The Affair (Fiction)

I was waiting for her for three hours before she finally arrived back in the apartment. I smoked a cigarette till it burned my fingers, then another, and another, and another… Poured myself a stiff gin and walked around our home, looking at the detritus of our joint life. Silver picture frames lying on the grand piano showing our wedding photos, sailing photos, party photos, skiing photos, summer photos… The list went on and on, a series of petty, mindless events illustrating our marriage perfectly, showing it for what it really was. There are no pictures though, of my infidelity. There are no shots of Hyacinth and I on the balcony overlooking all Paris, none of us having dinner in Rome, nothing. I’d been so secretive for so long, and now I was about to rip that shroud away and force both my lives together in one second of confession? Well, I’d promised H. and so I would do what I would do.

Hearing the engine of that taxi broke me from my reverie. I swallowed half my drink in one go and made another, hearing the elevator whirr beneath my feet as I did so. She unlocked the heavy door and walked in, wearing a fur coat, tight red dress with a black belt that I didn’t recognize and a huge hat that shaded her face just slightly and showed her lips perfectly…

The effect was stunning, she radiated physical loveliness as she always had though in my heart I knew that deep down she was as twisted and vile as anyone I’d ever met.
‘Darling’ she said, the coat falling off her shoulders if on accident, ‘I’m sorry I’m back so late.’
She said this warmly, as if she was still as in love with me as she’d said she’d been when we’d first met at Oxford. It made me falter, perhaps I had made a mistake?
‘Did you put the supper in the oven?’ she asked, hanging the coat up and moving closer, the smell of her perfume intoxicating, ‘I left a note for you.’
I was made almost speechless by her, as I often was, and all I managed to say was a quick thank you and ‘I found it.’
She looked at me strangely, almost seductively and looking down I realized that I had finished my drink. I walked over to the sideboard, seeing her still standing there in the corner of my eye, unspeaking as I poured another drink. Suddenly she spoke,
‘Charles’ she said quickly, almost garbling her words, her voice husky, ‘don’t you have something to say to me?’
At that moment I suddenly realized that she knew about H. Why else the silences, the strange aura I was seeing like a chimera. She had found out, somehow, and had planned her move perfectly so that she could surprise me absolutely. What else could I do, I had to continue with my plan.
‘So’ I breathed deeply, ‘so I guess that you know already…’ I said, half expecting a slap but nothing came but a sharp intake of breath, her eyes widening in sudden fear and she seemed to glance around nervously for a second before speaking,
‘What should I know Charles?’ what I perceived as fake innocence throwing me for a second, her usual cockiness so ridiculous in this circumstance that I yelled at her, tried to force a confession of her knowledge, as if she was the guilty one,
‘‘Don’t play games’ I snapped at her with venom, ‘how long have you known about me an Hyacinth?’
She laughed, filling me with uncertainty, and then said primly, like the bitch she is
‘Actually, Ididn’t know about you and Hyacinth, and I guess you didn’t know about me and Seb.’

A Bad Situation in Beautiful Place

Franklin Pierce, Rindge, N.H

A few months ago a mammoth ice storm ravaged our campus and half of New England, destroying power-lines and leaving us stranded for days. Though the damage has mainly been repaired around school, the nearby woods are still littered with dead trees. I went out with my camera for the first time since the snow fell to see things for myself.

Frank Runs Away (Fiction)


So, you want to hear my story? Well, there is some time till the boat arrives from up river, and my feet are sore from walking. If you fetch me a black beer from the vender in the shack over there by that tree I’ll split some of this papaya and rice with you, it’s a good trade. Anyway, my story. Sorry to sound like such a prick about it, but it is a good tale, I can assure you.
Anyway, so I was eight when I ran away from home. I’ve heard that a lot of kids this age do something like that. They leave their houses and hide in the garden or down the street, returning two hours later in the hope that their parents will appreciate them more. In part I was like them, I grabbed a strange collection of things I presumed I would need and stuffed them into my schoolbag: Two oranges, an apple, a banana, some colouring pencils and paper, also my older brothers Discman and a family photo in a black frame. I even managed to steal a wad of ten-pound notes and my passport from my fathers desk. Then, like the other children I set off down the street wearing my best raincoat on my back.
Me though, I never turned back. When I reached Poland and was cold, wet and hungry for much of my tenth year I thought about it a lot but I never did. It was tempting for a while, when I sent postcards back home, to ask them to fly out and pick me up, but I never gave in to that temptation. Instead I kept going, racking up cities, countries, regions, and continents till the soles of my wellington boots fell apart and I had to scrounge a spare pare (two sizes too large) from a building fire escape in Prague. My hair got long and body got taller, I grew from small boy into gangly teenager, drinking a Starbucks coffee on the train to Beijing from Ulaanbaatar and Moscow before that, the open road my only home.

