Christopher James

The Penis Mightier

2010-03-23T05:32:00.001-07:00

I first became familiar with Marquel Garciez when his penis broke the soil of the Tomangtol cemetery. At the time I was a young reporter with the Jakarta Century Newspaper group, mostly covering births, deaths and weddings. This was not such a boring job as it may sound. I was invited to the most important events. I was showered with gifts. The rich and famous want to be remembered well, so they look after the local obit writer. And, foremost nowadays in my trips down memory boulevard, I was one of the few there when they dug up Marquel Garciez.

The mourners of the recently deceased Alejandro Macondo discovered the tip of the penis pushing through the hard earth when one of their members tripped over it. Two inches of cock pushed through the ground, obscenely daring the world to try to dislodge it. Tentative kicks had no effect on the penis's bearing, so the party of mourners informed the church of its latest unwelcome addition. Initial investigations into the owner of the organ remained surprisingly unresolved, and after a foot and a half of the ground had been scrabbled out by hand the decision was taken to organise an excavation. Somebody involved with the dig took it upon themselves to call the paper, and since I had nothing better to do that day and it was vaguely connected with deaths I drew the short straw and went to Tomangtol with pen and pad.

The story never made the cut in the end. My editor ruled it unseemly and obscene. I argued with him over his decision for longer than was necessary or expected, but he reminded me of my place in the company and the issue was dropped. 'Besides,' he said, 'nobody would ever believe it anyway.' One hundred lonely years after death the penis of Marquel Garciez had grown to the extraordinary length of seven feet two inches. It was those two inches that had tripped up a member of the Macondo party. The rigid cock had made a splintered hole in the cheap wood of Mister Garciez's coffin before rising through the tangled roots and hardened ground to reach the light of day. Though age and hardships had done his penis no favours it was still a magnificent thing to behold, and difficult to forget.

I was with the paper for score more years, until my first novel was accepted and published by Colonel Books. The unexpected popularity of that novel, and the resulting fame thrust upon me, made it impractical for me to continue my job with Century, and I left. That itself was fifty years ago. I'm blind now, and I have little time left, but before I pass this mortal coil I have resolved to discover and to make known the story of Marquel Garciez, the owner in death of the world's finest cock.

I have a young man, a queer, who reads me my mail and performs errands for me. He refuses to accept payment – he says it gives him immense pleasure to serve Indonesia's greatest novelist. I am too vain to allow flattery like this to escape my clutches, and so I keep the man around. I have asked him to be my eyes, to delve into the world of Garciez so that I may bring him to life. He attacks his task with gusto, but he has none of the instincts of the investigative journalist, and none of the passion of the author, and so our progress is slow.

This is what we know so far:

Garciez was born, like myself, in Tanjeng Duren. His mother was a whore, and his father could be any one of a thousand men. Garciez had a fine Western nose, so his father was most likely a Dutch man. Perhaps a government official, or a soldier. Until he reaches the age of fourteen we have found no more about Marquel's life. At that age he married a Chinese woman, aged thirty. Sometimes she is called Marysia, and sometimes Icha. Unless she is two women. We have the remains of her correspondence with a man in Sumatra. The Sumatran man appears to be her lover, but Garciez is the father of her child. I find the details fascinating, and only wish that I could read her words myself. My man has no tongue for telling stories, and I am left to piece the pictures together alone. It's hard going, and makes me feel old.

Six months after they are married the child dies. Marysia writes in her diary that 'Marquel beat me with his cock until I bled from my eyes, nose and mouth.' She leaves him by horse, and escapes to better dreams in distant lands. I'm enthralled by the beating, and I ask for a whore so that I may too try such a thing, but my own penis is small and weak, and does little damage to the whore, who tires quickly of the game.

We hear from a popular song of the time of a man with a twelve inch penis who impregnated the queen from thirty feet away. He demands her hand in marriage, and she orders him killed. The words don't translate so well into English, but the song makes me laugh. Before he dies he vows to return and have revenge. At this point several different versions of the song exist, but one, the dirtiest one, has his penis growing after his death until it finds the queen and chokes her by the neck.

I can't help thinking that the hero of this song must be none other than my own underground swords man. The queer finds my conviction unsettling. 'It's just a funny song,' he tells me. 'Hardly even that funny.' But I have never trusted the sense of humour or the eye for the truth of a homosexual who cannot tell a story.

There the trail goes dead. Perhaps I shall make up the rest. I think my own penis is growing longer too.

Homemade Kings and Queens

2010-03-23T05:30:00.000-07:00

Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old fashioned way, Paulie liked to say. Queuing in a never-ending line for food at Dachau.

That was Paulie's little joke. Mirry hated it. The other story that made Paulie laugh was the day his nephew Sol thought the holocaust was a Jewish Bank Holiday.

Paulie was always laughing about it. 'If you can't laugh', he'd say in his thick Jewish German twang, 'what can you do?' If you caught him off guard when his sleeve rode up you'd see the scars on his arm where he'd tried to scratch out his numbers with a kitchen knife back in the early fifties. If he saw you looking he'd tease you about it. 'I'm going to get my name and address tattooed there soon. At my age there's a good chance of forgetting yourself!' It didn't make much sense but you laughed anyway because it's what he wanted you to do.

Mirry was the quiet one. You imagined she had enormous inner strength – that she didn't need to hide her pain behind a smile and a one-liner. The truth was she didn't talk much because she'd still not learned more than twenty words of English. But you should hear her belting out incomprehensible songs from her youth after a couple of shots of schnapps at a bah mitzvah.

Paulie was a social butterfly – had been since they arrived. Back then it was parties and boxing. Nowadays it was chess. He'd wake up before the rooster every day, dress up in his Sunday best and take a folding chess board and a bag of homemade kings, queens and bishops down to Central Park and sit at his favourite table under the English oak until Walter turned up, late as usual, and they'd play until it got dark. Some people have said Paulie was out too much, that he should stay and keep Mirrie company. But who am I to have an opinion about that?

