69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess Page 11
Although Alan didn’t like to admit it, he’d spent the late 70s reading through much of the John Calder backlist. This had led him from Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs and Alexander Trocchi on to French writers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon and Nathalie Sarraute. It therefore isn’t surprising that his copy of Cain’s Book was a British first edition hardback published by John Calder in 1963 and purchased by Alan 15 years later when he was still that mythical beast, ‘a teenager’. Alan’s copy of Young Adam, also purchased secondhand in the late 70s was a Pan paperback with a classic 60s cover. His copies of Trocchi’s porn books demonstrated that his interest in this writer was perhaps more tenacious than he cared to admit. There were Olympia Press editions of My Life and Loves: Fifth Volume and Helen and Desire, that had been acquired secondhand in the early 80s. Alan had purchased a paperback copy of Sappho of Lesbos when it was reissued by Star in 1986. The copies of The Carnal Days of Helen Seferis, School For Sin and White Thighs were paperback reissues put out by the American porn publisher Masquerade Books in the early 1990s. Thongs had proved even more elusive, Alan had to wait until Blast Books reissued it in 1994 to obtain his own copy, although he’d read it in the British Library some time in the 1980s. Alan also brandished a copy of Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader, edited by Andrew Murray Scott and put out by Polygon Books in 1991. Although he possessed a number of the books Trocchi had translated, Alan didn’t own a copy of the poetry collection Man At Leisure and professed himself uninterested in Trocchi’s verse.
After much arguing I got my way and rather than going to my pad for refreshments, Alan drove to Asda at the Bridge o’ Dee where we made good use of the customer café. By this time Alan was back onto the subject of Thongs. He insisted the description it contained of Glasgow as Scotland’s grey city was utterly misguided. Anyone who knew the whole of Scotland – and here it’s important to remember that Trocchi spent very little of his adult life in Scotland – realised that Aberdeen was the country’s grey city since it was built of grey granite. The materials used to build Glasgow were more varied than those on which Aberdeen had been founded. Given that Aberdeen is on the East Coast, Trocchi’s claim that Scotland’s West-Coast towns are grey and Glasgow the greyest of the lot becomes even more ridiculous. On the evidence of Thongs alone, Trocchi’s knowledge of Scotland was no more convincing than his sentimental picture of the Gorbals. Alan therefore considered it bizarre that Trocchi’s London publisher John Calder singled out this section of Thongs as exhibiting literary merit in an essay he contributed to a special number of the Edinburgh Review dedicated to the writer.
After downing a cuppa we whizzed around Asda and Alan picked up a couple of ready meals before we hotfooted it to the Bridge o’ Dee Sainsbury’s. It was at this point that Alan linked his discussion of Trocchi back to The Biography of Thomas Lang by mentioning that Trocchi’s father had been a concert pianist. It is alleged that Trocchi had relatives who were high up in the Vatican and regardless of whether this is true, the influence of this institution was on open display in Thongs. The secret society described in the book with its Holy Pain Father, Pain Cardinals, Grand Painmasters and beneath them ordinary Painmasters and Painmistresses, is clearly modelled on the Catholic Church. Alan thought that by inverting the religious superstitions of his family, Trocchi ended up reproducing the very thing he wished to destroy. The exercise was every bit as futile and reactionary as the so-called Black Masses of Satanists. Indeed, the Vatican was more likely to be damaged by over-fervent converts than Trocchi. In relation to this, Alan specifically mentioned the distasteful sexualised descriptions of a five-year-old prince in Frederick Rolfe’s pathetic fantasy Hadrian the Seventh.
Returning to the main thrust of his argument, Alan broached the nature of the relationship between Thongs and Young Adam. Both books featured characters rejoicing in the surname Gault. In Thongs the razor king John Gault is known as the werewolf of the Gorbals. In Young Adam, Leslie Gault, an older male character is impotent and the surname is mentioned only once in the entire narrative. For all its faults, Alan insisted that Thongs was of some interest when read alongside Trocchi’s two literary books. There was even a curious almost stream-of-consciousness passage in the novel when the female narrator is raped and imprisoned in a brothel. Because Thongs is a very uneven and unsatisfactory work, it is a useful tool for anyone wanting to unpack Trocchi’s artfully crafted depiction of proletarian Glasgow in Young Adam.