As a reader you’ll ask why and I wouldn’t blame you. People expect answers these days, I read from pieces of magazines I find that scientists are trying to make some machine underneath Switzerland that will smash and bump a bunch of stuff we cant see together and somehow explain what makes everything in the world. Anyway, that’s a tangent but people do seem to want answers, they can’t just be content with the idea that my parents were normal. They seem to insist against everything I say that my Mum and Dad were somehow bad, that I was abused, that my family werecrack heads that left me in a gutter to fend for myself. The truth is much more mundane but people can’t seem to accept that.

My parents were perfectly normal and quite boring. My father was an insurance salesmen or something like that, my mother worked in an office before I was born and occasionally afterwards. They were nice people, what I remember of them, my father smelling of cologne and my mother with her hair tied back as she listened to the radio and made me dinner. They didn’t drink really and when they did were never drunk, hardly argued about anything and even went to bed at a reasonable hour. My brother, five years older than I, was “wild” in that he smoked the odd cigarette and drank cans of Strongbow underage but that’s hardly a crime any more. They were nice people, they cared for me, clothed me, fed me and put up with all the priggishness a child can offer their family.

In the end I guess it was just destiny that led me to the road. I was bored. I got home one day from school, mum went out to do some errands and so I turned on the T.V. There was a program about Easter Island on BBC showing the huge stone heads sitting there with the sea and the sun and something in me just clicked. I wanted to leave the grey drudgery of Britain, the monotony of primary school, the playgrounds with their health and safety, their stifling political correctness that didn’t even make sense… I wanted to see things, countries, experience the world… I couldn’t articulate all this of course, but that’s how I felt. So, I wrote a brief note to my parents in green crayon that read:

“DEaR, Mumm and Dad, Thanksyou for bing good parANTS but I am borred and am going to run away. I LOVE YOU AND SIMON MY BROTHER AND THE KAT. KISSES, FraNk xoxx
P.S. I am taking MY dog.

Oh, I havn’t even got round to writing about Pip, have I? Well, Pip was the puppy spaniel my parents had given me for Christmas that year, all fur and boisterousness and I adored him more than anything else. Well, I put a piece of long garden twine around his little neck and he came with me. Together we walked out of the house and down the road, got on a train and for some reason nobody stopped me! Perhaps the attendant was tired or ill, maybe I just looked confident enough that people presumed I knew what I was doing. Whatever, I made it to London and took a few days seeing the sights before I moved on. Even then I was smart enough to dodge peoples questions, when they asked me “where are your parents” I’d simply point in a spurious direction and then say, and this I was proud of, “Mummy says I shouldn’t talk with strangers” and run away, Pip bounding behind me.

Using the above skills and utilizing a lot of luck I somehow made it across the Channel on a ferry and into France five days after running away. I remember standing by the boat rail with Pip licking my face and looking out backwards at a choppy sea as we left England. Amazingly, and some don’t believe this, I hid Pip under my coat and just ran through a crowd of peoples legs and through immigration. Believe it or not, I made it to France and mainland Europe.
I love Europe. So many antiquated small villages in France and especially Spain even now, where if you avoid the mopeds and German tourists you can find peasant-like women living in total Franconian 1950’s style. Some gave me food and looked after me for a few days, very few called the police and those that did were rewarded by the sight of me and Pip bolting down the street away from them and out of sight. Those were good days, that first year of learning to survive. I ate tomato and mozzarella salad in a old grandmothers house while her ancient husband puffed on strong smelling cigarettes and cut my hair, showing me how to trim Pip’s ears and even going so far as gifting me a pair of scissors for that purpose. I avoided two police cars when I was drinking a hot chocolate in café outside Barcelona by running along the street and jumping into the town river, Pip complaining as we rocketed down stream. I saw true beauty in the Mediterranean, brightly coloured Latin sail boats off the coast, groves full of olive trees where I’d find somewhere to stay among the hay of an abandoned stable.

