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Steve Finbow
Author: Steve Finbow
  Hillary Raphael, neo-geisha & author of I (Heart) Lord Buddha & Ximena, asks Steve:  

Why are such a disproportionately large number of literary theorists into sadomasochistic sex?

Yeah, why is that? Let’s see. Well, theorists create a power exchange through text – their text subverts & supplants the master text. Some critics – Dale Peck for example – inflict pain & humiliation on their subjects – poor Rick Moody. Jacques Derrida’s work is almost algolagnic in its enjoyment of literary and generic dissection – look at The Post Card. Both literary theory & S/M (S/Z – Barthes) are means of control. The theorist/critic treats the author/work as if they/it were a masochist. The original master text rejected in favour of the slave-now-master text. Critic as sadist – the deferred death of the author. Look at the complementary relationship between critic & writer, theory & text – violent love – a transformation from slave to master. In Deleuzean terminology: The Contract: how one person controls the other, sexual enjoyment through delayed gratification – or Différance in Derridean terms – the infinite delay of the signified – master/slave, signifier/signified, author/theorist. The perfect fit is in Sartre’s theories of sadism & masochism: the work of the author subjected to the “abyss of the Other’s (i.e. the theorist’s) subjectivity” – Being & Nothingness. Or the ultimate sadomasochistic/theoretical acts – Maurice Blanchot’s escape from a Nazi firing squad in 1944, Michel Foucault out for the night in San Francisco (Death and the Labyrinth), or Nietzsche eating his own faeces.
Submission Date:
06 Dec 2008 Category:   Short story In Podcast and Chap-book
down among the dead - part seven

To listen to Steve Finbow reading part seven of his story, click the play button click here to play now.


I didn’t notice until now – just goes to show how bollocksed I was last night – but Tony only has four teeth – upper ones. His mouth looks like a neon advertisement for TEETH but with one blinking out so it reads TEE H. The rest of his mouth is a purple hollow where the tongue freely fucking roams. While I’m thinking this, Tony is asking me a question and I don’t quite catch all of it and I say, Sorry, fella, what was that you were saying? I need to get this over with. Fucking eejit I was last night to go shooting my mouth off. Getting old, Michael, I say to myself. Past it. Tell us about the funeral again. The second one, Tony says. Ach, it was a long time ago, so it was. I can’t remember. You remembered last night, all right, didn’t he, Eddie? Yep, right down to the make a the underpants those army guys was wearing. Ah, fellas, I say. An old man’s imagination. I was there or thereabouts but had nothing to do with the goings on. I was home with my feet up by the fire by then with the wife and the girl. Thought they’d buggered off by then, says Tony. Done a runner to her parents, that’s what you said. Some swanky place. You said you’d gone round, kicked the door in, and threatened to kneecap her old man if he didn’t let you see your daughter. That’s what you said. An old man’s dreams, Tony my lad. It was the drink talking. I’m mixing in my mind things that happened and things I’d like to have happened. Do you never daydream, lad? Oh, I daydream all right, pops. I daydream all the time – house in the country, yacht, gorgeous bird. But I don’t think it’s real. I don’t go down the pub and tell everyone I meet that I’m a fucking millionaire when I ain’t. So, let me remind you. Look, Tony, Eddie, fellas, I’ve really got to be going. Mrs. Quinn will have my guts for garters if my food is spoiled. She’ll be looking down the street after me, wondering where I’ve got to. Thirty seconds and I’ll let you go, Tony says, it’s just been bothering me since last night. Not you going on about the cause and the old country – I dunno why all a you bastards don’t fuck off back there, you go on about it so much – no, it was that last thing you told us. I’ll start. You interrupt if I’m wrong. I hear footsteps coming from out back and see Jane, dressed to the nines, behind the bar, the lad whispering in her ear. She looks at me and mouths, Everything all right? And I half shake my head, half nod. My stomach feels hollow, not sure if it’s because of this fella not six inches from my face or the fact that I need to get some air, go to the bookies, eat some food. Jane opens the till and pretends to check the takings. Second funeral you’d been to that week. First one, some nutter shoots the fucking thing up – some balls he must’ve had – he kills three people right and he was aiming for that geezer who looks like a bearded ferret – Adams, that’s right – and so the next funeral for one a them that got shot, two army guys are spotted by the crowd – including you – and you chase ‘em, corner ‘em, drag ‘em out of their motor, drive ‘em to a sports ground – very fucking sporting – where you strip ‘em, torture ‘em, throw ‘em over a wall – brave, brave – drive ‘em in a taxi to some wasteground, and then some a you – and you didn’t say who, no matter how many drinks I bought you, I’ll give you that – some a you shoot and knife the poor fuckers and leave their bodies there – rotting in puddles, I think you said, s’that right Eddie? Rotting in puddles, something like that, Tone. I was just telling you a bit of history, lads. Nothing more. I go to get up but Tony puts his hand on my chest and I can feel my heart thump. I begin to sweat. Jane says, You OK, Michael? About time you were getting home, love, innit? You’re probably right, I say. Jane says, You fellas want another or are you on your way? Tony looks at me, his lips thin, pursed. We’re OK, he says. Just having a chat with Michael here about the old times. Seems he’s a bit confused. That, or we got the wrong end of the stick, like. Jane puts on her coat and says, I’ll walk you down the street, Michael. It’s on my way. Tony and Eddie leave. What was all that about? Jane says. Were they in here last night with you? Aye, I say. Let my gob and my imagination run away with me. Learned my lesson, I say. You’re too old for that, you old sod, Jane says. Come on. We leave. Tony and Eddie outside, leaning on a black car, arms folded, watching the pub. Jane takes my arm. We walk along the High Road and I forget to call in the bookies to check my bets.

