Jackdaw, page 6
But how could I know how I would respond now? Most importantly, how could I understand Bacon’s love of receiving violence without receiving violence myself?
Answer: I couldn’t.
I had to find someone who would beat me up.
This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. There’s an anecdote about the filming of Marathon Man. There was a scene where Dustin Hoffman had to appear to be exhausted. Being a method actor, Dustin ran around the studio a few times and arrived breathless. Laurence Olivier, who was acting opposite him, asked him what he was running for and Dustin told him.
‘Next time try acting,’ Olivier is reported to have said.
‘Next time try writing,’ my friends would say to me if I told them I went to find someone to flog me. In truth, they would have thought I was a pervert, using writing as an excuse to indulge in my “unnatural wants”. If I put out a query on Facebook or Twitter my mother would hear about it in two hours.
Classifieds, then? The café had half a dozen papers delivered every day. I checked the ads.
This is how I came to meet Danni, the Destroyer.
*
The Destroyer was a professional, by which I mean I paid her. I don’t know if that makes her a sex worker or not. I have nothing against sex work, but people are trafficked, so I asked the Destroyer what her situation was. She laughed at me and asked me to sit in the corner facing the wall for an hour. She went out while I sat there.
I didn’t find it sexy at all. To be honest, I imagined she was going to pull out two machetes and hack me to death while I was too handcuffed to mount a reasonable defence. I am pleased to report she did not kill me.
It was a bit of a scam, though, because most of the time the discipline was something I inflicted on myself while waiting on her hand and foot. And I wasn’t alone. There were one or two other men, no women, who would be slaves to her. Most of the time there was no overlap, but sometimes she would chain me to the wall in her basement while the others were there (which she called a dungeon, but let’s be real).
The whipping was both tame and lame. She had a cat o’ nine tails that couldn’t hurt no matter how hard you swung. I tried it one day when she wanted me to flog a different slave.
Danni the Destroyer was a big woman, easily six-three, six-four. Broad. A bit fat. Superb skin and supremely confident.
I saw her twice a week and after a month I told her I wasn’t satisfied.
‘I think I need to feel actual pain. This enactment isn’t helping me get into the mind of a masochist,’ I said.
‘Because you aren’t one.’
‘Does that mean I’m Dom? Should I be paying to whip someone instead?’
She laughed at me and sent me to the corner. For free, which was kind of her, if you think about it. I was nervous, though, because Elise would soon be returning from work. It was essential that I was home before her.
‘This isn’t a binary state, Tade. Being either Dom or sub isn’t a switch.’
‘What am I, then?’
‘A tourist. This isn’t for you.’
I thought about that one. ‘I’m not a tourist. I’m an anthropologist.’
A part of her heard me, though, because the next appointment things changed.
‘I want you to change your posture. You’re standing too erect, projecting too much confidence. I want you to slouch slightly, but not too much. Do it.’
I approximated what I thought she wanted.
‘Don’t make eye contact with me.’
I looked away.
‘I didn’t say don’t look at me. Avert your gaze from my eyes.’
I looked at her from the neck down.
‘Are you looking at my tits?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t.’
I aimed my eyes at the demilitarised zone between her chin and her upper chest. This was a lot harder than it sounds. It didn’t work the way Nicholson Baker books make this kind of thing seem.
‘Go and buy me some mango yoghurt,’ she said.
I did. She hurled it at the wall.
‘I said plain yoghurt.’
‘Er…’
‘What did I say?’
‘Plain yoghurt.’
I went and got plain yoghurt. Two pots.
‘Oh, good. You’d have had to go back to get a second one.’
The Destroyer opened one pot and poured the contents over my head.
‘I want you to lick it all off yourself. Quickly. I’m busy today.’
Somewhat challenging, but not impossible. I set to.
‘Your back’s getting erect again.’
I snuck a look at Lightfoot, who was still expressionless. Henrietta never appeared when I was with the Destroyer. I couldn’t figure out why.
I licked the yoghurt off my left arm first starting from the shoulder, over my shirt, a bit bitter at the armpit from deodorant, the pit of my elbow, my forearm, my wrist, my palm, the back of my hand, the tips of the fingers, then the back of the hand, the palm, the wrist and on to the shoulder.
Contortions now, as I licked the tiny part of my chest that I found accessible. Breathing heavy now. I went foetal so I could get to my legs, but I was a chunky, five-seven guy, not a yoga instructor. I was muscular and I had generous belly fat. This was always a losing game.
‘Take off your clothes, wipe your body off, and lick.’
I did this.
I knelt in front of my clothes, a middle-aged puddle man with a puddle of yoghurt-soaked fabric. She reached into the pile and pulled out my belt.
She doubled it, shook her head, then pinched the end tip. She wrapped the strap around her palm, leaving the buckle and about a foot of free leather to dangle.
‘Turn.’
I did, backing her.
