Part 5

I got in my car and after a few failed attempts, I managed to get it started. I clipped my seatbelt in and I drove off. After a few minutes, I found myself on the A3 heading towards London, a vague plan to go and see my wife, and possibly my son if he was still living at home, having hatched in my mind, as if the plan were a chick and my mind an egg, I thought, a preposterous simile that evidenced my woeful lack of talent as a writer, a lack I was all too painfully aware of and hardly needed reminding about, but it was too late, I had reminded myself, I thought, and therefore I had no choice but to acknowledge (yet again) that I was a talentless writer, a writer who stood precisely zero chance of ever being published and therefore did not even deserve to be called a writer. I drove very fast in the fast lane for a while, all the while frenziedly tooting at the vehicles in front of me to get out of my way, even though I was in no rush and only had a vague plan to go to London, a half-baked idea about visiting my wife and my son if he happened to still be living at home, I nonetheless drove like a man possessed, as they say, as if there were an urgent need to get to where I was going as quickly as possible, which there clearly wasn’t, I didn’t even know whether I wanted to go where I vaguely thought I was going. Get the fuck out of my way! I screamed repeatedly as I maniacally tooted my horn at the vehicles in front of me, all of which did move out of my way, some immediately, others holding on for a while before finally relenting and pulling into the middle lane to allow me to pass. As I passed them, the drivers of these vehicles scowled at me, shook their heads in disdain, not that I gave a fuck. I don’t give a fuck! I shouted at these drivers as I whizzed past them, some of whom I showed the middle finger to as well for good measure. I felt exhilarated is the truth of the matter. It had been far too long since this side of my personality had had a chance to express itself, a side that I ordinarily kept shackled to a dungeon wall inside my mind, but which now I had evidently decided to unshackle, or not decided as such, since one doesn’t decide to do anything, not really, what with free will being an illusion and all, but all the same this side of my personality had been let loose, as it were, to run amok, something that was immensely pleasurable yet also dangerous if left unchecked, as I knew to my great cost, which was why I ordinarily kept this side of my personality under lock and key, hence why after twenty minutes or so of giving this side of my personality free rein, I came to my senses and pulled over into the slow lane, from which point onwards I drove at a sedate pace, so sedate that I was overtaken countless times, the drivers of the overtaking vehicles scowling at me as they passed, some shaking their heads disdainfully, which was fair enough, I thought, there being nothing more annoying than having to drive behind someone driving as slowly as I was driving. I pulled over at the next services and parked up next to the coffee shop, the brashness of which disgusted me. Did I want a coffee badly enough to have to enter this premises? I couldn’t be sure. Even as I got out of the car and made my way into the neon cesspit, I still couldn’t be sure, even after I started queuing at the counter of the meretricious coffee shop, a coffee shop that was almost certainly a franchise business, access to the intellectual property of which I had no doubt the vampire bat of a franchisor exchanged for the blood of the franchisee, even as I stared intently up at the board and scrutinised all of the ridiculous-sounding options for coffee, I still had no clue whether I would in fact go through with the act of ordering one, even as I was ordering my skinny latte grande or whatever the hell it was called from the blue-haired girl with mutilated earlobes, I was still thinking about how I could, if I wanted, simply turn on my heels and hotfoot it out of this execrable establishment without paying, I even saw myself in my mind’s eye doing just that, but I didn’t do that, instead I paid for my coffee without a murmur and went back to my car to drink it and eat my muffin, if not in peace then in quiet detachment, which is as close as I could realistically get to peace, an elusive state of being that I had long since given up trying to attain for the simple reason that it was, I thought, completely unattainable. I pushed the last of the muffin into my mouth, chewed it, swigged some coffee, swallowed. That’s better, I either thought or said out loud to myself. But was it, I wondered, was it really? I started the car and reversed out of my space in a hurried motion that I could see the driver of the car parked next to me found excessive. I drove back into the space and wound my window down. Hey, I said, is there an issue? What? I saw the driver mouthing. I mouthed back with exaggerated lip movements. Is. There. An. Issue. I capped the words off with a gesticulatory gesture that I felt added a question mark to them. The driver of the car – a bespectacled guy, buck teeth, reedy physique, almost certainly a white-collar worker – shook his head, waved his hands to signify that no, there was no issue, not as far as he was concerned. Good, I mouthed. I promptly reversed out of the space, even faster this time than the last, and then I lurched forwards and made my way back onto the A3, but after a few minutes I realised I didn’t want to go to London to see my wife, possibly my son. What would I say to them after all? Sorry I fucked off and left you to fend for yourselves, I’d like