My local novel, THE FIRE IN BRADFORD, Chapter Two

Warning.

 

The second chapter of my novel, THE FIRE IN  BRADFORD may be rated 18+

 

But here goes anyway. THE FIRE IN BRADFORD, Chapter Two:

 

Chapter Two

On my frequency in spades, or was it the Rolling Stones?
    Well I followed her to the station
    With a suitcase in her hand
How long would I follow her over the next five years, with a suitcase in my own hand to be rebuffed, Rabelaised on.
    Well I saw her at the reception
    A glass of wine in her hand
    I knew she was gonna make her connection
    In her glass there was a footloose man
This after a pretty stud popinjay tried to make her his novel. Maybe a popinjay like me. And would I later be a bleeding man in the bottom of her glass?
We danced. She seemed somehow stiff, not in tune with the natural grace of her perfect little body. She just seemed to want to sit near me, wanting to be very close. She rubbed a tentative thigh against me. I backed off a little. "What goes on between you and Lief?' I blurted. "You are a married woman after all."
She took a sip of her white wine. Damn. Her nice high forehead, flesh-coloured lipstick, blonde hair abob.
"Lief and I have an open marriage. He has male friends, he has female friends. I have female friends. I have male friends."
So here we were, dating and dancing, she and I. Male friend and female friend.
The night, as they say, rocked on, as it will with music by the Stones and the nice amber haze. Why is this beautiful, sexy mannequin so interested in me, mousy wallflower, dumb prof? And then she made that tentative move towards my genitals. Whaa...? I was lonely but not altogether stupid. "Lana, you are a married woman. Leif is just next door."
"Lief understands."
I leaned back and had a cigarette. Nice living room with its C-shaped chesterfield, wide enough to accommodate two small, slight people like ourselves. Top the left, a dining room with its millet and Cezanne prints, all grouped nicely, the wide picture window, the drapes not drawn, the two of us more than just silhouettes in the window. We kissed like brother and sister. I was growing to falling in love with her. And yet I could not make a move.
We would begin to have pub nights quite often, Lana soon affecting a wonderful floppy beret that graced her beautiful, symmetric face. "I am in a French Writers class," she would say and we'd trade bon mots and zippy Parisian phrases. Or, at least, my fractured French that I'd learned in Quebec, Haiti and Newfoundland. It's not hard to get a job at a community college. "What you call dat t'ing that bash his face against de tree?"
Very quickly, though, I felt a need for the wide open spaces.
Lana was sending up a wave of energy that welled right up against my lifeboat.

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A hermaphroditic Martian lands on queer Toronto.

Suppose a Martian were to write this blog.

Supposing he saw "spots" out of his saucer window on his way here, and that would have maybe even scared the average alien.
Migod, this is extraterrestrial!

What would he say?..."Well, it's a typical earth-specific phenomenon. Some earth astronauts in their crude analogies for spacecraft have seen 'spots' outside their capsules, and when debriefed by psychologists, they would be asked...."And what did the little spots say?
"Ah, little did they know that those spots 'R' Us ."

"But how come I now see them as spots?
"Likely the ashes of the cremated, now in orbit, since the recession on earth has hardly left any money for anybody to be buried any more. Nobody down there seems to have change for even a Gloopel. And even funeral pyres are expensive. Hindus in Haite have a hard time. There ain't no wood. And that's not so good. In poor, denuded Haiti, everybody now, has the shits. And there ain't no trees fer to make the toilet paper. So the poor Haitians get worse things, like the C word. It's a good thing I have no feelings. I am an alien.

...........

The Martian is my alter ego, I suppose.
In my perfervid imagination, I can see the Martian.
Predictably, he is is vaguely of mongoloid appearance, though very large-eyed, more like a bug's eyes.
He appears to be wearing some sort of loincloth on his silvery body, but it could well be a kind of diaper. An incontinent Martian?...Well, maybe something here on earth gives him the shits.
He comes out of his craft already yelling and complaining, perhaps like a Canadian immigrant today
Act and don't react. Your planet is shit.Your culture is shit. Earth gives me the shits. And fuck-off."
He taps his hollow chest. " Important Documents! All the way from Uranus."
"At least on Mars, we have communal relief. You guys sit alone on the commode, usually thoughtful.
We shit and stink communally.
You have no such thing here. You only shit communally on smokers. And local muslims-- if redneck radio that I hear naturally, with no antenna, is any example.

