Monday, February 22, 2010

Angouleme













Pip

“The dark water,
chromed with oil,
flopping against the
buttressed shore”
—Thomas Disch,
“Angouleme,” 334

“Laughter is just
a slowed down
scream of terror.”
—Thomas Disch,
“Disching It Out: An Interview
with Thomas Disch,” Joseph
Francavilla, Science Fiction
Studies #29, Vol 10, March 1983

Great expectations—what a joke. Charles Dickens? What a drama queen, Pip shrugged. He’d become a young hustler. And Miss Havisham had become a chicken-queen.

Already Pip was stiff. He’d begun his usual moaning routine plus a little extra rhythmic pelvic protest—acting put-upon like he was struggling against the pleasure or the pain, whichever it was. As his left hand kneaded the balding head of Miss Havisham, his right hand pulling off his shirt.

The ensuing years of hustling had given Pip’s lax flesh a peculiar virginal quality—as though each time he got done it awakened him from some long drawn-out enchanted Snow White innocent sleep. He could still pull it off—the pseudo-waking up routine, acting as if he’d suddenly, helplessly just woken up, only to find himself being gummed to death by Miss Havisham again.

There was no more innocent playing cards by the fire—in the big dark moody Manor House. No more entertaining Miss Havisham in her lonely seclusion—having been stood up by her fiancé on her wedding night, much to her eternal shame and bitter embarrassment.

Miss Havisham’s only way to get even over all the past years—was to set up Pip with Estella, letting her break his heart like her heart had been so rudely broken way back when.

But with Pip—things were different for some reason. Eventually, slowly, without being planned at all—Miss Havisham found herself falling head over heels—for the cute young precocious Pip. Rather than breaking his heart—it was the other way around.

It was like a cruel déjà vu joke—reminding her of her fatal wedding night. The rotting wedding cake leaning on the table—symbolic of her scorned existence.

Except with Pip—it wasn’t angel food cake. It was devil’s food—even though it looked innocent on the outside. Miss Havisham discovered that the more she tried to corrupt him and break Pip’s heart with Estella’s help—the more she actually broke her own heart.

Pip became more than just her despised surrogate bridegroom—in his pale chickenhood, he became her true husband. She seduced Pip—wanting him more and more. Pretty soon Miss Havisham pushed Estella aside. She wanted to break Pip’s heart all right—his young male innocence smearing her lips with spluge.

There was a kind of tardy sluggish splugage shame to Pip’s demeanor—a nostalgic sort of lost innocence. It was sweet and sour sauce—except it had gotten stale like Chinese takeout gone bad after awhile.

A decadent overripe Tadzio smell that seeped from his pores—when he was having sex now that he wasn’t chicken anymore. The way maples yield sap only in the depth of winter.

Pip’s winter was now—his days of being a spring chicken were over with. Now he did it for money—not for pleasure. They called him Taromina Inc.

Miss Havisham loved it—Pip’s innocence was one thing. But Pip’s corrupted innocence was better. It was another young stealthy wicked beast altogether. She’d liked Pip when he was all goggle-eyed and embarrassed—young and virgin as the driven snow way back when.

But that was then—and this was now. Miss Havisham actually craved Pip more now—now that he’d lost his boyish innocence. Pip was a man now—down there where size queens slobbered every weekend. His rendezvous encounters—cost plenty for wealthy connoisseurs. There wasn’t any more blushing or nervousness anymore—it was just business.

Pip got sweaty in his armpits—he still got nervous but it was a different kind of nervousness. It wasn’t a virgin nervousness—it was more like getting it over with so he could get out of there.

Out of Miss Havisham’s dumpy cloying old mansion—the Manor House next to the brewery. With all the dreary drapes, dark staircases and rotting wedding cakes—plus Miss Havisham’s needy cloying lips.

Pip wasn’t naïve like he used to be—Pip was a young businessman now. The desperate lips down there below—drooling away like all the rest of his wealthy clients.

The steady sucking salvo—of Miss Havisham’s smacking and slapping and farting around down there as usual.

This, to Pip, was the worst part of their sexual trysts—especially when he imagined Estella standing on the other side of the door, unable to keep from thinking of what happening to Pip, despite the jealousy it must have caused her.

It didn’t bother Pip much though—in fact it turned him on. Estella had been so haughty and cruel in the beginning. Making fun of his big hands—and his crude bourgeois ways. It served her right—to be at the other end of the stick now. Along with old Miss Havisham.

Sometimes it was the only thing Pip could think about—the thought of Estella fuming in the hallway. The thought of her coming into the room and seeing the look on his face—as he shot a seriously down Miss Havisham’s famished throat.

Pip yawned—his hips had a bored life of their own. They had a life of their own and would only begin to pump faster if it was like toward the end.

Miss Havisham, crossing the obscene threshold between self-control and automatism—always struggling down there to impale herself on the cruel thrusts of Pip’s nonchalant young manhood.

Her hands grabbing Pip’s hips—forcing him to treat her old whorish lips like a young tart at the nightclub. Even though they didn’t much want to. She squeezed them—like a pair of bored loin-chops. Pip yawning—smoking a cigarette, looking up at the ceiling.

Crocodile tears came flowing superciliously from Miss Havisham’s eyes—but that didn’t mean anything to Pip anymore. It was just business like everything else. You trick, you make some money, you die. End of story.

Finally Pip would lose it and go spaz—smirking and looking at his watch. He’d let Miss Havisham have it—and it wasn’t very pretty. She choked on it—trying to strangle it to death. Only to gag on it—choking on the sheer greed of her self-loathing. It was just awful—awfully nice.

Miss Havisham tried to hang on to it for dear life—but there was just too much action going on. She fell off the bed—the mattress giving one last exhausted whoosh.

“Pip?” a voice called from the hallway.

It was Estella—she should have been in school. The bedroom door was halfway open. She gazed in with a look of mock-shock and disgust at Pip there nude in Miss Havisham’s bed—with nothing on except his pair of shiny black and lavender cowboy boots.

The ones with sharp shiny jiggling-jangling spurs. The spurs were still spinning—and they had blood on them too.

Pip had that stoic cowboy sneer on his lips—you know what I mean? That cheap leering Italian spaghetti-Western hustler look? That slutty “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” kind of sneer?

Pip was hanging onto the brass railing of the bed—still weak from spluging the last bit of his brains out. Estella came rushing over to the bed—trying to get her lips on the last little bit of Pip’s foolish love.

Never, Miss Havisham thought to herself, in her whole life, in her ecstasy of humiliation, down there on the floor—never had she thought a moment like this would happen to her.

Bright new blotches of blushing shame creeping across her shameless distended face—leaving her still slithering viscera writhing like a snake there on the cold floor.

Miss Havisham could feel her embarrassed feelings—escaping from her. Leaping over her—like fast herds of antelope or gazelle.

Quickly migrating across the veldt of her swollen pussy—leaping elegantly over her flopped physique.

Up and over her exhausted old body—sprawled prostrate there on the Persian carpet floor.

“Miss Havisham?” Estella asked. “Are you asleep?”

“I would be if you’d shut up and get outta here,” Miss Havisham said.

Estella had her hands all over Pip—feeling him up.

“And close the door behind you,” Miss Havisham said snidely, eyeing Pip for sloppy seconds.










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