Lionel Asbo: State of England Read Online Free PDF Page B

recoiled from anything weird. Or anything rough. In churning and interminable close-up, even straight-foward copulation looked horrific (this is what happens, he suddenly thought, when a zoo rapes an aquarium). And all these stripped blokes, with biker or convict faces, and their third-degree tattoos … The lez stuff was okay, but what he liked, it turned out, was this: a pretty girl acting alone, slowly undressing (it was never slowly enough), and indulging, perhaps, in a discreet self-caress – with the lighting all misty and vague. Practically everything else seemed gladiatorial. I’m a romantic! he thought. I knew it … And after a pensive interlude, under the auspices of Strictly Solo Tease and more particularly a wandlike blonde called Cadence Meadowbrook, Des put the Web aside, reached for the Cloud, and started learning about calligraphy.
    The Cloud, the Web: it was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the modern Fall. And there was no going back.
    You’re doing that funny face again , he said during his next session with Alektra.
    What funny face?
    Like you’re looking in a mirror. Or at a camera … Ow. That hurts .
    Chanel was the same – and Joslinne, and Jade. What did you expect? They had started learning about the birds and the bees (in high definition) when they were three.
    … Why’re you always spitting and saying how nasty you are?
    Boys expect it .
    He said, Not me. You see, love, I’m a romantic. It’s just the way I’m made .
    And it was all so very different with Grace.
    That first time, when she was giving him the funny looks, he was paralysed by the unreality of it all, what with the Dubonnets – and then the babydoll! Come over here, handsome, and give us a cuddle . This was the unalterable premise: he couldn’t hurt her, he couldn’t spurn her, it wasn’t in him, it wasn’t the way he was made. So he walked across the room. And what a long walk that was – fifteen feet, across the granny flat, from grace to Grace. He walked across the room because of the clear impossibility of doing otherwise, and entered the heedless world of the deaf. Then he lay back and succumbed to an experiment – an experiment in gentleness. And the texture of her flesh to the touch, with that strange give in it, and the depth of all that lived life, now brought languidly to bear on him and his body.
    Oh, you’re so beautiful, Desi my dearest. It hurts my heart you’re so beautiful .
    And his heart, in its turn, flared up on him, like an inner climax running through his chest to his throat. He kissed her neck. She touched his brow. On the table was a jar of strawberry jam with a spoon in it. The stereo, with its tiny but furious red eye, was playing ‘If I Fell’.
    That was in March, and now it was April. It was April, with its drip drip drip …
    ‘Des, there’s something I never told you.’
    They were getting dressed. It was all behind them for the moment – the soundproofed laboratory of sin.
    ‘What’s that, Gran? Sorry. What’s that, Grace?’
    ‘Remember – remember when I used to have gentlemen friends? Remember Toby?’
    ‘Toby. I remember. And Kevin.’
    ‘And Kevin. Guess why I stopped.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because of Lionel … Remember the summer your grandad died?’
    Dominic Oldman was out fishing with his boy Mark (the one child of his twelve-year marriage to a pharmacist named Eileen). And suddenly nature became too big and too loud, and Mark slipped down the bank and into the headstrong River Avon, and Dominic went in after him. Only Mark came back – only Mark came back from under the thick nets of the mists.
    ‘They let Lionel out of Yoi for the cremation. You were there, Des. After it was over, he sees me home, he comes in here, and he takes the Bible down from the shelf. And he jams my hand on it and makes me swear. No more of your bleeding geezers, Mum , he says. No more of your nonsense, woman. You’re past it anyway. It’s all