Psychoneuroses, Part 4

It was tough improvisational shit he’d sold to Aleister; it was shamanic: coming on strong. Even flea-ridden mongrels like Aleister weren’t guaranteed to handle deep funk action like this gear. Piggy peered into Aleister’s mince pies for reassurance. The bitch seemed cool. Joyfully, Pigsty drifted away; a trackless spore in a hot, humid dusk. Meanwhile, Cecil continued to push his luck, displaying a barbaric propinquity toward taking the piss. Using grotty rhetoric, the pawky manner in which he mockingly depicted community values threw a shitty spanner into the central mechanism of society’s psychical economy; devaluing core theories at the very heart of its exchange rate. Self-proclaimed Royalty; do me a favour! Cecil was simply out for what he could lay his grubby paws on. He couldn’t give a tuppeny-toss about all the fools deluded enough to idolise him. In bygone days, human behaviour mirrored unimpeachable elders, folk trusted digestible rules, and felt safe under the protection of pedagogical politicians hoving flinty principles like Thomas More, or James Ramsay MacDonald; gentlemen of integrity, sinew and fibre, who stood or fell on ancient fundamentals. Ab immemorabili, more martial, but equally legendary leaders flourished: Thor and Odin, brass-balled hairy guys who led from the front; demigods, content, nay eager, to share, even their dying energies, with a beloved natural environment. From those vanished golden-ages onwards, subsequent hero-less governments had been as corrupt as Narnia in winter. Aleister’s revelatory thinking swayed toward regicide, because organically (apart from that soggy-knickered Granny-shagging stuff) Fagan was spot on: any demagogue, quasi-prophet, or tin-pot opportunist seeking to subordinate our painstakingly patch-worked communities had to be dissuaded in the most brutal fashion- lest we poor people suffer. To be ill-governed under heavy manners is to be inspected, spied upon, directed, law driven, regulated, preached at, controlled, censored, and/or bummed by creatures that have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. 

For example, The Queen of England safeguards sovereignty for a cadet branch of the haunted house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; landed gentry poncing off successive populations of the British Isles like a bejewelled tapeworm since 1840. Her Majesty possesses arbitrary powers of pleasure over star-struck subjects, and takes the preposterous title of Supreme Governor on Earth of the Church of England. How mad’s that? Because structurally, amid the white-hot foundry of Christ’s notional Kingdom, there is no private property, no operationally leased airspace above buildings, or on rooftops, capped with newfangled mobile phone aerials; no pride and precedence, absolutely no commercialised motive, and no reward save love. Ah, love. Today schoolchildren are groomed from the age of four; force-fed fairytales daily, stuffed full of ornamental gibberish, and unwise additions, dreamed up by the unintelligently devout, concocting a miasma which paraphrases the lifecycle of a mysterious first-century Palestinian Jew: stuff and nonsense that kiddies must fit onto the same mental map as the lifecycle of a hungry caterpillar (to which, oddly, it bears a striking resemblance). A diabolical cult of the individual surrounds Queen Elizabeth (whose face as designed by Arnold Machin, appears on all legal currency and postage stamps); leeching it large in magnificent palaces with stunning gardens, she’s amassed a vast private fortune, becoming in fact, the richest witch in the world. What on God’s green earth does Fagan see in her? Her every public relations action, no matter how banal, is lauded by a crass, fawning, sycophantic media; dark forces choreograph accompanying, pro-royalist demon-strations. Lurking behind Blighty’s stylised figurehead, a voracious clique of parasitic castrators rule a decerebrated majority, who scribble the traditional mark of inutile illiteracy by one of three names twice a decade (although some unlucky blighters from outside the portcullis, beyond the motte-and-bailey, are procured by palace security chiefs for the dubious privilege of being humped by princes, whilst sky-high on drugs). 

“And now you children of my father’s flock, the stochastic moment arrives to realise the implicatures and insurmountable powers of conviction.” Cecil trumpeted forth mesmerising messages: “…there can be no life without injustice, no living creature can live and thrive without destroying another existing organism. Behavioural battles between one’s instinctual reflexes and conditioned roles, brings painful confusion upon one’s soul! Please yourself people, groove as you feel, follow your nature, let’s all remain real. Come! Gather now; conceive infinity as it actually is.”

Slyly Cecil produced his spellbinding lantern (a theatrical prop billed as a ‘sovereign cognitive apparatus’ over promotional posters dotted around the West End) and proceeded with a phantasmagorical exhibition of suggestive images; projections fraught with terrified mini-mammals, punctuated at intervals by uglier scenes where he performed bestial deeds on an array of plastic inflatables. This cynosure of spectator heed revealed hedgehogs and multicoloured shrews, pulling processional carriages under the yoke of fantastical homorphous creatures (bipedal figures that bore antlers or pointy things akin to mountain goats). All manner of inventive pictures were grotesquely distorted, conjuring up kaleidoscopic sequences of emotional and spiritual depravity, eating into and becoming ever more pressing upon the mindset of an audience agog. Tension grew, lewd ladies cried out in ecstasy, for stark was Cecil’s power. Gross manifestations emanating from CCG’s ingenious implement of lurid exposure formed a veneered pictorial mimicry of humanity, laced with vermin, smut, scatology; painting an eerie irreligious triptych, echoing mediæval exemplars of Judgment Day. Alternative cabaret disguised excavations into evils. Serving no teleological purpose, lionising deceit, and betrayal; highlighting people’s worst traits, Cecil triggered anxieties, disinterring a primordial adversarial fear of ‘others’. FOMO spread across vast ranging horizons. Thatcher’s atavism had won; employing rubrici branded: what’s in it for me? His contemporaries were no longer willing to curb sensory whims and fancies. En masse shunning personal responsibility, compromise and sobriety; wholeheartedly subscribing to brain-worms, sleight of hand, and cheap tricks that Cecil used to corner TGI Friday’s kippered meat market. Afternoon bled into evening; febrile scuffles broke out amongst rebarbative white niggers in the foyer. Aleister espied Piggy’s sudoriferous armpits milling amidst the best of them; late arrivals, as incompetent as they were brutal: an irruption of non-thinking easily divisible boot boys, disaccustomed to harmonious mingling at an after-office-hours soirée. A transitive section of stage-struck punters crowding the auditorium were, by contrast, smitten by Cecil’s spectacle to the point of sensualism. Aleister could feel a collective craving to edge closer to Cecil’s enthralling contraption. Cecil had turned them on big time. He’d spit roasted the lot of them by talking dirty. Now they were ready to bend over and retake it where the sun doesn’t shine. Aleister guessed that promises of requited lust were genuinely scarce fodder for most heavily taxed, hard-working citizens, and now, thanks to Cecil’s adept salesmanship, easy virtue had become a big issue of the upmost primary significance. The gloating horny figure of Curious Cecil Gruff (who jarringly reminded him of his absentee father) pandered to illicit desires, playing upon biblical guilt’s and weaknesses; beseeching volunteers to feast upon the pabulum of his wicked craft. Only a soupçon of sanity survived; it belonged to venerable Aleister, would-be guardian of an adamantine anus, thus not a man to die of ignorance. 

