Human Sacrifice

I don’t mind admitting, the last place I expected to finish up…
was as an exhibit in «The Chamber of Horrors». And not even at the main HQ —
but in Blackpool, if you please! Nowhere to be found on my long list of
desirable places to spend the weekend
And yet… not so very long ago, I had a fair claim to be the most popular man
in London
(He moves towards us, shaking his head ruminatively; then looks up again,
smiling, full of charm, the soul of bonhomie.)
Stephen Ward
Your friendly osteopath
I can fix your
Lower back for you
Also known for
High-class portraiture
And you’ll find out
That’s not all I do
Winston Churchill
Ava Gardner
Different contours
Same predicament
Gandhi was another regular
Called me his «preferred medicament»
I invented
A new way of life
Some might call it
Unconventional
All that stuffy post-war Englishness
I like something
More consensual
You’ll be wondering
What I’m doing here
Stuck between Hitler
And the Acid-Bath Murderer
Let me warn you
It’s the consequence
If you get up
The nose of the establishment
If you give them
What they’re looking for
They’ll be grateful
Oh, they’ll be awfully nice
But
If you should step across the line
You’ll become a
Human sacrifice
Friends could never understand
The girls who caught my eye
Shopgirls, models
Working girls
I’d have them all come by
Strange behavior, you may think
But tolerance is blind
All I ever cared about
Was simply being kind
I tried marriage
Didn’t go for it
I liked freedom
And diversity
Mixed with all sorts
Tarts and royalty
And, of course, the young and beautiful
Portraits of
The Duke of Edinburgh
Jolly threesomes
In Belgravia
Weekends in some
Stately country house
With assorted
Misbehavior
All this was my life
Limitless delights
All the girls and
All the parties
All the amazing nights
Self-indulgence
Is permissible
But one day, you’ll
Have to pay the price
I suppose I
Stepped across the line
And became a
Human sacrifice
They will bring you down unless
Your heart’s as cold as ice
Nothing they like better than
A human sacrifice
(He takes a final drag of his cigarette and stubs it out on Lucrezia Borgia;
then he turns back to face the audience.)
No matter how experienced or sophisticated you are, you never see it coming,
do you? I mean, when I stepped into Murray’s Club in Beak Street that wet and
murky Tuesday… why should it have been any different from the dozens of other
evenings I’d whiled away there?