[Wednesday, November 15, 2006][Andrew Gallix] HALF-HEARTED CONFESSIONS OF A GELIGNITE DOLLY-BIRD (2006) I was feeling homesick for the event while it was happening - Douglas Coupland, Generation X
Daintily, a faun-like figure stole across the cluttered room, pirouetting over the bottles and ashtrays that littered the splattered floorboards. She was the first to notice, having been awakened by a muffled squishy sound as of manifold foreskins peeled back in unison. Fanny sat up and fumbled for her cigarettes which she dimly recalled leaving beside a dog-eared magazine. She pouted outrageously, mimicking Nina Hagen on the glossy cover, but feeling more like Mme Pompidou gone feral. Not that anyone could see her, of course, nor she anyone. Except when she sparked up and caught a glimpse of the other partygoers who had crashed on the rugs. The expensive Persian rugs with their expansive mindfuck designs: it was all coming back now.
Guy Debord in hot pursuit of a statuesque demi-mondaine modelling a lampshade hat. That fucking twat, with his sweater knotted around his neck, whose inanities were still audible above the UK Subs. Astrid surrounded by livid creatures of indeterminate gender lapping up the dark glamour of a voluptuous runaway terrorist. The lead singer with a pretentious Parisian band reclining on a Moroccan pouffe drinking champagne from a shiny boot of leather. An amazon (with a blonde beehive and the blank expression of a blow-up doll) fellating an oversize banana in some dark (dank?) corner. Jacques Lacan doing the twist to Martha and The Muffins: rather tentatively at first, then letting rip. Some obscure artist (with an impressive pompadour and an unresolved mother fixation) showing off his collection of individually-numbered potato prints. A boy who looked like a girl almost kissing a girl who looked like a boy before recoiling in sheer horror. Astrid astride an up-and-coming Post-Structuralist who kept neighing and bucking bronco-fashion. Malcolm McLaren describing his new film project as Blake Edwards meets Russ Meyer...
...At some point, there had been a blackout. Matches were struck, candles were lit, she could remember that distinctly. Probing eyes, disembodied, unblinking and bloodshot, trained on her, boring through. Bleeding gashes in the cloak of night. Writhing couples, vertical, horizontal or higgledy-piggledy, their serpentine hips suddenly illuminated like quattrocento manuscripts. A torch flashed into the deepest recess. Astrid, bent over a Formica table, Jackie O hairdo in disarray, retro ski pants concertinaed around her ankles, emitting unmistakably teutonic grunts while a rolly-polly Pataphysician with a twirly moustache bobbed up and down behind her in slo-mo. Wall-to-wall hip young gunslingers, no worse looking than Johnny Thunders, every one a Sex Pistol. Pointillist ponces in pointy shoes atomised under the strobe light: lithe, lank youths, all floppy fringes and flailing arms, moonstomping to the B52s like there was no tomorrow, although tomorrow was today.
Today was tomorrow when Fanny's angelic features were bathed in gold, her halo melting like fondue cheese, and sparkling fruit carved in dewdrops dangled lasciviously from chandeliers like overripe testes. How could she ever forget what it was like?
He had pounced out of nowhere and pinned her by the arms to the soft furnishings, his breath as fresh as a lungful of menthol, his greedy fingers foraging deep and she had put up a feeble show of resistance like a heroine in some cheap novel and the only time he ever smiled was when he slapped her and it only made her wetter still and she was confused because her mum was a feminist and Buggles were on the stereo and she closed her eyes as soul surrendered to body and the world melted all around.
"You can only take so much beauty," he said blowing a plume of smoke at the plaster putti on the ceiling, "before you hit the bottle". Up close, he looked even more like Paul Simonon. Same fragile strength. Same studied abandon. A panther in a tonic suit. A pugilist cherub after a few rounds.
Later on that night, Fanny pictured him whizzing by at the speed of light on his shiny Lambretta, pork-pie hat cockily at half-cock, skinny tie flailing the air, high on hormones, bent on being. He was just wind in her hair now. A dot in the distance, merging with the background, at one with the cosmos. Pure life force. ...Just wind in her hair. ...She closed her eyes, but the world did not melt like it had the first time. How could she ever forget what it was like? What it was like would never be forgotten, but what it was like was not what it was.
