A short story that I wrote tonight.
I’m going to swear alot in this story. If you don’t like the word’s cunt, fuck and mollycoddle, I suggest you skip the next 134 pages. This story started in 1984, when a man said “hey, guess what…?”
What he guessed, we may never know. Or maybe we’ll know in 134 pages time. The main thing is that you know what you’re in for. I hope this story doesn’t get any of its your and you’res wrong. Despite technology having a good spell check, you’res got a red line under it.
We’re in the depths of a deep night. One that happens in San Francisco. A hotel lobby where everyone seems to be having a euphoric time. I walked in and it was 400 or so people all doing one of those moves you see in a bad movie. All had their hands in the air in unison to a mediocre dance song. I don’t know why I love San Francisco so much when one of the great memories is people getting overexcited by a bad dance song. Ahh well, I’ve probably got excited by lots of bad dance songs myself when I’ve been in the right mood. In fact, perhaps loving bad songs is a sign of a really good night.
The star of this story loves bad songs. He even liked Good Charlotte back in the day.
“You cannot leave this building,” said Dominic in an emphatic way.
“What, are you going to stop me?” said Marvin, repulsed at having a man called Dominic make such a statement. To Marvin, the name Dominic represented someone who had been really good at irrelevant things in life (such as dominoes) but no good at things that matters (such as book reviews and understanding cheese).
Marvin once reviewed a great book about cheese and it meant so much to him. There aren’t a lot of great books about cheese, despite it being so important to understand what makes a good gouda or parmesan. I’m sure you know that a good brie needs to be so smooth it’s almost like sucking on a finely wrapped cheese with butter injected into it.
But this book isn’t going to cut the cheese unless it has a story, and the story starts with Marvin finishing his first week of Japanese classes at the adult education centre. Haji me mashita. Marvin was a man who wanted to expand himself but instead embedded himself in silly introductory stuff that gave him a tase of what life can offer, but in reality took him no further than his own front fence.
Our man, Marvin, left the Japanese class feeling dejected because he had set a bad example for the other students. In a presentation to the class for the last lesson, he decided that it was better to try and tell his life story in a mixture of German, French, English and Mandarin, instead of just sucking it up and trying to tell it is in Pigeon Japanese. I assume pigeon Japanese is a term that describes someone who uses a dumbed down version of Japanese like a New Caledonian country such as Vanuatu uses Pigeon English (although I found the people of Vanuatu actually spoke pretty good English, but their seafood gave me food poisoning). As poor as his Japanese was, his German, French and Mandarin was (ie. limited to saying hello, asking for sex and saying a couple of swear words) was devastating. Funnily enough, his English was not much better in this instance despite the fact that he had a journalism degree.
Who tries to pretend they know 19 different languages when their name is Marvin? Marvin does.
So Marvin, in all his glory, walks down the street after class. There were some social drinks after Japanese class (being the last class and all) but he decided he was too good for those bilingual so and sos. He wanted something grander from his Tuesday night and surely San Fran had that to offer. Would it be the Golden Gate Bridge, a backpackers or a sleazy bar? Or was he capable of making a special night from nothing. You’d think so, given his multiple linguacy.
Marvin caught a cable car across a steep hill. It reminded him of ‘90s sitcom Full House. A couple of girls on it reminded him of the Olsen twins, in fact. They weren’t twins but they were both anorexic. He asked a man standing next to him: “why is San Francisco so petulant these days?”. The man didn’t answer because he didn’t really know what the word petulant meant. Marvin didn’t really know what the word meant either, he was just trying to make small talk and sound clever at the same time.
But that was when Marvin saw her, someone who set his eyes into a hazy summit. Churned his stomach into a hurricane and bent his liver into a violin. Believe it or not, there was a whimsical femme fatale on this tramlike tourist vehicle. Her legs were everything you’d expect from a whimsical San Franner girl, straight, slightly bent and red haired. Her legs weren’t red headed, but her red hair gave it away that if she had leg hair it would also be red. The only disappointment was that she had a leg tattoo - a giant clam - on her thigh. She should’ve covered that up given that a surfer had recently been attacked by a giant clam near San Fran.
Undeterred, Marvin decided to speak to her straight away. Statistics say that you are much better off talking to a readhead within 20 seconds of seeing her, otherwise she will get away. Comparitively, a snapper needs to be captured within 30 seconds.
“Hey, Sarah,” Marvin exclaimed.
“Sorry,” said Belinda, the redhead.
“Ooops.”
“Erhh.”
“So I take it you aren’t THE Sarah?”
“No.”
“Oh, well that’s an educated guess that wasn’t so educated.”
“I so do not look like a Sarah. most Sarahs have pubic hair ejaculating above their belt.”
“Sorry, I now realise that it’s just a tassell hanging from your top. I didn’t look closely because I was trying to be a gentleman. I obviously failed.”
“The tassel finishes above my belly button. What’s obvious is that you’re a cunthead.”
‘Ouch,” felt Marvin. The conversation was turning to shit. Not that it ever reached great heights, but cunthead was a pretty serious word for a girl to use. Yet he responded anyway: “Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
Christmas had been three weeks ago. It wasn’t going to work. Or was it?
