Cassandra Voices

Category: Culture

  • Woody and Annie (and Others) Part I

    ‘I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with. Will you take two negative points?’
    Woody Allen, from his stand-up comedy routine (1964)

    Consider the facts: French writer Annie Ernaux has an affair with a young man, thirty years her junior (she was fifty-four, he was twenty-four), and writes about it, in the recently published The Young Man. Therein, she flatly admits that she was simply using him solely for her own satisfaction, stating that she was with a younger man ‘so that I would not continually be looking at the timeworn face of a man my age, the face of my own aging. When A.’s face was before me, mine was young too. Men have known this forever, and I saw no reason to deprive myself.’ Also, ‘I felt as if I had been lying on a bed since age eighteen and never risen from it – the same bed but in different places, with different men, indistinguishable from one another.’ It is hailed as disarmingly honest in reclaiming female desire – as though we did not already know that women have always had desires, and do not really need to reclaim them because they never went away. Annie Ernaux is lauded. She has won the Nobel Prize, among other prestigious awards.

    Then there is the case of North American filmmaker Woody Allen: he has an affair with a young woman, thirty-five years his junior (he was fifty-six, she was twenty-one), and despite the fact that they married five years later, and have since adopted two daughters, and been apparently happy in their union for twenty-six years and counting, he is vilified as a predatory creep and possible paedophile, constantly mentioned in the same breath as charged and/or convicted sex-offenders Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. He now has difficulty financing his films in his own country, and has to do so abroad – notably in France. Amazon refused to distribute his 2019 film, A Rainy Day in New York, as ‘unmarketable’, resulting in a law suit for breach of contract. While some famous actors have stood by him, singing his praises, others have rushed to distance themselves from him, making clear that they regret having worked with him, and would not do so again. His memoir Apropos of Nothing was dropped by his original publisher, after protests from his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow and some members of her family, and a staff walkout at the publishing firm, although it was subsequently taken up by another house. He has been blacklisted, or in the parlance de nos jours, ‘cancelled’. (Amusing titbit: the contribution of Allen and his wife to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign was unceremoniously returned. The principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, and the requirement of due process, seemingly does not apply in Clinton’s legal framework.) This double standard needs scrutiny.

    Obviously, there are additional factors which serve to place Allen in an unfavourable light, and can be used to justify the opprobrium he endures. For one, the young woman he took up with, Soon-Yi Previn, was the adopted daughter of that ex-girlfriend, Farrow, who was still at the time his current girlfriend. For another, and far more damaging to his reputation, he was accused by Farrow, in the aftermath of the Allen/Soon-Yi relationship becoming public knowledge in 1992, of molesting his and Farrow’s adopted daughter Dylan, then aged seven, an accusation which resurfaced in 2016 in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and a 2021 HBO documentary featuring interviews with Dylan, Allen v. Farrow. In fairness, Ernaux’s young paramour was a fan (a male groupie?), not an extended family member, and she has never been accused of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy, much less the adopted son of her then boyfriend. But, the key word in the previous sentence, to my mind, is ‘accused’. (Echoes resonate of the reflexively eponymous 1988 Jonathan Kaplan film, starring Jodie Foster, in which she portrays a rape victim who struggles to get justice. Who, exactly, was The Accused?) Allen has been accused, but never charged, much less convicted – unlike Cosby, Weinstein and Epstein.

    It is not my intention here to delve into the copious mound of facts and opinions, claims and counterclaims, which surround this case, and are readily available elsewhere to those with the inclination to do the proper research. Such an approach would involve excessive quotation from the large swathes of television, newspaper and magazine interviews, statements and op. ed. pieces I have read (to say nothing of the social media onslaughts on either side), information which has long been in the public domain. The Allen/Farrow/Previn blended family imbroglio is too sad and sordid and multifaceted, the problems around the original accusation too byzantine – partaking of classical tragedy – to allow of a simple black and white interpretation, and we may never know the whole story, only the conflicting, partial versions. So I will be economical with my references, but hopefully not with the truth – as I see it. The trouble with presenting an argument from either side of this dispute is that, as with the majority of such issues, once a side is taken, all arguments become one-sided. However, while I hope to avoid the bulk of the ‘he said/she said’ discourse on this episode of the culture wars, I will allow myself the odd judgement, while trying to avoid being overly partisan. My own allegiances will soon become apparent, and in any case I have other matters to engage with here: mainly, societal attitudes to legal, large age gap relationships; and, also, the age old conundrum around the separation of the artist and the work.

    Let us pull from the pile this quote, if only because it pithily summarises the vast and seemingly endless debate around the Allen/Farrow debacle. Daphne Merkin wrote in her profile of Soon-Yi (New York Magazine/Vulture, 17/09/2018):

    With regard to almost every aspect of life in the Farrow household, Soon-Yi’s story, like those of her younger brother Moses and Allen himself, is strikingly different from what’s put forth by Mia and Dylan as well as their son and brother Ronan Farrow, the journalist who has written a series of high-profile #MeToo stories over the past year. I can’t pretend to know what actually occurred, of course, and neither can anyone other than Allen and Dylan. Even the judge who eventually denied Allen custody of Dylan opined that “we will probably never know what happened on August 4, 1992.” All of life is filled with competing narratives, and the burden of interpretation is ultimately on the listener and his or her subjectively arrived-at sense of the truth.

    People will choose sides, based on previous loyalties and ideological standpoints, often ignoring evidence and even succumbing to flimsily substantiated conspiracy theories. (Needless to say, Merkin herself has faced multiple accusations of bias, both as a long-term acquaintance of Allen’s, and as a #MeToo sceptic). Still, a few salient points, often ignored, deserve to be made in Allen’s defence on both (separate, but in many minds, related) counts: that of the inappropriateness of his relationship with, and possible grooming of, his now wife (who was his then girlfriend’s adopted daughter); and that of sexually assaulting his own adopted daughter.

    Allen is on record as stating that he had no serious qualms about his relationship with Soon-Yi. ‘I didn’t feel that just because she was Mia’s adopted daughter, there was any great moral dilemma. It was a fact, but not one with any great import. It wasn’t like she was my daughter,’ he told Time magazine in an August 1992 interview. ‘I am not Soon-Yi’s father or stepfather. I’ve never even lived with Mia. I never had any family dinners over there. I was not a father to her adopted kids in any sense of the word.’ Supporters will concur. Detractors will see in this attitude further evidence of the man’s deficient conscience, and questionable moral probity. It does seem that the romantic part of Allen’s relationship with Farrow was well over by the time Soon-Yi and he got together, at least according to the Woody and Soon-Yi side of things. Allen and Farrow were maintaining a loose union mostly for the sake of the two children they had adopted, and the one biological child they had had together. In December 1987 Farrow gave birth to her and Allen’s son, Satchel (now known as Ronan) Farrow. Farrow wanted to adopt another child in 1991, and Allen said he would not take ‘a lousy attitude toward it’ so long as she agreed to his adoption of Dylan and Moses, whom Farrow had already adopted by herself. In October of that year she adopted another Vietnamese child (who turned out to have disabilities Farrow could not cope with, and so was passed on to another adoptive family). Allen’s adoption of Dylan and Moses was finalised in December 1991, shortly before Farrow discovered that Allen and Soon-Yi were romantically and sexually involved, in January 1992.

    Soon-Yi’s version of events, and justification for them, is more or less the same as Allen’s. In August 1992 she wrote, in a statement to Newsweek, that Allen had never been a father figure to her, and that they had become friendly long after his romance with Farrow had ended, adding:

    I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested and spoiled by some evil stepfather – not by a long shot. I’m a psychology major at college who fell for a man who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Mia. I admit it’s offbeat, but let’s not get hysterical.

    This was repeated twenty-six years later, in that controversial 2018 Vulture interview with Merkin: ‘We didn’t think of him as a father. He didn’t even have clothing at our house, not even a toothbrush.’ She went on to say that she was ‘madly in love’ with Allen. ‘[I was] completely attracted to him, physically and sexually. I know he’d said that I’d meet someone in college, but I’d already decided,’ she told Vulture. ‘From the first kiss I was a goner and loved him.’ As Allen and Farrow had never married, and as Allen had never adopted Soon-Yi, their relationship was not illegal. Furthermore, at twenty-one, she was more than ‘of age’. Soon-Yi’s affirmations are, unsurprisingly, disparaged by the vilifiers, as the product of an impressionable young woman manipulated by her more worldly and high-profile partner, and who may even be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. This interpretation finds its equal and opposite expression on the part of Allen’s advocates in the contention that Dylan was coached by Farrow into making her accusations of molestation, as the vindictive vengefulness of a woman wronged.

    However, in many ways, the propriety of Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi is a red herring, when it comes to characterising him as a sexual predator. Although it should not need to be pointed out, apparently it does: when it comes to passing judgement on Woody Allen’s large age gap marriage in particular, or large age gap relationships in general, and whether or not the senior party – man or woman – is de facto creepy, Allen’s status as an accused (but, more importantly, uncharged and unconvicted) child molester is simply irrelevant, if only because paedophilia (defined as a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children), hebephilia (a primary or exclusive sexual interest in eleven to fourteen-year-old pubescents) and ephebophilia (a primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages fifteen to nineteen) are very distinct, not necessarily overlapping, preferences, with the later not considered by mental health professionals to be pathological. Twenty-one-year-old women are not seven-year-old girls. In other words, it would be entirely possible that Allen could have groomed Soon-Yi as an adolescent but not molested Dylan; and, vice versa, he could possibly have molested Dylan while not ever have been grooming Soon-Yi. One act would not substantiate the other. In addition, it is just as likely that neither act took place as that both did.

    Paedophilia itself is a compulsive behaviour: you do not suddenly start acting on paedophiliac impulses when you are fifty-seven-years old. Indeed, clinicians differentiate between paedophiles and child molesters, and ‘preferential’ and ‘situational’ child abuse, since not all of those with a sexual preference for prepubescents molest children, and not all child molesters are true paedophiles. There are motives for child sexual abuse that are unrelated to paedophilia, such as marital problems, the unavailability of an adult partner, or general anti-social tendencies – which does not, of course, mean that everyone who finds themselves in such situations is going to abuse children. Furthermore, paedophilia is a prenatal, genetic sexual orientation: people are born that way, rather like being born straight, gay, bi or trans. For this reason, there is no evidence that paedophilia can be cured. Such an endeavour would be a little like trying to ‘cure’ homosexuality through aversion therapy, one of the more shameful practices of the many to be found in the history of psychiatry. Instead, most therapies focus on treating paedophiles so that they refrain from acting on their desires. However, in the wider society, just as there was once no understanding, or at best condescension, for LGBTQ+ people or unmarried mothers (the phrase ‘single parent family’ had not even entered the lexicon), now there is none for paedophiles – only judgement and condemnation. Every generation needs a minority to hate on, even if it is demonstrably true that paedophiles do more harm to the vulnerable than LGBTQ+ or unwed Mums ever did. Remember: there was a time, not so long ago, when gay people were routinely considered to be a bunch of pederasts, and unmarried pregnant females were thought of as lascivious ‘fallen’ women, whose ‘innocence’ had been taken, or who had given it up too easily. Magdalen laundries were full of them.

    Allen had no previous record of sexual activity with children (which does not, of course, mean that it did not happen – nor would it be of much consolation to Dylan, if her accusations against Allen are true). Various studies have indicated that non-paedophilic offenders do tend to do so at times of high stress, have a later onset of offending, and have fewer, often familial, victims; while paedophilic offenders frequently start offending at an early age, have a larger number of victims who are more often than not extrafamilial, and are more driven to offend. Such classifications and terminology may be irrelevant to victims, but while the possibility that Allen is a very late onset, single incidence child molester remains, it is unlikely that he is a paedophile. His numerous relationships with adult, so called ‘age appropriate’ women would also militate against this diagnosis.

    For those unfamiliar with the bare facts, Allen was accused of one incident of molestation of a seven-year-old by the child’s adoptive mother, against the backdrop of the revelation of his legal relationship with another adoptive daughter of the seven-year-old’s adoptive mother, and the ensuing custody battle between him and the child’s mother for custody of the seven-year-old adopted daughter, and two other children, one adopted and one biological. He was investigated in two separate states, Connecticut and New York, and cleared in both. These investigations included both physical and psychological examinations of Dylan, and lie detector tests taken by Allen, which he passed. The Connecticut State’s Attorney did not press charges. During the investigation the Connecticut State Police referred Dylan to the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale–New Haven Hospital, which concluded that Allen had not sexually abused Dylan, and that the allegation was probably coached or influenced by Mia Farrow. After a fourteen month long inquiry, the New York Department of Social Services found ‘no credible evidence’ to support the allegation. Furthermore, Farrow’s legal representatives offered Allen the opportunity to have the abuse allegation remain private, in exchange for a huge payout to Farrow in compensation and child maintenance, which he refused. This hardly points to his having any sense of guilt, or an overriding desire to preserve his reputation.

    But then come the speculative caveats: the state attorney in Connecticut found ‘probable cause’ to prosecute, but decided against doing so because it would further traumatise Dylan, and because there was ‘reasonable doubt’ that a conviction was a certain outcome, as it had been impossible to reach the conclusion that the abuse had occurred. One of the social workers in the New York investigation was fired and replaced because he was in favour of charging Allen. I find this latter claim, with its implication that Allen was too powerful a figure in the U.S. film industry to face the full rigors of the law, what with his having many sympathetic friends, and having brought millions in revenue into New York City, vaguely ridiculous: if Harvey Weinstein, a much more powerful presence in the U.S. film industry, can be charged and convicted, then Woody Allen certainly can. If it was so easy for rich and powerful men to act with impunity and evade the justice system, then why are Weinstein and Cosby serving prison sentences, and why was Jeffrey Epstein in prison on remand (when he committed suicide), while Woody Allen is not? As regards Allen’s rejection of Farrow’s lawyers’ attempt at mediation, which involved financial payments in exchange for making the charge go away, his antagonists might argue that this was only because Allen did not want to be lumbered with paying out such a large sum of money to Farrow in what he considered to be an extortionate deal. Again, your explanations will tend to be determined by which side you have already taken.