I heard in my mind Sam and Dave singing ‘Hold on I’m Comin’’. I remember that distinctly because it puzzled me. I hadn’t listened to it since 2003 when I bought their greatest hits CD from Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street.
When you’re flogged with a belt you don’t feel the strap for the buckle. I knew immediately that she’d broken my skin. The pain was searing to start with, and with subsequent stripes I felt alternating throbbing and heat.
Yeah, I cried out.
Yeah, I hated it.
What the fuck, man, how do people enjoy this? It fucking hurts.
And I was paying for this.
Worst thing was I couldn’t listen to Sam and Dave after this. Still can’t.
I have suffered for my art. Tell everybody.
The Destroyer was surprisingly tender afterwards. I lay across her lap as she treated my back. Good, gentle hands. She put strips over some of the cuts and stitched one because as fate would have it, she was a nurse. Or used to be before she got a higher calling.
‘So, anthropologist. What do you think?’ she asked.
‘Is it supposed to hurt?’
‘You have nerve endings. Yes, it’s supposed to hurt.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Why do people… get hurt? This is just pain. It’s not arousing at all.’
She didn’t speak, but her hand snaked down my front and squeezed my limp penis.
‘Are you here because of someone else?’ the Destroyer asked.
‘Yes.’
‘This person enjoys pain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know if it was sexual?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Masochism isn’t always sexual.’
Hmm. I had no idea if Francis Bacon got sexual gratification from his beatings.
The Destroyer warmed to her topic. ‘Freud said a masochist is just a sadist with guilt. Guilt at the idea of hurting or humiliating someone is too high a price to pay, so instead the masochist identifies with and becomes the object of pain and humiliation. No guilt. Everybody wins.’
I knew this already. I also knew that, as usual, Freud’s ideas on the matter were not universally accepted, nor did they have irrefutable proof. Some weeks earlier, I had tried to find Bacon in my psychotherapy and psychiatry textbooks and journals. I was surprised that the Destroyer knew so much, though. Perhaps I had underestimated her.
Her hand pumped up and down now.
‘I’m more of a Behaviourist Theory fan,’ she said. ‘You couple the non-sexual object, in this case pain, with repeated pleasurable sexual action.’
She… coupled.
The Destroyer was wrong about the behaviourists, though. Or at least, she wasn’t right enough. You can condition a response, sure, but to create a pathological masochist you also need problems with self-esteem and relationship-forming problems. Most masochists are not pathological.
I would have been predisposed to be a pathological sado-masochist because I had self-esteem issues and difficulties forming and maintaining relationships. We’ll come to why later.
But all of this was academic, even as I seemed to watch from a distance as Destroyer put a salve on my welts and wanked me over her knee. I wasn’t the masochist. Bacon was.
Reality wasn’t that easy to understand. I was the one with the torn back.
The guy bent over the Destroyer’s lap ejaculated violently and thrashed about like he was experiencing a seizure. His eyes rolled up like he was off on an out-of-body experience and his mouth opened showing all his teeth and a lolling tongue. A line of spit dropped to the floor.
Was he dead?
Hold on.
I’m coming.
9
Something happened to me, a thing related to being in pain most of the time.
The best way I can put it is, the rest of my life fell away, not all at once, but slowly, not enough to see day by day, but a pattern discernible after a month. Healing lashes are the worst, probably because delicate nerve endings and blood vessels are growing back. In that state any small movement can disrupt them or set them off. This is why it’s best to rest and be still when you have healing wounds. But I couldn’t admit to being wounded, and I had no official reason for bed rest.
Moving as slowly as possible became important. Avoiding jostling when in public, driving like a statue, and absolutely no running. I had to do all this hunched forward, slouched, because the Destroyer said I had to take this posture even between visits. My back muscles screamed out at this, but homo sapiens are so cool because we can get used to almost anything.
People around me started responding to my body language, even if they didn’t know it. They started to challenge me more, and while I wasn’t bullied, I was offered things that I would never have been offered had my posture been what it was before. Like the ECT rota.
Electro-Convulsive Therapy or ECT is one of the least understood and most effective treatments in psychiatry. Most people’s opinions on this derive from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
If I become mentally unwell, I’m having ECT. I’ve written it in my advance directive, though you can’t make the treating team give you a treatment; you can only tell them what you don’t want. You can suggest what you do want, though.
But none of the above is the point. The point is ECT is effectively administered by the anaesthetist who puts the recipient under and the specialist nurse who arranges it. Most areas have a supervising psychiatrist, however, and it is the most boring job you can imagine.
The last thing my mentor told me when I finished training was, ‘When you get a job they’re going to try to put you in charge of the ECT rota. They will dress this up like it’s some kind of honour, and you, being such a new specialist, will think it’s great to be offered. It isn’t. Do not accept it.’
And I found this to be correct. The role is mostly administrative. Who does what and why. Filling out repetitive, boring and at times contradictory forms. And there are many forms. These forms are for safety in some ways, but in other ways they reflect dramatic fear of what the voting public do not understand, fear stoked by movies and TV shows. ECT is as safe as a tooth extraction, but you have to jump through dozens more hoops than dentists do to yank out your premolars.
