Post-Coital Bliss - Extract from my novel "A,B and E"

On the day that The Literary review announce their shortlist for the Bad Sex In Literature Award, I thought I'd dust off a sample from my debut novel "A,B &E", which is post-coital, but racks up the sexual tension no less.

*

Simon his name was. One of the few pre-coital words tossed beathlessly in my direction. Now, no longer one flesh, our torsos cloven apart. Our legs however were still intertwined. He, head slumped against my shoulder, legs splayed out at the diagonal. Me, stiff backed against the headboard, my left leg threaded under his right and over his left. My right leg bent at the knee, arching over his ankles. Hand propped on it, fingers buttressing a lit cigarette overhanging the sheet beyond my foot. I’ve no intention of bringing it to my lips. It measures out time for him, embers in place of grains of sand. The span of two such kindlings will determine whether he is reignited, or rolls over to sleep. I have found this chronometry unfailingly meters the male metabolism.


I glance over towards him, unable to determine whether the look in his eye expresses confusion as to why I am not putting it to my mouth, or suppressed concern as to the impulse of the hot ash. The modern day version of barefoot and blindfold. He tilts his torpid head as a prelude to inquiry, but I nimbly raise the index finger of my right hand and gently transect his lips. Uh-uh, if we no longer are able to retain the disarticulations of earlier, the reflexively unreflected babble, the sonorous squalls coitally quarried from our deepest seams of self, then better we are held together under silence’s shroud. It is paramount that we become alalial allies. It is the very heart of the matter. I shake my head for added emphasis and already I detect his purpose is lost in the undulations of my tresses against his exposed cheek.


Suffused in my ruminations, I was unaware that my murmuring Medusa’s locks had ceased their stroke. He was unconsciously rubbing his delicately flayed cheek and I ventured some sort of vocalisation would follow. Again I placed my finger across his lips and spiked their unsheathing. Tentatively he edged the tip of his tongue out against my tapered digit and hastily withdrew it again. He had tasted my resolve. Through the conduit of his lips, I felt his whole body flinch as he gathered himself up towards defiance of my circumvention of speech. I unfurled my middle finger and laid it with great deliberation next to her sister, across the crevice of his mouth. The muscles at the corners of his lips, measuredly retracted their charges into a crooked grin. My two fingers now like twin colonnades, bracing open his stupid wide aperture. I lent forward and mutely kissed the extended knuckles of my own fingers. That threw him somewhat. For as his startled lips were about to clamp down reflexively on them, I withdrew my fingers but maintained their sentinel trajectory. He was seemingly transfixed by the sight of two caryatids rigidly posted just beyond his orifice. He was beyond coherence right now. Veritably speechless. He jutted his chin forward and slithered out his tongue to reel my goading digits into his teeming maw. They waggled out of range. He extended further forward. My fingers spun away. He was shaping to cast again, when my left foot snakes across and presses him back down across his chest. He is about to protest verbally, when my twin fingers reassert their superintendence across his portals of locution. His body sags and crumples back to the mattress, though I can tell his mind has been wracked by a bolt of delicious tautness.


After a circumspect period, I detach both my leg and my fingers. He does not stir. I light my second cigarette and resume my vaulting of him. Leadenly, he rolls on to his side and scrabbles for something on the floor. He resurfaces with a burgundy towelling robe, (brought with him from home, since this is not the class of hotel which runs to provisioning them for guests, though the guests would be of the class happily to snaffle them), before reclining back towards the headboard. Half self-pinioned, awkwardly he shrugs himself into the robe. He gropes around his back for something, with clumsy, sightless digits. I surmise that he seeks the belt of the robe, but it is not there. He submits and his head slowly sinks back down the surface of the headboard. His long locks pincered by his crown, momentarily maintain their station like creeping ivy, before they descend to unseam his now less than immaculate coiffure. I fix him there, framed unflatteringly by the knobbly towelling. At the angle he lies, his glorious sixpack is almost completely submerged by the flesh collected under gravity. There is even the hint of a rucking of flabby skin just above his hips. Why on earth has he donned this garment and broken the spell ? I deflect my gaze and peer through the rising cigarette smoke as if for augury. I must have sensed something in the corner of my eye and snapped my focus back, to intercept him about to tumble words into the air. This time it’s my cigarette-cradling fingers that drape themselves over his mouth. His eyes start to water, from the proximity of the smoke, or from more internal fusillades I cannot be sure. I know the prosaic reason for the robe of course. The poor lamb’s cold. His lips are quivering. He manoeuvres them to siphon some superficial heat from my cigarette, his irises scuttling to their extreme margins scanning for any repercussion. Good boy, maybe we’re getting somewhere after all. I cant my face away so that my jagged smokey laughter does not exhale over him.


The sheen of sweat from our earlier endeavours, (which so sublimely varnished his sixpack all throughout) still sits atop his skin. But it has fulfilled its function and cooled him down, to the extent where his follicles currently stood to attention in an attempt to reinsulate him. They no longer glistened like the limbs of an insect dappled with pollen. Now such droplets threaten his tonicity. Indolent, mutinous beads with no sustained interdependence. They subvert him. He trusts to the robe to absorb and dismiss them. To tamp him back down and regather. My perspiration went west long ago. Evaporated, since my temperature’s still rising with the afterglow. I take pity on him and place my two unburdened fingers on his lips again. He is surprised, since he was not attempting to challenge me. But this time they do not crest the vertex, but bow in supplication at the lower ridge. They wait a while, before he hesitantly lifts the labium and gently skims the pads of my fingers. Emboldened, he grazes them with his gums, before eventually, he throws off his shackles and engulfs them. He laps at them with bulbous slurps and satisfied tiny suction pops. So I flick his teeth with one of them as scourge. He responds obediently and laps at them regularly, up and down in a spiral. First one, then his tongue nudges them apart so he can acquire the second. Like he’s chamoising minature mullions. Sure enough, he soon slots into a mechanical, albeit arrhythmic, insipid servicing. His thoughts off elsewhere, because he’s too blunted to assert what he wants. Wordlessly that is.


