THREE
NO JACKET POTATO REQUIRED
I’m gonna take some time out here, to pause and reflect on the difficulties of life and the seemingly meaningless and incessant tirade of complications, conflicts and dilemmas that it throws up at us. You’re probably sitting there thinking, “Why is she smashing up that lovely little town and mashing up all of those innocent folk? Is she a complete tosser, or what?” But I have my reasons. And, by recounting to you here the tale of what’s been happening to us over the last month or so, taking care to zero in on the mundane minutiae of everyday life, I hope to explain the ferocity of my actions and to reveal just why those arseholes deserve to die.
Hold my hand and let me take you back...
The story really started long ago when Booga was a young teenager, staying in Chankers with family friends for his summer vacation. He’d gotten himself a job working as a Bin Emptier in the Spud-O-Matic selfservice hot potato bar, hoping to save enough dough to put a down payment on a car. The sunny days began to pass him by as he spent his holiday picking up empty spud skins (which, by the way, you should always eat, ’coz that’s where they keep the goodness), thrown on the floor by brainless, overweight, hick families. He became very downhearted and started to lose interest in his job and the chance of promotion to Bin Supervisor. His bosses soon became aware of his slack attitude and slovenly appearance. They took him into the back office for a verbal warning.
The manager said to him, “Now listen to us young Booga, we’ve been keeping a close eye on you and we can’t help thinking that you are letting the side down. We want our staff to look keen, sharp and above all happy.” Their manner was as pious and condescending as ever.
Booga said, “Yeah, but I don’t feel personally fulfilled by this job.”
They said, “Booga, there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’.”
To which Booga apparently replied, “No, but ‘U’ is in ‘cunts’.”
So there he was – young, braindead and job-free in Chankers.
Delinquency will always find its way to a bored kid wandering about the streets of a town like Chankers. Booga fell in with a gang of no-goodniks from the rotten side of the tracks, calling themselves the De Niros after the Bananarama hit single, ‘Robert De Niro’s Waving’.
Soon he found himself acting as lookout on several aborted latenight attempts to steal doughnuts from the local bakery, one of which ended in the arrest and detainment of the De Niros’ gang leader, Pinky Punky Pearson.
Pearson, a youth know for aggravating the cops, had been caught with his pants around down and was duly sent off with a smacked bottom to a reformatory for under-aged offenders and naughty people. Booga hadn’t found it easy making friends in Chankers and Pearson was the only lad that he had managed to form any kind of bond with, so his sudden disappearance sent Booga into a lonely depression.
The gang needed a new direction and Booga was reluctantly pushed forward to fill the boots of the absentee leader. That was a big mistake – Booga has never been able to tell the difference between what’s cool and what’s shit. To him Sunday School is as much fun as throwing bricks through a police station window and legging it. Before long Booga had the gang cleaning and tidying their club den, escorting little old ladies across busy streets, holding charity events, listening to Cliff Richard “discs” and playing ping pong for kicks.
It didn’t take much time for the gang to suss that Booga sucked. He was knocked off his high horse in a rebellious uprising. A hirsute kid with big turn-ups and curly golden hair calling himself Huckleberry took over as leader of the gang. They nicknamed him Fuckleberry, or Fuck for short, because he was a short fuck.
The coup d’état placed Booga in a vulnerable position. His standing in the group had moved sharply from new boy to leader to deposed loser. Fuckleberry took a mean disliking to him, pushing him around and punching him for a laugh.
Booga found himself shunned by the rest of the gang – much in the same way that badgers push the old guys out of the set when a young upstart shows his superior strength – and he was bullied and mocked in a jolly unsporting manner.
One time Booga got himself into a scrap with Fuckleberry and was getting his arse kicked. He made his escape by pulling a clump of Fuck’s hair out and left the kid screaming in agony. Booga kept the tuft and used it as the crowning glory of a voodoo doll he was making. The two boys never met up again; Booga made damn sure of that.
