Sitting in the chair, wearing baggy, magenta shorts where usually he wore mustard corduroys, he was found, recumbent.
“Jolly old fatso! Getting his share of the sun!” said the kid. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hear. He had his over-sized, coal-black headphones on.
“I don’t know how you can do it. Selfishness. Utter selfishness.” He continued, indignant.
I don’t know for sure, but I think this grumbling kid wanted the sun bed. The fat mound moved, gurgled and snuggled back into the recesses of the towel. No way was he moving through “Tears for Fears”. Bad taste, no good lazybones.
The woman approached. Beautiful, shining even, despite the fifty or so years on her back – breasts still like ripe pears, y’know? Even I, at no more than twenty, felt that silly shiver as she, bending over oh so slowly, whispered gobbledygook and egotisms into the ear of the mound. Pouring poisons like rain, man. I don’t know how they stand it. Probably the looks, the hypnotic looks that make you strain to look past and into the distance, but you can’t. You always end up looking at the nipple or the crotch.
The kid was still bouncing like rubber. Annoying. I can’t believe he came out of her flesh. Flesh that shimmers in the sun and can’t be replicated. I still don’t believe in all that DNA crap. Double helix! I know I’m more complex than all that fucking symmetry. I don’t want to bury myself in her to make more of me and her; but to make more of me. Mother wouldn’t like it much either.
“Friends.” She says.
“Of a different generation!” She whines.
“She’s married with 2.5 children!!” She shrieks.
Well, I don’t take no advice from someone whose grandmother said, at New Years Eve, (I can pinpoint the moment. I’m accurate, me), TO ME:
“That’s a mighty fine nigger-brown knit you’re sporting, love.”
Nah. I’m gonna do my own thing. And my own thing’s just fine.
The kid starts up with me now. Something about bat-and-ball, or cricket. But he can’t bowl; and, besides, I resent his little, fleshy bowlegs. He looks like he shouldn’t be running, like he should be confined somewhere. I was thinking, “Crčche: too simple. Zoo: too political. Church will do fine.” I roused myself from the lawn itching (gritty grass pollen you get round here) and ambled to the field of play. I hollered to the mound. I mean he’s supposed to be the father. All he does is turn and show his hairy, red-raw west-face – he’s still asleep.
With the ball in hand I throw at the stumps. Well did I mean the stumps or didn’t I, did I mean or didn’t I? Kid was pole axed. Detached retina, I believe. Howling on the floor, and me howling with tears of laughter, I knelt down; before the mound could move; before the woman could come over all sensuous twice in a day, and whispered:
“See that easy chair, kid? That sun bed you covet like a German with a towel arising at five a.m.? I had the woman on it for two hours while you and the mound were off out.”
He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t even see. At least, I hope so. I left with apologies before the ambulance arrived.
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