Pages Torn From a Travel Journal Read online

  Truly I am the odd man out in this world of musky lasciviousness–I find most of human nature deplorable & most of the human species cretin-like, people akin to the filling station itself: human hovels; while my cohorts jokingly dub me the misanthrope. I can only hark back to my short tale of the necropolis. I am an outsider.

  Yet an outsider with some pomp. While many men would join in to the gutter-talk as a means of demonstrating masculinity, I know that it was my culture, my superior breeding & gentry that were the admixture which triggered my revulsion. But now, however, I’d be dishonest to refute . . .

  Something about Nate’s foul-mouthed rant left me . . . sexually enlivened.

  My privates verifiably throbbed.

  I let my mind wander as I traversed the sedate trail, shaded by branches of century-old trees. Amid quotidian shelf-fungus, tree boles, flowery vines, one out-of-sort discovery stopped me in my tracks:

  A yellowed mammalian skull–most probably canine–with a hole in it.

  Later

  In correspondence, August once referred to an associate who’d undertaken side-employment as a seller of lightning rods. This occurs to me now only as an undue abstraction, for I myself feel akin to a lightning rod, not one that attracts nature’s storm-born electrical emissions but instead?

  Human sexual perversity.

  With each step of my walk, it seemed, thoughts overtly sexual rankled me & filled my head with the most obscene images, i.e., Nate’s creekers, “sick in the head for d—.” Did such creatures genuinely exist? Thus far, I had seen none, & the more decent side of my reason hoped that the indelicate mechanic’s promises were pure invention. But . . . what of my less-than-decent side?

  & all the while, that bathroom graffito left me helpless but to ponder what it insinuated. Such thoughts never occurred to me; they were useless thoughts, they were a waste of my precious faculties & shameful to be entertained by someone of erudite persuasions such as myself. I’d walked perhaps a mile down the trail, until it grew impassable; whereupon I retraced my steps, but after an undue amount of time I realized, 1), that the nature walk had indeed, finally, purged me of those obsessive sexual images which so distracted me, &, 2), I’d over-bound my starting point. Where was the exit spur back to the main highway &, further, the garage?

  It was now that my “lightning-rod” analogy socked home. I heard–or thought I heard—a sound like the tiniest squeal whose tenor did not let on whether it be a squeal of panic or a squeal of delight.

  Through some bushes, then, I thrust my head.

  Like a great glimmering mirror, a small lake shined back at me–of course, Nate had mentioned a lake close by, hadn’t he? To wither the 3 roughs had repaired for a bout of fishing. However, when my gaze circumscribed the modest body of water, it revealed no signs of the men themselves, though 3 fishing rods were indeed apparent, each with its haft stuck in the ground at the shoreline.

  Then it was the squeal that came to my ears again, & then?

  Another more deliberate sound.

  Crack!

  Yes, a hard, wet smack, quite akin to a palm hauled across the cheek in violence. Behind a sprawl of unruly bushes I rose on tiptoes to afford a view—

  & stood in utter shock.

  There, several yards off the lake’s edge, I beheld a most primal congregation: the 3 surly roughs on their knees in the dirt, & whom they all knelt about was the huge-bellied Brit mother. All 4 of them were naked as proverbial jay birds.

  The woman lay squirming, her knees painfully jacked back nearly to her shoulders as one of the lean rubes fornicated with her so vigorously it could only be described as savage. Her breasts & belly jolted with each pelvic thrust. “Oh, I’ll get another ‘un off in ya, I will,” grunted the man.

  It boggled my mind to see such ferocious intercourse with a woman so close to term; yet it was the other 2 ruffians who disturbed me all the more. One leaned over, & there could be no mistake that he was biting the woman’s left nipple, after which she cringed & shrieked. & the other?

  crack!

  It was this 3rd rube who laid his open palm hard across her cheek.

  Clear to me then it was–in my investigatory nature-stroll–that I’d stumbled upon an overt rape & beating; & while I am not a man made for imbroglio—

  crack! crack! crack!