Bad vibes travel fast in small communities and soon the whole town was down on poor Booga. He became the scapegoat for every little misdemeanour and found himself harassed, blamed and persecuted from one end of the town to the other.
He was forced to go underground for the rest of his vacation.
FOUR
CHICKEN SHIT FOR THE SOUL
One of my first boyfriends had the names of all the girls he had ever shagged tattooed along the length of his cock. Unfortunately for him the first three girls’ names were Chrissy, Olivia and Desiree, and, seeing as the names started at the sharp end and scrolled down towards his pubic patch, their initials spelt out the word COD in black letters around the bell-end of his circumcised choad.
Now I didn’t get to see this until after the fact, and call me a prude if you like, but when he’d unloaded himself and whipped it out – and I’d gotten a good look at it in all its glistening, black on pink, Technicolor glory – I couldn’t stop myself from screaming, pulling out my switchblade, taking a slice at it, almost missing, but nicking it, and adding a small, bloody crossbar to the bottom curve of the letter C.
So if you ever come across a guy with a bit of a funny walk and the word GOD tattooed on his helmet, say hello from me.
FIVE
BARNEY’S ARMY
One sunny, run-of-the-mill Tuesday afternoon, about four and a half weeks ago, I was sitting in the kitchen of Jet Girl’s house, attempting to cut my toenails with a blade that I had unscrewed from an old Battle of the Planets pencil sharpener.
Although Jet Girl’s house is an antiquated late Victorian mansion in the puritan style (left to her by an eccentric aunt, who was so eccentric she was actually somebody else’s aunt, and it was also somebody else’s house), the place looks like it could’ve been built out of packing cases by Brian from The Breakfast Club. The rooms are littered with a lot of cool and interesting crap, including a stuffed antelope, a signed Cannon ‘n’ Ball LP and a cabinet collection of over four hundred gravy boats. Rock on fucking Tommy.
The kitchen is a spacious, clutter-free area with a giant, shit-brown round table as its centrepiece. I was there alone, waiting for Jet Girl to return from the local store with a packet of Custard Creams and some teabags.
Suddenly Barney burst in, all sweaty and ruddy, her beautiful, thick dark hair mussed-up and matted like she’d just shagged an entire football team. “Quick! Do you know where Booga is?” she asked in a deep and shaky tone.
“Sure,” I replied, looking up slowly, not wanting to give away the fact that I had always suspected her of fancying him, “he’s down at the police station, trying to buy an ice-cream.”
“Fuck,” she mumbled to herself, looking madly at the floor as she executed a sharp about-face and a swift exit, “titty-bollocks.”
Barney has been having problems coping with reality ever since her criminally insane parents managed to get her Christened with a boy’s name – that was just before they got banged up for three life-terms apiece. These days her lack of mental balance manifests itself mainly as streams of unwarranted swear words, long conversations with inanimate objects, a general lack of respect for herself and others, and an uncanny ability to stare blankly into the middle distance for hours on end. She’s a difficult friend to manage, but a powerful ally to have blocking for you.
Anyway, after Barney’s flying visit to Jet Girl’s house, I didn’t see her or Booga for another forty-eight hours. I spent the time playing chess and drinking with Jet Girl on her porch. Then I got a call on the blower. I was fast asleep on th
e sofa; it was Barney, sounding almost hysterical with happiness. “Tank Girl, is that you? Come to the window at the front of the house and take a look at what’s in the garden.”
So I did.
“You fucking loony,” I must’ve muttered a dozen times, as I scanned the outrageous spectacle before me, “what the hell are you playing at?”
There on the lawn was a regimental block – some twenty men wide by ten deep – of the most motley, crooked, ill-shaped and malnourished criminals ever assembled in one front garden, each one holding up a kitchen utensil or farm implement as a weapon and a bin lid as a shield. Not one of these “soldiers” was over four foot high.
I rolled myself up in a blanket and stepped out into the night, halfblinded by Jet Girl’s security lights. The smell of cabbage-farts reached me almost immediately.
