by Sollai Rhys
~~~
John - a portrait
Dedicated to Bottle Beach
Looking hard at a sea of blue, we notice taxi boats driving in loads of feminines!
We wait on shore loose as jazz. What’ll we meet? Who will be ours on this sandy shore? Who, feather light, will grace our rooms, to halve our bills?
What evil will be done?
John waits alone on that sand's stretch of earth that greets wave after brushing and peaceful wave.
He writes in his book and reads his reading book. He lets the sun slowly burn his back, and if he regrets not buying sunscreen he’ll only remind himself that he’s young and that when he is old he’ll change his philosophy to: “You only live once.”
One day John will fall out of a window from the third floor and be revived in the ambulance truck. He’ll change his philosophy of many changing philosophies and correct people with “You live a few times if your lucky…” It will never leave much of an impression upon anyone but that’s in some future of his yet unexplored life… So yeah, it may be that that won't happen.
John watches legs. They are beautiful and golden in tan. He is deciding on whether he should risk looking higher… those legs are likely the most pristine and beautiful things he’d ever looked upon. They are tall and softly muscular… he can't describe them. They are beautiful and he’s… He’s blown away! To John, those legs are legs. Just legs, priceless and treasure chests in riches, ultimate value. They are beautiful because his values dictated they are so… Not because they are (though most people would say so) but just because.
John thinks like this. He accepts that he has values and without those values his truths would be a blank canvass of is-ness. However he is afraid of what his values would dictate when his view rises to take in her whole (hopefully) “pristine” figure.
But he is also a man of risk. “What a man.” People would say at his funeral in many years to come, when he has more friends than the few acquaintances he now owes his insanity to.
“What a man!” So, this man of such emboldening words as “what” and such individualizing letter words as “a”, makes the quantum leap and looks higher.
He isn’t disappointed he realizes, when the foggy heat of what he could only later guess to be called lust has washed away enough to think clearly. Not that he is thinking clearly. He, in fact, has made a right fool out of himself. Mouth open in awe, he’s got half way up off the sand and fallen straight back down. A little paralyzed.
She hasn’t noticed of course. She has a man following her lead who has obviously stolen all her interest and replaced it with godly haughty awareness of the infinite men looking at her along the beach. A big lad with both their packs on him. He has the muscle to make it look easy. Obviously this man is her man, she’s the boss. But she, she’s John's woman. She doesn't know it yet, but she would know as and when she would be.
The legs owned a lean blond with a smile like confidence and loveliness and secret little jokes all mouthified. She’s headed to the bar up the beach, trudging ungracefully through the soft white sand. It’s a different lodging place to his! He has to move quick, change her course. He might not see her again if he left her to go now on her fool’s course without him. He has to make an impression at the very least of leasts!
“No!” He yells.
Lazy young beachanites swivel heads to look at him, this man who had suddenly lost his cool in the heat, perhaps the only thing that keeps a man alive from this foreign land and its hot, hot sun.
“What no?” She asks. As in, “what do you mean by no?” He likes her use of English, like she’d smithed it slightly off-track for a bit of a laugh.
“Not that one. You must know that that’s the family place? The family people go there!”
“The family people?”
“Come to the dark side!” he blurts out.
“What do you mean?” She looks worried by his apparent lunacy. How uncool he must seem, despite his lean, cared for body and fifties sunglasses, reminders (usually), of his rock star confidence.
“As the sun goes down, it is darkest here. You can see the stars and people come to light fires and dance about them nearly every night.” A distant look, like a religiously impassioned man, half in the spirit world, crosses his face. He’s forgotten that the term “dark side” actually comes from Star Wars. He’d put meaning to the phrase some joker had named that lightless hippy traveller's half of the beach. “We live by the moon and the calmness of the receding tide at night and shun away from the light where families go. We wait at day to recruit more likely souls to join our side. The side of darkness. The generator goes off by midnight and not only darkness surrounds us, but all silence as well, save shifting sands and whispering friends and lightly receding waters against the coral. We whisper because only a fool would disrespect the dark and the dark side.”
She looks genuinely startled. The hulk of a man steps forward and opens his mouth. John interrupts him with an upraised finger. “Only woman’s word is law. A man's can be disrespected without me having to kill the disrespectful, so respect this moment that I get to hear this woman’s voice again!”
The hulk shifts his bags, bounces them higher up his back. “We are going to the next place. Stay away from us arse-hole.”