  –I knew that I must come at once to this woman’s defense, & with only my meager fists & barely existent muscles as weapons. But as I made to do exactly that, knowing well that I’d be thrashed to a spindly pulp, the most shocking truth of all unveiled itself.

  After the most recent crack across the face, the woman inclined up with a fuming frown, & her accent rang: “What is it with you yanks, anyway? When I say bite me, I mean no less!” & then she glowered at the fornicator, who’d stopped mid-thrust–“and can’t you fuck a bird’s minge harder than that?”

  The man’s naked chest gleamed in sweat, while his face crumpled in perplexion. “Well, dang, we each done put two in ya already! I’se humpin’ hard as I can!”

  “Well hump harder, love, like you mean it,” she griped, & then, to the 3rd: “And if American blokes can’t slap a woman with any more spunk than what you’re doing, how’d you managed to whip us in two wars?”

  So yet again, the cosmic laugh was on me.

  The perverse woman’s complaints seemed to cense her 3 suitors. Now the brute copulation recommenced w/a vengeance, such that I feared her fetal water would be untimely summoned. Several minutes ensued as such, & next the man’s face twisted into a rictus of the most basal disdain; & he extracted himself, stood up, & slaked himself of hand, dropping lines of seminal slime onto the woman’s quivering belly. “Yeah, man!” railed one of the others. “Shine the limey bitch up!” but his accent, which I’d been thus far unable to place, pronounced the “shine” as shan. When the emission abated, its depositor crudely rubbed those same procreative wares all about the woman’s great belly, leaving her intensely agleam. Then he guttered, “Bitch wants ta get fucked hard, huh? Well, I’ll show her hard,” & as the other 2 continued to alternately bite & slap, he trotted off naked only to return in a moment . . .

  With one of the fishing rods.

  Dark cackles circled about the obscene spectacle. “Yeah, stick it to her, Corey!” one egged on. When the woman herself saw what was about to be inserted into her, it was not horror she reacted with, it was encouragement! She moved her frantic hands to her bared privates, using her fingers to widen the aperture & assist the unnatural invasion.

  Hoots, hollers, & whistles ensued evilly as the fishing-rod’s stout haft sunk into the woman’s private egress; then the effort of its bearer produced a long, slow piston effect. It was the outrage of all outrages, an ultimate sickness-induced exploitation of nature. All the while came the woman’s wanton pant; her face grew puff-eyed, & her salacious grin sharpened to the point of drooling. In & out proceeded the obscene rod-handle. The chuckles rose, & when one bit down again on a gorged nipple, the woman’s back arched with a convulsant abruptitude, & from her throat burst a propulsive scream of such pitch, I broke out into gooseflesh. Lastly–

  CRACK!

  –her final demand was discharged as the next slap across her face knocked her to undisputable dizziness & rolled her eyes back in her head; after which she began to shiver seizure-like as her climax was finally achieved.

  The final withdrawal of the rod-handle proved it had reached a depth of a foot, somehow without rupturing the intricacies of the woman’s womb. Moments later, the men collapsed, wither-penised & exhausted; yet the woman hopped up almost cheerily & bid in the shining accent, “Thanks, fellas! The fucking most Yanks manage ain’t worth a bag of wank and a brown trout, but that was fair to midland–now I think I’ll have a dip,” & with this, she waddled off–nude & enthused–toward the lake, as if nothing untoward had taken place.

  Dusk

  My disheartenment stalked me for the remnant of daylight’s hours. Blast the Fates for throwing such raving lewdn
ess across my otherwise meek-minded path. What I’d seen heretofore seemed to provoke a deep self-rumination. Certainly, the weird tales I’d spent my adulthood crafting were rife with implied procreative aberrancy; why witnessing it in reality’s scape should disjoint me so, I could not estimate. Was I, in my wee tales, venting speculations–or even phantasies–otherwise kept reticent in my subconscious? This I shuddered to contemplate.

  & I shuddered further to realize something I would never admit to a living soul: the sexual unnaturalness I’d watched take place on that lake shore left me decidedly & ashamedly aroused, more so even than before.

