‘Salutations, my bulbous brothers and sisters’ (Photo via Man Alive!)
Some things you just can’t shake. When I was a kid I was watching a very brave BBC documentary about some troubles somewhere – I don’t know where; I was a kid, the memory is hazy, but it was in a jungle-like setting – and there was this really vivid moment where a guy got shot. There was all this preamble to the guy getting shot: two men blindfolded him, jostled him around, disorientated him and he was begging. “Please,” he was saying, “Please, my brother, my wife and my brother –” and then: pofttttt. Single bullet to the base of the skull. Slumped over dead in his fatigues. I just wept. I wasn’t expecting it. Both of my parents had to wrestle me out of the room to calm me down. I absolutely lost my mind. And I can still replay every second of that footage in my head. Still hear the sound and then the silence. Stunned and bloodless. Straightforward. Death.
Anyway, Morrissey’s written a book, and can we just talk about this passage from it, please? Because – related to the above, there is a hook to all this – it will not leave me. The word pair “howling mouth” is writ large when I close my eyes. When I try to find moments of piece, a high quiet hum whispers “bulbous salutation”, a cheeky trombone noise of an erection descriptor:
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“Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”
Now: I am a relatively un-perverted man. But I would like to see that shagging in action. I would like to watch two people do that shagging. I would like to see what bits go where. Because I have read that maybe 15, 20 times now, and I still can’t quite… I mean, screaming and shouting? Am I doing sex wrong, or are they having some sort of foreplay water balloon fight? What in the blue and infinite fuck is a “snowball of full-figured copulation”?
Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out how Ezra and Eliza intend to actually get it in, so the only way to really do that is to go through it line-by-line. Sorry:
“Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation”
You know in cartoon Westerns, where a fight breaks out and everyone rolls up into a dust ball of flailing limbs, and there are “kapow” noises, and then the whole thing rolls off screen and Bugs Bunny in a cowboy hat and waistcoat just really calmly bites into a carrot? That is how Morrissey thinks sex goes.
“Screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other”
I have a mate who works at a support home for young offenders, and Morrissey’s description of foreplay could have been taken verbatim from one of their incident reports.
“A dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation.”
Play the latest Buzzfeed quiz: Jeremy Clarkson describing a red fast car, or Morrissey imagining some especially athletic foreplay?
“Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled”
Was Morrissey not paying attention, like, at all during Year 7 PSE lessons? When the girls were all ushered into a separate assembly to be stoically told how periods worked and the boys all had to stay behind in class and learn distantly about ovaries, was Morrissey just staring out of the window thinking about how important a single stemmed rose was or how sighing a lot is good? Because dude does not know what a titty is. Morrissey does not know what a titty is, or how it works. Morrissey has never beheld a titty and Morrissey has never looked at a diagram of one on a whiteboard. Morrissey just described a titty capable of doing a barrel roll, an aeronautical manoeuvre exclusive to only the most agile of planes. Morrissey basically just described a titty that clangs. To Morrissey, a titty is essentially nine long iron chains fixed to a bicycle wheel being whipped around excitedly by a group of children. To Morrissey, a titty is small pieces of unwanted scrap metal being dropped inelegantly down a well.
“Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his—”
“Howling”; “pained frenzy”. Going to have to stop you there, Eliza, you metal-tittied queen: you appear to be having sex with a stunned bear.
“— bulbous salutation”
I feel like Morrissey took this description of an erection from some court documents where a local eccentric in a closely-knitted provincial town was found extraordinarily guilty of fucking a council-run flower bed. “And what happened to the daffodils, Mr Richards?” “Dug ’em out, didn’t I? Spaded them up with my bulbous salutation.”
“—extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”
What I am getting from this is Ezra sort of dabbed at Eliza’s body with his penis like a beaver tamping a dam down with its tail and then, at the climactic moment of entry, just jammed it vaguely near the erotic, the ethereal, the greatest mystery a woman possesses: her otherwise central zone. Fuckbois of the present and the future were just handed the greatest indistinct vagina description ever in history. “Ey girl, nudes?” one-match tracksuit bottom lads on Tinder are saying right now. “Let me see them titties. Turn around and let me see that peach. Get out the shower and show me your otherwise central zone.” Clap it while chanting it: Morrissey. Has. Never. Seen. Another. Naked. Human. In. His. Life.
But who am I? When have a thousand crying dads ever queued up to see me sing on a stage while wearing a plain black shirt and being aggressively vegetarian? Where’s my book deal, huh? Where’s my Wikipedia page? Essentially, the annals of history will not remember me, but they will remember Morrissey: his pompadour, Salford Lads Club, that iron-strong chin, tits that can flip over 360 while flying high over the English countryside on RAF manoeuvres, otherwise central zones. Well played, Morrissey, you mad sexless alien. Well played.
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