WHERE DO YOU GO TO, MY LOVELY?
Ned McCann. © 2005.


Despite the impressive riband of letters flowing after her name on the very long brass plate in the lobby, Dr Chelmsford was plagued constantly by feelings of inadequacy, which consequently led to insecurity. Standing smoking a panatella by the window as Gosling, the dwarf, settled on the couch, she looked around as if for re-assurance at the walls lined with her diplomas from Berne, Vienna, Edinburgh and Dublin. Dublin had been a mistake, for it was there she had acquired the taste for Guinness which had done nothing for her figure.
*
Gosling slipped the Windsor knot loose from his tie, and undid the buttons on his mohair waistcoat. The rhinestones on his elevated heels glittered in the sun’s dying light, and as he removed his little shoes the rank smell of his socks wafted across the room.
Chelmsford hurriedly opened the window, dislodging a flap of pigeons from the sill. A quick, dark shape flashed among them and a drop of pigeon blood spattered the pane.
Hawks breed well in the city’s canyons, and she watched as the bird soared the completion of a parabolic curve with its already dead prey clutched in cruel talons.
She corrected herself. Nature is not cruel, nature just is. Passionless in her killings, unburdened by emotion.
*
Chelmsford wiped the blood spot from the pane with a tissue. She flicked the tissue from the window and watched as it wafted like a solitary snowflake to the street far below, where the people scuttled like lice on a blanket. Usually one would use the cliché of ants, yet she had thought lice- strange, and why blanket? She noted it among the doodles she always made in the margin beside her patient notes. Chelmsford made no attempt to analyse her doodles, preferring to leave it to her own analyst when she gave him the bundle of blotters and notebooks they went over together once a week.
Chelmsford looked forward to the sessions with her analyst; someone to confide in after a week of listening to the drivelling of wimps.
She was driving herself too hard, she knew, but the beach house, the town house, and the Bentley didn’t arrive in Christmas stockings. Not to mention the maintenance and custody of the children that judge had awarded in George, her ex husband’s favour. Not a fit mother, indeed. How dare he, the biased, patriarchal old fart?
And Tim- dear, sweet, young thing (if only she had been more discreet), had expensive tastes too. Sometimes she thought it would be cheaper all round to relocate to Bolivia and cut out the rapacious middle man, who charged so much for the little packets of powder Tim went through like snuff at a wake.
What would Tim be doing now? Soaking after his work out? Muscles throbbing, and the head of his cock rearing from the Jacussi’s bubbles like a golden carp waiting to be fed.
Chelmsford looked at her watch and at little Gosling, still wriggling to comfort on the couch. Thank God he was the last of the day. "Keep the water warm and the Guinness cold, Timmy," she murmured and cupped, what the young wretch had taken to calling, her earth mother bazooms. Cheek, but she smiled.
"Well, Mr Gosling. How was your week?" A breeze from the open window ruffled her notes. She made no attempt to close the window, for the breeze was quite balmy and even with the faint smell of exhaust, wafting up all that way from the canyon’s floor, preferable to the recycled farts oozing from the grills on the wall.
"I had a dream," Gosling said.
"We all have dreams, Mr Gosling. Dreams are merely the manifestation of our sublimated conscious longings."
Gosling pondered for a moment. "You are the Doctor, of course," he said. "But I don’t think my consciousness, sublimated, or otherwise, truly longs for what I dreamt. I can assure you I have always attempted to be politically correct-even in my dreams. "
Chelmsford glanced at her watch again and sighed.
"I have been having variations of the same dream all week. I don’t like it, or any of my dreams." Gosling raised himself on his little elbow. "Isn’t there a pill or something you could give me to stop them?"
"A pill?" Chelmsford was outraged. "Dreams are the mirror of our soul, Mr Gosling. Dreams promote a healthy psyche. Even if there were such a pill, I would not prescribe it for you."
"Oh," Gosling said and sank back on the couch.
She glanced again at her watch and tapped the face. Tim would probably have finished the bottle by now, but there was plenty more in the fridge beside the Jacussi. "The dream, Mr Gosling," she said.
Gosling wriggled his little toes, glanced at her. Was that a smile?
"I found myself in Oxford or some other University," he began. "There were lots of spires and things-very Gothic. I had been invited to give a talk to a group of militant feminists on the subject of men’s attitude to women. You know the sort of thing. Men’s fears, their expectations, their disappointments. Now that women have found their voice, and quite strident it can be, indeed always has been," Gosling glanced up at her. It was a smile.
" we have been subjected to accounts of women’s fears, expectations, disappointments; while men, to their credit, have listened in silence allowing the women to implement the dismantling of what was once a perfectly workable and reasonable patriarchal society."
You little prick, Chelmsford thought before quickly amending it to the more politically correct ‘little patient’ and making a marginal note for her analyst.
"I hope I haven’t offended you?" Gosling smiled up at her.
It was more of a smirk, but smile would do.
"Doctors don’t get offended." Chelmsford kicked her ankle, an action that had usually controlled that damn twitch beneath her eye. "We are immune to blandishments, compliments or insults. Passionless, we have heard it all before and merely experience impatience at the time it takes to relate a simple dream."
