Ben Elton - Blast From The Past

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Ben Elton - Blast From The Past» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Современная проза, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Blast From The Past: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Blast From The Past»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

It's 2:15 A.M. and the phone is ringing. Jolted awake, Polly stares wide-eyed at it. She is certain it must be bad news because no one with good news calls at that hour. A wrong number, maybe. But more likely it's the Bug, the stalker who has been harassing her for ages. But as Polly reaches for the phone, the one thing she cannot imagine, the one thing she doesn't remotely expect, is the voice on the other end of the line. Her very own blast from the past… "Don't freak out," the voice says. "It's Jack." And so begins a steamy two-in-the-morning stroll down memory lane. Sixteen years ago Polly Slade collided with an American knight-in-shining-armor at a roadside restaurant, when she wore a T-shirt with a cruise missile on it and he fell in love like a man without a parachute. For one summer the coolly polished American soldier and his red-hot anarchist British lover shared hotel rooms and noisy sex in the kind of burning-furnace love that can only happen once in any lifetime. Then Jack went back to America and his oh-so-promising career in the U.S. military. And Polly went on to her demonstrations, an unsatisfactory string of lovers, a dismal apartment, and, of course, the Bug… "Now Jack is a four-star general. And the Bug is a menace with a knife, standing outside Polly's building as the American makes his dashing return.

Blast From The Past — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Blast From The Past», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

“OK, OK. Whatever you say, Polly.”

A silence descended. Polly was getting impatient with Jack’s enigmatic visit, but she did not want him to go and he did not seem anxious to explain himself, so there was very little she could do.

“So what do you do on your ‘council’ then?” Jack asked and Polly did not like his slightly patronizing tone.

“I’m with the office of equal opportunities.”

Jack sniffed and his patronizing tone became slightly more marked.

“What? You mean it’s your job to make sure there’s a suitable quota of disabled black Chinese sodomites getting paid out of public funds?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I do,” Polly snapped sarcastically. “You’re incredibly intuitive, Jack. I had no idea you were such an expert on local government.”

“We have people like you in the army,” Jack said, and now it almost sounded as if he was sneering. “Checking out that we have enough women in combat training. Homosexuals, too, that’s coming. A queer quota. Can you believe that?”

Polly enquired if this offended Jack, and he replied that it damn well did offend him.

“You think that makes me a fascist, right?” he added.

The atmosphere between them, having been definitely warming up, was now becoming chilly.

“Well, I certainly think it makes you a bit of a dick-head.”

Jack went over to the kitchen table and grabbed the bottles.

“Have another drink, babe,” he said, “and let me tell you something.”

“Don’t call me babe.”

Polly was still sitting on the bed. Jack marched back across the room and sloshed more Bailey’s into her half-full glass before refilling his own with bourbon. He had not intended to discuss this issue but he felt too strongly about it to let it go. Besides, this night of all nights Jack wanted Polly to understand something of his point of view.

“Christ, where do you people get off! Gays in the military. What does it have to do with you, anyway? You don’t care about the army, you hate it, you wish it would turn into a network of creches for single mothers! But you still think you can tell us how to run it-”

Polly raised her hand for him to stop.

“Hang on, hang on. Hang on! Me?” she said. “Don’t lay your shit on me, mate. I’m a council worker from Camden.”

“I’m talking about your kind, Polly. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what job you do. Your kind are international.”

“My kind!” Polly protested. “What the fuck do you mean, my kind?”

“Your kind, Polly, that’s what the fuck I mean. Your kind.”

