JOHNNY AND CLIVE
THIRD PERSON · PRESENT TENSE · NO CHALLENGE PARAMETERS GIVEN
DIALOGUE KEY: Johnny Clive Contested attribution
Two men stand beside a field, on a road in the middle of
World-Internal Nowhere Capitalised throughout the story — a proper noun. Not just any field, but the canonical, mythic Nowhere of British crime fiction. The Boss has an "evil lair," Barry may have stolen something, and the disposal site is Nowhere. The geography is genre., staring into the back of their car.
"We're dead."
A moment of silence.
"Actually, he's the dead one."
Craft Note Clive's defining character move — established in his second line. He interrupts a moment of crisis with a literal correction. This exact pattern repeats across the whole story: Johnny states the problem, Clive refines the semantics. Every exchange is a version of this. "That's why we're dead." "I'm not following." "We're dead because he's dead." "We are? I don't feel dead." "Don't get smart.
World-Internal The Boss Never named, never seen, never described beyond "balding fat fart." The Boss is the unseen authority of the British crime genre — a figure whose entire function is to make other people afraid. His "evil lair," his missus, his wounded pride about killing order — he is defined entirely by absence. The story is set entirely in his shadow without ever entering it. is gonna kill us when he finds out that this guy's dead." "But I thought the Boss wanted him dead." "No, the Boss wanted to kill him." "The difference being?" "Well he can't kill him if he's already dead now, can he?" "Oh I see. It's one of those
. 'Look at me, I can bring you here and kill you myself. I'm a big man boy with a big stick and a fat arse.'"
Craft Note Clive's philosophical riffs are his signature — he takes a simple situation and extends it into a small speech. This is the first one. What Clive is actually doing is correctly diagnosing the Boss's psychology. He's not wrong. He's just doing it while standing over a body in a field. "Something like that I guess."
Some more silence.
"What did he do to piss the Boss off anyway?" "No idea. I just got told to bag him and bring him to the Boss." "You forgot the alive part." "Ha bloody ha. We wouldn't be in this predicament if someone had remembered to
Decoded Boot = Car Boot (British English)The boot is the trunk of the car. Drilling holes would let air in — keeping a captive alive during transport. Clive forgot to do this. The detail implies they've done this before: drilling holes is not improvised; it's a procedure someone failed to follow.." "You didn't tell me to. And he might have made it if someone hadn't got lost." "I took the wrong turn off." "But you didn't know that, so you didn't stop, didn't turn 'round and didn't ask for bloody directions." "Well I can't exactly stop and go, 'Sorry, do you know where to find
Craft Note Evil Lair"Evil lair" — the vocabulary of superhero cinema and pantomime villainy, dropped into a conversation about a real murder. Johnny uses it completely straight. JL's method throughout: genre vocabulary applied without irony to its natural context, which makes the context absurd.?' No I don't think that would go down so well. Not even with the village idiot."
Some more silence.
"So what do you think he did?" "Don't know. Probably stole something." "Not money, I guess.
"
Feminist Note The Boss's missus is the first female presence in the story. She is introduced as: property the dead man might have touched, someone the Boss also can't touch, and someone who hates the Boss. She exists in four lines, is never named, and is defined entirely by what men do or don't do to her. Click the red underline for the full analysis. "Please. She wouldn't touch a balding fat fart like him." "The Boss is a balding fat fart." "Yeah, and she doesn't touch him. She hates him." "True." "Do you think he's
Reference Nemesis — Greek / Comic Book In Greek mythology, Nemesis was the goddess of retribution — an equal opposing force. In comics, a nemesis is the equal-and-opposite villain to a hero (or hero to a villain). Clive introduces the concept in full philosophical seriousness. Johnny immediately interprets it as referring to the Boss's marriage. Two different understandings of the word "opposite" in action.?" "His what?" "Y'know, his equal but opposite?" "The Boss is already married. To his missus." "No you daft twit. Like his enemy, only equal in strength." "Naaah, can't be. Look at him. He's a dead git." "Yeah, but
Reference Superman / Clark Kent Superman's alter ego Clark Kent is famously mild-mannered, clumsy, and bespectacled — a git in glasses. Clive's point: appearances don't rule out hidden significance. He's philosophically defending the dead man's potential importance. Johnny immediately corrects the reference, not the argument.." "No that was Clark Kent." "Same thing." "Not a chance."
? CONTESTED ATTRIBUTION — 5 LINES · CLICK TO EXPAND ▾
"I'm not going to argue with you now. I have to figure out how we're gonna get out of this." "Down that road I expect." "Out of this mess you idiot." "I know what you mean. I'm just having a laugh. Don't you have a sense of humour?" "Not when I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dead guy in my car."
Why these five lines are genuinely ambiguous:
The Clark Kent argument breaks the story's established rhythm. Johnny has consistently taken figurative speech literally; Clive has consistently digressed philosophically. Here, both men are frustrated and stepping back at the same time — and the character markers that have been guiding attribution disappear.
Plausible reading A: Clive says "I have to figure out how we're gonna get out of this" (uncharacteristic problem-focus), Johnny jokes "down that road I expect" (taking it literally per his pattern), Clive corrects him ("out of this mess you idiot"), Johnny defends himself ("I'm just having a laugh"), Clive ends it ("not when I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere").
Plausible reading B: Johnny says "I have to figure out how we're gonna get out of this" (outcome-focused, consistent), Clive makes the literal joke ("down that road I expect" — a rare reversal), Johnny corrects ("out of this mess"), Clive deflects ("I'm just having a laugh"), Johnny shuts it down.
Both readings are internally consistent. Reading B is a deliberate role-swap that mirrors the Clark Kent / Superman inversion. Dropping Eaves names them later but doesn't resolve this section. The author may not have intended a resolution.
Again, more silence.
"Do you think we should have a funeral." "What?" "Y'know. Bury him in the field, say a few words." "Good a plan as any, I suppose." "Poor bastard. Not his fault he's dead." "Yeah, It's yours." "Don't start again." "I'm not. Let's get him out." "At least there's no blood this time."
Craft Note"This time." A single throwaway phrase that opens an entire implied history: there have been previous times, with blood. The story has been presented as a one-off situation, but "this time" reveals these are career criminals with a procedure and a body of prior work. JL does this with compression — one phrase, no explanation, full implication.
Dead guy moves. Bang.
"Oh come on!" "It was a reflex action. He was already dead."
Craft Note — Escalation The story's central escalation: the situation goes from "he's dead" to "he wasn't dead" to "he's definitely dead now." Clive shoots without warning, explains afterwards. The structure is pure farce — every attempt to simplify the situation creates a new complication. The body that was supposed to go to the Boss now has fewer recognisable features. "Evidently he wasn't!" "Well he's dead now. Again." "Because you blew half his bloody face off!" "Yeah sorry about that." "Do you have any idea how long it's going to take to clean this up?" "Couple of hours?" "Shut up and help me get him out. You can take his head." "Fair enough." "Watch out!" "He's not going to feel anything, he's dead." "But banging his head is making more of a mess." "Sorry. He doesn't have much brains left, does he?" "Shut up." "Don't think he had much to begin with." "Shut up." "Most of it's in your car now." "SHUT UP!"
Thud.
"Oh for fuck's sake." "He's heavy okay. And the legs are easier to carry. Not as awkward." "I don't care! Pick him up."
Silence. Digging. Silence.
"I think we should say something." "You do it." "What was his name?" "No idea.
Craft Note Barry The most ordinary, unmenacing English name available — the specific anti-climax of it is the joke. Not "Vladimir" or "The Nemesis" or "Barry the Fixer." Just Barry. The random christening strips the dead man of any remaining mythological possibility Clive had been constructing. He was never the Boss's nemesis. He was Barry.?" "Alright. We are gathered here today to lay to rest
. He's dead. Probably because I shot him. What do you think he did for a living? Lawyer?" "Naaah, lawyers are good looking. They need to woo the jury." "Doctor?" "Wouldn't want him as my doctor. Creepy fella isn't he?" "
Cultural Reference The I.T. Guy The IT support worker is a standing British comedy archetype — socially awkward, physically nondescript, essential but invisible. Assigning Barry this role is a form of ultimate erasure: he was the person who fixes things in the background, who no one notices until something breaks. He has become, in death, as anonymous as he probably was in life.." "Yeah, seems about right." "Right. So we lay to rest Barry the I.T. guy. Uh. Do you think he had a missus?" "Him? Not likely." "Maybe he bought one off the interweb?" "Maybe." "Kids?" "Don't think so. Probably a low sperm count." "Okay. We lay to rest Barry the I.T. guy. He is survived by his wife
God rest his soul."
Feminist Note Three women invented and immediately dismissed in one sentence. "Who aren't really his" is the punchline — three invented females reduced to a joke about the dead man's inadequacy. See the full feminist critique via the red underline above. "Had your fun?" "Have some respect for the dead." "Shut up."
Dirt falls, as does sweat.
"Bugger me. I'm glad that's done." "Yeah. I'll miss Barry." "You're an arse." "Yeah, but I'm a better looking arse than you." "Not what your mum said." "Oi. She makes great spaghetti.
Character Detail Clive's Mum — Half Italian The first and only biographical detail we get about either man. No other personal information is given in the whole story. Clive's mum makes great spaghetti and is half Italian. Johnny says bullshit. Clive insists it's true. It functions as a coda — a tiny warm thing after the digging." "Bullshit." "It's true."
Some more silence.
"So what now?" "Grab a pint?" "Yeah alright."

