Common Problems

“So now I'm kind of wondering where all this will go next. It's like I've been through some big event, like a festival, a big show or a huge banquet; I'm stuffed and tired, a little over stimulated and I'm thinking I am satisfied. Satisfied is an odd kind of word, I know what it should mean but I feel I'm just stretching it a little to cover the application here. I suppose I'm satisfied but I know fine well that there is always going to be something else, pushing it's way in just to steal that feeling. Unexpected, maybe a bit unwelcome, jostling with other things and struggling for impact and success and starting the whole thing of again. Perhaps I'm played out, perhaps it's steak and eggs and heavy duty protein drinks and build up time. Glasses of milky stout and beetroot and wholesome stuffing and ruthless exercising, is that what you do? Still part of me wants to lie back and just float, float in a sunny careless haze, down streams of low expectations, anonymity, invisibility, following tiny shadows in the sun. Here today and drifted another hundred yards tomorrow. Catch me if you can? You certainly will because I'll be going nowhere and there you go, you've caught me.”

Sheila slapped my face. I almost fell from the porch bench, I was aware of the warm timber and flies and bees and insect noises, I stopped the procrastination. “I'm fed up with your self searching bullshit, get a job, get some money, sort yourself out. You last job's done, ok, maybe it was satisfying but that's all history. Go and start something new.”

The playful slap hurt, the words were all I expected, in this business the jobs come, the jobs go and whatever money there is just disappears in some spiral event that usual centres around the things that Sheila wants to do. I reached down and clicked open a beer and smiled at her. She was staring away into the distance, avoiding my eyes and doing her passive aggressive thing, trying to turn me back around.

“You know Sheila, you're damn well right, I'm going to finish this cold beer and head right out and see what the opportunities are downtown.” She laughed and slapped me again, a little beer spilled and we play wrestled on the bench. We were both giggling and tickling and then we stopped and just lay still and held each other close saying nothing. Over in the field I heard a big diesel engine running, in the trees crows were angry at something and the insects stayed busy avoiding being eaten. Sheila was hot and sticky in her work jeans and cheesecloth. Her breathing was low and pretty and I liked that. I settled to stay still and she did too, on the warm bench. So I just stared up into the afternoon sun and dreamt away a little more. I still wasn't feeling satisfied, I wasn't feeling anything I could describe. Maybe that's the trouble with my trouble, my chronic common trouble, I just don't have the right words to describe it but still I know it's really there.

The Camera

On reflection, the camera seldom lies.

“Time was I was a pretty good looking guy, clear skin, no pot marks, good colour skin, a little stubble, nice jaw line and a nose that was straight and precise as a pencil. Eyes bright like brown headlamps, no bags, no drooping. Teeth all pearly white and no furry tongue. I’d thick hair in those days, under control, not like now, bald where I don’t want it, sprouting from places I never knew it grew, black eyebrows, hair like fuse wire, Jesus, I’m out of breath describing my features. I look and I don’t recognise myself. Inside I’m still that kid, nineteen and I didn’t have to try, it all came easy. I just looked, made a little contact, a little smile, cheeky maybe, then look away, then look back, then look away, then stare and …hold. In a snap I’d caught me a fine slim, sliver fish of some girl. Too many now. I can’t recall their names, well some, some just blur into one another. It’s how it is until you find that right one. Swimming in that shoal, all looking the same from a distance but up close, you can tell the one. Yes I was a catch and so was she. A catch catches a catch. That’s how it should be, that’s how you find happiness, in equals and balance. Yeah, she was a pretty fine girl. Then of course I had to chase her down, talk a little, look a little, maybe run a little. It was the funniest game and you know we both knew that, whatever it was it was inevitable, like science or maths or something. It just clicked and we knew what we knew. She didn’t want to let on about that anyway, see that’s not how you play. You play smart and long, even if you’re really going in a circle. It’s all circular movements, to get to the place that you want to get to. Circles.”

“So, well right now I’m no catch, I’m in no shape to be caught. I look at this old face and all the damage me and my friend time did. We put this thing through it’s paces, now it’s pretty tired, worn out, beat up and weather beaten. It’s as if the scaffolding underneath it all just has some serious kind of fatigue. It’s shaky…and the fabric, it’s stretched out, too dry, too much extreme. Like an old motor that can’t quite rev up to places it used to rev up to. There’s a clear drop in performance. Hey but maybe that’s no everything, ‘cos now that she’s well…gone, what’s a fellow like me got to look good for? Why should I try? I’m not some silver fish that any crazy girl’s gonna want to hook, look at me.”

“Yes, time was that I could make things happen, a razor, a tack, a stiletto; sharp as they come, that was me. I could fight. I fought for her, oh yes, there were others. Keen as the mustard in a street vendor’s hog dog. They slipped and slid and there was a little blood, a few words…but she was mine, I never was a quitter. Better guys than me too, I knew that, I see what I see and I saw that. They had me all measured up but I surprised them, I punched above my weight. Nobody really expects that, nobody expects that sharp, quick punch. I fought for her all right, won her fair and square and now…it’s all some kind of history that nobody else can really remember. Only my version of events. What I saw and did and now, the little of that that I can remember. That’s all I have left, this fragile thing inside my head that plays all those tricks, this memory. I swear some days I cant figure where the lines cross and where they bend. I think I remember things, clear as ten crystal bells ringing on a snowy night. Then I remember nothing, that’s when I get the chills, the frustration. Beating myself up because you see, I can’t quite picture her face. All those years together, those things, sunny days and lollipops and I’m such a dead man now. I can’t tell what she was like. Ok I have photos, paper with ink, running colours and blacks and whites. Get togethers and beaches and weddings and monkey suits and families. I look at her in those pictures, she’s so young and so am I, well younger. She’s there on the paper but it kind of makes no sense. It’s paper, it’s a fucking piece of paper. What’s that to have at the end of your life?”

