VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
by John Morrison
Contents
73: Passion Play
It's high summer, the traditional 'silly season', when politicians decamp, en masse,
to deepest Tuscany, to enjoy a little rest and recreation before the resumption of
hostilities. Here in Milltown we have a silly season of our own, when a paucity of
hard news makes the Milltown Times
search - in vain - for meaningful stories. The only significant noise emanating from
the newspaper's compact office is the unmistakable sound of a barrel being scraped.
So the paper has been happy to broadcast the news of the Milltown Miracle far beyond
this valley, with the result that our church has joined Mecca, Knock and Lords as
a holy place of pilgrimage. People are coming from far and wide to gaze in wonderment
at the weeping effigy of St Diana, Our Lady of the Landmines. The miracle even made the
cover of Which Altarboy
magazine: reckoned to be the highest accolade in ecclesiastical circles. The Vicar
of Milltown ought to be gratified to see so many eager supplicants packed into his
church... but he's not.
He bites his lip; he knows only too well that he's supped with the Devil. In fact
he's not merely supped with the Devil, but he's cheerfully gone all the way with
the horned one, doing things of a frankly sexual nature which even Mrs Satan - generally
reckoned to be broad-minded and unshockable - would blanch at. It's only a matter of time
before the vicar is unmasked as a charlatan, and the weeping figure of St Diana as
a brazen fake. But the further he walks down the perfumed road towards the eternal
bonfire, the harder it is to retrace his steps onto the path of righteousness.
At the risk of being churlish, there are people who can put Princess Diana's exploits
into sharp perspective. Carers who continue to hold the hands of Aids patients, even
after the film-crews have yelled "Cut, it's a wrap" and put the lens caps back on
their cameras. Yes, nurses. And let's tip our caps to the brave men whose job it is to
disable those accursed landmines: men for whom a minefield represents a traumatic
day's work and not merely another photo-opportunity.
These are just the kind of men that Wounded Man is hoping to emulate. Men of action.
Men who react to the prospect of danger with courage and self-reliance. Men who are
happy to take on whole battalions single- handedly, armed only with a Bowie knife
and a six-pack stomach. Down from Wounded Man's bedroom wall come the pictures of Mahatma
Ghandi and Florence Nightingale; up go posters of of Arnie Swarzenegger and Sylvester
Stallone. A man hitting his mid-life crisis feels the need for new role models.
Wounded Man is fed up with being a good listener. The trouble with listening empathetically
to other peoples' problems is that you can end up doing it rather too much of the
time. He'd rather be the Man With No Name: a charismatic stranger with a steely gaze and a monosyllabic line in conversation, who rides into a troubled little town
and pits himself against the bad guys. It's a foregone conclusion: the desperados
are no match for the stranger's vengeance. It's simple, eye-for-an-eye, Old Testament
stuff. By the time he's through there are bandits, dead as doornails, lying all over the
place... though the townsfolk discover that justice has its price.
Like an avenging angel, the stranger forces the menfolk to confront their own inadequacies.
The menfolk, on the other hand, would prefer to leave their inadequacies just where
they are: out of sight, swept under the carpet. One by one the women of the town overcome their reluctance to sleep with a man who hasn't showered for six months.
Best of all, the Man With No Name doesn't sit impassively at a stripped pine table,
listening to their interminable problems. He gives each one a Damn Good Shagging
instead, which magically transforms raving harpies into compliant, doe-eyed maidens. He leaves
them with their hair spread out over the pillow and a dreamy, far-away look in their
eyes.
The Man With No Name doesn't think: "Hmmm, Deadman's Gulch, not a bad little place.
Maybe it's time to settle down, find myself a bride and start up a business. This
town looks like it could do with a decent dry goods store". He doesn't start looking
at houses, or mulling over the pros and cons of simple repayment schemes and endowment
mortgages. No, he just saddles up his horse and rides off into the sunset.
Apart from the undertaker - who reckons that Christmas has come early this year -
the men are very glad to see the stranger go. He may have saved them from the hoodlums,
but life in Deadman's Gulch will never be the same again. The men know they've been
compared to the Man With No Name... and have come off badly on every count. The women
part their curtains to watch the stranger ride down Main Street one last time, and
they smile their secret smiles. Having tasted the forbidden fruit of unbridled passion,
there's nothing to suggest that they'll be content to resume a bland and unchanging
diet of apple pie.
The Man With No Name: what a hero... He can dispatch the bad guys with casual insousiance
and a smoking gun. Then, with the same unerring aim - and without even pausing to
wash his hands - he can move a woman to the very core of her being. He doesn't talk
about it... he just does
it.
These are thrillingly subversive thoughts for Wounded Man, a good-hearted fellow repressed
by years of politeness and political correctness. But good sex isn't
PC and it isn't polite. Once you start holding open the door that leads to sexual
ecstasy ("After you...". "No, after you
...".) the passion soon gets lost amongst the pleasantries.
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