The Secret Life of a Therapist

2010-08-03T17:32:00.005+01:00

Ah, no.

No, we were only playing, yes we were. We were playing, laughing. How we laughed and played, and dallied, yes, in that rose garden. Did we ever do anything but dally, in it? That's it. That's it. But it's previous.

This is altogether more serious.

My books, they get older.

Outside, the sky burns.

And for us? Well, like the world, we breathe a little faster. We ache a little more. We come as hard as ever but with, perhaps, a little less certainty. But who would argue with that? What are the middle aged for but to lend a little character to acts of eternity?

I hear Gareth, the scrape of his chair.

Are we done?

I think not.

2009-02-23T21:21:00.003Z

Of Rome, lately.

What can I say? How cold her arse must have felt on the Spanish steps. And pregnant, too. Of course, I took to the skies with redemption in mind and did not expect to have my intentions so thwarted, so quickly. And yet what are plans for, if not subversion? I came to banish shame and found, instead, a smiley blonde from Texas.

I sat with her, smiled, and offered the sense that I, too, were far too weary to work out how or why I landed here, on these steps in the furious cold of a February morning. Of course, I knew exactly why, and yet, as my befuddlement began to amuse her, I could sense we were only minutes away from undressing and so, like a proper Englishman, I took her for tea, to gather myself. I should have been in the Galleria in the park behind us, groping my Pauline, my marbled mistress, but, in fact, I was captivated and later, as we drank and our knees touched, I felt the arousal of my long dormant desire, and fetish, maiesiophilia. Was I not done with all that? I wanted my hands on her belly and to follow the long curve into her thighs. I wanted the honey scent of her hormone. If I had her, I would never want of anything, nor have any need of justifying, or articulating, redeeming or even listening, ever again. And if could hear, in the singsong of her accent, the insincerity of my own mother then, so be it, so what. It was all I ever wanted then, and forever. And so, I did.

She was twenty one.

2009-02-13T20:19:00.003Z

Oh what am I for? No, really.

When we were shopping and dancing, watching and waving, therapy seemed a radical, almost subversive thing to do. When all of life seduced you outward, into the shops, to go inward was the highest refusal. And yet now, with the world entering a depression that will hang over the best years of my son's life, I cannot help but see therapy as becoming the shameful preserve of the upper middle classes. And yet, are they not interesting, too? Certainly, I have found much to savour in these women. They tend towards their mid-forties, teenage children, a travelling husband and a general sense of losing purchase on their attachments. And into this aporia they fill memories of childhood, the angry nanny, the abusive uncle, the desolation of wealthy parenting and so, partly vengeful, they come to see me, in my room , once, maybe twice a week. Who's complaining? And yet, is this what I am for? Inevitably, I am dependent on the state of the ecomony. I hawk my wares as much as anyone and yet, in truth, I will heed a lesson I learnt from Axel: when times are hard, put your prices up.

I really must buy a ticket to Rome. And yet, the loneliness of groping Pauline again, on my own. Would Thom come?

Would he ever recover?

2009-02-11T22:29:00.002Z

And so, cock robin...

I took a flask of O to the cemetery. In truth, as we stood listening to another African song (hardly an expression of Colin's soul, I have to say, yet certainly indicative of his contemporaneity), I took a quiet blast of O, less to stifle my grief, but the better to experience it. I also wanted the O to muffle a certain preoccupation I was having. I couldn't stop asking myself what the collective noun for a group of therapists would be. An alliance, perchance? A hum? Eventually I came round to exactly where I stood, a funeral of therapists. Appropriate and accurate, if entirely meaningless. And so later, I casted around for any old uncles, retarded sisters or pervy cousins, anything to give a real whiff of Colin, or the hinterland he'd polished away, both in therapy and half a life consorting in cosmopolita. There was nothing, there was nobody. He'd filled the church with friends and, of course, contemporaries. Even Gareth was restless.

I shall break into his room and steal one of his books.

God knows, I'll inscribe it to myself.

2009-02-08T23:20:00.002Z

Colin's funeral.

Gareth said the clients can't come. He insists on maintaining proper boundaries, even in death. I feel rebuked, slightly, while noticing, however, that the zeal Gareth puts into insisting upon boundaries, is the very same zeal he puts into transgressing them himself. I really must do some proper spying on him.

Saw Thom this evening. He was quiet, preferring to practice his grade 5 piano pieces. I wonder if he has girl trouble? And then it occurs to me, for all our international pursuit of the finest erotica, would Thom feel at ease telling me about his girlfriends...? Is that possible? Could I have been a more liberal, more, in fact, shameless father? I began to crumple under a wave of stunning dismay. And so he, sensing my disintegration, reminded me of how I, at his age, had failed my grade 4 flute exam. Had not the teacher called my playing 'disturbing'? And so Thom, as only a son is able, saved me from my disintegration, by pointing it out.

I still have that report of my musical failure.

I must frame it. It'll be a reminder of my vocation.

2009-02-03T20:06:00.009Z

The worst snow for eighteen years, they say.

What would Colin have said? Undoubtedly, he would have made some pertinent comments about the media, and our penchant for a national crisis. But Colin is dead. And so, alas, there is nothing I can do but shake the snow from my wellies and enquire after Gareth, his health, and where he procured his rather fetching, undoubtedly new, bobble hat.

It was a bracing start to the day and yet it paled, quickly. Client L, for all her rosy cheeks, left the room having deposited, in earnest, a certain amount of the sexual shame she inherited from her demented, Plymouth Brethren parents. Oh, what matter? And yet it left a stain that attached itself to me, to my face, in fact, to my nose. Very slightly, it quivered. For a moment I had no control over my nose and, aware of the symbology, made a direct connection to Canova's Pauline. Clearly, this was all about my dick and my doomed, teenage groping of Pauline's left breast. I really must get back to Rome and finish the job properly.

The rest of the day I was restless. I tore a copy of Courbet from the shelves and stared at The Origin of The World for twenty minutes. Later, at home, I poured my flabby but bronzed body into my old wetsuit, slithered into the car and headed for the coast where I then staggered into the freezing winter sea. I roared into the waves as they annihilated, and yet affirmed, my burning body. Thank fuck for life, as they say.

2009-01-30T22:43:00.002Z

Gareth cries.

Our first response to Colin's death was a race of adrenaline (somewhat buffered in my case by a glass of O), but by lunch Gareth and I were tired and weepy. There have been times, in experiential workshops and seminars, where Gareth and I have played the game, and hugged each other. There was always a tension in his back, and neck, as he entered the huge, albeit artificial generosity of my embrace. But today, alone, we rose to our vocation and hugged with neither intention, nor history, and it was good.

Later, I rang Colin's clients. Aside from the couple he was counselling, they all wanted to come to his funeral. Of course, my first instinct was to push them away saying, actually, you don't know anything about him. And yet, for all our talk, it's in the gaps we learn. They may not know the details, but very probably his clients know him as well as anyone. I shall let someone else decide.

Goodbye Colin.

2009-01-28T22:49:00.003Z

I have news.

On this, a warm and rainy day where even on my skin, I can feel the fecundity. And so, alone with my toast, seemingly happy, I fled to work.

It was there, opening the door with a relish, that Gareth informed me Colin, that most contemporary of men, had passed away.

You mean dead? Like many people, Gareth preferred the notion that, like a piece of furniture, one simply moved on. He turned and, accepting my rebuke, headed toward the kitchen. Clearly, this was serious. Gareth and I have known Colin for over fourteen years. We have shared this kitchen, our coffee, our spoons. We have pressed our bodies to the wall, allowing him to pass, and now this. He was dead.

Helen is away. She is in Africa for the quarter. God, we needed her today. How we needed someone to administer the situation. Gareth flapped, I attended to the kettle, and the day passed, but god, we needed Helen.

I walked home, leaving my car, and all my intention, in the centre of town. He was only a little older than me.

I shall frig myself to sleep.

2009-01-27T11:34:00.005Z

My weekend? A delight, yes, yes. Well, have I ever been lonelier?

It may, possibly, be a little early to use Thom in lieu of a social life, but there we are. Who wants me and my anger? But after all, anger does work, it does the job, it keeps people away. Certainly, it has served me. Nevertheless, Thom is almost adolescent and has taken to ringing me at all hours for no obvious reason (aside from spying for his mother, of course) so I felt it appropriate for another of our adventures. So, with lusty chambermaids in mind, I booked us a flight to Liverpool with two nights at the Hilton, all with the express purpose of gazing, forlornly, at Edgar Degas Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

I am, of course, a keen advocate for all Degas' women, fiddling at their toilette, arses in the air. I love them all. However, his girl dancer simply made me wince. To my surprise, Thom took out a sketchpad. He mumbled something and began to draw. I tend to barge in and fuss all over his solitude, except when fishing. And this was another moment he chose to own. Quietly, I took myself off to find relief with Bonnard's wife, the rather depressed Martha.

For all my training, I cannot explain why, or even how I felt. Certainly, there was the pleasure in his company. Yet a well of loneliness fell between us, which neither of us could articulate, or separate from the other. That evening, after pizza, we called his mother. Thom wants to try some of my brandy, what do you think? As if I have ever asked anyone's approval over anything. No, he can't. And with that, the answer we both wanted, we headed for the hotel.

Later, while he slept, I found his picture of the dancer. It was exquisitely detailed, both the skirt, and the strain of thigh muscle and yet, as if it were altogether too much, he had drawn no face. I went to bed, thinking of my own mother, dead when I was his age.

I went to bed, remembering that I believe in ghosts, and wondering, too, what my son, the artist, was trying to tell the world.

2009-01-23T21:31:00.005Z

Client Y cancelled.

I spent the hour alone in my room. I could hear nothing but the fury of me, my mentalese, and very likely Y picked up on my despair. The force of my misanthropy was probably seeping under the door, out the house and across the fields. You think with words we communicate? I was positively shooing him away. We always know everything, all of us, try as we do to pretend we don't.

I can hear Gareth's chair.

It always scrapes, just as he moves in for the killer comment.

Christ, what a life.

2009-01-21T22:05:00.008Z

A letter from my friend, Jacobson.

Opening it, I warmed to the idea of a slower world, a place where letters, thought, good manners and the timbre of one's voice, actually matter. As a novelist, however, Jacobson has a tendency to bang on about women and sex, as if he invented the whole thing. Sometimes I'll quote him a little Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or, if I'm really pissed off, then the Book of Job, just to let him know he is not alone, and there is nothing new. And yet this morning, taking a shit to the classical fashionista, Einaudi, I opened the letter to find a brief note plus an invite to accompany him to the memorial of Harold Pinter. Deceased, clearly.

Well, apparently he died christmas eve (as I was sojourning in the Alps, trying to avoid Axel's orgy in Bavaria). Yet I was gratified that Jacobson was thinking of me for, indeed, I have history with Pinter. I first met him in the 80's when, as a student, I was member of an anarchist group called the Fuckwits. Once we were ensconsed outside the Turkish embassy where we advoated the torture of every Turkish poet and short story writer. As the afternoon paled a drunken man (evidently Pinter) rolled out of a black cab and gave us all the most furious bollocking I have ever known. Even then, as a student therapist, I was aware of the homosexual component of his rage.

The next time we met was at a crush at the bar of Hammersmith theatre. I was aware of a seething presence at my side. I turned and saw it was Harold, angry at the world, or whatever. It must be very hard being Harold Pinter all the time, but this synthetic rage was rather irritating so I took a breath and decided to play. Already aware of his predilection for the camp, I simply turned and asked if he would hold my cigarette. Without a word, he took it, as if relieved. I then removed myself to the back of the bar, lit a new cigarette, and watched as the greatest playwright of the twentieth century stood at the bar, holding my fag, waiting to be served.

Oh, Harold.

The times we had.

2009-01-19T23:05:00.003Z

Surely I'm done with all that, all that shame.

Is it that not for teenagers, or children?

I put on a favoured Nocturne, and went to the bathroom. What is it anyway? A sudden exposure. A contagion, too. Nothing spreads like shame. It can enter a home, a village. It can even cross borders and fields of discourse. Surely I'm done with all that? God knows, haven't I spent days, even weeks, at Axel's orgies?

And yet my warm, nervous hand, reaching out for Pauline's breast. What has this, this grope done but regressed me forty years? What, the fear of a security man? The fear of some uniformed youth with buttocks as thin as his lips, flapping away at me? Did I fear, or even seek, punishment? Certainly, my hand quivered. What game was I playing with the gods? And to be left here, today, with the slow stink of shame. Surely I've done enough, bucked and fucked and sucked enough, haven't I? For this?

2009-01-18T06:39:00.005Z

God knows, I could do with some supervision.

I fired Buckley. Who wouldn't? Aside from his moronic adherence to Freud, I couldn't bare his bald, stubbly head. Very likely he would have demurred, pointing out it's genital likeness. However, he failed to hide his surprise when I told him we were finished, flinching, somewhat pleasurably, then muttering something about my grieving process.

Oh Dad, when will I ever get round to you?

Is it time to talk?

