CONVERSATION

TOTALLY VACUOUS NOUVEAUX LADS

Four middle-youth guys and one girlfriend have met up at Henry’s, a Thames-side bar in Richmond, southwest London — their ‘local’, in fact. Jeremy ‘Jezza’ Calthorpe organises conferences, Nick Hancock is a key account handler for a major UK publisher, Olly ‘the main man’ Minto is a front-office trader for a major investment house. His girlfriend Emily Westlake works in that bank’s PR department and Simon Carter, a frustrated feature-writer on a trade magazine, make up the quintet

Olly: Christ, guys, I don’t think we’ve all been together since the Uni old boys tour. Export lagers for everyone, the ‘wife’ excepted?...

Jezza: Too right, mate. I’m gasping. And the United game follows the ‘Quins coverage. Where’s that layabout Simon?

Olly: (to barman) EXCUSE ME Pedro, four Stellas and a dry white wine over here — when you’re ready...(to Jeremy)Yuh, old ‘Simple’ Simon probably can’t move from the sofa for all the gear he’s been smoking. If he can’t make important drinking rendezvous’ at 4pm then he’s a weak character, if you ask me

Hancock: Still owes me £20 quid from that tour as well. He’s probably hiding in that pisspoor bedsit of his in Acton

Jezza: Or watching that embarrassment of a team he calls City

Emily: You guys are so nasty to your friend. Why don’t you show him respect?

Olly: Belt up love, he knows we’re mucking about. Well, he makes the team don’t he?…(three pints into ‘a big one’ later)…Christ, I should have saved some drinking money and gone and watched the ‘Quins on my corporate ticket. Those guys at Chase really know how to get through their complimentary booze...

(Simon arrives)

Olly: .Wahey! Here he is, Simple Simon the sad City fan!!

Hancock & Jezza: Hur-hur, nice one Olly

Olly: You been smoking all that stuff again?

Hancock: And where’s my £20 (pause) Oh fuck it, as I’m so generous, we’ll just say its your round

Jezza: Look, United are winning again Simo

Simon: (‘for fuck’s sake’). Jeremy, you’re a stupid Munich bastard who uses the Filth as a success symbol, like you did Liverpool at school; Nick, I’ve known you for four years but you’re definitely the most odious creature I’ve ever met. Stop trying to subsidise your rampant alcoholism through me. Try your old man, that normally works; Emily, the Berkshire bike never says much Olly. What could she be hiding?; and you Minty, you fucking grotesque fat bastard. I smoke myself stupid because I’m addicted to the herb. It’s essential for avoiding careerist cock-suckers like you. And if you’re so fascinated by it then buy some of your own. I’m not coming to any more of your ‘socials’ just so I can half-guarantee myself a place in your aberration of a team. You’re shit anyway, but that’s because you only took football up three years ago. Don’t call me ever again as I won’t be calling you.

(spots mates outside and leaves immediately)

Jezza: Shit, United are losing. This doesn’t normally happen....

Dog turning you on?

Canine Cum £35 fl.oz

SHORT STORY
BLUEPRINT SAMMY

Toying with the idea of immortality had always pricked the pleasure zone of Sammy Procter. Not only did it appeal to his innate dislike of homogeneity it fuelled his immense ego, the one which inspired such an organic opposition to uniformity and its rigid sibling, conformity.

Sammy thought of himself as something of a hero. Even if he only satisfied himself with this summation of his abilities, it still qualified him to speak, shout and generally behave louder than his peers. Having said that, his consummate arrogance tended to distance what friends he had managed to maintain from his youth.

His complete rejection of the comfortable corporate life he was naturally destined for had destabilised his parents to such an extent that they had started substituting his opinions for their own. Normally, he would have regarded this as a dangerous loss of identity and intellectual sovereignty, but as his own views were being espoused, Sammy was more than happy to allow the current impasse to continue. Although he knew his parents didn’t fundamentally agree with 80% rates of tax for those earning over £50,000 a week (footballers at a certain satanic Manchester club were his intended target), he was convinced of the benefits of going against the grain.

By early sixth form he had renounced money and had even refused to handle it for several months. Soon after discovering the regular satisfaction of intoxication at the local pub, his views on currency, especially the ‘imperial pound’ as he referred to it, relaxed sufficiently to allow him to labour on building sites at the weekend. Furnished with the necessary funds, he furthered his research into the belief he held at that time: the utter honesty of intoxication.

This became something of a mantra with Sammy and he even experienced a brevity of popularity with the more introverted groups at college. But his notoriety came to a catastrophic end when his enthusiasm, in illustrating his point that education in England served only to compartmentalise the population and lead to inter class conflict, went a little too far. And as Sammy commented later: "There’s nothing the English hate more than successful excess". His sense of proportion took an immediately dislocated root.

As with anything he said at that time, it sounded like a formal statement elicited by a baying press pack. Of course he was subject to nothing like that, but he had managed to anticipate the Blairite schism by a good five years. Indeed the sententious rector from Sedgefield, via Establishment-de-la-Zouch, had been in secret contact with Sammy ever since he had risen Shadow Home Secretary and impressed everyone with his neighbourhood crotch and tyrannical teeth. Such was the delicacy of their clandestine connection that the Rt Hon Anthony Blair was not even aware that they were in contact. Given a few years Sammy would have been safely perceived as a stalker and locked away to his parents’, and Tony’s, relief.

Discipline was always the obstacle that would interrupt his chaotic progress. Ever since his Primary school days he had harboured an intense hatred of authority. He didn’t trust it and felt, with equal passion, that he should not be subject to the same controls and restrictions as everybody else. This ‘reasonable’ approach was maintained indefinitely.

