Diversions (945 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.95 on 19 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Thor (View user info) at 2005-01-28 01:11:18 EST
Helen was determined not to let events get the better of her. She was determined to say her piece, and she knew she was right. The thoughtless fascist bastard HAD to learn. But she hated confrontations. Her heart was pounding and she could feel a tremble in her blotchy, freckled hands.
She took some deep breaths and it occurred to her that it was at times like this that people reached helplessly for cigarettes. Well, she wasn't as weak as them - she didn't smoke and never had.
The back door slammed behind her as she stepped outside and called the dog. Her voice was steadier than she expected, and patting Sarah made her feel a bit stronger. The trick was to try and enjoy the nerves, the excitement.
There he was! Look at the snake, slithering up from the compost heap. There was actually a bit of moldy carrot sticking out from his gums! What a fucking hide! Emaciated black bastard, trying to play on her pity!
All at once Helen's nerves vanished, overtaken by anger. "You call yourself a fucking Ethiopian! Fucking pathetic cunt!" she shouted.
Sammy looked up, eyes huge in the shrunken, skeletal, face. His gums worked futilely at the small piece of carrot. He daren't risk choking by swallowing it whole.
Helen marched across the patchy, weed-ridden, dog turd spotted lawn. Sammy's desperate crawl had come to a halt beneath the Hills Hoist, from which a solitary pair of tattered Levis hung. She bent down and snatched the carrot from his mouth. His eyes looked into hers, and she saw a faint but terrible glimmer of sadness before they went blank. His head slumped onto the ground, face down.
The anxiety surged back into Helen's blood. "Look Sammy, I really don't want you getting into the compost anymore. You know we need it for the garden" Her voice was wavering, and she felt the familiar, sinking debilitation of an anxiety attack. She threw the carrot back toward the compost heap with a clumsy, spasming motion. It missed.
Sammy remained face down. His fragile body shuddered a little as he breathed, making a faint rasping noise. Helen stood her ground, trying to say something. But the nerves were in full cry now. Trembling, she retreated to the house. She felt short of breath and dizzy as she went into her room and lay on the bed.
It was a room typical (in intention, at least) of those occupied by girls with 'alternative' aspirations living away from home for the first time. Helen had unconsciously tried to model it on Lana's, the other girl living in the group house. Lana had a natural flair for appearances and her room, with its brightly coloured silks swirling and billowing down from the ceiling around the low bed, the scattered cushions and the handmade rug had the air of an Arabian concubine's retreat. Helen's attempt at this style had unfortunately achieved an air closer to that of a Dickensian sick house. The flannelette sheets she had dyed herself were streaky and bilious in colour and hung down limply from big nails, bringing to mind soiled handkerchiefs. They blocked the windows and made the room dim and stuffy.
Helen stared up from her bed. She had removed her glasses, exposing watery eyes beneath faint, ill-defined brows. That bastard Sammy was just the same as all the men she'd known - he'd do anything to get his own way - even stoop to emotional blackmail. He had no social conscience whatsoever. The vegetable garden was for the good of everyone who lived in the house, all of them contributed to it's maintenance - except Sammy, Of Course. And now he was raiding the compost heap. Why, oh why, did she get so frightened? If only she could act freely, there was so much potential trapped inside her.
*
Sometimes when I'm driving the car, maybe after a movie, with the radio on, it seems as if there is nothing else but the moment - the music, the road, the lights. Everything else is hypothetical and non-threatening.
*
Daniel was the fourth human member of the house, a handsome boy with thick blonde hair, broad shoulders and a muscularly well proportioned body to match. His strong chin, blue eyes and a certain intense, aloof calm made him hard to resist, and although at the time I was not aware of it, Lana has already succumbed and presented him with her virginity. They had then advanced to noisily showering together in flippers and goggles, stoned out of their minds.
This debauchery was another development that disturbed Helen - it had changed the homely, Enid Blyton/Whole Food/Ideologically Sound atmosphere that had prevailed in the house for the first couple of months. But that problem (which was really one of jealousy) was not now at the forefront of her mind. She, Lana and Daniel were sitting in Lana's room, united by a discussion of Sammy's appalling behaviour. They all agreed he was being a bastard, and anecdotes describing his various crimes - the compost raids, the dysentery, the skin diseases, the sharing of the dog's kennel, the feeble attempts at washing up - were exchanged.
When these were exhausted the conversation lulled unpleasantly with unspoken tensions; but was quickly resurrected by repeating, in different sequence, everything they had agreed on. During this desultory process Helen's attention wandered a little.
