Friday, January 04, 2008

We Didn't Meet Any Heptagamists, Though

EXT. ST IVES - EVENING

PATROCLUS and MR BC are walking along the beach with S., Patroclus's old friend from university, and his boyfriend, R., after a long, decadent lunch and a lot of reminiscing and catching up.

S. pauses to light a cigarette.

ME: I miss cigarettes.

Pause.

ME: Cigarettes were my only friends.

S.: What! I'm your friend! What makes you say that?

ME: I'm not sure why I said that.

Pause.

ME: That's like saying I like to watch my friends die.

Pause.

ME: I like to set fire to them, and watch them die slowly in front of my face.

Pause.

ME: Knowing that they dedicated the whole of their short little lives to my pleasure.


We finish the rest of the walk in silence.


UPDATE: I'm not sure this was the sort of post Fat Roland had in mind when he said I 'bring a beautiful humanity to the blogocube'.

9 comments:

Johanna said...

Ahh, sweet. Not sure what a heptagamist is, but I do love your new motto. Very true.

patroclus said...

Hello Loganoc! Heptagamist is a word I made up, which in my mind means someone who has seven wives. (Or husbands, but that wouldn't fit with the nursery rhyme, or the story.) And the motto is from Max Frisch, but I expect you knew that.

Dave said...

I’m sorry to say someone else invented the word before you. If you look at the comments here you will find it used to describe Snow White.

Tim F said...

Hang on... does that mean you put your friends in your mouth and inhale deeply?

Anonymous said...

I was in St Ives for New Year! I was smoking too! Damn the New Year.

patroclus said...

Dave: Harrumph. Next thing you'll be telling me that the nursery rhyme refers to St Ives in Cambridgeshire and not the St Ives on the north Cornwall coast at all.

Tim: Also, to my eternal shame, I have been known to throw my friends out of the window of a speeding car on more than one occasion. (Not any more, though. I'm a reformed character now.)

Paul: Were you, by Jove? Did you happen to run into a flamboyant chap with an elaborate rubber mask and a black leather warlord coat with many flaps on it, accompanied by another chap dressed like Dave Gahan circa 1987?

Willie Lupin said...

This was the gist of the famous Strand commercial: "You're never alone with a Strand".
The brand was stubbed out soon afterwards because people thought smoking one showed you were a sad, friendless person.
Apart from that minor failing, it was a brilliant commercial.

llewtrah said...

I don't miss cigarettes. I have some nice bottles of wine as my friends, but only at weekends :)

patroclus said...

Can I commend you all on the tasteful colour palette collectively exhibited by the profile pictures in this comments thread? Lovely.