The story of Mona and Reg is a tale of epic romance. You might not be able to see that if you don’t know them very well, but it’s true. You could learn a lot about how to create a successful relationship just by watching them.
They’ve been married a long time – like maybe 18 years – and if you ask them, they’ll tell you that the secret to a long and healthy marriage is open and honest communication. Like just this morning, Reg was telling Mona that she was the biggest twat who’d ever lived, and she was telling him that it was funny they’d found each other then, what with him being the biggest dick who’d ever lived.
But I’m not going to tell you that story. The story I’m going to tell is the one about Mona and Reg’s 2009 barbeque. Their barbeques are famous in Brixton, but in 2009 that shit was monumental. It all started with Reg bragging up a storm about how he knows his way around a grill. He was all like, ‘Come and get it. You won’t want to miss out on this. I might have outdone myself this time. I might just be king of the grill the way I move a slab of meat around the fire.’
So Mona was all, ‘Yeah Reg everyone’s impressed by your mad skills with a bottle of kerosene and a lit match, but babe when will the food actually be done?’ And it became like this boys on one side, girls on the other sort of gang up, where all the ladies were like, ‘Yeah we all know your cocks are huge, but we’re hungry.’ And the men were all like, ‘Yeah and we’d like to hear a bit more about how our cocks are so huge.’ And it ultimately came close to blows, except everyone was starving so they finally moved on to the part where the food was served.
Then Reg was moaning into the meat he’d cooked like it was the best orgasm he’d ever had, before he’d even brought it to his lips. ‘The aroma is a dead giveaway,’ he said, ‘this pig is going to be delicious.’ Then he just went at it like he was going down on the hottest chick he’d ever seen – really getting his face in there and rubbing it around. Incisors piercing skin, tearing flesh away from flesh, snapping tendons that tied muscle to bone. And the meat was blooming like a fucking flower in his hand.
There was a machination to his mastication – you can’t move through a body that quickly without a plan. Saliva was dripping from his lips, wetting his mouth and tongue, wetting the meat so it could move, sending a message to his throat that it was ready to swallow, even though his throat looked to be telling him that it wasn’t ready at all, his mouth so full of meat like that.
He kept yelling that he was a big cat like, ‘I’m a lion, baby! Look at me taking down this beast and bringing it home to you. You should be licking me down in gratitude, baby. I’m a goddamn Siberian tiger!’ The boys were having a laugh, but Mona was looking like she was about to kick off. And then Reg made a little cough and stopped with all the big talk – stopped with everything really, because his face was starting to turn blue. That’s when Mona started to laugh.
Everyone went crazy, girls screaming like, ‘What should we do?’ ‘Someone call 999!’ ‘Oh my God!’ Except Mona stopped laughing and just shook her head and smiled. She walked over to where Reg was now flat on his back and knelt beside him. Then she started cooing in his ear. She was like, ‘Reg, why do you have to do this? You’re not a tiger, love…. you’re not a big cat….you’re like a little jungle ape, baby….a tiny pink jungle ape with bollocks like marshmallows.’ And then she reared up with her fists in the air and dropped her elbow down hard against his diaphragm. Almost instantaneously, the bit of pig that had been lodged in his throat came sailing out, flew across the patio, and sank into the kiddie pool their dogs used for a bathtub.
Reg coughed a bit and sat up. We could all hear the sirens approaching. Then he looked at Mona like she was the only girl in the world. ‘I love you baby,’ she said. Reg said, ‘I love you too, you daft cow.’ And then they kissed like they couldn’t even see all of us standing there.
About the author:
M.E. Rolle studied English and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She holds a J.D. in Law from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an LL.M. in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School. After a twelve year career as an attorney for U.S. federal government, M.E. decided to pursue her passion for writing in London. She is currently taking part in the University of Westminster’s program,
MA Creative Writing: Writing the City.
Photograph © Caleb Drost
Wells Street Journal 