« 2007-05 | HomePage | 2007-07 »
Friday, 22 June 2007
DANNY-IS-GOD.COM
Here, at last, as promised, is your news blog.
Are you all sitting on the edge of your seat?
Course you are.
Well, I was going to leave this till last but you'll all cheat anyway and skim down the blog to find it so I might as well give it to you now.
The launch date for DANNY Volume 2 is 31st October 2009. Only kidding. Calm down.
The launch date for DANNY Volume 2 is 31st October this year, 2007. So you only have four more months to wait till nirvana, and I, at last, get to launch a book on Danny's birthday.
In fact I'm going to set a precedent and launch every book from now on on the 31st of October. So look forward to Volume 3, part one, Skull Island (sounds like an episode of Pirates of the Caribbean – curse those Disney imitators) on 31st October 2008. If I work very hard I might be able to give you both parts simultaneously. But don't quote me – no telling what unexpected horrors I might trip over in the course of editing.
No price is fixed for Volume 2 yet as we are still getting quotes and sourcing print in places as diverse as Poland, Korea and China – my personal favourite as the firm there is called Royal Printing of Beijing. That just looks classy on a fly leaf.
It's going to be considerably dearer to buy from Amazon (probably in the region of £24.99) as we are pricing it correctly this time to cover their 'margin'. It will be substantially cheaper to buy from us (only around £16.99 - £18.99). We are competing very favourably in the market place and charging exactly the same price as similar, slightly smaller book/s from Penguin, a much bigger firm than us, so please, no complaints about the price.
To mark this auspicious occasion the new Poison Pixie Publishing web site goes on-line today (with the existing name unchanged). This is the first of four new websites, each of which has a domain name of its own.
The new site features the prototype DANNY Volume 2 so that The Great Object of Desire can be printed out and stuck up on your pin board/wall/fridge – all helps to make it real, folks. You can even mark the date on your calendar. We will probably be featuring a countdown of our own, ticking the days off, so look out for that.
The new site also features the Volume 1 free extract to read on-line, so no more waiting for boring PDF downloads, and, of course, it lets you read exactly as much as you want. There are synopses for the new book, and an inaccurate page count (it will, most probably be longer than 998 pages), but we are still not sure how much, if any, of Volume 3 we are including, so that will be revised as we have more concrete data.
There is also full details of Max's new book, Theatres of Dreams, which is a limited edition (hand-numbered, a hundred copies, I think) collection of the artworks taken from an exhibition he recently had at the Belmont Cinema here in Aberdeen. He has a video wall playing tonight at a rock gig at the Peacock Visual Arts Centre and then another one-man show (static art) at The Aberdeen Arts Centre in January 2008.
He seems to have a constant stream of new things going on - I can't bloody keep up.
Illustration 101 is still selling outrageously well. So well it makes me nervous. I keep waiting for the bubble to burst. But it shows no signs of halting, so no complaints.
While at the Belmont he managed to accrue yet another daring art thief. I'm not sure quite how he does this. For some reason whenever he exhibits his work someone always tries to steal it.
The Belmont exhibition was in the café bar, a large space with plenty of wall to spread yourself out on. Apparently a woman came up to the bar and asked if she could buy one of a triptych called See Thru Walls (Yes, inspired by my blog of the same title).
This featured Vincent Price in X-ray specs in two end pictures with an 'invisible' middle picture only featuring clear glass in a frame. The woman wanted to buy only one Vincent. The barman told her the piece was only up for sale as a triptych. She went away. A little while later he saw her try to take it off the wall and leave with it. He 'apprehended' her, as the euphemism goes, and she apologised and gave it back, saying she'd taken it 'by mistake'.
Some while later (not quite clear on this as we got it third hand) the barman noticed it was missing from the wall. Fortunately they have CCTV cameras and they checked the tape. Sure enough, there was our daring art thief making off with her booty.
Now, the real fun in this story is that the woman was a stall holder at the large weekend Arts & Crafts fair that's in the street outside the cinema. The barman not only recognised her but knew her stall. Staff were dispatched to 'politely' tell her she had been caught on film and that if she returned The Missing Vincent no more would be said. She denied involvement, but next day The Missing Vincent was found posted through the cinema's letterbox along with a note (and now it gets like Fawlty Towers) saying that it had been taken in "an error of judgement" and it was being returned. She finished it with the word, "Sorry." Classic stuff.