How our moments escalate.

But Buckley was wrong. My father's death is reorientating my entire existence, but it has nothing to do with this irritable and destructive desire to be alone, utterly alone, aside from periodic acts of intercourse, of course. And so it is, I fired Buckley because I hoped never to see him again, ever. I could ruin my entire career in the space of a few weeks, but I am in the grip of thanatos and cannot help but wonder, was I ever as good a fuck as now? I doubt it. But if there were a moment, a moment in time where the flame of my end were lit, it was last summer. It was Rome, in August, when I groped, in seeming magnificence, the bare breast of Canova's Pauline. It ruined me.

So, there we are.

A glass of O, and sleep.

2009-01-14T23:16:00.002Z

Oh, please.

Is there nowhere else for me?

I am sorry. Yes, yes

I am. I wish I had somewhere better to be. Only, this is the less lonely place, oh please god.

There is nothing but this, and a glass of O (indeed I renounced the pipe), so help me reader, save my soul from the world, my life, from the power of the dog. What what else is there? I've ran screaming my head off in English forests, I've whored my way round the taverns of post-war Europe, and confessed everything at the grave of my master, in Montparnasse. And so it goes, with some regret, considerable bullshit, and not a little lust, I beseech you.

Listen, please.

For where I lie, I honour.

2009-01-12T21:56:00.003Z

God, my dick hurts.

No, really. I've been frigging for months, for years. But really, these last few months I've frigged like nothing else. I wonder if they are not, as I reach the middle of my middle years, the dying strain of all my wanks, past and present, as if, like any common or garden drug addict, I was furiously aching, doubled over, for the memory of that first ever, ever, frig. God only knows, but my dick hurts.

Have we met?

2008-08-28T04:48:00.005+01:00

This boat life will be the death of me. I have been rather low lately with various niggles and wheezes, spluttering and occasional flushes, all of them stages on the withdrawal and recovery from O that I appeared to have embarked upon. But I am weakened and irritable, taken to phoning Karen on impulse, having nothing to say. I find myself eroticising the most unlikely of clients and then, having closed the session, I breeze down into the kitchen with a passion for the small talk of my colleagues. I have never embraced the community of my fellows as I have recently, including that of Gareth. Of course, Helen is ill and Neil is lovesick, I am withdrawing and Gareth is insane but we are, at last, the very image of a happy family.

As for Canova's Pauline, dear Reader, I touched her breast. In fact, I ran my finger along her cold lips, as if waiting for her to bite.

Thom is twelve and starting a new school. The mackerel have left early this year, so lately it's been dismal fishing. But he has seemed unduly relaxed about that, happy to spend all morning with me, and catch nothing. And it's on mornings such as these that I wonder if there are whole swathes of his interior life of which I know nothing.

I long to be home.

2008-08-21T22:23:00.003+01:00

Smuggling O into Rome.

In the days before security became an ontological condition, I used to waltz through customs with the O in my hand or in my top pocket or, as on a certain memorable trip to Florence, crushed down into a bag of pistachio nuts. But we live in stupid times which demand stupid responses and so it was I went through security with the O inside my unlit pipe which, indeed, I left hanging from the corner of my mouth.

2008-08-13T05:13:00.002+01:00

And so tomorrow I leave for Rome.

My master is not well represented in Rome but I fully expect Raphael to restore my spirits and, in particular, the tweaked nipple of his La Fornarina. And while I have always found sculpture rather less subtle and even tiresome (do we not deserve a break from our three dimensions?), I am looking forward to seeing Canova's rendering of Bonaparte's sumptuously sexy, yet irredeemably silly sister, Pauline. In fact, I hope to touch her breast.

Thom was hurt I failed to invite him. I told him this was a work trip. Truth is, I need the freedom to be very possibly on my worst behaviour. Besides, it does no harm to allow his mother to know I am not solely at her beck and call. Yet does she ever beck, or call, come to that?

I called Axel on a few matters pertaining to the maintenance of the boat. He sorted it out with his customary indifference to the practical world (he'll buy a new boat) and then gave me the number of a friend in Rome. I shuddered slightly and, as with Thom, told him it was work, not pleasure. What am I doing? Perhaps one has to do things to find out the reason for doing them.

God, I miss home. I ache for a long, soulful shit to Chopin. Possibly a Nocturne, the 4th, yes.

2008-08-09T22:49:00.002+01:00

I've had a run of pipes this week and, certainly, it's slowed me down. I'm constipated and plagued with childish ailments, runny nose and random itching. I've taken so much in the way of O I now no longer know if I even need a piss. My bladder has inflated to documentary levels. Of course, if my mind were to slow the way my body has then I'd be kicking up a proper storm. Perhaps it has? Suicide is no longer an option. It hasn't been since the birth of Thom. And even this morning I realised that a mere glance at a decent picture can warm me sufficiently. I spent a little time with my master's portrait of his second wife, Helene Fourment in a Fur Wrap. That was enough to feel part of life, least for today.

I'd like to talk to Karen.

I'd like to tell her why we failed to mend our relationship. (Because of Thom).

I'd like to lose some weight, give up the O, the fire in the belly, generally, all that, sharpen up. I shall take a week in Rome, I think. All I need are my masters. Yes, I shall have a week in Rome, that'll quicken me again. And god alone, I hope to make it. What if I am waylaid and land up talking to someone? Fuck me, I'll book it now.

2008-08-06T23:12:00.003+01:00

How much boat can a man take?

All day I was feeling mischievous. Finally, with my brandy warming, I put a little supercilious Shostakovich on, the Jazz Suite and so, limbering up for some entertainment, I rang up the Swiss and gave him eight weeks notice to vacate. He took it gracefully, as if to suggest he had been thinking the very same thing, and at the same time, only I had got to the phone first. Queer. How much ruin and misery our sexuality! How many affairs did the poor wife have to have? And the children, what, teenagers? Oh there'll be self harm, perhaps a brilliant neurotic, anything to seek definition. A Nazi child, perhaps? Oh god, what has he done? I rang Karen. I miss you.

I walked around the boat. Around and around the boat.

I returned to the lounge, switched off my phone. I carried on walking. I carried on and on until I was certain that I knew what I was doing.

2008-08-05T21:11:00.003+01:00

A cup of O.

Well, I may as well confess. On sunday afternoon the craving for O had given me such an ache over the back of the neck that I had no choice but to sneak into the personal rooms Of Father Ian, chaplain of Southwark cathedral, and the drum and bass of my temples was so relentless that I could do nothing but throw my crushed up poppy heads into his kettle and, when boiled, take the kettle outside and, throwing myself on the grass, wait for the lovely O to steep. There was no time to investigate the suggestion of pornography under Father Ian's cushions, but certainly it lent a balance in the moral reckoning of our situations, so I lay back on the verge feeling like the god of my own singular needs yet wondering, too, what I would have said to Father Ian if he had found me in his closet. I like to think I could have turned it around and departed his rooms, perhaps having thrashed his buttocks with a few sticks. I returned home in a swoon, and slept like a baby.

2008-08-03T20:52:00.003+01:00

Thom cancelled.

On impulse, I took a train to London to see Rothko. I visit his room at the Tate twice yearly and have plans to visit the chapel in Houston next year. He is my only concession to 20th century art. In fact, aside from the phenomenologists, he is my only concession to anything at all abstact. And yet, in accepting Karen's unconvincing apology I was left with time to ponder on the nuances in her voice. I have chronicled how we tried and failed to renew our relationship. Certainly, I have yearned for her and yet, in imagining all kinds of temporary lovers, I have thrown every obstacle in our way. So why have I contrived this jealousy? Is it so hard to accept that I prefer my life as, oh that silly phrase, a single man.

I'm running out of O.

Sliding out of East Croydon, I called K, the line was dead. There is no O in London anymore, no, hasn't been since the 1890's, and so, already itchy, the awareness of arrival into a place without it sent my craving on a spiral. I walked swiftly to the Tate, hoping Rothko would restore some balance, only to find his room had been temporarily dismantled. And so, furious, I stormed to the box office where, Maxim, the Polish, explained the reason for this and that, luckily, there were many other paintings to see. Other paintings? What do you think I am, other paintings? Do you think I will look at anything that is put in front of me? I am here for Rothko!!! For Rothko!!! After that, London was not pretty for me. I spent the afternoon walking along residential roads in Chelsea and Kensington, imagining a letter to the Guardian, and lopping the heads of any wanton poppy plants.

2008-07-28T22:31:00.004+01:00

I will have to enter your house now.

Oh, you made a hearty job of clearing out. It's what kept you going those final months.

I don't know when I'll do it, Dad. I still feel like I need to make an appointment, habit being such. Of course Thom is too young to help and there's a melodrama in seeking the support of anyone else. And after all, if grief is anything, it's not lonely. Though objectively, I suppose, this is very likely the most lonely time of my life. George is in Asia, looking for a new wife and old recipes. He sends a marvellous postcard. I dumped Buckley, as promised. I am also professionally negligent in not seeking out another supervisor. I'd like to keep it simple for a while, perhaps rope in a Gestaltist. And I seem to have removed myself from my friends in psychotherapy, prefering the company of Renaissance scholars and obese women. And even Gareth, when he sees my eyes glaze over, is aware that it's not about him.

2008-07-27T04:56:00.002+01:00

And yet, I have practised no magick since returning from Wittenberg.

In the first place, Axel's boat feels altogether too fabulously modern and almost futuristic for something so arcane. I didn't feel there was a suitable space until last night, drunkenly exploring the lower cabins, I came across a small and empty room. There was nothing but a stone Buddha on the floor of the back wall with, as ever, his closed eyes and the smug smile. Was this Axel's meditation room? The fleeting idea of his inner life left me cold as, I suspect, it leaves him, too. I could throw the Buddha overboard (are not life's pleasures deep enough?) and do my invocations, and my evocations, in here. It is pleasingly dark, too.

We caught bream for lunch, Thom and I.

He'll be going to a new school next year and I am raising the question of finishing his schooling in private education. Like many professions, teaching and teachers have been ruined by this government with it's moronic obsession with targets, tables and statistical hygiene, at the expense of nothing less than life itself. Why of course children stab each other in the playground for, if we know anything, it's that life can be denied only so long. And so I find myself honing my arguments in favour of, ready to enjoy the battle with Thom's mother, and the egalitarianism that she, and the middle classes, have now taken to their hearts. I drove Thom home yesterday and saw her, in my wing mirror, standing at the kitchen window. I then had another of my wayward and unaccountable certainties that she has, in fact, been single all this time.

2008-07-25T21:15:00.005+01:00

I got a little burnt. Today, I did.

It's the weather. For an hour, with my skin blistering and tight, I wandered around the boat without a single thought in my head. I was an empty vessel inside an empty vessel. And if it weren't for my renewed passion for cigarettes, I'd be nothing! Certainly there are moments, if not whole hours when I am clinically a psychopath. And so I took to wondering how grief can render me, a therapist, so useless, so labile, so prone to marching up and down with my nothingness. And so I took to wondering of the state of the world, the nation, the city and the town, of the people in my street and how we rub along together, we do, pretty much. And yet the lunacy within each of us, BANG! God, FUCK! And to think that we dont, do we, no, we hold it together, we do, pretty much. Yet god help Caroline if I see her tonight, oh god, yes god.

And Thom.

We'll fish off the pier if the weather holds.

2008-07-23T22:22:00.008+01:00

Ah, Caroline on deck, putting out the washing.

Myself on top deck, tapping ash onto the awning below.

Aside from her bikini, Caroline cannot help but remind me of Degas, and those moments of sensual, yet awkward physicality. God I should clutch her arse and save us both.

I have to confess I have missed Gareth. Within seconds he was gossiping, open and intimate, revealing the end of his relationship with his life partner, his fear for Neil over his dwindling client list, and the ridiculous but charming concern over Helen and the schizophrenia that runs in her family, finally making itself known. And so I sat with Gareth in the kitchen, blowing clouds of smoke between us, wondering if I had missed him or, rather, missed the simple ache and grace of inclusion.

Clearly, I'm capable of anything.

I could walk out of my life again, again and again.

I could go paint boats in New Zealand.

Or chop trees in Scotland. Or find an Asian bride.

Give her all I own.

2008-07-22T21:51:00.006+01:00

Oh jest is infinite, is it not?

Well mine isn't. You think I jest?

No, no.

Angels, I believe.

And so it was, with my central nervous system somewhat impaired, my senses, in recompense, gloriously alive, my tread firm and definitive with the scent of O hanging on my collar, and feeling as libidinally febrile as ever, I walked into town and back to work, wondering how to explain my overlong leave. I decided that the maiden aunt, incontinent and immobile yet culturally aware, resided less in Australia and rather more in Rome. I decided the Italian city, with all that art, would throw Gareth off the scent. He'd let me have Rome. Very likely he'd bag the East, all that injustice and literal thinking, nothing to threaten. And so you can imagine my surprise on turning the corner to meet Gareth's huge grin (and obvious delight) and the instantaneous question, so how was it, Wittenberg? I smiled wide and true and, holding the buckle of my belt, found a deep, but entirely false laugh. Well of course, I learnt sorcery in Wittenberg, I said. I then explained most seriously of the minor relatives of my father that I looked up in Germany, en route, of course, to the maiden aunt in Rome.