When the police presence started hotting up with people looking for me I went east, and those times weren’t so good. Nobody gave a shit in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia or any of those countries of course, they didn’t care about me travelling alone with a dog, didn’t care that I looked like a street urchin with scruffy hair and dirty face. The problem was they mostly didn’t care if I was half-starved, coughing and blue, delirious with pain from when I fell off the back of a truck in Bratislava and almost killed myself. Somehow, and I really don’t understand how I did it, I survived and grew stronger. Pip made it too, just. A tramp once tried to eat him and I had to throw stones at the old man to make him go away.

Eventually I made it to Africa via Russia, the Caspian Sea and part of the Middle East before trucking down China and finally here. You might ask at this point if I was ever lonely, and the truth is I very seldom was without good company. The tramps that ride freight trains, the great unwashed of Eastern Europe housing estates, truck drivers, hitch-hikers, migrant workers, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. These are among my friends. People from every country I’ve visited and of almost every background, profession sex and age bracket have accepted me at some point, and been a part of my journey. People either travel with me for a time or offer me help in some small way, often they do both.

People are kind. From a young female college student who saw me sitting next to her on a park bench in Berlin and gave me and Pip the sandwich she didn’t want to eat, to a group of rugby players on tour who paid for all the drinks at the French pub where I spent my fifteenth birthday, to the sweet Dutch whore in Amsterdam who took my virginity for free that same year while Pip slept in the corner, much of what I need to survive and be happy has been provided for in some way by total strangers, just out of love for humanity and maybe more than a little pity. As I got older I travelled more in groups, usually helping backpackers find their way around in exchange for company and maybe the odd travel expense and with this I came to appreciate the power of having friends.

It’s getting late. Soon I should think about catching the barge down river from here but there are some things I need to say first, some questions you will have that are yet unanswered. To start with, OF COURSE I have regrets, these even I cannot outrun though I’ve tried hard to do that before. Sometimes when it’s raining and I don’t have money or anything to barter I’ll manage to sneak into a cinema and curl up warm and snug on the seats. When the films are about “romance”, that’s when I get sad and think about my possibly misspent past. Seeing American actors hugging, kissing, standing on manicured lawns with perfect teeth, perfect families, perfect lawns. Who in my position wouldn’t be upset by all this seemingly accessible love? I sit there and I admit I cry a bit sometimes, eating popcorn and feeding the odd piece to Pip, who’s head is perched up through my jacket, which is how I smuggle him in to the theatre.

I miss my family. I think about them all the time but haven’t had the balls to contact them. Frankly, I wouldn’t know how. Would I pick up and say” Hey Mum and Dad, Its Frank… Long time no speak…”
No, I think the occasional post card is fine, it lets them know I’m alive at least. Please don’t judge me on this by the way… I consider also that I’ve always been conventionally single and , that a girlfriend, companion on my travels, would be a welcome relief. There are nights alone spent sleeping outside with Pip at my feet that I dream of familiar arms around me, somebody who can laugh at my jokes and understand my everyday struggles.

The question is, who would that be? What do I know of modern culture, of living a quote “normal” life that most would find appealing for more than a few nights? The women I have had, those nineteen year old backpacker girls yearning to get off the beaten track, to experience life at its fullest for a year, the bored Slovakians popping gum and drinking vodka from the bottle after sneaking me from their bedrooms, the subtle French girls drunk after a night clubbing and yearning the same thing as I (Proximity), what do they really mean to me? I meet them all the minute I stop for the night, and something about me attracts them, some invisible aura I seem to emit. We begin talking, and if they don’t believe me my story they leave without a backwards glance and if they do… Well then the female hand leads me to a warm bed for the night, and for me there is no greater luxury.

You may think me a chauvinist perhaps, but I’m not. Some of the most brightest, most amazing people I’ve met are women but what hope do I have with them, why would they want me for more than mere enjoyment? I have no home, no life other than Pip and the road, no future further than the next meal. As you could perhaps understand, it’s not a very appetizing situation for a single woman.

Moving from that painful subject I can say that there are times though, that cancel out my melancholy. When I’m on the road I’m happy, truly happy. The wind buffeting the Cambodian scarf I wear, the roar of cars, mopeds and trucks beside me, Pip barking merrily as we hitchhike together. Pip is getting old now, but he’s as good a pet as ever, brave and loving to me. We’ve experienced more together than most people would in several life times! You know I looked at a “1000 places to go before you die” book and saw that Pip and me have done well over half? That and many more that they’d never show in a book like that.

