Butt-Phillip: A Man Dismayed

4. The Unequalled Whelk

Let me spin you a yarn. One bright summer in 2003, a young, pert, extravagantly beautiful young boy took his first, faltering steps towards independence by going to university. This same effigy of perfection was seduced by a flyer and an encouraging word to attend an event thrown by Kent's own Rock Music Society. That day, I moisten at recollecting, he had his innocence stolen from him and it was never returned. The experience tarnished the young boy... Actually - I shall break my authorial spell - it was me, Phillip Butt-Phillip and I am not beautiful, I'm a couple of stone overweight and shout things like "cunt him in the bastard" at football matches, but the principal is sound. "Why? Why? Why?” I hear you cry - you collection of sexual deviants, depressive malcontents, wilfully mistrustful vagabonds and similarly inclined gaggle of bastitches- "Why and how was your innocence taken"? Here is why and here is how.

One Friday, early in my stay at the University of Kent, I was wandering along with a new acquaintance (the same Theo whom I spoke of in my last dispatch). I will not say that a fraternal bond was instant, or even that I liked him then or now but from the moment we met he became a fixture in my life as I became of his. Over time I passed through stages of dismay, disbelief, horror, abhorrence and find my self now in a placid backwater of bewildered love for the creature. All of this is secondary, but I must posit the broader points of the mise-en-scene . A man approached us, an extravagantly bearded specimen who offered us a flyer:

"You guys like rock?" spake the thing.
"Yep", Theo replied.
"Come along to K-Bar this Friday, it'll be mmmental!" and with that he was off. Leaving only the flyer and a question in the air:
"You wanna go?" said Theo.
"Fuck it, why not?" said I. And so we went.

The event, it transpired, was a pub crawl to initiate vulnerable Freshmen into the ways and means of the Rock Society. My new friend and I lasted until the first pub, where we waited in the toilet for everyone to leave. What curses were flung! What words, so lightly thrown, were tossed! How we did rue giving £5 for membership to the benighted collection of cunts that had just left:

"What in the blue cunting, fucking, rodgering, bucket-cunting, blood-spewing, bitch-farming motherfucking ARSE are we doing here?"
"I have no idea" said I helplessly, "perhaps, they improve on better acquaintance."
"Yes, and perhaps Virginia Woolf was a cock-hungry homophobe, but, like your scenario, I somehow fucking doubt it."

Such was my first encounter with the Rock Society. At length we emerged from the "smallest room" to find the place pleasantly deserted and settled in for the evening, hoping never to repeat the experience. Alas, repeat it we did. The traditional “University life” is strange for those who experience it solely as noise through his window in the early hours. Every time you step outside your established group - the people of whom you are certain - you are faced with the utter monotony of it and yet it still maintains its strange allure. One can never be quite certain that one isn't missing out on something. Such was my situation in the first year, the singing and strange, semi-heard snatches of conversation that floated into my window were both repellent and compelling:

"Awright darlin', you wan' me to come round?"
"Wa' she sayin', Gaz?"
"Ah fink she's got another bloke round!"
"Fuckin' cheeky little slapper!"
"Wait, she's sayin' sumfing...mm... ah, well bollox mate, you've got shit tits n' all!"

The conversation would then peter out leaving me forever wondering if, in the classical tradition "those two kids ever got together" or, whether the philandering lady with the questionable knockers had forever burned her bridges with her pomme de terre . In any case, Theo and I were playing the bon viveurs ourselves as one late afternoon we went out for a drink with two acquaintances from our seminar group: One Dan, the other James. For this instalment of my dispatches from the frontline of higher education, I shall refrain from describing them in depth. Such details can wait, deserving as they do, a separate chapter entirely. Content yourself to imagine the four of us, with easy leisure, and casual badinage , passing the hours away when our attention was drawn to a RockSoc event being held in Darwin college - "The Pit" it was called, or perhaps "The Cave", some such incommodious name anyway. “Why, with three friends, I might accomplish this,” thought I, “I might gain entree to all the things I'm missing out on.” There was no dissonance from our party, and so we went.

5. The Ninth Circle

"The Cavernous Pit" (or whatever) consisted of two rooms, the one playing metal, the other playing goth and rock. Each room consisted of a circle of unattractive people (predominantly female) swaying in the centre, and a row of unattractive people sitting on chairs (predominantly male). From time to time, one of the circle would break away to vomit and a hopeful male would rise and attempt to gain entry. He would invariably fail: this one might stumble over a bag whilst that one would slide, on a slick of effluent, through the circle and defenestrate himself into a waiting bush, re-emerging some minutes later with twigs in his hair and a vulgar expression. After observing this fascinating ritual for an hour or so, the DJ felt it was time for us all to listen to Orgy's version of "Blue Monday"; tragically he had misjudged the situation for, as everyone knows, it is never time for us all to listen to Orgy's version of "Blue Monday", and the crowd dispersed accordingly. Some of the hopeful males had their patience rewarded by an apparition in a corset taking their quivering hands in their meaty sausage-fingers with the promise, as Theo put it later, of "crap, angry fat-girl sex". And so we left, my little band of unhappy brothers. We left and began the habit of a year, we returned to James' room and watched a film, I forget which. How comfortable I felt and how much fun I had, I shan't soon forget.

