by Lucy Ellmann
For Katty Byrnes
Nothing: no thing: the non-existent: zero number: a thing or person of no significance or value: a worthless thing: a low condition: a trifle: (in Shakespeare) the vagina.
Contents
Preface
A Rural Backwater
The Café
The Corridor
Aeroplanes
The Job Interview
Jen’s Body
I Have A Job!
Coelacanth & Chips
Medically Impossible
Vaudeville
Roger Lewis’s Body
What’s it Really Like to Have a Body?
First-Name Terms
Jen Surveys Her Domain
Pandora’s Boxes
Xmas Pudding
Football
Catheterised Mares
The Gorgeous Gorge
Roger & Out
Sharp Moments
A Shaky Affair
The Veil
A Sunny Scene
The Wedding Plans
The Wedding-Eve Supper
The Wedding Itself
Civilisation
C-Shapes
The Wedding Night
The Meaning of Life
Epiphany in the Bush
A Perfect Pig
Back to Normal
Insults to the Body
A Sort of Apology
Soft Tissues
The Usual Suspect
Body of Evidence
Not Quite White (A Flashback)
Next! (Another Flashback)
Worthless
A Citizen’s Arrest
Tenacious of Life
Just Jelly
Life!
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
By the Same Author
Preface
In the beginning there was no east or west, no above or below. There was no HORIZON. In the beginning there was all the fun of the fair! A jousting and a jostling, a rollering and a coastering, BIG BANGS, carbon dating, galaxies of cotton candy, and tasty morsels served on tectonic plates. Glaciers inglaciated themselves. There was fission, there was fusion. Everything was in FLUX. And for once, male and female came together as one.
It was deep, it was ROUGH, this mating, the violence of cliff against cataract, of mantle on magma. Lava spat far and wide as the ramming went on – the earth laid bare, fucked by a rock. The NOISE he made as he wedged himself into her, piercing her fissures, mashing a groove there that would last to the end of time. Juices sprang from the gully he dug and ran hot and sulphurous from her cracks. All the friction and fiction of lovemaking: he, brutish, relentless, refusing to be expelled; and she, passive, pinioned, helpless – except to envelop him further. His gnarled edges ploughed her moistened ground until she GROANED, the earth groaned and opened for a rock.
It might have gone on for ever, rock and gorge alone in the dark together on the brink of time. Why should he stop? Why should a rock ever stop snaking into the earth, why not rock her to and fro FOR EVER, rest, revive and TWIST there, never leave her be, shaft her for ETERNITY! But they were sadly interrupted: a sun was born, and its shrill white light shrivelled the wild will of the rock. Taking fright, he leapt backwards, landing upside-down in the sea about twenty miles away, a quarter-mile from shore, only his blunt tip showing above the waves. Gannets quickly nested there, on a foreskin of grass and guano. Their bodies made the ROCK look white, as if covered in his own cum.
The gorge was left to gape and gulp emptily at the air. Gradually she filled with water, the salt water of her own tears at first. But later she lost her tang and bubbled with now long-gone lacustrine creatures. A dinosaur named NIGEL once sipped from the forlorn swamp. People named LUCY bashed each other’s skulls in on her banks, or ate the daffodils that grew there, hallucinated, and died.
Volcanic and erupting, as all cunts are, the lake sometimes heated up, red and swollen with desire, doubt, despair (curse of the unrequited), forcing her fish to die and her birds to fly. They flew to the ROCK, their arrival a clear message of love. The gannets fought them fiercely but the rock was unmoved, IMMOVABLE. His need: to hide from the sun in swirling waters, content with the indiscriminate fellatio he got from the rhythmic movements of the tide in the wide old ocean’s gob.
It was the earliest, and earthiest, of betrayals.
A Rural Backwater
A RURAL BACKWATER. Can’t you see how FRIGHTENING that sounds? Sounds like a place in which you might quietly DROWN. Birds tweeting overhead, late-afternoon sun flickering across the water, moorhens, greenery, dandelion FAIRIES floating by … A quick skinny-dip before anyone notices! But as soon as you get in, mud sucks at your feet and strong slimy weeds tug at your arms. The temperature of the water takes your breath away and you start to SINK. Before you know it, your eyes, still open, are being nibbled by STICKLEBACKS, your grey cheeks tickled by feathery fronds. Hey, somebody call an AMBULANCE, for chrissake!
