Eps 10-12 The Strange Case of Seeking Miss. J. Hyde

Episode 10

‘Let’s pull you apart and then put you back together again.’

A few days pass. A few weeks.

A few dreams, desires, hopes, malinger. (1)

With the passage of time, the Disney-soundtrack-trauma fades.

Let’s face it, Miss J. Hyde was terribly good fun.

I know, I’ll look at her website.

Just a peek.

Just a glance.

A peek, a glimpse, a glance, a peep.

Another glimpse.

Another peep.

An eyeball!

I’m hooked!

And then I read:

‘Let’s pull you apart and then put you back together again.’

Now I’m excited.

Holy fuck!

She gets it! She gets it!

I’ll have to chat to Emmeline about that unendurable monologue I inflicted upon them a few months ago when I was discussing (primarily with myself) how a specific rites of passage involving the fragmentation of identity, disembodiment through suspension, and ritualised reassemblage, would really get me off!

Miss J Hyde gets it. She gets the whole liminality and surrealist bricolage of splintered identity thing!

She puts it more simply.

She puts it less foolishly.

‘Let’s pull you apart and then put you back together again.’

She better be into Situationism – otherwise I shall have to have words. (2)

Or more words.

So, like Dr Faustus, I’m going to be dismembered and dispensed to hell, and by the courtesy of Miss J. Hyde, I’ll be retrieved from the infernal regions, reanimated and resurrected! (3)

She’ll benignly stitch my limbs back together and send me on my mirthful joyous way.

Oh, what a divine caper!

Sounds like a damned good deal, if you ask me!

Where do I sign?

Episode 11

Wired For Sound(1)

I can picture the scene now:

Me, enfettered upon a rotating St Andrew’s Cross, au naturelle (and forced to wear the most humiliating thing imaginable this side of whoreson Christendom - a Cliff Richard face-mask), turned upside down, and being subjected to Walt Disney soundtracks at high volume; Miss Hyde, laughing like Vincent Price or Inspector Dreyfus at my woebegone suffering. (2)

The whole set-up is a bit like one of those torture scenes in war movies located in the Middle East where captives, over-seen by another red-haired Jessica, are played heavy metal intermittently over a number of days. (3)

Maybe Jessica Chastain’s Miss J. Hyde’s inspiration, after all, - not Jessica Rabbit?

Mind you, the boobs tell a different story.

But whether Jessica’s inspiration is Jessica or Jessica, my imagined death-by-Disney debacle is far worse than what American troops can inflict illegally.

Worse than waterboarding.

Hold on, hold on.

The scene’s incomplete: there’s no dilemma! There’s just pure torture!

There has to be a dilemma.

There has to be choice which isn’t a choice.

That’s the whole point…

It’s the existential anxiety which, crucially, drives me from mere male fantasy towards a welcoming crisis of identity.

It’s that which fuels the erotic!

At least for me.

I need crisis. I need dissolution.

Dissolute wretch!

Ok, think, think…

Add an electrical gadget, of some kind!

Maybe an Oral B toothbrush?

A Technics SL-1210 Mk II?

An Iron Ether Nimbus Bass Guitar Reverb Pedal?

Maybe a microphone?

That’s it! Got it.

We’re back to aural torture.

Great. We’re back on track.

Miss Jessica Hyde could pressure me into making a choice between:

a) listening to Walt Disney soundtracks over a whole night (wearing a Cliff Richard face-mask), enfettered on a rotating St. Andrew’s Cross

or (in a short but sweet alternative)

b) giving me a microphone to use in some bizarre karaoke act – and compel me to sing along to the schmaltziest Walt Disney theme tunes of all time, - electrifying my genitals if I sing out of tune, out of time, or without the required amount of camp-gusto required for such schmaltz!

This musical torture is going to be like the end of Mars Attacks without the explosive resolution. (4)

I wonder if Jessica has a tannoy?

A tannoy for Portnoy? (5)

I think this could be exciting.

Exciting for me.

…

Actually, they say that many Pro-Dommes have seen it all before.

