by Lucy Ellmann
When she’d had about as much as a girl can take, of the whisky AND the stares, she asked the barman about a room for the night. He led her back to the reception desk where he suddenly became the Hotel Manager. Jen signed the book ‘Loathe Self’ and, in answer to his question, ‘Any bags?’ she mystifyingly replied, ‘You mean ma GRIPS, mister? I travels light and I travels alone.’ He made her pay in advance therefore, then took her upstairs through a hallway hotter’n Death Valley to a room colder’n a sheriff’s balls or a hangin’ judge’s heart, all the time a-CHAWIN’ on something. WHAT?? She would never know.
The room was without charm (Jen CHECKED it for charm but there wasn’t any). And the WINDOW didn’t shut. No wonder it was COLD in there! It looked out over a low flat roof (the roof of Europe?), on to which varmints of any kind could easily climb. It made Jen nervous, nervous as a prairie dog in a BUFFALO stampede! But it would have to do. Jen shat (yes, you have to shit even on your wedding day), blew her nose, cried, splashed water on her forehead and abstractedly examined her very own tiny bar of crappy hotel SOAP, before trundling back downstairs in search of food. The Manager was at his desk, whispering (about JEN?) to some FLOOZIE on the phone, some JEZEBEL. (Otherwise, Jen might have complained about the WINDOW.)
She strode nervously down the middle of the dark, deserted high street, like Gary Cooper, sensing she was being stared at from every dingy window. ‘COME OUT, YOU COWARDS!’ she yelled. The CHIP SHOP beckoned, a BEACON in the darkness! Jen burst through the door and ordered two large portions of chips and two pieces of FISH – it’s the only way to ensure they don’t skimp on the CHIPS. What did SHE care what they thought of her? Anyway, they probably thought she had a BRIDEGROOM waiting in the car somewhere.
BASHFUL BRIDE SLIPS OUT
FOR FISH AND CHIPS
A newlywed was left high and dry, tied to a four-poster in the Honeymoon Suite of the Station Hotel, when his wife of six hours suddenly dashed from the room!
Was she fleeing the Facts of Life? No, just getting fish and chips.
At a newsagent’s she bought some o’ them fancy EATIN’ chocolates and some chawin’ tobaccy. At an off-licence, low-cal white wine. She was carting her haul back to the hotel like a PACK MULE when she was again ACCOSTED by the impudent young man! This time he RAN at her. Men should never run at women (unless it’s to SAVE them from CALAMITY). Jen headed him off at the pass and managed to skidaddle back inside the Bucket o’ Blood Saloon before he could catch up with her. Vamoose, stranger! But she was now sure he would climb in through her window and MURDER HER IN THE NIGHT.
First though, she was going to shovel all her goodies down her throat! The chips were too PALE, the fish too greasy, but she ate them all the same. I want whatever I WANT today, it’s ma weddin’ day.
Jen falls asleep watching Meg Ryan play a DRUNK. It seems to go on for ever (Meg Ryan shows no mercy). When Jen wakes up, the TV’s still on. She’s confronted by MORNING NEWS on every channel, each with its own pair of male and female presenters – the nation cannot rise without these mummy and daddy figures barking at them. They’re so RESTLESS: they can’t sit still, and keep changing places during the ads, like TENNIS players. Clearly want to THUMP each other most of the time.
How cheerily they talk of dead, dying, bullied and obese children! The presenters seem to think themselves SUPERIOR to these children, because they SURVIVED childhood. Smirking away, they try to look stricken with concern but it’s a struggle. CUT to a guy standing in front of the Old Bailey in the rain, gripping an enormous yellow umbrella, there at least four HOURS before judge, jury or PERPETRATOR, just to be able to say (at six in the morning): ‘Live from the Old Bailey.’
Jen squirms back into her grubby dress and fiddles angrily with hooks and eyes, while Tony Blair drinks a cup of TEA and tries to look stricken about AIDS or rape victims or Chinese cockle-pickers or maybe even Abu Ghraib. This reminds Jen that she wasn’t MURDERED IN THE NIGHT. No shoot-out, no posse, no lassoes, no coyotes. With her whole life seemingly still before her, she plods downstairs for breakfast.
