THE DAY RITA RATTED

There

She did

Told the whole story exactly how it was

Warts and all

No shame

Why should there be shame ?

Ever ?

After all all of it is human, all too human

She liked girls

The soft-skin variety

Brown and rolling in pristine white sheets of desires

Why not

Who would say no ?

Guys would say yes

Please

And some girls too

Rita did

She'd had countless lovers

Some very young

Fifteen upwards

Others

Much older

Age was not the issue

Sex and love certainly were

These girls had brought the best out in her

She had felt love with them

Expressed it

Rolled on it

Bathed in it

Like a film under the expert hands of the photo studio

They had revealed infinite reservoirs

Of kindness in her

A desire to merge

To melt

To share

Humanness

Sweat

Skin

Like currency in a bureau de change

And she'd made millions that way

Millions of non-transferable shekels at the Love Bank

Where there is no need for paper to prove anything

But aged thirty she decided she'd try a tranfer

Like a worn-out football giant seeking a new challenge in a new club

To reinstill desire for the great game.

She'd move to the hetero club

Since she'd played all the moves in the other one

And needed new turf

To practise new kicks

Under a new sky.

And that was that.

Simple. No ?

First off she moved country. She'd always lived in England. Bored with it to the back of her teeth. She had friends all overthe planet. Decided she'd try a few places

Went to Canada first

But she couldn't hack the cold and the underground living in the winter months

She left almost as soon she got there

Went to Hawaii

There she loved it. Loved the flowers. People. Everything. She could not get work

And had to leave

To her utter dismay

But she just knew it would not happen

Tropical flower-sure

She pressed on. A whole year in Bangkok; like the Panchen Lama living next door and doing it doggy-doggy fashion with your neighbours. Mixture of holiness and depravity. Entertaining it really was; but she soon understood that it had a sell-by date

That she wouldn't stay

Indeed after she'd resided in a few places she understood that places are like people: heart, legs, feet, so on, and also they all reflect a certain part of you.

Some are good for a while; then no more, and it is time to move on; to get aboard the ship of life, and let it take you to your next destination.

So she left Bangkok with mainly good memories

The place was magic insofar as she could see

She went to India and felt fear there although she could not have said why

Went to Madras, Bangalore

Sri Lanka

Again she understood that wasn't it

Took her longer than it had in Thailand

But she got it too.

And then another rupee dropped. She'd know when she got there

She'd know

And that would be it

So she carried on

Bulgaria for a while

Big mistake

Then Paris

Again no good

So after a five year absence she arrived back in London. She did not know how she really felt about it. Back where she had started; and maybe none the wiser. But how could she tell ? She couln't

Her sexuality which had been so central to her life prior to her departure had now faded into the background. Truth of the matter she'd experienced virtually total abstinence during her five-year journey

No change of taste either although she'd sort of willed it before she'd left

Anyway back in London

Good old Big Ben, pavements and grime

She loathed it on sight

Hadn't gone all this way to find herself back here

She couldn't bear it

Ached all over thinking about it

Hired a car

And rode away in a haze of confusion

Went North. Saw Scotland. Wales. The entire South

Then she went East. Saw Norfolk. Suffolk. The Coast. Stayed there for a while. Felt strange sensations in her body. Like she was nearly there but not quite

She got into the car again, headed for London, but changed her mind half way down; turned the wheel round and headed back North. Stayed in Scarborough

And then she gave up. All this place business was horseshit

Why should she bother ?

It was all pure creation of her own unhappy mind

She decided she'd put a stop to it

Had wasted enough time. Seen a lot of interesting places, for sure, but, and she felt relieved when she came to that conclusion, she'd go back to London, pick up where she had left off, and visit her old girlfriends

She drove for a while in a state of ecstasy

At last she could see clearly

Then she sank into the darkest of depression

GOING BACK WAS NEVER A SOLUTION

The devil you knew

That was untrue

New territories were going forward

Never back

She'd got to Lincolnshire by now. Paid no attention to the landscape; gnarled trees and flat fields. Black or green. Also a profusion of seagulls. All she saw was her dark hole, how lost she was. What a mess she had made of things. Inadvertently. She just managed to keep her car on the road. That was as much as she could manage. She forgot where she was headed and veered off the main road

Then she got tired and parked the car. She saw the sea in the distance and somehow felt the pull of it. Nothing like a body of water. Not even her girlfriends'.

When she restarted the car and made her way over the last few miles, 2 or 3 at most, something melted inside of her. Vanished. At first she looked to see what it was. But didn't manage to locate it. She was driving

Then she saw

Her dark cloud had dissipated. So suddendly and thoroughly that she'd almost missed it

LIke a party of tourists in front of the Eiffel Tower unable to spot it. Her messy darkness inside had just lifted. Her confusion too. And they weren't replaced by anything she could identify. No elation. Joy. Excitement. Just nothing. Nothing at all

Parked the car near the sand and sat on the damp strand, Drizzle filtered down gently. She looked at the grey sea. Squadrons of gulls

And felt something for the first time since her cloud had departed

That her five-year journey was over

That her personal Shangrillah was wet, sandy, grey, and gull-rich

That whatever it meant in the wider scheme of things, and however long it had taken her, she had made it to the port

In few words that she had finally reached her home, where her heart was immediately and would remain for a long time

That her personal dilemna had been one of locale when shehad thought it might have been sexual preference

Found a job the next day

A girlfriend in a week

White-winged

With a beak. On the coast.