Paul swung back to the console and said “Take a seat.” He nodded his head at another castored chair in the back corner of the box. “Pull it up and I’ll show you how this lot works. If you want?”
Delaney didn’t answer, but he brought a chair up and sat down.
Paul said “Right,” and began taking him through the controls, the spots, the fades, the follow beams. He showed him the sequencer, the computer and how it came up on the screen. He said, “We can control some of the scenery lifts from here too, and effects. Snow, wind, what-have-you. When the performance starts you’ll be able to see better what each is.”
Delaney nodded, looking at the controls with that rapt intensity. You had the feeling he could repeat back every word you’d just said to him.
Paul watched him covertly. He was different from how he remembered him, more Asiatic looking, eyes more slant. Was he thinner? Was that it? “I hear you’ve been working with Jonathan?”
Delaney nodded, just about.
“Enjoying it?”
Delaney lifted his head abruptly and looked through the window to the stage. “He’s good.”
“As a dancer? He was.” Paul looked at him curiously. “Don’t tell me he dances with you?”
“He shows me what to do,” Delaney said noncommittally.
Paul nodded, feeling somehow that the answer was evasive. Jonathan didn’t dance more than he had to. Steps if he must, but mostly he just talked them through it. After all, that’s what all the bloody French was for, wasn’t it? He’d wondered, with the boy being untrained, if he’d been forced to be different with him. The boy wasn’t saying though, was he? “He hasn’t danced since he was in his twenties.”
“He said.” It was almost curt.
“Big dark secret why he stopped.”
Delaney looked at him. Paul felt that same tightening in his chest. God, he was a sexy little bugger and no mistake. Those eyes. Mouth looked as if it had been carved just to suck dick. He said, wanting to keep the boy’s attention on him, “He just stopped one day, said he’d had enough. He’d been threatening to start a company, had begun to do it, in fact, and then he said ‘That’s it, going to be a choreographer, the hell with dancing’. That was it,” he said again, making a shrug with his hands as if Jonathan’s behaviour was utterly inexplicable.
Delaney turned away as if he didn’t believe him. Or something. Paul felt rankled. Stick then, you little… But his disgruntlement was short-lived. Delaney’s pulling power was too strong. Even if his clothes were a mess. Jonathan ought to take him in hand. Did he only own one jacket? He looked like some unemployed kid off the street.
Paul reached over for his cigarettes and opened the pack, offering him one.
Delaney shook his head.
“You’re right. I should give them up.” He clicked his lighter and lit it, threw it down, pulling the ashtray closer and putting his feet up on the console.
He smoked Marlboros, as many as fifty a day some days. But what the hell. “So has Johnny been taking you round the competition?”
Delaney looked at him blankly.
“The other companies. No? I thought he would.”
“We work most nights.”
“Keen old you. I admire his stamina. What is he teaching you?”
“Just basics. Exercises, bits from ballets.”
“Soloist stuff?”
“Has to be.”
Paul smiled. “No Pas de deux?”
Delaney turned to him. “We’ve done a couple.” There was no smile. Was he serious?
Paul raised his eyebrows. “The mind boggles.” But Delaney didn’t clarify, amplify, and Paul didn’t dare ask. He inhaled some more cigarette, sat forward abruptly and tapped the ash off, then said without looking at him, “I know it’s a cliché, but are you gay?”
Delaney said flatly, “No.”
Paul sat back with a slow exhalation. “Didn’t think you were. Ah well.” He looked at him. “I am, by the way.”
Delaney said nothing.
Paul said, “I prefer people to know that. Can’t stand hiding.”
Delaney still said nothing.
Paul took another nervous drag on his cigarette. He wondered how Jonathan coped with this. “Aubrey is too,” he added.
“I guessed.” It bordered on sarcastic.
“He thinks you’re cute.”
Delaney said nothing.
“As soon as you turn twenty-five he won’t love you any more. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Really? You look younger.” He smiled. “Really unusual face, those eyes.” He leaned forward and tapped ash off again. “What do you think of Jonathan?”
“He’s a good teacher.”
“And as a person?”
“He’s a good teacher.”
Paul laughed. “God, you’re a tight one. Not everybody here would agree with either of those statements. Not his students certainly. There’s a consensus of opinion that thinks our Johnny drives you too damn hard, and that he’s a very bitter man.”
Delaney said nothing.
“Doesn’t drive you then?”
“I wouldn’t be here if he did.”
Paul laughed then said, “No, I don’t think you would. Not much like our Vaslav, are you?”
Delaney looked away.
“You know about Nijinsky and Diaghilev?”
“No.”
“Let Uncle Paul enlighten you. Diaghilev rescued him from the Imperial Ballet in Russia. Condition was, if you ask me, that Nijinsky slept with him. Nijinsky did, although, in my humble opinion, he was no way homosexual. Nijinsky was one of those ‘never say no’ characters, and let’s admit it, he had his eye on the main chance a bit here. Diaghilev was a respected man, at least artistically. Nijinsky knew he’d be prancing around as Prince Valiant forever if he didn’t go with him. He also knew that if he said hands off he wouldn’t get to be Sergei’s favourite boy. Let’s say Diaghilev was one of those men who liked to own people, body and soul. And Vaslav was used to being owned. He had a prissy bitch for a mother and a sour prissy bitch for a sister. A dyke if ever there was one. Both of them, if you ask me. And I might as well tell you now, Aubrey disagrees with all of this.
“Anyway, Vaslav got married eventually and ran away from his sugar daddy. You know they all say he went nuts after he married, but the fact was it was before that was doing it to him. He got mad to escape it. It’s obvious. Then he found out she was just like the rest. I’ll make your decisions for you, Vaslav. So he went. Just disappeared inside his head.
“There, that’s the story of Diaghilev and Nijinsky. Oh, Diaghilev disowned him, by the way, for marrying. Never forgave him.”
He smiled. “Now you know. Think you can see yourself in the role? No? Maybe you’re right at that. You’re no doormat and Jonathan is too cold to want to own anybody, and yet, still…” He looked at him. “Something about you, I don’t know.” He moved abruptly, almost as if he were annoyed with himself. He stubbed out his cigarette. “And, of course, he was only the greatest male dancer of all time. No-one’s replaced him yet, or probably ever will. How can you replace a myth? A God. What do you think? Think your life can match that?”
But before Delaney could answer, music flooded the control room and Paul sat up and said, “Here we go.”
CHAPTER THE FESTIVE…
On Sunday night it became obvious that Delaney was nervous. Apprehensive even. Certainly self-absorbed. After he’d made the same mistake twice, he stopped, stamping his foot in irritation, “Shit,” and running a hand through his hair.
Jonathan crossed to the hi-fi and put the music off. He said without turning to him, “Come on, let’s give it a break.”
Delaney acquiesced, but Jonathan sensed it was more because he could hardly argue he was giving it his all rather than because he wanted to.
Jonathan went upstairs and put the kettle on. He picked a sweater up from the living room and went back to the kitchen. Delaney was already there, sweatsuit on, rummaging in the fridge. He took a carton of fruit juice out and hooked a chair out with his foot and plumped down.
Jonathan busied himself making coffee and sandwiches. He didn’t ask him if he wanted any. Delaney seldom ate after eight o’clock at night. Certainly not if he was tense. Which he certainly was tonight.
“Do I detect a certain apprehension in man and superman?” Jonathan smiled as he asked it. Delaney could be touchy as a grasshopper on a frying pan.
Delaney nodded, no answering smile.
Jonathan said, “You don’t need to be. I wouldn’t let you do it if I didn’t think you were good enough. What exactly is scaring you so much?”
Delaney shrugged.
Jonathan studied his face then said, “Did you tell Paul last night?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
Delaney lifted his head. “Did you?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
Delaney shrugged.
Jonathan said, “I didn’t tell anyone. Your anonymity is intact. We shall have the element of surprise.”
Delaney lifted the glass of orange and put it down again, then said, “It would be alright if it was just you, teaching. I know you.”
“Our maestro Ceccetti is very good. He’s no tyrant. Anyway, you’re a prize pupil.”
Delaney looked at him. “I thought you said his name was Mayakovsky?”
Jonathan smiled. “Joke. Ceccetti used to teach the Ballets Russes.”
Delaney gave a slight nod and finally drank some of the fruit juice. He put it down and got up abruptly. “I think I’ll go for a bath.” He looked at him. “That alright?”
“Sure. There’s always hot water.”
Delaney nodded, went out. Jonathan didn’t see him again that evening.
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Merry Christmouse Pixie folk.
Hello
The books have arrived, they look fantastic. Two is my favourite cover, love the back with the big black wings. Also love the back of one. I really like the finger prints all over the writing on book one. They really are gorgeous, well done to Max, my favourite covers yet.
Glad you like them. Schwarze Engel is my favourite too, and you will get more out of it when you read 2.3 in 2012. The back of Hope House was an accident, but I’ll deny that if you repeat it. I love artistic accidents - they help you to believe in God, which is useful in times of economic need, as it saves you on costly animal sacrifices and black candles for Satan worship. And don’t be too quick to thank Max; he hated the fingerprint font (forgotten its name), which I picked (of course). But otherwise he’s a good lad. Some day I intend to pay him……
Hi Jodie, so glad you liked the new books. To join my fan club please send a postal order for ten shillings, for which you will receive a signed photograph, a stylish vinyl key fob and a club magazine that praises me to the skies.
Max
Ha ha, the money is winging it’s way to you as we speak Max.
How come the back of Hope House was an accident?
You don’t think anyone’s going to tell you that, do you, Jodie? Happy New Year to all!!!!
Oh you secret keepers, more lies than Danby and John together. Happy new year, have a Danny good time
H.n.y. Pixie’s
Happy New Year to you, too, my little DANNY junkie. The back cover was an accident because we were moving the figure into different locations to see what kind of story we could tell. The cover image is made up of layers with each object in a different layer. When we flipped the new figure, the old one was still in place and I stopped Max with a “Hey, leave that, I like the look of it. Now we’ve got two them in there, that interests me strangely……” And behold the cover was born.
Max just didn’t want me to reveal that because he’s a narcissist and he needs everyone to believe he’s special. In fact, we both do; we have narcissist parties where we lie to each other. In fact, I’m lying right now……
I so refute all of this. I am not a narcissist - the world just so happens to revolve around me…. And the cover was NOT an accident, I had already guessed that it would look good that way!
Oh, you are so a narcissist: signing yourself ‘genius in residence’, ordering those key fobs for your fan club, writing a newsletter all about yourself. You shameless elf-promoting whore, you….
P.S. That’s like being self-promoting, but it only happens at Xmas. And no, it was definitely not a mistake…
I’ll have you know that elf-promotion is an ancient art and not at all shameless, unlike munchkin-promotion which is a very base art indeed….
Right, I’ve read Eilean Mhor again. Slowly and paying more attention because there were a lot of remarks I didn’t get first time but I wanted to know what happened so I didn’t analyse anything for too long.
After the second read I have no fucking idea what Danny runs away for. I’ve read the bits over a few times and I have no idea what the lie is. I know your not going to tell me but no one else has said that they’ve gotten to that bit yet, so I am just letting my confusion out.
I have another one as well, but again I know I’m getting no answers, but fuck it, you don’t ask you don’t get. Is someone else who features in the books another brother, someone a little bit foxy?
Oh Goddamn, Rhodes, you’ve done it again - baffled me with my own book. Which lie are we talking about? There’s hundreds of the fucking things. Not including the things you currently believe to be truths but I know to be lies. Give me a page number if you can’t tell me what the lie is. In fact, give me the page number anyway, speed things up - if we’re talking about a specific lie.
As for the foxy one being a brother - maybe he’s something a whole lot worse…………
I can’t pin point where the lie is beacause I really don’t have a clue what’s been lied about, but I think it’s on page 493 to 495. It’s the reason Danny leaves on the next page (or it’s at least what he says the reason is). Danny says it on page 588. What did he lie to him about all along? Am I being really stupid?
P.S. I have This is England now, it has finally come in the post, I’ll send it up after I’ve watched it through. Also ave you ever seen Thirst, it’s a Japanese (I think)vampire film?
Okay, the lying. As best as I can, without spoilering: the conversation on pps 493 - 495 is about Ian and the extent of Mr P’s complicity. It’s the first time the possibility has been admitted that Mr P may have known and ‘approved’ of what Ian did to Danny, that it might have been in Mr P’s interests in more ways than one to let it happen. If you want to, you can see the conversation being not as simple as that, but as Mr P confessing he may have asked Ian to do the things, albeit in a roundabout way (ETA I’m going to qualify that here. The conversation does already pretty much say that. But I can suggest that something else deeper may be being hinted here. I need to leave that up to you. Just remember John won’t tell a whole truth if a half [or fractional] truth might do). By the time you get to the conversation on p588 Danny is venting about the comprehensive lying Mr P has done, in that he is allowing himself to believe for the first time that Mr P may have been manipulating Ian all along and, I think, more worryingly, that ‘confessing’ to Danny may only be another field of lying. If you like, that something else maybe lurks underneath. (I’ve told you before - and after reading your latest lovefest on your blog, it needs repeating - Mr P is not what he appears to be; you are too trusting, my girl!)
Danny kind of knows this, but, like you, doesn’t want to believe it. His outburst about lying is not about a lie but about all of them. Or perhaps the depth of them. I think he’s taking the opportunity of the distance between them, his attempt at breaking away from him, and the presence of Stephen as a fall-back, to throw it out there. If you like, he has leverage - perhaps to force Mr P into some truths, perhaps to sound him out, or perhaps it is just venting. Or then again, maybe he’s playing mind games of his own. These two do a lot of baiting: I’ll tell him this and see if he tells me that.
However, (there’s always a however), if you read the p588 scene you will see they keep all their pronouns very vague - the key sentence being “for letting that mad little shit kill him”. You have to ask yourself which ‘him’ they are referring to here. The conversation actually goes on from here to talk about different people and different things. You maybe think they’re talking about one killing and one mad little shit, but it may be different people, times and killings altogether - and that’s all I’m saying.
The only clue I ever give in any of the books that a shift has taken place in the conversation is if it suddenly seems to not make sense to the reader. If you come across one of these moments, where it’s like you’re in a different conversation and you have no idea what is going on, it is because you are. Like real life, you don’t always know people’s secrets, their agendas, or their private languages. This would be one of those moments. They really mean, ‘be alert - lying, obfuscating and deceit in progress’. Often it’s not intentional (on the character’s part/s) - as it may not be here - it’s a different kind of lying, if you will. The kind that people do when they are too afraid to tell the truth, because they can’t face what it means, or it’s about a secret that’s just too dark, too hard or too forbidden to be said out loud. And that really is it. Enough.
