by Peter Marks
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Apparently, whereas every-one else on Earth experienced a single day, old fucked in the head was getting a double. Some-how, Wright was gaining an improbable forty-eight from an equation whose only correct mathematical solution was twenty-four. He believed he experienced, however occasionally a Friday, which was immediately followed by another Friday. Or a Monday followed by a repeating Monday.
So while every-one else was getting Friday then Saturday. (And he would’ve got seven years in a laughing academy had he not been able to rationalise it. And keep his mouth shut) Wright got two Fridays. And a hell of a fright usually.
Fortunately, both the functionality of his brain and the quality of his maths had always been equally appaling so Wright, on considered reflection, believed he was wrong. Not even the deranged Wright could adequately convince himself of the doubleday effect.
Even on the odd occasions he thought something odd was happening Wright still found excuses. Instead of doubting his sanity as he should have, he began to blame this peculiar event, if it did occur or exist, on chronically bad arithmetic and a years gone drug habit.
As past president of the pharmaceutical fan club, Nathan spent five years of his life drunk on booze and desensitised on Serepax. So much of either in fact that he now believed that these very same chemicals had simply returned from their doped out vacation to come back and haunt him.
It had happened before - everything turning strange. Nathan, dumbfounded then by the experience, had called the manifestation a Serepax Tango for he considered deja vu drugs to be the only reasonable explanation. He was wrong, but it was such a temporary, itinerant phenomenon that by the time he began to believe in it, it disappeared. The damn time giver buggared off and went back into hibernation again before he had a chance to catch it. Permanently.
Or at long enough to believe it anyway.
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Kelly thought leaving was a brilliant idea having no real idea what Nathan had been prattling about anyway. Gathering her handbag she leapt into the gloom, heading for the brightly lit front door of a house several doors down from where she’d parked. The place was shaking with the unmistakable racket of a Saturday night party.
Wright, less enthusiastically, followed in her damp footsteps. As soon as they were at the door, he pushed Kelly inside and stood on the porch awaiting a report from her - before push turned to shove and Kelly retaliated to his urgings by grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and shoving him through the door, telling him to glean the information first hand (or face first as it happened, the wall being thing he met). Peeling him from the wallpaper, she thrust him into the murky lounge amongst the feverishly dancing throng.
Inside, the house was darker than outside had been. From a black pink ceiling, hanging lamely like dry seaweed, streamers in rainbow tones crisscrossed a room, seemingly kept upright by the thousand helium filled balloons bobbing sleepily in the smoky gloom. Everywhere there were streamers and ribbons and it was all so jolly. Wright wanted to go home.
Rubbing a battered nose, looking about, Kelly wasn’t about to let Nathan off that easily. As she pushed him through the crowd Wright was struck by the absurdity of it all. He’d always thought parties were strange affairs and this one was no different. Then he shrugged realising that this was exactly their purpose. Everyone’s purpose. To have strange affairs with total strangers and as good a reason as any to put one’s ego on the line (and one’s immune system at risk).
Eyes darting about, he cautiously perused the room. Saw the smiling faces of the over sexed. And the overly optimistic which the appallingly ugly girl standing by the lamp in the corner sure was.
Wright clung to Kelly like a barnacle to a barge as she swept by him. Ever insecure, he followed her as closely as he could bar surgery, tightly clasping her trailing arm for reassurance as they ploughed through the mass of preened and perfumed bodies (when he noticed, in passing, that some of the men smelt sweeter than some of the women. The world was going berserk, he observed).
It was Kelly’s night. It was her party and her friends so the place was full to bursting with people Wright didn’t know. And didn’t care to.
Suddenly, from the crowd, twenty stone of vibrating cellulite in a vast dress of truly optic distress came hurtling out toward them. Nice dress, Wright thought. Christ, Christo could wrap Mars with that amount of material he whispered to Kelly who immediately invaded his solar plexus with an axe elbow in violent reminder for him to behave himself and keep his big trap shut.
‘Kelly, d.hh..aaarling ...how are you?’ The mammoth howled. And Kelly disappeared.
