Herein, we hear about The Beard, The Spunk Mountain, and Brother James’ views on cocaine and reincarnation.

Brother James is the shit. “If I belived in reincarnation, I’d want to come back as myself.”

Say word.

Visit Lee and find out more about his great works here.

The homie Lee Henshaw just sent me this, which is awesome, as I have wanted to see it for ages! Forsooth:

This 1979 documentary film focuses on gangs such as the savage skulls & nomads who occupied areas of the South Bronx. Perhaps even more compelling is considering that the backdrop and social conditions in this film are a ‘far cry’ from the lifestyle being promoted through disco music and film. Perhaps this answers questions to why many people took preference over the funk records which arguably paved the way for Hip Hop culture.

Read more about it here.

Trout Fishing in America Fucking

She gave him a copy of Trout Fishing in America because she thought it was a book about fishing for trout, something he liked to do. He had a long trout rod that he tied dried flowers to.

She was rushing when she bought him Trout Fishing in America from the second-hand bookshop, trying to get home quickly so she didn’t miss that day’s episode of the Australian soap opera Neighbours.

She didn’t concentrate on the cover of Trout Fishing in America, on the photograph of the author, Richard Brautigan, and his muse, Michaela Clark Le Grand. If she’d concentrated on that cover, she probably would have asked herself, ‘Is this really a book about fishing for trout?’

It didn’t matter to Jason that Trout Fishing in America wasn’t about fishing for trout. He enjoyed Trout Fishing in America so much that he went on to buy all of Richard Brautigan’s novels and poems and to describe Richard Brautigan as his favourite writer.

On that warm Sunday afternoon, Jason decided to fuck her in the churchyard as if she were a copy of Trout Fishing in America. He was going to have sex with her, he decided, the same way he liked to read Trout Fishing in America: slowly and carefully.

He touched her here and there as if her body was made of chapters from Trout Fishing in America, which are tricky things if you let them be. The best thing to do with Chapters from Trout Fishing in America, he found, is read them again and again until they have no surprises left in them. A chapter from Trout Fishing in America takes a while to unpack.

On their way home, he told her what he’d done, and she said, “I enjoyed being fucked as if I were a copy of Trout Fishing in America”.

Lee Henshaw’s first novel was called Queer Fish in God’s Waiting Room, and it’s out now.

Thinking of Ignatius Moricand on The 108 Steps.

They were tripping, this boy and girl, at the bottom of The 108 Steps. It was a warm Sunday afternoon. The pubs and the kebab shops were quiet and the bells of the church at the top of The 108 Steps were ringing. He was looking at the kebab shop. At the flames licking the kebab meat. His eyebrows rose when, every now and then, the flames melted through the window and danced for him to the slow melody of the church bells.

They’d eaten meringue nests for their tea, the meal you have around 5 o’clock in Macclesfield, holding them in their hands like Cornish pasties. They’d filled them with magic mushrooms, which grow freely in the countryside around the town. The sweetness of the meringue disguised the bitter taste of the mushrooms.

“When did you first come?” she asked him, her hand drifting from his shin to his thigh and back again as he sat next to her.

“When I was 12,” he said, “with a girl from Bollington called Mandy.”

“There’s a surprise,” she said sarcastically.

Bollington is a small town near Macclesfield and its girls have a reputation for being promiscuous.

She’d asked him about his first orgasm.

“What was it like?” she said.

“It was surprising,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be surprised like that again.”

“I can’t believe it was with a girl. Surely most boys do it for themselves first.”

“She was 16,” he said defensively.

He slowly licked his top lip and started to chew it.

“You’re thinking about Ignatius Moricand, aren’t you?” she asked him.

Thinking about Ignatius Moricand, she knew, could change his mood as completely as tide covers dry sand.

She put her arms around him.

“Let’s kill him,” she whispered. “Just in our heads. Let’s kill him in our heads.”

“I would like to kill him even if it’s only in my head,” he said.

“We can do it,” she said, “but take me the top of the steps first.”

They walked up The 108 Steps to have sex in the churchyard.

She sat on a wall and he stood. With her head pushing against his she was louder than the church bells, like Mani’s bassline over Reni’s drums in the song I Am The Resurrection by The Stone Roses, he thought.

Afterwards, as they were near the gates, she saw the vicar leaving the church. She fell to the floor and started crawling around.

“What are you doing?” asked the vicar.

“I’m looking for my purse,” she said, “I lost it in the church.”

“If you lost it in the church,” said the vicar, “why are you looking for it here?”

She looked up at him and smiled.

“Because the light’s better out here,” she said.

Lee Henshaw’s first novel was called Queer Fish in God’s Waiting Room, and it’s out now.