Ravishing

As the regular reader of my blog may know, I am a little shy about having people who know me in 'real life' read my stuff. My reticence is largely born of experience; family members querying my choice of subject matter and suggesting I replace it with "something a bit more cheerful" (my mother-in-law, straight from Central Casting), chums finding it amusing to pop up on my blog and leave their own unique brand of witty comment (Mr Edwards, Mr Bell, both long since banned), and the tiresome risk of professional cross-over, boringly relevant in the job I do (in which I am supposed to if not embody at least represent a fairly neutral presence whose private scribblings and rants are best kept out of the consulting room. The patients really don't need to know what I think of Lance Armstrong, clowns or Yan from British Sea Power.).

So, my blog goes out under an admittedly rickety pseudonym, as do several of the short stories I've had published over the years. I don't get the glory but I get left alone, which means I'm not very often asked to justify or explain, in deeply personal terms, why I've written something. I like it like that.

Not everybody feels the same. Many people, all probably more confident souls than me, publish freely and fearlessly under their own names, presumably uninhibited by concern that their readers may, perhaps quite unreasonably, read their work and look on them with altered, maybe even slightly fearful, eyes.

Let me illustrate. A few weeks ago I was sent the opening chapters of a self-published novel by a work associate of my husband's which, the author was very proud to announce, was tickling the lower reaches of the Amazon charts at number 9,948 ("that puts us in the top 2%".). I've never met this man but somehow ended up on his email list which included hundreds of other names, many of them people as peripheral to his life as me, but others very clearly close colleagues, junior staff, a full spectrum of business contacts, and quite possibly the bloke who gave him two fifty pence coins for a quid when he needed to feed the parking meter outside his Mum's house in Chorley six months ago. We were all asked to buy his book, which he assured us was a 'high spirited chase through the glamorous underworlds of London and Marbella, including loveable rogue character's (sic) you'll feel you've known forever and with some of the more ravishing aspects (his italics) undiluted for an eye-opening read!! (his screamers.).

How could I resist? I opened the document and was propelled straight into the lushly carpeted and tasteful Spanish hotel room of Gavin, who was just in the process of helping the luscious Saskia out of her clothes. Hmm. Let me précis here...."unleashing....firm...wondrous mounds (wondrous mounds??)....straddling... easing herself expertly... huge.......groaned hoarsely...arching her back... those wondrous mounds (he really does like them)... yeah babe... moving in unison... roaring climax... wept with gratitude and the force of the spasms in her uterus (too good to leave out.)."

Well now. All this from the imagination of a fifty eight-year old West London businessman. Maybe it's not imagination, though. Maybe there's a lot more to him than meets the eye. Maybe the Old Rogue has a ravishing past and a knack with the ladies? And maybe, even, a dangerous side? I read on, as far as the part where Saskia, her Wondrous Mounds at liberty once more, is performing an impromptu penile examination on the 'tethered and helpless Ramon' using, imaginatively, a corkscrew. It's not always easy to incorporate the word 'urethra' into a work of literary fiction but as Saskia's uterus can testify, our author favours biological realism. A crude slang term like 'bell-end' would be too general. This is forensically detailed description that would shame a sloppier writer. I'm too overawed to read any more.

I'll never know how the author was greeted when he arrived at his office the day after his 'taster' was circulated, but I would give anything to have been a fly on the wall (though he'd probably have swatted me, "expertly and with lightening reflexes, reducing the succulent insect to a pulsating puddle of scutum and anterior mesoplutum". ). I know that in the outer reaches of his business world, he has certainly acquired legendary status - of a kind - and that marvellous phrase 'wondrous mounds' has been eagerly adopted and heavily used at the slightest and most childish excuse. People are looking at him in a whole new and revised light, wondering about him and his past and his life, and his very state of mind. Which, presumably, is just what he wanted?

Hmm.



©Ishouldbeworking 2011