P.S. Yeah, I’ve already seen Thirst, thanks. Good film.
Hello,
Thank you for the clear up, I wasn’t expecting any clues, knowing your secretive tight lipped ways. I still can’t believe you never let slip about the present for that many years after book 1, I can’t imagine how quickly I’d have let that out of the bag. That’s really helpful though. I knew Mr P had told Danny he was behind some of the things Ian did, but for some reason I had no reaction to that, it didn’t shock me. I don’t think I thought about it properly, it is awful but in the terms of DANNY I don‘t think it‘s the worse thing he‘s done. I think watching the old man with Danny is the worse thing, so I‘m guessing there‘s more along that line to come. Mr P has always shown excitement in the face of the things Ian did to Danny, in the face of anything painful done to Danny, not nice but none of them are saints.
Thinking about it though what he did was cowardly, he messed around with Danny (I think he my have been the first one to do this as well) then he daren’t admit to anything so he used Ian‘s sick head to get off on Danny‘s pain. That is pretty fucked. But looking at the section that comes before p493 I think there’s something even darker in John’s motive for confession and I think Danny knows what this is. So I’m firmly in the camp of ‘confessing’ to Danny may only be another field of lying.’
As for the lies of Mr P, I think being the kind of liar he is is just as bad for the lair as the people they lie to (well that sounds convoluted). John’s a true liar, he doesn’t hint to the fact that he’s lied. I think a lot of the time when someone has got away with a good lie, they’re so proud of their ability and their power to make people believe them, they can’t help but brag about it through little hints and suggestive looks. The lie is not full proof, it’s not 100% lie because they have themselves hinted at the fact they weren’t being honest so the guilt of lying is also lifted slightly. Mr P never hints about his lies, never slyly brags, I think this sort of lie is soul destroying. It must be such a guilty feeling to have everyone believe you without question, praise you for honesty, give you credit for being the type of person you aren’t. I think that must make him lonely and guilty. To never show your true face to the people you love the most, if they love you it isn’t you they love.
I can’t seem to stop turning Mr P’s bad points around, I know I’m a lost cause, I’m going to be so disappointed aren’t I. The worst thing is in book 3 I like Mr P after page 495, when he’s on his own and spreading evil, I’m guessing that makes me a horrible person, aw well.
It’s weird discussing DANNY with you, you know all the story, beyond all the story, more than I will ever read in all the books, I feel like a kid talking to a grown up about an adult subject. This probably bores you as well, if your sick of discussing DANNY with an idiot, tell me to shut up.
P.S. I’m afraid the love fest is going to continue, at least for a little while, I’ve been absent the P’s presence for four long, cold years.
P.P.S. I have watched all but one of the films you sent so I will send everything back to you on Monday I promise, along with This is England (which by the way has one of the most realistic depictions of domestic abuse I’ve ever seen, especially in the last episode, I think the antagonistic conversation before the main event is bone chillingly real, you’ll see what I mean). Also I have the original Last House on the Lest, Satan and The Lover (with Jane Marsh). I know you want Satan already. Have you seen the other two?
P.P.P.S. This is way too long, someone else really needs to finish this book soon, I’m going mad.
P.P.P.P.S. Ha. I’ve sold two more lost souls on the concept of DANNY, they should be buying it very soon, unless they want me up their arse.
Sitting in my bed, late at night, and doing what I never do, using a computer in bed, but you have seduced me. Oh, how you have seduced me. The seduction of lying.
Never worry about boring/irritating me. On the contrary, I love talking about the books, since I never get to. I’m like some kind of sin-eater, with this massive amount of information in my head that I’ve had to memorise so I can tell it back perfectly, and I’ve been locked in a cell with it for 20 years, so that I’m reduced to muttering to myself. The trouble is, love it as much as I do, I am so circumscribed by not spoilering that I can’t really discuss it, so it’s a bit like getting your clothes off… but then no foreplay and no fuck. Unsatisfying.
But the seduction of lying… This I can talk about. You make a very astute observation about people bragging about lying. Well, liars bragging about lying. And, of course, this is because inveterate liars lie somewhere along the narcissistic to psychopathic scale (narcissism seems to be big in these comments!). But Mr P doesn’t brag. Not ever. This is the one true, remarkable thing about him. Even I don’t know all the whys and wherefores of his lying. All I know is, he would never fait acompli with his lying (like Ian would). His lying is always productive. It leads to something. But the somethings are often so far away and so mindboggling that I don’t know how he keeps it up. His calculation is beyond Machiavellian. He makes Ian look like an amateur. But think about it, where did Ian learn it?
This is some dimension of what you were saying in your lovefest (I think it was) about Mr P not caring about losing face. Being able to show yourself in a poorer light so that you can save something else other than yourself. Although I know what Mr P’s darkest secrets are (and they’re dark), I’m still not sure what they actually are to him. Why he’s kept them secret. It’s tempting to believe that they are so monstrous that actually the whole thing has been one huge, monolithic face-saving (would that crush all our fan love out in a single blow?) – and then I become you and think he’s done it for some other greater, nobler cause.
And that way madness lies.
Yes, the truth is I still don’t know, understand, or trust Mr P. Unbelievable and shocking, but true. I’ve always felt the truth of him lies in Volume 4, as it would be now (the old unfinished 5), and I’ve always felt that’s why I’ve never pursued it. Partly it’s because their histories will then be cast in stone and I won’t be able to save them. What if I lock them into some horrible past and they will be damned to it for all eternity? That’s too cruel. But I also worry that at the end of the day ‘THE TRUTH’ will be so banal that all of us will wonder what the hell the fuss was about.
This isn’t a fear of disappointing the readers (although that would be there!), but that their lives would turn out to be a terrible waste, that it would lay waste to something about my own life in the process. Too shitting scary.
But this absence of grandiosity in Mr P is what separates him from the psychopaths. Ironically, because he is prepared to lie without reward, as it were, it means he’s not nuts at all, and is not only sane but in danger of being noble. Maybe.
See what I mean? I too fear the magnetism of the damaged man.
The horrible thing is I can’t even really discuss the books properly until after ‘the new 4′ is written, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to finish that, so I may be locked into silence forever by my own fear/procrastination. I don’t know if it would be better for them to be left high and dry by me never finishing it, or for them to be damned eternally by any inadequacies that I deliver up in their final volume.
Believe me, I understand the Mr P fascination. But I do feel he is overrated. Danny has a fierce loyalty that easily matches Mr P’s, and his damage, although different, is equally extensive. I think the difference – and it may be the thing that seduces us both towards Mr P – is that he has borne his pain alone, but Danny has always been able to share his, albeit in many weird, warped ways. I know the extent of Mr P’s loneliness, but, technically, you shouldn’t. However, I am not so foolish as to not realise that although you don’t know all the facts, you are perfectly capable of picking up that isolation in him. I never mention it, and neither does he, but I think the weariness of weight-carrying seeps out of him onto the page all the time.
But is he isolated? Is that not what Danny is – was – to him? The answer to his isolation? And is that why Danny hates him? Or is it what makes Mr P hate himself? Or is he such a selfish self-absorbed cunt that the whole of his life has been about using a young boy who hero-worshipped him to save him from his own terrifying loneliness?
Now, those are the late night musings of a madman, and, as usual, I have probably given you more to worry and tease than to solve. Sorry……….
P.S. It’s now after 2am and I was up very early and at the dentist today, so I am never, ever going to read this back. Forgive any errors, ramblings, scary musings and general lunacies. I am quite sane really.
P.P.S. Thank you for pitching your book at all and sundry. My gratitude knows no bounds, and long may you continue.
P.P.P.S. Now I’m rivalling you, but just as I hit the submit button I saw I’d called it “your” book. Shit. Maybe I’ve been channelling you all along. Damn, and I thought it was Emily Bronte……..
Sorry, forgot to reply about the films last night. (And I did read my surreal orgy of late night Mr P ponderings back. I told you that would be a mistake. It sounds like a long inexplicable riddle. I rest my case about trying to discuss the book without spoilering or directing.)
I’ve somehow never seen Last House on the Left, so please, yes, send it up. I remember seeing The Lover in the cinema (back in the 80s? Can’t remember how old the fucking thing is.) But I remember it being kind of David Hamilton wishy-washy, middle-class, misty-lensed kind of shit. Am I misremembering…..?
You know even your late night, post dentist ramblings are more cohearent then my wide awake sober musings, it’s very frustrating. Three things in that you’ve explained what I was trying to say. Especially the lying being on a scale between narcissistic to psychopathic but I have a question. I don’t have any academic knowledge of psychology, I’m not sure what defines a psychopath. I didn’t think lying without reward would save Mr P from being a nutcase (or abnormal, I‘m not really sure what to call it). I think it’s human nature to want people to think your amazing, its human to brag, it shows feelings, shows you care a little what other people think, and an average degree of that is normal. I think Mr P’s the oddity to not care what people think to that extent, to be happy for people to think you are the worst person ever, so they don’t ever catch on to the person you actually are. That’s mental and unbelievably impressive, who has that much control. It’s something that I admire in a person but does it stop him from being a psychopath? Does it not make him a bit psychopathic, or am I thinking of a sociopath?
Second thing. Mr P’s willingness to lie and not brag, to show himself in a poorer light is noble, but I also think it could be evil. Noble because he never says ‘poor me look what I’ve been through.’ Like you say he bares his pain alone and asks no one else to carry it with him. He never says ‘yeah but listen to what iv been through before you judge me.’ The evil is, I think, his willingness to let everyone believe what they want is because all the bad things they are assuming are better than the truth he’s hiding. Letting people think he did one thing throws them off the trail that he did something else and that something else is much worse.
Also I had the thought that Mr P’s behaviour towards Danny in the scene following page 493 is one of those moments when his lies have become too much for him and he is dying to unburden himself. In these moments he seams to go creeping on his belly towards someone dying to tell them what he’s done, all the weight on his soul aching to be lightened. But he’ll never say it, at the last minute something in him will stop and he hits the person he almost told out of frustration with himself. I don’t think Danny wants to hear it either. When Mr P comes to him in this mood Danny gets freaked out, he wants Mr P away from him. I don’t think Danny wants to hear it as much as Mr P doesn’t want to tell. Even though Danny says he wants the truth when he sees it coming at him he wants to run away, just like Mr P does to Danny’s truths.
But Danny rubs this in his face, says ‘are we playing that game, tell me Danny tell me but don’t dare tell me.’ Danny plays this with him but Mr P never throws that at Danny. But I have the feeling that the fact he doesn’t throw these things is another way of him hiding himself. He tries to stop himself throwing things in Danny’s face because then Danny will know what bothers him. He will see his weakness, and Mr P is used to people using his weaknesses against him.
Mr P seems crawling when he wants to shed a truth, he seams repellent because he is vulnerable in that moment, truly vulnerable and Mr P isn’t allowed to be vulnerable. Everyone sits with open ears and a little too much of the wrong excitement when Danny starts to spill his guts, speak some truths. Danny is allowed to be vulnerable. Mr P has to be strong all the time, any real vulnerability freaks people out. Who said he had to be the saviour, who appointed him the brave man who never should expect anyone to stand up for him. He’s on his own in his fights and pain, but if he isn’t there for someone else to protect them then he’s a coward, he’s let them down. That’s not fair, I can’t imagine he chose that consciously, no one does. The only way you become that is by sticking your neck out for people again and again, they expect it. If you don’t do it one time it’s a crime. But if your necks on the chopping block and you look round for help, all the fuckers stand there saying ‘what, you do the saving not me.’ No wonder he works so hard protecting himself, no one else has done it for him. The others don’t need to lie as much, don’t need to hide, or fight as hard because there’s always someone there ready to step in when it really counts. I know you can never really tell if he’s going to be there or not, and sometimes he does let people down when it really counts, but I do think he is naturally protective. He wouldn’t have saved Danny when he fell from the tree if not, that is without doubt the action of a protector. I think a lot of fighters are protective, they can fight so they do it for other people but this shouldn’t mean that they have to.
I think some of what I’ve said above links in someway with the fact that Mr P is the eldest in his family. He was there first, he got the speech of don’t tell our secrets to anyone, keep it in the family. He got that undiluted, no one there to tell him they might be wrong. He had to figure that out for himself. Go against his own brain after he had been brainwashed for that long. It never really leaves that person, its too deep rooted, the next one down and the ones that follow get a diluted version of brainwashing because the first ones always there to say don’t listen to their shit. But they were all alone with it, they can save other people from it but they can never truly save themselves. I suppose that maybe part of what accounts for the loneliness and the burden, constantly fighting his own brain. I think the rest of them, Danny, Ian, Rab, also have this fight against their own brain in their family, but not as acutely as Mr P.
I’ve wandered into the realms of worship once again, it’s actually starting to make me feel uncomfortable. Thank God he’s not real, I’d have to kill myself rather than become that pathetic.
P.S. Of all the films you sent I loved Me Without You the most, I also like Harry and Max a lot (of course), I have bought these two. I’m just watching Last House on the Left again before I send it, the main murderer is gorgeous, there’s no point denying it, he is evil in it but good god. And I didn’t realise until I watched it today that there is something very John about him. If you could go back in time to make DANNY he’d be excellent.
I’m not sure if lying without reward would qualify as psychopathic. Psychopaths tend to be profound liars. More importantly, they are generally (severely) narcissistic. Many people – self included – believe that psychopathy is just extreme narcissism. The fact that Mr P doesn’t care what people think about him is very asymptomatic of psychopaths, who are generally very touchy about appearing in certain ways to the outside world.
That said, if a psychopath was keeping up a particular front, and if he had a form of grandiosity (the chief characteristic of narcissism) that meant he felt superior to everyone, then he may look down on lesser mortals to such an extent that them thinking bad of him would not matter. If the psychopath was also obsessional, he may be prepared to lose face in order to get what he wants. But, generally speaking, losing face doesn’t sit well with psychopaths, just as it doesn’t sit well with narcissists.
Mr P’s ‘urge to tell’ is as suspect as the rest of him. Perhaps it’s to cover up something worse, as you suggest. Perhaps it’s to garner sympathy. Perhaps it’s to do something else we don’t even suspect. And perhaps he is telling the truth, trying to bond, apologising. If Mr P can gain something from apologising, let’s just say I’d think that would make it all the more appealing.
