Proctal Algesia, a fictional satirical blog by Hamish Dixon, monstrous expat Scot living on New York's Upper East Side, plus spurious news from around the world

Droning on...and on...and on...and on...and on...

Lies, Lies, and more damned lies...

HAMISH DIXON'S DIARY

Saturday, January 31, 2004

TOUGH LOVE FOR RORY

I place so many of my hopes in young Rory that I sometimes wonder if I'm overburdening him. Maybe I should simply look the other way and let him wander off into a life of ballet dancing or management consulting. But good God, I might manage to deal with the idea of my son prancing around on stage in a body stocking (Rory, if he carries on like this, will be force to put a bit of extra padding down the front, if only for the sake of balance), but if the boy ended up a management consultant I think I would drown in my own vomit.

As part of my ongoing effort to toughen the boy up and save him from such things I dragged him off this morning to an outer borough market where, I would imagine, every single one of Mayor Mike's health laws are exuberantly ignored.

The main purpose of the visit was for us to watch other people buying live chickens and other birds (pigeons were a big item), and the birds' subsequent decapitation and disembowelment, and then for Rory to pick one out himself, which we would later cook for dinner. We were, unfortunately, not very far into this worthwhile exercise when my beloved son went white as a sheet and scurried off to throw up among the discarded lettuce leaves. Everyone at the market gathered round him, letting out gales of sympathetic laughter. For his own good I forced him to return to the chicken stand and held his head between my hands while the butcher did his work, and we returned home with the freshest chicken he or any of the rest of the family are ever likely to see. On the way back he looked at me with an intensity that ignorant observers might have confused with hatred, while I told him stories of how in the old days at Bridge of Scrapie we had slit the throats pigs and sheep in wheelbarrows outside the kitchen door. I think the trip was a great success, on the whole, but I am inclined to shelve my plans for a visit to a cock-fight next week.

Dolores once again displayed her normal scowling disapproval at all of this, so, being close to persona non grata at the Megalopolis, I went round to see Wanda, who was her normal pneumatic accommodating self.

Friday, January 30, 2004

RECONSIDERING VINNY

Things were slow at the office today and once I had called the agency to discuss a replacement for that useless creature Myrna - I asked for a big beefy woman who could block a doorway -- I had time to reflect on recent events.

This meant, since my finger stump is still excruciatingly painful, that I turned to thinking about Vinny Berlusconi and what a worthless lowdown cur he is. I don't think I mentioned that after he chopped off my finger this low-grade hoodlum, this man whose children I had virtually sent to college, bundled me back in that disgusting Lincoln and instead of dropping me off at the nearest hospital or at least back at the office, drove me out to the Meadowlands (an act which caused me to soil my linen with justified terror and significant later embarrassment, since it seemed to be the prelude to a Godfather-like snuffing out of the Dixon lights) and deposited me on a causeway in the middle of a snowy ice-girt wasteland. Before driving off he leaned over and gave me a big hug, almost killing me there and then with grappa fumes. "Nothing personal, eh, Mr. Dixon?" he rasped, "Just business."

And I was so pathetically grateful to be still alive that I agreed with the miserable macaroni-eater, and continued to town the party line until today, when I sat up in sudden realization of what a load of b.s. it was to say that there was nothing personal about chopping off someone's finger and then, perhaps even more obnoxiously, dumping them still-bleeding in the middle of New Jersey, of all places, in subzero temperatures, with no coat, gloves, hat or money. Well, if Vinny thinks that I will be using him for my hits in the future, he had better damn well think again. There's plenty more like him out there.

Dolores and I finally reached a compromise on a replacement for the Maybach today - not that anything really can be a replacement for such a magnificent, proletariat-distancing vehicle. We have, to our mutual dismay, agreed that for the sake of my manhood we should have a poor-people's car for when I am riding with the family, and the rest of the time they should have a Bentley with a plummy-voiced English chauffeur. The popular choice for a poor people's car appears to be a BMW.

Thursday, January 29, 2004

MYRNA IS CROSS

When I arrived in the office yesterday I found Myrna still lying on the floor on her back, almost exactly as I left her when I still had all my fingers. She had, however, stopped kicking her legs in the air, and was snoring foully.

A couple of quick jabs with my foot brought her to something resembling wakefulness. She looked puzzled and disoriented, so I helped her out.

"Myrna, get up and get out," I said in a kindly voice. "Don't you remember I fired you?"

"I remember, you asshole," she said.

"So what's the deal? Why are you still here?" I asked.

"I couldn't get up, you miserable fuck," she said.

I must admit, I hadn't pegged Myrna as having such a filthy mouth. I leaned over and offered her my hand. She grabbed hold of it ungraciously and hoisted herself onto her skinny feet, where she stood swaying and looking bemused while I went into my office and listened to my messages.

