The Cerebral Catalyst

It's been six weeks since I left the centre. Six weeks since Bethel saw me off — "I know you can do it" — her eyes brimming with compassionate tears like my efforts might be worthy of an Olympic medal. It always struck me as odd. The worst of it is the not doing anything, enduring the nothingness of a clean lifestyle.

I have endured weeks of yoga, the cramps, the undignified gasping and the collapsing. Yoga Master Ray, an excellently proportioned human being, rallies us on each week flexing and bending with contemptuous ease.

I have taken to early rising, sleeping only the hours I permit myself and taking my daily supplements like prayers. There are unexpected pleasures along this road of self-improvement, like the satisfaction of watching my bright yellow piss arch into the latrine or watching a well-formed stool materialise beneath me. I imagine my by-products as specimens for a scientific study. Naturally the results confirm me a credit to my species.

I am becoming more neurotic by the day.

You will see me in the shopping aisles scrutinising food labels for unwholesome additives and grams of fat. I have developed a benign obsession with cookery programmes and recipe pages at the back of magazines. I never thought that would happen.

There seems to be no end to this crazed quest of self-improvement, no point I will ever feel I have done enough. Whole days then whole weeks begin to seem regulated by bodily functions.

I've always regarded health fanatics with some suspicion, now I'm beginning to understand why. The real disciples are either body beautiful types driven by vanity, or the yogis who seem somehow distanced from humanity, serene but aloof, as though that feline flexibility comes at the expense of something more meaningful.

No matter how much I preoccupy myself nothing fills the void. You begin to appreciate the ageing rocker who won't call it the day. You begin to accept the heartbreak of seeing an ageing boxer get battered in a comeback too far. I'm not talking about the ones who needed the money; just the ones who didn't want to do anything else. What could possibly replace the thrill of that lifestyle?

**********

Fudge is my sole companion. A fat surly Tom with the biggest pair of balls I've ever seen on a cat. Some well meaning soul from the Centre gave him to me doubtless convinced that looking after him might restore my humanity. She overlooked the fact that an unneutered Tom sprays his piss everywhere to mark his territory. The smell in my flat is so vile that gangs of virgin cats on the other side of the city must know about Fudge and his big balls.

Fudge does not like me. Daily he shits outside his litter tray as a reminder and skulks off to hide whenever I get home. I think I should let him go, he might find a new home or get his leg-over before he gets mown down on the busy roads. He seems distinctly unimpressed with his new surroundings and I don't blame him.

It's a sad flat with brown damp rings gazing down from the high ceilings onto the sparse motley of furniture. A fat Buddha perched on top of the TV laughs to himself, mocking my predicament. On the windowsill lies a scrawny bonsai tree lain to waste by neglect. I still water and feed it in the hope it will spring into life again but I think it's a little too late. I leave my leafless companion where it is anyway because it reminds me of Sarah. She said she wanted a Christmas tree so I bought her this and dressed it up with tinsel as a joke. She left months ago. It's amazing what you become sentimental about.

The flat is filled by the noise of the traffic below. A parade of double-decker buses rumble along. The brakes of the iron brutes
screech as they stop... a huff, a shudder, then they drag themselves off complaining to the next stop. At 4:30 a.m. every day a cleaning buggy scoots along the street sweeping the filth from the centre of pavement to the kerbside. It doesn't wake me anymore; my body stirs in an involuntary anticipation. I think this is what it must be like to live under a railway arch.

There is a lot to be said for having a healthy appetite and being aware you have functioning sexual organs. I'm warming to the idea of frolicking around drunk with all the other assholes on a Friday or Saturday night. I like to remind myself what a good night out entails from time to time. Faceless corporate bars plying you with criminally cheap booze and banging bar anthems. Maybe I could pull some well-tanned dolly bird, pick a fight with a stranger or spend an hour retching in the street. Hard to imagine that I would be more acceptable doing this every week, but it's true.

It's no good. I'm not ready to socialize yet.

Rocco Ravishes Russia will have to do. Our hero gets an SOS from a bevy of sex starved beauties so he flies to Moscow and within minutes the screen is awash with jiggling titties and thrashing limbs — Rocco in the midst of the mayhem, pounding away. I'm glad there are people like Rocco compensating for my long stretches of indifference, like some karmic equation balancing itself out. Sadly this is the most excitement I've had in weeks and I reach for the Kleenex long before Rocco's mission is accomplished.

Samuel Johnson once said that the problem with seeking pleasure is that it crumbles on the moment of attainment. I can think of no better example than masturbation.