They didn't have any children. We don't ask why. Instead Mirrie had seventeen German shepherds that she'd named after the guards from the camp. She fed them well, but Michael Winterman told me she kicked them with hard, sharp jabs if they got in her way. He worked in the vets, so it could be true. But Michael Winterman is known for jumping to far-fetchedness, so I secretly doubt it.

They both died separately and apart on the same day. Paulie collapsed in the park, ruining the conclusion of a hotly played Rook's Manoeuvre. Nobody told Mirry, but at the same time, give or take a white bishop to e7, she opened the door to their house, chased the German Shepherds out into the street and then dressed herself up in her nicest skirt and blouse and shot herself.

I like to think that they were happy, despite everything. They laughed a lot, after all.

Ladies Go Missing At The Cirque de Fried Chicken

2009-12-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

Red-nosed and squinty-eyed on Lynchburg's finest, Slim James left a yellow heart in the snow out the back of the Cirque De Fried Chicken. 'SJ' to the left of it, 'Rosie' to the right. He threw the empty bottle of amber mash against the black and green canvas Big Top walls, raised his face to the waxing moon, and howled like Teenwolf.

'Rooooooooooosssssieeeeeeeeeee!'

Squid-ink clouds passed in front of what was left of the moon, and Slim James fell face first with a soggy thump into his cold piss-framed heart. His body was found with the crow of morn's first cock, frozen stiff and misshapen. 'SJ' and the heart remained, but Rosie's name was gone – a pure blanket of snow in its place, and nothing to suggest Slim had ever had the urine in him to finish the job.

Rosie was number one

*

Big Tiny, the Human Punch-Bag, was writhing on top of Jenny the Mime, grunting and groaning and grinding his pelvic bone into what he thought was her clit. She bit her lip to block out the hurt and he mistook it for passion and writhed even faster.

Jenny the Mime was too disingenuous to pretend to be done, and too sweet to complain about the pain. But when Big Tiny started banging her head over and over and over again into the oak veneered headboard of his caravan bed she clapped her hands together until Big stopped. She mimed changing positions, and climbed on top. She planted a foot either side of his considerable girth, and bounced up and down on him like one of the bare-back riders on Rover the horse.

Big Tiny soon came, and when he did Jenny vanished in an explosion of sparkles. Big Tiny pondered this whilst the sparkles settled on his sweat wet bulk, and then he, like so many men before him, forgot all about Jenny the Mime and fell asleep.

He slept like a drunken baby.

Jenny was number two.

*

Morgan Palookaville took Lucy Lastic to the circus on her birthday with a diamond on a ring in his back pocket. Lucy was a hooker from opposite the Seven Eleven on Fifteenth. Morgan was a banker from Sackman and Sacks. They'd shared a taxi the Thanksgiving before last and gotten along like ketchup on curly fries. They'd not met again since then, what with Morgan travelling so much and Lucy spending all her money on crystal meth, but they'd stayed in touch and their love had blossomed.

Back last month Morgan had tasted the savoury goodness of a Jacket Potato-induced choking attack. He'd been Heimliched by a lad from the mail room, and it had opened his hidden emotional eye. He paid a small fortune on a ring and called up Lucy, who he'd realised was the love of his life. He'd flown into town and taken her to the Big Top. He noticed the g-string, the dilated pupils and the graveyard teeth, but he worked hard to ignore them because Lucy was the love of his life.

The love of his life. The love of his life. The love. The love. Of his life life life.

"You're exactly as I remember you," he said when they shot a man from a cannon.

Lucy threw up in his lap. Her vomit was bright blue, the colour and texture of Listerine mouthwash.

Lucy was number three

*

The saddest greatest show on earth begins amid a sugar-rush orchestra of child-sound. Whining kids ride tired elephants. Alco-clowns chew gum to mingle with the crowds and paw the young girls. Caged tigers are wheeled in and wheeled out. APPLAUSE!

And then the lights go low and the audience is hushed. Jonah the Juggler and Part-Time-Lady-Killer walks the long spot-lit walk to the centre ring. He begins to juggle.

"I do this for you," he shouts. "I love you all."

One ball is white as snow. One sparkles. One is bright blue. He throws them effortlessly higher. One by one they explode at the height of their arc, and the circus is filled with happiness and sadness and love lost.

"This show gets better every year," says Thomas to his wife, Gerri.

"Yeah," says Gerri – a cynic. "Last year he only had two balls."

From the centre ring, the juggler caught her eye.

Gerri was number four.

Anger and the Beard

2009-10-06T18:00:00.001-07:00

"Why do you have a beard?" asked my daughter.

"Elizabeth!" said her mum. There was enough warning in her voice that the elderly couple at the next table turned to look. When they caught my eye they turned back. Under the table somebody kicked me. I wasn't sure if it was Lizzie or her mother. It was hard enough that it might have been on purpose.

Lizzie ignored her mum and continued to watch me. She tilted her head as if she were looking for something hidden. "Do you have it because you don't like your face?" she asked.

I felt the kick again. I think Sarah was trying to tell Lizzie to knock it off and catching me instead. I moved my leg out of the way.

"I think a beard suits me," I said calmly. I fought the impulse to cover that part of my face with my hands.

"Some people grow a beard because they have something to hide," said Lizzie. "Something they're ashamed of."

She squinted her eyes. She stared at me with naked resentment.

"Stop it," said her mum, and for the first time Lizzie looked at her.

"I'm not doing anything," she said. "You're the one who keeps kicking him."

Sarah faced me. "Oh, god, Michael, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to –"

"It's okay," I said. "Everything's okay. And if Elizabeth wants to do this here and now then that's okay as well." Before I faced Lizzie again I rearranged my body language to appear at ease. I pulled my chair forward an inch towards her, leant back in it ever so slightly and placed my hands in my lap. "Lizzie, you can ask me anything you'd like to know."