While I was listening to the message from the President of the Governors of the Megalopolis Club summoning me to appear before their assembled lordships to explain my role in the great Bill-Mel melee of last week, Myrna walked in with a gun and fired it three times in my direction, entirely without effect, and then fled, screaming obscenities. All this from a woman who went to Spence.

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

BREAKFAST BROUHAHA

At breakfast this morning Alison looked at my bandaged hand across the formica (a source, incidentally, of constant disgust for Dolores, who in her ever-failing bid to compete with Bambi Drysdale wants it replaced with marble hand-chiseled from some Greek island quarry.)

"Daddy?" said Alison.

"Mmmm?" I responded through a mouthful of crumbling toast and Dundee marmalade.

"Daddy," she asked, "Things generally come in threes, don't they?"

"That's what the old wives say," I replied, reaching for my steaming megamug of superstrong Assam, "although I'm not sure that my particular old wife would agree."

At this Dolores feigned deafness, which well she might considering the amount of time she spends down at the gun club pretending to blast away at ethnic-minority intruders.

"Daddy," protested my beloved daugther, "Mommy is not at all old. She's your third wife. She's a trophy wife. Aren't you Mommy? Anyway," my beloved daughter went on, "If what the old wives say is really true, and I've lost a nipple, and you've lost a finger, isn't it time Rory lost his..."

"That's quite enough of that, Alison," spat Dolores, slammming down a cup of OJ in front of her adored eight-year-old son, the last, sadly effete, male of the Dixon line -- the living embodiment of the hopelessness of any attempt to keep the honor of the Dixons afloat. Poor peely-wally red-haired small-dicked Rory, such a disappointment to his father in virtually every way, is almost as dismally equipped as I was when my bout of Maybach-possession syndrome was at its peak. No amount of toughening up and summers at Bridge of Scrapie are going to change that.

"Well, his whatsit is so teeny-weeny that it wouldn't make any difference, " said Alison, echoing my thoughts, admittedly, but coming in a dismal last in the word-mincing stakes. At which entirely truthful remark Rory jumped up from the table, threw his porridge in his sister's face and ran from the room, while Dolores leaned across the table and cuffed Alison with such vigor that the poor wee thing was sent flying. If we keep this up the place is going to be literally crawling with social workers.

All this before I even got to the office, and I had been hoping for a quiet day because of the snow.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

BLOODY STUMP AT THE DINNER TABLE

When I arrived at the dinner table last night Dolores took one look at the blood-soaked bandage and let out a groan of disgust.

"What is that revolting thing round your hand?" she demanded.

"It seems," I said, in my most suave tones, "that someone envied me the return of my manhood to its full expansive glory and decided to compensate by chopping off my little finger."

"Could you try being a little less pompous," Dolores said, "Just for once?"

"Isn't it clear enough?" I demanded, raising my voice and slamming my intact hand on the table. "Didn't I just say that someone chopped off my finger?"

"Well get that disgusting stump out of here!" Dolores screamed. "Get yourself to the hospital before you get blood on the sofa!"

"Mommy!" said my one-nippled daughter Alison, "Stop it." She looked at me. "Who did it, Daddy?"

"I don't know, my little sugar plum," I said, "but he did say that the next thing he was going to do was kill Mommy -- very very slowly. He said that it would be crueller for me to have to watch the woman I love die a painful death than simply to die one myself." I smiled at Dolores and she looked back at me with concentrated hate.

"Oh Daddy," said Alison, who is a lot brighter than her mother, "What a load of nonsense. I am sure you did something extremely sleazy to make someone chop off your finger, you bad bad man. Now run along to the hospital and get yourself fixed up."

I did what my daughter told me, of course. I always do. All the way to the hospital I practiced what I was going to say to the doctor when he asked me what had happened, so it was a big disappointment when she just looked at me and said "Encounter with a guillotine, eh? Over there."

Apparently there has been a rash of printer's guillotine finger amputations lately.

Tonight the weathermen tell us there is going to be a big snowstorm in New York, so tomorrow should be a day without serious incident. Perhaps I will have time to consider who gave Vinny his orders.

Monday, January 26, 2004

DEDIGITATION BY VINNY

I was sitting in my Spanish leather-lined office at the top of 9 West 57th Street just before lunch time, looking out over Central Park all covered in snow, and searching my address book for Vinny's phone number, when a commotion arose outside, and all five foot two of the man himself pushed past my aged secretary Myrna and into the inner sanctum.

"Well, hello there Vinny, old bean, good to see you, " I said. "What brings you to this part of town? Are things so bad that you have to tout for work?"

"It'd be good to see you too, Mr. Dixon if I wasn't here on business," he said. At this my blood ran cold and my bowels only barely remained under control.

