Bibliophilic |
adjective: descriptive of someone who is a bibliophile; a lover of books. |
Sandwiched |
transitive verb: for one thing to be inserted tightly between two others. |
I didn’t manage to get on a flight out of Seattle until around eleven o’clock that night which meant I had to spend several hours hanging around at the airport which meant that I could now add the following fact to the list of things I knew about Seattle: its airport smells of cinnamon. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it smells more of cinnamon than any other airport in the world.
My flight took me first to Chicago where I made a connection to Washington and then to Heathrow. None of these airports had the faintest sniff of anything even remotely spicy about them.
When we landed in London it was about ten o’clock at night but which night I couldn’t work out. The length of the flights and the four different time zones involved were all too much for my addled brain to calculate. Was it a day later or two? Or had I just gone back an hour? It was all too confusing.
There was no point travelling all the way across London to get to my flat, especially as the next ’whack was based in Richmond. It would be easier to travel there from out west than it would be to cross London twice. Besides, I didn’t feel like I’d come home and I didn’t want to trick myself into feeling that way by actually going there. I checked in to a Heathrow hotel instead. As far as I was concerned this was just the next leg of my journey and it just happened to be in London.
I may have been physically exhausted and mentally confused but I was very much awake. And I was very clearly focused on my goal, the next googlewhack.
As I checked into the hotel I looked up and saw seven or eight clocks telling the time in various cities around the world: LA, New York, Tokyo and so on. No doubt these were there to help keep the international businessmen who pass through the hotel in tune with the global marketplace or something like that. More importantly, they probably make the odd small-time sales rep feel like a bona fide international businessman.
My eye ran along the display trying to see which clock my body agreed with most. It didn’t feel like it was any of those times in my world. I was no longer operating on anyone else’s time frame. I’d started to exist in a time zone all of my own. From here on in I was on GMT: Gorman Manic Time.
Nevertheless I had to force myself to fit in with other people and I had a lunchtime appointment for the next day so I forced myself to go to bed. But no matter how hard I tried, sleep wouldn’t take me and at 4 am I could be found still wide awake and staring blankly ahead at the bland hotel wall. I decided to use the time wisely instead. All I knew about my next googlewhack was that his website contained ‘explicit, male/male romantic sexual interactions’. Wouldn’t it be polite to take a proper look around the site, find out a bit more about the man I’d be meeting? I pulled on a pair of trousers and a T-shirt and made my way downstairs to the hotel’s business centre.
As Tritorella’s page was opening up I was startled by a polite cough. I turned to find the night porter standing in the doorway. The only light in the tiny room was cast by the computer screen which only served to make his elderly, craggy face look all the more craggy. He wore the shirt and tie of the hotel uniform but the corporate identity was undone somewhat by the faded, home-made tattoos that adorned the back of his liver-spotted hands. I didn’t like to look at his hands; the thought of the needle puncturing his skin over and over and over again made my skin crawl.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, his voice as rough as sandpaper, ‘I just heard a noise and came to see who it was. We don’t normally have people using the computers at this time.’
‘Well, I’ve got some very important business to attend to with … em … some clients,’ I lied, ‘in … em … somewhere.’ Badly.
‘Right you are, sir,’ he said with an air of world-weary cynicism. He knew I was lying but he also knew it was his job to let me. ‘Can I just see your room key, sir?’
I showed him my key, he thanked me and went on his way. As he left I stood and closed the door behind him. I turned back towards the computer and immediately saw that the words on the screen were clearly readable from this distance. They stood out somewhat, being big and bold and red.
THE MATERIAL ON THIS PAGE IS NOT SUITABLE FOR EASILY OFFENDED PEOPLE OF ANY AGE, OR MINORS. ALL CONTAIN REFERENCES TO, OR EXPLICIT, MALE/MALE ROMANTIC SEXUAL INTERACTIONS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE OFFENDED BY SUCH MATERIAL OR IT IS ILLEGAL FOR YOU TO VIEW IT.
I had no doubt that the night porter had been able to read this warning. Perfect. The man with love etched into the back of his right hand had doubtless gone away thinking I was about to make love to mine.
Without thinking I found myself striding through to reception, desperate to explain away what he’d just witnessed. As I approached the desk the night porter put down his newspaper, raised his eyebrows expectantly and asked, ‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘Umm, I just wanted to say it’s not what you think,’ I said, unwisely choosing the one phrase guaranteed to make him think ‘it’ was precisely the thing he’d been thinking. ‘Not that I know what you think, but I know what I’d think if I were you and it isn’t that. So unless you were thinking it was a wholly innocent situation, which I admit it doesn’t really look like, then you were wrong. Because it is. Innocent I mean. There’s nothing untoward going on, you know, not that you’d …’
‘It’s OK, sir, I understand,’ he said misunderstanding. ‘You’ve got a lot of “important business” to attend to with “some clients”…’
His words positively dripped with meaning that didn’t belong. I knew what he thought and it wasn’t true. I would have to try a little harder to persuade him otherwise.