"I thought I just did," said Lizzie. In case I'd forgotten, she reminded me. She spoke to me the way you talk to the retarded. "I asked if you wanted to hide your face behind your beard because you were ashamed of yourself."

The corner of my eye was twitching. I leant forward and put my hands on the edge of the table and willed it to stop. The desire to slap my daughter came and was pushed to one side.

"I grew the beard, Lizzie, because I like the way it looks on my face. I don't need to hide away, because I have nothing to be ashamed of." My eye twitched again. "I'm sorry about the circumstances, the way things turned out back then, but it was out of my control. And now I'm here to make it up to you."

Lizzie snorted, the international sign of derision and disbelief.

When she snorted, I remembered she was just a teenager. Just a hurt, confused, angry teenager. My angry teenager. I repeated myself, this time without the eye-twitching. "I mean it, Lizzie. I'm here to make it up to you. And this time I'm not going anywhere."

The elderly couple at the next table were eavesdropping. You could tell by the mechanical way they pretended to move food from their plates to their mouths. Elizabeth pushed her chair back, stood up, and walked out.

"Fuck this," she said as she passed me.

When she was gone, I dropped my head into my hands and let out all the breath I didn't know I'd been holding in. I looked to Sarah and with my eyes asked for help. The next table forgot their pretence and turned to see the broken man.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" I said loudly. Sarah didn't kick me under the table, but she probably should have.

"Nothing much," said the old man, and I had to agree with him.

Running on People

2009-07-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Aimee Tan watched her little brother pin a spider by the leg with his chubby ring finger, the only finger left on his right hand. From the treadmill she lost sight of the trapped arachnid, but she recognised the patient look on her brother's face. When he nodded, a single exaggerated movement that brought his chin into contact with his chest, she knew the spider had detached itself. The nod was the first sign that Joey was there. It reminded Aimee of training.

Joey lifted his head towards Aimee. "Mom?" he said.

"No Joey, no mom. It's just you and me, remember?"

When Joey figured out who she was his eyes and mouth folded into a smile."

Ai-mee!" he said, the syllables separated.

Aimee ran on. "Joey," she said. "Stay away from the treadmill. It's dangerous, okay?"

Aimee ran fifty yards before Joe answered back.

"O-kay," he said. After fifty yards more he dropped his head back to the floor to look for the limping spider. To himself he said her name again. "ai-mee, o-kay."

*

Training is all day, every day. Track for eight miles at six, breakfast blended and drunk before seven. The steam room and a demanding massage, and weights till half eight. Then she meets Coach. With two sleeps till the big race everything is double.

Coach greets her with a long kiss, then shouts at her for losing fractions of a second on the eight mile. He kicks her shoe into the exercise bike, swears and screams and belittles her commitment. He wants her to cry. After so long together Aimee is familiar with Coach. She bites her tongue and when he's done she heads back to the track, determined to prove something.

Her time comes back better than ever. Now, with Coach's plan, is the first time in her life she's had a good shot at gold. Coach shouts and screams and swears and throws shoes because together they demand the best. Despite her good time he's not happy with her technique. But with the marathon so close he forbids her to risk anything by going out to the track again. "Fuck it," he says. "It'll just have to do."

At session's end he asks her.

"How's your brother doing?"

Slowly, loudly, Aimee replaces the weights in the rack. Coach watches it all and says nothing to hurry her up.

"His name's Joey," she says.

Coach is responsible for Joey. A year back he shoved Aimee, hard, angry at her for skipping a meal; and she fell into Joey, who fell into the running treadmill. His hand was cut up, his head was fucked in. He was normal before.

"Joey's fine," says Aimee. "He'll be thirteen soon." She thinks slowly of spider limps. She punches Coach, hard, in the chest. He tensed before the blow, expecting it, and absorbed the impact. He takes a deep breath and lets it all out.

"Go get washed up," he says. "You stink something rotten. Then I want to take you some place nice."

Aimee headed towards the showers with the determination she had heading towards the track. On her way she checks the treadmill is switched off.

*

Coach took her to an Italian place, and allowed her tomato sauce with her pasta. There was a candle on the table, and he was wearing a suit. Romantic music fell softly from speakers on the walls hidden behind heavy curtains.

One subject dominated dinner talk. What Aimee had to do to win. After the food they split the bill, and when Aimee left her card in the waiter's tray Coach took her hand.

"Hey.," he said. "I love you, okay? I know that you can do this."

At one in the morning Aimee crept away from Coach's snoring bulk and silently dressed. She took her trainers out to the hall to put them on, so he wouldn't wake to the sound of laces tying. In night's light she made her way to the track. She would do whatever it took to take first place.

*

Coach trained her in what to say and what to do in the car on the way to the race. He stressed again and again how important it was that she talk to no one, and that before the starting pistol she remain in character. If they were going to pull this off it had to be absolutely perfect – there'd be cameras and people everywhere.

Aimee won the race. Two hours forty. Joey was there to help her celebrate, and so was Coach, with a paternal hand on Joey's low shoulder. Coach wrapped a foil sheet around her shoulders and told her not to drop, to keep moving, most importantly - to remember the act. Aimee picked her brother up and pulled his ear close to her mouth. "Sorry Joey," she whispered.

They interviewed her for the television.

"Aimee, with your performance today knocking seventeen seconds off your personal best, and your domination of the field over the final miles, you must have an eye on a medal in the London 2012 Paralympics? Would you like to say something about that to our viewers?"

Aimee nodded, a single movement that took her chin close to her chest. She slowly folded her eyes and her mouth up into a smile. She hated herself, she hated herself.

"Ai-mee!" she said. "O-kay!"

Saving the world one person at a time. Starting with me.

