STOP GAPS
Published 'Rattler's Tale' 1993
THEY KISSED, crushing out her cigarette between their lips. He was quite out of his depth, in fact. Concert-going was not normally his cup of tea, particularly when it figured some modern classical music (if that's not a contradiction in terms).
Her name was Especialla Martin, or that was how it sounded when she half-enunciated between alternate bites on a British Rail sausage roll (with no concern at all about hurting its feelings).
He had been travelling to Birmingham and he was in his early to mid-forties. Imagine his surprise (if surprise can indeed be imagined in connection with someone you have not met), when the young lady in the next passenger seat (who later turned out to be Especialla) struck up a co-traveller's conversation. It was all very well and good for some half-cut old fogey with a smoker's cough to launch forth upon sterile small talk; one almost expected it in railway carriages. But for a well-heeled, vaguely attractive wench of mid to late twenties to 'chat up' a middle-aged bore such as him, well, it was enough to set his tongue lolling from his open mouth with the weight of words mustered in response. Pity about the scent she used, however, more a waft of stale tobacco than anything else.
Life is too precious to waste on stop-gaps. Elaboration upon the character of our erstwhile adventurer, now aspiring romantic protagonist, can take place at the concert, several days later. Where, how, why, only magazine stories would stoop so low as to recount such wastelands of existence between the initial meeting and their first official date. Words are meant to be used sparely since, like natural resources, the semantic sperm-bank could very well dry up any day and all the writers in the world will suddenly find no ink in their pens nor gumption in their computers. Mushy words instead of processed ones. So, the long and the short of it, here is George, our hero - Especialla Martin, our heroine - and me. All three of us at the ludicrous concert, none really enjoying the music, the venue being the only thing that counted. And that really wraps it up concerning Especialla and George.
Merely left to say that I am no shrinking violet nor wallflower nor gooseberry. I just have the knack of being present at even the wildest passionate kisses. Externally, I am able to leave the faintest tinge of yellowy brown stain on the gentlest fingertips. At best, minor scorch marks. But deep down inside you where the bodily innards blossom ...
There are not so many of us left now to do what we can to prevent you people wasting life. And indeed at the fag-end of existence as we know it, we do have real sympathy for minor human creations such as you, since our own lives are mercifully shorter than yours, stubbed out between one word and the next.
The rest is imagination.