The girl's head is tilted and John can see she wants the dark side secretly. And the dark side in all senses is the realm of John. For he rules the world of the unseen on this lonely little beach, the world of the mind. He’s respected and unwanted as a friend, but needed among the other travellers as the figure of sureness. Like a lone pinnacle of pure light and pure shadow, he is half insurance that you can’t get more insane and half insurance that you can always have more confidence. For that’s John: Insanity and confidence all wrapped up in one body.
“I’ll kill you man.” John whispers as the couple walk away up the beach.
It's come to dusk and John can see her form up the beach emerging from the water. She’s happy with her hulk man who plays predictable couple games with her. Teasing, poking, generally being annoying. We hope he sleeps light because he’s a good man, not a great man, and John will only let great men offend him and get away with it alive. John thinks himself a great man. In truth, he’s a horrid man who murders on a whim. John's cold blooded. There’s a reptilian look to him. Not as though he's blocking off emotions, that’s too obvious. He has none beyond his tunneled vision of false love for sexy bods. He’s a blank canvas, wrapped in plastic, he’s painted values upon the plastic, detached from his true empty self.
There’s no one at dinner yet and he’s reminded by the bizarre people of the world. Most people he’s met about the beach will shower before dinner and get changed before their meal into something casual. Casual is a lie. They call pre-faded, ripped and paint splotched jeans casual, but John’d just call it pretentious and above all, expensive crap.
He had every wash out of the sea and had never changed so much as his undies, though he’d often go about without them.
He’d wear one pair of shorts or a sarong. He liked to go topless everywhere but owned a yellow Hawaiian shirt that was of very soft cotton. Tonight he wears this. He leaves it open so that his fit front shows between his flanking gold cotton. He wears his shorts and keeps his square fifties glasses in his front pocket. He drinks one beer and has a daydream of horses in a distant paddock. He thinks of dogs then and decides he likes them a lot. He takes a snack at the bar. He has pitta bread and badly wrought home made dips. They’re a tad watery.
He sits out the front so that he can spy on the next bar along the beach and wait for the hulky bastard and the gorgeous woman.
A girl he’d met two nights earlier, one he’d also taken back to his bungalow, comes to make conversation. She’s a good conversationalist and they disagreed on many things, like war, the jungle and trees, politics, love, the afterlife. John knows they don’t disagree on any of those subjects. He knows it’s just their characters that disagreed w
ith each other. But both their characters are strong and stubborn in an argument or “conversation” as she likes to call them, and this is attractive to the both of them.
She plonks a cheap beer in front of him and he says his thanks, not to mention his hellos.
They drink for a while not talking. Pretending they are comfortable in the silence as they gaze off into a darkening horizon, the orange flaming ball of sun sinking into a grey blueness.
“Anything planned for tonight?” She asks. Her name’s Sarine and she’s French. Her accent's incredibly sexy, much like her olive tanned body. These things had also attracted John. But not any more. Lusting for her had ended soon after one night. She was annoying in the way that she was so anti-opinionated about the sunsets. Most people made gestures about them because they were beautiful. Well they believed that was what beautiful was… Once again, John’s emotions were a cheap display, yet ones he thought necessary in human behavior, so he often made remarks about them to his fellow acquaintances. She, however did not follow this rule. She never had anything to say about them. Nor did she have anything to say when the tides receded and left rippling effects in the wet sand which reflected the sky oddly in the afternoon. This rule-breaking had lost John’s love for her. Forever.
“The sun is beautiful today, is it not?” John asks her.
“Yes.” Is all she says.
“But, what I really meant to ask you was, how beautiful?”
“Most.” She replies.
“Ok. But that’s not very descriptive.”
“Oh? What should I say John?”
“The sunset is most gorgeous. I could live here forever. I wish time stopped at this hour. You don’t get this back at home… The list goes on Sarine.”
“Yes. I guess I could say that. But I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because you said it all and therefore already know it.”
“Yeah. But what else are we sposed to talk about?”
“How do you say…?” She stumbles through a few words in French and English. “Ah… we could talk about health!”
“Health?”
“Yes. Like, how are you today?”
“Oh… I see. I guess I am fine. You?”
“Yes, fine.” She finishes her drink. “Thank you John, now I must be off. Good luck with the blond and mind that man.” She points off down the beach at the other bar. The blond and the hulk are ordering.
“Thanks.”
He watches a while. Notes that they are talking like a healthy pair of human beings. A much better conversation than what he had just experienced. Bloody Sarine! Bloody rude Europeans. He had come overseas seeing all other nations equal to his own. He now disliked the French for their arrogance, the English for their terrible drinking. He did like the Irish. He thought little of Americans. Oh yes, Germans he considered to be a bunch of cry babies while most other northern countries were very good company. But he liked the company of the locals best.
