If you haven’t read Meta-Bryan part 1 and Meta-Bryan part 2, you need to before reading this part.
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July 1984 had a long life, with many exploits. It decided to visit me and my friends a few times and leave us with monumental lumps which’ll never go away.
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‘She’d have been one today RuKsaK.’
‘Who would?’
‘My ulcer.’
Meta-Bryan called his adopted daughter ‘my ulcer’ with uncomfortable affection. He didn’t mention her often, but his idionym for the little girl he’d never seen worked somehow. His grammar was damning – she wasn’t dead. ------
Just over a year earlier:
‘The ulcer gets lanced any day now Rukkaby.’
‘It’s not an ulcer Bry – sorry, but it’s not an ulcer.’
‘Aye – and an ulcer is what? It’s a piece of fleshy-wesh which builds up bigger and uglier until a Hippocratic alien rips the fucker off your body. The only difference is that I won’t even get a bag of pus to show for this one.’
‘Okay, okay – it’s Bren’s decision though.’
‘It’s a hereditary decision like they all are. I’m working on having that fucking removed too.’
‘Eh?’
‘All this decision muck that parents lob at us – fuck that. I’m not running to the same shelf – I’m going to tailor myself some gleaming, super-chrome decisions. You’ll see.’ Angry balls of saliva were on his chin by now.
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Today, I guess there’s a twenty-one year old woman someone-somewhere, whose real first name was ‘ulcer’. She'll never know because Bryan will never be telling her.
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The July began with an interrupted session of ritualised TV slumping round at Steadward’s house. There were four of us, Stevo, Angry Oddo and me and Steadward. The doorbell rang at 10pm again. It was Bryan coming back from Bren’s, as he did every evening, for a cup of tea, a sit down, a walk back home with me – we lived on the same street.
Angry Oddo, the most persistently irritated man I’ve ever known, spat:
‘RuKsaK – what’s Steadward frigging doing at the door so long?’
He’d gone to let Bryan in and it’d been no more than twenty seconds. To silence Angry Oddo I ended my slouch in the armchair and went to see.
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July 1984’s first delivery drilled a bolt of crimson coloured forever-memory into my head - a 'just yesterday' memory.
Bryan and Steadward were kissing each other – hammering into each other’s faces, rocking their skulls together with arms wrapped everywhere.
In the three seconds I watched them I got one of my most vibrant memory tattoos.
I slid back to the living room.
‘Fuck me! You seen a ghost or something you daft twat?’
‘No, Oddo – not a ghost.’
I felt I'd just seen the polar opposite of a ghost.
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In part 4 (a long post) - July goes insane, Steadward joins the forefront, Meta-Bryan gives his final speech and RuKsaK starts to fade.
