Ten

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from: richardvhirst@acemail.com
to: martintrhiggins@acemail.com
sent: 20.03.10 at 14:56 pm
subject: RE: Hello!


Richard

Hey, Marty.

Good to hear you’re trying to get back into the swing of things, albeit with mixed results. Have you ever thought of signing yourself up for some evening classes? My cousin Alf was learning how to smoke mackerel when he found love. In fact, his teacher turned out to be his future wife. Obviously, she also turned out to be a cannibal, something cousin Alf probably learned when she killed, smoked and ate him. Still, don’t let that put you off. People always forget that cousin Alf and Maria had many, many, many happy hours of matrimony before she stoved his head in with that galvanised concrete birdbath.

Ugh, what a week this has been! And it started out nice as lice, as my granddad used to say: the sun was out, the birds were singing in the trees, all was right in the world. But no, it’s ended up crap as a tap, as my granddad also used to say: the birds have all gone mad and are pecking me all over then precision-shitting into the wounds whilst the sun laughs like a drunk and smears its hot balls all over my face and the trees that all the birds had previously been singing in use their branches to pinion me down and say ‘DO YOU LIKE THAT? DO YOU? DO YOU LIKE IT?’ into my shivering, blubbering face. Metaphorically speaking, of course. As the old saying goes, ‘you can’t become Pope if you’re just a pillowcase full of prawns’. Actually, I’m not sure exactly what that means. It’s something else granddad used to say when he was in the home, shortly before the end.

Everything was fine, Marty! Things were all going so well - I was looking forward to this coming weekend’s date with Agatha (I’d planned on taking her to the Steve Martin Memorial Museum Of Toasters And All Things Toast); and I was starting to enjoy going to work a lot more - getting to see her around here and there at Benjamenta Insurance. During coffee breaks where we’d sit together and do the Independent’s new ‘erotic sudoku’ (although I’m not entirely sure how it qualifies as ‘erotic’ rather than ‘mind-wiltingly simple’ - all the numbers have to be either a six or a nine - I guess that’s so you can finish quickly and get some quick-as-a-flash rumpy-pumpy in before the end of your break). We even started leaving amusing little post-it notes for one another. Only yesterday I stuck one to her desk-tidy saying ‘How about a swift snuggle round 3.30pm? In the under-the-stairs cupboard where the Henry the Hoover lives?’ She left me a reply-note saying ‘I’m not interested. Frankly, I’m alarmed. Also this is a waste of stationery. Thanks. Geoff.’ which I thought hilarious till I remembered Agatha had indeed switched office-cubicles with Geoff Langley from accounts earlier in the week. Now I think about it, as I was leaving the note, I did think it seemed a bit odd that she had a monster-truck calendar on her dividing-wall, a picture of Geoff’s family on her desk, and an envelope stuffed with pornographic playing cards at the bottom of her drawer.

Anyway, besides this minor blip of misunderstanding, everything was going swimmingly. Until, that is, I got back from work last night to find Virgil, my ex-lodger, sat on my sofa. He’s returned to my flat for the time being whilst his new place is being used as the set for ‘Paint Your Dragon’, a sitcom about a family who have a large, mischievous pet dragon they have to keep secret from their priggish neighbours by painting it so it blends in with whatever background it’s stood against. Apparently Nicholas Lyndhurst’s in it. I think it sounds amazing.

We chatted for a bit, then I showed Virgil a picture of I’d taken on my phone of me and Agatha in the staff room, holding up our successfully completed sudoku in celebration. Then do you know what he said? Do you? I’ll tell you, because you probably don’t.

He said: ‘I did her.’ Just like that. All nonchalant, like he’s Serge Gainsbourg or John Leslie or something, and not a toothless, eczema-faced drunk who should be grateful to get any action from a dead lamb. He continued: ‘I did her. Like, in a sex sense. I mean, I had sex with her. Me and her - sex. Just so we’re clear. I’d hate for a series of amusing, madcap antics to emerge from a relatively basic misunderstanding here. I had sex with her. This woman in this picture you’re showing me on your phone. Her. I had sex with her. With my erect penis. And her vagina. Sex.’

Obviously, I thought there must be some kind of mistake. But no. Virgil was unashamedly adamant. He even started launching into a lengthy appraisal of the foreplay that had been involved, leaning forwards in his armchair and chuckling like some kind of bad Ronnie Corbett. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Obviously, we got into our old argument about Stagecoach's franchise-ownership of Sheffield's tram system - Virgil holding that it was a perfectly legitimate business-move, whereas I, as you know, maintain that the lack of adequate regulation involved in this transaction was the starting-point for the company's disregard for localised competitive strategy.

Enraged, I opened the door, stormed out of the room and slammed it shut. Immediately I realised I’d picked the wrong door, was in the fridge, and had pulled the door shut so hard nothing could re-open it. Three and a quarter hours later, with a little help from Virgil, the building’s utilities manager, and some lovely chaps from the fire service (and after three dozen or so rounds of ‘Imaginary Battleships’, ‘Imaginary Risk’ and ‘Imaginary Hungry Hippos’ with Virgil), I uncoiled myself from round the leftover roast chicken and measuring jug of curdling custard and was able to re-stage my dramatic exit five hours later.

I stormed straight into a woman in the corridor outside my flat. She had a slipper of Babysham in one hand, a large flash of mulled-sherry in the other, and a yard of Malibu in the other. I’d seen her around the block of flats before and figured she was one of my neighbours. Right away I could tell she wanted me. I don’t know whether it was my dizzying good looks, the waves of sexual magnetism I can’t help but radiate, or the fact I smelled very strongly of roast chicken and she was drunk and peckish. But when she said ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you have an argument with your friend in there. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea. I’m having a little party - just a small gathering,’ I said yes without a second thought.

