by David Louden
“Turns out their relaxed attitude towards the Mary-Jane is a false impression on their attitude towards everything else. Apparently they’re very religious and very anti the man-on-man, that’s religion for you.”
“That’s shocking, I did not know that.” she drained down a glass on red.
“I know right! Every day’s a school day.” I replied matching her.
She poured two more before speaking “So what do you do then?”
“I’m at Queen’s…by day, by night I’m one fifth of a deadly hash smoking ninja team but I really shouldn’t talk about it. Our main office is in the shadows.”
“What are you studying?”
“English and Film.”
“So what do you want to do then?”
“Who knows, I wanted to be a writer but who knows.”
“That’s cool, what kind of stuff would you write?”
“I’m still figuring that out, still figuring a lot out.”
We tore through the first bottle making a mockery of its alcohol percentage. Before long the second bottle was gone too and we’d taken to sitting on the floor smoking cigarettes while she told me of her plans to exhibit something within the next year or so and how disapprovingly straight laced her family of doctors were towards her idea of a future. Turns out she was given no easier or guilt free ride than us poor people. She rolled us two joints and we took two big hits and held them, I toasted Lee in the back of my mind before blowing it out.
“That’s pretty nifty.” I said, snapping my pointed finger at her dormant self portrait.
“Oh that! Thanks baby,” she replied sinking the remains of her glass before twiddling with her hair “I could do your aura too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, all exploding like the Eastern sunrise with burning red stars in your eyes.”
“Is that what my aura looks like then?”
“I guess.”
“I always assumed the sun shone from another part of my anatomy but I’ll take that.” I toasted topping us both up.
“I’ve a question Doug, I want your honest answer so please don’t think just blurt out your immediate thought.” she said, toking down another hit.
“Bring it on Sista.”
“Would you like to fuck me now?”
I didn’t mean to but I took a moment and I could see it annoyed her.
“Are you fucking kidding?” I asked.
“I never fuck around when it comes to fucking around, so what do you say? You can do me any way you want, it’s entirely up to you. There’s only two things, one is that you wear a Johnny…”
“Obviously.”
“…and two is that when you’re finished I get to keep it, the Johnny that is.”
“And why would you want to keep it?” I asked, huffing it down.
“Oh don’t worry it’s nothing weird,” she’d offer earnestly “so what do you say?”
“Well if it’s nothing weird then I’d be delighted to fuck you Cara.”
“Great!” she stated, clapping her hands and leaping to her feet.
She rooted around in the briefcase before pulling out a sheet of white paper detailing it. A contact, a fucking fucking contract.
“Just read this and sign the release at the bottom.”
“Cara, what the hell is this?”
“It’s important Douglas, you don’t get any ass without it.”
I took the contract from her and read it through. The act was consensual and no monetary reward was either given or received; both parties at the time of the act were over the age of eighteen years; that Miss Harrison retained all rights over the male contributors ejaculate and that at no time would she use it in an attempt to impregnate herself or commit a criminal act or use it in any way that may damage the character or legal status of the donor. The print got smaller and my attention waned.
“You’re serious about this!” I stated more than asked.
“Sign it and fuck me.” she demanded removing her jeans, then tee, then panties and laying herself out bare on her perfectly made bed.
I scribbled down my signature and followed suit; stripping down in record time and then I was on her. She rode me as though she stood a chance of winning the Kentucky derby, my pole firmly wrapped up inside her juicy pink walls as she pounded up and down on top of me. Her small breasts jiggling about, her nails buried half an inch deep into my chest before she flipped over and I got a ringside view of her pear-drop ass as she smashed up and down in an attempt to turn my hips to dust.
“Oh that’s it baby! That’s the fucking spot there!”
She worked me into the small hours and when I finished my eyes rolled back in my head and didn’t correct themselves until I got a phone call from Morris at 5:30AM wondering why I wasn’t in his fucking shop.
My bones hurt and I smelt of pussy. It made me think of Ronan’s tent and I was in no mood for Morris. He’d come to get me after being on break for seven minutes and I’d tell him to fuck off you slave driver before turning back to the glamourous vista view of industrial bins and heavy-set female cleaners with what looked like male patterned baldness and smoked the end of my cigarette. I needed money but not his, not anymore. I’d get another job and I made sure I’d quit in style dropping two blister packs of laxatives into the coffee machine that would not only take out Morris but half the city’s bus drivers as Belfast came to a stinking brown stop; traffic bumper-to-bumper as driver after driver dropped out of their cabin to empty their balloon knots in whatever bathroom or sewer grate that would welcome them.
“I don’t feel too well today Douggie.” groaned Morris as he doubled over.
“You look like Casper.”
“I could shit through the eye of a needle.” his stomach turned over, his ass yawned and he raced towards the stock room and the staff toilets.
“It’s going to be a photo finish on that one.” quipped Joel.
“Do me a favour Joel, when Chief Gravy Arse gets out of the stink lodge tell him I quit.”
I savoured every step of the walk home that day. The tiredness only served to make me feel alive.
