Blueeyedboy Read Free Page A

place for it: no names, no rules, no colours – but one.
    No, not black, as you might expect. Black is far too limiting. Black presupposes a lack of depth. But blue is creative, melancholy. Blue is the music of the soul. And blue is the colour of our clan, embracing all shades of villainy, all flavours of unholy desire.
    So far, it’s a small clan, with less than a dozen regulars.
    First comes Captainbunnykiller : Andy Scott of New York. Cap’s blog is a mixture of jackass humour, pornographic fantasy and furious invective – against niggers, queers, fucktards, the fat, Christians and, most recently, the French – but I doubt he’s ever killed anything.
    Next comes chrysalisbaby . Aka Chryssie Bateman, of California. This one’s a typical Body Freak – has been on a diet since she was twelve, and now weighs over three hundred pounds. Has a history of falling for vicious men. Never learns. Never will.
    After that there’s ClairDeLune ; Clair Mitchell, to her friends. This one’s a local; she teaches a course on creative self-expression at Malbry College (which explains her slightly superior tone and her addiction to literary psychobabble) and runs an online writers’ group as well as a sizeable fansite devoted to a certain middle-aged character actor – let us call him Angel Blue – with whom she is infatuated. Angel is an irregular choice, an actor specializing in louche individuals, damaged types, serial killers, and other assorted bad-guy roles. Not A-list, but you’d know his face. She often posts pictures of him on here. Curiously enough, he looks something like me.
    Then there’s Toxic69 , aka Stuart Dawson, of Leeds. Left crippled in a motorbike crash, he spends his angry life online, where no one needs to pity him; and Purepwnage9 , of Fife, who lives for Warcraft and Second Life, oblivious of the fact that his own life is surely but swiftly slipping away; plus any number of lurkers and irregulars – JennyTricks ; BombNumber20 , Jesusismycopilot , and so on, who exhibit a diverting range of responses to our various entries, from admiration to outrage; from cheeriness to profanity.
    And then, of course, there’s Albertine . Definitely not like the rest, there’s a confessional tone to her entries that I find more than a little promising, a hint of danger, a dark undertone, a style perhaps more akin to my own. And she lives right here in the Village, no more than a dozen streets away –
    Coincidence?
    Not quite. Of course, I have been watching her. Especially so since my brother’s death. Not with malice, but with curiosity, even a measure of envy. She seems so self-possessed. So calm. So safely cocooned in her little world, so unaware of what’s happening. Her online posts are so intimate, so naked and so oddly naïve that you’d never believe she was one of us, a bad guy among bad guys. Her fingers on the piano keys danced like little dervishes. I remember that, and her gentle voice, and her name, which smelt of roses.
    The poet Rilke was killed by a rose. How very Sturm und Drang of him. A scratch with a thorn that got infected; a poison gift that keeps on giving. Personally, I don’t see the appeal. I feel more kinship with the orchid tribe: subversives of the plant world, clinging to life wherever they can, subtle and insidious. Roses are so commonplace, with their whorls of sickening bubblegum pink; their scheming scent; their unwholesome leaves, their sly little thorns that poke at the heart –
    O rose, thou art sick –
    Still, aren’t we all?

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    You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy .
    Posted at : 23.30 on Monday, January 28
    Status : restricted
    Mood : contemplative
    Listening to : Radiohead : ‘Creep’
    Call me B.B. Everyone does. No one but the police and the bank ever use my real name. I’m forty-two and five foot eight; I have mousy hair, blue eyes and I’ve lived here in Malbry all my life.
    Malbry – pronounced Maw-bry . Even the word smells of shit. But I am