Kim Song

KIM SONG

Upstairs at the front of the Lhasa Hotel, up the wide marble staircase from the fountains and statues of the huge reception hall, is the vast, spectacular Norbulinka Lounge. On three sides, tall tinted windows reveal a stunning panorama of the encircling Himalayan peaks. So close that you really do have to put your head back to view the higher points.

I was musing on the mysterious ways in which God was moving…or at least moving me. Here I sat in a gigantic concrete and glass construction with more electric wiring than the rest of the whole city of Lhasa. Mind-bogglingly owned half by the People’s Republic of China, half by the Holiday Inn chain based in the USA. Flying dead cows a thousand miles from Chengdu to feed the few carnivorous white ones who stayed here – at this time, mostly me!

Across the road – which was as wide as two motorways, though Lhasa did not seem to brag more vehicles than somewhere between 50 and 100 – stood the only other notable modern construction in Lhasa. The Great Hall of the Performing Arts was a fully equipped modern theatre facility. With seating space for thousand, audio and lighting systems, stage, curtains, etcetera it would have been impressive in any Western community of comparable population. Here in Tibet where everyone except the incomprehensible tourist went to sleep soon after darkness fell, it was pretty much unbelievable.

I was wondering who had decided to construct these two buildings – the hotel and the theatre – here? Why? The theatre was locked up and empty, the hotel as quiet as a monastery. These must have been major construction projects, involving the transport of materials and equipment many hundreds of miles through difficult mountains and passes. What was the idea?

While I mused, my attention floated slowly like an eagle around the peaks above me.

“Mr Soul?” A slim petite woman at the right of my armchair, bending over as she spoke, interrupted my reverie

I nodded.

“Might I join you?” she smiled. I smiled and nodded agreement. Why not? She wasn’t a Westerner, though she dressed in their style – pink cotton long-sleeved tee shirt and sky-blue denims. She was some unusual genetic mix, maybe half Tibetan the other half Chinese or Japanese. She settled in an armchair at right angles to mine.

“My name is Kim Song, Mr Soul. The management suggested that I should speak with you. You see, I am a specialist guide.”

“I wasn’t really planning on much trekking in Tibet”, I said. My poor feet were still aching, my white Hush Puppies almost worn through the soles, from all my wanderings through China – and before that the Cote d’Azur, Geneva and Amsterdam. 6 weeks non-stop trekking was enough, for me already. Anyway, I was having terribly breathing difficulties at this altitude. Even on such short jaunts as from my room to the toilet I would end up gasping, frantically holding on to furniture to avoid having a whitey and fainting…unless I took each and every step in slow motion.

“Oh, I do not mean tourist guide. No. It is sufficient physical travel that you have arrived here in Lhasa. I am more a guide to the…understanding of your own psychology.”

My eyes widened. Was I now paranoid? This felt like she was here specifically to see me, not just touting for business amongst chance travellers. Just like I had felt the Hall of the Performing Arts had been built for some purpose that, mysterious, involved or required my arrival and contribution to approach its actualisation.

I looked at Kim Song, realising that for all I knew my ‘private’ thoughts were totally available to her. If this was paranoia, I could deal with it. Why? Because, if all these impulses and inspirations had been coming to me from one source, I was inclined to have faith in that source. Eight weeks of the most adventurous activity in my whole life and I had not been hurt once. So I trusted the ‘author’ that was making it all happen for me.

She smiled, not hurrying. From a shoulder bag she had dropped beside her chair she took a clipboard, referring to some neat hand-written notes and un-capping a pen for action..

Suddenly I realised I might be already running up some bill that would be presented to me later.

“Mr Soul…”

“Adam.”

“Adam, I must make it clear. You came to Lhasa for a reason. There are here facilities, opportunities, for you to learn things that may transform your view of life, yourself and the world. At present it is not clear to you whether I am a user-friendly guide presented by your own soul or a dollar-hungry tourist trap, no? As you decide, so you will see me. I wish to investigate with you why you present yourself with the suspicious, untrusting option at all.”

What could I say? Kim Song was certainly able to read fine what I was currently going through. I could certainly use a psychological guide.