I’d imagine Miss Jessica Hyde’s been through this scenario numerous times.

Probably a common request.

Very common.

She’s probably bored and tired of it.

Probably roll-yer-eyes sick of it!

Here I was - thinking I was unique.

Here I was – thinking I was her perfect victim!

I just got carried away with a psychodramatic scenario, and all that my (usually reliable) over-active imagination came up with was a sexual scene so unoriginal, so common, so mediocre, so unadventurous, so bland – you can be assured everybody else has already done it!

I’ve made a wildly foolish assumption that my desires are somehow idiosyncratic and I’ve ended up right where I started.

My selling point of imaginative creativity has gone right out the window!

I’m no good at self-promotion.

You should see the pressure I’m under from my fans. Take a look at my Insta, for example. I was particularly overwhelmed one morning when I saw that the number of my followers had shot up suddenly overnight from 130 to 129!

Oh, I’m such a fool!

Such a dunce!

A dolt, a dope, a donkey!

No wonder why Miss J. Hyde doesn’t suffer fools!

I’m beginning to empathise.

This whole thing's a non-starter.

I’ll be bound, I’m back in the same double-bind!

…

Whichever way, and whatever I do, I’ll always be in a snag.

…

Yet it is sad that Miss J. Hyde’s foolish enough not to see how the company of fools can be heart-warming!

Cheery.

Uplifting.

Rewarding.

Fulfilling.

Inventive.

Creative.

Meaningful.

Witty.

Wise.

…

Episode 12

‘We Three’: The Return

Well, if Miss Jessica Hyde has read this, bothering to read to the pointless end, at least my mission is complete.

At least she has suffered one fool.

Gladly.

‘We Three’: Slight Return

And I, which was two fools, do soon grow three;

Who are a little wise, the best fools be. (1)

'We Three': Slight Departure

We three, we're all alone,

Living in a memory,

My echo, my shadow, and me. (2)

Coda: Cat Sitting

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who’s been preoccupied with a pointless enterprise over the Winterlude.

In the lead-up to New Year, one of my new pals tells me, she’s ‘up in London, cat-sitting for a friend’. (3)

Now, as she’s a new pal, I have to be careful what I say by way of reply, but, strictly entre nous, I do question the sincerity of her friend’s friendship: whenever I’ve tried sitting on a cat, my arse has got about two inches away from the cat’s head and it’s suddenly bolted off, looking thoroughly alarmed.

As it whizzes off, the cat-sitter usually becomes unbalanced and rolls on the floor.

It can even be dangerous. Sometimes the said-sitter hits a head on a passing shelf, table, or desk.

I’ve tried it many times.

I’ve employed multiple strategies:

Creep up on the cat.

Launch yourself at the cat.

Be friendly to the cat then surprise it.

Stroke an adjacent cat then do an arse-about volta face.

Every time, it’s bolted off.

Every time.

Over and over again.

All day.

It never stops.

Cats are always one step ahead.

Oh, Macavity, Macavity!

Macavity’s not there! (4)

If these cats can evade The Flying Squad and The Bow Street Runners, it’s highly unlikely they’re going to be caught sat on by a lone sitter. (5)

Oh, what a shitter!

What a pointless exercise, this cat-sitting business!

Well, as I say, at least I’m not alone in having wasted my time on an entirely purposeless exercise.

That much is certain.

The Foolish Footnotes

Episode 10

‘Let’s Pull You Apart and Put You Back Together Again’: Footnotes

1 Evoking ‘Smoothed by long fingers/ Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers’, from T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, lines 77-76.

2 For a cultural history, see McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International, (London: Verso, 2011).

3 Conflating the dismemberment of Dr Faustus in climax of the B-text with the birth of the monster in what would later become Chapter V of Frankenstein, although these were the first words Mary Shelley wrote of her manuscript at the Villa Diodati. See 5:00 min in of Christopher Frayling’s first episode of four in the wonderful documentary series Nightmare: The Birth of Horror, BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_QNkaxj9DE