The Amazing Mr Honestly It Is Not

The Blunt Edge of Almostness

Hello! Loads of new subscribers lately, and loads of people ‘pledging’ - it really is amazing. Writing is the most important thing I do, and I write to be read. To get the encouragements of subs, pledges, donations, comments, and the like, means so much to me, I wanted to say a sincere thank you.

It would be an honour and a privilege if you’d give this some of that increasingly valuable commodity: time. Letting me know what you think in the comments is always a much-appreciated bonus. And a share, well, I can understand why you wouldn’t. Here we go…

I’m Mr Honestly It Is Not, and a few months ago, I walked out of my house and was physically assaulted. Bludgeoned I was. Out of the blue and rendered insensible by… “some kind of blunt weapon, like a baseball bat," as my neurologist, Dr Sla la la la la la la, said, which seems, in retrospect, not much to show for however many years he peacocked around at medical school, stalking the grounds at night for hot, hot, fillies in white lab coats, muddy white plimsolls, and a twinkle in their peepers, ahem! The naughty old duffer, he had spunk alright. In everything he says and does, you can see exactly what he was like when he was young. It’s the same for everyone. It’s in the List of Answers in my Moleskine notebook. He’s got the chops, though. Likes to play General Practitioner and ramble on in some kind of twisted bedside manner move he’s developed over the years. He’s old you see, old Dr Sla la la la la la. He once told me Count Dracula had a son. He didn’t need to say ‘Count’ and yet he emphasised it as well, like the obvious bit really mattered. You lean-in on someone in a public bar, nightclub, wine bar, et al, and say, “Hey sweet ghost of desire,” (unless it’s a male, then just ‘Hey’ will suffice) and then say: “There’s a new ‘Count’ movie out.” You’re going to look like a right Billy Bongo, a chicken’s eyebrow and such. You may as well wiggle out of your threads and stand there wearing nought but a pig mask and a snorkel. ‘A count movie’, please.

I guess there wasn’t a Mrs Dracula - a wife, I mean. Hmm, surely they must have made a movie. I don’t follow the pictures anymore. Not after watching the second Dirty Harry movie: Magnum Force. Gosh, total muscle. It’s near perfect. Yes, it’s crude and appeals to some of our more base and emotionally immature impulses. I used to stammer when I said ‘im-im-im-impulses’. Utterly vulgar does stammering be. If I accidentally pull the shortest of all social straws and find myself interlocular with someone who stammers, I say: “I’m sorry, but you cannot speak properly, which makes an already difficult and usually unpleasant situation almost unbearable. I am leaving now, but I can guarantee there will be people here who will pretend not to have noticed the most noticeable aspect of your character, and you can have a great chat with/at them, even though, since you bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bumped into them, they’ve been spending more of their central processing unit power on planning their exit strategy than listening to anything you can’t quite s-s-s-say. My guess is you can smell them a mile away, the exit strategies, I mean. Good gosh and gosh thrice more! Your social life is like a perpetual car-crash, the few frenetic moments before impact and damage, on an endless loop. When did you know I was on my merry way? "Wh-wh-wh-wh..." "When I didn’t turn my body or face to you. Barely even moved my head, just my eyes. I give the barman more attention when he’s giving me my change." "Yu-yu-yu-yu..." "Knock it on the head, old bean; these shoes were made for walking." Shazam! And I’m out of there like a bullet from a gu-gu-gun. Remember Guy the Gorilla? Dead.

Wife of Dracula, sorry, Wife of ‘COUNT’ Dracula. If it were my movie, I’d go for Bride of Blood, something like that, or Wife of The Midnight Teeth, but like I say, it’s not my thing. I fiddle in my inside jacket pocket for my Moleskin brand notebook (I pronounce it ‘Moleskine’ when socializing. Great conversation starter, ice-breaker. SKULL GRINDER). And then, of course, you’ve got the book and notes in hand. Voila! Socially Cocked. And. Ahem! Sensually Loaded. Lay down Sally, Lay Lady Lay, and although Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon is on the list in my Moleskoon notebook, it’s a bit too close to the bone-er - and with increased frequency, I find myself wanting to cross it out - And. From. It. Cause. A. Martyr. Be. Made. Shut your eyes, reclining nude, and think of the sax solo from Baker Street, by Mr G Rafferty. Bwa bwa ba ba da da da dah…

