A sweaty tale of irresistible desire within remote salty environs
A short story by Evan Hay
Brigadier Robert D’Alby of those famously Glorious Roscommons was drilled hard, under unimpeachable tutelage, as a rosy cheeked officer cadet at RMA Sandhurst, to embody impeccable leadership material; a token figurehead for the troops, if you will. Vicious rumours aside, it became crystal clear he was hewn from precisely the right old-fashioned, ornamental stuff. Thoroughbred, D’Alby developed into a mighty fine, hench figurine of nobility. A mentality monster, possessed of athleticism, albeit devoid of contagious narcissism, D’Alby employed fluent Received Pronunciation to magnanimously acclaim a martial lifestyle (minus modernity’s all-too-familiar ‘boot-polish-up-the-kilt’ fanaticism). Copybook ethics, Spartan indifference to physical discomfort, & an unerring Apollonian devotion to UN-authorised, NATO-led tours of duty (raining widespread collateral damage & untold millions of premature deaths down upon non-combatants), combined to make D’Alby splendid soldierly material.
For good measure, D’Alby’s tendency to orbit celestially aloof, discreetly distanced from clamorous rank-&-file subordinates, enabled access to personal contemplations way beyond an insular, woefully limited blokeish appreciation, of his rough-&-ready non-commissioned parade ground comrades. What’s more, a glut of stereotypical associate officers (infected by latent homosexuality & sporting philistine tomfoolery), bored D’Alby rigid too. Drinking contests sparked impossibly drunken mess hall parties, yielding sloppy tutti-frutti salads of macerated silliness, pink willy-waving, imbecilic gambling, with losers’ tears & tantrums before bedtime. D’Alby assumed the routine shenanigans & attendant hangovers of these appointed officials, were contributory factors in their expressed, blockheaded contentment with monomaniacal brutalism; a witless aesthetic flaw which interdicted him from honourably pursuing any deepening camaraderie. To crown it all, he abhorred a collective flat-Earth disregard amongst the general staff for synthetic cubism, et seq.
However, such wilful textural blindness couldn’t prevent, nor distract D’Alby, from admiring Britannia’s venerated strength of character. Nor could multifarious, mind-bogglingly crude patterns of persistently spiteful, antisocial behaviours, intemperately disseminated throughout the length & breadth of Merry England’s privately educated landowning ruling-classes, annul an intuitive esteem in which he held their ruthless creed. That these chaps existentially flaunted an intrinsic prejudicial exceptionalism, uninvitedly worldwide, at the expense of successive generations of common-or-garden folks, deemed genetically inferior to aristocratic gents, bothered the Brig not one whit. On the contrary, D’Alby revered unsupervised, unfettered, unilateral power. He treasured feeling the electrifying charge of imperious, dictatorial vigour, & indulged himself in exercising its merciless potency, whenever an opportunity to do so presented itself (as if iniquity were a fetishistic perk of anointed righteousness).
Stood down from a regular commission, D’Alby returned his armed forces ID card, but remained fighting-fit at thirty-nine. Despite abject failure best describing his combat duty’s swan song amid the rubble of Helmand province, & his identity clearly visible amongst redacted army scandals (documenting allegations of murder during counterinsurgency operations), D’Alby’s transition to civilian life was well-cushioned by the prevailing status quo, under the guise of the UK parliament’s Armed Forces Pensions & Compensation Scheme. In the wake of index-linked military retirement, D’Alby’s subsequent induction into the Guild of Ancient Mariners & Venerable Fishmongers (an otherly-brotherly organisation, welcoming applications from well-heeled members, emerging out of institutionally approved communities catered for by Blighty’s old boys’ network), facilitated another lucrative opportunity in a lifelong career spent silver spooning.
A stint of reclusive commitment, out of harm’s way, beyond reproach as ever, further serving his class with insignia, keeping his privileged end up in a public-private partnership lighthouse. Shining bright, generously endowed, embellished with frilled epaulettes, a rosewood handled cassowary feather duster, & charitably left to his own obsessive-compulsive disorders. Proud to be aboard, at the helm of Men Epskop as sole wickie, & custodian of its admirable beacon; indeed, so thrilled, that D’Alby ran out of steam in a trice: over polishing his brilliant Bishop Rock spotlessly clean in a frenzy of exhilaration. The second humid week of a becalmed summer lured him to a mysterious lull, one which coincided with still waters & a blue period in the doldrums. All at sea, even if D’Alby’s loyal service was made as comfortable as possible by a closet storing thick woollen blankets, portable paraffin heaters (to ward off Jack Frost come wintertime), frozen crab-sticks (subject to the limited capacity of a small chest freezer), & a transistor to pick up broadcasts from Scilly regional radio, or amusing BBC World Service re-runs of It Sticks Out Half a Mile.
