Ding Dongs and Love Affairs in the Future West Midlands

-Are you stupid, Stanley? The point is not whether you are good barman or not. A late barman is not a good barman. My point is this. There is my opinion- and there is wrong. If you want to be wrong, help yourself!!! But then I will annihilate you!

Moshe was the proud owner of a crappy attitude. His eyes are hysterical and tired, they speak of megalomania and insomnia, of wild paranoia and spontaneous combustion.

-You're a goddamn hour late, Stanley!- his mouth is a hairdryer in my face, -why shouldn't I dump you out on the street now with all the other vagabonds in the Black Country? Tell me that!-

He sticks his boot on a chair and rolls up his his sleeves and leans over on an elbow enjoying it all, picking olives out of a bowl. - Did I ever tell you what I did with the Slovakian?- his voice is going falsetto and he grins madly and self-consciously, like an excited rottweiler. Just sack me, falafel features. Then we'll see how well your lacklustre bar fills up with pure H2O. I've heard your bullshit before.

Apart from owning a bar, he sells crap artwork. Paintings that come off a conveyer belt in Peking are touched up a little, given a signature and then sold off as original artwork all around Spain by his network of travelling salestwats. One of these salesmen, 'the Slovakian', took a collection of paintings and went off to sell them. Only the stupid bastard sold the paintings then kept the money for himself. Some time passed by during which Moshe was very quiet. Very very quiet. Moshe was in the The Merry Hill Centre one day when he spotted the Slovakian, who'd sneaked back to the city for the day. Moshe went upto him and in broad daylight stabbed him. The Merry Hill is the most conspicuous place to perform an unlawful act in the whole of The Black Country.

-Luckily I have the best lawyer in all of Stourbridge,- Moshe said, -Ronny Jifstein!- and his face was deadly serious and the whole room turned to a different shade. The walls bent inwards and his voice was slow, deliberate, -Now,- he said, -do...you...get...my...point? Next time you are late, you are fired!-

It was allright though, I had cunningly prepared a new job. The Amazon, a big, green barge moored out on the Severn at Kinver, where the sandstone caves give shelter to Romany gypsies. The Amazon was housed in a huge plastic couverture to shield it from rain and wind. We worked like mules. 'Shammy the rail, slap some facking serious alcohol on it, tag it up, whack some fucking PP on the bugger, give it the lick three times round with two hour intervals and knock it fucking off with some serious 280 sandpaper,' said Du Spicey, the first mate, a morose duck-billed platypus.

A woolly fleece had grown from first mate Du Spicey's chest since teenage. He was saddened by the fleece and his blotchy skin, but they were compensated for by beautiful, morose eyes. He viewed his body as an obstacle. He said in the summer heat it was stupid to have a woolly fleece on one's chest. When he was a teenager Du Spicey compounded his self-distaste by showing attractive girls his body. While most men would strike a pose, tauten their muscles, look impressive, he stood in the least flattering pose. All flaccid, pushing out his belly, which seemed a creature all of its own.

He was open and sincere with people. He was tentatively revealing himself to the world, all of his dark and murky bits. He was incredulous about Charlie.

-Your ego is like a petulant teenager that wants constant attention, Stan,- Du Spicey warns me, -he jumps up and down on your shoulder shouting 'Entertain me! Entertain me! Entertain me!' He's a jealous bastard when you prefer to do something worthwhile, like improving yourself in some minute way. What the Barnsley are you doing marching into some man's home and taking away his woman?- I tell him she marched me into his home and then he ordered me to take her away.

My best way of defeating my ego, Du Spicey then reasons, completely ignoring what I say, is by taking my clothes off and forgetting everything expected of me. This is why Du Spicey doesn't smile too much I guess, he does nothing expected of him, but when he does smile it must mean the right thing, it's why Du Spicey doesn't posture, it's why Du Spicey always involves himself in arguments that can only be lost, it's why Du Spicey has decided to negate his talents by working only in employment where his talent is not required or utilised in any way.

Du Spicey was sacked from the chocolate factory in Bournville for fiddling timesheets, he graded onions on some Worcestershire farm, he was sacked for working one-handed, he was the odd jobs person in a Birmingham office, where he discovered to his amazement that yuppies actually existed, he always believed them to be mythical creatures, then he became an envelope licker, then he worked on boats.

