The Zero Complex: Chapter 0

The Zero Complex: A Novelette

Or; The Life and Times of an Infinitesimal Zero, 2022-2023

Chapter 0

An Epistle to Mr John Matheson:

Or, On Not Knowing How to Choose an Appropriate Artistic Form

So, what’s all this about then?

What’s the matter?

These readers need a bit of context. Not least, poor John, and, as this grand Epistle is actually addressed to Mr Matheson, I should at least have the decency and decorum to do a spot of gossipy scene-setting from London’s liminal nightlife before we get this metanarrative bumpy ride underway.

Epistles, eh?

A dying art form.

A dead art form.

And therefore, - totally appropriate to reanimate, resurrect, and restore for the purpose of this present pleasant ramble.

You can’t get up and running with your nocturnal London text-world-building until you’ve chosen your literary form first, can you?

The whole architecture would fall apart!

You can’t run those risks.

Not in this age and day.

It would topple like Fonthill Abbey.

Health and Safety, Health and Safety.

Close shave.

John, as an experienced Professional Stage Manager, would recognise my diligence here.

It’s nice to know my efforts are appreciated.

Epistles. Epistles. Epistles.

An open letter. A public letter.

One written in a formal, grand, and elegant style, addressing a theme of weighty importance.

Fuck me, this is gonna be titanic.

Epic.

Oh no, epic’s a different genre.

Don’t mix genres together, mr peril, you’ve learned what dangers lie therein.

So stop lying about, you layabout, and stop with your roundabout lying - and get to work, mr peril!

Stick to the rules, the conventions, the customs.

Straight down the line.

Straight.

No bends, no curves, no contours.

No bumps, no mounds, no valleys.

No kinks.

No Venus, no Cupid, no Psyche.

Straight.

Ok, ok, hmm.

To get this right, I need to search for models from classical antiquity.

Yes.

Copy them. Like the Neoclassicists.

Like Alexander.

Alexander the Pope.

Can’t go wrong there.

Be obedient. Be balanced. Be tasteful.

Ok.

[Pause.]

Well, I’ve just pulled out my Horace.

I’m worried.

Quintus Horatius Flaccidius says ‘ere, in Epistle XIX, on ‘The Rewards and Disadvantages of Originality’, that ‘models deceive, their faults are easy to copy’.

We have another snag, my dear long-suffering readers, another snag.

Because there’s always a snag, you see.

As no artwork is perfect, if I copy Horace, I copy his faults ’n all.

No joy.

I better read on.

[Pause.]

Well:

I’ve scanned my Horace, thoroughly inspected my Horace, and flicked my Horace.

I’m relieved.

Phew!

The old todger says ‘ere:

Imitators! Bah! A slavish herd. How often their antics

Have made me wild with rage!

Codger, I meant.

Sorry! Tasteless that. Tasteless.

So, this sage in a rage has just let me off the hook!

I can blaze across untrodden ground and ‘offer things that no one has uttered’.

Great.

I’m glad I was bold enough to whip out my H-H-Horace.

This fine fellow has allowed me to go right off-piste.

I can be a very off-piste boy, you see.

Very off-piste.

But, then again, if I resort to verbal anarchy, attractive as that may be, this whole thing would cease to be an epistle, wouldn’t it?

It would be a pile of unrecognisable drivel, ‘nat worth a toord’.

Might be that already.

Ok, what about the logic?

The case. The argument.

That would help.

So epistles are… didactic in form.

Oh dear.

Oh shit!

I’ve landed myself in a right bog.

Sticky ground.

I mean, these readers, this modern lot, they don’t like the didactic approach, do they?

They don’t like being told.

It’s too condescending, too patronising.

They don’t like the ‘I’m going to speak down to you because I know best’ approach.

They like the whole ‘Oh, show me the way and I’ll make the cognitive links myself, thank you very much’.

They like the gentle ushering of an editorial comment-and-opinion column.

Or blog.

Mind you, blogs can be a right dumping ground!

You should read some of this shit out here.

Slip of the tongue.

That shit out there, I meant.

Such a pile of shit that I can’t distinguish between here and there! The bog of a blog, eh? It baffles thresholds.

Oh, the ancients and the moderns, the moderns and the ancients! The Battle of the Books!

What about the theme of this ’ere epistle then? The principium? Will that help me out?

So… these ’ere epistles address matters of grave and pressing importance. Matters of weighty solemnity.

Sincere.

Relevant.

Relevant to whom, what, where, or when?