2009-06-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Helen K works for Save The World on the streets of London, collecting direct debits. She's on Tottenham Court Road today. She's rolled the red SAVE t-shirt into a knot above her navel, and paired it with a dark green skirt that stops above the knee and cotton white socks that stop below the skirt. She has on a cute bonnet hat from the thirties with a large peacock feather that she found in a little vintage shop in Hampstead. She holds her clipboard behind her back when she approaches a potential giver and brings it out after they've stopped and she's initiated the spiel.

She jumps in front of a young man wearing an obviously brand new shirt and tie, carrying a sandwich from EAT and a Costa coffee. His name is Vincent and it's his second day in London, his first day at work.

"Hi!" says Helen. She has a big smile and she pushes her chest forward. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Vincent looks around in case Helen was talking to somebody else. She's hot! He catches a glimpse of the naked thigh between her socks and her hemline and her naked hips and drags his eyes up to hers. He's conscious of a thin layer of sweat on his upper lip and under his arms. "Um. Sure! That would be great. Uhhh. I'm Vincent, by the way."

"Hi Vincent! I'm Helen. Vincent, have you heard about Save The World?"

Helen brings out her clipboard and launches into her rehearsed patter.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Vincent, interrupting her. "I thought this was something else. I'm really not interested. Thanks, though."

Vincent walks off. Before he's back in the office he sees another girl in a Save t-shirt holding a clipboard, and crosses the street to avoid her.

*

Three monkeys are playing football. One of the monkeys has his hands over his eyes. One of the monkeys has his hands over his mouth. One of the monkeys has his hands over his ears. The football is a globe. The deaf monkey kicks it too hard and it bursts. The blind monkey picks up some of his own shit and hurls it at the deaf monkey. It misses. The monkey with hands over his mouth takes a black cab over to Tottenham Court Road and throws shit at a couple of girls trying to sign people up to charities. Maybe later he'll get a new football.

*

Some animal fuck just threw shit at Joe Yu, ruining his tie. He takes it off. He has another one back at the office. Joe left school aged sixteen back when anyone could become a dotcom millionaire and he created his own company. He sold it two years later for two point one million. He had an expensive wedding and a more expensive divorce to an attractive girl whose name he sometimes forgot. He joined Them & Eye, an international market research company, and quickly made associate director. He had a riverside apartment, a red sports car and a new attractive girl whose name he would sometimes forget. He also had just fifteen minutes a day to care about other people. He'd already wasted seven minutes of compassion this morning letting a hot girl in a short green skirt with thigh length socks take his space on the Central Line. God, he'd have to start taking the car to work again. Screw the company's environmentally friendly public transport policy. If he was lucky he could spend the remaining eight minutes this evening making his girlfriend think that she'd enjoy anal. He couldn't work out if it was worth having the caring time or not. Maybe he could trade it in for a bigger sports car.

*

Blonde was having her nails done in that Vietnamese place and talking to her brother Vincent on her Bluetooth. "Oh, yeah, they just jump in front of you, don’t they? You know they get a huge commission for everyone they sign up, on top of a great salary. It's such a con, really. No, you did the right thing. Giving money to those people is like throwing it down the toilet."

Blonde wondered if she should let her boyfriend screw her in the ass. He'd been hinting at it lately. Sometimes he could be a bit of a dick, but he was always real nice when he wanted to screw her in the ass. Maybe he'd get her a new car.

She asked the woman doing her nails what she thought. "Oh, that's right. You people don't speak good English. I always forget." She said it again, slowly and loudly, enunciating each word. "Should – I – Let – Him – Poke – Me – In – The – Heinie? Huh? What – Do – You – Think?"

The Vietnamese lady kept her eyes on the blonde ladies nails.

"For God's sake – it's like talking to a brick wall," said Blonde. "Vincent, what do you think?"

*

The Vietnamese lady was from Leeds. Her name was Sally Sutcliffe. She ran four successful beauty salons in Central London with a combined value of close to a million. She had a home in Notting Hill and several rental properties in Lambeth which were sometimes more trouble than they were worth. She only rented to Asian students, thinking they'd be less hassle, but even so. It was practically a full time job looking after them all. Just before this tart with the roots had come in she'd got a call from one of the girls in Brixton Hill complaining again about the broken downstairs toilet. What did she look like, a flipping plumber?

The blonde tart was giving her a headache. Sally put on her best Chinese Lady voice and told her to wait two minutes. She went out and lit up a Silk Cut, her seventh already this morning.

"Hi," said some bimbo in a funny hat. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"No," said Sally. "Eff off."

The Regretted Protest of Heidi Lopez

2009-04-11T08:24:00.001-07:00

The Regretted Protest of Heidi Lopez

(by Christopher James)

Heidi Lopez was bestest friends with Jesus Christ. In fourth grade, Jesus told Heidi to pull up her skirt and pull down her panties and show the school assembly her naughty bits. Miss Jones from 4J dragged Heidi through the hall and into a corridor and slapped her so hard she knocked the Lopez out of her. This was in eighty four, and even way back then teachers were not allowed to do that sort of thing.

Heidi prayed to Jesus to kill that wicked old witch and Miss Jones died in a tragic midnight miniature skinny-golf incident, her nude body found lying between holes eight and nine, her club near hole seven and her ball just an inch from the putt. Nobody knew why Miss Jones played miniature golf at midnight by her lonely naked self, and for most who heard the news it was odd enough behaviour to serve as an explanation for her winding up dead. But Heidi Lopez knew better.

That was the last time Heidi lifted her petticoats in the school assembly, and she vowed to never again ask Jesus to kill anyone, no matter how big of a witch they were.

Paper Chains

2009-04-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

God's friend, Silvia, changed her last name to Chance. God never asked her why. He was sure she had her reasons but he preferred to imagine his own. Things happen, and we don't always need to know why. Silvia knew the importance of names. Her mother named her Short Face for seven years until she chose to grow a foot and a half in a single night. After that she was called Long Face.