“You’re cute!” said Marvin’s imagination when Belinda told him that she wishes restraining orders were easier to obtain. But Marvin had already taken out his own restraining order. He would never talk to Belinda again because he had found someone new, a girl he called ‘Evil Belinda’.
Evil Belinda (Sandra was her real name) was walking out of a really bad musical that a bunch of local pandas had performed (no, it wasn’t a pandamime). They weren’t real pandas, just local actors covered in lots of talcum powder. She had a big fuck-off stare, one that told most people to fuck off. But instead, Marvin was captivated by it and decided to hire a bike from one of those city bike ranks to follow her for a bit.
He followed her for a bit. Things got a little bit hairy when they got to the top of a San Francisco hill. Not because of an earthquake (did you know that San Fran has a heap of earthquakes?) but because of the downhill that followed. Marvin wasn’t scared of falling steeply… just ask him. But aren’t we all scared of falling steeply and scared to admit it?
Evil Belinda was one of those girls who had obviously been hurt a few times before. But that’s because there are lots of people in this world who inadvertently like to hurt people (generally because they too had been inadvertently hurt). It’s amazing how inadvertent hurt has a direct correlation with inadvertent hurt. Marvin had never experienced that, but wanted to associate with people who had.
Marvin approached Evil Belinda, but not too obviously. The tram just pulled up and he bounced in her direction from the jerk of the stoppage. It’s amazing how a tram can ‘bounce’ you two metres when you want it to. I guess he just wasn’t holding the pole too hard.
“Hi Evil Belinda,” he said. Ok, he didn’t call her evil Belinda. I chucked the word evil in just the same way that some people throw the word ‘fuck’ into some stories to exaggerate them. We’ve all got a friend who adds the world ‘fuck’ to things that their mum said to them.
“Hey Marvin,” said Evil Belinda. Marvin wasn’t wearing a name badge but she went to school with Marvin and recognised him vividly because of his monobrow. Marvin had tried to keep his unibrow inconspicuous over the past few years but it remained pretty obvious. Not many men have managed to really cover up their monobrow.
“How do you know my name?”
“You’re famous”
“Huh”
“We pashed in high school”
“Huh”
“We pashed in high school”
“I know, but that was so many years ago, how do you remember that?” said the backtracking Marvin. It was going to be hard to backtrack out of this one. He continued, “I thought you would’ve forgotted about me!”
“How could I ever?” she said. Marvin took that as a compliment, but it was actually a reference to Marvin’s weird dance moves from the night that they pashed. Evil Belinda had only kissed Marvin to make her ex, Evil Kris, jealous. Who spells Carl with a K?
Evil Kris was actually a legend. His parents had given him that name because they loved karaoke so much and because karaoke started with a K, they decided their son’s name should also start with such a glorious letter. I think that’s ok, it’s not like they named their son Thom or Glynn. They didn’t give his name the prefix ‘Evil’, that happened because of his torrid relationshp with ‘Evil’ Belinda. Neither of them were really ‘Evil’, they just brought a bad side out of each other.
‘Evil’ Kris and ‘Evil’ Belinda had some fun times together. They once had a 400 metre race around a local athletics track on new years eve. No one was there except for them and B (that’s short for ‘Evli’ Belinda) had stolen the keys to the athletics stadium from her mother who was the secretary of the local athletics club. The lights were on full blare and B actually won. K says he wasn’t trying but his arrogance cost him in bed that night.
Marvin liked to learn from such stories. He is not stupid. He didn’t have massive desires for B, but irrespective of that, he still wanted to achieve more than K. Despite his promise to himself that he’s ‘not that kinda guy’ he really wanted to kick K in the head and stomp on him after his face hit the turf. If that’s not bad enough, he also hoped K would be punished by something really nasty like a really bad power bill.
Our man Marvin still has some work to do on his own self control, but you can’t help but also feel sorry for him. He was ready for his next challenge, a trip to the local rock climbing centre where he would try to see if his life has a real glass ceiling. M has agility, but does he have the core strength to climb to the ceiling of that place and impress everyone in the building.
To climb a big wall, one needs to also jump a lot of hurdles.Some of the hurdles jump up and are easy to jump. Some of them don’t jump up until you’ve already half tripped over them.
Evil Belinda yelled out: “don’t go rock climbing again, man.”
Marvin didn’t know what to say because he was half shocked that Evil Belinda had followed him and half shocked that he couldn’t feel his legs due to the anticipation. He replied: “what should I be climbing then?”. Oh man, that is horrific. Evil Belinda should have run away looking for Evli Chris at that point. I know I misspelt Kris there, but I thought it would be nice for Kris to see his name spelt properly for once.
Evil Belinda didn’t really care. She knew what she wanted. And we’re not just talking about a massive bunch of roses and a tub of ice cream. Evil Belinda wanted to mollycoddle with a massive cunt of a man like Marvin. Shit would get rough at times, oh yeah, but rough shit with Marvin is better than unrough shit with a cunt like Evil Kris.