Speaking of relevance, I once had a short discussion about the arbitrary prison-house of relevance with a friend-of-a-friend, many years ago:

‘So why is A Streetcar Named Desire relevant?’ I was asked.

Something within me died at that moment. Some oasis of beauty dehydrated and promptly vanished. And, out of the intense pain of my aesthetic bereavement for my darling, Mr Tennessee Williams, I rather cattily answered, in an Hamlet-esque ‘antic disposition’ - and not dissimilar to a Blanche DuBois haughty riposte:

‘Relevant to which literary tradition, may I enquire?’

See what I mean by condescending? The punters don’t like it. Don’t like it at all. They’d up and leave and clear the table.

Ok.

So, here we have a reconfigured aesthetic for the epistle,- rebooted and reloaded from those noble ancient todgers, adapted for the modern bunch:

Put forward an argument, but don’t be condescending; neither copy the conventions slavishly nor stray too far from them; choose a grand theme, and, for God’s sake, be relevant and sincere!

Make it a matter that matters, for Mr Matheson.

A matter of moment.

A momentary matter.

And, it is for that very reason, that I’d like to discuss: The Perils of Growing a David Niven Moustache.

‘A Misfit Amongst the Misfits’:

Or; What You Will with Underground Kim and Overground Kim

Well, Mr John Matheson is a ‘lover of all things strange’ so I’m on safe ground with this ’ere epistle.

…

‘You’re one of the carrots,’ says Will Williams at le Boutique Bazaar.

He has a friendly mischievous mobile grin between beard, nose, and top-hat.

‘Erm?’ I smile, eyebrow raised.

‘Yes; I once saw a punter at TG dressed up as an inflatable carrot and that’s been my reference point ever since. You know, - the misfits. What a suit!’

[He nods]

‘Oh, thanks. Yes, I was assailed gently by a woman on the way in who said I looked like a mad character in a children’s book and asked for a photograph. Yes! Yes! I’m a sort of Botanical Gothic Willy Wonka!

[Gestures at the 3-D Latex Butterflies.]

[mr peril sings] ‘”With “wild wide eye and painted wing”!’

We exchange Instas.

‘Oh, you’re a literary boff! Come to LAM!’

‘Will that make me a misfit amongst the misfits, Will?’

‘What?’

‘“What you will”, Will.’

[Pause]

‘“I do. I will.”’

‘What what, eh, what what, - Will? [Pause] Oh – I see! Good one, Will, good one!’

…

Strange but true: I’m one of the carrots!

I willingly will that you will take Will’s word for it willingly.

And take my word for it.

I swear, by my electrocuted testes!

Actually, my words can be a bit slippery in these confessions, can’t they? So, if you can’t trust my word for ‘it’ or for ‘whatever’ then trust in the words of the two Kims!

Both Kims are highly reliable.

Underground Kim and Overground Kim.

The photonegative twinned Kim.

Underground Kim:

‘You’re an eccentric,’ says Miss Kim Rub to me over a cup of coffee.

‘Am I?’

“Well, you are wearing a full pinstripe suit of a 1950s banker at ten o’clock in the morning in a café. I’d say that’s eccentric.’

‘I suppose. You’re wearing a cheerful beret! Lovely. I wonder why I didn’t wear my bowler hat today? I could have done Civil Service vibes. Mind you, I did wear it to the opening of the UK Fetish Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute. I can be a stickler for decorum!’

Miss Kim smiles.

‘I like multi-faceted people,’ she discloses.

Well, I can be a very prismatic boy.

Very prismatic.

She’s seen my refractions. Or some of them.

Did you just notice that I lied to Miss Kim?

It was not the ‘opening night’ but the second ‘open night’ of the UK Fetish Archive!

Mr Stefan Dickers, Mr Pioneer at The Bishopsgate Institute, might have clocked my whopping barefaced lie, so I better write an open letter of apology, an epistle, to him and Miss Kim Rub in another chapter!

Actually, there’s something else for which I need to apologise, which didn’t happen last night at The Sexual Freedom Awards; - last night being a date that happened long after I wrote this very chapter. (So, if you see what I’m getting at, these paragraphs has been shoved in later, and rather rudely, I might add, for the present reader.)

Where was I? Oh, yes:

Miss Kim smiles.

‘I like multi-faceted people,’ she discloses.

Mind you, If Miss Kim wants eccentricity she might have to suspend her disbelief when I eventually tell her the story about the first time I met her at Club Rub in 2005, and how the encounter triggered a delicate childhood memory of a fainting episode in the waiting room of a dentist’s surgery.

