G devises a novel feeding method…

The entrance tunnel over the Metro tracks proved a more difficult obstacle for the crowds voluntarily ejecting themselves from the warmth of public transport to negotiate than usual as digital camera wielders stood immobile, resisting the current of winter-wrapped bodies pushing around them as stubborn as mighty rocks uneroded by the churning torrents. The periodic blockages were caused by a series of posters depicting a huge gorilla, teeth bared in aggression, facing a Tyrannosaurus Rex, an irresistible backdrop against which to pose.

Having failed miserably to procure a ticket on Saturday (according to AS, demand outstripped cinema seat capacity by ten to one) on the opening weekend (although die-hard fans had the opportunity to secure places at the pre-premieres showing at ten pm in the run up to the weekend), we abandoned the car at the park and ride in anticipation of the storming of the multiplex and settled into the bright orange plastic to hurtle beneath the pavements. Reassured that there would indeed be an interval, G and the Hungarian queued for provisions whilst I spread our belongings over the upholstery to mark our territorial boundaries (slightly more subtle than spraying the upholstery with pheromones). Half of the screens were dedicated to the adventure in three language versions at half hour intervals. Even so, a cursory scan revealed a sea of faces. A group of small boys played hide and seek to the irritation of everyone whose toes were trodden on in neighbouring aisles. At last the lights were dimmed (and the patient running commentaries began for the benefit of the multitude of children who may or may not have been old enough to read the subtitles, but were certainly unable to understand the implications of the dialogue or the images beyond the visceral scenes of combat, mayhem and destruction) and the beautiful art deco titles imprinted themselves momentarily on our retinas. I had attempted to convey to G that what we were about to witness was the exact equivalent of its predecessor and source text in terms of thrills, incredulity at the wonderment of special effects, the sheer ingenuity of the master manipulator of celluloid. Although in our latter-day cynicism we might grin at the obvious thumbprints on the fur of the stop-motion Kong and the clunkiness of the plasticine monsters the audiences of the time would have been no less enthralled than we with our superior trickery.

The opening sequence evoking in shorthand the era of Depression and prohibition with an ironic musical overlay (stills smashed in the street, a man in bowler hat and business attire slumbering on a bench next to a more seasoned vagrant) reassured me that Jackson was not going to lapse into saccharine moralising a la Spielberg. Even the smallest cameos of the theatrical troupe of which Ann Darrow is a member were lovingly and sympathetically acted. The harsh reality of fighting for survival tactfully handled (the producer whom Darrow accosts sizing her up and suggesting that she use her assets profitably scribbles a name and an address on the back of a visiting card directing her to a seedy establishment – “Burlesque” in flashing lights above the door – where Denham strays in search of an “actress” to fill the gap caused by the withdrawal of his female lead. The implication clear: when all else fails, a woman can rely on her sex appeal to stave off starvation. Darrow, however, is made of morally sterner stuff, this virgin will not stoop to whoredom to nourish her weary body. Darrow, naïve and fatalistic though she is, possesses a quality that elevates her above that tired cliché of masculine classification, she is pure in heart).

When we are introduced to Denham, the impression he makes is initially sympathetic. Here we have the nervous prodigy endeavouring to extract cash from the moguls to finance his latest serious work. Compared to the crass vulgarity of his gross potential sponsors, he is cocky and spirited in his defence (I could not help wondering whether Jackson was taking a deliberate swipe at all those who had sought to interfere with his artistic vision or grudged him the funding he required to realise his projects). Primarily interested in safari-style adventure reels, his tale of a lost civilisation foundered on the vulgarity of a cigar-smoking sleazebag (with an IQ exceeded by pond scum) whose sole interest in the genre was confined to whether he would be able to feast his eyes on the jiggling bare breasts of voluptuous natives (sadly, I fear, his one talent that of understanding the appetites of the punters), effortlessly rattling off a list of euphemisms for the mammary glands calculated presumably to avoid attracting a “contains swearing” label. What at first glance seems like single-minded dedication to his craft is soon enough revealed as hollow egotism, his whisky-induced remorse equally without substance (when his sound recordist is skewered by a spear he praises his dedication for making the supreme sacrifice for something he believes in, vowing to dedicate the box office receipts to the deceased’s wife and children we are willing to believe him, but when his cinematographer is ripped to pieces by ravening raptors and he repeats the lament verbatim his moral bankruptcy and ruthlessness are rudely exposed). By the time we observe him wallowing unashamedly in his success in the theatre lobby, the former tight-fisted producers all too eager to be photographed alongside him, he has lost all credibility (his solemn pronouncement over Kong’s twisted carcass that it was beauty killed the beast mercifully lacking resonance).

