

I told him to pour the remainder of the incriminating batter down the sink, but he said that was no good and frantically held the jug to his lips and began to pour it down his choking throat, gagging odd flecks of the mixture out through his widened nostrils. We put the last dregs in the back flowerbed. I'll never forget his face, wide, teary and streaked with pancake.

the girl and the tiger

It was a drab morning with traffic like an afternoon shadow that slunk through the streets with a sinister cough. A little girl in a pink frock with flowers across the stomach skipped by an unusual tiger, who looked funny in a dress shirt standing solidly on four paws beneath the blue and white striped awning of a small persistent greengrocers.

Three pomegranates: £0.75p.

One red apple: £0.16p.

What a cheap apple, thought the girl in the pink frock.

She saw the tiger between the pumpkins and a pile of sacks which all contained onions. She smiled like daybreak. The pumpkins weren’t quite ripe and still had patches of green on their orange sides, whilst the onions smelt a little too ripe. This is often the case with the produce in a greengrocers, she thought. Perhaps the severity of the pavement and the faces of the customers constantly watching the sacks of onions made them turn bad quicker than they otherwise might in the vegetable rack at home. It wasn’t for the tiger to pay much attention to either the vegetables or to the little girl who stood alone in the street. In front of him she asked from nowhere:

“Where are we going to go?”

The tiger blinked slowly. If he hadn’t been covered head to toe in luxurious striped fur that was as warm as a good coat I think he would have blushed.

“We could go to my place,” he said quietly. The little girl thought he had a slightly Germanic accent, but found it unlikely. After all, there aren’t many tigers in Germany. “It’s just this way.”

He started off down the street, past the butchers and the turf accountancy and the church and some dogs sniffing at a lamppost, and the little girl took a big bite out of a juicy red apple and quickly skipped after him.

*

They had seemed to walk for hours and hours, all the way out of town, over the old bridge, over the new bridge, through the cemetery where Gravedigger Pete said hello and rubbed his eyes in disbelief at the sight of the tiger, until eventually they both stopped, a little out of breath.

“This is it,” said the tiger. He gestured towards a charming cottage hung thickly with ivy. The windows were clean here.

“I didn’t expect tigers to live in houses like this,” said the girl sweetly. She is sweet, thought the tiger.

“Caves are a crude myth, dummy.”

She belched while the tiger opened the front door with a heart shaped key. Everything clicked into place.

There was only one room, full of glass boxes each about the size of a standard single bedroom.

“WELCOME!” came the exclamation.

“What the heck is… that?” The girl felt warm tears flowing down her face but was unable to ascertain mentally the emotion with which they were connected.

“It’s tiger time!”

Good God almighty!

*

Draw a thick black line about three inches long. Cross it.

*

It was like an explosive and dangerous dream without enough blankets. I am a naughty boy.

“You twisted awkward gangling shit.” The face looks like a cookie jar.

Tiger bones rattling rhythmically, hauntingly down a steel fire escape. Dong, dong, dong, dong, thud. Is this a Chinese preparation? Scrap the olives. All reasons are inexplicable.

Breezeblock fashion show, red cage white dais, snarling paw fuck frenzy.

The little girl had her socks pulled up to her knees and her black leathers had shiny silver buckles and she looked very smart standing sobbing with her swollen red face.

“Where’s my twenty-five you fucker?”

“Watch yourself around that because that’s likes um they’s self, hear me?”

And like slow motion cinematography:

Apple core falling,
Brown-turning before our eyes,
Floor-contact-apple-core-crushed,
Pulse my vein eyes,
Flare my nostrils,
Quiver my lips,
Cock the sails.

I had never heard a scream like that before, as though hair became wet of its own accord, drip drip. Tiger: reading a newspaper; Tiger: preparing vegetables; Tiger: a wicked smile.

In a residential part of town the porch man exterminates flies in honour of his dead wife – the porch leers and creaks like his dead happy wife – who still sits in her easy chair and whom he lovingly fucks every night and tenderly dresses every morning, his dead dead wife.

“I’ll wipe your chin dear… ummsperm…”

“Whaddaya think of the place?”

Answers in a saucepan.

*

Dad catches up on the newspapers and mum makes fish-steaks for tea and the condiments remind me of a party bag, laid out on the midweek tablecloth.

*

The tiger raised a paw gently to the little girls hand and smiled warmly.

