gullybogan

Dear Reader,

We’re still in the past.

Now it’s the middle of xmas day.

All the presents have been unwrapped.

Sybylla has arrived on our doorstep with Astraboy. I’m hoping that it was her who drove the car on the way over here, on account of how drunkenly Astraboy is weaving as he walks to the table.

Sybylla brushes past me in the hallway, head down, steering Astraboy straight to the kitchen. I notice she’s wearing the same thing she was wearing last night, when we left for Carols and she was still putting the finishing touches to her make-up. Except that now her outfit looks like she’s slept in it, and possibly done some gardening in it at some stage, too.

They’ve arrived late. The turkey that Princess has gotten up at some ridiculous hour this morning to turn the oven on for so that it will be perfectly cooked by the stroke of noon has been “resting” on the stovetop for almost an hour. We have to plate up straight away, even as Sybylla and Astraboy walk/stumble to the table, without any further formalities. This has to be accomplished before the turkey passes officially and undeniably into that inconvenient and unusable phase between hot and cold – the dreaded Toxic Tepids.

Only Princess and Astraboy will be eating of the turkey at this meal, while it is still in the hot phase, since Sybylla and myself shun the consumption of flesh. The rest of the turkey is destined for consumption in its cold phase, at Princess’s family gathering this evening.

Astraboy sits at the table while we rapidly assemble the many rapidly cooling components of the meal at the kitchen bench. His eyes are the eyes of someone who has drunk too much the night before, and not slept enough in the time in between then and now.

« So, » Princess begins, sitting down once everyone has a plate in front of them. « How was your xmas eve? »

« Pretty fucken good, » Astraboy confides, in a laid-back, rock star drawl. « Fuck, we drunk a shitload of piss last night. What the fuck’s this? »

« That’s a parsnip, » Princess elucidates. « It’s a vegetable. »

He lurches forward alarmingly, as if he is about to perform a black diamond faceplant in the plate before him. « Yeah, i can see it’s a fucken vegetable… Parsnip. Shit, hey, Freckle. We’ve got fucken parsnip for lunch! La dee fucken da! »

It seems that his pet name for Sybylla is Freckle. Singular. This is a new development. I look forward with some dread to finding out the origin of this pet name.

« So you had lots to drink last night, » Princess continues, trying to make pleasant chat despite the obvious futility. « And… what did you have to eat? »

« Eat? » Astraboy asks, his tone indicating that Princess has leveled an affront against his manliness. « Well, we didn’t eat any fucken parsnips, that’s for fucken sure. »

He has a piece of parsnip speared on the tanes of his fork and he’s examining it like it’s a human eye he’s found in amongst his potatoes.

« Well, » Princess continues, valiantly, « Did you have… dips or anything? »

Astraboy smiles smugly. « Freckle and me had a dip, you could say. Ain’t that right, Freckle? »

And he sits there with that smug smile on his face, like the cat that’s swallowed the cream. Or like the cat who’s shot the cream up inside the person sitting alongside him at the kitchen table.

Sybylla looks up, and i see her face. I realise that i haven’t seen her properly, not looked her in the face fully, since she’s arrived: what with the wrangling of the drunk Astraboy and the rush of getting the meal out onto the table and all. She is about to say something, but i interrupt.

« What happened to your eye? »

Her left eye socket is accented with a bluish tinge that could be bad eighties eye shadow, but is actually a pooling of her own blood beneath her skin.

She looks down, embarrassed. I can’t remember the last time i saw her looking embarrassed, if ever.

« You know how clumsy i am, » she begins, making light of it. And this is true, she is clumsy. She hits her head on things – by accident – all the time. « I was walking into the bedroom at Astraboy’s last night, and i slipped on something on the floor and hit the side of my head against the door frame. »

The three of us sit in total silence, letting the story explaining her black eye settle upon us. Astraboy, oblivious, picks up one of my cans of UDL that Sybylla has brought him to table with his meal, and slurps from it noisily.

« You slipped on something? » i ask, finally.

« Yeah. It was dark, and there were a lot of empty cans and stuff… »

« And what the fuck’s this? » Astraboy asks, holding up something darkly orange on his fork where the parsnip had lately been featuring.

« Pumpkin, » Princess elucidates. « It’s a piece of pumpkin. Surely you’ve seen pumpkin before? »

Astraboy snorts. « I got a cousin up country; feeds pumpkin to his pigs. »

I can actually see, dear Reader, the words forming in Princess’s mind, and i wait for her to say out loud that it looks like she, too, feeds it to pigs, sometimes. But she doesn’t. We eat the rest of the meal in relative silence, only broken by food-identification questions or exclamations from Astraboy.

The plum pudding is a boiled one, and proves to be delicious. I remark upon how delicious it is. Astraboy says that it’s like eating brains. Princess asks if he’s ever actually eaten brains, with some Tone in her voice. He says he’s not a fucken zombie, pours more and more brandy custard onto the pudding, and stirs it, until his bowl is brandy soup with raisin croutons.

The meal ended, the table cleared, i start running the hot water in the sink for the washing up (or “the foreplay”, as Princess and me refer to it between ourselves). Astraboy manages to stand and takes Sybylla’s hand, pulling on her arm until she stands, too.

« Freckle and me is just going into her room for a little while, just so as youse can do the washing up and shit. Don’t mind us, hey. »

I look Sybylla in her bruised eye, telepathically sending her a message that this is too much, and that this will not be tolerated.

I refuse to accept that i have to stand at a sink and scrub greasy baking pans while the dinner guest from hell fucks my second-best friend in the next room.

Sybylla reads my telepathy with no apparent transcription errors and manages to get Astraboy to sit down at the table again. We try to get a four-way conversation going, but Astraboy has decided that – a fuck in the next room having not coalesced – the time and place is right for some heavy petting.

I put down the greasy baking pan i’m scrubbing and walk over to Sybylla. I disentangle her from Astraboy’s mitts, and stand her up.

« I think it’s time your boyfriend went home and slept this off, » i posit to her in a low voice.

She fixes her bra straps and straightens her top before saying that she agrees.

They’ve come in his car, and it occurs to me that if i send him home in a taxi, he won’t have his car, and thus he won’t be able to drive over here and harrass visit her. But that is a short term solution, at best.

With the aid of some clever distraction tactics and a little sleight of hand, we get him into the car. Everything is going to plan until Sybylla climbs into the driver’s seat. I tell her that it’d be best if she stayed here, i drove the Astra, and Princess followed up in one of our cars to bring me home again. Sybylla says that she’ll be fine, and that someone needs to see to him at the other end. I promise not to just dump him on the doorstep, but she says that she really should be the one to take him home.

I tell her i’ll get my car out, so i can follow her and bring her home when she’s done putting Astraboy to bed, or into the empty bath where he can piss and vomit with impunity, or whatever it is she has planned. She says that she’s OK, that everything’s fine, that she’ll be back in the morning.

It is at that moment, of course, that Astraboy opens his door and throws up in the gutter. Baked potato, parsnip, pumpkin, turkey, and brandy custard all relish the return to the light of day.

« I’ll be fine, » Sybylla says again, looking at me with her two green, cat’s eyes, the left one ringed with blue. « Really. »

So she gets into his car, and drives away with him. I watch those ugly, pragmatic Astra tail-lights disappear into the distance.

« So, » Princess says, sounding more tired than usual for a xmas afternoon. « Are you ready for my family now? »

For the first time in some years, dear Reader, her family xmas looked relatively unthreatening and angst-free. Possibly even inviting.

Yours,
Gullybogan