Yet her head still pounded to yesterday's pogobeat. Someone said: Nobody has ever been this young, whereupon Astrid and her fawning retinue had repaired to a dodgy sheesha bar near Le Rose Bonbon. In the metro, they mingled with the vanguard of the rush hour. Overground, daylight was competing with sodium. Several other revellers had woken up to the dinky farting sound of the faun darting around. As their eyes adjusted to the semi-obscurity, it transpired that he had been dipped, stark naked, in silver greasepaint. It also dawned on them that he was stealing everything his slender frame could carry. They all looked on, entranced, as if he were a cross between Vaslav Nijinsky and Arsene Lupin. A smattering of applause accompanied his final exit while tears rolled down Fanny's eyes. In that instant, she sensed she had lost something she had never found.
Her heart still pounds to the Burundi rhythms of yesteryear.
[Thursday, March 16, 2006][Andrew Gallix] SWEET FANNY ADAMS (1999-2003) Granted, it could have been an airport, say, or any other point of departure for that matter, not necessarily a railway station. Then again, I wouldn't want you to go thinking that his choice had been totally arbitrary, although he was, admittedly, no stranger to acts of random behaviour. It didn't have to be an overcrowded railway station, but it sort of made sense somehow.
It's like this: your train is due to leave any minute now. You look up from your book or paper -- if you are reading, that is, but I think we can safely assume that you, mon semblable, mon frere, are reading at least one or the other, possibly even both, one after the other, or, better still, simultaneously. You check the time on your wristwatch, the kind that they advertise in The Economist and suchlike publications, something Swiss or German with knobs on (the more, the merrier) which exudes manly sophistication. Just as the Red Sea parted for Moses, the door slides open, blissfully pneumatic, to reveal a stunning Mary Poppins -- stacked, stockinged, sorted -- in a comely knicker-skimming skirt: entrancing entrance. Being the proud possessor of a Y chromosome, your eyes make a beeline for her A-line, zooming in on silken thighs, NordicTrack-toned. While she fafs about with her umbrella (which will be left behind, of course, accidentally-on purpose like), you are at leisure to divide her putative weight in kilograms by her hypothetical height in metres squared, thus reaching the satisfactory conclusion that the young woman's Body Mass Index slots into the ideal 18 to 20 range. Stocky stoccado, scatty scattato, she click-clicks her way towards the only vacant space (which just so happens to be facing you) aloft a pair of chichi cha-cha heels, whereupon her petulant posterior takes a pew. As she crosses her endless legs with a hushed swish whoosh, the bright young thong hitches up her skirt a notch, pinching the flimsy fabric on either side of broad hips between manicured thumb and forefinger. At this juncture -- when you are about to abandon wife and children, sail the seven seas or commit genocide because men cannot help acting on impulse -- you notice that those are tear- and not rain-drops irrigating her tanned, yet still unblemished, features. Ever the gentleman, or simply embarrassed, you interrupt your ornithological study and peer out of the window which, being in dire need of a good clean, forces you to squint in the most unsightly fashion. Now is when it happens. For a few split nanoseconds, another train pulling into the station tricks you into believing that your train is pulling out.
***
Adam Horton -- 33, caucasian, 5'6'', underendowed, thinning on top -- viewed this sensation as a perfect metaphor of his stumbling through life like a sleepwalker on a treadmill, a pet hamster on a wheel, or a commuter on the Circle Line. Hence the choice of a railway station over any other point of departure. But which one? Paris offered un embarras de choix.
Gare de l'Est was a definite no-no for some obscure reason. Gare d'Austerlitz was likewise ruled out: Adam, you see, had a passion for Waterloo Station. Watching the workers munching their lunch-break baps at the bottom of the up escalator, eyes cast skirtwards all the while, never failed to microwave the cockles of his little heart. Since childhood, he had conceived of Austerlitz as a sort of counter- or even anti-Waterloo; it was enemy territory. This still left Gare de Lyon, built in the grandiose style -- probably the most pleasing, aesthetically. Gare St Lazare, caught between the red-light district and the posh department stores, scored a few brownie points. Proust's lycee was close by, as well as the Opera Garnier (a fine example of architectural eclecticism) and, more importantly, Marks & Sparks with its large lingerie section where Adam often indulged in a little lingering among the petticoats and suspender belts. There was also Gare Montparnasse, where the muses hung out, free and easy, serpentine locks flailing the air. They rode around like BMX bandits astride expensive Dutch bicycles sporting a saucy look on their freckly faces and precious little else. The area never failed to remind him of the time when he micturated on the tomb of Jean-Paul Sartre after burying his late goldfish (Botty, short for Botticelli) in the shadow of Baudelaire's corpse. Such fond memories.