So, I guess that’s that I guess. I’ve told you a lot, and look! That’s the boat, that’ll take me right down the river and out to sea to some nice islands I heard about. I hope you liked the papaya and rice, and cheers for the beer! Help me with my backpack a second… That’s it, thanks! Come on Pip, time to go. Bye mate, take care… Oh, and to answer your earlier question I’m seventeen years old!

Edmond and the Tiger (Fiction)

Edmond tiptoed down the darkened stairs in his pyjamas, clutching the banister and feeling the creak in each aged plank of wood beneath the bare soles of his feet. The hall was bathed in a soft moonlight and as he reached the last step he took a deep breath and put his food down on the floor. Nothing happened. The housemaster, a terrifying, buzzard-faced figure Professor Mr Moore did not appear, nor did his dour and equally terrifying wife. After a second Edmond padded quietly across the floor, past aged pictures hanging on the walls that showed haggard faces of head masters long passed, and cricket teams long graduated.
Along he went, until finally he stood by the huge bolted door to the outside world and turned slightly so that he was facing a small alcove set into the wall. Even with no electric lights he could see the eyes, bright orbs of orange glass caught by the moon. The head of a tiger, mouth open in a last silent, angry roar faces him from the safety of a glass fronted case smeared with the handprints of Edmond and others.
‘Hello Henry’ he whispered, smelling the musty smell of the dead animals fur as he presses his small nose against the glass, ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came to see you.’
It was no different from any other night, for there was little space in a dorm of eight snoring, farting boys for one who couldn’t sleep. Always, as the others were tossing and turning, consumed by dream, little Edmond would lie under his white duvet with eyes wide open until he was sure they were all asleep. Then, climbing softly from his bed he would sneak down the wide stairway and stand engrossed in one-way conversation with the stuffed animal head until he couldn’t keep his eyes open and he was forced to retire upstairs.
‘School was hard today’ Edmond continued, ‘Mr Whelks got me in trouble because I was picking my nose in prep, and Poppy Morgan came into the dorm and told us to stop jumping on the beds and throwing pillows.’
As he looked at Henry he caught his reflection in the glass of the display cabinet. He saw a seven-year-old boy with wavy blonde hair and owlish eyes wrapped in a huge blue dressing gown, hardly tall enough to look in the display cabinet without standing on tiptoes.
He stared at the tiger with inexpressible longing, and for a moment scrunched his eyes tightly shut, willing the huge animal to come alive and bound out of the case and curl up on the end of his bed. It didn’t, so after a moment he began talking again,
‘I had Mr Prufrock for Latin today, we call him cabbage because he smells strange, and he hit my fingers with the ruler because I was looking out of the window. He has hairy fingers and one big eyebrow, so sometimes they call him The Ape. Also Henry, I tried Semolina today at lunch but I didn’t like it and I had to throw up in the flowerbed but Charlie, the old gardener with the glass eye, got angry and said rude words… I think they were rude words. Oh, and Mummy rang, I miss her…’
This last he brushed over quickly, worried about bursting into tears because he knew one should never cry near a tiger, because they were the bravest animals of all. ‘I skinned my knee in cricket, but we still won…’

As he stood talking a slightly older boy of perhaps eleven, a prefect badge clipped onto his dressing gown, approached down the stairway and stood looking at Edmond for a second, shaking his head. After a few minutes he walked down and tapped the other child on the shoulder, grimacing slightly as Edmond jumped and turned around with huge mournful eyes, sensing punishment for his actions.
‘You know you can’t be down here Edmond’ the boy said, not unkindly ‘you’ll wake everyone up.’
‘Sorry Jack’ Edmond replied, ‘I was talking to Henry’
‘Well’ Jack smiled, ‘you can always sneak back down tomorrow when I’m not looking, ok?’
‘Yes Jack’ Edmond nodded and quickly padded back towards the stairway, leaving Jack alone to talk to Henry.

On the Edge (Independent Fiction)

Chapter One

Thirty years before, New York City, the office of the editor of a prominent arts magazine. An open magazine lies on a desk amid ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts and half finished drinks, all of them alcoholic. The magazine in question is the New Yorker, the arts section. Double paged picture, Joaquin standing with brush in hand, a dozen paintings on easels around him, like petals on a flower of swirling colours and bright blotches, paint thrown on canvas with a blasé almost approaching distain.

