Yid un Goy Yingl

By D. L. Forbes

After a chance meeting in San Francisco in 1999 of two diametrically dissimilar men; one a Conservative Israeli Talmudic scholar, the other a gay English artist, they are immediately propelled into a complex and often perplexing relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543946062

Book preview

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding, cover, or device other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All rights reserved

© D. L. Forbes 2018

ISBN: 978-1-54394-605-5 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54394-606-2 (eBook)

1. Bio-Fiction 2. Gay Jewish 3. Relationships 4. Sexuality.

For my Israeli friend

And our nonfictional

Time together

Table of Contents

Introduction

An Unpleasant Incident

Mother and Son

The Gutter and Beyond

Shem

Arrival

Staying On

Future

Yid ‘n’ Goy

The Bridge

Fishcakes

The Letter

The Park

Shem’s Tale

Dead and Living People

Someone’s Millennium

An Unfortunate Occurrence

The Royal College of Art

The Bastard Reprise

After the Murder

Voices off

Money

Panic

A Wandering Half-Jew

Copout

Intense Ingestion

The Find

Liars all

Karl

Naked Before God

A Walk

Going More Mad

Memory Lane

Aquatic Hell

Penge

Getting Out

Going somewhere

The Hero Unravelled

Introduction

A learned person, after reading the manuscript of this book, scratched his head and informed me. Well, this cannot be classified as autobiography because of its partly fictional aspect and it is certainly not written in a conventional novel form . . . and although I greatly enjoyed reading it – most thought-provoking and amusing – I cannot actually quite say for sure what it is.

How does one categorise a book that is perhaps 90% fact and 10% fiction – a bio-novel, memoir-fiction? Anyway, it is what it is – and one might even label it bio-mystery inasmuch as the reader can sense what real, and what not.

Therefore, I shall begin:

Once upon a time, there was a man

Once upon a time, there was another man

And once upon a time, these men spent time together, and that is all.

This is an account of some of the things they did.

Some of the things they did to one another, and that is all, too.

San Francisco 2018

1

An Unpleasant Incident

Before dinner as Billy stood washing his hands at the bathroom sink the apartment doorbell rang; startled by the rarely heard sound he glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. Shem stood immobile at the kitchen sink listening intently, naked now after his shower. He looked down at the damp towel that had slipped from his waist and now lay in a cold rumpled faint at his feet as though also unnerved by the doorbell.

Billy took a deep breath, set his face to neutral and stepped the few feet to the apartment door. "Hell-o, who is it?" he called in a bright singsong voice as though happily expecting imaginary friends or neighbours who were quite welcome to pop by at any old time.

It’s the building manager, and I want to speak to you.

Oh, well, I’m sorry but I’m just about to eat, Billy called pleasantly back through the door. I’ll come down and see you in about half an hour, okay?

No. I need to speak to you right now, so open this door.

Billy looked at the door unable to think of any reasonable reply.

I have the pass keys here, so just cut the crap and open the door.

Billy glanced over at Ben the cat, Shem’s cat, recently fed and now sitting back nonchalantly in the middle of the living room floor busily licking a hind leg held high in front of him.

Ten minutes earlier when Billy arrived back at the apartment he put off telling Shem about his morning mishap involving a ride in the elevator with the building manager, nicknamed the Bastard, and Billy’s subsequent earnest resolve to move them out of the apartment by next month – but no time now to explain any of this to Shem. A shock for Shem to find out in this way Billy thought, but nothing he could do about the problem at this moment; the door would open one way or another so he might as well get the unpleasant business concluded. Billy took another deep breath and opened the door wide, deciding not to give a damn what the manager saw or what he would say – sod the Bastard.

The building manager stepped uninvited into the hall, and Billy’s non-caring conviction teetered – but no, he must remember how inconsequential the Bastard and the apartment to his life with Shem. He might casually invite the Bastard to stay for dinner, strip off, and the three of them sit naked around the kitchen table, or sprawl together across or possibly under the table. They three of them would laugh about the farcical situation and the unnecessary toxic energy produced over the alleged illicit residence of a simple little kitty cat, and Shem, still unbeknownst to the Bastard.

