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, February 14, 2004

PAST CATCHES UP WITH NIGEL

Nigel and I took the kids out for breakfast at the Dingleberry Diner this morning, while Dolores nursed a hangover at home.

To my great relief, this meant that my beloved didn't want to celebrate Valentine's day in the traditional way, and my virtually prickless state could remain undiscovered -- in the old days we'd abstain from nookie entirely for the first two weeks of February and then go at it like a pair of crazed rabbits for hours on Valentine's Day morning. How the Hallmark folk would have smiled at this, we used to think. (Even now, once Dolores gets up steam she keeps on thundering down the tracks like a transcontinental freight train, and nothing can stop her except total exhaustion.)

As we waited for our food, Alison and Rory sat silently like little automata in front of their game boys, while Nigel and I talked about whether the recent ridiculous fuss over Bush's National Guard attendance record, or the photo of that traitor Kerry at a demo with Hanoi Jane Fonda, would make any difference to the election. I was quietly hinting to Nigel that although Jane, being a commie bastard, didn't turn me on at all at the time, if I'd been my age now when she was the age she was then (if you can follow that reasoning) I wouldn't at all have minded doing to her what I did to all those foolish young wee marys back in Bridge of Scrapie. I was just getting into the idea of how she would have struggled and spat, and how exciting that would have been, when Alison looked up at me.

"Daddy," she said, "you're a disgusting, perverted old man. You ought to be locked up."

"You're probably right, my sweet," I replied, "but you must allow an old man his dreams." I hadn't realized she was listening. Forcing oneself on a woman doesn't seem to be acceptable to the young -- something I still find surprising. Let's face it, though, if every time I look at a Maybach my tackle retreats into my innermost recesses, I'm never going to be a threat to anyone ever again, anyway.

"Anyway, Daddy," asked Rory, "What were you and Uncle Nigel doing at that demonstration? Haven't you always been a pair of right wing bastards?"

"Waddya mean, what were we doing there?" I demanded, glowering at my increasingly inquisitorial son.

"Well, you're both in the photo, aren't you?"

"We are?!" we both said in unison.

"You mean you didn't know?" asked Alison. "What a silly old daddy you are!"

"Uncle Nigel has long hair and a mustache and shades and looks stoned out of his mind, and you look just as boring and conventional as you do now," said Rory. "But you're both there. Not together, though."

"Were you a hippy, Uncle Nigel?" asked Alison.

Nigel does have a past, which he has managed to cover up, in which, inter alia, he smoked a great deal of weed, and had a huge collection of bongs. Even worse, to his intense embarrassment now, he was a registered Democrat and subscribed to that unspeakable rag The Nation.

But today my old pal Nige, fatter and balder, is an upright member of the community, running a chain of maximum misery private prisons in the midwest and dreaming up new small ways to make the felons' lives less comfortable. A very profitable chain, filled as it is with harmless non-violent drug offenders just like his younger self.

I looked across at him and saw that he had gone white. Noone could ever accuse Nige of having a razor-sharp intellect, but I could see that he had realized that if the kids could recognize him in a photo, so could others.

"What shall I do?" he asked me.

"Dunno, Nige," I said, "I guess you're fucked."

Friday, February 13, 2004

THE MAYBACH TAKETH AWAY AND THE MAYBACH GIVETH

I'm thankful to be able to report that what disappeared instantaneously also reappeared, at least in part, with relative speed. It would have been altogether too much to bear to have had to exist for any time both pinkyless and penisless in New York: I really think I would have had to retire to the remote confines Bridge of Scrapie for the rest of my life and anaesthetize myself with cheap blended whisky from dawn to dusk like my near ancestors, with nary a fond glance at the nubile young daughters of the gullible wee marys I used to roger in the heather every summer all those years ago.

Which is all leading up to the satisfying information that whereas yesterday at zero hour I had a gaping hole where the pulsating evidence of my manhood had nestled inside my boxers only a scant second before, now I have a steadily growing stub -- prepubescent in scale, I am forced to admit -- forcing itself forward and allowing me to return to upright urination.

My best friend, Nigel Bronsky, came into town last night and I told him what had happened.

"You should be thankful, Hamish, old boy," he said, "being without a dick will make your life so much easier. I often wish that someone would come and cut mine off."