While purchasing sour-cream Pringles in Sainsbury’s, Alan insisted that since Trocchi was for a time a member of the Situationist International, it made perfect sense to read his work dialectically, Thongs rubbing up against and ultimately sabotaging Young Adam and even Cain’s Book. Trocchi, like many other members of the SI, appeared to come from the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie. Alan insisted that the fact that Guy Debord and Alex Trocchi were rebelling against their privileged backgrounds in no way negated the fruits of that revolt and it was thus more than simply unfortunate that many of those in the media appeared unable to distinguish the Situationist International’s Hegelian Marxism from mere anarchism. While Trocchi was not as rigorous as Debord in elaborating his theoretical positions, those who had not encountered left-communism in all its originality nor understood the nature of its break with the Third International would never grasp the political background to Trocchi’s work, nor the ways in which he was driven to continually reforge the passage between theory and practice.
Alan off-loaded his collection of political books and journals several years before I met him and when he moved on to topics of this type I often found it difficult to follow him. Jacques Camatte was one of the pivotal theorists in this area as far as Alan was concerned, and while I have managed to obtain a number of works by this writer in translation much of the material can only be read in either French or Italian. I have never succeeded in following the lines of argument that caused Camatte to turn from Bordiga’s brand of super-Leninism to a position where capital was viewed as having escaped human control and thus dominated a universal human class.10 Since I am not really qualified to summarise the words that poured from Alan’s mouth as he drove from the Bridge o’ Dee to Bennachie, I shall omit any further description of them. However, it occurs to me that there is one other thing I need to record about Alan’s commentary on Trocchi. He considered it hilarious that in My Life and Loves: Fifth Volume there was a dig at Marx for having identified the proletarians rather than the bohemians as those who would enjoy true freedom.
Once we reached Bennachie, Alan announced that it was the most famous and popular mountain in north-east Scotland. He explained that this fact was easily accounted for. The graceful outline of the mountain; its standing comparatively alone, and being thus discernible and prominent from all points; the magnificent views to be obtained from its summits; and the easiness of access, all contributed to render Bennachie familiarly known even to those who are not given to mountain climbing. Situated in the Garioch, between the Don and the Gadie, its principal tops, from east to west are Mither Tap 1698 feet, Craig Shannoch 1600 feet, Oxen Craig 1733 feet, Watch Craig 1619 feet, Hermit Seat 1564 feet and Black Hill 1412 feet.
Since it rose 1000 feet above the surrounding countryside, Bennachie was visible from many of the sites I’d visited with Alan. It stood, black and brooding, dominating the landscape. Mither Tap, the second highest peak was actually the most prominent since the land fell away more sharply there than at Oxen Craig, which rose above it. While Alan can quite fairly be characterised as an ardent admirer of 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess, he considered the text deficient in that the only Bennachie peak visited was Mither Tap, and that by the sheerest route. We had decided to take a day off from testing the veracity of Callan’s work and so Dudley was left behind in the car while we explored the full extent of the mountain. Our first ascent was of Mither Tap since this is the most popular and most frequently visited of the peaks and the one we already knew. The
distance between Mither Tap and Oxen Craig was about a mile and a quarter. At Oxen Craig the view was most extensive and although the day was not perfectly clear, we easily made out many distant mountain peaks. Lochnagar, Ben Avon, Beinn a’ Bhuird and Ben Rhinnes were all lightly covered in snow, while Mount Keen, Morven, Clochnaben, Mount Battock, Hill of Fare, Back of the Gabrach, Tap o’ Noth and many lesser hills were seen in the nearer distance. There was a brief shower once we reached Oxen Craig but it soon cleared.
