Will Self - My Idea of Fun

For six years this unprepossessing domain had been the fiefdom of Dr Hieronymus Gyggle, psychiatrist, specialist in addictive behaviours and — as he liked to style himself-practical philosopher. Where other people would have seen only the dregs of humanity, their faces and hands scuffed and broken by the hard labour of intravenous drug use, Gyggle saw chirpy Cockney junkies. As his great ginger beard escorted him around the premises he always half expected his clientele to leap up, stick their thumbs in their braces and break into song, ‘Consider yerself at home, consider yerself part of the fa-mi-ly.’

Then Gyggle was no ordinary shrink — as we know — and on this particular hot Friday afternoon in late summer, his activities, in their peculiar diversity, served to underscore this fact.

He was dividing his precious time between three ongoing projects. Firstly, in one of the sepia rooms sat six of his junkies, talking their way through a group therapy session. Gyggle made attendance at these groups mandatory for anyone who wanted to get on the ninety-day methadone reduction programme.

Secondly, in a plastic-curtained cubicle right at the back of the unit lay Gyggle's protégé, his oldest patient, a tall, plump marketing consultant by the name of Ian Wharton. Gyggle had brought Wharton with him from his last job as student counsellor at Sussex University, much in the way that a lesser doctor might have transported a favourite desk ornament or a collection of sporting prints.

Lastly, in the great man's office, which looked myopically through dirt-filmed windows on to the gardens described above, there sat a young woman, one Jane Carter. Jane was fidgeting, searching out the split ends that destroyed the precise line of her bobbed hair. She was also waiting for Gyggle, waiting for him to come and assess her suitability as a voluntary worker.

Gyggle strode through the drug dependency unit. His beard was so long and so rigid that it scouted out the corridors in front of him, possibly trying to draw sniper fire. Every so often he would stop to exchange cheery words with one or other of his colleagues. The smack heads, thought Gyggle bustling on, can wait and so can Ms Carter — what I must get under way is Ian's deep-sleep therapy. He paused and consulted a fake diver's watch which was shackled to his bony wrist. It's four now. I'll have to wake him by four on Sunday afternoon, or else he'll be too dopey for work on Monday and we wouldn't want that, oh no.

The plastic curtain pulled back and Ian looked up from where he lay on the examination couch, outlined in the long thin gap was the long thin form of Dr Gyggle. Gyggle propped himself in the gap, he dangled from the curtain rail on his mantis arms. He was chewing gum and the long fan of the beard swished across his shirt front with each chew. ‘Ah, Ian,’ he fluted. ‘Been here long? Nyum-nyum.’ Swish-swish went the beard.

‘Long enough.’

‘Feeling a little nervous, are we, or just sarky?’

‘I don't know what you mean.’

‘Sarky it is. Look, I want it clear, Ian, that I'm not pressurising you to do this. You can get up off that couch and go home if you want. I don't even want to put you under if you haven't got the right attitude.’

‘Oh, and what is the right attitude?’

‘Well, here's how I see it,’ and just like any other ghastly enthusiast Gyggle propped one of his infinitesimal buttocks on the side of the couch and hitched up his trouser legs, preparatory to delivering his lecture. ‘Deep sleep is a logical extension of the role of psychiatrist as shaman. If we consider the act of interpretation — as in either psychoanalysis or dynamic psychiatry — as analogous to the forms of auspication practised by such individuals, then the deep-sleep experience can be equated with their summoning up of a possession trance.

‘In traditional societies the possession trance is invoked to purge demons by putting the subject in touch with his tutelary spirit. So, what I'm hoping for from this is that through protracted exposure to dream sleep your psyche will realise, and then dissolve the cathexis you have built up around this mythical character, this “Fat Controller”.’

‘Please,’ said Ian, hefting himself up on one elbow: ‘You must refer to him as “The Fat Controller” and it's important to capitalise the definite article — even in thought. ‘

‘You see!’ Gyggle exclaimed. ‘You see what a hold this still has on you. Don't you want to be free of him?’

‘Oh for Christ's sake, you know I do.’

‘Well then, the therapy is worth a try. Now slip out of your things, I'm going to give you a pre-med shot.’

‘What?’

‘We'll put you under and keep you there with a sedative, but the sensation of losing consciousness can be unpleasant, so it's a good idea for you to be relaxed beforehand. Now do what I say, Ian, and don't quibble.’

While Gyggle busied himself with ampoule and syringe Ian took off his clothes. Standing naked save for his boxer shorts he felt a chill run through him, despite the fusty warmth of the cubicle. ‘Am I going to have to lie on that bloody bench all weekend?’

Gyggle had loaded the hypodermic and was fiddling with the drip and catheter that dangled from a hook above the couch. ‘Nyum-nyum’ (swish-swish) ‘no, of course not, when the unit closes this evening you'll be moved over to the main hospital and put in a bed there. I've arranged for one of the nurses to keep an eye on you, maintain your sedative and nutrient drips until I come on Sunday afternoon to, as it were, call you back from the land of shades.’

‘And you say I'll be all right for work on Monday?’

‘Oh absolutely, you've an important job on at the moment, haven't you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Now turn on your side, I'm going to give you the pre-med.’ Ian felt Gyggle slap his buttock and then the apian sting of the needle. Warmth started to seep over him, spreading from a patch at the base of his spine. It was like being lowered into a warm bath, or reentering the womb. By the time he had turned back over on the couch Gyggle was standing once more in the artificial entrance. ‘Relax, Ian. I have to deal with something and then I'll be back to put you right under, OK?’ He turned and was gone.

* * *

Meanwhile, in one of the rooms at the front of the unit that faced the Hampstead Road, Gyggle's neglected group therapy session was under way. The six junkies were engaged in an investigation of the nature of the generic. Gyggle would have been pleased if he could have heard them, for their deliberations were carried out according to guidelines laid out by him in his self-appointed role as practical philosopher.

‘Like “Hoover”,’ said John, his dirty fingernail tracing the line of bubbling melted flesh that edged his jaw. ‘I mean to say, no one talks about a “domestic cleaning appliance” when what they mean is an ‘oover, now do they?’

‘Nah, nah, ‘snot like ‘oover at all, ‘cause ‘oover is like a manufactured thing, innit, not just. . a. . err— ‘

Well?’

‘A product!’

‘Tch!’ John waggled his head from side to side, heavy with disdain. His interlocutor, Beetle Billy, was a small black man wearing a green piped jumper, the frayed cuffs of which came half-way down his hands. Beetle Billy's voice had an irritating lispy component- he was agreed almost universally to be a waste of space and deeply stupid.

‘Or Magimix,’ John went on, warming to his theme. He sat forward in his chair and began to chop at the air with his thin, blue-tattooed forearms. ‘People still fink of Magimix as a company name, as well as a product, don't they?’ The question hadn't been intended as rhetorical but Beetle Billy wasn't living up to his role in the symposium anyway; as for the other junkies they seemed oblivious to what was going on. Someone at some time, probably a probation officer or a social worker, had been foolish enough to tell John that he was ‘highly articulate’. As a result a lot of non-professional people had been suffering from his articulacy ever since.