“Mr Soul…Adam…. I must ask you one thing to which I require fully honest answer. You have been travelling alone for a couple of months. Have you had sexual intercourse in that time?”

The question was shocking, for various reasons. Was it a veiled offer? I really wasn’t physically attracted to her. Something had changed on my travels. Before that I had been over-inhibited, which resulted in lecherous opportunity grabbing whenever drunkenness coincided with flirtatious come-on. Now, having loosened these inhibitions, I felt I would rather go without than tangle with the complications following a fuck not accompanied by some other attraction.

“Not lately.” My ‘manhood’ – whatever that might be – felt challenged by the question…. and weakened by the answer.

“Please tell me, Mr Soul, whether you think you might share with me fully, in the capacity of guide, your thoughts, desires, fears, experiences and memories to do with your sexuality. Will you be able to communicate with me, honestly and completely6, about whatever arises in your awareness?”

Eyebrows raised in question marks, she studied me intently as I thought of the possible implications. I felt she was getting her answer without requiring me to verbalise it, through body language. She continued, “I must add that my function is not to provide you with myself as a physical sexual partner, but to assist you as a guide to resolve any conflicts or confusions between your goals and desires in that area of your psychology.”

Kim Song appeared to heavily stress particular words and consciously gauge my reaction to them.

“Like a sister” she said, “Or a mother. I would like you to see me as a woman who is helping you to explore your psychology and sexuality without offering myself to you as a sexual partner.”

Then, although to me it seemed redundant now, she looked for my expressed response.

Never in my lifetime had I had a sister. No woman had ever taken this role. To my mother the entire area of sexuality was taboo as a subject of communication. I had not had the benefit of a woman’s friendship and support ‘on my side’ as it were. A woman in the position of sexual partner cannot easily act also as ‘sister’, since she must at all times in the relationship be more concerned for her own interests and security than for mine.

I, the great Adam Soul, world-travelled explorer, truth-seeker and dragon-slayer, felt tiny, weak and vulnerable. Confused. Wanting to trust her, open up and work with her, but afraid of the consequences from revealing my true thoughts. Wasn’t there a dark ugly beast within me that must be kept forever hidden? Who did she work for? To whom would she report what she learned from me?

Since I had begun these travels 8 weeks earlier, by stepping over the line of taboo to smoke the forbidden ‘dope’, I had actually found it impossible to lie to anyone. Much that I had formerly kept secret now spilled out freely while I was high. That was one of the reasons I had been moving so fast from location to location. I didn’t need to see again any face with which I had shared a secret that could lead to social backlash. Only I knew the full extent of the revelations so far from my inner self.

This Kim Song, psychological guide, who now sat studying me, awaiting my consent to share my private thoughts, could prove to be a major threat to my personal survival. Yet this distrust might itself be a major threat. Haven’t I always wanted to share my thoughts and feeling fully and unreservedly?

Eight thousand miles from all that has been familiar to me. In a world of entirely strange phenomena and even magical psychical experiences. My liquid financial resources almost exhausted, spent on experiences and equipment chosen by some unknown source of inspiration to achieve some purpose not yet clear to me. Faith - trust – has got to come into this trip somewhere. Either I am living with a dangerous chaotically unstable world or I learn to trust the source of creation, discovering love and peace instead.

What had she said? “As you decide, so you will see me.” So if I decide she is my sister, as close and trustworthy as ever my brother has been, then that’s what she will be? No other factor having more bearing than my own subscribed belief?

“Alright, Kim Song. You are my sister. I will trust you and communicate honestly with you about my thoughts. I want to know about love.”

Having said it, I experienced extraordinary relief. All of my consciousness was a journey of self-discovery, not a battle against humanity for personal survival with odds of millions to one against me.

“Thank you, Adam. I will not waste your time. Because of the way the human psychology has evolved there have been barriers to discussing sexuality. Inhibitions have been so strong that it was difficult to even talk about this area of life without becoming erotically excited. That excitement was often misinterpreted and directed one to seek satisfaction with whomever one had the conversation with. If one would tame a horse, it is necessary to confront it and bring it under control. Then one can ride to where one wishes to go. If it is kept locked up as a wild beast, any attempts to ride it will be wild experiences, unsatisfactory, since neither has yet learned to look at the other’s requirements.”

