Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘It’s like self-hypnosis. CBT. Call it what you will.’

‘But seventy per cent?’ Gene’s appalled.

‘Okay, maybe fifty,’ Ransom concedes.

‘And the rest?’

‘Hustle. Hype. Pep-talks. Mind games.’

Brief pause.

‘Bloody hell!’ Gene’s profoundly moved by this revelation. ‘But that must just be really … I dunno … exhausting …’ He struggles to get his head around it. ‘Not to mention demoralizing.’

‘Nah.’ Ransom shrugs. ‘It’s easy — it’s like second nature to me now. It’s the daily diddle, the bunco, the racket — the thing that gets your arse out of the clubhouse and on to the green. It’s just the spiel.’

‘Okay,’ Gene interjects, ‘so that’s all well and good for Stuart Ransom “the sportsman”. But what about Stuart Ransom the person — the living entity — the soul ? What about the individual inside all the spiel? How’s he feel? What’s he thinking?’

‘Uh …’ Ransom tries — momentarily — to enter this foreign person’s headspace. ‘My feet stink. My shirt’s too tight. I need a crap. The air-con’s on too low … Wow — that pretty masseur’s got amazing jugs, will she jack me off if I give her a big enough tip?’

‘Good. Great. I get the picture …’ Gene lifts a hand, sickened.

‘Some guys go in for all the humility stuff.’ Ransom shrugs. ‘Beckham’s made a friggin’ career out of it. You know, the whole: “I’m so lucky to be here right now”; the whole: “I don’t actually have an ego”; the whole: “Tiger Woods is golf’s greatest ambassador — he’s brought the game to a whole new friggin’ fanbase” malarkey; but the way I see it, that’s just another kind of spiel — part of the Big Sporting Lie. An’ I’m too friggin’ real for that, man — got way too much self-respect.’

‘So you don’t believe those people are being honest when they say that stuff?’

‘Hell no!’ Ransom chuckles. ‘Are you crazy?! They’re professional arse-lickers! It’s totally agenda-driven — just a different kind of bullshit.’

‘Maybe they’ve realized that it’s actually better for them,’ Gene volunteers, ‘I mean psychologically, emotionally — to look out at the world with … without cynicism? Without the spiel? With humility? With an open heart?’

Ransom stares up at Gene, appalled. ‘Please assure me that you didn’t just use the phrase “with an open heart”?’

‘I know it sounds a bit corny — a bit lame, even,’ Gene concedes, ‘but I do generally like to try and find the positives in any given situation.’

‘And that’s your spiel,’ Ransom allows.

‘But I don’t think it is a spiel.’ Gene’s duly niggled. ‘It’s not rehearsed or calculated. It’s more of a … a life philosophy — a general outlook — an instinct.’

(The word ‘faith’ almost tips his tongue but he easily shuns it.)

‘Philosophy?!’ Ransom splutters. ‘Philosophy- shmilosophy ! Philosophy’s just spiel with A-levels!’

‘It’s way bigger than that,’ Gene persists. ‘It’s about who you are. It’s about what’s inside. It’s about this strong feeling of …’

He puts a hand to his ribs and then suddenly — unexpectedly — loses all momentum. The word ‘well-being’ dies on his lips.

‘Of what?’ Ransom gazes up at him, quizzically.

Gene frowns, confused. The saliva in his mouth has turned to sawdust. He feels a burning sensation in his chest — a sudden, lurching indigestion — and while he’s all too familiar with the lesser gradations of this feeling (embarrassment, unease, discomfiture), this goes way beyond all those. It’s a fiery worm burrowing through his gut. It’s a carousel ride after a bucket of toffee-coated Butterkist. It’s a ripe cheese, confined within its sheath of claustrophobic plastic, left way too long on a sunny countertop. It is strong and mean and queasy. It consumes him entirely. He finally apprehends — his heart sounding with a deadening thud from deep within him — that this extraordinary feeling is nothing more — and nothing less — than a crippling, paralysing, asphyxiating sense of shame .

And it is biblical in its proportions. It is a plague of locusts devouring every, living thing — every stray shoot of grass, every flower, every leaf — with their ferociously active and merciless mandibles. It is the incapacitating roar of the Tower of Babel (the aural incomprehensibility of the jet engine in take-off). But it is quiet, too — it is intimate: it is St Peter, steadfastly denying Jesus before the third cock starts to crow.

Shame. An emotional caustic soda that is systematically gnawing into everything that’s good and calm and true within him. A poison that — he realizes, to his profound horror — may only be expelled by the telling. A boil — a sickening pustule — that can only be cured by the lancing.

‘Well, whatever works for you,’ Ransom blithely opines (moving on, with typical efficiency). ‘Although from where I’m standing that sounds dangerously like the kind of shit people come up with when they’ve lost all remaining shreds of self-respect and ambition. It’s the philosophy of a loser — someone who’s run out of options.’

‘Pragmatic rather than idealistic,’ Gene murmurs (still — even as he’s cruelly pole-axed by this whirling, emotional maelstrom — unable to resist the urge to classify).

‘Think about it this way,’ Ransom volunteers, ‘the piranha chooses to fight other, hostile piranha with its tail, not its teeth. It’s Darwinian — any other approach would be counter-productive for the species as a whole. It’s a basic survival mechanism, yeah? You just do what works in your particular circumstances. Some people are perfectly happy to eat shit. These are the people who work in electricity sub-stations, on the buses, in IT, in catering — your Regular Joes. Other people like to kick against the pricks, stand out from the crowd, reject second-best, despise compromise …’

‘And a piranha …?’

(Gene’s struggling to keep up. His hand presses against his ribs. He still looks stricken.)

‘The piranha’s a realist. It knows that if it fights another piranha with its teeth then it’ll probably end up screwed, so it does what it needs to do.’

‘Piranhas are pragmatists, at root.’ Gene nods, not really sure whose argument this furthers (in fact he’s not sure of much as things currently stand).

‘I was in the dentist’s the other week getting my veneers bleached,’ Ransom recalls. ‘I picked up this magazine — science magazine — and there was an article in it all about how the brain is just a machine which works by staging a series of “neuro-battles” …’

‘Neuro-battles?’ Gene echoes.

‘Yeah. Different parts of the brain compete with each other to control the body. They stage these little neuro-battles and the strongest part of the brain wins. It’s like a permanent, ongoing competition — a game. Which means it really doesn’t matter a toss how you like to package it: “Oooh, I don’t have an ego”, “I’m all spiritual and shit”, “I’m really modest and humble” … It doesn’t friggin’ matter , because — bottom line — conflict is natural. It’s written into our DNA. We are conflict. Just like the spider is …’

‘The …?’

(Gene finds himself utterly incapable of fully encompassing this latest — and perhaps most startling — of Ransom’s many hypotheses.)

‘And d’you know what really freaks me out about the whole thing?’ Ransom demands, irate.

Gene shakes his head. He honestly hasn’t got a clue.

‘These so-called “boffins” are planning to use this piece of knowledge to build a whole new generation of robots. Can you believe that?’