The Moth and the Candle

The river glistened as it sometimes should in the sun. Little wavelets broke on its surface as the evening settled over the city. The water slopped against the mossy green walls which bounded its course and made the painters holding the small craft to their rusted iron rings creak and groan. Felix walked down the newly built boardwalk which ran parallel to Bachelor’s Walk. The planks of the boardwalk were already starting to weather even though they were only a year or two old. Café’s which had sprung up along the thoroughfares of Dublin like mushrooms after the rain offered coffee and tea and bad pastries at exorbitant prices. Felix stopped at the hatch of one of them and bought a cup of tea. He sipped it as he crossed O’Connell Bridge and watched the new glass houses, shining and bright in the last of the day’s sun gleam, touchstones of a new and brave future. Felix leaned on the parapet of the bridge and looked back at Bachelor’s Walk. It all seemed so…obvious to anyone living here now, this explosion of prosperity and colour. But there were other tales the stones of the street could tell. “Remember Bachelor’s Walk!” a catch-cry from another time, another world, uttered to commemorate three people shot dead by the then civic authorities. Or by those acting on behalf of the civic authorities. At times of insurrection and war it is so difficult to tell the difference even with the uniforms and the guns. “Remember Bachelor’s Walk”. Felix remembered even though he never had an opportunity to forget. Being English this was not really, as he saw it, a part of his history. Part of British Imperial and colonial history to be sure but not really part of his history. Agincourt, Henry VIII, the World Wars, the Suffragettes, the Beatles. These were the avatars of his history not the plangent slogans of some distant Irish memory. And yet, and yet…he remembered it still as though he was there on the day the soldiers opened fire on the crowd. He could see the blood and the terror, the sweat and the horror. Remember, remember…


Felix looked down. A voice came from within a dirty shawl, the face peering up at him older than its years.
Pleeze? It said hopefully.
Felix reached into his pocket and tipped the contents into her hands. She looked up at him and said her thanks. Her attention turned to the person behind him, their dealings done. Felix walked on slowly and when he reached the edge of the path he looked back. She was counting the money he had given her, her only collection of the evening. He had no idea how much he had given, all the money he had for all he had noticed. There was something wrong and he couldn’t tell what it was. In the midst of new wealth old poverty crept through, a reminder of times past.

Walking down Benburb street dodging dog shit and kicking crumpled cigarette packets Felix saw the streetwalkers stare. They eyed him up as a fairly weightless prospect, shabby and poorly dressed. But even crumpled notes are better than none.
Looking for any business love? One called at him.
Felix blindly shook his head, embarrassed beyond reason. He walked on, head bowed, until he saw one prostitute leaning against the pitted brickwork, flesh against stone, the city. Heaven. She looked about sixteen years old, could have been more, maybe less. Her gaze invited him but her expression didn’t change. He was struck dumb. Wordlessly she took his hand her fingers grasping his wrist. She led him to a small flat complex, a palace of graffiti and needles.
50 quid for a fuck, that’s the going rate.
Felix blanched. Felix fumbled. He had never done this before. He trembled all over, fear and lust feeling soooo good. He reached out for her jejune body but she moved sharply aside.
Money up front, she said as she held out a cash-register hand.
Can I be..be…beaten? I want to be beaten!
Felix blurted out a fantasy that wasn’t his. Where were the words coming from? Without changing her expression the girl said
That’s extra, I…
I’ll pay whatever it takes.

An hour of succulent flesh, breasts and buttocks bouncing and bumping. Dirty talking, oh fuck me Daddy, creative acts with a greased glass bottle, her hair around his face. Spread-eagled, enraged sex by consent. Pay for pleasure, pay for pain. Shivering skin from the lack of windows to block out the cold. Screaming ecstasy as nearby junkies looked on in stupefied contempt. The girl left him there, panting and sodden. As she left she spat in his face. The old pro. He whispered thank you and came for the last time.

Felix woke from his dream with a jolt. He looked down at the sheets, spots of blood looked back, two eyes from his nightmare. He should have had a wet dream, as sordid a shag as he could imagine. He looked around but of course there was no one there. Breathing slowly, his body cooled, breath even, colour pale. He had never dreamed or even fantasized about anything like this before or if he had he didn’t remember it.