List of the Lost (5 page)

We do not invent it ourselves, and nor do we ask for it, yet it is our job to find the hour when needs might erupt, as salmons defiantly and insanely jump against the tide for … who knows what reason? It is sex that binds us to life, for it is sex that gave us life, and our four athletes are safe nowhere since their imposing physicality says Yes even when saying No. It's the No that means Yes. Urgings of want – you feel it if you've hiked this far to this very bar – conclude this day with Tracey and Harri predictably under shared sheets, and with Ezra and Eliza coiled atop discarded throws. Nails and Justy are left behind and go their own way; Nails flopped on the bedroom floor with jaggedly soothing music swirling in the background, and Justy pleasing himself by pleasuring himself in ways that predate religion, and no explanations required. We all do whatever we must. In the bed of Tracey and Harri the physical rush is a floodgate – too fast to mean anything, too many court-jester ouches … with their minds already wandering towards whatever will save them in order to make their exit seem polite and timely. In their secrecy, Harri does not like Tracey's knotted banana toes, and Tracey finds the manly central issue too slight to grip, and although such things ought not to count in the adult mind, somehow they do yet they don't yet they do yet they don't.

Mr Rims once grabbed life and then let it go, having no idea that there would be no second chances. “You'll nail anything that moves,” they had laughed about him, and from this he felt certain he was alive, catching the biggest fish. Now, coaching allowed him the gaps that he needed in order to slow down and no longer be the principal performer, even though he knew very well that he had aged into a typical case study of a typical type, living suddenly as the shapeless failure whose tired repartee was more than he could adequately explain – to himself, far less than to others. The menace of late middle-age really does, after all, bully its way through, and is not a spoof, and how very little time it took to slip over to the dark side.

He urged the boys to avoid alcohol and excess of physical pleasure, advice that had already aged him, yet which they accepted – largely. Now weary of time, Rims had worn himself out on the very two jewelled pleasures that his finger-wagging drilled through the boys with personal guilt, because, after all, it was for their own good (even if it had not ever been for his). But something for the boys had now changed. A trigger-switch had been clicked and there were too many hot-sweating nightmares of death under shrubbery, and all four had experienced similar dreams of single-track roads with yellow flag irises on either side. Relief would be sought and found. In his own dreams, Rims felt certain he could have very easily forged a manly world in Berlin or Leipzig – wild with passion for women of melancholic eyes and oh so slow, slow movements. Foreign affairs were of no interest to the American military soldier, yet there strode Rims in repaired breeches, loving the male joy of being no different to the rest of the squad marching forth to save the fattened neck of Churchill, whose home country was in an unhealthy and dangerous condition. Thus the U.S. government tore boys from their mother's arms and posted them off to lands empty of experience, where the boys' heads could be split onto spikes. Meanwhile, whilst yelping for help, the British established elite remained cosy and calm in rolling estates behind saxon gates. Churchill himself would experience World War 2 safely and in a suite of rooms at Claridge's most luxurious Mayfair hotel, with not a complicated twitch or pang to trouble his elaborate evening meal, often just he and Ivor Novello, like dons in senior common rooms, loaded on cognac and crashing into each other with doubled-up laughter, cigar-smoke being as close as they'd ever be to physical danger. Thankfully, the poor will die for us, yet the historic honor will belong only to Churchill, whilst the names of the dead shall never be said, and those who insist upon being known as ‘the royals' shall neatly and tartly cocoon themselves away in the preserved luxury of various country seats (as paid for by the dying poor), utilizing any rules within or without the game to avoid getting their hands dirty. This, after all, is what the poor are for, and although the young men of England will die (unasked) to spare the self-elected ‘royals' from Nazi Germany, the favor shall never be returned. The welfare of the party above the welfare of the nation is there in the eyes of Churchill, who would be booted out of office as soon as the war ended, so trusted was he at war's end. Although the war against Germany was won, not by Churchill, but by Alan Turing, history would scrub Turing out of existence due to his very private struggle with his own homosexuality, and once the war had been settled (thanks to Turing breaking German secret codes), instead of British authorities lauding Turing as a supernatural agent who unplucked questions too deep for science in a successful effort to save all of England, they instead persecuted Turing's nature towards his convenient act of self-destruction. Nicely out of the way, Turing would only ever be recalled for his suicide, and the UK elite were spared the humiliation of needing to praise a homosexual for saving Britain from Hitler. Instead, all of the praise neatly fell to Churchill, who had at least kept his whispered dalliance with Ivor Novello under Claridge's wraps. ‘Queen' Elizabeth and her mother were also hailed as World War 2 ‘heroes', having done nothing throughout the war but dine lavishly in protected splendor with their manicured teeth … always … saying nothing, saying nothing, oh so royally saying nothing ( lest they say the wrong thing ). This is what democracy means. Nothing forever, Rims left his deportments to those who thought they knew better, free to escape to where your freedom is nonetheless still checked. “Wait for me! And walk in step!” was a comrade's call made to Rims in Germany, and that soft male voice, and all within it, travelled like the sound of love, and sustained Rims for months to come, even if possibly dying for Churchill and Roosevelt repulsed the Rims of no choice: shoot the enemy or be shot by your own conscripted servicemen … the military wrath shows mercy to none, as all is unfair in love and war. We Want To Kill YOU! blared the recruitment posters, as ugly Uncle Sam pointed to those quite certain that they weren't real men unless they were the political cannon-fodder that only death could blue-ribbon.

