J Darts ch 8

Chapter 8

"So what's he like?" said The Poet, his eyes wide. He was doing what he
always did. He was fishing for the hint of the south-east Asian he was
still desperately longing for.

"He's just a regular guy," I said, remembering him, thinking how his
eyes weren't slanted, how his skin wasn't brown, how he didn't speak
Cambodian, Vietnamese or any strange dialect from a little explored
region in Laos.

"What?" said Captain Vegas. He leapt up and jiggled his hips. "Is he
more regular than me?"

The Poet shook his head sadly. "There's nothing regular about you," he
said.

"Nothing at all," said 16 with a meaty grin.

"No," said Captain Vegas, inflating his playboy chest, putting his
hands on his slender hips, "no, you're missing the point. What I mean
is, is that if you saw me and I was just standing behind the counter in
the fish shop serving bags of chips and the occasional slab of cod then
would you think, "there's a regular guy, I've never seen a guy as
regular as that."?" Captain Vegas looked around at us. His eyes looked
hopeful. In fact, his whole posture screamed out hopefulness, like he
was desperate for affirmation.

"Yeah," I said, "when you put it like that then I suppose I
would."

"Phew," said Captain Vegas. His chest deflated through his ears, his
hopefulness was apparently satisfied, its bags packed, its charter
flight in midair.

"I would think there's a regular guy who works in a chip shop and
looks like Elvis."

"WHY ME?" said Captain Vegas. "WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME?" His hips were
going backwards and forwards like they belonged to a famous hula-hoop
girl who had entered the village freak show by mistake. "TELL ME WHY
IT'S ME. THAT'S ALL I WANT TO KNOW."

This time I really didn't have a clue what the problem was and I asked
for a show of hands to see if I was alone in the matter. Everyone put
there hand up, even Captain Vegas himself, and in this manner it was
decided that no-one knew what Captain Vegas was talking about. We
decided there and then never to take him seriously again.

After this show of solidarity in the face of Vegas nobody knew what to
say. So much of our conversation was based on conflict that this
unexpected truce had confused us all and we sat there in silence. I
don't know how long this silence would have gone on if it hadn't been
broken by a knock at the door. Immediately I realised that it was time
for the regular guy to come round. Immediately I realised it must be
him at the door. I didn't know how I had forgotten.

"Quick," I said, jumping up, "everybody out of the window."
I wasn't ready yet to introduce the regular guy to 16, The Poet and
Captain Vegas so the options were limited. The only way I could see of
avoiding a meeting was for them to leave by the window.
There was another knock at the door. It was louder and more
regular.

"It's a long way down," said 16, looking out of the window, looking
down at the concrete pavement below.

"Don't worry," I said, "I've got an idea."

Actually it wasn't my idea. I had seen something similar once on that
American sitcom about the talking horse, Mr Ed. In this particular
episode the guy who owns Mr Ed has the horse in his bedroom. I think
the horse had been using the en suite shower and bidet set or something
like that. And then suddenly the guy's wife comes home. The wife hates
having that damn horse in her bedroom. Thinking quickly, the guy who
owns Mr Ed ties three of his wife's dresses into a rope and lowers the
horse out of the window.
The wife never suspects a thing.

I explained the idea quickly and everyone agreed that there was no way
it couldn't work, it the best idea they had heard for some time. So
without further ado I stripped off all of Captain Vegas's clothes, made
them into a rope, and then lowered Captain Vegas, 16 and The Poet out
of the window, one by one. The only evidence that my friends had been
there at all were a series of soft plaintiff cries. "Why me?" they
said. "Why is it always me?"
It was a fine punch-line to a great routine and discreetly
acknowledging the applause of the studio audience I went to let the
regular guy in.

"Hey," he said as I opened the door.

"Hey," I said.

"I got you these."

"Daffodils," I said.

"A bunch of them."

"Nice," I said. "Come on in."

Once in the lounge the regular guy went straight to the window and
looked out. There was a Holmesian certainty to his movements. I thought
he was going to say "elementary", leap out of the window and then
arrest The Poet for crimes against the iambic pentameter. But he
didn't. After a minute he turned to me and smiled. "There's a naked guy
in the street."

I feigned surprised and went over to look. "You're right," I said.
"Completely naked. Well I never."

"And look at that tattoo on his cock," said the regular guy, still
smiling. "In fact, it looks more like a story than a tattoo."

"You've got a lot of tattoos," I said, trying to change the subject,
while at the same time waving Captain Vegas away with a discrete hand
behind my back.

"I got the first proper one when I was a week old," said the regular
guy, hoisting up the arm of his T-shirt and showing me a seahorse, "and
I've been adding to them ever since. There're in my blood."

"What do you mean?" I said. It was both a way of diverting attention
away from the scene outside and a genuine enquiry. There was something
about the way he spoke that made me want to hear more. Outside, I was
glad to see that Captain Vegas was at least back in his underpants and
one sock. "Tell me more."