    The opposition between Allen supporters who claim that Farrow coached and cajoled Dylan, and the Farrow supporters who claim that Allen groomed and manipulated Soon-Yi, sadly extends into the Farrow family itself. Moses Farrow, who was fourteen at the time of the accusations, and is today a forty-six-year-old psychotherapist, staunchly supports Woody and Soon-Yi. In a long blog post from May 2018 titled ‘A Son Speaks Out’, he makes detailed claims about how Mia tyrannised him into upholding her version of events, how Mia coached Dylan during the videotaped interview she did with her, and that initially taking Mia’s side before coming out against her when he was an adult (and therefore no longer financially dependent on her) was ‘the biggest regret of my life.’ On the other hand, Ronan (formerly Satchel) Farrow, aged four at the time and today a thirty-seven-year-old investigative journalist, staunchly supports Mia and Dylan. He continues to campaign against Allen, both in mainstream media outlets and on social media. On one side, Soon-Yi and Moses paint a picture of Mia Farrow as mercurial, violent and manipulative, given to outbursts of rage and cruel punishments, and the instigator of Dylan’s allegations against Woody, as revenge for his affair with Soon-Yi. On the other side, Dylan and Ronan defend their mother against attacks while continuing to assert that Woody molested Dylan.

    What those who take sides in the Farrow family feud generally do not take into account is that even if Mia was an abusive, controlling, bad mother, it is still conceivable that Woody Allen molested Dylan Farrow. One possibility does not negate the other. It just adds to the sadness. Equally, just because Woody Allen began an affair and since married a woman thirty-five years younger than him, who was his then partner’s adopted daughter, it does not automatically make him a paedophile, a molester, or even a groomer. A further strand in this tangled web is the possibility that Soon-Yi Previn could have been exacting a subtle form of revenge on her adoptive mother Mia Farrow, consciously or unconsciously, for what she perceives was an abusive childhood, by ‘stealing’ her boyfriend. What is clear, however, is that there is a marked difference between the accounts and outcomes of Farrow’s biological and/or Caucasian children, and those of her adopted and/or Asian ones, and the sides they have subsequently taken. So maybe she did play favourites, as many parents do, with undertones of racism.

    ‘What’s your favourite Woody Allen movie?’ So begins Dylan Farrow’s open letter to the New York Times of 01/02/2014, in which she reiterated her accusation of molestation by Allen. There has emerged a line of argument which attempts to find evidence of his grooming of Soon-Yi and –  bizarrely – his molestation of Dylan, in Allen’s inappropriate interest in teenage girls as displayed in his film work. While reference is made to a few snippets scattered throughout the oeuvre, such as when Rob, the friend of Allen’s Alvy Singer in Annie Hall (1977), in recounting an escapade in Los Angeles, declares, ‘Twins, Max! Sixteen years old. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities?’, the chief culprit is the entirety of Allen’s 1979 movie, Manhattan, with its central storyline of a relationship between forty-two-year-old television comedy writer Isaac Davis (played by Allen) and seventeen-year-old high school student Tracy (played by Mariel Hemingway).

    Revisiting Manhattan forty-five years later, what is striking now is not only how all the other adult characters in the film are totally accepting of the couple in their social circle (save for a solitary  throwaway quip by Ike’s other love interest, Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton): ‘somewhere Nabokov is smiling’), regarding it as at worst an eccentric but charming peccadillo, but also how garlanded with praise from both audiences and critics, as well as awards, the film was at the time of its release. Even as late as October 2013, Guardian readers were voting it the best film directed by Woody Allen. Clearly, Manhattan’s portrayal of a middle-aged man dating a teenager drew little derision back then, with the sole dissenting voice on record being that of Pauline Kael, who wrote in her New York Times review: ‘What man in his forties but Woody Allen could pass off a predilection for teenagers as a quest for true values?’ What viewers and so-called critics frequently do not realise about Annie Hall is that, despite the fact that it is narrated by the Woody stand-in Alvy, it is actually about a developing female artist (whose name gives the film its title) who outgrows an immature male partner. Similarly, with Manhattan, it is Tracy who imparts important life lessons to Ike, such as the closing advice ‘you have to have a little faith in people’. Manhattan only began to attract more negative analysis in the late 2010s, as Allen’s reputation again came into question after the rise of the #MeToo movement, and Dylan’s reiterated allegations. Societal attitudes have changed, but only relatively recently.

    As even those who find Allen suspect or downright creepy will have to admit, Manhattan came out at a particular point in history (which was pretty much most of history up to and surpassing that particular point) where the kind of relationship portrayed in the film seemed unobjectionable to many adults (male and female). Take, for example, the character of Randal P. McMurphy in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962): feigning mental illness, McMurphy is transferred from a prison work farm to a psychiatric facility because he thinks it will be an easier way to serve out his six month sentence. His crimes? ‘Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest for…’ Statutory Rape. He was never convicted, as the fifteen-year-old girl chose not to testify, possibly due to intimidation. However, McMurphy claims that the girl, ‘Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.’, and that her insatiable sexual appetite made him take ‘to sewing my pants shut.’ He continues his own defence by arguing that he was forced to leave town after the trial because, ‘that little hustler would of actually burnt me to a frazzle by the time she reached legal sixteen.’ The subsequent filmisation by Miloš Forman, released in 1975, is even more openly condoning of McMurphy’s sexual history (and readers who are easily triggered should consider themselves warned that perhaps it would be in their best interests to skip over this excerpt from McMurphy’s interview with the good Dr. Spivey):

    She was fifteen years old, going on thirty-five, Doc, and she told me she was eighteen, she was very willing, I practically had to take to sewing my pants shut. Between you and me, uh, she might have been fifteen, but when you get that little red beaver right up there in front of you, I don’t think it’s crazy at all and I don’t think you do either. No man alive could resist that, and that’s why I got into jail to begin with. And now they’re telling me I’m crazy over here because I don’t sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Don’t make a bit of sense to me. If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko. But no more, no less, that’s it.

    Presumably, Kesey as author, followed thirteen years later by scriptwriters Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, thought that this crime was an acceptable one for a protagonist – whose status as a Christ-like figure is subtly alluded to throughout the narrative – to commit, and still remain a ‘good guy’, or even a secular redemptive saviour of sorts, however flawed. The reading and film audiences were in accord – if they thought about it at all – given the massive contemporary popularity of the book and film. Interestingly, Ryan Gilbey’s reassessment in the New Statesman on the occasion of the film’s re-release in 2017 appeared under the headline: ‘Watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest again, I feel sorry for Nurse Ratched’, the character previously seen as the story’s arch villainess.

    But Tracy in Manhattan was not underage ‘jailbait’, to use the colloquial term for the temptation of sexual relations with minors. The age of consent in New York state was seventeen in 1979, and remains so today. (As of April 2021, of the fifty U.S. states, thirty have an age of consent of sixteen, nine at seventeen, and in eleven states the age is eighteen.) Thus, there is nothing illegal about Ike and Tracy’s relationship, as she is deemed capable of giving consent to sex with anyone else over the age of seventeen (save for cases of incest), with no so-called ‘Romeo and Juliet’ rules governing the age of her partner(s). Whether or not that represents informed consent is a matter for the legislature. (As we know from the political sphere, consent can be manufactured.) I would suggest that if the majority of a given society is of the opinion that a sexual relationship between a forty-two-year old and seventeen-year-old, or the portrayal thereof, is inappropriate, reprehensible, or criminal, then it is the current law which now needs to be changed, not the filmmaker or his work, retrospectively. After all, you cannot be indicted for a crime now that was not a crime then – in fiction or in reality. Well, maybe in fiction.

    Was Vladimir Nabokov a predatory, manipulative man because he wrote a novel about a predatory, manipulative man? Hardly, although Martin Amis, who averred ‘I bow to no one in my love for this great and greatly inspiring genius’ (in ‘The Problem with Nabokov’, The Guardian, 14/11/2009), cannot help but have queasy reservations about what he perceives as the ‘only significant embarrassment’ in the literary reputation of one of his writerly heroes, opining (in ‘Divine Levity’, Times Literary Supplement, 23/12/2011): ‘Of the nineteen fictions, no fewer than six wholly or partly concern themselves with the sexuality of prepubescent girls . . . To be as clear as one can be: the unignorable infestation of nymphets in Nabokov is not a matter of morality; it is a matter of aesthetics. There are just too many of them.’ What if Nabokov had been accused of sexual impropriety (as could happen to anyone, for a variety of reasons, especially those burdened with teaching fickle, entitled students in the humanities departments of universities, in order to earn a living), would the facts that he had written Lolita and that paedophilia features in five of his other novels have been held in evidence against him? Was Nabokov a creep because he wrote about creeps – at length? Doubtless, there are millennials who would like to see Lolita banned, just as there were Moral Majority types who wanted it censored when it was published in 1955 (by the Olympia Press in Paris, for fear of backlash in the Anglophone world). Senior publisher Dan Franklin has gone on record stating that he would not publish Lolita today, for fear ‘a committee of 30-year-olds’ would resign in protest because of #MeToo and social media.

    Granted, it is disingenuous to conflate opposition to abuse and harassment with unreconstructed Judeo-Christian prudishness about sex. But it still amounts to arguing that there are facets of human behaviour that are out of bounds for nuanced exploration by artists and writers. We have exchanged the rationale for the puritanism of one era for that of another – however well-intentioned both of them were and are. Lewis Carroll obsessed about a prepubescent girl in Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. Father/Daughter incest is a major theme in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. From Gravity’s Rainbow to Bleeding Edge, via Mason & Dixon and Against The Day, incest and paedophilia run like a fault line through the work of Thomas Pynchon. In these days of sensitivity readers, should we ban them all? Should they come with a health warming? If we accept that paedophilia and incest and sexual abuse of children in general are things in the real world, and that they are immoral, where does that put the morality of writing about the topics or choosing not to, or passing laws to outlaw or censor such material? Does choosing not to publish facilitate covering them up? Does choosing to do so serve in tacitly promoting them? Such writing is deeply discomfiting, as it was probably intended to be. You would probably not be well-adjusted if you did not find it so. One thinks of Judge John Munro Woolsey, who concluded in the New York trial of Joyce’s Ulysses for obscenity in 1933 that, ‘Whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.’ But did the good judge not suspect that the novel’s power as an emetic was in some ways dependent on its being aphrodisiac? Does it not all depend on point-of-view and direction of sympathies, both within and without the texts? And, if so, who is to decide what the point-of-view, and direction of sympathies, are? Who will judge the judges? But if you are really looking for a book to censor because of depictions of rape and incest, then why not start with the Bible?

    There is a large age gap relationship in Sophia Coppola’s film Lost In Translation (2003), which remains unconsummated. The precise disparity itself is left unspecified, but Scarlett Johansson was seventeen when she played the role of Charlotte, a recent Yale philosophy graduate in her early twenties, and Bill Murray was fifty-two when he took on the character of Bob Harris, a faded actor in his early fifties. That the mutual attraction is romantic in nature is made clear by the significant show of disappointment exhibited by Charlotte when Bob has a fling with a more age appropriate woman (equally adulterous, but that transgression is not the focus of our moral inquiry here). In her rather vanilla defence of her storyline, in an interview given as part of the twentieth anniversary of the film’s release, Coppola stated:

    Part of the story is about how you can have romantic connections that aren’t sexual or physical. You can have crushes on people where it isn’t that kind of thing. Part of the idea was that you can have connections where you can’t be together for various reasons because you’re at different points in life.

    But what if it had turned sexual? Would Bob have suddenly metamorphosised into a predatory creep? Certainly, certain sections of the commentariat would have it so. They even express misgivings about the relationship portrayed as it stands. It is unlikely that what is widely regarded as a Gen X cinema classic would garner such a warm reception were it released today, given the heightened awareness of gendered power imbalances in the movie business, and elsewhere. The film assuredly benefitted greatly from being released before online discourse consumed pop culture, as it would easily have fallen foul of debates about the ethics of age gap relationships if it came out in the age of X (formerly Twitter). Furthermore, what if it had been made by a man? What if it had been made by Woody Allen?

    I notice that I myself have now fallen into the trap of failing to distinguish between legal and illegal sexual activity. But perhaps that is because there is a large cohort of people who are of the opinion that associations which are currently legal ought to be illegal. And if that were to happen, such currently legal relationships would become much less common in fictional representations, as it would become much less of a burning issue, although not in the realms of fantasy fiction. The queasiness of taboo which applied to Lolita in its day would now apply to Manhattan – as, indeed, it already does, but with much greater force, as now both scenarios would be equally illicit. And what would be the fate of future attempts at such representations?

    The fact is, just as Annie Ernaux was attracted to a man thirty years her junior, older men have always been attracted to women much younger than themselves, for the very reasons Ernaux says motivated her in her attraction to a much younger man. This is entirely understandable, whether you are a man or a woman: after all, youth is beautiful and full of promise; age is ragged and full of compromise. Was Ernaux grooming and being manipulative? Probably not, as it was her lover who first wrote to her, although she may have taken advantage of his fandom to have her way with him. But that was just ‘reclaiming female desire’. Nor has she been the only one engaged in this pursuit. When it comes to writers, a nefarious bunch to be sure, consider this: Iris Mudoch had a (legal) affair with a student when she was forty-four and he was twenty-four; Angela Carter had a (legal) affair with a nineteen-year-old man when she was thirty-one; and Germaine Greer published a book entitled The Boy (2003) – a study of the youthful male face and form from antiquity to the present day – in which she wrote that the ideally attractive boy must be ‘old enough to be capable of sexual response but not yet old enough to shave. This window of opportunity is not only narrow, it is mostly illegal.’ The erotic reawakening of middle-aged and older women is the main theme of several recently published novels: in Susan Minot’s Don’t Be A Stranger (2024), Ivy Cooper is in her early fifties, while her love interest Ansel is twenty years younger; in Miranda July’s All Fours (2024), the nameless heroine is forty-five-years-old, and constantly fantasises about sex with whomever; and Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir (2022) (a sly nod to Nabokov), features an unnamed fifty-eight-year-old academic, whose husband has been accused of historic sexual misconduct with seven ‘of age’ students, lusting after a forty-year-old colleague. (Parenthetically, Anne Enright’s excellent early short story ‘Felix’ riffs, both stylistically and thematically, on a female Humbert Humbert, a forty-seven-year-old suburban housewife who has an affair with her teenage daughter’s boyfriend.)