DROPPING EAVES
FIRST PERSON · PRESENT TENSE · CHALLENGE: "BANANAS" GENRE
DIALOGUE KEY: Narrator (blind) Johnny (whiny, aggressive) Clive ("the bright one")

I've never seen the colour blue. I don't know what it looks like, but I've heard that the ocean is blue. If the ocean is blue, then I like the sound of it. Blue could quite possibly be my favourite colour; I'm sure I'd agree with myself if I saw it.
Craft Note — The Reveal The opening sentence is the story's central misdirection and its eventual punchline. "I've never seen the colour blue" — a casual, philosophically-framed observation that only retroactively becomes the story's key. JL never says "I am blind." The reader is given every piece of evidence and trusted to hold it.

But I'm not by the ocean right now; I'm sitting outside a small coffee shop near
Decoded Hyde Park — London One of London's eight Royal Parks — a 350-acre public park in the City of Westminster. The coffee shop near Hyde Park situates the story in a specific socioeconomic register: expensive enough to attract "all sorts," central enough to attract the accidental, overpriced enough to be worth noting. Consistent with the characters being south London types operating slightly out of their territory.→ Hyde Park on Wikipedia, having a cigarette. Why I started smoking, I have no idea, but these days it's one of my favourite things to do. The tobacco makes a soft crackle as it burns; most people never notice, but it's actually quite a pleasant little sound. Like a mini fireplace in my mouth.
Craft Note — The Sonic World From the first paragraph, the narrative attention is sonic rather than visual. The tobacco's crackle. The coffee shop sounds. The strain in waiters' voices. The grinding and chopping. The narrator describes a world through sound with the granularity of someone for whom sound is the primary sense. JL builds the blind narrator through texture before ever making the condition explicit.

I come to this place almost every day, mostly because they let me bring
Character Detail Rufus — Guide Dog Joke Golden Retrievers are a common guide dog breed. The narrator's Rufus "never fetches a damn thing" and "just sits quietly next to me, panting and keeping an eye out for pretty girls." A guide dog who won't guide, who has his own aesthetic preferences, and who will — critically — fail to growl at the two men approaching. Rufus is both the dog's whole character and a gentle running joke about the narrator's reliance on unreliable assistance. inside. I've had Rufus about six years now, some old lady said he's a Golden Retriever, but he never fetches a damn thing. He usually just sits quietly next to me, panting and keeping an eye out for
. I suppose he's fetched one or two of those in the past, but he and I have different taste in women.
Feminist Note The narrator's relationship to women introduced in three words: "different taste in women." Women as objects of aesthetic preference — specifically visual preference, which is the narrator's diminished sense. Women appear in this story as: the object of taste, the sound of their shoes, and an unconscious body the two men bring up later. See full analysis via red underline.

I've come to the conclusion that this little coffee shop attracts all sorts and I'm pretty sure it's because the coffee is over-priced. But it is worth it, just to come and sit for a while and listen to the lives of so many different people. I usually bring a book so as not to creep people out with my pastime, but I'm pretty sure I'm
The Tell The Book Is Upside Down One of two structural tells embedded early for a second reading. An upside-down book is invisible to a blind reader. The quotation marks around "reading" are not coyness; they are the story's quiet admission. "Dropping Eaves" in the title — eavesdropping, listening — is what the narrator actually does. The book is a prop. Sound is the text.. On a quiet day, you'd be able to follow entire conversations and play out whole soap-operas in your mind...

This little hole in the wall can get pretty packed at times too, and you can hear the strain in the waiters' voices over the hubbub of people taking it easy for a while. On a busy night, or day, the best seat in the house is near the kitchen. It's a symphony of chaos, life is too, but the kitchen under pressure is the best example. The grinding and chopping and searing and the click-clack-clack mixed with the clangs and the thuds constantly mingling with worried shouts and precious inside jokes. It's not music, but I love it.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it busy today, but it isn't quiet either. I think I brought Lord of the Rings with me but I'm not sure. Right now, I'm waiting on a red velvet cupcake, a chocolate chip muffin and a pot of
Character Detail Earl Grey Earl Grey is a distinctively aromatic tea — its bergamot scent is recognisable by smell alone. For a blind narrator, tea choices carry sensory weight beyond mere preference. The order as a whole (red velvet, choc chip, Earl Grey) tells us about a person who enjoys specific, textured sensory pleasures: taste, smell, crunch, warmth.. Rufus loves red velvet, he's salivating all over my leg just thinking about it. Familiar — that's what I'd call today. The music playing over the almost-blown speakers is soft enough to blend into the background. It might be pop that's playing but at least it isn't
Reference Pan Pipe Moods (1994)A real compilation album — one of a long series of ambient pan pipe covers released throughout the 1990s in the UK. They were sold in service stations and became a cultural shorthand for aggressively inoffensive background noise. The narrator's specific horror at them suggests both cultural awareness and a finely tuned sensitivity to sonic environment.. There aren't a lot of cars passing and it's probably sometime in the afternoon, but the shicks and clinks of knives and forks underneath the low mumble of casual conversation is perfectly ordinary. Most people ignore these moments.