*******

Kim Song’s room was feminine. Aesthetic abstract pictures, toys and soft furnishings. Instead of chairs there were a large assortment of cushions. We adjusted these to our current requirements.

On a low table she had several huge piles of pictures, pages or cuttings from magazines. She used these to direct my attention. Selection of a particular image or group of images very rapidly unearthed my memories or desires related to what was depicted.

We sipped lukewarm tea. Slowly, not disturbing the large rehydrated leaves and flowers at the bottoms of the handleless fine china cups. Before me on the floor were images of idealised romantic love. A turbaned Indian prince gently caressed his consort by moonlight. The couple in formal evening attire, silhouetted by a fiery sunset, embraced on the deck of a luxury cruise-boat.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“By the time I was drunk I couldn’t remember what it was I had actually been looking for. All I was aware of was the physical lust, the desire to get into a fucking situation, now, now, now. I couldn’t even hear what the woman was saying any more. It didn’t matter. What mattered was whether she objected when I put my hands on her. I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, or whether the result was pleasant for her. I was just scoring points in my own head. Pushing up the points total I could reveal to other men when it came to the point of comparing our scores.”

My eyes were closed. Kim Song had vanished and I forgot about her. I forgot I was speaking aloud.

“I was 19 and I was so drunk I actually stepped over the line. Dee was the only woman I had touched since I was 14, apart from New Year kisses from Mum and the embarrassed farewell hugs as I left for University or on holiday.

Dee picked me. She was six feet tall and incredibly skinny. A wonderful example of malnutrition or anorexia. Her inseparable buddy was a short fat girl with thick spectacles. Together they floated around for several months on the periphery of my perception, like myself incapable of making any new social connections.

One day in the refectory, I was sipping the hot blackcurrant drink I ordered daily as part of the effort to create an identity for Adam Soul, a collection of details to make me unique. The two girls plonked down next to me. Dee said ‘You’re taking English Literature too, aren’t you?’ We all blushed. We talked for hours… with extra long sweating and blushing pauses.

Dee seemed so ugly or repulsive to me. I would hang out in the refectory after lectures praying for the two appear, pretending to read my notes but watching the doors with the corners of my eyes. When they appeared I jumped with excitement. Never did I approach Dee. If she was already there when I entered, I pretended not to have seen her and ran away. No way was anyone going to think I would deliberately approach such and ugly scarecrow of a girl.

While we were talking I hated the idea that dozens of people could see us. Could see me associating with such ugliness. All the time, though, I was thinking, ‘It’s a woman. I’m heterosexual. They can all see that.’ I blushed and sweated for hours every day while we talked.

Dee suggested going dancing. I got so drunk I actually attempted to dance. Hanging on to her, stumbling with my eyes closed, nearly pulling her to the floor. Thinking, ‘I’m going to do it! Tonight! Lose my virginity!’ Just for the prize of being able to avoid blushing next time my brother started talking about sex. The relief of not being a virgin. That was just too uncool for a would-be Free Love Hippy.

In the taxi I was on the verge of passing out. If I had been alone I would have laid down on the pavement and gone to sleep. Instead I slobbered all over her ugly face, felt her pimples against my lips and roughly pushed my hands under her clothes into all the forbidden areas. When I paid the cab driver, the coins actually slipped on her sweet-smelling lubricant on my fingers.

A wild animal took over, man-handled her through the pantry window into the hall of residence. Pushed her on to the bed, slobbering like a brute. It was over very rapidly. I only had enough time to take a few blurry mental snapshots of her going through her programmed ‘No… no…. don’t….don’t…’, complete my elementary education in biology (women really do have two holes), wonder if her matchstick legs were going to snap under my weight, then I entered, ejaculated and passed out all in one swift motion.

Conversation with Dee was even more embarrassing after that. I couldn’t ignore her but I was ashamed in public by the tiny motions of physical contact she made. Ugh!

