Naked City

by Anthony Cropper

  That staccato three-note intro merging seamlessly into that nostalgic classical guitar signature! That oh-so-irresistible windy bass drum! That slightly overeager single maraca accompaniment! And then, twelve bars in, when the flautist pipes up with his evocative four-note refrain and Gabriel begins his archangelic statement…Enough! You’re already up and dancing, right there in the middle of the Hare and Hounds to the complete astonishment of your co-hosts as well as the other disbelieving patrons.

  What exactly is it you’re feeling? Some paradoxical compulsion to get down and boogie? An overwhelming urge to move synchronously with the orphean music? Who gives a monkeys! It feels about the best you’ve ever felt with knobs on. That impossibly mellifluous sound flooding into your body, seemingly through every orifice and pore; it can only be described as a libidinous sonic caress. And an orange sonic caress at that, for the music, as strange as it seems, has developed a very definite technicoloured tactility. You’re hearing in colour! You’ve become a synaesthete of Olympian stature and you’re odds-on favourite to collect gold. Just hope you’re not selected for a random drug test.

  You hear somebody say ‘fucker’s as mad as a box of frogs’ and images of said amphibi spontaneously zip through your mercurial id, only serving to elevate you even further. Such lovely green and slimy creatures you think, the sheer frogginess of them all! But if your smile gets any wider you surmise your face might split open right across the front because there’s no real merriment in that facial expression, no siree. And on top of that you’re dancing on the spot like a madman, and that’s the sort of vigorous exercise that just can’t be healthy in a normally staid young man like yourself. You’re about ninety seconds into your impromptu Solsbury Hill quickstep when Russell and Rosalind intervene, as is the duty of friends to do so in such circumstances. Their part in the rescue effort involves each grabbing hold of a flailing upper limb, restraining you as best they can whilst you remonstrate like a spoilt brat and, erm, frogmarching you out of the pub to the dying strains of the ex-Genesis frontman.

  ‘Fucker’s enriched with social venom.’ Rosalind observes.

  ‘What -’

  ‘Vitamin E,’ she says. ‘Look at the size of his pupils. He’s on one.’

  ‘That…fucking Borg!’ Russell expounds astutely. He peers directly into your eyes and confirms the diagnosis. Heavens to Murgatroyd; it’s still relatively light outside and your pupils are fixed and dilated. Not that you have any inkling whatsoever about your optical mydriasis; all you can do is continue to strut your funky stuff right there in the street. Even the traffic on Liverpool Road throbs just at that specific beat you need to dance along with. And you are tuned into that transcendental tempo so emphatically that you want to dance along with it forever. You’ve hit upon the very frequency of the universe and nothing is going to stop you surfing the crest of that particular wavelength. You’ve got a feeling you might just be the Resurrection, but in the meantime your brain chemistry is being irreparably crucified.

  All this dereliction can only mean one thing; you know it, Russell knows it, and Rosalind knows it too. She’s got her knickers in a twist and looks about as happy as a convent girl with flat batteries, which isn’t that far from the actual truth. It’s you the blame should fall upon because it’s you who’s put the kibosh on her triplicate birthday extravaganza. This potential threesome has degenerated, at least for you, into a lonesome onesome.

  Far from humanity-embracing benevolence, what you are looking at now is a holocaust-calibre depression deeper even than Larkin’s coastal shelf. You are dopamine-depleted to near insentient levels and it’s taking all your remaining spatio-temporal capacities just to establish your exact whereabouts, of which you have no fucking idea. But after a minute, you pinpoint your location. You’re on the couch, Russell and Rosalind’s, and after squinting at your watch for a further minute you verify it’s the middle of the next day after the night before. You presume they’ve upped and gone to work; work being an activity you’ve long since eliminated from your day-to-day routine. You try to right yourself but find you can hardly move, let alone sit upright. And on top of the catatonic stupor, it seems rigor mortis has set in just for the hell of it. The only physical characteristic you’re acutely aware of is a priapic hard-on of hypotension-inducing magnitude, which isn’t that unusual in itself, except for the fact you’re still fully clothed and the denim containment of such a protuberance is providing intolerable to say the least. You reach down and free the beast from its enclosure; ah, that’s better.

