Depressaholic: Part 4

He worked at present in a bank, and would sit, with the exception of a half hour lunch break, and two other fifteen minute breaks, at his desk from nine till five, working through endless piles of forms, transferring the data onto a computer. Although it was terrible at times, horrifically boring, especially bad after dinner when all you wanted to do was sleep, and when the clock stood still and you felt like screaming, even so it was a manageable job. There were good points, for example in the morning, fresh, yet also half asleep, it was nice to work through a pile of forms, never having to tax the brain at that early hour, dozing your way happily through them, and having the satisfaction of seeing the pile go down. Also he could chat sometimes to the other employees, and when you did finally get a break – and they were very precious here so you appreciated them the more – you could have a nice cup of coffee.

He hated being unemployed, feeling always guilty for not earning money and contributing nothing to society and instead living on the dole or off his parents. More so than this he hated being idle and couldn’t cope with all the nonsense that swirls around in your head when you have too much time on your hands. No, when he worked he felt he was making something of his life; when he wasn’t he felt he was fretting it away.

So he liked to work, or at least it was the better of two bad options, and he liked to earn a bit of money, to pay his way and have a bit of cash in his pocket. His plan, his ideal was to work five days a week from nine till five, and then have the remainder of his time – all those precious evenings and the whole weekend – free to do as he liked and mainly to pursue his reading, his love of learning. This was one of the main reasons why he held such a low key job. He could’ve made use of his education by being for example a teacher, but then all his evenings and weekends would’ve been taken up with marking and preparation, in a word his life would’ve been over. Moreover being so antisocial and introverted, teaching could never have appealed to him, and he had no wish to return to school, detesting as he did his school days. Plus he hated the education system, the pushy parents, the exams, and had no desire to be part of a system which in his words was to ‘pseudo-educate dullards.’

As well as this people often asked why he didn’t go into publishing or journalism. But the answer to this was all too easy. Those students he’d been at university with, the conventional ones who’d despised Shakespeare and company and chased firsts, but who had hated the boffins, geeks and bores – they now saturated these professions. He was too true and sensitive, too refined and withdrawn to enter these. You had to have that bubbly, forceful character that came with being sated, well-fed and content, that crass simplicity of being to get on in these fields. Geeks, nerds, and bores like him wouldn’t be welcomed. It was with minor bitterness that he saw his piers take up cushy jobs in journalism and publishing; the plump, well fed goslings of the petit bourgeoisie, knowing what was cool and what wasn’t, now held sway here too. Again the girls irked him especially. He saw some of them progress in their careers. Two especially pretty blonde girls from his year, now belonged to a publishing firm, and had recently won an award for one of their books, a sell-out chick-lit novel, anathema to Tony’s soul. He’d seen their picture on the internet. The two of them dazzling, beautiful, holding their trophy, smiling for the camera like a pair of film stars, and speaking about what an ‘original novel’ it had been and how ‘it had blown them away when they first read it.’

Or there again, Lucile Phelps, a girl in the year above him, now writing a column in a national newspaper. Having the right connections, that narcissistic first chaser had made her mark on the world, writing book reviews, sounding conceited and clever, and looking, in her photo next to her column, beautiful and intelligent so that the readers were intimidated by her. It was such a lie. She’d hated all the classics at university. For her, Hardy was a boffin.

But by and large Tony didn’t care that the world should be like that. He was happy enough to live in oblivion, doing a job that didn’t make use of his skill, provided he was satisfied with himself. Whatever those fakes might do, he wouldn’t let it affect him. He just wanted to be alone, unnoticed, and allowed to live his own life. And by working a low key job, he had hours to spare in which to read; outside of work hours no-one held sway over him and he was free to do as he pleased. He enjoyed his aloneness.

At least in theory he did. In practice things didn’t work out so well. The job got to him. Not so much inside work hours where he expected the worst, but outside, when he was meant to be relaxing. It held sway over his soul, held it captive, and the wounds he received in battle during the day, he took home with him, where they rankered, festered and caused him pain.

He was not at all suited to the work environment of the office. Accustomed to the liberal atmosphere of the university, free of pettiness and tyranny, the office stifled his soul, it bullied him. Not that it was terrible or the people bad. Not so at all. It was simply that he was not of their ilk and always felt ill at ease in their presence. Felt he was too educated and wondered if they’d pounce on him. Felt secretly disliked. It wasn’t that they weren’t all nice people, they were: they were sensible, good, intelligent. Moreover Mike and Sheila were big novel readers like him, and Mike especially was a curious fellow, he had a passionate, sensitive soul, he wanted to know more. Many of the employees were graduates, they’d been to university like him. And all of the cashiers, the girls had been friendly to him, and would chat with him sometimes, and he recalled how Laura had shown him where the biscuits were on the first day. She’d been friendly. But he was an alien in their midst and couldn’t relax.

So he was constantly in trepidation, and though he was quiet, did what he was told, and worked hard, he feared he would be pulled up for something, disciplined, like he was in the army. He was in the power of decent men and women, sensible, well-mannered, hard working men and women, but he feared them, for they weren’t as educated as him, in his heart he despised them for being such robots, and he was terrified there would be a clash, that he would rebel against them. On his first day he’d been told off for wearing brown shoes and told to change to black ones. It had absolutely enraged him, such a petit, insignificant thing as that, especially since he was such a quiet and effective worker, just the sheer principle of it choked and upset him, and revelling as he did in freedom of the mind he felt bitter about it. Nevertheless he’d kept it to himself, changed his shoes and got on with it.

Then one Thursday another incident took place. He was told off for eating at his desk. A middle aged woman, a senior member of the team, had happened to come downstairs on business, and in passing, had told him it was against the rules. She hadn’t been nasty particularly, but at the same time she’d been snappy and unfriendly, and Tony was so angry with her; and to see that bossy, miserable, joyless woman, coldly, with a cold tone of voice, and cold eyes, cheerlessly tell him it wasn’t allowed, profoundly upset him. Especially so since others did it, the young girl Sarah, the flash, neatly dressed, handsome, young James. But then they were comme il faut, at home here, unlike he, the alien. He felt the woman would never have told them off, as though there was a clique.

He was on edge for the rest of the day, burning inside with hate and anger. But he kept it all pent up, and at five o’clock left the office, happy to be released, free, and as he walked home alone through the dark February night, he allowed a little tear to come into his eye, the veil of night protecting him from detection.

He was bitter, angry and upset. He burned inside and couldn’t let it go, the thought of that woman, and the way she held power over him. Yet he knew he shouldn’t let it get to him, that he was ruining his freedom, his free time, all that he had earned. It was a beautiful dark night, and as he walked alone home through it, he knew he should’ve been appreciating it, enjoying the soothing chill out music he had on his walkman, thinking, meditating, being relaxed and at ease. But it was impossible, he felt dreadful after work, lousy, unable to shake off its affects.

Sometimes, when he had a long hot bath, he was unable to feel anything but hot and bothered afterwards, as though he had boiled and heated his body so much that it couldn’t recover for the rest of the day. Likewise now with work. He had six or seven hours of freedom in front of him, but his whole being felt choked and his nerves were tense and angry, as if he needed to beat somebody: he was murderously angry and irritated, and all because of his work day. He felt filthy inside, unclean, impure, unable to wipe off the grime of the days work, just as the coalminer could wash clean his face and body, but never his temper or soul.

When he arrived back home and saw in his bedroom his copy of Moby Dick he felt irritated; no, the last thing he wanted to do when he was uptight like this was to read that. He chided himself for ever having chosen it, wishing instead he had a popular history book on the go, something like ‘They Travelled to Tibet’, a book he’d recently read, a page burner, a volume so interesting and easy to read, so light and uncomplicated that you ate up forty or so pages at a time, charging through the chapters, devouring the litany up whole. But he didn’t. He felt angered and enraged. He wouldn’t be doing any reading tonight. God, he wanted to relax.

Desperately uptight, as a first step to unwinding he went into his bathroom to masturbate, taking with him several porn magazines, of which he had a stash under the bed, addicted as he was to the images, but also to the sheer archaic human thrill of going out on a nighttime to try and buy one.

The girls were amazing and so diverse. There was Carmella, a busty, black-haired, dusky Latina, there was the slim, pert princess Anastacia, rolling around on the rocks and sand wearing only a jaguar g-string and a necklace of pearls, her supple, taut little body and buttocks covered in sand, her soft, naked body resting against the jagged, rough rocks, so that you almost felt the friction. Ouch! Then there was Petra the Pole, there was the leggy, juicy, voluptuous Asian babe Arabella, so arrogant, so haughty but so exceptionally beautiful and there were so many others too. Yet actually, after the incident at work, he hated women, wanted to hate them and he felt angered that he now had to lust over them.

But slave to these women that he was, he masturbated three times and when finished felt utterly depressed and low, as though he barely had the will to live. He felt so exhausted, so suicidal. He hated himself, he loathed the girls, he hated that he had to know of their existence. He lay on the bathroom floor, trying to recover.

At this point his mother knocked on the door.

‘Tony, would you like a cup of tea love?’

As he lay there suicidal, trying to recover, to obliviate himself, he felt as testy as a Lion to be intruded upon like this, the knocking on the door grated his soul, and his mother’s kind words so enraged him that he felt like running out and strangling her.

‘No!’ he screamed back emphatically.

It hurt his mother to hear it, but she so wanted to be his friend that she persisted.

‘Is something the matter Tony?’

But that was like anathema to him.

‘No’ he shouted once more ‘just go away!’

Upset, his mother saw however that it was best not to push it any further and headed downstairs. At the bottom she met Mr Luggin on his way up. Tony overheard their conversation.

‘Don’t go and see him love’ said his mother. ‘I think it’s best to stay clear.’

‘Oh’ said Mr Luggin taken aback. ‘I’ll just go up and see if he wants a cup of tea.’

He was in such a pleasant mood after work and was keen just to say hello to his son, glad to be back home as he was. His demeanour and feeling couldn’t have been more at odds with his sons.

‘I already asked him that’ said Mrs Luggin, taking her irritation out on her husband.

‘Well I’ll ask him again’ said the irrepressible Mr Luggin. He was so happy at heart, so peaceful.

By this time, irked, Tony came out of the bathroom and met his father on the landing,

‘Hi!’ said his father enthusiastically.

‘Hi’ replied Tony in a low, low pitch that showed how miserable and depressed he was.

‘Is something the matter, Tony?’ said his father, hurt, scared and confused, trying to reach out to his son.

‘No!’ screamed Tony, ‘just go away! Go on move! I can’t stand the sight of you. Now go away!’

Upset, and almost with puppy dog eyes, his father looked at him imploringly, then left him alone. Tony went to his room.

He lay on the bed brooding. He felt angry and stressed, bitter with himself. He hated the way he behaved, and knew he was exactly like the slave, who, after a gruelling days work, labouring in the sun and being whipped by his overseer, came back home to beat his wife.

One member of the Luggins family was however unperturbed by this, and innocent and oblivious, ran upstairs to see Tony. It was Pepper the cat.