“Why should I give a shit, its art?” the headline reads in black font, a statement rather than a question, bold in type and content.

A man stands behind the desk looking at it, short and fat, large glasses below a sweaty brow and receding hairline. He exudes pomposity with his large chest stuck out in what he presumes is a look made to impress and intimidate despite braces over a shirt vaguely stained with gravy and gin.
‘I am the editor of the second largest culture magazine in America’ he is saying, his voice a fog horn that emits spittle and globules of food as he talks, ‘the second largest. The first largest, this shit’ he points in anger to the offending item, the open magazine with its picture of Joaquin, ‘is the bane of my existence, topping the ratings continuously, thwarting my every effort.

The truth, Shaw, the terrible truth behind what we journalists do, is that sex, drugs and fucking debauchery of every twisted kind, that muck sells like hotcakes. We might say we’re a culture journal, or whatever name the assholes up top choose to call us, but we’re really no different from any two dime magazine on the street with its shitty gossip and fabricated lies. The art is just to make it look like we sanitise the filth, like chlorine in a swimming pool, just because’ it’s there doesn’t mean nobody is peeing in the goddamn water.

Now, the problem is Shaw, that while I’ve accepted this my counterpart in the fucking New Yorker has too, and he had a fucking head start of a year. He’s got his people, your counterparts, out sniffing through the garbage and muck of every two-bit so called “famous person” in the art and literary world.’

He took a deep breath and glanced up with eyes like needles at the man standing on the other side of the desk, slouching slightly in a baggy suit too big for him. Jeff Shaw watched the senior editor, his boss of seven months and twelve days, with forlorn curiosity. Shaw was a man of stark contrast to the editor, or simply Ed as everyone in the office called him, more in touch with the times they were living in, and there for that very reason. His hair was left long and untrimmed so that it passed over his ears and reached the stiff collar of his pastel yellow shirt, flecks of premature grey, he was barely twenty-five, showing in the nest of unruly brown. His eyes were light blue and curious though his mouth was set in a look of impartiality. A pair of aviator sunglasses was shoved onto his shirt, held in place at the neck and a pack of Marlboros peaked out of the breast pocket. He stood still and unspeaking till the other man impatiently gave up waiting for a response and carried on, obviously loving the sound of his own voice,

‘Now Shaw, I’ll make it clear. I don’t care for your type, you modernists with the way your never content, always shaking things up. In my day it was different, but I’m no fucking idiot and if I can’t move with the times I can at least pay some smuck like you to do it for me, and make us all some fucking money. You see Shaw, celebrity is my fucking bread and butter, it’s the filler in the magazine and this guy’ he pointed one meaty finger at the picture of Joachim, ‘is pure gold dust, and taking off faster than Marilyn Monroe. His paintings are worth more than either you or me make in a year (but how much does that say) and every famous person knows him or spends their time pretending to… Over all this one fucking article has sold ten thousand more copies and its only been out two days…’

As he ranted on and on, one finger still tapping, Jeff glanced down and saw the mans fingernails were bitten to the tip and yellow from cigarettes, a repelling combination that made this repugnant dwarf more hideous.
‘So boss’ Jeff asked, his accent lazy but cultured in a East Coast America way, produced straight from prep-school and a overly decent university, ‘you got a job for me? I can do an piece on this Westfallen painter guy, if that’s what you want.’
‘A piece’ Ed spat, ‘what the fuck do you think we are, the New York fucking times? I don’t want you to sit down with this guy for twenty minutes so he can bullshit you a fake shit story and then fuck off to do some more blow and fuck some more cheap French hotel hookers, I want you to get in his life, and do it better than the competition.’
‘Sure’ Jeff nodded, smiling slightly at this news, ‘I can do this.’