On the island, his clumsy efforts at diplomacy – chocolate functioning then as now as the universal currency in war zones – do not bear fruit as the party is attacked by the natives (in a staging reminiscent of the clashes with the orcs in Jackson’s previous epic). From the perspective of the interlopers, the encounter is truly bewildering and terrifying. They are rescued only by the superior firepower of the sailors who conveniently arrive in the nick of time. Interestingly, the brutality of the locals is given greater justification than that of their “civilised” counterparts. They respect Kong, the victims they present to him by way of an offering surrendered for the benefit of the entire community (in a ritual directed, significantly, by old woman possessing an authority unmatched in more “enlightened” surroundings). They acknowledge, indeed worship, his strength and his supremacy in the jungle through which he roams; they seek neither to intrude upon nor violate his realm, intelligently resigned to their own limitations (a lesson Denham is impervious to learning). In this respect, Jackson steers clear of the overt racism and patronising attitudes so ingrained in the 1933 context (the grass skirt and hip-swaying set piece of the black and white epos tellingly transported to the fantasy performance on the Broadway stage).

My abiding memory of the original is its unremitting misogyny, the girl reviled, bullied, a nuisance at best, a jinx at worst, her role to act as a foil for rugged male heroism, to scream (annoying though it is to have the eardrums assaulted by her plaintive cries, screeching one’s lungs out strikes me as a remarkably rational response to being abducted by a hundred foot gorilla), fainting and generally looking decorous in diaphanous gowns. Here, however, character development works miracles, not just for Darrow but for the crew (Hayes’ genuine courage and affection for Jimmy contrasted with the yawning chasm between tough guy persona of Bruce Baxter – wonderfully parodied by Kyle Chandler as a self-obsessed, narcissistic paragon of vacuousness – and his real-life cowardly selfishness). It is a mark of the screenplay’s virtuosity that the lines lifted from the 1933 version (Baxter’s character snubbing Darrow’s on deck) sound completely out of place. Indeed, in the following scene where Driscoll and Darrow discuss the dialogue, they mock it, Driscoll obviously too sensitive and intelligent to type such bilge of his own accord, submitting to Denham’s instructions. Yes, the blonde, blue-eyed white woman is still held up as the height of female perfection (the remains of her less fortunate sisters from the indigenous population discarded in a “boneyard”), yes, the corny quotation about women taming the beast in all men persists, both jarring elements (although we are invited to forgive these lapses as they were inherited from the archetype), but Darrow is more than a peroxide plaything (playmate) for the ape, her ability to empathise with Kong elevating her far above the men who almost uniformly regard him as nothing but a commodity (a means of personal enrichment) or a “dumb animal”, awed in spite of themselves by his brute power (which, I suspect, they secretly envy), his honest revelling in his triumphs.

I do not detect in the rendering of Darrow a bolstering of Victorian notions of the woman’s civilising role, so eloquently and delicately articulated by Ruskin in his Sesame and Lilies: “The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle, – and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise; she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial; – to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home – it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, – so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, – shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea; – so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.
And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.
This, then, I believe to be, – will you not admit it to be? – the woman’s true place and power. But do you not see that to fulfil this, she must – as far as one can use such terms of a human creature – be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise – wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service – the true changefulness of woman” (from Deborah Epstein Nord (editor), John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Newhaven and London, Yale University Press, 2002, pp77-8). Sheltered from the buffeting of earning a living, the “centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty” (op. cit., p88) must soothe, offering succour and comfort, to alleviate the savage impulses: “There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid where there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery, in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy in their own struggle; but men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope; it is only you who can feel the depths of pain and conceive the ways of its healing” (op. cit., p90).

Sculpture (ca. 1887) by Emmanuel Frémiet

Nor is Darrow’s bond with the ape an unmodified regurgitation of the trope in which King Kong was born, as discussed by Bram Dijkstra in his uncompromising dissection of the underlying loathing of womankind implicit in fin-de-siècle literature and art: “Clearly, as late nineteenth-century science had conveniently discovered for the eagerly receptive artists and intellectuals, though one might wish to separate woman from the animals by socialising her and pretending that she was adaptable to the intellectually evolving world of man, ultimately one was likely to discover that it was impossible to take the animal out of woman – that woman and animal were coextensive. Simply being in the vicinity of animals was enough to bring out the beast in woman. No matter how she struggled against the hegemony of the sexual instinct over her being, sooner or later she would have to succumb to its tyranny” (Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, p283).