Jack was sick and tired of them. These liberals, these feminists, these gay activists. The army wasn’t a laboratory for social experimentation, it was the means by which the nation defended itself. He had tried to explain this point at the congressional hearings into sexual bias in the armed forces and what a waste of time that had been. It had been like Canute trying to turn back a tidal wave of bullshit. What an impotent fool he had felt, sitting there in front of that pious pulpit of political zealots and petrified fellow travellers. It was the scared ones Jack despised most. At least the true believers believed, insane Utopians though they were, but the ones who knew he was right were beneath contempt. They just did not have the guts to risk offending the current sensibilities and so they nodded and sighed and stayed silent, mindful of their thin electoral majorities back home. It was McCarthyism in reverse. The liberals had become the witch-hunters: “Are you or have you ever been a homophobic?” There was a terrifying new orthodoxy abroad and as far as Jack was concerned whether it was happening on Capitol Hill or in Camden Council it had to be confronted.

“We take communal showers in the army, you know that, Polly,” Jack said bitterly. “You think about that. In the field we live in the same dugouts, wash in the same puddles. I don’t want no queer grunt staring at my ass instead of the soap.”

Polly did not want to discuss this, but like Jack she simply could not let it go. His attitude was just too disgusting. Every liberal instinct in her body screamed to reply.

“Gay men are not sexual predators, Jack.”

“How the hell would you know? Straight guys are sexual predators!”

“Well, yes, you certainly showed me that!”

“Exactly,” Jack said loudly, as if this proved his point.

“Keep your voice down! There’s a milkman asleep downstairs.”

On the floor below, the milkman was not asleep. Jack’s voice had woken him up again and he was gleefully making a note of the time of the disturbance: “Man’s voice: shouting: 3.06 a.m.,” he wrote. It wasn’t that the milkman enjoyed being disturbed, but the upstairs woman had complained so often about his radio, even threatening to involve the landlord, that the current disturbance was manna from heaven. Let her try and complain now.

Little did the milkman imagine that within a few hours his notebook would be in the hands of the police.

Jack reduced the volume but his tone remained combative.

“If you think I’m a predator, well, let me tell you, honey, I ain’t the worst by a long country mile. I’m the norm.”

Jack was remembering Bad Nauheim and the night that the German girl Helga had pushed her luck too far. Not all men were of the type involved in that terrible incident, but all men were men none the less.

“If you put any of the men in any unit I ever commanded in a showerful of women,” Jack continued, “they are going to check them out for sure, and if they can they’re going to try and get with them.” “Well, then, they need to rethink their-” Jack had just sat back down in his seat, but his frustration made him leap up again and take a step towards Polly.

Followed by heavy footsteps: 3.07 a.m.,” the milkman wrote solemnly before rolling over and wrapping the pillow around his head.

Jack was standing over Polly now.

“I know you don’t like it, Polly, but that’s what young men do! They check out babes and they try to have sex with them and you can make up all the laws you like but that won’t change.”

Polly rose from the bed and squared up to Jack. There was no way this man was going to win his argument with intimidating body language.

“Yes, it can, Jack, it’s called civilization. It’s an ongoing process.”

“Yeah well it’s got a long way to ongo.”

Polly checked herself. What was she doing? She did not want to have this discussion, she had work in the morning. In fact, it very nearly was the morning.

“Look, Jack. I really don’t know what we’re talking about!”

“We are talking about gays in the military.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about gays in the military!”

“Well, I do! It’s relevant!”

“Relevant to what?”

“Relevant to me! I want you to understand me.”

The urgency of Jack’s tone subdued Polly for a moment.

“You know what straight men can be like,” he continued. “You feel I showed you that.”

Oh yes, Polly certainly felt he had done that.

“So why not gays? What’s so different about them, huh? Are you going to tell me that if you put a healthy young homosexual in a showerful of young men who are in the peak of physical condition he is not going to check out their dicks?”

Polly tried to stop herself replying. She did not wish to be having this conversation. On the other hand she had to reply. Jack simply could not be allowed to get away with this reactionary bullshit.

“Well, he might look, but-”

Jack leapt on the point. “And when he does he’s going to get himself beaten to a pulp.”

“That’s not his problem-”

Jack laughed. “Excuse me? Getting beaten to a pulp is not his problem?”

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Blast From The Past»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Blast From The Past» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Blast From The Past»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Blast From The Past» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x