Yes I�m lonely, but isn�t that an expected condition for a woman of my age? We
out last our men, even me, who had so many. So many I only remember the
names, no faces, sometimes a filament of a voice, they say hearing is the last
sense to go. Aahh but what senses! What harsh joy each moment of living brought me, silly girl that I was, but extraordinary, exquisite even; now that it�s gone I can say it without arrogance or conceit, I was a beautiful girl. I still see that face floating under the murky waters of age, my doll face, the face of my mother and her mother before that and the one before that. The mink of my hair, our hair; the width of my eyes and colour no man could name though I assure you they were merely green or blue depending on my temper. The angles and planes of my face a mathematician could calculate by 7, the magical formula for beauty. That was my inheritance. Of course I�m skint now.
These long-lived women, what years they harvested between them, what tricks they learnt, what curses they cast- all lost. Who is left now that was a witness to how beautiful they were, how incredible the skills they wielded with such grace, their finger tips clicking with authority?
My grandmother had hands and fingers so dextrous she could weave silk finer than the capillaries of an unborn child. She made wedding dresses for rich husbands-to-be whose fianc�es were in trouble, and needed a dress double quick. Girls, who wept at each fitting and begged her hurry, hurry as the mound of their sin grew and quickened at every heartbeat. She never failed them, in days they swept up the aisle caressed and held; corseted and cosseted by her lace work. Till one day a girl of such breeding that no man could ever couple with her without conceiving a one eyed creature, arrived at the door, her finger on fire from the diamond so carelessly placed, her eyes shrivelled and dehydrated from losing so many awkward tears, like dried peas many winters saved; commissioned a dress of such complicated corsetry my grand mother could not fail to grasp the true intention of this bride, she would crush the little Cyclops before the wretched thing could slither out and into trouble. After two nights of sorrowful dreams where Pipistrells were crushed slowly by laughing children, Grandmother determined to help the girl. Cautioning her to silence, at her next fitting my grandmother invited her in to her private quarters and amid the webs and strands of sable thread she explained her plan. The stricken child agreed immediately, lifted her skirts and reclined on the workbench, her legs open wide, and with her slender curved fingers my grandmother found her true calling. So gently did her acrobatic fingers coax out the forlorn foetus that the girl was unaware of any movement, there was no blood loss and in moments she was as shiny as new pin. The tiny invertebrate Grandma removed she secreted in her pocket.
In time, despite her discretion her fame grew and no longer did she weave dresses to fabricate innocence, she removed the need for any marriage in the first place. The city in which she lived grew famous as a place where couples could love without fear of being shackled and where children born were adored and yearned for, where marriages were decided upon by virtue and not sin. She amassed huge wealth and built herself a palace of green stone found on the banks of a river near the tip of that country and deep in the grounds of her estate, with her own artisan hands she built an elaborate cairn from all the skulls of the saved embryos, the polished bone glittered in the sunlight, a bold memorial to rich men and their folly. It was here she gave birth to my mother and here I played with my kittens.
When my mother was born her birth cry was an aria, her voice a pure soprano. Of course, her heart was a song bird that fluttered, her father unknown but loved passionately. Her skin was so sensitive she had to be wrapped in the down of ducklings freshly plucked. My grandmother fretted on her daughter�s incredible sensitivity and worried that the shock of sudden winter darks would kill her little bundle. So she wove her gowns of gossamer, and then silks then wool's and Hessian till eventually my mother became resistant to sensation. Her face as lovely as a freshly made bed she was unmoved by experience, her nerves were carcasses, wormy cadavers in her flesh. She expressed no interest in playing with dolls or sewing, she sang and sang continuously. Then when her breasts first began to protrude and her world squatted low over her, she ran, to escape the narrow world of no sensation she ran and ran, the soles of her feet tattered and torn, from village to port and village to town, from boy to man to woman seeking sanctuary. Till she was 14, she ran into the arms of strangers and nuzzled them like a calf at the udder. Their clumsy and rushed fumbling at this lilac and elderflower beauty met only with her closed eyes and disappointed sigh. She felt nothing, emitted no sighs of pleasure or pain even while her lovers plunged their fists into her. Burying their hands to the wrist to try and gain her love or even attention. In their fury at having their failure reflected back in the bald mirror of her implacability, they chewed off her nipples and split her into portions of champed flesh. Like a thing thrown in clay she was the result of their love, scabs and welts her love trinkets. Her flesh moulded by her lover�s meaty tugs. She grew taller and more beautiful, the mixed reek of semen accumulated in the vat of her vagina condensing into a perfume that was more fatal and intoxicating than Spanish Fly. As she passed by, her scent trailing like a bridal veil, those caught by the fumes would feel the urge to hump and rub their genitals against the nearest object. Their hips jerking uncontrollably, battering their pubis, crushing the flesh between till they were rubbing bone against bone, the sickly friction causing such heat the weather changed in the region, tree�s clutched dead leaves and birds stopped short in their migration. Yet still she ran, searching for the one who could tear off her necrotic dermas and expose the withered cables of her self. She spewed her voice incessantly; she vibrated and jangled with song, pianissimo, staccato. Lullabies roared in a waxen whisper. She existed because she could be fucked and heard.