As for the Mr P and Danny ‘dance together, dance away’ routine when they are sharing; I think that may just be human. Nobody likes to air dirty linen. While they sometimes feel compelled to do it, it’s not enjoyable. Last summer I tried ‘therapy’ (I use that term loosely; it was just counselling) for the first time ever. And while I sat there and cried and told my stories in an odd distant way (my counsellor told me off for this!), all I felt when I came out, each and every time, was dirty, tired, sad and no further forward. I gave it up after 11 sessions, feeling like the village idiot. It was not enlightening. So something of that probably happens for them. I think some of those feelings probably cause the grumpiness, the bickering, the sadness, the outbursts and the accusations. Excepting the accusations (’It’s your fault my family hated me, you bitch!’ Doesn’t really work on a counsellor), I felt all of those things, and more, so it may just be that.
My ‘training’ was similar to the JMs (no surprises there), so no, you don’t feel better for getting it out – it just pisses you off and makes you feel weak and stupid. I can’t imagine weak and stupid sits too well on Mr P, or Danny, for that matter. I know I often wanted to punch my counsellor’s lights out (she was rather wet and not at all antagonistic or provocative), and can’t think of her without a sort of snarling fury. Bizarre, but true. It’s like the act of telling someone becomes a brain invasion and you resent them for that.
I don’t know if any of that lot was helpful – sorry. I’m just trying to say, in a very longwinded way, I’m not sure how much you can trust the emotions they exhibit during these times. Mind you, I’m not sure how much you can trust them at any time with those two.
Believe it or not, it has never, EVER occurred to me that Mr P has no-one to step up to the plate for him. My first thought when I read that was, ‘Yes, she’s right’. Now, I’m thinking, ‘No, I don’t think that’s true.’ Danny absolutely would. And Ian possibly even more so. In fact, Ian would be ferocious. Formidable. Awesome. Bless his dedicated little socks. Even Rab would do his best (poor sod is a bending reed though; I’d never rely on Rab). But, all that said, Mr P was on his own a long time before anyone would have been old enough or able to do it, so maybe he was already in the habit of fending for himself and trusting no-one. A lot depends on those early childhood years and, as yet, we know nothing about them (in P’s case). In fact, you never find out about them (well, not a lot); that was what volume 4 (as it is now; God, I wish I’d never changed these numbers) was going to be about – the early(ier) history of the JMs. So really the decision is up to you, the reader, to decide if you think Mr P has emotional support or not. And, if he has, if he got it fast enough to ’save’ him.
Your brainwashing theory is absolutely spot on, and it may explain why Mr P never wants to discuss the octopus at 5,000 feet. But here’s another thought: what if Mr P wants to bring the octopus up for exactly that reason? You may have experienced in your own life an odd twistedness in yourself, where you do something (or many things depending on how fucked up you are) precisely because your parents/family/granny/significant other does not, or would not, approve. Some people go on hurting themselves for years, doing things that are frankly self-destructive, often long after the person they are rebelling against is dead. Sometimes they are not even aware of it and will deny it fiercely if they are challenged with it.
What if Mr P physically wants to blow the lid off things? Or his secret wounded soul longs to unburden it? That would complicate the mix terribly, making him run towards it, then away again. Danny might very likely feel the same way. This would certainly produce the dancing towards, dancing away again that they do.
That’s it, I think. Got some of the films back yesterday, ta, and Family Friend seems to play alright. I think maybe you’ve got one of those ultra-sensitive DVD players. Our first player, a Sony, was expensive, and absolutely useless. The slightest scratch and it just refused to play discs. It would eject the disc as if it was beneath its dignity to play it. We sold it and bought a cheap player instead, which was great. Also got the films you sent – ta again – but we only got three of ours back. Are the rest on the way to us, or have they still not left you yet?
Did you not like Let the Devil Wear Black then? I thought the reworking of Hamlet would please you – and the lead has fabulous eyes, no? Are you not a fan of the psychopathic blues? Let me know if you want anything, and what you are in the mood for, or if you are still too engaged in reading/deciphering. More than happy to send you some stuff up. Let me know what you are lusting for……………
I’ve just tried to put Family Friend in my DVD player before I send them up because I haven’t watched that one yet. I can’t get it to work. It’s probably my DVD player again though as Alice in Wonderland still won’t play, along with a few others. I didn’t have it out of it’s case, but if it doesn’t work let me know, I’ve looked on amazon and they’ve got one so I can get you another one. I do look after them though I promise.
Just got the rest of our films this morning. Thanks!
You’re right about airing dirty linen, I think it depends on who you are talking to but the majority of the time it makes you feel weird not better. I once went to a counselling session a few years ago and had the same reaction, absolute bunch of tripe. The woman didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, sat there slack jawed for an hour and picked up on nothing, I understood more about her at the end of it than she did about me. I understand the ‘sharing’ making a person feel weak and invaded. I don’t feel weak when I think about what I said but I do when I think about booking the appointment. What I got from talking was the feeling that she thought I was lying, so I started lying. Just making shit up half way through the hour. If she thought I was lying, may as well give her a show. (Looking back on it though, this was probably my problem, I bet she didn’t think I was lying, I don‘t think she thought anything).
That’s makes sense with Danny and John, the willingness to unburden themselves, then the frustration that nothing changed when they’ve confessed something. It wouldn’t make them feel lighter, the weight is still there but now someone else knows, and people never have the reaction you expect or want.
Next DVD player I get has to be an all region one, and I bet they are much more expensive, this one is driving me mad though, I can’t watch brand new DVD’s. I did like The Devil Wears Black, glad I saw it but it wouldn’t be one I watched again and again. I didn’t find the main character attractive, I thought he was a bit greasy. Me Without You was by far may favourite I really loved it. I thought the dependency of the relationship was so realistic, and Michelle Williams is my new favourite. Just saw her in Blue Valentine, she was fantastic, loved the film as well, Ryan Gosling is always good. Although I had a few things to rant about the characters after I’d seen it, it was well acted though, believable and uncompromising. I also saw the Kings Speech, I enjoyed that one as well. Have you seen the Killer Inside Me yet? (The film, not my personal inhabitant) I ordered it from Amazon the other day so I can send that, but I still haven’t received Satan so I’m not holding my breath.
I’m not sure what I fancy, maybe a series. Have you got any period drama’s I won’t have seen?
Yes, I have seen The Killer Inside Me; both yours (many times) and the actual film. I found it enjoyable enough, but disappointing. It’s a LONG time since I read the book (the 80s), but I remember it being more about a man spiralling out of control rather than one who is patently already out of control. In the original he was more sympathetic, as I recall. I didn’t find Monsieur Affleck sympathetic. There was no sense of claustrophobic entrapment in the movie, which I recall being very prevalent in the book. I also found it (the movie) oddly misogynistic. Again, I recall he kills both sexes in the book, but in the movie it had the ‘let’s kill women’ relish that plagues Hollywood. But all this could be me. I could be completely misremembering the book.
I just felt that it was yet another Hollywood movie reliving noir fiction rather than actually living it. L.A. Confidential started this trend of remaking noir movies rather than telling noir stories, and I’m not a fan. It kind of turns the noir crime writers into male Jane Austens. Instead of telling a contemporary drama they end up making a period movie, which is NOT the same thing.
Speaking of which, I am in a period drama orgy right now – is this another instance of our psychic connection at work? I’ve been buying up everything with a pair of long drawers and a candle in sight. I started with Downton Abbey at Xmas and haven’t stopped yet. That was great – bought on a whim – but you probably watched it on TV? If not, I’ll be happy to send you it. You’ll thoroughly enjoy it.
We’ve already watched everything you sent. Really enjoyed both This is England/s, but especially the TV series. Yep, the abuse was spot on, but, of course, erring on the side of the molester as monster. Accurate though - no bones to pick with it. And you were spot on with the bloke in Last House on the Left looking like John too – to a T. I was surprised to see he was (probably) Jewish rather than Mediterranean. Javier Bardem still has the slight edge in build and strength of features, but otherwise perfect. Film was crap though. Too dated for me, with some seriously dodgy acting and even worse sound. The documentary with it was really interesting, listening to Craven talking about Vietnam and the portrayals of violence on screen up till then. But while I was sagely nodding my head through all that, I found myself wondering why, when you have to show explicit violence so that people can see how repugnant it is (what he claimed), it has to be carried out on screaming naked girls. No-one has ever adequately explained that to me.
Let’s face it, if you want to make people squirm in their seats, would it not be much more shocking and taboo to show men being stripped, penetrated and their penises exposed and mauled about? It makes all their arguments suspect to me. As yet, none of the controversial female directors have had the balls (or got the funding?!) to do something like that. Is it because the Breillats of the world (is there any other woman other than Breillat doing this stuff – oh, yeah, maybe Arnold?) just couldn’t get the money to do that?
If you ever want to make a film where it’s the men who get tortured and tyrannised, let me know. Maybe if we ganged up and lied about what we were doing by changing all the male names to female in the script that the producers saw, we could get it made. The world needs it.
Can I ask you something (very) personal? Please feel free to ignore it; I will not stop loving you and cut you from my will; I promise. But, in the vaguest terms, with no need for detail or specifics, is there something in your past that responds to the abuse aspect of DANNY? I ask because I have long suspected there are only two types of DANNY reader: 1 – the people who have abuse in their backgrounds and who feel connected to the family dysfunction of the story. And 2 – ‘I’m only here for the porn’.
Having said that, I think there may be a third crossover group who have some family history and who get the ‘psychology’, but who also like the porn. Then there’s a very small group who really get the book because they have both the family history and they like the porn. They are probably the fucked up ones who like some of the porn, hate some of the porn and who hate themselves for liking the porn, but like it anyway, although they hate it. But more than the porn, they love the disastrous dynamic of the relationships because they resonate so much with them. If you like, they read the porn, like the porn, but really it’s because porn is just a language they understand. That would be me. Maybe I AM that group, all by myself.
Let me know if you caught Downton on TV and if so, I’ll list some other stuff for you and see if we can fit you out…
Killer Inside Me was different to the book, I read it again before I went to see the film. I thought the same thing, the slow decline into madness wasn’t really there, and I don’t think he lost it enough in the end. In the book he kept bursting into fits of laughter and rambling speech, they didn’t really do anything spectacular with the end. I really enjoyed the film over all though. Did you not find Affleck attractive in it, not even a little bit.
Last House on the Left acting is wooden, there are some bits in it that make me piss my self though (ha, pun there). The beginning when the girl is talking about tits with her dad is the most disturbing and funny scene in the film. What the hell is that about? I’ve just bought Fish Tank, by the way, it looks really good. I’ve bought He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not as well. I’ll let you know what I think, if I can get past Audrey’s mesmerizing beauty and actually watch the film.
In a nutshell I think I would put myself into the forth category, which is why DANNY has such a personal effect on me. The thing that annoys me about commenting on blogs about DANNY is that I can’t say as much as I can say to someone when I’m face to face with them. Yes I do have some experience with the subject matter of DANNY, and in real life I have no qualms about saying so. On the internet I feel like I have to talk round things. It’s like when I’m talking about anything after book one and I don’t know what I should and shouldn’t say, depending on whose reading what I’m saying.
This makes me sound like such an attention seeking little arse, which is why I don’t hint to my personal experiences. I can’t stand when someone hints at something and then goes ‘oh no, I can’t tell you that’. It’s annoying, don’t fucking mention it if you can’t talk about it. Plus I hate not being able to say certain things, because I am not ashamed to talk about anything. I make people uncomfortable with my willingness to talk about unacceptable situations and the blatant way in which I talk about them. I even do it with people don’t know, I’ll tell a past tale and then realise after I see the other persons reaction that maybe it was a bit weird to have said. But the reason I can’t (honestly I can’t tell you how much I’m pissing myself off being vague) is that I am still very much involved with my family, they know I love DANNY, and I know they sometimes look up what I’ve written about it. And believe me it is not worth the fucking trouble it would cause, it would cause a world of shit.
I’m sure you know in certain families there’s a massive weight put on secrecy and not letting ‘the other people’ know what’s going on. I was told (for a very long fucking time) that we have to keep secrets, because the same thing’s are happening in everyone else’s lives and they don’t tell anyone about it either. You once said when your father was violent, your mother would be downstairs making sure the curtains were closed. I get it. I know it would be better to no longer be involved, but there’s guilt, and unwarranted loyalty, shared burdens, and a massive dollop of paranoia. Also there’s a strange feeling that I’ve always had that if I didn’t have trouble in the aspect of life I’m used to, I’d try to create it in another. A better than waiting for the other shoe to drop scenario. You’ll know I love fearless honesty, the fact that I can’t express my self in that way is really frustrating and belittling, but it’s my own fault, no one else to blame. I’m scared someone will see, I can talk openly to all and sundry, but I can‘t say it to the people directly involved (I can some of it, more than anyone else in my family says, which is why I‘m not looked on favourably and a little suspiciously), and saying it on here could potentially be doing that. And that’s that in a nutshell.
P.S. I have seen Downton Abbey, really enjoyed it. I haven’t seen the BBC adaptation of Bleak House if you have that. Would I like that?
Hi, wrote you a big long reply yesterday, bombarding you with more questions (well, four questions, but it still felt like bombarding). Come midnight it was bugging the fuck out of me. Slept on it and woke up knowing it was wrong. So wrong on every level. So, if you saw it, I’m sorry. Your position is intolerable for answering questions - which I have no right to ask - and my thirst for knowledge runs away with me sometimes. Forgive me. (If you didn’t read it, you will be imagining the worst by now.)
You’ve baffled me by asking me for Bleak House. Did you not offer me that a good while back, because you were selling it up? Don’t tell me we’ve been talking about a different Bleak House? Or have you forgotten that you’ve already seen it/ owned it? I have the Gillian Anderson one, which is fabulous, and which I always thought you’d love because of the sub-rosa power/sex domination thing going on it it. And because of course, Anderson is so fragilely beautiful in it, in her austere way. So I was always surprised you sold it. Now I will be most pissed off if it was an older production of Bleak House you were talking about, and I missed getting it. How can I train you to be more specific, you dozy cow? (Am I allowed to call you a dozy cow? I’m sure that’s ‘alienating my fans’.)
