Meet my new mistress

Every just so often I abandon drawing and everything and become someone else, like a playwright or a matador. At this moment, I have become a guitarist. I am already on p21 of “Progressive Guitar Method Book 1 – Beginner”. Studying is a beautiful process. You sit and you look at it and you practice it and then suddenly it all makes sense. Like one little, hidden room suddenly becomes illuminated, and you’re allowed to go in and enjoy. I love the sound of the C chord moving onto the E7 chord. I could do it over and over again. My fingers are killing me; I now know how Bryan Adams felt back in the summer of ’69. I will start using phrases like “At least I still have my guitar”, and “The guitar is my woman”. I also have a new fuck-you rock’n’roll haircut. Essentially I stand in front of the mirror and spend 15 minutes loading my hair with clay and wax until it looks like I haven’t washed in 3 days and just rolled out of the gutter without checking the mirror. Yep, that’s me, the genuine article.

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Until I start drawing again, I’ll just post random scans from old pictures. This is a banana I had a particular affection for, and I didn’t want it to decompose into obscurity, so I drew it.

I want you

Ah recovery. The days following a minor cold are the best. Your insipid body blossoms with the sweet surges of necessity, and your broken spirit becomes enflamed with guiltless want. You stand at the toilet and your cock weighs heavy in your hand, all rubbery flesh; soft, yet somehow twice its normal size and full of insinuation.
I have a plan. I’m going to invade Burma. All those dispossessed people, all those passive monks, that inept and globally hated junta. It’s practically a revolution just waiting to happen; just waiting for me. Oh how fucking fun it will be, choosing a new national anthem and watching statues of myself going up. I’ve checked a map. We’ll sail from Sri Lanka. There’s nothing in the way, and there’s no one in Sri Lanka who can or will stop us from gathering. We’ll go in many small boats. If we go in one big boat it might get stopped by the Myanmar military, but they won’t be able to stop many little boats. I’ve thought of everything.
We’ll need weapons, but we’ll barely need to use them. We’ll need them just to show we’re serious and to cut down the very few people who will resist. I calculate the Burmese military will almost immediately join us. They will have sensed long ago that the current leaders have lost the plot and are on a one way street to obsoletion. Still, we’ll cut deals with the current leaders, giving them ineffectual positions in the new regime where they can at least live out their worthless lives in peace. I want it to be a quick, clean revolution, otherwise it will drag out and we’ll have stupid little fractions to deal with afterwards. As king I will appoint Aung Sang Syu Ki as president. This will please the peacemongers and Europeans who feel they have a vested interest in the country's wellbeing and may get in the way.
For the initial army, I need only 50,000 men and women. I will pay you after we secure power, US$1000 each. Not bad for ten days’ work. I’ll cut a deal with the United States to pay you off – they will be happy to settle the account to have a friend in Burma. They do it all the time. I’ve calculated it, it comes to 50 million US dollars. Believe me, I know how these people work, and it’s a goddamn bargain. Send your contact details to: domboy@wrongdesign.com and I’ll cc everyone with the time and place to meet. I’ll need someone to help purchase all the boats and someone who’s good at logistics. I’ve really thought of everything.

It’s all swell when you’re well

Dreaming I was preparing an exhibition honoring Herman Brood. I was being emotionally tortured. In defiance I offered a knife to use against me, and in greater defiance it was ignored and the torture compounded. When I woke up my throat was killing me and I knew I was sick again. Then I fell asleep and dreamed of hamsters, just like the last time I was sick. A man had neglected his hamster – it was in a poor state, all malnourished and half bald. I helped orchestrate the campaign to save the hamster. Later, I walked past the man’s shop. His hamster sat on the sidewalk in front of his shop. The front of the shop was all glass, and the hamster looked tiny. I saw the man inside, completely broken with his head in his hands, awaiting his fate. I petted the hamster, which had completely recovered. The hamster stared stupidly in front of itself, completely unable to comprehend its current state, or even its previous state. It sure looked cute though.
Later Baby mentioned Laika. I always thought Laika survived, but it turns out her spaceship wasn’t even designed to be able to make it back into orbit. Later Laika was honored with all sorts of statues, postage stamps etc, which somehow makes me feel even more sorry for Laika. I bet all she wanted was some food, a place to run around, and a good fuck.
Well, in a nutshell: I’m sick, we’re all going to die, and existence is futile.

