Havelock: on the Mandrake

I’ve spent much of the week reading through the first chunk of Havelock’s notes, this batch largely about the Mandrake. The volume of the work is incredible, so I’m only going to publish a few excerpts for now, which might hopefully give us a better understanding of both the man and his legacy. All are taken from primarily untitled longer pieces:


“Our parks are rife with horror. As of yet, there may be no bloodshed, but there will be, of that much I am sure. All of humanity will feel the pain, the pain gestating in our municipal areas. For this horror is not human. It does not operate from the cold calculation of human reason, with comprehensible psychologies that we might, as thinkers, hope to quantify, to explain. It is borne wholly of the madness of nature, unpredictable in its movements and devastating in its effect.

This horror I call Mandrake.

Darwin, in his genius, speaks of his ‘Survival of the fittest’, and I quote him here: “in the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”

This supposition is central to my own. Namely, a process of evolution is in operation within the workings of the planet earth, and humanity itself is merely an aspect of that process. There is no realisable ‘end’ to the process, but a perpetual development of natural selection. In simplicity – and it is the simplicity of Darwin’s claims that are perhaps most crushing to the folly of the spiritual community – all life is descendent from a common ancestor. It has then branched off into its myriad directions and possibilities through this aptly termed natural selection, which posits that, over periods of time, certain characteristics favourable to the longevity of a species will be duplicated in their future offspring. Any trait that better meets the need to, say, hunt or reproduce, will be desirable, whilst those which fail to augment these natural necessities or even hinder them would be, quite clearly, undesirable. By omitting these undesirable characteristics, often over periods of many thousands of years, an altogether stronger example of the species is so slowly created, by evolution, one in which the traits which once, perhaps, slowed the creature down, made it vulnerable prey to a more adapted predator, have been eventually deemed of an unsatisfactory quality and, ultimately and in short, superseded by those which better suit a fruitful life within the functioning planet. Therein lies the adaptation Darwin so eloquently exhorts. A successful species will adapt to the environment in which it finds itself; if hot, it will adapt accordingly, if cold or sparse of vegetation or prey, likewise.

It is this ability to adapt, over time, that eventually brought about the growth of sentient life, and which saw the loss of a great many species throughout the our earth’s history, simply because of their failure to suitably adapt to the demands placed on them by changing circumstance.

It is a theory dowsed in elegance, yet also at once the theory which elucidates the very horror I speak of, the fear that has consumed me, swallowed into the darkness of a search for an unbelievable truth in an enlightened age. I say again the word, and implore your audience: Mandrake. Feel the word pass your lips, the chilled spine of its consonants, the nausea of its vowels. Feel the word with the sadness of bereavement.

The Mandrake will destroy us. They have already infiltrated...”

*

“And what is this Mandrake, you ask, and rightly so. Put in the simplest terms, the Mandrake is of the family Anatidae, that is to say, duck. With the superficial characteristics of the common mallard (a species known not only for its propensity towards interbreeding but also its rapid evolution), the Mandrake has evolved with one inherent difference from its cousins, pertaining in specifics to the observable leg measurement of the creature. Where one might expect a leg of 2 – 3 inches, say, on an everyday duck, the Mandrake – adapted fully to the available underwater dimensions of its day-to-day habitat – possess legs of a basically identical appearance but growing to sizes as large as 10 feet in length (with a width in suitable concordance to that length).

With such legs in place, the Mandrake is free to explore the new aspects of life so associated with species of a far larger constitution. Rather than swimming atop the surface of a pond, for example, the Mandrake will simply ‘walk’ along the bottom, its sternly constructed limbs providing more than sufficient resistance and flexibility against the currents. Yet it is the potential of what the Mandrake could provoke when out of the water that so terrifies me.

As a keen ornithologist and amateur zoologist, I have seen only too often the sheer brutality of the natural world. It operates without emotion, functioning through the veracity of a desire for survival. Likewise, so many animals within this system are themselves governed by similar primitive urges and desires, to breed and prosper. It is only the ingenuity of the human species that has, to date, secured us our position of apparent dominion over the lesser beasts of the earth, but the authority we like to assume of ourselves is infinitely more tenuous than one would either hope or expect. Considered within the scale of even the known universe, our meagre technologies – which so embolden us to conceitedly label our own as genius, as approved caretakers and guardians of the earth – simper with their own insignificance. The power we consider ourselves to have, as men, is not exclusive to us, is not a birth right of the species. It is simply representative of the fact that, at the present time, we have struggled our way over the millennia to the top of what one might call the food chain, using our large brains and (comparatively) large physical size to ensure that the threat of predators is minimized satisfactorily.

History would suggest that the day will come when a new predator will overpower the human contingent, will take back the earth we have colonised and expropriated for our own greedy ends, will make humanity serve penance for the authority it claimed, over life, land and sea. Considered thus, it somehow puts into perspective the frail meaninglessness, the fragility of our perceived custodial privileges over the natural world.

I posit that this predator is here, now, and it is called the Mandrake.

But can a duck, even a 10-foot duck, really threaten the human race?

Of course the simple answer is a crashing yes. Even the smallest changes to a precision system such as this earth have the most profound consequences upon its functioning, and therefore on the functioning of those species within it. The evolutionary passage from common duck to Mandrake is not a small change, quite the opposite; it represents adaptation on a colossal scale, the result of which has the potential to reverberate around the globe with a significance synonymous with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Imagine it, if you can. Like all animals, the ducks have lived as servants to mankind, as the oppressed classes. They exist in unison with ourselves; we grant them that, but solely on the terms that we ourselves sanction. They may swim the ponds, lakes and rivers, bob for their titbits, ‘quack’, even, but within the strict understanding that we are their rulers, their masters. We will eat them roasted as it takes our fancy, will feed them the bread we would otherwise dispose of solely for the purposes of our own entertainment, and not for any care or consideration for the animals themselves. When the Mandrakes take their steps from our municipal waters, the oppressed will have finally found their voice, and the centuries of abuse, consumption and slavery will be over, the Anatidae emancipation will be complete. Man will fall at the legs of the Mandrake but there will be no reconciliation. They will enslave us, leaving the human race doomed to an eternity of servitude. It will start quietly, the change, the liberation – inexplicable drownings, reports freak duck attacks – but when it has sustained its climax the face of the world will have irrevocably shifted. The foothold of man will be webbed.