“Perhaps somewhat overwhelming?” he asked, and referenced their surroundings with a well-placed head movement. The little girl nodded and almost broke a moist smile. There were businesslike tigers all over the place, some in the glass boxes and some doing regular activities about the house. One tiger sang Aretha Franklin and watered plants. Undoubtedly it was a significant amount of stimuli for one so small to take in, thought the original tiger sympathetically.

A sign said: PLEASE FEED THE TIGERS!

Another said: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A TIGER TO LIVE HERE… BUT IT HELPS!

Good old-fashioned tiger humour, thought the girl. “What do you guys do here?” she asked. “I was scared just now but I think I’m okay. Can we play some games? Or maybe just have some fun? That would be excellent, Tiger.”

Tigers have faces too, and this one said something about never having children in the ever-so-slight raise of an eyebrow while he looked around for a red rubber ball.

*

“Now what shall we do now what shall we do?” pressed the little girl to a tiger who was tired. Playing ball could be tiring after a hard day spent wearing a shirt.

“Maybe it’s time you got going? I’m sure your parents are beginning to get worried, after all. You have been here for three days now.” He seemed to be talking with an air of nervousness, like he had stolen a lucky deck of adult playing cards.

The little girl put on her sour face. This made the tiger wince. He had seen it one too many times and thought about snarling, but dismissed it with an air of civility.

“But I like it here with you tigers,” she said pleadingly.

“I know, and we like having you. But you must go.”

They looked at each other for an amount of seconds.

“Okay,” she agreed, and kissed him lovingly on the forehead and skipped out of the front door without saying thank you.

Heaving breath of tiger relief.

*

“Yes officer, this dinner’s been on this table for three days, just waiting for her to come home to her beloved old mum and daddy. A man in the high street last saw her with a tiger!”

The officer frowned past his moustache.

“Those… fucking tigers, missus. I knew it was only a matter of time before trouble started with those furry sons of bitches. I have a stressful job, sir.”

“You don’t mean…”

“I’m afraid so, couple.”

Heads hung with choking gasps. The vengeful insistent eyes of the frustrated policeman: “Better get the boys.”

The boys can’t change what hasn’t happened, but nobody thought of that, did they?

*

The last thing the tigers saw was a flash of unusually blue sky as stretch-guy police officers unloaded their rifles through the open front door.

*

And the little girl just got home, in proclamation:

“What a wonderful time I’ve had mummy!”

embracing the dead

fifty words for christmas

The festive lights of Anglia Square flatter our bah-humbug countenances wrought with isolation, her daubed coarse features now inviting, my weak jaw now handsome, commanding. The money I have won’t buy a turkey dinner, but will manage a noisy blowjob kneeling on the gravel of the poorly maintained car park.

santa's own holocaust

Dead thought: Santa starts his own holocaust tonight. It was a cold day and his wife had upset him.

- You silly old man!

One thing after another, one drink after another. A dirty beard on top of it all. Into the special cupboard, the locked cupboard. Here is the shotgun. Here is the carving knife.

- Shouldn’t you be getting ready for work, dummy? Have you been drinking, thicko? Brush that beard, ugly chops! Every year you sorry bugger gets the credit for his Christmas delivery! Where would you be without me, brainless? I’ll tell ya: Fucked Street!

BANG! BANG! The shotgun echoed around the kitchen and a fist full of wife brains went onto the ceramic green tiles that started at the sink and ended at the breakfast bar. Angry face even in death. She never finished the sausage roll preparation. An advance list of the weeks projected ironing fell out of her apron pocket. Santa shot her again, in the stomach this time. A trickle of guts smelt like black pudding. He trod on her fingers. They were coarse against the lino. Her thatch of nasty hair mopped up some of the blood, blown off from the scalp. One of her eyes wasn’t there anymore. It would turn up.

Nasty woman. Santa picked up the carving knife and cut off her head. He put it into a gift box with a red ribbon and bow. It could be a present for the mother-in-law. He threw the rest of the body out of the back door. Two elves watched curiously. Santa shot them fast through the neck and climbed into his 1958 Chevy. He threw the head in the box onto the back seat and put the shotgun onto the front seat. He loaded a small revolver and tucked it into the waistband of his faded jeans. It purred like a butterfly as he ran over his flock of reindeer. They fell down expectantly.

He played a song on the stereo and sang along for a few lines.