There is no possibility of avoiding a walk today – no taxis at the station. As soon as she reaches the pavement, Jen is almost RUN OVER: a big truck starts to move off just as she tries to squeeze past it. Jen could easily have been CAUGHT by that truck, pulled along by some bit of her clothing or, more probably, her HANDBAG, which she wears diagonally across her chest to deter BAG-SNATCHERS. Jen could have been snatched herself by that truck and pulled slowly along the road, so slowly at first she might have been able to keep up with it for a bit by running backwards beside the truck, much to the amusement of passers-by, much to the amusement of her ENEMIES, who would glory in Jen’s befuddlement followed by her EXTINCTION beneath the many wheels of the many-wheeled truck after her ridiculous attempt to stay alive by running backwards no doubt yelling ‘HELP!’ or ‘STOP!’ or ‘WAIT!’ or some other unmemorable last word. But Jen’s enemies will have to wait a little longer for the pleasure of seeing her SQUISHED FLAT.
Jen’s hot and her foot hurts. Her feet always hurt. Amazing that feet work AT ALL. Guy standing on the corner, talking into his mobile phone. Looks like he’s lecturing the street! Looks like an IDIOT. She smells something. A tree. Where’s the nice stinky tree? She retraces a few steps to try to smell it again. The trouble is, Jen runs out of smelling ABILITY very quickly. She gets a HEADACHE if she sniffs too long.
Hot. Need a HAIRCUT. Need to put my hair up. Boxes. Need boxes. Hot. Pink. Sweaty. Sore foot. Hair. Job interview. VOMIT: pink-noodle vomit on the street! Who’d eat that? Dog maybe. Pink POODLE perhaps. Better than Urma Thurb’s food though. Her and her soft-boiled eggs and her fucking blueberry YOGHURTS, sitting there like KATHARINE HEPBURN in that office of hers like she’s the QUEEN OF SHEBA. Urma Thurb used to be NICE, used to LISTEN when you talk to her. Now she’s too busy. HATES everyone. New man, new job, FUCK YOU.
Guy eating breakfast in his front room, reading the paper. Enormous paper, tiny egg. They should print the news ON the egg. Turn the chair into a commode so he could have his morning CRAP there too. Jen has read the paper today (she collected all the newspapers on the train that other people left behind), including an obituary of the woman who discovered the first COELACANTH; there was a picture of her KISSING the coelacanth she had identified, after it was stuffed. Yiiigghhh. And now the coelacanth woman herself is dead. Who knows what death takes out of you, how long the moment of DISSOLUTION might be, or how terrible? This worried CHARLOTTE BRONTË a lot.
Teenager blocking the path. Jen longs to elbow her in the ribs. Jen has VIOLENT IMAGES of how IN LOVE everyone is, violent because of what she wants to DO to them. Every buoyant babe on the street, every eyebrowless damsel in the magazines – all seem to BEG to have their little lives curtailed.
Bunch of dopes at
the bus-stop, secretly wanking: they have that bored look of people when they’re secretly wanking. Jen wants a CHEESE SANDWICH. Hates EVERYONE. Or maybe tuna fish. Dog barking. Pink poodle? Rape victim in the paper. Rape VICTIM, the woman insisted, not rape SURVIVOR. Jen has been raped enough to know that all men hate her, the last time DRUGGED, so that she woke to find scratches on her inner thighs and had to GUESS the rest. Nobody BELIEVED her. Too FAT to be believed, too fat to be LISTENED to. Now she sees rape-eyed women everywhere. They walk the earth unpitied. All anyone really wants is to be left in charge of their own GENITALS.
Jen’s hatreds are immodest – they are not confined to herself alone! She loathes widely. Hates her species and her nation too, its gardens and gonads and government, the foxhunts and football and FAILURE, the ETHOS of failure. Nigella Lawson, Neighbourhood Watch Schemes, the BUSH – they talk about Africa as if they still OWN it!
She hates the BBC, the NHS, Bhs, HSB, the DHSS, B & Q, R & B, B & Bs, the BMJ, BMs, BMXs, C & A, M & S, H & M, HMV, TCP, TLC, CCTV, CPR, ECGs, ENT, the C of E, the EU, the QE2, DIY, MFI, MRIs, SRNs, ICUs, IVF, IDS, IDs, PMT, BUPA, UFOs, VIPs, JCBs, GCSEs, CVs, STDs, MPs, PMs, GPs, WPCs, WCs, QCs, OBEs, OAPs, the SAS, MI5, MI6, MI7, MI8, MI9, etc, the KGB, KLM, AK-47s, HGVs, GBH, G8, ITV, DNA, the FA, the PO, P & O, G & Ts, RSVPs, BYOBs, the CIA, the IRA, the UK, the USA, LA, CO2, H2O, and OJ. (But she LIKES BLTs!)
