Eps 7-9 The Strange Case of Seeking Miss Hyde

Episode 7

Electro Play or Play Electro?

Back to seeking out Miss J. Hyde!

Let’s launch in medias res. (1)

UK Fetish Awards. Embankment.

‘Ooh, nice suit!’

I’ve gone outside to the smoking area to do some perfectly innocent eavesdropping, but, in the space of a few seconds, someone’s talking to me.

Now, I become very coy when receiving a compliment; - bashful even.

I’m a very modest boy, you see.

Very modest.

Even though I know my suit is spectacular, darling.

Nevertheless, my pumpkin-head is turning bright red. I can feel it.

It probably matches the colour of this woman’s hair.

Anyway, she’s very friendly, very funny, very assertive and, somehow, I become at ease.

She tells me about her profession.

She’s a Pro-Domme.

My ears are pricked, poked, provoked, piqued.

I’ve always been a fan of the sexual intrigue, dilemmas, and elaborate plots of Restoration Comedy so, as Miss Jessica Hyde begins unravelling the complex layering of what she chooses to inflict on her willing victims, my appreciation of her sense of scenic structure intensifies. (2)

This woman’s an artist.

A conductor.

A composer.

She hasn’t disclosed any identities, broken her counsel; - it’s all perfectly discreet.

And revealing.

Now, as a Piscean, I’m prone to oscillate between intense attacks of an over-active imagination and ethereally mysterious abstraction.

Essentially, the vast proportion of my life is lived somewhere else.

I really need to concentrate and particiapte in this conversation.

I know, I'll ask her about her ‘services’!

She lists quite a few.

Strangely, they all seem to involve the solid democratic justice of the redistribution of pain.

She particularly likes electro play.

Well, we’ve definitely got something in common.

I like to play electro!

I like the throb of electro beats vibrating through my body - emanating from a fuckoff soundsystem, while she likes applying an electro-stim instrument onto another kind of instrument.

Could our shared interests be fused, somehow?

I haven’t, as yet, attempted to wire the electro-magnetic fields of a mixing desk directly onto my genitalia and don’t know whether it's possible (under the laws of physics), but I could throw caution to the sea and give it a good try.

One for the future, no doubt.

I’ll have to start experimenting in a secret room.

I need a cabinet! Like Dr Jekyll! I need mysterious doors for enclosure. (3)

Back to this confession and onto the 'high-point''...

Episode 8

The Existential Erection

‘What I like to do is present my subs with a choice. A choice of punishments…’

I’m intrigued.

‘… a choice of very painful punishments. I like to see that sudden look of panic in their eyes.’

So Miss J. Hyde heightens the whole kink-thing by using existentialism as a weapon! (1)

‘I’m a sadist, you see. I get off on that.’

She smiles.

A Mephistophelean smile.

Then she laughs.

A bellowing laugh.

She laughs like Vincent Price!

Vincent Price at his most cruel moments. (2)

I’m transported.

The intersection brings about a change.

A transformation.

I suddenly realise I’m infernally aroused!

Aroused.

Infernally.

I’m possessed!

I’ve entirely transformed from my asexual androgynous default self, my respectable daytime Dr Jekyll self, into a demonic erotic nocturnal force-field.

I’ve been trampled upon by a juggernaut from within and without. (3)

Sir Danvers Carew is no more. (4)

In the same way Dr Jekyll is stricken with utter panic when he’s wobbling on at the window and realises he’s about to metamorphosise, with no polite notice, into Teddy Hyde, I start to panic intensely when I get this erection. (5)

This woman has given me an erection.

Without any notice!

No forewarning.

No courteous - ‘Oh, by the way, I’m about to…’-type heads-up!

Nothing.

And I’m standing up. I’ve got nowhere to sit down to conceal my shame.

Improvising a sudden Troubadour courtly bow might seem out-of-context too.

(I’ve tried it before.)

(Almost always, actually, when I’m attracted to a woman.)

(Doesn’t work.)