Proper leaders, heterodox ones who care about citizens, set the correct tone, they regulate an equitable agenda -called meritocracy- there’s no inheritance, and the right people are elevated as a direct result of their worth to society from a pool of stakeholders, not just to-the-manor-born usurpers. Direct democracies draw people together: promoting mutual respect, forbearance, and shared faith; not knobbing domesticated animals, or abusing feeble folk in the way Cecil encouraged. His ghastly vision was no better than some dreadful divorced, single, or separated shag-fest, where a winner-takes-all in a cold, friendless, windswept coliseum of malice, mistrust and paedophilia. Deciphering the nuclear consequences of undiluted iniquities free-flowing through this pantomime’s rudderless, ale-house intelligence, Aleister corroborated his heart for battle by swigging the dregs of his pint. Picking up Piggy’s abandoned shillelagh, Aleister tried to get at CCG ‘of the many gross improprieties’ but was hindered in his quest by profane powers. The fluctuating phalange of punters, seduced into chaotic tumult, prevented Aleister from marching unto war. An obsequious horde serried together in anticipation of Cecile’s grand slam finale: a human wave of pheromones, wafting sweat, semen, vaginal secretions, breast milk and urine; women bared their mammaries, whilst grown men chewed on leather belts and tapered cork butt-plugs. “Seekers of saliva hear me well, and duly obey my command! Bend your knees in supplication to erotic plasticity, shaped and finely tuned by the true might of passion” yelled Cecil during his rhapsodical rodomontade “…now hold hands and circle me, o relinquishers of the stoical void.”

Aleister wished to scream aloud in his eagerness to halt Cecil in his cloven tracks, yet was lost for words as an ominous shadow menacingly upstaged any notion of gaining attention. A teeny maelstrom of pastel hues appeared, pullulating into a racy nimbus over Cecil’s brightly painted, carnival style headdress, spraying out across the mosh pit like an expansive roman candle; showering mere mortals with star-spangled fairy cum. As the dust settled, an awesome three-dimensional monstrosity superimposed itself onto Cecil’s spot on the thrust stage, endowing momentary invisibility upon tonight’s barnstorming artiste: this gossamer Luciferian countenance, with an erect filamentous appendage sprouting from its brow, totally stole the show. “What does he do for an encore? Shag minors!” Fagan’s gravelly voice startled Aleister, conveying the impetus required to aim a well-deserved haymaker at Cecil, striking his target so hard that Piggy’s knotty walking stick snapped in twain. Before one could utter ‘hocus-pocus’, the garishly tinted bounder vanished in an acrid puff of smoke. Accusatively, a stranger demanded: “What the fuck are you doing, you nutter?” Bunches of bug-eyed Muppets stared daggers at him; they may have purchased council houses, but none had the Aristotle to confront Aleister mano a mano. In panic they pointed at him with large foam fingers. Poltroon bastards the lot of them, yet their consensus was remorseless. Aleister just couldn’t get a grip on what was occurring. He was so out of synch with the picture, it wasn’t funny. Was he the guilty party? Is that why spars blanked him? Fagan had seemed contrite, and other acquaintances had given him short-shrift. Someone could’ve warned him if he was edging off the rails & out-of-fashion. Now, who would visit him in clink- young Conservatives? Not a chance. Aleister could no longer handle this level of peer group rejection. At his feet lay CCG, at last bloody well mute; sprawled across the stage in fancy dress, shards of his technicolour Woolworth’s porch lantern scattered across the deck. A resident ship of fools was about to up anchor and mutiny, so he needed to scarper. He swivelled swiftly, nutted some character on the schnozzle, then was on his toes out into Leicester Square (the pungent stench of refuse contorted his expression); it was full of mad dogs with ticks, stretching muscles in his lower jaw as he roared back at them. He howled ripe obscenities, growling like a giant wolf from some Norse saga stuck in his head since the infants. His stature increased until all else appeared to shatter in his wake. As he raced through the green, hundreds of pigeons took flight in unison as if they were all tiny rockets; ICBMs, part of a first strike initiative aimed at destroying our planet. Blindly happy, in the depths of their ignorance, the population deserved mutually assured destruction: liars and cheats every last jack. Look! There’s the Devil. Where? There. How do you know? Listen my friend, the light from that bulb up there in the white asbestos Artex ceiling hit the Devil, and bounced off onto my retina; quantities of microscopic sensory things miraculously tingled in my mind. It was them telling my brain cells, no? What? You’re imagining things; you’re rather gonzo aren’t you? Am I bollox. 

Sprinting through Coventry Street and beyond into Haymarket, Aleister visualised that resistance was pure futility. A Route Master 12 fast approached, its number symbolising cosmic order; he braced himself to sacrifice the prospect of a virtuous life, to the mirage of a high-minded death. The omnibus hit him so hard it felt as if a fireball had exploded inside his hairless chest; he could hardly breathe. A massive bout of haemoptysis started to fill the airways of both lungs. Coughing, Aleister slowly drowned in his own blood. Energy dissipated from his being, his peripheral vision occluded; other senses seemed to operate autonomously, all of their own accord. As the world revolved around him, up above he noticed Fagan’s drunken face leering down. “Life ain’t fair Aleister, not for you or me leastways. Sadly, the likes of us see, across this big bad globe, we’re suffered: solely to be exploited. Even my mate Trestle-table the filth was fucked over. They dropped him like a hot potato when they discovered he was bent. Truth is- he was disposable see? His corruptible tendencies had gone undetected during routine security screenings, then, right on cue, the OB terminated his career: after twenty-nine frigging years! Oh well, every guttersnipe knows that manmade hierarchies are about princes and whipping boys, winners and losers, punishments or rewards. Still, you done good son. You realised we can’t let insolent twats like Cecil Gruff take liberties, and that he had it coming. I’d have done the same matey; only you beat me to it. Those yuppie wankers lapped it up like powdered pussies. As if Cecil was the greyhound’s undercarriage or some kind of fucking Sumerian deity. And the English working classes, this lost generation of uncivilised souls, socially engineered straight out of barbarism and direct into decadence, fought amongst them-selves as usual. Fuck ‘em. Still you got him; the means justify the ends OK. Now stay calm mate, I’ve brought a tasty reward; in recognition of your fortitude. Nothing styptic I’m afraid.” After chortling and wobbling a bit, Fagan gradually genuflected; holding tightly onto Aleister’s hand. With due care and attention, he produced a small wet pink object from his torn hip pocket. “Ere me now, I extracted Cecil’s sesquipedalian tongue. I’d have tampered with his greasy orifice had the opportunity knocked, but you know, been there done that.” 