So, Vincent was returned to his place of glory and Mr Scratchmann has another art-loving madman anecdote to add to his collection.
At his very first exhibition, some years ago in London, he had every single piece of (three dimensional) art damaged in a supposedly trendy, up-market gay bar in Soho by 'souvenir' hunters. And this was stuff glued down. Quite what, exactly, all these gay men were going to do with doll's shoes and little gem stones and cut out fairy figures (yep, it was about fairies – the flying variety, not cruising) I really do not know. Gay men appreciate art. Another myth up the spout.
Other news.
DANNY has been put onto Google book search, as has 101, but at the moment they look like dogs' dinners. Google is even slower than Amazon (I wouldn't have believed that possible) and they've managed to botch two lots of submissions. We finally gave in and sent them the submissions on disk, so some day, around 2015 maybe, it should appear on there in a format that looks half-professional. DANNY Volume 2 will also appear in due course.
Three more new web sites are also in the pipeline. The first up will be the comprehensive DANNY-IS-GOD.com. This is currently live, but there is no content except for the landing page. This will be exactly what it says on the tin – a site devoted solely to The DANNY Quadrilogy. And a quick little note on that.
The correct word for a four volume book is a quartet. The more academic terminology is a tetralogy. The first makes DANNY sound like a sleazy four piece cruise ship band (and now… roll of drums… The Danny Quartet – I don't think so). The second, correct or no, is meaningless to 99.8 per cent of the population.
The one I have chosen to go with is, believe it or not, not my invention, but the invention of Twentieth Century Fox who 'incorrectly' used it to describe the Alien Tetralogy. And can you blame them?
So, what is good enough for Fox is good enough for me. Anyone who doesn't like my use of a 'not real' word may write to Fox and let their displeasure be known, because you'd be wasting your time telling me. You know how I feel about pedants, don't you?
Moving on… DANNY-IS-GOD.com will feature exhaustive details of all the DANNY books, including the original photographs that inspired the characters and photo albums of the real-life places and locations featured in the book. We hope, eventually, to go back down to Cumbria and photograph the real-life Hope House and the village of Crosby, Brixby's real-life equivalent.
DANNY-IS-GOD.com will also feature the secret web sites. These will be sites intended solely for owners of each volume to find out more about the upcoming volume/s. They will be password locked to prevent spoilers being released on the web, or elsewhere, and to help keep the excitement for those readers coming new to The DANNY Quadrilogy.
For example, if you own Volume 1 you will be able to access the Volume 2 web site and read an extract from Volume 2 along with features on the plot of both 1 and 2. Presently I can't offer this kind of material because people, being people, will read what they are not supposed to read, and do what they are not supposed to do, and the more malicious among them do... you know, malicious spoilery kind of things. For shame.
DANNY-IS-GOD.com will be followed by Chancery-Stone.com which, like DANNY-IS-GOD.com, will be dedicated to everything you ever wanted to know about me, plus, probably, things you didn't. Obviously there will be some cross-over information between the two.
Lastly, we will have THIS-IS-HARDCORE.com. This is still very much in the story board stages, but will be a site dedicated to the 'deeper' issues (eek) of DANNY i.e. it will discuss everything from child abuse to pornography and all the other 'nasties' in between. It will be strictly 18 and over with a highly offensive visual content – so, paradoxically, you should give this one a wide berth if you're only here for the man-on-man action and the subtext of DANNY is of no concern to you. The complexities of morality will only baffle you - walk away, walk away…
What else?
Oh, the Minor Works.
I contacted my old typist on Orkney (Gillian – to whom all you fans owe a great debt) and she has agreed to type up all my remaining hand-written and otherwise not PC draft copies. God bless her, she's a wondrous little gem and my Personal Jesus.
The first piece I'm giving her is The Boy With the Red Hair – the prototype period DANNY - so I'll finally be able to see if it can be shaped up into something worth publishing.
Likewise she will be doing Death in Venice, the Danny in Italy fragment novella (about 150 pages, maybe), and Delaney, another incomplete novel (about 200 pages). She will also be typing up The Chocolate Woman, The Snow Queen, plus a handful of old magic realist stories that I do not have on my computer.
It very much remains to be seen whether any of it will be worth publishing, but I am certainly considering putting the DANNY pieces together and printing them as a (yippee!) conventionally lengthed 'novel'. I think Death in Venice was written during Volume 4, or just before it, so I would have to take that into consideration when publishing it so that it didn't unwittingly spoil other books.