“So doctor, you can see I’m an agitated man, my face, my memory, my head, what can you do for me? I need a package, a package to get me back there, into the stream, I need to live just a little more. Get the taste and colour, the appetite. She gave me so much. I want to get my hands on those things underground, grasp them again. I need to make some sense of this life before it all just trickles away. They say that’s how it is. You go on for years, you’re proud and caught up with yourself. You don’t look up or down, you miss the detail, the little things, they just kind of evaporated like the steam out of a kettle or the flavour from a pan. Those things that made the difference, well right now they’re eluding me, I can’t get them, can’t get back there. In my mind it’s like a conspiracy is afoot. Conspiring against myself. My mind and body have their own bloody minded agenda. They had it all the time, they played at that and they just didn’t let on, didn’t let me know that all the time that I was trusting and relying and using them they were on a whole different thing. They were real busy, running down the clock, running it down.”

The doctor sat back, elbows on the chair arm, his fingers knitted together as trying to form the roof of a tiny log cabin. He was staring at the finger pattern. The silence lasted. Neither man spoke. The doctor breathed heavily but Michael just sat quiet. Confessing his primal fears and shifted perceptions had exhausted him, he’d spent his vocabulary, pushed it all out with much of a pause for breath or thought and now his mouth was dry and he felt older but no wiser.

The doctor spoke. “Well Michael, you’re in a better place than you might think. You see you came to me looking for a cure for a problem that everybody has but no one can fix. Getting older and losing that little bit grip, friction, traction whatever that holds you onto the path of…forgive me sounding pretentious here…life. You have, momentarily lost that grip you once had. Quite a common occurrence and there is no cure…except…acceptance.”

The doctor pulled out a smart phone and clicked the camera on. “Smile please!” Automatically Michael smiled and the photo was taken. Across the room a printer kicked into life and pushed the printed picture out from it’s grey plastic innards with a whir and a few mechanical noises  as if giving birth. The doctor walked across to the machine and picked up a sheet of paper. “Just stay there on the couch, I’ll get this,” said the doctor.

“Michael, do you recognise this man?” Michael looked at the print and then looked at the doctor. “Well it’s a lot like a guy I used to know…” the doctor looked again at the print then at his phone. The image was not what he expected. There on both the paper and on the phone screen was a young man, maybe nineteen, dark and animal, jet black greased hair, in his prime. Beside him on the couch was a slim, smiling  girl, sitting right next to him, pretty eyes staring out into the lens. They were holding hands. In the background the doctor could make out every detail in is surgery. It was a pretty good camera phone.

The man who built time bombs

Of course the thing is that time bombs look nothing like popular (?) image you'd imagine, that clock and dynamite picture you see when the word comes up. Oh, I build time bombs, certainly but they are nothing like what you might think...and their purpose is quite different from...the traditional bomb.

You see what I do is that I act like a kind of official whistle blower. I come along, into your life take a good look, note things down and so on and then when the time is right I blow the whistle. Now I'm trying not to stretch all these analogies and things but when I blow my whistle then it just may be a little time bomb will be set and will go off. Maybe not right away but sure as shit it will. It's my job, I build them, guard them and then when you say so I light the fuse and generally stand well back or at I'm gone altogether by then, on some other job or something. Mixing and matching.

So the thing is the client gives me all the bomb making ingredients. There's no special chemicals or anything. What I need to do a good job is just a stack of facts and some evidence, maybe a witness or two if you want to pull it all out a bit. It's really up to you and how much you feel comfortable about paying and of course how much of a burden of guilt, shame, revenge or whatever the hell it is that you need to detonate.

I usually do my bit just after my client has gone off on, shall be say a long journey, one from which he does not expect to return. Or it may be that he (or she) is sadly deceased, passed away, crossed over the river. Whatever the circumstances I tend to follow their instructions to the letter. So I turn up a funerals, family gatherings, will readings, business briefs and meetings, press conferences or whatever way the client instructs. Then, at the agreed and opportune moment, bang! Of goes that bomb.

Some have taken a lifetime to build, others a few weeks or maybe it was all down to one little thing. Whatever the scale I will share this knowledge and information with the assembly (who do not generally know what's comin') and then see what happens. Maybe it would help if I gave some recent examples and then you'd understand. You see everybody, deep down, even crazy people want to make their peace and cleanse their lives. They need to reveal, explain and whatever else before it all just goes in a puff of smoke...and I can tell you that that smoke can smell pretty bad sometimes.

So some examples...well martial problems tend to be in there, secret lovers, unknown relationships, being unfaithful to a life time partner, the whole classic double-life thing, even double families. Then there's the criminal element (which may of course be in every example to some degree...fraud and deception etc.), stealin' and killin', movin' money, tax dodges and as I said criminal associations. Surprising how many killin's keep comin' up. That's a very heavy burden for a person to carry for a lifetime.

Then there's all the sexual stuff, gets a bit dark in here sometimes, straight sex, fetishes, gay relations, memberships of clubs and “out of town” organisations and fellowships. You can never tell what is goin' on but strangely some troubled people eventually tell me. Often they are proud of it, just couldn't quite tell the other half or the family or the wider world but they want that quirky little part of them to get some final recognition...it makes a lot of sense.

Some other folks need to vent their feelings, they've gone a lifetime playing the game, saying what was expected of them, turning up a church or the office, looking good and smiling when all the time something quite different was playing out behind the blinds. I find these kind of situations can cause the most...friction.

Money comes up a whole lot; there isn't any, there's more than you thought, there's all that but none of you are getting it for the following reasons. Or it's all going to a) a secret son/daughter b) the Republicans c) the old lady next door for her magnificent skills in fellatio d) some other real cluster fuck of a reason.

Justification: People the world over feel the need to explain and justify themselves, what they did, their decisions, their reasoning, their whole way of living. You set it out and I'll explain it. It may well mean nothing to the assembled masses, it may be a pile of shit but whatever it was you felt the need, at the last hurrah to get this thing off your cold dead chest.

So that's my job, I build the bombs from the carefully chosen parts you send me. What you got to share?