For that one night of blundering conquest I got my “Not A Virgin” medal, and I had to wait another ten years for my next sexual intimacy.

Many times in these ten years I fell in love. This was a different experience. Entirely subjective, except for the blushing and throat-constricting dumbness that struck me whenever the target was close. I can’t even say what I imagined might happen. Somehow, miraculously, I was to get to the position of being infatuated with the woman to where she freely shared and appreciated all the beauty, gentleness, wisdom and artistry I kept secret, locked away from everyone.

There were two collections of women in my memory. The ones I loved I could have written poetry for and I dreamed of heaven with. Then there were the ones who seemed easy or flirtatious. I would fall asleep on their floors at parties, follow them around in pubs or on the street, and pass out on their doorsteps unable to knock the door. That would be confessing guilt to the crime of wanting to fuck.

I couldn’t see how other men managed to do it. By the time I reached the point of being drunk enough to touch a woman I could not focus my eyes or formulate a sentence.

Pornography was a mixed comfort. Maybe it released some tension, but it also gave me an ever-widening menu of activities to feel deprived of. Plus continual guilt.

I was conceived in guilt, shame and ignorance. These are the basic foundation stones of my reality, my universe. Badness, evil, desire to do the wrong and shameful thing. These were the first thoughts I ever had in my mind, as soon as Dad’s sperm reached the ovum.

When I was 20 I took some LSD, stood in front of a mirror and commanded my mind to supply its earliest memory. The details were vivid. A couple copulating partly-clothed. Fumbling intoxicated in the darkness of a farm outhouse. I see the door, an ill-fitting wooden construction with a primitive latch and wide gaps at top and bottom. Someone is approaching across the farmyard. The couple are guests at a relative’s farm.

‘Quick! Quick!’ the woman gasps in frightened shame. ‘Somebody’s coming!’ With that, the now guilty male ejaculates. No pleasure any more. Just shame, guilt and the clumsy flurry to re-arrange position and clothing to pretend it hasn’t happened.

I’m prepared to accept these were the exact circumstances of my conception. That this – Adam –is the ‘body’ that was ‘coming’, so backwardly created. It was a world where copulation was filthy, disgusting and dangerous. To enjoy the act would have been sin. To enquire of one’s partner about how to improve it would have been confession of shameful perversion. I can only imagine what tortures my parents went through in the conflict between their basic natural desires and the social programming that made these so punishably evil and shameful. It is not hard for me to imagine, actually, since the conflict is basic to my own psychology and life. I am both innocent and pervert.”

I sat up, tears in my eyes, staring at Kim. Could she possibly understand? This wasn’t just sex I was talking about. It was me, my life and my love, twisted and perverted since conception. I came into being in a psychosis, my whole reality developed out of a psychosis. I realised I couldn’t actually speak for any other. Maybe I would never know for sure whether anyone else actually lived in the kind of paradise reality I could dream of? Could a child be consciously conceived as an expression of innocent love, allowed to grow in an environment that welcomed and supported the free-willed spirit of the child? Encouraged to express love and feel loved in return? Could Kim understand the horror I experienced on realising my whole world was built on the premise that pleasure, love, open and expressed affection and enjoyment are evil, sinful, to be overwhelmed and controlled by force, pain, shame and guilt?

If I had known that was immortal, infinite, impersonal spirit and that other options were available to me, I would have aborted this existence rapidly. Miscarriage. Cot death. Start again. Better that than forty years of fighting against the inevitable misery of having to abort the project.

Kim Sung was certainly an unobtrusive guide. She entered no dialogue, provided no answers, but gave me someone who cared, wanted to understand and wanted me to understand my situation. My head was on her knees. My tears were uncontrolled. She gently caressed my head. I had the mother I always wanted. Someone who let me be myself. Who accepted me as I was, as I wanted to be. Who was helping me to sort out my troubles without having to interrupt or correct me, or defend herself by denying or suppressing what I felt and said. She was loving me. Maternal, sisterly, feminine love.