Anyway, it's next on my agenda now that the Poison Pixie web site is up and running. Then, after that, the other web sites. And somewhere in between I have to actually finish editing Volume 2 and get it printed and publicised – a small point, I know.
Well, I think that'll do for one day, otherwise you'll all be suffering from informational overload. Think how I feel – I actually have to do it, not just read about it.
I'll just say, in closing, that Volume 2 will be available to pre-order from Poison Pixie as soon as we have a price for it. There is a good chance that it will be printed in advance of the 31st so any advance orders will be dispatched as soon as copies are available. So you better sign up soon as you can - you might just get a couple of weeks head start on the rest of the world…
You can now read this blog at the following locations:-
To subscribe to this blog on Blogspirit (my base camp) without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts. 
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their guts bust.
19:00 Posted in Blog , Books , Leisure , Web | Permalink | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Monday, 04 June 2007
WORLD PREMIERE! Danny 2 Live, Here, Tonite!
WARNING!!! MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!! Do NOT read the following extract if you have not read volume 1 of DANNY. If you have even the vaguest notion that you might like to read it some time, when you can be arsed, then the following extract will seriously spoil it for you. Think of it as watching the last ten minutes of The Usual Suspects or Seven before you watch the movie – a Very Bad Idea. You have been warned.
Seriously busy at the moment and can't spare the time to do a blog. Thought DANNY fans might appreciate this – the opening scene/s of the upcoming Volume 2. Enjoy.
It was a cold day in March, grey and smooth as cold water.
Danny ferreted in the side pocket of his door and found nothing. He leaned across Conley's body to the glove compartment. "It should be in here. It was in here... somewhere."
Conley felt that slow, familiar uncurling inside himself. It felt like the few delicious moments before you fell asleep, knowing comfortably you were going to do it, welcoming it, letting yourself drop into it. Only you didn't fall asleep. Instead you became drowsy with it, boneless, heavy and swollen with it, as if you had a compulsion to lie down and…
Danny said, "Here it is." He sat up again, kissed the tape briefly, then slotted it into the player.
Conley sat up straighter in his seat, suddenly and depressingly aware of how he felt. So quickly and nothing had changed, nothing at all, even though he wasn't the same person any more, not the same Danny at all.
"Alright?" Danny asked.
Conley was looking out the window. He didn't look back. "Fine."
Danny looked at him curiously, but didn't pursue it. "How long will they take to fix it?" he asked.
"What?" Conley said.
Danny laughed. "Your car. Remember your car? Remember me, Danny?"
Conley rubbed his face. "Sorry. Week, maybe a little longer."
Danny indicated and pulled into the traffic. "You going to hire a car?"
"No," Conley shook his head. "I can't be bothered."
"You mean you've got me to chauffeur you about."
Conley gave something that was almost a laugh. "What are friends for if you can't use them every once and awhile?"
"You know, it's no mean feat driving to and fro your place, Mr Conley."
"You will live in such a godforsaken hole."
"It is not a godforsaken hole."
"Smacks of cowardice, Danny."
Danny shot him a glance. "Meaning?"
Conley shrugged. "Far away from everyone."
"I can get company any time I want."
"From me? Not the height of excitement."
Danny laughed. "Reckon you're boring?" He braked and slowed to let a tractor pull out. He always did.
Conley looked at him for the first time. "All you're getting from me is talk."
"Talk's all I want." Danny didn't look at him.
"It isn't really enough, is it?"
"Sweet coming from you, Conley."
Conley heard the harsh note of irritation in his voice and looked out the window again. Danny went on, voice obviously angry now, "Is this an oblique hint?"
Conley flushed. "No."
Danny was slow to turn away from him.
Conley said, "I only meant you should have more friends, that's all."
"Share myself about a bit?"
"Yes."
Danny laughed, only quietly, but it sounded dry and cynical. Conley kept looking out the window, saying nothing, just as Danny was saying nothing. The car turned onto the main street.
They sat a couple of minutes, waiting for a haulage truck to reverse itself out, then pulled into Conley's car park.
Danny parked the car and cut the engine. He sat for a moment then said, "If my company's boring you, Conley, just say so."
"No," Conley said immediately. "It isn't that. That wasn't what I meant at all, and you know it."
Danny looked at him. "What did you mean then?"
Conley looked away. "I don't know." He shrugged. "Reassuring myself or something."
"About what?"