He continues: “Driven as she was by animal desire and animal instincts, it was not surprising that woman found she could get along better with animals than with men. Among the creatures most often frequented by woman in her passionate state, the monkey figured prominently – not surprisingly, given its shocking new prominence as the precursor of evolving humanity. John Charles Dollman, for instance, showed how monkeys and woman, equally childlike in their ignorant astonishment, tried to cope with the concept of fire in the primeval world. Monkeys also took to visiting women in their dressing rooms, as in Otto Friedrich’s painting ‘Vanity’, serving as subtle reminders of the promiscuous nature of the sex. After all, as scientists such as Henry Campbell emphasised ‘both the gorilla and the baboon were polygamous’, and woman had the same uncivilised tendency. Forel (…) had asserted that ‘nymphomaniacs often have polyandrous instincts, and they then become more insatiable than men’. To this one needed only to add Carl Vogt’s observation that ‘whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is nearer to it than the male’, and that in any such male/female comparison ‘we should discover a greater simious resemblance if we were to take the female as our standard’ to complete the outlines of a new feminine perversion. It consequently surprised few well-informed late nineteenth-century men to hear that, as Havelock Ellis was careful to point out in his discussion of bestiality, ‘Moll remarks that it seems to be an indication of an abnormal interest in monkeys that some women are observed by the attendants in the monkey-house of zoological gardens to be very frequent visitors. Near the Amazon the traveller Castelnau saw an enormous Coati monkey belonging to an Indian woman and tried to purchase it; although he offered a large sum, the woman only laughed. ‘Your efforts are useless,’ remarked an Indian in the same cabin, ‘he is her husband’’.
Given the vigorous ‘scientific’ bandying about of such provocative titbits of biological folklore, we can begin to understand why such a sculpture as Emmanuel Frémiet’s ‘Gorilla’, exhibited at the Salon of 1887, was given a medal of honour instead of being howled unceremoniously out of the slightly soiled halls of turn-of-the-century High Art. Who, among the intellectuals, would have felt called upon to doubt, given woman’s scientifically proven predilection for simian sensations, that a forward-looking ape might not also have decided that a shapely young woman was more delectable than a mate of his own species? King Kong was born in the jungle of nineteenth-century evolutionary science, and the details were fleshed out in the hothouse of turn-of-the-century art” (op. cit., pp290-1).

Jackson’s Darrow (Naomi Watts) is no limp rag or a wimp, but resourceful and compassionate, her efforts to communicate with Kong rewarded in the heart-rending scene where they survey the sunrise-tinged Manhattan cityscape from their vantage point atop the Empire State Building (the skating episode in the park, stock-in-trade of many a romance, similarly doom-laden). She refuses to participate in Kong’s exploitation (the hold she has over him having been exploited by Denham and Captain Englehorn to capture him), preferring to weep in the anonymity of a chorus line than to collude in his humiliation, turning down fame and a fortune in fees. She twice implores with his persecutors to leave him in peace (on the rowing boat where they knock him out with chloroform and standing beneath him as the biplanes home in on their target). In vain.

Kong, the tragic hero, is lovingly portrayed in a touching marriage of computer animation and Andy Serkis’ acting skills. On occasion, Jackson cannot resist showing off (the raptors herding their lumbering prey down the gorge, the insect attack, Kong’s fight to the death with the Tyrannosaurs), but he more than any other contemporary filmmaker captures the essence of the spectacle, the lifeblood of cinema pulses through his every frame (the recurrent theme of savouring a little mystery in the world for the price of an admission never truer than here, the irony of the audience assembled in the theatre to gape at the wonder presented to them for profit and the identical motivation of the cinema goers devouring the action a subtle nudge – after all, we can congratulate ourselves as we blow our dripping noses into our Kleenexes on caring more for the beast than the glitterati who marvel at his captivity). When he knocks Darrow down for his own entertainment on the cliff ledge, I was seized with a foreboding that was soon dispelled when Darrow set the boundaries, outlawing such violence against her person. Although he objected to this curtailment of his sovereign authority by throwing a tantrum, he demonstrates a willingness to restrain himself too many of his supposedly more evolved human brothers have failed to emulate (all too find of lashing out with their fists).

Torn from his environment, it is hardly Kong’s fault that he is out of place amongst the skyscrapers. Jackson has established that his savagery is essential to his survival in a hostile habitat where he must kill or be killed (and are not Darrow’s rescuers equally liberal in spraying bullets through the undergrowth when under threat?). The king is humiliated, laid low, chained, ridiculed, arms pulled taut like Christ crucified. What distresses me most about Harryhausen’s magical creatures as an adult is that they have to die. They are as expendable as they are rare. We knew before we set foot inside the carpeted foyer what Kong’s fate would be. Nature cannot withstand the onslaught of technology. How we wished he would swat those puny propeller-driven insects stinging him with their weapons. In a confrontation reminiscent of big game hunters gleefully felling elephants in an anachronistic and culpably misguided show of “virility”, the pilots callously gunned down their prey. Flesh and blood no match for the glinting efficiency of tempered metal projectiles. And so he plummeted, inevitably, to the streets below. To his credit, Jackson’s direction was tasteful rather than cruelly relishing the wounds inflicted or sadistically dragging out Kong’s agony.

It is a tribute to his team that Jackson has crafted an enduring masterpiece from such unpromising antecedents. It was not beauty that killed the beast, but male greed, aggression and folly backed by murderous hardware.

