Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving Read Online Free

young people everywhere. Get to work.”

Six
    ELFISH HIT MO full in the mouth with her fist. He yelled in pain. “For God’s sake, Elfish,” he shouted. “What are you doing?”
    â€œThat’s for sleeping with Angela,” said Elfish, and made to hit him again. Mo squirmed as if to leave the bed but Elfish grabbed his balls and held them tightly.
    â€œI’ll rip them off,” she said, and kissed Mo violently, biting his lip.
    â€œI swear I will kill you one day,” said Mo, tearing himself away and rubbing his bruised cheeks.
    â€œI’ll kill you first,” said Elfish, and they kissed again. Elfish sat up, straddled Mo and crammed herself on to him, forcing his penis inside her so quickly and roughly that they both grimaced in discomfort.
    â€œI’ve fucked every one of your lovers,” said Elfish. “And I gave them all a better time than you did.”
    â€œYou’re a liar, Elfish.”
    At this Elfish slapped Mo again because she hated it when he called her a liar.
    â€œYou are stupid, Mo. Really, genuinely stupid. If I didn’t enjoy fucking you so much I wouldn’t even bother to talk to you.”
    â€œAnd you’re disgusting. When did you last wash?”

    â€œNever,” said Elfish. “I stay filthy so I can rub dirt over you.”
    Elfish and Mo used to fuck so loud and long that the neighbours would bang on the wall in futile complaint. Elfish and Mo would reply with screamed abuse before drinking themselves into insensibility, and waking up ill, but happy.
    Elfish’s statement that she never washed was not far from the truth. She was genuinely filthy. This was not entirely her fault as the squat in which she lived had neither hot water nor a bath, but the other four women who lived there made efforts to wash at friends’ houses. Elfish did this only rarely. Since the crisis about the name Queen Mab had arisen she had not washed at all, deeming dried sweat and caked-on grime to be matters of little importance when there was work to be done.
    She sat now, musing on her memories of sex with Mo, playing her guitar on her bed with the TV on, trying to write a song.

seven
    THERE IS A legend that everything wasted on the earth is stored and treasured on the moon: unfulfilled dreams, broken vows, unanswered prayers, wasted time. Thus Pope wrote in The Rape of the Lock:
    Some thought it mounted to the Lunar Sphere,
Since all things lost on Earth are treasur’d there.
There Heroes’ Wits are kept in pond’rous Vases,
And Beaus’ in Snuff-boxes and Tweezer-cases.
There broken Vows and Death-bed Alms are found,
And Lovers’ Hearts with Ends of Riband bound;
The Courtier’s Promises, and Sick Man’s Prayers,
The Smiles of Harlots, and the Tears of Heirs,
Cages for Gnats, and Chains to Yoak a Flea;
Dry’d Butterflies, and Tomes of Casuistry.
    Elfish was aware of this legend. It was one of the many random and useless pieces of information her brother insisted on telling her when she visited. No visit to Aran was complete without a long, detailed, cross-referenced and fully annotated telling of some ancient story, lie or legend, whether it was requested or not.

    This could be a distressing experience. There can be few things worse to a habitual sufferer of powerful hangovers than to call in on someone simply to beg a beer and a sandwich and suddenly find oneself on the receiving end of a long analysis of the war between Athens and Sparta in 411 B.C. For the unwary it could be a disturbing, even frightening occurrence. Many a shocked young person had stumbled weakly out of Aran’s house, white-faced with terror, hunting for the nearest bar in order to obliterate with beer and whisky the memory of Aran’s insufferably long description of where exactly the Athenians had gone wrong at the siege of Syracuse, and what he would have done if he had been there to advise the military commanders at the