Wild and Full of Youth
by Pete
Gioconda
HER TROUBLE IS she’s in love with too many American movies where the kids trash the adults. Trouble is the way her parents see it. That aside, tonight they’re planning her birthday party, s’posed to be this Saturday. Three days.
‘Well boom bloomin’ boom, well cock-a-doodle-do!’ she mutters under her breath, knowing how much more insolent that is.
She’s gonna be sixteen, old enough, she guesses, for a girl called Alice. Her parents were deep into psychedelia when she was born, yet they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. Stamping her feet heavily up the stairs, she scuffs the stair-rods which clack, and sings . . . whatever.
‘Gonna sting like a gun, spurt ya out like a bum.’ Half way up she pauses to consider. ‘Nah. Stuff you like a bum.’
What’s it supposed to mean? Nothing. She hates school poetry, but loves the way she thinks. ‘Seeing how it is, that’s my biz.’ Her parents are watching TV, scraping some ‘World in Action’.
— TV oh TV, up your baby arse!
She scoops up Wickie and huddles him to her neck, taking him to her room. Cat knows real. Dissonant cuttings from magazines sprawl across the peeling skin of the walls. ‘Queen in blue, big deal!’ – ‘Too lazy to be a bum, you better chew gum’ – ‘World Cup ha ha ha!’ – ‘Alive and crawling . . .’
A cardboard box fixed to the ceiling near the corner dangles a pair of legs out the bottom. With monkey boots on. It’s okay, they’re not fit to wear: she used to keep slugs and snails in them but they died when her mum stuffed them with newspaper and put them in the airing cupboard. Alice found the slugs dry and crumbly when she decided to put in a puppy dog tail. She lies on her back and stares up the legs, letting it all go blurred. Things float between her eyes and she dreams a lot.
‘Waah!’
What she wants is to wander all night for something, follow a river through the trees, go on a secret adventure, anything . . . Birthday? No! She wants a birthday river to take her. Why must parents always have it their way? ’Cause you give ’em an inch? No, it’s obviously more than that – it’s a disaster. Aunty Fraud, Uncle Spank, Granny Poos, Next-Bore-Neighbour. Or plain old Dimple-Nuts from school . . . done friends, done that one!
But honestly, so pathetic. Little Jimmy Ruskin . . . he may as well be called that, living a life of corn. He’d never do anything exciting; he wouldn’t even think or speak in such a way as to raise his blood temperature. How about Jack-the-Lad? . . . No, never anything at all. When Plug-Face took his picture, he stuck two fingers up and said ‘They won’t print that one now!’ What a revolution. Alice muttered ‘Who’s the fruit?’ but no one got it.
‘Yeah!’ She leaps off the bed and chases Wickie round the house, bashing into furniture and sending the rocking horse rocking. ‘Get lost, things!’
Halting to collect herself, she grimaces sickly in a mirror. ‘Yes excuse me “things”, but could you please just leave the room? Come on, trot along!’
She laughs like crying. That rouses parents Bill and Ball and they go through their routine ‘What shall we do with her?’ etc.
Alice starts to mimic but ticks herself off with ‘Drop it!’ and bounds down the stairs, out the door and across the road without looking both ways, forcing Mrs Flab to swerve on her bike. ‘Silly girl!’
On the sea wall Alice sits with a broad grin, going ‘Who’s the fruit, me-aa-n, who’s the blurdy fruit?’
The gentle sea laps her mind sleepy, but she doesn’t want that now. She hops along the concrete wall then speeds up like a race walker, elbowing like a chicken. ‘Cock-a-doodle . . . don’t!’
‘It’s funny Wickie having such a long catlike body,’ she says breathlessly, ‘when he’s not a cat but a person. Not a human being but a person being, like me . . . hmm!’
Silence.
She ponders deeply as she chugs along, switching to a Scottish accent. ‘Ach, he’ll get by. I’m not worried on his account.’
Now she’s off.