Her gaze settled on a pair of nylon pantyhose Lana had left lying on the floor. She fondled the material absentmindedly. Her thoughts drifted to Lana's decadent pleasures with Daniel, and to her own brief, hidden sexual history. Suddenly, with an urge so deep it was almost a reflex, she lifted the dirty pantyhose to her face and sniffed at the gusset.
This action did not escape Daniel's attention - he told me about it much later. Whether he also told Lana I don't know. Possibly he did, and possibly this contributed to the complex tensions between Lana and Helen. Whatever the case, these tensions (together with her own pathetic needs) eventually lead Helen to reveal Daniel and Lana's affair to me. This came as a blow - I was deliriously in love with Lana and had been spending many intimate evenings alone with her in bars and restaurants.
*
Helen and I lay on my bed, fully clothed. The TV was on, but we were not watching it. The others had left, and my parents were upstairs asleep. Our heads were on the same pillow, close together. I could feel her thick breath on my face. I summoned my meager courage and we began to kiss.
With much effort I groped down the back of her jeans. I had never so much as touched a cunt (a failing I had struggled to keep secret during sessions of `boy's talk') and did not want to squander another opportunity, even though Helen was not exactly the girl of my dreams. The attempt from the rear failed - our position on the bed hampered mobility - but my fingers did penetrate her underwear and I felt about between the cleavage of her buttocks. It was obvious now she was willing and there was no danger of rejection.
She turned onto her back and I moved my hand down the front of her jeans, groping about amongst hairs, searching for the moist hole I had read so much about and seen so many pictures of. I had to reach lower and lower. My research and conjecture was alas not translating to reality with much clarity. At last I felt wet flesh and suddenly my finger slipped inside her body - INSIDE HER CUNT!
But there was barely a split second to savor this triumph before semen gushed out of my quivering penis into my underpants.
I was mortified. I noticed the TV station had closed for the night - the screen was fuzzy and white noise was blaring out. I leapt off the bed, on the pretext of turning the machine off. But my real motivation was to distance myself from Helen before she had a chance to discover the flooding, burning shame of my accident. As I moved crouching toward the machine, with my back to her, penis still quivering with the last drops of semen, I quickly sniffed my finger. It stank. The ghastly thought that I may have inserted it not into her vagina but into her rectum flashed across my mind.
*
A further source of tension in their house was Lana's financial problem. She was seventeen so could only qualify for junior social security handouts. Consequently she had been borrowing a lot of money from Helen, who was working as a vet's assistant - which, incidentally, resulted in a hospital odour of disinfectant and antiseptic lingering about her. Helen was getting worried about her money not being returned. We had started to talk often about Lana's flaws. Her parents were rich, but she wanted to be independent and was too proud to ask them for money.
*
Reading aloud from the Bible was one of Daniel's strange and rather charming quirks. He would go on and on, and when we were all stoned it became hysterically amusing. I had made a point of liking Daniel - I did not want to appear jealous.
*
I had started to suffer from nerves myself. I had a theory about this. The lie detector is a device that records increases in heart rate and the rate of sweating - indicators of nervous system activity. When humans lie, they generally become nervous. Perhaps also when we lie to ourselves, or bury truth away . . .
*
Helen, Lana and Daniel sat around the kitchen table drinking tea. They `discussed' the terrible problems of modern life - cars, machines, TV, the senseless grind of nine to five, money, possessions, the estrangement from nature, pollution. When the conversation lulled, they resurrected it by repeating themselves. Lana and Daniel smoked Kent cigarettes seriously. They liked the stylish all white cigarette Kent made, and the soft pack was distinctive.
In the yard, Sarah the dog licked Sammy's hand. Helen saw them through the window. Why did Sarah like Sammy more than her? She was the one who needed Sarah. After all, Sarah was her dog. She had read that proximity to animals decreased blood pressure.
*
My sexual relationship with Helen had finally yielded my first fuck. I was quite pleased with my performance - it seemed to last long enough and Helen had even started to `buck'. Mind you, I still hadn't had a proper look at her cunt. She always insisted on making love in the dark - her breasts were unfashionably huge and she was ashamed of them.
*
I have another theory about nervous tension. Things don't make sense. There's a bad smell. Lana, me, Helen, Daniel and Sammy. Sometimes the thought of it seems unbearable, especially when I think of Sammy. It seems as though my head will explode. But it passes. And anyway, what can I do?
*
*
The real estate agent was due in half an hour.
Helen was close to hysteria. She and Lana had signed a lease limiting the occupation of the house to two people, so they had to disguise Daniel's bedroom as a study. But Lana and Daniel were stoned (with dope no doubt bought with her money) and just giggled and peeled each other grapes. And what were they going to do about Sarah? And Sammy?