This tribute, delivered in a final act of innocent albeit demented compassion, soothed Aleister; as death engulfed him, his last selfless wish was that his lifetime on magna mater’s terrestrial sphere, hadn’t been spent entirely in vain. And if a repository for his immaterial soul had indeed been preordained, he hoped that his crushed body would at least, as a rite of passage, be reincorporated into the cycle of life as sustenance for stray dogs, urban badgers, jackals, and foraging swine, if not fed to eagles, birds of the heavens or fishes in the deep blue sea. Regrettably, he feared his cadaver would be clinically dismembered. Selected organs would be legitimately employed by scientists involved in pathological research, others reaped purely for profit; sold abroad illegally, by un-Hippocratic medical practitioners trading corpus components. Boiled in water that’s been saturated with numerous herbs containing tannins, black-market shrunken scrotums thus preserved, are proudly worn as amulets by handmaidens of Hanbi, going about their murky duties. Deconsecrating screaming infants, innocent babes in arms, wrenched from impoverished families; torturing impuissant souls dredged from the substratum of an intercontinental social pyramid, to harvest adrenaline glands for adrenochrome, at the behest of an ancient and illuminated order of orgiastic priests. This is wisdom.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 1

Psychoneuroses, Part 3

Manny’s extended family (a loud bunch of perfidious, po-faced, holier-than-thou, hypocritical wheeler-dealers) started as mozzle and brocha speculators who struck lucky. Establishing a London variety business during Soho’s vaudeville era, they grafted to nourish a lucrative customer base, and thereby curry favour with potential backers, to whom they pitched investment opportunities via a network of far-reaching, transterritorial transcultural channels of communication. Backed to the hilt, during World War Two they were able to boast, like the Windmill Theatre, ‘we never close’. Embroidered into the red-light districts’ bohemian tradition as a cool metonym for emancipation, as the swinging sixties dawned, the Klein’s (alongside competing cut-price facsimiles) were on hand to cash in. The K-mob became synonymous with navigating censorship and regulation, as parliament tacitly sanctioned Soho’s erotic cabaret boom: customers were obliged to pay fees, and join clubs as members an hour before admission. Thereafter, mischievous neo-Rabelaisian entertainment was permitted under law. By enthusiastically promoting liberation, lies and ersatz rebellion from the tight closets of inhibition, pimping-up revue bars and befriending the repressed, Manny’s family had won renown and favour. Alack, plebeian popularity doesn’t pay utility bills; hence, the bottom line means being admired ain’t worth bupkis. Not ones to rest on their laurels, the Klein’s remained sharp enough to excise flagging old comrades: dropping en route the functional mantle they’d worn as pansexual rights activists. Conversely, having cornered London’s hardcore porn cinema market, freedoms now required paying for; every customer was appreciated, no matter how rancorous. Or, as pontificated by Manny to Aleister (on his final relapse, just a few nights prior to his sacramental inauguration at West End Great Synagogue), over last-order beers in the French House: ‘’…you see collectively, we understand the technicalities of this world intimately. No one else has the beginnings of a clue. Without shame, we pretentiously relish explaining our expertly authorised view of what’s unfolding, as designed by our powerful clients; on whose behalf we issue whiny rejections whenever any dissenting voice speaks out. It’s all smoke and mirrors, obvs. History’s been knockabout fun up until now. If the truth be known, we’re deployed as an integral module, part of our masters’ ultimate authority toolkit, arranged to control public narratives, perpetuate obedience; keeping society suppressed by dint of cultural supervision.’’ Once again, Aleister had been well over the eight, so the lion’s share of Manny’s self-promotional spiel went in one ear, and out the other. Currently coming down around high noon (as per his custom on Freya’s day), in preparation for a critical night out ahead, Aleister was practically sat upright on the wagon. Thusly, temporarily, conflicted clouds cleared; turbid illusion cleaved, and momentarily, lucidity was suffered to intromit with his feelings.

“Manny! I ain’t seen you for ages you old bender, how’s it hanging?”

“Chambré to tepid, mon ami.”

“Tell me about it. I thought we were forecast to be basking under a hot sun regular now the ozone’s been depleted.”

“Don’t even go there, the climate’s one thing about this city which will never change.”

“True. What’s happening?”

“Man, I’m busy boyo. I’ve acquired all of Uncle Moses’ clip joints, peep shows, pop up massage parlours, along with his Swollen Gash™ topless kink kiosks; and I’m developing an avant-garde nightspot. We’re naming it ‘A Symphony of Expensive Contradictions.’ It’ll be the nuts.’’

“Whoa! That’s some itinerary.’’

“Well its business feller, not casual soul-laundering. However, there are perquisites; for one, it keeps me engaged in absorbing hobbies: know what I mean? How about you rude boy: still riding psychotherapy hobbyhorses, or solving trolley problems?”

‘’I weigh a person’s worth not by financial assets, but in their quotient of individuality, if that’s what you ridicule. But no, my intermittent disposable income doesn’t afford ongoing clinical indulgences, so I’m stuck with the difficulty of destiny over the ease of narrative. Left to independently question and challenge, the un-intellectual human condition homo-sapiens blindly follow, sans patronage.’’

‘’Splendide mendax on a shoestring; blimey, that’s more of a rivka, than a brifka. Stand on me Ally Bally; it takes a real trouper to admit that they’re badly cast in a revocable tragedy. I warned you already. There’s no future in poverty; crying over unremittingly bleak situations, without scope for cognitive entertainments.’’

