The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Monday 22 November 2010

Chapter Five: Duct Tape Is Silver

Feel it break your bones Mr. Jones
taste me as I bleed, taste my need
- Smashing Pumpkins: Spaceboy (1993)

The sales rep that had given me a lift out of Leeds got me as far as a few kilometres past Durham. I had fallen asleep in the stuffy warmth of his Volvo, the constant drone of his voice merged smoothly with the purr of the engine. After what must have been an hour – though it felt like 5 minutes – he shook me awake.
“You’re bleeding.”
Bloody was dripping from my hand onto my lap and the upholstery of the passenger seat. I pushed the jacket from my shoulder and rolled up the soaked sleeve of my T. The bandages had come lose and more blood was trickling down my arm.
The sales rep brought the Volvo to a skidding stop at the side of the motorway.
“Get out,” he snarled.
I looked at him startled. I mean, I was sorry for the stains on his seat cover, but I hadn’t expected this reaction.
“I cannot explain why I had you in my car,” was all of the cryptic answer I got to my puzzled look. “Get out. Now.”
I grabbed my satchel and did as he said. He pulled the door close from within and roared off, leaving me by the side of the M1.
I treated the wound. My next attempt to keep it under wraps and pressure wasn’t  much better, but I’d had enough experience with cuts to the arms to know that it wasn’t all that easy to bleed yourself dry even if you tried. I would live.
I made it to Newcastle that night, and appropriated enough money to stay at another hostel. This time no one wanted papers or a story why I had none. The next day I hitched a ride with a lady who drove a bloody big Japanese SUV and who made me listen to saccharine soft pop and her own sob story all the way to Edinburgh. She told me the story in that wonderful, melodious Scottish sing-song that I would come to cherish like few other sounds in the world.
Her name was Cherry or Sheryl or so Valance. She was moving back in with her aging rents in Perth after she had been fired from a job as some sort of researcher. She’d been accused of fudging some numbers.
“The thing is, I haedna cheated. No’ the way they said I did, anywae. I hae go’en the numbers wrong, tha’ much is correct. Bu’ it must’a been subconsciously. My boyfriend hae just left me when I wrote tha’ paper, and wha’ I wrote, it sorta proved an argument we’d been having. At least, it wid if I’d been right. Tha’ is to say, if I cheated on anybody, it was mostly on him.”
I don’t know what she thought she saw on my face, but she grimaced and said: “Yer right. I only cheated on myself.”
And after a brief, uncomfortable pause: “So, tha’ is my sorry tale. Wan’te tell me yer oon?”
I eyed her wearily. She laughed.
“It’s okay, laddie. Ye don’ hafta. I can tell tha’ it’s no’ a happy one. No noodle salad there either, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. I s’pose, things are tough all over.”
I suppose she was right. On the stereo Paula Cole asked us where had all the cowboy’s gone, but neither of us knew the answer.

4 comments:

  1. cool, new chapter!

    guess uve worked that predicament out?

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  2. A.I. is the worst film I've ever seen at the cinema. Boy did that one drag.

    It looks as though you're still skirting around the problem of how to write Edinburgh! Nice opening though.

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  3. @ Ben & Nerstes: "uve worked that predicament out?" - Nope, I'm "still skirting around the problem", lol...

    @ Ben: About A.I., yeah it probably sucks saw-dust, but I was 9, and I thought it was just glorious, and anyway, that flesh fair scene, where the 'bots get destroyed, with David in the cage, holding super-sexy Jude Law's hand, well, I was a goner at that point. I kept fantasizing for ages about Gigolo Joe holding me (and more) before they come and drag me from the cage and put me on some super-complicated cruel execution device... romance, male beauty, bondage, dehumanization, snuff... what else could I wish for? Of course it meant that by then I knew I was a freak and perv and that I must never, ever tell anyone what I was feeling... at least being a fag wasn't all that bad, since I knew that it was actually the tamest bit about what went on inside me, lol.

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  4. The sales rep's reaction was pretty weird, but maybe quite telling of what kind of person he was.

    The psychologist - the idea of rewriting personal histories has come up in my mind a few times lately. People are always wrestling with and editing the fiction of their own lives, eh?

    I like how you handled the dialogue parts here.

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