Of course, I had sent them all a postcard! But why had I done that and, equally, why had I forgotten? And so it was that I entered work with a wall of defences, lies and all the unending manipulation and smelt, again, the warm oil of my life, and, ticking over, the engine of my grand plan. I threw open the window and, leaning out, lit a cigarette as if searching for it all on the street below.

2008-07-22T05:53:00.004+01:00

I woke early to the drunken mewling and heavy tread of Caroline and Jeff returning to their boat. (And why, Axel, are we not double glazed?) What grisly party had they attended? Very likely it was a barbey that got out of hand. All tits and tans in some patioed garden, burgers and bottled beer from eastern europe, followed by the pub owned by their mates who happen to sell them their first yacht, then a lock-in for old times sake. Oh, when will they learn?

I went to the bathroom. I usually take a breath and enter my belly before walking into Axel's bathroom. Yet today I was unable to avoid the wall to wall mirrors and saw, as if for the first time, the wave of grey hair upon my head. What happened in Wittenberg? I used to have hair flecked with grey, maturing well, at it's own pace. I am now a grey haired gentleman. Oh what have the angels done? I found my dressing gown and went onto deck. And to think I have had a postcard of Dr. Dee pinned above my desk for over thirty years.

Oh god Helen.

Helen and Gareth.

Neil?

What will I tell them? And will Gareth believe me? The truth is rarely a realistic, or sociable proposition, so most likely I'll find a maiden aunt in Australia who required some comfort. Or maybe I spent a few weeks in one our Celtic regions, trying and failing to write my first novel. That'll go down well. But I must choose my deception with care for it may return to haunt my dreams and so, with a sly quarter pipe at the ready, I went to prepare myself for returning to the clear and obvious horseshit of the working world.

2008-07-20T22:44:00.003+01:00

In grief, what did I do?

Wittenberg? Well it's a place, isn't it? A place to hammer out your very own religion. A chance to buckle down and sort it out, once and all. A place to go pale and insane with learning. A place of tidy women and furious students. And so, your honour, what did I learn?

Well, I learnt magick.

What can I say? I feel almost shy in saying. In Wittenberg I learnt the Enochian magick of angels. In short, in grief, all I ever knew was now nothing. It was no-thing. There were no dimensions to anything. And like any crying child, I had nothing to lose and only my Dad to gain. Am I apologising? Hah, I should be struck off this minute! And yet, was not Jung's Psychology and Alchemy a bible of my youth? I feel no better for that or any reckoning. And so, as I sit waiting for Thom to come and catch ourselves a proper breakfast, it sometimes feels like the continuity of a life, of a mind, and at other times it all feels shattered, and new. Ah my master, Rubens, how I wonder at your seraphs and nymphs, your angels and satyrs, what the fuck have we known our life long?

Ah now now, carve me a breast, my master!

A breast!

2008-07-19T01:06:00.003+01:00

Ah, Dad.

If anything was ever expected, it was your death. And what are the processes of grief, if not my bread and butter? Oh, we always fell short, course we did. We were always lagging behind the face of that clock. When I could admit, dripping in fear, that you were only weeks away from death, you were, in fact, days away. And when I could see you gasping for the straw, craning over for the last suckle on some warm beer and accept, finally, that we were in our last hours, we were minutes away. And when at the end, half joking, you asked me if you would be going 'up or down', I fell to pieces. You were not asking and, finally, after a lifetime, I had no vanity to even imagine an answer. You were just wrestling me, as ever, right to the end. There was nothing here but you and me, and death. And so at last you couldn't hold your head, and death came. It pulled you hard into the pillows but you never left me, you never turned to the wall, or said a prayer, no final moment for yourself, it was just you and me, forever and always.

Is love the only word for that? And then it was over. It was over.

Ah, Dad.

What next? Well what?

To Wittenberg.

2008-07-17T03:11:00.010+01:00

I was eased from my dreams by a mournful Gorecki. Without the accompaniment, I'd very likely have banished the dream to oblivion for it was, indeed, the most fantastically torrid, orgiastic debauch reminiscent of nothing else but Ruben's own Last Judgement. I do have a fondness, almost a nostalgia for eschatology and so, buttering my toast, had to remind myself that everyone who has ever existed has lived at the very end of time. And so, happily rebuked, I took my rods onto deck to catch myself a decent breakfast, and, notwithstanding, the better to spy Caroline at her toilet. Oh, they are lovely people, Jeff, Jeff and Caroline. Like myself, they have just entered middle age. Having sold up their recruitment, or double glazing business and, childless, they are now perma tanned retirees in the world of easy cruising. They are incredibly fit, always upbeat, clasping hands and shoulders, the only blemish being Caroline's one, shameful cigarette, alone at night. They are, of course, a mere step away from the world of swingers.

There was noone around. Very likely they'd gone to town, running an errand in pursuit of their next adventure. I lit a half pipe Of O and took to wondering about my dream. And yet, it was less the whirling mass of breast and thigh that concerned me, or the terrible will of the flesh, but more a sense of overriding, possibly anonymous beneficence surrounding it all. I was then reminded of my master, Rubens, and always within or above the most punishing of scenes are the angels, forever heralding, or succumbing. And so is it any wonder, after all, that I have to come believe in angels? Finishing my pipe and, as ever, in the steps of my master, I returned to the kitchen, coffee, and my journal.

2008-07-15T21:57:00.003+01:00

And so this morning, stumbling out of bed like an English poet, I took a piss in the third and, surely, the final bathroom in Axel's boat. A measure of peace came over me as I watched the arc of my urine. It was good to know my waters would be slipping so economically into the waters below me, rather than piped around town with all the fanfare and administration of that. Am I warming to nature? Ah, I'm too old. Only it's deceptions really interest me. Of course Axel's largesse is legendary but he did request of me one thing. And for godsake, he said, just don't move, don't sail her, or screw her, or go anywhere at all with her, please. Now I understand that his boat is so big if I were to sail it anywhere it'd probably cause a diplomatic incident, perhaps even the recall of the depressed Swiss who is renting my house, very likely teasing himself to sleep, this minute, with my very own Mapplethorpe's. How far do I have to go to sleep in my own bed? Will terrifying the Dutch, do it? I shall finish my notes now (ah, my clients, do I deserve their loyalty?) and then take a brandy onto deck, all the better to see Caroline and the outline of her bra, as she slowly closes her curtains and then I'll return to the kitchen. I shall light a candle, brew some coffee, and, in my journal, I'll try to make sense of the last twelve weeks, holed up in a tiny room in Wittenberg, grieving, insane, and learning an altogether different trade.

2008-07-13T21:47:00.004+01:00

I've taken up fishing, by the by.

Thank the lord for silence. But am I welcome here, I wonder? Will the old life have me back?

I've always wanted this, an endless horizon, the enveloping vista.

And that's Caroline! Have I mentioned Caroline? I saw her today. She was sunbathing on deck in the most unlikely weather.

Indeed, I currently have temporary residence of Axel's new boat, moored in the marina of my usual stamping ground. As I am renting out my own house (including a premium for the walls of erotica) so I find myself homeless. Of course Axel, the errant and rather elderly son of Austro-German industrialists, is on a four week tour of the Pyramids and he extended the generosity of his vessel to me, in the main, due to my bereavement. And so it was, pushing aside the slovenly mackeral I caught earlier in the day, I took to wondering if I could just storm back into my home and throw out the imposter. After so many months away I long to reclaim my life, my home, my possessions and while my tenant is, apparently, a Swiss diplomat, the only thing that stays my hand is remembering the sticky divorce he is suffering. As men of a certain age, we must look out for each other.

Ah, Dad.

Dad.

And Caroline, on deck, smoking at the moon. It's ten now. She'll turn in soon, snuggle up with Jeff. And as it darkens, we'll let the waters lap around us.

2008-07-11T00:20:00.003+01:00

Mmmm.

No, no.

Mmm....Mmmm...Mmmmm.

Yes.

Yes.....

2008-04-01T22:14:00.002+01:00

April Fool.

I was feeling mellow and mildly humourous following a majesterial shit to an early, choral Stockhausen and yet even this equilibrium of the soul failed me as I lazily checked my electronic messages. One such was from a man called Buckminster. He was writing to seek my assistance in resolving the issues he had with his insane father. Oh, to be so certain. I deleted him and went to butter my toast. Only later did Thom call. Of course, I have my supervision with Buckley this morning and, as a good Freudian, he would insist on taking this joke very seriously. Dear Buckley, of course children think their parents insane. More pertinently, dearest Buckley, why are you so scared of them? He is, indeed, a symptom of a rather effete, somewhat feeble generation of men. Why in god's name do I keep him on? I'll give him notice today. Yes, it'll be fun. Freudian's are so crap at endings, it'll be marvellous fun.

2008-03-26T05:51:00.003Z

Thom had forgotten his book and so, as I was reading or, rather, re-reading The Brother's Karamazov, I found the section where the monk tells of immorality as the healthy response to the loss of god and, while reading it to Thom after dinner, I reflected on the wonder and luck of having such a curious child. I was reminded of a boy I saw at the station yesterday. He was in a circle of other teenage boys and, as they passed and puffed on a class A substance, this boy, clearly in need of some ontological comfort, stuck his hand into his trousers. Thom will have his own battles but, unlike so many of his generation, it will not involve such a consuming onanism. I was then reminded of Giorgione's Sleeping Venus and yet her groping hand is explorative, intuitive and sleepy, far removed from our station boy and his fear of the world, a fear of his face.

2008-03-24T23:49:00.002Z

My good friend Axel, son of German-Austro industrialists, arrived in London with his Easter boat party this weekend but, thank god, this was not the reason Thom and I took the train to the city. Rather, we were intent on seeing Madame de Sade, a rather thin play about the (oh suffering!) wife of our hero. I am forever astounded at Thom's development and, in the interval, as we aired our first thoughts, I rather regretted feeling that I had to remove the Mapplethorpe from the kitchen wall for the duration of his stay with me. He is only ten but nothing shocks him or, clearly, his friends. Yet as we travelled back I wondered if my gesture was less the preservation of his innocence but perhaps a rearguard attempt to clear some space for him and his rebellion, his own transgressions. Later, pouring a small brandy, Thom came down and kissed me goodnight. I went to bed feeling older, conservative, and pleasurably so.

2008-03-21T23:01:00.004Z

The low mood has lifted.

My belly is warm and my bowels definitive!

The low mood has slipped away, leaving hardly a trace upon me so I could, and clinically should, succumb again, and perhaps soon. However, pursuing my pleasures with a devotion and attending to my father's toilet have lent me a keen grasp on myself that has restored me immeasurably. Also, I took Helen to Venice. Of course, my initial purpose of the trip was to show Helen Bellini's Madonna degli Alboretti and to gauge her response to the maternal aloof. She was most animated and then, stirring her expensive coffee, withdrew from me. Of course, as I hoped, she came like a train that night.

I should have predicted a few days in Venice, the most artful and fake of cities, would have cheered me, and so it did. Yes, one or two long walks on the Downs has helped, certainly. Yet I find nature so insistent, like an overbearing parent. How can it compare?

Then a message from Karen. She is unwell and will I look after Thom for a few days? My restoration is complete! And yet my first, somewhat bitter feeling, was relief at our mutual lack of support. I am, indeed, a miserly creature. Clearly, if depression were to break out again, I'd deserve every bit of it.

2008-03-12T22:15:00.002Z

Up 5 am, as ever.

My low mood continues and, at a loss to explore or even refine it, I went shopping for a new translation of my Dante. Yesterday Helen placed my hand on her breast. I almost cried, but she turned away too quickly.

Haven't wanked for weeks.

I keep waiting for rain. I did this as a child, but no storm is sufficient now.

The O tires me out. Possibly I shall ring K and enquire after some stimulants. He has promised me a look at his 16th century edition of an Italian book on the varieties of the female breast. The longer I live the more I understand our entire failure to understand the art of living. They knew it, once.

2008-03-05T22:24:00.002Z

I am sleepless for days now.

I can feel a heaviness seeping into my bones, and settling in. I feel it in the hesitation of my flesh, the gap between the thought and the doing. And it's not as if I'm uncertain of anything, if anyone was ever certain, it's me. Where is the centre of the world, if not in my beating heart? Of course, I could bypass this crisis. Increase my use of brandy, a few extra pipes of an evening, anything to create a craving and, thereby, a minor addiction. That could prove a useful distraction to this misery. But I am unlikely to accept that, the metonymic of need, as, finally, satisfying enough. Besides, it would be a dishonour to the soul. No, I have no choice now. I will be attentive to detail, kinder to myself. I will relent a little on the Dante, renew my bowels with Chopin, all the while sitting in the wings, awaiting the shadow of my depression to reveal itself.

