---------
Yes.
I have had sex with a professional dominatrix. Although, in hindsight, it
wasn’t quite how I was expecting it to be. It wasn’t as systematic and well
thought out as the scenes on Kink (and yes, if you’ve bought this book, you
know exactly what I’m talking about) but it was a good experience. Painful, but
good, nonetheless.
I’ll
let your minds wander for a while as I exercise a little Post-Empire for my
previous readers which include American
Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis.
As
far as I can recall, I was not sexually abused as a child. I was an altar boy
at my local Catholic Church, though. I enjoyed the ritual and mystical aspects
of the incense and candles and the parading of the cross. I used to know the
structure of the Catholic mass off by heart. I took my first Holy Confession
when I was about seven or eight. What did I confess? I wasn’t too sure what to
confess. I hadn’t really ever done anything. I told the priest (it was held in
the staff room of my Catholic primary school) that I had told my sister to shut
up. I think I had to recite a Hail Mary. How did I feel afterwards? A little
used. The priest (who I won’t name) wound up having an affair with a married
teacher at the school, which gave the local newspapers something to write
about. She ended up dying of a brain tumour after giving birth to his child.
God got his own back in the end. As funny as this sounds to Atheists (they have
quite a heightened sense of irony) sometimes I think about him. He must have
felt like it was a divine punishment. How could he not have even entertained
that possibility? The carnal pleasures of the flesh that robbed him of his relationship
with God ends with a baby and the death of the only woman he’d probably ever
touched. It was one of the many secrets that my primary school kept close
within its ranks. Reminds me of the time when there had been a prowler on the
grounds. My sister (nine years old) was talking about it, and I was happily
reaching the final level of Super Mario on the Gameboy.
“Mum,
what’s rake?” She asked. “There’s a raker at school.”
Mum
cleared her throat. “Rape.”
I
paused the game. “What’s a raper then, mummy?” I asked.
“Yeah,”
my sister said. “What’s a raper?”
It’s
funny thinking back on this, because I’ve actually known quite a few rapists. I
recently was released from The Tarn in Woolwich, a secure psychiatric unit.
Everybody else in there, all the ‘clients’ as they’re called, were serious
sexual and violent offenders. Except me. I was there for self-harm. I sliced up
my arms with the smashed mirror in my room in Green Parks House, Farnborough,
the acute ward I know better than anybody. The day before six nurses had tried
to kill me with a forced overdose of Olanzapine and Lorazepam. They laughed at
me as my mouth started to involuntarily close from the medication. When I
wouldn’t bow down to their dominance, I was shipped off in a blackened box in
the back of a police van to the secure unit. Out of sight, out of mind, I
suppose. I had had a nervous breakdown after the Dark Knight Rises massacre in Colorado. I vomited after I had the
horrifying inspiration that maybe James Holmes had read my first novel. I
decided to punish myself and forced my mother to drive me to Green Parks. I
thought I would get them to kill me if I acted like a violent psychopath. I am
not a violent psychopath. But my performance was clearly convincing enough to
inspire laughter from their end as I lay on the floor of the doctor’s office
and the medication started to kick in, whispering a line from Marilyn Manson’s Born Villain:
“You
don’t even want to know what I’m gonna do to you now..”
*
I
pop outside for a cigarette. Me and Raf have gone to London to see The Shining at the BFI in Embankment and
are killing time in a Costas in the West End. I am listening to Ready to Die by Notorious B.I.G, dressed
in the height of non-fashion with cheap Reebok Classics, no-make jeans, a few
hoodies and a ten quid beanie. Window shopping rich girls and getting uneasy
looks (which of course pleases me) from up-market businessmen and middle class
kids suffering the latest fashion craze with floppy hair, ironic T-shirts,
oversized fluorescent sneakers and pipe-cleaner trousers. It seems that
Generation Wuss (as Bret Easton Ellis has dubbed the new crop of ‘talent’) genuinely
believe wearing Dr Dre headphones will actually help them crack the music
industry. They’re still unaware that the music industry ceased to exist in the
late nineties and is now a fully-fledged, fully operational entertainment
industry, and it doesn’t matter how many plays you get on your
MySpace/Soundcloud account, it all depends on how many cocks you suck or how
easy you are to sell. Saying that though, if you crack YouTube you’re pretty
much guaranteed a few thousand record sales. There is nothing genuine. There is
nothing real. There is only commercial savvy and an ability to swallow your
ego. Nobody is bigger than the competition. It’s an X Factor world. Deal with
it. It’s the age of Justin Bieber, not Jeff Buckley. I can’t see that changing
any time soon, if ever. We’re so atomised we’re not only a post-digital age,
but a post-dating and (tragically) post-literature age as well. Out of the
crowd I see a tall, distinguished man with a grey beard, prominent nose, iPod
earphones in and a haunted look in his eyes. I realise it’s Stephen Fry. His
fashion is impeccable, the sort of fashion that actually is high fashion, tailor made suits, three thousand pound scarf,
shoes that cost more than my annual benefit income. I inhale on my cigarette,
smiling wryly as he purposefully heads on toward Piccadilly Circus. I once read
in an interview with Clint Eastwood that said he never slows down in a crowd,
especially if he’s noticed. It’s funny. Stephen Fry is blocking me on Twitter. He
looks good though, he’s lost weight, poor lamb. I finish my cigarette and
wander back downstairs to Raf who’s fiddling with his Blackberry in the back
corner. I pour myself another cup of breakfast tea from my half empty pot.
“Dude,”
I say, taking out my earphones. “Guess who I just saw.”
“Avril
Lavigne?”
“I
wish,” I say wistfully. “Stephen Fry.”
I
describe the encounter.
“Yeah,
he has lost weight, and it probably was, y’know, he’d be out and about up
here.”
“He’s
one of the celebrities who are blocking me on Twitter.”
“Celebrities? More than one?”
“Yeah.
Ricky Gervais won’t let me retweet him, E.L James is blocking me, Stephen Fry,
The Literary Review, and Bret Easton Ellis’s boyfriend.”
Raf
grins. “You’re just a little Twitter troll aren’t you.”
I
sip my tea. “Dude, I’m the fucking God
of Twitter trolls...”
I
start to ponder on 2012, the worst year of my life. If I told you, you’d never
believe me…
A.W.M 11/11/2012
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