    In the cinema world, the mother-of-all-cougars is the Simon and Garfunkel serenaded Mrs. Robinson, the older woman who seduces and has an affair with Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967). A then thirty-five-year-old Anne Bancroft was playing a woman whose age, although unspecified, was at least ten years older than that, somewhere in her forties, which is a sharp reminder of Hollywood’s standards when it comes to roles for leading actresses (or ‘female actors’). As the twenty-one-year-old Benjamin, twenty-nine-year-old Dustin Hoffman was in reality only six year younger than Bancroft. (Interestingly, the film also contains a false rape accusation, made by Mrs. Robinson against Ben, in order to thwart his relationship with her daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross)). The older-woman-younger-boy trope later appears in Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal (2006), itself adapted from the 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. The scandal in question concerns forty-one-year-old art teacher and mother of two Sheba Hart, who has an affair with one of her underage secondary school students, fifteen-year-old Steven Connolly. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Liquorice Pizza (2021) is a contemporary film depicting a twenty-five-year-old woman, photographer’s assistant Alana Kane, dating a fifteen-year-old boy, actor Gary Valentine. Todd Haynes’ May December (2023) features Gracie Atherton-Yoo and her husband Joe Yoo, who started a relationship in the 1990s, when she was a thirty-six-year-old mother of two and he was twelve. Gracie has spent time in jail for statuary rape, where she gave birth to Joe’s baby. When she was freed on parole they got married, had two more children, and are still together. The scenario is loosely based on the real life story of Seattle teacher and mother of four Mary Kay Letourneau who, aged thirty-four in 1996, seduced her twelve-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. Like Gracie, Letourneau spent several years in prison, and married a then of age Fualaau upon her release in 2005, and had two children with him. In Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024), CEO Romy (Nicole Kidman), a married mother of two daughters, embarks on a powerplay affair with her intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson). While how old they are is not specifically detailed in dialogue, the official screenplay indicates that their respective ages are forty-nine and twenty-five, a twenty-four year disparity. Furthermore, Kidman is fifty-seven while Dickinson is twenty-eight, making the leads’ real life age gap one of twenty-nine years. (As it happens, Kidman is no stranger to taking on such roles, as she portrayed similar older women involved with younger men in A Family Affair (2024), The Paperboy (2012) and To Die For (1995).) Reijn has promoted her film thus:

    If we see a movie where the male actor is the same age as the female actor, we find that odd. Which is insane. It should completely be normalized that the age gaps switch and that women have different relationships. We’re not trapped in a box anymore. We internalize the male gaze, we internalize patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it. It’s really hard.

    In real life, Madonna is sixty-five, her boyfriend is twenty-seven. Cher is seventy-seven, her boyfriend is thirty-five. Brigitte Macron is seventy-one, her husband Emmanuel Macron is forty-seven. Some of these relationships are legal, some are not, while some inhabit a grey area, depending on where and when they occur. But the middle-aged ladies are evidently horny for young male flesh, at least in these zeitgeisty cultural representations. The message is clear: having a toy boy is cool, whereas having a younger woman, it would seem, is not – or not anymore. What men have always known, and women are catching on to, to echo Ernaux, is that connubial domesticity is often a burdensome bore from which respite is required. Thus, for men, the acquiring of a mistress, or the discreet visits to the brothel, to supplement the mundane or meagre mollifications of the marriage bed. So, either women are just catching up and this is only equality in action, or else no older person, man or woman, should be allowed to cultivate such intergenerational romantic or sexual relationships in the first place. After all, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – or is it the other way around?

    CLICK HERE to read PART II of Desmond Traynor’s ‘Woody and Annie (and Others)’.

    Feature Image: G1AWGP Cannes, France. 12th May, 2016. Woody Allen, Soon Yi Previn Director And Wife Cafe Society, Premiere. 69 Th Cannes Film Festival Cannes, France 12 May 2016 Diw88737 Credit: Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Live News

  • The Death of My Marriage and JFK Junior

                It happens. After four years of marriage, I’m madly in love…just not with my husband. I feel like Diane Lane in Unfaithful, guilt-ridden, and giddy as I face my new reality. I am a terrible wife…but…I was becoming a fantastic girlfriend. 

    You may deem me a horror, but the truth is never a fairytale. Only weddings are, and mine was no exception. In Camelot fashion, I rode to church in a horse and buggy. I should have known something was wrong when looking out the lace-framed carriage window I thought, “I could escape through the woods in this thing.”  To say we have one soul mate, one person we marry until death is to commit to madness. However sour that sounds, I still believe in love. I believe in Rocky and Adrian, couples who meet and mate for life. There are swans out there, and then there’s me.

    As my horse clickety clacks through the trail to church, I thought of where we met. My soon-to-be husband and I were waiters for an elite caterer who specialized in spoiling the rich and famous of New York. On any given night, we served an array of society members, rich bitches, charming bastards, and boring bankers. They all had the same nose, the same stifling perfumes, the same board-certified plastic surgeons. There were exceptions, rare guests that made even the most jaded waiters’ hearts skip a beat. There was Princess Dianna, who graced The New York State Theater with a presence that was otherworldly and English garden. Then there was our homegrown prince, John Kennedy Junior. He was intelligent, handsome, rugged — a bona fide American hunk. The only son of the late President John F. Kennedy was often alone, then later in the company of his wife Carolyn. She was stunning and stepped into the Kennedy dynasty as if the glass slippers were hers all along. Whether they were holding hands or mingling separately at a party, they were always in sync.  I thought of how secretly jealous I was of them, of their inexplicable beauty, and the life of ease they were born into. I thought of all the splendor we lavished on John and Carolyn, and how ironic and lovely that we were finally having our splash of an event.

    My future husband Robert was kind, respectful, and a planner. Everyone loved him and encouraged our flirtations. “Robert is one of the most emotionally mature men I’ve ever met,” said a co-worker. On the surface she was right. He was grounded, and generous – the opposite of the selfish tools I had experienced. But a deeper dive into his psyche revealed a gully of childhood trauma. I came to learn, in graphic detail, how his father had taken his own life when Robert was just a boy. And how his unspeakable death released a brutal barrage of white water on his family – for just as one wave of unrest was cresting, another would hit.

    Initially, I found Robert timid, but as our dating progressed, the sheer goodness of his nature won me over. On the morning after our second date, I was treated to a romantic poem left on my voicemail. It was impressive as Robert was a trained actor who sidelined his dream for steady work teaching. Though flattered by his gesture, I was puzzled by his spontaneous outburst. What had I done to deserve this? I perceived that our spark was not the brightest. He didn’t ask me many questions. So…was it my looks? Right face, right time? I didn’t care. He needed a place to put his love, and I needed a safe place to land.

    Our relationship progressed as he spoiled me with thoughtful gifts and a steady stream of attention. After three and a half months of dating, I moved into his place. I never thought of marriage as my life goal, I had already turned down proposals from two different men. But I was at that age where dormant domesticity busts through DNA, like weeds in cracked concrete. For there I was, a few months later, saying yes to this man who fell to one knee on a foggy night in July and asked me to marry him.

    Four years later, I wasn’t just breaking my vows, I was pulverizing them beyond recognition. Like all first-time offenders, I felt culpable but soon grew accustomed to my crime. My brain became an IV, slowly dripping rationalizations to assuage my conscience, conveniently removing all traces of guilt from my heart. The merit of my sins softened, as I recalled the things my husband and I had and hadn’t done. We HAD sex, TWICE…on our two-week honeymoon in Italy. I never got kissed under that Bridge of Sighs, I got a sweater. It was a really nice sweater. Every time I wore it, I remembered Venice – the churches we lit candles in, the canals we floated over, the arches we never made out under.

     

    I’m not a modern girl. I never had one of those razor-chopped haircuts, I had cookbooks. On any given night you’d find me making dinner for Robert like an old-school Italian wife.  Yet here I am, standing barefoot on my lover’s kitchen countertop and I’m not even cooking. I’m five feet off the floor at his insistence; “Take off your shoes and climb up,” he says. “Changes your perspective. Right?” I must have nodded yes, but in my head, I’m thinking, “My husband would never let me do this. He barely lets me in the house after he mops!” I met Jack at a master acting class in Manhattan. The teacher was a famous Beverly Hills guru. He was part Scientologist, part psychic. If you had a chink in your armor, he sniffed it out with vampiric accuracy. Once, when sitting in the hot seat after my scene, he noted the following, “You’re a passionate woman. But you exist in a passionless relationship, yes?” I take a breath before I answer, “Oh my husband’s…very supportive.” I’m barely exhaling as the guru stares through me. He needs no words, for the truth he sought was shifting in my eyes of a thousand lies. I panic, knowing I’m caught. But like a dog suddenly surrendering a steak bone, the guru lets me go and turns his attention back to show biz. He tells me to straighten my curly hair and rise above the middle-class vibe I’m projecting. The guru makes it clear that being middle-class is akin to poison and kills the spirit of an artist like slow-moving arsenic.

    About 2 weeks after the start of the first class, I’m slated to work with an actor named Cal. Now Cal was a loose cannon who pulled an actual gun on a woman in rehearsal, but I didn’t care. He was interesting and I was primed for artistic arousal. But word had it that bat shit, crazy Cal booked an acting job and wouldn’t be coming to class anymore. The director of my scene needed someone to take his place and chose Jack as my new partner. I admit, I was disappointed to miss out on loose cannon Cal. I could have used a gun to the head, and the only thing Jack was pulling out of his pocket was wax for his surfboard. No, he wasn’t a surfer, but he looked the part. One day during a lull between scenes, Jack reaches a row behind him, extending his hand to me. In a hushed tone he said, “Hey, it’s you and me.” I was thrown by the warmth of his gesture and the excitement in his voice. His friendly spirit and enthusiasm didn’t match the story that played in my mind. I had seen him outside of class many times pacing downtown Manhattan like a caged cougar in search of his soul.

    Jack was cocky, opinionated, an artistic bully at times, a 360 of my pragmatic husband. He confessed crazy things; like how he made 200 grand one year and had nothing to show for it but the pants on his ass. When I asked him where the money went he said calmly, “Jeans?” He was gentle, yet rough. He threw me off balance yet managed to keep me standing…barely. Once, during rehearsal, he got so pushy, that I almost quit. I couldn’t handle being terrible in my scene with this guy. How could I convince the guru I was more than middle class? In our scene, Jack was supposed to kiss me, and when he did it was forced, mechanical, the worst kiss I ever had. I’m supposed to be attracted to this? How could I desire a guy I wasn’t even sure I liked?

    One day after rehearsal, I find myself walking with Jack to the subway. I would later discover that his train was nowhere near mine. He had walked me out of his way just for the sake of my company. In Manhattan terms, it was a trek from our director’s Lower East Side apartment to my Brooklyn-bound F train. “F stands for failure,” I say with a laugh. But Jack’s dead serious and starts rapidly firing questions: What was my childhood like? My father? Mother? What were the parts I played, and wanted to play? As I answer his questions, I wonder why this man with a resume that dwarfed mine, was interested in my meaningless credits and boring Jersey life. “Hey, I grew up in New Jersey too, a town away from you, young lady!” he says with a cheeky smile. I’m five years older than him, but I love that he’s made me younger. As we wait for the train, we discover that we even shared the strange dentist at one point. Learning these trivial commonalities should have dimmed his light, but it only sharpened his luster. For me, he became the boy next door – the one I never met and would never be allowed to love.

    Jack knew I was married from my first confession in class and told me about the young woman he’d been dating. We both had significant others, and I rationalized that our friendship was safe. Our master class had been extended, so our weekly meetings progressed to impromptu hangouts. After lunch one afternoon, we find ourselves amid a torrential downpour. As we take cover under a storefront awning, I’m grateful he’s inches behind me, unable to see my burning red face. The air is thick with the obvious, our relationship was NOT safe. It’s downright dangerous, and I don’t fucking care. For the rain had passed, and when I turned around, I saw this man, the one I thought I detested – and like lightning strikes a steel rod in “The Omen,” I was smitten.

     

    Trying to describe why I loved him is like making a case for lasagna. It’s just lasagna, and It’s delicious. I’m not a high-risk person. I never wanted to climb K2. I’m the type of person who’d get to base camp and say, “I’m cold. Let’s go!” Even standing on his kitchen countertop was freaking me out. Now I’d been to his apartment before but class was over. I was now coming to his apartment on purpose. Nothing had happened, but we knew we were headed. We went as far as making plans to spend the weekend together. I considered backing out, but when I called him the night before, his enthusiasm for my visit won me over. “Morana…I feel like it’s December 24th.” That’s what he said. I couldn’t back out now. How could I bail on a man who just called me Christmas Eve?

    Months before our tryst, I went on an auditioning warpath, rising at ungodly hours to stand in packed performer lines in mid-town Manhattan. After weeks, I finally got cast in a summer stock production of “Bells Are Ringing.” It was a throwback musical conceived for Judy Holliday – a comedic film star of the 40s and 50s. It was her Broadway bust-out vehicle; a story about a quirky woman named Ella who worked at an answering service. Ella gets so involved with her answering service clients that she falls in love with one of them. Now I didn’t get cast as Ella, but as her best friend, Gwen and I’m fine with it. I was quite frankly too fucked up to carry an entire show. So I welcome the second banana distraction, for it took me from Brooklyn to Vermont, away from my husband and my burgeoning affair.

    After three weeks of intense rehearsal, “Bells” is up and running. Our cast is wiped out and excited to have off two days in a row. Now I could have stayed in Vermont, gone to a cheddar cheese tasting, a blueberry patch, or just slept. But when two of my male cast mates said they were missing their boyfriends and driving back to the city, I jumped at the chance to ride along. I was missing my boyfriend too. My fellow actors drop me off at 42nd Street. It’s midnight and I quickly put on my Jackie O. sunglasses, because I’m a proper adulterer now. After the slowest cab ride on Earth, I arrive at Jack’s. I’m standing in front of his apartment door poised to enter. I know it’s open because he never locks it. An emotional epidural of jubilation and terror shoots through my spine. I feel my lower half may melt. If my husband in Brooklyn finds out I’m in town, I’m fucked — and not in a good way. How would I justify my sudden arrival in New York? Our marriage had become combative and lackluster. If I got caught, I’d have to kill myself before Robert killed me. Maybe I’d turn around and taxi back to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. In light of my sins, it seemed fitting to walk into oncoming traffic. I consider it but know it won’t work. The “BQE” as we affectionately call it is so congested that with my luck, I’d never get hit…So I knock.