His problem, like so many of his kind, is he will not just live in the timeless moment. He’s all sweaty, He’s cold. He’s lying in a viscous, cloying pool (of his own making and one in which I am happy to cleave to me, to adhere me to the sheet. To anoint us together). And, he wants to prate about it. Ask asinine questions towards self-aggrandizement. Or to record and log proceedings. To minute them. To compare with the past and to carry forward amendments into the future. Where he has already projected himself. It was as if he was narrating the entire event. The circumstance. An episode. He is keen to march me back into the mundane and I am not at that double quick pace. He wants to return us to the formally structured relations, of speaker and listener. Addresser and addressee. Subject and object. Chatterer up and chatted up. The one inside and the one outside, of intent. He cannot wait for the sperm pellicle to mark out time by receding to a light, dried crust. There’s premature ejaculation and then there’s premature post-ejaculation. Cos intimacy ought not have departed with consummation. Our bodies had spoken, but they were still communing with one another in mute elation. Interwoven, flesh blended with flesh. Who knew or cared where you ended and I began ? So what of your slight edge on me in hirsuiteness, or my darker pigmentation ? It was all awash in the sensual maelstrom, the perceptual overload. Our fallible vessels, cause of so much anxiety in the workaday consciousness, had been temporarily uplifted, so we could quaff of mutual veneration and adoration. And we should seek to prolong those feelings for as long as possible. For eternity. To remain conjoined, even in stillness. Indeterminate and undifferentiated. Equals.


Until that is, you clad yourself in your burgundy fleece. Now our separateness is clear. Our demarcation evident against the hues of the sheet pointing up our contrast. A chasm between us, yawning in your case, yearning in mine. Me beached on dry land, you still shivering in the shallows. Conspicuously other. Another species almost. A reimposition of the way of things. You satisfied. Content. And me ? Trying to hold the moment. The feeling. But now solely dependent on my own creative resources. And yet far too aware of this reliance, so it slips from my grasp all the while. In closing the aperture of his reporting mouth, I have sealed the portal of our connection as if rolling a huge dolmen across the exposed fissure of his self. Occluded any and all light of disclosure from emanating from his hollow being. God damnit ! A role reversal yields the same futile outcome. My eyes hold all the unstinting power that Damon’s held, yet it prospers me in no wany, shape or form.


My cigarette had burned away to nothing. On the stroke of its expunction, he rolled over on to his side and curled into himself slightly. Somehow, his unsecured robe, his vinculum to life, had managed to adhere to him throughout his quarter revolution, his waning crescent, and still mantled his immodesty. I was now fully excised from his being, tossed into his moat of oblivion as the drawbridge of sleep was raised. I took a pinch of the robe between my fingers and lightly peeled it from his skin. I had a clear view of his ribs gently rising and falling with his quieted breath. The upswing seemed to take an eternity, as they manfully bore aloft their own weight against gravity. The downswing seemed to presage a relieving collapse, but each time caught itself from shuddering and instead coursed down in modulated repose. How does he sleep so easily ? I bent down to softly kiss them in salute. My lips left a glistening imprint upon them, which I watched undulate for a couple of cycles. Insufficient moisture to model a tidal effect with his zephyr breath. Then I leant over and smashed my balled fist into the centre of my mark and was rewarded with a satisfying crack. I took my reappropriated rib back from him...

To buy on Kindle 

Guest Post - Author Louise Wise

I have a thing about time travel. I've written a novel about it and a flash tale on the subject also appears in my current flash fiction collection. So I am always fascinated to see how other writers treat the subject. And today's guest Louise Wise has a similar interest in the paradoxes of acting on the past in order to change the future. Her latest book "Wide Awake Asleep" was published last month on Kindle and adds a paranormal element to the time travel, in that each jump in time comes accompanied with inhabiting an unfamiliar body previously owned by someone else. Sounds a fabulous read. I asked Louise to talk about the book and its themes and she kindly offered the following. Over to Louise -

If I had a time machine, I’d love to travel to events of tragedy and save the day! A superhero I am most definitely not, but who wouldn’t want to save the lives of those lost on the Titanic or those from the World Trade Centre? 

But I also believe in the inconsistency of time-travel (the meet-and-kill-your-grandparent-and-you’ll-not-exist paradox).

If I went back to Henry VIII’s time and visited the gorgeous Anne Boleyn I’d warn her not to be so flirtatious with the men around her because she was executed for having ‘relationships’. But then what would have happened? 

Henry VIII would probably have become Henry II—not the same, is it? Besides we’ve already had a Henry II in 1133! And then Anne Boleyn wouldn’t have become the household name that she is today. She’d have been remembered like Catherine of Aragon—who? Exactly!

Would I change anything from my own past? I can honestly say, no. Small things, maybe, like the time a so-called friend told me to scrump apples knowing the owner of the apple tree was lying in wait and who would clip my ear! Back in the 70s ears were frequently clipped!

And then there are bigger things, like warning my aunt not to take her family swimming that fatal day where my six-year old cousin lost his life. Had I been able to save him then his younger brother would probably not have been around. 

Paradox.

That’s the thing with time travel, one cannot and should not mess with it, unless they are prepared for the changes it would, undoubtedly, create.

Book Blurb: ‘Past events can be changed but one must be careful of how one does it because it’ll impact on the rest of one’s life.’—Dáire Quin, Modify your Destiny if you Must, 2003

No one saw Julie’s car leave the road, no one saw her crash into the watery ditch, no one saw the gnarled tree branch pierce through the window screen and impale her to her seat.

No one heard her screams.

Yet, this was the beginning of Julie’s life.

Julie Compton, is a forty-something woman, striving for success in a male dominated business world. She thinks she’s made it. She thinks she has it all. Trouble is, her destiny has been travelling in the wrong direction and Julie is now forced to relive her life by occupying people’s bodies from her past in a time-travel, paranormal adventure.

For readers who enjoyed books like 'The Time Traveler's Wife' and 'The Lovely Bones'.