The little ginger cat, cold and half wet from its recent jaunt outside, joyously ran up the stairs to his bedroom and after scratching at the door and meowing, was allowed in. As Tony lay on his bed, his hands behind is head, looking at the ceiling, the cat walked around on the bed next to him, purring, content, rubbing her head, itching it against his person, his toes, his legs, his head, ears and hair, meowing all the while, touching her wet nose to his ear, looking for love and affection. He indulged her, stroking her head and scratching her chin.

She was such a pleasant cat, always friendly and joyous, especially so when she’d been outside in the cold and wet for a while and was delighted to be back indoors. It was nice that she never resented being left out: whereas a human, left out in the cold would vent their anger after the event, when they were let in, the cat Pepper simply revelled in her new found comfort, completely forgetting all the hurt and discomfort of before. Yes, no doubt if it had’ve been him, the first thing he would’ve done on reentering the house would be to berate his parents for leaving him out, rather than just being thankful to be back indoors.

Only very occasionally did Pepper seem out of sorts. On cold days where she stayed in all days, she would, when night came, feel depressed: you could sense it, she snorted slightly as though she were peeved and like a puppy she pouted. At such times there was only one thing to do. Tony would put her, against her will, out of doors. She hated it at the time, but half an hour later, when she came in wet, cold and refreshed, purring and content, he knew he’d done her a favour. Now he should take his own medicine.

He went out for a long, rambling walk. The night was cold, dark and serene, and there was a freshness in the air after the rain. He walked alone, thoughtful, through the deserted streets.

He needed love in his life. He knew he needed somebody to love, to care for. He had a platonic image in his head of a girl his age – not older, not younger – sensible, sensitive, fairly plain, who needed him like he needed her. Someone whom he got a long with, a soul mate. He wouldn’t care what she looked like, in fact he would much prefer her plain and ordinary, someone who didn’t fit into this world, a geek, a nerd, a nobody. Someone who went to church say or read books or was a misfit in some respect. Someone good and sensible.

He would love her, dote on her, do everything for her. The weekends would be great. He would look forward to them all week. They would spend Saturday evening together, relaxing at home in each others company. Joyed to be in each others presence, he would hold her hand, kiss her forehead, give her the loving protection she needed. The plainer she was, the more outcast, the more he would love her. And it would be so easy to unwind in her presence. Being alone was so stressful, he craved to be in the presence of this woman, the woman he loved, it was such a relief, so relaxing. He loved her so much, it would be such a joy to do her laundry for instance or to cook for her, to take care of her and make sure she was looked after. They would spend the night together, he saw her next to him in bed, not in any sexual context, but in a loving one, and he would look over to her, hold her, comfort her, warmed and heartened by her presence. Then on Sunday afternoon the two of them would go for a walk together, alone in the countryside, in the cold, pure light of a cold winter’s day, hand in hand they would walk, loving each other and caring for nothing else, stopping to drink some coffee from a hot flask they shared.

That was his platonic ideal, but it was shattered by his obsession with sex, beautiful women and pornography. Would there ever be a day when he gave up these women, when he learnt to ignore them? It seemed unlikely. Sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night he would sit alone in a café overlooking Leicester Square and watch on as hordes, utter hordes of beautiful women, with cleavage, bare legs and body parts on show, walked past on their way to nightclubs. There were hundreds of them, and he sat there and ogled them, gorged with desire, seeing their strong naked thighs, their bouncing breasts, beautiful hair, their pretty faces adorned with scintillating earrings and necklaces, saw their sexy high heels and their tight, skimpy little costumes revealing so much. He was dazzled by them, tantalized. He wanted to sleep with each and everyone of them. Yet he would only ever be able to watch them from afar, never able to get near to them or impress them. He wanted all of them and he would never touch any of them. How was he supposed to maintain his sanity?

So his love ideal was smashed by his lust after handsome women, and there he was like a man sat, bound to a chair, his hands tied behind his back, as a procession of tantalizing lovelies came by and teased him. He loathed them for it, but it was his fault for being so obsessed. And it all left him between a rock and a hard place for if he did ever find his beloved plain wife, surely he would have unfulfilled desires, and then he would resent his wife for that, and get angry and rageful with her. Why did he associate true love with a plain woman, and lustful pleasure with the beauties? Why did he hate the beauties so much, while the plain girls were his platonic ideal? He always classified women, and put them into pigeonholes, and had no idea that they hated this. His views of women were so at odds with how women saw themselves. But then again, what he thought or didn’t think about women was all academic, since they weren’t in any way interested in him.

Thinking back to his days at university he always recalled the rows and rows of well-fed, ignorant lovelies, those magnificent girls and his hatred of them, but he rarely considered that not all of them had been like that. One girl, plain and undistinguished, had been very similar to him. She was intelligent like him, good at her work, but also upset, sad, crushed by the world. You could read that in her face; she always, like Tony, looked down, too sensitive. She lacked all the beauty and coquette manners of the other girls. It wasn’t just that she was plainer than they that made her less attractive. Tony realised that coupled with that was the fact that to him at least, a sensitive looking person, unhappy and despondent, a true thinker, someone who saw life like he did, was never so attractive as someone who was in the easy lane of life, plump, sated and ignorant of truth. No, those beauties were doubly attractive to him, because not only were they exquisitely handsome, but being well-rounded, comatose and oblivious, sunning themselves in the innocent joy of life, they seemed healthy and sexy. Yes, he and that girl the same, because they saw life as it was, and were crushed by it, lost something in their face, almost as if their physiognomy changed on account of their sensitive pursuit of truth. They looked unhealthy.

So there it was. Really he had already come across such a plain woman as his ideal. That upset-looking, plain, intelligent girl had been in his class. Yet they’d never said a word to each other, and there had just been a mutual dislike, a mutual shunning, as if to say in this lonely world, and in the presence of and under the weight of the well-fed guys and dolls, they just couldn’t ever face each other. Yes, she just like Tony, had been unconcerned about him, but rather more concerned with what upset her and what she was outcast from: the content, sated, beautiful, students.

He saw that he was obsessed by the worst of the students and especially the girls and hate them though he may, it was with them he wanted to make peace. When it came to feeling sexually aroused to women, the more vulgar, tacky and awful they were the more he found them attractive. Again with the female students in his class it had been the worst of them, that had left their mark on him, and these were the ones that he hated but whom he also in some sense found attractive. He saw clearly all the flaws in his nature. Other people found love, other people got on with their lives, other people contented themselves with what they were given. But he became obsessed and bitter, raging against the wrongs, hurt and upset by it all.

He walked on through the dark, deserted night, refreshed. For all his acknowledged faults however, he knew he also lived for truth, and that there was some justification in his anger against the world. He was lonely and confused, uncertain, unsure of himself, unable to explain why he felt like he did and why he was so different, yet at the same time sure in some small way, that it was he who was seine, and that the world was mad. When he got home he felt slightly better, as if he was coming to a state of caring less. He wanted to express himself a little, to try and explain himself, and so wrote a little comment on an internet forum. He knew it would almost certainly fall on deaf ears, but he didn’t care, he felt calmed and relaxed, and he would put it out there anyway. He would just say his peace and leave it to be.

‘Someone once said that life without love is impossible. It is unbearable. I need someone to love and I have no-one. I’m always so angry, raging and depressed. I hate myself for being like this, for hating the world, I absolutely hate myself, and I know I’m a total jerk and I’ve only got myself to blame, but I just can’t help be like that. I’ve got barely any friends and the only people who really care for me are my parents, and I constantly upset them by taking out all my problems on them. I hate myself for it, but just can’t help it. I’ve got nothing in my life, except my job, and I absolutely hate that, it’s dead end and drives me insane. I’m always down, low, dispirited and moody, but the worst thing of all is that I loathe myself and know that it’s all my fault for being this way.’

Depressaholic: Part 3

Despite gaining a first and a distinction in the degree and master’s degree that Tony completed in the four years of his time at university, he worked now as a temporary office clerk. He didn’t really like the work, but the worst aspect of it was that it left you drained, unhappy and unable to relax, in what should have been the reward of your leisure time.

Nevertheless, on a Saturday he felt sufficiently relaxed and enthused by those good feelings the weekend engenders in us, to shake off the irksome stench and anger induced by his life at work.

He woke in the morning fresh, and sat for a couple of hours trying to learn German. But it was difficult. He wanted so much to speak a language, he felt it should be something he could attain, but his aptitude was poor, and the way he studied – ploughing slowly through abstract, dull, old texts on German philosophy, constantly looking up words he didn’t know and then forgetting them – was poor and Quixotic to say the least. He felt jealous that so many others, especially foreigners, could so painlessly master a foreign language, especially since they didn’t appear in any way as intelligent or studious as he. It seemed to require a certain cool, a certain nonchalance, a certain ease of person to become fluent in another tongue; introverted people like himself faired badly at it. But he wanted it all the same.

Then later he ate lunch with his family, and dispirited and sad in light of his family’s seemingly easy talk regarding the lap dancer and the footballer, he’d headed off to town.

Not that he liked town so much. He hated being in a crowd, he hated shopping. He hated consumer society. Yet he wanted to make something of his day, to get out and enjoy himself, and he had no idea what else to do.

When he got there, he walked around aimlessly amidst the crowds, scowling and unhappy. He never smiled and cut a miserable, drab and discontent figure, so that if people saw him they just felt annoyed and angry as if he spoilt the joy and pleasure, their lightness of being on their day off. He hated the masses. He felt hot, bothered and sweaty, he felt ill and had hot flushes, and in this respect he didn’t help himself by having such an appalling diet. He always skipped breakfast, then later on, he would eat a couple of bags of crisps and chocolate bars. It was a pathetic diet, and he knew no better, but that concoction of e-numbers and additives, all that unsubstantial stodge and the lack of anything wholesome, left him feeling utterly dreadful. It left him with a headache, low on energy and with an emptiness in his stomach; it left him anaemic and lacklustre and with a depression rankling in his person. And yet he had no idea. He always thought that when he was down and low and dispirited, it was due to feeling unhappy about his life, about the world in general. But his appalling diet at least contributed to this state. It left him feeling hot and bothered, ill-tempered and energyless.

He strolled around. He had no comprehension of things like fashion and consumerism and hated to see well dressed women, joyously, rapturously engrossed in shopping, buying yet more clothes and apparently unconcerned about anything else. He couldn’t hide his anger, his hatred of the mob and he walked around town with a look of anger and dissatisfaction on his face. When other shoppers saw him like this, read his thoughts on his face, and knew he was out of humour, they felt angry and annoyed to have to put up with his presence. He wanted to mow down the mob with a machine gun. He shouldn’t have come, knew he shouldn’t have come and yet, he had come. Why? He was so annoying. It was utterly impossible to have sympathy with one such as him. He was a hard case indeed.

With respect to all the posse of well-dressed, beautiful young women he felt enraged. They were alien to him, he didn’t know them, and at one and the same time he wanted to know them yet was painfully aware that he would never get near them; and despairing of ever being able to communicate with them properly on any level, he was beset by a deep, impotent rage. They seemed to be everywhere he looked, and in the crowd you were forever bumping into them and making accidental eye-contact with them. He wished at such times that he could’ve been alone in the countryside. Yet he also knew that had he have gone there then he would’ve felt lonely.