She was gone. Vanished. Engulfed, she was made invisible by this fat tent. She was ushered in by ten stubby fingers which drew her to two vast bosoms that writhed menacingly under this, the biggest top Nathan had ever seen. Suddenly Kelly was no-where to be seen, she was completely lost amongst the fabric folds and Wright was about to send in a search party for her when she equally suddenly reappeared. Hell, Sir Edmond Hilary has scaled mountains smaller than this sheila, Wright was thinking when a pair of vast red lips that were painted and brilliantine below a fertile moustache, now engulfed him. Sucked him into the abyss. (The woman was as big as Colleen McCulloch, who was as big as combine harvester but more fun to drive).
‘And whh..ooo..se this?’ The mighty one squealed, turning her attentions to the quivering Wright who suddenly wished he’d brought an aqualung along. Christ she was suffocating him. Man meets mountain he gasped as she clutched him to the tremendous twin peaks. It was Nathan’s turn to disappear under the avalanche and he’d almost expired when she finally released him. Hell, she sure was affectionate.
And huge.
Overwhelming and over-endowed Nathan submitted. Old ballast bra could have shared her tits with at least fifteen other women and still have enough left over to suckle an elephant, Wright grinned. She could certainly afford to donate an inch or two to thirty bumps on fifteen flat chests he knew personally, intimately, were in need of the additions. Perfumed ironing boards that could do with a little more of what little they had. Kelly didn’t.
Wright smirked sleazily, grinning that his slavering mouth was the only addition Kelly’s tits needed.
God, huge was still hovering over him.
‘You must be Nathan,’ she told him. She’s terribly bright for a large rock Nathan though. He was still puffing, still trying to resuscitate himself after her breathtaking greeting. Accepting her accusation, he nodded in sad affirmation of his identity. It wasn’t something he usually admitted to. (To be perfectly honest, Wright would have agreed to anything she told him. He would have, considering her tremendous size, agreed to any name she’d chosen to bestow or call him. He would have answered to Bill, or Ralph, or Spot or Fuckhead for that matter. He would have nodded excitedly had she called him Dorothy or Debra or Downright Despicable. Or an endangered species more than likely if he hadn’t).
‘Nathan, this is Peggy Small,’ Kelly said, introducing him to the largest expanse Nathan had ever seen ambulant without the assistance of a crane. Wright did all he could not to break into hysterics. It took the vision of his bank book to depress him sufficiently to suppress the laughter that threatened to flow flooding out. Also, Kelly was watching him and he knew she’d strike with the speed of a rattler if his lips so much as hinted at a smirk. Great name for such a sizable object Wright giggled inwardly, restrained himself and limply shaking her pillow hand. Still nodding.
About the room, the more energetic around them danced while others were resting idly against the walls or were draped over the furniture chatting. There were all shapes and all sizes but none of them were as impressive as Everest (not even four of them glued together would be as impressive as Everest actually).
She fascinated him. All fat people fascinated him. Nathan thought fatso’s were great because they made him feel thin - which he wasn’t. Kelly was though, she was well formed and preposterously perf
ect and so she used Nathan for the same purpose he used fatties - to feel thin. She had wandered off from the huge one (a short sprint of five miles) and was busy swapping stories wedged against a couch full of swilling students who deep in a discussion about Marxist politics and who’d win the football next week. Face friendly, she was happily chatting away until Wright grabbed her back to where the tent Peg penned him. Frighteningly, her three thousand chins rolled in earthquake waves below the mountain moustache each time she spoke and Wright kept diving for cover with each utterance. Kelly was cool though. She talked, the monument laughed, Wright dove. Each time she shrieked with laughter, throwing her canon barrel arms about her bulk whenever she was trying to stress some point or other to an interested Kelly, Wright scattered Both women ignored him. And they ignored his wide-eyed wonderment. He was stuck between the one of Kelly and the five of Peg.
Nathan had by now estimated that Everest was the size of many normal mortals - that she was in fact quintuples locked in a single body. Peg was prodigious testimony to the power of the abused calorie (and gravitationally impossible).
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Really, she was not so much over-weight as over the legal limit.