Barney straightened her spine and shouted her command in true drill sergeant style, “Tennn huuuut!”
A wave of activity rippled through the ranks as the men shuffled their cheap shoes and held their weapons a couple of millimetres higher. The result of them coming to attention didn’t look much different from them being at ease, but Barney looked chuffed to bits anyway.
“Why are they all so fuckin’ short?” I asked, half yawning.
Barney looked sideways at her army without turning her head. “Are they?” she whispered nervously. “I didn’t notice.”
“And who the fuck are they anyway?”
Barney stiffened with pride. “This is my army.”
“So where is my boyfriend?”
Barney let out an ear-piercing wolf whistle. Moments later Booga came trotting around the corner of the barn, saddled on a knackered old donkey. Another ten mutant short-arses on clapped out ponies followed in a disorderly fashion.
“The cavalry?” I ventured.
“Damn right,” replied Barney.
Booga came past me at a mellow, Canterbury pace, turning his head slowly as he trotted and fixing me with a gallant and aloof gaze.
“And who the hell do you think you are,” I asked, snottily, “Don Quixote?”
“Who’s Donkey Hokey?” he replied, unable to mask his bafflement.
I strutted up and down in front of the uneven lines of “troops”. They puffed out their chests, stiffened their upper-lips and tried their hardest to resemble real men. Eventually I arrived back beside Barney and gave her a nominal nod of approval. “So what’s your beef? Who’s gonna get their head kicked in?” I asked, expecting the reply to be ridiculously fantastic.
“Chankers,” replied Barney, grinding her teeth with an anger that I don’t even want to try and describe. “My mum and dad are out of jail and staying above the old bar there. I’m gonna fucking kill ’em this time. I’m gonna get ’em and stretch ’em and squash ’em and cut ’em and shoot ’em up into little fuckin’ bite-sized morsels.”
“Nice,” I observed, trying hard to think on my feet – because I make it a golden rule in life never to get caught up in family squabbles – “but I’m afraid that I’m gonna have to give this one a miss, Barney. I’ve got some very important... er... cleaning to do. I’ve got to tidy out my Rockulator. I’ve been meaning to do it for quite some time now.”
Barney is easily fooled. She half smiled and said, “Oh. Shame.” Then I could see the thought floating around inside her brain, looking for a connection. After a long minute she finally asked, “What’s a Rockulator?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
SIX
“I AM NOT A FUCKING CHARITY SHOP.”
Next day it rained, all fuckin’ day. It came down so hard that it seemed like there was no air outside, just one continuous solid block of water, falling from the sky and bashing the living shit out of Jet Girl’s roof and windows.
Jet Girl made constant rounds of toast and Sub Girl came round. The three of us played the Scalextric slot-car drinking game. It felt like the last day of school (or what I’d imagine the last day of school would’ve felt like, had I actually been there, yuk yuk).
I couldn’t help worrying about Booga and Barney, off on their quest to do the nasty on Barney’s unsuspecting parents. I knew that Barney was crazy enough to scare off any really dangerous assailants, but something was niggling at me, a bad feeling deep down in my nether regions.
Time passed real slow.
Eventually the booze overtook us and the strain of putting the cars back on the track every five seconds sent us into a shallow coma.
We all had a collective dream of floods and boats and men in flowing robes, with bushy grey beards. Unbeknownst to us an electrical storm had blown up. The giant forked lightning, hitting the trees nearby, translated through the flesh of my drunken eyelids into a lovely big pink-red thing that had come to comfort me and take away my headache.
We awoke the next morning, bathed in warm yellow sunlight. Tufty white clouds rolled across the horizon. The storm had passed and it was time for breakfast.
Jet Girl brought in fresh fruit, Grape-Nuts and yoghurt. She set the stuff down on the coffee table and I peeled a silk cushion off of my cheek. She sat down on an understuffed beanbag and looked at me. “You were talking in your sleep again, missus.”