The Bastard looked over a Ben. "I see you still got vermin in here."

Vermin, Billy inquired remaining engaged in his calm, non-caring attitude, for in his mind he, Shem, and Ben had already departed. If there is any vermin in this apartment, the vermin appeared just a moment ago and entered uninvited.

The Bastard turned angrily, pointing a finger in Billy’s face. Don’t give me none of your lip, you smart-ass punk.

So, there’s an old moggy in the apartment, Billy replied offhand, Big deal; and so, what are you going to do, sue me, or spank the kitty? Call out the Marines, or maybe call in some of your underage rent-boy chums?

The building manager’s face flushed with rage and astonishment. Tenants did not speak to him this way, ever.

I want this piece of shit cat out of here, and right now. Do you understand that? Seeing Ben’s blue plastic cat-carrier by the side of the couch, he walked into the living room. "Put that vermin in the box, and get the crap out of this building, right now."

And where, Billy snapped back at the Bastard’s unreasonableness and despite his own resolution, am I supposed to take a bloody cat at this time of night?

"I don’t give a damn where you take it, but get that vermin out of this building now; throw the stinking crap-machine under the wheels of a truck for all I care. You signed the lease, punk, which as you know states no pets. No pets allowed in this building. I want you out of here too, you frigging weirdo . . . you speak to me like that, you son of a bitch and I’ll . . .."

Billy, for the next several seconds, or maybe minutes, watched the ensuing action with great concentration and attention to detail entirely detached as the scene played itself out like some non-threatening hallucination moving slowly through time, belonging to a wholly other and more interesting reality.

In this slow-moving frame-by-frame illusion, the Bastard took one faltering step towards Ben and the carrier. Distracted from his grooming, Ben looked up at the Bastard and out of his mouth mid-lick, his little pink tongue stuck out at the Bastard as though goading him. Shem appeared; moving naked through the frames from the left as if in a straight line, up behind the intruder. With tremendous force, Shem slammed down his heavy marble rolling pin with a splintering smudgy crack, across and into the top of the Bastard’s skull. The incredible downward blow dropped the Bastard straight to his knees like an ox felled in a slaughterhouse. From his kneeling position, the Bastard hung for an instant in mid-air before falling forward onto the left side of his face – arms by his sides, his buttocks stuck bawdily in the air.

Billy stared at the Bastard, half expecting him to get up and continue his raving from where he left off. Ben looked over once with sardonic cat indifference and strolled away towards the open front door to investigate. Billy surveyed the glistening blood running from the Bastard’s head, pooling onto the old Turkish rug lying in front of the couch. Billy thought later he might have stood for a long time, watching the hot-looking black blood, if not for the sound of an apartment door closing somewhere in the building. Ben stood making exploratory sniffs beyond the door. Billy rushed over, scooped Ben up, and shut the door. He put Ben down and looked over at his naked friend who breathing hard looked down at the Bastard, the blooded rolling pin clenched in his fist hung limply at his side. Billy saw he needed to make some sort of move, use some initiative, take instant charge of this situation and determine exactly what they must do.

Shem, Billy spoke quietly, his own voice sounding shaky and unfamiliar, please go and put the rolling pin in the kitchen sink and finish making dinner, okay? I’ve hardly eaten anything today.

Shem, pale and expressionless, looked at Billy. He turned and staggered back to the kitchen, dropping the rolling pin with a crash into the sink. Billy walked over to assess the Bastard, the top of his head was horribly caved in – so much blood and dead all right. Maybe, after all, he thought, none of this is so important and the building manager simply dead; a moment ago alive and shouting, and now dead and silent, merely another dead body. Billy thought how throughout the entire 1980’s and 90’s he saw many dying and dead men, and many of those friends or at least people he cared about. Common empathy aside, his particular dead body meant not too much to him.

Billy’s empty stomach growled and he grew lightheaded from hunger or perhaps from the situation and from looking at the dead Bastard. Leaving the Bastard on the floor in his lewd though not wholly unattractive position, which Billy thought rather suited him than not, he turned away and followed Shem into the kitchen.