‘’There’s a marathon of drudgery involved in signing-on for a pittance; however I keep faith in Raimundo Pato, theatrical agent extraordinaire.’’

‘’Charing Cross Ray’s looking after you, is he? Well, good luck with that schnip! What are you doing in between working days?’’

“Laxing dude: spending too much hard-earned money.”

“Splendid stuff, we must hook up- your shout of course.”

Immanuel K, with his costermongers’ God complex, was no more than a wide boy: too reliant on the dark arts of vice, hype and spin to foster credibility; Aleister had no intention of flyting with him, so he allowed Manny’s barbed comments to slide. They’d grown apart to loathe one another, but in the great scheme of things, this upshot was a bagatelle. Both chaps smiled courteously. Their enforced separation had plainly contributed to stifle a candid conversation. Bored, Manny’s morose minders shuffled; distrait, staring vaguely at some passing object. Halted, as if frozen; yet still, life’s frenzied momentum raced through muscular, bondage clobber-clad bodies: causing each tit weight to jangle nervously, like flies in a spider’s web. “Totally: it’ll be a mercy mission, won’t it? You’re working too hard.”

“Better to live as a blazing meteor, than die old gracefully.” Manny replied, and with a smirk added ‘’It’s a distraction, innit? The divine, as manifested within the universe, is my guiding light.’’

“But mate, apart from cavorting with toy-boys, to what purpose? Or don’t you care?’’

“I’m occupying my atoms so intensely; they’ll refuse to leave me. Life’s one big party dude, and that’s purpose enough for me.”

“Yeah, right cock, but like, what’s the end product?”

Through bored amber eyes; distrustful, assessing, imperious, Immanuel fixed a vulturine gaze on his dishevelled interlocutor. “Does God’s vengeance end? I think not brother. Historical consciousness keeps mutating: suck it up. Relinquish your neurotic orientation to sew loose hems; trust me. Anyway, let’s groove on, because it’s time to move on.”

‘’Wicked, I’ve got places to go, people to meet; sayonara Special K.’’

What’s that bustling atom malarkey all about? The impulse of an elementally active person to act is so strong, that it stultifies them from acquiring knowledge for the sake of apprehension. Just how did Manny Klein intend to blaze brightly in his dotage? And whatever happened to grace, friendship, honour, and serenity? Aleister was confused. Having acted intuitively all his life, he now found it nigh on impossible to think straight; psychological experiences steadily degenerated, visceral doubts multiplied. Much of this deterioration was a result of his disastrous addiction to adulterated angel dust. Assuming Aleister had once cherished continuity and cohesion, his life was now, in contrast, an ungovernable slide show of no fixed time span. Maddeningly, Aleister couldn’t fathom who was operating the projector, or where to find an emergency exit; some heartless tummler was evidently savouring a jape at his expense, and whomsoever it was, must pay. At the comedy club Aleister and Piggy (his anosmic dealer), snorted lines chopped up in the bog; sharing a splash of toilet humour and doing the Spanish fly deal, before Pigman was called out to strut his stuff. Wired, Aleister parked up at the bar where he met Fagan, langered on Nelson Eddy’s earned from his morning’s collar (running around Seven Dials for film production companies). The thin, delicate-looking figure with close-cropped hair that had stood in the dock a year before was a changed man: quietly confident, having bulked up in the prison gym. Mickey wore his unwashed hair in a ponytail, tied back with a blue ribbon; sporting stone-washed 501s, and a baggy white t-shirt bearing the slogan Frankie Says Relax in big black letters. On stage Piggy was first up (plying his Lorcán the Lovable Leprechaun shtick), but died horribly. Even Fagan heckled; stitching his mate up by intermittently screaming ‘Cobblers!’ By contrast, Aleister continued to feel awkward in the heaving venue; it burdened him with its fuggy claustrophobia, making him feel unusually aggressive. Worse still, the next act waiting in the wings was some gauche twerp named Curious Cecil Gruff; a wretchedly conceited squirt, artfully half concealing what appeared to be some type of magic lantern. The coy way in which Cecil postured bothered Aleister no end. Who did he think he was? Jack the fucking biscuit? These ultra-negative first impressions combined into a kind of supranatural sensorium, retained, or rather translated by a wounded hunter-gatherer within, multigenerational memories, and random imagination. Sensing his spars discomfort, Piggy ambled across, hoping to rub balsam over Aleister’s storm-tossed forehead. Piggy respected Aleister’s honest independence, but all the paranoid instability worried and depressed him. “Whatcha think: the big time, or late night Channel Five material?”

“Magic Pigsty, absurdly optimistic as always buddy; don’t give up your day job. How about this dodgy Cecil chap- you know him?”

“No; nor does anyone else. I bumped into him in the green room earlier. Curiously, he confessed to being a failed conceptual artist, but gruffly stressed he’d learned his lessons, and nowadays stands before us as the self-proclaimed king of multivalent comedy.”

“FFS Pigster, Equity shouldn’t hand out union cards to the likes of Cecil. His sorts tout angular collisions, rough ragged edges, raising voices of wrack and ruin. Amoral disorder oughtn’t to be assimilated into the federation of performing arts. Cecil’s idea of merrymaking is a monstrous anomaly, and best omitted. Look, I know this sounds Radio Rental, but I’ve witnessed Cecil’s repertory of treachery erenow, in my previous Mesopotamian existence; around the time a great famine gripped people in Babylonia, and settlers from Uruk conspired with Šamaš-šuma-ukin to plot evil.”

‘’Have a word.’’ Enough! Piggy’s clients were prone to puerile enunciations, so he remained silent, sipping maraschino via ruby red lips; just about every situation is sanable. As far as Pigsty was concerned, each chap’s concept of sub-consciousness was an extraordinary piece of storytelling, trying to present ways in which structural systems have explanatory force- simultaneously unknown, yet effectively present. The key question remained: what the dickens did Cecil represent to Aleister? Piggy gave him a gentle squeeze on his inside leg, and smiled. Piggy was a flirt, a proper card; a doughty lemon squeezer. Aleister was glad of Piggy’s playful company; it steadied him. Equanimity calmed Aleister, fending off eternal verities tampering with his mneme; carefully turning around to wholly admire Piggy’s glabrous countenance, possessed of soigné parity to Parian marble, he responded: “Your round innit geez?”

