Psychoneuroses, Part 1
Think of an occasion when you personally had to deal with either a challenging situation or a difficult person. What was the main concern, how did you tackle it and what were the consequences?
“While supervising twin rescue badger cubs playing outside our cosy Vale of Health home, I noticed a silly argument boiling over between nine or ten adolescent lads nearby. Two pretty refugees, Berber boys well known to us, were being bullied. My initial concern was that an unruly brawl might endanger my wards. Shuttling back and forth in cerebration between social totality and the irreducible complexity of individual needs, I prayed for a peaceful resolution, but a sudden escalation in aggression resulted in a nasty free for all. I gamely intervened, in an effort to assist the nicer foreign tykes- shouting aloud that they were our friends, and that acts of violence did no one any credit. At this point a craft blade was produced, and forcefully stabbed into my thyroid; I lost consciousness. It transpired that the big ugly cockney chaps had then carried me shoulder high at a canter, before gleefully throwing me through my own kitchen window. Consequently, I underwent five full emergency blood transfusions in order to live with disabilities, for the next three years in therapy; having suffered traumatic brain injury, I gradually relearned to think, speak, move, toilet unassisted- eventually conquering stressors that darkened my life with mental disorder: causing a deep sense of distress, and an abject deficit in functioning. I’ve since been blessed with a tidy legacy and almighty faith, learned to forgive, and am a happy burgher of Hampstead once more. Peace out.”
Slouched beneath yon immense, lonely Ash tree, grooving to Yiddish related acidic house, he greedily interfered with a lap-dancing Norn. Pungent little sort it was: halitosis, thick Irish accent, decked out in crotch-less knick-knocks, peephole bra, and dishing out plenty of extreme close-up. Bending over backwards it was, chomping his knob raw, yet falling asleep prior to eruption. She couldn’t even be arsed to spit out a prophecy. What a tease. In revenge, wearing a raincoat on his pecker, he shunted her up her dirty fibrous butt like a jackhammer. Oh, it was gripping all right; just a pity an amalgam of dour fate and high anxiety decreed Aleister never would get to blow his Old English. Up jumped a troll from under a humongous fungus, soliloquising ten-to-the-dozen; she clocked Aleister and threw a wobbler. “It’s all over son, you’ve blown it, and now it’s rustication time.”
Instanter, he realised he was alit, retrograde; having been tossed onto the serrated horns of a dilemma, before plummeting from the upper levels of a multi-storeyed identity crisis. Gasping for air in front of London Underground’s bleak LIFT OUT OF SERVICE sign, Aleister feared losing his will to live within an admonitory pit of despair at Goodge Street tube-station. He was all in a quandary when some stroppy mulatto bitch, wearing a navy-blue TfL staff uniform, exhaling rank foetid breath and reeking of BO, goose-stepped towards him along this stop’s lacklustre southbound platform. “Can I see your ticket?” At this juncture her abrupt question made as much sense as psychedelic yodelling, non-alcoholic whiskey, decaffeinated coffee, woolly Liberals, or Britain’s unelected yet constitutional monarchy; as fathomable as chicks with dicks, love under will, fealty to a tyrannical demesne, Roberto Calvi’s venerdì nero, Molly Sugden’s grotesque shaven pussy- whatever. So Aleister, as fey as you like, answered in colloquial Akkadian, and with a self-measured dignity, produced the necessary if sullied travel credentials. Her hostility flamed undiminished as she callously warned him to ‘mind the gap’. Still, now wasn’t the time to go for the jugular; this piece of washed-out white trash could wait. Flashing harsh promiscuous stares, out of rheumy jaundiced eyes, the misshapen famulua crawled back silently to her dark station master.