I’m starving, Shem. Shem looked up from where he sat slouched at the table. Billy tried to smile, how long until we can eat? The sauce smells wonderful.

Shem stared mutely as though hearing and seeing nothing.

Shem, I asked you a question. How long until we can eat? I haven’t eaten anything since last night, and I’m starving, literally starving.

Shem tried to speak but unable immediately to find his voice he swallowed and then coughed to clear his throat. In ten minutes, he muttered quietly, attempting to take his cue from Billy’s measured and apparent indifference to the whole situation. Shem got up, moving slowly to the sink where he filled a saucepan with water for the pasta.

For Billy, Shem’s brutal attack although shocking lasted but a moment. The incident now over, with no further jolts involved – only the residue of death on the carpet and no stings involved there either – not for anyone but the Bastard anyway; a life gone, and now there was but a vacant yet full container of meat on the carpet which would need dealing with, needed in some way disposing of. Did not men routinely murder one another, Billy reasoned watching Shem. Did men not murder just about every other living creature too, slaughtering millions, billions of them all over the world around the clock throughout their entire brutal history.

Shem took a wedge of Romano cheese from the freezer and grated a heap into a dish, and ten minutes later, they ate.

"Your pasta à la Shem, is excellent par usual, Shem."

Shem looked at Billy blankly.

I like particularly in this sauce your use of whole basil leaves with the black olives and chunks of garlic.

Shem poured himself another glass of wine, he did not eat. Billy sat quietly devising their plan of action.

Buttocks pointed heavenward in the darkening living room, the paralysed Bastard’s face pressed on one side against the Turkish carpet. His mind thought of the handsome muscular boy he was to meet again next Tuesday afternoon; his mind smelt again the boy’s intimate unwashed reek of manly Romano cheese, and something else too, the vague smell of blood. His slowly dying brain oozed blood into the rug as his failing vision viewed the verminous cat sitting not a yard away on the carpet, other leg up, licking the old scared site where once existed his expediently detached testicles.

Okay, Shem, Billy moved his empty plate aside. Shem, are you listening to me?

Shem looked up from staring at his wine glass. Vos?

We’ll wait until around three when the building’s completely quiet, then we’ll carry him down to his own apartment; he must have his keys on him. We’ll leave him there and make sure there is no way they can trace him back to us. I’ll take a plastic bag for his wallet and any valuables I can find, to make the apartment look as if a robbery had taken place.

Your Bastard, he would have taken Ben. Shem stated agitating the wine in his glass.

"He’s not my Bastard, Shem."

"‘Get rid of the cat.’ . . . you heard him. He would have murdered Ben. He called Ben vermin."

Yes, I know, Billy replied, without bothering to ask Shem his objection to the use of the word vermin. A word Billy often used himself when speaking of Ben.

Slaying a tyrant such as him, that is not murder, Shem pronounced his voice growing louder. He waved his glass in the direction of the darkened room.

Well, actually, Shem, I think in principle, Billy tentatively suggested, "slaying even an amateurish mini tyrant is considered murder."

"No. The Torah states two witnesses must testify to put a man on trial for murder . . . forcing his way in here, kicking down doors. You heard him . . . he would throw Ben under the wheels of a truck."

"Yes, I know, I heard him . . . Does the Torah really state the need for two witnesses to a murder? With hooded eyes, Shem looked at Billy and seeing no reason to repeat himself, topped up his wineglass instead. Ben and I both saw what happened, Billy continued, though I suppose Ben as a cat, representing a superior species, might not count, ah? Billy stood up from the table. I’m going to make tea; do you want some?"

"Urr, tey," Shem groaned.

You might not know this, Shem, but when you die and go to heaven, the first order of business, apart from getting your initial pair of wings fitted, they give you a nice big mug of strong sweet milky tea. Tea helps with the shock of finding yourself dead, you know, and tea probably helps with the terrible shock of finding out that there really is such a place as heaven after all.

In your English himl, maybe, Shem grumbled.

Oh, you mean you think there might be others?

My grandparents and my parents they survived the crimes and the horror of such men, Shem growled. "Should I now back away and cringe in some corner? Wait for the mamzer, your Bastard, to throw me under the wheels of a truck?"