Of course, could be me that’s the dozy cow here, and you told me it was an old one, or I just assumed it was the Anderson one. Assumption - the mother of all fuck-ups. Let me know, dearest (see, now I’m trying to sidle back into your good books - oh, oily Iago, I am), if you have not seen the G. Anderson Bleak House (2007?) and it shall wing its way to you with all speed. X
E.T.A. Just checked it. The Anderson one is 2005. Did you have the 1985 version? Damn.
P.P.S. By the way you’ve done it again. What would have taken me twelve rambling paragraphs, you’ve said in one sentence. The reason I’ve never read anything as honest, DANNY is written in a language I understand. The reason some people don’t get DANNY, they were never taught that language. The reason DANNY makes people remember things from their past they’d forgotten, it taps into that part of their memories that remembers speaking that language. I’m stealing that one Chancery.
Ha Chancery, I just nearly caused a proper confusion. I’ve just written out a reply saying ‘right, you’ve got to tell me what you asked or that’s going to do my head in’. I thought you’d asked me something other than what I had seen. We could have had a curiosity war. Then I realised I couldn’t see the comment asking me the original questions. The questions weren’t too probing at all. To be honest I was going to vague my way around the first two. But them not being there actually makes this easier.
1. Me, and others besides. Only it depends what type we are talking about. Some I have very clear memories of, and some very, very patchy. Plus throw into the mix, what’s always in the mix, a big healthy dose of denial and not being able to trust your own mind. Apparently I don’t remember things correctly. Shocking I know, but no matter how suspect I am of that sentence, I’ve heard it for a lot of years from a lot of folk, but I really don’t think my mind is to be trusted some times (see Bleak House below). That is such a strange thing, because I don’t trust them but I don’t trust me either.
2. This one is easy, my family doesn’t have friends. I’m the only person that has friends outside the family, and they’ve tried to remedy that. I’m not really that sociable but there are about four people that count with me, and I’ve known them forever. Honestly the schemes that were put in place to break me away from them were ridiculous. Even telling me that my friends had asked some of my family (I know I’m being fucking vague, I’m stabbing myself in the leg while I’m typing as punishment, good times) to gang up with them against me, or that whenever I left the room, they started insulting me, whether my family was there or not. Ha, no one would do that, I actually quite liked that one.
3. I think this one was about explaining the reasons I gave. Guilt, can’t explain that one, I just feel it, there’s no reason for me to. Maybe it’s because people with these kind of traits are needy and really want you to love them and adore them, so I feel guilty for not feeling it when they want it so much. Unwarranted loyalty comes from the brainwashing of ‘family is the most important thing, no one loves you more than family’ I know this is bollocks, but deep, deep down there’s a little voice shouting at me for ignoring it. Shared burdens is Jill. And finally paranoia, this is the main part of my personality, I’m 1% salt, 5% water and 94% paranoia. I’m not so far gone that I don’t know when I’m being paranoid, so not psycho just yet but it’s people’s hidden agenda. I know most of the time I’m dead on about people but sometimes I take it too far and they aren’t doing what I think. The reason I mentioned this is because it links in with not trusting what I think. This is starting to sound so self indulgent, time to talk about the dark side.
4. This is the only one I can’t remember. It may have been the lying, I never lie for sympathy, I never do anything, consciously, for sympathy. I hate it. I have always thought that just because you are victimised doesn’t mean you have to be a victim, and I am never a victim by choice. I’ve met victims and they are manipulative and nowhere near as weak as they make out. I hate it when people pretend to be weaker than they are. It’s only to lull others into a false sense of security so they never question the victims motive, and anyone that would wear the mantle ‘poor me’ is suspect from the start (hello paranoia). The lies were more grandiose, it was embellishment that made me sound more like a monster. Even before I started lying I ended everything with ‘and that didn’t really bother me’ (I know, paper thin, but she didn’t see through it), so the lies were more self protective than anything. Counteracting anything real I’d said with something that made me sound worse. It’s a big reason I don’t like saying anything real on here in case it could be used against me. Again I know that sounds dramatic, but years ago when I first started commenting on your blog I wrote that I didn’t like to go on about how much DANNY meant to me in case anyone saw it and used what I’d said. A few weeks later one of my copies was torn to bits, I’d already got three by that point but it was still ridiculous.
This part is very weird, two days before you posted the deleted post I had a discussion with Jill (which means I rambled at her face for an hour) about how when two people are talking about their history, if it’s fucked up, all it ever turns into is a competition. It’s supposed to be an unloading with someone who could understand what you’re talking about, but there’s always a point where it turns into a pissing contest. I said to Jill that it’s one of those things that people never admit to, that if one person was to say to the other in the middle of it ‘it’s not a competition’, it would be a horrible thing to do because they’d shut the other up immediately. Because it shouldn’t be a competition, it’s a bit sick, competing over how fucked up you are, but it doesn’t make it any less true. It is really weird that you said that.
Onto a lighter topic, I’ve been thinking all day about whether I’ve owed Bleak House or not because I can’t remember it for the life of me. It was the Gillian Anderson one that I meant, I have no memory of this at all. It wasn’t House of Mirth that I had was it, because I didn’t like that and Gillian Anderson is in it. I don’t think I’ve seen Bleak House so I’ll borrow that please, then if my memory returns when I’m watching it I’ll let you know.
P.S. I absolutely loved Fish Tank, really well acted and subtle. And daring, I loved when she threw the girl in the river because she was kicking her, I thought the little sister was good as well. Jesus Christ how nice is Michael Fassbender, I am fully converted, I have now seen the light. If you have any more of his films I wouldn’t say no. I love a red head.
P.P.S. Let me know what your wanting next. I have The Lakes (I think I’ve asked you about that one before), I have a lot of stuff with John Simm actually, if you like him. I have Sex Traffic, State of Play and Life on Mars. I loved Life on Mars. I also have Cracker and Dawson’s Creek. I’m pushing Dawson’s Creek again in case you want to give it another go. It’s my second favorite program (first being Border Cafe, but they never released it, and if you say you’ve seen that I will faint, no one watched that but me).
Oh, for fuck’s sake, I am the definitive dozy cow. If there was an award for dozy cows, my bathroom would be full of them. Yes, it was House of Mirth you offered me. Shit. Sorry. I shall send you up Bleak House. I will stick my neck out and say I guarantee you will love it. I just won John From Cincinnati on E-bay today. I mentioned it to you before, I think. Very, very, very weird. I’m going to rewatch it when it comes, see if I can understand it any better. But you’re welcome to that afterwards, if you’d like it.
Right, now for the interesting stuff. SOMEONE TORE UP DANNY!!!???????? Sorry, I have to say that again - someone tore up DANNY? That’s the most fabulous news I’ve ever had. Seriously. That could only be bested by a book burning of DANNY. Yes, I know it was probably more about you than it, or me, but still - SOMEONE TORE UP DANNY. God, you have no idea how much I want to know who. Do you have any idea/s? I mean I know Karl is threatened by DANNY’s girth, but surely he’d attack Jill’s copy? Just answer me this, who had access? Was it in your own house? Jodie, you MUST find a way to euphemise telling me who tore up DANNY. After that you need to tell me why. Was it to deny you DANNY because you enjoyed it? Punish you for reading it? Or because it was putting evil poison-dripping ideas in your head? Please tell me it was because it was warping you away from your loved ones. I need theories here. Big theories. The more outrageous and melodramatic the better. This is so good I’m going to include it in a novel. Sigh……
I was fascinated by your ‘I the monster’ scenario. Why did you monster yourself? Do you do this often? And what is your definition of ‘monster’? Were you trying to appear hard and brittle, like some kind of flinty-eyed CHAV a la Arnold’s Fish Tank? Or were you trying to make yourself complicit, as in ‘I was to blame’ – ‘I liked being burnt/bitten/fondled/sat on’? What kind of monster were you (are you?), and why did you feel you had to be one? Does being a monster make you feel safe, or are you like Danny (and, arguably, John) and feel that the things that have happened to you have pushed you to the edge of being recognisably human? Did you just think, ‘I sound like a monster here. She thinks I am one, so I will become one. Grrrr…’?
Obviously Jodie the monster is some kind of protective identity (well, it seems obvious to me, but then I thought you’d seen Bleak House, and you were obviously an idiot for forgetting that, so my judgement’s not to be trusted), but I’m feeling my way here and getting one of my ‘twinges in me corsets’ that says Jodie the Monster might be Jodie’s role in the family unit. You know – without Jodie to be a monster, the real monster might step up. And that wouldn’t do. Does the Jodie Monster deflect from the real one/s under the bed?
LECTURE FOLLOWS! WARNING! DO NOT READ IF YOU HATE PEOPLE WHO KNOW NOTHING OF YOUR LIFE GIVING YOU ‘ADVICE’
Okay, I’m not going to give you advice, I’m teasing, but you do know – right? – that being in the middle of a mad-making family and trying to make them sane, or function sanely yourself, is impossible. They say, in all the books, that you can draw boundaries, and they claim people can do that, but have you ever met one? I mean, one? Anywhere? I haven’t. Every single person I’ve ever met with a dysfunctional family has talked me long talks, but never walked any walks. Not even short ones. I know people think I’m hard/weird for being able to cast off my family. And I admit that mine’s was ‘easier’ because they couldn’t feel, but that’s only true because I was learning not to love mine while my head was coming out between my mother’s legs. I didn’t really do any better or faster than anyone else, because I had been practicing since birth. It took me till I was about 26/28, I’d say, to break properly – as in, I meant it – so really that was 28 years. And if anybody thinks giving up on your family loving you is an easy pitch; they’re wrong. But I do very much appreciate people wanting to hang on to the possibility of love, no matter how far-fetched. And I do realise that often people are sometimes (sort of) loved, albeit imperfectly. I never had that so I had nothing to lose.
Of course, never being loved has its own problems. For one, you’re a psychopath. Yep, it’s how we’re made. I’m a truly dangerous psychopath, of course, because I know I am one. Think how much power that gives me. Kidding… No, other than my psychopathy, I’m not sure what the worst characteristic of my style of upbringing is. Actually, I can think of a few, but they make me much too uncomfortable to talk about, so we’ll gloss them over.
And don’t worry about the paranoia - that’s par for the course. One of the problems with people telling you that what you think you feel is wrong all the time is you no longer trust what you feel. I’ll bet you have problems knowing what you want to eat, whether you’re hungry or not, and when to stop eating. You probably have health problems you ignore, and don’t take headache tablets when you should (or you go the other way and do it like clockwork). You have no real idea how to take care of yourself, or don’t even believe you should. You rely on others to define what you feel and need to hear things said out loud to understand them. You’ll have a significant other (Jill, maybe?) that you rant on at, and really she doesn’t need to be there at all; what you’re doing is listening to yourself so you know if you can believe what you think. But, if she doesn’t give you feedback when you do need it, it can completely unnerve you, because now you don’t know what to believe. While you run in your own direction to the extent of appearing brave and fearless to others, there’s an insecure part that thinks ‘This is fake, I’m wrong, fuck, I’ve no idea what I’m doing here.’ You don’t do it out of bravery but because you have no idea how else to function. It’s like you got no instruction book for life and you’re just winging it, hoping no-one’s noticed you’re not really human.
Of all the dodgy, stupid things to do – ‘diagnosis’ by internet. I never learn. Please don’t tell me if I got all that wrong. It will only embarrass me, and you know what psychopaths are like when they get embarrassed; I will probably come and hang your dog in the night.
Of course, not knowing when to shut up, I could tell you what I’ve learned about you from looking at your photos on Facebook, but a) I’d only frighten and insult you and b) I’d look like a stalker (I’ve only looked at them twice in however-many-years, honest – I’m just a fast study. Us psychopaths have uncanny skills; or so we like to believe – It’s a grandiosity problem, you know.). I’m shutting up now.
Let’s do the jolly films, before the men in the white coats come. Yes, please, I’d like State of Play – I’ve always wanted to see that. And I’d like to try Sex Traffic. But no to Dawson’s Creek, thanks. We’ve tried it before, and I swear if I make Max sit through another debacle like Robin Hood he will never ever design another cover for me. I’ve seen The Lakes, but can’t remember it. I might cadge that one off you at a later date. I have Life on Mars, and Cracker didn’t thrill me enough to want to rewatch it. I’m most piqued by the Border Café series though. Wish that was available……
I know, it’s ridiculous it was like something from Sunset Beach. It was my Mother, I think it was partly because she knew I loved it (I never learn to keep my mouth shut) and partly because she doesn’t understand why I can’t read nice books. It’s my father who thinks it puts idea’s in my head. There you see I never learn, I said I’d keep it vague. I can never keep my mouth shut.
The monster thing, it’s kind of a bit of everything you’ve said. I act hard (to be honest I am quite hard), sometimes I can be heartless, so if I’m feeling weakened I tend to exaggerate that. Then there’s the complicity because it is complicated, so like I said before (I think I said it to you anyway) I sometimes want things to kick off because waiting for it is much worse, so I just leave out the second bit. The biggest part of it though is if I get a feeling that they look down on me, or suspect me of something so I become worse than they thought. But I do this with everything and everyone, if someone thinks I am something I become the worse version of that that I can be. I can never decide whether I’m pretending to be worse than I am or if that’s the only time I’m ever actually being myself.
It’s taken to the nth degree with my family, I never have my guard down for a second, I was a quick learner, so they do tend to treat me a if I can take anything, so pile it on, see if she breaks. Honestly if I ever broke down I think they would collectively come. I know what you mean about playing that role, and I do, but I am not the member of the family we have to contain. The only way I can explain it anonymously is I have Ian as a parent, lesser in some ways and worse in others, the worse are the tinges of John thrown in, but then there’s tinges of John in Ian.
It is true, there’s no way anyone can make someone treat them the way they want or should be treated. Anyone who sets boundaries and has them followed doesn’t have my family. Most people can’t help what they are and add to that someone who doesn’t realise or admit what they are and you’ve got no chance. I stopped trying to change anything a long time ago. When I was really young I used to try everything to make people admit something was wrong, but there’s no point you have to have more than yourself willing to admit it otherwise our just the trouble maker. I realised that if I’m staying I have to deal with it in other ways. The one thing I wont do is pretend everything is normal, I can’t. The amount of times something has kicked off and people have responded like it’s the first time, every time. I’m sorry were they not there last Tuesday or the Friday before that, and so on for a lifetime. There is love in my family, but it’s clingy, obsessive, scheming love, to be honest it‘s not really recognisable. It’s probably not love but it’s the only way I’ve ever know it. And as much as I like to read that, it’s a shit to live it.
