Over the succeeding week or two, it became apparent that Farokh, now restored to health, withal he was an Engineer both in name and calling, and despite also his subordination as Herod’s creature to that wretch’s Operational satrapy, yet was operating quite outside the parameters of the mezzanine/penthouse prize algorithm agreed between management and myself as the representative of the human guinea pigs. This blackleg scab rushed to do the bidding of his fatcat capitalist bosses rolling in cash, and thought nothing of running roughshod over the legitimately democratic and democratically legitimate aspirations of the ordinary rank-&-file gym-going members of Pex ‘n’ Quads whom it was my honour to represent. At all hours of the day and night, with no regard for propitiating the sensitivities and susceptibilities of the host culture, he was to be observed, clutching various rubber and steel and glass apparatuses, and plunging beneath the waves of Charybdis; and rooting around, evidently, among Charybdis’s pipes where, as he continued to assert, he did find the lair of the worm. We announced the scandal to the ears of Herod. But those ears did not burn with shame. Instead, that saucy idolatrous knave only laughed in our faces, and bid us about our business with crude, vulgar and plosive epithets, oaths, and apophthegms. —
Farokh, Charybdis (Pex ‘n’ Quads), Herod, Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize
In truth, the disgusting behaviour of Farokh the Engineer little concerned me personally, for I wore my formal responsibilities lightly, only observing their superficial trappings, and would not have cared a jot even if the proprieties had been violated in letter and eke in spirit too, as indeed they were, so long as the very shallowest of pretexts could have been found for allowing such violations to pass beneath my notice. At root, the complaint against Farokh the Engineer was simply that he was too flagrant in his depredations and rievings. —
Farokh
January 20. The Feast Day of St Sebastian, the patron saint of exercise. And by yon indirect way, of gymnasia. At any rate, those superstitious priest-ridden idolaters Peggy and John Virgil would have it so. Those Romish foundlings, suckling at the withered dugs of the triple-breasted whore of Babylon, in their ignorance and ecstatic folly insisted that the Feast Day be marked in some way, and to this purpose sought the endorsement of the departments of Diversity and Diversity-Compliance. John Virgil obtained the requisite signatures; from Nero Cesare, by dint of showing him the contents of his bucket – no invitation to his windowless office being deemed necessary; and from Petra Mountjoy very willingly, that harridan still smarting with indignation over the undermining of her authority in the matter of the apprehension, torture and liberation of Farokh the Engineer. —
Nero Cesare, Peggy, Petra Mountjoy, John Virgil, The bucket
The culmination of all this papist fuckery was a primitive and atavistic auto da fé, taking the form of an acceleration of the mezzanine/penthouse prize selection process. It was determined that on this holy occasion no less than three penitenti were to be subjected simultaneously to the ministrations of the microbe hunters. —
Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize
were drawn from the ancient and venerated brotherhood or order of the old men eternally washing their nethers under the showers in the metamorphosis suite. Some of the more foresighted among our number recognized that the ranks of this sect were becoming unduly thinned. We had just previously lost Strapon, who was in his own quiet way an associate or adjunct or sympathiser, withal his professional commitments precluded any pretensions to the eternal element of the cockwashing institution. Accordingly, to the purpose of addressing this demographic issue, we dispatched scouts and ambassadors and press gangs and snatch squads to all the pubs and bars in Stokes Croft and St Werbuggers and Easton. —
Stokes Croft
In the Buttplough in Easton, our emissaries chanced upon Onanisticles the Scagsmith. This discarded plastic bag reasoned with us that, since Ianeass the Gimp had by changing place with Costa liberated himself from his thralldom to the Old Disgrace & Bristol Sikhs CC, it followed that he Onanisticles was no longer bound by any ties to Ianeass the Gimp, for the ropes that had bound him to that Gimp were identical with the ropes that had bound that Gimp to his shed, being all part of the same ingrained structure of class oppression. And now like so many freed slaves before him, Onanisticles found himself at a loose end, his life consisting in a purposeless longueur which, but for the necessities of scagsmithery which ever impressed themselves on that benighted soul, would eventually have proved his unravelling. Thus it was that our emissaries made short work of persuading Onanisticles of the advantages and generous ancillary benefits of enrolling as a replacement eternal cockwasher. I am given to understand that, eternal cockwashing being accepted as integral to our cultural heritage, a not insubstantial stipend was offered, and enthusiastically received, and of course regularly blarted on scagsmithery. —