‘No, actually, that was a lie,’ I said. If my lies were making it worse I would go with the truth instead. ‘I’m not conducting important business at all.’
My sudden rush of new-found honesty seemed to startle him.
‘I think I knew that, sir, but you really don’t need to tell me …’
‘And I’m not in there to do that either,’ I said firmly.
‘Oh,’ he said, confused, clearly unable to fathom another possibility.
‘If you must know,’ I said, ‘all I am doing in there is researching my next googlewhack. OK?’
‘Yes sir.’ He was still confused. ‘You’re “researching” your next “googlewhack”.’
He spoke tentatively, placing the words carefully to see if they sounded like they belonged. He thought he knew what I’d been up to in the business centre and he wanted the words to make sense so the only way was to try and lend the words ‘researching’ and ‘googlewhack’ the euphemistic quality he thought they deserved. It didn’t sound quite right and a look of confusion crept across his gnarled face.
Like a teacher wanting a student to get it right, I repeated the sentence but with the correct pronunciation. I placed no undue stress on any syllable. No word was quite so deliberately placed; it was clear that the sentence was a single entendre, if that:
‘I’m researching my next googlewhack.’
This time he copied my intonation as well as my words.
‘You’re researching your next googlewhack,’ he said, and knowing he’d got it right this time he gave himself a big smile.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we’ve got that clear.’
‘Yes sir. Clear as day, sir.’
*
I was in a leafy suburb in a relatively affluent part of London, although the number of doorbells on each doorway gave away the fact that most of the big houses had long ago been converted into flats. I got out of the taxi and rang one of those doorbells.
I was a little nervous about meeting this latest ’whack. In fact, the more I’d seen of his website the more nervous I’d become. I was about to meet a writer of ‘Highlander Fan Fiction’. That is, he was a fan of the Highlander TV series, so, using the pen-name Tritorella, he’d written a series of short stories using the show’s characters. Oh, and there was quite a lot of gay sex involved.
I’ve never seen an episode of Highlander so I suppose it’s possible that the TV show has that element of gay sex in it as well but somehow, I doubt it. I’m assuming the TV show is not too dissimilar to the Highlander movie, which I have seen – it stars Christopher Lambert as an immortal Scotsman while the immortal Scotsman Sean Connery plays an immortal Spaniard. I don’t remember the two of them getting it on, but I did go to get popcorn part way through so you never know.
As it was, in the story I’d read last night at the hotel there had been quite a lot of that sort of thing. In just over 50 pages I read about the characters Duncan, Methos, Caspian and Kronos having sex in different pairings, none of which I can imagine making it on to American network television.
And all of this added to the unease I felt about meeting Tritorella. It wasn’t the nature of his sexuality that made me nervous; it was simply the fact that I knew more about him than I care to know about a stranger. I’d have felt just as concerned if I’d looked at his website and found the message: ‘Hello, my name’s Brian and I like to make love with my wife in the missionary position. We do this three times a week, which I think you’ll find is the national average.’ It’s just too much information.
So, what kind of person would Tritorella turn out to be? I heard footsteps approaching the door and knew I was about to find out. The door opened and I found myself looking at a conservatively dressed man with sandy, ginger hair, glasses and a pair of white towelling house slippers.
‘Hi, Tritorella?’ I said, offering my hand.
‘No. I’m her husband, Greg.’
He shook my hand and I made a rapid mental adjustment. None of my gay friends indulge in that kind of husband/wife role-play but each to their own.
‘You must be Dave,’ he said. ‘Come in. Tritorella’s upstairs getting lunch ready.’
We were halfway up the stairs to their flat when the peace was shattered.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ screamed a voice from above and a procession of equally colourful words was quick to follow. The voice was loud, Australian … and female.
‘That’s her,’ said Greg with a wry smile and a roll of the eyes.
Oh.
There I was wondering what kind of man spends his time writing stories about someone else’s fictional characters having gay sex and the answer turns out to be a happily married, 40-year-old Australian woman who curses when she discovers her lasagne dish is too big for the microwave.
Once the dish/microwave issues had been resolved we sat down to a gorgeous vegetarian lasagne that came with unnecessary apologies from Tritorella: ‘I don’t think the leeks are cooked; we’ll all be farting later!’
I think brash is the word.