He is approaching Toronto, Canada.

"I see by all the day-after-the- election headlines all around that they have elected a new mayor.
Well. It's about time. An overtaxed, fascist city in a Canadian culture obsessed with homosexuality. Even the heir-apparent to the Liberal Pary has a cupid's-bow mouth.
Waiting relatives at Pearson International Airport greeted with a "You-Hoo", like they are in San Francisco, where eveybody is already airborne
And the story is apochryphal, but someone swears he saw former Mayor Miller shhpping for ;puce-cloured chaps down in Yorkville, where all the stars come from Hollywood.
Ah the Assend of Man.
"My ancestors were already homosexual while yours were still in the trees."
Giggling cops and U. S. Marines, eager to tell, break up couples.
People are still snogging!

The emperor has no clothes and is looking for little boys.
So, some wag tells me, is the defeated political candidate.

Toronto has a new mayor.

His name is Ford.

Good Ford!

"Fordy," says the retard on the elevator.

Says the Martian, who is a hermaphrodite, "I'd tell them all to go f*ck themselves, but then they would know things, and become like us."
"But they are certainly on the way."

Speedy Mercury READ MY BOOK

Thirty- three years ago, on an unusually bright January day, I decided to stop teaching and become a real writer, not a teacher of writing.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. I was nearing forty, the deadline decade; I was meeting all my turtles, the once- fastest rabbit (mouth?) in town and though having a million words in print, these were in column form and I was not sure if that really counted.
I had in print one small novel, "The Black Icon", which was published, of all places by the Bradford Witness Publishing Company, ON.
People would ask, "Are you a Jehovas'? You gonna stick your foot in my door and tell me to awake? You hear the one about the scion of a Jehova's Wintess and a biker, who comes to the door and tells you to f*ck off/
Enough that I didn't feel very authentic.

So I quit my job at the college, surrendered the vows, left my wife (who was probably glad to get the crazy bastard and his beer bottles out; there had been issues) and made for the place where the writers go.
Mexico.
Cuernavaca. Crooked horn. And yes, after a spell there I was somewhat bent and wastin' away in Margaritaville, forget the manuscript and the vows, foxy chicks gotta get, foxy psychotics from California telling me to get in touch with my feelings, American woman, stay away from me.
Ah, but she bagged the fool, and if you sleep with somebody crazy you'll end up crazy too, and soon I was "getting in touch with my feelings" tried to get away but she followed me all the way to San Miguel de Allende, where I soon discovered that I had drip to my whistle and thinking of that old limerick, "Since I met your lovely daughter/ I've had trouble passing water".
A damsel with a dose.
This was not getting the Great Canadian novel done.

Letter from the poor wife. "Whatcha doin', McLuhan?
--"Shrew and the kids."

Behaving badly..
How many novels on behaving badly?

A Fan's Notes

All of Burroughs.

Kingsey Amis

Me.

My novel came out, eventually. The Fire in Bradford, but as my impoverished banker and sp0nsor was to tell me, "Ivan, the fire was in your pants and not in Bradford.
And, he added after a few drinks, "Your asshole is in Ottawa".

Behaving badly.
Jerry Rubin. If it feels good, do it.

Ah but there were reasons for the odyssey.

There had been a problem with my poor foo-foo valve. Doctor had said it was nasty and the antibotics weren't getting it.
Well, with sunlight and marathon sex, one did repair ones foo-foo valve, but at what cost?

Ragged Dick the Match Boy.
Always the Horatio Alger follower. "Give you a bully shine, Sir" rags to riches all my life and now surely on the road back to rags. I think there was a movie mad of this, titled "The Jerk".

Standing today in front of the bookstore where I'd made me decision to chuck it all and become a writer. Meeting herds and herds of my turtles as the passed the maddened hare.

Someone taps me on the shoulder.

"You Ivan?"

"Yes."

"I read your book," said the stranger, who turned out to be a bus driver in Toronto.
Hah. Speedy mercurial figure.

"I read your book. It's a knockout."

Wow. Hey....If you can reach one person...

But the hell and high water to get there.

Do you have to be a devil to get your halo?

Surely felt like hell going through the process of the novel/autobiography.

And damn it all, it seems like it was all somehow worth it.