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 4

Psychoneuroses, Part 2

After old Mrs Fagan died, her singleton son grew increasingly obsessed by the notion of a wholly exposed, crudely infibulated woman as head of state; it agitated and aroused him in equal measure. What otiose limp-wristed protection was afforded Her Majesty, by the tightly-wrapped Prince Regent? Fagan ceremoniously placed QE2 on the same questionable pedestal as his own mother; a trophy for vile men, offering little or no emotional support to their booty. Mickey envisaged Elizabeth Regina mounted posteriorly, and forcefully fist-fingered, before being brutally sausaged Greek style; crass libidinous fantasies deranged remaining particles of sense, rendering him unsure whether to fuck or fight his Glücksburgian adversary. Forever a romantic, when push came to shove, inspired by Ken Russell’s audacious Women in Love, Fagan settled on stripping-off for a tipsy bout of Japanese-style wrestling amid the firelight of the Duke of Dunedin’s bedchamber. National press reports stated that Fagan was gallantly tackled by dapper footman Phil McCavity (since retired), a queer chap who was oddly reticent concerning his personal involvement in the drama. London Lighthouse carers insist that McCavity wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Fagan would though: hissing loudly, a noble savage; lightly polished by interchanging moody goods on behalf of antiquarian operations down Camden Passage market, whose traders were enamoured by the cut of his jib. It was a ragtag and bobtail cash-in-hand confederation, but he’d been earning a few quid at the time, so it was right mauve him rocking the sloop, what with three million unemployed. Directly preceding his iconic faux pas Fagan had inadvertently violated an Islington Council byelaw. Tipped-off, Housing Association policy and procedure staff complained about his grunting pet (it transgressed his tenancy agreement); Fagan swore blind he didn’t harbour one, although a particularly cynical girl-next-door insisted she investigate. Behold! No fish or fowl, while Mickey, without a trace of embarrassment, boasted that the theriomorphic-like din resulted from his beasting a string of high-maintenance erotopathic lovers. Not one to be duped, the nosey neighbour insisted she put his explanation to task; so doggy-style, Mickey howled like mad, banging her so hard he got a ruddy nosebleed (earning himself the sobriquet Rudolph). Still unsatisfied, the dopey tart opted to sue him for noise pollution via the Borough Council’s pro-feminist local authorities. 

“Bloody Hell, ma’am, what’s he doing ‘ere?” A shrill alarm was sent ringing around the City of Westminster by HRM’s flummoxed chambermaids, given the screaming abdabs, having stumbled over Mickey, supposedly supping from a carafe of half-inched Californian riesling. How exciting! Let’s face it; Fagan was in no fit state to endure the resulting ordeal. That very morning he’d been involved in a heart-rending family squabble over the ownership of a second-hand cut-and-shut motor, aspirated a leaded lungful of mouth-siphoned four-star petrol, and for reasons best known to his-self, was masquerading as Rudolf Hess. No sober assessment of his condition would have adjudged him capable of scaling spiky railings, climbing burglar-proof drainpipes, or least of all, leaping from roof-to-roof like an orang-utan. Tell me, just how conveniently did Fagan elude Buck House’s 24/7 security? And what precisely defined his shady, sadomasochistic relationship with wrinkly Prince Philip? Whose bruised sphincter, rumour had it, was treated by that venal, royally benighted arse specialist Dr. David Croft: famed as an entrepreneurial quack pioneering the high-specification production of platinum ring-holes, for celebrity coke addicts. In a futuristic John DeLorean world of powdered cocaine-cum-cosmetics, malleable monogrammed DDC rectal accessories were the last word in reassurance, for syringe users, aiming to keep bugles clean, and septa intact. Word-on-the-street was, that the grand old iron Duke had been corn-holed and felched, until his puce tuchus resembled the sort of swollen Jack and Danny seen hanging agape behind a West African baboon during Guinea-Bissau’s rainy season. Of course, it was a cover up; although Fagan confessed to several prison psychiatrists, that he’d toasted better genitals. So, whisper from that whatever tenuous conclusions you fancy. The Old Bailey certainly did. 

“You are not ‘ere to see ze peeping show I ‘ope?” Brigitte smiled ear to ear as her sultry French accent wafted back into his mind; triggering an amatory frisson that stirred his loins. Momentarily intimidated, he rose to leave without tipping; laughing off her dolorous suspicions that he was tuned into videos featuring adult content, and the rest (obscene publications, showcasing teenage call girls absconded from foster care- running away from Oldham social services). On the hoof, Aleister nonchalantly cased the joint -eye eye- wandering past replica nude statues (including Auguste Rodin’s Le Baiser), and a grandiose art nouveau mirror. He cast a bitchy moue at his faltering baroque reflection- begging the question: did he resemble an unbalanced pervert? If so, he’d best buy a pick-me-up. Aleister daren’t appear unhinged or worse (creepy) in Heaven- his preferred destination. There geezers dress to impress, by camping themselves up a class; competition is bristly stiff inside that grand celestial residence, where a kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt. Yuk! 

Opportunely Piggy, now his dealer, was due live on stage at the Divine Comedy Store’s Friday matinee; he was odds-on to hold a few banging party tricks up his ropey sleeve to loosen Brigitte’s resolve. K-I-D, mum’s the word. Aleister decided to procure something special to slip into mademoiselle’s café latte, in the course of a future assignation. Shame he needed to date rape her, as he didn’t consider himself a misogynist. Aleister liked ladies well enough; not the wicked ones who found him wanting, but he balked at his latent notions of punishing, hurting, or damaging them. However, he failed to see women as equals, soul sisters, or trustworthy friends. Through his grimy doors of perception, the second sex represented objects of desire; dolly birds, some of whom he’d been able to train up & domineer for while. Brigitte possessed several serviceable aspects sweet enough to buoy his horribly warped tri-sexual mind. If only she could button her quivering lip, and turn an amenably blind eye to his eccentric affairs of the flesh; he may even propose to her: anything to leave a lump in her throat. Strolling along Gerrard Street he chewed a chunk of Peking duck, formally deciding that he could never endure monogamy on account of his innate needs, to wit: bimbo’s, priapic saunas, peppercorn rent boys, Qabalistic weekends, ritualistic blood drinking sessions etcetera; hobbies of a type so essential for a relaxed middle age. But young Brigitte, despite her femme fatale façade, was, in Aleister’s estimation, well-nigh prim and proper. Add assertive female to practicing Roman Catholic, teetotal or, (God forbid) virginal, and who needs it? He wanted desperately to love and be worshipfully adored in return; the problem was, where to start? Aleister reckoned the glorious day was fast approaching when he would subscribe to a competitively priced Filipina marriage agency; a flourishing Oriental avenue of commercial intimacy: open to post-prime Occidental bachelors, widowers, and/or divorcées. Perhaps it was one instance of a missed opportunity, where those innumerable, inscrutable Chinese have erred? Granted, tiddlywinks constitute rising stars within our rough tough adaptable species: fitted to survive amongst strangers as segregated immigrants, or, thanks to Beijing’s mushrooming economic leverage, to lead a global mercantile system; but in eugenic terms, they’re junk people. Spawned from a passé imperial culture, informed by screeds of dynastic court archives; traditionally square looking, and businesslike. Not at all to Aleister’s flighty, eclectic taste; the source of which remained a mystery. 

