Chapter 1: Man to Man

[the artist]

Expect the worst: I’ve just been cut out of what was promising to be a dead cert on Texas Holdem – all for a ‘phone call from my Nan, asking me to save all my margarine tubs. Oh yes. I’m serious.

There was some divine cyber shuffling going on in my favour, let me tell you because the deal was holy as the grail. The kind of deal that turns blind faith into a stigmata, as you see the proof, just for one precious moment, that life gives you what you need when you are ready to receive it: The simple truth that every card you need really is in the pack.

Picture it: I have a pair of threes. ‘Phone rings: Ignore it – Easy. The flop comes down with two queens and a three. The ‘phone stops ringing. Starts again straight away. Stops. Starts. Stops. Starts. Ignore it. Stops. Starts. Doesn’t stop: One thousand chattering monkeys leap over the gates of the Blissful Temple of Ignorance, each one chanting an emergency scenario. But I’m looking good. I’m looking good!

The gate swings on an ace. Black is beautiful. Silence is golden: At last that bloody ‘phone is quiet! I need to concentrate because some wise guy (virtual tuxedo, Kurt Douglas jaw, symmetrical features like a folded ink blot) is betting large. I’m on the edge as I double up. Wise Guy matches. I don’t believe it! The goddamned ‘phone again.

The unique madness of The Unknown Unanswered One keeps on and on and on and on and on and on as the three of diamonds smuggles its pretty little self down on the river. I wait for the bet as the ‘phone pulses and flat-lines intermittently. Come on. Come on! COME ON! Something truly terrible might’ve happened – must’ve happened - out there beyond my world of crumpled cans and polystyrene. COME ON!!!!! I have to get to that screaming harpy before…before…before it’s too late for me to save the day. I’m not just about “Get Rich Quick” schemes. It’s just a case of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, with maybe enough left over for a blowout real-time Second Life in Cuba, where I’m told they have Sangria running from their taps instead of Corporation Pop. Everyone flunks except the wise guy. He decides to bet river deep, mountain high. You wanna see me, Punk?
I go all in.

I’m waiting. Waiting. Waiting. WAITING. Damn that telephone. It’s becoming more than just ringing in my ears now: It’s like some kind of body snatching tinnitus; some off-the-scale ECT treatment. It’s under my skin, drilling my bones, retching inside my soul. Don’t keep me waiting, Punk. You wouldn’t like me when I’m waiting, Punk.
I’m still waiting as Virtual Wise Guy drums his beefy fingers on the virtual green felt. If I could, I would virtually kill him to the soundtrack of telephonic monotony. Instead I reach to open the blind, just to check the sky isn’t falling down, or at the very least, red and swollen with Apocalyptic symptoms, because whoever is on the other end of that telephone wants to tell me something CRUCIAL here, man. I’m yanking at the blind when I hear that divine little “ding” that serves to tell me that cyberspace has delivered Wise Guy’s fold – surely he’s folded. Tell me, sweet heavens above he’s finally folded because then I can answer the ‘phone with a joyous smile – even if – even if that person at the end of the line turns out to be another trappy student trying to lure me to Milton Keynes to pick up a free holiday voucher. It’s good to talk.

Then, get this: GET THIS! I yank at the cord on the blind that little bit too…angrily and the whole thing falls; hits me on the nose and knocks the cable out of the computer: Connection- What connection? What wise guy? What game? What winnings? What last chance for the clever little rat, of jumping out of the race at The Oasis of Mortgage-Free Paradise? But that’s how Lady Luck would have it. So I picked up the receiver and said “hello” to oblivion, waiting for the digital three-minute warning.

That’s when she asked me – straight up – if I could start saving all my margarine tubs. My Nan. Oh yes. She wants to give her Spider plants the chance to go forth and multiply. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m back on the butter.

So here we are. I’m back in the Word Doc. Wassup?

This is it, for the fifth time I think it is. I press return and come back from Texas Holdem to face this almighty task and each time, the territory becomes a little more familiar and I remember that familiarity can breed contempt. Oh well, after the “I can’t believe it’s not Armageddon!” experience of fifteen minutes ago, I just know that “Attempt No. 5” is going to have to be “it- or quit”.

I know: Sounds like a potential suicide- or a smell-o-like aftershave from a suitcase spiv at a Sunday market. Either way it’s not pleasant by default but whether you read this or you don’t, I’m going to write it. Needs must.
Look, I need to go and get a coffee or something. Don’t go away, will you? Not now; not now that I have your undivided attention. I have so much to share with you…so much. You know, it does feel different this time: I’m writing like there’s someone listening. It’s very… enabling. Anyway, I’m going to go away for five minutes to percolate the Social History of The Coffee Bean through that clogged up filter which has most faithfully represented my brain since it was last cleaned twelve weeks ago.

Okay, here we both are then…nice coffee. You see, you’re not the only slave in the plantation of digression.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah dee blah dee blah dee blah dee fucking blah. The shit’s hitting the fan again. Oh yes it is. So let’s flick the switch to “ up at the crack of arse every day to analyse the very backside out of being a writer/ a male/ a bachelor boy/ a fly”. So, I’ll break that down for you: My career (my book, my bible, my scrawl, my scribble, my life, my soul, my Barry White everything) is turning to shit (baba, cack, poo, faeces, excrement, waste, crud, poison, muck, sewage, SHIT).

So the shit hits me, the fan –sycophantic “fan” of people who succeed at things like this (call them “The Published Ones”) – with such force, that, as well as knocking that greasy chip right off my shoulder, “Lo and Behold!” I’m working through my block and the best bit is that you are still reading. Oh yes, I know you are there my friend! Do forgive me; I believe I have been gargling with the quinine again.