  After a while you get your sea legs and hobble into the kitchen. You polish off a litre of fresh orange juice in an attempt to quench your biblical thirst; rehydration being the name of the game. It brings about a partial resuscitation effect and you spot a note fixed to the fridge door with a novelty magnet, boldly addressed in Russell’s hand to you. It goes along the lines of: thereafter you steadily deteriorated into a state of half-collapse; you ruined everybody’s fucking evening you base cunt; but hey, hope you’re feeling a bit better all the same. Rosalind, you’re warned, is less forthcoming with regards to forgiveness and as far as your recovery goes, she couldn’t care less one way of the other. You take that to mean you’ve blown your chance of ever spearing her bearded clam. C’est la fucking vie.

  You start to remember stuff: their sleazy offer; The Borg; dancing in the street; how euphoric you initially felt when the Dove kicked in. You can safely say you’re feeling the diametrical opposite of that today. Inside your head it’s literally pandemonium; devilish fuckers have set up shop and are doling out retribution like there’s no tomorrow. It feels like you’re being trepanned from within, but then you’re reminded of a sovereign remedy.

  You enter that most private of domains; somebody else’s bedroom. This one looks just like any other, a bedroom is a bedroom, is a bedroom. But this one’s Russell and Rosalind’s and you haven’t come in here to admire the natty décor or catch forty winks; you’re here purely for fantasy and masturbatory purposes. You park yourself four-square on the bed and dick in hand, pants around ankles, set about achieving your objective. Whilst there are no personnel shortages in the Engorgement Dept., upstairs in Imagery most of the staff have rung in sick. An internal memo has been posted to your hippocampus: ‘Due to reckless management improprieties, all higher mental activity has been suspended for the foreseeable future. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.’ Now you need to find an alternative method of stimulation to support the matter in hand: visual, aural, or…olfactory. At the foot of the bed, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, lie Rosalind’s strewn and obviously well worn panties. The role of knicker-sniffer is not a part you ever saw yourself auditioning for, but you’ve always said you shouldn’t knock anything till you’ve tried it, so in for a penny…

  Once you’ve got Rosalind’s smalls over your head and positioned accordingly, you take your partner by the hand and dance a vigorous five-knuckle shuffle. Minutes pass; you find yourself consumed by that most characteristic of designer fragrances: Parfum du Rosalind. In fact what you’ve fashioned for yourself here is a relative bouquet garni, and it’s enhanced this ordinary meat dish to almost haute cuisine specifications. Languidly, incautiously, you continue to pull the head off.

  In no time at all, you’re galloping down the home straight with only a furlong to go, when you’re suddenly aware of an unannounced human presence in the room. You pull aside your insanitary blindfold and find its gob smacked owner standing there, bracing herself in the doorway. Not only have you been caught with your pants down in the true meaning of the phrase, you’ve been undeniably exposed with her pants on.

  No verbal communication is forthcoming and you offer her none in return. The room is filled with a short-lived tranquillity and for one merciful instant, you think she might just see the funny side. But that old proverb about women scorned: you wonder whether its author was ever bubbled in a similarly compromising configuration as the one you now find yourself to be in. By s
uch things does fate do its work for you conclude as her fists windmill into your cowering aberration of a body.

  Expectanz

  Jane Graham

  When we come in from sitting out in the yard I see that he has taken up gymnastics in the meantime. With hands and feet splayed out to the sides he jumps up and down in the shape of a star until he has had enough and then stands, waiting, tapping his foot restlessly on the floor of the cavern as if to say, so kids, when are we going to get this show back on the road?

  Our miniature warrior sits inside the television screen, all set to go now that his magical abilities have recharged and his health is back at its peak. He seems oblivious to the fact he’s stood smack bang in the middle of a blazing furnace being tended to by a gang of ogres chiselled wholly out of rocks, apparently as immersed in their activity as he is in his. Just as soon as one of us restarts the game though, they’ll notice him and attack.

