Once you have experienced a grief and seen how it resonates around you, piercing through your soul, flickering around you like a burning maelstrom of fire, a halo of hurt and thorns of real tangible pain. The feeling of wishing and yearning to see your loved one’s just once more, to touch their soft cheeks and to hear their dulcet tones. I had loved hard and without compromise, but this only made things worse. I cherished those moments with every single vestige of happiness and fulfilment that I could muster, for those fleeting moments were gone in a whim, never to return.
Auntie Myleene was a sadist of Nazi Germany ilk and possessed as much charisma and magnetism as a dead fish. She would have been chief commander in the Gestapo such was her ruthless streak I tell you. I still have the scars to prove that she was definitely a degree holder in accurate striking - when she swung, she scored. She was like the Babe Ruth of newspaper swatting, a national pastime where budding housewives would attempt to crush the fragile skulls of young orphaned adolescents for not tidying up the mess in their bedrooms.
Dalj had even shown me the light bulb screwing dance, the whisky bottle on the head jive and not forgetting the hoi hoi dance when you thrust your foot in and out of the circle – like the Punjabi hokey cokey - I simply loved them. However, he reserved the best until last - the ‘pendu’ or ‘freshie dance’ as he referred to it. This was when he would stand on the spot doing a double light bulb screwing move with his hands up above him and with one leg up to knee height jumping off the ground continuously, all this with an accompanying grin that would have put the Cheshire Cat out of business.
I popped my mobile in my pocket when suddenly the door flung open with force. Before I could even comprehend what was happening I was grabbed violently by the lapels and thrust into the house by a drunken and psychopathic Terry. I went hurtling in with such ferocity, I felt my teeth rattle in my head. The next few minutes were hazy as blow after excruciating blow landed in my stomach and face. WHAM! SMACK! THUD! Dalj was right he was a killer and finally my number was up… Every crunching strike caused me to whimper like a puppy. I felt trickles streaming from several areas on my face and the taste of blood was patently swirling in my mouth. In-between the violent attack I could hear the ranting expletives and foul mouthed abuse that I had become accustomed to ringing around the walls of the small hallway that was now slowly becoming my tomb.
The violent and wayward hood who had snubbed the acting school to pursue a life of crime and dodging bullets. His reputation had preceded him and I knew he was capable of serving me up a Colombian neck tie, where your throat is slit and your tongue is pulled out from the gaping wound in your neck at the mere drop of a hat and without provocation. He was a brooding beast of a guy with a Desperate Dan chin that had patently been no stranger to solvent abuse over the years. He shifted his stocky Popeye type frame over to us with all the smugness of an over confident buffoon. At five feet ten inches he wasn’t particularly imposing in the height stakes but he more than made up for it with his rippling muscles bulging out from his jean jacket, I mean I could actually see his six pack through his clothing.
I woke up the next morning to the aromatic smell of cow dung wafting in through the open window of our hotel room. Prity wrapped her silky legs around mine as she puckered up to kiss me, her perfume from last night still lingering tantalisingly from her soft body. She bought her lips closer to mine, soft, sexy and so kissable had it not been for the sewer type smell seeping from her mouth such was the toe curling stench of morning breath that threatened to eviscerate me where I lay.
The streets were packed with people and in amongst them were a swathe of beggars hobbling around in dishevelled clothing, some carrying sickening injuries, others looking they had been maimed to bolster up their begging revenue. The beggars were dancing with the traffic, risking life and limb, slinking in and out of the shadows of the sun rays beating down on their bony shoulders.
I remembered one such filly a few years back. The monster had somehow slithered into my life when my guard was pulled down. We were manacled together for two grisly weeks and the only lasting memories I had from her were a bout of crabs and VD. Her humongous tattooed jugs gave me my first indications that she was not the kind of girl who you would invite home for a spot of tea. I mean you know something is not right when the girl you are with sprouts more facial hair than you. I gave her the big heave-ho after our relationship hit the skids, and I praised the Lord that her or the tattooed jugs never darkened my hall again. However, my overall favourite creature from the depths of Hell was this buck toothed stunt that I had met at a party several months before Prity came down from the clouds like an angel. She had teeth the size of the white cliffs of Dover and her carrot crunching ways did not improve my self esteem one bit when people would shout out the cruellest things like `Oh look there goes Elma Fudd and Bugs,` when we were seen out together. Our relationship was doomed from the outset and fizzled out accordingly.
He smirked naughtily and flashed me a Brokeback mountain glance that was deeply unsettling. Then in a move that would have made any Chippendale proud he whipped off his top and unbuckled his trousers in one foul swoop revealing his custard coloured pants. His face turned into a scowl as he made a desperate lunge for me. Make no bones about it, if he had caught me at that moment I would have been sitting there for the next twenty minutes with an apple in my mouth, wearing a blonde wig and calling myself Suzy, not to mention waddling around with a sore arse for the next couple of weeks of added masala. He had raped me of my dignity in the most appalling manner, but like Sun Tzu said in the Art of War – ‘the wise man retreats and regroups but essentially lives to fight another day.’
Later that evening we arrived at a grandeur mansion on the outskirts of Mumbai. This was a palatial des res with panache, sophistication and pizzazz. I felt my mouth filling with drool at the mere sight of its imposing and baronial beauty. The wide reaching gardens stretching up and out into the backdrop of mountainous peaks merging with lip smacking splendour behind the veritable beauty that towered high above me. The ridge after ridge of spellbinding views stunningly situated and set amid rolling wooded grassland, with rustling palms swinging effortlessly and with aesthetic inspiration, it was a duvet of comforting serenity.
The Indian sanitation left a lot to be desired. I has stepped over dog faeces to enter the restaurant and almost vomited Exorcist style at the humming aroma that the entrance to the gents was wafting in to the main area, or was that the kitchen? I could not tell either way. I noticed that there were a pack of dogs fighting over scraps in the car park and occasionally entering the restaurant to see if they could mug any greenhorn tourists as they sat at the tables risking their own lives as they did so. Any one of the dogs would have been suitable for the lead role in the Cujo film, with there flaky flea bitten skin and accompanying diseased breath panting over the diners as we walked in.
There comes a time in every guy’s life when you can scream and shout as much as you like, but you have to back up what you are saying. So here I was a maggot on a stick for him, all he had to do was blow on my face and I am certain he would have knocked me over like a ten pin. My bravado was a smokescreen to test his mettle. This parasite had shit in my coat pocket one too many times and my fists clenched and unclenched several times with my body urging me to lunge at him and to duke it out once and for all. I knew instantly that if I mistimed my attack it would have been sayonara, au revoir and shalom to my pitiful existence.
I was already on the stake and the flames were just gently licking the sides of my face, moments away from turning me into smouldering ashes. I caught a blurry glimpse of the crazed animal in full flight and smelt his ferocity pouring out of every god forsaken orifice as he carried on shamelessly raping my dignity as a man.
