by Morrissey
MORRISSEY
List of the Lost
PENGUIN BOOKS
The author would like to thank Helen Conford
List of the Lost
Ezra, Nails, Harri, Justy. You’d dig hard and deep to excavate four names quite so unusual. Yet there they were and there they stood, sounding exactly like what they were. You would be offered a hearty shake of the javelin hand as expressions of possession of command from the four boys, each one fully developed into the blissful torment of their turnabout twentieth year – a pleasantly resolved marital union almost closed off in its camaraderie to the onlookers of the mookish greater world. Look at them now in their manful splendor and wonder how it is that they could possibly part this earth in dirt, as creased corpses, falling back as the skeletons that we already are, yet hidden behind musculature that will fall in time at life’s finishing line. At such an unavoidable call they shall be minus all that they now have, here and today, at ease in the confidence of their physical weightlessness, united in athletic skill from which they beg no acquittal. Our four boys have no hidden disappointments, for they equally bear the gift of hip-to-ankle idolized speed, their bodies calmly narcissistic ass-to-the-grass instruments com-mingled to become, as they now knew they were, America’s most sovereignly feared college relay team, with a unity that could send shivers through any braying jackass who might be fool enough to doubt them. The race begins and their bodies reply in relay, constantly responsible and on each other’s watch; four bodies of one heart, never forgetting themselves as being one single reflection. Imperishable, they train insatiably; companions in pleasure and passionate in sentiments, they are the living picture of the desired physique and the voluntary affection amongst friends that survives time. Beyond each other and their will to run, they seek no other distraction. People magnetically attract others with similar weaknesses, as marriage rings the bell for the servile in hiding. Ezra, Nails, Harri and Justy performed marital duties as joined by strengths, but not weaknesses, and this crowned their lives. They each saw the desirable object within each other, and combined, they had no cause to justify one second of their contract. It may be quite true that we unwisely reduce others in order to make them ours, yet here was a foursome to whom no outward event could dent flesh or expression. It should be said that they were indeed contracting parties, since their combined aim was to dispose of every other half-mile relay team on any known college campus across the land, and this they must do, biological chance providing all the damn-straight confirmation that they would ever need. It is certainly something to dwell excitedly within a body that fully and proudly shows whatever the person is, since we all, for the most part, struggle in haunted fashion, unaware of ourselves as flesh, looking at a future that does not show promise, or back at a past that couldn’t provide any, and permanently petrified at passing through without ever having lived. Undeveloped at twenty years, indecent thoughts at thirty years, the insoluble forty points to psychosomatic fifty, when moral inhibitions begin to laugh at the thought of further hope. The years pass as quickly as the sentence that describes their speed, yet you cannot believe it until you very suddenly look behind you and see a space once relied upon as being the future. Age sets its own terms, with its growing servitude catching that haunted reflection – one of no distinction because your frown now belongs to time. The wide-eyed girls were many, offering their conscious will as the running boys turned into overlords – strangers to the crowd yet well known in its imagination as the erotic reality of the deltoid deities who have no inhibitions in bodies fully occupied and enjoyed. The crowds look on with a lascivious dependency that a knife to the throat would never force them to admit. In servitude is the watcher, asking of the do-er that he assumes all aspects of the watcher’s desire. The body is a thing only, of which we all irrationally fear … how to control, how to control … that which controls us. Heatedly the four gather daily, minus boos and taboos, free of the prohibitions that dishonor us all should we dare remark upon each other’s physical good fortune (and lucky are those who might be remarked upon). We simply are not allowed to say. We employ sexual indifference as we gather in groups, schooled, as we are, against eroticisms, and any sudden desire registers as tension should our over-trained prejudices nap whilst our constitutional frigidity catches us looking – or, even worse, allowing ourselves to be looked at. Did you ever compliment a friend, a mere friend, on the directed desire of their eyes? Of course you didn’t. Or on their sexually agreeable smile? Of course you wouldn’t. Or on their hands – whose touch certainly does something as the waft of their passing being triggers unsuspecting impulses within unsuspecting you? The will to find all of these motions in others runs strong in our being, yet we must only ever observe without acting, and even the very words that are in themselves a form of action … must never be said. Day after day, year after year, we observe without operating, whilst the fact that we are only allowed to observe makes the will run and rise all the stronger. Worth is derived from approval, yet we discount the importance of our will to appreciate others because it is said to be a nothingness, or unwanted, or dangerously unsuspected. Yet, if I feel it, so must you, for it is you who made me feel so. Otherwise what is it that is ‘there’ for either of us to catch? Electrons from me need electrons from you in order to become electrons. Yet, there they are, and still you say nothing whilst always knowing. Look at the blue of the sky and tell me why you held back. Did you think there would one day be a bluer sky and a better hour? What did you think before you were aware?