The question that remains, perhaps, most prominent in my mind is precisely why it is that this species remains so undocumented, studied and reported throughout not only the scientific community, but the social community also. I assume that the only explanation for this bizarre anomaly is that people are scared. Scared not only of the realistic possibilities of the Mandrakes existence and what that would mean for human society, but scared of change, and of what any change can mean for the world at large. The public do not have the time for Mandrakes in the hustle and bustle of the everyday; they may see a duck as they saunter through the parks, but nothing further will register, they have no reason to delve deeper into the animals submerged world. I fear that even a direct experience of the Mandrakes would do little to convince the simple masses – they are simply not prepared to accept so obvious a breakdown of the paradigms with which they structure and make sense of the world.

Furthermore, there is a distinct failure on the part of the academic scientific community to conduct due research and experiment into the phenomena, despite my best efforts. My correspondence to Cambridge University has fallen on deaf ears, it would seem, despite my thorough tabulation, logged sightings, and hypotheses which, whilst perhaps not conducted in accordance with the rigours of the academic standard of control, would certainly – I would suggest – warrant the further investigation by the Department of Zoology that the discovery of any new species would demand. And yet John Stanley Gardner, esteemed Professor of Zoology, will not deign to grace me with a response. For the scientists, I am little more than a madman, a lunatic, infringing the purity of the scientific method with personal manias, obsessions. Yet is the history of science not itself composed of these lunatics, the bold few men with an outlandish hypothesis who dared to stand up and force the world to change its theories, to reconsider the very essence of our understanding of the world, the bold few men who can truly call themselves genius? Most certainly.

For the academics of our time, my suppositions are simply too far out of their accepted world order. Despite the growing body of evidence I have collated in support of the existence of the Mandrake, the scientists I have approached have singularly refused to investigate my claims further. Again, I believe, this wilful ignorance is a product of fear. They are afraid to have their established knowledge undermined by the truth about the Mandrake. Despite the empiricism of the scientific approach, disproving current assumptions and models with newly meticulously assessed alternatives, tweaking the truth into its purest form, it is no doubt a painful process for the scientists. In the case of the Mandrake, the sheer scale of the threat of this evolutionary incongruity posed to the civilised, enlightened world is so great that it is perhaps simplest for those very men who should be examining its existence and finding solutions for the threat to instead ignore it, to place their hope in the faith that they have so effectively destroyed.

As fearful as I am of these Mandrakes, I don’t doubt our human capacity to stop their rapid colonisation, if we act with sufficient force and within a suitable timescale. Without the interplay of these two factors the human race might well consider itself thwarted, outrun by the immense hidden legs of these sub aqua monsters. The first step must lie in research. The second – and I disgust myself with the knowledge that this may be the only option – in conflict.

*



*

On the origins of the word itself, Havelock has this to say:


“Mandrake (ˈman-ˌdrāk) – a compound noun attempting to convey, linguistically, the curiosity of this hitherto unrecorded species. The word comprises both ‘man’ – a reference to the enhanced leg measurements of the species more in keeping with the perceived view of man as tall, even superior, of leg and therefore height – and ‘drake’ – pertaining to the masculinity of the duck. Presently my still very limited research into the Mandrake has found exemplars of the species only in the male gender. Whilst I am not yet in a position to hypothesize about this fact, and whether it is consistent with a larger pattern of common monosexuality to the species, it is an interesting aside nonetheless, and I have drawn attention to it in the twice utilised masculine form of its compound (I do sincerely doubt that the unlikely adaptations of the Mandrakes leg would similarly feature a solely male species, thereby rendering itself incapable of conventional reproduction and propagation, unless of course their reproduction functions with the efficiency of some kind of asexual division, wholly separate from their Anatidaen relatives).

Whilst not to be confused with the plant root of identical nomenclature, there are a number of interesting and wholly unintentional parallels one could conceivably draw (although I would like to clarify at this juncture that the name of Mandrake, as pertaining to the Anatidae, was devised in an act of spontaneous linguistic expression on my own part, based on a knee-jerk response, of sorts, to the immensity of my discovery within the parks of Norwich City and its environs. I had, at the time, conducted no research into the plant genus of the Mandragora, of which the mandrake is one such member, and had no insight into the possible connotations of the word. These findings very much followed my initial naming of the unrecorded animal species, and have since ‘stuck’).

Firstly, the roots of the mandrake (belonging to the nightshade family) have long been used within magic rituals, despite their toxicity, due to their deliriant hallucinogenic properties, and there are legends suggestive of the fact that the dug root of the mandrake will omit a scream, killing all who hear it. However, I am curious as to wondering whether perhaps such ancient legends and near mythologizing of these mandrake, of the regard they are so greatly held in, is not itself implicating the existence of the Mandrakes of the family Anatidae for a period far longer than I might hitherto have assumed?

In his translation of Arthur Edward Waite’s 1896 work, “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie”, Eliphas Levi writes: “The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandragores (mandrakes), animated by the sun...” Whilst I am not naive enough, in the 1920s, to presuppose the presence of my Mandrake in some primitive creation fable, it nonetheless strikes me as remarkable, at the very least. Do such myths really make reference to the plant species that bears this striking name, or could it not be suggested that instead these references are made to the Mandrake of my writings? Were the Mandrakes once a respected, almost divine element of the animal kingdom, God’s amongst men, worshipped, revered, adored in their majesty and grace? It is no doubt a matter of interpreting the legend suitably, such as in the scriptural references to manna, but I would posit that these ritualistic usages of purported mandrake root in Wiccan religions might well, in fact, represent the symbolic consumption of the ancient Anatidae Mandrake. Humanity consumes duck to this day, and I do not consider it so fantastic a leap to conclude that a more archaic system of beliefs would consider the actual physical consumption of the “first men”, the “gigantic sensitive mandrakes” to in some way harness mystical powers for the diner. Indeed, one might similarly conclude that this devout consumption of the flesh initiated man’s dominance over his once magnificent Mandrake Gods, and gave him the greed necessary to force the species into the subservience of prey. In short, initiated the animosity still existent to this day between man and his grand Anatidae counterparts.