Aleister supposed that his sartorial bent toward dépêche mode was rooted in the days of Pearly Spencer, and tragic second-order observations founded while orbiting creation on his very own lonely planet. During Aleister’s junior year three, Pearly earmarked his old lady on one of her excursions to Brent Cross shopping centre. A haunted, milky-white escapee from Northern Ireland’s sectarian troubles, Pearly was employed as a liveried bouncer in Mothercare; incendiary eye-candy with access to the retail facility’s inner sanctum. Giggling, they’d eagerly disappear together through a doorway signposted ‘staff only’, to fornicate behind a clutch of industrial wheelie bins (positioned in a designated waste storage area, along a poorly lit service corridor). Abandoned, snivelling wee Aleister was left traipsing around the well-stocked mall. Unsupervised, pressing against laminated glass exteriors fronting interchangeable shops; mixed-brand department stores, fashionable clothing boutiques, electrical retailers, on-trend accessory vendors, or luxury goods emporiums hosting award-winning Provençal face cream concessions: whichever. Aleister stared inside like a piqued Martian. Exhilarated by the non-stop abundant varieties of FMCG, but deflated by consumerisms inconsequentiality, Aleister grew up to conceptualise existence as a shaggy-dog story. Defiantly, he recollected window-shopping as a fond childhood memory, his mother’s carnality not so much; or her wuthering post-coital gawp from hooded eyes that neither knew, nor cared, about the developmental damage being done. In time, trips to Hendon’s materialistic funfair petered out; perpetually liquored up, Pearly lost his clip-on neck tie, his job, and his studio flat on Childs Hill. Ultimately, Aleister’s mother’s girlish infatuation withered as Pearly metamorphosed, into an impotent homeless mendicant, lumbered with untreatable cirrhosis; sleeping with rats in shop entrances down Kilburn High Road.

Looking up, Aleister was struck by dyspepsia, and another blast from the past. Across the pedestrianisation stood Immanuel Klein, a player who purported to abhor all things ci-devant. He hadn’t changed: a buzz fed through the grapevine asserted that he was still a cunt. Aleister and Manny first met as high school boys selling imported designer schmutter across two local trading Lanes (Leather and Petticoat), working for Lillian Skry & Ronnie ‘The Knocker’ Zucker, whose Uncle Joe Arzi’s influence reigned supreme over Camden’s, and Tower Hamlets’ licensing systems; controlling market inspectors, and subletting stalls. Manny fell in love with couture stock, and in due course became a right fashion victim; philosophising on the topic with all the brio of an art-house radical (a radical wanker naturally). During his late teens he’d formed Futurist Punx, a heavy rocking four-piece musical combo that extolled beauty in strife. They jumped into bed with louring Brigadier Robert d’Alby, a scary ex-forces cove turned small-time impresario for fledgling voices panegyrising insubordination. A genuine brute, the cigar-smoking brigadier was pretty mixed up. Possessed of archetypal officer baggage, viz., horse-haired duelling scars, pent-up aggression, institutionalised homophobia; mindless desires to assault anyone, or anything deemed officially dishonourable, on behalf of manly ideals. Manny insisted the end justified macho means, opining that d’Alby’s intriguing personality compelled exertion. A complex egg: BRd seemed to seek a noble form into which he could pour his volcanic energy. An accomplished cubist; he and his easels simply disappeared one day, never to return. Without the insensate brigadier at the tiller, Manny’s ensemble petered out. Aleister recollected a few trite lines from their one and only 7” single entitled Post-minimalist Self-Portrait: “We shall sing of the thrill of danger/Flying fist-fuck up the arse/Courage, movement, hard rebellion/Sniffing glue, in Regent’s Park.” It was pompous tosh really. Thank you! 

The Brig booked Futurist Punx on a tragic tour of shite gigs, at workman’s clubs spanning the London Boroughs of Camden, Westminster, and Brent; awkwardly on the bill alongside traditional Irish ballads: Dubliner’s tribute bands for the most part. Manny boasted that he and his conjoint collaborateurs were waking punters from feverish hypersomnia; he glorified cruelty, thuggery, seven drunken nights, and wild injustice, but shat himself and ran for his life after being glassed while exiting the ladies lavatories in Cricklewood’s Production Village. After that moment of self-discovery Manny gave up on being a front man, and segued back into the supporting cast of his family’s extensive business interests. As part of a tribal initiation ceremony, Manny solemnly swore not to fraternise with former associates hailing from families or enterprises unrelated and/or unaffiliated to the Klein’s expanding empire for a complete lunar year. Manny kept his promise for the most part, only lapsing in a couple of lunations; first up, tripping on brown blotters during a summer’s twilight, over a Hampstead Heath night-swimming weekend. Under the influence, Manny confessed to Aleister that perceiving himself as an expendable, landless, fungible itinerant, in a suicidal stratified society feverishly cannibalising greed, fear, and malignant narcissism, had brought him to his senses. He accepted he couldn’t survive alone in Cuntish Town: that listless dive, peopled by dawdling vagabonds. Aspirational London’s galaxy of burnt-out wannabees, where genuine pretending passes as an adequate mode of existence, and lowbrow participants are deceptively orchestrated on behalf of ruling élites (for the sorry sake of fading public-minded perceptions) by arch-facilitators, activating media-managed biases to foment prejudicial egodystonic sensitivities. Recounting that he’d pursued a safety-in-numbers logic, and joined a mercenary gang; strategically allying himself through his bloodline to Albion’s Premier Grand Masonic Lodge: an institution that aggregated supernumerary groups of abominable opinion formers. As a party to which, his tribe pretended under warrant, to present pragmatic balanced solutions to travails faced by ordinary folk tholing their humdrum lives. Adding in peroration, that he’d lost all his honest, salt-of-the-earth mates; but out of necessity, he’d changed. Manny petitioned for righteous understanding, and forgiveness; appeals that were rejected by Aleister, who couldn’t, and wouldn’t confer his imprimatur. Nowadays, made-man Manny weltered amidst an orgy of sensual gratification, surrounded by heavies togged up in black leather, rubber, and shiny PVC. They were his disciples; hook, line, and sinker. Body harnesses, panic snaps, and meat tenderisers eradicated any notion of revolt. Their overseer, whom Manny jocularly dubbed Jack the Rimmer, a hefty mouth-breathing automaton, was responsive to his masters needs alone. Kept firmly in check by a remote-controlled erection trainer, and subdued by double-bar nipple clips, Jack’s enjoinders were slurred due to a fetish for adjustable velvet tongue gags, but he dealt severely with backchat or obstinacy within the ranks: lashing out with his customised sauna whip, that, along with a latex executioner’s mask, constituted his vestments of office, and tools of domination.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 3

