Monday, June 11, 2007

The salmon are spawning.

Fuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk. Fuke, Feck, Funk, Fick, Frank, Fank, FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Johnny was running like a madman, running down this golden street flushed with artificial light, running in fear, screaming in loss, in confusion, in the complete scared sacrificial agony of a man whose world is lost. A man whose life is wrenched from him at its sweetest.

See, this wouldn’t be a real story without a central conflict. I would mean nothing, my friends would just be friends, just like everyone else, like yours, were it not for Johnny’s catalystic screams of fuck. It wasn’t the fear of course that started it all, it was the words of Sara Holmes, who we all called Soho because it was almost a combination of her two names and because she’d grown up around there. Or so we assumed; England isn’t really a place, it’s just a moshpit of accents vying for proximity to the big tourist attractions. And it wasn’t just the words and the fucks that form the important story of our little pack, but they were the flick of the finger and the first domino, respectively.

If you were to construct a pattern of dominoes that was to best represent in every way our stories, from the single starting point of it all, to the bulge of action, to the one big tip of an event and then a scattering of aftermaths, if this story was a pattern of dominoes, it would look just like a vagina. Pudendum. See how it falls? Oh if only I could possibly convey just how perfect a picture this paints of us in a shorter form. It encompasses thematically, shapely, referentially and symbolically the arc of the events which tie us all together. The events so many of which were carnal. So welcome readers, to the base. Prepare yourselves for big, deep, dangerous, wonderful plunge.

Johnny sure wasn’t thinking of dominoes as he panicked, in fact he probably wasn’t thinking of anything, just screaming, just lost, but if he was it may well have been vaginas. Soho’s in fact. Well, at least as a starting point. Oh, right, maybe you haven’t figured it out yet. The words that rammed the key into the locked door of our lives, the moment that sealed a million other moments. See Soho – sweet, gorgeous make-you-smile-just-by-walking-in, bubbly but well dressed Soho – was everything to innocent little Johnny. Everything, including pregnant.

And so now we were all in a bar that cost too much for types like us, you know the kind with whole rooms and tables made of what seems to be a single piece of glass inlaid occasionally with vinyl-leather. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s birthday too, just another important anniversary ruined by the complexities of life. It was just a couple of weeks after I’d met Flo, and a lot of other minor introductory stuff had happened that I’m sure I’ll get back to, but we must get rolling here, get into the crux of some things and one of those things is Johnny and Soho! Some pretty and culturally valued figures have posited that love might actually be a cold and broken hallelujah, and not at all the simple thing it’s sold as in fairy tales. Johnny and Soho are to this theory what fossils were to Darwin’s – damn compelling evidence.

They’d met in high school, though they attended different ones, and Johnny thought Sarah looked like Fay Wray raised by hippie wolves. Sarah thought Johnny looked a lot like he actually did, and oddly enough this explains why she liked him as much as Ms. Wray explains why Johnny liked her. They weren’t ever really a big “thing”, but they did get along well, or at least well enough to hook up drunk now and again when it suited their selective memories. And so of course they were going to end up waking up in each other’s arms, hung over but satisfied every so often. With one notably shattering and unexpected result. Soho joked much later that she’s wanted the kid’s middle name to be “Inheritance” to match a christian name of “Goodbye”.

Anyway, Johnny was understandably, and rather vocally, distraught. Flo was just coming back from the toilets, looking refreshed from powdering her nose, if you catch on, and I was counting coins for more consolatory beer. Sleepy was arguing about the rankings of playing card suits with a mustachioed stranger and Maya was stealing salt and pepper shakers in her underwear. Mikey, the last of us, slammed his glass down for attention and said four words that probably changed the course of things almost as much as the “I am pregnant” three did.

“Let’s go on holiday.”

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