There is further suggestion of the spiritual significance of the Mandrake written in the Judeo-Christian Scripture. In Genesis chapter 30, Reuben, son of Jacob and Leah, comes across Mandrakes in the fields. Rachel, sister of Leah and second wife to Jacob, asks for the Mandrakes and agrees that in return for them Leah may spend a night with Jacob. “’You must sleep with me,’ she said. ‘I have hired you with my son’s Mandrakes.’” Leah, who believes herself barren, bears a further child from the act, thus associating Mandrakes with conception (a myth which is concurrent with many other belief systems), and thereby associating Mandrakes with the God who breathes the life into all men. Were Mandrakes considered Gods?

It would certainly seem to point towards a deep spiritual union between man and Mandrake throughout the historical past, but a union now severed in the twentieth century by generations of human aggressors and the growing threat of Mandrake revolt.

Of course, such supposition is beyond my field of expertise, preferring as I do to work with observable fact rather than conjecture. However, it would certainly make for a fascinating point of study into the historical and cultural significance of the true Mandrake. For me currently, there are simply too many anomalies with these observations, as curious as they may be. Firstly, how could Mandrake and man have existed on the same earth for so many thousands of years without extensive report and documentation existing of the former? Secondly, the very gravity of my terror pertaining to the Mandrake stems from the certain knowledge I possess – as a result of behavioural study – that humanity itself is at risk from these creatures. It would be inexplicable to assume that no past incidences of Mandrake attack would have been recorded throughout the annals of history.

No, the one certainty I have at this present juncture is that Mandrakes do exist now. I cannot comment on the past, I shall leave such work to the historians and anthropologists whom I pray shall follow me and my work, but I know, as a point of unarguable fact, that there are Mandrakes in our parks.

I note the homonyms above merely out of a certain academic curiosity. Perhaps these differing meanings and their poetic, often supernatural history take on a striking new resonance when considered alongside my own, as extensions of it, of each other?”

*

Later in his life, Havelock, a once spiritual man (although apparently largely religious by default and not by practice, he still believed vehemently in the existence of a ‘higher power’, as he termed it) lost his faith completely. This, too, was directly resultant of his Mandrake ‘discovery’:


“[so I ask you] can science really hope to explain the Mandrake phenomena? Answer me this, I say: what but the icy hopeless distance of the indifferent world could ever create such monsters? This is not the work of a divinity, for what benevolent God would ever create such beasts? Where God fails, only the quantifiable and emotionless facts of science – outside of humanity, some silent, motiveless instigator – can create a comprehensible narrative around the Mandrake. It is that narrative we so desperately need should we ever hope to understand them.”


And further:


“God? I once looked into a jar of Colman’s mustard and saw God’s work, yet now I see that of man. I look in the eyes of the Mandrake, on the hand, and I see God’s death. The two simply do not require one another, you see, and I have certainly experienced the one.”

*

Havelock gives significant attention to the so-called ‘Song of the Mandrake’. On this his notes are very garbled, almost unreadable for the better part. He talks briefly about the existence of an audio recording he had made of the song, but as far as I can see there is no further reference to it among the documents. If it did ever exist it is no doubt lost, forever forgotten as a meaningless noise:


“I have seen it written, and what better description of the haunting Mandrakes cry is there but this?: ‘And shrieks like Mandrakes, torn out of the earth, that living mortals hearing them, run mad.’ For this is the sound they make! It is not the gentle communication of their smaller kin but a most deathly, macabre sound, their Siren song luring many a man to the shipwreck of madness! No, it is not the alluring sweetness of the Mandrakes call that devours their prey, but instead its hideousness, which sinks beneath the skin and destroys the functioning body from the inside out. It is made of a sound unlike any on this earth; it is a warning, a threat, a call to arms for the Mandrakes of the country. It is awful, wretched, grotesque.”


“I have seen grown men fall to the floor on hearing the Mandrakes song. There is something intolerable about its pitch, its tone, its atonality that can drive even the sanest of men to catatonia. It may be rare to hear it, and rarer yet to tell the tale, but it is there. I have heard it myself, on several occasions, and whilst I retain my larger faculties, of thought and process, I would be foolish to deny the profound effect it has had on me. I am, in every sense, a man broken by the Song of the Mandrake.”


I find it interesting that he uses the Sirens as a reference point here, in this slightly manic passage, the Sirens themselves being seductive ‘bird-women’ who would lure travellers to their end with the majesty of their song. I couldn’t help noticing the significance of the symbolism of human sized bird-woman hybrids, a symbolism undeniably close to the Mandrakes that so plagued Havelock’s mind.

Unfortunately there is little legible notation of a descriptive nature referring to the song. Havelock’s senses seem to have been marred by this – I think later – point in his life, and he struggles with both handwriting and coherence, the notes often breaking into erratic obscurity rather than structured language.

*

Finally, I include this ‘Table of Sightings’, as prepared by Havelock for the year of 1924. The original document was so faded that the scanner couldn’t translate the text into an adequate digital format, so I have had to re-type the entries with all the clarity of the postmodern:



*

I have, as yet, barely skimmed the surface of the immeasurable wealth of Havelock’s Mandrake writings, and I will publish more as I get to it. The more I read, the more convinced I am that he was an authentic character, a man carved from the very oddity of the Norwich streets which he loved so much.

Charles Phillip Havelock, III

A few afternoons ago I stopped off in a second hand bookshop on a street in Norwich called Elm Hill. It’s an attractive cobbled street full of pleasant-looking but ultimately banal antique shops, but wedged between them is a shop specialising in board games and trading cards and this second hand bookshop, called The Dormouse. I rummaged around through the local interest books but didn’t find much worth picking up, all odes to small yachts and tabulated ferry information, and as far as I could see there wasn’t much in the whole shop that really intrigued me, aside from the owner. His name was David Simmonds, and on seeing my dismay at the quality of his stock he told me his name and said straight away that I could call him either David Simmonds or Mr Simmonds. He was one of those kinds of people, and he wore yellow corduroy trousers and deep brown brogues.