In the end, however, he had plumped for Gare du Nord which houses the Eurostar terminal. Adam's grasp of French had greatly improved over the past twelve months, but he was looking for a lady who spoke the old mother tongue. Besides, the word 'terminal' had a certain ring to it, the finality of a full stop.
***
The air hung heavy with Chaucerian expletives; dropped aitches were strewn about his feet. Here and there, love thugs sprouting Hoxton Fins were reading redtops from back to front. The odd diamond geezer was getting twatted while his missus flaunted the latest erogenous zones. In the distance, a posse of blue-rinsed senior citizens could be seen giving a spirited rendition of the hokey-cokey. A good vibe was being had by all. If I should die, Adam muttered, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign railway station that is forever In-ger-land. And there she was.
Sweet Fanny Adams.
Sweet Fanny Adams and no mistake.
Although he had never actually seen her before, he recognised her at once, and once he had recognised her, he realised he would never see her again. After all, not being there was what she was all about; it was the essence of her being, her being Fanny Adams and all that.
As he walked towards the bench where she was sitting pretty, Adam missed her already. Missed her bad.
'How do you do?'
'How do I do what? The imperfect stranger looked up from her slim, calf-bound volume and flashed him a baking-soda smile, all cocky like.
Their eyes met, pairing off at first sight. The earth moved, orbiting at half a kilometre per second around her celestial globes -- a couple of scalloped cupfuls with peek-a-boo trimmings -- in what can only be described as a new Copernican revolution. For the first time since Mrs Horton's belaboured parturition, when he was eventually sprung off into the world, Adam didn't feel at the wrong place at the wrong time: he was back in the bountiful bosom of Mummy Nature. As if to celebrate this return to the much-maligned Ptolemaic system, a gaggle of gurgling putti glided overhead to the strains of syrupy muzak and departing trains. All in all, it was an auspicious overture, fraught with the promise of premise.
'Adam,' said Adam, extending his right arm.
'Margherita,' said Margherita, giving it a hearty shake.
Still reeling from that initial, blinding smile -- let alone the handshake -- he struggled to regain his composure. 'Have you read The Leaning Tower of Pizzas by N.E. Tchans?'
'Is that the one which ends with an epic battle between gangs of pre-pubescent herberts bouncing around on orange space-hoppers?'
'Yes.'
'No, but I read a review at the time.'
'Well, it's all about this Mr Soft Scoop bloke, right, who comes from Italy and settles down in South London where he falls in love with a girl called Margherita.' She was fiddling with her umbrella, a faraway look on her face. 'Like you, like.'
'Oh, I see, yes. Sorry, I was miles away.'
'I know: that's the attraction,' he sighed sotto voce, before getting a grip on himself. 'Anyway, you should check it out some time -- if you're into lolloping lollipop ladies, lesbians from Lisbon, the romance of ice-cream vans, that kind of thing.'
'Sounds right up my street.'
'I see it as a contemporary footnote to Dante.'
'Talking of contemporary feet, mine are killing me.'
'Dying on our footnotes are we? One footnote in the grave, eh? How long have you got left?'
'Long enough to grab a bite to eat -- or so says my chiropodist.'
'I think there's an Italian just round the corner that might tickle your fancy.'
'Sounds great. I feel like a pizza.'
'I'm not surprised, love, with a name like that.'
Adam caught a fleeting glimpse of the dark, gaping twilight zone between Margherita's parted thighs as she uncrossed her legs to get up. That topsy-turvy Bermuda Triangle twixt skirt and stocking exerted a gravitational pull of such magnitude that he was sucked in, there and then, never to re-emerge. He picked up her bulky suitcase, l'air de rien, but in his mind's X-ray eye he could see her neatly-packed unmentionables. He was big on smalls was old Adam Horton.