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.

***

Psychoneuroses, Part 2

I, the Hammer

“What kind of sick bastard would run over a retired police dog?” I stared at the trail of blood the golden retriever had left on the pavement as he’d tried to crawl to sidewalk.

“I know you and Duke were close,” Captain Rex Barkless said.

“He saved my life in Nam. Lost his leg jumping out of the Huey I was flying to deflect a surface-to-air missile. I can understand killing a cat because cats suck. But a dog?”

“You know, most cat owners don’t even like guns.” Barkless touched the Glock on his hip.

“Not even, Betsy?” I removed the .45 from my shoulder holster. “I’m going to find who killed Duke and put a few dozen slugs in his testicles.”

“Not if I get him first, Mallet.”

“I don’t have to follow the rules that coppers do. Besides, I’ll save the taxpayer the cost of a jury trial.”

“How much you want to bet I’ll get him first?”

“Steak dinner?”

“You’re on.” Barkless walked to the squad car.

***

“Sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Barkless said to Duke’s bereaved dog mom.

“He was a good boy. Would you like a cup of herbal tea?” Hortense Hamentaschen struggled to rise from the floral-upholstered chair with doilies on the arm rests. She was in her late seventies with bones thin as number-two pencils. Hortense limped to the kitchen. After banging pots, she returned with a teapot and cups. “Would you like milk?”

“I take mine straight, just like my women.” I drained the cup of boiling chamomile in one gulp. 

“Did anyone want to hurt Duke?” Barkless tried to hide his frown as he sipped the herbal tea.   

“Oh.” Hortense held in index finger to her chin. “I can’t think of anyone.”

“Cut the crap, granny!” I backhanded her, sending Hortense’s dentures flying into the potted plant. I drew my .45 and held it under her chin. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find his killer, I’m going to put a half-dozen slugs in his genitals, pour molten lead in his eyeballs, and make him listen to Miss Edna Chilblains, author of the epic poem Robinson Crusoe and that Damn Hangnail. The same goes for anybody who gets in my way. Now, spill it!”

“Sometimes he’d board the number forty-seven bus and ride it down to Hickenlooper’s Tavern on Delirium Street. Everybody loved him and the bus driver let him ride for free.” Without her dentures, Hortense slurred her words. “He also worked as a therapy dog at the pediatric cancer center.”

“Looks like I’m one step closer to that steak dinner.” I holstered my .45 and spoke to Barkless. “I’ll hit the hospital. You check out the bar.”

***

When a police officer makes detective, the taxpayers pick up the tab for his theme song. A private investigator with a movie deal might get the studio to buy him something like Harlem Nocturne. With my budget, I had to raid the public domain. I chose a kazoo playing the 1812 Overture and added a recording of a few rounds from my .45 for the cannon blasts. When driving in Texas, I’d even shoot a few holes through the roof of my rented pickup. Anyway, the theme played in the background as I drove to the hospital. I parked my Camaro in the emergency room zone and walked through the sliding doors. Juvenile malingerers, who’d shaved in a pathetic attempt to avoid working in the coal mines, roamed the pediatric cancer ward on the second floor.

“Names Mike Mallet.” I showed my PI license to the receptionist. “Give me the medical records of every patient you’ve treated in the past decade.”

“Sir, you’re not a policeman and have no authorization of subpoena medical records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to her face.

“Security!”

Two sumo wrestlers wearing traditional mawashi ran up the hall. Even though both outweighed me two-to-one, I didn’t need my .45. I hit the first with a roundhouse punch that spun his head like an ultra-high-capacity, refrigerated centrifuge and dropped the second like a watermelon off a sixty-story building with a punch to the gut. A nurse who was watching fanned her neck with a prescription pad.

“Ooh, it’s getting moist down there.” She rolled her panties over her ankles and handed them to me. “Hold on to these until I finish my shift. The name’s Buttercup, Honey Buttercup.”

“Mike Mallet.” 

She was blonde as a bottle of Riesling, the dry kind because I don’t like mine too sweet, and her breasts were buoyant enough to keep a shipwrecked sailor afloat. 

“See you at eight, Mike Mallet.” Honey wrote her address on back of a Viagra prescription as if unaware that I never needed it.

Even though I missed out on bracing the kids, I judged my one-on-one with Honey would be more productive. When I left, I found a meter maid was placing a ticket under my Camaro’s wipers. I slugged her in the chin and left her unconscious body in a wheelchair by the emergency room’s entrance.

***

 “Do you know what a nymphomaniac is, Mike?” Honey let her nightgown slip off her shoulders.

“Yeah, a woman who can almost keep up with me.” I tossed my fedora on the bedside table.

“Oh Mike, I’ve made love to astronauts, Navy SEALs, Olympic athletes, and the entire Dallas Cowboys football team but I’ve never had a real man.”

“Then get ready, baby.” I slipped out of my shoulder holster and pleasured her thirty-seven times until she begged for more. I did her nineteen more times. Then I rocked her world with three hundred eight orgasms until she begged me to stop. I gave her a few dozen more for good measure.  