The fug lined my lungs in the restaurant’s warm embrace. Once my favourite haunt (always crowded, the refuge of choice following the midnight shift since it serves food until one in the morning as well as being conveniently located by the river, should one feel the urge to lean over the railings and dispose of the contents of one’s stomach following a bout of overindulgence and within easy staggering distance of late-night watering holes) in the days before we fragmented, our former cohesiveness preserved only in the oral tradition of the group, little had changed, least of all my dish of choice, half a roast chicken and chips. LR ordered a jug of rosé to accompany her ham and eggs starter-portion masquerading as a main course, whilst Olli and I shovelled the crisp potato slivers on to our plates before requesting another salver. I poured on the illicit salt with abandon (only chips and egg cry out for it, which is why I normally abstain), declining every kind offer of noble fermented grape. A homeless man with tangled seasonal beard lurched towards the window pane, having clambered up the embankment from his cardboard mattress carefully stored beneath the red sandstone arches on the towpath. We joked that CM had finally arrived.

I recounted my dinner guest’s tale of life in Africa where the main crop cultivated on the sloping foothills is only tolerated in strictly limited quantities for personal use back home (he sensibly purchased the produce in bulk, a kilo at a time, before dividing it into more realistic doses in airtight bags, which led him to the discovery that the longer it is stored, the stronger it becomes). The long evenings without electricity tended to drag as he allowed his mind to wander whilst relaxing on the porch. He devised a form of entertainment, which proved an instant success with the villagers who would walk for miles to take part: chicken bingo (those of a squeamish disposition would be well-advised to spare themselves the details). Having scratched a grid with numbers into the dirt with a stick, the participants would place bets on the unfortunate bird’s final resting place. Its head would then be severed and the body released to run around until it flopped. The lucky winner took home the carcass for dinner as well as the other proceeds. At this juncture, LR interrupted with an inspired proposal that we introduce a variation on the theme, colleague bingo. One name instantly occurred to all of us (I dare not even mention her initials), although, as LR went on to point out, cutting off her head would make little difference.

I attributed the wooziness I felt the next morning to the handful of cold chips filched from CM. In spite of the chill, a huddle of young men armed with bows and arrows and clad in skimpy felt outfits of Sherwood handed out tracts protesting against the UK Presidency’s stingy budget offer. As the caffeine took effect, CM reminded me of some classic blunders. On a typical afternoon of one dreary press conference after another (naturally with no announcement of the subject or any documentation available) the speaker (a foreigner regaling the assembled journalists with his extensive knowledge of the language of Voltaire) was extolling the virtues of trade before launching into a paean on “les ananas”. CM, logically enough, assumed that he was defending a grower’s organisation, but doubts began to cross his mind when he started railing against the despicable conditions in Turkish prisons and the courage of feminists. Eventually, he had to come clean: “Mr X was not talking about pineapples, but the award of the Sakharov Prize to Leila Zana”.

The monthly journey to S is arduous at the best of times, neither of the main alternatives (rising at 5.45am to haul the weary body into town to catch the 7.24 train or cramming into an overbooked charter with less legroom than the average dodgem) appealing even without the delays and aggression (turfing some arrogant little chancer – and there are plenty of them – from the seat you have taken the trouble to reserve. On the way back last month I witnessed a bloated, wart-ridden little toad of a man refusing to budge on the pretext that he did not understand the extremely polite request on the part of the rightful occupant. Several other passengers had to intervene before the obnoxious interloper could be evicted. The insult to the girl’s intelligence of the transparent ruse of hiding behind his mother tongue left us collectively seething. Should he ever try it on with me, I have already rehearsed my line of attack: “Ah, you don’t speak English, so you won’t understand it if I tell you to shift your moronic ugly arse the fuck off my place”. Or words to that effect). Adverse weather conditions make the whole experience more miserable. Addressing a near empty chamber, the President apologised for the poor turnout, explaining that (as LR swears she heard it) the airport had been temporarily closed down due to “écureuils sur la piste”. Undaunted, she rendered this as “squirrels on the track”, although, admittedly, she did not quite see why the fire brigade had been called in to shoo them away. It was only when CM’s plane eventually landed that the truth emerged. The surrounding fence had somehow been breached, allowing chevreuils, or roe deer to wander over the runway in the dense fog, constituting a serious hazard.

Then there was KC’s slip of the tongue when the reference was to the dark days of the Stalinistic “personality cunt”.

The buzz of Unikum Next slurs my wits, cogent thought as laborious as swimming in treacle, but I do not regret the occasion for such indulgence, the Hungarian initiating Zed and Quarsan into the delights of gulyásleves, paprikás csirke with fresh galuska, Tokaji furmint and szilvapálinka (when the translation for the ripe, dangling fruits depicted so lushly on the porcelain bottle escaped me, he grinned mischievously over their uncanny resemblance to a pair of purple testicles). The anecdote as a narrative form could have been invented for him; if the leak-induced hole in plasterwork had not been recently repaired our gales of laughter would certainly have dislodged more of the noxious dust. His mystical encounters with the spirits of tribal elders roaming in hyenas and his tales of the clear, tasteless yet incredibly potent brew gifted to him by a witchdoctor by way of thanks for a bottle of Laphroaig transporting us effortlessly from the dull, curtain-twitching bourgeois surroundings we have all decided (temporarily) to settle in/for.