The alley, unseen.
Challenge Requirement + Reference Jaws (1975) — Chief Brody"You're gonna need a bigger boat" — Chief Brody's line upon seeing the shark for the first time in Spielberg's Jaws. Required by the challenge. Clive applies it to the problem of fitting a large body into a small car boot. The line lands perfectly: the original context (inadequate vessel, terrifying obstacle) maps precisely onto the new one. The challenge requirement and the story's logic are entirely consistent.

He might have said "boot" but he's cockney and a little far away, so I can't really be sure.

"Just jam his legs in harder, Clive… He ain't gonna need 'em."

I can't help myself; this is too weird not to listen to. This second guy sounds like the bright one of the pair. He also sounds smaller and a bit whiny.
Craft Note — Unreliable Assessment The narrator calls Johnny "the bright one of the pair" — which is demonstrably wrong based on J&C. Johnny is the one who got lost, shot a man who wasn't dead, and forgot to ask for directions. Clive is the philosophical one who correctly diagnoses the Boss's psychology. The narrator's blind assessment of character via voice alone is exactly as reliable as you'd expect: not very. The "smaller and a bit whiny" is consistent though.

"Have you seen the size of that gut, Johnny? If I squeeze his legs any harder, it'll come out of his belly button like toothpaste." "You're disgusting, you know that?" "I don't know; I just think we're, y'know… Doing it wrong."

Well for starters, I would think that doing whatever they're doing in broad daylight is wrong from the start. At least under cover of darkness, you'd expect this sort of thing. Aren't they worried about being seen? Not by me, obviously, but there are at least thirty witnesses. What if they're planning on mass murder after they've finished? No, I'm being paranoid. But I can't hear any whispers or gasps, from inside. Has no one noticed?

Wait. The cars are that way and they're… In the alley. That makes me feel better.

"Look, it's an
The Connect The Boot — Linking Both Stories The same boot from J&C. The narrator has been listening to the tail end of the J&C story — specifically the argument about fitting the body in. In J&C, the body was put in the boot to drive to the Boss; it died en route. Now they need to dispose of it differently. The narrator has stumbled into the aftermath of a crime she heard from the beginning; the reader has seen both ends of the same event.. Perfectly adequate for one large bloke – or two
Reference Backstreet Boys The American pop group active from 1993 onwards — a culturally specific unit of small-ish human measurement. Johnny uses them as a volume reference. The incongruity of Backstreet Boys appearing in a body-disposal conversation is entirely consistent with the story's register. at a push. Now push his bleedin' legs in before I beat you to death with a shovel and bury you in the arse end of nowhere." "Why'd you want to do that?" "Because, it's going to happen to someone, and if you can't get him in there, then it's going to be you."

I really should not be listening to this. I should turn the page of my book. Oh thank goodness, the waitress is here with my order. I've never welcomed the sound of
with more gratitude in my life.
Feminist Note — The Waitress The waitress — the only female character present in DE — is identified entirely by the sound of her shoes. No name, no face, no words. She exists as a sound that provides relief, then disappears. In J&C she re-enters via reported speech: she "told him to take a flying whatsit at a rolling doughnut" — an act of assertion, but still secondhand, still nameless. She is the story's most capable character and the least visible one. Rufus lets out a little bark of glee and scoffs his cupcake – it might be mine – out of my hand, leaving a slimy saliva coating in his wake. I hope to heaven they didn't hear him. They seem to be bickering, so I'm safe. I take a bite from my cupcake. Choc chip. Rufus is safe too.

I try to steady my breathing. Just calm down. But curiosity is so annoying sometimes. No, I tell myself. Don't listen. Don't pay attention. Listen to the birds. Or the cars. Let them do their thing and be on their not-so-merry way. Just don't —

"'Scuse me."

That was ridiculously close, and very cockney. Rufus should be growling. Damn it! He's still doing that sloppy chewy thing dogs do with cake.

"Hello? You with the book."