Strange but true.

Sort of.

Overground Kim, or Linguistic Kim, seems to think I’m leftfield too, but she comes at it from the genre-hybrid intertextuality angle, as you might expect!

Now, much of what I know professionally I learned from Overground Kim, so I’m rather charmed to receive this message after an Easter Oxo Tower lunch:

‘Have just spent a very entertaining glass of wine dipping into your various posts… A delightful smorgasbord of literary and ?autobiographical? bits and pieces! You certainly have a gift for off-the-wall entertainment!’

And later, after she had read a draft of this very confession you’re reading – which was sent to her in order gain consent for me to use the quotation you’ve just read:

‘Well, that was quite an epistle that wasn’t an epistle!!! Laurence Sterne kept coming to mind. You must have so much fun writing these blogs… they’re certainly fun (and a bit challenging - in a good way - to read). [Smiley]’

[Audiences in amphitheatres all around the globe rise in rapturous applause. I bow solemnly.]

But, far more problematically:

‘Thanks for checking about using an extract from my message, that’s absolutely fine.’

Oh, fuck! I’ve really bummed myself here.

Bummed myself in the arse.

Do I need to seek consent from Overground Kim for using the message I’ve just quoted in which she confirms that she’s given her consent for me to use the earlier message?

I think I do.

I’m in a metatextual consent-loop: I’m in a consent-Krapp’s Last Tape.

A consent mise-en-abyme!

It’s like that famous tea-thing, my previous partner - Emmeline, penned.

On a bespoke level: I’m in a Whittard’s Earl Grey loose-leaf-tea-and-consent- metanarrative-loop!

Anyway, my point is:

I’ve been legitimised by the photonegative twin Kims: Underground Kim and Overground Kim!

How about that?

Prismatic!

[Getting carried away, hopeful, naïve…]

I’m prismatic, enigmatic, charismatic!

And…

Anti-climactic!

Especially anti-climactic.

Enigmatic in my good moments.

But anti-climactic in my great moments.

Or when it matters, Mr Matheson.

Ay, there’s the rub.

Both Miss Kim Rub and Ms Kim Intertextuality will be highly impressed by that allusion! But I do have something to say…

An epistle, if you please:

Dear Miss Kim Rub Club Cult and Ms Linguistic Intertextuality Kim,

There’s no need either to applaud me or send me gifts. No need. The pleasure’s all mine!

I’m selfish like that.

Yours insincerely,

London’s purple peril.

Brat.

P.S. Untameable Dog (that’s gone-to-the-dogs).

Great epistle, that.

All this Kimming Twinning, eh?

Where was I?

Oh, yes, the anti-climax!

A bathos and build-up, a build-up and bathos!

Oh, this narrative ship has run aground again, Sea Captain!

‘I’m the Kim of the world! I’ll never let go!’

…

(Don’t worry. We’re all safe. Ship’s got a double-hull.)

…

Musicool Interludicool:

‘This is Rockin’’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCo2NgXZC6w&list=PLu2sMcfun2pcBNCwDoyUWqQZBRcl5EwEM&index=19

The Best View in the House:

Or; Who Dares Eclipse Marnie for a Moment?

As a deeply unreliable narrator, I’m off the hook now because you can trust the word, or words, of the two reliable Kims.

Mind you, as a diligent narrator I can’t overlook Underground Kim’s claim on a recent Rubber Cult Insta post. The claim she made was so unreliable that I was tempted to make an objection there and then.

But I behaved myself.

For a brat with a long record of misdemeanours and suspensions from boarding school (in the noble dignity of my youthful years), I thought this showed remarkable self-restraint.

But a sense of duty and justice calls me to bring it to light now.

Now, we all know it’s not very easy to steal attention away from such a consummate, surreal, skilled, and bizarre performer as Marnie Scarlet, but I’m ashamed to admit that the following incident occurred at Kim Rub’s Cabal Night, Cult Rubber Club:

(Fortunately, as I’m an unreliable narrator, I’m relieved to say that proof of this controversial event was captured in one neat photograph for all historians to consult. (Although it’s worth noting that the photograph is a highly unreliable record of reality, as you shall soon see.))

