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, March 06, 2004

FREEDOM TO THINK

Nobody was talking to me at home, so yesterday I took my malodorous Mercury Tracer and headed off alone to Monte Pollo, the Dixon rural retreat in Rhode Island.

As usual the disgusting little car did wonders for the state of my manhood, which measurably perked up over the course of the journey -- and by the time I arrived among the swamp yankees I was beginning to fantasize about finding a willing exercise partner among their more credulous daughters.

But I long since used up my gullible country girl seduction energy on the firm-thighed fresh-faced lasses of Bridge of Scrapie (oh, what days those were!). So instead I cracked open a bottle of Graham's '77 and spent the evening in front of a sulking fire, reading Robert Harris's novel Pompeii and feeling a strong sense of sympathy for the rich property developer who feeds his slave to the eels.

I also took a moment to consider my current problems, which are:

1. My wife won't talk to me.

2. My effeminate son is a disaster - although his appalling school, East Side Spoilem, seems to think he's some sort of a paragon. He doesn't talk to me, either.

3. My thirteen-year-old daughter's nipple fell off some weeks ago. She is a wonderful child, but since I got her drunk and gave her a Cohiba to smoke, she has also been forbidden by her mother to talk to me. Her school, Chance, is also causing problems -- threatening to expel her for dancing naked in the snow.

4. My enforcer Vinny cut my finger off in a printer's guillotine and dumped me in subzero temperatures in the middle of the New Jersey meadowlands without a coat. My finger hurts, and I need to find a new enforcer -- I will certainly never use that ingrate again. You would have thought this would be easy in New York, but it is not.

5. I don't know who paid Vinny to cut off my finger. Does this person plan more disastrous violence against my person? How can I avert it?

6. My penis disappears inside my body if I go anywhere near a car costing more than $10,000.

Thursday, March 04, 2004

IN RECEIPT OF A TAUNTING FROM DONALD

Donald called today, pretending to sympathize about the troubles I'm having with my tenants.

"Of course," he said, "if you worked for me, Hamish, I'd have to fire you."

"Meaning what, exactly?" I asked, bridling at the barefaced impertinence of the inventor of the structural hairdo.

"You're a slum lord, Hamish," said the prince of polished brass, "you run your buildings into the ground and you treat your tenants like filth."

"I run low-key buildings, unlike you," I said, "but they are impeccably maintained, and most of my tenants love me."

"That's horseshit," he said, "and you know it. Your buildings are dingy and dirty and you're a penny-wise and pound-foolish skinflint. Now, if you were like me, you're buildings would be recognized as the most beautiful examples of modern architecture in the city, and would be manned by adoring employees, and everything would function like a well-oiled machine. You would also, of course," he added, putting the knife in, "be a deal richer than you are."

The call left me feeling thoroughly depressed. I'd give anything to put out a contract on Donald's hair. I wonder whether Shlomo the enforcer would be able to get near enough to hack it off?

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

TOO OLD TO HIRE BABY-FACED HITMAN

My meeting with the hit-man was a disappointment. I was willing to contemplate the possibility of an orthodox Jew like Shlomo being an effective and scrupulous instrument of punishment and revenge -- good heavens, every race and creed must produce them -- but the fact that he was only sixteen and not even shaving made the whole thing impossible.

"How can I hire you when you're so young?" I asked.

"I'm a natural born killer, man," he said, pulling his big black hat down over his peely-wally beardless face.

"So I'm told," I said. Our intermediary, Ronnie, said that his record out in Brooklyn was impressive. "But what if I want something done when you're locked up in your yeshiva, or it's the sabbath?" Shlomo's dad, I'm reliably informed, is a very reputable rabbi who keeps a close eye on him -- although not close enough, apparently.

"What you want done is your business," he replied. "Timing is mine."

"Shlomo, old pal, old bean," I said, "You're very convincing. And you certainly come highly recommended. And there certainly might be something to be said for the terror-inducing effects of your unfashionable suit and that splendid hat. I'm even sure you can put a bullet in a man's head or break his legs with the best of them. But I'm just too old to hire someone so young to do these things. I need some hardened old bastard -- someone more my own age."

He didn't seem too disappointed. "I got plenty to keep me busy," he said. "Keep the phone number. You'll change your mind."

Maybe I will, too, but I've just got to get used to the idea. I'm more used to the idea of hiring an enforcer bred of a long line of thugs rather than a long line of religious scholars.

Meanwhile the tenants at the building where the boiler blew up and killed Cuddles the cat have been getting uppity. It took them a little while to get organized -- thank God I always kept lawyers out of the building -- but now they've ganged up on me under the leadership of some weasel-like management consultant, and are refusing to pay their rent until the thing is fixed.

They claim that the last three weeks of frigid temperatures have made their offices unusable. I simply tell them that if they'd been brought up like me in Bridge of Scrapie, they'd really know the meaning of cold. They tell me they are unimpressed by this cogent argument.

Anyway, I have virtually no equity in the place, so I'm seriously considering defaulting on the mortgage and letting the Tenth National Bank of Block Island take the thing over. The tenants won't know what hit them when that shambles is in charge.

Monday, March 01, 2004

A CALL FROM MRS. DIXON SR.

On Sunday mother somehow managed to get to the phone and call me, waking the entire household out a deep sleep at 5 in the morning.

"What is it, mother?" I asked.

"Hello, dear," she said, "I'm just calling to wish you a happy birthday."

"Mother, you old fool," I said, "put the nurse on the line." At this she let out one of her lunatic shreiking gurgles, after which there was the sound of a slight tussle and the phone went dead. I would very much like to know how she managed to get my phone number.

My birthday is, in fact, in September. Mother has, of course, been completely gaga since my younger brother Jack had the operation over 20 years ago. She simply couldn't get used to the idea that her little boy (a poisonous little twerp all his life, if truth be told) had gone and had his whatsit cut off. He/she, although the cause of the problem, refused to look after the old trout, and blithely went off to Morocco in search of gullible Arab boys, so when things got too out of hand -- she kept on trying to persuade the postman to go to bed with her --I had her put away in a high class private bin in a big old house called Drumnancie on the banks of Loch Scrapie. I think Uncle Hector occasionally totters over there to check on her, and shoves some delicacy under the door, but I haven't been near the place myself or seen her since I had her carted away.

That brief chat with mother was the sum total of my conversation over the weekend. Rory slinks from the room as soon as I come in, and Dolores has clearly put the fear of God into Alison after we sat up drinking and smoking Havanas the other night -- when, of course, my little angel threw up all over the carpet right next to Dolores's favorite chair. Dolores herself continues to give me the silent door-slamming treatment, and has expressed no inquisitiveness at all about the very obvious injuries I sustained at the hands of Wanda's diminutive but powerful lover.

I am about to go out and conduct a very secret interview with a potential replacement for Vinny. If this is the right man, I shall soon be able to clear out some of the pricklier undergrowth that is making life so miserable.

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

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