Pond Scum: The Further Adventures of
Lucinda Twittington-Smythe and Miss Binky ButtburgerBy Steve Finbow
Secure in the knowledge of her family’s rightful place in English society, from the age of 11, Lucinda boarded at Roedean School. After sixth-form, she went up to Cambridge to study archaeology and anthropology. In her spare time, she specialised in anal but not vaginal sex. In her second year, fellow students adopted and adapted a line from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Utopia, Limited, and in the halls, sang to Lucinda, “Oh, maiden rich, a Girton whore.” Her father was a minor baronet or something and because he had to pay for repairs to the family pile, sinking and stinking somewhere in the wilds of Derbyshire, Lucinda missed out on what were, for most of her friends, essentials – instead of a pony, Lucinda had a Great Dane; in place of a tiara, she wore a tweed cap; rather than a Porsche Boxster, she rode a Vespa scooter.
By Nicholas Allanach
However, during her first year at university, some dodgy investments her father had made in international munitions bore fruit (well, grenades) and he moved to an island somewhere in the Caribbean. Before leaving for good the shores of Albion, he bought Lucinda, as graduation gifts, a small five-bedroom house in Grantchester and a three-bedroom pied-à-terre in swanky (that’s swanky) Primrose Hill. Lucinda visited her father as often as possible, which was pretty often seeing as her days were spent brunching, shopping, lunching, shopping, resting, and her evenings drinking and dining. Eventually, she would fall asleep alone in her four-poster bed after having vaginal and not anal sex (she was SO over that) with various floppy-haired and large-arsed Jeremys, Jaspers, and Jonathans reeking of liniment and pastel cardigans she’d met in the area’s restaurants and bars. She interspersed these trysts with single nights of noisy gymnastic sex, coupling with paint-splattered and spavined Kens, Kevs, and Keiths, humming of Lynx-tainted sweat, kebabs, and Stella Artois.
Miss Binky Buttburger pulled on her pink faux-snakeskin cowboy boots and looked in the mirror. Her fringed denim skirt barely covered her white-silk thong. She sat on the bed and practised crossing and uncrossing her legs. Would the men tonight get a glimpse? Satisfied that they would, Binky began to concentrate on the rest of her outfit. She’d already decided not to wear the leopard-skin-banded straw Stetson – after all, that afternoon, she had spent $400 and over six hours in the hair studio– and her hair was so bouncy and so shiny and so golden and so beautiful and so… so… so…! She took a white blouse from the closet and tied together the bottom so it formed a knot just above her pierced and diamond-studded bellybutton. She put her head to one side and decided that, no, the look was far too Jessica. She threw the blouse to the floor and before trying on another top, inspected her tan – the Cancun sun and the girls at Don’t Hide Your Tan, Tan Your Hide had done a thorough job. Binky then examined her breasts. She was so proud of them. No Brazilian boob jobs these beauties. This was prime Californian silicone. The best money – actually, her father – could buy. Two perfect teardrops (rather large teardrops to be honest) caught in the amber lustre of her skin and, for a final flourish to this heavenly ensemble, topped and tipped with nipples the size and colour (though not flavour) of ginger snaps. Eyes closed, Binky gave them a gentle squeeze. Guiltily, she imagined the somewhat rougher hands of Brad, Rad, Tad, or Gad doing the same. And guiltier still, she thought that maybe she would ask Rip, Trip, Grip, or Drip if her aureoles did indeed taste lingeringly of that spicy aromatic root. Her cell rang. It was Lynzee-Jo. It was also five before eight. Cradling the cell between shoulder and ear, she took from her underwear drawer a La Perla white-lace bra – one size too small – over it, she wore a white chiffon long-sleeve blouse with tiny pink hearts. Uh-huhing to Lynzee-Jo, she checked her purse for lipstick, lipsalve, lipgloss, and condoms and walked down the sweeping staircase, out of the double doors, and slipped into her Flamenco Red BMW Z4 Roadster to drive to the house next door where Lynzee-Jo was throwing a party.
Creating people in fictive worlds is a means of understanding human nature. To imagine an ‘other’ is to explore psyches, emotions, and morals that are alien or otherwise unavailable to scrutiny. It doesn’t always work – I’m thinking Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons or Jack Kerouac’s excruciating Pic. But sometimes it does. I give you Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. To create a trans-gender, trans-species, or even trans-human character is an exercise in writing and nothing more. Gustave Flaubert is a genius and his portrait of a 19th century provincial woman is one of my favourite novels, yet its psychological realism is questionable, and his assertion that “Madame Bovary, c’est moi” is profoundly honest. All characters, regardless of gender or species, are transverse, coronal, and sagittal sections of the author.
My mission this week, though I chose not to accept it, was to write about the differences between American and British women. What do I know? I am a mere man. I sat and thought about it. I made notes. I asked friends. The one idea I came up with was that American women talk more than their British counterparts (do). That’s about it. If I knew everything there was to know about women, I would first kill myself and then stop masturbating. If I knew everything there was to know about men – yeah, girls, I could write all of it on a grain of retarded dwarf rice – I wouldn’t have any friends or be able to watch football. For as long as I am alive, I want to find out about my fellow humans – through love, sex, friendship, conversation, argument, silence, loss, death, and everything else in this messy fuck of a world. I want you all to surprise me and shock me. I want you to make me comfortable and buy me a beer. I want you to frighten me and shake my organs. And then I want to write about it. I can only find out about you by finding out about me. I can only find out about me by finding out about you. Then there are the dogs, dogs with heads of cats, cats with the teeth of piranhas, piranhas with the eyes of Christ.
I am working on a story called 'Mrs Nakamoto Takes a Vacation.' It’s about a fifty-four-year-old Japanese woman who decides to opt out of the day-to-day rush and roar of Tokyo. And do you know what? I think I’ve fallen in love with her.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2006 Me Three