We chatted briefly about the kind of thing I might be looking for, but I struggled to explain my plans to write a novel called “Meet Fuckface”, which would be enshrouded in the historical mysteries of petty crimes, the East Anglian witchcraft trials and the early railway network. He nodded disinterestedly while manually cataloguing a huge box of musty-smelling books which he had told me had come from a local house clearance. I smiled politely and went to leave, but David Simmonds halted me with a barked exclamation. When I turned back to face him he was grinning unusually, which made me feel quite uncomfortable, and instead of speaking in methods in keeping with consensual politeness he simply thrust a battered leather case towards me, gesturing for me to look inside. I did as he said.

It was full of papers, masses of them, reams and reams of yellowed, faded, crumpled documents pertaining to all manner of things. There seemed to be a healthy mixture of personal correspondence, essays, official documents, philosophical ramblings and even some photographs. I automatically picked out what looked like a comparatively recent copy (of the short version) of a far older birth certificate, which was sitting at the top of the pile. It belonged to someone called Charles Phillip Havelock III, born in Norwich in 1887.



Among some of the old photographs was one of a gentleman, scrawled on the back of which in almost unreadable ink were the letters CPH III – Charles Phillip Havelock, I’d guess, the same man.



One other thing immediately caught my attention, an onionskin document of several pages containing faint – at times illegible – type-written words aligned in a visual presentation suggestive of poetry, the piece emerging from the title “The Day of The Sandwich” in what at first glance appeared to be composed in a quite irregular form. It was an incredible title, and made me instantly curious and excited in equal measure. I noticed that the pages had all been torn off at the bottom end. The rip still looked fresh like a recent murder.

While I had been looking at the documents, David Simmonds had edged out from behind the counter and was now standing right next to me. Before I could continue with the poem he had touched my shoulder gently and I jumped violently from my state of enraptured concentration, dropping all of the papers at my feet. I bent down to pick them up, apologising stupidly, but he was already scuttling about on the floor as though genuinely enjoying himself.

“You like these documents?” he asked. “You want them?”

I laughed defensively. “I can’t afford them,” I said, and tapped my pocket. Its emptiness echoed around the silence of the bookshelves.

“How much have you got?” he asked. He had shuffled the papers back into some kind of order and was forcing them back into the case. I took out my wallet and looked inside it. There was a five pound note stuck defiantly between cards.

“Only five pounds,” I said, sure that it wouldn’t be enough for the entire personal history of an individual, the feelings that he had committed to paper in a desperate attempt to somehow remain in the physical world he had left behind, as a bizarre education for the future generations of Norwich. It was like peering into the diary of this man Havelock, or the brain itself. With paper he had enmeshed himself with the history of the world, had left his imprint in the future. Surely five pounds couldn’t buy that?

“That’s okay,” said David Simmonds. I didn’t really want to spend the five pounds because I had been saving it for food, but I was intrigued by the documents, and by the thoughts of this Havelock, who looked out from his photograph as though inviting me to receive the answer to a question I hadn’t yet thought to ask. It was the same voyeuristic urge that made you guiltily read other people’s postcards, even if you knew neither the writer nor the recipient. I had given him the five pounds before I knew what was happening and was on my way home to look through the documents.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I started reading that afternoon, the scope and the implications of the theories that Havelock had spent a lifetime outlining and methodically logging. From my preliminary readings (including some vivid correspondence between Havelock - who seemed to favour the moniker 'Pippin' - and a number of psychiatrists), it appeared as though he had suffered from varying psychotic symptoms throughout his life, from which consequently developed three primary, deep-rooted obsessions that eventually engulfed his personality in their persistent recurrence. These three, in short, as so far discovered, and thus with no claim to obsessive exclusivity in the thoughts of Havelock, can be briefly listed as follows:

1.Sandwiches – the foodstuff comprising leavened bread slices and their composite interior fillings.
2.The mandrake – a purported duck-like creature, consistent with the physical characteristics of the common mallard but with legs of an entirely disproportionate length.
3.(Largely compulsive) Acts of – often inappropriate – sexual intercourse or contact.

Although I am yet to have read the full extent of the documents of the man in my possession, it is clear that his obsessions were developed under a ferocious intellect with a stringent attention to detail. Whilst in no position, currently, to objectify the veracity of his more seemingly outlandish reports, the painstaking accuracy and sheer prolific extent of his work would appear to suggest either (a) a profound level of academic expertise in his field (of the family Anatidae, for example); or rather (b) a complete immersion in a fantasy world of his own construction, which had entirely replaced his perception of any meaningful shared reality as experienced by others, and for which he had created a parallel natural order, of sorts, an alternate zoology, in concordance therewith his off-kilter reality and to which he was entirely, crushingly devoted, as if it were the essence of Truth itself. My own early reactions to his often florid prose would favour the latter at this early stage in my familiarisation with his writing, but until I have conducted further research into the man, his claims and his life, I do not feel qualified to condemn this intriguing character to the historical waste bins of psychosis.

I will publish excerpts from his writings here on further reading, and as I come across and digest them myself.

the 9" deep pan meat supremo

“What do you think about this?” He carefully showed me a photograph of a nude man. The picture looked much as he would himself if he had a different face.

“Hmm,” I answered. “Yes. Hmm.”

“I see.” He placed the photograph secretively inside a plastic wallet and slipped it into his green greatcoat. We shook hands for a second too long and he ran off into a dark spot under some trees.

I decided that I would like a cigarette, and lit one immediately. Nothing of any importance happened while I was smoking it, so I left to go somewhere else. A bar, perhaps, or for a pizza.

There was a special offer on for people who used pizzeria's alone on school nights. A lot of restaurants feel sorry for the lonely. This made me feel like a statistic, but at least the pizza was cheap.

The waiters had smirked at me because I had been there every day this week so far to eat alone. Sometimes I asked specifically for table number 4, but tonight I didn’t specify my seating position. It was nice to watch the world go by, and pretend to have conversations with it.