At lunchtime on the dust-encoated The Amazon, a breeze billows in the plastic couverture that acts as the tent around the barge, we are all covered in toxic substances, alcohol, pre-prep, sweat and varnish dust. One of the boys, Droomsy, is climbing over the stern to go to the shop and Du Spicey tosses him some money, almost making him fall. -Get me a lionbar- Du Spicey says and he suddenly turns red, -and not the fucking peanut one!- He is fuming. Du Spicey has been roused to anger by a mistake that Droomsy had as yet not committed. While Drooms went to the shop, I was eager to bring it up, I was delighted and intrigued and excited by the possibilities of such a preaction.

'What an outburst! Drooms hadn't even left for the shop and he was already blamed for an imaginary peanut lionbar. You had a tantrum about Droomsy's error in advance !'

'Shut it!' said Du Spicey as I contorted into several realms of amusement and excitement, 'I knew he'd get a peanut lionbar.'

'This isn't about Drooms, it's about you! Why would Drooms intentionally seek out a lionbar with peanuts in?' Tears of pleasure are streaming down my cheeks. 'You think reality is designed to deny you everything you want, don't you!'

'No! Everything happens because you willed it to.'

'So you decided in advance to be an absolute fuckwit then?'

'Yeah, that's right!' says Du Spicey in bad humour.

'And because you're a sado-masochist, what you really wanted and expected was the wrong chocolate bar! I can't believe it! You absolute fuckwit!'

I can't control my mirth. Du Spicey exits, outraged. Laughter is submitting to a threat, like a dog rolls over onto its back and puts its legs in the air, Du Spicey tells me later. Laughter is a way of appeasing a threat. It's the sound of fear, Du Spicey says. In that case I must be seriously afraid, because I find almost everything funny. What the hell was Du Spicey doing performing menial tasks on boats? The man had ideas.

'Lighten up, Spicey,' says Drooms climbing up onto the deck, 'they didn't even 'ave lionbars.'

'Droomsy, I had to take control,' says Du Spicey, 'otherwise it's in fate's hands, and fate invariably puts peanuts in my lionbar.'

Here I am, in The Mitre, covered in varnish and dust watching drunken Mister, my old schoolboy mate. It is strange to see him like this, drunk, so hopeless and so melancholy in the lunar hours, when by day he is so gregarious and vivacious. Ah, Mister, look at you now, eating your own bitter words, thinking about your loss, your eyes cast down into your glass, you make such a beautifully tragic creature to behold. A man so befuddled and bedazzled, disillusioned and inspired, by the world. I know you'd recognise my soul if I had no body, but you can't appreciate how far we are from each other.

Drezna Alpay, 35, from Kinver, tried to weave a magic mist around Mister. She tried to lull him into a dreamy state, like a Persian Persephone might.

It seemed strange when they first met on the Metro that a lawyer, a glamorous, sophisticated woman, should want Mister, a moody, broke, bastard, but when they met and she was immediately appalled and affronted by his attitude, she found herself as aroused and intrigued as she was offended. She told him she had a compulsion to take him home and eat him. I was on the same carriage, keeping an uncustomary low profile.

I have the misfortune to be incapable of sinking into the shadows of any situation and remain unnoticed, soon as I go into my own world, people wrestle me out of it, 'what's wrong, Stan!' so she was soon giving me the eye to say, 'scarper!' but I wasn't going anywhere, I wanted to watch this episode. Mister couldn't believe it when Drezna hissed to his ear, 'I want to take you home now and eat you...' This beautiful, business-suited, lascivious-lipped little nymphomaniac. And on the Metro, of all places. I couldn't believe it either, I was as aroused as he.

After they made love in her apartment, Drezna took him to a Bistro on Stourbridge High Street. She wouldn't let me into her apartment and so I had waited in the street below, but now I followed them to the restaurant, where I was forced to spend a little fortune even on the cheapest dish on the menu cos she wouldn't pay for me.