Eventually, unable to contain his rage, he displayed his dissatisfaction by deliberately walking in the path of a young, handsome girl out shopping with her mother. The sight of those two aliens, sated, consumed by their shopping, irritated him, and as the man in front of him did the gentlemanly thing of allowing them to pass through a narrow shop doorway, Tony intentionally marched past, blocking the way of the daughter, almost bumping into her and showing her scorn and disrespect.

The young girl saw all this, read the situation perfectly, and being upset, directed a contemptuous look of scorn at Tony, tutting at the same time. His action was so pathetic and silly, and his body language and facial expression had told the girl everything, how much he hated her and how unhappy he was. And she, with mixed feelings of sympathy, annoyance, but also wounded pride on her own part, had hit back with haughtiness and supremacy, dealing Tony a blow to his spirit and soul. He felt hollow and ashamed, desperately unhappy. He hated himself for being like this, and couldn’t understand why he, and seemingly only he, should be so dispirited, dissatisfied, so hateful, black and raging.

Walking through town that day he had seen a young man with a Bible in his hand, backed up by his prudish looking parents, quoting from the Bible and lamenting the lack of soul of the consumer society, decrying the worldly vanity of all those indifferent shoppers. Tony had looked upon him with contempt and hatred. Yet he at heart was exactly the same. He felt such shame to be so hateful and raging inside. He only wished to be in harmony with the world.

And yet the incident with the young lady had then been compounded by a second run in with another woman, this time at a burger bar.

Although he realised he must return home immediately he decided first to stop off for a burger and a milkshake in an effort to cheer himself up. Whilst at the counter he turned around and in the queue behind him saw a small woman of stunted growth. His eye lingered on her, as she stood there alone, vulnerable and exposed, and he was unable to hide feelings of revulsion at her ageing, feeble presence as well as a general despair that fate could be so cruel.

Though he would fain have it otherwise he couldn’t resist a second glance at the lady, and then when he desisted doing this he persisted in thinking of her; he felt guilty and depressed to find such feelings of cruelty and ruthlessness aroused in his breast when he would like to consider himself a good person; in his gloomy state of mind he was unable to live and let live, like the other happy people around him. The sterile, kill-joy bully in him came to the fore.

The thought of the poor woman, queuing up alone like himself, for the cheap but comforting thrill of some fast food, filled him with utter loathing and he hated himself for it. He felt the woman was especially aware of his behaviour and thoughts and later when he happened to see her again on the way out he attempted to smile at her: but she, annoyed by him had just looked back with a mixture of contempt and real hatred.

He took the bus immediately home, deflated and depressed.

That evening he tried to make something of his time. As a student he had loved Saturday evenings and would spend them drinking a glass of red wine, reading a good book, and afterwards, feeling happy and warmed through by the wine, and the after glow of reading, reflect and meditate, whilst listening to classical music. But now, as a worker, that was not so easy. Even though, he was equally free now, and at home, just as at university, the simple fact that he worked during the week, in a pressurised, not overtly intelligent environment, scarred his soul enough to leave a mark now, on a Saturday night. Somehow you never quite escaped the horror of work, and his soul was not really, truly released from the bondage that he bowed to in the workplace, the meanness that corrupted it as he submitted to the company. His soul was still uneasy, poisoned, injured, imprisoned, and it was impossible to unwind and relax as in former days.

Tied to that the books he was busy reading were proving to be dreadful choices: Moby Dick and Dr Faustus. It was his own fault, for the tyrant in him demanded he read such books from front to back, never allowing him to quit, even though they were impossible to read, obscure and unrewarding and stretched your nerves, till you wanted to scream. He should’ve been more well-rounded, at least here, since there were plenty of good books about that were easy to read.

So at ten o’clock that evening, after having attempted to force his way through a chapter of the great white whale, he gave it up, angry, bitter and deeply unhappy. He only got one Saturday night, he didn’t want to waste it dragging through these awful pages, he wanted something more, he wanted friendship, he wanted to live, to love and he also wanted to take it easy and relax. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but it wasn’t going to be reading.

His parents having gone to bed, he watched TV downstairs, and was unable to help himself watch a documentary about a woman getting plastic surgery followed by another about the making of a porn movie. It was all wrong, he hated it, hated himself for watching it, for wasting his well earned Saturday night watching this car crash TV, knowing he was somehow doing it to punish himself, as it held his soul in antagonism, knowing he should be doing something better with his free time.

Inevitably he ended up late that night on the internet. He had a vague hope that here he would find a friend or solace. He attempted searching the words ‘lonely’, ‘depressed’, ‘Bronte’ ‘Christian’ hoping to find somebody out there who had a mind like his, a girl especially. But it was all so fruitless, there were tonnes of useless hits, and the internet seemed like a lonely place, the final false solace of the hopeless and introverted. In the end it was something else that peaked his interest.

It was a news item entitled ‘celebrities of the year’, unavoidable as he visited his homepage. Knowing he shouldn’t look, he did so however, to see photos of a beautiful woman, with huge plastic breasts in a bikini and another of a good looking footballer, strolling along the beach with his wag. He was so furious with everything that he just had to make a comment.

‘I’m sorry, but why are we forced to look at these endless pictures of celebrities? They get paid huge amounts of money, don’t do anything for society and are totally removed from the common man and woman on the street. Most people will never get anywhere near them or the sort of lifestyle they lead, so why bother looking at these images?

‘And they’re all fake as well. That woman’s breasts are false and plastic. She’s not real. How can any man seriously like her?’

He felt frightened as he wrote this. Never one to voice his opinion in public, the internet offered him a security, an anonymity that he wouldn’t have otherwise had. He imagined someone would see his comments, a girl perhaps, and be pleased to find someone of a sensible, intelligent mind in this tawdry, Godless world. There must be someone else out there he thought and this would be a springboard for a friendship. So he was pleased to have written it, Yet he went to bed feeling unhappy and regretful, sad, nervous and at sea, as if he’d started a fire. Perhaps he should have just kept his mouth shut.

He awoke the next morning, sad and worried, and with a headache. And when he saw the response to his comment he felt utterly crushed.

Andy said ‘Wanker! If she’s so fake what are you doing up at two o’clock in the morning looking at pictures of her breasts? Loser!’

Nicole said ‘Shut up, you miserable bore. These people are living the high life. They like being photographed and we like seeing pictures of them, so cut the lecture moron, and go back to being a freak.

‘As for XXX (the footballer) – he is absolutely gorgeous.’

Tony was deeply upset. His nerves were shattered. It spoilt his whole day, and that was bad news, since tomorrow was Monday and he hated it.

Depressaholic: Part 2

At University Tony had studied combined English and American studies. He had a quiet and deep passion for both and for literature, history, culture and art in general. In the writings of the Brontes or the poetry of Poe he found a purity and an elegance, that was a solace, an escape from all the soul crushing doom and misery that the real world presented for him.

His mind and soul had come alive at the university. The lowly tyranny of his school days had been replaced by an environment in which intelligence and calm wisdom were respected. By and large he had quietly admired and liked his lecturers. They were cool-headed, thoughtful, and had a deep passion for their subjects; they revelled in the wonders of literature, in the delights of poetry, in the tragedy of history, and in their lectures they transmitted this enthusiasm, quietly, calmly yet passionately to their students.

The sense of freedom and liberality at the university was like balm to Tony’s soul, and in such an atmosphere, where independent thinking and motivation were encouraged, he revelled. No one was on your back, you were left to your own devices. And under such circumstances he felt relaxed and studied hard, opening up his mind to all knowledge.

He loved the large lecture theatres where they would sit and listen as say Dr Woodthorpe a wizened little white haired academic in a grey tweed jacket, would calmly and passionately tell them of Hardy or Lawrence or Shelley; enthusiastic, deeply knowledgeable, expansive and thorough, he would speak of their lives, their literature, how the two interacted; and he possessed withal such a fine sense and love of history, that say, he seemed exalted and delighted by the fact that at the battle of Trafalgar, Nelson, when dyeing, had begged of one of his men ‘kiss me Hardy, I am dyeing’ and this was in fact Thomas Hardy’s cousin; or that Black Elk and a cohort of Sioux Indians, should, after skirmishing with the likes of Custer in the great plains of America, land up one day in London town, home to Queen Victoria, Dickens, and the Elephant man. The charm of such kisses of history was never lost even on the most dullest of students. At such times they were spell bound by their lecturer’s words. The lecturers were such refined, calm individuals. And such great teachers.

He could recall sitting on an evening in his solitary room, bare, plain, undecorated and monastic, his garret as he called it, and sitting by the lamp light, in the dark, quiet, calm of evening on a Wednesday night, reading the magnificent Huckleberry Finn and interspersing it with a small but excellent volume on the last days of the Sioux nation. It was such a compelling story, full of brilliant characters and drama, and it could evoke such conflicting emotions. And it was well-written, scholaric, you felt pleased to be in the calming presence of the author. Yet what had delighted him most about this book, this little volume, that he read of his own accord, was that it was so musty and old, a hardback with reed-like pages and a delectable font, and he had picked it off the shelf one evening, in a dark, deserted area of the library; an obscure little volume seemingly, it hadn’t been touched for years – the last stamped date was 1976! – and it had just sat there quietly collecting dust, ignored by all, out of the mainstream rush of life, sitting preserved in this dingy, untouched corner of the library, waiting for an individual such as himself to step quietly up to the pate one day and pick it out, only to discover what a brilliant little pocket edition it was, and let it enliven his soul.

Then on such an evening, his soul revelling, spinning, dizzied with all that knowledge, he would finish reading at twelve, and go for a solitary walk through the deserted streets, pitch black and empty, and with well-being calm seeping slowly but surely through his soul and person, he would reflect calmly on life and literature and history, comparing and contrasting all the different books, stories and histories he’d learnt of, all the different dishes on the table of knowledge.

Or on another occasion, sitting in the library till late, growing ever more happier as it emptied, as other students left, sitting there till closing time, writing away passionately on his dissertation on the varying personalities of the Indian chiefs as they attempted to defy the encroaches of the white man, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph and Geronimo. His soul happy, calm, and pleased with the work he’d done, he would stand up and go for a stroll around the library; ending up inevitably at the literature section, perusing the shelves, seeing names such as Webber, Wordsworth and Claire, his soul thrilled, promising himself that he would read these admirable books one day. No, you could not beat that sense of calm learning that pervaded the library at the end of the day. All those books, all that knowledge, all those periodicals and journals, full of scholaric findings. Peace, quite, calm. The cool rationality of academia.

In contrast his personal life had been lonely and sad, and it was because of this that he’d drowned his sorrows in his study and work, his love of learning. He had a few acquaintances, but not really any close friends. Just two or three fellow students on his course and a mature student, one of his flatmates, a kindly, wiser and older man who at least seemed to have some inkling into his nature, and sort of warmed to his sensitive, despondent soul. But by and large he was lonely.