I guessed they all thought I was pretty tragic, and I suppose they were right. It was clear that I had no one, no one at all. I imagined that this is how it would feel to be a minus digit, like –35 or –12.

They called me by my first name in this place. I hadn’t been able to tell them yet that the name they used wasn’t actually mine. I was too embarrassed, and found that being called something made me feel slightly more alive, even if it was a mistake, or a joke. If I had a credit card I wouldn’t have been able to pay with it, just in case the staff were upset by my dishonesty when the truth of my identity was finally revealed by the processing card acknowledger.

Once I was offered a green sash that had the word ‘single’ stitched badly onto the front and back. The text was in yellow. I tried it on and was told that I looked charming. An insincere waitress called Suzy with long red hair and strong looking legs suggested I wear it throughout my meal so that any single women who might arrive to take advantage of the same pizza offer as me would know that I was definitely single and looking for love, and not just a businessman taking a light supper alone between meetings. She laughed as she told me this, and said something about a dating initiative led solely by pizza.

I thought that Suzy must be attracted to me. This would explain her kindness. I wore the sash for the entire three courses. The other patrons didn’t take kindly to my presence. The restaurant was full of so many titters that it sounded like a weird production line in a jokes factory.

It felt as though even the language of the menu was against me. 9” was the size made especially for one, never to share. Every time I asked for the 9” pizza the waiters would reiterate it, play my loneliness back to me in their awkward foreign accents. It was as if had a dirty secret that was made public every time I picked up a knife and fork.

After I had paid my bill I removed the sash and folded it neatly. I gave it to Suzy at the door and thanked her for trying. Maybe it’s worth a shot tomorrow Suzy, I said. Although she was good enough to keep her hand over her mouth I could still tell she was laughing. Perhaps it was even harder laughing this time. She was a pretty girl.

“Would you like me to kiss you now?” I asked, offering her a tip of a pound sterling. She ran to the kitchen to the guffaws of the swarthy rugged chefs, and I didn’t see her there again.

I never saw anyone else wearing the sash after that, and was never offered it either. I supposed that the dating initiative hadn’t really taken off. A poster on a bus said that it was sad to be single. I agreed with that and wished I were younger.

The thought of pizza made me feel decidedly isolated, so I decided to go to a bar instead. I could have a house scotch on ice and look around. Maybe there would be some women who I could talk to. The television I watch has a lot of women on. They are always in bars, and excited about tall handsome men who will sweep them away as though life is a fairy tale.

I look like the spectre of a happy man.

issue two

the lump

I gripped firmly at the porcelain surround of the sink. It was cold to the touch. I hitched my boxer shorts down to my knees and narrowed my eyes almost shut as I pushed the bare tops of my thighs into the hard white rim. My face looked dead in the light of the bathroom, mottled and pasty, capillaries making a bid for freedom, forcefully emancipated from the prison of my skin. The eyes were small and sunk back in deep black rings. I examined the inner crevices of my internal mouth, my gums were bleeding and I could taste the richness of the blood like raw meat. It crept in fine rivulets from between my teeth, discoloured and rotting, forgotten enamel.

Softening truth with the distance of reflection I glanced down at my balls. The scrotum seemed too big for them, hanging wrinkled and dense like the superfluous growth of an elderly person. I held onto them gently with my left hand, familiarised myself with the spatial dimensions of their paradoxically imperfect spheres.

It was definitely a lump.

I had thought it was, when I first checked all those months ago, but it had been hard to tell then, or maybe I had been reluctant to extend myself the relief of acceptance, of certainty. How often do you really feel your own balls, your nuts, your nads, your knackers, your family jewels, man tonsils, stones, your bollocks, your gonads? A grope here and there, a scratch, an idle fingering, a tug or a squeeze perhaps. But really feel them? Taking each of the balls in turn, between your favourite fingers, and rolling it like a small piece of fruit, feeling the softness and fragility of the gland and noting any differences to its day-to-day normalcy. There is a bizarre sensation that befalls the man who clasps his own balls there in his hands. It is a desire to keep on squeezing. I don’t know why it happens, and I know I never would, but it is always there, that curiosity, as if I expect to hear a pop. With my fingers on my balls I can close my eyes and imagine their surface like a soft alien landscape. I remember medical documentary shows where a camera enters a body cavity and an instrument that looked like a tiny ice cream scoop scrapes harmful tissues from infected areas. The scrapings of the scoop make me think of balls, wispy spirals of inexplicable matter. Fibrous melon balls, dumplings, Swedish meatballs. But the texture of testicles is truly its own.

There was no reason for me to assume that the lump – and I admit, it had felt like a lump – was anything untoward. It might just as well have been a simple idiosyncrasy to the personal presentation and superficial construction of my individual balls, a minor quirk like the noses on our faces or the toes on our feet. The balls were such a mystery to me, something unsettling about their dangling presence and their great power. I was humbled by them, frightened of them, and I would avoid them as I would avoid a man with whom I didn’t want to make conversation in a nearly empty public place. And so as I massaged the balls with thought and gasped slightly as my fingers darted over the lump, I just as immediately set to work dismissing its existence, subjugating its reality to my own youthful frivolous certainty that when I was going to die it wasn’t going to be the balls that killed me.

Months had passed now and it hadn’t gone away. Recently my wife had been talking about a baby, or rather the possibility of our having one, and all of a sudden the gravity of the lump was brazenly lauding itself over my day-to-day trivialities. I’d have probably continued to ignore it had it not been for mention of the baby. What kind of a man would I be if I couldn’t give my wife a baby? I wanted to look in its eyes and see a bit of both of us, wanted to melt into evenings with its weight in my arms.

I moved my fingers over the lump another time. It didn’t hurt. Surely it would hurt if it was something bad? It must just be a routine anomaly, nothing a quick procedure won’t remove, whip it off and patch me up and back home in time for dinner. Two healthier testicles I have never seen sir, says doctor.