Now, peace is regained as his television flickers from commercial to commercial to commercial to commercial, advertising nothing at all that he would ever want or need, yet reminding him that he is nothing and that he will die in debt, reminding him that whatever insurance he might have could never possibly be enough, reminding him that all medications will kill him mid-laughter, shouting at him as if they were the vigilant society – a blatantly sensational phony inflation with that essential TV ingredient of nightmare and pixy-minded publicity with nothing at all to touch the artistic emotions, yet preying unmercifully on the viewer's insecurity and lack of ready cash. Whatever you can do will never be enough. You are fragile and possibly already dead. Thank God, he thought, for Dick Cavett, who acts through words, who placed questions before viewers in a richly competent way, free of the condescending claptrap trap and always with a direct route to some basic truths. Thank God, he thought, for Dick Cavett, highly civilized enlightenment and peace accomplished – yet there he stood, all-Nebraskan American and costumed in the heart of United States of Generica, yet mysteriously meaningful. The Dick Cavett Show reruns transmitted love to Rims nightly, that rare glimpse of television entertainment that dared assume its audience to be in possession of fully formed brain-matter. This, in the United States, was a very rare thing indeed, and possibly treasonable under constitutional laws. Consumption and escape, as the 4 a.m. dreams of Rims would break off into a spinning spindle of whatever he had seen that previous night on The Dick Cavett Show – the show that didn't end when it finished. Beer assures Rims that the very best of reality is a friendly pair of eyes and the tender gesture of holding doors open for others, and of excusing intrusion in a small tenderness for women and men that he shall never know. It is now only the little things. Nothing else lives in the heart. He sees teenage girls as he saw them when he too were a teenager, and he cannot bear the fact that they no longer see him – as once they had. A trip to the local mall in search of strip plywood is to look suffering directly in the eyes. Do teenage girls know about men of Rims' age? Well, they know something. But they cannot know of the speed of change into an older person, outside of the ring, suddenly a swab-down cornerman instead of a ribbed boxer, suddenly a fat face of bleak monotony swallowed up by life, persecuted by forms and fees and forms and fees and insurance penalties and sec-urity threats in the land of the free. Now, as Rims overhears the teen-burst giggle of a gaggle of girls, he automatically frowns, because although he likes the sound, he knows he is hearing the sound of his own grave, for nothing, now, will correct the misshapen bully-boy face that time has given him unrequested. The mentality of our age tells us that men such as he do not exist, or are outside all interesting demographics, for they do not feature on billboards advertising scent or shampoo, yet they might possibly be seen endorsing care homes or fighting a courageous sickness. The expression of transfixed terror is now the only face that Rims has, and he realizes that it will not slip back to the youthful openness of his past countenance of good intentions, because that, simply, is life, and is what life unfailingly does when such as Rims begin to snooze a mid-afternoon nap that revives, yes, but does not repair ravages, as Rims' self-inspection now notes only crumbling, crumbling, crumbling in place of the development of his strengths. Unclothed, the ruin is heartbreaking for Rims … and how lucky were they who saw me in glory, standing to attention in more ways than one.

“How do we find new ways to hand this baton to one another and make it any better than it was?” asks Nails, all kitted and fitted and ready for the new day. “By being faster, that's all … by not dropping it … and by all means kill yourself if needs must … death or gory,” answers Justy unhelpfully, looking still young enough to be innocent. The afternoon's jaws yawned. Time moves on as it must, and life becomes a camera-flash of exhilarating fitness regimes, the past a distant nowhere, the future always superior and agreeably laden with unclaimed prizes, praise on all lips, your name printed in local newspapers becoming the sound of moony she-man poetry when read over and over repeatedly, like tolling bells harmonizing their midnight peal; the outcome an inevitable wish fulfilled with nothing at all but jaundiced favoritism to claim and collect … the commemorative ribbon, the constitutional medal, the permissible giddiness, and the self-willed, just achievement having re-written the scriptures. Glory brings its preferential treatments and its smiling partialities. They were the best team in the country, and whether willingly or stubbornly their inevitable success was already recognized in predisposed essays on college forums. Season after season they were known for being known, their timings eagerly canvassed and difficult to become more absolute. This attention brought a certain hateful resentment in proportion to the back-slaps of devotional well-wishers, and the girls of the ‘I, unlovely' division who wrote too openly from afar offering unsought personal details with their this-is-not-me-at-my-best photographs. The cheerleader is dead, yet is brought to life by the justification to praise and wave and flounce and bounce, and to later break down in private meaninglessness. The tongue, unfortunately, breaks loose on the safety and secrecy of paper whilst suffering in its haste by assuring itself that the sheet shall shield all secrets because, after all, it is only here and now, between you and I, for no one else is reading this. Poisonous dribble is always prepared should a cry go unanswered, and the desire to injure is a critical shade of the fiery enthusiast, for since no one can love you as much as I do, therefore no one can likewise exceed my venom. Accept the enslavement of my undying love, or bear my viciously unpleasant cruelty, for dearly I love you more than any other could.

Shadowed against bored sunlight our boys despaired to ever again recall the wasted heap whom none had yet reported as a thrillingly grisly find, so woven into stretching vegetation, ripped in the jaws of ravenous rats and grunting boars and stalking hawks. Human flesh when devoured is said to differ not at all from the flesh of pigs. Owls would sniff the stiff and make off with frosted eyeballs as the fox family unglue and rip at this medley of meatball. In the church of secret service known as the abattoir this is exactly what humans excitedly do to beautiful bodies of animals who were also crafted in care by some divine creationist, yet at the human hand the animals are whacked and hacked into chopped meat whilst gazing up at their protector with disbelief and pleading for a mercy not familiar to the human spirit, ground and round into hash or stew for the Big Mac pleasure of fat-podge children whose candidature for roly-poly vicious porkiness makes their plungingly plump parents laugh loudly, as little junior blubber-guts orders yet another Superburger with tub-of-guts determination to stuff death into round bellies, and such kids come to resemble their parents as ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.