It occurs to O one day that half an O - one spirit of a two spirit human - is not a lack; it’s a
smile … not a silly, toothy Half-a-Sixpence, but a happy smile; see tousle-headed Tommy bounce
like Tigger; corkscrews and scissors his licorice legs, and winkle-pickers
dangerous as jousting knights […]
O remembers Pakistani Dave down his local; back from the
bar, crabs to place four pints of pale, thin yellow beer on the beaten-bronze
bottle-top table; slides in beside Dirty Pat, the Professor and Tranny
Sandra; heads and hair together all confidential, they giggle bubbles, and
misty brown and white horses swirl in their beer over high-kicking
storm-troupers singing ‘Springtime for Hitler’; lightening
surprised by his own eureka, Dave blurts what about ‘Hospice: the Musical’; and they’re rasperrying bums together on shiny plastic seats, they’re flailing arms and legs and rubbing foreheads laughing; they laugh and laugh and laugh […]
O remembers how the three am rifle slid from Woody’s glistening
temple; cartoon jagged flash and boom, and a clattering wild escape onto the rain-polished New York sidewalks; finds wild
orchestral jazz in black and white subterranean Ruritania; Beano
foam on too many clinking beer pots in big ham fists, and an improbable
row of helmets played like a xylophone by a wild-eyed, demonic Groucho; and the
fat lady in the shimmering fish-dress sings … and it's still not over […]
Another day. O wakes regretful: he dreamed he woke to a
tennis racquet lying beside him on a summer lawn; and resplendent in white,
Freddie Mercury casually asks him for a game; and they spend the whole time
trying to fix the net […]
Returning disconsolately to his rough browns and reds rustic
picnic blanket, O throws himself down, and, all Ray Milland in Oxford bags and
sleeveless cricket sweater, leans casually on an elbow, picks up a laid-aside
volume: some light summer reading, carelessly packed between sun-cream and
socks; strokes his chin; hmm: My Life in Trousers by Grayson Bagpipes; absently turns a page; shh ... click; Random House, usual acknowledgements, he muses,
unevenly screwing up his eyes, winking back at the sun; and as Ray and Elwood stroll in slacks, crackle and fade, he can’t help
himself; suddenly, he is laughing; and he laughs and laughs, and laughs and
laughs; and he remembers My wife’s so mean, she just organized a
cheese OR wine party; and Community service for man accused of licking
Terence Stamp; and late news, just in: Oxford man charged with damage to renowned
Library … Grievous Bodleian Harm ; O laughs and laughs and laughs, and
laughs and laughs and laughs […]