Available from Amazon (all territories)

Novel Excerpt:

Disorientated, I looked around at my surroundings. I had the strange feeling that I wasn’t here at all. I thought I heard a voice, and I cocked my head, but it was carried away on a gust of wind. The feeling of hands touching my body subsided and I was left in this paradox universe where I was me inside someone else’s body.

I looked down at myself and the first thing I saw was a plaid skirt, and thick tights, which sagged at the knees and ankles.

My heart began to beat in horror. No, no. Please, God, no. 

My hands touched the stained cardigan over my large droopy breasts. Up further to my face…

My hands recoiled.

I felt a moustache!

I gasped in horror. I was ‘Auntie’ Iris Grimshaw!

It was bad enough being goofy Sarah Marshall, but now I had a moustache! And a bloody monobrow! 

Iris began to walk, and I felt a sharp pain in my hip. I slowed, but the pain persisted. It shot down my left leg every time my foot touched the ground. No wonder the old sod was grouchy.

*

Louise's author bio:

Louise Wise is a British author. She lives in the Midlands with her husband and four sons, and works as a pharmacy technician.

Her debut novel is the acclaimed sci-fi romance EDEN, which was followed by its sequel HUNTED in 2013. 

Her other works include A PROPER CHARLIE (romantic comedy), OH NO, I’VE FALLEN IN LOVE! (dark, comedy romance), and SCRUFFY TRAINERS (a collection of short stories). She has written numerous short stories for women’s magazines including Women’s Own and Take a Break.

Her latest novel, WIDE AWAKE ASLEEP, was published December 16th 2016. In this novel, she has mixed time travel and romance with her on-going theme of isolation and loneliness. 

You can contact Louise through any of the following media:

Website: http://louisewise.website

Email: wiselouise@gmail.com

Books: http://amzn.to/1Ne7KX0

I'd like to thank Louise for giving me the opportunity to talk about her latest book and would urge you to go out and read it

New Cover Reveal

In 2011 I published my novel "Not In My Name" about the genesis of a homegrown Islamic terrorist, in response to the bombing of railways in Madrid and London and the spate of suicide bombings in Israel that prompted the erection of the security wall.

Everything that I wrote in that book, about online recruitment, suicide bombers, beheading videos, martyrdom and the nature of a death cult, is more true today with the emergence of ISIS/ ISIL than even back then.

Recently I've blogged on the factors shared with the rise of recruitment to ISIS to the homegrown suicide bombers who attacked the London Underground, here, here and here. I despair of the pronouncements made by the authorities as they flail around trying to get to grips with the phenomena of 5 Britons a week travelling to join up with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They seem to me to be utterly clueless with this manifestation of militant Islamic terrorism, but the point is it's not that new. My book lays out the journey from Yorkshire to Syria or Iraq.

I'll be honest, my book hasn't done terribly well up until now. I think part of the reason is not that people aren't interested in this subject, but that I did them a disservice with a terrible original cover that looked like the book was a cartoonish treatment of a serious subject. The fault was mine not the designer, since they were working from my brief. So I'm glad to announce that I have republished the book to Kindle with a brand new cover this time designed by Appleseed Images. It will be interesting to see if the cover makes any difference to sales.

Here's the new cover:

UK Citizens joining ISIS in Iraq and Syria

The TV News tracks down the mother of a Jihadi in Cardiff and broadcast her pained squeal for him to come back home from Syria. But he's not coming. He's not going to heed his mother's appeal, because he'd already cut the umbilical family tie by travelling to fight. And now that he's openly shown himself on a recruitment video, he's unlikely to come home when his face is known to the authorities who will watch him night and day expecting him to wage war and terror at home. I think he expects to die out there in Syria or Iraq. Else to participate in a Caliphate erected across Syria and part of Iraq which is the stated aim of ISIS. A pipe dream in all probability because of the forces of resistance that will come to range against any such prospect. But for now, kalashnikovs and pipe bombs tilt at just such a pipe dream.

So no, he's not coming home. The mother's anguish is because it is such a shock. People may ask why she didn't even have an inkling what he was up to. Mothers know about their children right? Well if the intelligence services of our country don't know, practised professionals, why should his mother be any more in the picture? The Jihadi training doesn't start in camps abroad. It begins by learning the techniques to disguise the conversion to the cause of militant Jihad while you still reside in Britain.  To carry off the act of living a normal life, including respecting one's parents, until the moment is ripe to decamp for foreign battlefields. Just like the 7/7 bombers who were described as "Clean Skins" by the authorities in Britain, that is those with no history of terrorist activity. They don't need a history if they are suicide bombers, they just need that one strike and out.

I wrote about the genesis of homegrown terrorists in my novel "Not In My Name". I wrote of the complexities of the political ideals behind the drive to recruitment. Of the twin-track approach of the spiritual and the military professionals. Of the alienation within the home countries that was the launch point for joining the militant Jihadi cause (similar alienation that leads folk to join cults). And how this cult in particular embraced and celebrated and welcomed death as the ultimate aspiration. When writing of those who went to resist Western forces in Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, or the aftermath of post Saddam Iraq, I put it like this:

"This is not just defiance, a refusal to acquiesce. It’s more actively seeking the chance to mix it with someone. To prove their mettle and uphold their misguided notion of honour. The one emasculated by the unabated actions of the West. They’re after accosting the 'Crusaders', not necessarily withstanding them (that’s why recruitment of succeeding fighters to jump into the suicidally vacated breach, is so crucial for sustaining it as an ongoing campaign). Bottom line, what’s actually on offer, is an Oriental Grand Tour, whereby the disaffected sons of the rich can get to kill a GI in each of the Cities with a holy shrine. In truth, they have become a death cult. Venerating and worshipping carnage. Bringing in blood sacrifices as proof of election. Thus I say there is no ideological struggle at stake here."

The mother could not see the crisis of masculinity in her son that contributed to him enlisting to Jihad. A cultural nausea caused by an abhorrence of things in the British way of life that threaten masculinity, that lead to patrols in Whitechapel in London demanding all women cover up their flesh when walking in the area and that alcohol is not to be consumed either. But impromptu street patrols cannot cut it, especially when the authorities clamp down on them as illicit public behaviour. Again I quote from my book:

"They market death as a lifestyle. Conferring an off the peg posterity. Of soldier; freedom fighter; liberator; hero; martyr; patriot; bomber. When life circumstances have prevented the volunteer from being secure in the roles of lover, father, son, worker, provider, man of leisure. Such appeals strike at the very core of anxiety and neurosis. Become a sapper rather than merely sapped."

