Will Self - My Idea of Fun

With Jane it's going to be different. She knows me, she trusts me, she says she loves me, she thinks she is bearing our child. When I tell her that things are not at all as they seem, she will be utterly incredulous; and then, as she comes to believe, what exquisite pain there will be, what complete betrayal. The man she cherishes, the man she butterfly-kisses, the man she sleeps curved around like two spoons in a drawer. It is he who is evil, he who is sworn to destroy her, an emotional quisling of the first water.

I can bide time now, polish up my adamantine treachery, since I've decided now what I want to do. It's pointless for me to dwell on The Fat Controller's unsportsmanlike tactics. Wasn't evil always thus, banal, pinching its plots from elsewhere and shamelessly bastardising them? This business of cropping up in Jane's womb, it's only the latest in a long procession of shoddy gimmicks. I don't want to react, to show myself to be any weaker than I am, because that's quite weak enough.

Jane will be asleep soon, she's not a big sitter-upper. She'll probably take a couple of sips of her camomile, read a few lines of a novel and then start sliding down into the dark burrow of sleep. Usually, when I come upstairs, I tuck her in and turn off the lamp on her side of the bed.

So that leaves me here, I'll be undisturbed whilst I'm being disturbing. Here in the dun kitchen, listening to the fridge, with the whole night ahead of me, I want to try and explain, if I can, how all of this came to be. How it could have been that my idea of fun diverged, so far and so fast, from what might have been expected of someone like me. But I also want it understood by you that this explanation isn't intended as justification of any kind. I don't need to justify myself, I only want to be understood. That's always the cry of the weak man, isn't it? He cries out for understanding when he has none of his own. But I ask you, do you understand, do you really comprehend what has happened to you? If you look at the entire course of your life does it resolve itself into a series of clear-cut decisions, places where the route divided and you took the right way rather than the left? Couldn't it just as easily have been the Hand of Fate, blind or otherwise, that nudged you? Either scenario would make as much sense for anyone. At least it isn't like that for me, I can actually point to my determinants, I can name them even: The Fat Controller for one, Dr Gyggle for two, and if I were pressed for a third it would have to be Mummy.

Here's the hook. When I'm done we'll decide on it together, you and I. I'll give you the opportunity to participate in the denouement. I'm all for audience participation. After all, what's your fleeting embarrassment set beside my life's work? Don't worry, I intend to give full weight to our deliberations. When we're done I'll either go on upstairs, wake Jane, tell her the truth and have my fun as she expires, or I'll give up on the whole thing, pop my clogs and shuffle off into some other dimension altogether.

I don't think I'm being overly dramatic about this and nor do I feel I'm shanghaiing you. After all, you're like all the rest, you like the world on your plate ready to be forked into two chunks, don't you? There's nothing more comforting for you than saying, ‘This is either this, or it's that.’ You do it all the time, it's as primary as breathing for you. I'm merely providing you with another opportunity to exercise your fine discrimination.

Oh, and another thing before I go, before I sink into my own narrative. About that woman, the one at the dinner party this evening, the one with the Agadir tan. Why was it that what she said got to me so, prompted this gush, this breaking down of the safety bulwarks in my unsinkable Titanic psyche? Well, you see the thing is, I may have killed, I may have tortured, I may even have committed the very worst of outrages, but it hurt me too. Not as much as it hurt my victims, I'll grant you that, but it hurt me. I felt for them, you see, each and every one. From the woman The Fat Controller dispatched with his poisoned cane at the Theatre Royal to Fucker Finch's pit bull, all inclusive. I felt for them as they whimpered, as their bowels loosened — I felt for them as only someone who is precluded from feeling with them could ever feel.

You catch my drift? Look, I'll make it clearer for you. Indulge me in a little exercise, if you will. What do you think the definition of ‘empathy’ is? Got that? Good. Now, what do you think the definition of ‘sympathy’ is? Jot it down on a scrap of paper if it helps you to fix it in your mind. Now go and look these two definitions up in the dictionary. I think you'll find that you've got them the wrong way round, that what you thought was empathy is really sympathy and vice versa. You see, that's been my problem — all the time I thought I was sympathising I was really empathising. I'm not going to make big claims about this semantic quirk but I do think it's worth remarking on, for when two key terms tumble over one another in this fashion you can be sure that something is afoot.

A word first about a tricky concept that you need to be able to understand if you are to accompany me through what follows without flagging, and without getting lost. Woe betide you if you do, because where we are about to go is virgin territory. It's a wild primeval place, a realm of the id, where the very manifold of your identity can easily be gashed open, sundered, so that all the little reflex actions that you call your ‘self’ will spill out, just so many polystyrene personality pellets, tumbling from a slashed sag-bag. I will not be able to help you in this place and nor, may I say, do I wish to.

This concept is eidetic memory and I am an eidetiker. Perhaps I was always meant to be one — whatever that means — or maybe it was part of the set-up, something to do with the way my destiny has been queered by you-know-who. But no matter, that is not the issue here.

Eidetic images are pictures in the head. They are internal images that have the full force of conventional vision, but which are realised solely in the mind of the eidetiker. For me, it is almost impossible to imagine how it could be otherwise than that when I conceive of, say, a philosopher, I can see that philosopher as surely as if he were lying on this table in front of me. He's on his side, the deep notch between his sagging belly and his hard hip for all the world like a pass through mountains to a happier valley.

Furthermore, if I look closely at this image of a philosopher that I have; I can see all his details, the stitching in his pullover, the ‘druff on his cuff, the very particular gleam of his spectacle frames. I can even rotate my philosopher, spin him with great rapidity through three hundred and sixty degrees in all three dimensions; and yet stay him stock still again, if I so choose, without disturbing so much as one hair of his beard. It matters not what I do with my philosopher; in my mind's eye he will retain his pictorial integrity, his notable variegation, his subtle interplay of parts and whole.

I know it's not like that for you. I know that when you imagine a philosopher, any philosopher, for instance the one you saw asleep in the park yesterday, his scalp-scurf merging seamlessly with a mossy wall, your mental image is sharp only when it is hazy and hazy as soon as you attempt to bring it into sharper focus. Isn't that so? The more you concentrate on your visual memory, the more you attempt to fix it securely, the more it slides away, like a quicksilver bead.