Nigel can be a total fool at times. What an idiotic thing to say, especially for a man who was put on this earth to be paid by penis enhancement pill vendors to wander round the locker rooms of gyms in the altogether and make other perfectly well-equipped men feel inadequate.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

TOUCHING THE VOID

I was on my way this morning to see my dentist -- yet another round of drilling, plugging and expectoration of great gobbets of blood lay ahead -- when I accidentally found myself walking up the west side of Park in the 50s.

What on Earth was I thinking?

There it was, of course -- the Mercedes showroom. And there, in pride of place, was a Maybach. A beautiful, shiny, fuck-the-poor Maybach.

Still, when I found myself face to face with a pristine version of the car that had caused me so much past trouble, I started to tell myself that it wasn't beautiful at all. Which it isn't, really -- not in any classical sense. Its beauty lies in its price. Otherwise it's an excruciatingly dull thing, which probably explains why virtually nobody apart from me in the whole of New York has bought one. It is also, alas, a car that most of the great unwashed doesn't recognize (unlike Dolores's big bad Bentley), which really removes most of the point.

It might be a fuck-the-poor car, but if they don't know they're being fucked, why bother?

Well, telling myself all this did no good at all. With a plopping sound that I could hear above the siren of a passing ambulance, my prick disappeared back inside me as I stared at the marvel of Teutonic engineering, and I was left standing there with my nose against the window, a scrotum, two balls, a hole and a feeling of deep depression.

It took three months of Maybach ownership for this to happen to me last time round, but now it all it took was 30 seconds of looking at one of the damned things through a plate glass window. I carried on walking like an automaton to the dentist, in whose chair I sat for well over an hour while contemplating renewed emasculation.

So here I am. When I look at myself in the bathroom mirror I see a pot-bellied version of some Roman marble where the extremities have been knocked off, and when I pee I have to sit down, tuck my balls between my legs, and use the best part of half a roll of tissue to dry myself off.

This would, I would imagine, bring a smile to Rory's teacher Mr. Kleinpecker. But how on Earth am I going to break it to Dolores?

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

A BOILER AND KNIGHTHOOD HOPES UP IN SMOKE

The boiler in one of my luxury Park Avenue office buildings exploded violently today, killing Cuddles the building cat and severely scalding Antonio, the super.

This was, I am quite convinced, the result of sabotage by the communists I'm forced to employ there. Antonio, fresh in from the hinterland of some South European hellhole, ran a tight ship, and they didn't like it when he stopped them smoking in the fire escapes. He even wanted to institute floggings for bad workmanship, but then he ran into the union.

A man ahead of his time, that Antonio. Another four years of Bush's depradations on the undeserving poor, though, and he may end up being current.

"More likely it blew up because you're too much of skinflint to maintain it properly, you miserable Scottish miser," said Dolores, when I told of her my suspicions. We Scots continue to be much maligned, in spite of my Bible-bashing pal Mel's efforts to portray us sympathetically as poor downtrodden victims of English oppression. However much of a looney Mel becomes, I'm always going to love him for his hatred of the vile Sassenachs.

"My friends say you're a miserable bloodsucker, daddy," Rory chimed in -- with, I could swear, a glint of vicious humor in his eye. "D'you think it's true?" I glowered at the boy, who appears to be getting a tongue on him, even if he does walk and look like a girl. Makes me wonder what Dolores was like at his age.

"Well," he continued when I said nothing, sticking his chin in the air in that accusatory way of his, "it does seem to me that you never exactly deliver what you've bargained for, do you? You always suck more out of a deal than is strictly reasonable."

This boy is only 8. Maybe he is brighter than I had thought.

The building had to be evacuated and when I went to survey the damage the tenants who recognized me were a few degrees short of being friendly, but they were nothing compared with the building staff, who sounded as if they had been coached by my beloved wife. They actually hissed at me as I walked into the building and spat on the sidewalk behind my back. The boiler is totally wrecked, of course, and the only way we can get a new one in is to dig up the entire sidewalk. This will take weeks, and meanwhile the building is unusable and my tenants, I suppose, will stop paying rent. The pleasure of laying off the staff will be little compensation.

I called Big Ears later in the day to tell him that he couldn't come, and had to leave a message as he was off in the middle east, of all places. What could they possibly make of him out there, I wonder?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dixon," said the fruity tones at the end of the phone, "Could you repeat that?"

So I did.

"Did you say that the Prince could no longer stay with you?" asked the voice in awed amazement.

"No," I replied. "I said that he could no longer borrow my house. If he wants to come and stay, he can. But tell him my mother-in-law will be with us at the same time, so it might cramp his style, and as she's an alcoholic, all the booze will have to be locked away."