So he was quiet, calm and reticent as a person, but at heart narcissistic, vein and angry. He felt pleased to be disengaged from the pettiness and backbiting that so often accompanies friendship, and he felt himself truer, just to be alone, missing out on human squabbling and bitchery. Although he also lost out on the advantages of friendship and was lonely, he felt his soul cleansed, his person removed from the tawdriness of human behaviour, and he prided himself that he could be described as a decent, honest person. Yet actually in his heart he was really quite hateful and judgemental, seeing and summing up all the faults in his fellow students.

Though in better moods he saw the good in them, recognised their sensitivity and intelligence, felt sorry for those of his piers who seemed to have an inborn love for such books as Wuthering Heights or the Return of the Native, a respect, but who, lacking his grit, would never truly read or engage in such books; though at times he felt sorry and warmed to them and saw that in their hearts they were good human beings and that he was the bad one, a psychopath and mad man for studying so hard and reading so thoroughly, and taking life so seriously; by and large he saw the worst in them, and got angry over that.

They just seemed so well-fed, so good looking, so rich and at ease. There were rows and rows of them, guys and dolls, fashionable, young and sexy, yet they were all so, so mainstream, so horribly conventional, so uninterested in opening up their minds. They were all in tandem with mainstream society, they loved celebrities and gossip, they equipped themselves with the latest mobile phones and all the hob-knobs of the consumer society. They wanted nothing more from their lives. Worldly affairs, money, fashion, who was cool, who wasn’t, partying, eating in restaurants, drinking, having a good time, these were what interested them.

It was ironic then that they should be exposed to the delights of learning, the highlights of literature and history. They didn’t really want to know anything of it. It was wasted on them. The rich, the beautiful, the well fed darlings of the petit bourgeoisie. Wasted on them. Wouldn’t it have been better to expose the humble, working class dog to these treasures? Wouldn’t there then have been more chance of their soul catching alight? Yet, for all that, you had to concede that the students had an intelligence; a quasi, pseudo, mediocre one, but an intelligence all the same, an intelligence that had qualified them for their university course in the first place.

So there you had it. They would never tax their brains and why bother? True, hard thinking removed you from that easy, comfortable mode of life and only brought you down, made you depressed and ill at heart. It required psychopathic energy, the will-power of a bastard, and it meant headaches, eye-problems and a gloaming of the spirits. Surely it was better to stay sated, well-fed and indifferent, at ease with the world like they, than turn, like Tony, into a true thinking, but lonely outcast, taxing his brain and becoming disillusioned with the world and life, no longer seeing it through the prism of well-being. It was probably better to remain like they.

So did he see the other students, and he was always angered by the worse of them, those like him that were narcissistic and power hungry at heart. Especially the girls, the beautiful girls. All of their lives, girls and boys alike, were incredibly pathetic, and they wasted all of their opportunities, squandering their days, waking up late, skipping lectures, lounging in cafés chatting, not happily and at ease, not basking in the sun of youth, but in fact lounging with dissatisfaction souring their hearts since they were feeling guilty, knowing fine well they should be studying, reading, or making something of their lives. Then one day they would finally turn out at the library, in an attempt to work. But they would do so only intermittently, mainly bitching and chatting with each other, unable to sit down and concentrate for more than ten minutes, and having to get up and talk on their phones, chatting to some acquaintance, their voices betraying their unhappiness and discontent. They were dissatisfied with their lives and rightly so, for they wasted their entire days.

They struggled with the work. Tony saw that it was clear torture for them to get through the classics he so loved, just as it had been at first for him, when he had had to wean himself off his accustomed diet of TV and e-generation entertainment, to challenge himself with something purer, nobler, better. His desire for something more, that diabolical, hollow, empty feeling that had so hounded him as he struggled to come of age – that had driven him on. They lacked that drive, they were happy where they were. So it was torture for them as they tried to muster the energy and concentration to force their way through the classics; skim reading, hating it all the time, and as a mark of their sheer boredom, underlining passages in their texts, in pretended interest, or making blithe comments in the margin about the motives of the characters, and generally defacing those beautiful little books with scrawling remarks that indicated just how little they liked them. When Tony observed them like this, as he sat say a little distance off in the library, saw a little group of them, together to try and help each other through the onerous demands of reading, then the equally onerous task of writing an essay around vague questions, having no real grasp of their text; when he saw them like this, clearly unhappy, dissatisfied, trying to concentrate, he felt quite sorry for them, since he knew at least some small part of them respected the echelons of learning and craved that beauty that it can bestow.

But his sympathy was limited, since they, the rich, the young, the beautiful, especially for him the girls, held the real power in this world, not he, not the lecturers or academia. And it hurt him that they should so tarnish by their attitude, their disinterest and scoffing, their lacklustre, scrawled, drivelling essays, such beautiful and magnificent subjects. It would’ve been better had they just stayed well clear of it all, and left it alone for those who loved it. Instead they sullied it.

And their attitude could not have been worse. It was one thing to see them hard pushed and tortured, writing an essay; to see the dissatisfaction and unhappiness writ upon their faces; but then when they called the intelligent and genuine lecturers and any students who showed an interest, freaks, geeks, bores and egg heads, it really got you down. It was bad enough when ordinary people said this; but when students at one of the best universities also said so, well, where did that leave things? Their seemed to be a cohort of girls, pretty and otherwise, dissatisfied and unhappy, who used this sort of vocabulary, scoffing and denouncing as boring anyone who showed signs of interest, unable to see that they, dissatisfied and miserable faced, were the boring ones; incapable of seeing their own position, planted as they were in the quagmire, not stupid enough to live the happy life of a dog, not intelligent enough to rise above: stuck in the middle.
Geeks, nerds, boffins and bores, professors, egg heads and swots. For them that was all academia amounted to. They couldn’t see the beauty, they couldn’t appreciate the elegance. And they compounded all this by narcissistically chasing firsts, often gaining them as well; cheap, hollow firsts on the back of laboured, mechanical, conventional answers and essays.

Depressaholic: Part 1

One Saturday lunchtime, the Luggins family sat around the dinner table, eating sandwiches and drinking tea.

‘Did you hear about that footballer who got caught snorting coke with a lap dancer?’ said Adam, boyfriend of Michelle Luggin, with mild interest.

Yes’ replied father Luggin mildly, sensibly, ‘the papers are going to reveal his identity tomorrow I think.’

‘Who do you think it is?’ said Michelle, calmly, with interest.

To Anthony Luggins, twenty-two, these words saddened and crushed his youthful, innocent soul. A lap dancer. A footballer cheating on his wife and paying huge sums to have fun with a lap dancer. Snorting coke. Apparently from off the naked breasts of the girl. He saw it all in his mind. The naked girl, her breasts exposed. The footballer slavishly bowing down and snorting the coke. Bowing to the breasts, to the coke. Giving in, yielding to the power of both. A look of profundity, of death-like ecstasy transforming his face as he snorted back the coke. The lap dancer looking on, looking down at him, grinning, happy, pleased by her power. So he saw it in his mind.

Then the tabloids getting a hold of the story. The whole thing caught on camera. The lap dancer shamelessly selling her story to the paper, revelling in the publicity and taking the money.

It crushed his youthful, innocent little soul, and he felt like lying down on his bed, crying and going to sleep forever. The world was so horrid and sordid. It upset him. Yet what confounded his hurt and made him confused and lost, was the reaction of his family in just casually talking of it over dinner.

They were all good people, sensitive, educated, polite. In fact Michelle, Adam and his father, who discussed the whole matter with such ease, simply eager to know who the mystery man was, were all school teachers, decent and respectable people essentially. His pure, sad little soul couldn’t fathom how they could so easily take an interest in and then talk about such issues over dinner.

Anthony’s soul had been spectacularly shattered as he’d become an adult, and even now, at twenty-two, he had not really recovered. He was nervous, upset by life, unsure. He felt like an alien in this world, surrounded, he felt, by people who seemed perfectly at ease with a world that, according to what he’d been taught when young, seemed soulless, Godless and run on principles contrary to everything good and true. On account of all this he was reticent and kept himself apart and was often lonely, out of sorts and depressed. He had few friends.

The tabloids seemed to typify and capture all that was ill in this world and they held his soul prisoner, intimidating and scaring it. His soul raged in opposition, he loathed and hated them, he was in an agony of torment against them. Yet all the same he succumbed to them, curious and desiring to know, not only of how ruthless, cruel and horrible life could be, but also, fascinated and bemused to see how journalists and papers could be so callous, soulless and Godless in reporting all the shocking things in this world.

The Sun was the worst of these, and induced in him feelings of deep hurt and anger. They reported in such a heartless and inhumane manner, singling people out and bullying and humiliating them. Of course by and large these people were justifiable targets in some way or form, criminals for example. ‘It’s prison for rat face’ was a story about an ugly-looking, working class man, his picture for all to see, convicted of down loading child pornography. ‘Terror trio get life’ a story of how Muslims had apparently planned to blow up innocent civilians. ‘Mother of two kills husband’ the story of how a mother had stabbed her husband of ten years in a domestic row. The reporting seemed so harsh and cruel. Perhaps all concerned were guilty; perhaps they deserved to be so humiliated. What if the people involved were innocent of their crimes; or at least, what if there were mitigating circumstances? Perhaps the Muslims had only been talking of doing things; perhaps the authorities were trying to look in control. The mother of two had committed a crime of passion, and must now be going through utter agony. All the perpetrators were put through the humiliation of being photographed, treated like animals, dismissed, without anyway of countermand, by ruthless journalism.

It so angered and crushed him. The whole ethos of the paper was so cynically simple in its bias. The weak were singled out and punished. The strong, the powerful, the beautiful were in the right. The men were men, they loved footy and a pint, the women were women, they loved looking beautiful and buying shoes. It’s outlook was narrow minded, common and partisan. It was racist and nationalistic. Mainstream was right, deviants were wrong. But what made this ethos so unpalatable, was that it was done with such cynicism. Had it have been done in innocence that may have been forgivable.

He felt anger and rage, and in fact sympathy for the paedophiles, terrorists and criminals. If a man was a paedophile, so he thought, then surely he needed help? If parents wanted their children to be safe then surely it would be a good idea to try and cure these people, to deal with the issue in a sensible, grown up way. Instead the whole issue was off limits, paedophiles should be locked up for life, that was that and the papers and the parents joined hands, demanding blood. Meanwhile any beard wearing, religious, intellectual Muslims who voiced their anger at the state was a terrorist; scapegoats, as if they, and only they, couldn’t cope with the western world and wanted to destroy it; whilst ‘our lads’, ‘our boys’ the good, old, honourable British troops did everything to stop them; the good old English soldier, who liked his pint and his footy and his woman.

The plight of the mother affected him. Surely the last thing that she or her family could want at such a tragic time was to be given the centre stage, yet that’s what happened. That the tragedy must have been soul destroying for her family and children especially, was not brought into consideration. She was treated like an animal. And when Anthony saw clips on the TV of the mother being taken into custody and watched as photographers stood in front of her – as if she wasn’t there – in order to get a shot of her, intruding disrespectfully on her life, at this woeful time, he was so full of anger he felt like killing the photographer.