No, of course not . . . most people I suspect when driven into intolerable situations, instinctively make a stand against their oppressor, and . . . ..

Tell me, Shem interrupted vehemently, what must I do? Must I sit here and wait for them to burst in and trample my life under their feet?

No, you should . . ..

"No. Never!"

No . . . and remember Poland.

"Oy, Shem reached for the wine and filled his glass, go make your English tea."

Thank you, I will. Billy picked up the half-full bottle and placed the wine in the back of the cupboard; he needed Shem drunk right now as much as the poor Bastard needed another hole in his head. He filled the kettle at the sink. I’ll make some tea for you too, Shem, in case you change your mind.

"No, I will not cower in some dark corner, drinking tey . . . the Nazi scum, the filthy Nazi son of a whore . . . A demon who would take Ben away to exterminate him under the wheels of a truck. Peygern zol er!"

Billy went to the bedroom and brought back naked Shem’s sweat pants and a T-shirt. They stayed in the kitchen for the rest of the evening, Billy washed the dishes and placed the rolling pin in the cupboard beside the wine, and then he sat doodling and jotting in his notebook at the kitchen table while Shem minutely cleaned the already clean stove, countertops, and floor.

For hours, they sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and thumbing through a pile of library books. Midnight rapidly approached, and then for Billy each minute dragged like an hour in this unbelievably long day still with no end in sight. Shem lay forward on the table asleep, his head resting on his thick hairy forearms. Every ten minutes Billy went to listen at the apartment door but heard not a sound.

He sat looking at the top of Shem’s head, wondering what would happen to them if they were caught, and how everything changed from second to second anyhow: the endless nothingness of past, now, future . . . past, now, future, so what did any of this matter, and what might happen not even worth considering. What of the Bastard’s life anyway; and was the Bastard’s existence any more or less valuable than Ben’s existence or any other life form; and the lives in the contents of a can of Ben’s cat food, once a whole bunch of breathing vibrant animals who only ever attempted to live happy lives of their own . . ..

Billy stretched his arms and yawned, more than anything he needed to sleep, to go to bed and escape this day of perdition, but his mind continued to race on . . . and a man lay dead in the living room. Just recently, he had read about how animals in nature are at times violent and brutal and at other times kind and generous; for them, their actions hold no contradictions and only man conditions himself to believe he must always act kindly and loving, and never greedy, brutal, or violent. Instead of allowing humans to act as they naturally do, violent and brutal, society creates an unnatural situation turning mankind into a neurotic species, pursuing only the fictitious good, a passive and kind existence, and opposite of what they truly are. Emphasising how we would like to appear while opposing what we are, and thereby giving momentum to what we already are . . . Billy yawned and yawned again watching Shem’s head. He had read how we emphasise only one side of reality, distorting the whole picture, attempting to permit one without the other, creating misery and pain . . . and why condemn killing when all life forms are predatory and thrive on other life forms. We need to face the necessity of violence in our lives, for one way or another all people naturally kill to live . . . and besides, . . . Billy yawned, a huge yawn that caused his mouth to ache and his eyes to water. He thought he should read about this again and write about it in his notebook before he forgot it all entirely, but he needed to go to bed more than he needed to understand the non-meaning to existence. His eyes closed and his head bobbed him into sleep.

Facing the Bastard, paws tucked beneath him, Ben dozed on the couch. He looked as though he were asleep, but his ears remained perked with interest at the small breaths, and the tiny throaty gurgles still emanating from the large blood-stinking new shape on the living room floor.

At two-thirty, Shem grunted in his sleep and Billy woke after five minutes of nodding at the table – and no sound beyond the front door for hours. What, Billy wondered, would he do if Shem refused to leave the apartment or help carry the man he killed, the body, down to his apartment? Well, Billy thought, if Shem is not prepared to lift a finger to help himself there is nothing more I can do for him; and I will call the police. If I did, would Shem then try to murder me, too. Billy stood up – act now he told himself, and quickly, and do not give Shem a moment to think.

Shem. Billy put his hand gently on Shem’s rounded shoulders. Shem jerked stiffly awake, confused and afraid.

Vos tust du?