I cannot reconstruct the mentality from my born-again days, plundering my archives for clues. I became a feminist even before sociology emancipated me from the last vestiges of religion’s baleful delusion. In thrall to divine teleology, no detail was too trivial to be spared scrutiny. The struggle that ensued pitted unquestioning obedience and acceptance of pre-ordained wickedness and ineluctable inferiority against the temptations of the flesh. Eventually, immortal, invisible God lost the contest. My greed for exculpation and purification transmuted into a rejection of the foundations of social practice: women are not defective, faulty by “nature”, “dirty” or of relatively lesser worth. Thousands of years of encrusted grime scoured away the unblemished marble limbs revealed.

My diary was addressed to a putative reader to whom I had auctioned it for the (now paltry) sum of £20,000. As for the cast of characters, CD was the object of my (relentless) affections over whom I spent the final two years of school pining. CC joined our fellowship not long after I met him by chance whilst he fitted me for a pair of shoes during his summer job. 1983 was my first year as an undergraduate, when I eschewed halls of residence (where I might be distracted from my studies or, worse, my mind might be contaminated by contact with non-believers) in favour of a sitting room (complete with bay window) and a bedroom in Marchmont shared with the owner, a kind-hearted, genteel churchgoing lady in her early 70s, Mrs K.

18th July, 1983 (excerpt)
Beginning to realise the possibilities for the Kingdom of my flat. I can have the “open house” I have always wanted, entertain people and help strangers. I can even have folk in for meals. It’ll be like living as a single person in their own house, except I don’t have ALL the responsibilities of bills for gas, electricity, tax and so on. I will be able to learn how to organise and manage myself and my time to the balance Jesus wants me to have. It’s freedom, but I want to be really considerate to the landlady and that should speak for the Kingdom.

22nd July, 1983 (excerpt)
Life is a great gift. What a waste it is to sit hankering after something I KNOW I can survive and even enjoy myself without and consequently wasting time, sinking into self-pity and introversion. I mustn’t waste the freedom I have now, before I marry him. I can stick my posters on the wall, listen to my records when I want and I don’t have to worry about keeping the place tidy or looking after somebody else’s tea. I can go where I want, with whom I want, even to London or abroad. (By the way, I’m NOT forgetting Jesus in all this, I’m considering it from a purely WORLDLY point of view).
God spoke through “Prayer Desk” on Radio Scotland: BE CONTENT in whatever state you find yourself. (You know I never, ever mean to be ungrateful). Look at what the Lord has given me, the most important thing of all, perfect health. I make myself SICK you know, constantly moaning. I’m just a stupid, immature, whining, pathetic little fool, worrying about things of no consequence. Isn’t it just AMAZING that Jesus has given me all He has given and even more so that He puts up with me!

23rd July (excerpt)
“What good is faith when it isn’t living and breathing? What good is faith when it isn’t put into practice as a living reality? You wonder why you don’t see miracles of healing and deliverance when you haven’t the courage to rebuke a fly. How can you be so blind? Go out, go out and trust in God’s strength and resources, for He truly is greater than all the powers of darkness. Pour yourself out as a libation to those around you. Do it willingly. God will use you. Make a stand against your fear in the name of Jesus and it will disappear. I have so much faith for others, but so little for myself. God has given a golden opportunity in these ten weeks or so and I’m not going to waste it. I want to go out, not cos it’d be with CC or cos it’d be exciting, but cos I want to help people and see them saved. I’ve been such a hypocrite in the past and I’m NOT going to allow myself to be held back any more. I’ve got no excuses. I’d rather see one person come to Christ than listen to Wandsworth Plain [my then favourite track by my then favourite group, Landscape] a million times, even on a maximum high [I hasten to add that music was my only drug!]. I’m sick of my own inaction. Why do I want to go out? Because I see that people need help and I want to give them help. But I need help. I need somebody with me. I get on well with CC as a team. He could be the necessary covering authority. I don’t know. I’m certain that I don’t want to go out just to be with CC. I could easily go on cycle runs with him for example. I don’t have to go out witnessing. It is possible to be good friends with a male you know. He’s the only guy that’s got a real heart for the Lord that’s free at the moment. I don’t even really know what to do. I just feel I should go around identifying needs and meeting them as the Lord gives. I really learned a lot at prayer time. It made me wonder again “Where lies your heart?” It lies with God. I know this is true. I want to get off my backside, I really do. Give me the guts, Lord, to go up to a gang of skinheads without fear. Even if I got beaten up, I’d still not lose enough brain cells to affect the quality of my academic performance at university. I could give up everything that means anything to me for the Lord, i.e. I could drop out of uni, sell all my possessions if He asked. These things don’t mean anything at the end of the day anyway. The funny thing is, as I write this I don’t feel in some airy-fairy, hocus-pocus, vague, wispy emotional way that God is here. Where’s the awe? If I consider just what His BEING here means the awe will come, I’m sure.