It was so barbarous, the whole press, The Sun especially. No-one, utterly no-one seemed to be able to stand up to it: it was free to be as bad as it wanted, and the worse it was, the less likely anyone was to stand up against it. Anthony couldn’t understand why nobody was willing to condemn it for its all too evident ills. But more than that he wondered how it was that people never ever said that they too, like him, found it all so inhumane. But then he wondered if it even affected others at all. They seemed so oblivious.

Angered, he had often thought of direct action: bomb the Sun building. But then you ruined your own life and denied yourself everything that was magnificent in this world, as well as killing the tea lady. Added to which it was an irresistible force, a cockroach surviving a nuclear holocaust. Even if he succeeded in killing some of them, enough would remain to put his face centre page, write him up as a madman and lunatic, humiliate him and his family; and that was if he succeeded. If it all went wrong, he would be derided and scoffed at all the more.

The worst thing about the Sun though were the page three girls.

They were delectable. Beautiful young women, slim, sleek and slender. Kittens. A different one everyday as you opened up. Their beautiful naked breasts; their sweet little faces, looking puppy like at the camera; lovely eyes, lovely long hair, big eyelashes, nails like claws; their skin so soft and supple and tanned, so young and taught, their stomachs thin and crispy, their thighs well-toned. They held your soul in torment. It was hard to know which was more beautiful their breasts or their loins. The luscious naked breasts, pert, fleshy, not too big, not too small, sitting firmly on their chest; or the tight, slender, knicker-covered loins. The slim little waist above, the peachy, soft little backside behind, and in front, hidden, temptingly, alluringly by the little panties, the sensational vagina. All the contours of her beautiful body, running, tapering to this point of focus. The little panties, perhaps white, perhaps black, perhaps turquoise. Cammy knickers, so small, yet serving such a vital function. Covering the loins, so that the imagination was in ecstacy. The cute, tantalizing, minxy mid-region. Magic.

Of course you knew that these girls, in their heart, mind and soul were in no way better than anyone, and most likely worse. Hollow, empty and vain. Shallow and common, tacky, coarse and vulgar, mindless, thoughtless and uneducated. They seemed to espouse the very ethos of the paper, apparently hating terrorists, paedophiles, lesbians and feminists, egg heads, professors and all those weirdoes, loving the lads, the boys, the soldiers, the footballers. They were real women and they liked real men.

All of this then was crushing for Anthony. He hated the girls, but looked at them all the same, irritated to be subject to their power, yet unable to do anything but yield, knowing fine well they were hollow and vein, that they weren’t really looking at him, and that they didn’t care for him, but only for the power it gave them and the money they got for it. It was such a dualism, to be simultaneously so attracted and repelled by these girls. His soul was imprisoned, like a mouse in a trap, unable to resist the cheese. In fact the Sun itself was one big trap: it so agonised your soul, that you fell irresistibly into it; and just like a meteorite falling to earth, you fell toward it, unable to avoid it, your soul eventually burning out as you fell, until it left you cool and hardened, passionless and spent.

He had been brought up in a loving family. He had first seen a naked woman in the Sun, when ten. He had been thrilled to see her for himself. Yet the thought of his father reading it, having it in the house, as other fathers did, looking at the naked women, when his mother was about, sent his soul in trepidation, equally as if his father had run off with another woman. Thankfully his father had never read it or brought it into the house. He loved his mother. They loved each other. They were good, sensitive people.

Yet for all that it didn’t seem to trouble their souls to discuss lap dancers over dinner. He was hurt and upset.

Likewise his brother and sister, also sensitive and intelligent, appeared alien to him, happy and at ease with the world. His brother had photos of attractive women on the walls, read lads magazines, and he’d been to a show to see a dead man dissected in a live autopsy. It seemed so sacrilegious to Anthony, but his well-fed, content older brother had gone along with his fashionable, sassy young girl friend, and satisfied his curiosity, he and his girlfriend spellbound to see a dead man cut to pieces. His sister too was incredibly mainstream, reading piles of gossip magazines, looking endlessly at pictures of celebrities, absorbed in all the hollow gossip. Yet his brother and sister were good people. If anything he was the bad one.

Both his brother and sister loved the TV programme Big Brother, and talked about it endlessly. It sent him bezirk to see how they lapped it up. At best it was boring, dull and mindless, as you watched ordinary, boring, young people, pointlessly waste their time; at worst, for example when they had sex under the covers it was soul-destroying. He hated it, but his siblings loved it and would talk happily about it over lunch.

The whole of mainstream society upset Anthony. After being brought up on a diet of TV, he hated it now per se. He avoided everything worldly, newspapers, celebrities, films, popular music, just like the plague. Yet more than these abstract things, people in real life upset him.

He couldn’t comprehend his fellow youth. In sixth form and at university he had watched on as his peers went out to party after party, got needlessly drunk, were lazy and slovenly with their work; he couldn’t understand what made them tick, their seemingly shallow interests in parties and girlfriends and boyfriends, buying new clothes, looking fashionable, getting a part time job, so that they could earn a bit of cash in order to waste it all on alcohol, flushing it down the toilet on drink, or being so elaborate as to spend it all on a fancy hair cut; never appearing to care a crumb that half the world were starving, and that so many people in this life were suffering the cruelest of fates one way or another. Even such things as his piers obsessions with mobile phones, music players, the latest gadgets and gizmos, sent him wild.

For himself his tastes were incredibly eclectic, for example he loved classical literature and classical music. And almost as a statement against the world, he always dressed in dour clothing, never combed his hair or took an interest in his appearance.

He always needed lots of sleep, and his family would chide him for this. In fact sleep was always a solace to him, he found it such a beautiful escape from the real world and all its problems, it was magnificent to dream. But he always had trouble getting to sleep, because, he thought, his mind was so active: it took him a while to wind down. Whereas his father and brother, would just watch TV, and gormlessly, without thought, drop off to sleep, until they were snoring loudly and obliviously. Occasionally, when he watched and observed his family, and saw how unconscious they sometimes were, he felt there to be a resemblance to a group of primates.

Though upset and angry in his heart, he never made the fatal mistake of opening up his mouth or soul in public. He kept them both shut. But on occasion, angry and bitter, he would rant to himself.

‘The majority of people, what a bunch of slaves they are. What a mentality they have. Where anyone who likes Shakespeare, or Bach, or who reads poetry is considered a weirdo. But it’s worse than that. Anyone who doesn’t own a TV, people who go for a walk in the countryside, or someone who spends time reflecting and alone is considered to be very, very strange. As is anyone who believes in God, or doesn’t drink ten pints a day.

‘And people think I don’t like TV because I’m boring and stuffy and a kill joy, and not actually because it’s dross or because TV dramas are so dreary and undramatic, so poorly written, poorly acted and poorly put together, not in anyway enjoyable, scary or exciting. They all rave about such and such a show, what an exciting drama it is, and think I don’t like it as I’m boring and uncool, but actually that drama isn’t cool at all; it’s limp and insipid and couldn’t surprise or shock anyone with half a brain. It’s actually a big pile of shit. How stupid they are to think that they, watching the sludge of Saturday night TV are cooler and more alive than myself reading the classics. They think anyone who has classical tastes is too boring to appreciate common entertainments, but the reality is that we were all brought up on that garbage and people like me simply got sick and tired of it.’

He hated being considered weird. He prided himself on his independence, and loathed the fact that the majority of people seemed to view this trait, of being by yourself, as being exceptionally odd. One day he had been sat alone in the cafeteria of his university, sitting and meditating, after his lunch. A girl, fairly handsome and intelligent looking had also sat alone, eating her dinner, and seemingly lost in thought. Anthony had been impressed by her; lonely as he was, he was always on the lookout for a female companion. They’d exchanged eye contact. Was she looking at him? He felt flattered. Perhaps she was the sort of independent woman who liked an independent man. Then her friends arrived.

‘Oh God! Thank God you’re here!’ she said ‘I was just about to get up and go. I’ve been sitting here like a Billy no mates, feeling terrible.’

In that one sentence and in the tone of her voice Tony’s disillusion had been shattered, and he was simultaneously embarrassed and enraged, realising not only how simple, basic and robotic the girl was, in her herd mentality, sheepish way of needing to be in a group; but also it was clear that she thought Tony the strangest man on the planet, a weirdo for sitting there by himself, and that she had looked on him not in admiration, but with contempt, and that her feelings of isolation and distance from the herd had been doubly intensified by seeing Tony adjacent to her and being in his presence. He was so angry.

So was Tony Luggin. He saw what a cruel, soul crushing world it was, the rat race, the greed of people, celebrity, pornography, how nobody really believed in God and wondered how it was that no-one could step forward and denounce it all, condemn it as going against the grain of humanity, against decency, against morality and the Christian ethic. Yet in his heart he knew exactly why no one stood up and condemned it. Take for example the page three girls. They were a moral outrage for sure. But he was a slave to them. Only a fool would denounce them, no one was strong enough to resist them, no one. Fact of life. They were tantalizing, scintillating, all a man could want; and as one side of your soul repulsed at the mere thought of them, rebelling awaywards, the other side was magnetised and attracted, yielding desperately to their temptation, spell bound, so that your soul was torn apart. And, like a criminal on the wrack, stretched, you were kept in that state of agony. Because there was no way in the world you were ever going to get near them, let alone sleep with them.

Racist

Mr Mallhotra, the owner of a newsagents, was sick of young thugs coming into his shop and threatening him. The young white youths from the nearby estate, aged anything from five upwards, would come into his shop and hassle him. Either they would buy something and ask for it at half price, so that when he refused an argument would ensue; or, they would try to buy cigarettes and alcohol and again, when he refused, they would question his authority. On other occasions, when they came in and out without buying anything or without bugging him, he simply suspected them of shop-lifting. He would stare accusingly at them, and they would respond by questioning his insolence.

Over the last few weeks, he had seemed to spend his evenings doing nothing more than being in these stand-offs; whilst during the day he worried about them and got stressed and irritable. Last night had been typical. A gang of six teenagers, two of them girls, had refused to leave the shop, after he’d politely asked them to. They’d spent a long time inside without purchasing anything, and he had believed they were up to no good. They hadn’t taken kindly to the treatment and the six of them had stood near his counter, aggressively arguing with him.

Standing there alone at his till, he had felt really intimidated. They were so abusive and threatening, their language was foul. The boys were like hooligans, with their shaven heads, and their muscular, athletic teenage bodies. The girls were like tigers. They were harsh, common, and attractive, and they were insolent and contemptuous too. He had been called a Packie. One of the boys had said he was going to kill him.

He had come to this country over thirty years ago. Back then, with no money to his name, he had entered Britain carrying a decrepit suitcase in which were all his belongings. He had worked in an Indian restaurant, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He had felt despised, lonely and vulnerable. Youths had thrown a conquer in his face and injured his eye. In the first flat he’d lived in, he’d been burglarised and lost most of his possessions. In another house, the Greek landlord had demanded, after just two weeks, that he pay £100 in order to repair a crack in the floorboards. He hadn’t made the crack and refused to pay. Then a policeman came round to the house and in the company of the Greek landlord threatened him. He’d felt so intimidated that he’d duly paid. He’d been so upset by the incident that he moved out straight away, losing that month’s rent. It was only afterwards that he’d realised that the policeman was probably not genuine.