The libertine

I first learned I had no soul in Egypt in 1999. I was in an oasis town called Al Fayoum, taking photos of romantic poverty, when a local man purposely walked into me, knocking me sideaways, mid-photo. I assumed it was an accident and looked up at him, and he turned to face me while he was walking away and gave a clear grimace, somehow both facing me and walking away at the same time, grimacing, with piercing, unfriendly eyes. I’d seen that look before a few times in Egypt; enough times to make me stop and think what it meant. This was pre-9-11, when I still had a healthy disrespect for all religions, and didn’t know the difference between a Jew and a Muslim. I now know there is no difference – they are just the same as me: insignificant human animals with overblown senses of importance. I’d made a lot of faux-pas during that trip. I still remember the whole room filling with laughter - absolute uncontrollable, unexpected mirth, after I asked if I could get a flight to Israel. I remember the student coming up to me in the Mohammed Ali mosque (no, not that Mohammed Ali) and telling me I was not behaving respectfully. He was unapologetically angry, veritably incensed. I remember the man saying, with contempt, “No, they are not singing, they are praying”, and I especially remember that pregnant pause during an argument about money in the Khan al-Khalili souk, after a non-Muslim female had literally ripped the cash out of a male Muslim’s hand, when I could see in their eyes the thought: “Should we beat the crap out of them, or laugh it off?”. That look followed me everywhere, and I eventually interpreted it to mean “that base infidel”. Those challenging eyes, coming from an animal that had spent an entire lifetime in devotion to a spiritual ideal, facing an animal that had spent an entire young adulthood in devotion to folly and fleeting sensual whims.
What troubled me most was that it was all true. Where they had a deep spiritual conscious, no matter how absurd it was, I had only an indiscriminate fancy, based on nothing but orgasms, pride and desire. I have no soul. I am like a Labrador, running through a sunlit field; it’s tongue hanging out, with a glorious, idiot smile on its face.
I wish I had a soul. I listen to Mahalia Jackson and I wish I had a soul. I meet my fiends and relatives who have a certain and defined faith and I wish I had a soul. I speak to virtual strangers who are discovering subtle and profound truths about themselves and I wish I had a soul. But I don’t. I am hollow and empty like the rotten core of a decaying tree trunk. Like a shell whose inhabitant has long left for a larger housing. Like Kenny G. I am on a path of existence, leading towards a death that will lead me into eternal nothingness. It makes me feel so … liberated.

Men’s stage-fright (a true story)

Several years ago I was in the men’s room in Penn Station in New York. The urinal was one long, stainless steel trough with no partitions, long enough to accommodate about 20 men. I took the most free spot and started organizing the dormant Mr Thriller to pee when I noticed some commotion to my right. Men were hurriedly stuffing their trousers and scurrying away and I saw a man at the other end running his hand up and down his penis. By the time he had it to its full length everyone had vacated the area except me, and he was calling after them “You see it, don’t you? You see me doing it!” He had an enormous smile and he looked really pleased.
I was defiant, and I stood there facing the wall, determined to do my business. But I couldn’t. I waited, I concentrated, I tried not to concentrate, but I couldn’t pee. I can’t remember if I ever had men’s’ stage-fright before, but I definitely had it after that episode.
I have made an amazing discovery though; a Nobel Prize worthy discovery … I think I have cured men’s stage-fright. If you’re a man, or if you know a man, please read this.
Now, when I feel stage-fright coming on, I think of the Buddha. Yes, the Buddha. I visualize him, with his happy face and big belly, and I can pee. I can’t for the life of me remember how I came to this discovery. I know, over time, I tried various things to think about, and various techniques, and this was one of them, but I just can’t remember why on earth I would decide to try thinking of the Buddha. I haven’t been in a situation as dire as a masturbating stranger yet, so I’m not sure if it works in extreme circumstances, and I’m also not sure if it’s just me because I have a certain innate reaction to the Buddha, but it’s worked for years, so I think it’s a pretty good discovery. This is not a joke, by the way, and it doesn’t contain an indirect hidden message, so please try it and tell me how you get on.

Fish eat fish

I dreamed there was a tank full of fish which were to be culled. The culling was acheived by poisoning the water and slowly draining it, so the poison became less and less diluted. As the fish started to weaken, the stronger fish started to eat the weaker fish, but these stronger fish then became weaker and themselves were eaten, till it was just shallow water with various fish wallowing around with strings of half-dead fish half swallowing each other.
This reminded me of when I got a free pass to a new gym. My regular gym has a big, open changing room, but this new gym had a tiny one cluttered with ill-places seats. In my regular gym people are generally polite and generous in the changing room – they stand back and make room for each other, but in this new gym it was dog eat dog, with everyone vying for a good spot to change, jumping all over each other and the furniture and aggressively protecting their little patches.
This in turn reminds me of the Middle East.
Silly little fish.