    As he opens the door, I move to embrace him…” Wait! Lemme look at you.” he says. Seconds pass as his eyes travel the length of my body. Then like a kid in a candy store, he says, “Okay!” My overnight bag drops as I plunge my face into his chest, sucking one glorious whiff of the cigarettes and cologne on his freshly laundered shirt. I’m finally home, and this is so fucked up.

    I wasn’t the only one taking a risk this weekend, Jack was too. If caught, he’d face the wrath of a freight train, a locomotion of shame he couldn’t handle. His girlfriend was rabidly jealous, suspicious of every stray hair on his bathroom floor that did not match hers. Jack and I had stayed respectful. But on the very last day of class, he kissed me for real backstage, behind a curtain. It was spontaneous and special until he made a huge mistake. He told his girlfriend. She went ballistic, calling him every name in the book, throwing comparisons to her philandering father, and then threatening to tell my husband and destroy my marriage.

    I was not ready to be kicked to the curb. If my marriage was going to end, it would end on my watch, not with tantrums from a 20-something. I get it. I’m horrible. She’s the innocent victim, Anne Archer, and I’m bunny-boiling, Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. But I hated her for threatening to invade my life. I had crossed the line, but not with her…Jack did. And by throwing that kiss under the bus, he was running me over too. For what? Relief of his guilty conscience? I was furious, but mostly at myself and my lousy luck. Out of all the men in the universe to have an affair with, I had picked the ONE guy with scruples!

    Cussing him out would have been futile. He made a mistake and couldn’t un-ring the bell. The person who should have been an angry, suspicious, freak-out mess – was Robert. Weeks prior, I had my brush with getting caught. Robert was a neat freak. Everything in our apartment had a place. Disarray equaled discontent. He came from spaghetti on the walls abuse, and anything that came into our apartment was put away – immediately. This included my class prop bag.  It contained my costume, wax paper from an eaten Italian sandwich, and all objects used in my scene. At the bottom of the bag was also a handwritten note from Jack. We agreed to do this corny exercise where we wrote each other notes in character.  It was my idea, and I wrote him a whopper of a love letter. My note to him was an in-your-face, admission of lust.  Jack’s note was different. It was simple, and sophisticated and concluded with the poem “What If You Slept” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

    I was home no longer than 20 minutes before I realized Robert had unpacked for me. It wasn’t a favor; it was a violation. My prop bag was empty, not even a crumb from my Italian sandwich remained. That’s how thorough he was. I shook my head in disbelief and then remembered the note. It was not in the bag.

    “If something’s going on, you need to stop it.” That is what he said. I had fast-tracked it to the kitchen, like a zombie on speed. Now I’m standing here – caught like a kid, my right arm, elbow-deep in the garbage. He spoke low-voiced and parental. I remained silent and took my scolding like a pro as I let Jack’s note fall back in the garbage. We didn’t have sex that night. We never did. I lay there pretending to be asleep, then waited patiently for his first snore. Robert slept like a marine on watch, so I had to creep back into the kitchen without waking him. As I open the cabinet to the garbage can, I find remnants of Robert’s dinner splashed on my love note. I blot it off delicately, careful not to smear his handwriting. I flatten the wrinkled note as best I can. I could hide it, I thought, or ram it down Robert’s throat while he slept.

    Something in me turned that night, for what should have scared me straight, sent me crooked. It was not on purpose, or out of revenge. I gathered it was just my nature, bending me back towards the separation I’d always felt as a child. Why was I like this? I thought as I pumped my legs on a swing set. And where would this weirdness, “the left-out-ness” of my personality would take me? I felt akin to my guru, who shared stories of his grunt years as a butcher in the meatpacking district. I felt how he stood there, in a bloody apron and gut-splattered shoes, a reluctant Sweeney Todd, watching beatnik actors and would-be famous directors walk by his meat locker window.

    My pedicure was barely dry as I fly out of the Korean nail salon. I was slinking around the Upper East Side like a jewel thief passing time while I waited for Jack’s return. Closing his door with my wet nails, I feel my dream happening now, not in the past of our combined mistakes, or the future of whatever may never be. The brick walls of his apartment are warm like him – framed posters of all the movies he loves surround me. I soak in everything – his candles, his books, his oddness. With his return, we catch up on our uneventful day. And then I feel something bad is about to happen, like that moment before you throw up. He looks at me with the sobering awful truth in his eyes, “Meeting you was the BEST and WORST day of my life. Best because I met you, worst because you’re married.” In less than 24 hours, the laughter, the lovemaking, and the friendship will end. I’m back to the middle class, to second banana status in a dated musical in Burlington, Vermont.

    I want to stay in his place forever, but he won’t let me. “It’s not that I love her more, I’ve just been loving her longer.” That’s what he said. He was telling the truth, and I knew it. Now I’m the vampire reading his mind. He loves me. That’s the worst part. She’d just gotten there first. “Congratulations,” I say to myself. “You are the unfortunate recipient of less time in.”

    He was moving to California with his girlfriend. I was going back to Robert in Brooklyn, but not just yet. The curtain was closing on our silly little musical. Thank God, because I was starting to hate this show. But I loved my review: “Isabella Morana is the only actor in Bells Are Ringing, that plays an authentic New Yorker.” You see theatrically, I’m authentic, real-life…totally fake! I hadn’t the guts to leave my marriage or the wherewithal to stay and make it work.

    My husband visits me in Vermont for the last few performances. We’re staying in one of those generic motels, the kind where even the soap isn’t interesting enough to steal. I’m sitting on a flowery bedspread while my husband putters around our room. We were set on doing some crunchy granola stuff that day. Maybe we’d visit a covered bridge, a maple syrup factory, an open hole in the ground — who cares! I needed our day occupied, away from the awkwardness that had become us.

    I turn on the television while my husband changes his clothes. My summer top smells like Jack, but I refuse to change it. I want another whiff of him. I’m an adamant, adulterous, high-rolling bitch now. If Robert smells Merit Lights and men’s cologne on me, I’d blame my cast-mates. Chorus boys are notorious smokers. It was believable. I switched stations to the Mets who were losing, so I’m grateful for the break-in: “We interrupt this program for this special report. John Kennedy Junior’s small plane, The Piper Saratoga, is missing over the coast of the Atlantic. Kennedy was flying with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. They left Essex County airport and were scheduled to land in Martha’s Vineyard, before continuing to a wedding in Hyannis Port.”

    July 17th, 1999 was not the glamour year Prince sang about. It was hot, weird, and getting weirder. I see too much open water and an empty blue sky on every channel. Helicopters and the Coast Guard are all out and looking for John. “But why are they searching the ocean,” I think. “They should be searching Central Park because that’s where he rollerblades!” Pictures start flashing on CBS: a shirtless Kennedy skating down Columbus Avenue, another shirtless shot – John playing frisbee on the back lawn of The Met Museum. Robert stops what he’s doing to watch with me. I read his thoughts before he speaks. He’s got this habit of regaling stories I already know; how he did private home catering for the Kennedys, how friendly and real they were, and on and on. His comments on the impending tragedy made me want to scream, “I’m the tragedy. I’d rather be him…MISSING…Free from explanations of my whereabouts, but wholly at peace in the knowledge that I…AM…Free.”

    Turn off the television. Let’s drive to the county fair. We’ll drown our sorrows in maple syrup. We would, but we’re glued to the set. John, Carolyn, and his sister-in-law Lauren are still missing, and the photos keep coming. Only now it’s the two of them: John and Carolyn leaving their apartment, at their wedding, walking into a gala, out of a gala. I notice how in almost every John is kissing her from behind, and how effortlessly his arm drapes around her shoulders. He was always turning her to the camera as if he were treating the world to the elusive beauty that was his bride. That’s what I’m missing, I think — someone who resembled ease, who wanted ME more than the IDEA of me. With every flashing picture of John, I realize the man I married was the opposite of ease. I chose wrong, and like the current disaster unfolding before me on national television, it was in fact, preventable.

    After two days of scouring the Atlantic Ocean, it surfaces…a piece of luggage with Lauren Bessette’s name. Then more pieces, bits of a rubber tire, some carry-ons, and finally the bodies; all three, upside down in the water, still strapped to their seats. The autopsy reveals that John, Carolyn, and Lauren all died on impact, a minor comfort in a sea of sorrow.  For years I’ve read accounts of every flight instructor, pilot, and disaster specialist. I became a non-expert, “expert” in all things crash-related. I had to know what happened. If I couldn’t figure out my disaster, I’d solve someone else’s. I’d find that fateful ejection lever that leads to the end. There were many details, and countless contributing factors that led to the crash: the traffic they hit, their late departure, the weather, and the moon. But in the end, it didn’t matter, for this domino effect of unfortunate events kept pointing back to one thing…John. He didn’t have the experience to be flying in that weather, on that low moonlit night. He fell victim to something called spatial disorientation. It happens to pilots who are visually trained, but not instrument-rated. John knew this and planned for a daylight departure, but the traffic Lauren and Carolyn hit in Manhattan would push them into a twilight departure. A flight instructor at the airport who knew John was inexperienced at night, offers to co-pilot. But John refuses saying, “I want to do it on my own.” John would be flying solo in the dark, relying solely on his senses. But instead of landing safely in Hyannis Port on that hazy July night, his senses send him 1000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean. He couldn’t tell Earth from sky and neither could I.

    The wedding of Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey was postponed that day. I can’t imagine how that bride and groom felt when the celebratory atmosphere became funereal. How could they reconcile that the happiest day of their lives would be forever laced with what-ifs?

    I pictured the Piper Saratoga going down in that ocean as if it were my life. The pictures of that plane in pieces morphed into memories of my engagement night. I recalled how Robert knelt in the sand, on a small beach in Martha’s Vineyard with a poem, his nerves, and a tiny black box. I recalled the wild waves thudding the sand with the sounds of the upcoming storm. I laughed, remembering how uncharacteristically lit my future husband was — a combination of too many cocktails and proposal butterflies. And how utterly responsible his drunk ass was, as he handed me the keys to our rental car, “You’re driving,” he said. I remembered how blindly I drove into that dense fog, relying on nothing but my impaired vision to guide me. With my high beams on, I still couldn’t see. I was guessing. Instead of my senses guiding me safely down the road to our quaint hotel, they send me the wrong way, down a one-way street…right into the warning lights of a police car. I was caught, but not arrested, for Robert came to my rescue, taking my left hand and proudly displaying my sparkly new ring. “Please, let us go officer. See? We’re engaged.”

    July 19th, 1999 – The National Safety Board concluded that there was no instrument or navigational failure on the Piper Saratoga that night. John’s disorientation sent the plane into a spin, a graveyard spiral of epoch proportions, due to the pilot’s error. I had found my lever, in an answer that yielded no relief. The death of my relationship will always be synonymous with July 19th, 1999. You might say I was lucky, to never get caught, to land safely in the comfort of my slickness. I did it. I decimated my wedding vows. I did this to a man who was kind to me. That day, I knew my marriage was over. It took me six more years to leave the party.

    Feature Image: Jacqui Kennedy Onassis, 4 November 1968, London. Keystone Press / Alamy Stock Photo.

  • Fiction: Dos Lunas

    The Gallego, Dos Lunas, sat on the low wall of the Mirador San Nicolas hurling abuse at the tourists that passed him by. ‘Idiotas!!’ He shouted with his hand waving about in the air, until his mind soothed and he returned to the comfort of his can of Vol Damm (at 8% it was the strongest beer available in the Albaycin and his favourite beverage of all. Water, the elixir of life, flopped over the line a bedraggled second). His long black grey white hair fell about his shoulders which he occasionally used as a disguise by leaning forward, especially when the Guardia Civil were on their rounds. I said to him ‘Mira’ and started to sing Hotel California while pointing down the white painted lane at the orange orb sun, as it hovered over the branch of a tall palm tree. He laughed as he connected the song to the image and drank back the rest of his beer, letting out a long sigh in the afterglow of the gulp.

    As the first star appeared in the evening light, a young man approached us on the wall from the other side of the mirador. It was the head the ball Ignacio, resident of the road, almost toothless, wan and thin. He had been kicked out of his home in Valencia and after making his way south alone had been living rough on the streets of Granada. Dos Lunas noticed him and raised his can in acknowledgment of his arrival but said nothing else. Ignacio’s clothes, caked in dirt and dust hadn’t been changed for many days and his shoes were held together by miracles. I was sitting close by and heard their conversation. Ignacio asked Dos for five Euros to which Dos belched loudly whilst simultaneously managing to produce the word ‘no’. Someone nearby laughed. After the third time of asking Ignacio picked up his belongings and left, making his way down the cobbled path that leads to the Alhambra.

    One of the most spectacular aspects of Granada are its sunsets. As the day draws to a close the setting sun can sometimes be enough on its own but for the really spectacular ones what is needed are clouds. As I looked across over the Alhambra, I saw that one great cloud that stretched away like a canopy over the mountains had become an orchestra of light. Within the sun set, I counted no less than seventeen colours in the sky. How many shades I couldn’t tell. Perhaps thousands. Born from a blood red sun it danced its way west through oranges and yellows and greens and ochres, stretching its arms to a colour I didn’t know the name of, before pirouetting on a turquoise pillow, and finally it took a bow on a golden river of light.

    Dos Luna’s eyes glazed over as he stared into the middle distance. I was sitting next to him, untalkative and drinking also, as the sun thought about bed. In the summer, time moves differently in Andalucia than it does in other parts of the world. I had the slightly disconcerting feeling that anything that could happen probably would, but I was able to put my fears aside and we sat there boozing under the cloudless Andalucian blue. Dos Lunas seemed fixated on something on the other side of the mirador. It was as if he had seen a ghost. In the scope of his vision, balancing precariously between the past and the future, between regret and hope, was the veil that protects life from death. That is the veil that men named God. Dos Lunas had neither name nor care for such an entity. He felt that God had betrayed him a long time ago, so his illusion failed, doomed as he was to a certain reality. His eyes returned to the mirador and his expression lost its fire.

