On How Not to Enter the UK Fetish Awards

The Call to Adventure: Or, - On How Not to Enter the UK Fetish Awards

Now, as we all know, every legend, every myth, every story, has its ‘call to action’ (1). A profound moment when the hero, or heroine, is faced with a life-changing choice. The inciting moment. A moment that propels the protagonist on an epic romance ‘as ancient as the hills’ (2).

Well, this is my inciting moment. I have received a prod today that I just can’t refuse.

I really have to thank Zara du Rose for it.

Listen.

So, I get this e-mail today, - and please excuse this obviously strategic shift to the historic present whenever I’m gossiping; - I get this e-mail from Zara, suggesting that I might like to enter myself for the ‘UK Fetish Awards’ as a representative for Gothic Culture Magazine. She will be hosting the awards.

An invitation, if you will. A gentle ushering, if you will. A compliment, if you will.

What could go wrong?

There’s only one small snag…

I’m currently writing an article about Zara du Rose for Gothic Culture Magazine which I haven’t finished.

She’s caught me red-handed, dallying on the job.

I could massage the facts and claim that it’s ‘Nearing completion, Zara. Oh, I’d love to enter the Awards! Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’ but, knowing my inability to make barefaced lies believable, this would precipitate a severe existential crisis that would have me in therapy for months.

Let’s face it, she really has caught me red-handed.

Thankfully, I’ve arranged a series of follow-up interviews for this infamous article which are commencing this week. Zara’s performers and designers are lining up:

Keri Gold; - good pun.

Am Statik; - good pun.

Miss Fortune; - cleverly ambivalent pun (3).

Mind you, it was a pun that was lost on me for a while because I was following the Instagram posts of someone called Miss Fortune Backup. Obviously, if you’re a strap-on guy like me, attention (4) is firmly drawn away from the pun towards the ‘Back Up!’ imperative (5)…

So, I am actually getting on with the article about Zara du Rose Events. I could claim that my lack of timeliness is owing to the scrupulous rigour of my investigative research. But how can I enter the UK Fetish Awards if I haven’t even submitted a draft to the editor?

I know. I’ll write a blog.

That should do it.

And here I am right now, spending time writing this blog, these nocturnal rambles, instead of dutifully completing the article about Zara du Rose for Gothic Culture Magazine. She’s not going to get her article any time soon. I think Zara’s fucked this up for herself. I don’t think she’s thought this through.

Having said that, and strictly entre nous, I feel guilty.

Hold on, that’s ridiculous. Let’s face it, we’re helping each other out here. She’s getting me into a cool event and I’m adding to the line-up of entries so as to give the synthetic impression that there’s some kind of genuine competition going on.

I wonder how she’s going to present the awards for the writers? Maybe she’ll read a bit from each person’s blog?

It will certainly be a self-reflexive moment if she reads out this one.

Maybe I should enter for the Fetish Newcomer instead? Maybe, this way, - oh you dastardly fox, - I could keep under the radar and still get into the event? A-ha! No, - some officious meddler is likely to reveal that I’m an old-timer who wrote a shit load of articles between 2004 and 2007. This kind of public shaming would precipitate a severe existential crisis that would test the patience of even a Freudian therapist (6).

There’s always an antagonist on the loose, you see.

Whichever way, and whatever I do, or intend to do, or dream of doing, I’ll get found out. For something. I always do.

I feel like a naughty schoolboy.

I just don’t have the knack of evasion and concealment.

It’s no wonder I was suspended from boarding school.

Twice.

purple_peril_

04/10/22

Footnotes

I feel that embedding explicit footnotes would disrupt the reader’s smooth passage through these mesmerising psychodramas so I’ll pop sundry notes, qualifications, and illuminating research pathways that you are certain neither to read nor follow-up, here at the end:

1) The famous ‘call to action’ is beautifully discussed by the comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed., (Navaro: New World Library, 2008), pp. 41-48, (originally published, 1949), and the scriptwriters, Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey, (Studio City: Michael Wise Productions, 1998), pp. 99-105, and John Yorke in Into the Woods, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2013), pp. 13-14. A sincere footnote, this one. [Return to text]

2) As ancient as the hills’, is, of course, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opium-induced poem ‘Kubla Khan’. I mention it here, incidentally, as I know it off-by-heart owing to my placement in solitary confinement for a weekend at boarding school. [Return to text]

3) This type of pun, as exemplified by ‘Miss Fortune’, is technically termed an ‘oronym’. The homophonic qualities reach beyond word boundaries and play with the syntax. You know, like the joke ‘Where do Policeman live?, Answer: ‘Letsby Avenue’; or the old classic, especially for juvenile people like me, ‘Hey, what’s your name?’, Answer: ‘Ben Dover’. See Stephen Pinker’s The Language Instinct, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), p. 160-1. [Return to text]

4) The narratologists working in the area of Cognitive Poetics are fascinated with this stuff about how attention works in linguistic space. See Joanna Gavins, Text World Theory: An Introduction, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), and Peter Stockwell’s discussions of ‘resonance’, ‘alertness’ and ‘vigilance’ in Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 20-53. I wonder when all this attention about attention started? Maybe that bloke Donald Broadbent’s ‘filter model’ of attention? Funnily enough, the Broadbent is not much spoken of these days. We have all forgotten to attend to him. Proves his point, I suppose. [Return to text]

5) When I had the pleasure of interviewing Miss Fortune a couple of days later, she did tell me about her notorious nun act. It’s a performance where she gives holy communion to the audience but with a little twist. She uses a strap-on to ejaculate into a goblet, beckoning the audience to imbibe the liquid of transubstantiation. For a strap-on guy like me, one would have thought that I would have been aroused. Actually, I was overwhelmed by the uncanny thought that I wasn’t speaking to Miss Fortune at all, but to her identical twin sister, Miss Fortune Backup. [Return to text]

6) For the sake of existential authenticity, it’s important to disclose that, at the moment, I’m not seeing a therapist and haven’t done so for many years. Maybe this blog is strong evidence that I should? But then, I suppose authenticity and verisimilitude are slightly different things…. [Return to text]