So the regular guy told me. In fact, he didn't tell me, he showed me.
He peeled off his shirt and pointed to a spot on his chest. Tattooed
there was a perfect seven. It was an exquisite piece of art and had
obviously been done by a skilled professional.

"I was the seventh of seven brothers," said the regular guy. "As each
child was born he had a number tattooed on his chest. It was primarily
for identification purposes. My father was a prodigious lover and my
mother's family had been bearing children for generations. When they
met a population explosion was inevitable."

"Wow," I said, tracing the seven with my fingers. The regular guy had
a beautiful chest and it wasn't spoilt by the tattoo. Some people are
made ugly by tattoos but not him. He was right, it was in his blood, it
must have been.

"My father worried that he would never tell us apart. That's why we
got the tattoos. It makes sense really."

"But you were the last brother?" I said. I was thinking that seven was
a lot less than 2.5 billion. I had read my Chinese history. I knew all
about population explosions.

"That's right," said the regular guy. "That was the tragedy of my
life. Being the seventh brother is the tragedy of my life."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Sit down," said the regular guy, "and I'll tell you."

"OK," I said and I sat down. I felt happy. If this was going to be a
relationship then it seemed like a good idea to start with a tragedy.
Most relationships ended with one. We would get ours out of the way
early. "Start the story," I said.

"In my mother's family seven is an unlucky number," said the regular
guy. He had sat down next to me and our legs were nearly touching.
"Seven is the number of the devil, Beelzebub, Satan. So when my father
got to six sons my mother begged him to stop. She said that she didn't
want any more sons. She said that she didn't want seven sons, no way.
She said that that was a challenge to fate that she was not prepared to
take."

"But you were born," I said, enjoying the story but secretly wishing
that I had a biscuit.

"When I was a child my brothers often told me how, in the period
leading up to my conception, my mother cried and wailed. They said that
at night she would lock herself in the attic and that during the day
she would hide herself in the woods but my father would find her and
take her where he found her. He was not a superstious man. No-one in
his family had ever had less than twenty-five sons and that single
occurrence was more a result of the Punic wars than anything else. So,
you are right, I was born."

"Phew," I said.

"As it turned out, I was OK. My mother's worries had been almost for
nothing. I was not the devil. But that was not the end of the story.
All my life I remember my mother saying to me, You must never have
children Seven. Seven is what she called me, what everyone calls me.
Your offspring will be unlucky Seven, my mother said. They will be
cursed. The children of the seventh son always are. Throughout my
puberty she fretted and worried. I watched as she tore her hair out,
paced holes into the carpets. And when my brothers started having
children things only got worse. She saw that we children were like her
husband. We only had to look at a woman and she would become
pregnant."

"That's quite a gift," I said.

"On my sixteenth birthday," said Seven, "my mother took to her bed.
You see as each of the brothers reached sixteen they would be taken to
the local brothel and initiated into the rites of adulthood. And these
initiations always resulted in children. No thickness of condom could
stop the sperm of my family. Children were our destiny, were in our
blood.

"Therefore, when I was sixteen, my mother thought that this was it. In
her dreams and even while awake she saw the end of the world. She saw
whole legions of devil children being born to me, spitting fire and
stirring up international conflict and war. She saw the end of the
world and it wasn't pleasant."

"It can't have been, ends of worlds never are."

"Therefore, on my sixteenth birthday I decided to tell my mum the
truth. It had been on my mind for a while and I believed it could only
do more good than harm. Sometimes the bitterest pill is the hardest to
swallow. So forcing myself to be brave I went into my mother's bedroom
and I knelt by her bed. "Mum," I said, saying the words that were so
difficult to say, "I'm not interested in women. Women are not a path I
want to walk down. You see, I want to make love to other boys. Every
day and every night." At first she wouldn't believe me, she couldn't
believe me, but then a ray of sunshine burst through the thick clouds
in heaven and shone down on me where I knelt. Then my mother knew it
was true. She leapt out of bed and all the sixteen years of unhappiness
that she had had since my birth fell away. The lines on her face
disappeared, her hair grew back to its former glory. It was the
happiest day of her life. A great party was organised and the whole
village rejoiced. I wouldn't have children! It was gift from God. And
ever since then that day, my birthday, has been a holiday in our
village and I am seen as a kind of saviour in reverse."

"Wow," I said, "is all that true?"

"Absolutely," said Seven.

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely," said Seven with a smile.

"And I thought you were just a regular guy."

"I am," said Seven. "That was the point of the story."

"Cool," I said. "You wouldn't like to join our darts team, would
you?"

"I'd love to," said Seven, "I'm pretty good at darts."

"Cool," I said.

"Cool," said Seven.

"Cool," I said. "Cool, cool, cool. Darts it is."