Episode 5: Pests; from Individuals, Eccentrics, Weirdos, Monsters, Pests, Creeps, and Alfreds.

[...continued]

These three know the rules of how to politely escape from me.

There is a danger I’m becoming…

A Pest

I like creative people. I’m living vicariously, you see. I need to - because I’ve entirely squandered my intellect, talent, hard work, and energy on gaining unnecessary qualifications and leaving illegible scribbles on a broken chalkboard. (1)

As Caliban is drawn to celestial liquor (2), I can’t help being drawn to Ariels.

I spot someone.

She’s a soon-to-be-Goth-legend who once left a nuclear Insta photo of ‘Hey look at this “Goth-and-friendly-dog combo”’.

When I first saw the pictures they fast-tracked me into the Def Con 1 of happiness. They made me so happy I burst out crying. I bawled. Garden sprinkler!

Now, in the midst of those tears – I had a great idea – I left an Insta comment saying that the photos made me so happy ‘I “burst smilingly” into tears’ (3). Considering this is one of the greatest lines in Shakespeare, and one of the best moments in the history of world literature, I viewed it as a compliment.

A few weeks later, I realised that this might have actually looked at bit weird.

Cut forward a few weeks later to The Slimelight Four Floor Frenzy:

She’s there. Oh shit, she’s real! She’s a real person. Holy shit! She appears to be in the UK. She appears to be in London. She appears to be at one of my favourite clubs.

Oh God, I’m so embarrassed.

So, after the FFFrenzy, I immediately alert my previous partner and dearest of friends about it, Emmeline May, or Rockstardinosaurpirateprincess as they are known within the palaeontology community. Now, as Goth-loves-dog people go, Emmeline is unsurpassable (4), so I’m expecting a very sympathetic response to my current predicament.

‘Shit. What the fuck do I do? What happens if I bump into her again? She’s gonna think I’m a total weirdo!’

‘Aw!’

‘Should I say sorry for leaving the comment? It might have unsettled her. You know, she might have taken it the wrong way. Oh, I’m so hopeless, Em, I’m so helpless! What do I do?’

‘Oooh, don’t worry. She probably hasn’t even seen it. I wouldn’t say anything.’

But look, here she is again. At Wraith. I’m faced with the same dilemma in a concrete space-time-continuum. The dilemma is intensified by the fact that this woman is a Goth vanguard.

I wonder if she’s Dutch?

Goth Van Guard.

Maybe she’s German, or French, or both?

Goth Ave Von Guard.

Ooh, dear. (5)

Anyway, whether she’s French or German or Dutch, she’s way ahead of the Goth game culturally. Quite frankly, the cultural history of her hairdos shame the whole backcatalogue of B Movies by The Hammer House of Horror. This evening, lime green-and-violet electric-shock hair.

Now, being a self-reflective type, I’ve quickly learned my lessons from earlier this evening: I didn’t apologise to Iris’s pal number one for almost knocking her over at Slimes. I should have explained, clearly, that I’m haunted by Edgar Allan Poe’s oval portrait. Just because something is difficult to explain, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. So, this time, be honourable. Be open and honest. Add a dash of gentilesse and all shall be fine (6).

I’ll admit it all!

Get it all out there, you know, - and everything will go swimmingly. You know, clear the air!

In fact, I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the need to apologise to her!

Confess, my boy, confess!

Well, when I bound towards her at great velocity, doing my best imitation of a friendly dog, she looks, quite frankly, petrified.

The last time I’ve ever seen a woman look so panic-stricken was when my mum bade me a traumatised farewell on my departure for boarding school. The thing is, my mum was lucky because I was unexpectedly reunited with her shortly afterwards, owing to my suspension from school for unprecedented crimes and misdemeanours by an unreceptive and unwavering headmaster.

Oh Tantalus! (7)

Anyway, back to this confession.

I decide to reveal the whole shebang.

The whole shebang.

Whole.

Turns out she didn’t see my post, after all.

So I’ve now revealed, totally unnecessarily, that photos of Goth-plus-friendly-dog combos of complete strangers make me really happy, that I also burst out crying when I’m really happy, that I leave inappropriate evidence of these things on Instagram - expressed in Shakespearean allusions, and that I’m so sorry about the whole damned muddle.

I think this might be called ‘losing face’.

I think Emmeline might have been right.

But, when the forces of antagonism are about to overwhelm you, and particularly if you’ve brought them upon yourself, there’s only one thing to do. Wait for a brief interlude and then go in for the good-old repair job! (8)

Go for a friendly chat.

Perhaps in your second conversation she might not think you’re a monster or a weirdo?

I’ve got it. How about – ‘Hey, hey, hey, is your Insta handle an oblique reference to the Jungian concept of individuation?’ No, too pompous. Ok, hmm. Hang on - instead of going for the self-related comment like ‘I cry when I see…’, I’ll go for the whole other-related-comment. (9) Yes, that’s it:

‘You’ve got amazing hair!’ (10)

‘Oh, thanks.’

Now, as you see, Goth Van Guard is strictly an adjacency pair completer. She’s not an adjacency pair initiator (11). She’s polite. You say something and she responds. She responds politely. Can’t fault that.

But that’s as far as it goes.

Hold on, maybe she’s just shy? You know, like I used to be in the noughties.

I know, let’s go for the other-other-over-there-related comment about how much I’m enjoying Rachel’s set!

