TAN LINES: EXCERPT

AN EXCERPT FROM THE SHORT STORY

IMG_3590

IMG_1253

IMG_0393

'So you went for the Hollywood,' the man says as the door hits the wall and sends the whole flat shaking. 'Classy.'

The girl on the bed sits up with a gasp, and for a couple of seconds she simply stares at this man who's entered her bedroom, as if unsure whether he’s an apparition from her dream or her reality. He doesn’t move as he waits for her to decide, listening from his doorway to the aircon humming, the Sukhumvit traffic beeping, the thunderous sound of the door still reverberating through his head.

'How the fuck did you get in?' she says eventually, deciding on her latter assumption. Without taking her left hand off her breast, she uses the other to retrieve the duvet that's fallen to the side and exposed her nudity.

'I always thought you were against a full shave,' the man says and walks over to the wardrobe. He slides it open and starts going through the t-shirts on the top shelf. 'Said it reinforced the sexualisation of children,' he continues as he extracts an old, faded grey shirt, 'didn't you?'

'How did you get in?' the girl repeats, more slowly this time.

‘Always told you to latch the door,' the man shrugs, ‘never did you listen.'

'I seem to remember locking the door.'

'Have you got my Cramps t-shirt? The yellow one with the girl bending over?'

Instead of replying to this, the girl starts walking her sitting bones back towards the headboard. With her back against the wood, she slides her legs underneath her body and wraps the duvet around her until only the face is visible.

'You're gonna get very hot that way,' the man says and looks at her over the Iggy and the Stooges t-shirt held out in front of him. 'Wish you'd kept the fan now, don't you?'

'Hand me the keys.'

'No can do, m'fraid,' says the man and drops the t-shirt in a black leather handbag on the floor.

'That's my bag.'

The man shrugs. 'This is my flat. Doesn't seem to make much difference to you.'

'We had an agreement.'

'That was before you started shaving your pubes. Is this a Mulberry?'

'What business of yours is it what I do with my pubes?'

'How the hell could you afford a Mulberry?'

‘You can’t come here, Billy.'

Billy lets his hands drop to the sides, a black button-up shirt landing outside of the handbag. 'Two weeks, Nina,' he says and looks at Nina. 'Two fucking weeks.'

THE MEXICAN LETTERS: EXCERPT

AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL

IMG_4089

IMG_3100_edited

IMG_3697

How to Catch a Runaway Horse

22nd October 2015

Week 6, Day 4

Do you know how to show a horse who’s boss? Jessie does. It’s all in the feet.

“Whoever moves the feet is in control,” she explained as she lead Bandido around the round-pen today, the jumpy thoroughbred who ten minutes earlier had trotted around with his head high and ears pinned back now following her like a dog. He had his head low and ears forward, tuned into Jessie’s every movement without her so much as raising her voice. Jessie stopped, he stopped. Jessie walked, he walked.

Jessie turned around and looked at him, he looked like a kid caught with his hands in the cookie-jar. She only had to lift her whip an inch for him to step back, set it down and he’d stop.

“Never pet a horse when they do something good,” she explained as she set about walking again, not even looking at Bandido as he followed in her tracks. She stopped. Bandido stopped. “The only reward a horse understands is a drop of pressure. Let down the whip, or the lead rope, or just get out of his face. That’s all he wants. Ever seen how horses act in a field?”

I didn’t even begin to answer; it was evident it was a rhetorical question. Jessie, wearing purple tiger-striped Lycra hot pants, a white triangular bikini top and her totally unrecognisable, once leopard-print trainers, was in the horsemanship zone.

“There’s always a lead horse, right? Here, it’s McKenna.”

“McKenna?” I asked. “Old, shaggy, stubby-legged fatty McKenna?”

“Yup,” she said and turned Bandido around. “He’s the oldest. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. But every corral has its own lead horse, too, just like every group of humans has a boss who might not be boss in another social constellation. You see it in the morning, when you give them hay. Who can chase whom away.”

“Right. Marilyn can chase Chief off, but then Quintana will chase her off.”

“Exactly. It’s all about hierarchy. And the way to gain the respect of a horse, is to simply act like you’re higher than they are in the hierarchy. You have to be the lead horse.”

“And how do you act like a lead horse?”

“By moving the feet.”

“What if you can’t?”

“There’s always a way.”