Most beautiful

“It is so strange to wake up and know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” Lara was talking to herself in the mirror. “ Other women can't understand, naturally they hate me, I suppose, why wouldn't they? What they don't understand is the effort that I have to make, the work and the working out that I have to do, the pain, the self denial, it's constant.” She was looking deep into her own eyes, the conversation becoming more serious though her refection took no notice and blankly refused to answer. “I fine tune the regime, try things, drop things, stick with things, note what works and what fails, all to stay here in the top slot. Clothes, hair, cosmetics and preparations, that's just the start, that's almost the easy part. It's keeping yourself out there, being seen, even heard once in a while. No, they don't really want to listen to me, nobody wants a talking magazine cover or a model that chats on the cat walk. It's forever about my superficiality and only the very edges of anything else...but at the moment I retain the edge.”

She continued to chat into the mirror, unconsciously she was fixing her skin, her hair, looking for some tiny, threatening blemish, looking for the start of the downhill rot...but that was some time away. Right now she had to dab a tissue on her lipstick and squint at the corners of her eyes, just to check the translucence that was always there was always there.

“This is for my fans, the little people.” She was brushing her hair. “And this is for the scumbag press and the media liars and the bad bloggers and the paps.” She dabbed nail varnish remover across her fingertips with cotton wool...where is my manicure? It's nearly eleven.” She sipped some cold water. “Nice, pure, cold and clear...a little like myself.”

“Maybe today I feel I have a sore back, like my Polish mother would have said, like a worker, maybe I'm tired but still buzzing.” She sat back in the chair and daydreamed about smoking a long Russian cigarette and eating a large cheeseburger. “I do look sexy when I smoke, I look good and dirty and independent but that's not so good for this image, for the business. These managers they tell me what to do, where to go, what flight, I get there but I never really know where I am...other than the top. My mother would have laughed at that, traveling the world, five star everything, six star anytime ans still only wanting to be something that's a position on a list, a position on a list, a slippery, stupid list.”

Lara's phone chirped. She ignored it for a moment then picked it up. Few folks had her number and she had very few numbers. Being number one doesn't mean that all the numbers fall straightaway into the right places. Some number vanish all together. Some numbers are in funds and investments and bonds and sunny shiny white properties that will act like a magnet for other sunny white properties and their sunny owners, occupiers and clients. She sipped more water listening to the voice on the other end of the phone call. It was itinerary, travel appearances and way down in the detail some work, covers and opening nights and appointments. Tomorrow was to be a travel day.

She put the phone down and returned to the mirror conversation. “They say I have eight hours, then it's that premiere, then sleep, then an early start and I'm in Dubai or somewhere...are you getting this dumb bitch? Are you having a fantasy about a lettuce leaf or an oatmeal cracker? Are you worried about the size of the gap between your thighs? We both have stuff to do, to straighten out and I need you to be straight with me but you never talk. I do all the hard work planning and getting dressed and undressed and you...you just look back at me.” She tapped on three perfume bottles as if they were a little drum kit. “Boom, boom, boom I need red meat, masturbation, maybe a man,maybe a woman. A trustworthy worker who'll fill my bed and move between me and that mirror woman. Yes I'm talking about you, you look like you're listening but I'm not so sure, glassy eyes and that haughty look. What am I to make of that? So it's back to you and I am you're only audience but you refuse to perform for me.”

When your best friend is only a reflection your conversations will be frustrating; circular, tedious affairs, you will question your sanity. Mirror people don't talk back or share, interact, argue or tell you anything new. So you get in there and you find, suddenly it's all too deep, you've manoeuvred yourself into that place, that mirrored hall of self examination and reflection where you can go but no one else can reach you. You can't describe it or explain it, it's a ditch and you're ditched.

Maybe under different circumstances, with better tutelage, guidance, a smaller mirror even, Lara would have made that flight to Dubai. As it was she never was found but then again nobody knew she was lost and she never was number one anyway They said it was all a bit “smoke and mirrors”, that listing. If it did exist then the prize belonged to the girl in the mirror, wherever she has gone.

Which is best?

Is it better to leave no trace...or to leave a footprint?

Susan

“I should be putting in lines between these thoughts, creating breaks and boundaries, managing the stream, stop those collisions. I should but I cant. It seems like I just know that it's in those mysterious and random collisions that all the interesting chemicals change and processing occurs. These things are wild and unlimited, their conclusions unpredictable, at times unthinkable. You know how you have those pictures inside your head of who you are. Then you look in a mirror and get a shock, you don't look like the person you feel. That's disturbing but it's also the truth. It's also a collision and a spur. Which person do you want to be? The true reflection or the imagined and what's the difference between the way those two look, think, behave and react?”

The professor closed the door on the capsule. “She'll be fine in there but it is going to be a difficult and a different journey.” The team retreated behind the screens and into the control room. In the capsule Susan was still, serene almost. The mind training allowed her to disembody, dislocate, get away. The trip would be physical but on this voyage her mind and conscious self would travelling separately.

“Look upon your body as a piece of luggage, personal effects, things you'll need when you arrive. I think that's the best way to look upon it. You are a pioneer, your journey will blaze a trail for billion others, in all directions...and I'm sure your luggage will catch up.” He allowed himself a giggle and a smile as he switched off the microphone.

It was sundown when the countdown ticked to zero. A happy coincidence and a extra effect. At zero there was a flash, bright white and then the following on of loose colours from all across the spectrum. The light was so bright that you might have imagined it warranted some accompanying noise, the sound of thrust or schism or energy releasing. There was none however, just light and a vapour that ballooned out and then hung in some kind of good imitation of an incandescent rain cloud. In a few seconds the process was over and the capsule had gone. The team checked the sensors and instruments to ensure it was safe for them to emerge. For some reason it felt right to stand on the spot where the capsule had been even though they had no sense of which direction to look in order to catch a glimpse of it. It had not been a conventional launch or departure.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began the Professor, “it may be sometime before we hear from our colleague, as you understand our ability to communicate across these spaces is unexplored and untested...but we will continue to listen and to...hope.” They returned to the control room and cracked open the champagne as each shared their thoughts and feelings on the scientific triumph.

And so it was that they listened and waited and listened and waited. Two months passed without a word. The media, having been excited at the outset drifted back and looked elsewhere. There were other better stories out there. Some team members left, they had other projects to work upon and so the personnel shrank to a two person shift, perpetually now in listening mode only. They listened, dozed, read and researched. They reminded themselves of the mission, occasionally they forgot the mission. Time passed for them but not for Susan.

