Riot Most Uncouth Read Online Free Page A

stars
    Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
    Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
    Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air

    â€” Lord Byron, “Darkness”
    â€œFinancial prudence is the virtue of those who lack imagination.” That’s something my father often said, usually punctuating the statement with a violent gesture and spilling his drink in the process. “I pity the sad bastard who dies without any debt. He hasn’t really lived.”
    I was too small to understand most of his quips at the time, but I remembered them, parroting his manner and his speech in front of my bedroom mirror when I was alone. I wanted very much to be like him; he was so self-assured, and other adults seemed to take him very seriously. He was always surrounded by a crowd of friends and associates, and they always roared with approval when he told his stories. It seemed his personality itself was a radiant and mysterious force that drew these people to him; it was only much later that I came to understand that his charisma was helped in no small measure by the fact that he paid for all the booze.
    He was a great man, though. He had a voice like a church bell and a fist like a hammer, and he made frequent use of both these gifts. He continued our family’s military tradition; a captain of the guard and the son of an admiral. The soldiers who’d served under him called him Mad Jack, and not just for his fury in battle.
    If he was never affectionate, he was always boisterous, except when he was hungover, of course. While he dwelt at my mother’s Scottish estate, the place bubbled with constant activity; an endless parade of visitors and servants. Mad Jack was surrounded by strangers, and I, a small boy, was generally left to my own devices, or else locked in my room. My mother cared for me when she could, but she spent a lot of time alone, weeping. She was weak, and she could never equal his wit or satisfy his appetites. But my father made sure he always had plenty of liquor and girls around. He said these things gave him what my mother couldn’t.
    I rarely knew sleep in my earliest years; every night, the house would writhe with activity and pulse with noise. I remember lying in the dark, in my room, and listening to the sound of revelry all around me: stumbling footsteps in the corridors as men chased girls into various unoccupied rooms; laughter and yelling; the thrumming of strings and the pounding of drums—my father always hired the best musicians. And above it all, I could always hear his voice reverberating, clear early in the night and slurred later, but always authoritative.
    One June evening when I was five years old, I climbed out of bed and found my mother had forgotten to lock my door, so I ventured forth to see the party. In the hallway outside my bedroom, two men were pawing at an unconscious woman. I followed my father’s voice out to the courtyard, moving slowly to keep the brace on my leg from squeaking. I was frightened a little, for the adults were staggering about the house and vomiting in chamber pots. It was dark, too; the only light in the courtyard was from torches mounted on poles. A string quartet was playing an Austrian waltz, and some of the guests were lurching around, making drunken attempts at dancing.
    â€œDeath is not an inevitability,” my father was saying. “It is merely a likelihood.” He had draped his lanky frame over a high-backed wooden chair, and his friends were seated on the grass at his feet, waving crystal glasses at him, which he refilled with sparkling wine from a large green bottle. A young woman sat on his lap and was licking at his neck.
    â€œI have been to the East,” he said. “There are men, or things like men, in that region who have conquered death. They taught me their secrets. Mortality is for the foolish and the poor. Decay is a consequence of individual failure. A man ought to control his destiny,