Below Garbit Tap, midway between the tops we visited, but a little to the south, there is an old disused quarry and adjoining it a ruined smiddy. For a number of years in the 19th century this was the abode of William Jamieson, a character known locally as the Heddie Craw o’ Bennachie. Jamieson was a social outcast and he acted the bogie man to all the children round about so well that for a time his celebrity spread outside the immediate area. We made our descent to Beeches Well and then skirted around the base of the mountain and back to the car. After our hill-walking we were hungry so we charged back to Aberdeen on the A96. Once the car was parked outside Alan’s flat on Union Grove we walked the short distance to Pappagallos on Holborn Street. There’s nothing like a light but perfectly prepared Italian meal for igniting the fires of passion and over coffee we agreed to repair to Union Grove for a horny-arsed fuck.
Alan’s flat was much sparser than the first time I’d visited it. There were no longer any books in the bedroom. Indeed all the furniture had been removed and the clothes he still possessed were heaped up in a corner. There was no longer a bed, just a mattress on the floor with a rough blanket thrown over it. Alan went through to the kitchen to fetch some whisky and some time later returned with a bottle. The Laphroaig was placed on the floor and my love descended upon me like shadows at dusk enveloping a pretty country hamlet. His roseate limbs seemed floating in celestial light. I stretched up my arms and told my love how delightful it was to be with him now. I felt his dear hands groping between the lips of my palpitating sex. I opened my thighs and heaved my bottom as I murmured that Alan should feel up my cunt, how hot it was in its longing for his prick. His fingers tickled me nicely but it was his cock I wanted, his cock encased to its very root in my maidenhood.
Alan turned me over and lay upon my back. He slipped a blindfold over my eyes and then drew back so that he might drain his dram. He moved forward and poured my dram down my throat. I could no longer see Alan but I could feel him, his arm around me and his warm body pressing me deliciously. He put his prick in my hand. It was large and stiff. Letting the head pass through my fingers, I drew back the soft covering skin. I felt it bound in my hand. I told Alan to put it inside me as I drew his root towards my cunt. I told him I was longing for the plunge and that my cunt was burning with desire. I felt the head rub between my moist lips. I felt it press on the heated orifice. I heaved up and it slipped in. I let out a little scream of pleasure as it passed up my sex extending each humid fold and sensitive crease of the damp passage. The prick felt larger than usual and I was suffocated with rapture at the way Alan fucked me, since it was rare for him to treat me so roughly.
Alan rammed home his prick with desperate energy and with a low moaning cry shot forth a torrent of boiling spunk. I felt my cunt filled to overflowing. I knew it was bubbling out at the sides. I passed my hand over Alan. He had grown larger and heavier since we’d last fucked. His skin was less soft than I remembered. Then Alan, or at least at that point I still believed the man to be Alan, stood up. He moved away and then it was Alan who placed his arms around me. I found out later why Alan had taken so long to get our whiskies. He’d fetched the big brute of a student from downstairs. The student had hidden outside the bedroom until Alan had me blindfolded, then he slipped in and took my love’s place. Realising more or less what must have happened, I felt even hornier than usual when Alan shoved his root up my buttered bun. I screamed at Alan not to beat about the bush, he was to fuck me hard. Alan obeyed my instructions and minutes later we’d both come, my insides flooded with spunk once again. Alan got up and poured our guest a dram, I fell back against a pillow and moments later I was asleep.
That night I dreamt that all about me there were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees and beneath a humble valley comforted with a silver river, meadows, emerald with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers and thickets, which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds. Each pasture was stored with sheep feeding in sober security, while pretty lambs with bleating oratory proclaimed the peace and comfort of this arcadia. A shepherd boy was piping as though he would never grow old. A young shepherdess sat knitting and singing, her voice comforting her hands and her hands keeping time with the heavenly music she was spinning. The houses of this valley were scattered about, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off that distance barred mutual succour. A show, as it were, of accompanied solitude and of civil wildness. The scene picturesque and in marked contrast to the black sublimnity of Bennachie, whose pink granite quickly darkens upon exposure to the elements.