We have to do this right now, okay? Billy spoke urgently. Come on, I need you to help me. The job will only take a few minutes.

Shem pulled himself up wearily as Billy led the way into the living room. Billy switched on a small reading light by the couch and bent down to examine the body, the broken, splintered skull, a grey-white protrusion of brain clearly visible, the blood having soaked in left little trace now on the surface of the dense dark Turkish rug. Billy knelt down and jerked the edge of the rug sharply – the body fell to one side. Pulling on a pair of rubber household gloves, he manoeuvred a plastic bag over the Bastard’s head to contain any viscous dripping or brain from flopping out as they moved the body. He also did not want to see the Bastard’s half-open, glazed dead eyes staring at him. He planned to carry the leg end and let Shem take the bulk, as the Bastard’s muscular carcass must weigh two hundred pounds plus.

Shem stepped forward. Derloybt mir . . . let me take this.

Go, Shem, Billy thought, relieved at not having to haul the body. Billy rifled through the Bastard’s pockets, removing wallet and keys; he undid the gold chains around the Bastard’s neck, pulled two rings from the fingers, and unclasped the flashy gold watch. He undid the bastard’s belt and unzipped his pants – because as he told Shem, he wanted to add another dimension to this and give the police something extra to ponder.

Billy held the plastic bag in place as Shem groaned, humping the body up across his shoulders. Billy went to the door and listened . . . all remained quiet.

Right, let’s go.

With bare feet, they made their silent way down the three flights of stairs, Billy going ahead to open the ex-Bastard’s apartment door.

Don’t touch anything, Billy whispered as Shem carefully edged his way into the apartment. Billy gently closed the door behind them and let out a sigh of relief. Put him down in the bedroom there, in the same position as upstairs. I’ll look for any valuables.

Shem lowered the dead weight into place, bending the knees, aiming the rump skywards as before, the Bastard’s pants slipped down displaying his buttocks in skimpy black briefs. Shem slid the plastic bag from the head and handed the bag to Billy, noticing with disgust how the slimy brain protruded now even more from the skull. Shem stood contemplating the Bastard’s rounded buttocks as Billy quietly rummaged through drawers and cupboards, making as much mess as he silently could, dropping into the carrier bag any item he thought a young thug intruder might consider worth stealing and within five-minutes he filled the bag. He placed the keys on the floor close to the right hand of the body and then stopped to listen at the door. All remained silent, the tenants safely tucked up in their beds hopefully fast asleep. Stepping into the hall after Shem, Billy closed the door noiselessly behind them. They tiptoed back up the stairs, looking as they went for evidence of blood or any other leakage. Back inside the apartment with the door shut, they leaned back heavily on either side of the hall wall, entirely exhausted, looking blankly at one another.

While Shem went to take a shower, Billy cleaned up splats of blood and cut the bloodied Turkish rug into small sections in the kitchen sink. Thick and tightly woven, the rug protected the salmon pink carpet beneath. He stuffed each piece of the rug into black garbage bags, cleaned the bloody sink, showered, and within half an hour, fell gratefully into bed next to Shem.

As Billy settled against Shem to sleep, he wondered how the Bastard’s body managed to remain that flexible as Shem carried him and repositioned him in his own apartment, and why even after eight hours, rigor mortis had not set in; perhaps Billy thought, because of the Bastard’s years of hanging out at a gym and steroid abuse. The lack of any great quantity of blood on the Bastard’s carpet also suddenly alarmed Billy for a moment. He should have taken down the Turkish rug and positioned the evidence under the Bastard’s head . . . a big mistake there; but then he imagined the saturated carpet leaving tell-tale globs of blood down the stairs form one apartment to the other, and then there was all the betraying cat hair, too. That would be just like Ben and his dander, to get them arrested for murder. Oh, well, never mind, Billy thought vaguely as he drifted off to sleep. He thought then of the Bastard’s briefs looking rather sexy with his pants pulled down in that way and his arse stuck so provocatively in the air – and if not for Shem, he might have removed the Bastard’s briefs as a keepsake, a trophy of sorts, and left the Bastard butt-naked for police investigation.