It was almost six months from the launch that she returned. It was in the grey of some unexpected morning, the listeners were diverted by their own fatigue. That was about to change. As had happened when she launched there was light and vapour but no sound, the CCTV caught it all. The light dimmed and the capsule appeared, hot and glowing. They took out Susan's body, they estimated she had been dead for about six months. By the time the professor arrived she was laid up in the laboratory, the medical services hovering and scribbling. One by one the shift members arrived and gathered in the control room. The professor was silent and grim. The triumph of the capsule's return eclipsed by the discovery or the dead passenger. They sat there for a few hours musing over the possible causes and the consequences. It was an emotional rather than scientific time.

Just after midnight a burst of white noise and static shocked everyone in the room as spluttered from the loudspeaker. Then silence, then noise, then silence. Then a voice. “Hi, Susan here, I'm OK, I've arrived, I can't seem to see the screen...I think it's back light has failed...and I seem to have lost my luggage.”

The persistence of ideas

She's moving the furniture around the room, all the time. Like some piece of dancing animation where the couches, tables, lamps and variety of soft furnishings waltz across the lounge as if choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Sometimes they settle, as if to take breath, to review and ponder their latest arrangement then of they go again. Responding like the particles set into a kaleidoscope lens, never ending and unreliable combatants that argue with themselves in terms of function and aesthetic balance. She watches this in her head as if it was a movie, light entertainment, a reality TV show that is only real in her imagination. The thrum of the rolling table, the swish of the twisting carpet, the clatter of chair and table legs and the jazzy canvases that attach and move across the walls looking like a vista from  passing by suburbia through a train carriage window.

Then, abruptly into the room steps her future self. Older, respected, strange, as if seen in a dirty mirror glass. All the moves are over now. The furniture is stock still, the cushions are steady, the painting hang with no swinging. There she is moving amongst the furniture like she was at a party. She's holding a wine glass, giggling, perhaps flirting but there is no one else there. Popping a canapé into her mouth and savouring it. She looks confident and successful, she looks happy but she's had too much to drink. So it seems. She has the hint of knowing smirk that her younger self doesn't recognise. She comes across to her, she's going to talk to her younger self.

“You do know that ghosts live before death as well as after death.” She says. “Time for us isn't fixed, we have our peculiar freedom, we have our ways, we have our ideas.”

“I don't believe we've been introduced.”

“I don't believe we need to do that you stuck up, confused, bitch. You know fine well who I am.”

“Ahem, I'm not getting any of this, you are clearly a figment of my imagination and you're interfering with my plans and daydreams. Simple as that...and what's more if I'm seeing you and therefore going mad I'll just simplify things and swallow a few more pills and gins and...blot you out...and don't call me a bitch you...ghost.”

“Your lazy mind can hardly blot out something that doesn't exist. You can't even arrange furniture without getting stuck in a loop and you can't even see that being civil and communicating with me might actually help you...oh and I'm enjoying myself because, well you can't see it but we are having a party here. Right now.”

“You can't hold a party here without my permission, particularly while I'm rearranging the house. I hereby dismiss you. Please allow me to return to my own imagination.”

“I think you'll find that this is your imagination. You're just so far up yourself you've forgotten how to use it properly. You used to, God knows. Now all you do is fuck about with this junk playing yourself, as if the position of a couch or a lamp improved the quality of your life.”

“You can hardly talk about the quality of life, you're a ghost.”

“I'm a ghost but I'm also you. How does that sound? Perhaps you're seeing a bit of an opportunity here? Some constructive dialogue, some advice from my angle, something from outside of time itself, wouldn't that be attractive? I'm prepared to dip out of the party for few moments.”

The two women sat on the couch and faced one another. They talked for some time. To the viewer, had there been one, all that they would have seen was a woman sitting on a sofa, looking ahead and talking to herself. As the light failed the conversation seemed to slow and then the woman flopped back onto the couch and fell asleep. The sleep was a dark, cleansing and anonymous one. An hour later she was woken by the room light coming on and a man entering the room. “Hello darling” said her husband, “how's your day been? Have you been having a nap?” “No, no, yes...but I'm fine, I had a friend round.” “Anybody I know?” “She's an old acquaintance from the past, she was in town and dropped by, a nice surprise really.” He didn't answer but just nodded, kissed her temple and went upstairs to change out of his business suit. She patted her lap and stood up. She thought to herself that the room arrangement looked rather good.

Later they ate together. It was a simple meal, salad, some meats, a crisp cold white wine. They chatted but he was tired and the conversation was wandered and aimless. She also found concentration difficult, it had been an unusual afternoon. As they cleared their plates she sat back. She looked at him, then she seemed to look through him and she spoke but it was not really to him. It was to nobody in particular or perhaps just herself. “You know, I've just realised, death isn't an event in life at all.”

Sometimes you can get yourself so far into things that it's just impossible to get yourself back out.

My ISM problem

“A lump of chocolate now and then for the cancer, a drop of red wine now and then for the heart, a suck on a cigar occasionally for the inflamed nasal passages, a clove of garlic for the prevention strokes, a little aspirin for the blood, a brisk walk for the Alzheimer's, some regular sex for the endorphins, a bit of red meat for the brain cells, a plate of stir fried kale for the iron, a cup of tea for the early mornings and the regular check of the intermediate shaft bearing on the Porsche 997/998 2.7 to 3.8 engine. The one fitted between 98 to 2004. That is except for the 3.6i unit fitted to the Turbo and GT3, they of course use the 993 bottom end so there's no IMS problem. Lucky bastards. No one knows when or if the bearing will fail and Porsche don't seem to offer any reason or explanation. I find it a bit disconcerting that the fault can just occur without any warning. It's time bomb really, a cot death, that's the thing with physical and mechanical health...and well being. You just never really know. One day it goes 'click', one day that thing in your brain just goes 'click'.”