In general he had felt despised, dirty and looked down upon. He had lived in the cheapest of accommodation, he had driven a cheap, second hand car, that youths would jeer at, as he drove around. But all of this had motivated him to make money, to keep working hard, dreaming of the day when he would be a somebody, somebody who garnered respect. He’d worked for ten years in the restaurant industry, after which he’d been able to set up in business. For the last twenty years or so he’d been doing well.

Ironically, now that he had made it, the locals, the youths, and just about everyone seemed to hate him even more. Whatever he did, he realised, he would always be in the wrong. More than this however, his wife, whom he had wed in an arranged marriage, wasn’t very happy with him, and took out all her frustrations with life on him. She resented having to work in the shop, and was often huffy, terse and short with him. So too were his daughters. Insolent, disrespectful, they didn’t do as they were told. They hated working in the shop as well.

From all angles he was sick of his life. The youths came in every night, spoiling for a fight. It would bubble over one of these days, and in some ways he wanted the fight. He was sick of everything.

*****************************

Karl Bradshaw, aged nineteen, was a very angry young man. Unemployed and on the dole, his prospects in life were bleak, his options limited. He had no stomach or discipline to do a menial job. There was a sensitivity to him, a weakness, he wouldn’t bow like an ox. He thought about joining the army, but here again, he was somehow too clever, too philosophic, not really tough enough to do so. So he was frustrated. He felt he had lots of strength and energy, but utterly nowhere to put it. He felt he had something to give, but that he was not needed. He felt nobody gave a damn about his life.

He lived with his mother and siblings in a tower block apartment. Inside it was small, poky, and run down. The kitchen was dilapidated, the upholstery and crockery was all so old and fetid, the dishes and cutlery dirty and stained. The living room and bedrooms were drab and miserable. The carpets were old, the wallpaper dirty, the beds mangy, the sofa falling apart. Everything was worn down and filthy. The bathroom was smelly, dirty, a place to be avoided.

He hated living here, more so because he had grown sick of his mother and his siblings. He had managed to wreck a good deal of the furniture. Returning home from wasted days at the job centre, or days spent lolling around town watching happy people and looking for a fight, or again, days where he went drinking with his friends in the woods, he would come home so frustrated, bitter and angry, that his life was wasting away and that he was a nobody, that in an outburst of rage he would pull the door off the wooden cupboard, ripping it off its hinges, and throwing it across his room. In a similar way he had kicked and kicked a door until the glass panes in it shattered, and he’d thrown his ghetto blaster against the wall so that it smashed.

He hated his life, that it was going nowhere, and when the miserable, lonely, prison-cell of a bedroom annoyed him, or a malfunctioning ghetto blaster worked him up because he couldn’t listen to music, he gave vent to all his pent up rage and aggression, all his hatred of the world. He hated himself for it, absolutely hated himself. But he was at the end of his tether and didn’t know what else to do. Yet he hated it because he reminded himself of his father.

That man too had vented his anger and frustration with the world in a similar manner. When a toaster had failed to work, his father, sick, tired and out of humour, and preparing to go to work in a factory, had been so aggrieved that God should so peeve him, by not allowing him a simple slice of toast, that he had picked the stupid thing up, and unplugging it, hurled it across the room, at his four noisy, irritating children. It had hit Karl on the face. He had burst into tears.

When yesterday he had pulled a bathroom cabinet off the walls in a fit of rage, and thrown it across the room, he realised just how like his father he had become. It was an extra cause of pain to him. But he couldn’t stop his violent behaviour.

The thing however that iced his cake, were the foreigners. They were everywhere. Everywhere in the tower block, everywhere in the neighbourhood. Blacks, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Kurdish, Turkish and so on. He was sick of the sight of them. They got the best housing, the best furniture, the best of everything. They had nice cars, nice clothes, the best jobs. He detested the sight of foreign women, in beautiful, colourful clothes, often in native dress, arrogantly strolling around the place as if they owned it and paying him no attention. He hated being in their presence when there was a group of them. For example there had been a party of Pakistanis picnicking at a park near his flat. He had been loathe to see them, the women especially prominent in their fancy costumes, all of them gobbling away in their native tongue, caught up in their own world, oblivious of him. The same was true of all the races. They all got together, stuck together, and an especial camaraderie seemed to be bred amongst them.

So he hated being insignificant. And now, in order to show them that they should take more notice of him, he had shaved off all his hair and had a swastika tattooed on his arm. He wore a leather jacket and big leather boots. They would pay him some attention now.

He walked along the dark, lamp-lit street, and crossed the road. He stopped and looked left. There it was: Mallhotra’s Newsagents. He had a knife in his pocket.

He hated that man, not only because he ripped off the locals and sold alcohol to children, but because he thought he was superior with his BMW and fancy house. And Karl hated his daughters. They were so insolent and haughty and they went to their fancy private school for girls, and he felt jealous of Mallhotra for being their father, and also annoyed with him for allowing them to be so horrible. He crossed the street and entered the shop.

*****************************

Mr Mallhotra was beaten black and blue. Fortunately someone else had arrived during the fight and called the police. He had received some nasty injuries though, and lay on his back in hospital. He would be here for a few days at least.

His eldest daughter was at hospital with him. She had been here since morning, and was now going to take a break. She left Mr Mallhotra’s bedside, and walking into a waiting area, passed a few words with his new guest. It was one person at a time only, so she would go off for a fifteen minute break now. She thanked the new visitor for coming and showed him where to go to.

It was Karl Bradshaw. When finding, on entering the shop, that Mr Mallhotra was being beaten up, his only reaction had been to step in and save him. He saw how the youths were savagely kicking the innocent old man, and hurling one of them aside and smashing the other across the back of the head, he had saved poor Mallhotra. Then he’d called the police and seen to Mr Mallhotra’s injuries.

In fact Mallhotra had to some extent started the fight. Although he hadn’t thrown the first punch, he knew he had precipitated the affair. He had been waiting for a fight all night, but it had not been forthcoming. The two youths who in the end he’d fought with, had seemed, whilst in his shop, to be minding their own business and having a day off. He had been too quick to leave the counter and accuse them of shoplifting; they had probably just been taking their time, deciding what to buy. In the end though, it hadn’t taken much to get them started, and once Mallhotra had accused them of being thieves, and cursed them as insolent youths, the fight had quickly followed.

Mallhotra recognised the youth who had saved him. He’d come in on several previous occasions and simply bought a pack of chewing gum. Mallhotra had been unable to determine the mindset of this youth. With his skinhead and leather jacket, and with his silent aggression, he had felt threatened by him. Yet he had, on buying his chewing gum, always remained silent. He had said nothing and done nothing. But Mallhotra had sensed a tension in the air. He had felt there was something more to this youth. However in the end, appearances had been deceptive. This youth had saved him.

Karl had planned the assault on Mallhotra on several occasions, but every time, he simply didn’t have the requisite nastiness or viciousness to carry out the attack. He had simply entered the shop, and, slowly and menacingly, walked up to the counter. Then he had told Mallhotra he wanted chewing gum, pointing to it, not picking it out himself and speaking without manners, in monosyllables. Mallhotra had responded with monosyllables, staring insolently back at him, though he had felt nervous and intimidated. Karl had stared back. There had been a tension in the air, an unspoken hatred. Finally he had left the shop.

The whole incident had done him a power of good. He had finally felt necessary, needed, that he was making use of his energies. He felt like somebody now, he felt he had garnered respect, respect from Mallhotra and his daughters, respect from the immigrant population.

Yet nothing much had changed, and he foresaw that, in a few weeks time, when all these feelings had worn off, his old frustrations would resurface, and he would need someone or something on which to vent his rage. However, there could be no possibility of being a racist or a neo-Nazi now. Just the simple fact of having contact with Mallhotra and his daughters, the fact that he had honourably saved him, and that a tense friendship had now arisen between the two – all of this meant he could no longer become a racist. If he did, he would betray all of what he had done, he would betray Mallhotra. The easy option would be to become a racist, to hate the immigrants one and all. That would be the easy option, an attractive option once the banality of his life returned, and he felt once more frustrated and bitter. But he couldn’t go down that track anymore, because of this single, almost disgenuous friendship with Mallhotra. It would be incredibly, incredibly difficult, but he couldn’t ever tarnish the sparkle of this moment.

And Mallhotra too felt exactly the same. Though being beaten by the youths might finally have made up his mind, converted him, for good, into a bonafide hater of the white race, he couldn’t allow himself to give in to this easy and unrestrained way of feeling, because Karl had saved him and he couldn’t think ill of him. It was the difficult thing to do, but honour demanded that he do it. There was no possibility that he could like Karl and hate the white thugs. If he did that the hatred would eventually gain the ascendancy. So, to try and be true, he had to give up all that hatred entirely, and concentrate purely on trying to like this young man whom he was indebted to. He owed him, and he had to be sincere to him.

Karl stood at his bedside, Mallhotra lay on his bed. Karl said little, Mallhotra said little. The conversation was slow, both men reticent. As they looked at each other, it was as if they both read each other’s minds, and knew what their true feelings were. But they both saw that they had to make the effort. Karl poured out a glass of water and passed it to Mallhotra.

Pornography

‘Call me a prude if you want to, but I don’t think society is in a particularly healthy state when photos of topless young women are here, there and everywhere. Men’s magazines are displayed on the shelves of shops up and down the country as though it’s no big deal, when in fact the impressionable minds of young children are being subtly corrupted by them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to ban pornography or anything, I just think there is a time and a place for everything, and I don’t see why we can’t have some sort of regulations put in place to control the sale of this sort of merchandise. If men want to look at these images that’s fine, but can’t they do it in private? Why is it that, whenever I’m on the tube, I always find myself sat next to a man looking at a page three girl, so that I’m forced to look at her boobs as well?’

Rebecca had written these comments on an internet forum. It was a follow on from a radio discussion, on the topic of the sale of pornography, that had taken place earlier this morning and which she had listened to. Now she had made her thoughts clearer.

Last night she had been out for a meal with her boyfriend. It had been a perfect evening. It was mid-August and they’d sat at a table on the street eating their meal and drinking white wine. There had been such a relaxed, genial atmosphere, and everywhere one looked people seemed happy, at peace.

Then, afterwards, feeling sated after the meal, and flushed and drowsy with wine, they’d strolled off hand in hand to the park. The evening air was so calm and gentle. They’d walked around the lake. They had smelt the freshly cut grass, the scent of blossom. It was invigorating. The sun had been setting, its image lying on the unperturbed lake. And three little children, excited and thrilled in the holiday atmosphere, had stood by the lake feeding a pair of geese with their five fluffy little goslings. The little boy had looked at Rebecca and she’d smiled at him.

The whole evening could not have been more beautiful. She and her boyfriend were deeply in love and she felt so satisfied, calm and peaceful as if she could want for no more. She was so in love and looked on the children wistful, as if an idea was forming in her head.