She pushed tiger prawns between his lips, her own lips were smudged with oil and garlic and juices and she said, 'I want to dip the bones, the sinew, the muscle of you in the blood, the piss, the spunk of you and eat, eat, eat.' Drezna Alpay, the luxuriant, gorgeous little truffle! 'Eat, eat, eat...' How lucky a man was Mister, important nobody that he was, to have these indulgent attentions bestowed upon him! But the moody amnesiac soon derailed his train to Nirvana.

I was in the Town centre one morning eating a goldfish I had stolen from Stourbridge Aquapets and had fried at Carol's Fish Bar and Mister turned up reeking and three sheets to the wind. The sun was glimmering off pavestones into his bloodstreaked eyes. The scots pines rose ludicrous slender and high at wonky angles almost to the terraces of ochre buildings behind him like accomplices in his madness. All he could do was sway disconsolately repeating, she done a runner, she’s gone'. He said he kept having to go to her house to check. I followed.

The building was a bit of a slum on Pedmore Street, the door knob came off in his hands. Her flat was luxurious, at odds with the building. In the lounge, encouraged by a draught, a light shade twirled a hundred shadows around the whitewashed walls. The fireplace was silent. The bedroom was perfect tidy and smelled of lavender and dry rot.

'Where the fuck is she?' he grumbled. How am I meant to know, I said. ‘What am I doing here?’ he said. ‘I keep coming back here but I know she’s gone.’ He should be pursuing his own life, not hers, he said. He felt dizzy, he said. He pulled some clumps of brown hair out of lucid green eyes.
Meester? said a shadowed figure at the door. Meester?

'Yes, Martinez?' Mister said.

'She's not here cabron,' said Martinez, his moustachio emerging from the shadows, 'hello Stanley.'

Mister demurred, 'How did you find me here?'

'I followed you. You do strange things at the moment.'

'Things are strange. She disappeared a month ago, can't find her fucking anywhere.'

'Why you looking for her then cabron? If she been gone a month she ain't coming back.'

I pointed out that it was only yesterday Mister had met Drezna the lawyer so how come he was now claiming she had done a runner on him for the last month? and I was promptly told shut up and fuck off and what did I know about time, but it was definitely only yesterday the mad bastard had met the bird on the metro, I was convinced. Oh well what the hell reality is objective, one man's clock might not be another's, it could be one man's on Greenwich Meantime, another's on Buenos Aires time and another is on Uzbekistani time.

'Why did she leave me?' Mister asked me and Martinez in The Swan, 'what did I do? She's been gone a month and no-one can tell me why, or they won't tell me why.' I thought, you should know you drunken fool, not us! and there's an 'Uh-oh, here she comes, here comes Drezna!' he's saying, hallucinating. 'Get that witch the fuck away from me. I never want to see her again. Just by hearing her name, she makes me feel fucking sick!'

'Mister, darling?' I say in my most Drezna Alpay voice and he shrieks and wails, clutching his face in his hands...
Drezna Alpay, the fatalest of all femmes.

'So I might get on an Easy Jet flight,’ I say to Mister, ‘I'm gonna commit suicide in Rome, for fuck's sake, that's a proper place to do something young, romantic and foolish.’ I make straight for the Piazza Del Colosseo and there I am waiting for the moment of my jouney to the Otherworld, eating pizza in the Piazza Del Colosseo, my back up against a wall that could have been built at any time over the last bi-mileniae of Roman history and I can't help thinking Rome is right to simultaneously take itself, and refuse to take anybody else, seriously.

There are photo-opportunity clowns dressed as Centurions, Senators and Gladiators in front of the arches upon arches of the ancient home of brutal showbusiness, the Colosseum. I stand entranced, my mouth full of pepperoni as young Roman men and women postured in self-glorification. So macho they are feminine, every male is homoerotic in his comportment.

Outrageously beautiful and ugly Italians eat each other with devouring predatory glances. The Women look intrinsically unimpressed and the men look ludicrous. I've never seen such garments of clothing, such outfits before, anywhere else in the world. Little tight polo shirts beneath pink or mauve v-neck cashmere vests, three quarter trousers and pulled up white socks and Patrick trainers. Black Country men like myself see the world with a comedian's attention to detail and Rome is a treat, a feast, of mankind at it's most demanding of pathos.