29th July (excerpt)
In my little discussion with CC my mind was somehow expanded (to put it mildly!). CC mentioned the fact that the Lord wanted me to go to Edinburgh University and that maybe the whole CD thing was just what he used to get me to make that choice. That’s pretty tough! Were all those tears and prayers, was all that conviction in vain; was it mere self-deception? No, I don’t think so. CC told me he didn’t like to see me all cut up and frustrated over CD (I’d not thought so much along the lines of frustrated before, yet it’s undeniably true). I ask myself, why am I being so frustrated? To test the quality of my faith or of my love for CD? Nothing is going to induce me to be unfaithful to CD [remember, we had never even kissed, what bound me to him was the elemental force of my own obsession, my sublimated sexual desire]. I’ve not lost faith, even though in the natural everything seems so impossible. This is the only situation in my life where faith has so consistently laughed at impossibilities. Over such a long period. God certainly has taught me a lot through CD. It is not a particularly pleasant thought that CD might just have been a tool along the way to mature me. The ruthlessness implied would seem incompatible with my Father’s nature, but, on the other hand, He did not spare Jesus. With CD, I’ve had mostly hurt and only little joy in return. I’ve never been in love with any human being apart from CD and it is this that has made me go overboard in my declarations to the “trusted few” about my intentions to marry him. I just can’t seem to consider the possibility of anyone else (probably cos I love him so much!). I know that I’m the type of person who can only devote herself to one and I couldn’t go from one boy to another like a bee goes from flower to flower like J-A. I just can’t cos I’d feel so guilty and also I couldn’t stand it. I’d be a total emotional wreck by the end of it simply because I’d give my all, every drop of emotion, the lot (remember I’m a Christian – kiss and hug is as far as I’d ever go outside marriage), all my zeal, all my loyalty, all my attention, time, money, thought. I can only devote myself to one person, simply because I put my ALL into it and that level of commitment doesn’t come instantly. I’d have to be certain sure about it first and that certainly comes after a long time. CC said he thought I was a bit young to be thinking about a life partner, but age doesn’t come into it. When you meet the right one, you know about it. And yet, how can you know if he’s the right one when you’ve never had experience of anyone else. Don’t worry, this little exposé isn’t an attempt to justify a guilty conscience over a clandestine love for CC. I killed off all my emotional or otherwise sexual feeling for him on 21st July 1983. I’ve felt over the last few days, ever since the Thursday when CD and Sue sat and argued that I shouldn’t be so heavy about CD and marriage. I still don’t even know what I want out of life; I’m continually torn between lust for fame and the love of CD. I mean, I’ve closed my mind really, when viewed from a different angle. Over the whole CD affair there have only been two possibilities
1) I have the greatest faith it is possible to have (at this stage in my life, anyway)
2) I’m a total fool: look at all the chances I’m passing up.
I’m not promiscuous in emotion, nor do I make my mind up swiftly. I believe the Lord has been using the boy called CC to show me how closed up I’ve become. Everybody including my little brother thinks I should get together with CC. I don’t love CC and feel almost as if it’s too late. I’ve completely killed off all feeling for him and we’ve made our mutual agreement. I suppose I could salvage something, but without love, without reason…My certainty about CD hasn’t wavered and I guess I’m not really any different over how I feel about the world. There are times I’d like to belong to CC and to kiss him and to spend all the time with him that I long to spend with CD. I couldn’t marry him. I couldn’t respect him enough to marry him (nor could I love him enough to WANT to submit myself to him. I know right now what the root of my problems is: I can’t believe that I can have a boyfriend without feeling obligated to marry him, even despite the fact that I’ve never done anything except cuddle, hold hands, walk with arms round each other’s waist, even though I’d never masturbated after him [incredible though it might seem, I was completely ignorant of being in possession of a clitoris – sermon after sermon for the church youth was devoted to the topic of masturbation, with an unsavoury prurience on the part of the elders, my practical knowledge of the abomination was limited to knowing that if I lay on my belly and pressed hard enough against the mattress with my pelvis a rather satisfying sensation would eventually ensue] or desired him, even though we’d gone out places together. I just can’t seem to rid myself of that attitude and simply couldn’t go through a series of relationships because of the way I am, the way I have been made. To me, behaviour such as I have defined is for courtship to lead to marriage, therefore the only person I could have such a relationship with is the person I’d want to marry, i.e. CD. If I entered into any such relationship with anyone else, I’d be committing spiritual adultery. But I have such a need, my heart aches and groans for such a relationship; I NEED somebody to make me complete and that somebody is CD. I could have CC to fill in the time and temporarily meet the need, but I’d be living a lie according to my standards as defined, pretending that I wanted something that I don’t, i.e. a marriage or something deeper than companionship – deeper physically too – and entering into a commitment I had no intention of sticking to. If these standards are wrong, then I want the Lord to revise them and revise them fast cos they’ve brought me a lot of pain, heartbreak and frustration. I have stuck by them, even in my thoughts, attitudes and conduct. I’m sure Jesus will honour that, even if it’s wrong. He will see my heart is with Him and I’m willing to sacrifice all I’ve got or could have to stick to my ideals. I have also fallen victim to the basic assumption that I am always right. Let me explain. I have fallen in love with CD, therefore he is the one I must marry because I have fallen in love with him. If I weren’t meant to marry him, I would never have fallen in love with him. I’d like a relationship with CC, to kiss him and feel the warmth of his arms, the touch of his hands and his warm body (gosh, isn’t this getting disgusting/interesting?), but at the end of the day I’d never enjoy it; I’d be so guilt-ridden because of my standards. And yet, I’m causing myself so much pain. All the sighs from the “Seek ye first” message of the Bible Week to R’s [my brother’s] advice to go for CC last night, all tell me the same message, yet I find there is no confusion at all. I don’t even WANT him, except in the MOST DESPERATE of moments. You see, I just won’t listen; this “I am always right” habit. (It would be very embarrassing for me if it DID turn out that CD is NOT the one for me after all my declarations of love/marital intent; but I’m sure that anyone in their right mind would realise all that was down to a fundamental immaturity and inexperience, which Father was able to turn to good since my heart is basically with Him and I really only want to do His will. I don’t want these rigid rules to parcel my life and ruin it. I suppose I’m so proud that I would stick with CD just because I hadn’t the guts to be open and honest and admit to the Church I was wrong. I was immature, too much so to realise that your first love isn’t the be all and end all for all time. It takes guts, especially for me, who is constantly falling into the trap of thinking myself hyper-mature with a really unrealistic vision of just how far on I am, especially since I started shepherding CC, well, giving him advice, which is one of the gifts God told me he had given me. I have only just realised that I am getting what I prayed for, but not only am I getting the ability to help other people, but they’re helping me and having positive input into my life too. Don’t ever get the wrong impression from all I have just told you, by the way. My love for CD, my faith and my conviction (i.e. certainty) haven’t wavered one iota.