“Alright,” I said, cockily leaning my elbows on the round-pen fence. “What about Bullet this morning. I went to catch him in the corral, and he ran off. Then how do I “move his feet?””

Jessie got all French about this.

“Well, well, well,” she said and started prancing about stroppily. I might have imagined this, but I could’ve sworn Bandido got more French, too. “I am glad you asked, madame. Let me demonstrate.”

What happened next was a thing of beauty. Jessie unhooked the lead rope from Bandido’s halter and started swinging it around. In response, Bandido took off like a bullet and went rodeo in the round-pen. He started bucking, kicking and twisting about, turning this way and that, creating his own miniature storm of dust.

“Mon dieu,” Jessie said, “Seems he needed to let off a bit of le steam.”

We watched together as Bandido let off steam until he seemed pretty much worn out. Then Jessie walked over brusquely to him, in the way you should never approach a horse: head-on, looking into its eyes. Not surprisingly, Bandido smelled danger and trotted off.

“If you wanna catch a horse,” Jessie said and began jogging after Bandido, “and it runs off, what you gotta do is chase it.” She began running, spinning the lead rope around and making faces. Bandido, understandably, was running for his life. “Sounds counterintuitive, I know,” she went on, adding a few growling noises. “But the thing is, you see, that if you run after a horse for long enough, that horse will eventually forget that it was his idea to run in the first place. Especially if he stops, and you keep chasing, he will start thinking that it was your idea to move him. Which means –“

“You’re the lead horse.”

“Très bien.” She stopped moving, crouched down and turned away from Bandido. “Just watch.”

And sure enough, Bandido, after throwing some suspicious glances at the formerly very loud figure now crouching in the middle of the round pen, came sauntering over. Head low, eyes forward, snorting a little. Without so much as getting up from her crouching position, Jessie hooked the lead rope back on.

“Have a go?” she asked and held it out to me.

I did as she said, and it worked. Not as seamlessly as when she did it, of course, but I did manage to move Bandido around at walk and trot, change directions, back up, and move the front and hind quarters. That’s a pretty good start, but you know what’s even better?

I realised I’ve been treating you like a horse.

A runaway horse.

Now wait a minute, you might say – aren’t I the one who’s ten thousand miles away from home?

Well, yes.

But I only ran off after you’d already done it. You hadn’t left me, physically. But you and I both know you’d left the relationship. You just hadn’t bothered to take your body with you.

And so I ran even further, in a bid to make you think all that space was my idea. Hoping that you, like Bandido, would be so impressed by my strength that you’d simply walk back up to me, and let yourself be caught. I was the one to run away but honey I did it in self-defence. I broke up in self-defence.

When I was a kid I always said I’d marry a horse. I think I knew myself better at nine than I do today.

AZALEA WANKSTAIN: EXCERPT

PERFORMED AT THE ARCOLA THEATRE ON 5.2.18, STARRING SAFRON BECK AND KACE MONNEY

---

Taking the allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein to greener pastures, former news anchor Lauren Sivan claimed on Saturday that Weinstein had exposed himself to her in a restaurant hallway before “ejaculating quickly into a potted plant.” We get the other side of the story…

FEMALE CALLER: (distressed) and then he… then he said, you could either be in this script, or you could not. I guess it depends on how badly you want it. (sobs)

RADIO HOST: (lurid) Oh dear. That must have been very hard for you. (coughs) Excuse the pun. (coughs)

FEMALE CALLER: Pardon?

RADIO HOST: Never you mind your female little brain with that. What did he do next?

FEMALE CALLER: What… what do you mean?

RADIO HOST: (annoyed) Which type of sexual favour did he ask for? Are we talking just a handie, or -

FX: RECORDING SCREECHES TO A HALT

RADIO HOST: (disappointed) Aaw, Sheyla! We was just getting to the heart of the story! I had the what, the where and the when! I was just going in for the how.

SHEYLA: Take your hand out of your trousers.

RADIO HOST: Oh, don’t be like that, Sheyla. I became a radio show host in the seventies! Women’s rights didn’t exist back / then -

SHEYLA: Neither will your job, if you don’t treat the next call with more respect.

FX: PHONE RINGS

SHEYLA: Oh! Here it comes.