‘I ought to stay, but then again, I’m too restless! They say life is about getting by, but I say: “No! – life is about exploding!”’ She wonders why anyone might need an imaginary friend. Thing is, she’s always friends with herself, and she’s kind of imaginary but also real. How else could she feel this way, so tingly and excited!
‘I remember, Toto: we’re not in Kansas any more,’ she says, pretending to have an imaginary friend. She begins to skip and looks up, flinging her arms from her body. ‘Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are!’
On the first star she makes a wish, does a tap dance and spins kisses from her mouth, loving the sky with her hand. In mild hysteria she shivers and tears come, so alone. ‘Yuppy yup, icky bicky, bicky boo-kk . . . But I won’t be scared, ’cos I know what you are, little little big star. You are me and I am you . . . And we are all together!’
She’s mad all right: for she’s mad. Raving and wanting to go ‘Blam!’ and spatter herself over parts of everything. Breathing air so sweet, so deep it cleans her out.
‘Och, it’s none of it enough, y’know, normally, ’cos you have to hold yourself in all the time, squishy guts and all,’ she says, pretending to be interviewed, still in a Scottish accent. ‘Ma and pa push so hard on your body it tightens, and while it may be lush to have a cosy home an’ all, it’s criminal to stay when you have such a rush. I mean I do love my folks but I also love, och . . .’
What’s less, she’s about to be sixteen but it seems like ages and ages before she can go off totally and plunge into deep ends. Sure, she can cook her own food and that, and . . . money but money.
‘Just direct your feet to the Sunny Side of the Street!’
Singing and skipping like a little girl, she feels older: sad and beautiful. With mock-binoculars she gazes out to sea. If only New York could be got to, by land . . . ‘By hand even!’
Or anywhere real wonderful people do just what they feel like, day or night. And talk about what it feels like to be alive, when you know you’ll die one day.
‘What it’s like to be you? Och, but it’s very special, you know.’
Dancing in all manner of places with all manner of people. ‘Oowee!’
She’s no longer on the seafront, she’s striding towards the Downs with low gravity steps. She’s left the main road and skirting a wheat field, entering a ragged-looking copse. Foaming dark ivy. The moon is out, sticky yellow, bouncing behind the trees.
‘Yikes!’
Emergency stop. She can’t work it out at first.
A branch is stuck into her eye, right between ball and socket. Ever so slowly she eases back and slithers it out. Two whole inches of twig wet with eyeball juice! To her surprise and utter amazement she can still see perfectly. That cheers her enormously and she thanks her lucky stars. She thinks and thanks God.
— That’s what it’s like when you’re relaxed and ready for anything.
As soon as she reaches a clearing she flops onto a tuft of grass and kicks her legs in the air, pushes off her trainers and dances like a bug with the stars, carefully balancing them on her toes.
‘I could be Gregory’s Girl, what a waste!’
She thinks of love and feels in love – with no one in particular. ‘I love you, whoever you are, and if you exist!’
The evening flickers and it’s good to be alone, stuck to the planet side, with bright stars in pools beneath. But she could drop down such yearning immensity.
An electric shock jolts her up like death.
‘Summer. It is Summer, it really is! At last Summer! Yeah yeah Summer!’
She concocts images of jubilant bonfires on hilltops, dancing till dawn, everyone in Sunday best, eyes full of stars, and tears, real musicians playing like they did long ago, in love with life in the country, with fiddles and lutes and accordions and tambourines and things, lots of tearful snogging with a happy lad, then cart-wheeling a yumma-yum.
Divining a glint of Eden, she goes tearing up the hill, all the way to the top. There really is a bonfire, hot and bright, with a load of ‘hippies’ sitting round with guitars and bongos, getting stoned in the thick air.
‘Greetings from the Wicked Witch of the South!’ Alice calls, catching her breath, face like an imp’s.