Our four favored athletes have the task of relaying in relay and can therefore knock aside bothersome border boundaries as they guard each other’s bodies as if all amounted to just the one. Their success depends upon the communal goal, the spring in eight legs, the combined methodology of four minds, and the maintained perfection of four physical frames; four wheels of the one machine. It is not possible to have any purpose other than the solvent fixity of openness and sharing. They contemplate each other’s nature and structure, but not as a grasp on the sensual since, amongst other thoughts, there is a job to be done – a job almost as old as reading, one which fades faster than it blooms, batting away the decline that rots in life, a decline that must always win no matter how much you jog yourself into a headspin. Second by second the body is ponderable, ponderable, ponderable in any reflective surface.
In a pleasing suburb of the city of Boston, with its splendiferous stockbroker hamlets and bedroom communities of wide, tree-lined streets and pleasing market-town urbanization, the life-sized-puppet features of Mr Rims glare his magnified-fish countenance. As the boys’ training coach, his briefing-guru gestures might seem to warrant large pinches of salt, for he provides entertainment in amongst the bootcamp intolerance of his sharpening-up chalk talk. He is easy fun, but with a resounding thud in his go-for-the-throat launching attack he mocks the boys as pudgy girls, and he assures them that whatever they do shall never get in the way of proper sprinters.
“It would be nice if you took yourselves seriously once in a while,” he tells the boys as their punishing daily dozen drops each to the ground as if unable to do anything right. “But then, we don’t want to seem too pleased with ourselves,” he mumbles whilst looking away, “ambition exceeding grasp, and all of that.”
The boys of summer glare almost hatefully at the Sunday track, and the tryouts begin once more. Ezra is the lead-off man – twitch, twitch, twitching that all is in place; spikes, toes, elasticated waistband, everything comfortably arranged at the groin, and clear vision ahead with the right grip on the baton – firm, yet ready to loosen. Mr Rims’ starting-pistol jumps in his hand as it fires, and the other hand clicks a shiny stopwatch as Ezra takes flight, all schoolboy soul passing
perfectly to do-or-die Nails, licked into shape to hand over to Harri, whose big-leaguer grit finds anchorman Justy – the bull of the woods whose shafts of speed leave sparks across the finishing line. Huffing and breathless they then gather, facing Mr Rims for confirmation of something.