You’re completely right with everything you said, I have problems with food, I used to take painkillers like sweets (not so much anymore though). I CAN NOT make a decision, ever. I give my decisions to other people. I said to Jill the other day that when we were born my decision making facility was born in her instead of me by mistake. Also I act like a homeless person 70% of the time. For a few weeks I’m really together, I eat properly, wash my clothes, tidy up, look after my money. Then for no reason it all goes out the window, I stop eating, I let things pile up, my room is like a bin and I spend all my money the day I get it. It’s really fucking frustrating because when I do it I don’t think I’m doing anything, that there‘s nothing wrong, this is just how I feel like behaving. Then when I’m normal I think ‘don’t do that again, it’s stupid’. But on it goes.
End of therapy session.
I seem to have fallen into the Robin Hood trap again watching HEX. I think it’s shit but I can’t stop watching it because once every episode Michael Fassbender is in it and he’s fantastic. Damn TV for doing this to me again.
Ooh, that’s a complicated snarly mess, isn’t it?
I’ve been putting off replying to you because I found your similarity to a series of friends I had in my teenage years frankly alarming. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, and still amn’t, so didn’t know whether I should mention it or not. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s throw it out there and see what we make of it.
I had three best friends, pretty much in succession, who all had mad mothers. The first, Eileen’s, was convinced that I was a bad influence and was trying to seduce her child over to the dark side, via communism and general wrongness. She was convinced we were lesbians and that Eileen was in love with me, which she wasn’t. I mean neither lesbian, nor in love with me.
My next best friend after I ‘lost’ Eileen was Anne. Anne’s father was a little bloke who liked to throw his weight around although he was a foot shorter than his entire family and as thick as a plank. Anne’s mother, although she was a lot smarter, played at being the dumb bitch so her ‘man’ wouldn’t feel intimidated. They were both convinced that my family was weird (they were right, but not in the way they meant) and her father was sure that as communists we were trying to brainwash his family, steal his money, rob the poor, invade East Kilbride with an occupying army of Russians and take over the government via his living room. Actually, pretty much anything that was bothering him in any given day was thrown into the mix, so communists, and therefore me, were causing his frying pan to overheat and his daughters to give him cheek.
My last best friend was Laura. Now, for a change, Laura actually was a lesbian – maybe; she was very young – but she decided she was in love with me. Fortunately, after she left home, or that would have been very ugly. Laura left home to come and live with me when we both went to university and her mother went apeshit. I mean, apeshit. There was violence, throwing things, tantrums and worse. Her father turned up at our house and sat and cried with my dad in the living room about the horror happening back at Chez Laura. Real tears, which my father comprehended as well as he understood menstruation, and liked less. But he tried, bless him.
Laura didn’t tell me everything – I think, understandably, she was too embarrassed and didn’t want to insult me – but I don’t think I have been as reviled since the day I was blamed by Laura’s mother.
To further unnerve me, all these girls had big sisters who didn’t like me; two of whom were convinced we were lesbians (again). Honestly, I don’t think we put out a lesbian vibe. But I suppose I had short hair and we didn’t do girly things and run about with boys (little did they know; I just wasn’t allowed or I’d have been doing it) and our ‘closeness’ must have seemed too much.
I always felt they were jealous of that – hence the seeing love affairs where none existed, and in Laura’s case her mother very definitely did not want her girl to form allegiances elsewhere. Both Laura’s mother and sister came across as lesbianistic, in that they despised men and had no time for them. Ironic, I know.
I mention all this because all three girls had batty mothers who went apeshit when they thought they were losing their daughters (except Anne’s maybe, in fairness – she just didn’t trust me), and whose daughters were treated more like confidants and husbands than as children.
I’m not saying this is you – not by a long shot. I’m just saying it unnerved me that your mother did a Laura’s mum with DANNY. And it unnerved me even more that I had never, ever noticed that I’d had three friends, almost in a row, with a very similar family dynamic. I can’t believe I missed it. For all these years. Just sailed right over my head.
Scary. Unpleasant. And I don’t know what to make of it.
One last thought concerning your observation “if someone thinks I am something I become the worse version of that that I can be. I can never decide whether I’m pretending to be worse than I am or if that’s the only time I’m ever actually being myself.” It is just possible that rather than you pretending, or really being ‘worse’, what you might be seeing is that you feel more relaxed and natural in the context of being worse because you no longer have to monitor yourself to see how low you’ve sunk, or how much you are fulfilling your parents’ idea/s of you.
In other words, if you quickly get down to your ‘worse’ persona you have nowhere else to fall or fail, so you no longer feel pressured. The lack of pressure is making you relaxed and so you jump to the (wrong) conclusion that this is the real you. In fact, it’s actually just your parents idea of who you are, but it now feels so comfortable to you it feels authentic. Hope that makes sense.
Right, enough of this navel gazing. Sent Bleak House off to you today, and your stuff back. Looking forward to seeing some of the goodies I detailed somewhere up above a hundred years ago. I’ve forgotten what they are now……….
Just going to add, rereading this, that communism rears its ugly head a lot in this epic story of All My Friends’ Mothers Hated and Feared Our Love. I don’t want you to think my family were communist pamphleteers, rather like religious zealots. They weren’t; not even remotely. But I think my girlfriends goaded their families with it, possibly to show what a rebel either I was, or they were for being friends with me.
I felt then, and know it now, that my alleged communism was nothing to do with their families’ reactions and a lot more to do with it being something ‘legitimate’ they could disapprove of me for.
I think the parents didn’t like me because their daughters were too chummy with me, and I can’t believe, yet again, that I’ve never questioned that before……..
I think this is dealing with something I’m a bit obsessed by. Obviously anyone who takes an instant dislike to someone is either right or jealous. Either the person they don’t like isn’t to be trusted, and they have a good sense of people, or they covet something about them, making them hostile and defensive to that person, wanting them out of their lives and, more importantly, for them to have no contact with the people they know. If their friends get to know this new person, they’ll realise this person has something they themselves are lacking, and will be left out in the cold. It’s the jealousy part of this that I like, especially the two different types of jealousy this creates.
I think everyone gets one of three things: either no one get jealous of them, people do get jealous of them or people get jealous with them. I think every person only receives one kind (a lot more often than the other one at least). From what you’ve said, I bet you get the jealous of kind. I think this is where people want to be you. It’s the most destructive and vengeful kind. I think this type of jealousy can’t stand the fact that someone exists that they want to be like so much. Not only do they want to be like them, they want to destroy the original, can’t bear that someone they see as so superior to them, who naturally has the traits they desire the most, can exist on the same planet as them. I think that’s the most important aspect of this jealousy; it’s not good enough to have the things they covet, they want to destroy anyone else who has them. This is the one where friends won’t trust you around their boyfriends (I don’t think because they assume anything will happen; they assume their boyfriend wants it to, would prefer you to them). They don’t like mixing friends, in case they like you better; they don’t like meeting new people together - all along those lines. This is the fault of the jealous person’s insecurities, but it happens because there is something noticeably different, from average, in the person that inspires the jealousy. I think Jill gets this type, and I think Danny gets this type, even though, Danny does what Danny does and breaks this rule a little.
The other type is ‘jealous with‘. In this, I don’t think the jealous person wants to be the other, they want to be with the other, want to be the other’s everything. They don’t want you to want to be around anyone, other than them; they want you to like them best. They covet you for them; they want to be your favourite. This can be destructive, as it makes people want to destroy the rivals, and if the feeling is not reciprocated it’s a horrible position to be in. I think the other one sounds worse, but is actually a compliment, because to intimidate someone they must think you’re pretty important and dangerous to them. In short, they must think you’re better than them, so no matter what they do, that’s what it comes from - so before the game’s begun, you’ve won.
The second, I think, is suffocating and embarrassing, but the one thing that makes the first better is, like I said, they see that person as a threat: that person is better than them. The second is never a threat. They get angry when someone else likes them because they don’t expect it to happen. They like you despite your faults; they know you the best, all the bad bits, no one else could possibly like you, and if they do, the jealous person does their best to ruin things, either dramatically, by violence against the new person, or poison-spreading about you or them. The second is more sneaky and less easy to prove/claim. But to be honest, they are both as bad as each other. Jealousy is the worse thing to feel and to be on receiving end of; it’s the bottom line of most negative actions.
To put it in Danny and John terms, I think they both have a little of each, but I would say Danny is someone people want to be, and John is someone who people want to matter to. Would you agree with that, or am I talking shit again?
I got the DVD’s yesterday thanks, I’m sending State of Play and Sex Traffic up on Monday if these are still the ones you want.
Dear God, I really struck a nerve there, didn’t I? I have a horrible feeling I’ve maybe uncovered the whole Rhodes’ family dynamic without really trying. Possession is nine-tenths of your family law, huh?
I’m not proud to admit this, but I had to edit your stream of consciousness on the nature of jealousy before I could grasp the wonderful convoluted magic of it. Forgive me, forgive, me, forgive me - especially if I fucked up and got anything wrong (I couldn’t decide if “I don’t think because they assume anything will happen; they assume their boyfriend wants it to” should be the way I’ve ‘fixed’ it, or if you were actually saying “I don’t think because they assume anything will happen; they assume their boyfriend wants it too“, because both of them work, damn it. And they’re both true. Maybe that is your natural profundity, my friend. I left it your way, changing it back after I’d changed it, because it sounded more you. The “too” sounded like me talking, not you.
Please tell me if I’ve fucked up what you were trying to say. I would never, ever, normally interfere like this – I never have before, honest - but I could hear the logic, the concepts flying at me, but I couldn’t see them. Now I think I’ve mastered them. At least you’ll be able to read it back and tell me if I’ve got it right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you knock ideas out the park like that. Part of me kind of wishes I’d been there to hear them. I have a feeling if you’d told me in person we might still be there, beating the living daylights out of all the world’s jealousies.
I don’t know where to start with this. Like you - but not nearly as excitable - I think jealousy is immensely convoluted and enmeshed. It’s very difficult to sort out strands of it. Jealousy is a real clinging ivy: it puts tiny little fingers into stone walls and brings them down slowly and surely without people even noticing it’s doing it. Ian is a case in point. If anyone wrote a critique of DANNY, saying Ian was jealousy manifest in human form, I’d have to agree with them: all over the place and different every Tuesday.
Don’t get the idea here that I’m operating from any high ground of moral superiority; my family wrote the book on envy, jealousy and possessiveness. I’m just a lot older than you and don’t get so excited by the ‘joys’ of its discovery. It’s old and stale and poisonously rotten to me. And yet, just like you, I find it hugely sexually arousing - even while I am despising it, and know exactly, in detail, how corrosive and sad and stupid it is. I know intellectually that jealous people are stunted, egocentric and insecure, and I know to avoid them to the distance of a continent in real life - and yet, still, always, I am attracted to it like a magnet. I am no different from you. Not by one iota.
Of course, you didn’t say you found it sexually arousing, but you do, don’t you? Like a dirty little secret. I bet you find it hard to believe someone loves you unless they are jealous of you. And then when they are jealous of you, you despise them for it, and go looking for someone else without a backwards glance. “Shithead” you think, dropping him like a hot brick, as your gaze fixes on the next Neanderthal that sees things that aren’t there. Only to drop him again when he fulfils the thing you need and hate at the same time, and despise yourself for even more. Or maybe that’s just me…
Although jealousy and envy are actually two different things, they are strongly related; do you ever feel vindicated and right when people are patently uncovered exhibiting envy of you? Sometimes I get a feeling like a security blanket. It’s comforting. I’m not kidding. I feel warmed by envy, even while it strikes terror into my heart. Until you’ve felt your heart turn to lead in your chest while your gut gets butterflies of excitement, you can’t claim to have been raised in an atmosphere of toxic envy (I prefer envy to jealousy as the definition for my family life; I feel it’s more accurate. But that’s just my personal experience of it.)
Danny and John and jealousy? Yes, you’re right – people want to be Danny (gorgeous, wanted, powerful – very powerful to be beautiful. Arguably more powerful than wealth.) But they want to be loved by him too. After all, Danny is the original heart of ice – who doesn’t want to thaw a heart of ice? So yes and no: jealous of him and jealous to be with him. Both. But John is likewise. Stephen, for one, would give anything to be like John. I mean, seriously. He could be the one in charge for a change. Have Danny, call the shots. But maybe even Stephen is a case in point. Maybe he would also like – in those sneaky little hours in the dead of night – to be wanted by John, just like Danny is. And maybe that, in turn, would make him jealous of Danny, because he has all John’s attention – even while he is ostensibly wanting Danny. Can you imagine how confusing that would be? (Actually it’s pretty confusing just written down.) I’m sure if I kept this up I could show you layers of jealousy going on forever and ever in the dynamic of those three alone. Spiralling always downwards – that being what jealousy does. Bless it. Filthy horrible stuff that it is. And, oh, how it cries to me….
Yes, I could say I wrote the book on jealousy (thanks, Dad), but you already know that – you’ve read it. It eats me and is eaten by me on a daily basis. If you’ve ever felt that your obsession with jealousy was weird and unhealthy, you can now relax; there’s someone on the planet way worse than you are…….
P.S. But know what my all-time weirdest characteristic is? – I never feel envy. Never. It’s like some vital part of my humanity is missing. Seriously strange. The closest I ever come is for thin women, and even then it never eats away at me like it seems to eat other women. I just accept any twinges, without animosity, and move on. It’s almost fucking saintly. Maybe that’s the real secret here. Maybe I (we?) have been inoculated against it from being brought up in a cauldron of it. I do experience sexual jealousy though, like the plague. That baby makes me want to rip out hearts. With my teeth…….
P.P.S Yes, please, to the TV you listed. And I promise I will never edit anything you write again – as long as you promise to take a deep breath before starting. No, don’t, no deep breaths, I’d rather break my promise than miss out on your off-the-wall fun.
You’re right on all counts, my family runs on jealousy, ours is the house that jealousy built. And yeah, in the secret, unspoken dark I crave it, like I crave trouble (I’m not sure what this is, violence maybe, disharmony, a feeling that everything has slipped out of control) but I also fucking hate it more than any thing else on earth, I hate feeling suffocated. My first reaction to jealousy from men makes me angry at myself, I smile, feel warm, but I could knock the smile off my face in the next second. But when people don’t try to suffocate me I wonder what the hells going on. I spend more time with the people that do than the people that don’t. I’ve found that if it doesn’t happen I try everything to make it happen before I wake up and run for the hills because I’m being a psycho.
