On The Multitude Of Distractions To Be…
by Dan McNeil
…ENCOUNTERED WHILE MAKING LOVE TO THE CAP-DE-L’HOMY PLAGE”
ZEROTHIAN FLIRTATION
onto the yellow beach. The soles of your bare feet are leathery, but the
sand caresses with its silicon warmth. A frisson of sexual anticipation
commences in your calves, expands through your hips and settles in your stomach. A
portion separates from this mothership of sex like a discarded rocket booster*
and descends to the obscure outpost of your groin. Ahead the flat ocean,
glinting, crystalline, endless. Above the immense gold plated sun. The soft
warm breeze that carries particles of sand to be captured by the erect oil coated
hairs on your exposed body
*stock NASA Apollo footage, circa 1969. On the monitor, a five fingered
flare as the Saturn’s second stage ignites and the astronauts are thrust closer to
heaven
DISTRACTION 1 (THE AUDI A8)
looks best in bright metallic colours preferably silver this is true
DISTRACTION 2 (THE USS SCORPION*)
Commander Francis Slattery was utterly gripped by Echo. He’d picked the book
up months ago and had promptly forgotten about it. Ready for another duty
tour, he suddenly remembered the book and threw it in his pack at the last
minute. Wow. Josh was having a real tough time in New York. A little English
jockey way out of his depth. And that monkey…
“Captain to control room”, burbled the intercom. Damn. Just when it was
getting really good.
*USS Scorpion. Skipjack class nuclear powered attack submarine. Sank in
mysterious circumstances off the Azores in 1968 with the loss of all crew.
FRONTAL DOCKING MANOEUVRE
pushing into the sand which gives only slightly, away and away, yielding only
partially of its deep time. The portion of sexual excitement that descended
your stomach and docked in your groin is manipulating your senses. The
portion of sexual excitement (coloured dark red like a second liver) in your groin
begins to enlarge. And your senses enlarge. You enlarge also, but you will
never attain a surface area equal to the beach
DISTRACTION 3 (THE GERMANIC TRANSGRESSION)
then two Germans walk coincidentally past you. You know they are Germans.
How do you know? You don’t know, but you know. They are Germans. Germans.
Germans. Two (2). Two Germans. One (1) German female. One. The other
female also. Two. Both sexually attractive. Both wearing German swimsuits.
One orange, deeply so. The other blue, lighter than the sky. The German
with the blue swimsuit lighter than the sky and carrying in her left hand a
German parasol, as yet unfurled. Her name may be von Braun. In her right hand
nothing, fingers partially extended, sand flowing from the tips. The German
wearing the orange, deeply so swimsuit has a small German backpack in her right
hand. Note: in her right hand, not on her back. The way of the not so young
DISTRACTION 4 (ECHO, THE NEW DICK FRANCIS NOVEL)
ex-jockey turned actor Josh Anderson lands in New York to meet his agent
about a part in a new film. Unfortunately, this is September 11th 2001, and
Josh’s agent is killed in the Twin Towers atrocity. With time on his hands, Josh
sets out to discover who was behind the attacks, aided by an autistic howler
monkey called George
DISTRACTION 5 (THE AFRICAN CONVERGENCE)
yet although overhead of Dar-es-Salaam is the same sun, it is an altogether
bigger sun, plated in copper not gold and lower, more swollen, and the ocean
although filled with the same origin of water is warmer and of a different hue,
being less blue, but instead green, like the Colorado River at most times of
the year, or the Ganges in summer, and within this same different ocean, at the
point where (if viewed from a satellite in geostationary orbit) it fuses with
the land are dark skinned people bathing, like and not unlike these people in
the same different place to the north
DISTRACTION 6 (NEW YORK CITY, 9/11)
Josh moves towards the bar. The barman is weeping, his tears flowing onto
the stainless steel surface, overwhelming the stacked and folded beer towels
like a swollen river of mercury breaching a line of multicoloured sandbags.
Josh wonders
ORGASM
beneath you the beating heart of the ocean is muffled by the gentle sighing
of the ancient sands as they writhe softly beneath your pulsations
DISTRACTION 7 (THE GERMANIC NON-TRANSGRESSION)
then two Germans don’t walk coincidentally past you
DISTRACTION 8 (CAP-DE-L’HOMY PLAGE)
it’s a gorgeous day, even for mid September. One handed, Josh steers the
big Volvo into the car park, terminating with an affected French insouciance
next to a battered white Peugeot. The heat sucks at the air conditioned chill
of the car. From the top of the wooden steps, the flat ocean, glinting,
crystalline, endless. Above the immense gold plated sun
ZERO
THIAN
FLIRT
ATION
Towel and book in hand
Josh walks
down
the
wooden
steps
onto
the
yellow beach