11
I SLEPT FOR most of the afternoon and when I woke all was quiet. I’d call on Cara to see if she’d be interested in grabbing a movie or some Thai food and maybe screwing my brains out without a waiver being given my mark but she wasn’t there and the door was locked for the first time I had known. The dark haired girl from the level up stared down and said “She’s moved out” before asking if I was the new super and giving a thought or two as to whether she was game for continuing her consistent record but I was in no mood for games. Cara hadn’t mentioned anything about moving, if anything she seemed content enough in the shit hole we all called home. I returned to my room and smoked two of my last few cigarettes and cursed my nature. I was now living alone in an old beaten down house that I didn’t stand a chance of staying on top of with no friend, no girl, no job and a Baked Bean can full of money that mentally I was already depleting as I paid out rent and stocked up on peppers, eggs and oranges…oh how I forgot about those oranges. I had three beers and four smokes left. I popped the window and pulled my chair over to it, firing up the typer; if I was destined to be broke I’d at least have an excuse for it.
A few days later I got a job in a video rental store. It was in the heart of the student land so most of the new releases went out and never came back meaning pound for pound it had the best catalogue of any of the stores. I’d watch classic European cinema on the counter thumbing my nose at the company policy of only playing the latest releases.
“Keep what’s on the screens current Doug.”
“Sure thing boss, right after Knife in the Water.” I replied tucking into the burst bag of popcorn.
The Indian restaurant that sat above the store had a takeaway branch of the family’s curry empire next door and they were always late with their returns. I’d wipe their fines telling them it was atrocious they’d be expected to pay the sales va
lue for a DVD they were too busy to watch; they’d smile and thank me and appear at the door at lunchtime with a freshly cooked Indian meal just for me. It wasn’t bribery, it was bartering and it existed long before our current accepted method of commerce.
The house was falling apart and I was earning enough that I didn’t need to take the rent reduction to be Hegarty’s bottom bitch but not enough to be able to afford the first month and deposit that all other landlords were requiring so I continued to chip away at the crumbling tower and worked my way up to another Baked Bean tin.
On my way to class one day I saw a poster for an exhibition coming to the Ormeau Baths Gallery called “100 MEN by Cara Harrison”. I’d pick up a leaflet at the University’s library and read how Miss Harrison has shocked and awed critics and art lovers alike with her provocative and challenging self portrait that contains the semen of one hundred sexual partners. I beamed with pride for her; she was fucking doing it. She was living the dream; I had spent so long worrying about becoming my old man that I had almost lost sense of who it was I wanted to be. She was a god-damn champion; I was proud of her and more than a little pleased to be part of a provocative and challenging piece of art. The old man would have fucking hated it and it made me smile. The DUP would picket her opening night and call her all the whore-bags under the sun but to me she was aces and as they screamed and damned her to hell upon arrival she kept her head high, her shoulders back and she breezed through the gallery doors with all the God given grace of a princess. The invite would arrive at my door,
To Douglas,
Thanks for being Mr. 100
Cara
In class I overheard the intellectual chin strokers wax on about the think pieces they were working on and how there’s nothing I like more than to sit in my study with a great big cup of thought tea and really work.
“I know exactly what you mean.” said another and I damn near rolled my eyes out of my head. They were exactly the type of people I hated.
When I got home the ceiling had finally come through, the Pampers box was no match for decades worth of damp. Hegarty stood before me, his hands on his hips as a river of plaster and water rushed by our feet.
“Well, what are we going to do now Sonny-Jim?” he asked.
“I’m getting my white ass out of here.”
I took the stairs three at a time, packed my bags and swam out of there as quickly as I made the decision to move in. The place had character and that was code for a shit lot of problems that were never going to be fixed. Fuck character, I wanted hot water and a separate living room.
A few friends had a room going spare in their house on Ulsterville Gardens. It was an old house again; plenty of character but at least there was a separate living room, dining room and kitchen. I even got the biggest room, it was aces. The landlord was one of their cousins.
“Blood might be thicker than water but money talks.” he said making a mess of his metaphors.
I could already tell he was going to be a pain in the ass but at least the carpets were dry.
“It’s two-forty a month friend plus deposit,” he continued “you good with that?”
“Yeah I’m grand, I’ll have it with you tomorrow.” I said, placing my bags on the King-size bed.
The following morning I rose early and headed into town to the pawn shop with my banjo in hand. The man behind the bullet proof glass cut me a cheque for £500 and told me I had two weeks to buy it back before it went in the window. I paid off my rent and got to work on pulling in as many hours as possible at the video store; all too often skipping out on classes in order to make the cash I needed.
When I went back to the pawn shop it was the last day before my banjo went to any takers with the cash to acquire it. I paid him back the five hundred plus interest and he handed it back across the counter into my eagerly awaiting arms.
I glanced down at its shiny dark wooden finish. The instrument felt alien, unfamiliar in my hands, cold and unresponsive to my touch. I thought for a moment that maybe it wasn’t the same instrument and then I thought how stupid that seemed, and I left with it on my shoulder.