Ridiculousness is elemental to a Roman's nature. Rome is built in straight lines; as a Black Country bard I move in spirals.
It is my fate that I must enter the Otherworld today! I must enter the otherworld in the dominion which bought our world to its knees, among the people who burned our holy men and razed our villages and sold our ordinary men and women as slaves. In Rome, which has in its empire the origins of all that's revolting about the world now.

It is dead early that the harp of the afterlife and its melancholy chords beckon me, but I have reached a kind of consciousness wherein I can no longer exist, I must simply disappear. I must enter the antimaterial world. Emphasize the magic contours of reality and you might feel a reverberating of the outline of yourself, a rocking to and fro of your soul, eking it's way out of the physical parameters of your body.

The time has come; I must go down into the metro. The metro is the highway between worlds. The metro is how we walk between the worlds. Millions of people daily journey in the metro, without seeing it's magic contours. They journey between points above the surface, they imagine. If only they knew the magic contours of the underground highway they travel! Shuttling speechlessly along a tunnel, no pomp or pretension, just people with the purpose of arriving and leaving and in between with no other thought than being somewhere that isn't transitory.

We lie as we're on our way, 'must get there', we cease to exist on our journey. It is only the destination, the metro station that awaits you that makes you arrive and so re-take your place in reality. Take away the place destination above ground and you cannot arrive. That is the afterlife. I will leave, but before I arrive anywhere I won't be, any longer.

'Romans!' I address the race, 'Walking through the underground tunnels you forget, in your transit, how you wake up every day and beg reality to shine shards of phosphorescent light at your feet. You want god to land in your lap! You require a physical manifestation of God! If you want to find your God then you must be him!'

As I talk and walk I can feel my body melting away so that I’m words and movement and nothing more, I am becoming only sound and motion, like a sonorous gale, no sinew or bone or moisture or fixture, I’m disintegrating into...

'Look here Stanley,' said Mister, bringing me back to the Black Country, ' you can't just pop off to the Otherworld like that. You're not ready yet,' I loved that Mister would measure everything in the universe with equal gravitas no matter how abstract the idea. 'You've got to see a little more of life before you're ready for the realm of Gods,' said Mister. 'You're only twenty-five and it isn't like you're dying in battle or anything. You're a boastful, brash, cocky little bastard. You've never seen any pitfalls or quagmires, or quicksands or rapids, or tremors or landslides. You haven't tasted disappointment or defeat, or disillusionment or deceit. You've known nothing but idle pleasures!'

I found the Aztecs, Martinez and his prettyboy cousin Arellano and Silencio the enigmatic one, playing pool in The Plough And Harrow, the biggest lowlife drinking hole in the Town centre, which also happened to be my cousin’s gaff. Two gypsy boys were giving us the evils from their pool table. A guy in a trenchcoat i kept seeing everywhere was packed in the corner in a pokey little table. Am I under some kind of surveillance?

"Chinga tu madre*!" said Arellano to Martinez, stooping over the pool table to shoot. "No mames*, wey*!" said Martinez as Arellano sunk the shot.

'Asi, guey!' said enigmatic Silencio, who only ever drank beer and never played. "No mames* wey*!" said Martinez. "Chinga tu madre*!" said Arellano. He thundered the white off the table.

'Chinga tu Madre*!'

'Stop weying and mammying!' Mister said. They didn't know he was leaving for Mexico tommorrow.

'Asi, mamon!' said Silencio. "Chinga tu madre*, cabron*!" said Martinez. "No mames* wey!*"

Arellano stuck his cue in Martinez's face. Two policemen appeared in the doorway. 'Pinche* Policia' muttered Martinez as he played his next shot. "Pinche* policia putos* de mierda", muttered Arellano, turning his cap to the front. "No mames*!"

I could watch Mexicans for hours telling each other 'no mames' and 'chinga tu madre.' It was like watching kids with Tourettes. There was no threshold, no limit, to their no mammying and weying.

'Fuckkin shut the cunt up!' came a call came from the gypsies. The short haired, sharp-featured one with the gravely voice was giving Martinez a stern once over. 'Yeah man, spek fuckin English, loiak, we'm in The Black Country!' said another one with long, greasy hair.

'Ah, sorrrry,' said Martinez patronisingly. And then under his breath, 'chingan sus madres!'

