Helter Skelter


Frog told me that he would call. I am waiting for that god damned call. The spot light's on me, I know. I am on stage- the chairs in front of me bereft of an audience. Wood paneled rough huge stage, with me- alone -facing a red phone that's off the hook because that's how twisted our love story is. We have bizarre conversations in our heads- this phone and I, playing out tapes of our life's little pasts and futures and we look at each other with such remorse and sadness and rabid happiness on how it's all over now. And we want some more. Most times we don't make sense. So screw you Frog. I am waiting for your call which will never come, like it never does because the phone's off the hook. And you make me believe that our love's so cool and special that we can will miracles to happen. You conned me there. So I am reading out this letter of love and hate for you because we are done. Done with each other. Never more.

Dear Frog

My heart explodes with such love for you that the four letter word is lava not love. You however do not deserve it. I wish I could drain you off my memories and shed away the blue ink into a bottle and throw the bottle into the sea and lose the bottle. Good bye.

Love

Kay

That's beautiful isn't it? It's succinct and tells you how I feel about Frog and why this is over. I have this vague feeling growing stronger as I read it loud once more, that he is too dumb to get it. At the expense of artistic brevity and poetic justice I insert more lines. I thought of some great lines yesterday for this but they seem to evade me. I shall make another attempt at it now.

Frog
I believe love operates on five principles and I think you work outside all of the below and above. I will make you understand this by stating these rules and using ample examples from our life so far to illustrate how you are such a dead end.

Rule 1

The loved is not greater

The lover not smaller

For sooner or later

You are one or the other

I think the word I am looking for in the second line is lesser, but you get the point.

Rule 2

A man speaks to woman

He asks of her

Is love a shadow

or Strange light.

In the morning she leaves

Now this will need explanation, although I hate having to explain myself to you all the time. And I think that's the message, so there.

I am interrupted here by the cleaning lady walking into the hall. I am mistaken. She walks in from the exit door at the back of the empty hall, a hundred rows of empty chairs away. Some one has bought a ticket for the show. Poor Soul. Maybe I should tell her that there's nothing on right now. I can see her. She is all legs and blue short skirt and can't be true. My mind's playing tricks with me because Love is such a wretched thing. She is here for real. She sits in the front row, cross legged, blank and inviting. Will she take me home if I put on this show for her? Frog? What Frog? Time to churn on the charm.

Did I see that phone shiver a bit like there was someone on the other end? I pick up the red smelly receiver and I hear the dead buzz.

Rule 3, Frog, is that you do not let love lose its way like a complete unknown, you know, with no direction home...you feed it, nourish it, you nurture it and water it every day. The neglected heart wanders. And you turned me, the super girl of your life into wander woman. I hate you for that.

Look! If you think that it's turning insipid you are right. What do you expect? Here I am torn between eternal love breaking to pieces and tall slim infinity blue skirt there of the long face red pout slender curve and warm warm body. It's not easy. But life's not easy is it? Speaking of which,

Rule 4, Frog

If x is > y and y is < z are prevaricates and by axiomatic assumption we know that x^2+y^2 is < z^2 then how does one prove in five easy steps that x+y may or may not equal z+x given x,y,z is >0 for all x,y,z ?, Try solving that you self important practical headed son of a bitch.

A man has moved in while I was busy challenging Frog on an intellectual level. He is sitting next to that impossible girl and he is tall and well built with a head full of long hair to tell me she is out of my league. Of course she had a date and she chose to date here.

I can hear Frog. Sweet sweet little loser actually decides to call me. I prance wildly on stage, possessed by his voice croaked by the ten thousand hundred and five cigarettes, the dull beautiful smoked and aged and matured to woody perfection sound to which my heart beats. The date couple blink at my performance and exit stage left.


You called, I say, joyful. I can hardly hear him speak. He makes no sense. He warbles and mutters and yodels and croaks and chokes and recites two lines. He cuts the line and I am back to staring at that red  phone below a spotlight in an empty stage in a silent hall.

Dear Frog

I can't think of another rule because it is you who rules my heart.

I miss you so much

Love

Kay

A Hard Day's Night

He sat facing the wall in a blank empty white room, his chair turned against hers, eyes peeled wide at a screen. Her perfume was of dried orange peels soaked in vanilla essence. The sickly sweet smell invaded his nostrils. His ears were gently tortured by the rustle of her clothes. Net result: he retained nothing. Or next to nothing:
Step 1 Press O five O four Five hem
Step 2 ...
3 Thoughts on how if they survived what ever they were going to be made to go through, he might find true love -assorted feelings on abject nature of current existence, reality shows, never remembering how he got there and the fine bust line of the game show hostess and cut red and blue wire
4 Cut green and red wire.
Step 5 And Welcome home you happy couple.
It would turn out to be farce executed to perfection.