People underestimated the stress of being Santa Claus at this time of year. The violence on Oxford Street on Christmas Eve wouldn’t even compare. Without psychiatric input he had been a ticking bomb just counting down until something like this happened. He had to stop the children from carrying on.

The car was stopped at house after house. He slipped down the chimney’s and unloaded round upon round into the innocent heads of children and their parents. He looked at the brandy left for him but didn’t drink it. It was going to be a long night. White sheets turned dark red with blood, almost brown. The smell was like an abattoir. Beautiful blonde three year olds who couldn’t sleep:

- Santa!

- BANG!

- Mummy, Santa’s made Kerry’s head come off!

- BANG!

- Stop sobbing Timmy!

- What terrible parents… BANG!

The bloodshed continued into the very small hours of the ongoing night. No sleigh bells here but screams and gunshots, the whooshings of houses catching fire. There was blood in his beard. His fingernails stuck with gore. His eyes glistened like a jolly old man in the middle of a job well done.

But look! A police car! Tearing towards the scene.

- Halt it, Santa! Even a formerly good man can’t kill this many children.

Santa pulled the trigger of his revolver into the nearing shoulder of the officer with the megaphone. He fell from the car window. Santa shot him again and again and again. Four bangs: you’re a dead bastard!

A mob of angry neighbours who weren’t yet murdered in this grotesque holocaust shot Santa in the back. He fell down, but still managed to unload a couple of shots on the way. Two imprecise men fell victim. More police stood now over the injured Santa, smoking aggressive cigarettes. They shot him in the guts.

- Used to be such a good man.

- Yeah.

- Helped the kiddies.

- I hear ya.

They squared him in the balls. They hit him about the chops. What a violent Christmas surprise. They stamped his neck until air whistled through the broken shards of windpipe. They mangled his face until it looked like a dishcloth. What a heinous Christmas Eve killing.

- Yeah, real nice guy once, that Santa. You know, I blame loneliness.

- I blame drugs.

- I blame TV.

- I blame film.

Those proud men of the law. Walking off into the bloody street, cracking their bruised knuckles. Santa gurgled out blood. He was like a mistaken Halloween decoration. Someone pressed the wrong button on the plastic mould. A little girl stood over him. She was confused.

- Santa?

He mustered enough strength to punch her, a desperate last violence, funny and indiscriminate. The gnarled cadaver still lies in the street. There is shouted sex with the corpse, photographs too. People don’t know why they do it, but something comes over them. He is Santa. Was. Maybe. A man.

The mayor:

- An example is required of a nonce.

The newspaper:

- Holocaust.

Cirrus Mercurio

Cosmic greetings sentient shifters! My name is Cirrus Mercurio and I specialise in synaptic realignment, which harnesses the positive powers and teachings of the cosmos for ideational and practical improvements and growth. Or, to put it casually, Internally Driven Cosmorphic Realignment of the Synaptic Interchange!

With over half a years experience in the fields of cosmic ordering and motivational interaction, I am meticulously qualified to bring the right attitude back into your life.

For me, life is a journey, an exciting excursion from past to future which incorporates a sense of the present. Like any other journey, sometimes things can go wrong, and whilst this can make our lives seem miserable, or even worthless, these self-same things are also the one’s that give us the sense of urgency and achievement when we make it to that final destination. Or, to use high-level metaphor, it would be fair to say that nobody ‘likes‘ to run out of gasoline mid car journey... but at the same time, one only has to imagine the incredible things that might happen on the unexpected walk to the nearest petrol station to feel a real sense of gratitude at being alive and at the level of potential the cosmos has endowed us with!

I am very much a spiritual man, and my whole life has been shaped by the faith I have. As a boy I used to weep for God, and every night when I went to sleep I would sob beneath my covers and pray so hard that one day He would enter me. No readers, don’t be saddened, for my prayers were answered. One night within my twelfth year I again said my prayers, and as I settled into the pillow for another night’s slumber I heard it – the bedroom door slowly opened, and from the blinding light came the figure of a man. He told me, Daniel (for I was christened in this world a Daniel, and cosmically reborn in later life into the Mercurio nomenclature, meaning literally “of mighty therapeutic brain fingers”) do not be afraid, and that He was of God, and had come down from the heavens to enter me (just as I had longed for). As he took my hand I submitted fully to my first religious experience, one that was frequently repeated throughout my adolescence, strengthening both my faith and my resolve to take a spiritual path in life. A fire burned within me that night, a fire that remains aflame to this day.