  A man of breeding & civility should not feel this way, yet I did all the same. This strange trip was growing stranger & stranger, as though we’d broken down on some forbidden access between the stream of the normal world & some other half-real macrocosm of deviant ravenings & staggering lust. August would brand such harrowing departures from generative normalcy as the by-product of a society losing sight of God; but as an atheist I see it only as a rising signalisation of the times. It is concrete & unanimous morality that breeds order & culture, not the fear of the wrath of August’s deity. (& should I be in error? That same God will damn me to eternal torment, no doubt complete with pitchfork-wielding daemons & smoking labyrinths of brimstone!) Nevertheless, my quandaries are enough to solicit the devil; yet I do not believe in him, either.

  I frittered time in the office as the sun westered, while Nate worked on smaller jobs in the garage bay. Via small-talk w/the bus operator, I came to learn that the 3 “roughs” were brothers, venturing south back to their home somewhere in Florida, while nothing was known of the Brit. I jotted out some postcards, then worked on this travelogue till the small, drear-paned windows began to tinge with darkness. Sometime later, the pregnant Briton drifted in & made the strangest comment: “There’s something in the air tonight, eh?”

  Apparently I’d begun to drowse. The gravid woman appeared blurred, while her features of fecundity (i.e., her breasts, her curvatures, & of course the life-gorged abdomen) appeared exaggerated as of a cartoon. “Pardon?” I mumbled.

  Her face beamed, though her eyes looked flat, & in grainy half-light she turned to a small window to peer out, seeming to see more than was there. Her English accent sounded sputtery, like a suet-candle. “Sometimes the way the stars are . . . It’s Fate choosing us.”

  The bizarre words roused me. “Whatever do you mean, Miss?”

  “Oh, you know, Mister. Seems its chosen you today. Like a radio antenna, hmm?”

  “Or lightning rod?” I croaked without forethought.

  She turned, grinned right at me, & nodded, but then ever-so-slowly the grin turned devilish. “Those three blokes–they’re still sodding about at the lake, fishing. I’m gonna go fuck ‘em all again for a free fish dinner–that is, if their Yankee Hamptons got anything left to give up. Hope that previous fucking hasn’t left ‘em too airy-fairy for another go.”

  I gulped at the comment.

  “A bird’s gotta do what she’s gotta do in these bad times, eh? What with ackers bein’ rare as rocking-horse shit,” & then she giggled in a sound like a drove of rodents.

  The moment’s strangeness filled my head with a drone. Her pose drew my gaze such that a part of me grew frightened, as though the spirit of some other had transmigrated itself into the vessel of her flesh. My stare locked me in rigor as she brazenly smoothed her hands up the corpulent belly, then caressed her bosom; & after a moment of this she actually lifted her sundress up over the breasts to reveal all to my eyes. Yet it was the grin above all that nailed me to my chair.

  “It chooses me a lot”–her words seemed to cluck–“but tonight it’s definitely chosen you.” The fingers of one hand twisted a nipple substantial as a baby’s pacifier; her other hand played with deliberation amid the fur between her legs.

  I squirmed. “Really, Miss–you’re causing me quite a bit of discomfort . . . ”

  “Oh, I’m sure I am, love. Taken quite a fancy ta me Bristols, proves you ain’t an arse-bandit,” and then she laughed. “I saw you today–hiding behind that bush at the lake. You were havin’ quite a look, weren’t ya?”

  With instantaneousness, my face reddened.

  “Aw, yeah, dearie, I saw you watchin’ them three gutterscums fuckin’ me ta hell and back, and stickin’ that pole up me minge, and you fancied what you were seein’, didn’t you?”

  For the life of me I could not respond, & I can only hope that her entire hand did not really disappear into her sex. No, it was merely my imagination, jaded by the queerness of the moment . . .

  She ceased the self-molestation, then righted her worn gown. Did her great, tight belly quiver as I watched? It was to something as faintly audible as the wind that her words now reduced themselves to. “You should’ve joined in–I hoped you would,” she said, turning her back to me to re-stare out the dim window. “You’re a high and might one, you are. Oh, yes, a real sophisto. But you’ll be wanking later thinking of me. And if you think banging the daylights out of a pregnant bird is twisted . . . just wait till tonight . . . ”

  In spite of the warmth, I shuddered at a clear chill. “Tonight?” my tone begged.