"You. Being here."
"Why shouldn't I be here? Where should I be?"
Conley shrugged again, uncomfortable. "I don't know. Somewhere where you could get everything you need."
Danny looked away from him and took a long slow breath. "This is about sex."
"You can't go on pretending it doesn't exist, Danny."
"For me it doesn't. The only person I fuck is myself. I told you that right at the start and I meant it. Sorry."
"I didn't mean..." Conley started, indignant, but Danny was staring at him. Another old, familiar friend, the sensation that he could see right through your head, no secrets.
Conley stopped, flushing again, thinking, All the time he was away I can't remember once being embarrassed, and now look at me, unravelling at the seams. He felt suddenly angry. "You're not worth the effort, Danny."
"Fine," Danny said. "Door's right at your hand."
Conley shut his eyes and let out a slow breath. "I'm sorry," he said.
Danny didn't answer him.
Conley looked at him. "I didn't mean to pick a fight."
"And yet you got one anyway."
"Don't prolong it, Danny, be kind to me."
Danny looked away then said, "Okay, forget it." He didn't sound happy, he didn't sound as if he meant it, but he said it.
Suddenly he unfastened his seat belt. It rattled back with a noisy speed that Conley always found unsettling. "Let's go." He got out the car and slammed the door shut.
Conley unfastened his belt and got out. Danny was waiting for him, unsmiling, at the foot of the stairs. Conley passed him and climbed ahead of him.
Three weeks. It had been three weeks.
Not once had Danny mentioned his family. He'd talked a little about Katherine Henderson, virtually nothing about the missing four years after he'd divorced her, and nothing about his time in hospital.
Not once in three weeks.
Conley had made tentative forays for information but Danny had cut him dead every time, without any pretence or disguise about what he was doing. He didn't want to talk about it, period.
Conley hung his coat up. Danny threw his over the chair. Conley crossed and picked it up. Danny sat down and watched him, one foot on his other knee, hand holding his ankle. "Very domesticated."
Conley knew the tone of old. He took Danny's coat and hung it up, not answering him, thinking, Well, I started it, I put him in the mood. He came back, said, "Want any coffee?"
"No," Danny said, body still poised, still watching him.
"Well I'm going to have some."
"It's your house."
Conley went over to the coffee machine and began to fill it up.
"That's new, isn't it?" Danny's voice came over to him. "I mean, new to me."
"Yes. I've had it about two years now. It makes Cappuccino too."
"I've changed my mind, I'll have a Cappuccino."
"No problem. Want anything to eat?"
"No. No thanks."
Conley heard the sudden weariness in his voice, the abrupt change of tone. He looked over his shoulder. Danny had his head back, eyes closed. "Tired?" Conley asked, crossing over to him.
"Mm." Danny rubbed his face and opened his eyes. "Bad night." He looked up at Conley, then embellished, "Nightmares."
Conley sat down opposite him.
Danny said in that familiar dry, self-mocking tone, "And no John there to soothe me."
It was the first time he'd referred to him, even said his name. Conley felt he ought to make use of it, say something, try to bring it out of him, whatever it was, but nothing came to him. He just sat there.
But Danny went on of his own volition, "That's when I miss him most, at night." He smiled a smile as cynical as his tone had been and laid his head back again. He closed his eyes. He was gone, inside himself.
Conley knew he wasn't going to say anything else. He got up and went back to the coffee maker. He stood by it, looking back at him occasionally, but Danny remained as he was.
Conley poured the coffee and took it over. "Danny?" he asked quietly, in case he was asleep, but Danny opened his eyes and smiled up at him.
Conley handed him his cup, put his own on the table and went back for some biscuits for himself. "Lunch," he said when Danny looked at them. "Sure you don't want anything?"
"No, I had a big breakfast. The remains of a Chinese take-away."
Conley laughed. "What was the occasion?"
"A reward for having one of my serious you should get a job Danny talks with myself."
"And what did you decide?"
Danny shrugged. "Nothing, as usual. But if I don't do something soon I'll probably start thinking about buying a dog for company, or join the Women's Institute."
"I don't know how you've managed this long."
"I get lost in my dark reveries and I don't know the time's passing. Different landscape."
Conley drank some coffee and said carefully, "I'd have thought after being married you'd be lonely, more aware of it."
Danny shook his head. "One of Kathy's many criticisms." He tapped his head, "Too much time spent up here, and not enough with her. Had to suck up all my thoughts as well as my spu..." He stopped and smiled ruefully. "Still as tasteless as ever."