However, my Christian beliefs were only the beginning of my belief in what I like to call a greater Cosmic Sense. In many ways I feel as though my Christianity was eventually taken to its logical conclusion, as if I had come up against a brick wall and had nowhere left to go. I’ll try to explain. I love Christ, and not a day goes by when I don’t fall to my knees in worship of the heavenly Lord and the sacrifice he made for us all. Similarly, the key tenets of the Christian scriptures are those of unconditional love. And yet the majesty of the enormous universe is somehow a mere trifle for Christianity, and gazing at the stars and struck by the very real sense of wonder they instil within me and my life, I felt a real need to reconcile my Christian beliefs with what I consider to be the awesome power of the cosmos. In the universe I see an order and a rationality and even a tenderness all its own, untouched and incorruptible by humanity. I suppose I started to feel that the more judgemental tendencies of Judeo-Christian religions were blinding them to the power of universe, and of what the universe could do for us, with us (much as the preoccupation with life after death seemed to belittle our interactions with the cosmic guidance of the world during our lifetimes).

It was the freedom of the universe from the tainted hand of human development that I found so fascinating about the vastness of a universe still so desperately unknown. In fact, this propensity to value judgement so apparently integral to humanity, the propensity to consider ourselves to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ ‘things’ is the very first mental blockade that cosmic realignment aims to destroy. You see, nothing is inherently (that is, in and of itself) ‘likeable’ or ‘dislikeable’ – these words are merely convenient labels borne of the primitive need for verbal communication within the evolving Homo sapiens. Such words, however, are foundational elements of the mindset of negativity that is prominent within human consciousness. In other words, our understanding, as well as our society, is built out of ideas of hatred, in itself a meaningless notion that has over time taken on a profound sense of meaning pertaining to the psychic wellbeing of individual sentients (like you or me).

Linguists have proven in experiments that the very first languages consisted of only four words:

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Like (or approve of/love [of base type]).
4. Dislike (or hate).

With this apparent simplicity of linguistic exchange, the significance of what we would now consider negative responses (for example, “I dislike this wallpaper”) become all more apparent. Dislikes were used as way of forging relationships and of constructing a sense of shared value and unity. Within early human tribes, those with shared dislikes were effectively excommunicated from early social cohesion and forced into the wilderness to form new sects of shared, conventionally disliked characteristics.

One sees, then, that not only the English language, but all language throughout history grew from a very basic need to hate, separate and segregate, which allowed smaller communities to develop within a greater whole. Language was – and still is – used to divide oneself from others, to find wrong in the alternative and equally arbitrary value judgements of others. Over time, as civilization grew and thrived, other animal instincts within the human psyche – such as the lust for sexual exchanges – were sublimated, for some reason this linguistic divider remained so enshrouded within our minds as to be, to all intents and purposes, permanent.

With language playing so central a role in our lives, I consider it not only beneficial but even essential to break it apart and to REBUILD THE ENTIRE EVOLUTIONARY PATTERNING OF HUMANKIND FROM SCRATCH! A tall order indeed, but that’s only the start.

As the name suggests, Cosmic Ordering centralizes the Cosmos within the ever-complex matrix of what I term the human intellicore synaptic mainframe (or HISM). This HISM is a central contextual core, comprising many millions of individual nodes (or human brains) which are telepathically linked to form this one perfect, wholly encompassing Mind, which is the HISM itself. In other words, every sentient human mind within the world is simply a small part of something far larger, the one true mind, if you like.

I consider the physical cosmos to be a manifestation of the immense energy generated by the HISM, whereby the sheer scale of united thought has formulated into something all together tangible. For simplicity, and in keeping with the common parlance of religious dialogue, I call this physical ‘by-product’ Father Cosmos, or Father. He represents the very essence of an excruciating hyperbeing of reasonable and reasoned structure (borne as He is of pure reason).

Thus when I refer to the Cosmos, I am not referring simply to an ‘airy fairy’ notion of positive ideation; nor, on the other hand, am I referring to a scientific blanket term for the wilds of knowable space. Instead I use the term to refer to the reasoned universal interplays within the immensity of the HISM, and the telepathic union that grows out of it.

As a practitioner of Internally Driven Cosmorphic Realignment of the Synaptic Interchange, I am interested in the formulating harmony between the often seemingly illogical human psyche and the vast ordered logic that envelopes it through the telepathic network. Central to my work is the need to accept our status as individuals making up a bigger system. However, once we have accepted the seemingly trivial futility of our lives, we can then move forwards into blissful togetherness with all of mankind, and a certain ‘oneness’ with the workings of the physical and mental universes, secure in the knowledge the illogic of mind is illusory, and in fact order, strength and cohesion and the primary facets of the human experience.