Also the last bit, I’m exactly the same. I never feel jealous, ever. I have never wanted to take something from someone to have it myself, I’ve never wanted to destroy someone who has something I don’t. If I want something I just want it, anyone else in the world can have it as well as me, it makes no difference to me. I’m not that competitive either, which is something I think goes hand in hand with jealousy. It must be growing up around it. It’s a hard statement to make though and have believe, that you don’t get jealous, it sounds like a cover up, and it’s so tenuous, I hardly ever say it to anyone in case they think I’m lying (there’s the people thinking I’m lying thing again).
As to the editing, if you hadn’t told me I’d have read that again and not noticed a single change. I have such a poor knowledge of grammar I can’t tell when something’s right or wrong. Also I’m not sure I fully engage my brain when I give people my opinions, I think a lot of it vomits from my unconscious. Whenever I look back on it I can’t remember half of what I’ve written and I always think, what the hell made me write that. I start typing and out it comes, I’m not involved.
Maybe that’s why DANNY appeals to me so much, because they are a family bred on jealousy. I always thought all fucked up family were the same, that everything comes down to jealousy but maybe everything comes down to that in my head, in reality other families could have something else running through them, but I can’t think of one other thing it could be. I get so defensive with DANNY, in a way that I only get about my sister and a few friends, I will not hear/read negative opinions on it, and I’m not like that with anything. I can listen to anyone’s opinions on things and talk it out with them no matter how much I disagree. But if someone mentions DANNY, says it’s unrealistic or it goes too far it get my back up, because they don’t get it and they shouldn’t be allowed to comment. In others opinions I’m disproportionately intense about it but I can’t help it, it’s like my thoughts, opinions and feelings were taken and put into a book, so when someone looks down on it they’re looking down on me. In short (and for the millionth time, even though I haven’t been asked) I love DANNY and I’m a fierce lover, ha.
P.S. I saw The Fighter tonight and I have a theory that Christian Bale can only act when he has his hair slicked back. If I see Bale in a trailer and he’s had the gel handy it’s going to be a good film, if not it’s pants. He was slicked back in The Fighter and he was excellent, whereas Batman (‘I’m not wearing a hockey mask’ growls Bale) not so much.
From what you’re saying, I think our familial dysfunctions/s have been different in one very crucial way: I think your family kicked (kicks?) off, to use your phrase, as a regular thing – maybe even a way of bonding or communicating. I think this is why you seek out things like the TV series, This is England, whereas I would enjoy watching that, but never buy it. It doesn’t talk to me enough.
My family was the polar opposite of that lifestyle. Kicking off (fallen in love with yet another of your pet phrases) was only done in my house once every four years. When it did happen, it was savage, dangerous and completely unnerving. It was like an earthquake, and nothing was ever the same again after it. It was like a seismic fault that had shifted the landscape. No undoing it.
I think (this is all conjecture on my part) that once every four years in your house would be weird. You’d all be looking at each other, wondering what the fuck was wrong. Your lot were (are?) verbal to my lot’s silent. But, and this an important but, we obviously share something or my book wouldn’t talk to you. Interest you, yes, but talk to you – no. So I’m wondering if my family’s silent envy, resentment and rage is your family’s jealousy, accusation and yelling. There is yelling, isn’t there? To match my family’s deathly silence?
My family’s silence was all about mind-reading (that’s why I’m so good at it), whereas I think your family’s (perhaps constant) carping and nit-picking and accusing is all about mind-reading too; the difference being you are supposed to read what they are not saying when they are yelling that you poisoned their goldfish, and I was supposed to understand what mine’s were not saying when they were ostentatiously not saying it. In short, my silent treatment was all about the ‘Look how you have hurt me with the unexpressed thing I’m not saying’ and yours is all about the ‘Look how you have hurt me when you did that thing last Tuesday that I’m covering up by accusing you of poisoning my goldfish.’
I think it’s a difference in expression, if you will.
I am not, however, so sure about the jealousy/envy part. Whereas I know you’re not a big girl for semantics, I still know you like to use exactly the right word for things, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence you choose jealousy while I choose envy. The only thing is I don’t know why. Obviously your family indulges in what you consider to be chiefly jealousy, and I’m guessing a BIG part of that is relationship jealousy of the ‘You don’t love me if you love them’ variety, but you understand envy too. Ian is eaten up with envy, and you get Ian. So I’m wondering if envy is a constituent part of your family life but you have been so ground down in your self-esteem somehow that you don’t (or can’t, or won’t) recognise it? Just a thought.
Do you think your mum would let me move in for a week to get a better view of them? Sorry, that wasn’t funny. And yet I can see your nervous laughter, cringing anxiety and overwhelming panic from here. But I bet a part of you is still thinking, Hey, I’d like to see that. Hell, no. Your mum would whup my ass. She could take me with one arm behind her back. I know when I’m outranked.
So, I’ve got a great film recommendation for you. If you haven’t seen it, check out Bad Guy. It’s a Korean film (Nabbeun Namja – 2001) about a street gangster who takes a very peculiar revenge (if that’s what it is) on an unwilling love object. The film makes my work look tame in the weird relationship stakes. I should really find it direly misogynistic and I just can’t. It feels like way more than that to me. But the battle rages on IMDB about its intent. Watch it, you won’t regret it.
Yeah I think that’s exactly what we do, we say one thing but we’re saying another and it’s up to the person listening to work out what’s really being said. There was never silence in my house. I think I know what you mean though, I’ve seen other families that do the silence thing, where everything gets swept under the carpet and if anyone says anything real the atmosphere shifts in a second. That is really scary, like the place your living in isn’t real and everything is going on under the surface. I find that idea really terrifying. Like you say, that’s the sort of thing that would happen once every blue moon in my house and it makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t really know how to deal with that, when suddenly everything shifts, and something you thought was true never has been. That didn’t happen often but my reaction is always to want to fall asleep immediately.
This is the last thing I promise (never get a narcissist onto the subject of herself), I bet I’m boring the shit out of you. The big thing that I forgot to mention is that one member of my family (I think you can guess who by now) does things that are hard to explain. I think they are technically crazy I just don’t know in what way. The blow outs happen when one of us can’t take it anymore. I can never explain this properly. They talk, that’s all it really is but it’s constant and insulting. Aggressive, paranoid, crazy talking (and singing, can’t forget the singing, there was dancing as well, half the time the problem was keeping a straight face the other half was keeping your fists to yourself). It would go on all day and all though the night (I missed a lot of school), sometimes for a week. Then they’d beg to fight, constantly taunting, following you around, never stopping talking shit (about your appearance, personality, past, what you should be thinking). If you got out the house (they hid the keys) they would get in the car and follow you down the road at one mile an hour, with the window down, just talking shit. They’d bury your make up in the garden so you couldn’t go out, pour tea on you when you were dressed up, take your clothes out the wardrobe and hide them. Really odd stuff.
I don’t have a clue to this day what it is. I think a messed up family never just has one crazy string to their bow, so many things are true at once depending on what angle you look at them from. But out of everything, the stuff I’ve mentioned above was the worst for me, it was like Chinese water torture, but it’s also the stuff that’s funny afterward. It’s so odd I can’t help but laugh when I think of it but it’s the least funny at the time (Jill never finds it funny though, so I don’t know what that says about me). My friend always hates it when I use the term brainwashing, she says it’s impossible to brain wash someone because no one could say something enough times, for enough years for it to affect a persons mind. I’ve got to say that’s a load of bollocks, some people can.
The jealousy/envy is a simple and demeaning one, I don’t know the difference, I thought they were the same thing. What is the difference?
I would pay to see you enter my family house, you’d have them sussed in ten minutes. Forget Big Brother, no one would miss a second if we could film that concept, the country would grind to a halt. Jesus that would be amazing.
P.S. I have sent the DVD’s yesterday, let me know if they get there ok. I sent them from work so they’re not recorded delivery. I am liking Bleak House very much so far, especially the odd weasely looking man who likes the main female character (the one hanging about outside her house).
P.P.S. I’ve just had Pillars of the Earth recommended to me, I though it looked good when I saw it advertised but missed it on TV. It has Ian McShane and Ruffus Sewell in it. Apparently Ian McShane gets pissed on by a female character and there’s a mother son incest story. But if that didn’t sell it to me, apparently Ian McShane says the line ‘Bishops may be celibate, but they can still smell cunt.’ I’m there. Have you seen anything of this?
Let’s give S/He Who Must Not Be Named a name, shall we? Makes everything a lot easier. From now on, and for the next 15 years, let’s call them Luna, as in one whose moods are affected by the tides, the crying of wolves and other mad night things.
Okay, so Luna is definitely a lot weirder than I anticipated. However, you are in luck as I had a mad-maker in my family – my maternal grandfather. He was a bit craftier (maybe – a BIG maybe; I’ll get back to that later) than Luna, as in his mad-making was sneaky, stealthy and sly – until you learned to read it. This is the saving grace of mad-makers; after a while you can start to read patterns – as in what will make them kick off (there it is again), and how they will respond to certain triggers. You also twig what parts of your psyche they are trying to attack.
My grandfather was a feeder (he fed my gran deliberately to make her fat/ter) and one of his favourite mad-making pursuits was to bring lots of ice-cream, sweets, cakes and lemonade home (when he rolled home drunk). He would then make you eat this – and I mean make you. Now if he was in a very special mood he would wait till you were all seated at table, and halfway through eating, when he’d suddenly start picking on you for eating. You were greedy, taking more than your share, food didn’t grow on trees. He’d also play people – in my case my cousin – off against each other, saying ‘Isobel doesn’t overeat, look’. ‘Isobel is kind, sweet, non-greedy, gorgeous, talented, considerate, a saint’ etc. This was a determinedly sadistic device intended to undermine your feelings – ‘Didn’t he just tell me I could eat?’ – make you guilty – ‘My cousin is nice and I’m not’ – and, most importantly, make you feel insecure and less. You simply weren’t as good as – fill in blank of choice.
Now, where Luna is concerned, I’d say their mad-making is unpredictability taken to the nth. Unlike my grandfather, who was purposeful, Luna intends to make you think all those same things by throwing you so many body curves you don’t know whether up is up or down is down. The kind of behaviour you describe would make you doubt your sanity, for the simple reason that nothing around you is making sense – score 1 for Luna. Next, they make you feel that you must somehow deserve this victimisation, so you must be somehow flawed/provocative/defective – score 2 for Luna. I don’t know if a constituent part of Luna’s behaviour included playing members of the family off against each other; it may not be immediately apparent to you, but I suspect if you think about it for any length of time, you will spot they have a different treatment for you, Jill and your other parent (is there just 4 of you?). This means that you are special(ly evil) in relation to Luna because no two of you get the same treatment, ipso facto, you must do different (bad) things to set poor Luna off like this – score 3 for Luna. And so it goes on.
I’d say Luna had an extra trick up their sleeve too – social shaming. I can’t imagine it was a lot of fun having loopy Luna following you down the road. I don’t know if this made you keep friends away from your home – socially isolating – or if you brought them anyway and learned to figuratively spit in Luna’s eye, but no matter what you chose, it was still socially isolating. Which is just what Luna intends. If they keep you away from others then you can’t leave them for others. If they socially marginalise you, then you can never replace them. Score 4 for Luna.
No matter what way you look at the ‘nutty’ behaviour, it’s always a win-win for Luna. So it’s nutty like Ian is nutty, and that’s why you understand him. That’s also why you understand the Jackson Moore’s social isolation. Like John Snr keeping his boys away from women (a threat to his possession), so Luna has kept you tied to the family umbilical cord. If they can’t literally tie you to the house, they tie you by over-involving you in their welfare, and by making it physically difficult to break away.
And you need have no shame about not knowing the difference between jealousy and envy because they cross parameters all the time; and are misused constantly in popular culture. But, having said that, you were absolutely right to pick jealousy as your word (told you it wasn’t a coincidence). Jealousy is more what you’ve experienced (in my opinion), since, like my grandfather, Luna’s fear is all about being deserted, abandoned, or just plain left out. I don’t know how much you know about Luna’s upbringing, but it must have been fairly monstrous to have produced such bad insecurity. I know nothing about Luna but I can tell you they were badly neglected and subjected to worse abuse than they heap on you. There’s a very good chance one of their parents (or whoever raised them) was mentally ill and/or a drunk/addict. Not that that’s much comfort to you. But if you find out as much as you can about Luna’s upbringing you will get lots of insights into what they fear most – and what they fear most is what they will most torture you with. It won’t stop the torture, but it will give you tremendous power to turn it back on them.
I am a vengeful, harsh person when crossed and, subsequently, prefer to walk away from people than dig the two graves that revenge necessitates. I have tremendous affinity for revenge – that’s why the stories of it appeal to me so strongly, but I am very aware that it can completely consume your life so, like a pub fight, I yell ‘Walk away!’ at myself regularly. That said, I have got down to a fine art the art of attack, and you do this through knowledge – know your enemy like the back of your hand. Watch for every chink in their armour, keep quiet and learn. It is very possible, smart as you are, that you could dance circles round Luna and drive them insane (insaner!), but I’m guessing you really don’t want to do that – and I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s why I told you at the start that I’m a walk away girl and I don’t believe in the possibility of boundaries with damaged people, or their improvement through understanding and love. But I had two narcissists for parents. If Luna is just neurotically insecure then they may be redeemable, or at least liveable with.
Also, on a kinder note, knowing everything about Luna’s background will help you to understand them and they say understanding brings said love. You will note just a hint of cynicism, and a lack on conviction, in me when I say those words, but that’s just my experience. I don’t know if Luna is a narcissist (you are not); only you can know that. Quick pop quiz – do they have a lack of empathy? (they don’t get that others have feelings), are they centre of the universe? (do you all have to timetable round Luna, honour Luna’s needs, do everything Luna’s way?), and, most important of all – a hard question to answer – do you suspect that Luna may not really love you, or anyone else? If it’s yes more often than not to these questions then Luna is a narcissist. In which case understanding will NOT bring love. Ever. Sadly – and I mean that – narcissists don’t learn to love; they haven’t got it in them. But, like everything else, narcissism goes on a scale. My paternal grandfather was a MUCH worse narcissist than my father. My father felt some sympathy for animals and didn’t like animal cruelty. Occasionally, if bludgeoned with it, he could understand the suffering of others, at least abstractly – my paternal grandfather tortured animals and small children and thought it was funny. He was a bona fide psychopath. So, it’s a question of degree.