She hates everyone she’s ever met! She hates her whole FAMILY (though her brother’s all that’s left). She hates their neighbours in the building, because THEY get to carry on living there and she DOESN’T (the family flat where she has spent her ENTIRE LIFE, now up for sale against her wishes). Must be glad to see the back of me. They like my back view BEST, like to see me DEPARTING. That’s how I like THEM too. Like to see people moving rapidly AWAY from me. Only way to stop them STARING all the time.
Jen feels she’s being stared at NOW, as she peers across the street at what appears to be a café. So hungry! Hot. Hungry. Hair. Job interview. You need to EAT something before a JOB INTERVIEW. But Jen’s torn between wanting to get to the cafeé and wanting to deprive potential STARERS of something to stare at. Sometimes they lose interest if you FREEZE. But you can’t freeze in the middle of the ROAD, with CARS coming.
The Café
Jen sits for TWENTY MINUTES in her booth without being SERVED. The waitress consistently ignores her. Jen has changed her mind about the sandwich: now she wants CAKE. She’s read the menu, verified they HAVE cake. Why, she’s seen it with her own eyes! But no waitress. The place is full of babies. No COMPETING with all these babies. Who gave mothers permission to take over cafeés? What do BABIES know about CAKE?
One kid keeps creeping over and THROWING things at her. No ELBOW ROOM in this booth – feels like a COFFIN. I’m going to DIE in here, waiting for cake. Where is the fucking serving wench? Hiding behind the counter probably, devouring all the cake. Then she pukes it back on to the plate. People are always hiring these skinny waitresses on the assumption that they’re ABSTEMIOUS. But what if they’re BULIMIC and will cost you a fortune in doughnuts?
She somehow senses that I don’t DESERVE cake. But HOW, without even LOOKING at me, how does she know I’m unworthy of cake? Somebody come round earlier and WARN everybody? Like those guys who used to have to walk ahead of the train, waving a little flag. ‘Cake-eater on her way – don’t GIVE her any!’
By the time the waitress finally happens upon her in her booth, Jen is CRYING. What does the waitress think that IS on Jen’s face? SWEAT? That’s blood, sweat and tears, honey! And now she’s set all the OTHER babies off!
‘Could I have a piece of your pear, apple and bramble cake, please?’ innocently asks Jen. The waitress denies they have any such cake. WHY MUST PEOPLE DO THIS? When the cake in its ENTIRETY is sitting right behind her – Jen’s been STARING at it for half an hour!
WHAT A DUMP. Doesn’t she know we’re all only a week from STARVATION? You need to be in constant reach of food, water, shelter, light, TV, newspapers, alcohol, umbrellas, escalators, cigarettes and movies: it’s our HABITAT. Venture far from this stuff and you’re taking a BIG RISK (and missing movies). You’re better off being held hostage by Colombian GUERRILLAS than stumbling through the jungle on your own. At least with the guerrillas you’ll get food and a bed, maybe even a drink and a date! Being alone is only really safe if you’re a TREE.
Trees have it made. Plonk themselves down on a reliable food source and sit tight for CENTURIES, their leaves swept away by the wind and rain, their seeds transported by birds. WE have to keep on the move. Otherwise we’d be surrounded by SHIT. This is why the first creatures started CREEPING: they had to get away from their shit and their CHILDREN.
We only go to cafés because we assume there will be FOOD there, and a place to shit. Cafés with no toilet soon go out of business –
The waitress suddenly reappears, MIT CAKE. But it’s TINY. What is this miserable minuscule MINNIE MOUSE piece of cake? Jen has waited too long. One lousy PRISSY piece of cake just ain’t gonna do it. She wants the WHOLE CAKE, in its ENTIRETY, in fact she wants to eat the whole PLACE, mothers, babies, urchins and all! She wants to eat the bloody SERVING WENCH too, KING KONG-style, clutching that slender waist in her big fat fist while she bites her stupid HEAD off, cups, saucers, forks, knives, chairs, tables, doors and windows whizzing out of the corner of Jen’s mouth as CAKE CAKE CAKE pours down her GULLET into her GIZZARD (or vice versa), apples, pears and brambles, not an air pocket to be found in there between the CAKE and the SERVING WENCH and the weird metallic taste of the pretentious antique CASH REGISTER.