                                                                                                                     ***

The apes doss around, lazy and surprisingly fat, waiting for food, staring, and baring their teeth. They’re not apes at all, it says in the brochure, they’re monkeys, macaques to be precise. Ach, like most Irishman. Not Irish at all, half-English, half-Scots, half-bloody-Spanish some of ‘em. To tell you the truth, the monkeys are better looking. Harder working as well. And I’ll have to remember this one to tell the girl – what language do the Gibraltar monkeys speak? Gib-berish – d’you get it? Ach, I’m kidding. I stroll around for a bit and look at the view – the sea, Africa… Pillars of fucking Hercules. I check my watch and take the cable car back down to the Grand Parade and walk back to the hotel, pick up my car and drive to the frontier. Gibraltar – a UK overseas territory, ach, so’s the fucking six counties, mind. The neutral zone – my mind, more like – yes, sir, no, sir, three fucking fellas full, sir. Then La Linea – Spain – the way home and back to what? I get to the frontier at midday and find a café with a good view. Not much is happening apart from a stream of people crossing the border and planes landing at the airport. No added security as far as I can tell. I order a cold drink, position my chair so I can look out the window, and pretend to read my book. Pretend. Ach, that’s what I’m always doing. Pretend to be a husband. Pretend to be a father. Pretend to give a shite about the cause when all it is is a means to an end, but what that fucking end is I’ll never be sure. My end – Michael O’Connor – big man. Irish Republican Army volunteer. Seen things that would make you sick to your stomach. Make your knees wobble – if you had any left. But this is it. After this, I’m out. Whether the wife and the girl come with me or not. Ach, they will. They will. Maybe I won’t catch that return flight. Maybe I’ll drive up into the mountains. Visit Granada – the Alhambra Palace. Then drive on through Spain. Stop off in Barcelona. Visit a few civil war sites – Jarama, Madrid, Ebro, finish off in Guernica. I wonder if those mad Basque bastards are still around. Then drive into France, call the wife and the girl from there, ask them to come over – the wife knows where the money is. I don’t want her asking her da. Stay in a little village – drink some wine, take the girl horse riding. Ach, there’s loads of churches in France – the wife loves churches. Lourdes is just over the Pyrenees – we could meet up there. Now, that would be a fucking miracle. What I can’t understand is why the Brits didn’t come for me sooner. Surely, those brochures didn’t fool them. All they had to do was stick a few plainclothes boys on me, follow me for a day, they’d have seen me meeting with known fellas in known places. I mean, you can’t be so thick as to watch me go into a house on Beechmount Avenue, the walls painted with murals of an Irishman hand in hand with a member of the PLO, sharing a fucking rocket launcher for fuck’s sake, or one of your man James Connolly staring out at you from between the tricolour and the starry fucking plough. Why wait and come for me then? Why wait until I’d decided to get out? Why kick my door down in front of the wife and the girl? Shove me to the ground. Filthy fucking boots on my face. And I could hear the wife and the girl crying in the kitchen. Then they hooded me – right there in my own home, tied my arms behind my back, and carried me out to the fucking Saracen. Then those cold brick walls – that fucking chair. They kept me hooded. The odd drop of water. No food. I lost all track of time. Thought I’d been there a day. I’d been there three. The fella who questioned me had an Irish accent – Dublin, maybe – but I could hear English voices as well, in the background, just out of reach. I wasn’t allowed to sleep, or piss. Once, they soaked the hood with water and I couldn’t breathe. Choking. Gagging. Suffocating. I said nothing. Then the whispering started. In my ear. Close up. Intimate. About your man. About the wife. About the girl. He kept it up for hours. I’m not sure if there was one or two of them. Soft voice. Soft voices. While you were gone, Michael. Soft. While you were in America. Whisper. Why do you think they make you run errands? Softer. Out of Belfast a lot, aren’t you, Michael? Whispering. Where to next? Voice. Palestine? Voices. When it was all over, when they stopped with the whispering, the voices, they drove me to waste ground not far from the house. The Saracen stopped. I could hear the engine running then the doors opened, and I felt a shove or a kick on my back and I was on the floor still hooded, my hands untied. The Saracen pulled away and I tore off the hood. I was sobbing, spit running down my chin, snot in my mouth, my eyes red and streaming. I staggered back to the house. I knocked. The lights were out. I saw curtains twitch in the houses opposite. They’d changed the lock. They’d changed the fucking door. They were gone.

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