While Billy and Shem slept, three floors below, the fingers of the wrinkled muscular hands of the Bastard twitched, clawing at the carpet as the body quivered and began to drag itself inch by inch across the floor, his pants eased down below his knees. Within the drained hulk remained a desperate, involuntary instinct to survive, causing adrenaline to flow and making the Bastard’s heart race faster. Blood ran to the muscles in the arms as they attempted to pull the weight of the body nearer to the telephone on a small table by the bed. Liquefying brain and blood slid along the side of his face, leaving a glistening slimy snail trail along the powder blue carpet as he moved forward in the dim first light of dawn. Not fully conscious and unable to see the telephone by his bed, with only his fierce instinct to live driving him on, in one final movement, he stretched out an arm, gripping the leg of the table. The table fell across his back along with the telephone, a glass of water, and a pile of physique and muscle magazines.

Only then did he finally let go, sinking into a long final coma, hearing possibly the sweet celestial voices of muscular boy angels singing to him from afar.

Hoc est corpus . . . Gloria in . . ..

If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again . . ..

Hocus-pocus . . . Gloria. Gloria in excelsis . . ..

What do you call a lesbian with long fingers? a boy angel whispered.

What? another boy angel asked.

Hung.

The angels giggled at the five-thousand-year-old joke, always good as a last laugh, and the Bastard smiled at the boys as he died.

If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.

"Gloria, Gloria in excelsis . . . Seventy-five buck, please – cash only, and upfront."

With the Bastard slumped there, a single thread away from death, the telephone sitting ludicrously on the side of his head in a mess of drying blood and slopped-out brains, Billy dreamed of Saint Peter up in heaven putting the kettle on for the Bastard to make him a nice big mug of strong sweet milky tea.

2

Mother and Son

As a conventional mother, or indeed as a mother of any description, Elspeth Miller showed a scant interest, and in consequence, her son Billy grew up with no interest in functioning as a conventional son, or indeed a son of any description – an attitude his mother found unnatural in the boy, and exceptionally irritating.

On April 25th 1976, the day Billy turned nineteen, he came downstairs with his rucksack, and about to say goodbye to his mother before leaving her house in Notting Hill to travel in Europe for three months, when he heard her in the front room clinking ice and mixing cocktails, entertaining her new boyfriend who lounged on a couch.

". . . and my son, barely in his teens, she tried to keep her tipsy voice coherent, aspires to great aspirations, you know . . ."

Oh, yeah? her young thug of a boyfriend asked not giving a monkey’s toss about her son’s aspirations. He watched her mixing their drinks, wondering if she were enough of a tart or drunk enough to let him walk up behind her, shove his hand up between her legs, yank down her knickers and give her a good stiff one from behind up against her very aptly named cocktail cabinet. And ‘e aspires to do what exactly? he asked anyway.

To succeed as the world’s greatest artist of course, she came over handing him his drink, but instead he suffers from great depressions of the mind.

Yeah, well we all do that, don’t we, now and then . . . sounds like ‘e needs to buck up ‘is ideas and snap out of ‘is arty depression, or maybe ‘e just needs a good slap round the ‘ead.

She stood before him, so he reached up under her dress and found she wore no knickers; an easy old tart he thought, and probably good for just about anything going.

I know . . . she parted her legs and slightly bent her knees to accommodate his probing fingers. . . . you know, if one day I receive a call to say my son killed himself . . . She groaned, her dress writhing up as she swayed her hips from side to side on his hand, . . . and I’m not saying such a call would overly surprise me. Oh, yes, baby, give me your best. Oh, baby, oh yes, make me squirm for it . . ..

Unseen from the hall Billy stood holding his rucksack, watching the boyfriend undo his belt and his flies, pulling down his jeans, his big uncircumcised penis springing up out of his underpants.

Here love, suck on this for a while, my balls too.

He watched his mother sink to her knees. Cheers, dear, she laughed taking him into her mouth.

Billy left without saying goodbye, quietly closing the front door, determined never to enter this house or see this tart, his mother ever again.