They are simple precepts, but I guarantee you that this knowledge will make a difference to your life or my name is not Cirrus Mercurio (and my name was changed by deed poll earlier this year)!

Hold on though – I can hear your questions, humming through the Cosmos, and I’ll try to address some of them here:


1. Mr Mercurio, it all sounds fascinating but what does it really mean? For me?

This is a great question, and one I’m glad to hear. Remember, sometimes it’s okay to be ignorant! Because we are dealing with a groundbreaking approach to our understanding of human existence, I really could explain these ideas all day – and I frequently do – but it might be easier if I simplify matters as best I can. The theory can come later.

So, firstly:

(a) THE WORLD IS NOT AGAINST YOU.
(b) YOU ARE ONE WITH THE WORLD.
(c) YOU HELP MAKE THE WORLD.
(d) YOU ARE THE WORLD.

However:

(e) DO NOT LABEL YOURSELF – YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT. YOU ARE NOT THE WORLD (ALTHOUGH THIS TOO IS A LABEL).
(f) YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BE A HUMAN BEING, OPERATING – POSSIBLY – WITHIN WHAT WE KNOW AS EARTH.
(g) YOUR THOUGHTS REPRESENT AN INTERACTION WITH ALL OTHER THOUGHTS, AND DO SO WITHIN THE HISM.
(h) BECAUSE OF THE NATURE OF HUMAN ONENESS, IT IS UP TO US TO APPROPRIATE POSITIVE MINDSETS TO INCORPORATE UTOPIATE FANTASIES WITHIN THE POWER OF THE HISM.

In short:

(i) HUMANITY IS A VAST, INTERLINKED, MULTI-EXISTING SYSTEM OF ORDER FROM WHICH IS GENERATED AN IMMENSE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION (WHICH I REFER TO AS FATHER COSMOS, BORNE OF THE HISM). THIS SYSTEM INCORPORATES ALL HUMAN LIFE, ALBEIT UNCONSCIOUSLY, AND AS A RESULT FORMS A BANK OF INCREDIBLE KNOWLEDGE. MY PRACTICE OF COSMORPHIC REALIGNMENT REUNITES OUR UNCONSCIOUS ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE REALITY OF THE HISM BY CULTIVATING THE BEST WAYS TO ASK THE COSMOS FOR THOSE THINGS YOU DESIRE FROM YOUR LIFE. AS A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL I EXTEND THIS GUARANTEE: IF YOU ASK, FATHER COSMOS WILL DELIVER (although not within a specified timeframe). I REALLY SEE MY COSMIC REALIGNMENT AS A WAY TO BRING SENSE BACK INTO THE MADNESS OF MODERN LIFE.

On an individual level, then, I believe that I can offer complete ordering of your life, in everything from financial concerns to relationship issues. Cosmic Realignment is a way to re-establish contact with a sense of something bigger, better than you currently are. In so doing it marries perfectly religion and secular perspective, providing a greater ‘spiritual’ being for worship whilst maintaining the very human essence of that self-same being (a being ‘made’ of humanity, as it were).

With my intensive three week course, your very own Cosmos will be entirely realigned, and by using groundbreaking mind massage techniques stimulated by my own patented equipment, I will return your individualistic tendencies to the reassurance of a collective.

In fact, you’ll never be alone again!


2. What are the 6 ways in which we can apply your ideas about Cosmic Realignment to our own lives?

Too tight fisted to pay for professional aid? Whilst I wouldn’t ever recommend that unqualified persons attempt any of my Cosmic Techniques without intensive instruction and research, I also accept that the more sceptical of my readers might feel reluctant to succumb to such unconventional techniques. Fortunately for the doubtful (although ultimately there is no room for the doubtful within the HISM – NO ROOM), there are a number of key ways in which we can all work on our own Cosmic Realignment every day, and in the comfort of our own homes. You should think of these more as training exercises than as Cosmic Realignment proper, ways of liberating the mind part of the way towards comparative positivity built around order and productive assertive action (PAA).

Please note: only those who complete the course will receive a personal certificate of completion, which also works as recognised confirmation of a Cosmically Aware Mindset and will give a small discount on some full priced purchases within a limited number of Mindfulness Stores nationwide.

