Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, page 24
If I were ever asked to nominate that part of your body which was subjected to the most exercise I would, without hesitation, declare wholeheartedly for your right elbow although that same elbow has added, you might say, to my dimensions more than anything. I recall a particular night when the circumference was extended by a full inch, most of which accrued to me. You drank several pints of beer, retired to a hotel where you ordered a mixed grill which contained all the orthodox constituents from chop to liver, but which in this instance was enriched by several medallions of black and white pudding. You salivated and snorted like a starving hyena. The proprietor of the hotel was so taken by your appreciation that he added several further medallions of the puddings in question. Alas, because of their saline contents you consumed another half gallon of beer.
I just cannot forgive you for repeatedly indulging yourself in such a gluttonous fashion. You have made me ungainly and obese. Bad as this is the worst of all is that nobody cherishes me. You have never uttered a single word in praise of me or a word in my defence. There are no poems or songs about me or my equals. The only praise I ever received was when I accidentally came in the way of a kick at goal during a football game. Somebody shouted from the sideline, ‘Good arse!’ Beyond that nobody ever singled me out for approbation. I have no dignity. It’s been eroded over the years by your failure to keep me in shape. I once had innate dignity and when innate dignity is eroded there is no substitute. Acquired dignity is less sensitive.
I am often mildly irked by the veneration which is accorded to my female counterpart - it seems to be an object of immeasurable esteem as well as being a powerful source of titillation and infatuation. Men are frequently quite carried away by moderately attractive female posteriors and just as you slobber over your food so do the lecher and the philanderer slobber over the curvaceous sit-me-down of the graceful female. In fact I recall on occasion after you had emerged one morning from a newsagent’s in the metropolis, you were so attracted by the pair of bouncing female buttocks in front of you that you followed their proprietress blindly for over a mile until she disappeared through a doorway. Granted the female posterior is smooth as silk, eminently hand-cuppable and more capable of exciting the male onlooker than any other aspect of the female make-up. There is simply nothing to compete with it. Woe is poor me by comparison. Many a worshipful devotee will tell you that of all the world’s vistas the female fundament is the most surpassing whereas even the most chaste will not deny that, in all its unclad glory, it is the most intoxicating of prospects. But enough! I digress too much.
I have, for too long, succumbed to base matters. How can one be analogical when one descends to the very bottom! Despite my lowly position, however, I must not despair. I cannot draw myself up nor can I alter my situation. Yet I am strangely content. I do what is required of me and I believe I do it well. Little is seen of me and maybe that is just as well. All exposure has ever done for me has been to bring ridicule down upon me. I can still hear the derisive whoops from the day the seam of your trousers burst when you stopped to tie your shoelace as you searched for a Christmas turkey in the market place. You slunk home with your inadequate hands vainly trying to cover the exposed area which was the title bestowed upon me by your kind-hearted mother. I am, I must painfully conclude, an object of derision. I do not deserve to be, hairy though my lineaments may be and coarse my features, with a central situation which does little to enhance my overall appearance. If I were permitted to choose my epitaph it would read as follows:
Faithful down below he performed his duty.
No posterior deserved more to be raised aloft.
If I could leave my impression, my mark as it were, upon this paper I would be proud to do so, so that maybe one day a discerning soul might read my lines as the clairvoyant reads the palm and tell the world of the vilification to which I have been subjected and declare the true warmth, the true loveliness that I exude. If posteriors have a dream then mine would be to hold myself up to a mirror and ask:
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of us all?
To which the mirror would instantly reply:
Thou art, oh arse!
Remember, dear brain, that dreams sometimes come true. All you have to do is address yourself to moderation and unremitting exercise and I might be transformed into a posterior trim and shapely, which might be exhibited in public as a shining example of my kind.
Sincerely
Your Posterior
The Lips Write
Dear Brain
There was a milkman, a curly-haired, chubby-faced fellow who might, to the casual onlooker, have seemed twenty when he must really have been sixty at least. He was that kind of person. Age, it would seem, made little impression upon him. Your father had known him for years, or so he used to say, which means the man might have been eighty. His fountain of youth was his whistling. First thing in the morning, after the cocks had crowed and the last of the rooks had flown, his exhilarating serenading could be heard as he cycled upon his round.
What a happy man he must have been! He never whistled a drab melody. He excelled at the stirring march and he would empty his heart to nurture the sweet chords of love which he warbled, free of charge, morning after morning for all and sundry.
Dour veterans of the marital confrontation relented and turned in their beds to celebrate sweet sessions of amorous rapture and all because of this incidental input. The morning was transformed into a backdrop for his princely rendition. He contributed more to the rescue of foundering marriages than any human intermediary could ever hope to, and not unwittingly, I might add.
It often seemed to us lips that he was transported here from some heavenly sphere for no other purpose than the upraising of downcast hearts. How I secretly yearned that you, one day, would purse us into an instrument which would fritter away depressions and upraise the human spirit to its loftiest pinnacles!