I’m pointing north!

I might, scientifically, be more reliable than a compass, but, socially, - I’m a priapic mess! (6)

Maybe this is part of the sadistic humiliation of her victims?

Maybe it’s not. Maybe that ‘reading’ is simply a projection of male desire; who the fuck knows?

You don’t.

I don’t.

It’s all subconscious anyway, so what you know about what I don’t know might turn out to be what I know about what you don’t know.

So, in actuality, I don’t really know what you don’t know and you don’t know what I don’t know, if you know what I mean.

Ooh Jeez.

Whichever way:

I’ve become a sexual being.

I’ve become acutely aware that I’ve changed into a sexual being.

Shit.

I can’t cope.

And, I have to say, looking around at the UK Fetish Awards and the people in attendance, I realise that there might actually be a sexual dimension to the proceedings.

I can be an observant boy, you see.

Very observant.

Especially when prompted.

Anyway, even though I’m suited and booted, I suddenly feel naked.

Stripped naked.

I’m aware of my whole body underneath the heavy-gauge latex.

I’m exposed.

I’ve been found out.

Thereby hangs a tale. (7)

It would all, somehow, be appropriate if I was living in Victorian London. Perfectly in tune, - with all their public and private duality malarkey. (8)

But I’m not living in Victorian London.

I’ve been randomly chucked into the 21st Century and dismissively told ‘Oh, don’t worry; you’ll cope! We’re all making it up as we go along anyway!’

You mean I’ve got no solid literary-cultural frame through which to make sense of this?

Will the Renaissance help?

What about a splash of sprezzatura from The Book of the Courtier? (9)

Nope. Can’t recall any advice about the nonchalance of a hard-on.

Not even Willy the Shakes could shakedown this shaft.

If he can’t help, I’m fucked.

Shit!

The panic intensifies.

…

Ok, when there’s no narrative frame, - resort to improvisation!

Resort to a psychodramatic scenario! (10)

It’s got you through before.

Unsteadily, but it’s go you through.

…

Oh, God; there’s nothing else for it.

I’m going to have to book in with this woman and treat myself to a –th birthday gift.

Save up, mr peril, save up!

Work hard, mr peril, work hard!

Drop a few unsubtle hints to friends about my birthday coming up.

Beg.

Beg for some half-crowns, you clown.

It’ll all be worth it when you get a kick in the bollocks.

Episode 9

The Bare Necessities

But then, oh then, I’m overwhelmed by doubt.

Something unpredictable happens.

And I mean, off-the-scale unpredictable.

There are no literary conventions that can take account of this sideways blow.

No philosophical inductive reasoning can make way for this unexpected cultural falsification. (1)

There are no mathematical algorithms or computer programs which can formulate, or predict, what is about to happen.

We’re joined in our conversation by a very pleasant person, with whom I have no issue, and then…

She starts singing.

Loudly.

No need for amplification.

I don’t mind singing, don’t mind at all, but…

… she’s not singing The Sisters of Mercy.

Neither Bauhaus nor The Nephilim.

Not even The Southern Death Cult!

She’s entirely sidelined the Gothic genre.

These aren't Slimelight tunes.

She’s singing soundtrack tunes.

She’s singing Walt Disney Animation theme tunes.

Not ‘I Wanna Be Like You'. (2)

Nope.

Not ‘Trust in Me’. (3)

Nope.

Not even ‘The Bare Necessities’. (4)

It’s far more unbearable:

She’s singing all the schmaltz.

Cheese.

Processed cheese.

‘Wotsit’-flavoured tunes.

But, if you think that I’m being melodramatic, I’m getting hysterical, that I’m neurotic, oh no, dear readers, oh no.

No.

What happens now is that Miss J. Hyde here, not only recognises the schmaltz, but joins in.

She knows the lyrics!

I’m shocked. I’m stunned. I’m astonished.

I shudder, I burn, I scream, as I pen the damnable atrocity. (5)

I’m a very sensitive boy, you see.