Then, this morning she had awoken at six and taken her Labrador out for a walk in the countryside. All the calm of the previous night had still been with her, and in the fresh, calm, dewy morning she’d strolled through the fields with Lucky. On her way home however, she’d stopped off at the local newsagents.

‘Look at how big her boobs are. I’d love to spunk on them,’ a schoolboy had said, browsing a lad’s magazine.

‘She’s nicer, the blond one’ his friend had argued.

‘No way! She’s too skinny. Have you seen the tits on this one – she is amazing.’

And they had squabbled about it.

Rebecca, in to buy the morning paper, had to overhear all of this. And although she didn’t want to act like a prude, it had upset her. It just seemed wrong that young boys should so openly be able to access pictures of naked women and talk like that. She was an experienced woman, she knew what the world was like. Had it happened on another day she wouldn’t have cared. But today it angered her. She had been so calm, happy and satisfied as if life could not get any better, and this had come as an unexpected sucker blow, a wet fish across the face. Almost in proportion to how elated and peaceful she had felt prior to the event, she now felt deflated after it.

Whenever she saw pictures of naked women, she felt some feelings of jealousy and regret. But it was nothing major. She was too calm, mature and intelligent for that. Just this time she’d been so happy that it had wounded her so. Later on she’d written the comment.

That evening she looked at the discussion once more. One comment was directed at her.

‘Why can’t you just admit that you’re jealous of these women, and that’s why you can’t stand to see these photos? I’ve met women like you before. You’re so angry and resentful and just want to ban everything, to ban beauty. You feminists are so full of rage and jealousy, I’ve seen you argue till you’re red in the face, red with rage, that all of this is wrong, but really it’s all just jealousy and bitterness. Sigh. What can be done for you lesbians? In your hearts you hate these women and more than that you hate men, and can’t let them do as they like.

‘Please don’t tell me that this is degrading to women, or that they’re being exploited. It’s not. In fact it’s the reverse. These women want to be photographed and men want to see them. Everyone’s a winner. I can’t stand the moral outrage of people like you. You have to liberate yourself, liberate yourself from all that moral hanky-panky, all that conventional, Victorian-era nonsense.’

She felt angered by these remarks. She had made a sensible, reasonable comment and got this in return. Why was it not possible to have an adult discussion on this topic, without all this silly, sexist vitriol, these idiotic male comments that went way overboard? Yet for all that, she knew that there was some slight truth in what had been said. She had to accept she was slightly jealous and raging.

Yet not in any major way. Annoyed by the stupid response, and seeing it was pointless to argue, she logged off and went and made a cup of tea for her and her boyfriend. She took it into his study where he was working and then went into the living room. She got a book out and began to read.

Paul, the man who had made the comment, was profoundly affected by pictures of beautiful, naked women, and he collected such photographs. He found the girls so beautiful and alluring and was full of passion and desire for them.

He was sensitive and intelligent, but in debates of this type he always spouted these sort of views against any women who dared to question the morality of porn. His comments always infuriated people, and you were always left wondering if in fact he wasn’t the one full of bitterness, anger, rage and jealousy and that he projected his own feelings onto others, especially the ‘feminists’ he spoke of. Surely, as a man, he could only, on seeing these beautiful women, whom he would never get to touch or feel, experience feelings of impudence and anger, rage at being teased and mocked at like that? But it wasn’t clear. He always spoke of being liberated by the images. He was in awe of the women. He would do anything for them.

He looked at a picture of the naked Lucinda on his computer. The way she smiled so rapturously, so radiantly, the way she beamed; the look of surety and confidence in her eyes, as though she were the rightful inheritor of beauty, as though she were so at home in this world, so at ease; her charming, graceful body – all of this impressed him greatly and he felt like escaping with her, from all the stupid talk of ‘feminists’ as he called them, all that moral nonsense and humpty-dumpty. She was perfect, and was so far removed from all those feelings of rage, hatred, jealousy and bitterness. With her there need be no such emotions. He gave himself up to staring at her and she seemed to smile back at him so reassuringly.

Lucinda, or Lucy as she was actually called, had made that photo a year ago, but since then her contracts had run dry. In reality she was good looking but far from perfect. Her face was a bit spotty and tarty, her skin a bit blotchy. Her body was what made her, though here again her butt and stomach were a bit flabby.

From the age of about seven onwards she had been obsessed with becoming some sort of model. She would spend ages pouring obsessively over endless pictures of glamorous women, to the point where she did nothing else all day. The pictures had a profound, profound effect on her, and though she saw herself in the women, it had been a feeling of utter, utter jealousy, that had motivated her to become a model. Had she not have become one she would have been left with such a raging hatred within her.

There were lots of better looking women than her though and whenever someone spoke of them as such in her presence she would always pretend to be a lesbian, saying that she loved and admired them too, in order to avoid those all-consuming pangs of rage and jealousy she felt toward those women. She always pretended to be a lesbian and to some extent she was, since she was so obsessed with women’s bodies. As well as this, she hated men vehemently, though here again she was very much ashamed of this feeling. But she simply couldn’t help it. She hated that any man should have power over her.

She was always in the process of breaking up or getting back together with her boyfriend. She had never been in love, had no idea of what it was, and had rarely felt content. Her mother, like her, hated men and was divorced. Her new boyfriend was always protesting his support for her daughter, always saying ‘that he had no problem with her doing these photos, and that he would support her one hundred percent.’ He always told her she shouldn’t listen to the people who called her job immoral or had a problem with it, and said he would beat up anyone who stood in her way. He argued till he was red in the face that there was nothing wrong with it, and protested his hatred of those who had a problem with it. He always had a compliment for her, and exaggerated her beauty. She thought he was weird.

Other women tended to dislike her, and actually the feeling was reciprocated. But again she was terribly ashamed of this feeling, and felt guilty that she was such a bitch. Many beautiful women worked, for example, on the staff of her local pub. And she couldn’t understand why they, with the incredible beauty bestowed to them, had no desire to become models. They were content to work here, it seemed enough for them to be ogled and chatted up by the clientele. They really were attractive, and Lucy would look enviously at the slim figure of one girl, the stunning face of another. She felt guilty that she was so ambitious. The other girls were always really bitchy with her, and laughed at her behind her back. They sensed the weakness in her, and crucified her for it. And Lucy always felt guilty and ashamed, hated by these girls.

When she had gotten her first modelling contract, it was as though she were in ecstasy. She’d spent weeks looking at her photos, so content, so utterly blissful. But when she’d been ditched and told there would be no more contracts, she had been emphatically crushed.

More than ever she experienced such burning rage and jealousy when she saw images of beautiful women. She was angered to see them so happy and radiant. But worse than this, she just hated seeing men, for example on the tube or in a newsagents, absorbed in looking at pictures of women, talking about them and praising them. She felt so cut out and jealous. She felt humiliated. She had to get back in, she had to.

She wrote off to new agencies, she bugged her current one’s. She felt so in the prime of life, and when she looked in the mirror and saw how beautiful she was, she couldn’t stand to feel as if she were going to waste. She had been given such great looks and it was unbearable for her to feel that they were being wasted, that her life was running away from her and there was nothing she could do. This was her moment, it was now or never, yet she was being neglected.

Had she have been less well endowed, she could have let it go, accepted her rejection. And though she considered doing this, as a method of ending her perpetual state of agony, whenever she took an objective look at herself, she saw a beautiful woman, and felt that it would be such a mistake to give up. It was as if she almost had a pot of treasure within her grasp, and though she might not be avaricious, if it were there for the taking, it seemed stupid to just let go, to let it slip. So she was reaching out for the golden trinket, almost touching it, but it evaded her grasp, and she was in agony as she stretched and writhed for it. She was forever on the periphery.

She would get some good news, that she might get a new contract. Then she would feel so happy and elated, as if she’d gotten her life back. She would go jogging and eat sensibly. Then, a few days later, she would get bad news to the effect that a contract hadn’t in fact been secured. Then she would plunge into an abyss of desperation, as though her whole life were over. She would quit jogging and eat poorly, and it was as if her whole life were on hold now, until she got some better news. Whether she had a contract or not dictated her entire life: if she heard she was getting one everything was great and she could do anything; if on the other hand she didn’t have one, she worried eternally and couldn’t cope.

Earlier in the evening she had been terrible. She had been profoundly tormented by the lack of communication from any of the agencies. She was thinking she would never be successful again, never. She had written to so many. Many didn’t even bother to reply. Then, if one did ask her to come in and see them, they would set an appointment for six weeks time! Six weeks! She couldn’t stand the suspense, the agony. Then, when she went, it was only a twenty minute appointment, she was in and out in a flash, got no solid answers from the agent, who seemed disinterested and wholly unimpressed by her. She felt she wasn’t listened to. She felt the agent didn’t understand. She felt he didn’t even care either, that he hated her, and wanted her to fail. The meeting would end quickly, she was let out. Then she would have to wait for weeks in suspense, wondering whether there was anything, waiting for them to call.

She was totally sick of it all, with her obsession, but she couldn’t give it up. She wanted good news now! Now! Yet at best there might be a twenty minute appointment in two months time. She just couldn’t wait that long. It was too long to be kept in suspense. And it would probably be a waste of time anyway.

Desperate, going insane, she had started banging her head against the wall. Then, when this failed to attract the attention of her mother and her boyfriend, she went downstairs to the kitchen, picked out a knife from the drawer and put it to her face. They had been shocked, asked her what on earth the matter was, and she’d broken down in tears, telling them what the problem was, even though she had done so countless times already, and they’d been here, in this exact same position, many times before.

Eventually, after talking about it, she had cheered up a bit. Her mother’s boyfriend had told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and that he would see to it that she would get a new contract. She believed him, he seemed so confident of it. They’d gone out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner to cheer her up, and as they’d sat there, enjoying the food and wine, they’d talked with genuine happiness, and Lucy had wistfully looked forward to her successful future as a glamour model. She was so, so happy. All her dreams were to come true.

But when that night she had been unable to get to sleep, she had started to become troubled by the thought that she would never get back into the world of modeling and that it was all over. She’d gotten up and looked in the mirror. And though she hadn’t put any weight on, she imagined, after the heavy Chinese meal, that she had. She thought she was getting fat, that her looks were fading, and that she was rapidly loosing all that she had. All of her schemes were going to ruin.

She had gone to the bathroom and tried to induce vomiting. Then she had lain on the tiles and rolled around in mental agony, screaming like the devil possessed her, and flailing her arms around and banging her head on the floor. She was consumed by her obsession and couldn’t escape from it. She was shackled to it. She needed to do something else, she needed an alternative focus in her life, to have a change of scenery. Had she have gone jogging for instance, she would have felt much better. But she just didn’t have the inspiration to do it until she had word of a contract. So she was stuck in a vicious circle.

She was sick of the obsession, sick of the constant up and downs, feeling queen of the pack one moment, suicidal the next. She wanted it to end, but she couldn’t let go. It seemed wrong to. She rolled around on the floor, moaning and wailing.