Wright wondered why such a massive person wasn’t legally bound by an act of parliament to attach navigation lights to their extremities. He felt certain that she was large enough to be a hazard to low flying aircraft. Or Jumbo jets. Jumbo collides with Jumbo, he smirked. Wright could see the headlines now. In the TV in his head he could clearly see the news of the disaster written in tall black type across the front of the morning paper: ‘THREE HUNDRED SLIMMERS KILLED BY OBESITY.’
Wright believed it would be poetic justice if Peg collided with a herd of Weight Watchers on their way to anorexia. Wright believed that no bastard had any right to be thin when he was still fat!
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A few minutes later, much to Nathan’s relief (he was sick of hitting the deck to avoid Pegs stampeding chins) it was time to move on. Kelly led, the coward followed.
‘Now I know how the dinosaur vanished from the face of this earth,’ Wright whispered, speaking directly in Kelly’s ear as they left her regal vastness, heading for the corner of the dance packed room. Trouble.
Kelly stopped. Turning on her heels, prepared to turn nasty should Wright continue, she glared menacingly at him She was experienced with Nathan’s verbal cruelties. Of his constant asides about others less fortunate than he was(although Wright firmly believed there was no-one less fortunate than he was. So he picked on every-body without guilt or favour). Staring into his beady eyes, Kelly confronted him in the middle of the loud room a warning scowl etched across a ripple brow. Wright lent closer.
‘She ate them,’ he confided. It was just the sort of crass comment she’d expected. It was exactly the sort of unfeeling, uncaring dark humour she’d come to loathe. Her brow had warned and now her foot punished.
With casual, consummate ease she aimed a swift stiletto low on his shin inflicting the agony so nonchalantly, and with such genteel aplomb, that no-one noticed. No-one but Wright, who, although startled and now stork like, continued to grin crazily thinking that the joke had been worth it. Which he quickly realised it hadn’t when she stabbed him again and he stopped grinning and started limping, trailing behind a grim Kelly as she made her way through the writhing bodies which jerked spasmodically to the thundering rhythms blasting through two huge speakers that sat either side of a black curtained window. Wright recognised the song. It was Candy-O by the Cars and a favourite of his so he limped along with it. Hop, turn, limp. Hop, limp, pain.
Chasing carpet, their feet connected to the floor then up in the air, the rest danced while Wright limped by. Massed in movement in the increasingly hot lounge they gyrated, they drank, they smoked then, sweating torrents, fell in mass grave heaps on the plump cushions scattered along every streamer laden wall. It was party pandemonium
Every three steps Kelly would stop to wave and gesticulate above the shifting bodies to various people or groups of people who were spread about the room. In animated excursion, she’d scream and wave at all those she recognised (which seemed to Wright to be everyone).
She walked, stopped, semaphored; walked, stopped, greeted. Nathan limped, stopped, limped. Rubbing his shin he was sure that none of those Kelly yelled at knew what she was saying because the din was so deafening but they all nodded anyway as if there was some secret language only the initiated knew at work here. Kelly was the High Priestess by the look of things. She’d wave and yell and they’d wave back at her in some flapping ritual response which Wright neither heard nor understood. Still, such primitive communication seemed to please Kelly so Wright didn’t comment (his shins pleaded with him not to).
It was only when they reached the far wall and a corner by the patio door that was crowded with people Nathan had never seen before, that she finally stopped waving her wings like some mad mating seagull. Here, she smiled warmly and said hello to the collection of teeth which, hospital white, gathered there.
‘Nathan,’ she said pulling him to her side, ‘this is Kerrie. Kerrie, Nathan. Nathan, George. George, Nathan. Phil...it is Phil isn’t it?’ She blanched red, her face flushing the colour of fresh liver in anticipated embarrassment that she’d got it wrong. But Phil nodded yes and Kelly recovered. ‘Nathan,. Julie. Julie, Nathan.’ Nathan was getting dizzy with all these nodding introductions. Dutifully, he shook every hand that came his way but noticed that the one called Phil immediately wiped the shaken paw on the leg of an excessively loud pair of ill-fitting trousers he was occupying for the evening.