“So intermediate shaft failure is probable rather than inevitable, I don't know what's worse. It's like cot death or spontaneous combustion or something. Lightning strikes even. Some nights I don't sleep for thinking about it, I toss and turn, get the sweats, losing my mind, cancer and health and that IMS failure. I have nightmares about that pool of oil there under the car, I don't notice it (or maybe I ignore it) and try to drive away and there are all those costly consequences. Towed away by a yellow truck. Cancer or shaft failure? I'm shaking thinking about it, I'm disturbed, my eyes fill up and water, I get the shivers.”

“ There are solutions out there, they say the revised shaft and seal, that's the WPOZZZ99Z (6)S**** bit that works. I'm considering it but I've only clocked 46000 miles and the expense is just too much to consider what with all my regular medications and lifestyle costs. I'm keeping it together but it's a challenge. There are no official statistics, you'd think that there would be but no, it's all word of mouth and forum gossip. I don't know about that, those guys are all in California and you just never trust those things. Fly by night. I don't know if I want to set myself anymore challenges, not now; like trying to write a story when there's some other distraction, with a knife hanging over your head, naked, out in the worst weather, dressed as a woman, drunk and incapable, cornered by a mad dog, badly parked with people honking, tied to a lamppost, waiting on that pool of oil forming. What did the forum say again? The pencil keeps breaking and I keep trying to sharpening but it's soft and the lead is broken and the sharpener is blunt and I'm having ideas but I can't get them down, can't hold a single one.”

“In the workshop a job is underway, there is a flange bearing support bolted to the engine with three bolts, the flange is removed and you can see the threaded holes for the bolts. I wished someone could show me the bolt in the middle that shears off. So I could just see it for real, put my finger tip in that threaded hole. It's all in my imagination. What is the truth about the cars? I hear that 20% of Boxters don't make it past 100k without that catastrophic failure, then a £6k rebuild, a whole engine eaten up and shredded. Then again 80% are ok, that's good odds. Still it's those cursed bolts, the bolts fail and everything just falls apart. What if I have them? Maybe if I just keep the revs low, don't gun it, kid gloves and care, light right foot, tender loving care. I could stay well under 4000 revs if I had to, I could do it. Then consider the grip and gnaw of the tension that it would create. That's no way to live.”

“There's an old theory that Porsche know all about it. They build those engines on the cheap, or just cheaper, entry level engineering, Eastern European or Indian bolts, inferior alloy and so on. Wherever they source parts, who knows? Bet they don't make them in Stuttgart. That shiny factory is like a hospital. Beautiful but mean. Better than a hospital, hazy science fiction. Cost cutting or efficiency or carelessness or a plot for the benefit of the dealers. Decisions made in the board room, wood panelled walls, whispers and fine china, maybe a brandy, maybe a whisky, a nod in the right place, cool Germans, level headed, clinical. Well it is a hospital. So times are tough and it's all about pushing out the tin and money changing hands. Long term survival or a quick buck. Just enough quality in there to get them through the warranty period, after that you're on you own, living with the risk and the cost.”

“That's the buzz out on the forums, all the geeks and honest men, retelling their tales, posting pictures, ground up oily metal and unsmiley faces pasted to the jpeg. Their solutions, their after market additions, putting things right, solving those design faults that the so-called designers missed. Men in white coats looking through glasses, checking the bits against the drawings and nodding at each other. Nobody ever won the Nobel Prize for a reliable engine bearing, nobody. What were they all thinking? Now it's all repeated and played out and frankly I'm at my wits end and it's just a silly machine, a machine with a flaw. Like me, I might get that cancer or blood disease or some STD. All liable to breakdown, out of the blue, but I'm bombarded, all the time, tales of woe, early deaths and failures, diets and quick fixes, cures and snake oil, wrecks and wreckage on the highway. Plagues. No wonder I can't sleep. We are all broadcasting, all the time, all across the social networks and forums. We are all storytellers – that's how we make sense of our lives, but still it makes no sense.”

(“You know, I have another theory. Those blown engines, the intermediate shaft failure, the early and untimely deaths. Well it is just possible that those cars were not driven regularly, not exercised or stretched. Then you get deflection in the shaft from just sitting there, idle. Thermal expansion and cooling, it gets to the metal, gets into the metal. Slowly the tolerances get out of balance. Out of balance is never good. These cars were meant to be driven, their place isn't in showrooms or languishing as trophies and garage queens. It's the open road, whatever that means to you.”)

Losin' my religion

“Yeah it was a few years ago, I was a lot younger and I was a part of a cult down in Texas. They were all grim Presbyterian types, kinda skewed in their beliefs. Extreme and driven. They'd pick up and recruit homeless and vagabond types. They kept me there about two years, they were clever cock-suckers, they controlled my weight, held back food, kept us on a low protein diet. They made me work out in the garden most days, other times I was in the kitchen but they made sure none of us ate too much. They had regular lessons for us, morning, noon and night, brought us together for teaching and prayer. That was mostly them telling us what was wrong with us and how we were unrighteous and in need of grace and salvation. They used to speak from the Old Testament, they liked all that conquest and battlefield shit. They wanted to cleanse the country. They wanted a Old Testament solution I think. They seldom mentioned love or Jesus but you couldn't comment or criticise 'cos that wasn't on the programme. The programme was all about their control over us, that bombast of bullying, how they were right, how their reading of it was right and everybody else had it wrong.”

“I was pretty young and impressionable, I'd had a few bad breaks, I didn't feel too good about myself and so I was easy meat for these guys. I just didn't see it. I didn't see how they were controlling me, expecting things from me, the levels of obedience and what they liked to call grace. I just kept my head down, didn't argue, just got on with my work. Day in day out in that Texas heat. They fed us bread and vegetables, communal meals but they (the leadership) never ate to much with us. They ate later when they had their leaders meeting in the evening and we were working pretty much dawn till dusk. They ground me down I can tell you. I'm there, feeling like shit, they're telling me I need to change, what the fuck was that about? I looked at myself and it was true I wasn't much of a person, I had form and history but I couldn't figure how I was supposed to change. I just kept working and eating less stuff and I could feel myself withering away. They worked us hard, kept us busy and we were just too tired some days to think. There was no debate either. When they said bible study they meant they'd read a bit and then they'd tell you what that meant. I was usually that God was mad with us 'cos he loved us so much but we were a disappointment and though Jesus had come to redeem us we were still no making it. We had to work, to change (that word again).”