I pulled my trousers back up and fastened them around my waste. Everything felt numb, subdued, as if it were happening underwater. I flushed the toilet, although I hadn’t used it, and went into the kitchen. My wife was there, making tea for us. She had already poured the water on the teabags and was looking out the window whilst the tea brewed. She turned to me and smiled, and her face was so radiant in the sunshine the bled through the window. The expression on my face must have betrayed me and she her own expression turned immediately to concern. I took in my arms and looked in her eyes. I could feel that I was going to cry.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What is it?” Her voice was quiet and fragile.

“It’s a lump,” I said. I wanted to bury my head in her neck, to engulf myself in her goodness, but I couldn’t.

“A lump?” she repeated, desperately echoing a truth to push it away, to hide it.

“On my testicle.” It sounded absurd, picking this moment to say testicle, as if I were a scientist or a medical professional.

“I don’t… how long has it been there?” Her voice was losing its serenity with every sentence. I felt so bad about this. It must be hard for her, without any warning or preparation. It’s hard the way that life can suddenly turn itself upside down, pull the rug out from under us, and all we can do is watch, like spectators to our own end, without a hope in hell of making a difference.

“A couple of months,” I said. Was I whispering? “Three.” I could feel her gaze, her frustrated gaze. It burnt two holes right through me, but I didn’t dare look at her eyes. What she thought, her frustration at my cowardice, my stupidity, it was all true. Everyone agrees that you should catch these things early, gives you a better chance of beating it, but there I was, months down the line, sitting back while the lump became a part of me, conjoined to tissue somewhere deep within in my balls. I had the chance to be more than an observer, to get involved in the path of my life, but I left it. I waited, and contemplated, and deliberated, I hid from the power of the truth that infected my body.

“You stupid bastard,” she said. She didn’t sound angry, but hurt, and afraid. I was afraid too. “You stupid, stupid bastard.” She was crying, her fingers were digging into my flesh, she held me tight like she would never let go. I could feel the warmth of her tears through the cotton of my shirt. We cried together in the kitchen.

I waited for the light bulb to blow above our heads but it didn’t. Everything just carried on.

freddie mercury, the future and me

It had been another terrible day. I had spent it washing up dishes and porridge bowls and heavy soup containers and cutlery in the enormous kitchen of my local hospital.

It sure was hot in that kitchen, and my shirt stuck to my back while I stood letting the air from the industrial dishwasher blow the hair out of my face. During every revolution of the mechanics I forgot about the dishes and made the machine stop as the brown plastic bowls got trapped under the relentless motion of the conveyor belt. This didn’t make me feel so bad. The old man I had been working with had a red face and seemed exasperated by my slovenly technique. He had spent a lifetime washing dishes like me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I knew what I was doing.

Man I hated that goddamn job. The final straw must have been spilling hot fish juice from a hot plate serving tray and all over my blue Levi 501 jeans and scalding my leg. I’m the kind of guy who only has one pair of jeans, and all I had really wanted to do was wash up the pots as quickly as possible and get home. I knew things had to change from that moment on, and spent the whole afternoon trying to smell my thighs and spraying aerosol deodorant over myself to try to hide the stench of cheap badly cooked fish bits, plotting elaborate ways of escaping the hidden washing room where the sound of machinery drowned out the radio and I kept forgetting that there were other people alive in the world.

Yes particularly, things had to change.

I had met the most unfortunate group of devastated men of my life in that hospital kitchen and was happy I never got to eat their food. I could tell by their capillaries and halitosis that they were nearly dead but not near enough for themselves, and teetering endlessly on the wrong side of alcoholism.

One man’s name was Colin. He was terrible and hideous, but all of my colleagues said that it wasn’t his fault. He was over six feet in length and his head was spread thinly with patchy grey hair. The hospital legend was that he was run over by a bus when he was seven years old and since then he had developed amusing brain damage and could barely talk or learn. I wasn’t sure if this was true though because everyone who told me the story laughed about half way through, and it shouldn’t have been funny. I laughed too.

Even at I guess fifty-something years old Colin still lived with his old mum, who beat him up badly if he was late home from work. This might have explained the bruises on his arms and the nervousness in his gestures. He only ever said “sorry m’mate”, or “y’all right m’mate”, his deformed mouth somehow stuck on these frantically uttered sounds, erupting like pointless gunfire from the physical dyslexia of his heavy pink idiot lips. There was always a look of madness in his vacant eyes, despite his simple nature, as if he were moments away from exploding into an act of unprovoked violence without either thought or conscience. I suppose a life like Colin’s can often push a person into that kind of direction.

His washing up talent was a little better than mediocre because he had done it for more than twenty years in the same hospital and learnt it like a baby. He always did the heavy-duty washing, pots and pans, his leathery sausage coloured arms immersed to the elbows in scalding greasy water.

Trevor was a bigger shithead than Colin, mainly because Colin smoked such rancid cigarettes so incredibly quickly, and kept them lovingly in a tin with his full name engraved on the lid as some kind of reminder, in case anyone asked him who he was and the silence that followed became unbearable. Trevor didn’t smoke at all. He made me want to commit beautiful suicide. When I worked really long days with Trevor he talked about nothing but himself. He had once had the same moustache for ten solid years, but shaved it off for a part as an extra in a movie so small it was almost invisible.

It upset me that he thought he was a star because he signed up to free extra agencies in London and got occasional one second shots in films and sometimes even got paid but never got credited for them. He managed to spend too long telling me his Hollywood anecdotes that had clearly come from the pages of old copies of the Readers Digest, waxing lyrical about the stars as though they were golf associates or dinner companions.

Each story was told the same over and over again. I think he really had forgotten that he had told me them before, and all I could think about was shaking the bastard by the collar and telling him to shut his stupid mouth up because the rotten pots are better than your life and I’m glad I’m not you and forty-one.

He did disco dancing in a group in his local town and in nationwide talent contests, and he won a lot of rosettes for third place or pleasing competitive spirit. I asked him to dance by a recreational pool table and he hand-jived in silence for five minutes. I think we both felt uncomfortable at the futility of it all. I imagined him in sequined flare and trainers, sweating under the clinical white strip lights of a community centre, the plastic chairs piled around the peripheries of the room, the soles of his feet squeaking on the highly buffed floor. He is alone there.