Anger

‘Just as you judge and criticize and condemn others, you will be judged and criticized and condemned…’

Richard Steele, a middle aged man, was incredibly angry over an incident he’d borne witness to earlier in the day. Though it was Friday, he’d spent the whole evening in an excited, agitated state and had written a letter of complaint, expressing his anger. He printed it off and read it over.


Dear Sir/Madam
I am writing to you to complain about one of your ticket inspectors, whom I had the misfortune to observe at work today. I am incredibly, incredibly angered by his racist actions, and I won’t be happy until he is sacked.

Boarding the 16:08 metro from Monument station, earlier this Friday afternoon, I found myself in a crowd of six or seven passengers, in addition to whom were a group of inspectors. Now, as I and several other members of the public boarded the train, the ticket inspector turned to a young man behind him, an olive-skinned man, perhaps an Indian, perhaps an Arab, perhaps a Brazilian and said to him ‘let me see your ticket.’ I and the other passengers stepped on board, as did the inspectors; but when the young foreign man attempted to – whilst simultaneously searching his pockets for his ticket – he was told by the inspector to remain on the platform until he found it. When he finally did, the train doors had already shut on him. As the metro was set to leave, he stood on the platform, holding his ticket to the metro windows, asking to be allowed to board. When he realised he wasn’t going to be let on, he asked ‘what did I do, what did I do?’ to which the metro inspector cockily replied ‘you know what you’ve done, you know.’

I cannot express my total, total outrage over this affair, my anger to see that man humiliated like that, fooled and conned by the deceitful inspector whom he had shown an implicit faith in. I am so, so angry. Believe me, I am no bleeding heart liberal, but I cannot stand by and let that piece of vermin get away with what he has done. That foreign man deserves justice, he shouldn’t have been treated like that. This behaviour exhibited by your employee, is exactly the sort of stupid, petty but above all vile behaviour, which turns people’s hearts sour, which breeds terrorists.

I will come to your offices first thing on Monday morning. I will point out to you the ticket inspector in question. I expect to see him sacked immediately. Otherwise I will take this matter to the police and to the papers. I won’t let this rest until I see justice.

Yours Sincerely

Richard Steele


The incident had left a real mark on him. At first he had wondered why the inspector had just been asking to see the ticket of that young foreign man, and not those of himself and the other passengers. He had thought perhaps, that the foreign man had skipped the barriers at the entrance and that the inspector, having seen this, was now pulling him up. Then, when he was on board and saw the foreign guy flash his ticket at the window, he had considered, standing next to the doors as he was, pressing the button to at least try and reopen the door. Yet for some reason he’d stood there like a statue. Then the train had ridden off and when he saw the humiliated face of the foreigner left alone on the platform, it was as if he had suddenly woke up to what had happened.

As the metro ran on, he had been overcome with rage at the trick that the inspector had played. He looked around at the men and women on the train, who had boarded alongside him. Surely they had seen the whole incident to? Yet they all bore frozen, disinterested expressions, as if nothing had happened. He had thought of asking the inspector, who stood only a few yards away what the hell he thought he had just done. He had thought of accosting him. He had thought of asking for his name and telling him that he would be reported. But in the end he had done none of these things.

It was partly because he felt himself getting excited, nervous and agitated, and some part of himself told him to calm down and ignore the incident. He had felt that if he betrayed his agitation to the other passengers around him, they would think ‘Oh God, what is he getting so worked up about. He’s really lost it.’ And moreover, he didn’t want to come across as a busy-body or a do-gooder, he didn’t want to play the head teacher or policeman. He had been so enervated and upset that he worried that if he made his feelings clear, people would just tell him to calm down, and to stop being so dramatic. He had felt they would feel contempt for him, that he was trying to be a hero, a TV or film star. He had felt he had to be more sedate, and to mind his own business.

Plus he didn’t know the whole story and wondered if the foreign man hadn’t done something first to the inspector. In that case, it would be so wrong to interfere like that and be judgemental. He hated it when people saw only one side of an argument like that, and he’d been on the wrong end of people’s misguided righteous interference before.

Yet when he finally got off the metro, he saw that actually, probably, and in all likelihood, something bad had just gone down. He had borne witness to the entire incident. He had watched it unfold with a clear eye. Yet he had been as if paralyzed as it occurred, consciously unaware as it were, frozen. He should have opened the door for the young man, or at least tried to. That way the situation would have been resolved, the stupid inspector made an idiot of. Then when that failed he should’ve questioned the inspector. But his better judgement had dissuaded him from doing so.

Now, now that he was so distant from events, he saw with a clear perspective what had happened. He was enraged. Yet the moment was gone. It was too late. Too late to accost the inspector, too late to allow the foreigner to board. He was haunted by his unhappy, solitary figure, standing on the station alone, as the train went off, with everyone on board standing like frozen, disinterested statues.

It had ruined his Friday night. He should be feeling light hearted and relaxing. Instead he was in a tizzy.

He worked in an office above a carpet making factory. His boss was a self made Indian man, Mr Saleem. Though Richard couldn’t exactly say he was a bad man, and though to some extent he did like him, still, it would be a lie to say he was whole-heartedly enamoured of him. Saleem was mild mannered and considerate, but also hungry for success and money. He was a petit tyrant. He demanded efficiency. The whole office staff and factory floor were intimidated by him. Though he had come from absolutely nothing, he was rich now and had a beautiful house and several expensive cars. He had a beautiful daughter, and she, along with her mother would often come into the office to see her father. The factory workers had to look upon Saleem, his riches, his cars, his wife and daughter, with an envious eye. The same was true for Richard and the other office workers, though they at least had the opportunity to see them at closer quarters. The mother was a very nice woman and always made an effort to be polite.

Still, at the end of the day, the situation – that of working under Saleem – never quite sat right with Richard. On some days, business associates, also Indians or Pakistanis, would arrive in their BMW’s and hold meetings with Saleem. Richard would have to make the tea and biscuits, and walking into the plushly upholstered, intimidating environment of the board room, serve the refreshments, bowing and scraping as he went, and feeling ignored and worthless. On other days, he had seen Saleem down on the factory floor, nastily scalding workers for messing things up. Whenever he, Richard, had had to go down there, in order to relay orders, for example to instruct workers as to how to carry out the production of a new order, he always spoke to them kindly, sensitively, almost apologetically, as if he was sorry to have to set them such menial tasks.

Today Saleem’s daughter had been in. Because she had an eating disorder, she’d been bullied at her private school for girls and Saleem had pulled her out and brought her here. Richard had had to make her tea and biscuits, and taking these to the board room, where she was waiting, he’d put them down in front of her. She was a sweet little nymph, shy, innocent and beautiful. She had been on her phone when he entered, laughing, giggling and gossiping to her friend about how handsome somebody or other was. Richard had set the tea down smiling, and walked out. Later he’d spent nearly two hours trying to fix her internet connection for her.

It was September, and when he walked around town, at the end of his work day, in the sombre rays of Autumn, he would see hundreds, and hundreds of students, relaxed and enjoying themselves at the start of term. Of these the foreign students especially struck him. They seemed so beautiful, so rich, they appeared to have everything. He would, after work, read one of his many novels. Crime novels he loved to devour. So too popular history books. At the moment he was reading about Auschwitz. The book intrigued him. He wondered how such a thing could ever have been allowed to happen.
Usually he would either sit down in a park and read, or, more so now in Autumn, he would go to a coffee shop. And in the coffee shops in particular, he would see the foreign students. Yesterday it had been a posse of Greeks. The men, the women – both seemed so good looking, so fashionably attired. They sat there chatting all day in Greek, ostensibly having nothing else to do, sexy, at ease, bronzed, dark Latinos, appearing arrogant, smoking profusely and chatting endlessly.

However, whatever insipid feelings of racial tension he felt in his heart, none of that could in anyway justify the incident today. The two sides of the coin did not add up to a satisfactory conclusion: the incident just made him all the more angered. When he had got home, he had spent a good while trying to understand the motives of the inspector, wondering whether he hadn’t been brought to his actions, by the sort of subtle, indirect pressures that he, Richard, experienced in his daily life with foreigners. He had thought long and hard about it, trying to imagine the inspector being slighted by some rich, foreign woman. Yet in the end, he had been unable to conclude anything except that the inspector was a stupid, worthless idiot, who had done what he had done because he was a knave. Pure and simple.

His single, stupid, senseless act had caused untold chaos. Not least it had ruined Richard’s Friday evening. Here he was, at nine o’clock on a Friday evening, wasting his time getting worked up, when he should have been relaxing after his hard week. What a fool he was! How oversensitive he was, he thought to himself, to worry like this about such a minor, minor incident. He should have opened the door for that guy, or he should’ve accosted the inspector. But it was pointless now crying over spilt milk. He had to let it go.

He had to let it go, because he was wasting his free time, ruining his evening. Like a revenge scheme, it had consumed him, and he knew he had to give it up. However that irked him because it seemed that he had to do something for that man, he had to bring about justice.

However he felt like such a do-gooder, such a moralist. He didn’t want to stand in judgement of others, he just wanted to mind his own business and enjoy his own life. Who in this day and age wanted to stand in judgement, to be a holier than thou old busy body, or to ruin their own well earned free time getting agitated, dramatic, and acting like an anti-racist super hero? Who wanted that?

If he had have wanted to help, he should’ve acted at the time. It was too late now. Now, he had to let go. In an outburst of miffed anger he crumpled up the letter, and with frustration chucked it in the bin, sighing. He tutted to himself, and walked out the room. He went to the fridge and poured himself a cold beer. He sat down to watch the TV, his favourite show having started ten minutes ago.

At a fast food restaurant in town, three Brazilian looking men sat at a table chatting. One chewed a match, another ate a burger, the third one talked away.

‘I tell you these people are scum! Complete and total scum. All of them. Every single one of them. Never trust them, never trust any of them. They’re all bad.’

He had been deeply upset by the incident. He had felt so vulnerable and despised as he stood alone on the platform as the metro drove off. He felt such hatred for the inspector who had betrayed him, yet in some sense that didn’t bother him so much. What bothered him the most, what so utterly pained him, was that not one, not one of the passengers had cared to do anything. They had all, men and women alike, been completely unconcerned. He had watched them drive off. Either they had stared at him and his predicament, as though he were a villain who’d gotten his just desserts; or they had looked arrogantly and indifferently at him, breathing a sigh of relief since they were going home after their days work, and what had happened didn’t interest them. Or they had just stood there like statues, with frozen, immobile faces, passively allowing the inspector to commit his crime.

‘I’m telling you, they’re total filth. They’re like robots, their blood is cold, putrid, inhumane. They might have riches, they might think they’re an advanced nation, but actually, in reality, they’re not. They don’t have souls and they don’t have a God. They’ve forgotten what it is to be human. Someone once told me a story about how a man was kicked to death in the streets here, in full view, and everyone just walked by indifferently. I didn’t ever believe it back then, but now I see how true it is. They’re horrible, mindless rats. The white race is vermin. It’s easy to see how Auschwitz happened. They don’t share anything, they never eat together, there’s no spirit of community amongst these people. It’s just each son of a whore for himself. I’m telling you never ever trust them, they’ll stab you in the back, the bastards!’