    He tilted his head slightly back and again drank deeply from the warming can. Again, the reaction in his veins apparent in his eyes. The dark nectar poured through his body chasing away his conscience for another moment, and then he burped loudly, lifting his leg only to replace his foot on the cobbles, immediately fearing he may follow through. He knew that he hadn’t eaten anything but rubbish in the last week, half eaten sandwiches gifted to him, left over tapas outside the Albaycin bars, that kind of thing. He suddenly became at ease when he realised that he hadn’t shit himself in public and a smiling countenance returned to his face. A woman walking her Pomeranian nearby reeled slightly in disgust as his gnarly teeth became visible in his smile. “OOP EEE!!” He sang out as they made eye contact. She extended her middle finger at him as if she were simply waving hello and carried on down the steps without altering her pace. Her bluntness made him laugh out loud. Tears of joy welled in his eyes. For Dos Lunas mirth and offence were often intertwined. He finished his can with a crushing fist and tossed it against the side of the adjacent bin. The two recently arrived Guardia Civil officers either failed to notice or tried to ignore the attempt. They knew him well. For thirty long hot years he had made the Mirador San Nicholas his home. He had seen them come and go. The two officers looked over at us, arms folded with their guns in their holsters, presumably ready to fire at a moment’s notice, or what’s the point? It was often hard to tell their intentions as their eyes were permanently hidden behind dark glasses. They knew as well as us that the eyes were the window to the soul.

    It wouldn’t be long before those old demons would be back to claw at his brain like the hungry cats the old gypsy woman shooed away with her straw broom outside her cave house up in Sacramonte. It was a cave house Dos Lunas knew well, but only from the outside, having passed by it a thousand times on his zig-zagging walks home to his own cave, which was situated on the far side of the hill. The walls of the old gypsy’s cave were patterned with blue China plates and red and yellow flowers. There was a certain aesthetic, a certain beauty about her home where the old gypsy woman had lived since she was a little girl. Now well into her nineties she had looked out on this city since before the name of Franco was even a whisper. Dos Lunas had never been invited into her home. In a way, he feared the gypsies, and lived outside their world. She thought he was slightly mad, but not dangerous, like almost everyone else in the barrio did.

    There were times when the sun was high in the August sky that the demons he housed in his brain would begin to boil and bubble his mind, like the hot cobble stones under his feet.

    “Idiota!!” He shouted out.

    “You’re the idiot!’ Someone replied and he laughed again, glad of the interaction. I was becoming increasingly embarrassed by his behaviour and wondered if one day my friendship with him would result in me getting beaten up. It was possible. Some people court disaster more than others. And there are people who are simply dangerous. He took the opportunity to ask for money from a passer-by and another middle finger was raised firmly in his direction.

    Work to him was as mysterious as heaven. He saw others engage but had no evidence of it himself. He regularly saw the bin men and road sweepers doing their rounds but paid it no mind. He had turned loafing into an art. His aversion to work put the flâneurs of Montmartre to shame. He was now in his sixties and had been punched many times, (on no less than twelve occasions in the face), as a direct result of his method of instigating conversation.

    He knew that this wall that he sat on all day, every day, was in the heart of the tourist quarter, and that those that he interacted with he would almost certainly never meet again. His actions were soon forgotten, which is perhaps why he repeated them so often. Many timeless summers had passed since his first day in the Albaycin. Long, short years. He was young when he arrived and the glowing sense of joy he felt as he looked out on the Alhambra, framed by the snow tipped mountains of the Sierra Nevada, put a kind of lock on his soul. But that was thirty years ago. Or “thirty fucking years” as he was fond of saying. The arduous living of life sometimes felt to him like eons, with its tedium and sorrow, but its recollection as old age approached felt like a fleeting moment in time, all those years lived, only a lightening flash over an ocean storm.

    The truth was that when the sun was hot in the sky and he had enough money to drink and smoke, he didn’t fear death. It’s true. He would often say it. ‘No tengo miedo.’ And his eyes would glaze over, truly unable to understand the conundrum of deaths reality. But when winter drew in and the nights turned cold and he felt the long years he had lived as cold in his bones, and all those hungry mornings came begging, he would whisper secretly to the cobbled ground ‘I am scared.’

    One day in the middle of August he asked some hippies that had just moved into the caves if they had a cigarette paper. He grumbled and cursed when they replied in the negative. ‘Hippies de mierda’ he said. It was a solid part his life now, to beg, and he had resolved many years earlier to accept the rough with the smooth. Ten or so minutes later he saw a cigarette paper tumbling across the cobbles in front of him but he was too lazy to get up and fetch it, and when he asked someone else to do it and they refused, he grumbled a moan tinged in bitterness. I went and got it for him. He said thank you as I passed it over to him but I wondered if here was a man who thought he had learned all the lessons life had to teach him, which is why he sat in the same place, doing the same thing, day in day out, through the changing seasons, year in year out. The superior attitude he had towards menial work was what had beggared him. His grandiose dreaming, the beating heart of his vagrancy. He was not the only one in the Albaycin guilty of this.

    Noon came and went and by two o’clock when I returned from the shop with a fifth consecutive litre of Alhambra the fierce sun was high in the sky. It was one of those Granada days where even the stray dogs wouldn’t leave the shade. The electronic thermometer near Plaza Nueva read forty-eight degrees. The Granadino’s had absconded to the coast and left the city near empty.

    Just before midday he saw a flash of light on the floor and to his amazement, he noticed a two-euro coin someone must have dropped. His heart leapt and he whispered under his breath, ‘God will provide’. He was always willing to denounce his atheism for money or drink. On that occasion he did move, but not to the shop, he got someone else to do the errand for him. The old Gallego was fussy about the coldness of his beer, a trait found in many who inhabit the region of Andalucia. When he felt the ice cold can of Vol Damm against his leather brown forehead he tingled with familiar glee. There would be life.

    He hadn’t returned to Galicia for decades and it was starting to show in his soul. Strange he never left Andalucia for a man that loved the rain as much as he did. There had been no rain in Granada for months. The Galicians are a sea-faring people, as his own ancestors were, but he was anchored in the mirador. I looked over at him and thought perhaps it was the memory of the sea that kept him in the mountains. Perhaps something bad had happened that he had put to the back of his mind. I looked again at his silent, half-drunk expression and knew that the truth, in all likelihood, would never be known.

    The police took their time but eventually got in their car and drove away. I sat by Dos Lunas on the baking hot wall in the silence of the siesta drinking cold beer and feeling young and happy. Looking out on the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada’s above the Alhambra never quite fails. He was wearing his shit-catchers and a vest T-shirt (no doubt gifted to him by someone or other). His clothing revealed the young man still in him, the one that wouldn’t relent. He seemed fully alive with the new can of cold Vol Damm. With another drink, another momentary lease of life.

    At the middle of the siesta the mirador was empty save for a few people with nowhere to go. There was no-one there to call idiot, except of course for myself, which he obliged when the can had been drained and he had crushed it in his hand and thrown it at the full bin, doing nothing when it tumbled to the ground with some other detritus. He burped loudly, farted callously, (all previous concerns about shitting himself had vanished) and then the same old vacant expression came over his face as he wondered where the next drink would come from.

    He began to check through his pockets as one of the blow-through hippies that had recently arrived up in the caves in Sacromonte approached him, nervously playing with one of the metal rings in his dreadlocks. The story the man had to tell brought a black cloud to the clear sky. The mad Ignacio, the slender youth with burning blue eyes and tanned skin who wandered around the Albaycin looking for food in the bins had been murdered the night before. Two differing stories emerged about the method of execution. One said he had been stabbed to death by a gang, the other version, told by another man who had arrived by the wall a short time later, said that he had been killed while sleeping during the night by the stream that runs under the Alhambra by someone throwing a heavy rock down on his head, crushing his skull. The hippie was unsure. That’s what he told Dos Lunas. One thing was for certain, Ignacio was dead, the death confirmed by others, including the police. I looked over at Dos Lunas and saw that all the mirth had been extracted from his soul. The Gallego’s face was weighed with sorrow. The burning sun had lost its charms as Dos Lunas began to tremble.

    The hippie retreated when he saw the Gallego’s mood suddenly change and he violently launched his foot out and kicked the bin in frustration. The empty cans that teetered on the top scattered on the ground and the noise of the clattering turned heads. I thought a drink might calm him down so I suggested we walked to the shop and get a beer. He was too lazy, so I performed the simple task alone. I looked down and saw the sun tan on my arms was coming along well. Sad tale I thought, on the walk down the cobble lane. The bright day, and the colourful flowers, reds and purples and blues and greens in the pots outside the houses made me forget the terrible event for a while. The heat provided me with a blessed, constant thirst. That was life in the summer for us in the Albaycin, cold Alhambra from the bottle was just petrol for the car, without it, moving was impossible. When I returned with the beer, I saw the solitary figure of Dos Lunas hunched up and bent forward like a crooked old lady. The embers of his eyes had been extinguished. He had retreated completely within himself. I passed him a can of Voll Damm and to my amazement he didn’t open it.

    “Something wrong?” I asked.

    “He was my son” he said.

    Feature Image: Miquel Rosselló Calafell

  • Poetry: ‘hospital suite’

    From hospital suite

    One

    no matter
    how

    the oak ward
    is word-less

    the light buzz
    of a garden

    through terminal
    windows

    without logos

    _    rationalise

    brother
    at rest

    _    through doors
    _    down corridors

    _    the sheen of
    _    sterile floors

    feet walking away

     

    Two

    angel
    _    blue light

    so
    _    far

    angel
    _    night-blue

    giro-phar
    _    your star

    is

    a light
    _    lightly here

    a light thing
    _    to bear –

    a way

     

    Three

    man seeks terminal
    illness for

    brief but
    arduous journey

    _    must like people
    _    must have own transport
    _    staying power
    _    clean license

    Damien Lennon was Cassandra Voices Musician of the Month in July, 2020.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Murphy Walked into the Bar

    It was just after opening time when Murphy walked into the bar. He wasn’t welcome at any time of the day really. The Fat Landlord’s lazy wife, a picture of early morning sourness probably let the nuisance in, but who cared? It certainly wasn’t me. She was a miserable, cold unfriendly woman affectionately known as Choc Ice Lil. She rarely spoke, and never ever smiled.

    The bar itself was an ancient Edwardian masterpiece of metropolitan public house architecture. It was a pub by day, and a venue at night. Once a collection of snugs, billiard and dining areas it now consisted of two vast rooms, separated by a large square bar. Pulsing lights, throbbing speakers and yard upon yard of dangling wires now disgraced its crumbling ornate pilasters and fine baroque ceiling.

    Murphy paused in the sunlit open doorway scanning the long empty space before him. To describe him as a scrawny necked wreck would have been a kindness. Murphy had spent years living on the streets before ever I knew him, and it showed. Loose skinned and old enough to have lost several teeth he was as decrepit as the pub was.

    A long shadow of him now stretched across the greasy red carpet giving the remarkable impression that he was at least nine feet tall, which he wasn’t. Framed in dazzling sunlight the strange illusion of a giant Murphy cast across the empty bar was very soon extinguished. Instantly snuffed as the brown heavy door with head shaped dents in its leaded panes, bearing hints of dried blood closed silently behind him.

    The emptiness was an illusion too. As Murphy’s eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the natural order of the light inside, he would see that the early morning bar was not quite so vacant after all.

    I was there.

    I’d been working till past three in the morning the previous night, doing the sound desk for an astonishingly amateurish death metal band called Bugger Babies. Enthusiastic and young its members took themselves far more seriously than their dreadful racket could ever warrant. I was back by opening time, slightly shaky and enjoying the nutritious charge of a breakfast Bloody Mary. Extra Tabasco pepper to clean the mouth and put fire in my belly. I was waiting as usual for our very own host, The Fat Landlord to surface from his morning slumbers and pay me my money for the night.

    So I was there, unnoticed and unpaid in the musty corner facing the damaged door, and The Lion Tamer was there as well.

    I think his name was Dave. He was the doorman/bouncer in the bar and I’d actually known him for several years, but like most regulars he carried a moniker. Names in the bar were given, not told. He perched on a tall barstool like a giant daddy long legs. His tiny kneecaps pointing in opposite directions as his open legs splayed against the dark panels of the square wooden bar.

    Murphy was halfway across the floor before he even noticed there were people on either flank. He paused, and a slight nervous twitch showed upon his face before he broke into an exaggerated jaunty saunter towards the bar. Then, launching himself onto a nearby barstool, sideways to me, and facing The Lion Tamer, Murphy licked his skinny lips and stared.

    The Lion Tamer was a tall, solid, gawky looking man of well over six foot. His long spider legs and monkey arms were wrapped with sinewy muscles, like the intertwining strings of a sailors’ hairy rope. His feet and hands were unfeasibly large. The hands were a mass of gristle and scar tissue. Flattened knuckles and broken digits pointed crookedly in several directions, as if he’d been typing all day and his fingers had frozen in mid sentence.

    His huge feet were encased in dull black boots that looked like two leather ammunition boxes, and would anchor his towering frame to the floor. But it was his face that made him unusual. It was ordinary, even quite benign looking at times. Stuck on the front of a too small head. A face without mark or blemish. When he wasn’t being the doorman at various cheap clubs like ours he was a bare knuckle boxer in late night warehouse fights, and he must have been good at it.

    The Lion Tamer had a trick he used to show to the punters, especially those who he thought he might have a bit of trouble with later. He would line three coins carefully along the back of his hand. Then he would quickly flick them into the air and snatch each one of them individually with the same hand before they fell to the ground. It was a neat trick, and it carried its own unsubtle message. The Lion Tamer wanted you to know something. He wanted you to know that in the length of time it takes for a coin to fall to the floor, he could punch you three times.

    Murphy continued to stare. Apart from occasionally running his dry tongue round his lips again he did not move at all. He sat with his long bony spine completely straight and perfectly aligned to the square legs of the wooden barstool. It was like he was an extension of it. Murphy and the barstool, fused into one immovable staring object. I don’t know why Murphy stared at The Lion Tamer like that. It was odd.

    I mean anyone at all who drank in the bar could tell you The Lion Tamer didn’t really like Murphy all that much. It was even more confusing  because Murphy tended only to stare at people who gave him things, and who he trusted would be obliging enough to do so again. In fact it seemed to me to be his own unique and favourite way of asking for anything. Murphy would just sidle up to someone, touch their arm and then stare dolefully until they couldn’t stand it anymore. Eventually they might give in and offer him something, usually something he could immediately consume, but sometimes more, if he was lucky.

    Murphy was always in the bar on a Sunday lunchtime. That was when they put out bowls of sea food, cockles and stuff on the bar, free to help yourself. Murphy would help himself alright if he could. He had a particular thing for the shell on prawns. He actually liked eating the heads as well. It was fascinatingly disgusting to watch him cracking the hard pink exterior with his few remaining teeth and sucking the rich fishy stew from inside. He couldn’t get enough of them, but it did nothing for his halitosis.