Jen sits for some minutes being stared at by other guests before a waitress comes to take her order. The WORKS: kippers, bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, kidneys, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding, fried bread, chips, etc. In the meantime, juice, cereal, yoghurt, muffins, croissants, and soggy old tinned GRAPEFRUIT segments. A hero’s breakfast! Jen eats as if somebody’s DIED! CHOWS down. And while she eats she thinks about FRANCINE. The NERVE of the woman, betraying Jen for MONTHS with her simpering smiles and seeming DISCRETION, whilst secretly scuttling around DESTROYING EVERYTHING behind Jen’s back. The LIES, the TEA, the CHUMMINESS, the GAMES she played! OK, the woman’s NUTS, so she can’t be blamed for any of it, but the DUPLICITY that lay behind that innocent-looking, if artificial, exterior!
Also, how exactly was Jen meant to fit into that domestic scene? Not one complete CHAIR to his name, unless you count the swivel chairs in the surgery! She knows Roger sends all his spare cash to Médicins sans Frontières, but a guy planning a ménage à trois, in fact a MENAGERIE, might at least provide a spot for your ASS …
Things that most people do with a SMILE, like serving you BREAKFAST and taking your hard-earned DOUGH, these people did WITHOUT one. It’s a system! Jen had to eat amid frowns and stares.
‘What? WHAT? You never seen a JILTED BRIDE before?’ she screamed at the guy opposite, in her excitement dropping a whole grilled TOMATO on her dress. (Ah, the tomato.) She only quietened when more TOAST arrived, and more TEA. As she poured herself another cup, Jen suddenly thought she heard ROGER’S VOICE, calling, calling, calling her BACK to him! Her master’s voice.
Was it ESP, or just some peculiarity of the TEAPOT?
The Meaning of Life
Jen didn’t find the meaning of life that morning! Let us rejoin her in the AFTERNOON.
By now she was carrying two brass candlesticks and a big WOODEN thing. She’d been in a charity shop earlier, run by a guy with a very high voice. She was looking for cargo pants, but they didn’t have any, and she was about to leave when the guy with the high voice offered her some candlesticks at a ROCK-BOTTOM PRICE! Then she made the mistake of asking about the big wooden thing in the window.
‘Oh, that is a Shetland sweater-dryer,’ he replied proudly. Drying sweaters was obviously a BIG PROBLEM in the Shetlands, and pretty IMPORTANT. Jen thought it might come in handy for drying CARGO PANTS too! So here she was, the jilted bride with her loot. Naturally, she was causing a bit of a stir in the high street. People were mumbling and grumbling behind her back, as usual. Couldn’t they leave her alone for ONE MINUTE?
But it turned out they WEREN’T mumbling about Jen. Her customary position in society had been USURPED by a NAKED MAN, who was wending his way down the street wearing only HIKING BOOTS and a HAT!
Children giggled as he passed, men scowled, and women smiled (women LOVE looking at naked men). Jen RECOGNISED him from a news report she’d seen that morning. He was visiting every town in Britain NAKED to spread his message about ACCEPTING THE BODY. His own body was of course not accepted anywhere – he kept getting ARRESTED. Maybe that was why he was tackling this town at such a pace. His long legs were much in evidence: Jen had to RUN to keep up!
‘Look at us!’ he yelled. ‘We’re killing ourselves with SELF-HATRED! Where does it get anybody? People still DIE. Millions die every DAY because we hate ourselves! DEMOCRACY’S dying because we hate ourselves!’
A few people clapped. The naked guy stopped so suddenly Jen almost bumped into him.
‘Who do we think we’re KIDDING anyway with all this secrecy about the human body?’ he asked the crowd. ‘Animals? CHILDREN? They have bodies too!’ A police siren could be heard in the distance, but he seemed unperturbed. ‘It’s all wrong,’ he declared as he started marching onwards again.
‘Hooray!’ Jen cried, waving a candlestick in the air. She had discovered a new HERO (her Hero slot was unoccupied at present). This was the first time in her life tha
t Jen had been told not to HATE herself and she LOVED it!
A police car now swerved right in front of the naked guy, blocking his path. Three cops jumped out.
‘You can’t ban the human body,’ the naked man declared as they handcuffed him. They led him through the crowd to the police car, amid a few boos. ‘You can’t crush the body!’ he yelled. But they DID, getting him into the car. Then off they sped, three smiling policemen and A NAKED MAN IN CHAINS.
Outraged, Jen turned to a woman near her and said, ‘Since when did the human body become illegal? I didn’t know clothes were COMPULSORY, did you?’
But the woman stared at Jen with naked ABHORRENCE and crossed to the other side of the street. The rest of the townsfolk meekly dispersed. It was High Noon all over again! COWARDS. You let ACCOSTERS OF WOMEN roam free but a nice NAKED guy has to be LOCKED UP. What a ONE-HORSE TOWN!