The whiny one's here too, and — balls — they're definitely, without a doubt, talking to me. I don't know what to say.

"You know it's the wrong way round, yeah?" "
The Cover Lord of the Rings — Upside Down The upside-down book pays off here. Clive notices it's wrong; Johnny invents a cover story (secret codes) to protect a stranger he's about to approach for help. The interaction flips the power dynamic: two men who just buried a body need something from a person they think is just an eccentric reader. They have no idea they're talking to someone who heard everything., Johnny." "Clive." "Yeah?" "Shut it. Don't mind him, he's a pillock."

The whiny one is Johnny, the other is Clive.
Craft Note — The Attribution Reveal Four years after J&C, JL resolves the attribution — or at least anchors it. "The whiny one is Johnny, the other is Clive." The narrator gives the reader the key to the earlier story. But the narrator also says Johnny is "the bright one of the pair," which a reader of J&C knows is wrong. The naming is authoritative; the assessment is not. Got it. Now I can give names if I'm found, beaten to death, in the middle of nowhere. I still haven't said a thing, or moved.

"So, we need your help mate…"

For what?! What could these two possibly need me to help with? Keep silent. That's all I can think to do.

"My associate and I need you to settle a bit of an argument."
Craft Note"Associate" — the narrator notes: "What's with thugs and calling each other 'associate'?" It's the vocabulary of corporate crime fiction — professional distance applied to a very unprofessional situation. Johnny has an instinct for register-elevation when addressing strangers; this is the same impulse that made him invent "secret codes" for the upside-down book. "Can you fit a round peg in a square hole?" "Depends on the size of the peg," I answer. Rhetoric? At a time like this? "Exactly!" "Are you blind?!"

Nope, that wasn't meant for me. Clive continues:

"That is an exceptionally large, round… Thing… For a very small box, okay. It's just not going to happen." "You know what! YOU KNOW WHAT!!"

The whiny one stomps off. He sounds like a penguin. An angry penguin.

"I think he's still a bit mad, because the waitress told him to take a flying whatsit at a rolling doughnut."

The penguin is by the car now, making a serious racket. Grunting and thudding and heaving and what sounds like meat being hit with a blunt object.

"You see, Clive? YOU SEE?!
The Story's Loudest Line Said "A Bit Loud"The line the narrator has been dreading — and it is shouted in a coffee shop with thirty witnesses. The narrator's paranoia, which seemed comic, was entirely justified. Clive notes immediately that it was "a bit loud." What makes it work is that nobody inside reacts — either because nobody heard, or because London's social contract means you pretend you didn't. NOW COME ON! We need to get him to the Boss before he runs out of blood." "Hold your horses! Cheers mate."

I don't even get a chance to say anything back. Next thing I hear is:

"You might have said that a bit loud, Johnny." "I don't care. Shut up and get in." "You know, I think that bloke actually was blind."
Craft Note — The Payoff The story's final line — and the full reveal. "That bloke actually was blind." Clive has figured out, retrospectively, why the person didn't react to everything they were saying. The joke's construction: the reader knows from line one; the narrator knows throughout; Clive knows at the end; Johnny has already left. The punchline is delivered by the person who kept asking if the narrator was blind — having used it as an insult, then as a question, finally arriving at it as a fact.

The doors close, the engine starts and they speed off. I think that this has to be, the most utterly bizarre experience of my life.

CHALLENGE PARAMETERS — DROPPING EAVES

Challenger: Lee Watkins

Tell me a story about: The Sounds Around Me | Genre: Bananas | Style: 1st Person Narrative (Present Tense)

It must have: The sounds that you encounter in your everyday environment.

Someone must say: "We're going to need a bigger boat…"

"This is what happens when you choose Bananas as a Genre." — JL
THE UNIVERSE

The same event seen twice: once from inside (two men, a body, a field), once from outside (a blind eavesdropper, a coffee cup, a guide dog who couldn't care less). The stories were written four years apart, in reverse order to how they sit chronologically — J&C first, DE second. What JL built was not a sequel but a refraction: the same material rendered in a completely different register, from a perspective that can only access sound.

J&C covers the body's entire journey: the discovery of death, the arguments, the burial in the field, the spaghetti digression, the pub. DE covers only one incident from that journey: the moment Johnny and Clive tried to repack the body into the boot — apparently after the field burial failed, or before it, or they've moved locations. The timeline is compressed and slightly fuzzy.

What the narrator overhears in DE is the boot-packing argument that J&C never depicts — it falls in the gap between J&C's dialogue and its stage directions. DE doesn't retell J&C. It shows us something that happened offscreen in the first story, observed from an angle that makes it both funnier and more frightening.