One night a sheet from the Daily Mirror Sport Supplement containing pages three, four, sixty-eight and sixty-nine blew through an open bathroom window and hit Silvia Chance in her sex as she left the shower. Silvia looked down and was struck by two words that remained dry amongst the running ink. Abysmal Defending. She vowed to name her first son Abysmal Defending. Nine short long months later she did, for the words from the page, she said, and for the way he was conceived.

The father arrived in the maternity late, and insisted on a proper name for his son. Silvia was exhausted and belaboured and gave in to the man's demands and they named the boy Jonathon Jones, but whenever Silvia and Jonathon were alone she called him Abysmal, or Bysmal for short, and sung him old Sicilian lullabies to help him to dream in Italian.

Silvia and the father loved Jonathon Jones and raised him well with magic and discipline. They were not married, until one night the announcements page of the Islington Gazette landed on the father's open snoring mouth and almost suffocated him. The father woke up with a cough and a splutter and Kathryn Butkiss's marriage to Evelyn Spitpot pasted to his brow and he decided some time after the cough but long before the sputter that it was time to make an honest woman of Miss Silvia Chance. They married before the month was out, though Silvia kept her name, and Jonathon Jones, unbeknownst to Mister Jones, kept his.

'Do you think,' asked Mister Jones, 'that God will let a pair like us be happy?'

'Who knows?' said Silvia. 'God likes to take a chance every once in a while.'

The young child became a young man, and his spirit roamed further than his soul, and he began to wonder what he should do with his life. One sunny day, when he was hanging by a single long-sleeved arm from a yew in the neighbour's garden, a page from the Mumbai Telegraph wrapped itself around his dangling legs. The page had travelled many miles and was eaten by dust and weather and Jonathon Jones couldn't understand the unfamiliar language anyway, but he understood the picture of one small performing elephant upon the back of a larger performing elephant and resolved, like the performing pachyderms, to join the circus.

A circus came to town and it gave host to seven nights of World Famous shows and then it left and Bysmal the brand new Clown left with it. Bysmal practised pratfalls till his oversized pants were bare at the behind and then he stitched them back together with a long needle and thread and a measured eye and practised some more. He became known far and wide as the greatest clown the world had ever laughed at, and he thought he had everything a young big-top showman could ever want.

There was a night that the lion died, and the elephant died, and the horses that belonged to the Incredible Bareback Beauties died, and they feared the circus would have to close down under the pile of dead animals. A fire-eater pointed a soap scented finger at our hero and said 'It's because of him. I saw his name – he is Jonah Jonah. He brought down our ship.'

Jonathon Jones argued that his name was Jonathon Jones, not Jonah Jonah, but the circus folk could see no other explanation for the falling of their beasts, and Bysmal the clown was asked to leave. He donned his odd clown shoes and his peculiar clown hat and climbed to the platform from where the acrobats leapt and cried the tears of a cloud. He blew his red nose on a piece of paper that came to hand, and when he looked at what had come from his nose he found the paper was the lonely hearts column from the Roman Sun. Bysmal recognised words here and there from the lullabies Chance had sung him so long ago, and he wished he had an amore eterno to kiss and to hold.

He climbed down and found the Ringmaster and he hung up his water-squirting flower and his revolving bow-tie and said he was hitting the road and he wouldn't stop until he had found his soul mate. The Ringmaster was a romantic man when surrounded by dying horses and zebras and wished Bysmal well. The strongman and the lionless lion tamer asked him where he would go and Bysmal watched page after page of Le Metro fall from the sky and he said he would go to Paris. With the little money he had saved over the five years he'd been with the circus he bought himself a little yellow car that the previous owner said was fine as long as you parked it on a hill facing down, and he set off in the direction of France.

On the inside lane of the M6 a single page from the Yorkshire Post spread across the windscreen and obscured the view. PRINCESS KILLED IN CAR CRASH IN PARIS filled one half of the page. Things happen sometimes, and we don't always need to know why. Jonathon Abysmal Chance Defending Jones plowed the car into the back of a radio news truck, and God stopped flinging newspaper pages.

We'll Always Have Paris

2009-03-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

Our train took us out of London towards the East, and to France. Every thirty miles the landscape was new. City begat suburb begat industrial begat countryside. I waxed lyrical about the fields of rape, and Maria's eyes reddened. I wonder if it was something I'd said. Something about rape?

Maria caught me looking, and laughed and waved my concern away with her hand. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Just thinking about the countryside gives me hayfever!'

'Oh god!' I said. 'I thought – well. No matter what I thought. That's some strong pollen, isn't it?'

Maria nodded. She'd reassured me, and now she could go back to watching the world outside the window as we left it behind us.

From a plastic bag filled with discarded sweet wrappers and half empty bottles of water I fished an overpriced magazine I'd bought at the station for the journey. It was called TV Puzzler. Bubbles of soap opera gossip sat aside word searches.

On page two I was asked to spot the five differences between two pictures of Paris Hilton and Sarah Silverman standing apart from each other on the red carpet at a movie premiere. On page one I was told that whilst hosting the 2007 MTV Movie Awards Sarah Silverman had told a number of jokes at Paris Hilton's expense, whilst Ms Hilton was in the audience. She had made the socialite and star of 2005 movie House of Wax cry.

'That's not very nice,' I said to myself. I noticed that in picture one Sarah Silverman was wearing a bracelet and that in picture two she was not. I got unreasonably excited by my discovery. I never normally spotted details like that. I wondered who Sarah Silverman was. She looked cute. She had to be better than Paris Hilton, right?

'Hey, Maria?' I said. 'You ever heard of Sarah Silverman?'

Maria burst. Tears exploded from her. She howled, she howled, I'd never heard anybody make such a sound before. It tore at my heart. She doubled over and howled for thirty miles.