“I looked around and I looked at them and they were all in pretty good shape. All those leaders had cute wives, pickup trucks, clean blue jeans and leather boots, big black bible books and they didn't do much in the fields. Their hands were soft, they thumbed through those bibles and talked about it like that in itself was hard and worthwhile work. They wore spectacles when they read. They chose their words carefully, stressed service and servitude and faithfulness and that shit and they kept a eye on us all the time. They discouraged us forming little groups, they changed the rotas. I was pretty confused all the time and I felt increasingly disapproved of even though I was doing all the right things on the programme and keeping up with my duties.”

“Then one day I was working out on the Long Acre, we were nipping the tomato flowers and I was on a break, a water break. I was there just blowing out and the contractor who maintained the tractors (we had no mechanic for some time due to another little dispute) was fixing something and he stopped up and lit up a cigarette. Well I was there on the spot, hot and hungry and just feeling all shrivelled up inside and I saw him light that cigarette and I saw him suck in and blow out a big lungful of smoke. It looked so good. I stopped over and asked him for one please and I took the time of day. I was about halfway down that sweet smoke when I heard the foreman elder comin' and he was shouting and pointing and yellin' at me and the contractor. The contractor just looked and said that he was all too holy with a real big bug up his ass and too big a head for his hat but the foreman elder just came right up to me and he punched that half cigarette right out of my mouth and knocked me on my back in the dust. I stayed down there for about a minute. He was quoting the bible at me and talking about my body being a temple for the holy spirit. The contractor said this ain’t none of his business but he didn't care for the atmosphere around here. Lying there in that dust I had one sore chin and I had one or two crazy thoughts there in my head. Now there wasn't quite enough sugar in my blood to give me the speed of thought and action I once had but I still had something in there and I was feeling just a bit angry.”

“Time was moving slowly and I got up and looked at that guy. He was tall in his elder's jeans, clean and bright blue and he was looking right down his nose at me. He said something and referenced it all from Leviticus and nodded at me looking for an acknowledgement and agreement. By my left against the fence wire there was a loose piece of 2 by 4. I grabbed it and hit Mr Clean Jeans square across the jaw. He went down then like a pile of purple bricks. The contractor just said fuckin' good work boy and got back to his repair work. I was trembling though 'cos I knew I'd have hell to pay from those guys in the leadership. The foreman was rolling on the ground, both hands holding his chin, he was sobbing and writhing. I wanted to hit him again but I thought better of it. I thought about the rest of the leaders and I could see some of the gang heading cross to where I stood. I jumped the fence and ran across the potato field and down behind the water tower. I was struggling, this effort in the heat and in the state of shock I was in was too much. I vaulted the inner fence and now I was back at the compound.”

“I looked around and saw another of the elders comin' out the ranch house doorway. I just started to walk across to the cookhouse like everything was ok but I knew I was on the way out big time. When I got in there I just lit up every gas burner on the range and I threw towels and paper sacks and any shit I could find at that cooker. It was all in flames in seconds and by that I mean everything. I guess when he knocked that cigarette out of my mouth I snapped. I saw all that cunning and control, the lack of honesty and respect, all the cruelty and disregard embodied in that single act and I, despite my weakness, struck back in my own clumsy way. I was just standing up to the bullies and the hypocrites. I was also running out of the burning cookhouse and headed for anywhere but here.”

“There was a red pick up parked and half loaded with goods to sell at the farmer's market, vegetables and craft work. The keys were dangling in the ignition. I turned them, the engine growled and I was gone. Behind me somebody was clanging on the fire triangle as smoke billowed out all across the yard. People were shouting and I heard women screaming. Right then I didn't care nothin' for any of them, not even the other disciples like me and certainly not the elders and their dumb wives. I just thought I wanted those stupid bastards to learn a lesson and I hoped that even just for a few seconds they might consider that the wrath of their cruel and spiteful god was being wrung out all over them because of their ways and their sins and the disrespectful and casual indifference they showed towards their fellow man and people like me. Whatever the hell that might mean.”

“I was driving fast down the track towards the highway. I checked the mirror, the smoke was rising into the sky but there was nobody following me. I drove a little faster and the dust cloud grew and blew up behind the truck. When I finally hit the highway there were blue lights headed out towards the ranch. I couldn't see much expression behind their sunglasses but they ignored me as they went went on about their business. An hour later I was at the edge of town and I got my bearings. I stopped the pickup in a superstore car park and finding fifty bucks in the glove box took it and then threw the car keys down into a drain. Ten minutes later I'm blowin' the froth from a cold beer and getting ready to tuck into a double cheeseburger and fries. My head was clearer than it had been in years and the words, the prayers and the cruel controls of the cult were falling away from me like rotten fish scales. When the cheeseburger arrived I just whispered to myself a thank you Jesus for fuck all and bit into the juicy beef. I'd gotten my appetite for life back.”

Salt Peter

They called him “Salt Peter” because it had been his job to salt and so preserve the herring. He'd worked at the fish market up until it had closed a few years ago, he'd become a character there, not a popular one either. Salt Peter always had been a loner, his past was shady and once he'd settled in the town from wherever he came, he made few friends, he just salted fish and scared small children and stray cats and dogs. A short, thick set man, balding and hunched up he avoided conversation and socialising. He just cut and salted the fish and then packed them in tight in the oak barrels for shipment. His constant exposure to fish and salt had whitened and roughed up his skin, it was a peculiar and condition, hardly easy on the eye. The salt had not just affected his hands and arms but also the skin on his face and head, he was almost salted himself with dried up tear ducts and skin like a lizard but the whites of his eyes seemed extra glutinous and luminous, the pupils more watery and any hair or eye brow that remained was ginger crusted like the toasted skin of a kipper. Peter was slowly salting himself into becoming the local bogey-man. A reputation he did not deserve by any behaviour or action but had gained simply by his deteriorating look and chosen profession.