    Some people spoke to him but I didn’t. I couldn’t see the point really. I found him interesting enough and I saw him alright when I could. You could say we sort of shared the same living space even. Murphy came and went as he pleased though, and in truth I wasn’t really all that bothered about him. It certainly wasn’t possible for me to engage him in any viable, intelligent conversation as such, and I didn’t pretend to try.

    So there I sat watching from the gloomy corner. Waiting to be paid and struggling to guess what on earth Murphy thought The Lion Tamer was possibly going to give him. Whatever it was, from where I was sitting I couldn’t imagine it being anything less substantial than a swift and hefty kick up the arse.

    The Lion Tamer was not very well known for his bonhomie as it goes. He was now showing some pretty clear, and menacing signs that he didn’t really want Murphy to keep on staring at him like that. Murphy on the other hand showed no sign that he understood any of this at all and just continued his relentless staring down of The Lion Tamer.

    Finally he could take no more. Just as he was running his red tongue slowly round his narrow lips again, The Lion Tamer suddenly leaned over and poked his own one out. Murphy looked genuinely shocked. His tongue paused in its circular journey round his lips but now protruded from them foolishly, and in a similar gesture to that of The Lion Tamers’.

    There for a few long seconds they sat, eyes locked and poking their tongues out at each other. Murphy’s eyes wide open with surprise and The Lion Tamers’ half closed, and narrowed with intent. I sensed that Murphy was about to attempt a rapid exit from the bar sometime very soon and I was poised and ready to grab him when he did.

    Just then there was an all too familiar tap tap, tap tap sound fast approaching the bar in staccato quickstep. The bar room door suddenly flung open at the same time as a painful, high pitched screeched “Helloooo” assaulted our ears like a dentists screaming drill. The Tightrope Walker entered, spinning coquettishly into the bar. Her six inch pencil thin stilettos, silenced now by the aged Axminster were certainly no less obvious.

    Tightrope skeetered across the floor, like a marionette on a gyroscope. Brassy, blonde and now in her late forties Tightrope was a woman who would take no prisoners. From the moment she arrived anywhere it was immediately and sometimes painfully apparent to everyone else in the building that she had. She would have it no other way. Age and the drink had left but a vague imprint of the earlier sex grenade she had undoubtedly been. She was however, still explosive. Tightrope could hurl herself confidently into any congregation, like an immortal suicide bomber. Burning shards of her barbed wit sliced easily through any crowd she encountered, cutting them all to size without mercy or care.

    She could still draw men to her in an instant alright though, like flies to a cow’s arse, and she could shrivel a dick just as quick. She would cavort, cajole, flirt and entice. Thrilling and daring her gawping spectators to join her in her own hedonistic whirl of imminent self destruct, only to cast them casually to the ground. Tightrope would remain of course, teetering but intact in the limelight.

    Whenever Tightrope was around and wanted to play you knew for certain sure that someone somewhere was going to take a tumble.

    So Tightrope burst exuberantly into our small gathering, Choc Ice, The Lion Tamer, Murphy and me. Her eyes immediately lit upon Murphy. Surprisingly, and despite her hard exterior she did have quite a soft spot for him. I could never quite understand this one and Tightrope wasn’t the only woman who used to dote on Murphy. In fact he seemed to attract quite a few women, but if you ever found your face too close to him, you’d find he stank a bit. I’ve been told it’s a maternal thing. Somehow Murphy was some kind of surrogate for the children they never had. I found that thought quite disgusting myself.

    Tightrope certainly had some maternal affection for Murphy, which quite frankly baffled me. Anyway, whatever the reason, Tightrope made a direct beeline for him and poured herself onto his neck with that awful mawkish, “Awwwwww,” usually reserved for babies and cuddly toys. She then planted a long squeaking kiss on the top of his beaming head as a sort of bonus.

    Now this was all fine and dandy, even if a little peculiar to my mind. There was just one complicating factor that promised to add that little bit more excitement to the mornings’ entertainment. The complicating factor being that Tightrope was currently The Lion Tamers’ girlfriend, and The Lion Tamer was a very, very jealous man.

    I’m sure that Murphy didn’t realise any of this at all. He simply wouldn’t be capable of understanding how The Lion Tamer might think or feel about anything. The personal lives of people in the bar were meaningless to him. But even if he could read The Lion Tamer’s mind, the idea that Murphy could pose the merest waft of a threat to him about anything at all was just wrong.

    But then jealousy is a funny thing.

     

    The Lion Tamer had a very strong sense of propriety actually. He had his own very rigid code of ethics which he stuck to like they were The Ten Commandments. Only he had just three. He told them to me late one night when we were having a drink together, hours after the bar had closed and all good folk were long abed.

    In his slow, deep ponderous voice he leaned ever so slightly drunk into my face and said,

    “There are three things you must never never do to me. You must never rob me. You must never lie to me, and you must never, never never ever, talk to me while I’m eating”

    So there we all were. Murphy, The Lion Tamer, Choc Ice, Tightrope and me. Me still waiting for the Fat Landlord to pay me my money and getting a bit hungry now. So I decided to have another filling Bloody Mary, but this time with a packet of crisps. I was beginning to enjoy this. The whole ridiculous spectacle of The Lion Tamer wriggling around on his stool fuming like a stovepipe was just too good to miss.

    Tightrope cooed and fawned over Murphy, completely indifferent to The Lion Tamers presence. I noticed a small blood vessel pulsing on the top of his shaven head which reminded me a little of the valve on the top of a pressure cooker. Eventually he cracked and standing up said, “Oi! What about me then?” This was met, or rather ignored by Tightrope plonking yet another kiss on Murphy’s head. She then responded with something to the effect that The Lion Tamer should immediately buy her a drink and that he was also a bastard, which he duly did.

    Tightrope was very good at getting men to buy her drinks as it goes. Like the Lion Tamer she had her very own special bar room trick for the boys.

     

     

    Tightrope would go into a bar somewhere and spot a group of chaps out on the town. She’d teeter past and “accidentally” spill one of their drinks onto the floor. She would squeal and say she was very sorry. She would buy him another drink. It was her birthday. She didn’t normally get to go out very much. Then she’d add she might be just that, tiny tiny, weeny bit tipsy. All this followed up with plenty of eyelash flutter and a quick totter on the high heels. Her womanly bosom would squash against his manly chest of course, and her hand would steady herself casually upon his bum. Ten times out of ten her mark would be buying her the drink. “Oooh thanks darling, a large Vodka and Tonic please, ice and a slice dear.”

    She knew how to spot them alright. Rumour had it that that’s how she met The Lion Tamer in the first place.

    So there was Tightrope, standing next to Murphy with her drink in one hand and the other one casually stroking the back of his neck. She continued to fawn like an adolescent schoolgirl over Murphy as wafts of steam continued to rise from The Lion Tamers’ ears. While all this was going on Murphy still had his back to me and was completely hypnotised by the soft caresses on the back of his neck. Then it happened.

    Murphy ceased gazing adoringly at Tightrope for a moment and looked over towards The Lion Tamer. Since the arrival of Tightrope he’d taken over Murphy’s previous activity of staring and momentarily their eyes locked again. For some reason this appeared to trigger something in The Lion Tamer, and he began to rise slowly to his feet.

    The whole bar jumped into the air as there came a terrific rumpus and banging on the small side door leading into the bar. The one that nobody used anymore. It was unusual in that the handle was on the opposite side to where you’d expect it to be, but it still opened inwards as all doors do.

    Whoever was on the other side seemed to be frantically pulling at the handle towards them, while simultaneously kicking the door forwards in the opposite direction.

    We couldn’t see any of this of course. The entrance was sealed off from the bar by a heavy blackout curtain. This stretched in a curve from the door to a cast iron support pillar standing by the bar itself. Anyone entering there would find themselves in a small darkened closet area completely surrounded by a blackout curtain, which incidentally opened on the bar side for exit and entry.

    Eventually we heard the door burst open and the sound of our visitor tripping on the step and hurtling themselves heavy footed and rapidly across the floor. A single dull clang announced their precise moment of contact with the iron pillar. We then saw a great flurry of the curtain as the person behind it made their way back from the bar where there was an exit, towards the opposite wall where there wasn’t.

    Once there we witnessed what appeared to be a fight going on behind the curtain before the hapless visitor blindly felt their way back towards the bar and eventual escape. A further short flurry of curtain followed before a large sweaty head, topped with a pork pie hat burst breathlessly through. Red faced from his exertions and red nosed from the drink, he had an impossible grin and mad eyebrows. It was Coco the Clown.

    Swinging a bulging Bag for Life as if it were a counter balance the rest of  Coco swiftly followed. What came next in fact was a short obese man in said pork pie hat wearing cheap pinstripe trousers an inch too short and a grotesque green checked jacket. An orange T shirt proclaiming,” SAVE THE WHALE” in large bold letters across his chest and, “A SEAT ON THE BUS” written underneath, completed today’s ensemble. One thing you could say about Coco was that he didn’t have good fashion sense.

    Another thing you could say about him was that he had stupid feet, and he fairly flapped his way into the bar.

    I thought The Lion Tamer had incongruous kippers but Coco’s were in another class entirely. It was a wonder he didn’t fall over his feet more often they were that big.

    Coco was a wonder on the dance floor, and he often had significant amounts of it all to himself. I’m told he used to be a very good swimmer as well. Anyway, his feet seemed to have paddled himself right up shit creek here and Coco’s entrance could not have been worse timed.

    Blowing effeminate kisses to Murphy he pranced smilingly into the company. Now The Lion Tamer didn’t like that sort of thing at all and he already had another beef going with Coco anyway. The jigging vein on his head, which was already going like the clappers suddenly accelerated into a near perfect Fandango. Even Coco couldn’t fail to be aware of the penetrating glare emanating from the opposite corner of the bar for long. Eventually he stopped popping silly little kisses at Murphy and looked up, square into The Lion Tamers fierce, unwelcome gaze.

    Now apart from his red nose Coco had quite a pallid complexion at the best of times. Watching his face drain instantly from a light pastry to an urn ash grey was something I’d never seen before.

    Coco, among other things was a leading member of that noble band of cowboy builders that grace our green and gullible land. He could turn his hand to almost anything. He could mix concrete, do a bit of brickwork, carpenter, even put in the electrics, and he made a complete pig’s ear of the lot. In fact it wasn’t his appearance that earned him the name Coco the Clown at all. It was his remarkable skill in bollocksing up just about every job he was ever given.

    Typically he’d turn up ok the first day and do a fairly good job. The second day he’d be gone by lunchtime to buy tools or something. You can forget the third. On the fourth he’d turn up at eleven and need a sub to pay his rent. Then you wouldn’t see him until he was broke again.

    The job goes on so long that it never actually gets finished. Eventually someone else has to come in to complete the work and repair any damages the idiot has managed to do.

    How anyone could be stupid and trusting enough to employ Coco to do anything at all was frankly beyond me. But this of course was why The Lion Tamer was not at all so very pleased to see him today. The fact he’d come in smiling didn’t help one bit.

    Somehow Coco had recently managed to blag a few days’ work doing a bit of plastering round The Lion Tamers house. Typically of course, he had left quite a bit of mess on his nice new carpet. The Lion Tamer wasn’t very happy about this at all. Only yesterday he had to retrieve Coco mid drink from the bar and politely suggest to him that he might like to straightaway come back and clean it all up again. Well, Coco miserably got hold of an old carpet sweeper from somewhere and once back at the Lion Tamers’ he began to push it along, sweeping up his scattered bits of rubble and plaster.

    Still dreaming of his unfinished pint no doubt he was pushing along as fast as he could when he felt the rollers stiffen. Undeterred and too bone idle to actually stop and clear them of plaster he carried on, pushing even harder than before. Pausing to wipe unearned sweat from his brow Coco briefly glanced behind him. It was then that he discovered why it had been such hard work pushing the sweeper. Somehow during the course of his slovenly labours a piece of Stanley blade had got stuck in the roller. Coco had just cut a six foot slice straight up the middle of The Lion Tamers brand new bit of Persian.

    So there we all were, Murphy, The Lion Tamer, Tightrope, Choc Ice, Coco and me. The Lion Tamer positioned three coins carefully along the back of his hand. Raising one crooked finger into the air he beckoned poor Coco towards him. His smile upturned now Coco slowly removed his hat and gently placed that and his shopping bag on the nearest table.

     

     

    Then, shaking like old Shylock he took his more than several pounds of flesh up for negotiation with The Lion Tamer. I reckoned his best bet now was to rely on his solid reputation as a professional idiot, and hope to gain some sort of staff discount or something. With a bit of luck there could still be plenty of him left. In truth though I had the near certain feeling that I was about to witness one of life’s great clichés, the tears of a clown.

    Tightrope had sensibly turned her back on the proceedings and was repeatedly pumping pound coins into the fruit machine. Choc Ice was totally absorbed smearing bacteria round a dirty glass with a manky tea towel, and would see nothing. Murphy didn’t know his own good fortune. I could see Coco pleading desperately with The Lion Tamer but his face remained stony and unmoved. A long silent pause filled the room with an unbearable tension when suddenly he flicked three coins high into the air.

    Pandemonium finally broke out. A great shout of, “Oi! You thieving little git!” bellowed across the bar.

    It was Coco.

    Spotting an opportunity Murphy had slipped unnoticed off his stool and made his way over to Coco’s bag on the table. Caught red handed, he was having a right proper rummage through everything he could find.

    Coco came running furiously round the bar, faster in fact than his oversized feet would allow. His bulbous nose crashed into the carpet as Murphy fairly scampered off towards the gents toilets to escape. This seemed to lighten The Lion Tamers mood somewhat and he fairly roared with laughter.

    Breathless with rage Coco clambered to his feet and looked inside his bag. “Flipping hell” he yelled. “He’s only gone and had me bleedin’ prawns away!”

     

    The Lion Tamer slapped his thighs and roared again. “He’s had you. He’s had you alright”, was all he managed to say between triumphant blasts of laughter. Coco, with his nose even redder than before, stood glaring angrily at the toilet door.

    I knew Murphy wasn’t hiding in the Jacks.

    There’s a door back there leading into a small enclosed yard where the empty barrels and rubbish are kept. I’d taken a few crates out earlier for Choc Ice so I knew it was left slightly open. I also knew Murphy had used that particular exit many times before.

    He was no spring chicken alright but Murphy would have been out, over the wall and far away by the time Coco had even counted his missing prawns.