‘Shaw’ Ed continued, raising one fat hand, ‘you’ve only got that stupid shit eating grin on your face because you don’t have a fucking idea about what I want you to do yet. You think its easy, do you in your idealistic fucking brain, living with some celebrity in his life of sex and drugs while we pay your way? Wise up son, its hard work, you’ve got to keep one eye open while you sleep. These people are animals; they’ll eat you alive if you give them cause. If that’s not enough, you won’t be the only one desperate enough to be doing this. The New Yorker has had a man trailing Joaquin Westfallen for six months, six months Shaw. He’s going to be in favour in Westfallen’s court, and he’s going to be hot on the story before you even arrive.’
‘The story’ Jeff asked, not smiling ‘what is the story boss?’
‘How the fuck should I know. This guys rich and famous, he spends more money than everyone else and paints pictures when he’s not snorting and fucking that are thought so good everyone wants one. All I give a shit about is that the fucking bastards in the New Yorker think he’s big enough to have one of their best young guys cover him, so I’m going to put you in there to make things a bit more even. Your young kid, but you’re a good journalist and I want you in on the action. Trust me kid, Shaw, there’s enough shit in this fucked up character’s life that you should have no problem digging up a nice pile of juicy dirt. Now, check with Janice in accounts for your passport and flight tickets and get the fuck out of my sight until you’ve got a story, that clear?’
‘Yes sir, crystal’ Jeff said deadpan, ‘I won’t let you down but shouldn’t I have more info, I mean I’ve never even really heard of this cat, and now you want me living with him and writing about him?’

‘If you want more information, take this’ Ed said, throwing the magazine into the air and watching with amusement as Shaw grimised and took a step back, fumbling as he caught the magazine. With that the embarrassed journalist about faced and headed to the door, Ed calling out after him,
‘You’ve got a month, starting from tomorrow morning. Know this though, whatever you do Shaw, don’t fucking fail me.’

*

‘So’ Janice, the secretary told him later, ‘Ed gave you a job abroad. That’s big for a guy like you, he must like you, if that man has the capacity to like anyone. Has he even told you where your going yet sweetie?’
‘No’ Jeff shook his head, ‘he didn’t say anything apart from this cat’s your guy, tail him and get a story.’
‘That’s Ed’s way Honey’ Janice smiled, all crooked teeth, black-dyed greying beehive and huge winged glasses, ‘he’s old school, from before the war. He learned fast, and expects you to do the same. Now, moving on sweetie,
I spoke to one of Mr. Westfallen’s assistants and arranged everything for you. you’ll be flying into Marrakesh, Morocco, get picked up at the airport and go straight to Mr. Westfallen’s house there, it’s where he’s spending the summer to paint the nice assistant man told me. Now, what about your finances. You’ve got a lot of money, you’ll need it if your with this crowd, so don’t worry too much about accounts but please, honey, keep receipts because it’s a pain in my ass if you don’t.’
She chuckled dirtily and Jeff stared back expressionlessly as she gathered herself and continued,
‘You’ll figure the rest out for yourself I think, oh and do watch out for the New Yorkers man, he’s good.’
‘Who is he’ Jeff asked, ‘just so I know what I’m up against.’
‘He’s a Brit I think, speaks with a very funny accent. Not too old, few years on you though, …twenty-nine…Twenty-eight, something like that. He’ll be the one in the tweed, so keep an eye out honey and you’ll be fine.’
‘Thanks Janice’ he smiled and kissed the woman on the cheek, ‘you’re a saint, I’ll get you something nice in Morocco.’
Bounding slightly with joy as he walked Jeff left the small office, swinging round the door and into the press pit where he kept his small nondescript desk, amid a hundred other similar ones, each with a journalist straining at a keyboard or writing reams of notes on pieces of paper.’
‘Hey Joey’ he shouted to a tired looking hack in shirtsleeves as he passed, ‘I got a job, I’m off to Marrakesh.’
‘You bastard’ the man said, ‘good luck, and have fun.’

On the Edge (Independent Fiction)

Prologue

Joaquin Westfallen. For thirty-five years he was famous. Then he was dying and nobody gave a shit. For those three and a half decades though, he was god. His face in black and white and later colour, plastered in newspapers, magazine, billboards and on television. His thoughts and ideas scrawled in two autobiographies and splayed upon a dozen canvasses a month. The labels assigned to him were endless and contradictory, painter, artist, author, alcoholic and drug addict, roué and womanizer, bastard, con and gentleman. Perpetually wasted and to some, boundlessly talented, he moved with grace through social sects of the high and mighty in their playgrounds, Paris his favourite, Monaco a drag.