An hour later I got a call from the British Consulate-General. Not from Sir Tom, the consul-general, who was at Cambridge with my sister Fiona and with whom I once participated in an unfilleted kipper eating competition (he won), but from an underling. This person tried to scold me for reneging on my agreement.

"Look here, you young whippersnapper," I said, "His Royal Bloody Highness invited himself to stay and it was only after I said yes that I realized that he meant to take over the house and toss me and my family onto the streets. So to hell with him!"

Sharp intake of breath from whippersnapper.

Looks like another old friendship down the drain.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

DOLORES DIGS IN HEELS - NO WELCOME FOR BIG EARS

The truth about Big Ears's proposed visit got out almost immediately and fan-driven ordure was flying around the kitchen and making a big mess on the walls over breakfast this morning.

"What the f#@% do you think you're doing, giving away my house to the fairy prince?" Dolores screamed at me.

"There's no evidence at all that he's a fairy," I demurred.

"That's completely beside the point and you know it," screeched Dolores. "We are not moving out of the house just because you have an irresistible urge to suck up to his royal mighty goddam highness. This is America, Hamish, not Bridge of Scrapie where you lie down on the floor and let them walk on you!"

"Your problem," I said, trying to calm her down, "is that he's always ignored you. You really need to take a pill and get over it."

At this steam visibly emerged from my wife's ears. "Damn right it is," she yelled at me, all the while slamming bowls and mugs down in front of the rather dazed-looking children. "I'm your legally married wife, God help me, which is more than can be said for that creature of his." Dolores has always, I think, been unnecessarily rude about Camilla, who has been a staunch supporter of the harmless and innocent Big Ears in times of trouble. (Readers may be wondering about my apparently disrespectful reference to the heir to the throne as "Big Ears." It stems from our days together wandering the whorehouses of the port cities of the world in our minesweeper, when the rest of the officers would refer to HRH thus in order to throw local reporters of the scent.)

"If the useless creature has really got to come and stay, he can stay in one of the guest rooms and eat my food like any other guest."

It's pointless talking to Dolores when she's in this mood, so as soon as the children had left for school I made a pass at her, which I figured was just about my only chance of turning her around. When she's really furious I guess I have about a 50/50 chance of succeeding with this ploy and when I do the sex is extraordinary, if somewhat exhausting.

Unfortunately on this occasion she instead not only slapped me so hard that there was an impression of her fingers on my cheek all day, but she kneed me in the balls and stamped her stiletto into my toe as well. So unable to face the world I hobbled off to the movies for the early showing of Master and Commander where I was once again brought face to face with my wimpish son Rory's inadequacies as I watched young Lord Blakeney first bravely lie still as the doctor cut off his arm with a saw and later leap heroically into action against the dastardly Frenchmen. They don't make 'em like that anymore, at least not in New York.

Monday, February 09, 2004

SMOKE GETS IN MIKEY'S EYES

Little Mikey is in an awful lot of tabloid trouble because he sat still and watched while all around him puffed cigars at a "posh" dinner at the St. Regis last week. Much muttering among the lower orders of "One rule for the rich and another for the poor."

Exactly as it should be, of course; our rulers ought to be out of touch with the common herd. They ought to be able to break the rules. Rules, to adapt from my great friend and mentoress Leona, are for the little people. Smoking cigars, moreover, provides work for dry cleaners.

Still, there's pleasure to be derived, without a doubt, from watching another of my ex-friends squirm in the acid of his own hypocrisy.

I was at the dinner, of course, at a table with my minders Franky "the Insider" Funicula and Melvyn "the Margin" Evans, the latter all dressed up in his trademark 10 carat diamond cufflinks, and we fired up our Cohibas along with the rest of them. Little Mikey had studiously ignored me earlier in the evening, presumably because he's still sulking about my murderous chauffeur Slobodan's efforts to blow him up, so I sat down next to him with my great fat reeking cigar and blew smoke into his sensitive nostrils while chatting inconsequentially about cabbages and kings and the great Graydon Carter. He went noticeably red around the eyes, whether from the smoke or suppressed fury it was hard to tell.

Dolores's mother Ethel called yesterday to say that she is coming on her annual pilgrimage to New York at exactly the time when Big Ears is due to fly in from London. "Oh, how nice dear," I said to Dolores, who hates having her mother here but insists on her right to descend on us at any time she chooses. How am I going to deal with this? Ethel and the Prince are hardly likely to fall into one another's arms like long lost pals.

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

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