Say a child’s mind was a computer. A perfect, infallible, vast computer that could run a whole world. But empty, devoid of programming. The world it was to run still uncreated, unexplored. Put into the computer the first programming commands: “I am wrong. I am bad. I want what I want but what I want is wrong.” No matter what you build on tops of that base the program, the world, is going to be crazy. The computer, perfect and infallible as it is in construction, will come up with wrong answers forever, since that is the effect of the first command given to it. Whatever it comes up with as a right answer must be put through this perverting gate that says the right answer is the wrong answer.

Kim caressed my head more while I sobbed. I told her I could see the possibility of a loving world. Not a world of perpetual struggle to make something good out of something bad. A world that was innately good, made more good. Of course, top have emotions, excitement, adventures or games there must be right and wrong answers, but there is a vast difference between loving oneself, playing to have more right than wrong answers, and continually fighting uphill from being unloved.

Psychosis was the word that repeatedly presented itself. Life has reason, intellect, to guide its operations, emotions to translate the guidance into action and, and physical force to move objects around into the desired arrangement. Psychosis, as I saw it, was the perversion whereby physical force or violence was used to overwhelm reason and seize control of the emotions. Once psychosis of this kind is introduced into a life system it spreads by contagion from organism to organism, generation to generation. I explained to Kim the history of my people. I didn’t know where the psychosis originally entered the story. Once it was entered, though, the idea that one person could – and should – control the behaviour of another with physical violence, the rest was a chain reaction.

At some point, generations ago, my ancestors were invaded by psychotic people who overwhelmed their self-chosen values and behaviour. The invaders used violent brutal force to modify the behaviour of their victims. Freedom of choice was almost entirely eliminated and their behaviour was re-programmed to profit the conquerors, using fear and physical punishment as the basic programming tools. A few generations ago the overlords created out of my people a working class. Personal aspirations to develop intellect, artistic pursuits, lifestyles revolving around sexuality or pleasure were beaten out with physical force and replaced by duties to report for work for the overlords’ benefit.

The system was so developed by the time my personal; life began that parents used physical violence as the prime method or rearing their own offspring correctly. Doing the slavemasters’ job by beating out the child’s aspirations for freedom at home.

What were the first words I learned? My happy dreaming and play were punctured and beaten back rapidly as, right after ‘mummy’’daddy’’wee-wee’’potty’’jobby’’adam’, I learned ‘bad’’stop that’’bad boy’’smack’’spank’’thrashing’, ‘don’t’ and ‘don’t you dare’. There was no equal vocabulary of encouragement, ‘kiss’’love’’good’ or ‘do’.

So my life was approached with the premise that I was a wild animal more inclined to do wrong than right and that these evil inclinations should be beaten out of me. How could I love myself when I was being repeatedly hurt for reasons I could not understand, by the very ones I believed loved me? Love equals sudden inexplicable pain? I love something that might kill or destroy me?

********

CUT

*******

It is a nightmare. Kim Song is gone. I cannot find her. Trusted her. Began to open up, confront my deepest fears. Where is she?

The Thought Police have arrived. I am naked. The dope ran out. I am down. More down than I have ever been. I am innocent. Someone framed me. I want out of here. Just one toke of the Real McCoy and let me look at the flowers, watch the swans, sit by the fountain. You bastards. You’ve killed my God. Why? Don’t you have hearts that beat? Are you just robots? Don’t you have any feelings?

What am I to you? A blip on your screen? Detected nuisance – social threat – potential insurgent – quarantine. Contain. Control and contain. Distracting compliant units from their soap opera medication.

Kim! Professor! God! Ali! Where are you? I mean no harm. Never intended to hurt anyone. Oh, one rabbit I speared when I was 12. But I threw up and never hunted again. Not guilty! Help! I surrender.

Four officers. The Thought Police are giants. Armoured helmets. Faceless black visors. Are they people or machines? Six feet five, black and white uniforms. Waistbands loaded with clubs, cuffs, radios, machinery I don’t recognise.

“What have I done wrong?”

They do not answer. Two of the monsters pull me to my feet. The other paid block the doorways, hands on the hilts of their clubs. Tiny indicator lights flash on their waistbands and inside their helmets. For all I know they are talking about me inside these helmets.