“Where are you from woman?” John asks from where he sits, looking coldly down the beach at the blond.
He gets to his feet, the sand's still warm in the now full darkness of night. He can hear the lapping waves. They sound repetitive, constant, only just inconstant in beat. They’re soothing, meditative.
The restaurant's mostly outdoors, lit by flaming torches kept upright in the sand. There are no chairs and the tables are low. These are surrounded by pillows. People spread out like self-made Greek gods sipping at drinks and dipping into their food like they have all night to do so.
John tries to imagine these people back in their own countries. Likely sitting around their plain dining rooms or living rooms eating their overcooked two veg and steaks. “We are meant for better things,” they think, like a background buzz in their minds. Altogether thinking that mankind was meant to live by a beach with cheap beer and fine food. They forget that they are slaved over by the local populace. John sees himself as no exception, save that he doesn’t really see a difference between slaving and holidaying. He somewhere makes the decision that the beach is better according to modern values.
The Hulk of a man sees him first. He puts down his fork and makes a stoney face of his features. The girl turns, beautiful eyes of startling blue.
“My name’s John.” John says. “I made a fool of myself before. I’d like to apologize.” He turns to the girl. “Your beauty had me thinking like a mad man.”
The Hulk huffs once.
“I am Anna and this is Eric.” She says. He certainly deserved a Viking name.
John shakes both their hands. John’s the type of guy who does one of those handshakes where the web between thumb and forefinger doesn’t meet the other person’s. Eric is not one of those types of people, but John closes quick and wins his way.
Stupid Eric sees this as a weakness of character and smiles slightly, a secret smile that John’s reptilian character grasps the meaning of.
The music of the family place plays annoyingly around them. Bob bloody Marley. John guesses it’s their only CD.
“It’s nice to meet you Eric and Anna.” He begins formulating his plan. His plan to kill Eric the Viking.
“Likewise.”
“Now I insist on buying you drinks enough to convince you into the darkness.” He can't handle her eyes on him and realizes he has to move fast.
“Star Wars fan?” Eric asks.
“Aren’t you? No, no wait, I bet you anything you are!” John falsifies a laugh.
“I guess I am, yes.” Eric mutters.
“How did you guess that?” The girl.
So sweet a girl. He’d have to get her drunk. Very drunk. Lead him away! “Every western list of ten top movies includes at least one of the original trilogy films… if not all.” John says “if not all” like its kind of scary and this makes Anna laugh.
There is an air of untrusting about Eric. Secretly he knows Anna isn’t in love with him, for there was never very much passion outside of the bedroom. She’s being too friendly with John. Eric feels slightly embarrassed.
“Really? That’s odd. There are so many better movies.” She comments.
“Perhaps. Yet I think Star Wars leaves good memories in every childhood.” John had heard a guy say that exact thing whilst talking about the dark side of the beach not two nights back.
“True. But that doesn’t make those films great movies. Though, I do love those films.” Eric interrupts.
“Well, what would make a great movie Eric? Something serious, black and white and just for adults?” John turns to Anna now. “You see I think as a child, movies are least wasted. We forget in our older age the things we do or watch. I’m sure you’d probably forget the majority of the films you’d watch in a week. Whereas, who forgets great flicks like The Dark Crystal, Willow, and yes, Star Wars.”
“I agree.” Anna says. “We shouldn’t get caught up in what society thinks acceptable because, as you say John, they’re filtered in red and big named actors play drug addicts and child molesters.”
“That's not what I mean!” Eric says thumping the table. “I think a good movie is a movie with a good plot, good photography, something we can relate to and that!”
“Well I don’t know what “and that” entails, but I’d say Star Wars does all that firmly. Not to mention that they’ve made a Wikipedia site purely for Star Wars! Its called wookiepedia.” He’ll take Eric some where into the jungle… butcher him. “I can’t think of another film that’s achieved such a culture.”
“Is it really that big?” Anna asks.
“Huge.” John assures her with the accompaniment of a wink.
But how? John asks himself. Dreaming away from the table to an act of split skulls, cut brains and pissing blood. A machete flashing under the silvery moonlight, then smooth womanly forms, writhing in a film of sweat beneath his murderous, powerful self. Fucking someplace public, like on the table, here and now. He ignores a stirring beneath his garments, wondering at the paint that may
have slipped through the plastic coating onto the canvas of his soul. Thank you woman.
“I have to show you something Eric. Later if you’d like.