Conley shook his head and said, "I like the way you talk. I always have. What you see is what you get."
Danny laughed. "Not many people would agree with you."
Danny drank his coffee in silence, watching the creamed surface slowly collapse, then he surprised Conley by asking, "That woman still work for you?"
"Molly?"
Danny nodded.
"Yes. Why?"
"Married?"
"Divorced. She was divorced when you knew her. Nothing's changed."
Danny smiled. "Still holding a torch for you. She know I'm back?"
"You're not back," Conley said, knowing he shouldn't say it and unable to stop himself.
Danny looked at him and said without smiling, "I think we should talk about your sex life."
Conley put his empty cup down carefully and said, "One more apology coming up. I think I got out the wrong side of bed this morning."
"No, I think you're still in it. I think that's the problem. What's wrong, still not learned how to use your right hand?"
"I said I was sorry."
"I don't want to hear that you're sorry, I want you to tell me what's bugging you."
Conley shook his head, studied the floor.
Danny said, "It can't be the same, you know that."
"I know."
"Then what?"
There was a silence, long, itchy, then Conley blurted it out. "I still feel the same."
Danny studied his face then said, "I can't."
Conley nodded.
"I'm sorry," Danny said.
Conley nodded again.
Danny said, "This is my fault. I should never have come back here."
"No," Conley said, looking up at him quickly. "No, I'd rather have you like this than not at all."
Danny's eyes searched his face. He shook his head. "I don't think so."
"Yes. This is just a bad day. Bad week. It was just a momentary flush of greed, that's all. Now let's stop talking about it."
"You should marry her."
Conley laughed. He didn't need to ask who he meant. "No way. Not unless you never want to see me again."
"If she had you she wouldn't find me so threatening."
Conley looked at him suddenly. His voice when he spoke was thick, from somewhere deep in his chest. "But she wouldn't have me, would she?"
Conley saw him look away and felt a strange elation that he'd embarrassed him. But it was an elation mixed with misery that Danny had got so far away from him, had changed so much in the one way he still needed him, wanted him. He couldn't draw a line, it wasn't neat, but Danny had come along and laid it down and there it was. The wall. No gate, no door, no way over. Look, but don't touch.
"Want to go out tonight?" Danny's voice intruded.
"What?"
"Want to go out somewhere? I could do with some excitement. That place still open?"
"Which?"
"The one where we met Bobby boy… bless the day."
"No, long since gone."
"Where then? What's the 'in' place now?"
"Do I look like an 'in' person to you, Danny?"
"Well think of somewhere."
"I really don't know. Try the paper." Conley threw it to him from the table.
Danny spread it out on the couch and leaned over it, turning the pages. Conley watched him, looking at the long, white seam down his face, the clothes, the utter unrelieved black. "Why do you wear black all the time?" he asked abruptly.
Danny answered him equally abruptly, without looking at him, but his hand wasn't moving, and he wasn't reading. "Because I like it."
"No other reason?"
Danny turned the page. "You mean like perpetual mourning?" He looked up. "That is what you mean, isn't it? And what if it was? What's it to you?"
"Nothing," Conley said, not as surprised by his vehemence as he would have liked to have been. "I only wondered why you did it."
"I do it because I like it, because I've got a taste for expensive clothes and the money to indulge it. It's my one remaining weakness. Satisfied?"
Conley nodded. He looked at the floor then came back up, smiling. "Your temper hasn't improved any anyway."
Danny stared at him for a moment then said, "Guess I had a bad week too." He went back to his paper. "We definitely need a night out. Definitely, before we fuck up altogether."
Oh yes, Conley thought. How I wish we could. "Underwear too?" he heard himself asking.
Danny looked at him blankly for a moment then said without smiling, "Who do you think I am, James Henderson?" And he stared at Conley so hard Conley was forced to look away. "Want to know what colour it is or what? Want me to show you?" He suddenly pushed the paper off the couch onto the floor. "What the fuck is biting you?"
Conley just looked at the floor, like a child being reprimanded.
"Well?" Danny demanded.
"I hate this distance." Conley heard his own voice with a kind of horror. He sounded sulky and petulant.
"What fucking distance? At this precise moment it's about three feet."
"Between us." Conley was speaking so quietly it almost qualified as a whisper.