There, that’s enough psychiatric horseshit for one day. Yes, I discovered Pillars of the Earth on one of my searches and was so excited – what a cast! – but when I watched the trailer it looked like a bad (cheap) medieval drama, a la Robin Hood – and we all know what that name inspires in this household. But please, if you decide to hire it/buy it tell me if it’s any good/ lend it to me. It certainly sounds great, in theory.
Last thing – the difference between envy and jealousy. Envy would be Ian wanting Danny’s looks so he could get John; jealousy would be Danny being afraid Kathy H would take John away from him. Envy is an outward looking thing: I want what he’s got. Jealousy is more inward: Please don’t take him away from me. Envy is about acquiring, jealousy is about loss.
Here is some shit from Wikipedia (oh, the shame), but it is helpful:
Philosopher John Rawls distinguishes between jealousy and envy on the ground that jealousy involves the wish to keep what one has, and envy the wish to get what one does not have. Thus, a child is jealous of her parents’ attention to a sibling, but envious of her friend’s new bicycle. Psychologists Laura Guerrero and Peter Andersen have proposed the same distinction. They claim the jealous person “perceives that he or she possesses a valued relationship, but is in danger of losing it or at least of having it altered in an undesirable manner,” whereas the envious person “does not possess a valued commodity, but wishes to possess it.”
The experience of jealousy involves:
• Fear of loss
• Suspicion or anger about betrayal
• Low self-esteem and sadness over loss
• Uncertainty and loneliness
• Fear of losing an important person to an attractive other
• Distrust
The experience of envy involves:
• Feelings of inferiority
• Longing
• Resentment of circumstances
• Ill will towards envied person often accompanied by guilt about these feelings
• Motivation to improve
• Desire to possess the attractive rival’s qualities
• Disapproval of feelings
Parrot acknowledges that people can experience envy and jealousy at the same time. Feelings of envy about a rival can even intensify the experience of jealousy. Still, the differences between envy and jealousy in terms of thoughts and feelings justify their distinction in philosophy and science.
So now you can see if there is some envy under that jealousy Luna exhibits. I felt there was, but I see envy everywhere. It’s my genius they resent, you know. Yes, it’s my cross but I have to bear it…..
Bishops may be celibate, but they can still smell cunt
If I ever write a novel, Jodie, this has to be the title.
Max
PS: Your films arrived this morning.
Hi Max
It is the best quote I’ve ever heard. Although I saw a film last night where president Bush wrote a letter to a woman saying ‘you were the best thing I ever invaded’. That’s pretty good, but there’s a distinct lack of cunts.
Did you say at somepoint that you have the computer software for writing for a tv series, if you do could I borrow it. If not could you let me know what it was called so I can get it off eBay.
Thanks
Hi Jodie,
Try http://celtx.com/ for a free download, or I can send you paper instructions on how to make a Word template for scripts. Max
Thanks Max I’ll have a look at the website
If you don’t like it, try a Google search for free script writing software!
Max
Chancery Stone 3
A definite yes to not knowing what was up or down, and even more what was right or wrong. I’m not very good at boundaries , mainly because one day they were one way, the next somewhere else. I think you’ve said being around someone mad making is like having the rug pulled from under you. That’s the best way to explain it I think, like being on a convayerbelt of constant rug pulling. It does give you the ability to read situation quickly, and ordinary life ones are usually a piece of piss after years of situations that would be more at home in a mental asylum. So there’s always a plus side. It sounds like your grand father did the same things. Its odd how things that seem so specific and erratic are traits that people with the same problems have in common. Like people with anorexia are good cooks because they want to handle food instead of eating it. It seems like it wouldn’t be related but it’s a part of the mental effect. I find that really odd, like an invasion of your mind (does that make sense).
Anyway back to the point, Luna (love the name) did play people off against each other, treat certain people in different way, held them to other standards and gave them different types of encouragement/abuse. Luna is also a big advocate of telling people who they are, even if they aren’t anything like that, and convincing others you are her version of a person instead of who you really are. And I’ve found that people are much more willing to believe what they are told than what they actually see with their own eyes. Was this this the same with you Grandad?
The social aspect, everyone in my family deals with it differently. I always made it into a joke, I let my friends see the parts that were weird enough to make funny but I never let it get out of control. If I saw it going that way I would leave with them. And the main thing is I’ve always done that to get back at them, tell people. It’s the worst thing I could do, let it out of the house.
From what I have picked up from snippets of information I think Luna had an awful time but doesn’t think of it that way, more idealistic like it was lovely but I really don’t think it was. Luna had to have had a bad time otherwise it doesn’t make sense, ‘they were fucked up in their turn’ and all that.
I have watched a bit of Pillars of the Earth and I think you’ll really like it, if I buy it I’ll send it to you. Also I’m buying Social Network tonight, it was my favourite film of last year, if you haven’t seen it I’ll send it up with the next lot. Also I think I’d like to borrow the second series of Big Love after Bleak House (which isn’t playing on my aristocratic DVD player, I’ve got to wait till i can borrow someones laptop to watch it), I saw an advert for a later series and it made me what to watch the rest. I think you said you had all the series.
P.S. I have found that I can’t get the tv series of DANNY off my mind, I keep making notes about it. Something has to be done, I’m dying to see DANNY on the screen, it would be the best thing that could ever happen.
P.P.S. I’m having another tattoo, and yes I can’t help myself, it’s a DANNY one, I will send you pictures. I am a DANNY psycho stalker.
P.P.P.S. I did the personality test and got type 7 The Enthusiast, who’d have guessed.
ETA 25/2: to fix the fucking tortured pronouns. From now on, Luna is ‘it’. Can’t be doing with ‘they’, and he/she is worse. Not that ‘it’ works very well either, fuck it. Sigh………….
Oh, Luna is a liar. A big fat liar. This is the rewriting history syndrome. I know this one so well, it isn’t funny. You never said if Luna shows any narcissistic traits – and I think it’s deliberate that you never said, so we won’t push that – but the rewriting history (both yours and theirs) is very symptomatic. It comes part and parcel with the grandiosity thing. This can be very deceptive as a trait, and throw you off the track. For example, I knew my father had grandiosity problems from my mid teens: he always referred to himself as “a great thinker”, told you in detail all the brilliance and genius he’d shown as a child, told you how the men who worked with him looked up to him, etc, etc. So it was easy to see he fit the profile of thinking himself more important and special than he really was.
Many years later, however, after my brother accused me of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (you may recall that reaction when I outed my parents), I looked the ‘disorder’ up and was very surprised to see my parents there in varying degrees. That was the first time I’d read anything about it. Curiosity piqued, I bought several books and was perplexed to discover that my mother had some of the traits far worse than my father. I thought it was a question of degree thing till I realised – in one shocking moment of satori – that my mother’s grandiosity was very different. Instead of bragging about her genius she behaved as if she was superhuman: never sick, always having to win, not having normal bodily functions (like headaches and period pains).
In short, I realised her grandiosity was right there all along, I’d just misunderstood it.
Now, all of this is very dodgy to me, because actually I’m not a big fan of mental health labelling. For the very reason I’ve just discussed regarding my mother – it’s all too easy to lose people in the mix if they don’t fit the magazine article pop quiz type profile.
Nevertheless, real psychology, rather than Sunday Times article psychology, can be useful, in that it can be very reassuring to see these patterns in people, and it helps make sense of their lunacy. But there are as many different narcissists as there are human fingerprints. Also, as I mentioned in the post I deleted, which you might remember, narcissistic disorder is all the rage. It gets flung at all and sundry as soon as someone finds someone else too big for their boots. Calling Tom Cruise a narcissist because you don’t like the money he earns is far more barking than Tom will ever be.
However, to the point, I think Luna may have something here in the history rewriting. It may just be avoiding the awful truth, but I find its determination to tell you what you are, and to make sure other people think it too, far more suspicious.
Controlling the environment is what narcissists are all about. To use my dad again: he was all about ‘Andrew the genius’ who thinks great thoughts and everyone is in awe of his intellect. That would have been fine up to a point, but he had connected it to a more dangerous ideology of you couldn’t prick the bubble. He once went crazy at me because I, in all innocence, told him his job as a bricklayer was semi-sedentary rather than manual labour (we had been studying the categories in biology; although I can’t for the life of me think why now – calorific burning, I suspect). I was completely thrown by this until I figured out that it was because he had a carefully constructed picture of himself that I wasn’t allowed to weaken – in any way.
It’s normal to be like that to some extent. No-one likes to be told they are ‘less than’, but his reaction was disproportionate, and it didn’t really matter what he was categorised as, when you think about it. It’s not like I called him a lazy cunt.
Anyway, the whole ‘my life is a beautiful confection of my making’ thing is, like I say, very symptomatic. So, I think Luna maybe is doing some dance in there. And if it’s doing the dance then someone ahead of it did it first.
Does Luna ever talk about one particular parent with reverence? Or does it boast about its dad’s skill/talent/specialness at such-and-such? If so, you are probably hearing a big embellishment. It may not look like that at first. Maybe its mum never once had to comb her hair. Or she never lost a game of cards. Or she had pin sharp hearing that could hear you coming from two streets away.
What these really mean, in the real world of Luna’s childhood, was your gran never combed her hair and Luna was deeply shamed when at seven it was publicly ridiculed for its mother’s extreme depression, when she went down to the corner shop in her nightdress and uncombed hair and sat crying in the gutter till auntie Flo took her home. Its mum never lost a game of cards cause she used to cheat her children blind then laugh at them when they cried, and she made them play with her for hours and they had to let her win in case she freaked and wandered off down to the shops again, or urinated in the street like she did two years before. Her pin sharp hearing was because when Luna tried to bring friends home when it was fourteen, mother screamed that she could hear them talking in the next room, and she KNEW THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT HER!!! The pin sharp hearing isn’t real, but the paranoia about imagined conversations is. That’s the reality of Luna’s mad parent/s. The mental illness, the drinking, the beatings designed for Luna’s own good, the constant carping, mad, unhinged, erratic behaviour have all been written into a universe that allows Luna to be normal, so that, ironically, Luna can inflict Luna’s own madness on you.
You see, it’s important to Luna that you believe Luna’s world, not your own. And Luna is rewriting it to fit Luna’s picture of how Luna was made. If Luna had a mad mother and a drunk father, how can Luna pass judgement on you? If Luna said ‘I didn’t know menstruation wasn’t Christ bleeding through me till I was 22′, how can Luna lecture you on the Satanic use of tampons? Luna can’t tell you off about make-up, whore’s clothes, if Luna confesses your gran ate Luna’s lipstick and your grandfather forbad wearing bras because only ‘hoors’ wore bras.
Sorry, I’ve written truly barking relatives for you, but you’ll find that although the particular neuroses might be well off the mark, how they were played out in The Parental Den of Luna’s Lost Youth will be spot on. Only worse. Real life tends to be far more dark and dangerous than the fictional version.
So Luna is a liar, and Luna’s needs you to buy into those lies. That’s what I think the acting out is about. My theory – and mine’s only; all conjecture – is that Luna needs your complicity to make Luna’s life work. No complicity makes Luna ‘kick off’ (knew I could work that in). It seems like an ideal solution to go along with Luna’s Rule Book for Life, and avoid kick-offs, but two things happen then: 1) you are dancing to Luna’s tune, and so losing you. 2) You start to feel unloved and overlooked.
This is where it gets ugly. It is just possible – don’t be hurt or offended; it would be odd if you weren’t doing this – that you rebel against Luna’s ‘rules’ as much because it makes Luna love you as it does anything else. Bearing in mind that Luna’s love involves jealousy, envy and possession. In other words, you need Luna to kick off occasionally so that you can be sure Luna still loves you, and cares.
This is the hardest thing to kick, the thing most like addiction (addiction often replaces it if you leave home). If the only way you’ve experienced love follows a certain pattern (’my big brother John always beats me up when he needs me most’), then you will find yourself doing things to make that happen (I will goad my big brother/relative, John/Luna so that they beat me up/berate me, so that I know they love me.)
I’m not saying you do this all the time. Luna will kick off just as often – possibly more often – all by Luna’s convulsive little self – no help from you. But that makes it even more complicated. Like it wasn’t complicated enough. It all gets tangled up, and you’re already in a position of not knowing what’s real and what isn’t. When you don’t set Luna off, you’ll believe you have. And when you do deliberately set Luna off, you’ll believe it couldn’t possibly be something you’re doing. It gets all fucked up and you’re stuck in the middle.
WALK AWAY! WALK AWAY, JODIE!
Sorry, I had to say that. That’s my bete noire, and I needed to cut it a little slack. That’s why I took so long to answer you. I could feel myself getting caught up in your family madness. Do you know the saying, when you look into the pit (of hell/darkness/evil), the pit also looks into you? Well, that’s me. Even on the internet I’m like a plug – I plug into Luna’s lunacy and bingo – Luna is looking back into me. I pick up knowledge in some bizarre two-way karmic flow, so time to cut the link. Night.
Chan
You know the surface of my mind doesn’t want to let go of the comedy. Where else am I going to laugh as hard? Where am I going to see someone jumping up and down in the air screaming about a wooden door (and that was Wednesday this week)? Looked like Rumpled-fucking-stiltskins house. Or read a note that says ‘thats it I’m gone forever. You’ll never see my face again. I’m never to return… I’ll be back in twenty minutes for a dentist appointment’. No one can tell me thats not funny (it is to me anyway).
Yeah there’s definitely something in me that doesnt want to leave (I don’t live there anymore though, I moved out years ago, I’m not that far gone as a masochistic) because this is the treatment that makes me feel needed, special, but fuck it up it’s shit pipe, you play the cards your dealt.
I promise not to plug you into the insane-o-meter (I seem to have discovered the hyphen) unless absolutely vital.
I can’t remember what reply I saw this (I’m getting confused) but ‘Satan just gets it up for Daddy’ is the new best line I’ve ever heard. Beats Lovejoy’s hands down.
P.S. You’ve kept me up again Stone, i finally got paid so I bought Delaney. Didn’t get to sleep till three. Another story I couldn’t stop reading. If I reach 40 your paying for the plastic surgery for my eye bags. I loved Delaney, I hope someone finishes it as well as it is so far. I’ll leave a review this weekend. But, oh no, apparently my reviews are no longer required. Chimsky, where ever you are in this thread, I hope you know you’ve got a fight on your hands, and I’m a scrappy little bastard. (It’s weird that after everything i’ve now said in the previous comments I feel the need to clarify that’s a joke, no one needs to call the asylum). Right I’m off to have a tattoo of the whole book all over my body, starting with my face.