I had already refused years earlier, so I was surprised when it came back to me. ‘You know who should do the ECT rota? Tade.’
I resisted, but found it interesting that they would ask.
Normally, I would have mounted a robust verbal defence, but this time I just said, ‘No.’
It stopped mattering. All things acquired a blurry margin instead of a sharp edge. Only the pain in my back was sharply defined. Destroyer wasn’t a fan of painkillers, so I couldn’t do pills. I was allowed analgesia if it stopped me from sleeping.
Elise had been talking for some time before I even registered her presence. That is how blurry life was.
‘Sorry, what?’ I asked.
‘I said it’s going to be an odd number since Jess broke up with Mark, but we can make it work.’
‘Make what work?’
‘The dinner.’
‘What dinner?’
‘What dinner? We’ve been talking about this for weeks.’
She had been talking for weeks. My mind was elsewhere.
‘When is it?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Where?’
Elise’s mouth dropped open. ‘Here! We’re the hosts, dummkopf!’
‘Right, right. I knew that.’
I did not know that.
I also did not want strangers in my house. Well, not strangers. We had known these people for a minimum of ten years. No, I wasn’t in the mood for visitors, but most importantly, it was my day to see the Destroyer. I didn’t know if she would give me permission to miss the appointment. I didn’t like to call her because she didn’t like to be disturbed.
I jumped, because Lightfoot rushed towards me and stopped a few inches from me.
She screamed.
A kind of scream at any rate. Her mouth opened as wide as it could go and she seemed to be shouting, though no sound came out. She took breaths and yelled some more.
‘Tade?’ said Elise. Concern on her face. Heartbreaking. ‘I’m calling the doctor.’
All I could think of was the dinner party was off. Inside, I was jubilant.
I should not have been.
The dinner was indeed cancelled, but our friends still turned up out of concern. I didn’t talk to them, decided I was stressed, which is what the doctor said before she increased the dose of my fluoxetine. I stayed in the bedroom, lying on my side and listening to the muffled voices from the living room. Lightfoot kept moving back and forth, sometimes quiet, sometimes screaming. I had thought her a kind of harmless hallucination before then, but I started to wonder if she wasn’t dangerous in some way. Could she harm me? Would she harm me? To shut her out I had to close my eyes, but with my eyelids down, Henrietta appeared and… the usual endpoint.
I found myself needing the edge that pain brought. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I drew blood. But I felt better, less foggy, able to think in the moment. It gave me the courage to call the Destroyer.
She was not pleased. ‘I was looking forward to this evening.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I do not want apologies. There will be correction. Loving correction.’
Later, Elise and I sat at the dining table, me eating the chicken soup she made for me, her pretending to eat a salad, but really just watching me. We had the opposite of the electricity you see between new lovers. We had mildew, rising damp, flaccidity.
Lightfoot darted forward suddenly, and I jumped, the chair making a sickening screech against the floor.
‘What’s wrong with you tonight? You’re even jumpier than usual. I mean your new usual, of course,’ said Elise.
‘I’m… work is a bit difficult.’ This was true. Work was challenging since I’d returned from sick leave, but that had nothing to do with my nerves. My thoughts were consumed with trying to get to Destroyer that night.
‘You should take one of the pills,’ said Elise. ‘The ones you’re supposed to take when you’re feeling too anxious.’
I didn’t like those. They made my thinking cloudy the next day. The irony of the clouds being present before the pills. Heh.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said.
I walked to the end of the street through pools of street light. Soon as I turned a corner, I summoned a taxi and I found myself at Destroyer’s house within half an hour.
‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ she said.
‘No, but—’
‘Be quiet. Let me think of what to do with you.’
I heard a voice in the background.
‘Come up,’ said Destroyer.
Inside, there were discarded clothes on the floor, not hers.
‘Go to the kitchen, get me a glass of water, and bring it to the bedroom.’
I did.
In the room she was with a naked hirsute man with long blond hair and a beard that had seen more product than I had ever used in my entire life. She draped herself all over him. I took the water to her, but she indicated that it was for him.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘So, what’s your story?’
‘Don’t talk to the help,’ said Destroyer. ‘He’s a doctor.’
‘Truly? I didn’t know you still did house calls,’ he said.
‘We never stopped,’ I said. ‘We call them domiciliary visits now.’
‘Did I say you could talk?’ asked Destroyer. ‘Go to the corner. I’ll call you if I need you.’
I watched blond guy plough into her and I heard her entreaties to him, encouraging him, begging him, forgiving him. Lightfoot watched me from the opposite end of the room.
Strictly speaking this was not in our contract.
Study for a portrait of the Destroyer.
She was thirty-one years old. She would say she was not from Manchester, by which she meant she was from a place called Hadfield.
