RuKsaK

If you haven’t done so, you should read the following first:
Meta-Bryan part 1
Meta-Bryan part 2
Meta-Bryan part 3

It would help if you read the following too:
Liz - part 1
Liz - part 2
Liz - part 3

That’s a lot of reading though, and since this is a blog, not a novel, I expect your interest may have waned before you even got to this sentence. But, I’m not going to be around for a while, so it’s going to stay fresh for about a week. Also, egowise, and as this is my longest post yet – I’d be very happy with a bin-load of comments.
------
Bryan came in and sat down. He looked staggeringly composed to me. In my head the hammering of what I’d just seen was bleaching my face. How could he, having kissed another man, look so calm? It pained me a little, because it felt like I didn’t know him. I stood up, saying nothing, and went into the kitchen.

Steadward had a huge smile hovering over the cup of tea he was stirring. He jumped at me, hands on my shoulders, massive glee gushing from his face.
‘Fuck me Cinderella!’ I said.
‘Bryan kissed me.’
‘I know! I saw it!’
‘I’m so happy Ruk. I’ve got a boyfriend and it’s Bryan.’

I’ve still never seen as much outward thrill zoom from anyone as it did from Steadward that night.
-----
Sitting halfway up a typically silent road, first of July, Steadward had told me:
‘Ruk, I’m thinking about dying my hair blue and I’m gay.’
‘Blue? You sure?’
‘Don’t be a twat.’

Even at seventeen I had this shallow propensity to make a joke in any corner I could find one. I’ve always been scared like that, just in case life is an accident.

Still not totally letting loose of my fear:
‘You don’t fancy me, do you?’
‘Good God! No! I wouldn’t tell you I was gay if I did.’
‘Well – you’re not going to get off with many blokes, if you don’t tell them you’re gay.’
‘I really fancy Bryan though. Really, really fancy him.’
‘Ha – go for it. Maybe he’ll get you pregnant.’

I felt less guilt when Steadward laughed with me.
------
At the end of July, was the evening Liz gave me some chocolate. Bryan had been there, and then I’d lost him in that moment. When I climbed the drunken stairs out into the 2am street, Bryan was waiting for me. He snatched my hand:
‘You’ll not be battling with cock and fist for much longer Rukanova. You’re going to fuck that lovely Liz.’
‘Bry – she’s Stevo’s girlfriend. She’s nice, but that’ll be insane.’
‘Stevo’s girlfriend, eh?’

He held up my hand and shook it in my face:
‘And this is going to be yours for two more years? Not with your grammar Rukgin. You’ll be popping that passage soon.’

It was rhetorical. He let go and we moved homewards.

‘I’ve got some mad shit to tell you Ruk.’
‘More about you and Steadward sucking and fucking each other. I’d rather not hear it.
‘No – this is different. Look – sometimes I’m just lying in my back yard and… Anyway, come with me and I’ll tell you.’
------
Back at Bryan’s we lay down, side by side, on the useless grass in his back yard. We occasionally did this, in the pitch of the night to watch shooting stars. You could often see quite a few before the alcohol pushed you into sleep or vomit.

Bryan launched:
‘Fucking gravity. The up and down and to and there of what you say, do. Everything I say steeped in fucking gravity. Where am I going in life? Up, wrong-round, any way which defies the crap from the out of my birth.’
‘Don’t get you as usual Bry.’
‘Well - tell me about your life Ruk-baby.’
‘Christ! I’m seventeen – I don’t know where I’m going. My destiny you mean?’
‘You mean your destination - “going” you said. How can it be fucking “going”. How fucking arrogant of us. I hate the word 'go'. You flop out of the womb and this ego fucking swoops in because a ripe apple fell on that Newton twat’s head.’
‘You've lost me again, but that’s alright.’

I was feeling blissed that my virginity might be gone soon.

‘Ruk – just because a coin rolls off a table and makes a different clang on the floor we suppose it’s different from the slush and slap of a baby leaving the ulcer. It’s all the same. The star up there flies sideways and we reckon it’s different. That’s the problem. We can’t live or speak outside where the apple drops. Anyway, I’ve decided to fight it until I get tired all the same.’
‘Yeah – I’ve got you now.’
‘Have you?’
‘No – of course not,’ letting out a genial, juvenile snicker made of booze and contentment.

‘I’ll put it another way then. I left the club earlier to go and fuck Ray Flinckers in the arse. Took him down the beach. He sucked me, then I bent him over and fucked him and came up inside his filthy arse. I got my whiz and whir.’
‘What!’

A cannon-load of funk went off in my face. I jolted up, nearly puked from the swift move.
‘I fucked him, left him and that’s what I’m going to keep doing to anyone who’ll have my cock until this gravity shit doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m going to fuck this town and me senseless.’
------
That’s what he did for the next three years. Misfitted himself from the town, and some others of us. We had to move. Within two months we couldn’t go out in our small town. We’d go to cities where Bry could fuck away. And, so, he fucked on and on until we lost him. He fucked himself off the edge of the table, from the blip-strip of a star, from here to there, as he always put it.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Meta-Bryan part 4