Mark Wankstain chose not to pass a full evening in the company of his parents. Over supper, his addiction to peppering his discourse with yeahyeahyeahyeah!’s and his incessant liking became more pronounced and more grating on the nerves of his mother; a like effect being exerted by the unthinking and patronising bonhomie with which he treated his … er … father. As to his cuisine he proved cheerfully fastidious, spurning most of the smorgasbord of organic bonbons sourced by his mother at ruinous expense from the Fucking Organic Hippy Supermarket in Sevier Street, negotiating instead the delivery of a species of gourmet beefburger with a side order of kale, this arriving with unfeasible despatch courtesy of a Balkan gentleman in a crash helmet. After supper, tossing back yet another like damn like fine like coffee, he stood up abruptly, announcing: —
Gourmet beefburger, Sevier Street
Mr Tad Curmudgeonly, lordly luminary of the local offices of that venerable campaigning organisation the Vert Rouge, was delighted to make acquaintance with this johnny-come-lately whelp of his sister, and waxed exceedingly loquacious under the influence of the obscure and précieuse gin with which he was plied by the fellow. Apart from looking somewhat askance at the, shall we say, semitic appearance of the surname with which his nephew had somehow saddled himself, he betrayed vey little curiosity as to the provenance of the cove, being keen to expatiate at considerable length upon certain of his own interests - the soulless alienating so-called efficiency of modern commercial agriculture, the numberless multitudes of benighted subcontinental farmer-wallahs whom the thraldom of modern crop science had driven to make away with themselves, and the spiritual desiccation of modern schooling, with its gradgrindian fixation upon rote learning and competitive sports; all practices serving only to gratify the instincts of the bloated and rootless cosmopolitan bankster and the portly zionist factory magnate. From these topics, he strayed as the fancy took him up and down many and diverse conversational lanes and by-ways, frequently finding himself in dialectical culs-de-sac, from which he only with difficulty extricated himself, and then only by means of summoning the assistance of his nephew. —
Mr Tad Curmudgeonly, Vert Rouge
For his part, Dr Mark Wankstain tolerated this imposition with his customary equanimity; and when, vey late that night, he finally returned to the familial bungalow in Mangotsfield, it was with the consciousness of having gleaned from the tsunami of his uncle’s verbiage at least one nugget, namely that Uncle Curmudgeonly felt a profound personal distaste for Mr Crass Cheseham. —
Dr Mark Wankstain, Mr Crass Cheseham, Mangotsfield
“It pains me to say this, but the man’s gorn bush. Bosom pals with all the big chief bone-in-the-nose trustafarians in Montpelier. Fect of the metter is, dear boy, squalid and distasteful though the business be, you’re best off appointin’ him yer agent for the ward contest.” —
Montpelier
Dr Mark Wankstain had further occasion for rejoicing when, early on the morrow, Mr Crass Cheseham unexpectedly presented himself before the frosted glass of the Casa Ledwitch. Dr Mark Wankstain, plastering to the front of his face a perfectly blinding rictus of joy, perused the Cheseham person with his practiced eye for tailoring. Cheseham made, if the truth be told, a most unlikely gigolo. Somewhat lackadaisical as to his sartorial arrangements, he gave the impression of middle age run to seed, the overall tone being of a pervasive dirtiness. He bestrode the world’s stage upon a pair of cheesers shod in grimy brown construction worker’s boots, these being surmounted by a pair of crumpled and grimy black denims, which had contrived to withstand time’s ravages, albeit without having done so with the least distinction. The raiments just mentioned were in their turn surmounted by a vest which in its virgin state may vey well have been of a tolerable whiteness, but was now merely grimy, this enclosed by a scarlet and black and comparably grimy work shirt, the entire ensemble being crowned with an incomparably grimy black beanie hat. Cheseham did not remove this latter item during the morning’s transactions, whence it was Dr Mark Wankstain’s private surmise that the terra incognita beneath was but stony ground for a gentleman’s coiffeur. Of Mr Cheseham’s deportment, there was vey little to be said that was in the least manner edifying. Suffice to say that he vey expeditiously made it known that his chief business in day-to-day life was to hawk, to spit, and to utter oaths unleavened by the least pretence to wit. In addition to these pastimes, and no matter how refined the company in which he found himself, he would with a grimy digit mine for its nacreous treasures his grimy proboscis, which was every bit as red as ill-nature and intemperance, in robbing them of their former lustre, had made his eyes. —
Mr Crass Cheseham
“Yeahyeahyeahyeah!” quoth again Mark Wankstain, “and like there’s like going to like like be a like election, yeah? In like Montypee, yeah?” —
Montpelier
“Yeahyeahyeahyeah!” cried Mark Wankstain, “like I like thought like I like might like stand for like the like Confuckin’servatives, yeah?” —
Confuckin’servatives
Mr Crass Cheseham, deficient in reason as he was, had notwithstanding been blessed, if that is the word for it, with a certain vegetal cunning, and anticipated with a distinct lack of relish that, upon his concluding his explication of the political landscape, Dr Mark Wankstain might be moved to oppress him with close questions pertaining to the Quicksotte/Ledwitch investment portfolio. There was in fact one awkward moment when Dr Mark Wankstain, reaching into the pocket of his brown jacket, extracted a hipflask, and said, in a mangled sort of hipster hillbilly accent, —
Quicksotte/Ledwitch investment portfolio
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