I found a packet of tissues in the plastic bag and poked her helplessly with them. Before we reached the coast Maria straightened up again and calmed down. She took the tissues and did what she could to clean her face. Her cheeks and her nose and her eyes stayed red. Green mucus hung from her mouth and towards her ears. She wiped at it and moved it around.

'God, I'm sorry,' she told me. She looked sorry.

'Can I still blame it on that damned hayfever?' she asked.

Brothers and Sisters

2009-03-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher James

To: tuesdayshorts@yahoo.com

Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 12:25:37 PMSubject: Tuesday Short

Dear Tuesday Shorts, please find below two short pieces and a bio, which includes a link to my website. Thank you for taking the time to read these. I hope you might publish them, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Brothers and Sisters by Christopher James (99 words)

Sister Ramirez urinated hard and enjoyed it immensely. She lit a cigarette and stayed on the cold porcelain and sighed with the pleasure of the freshly deflowered. She would go back into the bedroom soon, but for now – aaaahh!

Brother Santos held his head in his hands. What had he done? If God didn't punish him for this the other Brothers would. They'd hold him down and make him bleed.

When Sister Ramirez left the bathroom the Brother slapped her hard and left.

The Sister went back to the bathroom and lit another cigarette. She enjoyed that one too.

Shrink by Christopher James (64 words)

Jonathon James once told the rest of the class that if they gave him a hundred dollar bill he’d stick his wiener in a hole in the dirt. Nobody gave him any money, but he did it anyway. He’s a psychiatrist now. I don’t know if the one thing has anything to do with the other thing. But he still charges a hundred dollars.

Bio Christopher James lives in London and travels the world. He is new to writing, and this is the first time he's been published in Tuesday Shorts. More, but not much more, of his work can be found here... http://christopherjamesstories.blogspot.com/

Brothers and Sisters will be published soon by Tuesday Shorts http://www.tuesdayshorts.com/8.html
Shrink will not be.

RACE!

2009-02-26T00:09:00.000-08:00

It wos a race – me against Christopher Walker from down the rode. His mum told my mum that she saw me pick there cat up by the tail, but its not tru cause I never did. So I went to find Christopher Walker and told him I was going to punch him in the nose. He said if I did that than he would tell his mum and I said if he told his mum than I would punch him in the balls. In the end we had this race.

Their wos two trees down the rec and their both the same big, so I wos going to clime one and Christopher Walker would clime the other tree, and the one who got to the top first wos the winner. If I won than I could punch Christopher Walker in the nose and he wouldn tell his mum, and if he won than he could punch me in the nose.

Every1 wos their and they all counted 1 2 3 Go! and then we wos off. The trees wos bigger then I thought and it wos hard work. I clime a lot of trees so it should be eazy for me and Christopher Walker stays at home wiv his mummy so he should be bad at it, but to start with he wos in the lead.

I could here every1 shouting and screaming and some of them wonted me to win but some of them wonted Christopher Walker to win. I heard Michael Davies shouting 'Go Chris,' and I shouted 'Michael Davies, when I get down from here Im goin to punch you.' He wos supposed to be my friend.

I almos slipped, and now we wos a long way up. I looked down at the groun and your not supposed to do that but I did anyway and I wosn't scared or nothing but it wos a long way down. I was sweating buckits and my hands wos wet. It wos hard too grip the wood. I looked over and Christopher Walker wos at the same high as me. My tree wos harder to clime than his tree cos the branchs wos on diffrent sides so I had to go all the way roun and they wos too far apart so I had to stretch and on his tree it wos like a ladder.

'Go On Chris!' I heard.

'You'd better run Michael Davies,' I shouted.

'Wot?' he said. 'It wosn't me!'

I dunno. We wos so high up by now that it wos hard to tell who wos saying what. There wos just a couple of meters left to the top. There wos no more branchs left and I had my legs wrap tight roun the trunk and wos going up a little bit by a little bit and I looked at Christopher Walker and he wos doing the same thin, and now that we wos here and nobody els could hear us I said 'Hey, it wos me that threw you're cat, and Im goin to do it again.' And I pretended that I wos throwin something at him. He let go of the tree cause he thought Id thrown something at him and he fell off too the groun.

He went bump bump bump on the tree branchs goin down and he hit the groun and it went CRACK! and I heard him cryin and I looked and there wos lots of blood and everyone wos watching him and he wosn't movin.

So I won.

Little Venetian

2009-02-22T00:17:00.000-08:00

From Happy

2009-02-18T15:54:00.001-08:00

I play this game, sometimes, to amuse myself. Game is a strong word, it implies fun, and the game I play provides me with no fun. But it passes the time and gives me a certain sense of achievement. It’s a game in the sense that a crossword puzzle is a game. I take the word HAPPY and try to change letters one by one, creating a new word at each change, until I reach the word ALONE. From HAPPY I change the middle P to an R to create HARPY. A harpy is an evil beast from ancient times with the head and body of a woman and the wings and feet of a bird. From HARPY I go HARDY, HANDY, HANDS, BANDS, BENDS, BEADS, BEATS, BOATS, BOOTS, BLOTS, SLOTS, SLITS, SHITS, SHINS, SHINE, SHONE, STONE, ATONE and finally, successfully, ALONE. To ATONE is to behave in such a way as to demonstrate that you are sorry for past actions. There are other solutions to my little game, but it amuses me to think that after the shits, a cruel woman and atonement you go from being happy to being alone. It makes my pastime seem like less of a game and more a metaphor for life.

Weighty

2009-02-18T15:34:00.001-08:00

Holly said to me ‘Christ, Stephen, you’re getting fat. Your bosom is bigger than mine.’ She said she wouldn’t touch me again until I lost some weight. ‘Hang on here,’ she said, and went to get some weighing scales from the bathroom. I got an idea of what was coming and filled my pockets with whatever heavy was around. Coins, a little snow globe, a glass. There’s nothing heavy in my house. I never realised nor cared about this before, but now it seems of great importance. How can I expect to have my life on track if I have nothing small in stature but mighty in weight?