*
Well. I could go on. Helen and I have just spent half the night reminiscing about the old times. Lana and Helen and I are all good friends now. Helen has come to love her body and herself and is now a rising anthropologist, specialising in Aboriginal problems. After recovering from a standard nervous breakdown during which I imagined I could save the world, my writing took off. The public these days lap up anything black and bizarre with bit of sex tossed in, so I just keep churning it out. Lana finally qualified as an Architect and is making big bucks. She just bought a beautifully restored EH Holden and has promised to take us for a weekend in the mountains, where she hopes to build an energy efficient house.
But it's hard to find the time, we are all so busy. We can't complain, though - it's being busy that has really saved us from our self-absorption and negative thinking.
Daniel kept smoking pot, and gradually drifted out of our lives. I hear reports now and again - he worked in a gay bar, he had a child, he felt so happy one night he cut his wrists, he spent a few weeks in a psychiatric ward, he worked on a fishing boat.
Sarah got run over by a car.
This upset Helen at the time, but the consequences were worse for Sammy. A neighbouring Bull Terrier raided the backyard the night after Sarah's death. We glimpsed the dog running out and thought it must have been one of Sarah's prized bones clenched between his jaws. A few days later we noticed Sammy was missing and put two and two together.
User Reviews
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-02-25 20:58:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fookin' epic.
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-02-25 17:54:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2005-02-24 20:55:57 (#)
Ranking: 0
apollo, i like your interpretation, but my conscious intention was much more simple: sammy was simply, as portrayed, a starving african.
ie, we bugger around with our daily lives and little dramas, our diversions, but in the background is the reality of these people starving to fucking death. and though we tend to ignore it, i think it does have an unconsious effect on us. i suppose part of the point was that if there actually was some poor cunt starving in the backyard we probably wouldn't be as cruel and callous as the characters in the story. but really isn't the way we look at africa just the same?
someone told me southpark did a show with a starving person in the garden, but if so this is just another case of my ideas being stolen as this was written before southpark even existed.
the sanctimonious film link: http://www.ubersite.com/m/19850#287299
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-24 06:48:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sammy.
Hungry, shivering, wracked with dysentery, face down. Carrot.
A crumb thrown his way that he is unable to devour for fear of choking.
Fear, subconscious, hidden depths.
Sammy is their subconscious, the little demon (hope? talent?) in them battered by society, by expectation by fear and fear of rejection. Desperate for any crumb, any release. Even compost.
The fact that Sammy is even there, perhaps one could say in his death throes, signified that at that point there was still some desperate hope for Sammy, i.e. them breaking the bonds of their position, but by the end of the piece when you have all settled into your lives poor Sammy is eaten by the dog. Dead and perhaps even forgotten.
Submitted by NoahsArk (user info) at 2005-02-22 18:34:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are a very good writer
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-02-22 18:08:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:55:05 (#)
Ranking: 2
sorry.
fucked up rating.
btw, what does the ethiopian signify, I have an idea but want to see your explanation.
-----
christ, that perfect rating was all i had in life. with friends like you...
tell me your theory re the ethiopian first you cunt.
Submitted by etbeliever (user info) at 2005-02-22 09:22:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow, this was really good.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:55:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
sorry.
fucked up rating.
btw, what does the ethiopian signify, I have an idea but want to see your explanation.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:53:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i read only the R&V parts, come on dude it was hundreds of pages long.
Submitted by Durae (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:46:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:11:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I went insane. She was like give me my toaster. So I give it to her. The I get in the tub anyway with my clothes on.
Submitted by Thor (user info) at 2005-02-22 08:04:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-22 07:55:52 (#)
Ranking: 2
How the fuck did I miss this?
Fantastic.
---
indeed, esp as you claim to have carried a copy of it across the atlantic
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-02-22 07:55:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
How the fuck did I miss this?
Fantastic.
Submitted by Ed_0150 (user info) at 2005-02-22 06:17:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That was really fucking good.
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-02-22 06:04:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Wiggles (user info) at 2005-02-21 21:36:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish I could cite things like this when I write papers for English or Arts & Humanities.
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2005-02-21 21:03:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent story. Fucking excellent!
Submitted by stardamage (user info) at 2005-01-28 09:52:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What the hell??
Submitted by Impassive-Digressive (user info) at 2005-01-28 08:38:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This rocked and more people need to damn well read it!!
Submitted by Impassive-Digressive (user info) at 2005-01-28 01:19:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
That was deliciously quirky. I really liked it.