I am searching for my clothes. I cannot find them. Too late. My arms are forced behind my back, cuffed at the wrists. Huge hands seize my upper arms and propel me forward, out of the room. I see my naked body in a mirror – weak, skinny, grotesque.

Am I already insane? Am I dead? What age did I actually reach? Maybe this is all a fantasy projection in my mind? I toked that spliff by the rooftop pool in Monte Carlo and the rest since then has just been a bad dream? Wish I hadn’t read ‘1984’. You are what you eat/read/watch/believe.

They have put a sign round my neck. We are passing through a vast enclosed shopping arcade, a supermall. Shoppers with boxes and bags are rushing out of the shops to gawp at my nakedness.

We have stopped by a fountain. Why? The Thought Police are on either side, inviting the crowd to come closer and stare. I read the sign hanging on my chest as they do.

“Anti-Social Element. Non-Contributor.

Thief. Pervert. Drug Addict. Murderer.”

It’s not true! Women are laughing at my nakedness, my vulnerability. How can they be so cruel? Dear God, let me die, or go insane. Get me out of here. Cerebral haemorrhage, please. Beam me up, Scottie, for Christ’s sake!

A little boy comes up close to spit on me. The crowd roars support. “Don’t! Don’t!” I scream. “I haven’t had a trial! I’m just like you. I love you. I’m a friend.”

I might as well be shouting Venusian. Whatever they hear, they laugh and jeer more. Here comes another little boy, more daring. He punches me nauseatingly in the genitals. A cheer.

“In the name of God, stop it!” I am crying, pleading, degraded, broken.

My guards yank me forward again. We are running. My genitals are slapping up and down. Everywhere we are crowded on all sides. Jeering, laughing, cruel ugly faces. Why can’t I just faint, die, go unconscious? At least go insane properly, so I don’t care any more?

Police Station. How many sets of electronic doors? I am rushed into a large room with bare white walls. My hands are pushed into nooses on the ends of rubber ropes rooted in one wall. Another pair are pulled over my feet, round my ankles. I am pushed forward, off balance. My frightened struggling tightens the noses. The guards leave.

Now what?

Before me is a table with three chairs on the other side. On the table is a video camera pointing at me, and a television monitor unit facing away from me.

A small man comes in dressed in black double-breasted blazer with brass buttons, grey flannels, shiny black shoes, a pinstripe pink shirt and red tie. He sits in the middle chair and fiddles with a keyboard in front of the monitor.

“Why am I here?” I ask mildly.

He doesn’t look up. Shows no sign of having heard me.

“Why am I here?” I am shouting now. Still he gives no indication of hearing me.

I am struggling to think. I want to give up, surrender, but I don’t know how to will unconsciousness.

Look back. I arrived in Lhasa. First Time? Second time? Thought I was dying. Met the Professor. Decided not to be re-born until I had edited my ongoing karma. Met Kim Song. Was sorting out why my life had always been sabotaged. Why the approach of success always led to overwhelm and failure. Here it was again.

Back up. Just a little bit. I blamed my mother! There’s the crime!

Oh, this is good, isn’t it? The Thought Police get me to accuse myself, supply the evidence, prove myself guilty. That’s clever. I’m arrested, so obviously I’m guilty. I’m sure that’s how my Mum would always see it.

Well, I’m innocent. The evidence will show that. I didn’t blame anyone. Don’t even see a value in blaming. We all want to be free of this damned psychosis. We don’t want a scapegoat. We want a solution. An end to it.

A long wait. Just standing there, arms outstretched. Naked, vulnerable, degraded. Waiting. The man in the smart clothes stares at his monitor, motionless.

Did I hear the voice of Kim Song? Soft, gentle, distant. Just one word. “Patience.”

My legs were tired. Sore. I wanted to sit down.

The man at the table looked up at me. In a cold, mechanical, emotionless voice, he spoke: “In your opinion, why were you arrested?”

That was their game. Well, I wasn’t playing!

He waited, motionless certain that an answer would come. Like a video camera on pause, ready to be voice-activated when I spoke.

Slowly I read, upside down, the sign that still hung around my neck over my chest:

“Anti-Social Element. Non-Contributor.