Cirrus Mercurio’s Six Ways to Train:

1. Smile for the universe! Did you know, for every smile you perform, a typhoon doesn’t happen somewhere else? It’s true, devil!
2. Don’t be afraid to touch yourself. Exploration of private cavities is a quintessential comprehension of the beauty of cunt, and, indeed, cock. My advice is to fumble on in there: you’ve only got yourself to blame!
3. Remember, positively! It may feel like a kick in the pride, but in truth it’s probably only mild disdain.
4. True Cosmic Realignment doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in a Cosmonium Chamber™.
5. Find your cosmic fingers! Often subtly located within the intricacies of the brains own matter, the cosmic fingers are near mythical, technically false digits conjured up for the sake of word counts. They will caress you to ‘kingdom’ ‘come’! So give it a try! Just turn left after the cerebral expletive... you know it makes Edmonds!
6. Owl eye. The key to expressive demonstrative lies in the eye of the common hoe owl. Boiled down and sodomized, the universe channels through its retinas, explodes screaming from its flawed lenses. For retribution or Cosmic Realignment – Owl.

And, of course, the final question stands:


3. My Incredible Monsieur Mercurio, do you sell any products crucial to the Cosmic Realignment Process which we can purchase in the instantaneous, with the use of credit card, cash, or deceit, in aid of the one true goal of Cosmic Enlightenmental?

My fuck, I’m glad you asked, O mighty brainsacs! It so happens that I do offer the following Cosmic items, and at a discount price to limit the ill effects of their reportedly ferocious danger:

BENEVO-LANCE!

What the Cosmos? It’s... it’s...

It’s a Benevo-lance!

Ostensibly appearing as a kind of magic wand, this is very much not, and is in fact the one official and [almost] patented BENEVO-LANCE!

It’s benevolent! It’s lance-like!

It’s... Benevo-lance!

Insert three inches into your anus NOW for IMMEDIATE results!

Only benevolence could be as benevolent as the BENEVO-LANCE!

Whatever the gripe (rectal or Cosmic) – jam it up there, and bugger (literally) the prostate!

BENEVO-LANCE! The simple, use-at-home instrument of exceptional Cosmic Realignment, conjoining man and woman alike with the awesome might of the HISM!

COSMONIUM CHAMBER

Constructed out of SOLID cling film, the Cosmonium Chamber fucks credulity! A transparent dome in three dimensions, it literally encompasses the Cosmic Order of Human Unity within its confines. Sealed within the Cosmonium Chamber, the individual is literally engorged within the answers of the all-knowing, positive Cosmos. In much the way that a Christian will feel somewhere closer to God when conducting acts of prayer within the sanctuary of a church, within the Cosmonium Chamber the Cosmic Practitioner can feel truly submerged in the midst of the reassuring rationality and mental order of the concentrated HISM.

A masterpiece of inter-relational design and theory, the Cosmonium Chamber was designed specifically for the home user as the ideal complement to Benevo-lance therapy and the more structured, professional approach of my own course of Cosmic Techniques. In concurrence, the increase in PAA will be notable and help in creating a liberated world of Cosmically Aligned personages, living or dead.

*

There, then, it is. My name is Cirrus Mercurio, and my quest is to help you and the world in its battle against human corruptions of inappropriate wordage and firmly bound brain response! Cosmic goodbyes to you readers, and long may you feel the explorations of my brain fingers in the fire of your souls over the vast terrain of the HISM, as my informational pamphleteering mutates in the darkness of night!