"Here on business, Vinny?" I said, trying to sound cheerful, "But I hadn't even called you yet."

"You gotta come with me, Mr. Dixon," said Vinny. "Where's your coat?"

"But Vinny, I don't think I want to do that," I said, my voice shaking, my knees trembling.

"You gotta, or I gotta do even more than what I gotta do," he said. Was this a ray of hope, or only the normal deception of the hardened killer?

"Where to?" I asked.

"Not far," he said. "A little place I know."

What choice did I have? I know Vinny. I've used him myself. He couldn't be bought off, he always does what he's contracted to do. I put on my coat slowly, taking in the view for what might have been the last time.

On the way out I looked over my shoulder and told Myrna, who was still lying on the floor weakly kicking her legs in the air like an insect, that she was fired. It made me feel a little more in control, just temporarily, and anyway I want someone Vinny can't push out of the way so easily next time he comes calling.

There was a car idling right next to the big red 9 and Vinny held the door open. It was an old Town Car, the leather all split, and it stank of cheap cigars. We drove in it over to Tenth, somewhere in the 40s. Vinny led me into the back of a store, into a room full of printing machinery where he made me take off my coat ("we don't want to make a mess of such a nice coat, Mr. Dixon" he said) , and then he quickly put my pinky under the guillotine and pulled the lever. My finger tumbled to the ground with a soft thud and sat amid a pile of paper trimmings. I just stood there staring at what had just before been a part of me in shocked surprise, while blood gushed from the stump that was left. I looked at Vinny.

"Who?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dixon," he said, and I could swear that he genuinely was, "I can't tell you. But my client said to say that if you don't stop, he'll send me back to finish the job. Now let's find a bandage."

I wanted to pick up my finger and try to have it sewn back on, but Vinny wouldn't let me. If I was seen with all my fingers, he said, someone might think he hadn't done the job. So we left it there on the floor and he bandaged me up and dropped me off back at the office.

In all the pandemonium I quite forgot to talk to him about dealing with Dolores.

Sunday, January 25, 2004

WINTER FUN

It had dropped below zero fahrenheit outside last night when the 11 o'clock news came on, so I toured the house opening up all the bedroom windows, and turned off the heating everywhere other than my study. My entire yankeefied family is much too soft, quite frankly -- if they had experienced my deprived Bridge of Scrapie childhood, they would be altogether more fit to survive in the harsh reality of today's world.

Anyway as far as Rory was concerned, his room was filled with swamplike gasses which might have caused an explosion had they not been allowed to escape. How do his bowels do this when he eats the same stuff as the rest of us? One could imagine us all being in his condition, considering the vileness of Dolores's cooking, but he lets them rip in solitary splendor. I was probably the same at the tender age of eight, but then I had to live on overboiled cabbage and haggis rather than being hopelessly spoiled like my brood and living off the fat of the land.

Meanwhile in my cozy den I continued snugger than any rug-bound bug, salivating over Mel's virtuoso performance in Braveheart, and toasting myself before a fire made from the ancient boards of the foul hovel that had been a blot on the terrace vista until I had it demo'ed last summer (its last revolting inhabitants, amusingly and serendipitously satisfyingly called Tony and Cherie Blair, whose family had lived in it for three generations, looked on the while in pathetic tears.)

Rory came downstairs in the morning and woke me up from my chairbound slumbers. "Dad," he wheedled, "May I be excused my run this morning? It's minus 10 out there, with a windchill of minus 30, and I feel terrible." "Nonsense, boy, don't be such a weakling," I retorted, looking over at the empty scotch bottle and realizing why I too felt so dreadful, "It'll do you good." He looked at me miserably, dressed in his white cotton shorts, singlet and sneakers, and I felt the tug at the heartstrings felt by fathers everywhere when they have to be tough for the sake of their children's future. "Off you go, then," I said, patting him on the head. He slunk out of the door and I saw him set off shivering around the field. I went upstairs to get my .22, and loading it with explosive bullets proceeded to put a spring in his step by firing just behind him. He arrived back half an hour later blue with cold, with the backs of his legs peppered with bloody cuts and looking more miserable than I've ever seen him. An appropriate antidote, I think, to the coddling he gets from his mother and at that hopeless namby-pamby school of his.

My efforts to harden up the rest of the family failed miserably, however. Dolores spent a whole hour screaming at me about how I could have killed them all. Apparently she was awake when I opened her window, and immediately closed everything I had opened. Thwarted at every turn! Then she saw what I'd done to Rory's legs and she went downstairs to the cellar and proceeded to smash every bottle in the place.

Vinny was not available when I called him, and if I don't reach him soon I may have to kill the bitch myself.

and on...and on...and on...and on

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