Surely the pipings of that dear departed milkman had their roots in his immortal soul and yet it was the orifice of the contracting lips that modulated and measured the bewitching torrent of empyreal sonority which charmed and delighted all those fortunate enough to be within earshot. We, too, might have attained to such fluency had you but persevered after your early failures. There wasn’t a child in the street who did not try to emulate that milk-carrying maestro.
We remember once of an icy morning how he fell from his rickety bicycle, spilling the contents of both his pails and breaking two front teeth into the bargain. Poor fellow, his lips were brutally lacerated. The tears formed in his eyes as the white streams of freshly-drawn milk coursed irredeemably towards the nearest channel, but how quickly he transformed misfortune into triumph.
Supporting himself on his right knee and placing his left hand over his breast he pursed his shattered lips, oblivious to the agonising pain. Then, extending his right hand to his invisible public, he gave the performance of his life. That redition of ‘At the Balalaika’ was the performance for which he would always be remembered. Not even the combined efforts of Nelson Eddy and Ilona Massey in their illustrious heydays succeeded in wringing such total ecstasy from this immortal lovesong. Long before he finished, the underemployed lips of that once dreary street were never so utilised in pursuit of loving fulfilment, and to think that it was a simple pair of mutilated lips which created the mouthpiece through which this masterpiece was delivered. For the listening lovers in the silent houses it was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Some had never even dreamed of aspiring to such unprecedented ecstasies. Remember, their moment came only after years of waiting. If the world and its people could only wait long enough everybody would, eventually, be kissed by someone, be loved by someone.
However, we lips were not designed for whistling alone. On a more realistic level we accurately direct the airflow that cools the steaming soup, the scalding tea, the gum-blistering stew. Alternatively, we warm the freezing fingers with the comforting breath, but it is at kissing that we excel.
Kissing can be a precarious business, as many a rueful participant will verify. We were designed to kiss and we are capable of producing a true multiformity of kisses. Our kisses may be blown and wafted from our pouting embouchure by the eyes or by the hands, but the imposition of lip upon lip conceals more hazards than thin ice on a bottomless lake.
Lips love to kiss but we also kiss to love and this must never be forgotten by those who would recklessly disburse kisses at every hand’s turn. ‘A kiss on the brow for the dead we loved,’ your late and pious father used to say. ‘A kiss on the cheek for a friend but a kiss on the lips,’ quoth he, ‘is the most imponderable of all propositions and should never be undertaken lightly, especially by those who foolishly presume they are fully aware of the dangers involved.’
In its own time and in its own place and in conditions blessed by love the kiss will melt the icicles of frigidity and replace the pinched cheek with the amorous suffusion. Of all the earth’s moistures there is none so delicate as that of the lips nor can the subtlest velvet match their smoothness of texture. When poised to kiss there are no dewier petals on land or sea.
We, your very own lips, are ambassadors from the court of true love and deserve the respect and deference which are the dues of all accredited envoys. Sully us not by debasement or defilement and do not ever shape us for the spit of ridicule, foulest of all human ejaculations; neither pout us for the contemptuous grin but be aloof and restrained so that we may buttress your dignity and beautify your wrinkling face.
Be not an imitator of posterior wind-breaking but whistle cheerfully in the dark for the benefit of those who may be affrighted. We have served you well and will continue to serve but we are a sensitive pair and would remain pursed rather than be party to grins and grimaces which may hurt another.
You have, alas, imposed us on the lips of females we would rather have shunned and disgraced us by not imposing the gentlest and sweetest of kisses upon the fair face and virgin lips of the lovely Lily Lieloly. Still and for all we are prepared to light for you the golden lamp of love, preserving its mellow glow through all your days and nights and trimming it to last your fretful pace till the final Amen is murmured!
In your lifetime, dear brain, you have kissed far and wide. Be thankful for your share and pity the lips starved of kisses. How goes it in the ancient ballad:
’Tis I my love sits on your grave,
And will not let you sleep
For I crave one kiss of your cold, cold lips
And that is all I seek.
Yes indeed; that is all he sought, poor fellow, and you who are blessed with a living wife and who knows not the pain of loss may kiss when you choose and yet would kiss elsewhere and put your lips for auction to the first bidder. You remind me of the improvident mule who vacates a barely nibbled pasture for the promise of sweeter clover behind the next hill, but then, in matters hymeneal, you could never see the wood for the trees. Would you had piped sweetly but once in your lifetime rather than the chirpings cheap and lewd wasted upon the passing lass. Unmusical and unromantic crow, you never turned a solitary female head whereas the true whistler serenading from his soul wooed the delicate ear and won the most precious heart. We, your lips, are God-given and whether we pout, whistle or kiss, we remain yours to do with as you will, but we would beseech you to employ us in order to issue the sweet whisper rather than formulate the braggart shout which shatters the female ear and dispatches discord like a raging fever through your house and every house.