I wrote these things in a fictional narrative back in 2011 and yet three years later our society still seems shocked and disbelieving that boys from Cardiff and Aberdeen can abandon their studies and go fight in Iraq or Syria. (I wrote of boys and girls from Wakefield, through Madrid to Palestine and Iraq). Nobody seems to be asking the right questions, or suggesting the mechanisms behind such a mindset. But I managed to penetrate it to some extent, (without offering any easy answers), so maybe we all better just catch up and start dealing with the issues involved here.

Available on Amazon Kindle 

Not In My Name - Excerpt

I was struck today by the debate raging over Facebook's decision to reserve the right of its users to post beheading videos depending on their context. I wrote about this in my novel "Not In My Name" which is all about the new politics shifting to the online world and which is far more vicious than any other public political discourse.

Below are two excerpts from the novel around the subject:

How can you criticise beheading videos on the internet, when during the invasion of Iraq, the US military would release footage of its surgical air strikes on mainstream TV news programmes? Both show ferocious acts of killing and the last moments of supposedly sacred life, just one appears in close up. Do you not realise that both seek the same outcome, that of enlisting support to their cause? We’ve moved on from baroquely moustachioed Lord Kitchener 'Your country needs you' recruitment posters. Telescopic military videos are designed to becalm its target audience with the detached, scientific nature of precision warfare, whereas the beheading videos are meant to stir the passions of its gallery. We cavil because it seems so barbaric, but they equally regard our methods as both cowardly and uncivilised with its ravaging of civilians. If we persist in such hypocritical myopia, how will we ever evidence the judgement necessary to resolve this clash of civilisations beneficially to both houses? 

Capitation (poem by Aki) 

Eyes cast down, neck braced by the woodImpressed grain logs the ineffable ruling.Court artist sand, worm’s upraised viewingDeath mask imprinted with my blood. I blanch while the ascending ground darkensTrading places, I divine sacrifice not martyr.

In the arena, a recount of the charges My basket case nerves nod mute accord. There is no bucket beneath to slam dunk Neither Jacobin traitor, nor political agitator My poll will not be mounted upon any pole. All glassy eyed it will be held up highRevolved around, to be cheered all four sides.
My lolling tongue and foaming maw Are requested to shape the words of Shahada.Lip service paid now, whence in default beforeChurlish to supplicate for a miracle. I hear the soft sandalled tread An executioner’s shadow enshrouding As the sword’s molecules dash on deck Each anticipates bloody anointing.

I shut my eyes, no desire to see The separation of my apostate head, From my mutinous body. Instead, An involuntary prayer, to whom I am unsure.I hearken the shimmering swish of a scimitarPerceive behind a field of dancing light.Beauteous spectral wake as blade parts the air.Not taut like steel, but floppy greenLong-stemmed bloom presented afore me
A declaration of love, gift of life Revivifying my enervated senses. I unfasten my lids, unshutter my gaze Winch my head up from the stump And view only the one, you my love As you drop your veil, to reveal A different red hue sun glinting. You shake away the baying dogs With a sweep of your head Your welcoming arms grant private audience

I stand and stride, a little shakily No mirage you, unflinching in bearing A cradle of acceptance Perfectly tailored for my body Hands safeguarding my bare crown. On approach they spangle and changeNow palm fronds provide our joint canopyMy bride elixir births me anew Returns me to my root safely.Intact, yet only half a man stillUnblockishly lower my gaze and modesty

On today's issue my personal thoughts are as follows. Beheading videos are created only for propaganda purposes. Facebook will not permit them being posted for the purpose of advancing a cause or trying to incite commitment and recruitment. I don't really see how representing these videos in a critical fashion can be beneficial to any public debate on the subject of terrorism or violence. Beheading is a bad thing, go figure... Also the act itself is a crime, a beheading video is a record of a crime while it is being committed and that must have legal implications I would have thought. I know happyslapping and joyriding videos abound online, but this is a far more extreme crime. It is the equivalent of snuff porn and that wouldn't be allowed online. Is the only difference that in a beheading video the victim has their clothes on, unlike a snuff movie? I say this not with flippancy, but as has been pointed out today, Facebook comes down heavily on breastfeeding images because of the nudity.

Sorry, I just don't see any circumstance where showing a beheading video promotes any understanding of the issues

New Novel Cover Reveal

Before the end of September, my new paranormal police procedural dystopian novel will be published on Amazon Kindle. It's very different for me to be writing a genre novel, (or several genres perhaps), but it's a book studded with literary values in the manner of China Mieville.

Over the next few posts I'll be trailing it with some videos and other extras, but for now here's the cover designed for me by Appleseed Images - @littleappleseed on Twitter

I think she's done a brilliant job, with both the central striking image and the subtle flourishes and cues niched within it. And my author name reversed in the glass bottle refracted through the alcohol. What hard bitten detective doesn't have a central relationship to alcohol? Only my detective isn't actually a policeman, alcohol as exotic as Mezcal is hard to get hold of in the dystopia caused by the economic meltdown of nations and his reliance on alcohol is fundamental to the plot of the novel...

Sunday Sample - Tattoo You?

Karen Dash is a gangster's wife on the run in fear of her life. She holes up in the holiday resort of Kavos on the island of Corfu, where she spends the days befriending anyone who will listen to her stories in return for free drinks. Here she is at a beach bar regaling her audience with her views on tattoos and piercings.