‘Yes, Rachel’s got a great vinyl collection.’

I don’t think she’s in the mood for a conversation.

I think she needs to be left alone.

I think she must be left alone to have a good time, and one that doesn’t feature my despondent face in it,burbling.

I’ve turned into a conversational pest! Oooh dear.

I’m now quickly earning the reputation of a man who keeps on starting unwanted adjacency pairs.

What’s worse, I’ve been thoughtless enough not to give her the chance to recover from the trauma of seeing me earlier, bounding towards her like an abandoned dog attempting to locate a new owner, – wearing a fucked-up latex face-mask that looks as though Salvador Dali has visually adapted Alice in Wonderland on a particularly bad day (12).

With that kinda look, anybody might think I’m…

A Creep

The last thing I wanted to do was contribute to a person not enjoying their evening. That’s just shit.

Maybe this is a retribution narrative? An historical one. You know, like the denouement of Richard the Turd…

I’m creeping around like good old Richie!

[to be continued, rhizomatically]

The Entirely Unnecessary Footnotes.

A Pest: Footnotes

1) Actually, I very much like what I do but I also like an ironic hyperbole for the pure pleasure of a rhetorical flourish. [Return]

2) The Tempest, 2.2.99, 2nd ed., ed. David Lindley, (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2013). [Return]

3) King Lear, 5.3.195-198, ed. R.A. Foakes, (Bloomsbury: London, 1997). One of the most moving and beautiful moments when Edgar reports of how his father responded when Edgar finally revealed his identity to him:

But his flawed heart,

Alack, too weak the conflict to support,

Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,

Burst smilingly.

[Return]

4) When, walking side-by-side down the street, I would often mislocate Emmeline, only to rediscover them approximately 20 metres behind me, bidding ‘Hello!’ to a newly found dog. With my interminable daydreaming and their instinctive 360 degree-dog-scanning-system, I’m surprised we ever managed to arrive at any agreed destination. A forthcoming confession is planned: ‘On How Not to Walk the Streets of London with Your Beloved Partner’. [Return]

5) Ave Von Guard = avant-garde: I apologise to my very few readers for this tortuous pun, or ‘oronym’. [For oronyms like ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me’, see Blog 1 footnote 3]. It is a rather forced gag, I admit. Actually I quite like the idea of forcing a gag, if anyone wants to do that to me? Subjecting you to my interminable rambles, I probably well-deserved to be gagged. Anyway, as this is a confession narrative and, in a very roundabout way, I might be asking for forgiveness, so I make this special plea: Forgive Me. [Return]

6) I’ve opted for ‘gentilesse’ to give it that medieval flourish as befitting the Troubadours of the Court of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Chaucer wrote a poem ‘Gentilesse’, arguing that middle-class fellows, like himself, could also be ‘gentil’. Mind you, at the rate I’m going, I’m more like a character in a Chaucerian fabliau. [Return]

7) Poor old Tantalus, eh? I like to tantalise, - probably because I find that life consistently and unendurably tantalises me. Maybe I’m dead? Maybe I’m in Hades? Maybe I’m actually Tantalus. Wouldn’t surprise me! [Return]

8) I really must tell you the story about my Mini Metro, ‘Bomber Harris’, which, surprisingly enough, couldn’t be repaired. Such a state of affairs did not elude the notice of WPC Harland, from whom I received a more-than-firm caution, as it happens, in full view of a variety of laughing faces looking out the windows of my place of employment.

… I often daydream about WPC Harland. [Return]

9) The most common ways to open a conversation after the initial salutation exchange is by either making a self-related comment or an other-related comment as the initiating move in the second conversational adjacency pair. See footnote 11, and eds. J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1984), and Malcolm Coulthard, 2nd ed., An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (Longman: Harlow, 1985); Anna Brita Stenström’s An Introduction to Spoken Interaction (Longman: Harlow, 1994), is also very helpful. [Return]

10) I just lied. I complimented her make-up skills, which are Def Con 1 stunning. Poetic licence, as well as the three philosophical theories of truth – correspondence, coherence, and pragmatics, allows me to substitute this for the purposes of aesthetic effect. Don’t lure me into a discussion about what linguistic games allow me to do. [Return]

11) In the field of Conversation Analysis, an adjacency pair is defined as the minimal unit of interaction between two speakers. The two parts must be produced by different speakers and the turns are not only adjacent but must occur in sequence and belong to recognisable pairs e.g. salutation-salutation, question-answer, request-response, invitation-response etc. the second part might have a preferred or dispreferred option e.g. if you make a request you usually wish it to be granted (although there are some exceptions). The first part of the adjacency pair is known as the initiating move and the second part the response. A wonderful field of sociolinguistic study, this was pioneered in America and, soon after, by the Birmingham School at Birmingham University. See the ground-breaking essays in eds. J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1984), and Malcolm Coulthard, 2nd ed., An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (Longman: Harlow, 1985). [Return]

12) I must thank my pal, Gat S----m, for this hybrid of Dali and Carroll, although I feel I’ve made improvements. My gift to you, chum. Gat, by the way, replaced me as bass guitarist in the Screaming Brides, my Goth band at boarding school, that never got to play a live gig until I left, owing to my pattern of serial bad behaviour and subsequent suspensions. More on that in a confession I’m writing at the request of Miss Fortune: ‘Double Vision: Or; On How Not to Stage a Gothic Rock Concert’. [Return]