The narrator's blind perspective enforces exactly the reader's position in J&C: you know what's happening, but you can't see it clearly. Both stories are acts of eavesdropping on violence.

The Boss is the unseen authority of the British crime genre — a figure whose whole function is to make other people afraid without ever being present. He has an "evil lair," a missus who hates him, a wounded ego about killing order, and enough power to make two men panic in a field for an entire story. He never appears in either text.

This is structurally essential to the comedy: the threat of the Boss is the engine of everything Johnny and Clive do, and everything they do is wrong. They got lost. They forgot to drill holes. They shot a man who wasn't dead. They shouted a confession in a coffee shop. The Boss would be horrified. The Boss never finds out, because the story ends at "grab a pint."

The Boss is also the story's only figure of actual power — and he is a balding fat fart whose wife hates him. The crime world's most feared authority figure is, at ground level, a domestic disappointment. His absence from the text is the joke.

Barry is never characterised before his death. He has no backstory, no motivation, no name until Clive invents one. He exists in both stories entirely as an object — something to be moved, disposed of, joked over. The eulogy is the closest thing to characterisation he receives, and it consists of two men inventing the most ordinary possible life for him (IT guy, probably no kids, maybe an internet wife) and then dismissing it.

The body's physical presence — heavy, difficult, messy — is the comedy engine of the digging scene. But Barry's absence as a person is also the story's quiet ethical register. Nobody knows what he did. Nobody knows who he was. He's a dead git. He might have been the Boss's nemesis, or he might have been an IT guy with a low sperm count. The story provides no answer because the characters don't know, and don't need to know.

Barry is also the story's only character with an entirely passive role. He is acted upon. He moves once, involuntarily, and is shot for it. In a story with no female characters of substance, he is the closest thing to an object — and he is male. The feminist critique of the story has to contend with this: the objectified body here is Barry's.

The narrator is never named, never gendered explicitly (though the narrator refers to "taste in women" in a way that reads as male), never described. They sit outside a coffee shop near Hyde Park, drink Earl Grey, bring an unread book, and listen to the world.

The blindness functions on three levels. Practically: it explains why the narrator doesn't react to the men discussing body disposal — they can't read faces, can't gauge threat from physical presence, can't make eye contact to signal awareness. Comedically: it explains the upside-down book, and it's the punchline of the final line. Thematically: the story is called "Dropping Eaves" — pure listening, no watching. A blind narrator is the logical ultimate form of the eavesdropper.

The narrator also models the correct relationship to the stories: attentive, non-reactive, gathering information from sound alone, unable to intervene. That is exactly what the reader of both stories does.

THE CRAFT
PERFORMED VERSION
▶ JOHNNY AND CLIVE — YOUTUBE Watch the performed version — embedding disabled by the channel

Two stories, four years apart, written in opposite directions — the event seen from inside, then from outside. The primary critical lens here is feminist: these are stories that were written without women, and that fact is worth examining carefully, because the absence is systematic rather than incidental.

Both stories sit in the tradition of British crime comedy — specifically the Guy Ritchie tradition of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000): working-class London men, organised crime as a backdrop of mundane incompetence, violence rendered comic by the people involved in it being fundamentally useless. The Boss, the associates, Nowhere, the boot — all canonical.

The specific sub-genre is the gallows comedy of the hired hand: not the kingpin's story but the foot soldiers', who have been given an impossible task by an absent authority and are making a mess of it. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead works the same structural ground — two minor characters stuck in the logic of someone else's plot, arguing about semantics while larger events proceed around them. J&C's Clive and Johnny are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a shovel.

DE has no direct generic analogue — a blind eavesdropper narrating a crime story through sound alone is JL's own invention. Its closest relative is the radio play: a form in which all information is sonic and the audience, like the narrator, cannot see.

J&C is written without dialogue attribution tags — no "he said," no "Johnny replied." The reader builds the identity of each speaker from verbal patterns that emerge over the course of the story. Clive: philosophical riffs, literal interpretations of figurative speech, the funeral proposal, the spaghetti detail. Johnny: outcome-focus, blame, shooting, "grab a pint."

These patterns are consistent enough that most of the story attributes cleanly. The exception is the five-line sequence after the Clark Kent argument: "I'm not going to argue with you now. I have to figure out how we're gonna get out of this." / "Down that road I expect." / "Out of this mess you idiot." / "I know what you mean. I'm just having a laugh. Don't you have a sense of humour?" / "Not when I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dead guy in my car."

Here, the character patterns overlap. Both men are frustrated. The literal/figurative confusion could go either way. The "I'm just having a laugh" could be Clive defending a philosophical digression or Johnny defending a misreading. Dropping Eaves anchors the names but doesn't resolve this sequence — it names the men after this moment, not inside it. The attribution is, genuinely, the reader's choice.