“The most important of all movements are your bowel movements,” said Mrs Macsween. She was taking in an automatic stream of consciousness way to Peter. Peter was concentrating on slitting the fish and rubbing salt. “If your bowel movements are irregular or difficult then you need treatment, you need freedom. It's all in the diet and of course the clothing. Your bowels need space and relaxation of operate and if you fail to allow them that then there can be dire consequences, almost too terrible to consider. The bowel is the key to good help in fact if you think about your system it's all like a long hollow tube running through you with the bowel there, at the very end finally doing all that last minute processing to keep you going. That's why it pays to be regular and that's, as I say, down to good diet and relaxation. Are you getting this Peter?” Mrs Macsween was a widow. Her late husband had expired in a domestic episode when crushed under the cast iron end of a Victorian bed frame, it had been a tragic accident that sent shockwaves across the cobbles and through the small town. The drunken funeral took place on a grey December day, the stormiest one anybody could remember. Since that day she had formed a tempestuous on and off relationship with the slow witted but compliant Peter. The local gossips had a bean feast.

Peter looked down at his fish and continued working. “I pride myself on my strenuous and robust regime,” continued Mrs Macsween, “It's a combination of planning and discipline and that’s key to keeping a balance, a regular balance and don't be afraid to check yourself, don't ignore the details, you need to be aware of what is right and normal in your body, how it operates, look out for signs and of course regularity and constituency are a large part of that. I'm not going to talk about smell because that is quite unseemly but it's still worth considering, it's a factor. You need to take all the factors into account. That's important, know the normal and keep the rhythm, times and things. You know you should follow my advice, a man your age, there are health problems that you're storing up and your posture wont be helping”. Peter grunted and looked away. Mrs Macsween was talking automatically, like a expert at a symposium, lecturing and describing, oblivious to the audience, their response, their interest. She ploughed on through with her topic – taking the right kind of care of the bowels. “Anyway”, she was almost finished now, “ it'll soon be time for lunch, where will you be taking be?” I'm not sure if Peter quite knew what he was doing but he quickly drew out his knife and sliced into Mrs Macsween like she was a wriggling fish. Then he applied the salt, then he put her into a barrel and shipped her along with another prepared consignment. I don't quite know where her final destination was and as for Peter...well nobody ever knew. All they found was a small white pile of Potassium Nitrate on the preserving room floor.

Repetition

Her hand was deep in the inside of the handbag, the cold silk lining caressing her wrist on the way down but she hardly noticed that. She was touching that single pearl earring, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. The hard shining pearl, there in the dark innards of her bag, hidden, known only by her. It was a faintly erotic and compulsive act that, as the rhythm grew, she could not stop. It fed some hunger and she did not want to stop. there was this clockwork, inner compulsion, a deal she had made with herself to carry on, to continue. She looked out there, across the street, out into space, away from her immediate surroundings whilst deep inside that bag she still rubbed on that pearl. Over and over and warmer and warmer the finger tip heat grew though the pearl stubbornly stayed as cold as it could, as if the bag was some icy deep freeze impervious to her touch. She liked that thought and held onto it as the pearl kept on rolling between her fingers. Like a mantra for the sense of touch. The strange inner warmth and peaceful assurance that comes with the comfort of repetition, the comfort of repetition, hypnotic, like a pearl, rolling between the fingers.

You can say what you like about sex, it's always on the human or animal mind in the same way that god is. Sex is a silly, simple little word for a complex world of feelings and circumstances, always on the loose, tasty sweet and sour, stewing up nasty little storms, brewing up clouds and imagined outcomes. Set and unset situations, holding tight and letting go. Functions and looks and far away strangers, awkward and untouchable, rolling it all between the fingers, rolling it and never quite letting it go. She was thinking how in the city everyday she could rub against too many to find that sense of sex but she had found that now and it was all too big. It had to be reduced and distilled down to something much smaller and easier to handle. Tight and private, like the pearl in the handbag, a very personal pleasure, a very private moment, a point of focus stretched to the limit and then enhanced by the applied constant comfort in the repetition of that touch.

On the Silk Roadway

So this is pretty much as it was told to me: “It seemed like a pretty stupid idea but he felt compelled to carry it out. It was a growing, throbbing kind of obsession. A feeling that he needed to capture, hold, sustain. Even if it was only a temporary fix it would be better than doing nothing. That was the thought and he was driven now to carry it out. He was uncomfortable in the shop, that in itself was ironic considering that it was a distinct discomfort that he wished upon himself. He braced himself and awkwardly wandered into the lingerie department and there was confronted by a baffling selection of ladies tummy and hips control pants. The sizes were of course a foreign language as were the shapes. He stared and tried to aid eye contact with the other shoppers, all of whom were obviously female. He took a silent deep breath, selected three odd sized pairs, all in black and headed to the check out. Of course nobody really took any notice of him or his choices of garment. Each female shopper remaining indifferent and detached in their own personal bubble. The girl at the check out hardly said anything but as he handed over the cash his heart was pumping and his palms and forehead sweating with unfamiliar and almost painful embarrassment. He relaxed visibly as the pants were stuffed into a green bag and effectively disguised as ordinary and insignificant shopping, as if anybody cared. Soon he would be home.

So what was the point? Why tight pants? Why the obsession? Harry had asked himself those questions many times and there never was a proper or sensible answer. That block of feeling couldn't be shifted, that notion of not quite right, that horrible sweated out heat and pressure, the gnawing and unfathomable need, one that stood against all that's normal or acceptable. The notion of being cursed. Harry wanted to be castrated and that was a pretty tough little fact to share. Right now he couldn't figure how that might happen but he just wanted to feel how it might feel. That was why he was wearing the too tight control pants right now (one pair had done the trick). They were tightly compressing his parts right now and though it was not the real thing it felt like...progress towards that imagined, elusive and unknowable state. He thought of himself as gelding, a horse, cut to become more manageable, more compliant, a better kind of horse all round. That was a part of it but Harry couldn't really get to the core of what he wanted or needed other than that he desperately had to have that big cut done.