By the way that wasn’t supposed to say chan, Chimsky and max at the start of the posts, I’m doing this on my phone and those were the titles of each separate answers I wrote in my notes. I couldnt work out how to get back to the start to delete. I’m not renaming people
If you do not get an all-over-body tattoo, starting with your face, I will never ever speak to you again. And I will leave all my book copyrights to Chimpsky.
(See? This is what I mean. I am now playing you off against each other. I told you Luna had looked back into me. [I am wearing my pants on my head and writing a suicide note even as we speak. Hell, worse, I'm putting brackets inside brackets...])
There’s no excuse for this, brackets are the devils dimples you know.
Jodie, we love, love, LOVE your reviews. Without you we would never have had “The New Testament” and “The Caravan of Love” - both of which will be on the fantastic new Poison Pixie website, which will be a cyber work of art, I can tell you. (Oh, and Devil’s dimples, that’s another one of yours that I’ll use for life!) Also, Suzy, our hard-working and grossly underpaid PR lady, frequently plunders both your reviews for her Press Releases which, of course, you never see… Don’t worry, we exploit all our fans equally here! By the way, how goes the tattoo?
Good good, I will not miss out on any kind of exploitation. I haven’t dared go and book it yet, I keep setting off to call in and book the appointment but then being too scared. I’ll do it one day like last time, just run in when I haven’t had time to think about, because that’s the way to do something that’s going to last forever, ha. Hopefully I will have some sore, bloody pictures in the next few weeks.
Not sure of the demographic male/female danny reader ratio (that just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?) but i guess i might be in the minority of men. I personally fall into category 5, a survivor who dislikes porn. The disliking i put down to my family methodist environment. With very contradictory dynamics: prudish on the one hand and on the other, well…
My last relationship was with a woman who had survived long term systematic ritual abuse. Despite my background i initally struggled to believe her memories (i was in the middle of a bad breakdown at the time, which didn’t help). There are behaviour/emotion descriptions in the discussions above that ring true with me, but Rachel was out there, she had Dissociative Identity disorder for starters adn it was all about the chaos. I was shocked when i saw The 33rd May a few years ago, a drama (i think by the chap who wrote the most excellent “No Child of Mine, available on torrent sites)about SRA. There was a lot of things that convinced me of even the more crazy sounding things from Rachels past. Where am i going with this, um, well both those progs are worth a look.And children need to be believed.i mean if a survivor struggles to believe, it shops how much more work there is to be done.
Anna M is another erotomaia film. The actor, or lady actressette :), playing the lead is also in He Loves me, He Loves Me Not. i personally preferred Anna M, it has greater depth, is harder hitting (literally) and the film itself accelerates into a sort of mania as it prgresses.French cinema has a great way of portraying the unhinged (see The ordeal, Satan - oh you know that 1! and Harry, He’s Here To Help) Mad familys? Try Mummy, Nannny, Sonny and Girlie. a film that’s as mad as a box of schiizoprhenics.SOme great films discussed above, and yes, as a horror fan i can shamely admit there sren’t many films that torture and degrade their male characters ( there’s the odd emasculation in Carver and a Day of Violence, but neither of these are notable horror films) The Australain revenge drama, The Horseman, about a father who goes on a rampage to kill all the pornographers involved in his dead daughters “career”, does have a lot of violence towards men in it, but one’s suspension of disbelief gets suspende too much (how much violence can our protagonist take??)
BTW what did you think of The Woodsman (Kevin Bacon plays a poor molester struggling to cope boo hoo)
One point on Counselling, i agree with the sentiments expressed about Counsellors ( and i speak as someone who became a progressive mental health worker for healing purposes)i’ve had ones like that too. But you can have proactive counsellors, challenging,lairy no-bullshit couns ellors and as counselling is about the relationship with a counsellor ideally you have one you need, And i need one who’s gonna challenge and be an ex hardcore punk like myself :) not a fuckin softly spoken water colour painter…
Hi Chimpsky, the DANNY demographic is shrinking every day on the male/female ratio. When it first came out, the only males it had were ones reading their significant other’s copies. Then it picked up one or two (usually) gay men, then a couple of straight men wandered in, and so it went on until it was about 2:1 – 2 women to every man, with a general bias towards gay ones. Now it’s about 50/50, with the women only in a slight lead, and how many straight/gay being anybody’s guess.
Unfortunately that’s only readers we’ve acquired from our own website and as Amazon sellers. We don’t know who the rest are. For all I know, all the Amazon and book store buyers are men and they’ve been outnumbering the women two one for the past year!
We sell a lot of DANNYs (all volumes) on Kindle these days, so the sex balance of that is a complete unknown.
Interestingly, you’re not the only man with a religious background to buy DANNY, although (to our knowledge) we’ve never had a female with a religious background. I don’t know if there is some deep significance to that, but I’m sure I can invent one. I usually do. It’s like an affliction.
Your girlfriend’s diagnosis sounds seriously dodgy to me, like someone threw the whole psychiatry book at her, poor soul. I’m not very big on multiple personality disorder, to use the less PC name for her condition. I feel it belongs more to fiction than real life; it makes great Hitchcock movies. I always think the whole ‘behaving like two (or more) different people’ thing is a combination of learned behaviour and psychiatrists alternately struggling to put a huge mishmash of weird traits into some kind of shape, and a natural tendency to over-dramatise. Psychiatrists are nothing if not drama queens!
Like I said to Jodie (above, below, wherever the fuck it is – damn it), I’m not big on labelling mental health problems. I prefer simple handles and broad strokes just to get a rough idea. Psychological labelling is misused too much, by everybody, from newspapers to psychologists who should know better. And sometimes I think it’s not very far removed from witch-burning – ‘Yeah, we know Satan’s got you, and we’re going to get him out, or kill you in the process. Now get in this dungeon, freak…’
I know nothing about you, but I imagine it’s occurred to you that your religious upbringing and your girlfriend’s ‘Satanic abuse’ background are not a coincidence. Like to like. And here I’m going to live up to my reputation as a cynical, thoroughly argumentative, unpleasant sod by saying I don’t believe in satanic abuse either. I think it most likely belongs in the realms of alien abduction. Just like alien abduction always involves anal probes (all that advanced technology and all they can think of is ‘I know, let’s stick something up its arse’), satanic abuse always involves sex with black candles.
I think child abuse is boringly prosaic. That’s why it is so horrific. I think some people use their background (religion, say) to express what has been done to them; ‘My dad came into my room in a black robe, chanting ‘Leave her cunt, Satan’. It doesn’t mean that he actually had a black robe on (his ratty old dressing gown in black velour), or that he said those words (he actually said, ‘Show me your cunt’, no Satan involved). But other times the Satan worshipping part has been there in actuality, but the ’satanism’ is all about candles and resin skulls and a cheap satinette cape from the joke shop. In other words, it’s sex games, and Satan just gets it up for daddy. Either way, the real Satan (!), or real satanic intent, is not there.
I think the drama queening part of sex abuse is a very real problem. Personally, I remember very little of significance (to me; other people would find it grotesque), but I feel as if there’s a lot more out of sight; the stuff of dreams. Whether that is real or not is anybody’s guess. On Mondays I think it is all true, and more. On Tuesday, through till Sunday, I think I’m a fucking idiot, and how could I possibly imagine that was real?
I think people like your girlfriend, whose abuse was probably a lot worse than mine, start letting that confusion seep into the reality, sometimes because it’s the only way to keep it manageable. Sometimes, because they get so confused they can’t keep a track of it and start believing the stories they made up to try and make a coherent narrative out of their childhoods. Is she lying? No. Did everything she says happened happen? Yes, absolutely. But probably not in a frock studded with pentagrams or in the woods with a goat and a goblet of menstrual blood.
But then again, sometimes it has. I think you can tell those ones though. The people who have really fucked goats on dad’s insistence tend to be either psychotic and in jail/ a paedophile ring, or they are incredibly prosaic about it and have consigned it to the realm of darkly humorous. They don’t discuss it unless asked, and when they do they make a joke of it. Concentration camp humour. They will usually have a badge of honour: addiction, illness, depression, early death or a writing/acting/singing career. But they live.
On counselling… Don’t think I’d ever use it again. I think you unconsciously made my point. Damaged people tend to go into the mental health professions, and I think that makes it very hit or miss at best, and downright dangerous at worst. Think of Freud, who changed his mind about women who had been subjected to abuse. He decided there were too many of them for it to be real, ipso facto, the women had a neurotic desire to fuck their male relatives. Suddenly it was the woman’s fault. I think that’s the downside of the mad leading the mad. And when the sane try it; they don’t have a clue. But I think if you are very lucky to meet a person/group who can be genuinely supportive then you’ve hit pay dirt. I just feel that damaged people are needy people and it’s all too easy to get into guru syndrome; ’someone else knows me better than I do, and they can fix me’. It’s like your childhood all over again: ‘I don’t know what to think, but dad’ll tell me’.
Now, the interesting stuff. Films. I don’t know The 33rd May. IMDB hasn’t got it. Have you got the title right? And thanks for the “No Child of Mine” I’ll go and watch that. Anna M is excellent, but I don’t know if I preferred it to He Loves Me… I think the latter is actually a better exploration of erotomania as it happens in real life. Anna M is so far gone in the unstable stakes she’s sectionable. I think most erotomaniacs don’t go that far, and hurt themselves more than others. I’ve known two, I can think of off-hand, and both of them were of the ‘He looked at me twice, I know he wants to leave his wife for me’ variety. They could make whole romantic dramas out of a dirty old man getting a free grope. I had a ‘friend’ who was 17, in love with her boss – 45 – and her erotomania was a truly frightening thing to behold. When I actually saw the man in question – a fat, over-tanned aging lothario in a BMW – I couldn’t connect him with her descriptions of him. He led her a merry dance while she invented whole scenarios that really amounted to him handing her a tray to put away for him.
But they are both great films taken from different ends of the scale. Again, Anna M is more of a Hitchcock dark version rather than a high street version.
Harry He’s Here to Help is one of my all-time favourite movies. Seamless perfection. And The Ordeal is an ordeal. A so good it’s bad movie, well-nigh unwatchable. I’ve never seen Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, although I’ve had it recommended to me. I admit I’ve been put off by the fact it’s a 70s movie; it looks so cheesy on its posters. I’ve always assumed it would fail on the harsh/darkness stakes. Have you seen Mum & Dad? A fabulous film, all the more remarkable for throwing itself into the mainstream with such aplomb. You can get hours of entertainment just from reading the reviews on Amazon. I love when something dirty makes its way in there and offends with a vengeance. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it feels like karmic debt personified.
The Horseman didn’t do anything for me, I’m afraid. The father was more offended that his daughter had made porn than she was dead. And it fell into the same rut as the ‘Girls in porn have to be seen to be abused in order to be sympathetic’ bullshit that pisses me off. Jodie just lent me Sex Traffic and that had me yelling at the TV. Never have I so wanted to take two girls and bash their heads together. Talk about ‘Poor me’ victim fiction. I wished one of the gangsters would just shoot the stupid bitches and be done with it. It’s a trademark of ‘hard-hitting dramas’ that are shown in prime time mainstream. If someone is going to be indulging in ‘perverted’ (i.e. not done for love) sex, then they had better damn well be forced. It’s that very old idea that if a woman is a willing prostitute you can’t rape her. Pisses me off.
On my final note, I liked the Woodsman. I’ve only seen it once; I have it in my ‘Check and see if I want to keep’ pile, so I will now watch it again, since you’ve (re)piqued my interest. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Maybe not. I liked the fact that it gave a ’sympathetic’ view of a paedophile. Very rare and very brave. Monster making is what they do to paedophiles. But that may well be personally offensive to you? I know you don’t like porn, by your own definition, and that kind of reaction tends to go hand in hand with ‘Burn the paedo’ thinking (in people who have suffered abuse themselves). By that I mean you may find it hard to say/believe anything positive about them, not that you organise lynch mobs on your lunch hours! That said, maybe it fell short in some other way for you? You know I’d like to questionnaire you on your background, and why and what you don’t like about porn, don’t you? But don’t engage me. Please. Seriously. Things will only get worse.
And now on my final, final note, can I thank you for the review you did for DANNY 2.1? I only spotted it very recently and I can say, hand on heart, that it is the very best review one of my books has ever had (sorry, Jodie; you know I still love you, but he’s trounced you in the reviewing stakes. He doesn’t have a tattoo though…). It is a work of perfection; I thank you. Please now go and write me another one for 2.2…
While we’re on films, let’s not forget L.I.E.
I love L.I.E.
Max
I think L.I.E. falls in the chatogory of films that don’t show the pedophile as an out and out monster (as mentioned by Chancery, I think). I’m quite a fan of the showing everyone as human, because no one is actually born bad angle. No one thinks when they are a child, when I grow up I want to be a paeodiphile.
Another film I think shows this is Happiness (also while being amazingly blackly funny). Has anyone on this board (or in this world) see this?
Chimpsky
Iv always thought the Danny readers would be women or if they were men they would most likely be gay but I suppose that’s actually massive stereotyping when you think about it. And it’s thinking of DANNY in the terms of it mainly being porn and I hate it when it’s just looked at in those terms. I suppose it’s because most of the men I know wouldn’t touch homosexual content with a ten foot pole (but they are usually the ones who would rather be touching it with something a lot softer and smaller). Obviously DANNY has much more important content than the sex so it makes sense that you wouldn’t mind it in DANNY because its not there for the same reason it is in porn books. It’s not there to get you off, it’s a part of the dynamic, explains a lot of the relationships and gives you glimpses into the past. And most importantly paints a very honest picture of abuse. DANNY is very far from being about porn but I have to admit I do like he porn side of it as well. But then describe John painting a fence and thats porn to me.
I’m going to have to give these films a go, I don’t think I’ve seen any of them, trip to amazon required.
pee ess how does someone who dislikes porn cope with reading Danny. Fuck knows, i usually turn the page, but with Danny, not one thrust was gratuitous, and to deny it would be to deny the book. open the book and think of England?
I am a great fan of Happiness - also A Dolls House
Elves, munchkins… This isn’t the Wizard of Oz, you know. Besides, I happen to know you’d promote anything if there was money in it.