RADIO HOST: That’s what she s(aid) -

FX: A SLAP INTERRUPTS HIM

RADIO HOST: (grunts) Good morning and thank you for calling Personal Tragedy to Personal Gain. What can I do you for?

FX: RECORDING SCREECHES TO A HALT

RADIO HOST: Aw, but Sheyla!

SHEYLA: One more chance. One.

FX: PHONE RINGS AGAIN

RADIO HOST: (petulant) Good morning and thank you for calling Personal Tragedy to Personal Gain. What can I DO for YOU?

AZALEA: Well, good morning, I’m an Azalea, and I think these allegations are outrageous.

RADIO HOST: You’re speaking my language, Miss Azalea. Or can I call you Anne?

AZALEA: Certainly not!

RADIO HOST: Very well, Miss Azalea. Any relation to Iggy, that saucy little / minx -

AZALEA: No, no relation, and I don’t appreciate your tone, Mr Radio Host.

RADIO HOST: Oh God, not another one.

AZALEA: I’m sorry?

RADIO HOST: (to himself) Aw Jesus, where’s that manual again…

FX: PAPER RUSTLES

RADIO HOST: (clears throat) I mean That’s interesting. Tell me more.

AZALEA: I just want you all to know that Harvey could be very loving. Him and I had a special bond that none of those women could ever understand.

RADIO HOST: (confused, then excited) Women? Are you… are you saying you’re underage, Miss Azalea?

AZALEA: In fact, the very first time Harvey laid eyes on me, he said, and I quote, he said, “One day I’ll make you a Wankstain.”

RADIO HOST: A what?

AZALEA: A Wankstain! As in MRS Wankstain! Swear down, I have it on CCTV.

RADIO HOST: Oh! I see! Well, Miss Azalea, I’m not sure that’s how you pronounce -

AZALEA: A husband and wife, I know, a priest needs to be present. But it’s a pretty clear declaration of intent, which is just as important. And I would like that recorded.

RADIO HOST: Right. So, Miss Azalea…

AZALEA: (giggles) Azalea Wankstain… it’s a neat name, don’t you think?

RADIO HOST: Oh, you’re hyphenating it?

Beat.

RADIO HOST: Anyway… you work in the industry, did you say?

AZALEA: I’m in the building, yes.

RADIO HOST: The Wankstain, I mean the Weinstein building?

AZALEA: A building he frequents, yes. Though I haven’t seen him lately, what’s with all the naughty naughty press against him. I think he wants to protect me from all that.

RADIO HOST: And what exactly do you do in this non-disclosed building, if I may ask?

AZALEA: Let’s just say nobody gets in without my knowledge!

RADIO HOST: A-ha. So you’re quite high up then?

AZALEA: Actually, I’m in the lobby.

RADIO HOST: Wait, are you saying, you work on the floor? A young receptionist, perhaps…?

AZALEA: Oh, floor, windowsill, hanging basket… Harvey said he’d have my bush anywhere.

RADIO HOST: Hanging basket? Wow, I mean we all knew he was into some unconventional practices, but…

AZALEA: INothing gets past me, sugar drop! Like that one night, when he came in with that so-called news anchor. I could feel my petals shrivel with jealousy as they walked toward the elevator. But then, suddenly -

RADIO HOST: Hold up, hold up. You could feel WHAT shrivel with jealousy?

AZALEA: My petals, petal. And believe me, they are NOT at the shrivelling stage! Anyway, just when I thought I’d see him walk out of my life, again, he stopped, turned to me, and lavished me with-

RADIO HOST: I’m sorry, Miss Azalea. Are you… a… potted plant?

AZALEA: Oh I am THE potted plant, big boy. A salmon-pink Japanese Azalea in her prime. You haven’t seen pistils like mine since the Wild Wild West. Harvey used to say he’d never poked such perfect ovaries -

FX: RECORDING SCREECHES TO A HALT

SHEYLA: (disappointed) Awww! I thought that was going very well! Minority perspectives are all the rage -

FX: RADIO HOST SCRAMBLES TO HIS FEET

RADIO HOST: Petals… pistils… ovaries… I need to get me some of that.

SHEYLA: Wait. Are you… leaving?

RADIO HOST: Take over, will you? I need to go write a sappy romcom with an over-the-top score masquerading as heartfelt emotion.

FX: DOOR SLAMS

SHEYLA: How wonderful! I love those movies.