to make it up to you if I may. No, that was ridiculous, patently so, a man could not simply waltz back into the lives of his so-called loved ones, having been absent for however many years, probably four, although I couldn’t be sure, just as I couldn’t be sure of various other things that were of importance in my life, not that it mattered, I was all too aware that nothing ever mattered. The cosmos is utterly indifferent to us, I thought, has never had one iota of interest in the things we deem to be of so-called importance, things that in reality are of no importance whatsoever, even though they seem very much like they are, they aren’t; things we take to be important are simply simulacra of things that are important, importance itself, I thought, is a concept that is rooted in, fatally compromised by, reducible to a simulacrum, a simulacrum of what I had no idea, but I did know that it wasn’t what it purported to be. It was obvious that importance as a concept was predicated on a lie, the inverse of which was the truth that nothing mattered, an ugly truth for some people, but for me a salutary truth since it liberated me from having to worry about anything, even though I continued to worry about everything, nonetheless I still knew that on a theoretical level I didn’t need to, which wasn’t as good as not worrying, but perhaps the next best thing. I had driven a few more miles along the A3 when I made the irrevocable decision to turn around and head back in the direction from whence I had come, I could see my wife and possibly my son some other time, I told myself, right now I needed to do something else, something completely different, hence why I decided not to pull off at Hindhead and to continue on the A3, which delivered me to Portsmouth, a city I had been warned by other people to steer clear of, I thought, although I couldn’t remember who had warned me, nonetheless I was sure they had, something I only now remembered as I drove the streets feeling completely unsafe and utterly perturbed by the menacing quality that seemed to characterise the people I saw hanging around on street corners, all the same I was determined to find a place to stay, had been determined ever since I turned the car around on the A3 and started driving away from London and towards Portsmouth, I had had it in my head to stay somewhere in Portsmouth, a city I now fully remembered being warned against visiting at all costs, but yet here I was visiting it anyway, throwing caution to the wind, as they say, going against the grain of no doubt sensible advice administered by no doubt sensible people who wanted nothing more than to ensure my safety, who also perhaps had, I thought, a vendetta against Portsmouth, hence why, in all likelihood, I was ignoring their advice, which now I came to think about it had been completely partial, prejudiced, biased, loaded etc, like all advice that had ever been dished out to me, particularly Ludwig’s advice, which he had been compelled to give me just as he had been compelled to make his notes, his mind forever needing to discharge its energy towards an object, even though that object, every object, had been inside his mind, just as every object was inside mine; we are all, I thought, nothing but minds, trapped inside of ourselves with everything our minds think is outside of our minds, hence we do not, I thought, feel trapped inside our minds, on the contrary we feel as if we are excluded from everything that we believe is outside of our minds, which is both ironic and tragic, I thought, but in the final analysis perhaps better than realising, knowing with certitude etc that we are in fact locked inside our minds with the objects that we delusorily believe are outside of our minds, with objects that are in fact not so much objects as figments of mentation. I felt dizzy all of a sudden, so I pulled over outside a parade of fast-food joints (disgusting Americanism: slap to face) and got out of the car. A hoodlum was loitering on the other side of the road, hoodie up, cadaverous, drug-ravaged visage just about visible; he’s no doubt harbouring some sort of ill intent or nefarious purpose, I thought, as I hastened towards the kebab shop, inside which a man with an excessively hirsute face, a werewolf basically, was skewering away at a slowly rotating hunk of doner meat. Yes? he said, as soon as I stepped over the threshold. I didn’t answer, instead I looked up at the garishly lit menu board, which I felt made it clear enough that I needed time to see what options were available and then make a selection from those options, but almost immediately the hairy beast said yes again, yes with a question mark peremptorily appended to it, implying, I thought, strongly implying, that he wanted me to state my choice now, which I felt was unfair, ridiculous in the extreme in point of fact, but, then again, in reality I did know what I wanted, had always known from the moment I had decided to enter the establishment, being the kind of person who always orders the same thing whenever he finds himself in a kebab shop, that thing being a lamb doner with all the salad, bar the chilli pepper, and a side order of chips, naturally, which is precisely what I ordered, hesitating only for a moment to debate with myself whether in the end I wanted a rum baba, sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t, on this occasion, I thought, I did, so I ordered that as well and the gorilla motioned for me to go and sit myself down on one of the plastic chairs, which was every bit as uncomfortable as it looked and immediately brought to my mind the issue of my piles, an issue