They were just perfect, just perfectly hideous and so well matched to the rest of his motley but exuberant costume Wright thought. Unfortunately for this Prince who should have remained in Darkness, this wasn’t a fancy dress party. Which meant that this textile nightmare was Phil’s idea of fashion. Phil had no idea of fashion.
Or dignity. Or taste Wright thought, thinking the outfit was more off-the-rack vomit than sartorial splendour.
Nathan took an instant dislike to the man in the appaling pants. Wright wasn’t a forgiving soul and he took it as a personal insult when anybody wiped their hands straight after shaking his as if he were a leper, or the bearer of AIDS or Subpoenas and decided to seek revenge on the wearer of his last illness at the earliest opportunity.
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Nathan would remember him. He’d remember Phil’s name. Such stunning recall was more than he could promise the rest of them for he’d already forgotten their names. He’d even forgotten the name of the big shiela, the one that ate dinosaurs and she was the most memorable of the lot so what hope did the others have? None really. Unless one of them decided to do something as nasty with their palm as Phil had.
Like wank on him for instance.
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The truth was that for Nathan to remember names, the men had to annoy, the women had to be beautiful and anything, anybody straying from these two strictly segregated categories could dress themselves as Admiral Yamomoto and commit sepuka in front of him but Nathan wouldn’t care, he’d still forget them.
Wright, in dire need of a brain that retained, considered that it should be mandatory for all guests to be labelled (tattooed on the forehead if necessary in inky affirmation). He felt every-one should be labelled somehow with name, rank and serial number. Or failing that, and dependant on sex, every-one should be forced to adopt a common appellation so that all women would become Jill’s and all men Paul’s (and any drag queens? Jauls).
Doing this, Wright argued, would ease the pressure of introductions and so drastically reduce his fits of mainly unintentional, occasionally blatant, rudeness. Those occasions when he had to gain the attention of some-one whose name he’d forgotten but couldn’t ‘cos he couldn’t remember and so could only grunt to gain their attention in affirmation of his ignorance. The wide acceptance of Wright’s Jill / Paul / Jaul strategy would
allow him to drop any pathetic pretense of knowing what he knew he’d forgotten. Their name usually.
Unless it was Phil.
Or unless they wanked on him.
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This memory lapse, this name dropping, was not an endearing quality. Nathan had discovered this very early in his partying career. He’d found that not remembering the name attached to the person was never excused or greeted with much sympathy. Wright understood. He didn’t grow angry with those whose name he forgot when they frowned aggrieved because of his failure to identify them as being anyone they weren’t.
However, being the confirmed hypocrite he was, he’d get really pissed off and take it as a personal insult if any-one had the gall to forget his name (if any-one forgot his name as smartly as he did theirs).
Wright deluded himself that he was more memorable than most. Wright was wrong but still wouldn’t forgive. He always held any failure by any-one to recall his name against them (when he could remember who the hell they were).
Nathan, to his constant dismay (and Kelly’s constant despair) had found that forgetting names was just about the ultimate social sin. And ultimately embarrassing in those situations where he was forced to introduce some-one he knew to a group of strangers he should have so had, over the years, perfected his parting tricks.
Nathan had gained the specialised skill of ducking responsibility. Of escaping introducing any-one to any-one. He had several methods of doing this. He’d do it by excusing himself pleading the sudden need to ablute or feign deafness or fill his face with food. Or, as a last resort, and when all else failed, faint.
Kelly despised Wright’s handicap. She called it laziness, rudeness or creeping senility and magnanimously took control of any potentially lethal exchange of names knowing Wright was about to lose his memory. Or so Wright thought.
In truth, she took over his duties more from selfish interest than sincere compassion. She hated the way Nathan always cocked things up. Inevitably he’d run for the toilet or faint. Or when he was cornered, when he simply had to name names he’d always rename every-one. He was her boyfriend, he was her burden. Everything he did or didn’t do reflected on her so she rescued him when he looked like forgetting which saved him from having to faint and fall to the floor so often that he’d have to take to wearing a bike helmet. Three cheers for Kelly.