31st July (excerpt)
Last night when I was showing CC how to disco dance I had a visible “turn on” effect. Until now, I’d always assumed that my apparent lack of appeal to the opposite sex had been due to the fact that I was really ugly and was about as sexually attractive as the rear end of an elephant. Now I’m a bit more open and can look back on my schooldays slightly more objectively (makes me sound really old and decrepit, doesn’t it?) and I see that I was a really bitchy person for a number of years. I must also have come across as a total cold fish as well as an obvious misfit (of which I was never in any doubt). This, coupled with my flamboyant personality and outspoken, uncompromising views must have made any boy feel like running a mile. And I always shunned every member of the opposite sex until fifth year [in Scotland the final year of secondary unless you, as most do, opt to stay on for Sixth Year Studies exams]. I don’t think any boy would have had the self-confidence to try to tackle such a daunting prospect. They wouldn’t know how to approach me, or how I’d act towards them. I was never interested in anyone apart from CD anyway. If the boys at school were too shallow or wary and worldly wise to try me, they certainly had plenty of any other type of “easy meat”, people who were more attractive bodily (not facially) than me on offer and I didn’t exactly try to attract them. I wore socks, for example, as a kind of defence against the world in general and against being hurt by people in particular. How could anybody else understand that (true to my often contorted ways of hiding the truth) the thing I spoke out against, the thing I never on the surface desired, was what, in reality, my heart was crying out for? Companionship and love with a male. Now, I’m not trying to say that I have an image of myself that is totally unrealistic, but in the opposite way/direction than previously – i.e., I don’t think I’m the most gorgeous female in the universe. I know that I’m too fat to be really even my own image of perfect beauty, but I’m not all that worried. I still want to lose the weight so I can feel at peace with myself in a quietly, modestly self-confident fashion. I’m not out to attract men, well, I’m only out to attract one man, i.e. CD, but now I don’t constantly worry about every millimetre of fat. I’m actually quite happy as I am, but I know I can be EVEN BETTER, so I’m striving to lose the weight. I’ll still get depressed, but I can still say to myself that it’s not because I’m an ugly, fat slob that CD doesn’t love me. I feel lighter, as if a load has been taken off my back. I also feel cleaner inside than before, cos the Lord also revealed something else.

January 1st, 1984
Unlike last year I really can’t say what I expect of this year. I’m looking forward to a new dimension spiritually, praise God, He’s big enough for that. I just make it my prayer that if anything’s holding me back from this new phase then the Lord, in His infinite grace and mercy, would show it to me and give me the power of His spirit to combat evil and implement victory in my life after repentance.
Two big things I have learned about God in 1983: “I am the God of no compromise”; “I am the Lord and you can’t demand anything from me nor can you issue ultimatums to me about anything”.
I have also learned sacrificial praise and how not to trust to my feelings. Also sacrificial love. All my problems about sex have vanished [my hymen was still resolutely intact]. I now believe I have a sexuality and I praise God for it – He instructed me not to abuse it by adulterous action. Many of my fears have melted away. I seek complete liberation of my mind so that I don’t even worry any more.
On marriage: all initial excitement must fade. The realisation of transitoriness. I don’t want marriage out of lust. The way I’ve changed is that the contentment principle that I learned a while back has been reapplied.