The Buttplough in Easton, Onanisticles the scagsmith, Ianeass the Gimp
Moreover, armed with certain informations proffered by Onanisticles the Scagsmith, and emboldened by the ease with which they had persuaded him to sign up to an eternity of cockwashing, the emissaries approached with similar blandishments Ianeass the Gimp in the bar which he nowadays frequented, viz. the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island. For it was surmised that, in the fullness of his years and given the somewhat mystical elements which were thought to underlie his obnoxiously Mancunian veneer, Ianeass the Gimp would make an extremely good eternal cockwasher. Alas, and all too predictably, our emissaries failed to make it appear to Ianeass the Gimp that he had dreamt up their proposal himself, and were therefore unable to persuade him of its benefits. After this debacle, they considered whether they should visit the Old Disgrace in order to tempt Costa back into the Pex & Quads fold. However, their reasonings determined them against such a measure. Firstly, Costa would have made an exceedingly young old man eternally washing his nethers. Secondly, they feared the development of an Hotel California situation, for having assumed the sacerdotal duties of Ianeass the Gimp, Costa would inevitably detain them for as many shed-bound games of chess as it would take them to become quite forlorn. —
Onanisticles the scagsmith, Ianeass the Gimp
Withal, as we did then discover, the eternal cockwashers were not quite naked; only nearly so. For there clung about the loins of each a comedy loincloth, the intention being evidently to make this tableau vivant evoke ille Salvator et dui latrones. There was nothing markedly Christlike, and only a little that was thief-like, about any of the three eternal cockwashers. For, to speak quite generally, they conformed to the family of resemblances constituting the brotherhood of the eternal cockwashers. That is to say, they were markedly thinner than the average Psorietist; although the fact must be mentioned that the Psorietists were an institution polarised in terms of their adiposity; a marked preponderance of the type being of considerable girth, whilst there also subsisted a not insubstantial minority which cleaved to a lean and willowy tendency. That is further to say, that they were for the most part older than most Pstorietists, being as they were the votaries of an order that was explicitly for eternal cockwashers that were old; and in such wise, older than any representation of the Saviour that has any pretensions to conventionality. —
Psorietist, Eternal cockwashers
To my taste, as fastidious in observing the proprieties as a Sourdust or a Barquentine, this was all anyway a disgusting obscenity, a blasphemy against the weeping entreaties of the orphans and the spilt blood of the saints whose wounds had crimson mouths which cried out for justice. For surely a ceremonial associated with St Sebastian ought to involve, rather than this sorry pastiche of Easter in which old eternal cockwashers stood in for the young Saviour and two thieves, instead a ritual shooting with arrows, ritual nursing back to health, ritual heckling of a ritual Diocletian, and a ritual second execution; all of which sounded well within the project-managerial capacities of, for instance, John Virgil. Withal, I did grit my teeth and go along with these wrong things, not wishing to attract attention to myself for fear that there might revive in the breast of Stig O'Dump that pervert’s groundless suspicion of my involvement in the Mystery of the Phantom Crapper. —
Stig O’Dump
I swallowed as best I could my fears about how John Virgil Haruspex and Peggy would react to having their ceremonial contrivances disparaged by the bourgeois helot in the ivory tower who had no idea what it was like to have to etc and should check his privilege. In such a grave matter, I determined that I for once would speak with sincerity. —
Peggy
The eternal cockwashers needed no further bidding, but did instantly and eagerly divest themselves of their pelvic encumbrances, and in less time than it takes to say strip Jack naked were exactly that. Nought abashed by their possessions of man boobs and the manner in which their multiple herniations glittered and shone and quite overmatched the mundaner actualities of their honourable members, these Aryan sadhus instantly raised a querulous and reedy clamour for soap and/or shower gel and a shower to stand under, for that they would at all events resume their eternal function of cockwashing. John Virgil Haruspex grew impatient at this further prevarication and, with the help of Colloid who entertained no scruples whatsoever in regard to the manhandling of elderly nudists, roughly propelled the martyrs up the steps and into the roaring din and foam. Peggy lifted an elephantine leg, let loose a stentorian not to say pachydermous fart, and laughed dementedly, our confined corner of the spa filling with the stench of the marshlands.. —
Colloid
- Porca Madonna! said Nero Cesare his eyes streaming, Santa Kaka! E la peste de Cipriano. —
Nero Cesare
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