The most interesting reading: this is the moment the two men briefly become interchangeable — the character markers dissolve under pressure. The contested section is where the story admits that Johnny and Clive, for five lines, are not reliably distinct. That instability is itself a craft observation about how people under stress stop performing their usual roles.

J&C was written first — it is the source material, the event. DE was written four years later as a challenge response to a completely different brief: "sounds around me," "bananas," first person present tense. JL solved a challenge about everyday sound by placing a blind narrator at the scene of an existing story and letting her overhear it.

The result is a structure where the reader of both stories occupies a position of maximum irony: they know more than the narrator (they know what's in the boot), more than Johnny and Clive (they know the narrator is blind and heard everything), and more than any single character in either story.

Reading them in chronological order (J&C then DE) gives one experience: recognition, the pleasure of seeing a known event refracted. Reading DE first gives another: a mystery that J&C retroactively explains. Neither order is wrong. Both are designed into the pair.

What the reverse-writing order also reveals: DE does not contradict J&C, despite being written years later without the notes in front of the author. The characters' voices are consistent; the boot detail connects; the "Backstreet Boys" measurement unit fits exactly. Either JL remembered precisely, or the characters were real enough to maintain themselves.

The challenge demanded: "the sounds you encounter in your everyday environment." The blind narrator makes sound the story's entire mode of access — not a device applied to the challenge, but the condition that makes the challenge meaningful. A sighted narrator would have glanced at the men, assessed the threat visually, looked away. The blind narrator must work from the tobacco's crackle, the hooker heels on concrete, the thud of meat on metal.

The "Bananas" genre demand is met by the situation itself: two men disposing of a body in a coffee shop alley, asking a blind eavesdropper to settle an argument about round pegs and square holes, shouting a confession into a patio, driving away. The absurdism is structural, not decorative.

"We're going to need a bigger boat" — required to be said by someone. Clive says it about the boot. The line works because it's accurate: the boat/boot/trunk is too small, the obstacle is too large, the situation is Jaws-scale inadequacy in miniature. The challenge requirement and the story's internal logic are completely aligned.

J&C refuses to say what Barry did. The men don't know; the reader doesn't know; it doesn't matter. What matters is that his death is an accident caused by incompetence. The Boss's authority — the entire justification for the operation — is revealed as both wounded pride and structural absurdity. Barry died because someone forgot to drill holes in a boot. The moral weight of organised crime deflates to logistics.

DE refuses to resolve what the narrator does next. They've overheard a murder disposal. They have names. They have a description of two men driving away with a body. The story ends on their observation that this is "the most utterly bizarre experience of my life" — not on a decision about what to do with the information. Whether they report it or not, whether they can (no visual evidence, no licence plate they saw), is never addressed.

Both refusals are meaningful. J&C's refusal to explain Barry keeps the comedy clean — explanation would require moral weight the story isn't offering. DE's refusal to resolve the narrator's dilemma keeps the register comic rather than thriller. Both endings are deliberately inconclusive because conclusion would require a different genre.

FURTHER READING

The texts below place the stories in their genre tradition, explore the feminist structures they inherit, and point toward the critical tools for both.

The British Crime Comedy Tradition
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels — Guy Ritchie (1998) The definitive source of the genre's visual and verbal vocabulary. Absent authorities, incompetent associates, working-class London, violence as comic failure. J&C and DE are in direct conversation with this film. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead — Tom Stoppard (1966) Two minor characters stuck in someone else's plot, arguing about semantics while death approaches. The most direct structural precedent for J&C's two men in a field. In Bruges — Martin McDonagh (2008) Two hitmen waiting for orders in Bruges, arguing about architecture and ethics while the body count rises. The same register as J&C applied to a feature film.
Feminist Critique of Genre Fiction
Men Who Hate Women — Laura Bates (2020) An examination of how misogynistic attitudes are encoded into everyday cultural vocabulary. Useful for analysing the casual framing of women in crime comedy as decoration or target. The Second Sex — Simone de Beauvoir (1949) "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." The foundational text for understanding how women are constructed as secondary in cultural narratives — including genre fiction where they simply don't appear. The Bechdel Test — Alison Bechdel (1985) Does the work contain two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man? J&C and DE: zero named women, zero female conversations, zero female agency. Both fail comprehensively — and understanding why that's worth noting without condemning the stories is the feminist critical task.
Sound, Perception, and Narrative Restriction
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time — Mark Haddon (2003) A first-person narrator who perceives the world differently from most readers — and whose perceptual difference drives both the comedy and the crime plot. A direct structural parallel to DE's blind narrator. Rear Window — Alfred Hitchcock (1954) A narrator physically restricted to observation — watching events across a courtyard, unable to intervene. The voyeurism-as-sport that DE's narrator names explicitly is Hitchcock's central subject.
FEMINIST CRITIQUE — THE WOMEN WHO AREN'T THERE

### The Count

Across both stories there are six female presences. None are named. None are present. All are defined entirely by their relationship to men, or reduced to a body part or a sound.