A couple of revellers nod blearily. She sits down and crosses her legs like a good girl; chin on hands and elbows on knees, observing openly and sincerely. The ‘hippies’ have a song that goes like this —
Dis-sip-pation, ooh la-la
Con-stip-pation, ooh la la-la
Though my love is Love, oh druggy-druggy
I gotta put it in my baby, ha hey
Ya c’n beat ma meat t’ pulp
Ya c’n suck reefers aht ma marf, an’ say
Squally-pocker-dum, blue yum-yum, ah
Dis-sip zoom-zoom pation
Then there’s a talking spot to the guitar-playing:
I put it to yoo, yuck youk ooh-loo
Why dahn’t ya take it in ya marf?
Whereupon they slam down their guitars, take a deep breath and laugh their heads off.
An’ a-dis-sip-pation of des-per-ation we go . . .
Alice claps her hands to her ears and picks and chews some grass. These lot must be eighteen, no, twenty even. Yet they act just like at school, or worse.
One of the hippies goes ‘Yeah right!’ and introduces himself as Arlo.
‘And of course,’ he adds by way of excuse, ‘the truth is I don’t know, no one really knows. I s’pose I should have a drink, see what I come up with.’
‘If you don’t know, then why you here?’ asks Alice.
‘That’s about the length of it, I guess,’ replies Arlo, pretending to be in Easy Rider. ‘So, what you doin’ up here on your lonesome, kid?’
‘I’m not on my lonesome-kid. An’ ah yain’t nah fockin’ kid neever. I’m me, Alice, I’m nearly sixteen and I know where I’m going, young maa-an!’
‘Where’s that then?’ demands a sullen girl.
‘I won’t tell unless you know yourself.’
‘Why not?’ demands the sullen girl’s sullen friend.
‘Because I don’t like people stealing.’
‘Whoo! Yeah right,’ cries Arlo, falling pensive when Alice points at the reefer he dropped on the grass.
She stands up. ‘It’s all right, I ain’t wired or nuffin’,’ she says. ‘I ain’t meanin’ ta be unfrien’ly, like, but that stuff just tires you out. My life is like a movie where everything should be, like, pronounced, and worth saying. So I do really mean it, you dig?’
‘Yeah, dig!’ reflects Arlo with a smile.
— Is his name really Arlo? wonders Alice, not that it matters.
The smell of woodsmoke leads her mind astray, chasing the last drops of sun through trees on the next hill. A commotion breaks loose on the other side of the fire as revellers appear to go into convulsions, dancing close to the flames and getting their clothes singed, chanting —
Dis-sip-pation, booga-looka-choo . . .
‘Sorry, what did you say just then?’ asks Arlo, gazing into ‘those Alice eyes’. Gawping at her ankles has aroused him.
Alice sits and shuts her eyes and describes the colours swirling on her inner viewing screen. Then with a chuckle she says, ‘It’s funny, I’ve got itchy feet.’ She fidgets her bare feet on top of her trainers and Arlo tunes into her balletic sensuality, getting even more steamed up.
‘Err, let me massage them,’ he says imploringly. ‘If you want. Just your soles and toes I mean.’
‘Oh, you thought . . .’ says Alice. ‘No, I mean it’s time to get moving again, methinks.’
Her voice is a lilt to Arlo, a soft gliding swallow that makes him swoon. Her tomboy toes and ankles, sleek calf and knee outlined beneath rough skirt are all there is to him; he dare not look near her eyes for fear of . . . Blurring his vision he humbly takes in her pert and graceful silhouette. She’s a dream figure in the sunset, a gypsy angel atop this primeval hill. And he is disabled with desire.
A burning sensation makes Alice open her eyes and she gets up.
‘Hey look at this,’ she says. ‘You gotta see what I see, Arlo. Stand up, it’s amazing!’
Arlo ejects himself from the swamp of his indulgence and stutters, ‘What is it?’
They stand next to each other for quarter of an hour as the sun inches down, and they narrow their eyes to follow it. Arlo can no longer hear his slovenly friends, and forgets himself awhile. Alice takes his hand and they shudder as peace creeps into their bodies. Slightly chilled, they sit down by the fire facing one another.
‘You can touch my feet now,’ Alice announces.