Over-enthusiastic simulation of the effect, as he interpreted it, of education policy in England led to his expulsion from any form of group contact. Hoping to allude to patriarchal connotations and single-sex schooling in the private sector, Sammy pounced upon the permanently over-wrought Goth Sandra McClintock. This was a further layer to his allegorical actions, symbolising the rape of the Scottish civil and political system by an aggressive and maniacal English administration.

The whole performance was conducted in the garden of the Hare & Arse public house and the unwitting audience, who numbered at least thirty, had all made their way from Sammy’s sixth form. There was some familiarity with Sammy’s modus operandi but absolutely no idea as to the depth and conviction of his eccentricity. Soon after making a sudden lunge for Sandra, throwing her onto a table and upsetting numerous tables, Sammy’s show gave the impression of an extremely intimidating abyss.

Always aware of the importance of detail, Sammy’s rape simulation did not contradict this pedantic line. Although he didn’t actually physically damage any of Sandra’s clothing, the effectiveness of yanking her imagined trousers down had the desired effect, in that everybody stopped talking and watched Sammy. He was silent during this apparently impromptu act and this had the effect of arresting the attention that had been gained. Once he got to the stage of penetration (simulating spit on his hand and introducing it as an improvised lubricant), three of his former friends had walked into the pub to remonstrate with the landlord, Lee Sanders.

This appeal freed up the frustration that Lee had been experiencing with Sammy. Every time he entered the pub Lee knew that someone would object to something Sammy had said during the course of the session. This time Sammy was irrefutably in the wrong: "Not even that demented twat is going to try and explain this way. He’s finally lost it. Now I can legitimately bar the cunt."

So it was with revelatory enthusiasm that Lee entered the garden of his pub, determined to eject Sammy swiftly and cleanly and get on with overcharging the general drinking public with a clear head. "Right Proctor, get the fuck out of my pub! You’ve gone too far this time you fucking turd." Sammy had just heaved himself off of Sandra, not before affecting a very vocal orgasm and dismissing her with a wave of his hand.

"Oh touché Leon, I wouldn’t expect many to understand the abstruse nature of my physical allegory and I just know that you’re going to be one of the most clueless……" His sentence was concluded by Lee’s forehead, which momentarily flattened Sammy’s prominent nasal profile and decorated his lips and chin with the most convincing blood disorder.

Sandra watched all this with some interest. She wanted to smash a glass in Sammy’s infuriating face but she knew this would pass. She was defensively verbose in the usual scheme of things and most of those still present thought that she was experiencing post-shock trauma. Having been engaged in such a real event, no matter how contrived on Sammy’s simulated part, Sandra felt a feeling akin to emancipation. Although she had been shit-scared it was only due to her concerns at how she would be perceived by the rest of the college — that’s why she had remained silent. Any noise from Sammy during the enactment was preceded by a sly smile that he had made sure Sandra had seen before further embellishing his allegorical character.

Sandra became fascinated by stimulation through violent simulation. The representation of sexual violence captured all of its taboo and awakened within her latent sado-masochistic desires.

On hearing this from Sandra, Sammy became concerned that Sandra would steal his thunder and effectively confuse the sincerity of his political and social message.

"You really are the most self-obsessed pillock I’ve ever met," Sandra countered to Sammy’s concerns. "Not only are you more conservative than you could ever accept, repetition is fairly important in conveying a message in performance and something tells me that you won’t ever be repeating that particular bit of social drama again. At least not with me as one of the protagonists, or object of cliched violence as I was. Prick."

"But feelings like that are a direct result of your parents inculcating you with the obedience bug, complemented by the deferential cultural framework in which you/we exist," Sammy countered.

"Shut up. You don’t even know my parents and you are working with some pretty huge assumptions at the centre of your thought." Sandra’s reply was impressively calm and assured, inspiring a feeling of jealousy within Sammy. He always resented people who could make sense without hysterics, which seemed to be the only combination that worked for him, hence his allusions and convictions were compromised with depressing consistency.

A lack of manoeuvrability on Sammy’s part had consigned him to the pit of ignorance that constitutes rejection in adolescents. He insisted that he had not "ridden rough-shod" over the rights of anybody in his quest for a graphic illustration of his point. In fact, he regarded the whole exercise as a success, in that he had exposed the fickle nature of Lee Sanders, a friendlier landlord you couldn’t have imagined, before the infamous education "debate" had robbed him of his rational faculties.

Voices that came naturally to Sammy were easily put to nefarious use in a wider context. Sometimes the internal dialogue would be indecipherable, and at other times, clear as the smell of chlorine. Several of his claustrophilic companions disputed the assumed sovereignty Sammy demonstrated in his thought processes. Larrance Truffles was a misleading moniker for the most destructive and pernicious of these subterranean operators, whose backgrounds and intellect Sammy barely acknowledged. The fact that Larrance always preceded any cerebral comment by stating his full name (Larrance Theophile Whirylgigs Colin Truffles), and stating his location in both longitude and latitude, set him part from the more spectrally inclined entities. Larrance alluded directly to the places right outside Sammy’s corporeal and set about undermining the credulity of the scene and people that Sammy encountered. Indeed, Sammy was convinced that Larrance had access to the part of his brain that interpreted visual information.

"Senility is your destiny"

This was the first encounter Sammy had from any of these voices, at the age of 13. At first, he thought some of his friends were having a laugh, until he realised that what was being said wasn’t actually funny. As it wasn’t verbalised, Sammy had a very strong reaction to hearing a voice that wasn’t speaking and didn’t involve his ears. So as such, the description of the reception of the comment as ‘hearing’ was insufficient.

Sammy immediately likened it to having a heated filament in your brain, like that of an electric fire or the element in a kettle, which branded your cerebrum with the words and you heard their shapes.