  Just then, the baby kicks. It doesn’t mess about, this one, in handing out the hidings, and when I pull up my top we can both see the distinct imprint of a foot bulging out of the stretched flesh of my stomach, as if this kid is trying to make a break for the outside world feet first.

  Just two weeks now to go. That’s if we’re still running to schedule, of course. Lee thinks this one is going to be an early bird. I’ve had to hear him explain to me I don’t know how many times how all the women in his family have their babies before the due date, but I’m not so sure. I don’t wonder if it’ll wait until August, just to let me sit out this long hot summer with my own built-in radiator.

  I can’t remember the last time we got this lucky with our seasons, when the weather’s so fine you don’t even have to bring a jacket in case, when you just know tomorrow’s going to sweat the life out of you the same as today. Bloody typical the one June I’m under house arrest has to be heading for the hottest British summer in years. It reminds me of the ones when I was a kid, with hikes bilberry-picking on the moors; one year a patch of heather caught fire just like that in front of me and my brother, and us kneeling on the moorland with our gobs open looking at each other like, we didn’t do nowt, honest, we didn’t touch it! My mum always used to tell me it was like this when I was born.

  I can still feel the heat coming up from the melting concrete out in the yard. That’s more Lee’s domain than mine. He’s been smoking out there now that he doesn’t freeze his nuts off soon as he opens the door – we both agree it’s better for the baby that way - and he seems to know exactly what’s going on with most of the neighbours, though to be honest that’s one scenario I can live without exploring. The other day he started telling me about the group of students who live in the next house along. They keep their door open well into the evenings just like we do, and aside from their regular viewings of Eastenders they sound like they’ve got a right little soap opera going of their own. I wasn’t too impressed when he said he kept seeing one of the girls in just her bra and knickers all the time, some little madam of a magistrate’s daughter, necking bottles of vodka in her room half-naked. Took it with a pinch of salt though. In your dreams, I told him, trying to look pissy but he could see the dimples where the smile was coming through. All that was before we started the game, of course.

  Just press the x key to pause it, Lee always has to tell me every time like it’s the first. You would have thought I’d remember it by now but somehow I don’t. It’s the same key to start it up again, I do know that much. Even when you’ve paused it, though, the game figure doesn’t stop going through the motions, but it’s a computer-generated loop, that’s all, just a series of actions repeated over and over until play is resumed or the machine is turned off completely.

  Lee starts the game up once more but he’s not concentrating properly and three ogres ambush him all at once. I’m dead, he says, emitting just a moment’s tantrum of body language and then he’s starting it again from his last save point like nothing happened.

  That’s Lee, tenacious as a terrier with a postman’s ankle. He’ll play for hours without tiring. The father of my unborn child, lying on his stomach and propped-up on his elbows, the sun dappling his body in stripes of light through the slatted blinds in a profile of complete concentration, his mouth a little open and his brow furrowed. I suppose he might quit if I suddenly jumped up off the bed, a great wet patch where I’d been sitting, but I doubt there’s much else to distract us this week. We’ll just keep playing until lumpy here decides it’s time.

  It might not seem like it as I never go near the controls, but I assure you we play this game together. I’m more of a back-seat driver, letting Lee know when he needs to use a healing potion or a magic spell, warning him of things he can’t see he’s so caught up in the fighting, trying to figure out the puzzles and how all the gems work. Hand me the joystick, and I’ll be dead within a minute, and that only makes me cranky and short-tempered. This way works out fine.

  I do take breaks away from it sometimes to have a nap or a walk to the supermarket, let Lee carry on without me. The first game we played together I didn’t take my eyes off the television screen for hours at a time, and then there I was in the night, talking about dragons and magic rings in my sleep. Now the baby keeps me grounded, I suppose. Always needing to get up to take a pee, to eat, always that restless fidgeting just in case I might forget I was really pregnant.

