Free Ménage by Ewan Morrison Page B

rebellion against the constriction of her veins. Likewise her gut, bladder and cunt. Every orifice puking, pissing in the face of convention.
    Dot was perplexed.
    — Who? Where? So I explained that Saul’s great muse was from New York, in the twenties the mistress of Duchamp, of most of the surrealists, in fact.
    — Nonsense! Saul shouted. — She
was
surrealism itself! Walking down Fifth Avenue wearing nothing but a trash can! A Chinese fan hanging from her anus. Did you know, he whispered drunkenly, — her talents at disguise were so accomplished she could go undetected even among her closest friends?! She dressed as a man, sporting a fulsome moustache, and wore a cucumber in her pants. She seduced rich men with homosexual tendencies, then blackmailed them, just for the hell of it.
    — No way! Dot said, but was transfixed.
    — That’s nothing. She was richer than Chrysler, some said, but lived in a hovel in Greenwich Village. She married an Austrian count and had him butchered, two days after the wedding.
    — That’s horrible!
    — Absolutely. She stole fur coats from Macy’s and handed them out to passing tramps. She was filling the streets with mink. She grew vegetables in human excrement and lived on nothing but champagne and opium! I have the book somewhere and if I ever find it you can read for yourself.
    Dot was enraptured. I left them alone so Saul could recount more of the gory decadence. In that moment, truth be told, I felt a little jealous for the sense of wonder she’d just discovered. From now on she would wake each day, her head bursting with surrealism and song.
    Back in my room, as I lay back, as if in déjà vu, I knew what would happen next and sure enough it did. I heard the stereo start up, then those ridiculous keyboards, that sounded like a kiddie’s toy version of Duran Duran meets a church organ – ‘Disparu’ by the Duchamps.
    ‘
J’ai disparoo, tu as disparoo
 . . .’
    Our secret album and he was sharing it with her. I fought a small surge of jealousy, then conquered it, telling myself that yes – through her I was already, in many ways, reliving my conversion to the wondrous ways of Saul. I smiled to myself as the synthesisers wangled and the backwards audio samples of cats miaowing got louder and the she-man’s voice rose to an epic operatic flat note.
    ‘
Nous avons deees – par – oooo!
’
    There are markers, signs, points of no return in every relationship, tests to be endured and questions to be answered, a yes or no as to the future. In ancient times men went to a seer or oracle. And so Saul insisted we take a trip to Hackney to visit Edna – the exemplary living artwork. Funny, how he never said, — Let’s go buy some hash from Edna: His many paranoias and claims included that our phone had been tapped by MI5, due to his previous undisclosed subversive activities.
    As he readied himself in suitably contradictory attire, it fell on me to explain the deal to Dot. The more I told her the more absurd every word seemed.
    Edna lived in a high-rise on Hobbs Estate, which was mostly abandoned. She dealt mostly in hash, downers, hallucinogens and handed out spliffs like cups of tea. She held Saul in great esteem as they had some secret history. In her clouds of hashish smoke with her mystical wind-chime vinyls, she was surrounded, daily, by a harem of stoners who worshipped her every word. Saul believed Edna existed beyond the limits of the known world – on a good day.
    For some reason I tried to shy clear of the most important fact.
    — Oh, and she’s a man, I mean she has a penis, she’s saving up to get it cut off.
    Dot, giggling, said it would be cool if she dressed in her new men’s clothes again. I voiced some concerns, as that part of Hackney was pretty rough.
    Saul emerged, to the sounds of the Revolting Cocks, head to toe in leather biker’s gear with a Chanel scarf round his waist, bandit-like, and two beauty spots on his left cheek. Dot was inspired and