By the spring of 1987 though he sat alone, hair growing grey, hands shaking from the daemon drink and cut cocaine, carpet slippers on his feet and thick dressing gown wrapped tight around his very frail and thinning body, emaciation not far way. He sat alone in a wicker chair on a balcony outside a crumbling monastery on the coast of Spain, a thin cigarillo gradually burning down to embers in one hand, a half finished gin and tonic floating languidly in its glass as still as the waters in the bay far below his vantage point. He sat looking at it with tired eyes, fingers tapping steadily on the armrest of his chair, thinking deeply.

Beside him, resting on a side table was a picture, a portrait of two young men in their twenties, one dressed in a tweed suit, the other in linen, both with hats perched low on their heads and arms holding each others shoulders. Behind them were palm trees and the corner of a church, blurry and out of focus, the photo tropical and old. Joaquin sat looking at the picture, throwing the cigar on the ground as if it were poisoned, picking the photo up and feeling its age in the weight of the thing, staring close at the faded faces of the two subjects, remembering taking the shot himself so long ago and laughing at the effort of forcing poses from the awkward and modest. As he put the picture back on the table, his mind began to roam.

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, N.H
2009 Dance Concert Review

So-called modern dance is a difficult genre to be preformed at any university, let alone Franklin Pierce. With dance companies, theatre schools and more prestigious colleges snapping up the most talented dancers, choreographers and theatre managers it stands to reason that a relatively unknown institution such as ours would be at the bottom of the metaphorical food chain as far as talent goes. With this in mind I was therefore slightly sceptical about attending the Franklin Pierce Winter Dance Concert. Overall though, its fair to say I was presently surprised by the quality of the performances. There were a few flinch worthy moments of course, but also some amazing and very talented appearances that made the former barely noticeable.

The concert was held in the warehouse theatre, a simple location without pomp or flair but this was in some ways appropriate as the darkness helped accentuate the simple moves of the dancers. The first dance to be shown was the very French Avec la Gauche, choreographed by Wendy Dwyer. Beginning with a group of dancers dressed in a European style with berets and black summer dress, running across the stage dragging behind them roller suitcases and choreographed to catchy French music it was snappy and feisty dance with some very clever moments. The girls behaved as if they were waiting for a train, criss-crossing the stage and miming meeting each other. There was a brilliant moment where they lifted the bags above their heads and pirouetted, then lay down with the bags on their chests. Unfortunately the overall effect was hampered by a severe lack of timing among the performers that rendered parts of the dance almost unwatchable.
The mood changed with the next dance, Shell. This was much darker, the music more trance-like. Making use of modern lighting techniques the stage was flooded with a green glow aimed through the blades of a rotating fan. Unfortunately the dancing itself was mainly of a lower quality and this really impacted the piece. Though I may sound like a image obsessed chauvinist the following has to be said: If a dancer is overweight to the point where she is audibly out of breath, something is wrong! Also the choreography was for me too erotic, the performers were forced to drape themselves over each other in a slightly unsettling fashion and it made the whole thing slightly unnerving.
Following Shell came Armee de Plastique. The performers were dressed in all black except for bunny-tail like pink ribbons tied to their bums, and this simplicity really worked to extenuate their movements. Set to music by Moby the dance itself had the girls moving mostly as if mechanized, stiffly but then suddenly fluid. I found myself really enjoying this piece and its simplicity.

The next dance however was very poor indeed and lived down to being called simply Untitled. The girls were good dancers, have no mistake on this, but their consumes didn’t mach and were in many cases too small which gave them a slightly comic appearance. The choreography was boring which was hardly mediated by some slick lighting, and the music was unmemorable.
If I have shown the low point of the concert then I am about to show the high. First Sight, a so called work in progress for later projects, was stunning. Utilizing just two performers it began with (and please forgiving me if I’ve muddled the two girls up) the brilliantly talented Gabriella Aufiero, who for me stole the whole show, sprawled on the stage and contorting herself slightly in moves similar to that of the dancer in Pearl Primus’s Strange Fruit. The lighting was very simple, as was her costume and the two played off against each other perfectly. Suddenly Ms. Aufiero was joined by the almost as good Amy Dilks and the two performed a world wind of spinning, almost ballet-like, movements that culminated with Ms. Dilks spinning Ms. Aufero around the stage by a simple red ribbon tied around the latter’s waist, controlling her movements through this as if it was the leash for a dog. This dance was completely brilliant and I have no complaints, save for the fact that the two young women performing it should consider looking for more prestigious appointments in the world of dance.