  If the last eight months have seen me bloom I must be the Venus Fly Trap of expectant mothers. Fierce close combat and an aggression rating at times off the chart don’t seem to have done too much harm, I mean I had wanted to get a whole new set of cups in the kitchen anyway. Most of the time money was at the bottom of it all, but all sorts of shit have prompted me to lose it since Christmas. Protecting my ward, call it what you like – just lately, though, we seem to have found ourselves becalmed, like being tossed up after a storm in the Bermuda Triangle.

  At least physically, I seem to have taken to pregnancy like a duck to water, and as for the two of us, we’ve slid into a little routine of our own, one based around that machine. It starts too early for the jobless, granted, as the morning sun has become an impatient authority that we try in vain to escape, crawling into the quilt for peaceful darkness, sheets sticking to our sweaty bodies. Yet aside from this capitulation to the weather and with a break for an afternoon siesta, our days are spent in the game.

  I’d made him put it away. It’s not good for us, I’d said, it’s rotting our brains. Stopping me sleeping and learning all those lines, which is what I was supposed to be doing back then. I was determined to get my big break. I needed to rehearse, audition, hell, do something. Even when I found out I was pregnant, in the beginning that only seemed to make it worse. Barely a few more months of my life as I knew it left to cram in everything I hadn’t got around to before… Who was I kidding? I got bored and asked him to get it out of the box again.

  The Playstation, I mean. Can we play it, I’d say, meaning I wanted him to play it and for me to watch. This really annoys Lee sometimes. He gets tired of my constant commentary, do this, watch out for that, tells me I have no idea how difficult it actually is to fight the enemies with this joystick. I know I might make it look easy, he says… That’s Lee for you, not exactly weighed down with humility.

  I don’t want to go out. I have everything I need right here. I don’t need start doing things out there when I don’t know when I’ll have to down tools and leg it for the hospital. It’s okay just to watch Lee make his way through the caverns.

  They call this ‘nesting’, don’t they? Except I’m supposed to be decorating our spare room with balloon-motifed wallpaper and fuzzy sky blue/pink things until it’s sickly enough to be dubbed ‘the nursery’, if we had a spare room, that is. We just have a cot, and Lee’s already put that together. Took him about half-an-hour. Now if I’d have tried to assemble it, I could have probably killed a couple of days.

  Lee’s getting agitated with this particular part of the game. He makes me go and look at a walk-through on
the computer. I call up the file in documents and scroll through it until I find the tips for this level, but they’re not exactly useful. It was probably written by some spotty Japanese twelve year old; surely nobody could stand to be the wife or the girlfriend of someone whose entire free time was spent on the computer systematically noting every enemy, object - magic or otherwise - and puzzle encountered in this entire adventure game.

  Lee’s not impressed with the information I give him but it’s not my fault the spotty Japanese kid didn’t think the level worthy of closer attention.

  People keep telling me I won’t be able to be like this after the baby is born, like I didn’t know that. My mum gave me a book to read but all I’ve done with that is laugh at the pictures. I don’t suppose I’ll really be missing much if this is what I’m giving up. I’m sure I did once have more than days like today, but what, I couldn’t quite tell you – more nights than days, for one thing. I’ve tracked the loss of my figure by the week, but my memory ran away when my back was turned.

  Before I can sink back into the mattress and lose myself in the game, I decide we need tea, so I take the used cups from off the side into the kitchen with me, trying to make sure I don’t make too much noise. Pregnancy has made me very heavy-footed, and Lee is always berating me for stomping, which would mean that I was stroppy about something, and isn’t usually the case. I just walk like that now without thinking, though I still don’t reckon Lee believes me. I put the kettle on, then notice there’s no milk. We live round the back of a shop, one owned by the landlord, so it’s no big deal to go out and get some. If I ever forget that fact, there’s little things to remind me, like when they’ve just had a delivery and you can hear them, lugging great sacks of onions or potatoes or whatever it is down into the cellar. I guess they can hear us just as well in the shop, too.