It’s usually exactly what you think it is
Yes, they have thick and shiny dark manes and brown eyes wide with credulity. Yes, they have round breasts, perky with just-barely-lost virginity. And, yes, they do have narrow hips, and shoulders like apples and gently sloping lower backs, and their skin is taut and plump with youth. But they exist everywhere in the world. They exist in other places, in different colour combinations; they exist here, too. In shades of cream and pale and cool.
So why the overwhelming need to butcher them? Perhaps because you think they know no better? They’ve seen no better? They can’t have - could never have - better? You really think - with that small mind, with that sensible car and those beige nothing trousers - that you have a better ‘chance’ with them because they are working-class displaced and you are middle-class bastards?
I don’t know. You might be right. Okay, I fancied one, yes. But she was flaxen-haired, timid and somewhat ill-tempered. She was rough-calloused, lanky, and smiled like it hurt. She was kind underneath. And she wasn’t your regulation immigrant, currently flooding your shops and your sheets (to hear you tell it). She was from a country that no longer exists. And. What that must do to your sense of self! The country of your birth is no longer to be found on any map. Only in history books, and then only the most obscure. She frequented the library in search of said books. But having never talked to her, you would never know.
So, yes. In our superiority and our virility and remarkable civility, I decree we reduce the whole place - a place of not inconsiderable size - to but a wet dream and a pair of slashed knickers. And your standard, rumpled twenty-pound note. To feed her family back home. For at least two weeks.
16 July 2008 at 5:22 pm
Ouch! And Shame!
17 July 2008 at 11:12 am
Before I’d read the piece properly I thought you were talking about horses actually – I clung to the words ‘manes’ and ‘butcher’ – and it might be a metaphor worth developing (I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out for you).
I had a problem with who was talking here and to whom; the pronouns are all over the place. I’d have a wee look at that.
I found the solitary ‘And.’ which follows ‘…a country that no longer exists.” interesting. I read it over a few times and wasn’t sure how precisely you would say it. If you’d added an ellipsis after it then that would’ve helped.
As for the country – ‘Only in history books, and then only the most obscure’ – I feel that’s an exaggeration. No one working the streets would be so old that ‘only the most obscure’ history books would have details of her country of origin. The idea’s good, I just think the language needs to be tempered a bit here.
Loved ‘In shades of cream and pale and cool’ and ‘our superiority and our virility and remarkable civility’ by the way.
17 July 2008 at 2:12 pm
Nice and insightful!
17 July 2008 at 9:53 pm
Clarissa: What? Where? Who? ;)
Jim: Jim. Jim! Thank you. Again, spot on! I confess, the horse metaphor never entered my mind. Possibly because I am utter crap at metaphors. I think if I tried to develop that one, I’d mangle it!
My pronouns are always all over the place, mostly on purpose. I think it’s a bit of a defense mechanism, so it’s at once embarrassing and heartening that you pointed that out.
The solitary ‘and’ was a silly whim and even I, myself, wasn’t sure how it was supposed to read (well-spotted).
And finally, yes, I did intend to exaggerate the ‘disappearing country’. This person doing the talking has a tendency to overstate things, but, of course, being unsure of who is talking you wouldn’t be able to deduce that.
I don’t know if everyone else finds our little ‘dissections’ entertaining, but I get a LOT out of them, so thanks again. :)
Your Wandering Mind: Thank you. :)
18 July 2008 at 7:50 pm
Wow! Jim is A Reader!
19 July 2008 at 7:01 pm
Yes! And a writer, too! All proper like.