I just want you to know that there is some real deep and meaningful shit to come. No bitterness. It’s going to taste good. And so, just for you, I bounce back from every rejection to butcher my antonyms and mince my chapters with ever-finer neo-classical cuts, through the blender of some crazy contraption called post-modernism and out again into the guts of experience as I write; you read. I talk, you listen until you become the critic and our roles reverse (meaty metaphors from a vegetarian).

Oh yes, I’m going to delete everything that came before this. I have to forget all previous efforts to grab your attention by the balls (Rugby etiquette, you understand): All that vine-gripping “Me Tarzan, you digitally enhanced composite girlfriend Jane”, no soap-on-a-rope slimy-palm intros. No Weismuller padded body suits. No leopard-skin loin cloth introductions to be found here. No more Grand Prix, no squirty cream, no runny honey and definitely no ice cubes in this story. Never again will you get the chance to read me the wrong way, as some historical sniggering voyeur with a fetish for telling you “the world’s fucked” as I direct your attention to the PVC-clad scientists with their Zeppelin-sized microscopes, stuffed like truncheons into every cove, cave and oxbow lake that Mother Earth possesses. There will be no pseudo coffee table Cosmo empathy, no horse’s mouth renditions of the nag, or the stallion: No more “Ugly Sister” jokes about me putting myself in a woman’s shoes (despite how elevating the aspiration).

There will be no tales of lesbian lock-ins at The Swan With Two Necks. Neither will there be will be any discussions on “the Female Eunuch”, whilst grazing on fresh figs, chained to the kitchen sink with a Prince Albert.
There will be nothing to force down your throat and there will be no reference to what you chose to swallow. You know- that was then, and this is now.

Indeed, the continuous loop of flickerings in the darkest recesses of my cine-mind is on the cutting room floor as of today. Never again will I encourage you to contemplate the heady cocktails that you have imbibed before splashing your soul with water made holy by a blessing bestowed out of inflamed, reddish guilt. I will not encourage your screaming confessions about mental adultery with girls you have never met. It will not be my way. Not this time. This time, I will not impart my insight into the forensic nature of women’s suspicion, nor will I over-enlighten you with ways of getting what you want, except to say that women are fond of dreaming their dreams.

And in will keep my views on Flies and Reincarnation to a minimum, though I cannot help but empathise somewhat with not knowing where the fuck you’re going or where the fuck you’ve just been. But there is a reason that flies do not have the capacity for nostalgia. And that’s enough of that. And enough obsessing about being chased around Asda on Singles Night by women in circa 1980 Gloria Vanderbuilt denim who’ve done bird on their sunbeds. All of this I will now throw in one direction, whilst running fast in the other. You know, I don’t care too much about the sheets, it’s my life I want to change.

I tell you, these things have come to pass. Move to the side gentlemen and let them pass without hindrance. We are all desperate to pass Go, no matter how many times we Go To Jail. It’s a sad-but-true fact of our restrictive culture that boys are not allowed to have anything real, or imaginary inside them. Hence the gargoylian facial contortions of men as they “make connections” and “network”. Send out an emotional depth-charge into the innermost part of a man’s being and the echoes in his throat as he tries to call up something tangible to the surface will haunt you like a daytime T.V. interior design challenge. We are forbidden from incubating anything that is suspected of being emotionally charged. We keep it all at surface level: It’s called our “feminine side” and it’s transparent. You can punch into it like tracing paper. But there are interesting patterns on that paper, tracing all sorts of sensitivities.

I’m going to clean the flat.
I’m going to clean my body as well – and I’m going into town, to The King’s Arms, to be embraced by fine ale and a sturdy hand of Poker.

So much pressure and the cork pops: It just takes a little more agitation than you think you’re able to stand sometimes. I’ve been shaken up so many times that I’ve finally got myself enough tiny bubbles of hope and optimism to make that cork go, “POP!” I’m ready to effervesce. Do you have space in your heart?
Will you still listen, now that I’ve cut all the bullshit? Does the truth inside a person interest you?
If it does, then I dedicate my life’s work to you. We are in this thing together after all. Taken neat, fear makes me retch but I can handle it with a mixer.

Come with me now, for a drink. We can lay all our cards face down on the table - and then I can keep twisting randomly because I reckon, now that you’ve got to know the real me a little bit, you’ll be able to accept whatever turns up. We are in The Game of Life together: clusters of pictures and numbers, dressed in suits, shuffling this way and that. We are characters in our own deck, as we game on towards the winning hand. I hope you trust that I have the capacity to win on our behalf. Tell you what – when we get to the pub, you shuffle, I’ll deal.
For now, you just keep your cards close to your chest. But I tell you, we can be men who can trust each other not to cheat- and that’s no bluff my friend – though I have been known to have mind-altering substances up my sleeve on occasion! But more’s to the point, you are still with me and so you are part way to realising that we are a vital part of each other’s destinies.

It’s odd, isn’t it, how the ingredients of someone else’s story thicken the plot of your own experiences? When you are prepared to bare your soul in the heat of the moment, everything boils down to bare bones and you suddenly see the structure of The Game, stripped of recipes and methods, rules and cheats.
Enough Solitaire and to hell with Patience. Come on, get your coat; we can talk strategies, man to man, on the way.

(Unbelievably, about two minutes ago, the ‘phone started ringing. Naturally, I didn’t want to answer because I was nearly at the end of that last, crucial sentence. Eventually, I did pick up the receiver. It was my Nan. She wanted to tell me to start saving all my margarine tubs, would you believe? I hope you do believe because what I’m saying here is the truth. And no, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’m back on the butter).