The photo is a picture of kinky-punters at the front cabaret tables in Simon Drake’s House of Magic, watching a performance of Marnie Scarlet’s outstanding ‘Cinderalla-Hag’ act; Simon Drake is taking the photograph. Between the cabaret tables are some steps to the stage upon which is perched another photographer, a domme called Miss Gold, who’s leaning forwards to take her own close-up of Marnie Scarlet. As Miss Gold is wearing a semi-translucent latex skirt, her peachy-shaded-peachy bottom has somewhat unapologetically drawn attention away from poor Marnie, notoriously stealing the limelight for an eye-dazzling over-exposed instant.

If you’d like to check your sources: 16th April, on Rubber Cult Insta!

Go and have a look. Go on.

And, with it, is Miss Kim Rub’s tag-line:

‘Best view in the house in Simon Drake’s House of Magic.’

Now, you might think, fair enough! Surely this proves your previous point, mr peril? Miss Kim is highly reliable! Nothing wrong there. Nothing wrong at all. Argument water-tight. Latex-tight statement.

Aha!

But you don’t know where I’m sitting!

And you can’t see where I’m sitting!

I’m being obscured in the photo by the back of the full-hood-mask of a charming gentlemen that I met that very night, who shall remain anonymous, sitting on the left-hand cabaret table.

All you have to do is follow the diagonal vector forwards from this fellow to reconstruct where I’m sitting.

I’m sitting on the left-hand side of the right-hand cabaret table closest to the stage, and only inches away from the central steps.

What can I see?

Well, I’m closest in proximity to Miss Gold’s bottom.

I have the most generous, enchanting, and hypnotic view in The House of Magic.

I have the best seat in the house!

Now, I’m actually surprised Miss Kim’s forgotten this.

And I’ll tell you why!

Because as a well-trained gentleman, sitting closest to the stage-stairs, I thought I’d lend a supporting hand and occasional shoulder to our cheekily lively compere for the evening, who’s wearing kinky platform boots, and who happens to be the one and only - Miss Kim Rub herself!

Well, you can imagine, can’t you?

I was standing up then sitting down, sitting down then standing up. Stand up, sit down. Sit down, stand up! Up, down, down, up, with shoulder, hand and foot, foot, hand and shoulder.

The most labour-intensive seat in the house for the best view in the house!

I worked for it, oh boy, I worked for it;- but life is unforgiving and labour is hard, my friends, so you have to accept life’s few rewards graciously when they’re presented to you!

How could Miss Kim Rub forget I was sitting there?

She’s erased me from history.

I’m a Zero!

I’ve gone from a highly-visible eccentric, - a misfit amongst the misfits, to a nought and a Zed, a Zed and a Zero in a flash!

It’s just as well I have the wherewithal and gumption to write myself back into history.

I refuse to be invisible, refuse to be silent!

Here I stand!

Here I simmer!

I refuse to be a Zero!

Why?

Because being a Zero is my worst fear.

…

‘… for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’

…

And nothing could be more fully illustrative of my oscillation from misfit to Zero, from visible to invisible, from ‘Hello’ to ‘Farewell’, from light to darkness, from sound to silence, than the rummy affair entitled: The Strange Adventures and Perils of The David Niven Moustache!

And this is why you should believe every event and wordage that follows in this torturously long lead-up to this ‘ere epistle! A matter of great matter to Mr Matheson.

I tell you, those sceptical punters willing to read this ‘ere epistle are not going to believe in the unlikely circumstances that gave rise to the appearance and disappearance of my David Niven moustache, and, how, after its disappearance my whole face was sucked into a vortex, only to re-emerge magically into the face of Ian Dury and, how, uncannily, that very fact was spotted by Mr Matheson’s partner, Mia-Jane, at Monster Queen - only weeks before Mr Matheson himself, quite unprompted, grew a moustache which I then spotted at TG, and how I had been redeemed from being a Zero before that TG by Allen TG, who had noticed and noted my invisibility at the previous TG, of which I was informed by him at the Curses gig with Kaori as my witness, and how my redemption from being a Zero was subsequently lost, at the very TG at which I noticed the appearance of Mr Matheson’s non-David-Niven moustache, when Kaori then denied Allen TG’s witness-statement!

Unbelievable!

Credulity and credibility crumbles, doesn’t it?

Strange but true.

Accurate too.

…

It was a shame Mia-Jane wasn’t able to witness all of that - otherwise she’d have thought my face looked like Picasso’s Guernica.

Missed opportunity for misrecognition, that.

Misfortune outfaces me.

…

…

Musicool Interludicool:

‘Sweaty palms and palpitations.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41vqcEHXzDs&list=PLu2sMcfun2pcBNCwDoyUWqQZBRcl5EwEM&index=26