Here in Doncaster his ideas were safely buried in the most private of places, his own churning head. Maybe in California or Thailand it would've been different, there might have been contacts , expressions, outlets, help lines and darkened rooms where there was discussion. Here he was a plain call centre worker, a voice and keyboard click, insurance advice and sales. On and off he switched himself but then in the spare, hungry moments the obsession arose again and again until it seemed like the only thing that mattered. It seemed that until he'd been done, cut and mutilated he'd feel incomplete, if that made any kind of sense. Like a man who wanted to lose an arm or a leg or an ear, surgically removed or pickled or buried at the bottom of the sea. How can a physically complete man man feel incomplete until he is physically incomplete? That paradox haunted him, troubled and tortured him and drove him. The tight pants produced a feeling, a temporary fix, a stop but there was no resolution here. Something else had to happen. Something that was real.

So Harry kept himself lost himself in daydreams and fantasy, he found cushions of comfort in here, worlds where boundaries had blurred and possibilities were stretched. There were days when it was all straight forward heterosexual sex that was there, calm and predominant, possible without the balls and the spray but all accepted just as a quirk. Mechanically smooth and easy, he imagined. Clean and free from care for both the partners. Harry did worry what any woman would really think, how would she react? Turn on or turn off? There were lots of tastes out there. He stepped across the deconstructed after sex small talk as if it was an alley covered in broken glass. It was a bizarre conversation that he'd design and savour. His justification, his longing, his past experience, the tough road that had turned him this way, it could perhaps be understood. There was maybe a tiny part of a female fascination to exploit, an acceptance, a desire to try and experiment, to feel out the freakish performance. It would be one time only and then never again, so he thought, and there was a strange comfort in that.

Some fantasies went too far; overcome and tied up by Amazons or the fanatical wives of Nazi officers, six foot six, dark hair and eyes, wielding knives and razors, handcuffs and silk scarves, determined to set the world straight on their twisted man hating terms. He was overcome, bound and knocked unconscious. They screamed themselves into a tribal, primitive and hateful frenzy. All shadows and shapes and dancing around. Then at the climax they ritually castrated him with their terrible razors and threw his balls out of the cabin window where they were devoured by hungry Alsation dogs. That played in his head in a endless loop somedays, oddly Technicolored but bloodless and painless. He sensed his own eyes spinning in his head as those images trolled on past. Like a woozy alcoholic nightmare played out in slow motion that turned back on itself in a loop of replay and time slip. Those Amazon's had their revenge time and time again, on the top of a bus, at the call centre desk, in queues and lines and checkouts, in a quiet bar and in the darkest nights. Hot and dirty and played out to the last reel but never truly consummated. It was a life, a kind of life and maybe, most of the time no kind of life when a slow uncontrollable torture runs on and on in the background all the time.

Harry grimaced, pressed himself to try to catch the version of normal that he'd chosen for himself. His daily rituals and compressed body parts mirroring his compressed aspirations. He took to the internet, drew in garbage, digested it, the faux researching was skimmed but kept disconnected. There were others out there, crazy groupings, cults and madmen. It was impossible to fathom it and Harry didn't trust anybody with his secret. It was all to too crowded here in his head, too precious and personal, too painful. Then there were the rare days of denial and forgetfulness. The castration passed away like some grey cloud, his head cleared and he functioned, for moments there were blue skies and pedestrian thoughts. Sports or politics, colours and food and pretty women. These days were few and fewer and Harry sensed a precipice edge before him. Here he was again, sucked into the narrow neck at the middle of the egg timer and then swamped and overcome and ready to fall. He looked at the phone, he pondered mental health help lines, doctor appointments, opening up to a stranger. Not possible, too costly was all he could think.

He browsed knifes and surgical implements on line, he looked at the procedures, medical reasonings, illness and injury, it was all stretched pink flesh and gory detail. That would all pass however as he journeyed through that pain and some sense of pleasant grief (he imagined) until he was set right into his own personal, ideal perfection. Existing in the secret shadow as the conflicted yet vigorous rare human gelding. For somebody special he would form up to be that desirable curiosity and unique experience. He contrived more disguised and improbable solutions and he began to build yet another more dangerous dream. He cloaked himself in ideas and drew up the details, like planning a gym or diet regime that built a perfect body. A one off, shit or bust opportunity. All the risk was his but the outcome could give him his desire. In fiction and in the red tops there always was a willing German surgeon or scientist somewhere who would rescue the tortured soul. He wondered if maybe somebody, somewhere had built a machine...

It was about a year after the pants purchasing outing when the headline and newspaper story caught Harry's eye. “Mystery man found dead on the street was a Mozambique refugee who had fallen from an aircraft landing at Heathrow.” He read the awful details and then noticed, down below that in a black and white tab box his eye was led to another. “Ex-Soviet scientists fix pervs with 'snap you later' ball burster technique”. The article told how a Russian scientist now residing in Switzerland was selling a tiny, self contained castration device to “clients” in the Far East. This one-time use machine, no bigger than a two cigarette packs apparently snapped on and then snapped off and simultaneously stapled, cauterized and sanitized the wound. You then disposed of the whole thing. It was soon to be available for sale on line for use in wider veterinary applications, mainly goats and dogs.

Harry filled in the application form very carefully, the delivery address and the price, 55 Euros plus delivery. Of course he'd lied about most of his credentials and was pretending to be a goat breeder curious to try the device. He clicked the order button and off it went. A week later the carton arrived complete with French, German and Flemish instructions only – no English for some reason. Harry's fingers trembled as he handled the small shiny surgical device. There was the red switch, two settings, a battery compartment (three AAAs) and most tantalisingly of all the opening. It was still all innocent enough looking, no obvious blades or teeth or sharp edges, just an aperture about the size of a cigarette pack and that red switch. Nervously Harry tried to read the instructions. He studied the diagrams and he explored the details and a film clip on their web site. It all seemed straightforward enough.”

Truly I don't quite know what happened next. I was told that Harry did try to use the device and whatever the out come lived to tell the tale...but simply chose not to tell. It just might be that when he got to the point, all systems go, ready to get that (?) thing, achieve that seemingly unattainable state, press the red button, something else kicked in, some other instinct. I don't know for sure. I do know that Harry quit his job at the call centre and headed east, back packing towards the Silk Road searching for a Buddhist teacher, or so some said. An odd thing for a guy his age to do but then again he was pretty odd anyway.