The lights turned bright yellow and hot. He blinked thrice. The cameras whirred and zoomed and panned and trolleyed. He was facing her. That’s one way to look at it. He was staring at her large invitingly exposed cleavage, coiled and wound and caged within a dark green brassiere whatever. Her face was the not disappointing Caucasian blandness of white skin and blond hair, whose features were sexily masked by large over sized sunglasses.He took deep breaths to look calm and collected. He conjured a dull uninterested sneer to convey to the larger audience how his life could go ahead unfazed by such brazen sexiness. Should he pause to register what she thought of him? That would break his heart surely. He looked cool and ignored her, slyly letting his eyes roll , every twenty fifth second, over that copious vastness within the green stretched cloth.

When he tuned back in, they were in the white room on their knees. On the wall facing them, was a large black hole and she on all fours trying to peer through it. She had this beautiful accent which sounded so right.

She was asking him looking up at him, bent over that hole.“Do you want to go in first?”
“Aren’t we supposed to make conversation for the first five minutes?” he asked eyebrows knit to show  confusion. The rules changed so fast that he could make them up as he went and all would be Calvin Ball. “Of course” she rolled her eyes and feigned disappointment.

“I am He”, he told her helpfully. “I have eliminated five unbelievers in games of might, wit and random suggestion”
“Hi!” she drawled, her upper lip and bosom beaded with little droplets of sweat from the heat of the lights. He blond curls covered and uncovered her ears. “I am Lana Marn. I am a blacksmith. I run a charity organization called Bang’d and Nail’d.”

With puns like that, she had to be a call girl-a high class one, or a porn star. He played cool. “And what do you do in the evenings?” the laughter track in his head, the audience and the gentle hostess tittering in unison. “The five minutes are up love”, she winked. “We have thirty minutes to save our hides. You go in first?” “After you”, he said, ever the gentleman. Lana crawled into the hole and He followed her, safely behind that tightly draped behind that looked like a challenge to his male virility. A voice in pre recorded tones of robotic precision said “you have twenty nine minutes to diffuse the bomb. Good luck. Click”

This must be the final round. The do or die or was it do and die?, He wondered. The subtleties evaded him. The objective was clear. They had to diffuse the bomb in thirty, twenty nine, twenty eight minutes through a five step procedure, which the wall had briefed him on in accentuated exhilaration conditions. He had to remember the guide and follow it step by step to safety. Television ratings do well with a death on air.

The end of that singularly well crafted hole was a stainless steel floor that curved around them- just enough space to accommodate their crawling bulks. Lana stretched her legs lay down on her back, facing him up from below, green largeness first.

"Look", she said, her pretty face pouting red lips to show concern."We should call the number for help. Do you remember the number?"

“Ah Step One…Zero Five Zero Four…”
The dialing panel appeared magically in green fluorescence on the steel curvature above her. He heard the camera, enclosed cleverly to cover all directions, zooming in, straining , giving those tantalizing assets of hers the stardom they deserved. She looked at him admiringly- like such intelligence deserved a favor returned. He knew that look. She took one gently filed index finger and nail and punched the numbers. “Hey wait”, she said. “It’s asking for a five digit number and you gave me four” It was a delicious little whine- confused, funny, sexy.
“Hem” He muttered. That was amplified- laughter track inserted. Somewhere.
“Uh?”
“Five”
“Okay” she nodded, her chin moving up and down. “Yeah! That was right you were boy!” she said. “Now to look into the plumbin’” she whispered in fake huskiness
He knew those lines by heart. Bang’d and Nail’d indeed.
“What seems to be the problem ma’am?”
“You know... it keeps gettin’ very wet at the drains”
“Oh well ma’am you need a new shaft and maybe some drillin’”
“I was thinkin’ more about somethin’ to do with the pumpin’”
He can’t get a line wrong. Else boom.
“That’s hard work ma’am”
“Why don’t you go down and take a look?”
“I’ll be darned ma’am it sure is wet down here”
“Well you ain’t licked are you?”
“A screw there, some hammerin and some nailin here and we should be alright ma’am” (applause)
Credit worthy applause that was. He had played it well. They had filled in ten minutes of solid air time. He had taken his time and seen it through.

