Thursday 22 July 2004

Searching for Answers

People search for things in Google and come here hoping to find the answers. I'm sure they click in and click out again swiftly. These writings are inspired by the searches that led people here (the title is the search term).


Black Umbrella Gentlemen Walking
Swing the umbrella out with the forward stride, slight back-whip of the wrist, snapping the tip down onto the pavement with a click, body moves forward past the upright brolly and swing... (repeat, all the way to the bank).

I walk over London Bridge from the station with all the other city rats. Resonating clickety-click of umbrella tips and leather soled shoes. I come from Deptford. Lucky to have a job in a bank really. But one day I’m going to kill my boss. I’ve worked hard to get where I got and he won’t let me forget where I came from for one minute. Yeah I may share a council flat with me old man just off church street but there isn’t a bank manager working today who deserves more than me. The work is boring but I can do it and I get a regular wage for it. Can’t say I haven’t given considerable thought to breaking the bank but I’m not quite ready, yet.


Girl Wrigley
Bubblegum beauty slides down the shorefront paving in disco rollerboots and hotpants. Hitting the sundecks hard has brought up a Miami beach-bunny tan. Blond hair, part sun- part bottle-blond. Rolling past the palm trees and the sand, chewing gum and singing Britney songs in her head. Tomorrow’s pressures put off by today’s carefree wind-in-the-hair freedom. And then she blows the most enormous bubble that bursts sticking all over her face and trapping the tips of her hair.


Toulouse Lautrec Brothel Life
I’ve grown fat and lazy since being here. My lace is fading and my velvet going bald. I was a young woman when I arrived, shock of red hair, loud laugh and back-street brash. Popular with the well-to-do gents, who seemed to love my pale skin and those freckles across my nose, I did very well for myself in the early days. Oh they bought me things - chocolate from Belgium, flowers from Holland and clothes - dresses with pink net petty coats, lingerie that held my stomach in and pushed my tits up.

I came to Paris to dance in the theatres but there was stiff competition from the sophisticated girls trained in ballet. I sought solice in the bottom of a wine glass in a bar near Montmatre, where I met Madame. She took me in, taught me the trade and showed me how easy it was to live like a queen on the gifts they brought me. They dressed me up to take me out, fed me fat and then I lay back and let them have their way with me.

As my looks faded I took a specialism. I bought a riding crop from a saddlemaker on the outskirts of town and dressed in pantaloons with a tightly drawn corset and laced up boots. And I gave them a jolly good spanking, and how they loved it, they came back again and again.

But I'm tired now, the younger girls are sparky and bright showered with the guady baubles and flashy dresses that they buy for them. I sit here in the corner with my greying skin and liverspotted hands and can't even be bothered to disguise myself with rouge. I haven't had a gift in an age. I have regulars, they like me because I'll still do what their wives won't and I'll still do it more often. Just enough so that Madame won't toss me out onto the street. Just enough.

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