"Scuse us, make way please. Elders and venerables coming through. That’s better, some clear sand. Ow, ow! You’re all right, you’ve got fetching open toed sandals on. Answer me this if you can. When the sun heats up the sand, to such a level of discomfort you can barely walk on it, why doesn’t it do the same to the metal insertions in people’s bodies out here? That would really give them something to cavort around for. And do tattoos absorb or diffuse ultra-violet light? Wouldn't it function like matt paint? I can’t find anything about it in the books. I only ask, since I’m troubled by the ins and outs of whether they apply sun cream to their cuticular respray jobs. Doesn’t seem right somehow. Right in the sense of fitting. They should further immolate for their art. Of course, if the ink provides its own sun screen, then the quandary doesn't arise. There again, it might be rather hard to spot a melanoma against a tattoo overlay. Like pentimento. But if you think about it, and every day out here on the beach such is the ubiquity of the body pictorialism on pallid flesh, I cannot but help chew on the subject, has not the cell machinery already been stirred into mutinous action? To heal the subcutaneous breech of rapier needles? Endlessly knocking its head against a metallic partition. I know how it feels.

Oh go on. Let me have a look then? Oh, cheeky! No danger of any sunburn there then. She is a handsome little devil! And everyday you get to sit on her face! Only an elect few get to witness it there I’m sure. No, no, not at all. Far from it. In theory I welcome the urge to own your body, shaping it to your own design. To draw upon your skin as a canvas. To render your self-portrait. But tattoos on girls just doesn’t sit right with me. Call me old fashioned, call them ladettes. (Actually, call them pneumatic hermaphrodites, so comprehensive is their adoption of all other male tropes). But there again, it isn’t even just the blemishing of feminine flesh that rankles. To my mind, all of them male and female alike, exhibit such a paucity of inspiration and verve. Is that really how this generation envision themselves? How they elect to self-daub? Take the overabundance of Celtic symbols. Alright, some may be genuinely extracted from Caledonian, Irish and Welsh stock and thereby wish to underscore some notional heritage. But the bulk are Anglo-Saxon, basking in constipated extirpation of these selfsame stirps. Therefore I’m convinced no matter where they hail from, all sail in brackish witlessness as to the origins of these geometric interweaves.

No let me ask you. Do you honestly think they identify themselves with those heroic tribal resistors of the Roman Legions? Or maybe it’s with the later anchorite Christian scribes? Smart money’s gotta be on the tribal illiterates over the illuminati. Symbols too knotty to pierce. Yet how ironic, that an artform dripping in twining interdependence, should be adopted by a complexion of youth so comprehensively alienated from meaning altogether. Here they are hankering after the uniqueness of their personal branding, yet en masse they contrive a monolithic classification palette. Rubber stamped, so whither individuality? A lost panoply of ancient tribes, paid tribute by a modern tribe that does not wish to be bound together at all. Craving after personal virtuosity. To have a secret, special meaning reserved solely for their mind. A cribsheet written on their skin. Unfortunately, all the pat answers have flowed into one another and become a tangled mess. Leaving them without an inkling.

Spirals that seemingly have no beginning and no end. (Depending on the proficiency of the tattooist at concealing them, oh yes I’ve traced this artform long through many a night). As representing connection to the cosmos and recycle of life. Yet don’t these non-believers renounce the afterlife totally? Whirling sigils and heraldic beasts, guardian family spirits, when they have pretty much repudiated family also. And what of the warrior caste they notionally align themselves with? I don’t see them undertaking too many heroic quests. Though in fairness, they are often to be seen bearing a fallen comrade from the drink-sodden field of battle. If the ink were green hued rather than black, then they would be solemnising their skin with the exalted vine. Which at least would be more legible.

So yes, I’ll opt for their regressive association with the primitive, rather than scholars and holy men. Superstition over abstruse thought. (To them an everlasting light is a refillable lighter, while most are blessed with the creative spark of wet matches). Each fibril of knotwork, another anodised briar of reinforcement. A decorative razor wire they have welted to their skins. Serving as a ‘keep out’ to any warm-blooded trespass beyond the surface and to caulk any seepage of character from within their own plated prison. Amulets against self. But all of that fades to a most bruised black, compared with the porcupine hide of piercings! Don’t tell me you’ve got some of them as well? No? Because you have responsibilities in the real world that’s why. Business suits and first impressions and all that. Am I wrong?

Granted one can accept the sight of antic flesh on a beach. In fact you expect it as the local Olympian pursuit round these parts. Sprinting into or out of the sea; discusing with a plastic frisbee; beach volleyball or playing paddle-bat tennis; Greco-Roman wrestling between lovers on sun beds. These are legitimate wobbling ogling opportunities. 5.9 for artistic impression and all that. I’m here myself, with more than half an eye on a gold medal, slow-dance partner for tonight. But then it’s anything but a knockout, as your attention is snagged by the detail of a ring or chain, performing its own whipping and pinched version of the dance of exuberance. Hells Bells! A case in point! Look at the state of that, emerging from the sea like it’s been salvaged. She’s going to have her own eye out if she hits top speed across the burning sand. For on those unfortunate occasions, when due to concupiscence, drunkenness or extreme flashback, I am forced into a canter, well let’s just say it’s no bad happenstance that I still sport my sunglasses. But she’s got metal extensions that swing like a flail. You see those bolts in her brow there? Not quite Frankenstein’s Monster, but so long as her mate has some jump leads handy, he should be able to get her out of bed and started of an afternoon. Once she’s flown back home to her life of graphic underemployment. In my day, office workers just used to starve themselves and paint their nails of a lunch hour. Now these fatted calves seemingly go and hand over good money to be skewered.

You’re not buying this are you? Maybe it’s not so pronounced at home. I mean given the climate, flesh is necessarily always trussed up behind fabric. Out here it’s all on show and I’m telling you, it’s absolutely rife. A particular one night only, stand-up comedian of my brief acquaintance, regaled me with an anatomical sketch of his previous night’s mooring. To what end I couldn’t fathom, but I did listen with a certain appalled raptness. Unsure as to which of the two protagonists was more despicable. She with her cloven skin predilections, or he for telling intimate tales out of school. Was I to be relayed in turn, to schmooze the following night’s selected audience member of participation? As what, someone more soft and yielding than last night’s human pin cushion? Soft and yielding? Uh-uh, he was going to be a mite disappointed on that front. Nevertheless, circumspection was clearly called for, as to what I broached with this loose-lipped lad. Couldn't be making a clean breast of things, as had my antecedent. If that’s not a contradiction in terms, seeing as according to him, her breast was disfigured by all manner of metal probes.