Stone me, another bloody trou-de-loup! Mortal peril was too close for comfort; somewhere along life’s impermanent way he’d taken a wrong turn. Festooned by beads of oily sweat, Aleister ascended a one hundred and thirty-nine step staircase to egress; stood outside the building’s oxblood red faïence blocks, palpitating, and timorously suffering all manner of oesophageal reflux, he rolled a fat fag -liquorice paper- trying to gauge the extent of this most up-to-the-minute mental lapse. Still tripping, he clocked a CCTV system overhead and so, in a public display of proleptic irony, pretended to be in complete control of internal impulses and external traumas. Meandering awhile, muttering scurrilously, before heading off down Berners Street; targeting those mawkishly bathetic Ancienne Forge tearooms on Berwick Street. Paul Raymond’s mock Vichy venue’s architectural splendour provided a makeshift video recording studio; its art deco interior offered scant pain relief from an excruciatingly naff fare of trademarked light entertainment spotlighting burlesque French missionaries clumsily shriving, whilst pursuing comic strip crusades against adult themed revues that the Grand Order of Water Rats officially pooh-poohed as misogynistic pornography. A clientèle chic of playboy property developers were treated to a caricaturish cast, bursting at their nylon seams with apotropaic mumbo jumbo, as they brokered a mesmerising repertoire of life insurance options (bon marché as far as Aleister could tell), plus slapstick servings of featherweight double entendres across disposable platters. A troupe of superficially wanton, but distinctly naïve mini-skirted waitresses, homogeneously sported black patent stilettos, tantalizing Hi-Vis stocking tops, and squeezed sun-ripened honeydew melons into sheer, plunge-cut white silk blouses; all in their early 20s, these heartbreakers passionately vied for Equity cards by advertising a synthetic, ‘take-me-from-behind’ coquetry. Bien sûr, for the sake of flickering proprieties, they also served luxurious leaf teas in fine bone china mugs. “Un tasse de bohea s’il vous plait Mam’zelle.”
Furtively checking his bins, Aleister felt relieved to grope a plenitude of coins of the realm, a travel-card for zones 1-2, three well-worn gummy ribbed condoms, a small cuneiform clay tablet, plus friable complimentary early-door midweek tickets into Madame JoJo’s; from whence hallucinogenic drugs and maladaptive daydreaming had instigated an impromptu mission to Yggdrasil (a right schlep on the Northern line). Occult Hindi messages garbled from the driver’s cab terminated his zero-hour tube journey in Mornington Crescent; bewitched, he’s popped out for an eyelash, but spent an unheralded Thursday night frottaging with a swarthy trog from County Kilburn. Sweet Jesus! He’d monster snogged mad Paddy’s emphysemic missus, two-bob Aoife, numerous times. Hot ruddied tongues inside rasping mouths, smooching and slavering; culminating in ultra-smelly staccato sex with both their zippers closed. He hadn’t climaxed mind, so he’d probably be okay. Psych! He lit a joint; even as a resting actor he figured it was outrageous, juxtaposing sensuously alluring gusset with Christianity. Bearing his order, a leggy, pussy-pelmetted factotum enquired after the state of his soul: inferno, purgatory, or paradise? You’re having a laugh! Ogling the ample cleavage on display caught his attention; her waitresses’ nametag read Brigitte. Oh là là. Was she a Bertie? Doubt it. Dear Brigitte, give us a wank. He blushed, picked up the linen draper and hid. It was all kicking-off that summer of 1983: in the wake of massive public spending cuts, British Airways helicopters plunged into the Celtic Sea, temperatures’ soared, and the Old Queen’s Guard wilted under bearskins. And still, it wasn’t nearly as perfervid as the previous one when The Battle of Goose Green, and racially aggravated consumer riots, set the scene for a hair-raising intrusion into monarchical mystique. Enter Mickey Fagan, Aleister’s old school mate; since transmogrified, a tad unexpectedly, from sardonic gamin into a star struck palace prowler. Aleister was loath to jump to conclusions, yet recursively suspect to his circumspect reasoning was that, national notoriety notwithstanding, Fagan’s alleged torch crimes and ostensible double trespass carried no legitimate conviction. Despite fractals of quasi-journalistic investigation no one appeared able, or willing, to corroborate any intelligible brass tacks. Each pejorative exposition differed in crucial details from its manufactured predecessor; resulting in fabulation, miscarriage of justice, and a palpable economy with the truth. Natheless, Fagan, the stock-in-trade madman, had exited stage left; to be housed sarcastically at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