Thief. Pervert. Drug Addict. Murderer.”

I waited, determined that he would have to place charges before me. No way would I co-operate in self-incrimination. But he just gazed at me blankly, a blinkless stare.

Minutes passed.

All the time the man stared at me, waiting for his answer. The question still hung there.

This wasn’t fair. To him it was a game. A job. He was paid and supported for doing this. I wasn’t.

He pressed a key on his keyboard. One of the hooded guards entered, marched up to me. He pulled some implement from his belt, put it against my arm and pressed a button. I felt a brief sting. Needle. Injection. Some kind of truth drug. The guard left.

“Why, in your opinion, were you arrested?” the man repeated tonelessly.

“Because of the false allegations on this sign,” I said.

“Why would these allegations be made?”

“I don’t know,” I said, then added “Misinterpretation of my behaviour.”

My mother walked into the room with that pained ‘you’ve-hurt-me-very-badly’ face on, stepping slowly as though on broken glass. She sat down by the interrogator.

“You are indeed fortunate,” said the expressionless man. “Out of the goodness of her heart, your mother has stepped in to support you in your defence.” She could have written that line for him.

She smiled at him daintily, glanced at me in my nakedness, my degradation, and looked quickly away.

“God knows why I should,” she said, “after all the shame you’ve put me through. All the ingratitude. What kind of reward is that for all these years of trying to bring you up right, to be good?”

Now a middle-aged lady came into the room. She had grey hair, a double chin, a low cut tight grey dress that squeezed up her cleavage, highlighting her thick hips and overweight bottom. She wore black stockings and very high-heeled shoes that clacked loudly on the floor as she wiggled and waddled past me, round the table and into the vacant seat.

“Procurator,” said the man, “Please present the charges.”

The overweight woman rose from the seat she had just occupied, leaned forward with her hands on the table and said, “The guilty party, Adam Soul, is accused of being an actively anti-social element. He is a non-contributive parasite on society. A thief. A sex pervert, a drug addict and a murderer. He is incurably insane and…” she paused, looking with most serious sympathy at my mother, “a spiteful, vicious, ungrateful child!”

She sat down, hissing and crackling. Mum began to sob, great streams of tears making a study in misery of her face.

I could see that all the elements were in place for the sort of justice I had come to expect from early in my life.

“Who is to be my judge?” I asked.

“Silence!” barked the man. “If you show any further disrespect you will be forcibly restrained. Now, would you like to make a free confession of your crimes? By saving the time of the court and displaying some genuine contrition you might expect better treatment.”

What had I to lose?

I said, “The truth stands in my defence, whether it is heard or not. I suspect that fair hearing and fair treatment may lie in other hands than this court. Let’s get on with your game.”

“Oh Adam, Adam!” Mum began a fresh batch of weeping and wailing. “Don’t hurt us any more. I’ve really done my best for you. How can you be so ungrateful and spiteful?”

“Present the evidence,” said the man in the middle.

The Procurator stepped forth, loosening two buttons at the top of her dress as she approached. It peeled apart to reveal she wore nothing underneath. With her back to the camera, she stepped slower as she neared me. Her right hand pulled the top of her dress down and to the side. She lifted a large, exposed breast and let it fall. Slowly she stepped tight up to me and took my penis in her left hand. I realised that all this was concealed from the camera and court by her back.

Again she licked her lips, looked me in the eye with one of those ‘I-like-to-suck’ looks, looked me in the other eye with the same look, and began to put her fiendish questions. She had one of those harsh wine-soaked voices that puts suggestive emphasis on selected words.

“Let’s not pussy-foot around. You play poker with me and you might come off lightly. You understand? So, let me put it to you like this..”

She made suggestive licking motions with her tongue between her lips. She moistened the middle finger of her right hand and played with the huge rubbery nipple of her left breast, all this still concealed from everyone but me.

“You smoke cannabis, don’t you?” She emphasised the question with a squeeze of her left hand.

Under the influence of the truth drug I felt compelled to be fully accurate in my response.

