Bags not... Rick!

The picture is filled with the face of a clean-shaven man, his hair gelled back. He’s wearing a loud, pinkish-red tie and a chequered shirt.

“Not getting enough attention?” he asks. “You have a story to tell? Scum, Mush & Sons is your friend. We will print your life story, no matter how boring it may be! Call us now, and get a free set of cutters AND this beautiful vase with your order! Scum, Mush & Sons – we print everything!” He gives a flashing smile and holds up his thumb, and the vase.

In this moment, a pantomime horse knocks him over and gallops off into the wood. The salesman struggles to get to his feet. He has been sitting in front of a white screen in the middle of the woods.

“We’re gonna have to film it again, Henry”, says a nasal voice from somewhere invisible.

“Sod off”, splurts Henry and spits out a little moss. “Do your own stupid commercial, I hate autobiographies! I hate them!”

“There, there, mate.” Mike comes into the picture and helps the salesman back to his feet. “I liked your offer about the autobiographies, can you tell me more?”

“Oh? Oh, sure.” Henry goes back to businesslike mode in less than a second.

“Mike!” calls Neil. “The lentils are ready!”

“Give me a minute!” shouts Mike back impatiently. “I have some important business to sort out!”

Neil scowls and sits down by the fire, a few yards away from Mike and the salesman. There’s a little silence while Neil, Rick and Vyvyan fill their soup cans (for a lack of plates).

“And I spent two hours on this”, says Neil finally, to no-one in particular. “And that’s not counting the time it took for the lentils to marinate.”

“Mike would rather spent his time with a capitalist bastard in a tie than us”, says Rick hatefully. “Fascist.”

Vyvyan looks around the place, and finally asks: “Where’s the hamster?” Then he discovers the cage by a tree. He gets up, fetches the cage and puts it down beside the fire loudly. “Rick, you bastard! You left him alone over there!”

Rick grins smugly. “It’s not my hamster, you know”, he says, wagging his fork. “You bonded with him on day one, when he tried to bite you. He has picked you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s yours.”

Vyvyan hits Rick around the back of his neck. Rick flinches, snarls, picks up a rock and tosses it against Vyvyan’s head, where it bounces off and rolls over the ground. Funny. Seems like it didn’t do any damage. Rick picks it up to examine it, and see whether it’s a proper stone at all.

“Hey Rick, it’s so cool of you to buy a hamster for Vyv”, says Neil. Before Rick can even look up, a heavy “thump” is heard, followed by a loud crack.

“IT’S NOT MY HAMSTER!!” shouts Vyvyan, and starts to jump on Neil’s unconscious form, cricket bat still in hand. It was the first thing he bought from his money.

Rick secretly slips a spoonful of lentils into the cage. Having a starved hamster around is dangerous for everybody involved, no matter what Vyvyan says.

“Now look, what I have here for you is the next top-seller”, explains Mike to the salesman. “The raunchiest work of the century. Makes James Bond look like a choirboy. Lots of ladies, blond or red-haired or black, you name it. I’m thinking about a title like The Secret Life Of Mike – A Man Worse Than Casanova.”

Henry takes notes. “In what colour would you like the vase? Mauve, mint or amber?”

Mike, who, like most heterosexual males, does not even vaguely know what hues of colour these would be, just nods to everything. “I’ll start writing first thing tomorrow”, he declares.

The next morning, the woods are filled with the sound of a typewriter, hacking away. Mike bought it in the evening, in the town; Vyvyan was going there with him, of course, and afterwards carried the wretched thing to the camping site.

“Now Vyvyan, listen to this and tell me what you think”, Mike says.

Vyvyan leans forward and nods. “U-hum? Hum?”

“I unhooked the bra behind her slender back, and watched her breasts fall forward like two over-ripe peaches”, reads Mike out dramatically. “Soft and inviting. She shivered from the cold and my investigating looks on her, and let the straps slide down her smooth arms to give me a full view. ‘Oh Mike’, she sighed. ‘No man has ever seen me like this before! I never even undressed for my husband with the lights on!’ I soothed her and took her into my strong arms. She sighed again and leaned forward into my embrace.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good, right on”, says Vyvyan, and keeps nodding. One thing the bastard can’t do is fake anything. He must genuinely like this.

Rick scowls over his notebook. If these two monkeys didn’t make so much noise about Mike’s pathetic attempts to write soft porn, maybe Rick could find some rhymes and finally finish his poem.

