List of the Lost by Morrissey Read Free Book Online Page B

Instead, all of the praise neatly fell to Churchill, who had at least kept his whispered dalliance with Ivor Novello under Claridge’s wraps. ‘Queen’ Elizabeth and her mother were also hailed as World War 2 ‘heroes’, having done nothing throughout the war but dine lavishly in protected splendor with their manicured teeth … always … saying nothing, saying nothing, oh so royally saying nothing ( lest they say the wrong thing ). This is what democracy means. Nothing forever, Rims left his deportments to those who thought they knew better, free to escape to where your freedom is nonetheless still checked. “Wait for me! And walk in step!” was a comrade’s call made to Rims in Germany, and that soft male voice, and all within it, travelled like the sound of love, and sustained Rims for months to come, even if possibly dying for Churchill and Roosevelt repulsed the Rims of no choice: shoot the enemy or be shot by your own conscripted servicemen … the military wrath shows mercy to none, as all is unfair in love and war. We Want To Kill YOU! blared the recruitment posters, as ugly Uncle Sam pointed to those quite certain that they weren’t real men unless they were the political cannon-fodder that only death could blue-ribbon.
    Now, peace is regained as his television flickers from commercial to commercial to commercial to commercial, advertising nothing at all that he would ever want or need, yet reminding him that he is nothing and that he will die in debt, reminding him that whatever insurance he might have could never possibly be enough, reminding him that all medications will kill him mid-laughter, shouting at him as if they were the vigilant society – a blatantly sensational phony inflation with that essential TV ingredient of nightmare and pixy-minded publicity with nothing at all to touch the artistic emotions, yet preying unmercifully on the viewer’s insecurity and lack of ready cash. Whatever you can do will never be enough. You are fragile and possibly already dead. Thank God, he thought, for Dick Cavett, who acts through words, who placed questions before viewers in a richly competent way, free of the condescending claptrap trap and always with a direct route to some basic truths. Thank God, he thought, for Dick Cavett, highly civilized enlightenment and peace accomplished – yet there he stood, all-Nebraskan American and costumed in the heart of United States of Generica, yet mysteriously meaningful. The Dick Cavett Show reruns transmitted love to Rims nightly, that rare glimpse of television entertainment that dared assume its audience to be in possession of fully formed brain-matter. This, in the United States, was a very rare thing indeed, and possibly treasonable under constitutional laws. Consumption and escape, as the 4 a.m. dreams of Rims would break off into a spinning spindle of whatever he had seen that previous night on The Dick Cavett Show – the show that didn’t end when it finished. Beer assures Rims that the very best of reality is a friendly pair of eyes and the tender gesture of holding doors open for others, and of excusing intrusion in a small tenderness for women and men that he shall never know. It is now only the little things. Nothing else lives in the heart. He sees teenage girls as he saw them when he too were a teenager, and he cannot bear the fact that they no longer see him – as once they had. A trip to the local mall in search of strip plywood is to look suffering directly in the eyes. Do teenage girls know about men of Rims’ age? Well, they know something. But they cannot know of the speed of change into an older person, outside of the ring, suddenly a swab-down cornerman instead of a ribbed boxer, suddenly a fat face of bleak monotony swallowed up by life, persecuted by forms and fees and forms and fees and insurance penalties and sec-urity threats in the land of the free. Now, as Rims overhears the