Nonetheless, determined to stay on point, this Brigadier (retired), understood he needed to maintain a sharp focus, & that necessity truly was his mother of invention. So, recreationally, during superabundant spare ‘moi’ time, using initiative, & raw ingredients (which were generally available), ingenuously D’Alby became a cottage industry, manufacturing sundry collectibles, e.g., model Royal Navy vessels from the Napoleonic era (warships frequently embattled within bottles), & lovingly crafted hand-woven cotton rugs (featuring replica regimental badges). D’Alby exacted great pleasure in fashioning arrays of novelty ‘revenge’ candles, i.e., clutches of shaped caricatures, resembling pet hates for the Guild’s constituency to burn to buggery, inc. The Dying Gaul, Mahatma Gandhi, George Orwell, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley, Neil Kinnock, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott et al, which titillated him no end; although his sense of frisson registered at its most pronounced, when conjuring imaginary waxen impressions of mini-skirted state comprehensive schoolteachers, & K-cupped, leftie lesbian social worker types, dressed in matronly attire, cinched with an Agatha Trunchbull style, heavy leather belt. These choice trinkets, twinned with inspired mustering’s of postcolonial, dreamcatcher souvenirs, constituted D’Alby’s growing assemblage of reactionary objets d’art: basic bric-à-brac, sold for cash to nostalgic gammons, from unvarnished trestle table stalls at mariners’ fêtes.
Alas, despite crackerjack diversions, piecemeal, D’Alby’s lonely life’s gentle routine drifted surreally, towards unplanned concatenations eliciting dubious, psychosomatic occurrences. In the fullness of time, Robert sagely monitored how natural energies emitted from those loose & fecund bowels of Mother Earth, reigned supreme: put simply- this epiphany convinced him the Everyman was a sentient nonentity, riddled with doubts, merely floating on Magna Mater’s ethereal waves. Moreover, one of his regular ferrymen enterprisingly confided, that for a nominal price, he’d present D’Alby to a gathering of fellow travellers, representing an ultraconservative faction of their Guild; blesséd visionaries, adhering to ceremonies rooted in the legend of a secret seafaring subsect (long able to curry Poseidon’s fishy favour). Over & above the cost of introduction, Robert was required to travel topless, rollup both trouser legs on arrival, sing bawdy shanties on demand, ere fulfilling formalities, namely: signing membership forms, swearing a primitive oath (the origins of which, allegedly, were Phœnician), & paying annual subscription fees in advance. Thereafter, Robbie was at liberty (weather permitting), to row his dinghy ashore, yomp across heathery hills (interwoven by dense fronds of bracken-cum-bladderwrack), to frequent an austere mariner’s guildhall, wherein a gracious & most proper art of ingratiation was taught, in strict confidence, to selected scholars.
Inside Twisted Bobbins Sentinel Chambers, upstanding cavaliers were cordially invited to confidentially manipulate mystical gifts, in accordance with one’s breeding, wisdom & inherent talent. Ancillary occult counterparts, fraternal tools (empowered with prodigious vibrancy to factor seraphic evocations), allowed highbrow seekers to beseech spiritual prerogatives, & become adorned with decorative charms afforded to orthodox craftsmen. Twofold keys to palpable divinity: one pukka velvet wishing cap (immaculately derived from legendary Fortunatus), the other, an elegant pair of ivory handled silver lorgnettes, proffering all-sightedness. Now, as amusing as this esoteric bourgeois scenario appears, it wasn’t entirely satisfying. Hence, influenced by the compelling Baphometic literature of Aleister Crowley (on loan from Bobbins’ hypnotic Worshipful Master), Bob sat forlornly inside Sentinel Chamber’s DIY orgone NRG accumulator (its unhinged door ajar), wearing a pointy puce skullcap, staring disconsolately through tight-fitting magical retinae at a tumefying purple abomination (his unemployed Hampton Wick). Hallucinatory masturbation wasn’t working; hard-core, no-nonsense, carnal skulduggery, was urgently required.
Accordingly, one day, this abstemious xenophobe (inasmuch as his WASP’s waist seldom played host to dodgy foreign foodstuffs), clipped his magnificently glossed monkey wrench moustache, & smeared petroleum jelly around his unloved ring-hole, before purposefully penning a succinct, germane advertisement; dead set to be displayed in the tasteful Lonely-Hearts section of London’s Clash City Rockers weekly listings magazine (a cooperatively run, cheaper print alternative to Time Out), ref: pubescent wantonness – this provocative announcement D’Alby dispatched post-haste, by the utmost economical means, of a tax deductible supplies dory (that fortnightly ferried his nibs’ precious rations of baked beans, marinated in orange tomato sauce).
Attention all cute boys, girls, or any teenage proletarian dirtbags, hankering after pagan erotica in a lighthouse with a well-hung warrior poet, scholar, come horny magus; call me: Bobby D’Alby, PDQ. Admission is free!
Conspicuously erect, & decorated with assorted ethnic medallions, the Brig muttered fiendishly, revelling in anal images, aroused by his mentally retarded, adulterated, pseudo-Orientalism.
’’Oh yes, London. The filthy big city chock-full of perverted, brown-skinned deviants.’’