    The Great Prawn Robbery would be told and laughed about in the bar for weeks to come. The Lion Tamer finally managed to declare he’d never really liked Murphy all that much before, but he’d gone right up in his estimation now. Wiping tears from his eyes, and evidently in a better mood than before, he made Coco an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse.

    The Lion Tamer had just got hold of an allotment. Coco was to dig it all over and paint the little shed as compensation for the carpet. Furthermore, he was to buy Murphy his own large bag of prawns every Sunday lunchtime until The Lion Tamer told him otherwise.

    Justice of sorts being served The Lion Tamer turned his attention back towards Tightrope. She in turn informed him he should immediately buy her a drink, and that he was also a bastard. Planting a kiss on his head she added reassuringly he couldn’t really help it, and that she loved him anyway.

    A crestfallen Coco was putting on his hat in readiness for his second trip to the fishmongers and I was losing hope of seeing any money that day. It was nearly lunchtime now and The Fat Landlord had still not surfaced. I decided to go back to bed for the rest of the day and try again later.

    It was only a short walk from the bar back to my flat. There was some instinct or smell or something that told me I was not alone. I was being followed. I had a strange sensation of something running past me, just out of sight as I cut across the play area.

    It happened on the stairwell on the way up to my flat as well and there was a short familiar snap sound like a large mousetrap going off. I was glad when I put the key in the door and got safe inside. I knew what was coming next.

    I walked the few short steps into the front room. The curtains were closed and there on the sofa, staring into the unlit gloom was Murphy.

    Our eyes briefly met and I made my way into the kitchen to get a can from the cupboard. I’d barely begun to open it before Murphy suddenly leaped off the sofa and came running top speed into the room.

    I could feel him writhing and weaving himself round and round between my legs. I emptied the contents into his dirty old bowl and placed it on the floor by his saucer of milk. Then, for the first time ever, I actually spoke to him. Bending down, I scratched behind his ear and looked deep into his eyes and said,

    “I love you Murphy.”

    Feature Image: Lyonel Kaufmann

  • The Secondary World

    Christopher Tolkien, referring to his father, defined what J.R.R. called his ‘secondary world.’ He said ‘it is a world that cannot be seen, it cannot be found, it exists only in the mind.’[i] He goes on to say for many people when they first realise the existence of this place, this secondary world, they find the experience to be a very delightful thing.

    This desire for a secondary world, if not perhaps intrinsic to every individual, is intrinsic to humankind. That is to say this relationship with the secondary world goes back to ornate prehistoric burial sites. It is ghosts and banshees; it is gods and elves. It is found in the art of Blake and the science of dreams. The Hellenic culture, among the most advanced societies of the ancient world, created a secondary world on top of an actual mountain, which they then honoured and worshipped. The volcanoes, the rivers, the sky, the sea, the wine, each aspect of the tangible world endowed with its own God, its own secondary being. Consequently, belief in this secondary world manufactured the temples. This poses the question: what would the world be like if no one ever had conceived of a secondary world? We can say if this were the case there never would have been the burning of a witch, and certainly no heavens and hells beyond. Is our world, our universe even, not sufficient at times for our complicated brains? Newton was an alchemist, and Einstein sourced many of his breakthroughs from his imagination, which suggests a scientist of pure reason can also be subject to fantasy.

    Did the secondary world begin with the people who sat around the first fires? Jung thought so, but in reality we can’t know – we would have to ask them, or at least study their behaviour to know for certain. As with all history where there is no evidence at all, there is only the sound of the wind. Where there is scant evidence, we are obliged to speculate and theorise. In this spirit of conjecture, I would suggest the secondary world is a form of reality. It would be useful to make a distinction at this point between what can be solely attributed to the imagination, and neurological shifts that can occur under the influence of drugs and hallucinogens in particular. The world of the imagination, where William Blake should be interpreted, does not in of itself need intoxicants. It is its own entity. This leads to another question: is what is imagined in the mind real, or is it unverifiable? When does the imaginary become reality? If I imagine a story and then write it down, I have worked to bring the imaginary into the world of reality. But what if I just keep it in my mind? Does this mean it wouldn’t be real? What is real in one person’s mind that cannot be detected by others, is of course often interpreted as madness.

    To William Blake, the secondary world could be thought of as the real first world, that is the world perceived through the senses, because he perceived the secondary world with his senses. When he was a boy, he witnessed the spirit of his brother Robert rise out of his dead body at their house in Soho and stated categorically the apparition was clapping for joy. He watched angels illuminating the boughs at Peckham Rye. Did Blake have a condition akin to synaesthesia? What modern medical prognosis can we make? Perhaps the most scientific explanation would be that to some people the secondary world is reality itself. We can however say with absolute certainty that Blake would have dismissed any scientific analysis of the imagination. Reason cannot bound the imagination.

    Is there a relationship between the unconscious and the imagination in association with the secondary world? According to the basics of psychoanalysis, the unconscious mind is always unconscious, but it can be perceived through dreams. Is there a connection between Freud and Jung through Blake’s oeuvre? Not conspicuously. Blake, or indeed any artist, should not be attempted to be understood through the lens of science. It would be like turning Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto into a formula. It strikes me that no one has ever even attempted to turn the source of art into an equation for good reason.

    Tolkien’s secondary world lives within our imagination. Perhaps his greatest gift was the extraordinary way he was able to make this secondary world so believable for so many. Remember, there is moon and starlight, as well as cheese and salted pork and tobacco and pipes, in the imaginary world he invented. In this instance the primary world has been superimposed on the secondary world, or the other way around.

    In medieval England there was the ‘land of Cockaigne’ an imaginary land of plenty. According to one source ‘Cockaigne was a ‘medieval peasant’s dream, offering relief from backbreaking labour and the daily struggle for meagre food.’[ii] This may provide an insight into the function of the secondary world. Necessary escapism. Or as Tolkien put it, escapism in it’s true meaning, ‘as of a man getting out of prison.’ This also may provide an answer as to why the desire for the secondary world is not universal, simply because there are many among us who do not wish to escape the primary world. They are more than happy where they are, but this is not to say those who seek the secondary world are somehow inherently unhappy. It can be invoked simply for the joy of the thing, like a magic trick. Think of Alice in Wonderland, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This brings up the subject of our agency through our imaginations and the effect this has upon the world itself and ourselves. Scrying, palm reading, divination, horoscopes and so on. These are attempts to impose our own agency into the supernatural world that evidentially doesn’t exist. The secondary world is distinct from hocus pocus and bogus truth claims, but its claim to existence does, however, hinge on the power of the imagination.

    William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Terence McKenna and memorably Aldous Huxley experimented with Ayahuasca, all giving vivid accounts of a world that hides behind a veil. This other plain, or higher state of consciousness is not what Tolkien meant by the secondary world. The secondary world is not drug-induced. It is a state that can be accessed by all people. It is the sober world of the imagination, of fantasy, that being the secondary world in our senses, in the reality we have evolved.

    It is a mistake to compartmentalise the secondary world solely into the world of fantasy but that the secondary world is a function of fiction is valid. In other words, if it is based on real events, it is biographical. As mentioned, Einstein’s major breakthroughs in science were sourced from his imagination and this is also partly true of Newton. But when Einstein imagined the movements of space time as he looked at the church clock from the window of a tram, had he entered the secondary world, or was he simply using his imagination? Perhaps we can deem the secondary world as a desire for fiction and escapism rather than fact and truth, but fiction is perhaps the best way we have to understand truth. And here lies the riddle.

    Arguably, the imagination has an evolutionary function. To imagine a possible attack by wolves or bears out in the forest was likely extremely useful. It may in fact be the reason we dominate the animal kingdom. Our imaginations work in tandem wit reason in the battle for survival. It is the duality and relationship between imagination and reason which must be explored when trying to understand the secondary world, which, once discovered, remains a very delightful thing.

    Featured Image: ‘Beatrice’ by William Blake from Illustrations to Dante – The Divine Comedy (1824).

    [i] JRR Tolkien – A study of the maker of Middle Earth

    [ii] “New York Public Library: Utopia”. Utopia.nypl.org. Archived from the original on 2012-07-16. Retrieved 2012-10-02.

  • Poem: ‘If I Could Only’

    If I Could Only

    I dream of roses blooming in the sky,
    of boys with guns, of body parts slung
    over broken toys in some unholy rite.
    And through mind-searing noise, I hear
    the  wail of mothers keening for their young.
    I dream of hell.

    But when dawn breaks,
    I wake to find that, silently,
    a veil of snow has fallen in the night.
    No severed limbs,
    no sightless, disembodied faces.
    Just snow.
    Its cooling calm fills all the small, slight
    spaces where, yesterday, deep shadows
    seized the waning light.

    No bombs. No blood.
    Here every twig is dressed in vestal white;
    and even while the cold-eyed, brooding
    dawn still dawdles into day, the sky is bright
    with snow, caught by its primal purity –
    the indrawn hush.
    This lustrous, arcane alchemy:
    the mint-ness of a clean-wiped slate.
    It seems a consecration, soft as
    the laying on of hands. It bears the grace
    of prayer – an urgent dream for respite
    everywhere.

    If I could only catch it up, reach out
    and gather in this white of new-washed
    sheets, flung over fields and trees;
    garner it in, then loose it on the scorching,
    hope-burned world. Stifle the fires and guns,
    the screaming drones. Re-write the
    countless stolen, rubbled lives.

    If I could only soothe this quenching
    silence over all the weeping and the
    wounds; make real this gift of new
    beginning. Of absolution.
    This unflawed state of grace.
    If I could only.

    Feature Image: Francesco Goya, Y son fieras (And they are fierce or And they fight like wild beasts), c. 1810.

  • Scratch That: Taylor Swift is a Dime-Store Novelist

    The poet Haley Hodges has recently written a winsome essay for Cassandra Voices claiming that the Galactic Empress, Her Swiftiness, Queen of Ubiquity, is our “greatest confessional poet.” Let’s leave aside that Tay-Tay isn’t a poet—that song-writing and poetry-writing are different games with different rules—she is certainly a confessional, and one in the terms Hodges outlines. So far, so good. But I want to take issue with the hyperbolic praise in which that essay bathes the Golden Girl.

    One has, of course, to account for her success, and I do so by thinking of her as some latter-day Tennyson striding into the enormous gap left in literature by the passing of the Romantics. He became, despite his frequent mediocrity, the national poet simply because there was nothing else around—in much the same way that whatever show aired after Seinfeld in the era of broadcast television was bound to be popular simply because people couldn’t be bothered to get up and change the channel.

    So it is with Miss Swift. Despite the fact that she can barely sing, play guitar, dance, or write songs, she has somehow become our late empire’s troubadour simply because, well, it seemed like we should have one, and she was there.

    I will say, however, that she does seem to have both the sense and the good taste to enlist the talents of better musicians when she finds them as aides-de-camp. I don’t know whether there’s a real relationship here or if he’s just a hired gun, but in finding the guy from The National and letting him do his thing across a couple of her albums, she has shown shrewd awareness of the limits of her own powers. It’s just unfortunate, to me anyway, that she sings over it.

    Also in the plus column for Miss Swift is something called “vibes,” which I have on good authority is how the youngsters are measuring musical quality these days. The alternative is to measure something like albums, songs, or performances, but I do have to admit that the vibes on an album like folklore—or even the new tortured poets record—are just right. The album art and production quality are suggestive of very specific kinds of scenes, which is to say, ways of being in the world that I think most people are quite hungry for. Perhaps it’s okay that music is serving a different role for this generation than it did for previous ones. Rather than, say, producing memorable songs that one might sing out loud with friends or tap one’s foot to in bars, Swift produces a kind of mood. If that mood is principally tepid, leftist, feminine revenge porn, well, what is that to me?

     

    But actually, is such a posture all that new? Take punk music, for example. How many of those records are about posture—about a certain way of being in the world—more than they are, say, about musicianship or song-craft? Rather more than a few, I’d think.

    In the end, I think of Miss Swift’s accomplishment like I think of the accomplishment of the McDonalds restauranteurs. The fare offered is easy and everywhere. It appeals to an extremely broad base of persons looking for an easy fix. There’s something uniquely American about both products. Some people, of course, may turn their noses up at both. At other times, though, it can be just the thing wanted—especially if it’s late, you’re tired, and hanging out with friends, and no one can think of where else to go.

    No. I think the more apt literary key for understanding Swiftian appeal contra confessionals is the early novelists. Here’s the oft-forgotten American critic William Dean Howells on what the youngsters were then ingesting: bad writing that does “a great deal of harm in the world.” “[Figures like Swift]” he argues, “that heroine, [have] long taught by example, if not precept, that Love, or the passion or fancy she mistook for it, was the chief interest of a life which is really concerned with a great many other things; that it was lasting in the way she knew it; that it was worthy of every sacrifice, and was a finer thing than prudence, obedience, reason; that love alone was glorious and beautiful, and these were mean and ugly in comparison with it.” (From “The Editor’s Study” 1887).

    This is precisely Swift’s contribution to world culture, in my view. She works to elevate not-even-the-state-of, but the feeling of being in love to the ne plus ultra of human experience. Her obsession with dopey, high-school boys and floppy hair made sense when she was a teenaged songwriter, appealing mostly to other teens whose concerns tend to be similarly circumscribed. But I expected—I thought we all expected—that she’d grow out of them.

    We were wrong. Her emotional range is the same. Her jealousies are the same. Her available subjects are the same now, in her 30’s, a billionaire, as they were walking past the lockers hoping to be noticed. That too would be fine; cases of arrested development are legion, except that she foists this worldview so broadly about. Thanks to her, several generations of women have been baptized into the shallow end of the kiddie pool, there to thrash about and encourage one another in their Mean Girls affectations.

    I don’t know. At the beginning of his essay, Howells cautions about reading to much into these pulp offerings: “the [art] that aims merely to entertain—the [art] that is to serious fiction as the opera buffe…and the pantomime are to the true drama—need not feel the burden of this obligation so deeply.” That’s probably right. That’s what she’s doing. It’s entertainment. We don’t have to take it so seriously. It’s what Liam Gallagher of Oasis once referred to as “junk food music.”

    And there’s nothing wrong with a little junk food! This is America! Have some. Enjoy yourself. But let’s not make the category mistake of thinking it counts as cuisine.

