Free Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar Page A

fairly appealing to him, provided he had someone to show off the results to.
    Elfish went off to practise. Aran thought about starting the search for a poem but decided it would be unwise to rush into anything. Too much sudden activity might well be injurious to his health. Instead, he thought about his cigarette cards. The brand of cigarettes he smoked were now running a promotion in which each packet contained a card. These were copies of adverts for the cigarettes and were of such artistry that they had won coveted awards from the advertising industry’s panel of top artistic directors.

    There were twenty of the cards and anyone who collected all twenty could send them off and claim a prize of five pounds. Aran had three cards and had intended collecting the set and claiming his free five pounds but general listlessness and depression had prevented him from making much progress.
    He made some calculations. These revealed that even at his normal rate of smoking it would not take him long to collect the entire set. Possibly he could smoke a little more to hurry things along. This seemed like quite a pleasing prospect.
    The phone rang. It was Elfish.
    â€œStop sitting around uselessly,” she said. “Get out there and find me a poem.”

twenty-four
    [ STAGE DIVING WITH ELFISH ]
    The band thrashed their way through their set. Their songs were simply structured but they played the chords extremely fast, so fast that all that was discernible was a continuous deep roar of brutal guitar noise punctuated occasionally by fleeting, shrieking high-pitched solos.
    Elfish and Amnesia continued to dive from the stage. After one particularly violent landing Elfish found herself wrapped around various pairs of feet and a full beer can and she shared this with Amnesia before making their next assault.
    The band played louder and faster, the audience danced and shouted and the support band appeared through a door in the back of the stage to sit behind the drummer, tapping their feet and smoking joints. With the stage crowded and Elfish, Amnesia and the other divers in full cry, it was a very active event, and fun for all. Elfish’ s melancholy departed entirely when she was midway between the stage and the upturned hands of the crowd. As she thudded on to their heads and disappeared from view into the heaving mass of sweating bodies, she could even be seen to smile.

    â€œI regard this stage diving as very dangerous,”Aran told her, often, but as Aran was dull enough to make a joke that possibly the stage diving could be regarded as a Brechtian interruption between the performers and the audience, and then repeat this joke whenever he remembered it, she did not listen to his views too closely.
    Amnesia was jumping further than Elfish. She made one spectacular leap after another. Elfish could never quite match her. After one prodigious jump Amnesia found herself wrapped around Mo who was enjoying himself in the moshpit, violently crashing into everyone around him. Elfish saw this from the stage and frowned a little at the sight of Mo helping Amnesia to her feet in what seemed to be an unnecessarily intimate manner, that is by her breasts, but she ignored it, and tried to jump as far. She failed in this but it was a good jump nonetheless, and she crashed down again, pummelling the heads of the crowd and moving a few yards along their hands before turning upside down and sliding down through them to the floor. She fought her way to her feet and began to use her elbows in pursuit of Amnesia who was already back at the front of the stage, negotiating the bouncers.

twenty-five
    â€œAFTER COUNTLESS HOURS of difficult and laborious research I have managed to unearth another Queen Mab poem,” said Aran, proudly handing a sheet of paper to Elfish. “It was published in 1648,” he added, superfluously.
    Elfish examined the poem.
    Â 
If ye will with Mab find grace,
Set each Platter in his place:
Rake the Fier