From the briny soup of her womb, the primordial brew of a thousand cocks, I evolved. Like a minute succubus I drained the DNA necessary for my survival and pieced my self together. My thousand fathers and their greedy ambassador sperm wove in me a perfect and dreaded beauty with an insatiable hunger. Within days I was as thick and red as a tongue, a luxuriant pulp suppurating in my mothers body. Her voice robbed me of my infant curled sleep and in my desire to flee her and her buzzing I was born three months too soon. Still covered in the masculine fuzz of a foetus, my eyes sealed shut I was as ugly as my mothers new husband, luckily for her.
Stanley was the odd job man for a mouldy Circus; he swept the ring clean and shovelled out lion shit from the cages. Poor daddy Stanley, one night as he swept the ring clear of piss and popcorn his senses of smell and hearing warped by the mountains of faecal decay and lakes of ammonia, there was no indication that his angel, the woman he longed for to warm his pallet bed at night, to swaddle him between her legs and smother him in her blue eyed purity was about to fall from the heavens. Stanley, who had fucked every decent girl he had come across and then dismissed her as a whore was about to be suckered. Up above him on the high wire my mother was pleasuring all three of the Borcotti brothers, their display of balance and daring a real treat to behold, if it were legal, and all with out a safety net. At the height of the brothers� momentous orgasm my mother fell from their tidy little orgy, her arms flung out in a monkey�s reflex, clutching at nothing. The immediate drag of gravity flung her into my father�s strong arms. Years of dodging lions had pinched his instincts to such a taut degree that he was merely a jumble of responses at any given stimuli. She fell and he caught her. The jism raining down from the brothers above he thought angel tears at the loss of one of their own.
My mother�s lack of fear ensured she didn�t even flinch or express surprise, nor did she gasp at his foul breath or brimming blackheads that dotted his nose. She smiled her vixen smile and closing her eyelids over her ripened pupils, just kept singing. All this just convinced Stanley more. This was she; this was she, his wife and the mother of his children. He carried her back to his bed, his thumbs pressing against her flesh and laid her down to sleep. By the next morning he had found a minister to marry them and by the time the ticket office opened for business that evening, the marriage had been consecrated and consummated, her voice and it�s 3 octave span enthralling her new husband. I have no idea why a girl like my mother let herself get married, that's not a part of the story I was ever told; perhaps her feet were sore, or she knew I was knitting myself together buried away in her. My grandmother sent them a fruitcake and an embroidered table runner for a wedding gift, hoping all the while that her new son in law didn�t mind singing and wouldn�t expect a tidy house.
He didn�t, and so the honeymoon period lasted and lasted. Stanley couldn�t believe his luck, his missus was so beautiful that in the wrong light she was almost ugly, she never turned away from his needs, never once complained about the grubby trailer they lived in or the travelling and could always make the housekeeping money stretch interminably. Six months into this match made in heaven, I slipped out, lurid with blood and my purple caul.
Someone is stealing from me, I don�t know whom or why. I put things away or don�t, this is my house, I know where things belong and they aren�t there any more. I�m not even sure what has gone missing; things are just being eroded from the house, like land swept into the sea grain by grain.
My parents died eventually just like everyone. There were no more children after me. Mother made herself a career in show business; father was her manager, which meant that he sat at the side of the stage in his donkey jacket looking lost. On a raised platform, swagged by a grubby curtain, she slept in a glass tank filled with a hundred rats, a hundred rats and their sharp teeth and claws chewing at her, scratching at her but of course she felt nothing. Punters paid a shilling each to look at this naked girl sleeping in her ratty bed her flesh covered in minute scratches and tears, her face soft and dreaming, her snores fluting breathy scales. She became famous with the sorts of men who whisper to one another and they came from all over the world fantasising about being the one to finally break through her dead hide. It was my job to feed and exercise the rats though I hated them. And as quickly as I killed them (out of spite, but never enough for her to notice) another 5 were born. Sometimes she would turn over in her sleep and crush one or two, these I would give as a gift to the snake charmer for his Cobra. He never said thank you to me but he gave Stanley the odd pint of beer.
But as I said, they�re dead. I was in show business too. Higher up the scale than the travelling freak show that called itself a Circus though. I know the real difference between adoration and curiosity. I grew up with the trust fund of good rhythm, and great tits. I could walk from one side of my stage to the other still clothed and collect hundreds of pounds in tips just because of the swing of my hips and the temperature of my stare. I was hot shit baby, my men sucked me in with their eyes and believed they were the only ones I could see through the flare of the bright lights.
I am nothing like my mother you know, she never left the safety of her own skin whereas I always risked and felt. Even old people want to be touched, I want to be touched as though I were a young girl again, clenched by a man who can�t stop himself and God, I would let him, no playing coy for me. I would let him rub me and pull at me even though I am decrepit and brittle, even though the splendour of what I am isn�t so obvious. Can you imagine the revulsion a youngster would feel if they knew that some old women still long for a man, and even remember the technique of orgasm?
Someone is stealing from me; they have stolen everything I could have ever been, anything I ever was, fucking bastards. The taxman, that's who it is creaming off his percentage. All that was and all that will be is shit quite literally shit curled at the bottom of the pan. I have collided with time and all that came of it was the regular evacuation of a turd.
I burnt the very tip of my finger today on the stove. Those few microscopic layers of skin are dead. I realise now, finally that the only way I will make my life memorable is to have a spectacular death; taking someone else with me, some great enemy of the people, those fantastic hypocrites of opinion, the lowest common denominator, the people. I have bought every paper on the rack at the newsagents, and as I sit here with my tea I can�t find a single sodding candidate.
DANIEL JOHNSTON
BILLY CHILDISH
JOHN STEINBECK
ANGELA CARTER
ALBERT CAMUS