“Funeral pace,” Rims chews, feigning disinterest. “I could’ve walked in the time you took to run.” This isn’t true, of course, but such sorry-butt putdowns are thought to sharpen self-respect. “OK, so you’re now warmed up,” the coach croaks, even though two get-out-and-push hours have already dragged by. In the heat and the heart of the moment it is all never good enough, and the team ache for rest whilst wanting to perfect. Their dependency upon Mr Rims’ glib jib annoys their spirits whilst also directing, as he repeatedly mumbo jumbo’s his muttering mantra of “get your head into the game”. A game it isn’t, but with some muttonhead meaning such words find reason. There is no poetry in this military exercise, and yet it is understandable to cry with gratitude when it all goes well. All dietary modifications made, it becomes a sign of success when the boys feel too exhausted to sleep, but they are short sprinters and not tested for endurance, and so directed are they towards success that they can now only accept praise from those least likely to give it. Anything else is motherly encouragement – which will not do in the meathead world of savage sport. Light rain taps their faces like uncommitted kisses as early evening rush hour begins to hum from beyond the training ground. There is still no contentment from quibbling Rims, logic-chopping his way across every speedboat team attempt. Rims is only alarming if you are afraid of him, which the boys are not, but nonetheless there he is – a human speedometer whose insults facilitate and demolish the spirit in equal measure … “My grandmaw moves faster than that,” he drones with standard banality, “may Satan … rest her soul.” Stretching and high-kick exercises hone up on the scratch-gravel, and the fastidiousness shows a spit-and-polish tone on these days that seem like nothing yet might have great meaning in years to come … these months that gleefully suck the life out of your prime even though you think it must surely be far too early in life’s story for reflected light to take root. None can be patient enough to let life take its course as the years creep upon us like energy thieves, and to be twenty years old has no vague importance to those who find themselves in such infancy, for there is time a-plenty to waste, and indeed to enjoy wasting. Closing the day, Mr Rims now talks to the boys almost as if they were proper people, and this change in tone signals the dying day, for Rims is homesick for the success that only the boys’ can bring to him. This is a darker than usual April, with a major competition too close to jest about as June approaches like a meteorite in this year of 1975, so lavish with promise, so sadistic in demand. Only at the risk of their lives could the boys ever relax, and with never a moment’s cease-fire they shall die with their spikes on. Justy slaps his leg muscles and Ezra jogs on the spot whilst lifting his knees comically high. Nails twists his upper torso as the lower body remains statue still, his hands on his hips, and Harri seeks some applause for his impressive one-armed push-ups. The boys are indeed licked into shape and ready to jockey and scramble even the feared fraternities of Lakeview and Bennington, from where rumors of hellion gazelles have taken the wind out of a nation’s sails. The hand-off, here in God’s own Boston, has been so skilfully mastered that the most difficult task ahead will be shaking hands and kissing babies – the names of our tracksters called out to, yet unanswered, as bleacher observers rise to their feet and shout to our boys as if believing in nothing else. Easy victories do not await, but just rewards seem like a tasty cakewalk, a wrapped-up walkover, so neat and ready to breast the tape. They remind us all of what it is to be living, just as they might show you that you are not, but their natural joys can prevent us from dwelling on our own private failings. As innocent as water, as fueled as a bursting tank, their drunken rapture is found in their natural selves, ready to be televised and then pressed for their secrets like an imperious political dynasty. The athlete is very alone and must control every outcome, knowing how an unforeseen blunder shall be judged as the beginning of the end – or, even worse, the end of the beginning. You might let others down when such a move is the opposite of your intentions, and the shifting nature of luck leaves you privately howling.