‘Pardon?’
‘Well, you wanted to a moment ago.’
Arlo blushes. ‘Yes I . . . Would you like me to?’
‘I’ve got a long walk home.’
Arlo cups his palms round Alice’s soles until her feet become hands and he can press out the tension. He explores the dips and bones and compact roughness of her heels; but his fingers want more, to grasp her skinny ankles, and legs. He’d like to kiss from her toes upwards, to really say hello, but knows he can’t, not here, even if she wanted. He wonders what her knees must be like and dares a look in her eyes. Blissful pools of silence.
‘It’s nice,’ she whispers.
Emboldened, he rings her ankle with his thumb and forefinger and shapes his caress until it gradually becomes more than a massage. ‘So smooth . . .’ he sighs, edging further up.
But Alice gets up, saying, a little sadly, ‘We agreed on feet.’
They remain frozen for two minutes, one up one down, until Arlo thinks he hears something and stands beside her, like before.
‘Um . . . Er . . . Did you say what I thought? It was very quiet, whatever it was.’
‘And what might that be?’ Alice teases.
They kiss dreamily and she lets him fondle her bum, which he didn’t expect. They collapse onto a blanket of firelight and roll around under a blinking star. ‘That’s it!’ she whispers, stroking his hair. ‘Here’s to the wow, to the dissolving frown!’
She sits him up and massages his back with her feet. ‘You’ve got dancer’s feet,’ he says, turning to kiss her arm and wrist down to the tips of her fingers. ‘And strong arms.’ He moves to worship at her naughty belly, and prays.
— If only this could last forever! Dear Lord, just one wish – now, not later please – I beg of you, whoever you are, and if you exist . . .
But there’s a noise from the gang of returning ‘hippies’, to do with a dog or something, and Alice’s spontaneity gets the better of her. A breeze brings her the scent of beyond and, still electrically charged, she springs up, beaming like a cat. She touches Arlo on the forehead, ready to run away.
‘Can’t catch me for a toffee flea!’
He springs up too, conjuring fantasies of heavenly delight.
But a stick lands by Alice’s feet and two huge dogs chase over. While she attends to them, Arlo joins with several revellers who are talking politics. He wants to sound grown up and impress Alice. She catches ‘hijacking the revolution’. Someone begins thumping a pair of bongos and the vibe is chaotic, lost. A boy with greased-back hair attempts to revive the ‘Dissipation’ song. Alice looks to left and right, and Arlo feels powerless, sucked back in the throng.
Alice dons her light jacket and pirouettes in a wide arc, pausing by the fire to fasten her hair in a bunch. Arlo slumps dejectedly to the ground and, with three others (including his normal lover), watches Alice perform a dance, entranced. She giggles randomly as she gathers momentum, convincing like an actress, whirling in private joy, with narrowed eyes that slice and prong.
‘Come on! Kayn’t ya come better’n that?’ she enounces, in an Irish accent; then with a twirl she changes into Claude Rains in Casablanca: ‘I must say I’m shocked . . . shocked to find gambling going on here . . .’ – mumble mumble, with gestures – ‘Here are your winnings . . . Ah thank you very much!’
Cycling her legs in a whizz round the bonfire, she’s approaching escape velocity. Eyebrows rise all around.
‘Whaat?’ some voice quips in stuporous disbelief.
‘Never you mind!’ laughs Alice, bursting in love with a new freeness of form. Her ballet has its own abstract which can never be repeated. She feels love pour out of her, yet she’s utterly alone in realisation of her happiness. If she thinks, she’ll get sad, so she gives her glissade and plié total concentration, frowning for a second as she releases a pinch in her knickers. ‘It’s all so little to talk about,’ she says with breathless urgency.
‘I’m twenty,’ Arlo explains soberly.
‘Baby!’ Alice cries and blows him a kiss, then swoops into a headstand, gleefully showing everyone her lilac knickers. She knows they won’t comprehend.
— Shamelessly compelled to self-express, that’s me, but I am not trying to impress. I never need permission to breathe.