Lights off. Steps 3 and 4. The air around them cooled. It was cold, the touch of stainless steel against skin. Two little panels opened gleaming eerie orange light into their faces- one from over her face and another just behind her head-on the steel floor. Each had a set of three wires-red, green and blue- thin plastic wires that looked so small to terrify him.

Her face was  heart wrenching childlike concentration- on a figure modeled sculpted and refined for child bearing.
“So I’ll cut the ones on top and where’s the other?”
“Behind you”
“You get them…Thiger!”
Fine. He stammered here. The obvious did that to him. If they had scripted everything so far, then they got him where it hurt.

He crawled over her and eased himself into that soft, welcoming flesh that softened just a bit like a pliable pillow and warmed him. This was monstrous. He cursed and he shivered and grew. He had no clue which panel went first. Blue and green and then red and blue, seemed a good possibility. His mind clogged as blood drained and rushed to the one part of his body he did not need to preserve his life at that moment. He tried to think of ridiculously boring entities- differential calculus- but that reminded him of his lady maths teacher. World War Two helped until she heaved below him and the thought dissipated. He surrendered to his worse nature.

The mechanical voice reminded him that they had ten more minutes to doomsday. That was unhelpful, because the fright strengthened the hardness.
“Cut the crap and cut the wires you fuckin idiot” Lana shouted, the sweetness drained out of that husky voice. “And tell me which ones to cut on mine”
That cursed laughter track. Close ups of his face and hers.

“You cut the green and red” he said, shuffling, slowly moving, thrusting slyly despite himself, facing death.
The orange glow above her face deepened and there emerged a Goddess, descending from it slowly, like She was suspended through thin steel wires. The Goddess announced that He had passed the test, grasped his hand gently and lifted him up and above- floating up through dark skies, milky ways, star bursts and tremors. Below him the explosion filled everything with fire and brimstone and tore her flesh apart.

He woke up. His head protested wanting more sleep. His eyes focused. The strange taste in his mouth turned to sawdust. He thought he was alone in some darkness of the middle of the night saved from a nightmare. He was wrong. Soft feminine voices on his left , tender gentle touches to the left, right and centre that went “There, there, there…” He slipped back into the loving embrace of those heavenly virgins and slept.

Record Label

He heard the question floating up to him from around two and three fourth’s feet above the ground, way below his accustomed line of vision. Caught off guard, he took his eyes of the heavy white and blue led light of his Black Berry. File boards, screens and passing men and women jolted upwards and out of the tilting frame and his eyes focused on this mess of black hair and wide earnest eyes.

"You are Laloo aren’t you?"

The voice was deep and masculine, like that of a rounded joyful tenor who was puffing up to introduce himself as the cool hairdresser of the town. Laloo tried apprising the situation with a lazy uninterested look, couldn’t sustain for it more than twenty seconds and asked, muttered, mumbled, whined “Yeah…and who are you, kid?”

“I ain’t no keed” The face contorted into an angry redness which made the upper lip perspire. Laloo noticed the first emerging line of a shaved moustache now, but thought it would be cool to continue in the condescending adult vein. “Where’s your mommy?”

Somewhere between the “mom” and “ee” Laloo realized the not very ordinariness of the situation. That unpleasing stark yellowness with dull leaden carpeting that he came to every day, to work amidst busy people who typed and called and walked around looking very busy, was not the kind of place where dwarves/midgets dressed like Figaro walked up to you from nowhere, distracting you while you were getting yourself set for a con call. The “?” was hence sounded out with a hesitating hushed whisper that indicated respect, confusion and slight fear.

The Dwarf caught that change, being used to such tonal fluctuations. They were every day occurrences in his interaction with human life and where he came from they had a word for it, which could roughly be translated as “time to cut the carp and get down to it”, although that robs the word of its poetic beauty and its rough sexiness.
“I am heere to help you deesign that beeer label. Shall we start?”

This was cosmic stuff. Two nights back, two of the Gods Laloo worshipped had brewed amber and gold, chilled and frosted, in his dreams. It was the purest Belgian beer, spiced with olives and cardamom and chestnuts, the color of oranges in warm sunshine, that tasted like a fruit market gone deliciously wrong. They served it to him in a large silver chalice that was polished so well that it reflected the liquid within outside and glowed in the warm bright amber. He sipped the cool froth and liquid as Athena and Horus looked on and smiled beatifically. From then on the dream twisted into something strangely unmemorably sexual and he blushed at the lost recollection of it.

