The Christening
I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-like
balm in my huge, coffin-shaped head. I have a brain the
size of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled to
my opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the
fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into
the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and
compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and
those who have “pitched the quavering canvas tent of their
thoughts on the rim of the dark crater.” The oil in my head
is of huge commercial value and has been used by NASA,
for even in the galactic emptiness of deep space it does not
freeze. I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party
on
paper
but once inside the voting booth my hand is guided
by an unseen force. Sometimes I vomit large chunks of
ambergris. My brother, Jeff, owns a camping and outdoor
clothing shop in the Lake District and is a recreational user
of cannabis. Customers who bought books about me also
bought
Do Whales Have Belly Buttons?
by Melvin Berger
and street maps of Cardiff. In many ways I have
seen it all.
I keep no pets. Lying motionless on the surface I am said
to be “logging,” and “lobtailing” when I turn and offer my
great slow fluke to the horizon. Don’t be taken in by the
dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets
of the ocean, the gypsy children of the open waters and
they are laughing all the way to Atlantis. On the basis of
“finders keepers” I believe the Elgin Marbles should
remain the property of the British Crown. I am my own
God—why shouldn’t I be? The first people to open me up
thought my head was full of sperm, but they were men, and
had lived without women for many weeks, and were far
from home. Stuff comes blurting out.
An Accommodation
—— and I both agreed that something had to change,
but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I
staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a
net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.
She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and
from now on that’s how it’s going to be.” It was a
small house, not much more than a single room,
which made for one or two practical problems.
Like the fridge was on my side and the oven was on
hers. And she had the bed while I slept fully
clothed in the inflatable chair. Also there was a
Hüsker Dü CD on her half of the border which I
wouldn’t have minded hearing again for old times’
sake, and her winter coat stayed hanging on the
door in my domain. But the net was the net, and we
didn’t so much as pass a single word through its
sacred veil, let alone send a hand crawling beneath
it, or, God forbid, yank it aside and go marching
across the line. Some nights she’d bring men back,
deadbeats, incompatible, not fit to kiss the heel of
her shoe. But it couldn’t have been easy for her
either, watching me mooch about like a ghost,
seeing me crashing around in the empty bottles and
cans. And there were good times too, sitting side by
side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the
TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me
into account.
Over the years the moths moved in, got a taste for
the net, so it came to resemble a giant web, like a
thing made of actual holes strung together by fine,
nervous threads. But there it remained, and remains
to this day, this tattered shroud, this ravaged lace
suspended between our lives, keeping us
inseparable and betrothed.
The Cuckoo
When James Cameron was a young man, this happened
to him. After his eighteenth birthday party had come to
an end and the guests had disappeared wearing colourful
hats and clutching cubes of Battenberg cake wrapped in
paper napkins, James’s mother sat him down at the
breakfast bar. The smell of snuffed candles and
discharged party poppers floated in the air. “James, I’m
not your mother,” she told him. “What?” he managed
I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-like
balm in my huge, coffin-shaped head. I have a brain the
size of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled to
my opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the
fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into
the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and
compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and
those who have “pitched the quavering canvas tent of their
thoughts on the rim of the dark crater.” The oil in my head
is of huge commercial value and has been used by NASA,
for even in the galactic emptiness of deep space it does not
freeze. I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party
on
paper
but once inside the voting booth my hand is guided
by an unseen force. Sometimes I vomit large chunks of
ambergris. My brother, Jeff, owns a camping and outdoor
clothing shop in the Lake District and is a recreational user
of cannabis. Customers who bought books about me also
bought
Do Whales Have Belly Buttons?
by Melvin Berger
and street maps of Cardiff. In many ways I have
seen it all.
I keep no pets. Lying motionless on the surface I am said
to be “logging,” and “lobtailing” when I turn and offer my
great slow fluke to the horizon. Don’t be taken in by the
dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets
of the ocean, the gypsy children of the open waters and
they are laughing all the way to Atlantis. On the basis of
“finders keepers” I believe the Elgin Marbles should
remain the property of the British Crown. I am my own
God—why shouldn’t I be? The first people to open me up
thought my head was full of sperm, but they were men, and
had lived without women for many weeks, and were far
from home. Stuff comes blurting out.
An Accommodation
—— and I both agreed that something had to change,
but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I
staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a
net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.
She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and
from now on that’s how it’s going to be.” It was a
small house, not much more than a single room,
which made for one or two practical problems.
Like the fridge was on my side and the oven was on
hers. And she had the bed while I slept fully
clothed in the inflatable chair. Also there was a
Hüsker Dü CD on her half of the border which I
wouldn’t have minded hearing again for old times’
sake, and her winter coat stayed hanging on the
door in my domain. But the net was the net, and we
didn’t so much as pass a single word through its
sacred veil, let alone send a hand crawling beneath
it, or, God forbid, yank it aside and go marching
across the line. Some nights she’d bring men back,
deadbeats, incompatible, not fit to kiss the heel of
her shoe. But it couldn’t have been easy for her
either, watching me mooch about like a ghost,
seeing me crashing around in the empty bottles and
cans. And there were good times too, sitting side by
side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the
TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me
into account.
Over the years the moths moved in, got a taste for
the net, so it came to resemble a giant web, like a
thing made of actual holes strung together by fine,
nervous threads. But there it remained, and remains
to this day, this tattered shroud, this ravaged lace
suspended between our lives, keeping us
inseparable and betrothed.
The Cuckoo
When James Cameron was a young man, this happened
to him. After his eighteenth birthday party had come to
an end and the guests had disappeared wearing colourful
hats and clutching cubes of Battenberg cake wrapped in
paper napkins, James’s mother sat him down at the
breakfast bar. The smell of snuffed candles and
discharged party poppers floated in the air. “James, I’m
not your mother,” she told him. “What?” he managed
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