Very sensitive.

Sensitive, - with a particularly low pain threshold for specific genres of music.

Now this really is sadism.

Miss Hyde didn’t even list this sadistic proclivity earlier in her long-list of ‘services’.

So, now it’s choral.

I’m in pain.

And, even, worse, they’re in tune!

How dare they sing in tune!

And they’re in time.

In time!

This is all too much.

I can’t be a ‘real’ masochist;- otherwise I’d linger.

I’ve learned that about myself, at least, - but I’m having a major existential crisis.

Would it be impolite to wander off?

Stealth, mr peril, stealth.

You’ve done a vanishing act before. (6)

Yes.

Oh, you dastardly fox!

They won’t notice.

‘Oh, are you off?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, yes; it’s a pleasure to meet you both, but I must catch up on how these awards are progressing. I promised Zara that I’d be a jovial bystander at this merry festive ritual! A gentleman must be true to his word!’

Jeez, mr peril, you shouldn’t resort to outright lying to maintain your gentlemanly panache.

That’s punishable by wiring squad.

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.

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

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

[to be continued, sideways...]

Part II: Even More Foolish Footnotes

By my folly, here are some more foolish footnotes that you are entirely welcome to ignore.

Episode 7

Electro Play or Play Electro?: Footnotes

1 in medias res, in the midst of things; - the technique of opening an epic narrative bang in the middle of the action before a a time-shift back to the exposition and subsequent to the evocation of The Muses and the principium. You have to admit it, the sheer grandeur and nobility of my theme merits such elevated treatment.

2 That’s not the only similarity: the multitude of aptronyms, aptonyms, and eunonyms that abound in the naming ofdramatis personae in Restoration Comedy like Lady Wishfort, Mrs Millamant, Mrs Fainall, the two servants Foible and Mincing, - to name some ladies from Congreve’s The Way of the World, - and, to name some fellows from Vanbrugh’sThe Relapse such as Sir Novely Fashion, Worthy, Sir Tunbelley Clumsey, Coupler (a matchmaker), and Syringe (a surgeon), Sir John Friendly, - seem to echo the remarkably inventive roll-call of doppelgangers, stage names, Insta-handles, and pseudonyms that abound in the fetish and alternative communities.

A future confession on this matter, perhaps? Maybe I could pretend to be Professor Labio-Dental Fricative, a Linguistics Researcher (aided by my two colleagues Doctor Multiple Subordination and Doctor Back-Channel Behaviour) from the University of Lower Swell? Yes, I could interview everybody! Lower Swell? You haven’t heard of it? No? Ok, I’ll admit it. That University doesn’t exist. The place does though – it’s real! Sorry for my faulty memory, I meant the University of Netherthong.

Oh dear, you don’t want to get me onto rude place names…

At your leisure… https://www.countryfile.com/go-outdoors/10-of-britains-rudest-and-funniest-place-names/

3 Don’t you love that transformation of the mild-mannered Mr Utterson who demands that Poole should (illegally) hack down the ‘red-baize door’ from its ‘lock and hinges’ to discover Dr Jekyll’s ‘cabinet’. It was only on my third reading that I realised that almost every character either had a double or was doubled with another! I also love that interplay between secret spaces and written documents when they discover the ‘envelope’ and a series of ‘several enclosures’ fell to the floor. See the climax to ‘The Last Night’ (Section 8) to Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p. 44, and p. 46.

Episode 8

The Existential Erection: Footnotes

1 Jean-Paul Sartre outlines the implications of freedom in existential terms as: ‘anguish, abandonment, and despair’. No hippy-shit here, darling. You’ve got to love him, haven’t you? And you’ve got love Miss Jessica Hyde even more for weaponising such terror. The case for the former ideas concerning freedom is made in Sartre’s essay Existentialism and Humanism (London; Methuen, 1973), first published 1948; pp. 30-31; a quite brilliant essay, and one which (along with a splash of Aristotle, Jung and Rousseau) changed my life and the ways I live it.