2008-03-03T05:08:00.002Z

I woke at 4 am, sleepless.

The red light of the ansaphone flashes in the dark. One of those messages is from George asking, in so many words, my opinion of the Thai. Another is an invite to a talk on Ego and Art, and yet another from Karen, passing on the make and model of the phone she wants for Thom. I am not reluctant to deal with these messages or my rising tide of paperwork, yet I've neglected it all. It seems I require some purchase on these tasks, the underlying thread that links them to me. It's as if I expect the next task to be the one that joins the others together. Is this how it begins, is it? The long road of my dying. I forget, it's so long since I've been depressed.

2008-02-28T22:27:00.006Z

Helen is clear!

There is a deep pleasure in endings. Indeed, one should only embark on something if the pleasure of it's end is already in sight. Helen's news was hanging over me all week and so, the relief of hearing she does not have cancer was expressed, interestingly, in my purchasing two tickets for a celebratory performance of Messiaen's Quartet to the End of Time. Clearly, I am desperate for something to end.

Gareth is avoiding me.

And Colin, that most contemporary of men, I find him one of the most subtly deluded men I have ever met. Unable to experience, deeply, his own unhappiness, he seeks the cause of it.

I sense Gareth is not hearing what he wants from Colin.

I have stirred my coffee in the kitchen, waiting. I have strolled the hallway with the nonchalance of an executioner. But no Gareth.

2008-02-26T21:45:00.002Z

It took a while for Canto XVII to finish so I drove round and round the block and, as ever the counter of my mood, arrived at work to find my happiness meet Gareth, snarling in the kitchen. He tried to hide his mood by ridiculing the morning news. In response I poured my coffee, breathing deeply, trying to stay in the belly. Inevitably, my retreat incited him. He them ridiculed a very promiscuous Gestalist of our acquaintance, roped in the Motivational Interviewers, then finished with a low punch at Neil and his toilet. It was a fabulous display of complete horseshit and so, elated at Gareth's angst, I withdrew to my room to await the day, and to allow Gareth to expend his ire on other, perhaps more reactive people. And yet only later, taking an early evening shit to a little singsong by Bach, did it occur to me that Gareth's anger might relate to myself. Or rather, myself and Colin. It was a deeply gratifying idea. Indeed, tomorrow will tell, as it will the state of Helen's health. Very likely, I'll sleep like a peach.

.

2008-02-24T22:52:00.002Z

I've just returned from George's and, thank christ, I never laid a finger on the Thai.

I'm a bottle of brandy under, my liver on fire, but my friendship intact. I wish for nothing now but to spread out on the cool grass of my garden, to close my eyes and wait for Helen's nipples to descend and enter my open mouth.

Instead, I shall have a cigarette on the terrace then it's lights off, a quick wank under my duvet.

I shall wake in the morning.

With or without soul, life goes on.

2008-02-23T05:52:00.006Z

I can't say we did.

And yet, rather in the manner of Bergh's Nordic Summer Evening, there was an entire lake of desire between us. We did nothing but fake a gaze into the distance. Of course, we were talking over the desire, intensifying it. I was deeply unprofessional. It is my job to wade into these waters but in opting for the pleasures of restraint and the coy I have, therapeutically, failed her. And yet, she did not want it any other way, seeing my analysis of our desire as a weakness in me, and a rebuke to herself. And certainly, under this happy, willful denial an ancient imperative, nothing less than life itself, was grinding away. It is this fierce instinct that knows it is in client R.'s best and permanent life interest to use her unknown, unconscious needs in the service of the flesh. The dumb will of biology is the winner here. In short, she is too young for the therapy we practice. All the energy in her unconscious, defensive stratagems will make her career, find her a husband, and lend the final push in the happy conception of another, altogether different life. It's not for therapy that she needs me. Rather, she would like a confirmation of her power to achieve those life events and, with time running out, sex is the way to go. I could point this out to her, of course. I could do that, then recline with a half pipe and a slim volume of verse. Or I could meet her in the marshlands of our mutual need, and fuck the day to death. It could go either way, frankly.

2008-02-22T03:38:00.004Z

Client R.

I considered my work with R. to have come to an end a few months ago but she doesn't feel the same and so, aside from considering that some things are only ended by sex and death, I have plodded along with her stale wishes. She says that her desire to continue therapy proves there are old dependencies and, therefore, the necessity of dealing with them. I am not unaware, of course, that in these winter months it is a peculiar thing to wear tops that reveal such a distinct outline to the nipple and it is this, rather then her own protests of dependency, that suggest a more cogent case for continuing our work. I will see her this morning and, assuredly, the ancient argument will arise for enacting desire, rather than it's articulation. Of course, the planet is going to hell in a handcart in the service of articulation and yet, inevitably, I shall ensure a pipe of O to hand, the better to collude with the necessary suppression, not to say the death of the planet.

Helen is quiet.

As for George, I accepted an invite to dinner. He allowed me to know the Thai friend will be cooking for us. I pictured George and I licking madly from the same bowl.

2008-02-20T23:13:00.003Z

I was dreaming with a heavy heart. In short, I find myself fatigued at the idea of another onslaught of whispering, rumour and the unending, oedipal desire of Gareth to smear my name. I wouldn't mind but he is forever looking in the wrong places. He could do a lot worse than overhear my next session with R., for example. Indeed, I find myself wavering on the border of a misconduct. And for all my tiresome articulation of impulse, it is also a cultural provocation. Do we not, after all, require ever more sophisticated forms of transgression? And so it is in this mood I will entertain client R.

And George has invited me over.

Something will break, I suspect.

2008-02-18T23:27:00.004Z

And where was I, 4 am this morning?

Idling gently past her driveway. Upon which, of course, there were no unknown, nor even foreign cars. I remembered Lowell and his own madness, each blood cell sobbing. Whereas I simply went home, buttering my toast to my overloud, yet always ferocious quartets. And so it was I was rather unprepared and overexcited in my investigations, entering the kitchen to greet Gareth with a wheeze, and faking, too, a little asthma. This allowed me to mutter something about exercise and fitness whereupon Gareth, to my delight, poured my coffee and said there was, indeed, a sharpness in the air. While I can imagine him not making any mention of badminton, it is rare for Gareth not to place himself in the centre of any gambit, and even more unusual to hear of the weather. Clearly, he was avoiding any link between himself and Colin and so, by default, the conspiracy was confirmed. I took my coffee to my room, aching for a little negative consolation, but instead, heaved my shoulder to the wheel and read up, from a fifty year edition, on the pathology that is homosexuality.

2008-02-17T21:30:00.003Z

I was on the phone, consoling Thom over Arsenal's woeful display when, while aware my son will bear his losses heavily in later life, I also sensed that he was keeping me on the phone for some other reason. I made a mental note to check his mother's driveway in the early hours. I then whoofed up the Gorecki and took a slow, almost mournful shit and it was then, with the toilet door ajar, that I could just hear a message recording itself onto my machine. It was an old Rogerian friend informing me, as requested, that he does, indeed, know a little something of Colin, that most contemporary of men. He told me that Colin, in fact, plays a weekly game of badminton. I was shocked, pleasurably. Had not Gareth mentioned playing the game himself? I took a warmth, almost a gratitude, in imagining their conspiracy. After all, it is a relief to know one is not surrounded by dullards and, really, what can they possibly do to me? And so it was I took a dose of O and opened my Mapplethorpe, all the better to explore our unlovely and, perhaps, finite outcomes.

2008-02-16T23:32:00.005Z

So, he sends a card.

I woke this morning to a postcard from George. It is from a film the artist K R Buxley has made showing herself having an orgasm. Of course the very meaningful, if slightly laboured point, lies surely in that all one sees is the face of the artist. Yet beyond Buxley, what is George trying to say? That he is back to his old powers? What is this if not another provocation?

I spent the day with my father. He says he is in remission.

I agreed, heartily. All the while his leg gets bigger and bigger.

Yesterday I saw Colin, the most contemporary of men. After the session, as an antidote, I spent awhile cleaning and polishing my Russian pipe, circa 1880. I am still no wiser as to what Colin wants or who he knows but I am aware of Gareth. He passed me in the hall, smiling, as if his mind were elsewhere.

2008-02-12T23:10:00.000Z

I heard the Gustave Dore fall from the letterbox as I sat on the can, taking an uneventful shit to the dying strains of my favoured Gorecki. The Dore is a scene from the Inferno and yet, while I have listened to the recording in my car every morning, the purchase of the print was somehow bound up with George. In short, I wanted to share it with him. Our friendship began in hell and, assuredly, will end there. Why, perhaps we are closer to that end than I ever imagined. These are ruminatons that have no basis anywhere but the id. Oh god, I am infinitely subtle when it comes to men, but in dealing with women I lack manners. How can I ever take seriously his ridiculous Thai girlfriend? Of course, mine is a very artful barbarism, and one that has served me well. No, I am under no illusions. It is the manner of my controlling the beast, the art of it, that delivers, not the beast itself. Are we not all burdened with what we don't yet know? Oh, I have tried, but I simply cannot imagine entertaining George without taking the bait and pouncing upon the Thai. And George? He expects nothing less. And so it was I spent the night alone, indulging the Dore, taking a dose of O, on my guard against the passive, sleeping early and dead to the world.

2008-02-11T23:23:00.000Z

My weekend exertions maintained their occult power this morning as I breezed into work and, following some buffoonery with Gareth in the kitchen, I entered Helen's room and, blithely ignoring her victim self, asked gently but most firmly why she had taken my parking space. The low note in my voice awakened her and, entering adult, she said she took my space on the assumption I was walking to work. But is it not my space, whether I drive or not? She accepted this as the case, maintaining a level, adult smile. I heaved my voice into it's deepest timbre, sensing a certain relief on Helen's part and prompting, too, the further renegotiation of these states that occured later in the afternoon, in my room. Sex was not my intention and I was genuinely furious about the parking space. Of course, it's also my fault. Most recently I drive to work while listening to Dante's Inferno and I refuse to park my car and switch off the Florentine until I have reached the end of a canto. While I may insist on the perogative of poetry, it did make me late for a client last week, as I drove round and round the block until the end of Canto Xll. Aside from my exertions, it is also this heightened priority that is deepening my strength. I write this on the train, returning from Arsenal, Thom asleep on my shoulder. I may not have earnt this peace but I have owned it and that, I suspect, is much the same thing.

2008-02-10T22:50:00.001Z

And so finding myself in good time for my afternoon appointment I spent a few minutes in an anteroom, waiting for Madame C to appear. An elderly coffee table carried an array of disappointing pornography so I closed my eyes and shifted my focus inward. I quickly sensed that I wasn't here for my upper thighs or to reawaken my regressions, but simply to clutch any woman's arse and bury my head in her cunt. And so it was, exuding a nonchalent benevolence, I renegotiated with Madame C and she agreed to an extended oral, the price unchanged. I spent an hour working on the thighs, the clitoris and the vagina of madame C and, aside from straying to the nipples, ensured a concentration of purpose and, assuredly, as she writhed towards her several ends, I knew that I had summoned and wrangled and, finally, mastered the mess of all my guilts and regret over Helen. I heaved a deep breath and, as Madame C lay below me, eternally realised, I felt like the priest of her and all women and, in keeping, sought no reciprocation and felt, in fact, quite indifferent as Madame C laboured with my dick. I kissed her hand and put it away.

2008-02-09T22:53:00.000Z

Oh, George.

What farce our middle years. After a week of various hysteria, including my own in a public park, I decided to spend the day alone. I boiled up a mug of Burdock tea (is there nothing I will not do for my bowels), and browsed my eighteenth century copy of Ficino and yet, while curious to know what my Renaissance master has to say on the nature of grief, I was also aware of my breath, shallow and slight, a state I increasingly felt could only be resolved by a thrashing on the back of my upper thighs. I was aware that Helen's uncertain health lent her an unwarranted power and, therefore, hoping to balance this and resolve the tension in my lungs, I lay aside my Ficino and put in a few calls, finally making an appointment for myself tomorrow, along the coast, with a mistress who, if I remember correctly, used to work in a pet shop. She had a voice as hard as diamond.

I called Thom. We discussed his physics homework and after, on a whim, I projected, as fathers and sons tend to, all our dilemmas onto the astronomical and, thereby, asked what he knew of how the planets revolve around the sun. His answer nearly made me cry. So, lifting us onto firmer ground we then made plans to travel to Arsenal for monday night. Yet it was later, in the supermarket, seeing George and his new girlfriend in the alcohol aisle, that the uncertain emotion in my chest cohered into an obscene and horrible guffaw as I saw George's girlfriend was hardly more than a teenager, a Thai bride, in fact, and the innocence on the face of my friend as he pottered around with his girl was so profound, I had to depart the shop and unsure if it was misery for us both or admiration for him, I could do nothing but stagger home, breathing deeply, laughing like a loon.

Oh, George.

2008-02-08T21:16:00.000Z

Are they spying on me, are they?