The estrogen egghunt didn’t end at the mammaries. Apparently, she also was the proud possessor of twin labial piercings. Tied off in tiny, white balls as might affix corkboard pins. Memo to herself. Signpost landing strip navigation lights, for any intrepid night pilots. Gliders rather than dive bombers one might hope. ‘Nacreous or ivory?’ I innocently inquired, for if I have to put up with an imposition of taste, then I insist on going with a full flavoured flow. In preference to a gobbety drip feed. But of course, my deadeye witness couldn’t enlighten me further. His insipid sapidity unable to register any new sensation, despite presumably not having orally partaken of either material before. Rather, he informed me his tongue delightedly played with them for a seeming eternity. A ‘wicked’ sensation of licking a woman’s ‘balls’, no matter how shrunken. Freud would have had an orgasm. The target buoys bobbed up and down, among the roiling waves of her sex, entailing contact kept being lost. She seemed pleased enough with his fingertip searches for them anyway, so perhaps there was some design to her self-stapling. I queried whether it wasn’t like having a pair of tiny eyes scrutinising him, or worse, just the whites of lifeless orbs? Even more accursed than that, he conceded. Once it had gradually dawned on him that in fact, they rather resembled two beads of, well ejaculate. That somehow he was embarked on somebody else’s sloppy seconds, which crash landed him immediately. And yet the sexual metallurgists will protest till they’re blue in the face, that it only heightens sexual pleasure. More like vagina dentura if you ask me!

Behold another one, with wireless bra and wired breast. There with the tray of food buttressed against her pierced abdomen. Oh double bubble and squeak! For I spy a tattoo rippling beneath her costume, where she might cradle a feeding babe. If an infant wants to watch an animated cartoon with its supper, stick it in front of the TV like any normal Mum. This way, he’ll likely get indigestion, motion sickness and a squint all in one. Surprised she needs to utilise her hands. Surely she could just run a chain through her evidently pierced nipples and secure the tray across her sternum? More than likely, the overpriced lunch will be the most precious issue to emerge from there. No, no I’ve found her! She’s the clincher! That one fellating an ice cream cone yonder.

You can see it quite clearly. There at her site of honeyed suckling, is only to be found the bitter aftertaste of mummy’s noxious metal ringlet. Think about it, how the fleshy areola must have been sent packing. For a permanent mineral tenant. So the only lability can’t possibly be the hormonal brewing of milk. Rather the tarnishing of cheap gold. Verdigris. And don’t you wonder what all this says about their own mothers? That umbilical tie clamped and snipped at birth, cutting them adrift of their life-giver. How they now spike and padlock their own navels to return the deed with ruinous interest. Voting with their sharded mammaries to ostracise the maternal. Oh for a giant magnet to hoover them all up and drop them down in say Cephalonia. Or Lesbos even."

"A,B&E" available on Amazon Kindle

Academic Viva - Sunday Sample "A,B&E"

What two more exclsuionary roles could there be for women than to be the wife of an Oxbridge academic or the wife of a gangster? Karen Dash the protagonist of the novel "A,B&E" has been both. A strong woman with forthright views, but constrained by these two male milieus. In the sample below, Karen is regaling her Greek poolside audience with her summary of the different academic types.

"My open university dissertation into the closed university world.   

ART HISTORY: Perennial gloating grins smeared across their florid faces. As they glory in the preposterousness that taxpayers actually stump up the funds, for their life of sedentary aesthetic appreciation and extravagance. Only percolated by the occasional obligation of having to deliver a lecture. Affected dandyism in everything they do, except wading into the copious wine vaults, at which they bare their teeth. In ten years’ time, at the present rate of connoisseurship, the brittle venous patina of their skin will need considerable restoration work.

ARCHITECTURE: Would-be art historians, except that their more humble origins entailed parental advice/exhortation to train for a solid profession. Seven years of study, just to end up teaching others and without a building to their name, they have never quite reconciled themselves to the irony. At no time wholly present when conversing with a woman. Preoccupied with lashing their suppressed patricide to a mast, while simultaneously refining their design for a mausoleum.  

ECONOMICS: These permatanned but unshaven young turks, cut a dash amongst their dusty peers. Only, their oblique expressions seem to harbour guilty secrets. Microeconomics is predicated on the rational consumer. Macroeconomics shows us all to be indentured to the world economy and unable to influence our own destiny. Perhaps this explains the shiftiness. They engage themselves in Game Theory in the quest for self-justification, while on the side they supplement their stipend with shrewd stock market investments. The highest turnover of any department, as they soon slink back to the outside world. 

LAW: Lecturers undoubtedly, but academics? I think not. Standing there year after year, boring on about the same landmark judgements. Drilling in case studies and droning about the incontestable facts, only the facts. The fact is they don’t have opinions of their own, only precedents. Despite their limpet-like tenacity, I avoided them to be honest. (Ironic, given my future submersion via Damon). Having a sociologist for a husband aided me in repelling them. The facts, only the facts? They bored me rigid.

HISTORY: The porcine smile of the fanatic. The pedlar of a cause. The only people who truly can ever be said to be making history. All those periods of time, all those events, what rationale do you employ to choose one for study? Apart from it being an undiscovered seam in the market perhaps. You would credit them empathically to enter the historical mind, through chroniclers, clerks, notaries and pamphleteers. Yet where are the testimonies of the yeomen, slaves, footsoldiers and women? They posit either the progression of reform/revolution, or the conservatism of counter-reformation/ revolution, according to their political tastes. It all depends precisely where they establish the datelines for their period of teleology. It’s as maggoty as that. To the victor the spoils. 

CLASSICS: No discernible difference from school Classics teachers. Crumpled corduroy jackets, gowns and chalk dust, like they were emerging from an excavation. Which of course they never were, given that their body of texts was and is never likely going to increase in scope. The language had no new insights to throw up. The philosophy is available in Penguin paperbacks. Dead, dead, dead. Even the lawyers no longer paid lip service to them.  