I feel like zang

A soft drink: made with twenty per cent fruit concentrate and oil based colours from the art shop in the precinct, poured down necks in hot summer gardens straight out of the plastic jug (“we don’t want any breakages now boys…”; “break off out of here, ma, you’re embarrassing me!”): passed between muddy-fingered boys: red-cheeked and blood-knuckled, the kids by the towering sweetcorn in which you can run and you can hide and which the late summer drifts straight into, staying out past six o’clock for a telling off later in a thunderstorm, and your fat boy’s back got sunburned today – bare-chested in the back garden with big raindrops crashing into your skull – mother cut your hair last week – “nice haircut today” – and the kids to the south of Troll Bridge won’t be fucking with us any more… it stains the bedsheets on its way out and with a glassful of ZANG inside me (about 250ml recommended serving allowance) it is like the days on the yellow bicycle whose ridiculous oversized frame was too much for a kid like me – “hey kid, you never even heard of a comb?” – when a girl called H.S. from the street around the corner had a reputation for being a nice girl to talk to and after two years or so I thought I’d give it a try and I talked to her and it was nice, the rumour grinder was mincing up the truth for the food plate of the world and one day she tried to kiss me, it felt like a funny age, like eleven years; I thought it was a mistake but then it happened again and in that exuberant youthful naïve misunderstanding – guffaws all round, the fat blushing red-top! – I ran away; to look back now it seems hard to budge the vision in my eyes of the teary little unopened and hairless cavern between her legs – like a new pot of pickled gherkin – the dimly lit highway into the sweetness of her soul that I was too young to want to see, and too silly to drive on in to, and I wonder if she still holds it now beneath her cotton girls pants like she hasn’t grown at all, or left her bike or the disused railway line linking the villages of the south, and wants not to talk all night but just to have a dirty party with no sweets and no genetically activated fruit beverage just a long and furious love?

*

A street slang neologism: achtung! The masturbation! Oh goodness the terribility of the awful scenario! The knuckles are cracked or cracking like a professional yo-yo expert ready to demonstrate to a small crowd in an even smaller toy shop the wild stunts of his youth and his father’s youth before him – “and here ladies and gentlemen you may yelp as I ‘walk the dog’, yes, ‘walk the dog’… no no my love I’m not walking a real dog here in a toy shop am I, that’d be a crazy stunt for even me: Daring Pete, UK’s sixteenth most renowned Yo-Yo Tactician! Yo-yo tricks is one thing my dear, dog shit on a wipe clean linoleum flooring system with Lego to the left and dolls in aisle four is another entirely, ha ha! No it’s a trick I’m performing is all, it just eventually looks a little like walking a dog on a lead on a fine May morning. Let me demonstrate… (to the imaginary band with the imaginary snare drum) ready maestro… (Daring Pete provides a primitive soggy drum-roll from his own mouth to prepare the bored crowd of three for his dog walking yo-yo trick. One of them is unable to escape, suffering seeming entire body paralysis). And here it… (the suspense hangs before it can plummet)… IS! (The yo-yo wobbles and wiggles on its string and finally ceases all motion before it reaches anywhere even near the ground. An indifferent hush). All right, all right… (Daring Pete reddens, looks the yo-yo deep). You fucking thing! (The toy is thrown into the glass cabinet containing battery robots and tin soldiers). Fucking show me up, you fuck!” – and the cloth is laid with the covering of full stomach for optimum sperm protection. Zip, the fly screams! Rhythmic pumps of glands in the sad mid-morning light, up to down, slow to fast, watching a-giggle the foreskin playing over the tip like a bear climbing a short tree more to kill time than for any fun, and the movement doesn’t feel good anymore, nothing does after this many times, it’s all a bicep-test for the ejaculation and the spunk mountain when it becomes a worthwhile sport – “Welcome to sports day you old bastard! The boys by the track jack off for a trophy… loser? Gobble the juice up!” – and as it all builds up the nightmare builds with it…

KNOCK-KNOCK: “Son?”: oh shit it’s the door right in the middle of my…

“Fuck I mean, yeah?”

“I’m… I’m coming in.”

“Nah, fucking nah mum.” The door is open and mum is on the bed, sitting on its edge in a pleated ill-shit brown knee length… doesn’t look half bad for a woman her age maybe but hell look I can’t stop it my arm’s got locked into the motion and I’m damn well going for it all the way frantic as you like while my fucking mum’s watching on…

“You think I can’t ever smell it, son, when I’m down in the kitchen? Today it was too much – right over the tomato soup and the roast potatoes. It was there, refusing to be extracted by the extractor fan. And I couldn’t not come up here and have a… go.”

Weird woman that mother, oh god, I’m so clo-ose. A race of ecstasy miniatures crawled to the hole in the very tip of the length and they jump out together toward the cloth I laid out previous and I can feel the heat all on my chest even through the cotton and there’s mum…

“You know son, I use balls. Special balls. You know? Special… vagina balls.”

And she’s guzzling it up faster than I can pump it out, like a virgin cocktail man in a darkened queer bar, licking the sperm up with one hand on her tits, and I’m just yelping uncontrollably…

“What a ZANG, I really deeply felt like that ZANG, ah such a fucking ZANG, ZANG, ZANG, ZANGGGGGGGGGGG!”