Three months and then three years went by and Billy did not return from his holiday. His mother during the first year often wondered as to her son’s whereabouts, and occasionally considered informing the authorities reporting him as a missing person, but by the end of the second year came to terms with the idea of his absence or even of his demise. After all, since the early and sudden death of her father, which she interpreted as malicious abandonment and with whom she once shared a secret passion, men continued to desert her on a regular basis. She grew cynical and hardened by her experiences with men, though certainly not the kind of woman who sits around moping after any bloody man for she remained an attractive woman much in demand, maintaining a full and active social life.

Not until December of 1979 at a bridge party at the home of a friend, did she hear of her son again through a chance meeting with Daphne Simon, the mother of Terry, one of Billy’s old art school friends. During a drink break between rubbers they sipped flutes of champagne and surveyed the plates of calorific canapés and petit fours, discussing the trials . . . "Or, Daphne laughed, do I mean tribulations, dealt these sensitive only sons who possess artistic dispositions, or inclinations?"

Or do you mean pretensions more like, Elspeth suggested – anyway they shared a good laugh together about their wayward sons.

The next day, over the phone and reading from her son’s private address book, Terry’s mother gave Billy’s mother an address in San Francisco, California. The same day, by certified post, Billy’s mother wrote in a spare Oxfam Christmas card. ‘Happy 1980! From your Lovely Mother. P.S. I got your address from Terry Simon’s mum.’ She enclosed in the card a bank cheque from a trust company to the sum of one thousand U.S. dollars.

Startled at receiving his mother’s card and gift Billy called Terry.

Oh, well, you know my mother, she likes to snoop about in my room pretending to tidy, Terry replied long reconciled to his mother’s meddling. She’s awful; I’ve asked her not to, but after all I am living in her house and she’s keeping me, so I can’t exactly complain . . . I think your mother’s lovely sending you a thousand dollars for Christmas, particularly when most of us don’t do Christmas anyway . . . spend the money, Billy.

But I loathe her baiting me like this.

She could bait me any day if she handed me a thousand dollars.

I don’t need her money . . . I’ve had the same bookstore job and same apartment for nearly three years now. I live minimally, even austerely . . ..

Yes, I know dear, you always did tend towards the ascetic didn’t you . . . Oh, the willful ingratitude and indulgence of the poor yet proud artist. Though speaking for myself as a professional working artist, I would have starved to death by now without major parental interference and funding . . . so anyway, you aesthetic ascetic, what’s your excuse again for not having painted since you abandoned the fair shores of Europa?

Billy did not want to think about painting, about mothers, or money, but on Sunday morning two weeks later as he lay in bed reading with the cheque used as a bookmark, Billy examined the cheque again. He thought, although negligent in the way of motherly care she never failed in her financial generosity, the one area in which he could not fault her; so right then in a weakened moment and against his better judgment or any judgement he picked up the phone by his bed and called her.

"Well, hello, there, stranger, his mother chuckled, her familiar tone even now primed for immediate irritation or sarcasm. I am so honoured to hear from you and after all this time too; and so, what are you doing out there in San Francisco; or maybe a mother shouldn’t know what her perverse son gets up to out there. Anyway, dear, are you still cranking out those paintings of yours?"

No, no picture cranking, he replied. I’m not doing much of anything really, He did not want her to know anything of his perverse life either. I travelled about Europe for a while, and then one cold day someone offered me a practically free one-week return flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco; I liked the place so I stayed on after the week.

Did you get my Oxfam card and cheque?

Yes. Thank you. – Okay, he thought, my filial duty done here; so can I go now?

Only I did wonder as the cheque remains un-deposited.

I know; the cheque’s right here.

Well, cash the cheque, silly boy. Buy yourself something nice. Mind you, I shouldn’t be sending wayward sons’ any money at all; I should send the money to the probably much more deserving and needy African natives . . ..

Hardly believing he set himself up to listen to his mother natter on again, Billy gazed at the mottled stain on his bedroom wall the colour of dried blood edged by a sickly yellowy plasma tint. He might use the money he thought, to begin a health insurance plan, for the independent bookstore where he worked could not afford to offer employees health coverage.

. . . I’ll have to quiz my accountant, his mother continued, as to the better tax write-off, lepers or sons . . ..

Despite any deserving and needy lepers, Billy began