‘What’s that girl on?’ Arlo’s mate, Bearded Wonder, demands indignantly.
Alice scissors her ballerina legs like a trick cyclist upside-down on a tightrope. She enjoys the familiar strangeness of dizziness as she sways, coming to a halt with a lopsided grin. ‘Relax folks! I’ve lived or imagined this place many times before, all kind of, ah . . .’
Someone interjects ‘Biscuit?’ and proffers a packet.
Alice rights herself and takes a biscuit, sitting cross-legged opposite Arlo again. Her inner world of symmetrical madness beckons more than ever.
‘I’m into the light of the night, if you see what I mean, “man”s and “man”-esses,’ she says.
Bearded Wonder is still indignant: ‘Jesus man, what is this girl on?’
Alice makes a megaphone round her mouth. ‘I’m on banana-tambourine-flux, and I ain’t gonna give it up, no, not till it screws me up. ’Cos, quite frankly . . .’ – she leans forward confidingly – ‘I like it!’
Arlo catches her eye and hopes for another kiss. Pressing his fingers to his eyes he attempts to visualise, saying the first thing that comes into his head: ‘D’you mean it’s like . . . a dayglo view?’
Quietly Alice says, ‘Now someone goes —’
‘Wha’d you guys talkin’ ’bout, nuts or what?’ It’s Bearded Wonder, spot on cue.
Arlo’s mind empties and he opens his eyes to find Alice smiling sweetly at him. She’s on a completely differently wavelength and he realises he won’t even get to touch her feet again. ‘It’s okay,’ he resigns, and reaches for a guitar. ‘Everything is as it should be.’
Kindly he sings —
She was only sixteen, only sixteen
A second guitar joins in and Alice conducts the playing, swaying. Soon the song brightens many a tongue and throat and she feels impossibly sad, old in the first candle of youth. The last shred of sunset wipes itself away and she begins to ride out, with a teardrop in one eye and a skip in her feet.
She was too young to fall in love
And I was too young to know . . .
‘Even though I won’t always be sixteen,’ she says to a gorse bush, ‘I think I’ll always be ageless. That is, if I don’t smithereen myself first like I will soon if I don’t find someone else who feels this way!’
From the following hillcrest she emits a huge joyous wave at the revellers, who somehow look humbled beside a bigger bonfire. Passing through the wood this time she’s more careful with her eyes. When she emerges onto the main road she’s already in a suburb and steers for home. The wind has risen and a fine spray wilts down, laying itself gently all around. The whites of Alice’s eyes shine out from shadows and she could be in an expressionist film. As she walks nonchalantly, hardly minding where she’s going, a man picks up on that and decides to bug her.
‘Where you off to, little one, at this ungodly hour?’ he quizzes, leering like her Biology teacher, whom she can’t stand.
‘Testing a theory, old man.’
‘What theory?’
‘One that says ordinary insect repellent don’t work on the likes of you but requires stronger stuff, not Mace, but a sharp crack in the balls.’
‘You little . . . Now listen little girl, I don’t stand rudeness from the likes of you. I want to be sure your parents know you’re out or I’ll darn well take you to the police station.’
Alice skips two steps ahead and sticks her tongue out —
‘On your way, punk schmuck. Drift.’ A scene pops into her head from Paper Moon, one of her favourite films, and she hollers in precocious Yankee accent, full of childish insolence: ‘Anyway, you still owe me two hun’red dollars!’
This startles the man into catching up and he blocks her path. She steps round and resumes her high speed walk.
‘You’re in an awful hurry,’ the man observes. ‘Something upset you? I’d like to see you’re all right. Besides, I live near here. You’re much too pretty to be out so late, and too young.’
‘You want to steal something from me?’
‘What? Heavens no. I’ve got plenty of money; and I’ve got lots of nice things at home.’ He missed the turning to his road; now they’re half the length of Orphanage Green, with its tall edging of trees; soon they’ll reach town centre. The cheeky bounce in Alice’s step appeals to the man. She slaps each foot down lightly.