“Oh Mike, I brought you those medical records.” Honey got out of bed and returned with a pile of folders tall as Godzilla.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” I slapped her on the ass. “Now how about getting me a snack?”

***

Aside from sick kids using a lot of painkillers, the medical records were a bust. Sure, the pastor’s wife had chlamydia and the pictures of the DA’s genital warts might come in handy but there was no way to move my investigation forward so I took a drive to Delirium Street. 

“My name’s Mike Mallet.” I flashed my PI license at the bartender. “Show me your business records for the past twelve years.”

Hickenlooper’s Tavern seemed like a wholesome place with drunks passed out in their vomit and two bikers going after each other with pool cues. 

“Sir, you’re not a policeman,” the bartender said. “You have no authorization to subpoena financial records.”

“This is my authorization!” I drew my .45 and held it to his face.

I heard growling from a back room and kicked open the door to encounter the seedy underbelly of canine corruption. I’d always thought that painting of dogs playing poker was the artist’s fantasy but here I encountered it in real life.

“Show me your dog licenses and rabies certificates.” I fired my .45 into the ceiling to get their attention. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“Mikey, Mikey! You wouldn’t want to begrudge a few hardworking canines the chance to blow off a little steam.”

It was George Kolaczki, a retired English teacher who supplemented his pension from the Penobscot School District by loan sharking.

“You know this dog?” I showed Kolaczki Duke’s picture.

“Yeah, he played Texas Hold’em sometimes.”

“Was he into you for any money?”

“Hey, the game’s for entertainment. We only play for dog biscuits here.”

“Let me tell you something.” I shoved my pistol in Kolaczki’s nose. “Duke was a friend of mine. When I find out who killed him, I’m going to give him a sulfuric-acid enema, fit him into a poison ivy jockstrap, and make him listen to Edna Chilblains.”

“I taught Great Expectations in high school for twenty-seven years. You don’t scare me.” Kolaczki yelled, “Luka!”

A snarling Doberman in a luchador mask burst into the room. I kicked him in the nuts and he collapsed into a whimpering pile of emasculation.

“See you around, Kolaczki.” I adjusted my fedora to a proper thirty-degree angle and left.

***

  Honey took me to a strip club called the Habanero Narwhal. The name was slang for a kink that anyone with a capsaicin sensitivity shouldn’t attempt. I sat at a booth with my date and placed my fedora in my lap. A barmaid with breasts shaped like killer whales approached.

“Care for a drink?” 

“Vodka and baby seal blood, garnished with a Carolina Reaper. I want that baby seal clubbed fresh. None of that bottled stuff.” 

“Irish Cream.” Honey fingered my hatband.

The naked girls chewing mukluks backed by a chorus of howling malamutes wasn’t my thing so we left to ransack bodegas in a search for million-Scoville hot sauce. As we stepped out the front door, I heard squealing tires and turned to see a Lincoln Town Car speeding toward us.

“Get down!” 

I shielded Honey with my body as a man in the passenger seat leaned out the window and tossed a thesaurus at us. His throw went wide and the heavy volume embedded into the strip club’s brick facade. I drew my .45 and fired six rounds at the receding taillights. 

“Are you okay?” Honey asked.

“Yeah.” I holstered my pistol. “A certain loan shark with a name like a pastry is going to get it.”

***

“Do you have a reservation?”

“I’m Mike Mallet here to fix your rodent problem and that rat’s name is George Kolaczki.”

I muscled my way through the crowd and found Kolaszki at a table by a window with a view of Jupiter City’s skyline. A cornucopia of mayhem lay on the tablecloth. A Japanese hotpot simmered atop a blue flame, cheese fondue bubbled like the La Brea Tar Pits, Korean barbecue sizzled atop a portable grill, and a waiter ignited brandy atop a serving of Steak Diane. The cowboy, ninja, Viking, and pirate who served as Kolaczki’s bodyguards sat at a separate table, eating shish kebab on foot-long, metal skewers.

“I came to return this.” I dropped the thesaurus in the hotpot and splashed hot dashi on Kolaczki’s lap.

The loan shark recoiled from the table as the cowboy stood and reached for his six-gun. I threw a fondue fork overhand and it sunk three-inches deep into his eye socket. Before the Viking could draw his longsword, I flung the burning brandy into his eyes, used the pan to block three throwing stars, and brained the ninja into dreamland. Using one of the skewers as an epee, I scored first blood against the pirate before knocking him out with an uppercut.

“This is for Duke.” I held Kolaczki’s face in the boiling fondue until he drowned.

“Excuse me, sir.” A waiter approached with a lighter and chafing dish. “Does Mr. Kolaczki still want the Cherries Jubilee?”

***

 “What kind of sick bastard would run over a grieving dog mom?” I stared at the trail of blood Hortense had left on the pavement as she’d tried to crawl to sidewalk and began to wonder if I’d been wrong about Kolaczki.

“Two killings in one week.” Barkless fanned sweat off his face with his fedora. “You think they’re connected?”

“All I know is that when I find the killer, I’m going to use his intestines as dental floss.”

“Detective, you might want to see this.” A uniformed officer pointed to some broken glass.

I touched my finger to the liquid and gave it a sniff. 

“Rectum Rooter Hot Sauce. I’ve got to go.”

***

 “Mike, I wasn’t expecting you so early.” Honey peeled off her halter.

“It was you all along. Wasn’t it?” I stepped toward her. “I didn’t put it together until just now. You skimmed painkillers from all those kids. Duke was a drug-sniffing dog and he found you out so you killed him.”

“Mike, you’re scaring me.” Honey took off her bra and stepped backward.

“You paid the dog mom to keep quiet but she got greedy so you bumped her off, too.”

“I had to, Mike. I needed that money to pay for male escorts but I don’t need them anymore now that I have you. We can move away together to someplace in the country with a hot tub and waterbed.”

She stepped backward but I was relentless as a steamroller chasing Gumby and Pokey.

She reached behind her for a dildo on the coffee table and swung it so hot sauce from our last fetish flew into my eyes. I bent over in agony as she battered me about the head with the heavy latex but she couldn’t resist my manliness and our struggle turned into a BDSM session.

“Give it to me, Mike. Give it to me.”

I gave it to her all right, a .45 slug right in the guts.

“How could you do this to me, Mike?”

“Killings too good for you.” I strapped her to the easy chair with duct tape, put a tape of Edna Chilblains’s epic poem on repeat, and turned up the volume to cover Honey’s screams.