He insisted upon hedging most of his sentences with “-ish”, even when it was completely unnecessary.

“I don’t think it will take too long to do those spuds. Ish.”

“I loved that movie. Ish.”

“I collect pornography and live alone. Ish.”

Once it had become noticeable it became harder and harder to take my ears off.

*

I needed to do something with my life, that much had become clear through the headaches. It was difficult to find things I liked about the building where they secretly stowed the kitchen, and nothing there made me feel like smiling or used the kind of good quality building materials that smelt like an old house. It had been hidden by the hospital bigwigs behind cracked walls and decaying areas full of skips of rubbish, as if they pretended it belonged to somebody else, some embarrassing defective extended family member, probably so they could feel sorry for that person when they looked out of their executive windows. A middle-aged woman whose hair was taller than her head blushed when she saw the kitchen staff in the corridors. I wasn’t sure if it was bad to have people feeling ashamed to talk to you because you wore a wet apron.

So on my way out of work that day I stole a hotdog vendor’s portable cart that had been left unprotected outside a public convenience. I pushed it home, following the coast road where joggers cursed mumbles and jogged past the wheels, and old people seemed to be unsure about everything. I was formulating a business plan and whistling songs by the rock and roll band Queen.

Half way through the second chorus of the song “Don’t stop me now” it all fell into place. With special modifications that I had loosely drafted outside a residential block of flats I would use my new cart to sell chilled or warm peanut butter sandwiches to the public, in polythene bags or on sticks, for snacks or even evening meals depending on the complexities of the recipe and the quality of the ingredients.

It seemed likely that I would be famous. The world had to be waiting for something so simple. I had never seen a peanut butter sandwich for sale in a shop. I had to get to work as I quickly as I could. I left my job washing dishes behind forever, folded all of my belongings into my brown leather buckled suitcase and walked down the familiarity of the road and into the sun with my peanut butter stall in the other hand. It was Freddie Mercury, the future and me.

*

It didn’t take long to prepare the cart itself. I painted it a new green colour I had found in a hardware shop and asked a mechanic friend of mine to take a look at the wheels. “They seem to be in full working order,” he said. I had to explain that I couldn’t pay him for his time but would gladly offer him as much peanut butter sandwiches as he could eat. It could be hungry work being a mechanic. He rubbed his chin and agreed that it made good business sense.

I had managed to pick up a second hand sandwich display unit at a junkyard I used to play in. it looked a lot like a toast rack, but I could tell it was a sandwich display unit. The manager recognised me from all those years ago and I only had to pay him enough for a coke. He even offered to throw in a baby’s pushchair, but I told him he should hang on to it for the right person. A prospective mother would have a really good day after drinking coffee and buying that pushchair for the price of a couple of cokes. I didn’t know how the junkyard manager called Steel Mike managed to live very easily on just coke, but that was his business.

The secret would be in producing good sandwiches with thick peanut butter. Nobody wanted a sandwich with thin peanut butter. Thin bread could certainly make for a better peanut butter sandwich, just as long as the peanut butter was used well. I practised making up sandwiches for a whole day until they tasted just right. I spent the next day making a large replica sandwich out of wood and glue that could be mounted on the roof of my peanut butter sandwich cart to attract attention. This would be called marketing in the business world. I was marketing my peanut butter sandwich cart.

I could barely sleep at night, thinking about the bright green cart and its sandwich display unit.

*

One Thursday morning that started off cold enough to wear a jacket I woke up early and made up a batch of one hundred fresh peanut butter sandwiches, which I carefully placed into the chilled half of the cart, and set about wheeling it to the centre of the main shopping street. It was empty when I arrived so I displayed four sandwiches on the display unit. They looked very attractive and made me start to feel hungry. Peanut butter escaped from the sides of the bread, just like it should in a well made sandwich, and I poured hot coffee from a flask into a paper cup and waited for somebody to walk by and buy a sandwich for their morning snack.

After two coffees a man with a broom asked me what exactly I was selling. I pointed at the sandwich display unit and he squeezed the bread gently between his thumb and forefinger. He looked happy with surprise, and bought a sandwich for sixty pence. I asked if he wanted a bag or a stick. He laughed like a waterfall and said a bag’d be fine. The bags were see-through and said “peanut butter sandwich” on them, which he seemed to enjoy. I pointed out the condiment selection on the front of the stall: jam, banana, pickled gherkin or bacon. He smelt the bacon but said he was okay and walked off with his broom and his sandwich.

A few minutes later he came back with the empty bag.

“That was a good sandwich,” he said contemplatively. “Damn good sandwich. You bet. Thickness of peanut butter was just the right compliment to that soft bread you’re using back there.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m glad you enjoyed your sandwich.”

“It was delicious. I think I’ll tell people I know about this green sandwich stall.” He nodded at me.

“Thank you very much again.” I nodded back at him.

“What else are you guys selling but those peanut butter sandwiches there?” he asked. His hand was rummaging through the change in his trouser pockets.

“I’m emphasizing the peanut butter. You can buy any number of sandwiches from any number of food shops, but I never saw me a retail peanut butter sandwich before, not in or box or in a bag, and never on a stick.” We both laughed at this because it was so crazy it was true. “I can do a peanut butter sandwich of any size you like. Or a delicious hot peanut butter sandwich.”

He looked toward the heated half of the peanut butter sandwich cart. “A hot peanut butter sandwich?” His eyes had opened wider at the nearly unfathomable prospect. “How much is that?”

“As my first valued customer I shall sell you a hot peanut butter sandwich for just fifty pence. I recommend it with bacon.”

I carefully lowered a sandwich into the heated drum of the old hot dog vendor’s cart, and waited while it heated up some. The man rested his broom against the paintwork and bought the sandwich, which this time he ate in front of me off of a stick with bacon and a slice of pickled gherkin on my recommendation. He put the stick in a dustbin and came back for his broom.

“You make an excellent sandwich,” he said and offered his hand for me to shake. “I’ve never tasted anything like that before. Are you going to be here all the time from now on?”

“Every day.”

“Thanks.”

