andre the giant and the
strawberry
(the coloured version)
Andre the Giant punted down the
Clem, Ms. Katonic in tow, trafficlight green chemise unruly, Winners’ briefs
unsoiled, fluffy socks from mocked aunt in Devonshire, quite deceased.
The Clem, since it was circular,
and thus knew no destination, was a favourite spot for lovers who, loving love,
knew no destination too.
Boys were known, being boys
despite the second sex, to hide in bushes round the bend of the Nodens, and
display penises through the prickles, to their own bemusement and lovers’
shame.
The sun that day seemed beyond
itself, as if it had read the most esteemed literary and scientific
descriptions of itself, and attained a new consciousness, affecting its
reflections.
The mocked aunt was not from
Devonshire but Bocking and was infamous in certain basement ecclesiastical
circles for her fluffiness and how she somehow transmigrated it to her socks.
A renowned incident occurred
some years prior, and was reported, involving a Lucia Haddlewich and a Milton Brubblewich and a sandwich and an ostrich
and a pickle and a punt.
General Paint (a nickname) was
the lead boy and had become accustomed to vulgarities, some say, due to a
father who had used zucchinis for what God, if there were one, had not
intended.
Continuing the speculation of a
solar literatus, the sun’s favourite lines from our terrestrial ball about itself all had to deal with anthropomorphisms; it
had to laugh, if it could, which it couldn’t.
Ms. Katonic hailed from
Catatonia; her father was a sociopath, her mother a homeopath, she herself a
taxi driver who’d met Andre through a poet in a backseat, rather squished.
Being round and flowing into
itself, but not a moat, the Clem was a minor curiosity for fluviologists, who
flocked to punt and wonder, though General Paint and his penises made many
flee.
Sometimes though the boys would
put out pickles to sub for penises, dressing them with alfalfa sprouts and
little hats of cocktail umbrellas, and give them names, then eat them.
Beyond itself yet
notwithstanding the sum of itself, the sun performed its duties without any
lone or clump or crowd of clouds, meaning punters and penis boys were sunned
and, being summer, warm.
They had not got it on much, the
Giant and Ms. Katonic, in the backseat, initially, squished, due less to any
chemical incompatibilities and more to a sort of caesura that came between
them.
Haddlewich and Brubblewich spent
a night in jail, the ostrich in a morgue, the sandwich in General Paint’s anus,
the pickle in a punt in a bobby station, a bobby at the bottom of the Clem.
General Paint procured his
penises from Margrit and Margrit got them from her cousin who got them from a Presbyterian who got them from an Oxford don. He got his pickles from the store.
The sun that day rose higher
than it usually did and saw with eyes more perspicaciously the randomness of
humankind and stretched its fingers so it almost lit the bobby at the bottom
still.
The other punters thought Ms.
Katonic might be playing a game, the way we do, like water skiers but
horizontal, like funalicious in the Clem, and Andre the Giant her gracious host
and driver.
Circular rivers,
wrote Dr. Slev D. William Blot-Hrag, in Fluviology Today for Fluvies (Fluviologists
being taken), I propose are deltic
aberrations of rhithronal stridulations. Little more.
Paint’s favourite had been the
one who when she saw the penis (the extra large kind) pushed her man from the
punt and punted frantically away, crashing on a little isle, impaling herself
on rocks.
Consciousness, being preferred by humans as a human
attribute (though defined by them in terms favouring such a preference), may
not be solely or predominantly such a thing,
thought the sun.
The sock mocked Bocking aunt was
the mother’s sister and Ms. Katonic had met her only once, in Braintree, with
spray paint on her hands, at a rave. The
socks started coming then.
There was a way (counterclockwise) to go round the Clem
but those in the know would do the other way so that General Paint and his boys
would focus on the others, drawing ire from the others.
The boys in the bushes with
their penises and pickles weren’t against love, technically, in its romantic
guise, but more for love, realistically, as a rupture in the flow of things.
What if I, the sun
continued, did the same to them, and
solarpomorphized the human, and said the human lacks my consciousness, which it
does?
So was the perfect venue not
that river, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience, for their exploits, love
and boys and punters, a distributed collective quest under the rosy rolling sun?
Ms. Katonic and the Bocking
sockist hadn’t hit it off in Braintree, but with the drugs and the blood and
the Catatonia connection, who would? The
socks came anyway.
You’d think, of course, that the
penis- and the pickle-flashers through the bushes would be nabbed by the
bobbies and settled down, the way society’s supposed to do.
You’d think they’d get families
and put penises in homes they’re made for and let the fucking lovers on the
Clem do the googlies and the sippies and the touchies and round and round once
more!
The socks came, though Ms.
Katonic didn’t often, and she’d put them in a box or give them to Goodwill or
feed them to her dog … but here, towed in the Clem, she wore them.
The Clem had a reputation
naturally. All things do. General Paint was underplayed to
newbies. Locals went the other way. Bobbies got paid off. All things worked together the way they do.
Andre the Giant, despite his
size, was gentle, while Ms. Katonic, despite her size, was not. When they found each other on the channel
ferry and shared a moment, she promised him some socks.
But what’s happening up there?
With the sun? Let’s ask it. Well. The
usual. Not much. Been reading a western. Doing a bit of thinking. The usual. Some
anger management issues. Going down.
The aunt, after all, was not known for sizing, but
fluffiness, so the socks for Ms. Katonic, in abstract surprisingly, fit Andre’s
feet quite well, and Ms. Katonic got rid of socks, and Andre gained some.
We have one only, but there are
many, and some have wondered whether they all think the same or, like us, if a
certain inscrutability exists from star to star.
Science says, of course, that stars don’t think but
science does, rocks don’t think but people do—thoughts worthy maybe of
consideration.
The sun that day shone lightly on the punters who, except
for Andre who required a special punt and was the talk, being large,
interrupting more than the boys the quiet quests of love, only wanted love.
When the Bocking socker heard of her niece’s demise she
didn’t weep (she was British) or think of travelling to the Clem to see the
body but made more socks than ever, sending them to Andre.
The Clem was a circle as we’ve said, but the boys were
stationed in the bushes round the bend of the Nodens, as that was most
fortuitous for shocks and fleeing and various exchanges.
More rivers should be circular, argued Dr. Blot-Hrag, and
engineers should get right on it: dams
and projects, federal funding, work and progress, now’s the future, begin it
yesterday.
The Oxford don wasn’t always careful or consistent, nor
was the Presbyterian nor the cousin nor Margrit nor the boys nor Ms. Katonic;
who is?
The Clem rose slightly with Andre’s tears, for they were
large and many, and he had never loved before, but now he had and she was dead
and he was weeping and she was towed and she was dead.
The sun glanced at its continual
descent—that slide of spherical proportions that slides eternally away from
science—and said, It’s been a day. With
me, it’s always been a day. Always is a day.
The boys were known, led by
General Paint (that bastard), to drop the used penises in the letterboxes of
the punters whom they considered, after voting, were most likely to succeed in
love.
The Clem, since it is circular,
and thus knows no destination, is a favourite spot for lovers who, loving love,
know no destination too.
Andre the Giant is punting down
the Clem, Ms. Katonic in tow, trafficlight green chemise unruly, Winners’
briefs unsoiled, fluffy socks from mocked aunt in Devonshire, quite deceased.