*

A Japanese cartoon character: “No one will ever defeat you, mighty ZANG, for the pure of heart shall never face conventional destruction! Take this, the ancient Sword of Defiance… and this, the contemporary Firearm of Incomprehensible Power! With this bounty you will forever prevail against the feared Bastard From The Mountain.”

Close up on ZANG’S face.
The background freezes.

“Good Oracle Nymph of the village bakery, I prostrate myself in thought at your symbolic feet! With these dangerous weapons in my knapsack, and with such love in my soul, the evils of the Bastard can never destroy the peace loving people of my beloved native village, from which I was so cruelly separated by a wicked alien plague in my formative years, found floating and forgotten as a baby on the River of Local Supremacy by my sensei and saviour, who taught me of my fate and heritage, and prepared me for the day that he knew would one day come: today. It is now this heritage which I must defend from the debauchery which sweeps the valley! My life has led to this moment… I shall finally destroy the Mountain of Evil.”

A mountain looms in focus in the background.
Lightning stereotypes its peak.
A distant cackle is heard.

“Only I, ZANG, can save the village and, ultimately, the world!”

Phallic tentacles dominate!
Hundreds of rounds of the Firearm of Incomprehensible Power are unloaded into the sky in jubilation!
The sky darkens!
Close-ups… long shots… theme tunes!

“ZANG! ZANG! ZANG!
ZANG will beat the evil!
Born of a pure mother,
And a semi-pure father,
Made ZANG himself pure, too;
Today he fights
For the purity of others
And largely succeeds in his quests
Because of the purity in himself
And while ZANG is fond of the ladies
It is only in the context of a meaningful relationship
Built of respect
It’s so good to respect the world!
ZANG!”

*

A medium to bad rock ‘n’ roll band: ZANG are bottom of the bill and flop after one long guitar solo… no saxophones… no groupies… the road manager got laid, but it was by his wife, and three years before the ZANG gig happened. It was a synthesizer doom outfit gone wrong.


I

Sure

Feel

Like

Zang!

from the archives

John didn’t like Steve, because Steve had a thing about Harry, but Harry had made Julian unsociable once and everyone, including elderly Barry and even diminutive Timothy from the nearby flats, thought that Harry’s influence was enough to make anyone become as much of a recluse as Peter, who hadn’t left his flat since Louis decided that Norris was actually called David and that Frank once had a pal called Richard who fathered two sons – Oscar and Charlie – before befriending big Daniel and his brother James so that they might form a team of four with Geoffrey, only Geoffrey wanted Jeffrey to be a part of it but Jeffrey didn’t want to be a part of anything unless Alexander was prepared to participate, and Alexander was a huge fan of William who in turn acted as a kind of middle man, trying hard to bring in not only the boys from the Shropshire Arms, being Colin, Douglas, George, Henry and Robert, but also all of his friends from the Devonshire Constitutional, like Simon, but Simon had developed a reputation and this had put off the likes of poor Paul and his eldest son Gary, who worked in an abattoir, while Michael, the friend of Johnson, wanted his old college buddy Ernest to be welcomed into the team, but the hot temper of Frederick made this an impossibility, as Lawrence had no choice but to introduce the local fishmonger, Arthur, to the master of meats and butchery, Ian, who sold spare animal parts to the scientist, Roderick, for experimentation, and fresh livers to Brian for use in his pies, but the farmer and landowner Leonard hated Dale so much for being tall that he decided to hire the simpleton Anthony to use his secret weapon, Francis, to get Dale via Kenneth who knew Jack who was an ex-business partner of Philip, the friend of Ivor, who had created Thomas in the back of Terry’s old Ford Cortina which was sold to him by Howard who once played a hand of poker with Eddie who was a friend of a friend of Alan who had apparently overheard a conversation between Christopher and Adrian who both met Andrew at a dinner function once and who are good friends with Graham who lent a lawnmower to Duncan whose mother’s boyfriend Samuel owned a small allotment right up the road from Benjamin’s place, and he had once played football with a team who claimed to have known Reginald, the second cousin of Nicholas who once brushed shoulders with Dale in a busy supermarket when he talked to Nathaniel about garden tools and car parking space, the specialist subject of Dennis, who was busy with his only uncle Edgar in the shed with Rhys, who was known to be dangerous and trustworthy, so Leonard would get Dale like that. Then every man realised he didn’t have a cock.