Timmy would probably be powdering his nose and fingering the carp; exhausting himself, while she had to listen to this drivel.
"The dream, Mr Gosling."
Gosling flexed his toes. They cracked. George, her ex, used to crack his toes while reading in bed. Toe cracking drove her to distraction. Timmie had taken to doing it too. She would bring it up with him soon.
"I don’t know what made me do it," Gosling reflected. "The Devil, I suppose."
Chelmsford cross-hatched shadows on the underside of her sketch of a wickedly curved horn as Gosling continued.
"The talk had gone down well. There had even been a smattering of applause from the militants, although at first I must admit I became somewhat alarmed when they stamped their combat boots. But it was only their way of registering approval."
There! That smile again! Condescending! That was it. Conde-bloody-scending!
"I should have quit when I was ahead," Gosling said. "Instead, I launched into a rave on the positive aspects of infibulation."
Chelmsford hacked again at her ankle. "Positive aspects of infibulation?" She was convinced she had drawn blood. "I was not aware that there were any."
"Are you sure I should go on with this?" Gosling asked. "You look disturbed."
He was smirking again. Testing her, dammit! And, yes. There was a wetness welling inside her shoe.
"Mr Gosling," she said. "I’m a professional. Please continue."
"Well," Gosling’s little fingers flickered across his fly, where he had obviously stuffed a football sock, or something, before coming in. Dwarfs, Chelmsford knew, were reputed to be well hung, but that ridiculous bulge reaching almost to his knee was out of all proportion.
"The infibulation rave did not go down too well. The drumming of combat boots became more like a slow handclap. However I decided, in for a penny, to expand upon the subject." His little eyes glittered from beneath half closed lashes. "I can be quite reckless at times."
"I’m sure you can, Mr Gosling," Chelmsford said.
"I decided to elucidate the audience as to why sexually sophisticated men prefer virgin territory to that which has been... well ploughed."
He’s just pausing for effect, Chelmsford decided as the seconds of silence clumped forward in diver’s boots. I will not rise to the bait.
"Even in the most frenzied coupling between female homosexuals, where the so called dominant partner, bedecked in a plastic facsimile of the male sexual organ, pathetically attempts to replicate that most sublime occupation known vulgarly as rooting. And may or may not give the passive partner some degree of dubious satisfaction. Even if the dominant partner was endowed with an abnormally enlarged clitoris, as was rumoured of St Thereasa d’Avilla, and eschewed such contrivances, she could never achieve the enjoyment men do when first breaching that quivering fortress of the virgin quim."
You little cunt! Chelmsford thought, and made a note on her blotter.
"This," Gosling continued," is why most men, trapped in an unsatisfactory relationship resort to anal pursuits."
Chelmsford stiffened. After all these years of counselling and therapy, this little prick had uncovered the cause of her resentment towards ex husband, George, whose predilection she had mistakenly put down to his Greek forebears.
"Of course, this is not me speaking," Gosling’s little eyes fluttered open.
"Of course not." Chelmsford forced her lips into a reasonable image of an understanding smile. It was a great effort.
"Merely a dream," Gosling continued. And, as I told the audience at the time, one can always tell when the first stirring of dis-satisfaction in the so called love process is taking place."
"Can one?" Chelmsford murmured.
"Oh yes," Gosling turned to her. His little eyes were wide, blue, and innocent. "As I said at the time, one must never mistake it for passion, when the man turns- excuse my crudity- to the buttocks for congress.
"Mustn’t one?" Chelmsford closed her notebook.
"Oh dear me, no." Gosling closed his eyes again, returned to his dream. "As I told them, the rectum, unlike the vagina, actually shrinks-narrows as we grow older. Resorting to it for congress is merely man’s crude attempt to recapture the exquisite pleasure in the taking of a maidenhead which, like one’s first bowel movement, once gone can never be retrieved."
Chelmsford experienced again the pain and discomfort of the vaginal nip and tuck she had undergone in an attempt to give George his pleasure. And Tim, she had noticed, even although mouthing those endearments in her ear about the pleasure she was giving him had recently begun to slide the carp up her tan track when they made love. "Everyone does it, not just poofters."
Chelmsford pushed back her chair and rose slowly to her feet. She placed her notebook on a side table and aligned her Mont Blanc pen carefully on top.
"What are you doing, doctor?" Gosling’s fingers wriggled like little, pink worms as Chelmsford lifted him from the couch and carried him in her arms to the still open window.
"I’m going to throw you from the window," she said.
"You wouldn’t dare. I’ll scream."
"I’m sure you will," she said. He did, and she never even watched as he fell.
Dr Chelmsford threw Mr Gosling’s little boots with the rhinestone studded heels after him. She lit another panatella and stood smoking it. Some pigeons, silly creatures, settled on the sill again. She smoked the panatella down to its nub. And as she flicked it from the window, from far, far below, she could hear the faint donkey bray of an ambulance.

ENDS.

© 2005. Ned McCann. 15 Church St. BALMAIN. N.S.W. 2041. Australia.