I pay my professional body sixty pounds a year for the privilege of practising my trade and now, in gratitude, they spy upon me. And so it was, searching for Canto XXV of Dante's Inferno on my car stereo, I left for work reflecting that paranoia is, indeed, the most tiresome of all defence mechanisms and yet how else can I explain my new client, Colin. What a prick, is Colin. He has come to me to explore his depression. Normally, I would approve the humility of this and yet something in his tone wanted me to understand, rather desperately, that in this exploration we were equals. It soon transpired, of course, that Colin is a counsellor himself. He failed to reveal who recommended me and, aside from admiring his absolute baldness, I spent a fair portion of the session wondering if he was a plant, a spy, and if not from the BACP then perhaps a friend of Gareth's? He was clearly gay. Also, like many contemporary men, he is an expert on his feelings but knows nothing of soul. Of course, his access to his feelings allows us the semblance of a therapeutic session and yet I grew tired of his quick and felt discriminations for they are always temporary, without the reach of soul. It was a deeply superficial session but Colin seem to like it. It occurred to me that Colin, in his choice of career, may have wasted his entire life and I began to rather hope that he was a spy, a plant, if only for his sake. I shall send out some feelers, but if Gareth is behind this then I shall break his spine.

2008-02-04T21:13:00.000Z

Am I not done mourning?

Oh, mother.

I've had nearly forty years of nothing else. What have I been playing at?

Well what, then?

Oh a fake, certainly a fake, please god, yes.

But a buffoon I am not and yet, this morning, after a few songs by the hearty, if oververrated, Wolkenstein, I was ready to go to work and extinquish Gareth with an indifference that was so complete it was almost, in fact, religious. And yet, barely on the perimeter of the park, I felt a hot, oily ache. Initially, it reminded me of a certain insane lust, yet quickly I felt the need for the ground, for earth. The hot ache, like a ball, was roiling around my chest and I yearned for a place to lie down and clutch, or comfort myself. Quickly, the sobbing came. I imagined myself returning home and breaking down in front of the Nude Maja. It felt a vain and stupid thing to do and, rebuking myself, I was then distracted sufficiently to swallow the sobbing. So, having made no scene in my local, public park and, finally, pretending I had lost something, I made an exasperated, sweeping gesture and continued on my way. The charade, as ever, was entirely accurate for I had, indeed, lost something. If only the grief I have so long coveted. And so it was, I entered work in a broken and, it occured to me, a very modern state, desperate, as I was, to process something that not yet happened. And aware, too, of Gareth's voice in the kitchen.

2008-02-03T21:56:00.000Z

Well, he doesn't make it easy, does he, St. John? If my soul is made of anything it's wet and mud and steaming horseshit, and so it was I put down St. John of the Cross's Ascent and lifted the phone to call my own dear Helen whereupon I learnt, at last, that she has, in fact, found a lump. I may have thwarted Gareth but god, this was no consolation. A lump? And so, forever calculating, my second consideration was to wonder why I hadn't found the lump on friday. Had we not groped? My sense of occassion was failing me but, within the whirr of my defences, I was aware that I would have to deal with this in a physical way. I imagined diving off the pier and swimming to France. Helen mentioned a six week waiting for a mammogram and I found myself on firmer ground, lambasting the health service and offering to pay for private care. She made it clear she could fund her own needs, a statement I felt was sexual, as well as financial. And besides, the waiting was based on medical grounds. I could feel myself turning, sensing the involvment of unknown others, as well as Gareth. And it could, after all, just be a lump. Before signing off I had already decided to take a pipe of O to the bath, the better to explore the crushing failure of my instincts as well as, what I can only describe as, my position.

2008-02-02T22:18:00.000Z

Oh, I am grown old for this town.

I should move, no I should. It's a town for children, it really is. Everything here aspires to the condition of the infant, adoring of both innocence and incontinence. Oh, oh, an example. I was taking a quick brandy with an antiquarian friend when I spotted a flyer for an Ibsen play. Having a weakness for the Norwegian's cruel determinism I decided to go but, once again, it was another fusion of dance, jazz and camp, a mix of everything and therefore nothing, all, obviously, in the manner of Ibsen. I was appalled at this dissolution of a text into an onanistic showcase. The town is known for its liberality but it tends to extend this into a celebration of any personal expression whatsoever. It is such a gullible place. You could chew a piece of gum and it would draw a crowd. No I have to leave, I really do. One could make a postmodern apologia for the place, but no. It has an unbearable innocence and, under that, an inevitable pit of despair, depression and drugs. Yet it relentlessly celebrates youth and youth alone. And, of course, the old come here to be youthful, too. But they are missing a trick. Assuredly, one of the deep pleasures of life is accepting the age you are. No, I have to go. I shall ring George and tell him.

Later, after the show, I sat with an Australian girl. We spoke of nothing. However, I noticed her thighs and, after that, sat there, admiring her conversational skills.

This place will be the death of me.

2008-02-02T00:32:00.000Z

I was in a mournful mood and, rather pathetically, reading St. John of the Cross, when Gareth knocked. I had no desire for either good or bad news so I held my breath and said nothing. He didn't try the door and, always seeking rejection, I soon heard him walk away. Soon after that, to confuse him further, I made a racket as I left for lunch. Aside from a brief urge to throw my pork pie at the head of a deathly teenager, there was no reason to expect the surge of lust that overcame me in the queue at the cashpoint. If not for the efficiency of the machine, my behaviour may have turned criminal. But how ungainly, the way my femme snatched her money. Surely that, the discourteous consummation, would have put me off? I sat on a bench and tried to summon a little mentalese. Plainly, my relationship with Helen, while containing tenderness, is almost exclusively physical and yet I have grown so accustomed to liasons of this nature I sometimes forget that verbal intimacy is even an option. Inevitably, the silence is filled with something, usually my horrors. So, clearly, just because Helen and I don't talk much, it doesn't mean she is dying. And so, having confirmed the value of logic, I swept back into the house, ready to see my very famous client.

2008-01-31T23:38:00.000Z

I have no use for stress. No, I can't be doing with it. It's a failure of priority and, frankly, I have never failed to put myself first. And so it was with some surprise that I woke this morning to find that yesterday's concern for Helen had translated into a rash upon my arm. Following a wonderfully ordinary shit to a rather overrated Krommer concerto, I decided to refrain from a medical intervention, preferring to explore my dermatological issues more directly. Sitting neatly at her desk, Helen was reading a novel. Her bare arm and thin, pale wrist aroused me quickly, but I was annoyed by the novel, aware that until I knew what she reading, I would be unable to concentrate on seducing her. This is undeniably a delicate business. To secretly discover the title would enhance my desire, whereas a literary discussion would destroy it. She closed the book and seeing it was the latest Ian McEwan I was undisturbed, if slightly disappointed. I was aware that in trying to seduce Helen I was trying to resolve for myself the matter of her health. My deluded idea was that if she acquiesced, she was fine. If she didn't, it was very likely cancer. She spoke first, saying she hadn't missed me. I took this as an invitation to touch her breast. I eased my hand into her bra, holding her nipple, aware I could easily slip my hand between her thighs and under her skirt. The memory came of Axel's party and the several hundred breasts I saw that night and, remembering it, drew me closer to Helen. I felt her breath on my arm and the wholeness of that moment stilled us. I went to scratch the rash on my other arm and realised, woefully late, that testing her in this ridiculous way was serving my own, ancient wounds. My own dead mother and me, aged nine, had entered the room. Helen saved us both, saying she had a client coming. And I was freed for the bliss of scratching my arm to bits.

2008-01-29T22:02:00.000Z

So, with one of Ammerbach's rather more florid and, possibly, lesser known works dancing in my ears, I left for work this morning with an air of dreaminess that I sensed could turn, in an instant, into a wayward and relentless cruelty. I decided to nurture the dreaminess, keep it close and, when it turned, ensure Gareth was in sight. Within minutes I was in the kitchen, joyfully making him coffee. We spoke of his Humanistic supervisor and we bonded over his stupidity while I invented an acquaintance of similar disposition and, sharing, we denigrated them both. It was delightful. However, I was aware of Gareth simply dying to inform me of something terrible. I also sensed he was torn between the pleasure of hurting me, and maintaining his joy over my ignorance. I could feel the ecstasy of finding the balance between the two was clearly a fulcrum he played with as a child. Always disastrously intrusive, forever grabbing his father's dick, or hiding under his mother's skirts. And it was then, picturing the boy Gareth, that I imagined the horror of what he was aching to say. I suddenly understood it could relate to Helen and, quite possibly, her health. I could see the psychological ecstasy for Gareth in telling me that Helen, his maternal imago was, in fact, dying and that I, her ostensible partner, am so unnecessary as to be barely worth informing. I could see Gareth had waited his whole life to say this. Holding his mug, and opening his mouth, he lunged toward me. Using my coffee to stall him, I stepped forward and swinging my elbows, propelled myself out of the room. Helen was off today so I spent a couple of hours trying to contact her. For lunch, I threw open the window, lit a pipe of O and promptly forgot about them both.

2008-01-27T22:58:00.000Z

And when, precisely, when was it that my son, a mere ten, took control? When did the change occur? Or was it only this morning, in the hush as we heaved on our boots for the morning walk that he had promised me? Like that, the tables were turned. In the quiet of a moment I imagined was mine, he had me floored. Am I to understand he no longer enjoys our walks, that he is indulging me? Am I not authority enough? There is no manoeuvre left me now, only the absurd and overweening position of the specialist. Should I wow him with a little ornithology? Some soil science as we amble? Some folk astronomy? No, it's hopeless and so it was, impotent and waywardly bored, I dropped Thom off with his mother and invited myself over to George with a bottle of brandy. Luckily, the new girlfriend was not there but, as George tried to show me a photo of her, I feigned interest in some rubbish Picasso. I think she's blonde.

2008-01-26T22:59:00.000Z

I have indulged a deliriously sweet tooth of late and in recognition of this I took a tight, compacted shit this morning, and such was the effort, it arrived with a something of a sheen. I cannot blame Stockhausen. In truth, the piano of Klaiverstucke, rather than expressing a soul, seems to describe the outline of a soul, and is almost doubly moving for doing so. Yet this morning, as I strained, the Stockhausen sounded like an assault and it wasn't until flushing the toilet, then checking my hair, that I felt certain I wasn't about to break down.

2008-01-25T22:50:00.000Z

There is no such thing as sexual intercourse. Of course, Lacan was talking of language, and being a tease, too. Yet this line, upon which I once wrote an essay, came to haunt me again this morning, ruining my breakfast. And so, done with the late quartets, I left for work, deciding Lacan's line was also rather silly, almost pompous. This, in turn, lent a purpose, a firmness and an unmistakable virility to my stride. My arms swung with a spontaneity, a gusto. I was crushing the face of the great psychiatrist under my feet, and even if my arms could not repeat that spontaneity, I entered work with a pounding ego. Of course Gareth, who has spent his adult life crushing or seducing the male ego, could have destroyed me with a glance, so I swept up the stairs and burst into Helen's room, ready to bury my head into her bosom. And so it is, wars end. However, Helen had called in sick so I slammed her door shut. I spent the rest of the day alone with the residue of my inflation, relieved only by the memory of Tintoretto, a woman revealing her breasts and the relief, therein, to be reminded of the relentless, the unrelenting hydraulics of it.

2008-01-23T22:35:00.000Z

Perhaps there remains for us/ Some tree on a hillside.

And perhaps not even that.

I have, of late, neglected my Rilke.

Ah yes, a pipe of O to bed and read the elegies. What better.

And yet my working world is nothing if not intimate. Suffused all day long in the anima and yet I've banished it from the home. I return to a hearth of my own calculations. One can no more request anything of the soul than one can of the wind, and yet in an attempt to shake up the hemispheres of my mind I decided, last night, that I would masturbate with my left hand. I cannot claim to have filled myself with the grace of god but, certainly, I slept like a baby and, waking slowly, remembered my dreams. There are far worse ways of trying to enter middle age.

Gareth smiled as we passed in the hall.

Clearly, he has news that he wants me to know I don't know.

Tomorrow I shall tread on his foot.

2008-01-22T22:42:00.000Z

I woke alone. Tea and toast, alone. In truth, a vague air of unhappiness has plagued me awhile. I have neglected to study the symptoms, aware only of an increasing interest in Couple Having Sex, a Zichy print upon my kitchen wall. Last week, I was late for a client, so engrossed in this picture I have owned over twenty years. This evening, I ignored a call from my father. How quickly life can fall apart. Anyway, the Zichy shows a man lying on his back and the woman lying on top of him, but a facing upwards, covering him. Her arms and legs are splayed open and the man's penis is shown entering her from underneath. But why, why this bliss and abandon bothers me? Clearly, I am jealous of the feminine experience. The sexual pleasure of the woman is wholly, entirely, ontologically other. While the man experiences an intensification, the woman dissolves. Her pleasure is one of receiving, not striving, thereby yielding the grace of sentience. And what of that? If the religious sensibility is anything it is feminine. Clearly, mid life has lent me no favours. I am still as heavy, as male, as material, as dog as ever I was. If only I could paint. And so it was I spent the evening ignoring Helen's calls, honouring my own hormones, then took a late night walk into town, stopping to stare into the window of a kebab shop.