‘It’s a very nice house I live in. I even have a pool table and my own bar,’ he goes on. ‘What sort of things do you like? I’ve got all the latest games and films . . .’
‘Spose you gonna offer me mushroom tea or summink?’ asks Alice, stopping to bat her eyelids and stupidly chew on some bubble gum.
The man smiles weakly, charmed by the urchin but disorientated. A film still moment ensues under a sodium lamp. Washed out faces and eery desolation, no cars. Panning out to show black backgrounds and dead buildings. The man’s thoughts race. He tries to maintain composure, with sweating brow and clammy hands. Perhaps he will get something after all. She’s delightful. He greeds at her lithe little neck and shoulders, delicate wispy hair about her ear – and rolls his eyes. His breath is heavy and fetid, though he tries to keep it in.
‘Now you listen muth-err!’ Alice attacks. ‘You lost your youth but you sure as hell’re not gonna take mine. I can see you sweat. You really miss being young, don’t you? But I bet you just hated being a teenager. If only you could try it again, eh?’
By the curve in her hips and swell of her breasts he can see she’s not as young as he thought. Shaking her head she reads the man’s face. He appears glad of her consideration, but she forms a backup plan. Whack in the eyes or balls, or wind the bastard, and/or just run. She’s an ace sprinter.
‘I bet you just hated it,’ she persists. ‘Didn’t have fun, poor thing. Well I got news for you: it’s still there, your youth is right there’ – she points at the man’s heart and rereads his eyes – ‘if you want it. The real you, the child you were and could always be, if you weren’t so ashamed . . . Look inside.’
She bursts a bubble gum bubble and struts off into her own movie. The man is gobsmacked when she stops after a few paces to resume her lecture.
‘Ah, I know, but you think you’d rather steal it, spend a little money on it. Just pretend everything. Then do nasty things you’ll say you never wanted to, it’s not your fault . . . I tell you, you better do something about yourself. It’s you you must learn to love. Stop being pathetic, going around bothering people like me walking home . . . Take your own advice!’
She waves and marches off determinedly. ‘Besides, you’d never unnerstand me,’ she calls across her shoulder, pinging an echo from the shop fronts. ‘Let’s jus’ say I dislike coconut too much, leave it at that.’
He keeps following, trotting up behind her. ‘What’s your name, young lady? You amaze me. Couldn’t you teach me? If you calm down we might get on. I’ve got lots of nice things it’ll take you years to get otherwise . . .’
— I’ve had enough of this, thinks Alice. It’s a Klingon shake off.
She notices a police car poking out by the fire station. ‘Say, d’you like frogs, Mr Rancid?’
‘Huh?’
Loudly clucking she enacts her chicken dance and sings —
On top of old smokey, all covered in slime
A middle-aged woman emerges from a house and rapidly approaches, with large glasses and big hair. Clip-clop heels.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me,’ Alice calls to her.
The lady stops and Mr Rancid gets ready to pretend he’s Alice’s father. Alice takes his elbow and steers him towards the lady, and introduces them to one another.
‘Old man – old lady.’
She skips off with a light heart while the strangers are sunk in amazement. Before she disappears round a bend, Alice calls back —
‘Or maybe you thought you’d shove your gnarled old stick where it don’t belong? But I won’t have it, I – won’t!’
Blissfully alone she reaches the sea again. Now it roars like a great turbine. Feeling just like Spiderman she lopes along the side of the concrete snake which juts out, and sits astride the end. The wild wind is whistling up her nostrils and huge waves chase in either side, the rough white foam making astonishing patterns if she half closes her eyes.
— If only I could take a whip and ride this snake out!
Opening her mouth wide she bites at the air, fills up and calls —
‘You’ll see!’
© 2023 Copyright by Pete Gioconda & Black Cat Communications
The
story “Peace in the Sky” is an original work protected under
copyright law,
and may not be reproduced or adapted without the written permission of
the author.
Edible Society – Short Stories