“Not at this moment,” I said, “That should be obvious. We would have to refer to either the past tense or the future tense. Even then, there might be a difference between what a dealer may call a substance on selling it and what a proper chemical analysis might prove that substance to be. In a climate of illegality with no consumer protection, what a seller presents as ‘cannabis’ might actually be boot polish, henna or..”

I had to break off. All this time she had been pulling my pecker with short but firm concealed motions.

“Oh,” she said, “You want to make it hard for me? Let’s see what you come up with when I put it to you like this. Have you purchased and subsequently smoked or otherwise consumed any substance claimed at point of sale to be cannabis… pot… marihuana…. Indian hemp….”

She was now accompanying each word with a strange rippling motion of the fingers of her left hand. I felt fingernails and sharp sensations where they had not been felt for a long time.

“ganja… bhang… dope… weed… stuff… puff… black… grass… bud… devil’s weed… or afro-fucking-dysiac?”

“Yes.” I choked. I could not lie. Or take much more of that line of questioning.

She was quickly buttoning up her dress again. Twirling, she addressed the court and camera.

“There you are. A self-confessed user of dangerous drugs.” Watching her back I realised that this was a clever woman, for as she spoke to the camera she was rocking back and forth at the hips in a grinding circular motion, a motion that was somehow or other transmitted into and felt by my own nether regions.

“It is a matter of common knowledge that anyone who uses such drugs is anti-social, lazy, non-contributive, willing to steal and murder to maintain their evil habit. Perhaps even worse than that, such a drug addict always turns out to be, as his mother will be forced to agree, a sex pervert.”

Like a Sunday School teacher she stepped primly away from me, leaving me staring down, like the two shocked figures behind the table, at a piece of evidence that would not be easy to talk away.

********

CUT

*******

The Professor was also busy performing to a video camera, a final test transmission for his television channel. It was New Year’s Eve in England and he was about to go live globally at midnight GMT, after years of preparation and practise on a smaller scale.

He looked around the small select audience in the Hall Of The Performing Arts, each of whom would shortly make his or her own contribution on-camera. Once again he tried to use layman’s terms all the way through this first public presentation of Para-Temporal Levitics (or ‘Quantum Mechanics for those who really want to get off’ as he was calling it at the moment):

“As will shortly be explained in more detail by Herr Einstein,” he waved towards an eccentric hippy hairstyle in the ranks, “Quantum Mechanics is not just something to nod one’s head at in sage pretension. It is an applicable practical guide to staying outside. Outside the head, outside time, outside space. Whilst the over-rational gravity-addicts among us may benefit in more easily grasping these truths through use of a modicum of zero-zero grade hand-rubbed charas – available through the link on your screen now – the more experienced among us have been for some time (or should I say times – ha-ha) taking advantage of the Gift of The Big G.”

“Jah Make Mah Heart Sing!” shouted Bob Marley, who had till now been quietly checking his tuning with James Marshall Hendrix, a mop-headed youth beside him.

“Now, if y’all think that’s fancy talking,” continued the Prof, “I advise y’all to get your heads in place before Uncle Albert here gets his mouth in gear.”

Albert, who was concurrently trying to recall all the words of ‘Desolation Row’ for his musical encore and explain the concept of Simultaneous Mega-Anti-Orgasm to an as-always enchanting Joanna Lumley Darling, coughed a little in stage fright.

The Professor was concluding his warm-up.

“Mr Einstein, or One-Stoned-Bert as we sometimes call him, will explain to you that both Time and Space are, logically, illusion. That if you go far enough in one direction you will come back to from where you started. That each moment of time, each ‘now’, is a point of intersection between infinite numbers of alternative realities and space-time continuums.. And much, much more. Get your video recorder running now. You will most likely want to see this again after your trip, to explain what happened. Now while our Armageddon Super-Group Maitreya pump up some action in your on-board cerebral chemistry set, here’s a simple primer to be working on: When you travel at any speed greater than the speed of light, you are actually travelling in reverse time. Now that’s what I call one hand clapping!

He clicked on the applause switch with his left foot, left it running as he walked over to pick up a loaded bong at his control panel. As he raised the flaming lighter he smiled at me, said “Weird dream….but nice!” winked and vanished.