"Oh, for Christ's sake." Danny punched the settee. "Why don't you fucking say it? You want to go right back to where we were. In bed, between each other's legs. That's what you want, isn't it?"
Conley said nothing. He could feel his heart racing.
"Isn't it?!" Danny yelled at him.
"Yes!" Conley yelled it back, then dropped his voice, his eyes holding Danny's. "Yes it is. You win, it is."
They sat there like that, staring at each other across the table. Finally Danny took a deep breath and dropped back. He pushed his hands deep in his pockets, stretching his legs out, staring at his feet.
Conley waited. Finally Danny said, "You should have told me this sooner."
"I didn't bloody know sooner."
Danny looked up. "You've started swearing again."
Conley jerked his gaze away. "Oh fuck off, Danny." He could feel Danny watching him but he didn't apologise and he didn't look back. He sat there, grim mouthed, looking at a spot somewhere in the middle of the curtains.
Eventually Danny said, "What do you want to do?"
Conley looked up at him uncertainly. Danny clarified the remark with an immediacy that was embarrassing. "I mean, how d'you want to deal with this?"
Conley flushed and looked away again. "I don't know. How do you normally 'deal' with this?"
"Alright, then let's make it simpler. Do you want me to clear out?"
"No," Conley said. "Definitely not. Don't even think about it."
Danny held up his hand, shaking his head as if he had something irritating in his ear. "Don't start pouring your emotions all over me, Conley."
Conley felt humiliation crawling across his skin. He wanted to yell at him, scream at him, but what could he yell? I'll love you if I want to? I'll adore you if I want to? But Danny was talking to him. Conley forced himself to listen, but he could barely concentrate on what Danny was saying, didn't want to concentrate on what Danny was saying.
"We can be friends..."
Friends? But Conley said nothing, went on staring at the floor.
"...go on being friends, if we keep it straight. Every pun intended. I want to tell you something..." Danny hesitated. "Conley, are you listening to me?"
Conley nodded.
"No, you're not. You're sitting there having a private little hate all to yourself."
"Just get on with it, Danny."
There was a silence. Conley felt sure he'd blown it, but after a moment Danny simply went on. "When I saw you at the car fair it wasn't wholly an accident. I kept finding myself driving about here, wondering if I might bump into you. I even got as far as your office once."
Conley brought his head up slowly. "Why?"
"Don't get me wrong, I had no plans for taking up where we left off. There was just a 'maybe' in my mind. Maybe it was even a 'hopefully'. I don't know. But I picked you because..." He stopped.
Conley watched him. Now Danny was taking his turn at studying the floor. He took a breath and went on, "Because I thought..." he hesitated again, looked up, "I thought with you I might stand a chance of keeping this out of it." He suddenly slid further down in the sofa and looked up at the ceiling, then said quietly, "I didn't want to make the effort to break in someone new."
"Oh… great," Conley said.
"I never intended to take any more than I thought you would give me. I thought it would be, could be, mutual. You're right, my brain's turned to soap. I told you I was trouble. I take it everywhere. No escape." His voice held no trace of self pity, not even distress. It was curiously flat, while every time Conley spoke his voice was fraught with emotion. It was a role reversal Conley could do without.
They seemed to be silent a long time before Danny said, still looking at the ceiling, "Come on, Conley, this has got to be sorted out here and now. We can't take this baby for any walks."
"Then tell me something."
Danny heard the tone of his voice, sharp and angry, still filled with resentment, and said, "What?"
"After you left her, did you have anyone else?"
Danny kept looking at the ceiling then said, "Why do you want to know?"
"Just answer the question."
"Alright. Yes."
"Sex?"
"What?" Danny frowned.
"What sex were they?"
There was another of those historic pauses and then Danny said, "How do you know it was a they?"
"Answer my question."
"Both."
"How many?"
And this time the pause went on so long Conley felt he wasn't going to answer him before he finally said, "The wages of sin are death, Conley, you know that. I came close. Won't that do you?"
"How many?"
"Still running after pain. Why does everybody run after pain? What colour of truth do you want? A ghost of, hint of colour, or a deep stain? Doesn't wash out."
"How many, Danny?"
"I don't know. I lost count."
"What?"
Danny could hear the blend of hurt and anger, very potent, very special, very dear to him.
Conley said, "How the hell could you lose count?"
"They began to meld together."
"So what made you stop?"