2 We know this one, don’t we? If you don’t dutifully remember it as you haven’t had the pleasure of sitting up late at night with your mum on numerous occasions, watching Hammer House of Horror movies featuring the unholy trinity of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing, then you might recall it from the outro of an extremely famous 80s ‘pop song’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqBR8knRM2w

3 ‘The Story of the Door’ (Section 1), Hyde is depicted as a ‘damned juggernaut’ as he tramples over the ‘screaming child’ but it is interesting to find that the eye-witness, a doctor, seems to forget his Hippocratic Oath and is transformed with ‘the desire to kill’ Mr Hyde. See pages 7 and 8 in Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

4 From ‘The Carew Murder Case’ (section 4), in Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p. 21. Sir Danvers Carew is that charming fellow who has a ‘pretty manner of politeness’ and an ‘old-world kindness of disposition’ who is trampled and clubbed to death by Mr Hyde’ impatience with these elegant manners. Gosh! It sounds like my ongoing inner struggle, doesn’t it?

5 From ‘Incident at the Window’ (Section 7) in Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p. 36. ‘The words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, a froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below’.

6 Captain Robert Walton, the pioneering explorer of the frame narrative of Frankenstein (a frame narrative, incidentally, that was written last in Mary Shelley’s manuscript) wants to biff up to the North Pole to discover ‘the secret of the magnet’. He ends up a bit of a mess too by the end, doesn’t he, - just like yours truly? Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1831 edition, ed. Maurice Hindle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), p. 16.

7 Shakespeare uses the same expression in four plays: TS, AYL, MWW, and Othello. I think the fool’s use in 3.1. of Othello is the most compelling in relation to the drama. I should use this expression in my future four play too. Ooh dear, the homophones are rife again.

8 For the remarkable dualities of Victorian London see the lavishly illustrated Oscar Wilde’s London by Von Eckardt, Gilman and Chamberlin (London: Michael O’Mara, 1997).

9 Sprezzatura, or nonchalance; - the art of concealing art is viewed as the true source of grace for the Renaissance courtier, whether it be a ‘single brush stroke’, seemingly unforced, or ‘single step’ in a dance, or pulling out your sword, or even, would you believe, handling ‘some other weapon’. I can’t say I’ve ever pulled out my weapon effortlessly with an easy urbane elegance. Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 67 and p. 70, composed between 1508-1518..

10 Psychodramatic scenarios underpin each of the nine core short stories that were collected in J. G. Ballard’s surrealist masterpiece, The Atrocity Exhibition, as Chapters 1-9, although their sequence differs to their order of composition and publication between 1966-1969 as separate stories in SF magazines.

Psychodrama as a formal method of therapy was pioneered by the psychologist Jacob Levy Moreno who used theatre and role playing as the basis of treatment. See J. L. Moreno’s Psychodrama, Volume 1, (Princeton: Psychodrama Press, 2019), first published in 1946, or The Essential Moreno (New York: Tusilata, 2018).

Episode 9

The Bare Necessities: Footnotes

1 Falsifiability is the crux of Sir Karl Popper’s philosophical distinction between scientific methods of investigation and ideologies, the latter of which are non-falsifiable. Always useful to remember when taking to people in the throes of any particular ideology; - don’t waste your time with them (unless your fooling about, of course).

2 It’s a shake-your-booty classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwTClRr1x6g

3 It’s a psychedelic hypnotic classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3YkkmMxjV0

4 Is it me or is Baloo the Bear a reincarnation of Sir John Falstaff, Baghira that party-pooper Henry IV, and Mowgli Prince Harry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BH-Rxd-NBo

5 A misquotation from Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’: ‘I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity’, from ed. G. R Thompson, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (new York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

6 See Episode 6: ‘Creeps’, from that masterpiece of unbridled human invention by some random bewildered poor soul from London, known as 'purple peril', from his interminable confession about Wraith Club, published in October 2022.