'Shut up, guey, they are hooligans,' said pretty Arellano. 'Cabron!' said Martinez, 'they’re English. To be English is to behave like a hooligan, carbon. No mames.'

'Martinez!' I said, 'No fucking mames with your shitty observations about my country.'

'Stanley wey,' he replied, 'these two sorry guys would be an embarassment to any country.'

Meanwhile, the two gypsies, were having their own conversation, in their equally colourful dialect. From their accent they must be from Tipton. But they didn't know I was a local too, I kept one eye on them, one on the game.

'There was a kick-off in the god Black Horse last night. Right old fuckin ding dong!' the short haired one said out of the side of his mouth.

'Where'd it kick off?' the other one, who looked like a dark age outlaw, pulled a nub-end out of his long hair which had been nestling in the ashtray.

'Black Horse. Right old fuckin ding dong!' Short hair said, glancing at me and the Aztecs.

‘Was yau in it, like, Oaksy, me mon?' said Long hair.

'When the ding dong kicks off, brother Shakey, and there's some dusting up up to be done, I will done and dust,' he said and inspected his knuckles.

'Did you dust up when it kicked off?'

'When the ding dong kicked off, Shakey, me mon, I done and dusted. When necessary, I will done and dust, like. There was tables breaking, chairs flying and wenches ducking. There was pints smashing, ashtrays whizzing and blokes shouting. There was people diving over the bar mate,'

'Sounds like it kicked off well bad like,' Shakey said.

'Right old fucking ding dong,' Oaksy said.

'Allright, chapper!' a man who resembled a Saxon Thane circled the table and picked a cue.

'Allright, Jamsy, me mon!' Shakey said.

'Right old kick off down The Waggon And Horses last night wor there!' Jamsy said.

'Oh ar?' Oaksy growled.

'There was, ar!' Jamsy said, 'this bloke like, he fucking kicks off, right, said mar muther was keen, like, so I rugby tackled him an'...'

'Yau day want to do that, me mon. What you do is yer fucking headbutt the cunt then while he's holding his nose you kick his bollocks in, like, then you kick im on the floor smacking im round the ead and bootin im in the kidneys.' Oaksy said.

'Yeah but if you...' Jamsy offered.

'Nah me mon,' Oaksy bellowed, 'you fucking headbutt the cunt, then while he's holdin his nose bottle him then kick him on the floor repeatedly smackin him round the yead and bootin him in the fucking kidneys, like.'

'When Oaksy kicks off he fuckin kicks off like, do' he!?' Shakey cied.

'When there's a ding dong and it's kicking off I will done and dust, me mon. With headbutts, broken bottlenecks and flying barstools. I will dust up with boots to the kidneys, knees in the bollocks and nose-cracks as well as elbows in the guts and broken ribs.' Oaksy told them, looking right at us.

'What about knives?' said Jamsy.

'That is inappropriate,' said Oaksy.

'What the fuck joo looking at?' Martinez was riled.

'Yaur fookin fairce, yer fookin, spacker!' said Oaksy.

'Boys!' interrupted my cousin, Ross, from behind the bar, 'could I just remind you this is a bar, not the set of the latest movie by fucking wassisname!'

'Play pool!' I said.

Everyone returned to their games. The guy in the trenchcoat looked incredibly amused. I was close to throwing him out in the street and he hadn't done anything. His presence alone gave me a sickening feeling. A kind of acute indigestion. Fortunately the gypsies were on top form and Martinez was riled, which made for a diverting scene.

'Oaks, them gypsies am lookin funny at us,' Shakey said.

'Worry not, Shakey, me mon, for we are the disciples of Done and Dust.' Oaksy said.

'There's four of 'em!'

'There ay a thousand of 'em that could withstand the done and dustingness of the demons of the Ding Dong,'

'Martinez, guey, I am a little bit preoccuppied,' Arellano said, 'perhaps we should get out of here.'

'Why should we, cabron?' Martinez glanced at the English, 'we are regular clients here. Chingan sus madres!'

'Asi, guey!' Silencio said.

We all looked round to see the bottle fly out of Oaksy's hand and soar across the bar. Martinez curved his neck left out of the path of the glass missile, as did Arellano to the right and it smashed behind us on the wall.

Simultaneously we all turned to look at the gypsies and the cues were laid down. Shakey and Jamsy too laid their own cues down. Oaksy rolled up his sleeves, eyeballing Martinez.