Aleister himself acquired insights into shenanigans behind the story, months before its cognate scandal belched, having sampled the fellowship of Fagan and a gang of the saga’s key players on a night out celebrating absolving conclusions reached in Lord Cyprian’s report (formulated to close the book on a Security Commission inquiry). It was a jolly on expenses, courtesy of some big knob from Royal Protection codenamed Trestle-table; a group commander who could afford to support sordid and degraded company. Amusingly the copper’s favourite bed-hopper tagged along, a hustler called Roach, who tittered nervously and kept holding hands with his philanthropic squeeze; alluding to the senior officer as ‘my Vicky Order nut gone commando.’ This subversive posse, all lovely boys together, cruised (with some random wandervögel from the Canaries for good measure) from that well-appointed political nexus of Highbury Fields to rip it up, binge drinking around London N1. Aleister’s remembrance was frayed (same world, different planet). What was certain was he’d gotten shickered, and grown inexorably attracted to the witty Spaniard. By the time they alighted at The Famous Cock Tavern, Aleister had lost it completely; quizzing the young caballero in an ill-defined monologue that over-indexed Norwich City Football Club. Amid a dense cloud of King size cigarette smoke and acute embarrassment, with the help of pictures mapped onto scraps of paper, it was comprehensively pointed out that he’d sorely misunderstood the Guanche guy’s allegiances; Pedro wasn’t the least bit interested in association football. Neither was Aleister. He went for a leak, recovering his composure before returning to the fray, which was heady fare by anyone’s standards: commentaries on political stasis, corruption, and dire warnings that Britain’s population would soon be consigned unto a neo-dark age; an upcoming epoch heralded by societal crises (a series of vicious events, which Trestle-table delighted in referring to as Doctor Marten’s apocalypse). By this juncture Aleister had heard enough seditious gossip to develop an unhealthy appetite for complots, chiefly state-endorsed crimes against the proletariat. Despite that, on account of his unrequited love affair with loss and sorrow, he felt vulnerably ineffectual. Daring to fight the powers that be was unimaginable. Even in dreams he couldn’t escape an aching disappointment of coexisting with negative expectations; self-critically, he’d grown aware that he was the sort of frenetic, psychometrically-tested, unfit-for-purpose loser, who’d nause up a civil protest big style.
By way of contrast, Fagan, throughout his wasted youth (best sympathetically understood in the context of psychological praxis), harboured a passion for zestful revolutionaries come urban guerrilla types; especially those prepared to go the full nine anarchic yards. He was fascinated by social inequity, royal prerogative, and class war, positing (after sedulous consideration): who the flipping hell wouldn’t rebel? Unmistakably, Aleister had experienced little enough welfare from trickle-down economics, his neighbourhood, or his estranged parents; two galling wage slaves, base, little-or-no hopers, scunnered by a lifetime’s penury. During reception year two, on the eve of his primary school sports day, his depraved bearded father (damnatio memoriae) buggered off, and whilst mother dearest kept social workers at bay, there was precious little time left in between her two cleaning jobs and recurrent affaires de coeur, for mother-son levity. Unsurprisingly, he’d never felt loved or wanted; more like some dusty ornament- a token curio from an ephemeral union. Aleister could only aspire to the warm devotion extant between Fagan, and his diminutive twinset mater. Their close-knit, cradle-to-grave relationship wasn’t flagrantly unconventional, yet Aleister sensed an intense, abnormal, selcouth aura: a kind of primitive joy. Aleister and Fagan’s mutual, ginger Piggy O’Brien (panel beater by profession, farceur by vocation), the grinning, stertorous, no-nonsense pragmatist of their thirty-something, Anglo-Hibernian Clan of Three, curtly trashed such unguarded speculation as ‘utter bollox’; counselling Aleister to keep shtum, or face extreme consequences. Quick with his fists, violent and territorial, Fagan smack-battered each of his pink step-dads purple. Eschewing happy family idealism, Piggy viewed Fagan’s domestic straighteners as expressions of a natural will to power. As far as Piggy was concerned, a humble council estate heritage wasn’t wealthy enough for disposable airy-fairy fancies; although O’Brien’s bog-hopper parents did stick with the sanctity of marriage, if only to celebrate a silver jubilee. Theirs was an elegantly understated party, gay beyond belief: Joe Loss and His Orchestra played over the gramophone, with cocktails and vol-au-vents served upon crepuscular rays of midsummer sunlight to underwhelmed public bar acquaintances, and a few pasty faces from their 1930s terrace. Pigsty’s nonchalance was typical of someone whom had always enjoyed the love and commitment of an adhesive family; he simply took it for granted. Aleister cried a river, Fagan danced a well rehearsed tango with his old lady, and gin slings washed the shores of dawn.
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Horror Sleaze Trash 
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