I should’ve realised this was a bad idea when I saw the inside of her flat. The woman went off to make me a cup of tea and I saw that her living-room was lined with what looked like unlit phallic-shaped candles. In the corner nearest to me there was a large bucking bronco machine, but I couldn’t see how anyone could ride on it, Marty, because in the middle of the saddle there was some sort of large handle moulded into the seat. Initially it looked like there was four or five very old, very wrinkly people sat round a coffee table in silence in the centre of the room, all in the nude, whilst ‘Candle In The Wind’ blared out of a stereo system in the corner. By the time I’d realised they were actually a group half-deflated blow-up dolls it was too late to leave. The woman had returned. I accepted a mug brimful with tea, which turned out to be a pint whiskey with a teabag floating in it.

‘My name’s Chloe,’ she said, pushing me onto the sofa in between the sex-dolls. Then she started lapdancing, whilst eating a sausage and egg sandwich. The brown sauce spilled down her chin, she spat stray pieces of eggshell and gristle into my lap, some of her long fringe got caught in the sandwich so had to keep dragging food-matted lengths of hair from her throat. It was erotic. I stood up, took the remainder of he sandwich off her, took a bite out of it and said ‘Shall we take this to the bedroom?’

She was annoyed at me for stealing a mouthful of her lunch but agreed nonetheless. Her bedroom was worse than her living room. Every single patch of wall was covered with pictures of celebrity chef Rick Stein: magazine photos, newspaper cuttings, crayon drawings of him cooking his enormous genitals in a huge pan which had been specially converted from a decommissioned naval ship, print-offs of crudely photoshopped images of him dressed in dungarees whilst having sex with a bear’s skeleton. Still, I thought ‘No. I will do this.’

Chloe put some music on - another cd of ‘Candle In The Wind’ which she left on repeat - then began to undress. One of the first things I noticed was that she had a large bushy tail like a hairy dog’s. It wagged happily.

She caught me staring at it: ‘Oh, don’t worry about the tail. It used to belong to my Biffy. I was devastated when he died. Luckily, all it took was a brief bit of experimental grafting in the veterinary surgery,’ she said, stroking the tail, ‘and presto - part of him will live forever! It’s wonderful. And I save a fortune on toilet paper.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘And what are these on your back?’

‘Oh, they’re testicles. A side-effect of the treatment I had to undergo to counterbalance the effects of the dog-hormones that the graft introduced to my metabolism. Don’t worry though, I’m all woman. Other than the backers, of course. I call them that. It’s a mix of the words “knackers” and “back”, y’know?’

‘HOW SWEET!’ I shrieked, touching my hand against the nightmarish spice-rack of flesh, the whole thing two degrees cooler than the rest of her body. I felt like crying. Still, I thought ‘No. I will do this.’

Then I saw that there was an eyeball in her knee, studded into the bagged cap-flesh like a glacé cherry on a cake. ‘Oh, you don’t want to be bothered by Chaz,’ Chloe said.

‘Chaz?’

‘My unborn twin. My mother had a traumatic mishap in an out-of-control teacups ride when she was pregnant with us. As a result there’s pieces of him all over my body - an eye in the knee, a hand in the brain, and I think a couple of these backers might be his,’ she said, hopping into bed. ‘Don’t worry though, he can’t see you.’ The eyeball moved around, seeming to focus on me, winking and frowning in disapproval of what was about to occur as it disappeared beneath the sheets. Again I thought: ‘No. I will do this.’

‘CAN I TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?’ I asked, using my discarded clothes to block any light coming in under the door and draping a duvet over the curtain-rails to mask some exterior streetlight which was coming through the window. As I approached the bed though, I could just about see Chloe’s outline, and stopped in my tracks. Her profile looked exactly like that of former home secretary David Blunkett, Marty. As you know, there’s nothing which terrifies me more than former home secretary David Blunkett. Well, other than clouds, muffins, buttons, pigeons, fingernails, death, lawns, bumper-cars, mimes, bookmarks, coat-hangers, paté, balloons, guinea pigs, broccoli, question marks, hammers, old people, bongos, skimmed milk, and The Wurzels. Nothing.

She said: ‘Since the 11th of September, 2001, we've faced a heightened threat level. And we've been enhancing both the exchange of intelligence and security information and the assessment of that information, because that's the crucial element.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said are you okay?’

I’d had all I could stand. Before I knew what was going on I’d bolted out of the flat and was stood inside mine, leaning against the door and panting. Virgil, who’d been lying weeping on the sofa whilst watching Gramsci and the Mutt on that new Marxist Cartoon Channel. He stood up when I came in. He asked why I’d stormed out. When I told him he laughed and asked me get the picture back up on my phone-screen. After a brief return to Chloe’s to gather my clothes I pulled the phone out of my pocket and showed him.

‘No, not her,’ he said, pointing at Agatha. ‘I meant her’ And he pointed at the picture of Judith Chalmers in the newspaper we were holding up. ‘I had sex with Judith Chalmers. Up against a lamppost in a town in Estonia whilst a tv crew filmed the whole thing. Some locals paid to watch. It must have made quite a controversial Wish You Were Here…? At least, I’m pretty sure it was her. She didn’t speak a word of English.’

My mind's all over the place. After spending the best part of an evening directing my hatred towards Agatha for whoring it up with a confused homeless man who, it would seem, was actually being whored out himself by an Estonian pensioner who had the good luck to look a little bit like Judith Chalmers, and coming close to going through a sexual Hellraiser, I’m not sure what to think. I feel awful. I’m supposed to have my second date with Agatha tonight, but I think I might cancel. What should I do? Should I tell her? Keep it secret? Help me out here!

Richard