The sweet whisper is the very distillation of love’s gentle presence and we would have you know that we have responsibility for the processing and distribution of all whispers, sweet and secret, long and short; therefore, engage us unreservedly in this respect and you will be as well rewarded as we will be fulfilled. Where shouting, threats and posturings fail, a whisper carefully wrought and intimately delivered by the lips will always succeed. When our modifying sensitivity is bypassed by the shout and the scream respect is shattered and civility dies.
Look to your lips, dear brain, and the harmony that is absent from your life shall be implanted. We shall infuse in you the fire that shines through the spirit of love and when we part there shall be revealed for the first time the smiles of which you were always capable but never uncovered to a world in dire need of a produce so refined. We should, perhaps, now draw to a close. We look forward to better times and to remaining firmly closed in the face of unjust criticism and broadsides of a malicious nature.
Sincerely
Your Lips
The Knees Write
Dear Brain
Our fondest memory is supporting the lovely Lily Lieloly when she sat on your lap in the rear seat of a motor car as you journeyed home from a dance one blissful summer’s night many years ago. We were proud to give service to one so splendid and innocent. Although the journey took over an hour we never flinched and, if needs be, would have happily borne her till the pleasurable commission made us numb.
Later you were to use us for the transportation of creatures infinitely less savoury and immeasurably more seductive but our fealty was and ever will be to Lily Lieloly. Had we but wings we would one day bear her safely to the very portals of heaven. For her part, unlike so many others, she never made us feel knobbly or unsolicited. We regarded ourselves, in fact, to have been devised for the sole purpose of ministering to her in matters of transport. Enough of Lily, however.
We recall with dismay the countless times we wobbled as you trundled homewards in your cups. We became scarred and battered beyond recognition when you would stagger, then stumble and finally fall, sometimes on your posterior, other times on your hands but more often than not on us poor knees.
We knees are ungainly enough without adding to our aesthetic inelegance. Whatever it is about knees and despite their undeniable usefulness to men and women, nobody seems to love them. We have never heard it said of a man that he has lovely knees and rarely indeed would you hear it said of a woman. Women in fact, from what we manage to gather whilst listening to their conversations, very often loathe their own knees, particularly if they are unusually knobbly, crinkly or over-convoluted. It does not matter that we play the role we were ordained to play and that without us there would be no footloose movements of any consequence. Out of commission we spell total stagnation and, even when we suffer minimal damage, travel by shanks’s mare is restricted.
Once we felt you fall clumsily on us when you were swearing love to a rather podgy-faced woman at a distant orgy. You very nearly permanently damaged us, so heavy was this infatuated collapse, this prurience-inducing gratulation, this dastardly declaration of lunatic libidinosity. More offensive still was the raucous and unladylike laughter of your pickled pick-up as she contorted herself drunkenly in appreciation of your loutish tomfoolery. We were sore for several days following that particular exhibition.
We recall with delight how you were overcome on the occasion by your own alcoholic fumes and were unable to perform.
We would now like to refer you to a function for which we were, we firmly believe, designed by God. This is for the sublime purpose of paying Him the homage that is His eternal due, although you would argue in drink that if you were invited into the world and given the choice of acceptance or refusal you would have declined the invitation and stayed where you were, wherever that was.
You were always a great man for flying in the face of God, forgetting, you poor benighted mortal, that you may one day have to crawl on your hands and us in supplication before His throne, and that day may not be as far away as you think. Now to that function for which we were specially designed; i.e. making you kneel in prayer. Alas it is the one function for which we were never even partially utilised and it is the one function in which we would have been pleased to involve ourselves. It was Saint Paul who said: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee should bend.’
Paul was, of course, referring to the followers of Christ and must surely have meant every Christian knee, two of which have been possessed by you since the day you were born. However, neither of us can recall anything remotely approaching the faintest semblance of a genuflection since your sinless and virtuous mother was borne away to the plains of heaven by the nine choirs of angels. Neither did you kneel to pray at the anniversaries of your parents’ death.
Although these were not deliberate sins of omission we, nevertheless, find your negligence to be bordering on the unforgiveable.
How is it that your late father could always manage to find time for prayer, always make it a point to bend us on the floor or the pavement or in the fields which he loved to traverse in obeisance to his heavenly benefactor! How often we foolishly wished we were his knees instead of yours but those were transient aspirations for, through thick and thin, we are still determined to support you and though somewhat rickety and wobbly we will persevere with the struggle to support your ever-extending paunch and inexorably fattening buttocks and thighs.
We lovingly recall your father as he would gently lower himself into a kneeling position to thank the appropriate saint for some favour received. Even when he would recover the pipe or the spectacles which had been mislaid for but a few moments he would cross himself and kneel in thanksgiving.
The only occasion in recent times that we remember you kneeling in real earnest was when the right knee of one of your enemies guilefully connected with that prized and sensitive area commonly referred to as your private parts!
At once you fell to your knees clutching the affected spot, uttering hideous screams and gasping for breath until you were stretchered away to the nearest infirmary by some of your cronies. Even they would not deny that you had at last come into your entitlement for you, in your day, were never slow to inflict the same punishment on those who had incurred your wrath! How true the old adage: ‘Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.’