For Adam, stay safe

South Sea Island by Rob G

[On Rob and his songs, see His Demonic Smile]

I started listening to pop music in 1981. Previously I had ignored the posters alleviating the monotony of woodchip on other girl’s bedroom walls, decorating my own with reproductions of World War Two admonitions warning of doodlebugs targeting the one chink of light betraying the presence of a city, or of careless talk costing lives, glamorous foreign spies clad in shimmering dresses, stretched out seductively on chaises longues waiting to ensnare the gullible serviceman. Not for me some gleaming-toothed, wholesome American boy in sweater and flares. Nor the wedge-heels and chest exposing excesses of the painted glam rockers. Televised images of fellow teenagers swooning at the Bay City Rollers left me bemused. Garish testosterone displays of the chest medallion and tight trouser variety likewise made little impression. It was all so vulgar. Besides, my peers dribbled over the album covers in a most unseemly fashion. A dry run for snogging boys. Enough to give me the shivers. My aloofness earned me a reputation as a snob (disastrous when combined with swottiness and a burning desire to convert my classmates for the sake of their spiritual welfare). Bullies lobbed bricks at me as I fled homeward. The teasing was merciless. In my regulation white socks and stern driven-snow virtue (no rebellious pierced ears or short skirt) I consoled myself with martyrdom. Only Lorna and Maggie (similarly driven to escape, she shared my passionate commitment to redemption, although she never ceased in her efforts to disabuse me of my superstitious illusions, determined to cut off my opium supply route in her Marxist fervour). None of us had boyfriends, ostracised from the ranks of the popular. Maggie is witty and warm, brimming with compassion for the damaged and the left behind. My admiration and affection for her will never falter. We both sensed that romantic entanglements too early on would prevent us from attaining our objectives of something more. The apparition of the housewife filled me with unspeakable dread. Marriage was slavery. The ring would bind me by the wrists and ankles, inhibit me, trap me permanently in the city of my birth, which I once described as “a middle-class armpit of a town”. The relevant finger still proudly naked.

Maggie departed for university to study medicine a year before I had the courage to leave school. I swithered between applying for law or literature and history. At that stage it would never have occurred to me to risk a less conventional intellectual trajectory, the jingle of the till ringing in my ears.

The church eventually demanded that I destroy all records (they were inspired by Satan) along with my short stories of which they did not approve. I obeyed, to avoid jeopardising my salvation. Idle, momentary pleasures had to be measured against the prospect of an eternity of fire and brimstone. So I consigned manuscripts and LPs alike to the gleeful flames in the midden. Once I had settled in the capital, however, its grip loosened. Not enough for me to succumb to the temptation of discos and pubs, but sufficient to persuade me to reinvest in what I had destroyed. The pettiness of its rules constricted my throat. To prove my purity I ceased consuming blood. How could a God condemn any expression of love? How could He condone slaughter to fuel life?

On pavement grey afternoons, I would allow my mind to drift with Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age of Wireless. The plaintive strains of thwarted (or satiated) desire had no place there. His themes owed more to kitsch sci-fi and I basked in this detachment. His flirtation with the mad scientist trope appealed infinitely more than the obvious gyrating hips and straggly masculinity of his competitors. The geek’s repressed yet ravenous sexuality and fantasies of control and submission darker and more fascinating. His world-weariness reflected my own disenchantment. Convincing Magnus Pyke, conduit of the wonders of science to the masses, master of grandiose gesticulations whose flailing arms put the sails of a storm-tossed windmill to shame, to feature on one of the tracks a stroke of genius. Purchasing the album in compact disc form many years later (space-gobbling vinyl and needles having long since become obsolete) I found Airwaves inexplicably truncated. Why the Procrustean bed solution when so much more information could be stored nowadays than on the grooves of a single side? Yesterday, by chance, as I sifted through a repository of sound in search of a truly appalling (and completely unforgettable) earworm to amuse G, I made my first download of music. Looking at the length (five minutes sixteen seconds to be exact) I was filled with hope that this might be the version I had longed for and I was not disappointed. Lines I had not heard for some twenty years slipped effortlessly back into my mind as I immersed myself in the so much richer melody.
Control has enabled the abandoned wires again
But the copper cables all rust in the acid rain
That floods the subway with elements of our corrosion
Cabled in to me, yeah, cabled in to me, cabled in to me…

Seamlessly flowing into the never-abandoned:
Be in my broadcast
When this is over
Give me your shoulder
I need a place
To wait for morning
No it was nothing
Some car backfiring
Please don’t ask questions
I itch all over
Let me sleep