If you went to the end of the jetty, the far end, you could be alone. They wouldn’t come for you there. It was almost as if you was a part of the sea there and not any part of the town, and being part of the sea you was part of the darkness that fingered the shore when the sun was down, and they could turn a blind eye to what you was or shrug and think to theyselves that you wasn’t any problem for ’em to worry over.
So, me and Tom and Art, we takes ourselves to the end of the jetty some nights, the air cold all about us and the sound of the water lapping on all sides. And Tom likely with a bottle of whiskey and he’d put it in a supermarket carrier so no one’d know. And we just passed it round, taking turns at kissing the lips of that bottle – like once we took turns kissing the lips of Hissy the Whore.
At us backs the sea, black and bullish; in front of us the town, curled like a sleeping cat, cosy in its streetlamp yellow. And me and Tom and Art crouched down behind a raised wooden buffer set ‘gainst returning boats clipping clumsy the corner of the jetty – that way the wind rolls over us and does not touch us. We is huddled together like lovers and our breath is shared and sour, and there’s a song hung in the air.
Like that we is alone and not lonely. We is in us own heads and out of us heads, both at the same time. And Tom it is singing to us and singing to hisself and to no one, and Art is dancing, without being on his feet, his body shifting next to mine, and his face carrying a smile that makes him look young again. And it is like all time has slipped away and I say to no one in partic’lar, ‘Do yous remember?’ That’s all I say, ‘Do yous remember?’ but it is enough, and I think we prob’bly share the one memory then:
Hissy the Whore and she was dancing across the silvered sands of the moonlit beach and we was watching her every move; and if I had poetry in me, I’d give it all to describing her dancing. And we was young men then, itchy and cocks ever hard, and Hissy the Whore was as pretty as sea shells or sunsets, and we licked us lips and felt for what money was in us pockets. We was short by a long way, always rubbing our small pennies together to make more of ‘em. ‘Short,’ said Hissy the Whore, ‘cept she said if we put what we had in the same pocket, then there was enough for one of us.
Hissy the Whore counted through the pennies and the siller, and she said she’d dance with us all three and dancing was for free, and she’d have kisses enough for us, too, and no charge for ‘em neither. Then she’d let the moon decide what was what.
It was Art as got the prize that night, though me and Tom thought Hissy the Whore’s kisses made us all winners – at least we said as much. And Art old as hills or ha’pennies now and he’s sitting next to me, breathless like before, and grinning like he’s the cat what’s got the cream, and maybe he’s dancing to the song that Tom’s singing, or maybe he’s fucking Hissy the Whore on that summer-night beach, fucking her over and over in his head, just as me and Tom is always kissing her when we drinks from the whiskey bottle.
Patricia Ann McNair 
If you went to the end of the jetty, the far end, you could be alone. They wouldn’t come for you there. It was almost as if you was a part of the sea there and not any part of the town, and being part of the sea you was part of the darkness that fingered the shore when the sun was down, and they could turn a blind eye to what you was or shrug and think to theyselves that you wasn’t any problem for ’em to worry over.
So, me and Tom and Art, we takes ourselves to the end of the jetty some nights, the air cold all about us and the sound of the water lapping on all sides. And Tom likely with a bottle of whiskey and he’d put it in a supermarket carrier so no one’d know. And we just passed it round, taking turns at kissing the lips of that bottle – like once we took turns kissing the lips of Hissy the Whore.
At us backs the sea, black and bullish; in front of us the town, curled like a sleeping cat, cosy in its streetlamp yellow. And me and Tom and Art crouched down behind a raised wooden buffer set ‘gainst returning boats clipping clumsy the corner of the jetty – that way the wind rolls over us and does not touch us. We is huddled together like lovers and our breath is shared and sour, and there’s a song hung in the air.
Like that we is alone and not lonely. We is in us own heads and out of us heads, both at the same time. And Tom it is singing to us and singing to hisself and to no one, and Art is dancing, without being on his feet, his body shifting next to mine, and his face carrying a smile that makes him look young again. And it is like all time has slipped away and I say to no one in partic’lar, ‘Do yous remember?’ That’s all I say, ‘Do yous remember?’ but it is enough, and I think we prob’bly share the one memory then:
Hissy the Whore and she was dancing across the silvered sands of the moonlit beach and we was watching her every move; and if I had poetry in me, I’d give it all to describing her dancing. And we was young men then, itchy and cocks ever hard, and Hissy the Whore was as pretty as sea shells or sunsets, and we licked us lips and felt for what money was in us pockets. We was short by a long way, always rubbing our small pennies together to make more of ‘em. ‘Short,’ said Hissy the Whore, ‘cept she said if we put what we had in the same pocket, then there was enough for one of us.
Hissy the Whore counted through the pennies and the siller, and she said she’d dance with us all three and dancing was for free, and she’d have kisses enough for us, too, and no charge for ‘em neither. Then she’d let the moon decide what was what.
It was Art as got the prize that night, though me and Tom thought Hissy the Whore’s kisses made us all winners – at least we said as much. And Art old as hills or ha’pennies now and he’s sitting next to me, breathless like before, and grinning like he’s the cat what’s got the cream, and maybe he’s dancing to the song that Tom’s singing, or maybe he’s fucking Hissy the Whore on that summer-night beach, fucking her over and over in his head, just as me and Tom is always kissing her when we drinks from the whiskey bottle.