PHILOSOPHY: Either I didn’t exist, or they didn’t and they could prove it to boot. Never, ever bumped into a philosophy Don. Presumably too cool for school (if I may be so bold as to employ an anachronistic idiom picked up out here), they were off partying with the students. Which is exactly what I myself do now. Though with less inductive justification.

ENGLISH: My pick of the crop. They didn’t look down at me and were all too happy to debate. One-to-one personal supervision. My very own reading group. They gave me pointers that opened my literary vistas up to many wonders. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake. A panorama of human emotion, expression, language and an insight into diverse human periods (eat your hearts out historians). They complained to me how their students never read the original texts. I informed them of the students’ wails that they never had the time to read anything but the literary criticism, such was the welter of literature to plough through. They thanked me for my input, but were then struck down by institutional inertia. That which dictated they only had to sit it out for three years to see off each fresh wave of student dissatisfaction. While they themselves would fall prey to the longer-term predations of time. Ensuring Beowulf would still be studied ahead of Kafka and Beckett, long after they surrendered life’s tenure. Because it had always been thus.

MODERN LANGUAGES: Divided into two camps. Those native speakers, gathered from all points of the compass. Among whom I was welcomed as an honorary member, in some sort of inverse ex-pat community. Conversation rather than discourse. And those English-borne linguists, scowling their way through foreign cultures and literature they evince little interest in. Having drawn the professional short straw, to instruct British youth in the way of the modern world and diminished eminence. The former’s company I felt very comfortable amidst, the latter were simply estranged. They’d love it here in Britain-upon-Ionia. 

MATHS/PHYSICS: Since I could reasonably hold my own within their discipline, much depended on how they reacted to me personally. Those that were happy to spread the gospel of the metaphysical nature of their subject, per the spiritual dimensions of matter that they could not pin down, would blithely indulge me in playing cat’s cradle with their string theory. While those that were affronted by my forwardness and presumption, retreated behind hyper-specialisation and rendered me two-dimensional. The beaming, open demeanour of the former, was more emblematic of proselytising missionaries. Please believe. 

BIOLOGY: Molecular to a man, I think the Department had garnered some Nobel prizes. They always seemed to look at you as if they were decoding your entire DNA. With such complex detail to attend to, they invariably carried an air of distraction. They have taken over from the physicists as the archetypal mad professors. Evolutionary geneticists have developed an interest in Game Theory too. (See Economists).

MUSIC: Pederasts. Organ scholarships in this irreligious day and age? Organ, get it? They certainly did. From the choirboys who sang in the Chapel in the main.

Sunday Sample - A Playlet

My debut novel "A,B&E"  has been described as "experimental", "unconventional" and "radical". I don't think it's for the cocktail recipes that conclude each chapter (referring to the cocktails the protagonist Karen Dash sponges off the people she spins stories to at beach side bars like a down at heel Scheherazade). It might have more to do with the appearance of a small playlet in the middle of the novel.

For Karen Dash is a gangster's moll who had to flee for her life when her husband discovered her infidelity and put a contract out on her. Fortunately the crime under-boss charged with the hit had his own motives for not executing the order and the two of them faked her death and bundled her out of the country. Through her bitterness and the vision from the bottom of one drained cocktail glass after another, Karen composes the scene of the crime under-boss' report to her husband of her successful execution. It is therefore complete fantasy on her part and lets her indulge in all her bile towards her husband and the criminal world that called for her death.

The whole scene is framed at torso level, so the faces are unseen. Enter an ill-fitting chauffeur’s grey suit, the torso threatening to burst out at any one of severalrucks and bulges. This torso narrows the space between itself and an expensively cut suit, the colour of bordello silk, muscularly well filled, but perfectly fitted. TERRY is in the chauffeur’s uniform, DAMON in the silk. The tensing and relaxing of the musculature conveys the emotion that would normally be held by the face. Actions described are through viewed consequence, eg a sip of a drink is discernible by the glass being less full than before when it returns poised in hand at body level.

TERRY I’d like to...

TERRY takes hold of DAMON’s wedding finger and works at the ring.

DAMON Allegiance or forgiveness?

TERRY works off the ring.

TERRY Funny, thought it would be harder to pull off than that

TERRY places ring on floor.

TERRY... for the position you see

DAMON pours himself a drink.

DAMON Refresh my memory. Which position would that be?

TERRY Anterior, posterior, lateral. If the Dutch cap fits-

TERRY removes his peaked cap and punches its heart.

TERRY The position that till recently was being filled every fucking whichway, but has now become suddenly vacant

TERRY peels off leather gloves and drops them into cap. DAMON reaches down to pick up the ring.

DAMON Decree nisi?

TERRY Decree abso-fuckin-lute

 

TERRY drops the cap to the floor, as his hands manically strum an imaginary lute.

TERRY (as George Formby) When I’m cleanin’ car windows!

Lute playing changes into a mimed chamois wiping, which then abruptly freezes and the fingers curl into a menacing claw.

DAMON Decree’s a passionless word. Too much juris-bloody-prudence. Know what I mean? Legal. Habeas corpus. I tend to find the towelhead term fatwa more copiously delicti

DAMON brings his foot down on the cap.

TERRY’s body flinches.

CHORUS  (unseen)  Oh woe corpus luteum!

DAMON Don’t got no vodka. Scotch do you? Should be champagne really. Didn’t think ahead

TERRY Yeah, well. Whole thing blew up so quick

DAMON Not too quick I hope?

TERRY Scotch’s fine. Ice and water

DAMON Watered down and on the rocks...? That’s not how you usually take it Tel. Oh I get it, very droll. People have drowned for less

DAMON swigs from his glass, so that he ingests the ring. His speech accordingly affected.

DAMON Your hand’s shaking. Sure you want it diluting? Better off  with a stiff one as you always say

DAMON spits ring back into his glass.