'Heavy, innit?'
'It's a burden I feel I've been carrying all my life.' He turned to face her, fair and square. 'This may sound potty, but you are the hollowness inside. At last, I have found my sense of loss.'
'I'm flattered,' she said in Estuarine undertones, blushing a little. Her dimpled cheeks resembled two squashed cherry tomatoes, only bigger. 'I always like to be of assistance to strangers.'
'After you,' said Adam, bowing theatrically and showing the way with her suitcase like a truncheon-toting gendarme stopping the traffic for pedestrians. He couldn't help noticing the shaft of light that fell on Margherita's top bottom -- proof positive that the sun shone out of her behind -- before leaving the station, hot on her high heels.
They repaired to a Greekish spoon which Margherita praised on account of its 'atmosphere'. 'Looks great,' she gushed, surveying the menu in the window, 'I feel like a cocktail'.
'I'm not surprised, love, with a name like that.'
***
The walls were festooned with fairy lights, garlands of garlic and pictures of Asma Assad, the Syrian President's glamorous spouse. The waiters were all male to a man. It soon transpired profusely that none of them were actually Italian, having been born and bred -- through no fault of their own -- on the wrong side of Thessaloniki. ('Oh, that's a shame, isn't it?' cooed Margherita, detaching each word as if she were dismembering some winged insect.) The chef, a diminutive Algerian with an endearing paunch, had a Saddam Hussein mustache going on and a nice line in knock-knock jokes. The toilets were typically Turkish. Having taken in the scenery, Adam proceeded to pour out his heart and a couple of cheap, albeit cheerless, bottles of Sidi Brahim. Whining and dining, in medias res.
'We are all post-Denis de Rougemont.'
'Couldn't agwee maw,' said Marwghewita, making a mental note never again to shpeak wiv her mouf full. Frankly, she didn't have a clue what he was going on about.
'We are the first generation to know full well that love doesn't last, and yet we cling to the ideal like shit to a protective blanket.'
She turned up her already-retrousse nose. How more retrousse can it get? he wondered.
'Maybe it's just me. The whole thing's very Oedipal, I know.' Adam cringed at his attempt to laugh it off.
'I could spank you, free of charge, if you think that might help.'
'I'd rather not if it's all the same with you,' he replied rather primly, his flushed face a slapped-arse crimson, 'but thanks for the offer. Might even take you up on it some other time. Except...' Adam paused for effect, 'there won't be another time.' He sighed, baleful, into his bowlful of miniature bow-ties, topped up their glasses and cleared his throat. 'Love stories are like fairy tales...'
'Aren't they just,' she interrupted, a trifle too eager.
'...in that we know the end from the start. Only it's not and they lived happily ever after, is it?'
Tears welled up in her belladonna eyes.
'You know, someone should really write a different kind of love story for the new millenium. It would start with the foregone conclusion and work its way back towards the unknown: how it all started in the first place.'
'Will you write this new-fangled love story?'
'I'm writing the first pages even as we speak -- with your assistance, of course.'
'I like to be of assistance.' She smiled a wet smile.
'Shall we call it a day then?'
'Call it what you like: your book, your call. ... So that's it then is it?
'Yes. In our beginning is our end.'
'We're obviously going nowhere slowly.'
Margherita seemed in a hell of a hurry all of a sudden, even her nose was running. Where is it running to? he wondered. To by-corners Byzantine, I'll be bound, and wondrous Wherevers, to the end of the earth, at the end of its tether. Then he shrugged -- to himself and at it all -- because it didn't really matter anymore, it really didn't. Whatever: yeah, right.
It was raining when Margherita stepped out of the restaurant. Adam watched her amber umbrella disappear from view, a Belisha beacon of hope on a dimmer switch. He scribbled a few words on the paper tablecloth. D'elle, il ne reste que ses tagliatelles.
***
The door slides open -- which is where you came in. You assess her golden-delicious breasts as if you were picking apples on a market stall. You think that a man should never trust a woman who offers him an apple, let alone two. You think that this woman's tits are perfectly identical, for Christ's sake. Like bookends.