The living room was painted the same bright yellow as my own and everywhere I looked there were similar touches. They even had the same curtain rails as me allowing them to hang two sets of curtains, the first a thin gauzy cotton just like my own. And like me, they’d had to make the best use of limited space. There were shelves wherever shelves could go and the living room had been pressed into service as both an office and a dining room too.
‘Aha, trying to avoid going home,’ said life, ‘well, I’ll do my best to remind you all the same.’
We were joined for the meal by Simone, a friend of Tritorella and a fellow writer of fan fiction. The two of them told me everything there was to know about the world of fan fiction, or fan-fic as it’s inevitably known to aficionados.
There are three types apparently. Gen-fic is just simple, straightforward story writing. The other two types involve material of a sexual nature. Het-fic involves straight sex, and slash-fic involves gay sex. So if you wanted to write Starsky & Hutch fan-fic (and I’m reliably informed that hundreds of people do) then, if gen-fic is your thing you’d probably write a basic detective story starring the two all-action cops. If slash-fic is your bag you could have the two of them solving crimes while making out, but if you’re more of a het-fic type you might have to get them double dating Cagney & Lacey. Slash-fic was the chosen genre for two of my dining companions. Greg, on the other hand, was a zoologist.
Beyond these three simple divisions there seem to be endless variations. Most people write about characters from the screen, others write about characters from literature while a small number write about real people too, maybe actors or members of bands.
‘There’s an awful lot of ’N-Sync fan-fic, for reasons I just cannot understand,’ said Simone with a withering shake of the head.
The idea was clearly preposterous to her, which might seem a bit rich seeing as she writes stories in which the young Clark Kent and Lex Luther get jiggy.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘weird!’
‘Most people who write fan-fic, even slash-fic, tend to be women,’ said Tritorella.
‘Really?’ I asked, bemused.
‘Oh yeah. And highly qualified too,’ added Simone.
‘I’ve got three degrees,’ said Tritorella and it took me a moment to realise she was talking about her qualifications not writing some girl on girl on girl action for the Seventies singing sensations.
As the conversation moved on Greg passed the odd insightful comment but mainly Tritorella and Simone held court. They were witty, they were articulate and with their enthusiasm they made the world of fan fiction make sense.
As far as I could work out it wasn’t a sexual thing to either of them, although Tritorella explained that she had used her writing partly as a way of dealing with her own feelings towards a friend’s sexuality. I’m not sure why she chose Highlander as a vehicle for this exploration. I can only presume that her friend is an immortal Scottish swordsman.
As Simone was handed the task of slicing the chocolate cake that followed, I explained my travels so far and the need for two more googlewhacks. Tritorella moved quickly to the sofa, placed her laptop on her knees and started conjuring up some unlikely words.
After a little while and a few near misses – each marked with an innovative new cuss – Tritorella suddenly declared, ‘I’ve got one!’
I moved to the sofa to take a look and there it was: Actaeons Wordplay. Both words were underlined and there was only one hit.
Actaeons wordplay led to another academic site, this time from a German university and the page, written in English, concerned the work of Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. The author of the page was named and an email address for the site’s editor was listed. After the long distances I’d been travelling recently a trip to Germany would be child’s play so I was eager to pursue it.
But I knew it was only fair that I allowed Tritorella to find googlewhack number two first. She was a talented ’whacker and it didn’t take long before Dripstone Ingles showed its face and an email address was found.
Tritorella slid the laptop over to me and I clicked into my mail account. Immediately my excitement grew. There waiting for me was an email from Tom and Lisa in Seattle. I opened it up and yes, they’d found me their two googlewhacks.
All of a sudden I had four potential ’whacks on the go. As well as the German academic responsible for Actaeons Wordplay, Verandahs Plectrums meant there was a distinct possibility of a trip to Holland to meet the author of ‘an ever-evolving site that is chock full of lesbian literature’. Dripstone Ingles, however, would take me back to the States to meet a creationist scientist while if Catnips Gargoyle came good it would test my resolve; the man responsible, a player of the dice-rolling fantasy game, Dungeons & Dragons, lived in Australia!
In an instant my googlewhacking world had become a world of many possibilities. I sent all four emails and hoped that one or more of them would yield a result.
Actaeons Wordplay bounced. But the other three did not.
I left Tritorella and Greg’s home full of hope and lasagne. I took a taxi to Heathrow figuring that, whatever happened next, I would be taking a plane somewhere. I checked my email regularly, keen to know where I would be heading next. For several hours there were no replies. I started to worry. Was this it? Was it all over? Early that evening a reply finally came. Dripstone Ingles was on.
I’d missed the day’s last flight to San Diego so I checked back into the Heathrow hotel from the night before. It was a cold January night, but the bed was warmed by my constant farting. Tritorella had been great company, but I think she was right about the leeks.