2008-01-21T21:46:00.001Z

And so it was I entered the new year. I have since heard that Axel and his party have repaired from Athens to a maisonette in Berlin. As for myself, I harbour no revenge upon him. We are friends, after all, as they say. And why betray me, a mere therapist, when he could expose cabinet ministers from nearly every government in Europe? No, I have no fear of Axel, I am just surprised he has access to something as awkward, as crass, as a computer.

In short, I am no longer sure what I am doing here.

Oh, things have happened, course they have. Helen and I are regular. Her office, usually.

It was Thom's tenth! I took him on a tour of the Emirates stadium and now, pride of place in his bedroom, a framed photo of him, me and Arsene Wenger. The Arsenal manager has a grin the size of a boat, clearly in awe of Thom, and rightly so. My son has a mind the size of England.

And George, yes, George has a girlfriend. He would like me to meet her but I fear his motivation and, equally, my own. Clearly, betrayal is on my mind. And what is that, after all, if not the soul spreading it's wings? And yet, as the Russians knew, I must choose my enemy well.

2008-01-20T06:06:00.000Z

I awoke, in faith, on New Year's Day like a pig in shit. But if I resembled anyone, surely it was the glorious debauch of Rubens' Bacchus, holding aloft his wine, rolling on his haunches, a half naked wench tending him, lovingly. So it was I ushered in the new year. And while knowing I was, indeed, waking up in the Chelsea basement of the mansion owned by my friend, Axel, even I was surprised to find myself stepping over so many breasts, not to say one engorged and, surely, deformed scrotum. Nevertheless, I entered the bathroom with no regrets. I inspected my teeth like a thief, then explored my body for any signs of debauch that I was, perhaps, suppressing but finding none, I blew a kiss to the Sodom at my feet, and departed. And so it was, of course, turning the corner onto Sloane Square tube that I stopped, clutched my knees, and heaved into memory the confession of Axel von Raffenstein, my friend, my host.

While seventy years old, he remains the delinquent son of some fabulous Austro-German industrialists and while undefeated, Axel fears that even his degeneracy has failed to dent his inheritance. And even his homosexuality failed to defend or distinquish him from the largesse of his family money. I will fuck myself to death, he said, twenty years ago. He had boys round the clock but even that didn't happen. Nevertheless, he maintains an exquisite collection of erotica and counts among his friends some of the most compromised people in the capital. And it was in view of the latter that I didn't think to question his invitation to a New Years Party. It was to be held on the third floor of the Barbican in London, currently host to an exhibition of erotic art from antiquity to the present. Yet someone did have the temerity to ask Axel how he had procured the space for his party. I was having an earnest conversation about house prices with a rather young blonde, but I did overhear Axel saying, 'My dear, these exhibits', extending his arms, 'half these exhibits are mine!' It was very likely his finest moment.

The party continued in Chelsea. Axel had themed each room into a particular fetish. Not knowing the rules, a man groped me in the hallway. To get my bearings, I took a brief tour and discovered a dutiful, almost donkey respect for the rules. There was an Anal Play room, a Nipple Clamp room, an Electric room and, in a wave of warmth for my old friend, I found the Kissing room. However, contrary to rumour, for peace and quiet I went to the Fisting room. I spent hours in most of these and certainly I'll write of what happened and, more importantly, what failed to happen. But in the early hours I found myself reclining with the young blonde. Perhaps in respect to our serious conversation at the Barbican about house prices we were unable to perform anything other than missionary position and it was then, or thereabouts, that I felt the cold hand up and down my back. I could hear the low drawl of Axel's voice but it took a long while to associate that with the hand on my back. Oh it was only a joke, for godsake man. Keep it up, that Secret Life thing. I was only playing, for godsake carry on! He said something about the party continuing at his residence in Athens. I smiled at the blonde and, trying to pretend Axel wasn't there, I maintained our embrace, all the while withdrawing slowly.

2008-01-14T22:38:00.000Z

Ah, now.

Yes, let me sniff this, this air again.

Why end a silence so beautiful, eh? Or proffer my arse again? Why do that? Who needs that?

Of course, I know who revealed me. I met the person who named me as the writer of this blog and who scared me off in that dastardly fashion. He revealed himself on New Year's Eve. For that, later.

I'm fine, of course I'm fine.

The bowels are eager.

My client list is full and varied. Yet while noticing that modern tendency to desire progress and achieve goals, I am neither more nor less bored than ever I was.

George has a girlfriend.

I'm fine, absolutely. My mind.

My faculties, grossly intact. Buttocks firm, if lean.

My belly, the world!

Hah!

2007-11-17T21:42:00.000Z

It's a line in the sand.

I am named!

I can't go on, clearly I can't. And so this, my dear readers, is my gentleman's excuse me.

You'll be relieved to hear my reasons are not ethical, let alone philosophic. I'd love to plead some higher consideration, oh you know I would, but it's quite pragmatic. In being named, I am not free. In being named, I cannot write as freely or honestly as the blog necessitates. This project has assumed a complete and ongoing anonymity, and that's now gone. It's past. And how quickly the past assumes its innocence, its simplicity. Clearly, I am no longer free to transgress, digress, or cast my wayward gaze wherever I choose. No, I have to assume the mantle of my position and, thereby, protect my career and my reputation. I will do this and I will top up my pension. I will do this, all this. I will take full responsibility for the angle of my smile. I will, in fact, say and reveal nothing. And yet, I stand by this blog. I stand by every word. And so, of course, a note to you, the reader. I may have appeared, on occasion, to be writing this like an autistic, a solipsist, but, of course, as with everything in life, it was entirely supported and sponsored by you, and your gaze. For that, I thank you. I will miss your gaze. P.S Just for the record, there is no publishing deal. I didn't ask for half a million, but I did ask for a hundred thousand. It was flatly refused and I was happy with that.

2007-11-16T21:05:00.000Z

Hello you.

You're reading this, oh yes. I know you are.

But that's all I know, isn't it. You know my name and I don't know yours!

Of course, I have some faithful readers and to them I am bound forever. Yet I must also warn these readers that I have received two comments on this blog from someone who, it seems, knows of me and knows my name. They were deleted, of course. The comments were blunt, factual, lacking entirely any style or wit and, therefore, somewhat aggressive. And so I could spend hours ruminating wastefully, pointlessly, on this person who knows my name. I could turn a suspicious gaze on, for example, Gareth. Helen, even. Well, it could be any number of acquaintances or past clients, present clients, family or friends. It could be the agent. In short, I may not know your name and while I may lack in nomenclature, I am well versed in the state of your poor soul. And when I see it next, I'll know it. I'll whisper ashes in your ear.

And so on this, the first day of my recovery, I wake to this dull, this inane and literal minded slug at, at what, the truth? Oh god, not again, grow up. Am I really writing this for someone like you? And what do you think you have on me anyway? I take that back. It wasn't the agent. Unless he did some relentless digging, it wasn't him. I used a pseudonym. Yes, for you I did! Oh, it's all seeping out now. All the bickering of detail, of facts, like a teenager, or a lawyer. Oh god save my soul from the sword, and from children with all the facts!

2007-11-15T01:38:00.000Z

A card.

Did you get our card? Helen asked, as if receipt of the card itself would improve my health, not to say my morals.

I got the card. I spent far too long studying the graphology of the signatures. Clearly, Helen had rallied the troops. This was obvious in Neil's impatient scrawl. Yet Gareth's signature was a revelation. He signed his name, then drew a circle round it. There we have it, definitive proof. The man really does live in a bubble! I took an overlong, teenage glee in this, and spent the rest of the day in bed, reading Chekhov. Illness has rendered me, my life, defunct.

2007-11-13T22:27:00.001Z

He laughed.

A hundred grand, I said, a hundred. I heard him gasp, then laugh.

Well let's be clear what you're asking me, shall we? This is my life, my career, and you're asking me to ruin myself. You want me to take myself to the cleaners and you think fifteen grand is the cost? It's a hundred grand, a hundred, you hear. And that's minimum.

I left my unbuttered toast on the table, whoofed up the Gorecki, and took the most pulsing, compacted, painful crap alive. A hundred? Even that was self abasing. I staggered out of the toilet, empty and craving impact, definition. I tore into my toast, ready to call the agent and fuck him sideways.

Half a million, we'll talk.

With that, I went to my bed, a better view of my extended horizon.

2007-11-12T22:48:00.000Z

Ah, the humiliation.

A mere chest infection. I rather fancied myself the inspiration for a run of TB along the coast, or perhaps the importer of a little French Legionnaires, but a fucking chest infection! And me doubled over in the shower, arse and naked elbows, like the ghost of a Bacon, furious with memories of ancient, unending intercourse only to look down, cupping my frightened, shrivelled dick in my hand. What is this, the end, or the image of that end? And what are these if not my moments in time. If I don't heed them, who do I imagine will? Or worse, without heeding them, why have them? I mean, really.

2007-11-11T20:13:00.001Z

With my fever at 39, I took a shower and collapsed in the cubicle. I spent four hours, naked, clutching my feet for dear life. Was the house being washed out to sea? My intention was to spruce up for Thom. We'd planned to spend the morning buying a pair of skates. Very likely it wasn't four hours, but I'd made a cocoon of my body, a shield, and nothing, not even time, when it knocked, got an answer. I sensed if I ever got out of the cubicle I'd either be dead, or a mystic. I could smell, taste, or feel an amorphous understanding of the transpersonal. I saw endless vista's enveloping over each other. It was like flipping through a travel magazine, or a deranged search for pornography. To be frank, I'd rather have been dead. I cancelled Thom, cancelled Helen. It's my fourth day alone.

2007-11-10T02:01:00.000Z

Who would ever tell anyone anything?

That was a lesson I grew up with and very likely one I'll die with, all the therapy merely a circular, somewhat decadent detour, back to what I really know of life. Unwashed and too sick to do a proper tour of my collection, I cancelled Helen until Sunday. I called the agent and said, again, I was too ill to speak. That was pleasurable, if demented. Clearly, I need antibiotics. The future quickly shrivelled, along, I noticed, with my dick, to nothing, or next to nothing, and all I look forward to now is finding the ivory cane, my dressing gown in purple, pottering around the house, showing Helen the finer moments in Victorian erotica, allowing her to know her body is of interest to me with, and yet also without soul, and that for all my fervour, she cannot own the scheme of my life. And not even that of her own.

For comfort, I called George.

2007-11-08T21:11:00.000Z

15,000 pounds.

With a fever in the early hours, a slug in my lung that smells of Legionnaires, I took the phone call with a delirium that felt almost transcendent. I then fell asleep until lunch and slowly, by mid afternoon, pieced it together. An agent- Baxter? Dexter? is offering his services and a publishing deal, all in one happy, brief, handshake.

For The Secret Life Of..? Great Title.

Oh if, if, if.

And yes, anonymous, definitely.

I wasn't going to negotiate money from my duvet, one needs to stride across cemeteries to do that, yet I was well aware his paltry offer won't even replace my car.

I am far too ill, too demented with fever, to even consider the ethical. Right now, I'd sign anything.

I rang Thom and prior to answering, yearned for him aged three, his little red doctor's box, rushing to my side. We made a plan for the weekend. What was it? And why am I making plans.

Helen called. Drop by, shall I?

Tomorrow, my dear. I can only hope I am well enough to show you my entire collection.

Hah.

2007-11-07T22:42:00.000Z

Sick as a dog.

Something has taken root in the lung. Yet I staggered to work, delaying the full hysteria of my symptoms, the stridency of denial such that it cast a reminder of my early twenties, all intense and feverish. I staggered on, swaying from one age to another like a toy in a storm, greeting Helen in the kitchen, finally, as if I were a functioning, consistent thing. It was only in seeing her that I understood I should be in bed. I said nothing. Anger, was it?. Oh god, had her paltry admission of sexual feeling for other people, had that hurt me? Was I ever so precious? What now, as I take the stairs to my room, is it me or my illness belittling me? I was spiralling away. The dream of the huge arse, merry on my face. I found a dictionary of psychiatric terms and discovered, with some elation, the clinical definition of nightmare. It is a dream of being sat upon, to the point of suffocation, by a female monster. Oh Helen, what have you done? I staggered home, cancelling everyone.

2007-11-06T22:01:00.000Z

Was ever an arse proferred like Boucher's Odalisque? While not overly appetising, she was on my mind this morning. I had woken from a dream where, in short, I was suffocated by the rolling fat of a woman's arse. And so, as I buttered my toast, I understood the woman was archetypal and clearly a rendering of my current situation and yet surprised, too, that such a vicious assault should arise in these quiet, almost tranquil days. One should never underestimate the shadow, I suppose. I cleaned my teeth twice and, on the walk to work, imagined the arse to be Boucher's rumpy Odalisque and, pleasing me, this quickly evolved into a plan of activity for Helen and me tomorrow afternoon. And so it was, alive with vengeance, I breezed into the house, wiping out Gareth with my grin.