Departure

I decide to go for a walk. I have been avoiding the town centre lately, but sometimes I feel the need to be with lots of people even though I don't want their company.

It feels good to be casually observing the festive frenzy. Special offers abound posters and signs promising improved figures, perfect smiles, bigger breasts, better tans, better rates, peace of mind, more money, more freedom, more choice, more more more.

Yet for all this choice the uniformity of people is depressing. I'm glad I never bothered to be fashionable.

Charity stalkers rattle boxes at the passing herds and worse, researchers and sales hawks prey on the weak willed. I dodge one only to be accosted by another,

"'Scuse me just one minute — have you been involved in an accident recently?"

As if there weren't enough ads telling us 'go on — get in on the act!' I wonder how much longer it will be before we have well coiffed lawyers in sharp suits pimping themselves out on TV like they do in the States.

I tell the gentleman I overdosed three months ago and he gives me a funny look.

Being the avid people watcher I am, it's not long before I'm lost in my own thoughts gazing at the passing throngs. I become totally distracted. A chubby faced kid sucks suggestively on a lollipop; a scrawny mother pulls on a cigarette as she pushes a pram along. Everywhere people are chewing smoking sucking slurping, it's obscene.

My mind plays tricks on me, the dark matter of my subconscious stirs and the lines of a poem I read at school flash into my mind. Its one of the longest I ever read and I memorized it.

Sweeter than honey from the rock.
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice,
she never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked some more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She sucked until her lips were sore;

I was a weird kid.

"Big issue, Sir? Free smile with every copy!"

His whiney voice gives me a clue but when I look at the pallor and the whites of his eyes I know for sure.

We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:

I stop, hesitate a moment. A pang of excitement passes through me like nothing I've felt for a long time. I did not plan this, or did I? I don't know and I decide I don't care.

"You sir? Big Issue Sir? Go on!" he whines, flashing me a toothy grin.

I hand him a fiver.

"Keep the change."

"Oh, nice one mate."

"Listen..." I say.

He's listening, but I wait for a young mother and her kid to pass.

"I need some brown."

"You what mate?"

"You heard. Smack."

He looks me in the eye, weighs me up momentarily. He doesn't even bother to ask questions. Junky intuition. We're like a secret cult.

"HAHAHA you look a bit fresh mate, just had a break have we? If I could do wivout it for a bit I would just for the buzz y'know..."

And so I have to suffer his prattle. Skag is a great leveller.

"I want a five," he says finally.

"You got a mobile?"

Epiphany

I am so excited I can hardly hold the foil still. It's like my first time again. I inhale, filling my lungs like empty balloons until they hurt.

"Draw the breath through your feet along the your back and uuup through the neck..."

Ray, the yoga master urges me on sportingly.

I oblige, filling my lungs with the chalky goodness.

"...and hold for five: FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWO...ONE... and release."

And for twenty minutes I have it. Clarity. Suddenly there are no questions, no doubts, only answers. The natural order of the world. This feeling isn't meant to last I know, so I savour it. Fudge's head appears from behind the sofa, he looks at me curiously.

Buddha looks on laughing, belly bouncing beaming his approval. Fudge mews and jumps onto my lap. He closes his eyes and shudders like he's basking in my opiated bliss, then flops on his back, his bright orange balls bobbling.

The purring of my new friend and the hum of the buses below stirs something in my soul. Such is my cheery goodwill I want to throw open the window and call out to the people in the street, like a revived Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas day.

"YOU BOY! Yes you! Come here I say. I want you to go to the Metro store directly, get me twenty Marlboro reds and a bottle of their finest Scotch. No, not that one! Finest I say. And a turkey...

If you're back here by a quarter past the hour I'll give you TEN whole pounds my fine fellow."

Of course I do no such thing, I feel far too good to bother moving.

No turkey for Tiny Tim today.

I sink further into the seat, fondling Fudge as he purrs contently on my groin. I feel inexplicably superior. Victorian perhaps. I should have a crushed velvet jacket, whiskers to pull and a pipe to smoke while pontificating worldy affairs.

As the shadows from the window reach into the room I notice a speck of green on the bonsai tree like a green handkerchief on the mast of a ship.

My head begins to nod, my eyes glaze, until finally the distant rumblings of the outside send me into a heavy sleep.

______________________________________
John Banks is a sometime literature student — and fulltime dreamer and philandering cad. He is based in Manchester, UK. If you must contact him, email; jonbanx@hotmail.com.

posted 05.15.06.

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