Instead, Jen merely asks if she can buy the rest of the cake ‘to take home’. No. Why not? Because then there would be no pear, apple and bramble cake to offer OTHER customers, should they arrive EXPECTING to find a pear, apple and bramble cake. But why does it MATTER who buys the cake, so long as it’s sold to SOMEBODY? There are plenty of OTHER cakes for those dopes. What the hell does it matter if this particular cake is sold to ONE dope or a BUNCH of dopes? JEN WANTS CAKE.
She wants anything she WANTS today. She has just arrived in a RURAL BACKWATER. She has almost been RUN OVER, she has been stared at, jeered at, denied cake. She has already had a little CRY. Jen is all alone in a strange place, motherless, fatherless, friendless and blue, blue as the sky outside, SKY-BLUE – a colour Jen has hated since infancy, when her mother forced her to take naps in her sky-blue bedroom. CAKE is her simple request! But nobody listens.
Jen gets up, releasing a stinging fart, and heads for the loo. BUT THERE IS NO LOO. Call this a CAFÉ
The Corridor
She stared down the corridor. It was not a LONG corridor, nor a very wide one. It was not a corridor worth mentioning THREE TIMES, but still it got mentioned.
Jen was a bit surprised to find herself standing in the bleak and narrow corridor (FOUR) of a rural GP’s surgery, waiting to be interviewed for the nurse’s job. She was not unaware that MOST doctor–nurse books start with the job-interview scene. No, that was not what surprised her. What surprised her was that SHE was a nurse.
Though she panted all the time, and stank, she was a nurse. Though she was so fat she attracted notice going through doorways, in case she didn’t MAKE it, she was a nurse. Though a light snow of DANDRUFF drifted down whenever she twiddled with her hair, which she did quite often, she was a nurse. Though every hair on her head was split, frizzed and frazzled, her neck a cascade of chins, she was a nurse. Though, squidlike, she changed COLOUR all the time, still she was a nurse (sometimes a pink one, sometimes black-and-blue). Though she’d barely passed all her EXAMS and was off sick half the time she was meant to be on duty, she was a nurse. Though she would rather NOT cure anybody if she could help it, she was a nurse. Though she’d been taught to see patients as DISEASES, and diseases as STATISTICS, she was a nurse. Though she had a deep aversion to the SICK, the AGED, and the DISABLED, she was a nurse. OK, so she hated oldies, cripples and retards. Everyone has their LIMIT. (They hated HER too!) She
didn’t much like KIDS either.
Shifting roomily in her trademark cargo pants, Jen tried to remember why she’d come. One reason was that nursing EXISTS, as a job. If it didn’t, she wouldn’t have bothered applying for a nursing position. Hell, she wouldn’t have done all that TRAINING either. The other reason is that JEN exists. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have NEEDED a job, she could have hovered ethereally somewhere: just being a couple of interrelated ATOMS would do.
Jen had often considered NOT existing. She was conversant with all the latest fashions in self-immolation. She could have clamped her head in a vice and bored holes in her temple with an electric drill, or set about her throat with an electric carving-knife. She could have injected herself with a little MAYONNAISE or PEANUT BUTTER, or tried a combo of potassium chloride, sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide (the recipe on Death Row), or raided the hospital labs for a smidgin of SMALLPOX. She could have drunk raw hydrochloric acid with a chaser of LIT FIRECRACKERS (always a big hit in the hospital canteen). But in the end it seemed simpler to get a job. Nursing was in her BLOOD (Jen was rather careless with needles) and – DUTY IS ALL.
Her most recent job had been on the Children’s Ward of a big city hospital: shit everywhere, pisspots overflowing. Children froze to death in the hallways awaiting a bed. The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Victorian times (the cleaners were on some kind of CONTRACT). It was MURDER, it was MAYHEM, it was the NHS during a period of reform, and Jen had called it home for a time.
Although many children died under her care (more than the national AVERAGE, if anyone had bothered to check), Jen was considered a useful member of staff. She could always be relied on to sit by a dying kid’s bed all night and still have the energy to make QUIPS in the morning with the grieving parents about the kid’s final thrashings or the effect of projectile vomiting on her UNIFORM. And she it was who volunteered to accompany seriously ill children in the ambulance to specialist (BETTER) hospitals which, curiously, they never reached in time.