'Excuse me, boys, but this stop right here!' the barman growled unimpressively, his arm blocking Oaksy's way.

'Excuse me son, but when the ding dong kicks off,' Oaksy said, whalloping him, 'I will done and dust.'

'You will done and dust allright,' I said, 'you will dust up that beer glass for a start and then you will mop up the whole floor.'

A headbutt promptly took me out of action, I was on the floor clutching my nose and looked up and saw the gun, A gun a gun a gun! In Martinez's hand the thing pointed right at Oaksy's leg, how a gun when cocked and aimed regards its target with such disdain!

'You know it!' the gun said to Oaksy. Did Martinez often pull this kind of shit? I panicked, is this my friend? Is this a toy gun? Has life always been this stupid and dangerous, or did I once live in a suburbian utopia? Oaksy moved and the gun punished him for it, a splash in the leg, a resounding crrrack and smoke fanning, 'yeah that's right cabron, you won't be acting like a hooligan again in a rush cabron!, The Plough And Harrow in turmoil, even the Morroccans. I got out of the pub as quick as I could, reeling with a smell of sulphur and went straight to Mister's, who was in a dressing gown at the door, no doubt with some lady in his bed.

I lay on the couch thinking about Martinez, he was all so melancholy and sentimental, fucking tears in his eyes after a couple of drinks and clutching you in his arms, his fat arse glued to the barstool, 'no mames wey, I fucking love you cabron', and here he was bringing guns out down my local pub on some local tatters.

On the bridge staring into the gloomy sun the girl was good looking from afar but turned out to be far from good looking. She shifted her weight from heel to heel nervously and when I spoke to her she postured and bristled, as sardonic and sour as a pussycat. She took me to the Wychbury Hill where her luxurious home was, when she entered the key in the lock she turned and reminded me her name was Charlie. In the sitting room there was a table and covering it a cloth embroidered with decaying flowers and a photo of a cheesy man. She lifted the cloth and there was a hearth underneath. She sat and warmed her feet in the hearth and invited me to join her.

Kindling spat in the fireplace. It kept spitting like a spoilt child regaining attention. Empty chairs around the table were silent. Their shadows were less stationary, they danced on the tile floor.

She looked horrified when I asked her if the man in the picture was her husband, she was open-mouthed as if elves were branding her bottom with red hot irons. Then she was looking beyond at the doorway and her sticked-lip curled into a calculating, satisfied little grin, the kind of grin only women use, full of sex, full of vengeance, power, irony and an unquenchable lust to humiliate. Living as a vagabond I learned that lunatics and threatened lovers must always be treated with great respect so when I realised the man in the photo was in the doorway and he asked me who the hell I was despite my dangerous proneness to sporadic acts of marxist defiance I chose an unhostile response.

-Your wife,... Charlie, and I are old school friends...-

-He's lying,- the awful girl said, -I don't know him. I invited him here so he could have me, thinking you would not come home until later.- Wicked harlot! Women, always encouraging men into the arena of the ding dong, where the done and dustingness of one will mean the done and dustedness of the other and she will feel the thrill of being the cause of ruptured antlers!
Surprisingly though the husband slumped wearily into an armchair and told his wife to leave with me. Disappointed and miserable she piled some belongings into a bag and we left together, me and Charlie, disgraceful girl.

She had a little bit of money so we went for a drink, stupidly in some pricey yuppie bar. We met a young Brazilian dressed in designer clothes. He was from Minas Gerais, a mineiro, and he talked about eighties electro music and made a lot of gay jokes, in fact it seemed he imitated gays in every sentence he uttered, but he was a very enchanting and casual Brazil-Aryan so we asked if he could put us up for the night.

We stayed for a month in the spare room in his batchelor pad. Charlie and I began to fall in love because there was little else to do and we constructed a simulacran world of enchantment with each other, moustachio-twiddley romance in meadows with dandelion wisps floating in the afternoon around us. Antonio the blondie Brazil-Aryan took us out into the countryside in his sportscar and loved nothing more than to watch us, arguing and frolicking. He envied and admired the kind of relationship we had, I could see it in his grimace grin.