He went back to sweeping the streets clean for the day, and I had some coffee and thought about the one pound and ten pence I had made with my sandwiches.

*

As people heard about and then tried and then spoke about this strange green cart with a wooden sandwich on its roof that sold peanut butter sandwiches in the high street, the number of fillings grew and the choice of accompaniments grew also. But the peanut butter always came first. As long as that was smooth and thick then the sandwiches would always sell, even without the gourmet additions. I began to prepare sandwiches of peanut butter ‘plus’, using a variety of carefully selected fillings to further the sandwich eating experience. Handmade peanut butter sandwiches prepared to order on a cart in the street. Customers were excited and started to queue to buy my sandwiches. Working men who smelt of lager ate peanut butter and chilli sandwiches; mothers talked to each other about my peanut butter, plum and finely sliced duck explosion; children screamed and pulled and stamped for the triple layered peanut butter, chocolate and cream surprise.

But still nothing sold better than plain old PB, and the man with the broom was always first in line every day for his steaming hot peanut butter sandwich on a stick.

I had even started making small amounts of profit from my stolen hot dog cart, but it had become about something more important than money. People began telling me that this simple sandwich idea was changing their life and finally giving them a reason to go to work, just to wait for their lunch hour.

*

After a few months of ideas and experiments I faced my first problem as a peanut butter sandwich vendor. While I was just putting together a peanut butter-mayonnaise on rye I noticed a frustrated looking woman next in the line. People hadn’t often looked frustrated in my queue before. The smell of good nut seemed to bring a kindly feeling to all. But this lady had a red face and her hair was a-fluster, like she had walked a long way very quickly in a moderate wind. I finished up the sandwich and asked her what she would like.

“Are you that peanut butter guy?” she snapped.

“Yes missus,” I replied. I think I was smiling a little too hard, and she seemed to notice that. “Peanut butter is my trade! What would you like today? I can recommend my new special brandy peanut butter for the perfect solution to a hard day.” I was still smiling at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice was hoarse and I imagined her shouting about things at home in preparation for our dialogue.

“What?” I asked.

“Two days ago, mister, you sold a peanut butter sandwich to my eleven year old boy. Thomas.” She showed me a photograph of an unusual looking kid who I remembered well. He had shouted at me when he asked for the sandwich too. She had one hand in her brown coat pocket and one hand clenched and half pointing at me.

“I remember. He seemed happy with his purchase.” She stared at me and didn’t say anything. “Was he happy with his purchase?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

“No. In fact, what you seemed to not realise was that my son is allergic to nuts. And you sold him a peanut butter sandwich. He had two separate fits and got swollen!”

“That is awful.” I said. I had not anticipated this, and felt a true pain for my irresponsibility.

“Yes it is you irresponsible fool.” She wasn’t shouting anymore. I preferred it when she was shouting as it made her actions more predictable.

“Might I refund the cost of the offending sandwich?” I suggested in a way I deemed appropriately humble. “In some small way it might ease the pain of your swollen son.”

“Your attempts at situation rectification are embarrassing. I don’t want your money. I want you to think about what you have done. I will be coming back here with my husband who is a tall, tall man. I want you closed down.”

She snatched the photograph of Thomas out of my hand and stormed off. I could hear her huffing all the way down the street.

*

The next day I opened up the cart ready for business as usual. I was more tired than most mornings because I had sat up all night trying to come up with a way that people with nut allergies might still enjoy a good old-fashioned peanut butter sandwich.

The plan I came up with involved selling genuine and tasty peanut butter that contained absolutely no traces of peanuts, an idea that sounded crazy. I baked some up and it sure tasted like real peanut butter to me. I spread a few thick cut sandwiches with my idea and offered it free of charge to my friend with the broom that very morning. He said it tasted great, but why would I just give him this regular sandwich for nothing?

I gestured for him to come a little closer. “That sandwich you’ve just eaten, how’d it taste?” I asked in a whisper.

“I told you, it was delicious. Your sandwiches are always delicious.”

“Interesting.”

“What is?” He looked confused.

“That sandwich you just ate didn’t contain any peanuts. Not one.”

He laughed at me. I didn’t laugh, so he laughed again. “No peanuts?” he said between laughs. I shook my head. “With respect,” he went on, “I just ate that sandwich, that peanut butter sandwich, and it tasted a lot like peanuts to me!” he laughed a few more times and looked at me like I was crazy.

I explained the whole story to him, about allergic Thomas and the angry mother, about my night of testing recipes. He looked doubtful.

“So if there ain’t a single nut in that peanut butter,” he pointed vaguely at the cart, “what is in it?”

“You really want to know?” I asked. He nodded. “FUN! That’s what’s in there, plain old fun, enough to make one hell of a great sandwich.”

He really laughed at this and slapped me on the back. I sold him another two nut-free sandwiches and drew up a poster advertising my 100% fun and 0% peanut peanut butter sandwiches (suitable for allergy victims everywhere). Before long, I didn’t even have to use regular peanut butter for those who requested it. They just couldn’t taste the difference. Everyone in town was dying to get their hands on this crazy nutless butter that tasted somehow better that even the real thing.

*

Swollen Thomas’ father never did come to find me, tall as he might have been. Sometimes I saw Thomas and his mother walking past the cart and I pointed at my new sign, but still she would never let him have the sandwich. Despite his unfortunate allergic reaction, I think Thomas was happy that he’d eaten that sandwich that time. It gave him a little taste of something he might never get again. At least until he gets a bit older.

issue one

women

"Would you like to dance, Julia?" I asked charismatically. I wore a sky blue jacket which was embroidered on the breast. The embroidery? Insignificant in the context. My trousers were cream and pressed, tan moccasins offered a casual yet appropriate footwear for most functions.

"But there is no music playing, Gregor."

Her reply sounded like a punch. I followed through with a clean hook to the jaw.

"How'd ya like the sound of that one, huh?" I asked aggressively. "Felt that one did ya, tough nut?"

She whimpered dramatically, the back of one hand laid gently over her forehead, other raised to no one in particular. "Why did you strike me so?" she pissed.

"You still don't see you dumb cunt. I didn't mean real dancing."

Women.