1. Pretty girls — DE, para 3. The narrator and Rufus both "keep an eye out" for them (the narrator figuratively; Rufus with genuine intent). Women as objects of aesthetic preference, introduced as the first relational category in the story.

2. "Different taste in women" — DE, para 3. Women as objects of taste — differentiated only by preference, not by personhood.

3. The waitress — DE, midpoint. Present only as "hooker heels on concrete." No name, no face, no words given to her directly. She is identified entirely by the sound she makes walking. She later appears in J&C via reported speech — she "told him to take a flying whatsit at a rolling doughnut," which is actually an act of confident assertion — but we get it secondhand, filtered through Clive's retelling, still nameless.

4. The Boss's missus — J&C, the nemesis section. The first near-character in the stories. She gets four lines of attribution: she wouldn't touch the dead man, she doesn't touch the Boss, she hates the Boss. Her entire existence is described in negatives — what she refuses to do — and in relation to two men. She is never named. She is never quoted. She may be the most trapped figure in either story: powerful enough to be a motive, invisible enough to have no voice.

5–6. Chi Chi, LaToyah and Monifah — J&C, the eulogy. Three women invented in one sentence and dismissed in the same breath. The "wife" (Chi Chi) is named with an exoticising joke name. The daughters (LaToyah and Monifah) are named and then immediately undermined: "who aren't really his." The joke is about Barry's inadequacy — low sperm count, internet wife, children he didn't father. Three women are constructed and destroyed as punchlines to a joke about a man.

### What the Bechdel test reveals — and what it doesn't

Both stories fail the Bechdel test (two named women, speaking to each other, about something other than a man) absolutely: there are no named women at all, no female dialogue at all. This is a meaningful absence in work that is otherwise technically accomplished and emotionally attentive.

But the Bechdel test is a floor, not a ceiling. The more precise observation is this: the stories belong to a genre — British crime comedy — that is structurally organised around male homosocial bonds. The Boss, the associates, Barry, Johnny, Clive. The women who appear are defined by their proximity to men in that structure: the Boss's wife (possession), the waitress (service), the pretty girls (aesthetic background). The genre predates these stories by decades and encodes female absence as default.

### What the stories do — and don't — know about this

JL is a writer with demonstrated range and emotional intelligence — My Himitsu is a story about the most private forms of love and loss, written with extraordinary care. The female absence in these stories is not a failure of imagination about women. It is the genre operating as genre.

The question a feminist reading asks is not "is the author sexist" but "what does the form require, and what does that requirement reveal?" What it reveals here: a genre built around male incompetence and male homosocial loyalty, in which women exist only at the margins — as possessions, sounds, and jokes. The stories are funny. They are also, in this specific way, entirely conventional.

The most interesting figure is the waitress. She's the only woman who acts in either story — she tells Johnny to take a flying whatsit at a rolling doughnut. She has sass, agency, a whole implied interaction. She is not given a name or a face. She appears only in a report, not in scene. She is, in miniature, the pattern of the genre: women doing things, just not where anyone can see them.

THE BOSS — POWER WITHOUT PRESENCE

### The unseen authority

The Boss never appears in either story. He is described in four lines of J&C: he is a "balding fat fart," his missus hates him, he has an "evil lair," and he wanted to kill Barry himself. This is his entire characterisation.

### What Clive correctly identifies

"It's one of those dick measuring things." Clive's diagnosis of the Boss's wounded ego is accurate: the Boss wanted to perform the kill himself, not have it handed to him. The specific injury is to his sense of dominance — not logistical but symbolic. He can't display power over a dead man.

### The structural joke

The Boss is the story's only figure of genuine authority. Everything Johnny and Clive do is driven by fear of him. And everything they do is incompetent: they got lost, forgot ventilation, shot a man who wasn't dead, shouted a confession in public. The Boss's power is absolute and generates total uselessness in his subordinates. The crime hierarchy is a perfect engine of comic failure.

### His absence

The Boss never finds out. J&C ends at "grab a pint"; DE ends at "he actually was blind." The Boss, who was the whole point of the operation, is simply never reached. His authority generates the entire plot and receives zero consequence. This is the genre's standard resolution for off-screen authority figures: they generate the problem; the problem resolves itself; the authority never materialises.