TERRY Was she less, or was she more? I trust it was more. It better have been more. To risk everything, for what could have been said with a slap

DAMON What are you, a man or a stuffed scarecrow? Never hit a woman in me life. She was bleedin’ everything to me. So anything less she gave me, meant a complete dereliction

TERRY Alright, alright. Keep your hair on

DAMON Ain’t got none. Number one for number one. Besides, she didn’t show me no respect did she?

TERRY Not gonna get any from six feet under now are you?

DAMON Six feet under? You said you’d burn her body in the Merc. Fucking involuntary suttee, with you to sweep up the ashes for me to piss on-!

TERRY Listen Damon, it’s no way to operate. An overly firm handshake, fair enough. That’s business. That’s the power of suggestion-

DAMON takes swig, again ingests ring.

DAMON Word gets around she’s cheating on me, what’s that going to do for business...? No, okay, you’re right. It weren’t business. Just personal. Very, very personal

TERRY So personal, you got me to do it for you

DAMON Tel, Tel, Tel. She might have pricked my emotions, but I haven’t entirely taken leave of me senses. Bluebottles’ll be over me like a rash. Prime suspect. So how could I be the one to do the deed? They’ll never place you with her now will they? I’d do the same for you. Any one in your personal life you want... chaste-tising, and I’m your man

TERRY I haven’t got a personal life. It’s all devoted to you and the business

DAMON spits ring into his hand and offers it to TERRY in unreciprocated handshake.

DAMON Exactly as it should be. Always has been and always will be, just like brothers. Blood brothers

TERRY Uh-uh. We’re both single children. Orphaned single children

DAMON Jesus Tel! I think you’re starting to lose it mate. Getting a bit flabby around the gills. Bit long in the tooth maybe

TERRY No. I don’t have a taste for doing women if that’s what you mean

DAMON What you complaining about? I gave you the driver an’ all. For symmetry like

TERRY Fuck him! It’s not about him! I done him quick, cos I needed his duds. To get close to her

DAMON Seems to me anyone could get close to her

TERRY You said she’d have to grasp the reason why, from the very nature of her premature ejaculation from this world. So I needed to get close enough to perform it

DAMON You didn’t whip it out, did you Terry? I bet that made you choke more than her. I almost feel sorry for you, you poor bent bastard! Still, there’s a certain piquancy in eliminating her in such a way, that the last overriding stench in her nostrils would be that of elimination. See, you squared the circle. I said you were the man for the job. Find the symmetry in everything you do. Hope you made it linger. Gave her a chance to reflect on the irony of it all

TERRY Don’t be daft. It wasn’t like that

DAMON No, how exactly was it like then?

TERRY I’d seen them at it. In the limo like. She’d be sat turned round in the back, on one of those flip-up seats you reckon establishes status, but to me makes your high-powered limo more of a glorified ‘ackney. Anyway, he’d slide open the partition glass, lean over from the front seat and plant his peaked cap on her head. Then he’d put his arm through and start pawing her neck with the old leather mitt. She’d arch up and back in response, so he’d bring his other arm across her tits. This bothering you?

DAMON Less than you probably

TERRY Well I sees she’s got her eyes shut. Never clocks who’s behind her

DAMON He was fucking her up the shitter? She nev-

(director’s cut)

OR

She had her fuckin’ eyes closed? She nev-

(producer’s preferred option)

TERRY Don’t be stupid! How could he? There was polished leather upholstery between them. It was all going off in her head like. This was just what I believe you handicappers call foreplay. Or is itmatchplay? I can never remember 

DAMON Yeah, I think I got some knock-off of that four-ply down one of the lock-ups

TERRY So that was how I did it. Can’t see nothing from outside with the tint, so she slides into the rear seat all unsuspecting. Dressed in the gear, she only sees the back of my neck and most of that’s cased in the cap. I hear the swish as she vacates the plush leather and the squelch of the cheap seat being flipped down. Now I know she’s got her back to me, so I give her the cap and it’s like I’ve popped her champagne bottle. Made me half jump out of my skin. But she hasn’t cottoned on to me. So I do what I saw Loz do, stroke for stroke, then callous my fingers. She arches back, really into it, like she’s trying to help me finish the job, but when my second hand clamps her throat and not her tits, the eyes flash open

DAMON Oh man, I wish I could have been there

TERRY No you don’t. Those eyes never once showed terror. Damon. At first they were just blazing angry

DAMON She didn’t have no right to be angry!??

TERRY It was only for a split second like. Then I don’t know what they registered. Couldn’t make out nothing written on her face. She weren’t resigned or knowing or anything really. I’d say they were just empty, except for the way she kept them trained on me till the end. I just know she wasn’t afraid

DAMON I didn’t expect her to show fear Tel. I knew she was a good’un when I picked her. I knew she would never crack. That’s what makes what the stupid bitch did even more mystifying. I never thought it would end up me being the one having to try and crack her

TERRY points at himself, before turning his finger to jab at DAMON.

TERRY Me Damon. I was actually the one remember? And I ain’t doing it again for you neither. Rips up the rulebook. People don’t know where they stand if you can do this to your own flesh

DAMON throws up his ring and snatches it out of the air. He then takes TERRY’s finger and addresses the adorning gold signet ring. He swaps them over, so that TERRY has his wedding ring and he wears TERRY’s signet ring. He ends by patting TERRYs hand.

DAMON Yeah, yeah. You got it Tel. Blood’s thicker than water and you and me waded through plenty in our time. You’re my only kin. Let’s go back to exactly how things used to be. See TD, you never went in for this... hollowness. Remained true to yourself. Only have to look at the gold rockface to remember, the heights scaled to get up there. The company seal of disapproval. Twenty-four carat, diamond geezer justice. Branded into the flesh of weaker men. Bosh! How does it feel Tel? It doesn’t quite carry the same weight does it? Unmans yer. She drove me to it Terry, just keep telling yourself that and don’t lose any sleep over it. ‘Rife’ is inlaid in ‘strife’ and ‘riven’ is wholly contained within ‘striven’. Now get out of that ridiculous outfit. You’re starting to come apart at the seams

They exit stage sinister.

BLACKOUT  (from alcohol probably)

CURTAIN FALLS on the person I used to be, the plush life I used to own.