The finale of the concert was the maddening The Haunting. I use this verb because in the roughly 15 minutes it ran it soured and plummeted with both very high and low points. Though it was slightly too long it employed impressive visuals by having the lead dancer backlit by a black and white movie of a house and cast iron gate that I found slightly chilling but VERY edgy indeed. The dancing was both brilliant and drudgery, the best part being a walze conducted by four couples, each carrying a large lamp between them. Unfortunately one had failed to work so the whole image was lost slightly.

So, in just one hour the school Theatre and Dance department has shown us the best and the not so brilliant, showcasing some real talent but illustrating the areas where more work needs to urgently be done. Overall I’d say I was very impressed and even pleasantly surprised, and will hope to see further concerts in the future.

There was no closure for us going back. Splintered tree branches, the ends lily white from where they’d split from their trunks, lay festooned around the campus we loved so much. The paths to the doors were covered in thick snow, brambles crawling over a splintered Adirondack chair that I remembered from my days there, a thick chain fence now stuck crudely like a thick scar across from the old farm house. Even the trees around the Buddha garden were in pieces, the statue itself hidden by ice. We parked behind the old educator housing, cracked a beer and walked into the school like explorers stumbling upon an ancient city.
Around us were the signs of decay, rot on the wooden siding of the buildings, a tattered blue plastic rain jacket hanging from a tree. It was this last that brought back memories, images of teenagers walking up a path through icy mountains, of standing in that very spot and packing and unpacking our heavy backpacks in unison upon huge tarps that probably still gather dust in one of the school’s locked sheds. Looking at the rain jacket Zach pointed, we recognized the type from when we had been here years ago.

I had not seen Zach Orme for almost two years when we met yesterday. Old school friends from Shackleton we had been reunited just once after the closure and a fierce argument had sent us on our own paths from there. Yesterday though, was a time to put our differences aside, embrace old friendships and go back to the start. Ashby Academy, the autistic school that had followed Shackleton when our doors had so abruptly closed, had gone bankrupt under a cloud of fraud allegations alleging to the founders penchant for buying sports cars with tuition fees and was now under investigation by the F.B.I . With this in mind we had decided that the buildings would be empty and that we should visit for old times sake.

To this end we had lunch and drove back up icy roads, past forests snapped in half by the ice storm, the landscape looking to us as if a Bosnian warzone had intruded into our quiet New England existence. A giant tree had smashed through the shed of a house on Spring Hill, and as we finally mounted the hill an abandoned and tragic looking campus faced us. My eyes widened and I was lost for words, instinctively I turned off the radio and forced us to deal with the silence.

Zach led the way after we’d parked the car. We sipped our dark beer, trudging through the snow and posing for pictures outside the abandoned buildings. All around us, the place was like a horrible nightmare that had taken root in my darkest subconscious for nowhere were there signs of improvement or progression. Seemingly nothing much had changed since the last day of school save for a single fence standing pointlessly by the entrance, shining a light into Elephant Island we saw furniture we recognized and the same beds gathering dust. In the dining hall the kitchen had been ripped out but everything still looked like the same old Shackleton. Even the emergency lights were still on and I was reminded of a scene from the film "Shackleton" where the Endurance lies sinking in the ice and yet a single light blinks on and off like a "heart beat" to tell the crew she is still alive.

The hardest part of visiting was not being welcomed back into a loving community. Even now I remember being a first year in Sua Sponte and giving out blankets to Boaz, Danny and Rob Bessler as they visited, our alumni but still part of our family. For me and Zach it was different. We were alone in what felt like a pure white thought consumed with bitterness and darkness, the buildings that had played such a big part in who we are covered with brambles, snow and rot.

In the end though, as I drove away with eyes sore with barely suppressed tears I remembered that Shackleton still exists, however cheesy that sounds to you who were not part of it. Though our campus has succumb to nature, like the Endurance did when it buckled and sunk beneath Earnest Shackleton, like him we are not beaten. We keep in touch, many of us, share news of our journeys and when we meet, however rarely, we share much of the hope and optimism that bound us together in the first place.

"Zak"

"Me"

"Abandoned"

"Then"

"Lights still on"

"Dorms"

"Memories"

"Buddha Garden"

"Many years Ago"

"When we were young"

"Simon, then"

"Paint Peeling"

"Empty"

"The Next Expedition"

"Overgrown"

"The sun sets"

"In the end WE are still Shackleton"