White Tunnel Reach Out

My old man died of blood cancer in Liverpool Royal Infirmary. I was avoiding the discomforting awkwardness of his passing big time. I delayed visiting him until the very end. When I arrived, the ward was gifted with a high rise, breathtaking view of the city. It reminded me of Dignitas, the setting for my next story. That’s something I’ll get around to after a field research trip to The Priory. I need booking in for ketamine misuse. I’m in more K-holes lately than a space cadet.

When it comes to tragedy at the moment, I’m all over it. I’m not saying I enjoy it, but I know it. I wouldn’t mind, but I was no big fan of Romeo & Juliet, or Tristan & Isolde, or any other epic romantic coupling (apart from Bonnie & Clyde, of course, but they’re different). I don’t need nobody else’s idea of a partner in crime, or a soulmate, or a brother in arms, or a love buddy, or a side kick, or a friend with benefits, as I have my own. Along with me over the span of the years has always existed someone special, whether it be a child walking into a bookstore to be given one of my self-pubbed testimonies, the spirit of an Indian chief genie bottled up in a suicidal cat on the motorway, or a Flicker Of Recognition caught within briefly held eye contact from a passing transsexual postman. I never fail to recognise/realise likeminded kin across the time frame of my plight throughout life. I’ve had some marvellous visitations from supreme beings, shall we say, although truth be told, in all honesty, I am mostly kept busily distracted by pesky Chinese Terrorists and irksome Russian spies from the observation base next door to my flat. Instead of daffodils and buttercups, or strawberries and ice cream, its blunt force trauma, mashed up blood and guts, paralysed dreams, and stolen brain fluid. Lucky me, eh. What’s a man to do? Just this – talk to you about it.

Yeah, I always have someone to love in my life, fortunately, to brunt the burden of the pain. They come and go like Santa’s carriages, silhouetted by cheesy blue moons with flying pigs. My neighbour once said, on the subject of the Silver Jubilee marriage anniversary…”Why would anyone want to lick the same carcass for 25 years?” Funnily enough, he swaps girlfriends like underpants. He believes in the old rule of “Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen.” That’s Section 18 kinda mean. Smacked with an iron kinda mean. This opinion is cointradictory to mine, for I believe in regarding them all like Princesses. Unless they are a stern fire-breathing dominatrix in skintight leather barking out instructions, in which case you bend over, beg her to be gentle, and repeat her double-barrelled surname over and over. But that’s only down the local parlour, at weekends, for £180 per hour. I haven’t been there since I spelled her Welsh safe word incorrectly last summer, and got into trouble with the wrong end of a feather duster. Sorry Desdemona, promise it won’t happen again. Currently doing English G.C.S.E at night school. Spelling’s coming on fine. But the names of these Welsh train stations are proving a problem. No, I don’t know the sixth letter of Aberystwyth. Love it really. Wink-nudge-wink-nudge x

You can’t be loving a dominatrix though, can you? They might prefer other more weakling clients over you (or other more bulletproof clients over you, for that matter). Who knows how many corporate bankers who like to be referred to as ‘Babycakes’ while crawling on the end of a dog lead she bosses about daily? Who knows how far she goes with them? I know of a gentleman who divorced his wife and forsaken his children to be ‘at one’ with his dominatrix. She still beats him black and blue to this day. He can’t get out of it. I’d pray on his behalf to the treasured Saints to send him an Angel but he would sacrifice it at her heeled feet, pledging further allegiance to her House Of Wax face for more to do the same to make her happy. The beginning of the end becomes the end of the beginning of the end when you keep returning to those breast rooms and lose sight of what is precious to you in the oncoming headlights of deviant diabolic sexual kinky kicks.

I’ve never heard of a dominatrix appearing in the light of a white tunnel. It’s usually Jesus or your deceased loved ones. They call the process of looking for characters to trust in on your deathbed a ‘Reach Out’. This is because patients often sit up straight and hug nothing in particular when on Death’s Door. I had mine all planned out, with the terrorists and spies in invisible suits (if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em), but instead of promising narrow cloudy chutes to Heaven, and foot massages with Camomile tea, they’re obsessed with Life Extension below the surface in some dingy dungeon of the Hades realm. Draining blood, as is per usual. Drinking blood, as is per usual. And chatting bubbles, as is per usual. While you wonder what could have possibly separated you from your Angel. The answer is so simple even the impossible refuses to believe it: Desdemona’s Crayola makeup. Couple of quid from Asda.

I gave up on a Reach Out when I was in danger of losing my love temporarily. I was in the wilderness for an era with only unbroken twilight to cloak the monsters, soothing my wounds with sarcastic humour. I refused and denied loss. I clung to hope and then ripped that in half too. My faith in humanity went out of the window with it. I was left with ideas of fondness and protection, which ushered in me a rebuild of what I’d left to depreciate. I couldn’t give up on Heaven, I couldn’t walk away from a brighter future one day. I still can’t, yet the temptation to collapse and lie riddled with failure and disappointment in the rubble never goes away. This niggling preoccupation to combust in my own funk is fueled by something so simple (like Desdemona’s Crayola makeup) as a pint of beer, which leads to nicotine, then fast food, then a downturn in mentality towards harder caches of pleasure. And before one knows it, accidents with feather dusters are reoccurring.