NINE
I AWOKE to find Dudley ravishing me, or rather Alan woke me as he helped his ventriloquist’s dummy simulate rape. A large dildo had been screwed into Dudley’s groin and Alan was attempting to ram this up my queynt. I screamed, Alan placed a hand over my face. Shortly afterwards I found myself gagged. I struggled but Alan, who was determined Dudley should have his way with me, had tied my limbs to the four corners of the bed. At some point Alan picked up a short riding crop and beat me. After these stimulations, Dudley’s extension slipped easily inside me. I don’t recall when I’d first confessed to Alan that I had fantasies about being raped by the dummy but he’d listened attentively and the sympathetic way he catered for my sexual needs was very pleasing. After Dudley had exercised his detachable part, Alan brought his moist lips down upon my steaming cunt so that he might worship there. He worked his tongue around my swollen clitoris and thrust two fingers up towards my womb. Eventually he bit the fleshy part he’d so excited with his lingua and an orgasm of immense power and duration shuddered through my heaving bulk.
Alan got on top of me and plunged the chief implement for the propagation of our species into my welcoming vulva. This felt good but what I really wanted was another beating. Alan tore the gag from my mouth and I told him to tan my backside and then fuck me the Greek way. I hadn’t even finished uttering this request as Alan began unfastening my bonds. Roughly, very roughly, he rolled me onto my stomach and then began to horsewhip me. Alan, who I momentarily misidentified with Dudley, understood my true nature and my most secret desires far better than I did at that time. Not only did he bring out increasingly deep red blushes as he bruised my buttocks, he worked the crop up and down my legs and back as well. As Alan explained to me later, a single area of flesh that is whipped soon goes numb and the slave being chastised feels little pain. Since I was seeking more than mere humiliation my pleasure was maximised by enlarging the area of my distress. Eventually Alan threw the crop down and mounted my chaffed buttocks. Oh joy to feel him burst through the puny resistance offered by my sphincter muscles and plunge up my backside. My partner had made perhaps ten strokes before the sap rose within him and he fell upon my back, smothering me like a collapsing building.
We dozed before rising. As he made breakfast Alan began talking about Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster by Andrew Murray Scott. Alan was indifferent about whether Trocchi was well served by this biography, what interested him as a reader was what he could get from the book. The laughs squeezed from filtering Trocchi through the perspectives of Scottish nationalism were both hollow and purely unintentional on Murray Scott’s part. Indeed, Andy Scott had so little understanding of his subject that one doubted he had the intellectual capacity to knowingly lie. Dismissable as he was, Alan continued dismissing Murray Scott as we drove to Ellon. We passed through the town and doubled back on ourselves as we laced the four and a half mi
les by minor roads to South Ythsie stone circle. Alan parked the car at the top of a lane that led down to the monument. He threw Dudley over his shoulders and we took our bearings from a wooden arrow marked with the words ‘stone circle’.
The circle had been ‘restored’ in 1994 on the initiative of a local heritage project, which meant that at the bottom of the lane there was a notice board with information about the stones. We followed the path around a corner and crossed a field of corn where a sign proclaimed ‘Cross here’. There were six stones with a mound of earth heaped up around them. The earth was indicative of the problems of restoration, since it was not clear whether those who erected the stones intended to heap earth around them or if this feature was a later addition. The earth mound had been removed more than 100 years ago and recently restored. The main Aberdeen-to-Fraserburgh road was a couple of fields behind us, so there was no danger of anyone using the ‘A’ route noticing as Alan wedged Dudley in the cleft of the split south-west stone, then got me to jerk him off into the dummy’s face.
Once Alan had zipped up he slung Dudley over his shoulders and we made our way back to the car. We were using back roads since they got us closer to where we were going than the arterial routes radiating out from Aberdeen. Our journey towards the Shethin stone circle was circuitous. As he drove Alan talked about Alexander Trocchi’s work with the Olympia Press and John de St Jorre’s book The Good Ship Venus: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press. Of course, Olympia was not simply a pornographic operation, it also published ‘serious’ works by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet when few other English-language publishers would touch them. Alan said he’d known what to expect from de St Jorre from the kick-off, since in his preface this cretin speaks of banned books being burnt in the same way heretics were burnt by religious tyrants. Alan was always quick to denounce the cruel inhumanity of liberal fuckwits who wantonly blurred the lines between human life and the products of a literary culture that had yet to escape its commodity form.