Such was the extent of our connection with Kent's society-led culture and I don't regret it for a second. Some people do not mix well. By this I do not mean that I value my life above theirs, that I consider them in any way "lesser" by general principal, I simply mean that they don't like me and I don't care about them because they don't like me, which shows very poor taste. Perhaps it is foolish, and evidence of something wrong within me, "something broken inside", but I learned in early adolescence to break life down to a series of choices, qualitative assessments about what I felt comfortable with and what I did not. I trusted my judgement and it has served me well. If I read, for example, an entry on thestudentbar.com, that runs "Books:lol yeah right i only read when my life depends on it", particularly if that student is studying "European Culture and Thought", then I know I will not like this person. In my estimation, this person is a willy and I should have nothing to do with him. I am usually right.

This dispatch shall close, by way of contrast, with a short description of events in my house in Parkwood that directly followed the night described above - in particular it shall focus upon Kitty (my female housemate for those who have yet to read, or indeed, have read and forgotten my first dispatch).

6. Portrait of a Lady

When I returned to Parkwood that night, it was to the sight of Kitty orally pleasuring a young man whilst he sat at the kitchen table eating a pot noodle. They did not seem to notice me and, being slightly the worse for passive marijuana smoke, I thought nothing strange of passing them without a word, depositing my bag in my room and returning to make a cup of tea. When I did return, they were sat sheepishly at the table sharing the pot noodle.

"Evening" said she, "This is Spaz."
"Of the Newport Spaz's?" I replied, which was foolish, but reasonably funny. Spaz laughed. She did not. As he guffawed and stretched out a hand, Kitty glared at me and pouted. Spaz's hand remained untaken.
"Have you been smoking in your room?"
"Um...yes."
"You know you're really not supposed to."
"No, I am allowed. I checked with the accommodation office." This was true, I had.
"Well you're obviously lying because I put in for a non-smoking house."

How does one react to this? With fists, with insults or with reasoned logical argument? I decided quickly, drew a cigarette from behind my ear, lit it on the oven and would have made a perfect exit if I hadn't tripped on her outstretched leg as I passed. Ah well, these things are soon forgotten, soon kissed and soon made well. Two days later I awoke somewhat in a fug, not from alcohol (I don't drink) but just from too many cigarettes and too little food. It must have been about half past 7 on a Monday, as I was just preparing for my Early Drama seminar. Wandering into the hall, heading for the turlet I saw a note written in marker pen pinned to the kitchen door. Some trifling domestic matter, I thought and glanced at it - it read thusly:

"Will whoever had a VERY noisy orgasm this morning PLEASE refrain from doing so again as he is living with four other people who have exactly NO interest in hearing him FUCKING. AND, if it IS who we THINK it is then its the MOST we've heard out of him since he GOT here."

Now I have so far remained quiet on the subject of women. Such musings, again, warrant a chapter to themselves. Rest assured though, that I had not sweetened the early morning air with cries of passion, but had slept through whatever commotion there had been. Underneath the note I scrawled "Not guilty I‘m afraid, guess again". I cleaned my teeth and went to my seminar in an understandably poor mood.

My state upon returning was yet worse - Theo, James and Dan had all been absent and the time had passed tortuously. There was a conference of sorts going on in the kitchen. There they were: Kitty of course; Gorgoroth nibbling a microwaveable burger; Darbisher leaning his chair against the wall and stretching his hands over his gut; Septimus sitting hunched over like a tent-hook and Myshkin, sipping from a pint glass of foul-smelling florescent-pink liquid. Darbisher chuckled:

"Mystery sorted."
"Oh yes?" I said slowly, suddenly fearful of which housemate it was, my worst suspicions were confirmed.
"It was Gorgoroth and Betsy."
"..Betsy?" I stammered, Gorgoroth looked at me:
"...My girlfriend," he said pointing to what I had assumed was a pile of laundry and spoiled meat beside him - it spoke:
"Yeah sorry, lol!"
The erstwhile laundry-meat revealed itself to be, in fact, a foul girl. Don't think I'm one of the precious types who picks people up on spelling and grammar, Christ knows I cock-up enough myself, but saying "L.O.L" as part of conversation pushes me to the brink. I rallied.
"Don't worry about it, Betsy dearest," said I and looked at Kitty.
"I'm sorry about the note," she said, then rose and left with a bustle and a swagger.
"Think nothing of it," I muttered then took my leave.

Back in my room, a slow, numbing realisation passed over me as the true import of what had just passed disseminated. The Austro-Serbian poet Gaizka de Rochemback imaged the feeling of terror as a drop of black paint spreading in a clear glass of water. The fucker had no idea. Gorgoroth had climaxed! Within metres of where I unknowingly slept! The idea was terrifying. That this foul, sweating oaf had roused himself to sexual orgasm in the same living space as myself was bad enough, but that his ministrations had been enough to wake those upstairs. I could only thank God and all his pretty muses that I had been spared. However, if I had had any idea of what the bastard had in store for me as regards Gorgoroth, I would have saved my breath. But that's for another day, I'll pause for now, to let both you, dear reader, and I catch our breaths. I wouldn't wish to tire you out for you're really rather pretty with your hair tied back.

End of part 2

By J. L. Cranfield

Copyright February 2006