I tell most people that I have no parents and grew up in care before running away age twelve to work on the docks. “Work on the docks?” Gosh, that’s a one! And the beauty is that no lady - not even one - has ever asked for proof or anything. And I, for one, wouldn’t continue to court a lady who asks for evidence of personal claims, however outlandish. No way, Rosé. Not now. Not ever. Negatory. I have no parents and grew up in care before running away age twelve to work on the docks. A stevedore. A man who stuffs.

Who I’m guessing is the husband, is acting as his one-legged wife’s crutch. He’s holding her upright. It’s like he’s sacrificed his entire body to replace her missing leg. Each other step is more of a drag than a lift. That’s going to be a progressive issue. It is! I bet the first time he lifted his post-op, newly delivered, one-legged wife, he carried her all the way to the car, where he’d installed a SeatMachine2000 - maxing out their last credit card - so she could get in the car without looking like a real spastic. It worked, but occasionally the mechanism moves a bit fast, and she hasn’t managed to get into position B in the allotted time (according to the user manual, the first reading of which made the husband cry,) and the poor monoped ends up arse o’er tit, with her one leg waving in the air. Guitar artiste and stench of hippy, Jimi Hendrix, said he was going to ‘wave his freak flag high’, that’s what she’s doing, and the SeatMachine2000 is loving it, repeating in its high pitched and too much treble, digital voice: “Relax and assume position B. Relax and assume position B,” over and over. Every fifth time it says “Relax and assume position B,” it beeps once and goes: “Say ‘yes’ for assistance. Say ‘yes’ for assistance,” before almost angrily returning to “Relax and assume position B. Relax and assume position B.” So it fucking goes.

The Husband, Keith - good old Keith - always checks to see if anyone’s looking before he walks around the car, drumming his fingers on the T-Cut bonnet as he goes, hoping but failing to give the impression of joire de vivre, of having a spring in his step as his hopes and dreams continue to dissolve like the undersized ice cubes in his oversized glasses of increasingly frequent vodka. Understandably, he fantasizes about just throwing her in the boot like an old carpet, and leave her in there for days on end with a bottle of water and some of those Pringles, sour cheese of course. A man who stuffs. What a ball and chain, the old one-legged wife. A few weeks ago, his family, holding together by a thread, but doing a good impression of all those who live in the ZeitherZone. Science fiction, lol. Drop it in. You know what I mean. She’s breaking his back, and she’s breaking him. His life will never be as happy as it was before. Not even close. It’s an image of the era, I take out my camera, assume the David Bailey one knee pose, camera at ninety degrees, and click! Moment captured. Not really. I don’t have a camera.

MOVIE IDEA: A one-legged woman falls in love with a one-legged man in a physio class, and after going barking mad together, they decide to build a contraption that allows them to walk using each of their one legs. It takes some practice, but soon they’re flying along, two legs, two bodies, One beautiful crippled love. She gets pregnant after drugging him every other Sunday and doing the dirty with a local one-armed man while hubby’s out for the count. Knowing it wasn’t he who done the deed, hubby scores some Rumpelstiltskin Butter, goes all pang pang, and, well, it all goes terribly wrong. Awful turnout.

“Have you had any more symptoms from the concussion?” said old Dr sla la la la la la la, staff room sex pest, to whom I can say pretty much what I want. I wonder if my mother would have preferred a girl. You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever thought that. I start writing First Thoughts in my Moleskinetty notebook, but I think about it and realise a list of my first thoughts would be everything I think from now on. And I’m not writing all that down. I think a lot, you see. I’m a thinker. A thinking man. More than most. More than more than most. I’ve a high IQ. I’ve done the tests. I’m like a thought machine. I’m like an idea engine. Concept Generator, Wisdom Apparatus. The Insight Frightener brought that list to a close in my notebook. It’s Moleskin brand, although I like to say it’s MuleSkoon. It’s a great ice-breaker, you know, when you’re grasping; that’s what I call it, ‘grasping’. It’s hard to be yourself under such conditions.