“Really? What was I saying?” I asked.
“Something about someone trying to stuff an old raincoat and a jigsaw puzzle up your backside,” she replied, stirring six lumps into her tea.
Sub Girl was looking out of the front window, perplexed. “Hey, Jet Girl, some cunt’s dumped a load of shit on your lawn.”
I struggled to get up and we went over to see what was out there. A mountain of rubbish obscured our view of the surrounding countryside. We looked at it for a short while. It was a surreal moment – us lot, still drunk, and the mysterious heap of grey fabric and mud, with a potato masher on the top, in the centre of a picturesque country garden.
The booze was still coursing around my brain. I wasn’t yet in full control of my faculties, but I knew there was something that I should’ve been thinking, something staring me right in the face, something of vital importance...
The beautiful morning.
The smell of stale vodka.
The rotting pile of grey matter.
The potato masher.
The potato masher.
The fucking potato masher!
Suddenly my eyes pulled into focus and I could see the pile of shit for what it really was – a mess of clothes, blood, kitchen utensils, donkeys and people. There was a hand, a shoeless foot, a beard, and there, at the very bottom, there was Barney’s bottom!
It was Barney’s stupid fuckin’ army!
I ran straight through the french windows without opening them, screaming my lungs out. “Booga! Booga!! Where are you? You stupid twat!”
We waded into the pile and started to untangle the bodies. They were sodden and cold from spending the night out in the storm. The smell was unbearable and Jet Girl had to go and puke on some daffodils.
Slowly we worked our way down through the crap and corpses towards Barney, carefully laying out the soldiers as we went.
Booga was nowhere to be seen.
Then we reached Barney. We pulled her out and positioned her lovingly on the dewy grass. She looked so still and peaceful, like a sleeping child. Then she farted a long, trumpety, deeply tonal and noxious smelling honker.
“That’s what happens when you die,” observed Sub Girl, “all of your bodily functions do their stuff and all the shit and poo comes out.”
The fart smelt strangely familiar, a real blast from the past.
Barney let out a lengthy, croaking belch that probably had all of the bullfrogs in the local area in a state of heightened sexual arousal.
“See what I mean?” said Sub Girl.
I was still breathing in the brown air. “That fart... I know that smell...” Then the penny dropped: “I’ve got it! That’s the fart that Barney does when she’s had more than two dozen pints of lager.”
Barney’s left eyelid unstuck itsel
f for a microsecond, revealing the whites of her bloodshot eyeballs. Her bottom lip fell open in an involuntary motion and a single word fell out of her mouth: “Blager.”
Then she farted again.
SEVEN
BOOGA
Baby
you got me hangin’
hangin’ like a bauble on a Christmas tree
a shiny blue globe
reflecting the kids opening the stuff
and all the wrapping paper
all that beautiful paper
such a waste
such a shame
to throw away something that took a mind to make
that took a lifetime to grow
and heartfelt consideration to achieve
on a day like this
when everyone seems so happy
such a shame
I can’t open this up
I can’t get this out of here
out of my heart
and you couldn’t take it anyway
we’re both
so cold
but hope
is an eternal spring
and death
will never come
so long as you keep me hangin’ on.
EIGHT
COLUMBUS WAS A CUNT
It turned out that Barney’s army had marched into the wrong bar, in the wrong town, but decided to stay there anyway because of the bad weather. One of the short-arsed soldiers knew the barkeeper from summer school, so the raid turned into a free-for-all booze party.
No one was hurt – apart from a small injury sustained from a game of Slapsies that got out of hand, so that explained the blood – they were just excessively Brahms and Liszt and totally incapable of anything, including looking like they were still alive. Even the donkeys had had a few shandies.
Some helpful soul had given them all a lift back to Jet Girl’s house on the back of a tip-up truck and dumped them unceremoniously on the lawn in the big, festering, drunken heap that we had found them.
Tank Girl Page 2