that had not been so prominent in my mind of late, not having had a flare up for a while now, but sitting down on a hard plastic chair reminded me of the issue, which had been very bad on multiple occasions, but was now, fortunately, in abeyance, although it almost certainly would resurface at some point, probably in the not too distant future since I was long overdue a resurfacing of the issue, an issue that to this day I had never discussed with anyone, not even a so-called professional, neither had anyone ever disclosed to me that they had piles, it being, I thought, thoroughly distasteful to discuss matters of the anus or the sphincter, probably because of a fear of the scatological or more likely a fear of being seen to be interested in the scatological, which was beyond the pale, as they say, one step removed from coprophagia, which for all I knew was a widespread practice, although I suspected it wasn’t, I nonetheless had no way of knowing it wasn’t, just as I had no way of knowing how many people harboured other unsavoury desires, by which I mean deviant sexual ones naturally, though I suspected a great many people did harbour such desires, having a very bleak, some might say cynical, view of human nature, a thoroughgoingly pessimistic view in fact, which was innate to my character just as it had been innate to Schopenhauer’s and Hobbes’s and the characters of various other doom-mongers over the course of history, which to my mind was not only a dispositional phenomenon but also the only reasonable position to adopt when confronted with the obvious tawdriness of human existence, whether or not people harboured secrets about their darkest, basest, vilest desires, it was nonetheless obvious from what human beings were happy to disclose to each other and from the behaviours exhibited in their day-to-day dealings with each other that only but the dimmest view could reasonably be taken about the species in general, only a fool or compulsive liar could believe otherwise, could or would be happy to profess to have a optimistic view of human nature, only the most dishonest and deluded of people, I thought, had the gall to portray humans as special beings, higher level organisms. I took out my phone and scanned my newsfeed, something, I reflected, I had been in the habit of compulsively doing, but which recently, ever since quitting my job in order to move in to the house in Hindhead, ostensibly to review Ludwig’s notes but in reality to fuck Elda up the arse, had stopped doing, not entirely stopped, no that would be crazy, but compulsively doing every few minutes without fail, regardless of whatever else I happened to be doing. As usual there was nothing of any interest on my newsfeed, the government, I noted, was up to its old tricks again, the economy was apparently sclerotic, moribund, dysfunctional etc, the climate was going to hell in a handcart, technology was tightening its chokehold on so-called civilisation, the people on the right were busy propagating insane ideologies, just as the people on the left were busy inveighing against those ideologies. The same old thoroughly depressing nonsense in other words. I shut my newsfeed, put my phone back in my trouser pocket and then pulled my phone immediately out again. I opened a so-called ebook, read a few paragraphs of utter claptrap, shut the book, opened another, read a bit of that, felt a nauseous twinge after a few pages, shut that book. I opened a so-called web-browser and typed this question into the AI search engine: can you tell me what the point of it all is? The response was predictable, I felt. The point of it all is unknown and, some people believe, unknowable. Nonetheless many people have posited theories that purport to explain the point of it all. Generally, these theories are unscientific and easily debunked. For now, the best I can say is that the point of it all may be elicited one day, but I am personally not hopeful. Life can, however, be lived quite satisfactorily without finding an answer to this question. And so it went on. Yadda etc. Twaddle of the highest order, I thought, fucking AI bollocks, I thought. I could feel myself beginning to fulminate, hence I put the phone back in my trouser pocket and stood up. Not ready, said the unshaven brute immediately, who was scowling at me balefully, I suppose because of what he deemed to be my impatience. Rather than explain to the man that my standing up had nothing to do with me wanting him to get a move on with my order, which maybe subconsciously it did, it couldn’t be ruled out anyway, I sat down, pulled my phone out, checked my emails, nothing of any interest, an email from my brother that seemed to be asking me in a roundabout way for something without actually specifying what exactly, thankfully enough, although I knew he certainly would, when the time was propitious for him to do so, he always unfailingly specified what he wanted from me with tremendous exactitude, but he always took his time doing so, it was a foible of his, perhaps borne of apprehension of what I might think if he just came out with his ask rather than filling up an email with finagling pleasantries, vague hints of what was in the offing, which was ludicrous of course, but then my whole family was ludicrous, my mother, my stepfather, my brother, my sister, each of us in our own way was ludicrous, a euphemism for crazy, of course, all of us being as certifiable as it was possible to be without actually having been formally certified, which, as everyone knows, the so-called mental health practitioners are notoriously reluctant to do, not because they are concerned about