Someone had to carry on his good work! DUTY IS ALL. Jen was tired of secrets, secret eating, secret wives in the attic, the secrets of her body. She was tired of hating herself (REALLY tired of it). EVERYBODY gets to have a body, not just the BEAUTIFUL, not just those in FIRST CLASS. EVERY BODY is a legitimate example of the species! Not fair to treat a single one with disdain – not even JEN’S. The body is where all the LIFE is! Even sick bodies, old bodies. They’re ALIVE. Every defect, every illness, springs from LIFE. Every body SPEAKS of life. Sitting up or lying down – LIFE. Rich or poor, fat or thin, fit or feeble – life. They’re JAMMED RIGHT THROUGH with life. Friend or foe, liked or unliked – LIFE.
Your body is not something APART from you, something bad to be JUDGED, CRITICISED, SHUNNED. It’s YOU, not discardable until death. It’s not NOTHING. It’s the ONLY thing there is.
DELIGHT in its survival, delight in it!
Epiphany in the Bush
Following these thoughts to their logical conclusion, Jen ripped off her clothes in the middle of the sad little high street, relishing her release not only from all that TULLE, but from the tortuous and bewildering corsetry as well. She wanted OUT of this instrument of ENSLAVEMENT! She then strode BARE-ASSED through the town, holding her dress under her arm and waving the candlesticks above her head, like a Statue of Liberty that finally understood what liberty was all about! The price of freedom is to go UNCLAD: freedom has BACKBONE, and that backbone’s got to be VISIBLE.
People covered their ears, their EYES, as Jen drew near. But she didn’t care. Equipped with nothing but a couple of candlesticks, a BIG WOODEN THING, and a few insights, she felt full of power and, curiously, LOVE. Outside a shop she gave all her coins to a tramp. The warmth of a beggar’s hand!
Inside the shop, she sped about getting provisions. Other customers cowered in fear of Jen’s elephantine form. The guy behind the counter picked up the phone to call the police. But Jen, with all the agility of new-found nakedness, bundled up her purchases, grabbed a small bottle of brandy for the road, threw the shopkeeper a £20 note and flounced out. The sight of THAT ASS caused a few people to faint. One had a heart attack! But Jen was OFF-DUTY. In fact, all her medical training now seemed a NONSENSE, an insult, a mockery of the body! So you get sick now and then, so what? The body deserves to be recognised and appreciated for what it IS, not castigated and penalised all the time for going wrong.
In the woods outside of town, Jen dumped her stuff under a bush and ran naked through the trees. Yes, Jen ran, HAPPILY ran, feeling the wind on her shoulders and her breasts flapping free, and nettles stinging her shins. IMMUNE to the sting, the sting of her TIMES – the hell-hole last breaths of the human race – she ran. She flung her floppy arms out and DANCED.
Lying on the ground afterwards, purple and panting, she looked up through the trees at the blue sky, not minding for once that it was sky-blue. She even listened to BIRDS. Jen had lost her VEIL: not just her wedding veil, but her veil of separation from the world! She felt for once AT ONE with things, with her body, and the species in which it seemed to have a home.
When it got dark, she lit the candles she’d bought for her candlesticks, and made a sort of TENT out of her wedding dress by draping it over the Shetland sweater-dryer (it was the best use that had ever been made of either item). Then she ate some bickies, smoked some ciggies, drank brandy, longed dimly for CANDY and fell asleep, her thorny head resting on a carpet of cummerbund.
BUGS came in the night and stared at Jen as she slept, wondering at this human who had discovered the meaning of life – the bugs thought THEY were the only ones who understood the meaning of life. ANTS crawled in a long line up Jen’s thigh – word went out in Formic that they had found a marvellous new QUEEN. They all wanted to claim her for their own! Flies thought she was a FLY. And FOXES slunk by, pretending to know nothing of joy, but Jen really cheered all those creatures up! They had thought they were alone in the world.
The next morning, Jen hadn’t LOST the meaning of life, but it no longer thrilled her quite as much. She was cold and it was raining. She couldn’t ignore the possibility of HYPOTHERMIA. She was HUMAN after all: she needed food, shelter, newspapers, hot drinks, a JOB, contact with her own species, and a place to dump her stuff!
She went back into town to see the nice guy with the high voice and the bargains, swapped her dress for a hideous TRACKSUIT, which was at least warm, and watched without regret as her wedding dress sank into a big catatonic heap in a corner, still bearing her impress.