2007-11-05T23:55:00.000Z

Kindly, Helen.

She came with tea. Clearly, she thinks I am disturbed by her revelation and I am happy to play along, the better to hide my own affairs. And yet, in ministering to me like this, as if I were a child requiring appeasement in the light of his slutty mother's explosive, menopausal sexuality, I felt a coldness that jarred me into facing her, and in facing her, into speaking.

Thank you, I boomed.

Are you well? She recoiled.

We stared and, for a second, were both locked into that ancient, demonic battle for sexual imperative. Oh how did that happen, Helen? Kindly Helen. How did it happen? Eventually we looked away, fell into our bodies, and returned to matters of tea, tea and biscuits.

2007-11-04T23:32:00.000Z

Dad.

I noted the dust on the handle of the zimmer frame. Clearly, he'd rather fall over and piss himself in style rather than use the zimmer. In denial over his capacities, he insisted on the walking stick. While he was in the kitchen, I had an impulse to try out the zimmer. So, imagining myself my dad, I took a few steps. I was as smooth and intent as a crab, yet had to focus hard on my feet to ensure I was enacting this for his benefit, not some perverse role play of my own agenda. I put the frame away and on cue, my father entered with two cups of tea. Later he made a third cup, leaving me alone in the lounge with the District Nurse. I was pleased to note that she was a robustly attractive woman. Her job had clearly depressed her needs in relation to men and I sensed, contrary to her desire, every voice she used was, finally, a professional one. My father was spending too long in the kitchen and, unable to fathom what he hoped I'd say to the nurse, I returned to the safe, yet animating topic of her teenage sons. In speaking of the ambiguity of their behaviour, I sensed the return of her hidden libido and, finally, as father returned, I knew I'd nurture this further, in my evening's fantasy. However, splayed out on the sofa, the scenario took a long while to elaborate and I must concede, I had not anticipated how central my father's role was to my final, belated satisfaction. I awoke in the same subterranean mood as the fantasy, noting the handle of the zimmer and the claw hands that, finally, had used it in the night.

2007-11-03T03:19:00.000Z

My mute.

Today, I was ready. Bounding over to work on a summer's day in November, a critical state of affairs, I decided to summon all my powers of empathy and osmosis. I had not seen client G. last week, requesting her doctor wean her off the high dose of diazepam and so it was, this morning, with the atmosphere in the room allergic and viral, my mute and I reunited. I sat at an angle to her, suggesting alliance against a terrible, demonic third party. I summoned, again, the imago of myself as a boy. A sickly thing, stricken with shame. I happily exaggerated, seeing myself as frozen with pain, tearless, and borderline catatonic. I stayed with this boy for twenty minutes, hoping my mute would feel a subterranean empathy. In short, I created a silent, hypnotic attachment between us and yet, while she didn't speak, I felt layers of psychic shifting, as if tectonic plates were easing off. Of course, this technique is entirely unproven and unregulated but, like some forms of magic, it can be highly effective. And now, in the dark of my study, I still feel a precious, if precarious attachment to the experience and, for the first time, wonder at the risk of writing this, and tampering with the trance. Instead, to counter it all and tantamount to a good bollocking, I rang my father where, once again, I will spend the weekend.

2007-11-01T20:53:00.000Z

Client R.

The Zichy print had been preying on my mind. I placed it in the bedroom, but it haunted me this morning while in the kitchen, buttering toast. It preoccupied me on the toilet where I took a silent, unthinking, almost unconscious shit. In depicting a moment of climax, Zichy has shown the most intimate, most literal moment and yet it gave rise to endless abstract speculation, so much so I walked to work resembling nothing more than a breeze of air. I spent an hour trying to return to my body but when client R. entered, not unpretty but heavy, crushed by last week, I wanted to absorb something of her substance, her corporeity, so I clasped her hand and pulled her into the room. Within a second the flare of transference returned to her eyes and she kissed me, quickly, on the lips. What a bollocks. It was as instantaneous for her, as clasping her hand was for me. A right and proper fucking mess. What was I doing? Had I ever been so unthinking, so cruel, in fact? The ambiguity of my behaviour could only lead to madness, suicide, or open the door, perhaps, to a life of servitude to my dick. All three choices vied for attention, until client R. relaxed, and forgave herself the kiss. It was this forgiveness, and therefore the client, R., who did the healing today. The animal warmth of her own good sense filled the room and, inevitably, when she left I had only the awareness of how quickly, how ordinarily, I will invite my own end.

2007-10-31T21:58:00.000Z

I sensed early on the day's end was a pipe of O.

Helen passed me in the hall, smiling at her coffee. Does she imagine I'm hurt? I shall invite her round, show her my collection, have her understand the depth of my tolerance.

Neil has lost his confidence, and now his clients. I cannot begin to care.

Gareth's fevered imagination finally succumbed, to flu. I planned to send him a Dali card and yet, as my very famous client fell into the frozen waters of another anecdote, I decided to send the postcard to my son, instead. A small decision, perhaps, and yet enough of those, in time, could redeem a life.

And so for no obvious reason I went home, stuffed the pipe, took a bath, and reclined to a late Beethoven quartet, trying to ward off with O the shred of flesh in that final movement.

2007-10-30T22:37:00.000Z

The death of Anthony Clare was reported this morning and so, stuck in bed, I was unwittingly cast back twenty years to a celebrity lecture on sexual abuse and schizophrenia that I attended one frosty morning in north London. I recall leaving the lecture hall with the impression of a man in dialogue less with his profession and more with the media. I then recalled my excitement as this passing observation incited a rather frightened blonde into arguing Clare's defence. I bought her coffee that day and before the working week was over, we'd slept together. I remember her as training in psychiatry and having, in particular, an intense interest in sexual abuse and mental illness that made me wonder, as I held her spasmodic back in my hands, that perhaps she had decided, in a somewhat tragic manner, that random sex was both a symptom and the salvation to her condition, as underwritten by the towering authority of the little Dubliner. A year later I bumped her into her at a Jung symposia and noted, with quiet gratification, that she did not recognise me.

2007-10-29T18:00:00.000Z

Mmmm...

When he speaks, Neil will find the most considered, defensive position and sit there until the world ends. However, prior to engaging his huge superego, Neil does a good line in grunts. And it's on this level we understand each other. And so it was at the front door, I exchanged a grunt with Neil before seeing Gareth speed off into the kitchen. Every few weeks, Gareth will have the look of a man who has accumulated all the evidence he requires against me, even a momentary air of pity will cross his brow at the knowledge he's acquired, yet, finally, all the intuitions, all the chat with Helen in the kitchen, all the childhood scenarios come into fevered play, and I am then his errant father exposed, at last. Oh, Gareth will have his day, certainly. But not, alas, with me. It was this greedy, oedipal Gareth I saw rush into the kitchen this morning and so, certain that the only outstanding gossip related to the 1 day workshop in sexual feelings in the consulting room, I decided to check the balance of play with Helen.

And so it was at the moment of letting myself into her room, the penny dropped. While intending a general briefing, entering her room felt like a widening knowledge, and seeing her now so complete, so absorbed in her administration, the words came from the very back of my head, an unconscious compulsion. It's you going to that workshop! Helen smiled, gently. Clearly, there was no need to elaborate, but I had yet to contain the look on my face and Helen, despairingly for us both, fell into explaining herself. Yes, I am having these feelings in sessions on a regular basis and, well, even with different clients. She sounded measured yet I understood her as trying to appease me and so, standing with my hand on the door, I withdrew to a sense memory that went, via Rubens, to the debauchery of my early twenties where, for a while, it seemed as if every man was fucking every woman, every day, every night, and from there to the Bosch whose Garden of Earthly Delights hung on my wall at the time. I returned to Helen and she blinked, heavily. She was hardly the Bacchae incarnate, yet expressing her news had clearly sent her own projections ricocheting off the walls. We stared at each other, blinking furiously, trying to draw some lines under the furies and trying, but failing, to stay in the present. I departed, leaving her to stare at the door.

2007-10-29T01:20:00.000Z

Oh, dad.

Like any man at home with cruelty, my father has a sentimental side and so it was this morning, looking for some music for my 5 am ablution, I trawled through his collection of musicals and, finally, chanced upon a Brahms. It was years old, a Christmas edition with a celebrity fiddler. Had Karen bought it for him? The memory returned of Christmas shopping in a record store and Karen waving this cd at me, will he like this? My dad had no interest in classical music but for Karen, I welcomed her misguided assumption that father was like son, and heartily assented. Shopping with my lithe, my undeniably sexy wife, it felt then as if my father could like the Brahms, should like it, and I was pleased then with the slightly cruel, coercive feeling it lent me. Oh, dad. I put the cd on and entered the bathroom. There is nothing in here. He is waiting for death, planning to do it with no inconvenience to anyone else, having cleared the house of unnecessary furniture. Even the bathroom is empty. I hear the strains of Brahms under the door, matching them with my own. And then, in passing, my father behind the door, what the hell you playing that for? And with that truth, our truth, forever inherent in his tone, I evacuated in seconds.

2007-10-26T22:14:00.000+01:00

I arrived with twelve litres of cranberry juice, a desperate and rearguard attempt to soften his cancerous pancreas. Oh god, how we staggered last night. His bloated legs. The stains on his jumper. How we laughed, as he clutched at my greying hair. And was there a moment, as we lunged toward the bathroom that we were not, in fact, taking him for a hopeless shit but returned, in the push and pull of our bodies, to forty years earlier, wrestling on the carpet, both of us the winner, always. I saw his claw hand open, his eyes waiting to haul me to the floor. Finally, on the can, he spoke of the district nurse. He had no grievances but, equally, he had no lewd comment to make either and this, beyond all the obvious, concerned me considerably. It's over forty years since I saw my father defecate and yet, as I stood at the bathroom door, it felt almost natural and it was only later, studying the Zichy print, that the memory came of myself aged three, on the toilet, chatting away to my father as he waited at the door, ready to wipe me. I took a quarter pipe and decided to spend the weekend at his house, perhaps get a better picture of all his needs and take, too, the only gift he can give, that of retrieval.

2007-10-25T21:41:00.000+01:00

Client R.

Sex, of course, is the most florid, quick, most satisfying way of ending client R.'s transference of feeling onto me and this is, perhaps, one of the less obvious reasons for disreputable behaviour in my profession. I hadn't ruled it out. Yet today, I opted for something more surreal. I rolled up one trouser leg to the knee and sat in my room, waiting. She entered and sat down, smoothing her skirt. She didn't laugh or register any emotion and I understood the depth of her transference in this quiet acceptance of my ridiculous pose. So I decided to say one true thing about me. I took a breath and summoned a boy, the fearful, blonde boy who couldn't speak for shame, and madness. I'm a bedwetter, I am. I am seven and I wet my bed. I repeated this, and trouser leg, ad infinitum until her face crumpled and, trying to wipe a tear away, she gave in and buckled over. Of course, if I were a therapist in the seventeenth century, god knows, I could have released her from this transference in slowly, but surely, pinching her nipples till she screamed. Yet in enacting my regression and seeing me as a child, indeed, a pathetic one, client R. had experienced an equal, if not greater brutality. And so as I saw her, doubled over, filled with her new loss, I almost forgot to reflect that I was never, in fact, a bedwetter, not once, and that I had told her nothing true of myself. Falsehood, as ever, had served equally, if not better than the truth. Who cares for the truth? It's a shabby thing. And yet, as client R. sat up and we stared at each other, two animals alone in their bodies, I understood the falsehood as more interesting, viable, more powerful than the truth because I always felt like a bedwetter, yes I did, all day long as a child, little bedwetter. And so, finally, the session ended and client R. left, forgetting to smooth her skirt and grateful to be alone with herself, at last, as she always had been.

2007-10-24T22:07:00.000+01:00

My famous client.

I wonder at him. Like Elvis, he is the gatekeeper to his mother's bedroom. And all that, the fame, the hysteria, and somewhere far down the line, the music, all of it the desperate noise of a little boy trying to distract you from the delights of his mummy.

Oh, these errant fathers.

The celebrity they could have spared us.

'A Deflowering', 1911. The Zichy print arrived this morning. I shall invite George for supper.

2007-10-23T21:53:00.000+01:00

10 am, Thom's house.

Within seconds, I was questioning my own motives for the visit because, instinctively, all I focused on were the most painful, intimate things: Thom's bowl of cereal from this morning and, on the floor, the novel I'd posted the week before. Everywhere I looked was a reminder of the reality of his life, all that I'd lost. I was also aware, to some degree, of polishing this pain upon my sleeve, and quite unsure why. Karen entered the kitchen and, dressed casually, continued the theme of life merely humming along. And yet, on closer inspection I wondered at how clean, how artfully casual she seemed and decided, without a doubt, she'd prepared for me. I also became more confident, more aroused, noticing that Karen was observing the protocol of the occasion. We were not talking of, or even mentioning, our son. And so it was we spoke of current plans, parents, mutual friends, all with the temporary, inconclusive air, of opinions and plans that could be entirely different, or even irrelevant, in five minutes time. We were flirting. During this insane dance, I was keenly aware of Karen's lips, the rush of blood, and waited only for a measured calm, as if this were an entirely considered seduction, which, in fact, it was.