And now here was the sign that all that was not in vain. There was a purpose to his life after all and the Gods did exist outside of dreams and books and vases and museums.

They started walking back to his desk, Dwarf and Man, with the Dwarf taking long strident steps to lead the march. Laloo tried making conversation. “So what’s your name?” “Are you a friend of Athena’s?” “Are you allowed to drink?” “How old are you?” “Are Dwarf women also called Dwarfs?” “Where’s your beard?”

The Dwarf walked, head bent down as if in deep meditation and arms folded thoughtfully around his chest with the chin almost resting somewhere close to the neck. He had a placid growl, if that could be the expression to be used, that unnerved Laloo and made him ask several meaningless questions in a go.

When they reached the glass cubicle where Laloo stored his coffee mugs and laptops, the Dwarf deigned to answer a few questions. “My name is not important, I dated Atheena a long time back, I am older than the rock your beelding stands on and I can drink you down man to Dwarf any night and take you home to your momma” Laloo ignored the taunt and focused on what was most relevant. “Dated?”, he asked.

“Let’s begeen” said the Dwarf with the unimportant name. He said “begeen” in a mind numbingly awesome deep voice that exuded strength of purpose and the gravity of the said purpose. He also muttered two short sentences that sounded like four short sighs and that indicated a prayer to the Gods.

“Have you configured the bottle?” he asked looking around as if he expected to find the bottle on the table there but knew better , knowing Laloo’s incapability at doing anything great, not to expect it. That grated. If there was one thing that set Laloo off on missions no one could stop him from, it was when someone acted like they knew better and expected nothing less than ineptness from him. That was perhaps the only thing that could rouse him into marvelous action and fabulous feats of power and creativity. He did.
“Here’s your bottle.”

He took up a pen, flipped over a magazine that carried an inviting picture of Wonder Woman on its cover and drew rough blue outlines of various beer bottles. He craftily drew one that looked like a well endowed woman. Two, in fact. Three were stout, short dwarves, three linear elongated conicals and two which paid tribute to mount Olympus. The Dwarf made an annoying sound with loud breathing at each design and finally nodded at one of the conicals. “That looks bad but I can make that good.” He paused and added helpfully “The rest are reelly bad”

The Dwarf with the unimportant name attacked his design with a religious fervor. He produced a clean white A3 paper and made Laloo draw a neat larger outline of the bottle. This done he proceeded to cast it on the floor, went on his knees and bending over it like a five year old in a crayon company sponsored art competition for world peace, worked his magic on it. He filled it with a ring of runic letters that were finely etched at the foot of the bottle. He gave the front label a beautiful dome like shape that reminded Laloo of the evening sky over the Bay of Bengal. Creepers and mythic creatures filled in the spaces. He blended black and green and yellow and cream to create a color that looked like amber but was infinitely sadder, darker, peaceful and tempting. And that was the color the dome took. In it he poured his infinite creativity, his power, his will to mine and craft and admire. Tears filled Laloo’s eyes at the sheer beauty of it all. The hands worked like two inebriated lizards, swishing here, curling there and creating a silent racket- like a mating ritual. In dark blue bold letters that curved around themselves he wrote the name of the beer on the label- Calebras- that looked, sounded like an invocation and the very reading of it made Laloo fall on his knees with a prayer for forgiveness. Having written 5% v/v and 700 ml in small delicate cursive font and shaded the entire bottle a golden amber to indicate the brew inside, he looked up and gave a proud, happy sneering smile at Laloo. “Now it’s good!”

Laloo had to find a fault and rather unconvinced himself muttered “Calebras” and then said it twice a little louder to make it look like he was tasting the word in his mouth and looking very omniscient said “ Can we look for a better name?”

The Dwarf snorted and walked out of the glass cubicle. Before Laloo could try stopping him, he had left the office and disappeared to wherever he was from.

Laloo took up the paper and looked at if for five whole minutes. He could discern little stories playing themselves out there. He could make out thinly disguised Gods and demons at war and at love and he could even see himself in that tapestry with almost all creation, busy getting drunk in their own unique way, all blissfully happy and satiated.
If there ever could be a message from the Gods, then this was one to him.

He clasped it to his chest and rushed out of his office into the open to find the Dwarf with the unimportant name and thank the Gods for this beauty. A lightning thereby struck him from the blue sky and burned him to a crisp.