Antonio looked boldly in my eyes one night, as we sat round the fire, just me and him, -I am a twenty five year old Brazilian with a German passport,- he said, - I don't even speak a word of German!-

-What are you trying to say?-

-I am a Brazilian who doesn't play football. I am a Brazilian who doesn't do Capoeira. I am also a Brazilian who doesn't put his dick in just any vagabunda. I am like a Brazileiro Paraguayo.-

-Brazileiro Paraguayo?-

-In Brazil everything fake is called 'Paraguayan', Antonio leaned in to make sure we couldn't be overheard by any eavesdropping Paraguayans.

-Paraguay,- he continued, -is the home of fake trademarks and like, imitation products. Everything you buy in Paraguay is fake. I've never been to Paraguay but I am a Paraguayan Brazilian. I am no Brazilian man.

-When I invited both of you to stay here with me it was no charity I was immediately enchanted by the two of you. I told Charlie the way I felt, that I wanted to be with someone like her. So confident, so easy to talk to, so elegant, fun, beautiful. And she told me. No, it isn't me you want to be with. I'm the one who you want to be like. You want Stanley. That's who you want. You've got it the wrong way round, darling.
I was shocked!-, continued Antonio, -I didn't want to believe it, I wanted to deny it. But she took me gently and said, look, sweet boy, I will make love to you and then you will see. You will be Stanley for tonight.-

I told him he could idolise me if he wanted but he couldn't fondle my buttocks or make homosexual advances on my person.

-I love you!-, he told me despairingly! Not very tenable, all this love, all this loving, Mother Theresa likely fucked her way to the very top, the priests preaching the love directly from above in my Church of England school, their wafer-holding fingers wandered under the cassocks of choirboys in quiet vestibules and Diana love goddess and princess of Wales, licked old Theresa's steaming, quimmering clitty and Charles Windsor, the bastard, he in turn licked that charming doll Diana's sophisticated gash.

Rachmaninov is playing, the romantic Russian fool! It surges over me in a sweet precipitation of aural lacrimas and I consider Antonio seriously a moment, how moving, how moving that this delightful man should tell me this, I deposit some ash in a tyre tray, a tyre tray ash tray and lose focus of the Antonio, who is there somewhere in a glimmering halo of fireplace, the gay fucker, how beautiful is this planet, where people lumber lie until they can bear it no longer and lemmings become, compelled towards the destruction of themselves on the jagged rocks of someone else.

But it's ok, Antonio, I've padded out your fall with a trampoline, because, despite all my forays into negativity and conflict, my cynicism is just experimental, I am an optimist who knows his optimism cannot be upheld by any logic, but will remain an optimist evermore even so, out of some deep petulant reluctance to do anything except rebel against what all the information and statistics say, I'm carrying out an investigation into a world of darker possibilities, my own bright expectations of the universe and faith in people and destiny are uncollapsable and bore me to tears. Antonio, your weakness exposed will not be exploited, your lameness and lemmingness move me, they are beautiful, sincere, honest things and such things may not be around forever if globalisation transforms every creature into a product and the world into a supermarket.

For then everything will be pure bartering, our thoughts, our emotions, our dicks and pussies, all will be trade, every feeling we give will be undervalued and tentative, dependent on it's turnover, let's see how much I get back if I put in that amount of x feeling.

One day the world will be suburban Anglo-Saxonia, great green hedges driven into even the desert, we will cross as many bridges as we like but it will be the same river every time, the river Amazon, each meander of it's emeraldbrown sheen, will be the same river as the Severn, the Nile as the Danube, the Gangees as the Hudson, we stare at the moon huddled when we remember to forget, so bright it is at times spreading it's lunar delirium in our veins, we see within it's globe only a reflection, everything a reflection of ourselves, a reflection of our earth, the continents spread out as if on the moon's surface and we fear for terrible calamities huddled together and we lose them in our personal labyrinths as soon as we can cos the awarer we are the tenser and scareder we are, amen, and good night, dream well, and tomorrow we shall be somewhere not quite the same and you, you will be new.

Mexican Glossary

Wey: mate
Cabron: big goat
Pinche: Bloody
¡No mames!: Don’t suck!
¡Chinga tu madre!: Fuck your mother!
Putos de mierda: bitches of shit