‘No, I’m not going to bring it here; you’ll have to come to the bathroom.’

What was so wrong with the weighing scales that she wasn’t going to pick them up and carry them in? ‘You’ve had your feet all over them; I don’t want to touch anything that’s had your feet all over them.’

So I go into the bathroom. ’Ninety eight kilograms?’ she tells me. ‘You weigh ninety eight kilograms? Why not eat some of that Chinese left in the fridge, make it an even hundred. Pick up the scales.’

‘What?’

‘Pick up the scales. Pick up the scales.’ She said it twice, quickly. There’s a character in the film Goodfellas who they call Tony TwoTimes. They call him that because he says everything twice. I’m going to get the papers, going to get the papers.

‘I don’t want to pick up the scales.’

‘You don’t want to pick up the scales? What’s wrong with you?’

‘They’ve had your feet all over them.’

I didn’t say that. I wish I’d said that but I didn’t say that. I picked up the scales.

‘Turn it over. Come on come on.’

I turned it over. Not quickly, of course, I still had my pride. There was a chart taped to the bottom. ‘How tall are you?’ She asked. ‘One eighty?’

‘More or less, yes. Six foot. What’s that? That’s one eighty.’

‘A man your height,’ she tells me, looking at the chart, ‘should weigh seventy five kilograms. You’re twenty three kilograms overweight. She scrutinised the chart for more to batter me with. ‘You’re obese. You know that? You’re so fat you’re obese. Well you’re going to lose some weight. Before you can even think of touching me again you’re going to lose five kilograms.’

I said that was ok. ‘You’re right. I need to lose weight. Five kilograms. You’ll see. This time next week, I’ll be ninety three or less. Less. And that’s just the beginning. Then I’m going to lose more.’

She was disappointed I’d agreed so readily. She’d wanted to fight. Still, she was a busy lady, and she left without pushing it. I took out the coins and the snow globe and the glass, and weighed myself again. Ninety one. I went to the fridge, got out the Chinese, and tucked in.

Who killed my son?

2009-02-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

David Mackey

2009-02-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

David Mackey has new goggles for swimming and has discovered two new things. One: When he keeps his head above the surface, begoggled or not, the light is bent through the water, creating the illusion that the feet of the person ahead of him are further away than they actually are. Two: Jessica Goldstein from across the street wears an ill fitting bathing suit and if he swims behind her when she does the breast stroke he can catch a glorious glimpse of her much desired crack.

David’s mother is telling all her friends how proud she is of her son. He’s lost so much weight since he started the swimming, she says. He’s there every day for hours on end. He’s a born again dolphin.

David Mackey heard that playing with yourself will turn you blind. He knows that’s not true. His vision is getting worse, but it has nothing to do with that. That’s nothing but an old wives tale, told to scare old husbands and old sons. Just in case, though, he doesn’t tell his mom that he can’t see the board at school anymore. He moves to the front of the class, and though his grades don’t improve his teachers praise him for the burgeoning interest in his studies.

This kind of dedication, they tell his mother, might see him getting into somewhere like Berkeley. His mother is over the moon. Did you hear that, she says to David’s father. Berkeley! His father grunts approvingly and scratches himself.

David Mackey buys a dirty magazine from a store in New York on a field trip and the next week he takes it into school and unsticks the pages to show pictures of naked girls to the other boys in his class.

David has so many friends now, says his mother. I know that being popular isn’t the most important thing, but still… They’ve all started swimming too, say the other mothers. He’s such a positive influence.

I fucking hate David Mackey, says Jessica Goldstein. The big jerk off.

now published here... http://www.johnnyamerica.net/

From Ribs Come Tales

2009-02-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

A story begins at the point where two characters meet. If I put Adam in a garden by himself we don’t have a tale. Adam stares into space drumming his fingers. He doesn’t even think about anything because he has nothing interesting to think about. Now if I put Adam into a garden with Eve we have the start of something. Both wish to reach out to the other, and if they do we have a story developing. Sadly they are unused to company and the delicate art of small talk, and no conversation flows, and we have a story collapsing. Adam blames himself for being unable to think of anything worth saying and Eve blames him as well. At some point pride demands they give up trying to think of things to say and independently they both stare into space, drumming their respective fingers, each of them pretending to be on their own. It is not much of a story, yet, but we are getting there.

I put Adam and Eve into a garden filled with flowers. “Look at the flowers,” says Adam, “aren’t they beautiful?” “Yes,” agrees Eve, “they’re very beautiful.” “Yes,” repeats Adam, “they really are.” Adam is pathetic. Eve is becoming bitter. She resents Adam for having nothing more interesting to say. In the back of her mind it occurs to her that she too has nothing to say, and she blames Adam for this as well. Adam wears nothing and Eve wears nothing and their bodies belong together. What’s wrong with him? She glares at him with mean eyes that she hides from him when he turns, and she hates him because he doesn’t beg her gentle touch. She pictures herself tearing up the flowers and throwing the torn petals at Adam like vicious confetti. Still they have nothing to say to each other.

I put Eve and Steve in a garden together. Steve is slime. He slicks his hair back with wet look gel, wears snake skin suits and throws his arm in the air to pull back the sleeve when he wants to check the time on his designer watch. Within half an hour Steve and Eve are screwing on the freshly mown lawn. Eve is wondering what Adam is doing. She closes her eyes tight and bites her lip and makes noises of ecstasy in case Steve cares whether she enjoys herself. He doesn’t. Adam is watching from the other side of the garden, hot tears on his face. He is digging his uncut nails into the fleshy part of his hands and biting his own lip hard enough to draw tiny blood droplets to the skin. He is cursing himself, and Eve, and Steve. Mostly he is cursing himself. He remains silent and listens to Eve’s moans and wonders how she can enjoy herself with that asshole inside of her.