There are days of genuinely poor visibility when your sorry best is the most you can do, whereas a dry and radiant day expects more from you and is ready to catch you victimized by excuses. Well, either you can run or you can’t, and no eloquent apologies are acceptable substitutes for hair-raising action. Somewhere alone within the hole of the soul it is known that the page is already turning, and the future is a time when you will only watch. Fully present in today, you will make the most of yourself as you dig deep to bring out whatever will save you, for isn’t it true that we have within us everything that we seek outside, from others? Ah, the competitive spirit which would endanger its own soul if it accepted less. It is never enough to assume that it will right itself when your name is called, and you twist within such a burden of responsibility so that the concentration prods like a long-term agony. It is a power that needs more power – and here and now, in this world but not the next. The thrill is not the race, but the point at which the race successfully ends, for there are no consolations to be had at third or fourth place – your brake lights evidently mysteriously snipped. By chance, our teamsters are four wind-shot greyhounds, and nature bestowed as much, as each makes the same deadly quicksilver strike in his different way. Their jet-plane speed and their bluedarter health are fully equated with natural virtue, and once they step on the gas or flatten the grass nothing else in life has class. Backward flips motion without any thought; it is just there, always, without cautious planning. Their surfboard bodies came genetically, as fat fanatics gaze on depressively. Perfectionism is what few possess as raw instinct, and you might work as hard as you wish yet find yourself still remaining your true Sara Lee podgy slug. Vanilla runners such as Ezra and Nails have never known chemical adventures – their Hispanic backgrounds somehow unimpressed with letting the air out of optimism – whereas pale-faced Justy and Harri were briefly blue-eyed and round-eyed devils who very quickly found their way back before any serious habits and hooks took the last of their luck or led them knuckle to knuckle with the machete of justice. All of that doesn’t matter now, because June looms with the most important day they shall ever have as a team, when national television cameras document a major track defeat for boneless Bennington and gassed Lakeview, our Priorswood tetrad repaid with paradise for all of their hard work. Nails didn’t care too much about what he did in life as long as he did something well, scarred as he was by his scrappy social background of unrelenting parental disapproval, of the untouchable question of religion’s fatal grip, of hate and hurt persistently bruising a harmless heart, whereas Justy had fared better in a rambling house full of upper-hand sisters (although they had always been they, whilst he would always be other due to whitewashed gender divides and separations that appeared to crop up hourly, and just occasionally with some meaning). Divine love had blessed Ezra, who had always won due to his physical and facial features – an amorously fixed gaze so sensually in place and all-American Alien strong that it would be commented upon time and again as if it were all he’d ever need. Nails had no family as such, having been abandoned and then discovered by a set of adoptive parents, whose methods of love were far too harsh to benefit the boy. Thus he assured himself that he was indeed as hard as nails, since life had insisted upon as much. He, too, had always been a desired one beyond the gloomy lair of the family home, and it would be forever assumed that his sharpened body accurately reflected his needs – which it did not; but at the same time he denied no bouquets that flew his way, and many there were. Touch came second to watching, though, and this troubled him without his understanding why, even though such shame was easily readable in a modern American society that worked very hard to keep sex out of commission. A
t a standstill, sexual experience became the one thing that most young people thought about, usually with worried countenance, and soon they would grow to fear it and learn to suppress it without finding out anything new about it – or about themselves in relation to it. If it worked it must only work one way … like most things in life. Parents approved only of sex within marriage, which also served as the ultimate threat to trying anything else with others. Conversely, Harri (a boy alone with his mother) and Justy opted for a certain less-educated mimicry, since they were romantically unsuccessful yet managed to keep such a truth unsaid, and simply made the most of what little they knew.
Sex was always there – everywhere photographically, in print, in film, so expansively thought about that almost nothing more could need to be said about it … yet … so difficult to obtain, not because of the appearances of Justy and Harri, but because of the atomic supremacy in the family values of their upbringing which, of course, circumscribed the sons’ freedom to fly, since a certain sexlessness kept the grown child tied to the family, even if the impossibly constricted demands could very easily lead to a form of sexual cremation for the young child. The parental mind would allow the child time to develop political views, but there would certainly be no question of allowing the child time to choose its preferred religion, and, even more importantly, the grand assumption that all children are extensively heterosexually resolved at birth whipped a demented torment across the many who were not. Whether physical maneuvers were difficult or easy (and it is usually one or the other, and for eternity), our foursome found in each other a generosity of spirit and determination that all other circumstances seemed blind to. Each would make up for the other’s loss – so firmly they took their friendship into their own hands, and around it went. Only Ezra worried that four males had found each other to be so emotionally indispensable to one another, yet he could not argue in favor of a better situation. In fading light he had met Eliza – the similarity of their names! … that e and that z! – and she provided enough initial silence for Ezra to fill as he’d wish, even if her all-show-and-no-go banished Ezra’s warmness for her formness to initially go its full distance. In such circumstances Ezra had only ever known sunlight, his thigh-blaster trophies easily acquired as he handled the female structure with an expertise that almost suggested aloofness – so speedily he knew, so speedily he unclasped, so confident his aim, like banking deposits.