Talking to Myself
One day I arrived into work and there was a package waiting for me at my desk. There was no card and it was wrapped in duct tape like some lunatic shoe bomber type had singled me out for fame and dismemberment. Firing up my computer I pulled it in under the desk lamp and carefully opened it. Inside sat a handkerchief and buried inside the white silk fabric of the ‘chief were two baby teeth.
The milky white tusks peered up at me, so innocent and pure that they sent a Godly shiver through my spine. Who was playing games? Grabbing my cigarettes I walked round the cold glass fronted concourse to the rear of the building, stopping at reception.
‘Morning love.’ greeted Lillian.
‘Morn Lill, look there’s a package on my desk but there’s no postage on it. Did a courier come with it?’
‘There’s been no post today.’
‘What about yesterday? I slipped out early, did anyone leave it in last minute?’
She considered this before offering ‘Nope, no courier. What is it? Something saucy I hope.’
‘You could say that.’
Pushing on I asked at security but they saw nothing or slept through it. Either way I had shit all to go on. I smoked two cigarettes, returning to my desk two minutes before nine and opened a word document. I had been stealing time from my employer for two years, writing the daily short story, the occasional novel – both completed and aborted but each time I looked at those baby teeth my mouth hurt, so after lunch I tucked them up in my desk and whittled away the afternoon on Twitter and Good Reads.
Walking home along the coastline I stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of Dago red for dinner but as I opened the front door of my apartment a fly crashed into my eye and I lost my grip on the grapes. Hitting the ground the bottle cracked without fully breaking. Cradling it like a new-born I rushed the bottle to the sink, placing it inside an empty ice bucket all the while still partially sighted from the dead bug under my eyelid.
The air pressure in the room shifted slightly and I knew without looking that the front door, which I’d left open, had been shut. Slowly, reluctantly, I turned on my heels to see him standing before me – Jack Morgan, my father. Almost twenty years deceased and looking well for his age; the California sunshine seemingly just what the undead relative required. My eyes welled up with salt water, half from the emotion of seeing my dead dad standing before me, half thanks to that god-damn fly. Rubbing my eye I stepped forward and offer an almost childish…
‘Daddy?’
He smirked, chuckled to himself before shaking his head. ‘No, I’m not dear old Jack.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just you look so much like my dad.’ I explained.
‘Well I’m not him.’
‘Who are you then?’ my left hand unmoving from the neck of the wine bottle, if he moves I’ll strike him I told myself.
‘I’m you Doug, well… we’re us. I’ve…’
‘Bullshit, sell that shite somewhere else. Close the gate on your way out too.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ the older me said ‘I didn’t believe it either when it happened to me.’
‘This happened to you?’
‘Of course, that’s how time travel works.’
‘You’re a time traveller, I’m a time traveller. What have we been drinking?’ I quizzed.
‘I assume so, I mean I can’t really explain how all this happened and you won’t be able to either but one day… in about thirty years’ time you’ll be here looking at your youth.’
‘Thirty years, fuck we’ve aged badly.’
His brow knitted and I realized if he was me then this was pretty much his cue to strike me. I offered him a glass of wine, he accepted and we both retreated to our mutually agreed safe distances from one another. The dog seemed at ease with him, with me and with the situation. I was yet to start dinner but he assur
ed me it wouldn’t be necessary as she won’t make it.
‘So if you’re me prove it.’ I threw down challenging him.
‘Ok, you went down on Karen Barlow when you were nine years old.’
‘Everyone knows that.’
‘You smoke a bone and listen to the Stones when you finish a book.’ he countered.
‘Everyone knows that too.’ I snapped.
‘Ok.’ he said finally, stepping forward to place his glass on the kitchen worktop before unbuttoning his jeans grabbing two hands of denim and pants then driving them firmly to down around his ankles.
Standing before me, half awake and hanging to the left was my very own dick. Thirty years older, with only God knows how many extra miles under its hood but as sure as I was staring at the familiar face of my father there it was, my torque, travelled through time to save me. Nodding, I forced myself to break eye contact. I’ve always liked the sight of my own wang. Pulling his pants up he… I mean I grinned like a stupid asshole having proved a point. I realized that one day I’ll be dropping trou to wave my talliwhacker at a younger version of myself who thought I look like a decrepit old prick.
‘So the baby teeth, you sent them.’ I said gulping down my wine, the fly slowly working its way round the back of my eye to decay somewhere inside my skull.
‘They’re ours,’ he said smiling as I held them out ‘I took them from our childhood bed. It was the last time there was an ounce of innocence in us. When those teeth went…’
‘Look who we had for a father, what chance did we stand, huh?’ I toasted.
‘Cut that shit out!’ he barked in a familiar tone ‘Blame is like water, if we don’t douse ourselves in it how are we ever expected to grow?’
My knees didn’t feel like they worked anymore so I pulled up a seat on the couch as the dog clambered up on top of me. It was all a little too much to take on board, I looked to him and I saw my future. I saw Jack, I saw everything that my childhood promised and my soul feared.
‘This isn’t happening.’ I assured myself.