  But she’d already quitted the seedy office & was out the door & crossing the road to the lake trail.

  My God.

  Had she been touched by some premonitory insight? She’d spoken as though something grim remained in store for me, & as for her actions? I felt disgusted with my uncomfortable yet undeniable arousal.

  How eccentric it is: this organic machine called the human brain whose neurotransmitters & hormonal brew keep the host at odds with himself. No, the night was too weird, nauseously so. I thought then of De Quincey’s helpless chasing of the “dragon,” for it was through the veil of that narcotic that surely he pondered some other world of hyper-reality which served as the fodder for his art; & Poe, too, via the fermented spirits which bid his beggarly demise but whose stupors showed him his true Muse which lives forever while he himself has degraded to dust. Where did that leave me, then? Mordant, querulous, a hypocritical bigot–yes. I couldn’t have felt more empty just then. The yearning of my groin strained, begetting more shame & self-disgust. For distraction, I looked out the window. No sign could be found of the gravid tart; no doubt she’d returned to her ruffian suitors to slake more primal needs. Whereas in daylight, the woods had looked vibrant & plush, now they appeared primeval, overgrown & hauntedly twisted. Twilight flickerings through darkness of more onerous depth seemed impossibly to settle about the drab wooden building. I nearly yelped at a sudden clatter behind me. A light flicked on.

  “No need to sit in the dang dark,” the mechanic, Nate, chuckled. He gained entry through an ancillary door.

  “Oh, you startled me,” I stumbled.

  The man cracked the top off a pop bottle. “What’cha always writin’ in that book? You a writer?”

  “I simply keep a journal of my travels,” I replied, having long-since learned never to reveal my imponderable profession. “It seems late,” I observed, “but it’s not really. Only eightish.”

  He flapped a hand. “Aw, what’s time anyway? Usually takes too long ta go by, ya ask me. Sure as shit wish there was sumpthin’ ta do tonight.”

  The profanity vexed me. “A good book is always a means to boredom’s end,” I said. “Have you ever read–”

  “Aw, I mean sumpthin’ fun–but who’s got money fer that, huh?” & then he cracked a boisterous laugh, though I found absolutely no comedic merit in what he’d said. Then, however, & nearly in unison, we both stiffened at the sound of a long wooden creak as of a heavy foot on the porch outside. I fancied I saw a tall shadow begin to bend like a fevered hallucination. Was something silhouetted by moonlight standing just outside the screen door? Nate exclaimed under his breath, “Jumpin’ Jesus, who the hell’s–”

  It was a figure nearly doubled over who stepped silently into our midst: a man in clothes like tent canvas & wearing, of all t
hings, a bellman’s cap. He’d entered bent-over due to a shocking abnormality of physical height; even inside now, he was unable to stand upright. No doubt existed that he must be at least over 7 feet tall.

  Beady, overly round eyes seemed to squint in a head that seemed too small, almost shrunken. It was Nate those eyes addressed. “Good even-time, Sar. I beg only absolution for any intrusion I might be encumbering thee with,” he spake in the strangest antique diction. “Mightn’t I be enquiring of ye proprietor?”

  Nate scratched his head at the sight of great stooped man. “I run the joint if’n that’s what ya mean and–holy hail, buddy! Ain’t never seen no one tall as you in my life!”

  “So much more than I, good Sar, thee have never before seen, ye spectacles most incredulous.” The man had several paper tubes tucked under his arm; & one of them he unrolled with a single flap of an enormous hand. “I beg thy permission to post this notice in thy window–in exchange, mind thee, for admission at no cost to thee.”

  It was a poster of the most intricate illustration, entitled along the top:

  O’SLAUGHNASSEY’S TRAVELLING SHOW!

  RIDES!

  CONCESSIONS!

  ODDITIES OF NATURE!

  THRILLS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!

  COME ONE, COME ALL!

  “Well tickle my stick, a carnival!” enthused Nate. “That the same one was here last year?”