Facsimile Guy

Facsimile Guy Here comes trouble. The silly plump frump across the street, waddling like a duck on her way back to hubby from eating small candy-coated kids or whatever it is she does in the night. Munching on the munchkins. My friendly neighbourhood psychobint. The ghost of Xmas pudding. And I’m Oliver Pissed. I call them Fred and Rose. Pish and Posh Spite. Poppycunt and Balderdick. Bonehead and Slaphead. The respectable, mundane face of evil in all its ignorant, insane projections. The Ghosts of Xmas Cracked. All the horror is in that there is no horror, as someone once said. ‘Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,’ but it’s going to take a bigger man than me to see it in them, as it’s the last thing they’d look for or see in me. Anger Mismanagement. You don’t have to be a fucked-up alien sex fiend to live and work here but it helps. These horsebanging skanks. They would positively revel in it. It takes one to know one. Now this midsummer night’s sex farce. A set-up just waiting to happen. Every conspiracy needs a patsy. Watch the players manoeuvre themselves into place, almost imperceptibly, as if by chance. I’m almost taken in by it myself. That’s the beauty of it; the insidious, supernatural slyness of it. Yet, it encompasses all the charm, finesse, and perceptive acuity of a retarded plastic bucket, to paraphrase Billy from school-days. Oh how we laughed. ‘Howling at the moon, waiting for their demon-lover’. The ghosts of my dreams. Like snippets of movies, strands of wishful thinking, a forbidden thought, coalescing, shapeshifting into anything it likes, coming of its own volition, or so it seems; like a pack of ravening wolves, or a scream of rage. Or frustration. The blood-red rubies of temptation, the gift of hatred and death in human form, as she stands by her window and coolly unbuttons her woollen cardigan, letting it slip off her shoulders to the floor, then crosses her arms and pulls her t-shirt up over her head in one slick, practised movement. Then reaches behind and unclips her bra and slips it off her shoulder. An almost imperceptible pause before she reaches up and pulls closed the curtains, abruptly, as if reestablishing her dominance, her territory. The mock outrage an absurdity. Consciousness rises in on me abruptly in that moment of clarity. If I was dreaming then it’s sunk back into the dream-repository it came from, to be replaced by the clarity of memory. The realisation of which makes

me feel slightly queasy. Again I feel the impulse to question how such a situation could have arisen. I want to protest. Then she’s naked, pressing her lithe body against me as I cup a breast and stroke the nipple before covering it with my lips, her long hair flowing against my face and chest. Curses. I‘ve got to get out of here. Or find a woman. I finished a painting earlier in the evening, and left it until I was sure it was dry, or pretty sure, then took it through to the bedroom, as I usually do, and put it on top of the rest, that lay there flopped on top of the small settee turned on its side, reminding of nothing so much as one of Dali’s surreal images of the floppy clocks. I had intended to take it through to the sitting room, but had allowed the clutter of books, magazines, and art-junk piled on the chair in the corner, put me off. I hadn’t bothered to flick the light on, as I could see by the light of the lamp in the sitting room. An undertaking that would take only a matter of seconds. Or had I hoped she might do something daring, something 'outrageous? How fresh of her. Already a practised coquette. And there she was. I had given up on the thought of putting up curtains, as it became apparent they had got into the habit of copying my movements, opening and closing their own shortly after me, sometimes almost simultaneously. Too impatient or forgetful to remember to buy the cord for nets, I attached them with metal clippers to those old-fashioned slats that criss-crossed the window, and left it at that. If it pisses them off, all they had to do was close their curtains. All of them. Instead, they indulge in every variation under the sun. As for the others, everything seems to piss them off. And by everything, I mean me, and everything about me. The kind of statement that says everything but explains nothing. Some people secretly revel in problems. They live to complain, love finding things to be angry about. These people are, as nigel molesworth might say, positively furious, my dear. The thought of which pissed me off, and the more obvious they were about it, the angrier I became. In short, I was furious. But intelligent or observant enough to see the irony inherent in the situation. It had become a vicious circle. I suppose the situation with the older flirtatious teen amused me somewhat. The irony there didn’t escape me either. Maybe she saw me as some sort of maverick James Dean figure, or Elvis wannabe with my dark hair and occasional jeans. Only, she’d probably never heard of James Dean. Or that’s all she’d heard. She’s put her computer facing the window from her bedroom. That way, it seems to me, she can keep her eye on the whole flat. She can do her studies or chat to friends, or explore

various exotic locations, or look up the latest slim to no talent slim boy band or whatever the hell it is she does up there, while I fight my ever fluctuating motivation for painting as at least a means of some kind of regular income. Just call me Joan of Art. While my life revolves around cable TV, and a book when I’ll fit it into my, er, schedule. I suspect her neighbours see me at best as a useless parasite. Or want to. With their head full of bilge from the daily rags that form their views of the world, they have no real appreciation or interest in art or real psychology of any kind. Their lives are a blur of crap on immigrants stealing ‘their’ McJobs, violent yobs. Suffice it to say they’re impervious to beauty. I feel if anything, they resent what they see of my abilities. I sometimes stand a painting up against the window, as much to have a sense of shutting them out as to show off. If it pisses them off by upsetting their preconceived ideas of what I should be capable of, good. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if what they really want were that I turn out to be the axe murdering paedophile they were hoping I was all along. As long as it doesn’t affect them personally in any way. And if it did, as it would, as everything is connected, well, they’ll always have the satisfaction of saying I told you so. What’s a little sacrifice in the name of love and friendship when the goal is to be right whatever the cost? And if it happened to be a stranger, or better still, someone you secretly disliked, then all the better. Still, you wouldn’t wish such a thing on your worst enemy. Or would they? The weird circularity of their outlook escapes them. I probably resent that the most. What they need is a piece of my mind, a good shake, or a good slap. Compassion, rationality tells me they are like fearful children. Everyday experience makes it clear they’re like vindictiveminded, immature brats. That their own thoughts, how they think of others, could affect themselves in any way is an alien concept to them. Reason reminds me I read much the same thing about the psychology of arch-serial killer Ted Bundy. ‘What’s one less person on the face of the earth anyway?’ he once quipped. Ted The Quipper. Quite the voyeur too. He’d have been in his element here. It’s like living in a goldfish bowl. The voyeurs, my friendly neighbourhood self-appointed policers and guardians of the universe. Now we’re to have officially appointed community voyeurs, I heard. Nothing much will change except that the curtain-twitching and strategic peep-holes will now be official. The intrusion more overt, more assertively confident in its conviction of its

own omniscience, untouchability, and inverted concept of victims and victimizers. Same old same-O. Trivial tales of everyday psychosis. And weird and ominous dreams I thought I had long forgotten, but one never knows just when it or they might come handy, reappearing as if a warning to say ‘be on the alert and take nothing for granted’. Yeah, I saw it coming, or most of it. Some dreams you never forget, as in life – and other clichés. Like history repeating itself, like some malevolent snake, marshalling its forces, withdrawing only to strike again when the moment is right and so, all the more effectively. Dreams at their best are the reminders of the kingdom of jewel-like radiance, and the experience of it. The gateway to another world. The end of anger and regret and sorrow, and all too easily forgotten.