One is company, two congestion.
A man's best friend is his dog. Even woman cannot attain the high standard of companionship afforded by the dumb canine. A man, his dog. A man.
There's no such thing as love. It's a misnomer for infatuation. Infatuation elongated and attenuated into habit.
I wonder where she is now. Happily married. Dead. In a convent. Perhaps she's returned to Rainbow, her home town, to die. I can see her now.....on a wicker chair..... under a pergola of everlastings..... enjoying the sunsets over Lake Hindmarsh......feeding a grass parrot or two.....wherever you are my sweet, I wish you all the best. I mean that. Dead or alive....
Yes, many a female has swooned before my growth. That's not a growth said Muriel, that's a tumour. (chuckles) She knew all the correct terms......maternity matron at Leongatha Base. What a pelvis. She stretched out for me one humid afternoon.... on the sands of Venus Bay... naked, red raw, oozing, she didn't swoon
Hard up against me she was Mervyn. Note that. One hand soft on the nape of the neck..... the other cupping a buttock..... licky lick up and down my throat.... tongue in the wax-black ear. Hand down the tweeds.... fingers coiled around my python.....tug, tug.....dragged off by the skewer.. behind the dunnies..forced to the turf beneath a Washington navel..... I succumbed
I used to accompany her to the cemetery every Sunday....she would kneel at the foot of Morrie's grave...a simple mound, not unlike Mort's...they're all similar bereft of ornament.....she would weep copiously, and fill a cut-glass vase with an Iceland poppy or two. 'This cannot go on' I said, from behind.....a hand on each morose shoulder..... 'I am inconsolable'. 'I understand Dolores but -'....She carressed me lightly upon the knuckles, then loosened the buttons of her black blouse......(pause)(stares at grave) We asked forgiveness of Morrie for that sin of sins....a man should be allowed to decompose in peace.
What brought you to One Tree Hill Mort? The view? Magnificent is it not? A panorama of dust, anthills and dead grass. Naught else. Except for the occassional bull-turd.
I postulate a steam producing maximum of 112 degrees. Purgatory. Dead on three. In the shade. (peers at thermometer) Fair crack of the whip. Eighty-nine degrees of quicksilver already. This could warrant an excursion to Dead Dog Creek. An immersion of the sizzling parts in those cool shit-thick springs
When I first came to One Tree Hill there was this one tall tree. Nothing else. A hairy tree. Conspicuous, almost outlandish. Not wishing to advertise my presence I took an axe and chopped it down. Thud. The uproar was immense. Every cockatoo, crow, emu and rosella in the kindom took to the heavens filling them with spleen and indignation. Lesser men would have regarded this as a harbinger and knelt down in supplication. Not me. I siezed the old shotgun and fired salvo after salvo at the demented pricks
I was living in Echuca at the time....A well appointed little bungalow in the kerosene-tin style. River frontage. Two acres of fine soil. Tomatoes, broccolli...... the odd chook..Rhode Island Reds. Yabbies, manure, an invalid pension. What more could a man want?
To imagine that as a young beard I dined at the most select restuarants in Melbourne. A youth of breed and starch - dapper, punctilious, well kidneyed, etiquette itself. Knew all the wines too. Must have an 1876 Chateau Carbonnieux with the basted salamander, anything else would be unspeakably Yan Yean, eh Jeremy (laughs)
Garcon! This table napkin is much too stiff. Another. It must adapt to the undulations of the lap, not rasp and chafe the Savile Row, you ox.
You call that coffee cameriere, its squid piss! Summon the manager. At least the saxophonist is in tune.....Ah, Monsieur Epinard, I regret to inform you, but this establishment reeks. Never again shall I break bread or wind between these rancid walls. Good night.
Paris 1912. Boulevarde Haussman. South of the Parc Monceau, west of the East Cemetery. What a day. I cycled from Calais to Notre Dame.... head wind all the way. Parked the Malvern Star up against a flying buttress and went for a swim up the Seine, introducing the Australian Crawl to the Frog. I obtained a salon on the Ile St. Louise.... met a few gormless Poles.... lingered on until the finances lapsed, some seven days......then pedalled back.
To think that these once-supple dactyls caressed the ivories on many a Saturday night at the Saloon Bar of the Shamrock...accompanied by Cliff Treble on double bass, and Les Saffo on soprano sax......no more
My fucking legs! Corroded or something. No gristle. Its all migrated to my skull. I've ossified.
(attempts to urinate) I void null. What happens now? The gland has won. I could puff up with piss and detonate. Do a Henry the Eighth..... swell up, curse, shout, scream, and explode....covering icons and sycophants alike in the last meal and tomorrow's excrement
Its all too rapid! Is there no chance, clock, of a slug tempo, a marche funebre for the sunset years, a last adagio into which I could pack some substance? (pause) Apparently not. A palpable leap of the hand. A slap in the face.
Midday! No. Co-operate timepiece. You've made a mockery of my morning. Mort is very upset. Hark! SSsh. Hear the present ocean past.(pause) Not the tick tock of ratchets and cogs, but continuous and silent avalanche. We do not move forward. We merely mark time. All progress is an illusion. Our advance into a vaccuum is also an illusion. So cheer up. (pause) If time were slower there'd be more of the present to dwell upon the past. That would please me Mort, no end..... The past is something to which I always look forward
Thought I'd croaked. I would like my departure from this life to be a little longer than that. Perhaps a whole afternoon. A slow crawl on the stomach to the record player..... a few bright numbers from a requiem or two......a last tomato.... a slice of ham...... some sugar for the ants..... couldn't make it to the goats....... a last jerk of the gherkin..... just in case...... you never know..... I'd like to die erect.....hang up the rosary beads......momento mori, Mort......see you tomorrow today...croak.
I myself have taken the liberty of excavating for myself a grave. The traditional six feet with smooth walls of baked red clay and an innerspring of silk on the floor. Yes, I shall crawl, on my last legs, to its edge, cast a fleeting but longing look over the pastures, then tumble in.... fall onto the mattress, not quite dead.....I shall lay there a while, breathing my last, listening to the corpuscles choke, ruminate on life and gaze up at the lowering sky, for it shall be evening, and discern that lurid neon....the Southern Cross, laugh a little....blaspheme the icon of it all...and feel the clay cave in....croak.
Yes I know you've got cancer of the white blood cells Luke. (pause) All right, you've got three weeks left to live. Look at it from the opposite angle. You've got three weeks to die. Think of it that way and relief will be immediate. (pause) He didn't. Wouldn't heed the advice of his senior brother. Those last three weeks could have been extrovert and cordial, full of rhetoric and joy. (pause) Instead, the weak bastard allowed Father Asterisk, a snivelling and vulpine Jesuit, to sneak in and piously rekindle the dead tapers of guilt ......with talk of Ireland and the usual slop. I intervened just in the nick of time to arrest the most fulsome deathbed recantation
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