“Are you experiencing pain?” said Dr Rasputini Lemon Pledge Ethiopian Famine. Different bloke, same person. There are at least thirty pages of answers in my notebook, yet not one for “Are you experiencing pain?” I’ll have to put that right. I’m not getting any younger. I reckon it’s pretty good odds I’m going to be asked, “Are you experiencing pain?” with greater frequency as I age. It’s inevitable, death and Ubers. When all your projects have dried up, your balls have shrunk, or your vulva is gritting its teeth. (Whoa! Come on, mum, we both knew the score.) Once you accept that you no longer produce, you just consume, or lie about someone whacking you over the head with some kind of blunt object, possibly a baseball bat - whatever - as soon as we contrive our own nostalgia, a certain performance invades even our most sincere moments, and then my friends, there are no friends.

MOVIE IDEA: A very nice man wearing cheap but optimized attire, steps out of his house and drops his key. Someone goes to strike his head. However, the intended hittee leans forward to pick up his key, and the hitter follows through and catches the neighbour, Mr It’s a Lovely Day For a Shoe-Shine, instead, right in the old cake hole. The hitter disappears into the shadows from whence he came, and the intended hittee stands up to see his neighbour collapse like a flatpack cupboard that’s had one too many crown green bowling trophies placed proudly upon it. Mr Honestly It Is Not looks at the slightly flinching ca-da-ver (I’m not too fond of that word) and wonders what the hell could have caused that. “Are you experiencing pain?”

Nurse Argumentative Bentley suggests a lot of people come to medical professionals exhibiting signs of drug seeking behaviour, (which she has tattooed on her thigh, and pulls up her skirt, unclips her suspender strap and rolls down the white nylon of her stocking to show me,) and they turn them away should signs of drug seeking behaviour expose themselves behind a glorious red and gold cloak of otherwise beautiful truth. Dr Elegant Tsunami steps in, leans in, breath like a Spanish bordello and aftershave with an odour that punches returned to owner after a six-stretch at Her Majesty’s complete and utter ignorance right into your olfactory epithelium. “Not only are they turned away, but they can be prosecuted.”

“If I’m in pain, then I come somewhere like this fine establishment (naked females, breasted, heels, and a clipboard (which is actually a mirror. ZING!) would make it finer. Glasses, too, as they suck the tips of their pens. A gottle of curves and the unsure innocence of flesh adventures. Got to get the glasses right. I’m thinking of XX XXXXX from my art school days, who stole the look from bubble and squeak recording artist Nana ‘released over 200 albums in thirteen languages’ Mouskouri, and not some NHS jobbies with a plaster on one lens, AKA Swimming Pool attendant Miss Mable Druck (looks like a duck), who used to bite my arse for ten pence and get me to conduct Mozart with my prepubescent erect penoir. (I call it my penoir to remind me of French romance that I read about once) and I am one-hundred percent behaving like someone seeking drugs. “Give me a moment to write that question in my notebook. It’s Moosekinder brand.”

Dr Bellyache Fartoir and Mr Congealed Abacus, the healthcare compliance specialist and auditor, arrive right on time. “The thing is, Mr Honestly It Is Not, patients who go to medical dispensaries with real problems are prescribed medicines for…” Mr Congealed Abacus turns his head towards Dr Bellyache Fartoir, purses his lips and slightly squints one eye as Dr Bellyache Fartoir speaks. This appears to be a significant area in healthcare compliance and auditing, causing Dr Bellyache Fartoir to pause before committing to the conclusion of his assertion “…to make them feel better” “As opposed to someone who lives on the street chewing his fingers off after watching his friend’s head explode during some war he didn’t know why he was fighting, or for whom. Is he not seeking drugs to make him…er… feel better?” What a laugh. Dr Bellyache Fartoir, Mr Congealed Abacus, and Nurse Argumentative Bentley form a small but effective three-person conga, all singing: “Do do do, come on and do the conga, do do do, come on and do the conga” as they leave the little room. My little room. My little notebook. My lonely life. My dirty window. My dirty sheets. My dreams. My losses. My failures. This child of a father whose land is no more. This other. This man who writes. Squalor®

The End

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