On the surface, Robbie’s deportment & attitude conveyed a cultivated, unflappable demeanour: a recherché esquire, who coveted beauty & classical repose above all else. This shtick appealed to his vanity, as did considering himself a chosen one, & kitting-out in a black velvet cloak for mariner’s nights; his very first experience of entering Twisted Bobbins in fancy dress had felt like stepping into the shadow of a planetary body, to apprehend direct contact with an apex presence outside the world at large. Howbeit, beneath this calm exterior, D’Alby frantically required percussive barrages of hard-knuckled, colon bruising fist fucks, via the unbuttoned fart-flap of his bespoke Liberty bodice. Assimilating contradictory hyper-religiosity, lewd mood swings come hormonal pressures, resulted in an egodystonic guilt trip; operating as justice & jurisprudence, D’Alby’s anaemic superego induced pallid umbrage, wanly scolding a Dionysian id for clammy, impure ruminations.
‘’Sensuality: lay back agape, suck it up big time, legs akimbo, or think of England!’’
D’Alby tentatively undressed, assessing his painted moobs, goose pimpled in front of a full-length cheval mirror. Perturbed, he critically reviewed a haggard reflection: sickened, his dark inner resentment metastasised. Uncontrollably, shocking surly features re-emerged, gloating without invitation; in this liminal moment between liquescent breaths, D’Alby’s obnoxious temperament revealed itself: poisonous, outlandish, bizarrely misshapen in every single ghastly detail. Each flaccid aspect called for slashing, &/or expert mutilation. An acrid, self-defacing element, imbued Robbie’s mind, prompting a rueful acknowledgment that beauty had made promises it couldn’t keep over the long-haul.
‘‘Oh, for a Black-&-Decker Workmate!’’
Robbie hated saluting boorish ugliness. This damned chimera staring back, couldn’t satisfactorily render the graceful enigma from his youth, rather like Basil Hallward’s abominable portrait, it cast a mocking, minacious curse. Hells bells! Furiously, giant hailstones crashed against the toughened glass surrounding Men Epskop’s lantern room; half-demented, D’Alby laughed uproariously, artistically smearing arterial blood around his scarred, rubicund nakedness. Teetering on the edge, D’Alby sliced off his inverted hairy nipples, & super glued one to each knobbly knee, prior to recklessly taking a rusty cheese grater to the ship’s fringe benefit tomcat; shrieking wildly in lingua Carthusiana, whilst ejaculating over vivid adolescent memories of his gang fingering at the intrusive hands of House Apostles (ceremonially attired in uniform coats, & cocked top hats, garnished with white ostrich plumes) throughout his minority assignment as Charterhouse fag.
Suitably relaxed, D’Alby brooded upon infamous full moon initiation rituals he’d witnessed agog; rough sleeping orphan Stan Crabbs, a plausible cephalopod, came unstuck. A rootless persona non grata, Stan’s ovoidal working-class corporation was collected; drugged & bewitched by sinister decree. Manhandled by St Agnes’ sturdy yeomanry, downstairs, into Old Lanes’ sacred basement cellar, with its spellbindingly red crayoned pentagram; forcefully shoved therein, Crabbs fell prostrate between scary cloven hooves – where he was instantaneously plagued by ankylosis & force-fed slough from millions of damned excrescences, while his chafed tramp’s sphincter was invaded by vile swarms of chattering animalcules (besieging his punch-drunk cerebrum, & infesting his congenitally stunted imagination, with obscure forms of regimental Catholicism). Sadistically, metemsomatosis irretrievably undermined Stan Crabbs’ innate processes of perception, rendering his alchemical substitute desolate, yet frenetic, snarling, & cringingly regardant (momentarily slipping out of character, D’Alby fleetingly questioned why, such random, educationally subnormal vagabonds, were godforsaken, & solemnly condemned to suffer).
‘’Fuck only knows! But then, all us nonpareils, chartered fishermen, aristocratic seafarers & the like, steamed the fat plebeian cunt, & gouged out his oculi. He can’t see nothing now!’’
Following an eccentric two-month long collage of auto-erotic overload (resulting in the first instance, of little more than a sore willy, & secondly, through the latter period, only dizziness, nausea, plus an acute sense of futility born of self-mutilation), having received no expressions of interest, nor any letters of reply, Bob nonchalantly applied enchanted Fastskin Elites; pinching his sagging cellulose buttocks decisively before bellyflopping overboard. Resurfacing like a seal, resplendent in top-of-the-range Speedos; determined to swim ashore & hard ride Shanks’s pony onto central London immediately, in full Picaresque personage, to smash balls-deep into heavy-duty cottaging (systematically satiating himself sexually, with the horrors & glories of being alive). D’Alby wondered what the poncy all-seeing mincer would make of that; beat off an all-penetrating stethoscope perhaps, or tickle some ever-swollen vulva? Because unequivocally, whatever it is, & wherever it’s coming from, throbbing gristle around one’s erogenous zone, needs a jolly good going-over now & again, simply to maintain a soupçon of sanity. Seen?
A version of this story by Evan Hay, illustrated by Stevo Swaddling, first appeared in Dig magazine in 1988, and reappeared on The Cannibal’s Gazette in 2020. Original illustrations on this page by Stevo Swaddling.