‘MANY HAPPY RETURNS’
“Here is a present for you: X.”
“What a smacker: Hold your horses let me get it off.”
“What an Angel you are.”
“You are such a liar.”
“Except when you’re naked.”
Take note that the disembodied voices are the HORDE letting off steam inside the HORSE’S HEAD, which is an integral part of the cluttered décor in this rough sketch of a sunny room. What this bit of a beast conjured up, after having been given an encouraging nod & brushed out on a free rein, is Angel, caught flagrantly riding roughshod over the Artist’s leg of mutton on a leatherette settee squeaking with the friction of the warm skin of her knees on wet plastic. So, assuming she is another one of the Artist’s classy girls like Darling free for fun, we can freeze the action & frame, for later delectation, what she let loose. Examine each piece to see how well it was played to break our hearts. And also dissect each part at leisure to our heart’s content. That is, if we don’t find she is a real angel, completely spotless, slotless & useless. Wait. A dab of red. Good. An encouraging start, she kept her boots on. I knew she wouldn’t fail.
Meanwhile, treasuring a moment of freedom given by this diversion, we are heading downhill as fast as we can towards the abandonment of necromancy, for this rummaging in the murmur of bees, had without exception proved unsuccessful in finding a way out of the tight spot. We, a plump little tart & a sourpuss painter, in the course of our descent, come again to a famous hollow tree into which I had briefly & unavailingly popped time after time in search of sympathy, to lie beside, hoping it would be manifested in the shape of an easy woman. In trying to gain access to this objective, by cutting through the wreckage of my luck, I am warned the operative words are figurative; bust & snatch for example.
“And the area of operation is the graveyard.” Snyder said on cue. “Cradle snatching.” He whistled. “And taking in the instructive frescoes. While taking out the bodies.”
Prevented from reaching a climax by Snyder’s untimely interruption, but chiefly by wonder at the amount of time lost selecting subterfuges to breech the defences of all the supine beauties, this ride had been deemed necessary to catch up.
‘Take whatever it takes.’ I had been instructed. ‘But don’t take too long.’
“Verbosity.” Snyder challenged the means without the ends. “Should cushion the fall.”
So at first blush, like Tom Thumb, I would loved to have smuggled a secret directive back into the Horse’s Head by way of its ear rather like the way she used to plead in mine, ‘Fuck me hard.’ Yet I was struggling like a man (Schlumper) who has decided, for most of the above reasons, to make a loved one look as ugly a bitch as possible in the mind’s eye to stop his slide towards a confrontation with his innermost needs.
“Prevent a bust up. Never, they’ll pop out.” A leaden-footed Snyder dolefully suggested the snag.
“See how easily the very words we had been warned about can fuse into trouble behind his back & can be slipped in, in the confusion.” Eve stalked disapprovingly round a Snyder mesmerized by her beauty.
But, in a lapse of sensual flirtatious yearning, imagining his loved one in a beautiful combination of black & white, Schlumper gave in, picked up the palette & decided she should be beautiful still. Alas he could not succeed in his effort to snatch (I wink here at Snyder, clumsily) the collapsing order back from the brink anyhow; for the lack of a platitude let him down. Or, more likely, it was the loss of a potent dimension to operate in that thwarted him.
“You’re dead right. We soon discovered that he lives between the lines.” Darling declared. “And it’s hollow there too.”
“He fell into a drunken stupor. I saw him. Is that what you’re trying to say?” Eve asked.
“A corpse is fairly unresponsive.” Snyder blurted out, startled by the wink but keeping his back to Eve. “Even when it’s kept alive in the mind of a deluded woman who claims that the cast off underwear from under the bed looks better on her than it did on the ghost which she nevertheless pursues. A figure that also torments her.”
“And it did look better on her. She wasn’t swanking.” Darling said nicely, sure it was true & pleasantly uncompetative because of her self-assurance.
“You must be kidding. It was baggy on her. She was as thin as a nail. She’d be like shagging a bottle.” Eve said viciously lashing out.
I had to shout to hold them back, “Eve, Darling cut it out & who is that bulging funny looking fucker? Your anger calls up some queer bedfellows.”
“Horsey?” Darling exclaimed with delight & then her voice changed to become as hard as a brick. “Oh & you, Schneider? How did you get here?”
It was a very blurred picture now the sun had gone in & they were stepping into a darkening arena out of the doorway. Leaving the room bare & echoing with the grunts & moans of sexual excesses.
“If you could hold on a minute . . . or two . . . let me get my bearings. Put a few things on in order . . . here that’s mine.”
“You can fish.”
Scuffle. “Not there.”
“Ouch.”
“Wait. I’ve got him by the balls.”
“Let go.”
“Lost your marbles? Join the club.” Snyder said darkly, adding, “Without all that twaddle about who discovered the magic of Schlumper’s work first? And trying to guess who the beanpole was you were fucking. I’m not surprised you want out. Oh. Don’t leave any of the shit out of the stories on anyone’s account. Don’t iron out the wrinkles that would spoil the fun. If you’re going to tell anybody anything tell them this.” Snyder made the universal sign. “Straight up.”
“Just like you Snyder, no imagination.” Darling’s comment was lost in the rumpus.
I read here. It has been suggested that if Schneider’s body could keep topped up with it (keep in the nocturnal emissions for a change) perhaps that might have an effect which would certainly limit the empty feeling of rejection he was given to & all the other dissonance back-firing between his ears.
Eve half tried to defend him. “He wasn’t as bad as that. Was he?” But she said it deliberately without conviction.
“Are you saying he was a numbskull?” Darling was nonplussed & didn’t care for it much & tossed her head. “And he dribbles?” But then, in a flash, decided she had known all along.
There were lots of heads twanging up & down. “Something is definitely missing.”
“Confetti? Shrapnel?”