V - Really Rhyl

Dear K,

Lolo, K. Hola! How are you? I'm sorry that writing letters to you has
not yet become a habit. Perhaps it will soon. You see, I'm writing from
prison. A converted prison - Caley's tea and chocolate house, in a
stone tower on Gaol Hill, near the Tesco Metro. I taught Manley a thing
or two about gaols - namely, that 'gaol' is not the Ameircarn spelling
of 'jail.' He's quietened down about it now.

It's a fair prison. We're sitting on a table beside a staircase
drinking chocolate coffees - there's a tin poster print mounted on the
wall above us, and I can just about see it if I lean a little. It's an
advertisement for Caley's marching chocolate, from the thirties or
forties I'd say, and it shows a ginger-haired boy holding a bar of the
chocolate, being led away by two policemen. One policeman is pinching
his ear, and he looks very miserable - the boy, I mean.

The room is very quaint - cream walls, oak beams, table cloths, a
glass counter, and female prison officers in frilly aprons. There's a
Christmas tree by the far wall. The other prisoners are all quite old,
but they seem well treated. This is how all prisons should be.

Why am I in prison, you may ask? Well, K - do you remember what all
the schoolboys were after? When we were schoolboys, I mean. They were
all in search of the pink panther - they were all modelling themselves
up to be Laurence of her labia, to be loading the chambers of her
re-vulva. That's why they spent so much money on suits and cigarettes.
That's why they hit us now and then. By 17 they'd got more
sophisticated than that, thank God, but they were still at it. You know
what, K? They didn't really need to bother. They could have written
things down in notebooks like us.

Yes, I am reporting another success. I hit lucky after going to Great
Yarmouth with my local writing society, and that's also why Manley
&; I are here in prison. The trip was called 'Fear and Loathing in
Great Yarmouth.' There were free spaces all over the coach, so I took
Manley and as many harpies as I could. When I say as many as I could, I
mean one, and that was the vampire countess. Yes, K - I landed the
vampire countess!

I persuaded Cole and Dent to come too - they're from Wolfson Close, the
flat across the field from us. I convinced them by telling them that
writing is healthy, and a trip out to the seaside moreso. I think in a
way they admire me, so they asked me if I did my writing for my health.
Goodness, K, am I writing this for my health? What do you think? I said
no, it's a fulfilment. Then I got more honest - I said I'm a
nymphomaniac writer - I have always needed to write, or draw, or plan.
It is rattling the bars of the body - it's an urgency. I said it was my
own way of tossing off - a deeply personal sacrifice. My pleasure, my
health, I said, is actually reading, so it is the very least I can do
for myself to write things that are pleasurable for me to read. I truly
am up my own arse, but such an infinity serpent of pleasure and health
and satisfaction - it allows me to behave well towards other people
most of the time. We must introduce more of our species to harmless
self-buggery.

Before I go on - and I know you must be dying to here what happened - I
think I should explain (and you're probably already wondering, if
you've skipped ahead to the end of the letter or opened it the wrong
way up, as I sometimes do,) why I have signed off as 'Pumpkinhead.' You
remember how shocked we were to discover 'nonce' was actually used in
the 1970's by prison officers to describe sex offenders? You remember a
lot of things, K - you must remember that. Well, similarly,
'pumpkinhead' is the term they use for offenders such as me. I'm not
entirely sure why - as far as I know, I haven't been charged with an
offence. It may well be because our brains, still reeling from
overconsumption of alcohol all those nights ago, are little but orinj
mush. This is nothing new, according to the figures. We are the orinj
mush generation. More worryingly though (and this fits in with the
nature of the questions I was asked,) it may be a reference to jack o'
lanterns. That is, a pumpkin head adorned with facial features, but
hollowed out except for a solitary candle. Again, you might take this
to be an accusation of brainlessness, but it seems to me something
more. It seems that we are being designated 'men without purpose,' a
useless and tiresome burden on the state and the country. Again, this
is nothing new. I'll let you know post haste if anything new comes up,
K, but this is nothing new.

There were two bottles of vodka on the coach. One ended up on the back
row, and no one else wanted any, so I glugged it myself. I'm like that
now - I feel like I need to make up for all the time writing things
down in notebooks, and get my whole life's supply out of the way as
soon as possible, so I drink a lot. I'm going out drinking tonight
again, when they let me out. Down to the Waterfront. I buy a bottle of
coke and then it's straight double vodkas from therein on - the coke is
to wash them down. Hold you breath when you swallow the shot - then
quickly take some coke. Hey presto! No gagging.

I was smashed by the time we got there. We climbed up onto the rotten
end of the pier as the tide came in, and we pubbed around on the
shoreline streets, playing pool and drinking more and more. Manley
&; Si?n built a whole sand shanty town. We sang karaoke in the
Poet's Upside Down Bar, and spent money on bright, blurred arcade
machines. Then we ran into the North Sea in just our underwear. Some of
us, I mean - Cole didn't. Manley didn't. And Si?n didn't.

It's worth making a point out of this. And I forgot to mention - I'd
been putting my hand down her top all day. It's difficult to explain, K
- I was drunk. I remember hiding something down my own top, and her
fishing for it. I took this as a kind of public fishing license, and
she didn't seem to mind too much.

I sat in the black North Sea, after running in, letting the cold munch
on me. Munch, munch, munch. It was nice. Then I looked back, K - and
she was standing there in the marmalade of the streetlamps, like a
glowing white ember, and the broken backs of the waves crawled and
trembled at her feet, then were dragged back into the murk by their
toes. I was the only refugee of the sea who could scramble out to her.
So I did. Oh I did, I did.

She asked about my countryman umbrella. I said I liked swinging it
around, which I do - I like to have busy hands, I said. And I do - busy
hands, busy hands, eh? Sometimes she only wears her socks in bed. And
the gulf when she wears the V of my dressing gown wide!

But Saint K, what can I tell you that wouldn't be better supplied by a
clutch of erotica? There are only two words associated with sex that I
find unalarming in sound and appearance - those that I've already
mentioned. Labia and vulva. Snatch isn't bad either, but I've only
learnt that recently. Oh God, breasts, K, breasts. Saggy with all the
warring poets who have swung from them!

You must think I'm trying to humiliate you. I'm not trying to
humiliate you, Saint K. Far from it. I wish to congratulate you. You
see - and I know this must seem out of key with the rest of my letter -
I think you are something of a Dragonballer. In Akira Toriyama's manga
series 'Dragonball' kids get stronger the more they train. They go from
speedy and brave pint-sized licks to great, roaring warriors. In volume
3, Kuririn can only punch and kick - in volume 17 he can fly and
conjure a razor disc of pure energy - it slices through mountaintops!
He remains, it must be said, a short, bald monk throughout the
experience, but still. I think you have ki that is yet to be unlocked,
K, and while you may start off, as I have, writing science fiction in
notebooks, and writing odd novels starring yourself, who knows - one
day you may be throwing razor discs of pure energy that slice through
mountaintops. Who knows? I'm sure you will remain a slight figure with
a widow's peak throughout, and that's how I'll always recognise
you.

When they interrogated me here, in Caley's tea and chocolate house, I
was given a ninja instead of a lawyer. I think it might have been some
mistake - although ninjas, in their day, were also regarded as
dishonourable yet essential. Like lawyers. So I didn't say anything,
because He advised me to be indecisive - that was all he said. Be
indecisive, Hen. Honestly, K, I'm not lying. They gave me a ninja and a
bar of marching chocolate.

Anyway, I'd better round it off. I'll write to you again soon.
Promise.

Taketa carera,

Pumpkinhead (Hen)