Pah. It’s cheap, cheesy soft core stuff. Why the hell is Vyvyan so enthused about it? It’s not like it’s great art. It’s just something to please a simple mind, maybe for a quick wank. Whereas Rick is trying to make words that come down on you like steel bolts. Words that crash right through your mind and leave you shaken. Words that strike something in your soul. He’s trying to think like Ginsberg; but when Ginsberg wrote about Rockland, he sure didn’t have Mike and Vyvyan around, and also not Neil, who is singing “San Francisco” and strumming his guitar horribly to it.

“I caressed her until she lost her wits; until she submitted her everything to me”, reads Mike. “Her deepest, darkest desire, the places inside her that had never been touched, until she was all woman. All female. When I finally took her, she raked her nails over my back.”

Rick exhales loudly and rolls his eyes. “Mike, you’re a bloody virgin, where the hell do you get that stuff from?”

“Well, so are you, so shut up”, replies Vyvyan, teeth bared with the strain of listening. “I want to hear this.”

“I’m not a…” Fuck. No, he isn’t a virgin any more. Neither is Vyv. But he’d sooner bite off his own tongue than ever talk to anyone about it. He’s not a virgin and he can’t brag about it, damn it!

When he looks over to the typewriter, things are even worse. At first he thinks it’s just an illusion, but no. Vyvyan has a bulge in his pants from listening to Mike’s mindless drivel. And he’s still drinking every word off of Mike’s lips. Every now and then he nods, grins and tells Mike that this is very good.

Rick watches in disgust. Getting off on cheap shit like that, it’s just revolting. He could vomit at the idea that he actually had his first time with this guy.

And anyway, what’s so great about Mike? Mike is short and dresses like an idiot. And he’s stumpy. Whereas Rick… well, is a bit on the skinny side, to be honest. But that’s not the point! Why the hell is Vyvyan always following Mike around like a puppy? Why can Mike tell him what to do? Why doesn’t Mike ever get hit with a cricket bat? Why does Vyvyan… admire Mike the way he does?

“Make some room, Rick, I need the corn flakes and the mustard.” Vyvyan pushes past Rick, to the rock under which they keep their foodstuffs safe from the rain.

“I can’t believe you can listen to this shit”, says Rick under his breath, and desperately tries to avoid looking at Vyv’s crotch area, which is just at eye height for him now. “It’s evil. It’s cheap fodder for the simple-minded. Drugs to keep the people calm, so they don’t start thinking about what’s wrong with society!”

“You’ve got a stack of those mags under your bed”, says Vyvyan.

Rick snorts. “Well, how come you know?”

“And nearly all the pages are glued shut. Well, probably not glued shut.”

“All the worse for you knowing it.”

“You know what? Mike’s a good writer.”

“He is bloody not, Vyvyan, and you know it. This is… junk!”

“As opposed to poems dedicated to Cliff Richard’s hairdo?”

“How do you… you sneaked around my note book, didn’t you?!”

“Yes. When I was really bored.”

“I’m disappointed with you”, hisses Rick, seething. “I thought better of you than to fall for that kind of bait.”

Vyvyan doesn’t answer. He slouches over to Mike and sits down again to watch him type.

Just to watch him type. What a sucker.

Well, Rick is going to show him the way only Rick knows how. Face still red and glowing with anger, he starts to scribble.

Ten minutes later he stands in front of Mike, who looks up from his typewriter. “Mike, I need to have a word with you about this obscene, sexist, fascist drivel you’re writing there”, he says and keeps his voice calm with all his might.

“Fire away”, says Mike.

Rick inhales and begins.

“Mike!
Why don’t you take a hike?
Instead of scribbling all that rubbish like
You do when you strike
Your typewriter?
Mike!
I wish you were a dyke!”

“That was great, Rick, now get out of my sunshine”, says Mike. “You can’t write about playboy life with somebody standing in the sunshine.”

“I’m not done”, says Rick under his breath, fuming. “I’ve got one more for Vyvyan.”

“Oh! Found something that rhymes Vyvyan, did you?” asks Vyv. He seems to like this.

“Vyvyan!
Does fascist porn give you a stiffy-on?
You bastard, Vyv!
Not a single damn is what I give
About you, you smelly whiff!
Vyvyan,
Go forth into oblivion!”

“I don’t think stiffy-on is, strictly speaking, a word”, says Vyv, and grins an approving grin. “But it was pretty good, for one of your poems. It rhymed.”

Rick is proud. He knows that these must be among his best works to the date. “So, if you feel like coming over and admiring me for a bit, Vyvyan”, he says sweetly, “and getting a stiffy about it, be my guest.”

“If you don’t piss off this minute, I’m gonny slash your face up.”

“Fine.” Rick goes back. Anger is mixing with red-hot pride. It IS good, being the best poet around.