I could never have expected George to bollocks it up. Karen has only briefly met him. George and I bonded over our respective divorces and thereafter the whiff of misery has sustained our friendship. I felt compelled to answer Karen's question respectfully, as if in describing George's crisis, I was being somehow loyal to my own turmoil. And so, as we returned to ourselves, the flirting eased off. And for a while we began to luxuriate in ourselves as mature, responsible citizens. After all, we could continue this another time. I then privately luxuriated in my own sheer luck. I had an exwife who now understood my infidelities. She knew my body, the reach of my desires. I could talk of a Rubens nude without her doubting my integrity. She knew I was professorial about my body, and those of others, accepting me as a man. A man in full. And yet, 0f course, could never live with me again and so, as we kissed goodbye, I held her hip and, present in our standing bodies, allowed the moment to acknowledge, or test, my sheer good luck. I kissed her mouth and was gone.

2007-10-22T20:51:00.000+01:00

It is time to name her.

Karen, there.

I arrived at work an hour early with the sole intention of clasping Helen's arse and hoping, in the moment of releasing my fingers, to have protected myself from whatever may or may not pass between myself and Karen, exwife, first thing tomorrow. Of course such an act, in my trade, would be seen as a reflex of control, suggestive of ancient abuse, perhaps, and yet, for all that, it also contains an animal power, almost occult in its knowledge. And besides, we're a long time dead.

And so I entered the kitchen, hoping for a half hour with Helen, before Gareth and his teeth enter the room, casting a toxic light. (His obsession with dentistry being the flipside of his cruelty to insects and, possibly, small animals). Helen made me tea and we spoke of general topics, small matters of housekeeping, and I was aware of her probing, gently, the perimeter, inviting an incisive comment or one to bind us at the expense of another, often Gareth, then swiftly moving on. There was a hint here about practical matters but I chose to take the intimacy as physical, and so took her hand, breathing softly on her neck. She put a finger inside my shirt, a good sign, and in kissing her I was initiating us further, yet also preventing a disclosure. The longer Helen allowed us, the greater the sense of inviting bad news and the awareness of negation ran simultaneous with the warmth of her hands on my chest. I was quickly aroused, yet wanting only to conquer my own arousal and then, to do nothing but render her into my hands. I slide my finger between her buttocks, edging onto her perineum, warm on her sphincter, then felt the whole of her arse in my hands, tight, until she gasped. This was our ecstasy prior to climax. The intercourse, somewhat nonchalant. And so it was we had time to spare before Gareth and Neil arrived. Helen and I spent the day in our separate rooms, sometimes colliding, warm and aware, the physical intimacy stronger, more relevant than whatever she may or may not have disclosed. And yet as I drove home, debating the perversions of monogamy, the Red Queen, and my rendezvous with Karen tomorrow, I wondered if Helen's failure to disclose was entirely matched by my own. After all, the prompt is forever hidden.

2007-10-21T21:10:00.000+01:00

Who was the woman who revealed her breasts to me in my dream this morning? Who the hell was that? There was the hint of impatience, of forbearance, as she offered me her right breast, then looked askance. Frankly, it could have been anyone, ranging from the shop assistant to mother, to exwife, to Madame X herself. Of course, the extent to which I woke up and failed to take the nipple is the exact measure of my desperation to name the woman. And it's indicative of the reluctance of my unconscious that, easing from a slovenly morning with a quarter pipe and no lunch, I now decide the woman resembles noone other than Tintoretto's Portrait of a Woman Revealing Her Breasts. While it was not a true likeness, it calmed me to imagine this and so, satisfied, finally, I was able to get on with the rest of my day.

2007-10-20T22:38:00.000+01:00

I was glancing at a catalogue of winterwear when George called. Loathing shops, this is my only means of acquiring clothes and I was considering tweed an autumnal rather than winter choice when George invited me round to watch the rugby. We have never spoken of rugby, or any regulated sport whatever, and so, aside from not knowing what he meant, I could only take his invitation as further evidence of his descent into popular culture, by which I mean, in fact, the media. I demurred, gently, but then hastily enquired after the Etty. Did you buy the Etty? My god, for eight thousand? It was George's turn to demure, and he declined to confirm, but we arranged to meet for lunch at his house anyway. And so it was that George's ruse over the rugby, his minor deception, had lifted my spirits and, it was while considering if his mental health were improving that I, easing on the brakes, stopped at a pelican crossing only to sit and watch as Thom and his mother crossed the road. And so it was that I, uplifted by falsehood, stumbled out of the car and threw my arms round them both. I had no idea what I was saying, but only seconds to say it, so I did. Look, I really have to speak to you. What about monday? Make it Tuesday, she said. And so I drove to George, my friend, ready to inspect his new purchase and felt in the evasions, the mild, yet knowing deflections of other people, a tremendous grace, now and forever.

2007-10-19T21:34:00.000+01:00

A mute!

I woke in a jovial, almost giddy mood, and so took a managerial decision to level off a buoyant shit to the monotone of Stockhausen's Stimmung. I strode to work in a chastened, sentient mood, ready to receive my new referral. Client G. is mute. Client G., moreover, is a blonde girl. While at risk of sounding as if she were pulled from the trailer of a B Movie, I should also confess that she has full, pale lips. She is also fifteen. Oh and what sad, blank eyes. All this is true. By and large, I don't like young people. In a word, I prefer sensibility. The bodies of young women are so greedy and aspirational. All their bits point upward, as if seeking first prize. These are bodies with nothing to say, or give. And so as she sat slumped in the chair, staring at the corner of my desk, I reflected that the fetishization of the young is one of the more heinous of capitalism's great crimes, and in this antagonistic vein decided to pursue my own concerns, rather than chase after hers. I stood up and examined the spines of some first editions. With utmost care, I polished my pipe. First and foremost, whatever catatonic, or trauma symptoms may arise, I understood this as a battle of wills, and one she has no chance of winning. She has not spoken for the last six months, (I have a bet with the G.P who referred her that I will have her talking within six weeks) and in this, our first session, I had no intention of abnegating myself by saying or asking anything so after a long, fruitless period of suggestive movement, I then spent twenty minutes trying to summon an enormous fart from the bottom of my bowels. I will try this technique next time but aware, also, that I have only five weeks left.

2007-10-18T22:05:00.000+01:00

Client R.

I woke early, unduly alert, and so, finding some Sibelius on the radio, I then felt a nagging need for a little ontological security, and so grabbed my dick. One or two indistinct scenario's vied for attention, but I was drawn by client R. and her transference, oh heck, her love for me and so I toyed with a little counter-transference of my own, and that was good. Of course, in the reality of the clinical setting this afternoon, the feelings were far more perverse than my imaginings (a la Koon, I was inclined to think afterwards). Client R. has a tenacious passion that would test any man's resistance and so, as she articulated yet another defence against herself, suggesting her feelings are not the transference of father issues, but they are present tense, normal and genuine as any feelings can be, I felt overcome with an afternoon lethargy that had a dangerous, decadent edge. I sensed this could only lead to an oral gratification, perhaps followed by cigarettes at the window, so I tried to centre myself with some deep breaths. However, within a few minutes, she was speaking from the throat and I drifted off, dazed by her white stockings and the hint of a ruddy nipple, aware of a decentering somehow related to my own father and the ontological insecurity I felt this morning, only pulling back from this by a mortal fear of wrecking my whole career for the sake of a blowjob.

2007-10-16T20:37:00.000+01:00

The Tuesday Group.

Like my father, I prefer dreaming. I know he is a mournful, almost romantic man when alone, or with others, and yet when alone with me it feels like we batter each other in a constant assault of reality, and truth. Then we part and return to our dreaminess, a small relief before the next assault. In recent years, to prepare myself for these encounters, I've often had to partake of some lascivious, kinky, or risque behaviour before seeing him. It lends a film of protection against the present moment. And yet also enacts, in perverse miniature, the experience and the feelings that will arise with my father. Having just undergone the experience, I can feel an illusion of control. And yet today I would have no time for any miniature enactment and so felt somewhat low, oppressed, aware of viewing everyone with an air to fraud or potential misdemeanour. And so it was at tea-time I entered the kitchen and, seeing Helen, grabbed her hand and kissed it all the way to her elbow. In response to my theatrics, she placed her hand, for a split second, over my crotch. A twin sense of shame and lust entered the fractional second and, in expanding it infinitely, I was able to drive to my father's with a modicum of sanity.

2007-10-15T23:42:00.000+01:00

Neil was born to tie shoe laces. And so it was I entered work and saw him, hunched over in the hallway, and feeling I had enough momentum to turn on my heel and up the stairs, I sped off without a word. However, the incongruity of a certain detail, surely the unconscious reason for speeding off, had finally rung a bell in my conscious mind. I then yanked myself back in Neil's general direction, checking the purple flyer above his head. It was true. Somone had cut off the reply slip and booked a 1 day course on Sexual Feelings in the Consulting Room. Now who would be doing that? To cover my behaviour I launched a Lovely Day! at Neil, and, in saying the unlovely words, I could feel our toes curling. But who the hell is having sexual feelings in the consulting room? Does Gareth know? Why's he not told everyone? He is paid to be the child of the team. And yet, of course, when it comes to the really important issues, the gossip will always let you down, leaving the last stretch to your own imagination. I entered my room with a huge appetite for nothing in particular so, throwing open the window, I sat on the ledge and lit a quarter pipe.

2007-10-14T20:06:00.000+01:00

I glimpsed Thom in the lounge, bent over a joystick, but followed his mother into the kitchen. Without speaking she reached for a cupboard, changed her mind, then filled the kettle instead. On top of the million little details I was processing, I wondered if she were reaching for alcohol in that cupboard and sensed, in the calm of her negation, that she had decided to make me suffer for any pleasure I might find here. To make matters worse, I felt it necessary to maintain my demented persona and only felt able to do that by saying nothing. She turned towards me and I wished myself to hell and back. However, instead of folding her arms she let them fall to her side, relaxed. Clearly, she had no more idea what to do or say than me and, seeing that, I rolled up my sleeves and sat myself at the kitchen table.

Do you remember Versailles?

I asked, as if the unresolved memory of a holiday in France had stopped me moving on with life.

You really do want sex, don't you?

Yes, I only suggest a little historical foreplay...

And felt a certain pity for myself, aware that my unbidden memory of Versailles was important and worthy of discussion and, quite suddenly, it then became a fleeting symbol of our disharmony, containing all the ambiguities within. I was desperate to speak of this as X arched her back as she sat opposite, showing well preserved breasts plus a hollow of shadow to her buttocks. And it was another fleeting symbol, too, that I did not speak of what I wanted, and of X that she would not relax to allow the past in. It was all happening all over again. We would not be having sex. These few minutes had exhausted us both so we sat there, calm and ironic, ready now to talk of Thom, the week ahead, the future. We were good people, done with anger, making the best of it. Sure we were. For ourselves, and him. And so we waited for Thom to come bounding into the kitchen, each second of silence like a pinprick on my palm.

2007-10-13T23:09:00.000+01:00

Drunk with David Hockney.

I spent the morning trying to recollect the night I spent drinking with Hockney and remembering the slowly dawning shame at seeing how, as we quaffed our thirty year brandy, the artist, stubborn when sober, yes, perhaps truculent, how quickly he became an incredible bore. I even remember noting a certain retardation in his character. The shame then revisits me now like a pain in my lungs. It was a letter from a Dr. R. L, requesting she read the letters Hockney sent me in the early 1990's, that prompted the memory. I was heartened to observe that the subsequent letters we exchanged has not sweetened the memory of that first meeting and so, my mental health thereby confirmed, I turned to the question of whether to an accept Axel Von Raffenstein's invite to his party after the Erotica exhibition at the Barbican. The exotic creatures he gathers would certainly be a rare tonic to the somewhat homespun, laundry girls I currently desire. I decided to attend and, at the moment of decision, emboldened with a daring, a vanity, a peripheral awareness of my charm as I crossed the lounge, I also decided I really would make a pass at Thom's mother.

Yesterday, my aim was to ascertain if a man had entered her and therefore Thom's life. This afternoon, my intention had warped, or perhaps consolidated into one of sheer prowess. And so I went to see them at four, the idling hour, and arrived with the sense this would only work if my confidence were at the hilt, as hard and tight as mineral. In fact, psychotic. I stood on the doorstep, figured a statement, not a question, was more effective. She opened the door.

I would like to have...

I paused a few seconds, suggestive of unending personal, cultural pursuits, but then, as if veering into a sudden, impulsive understanding of core family values:

Like to have sex with you.

Ok, she said. And then, to cover herself, You'd better come in, I mean. And so, with the hint of mental illness, as if allowing me in were making the community a safer place, I entered the family home for the first time in five years.