She caught the next train home – to ROGER. Out of the window, the landscape seemed dizzyingly alive. Jen thought she saw molehills creeping sideways! They definitely moved a BIT. And after the rain cleared, the wet trees twinkled at her, PRISMATICALLY. Their leaves dripped with COLOUR, blue, green, purple, red, gold. They flashed at her like XMAS-tree lights! This must be what Xmas-tree lights are BASED on, Jen thought: wet, sparkling trees.
Finally the world was REAL to Jen, and open for INSPECTION. She was PART of it, a body in her own right. Neither inferior nor superior, just EQUAL – as we all are.
A Perfect Pig
Jen returned from her days in the wild a WRECK: cold, wet and starving (though I PROMISED there would be no starving!). She looked at the attic windows and wondered if Roger was up there enduring the indignities of FAMILY LIFE. But she couldn’t save him tonight. (Maybe tomorrow.) All she wanted to do right now was find that PASTA MACHINE Urma Thurb had given her!
There were signs of much coming and going in Jen’s dungeon, perhaps to be expected after a wedding, especially an INCOMPLETE one. All the presents were stacked in a messy pile in a corner of the living room and, weirdly, all Jen’s little colourful RUGS were gone, the ones she’d paid for with her OWN MONEY. Who’d taken them? FRANCINE?
Jen rooted around like a perfect PIG in the present pile, like the pigs she’d seen from the train (energetically). But she couldn’t find the PASTA MACHINE. Fuck Urma Thurb! She must have CONFISCATED it on the grounds that there had been no wedding! But no, finally she FOUND it, at the very bottom of the heap (the back bottom, not the front).
Jen immediately set to work making the dough. According to the accompanying LEAFLET, you could make any shape you WANTED with this thing: it was a state-of-the-art NOODLER! The dough had to cool before she could cut it up. So Jen was planning to have a nice hot steaming soak in her JACUZZI while she was waiting. But when she went into the bathroom she found the jacuzzi covered in reddish SLIME. This was worse than ANY of Francine’s previous bath rings! It looked like she’d been trying to create a new SPECIES in there, or make her own CLONE.
Seized by an odd revulsion (odd in a NURSE), Jen scrubbed and disinfected her jacuzzi. Then, with Dionne Warwick warbling in the background and candles in her candlesticks dribbling on to the rim of the bath, Jen finally BUBBLED, her body again at one with the world. What the world needs now is love, sweet love! WHILE she jacuzzied, Jen tried to LIKE herself by thinking of the life in every inch of her body, the MANY inches of it. We don’t need another mountain! But it wasn’t easy: the bubbles made it hard to concentrate.
S
he padded, naked and PROUD, into her bedroom to get her favourite nightie, a barrel-shaped expanse of flannel: she didn’t want to catch PNEUMONIA. But Jen had a terrible shock when she reached her bedroom. All the walls were bare, bare as her ASS! The HANDBAGS were gone! All of them! Her mother’s, with its pretty gold chain; Urma Thurb’s (full of precious junk); the Lady Reporter’s; the one Jen had designated as FRANCINE’S (actually much NICER than Francine’s real bag); Martha the Orgasmic Woman’s monstrous bundle of silken folds; even the SPORRAN and the antique MEDICAL BAG Jen had assigned to ROGER – GONE, all gone! The accumulation of a LIFETIME, a lifetime’s GRUDGES and DISILLUSIONMENT, cunt-study and collapse, the numberless numb longings and leanings of loneliness!
She instantly guessed the CULPRIT of course. But still, the THOROUGHNESS of the operation appalled her. Nicky usually just snatched her BEST stuff, he didn’t do HOUSE CLEARANCES. And WHY? Nicky had no use for HANDBAGS. Maybe he was jealous of Jen for nabbing a DOCTOR? But Nicky had had a million of them! Doctors were CRAZY about him! Maybe he was angry that he’d been dragged to a godforsaken rural backwater for NOTHING. But LOTS of weddings never happen – that’s no excuse for stealing HANDBAGS!
Foaming with rage she thundered into the kitchen, all her new-found CONTENTMENT shattered! Nicky had stolen that too! Not just her HANDBAGS, but her fucking TRANSFORMATION! Naked in her kitchen, Jen made pasta in the shape of Nicky’s BONES: femurs, ulnas, fibulas, clavicles, and skull. FUCK THE BODY (Nicky’s anyway). With sinister glee, she threw the ossified noodles into a big pot of boiling water, scalding her belly in the process. But who cared about Jen’s belly? NOBODY.