  • Fiction: Change

    Neil went to tea break for the gossip, to find out what was going on, although he screened out the small talk about football and politics. The canteen overlooked the carpark with the smoking shed at the other end – another good source of information. It was raining the day he heard a replacement boss was coming at the end of the month. She was something new, a bit of an innovator. The rain continued as the men discussed this new woman. Some were dismissive of anyone making a difference. Neil was silent. Sometimes change was a good thing, there was certainly no point in avoiding it. He had joined the organisation five years ago after college and he still daydreamed about the future. Nothing would stop him, he smiled slightly. He had his plans and maybe this new woman would help him.

    By three thirty the rain had stopped, but the roads were flooded, pooling around the drains in large puddles. It was dark when Neil got on his bike to cycle home and, on the way, he was soaked through by unforgiving passing cars. His mother was in the kitchen boiling potatoes the windows running with condensation.

    ‘I have a lamb chop for your tea,’ she said accusingly.

    Neil took off his backpack and hung up his wet jacket in the hallway.

    ‘How’s the captain of industry?’ his father asked amiably as he passed.

    One day Neil thought, they’ll all see. He ate his dinner without comment reading The Evening Herald unenthusiastically and then went to his room. It was his belief that things would change, his life would be transformed. He was certain of it.

    The office was a large room on the third floor. Desks were mainly clustered around the windows with managers discreetly hidden behind wooden framed screens. They were the middle managers; the senior managers had their own offices filled with books and manuals of all kinds. One of them kept a full set of golf clubs leaning against a cupboard under the window while a framed picture of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca hung on the wall. Neil wasn’t even a middle manager; he was an executive assistant which meant he was a nobody. In the afternoons after lunch he let his thoughts wander to his amalgamation project. Imagine consolidating all the programmes and centralising the funding. Think of the savings! He’d done the research, and it was possible. Why had no one thought of it before? It came up at his last annual appraisal. They were in the process of discussing his Key Core Deliverables when he took out his folder with all his ideas and the costings to back them up.

    ‘That would be a matter for Corporate Affairs,’ his supervisor said primly.

    Neil shouldn’t have expected more from Amanda. She’d been in the job so long she could remember when they’d worked things out on their fingers.

    Down in the pub he complained to his mate Kevin.

    ‘No one can see the bigger picture,’ Neil said taking a gulp of his pint. ‘They’re all so busy squirrelling away at their own jobs no one puts their heads above the parapet.

    ‘Good way to get it shot off,’ Kevin said glumly.

    ‘What do you mean?’

    ‘Well if nobody does anything then nobody makes a mistake.’

    Neil had to admit to himself that Kevin was right. He was having doubts about spending much more time in the place anyway. He’d already done two competitions for promotion without success largely because Amanda had commented that he needed to improve. She said he needed more training to bring him up to speed on the organisation’s mission and objectives. It was a polite way of saying he didn’t know his job, but the idea of training wasn’t a bad one and he toyed with it over his ham and cheese sandwich in the canteen. He thought about the training courses he’d done so far in management skills and accountancy. He really needed to get a qualification like a Masters of Business Administration. Meanwhile the replacement manager was due to arrive on Monday. Rumours spread wildly, on the one hand describing her as a ruthless manipulator to a listening ear on the other. Neil decided to wait and see.

    Over the weekend he googled admissions criteria for an MBA. None of the colleges were taking applications until the spring, still it was something to aim for. He took out his C.V. It wasn’t impressive. For the last five years he had been working for Amanda in the same job. It didn’t look good, and HR had blocked his application for a transfer because of his poor performance at his appraisals. On Monday Kevin emailed him:

    ‘Just met the new boss. Her name is Stella Reynolds, and she has the corner office across the hallway from the D.G.’

    So she was a highflyer, well that could be a good thing.

    Usually Neil didn’t discuss work with his parents. Occasionally his mother asked him if he was happy at the office. It wasn’t a question he asked himself. The job wasn’t about happiness. We’re not here to enjoy ourselves Amanda was fond of saying. He had good days when he got something done and he felt satisfied for a little while. A lot of the time though the days were long and tedious. He was twenty-six and Neil didn’t consider himself young anymore. At this stage he should be getting on with his career, things should be happening! Instead he woke each morning with a heavy feeling of apprehension about the day ahead. He looked at Kevin’s email again and wondered if he was fooling himself thinking there was anything significant in her arrival. At tea break he skipped the canteen and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin was there smoking and drinking a can of Red Bull.

    ‘Everything OK?’ Neil asked cautiously.

    ‘I’ve had enough,’ Kevin blurted out. ‘I’m going to my brother in New Zealand. He says he can get me a job.’

    ‘When are you going?’

    ‘Next month.’

    So Kevin had found an escape route. Neil was envious, but also felt a surge of energy, now he really had to do something. When he got back to his desk there was a notification about a presentation on Financial Efficiency in the board room on Friday at three. Stella Reynolds was the lead speaker. So this was Neil’s opportunity to meet her. He accessed the slides for the talk and the topics covered coincided with the work he had done on amalgamation. This was it; this was his chance. Kevin once asked him if he believed in God. Neil was so surprised that for a few minutes he didn’t say anything. Then as if it was obvious he said:

    ‘No I believe in myself.’

    ‘But what if you’re not enough,’ Kevin said. ‘What if you try and try and it’s still not enough.’

    Was that why he was going to New Zealand? Was Kevin looking for God on the other side of the world? It wasn’t true that Neil just believed in himself, he also knew that luck had a large part to play in it. Even the best plan could come asunder if you were unlucky. He thought about Stella Reynolds and looked up her staff details on the HR link. She wore glasses and peered anxiously towards the camera. It wasn’t a good picture. She was probably nervous about having her photo taken. Then he looked at his own staff details. The photo wasn’t too bad, but he was wearing that striped shirt that always made him look like a wide boy. On Friday he would look his best and his most confident. If this plan didn’t work, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t make the effort.

    On Friday morning he left for the house early and noticed that the day was fine and dry. The trees were still bare and wintry, but there was a brightness in the sky that suggested spring. At his desk he took out his folder and went through his spreadsheets again. It wasn’t perfect, but he was sure some of his ideas would work. Then he looked up and saw Amanda was standing beside his desk.

    ‘Come with me,’ she said tersely.

    He followed her to a large cupboard hidden by a row of filing cabinets at the bottom of the room. She opened the cupboard to reveal a mess of documents lying higgeldy piggeldy on the shelves.

    ‘These have to be ordered by subject and date then filed away.’

    ‘But this will take days.’

    ‘Have you anything else on hand?’

    ‘I wanted to go to the presentation.’

    ‘This takes precedence.’

    Neil reminded himself that there was nothing to be gained by getting angry and set to work. He tried to work quickly, but the task was more complicated than he realised. By Friday evening he reckoned he was about halfway through. He took a break around four and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin looked up and asked the obvious question:

    ‘Where were you?’

    ‘Don’t ask.’

    ‘Let me guess, Amanda. Why not bring your stuff up to Stella Reynolds anyway? You’ve got nothing to lose.

    The two young men sat in silence for a few moments, smoke hung in the air and the light faded gradually as the day ended. They talked about New Zealand and staying in touch. There was a note of sadness in their conversation. Neil finished the filing job although it was difficult to tell if Amanda was happy with it. She was nowhere in sight when he left the room and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. He walked slowly to the corner office, the door was open, he went through. Stella Reynolds smiled at him and said:

    ‘What can I do for you?’

    ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Neil said.

     

  • Taylor Swift is our Greatest Confessional Poet

    Confessional poetry has had a haunted reputation from its post-war onset. The literary legacies of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and W. D. Snodgrass—widely considered ground zero for the entire confessional school—are crucified at least as frequently as they’re praised, and a healthy allergy to what contemporary teachers of writing pertly refer to as ‘trauma porn’ has seeded in the DNA of most graduate-level writing programs.

    When in 1959 Robert Lowell published Life Studies (the book of Genesis as far as confessional poetry is concerned) the idea of a poem’s author unambiguously self-identifying as the first-person ‘speaker’ was unthinkable. In intentionally shattering—and the method of shattering was simply ignoring—the public/private barrier, Lowell had done something truly new, setting off an irreversible trend in American poetry. If one wrote, before this, from autobiographical experience, it was duly air-brushed and sanitized for public consumption. Taboo subjects like mental illness and sexuality were no-fly zones. One did not say, for example,

    I hear
    my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
    as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
    I myself am hell

    Robert Lowell by Elsa Dorfman.

    The dominant and ongoing beef with confessional poetry is not entirely unreasonable. At its worst, (or I should say, perhaps, when it fails) readers are startled and not led into a world they didn’t ever wish to explore, trapped in the speaker’s garishly personal agonies and ecstasies with no window looking out, and no resonant ‘me too’ chime.

    When confessional poetry germinates exclusively at the level of the individual—meaning there is no bridge, on-ramp or springboard to universal human experience, some place of wider echoing beyond the speaker and confines of the poem—it devolves into drudgery, if dull, and trauma porn, if shocking. In this sense, confessional poetry is always a tightrope walk, a precarious style with precarious risks. But I digress.

    Fast forward to the twenty-first century. Confessional verse needed a new hero, a lone voice powerful enough to lift it from the ashes of ceaseless academic squabbling and into the hearts and ears of eager culture-consumers. When Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April of 2024—she confirmed (with a moody noir photoshoot and a perfect cat-eye) what I’d long suspected, namely that she’s the all-American GOAT of contemporary confessional writing. Taylor’s entire deck of cards is comprised of aces. She mines herself and her experiences, writing from her own lifeblood in a way that *never* fails to merge with the shared experiences of women—indeed, of people—everywhere, and her level of celebrity has successfully inoculated her against the most common affliction ailing the Confessionals: the event of people really not wanting to know.

     

    Now, I personally contend that with a sufficient level of ingenuity and craft people will stomach just about anything, whether they should have to is another question entirely. Sexton in particular is often out-and-out lurid, but her syntax is so surprising, so fresh and deftly handled, that her brilliance is rarely the disputed thing. The disputed thing is that whatever Sexton’s level of creative prowess, readers don’t necessarily resign themselves to (let alone rush to devour) accounts of dysfunctional sexcapades or manic episodes, preferring on the whole to be spared. She never overcame, in life or death, the miasma of ‘ick’ generated by gutter content, specifically, however immaculate the form. Of course, defiant exposure of the quote unquote gutter may well have been the point, and every exhibitionist needs more than a little pluck, but you see the problem.

    If only there was someone so fascinating, so simultaneously winsome and relatable and fun and clever and coy that society’s desire to really know absolutely everything was utterly frenzied. This is precisely the empire TS half-inherited (by being a young and beautiful woman reared in the public eye) and half-created (by being a confessional song-writer so savvy it amounts to legitimate genius)

    Swift on the Speak Now World Tour in 2011.

    It must be said that Taylor has not historically descended to the Sextonian depths of genitals, slime and latrines (see “Angels of the Love Affair”) as such. Or if she DOES go there she makes it, well, hot (see in the middle of the night//in my dreams//you should see the things we do) Even her punchiest lines, say “fuck me up, Florida” are always a little sugared by a sprawling pop foundation. I do firmly believe that even if she did descend to darker depths, everyone would want to come along for the ride. Taylor’s gargantuan appeal means, literally, that everyone WANTS to know, all the time. Fan appetite is insatiable. And TS knows how badly we want to know, which brings me to her other confessional stroke of genius—

    Taylor deliberately toys with us. Despite the morally dubious efforts of the tabloids, we plebeians have no real access to T’s lived life, let alone her inner life. She offers us the private portraiture we long for on her own terms. A long-confirmed tradition of writing songs about herself, her thoughts and relationships notwithstanding, we are frequently given over entirely to speculation regarding which songs are indeed autobiographical and how precisely autobiographical they are. In this regard, Taylor is wonderfully ballsy, unafraid to have an unambiguous go at men who did her dirty— (see “Dear John”) many Swifties make riddling out her more nebulous lyrics and mapping them onto her actual history a full time job.

    Taylor always leaves sufficient room for us to step into her music, inhabiting our own adjacent experiences more deeply for knowing—dare I say vibing—with hers: this is her triumph, and also the confessional jackpot. She manages to showcase every emotion unapologetically—heartache, bitterness, yearning, envy, the lot. She can be minxy (handsome, you’re a mansion with a view//do the girls back home touch you like I do?) She can be nostalgic (I knew you//leaving like a father//running like water) She can be melodramatic and vengeful, (You caged me and then you called me crazy//I am what I am cause you trained me) and she is rarely—however widely lauded she is—given enough credit for being a military-grade confessional tactician. Taylor’s extended metaphors are breezy, memorable, and open to myriad interpretations. Let’s take a look at the recent smash hit “Down Bad,” a single representative example. In it, Swift is (nominally, and never to the point that it actually gets too weird) a humanoid cast off the mothership by her lover. At the song’s climax, she croons:

    I loved your hostile takeovers
    Encounters closer and closer
    All your indecent exposures
    How dare you say that it’s –

    Four lines of dazzling ingenuity. “I loved your hostile takeovers” – you once took powerful initiative with me/this relationship. “Encounters closer and closer” – things got intimate and vulnerable. “All your indecent exposures” – I personally understand this line ‘thanks for the sexts,’ but of course I don’t know. “How dare you say that it’s—” and the song’s speaker (Is it Taylor!?!? Did someone leave THE QUEEN HERSELF down bad?!?!) cannot bring herself to say the word ‘over.’ We have four lines of a single extended confessional metaphor explode in a Molotov cocktail of relatability and alien-core cheek. Been there? I’ve been there. Almost everyone has been there, and that’s why the song soared immediately to the top of the charts and was ensconced there for weeks.

    Let’s recap. When Confessional Poetry emerged in the 1950s, its most zealous defenders insisted it would humanize us to each other, offering tender glimpses at tender subjects in a way that engendered compassion and deeper understanding. I believe good confessional poetry does this, even if the truth it tells is wildly dark. If we cannot call her a poet in the strictly traditional sense, no one in a hundred years has harnessed the staying power of confessional writing like Taylor Swift, and no one possesses her unique, precise vaccination against the disease of over-sharing. Aspiring confessional writers would do well to take a page (or many pages) from the Swift Gospel, unifying introspection with an outward gaze generous enough to the human condition to compel readers in, make one’s own head an inviting (or interesting or evocative or profound) place to visit. I began with Confessional Poetry’s founding father Robert Lowell, and it seems fitting to close with him, too:

    Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing—I suppose that’s what vocation means—at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I’m thankful, and call it good.