the impact of a certification on a mentally unwell person, about the potential for the stigma and shock of being certified (confirmed as crazy in other words) to exacerbate an already precarious situation, but because they are concerned not to clog up the lunatic asylums, which are already full to the brim with people who have somehow or other wound up being certified, probably because they are psychotically unwell, there being a difference between being psychotic and having a so-called nervous disorder, the latter not being taken seriously by mental health practitioners, who invariably assume that people claiming to have a nervous disorder are either malingerers or time-wasters, a view my uncle, the consultant uncle, I reflected, also espoused, very much believed in etc, being a typical right-wing businessperson with zero empathy, even though he himself was the most obviously afflicted by the nervous disorder that seemed to have afflicted so many family members, and which I had no doubt would go on afflicting them for their entire lives. Looking over, I descried that my kebab man was wrapping my kebab, so I put my phone away, stood up and walked over to the counter and watched as my kebab man finished wrapping my kebab, a process that seemed to take far longer than seemed reasonable, but which finally came to an end, only for another process to begin, that process being the preparation of my chips, which involved their removal from the fryer, their being placed in a polystyrene box and sprinkled liberally with salt, even though the kebab man had not asked me if I wanted salt on my chips he nonetheless put salt on them, something that I felt was presumptuous, but which in fact I was totally fine with because I did want salt on my chips, always had salt on my chips, couldn’t think of anything less appetising than having unsalted chips etc; then the chips, kebab and finally the rum baba were placed in a plastic bag that the kebab man tied with a knot and at this point the kebab man communicated the price I would need to pay to secure my takeaway, which was not an unreasonable price, far from it in fact, so I took my wallet out of my jacket and a note out of my wallet and handed it to the kebab man who at the same time handed me my bag of food, releasing it to my grip at precisely the exact same time as I released the note into his. I immediately hotfooted it out of there and got back into my car and drove off. I didn’t know where I was going, but it didn’t matter, nothing ever mattered, including knowing where I was going in Portsmouth, hence why I drove around aimlessly until I finally pulled over by an industrial estate, across the road from the security hut at the entrance, which is where I ate my food, not including the rum baba, which I didn’t like the look of, and bedded down for the night, figuring that the sentinel I could see sitting in the security hut would deter any criminals from committing a brazen criminal act against my person, although in reality he was unlikely to lift a finger to help me if I were attacked, for example by a group of feral kids, or by a crazed lone wolf terrorist, or by a drug addict looking for cash to fund the next hit and so forth, I thought, more than likely he would turn a blind eye, it not being in his interests to meddle in a situation that was no business of his and which could only redound onto him in a potentially violent escalation if he did meddle in it, a violent escalation that he was almost certainly ill-equipped to deal with and for which he was likely not paid enough to deal with, hence why he would leave me to be beaten to a pulp by my crazed assailant or assailants, I realised, so I drove off in search of somewhere safer, but there was nowhere safer, of course, this being Portsmouth I was driving around in; so I had no choice, as I saw it, but to leave Portsmouth, which I did forthwith, soon finding myself on the M27 heading in the direction of Southampton, though I didn’t get as far as Southampton, since I pulled over at the first services I came to, which is where I spent the night, sleeping very little if at all, it being far too cold for me to be able to sleep, which is something I invariably didn’t get a lot of under the best of circumstances, having been an incurable insomniac from the age of thirteen or fourteen, having not had a proper night’s sleep in thirty years, I was hardly likely to have one sleeping in my car on a gelid night. As soon as dawn started to make itself apparent, I went into the services and bought myself a vaping device, which I lost no time in puffing on and then I drove to Hindhead. Back in Ludwig’s wing, I felt a palpable sense of relief come over me. What had I been thinking? I thought. This is where I needed to be, safely ensconced etc. I sat in the armchair in the hallway and sucked on my vape device as my mind yo-yoed from one thought to another, the one thought being that I needed to get out of this house as soon as possible, the other being that I had to stay put. Every time I convinced myself I had to leave, I made as if to get up off the armchair, but then the other thought would supervene on my consciousness, namely that it would be best if I stayed exactly where I was, and I would recline back into the armchair, only to immediately begin to doubt whether staying here was such a good idea after all, which was the prelude to believing I needed to leave the house that very instant, and so it went on for quite some time, until, that is, I found myself being overcome by what was in fact the dominant thought, namely that I needed to leave the house immediately, no ifs and buts.