I put Adam in a room by himself and he jerks off violently, thinking of Eve. Now he has plenty to say.

A story begins at the point where two characters part.

From Ribs Come Tales will appear in Issue 20 of Neon On Line Magazine.

Introduction to a character you're not supposed to like

2009-02-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

When I trip and hurt myself and somebody laughs I immediately think of my old, dear friend Marshall.

Marshall tended to dole out conversation to me in nugget sized chunks, regardless of relevance. "Never say sorry," he told me, apropos of nothing. "To say sorry is a sign of weakness. You should always say instead that you apologise. Allow me to explain.

"Sorry is an adjective, a passive word. When you say 'sorry' you are abbreviating the sentence 'I am sorry'. We can loosely translate this as 'I equals sorry'. You appear, ever so slightly, to be describing your entire being, and in an especially negative way. It's abject. You are identifying yourself to your audience as one with sorrow. It's not good. Not good at all.

"'Apologise', on the other hand, is a verb. A strong, active, doing word. 'I apologise.' The emphasis here is on the subject's actions. It comes from a position of strength. Your audience will look up to you. Do you see? How you present yourself is wrapped up in the language you use. When you use strong, active verbs in place of weak, passive adjectives you become stronger and you appear more active. And vice versa.

"Furthermore! Furthermore, to say 'I apologise' does not constitute an actual apology, in much the same way that saying 'I laugh' does not mean you are laughing. Yet your apologisee will every single time accept it as such. They concede their right to insist upon a genuine apology, and you once again are the stronger participant in this exchange."

"Okay," I said.

"Thank you," I said

Long acquainted though I was with the random topic generator that was Marshall's mind I never became wholly used to it.

"I once dated a girl," he began, and I knew this would have little or nothing to do with the implications of word choice in an apologetic situation. "Though we were clearly physically attracted to each other there was also, and above all else, this passionate intellectual eroticism to our relationship. You know I used to paint lipstick on her labia? We would talk of Sartre up to and after and during the moment of coitus. It's so liberating and refreshing to not be bound by sex talk when having sex.

"The first time we slept together as we undressed and caressed we discussed in depth her family history. She made a number of disparaging remarks about her stepfather, and throughout our dialogue her body language was tight and aggressive. She never mentioned his name, although she happily called her mother Elizabeth, and when she talked of him she punctuated her sentences with a stabbing motion using whatever was to hand. This piqued the pervert deep within me and in the moments between her onanising me and me penetrating her Crimson Sunrise vertical smile I said 'You don't much like your stepfather, do you?'

"She said 'No,'" and Marshall paused for dramatic impact, "'but he did teach me everything I ever wanted to know about sex.'"

Marshall stopped to assess the impact of his story on me.

"Shit," I said, and then I said it again. "Shit."

"Precisely," said Marshall, enjoying my disquiet.

"That poor girl."

I considered the scene Marshall had painted. His monologue had come to an end, and it gradually occurred to me that he was expecting rather more of a reaction than my hiding behind four letter words.

"I imagine that must have put a dampener on your night," I said, finally, in an attempt to show off to Marshall how casual I could be about such and such.

"On the contrary. It was some of the most enjoyable sex I have ever had. She fucked me like she was killing me with her cunt. We went together for eleven months and then her stepfather died and we split up."

"Oh God oh God oh God! For fuck's sake, Marshall! I do wish you hadn't told me that."

"Really?" said Marshall, after an age. He grinned widely.

"I apologise."

Valentines in a Trendy London Flat

2009-02-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

Mark uncrossed and crossed his legs. He pushed his chest forward and up. One hand was on his knee with his fingers splayed and the palm raised and the other hand played with his hair. "Louise, are you still seeing that child?"

Louise had her legs wide apart and her pelvis thrust towards Mark. Her arms stretched along the top of the comfortable couch so that she appeared to take up the entire three spaces by herself. She half heartedly hid a mocking smile. "He's hardly a child, Mark. He's seventeen. And yes, we are still seeing each other."

Mark tucked his hair behind his ears. The movement of his arms lifted his top several inches and revealed his navel. He caught Louise looking at it and hurriedly pulled his top back down. "Well I think there's something wrong with it, Louise. It makes me very uncomfortable.

Louise scratched her belly slowly and deliberately. She dug a finger into her own navel and poked around in there. "You were the one who wanted an open marriage. You practically begged me for it."

"Well this is hardly what I had in mind, is it?" Mark pointedly shifted on the chair to direct his body away from Louise and pouted.

Louise rolled her eyes and sighed. Mark tried to ignore the all too familiar sound, but his pout slipped. It returned, briefly, but it no longer felt natural. "Mark, what do you want from me? First you want an open marriage, even when I tell you it's only going to cause problems. Now you don't want me to see other people. How am I supposed to keep you happy when you don't even know what you want?"

Mark turned his body back towards Louise and put his hands on his hips. He raised his voice and said "I know what I don't want though."

"Oh yes, you always know that, don't you? Half of London knows what you don't want."

Mark's eyes flashed in the living room light as he opened them wide in surprise and then narrowed them quickly in a controlled display of resentment. He made as if to say something and then markedly stopped and turned his head to the side. He swallowed with force and concentrated hard on not crying.

"Oh god, now you're giving me the silent treatment." Louise sank back into the couch and shook her head slowly. "I don't believe it," she said. After she'd shook her head for long enough and punctuated her disbelief with a few more sighs she slapped a hand hard on to the cushion beside herself. Because the cushion was soft it didn't make much of a sound. Louise stood up, and headed towards the door.

"I have to get out of here," she said. "This is the worst valentines day ever."

When she opened the door Mark clapped enthusiastically. "That was great," he said, a huge grin all over his face. "Now this time I'll be the angry husband and you be the wife."