"A curse fulfilled itself, boring but obvious. I caught a nasty antisocial disease. I didn't even know who I'd caught it from. Too many, too close together. I had even been picking them off the streets. It felt right." Danny laughed. "No, it felt familiar. Amazing how comforting familiar can be. Tell you something really bad, Conley. I sold it out there too. To see what it felt like."
Danny fell silent. Conley prompted him, teeth almost gritted, "And what did it feel like?"
"No different. No, that's not strictly true, more passionless usually, although not always."
"You did it more than once?" Conley couldn't keep the disgust out his voice.
Danny laughed. "I'll have you know I made serious money out of it. Money I didn't need, but I made it, selling nothing more than myself, scars and all. Having me in a toilet was the pinnacle of some men's dreams." He laughed again.
"And one day, after a trip to the doctor's, you saw the light?"
"Something like that."
"And stopped?"
"More or less."
"Why more or less?"
"Because that's what it was, more or less."
"Be precise."
"Go fuck yourself, that's all you're getting."
"Why did you do it?" Conley asked.
"I don't know. Off the leash, I suppose."
Conley could hear the smile in his voice. "You were never on the leash," he said, then added, "Were you?"
Danny finally brought his head down and looked at him. "No, but it felt like it. Sometimes it really felt like it."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She made me feel trapped. It wasn't the sex. Fucking her was easy. Too easy maybe. It was me she wanted, always more of me, and there isn't enough to go round."
"I still don't understand. Why debase yourself when you didn't need to?"
"Nobody said I did. I wanted to do it."
"But why?" Conley asked again, exasperated.
Danny shrugged again, indifferent. "I don't know. I just did."
"What did you get out of it?"
"Other than money? Nothing. That wasn't why I was doing it. I did it to take something away."
"What?"
"Loneliness."
"Loneliness? A prostitute? You cannot be serious, Danny."
"Hey, don't knock what you don't understand." He tapped his head for the second time that day. "Up here, where the wild fishes roam."
Conley looked at him then said, "Now what? Another five years repentant celibacy?"
"Forever celibacy." Danny smiled. "Like a sheet of perfect silk wound, faultless, around my heart."
"What colour?" Conley asked on an impulse he didn't even understand.
Danny looked at him for a moment, almost as if the bizarre question had thrown him. But his answer contradicted that notion with an immediacy that proved whatever mad impulse had prompted it was right on course. "Pure white. Like a winding sheet. Is that what you expect me to say?"
"Play it as cynical as you like, Danny, but you still miss him, don't you?"
Danny's face chilled like something whitening with frost. He said nothing.
"Don't you?" Conley pushed, suddenly bitterly determined to get it out of him, an admission that John was still in there, alive and well, and Danny doing a slow death for him, on self destruct. If one way didn't work he'd simply try another.
Danny said slowly and carefully, "Take a flying fuck at yourself, Conley."
"What were you doing? Looking for re-enactments amongst the rough trade, determined to prove your feelings were real?"
"You fucking shut that. I got enough of that shit in Anerley. I don't need any more from you."
Danny had jumped up from the sofa and was glaring down at him. His face was chalky, making his scar stand out in sharp relief. His eyes were black. He looked close to tears.
Conley swallowed. He felt shaken by his own viciousness. He felt like he'd poked a snake with a stick to see if it would bite him only to accidentally make it bite itself. "I'm sorry. I'd no right to say a thing like that."
He got up, stood in front of him. He could see Danny's chest moving, his eyes still too bright. Danny said nothing. Conley wanted to touch him, bridge the gap between them, but he didn't know how.
He put his hand out and squeezed Danny's arm. He felt the brief, hard warmth of him before Danny pulled his arm away. "Don't touch me."
Conley felt a sudden conviction that he'd screwed it up for all time. He tried again. "I really am sorry. I was... feeling sorry for myself, out to wound, and now that I've succeeded I wish I could cut my tongue out. Forgive me."
Danny turned away from him, shoulders dropping, and Conley knew he'd won a reprieve. But Danny wasn't going to forget what he'd said, and he wasn't going to let him go without paying for it either.
Danny sat down. "I'm tired, Conley. So tired you wouldn't believe it." He looked up suddenly. "I just want to be friends. Now tell me, am I wasting my fucking time here?"
"No," Conley said, heart screaming out at him. "No."
You fucking liar.
You can now read this blog at the following locations:-
To subscribe to this blog on Blogspirit (my base camp) without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their guts bust.
22:55 Posted in Blog , Books , Web | Permalink | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this